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Arabian Nights week 22
Story
- Three sisters reveal their wishes. Sultan overhears and grants them. The elder sisters become jealous
- The younger sister, now sultana, becomes pregnant. The other sisters become her midwives. They steal the baby, putting him in a basket in a stream. He's found the the palace gardener and adopted.
- Next year, the same again. Then a daughter.
- The sultan wants to kill his wife, but she is saved by the vizir. She is condemmed to live in a wooden box.
- The children, including the daughter, grow up highly skilled.
- The gardener retires and the family move to the country. He dies before he can tell the children about how they were found.
- A holy woman visits and tells of three magical wonders to make the house perfect.
- The elder prince, Bahman, sets out to get the treasures, leaving a knife behind.
- Bahman meets a dervish who warns him of the danger ahead. He is turned to stone on the mountain.
- Parviz, the younger brother, sets out on the journey. He meets the same fate.
- Parizade dresses as a man and heads off.
- She shows cleverness by stuffing her ears with cotton so she can't hear the voices. She reaches the bird. The bird tells how how to find the golden water and singing tree. Then she asks about her brothers.
- The bird tells her how to return the petrified people to health. She does so and rescues her brothers. All return home.
- The princes go out hunting and meet the sultan. He invites them to hunt with him. The brothers impress the sultan.
- After a couple of days, the brothers consult Parizade about going to the palace. They consult the bird, who tells them to serve the sultan but invite him to their house.
- The sultan is impressed by the princes and agrees to visit their house.
- The bird gives instructions and Parizade finds a golden chest buried in the garden. She instructs the cook to make cucumbers stuffed with pearls.
- The sultan starts eating and the bird reveals the sultan's haste in judging his wife.
- The sultan is reunited with his children, releases his wife, and executes her jealous sisters
Frame
Finally, Shahriyah relents and agrees to stop killing his wives.
Notes
- Third sister's wish is still gender-role limited: to marry a powerful man and bear children. Do the baker and cook get any say in their marriages?
- The jealous sisters: the same archetype as Cinderella?
- Baby in the basket. Baptism in the Jordan? Baby in a basket like Moses?
- Nobility of heritage equates to beauty of children. A result of the values of the time of translation?
- Again, the air of fatalism throughout the story.
- Again, water as a vehicle of magic.
- Not much story in the latter part, just a reiteration that nobles are superior to commoners in every way.
Comments
The Baby in the basket story goes at least as far back as Sargon of Akkad (and hough I think it was a later creation, but in any case predates Moses), though likely the story of Moses was a direct inspiration for those that came later. The sidebar suggests the idea of babies floating in baskets was a common one. See also River of Cradles (in the Glorantha setting) in n which I think it was giants babies in floating cradles.
Nobility = beauty in this context might be attributable to Galland, but the notion itself is fairly timeless (though predating the Windsors, I should think). In ancient Mesopotamia, priests had to be free of blemishes and were mostly nobles, too.
Fatalism for sure - a common theme.
I don’t think nobles are superior to commoners in every way. Certainly this most noble sultan was very easily duped, which means he was quite inferior in the common sense department - arguably the most important quality one would look for in a leader.
In general, I rather liked this story. Especially the quest part. The latter part was less interesting, as you noted.
Another story I enjoyed. It has lots of echoes with other tales we know, but was told in a vigorous and inviting manner.
Yes, I thought of Moses and Sargon in relation to the babies. The Sargon one is closer in some respects - the mother was a high priestess so though not strictly royal, was pretty close to it. The baby was discovered by a water drawer, and was put to work in the garden. Moses, in contrast, was born a slave and adopted by royalty. I don't remember coming across any other parallels to this motif but am happy to believe there are such.
Again forgetfulness is a major theme - it kind of stretches credulity that the brothers wouldn't recall meeting the sultan and hunting with him! One might have expected some other imperative for not revealing this "minor event", such as happens later when the sister doesn't want to tell her brothers what the holy woman said, and conversely the first brother doesn't want to say where he's going.
Cotton wool in ears reminds me of Odysseus's crew and the sirens, though of course he came up with a cool way to both hear them and not be personally entrapped.
You've gotta love the talking bird! One of the best characters in the whole of the Nights, surely.
And we have a wrap-up to the frame story, and we finally learn that not only Shahrazad but all the other women are now safe. How interesting (in the notes) that sundry folk have tried to think out alternative endings with widely differing outcomes. I liked the variant in which Dunyazad is actually the central figure, and Shahrazad is something of a spare part to entertain Shahriyar and Dunyazad while they try for a little over three months to conceive. But the general principle of contemplating alternative destinies is quite appealing.
I should also have said that it made me wonder how many of the "talking creatures" stories of our own culture owe a debt to this - Wind in the Willows, Heather Hill, Narnia etc? Or is it just such an obvious thing that pretty much everyone in the world would come up with the idea?
Yes, I also remembered the Odysseus reference just after I posted my notes.
I also think that talking animals are a staple, but perhaps not ones as gifted or forthright as the talking bird in this one!
As for the wrap-up, I think the introduction stated it was invented either by the publisher, or by Galland at the publisher's insistence, as something that gave closure to the stories for the French readers.