Help offset server costs by donating. This is totally optional. Any overages will go to library fines or new books.
Arabian Nights week 14
Stories
Ali Khawaja
- Ali goes on hajj, needs to safeguard his thousand gold coins. Hides them in a jar of olives
- Goes to Mecca, Cairo, Damascus, ... for trade taking seven years in total.
- Meanwhile, the merchant entrusted with the olives eventually opens the jar, takes the money, re-seals the jar
- Ali returns, retrieves jar, discovers the theft; merchant denies it
- Qadi rejects Ali's accusation; Ali appeals to caliph
- That night, caliph overhears children re-enacting the case. They consider the freshness of the olives.
- Caliph hears the case the next day, with the child judge and qadi.
Night adventures
- Harun depressed, but is reminded that he was going into the city in disguise
- Meets a blind beggar who wants to be slapped, a man whipping a horse, and a new house of a rich ropemaker. All three are invited to the palace to tell their stories
- Harun says he will judge them
Baba Abdallah
- Meets a dervish in the desert, who tells of a nearby treasure trove
- They haggle over shares of the treasure, showing Baba's greed
- Dervish uses magic to enter the treasure cave, take all they can
- Dervish takes a small box of ointment, then they part ways
- Baba is envious, reclaims the camels and treasures. Dervish agrees but gives ominous warning
- Eventually, takes the ointment. Is too greedy and is blinded. Dervish takes the treasure
- Baba has begged since then, asks for slaps as punishment
- Harun gives him alms
Notes
Ali Khawaja
- Is this a good template for a prototypical detective story? Compare to Three Apples
- Does the travel guide part give an impression of the size of the Muslim world?
- Expectation of honouring promises
- Harun the idealised ruler
Night adventures
- I'd almost forgotten about Shahrazad!
- Do you see the similarities with other stories, such as the detail of porter and three women?
- What do you think of Harun's goal of keeping order and decorum?
Baba Abdallah
- Obvious morality tale
- Again, based around urban merchants, making the tale relatable to ordinary folk.
Comments
I enjoyed these tales again, though in places they seemed to cover similar ground to what we've had before. I guess that's inevitable really!
I wasn't sure about Ali Khawaja being the prototypical detective story - it seemed to me more along the lines of "children at play have better insight than sophisticated adults", so you could reckon it being the prototypical YA story maybe?
Again with Ali Khawaja, I agree with you about the scale of the world. Like Sinbad, we get a series of journeys that take several years to accomplish, but this time we get more of a recognisable list of cities rather than semi-fantastical islands and realms. So it feels more realistic than Sinbad, and certainly easier to track the route.
Forgetting about Shahrazad... yes, and also it feels like the little interjectory paragraphs causing the story's interruptions are more artificial somehow. Kind of like an advert break in an ITV show - you get that they sort of have to be there but you stop noticing them (if you can). I suppose I'm saying that these interjections feel more like the work of a compiler than a storyteller.
Baba Abdallah - can anyone be so stupid? I mean, how many times does the dervish have to warn him? But then again, I suppose you could liken it to repeated warnings about climate change or certain ambitious leaders. How many times do we as countries need to be reminded but then we act the opposite way anyway?
I though the Ali Khawaja tale was a bit boring - I mean, the kids are observed playing out the trial, then invited to the actual trial where their case is repeated almost verbatim? Meh.
But I really loved the Night Adventures - it's one of my favorite tales in the book so far. So, mixed bag for me this week.
I don't know if Ali Khawaji is any kind of template, but it does show how sound reasoning and looking at the details can help solve a case, so that's a lesson well learned, I suppose, if you're going to write stories featuring a competent detective (which this is not, btw).
I'd say the travel part doesn't give an impression of the Arabic world since it only visits a small part of it, and it was quite extensive even during the time of Harun al Rashid, extending far south to Yemen and well west to Tunisia. Though because these locations are not all that well known to us, even today, it probably feels like his travels were more expansive than they were.
Harun has been several kinds of rulers through these tales, though I much prefer the version of him in these two tales.
The Baba Abdallah tale is exaggerated for effect, so yeah - it's not all that plausible someone would behave that way, but it does hammer home the point.
As I mentioned during Ali Baba, the breaks to remind us of Shahrazad are much less frequent in the Diyab section. From the perspective of enjoying the individual stories, this is a welcome change. But as you guys point out, it does mean we tend to forget about the frame story altogether. I wonder if that's because we got used to skipping the text of the frame story. If you read-read this including each incidence where Shahrazad promises another more exotic story the next night, would you find that this Diyab section actually had the right pacing?