muwashshahat strophic poetry, usually recited to a musical accompaniment. This form of verse originated in Spain, but spread throughout the Islamic world.
nadd a type of incense consisting of a mixture of aloes wood with ambergris, musk and frankincense.
Nakir see Munkar and Nakir.
naqib an official whose duties varied according to time and place. The term was often used to refer to the chief representative of the ashraf, i.e. the descendants of ‘Ali.
Al-Nu‘man ibn al-Mundhir a fifth-century Arab ruler of the pre-Islamic Christian kingdom of Hira in Iraq.
nusf literally, ‘a half ’; a small coin.
parasang an old Persian measure of length, somewhere between three and four miles.
qadi a Muslim judge.
Qaf Mount Qaf was a legendary mountain located at the end of the world, or in some versions one that encircles the earth.
qintar a measure of weight, variable from region to region, equivalent to 100 ratls.
qirat a dry measure, but the term could also be used of a certain weight; also a coin, equivalent to a twenty-fourth of a dinar.
Quraish the dominant Arab clan in Mecca at the time of the Prophet.
rafidi literally, ‘a refuser’, a term applied to members of various Shi‘i sects.
rajaz term for a poetical metre.
rak‘a in the Muslim prayer ritual, a bowing of the body followed by two prostrations.
Ramadan the ninth month of the Muslim year, in which fasting is observed from sunrise to sunset. See also months of the Muslim year.
ratl a measure of weight, varying from region to region.
Ridwan the angel who is the guardian of the gates of Paradise.
Rudaini spear see Samhari spear.
rukh a legendary bird of enormous size, strong enough to carry an elephant (in English ‘roc’).
Rum/Ruman theoretically designates Constantinople and the Byzantine lands more generally, but in some stories the name is merely intended to designate a strange and usually Christian foreign land.
Rumi of Byzantine Greek origin.
Safar see months of the Muslim year.
Said ibn Jubair a pious Muslim and Quran reader of the Umaiyad period.
Sakhr an evil jinni whose story is related by commentators on the Quran.
Saladin (1138–93), Muslim political and military leader, famed for his chivalry and piety and for opposing the Crusaders. He took over Egypt and abolished the Fatimid caliphate in 1171;in 1174 he also became sultan of most of Syria. In 1187 he invaded the kingdom of Jerusalem, occupying the city and many other places. Thereafter he had to defend his gains from the armies of the Third Crusade.
salam meaning ‘peace’, the final word at the end of a prayer, similar to the Christian ‘amen’.
Samhari spear opinions varied as to whether Samhar was the name of a manufacturer of spears, or whether it was the place where they used to be made. A ‘Samhari spear’ was a common metaphor for slenderness; likewise ‘Rudaini spear’, said to be related to Rudaina, the supposed wife of Samhar.
Sasanian the Sasanians were the Persian dynasty who ruled in Persia and Iraq from 224 until 637, when Muslim armies overran their empire.
Serendib the old Arab name for Ceylon or Sri Lanka.
Sha‘ban see months of the Muslim year.
Shaddad ibn ‘Ad legendary king of the tribe of ‘Ad who attempted to build the city of Iram as a rival to Paradise and was punished by God for his presumption.
al-Shafi‘i Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi‘i (767–820), jurist and founder of the Shafi‘i school of Sunni religious law, whose adherents are know as Shafi‘ites.
shaikh a tribal leader, the term also commonly used to refer to an old man or a master of one of the traditional religious sciences or a leader of a dervish order. Similarly, a shaikha is an old woman or a woman in authority.
Shaikhs of the Fire Zoroastrian priests or elders.
shari‘a shari‘a law is the body of Islamic religious law.
sharif meaning ‘noble’, often used with specific reference to a descendant of the Prophet.
Shi‘i an adherent of that branch of Islam that recognizes ‘Ali and his descendants as the leaders of the Muslim community after the Prophet.
Sufi a Muslim mystic or ascetic.
Sufyan al-Thauri (716–78) born in Kufa, theologian, ascetic and transmitter of hadiths (sayings of the Prophet). He wrote on law and was a leading spokesman of strict Sunnism.
sunna the corpus of practices and teachings of the Prophet as collected and transmitted by later generations of Muslims, the sunna served as the guide to the practice of the Sunni Muslims and as one of the pillars of their religious law, supplementing the prescriptions of the Quran.
sura a chapter of the Quran.
sycamore a type of fig; also known as the Egyptian fig.
taghut a term designating pagan idols or idolatry. By extension, the word was used to refer to soothsayers, sorcerers and infidels.
tailasan a shawl-like garment worn over head and shoulders. It was commonly worn by judges and religious high functionaries.
Thamud an impious tribe in pre-Islamic Arabia whom Allah destroyed when they refused to pay heed to his prophet Salih.
‘Udhri love this refers to the Banu ‘Udhra. Several famous ‘Udhri poets were supposed to have died from unconsummated love.
Umaiyads a dynasty of Sunni Muslim caliphs who ruled the Islamic lands from 661 until 750. The Umaiyads descended from the powerful Meccan tribe of the Quraish. In 750, they were overthrown by a revolution in favour of the ‘Abbasids. One member of the family succeeded in escaping to Spain, where he set up an Umaiyad empire.
‘Umar ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, eighth Umaiyad caliph (r. 717–20), famed for his piety.
‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (581–644) the second of the caliphs to succeed the Prophet (r. 634–44).
‘umra the minor pilgrimage to Mecca, which, unlike the hajj, can be performed at any time of the year.
al-‘Utbi (d. 1022) famous author of prose and poetry, worked in the service of the Ghaznavid court. (The Ghaznavids were a Turkish dynasty who ruled in Afghanistan, Khurasan and north-western India from the late tenth till the late twelfth century.)
waiba a dry measure.
wali a local governor.
witr a prayer, performed between the evening and the dawn prayers, which is recommended but not compulsory.
Yahya ibn Khalid the Barmecide a Persian who was a senior government official under the ‘Abbasid caliphs al-Mansur and Harun. He was disgraced and executed in 805 for reasons that remain mysterious.
Zaid ibn Aslam a freed slave of ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab.
Ziyad ibn Abihi ibn Abihi meaning ‘Son of his Father’ – the identity of his father being unknown – (d. 676), governor of Iraq under Mu‘awiya.
Zubaida (762–831) the granddaughter of the ‘Abbasid caliph al-Mansur and famous for her wealth. She became chief wife of the caliph Harun al-Rashid and was mother to al-Amin and al-Ma’mun, both later caliphs.
al-Zuhri Muhammad ibn Muslim al-Zuhri (d. 742), the transmitter of traditions concerning the Prophet and legal authority. He frequented the Umaiyad courts, where, among other things, he was a tutor.
622 Year one of the Muslim hijri calendar (dating from the Hijra, or year of Muhammad’s emigration from Mecca to Medina).
630 Mecca submits to Muhammad.
661 Beginning of the Umaiyad dynasty of caliphs.
750 Beginning of the ‘Abbasid dynasty of caliphs.
762–6 Baghdad is founded and becomes the ‘Abbasid capital.
786–809 reign of Harun al-Rashid, caliph in Baghdad.
c.800–900 Kitab Hadith Alf Layla (‘The Book of the Tale of One Thousand Nights’), a lost precursor of The Arabian Nights, is put together.
c.850? Earliest surviving fragment of the Arabic Nights written.
1085 Somadeva’s Kathasaritsagara.
1171 Saladin overthrows the Fatimid caliphat
e in Egypt.
1250–60 Collapse of Aiyubid principalities in Egypt and Syria and their replacement by the Mamluk sultanate.
1258 Mongols sack Baghdad. Execution of the last ‘Abbasid caliph.
1353 Boccaccio’s Decameron.
1387 Chaucer begins The Canterbury Tales.
c.1450–1500 Probable date of Alf Layla wa-Layla (‘The Thousand and One Nights’), the manuscript translated by Antoine Galland and the oldest substantially surviving Arabic version of the Nights.
1516 Ariosto’s Orlando furioso published.
1704 Galland begins publishing his translation Les Mille et une nuits, the last volume appearing in 1717.
1708 Probable date of first chapbook translation of Galland into English.
1814–18 Calcutta I edition of the Nights.
1824–43 Breslau edition.
1835 Bulaq edition.
1838–42 Edward William Lane’s translation.
1839–42 Calcutta II edition.
1882–4 John Payne’s translation.
1885–8 Richard Burton’s translation.
1899–1904 Joseph Charles Mardrus’s French translation.
1921–8 Enno Littmann’s German translation.
1984 Muhsin Mahdi’s edition of the Alf Layla wa-Layla manuscript formerly translated by Galland.
Ballaster, Ros, Fabulous Orients: Fictions of the East in England 1622–1785 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005). Ballaster’s book explores the impact of The Arabian Nights and other Oriental fictions on British and, to a lesser extent, French literature.
Burton, Richard F. (tr.), A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, 10 vols. (Karma Shastra Society, London, 1885). A full translation of the Calcutta II Arabic text of The Arabian Nights, this work was impressive for its time, but there are many errors in it and Burton’s contorted literary style makes it heavy going for the modern reader.
Byatt, A. S., The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye: Five Fairy Stories (Chatto, London, 1994). Despite its fictional status, Byatt’s title story in this collection contains some serious and penetrating observations about the characteristics of storytelling in the Nights.
Caracciolo, Peter L. (ed.), The Arabian Nights in English Literature: Studies in the Reception of The Thousand and One Nights into British Culture (Macmillan, London, 1988). A collection of essays by various hands. Caracciolo’s lengthy introductory survey is a masterpiece of intelligently directed erudition.
Clute, John, and Grant, John (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (Orbit, London, 1997). This mighty work of reference is 1,049 double-columned pages long. Apart from the article ‘Arabian Fantasy’, it contains many entries on authors and works influenced by the Nights. It also has serious analytical articles about the literary tropes and devices of fantastic and magical fiction.
El-Shamy, Hasan M., A Motif Index of The Thousand and One Nights (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 2006). Weighing in at 680 pages, this classification of thousands of motifs in the Nights serves as an index to themes, people, animals, objects and social practices in the stories. The motifs are cross-referenced to the Burton translation and to Victor Chauvin’s Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux arabes; publiés dans l’Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1885, 12 vols. (Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège, Liège, 1892–1922). They include such topics as ‘series of living corpses to serve as phantom guards’, ‘compulsion to steal’, ‘severed head speaks’, ‘taste of food eaten in a dream still in the mouth next day’, ‘fool recognized by his long beard’, ‘wish for exalted husband realized’ and ‘woman thinking lover dead erects cenotaph and mourns before it’.
Haddawy, Husain (tr.), The Arabian Nights (Everyman’s Library Classics, London, 1992). This is a (good) translation of Muhsin Mahdi’s scrupulously edited text of a Syrian manuscript dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The manuscript in question was used by Antoine Galland for his eighteenth-century French translation. However, it contains only thirty-five stories.
Irwin, Robert, The Arabian Nights: A Companion, 2nd edition (I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2004). A survey of the composition, collection and translation of the stories, the leading themes of the tales (including sex and magic), structuralist classifications of the tales, medieval storytelling techniques, the influence of the Nights on European and American literature, and much else besides.
_____, The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature (Penguin, London, 2006). The Nights are placed in the broader context of medieval Arabic prose and poetry.
Marzolph, Ulrich (ed.), The Arabian Nights Reader (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan, 2006). A collection of key twentieth-century essays by various academic hands, on such matters as the dating, structure and contents of the Nights.
_____, and van Leeuwen, Richard(eds.), The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (ABC Clio, Santa Barbara, California, 2004). The essential reference work for Nights scholars and fanatics. Volume 1 contains fourteen essays by experts on such matters as literary style, oral features, illustrations, manuscripts and cinema. It also has individual articles on every story found in the Calcutta II text, Galland and other versions of the Nights. Volume 2 has articles on a wide range of Nights-related topics, such as George Eliot, Richard Burton, Harun al-Rashid, Shahrazad, camels, slaves and music. It also has tables of concordances, international tale types and narrative motifs.
Yamanaka, Yuriko, and Nishio, Tetsuo (eds.), The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West (I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2006). Essays by various scholars, the majority of them Japanese, on such subjects as the reception and translation of The Arabian Nights in Japan, Alexander the Great in the Nights, and the Nights in folklore research and in illustration.
Zipes, Jack (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the Fairy Tale (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000). Apart from an article on The Arabian Nights, there are also entries on ‘Aladdin’, ‘Ali Baba’, ‘The Thief of Baghdad’, Shahrazad, Galland, Edmund Dulac and Salman Rushdie.
The ‘Abbasid Caliphate in the Ninth Century
Baghdad in the Ninth Century
Cairo in the Fourteenth Century
Bold numbers indicate the Night, or series of Nights, over which a story is told. Stories told within a story are presented in brackets.
King Shahriyar and Shah Zaman 3
King Shahriyar and Shahrazad 7
(The story of the donkey and the bull) 7
1–3 The merchant and the jinni 10
1–2 (The story of the first old man 12
2 The story of the second old man 15
2–3 The story of the third old man) 18
3–9 The fisherman and the ‘ifrit 19
4–5 (The story of King Yunan and Duban the sage 25
5 (The story of King Sindbad and the falcon 28
5 The story of the treacherous vizier) 30
7–8 The story of the semi-petrified prince) 41
9–19 The porter and the three ladies 50
11–12 (The story of the first dervish 66
12–14 The story of the second dervish 76
13 (The story of the envious and the envied) 79
14–16 The story of the third dervish 90
17–18 The story of the lady of the house 106
18 The story of the doorkeeper) 113
19–24 Harun al-Rashid and the fisherman’s chest 123
19 (The story of the young man and the three apples 126
20–24 The story of Nur al-Din and Shams al-Din) 129
24–34 The hunchback 173
25–6 (The Christian’s story 178
27–8 The inspector’s story 189
28–9 The Jewish doctor’s story 197
29–34 The tailor’s story 205
31–4 (The story of the barber 217
31 (The story of the barber’s first brother 219
31–2 The story of the barber’s sec
ond brother 223
32 The story of the barber’s third brother 226
32 The story of the barber’s fourth brother 228
32–3 The story of the barber’s fifth brother 231
33 The story of the barber’s sixth brother))) 237
34–8 Nur al-Din ‘Ali and Anis al-Jalis 244
38–45 Ghanim ibn Ayyub, the slave of love 278
39 (The story of the eunuch Bukhait 282
39–40 The story of the eunuch Kafur) 283
45–145 King ‘Umar ibn al-Nu‘man and his family 304
107–37 (The story of Taj al-Muluk Kharan and Princess Dunya 475
112–28 (The story of ‘Aziz and ‘Aziza) 489
142–3 The story of the hashish addict) 594
146–7 The peahen, the duck and the gazelle 613
147–8 The pious shepherd 621
148 The water fowl and the tortoise 624
148–50 The wolf and the fox 627
149 (The story of the hawk and the partridge 632
150 The story of the man and the snake) 638
150 The weasel and the mouse 639
150 The crow and the cat 640
150–52 The fox and the crow 641
150–51 (The story of the flea and the mouse 642
151–2 The story of the falcon and the birds of prey 644
152 The story of the sparrow and the eagle) 645
152 The hedgehog and the doves 645
152 (The story of the merchant and the two thieves) 647
152 The thief with the monkey 648
152 (The story of the foolish weaver) 648
152 The sparrow and the peacock 649
153–69 ‘Ali ibn Bakkar and Shams al-Nahar 650
170–249 The story of King Shahriman and his son, Qamar al-Zaman 693
237–46 (The story of Ni‘ma ibn al-Rabi‘ and Nu‘m) 808
249–70 ‘Ala’ al-Din Abu’l-Shamat 832
270–71 Hatim of Tayy 884
271–2 Ma‘n ibn Za’ida 886
272–3 The city of Labtit 888
273 Hisham ibn ‘Abd al-Malik and the young Bedouin 889
273–6 Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi 891
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