Before Galland, the stories had existed for centuries in a constantly shape-shifting collection. It came to be known as Alf Laylawa-Layla One Thousand and One Nights, and it was a manuscript of this text (from the Syrian recension) which Galland took as his primary source. But he added stories not found in any of his predecessors, too, among them "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", which have since become perhaps the Nights' most familiar components to Western readers.
Not that they ever had one "home" at all, of course. The component stories have roots in Iraq, Egypt, India, Syria, Iran and elsewhere, and were strapped together as a miscellaneous bundle that Europeans labelled "Arabian", which meant simply that they had some approximately Eastern exoticism in common, slightly weird colours and tastes, and people in a far-off land behaving in ways that we probably wouldn't here.
On the following morning, the merchant and his wife went to the bull’s crib, and sat down there; and the driver came, and took out the bull; and when the bull saw his master, he shook his tail, and showed his alacrity by sounds and actions, bounding about in such a manner that the merchant laughed until he fell backwards. His wife, in surprise, asked him, At what dost thou laugh? He answered, At a thing that I have heard and seen; but I cannot reveal it; for if I did, I should die. She said, Thou must inform me of the cause of thy laughter, even if thou die.—I cannot reveal it, said he: the fear of death prevents me.—Thou laughedst only at me, she said; and she ceased not to urge and importune him until he was quite overcome and distracted. So he called together his children and sent for the Kadi and witnesses, that he might make his will, and reveal the secret to her, and die: for he loved her excessively, since she was the daughter of his paternal uncle, and the mother of his children, and he had lived with her to the age of a hundred and twenty years. Having assembled her family and his neighbours, he related to them his story, and told them that as soon as he revealed his secret he must die; upon which every one present said to her.
We conjure thee by Allah that thou give up this affair, and let not thy husband, and the father of thy children, die. But she said, I will not desist until he tell me, though he die for it. So they ceased to solicit her; and the merchant left them, and went to the stable to perform the ablution, and then to return, and tell them the secret, and die. 16
Now he had a cock, with fifty hens under him, and he had also a dog; and he heard the dog call to the cock, and reproach him, saying, Art thou happy when our master is going to die? The cock asked, How so?—and the dog related to him the story; upon which the cock exclaimed, By Allah! our master has little sense: I have fifty wives; and I please this, and provoke that; while he has but one one wife, and cannot manage this affair with her: why does he not take some twigs of the mulberry tree, and enter her chamber, and beat her until she dies or repents? She would never, after that ask him a question respecting anything.—And when the merchant heard the words of the cock, as he addressed the dog, he recovered his reason, and made up his mind to beat her.—Now, said the Wezir to his daughter Shahrazad, perhaps I may do to thee as the merchant did to his wife. She asked, And what did he? He answered, He entered her chamber after he had cut off some twigs of the mulberry tree, and hidden them there; and then said to her, Come into the chamber, that I may tell thee the secret while no one sees me, and then die:—and when she had entered, he locked the chamber door upon her, and beat her until she became almost senseless and cried out, I repent:—and she kissed his hands and his feet, and repented, and went out with him; and all the company, and her own family, rejoiced; and they lived together in the happiest manner until death.
One Thousand and One Nights: A New Re-imagining, By Hanan Al-Shaykh
Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, By Marina Warner
Just as any act of translation is by its nature a creative, or re-creative act, so storytelling itself is always fundamentally an enchantment. The reader of the Nights – like Shahrazad's king – is enchanted by stories that are themselves about enchantments. It's largely this inner wheel – the magical "content", if you like, with magicians, transformations, flying carpets and all – that is Warner's subject.
With the text of the Nights as her anchor, Warner's widely referenced argument spins outwards and back again - to some close relations, such as Lotte Reiniger's "shadow film", The Adventures of Prince Achmed, but also further to The West-Eastern Divan (Goethe's collection of lyric poems), and even to the symbols on the Persian rug covering Freud's couch. "The Persian rug, the Arabian nights and the psychoanalytic process," she writes, "are all forms of storytelling."
Where Al-Shaykh gives us a translation that, like any translation, reveals and acknowledges its origins as it simultaneously dissembles, Warner cracks open the frame to expose the workings of the component parts. She dismantles and rearticulates them on an exhilarating scale, in a book dense with allusions and wide-ranging new associations. Which is, I suppose, a sort of re-creation too.
In the late 1920s, the art publisher H. Piazza produced a twelve-volume version of The 1001 Nights that was one of the most beautiful ever made. It included splendid illustrations by Mohammed Racim and wonderful miniatures by painter Leon Carre. Today, Assouline is publishing an abridged version of this masterpiece, which includes the most famous and enchanting of the tales, from the story of King Shahryar, to the story of Sinbad the sailor, Ali Baba and the forty thieves, or Aladdin and the magic lamp...all told by the beautiful and sensual Shahrazad.
