Edited by Paulo Lemos Horta, this publication is dedicated to approaches for teaching the Thousand and One Nights. It is a highly original publication that will occupy a welcome place among the vast array of academic texts devoted to one of the most influential works in world literature, influential, as we are aptly reminded, like that other Eastern text, the Bible. While primarily a useful resource for those who teach the Nights on university courses, the book’s readership is intended to be multifarious as it offers a panoply of approaches and various points of departure. Apart from the teacher or student, Horta’s book is for those who wish to extend their overall knowledge of these classic tales, discovering new readings and textual perspectives, the various movie versions, and all-important social connections and related controversies.
The editor’s Preface provides an overview of the main topics, from the text(s) used in class--whether in Arabic or in translation (or both)--to the so-called “French tales”, which now appear to be more Mediterranean than French. This also encompasses challenging issues linked to the teaching of the Nights, that is, topics relating to gender, race and slavery that are seen through the lens of older translations, movie (mis-)representations, common beliefs and clichés.
The first part of the book (3-23) is devoted to Materials (Contexts – Texts – Film and Popular Culture – The Instructor’s Library). The elegance of Horta’s writing guides the reader with confidence and precise know-how through the various editions, translations, silent movies and contemporary wide-screen adaptations from around the world (Germany, Poland, Japan, Italy, India, and of course the USA). Mention is also made of the works of reference and literary criticism that are necessary to any instructor. The second part, introduced by Horta (27-31), is divided into five sections: Context of Origin (32-74), The Tales as World Literature (75-89), Controversies (90-118), Intertexts (119-152) and Contexts of Circulation (153-180). These bring together eighteen texts by seventeen different authors plus one by Horta himself.
As an Italian, I rediscovered my own ties with the tradition of the 1001 Nights: from the first translation from the Arabic--coordinated by Francesco Gabrieli (1949)--to Pierpaolo Pasolini’s Il Fiore delle Mille e Una Notte (1974). It is also possible to link these past references to more recent years by citing a limited (deluxe and illustrated) Italian edition of selected tales accompanied by an essay by Angelo Arioli (2005) as well as a new Italian translation based on the Arabic text established by M. Mahdi. [1] On the music side, I also like to recall the Italian group Gabin and their 2016 track Mille et une nuits de desirs (feat. A. Carril Obiols) in the album The Supreme Collection (available online).
Horta’s work also provides us with the opportunity to compare our own teaching experiences with those chronicled and generously shared by colleagues from around the world, especially those in the USA. Teaching Arabic Language and Literature, I have myself had the chance to dedicate some of my courses to the Nights. Personally speaking, I approached both the literary tradition of the Nights,and the vast scientific literature that surrounds them, via an extra-canonical tale, the Tale of Bayāḍ and Riyāḍ (Ar. Ḥadīth Bayāḍ wa-Riyāḍ), [2] which is not included in standard editions. I thus start, so to speak, from the margins of the Nights. Attested essentially by western (Andalusian and North-African) codices, the Tale of Bayāḍ and Riyāḍ appears to be a sort of distant cousin of the orphan tales, [3] which has, however, been considered among the “noteworthy texts” of the tradition of the Nights and is thus included, to quote Horta (29), in a “revolutionary” publication. The Tale of Bayāḍ and Riyāḍ is an oriental story which, in early 13th-century al-Andalus, was expanded so as to occupy an entire illustrated manuscript by itself (Vatican City, Vatican Library, Vat.ar. 368). It is also the only illustrated manuscript that has survived from the western regions of the Arabic world. One of the main characters in the novel is Riyāḍ, a white slave girl (Ar. jāriya). The textual and visual references provided by the Vatican codex--the slave girls in the retinue of the aristocratic Lady (Ar. Sayyida) are of different skin tones ranging from white to darker--prompted my discussion of white slavery in the medieval Islamic world. The presence of white slaves, particularly female slaves, is connected with the Viking-Age trade that linked Baghdad to the North of Europe through the Caucasus and provided the Abbasid capital with rare and precious goods, such as amber and furs, as well as slaves. However, the presence of white slaves--both girls and boys (Ar. ghulām)--is also attested by documentary evidence such as a mid-10th/hmid-11th-century slave dealer’s day-book found in Fusṭāṭ which explicitly mentions a European male child (Ar. Rūmī). [4] On the subject of Egyptian documents, it is also worth mentioning that the title, Alf Layla wa-Layla, has been attested since the 12th century: it is found in a Judaeo-Arabic document found in the Cairo Genizah that also contained some early 13th-century manuscripts of theNights. [5]
The readings I suggest to students are thus linked to geographical literature, such as the anonymous Ḥudūd al-ʿālam, [6] and travelogues such as the one written by Ibn Faḍlān (fl. 4th/10th century) describing the lands of the Volga Bulgars. [7] As for cinema, the 1999 Hollywood movie The 13th Warrior, starring Antonio Banderas and--through Michael Crichton’s 1976 novel Eaters of the Dead--recalling Ibn Faḍlān’s journey, can serve as a means for introducing students to contact areas beyond the somewhat familiar Middle Eastern context. Moreover, with regard to servitude and blackness, I would recommend Bernard Lewis’ essay on the “crows of the Arabs” (Ar. aghribat al-ʿArab), [8] which has the merit of citing verses and poems in which the authors--from ʿAntara to Sulayk b. al-Sulāka--complain in their own voices about the social attitudes of the Bedouin aristocracy towards non-Arabs. Beyond any caveats regarding recourse to specific coinage as a means of dating the stories or the manuscripts of the Nights, given the correspondence between numismatic evidence in many tales and the fact that the names of Hārūn al-Rashīd and his vizir Jaʿfar al-Barmakī--among the protagonists of The Three Apple tale (Ar. al-tuffāḥāt al-thalātha)--are found on actual coins (such as a 182/798-799 Abbasid dinar), I would also recommend that students explore the immense field of Islamic numismatics.
Some of the many themes in the Tale of Bayāḍ and Riyāḍ, like the sapphic relationship between the Lady and her favourite slave (Riyāḍ), allow for the discussion of topics linked to sexuality and same sex love in Medieval Arabo-Islamic narratives--themes which usually attract the interest of students--also when adopting a comparative literary perspective. [9] Conversely, it is somewhat difficult to see Shahrazad as a feminist heroine bearing in mind that, all in all, she is one of the many female characters in pre-modern Arabic (and world) literature who gives voice to male authors writing for a male readership/audience. This has been aptly pointed out by Serena Tolino, [10] who also cites the Thousand and One Nights tale of Qamar al-Zamān and Princess Budūr. The circulation of the Arabic text of the Nights among a(n essentially) male readership is confirmed by the reading notes (Ar. muṭalāʿāt) recorded in the manuscripts that once belonged to Antoine Galland, the first translator of the Arabic text. These marginal, yet insightful notes, have been carefully edited and studied. [11] They attest to the interreligious interest in the tales--expressed by both Christian and Muslim (male) readers and the effort to promote the Nights to the level of high literature (Ar. adab)--by deploying rhetorical expressions like “this blessed book” (Ar. hādhā l-kitāb al-mubārak)--and the circulation of the manuscripts in Syria (Hama, Aleppo, Tripoli) before their arrival in Paris.
Overall, this is a most rewarding publication, and every essay offers valuable insights, from those dealing with old and new links between the Nights and the Arabic literary tradition, such as the essays by Bruce Fudge, to Dominique Jullien’s paper on intertextual links, and Evanghelia Stead’s on the Western “Thousand and Second night” literature. Maurice Pomerantz, deals with the Tales of Sinbad, highlighting the meaningful dialogue below-the-surface between these fictive stories and the long tradition of Arabic tales on marvels (ʿajāʾib), travelogues (riḥla) and the proper literature for the élite such as the Maqāmāt. As proof the cultural mobility of Sinbad’s stories--another point made by the Pomerantz (89)--I like to recall that Alexandre Dumas dans son chef-d’oeuvre Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1846), entitles a chapter: Italie – Simbad le marin. In the novel Edmond Dantès uses the name of the famous Arabic character to hide his own identity. Shawkat M. Toorawa focuses his text on graphic novels of the Arabian Nights and gives us as interesting list of reasons for his choice. In Toorawa’s list he mentions, for instance, that graphic novels share, with the text of Nights, a “lowbrow consideration” by scholars which is rooted--among other things--in the fact that the frame tale of the Nights “is about serial rape and murder staved off by seduction and storytelling” (121). Yet, Marquise de Sade’s (1767-1814) production--notwithstanding the chronological gap and different cultural context which set it apart from the Nights--recalls us that literature is a vast domain, and that sexuality is a powerful driving force of human actions. Also, despite the fact the early Arabic manuscript tradition of the Nights lacks illustrations, graphic novels--following a long tradition of modern illustrated editions of the Nights--integrate the visual aspect of a text and thus offer the chance for “productive discussions of the relation between word and image” (122). Nadine Roth guides us in the story of The City of Brass “which draws on legends of a historical expedition under the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwan to narrate a classic journey to what appears to be a dead city” (59). Following Roth’s leads, the reader observes the effects of the Qurʾān recitation which--as the wax in the ears of Odysseus’ crew against the siren’s song--prevents the sheykh of the group to be enchanted by the vision of the ten beautiful women appearing to all those who arrive at the top of the enchanted wall of the city. The deciphering of an inscription made by the same sheykh represents another relevant point of the story, relating to the challenge of ancient scripts which are no longer understood and thus become enigmatic - a code to be deciphered as recorded by al-Qalqashandī (756-821/1355-1418) in his Ṣubḥ al-aʿshà. The connection to a Mamluk author seems consistent with the Cairo phase to which The City of Brass tale is part. Roth also stresses the “persistent elevation of tricksters and thieves as protagonists” in the tales of Mamluk times: new heroes are linked to the ethos of a complex urban society in 14th-16th-century Islamic cities such as Cairo and Damascus.
A recurrent theme in the volume, which is evoked by more than one author, is the (oral/written) transmission of the tale of the Nights. Wen-chin Ouyang stresses, for instance, that for the orphan tales such as ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Ali Baba’ have neither an oral nor written Arabic origins (42). Susan Slyomovics devotes her contribution to oral performances of modern storytellers, investigating the ways through which orality interact with written literature in the case of folk tales such as those of the Nights. She masterly explains puns and double meanings--both sexual and political--thus revealing taboos events and erotic innuendos attested in the audiotapes she recorded in the 1980s.
There are also valid suggestions for the teaching of the Nights, some of which sparked my interest for various reasons. Abdalla Uba Adamu, for instance, guides us through that terra incognita, namely the presence of theNights in African literature. This fascinating, revealing, and somewhat amusing journey also allows us to discover that “in the Hausa versions of theThousand and One Nights, the tales are narrated by a parrot, a metaphor for a woman deemed too loquacious according to local social mores” (159). Moreover, I like to recall Abdalla Uba Adamu’s powerful words about the place that Sinbad has in African literature, which remind us “a common template for human behaviour, regardless of race--for the fundamental lesson delivered by the storytellers remain the same” (160). Through Margaret Litvin I also discovered the cyberpunk novel Alif the Unseen by G.W. Wilson (2012). This was a most pleasant find that ties in with my own research interests in ciphers and coded texts in the Arabo-Islamic written (and oral) culture. Minor lapsus calami or negligible inconsistencies in transcriptions--e.g. Reyhan/Raihan or muqaṭaʿāt sic, per muqaṭṭaʿāt--do not affect at all the overall value of the volume and the quality of its contents.
To conclude, I would like to mention the text by Ulrich Marzolph on the textual tradition of the Nights. The author starts by recalling the playful ways in which he evaluates his students’ general knowledge of the Nights and concludes by stressing that in teaching the Thousand and One Nights--in the light of its complex origins (from India and Persia), its complex textual tradition, its multiple translations from various epochs, and its vast adaptation to different semiotic systems--it cannot be reduced to a single book or a single notion. Indeed, whoever teaches it puts themself in “a position of significant responsibility” (56).
--------
Notes.
1. A. Arioli, “Alf layla wa layla”, in Mille e una notte (Fontanellato: Franco Maria Ricci, 2005), 2-60; R. Denaro (ed.), Le Mille e una notte. Edizione italiana condotta sul più antico manoscritto arabo (Roma: Donzelli, 2016).
2. A. D’Ottone, La storia di Bayāḍ e Riyāḍ (ms Vat.ar. 368): Une nuova edizione e traduzione, Studi e Testi 479 (Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2013).
3. A. D’Ottone, “The Tale of Bayāḍ e Riyāḍ,” in Arabic Manuscripts of the Thousand and One Nights: Presentation and Critical Editions of Four Noteworthy Texts; Observations on Some Osmanli Translations, ed. A. Chraïbi (Paris, Espaces & Signes, 2016), 293-320.
4. D.S. Richards, “Fragments of a Slave Dealer’s Day-Book from Fusṭāṭ”, in Documents de l’Islam médiéval: Nouvelles perspectives de recherche, ed. Y. Rāghib, TAEI 29 (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1991), 89-96 and pl. III-IV.
5. R. Hasson, “The Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts of the ‘Arabian Nights’ found in the Cairo Genizot: T-S NS 183.18+23+35+37+38”, Genizah Research Unit, Fragment of the Month, September 2021 (available online).
6. The original is in Persian with Minorsky providing an English translation. See V. Minorsky (trans.) with an introduction by V. V. Barthold, Ḥudūd al-ʿālam ‘The Regions of the World’: A Persian Geography 372 AH-982 AD, E. J. W. Gibb Memorial, n.s. XI (London, 1937).
7. J. Shepard and L. Treadwell (eds.), Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age: In the Footsteps of Ibn Fadlan (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2023).
8. B. Lewis, “The Crows of the Arabs”, Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 88-97.
9. S. Amer, Crossing Borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); E. Naaman, “Eating Figs and Pomegranates: Taboos and Language in the Thousand and One Nights”, Journal of Arabic Literature 44 (2013): 335-370; Z. Antrim, “Qamarayn: The Erotics of Sameness in the 1001 Nights”, al-ʿUṣūr al-wusṭā XXVIII (2020): 1-44.
10. S. Tolino, “Normative Discourses on Female Homoeroticism in Pre-Modern Islamicate Societies”, in Mediterranean Crossings: Sexual Transgressions in Islam and Christianity (10thh-18thh Centuries), ed. U. Grassi (Roma: Viella, 2020), 27-42.
11. M. Sironval and L. Daaïf, “Marges et espaces blancs dans le manuscrit arabe des Milles et Une Nuits d’Antoine Galland”, in Les non-dits du nom: Onomastique et documents en terres d’Islam. Mélanges offerts à Jacqueline Sublet, ed. C. Müller and M. Roiland-Rouabah, Études arabes, médiévales et modernes--PIFD 267 (Damascus-Beirut: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2013), 85-126.