Thoughts on the Arabian Nights

Cafe Society
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I’ve only got time to write out a small portion of this, but it’s been on my mind recently, especially since I read The Annotated Arabian Nights. As I wrote in the What are you Reading This Month thread, the bulk of this volume isn’t really about the old, traditional Arabian Nights. They only translate and comment on a handful of the tales from the original old manuscripts.

Most of the volume is devoted to the stories told by Hanna Diyab, a Syriasn Maronite storyteller who visited Paris and met with Antoine Galland, who was publishing the first translation of the 1001 Nights into a Western language. Galland was under pressure from his publisher to produce more stories, and more fantastic ones, and he latched onto the stories Diyab was telling, amplifying them with his own additions, and publishing them as part of the Arabian Nights series. Only they weren’t really old traditional Arab or Persian stories. Diyab was the author of them (although they contained traditional tropes and story elements) – there are no earlier versions than the notes Galland wrote down of Diyab’s stories.

The thing is, these stories include the best-known and most influential stories of the Arabian Nights.

Aladdin and the Magic Lamp
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Prince Ahmed and Peri Banu

That last one isn’t so well known, but was very influential in early cinema – both The Adventures of Prince Achmed and the original Thief of Baghdad took their stories from it.

This isn’t to say that all the Arabian Nights tales came from Diyab and Galland – The Fisherman and the Jinni and the Sinbad stories aren’t from him, for instance. But be honest – how many Arabian Nights stories can you name that I haven’t already in this brief report?

My point is this – we think we know what the Arabian Nights stories are, and what they are like, but most of what we know is really much later stories that were told with an eye to the European audience from the start, not the authentic stories. This is even more true of the versions we know from the movies, which are cobbled together from bits and pieces of the above stories. And most of the tropes we think of as characteristic of Arabian Nights stories aren’t at all.

1.) The Genie in the Magic Lamp – Certainly the Jinn are part of Arab culture. They’re mentioned in the Koran, as well, which solidifies their status. They are creatures of fire, as people are creatures of matter. It therrefore seems to make sense that they live in lamps. Illustrators who draw them with wispy lower portioins, or with vapor and smoke instead of legs are simply following tradition.

Except they aren’t. Jinni aren’t generally associated with objects, or shown as living or trapped in them. Certainly the Jinni in “The Fisherman and the Jinni” has been stored in a bottle by Solomon, kept in placde by a lead seal inscribed with the name of God. And a few other Jinni are associated with wishin objects of some sort,. But apparently there’s only one other case of a Jinni living in a lamp in genuine midle eastern literature. And that lamp wasn’t the kind you see in stories of Aladdin – it was a glass container with a wick in it, as was used i illuminating mosques.

Our idea of an oil lamp=dwelling genie granting wishes when the lamp is rubbed comes from Diyab’s made-up story of Aladdin. He also gave us the Genie of the Ring (usually ignored in adaptations of the story). Jinni bound to objects to serve the holder of them occurred in some stories, but they weren’t the most common ones about Jinni.

So what is probably the most common image of Arabian Nights fantasy isn’t a traditional one at all.

2.) Flying carpets – this isn’t in Aladdin, despite appearing in at least two cartoon versions of the story that have it (the UPA Mr. Magoo version from 1959 and the Disney cartoon). It comes from the story of Prince Ahmed and Peri-Banu, another of Hana Diyab’s concoctions. There is a trickle of tradition behind magic carpets, but these weren’t magic flying-through-the-0air carpets. They were more like Teleportation Chambers – the owner stood on them, wished to be somewhere else, and was whisked there instantaneously. But flying on the carpet suggests movement and can be depicted in an image more easily than instant teleportation. There’s a great painting showing a flying carpet, but it’s from 1880, by a Russian – Magic carpet - Wikipedia

I don’t think there’s another flying carpet in the Arabian Nights (although I admit that I still haven’t read it all), and IU don’t know of any depictions before 1880.

Again, this is what we expect from Middle Eastern fantasy literature, but it’s not a common feature there. But it made its way into Western literature – Mark Twain’s “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”, Edwin Arnold’s “Gullivar of Mars” (and from there to volume 2 of Alan Moore’s “League of Extradordinary Gentlemen”), Dan Simmons’ “Hawking Mat” in his “Hyperion” series. And lots of movies.

3.) Sinbad the Sailor, the Rukh, and the Cyclops – As I had remarked in that earlier thread, Sinbad isn’t what we would call a sailor – he can’t “hand, reef, and steer”. He definitely isn’t a captain. He’s the merchant passenger on someone else’s ship, and is more like Jonathan Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver, or Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (before he was shipwrecked). He does meet the giant Roc/Rukh in two of his adventures. But he never meets a Cyclops. On one voyage he and his companions are trapped in a cave by a giant, who proceeds to eat them one by one, but the giant has two eyes (“Look! A Cyclops” “He has two eyes” “Must be a Bi-Cyclops” – Yellow Submarine). The escape by blinding both eyes. The story closely resembles than of Odysseus and his men in the Odyssey, and was probably influenced by that epic. Galland saw the similarity and changed the giant into a one-eyed giant. So did a lot of illustrators afterwards, even when the story was properly translated and the text said the giant had two eyes.

So we have a giant Roc and a Sinbad, but he’s not what we would call a “sailor”, and he doesn’t meet a Cyclops. Nor a dragon, I might add. In the stories he does encounter giant snakes (which arguably lie at the root of many accounts of dragons), but no four-legged reptilian beasts, and not ones breathing fire.

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So have a look at what appears in various “Arabian Nights” movies, and see how much is authentic

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed) – Lotte Reininger’s 1926 silhouette animated film – the plot is a cobbled together story made of part of The Adventure of Prince Ahmed and Peri-Banu" and “Aladdin”, but it significantly changes the former. It also adds a witch and other elements not in the originals – but both of those stories are Diyab’s inventions. It also adds a hydra straight out of Greek mythology. But there’s a giant Serpent, at least. So the actual Arabian Nights content is practically zero.

The Thief of Bagdad – Douglas Fairbanks’ 1924 film is a masterpiece. I’ve long wondered where the plot came from, and who is responsible. I still don’t know, but my best guess is that the screenplay was writen by Fairbanks himself , probably in collaboration with “Achmed Abdullah”, a prolific writer of “Oriental” stories who was supposedly really named Alexander Nicholayevich Romanov, as in the Russian royal family Romanov. I have my doubts. He did write the novelization, however. Wikipedia also credits Lotta Woods, but her name doesn’t appear in the credits, so I don’t know how she gets into it.
The moral, stated at the beginning – “Happiness must be earned” – is noted in The Annotated Arabian Nights as not a very Arabian Nights’esque sentiment. The plot of the Thief who Reforms and Learns Better is also more European than Arabian Nights (thieves in the Arabian Nights stories are mischievous or downright evil, not appropriate for this kind of role).
Much of the plot come from The Adventures of Prince Ahmed – interestingly, from the parts Reininger discarded. Three suitors for the hand of the princess strive to find the rarest gift, sand return with a flying carpet, a magical healing fruit, and a crystal ball (not in Diyab’s story – he has a sort of “magic telescope” that betrays the story’s recent origins. I don’t know of any crystal balls in the original Arabian Nights) Other trappings in the story are similarly not in the Nights – A Magic Rope (which is a more recent legend supposedly out of India, but not really found there), a dragon (see above), a tree-man who comes to life and gives information, a Cloak of Invisibility (again, not in the Nights as far as I know), and a flying winged horse (which seems to be more in line with Greek mythology – pegasus and similar flying horses. The only one I know of associated with the Nights is out of Diyab’s stories). Other elements are the sort of thing you might find in the Nights – helpful magical guides, various monsters, wishing dust – but don’t really stand out. The villains are evil Mongols, which isn’t an Arabian Nights menace, but WAS in the pulp magazines of the time, especially the sort “Achmed Abdullah” wrote for.

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Honestly I thought flying carpets originated in the opera The Firebird. Shows you what I know.

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Our version of the Nights has a lot of crossover with Russian folktales. There are several stories where a man of humble origin falls in love with a king’s daughter, or a djinn’s daughter, and he has to perform seemingly impossible tasks to persuade her father to approve the marriage.

There are some racial tropes in the Nights that, in my opinion, have more to do with 19th Century French colonialism, than with storytellers in the Baghdad town square.

There is a lot of wish-fulfillment in the stories. A guy is travelling through the countryside, and finds a cave full of treasure. A guy is repairing the floor in his house, and finds a buried treasure. Even when someone earns his fortune, the details are vague. “He used his share of the treasure to buy a shop in the marketplace, and in a few years, he became the wealthiest merchant in the city.”

There is a surprising amount of sex in the stories. A guy walks through the town square. Watching from a high tower, the king’s daughter falls in love. A guy takes a shortcut through a back alley. One of the houses belongs to a rich widow, who falls in love. There are lots of religious prohibitions, but if the lovers are young and pretty, the neighbors will not only look the other way, but actively collude to help the lovers get together.

It is forbidden to have sex before marriage. But if, by the end of the story, you get her father’s permission to marry, all will be forgiven.

It is forbidden to have sex with another man’s wife. But if, by the end of the story, her husband divorces her, dies of natural causes, or gets executed by the king, all will be forgiven.

It is forbidden to have sex with another man’s slave. But if he is a good friend, he will give her to you when he notices you are interested. :open_mouth: And if you are a good friend, you will give her back when you are finished. :nauseated_face:

Homosexuality is forbidden, but guarding your anal virginity is more a matter of low comedy than high moral dudgeon. In general, attitudes toward gay sex depend mostly on how good-looking the gays are. If an old person, or an ugly person, or a person of low social status lusts after you, that is an outrage. But if someone is young, pretty, rich, and professes their love for you, nobody seems to mind. The gay sex always takes place offstage, but the hints about it are pretty broad.

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I didn’t know a flying carpet appears in the opera The Firebird. Shows whayt I know.
It must not be a standard element because it’s not mentioned in the Wikipedia article on the opera. But the painting I link to is supposed to illustrate the story.

FWIW, Diyab’s story and Galland’s version of it date from about 1710

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I’ve recently started reading the stories, and the number of Black slaves cuckolding an Arab / Asian / White man seems surprisingly high for stories that are purported to be written before the West African slave trade got going.

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I’ve noticed this, too. But this is in every translation I’ve seen, not just in ones where the translator took a very free hand, so I think it’s part of the original – and Galland didn’t get his Sharzad “framing story” from Diyab.

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Oh, one othrer item from Thief of Bagdad – the crystal ball that they substituted for the “Masgic Telescope” is stolen from the eye of an idol, something not even in Diyab’s story. This is a trope with an interesting history all its own. Precious gems had been used to adorn statues for a long time, including eyes. Several famous gems were rumored to have been stolen from idols, but the accounts are suspect. The idea appeals to the romantic in us, and has been used in fiction from Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone to The Eye of Argon and beyond. But I don’t think this was ever an element in any genuine “Arabian Nights” stories.

They re-used the “steal the diamond from the eye of the idol” trope in the 1940 remake of Thief of Bagdad William Cameron Menzies was the designer for both versions. The scene in the 1940 version is far superior to the 1924 one. Looks as if it could’ve been done today with CGI, bit it’s matte paintings and sets.

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According to Wiki, the Indian Ocean slave trade pre-dates Islam. It existed 2500 BCE, and became a major enterprise under the Byzantines in the 6th Century, and under the Sasanids in the 7th Century.

By the way, have you seen the 1978 version of Thief of Baghdad, with Roddy McDowell and Peter Ustinov? The villain in that one (played by Terence Stamp) is basically an Arab version of Koschei the Deathless, from Russian folklore.

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No. I’ was brought up on the 1961 Italian remake, which actually follows the plot of the 1924 original much more closely than the celebrated 1940 version (which I finally saw recently). But the 1924 version is my favorite.

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I re-watched Alex Korda’s 1940 version of Thief of Bagdad. It really annoys me how this is given the capsule review that it’s a “remake of the 1924 original, but with the roles of the Thief and the Suitor/Prince separated”.

No, it’s not. The plot is completely different from the 1924 film. There are influences, but this really is an entirely new and different story. Instead of the reform of the amoral thief we have the story of a benevolent , mischievous thief. Instead of a thief-turned suitor we have a king of another realm infatuated with the princess. Instead of an external threat by Mongols we have usurpation of two kingdoms by an Evil Vizier/Magician. But the differences aren’t limited to those.

KOrda’s film is really impressive. In an age of mostly black and white movies, this one is in opulent Technicolor, and, like most Technicolor films of the period, it really flaunts its color. The opening shots are a blaze of bright and contrasting colors. You never forget that you’re watching a color film, because they take every opportunioty to exploit this. When color film became inexpensive and commonplace after the mid-1960s, a lot of films were made in color simply because it was there, and you had no end of films with washed-out, random color. They could as well have been made in black and white.
This was also one of the earlier films to have extensive special effects in color, too. There’s a lot of “bleeding” around the edges of the mattes, but I can forgive that – they were still figuring out how to do it. And that blue halo lent a mystical aura – literally – to the film.

The screenwriters – Lajos Biro and Miles Mailson, as well as the scenarist – went back to the Arabian Nights stories themselves for their inspiration (although they did take a little inspiration from the 1924 film, and adapted from some of the same strories). As a result, this has a bit more of the original Arabian Nights in it. They still adapted stiff from Hanna Diyab – the tale of Prince Ahmed is still there (the prince is even named Ahmed), and they used the Flying Mechanical Horse from that, a well as the Flying Carpet and the Magic Jewel (instead of Diyab’s Magic Telescope. And, in a nod to the original, it’s the jewel taken from a huge idol), although the Magic Healing Fruiit isn’t there.

But they also put in The Fisherman and the Jinni, which is part of the original Arabian Nights. They also used elements from The Night Adventurees of Harun al-Raschid, which is another of Hana Diyab’s late additions, but the elements of it can be found in older stories. These include the Prince visiting his people in disguise, accompanied by his vizier, the Man turnbed into a Dog (that shows high intelligence) and the Man Blinded by Magic. al Raschid’s Visier in these stories is named Jaafar, and in this movie, it’s Jafar, as well . I think this film introduced that meme in “Oriental” tales.

This movie also opens with a lot of sea-going ships in the port of Bagdad – which is gorgeous to see, but absurd. Bagdad is a thousand kilometers from the Persian/Arabian gulf, up the Tigris river. Later on a ship sails from Basra, which makes more sense, and shows that they read their Arabian Nights – when someone wants to set sail, they often leave from Basra in the Nights. My main complaint is that some of the ships shown aren’t Middle Eastern vessels, but European three-masted, square-sailed ships. This would show up in later movies, too.

This film, as I say, was influential. The resemblance to Disney’s Aladdin are pretty obvious – hero who’s a benevolent thief, the Sultan who’s childishly obsessed by toys. The Evil Vizier who wants to usurp, and is also a magician (and is named Jafar). It’s got the Flying Carpet and the Genie.
It also influenced the UPA cartoon.1001 Arabian Nights that “starred” Mr. Magoo – it has the Evil Magician Vizier, too, and the magic carpet and the Genie and the SDilly Sultan.

And it gave leave for Harryhausen’s Seventh Voyage of Sinbad to have a seacoast Bagdad and European sailing ships. And a genie.

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I hadn’t heard that Aladdin wasn’t an original. I’ve read (much of) the Mardrus & Mathers version, which I had understood to be based on the original Arabic, and it does contain Aladdin.

On some research, it looks like the story was probably back-translated to Arabic by some falsifiers (separately by Shawish and Sabbagh) and then pulled into either the Bulaq or Calcutta text, and then translated back into French again by Mardrus.

More interestingly, the originator of the story seems to have been a Syrian who worked for an older French treasure hunter and his job (other than acting as a translator) was to go squirming into caves to try and grab loot, to bring back to the King of France. His experiences might be fairly core to the stories that he invented for the book.

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Jaʽfar ibn Yahya Barmaki was a real person. In the Nights stories, he was usually portrayed as a good guy. He gets slandered in the movies.

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To be honest, the quantity of active maliciousness (rape, theft, murder, enslavement, etc.) by the “heroes” was so extreme in all the stories that there weren’t really any that were likable enough to be memorable. That only leaves cultural inertia to help.

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I’m curious about the importance of the original 1001 Nights stories in modern Islamic culture. Are they revered treasures, or an embarrassment, or ignored, or outright discouraged or banned? The versions westerners are most familiar with seem like they would be offensive stereotypes, but I have no idea how the original stories are regarded in their countries of origin.

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It sounds like we don’t have a very good history on them, in large part, because they simply weren’t that important through most of Arabic history and people didn’t write about them nor comment on them.

Once it caught on in Europe, it sounds like, financial motives lead some people to try and turn it into something more official, in Arabic territories, but prior to that it wasn’t notable.

Looking through a sampling of languages on Wikipedia, for the 1001 Nights, most seem to only copy the original English text. Only Iranian is independent and tries to strike some possessive/prideful tone towards the work.