Princess Badoura: A tale from the Arabian Nights

by Laurence Housman

A Tale from The Arabian Nights Retold by Laurence Housman

The Sultan Shahriar stands out to fame as the greatest monogamist in all history. Having been deceived by his first wife, he caused her to be put to death, and then proceeded to avenge himself upon a thousand others. Faithful to his monogamic instincts, he married a fresh wife every day, and on the morning of the next became a widower. Having thus achieved faith to a thousand dead maidens—all equally beloved in turn—he may, in his heart of hearts, have found that change, so doggedly insisted on, did but mean boredom, and so may readily have welcomed any excuse to relax a performance to which he had bound himself by many religious oaths.

But, if he had a heart, the old Eastern chronicler has neglected to tell us what was in it; and at the point where his sacrificial bridals have become monotonous, the interest of the story shifts from bridegroom to bride, and Scheherazade, daughter of the Grand Vizier, witty, courageous, resourceful, and most prolix of all delightful tale-tellers, adventurously enters the royal menage, and becomes his only surviving wife.

For Scheherazade, intent on saving the lives of others, brings her bridesmaid with her, a younger sister named Dinarzade; and when the morning light comes to tell her that death is near, Dinarzade—prompted thereto beforehand—stirs in her attendant place at the foot of the couch, and asks for the sake of old times that one last tale may be told.

Shahriar, at the bride's humble request, grants permission, and from that moment is in the toils of the plot which has made his name so secondary in importance to hers. Scheherazade, 'to do a great right, does a little wrong': by her entrancing powers of narrative, always interrupted when the interest of each story is at its height, she breeds in her tyrant lord infirmity of will, and destroys the only principle of conduct wherewith he set out to teach woman her place. For the thousand and one nights which have given their name to the world's most famous collection of stories, he lives blissfully forsworn, postponing the execution of his wife to another day; and at the end, repenting him of his vows, does what we still make our kings do in England when justice has gone astray, and bestows his 'free pardon' upon innocence.

The story which is here retold, with many of its life-saving prolixities omitted, has the distinction of being, according to some versions, the last of all: it witnesses the accomplishment of the task which Scheherazade set out to perform. With the story of Badoura, the woman of beauty and brain, who, personating her husband, ruled a Kingdom, and without jealousy provided him at the end of his wanderings with a second wife—in this story Scheherazade, her great act of statesmanship concluded, adumbrates what woman set free to use her own resources can do. And in this reflection of her own great adventurous self the series concludes. Through a thousand dim dawns, with the issue still in doubt, she has led the forlorn hope for all the other women whose lives she would save; and when her tyrant relents, and in his promise to spare her life spares theirs as well, she kneels and gratefully kisses his feet.

The History of Badoura, Princess of China, and of Camaralzaman, The Island Prince

The story of Aboulhassan, the Prince of Persia, had come to an end and the light of morning was full. Then said Dinarzade, 'Another story, O sister, another story!' Scheherazade made answer, 'If my Lord will suffer me to live for another day, there is yet one more tale that I could tell. The history of Prince Camaralzaman and of his bride Badoura is far more entrancing than that which I have just given; but it is too long to be told now.'

Then she was silent; and Shahriar could not bring himself to order her death till he had heard that story also. So once more he let his oath stay unfulfilled and deferred sentence; and the next night, wakened in the small hours towards dawn, Scheherazade, opening a mouth of loveliness and filling it with wise and sweet words, took up the thread of her tale and began: