The Thousand and One Nights (Lane's translation, Volume I)

Summary

This is the first of three volumes of Edward William Lane's translation of The Thousand and One Nights, made directly from the Arabic of the Cairo (Bulaq) printed edition and published in parts from 1838. The library text is the 1859 revision edited by his nephew Edward Stanley Poole, in the 1912 Chatto & Windus reissue with a preface by Stanley Lane-Poole. It contains the Introduction and Chapters I-VIII, each followed by Lane's long notes; Volumes II and III, which include the close of the frame story, are not included. The Introduction opens with praise of God and the claim that the lives of former generations are a lesson to those who follow. King Shahriyár and his brother Sháh-Zemán, King of Samarḳand, each discover a wife's infidelity; after meeting a captive woman who has deceived a Jinnee, Shahriyár resolves to marry a virgin each night and kill her at dawn. After three years the Wezeer can find no more brides, and his learned elder daughter Shahrazád insists on marrying the King, telling her father that she will either die as a ransom or deliver the daughters of the Muslims. Her sister Dunyázád asks for a story, and the King, restless, listens. Chapter I tells of a merchant condemned by a Jinnee for killing his son with a date-stone, saved by three sheykhs whose tales of a gazelle, two black hounds and a mule each buy a third of his blood. Chapter II follows a fisherman who frees an 'Efreet from a brass bottle sealed by Suleymán and tricks him back in; within it come King Yoonán and the sage Doobán, the Husband and the Parrot, and the young King of the Black Islands, half turned to stone by his wife. Chapter III gathers a porter, three ladies of Baghdád, three one-eyed royal mendicants and the disguised Khaleefeh Hároon Er-Rasheed with Jaạfar and Mesroor; the mendicants' histories include the Envier and the Envied. Chapter IV joins the Three Apples, a murder Jaạfar must solve in three days, to the tale of Noor-ed-Deen and Shems-ed-Deen and the son Ḥasan Bedr-ed-Deen, carried by Jinn from El-Baṣrah to Cairo and later recognised by his confection of pomegranate-grains. Chapter V is the Humpback, choked by a fishbone and passed from a tailor to a Jewish physician, a steward and a Christian broker, each confessing to save the next, with the barber Eṣ-Ṣámit's tales of his six brothers before he draws out the bone with forceps. Chapter VI tells of 'Alee Noor-ed-Deen and the slave Enees-el-Jelees; Chapter VII of Ghánim the son of Eiyoob, who rescues the Khaleefeh's favourite Ḳoot-el-Ḳuloob from a chest, with the comic Slave Káfoor; Chapter VIII of Táj-el-Mulook and the Lady Dunyà, enclosing the sorrowful story of 'Azeez and 'Azeezeh. Lane divided the work into chapters instead of nights and omitted tales and passages he judged uninteresting or objectionable.

Top Lessons

• Stories as moral argument

  Nearly every embedded tale here is told to persuade a listener: the sheykhs bargain for the merchant's blood, the fisherman answers the 'Efreet with King Yoonán and Doobán, the four suspects of the Humpback buy their lives with stories. Lane's own note calls eloquence lawful magic among the Arabs, and the frame turns that belief into the plot.

• Ingratitude and pardon

  King Yoonán repays the sage who cured him with death, and dies by his poisoned book; the envied man of Chapter III repays the neighbour who threw him down a well with gold and honour. The collection sets retribution and generosity side by side and lets the listener weigh them.

• Destiny and responsibility

  Characters constantly say that what is written on the forehead must come to pass, yet they plan, lie, flee and confess. The humpback chokes because his destiny so determined, and four men still hurry to accept blame. Lane's long note on fate and destiny explains how Muslim teaching joined predestination with the duty to take medicine and act prudently.

• A translation as a window and a frame

  Lane wanted his readers to see the Nights as faithful pictures of Arab life, especially of Cairo, and his notes on religion, law, magic, medicine and manners are almost as long as the tales. He also chose what to omit. Reading the notes alongside the stories shows both the learning of a careful observer and the decisions an editor makes for his audience.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Lane's volume is useful to the historian of medicine less for any single tale than for the combination of tales and notes. The sage Doobán is drawn as the ideal learned physician, read in Greek, Persian, Arabic and Syriac books and in the properties of plants, who cures King Yoonán's leprosy without potion or ointment by a drug hidden in the hollow handle of a goff-stick and absorbed through sweat, followed by bath and sleep; his revenge by a poisoned book is a poisoning-by-contact motif. In the Humpback a Jewish physician, eager for his quarter-dinar fee, believes he has killed a patient by stumbling over him, and the tale of a physician of Damascus who becomes superintendent of its hospital prompts Lane's note that the first hospital built by a Muslim was founded there in AD 706-7. The barber revives the humpback by anointing his neck and extracting the fishbone with an iron forceps, a small scene of practical surgery. In the Envier and the Envied a princess's madness is attributed to a Márid in love with her and cured by fumigation with seven hairs from a cat's tail, and Lane's note on Muslim saints describes how mild insanity could be revered as sanctity and how the French authorities in Cairo ordered disturbed persons confined in the Máristán, the hospital and lunatic asylum. Lane's note on benj identifies it with henbane or hemp, links hemp-eating to the name of the Assassins, and records reports of narcotics used to drug sleepers, as Zubeydeh drugs Ḳoot-el-Ḳuloob in Chapter VII. His note on fate quotes traditions that there is a medicine for every pain and a list of contagious diseases that includes melancholy and pestilence, set against the saying that disease does not pass by contagion. Lovesickness, wasting and fainting are frequent (Sháh-Zemán's sallow emaciation from grief, Ghánim reduced to a toothpick's thinness, 'Azeezeh dying of love). These are period beliefs and literary motifs, best read as evidence of how medieval Islamic and nineteenth-century observers understood illness, not as case histories.

• Chapter II, Story of King Yoonán and the Sage Doobán

  Doobán cures the King's leprosy with drugs concealed in a goff-stick, is executed on the Wezeer's slander, and kills the King with a book whose leaves are poisoned.

• Chapter III, Story of the Envier and the Envied, with Note 63 (On Muslim Saints, or Devotees)

  A king's daughter, possessed by a love-struck Márid, is cured by fumigation; Lane's note discusses insanity regarded as sanctity and confinement in the Máristán.

• Chapter II, Story of the Young King of the Black Islands, with Note 46 (On the Use of Hemp to induce Intoxication)

  The queen drugs her husband's nightly wine with benj; Lane's note identifies benj with henbane or hemp and connects it with the Assassins.

• Chapter V, Story of the Humpback and its conclusion

  A fishbone apparently kills the humpback; a Jewish physician believes he caused the death; the barber anoints the neck and removes the bone with forceps.

• Chapter V, Story told by the Jewish Physician, with Note 47

  The physician takes a pulse, prescribes, and is made superintendent of the hospital of Damascus; Lane's note on the first Muslim hospital (AD 706-7).

• Notes to Chapter I, Note 5 (On Fate and Destiny)

  Traditions on medicine and predestination, and a list of contagious and engendered diseases including melancholy, pestilence, leprosy, epilepsy and phthisis.

• Chapter VII, Story of Ghánim the Son of Eiyoob

  Ḳoot-el-Ḳuloob is drugged with benj and buried alive in a chest; later Ghánim, wasted by grief and hunger, is spared from the Baghdád hospital by a charitable sheykh.