Five-minute digest
The Arabian Nights Entertainments
Summary
The Arabian Nights Entertainments is Andrew Lang's 1898 selection of the Thousand and One Nights for children, retold in English from Antoine Galland's early eighteenth-century French version. The frame story comes first. The Sultan Schahriar, betrayed by his wife, marries a new bride each evening and has her strangled each morning, until Scheherazade, the grand-vizir's learned and courageous elder daughter, insists on marrying him. Her sister Dinarzade wakes her before dawn to ask for a story; Scheherazade always stops at the most exciting point, and the curious Sultan spares her another day. Lang keeps this device only for the first tales and does not narrate the frame's ending. The merchant who killed a genie's son with a date-stone is saved when three old men tell stories of a hind, two black dogs and a mule. A poor fisherman nets a sealed copper jar, releases a furious genie and tricks him back inside; within his tale comes the Greek king who executes the physician Douban, who had cured his leprosy, and is killed by the poisoned pages of the dead man's book. The fisherman's four-coloured fish lead a Sultan to the young King of the Black Isles, half turned to marble by his wife. A Bagdad porter, three sisters, three one-eyed calenders and the disguised Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid exchange astonishing histories, including the tale of the Envious Man. Sindbad the Sailor tells the porter Hindbad of seven voyages: a whale mistaken for an island, the roc and the valley of diamonds, a man-eating giant, burial alive with his dead wife, the Old Man of the Sea, a river of jewels, and the graveyard of the elephants. The Little Hunchback, apparently killed by a fishbone, is passed from a tailor to a Jewish doctor, a purveyor and a broker, each believing himself guilty, and the garrulous barber tells of his brothers, including Alnaschar who smashes his glassware while daydreaming. Then come Camaralzaman and Badoura, lovers brought together by genies; Noureddin and the Fair Persian; Aladdin, who outwits an African magician with the ring and the lamp and loses his palace to the cry of new lamps for old; Haroun's nights among the blind Baba-Abdalla, Sidi-Nouman and his ghoul wife, and Ali Colia's gold hidden in an olive jar; the Enchanted Horse that carries Prince Firouz Schah to the Princess of Bengal; and the Two Sisters, whose plot against their younger sister is undone by the Talking Bird, the Singing Tree and the Golden Water. Lang's preface explains that verses and passages unsuitable for children are left out; H. J. Ford drew the pictures.
Top Lessons
A story can save a life
Scheherazade has no army and no weapon, only learning, courage and the power to make a listener want to know what happens next. The frame turns storytelling itself into an act of rescue for the girls of the kingdom.
Ingratitude and envy bring their own punishment
The Greek king kills the physician who cured him and dies by the physician's poisoned book; the jealous sisters lose everything when the Talking Bird speaks. Again and again the tales show envy and ingratitude turning back on the one who harbours them.
Cleverness against brute power
A small fisherman shuts a giant genie back in his jar by asking him to prove he fits; Sindbad gets the Old Man of the Sea drunk; the Princess of Bengal pretends to be mad. The weak survive by quick thinking rather than strength.
Riches are earned by hardship, and greed loses them
Sindbad tells the envious porter that his wealth came through years of danger, and he shares it with him. Baba-Abdalla, who already had forty camels laden with treasure, loses his sight by demanding the dervish's last box of ointment.
Verified Quotes
“If I fail, my death will be a glorious one, and if I succeed I shall have done a great service to my country.”
Frequently cited
“My dear sister, if you are not asleep, tell me I pray you, before the sun rises, one of your charming stories.”
“The Sultana told a story, and the Sultan let her live to finish it.”
“do not trifle thus with me, a poor fisherman, who can hardly support his family!”
“see how cruelty and injustice are punished.”
“I have only reached this happy state after having for years suffered every possible kind of toil and danger.”
“who can help laughing to see an old fool offering to exchange fine new lamps for old ones?”
“the cure depended neither on them nor their skill, but only on the princess herself.”
Medical Lens
For a children's book, Lang's selection carries a surprising number of physicians and feigned or imputed madness. The physician Douban cures the Greek king's leprosy by a drug hidden in the hollow handle of a polo club, absorbed as the king sweats at play and followed by a bath and sleep, a tale often noticed as a literary picture of medieval Islamic learned medicine and of the court physician's precarious position; his revenge by a book with poisoned pages is a poisoning-by-contact motif. In The Little Hunchback a Jewish doctor, eager for a fee, stumbles over the body in the dark and believes he has killed his patient. Madness is a recurrent social device: the King of China confines Badoura as insane for refusing marriage and promises her to whoever can cure her, Camaralzaman's own father thinks him out of his senses, and the Princess of Bengal feigns madness so convincingly that court doctors, city doctors and foreign professors fail, some prescribing harmless potions from sight alone, until Firouz Schah comes disguised in a physician's robe. These are readings of folk narrative, not case histories, but they show a world in which marriageability, honour and madness were bound together and in which the physician was both honoured and suspected. Other details include Sindbad's companions maddened by a herb given them by cannibals in the fourth voyage, his burial alive with his dead wife, the blinding of Baba-Abdalla with an ointment, and the one-eyed calenders.
- The Story of the Greek King and the Physician Douban
Douban cures the king's leprosy with a drug in the handle of a polo club, is executed through the vizir's slander, and kills the king by a poisoned book.
- The Little Hunchback
The hunchback chokes on a fishbone; a Jewish doctor, a purveyor and a broker each believe they have killed him until the barber revives him.
- The Adventures of Prince Camaralzaman and the Princess Badoura
Badoura is shut up as insane for refusing to marry, with a cure promised to any suitor; Marzavan, posing as an astrologer, brings the lovers together.
- The Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor, Fourth Voyage
Sindbad's companions are given a herb that drives them mad before they are fattened to be eaten; later he is buried alive with his dead wife by local custom.
- The Story of the Blind Baba-Abdalla
A dervish's ointment shows hidden treasure when applied to one eye but blinds the greedy Baba-Abdalla when applied to the other.
- The Enchanted Horse
The Princess of Bengal feigns madness; doctors are summoned from far and wide, and the prince gains access to her disguised as a physician.