Eastern Dreams (8 page)

The celebrated Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, a passionate admirer of the
Nights
, likens its structure to a palace so vast that it can be built only by many generations of men. From the setting of its foundation in the latter part of the first millennium to its continuing mystique at the beginning of the third, the
Arabian Nights
has had innumerable wings added to its core structure over the course of at least eleven centuries, giving Borges's labyrinthine word-palace a shape never remaining exactly the same, under continuous construction for more than half of the past two thousand years. Even if the tales within
Alf Laila wa Laila
form an ever-changing mansion of narrative, from available accounts it is possible to construct a timeline of the book's progress in the Muslim world from its ancient origins to the moment it first appeared in the West.

The core of the
Arabian Nights
lies in the lost Persian storybook
Hazar Afsanah
, which itself incorporated Indian tales carried to Persia. This core was almost certainly quite small—perhaps just a few dozen stories at most. Once the text was translated into Arabic, sometime in the eighth or early ninth centuries, it was given the title
Alf Khurafa
—“A Thousand Stories”—but was more commonly called
Alf Laila
—“A Thousand Nights.” At around the same time, Arabic stories were added, beginning in Iraq, superimposing an Arab layer onto the existing Indo-Persian base and providing the first of several
Nights
ironies. Rather than being “Arabian” Nights originating on the Arabian peninsula, the heart and soul of the
work hails from Persia, with contributions from India and perhaps other lands. Indigenous Arabian stories and Arab modifications came only later, adding their own cultural contributions to a preexisting collection without being part of the work's original source.

A third layer of stories looks to have sprung from Egypt between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries; many of these are set in Cairo, and a number contain narrative threads dating back to ancient Egypt. Those tales in the
Nights
featuring demons, magical objects, talismans and trickster-figures probably arose from this most recent source, as did many of the romantic and sexual stories. This makes it possible to render some tentative differentiations among the tales. Those fables concerning animals are generally thought to have come from India, while most of the fairy stories (such as “The Trader and the Genie” and “The Fisherman and the Genie”) look to have originated in Persia. Anecdotes and moral fables are chiefly Arab, while other stories not belonging to these three basic groups probably arose from further afield; Egypt, the Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Turkey, China, even Japan are all possible sources for stories so closely associated with Arabia.

By the late twelfth century, the work had become known as
The Thousand and One Nights
, assuming much of its present form as it wound its way through Egypt and Syria, where still more stories were added along with additional modifications to create what became the source material for the first western translation of the
Nights
, appearing in the eighteenth century. Some researchers speculate that there may be still
another
layer to the work dating from the sixteenth and even seventeenth centuries, when material from popular Muslim epics and counter-crusade stories, along with later Egyptian and Turkish tales, was introduced.

The long period over which the work was compiled definitely swelled its contents far beyond its original size. If
Hazar Afsanah
and
Alf Khurafa
were small selections of stories, then over the
centuries the attachment of different layers added to the work's oeuvre until the early modern age, when the cumulative contents of
Alf Laila wa Laila
probably reached the 1001 Nights promised in the work's now-common title. From the original eighth-century Persian core, Arab stories were added, as were independent story cycles like the
Sindibadnama
(also known as “The Craft and Malice of Women” or “The Seven Viziers,” but having nothing to do with Sindbad the Seafarer) and longer, self-contained tales such as “The Tale of King Omar bin al-Nu'uman and his Sons Sharrkan and Zau al-Makan.” By the early Renaissance, the totality of the Arabic
Nights
had become the original
Alf Laila
on steroids.

This long period over which the
Nights
was gathered also makes for a frankly bizarre, even impossible timeline, if Scheherazade's stories are taken literally. In the frame tale, Scheherazade and Shahryar are presented as characters from the Sasanian period of Persian history—those kings ruling Persia and parts of Asia from 226 to 641 CE, with Shahryar ruling some part of the Indies and China. Yet Scheherazade's stories contain allusions to much-later times and cultures, as well as references to materials, substances and inventions that had yet to come into existence, let alone use. Coffee, tobacco, gunpowder, firearms, artillery—even Islam itself, which was not founded until the seventh century—make appearances in stories told by a woman allegedly living during Europe's early Dark Ages, when Rome was only in the first stages of its long decline.

In the greater scheme of things, however, this doesn't matter one bit. As the patron saint of storytellers, Scheherazade is a cosmically immortal figure, as magical as the awesome genies she describes. She is able to move forward and backward in time to employ whatever stories she chooses from whichever period suits her immediate purpose. As a character with a personal history, Scheherazade's repertoire may be gleaned from her readings of the
chronicles stored in her father's house, but her stock has no limits; it cannot be restricted by mere temporal parameters.

Still, mysteries of origin and dispersal remain. So many stories embody echoes of other tales from outside the collection that the
Nights
can seem a kind of narrative vortex, absorbing and recycling stories from other sources into a perfectly elastic text. Some material dealing with universal mythological themes, like the transformation of men into beasts, would have appeared independently, but it is clear from both Muslim and European literary history that elements of
The Thousand and One Nights
and other tales appeared interchangeably in both the East and the West centuries before the work's actual publication. It is known that stories from the
Nights
were circulating in “westernized” versions in Europe many centuries before their printed appearance, cropping up in oral form in Germany, France, Italy and Spain, although it is unclear whether manuscript versions of sundry
Nights
tales were in circulation. All the same, it is likely some
Nights
stories were present in Europe from around the twelfth century, arriving through Arabized Sicily or Moorish Spain to be absorbed into the European folklore tradition.

This is no one-way street, since it also appears that the basis of some
Nights
stories owes a debt to western tales as well as vice versa. The striking similarity between Sindbad's fight with a carnivorous, one-eyed giant during his third voyage and Odysseus's battle with the Cyclops Polyphemus in
The Odyssey
is too close for pure coincidence. Canto 28 of
Orlando Furioso
, a sixteenth-century epic poem by the Italian Ludovico Ariosto, contains a version of the story of Shahryar and his brother Shazaman that initiates the
Nights
' frame tale, in which King Astolfo and his companion King Jocundo—both suffering adulterous wives—undertake a bitter journey to prove that a faithful woman does not exist. Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
contains a reference in “The Squire's Tale” to a
mechanical brass horse capable of flying, very similar to the
Nights
' “The Ebony Horse,” while Boccaccio's fourteenth-century Italian
Decameron
likewise contains stories with strong similarities to tales found either within the
Nights
or other eastern collections.

There are also elements of the
Nights
found in the Old Testament story contained in The Book of Esther, known to have been written in Persia no later than the third century
BCE
. Here Esther the Jewess becomes the soothing queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus (the historical Artaxerxes II) and so is able to save both herself and her people from a royal edict ordering the Jews' destruction—a scenario similar in outline to Scheherazade marrying Shahryar to end his murderous spree. Similar echoes can be heard in the troubled backstory of Ahasuerus and his first queen, Vashti (deposed and executed for an act of disobedience, whereupon a succession of virgins are brought before the king so he might choose a successor), and the motif of night recital is found in Esther 6:1 when Ahasuerus, suffering from sleeplessness, commands that the Persian “Book of Chronicles” be brought before him and read aloud to pass the time.

Even the
Nights
' most famous device, the concept of a frame tale through which other stories are presented, appears as a vehicle in other cultures. In the
Nights
, it is the method whereby Scheherazade saves her life. In
The Odyssey
, Odysseus relates his adventures to King Alcinous while residing at the latter's court. In the
Canterbury Tales
it is a group of pilgrims, travelling through England to the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket, who exchange stories with one another en route; in the
Decameron
, a number of people escaping the plague by fleeing into the Italian countryside do likewise. The
Arabian Nights
contains a unique difference, however. While these other characters tell stories for diversion or explanation, Scheherazade lives under perpetual threat as she plays an intellectual cat-and-mouse game with the sultan's rage, trying to
break the circle of marriage and death destroying her world. Should she fail, the deadly cycle will continue unabated. This makes her recitations not merely the framework whereby other tales are hung, but itself the most important story in the book; it is the story necessary for life to continue.

Scheherazade herself is a figure of mystery, since her origins are not readily apparent. Her phonetically accurate name,
Shahrazad
, is Persian, meaning “City Freer” (likewise, “Dunyazad”—Dinarzade—means “World Freer”), and from references in al-Masudi and Ibn al-Nadim, it is likely her story appeared in some form in
Hazar Afsanah
. Some believe Scheherazade has her precedent in the Indian legend of
Kanakamanjari
, the tale of a woman who maintains her king's love for half a year by telling him stories every night, but only concluding them on the following evening. This makes literary sense, as
Hazar Afsanah
is known to have contained Indian stories, perhaps based on recycled Jataka tales of the Buddha or the Hindu
Hitopadesha
, a collection of Sanskrit fables.

But there is also a reference to a similar storytelling persona in Greek Byzantium, which had a tradition of reciting fantastical “evening stories” about romantic histories, fables, and proverbs as an enjoyable diversion from the humdrum cares of the daylight hours. The titles of a number of these tales are included in al-Nadim's work, including one called “Shatariyus the King, and the Reason for his Marrying Shahrazad the Storyteller.” The complication does not end there, since there is one
Nights
story (“The Tale of the Two Kings and the Vizier's Daughters”) in which Scheherazade actually tells her own tale and that of the sultan, but this time set in China, with the king's brother Shazaman ruling part of Persia. All this leaves Scheherazade's origins as alluringly mysterious as her character, and also indicates that the story of a king and a tale-spinning woman was not exclusive to the Muslim world during the first millennium.

So an innate truth about
The Thousand and One Nights
is that this personification of Middle Eastern literature—the most famous Arabic storybook in the world—is actually an international compendium of tales culled from India, Persia, Arabia, Ottoman Turkey and Egypt, probably infused as well with stories surviving from Hebrew, Greek and perhaps even Roman sources. Parented by multinational sires and a Muslim mother—literally, in Scheherazade's case—the
Nights
may owe at least part of its longevity to its development at a time and a place acting as a crossroads between cultures. Attracting both eastern and western influences into its oeuvre, an entire fictional world was created based on Islam at its height—an imaginary, super-geographical realm given breath by its narrator's ability to conjure life with her beguiling voice.

*
al-hakawait
: combining
wati
and
haka
in the sense of someone possessing the popular expertise for relating a tale or fable. The word for “storyteller” varies from region to region in the Arab world.

Chapter 2

A FRENCHMAN ABROAD

To be lucky in the beginning is everything
.

—
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES,
DON QUIXOTE

By the time
Alf Laila wa Laila
reached the sixteenth century, it had become a veritable warehouse of eastern stories culled from many different sources, a work that had survived as popular entertainment in the Muslim world for more than six centuries, and would thrive for five more. Stories from
The Thousand and One Nights
continued to be heard and read in coffee houses, marketplaces and homes from Morocco to Constantinople and beyond as far as the China Sea; during the Ottoman Empire, they even became the basis for a national theatre in Turkey.

At around the same time, a phenomenon was taking place in Europe that would have a profound effect on the
Nights:
a growing consciousness of the Asian world. From about the early seventeenth century through the nineteenth, a period later described as an “Oriental Renaissance,” Europeans began a process of “rediscovering” the East—particularly India, but also the Near and
Middle East—through increased interaction with Asian lands and peoples. Some European travellers had always smoothed their way by learning indigenous languages, but with merchant companies pushing outward along routes pioneered by Renaissance explorers, the new international trade reality sparked a revival of interest in eastern languages and cultures. The Portuguese in Africa, the French and British on the Indian subcontinent and the Dutch in the East Indies were all instrumental in bringing together aspects of eastern and western civilizations as never before. The sustained interaction with Asian peoples created a necessity for linguists versed in eastern languages and protocols to translate exchanges, inaugurating the development of oriental studies—what we describe today as “Islamic” or “Asian” Studies.