Arabian Nights week 8

NeilNjae

Stories

Third dervish

• Exploring, got lost at sea
• Ship wrecked on lodestone island
• Has a prophetic dream, not to mention name of god
• Carries out the steps, is almost saved by another man of brass, but utters name of god at last moment
• Washes up on an island, spies people digging to a trapdoor
• Fill chamber with supplies, old man leaves a beautiful boy there
• Ajib meets boy, hears he is prophesied to kill the boy
• Forms friendship, but kills him by accident on the fated day
• Eventually leaves the island, comes across city in the desert
• Ten young men, each missing an eye. They do pennance.
• Eventually, Ajib asks for their story. Ram and rukh to go to sandalwood palace
• Spends a year of pleaure there
• Women leave, tell him not to open door of red gold
• He does, on the last day. Finds a flying horse, which takes out his eye and returns him to the house of one-eyed men

First woman, the owner

• Three sisters, two half-sisters
• Elder two sisters repeatedly swindled by husbands
• Youngest sister goes on trading trip, finds city with people of stone
• Gets lost in palace, eventually finds a man reading the qur'an
• He tells how everyone was petrified for refusing to convert to Islam
• She proposes marriage to the man.
• The sisters, jealous, threw the couple overboard. He drowned.
• Knowingly rescues a jinni, who rewards the woman and curses the sisters into dogs, the woman to beat them knightly

Second woman, the keeper

• Rich widow, asked by poor woman to attend her daughter's wedding
• Meets the daughter's brother, love at first sight, married, but with oath of never looking at other men
• Going to buy cloth, has a piece of her cheek bitten off
• Husband questions her, threatening excessive collective punishments, eventually threatens to kill the woman
• Old woman intervenes, the keeper is beaten and expelled
• The husband's house is destroyed

Conclusion

• Marriages all round, justice served, happily ever after

Notes and comments

Third dervish

• Initally claims to be a stranger tale than what told before. is this true? Would these stories have worked better in a different order?
• Automaton with written charms: connection to Jewish golem?
• How much of Ajib's story is fate, how much his own doing?
• Is the relationship between Ajib and the boy friendship, romantic, sexual?
• Repeat of motifs of women living alone, debauchery
• Door of red gold: reversal of gender of typical story (woman's curiosity is punished)
• Did you enjoy the descriptions of the wonders in the rooms?
• Is there a moral to this tale? (e.g. note 96, p. 142, that curiosity is ungodly)

First woman

• Change in power dynamics: now the caliph demanding the truth
• Another change: assertive woman
• Another change: she obeys instructions, and has good fortune

Second woman

• Undefined oath: look at men, talk to them, what is forbidden?
• Is such an oath reasonable?
• Another victim of fate. Did she break the oath?
• Destruction of the husban's house: do you miss any explanation?

Conclusion

• What do you think of the tidy resolution of these tales?
• Imposition of status quo: people must be married, women subservient.

RichardAbbott

I really enjoyed this week's read! Some thoughts:

Early on in the 3rd dervish's tale we read "no praise for the reckless" which mirrors Isaiah's "no peace for the wicked" - but with an interestingly secular twist. It occurred to me that although the various characters spend a fair bit of time praying, calling on Allah, making pious statements etc, their views and conduct are basically very secular. The religious "stuff" seems quite a thin veneer over some tales which are in part funny and moralising, but not devotional.

Much later on in his tale we read "Paradise, an orchard of green trees and many fruits..." - all very Eden-like. The word paradise in biblical Hebrew is a loan word with the basic meaning "walled garden" and we see the same idea here - an enclosed space, lots of creatures, peace and happiness... even fruit trees - but here the thing you mustn't do is not in the garden itself but in the final door which mustn't be opened.

To my (perhaps cynical) eyes, the end of the tale where everyone happily marries everyone else, seemed a late and perhaps optimistically pious addition to an original core in which marriage was unnecessary and men almost entirely lacking in the attributes necessary for a successful and happy marriage!

From a modern perspective, I found the multiple links to Charles Dickens fascinating, as that's not a connection I would have thought of.

All in all a great passage this week, and I am finding the book increasingly engaging as it develops.

NeilNjae

@RichardAbbott said:

Early on in the 3rd dervish's tale we read "no praise for the reckless" which mirrors Isaiah's "no peace for the wicked" - but with an interestingly secular twist. It occurred to me that although the various characters spend a fair bit of time praying, calling on Allah, making pious statements etc, their views and conduct are basically very secular. The religious "stuff" seems quite a thin veneer over some tales which are in part funny and moralising, but not devotional.

By the same token, European folk tales come from a very Christian culture. How much of King Arthur, or Robin Hood, or Grimm's Tales, are devotional in nature? God is called on, people may go to church, but the tales are mostly secular.

To my (perhaps cynical) eyes, the end of the tale where everyone happily marries everyone else, seemed a late and perhaps optimistically pious addition to an original core in which marriage was unnecessary and men almost entirely lacking in the attributes necessary for a successful and happy marriage!

Same here!

RichardAbbott

@NeilNjae said:
By the same token, European folk tales come from a very Christian culture. How much of King Arthur, or Robin Hood, or Grimm's Tales, are devotional in nature? God is called on, people may go to church, but the tales are mostly secular.

Yes - Friar Tuck is hardly a paragon of sincere devotion

Apocryphal

I didn’t expect the Wilkie Collins link, either, but there you go. I recently listened to My Favorites, a collection of Ben Bova stories (which I thought lent themselves quite well to audio) and one of the stories is all about a group of storytellers from whom the Vizier extorts stories to get material for his daughter to tell to the King. Feeling hard done by, the storytellers form a union. Each storyteller is modelled on a sci-fi writer Bova knew.

So the influence is everywhere.

I’m not sure I bought the argument that the beating of the Keeper was just, nor the argument that the King was just by forcing that woman to marry the man who beat her, but those were different times I guess.