Malcolm C. Lyons
Pembroke College
Cambridge
The translation from the French of two of the best-known tales in the Nights (‘Aladdin’ and ‘Ali Baba’), called ‘orphan stories’ because they were not included among the three manuscripts used by Antoine Galland and because they lacked a surviving text, presents problems of another kind. Both are essentially retold by Galland to suit the audience and society of his time, and consequently the contrast is stark between the Arabic of the Calcutta text and the sophisticated and elegant French of Galland. ‘Aladdin’ was first read by Galland in 1709/10 in an Arabic version written for him by Hanna Diab, and he himself admitted his version was ‘toute différente de ce que lui avait été raconté jusqu’alors’. Galland makes Shahrazad conclude her story by pointing out the moral it contained, and he also added an ending where the king asks Shahrazad if she has finished her story. In his version, Galland’s sultan and courtiers act as though they are at the court of the Sun King, with its etiquette, language and customs. The language of deference is even used by Aladdin’s mother, who, despite her description as a poor woman of humble origins, Galland makes speak in language quite out of character, giving her long monologues containing a complex sentence structure of subordinate clauses when she tries to dissuade her son from daring to seek the hand of the sultan’s daughter in marriage. Moreover, she asks him, anachronistically, what he has done for his sultan (whom she describes as ‘un si grand monarque’) and for his country (‘patrie’) – concepts alien to Nights society – to deserve this. Here the translation remains as faithful as possible to the eighteenth-century French, but it has been necessary to simplify the sentence structure and shorten the sentences. Some of the idioms have had to be altered, together with some of the modes of address (such as mon bonhomme, ma bonne femme), and such concepts as honnêteté, the honnête homme and the beau monde, which all need reinterpreting.
Galland’s version of ‘Ali Baba’ was developed from a summary he entered in his journal and, again, was originally written down in French after he had heard it from Diab. Galland’s treatment here is more straightforward. The story is much shorter and is told in a more direct manner. The action is faster; the dialogue is in keeping with the characters, though he cannot resist making the wily Marjana more representative of a cultivated Frenchwoman, allowing her space in which to describe her actions. Here, interestingly, we find the origin of the phrase ‘Open, Sesame!’ or ‘Sesame, open!’ (or ‘close’), which Galland has translated from the Arabic in which he was told the story as ‘Sésame, ouvre-toi!’ and ‘Sésame, referme-toi!’
As for the proper names in the French versions of ‘Ali Baba’ and ‘Aladdin’, these have been changed to follow the conventions for transliterating Arabic names that are used in the rest of the translation, but without any diacritical marks. (Hence ‘Husain’ is used instead of ‘Houssain’; ‘Qasim’ instead of ‘Cassim’; ‘Badr al-Budur’ instead of ‘Badroulboudour’; and so on.)
To these two tales has been added an alternative ending for ‘The seventh journey of Sindbad’ as it is given in Galland, but which is also found in the translations by Enno Littmann and Edward Lane.
Ursula Lyons
Lucy Cavendish College
Cambridge
Among the histories of past peoples a story is told that in the old days in the islands of India and China there was a Sasanian king, a master of armies, guards, servants and retainers, who had two sons, an elder and a younger. Although both of them were champion horsemen, the elder was better than his brother; he ruled over the lands, treating his subjects with justice and enjoying the affection of them all. His name was King Shahriyar, while his younger brother, who ruled Persian Samarkand, was called Shah Zaman. For ten years both of them continued to reign justly, enjoying pleasant and untroubled lives, until Shahriyar felt a longing to see Shah Zaman and sent off his vizier to fetch him. ‘To hear is to obey,’ said the vizier, and after he had travelled safely to Shah Zaman, he brought him greetings and told him that his brother wanted a visit from him.
Shah Zaman agreed to come and made his preparations for the journey. He had his tents put up outside his city, together with his camels, mules, servants and guards, while his own vizier was left in charge of his lands. He then came out himself, intending to leave for his brother’s country, but at midnight he thought of something that he had forgotten and went back to the palace. When he entered his room, it was to discover his wife in bed with a black slave. The world turned dark for him and he said to himself: ‘If this is what happens before I have even left the city, what will this damned woman do if I spend time away with my brother?’ So he drew his sword and struck, killing both his wife and her lover as they lay together, before going back and ordering his escort to move off.
When he got near to Shahriyar’s city, he sent off messengers to give the good news of his arrival, and Shahriyar came out to meet him and greeted him delightedly. The city was adorned with decorations and Shahriyar sat talking happily with him, but Shah Zaman remembered what his wife had done and, overcome by sorrow, he turned pale and showed signs of illness. His brother thought that this must be because he had had to leave his kingdom and so he put no questions to him until, some days later, he mentioned these symptoms to Shah Zaman, who told him: ‘My feelings are wounded,’ but did not explain what had happened with his wife. In order to cheer him up, Shahriyar invited him to come with him on a hunt, but he refused and Shahriyar set off by himself.
In the royal palace there were windows that overlooked Shahriyar’s garden, and as Shah Zaman was looking, a door opened and out came twenty slave girls and twenty slaves, in the middle of whom was Shahriyar’s very beautiful wife. They came to a fountain where they took off their clothes and the women sat with the men. ‘Mas‘ud,’ the queen called, at which a black slave came up to her and, after they had embraced each other, he lay with her, while the other slaves lay with the slave girls and they spent their time kissing, embracing, fornicating and drinking wine until the end of the day.
When Shah Zaman saw this, he told himself that what he had suffered was less serious. His jealous distress ended and, after convincing himself that his own misfortune was not as grave as this, he went on eating and drinking, so that when Shahriyar returned and the brothers greeted one another, Shahriyar saw that Shah Zaman’s colour had come back; his face was rosy and, following his earlier loss of appetite, he was eating normally. ‘You were pale, brother,’ Shahriyar said, ‘but now you have got your colour back, so tell me about this.’ ‘I’ll tell you why I lost colour,’ his brother replied, ‘but don’t press me to tell you how I got it back.’ ‘Let me know first how you lost it and became so weak,’ Shahriyar asked him, and his brother explained: ‘When you sent your vizier to invite me to visit you, I got ready and had gone out of the city when I remembered a jewel that was intended as a present for you, which I had left in my palace. I went back there to find a black slave sleeping in my bed with my wife, and it was after I had killed them both that I came on to you. I was full of concern about the affair and this was why I became pale and sickly, but don’t make me say how I recovered.’ Shahriyar, however, pressed him to do this, and so Shah Zaman finally told him all that he had seen.
‘I want to see this with my own eyes,’ said Shahriyar, at which Shah Zaman suggested that he pretend to be going out hunting again and then hide with him so that he could test the truth by seeing it for himself. Shahriyar immediately announced that he was leaving to hunt; the tents were taken outside the city and the king himself went out and took his seat in one of them, telling his servants that nobody was to be allowed in to visit him. Then secretly he made his way back to the palace where his brother was and sat down by the window overlooking the garden. After a while the slave girls and their mistress came there with the slaves and they went on acting as Shah Zaman had described until the call for the afternoon prayer.
Shahriyar was beside himself and told his broth
er: ‘Come, let us leave at once. Until we can find someone else to whom the same kind of thing happens, we have no need of a kingdom, and otherwise we would be better dead.’ They left by the postern gate and went on for some days and nights until they got to a tall tree in the middle of a meadow, where there was a spring of water by the seashore. They drank from the spring and sat down to rest, but after a time the sea became disturbed and from it emerged a black pillar, towering up into the sky and moving towards the meadow. This sight filled the brothers with alarm and they climbed up to the top of the tree to see what was going to happen. What then appeared was a tall jinni, with a large skull and a broad breast, carrying a chest on his head. He came ashore and went up to sit under the tree on top of which the brothers were hiding. The jinni then opened the chest, taking from it a box, and when he had opened this too, out came a slender girl, as radiant as the sun, who fitted the excellent description given by the poet ‘Atiya:
She shone in the darkness, and day appeared
As the trees shed brightness over her.
Her radiance makes suns rise and shine,
While, as for moons, she covers them in shame.
When veils are rent and she appears,
All things bow down before her.
As lightning flashes from her sanctuary,
A rain of tears floods down.
The jinni looked at her and said: ‘Mistress of the nobly born, whom I snatched away on your wedding night, I want to sleep for a while.’ He placed his head on her knee and fell asleep, while she, for her part, looked up at the tree, on top of which were the two kings. She lifted the jinni’s head from her knee and put it on the ground, before gesturing to them to come down and not to fear him. ‘For God’s sake, don’t make us do this,’ they told her, but she replied: ‘Unless you come, I’ll rouse him against you and he will put you to the cruellest of deaths.’ This so alarmed them that they did what they were told and she then said: ‘Take me as hard as you can or else I’ll wake him up.’ Shahriyar said fearfully to his brother: ‘Do as she says.’ But Shah Zaman refused, saying: ‘You do it first.’
They started gesturing to each other about this and the girl asked why, repeating: ‘If you don’t come up and do it, I’ll rouse the jinni against you.’ Because they were afraid, they took turns to lie with her, and when they had finished, she told them to get up. From her pocket she then produced a purse from which she brought out a string on which were hung five hundred and seventy signet rings. She asked them if they knew what these were and when they said no, she told them: ‘All these belonged to lovers of mine who cuckolded this jinni, so give me your own rings.’ When they had handed them over, she went on: ‘This jinni snatched me away on my wedding night and put me inside a box, which he placed inside this chest, with its seven heavy locks, and this, in turn, he put at the bottom of the tumultuous sea with its clashing waves. What he did not know was that, when a woman wants something, nothing can get the better of her, as a poet has said:
Do not put your trust in women
Or believe their covenants.
Their satisfaction and their anger
Both depend on their private parts.
They make a false display of love,
But their clothes are stuffed with treachery.
Take a lesson from the tale of Joseph,
And you will find some of their tricks.
Do you not see that your father, Adam,
Was driven out from Eden thanks to them?
Another poet has said:
Blame must be matched to what is blamed;
I have grown big, but my offence has not.
I am a lover, but what I have done
Is only what men did before me in old days.
What is a cause for wonder is a man
Whom women have not trapped by their allure.’
When the two kings heard this, they were filled with astonishment and said to each other: ‘Jinni though he may be, what has happened to him is worse than what happened to us and it is not something that anyone else has experienced.’ They left the girl straight away and went back to Shahriyar’s city, where they entered the palace and cut off the heads of the queen, the slave girls and the slaves.
Every night for the next three years, Shahriyar would take a virgin, deflower her and then kill her. This led to unrest among the citizens; they fled away with their daughters until there were no nubile girls left in the city. Then, when the vizier was ordered to bring the king a girl as usual, he searched but could not find a single one, and had to go home empty-handed, dejected and afraid of what the king might do to him.
This man had two daughters, of whom the elder was called Shahrazad and the younger Dunyazad. Shahrazad had read books and histories, accounts of past kings and stories of earlier peoples, having collected, it was said, a thousand volumes of these, covering peoples, kings and poets. She asked her father what had happened to make him so careworn and sad, quoting the lines of a poet:
Say to the careworn man: ‘Care does not last,
And as joy passes, so does care.’
When her father heard this, he told her all that had happened between him and the king from beginning to end, at which she said: ‘Father, marry me to this man. Either I shall live or else I shall be a ransom for the children of the Muslims and save them from him.’ ‘By God,’ he exclaimed, ‘you are not to risk your life!’ She insisted that it had to be done, but he objected: ‘I’m afraid that you may experience what happened to the donkey and the bull with the merchant.’ ‘What was that,’ she asked, ‘and what happened to the two of them?’ HER FATHER TOLD HER:
You must know, my daughter, that a certain merchant had both wealth and animals and had been given by Almighty God a knowledge of the languages of beasts and birds. He lived in the country and had at home a donkey and a bull. One day the bull went to the donkey’s quarters and found them swept out and sprinkled with water; there was sieved barley and straw in his trough, while the donkey was lying there at his ease. At times his master would ride him out on some errand, but he would then be taken back.
One day the merchant heard the bull say to the donkey: ‘I congratulate you. Here am I, tired out, while you are at your ease, eating sieved barley. On occasion the master puts you to use, riding on you but then bringing you back again, whereas I am always ploughing and grinding corn.’ The donkey replied: ‘When they put the yoke on your neck and want to take you out to the fields, don’t get up, even if they beat you, or else get up and then lie down again. When they bring you back and put beans down for you, pretend to be sick and don’t eat them; for one, two or three days neither eat nor drink and you will have a rest from your hard labour.’
The next day, when the herdsman brought the bull his supper, the creature only ate a little and next morning, when the man came to take the bull out to do the ploughing, he found him sick and said sadly: ‘This was why he could not work properly yesterday.’ He went to the merchant and told him: ‘Master, the bull is unwell and didn’t eat any of his food yesterday evening.’ The merchant realized what had happened and said: ‘Go and take the donkey to do the ploughing all day in his place.’
When the donkey came back in the evening after having been used for ploughing all day, the bull thanked him for his kindness in having given him a day’s rest, to which the donkey, filled with the bitterest regret, made no reply. The next morning, the herdsman came and took him out to plough until evening, and when the donkey got back, his neck had been rubbed raw and he was half dead with tiredness. When the bull saw him, he thanked and praised him, but the donkey said: ‘I was sitting at my ease, but was unable to mind my own business.’ Then he went on: ‘I have some advice to give you. I heard our master say that, if you don’t get up, you are to be given to the butcher to be slaughtered, and your hide is to be cut into pieces. I am afraid for you and so I have given you this advice.’
When the bull heard what the donkey had to say, he thanked him and said: ‘Tomorrow I’ll go out
with the men.’ He then finished off all his food, using his tongue to lick the manger. While all this was going on, the merchant was listening to what the animals were saying. The next morning, he and his wife went out and sat by the byre as the herdsman arrived and took the bull out. When the bull saw his master, he flourished his tail, farted and galloped off, leaving the man laughing so much that he collapsed on the ground. His wife asked why, and he told her: ‘I was laughing because of something secret that I saw and heard, but I can’t tell you or else I shall die.’ ‘Even if you do die,’ she insisted, ‘you must tell me the reason for this.’ He repeated that he could not do it for fear of death, but she said: ‘You were laughing at me,’ and she went on insisting obstinately until she got the better of him. In distress, he summoned his children and sent for the qadi and the notaries with the intention of leaving his final instructions before telling his wife the secret and then dying. He had a deep love for her, she being his cousin and the mother of his children, while he himself was a hundred and twenty years old.
When all his family and his neighbours were gathered together, he explained that he had something to say to them, but that if he told the secret to anyone, he would die. Everyone there urged his wife not to press him and so bring about the death of her husband and the father of her children, but she said: ‘I am not going to stop until he tells me, and I shall let him die.’ At that, the others stayed silent while the merchant got up and went to the byre to perform the ritual ablution, after which he would return to them and die.
The merchant had a cock and fifty hens, together with a dog, and he heard the dog abusing the cock and saying: ‘You may be cheerful, but here is our master about to die.’ When the cock asked why this was, the dog told him the whole story. ‘By God,’ exclaimed the cock, ‘he must be weak in the head. I have fifty wives and I keep them contented and at peace while he has only one but still can’t keep her in order. Why doesn’t he get some mulberry twigs, take her into a room and beat her until she either dies or repents and doesn’t ask him again?’
The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volume 1 Page 3
