Reading Notes: Arabian Nights, Part A
This week in Mythology and Folklore, I'm adjusting my focus from Greek/Roman mythology to Middle Eastern mythology, starting with Scheherazade's The 1001 Nights. Read below for my notes!
1: Scheherazade
-the Sultan Schahriar really love his first wife and he gave her everything, until he discovered she had been lying to him so he had her killed; because of this, he was convinced that all women were wicked
-so every night he married a new woman and had her strangled the morning afterward; this made everyone in the kingdom very upset
-Scheherazade, the oldest daughter of the grand-vizir, asks him to let her marry the sultan so she can save all the women of the town from ever having to marry him and die; after some convincing, he reluctantly agrees; Scheherazade tells her sister that when she marries the sultan, to come to their chamber and ask her to tell her one of her stories before she dies; she agrees
-Scheherazade marries the sultan and her sister comes to her, asking her to tell a story; the sultan permits Scheherazade to tell the story, so she starts with the story below
2: The Merchant and the Genius
-a merchant is traveling through the desert; on the fourth day, he stops at a fountain to eat and relax; suddenly, he gets attacked by a genius (genie) who accuses him of killing his son and is now threatening to kill him; the merchant is confused, so the genie explains that while the merchant was relaxing, eating and throwing stones around, a stone hit the genie's son in the eye and killed him
-the merchant begs for mercy because it was an accident, but the genie isn't moved and is ready to kill him
-at this point, Scheherazade's first night is over, and the sultan has to leave for council but agrees to let Scheherazade live to tell the rest of the story; he comes back that night and the story continues
-the merchant makes a deal with the genie that he will take a year to tell his wife and kids goodbye and make his will and then he'll come back so the genie can kill him; he goes home and the year passes; as he waits by the fountain, an old man comes by and asks him what he's doing; the merchant explains the situation, and the old man decides to stay with him and witness what happens
-another old man with two dogs shows up and decides to stay with them to see what happens; a third man shows up and does the same; the genie then shows up and is getting ready to kill the merchant but the first old man makes a deal with the genie that if he tells him his own story and the genie finds it marvelous, he will do away with a third of the merchant's punishment; the genie agrees
3: The First Old Man and of the Hind
-the hind that he has with him is his wife; he adopted the son of his favorite slave in order to have an heir; his wife didn't like his adopted son or his mother, so when he went away for a year, she took his son to the woods and turned him into a calf and his mother into a cow and gave them to their steward
-when the old man came back, his wife told him that the mother had died and she didn't know where the son was; time passed, and one day he decides to sacrifice a cow to Bairam; he almost sacrifices the mother (disguised as a cow) but sees the cow crying so he decides not to; he has the steward kill the cow instead, but he sees that she's nothing but bones instead of fat, and is confused; he decides to try and sacrifice the calf (his son) instead, but the calf resists, putting up a huge fight; he decides not to sacrifice this calf, but tries to sacrifice another one instead
-the steward comes to him the next day and says that his daughter knows magic and knows that the calf he spared yesterday is actually his son, and the cow they sacrificed the day before was his mother; he makes a deal with the daughter to change back his son if she can marry him and punish the woman who changed him; the daughter changes him back and turns the old man's wife into a hind as punishment
-the genie agrees that this story is amazing, and gives up a third of the merchant's punishment
-the second man with the two dogs makes the same deal with the genie as the first man and starts his story
4: The Second Old Man, and of the Two Black Dogs
-the second old man says the two dogs are his brothers, and they all used to be merchants; his older brother went to foreign countries to be a merchant for a year and came back to the old man's shop one day as a beggar because he lost all his money; the old man took him home, gave him half of his money and they lived together happily
-the second brother (the other dog) does the same as the older brother and then comes back as a beggar; the old man gave him some money and helped him back on his feet
-eventually, the two brothers convince the old man that they should travel; one day, the old man runs into a woman on the beach and ends up marrying her and bringing her along in their travels; one day, the two brothers get so jealous that they toss the old man and his wife into the sea; the man's wife (who is a fairy) saves him and takes him to an island; she decides to turn his brothers into dogs as punishment
-the genie says his story is amazing, and gives up another third of the merchant's punishment
-the third man makes the same deal with the genie; Scheherazade doesn't know his story, so she doesn't tell it, but says that it was amazing so the genie gives up all of the merchant's punishment
-Scheherazade decides to tell the story of the fisherman, because it's more amazing than all of the stories that she told before
5: The Fisherman
-one day, an old, poor fisherman catches a yellow pot in his net (after so long of catching nothing), he opens it, and a genie comes out; the genie decides to kill the fisherman, and asks him to choose how he will kill him; the man asks why the genie wants to kill him, so the genie tells him a story
-the genie had rebelled against the king of the genies and was shut in the pot; after being shut in there for so long, the genie swore if someone let him out, he would kill them
-the fisherman refuses to believe that the genie could fit in the pot and tricks the genie into showing him how he fit into the pot by getting back in it; the fisherman locks the genie back in the pot; the fisherman then decides to tell the genie a story (the greek king and the physician)
6: The Greek King and the Physician Douban
-a Greek king has a disease that no physicians have been able to cure; one day, a new physician comes to him and tells him that he can cure him; the king agrees to let him try so the physician goes home and puts the drug he wants to use in a polo club, makes a ball, and goes to the king
-the physician tells the king that he wants to play polo; the king agrees; the physician gives the king the club with the drug in it and tells him that he must use it, go home, take a bath, sleep, and when he wakes up he will be cured; the king does as he's told
-the next day, the king wakes up and he's cured; the king celebrates the physician; this makes the king's grand-vizir jealous, so he tells the king that the physician is there to kill him; the king does not believe him and knows that he's jealous, so he decides to tell him the story of what a vizir said to King Sinbad in order to keep him from killing his own son
7: The Husband and the Parrot
-a husband buys his wife a parrot capable of telling him anything that it sees, puts it in her room and leaves for a time; he comes home, talks to the parrot, and scolds his wife for bad things she's done; this makes her angry
-the wife tells a slave to fabricate a thunderstorm for the parrot so he could only tell the husband that a thunderstorm had happened; the husband knows there wasn't a thunderstorm, so it kills the parrot believing that it lies and apologizes to his wife
-the greek king tells this story to the grand-vizir and says that this is why he won't believe his lies about the physician; the grand-vizir continues to insist that the physician is trying to kill him, so he tells the king a story about a vizir who was once punished by a king
-a prince and his father's grand-vizir go hunting, and one day the prince gets lost alone in the woods; the prince comes across a woman who says she is an Indian princess who lost her horse; the prince helps her and takes her home; when they get there, he follows her inside and hears her tell someone that she has brought them a "nice fat youth" to eat; the prince realizes that she's not a princess, she's an ogress and gets on his horse
-the ogress catches him and asks him what's wrong; he asks her where the road is, and she tells him; he makes it home and tells his father about how the grand-vizir lost him in the woods, and the king has the grand-vizir strangled as punishment
8: The Physician's Revenge
-after the grand-vizir tells this story, the Greek king believes that the physician might be trying to kill him; the king sends guards to get the physician and bring him to the king so he can be executed; the physician tells the king he isn't trying to kill him and begs for his life; the physician convinces the king to suspend his execution for a day so he can go home and get a book that he thinks the king will like
-the king lets him go get the book; the physician tells the king that once his head is cut off, if it's placed on top of the book, the king can ask it any questions and it will answer them; the execution happens, and the physician's head is placed on the book; the head tells the king to open the book and go to a certain page; as he turns the pages, he licks his fingers; he can't find any writing, but the physician's head tells him to keep going, so he does
-eventually, the king figures out that the pages of the book are poisoned, and he's been licking his fingers and ingesting it; the physicians head mocks him as he dies
-the fisherman finishes telling the genie this story, and says he is going to throw the genie back into the sea (and punish him as the physician did the Greek king); the genie tells the fisherman that if he lets him out of the pot, he will make the fisherman rich; the fisherman agrees
9: The Sultan and the Fish
-the genie takes the fisherman to a certain lake and tells him to fish; he catches plenty; the genie tells him to sell the fish to a sultan, and he will get lots of money, but he can't fish in the lake more than once a day; the genie leaves, and the fisherman does what the genie said to do
-the sultan asks the fisherman where he got the fish; the fisherman tells them about the lake, but the sultan doesn't believe him, so the fisherman takes them there
-while they are camping by the lake, the sultan goes by himself to a nearby castle; the sultan finds a sad man there and asks why he's the only person in the castle; the man shows the sultan that he is half marble, half man, and tells him his story
10: The Young King of the Black Isles
-he says one night, when everything was normal, he overheard his wife's handmaids saying she didn't love him anymore and wished to kill him because she's a witch; so he nearly kills one of her slaves, and in her grieving and rage, she turns half of him to marble and casts a spell on the slave so that he will stay alive
-she changed everyone in the kingdom to fish, made the capital the lake and all the islands hills, so he would be the last man there
-the sultan tells the man he will wait for her to show up so he can avenge him and the kingdom; the next day, he kills the slave and throws his body down a well and waits for the woman; when she shows up, the sultan pretends to be the slave; the woman is happy that he can speak and decides to turn the man back into a whole man
-the sultan (posing as the slave) then gets her to change the whole kingdom back to what it was before; then the sultan kills her and goes back to his kingdom with the man, who he decides to make his heir; because the sultan was so happy with this development, he makes the fisherman rich
1: Scheherazade
-the Sultan Schahriar really love his first wife and he gave her everything, until he discovered she had been lying to him so he had her killed; because of this, he was convinced that all women were wicked
-so every night he married a new woman and had her strangled the morning afterward; this made everyone in the kingdom very upset
-Scheherazade, the oldest daughter of the grand-vizir, asks him to let her marry the sultan so she can save all the women of the town from ever having to marry him and die; after some convincing, he reluctantly agrees; Scheherazade tells her sister that when she marries the sultan, to come to their chamber and ask her to tell her one of her stories before she dies; she agrees
-Scheherazade marries the sultan and her sister comes to her, asking her to tell a story; the sultan permits Scheherazade to tell the story, so she starts with the story below
2: The Merchant and the Genius
-a merchant is traveling through the desert; on the fourth day, he stops at a fountain to eat and relax; suddenly, he gets attacked by a genius (genie) who accuses him of killing his son and is now threatening to kill him; the merchant is confused, so the genie explains that while the merchant was relaxing, eating and throwing stones around, a stone hit the genie's son in the eye and killed him
-the merchant begs for mercy because it was an accident, but the genie isn't moved and is ready to kill him
-at this point, Scheherazade's first night is over, and the sultan has to leave for council but agrees to let Scheherazade live to tell the rest of the story; he comes back that night and the story continues
-the merchant makes a deal with the genie that he will take a year to tell his wife and kids goodbye and make his will and then he'll come back so the genie can kill him; he goes home and the year passes; as he waits by the fountain, an old man comes by and asks him what he's doing; the merchant explains the situation, and the old man decides to stay with him and witness what happens
-another old man with two dogs shows up and decides to stay with them to see what happens; a third man shows up and does the same; the genie then shows up and is getting ready to kill the merchant but the first old man makes a deal with the genie that if he tells him his own story and the genie finds it marvelous, he will do away with a third of the merchant's punishment; the genie agrees
3: The First Old Man and of the Hind
-the hind that he has with him is his wife; he adopted the son of his favorite slave in order to have an heir; his wife didn't like his adopted son or his mother, so when he went away for a year, she took his son to the woods and turned him into a calf and his mother into a cow and gave them to their steward
-when the old man came back, his wife told him that the mother had died and she didn't know where the son was; time passed, and one day he decides to sacrifice a cow to Bairam; he almost sacrifices the mother (disguised as a cow) but sees the cow crying so he decides not to; he has the steward kill the cow instead, but he sees that she's nothing but bones instead of fat, and is confused; he decides to try and sacrifice the calf (his son) instead, but the calf resists, putting up a huge fight; he decides not to sacrifice this calf, but tries to sacrifice another one instead
-the steward comes to him the next day and says that his daughter knows magic and knows that the calf he spared yesterday is actually his son, and the cow they sacrificed the day before was his mother; he makes a deal with the daughter to change back his son if she can marry him and punish the woman who changed him; the daughter changes him back and turns the old man's wife into a hind as punishment
-the genie agrees that this story is amazing, and gives up a third of the merchant's punishment
-the second man with the two dogs makes the same deal with the genie as the first man and starts his story
4: The Second Old Man, and of the Two Black Dogs
-the second old man says the two dogs are his brothers, and they all used to be merchants; his older brother went to foreign countries to be a merchant for a year and came back to the old man's shop one day as a beggar because he lost all his money; the old man took him home, gave him half of his money and they lived together happily
-the second brother (the other dog) does the same as the older brother and then comes back as a beggar; the old man gave him some money and helped him back on his feet
-eventually, the two brothers convince the old man that they should travel; one day, the old man runs into a woman on the beach and ends up marrying her and bringing her along in their travels; one day, the two brothers get so jealous that they toss the old man and his wife into the sea; the man's wife (who is a fairy) saves him and takes him to an island; she decides to turn his brothers into dogs as punishment
-the genie says his story is amazing, and gives up another third of the merchant's punishment
-the third man makes the same deal with the genie; Scheherazade doesn't know his story, so she doesn't tell it, but says that it was amazing so the genie gives up all of the merchant's punishment
-Scheherazade decides to tell the story of the fisherman, because it's more amazing than all of the stories that she told before
5: The Fisherman
-one day, an old, poor fisherman catches a yellow pot in his net (after so long of catching nothing), he opens it, and a genie comes out; the genie decides to kill the fisherman, and asks him to choose how he will kill him; the man asks why the genie wants to kill him, so the genie tells him a story
-the genie had rebelled against the king of the genies and was shut in the pot; after being shut in there for so long, the genie swore if someone let him out, he would kill them
-the fisherman refuses to believe that the genie could fit in the pot and tricks the genie into showing him how he fit into the pot by getting back in it; the fisherman locks the genie back in the pot; the fisherman then decides to tell the genie a story (the greek king and the physician)
6: The Greek King and the Physician Douban
-a Greek king has a disease that no physicians have been able to cure; one day, a new physician comes to him and tells him that he can cure him; the king agrees to let him try so the physician goes home and puts the drug he wants to use in a polo club, makes a ball, and goes to the king
-the physician tells the king that he wants to play polo; the king agrees; the physician gives the king the club with the drug in it and tells him that he must use it, go home, take a bath, sleep, and when he wakes up he will be cured; the king does as he's told
-the next day, the king wakes up and he's cured; the king celebrates the physician; this makes the king's grand-vizir jealous, so he tells the king that the physician is there to kill him; the king does not believe him and knows that he's jealous, so he decides to tell him the story of what a vizir said to King Sinbad in order to keep him from killing his own son
7: The Husband and the Parrot
-a husband buys his wife a parrot capable of telling him anything that it sees, puts it in her room and leaves for a time; he comes home, talks to the parrot, and scolds his wife for bad things she's done; this makes her angry
-the wife tells a slave to fabricate a thunderstorm for the parrot so he could only tell the husband that a thunderstorm had happened; the husband knows there wasn't a thunderstorm, so it kills the parrot believing that it lies and apologizes to his wife
-the greek king tells this story to the grand-vizir and says that this is why he won't believe his lies about the physician; the grand-vizir continues to insist that the physician is trying to kill him, so he tells the king a story about a vizir who was once punished by a king
-a prince and his father's grand-vizir go hunting, and one day the prince gets lost alone in the woods; the prince comes across a woman who says she is an Indian princess who lost her horse; the prince helps her and takes her home; when they get there, he follows her inside and hears her tell someone that she has brought them a "nice fat youth" to eat; the prince realizes that she's not a princess, she's an ogress and gets on his horse
-the ogress catches him and asks him what's wrong; he asks her where the road is, and she tells him; he makes it home and tells his father about how the grand-vizir lost him in the woods, and the king has the grand-vizir strangled as punishment
8: The Physician's Revenge
-after the grand-vizir tells this story, the Greek king believes that the physician might be trying to kill him; the king sends guards to get the physician and bring him to the king so he can be executed; the physician tells the king he isn't trying to kill him and begs for his life; the physician convinces the king to suspend his execution for a day so he can go home and get a book that he thinks the king will like
-the king lets him go get the book; the physician tells the king that once his head is cut off, if it's placed on top of the book, the king can ask it any questions and it will answer them; the execution happens, and the physician's head is placed on the book; the head tells the king to open the book and go to a certain page; as he turns the pages, he licks his fingers; he can't find any writing, but the physician's head tells him to keep going, so he does
-eventually, the king figures out that the pages of the book are poisoned, and he's been licking his fingers and ingesting it; the physicians head mocks him as he dies
-the fisherman finishes telling the genie this story, and says he is going to throw the genie back into the sea (and punish him as the physician did the Greek king); the genie tells the fisherman that if he lets him out of the pot, he will make the fisherman rich; the fisherman agrees
9: The Sultan and the Fish
-the genie takes the fisherman to a certain lake and tells him to fish; he catches plenty; the genie tells him to sell the fish to a sultan, and he will get lots of money, but he can't fish in the lake more than once a day; the genie leaves, and the fisherman does what the genie said to do
-the sultan asks the fisherman where he got the fish; the fisherman tells them about the lake, but the sultan doesn't believe him, so the fisherman takes them there
-while they are camping by the lake, the sultan goes by himself to a nearby castle; the sultan finds a sad man there and asks why he's the only person in the castle; the man shows the sultan that he is half marble, half man, and tells him his story
10: The Young King of the Black Isles
-he says one night, when everything was normal, he overheard his wife's handmaids saying she didn't love him anymore and wished to kill him because she's a witch; so he nearly kills one of her slaves, and in her grieving and rage, she turns half of him to marble and casts a spell on the slave so that he will stay alive
-she changed everyone in the kingdom to fish, made the capital the lake and all the islands hills, so he would be the last man there
-the sultan tells the man he will wait for her to show up so he can avenge him and the kingdom; the next day, he kills the slave and throws his body down a well and waits for the woman; when she shows up, the sultan pretends to be the slave; the woman is happy that he can speak and decides to turn the man back into a whole man
-the sultan (posing as the slave) then gets her to change the whole kingdom back to what it was before; then the sultan kills her and goes back to his kingdom with the man, who he decides to make his heir; because the sultan was so happy with this development, he makes the fisherman rich
Scheherazade telling her stories to the sultan. Source: Untextbook.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"The Arabian Nights Entertainments" by Andrew Lang. WebSource: Untexbook.
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