Arabian Nights week 15

NeilNjae

Stories

Sidi Numan

• Sidi marries a woman who eats suspiciously little
• One night, he follows her and sees her meet a ghoul and eat human flesh
• Next day, he confronts her, she casts a spell and transforms him into a dog. He escapes after a beating
• Shows politeness, is taken in by a baker
• Shows a talent for spotting fake coins, becomes famous
• Eventually a woman takes Sidi the dog to her daughter, a magician; she dispells the transformation
• Sidi tells his story, the daugher gives him the water to punish his wife
• Caliph Harun passes judgement on the man and his wife

Khawaja Hasan al-Habbal

• Saadi and Saad disagree about wealth and happiness. They decide to give riches to a random poor craftsman and choose Hasan
• Hasan buys some hemp and meat but loses the rest of the money stolen by a bird.
• Six months later, he's back in the same poverty as before. Saadi and Saad return, don't believe the story, but give him more money anyway.
• He hides the money in a jar of grain, which his wife gives away. She berates him for keeping secrets
• Saadi and Saad return. They discuss the matter, and Saad gifts Hasan a piece of lead
• He gifts it to a fisherman, who gifts back a fish containing a diamond in its guts
• Neighbour, a jeweller, visits and recognises the diamond. After some haggling, Hasan sells the diamond for a huge sum
• Hasan uses the money to become a capitalist
• Saadi and Saad visit again, disbelieve the tale until Hasan finds both lost purses

Notes

Sidi Numan

• What do you think of Seale's assertion that this is really about incomprehension between sexes?
• Same sorts of magic as the previous story, using splashed water and the undoing being similar to the casting of the initial spell
• Is Harun's decision a just and wise one?
• What about the similarity of this story to others in the collection?
• Is there a moral to this story?

Khawaja Hasan al-Habbal

• Does Hasan not tell anyone about the money, so it can be kept safe?
• What's the moral? How do you think this tale would have been read byGalland's original audience?
• How about the numerous notes about Galland's embellisments of the story? Do you think they add to the story?

Apocryphal

Interesting set of stories. They reaffirm my impression from earlier reading that the Nights tales featured a lot of fortune reversals and, in the end, people getting what they deserved, even if by the most unlikely means.

Also, that folk tales are not, or at least seldom are, heroic tales.

Sidi Numan: Could this be about gender relations? I can see it. We need to cast aside the literal ghoulishness of the woman (perhaps this is really just an embellishment by the man, anyway? This most salacious fact seems to get forgotten by the end of the story). But think of certain basic differences, like how much one eats, what one like to eat, and how this can differ between two halves of a couple, and get blown out of proportion with niggling annoyances. And also how the man was turned into a dog, but the woman into a donkey (or was it horse?) - and I wonder if those are cultural allusions similar to how we might liken a man to a bear or a woman to a mouse.

In light of this, maybe Rashid’s judgement makes more sense - yes, ok, one’s spouse did a bad thing, but no need to keep flogging them for it. Is that maybe the moral?

Khawaja: my guess is that there’s a shame element in not telling his wife about the money, but it could be other things - fear his wife would use it or tell someone about it. Hard to say.

What’s the moral of this one? I think it points to a degree of fatalism, in that we can only do so much to influence our own destinies, but ultimately we exist at the whim of fate.

I liked the reveals about how Galland altered things - it reveals something about the author and/or the time in which he lived.

RichardAbbott

I enjoyed these again, but I wasn't convinced that the incomprehension was gender based. To me it came over more like the bafflement of a non-magician trying to come to terms with the magical abilities and preferences of someone they had assumed was "just a normal person". I don't think the confusion between husband and wife would have been any different if they had been two male business partners, or two sisters, or whatever - it's the intrusion of the uncanny that messes things up, not (IMHO) the difference in sex.

I liked the motif (which of course we have had before) of the dog showing human skills and so enabling the astute watched to work things out. I'm sure I mentioned the whole English (maybe European?) Learned Pig tradition in that earlier tale.

Hasan's tale - I guess this was less involving... but then it wasn't really about Hasan, but rather about Saad and Saadi and their respective views on how power, wealth and influence could be gained. Obviously the teller comes down firmly on the side of fate rather than hard work, which I suspect means that most tellers were (or thought themselves to be) poor folk who just needed one good break and they'd be home and dry.

In a side note and going back to Ali Baba, I was at the home of two of our grandchildren over the weekend, and what did I see but a child's version of Ali Baba! Now, this was pitched at "early readers" though with the age of our grandkids we are still mostly reading to them as the older one's reading level is at sounding out letters and recognising a small number of simple words. So I (perhaps cynically) assumed as I picked the book up to read that it would be a highly anaesthetised version - but no! Qasim the foolish brother still got cut into pieces and left in the cave, and most of the thieves were still boiled in oil poured on top of them. The robber chief still got his come-uppance by being stabbed by Majana after her dance. So all pretty much as per the adult version. (In passing, Majana got renamed to Morgiana, which for the well-read early reader would give some fascinating inter-textual links with Morgan le Fay of the Arthurian cycle.)

NeilNjae

One thing that struck me about the story of Hasan is how fate and prudence combined to make his fortune. It was fate/luck that he got the diamond, but prudence to only sell it for a high price, and more prudence to invest the proceeds in buying and growing a business.

@Apocryphal said:
In light of this, maybe Rashid’s judgement [of Sidi's wife] makes more sense - yes, ok, one’s spouse did a bad thing, but no need to keep flogging them for it. Is that maybe the moral?

Yet still, Rashid made no attempt to have the wife returned to human form, or have some other form of punishment imposed. I'm not sure that Rashid's judgement is is necessary to the story, or that it really shows mercy.

I liked the reveals about how Galland altered things - it reveals something about the author and/or the time in which he lived.

Of note, Galland's notes on the stories are later in the book. Yes, I also liked the comments, but I'm skeptical about the interpretation of the changes.

@RichardAbbott said:
In a side note and going back to Ali Baba, I was at the home of two of our grandchildren over the weekend, and what did I see but a child's version of Ali Baba! Now, this was pitched at "early readers" though with the age of our grandkids we are still mostly reading to them as the older one's reading level is at sounding out letters and recognising a small number of simple words. So I (perhaps cynically) assumed as I picked the book up to read that it would be a highly anaesthetised version - but no! Qasim the foolish brother still got cut into pieces and left in the cave, and most of the thieves were still boiled in oil poured on top of them. The robber chief still got his come-uppance by being stabbed by Majana after her dance. So all pretty much as per the adult version. (In passing, Majana got renamed to Morgiana, which for the well-read early reader would give some fascinating inter-textual links with Morgan le Fay of the Arthurian cycle.)

I liked this! Kids can deal with a lot.