One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents

  The end of the Six Hundred and Eighty-eighth Night.

  Then said she: — I have heard, O auspicious King that the King spake kindly and fondly to his Consort, and told her all that had betided him, and what the Speaking-Bird had made known to him, ending with these words, “Come now with me to the palace where thou shalt thee thy two sons and daughter grown up to become the loveliest of things. Hie with me and embrace them and take them to thy bosom, for they are our children, the light of our etes. But first do thou repair to the Hammam and don thy royal robes and jewels.” Meanwhile tidings of these events were noised about the city how the King had at length shown due favour to the Queen, and had released her from bondage with his own hands and prayed forgiveness for the wrongs he had done to her; and how the Princes and the Princess had been proved to be her true-born children, and also how Khusrau Shah had punished her sisters who conspired against her; so joy and gladness prevailed both in city and kingdom, and all the folk blessed the Shah’s Bßn· and cursed the Satanesses her sisters. And next day when the Queen had bathed in the Hammam and had donned royal dress and regal jewels, she went to meet her children together with the King who led up to her the Princes Bahman and Parwez and the Princess Perizadah and said, “See, here are thy children, fruit of thy womb and core of thy heart, thine own very sons and thy daughter: embrace them with all a mother’s love and extend thy favour and affection to them even as I have done. When thou didst give them birth, thine illomened sisters bore them away from thee and cast them into yonder stream and said that thou hadst been delivered first of a puppy, then of a kitten and lastly of a musk-ratling. I cannot console myself for having credited their calumnies and the only recompense I can make is to place in thine embrace these three thou broughtest forth, and whom Allah Almighty hath restored to us and hath made right worthy to be called our children.” Then the Princes and Princess fell upon their mother’s neck and fondly embraced her weeping tear-floods of joy. After this the Shah and the Banu sai down to meat together with their children; and when they had made an end of eating, King Khusrau Shah repaired to the garden with his Consort that he might show her the Singing-Tree and the fountain of Golden-Water, whereat the Queen was filled with wonder and delight. Next they turned to the belvedere and visited the Speaking-Bird of whom, as they sat at meat, the King had spoken to her in highest praise, and the Queen rejoiced in his sweet voice and melodious singing. And when they had seen all these things, the King mounted horse, Prince Bahman riding on his right hand and on his left Prince Parwez, while the Queen took Princess Perizadah with her inside her litter, and thus they set forth for the palace. As the royal cavalcade passed the city walls and entered the capital with royal pomp and circumstance, the subjects who had heard the glad tidings thronged in multitudes to see their progress and volleyed shouts of acclamation; and as the lieges had grieved aforetime to see the Queen-consort imprisoned, so now the rejoiced with exceeding joy to find her free once more. But chiefly they marvelled to look upon the Speaking-Bird, for the Princess carried the cage with her, and as they rode along thousands of sweet-toned songsters came swarming round them from every quarter, and flew as an escort to the cage, filling the air with marvellous music; while flocks of others, perching upon the trees and the housetops, carolled and warbled as it were to greet their lord’s cage accompanying the royal cavalcade. And when the palace was reached, the Shah and his Queen and his children sat down to a sumptuous banquet; and the city was illuminated, and everywhere dancings and merry-makings testified to the joy of the lieges; and for many days these revels and rejoicings prevailed throughout the capital and the kingdom where every man was blithe and happy and had feastings and festivities in his house, After these festivals King Khusrau Shah made his elder son Bahman heir to his throne and kingdom and committed to his hands the affairs of state in their entirety, and the Prince administered affairs with such wisdom and success that the greatness and glory of the realm were increased twofold. The Shah also entrusted to his youngest son Parwez the charge of his army, both of horsemen and foot-soldiers; and Princess Perizadah was given by her sire in marriage to a puissant King who reigned over a mighty country; and lastly the Queen-mother forgot in perfect joy and happiness the pangs of her captivity. Destiny ever afterwards endowed them, one and all, with days the most delectable and they led the liefest of lives until at last there came to them the Destroyer of delights and the Sunderer of societies and the Depopulator of palaces and the Garnerer of graveyards and the Reaper for Resurrection-day, and they became as though they had never been. So laud be to the Lord who dieth not and who knoweth no shadow of change.

  Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents

  APPENDIX. VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES OF THE TALES IN VOLUME XIII.

  By W. A. Clouston.

  Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents

  The Tale of Zayn Al-Asnam.

  This story is a compound of two distinct tales, namely, the Dream of Riches and the Quest of the Ninth Image. It has always been one of the most popular of the tales in our common version of the “Arabian Nights,” with this advantage, that it is perhaps the only one of the whole collection in which something like a moral purpose may be discovered— “a virtuous woman is more precious than fine gold.” Baron de Sacy has remarked of The Nights, that in the course of a few years after Galland’s version appeared “it filled Europe with its fame, though offering no object of moral or philosophical interest, and detailing stories merely for the pleasure of relating them.” But this last statement is not quite accurate: Shahrazad relates her stories merely to prolong her own life.

  It is a curious fact — and one perhaps not very generally known — that the Tale of Zayn al-Asnßm is one of two (the other being that of Khudßdßd) which Galland repudiated, as having been foisted into his 8th volume without his knowledge, as he expressly asserts in the “Avertissement” to the 9th vol., promising to remove them in a second edition, which, however, he did not live to see. I understand that M. Herrmann Zotenberg purposes showing, in his forthcoming edition of “Aladdin,” that these two histoires (including that of the Princess of Daryßbßr, which is interwoven with the tale of Khudßdßd and his Brothers) were Turkish tales translated by M. Petis de la Croix and were intended to appear in his “Mille et un Jours,” which was published, after his death, in 1710; and that, like most of the tales in that work, they were derived from the Turkish collection entitled “Al-Farßj ba’d al-Shiddah,” or Joy after Affliction. But that Turkish story-book is said to be a translation of the Persian collection entitled “Hazßr · Yek R·z” (the Thousand and One Days), which M. Petis rendered into French.

  In the preface to Petis’ work it is stated that during his residence in Persia, in 1675, he made a transcript of the “Hazßr · Yek R·z,” by permission of the author, a dervish named Mukhlis, of Isfahßn. That transcript has not, I understand, been found; but Sir William Ouseley brought a manuscript from Persia which contained a portion of the “Hazßr · Yek R·z,” and which he says (“Travels” vol. ii. , note) agreed so far with the French version. And it does seem strange that Petis should go to the Turkish book for tales to include in his “Mille et un Jours” when he had before him a complete copy of the Persian original, and even if he did so, how came his French rendering of the tales in question into the hands of Galland’s publisher? The tales are not found in Petis’ version, which is regularly divided into 1001 Days, and the Turkish work, judging from the titles of the eleven first tales, of which I have seen a transcript by M. Zotenberg, has a number of stories which do not occur in the Persian.375 But I think it very unlikely that the tales of Khudßdßd and the Princess foisted into Galland’s 8th volume, were translated from the Turkish collection. In Galland the story of the Princess Daryßbßr is inserted in that of Khudßdßd; while in the Turkish story-book they are separate tales, the 6th recital being under the title, “Of th
e VazÝr with the Daughter of the Prince of Daryßbßn,” and the 9th story is “Of the Sons of the Sovereign of Harrßn with Khudßdßd.” This does not seem to support the assertion that these tales in Galland were derived from the Turkish versions: and it is not to be supposed, surely, that the translator of the versions in Galland conceived the idea of fusing the two stories together?

  The first part of the tale of Zaun al-Asnam — the Dream of Riches — is an interesting variant of the tale in The Nights, vol. iv. , where (briefly to recapitulate, for purposes of comparison by-and-by) a man of Baghdad, having lost all his wealth and become destitute, dreams one night that a figure appeared before him and told him that his fortune was in Cairo. To that city he went accordingly, and as it was night when he arrived, he took shelter in a mosque. A party of thieves just then had got into an adjacent house from that same mosque, and the inmates, discovering them, raised such an outcry as to bring the police at once on the spot. The thieves contrive to get away, and the walÝ, finding only the man of Baghdad in the mosque, causes him to be seized and severely beaten after which he sends him to prison, where the poor fellow remains thirty days, when the walÝ sends for him and begins to question him. The man tells his story, at which the walÝ laughs, calls him an ass for coming so far because of a dream, and adds that he himself had had a similar dream of a great treasure buried in the garden of such a house in Baghdad, but he was not so silly as to go there. The poor man recognises his own house and garden from the walÝ’s description, and being set at liberty returns to Baghdad, and finds the treasure on the very spot indicated.

  Lane, who puts this story (as indeed he has done with much better ones) among his notes, states that it is also related by El-IshßkÝ, who flourished during the reign of the KhalÝf El-Ma’m·n (9th century), and his editor Edward Stanley Poole adds that he found it also in a MS. of Lane’s entitled “Murshid ez-Z·war ilß el-Abrar,” with the difference that it is there related of an Egyptian saint who travelled to Baghdad, and was in the same manner directed to his own house in El-Fustßt.

  The same story is told in the 6th book of the “MasnavÝ,” an enormously long sufÝ poem, written in Persian, by Jelßd ed-Din, the founder of the sect of Muslim devotees generally known in Europe as the Dancing Dervishes, who died in 1272. This version differs from the Arabian in but a few and unimportant details: Arriving at Cairo, destitute and hungry, he resolves to beg when it is dark, and is wandering about, “one foot forward, one foot backwards,” for a third of the night, when suddenly a watchman pounces on him and beats him with fist and stick — for the people having been plagued with robbers, the KhalÝf had given orders to cut off the head of any one found abroad at night. The wretched man begs for mercy till he has told his story, and when he has finished the watchman acquaints him of a similar dream he had had of treasure at Baghdad.376

  A Turkish variant occurs in the “History of the Forty VazÝrs,” where a poor water-carrier of Cairo, named Nu’mßn, presents his son’s teacher with his only camel, which he used daily for carrying his skins of water, as a reward for instructing the lad in the Kurßn, and his wife rails at him for his folly in no measured terms. In his sleep a white haired old man appears to him in a dream and tells him to go to Damascus, where he would find his portion. After this has occurred three times in succession, poor Nu’mßn, spite of his wife’s remonstrances, sets out for Damascus, enters a mosque there, and receives a loaf of bread from a man who had been baking, and having eaten it falls asleep. Returning home, his wife reviles him for giving away a camel and doing other mad things. But again the venerable old man appears to him thrice in a dream, and bids him dig close by himself, and there he would find his provision. When he takes shovel and pick-axe to dig, his wife’s tongue is more bitter than before, and after he had laboured a while and begins to feel somewhat fatigued, when he asks her to take a short spell at the work, she mocks him and calls him anything but a wise man. But on his laying bare a stone slab, she thinks there must be something beneath it, and offers to relieve him. “Nu’mßn,” quoth she “thou’rt weary now.” “No, I’m rested, says he. In the end he discovers a well, goes down into it, and finds a jar full of sequins, upon seeing which his wife clasps him lovingly round the neck, exclaiming, “O my noble little hubby! Blessed be God for thy luck and thy fortune!” Her tune changes, however, when the honest water-carrier tells her that he means to carry the treasure to the King, which he does, and the King having caused the money to be examined, the treasure is found to have the following legend written on it: “This is an alms from God to Nu’mßn, by reason of his respect for the Kurßn.”377

  This curious story, which dates, as we have seen, at least as far back as the 9th century appears to be spread over Europe. Mr. E. Sidney Hartland, in an able paper treating of several of its forms in “The Antiquary” for February, 1887, p-48, gives a Sicilian version from Dr. Pitre’s collection, which is to this effect:

  A poor fellow at Palermo, who got his living by salting tunny and selling it afterwards dreamt one night that a person came to him and said that if he wished to find his fortune he would find it under the bridge of the Teste. Thither he goes and sees a man in rags and is beginning to retire when the man calls him back, informs him that he is his fortune and bids him go at midnight of that same night to the place where he had deposited his casks of tunny, dig there, and whatever he found was his own. The tunny-seller gets a pick-axe and at midnight begins to dig. He comes upon a large flat stone, which he raises and discovers a staircase; he descends, and at the bottom finds an immense treasure of gold. In brief, he becomes so rich that he lends the King of Spain “a million,” to enable him to carry on his wars; the King makes him Viceroy of Sicily, and by-and by, being unable to repay the loan, raises him to the highest royal dignities.

  Johannes Fungerus, in his “Etymologicon Latino-Gr cum,” published at Leyden in 1607, in art. Somnus, gravely relates the story, with a young Dutchman for the hero and as having happened “within the memory of our fathers, both as it has been handed down in truthful and honourable fashion as well as frequently told to me.”378 His “true story” may thus be rendered:

  A certain young man of Dort, in Holland, had squandered his wealth and all his estate and having contracted a debt, was unable to pay it. A certain one appeared to him in a dream, and advised him to betake himself to Kempen, and there on the bridge he would receive information from some one as to the way in which he should be extricated from his difficulties. He went there, and when he was in a sorrowful mood and thinking upon what had been told him and promenaded almost the whole day, a common beggar, who was asking alms, pitying his condition, sat down and asked him, “Why so sad?” Thereupon the dreamer explained to him his sad and mournful fate, and why he had come there forsooth, under the impulse of a dream, he had set out thither, and was expecting God as if by a wonder, to unravel this more than Gordian knot. The mendicant answered “Good Heaven! are you so mad and foolish as to rely on a dream, which is emptier than nothing, and journey hither? I should betake myself to Dort, to dig up a treasure buried under such a tree in such a man’s garden (now this garden had belonged to the dreamer’s father), likewise revealed to me in a dream.” The other remained silent and pondering all that had been said to him, then hastened with all speed to Dort, and under the aforesaid tree found a great heap of money, which freed him from his obligations, and having paid off all his debts, he set up in a more sumptuous style than before.

  The second part of the tale, or novelette, of “The Spectre Barber,” by Musaeus (1735-1788), is probably an elaboration of some German popular legend closely resembling the last-cited version, only in this instance the hero does not dream, but is told by a ghost, in reward for a service he had done it (or him), to tarry on the great bridge over the Weser, at the time when day and night are equal, for a friend who would instruct him what he must do to retrieve his fortune. He goes there at dawn, and walks on the bridge till evening comes, when there remained no one but himself and a wood
en legged soldier to whom he had given a small coin in the early morning, and who ventured at length to ask him why he had promenaded the bridge all day. The youth at first said he was waiting for a friend, but on the old soldier remarking that he could be no friend who would keep him waiting so long, he said that he had only dreamt he was to meet some friend (for he did not care to say anything about his interview with the ghost), the old fellow observed that he had had many dreams, but put not the least faith in them. “But my dream,” quoth the youth, “was a most remarkable one.” “It couldn’t have been so remarkable as one I had many years ago,” and so on, as usual, with this addition, that the young man placed the old soldier in a snug little cottage and gave him a comfortable annuity for life — taking care, we may be sure, not to tell him a word as to the result of acting upon his dream.