A Thousand and One Stories. Week 18: The Arabian Nights

This week’s reading was A Thousand and One Nights, also known as The Arabian Nights. The backstory (very, very briefly) was that a king, upon finding his queen to be unfaithful, executed her, and declared himself done with women, sort of. Every night, a new woman was brought to be his queen. Every morning he had his vizier execute the poor unfortunate girl. One day the vizier’s own daughter Scheherazade asked to be married to the king. After many days of begging, the vizier finally gave in to the girl’s request.

Once in the king’s bedchamber, her sister (it’s kind of complicated) asked for a story. Scheherazade spun a tale but ended it at a cliffhanger. The king, wanting to hear the end of the story, decided to let her live and bring her back for a second night. With stories that included Sinbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin, Scheherazade lived a thousand and one (and more) nights.

The actual stories are collected from around the 8th century until the 13th, from Persia and India predominantly. They were translated into English around the 17th century. I’d imagine that the exotic stories captivated European audiences!

For me, the experience of reading the stories was similar to reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The stories are fun, and very interesting—I loved some of them, especially the seven voyages of Sinbad. But when I say they didn’t leave a mark, I just don’t think I’ll take a lot from this week’s reading. I didn’t find any of them to demonstrate particular lessons, to teach virtues or make some kind of grand statement about the human condition. They were really fun, and I will definitely keep this book around because it is terrific bedtime reading. That’s not a terrible thing to say about a book.

A year ago I read the wonderful Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri, about a little Iranian boy who emigrates to Oklahoma with his mom and brother. There are vignettes in which the author directly references these stories, related as a way for him to hold onto his Persian heritage. I do think I’ll go back and reread that one, just because I really loved it and would like to be able to know it a little better. Now that I’ve read Arabian Nights, that should be easy.

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Daniel Nayeri, author of Everything Sad is Untrue

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

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