Eastern Dreams (13 page)

An earlier lead, however, proved to be more significant. In 1709, still searching fruitlessly for a thirty-six part
Alf Laila wa Laila
, Galland found another source, this time through a living person. That year, he made the acquaintance of the celebrated French traveller Paul Lucas. Like Galland, Lucas had travelled in the Levant looking for oriental collectibles, so with much in common, it can be assumed that he and Galland quickly became friendly. Lucas had just returned from Syria, bringing with him a Maronite Christian friend from Aleppo named Youhenna (called “Hana” by Galland) Diab, who proved a fount of further tales. Galland's journal shows that on March 17 of that year, he visited Lucas and met Diab for the first time. Besides Arabic, Diab spoke “
Provençal and French tolerably well.” On this or a second visit a week later, Galland probably asked Diab about the
Nights
, perhaps mentioning his trouble in finding a full manuscript of the work. Learning of the Frenchman's interest in storytelling, the next time they met, Diab began telling Galland “
some wonderful Arabic stories, which he promised to put into writing and give to me.”

There are only a few more brief mentions of Diab in Galland's journals, but before his departure from France later that year, Diab gave Galland—either in Arabic manuscript form or dictated orally—some fourteen stories. Seven of these provided Galland with most of the material used for future volumes of
Les mille et une nuits
although, still searching for the elusive full
Alf Laila wa Laila
, he would not bring these out until 1712—a hiatus of six years following the release of Volume 7, which he considered the last “legitimate”
Nights
volume to appear before Volume 9.

Of these seven published tales, two are among the most famous stories in history, their very names representative of the classical Muslim world. On November 3, 1709, Galland notes in his journal that he has started to read the Arabic story “The Lamp,” “
written for me almost a year ago by the Maronite … whom Paul Lucas had brought with him….” Two months later, he writes, “
I have finished the translation of Volume 10 … based on the Arabic text I have received in Hana's handwriting.”

The story Galland calls “The Lamp” was, of course, retitled “Aladdin; or, the Wonderful Lamp.” It involves a fatherless tailor's son living in China named Aladdin (
Ala al-Din
in Arabic: “Excellence of Faith”), who is tricked by an African sorcerer into retrieving an old oil-lamp from a booby-trap-filled cave. Aladdin discovers that the lamp contains a genie pledged to fulfill the wishes of whoever possesses it, and is thus transformed from a pauper into a rich man who marries a princess. But just when his happiness seems assured, the sorcerer returns in the guise of a peddler, still searching for the lamp by advertising his wares in the streets with the cry, “New lamps for old!” The princess, not understanding the worth of Aladdin's lamp, trades it for a newer one. After much trouble, Aladdin manages to win back his old lamp—the low-born outfoxing the trickster figure—and everything ends happily.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no limit to the number of wishes genies may grant—no “three wishes and done” as depicted in most popular versions. Whoever possesses the lamp has an inexhaustible treasure trove at their disposal, although there are limits to supernatural generosity. When Aladdin is tricked into ordering a roc's egg be hung from the dome of his palace, the Genie of the Lamp grows angry and threatening at his presumption, since rocs are masters of genies. It is only because the genie is aware that the request did not originate with Aladdin himself that he, his family and his palace are not reduced instantly to cinders.

That “Aladdin” is among the most famous wealth fantasies in existence—the Genie of the Lamp is practically a template of sudden riches—is beyond dispute, but the popularity of this story is also due to the fact that it embodies a favourite scenario found in fairy tales all over the world. An individual of common, even lowly, origins is transformed to a significantly higher state by the intrusion of the uncommon or the fantastic into their everyday reality, meeting and vanquishing troubles until an ultimately happy existence is reached.

The origins of “Aladdin,” however, are a matter of dispute. No Arabic manuscript of this story prior to the eighteenth century has ever been found, and the only information regarding the tale in the Muslim world comes from Galland, who had his from Hana Diab with no apparent explanation concerning its age or origins. Matters are not helped by Galland's admission in his journal that he substantially changed the scenario of the “Aladdin” he published in
Les mille et une nuits
from the shorter version Diab gave him (in true
Arabian Nights
fashion, Diab's original Arabic version has vanished). As well, in keeping with his belief about the uplifting possibilities of literature, Galland even has Scheherazade deliver a short speech at the end concerning the story's moral, pointing out the rewards and punishments incurred by its characters, and running perilously close to ruining the reader's enjoyment. Where Hana Diab heard the story he called “The Lamp” has never been revealed. All Arabic versions of “Aladdin” postdate Galland's adaption, making it very likely that the most famous story in the entire
Thousand and One Nights
, in whatever form Galland had it from Hana Diab, was retranslated into Arabic sometime
after
its appearance in the West, to thus become part of the eastern
Nights
.

So famous and beloved is the story of Aladdin that it has attracted the attention of fraud artists. In the years following the appearance of
Les mille et une nuits
, two manuscripts purporting to be original
Arabic texts of “Aladdin” were forged by copyists, who translated Galland's version into Arabic with enough changes to make them seem genuine originals of the tale. But as no true Arabic version has ever been found, the odds are greater than even that the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp is as much a product of Antoine Galland's own imagination as it is—perhaps—the expansion of a story originating somewhere in the eastern hemisphere. This would make an Enlightenment Frenchman the true author of the most famous story in the entire
Arabian Nights' Entertainments
.

The second celebrated tale Galland adapted from Hana Diab is nearly as famous as “Aladdin,” and for much the same reason. In its depiction of a lowly person transformed to a higher status, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” is also a classic cautionary tale about the perils of greed. When the poor woodcutter Ali Baba enters the thieves' treasure-cave through the magic passwords “Open, Sesame!” he takes only what he can carry on his benighted mules, treating his new-found wealth as a gift from Allah while maintaining his personal traits of humility and generosity.

But Ali's brother Kasim, a wealthy merchant, is consumed with greed once he learns of the cave's location, and becomes so besotted by the immense riches he plans on hauling away with ten sturdy horses that he forgets the magic words required to open the cave from the inside as well as from without, and is slain by the returning thieves. In classic folklore manner, “Ali Baba” features a pair of contrasting siblings or relatives of opposing station and temperament who act in markedly different ways to an unforeseen circumstance. Ali's constancy is—ultimately—rewarded, while his brother's selfish venality causes his downfall.

The common perception is that the world of the
Nights
is one where men reign supreme at the expense of women, so it is significant that it is not Ali who is the ultimate hero of the tale: the story's full title is “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and How They
Were Destroyed by a Slave.” The brigands, who have marked Ali for death after learning he has been in their hideout, are thwarted by the wit and ingenuity of Ali's slave-girl Marjana (or Morgiana). She comes up with the plan of scalding to death the thieves who, hiding in huge oil jars, were preparing to kill her master, and then also slays the disguised bandit chieftain intent on murdering Ali. In this way she not only saves the Baba family but also wins her freedom and becomes Ali's daughter-in-law.

There are a number of such females in
The Thousand and One Nights
, starting with Scheherazade herself. These women exhibit the superior wit and courage, more often associated with male heroes, necessary for bringing dangerous situations to safe conclusions. In “The Ebony Horse,” a princess feigns insanity to thwart a marriage proposal from the Sultan of Kashmir; in the tale of “Nur al-Din Ali and the Damsel Anis al-Jalis,” the title character selflessly insists she be sold as a slave to pay her husband's debts; in “The Tale of Kamar al-Zaman,” Kamar's wife Budur, a princess of China, disguises herself as her vanished husband to complete his journey and make a political match. The Syrian-born academic Rana Kabbani claims that because the
Nights
were recounted originally for all-male audiences desiring ribald entertainment—something never entirely true either in stories or settings—female characters within the tales tend to belong to one of two categories. They are either crafty, untrustworthy types—whores, adulteresses, sorceresses, manipulative relatives—or mild, pious, sexually unthreatening figures who don't drive the plot forward but act as mere narrative accoutrements.

To be sure, there
are
female characters in the
Arabian Nights
who demonstrate such elevated levels of envy, greed or hate that their portrayal verges on misogyny (Crafty Dalilah and her daughter in “The Rogueries of Dalilah the Crafty and her Daughter Zaynab” and the jealous sisters in “The Eldest Lady's Tale”), but they are
counterbalanced by numerous other women who are “
more remarkable for decision, action and manliness than the male” characters in many
Nights
stories. Taken as a whole, the charge that the majority of females in the work are simple projections of male desires does not hold water amidst the plethora of good, bad and neutral figures found throughout the book. With thousands of characters populating hundreds of stories, such a profusion practically guarantees a broad range of human types, not just across age and class lines but also between genders.

Like “Aladdin,” “Ali Baba” was an orphan story Galland expanded from a brief synopsis given him by Hana Diab. It also proved popular enough to attract fraud artists, one of whom rewrote the tale into Arabic with changes before presenting the manuscript as an authentic, newly discovered Arabic version. But even this does not mean the story of Ali Baba is a complete fabrication, for in the 1870s the English Arabist Edward Henry Palmer claimed to have found an altered version of the tale current among the Bedouin of the Sinai peninsula. It is true that over a century and a half the story could have found its way from Galland to Egypt, but as another imaginative writer might say, “Curiouser and curiouser.”

Other orphan stories such as “The Tale of Prince Ahmed and the Perie Banu” and “The Ebony Horse” were similarly given to Galland by Hana Diab and have since become standard parts of the
Nights
. But like “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba,” the story of “The Ebony Horse” cannot be found in Arabic manuscripts prior to
Les mille et une nuits
, although there are strong reasons for believing it to be genuine, since echoes of this tale involving a flying steed crop up in stories appearing from Europe through North Africa to India, all of which predate Galland. As for “Prince Ahmed,” Galland also changed this tale substantially from the version he was given by Diab, padding the plot with material from a fifteenth-century Arab travel book and inserting a personal speech
denouncing the custom of arranged marriages, which were still widespread in France at that time.

It is reasonable, then, to say that many of the tales in the
Arabian Nights
that spring quickest to readers' minds are also the ones burdened by the biggest question marks. There is no proof that these stories ever existed in
Alf Laila wa Laila
, and in some cases they are either part or total fabrications of the work's first European translator. If so, it is one of literature's great jokes that “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba” are largely European pastiches of
Alf Laila wa Laila
stories—western takeoffs of the original
Nights
that have long since surpassed the earlier Arabic tales in fame and popularity.

Yet here is another twist. Following the publication of
Les mille et une nuits
, a number of Galland's orphan stories, including “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba,” were translated into eastern languages and have since become accepted as true
Thousand and One Nights
stories across all of the Middle East and Asia. They exist today in as many eastern editions of the
Nights
as they do in the West, and are as familiar. This is sublime proof of the
Nights
' power to adapt itself for its readers, wherever they may be found.