The 1001 Nights, by . . . Whoever

The 1001 Nights

Whoever

Whenever

An Alexandrine Couplet About The 1001 Nights

                                              A king wanted to shag and kill lots of women;

                                              One knew his kryptonite—half finished short stories.

The original 1001 Nights go back much further than any book version. Like most collections of cultural stories, there never was an original, definitive set, just an amalgamation of many different texts and disparate oral traditions. With that being said, I certainly don’t know a great deal about the origins.

I know the 1001 Nights came to the West in the early 1800s and have been translated to English many times by many people. The version I read and that most of this blog is based on – the Harvard Classics – is probably not the best collection or translation, so take it with a grain of salt.

Check.

 

Basic Premise: A king falls in love and gets married. Everything’s great until he catches his wife having orgies with women of the court and slaves in the palace garden (they left that part out when I was in kindergarten). He has her killed, then marries a different chick every day, has his wedding night, and murders them in the morning so that they won’t be able to betray him. A clever and daring lass bets if she can start telling him a story on their wedding night, get him really interested, and claim a headache, he’ll give her till the next night to finish it. If she does this every night for a long time, she’ll survive until he actually loves her and then he’ll just let her live, and as far as I can tell this isn’t an extended metaphor for sex – it’s actually story telling. The 1001 Nights are the stories the bride tells.

Man, she must have had some great stories.

 

Thank Jack Daniels, but that’s not exactly what I was trying to get across.

The most famous of these stories, at least if you grew up in an American school, are Ali Baba And The 40 Thieves and Aladdin which, arguably, are some of the least original, but that’s neither here nor there.

 

The Harvard Classics probably wear this shirt to bed. Just sayin’.

The stories we kids in California were told had some differences from the ones The Harvard Classics told me. For example, Ali Baba didn’t do too much, really. His slave girl (who was loyal and just thrilled to be his slave!) discovered and killed most of the thieves herself while Ali Baba wasn’t paying attention. He was so happy he set her free. When she later killed the leader of the thieves, Ali Baba was so happy he married her to his son. Since he didn’t ask either of them first I’m not sure what her freedom was actually worth. You can see how there are some problematic ideas for a modern audience. Oh, and how Ali Baba is kinda a dick.

 

He’s no Draco Malfoy, but who is?

And then there’s Aladdin.

The story has neither a monkey nor a magic carpet,

but thanks for trying, Disney.

Aladdin, as it turns out, should be spelled ‘Ala-ed-Din, but apparently that’s way too complicated for white folks so we just changed it, which is pretty messed up.

The kid was a lazy bum, not the street-smart orphan thief Disney would have you believe in. He basically did nothing all day while his sad Mom worked her fingers to the bone. Jafar was an evil sorcerer, but he was evil mostly because he was a Moor (read: black), and because the 1001 Nights are racist.

‘Ala-ed-Din gets the lamp, uses it to break up the Sultan’s daughter’s marriage before she losses her virginity (because otherwise, what’s she good for? – Seriously, there are some messed up details in these stories), marries her, kills Jafar and his equally evil (and equally black) brother, and literally has all the power and magic in the world and can accomplish anything, but instead of doing away with war or hunger he mostly just creates extra slaves out of thin air and throws money at people so they’ll love him.

And again, no Magic Carpet. Totally sad.

 

Sorry princess. Hope you brought your walkin’ shoes.

Many of the stories are, of course, morality plays, so the good people tend to win and get rewarded and the bad people tend to suffer or die. Usually poor people earn their way to riches. Jinni’s help out people who deserve it, or are at least out-smarted by good people. Also, it’s spelled “jinni”, “jinn”, “djinn” or any one of others ways – there are lots of types of jinni in this translation, and none of them start with the letter G.

Sure, these stories have lots of racism and sexism, but virtually all old stories have those and you have to see it as history, not progressive fiction. Overall, I liked it more than I expected and it’s worth picking up. Especially because of the short story format, if you don’t like a part, you can just skip it and move on to the next one.

Or just read the ones with Jinn running around doing things. The jinn are pretty spectacular, apparently!

I’m spectacular. Snarl.