THE ARABIAN

NIGHTS
 Hindi bindi Indian shoes Western “rescuer”
(red-colored dot) Turkish hat
 What is Orientalism?
• The term "Orient" is derived from the Latin word "oriens" meaning
"East.”
• The Orient, a European construct, has long been associated with
romance, exoticism, and the perception of barbaric beings since ancient
times.
• According to Edward Said, the orientalist project is mainly a French and
British cultural enterprise that has produced a wide-ranging body of
knowledge about the Orient, represented as an undifferentiated entity
with despotism, splendor, cruelty and sensuality being its main
attributes.
• The Orient is depicted as “inferior” and “exotic;” a regressive region,
innately opaque and impossible to understand; but is also romanticized
as a mysterious or mystic fantasy land.
 ARABIAN NIGHTS: AN OCEAN OF STORIES

• Evidence from as early as the 9th century.

• Likely to have originated even earlier still (India,
Persia, Iraq ) Islamic Caliphates in the Middle Ages
• Medieval reception of these stories beyond the
Arab medieval world: Chaucer / Ariosto
• First translated into French, 1704-1718 (Antoine
Galland), then into English (sir Richard Burton, 1888)
• Influenced European ideas about the ‘East’ or the
‘Orient’.
• The tales have no author.
• Other tales associated with the collection, like
Sinbad, and Aladdin.
• Total number of tales unknown; ‘1001’ is probably a
poetic device.
In Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages,
the title is One Thousand and One Nights. In
English translations it is called The Arabian
Nights.

To say a thousand nights is to say infinite nights,

the many nights, the countless nights. To say "a
thousand and one nights" is to add one to the
infinite.

Jorge Luis Borges

 FRAME NARRATIVE
 Two Kings, Shah Zaman and Shahryar, discover their
wives' infidelity with servants.
 They embark on a journey to find someone more
betrayed than they are.
 They encounter a genie with a casket containing a
beautiful woman.
 The woman demands the kings to have sex with her
while the genie sleeps.
 Shahryar returns to his kingdom and starts a pattern of
marrying virgins and executing them after one night.
 Shahrazad volunteers to marry Shahryar and insists on
bringing her sister Dunyazad.
 After having sex with the king, Shahrazad begins telling
stories to Shahryar, but intentionally doesn't finish
them.
 Shahryar spares her life for another night, and
Shahrazad continues telling story after story, which
never quite finished at the right time
 • Life and death intertwine in unusual
T ELIN G STO R IESC A N SA V O
EY U R LIFE

ways in The Arabian Nights

• Desire for narrative; desire in

The demon says to a merchant, narrative; desire and narrative
“By God, I must
A merchant kill you, as
accidentally you
killed
killed
the sonmyofson, even
a demonTheifwith
youaweep
date
merchant and • Narrative desire: craving for an end
blood.’ The merchant
pit he tossed the
away when demon
asks, ‘Must
eating
• The king’s craving for the end is
you?’ The demon
lunch replied, ‘I what keeps Shahrazad alive, as she
must,’ and raised his sword to endlessly defers the conclusion
strike”
• Under the threat of death,
Shahrazad ration out her story in
small pieces pieces. Furthermore,
she elaborates a structure of stories
within stories within stories.
But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence. Then her sister
said, “Sister, what a lovely and entertaining story!” Shahrazad replied, “What is
this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night if the king spares me and
lets me live! May God grant him long life.”
NESTED/ EMBEDDED STRUCTURE

SHAHRAZAD FRAME’S NARRATIVE

The merchant
and the demon

The first old The second old

man’s tale man’s tale
  Throughout The Arabian
nights characters within
one story begin to tell
other tales and characters
in those tales tell stories.
 One story nested inside
another story, like a series of
rings, getting one done into the
other. So that each one
resonates very often with the
theme of the one above.

 Within the frame story

there are many, many
similar stories, which are
called ransom stories
 Shahrazad, as a heroic
character.

She tells stories to save her life,

but also to tell stories to save
the life of other women

The power of storytelling to

influence and transform
people’s mindsets
 SHAHRAZAD

• She possesses an exceptional memory, retaining vast

knowledge from Arabic, Persian, Indian, and Greek
cultures, which she shares with the king.
• Over time, her accumulation of stories begins to
influence the king, gradually changing his previously
negative perception of women.
• While she shares stories, she becomes the mother of
three of the king's children.
• The king eventually realizes the depth of his love for
her and re-evaluates his perception of women

Scheherazade, 19th century painting by Sophie Anderson