The Book of One Thousand and One Nights

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights ( Hazār-o Yak Šab, Kitāb 'Alf Layla wa-Layla; also known as The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night, One Thousand and One Nights, 1001 Arabian Nights, Arabian Nights, The Nightly Entertainments or simply The Nights) is a medieval Middle-Eastern literary epic which tells the story of Scheherazade (Shahrzad in Persian), a Sassanid Queen, who must relate a series of stories to her malevolent husband, King Shahryar, to delay her execution. The stories are told over a period of one thousand and one nights, and every night she ends the story with a suspenseful situation, forcing the King to keep her alive for another day. The individual stories were created over many centuries, by many people and in many styles, and they have become famous in their own right. Notable examples include Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.

History

The nucleus of the stories is formed by a Pahlavi Sassanid Persian book called Hazār Afsānah Abdol Hossein Saeedian, "Land and People of Iran" p. 447 ("Thousand Myths", in ). During the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the 8th century, Baghdad had become an important cosmopolitan city. Merchants from Persia, China, India, Africa, and Europe were all found in Baghdad. It was during this time that many of the stories, which were originally folk stories, are thought to have been collected orally over many years and later then compiled into a single book. The later compiler and translator into Arabic is reputedly storyteller Abu abd-Allah Muhammed el-Gahshigar in the 9th century. The frame story of Shahrzad seems to have been added in the 14th century. The first modern Arabic compilation, made out of Egyptian writings, was published in Cairo in 1835.

Synopsis

The story takes place in the Sassanid era and begins with the Persian king Shahryar. The king rules an unnamed island "between India and China" (in modern editions based on Arab transcripts he is king of India and China). Shahryar is so shocked by his wife's infidelity that he kills her and, believing all women to be likewise unfaithful, gives his vizier an order to get him a new wife every night (in some versions, every third night). After spending one night with his bride, the king has her executed at dawn. This practice continues for some time, until the vizier's clever daughter Sheherazade ("Scheherazade" in English, or "Shahrastini", a Persian name) forms a plan and volunteers to become Shahrayar's next wife. With the help of her sister Dunyazad, every night after their marriage she spends hours telling him stories, each time stopping at dawn with a cliffhanger, so the king will postpone the execution out of a desire to hear the rest of the tale. In the end, she has given birth to three sons, and the king has been convinced of her faithfulness and revoked his decree.

The tales vary widely; they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques and Muslim religious legends. Some of the famous stories Shahrazad spins in many western translations are Aladdin's Lamp, the Persian Sindbad the Sailor, and the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves; however Aladdin and Ali Baba were in fact inserted only in the 18th century by Antoine Galland, a French orientalist, who claimed to have heard them in oral form from a Maronite story-teller from Aleppo in Syria. Numerous stories depict djinn, magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography; the historical caliph Harun al-Rashid is a common protagonist, as are his alleged court poet Abu Nuwas and his vizier, Ja'far al-Barmaki. Sometimes a character in Scheherazade's tale will begin telling other characters a story of his own, and that story may have another one told within it, resulting in a richly layered narrative texture.

On the final (one thousand and first) night Sheherazade presents the King with their three sons and she asks him for a complete pardon. He grants her this and they live then in a relative satisfaction.

Note: the narrator's standards for what consitutes a cliffhanger seem broader than in modern literature. While in many cases a story is cut off with the hero in life danger or another kind of deep trouble, in some parts of the full text Scheherazade stops her narration in the middle of an exposition of abstract philosophical principles or abstruse points of Islamic theology, and in one case during a detailed description of human anatomy according to Galen - and in all these cases turns out to be justified in her belief that the king's curiosity about the sequel would buy her another day of life.

Editions

The work is made up of a collection of stories thought to be from traditional Persian, Arabic, and Indian stories. The core stories probably originated in an Iranic Empire and were brought together in a Persian work called Hazar Afsanah ("A Thousand Legends"). The Arabic compilation Alf Layla (A Thousand Nights), originating about 850 AD, was in turn probably an abridged translation of Hezar Afsaneh. Some of its elements appear in the Odyssey. The present name Alf Layla wa-Layla (literally a "A Thousand Nights and a Night", i.e. "1001 Nights") seems to have appeared at an unknown time in the Middle Ages, and expresses the idea of a transfinite number since 1000 represented conceptual infinity within Arabic mathematical circles.

The first European version (and first printed edition) was a translation into French (1704 - 1717) by Antoine Galland from an earlier compilation that was written in Arabic. This 12 volume book, Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français ("Thousand and one nights, Arab stories translated into French") probably included Arabic stories known to the translator but not included in the Arabic compilation. Aladdin's Lamp and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves appeared first in Galland's translation and cannot be found in the original writings. He wrote that he heard them from a Syrian Christian storyteller from Aleppo, a Maronite scholar, Youhenna Diab, whom he called 'Hanna'.

John Payne, Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp and Other Stories, (London 1901) gives details of Galland's encounter with 'Hanna' in 1709 and of the discovery in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris of two Arabic manuscripts containing Aladdin and two more of the 'interpolated' tales. He instances Galland's own experience to demonstrate the lack of regard for such entertainments in the mainstream of Islamic scholarship, with the result that

…complete copies of the genuine work were rarely to be met with, collections… and the fragmentary copies which existed were mostly in the hands of professional story-tellers, who were extremely unwilling to part with them, looking upon them as their stock in trade, and were in the habit of incorporating with the genuine text all kinds of stories and anecdotes from other sources, to fill the place of the missing portions of the original work. This process of addition and incorporation, which has been in progress ever since the first collection of the Nights into one distinct work and is doubtless still going on in Oriental countries, (especially such as are least in contact with European influence,) may account for the heterogeneous character of the various modern manuscripts of the Nights and for the immense difference which exists between the several texts, as well in actual contents as in the details and diction of such stories as are common to all.

Perhaps the best-known translation to English speakers is that by Sir Richard Francis Burton, entitled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885). Unlike previous editions, his ten volume translation was not bowdlerized. Though printed in the Victorian era, it contained all the erotic nuances of the source material, replete with sexual imagery and pederastic allusions added as appendices to the main stories by Burton. Burton circumvented strict Victorian laws on obscene material by printing an edition for subscribers only rather than formally publishing the book. The original ten volumes were followed by a further six entitled The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night which were printed between 1886 and 1888.

More recent versions are that of the French doctor J. C. Mardrus, translated into English by Powys Mathers, and, notably, a critical edition based on the 14th century Syrian manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, compiled in Arabic by Muhsin Mahdi and rendered into English by Husain Haddawy, the most accurate and elegant of all to this date.

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights has an estranged cousin: The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki. A Polish noble of the late 18th century, he traveled the Orient looking for an original edition of The Book... but never found it. Upon returning to Europe, he wrote his masterpiece, a multi-leveled frame tale.

Adaptations

Film and television

There have been many adaptations of the Nights, for both television and the big screen, with varying degrees of faithfulness to the original stories.

The atmosphere of the Nights influenced such films as Fritz Lang's 1921 Der müde Tod, the 1924 Hollywood film The Thief of Bagdad starring Douglas Fairbanks, and its 1940 British remake. It also influenced The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), the first surviving feature-length animated film.

One of Hollywood's first feature films to be based on the Nights was in 1942, with the movie named Arabian Nights. It starred Maria Montez as Scheherazade, Sabu Dastagir as Ali Ben Ali and Jon Hall as Harun al-Rashid. The storyline bears virtually no resemblance to the traditional version of the Nights. In the film Scheherazade is a dancer, who attempts to overthrow Caliph Harun al-Rashid and marry his brother. Unfortunately Scheherazade’s initial coup attempt fails and she is sold into slavery, many adventures then ensue. Maria Montez and Jon Hall also starred in the 1944 film Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

The 1980s "1001 Erotic Nights", starring Annette Haven as Scheherazade and John Leslie as Shahryar, was supposedly the first X-rated movie with a million-dollar budget.

The most commercially successful movie based on the Nights was Aladdin, the 1992 animated movie by the Walt Disney Company, which starred Scott Weinger and Robin Williams. The film led to several sequels and a television series of the same name.

The Voyages of Sinbad have been adapted for television and film several times, the most recent of which was in the 2003 animated feature Legend of the Seven Seas, which starred Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Perhaps the most famous Sinbad film was the 1958 movie The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, produced by the stop-motion animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen.

A recent well-received television adaptation was the Emmy award winning miniseries Arabian Nights, directed by Steve Barron and starring Mili Avital as Scheherazade and Dougray Scott as Shahryar. It was originally shown over two nights on April 30, and May 1, 2000 on ABC in the United States and BBC One in the United Kingdom.

There are of course, many non-English versions of the Nights. These include the famous 1974 Italian movie Il fiore delle mille e una notte by Pier Paolo Pasolini and the 1990 French movie Les 1001 nuits, that starred Catherine Zeta-Jones as Scheherazade. There are also numerous Bollywood movies, such as "Aladdin and Sinbad" in which the two named heroes get to meet and share in each other's adventures; in this version, the lamp's djin is female and Aladdin marries her rather than the princess (she becomes a mortal woman for his sake).

Upcoming movies

A film entitled 1001 Nights, written by Jeff Vlaming and due out 2006, is to be set in the present day and star Juliette Binoche and Laurence Fishburne. It portrays Scheherazade’s equivalent as the unfaithful wife of a mobster, who is kidnapped by her husband's henchmen and forced to tell stories in order to win her freedom.

Another film based on the Nights, is due out in 2007 and is simply named Arabian Nights. Written by Enio Rigolin, it will depict a more traditional version of the Nights set in ancient Persia.

Music

In 1888, Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov completed his Op. 35 Scheherazade, in four movements, based upon four of the tales from the Arabian Nights; The Sea and Sinbad's Ship, The Kalendar Prince, The Young Prince and The Young Princess, and Festival At Baghdad.

In 1975, the band Renaissance released an album called Scheherazade and Other Stories. The second half of this album consists entirely of the Song Of Scheherazade, an orchestral-rock composition based on the Arabian Nights stories.

In 2003, Nordic experimental indie pop group When released an album called "Pearl Harvest" with lyrics from Arabian Nights. "Ebony Horse", "Goose poor Goose, "Prince Kamar" and "Keys" are all taken directly from Arabian Nights. The music is also an ironic reflection on it, combining Beach Boys rock & roll with plunderphonics.

Notes

External links

References

The Thousand Nights and a Night in several classic translations, including unexpurgated version by Sir Richard Francis Burton, and John Payne translation, with additional material.
Stories From One Thousand and One Nights, (Lane and Poole translation): Project Bartleby edition
The Arabian Nights (includes Lang and (expurgated) Burton translations): Electronic Literature Foundation editions
Jonathan Scott translation of Arabian Nights
Notes on the influences and context of the Thousand and One Nights
1001 Resources and Links for A Thousand and One Nights University of Houston
The Book of the Thousand and One Nights by John Crocker
(expurgated) Sir Burton's ~1885 translation, annotated for English study.
Arabian Nights' Tales Dedicated site with just the stories of 1001 nights listed in order.
1001 Nights, Representative of eastern literature (in Persian)
"The Youth and his Tutor" & "Abu Nuwas and the Three Youths" - Two homoerotic tales from the Arabian Nights
"The Thousand-And-Second Tale of Scheherazade" by Edgar Allan Poe (Wikisource)

Film and television links

Arabian Nights (1942) IMDb
Arabian Nights (Miniseries) Official website
Il Fiore delle mille e una notte (1974) IMDb
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas Official website

Music links

Scheherazade And Other Stories Lyrics from Northern Lights, a Renaissance fan site

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