Husain Haddawy

This is as good as it gets. I don't know Arabic so there's no way I can judge the accuracy of the translation -- all I know is how it reads, and it reads superbly. I'd rather not get into any "oh, but there's only 271 nights here, what the --" patter. I have the newer, bigger Penguin translation on my shelves too & it presumably uses the (much!) longer Egyptian 'version' (version is the wrong word but I can't think of the right one at the moment) ... but I doubt it could be, well, better show more than this. What's here is simply the rapture of tales, tales, tales ... and it's a volume that makes it eminently clear why people get obsessed with this thing. I'm a bit obsessed with it, right now. show less

There are many versions of The Arabian Nights that have floated about over the centuries; this one is a translation of the Mahdi edition, based on the oldest known copy from 14th century Syria. It has 271 “nights”, tales that were collected from Persia, Arabia, and India and containing stories within stories (and sometimes within stories, and so on). The collection was expanded over the centuries to reach the well-known 1,001 nights, including “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp", "The show more Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor", and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" – none of this later content is present in this version.

With that said, it’s an enjoyable read, and there is plenty of 700 year old sex and violence from the Middle East to hold one’s interest. :)

The stage is set in the prologue in a way that certainly opens the eyes. There are two kings, one named Shahrayar, the other Shahzaman, who are brothers. Shahzaman is sent for by his brother to visit, but before leaving, discovers his wife in the arms of one of the kitchen boys. Naturally, he strikes them with his sword, drags them by their heels, and throws them from the top of the palace to the trench below. He then arrives in Shahrayar’s domain in a dejected mood. As he’s agonizing over his sorrow, he finds himself a witness to an interracial orgy involving Shahrayar’s wife, ten white slave girls, ten black slaves who had been dressed as girls, and Mas’ud, another black slave who, upon being summoned, jumps out of a tree to have his way with the Queen. Yeah, wow.

Shahrayar can’t believe his ears when he hears of this, and so the two of them have to watch a repeat performance to convince him. They are so disheartened that they decide to take to the road and leave the palace. That night they see what seems to be a giant pillar, one that grows to touch the clouds, emerging from the sea. They flee in terror and hide in a tree, and when they look again discover that the pillar is actually a mighty demon, who approaches without seeing them, carrying a large glass chest with four locks. He sets it down in the meadow beneath them and unlocks it, and what emerges is a beautiful woman, with a face “like the full moon, and a lovely smile.” The demon then proceeds to fall asleep, whereupon the woman notices Shahrayar and Shahzaman in the tree, and asks them to come down and make love to her, otherwise she’ll wake her husband the demon and have him kill them. They comply, one after the other, and she then asks for a ring as a souvenir from each; she’s collected one from each of her lovers and has now reached a full hundred, despite the demon keeping her locked up. Again, yeah, wow.

The brothers decide to return to their kingdoms and never marry again. Shahrayar has his wife and all her slave girls killed, but then formulates a new plan, to marry a new woman each night and then kill her in the morning to prevent her from cheating on him. After he’s done this for so long that girls in the kingdom are becoming a little scarce, Shahrazad (sometimes spelled Scheherazade), the vizier’s daughter, volunteers to marry the king. She is smart and very well read, and her plan for survival is to tell the king a new story each night, but to not finish it, betting on his curiosity to postpone the execution from night to night.

And thus begin the stories, each ‘tale’ or night of which are generally just a couple pages each, but which are grouped into larger stories, such as The Fisherman and the Demon, The Porter and the Three Ladies, and The Hunchback. The prologue is so classic that frankly it’s a tough act to follow, and I have to say the tales tend to get a bit tedious. If you’re not a fan of misogyny or body parts getting lopped off you may not enjoy them, but they are certainly not dry, and there is something special about reading stories this old that provided entertainment for the medieval Islam world, similar to The Decameron or The Canterbury Tales. I prefer those other books to this one, but wonder if the inclusion of the other stories in the 1,001 Nights version would have upped my rating. show less

While I can't comment on the quality of the translation, The Arabian Nights is a dizzying array of stories within stories within stories, playing with the idea that our narrative impulse is the connective tissue that makes civilization possible. The stories are at their best when they fully indulge in fantasy, recounting tales of demons, transformative magic, and epic romance.

As much as I liked the book, however, I had a few complaints, principally the lack of development in the frame story show more of Shahrazad and its disappointingly abrupt ending. While her story does exist primarily as a means of telling other stories, I really regretted that after her first night with the king, she becomes nothing more than a chapter break. If The Arabian Nights exists as a tribute to her bravery, skill, wit, and inventiveness as a storyteller, I would have appreciated the chance to see her put to use in other ways. The constant interpolations to remind us that she is narrating for her very survival only serve as a reminder that we're learning nothing else about her.

As with any compendium of stories, some are less interesting than others, and I enjoyed the earlier stories a great deal more than those which ended the book. The introduction made mention of the fact that the book was probably the result of a number of different writers, and reading the stories makes that more than plain. The interlocking stories and cliffhanger endings that I found so interesting disappear entirely as the book goes on, to its detriment.

In addition to the sheer pleasure of the book as an exploration of storytelling, I found it a work of great cultural interest as well. Many of the stories have a decidedly foreign flavor, not just in terms of locale but in what the narrator chooses to emphasize. I found myself thinking on many occasions that I wished the Qur'an had been more like this book, as it seems to provide a much greater insight into a culture about which I know depressingly little. show less

Ah. So some time ago I had a yen to read the 1001 Nights, and I have only just got around to it, apparently having forgotten that I don't like fairy tales. I appreciate the importance of fairy tales, fables, myths and legends from a cultural, historical and literary point of view. Stories that have been passed down between generations by word of mouth should be collected and collated and written down and shared etc. But all the same, I don't enjoy the style in which these stories tend to be show more told, so unless I want to study the Arabian Nights, I don't see much point pursuing reading something I'm not enjoying. Literally the first story in this book (the framing device of Shahrazad) is wall-to-wall sex and murder, which are pretty much my two least favourite topics for a story, and I flicked to the end of the book and it doesn't even resolve the damn story! It just says 'tradition says this happened...' Ugh. show less