THE ARABIAN NIGHTS
BY RICHARD GOTTHEIL
he Arabian Nights--or, more accurately, 'The Thousand Nights and a Night' (Alf Leilah wa-leílah)--have gained a popularity in Europe, since they were first turned into a modern language by Galland in 1704, which rivals, if it does not exceed, their regard in the East. They opened up to Europe a wealth of anecdote, a fertility of daring fancy, which has not ceased to amuse and to interest. It is not their value as literature which has placed them so high in the popular esteem, both in the East and in the West; for they are written in a style not a little slovenly, the same scenes, figures, and expressions are repeated to monotony, and the poetical extracts which are interwoven are often of very uncertain excellence. Some of the modern translations--as by Payne and Burton--have improved upon the original, and have often given it a literary flavor which it certainly has not in the Arabic. For this reason, native historians and writers seldom range the stories in their literary chronicles, or even deign to mention them by name. The 'Nights' have become popular from the very fact that they affect little; that they are contes pure and simple, picturing the men and the manners of a certain time without any attempt to gloss over their faults or to excuse their foibles: so that "the doings of the ancients become a lesson to those that follow after, that men look upon the admonitory events that have happened to others and take warning." All classes of men are to be found there: Harun al-Rashid and his viziers, as well as the baker, the cobbler, the merchant, the courtesan. The very coarseness is a part of the picture; though it strikes us more forcibly than it did those to whom the tales were told and for whom they were written down. It is a kaleidoscope of the errors and failings and virtues of the men whose daily life it records; it is also a picture of the wonderfully rich fantasy of the Oriental mind.
In the better texts (i.e., of Boulak and Calcutta) there are no less than about two hundred and fifty stories; some long, others short. There is no direct order in which they follow one upon the other. The chief story may at any moment suggest a subordinate one; and as the work proceeds, the looseness and disconnectedness of the parts increase. The whole is held together by a "frame"; a device which has passed into the epic of Ariosto ('Orlando Furioso,' xxviii.), and which is not unlike that used by Boccaccio ('Decameron') and Chaucer ('Canterbury Tales'). This "frame" is, in short:--A certain king of India, Shahriyar, aroused by his wife's infidelity, determines to make an end of all the women in his kingdom. As often as he takes a wife, on the morrow he orders her slain. Shahrzad, the daughter of his Vizier, takes upon herself the task of ridding the king of his evil intent. On the night of her marriage to the king, she, together with her sister Dunyazad, so engrosses his mind with her stories that the king seeks their continuance night after night; thus she wards off her fate for nearly three years. At the end of that time she has borne the king three male children; and has, by the sprightliness of her mind, gradually drawn all the conceit out of him, so that his land is at rest. The tales told within this frame may be divided into: (a) Histories, or long romances, which are often founded upon historical facts; (b) Anecdotes and short stories, which deal largely with the caliphs of the house of Abbas; (c) Romantic fiction, which, though freely mingled with supernatural intervention, may also be purely fictitious (contes fantastiques); (d) Fables and Apologues; (e) Tales, which serve the teller as the peg upon which to hang and to exhibit his varied learning. In addition to this "frame," there is a thread running through the whole; for the grand theme which is played with so many variations is the picturing of love--in the palace and in the hovel, in the city and in the desert. The scenes are laid in all the four corners of the globe, but especially in the two great centres of Muhammadan activity, Bagdad and Cairo. It is not a matter of chance that Harun al-Rashid is the Caliph to whom the legends of the 'Nights' have given a crown so very different from the one which he really wore. Though his character was often far from that which is pictured here, he was still a patron of art and of literature. His time was the heyday of Muhammadan splendor; and his city was the metropolis to which the merchants and the scholars flocked from the length and breadth of Arab dominion.
To unravel the literary history of such a collection is difficult indeed, for it has drawn upon all civilizations and all literatures. But since Hammer-Purgstall and De Sacy began to unwind the skein, many additional turns have been given. The idea of the "frame" in general comes undoubtedly from India; and such stories as 'The Barber's Fifth Brother,' 'The Prince and the Afrit's Mistress,' have been "traced back to the Hitopadesa, Panchatantra, and Katha Sarit Sagara." The 'Story of the King, his Seven Viziers, his Son, and his Favorite,' is but a late version, through the Pahlavi, of the Indian Sindibad Romance of the time of Alexander the Great. A number of fables are easily paralleled by those in the famous collection of Bidpai (see the list in Jacobs's 'The Fables of Bidpai,' London, 1888, lxviii.). This is probably true of the whole little collection of beast fables in the One Hundred and Forty-sixth Night; for such fables are based upon the different reincarnations of the Buddha and the doctrine of metempsychosis. The story of Jali'ad and the Vizier Shammas is distinctly reported to have been translated from the Persian into Arabic. Even Greek sources have not been left untouched, if the picture of the cannibal in the adventures of Sindbad the Sailor be really a reflex of the story of Odysseus and Polyphemus. Arabic historians--such as Tabari, Masudi, Kazwini, al-Jaúzi--and the Kitab al-Aghani, have furnished innumerable anecdotes and tales; while such old Arabic poets as Imr al-Kais, Alkamah, Nabhighah, etc., have contributed occasional verses.