Glory to Allah, Lord of the worlds! Greetings and blessings to the lord of the messengers, our lord and master Muhammad! Allah bless him and welcome him with blessings and eternal greetings, lasting until the Day of Judgment!
And after that: truly, the tales of the first generations became an edification for subsequent ones, so that a person could see what events happened to others, and learn, and so that, delving into the traditions of past peoples and what happened to them, he refrained from sin . Praise be to him who made the legends of the ancients a lesson for the peoples of the future!
Such legends include the stories called "A Thousand and One Nights", and the sublime stories and parables contained in them.
They tell in the traditions of the peoples about what was, passed and long ago (and Allah is more knowledgeable in the unknown and wise and glorious, and most generous, and most gracious, and merciful), that in ancient times and past centuries and centuries was on the islands India and China, the king of the kings of the Sasana family, the lord of the troops, guards, servants and servants. And he had two sons: one adult, the other young, and both were brave knights, but the elder surpassed the younger in valor. And he reigned in his country and rightly ruled over his subjects, and the inhabitants of his lands and kingdom fell in love with him, and his name was King Shahriyar; and his younger brother was called King Shahzeman, and he reigned in Persian Samarkand. Both of them lived in their own lands, and each in his own kingdom was a just judge of his subjects for twenty years and lived in complete contentment and joy. This continued until the elder king wished to see his younger brother and ordered his vizier to go and fetch him. The vizier carried out his order and went, and rode until he arrived safely in Samarkand. He went in to Shahzeman, conveyed his greetings and said that his brother yearned for him and wished him to visit him; and Shahzeman answered with consent and got ready for the journey. He ordered his tents to be brought out, camels, mules, servants and bodyguards to be equipped, and he appointed his vizier as ruler in the country, and he himself went to the lands of his brother. But when midnight came, he remembered one thing that he had forgotten in the palace, and returned and, entering the palace, saw that his wife was lying in bed, embracing a black slave from among his slaves.
And when Shahzeman saw this, everything turned black before his eyes, and he said to himself: “If this happened when I had not yet left the city, then what will be the behavior of this accursed one if I go away to my brother for a long time!” And he drew his sword and struck them both and killed them in bed, and then, at the same hour and minute, he returned and ordered them to leave - and rode until he reached the city of his brother. And approaching the city, he sent messengers to his brother with the news of his arrival, and Shahriyar went out to meet him and greeted him, overjoyed to the extreme. He decorated the city in honor of his brother and sat with him, talking and having fun, but King Shahzeman remembered what had happened to his wife and felt great sadness, and his face turned yellow and his body weakened. And when the brother saw him in such a state, he thought that the reason for this was separation from the country and the kingdom, and left him like that, without asking about anything. But then, one day, he said to him: "O my brother, I see that your body has weakened and your face has turned yellow." And Shahzeman answered him: “My brother, there is an ulcer inside me,” and did not tell what he experienced from his wife. “I want,” Shahriyar said then, “that you go hunting and catching with me: maybe your heart will cheer.” But Shahzeman refused this, and his brother went hunting alone.
The royal palace had windows overlooking the garden, and Shahzeman looked and suddenly saw: the doors of the palace open, and twenty slaves and twenty slaves come out, and his brother's wife walks among them, standing out with her rare beauty and charm. They went to the fountain, and took off their clothes, and sat down with the slaves, and suddenly the king's wife shouted: "O Masud!" And the black slave came up to her and embraced her, and she him also. He lay down with her, and the other slaves did the same, and they kissed and hugged, caressed and played, until the day turned to sunset. And when the king's brother saw this, he said to himself: "By Allah, my trouble is easier than this disaster!" – and his jealousy and sadness dissipated. “This is more than what happened to me!” he exclaimed and stopped refusing food and drink. And then his brother returned from the hunt, and they greeted each other, and King Shahriyar looked at his brother, King Shahzeman, and saw that the former colors returned to him and his face turned red and that he was eating without taking a breath, although he had eaten little before. . Then his brother, the elder king, said to Shahzeman: “O my brother, I saw you with a yellowed face, and now the blush has returned to you. Tell me what's wrong with you." “As for the change in my appearance, I’ll tell you about it, but spare me the story of why the blush returned to me,” answered Shahzeman. And Shahriyar said: "Tell me first why you changed your appearance and weakened, and I will listen."
“Know, my brother,” Shahzeman spoke, “that when you sent a vizier to me with a demand to come to you, I prepared myself and already went out of the city, but then I remembered that there was a pearl in the palace that I wanted to give you. I returned to the palace and found my wife with a black slave sleeping in my bed and killed them and came to you thinking about it. This is the reason for the change in my appearance and my weakness; as for the blush returning to me, let me not tell you about it.
But, hearing the words of his brother, Shahriyar exclaimed: “I conjure you by Allah, tell me why the blush returned to you!” And Shahzeman told him about everything he had seen. Then Shahriyar said to his brother Shahzeman: “I want to see it with my own eyes!” And Shahzeman advised: “Pretend that you are going hunting and catching, and hide yourself with me, then you will see it and see it with your own eyes.”
The king immediately ordered the cry for departure to be called, and the troops with tents marched out of the city, and the king also went out; but then he sat down in the tent and said to his servants: “Let no one come in to me!” After that, he changed his appearance and stealthily went to the palace where his brother was, and sat for some time at the window that overlooked the garden, and suddenly the slaves and their mistress entered there along with the slaves and acted as Shahzeman told, until the call for afternoon prayer. When King Shahriyar saw this, his mind went out of his head, and he said to his brother Shahzeman: “Get up, let’s leave right away, we don’t need royal power until we see someone who happened to the same thing that happened to us! Otherwise, death is better for us than life!”
They went out through a secret door and wandered day and night until they came to a tree that grew in the middle of a lawn where a stream flowed near the salty sea. They drank from this stream and sat down to rest. And when the hour of daylight had passed, the sea suddenly became rough, and out of it rose a black column, rising to the sky, and went towards their lawn. Seeing this, both brothers were frightened and climbed to the top of the tree (and it was tall) and began to wait for what would happen next. And suddenly they see: in front of them is a genie, tall, with a large head and broad chest, and on his head he has a chest. He went out on land and went to the tree where the brothers were, and sitting under it, he unlocked the chest, and took out the casket from it, and opened it, and from there came out a young woman with a slender figure, shining like a bright sun.
The genie looked at this woman and said, "Oh lady of the noble ones, oh you whom I kidnapped on the night of the wedding, I want to get some sleep!" - and he laid his head on the woman's knees and fell asleep; she raised her head and saw both kings sitting on a tree. Then she removed the head of the genie from her knees and laid it on the ground and, standing under the tree, said to the brothers with signs: “Get down, do not be afraid of the ifrit.” And they answered her: "We conjure you by Allah, deliver us from this." But the woman said, "If you don't come down, I will wake the ifrit, and he will kill you with an evil death." And they were frightened and went down to the woman, and she lay down in front of them and said: “Stick, but stronger, or I will wake the ifrit.” Out of fear, King Shahriyar said to his brother, King Shahzeman: “O my brother, do what she told you!” But Shahzeman answered: “I won’t do it! Do it before me!" And they began to encourage each other with signs, but the woman exclaimed: “What is this? I see you wink! If you don't come and do it, I'll wake up the ifrit!" And out of fear of the genie, both brothers carried out the order, and when they had finished, she said: “Wake up!” - and, taking out a purse from her bosom, she took out a necklace of five hundred and seventy rings. "Do you know what these rings are?" she asked; and the brothers answered: “We don’t know!” Then the woman said: “The owners of all these rings dealt with me on the horns of this ifrit. Give me a ring, too." And the brothers gave the woman two rings from their hands, and she said: “This ifrit kidnapped me on the night of my wedding and put me in a casket, and the casket in a chest. He hung seven shiny locks on the chest and lowered me to the bottom of the roaring sea, where the waves beat, but he did not know that if a woman wants something, then no one will overcome her.
Two brothers lived in one of the cities of Persia, the elder Kasim and the younger Ali Baba. After the death of their father, the brothers divided equally the small inheritance that they inherited. Kasym married a very rich woman, engaged in trade, his wealth increased. Ali Baba married a poor woman and earned his living by chopping wood.
Once Ali Baba was chopping wood near a rock, when armed horsemen suddenly appeared. Ali Baba got scared and hid. There were forty horsemen - they were robbers. The leader approached the rock, parted the bushes that grew in front of it, and said: “Sesame, open!”. The door opened, and the robbers carried the loot into the cave.
When they left, Ali Baba came to the door and also said: "Sesame, open!". Door opened. Ali Baba went into a cave full of various treasures, put everything he could into bags and brought the treasures home.
In order to count the gold, Ali Baba's wife asked Kasym's wife for a measure, allegedly measuring grain. It seemed strange to Kasim's wife that the poor woman was about to measure something, and she poured some wax into the bottom of the measure. Her trick was a success - a gold coin stuck to the bottom of the measure. Seeing that his brother and his wife were measuring gold, Kasym demanded an answer where the wealth came from. Ali Baba revealed the secret.
Once in the cave, Kasim was taken aback by what he saw and forgot the magic words. He listed all the cereals and plants known to him, but the cherished "Sesame, open!" did not say so.
Meanwhile, the robbers attacked a rich caravan and captured huge wealth. They went to the cave to leave the loot there, but in front of the entrance they saw harnessed mules and guessed that someone had learned their secret. Finding Kasim in the cave, they killed him, and chopped the body into pieces and hung it over the door so that no one else would dare to enter the cave.
Kasim's wife, worried that her husband had been gone for several days, turned to Ali Baba for help. Ali Baba understood where his brother could be, went to the cave. Seeing his dead brother there, Ali Baba wrapped his body in a shroud to bury him according to the precepts of Islam, and, after waiting for the night, went home.
Ali Baba offered Kasym's wife to become his second wife, and in order to arrange the funeral of the murdered man, Ali Baba entrusted this to Kasim's slave Marjana, who was famous for her intelligence and cunning. Marjana went to the doctor and asked him for medicine for her sick Mr. Kasim. This went on for several days, and Ali Baba, on the advice of Marjana, began to often go to his brother's house and express grief and sadness. The news spread throughout the city that Kasim was seriously ill. Mardjana also brought home a shoemaker late at night, having previously blindfolded him and confused the way. Having paid well, she ordered the murdered man to be sewn up. After washing the dead Kasym and putting a shroud on him, Marjana told Ali Baba that it was already possible to announce the death of her brother.
When the period of mourning ended, Ali Baba married his brother's wife, moved with his first family to Kasym's house, and handed over his brother's shop to his son.
In the meantime, the robbers, seeing that there was no corpse of Kasym in the cave, realized that the murdered man had an accomplice who knew the secret of the cave and that they needed to find him at all costs. One of the robbers went into the city, disguised as a merchant, to find out if anyone had died lately. By chance, he found himself in a shoemaker's shop, who, boasting of his sharp eyesight, told how he had recently sewed up a dead man in the dark. For a good payment, the shoemaker brought the robber to Kasym's house, as he remembered all the turns of the road along which Mardjana led him. Once in front of the gates of the house, the robber drew a white sign on them in order to find the house by it.
Early in the morning Marjana went to the market and noticed a sign on the gate. Sensing something was wrong, she painted the same signs on the gates of neighboring houses.
When the robber brought his comrades to Kasym's house, they saw the same signs on other houses, which were the same. For an unfulfilled task, the leader of the robber was executed.
Then another robber, having also paid the shoemaker well, told him to take him to Kasym's house and put a red sign there.
Again Marjana went to the market and saw a red sign. Now she painted red signs on the neighboring houses, and the robbers again could not find the right house. The robber was also executed.
Then the leader of the robbers got down to business. He also paid generously to the shoemaker for his service, but he did not put a sign on the house. He counted which house in the block he needed. Then he bought forty wineskins. He poured oil into two of them, and put his people into the rest. Disguised as a merchant selling olive oil, the leader drove up to Ali Baba's house and asked the owner to stay overnight. The good Ali Baba agreed to give the merchant shelter and ordered Marjana to prepare various dishes and a comfortable bed for the guest, and the slaves placed the wineskins in the yard.
Meanwhile, Marjana ran out of butter. She decided to borrow it from a guest and give him the money in the morning. When Mardzhana approached one of the wineskins, the robber sitting in it decided that it was their chieftain. Since he was already tired of sitting hunched over, he asked when it was time to come out. Marjana was not at a loss, she said in a low male voice to be patient a little more. She did the same with the other robbers.
Having collected oil, Marjana boiled it in a cauldron and poured it over the heads of the robbers. When all the robbers died, Marjana began to follow their leader.
Meanwhile, the leader discovered that his assistants were dead, secretly left Ali Baba's house. And Ali Baba, as a token of gratitude, gave Marjana freedom, from now on she was no longer a slave.
But the leader decided to take revenge. He changed his appearance and opened a fabric shop, opposite the shop of Ali Baba's son Muhammad. And soon a good rumor spread about him. The leader under the guise of a merchant made friends with Mohammed. Muhammad truly fell in love with his new friend and one day invited him home for a Friday meal. The leader agreed, but on the condition that the food be without salt, since it is extremely disgusting to him.
Upon hearing the order to cook food without salt, Marjana was very surprised and wished to look at such an unusual guest. The girl immediately recognized the leader of the robbers, and looking closer, she saw a dagger under his clothes.
Mardzhana dressed in luxurious clothes and put a dagger in her belt. Entering during the meal, she began to entertain the men with dances. During the dance, she pulled out a dagger, played with it and plunged it into the guest's chest.
Seeing what misfortune Mardjana had saved them from, Ali Baba married her to his son Muhammad.
Ali Baba and Muhammad took away all the treasures of the robbers and lived in full contentment, the most pleasant life, until the Destroyer of pleasures and the Separator of meetings came to them, overthrowing palaces and erecting graves.
The Tale of the Merchant and the Spirit
Once a very rich merchant went on business. On the way, he sat down under a tree to rest. Resting, he ate dates and threw a stone on the ground. Suddenly, an ifrit with a drawn sword sprang up from the ground. The bone fell into the heart of his son, and the son died, the merchant will pay for this with his life. The merchant asked the ifrit for a year's delay in order to settle his affairs.
A year later, the merchant arrived at the appointed place. Weeping, he awaited his death. An old man with a gazelle approached him. Hearing the story of the merchant, the old man decided to stay with him. Suddenly another old man came up with two hunting dogs, and then a third with a piebald mule. When an ifrit with a sword appeared, the first old man invited the ifrit to listen to his story. If she seems surprising, then the ifrit will give the old man a third of the merchant's blood.
The story of the first elder
Gazelle is the daughter of the old man's uncle. He lived with her for about thirty years, but had no child. Then he took a concubine and she gave him a son. When the boy was fifteen years old, the old man left on business. During his absence, the wife turned the boy into a calf, and his mother into a cow, and gave them to the shepherd, and told her husband that his wife had died, and his son had run away to no one knows where.
The old man cried for a year. The holiday has come. The old man ordered the cow to be slaughtered. But the cow that the shepherd brought began to moan and cry, as it was a concubine. The old man felt sorry for her and he ordered to bring another, but his wife insisted on this, the fattest cow in the herd. After slaughtering her, the old man saw that she had neither meat nor fat. Then the old man ordered to bring the calf. The calf began to cry and rub against his legs. The wife insisted that they kill him, but the old man refused, and the shepherd took him away.
The next day, the shepherd told the old man that, having taken the calf, he came to his daughter, who had learned witchcraft. Seeing the calf, she said that he was the son of the master and the wife of the master turned him into a calf, and the cow that was slaughtered was the mother of the calf. Hearing this, the old man went to the shepherd's daughter to disenchant her son. The girl agreed, but on the condition that he marry her to his son and allow him to bewitch his wife. The old man agreed, the girl disenchanted her son, and turned his wife into a gazelle. Now the son's wife has died and the son has gone to India. An old man with a gazelle rides towards him.
Ifrit found the story surprising and gave the old man a third of the merchant's blood. Then a second old man came forward with two dogs and offered to tell his story. If it seems more surprising than the first, ifrit will give him a third of the merchant's blood.
The story of the second elder
The two dogs are the older brothers of the old man. The father died and left his sons thousands of dinars each, and each son opened a shop. The elder brother sold everything he had and went to travel. He returned a year later as a beggar: the money was gone, happiness changed. The old man counted his profit and saw that he had made a thousand dinars and now his capital is two thousand. He gave half to his brother, who reopened the shop and began to trade. Then the second brother sold his property and went traveling. He returned a year later, also a beggar. The old man counted his profit and saw that his capital was again two thousand dinars. He gave half to his second brother, who also opened a shop and began to trade.
Time passed and the brothers began to demand that the old man go with them to travel, but he refused. Six years later, he agreed. His capital was six thousand dinars. He buried three, and divided three between himself and his brothers.
While traveling, they made money and suddenly met a beautiful girl dressed as a beggar who asked for help. The old man took her on his ship, took care of her, and then they got married. But the brothers were jealous of him and decided to kill him. While sleeping, they threw their brother and wife into the sea. But the girl turned out to be an Ifrit. She saved her husband and decided to kill his brothers. The husband asked her not to do this, then the ifrit girl turned the brothers into two dogs and cast a spell that she would release them no sooner than in ten years, her sister. Now the time has come and the old man with his brothers goes to his wife's sister.
Ifrit found the story surprising and gave the old man a third of the merchant's blood. Then a third old man came forward with a mule and offered to tell his story. If it seems more surprising than the first two, ifrit will give him the rest of the merchant's blood.
The story of the third elder
The mule is the wife of the old man. One day he caught her with her lover and his wife turned him into a dog. He went to the butcher shop to pick up the bones, but the butcher's daughter was a witch and she dispelled him. The girl gave magic water so that he splashed on his wife and turned her into a mule. When the ifrit asked if this was true, the mule nodded his head, showing that it was true.
Ifrit found the story surprising, gave the old man the rest of the merchant's blood and let the latter go.
Tale of the fisherman
There lived a poor fisherman with his family. Every day he threw the net into the sea four times. Once he fished out a copper jug sealed with a lead cork with the seal of Suleiman ibn Daud's ring. The fisherman decided to sell it on the market, but first to see the contents of the jar. A huge ifrit came out of the jar, who disobeyed King Suleiman and the king, as a punishment, imprisoned him in a jug. Upon learning that the king had been gone for almost two thousand years, ifrit out of anger decided to kill his savior. The fisherman wondered how such a huge ifrit could fit in such a small jar. To prove that he was telling the truth, ifrit turned into smoke and entered the jar. The fisherman sealed the vessel with a cork and threatened to throw it into the sea if the ifrit wanted to repay the good with evil, telling the story of King Yunan and the doctor Duban.
The Tale of the Vizier King Yunan
The king Yunan lived in the city of the Persians. He was rich and great, but leprosy formed on his body. None of the doctors could heal him with any drugs. One day, the doctor Duban came to the city of the king, who owned a lot of knowledge. He offered Yunan his help. The doctor made a hammer and put a potion into it. He attached a handle to the hammer. The doctor ordered the king to sit on his horse and drive the ball with a hammer. The king's body was covered with perspiration and the medicine from the hammer spread over his body. Then Yunan took a bath and in the morning there was no trace of his illness. In gratitude, he gave doctor Duban money and all sorts of benefits.
King Yunan's vizier, jealous of the doctor, whispered to the king that Duban wanted to excommunicate Yunan from the reign. In response, the king told the story of King as-Sinbad.
The Story of King As-Sinbad
One of the kings of the Persians, as-Sinbad loved hunting. He raised a falcon and never parted with him. Once on a hunt, the king pursued a gazelle for a long time. After killing her, he felt thirsty. And then he saw a tree, from the top of which water was flowing. He filled his cup with water, but the falcon overturned it. The king filled the cup again, but the falcon knocked it over again. When the falcon overturned the cup for the third time, the king cut off its wings. Dying, the falcon showed the king that an echidna was sitting on the top of the tree, and the flowing liquid was its poison. Then the king realized that he had killed a friend who saved him from death.
In response, the vizier of King Yunan told a story about a treacherous vizier.
The story of the insidious vizier
One king had a vizier and a son who loved hunting. The king ordered the vizier to always be with his son. One day the prince went hunting. The vizier, seeing a large beast, sent the prince after him. Chasing the beast, the young man got lost and suddenly saw a crying girl who said that she was a lost Indian princess. The prince took pity on her and took her with him. Passing by the ruins, the girl asked to stop. Seeing that she was gone for a long time, the prince followed her and saw that she was a ghoul who wanted to eat the young man with her children. The prince realized that the vizier had set it up. He returned home and told his father about the incident, who killed the vizier.
Believing his vizier that the doctor Duban decided to kill him, King Yunan ordered the executioner to cut off the doctor's head. No matter how the doctor cried, or asked the king to spare him, no matter how the king’s associates stood up, Yunan was adamant. He was sure that the doctor was a scout who had come to destroy him.
Seeing that his execution was inevitable, doctor Duban asked for a respite in order to distribute his medical books to his relatives. The doctor decided to give one book, the most valuable one, to the king. By order of the doctor, the king put the severed head on a dish and rubbed it with a special powder to stop the blood. The doctor's eyes opened and he ordered the book to be opened. To open the pages stuck together, the king moistened his finger with saliva. The book opened and he saw blank pages. And then the poison spread through Yunan's body: the book was poisoned. She repaid the king with evil for his evil.
After listening to the fisherman, ifrit promised that he would reward him for letting him out of the jar. Ifrit led the fisherman to a pond surrounded by mountains, in which colorful fish swam, and told him to fish here no more than once a day.
The caught fish, the fisherman sold to the king. When the cook was frying it, the wall of the kitchen parted and a beautiful young woman came out and spoke to the fish. The cook fainted from fear. When she woke up, the fish were burned. The king's vizier, having heard her story, bought a fish from a fisherman and ordered the cook to fry it in front of him. Convinced that the woman was telling the truth, he told this to the king. The king bought a fish from a fisherman and ordered it to be fried. Seeing that when the fish was fried, the wall parted and a slave came out of it and spoke to the fish, the king decided to find out the secret of the fish.
The fisherman led the king to the pond. Whom the king did not ask about the pond and fish, no one knew anything. The king went to the mountains and saw a palace there. There was no one in the palace except for a beautiful crying youth, whose lower half of the body was made of stone.
The story of the bewitched youth
The boy's father was a king and lived in the mountains. The young man married his uncle's daughter. They lived for five years and he thought that his wife loved him with great love, but one day the young man overheard the conversation of the slaves. The girls said that every evening his wife pours sleeping pills into his drink, and she herself goes to her lover. The young man did not drink the drink prepared for him by his wife and pretended to be asleep. Seeing that his wife had left, dressed in his best clothes, he followed her. The wife came to the wretched hut and entered it, and the young man climbed onto the roof. In the hut lived an ugly black slave who was her lover. Seeing them together, the young man struck the slave on the neck with his sword. He thought he had killed him, but in reality he had only wounded him. In the morning he found his wife in tears. She explained her sadness by the fact that her parents and brothers had died. The wife built a tomb in the palace to retire there with her sorrows. In fact, she moved a slave there and cared for him. So three years passed, her husband did not interfere with her, but one day he reproached her for treason. Then she turned him into half-stone, half-man, turned the inhabitants of the city into fish, and the city into mountains. In addition, every morning she beats her husband with a whip to the point of blood, and then goes to her lover.
Hearing the story of the young man, the king killed the slave, and dressed in his clothes, lay down in his place. When the young man's wife came, the king, changing his voice, told her that the groans of the young man and the weeping of the bewitched inhabitants tormented him. Let her free them, health returns to him. When the woman disenchanted the young man and the inhabitants, and the city again became the same as before, the king killed her. Since the king had no children, he adopted the young man and generously rewarded the fisherman. He married one of the fisherman's daughters himself, and gave the other out as a bewitched young man. The fisherman became the richest man of his time, and his daughters were the wives of kings until death came to them.
Once upon a time there was a king, his name was Shahriyar. Once it happened that his wife cheated on him ... And that's when the sad longest more than 1000 and one night began.
Shahriyar became so angry that he began to take out all his anger on the others. Every night a new wife was brought to him. Innocent, young. After spending the night with the beauty, the king executed her. Years passed. And, probably, the Persian kingdom would have been left without, but there was a brave maiden who decided to be Shahriyar's next wife.
Scheherazade, according to legend, was not only beautiful and smart, but also very educated, because she came from the family of one of Shahriyar's viziers.
The trick that gave birth to love
Scheherazade decided to outwit the bloodthirsty king. At night, instead of love pleasures, she began to tell the lord a fairy tale, and in the morning the fairy tale ended at the most interesting moment.
Shahriyar was impatient for the continuation of the most curious, so he did not execute Scheherazade, but left her life to hear the continuation. The next night, Scheherazade appeared even more beautiful, she slowly began to tell the king the continuation of the story, but by morning this one ended at the most interesting place.
The vizier's family, which at any moment could lose their beautiful daughter, was horrified, but the wise maiden assured that nothing would happen to her for 1000 and one night. Why quantity? 1000 and one coin was worth the life of a slave woman in the slave market in those days, the wise Scheherazade estimated her life in the same number of nights.
Is there a lie in the story?
Scheherazade told the ruler a variety of tales, some of which were so plausible that Shahriyar easily recognized in the heroes his own courtiers, himself and merchants from the medina, where he was simply forced to go, intrigued by the beauty.
Scheherazade's stories were so interesting and unusual, so fantastic and fascinating that the king listened to her for a whole thousand and one nights! Imagine, for almost two years, the wife told Shakhriyar fairy tales at night.
So how did it all end? Do you think one day she told an uninteresting story, and the king executed her? By no means! For many months of meetings with the beauty, the king sincerely fell in love with her, besides, the instructive instructive stories of Scheherazade made it clear to the sovereign that innocent girls should not be killed just because his wife was unfaithful to him, because the rest are not to blame.
The tales of Scheherazade were stories where there was a meaning, where it was said about good and evil, about what is true and what is false. Maybe Shahriyar's anger would have lived in him if he had not met Scheherazade, who, with her wisdom, beauty and patience, gave the ruler a new
Thousand and one nights (fairy tale)
Queen Scheherazade tells tales to King Shahriyar
Fairy tales Thousand and One Nights(Persian هزار و يك شب Hazar-o Yak shab, Arab. ليلة وليلة alf laila wa-laila) is a monument of medieval Arabic literature, a collection of stories united by the story of King Shahriyar and his wife named Shahrazad (Scheherazade, Sheherazade).
History of creation
The question of the origin and development of "1001 Nights" has not been fully elucidated to date. Attempts to search for the ancestral home of this collection in India, made by its first researchers, have not yet received sufficient justification. The prototype of the “Nights” on Arabic soil was probably made in the 10th century. translation of the Persian collection "Khezar-Efsane" (Thousand Tales). This translation, called "Thousand Nights" or "Thousand and One Nights", was, as Arab writers of that time testify, very popular in the capital of the eastern caliphate, in Baghdad. We cannot judge his character, since only the story framing him, coinciding with the frame of "1001 Nights", has come down to us. Various stories were inserted into this convenient frame at different times, sometimes whole cycles of stories, in turn framed, as for example. "The Tale of the Hunchback", "The Porter and the Three Girls", etc. Separate tales of the collection, before they were included in the written text, often existed independently, sometimes in a more common form. There is good reason to assume that the first editors of the text of fairy tales were professional storytellers who borrowed their material directly from oral sources; under the dictation of the storytellers, fairy tales were written down by book sellers who sought to satisfy the demand for the manuscripts of 1001 Nights.
Hammer-Purgstahl hypothesis
When studying the issue of the origin and composition of the collection, European scientists diverged in two directions. J. von Hammer-Purgstahl stood for their Indian and Persian origin, referring to the words of Mas'udiya and the bibliographer Nadim (before 987), that the Old Persian collection "Khezâr-efsâne" ("Thousand Tales"), the origin is not yet Achaemenid , not that of Arzakid and Sasanian, was translated by the best Arabic writers under the Abbasids into Arabic and is known under the name "1001 nights". According to Hammer's theory, translated from Persian. "Khezar-efsane", constantly rewritten, grew and accepted, even under the Abbasids, in its convenient frame new layers and new additions, mostly from other similar Indo-Persian collections (among which, for example, "The Book of Sindbad") or even from Greek works; when the center of Arab literary prosperity moved to the XII-XIII centuries. from Asia to Egypt, 1001 nights intensively corresponded there and, under the pen of new scribes, again received new layers: a group of stories about the glorious past times of the Caliphate with the central figure of Caliph Harun Al-Rashid (-), and a little later - their own local stories from the period of the Egyptian dynasty second Mameluks (the so-called Circassian or Borjit). When the conquest of Egypt by the Ottomans undermined the Arab mental life and literature, then "1001 Nights", according to Hammer, ceased to grow and survived in the form in which the Ottoman conquest found it.
De Sacy's hypothesis
A radically opposite view was expressed by Sylvester de Sacy. He argued that the whole spirit and worldview of "1001 Nights" is through and through Muslim, mores - Arabic and, moreover, rather late, no longer of the Abbasid period, the usual scene of action is Arab places (Baghdad, Mosul, Damascus, Cairo), the language is not classical Arabic , but rather common, with the manifestation, apparently, of Syrian dialectical features, that is, close to the era of literary decline. From this, de Sacy concluded that "1001 Nights" is a completely Arabic work, compiled not gradually, but immediately, by one author, in Syria, about half a century .; death probably interrupted the work of the Syrian compiler, and therefore “1001 Nights” was completed by his successors, who attached different endings to the collection from other fabulous material that circulated among the Arabs, for example, from the Travels of Sinbad, Sinbad’s book on female deceit etc. From Persian. "Khezar-efsane", according to de Sacy, the Syrian compiler of the Arabic "1001 Nights" took nothing but the title and frame, that is, the manner of putting tales into the mouth of Shekhrazade; if, however, some locality with a purely Arab setting and customs is sometimes called Persia, India or China in "1001 Nights", then this is done only for greater importance and, as a result, gives rise to only amusing anachronisms.
Lane's hypothesis
Subsequent scholars have tried to reconcile both views; especially important in this respect was the authority of Edward Lane (E. W. Lane), a well-known expert in the ethnography of Egypt. In considerations of the late time of the addition of "1001 nights" on late Arabic soil, Lane, as an individual, sole writer, went even further than de Sacy: from the mention of the Adiliye mosque, built in 1501, sometimes about coffee, once about tobacco, also about firearms weapons, Lane concluded that "1001 Nights" was started at the end of the century. and completed in the 1st quarter of the 16th century; the last, final fragments could be added to the collection even under the Ottomans, in the 16th and 17th centuries. The language and style of "1001 nights", according to Lane, is the usual style of a literate, but not too learned Egyptian - the 16th century; the conditions of life described in 1001 Nights are specially Egyptian; the topography of cities, though they be called by Persian, Mesopotamian, and Syrian names, is the detailed topography of Cairo of the late Mamluk period. In the literary adaptation of 1001 Nights, Lane saw such a remarkable uniformity and consistency of late Egyptian color that he did not allow centuries of gradual addition and recognized only one, maximum, two compilers (the second could finish the collection), who - or who - for a short time, between -XVI century., in Cairo, at the Mameluk court, and compiled "1001 Nights". The compiler, according to Lane, had at his disposal an Arabic translation of Khezar-efsane, preserved from c. until in its old form, and took from there the title, the frame, and perhaps even some of the tales; he also used other collections of Persian origin (cf. the story of the flying horse) and Indian ("Jilâd and Shimâs"), Arabic warlike novels from the time of the Crusaders (King Omar-Nomân), instructive (The Wise Maiden Tawaddoda), pseudo-historical Tales of Harune Al-Rashide, specially historical Arabic writings (especially those where there is a rich anecdotal element), semi-scientific Arabic geographies and cosmographies (The Travels of Sinbad and the cosmography of Qazvinia), oral humorous folk fables, etc. All these heterogeneous and multi-temporal materials are Egyptian compiler -XVI century. compiled and carefully processed; scribes of the 17th-18th centuries. only a few changes were made to its editions.
Lane's view was considered generally accepted in the scientific world until the 80s of the XIX century. True, even then the articles of de Goeje (M. J. de Goeje) consolidated, with slight amendments on the question of criteria, the old Lane view of the compilation of "1001 Nights" in the Mameluke era (after the year, according to de Goeje) by the sole compiler, and indeed new english the translator (who for the first time was not afraid of being reproached for being obscene) J. Payne did not deviate from Lane's theory; but at the same time, with new translations of 1001 Nights, new research began. Back in X. Torrens (H. Torrens, "Athenaeum", 1839, 622), a quotation was given from a historian of the 13th century. ibn Said (1208-1286), where some embellished folk stories (in Egypt) are said to resemble 1001 nights. Now the same words and he Said drew the attention of an unsigned author of criticism of the new translations of Payne and Burton (R. F. Burton).
According to the author’s thorough remark, many cultural and historical hints and other data, on the basis of which Lane (and after him Payne) attributed the compilation of “1001 Nights” to the -16th century, are explained as the usual interpolation of the latest scribes, and mores in the East are not so fast. they are changed so that, according to their description, one could unmistakably distinguish one century from one or two previous ones: “1001 nights” could therefore be compiled as early as the 13th century, and it is not for nothing that the barber in “The Tale of the Hunchback” draws a horoscope for 1255; however, over the next two centuries, scribes could make new additions to the finished “1001 Nights”. A. Muller rightly noted that if, at the direction of Ibn Said, "1001 Nights" existed in Egypt in the 13th century, and by the century, on the rather transparent instructions of Abul-Mahsyn, it had already managed to get its newest extensions, then for strong, correct judgments about it, it is necessary first of all to single out these later buildups and thus restore the form that “1001 Nights” had in the 13th century. To do this, you need to compare all the lists of "1001 nights" and discard their unequal parts as layers of the XIV - century. Such a work was done in detail by X. Zotenberg and Rich. Burton in an afterword to his translation, 1886-1888; Chauvin (V. Chauvin) now has a brief and informative review of manuscripts in Bibliographie arabe, 1900, vol. IV; Müller himself in his article also made a feasible comparison.
It turned out that in different lists the first part of the collection is mostly the same, but that in it, perhaps, no Egyptian themes can be found at all; tales about the Baghdad Abbasids predominate (especially about Harun), and there are also Indo-Persian tales in a small number; hence the conclusion followed that a large ready-made collection of fairy tales, compiled in Baghdad, probably in the 10th century, came to Egypt. and centered in content around the idealized personality of Caliph Haroun al-Rashid; these tales were squeezed into the frame of an incomplete Arabic translation of Khezar-efsane, which was made in the 9th century. and even under Mas'udiya was known under the name "1001 nights"; it was created, therefore, as Hammer thought - not by one author at once, but by many, gradually, over the centuries, but its main constituent element is national Arabic; little Persian. The Arab A. Salkhaniy took almost the same point of view; in addition, based on the words of Nadim, that the Arab Jahshiyariy (Baghdadian, probably, the 10th century) also undertook to compile the collection “1000 Nights”, which included selected Persian, Greek, Arabic, etc. and there is the first Arabic edition of "1001 Nights", which then, constantly rewritten, especially in Egypt, significantly increased in volume. In the same 1888, Nöldeke pointed out that even the historical and psychological foundations make one see Egyptian origin in some fairy tales of the 1001 Nights, and Baghdad in others.
Estrup's hypothesis
As the fruit of a thorough acquaintance with the methods and research of predecessors, a detailed dissertation by I. Estrup appeared. Probably, the latest author of the history of the Arab also used Estrup's book. literary - K. Brockelmann; in any case, the brief reports he offers about the "1001 nights" closely coincide with the provisions developed by Estrup. Their content is as follows:
- “1001 Nights” received its current form in Egypt, most of all in the first period of Mameluke rule (from the 13th century).
- Whether the entire Khezar-efsane was included in the Arabic "1001 Nights" or only its selected tales is a secondary question. It can be said with full confidence that the frame of the collection (Shekhriyar and Shekhrazada), the Fisherman and the Spirit, Hassan of Basri, Prince Badr and Princess Jauhar of Samandal, Ardeshir and Hayat-an-nofusa, Kamar-al-zaman and Bodur. These tales, in their poetry and psychology, are an adornment of the entire “1001 Nights”; they whimsically intertwine the real world with the fantastic, but their distinguishing feature is that supernatural beings, spirits and demons are not a blind, elemental force, but consciously have friendship or enmity towards famous people.
- The second element of "1001 nights" is the one that was layered in Baghdad. In contrast to the Persian tales, the Baghdad tales, in the Semitic spirit, differ not so much in the general amusingness of the plot and artistic consistency in its development, but in the talent and wit of individual parts of the story or even individual phrases and expressions. In terms of content, these are, firstly, urban short stories with an interesting love affair, for the resolution of which he often appears on stage as a deus ex machina, a beneficent caliph; secondly, stories that explain the emergence of some characteristic poetic couplet and are more appropriate in historical, literary, stylistic anthologies. It is possible that the Baghdad editions of the "1001" nights also included, although not in full form, the Travels of Sinbad; but Brockelman believes that this novel, which is missing in many manuscripts, was entered 1001 nights later,
Faced with the infidelity of his first wife, Shahriyar takes a new wife every day and executes her at dawn the next day. However, this terrible order is broken when he marries Shahrazade, the wise daughter of his vizier. Every night she tells a fascinating story and interrupts the story "at the most interesting place" - and the king is unable to refuse to hear the end of the story. Scheherazade's tales can be divided into three main groups, which can be conditionally called heroic, adventurous and picaresque tales.
Heroic tales
The group of heroic tales includes fantastic stories, probably constituting the most ancient core of "1001 Nights" and ascending in some of its features to its Persian prototype "Khezar-Efsane", as well as long epic chivalric novels. The style of these stories is solemn and somewhat gloomy; the main actors in them are usually kings and their nobles. In some of the tales of this group, such as the story of the wise maiden Takaddul, a didactic tendency is clearly visible. In literary terms, heroic stories are more carefully processed than others; turns of folk speech are expelled from them, poetic inserts - for the most part quotations from classical Arab poets - on the contrary, are plentiful. The “court” tales include, for example: “Kamar-az-Zaman and Budur”, “Vedr-Basim and Janhar”, “The Tale of King Omar ibn-an-Numan”, “Ajib and Tarib” and some others.
adventurous tales
We find other moods in "adventurous" short stories, which probably arose in the trade and craft environment. Tsars and sultans appear in them not as beings of a higher order, but as the most ordinary people; the favorite type of ruler is the famous Harun al-Rashid, who ruled from 786 to 809, that is, much earlier than the Shahrazade tale took its final form. The references to Caliph Haroun and his capital, Baghdad, cannot therefore serve as a basis for dating the Nights. The real Harun-ar-Rashid had very little resemblance to the kind, generous sovereign from 1001 Nights, and the tales in which he participates, judging by their language, style, and everyday details found in them, could have been formed only in Egypt. In terms of content, most of the "adventurous" tales are typical urban fables. These are most often love stories, the heroes of which are rich merchants, who are almost always doomed to be passive executors of the cunning plans of their beloved. The last in fairy tales of this type usually plays a leading role - a feature that sharply distinguishes "adventurous" stories from "heroic" ones. Typical for this group of fairy tales are: "The Tale of Abu-l-Hasan from Oman", "Abu-l-Hasan of Khorasan", "Nima and Nubi", "Loving and Beloved", "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp".
Rogue Tales
The "picaresque" tales naturalistically depict the life of the urban poor and declassed elements. Their heroes are usually clever swindlers and rogues - both men and women, for example. immortals in the Arabic fairy-tale literature Ali-Zeybak and Delilah-Khitritsa. In these tales there is not a trace of reverence for the upper classes; on the contrary, "picaresque" tales are full of mocking attacks against representatives of the authorities and clergy - it is not for nothing that Christian priests and gray-bearded mullahs to this day look very disapprovingly at anyone who holds a volume of "1001 nights" in their hands. The language of the "picaresque" stories is close to colloquial; there are almost no poetic passages that are incomprehensible to readers inexperienced in literature. The heroes of picaresque tales are distinguished by their courage and enterprise and represent a striking contrast with the pampered harem life and idleness of the heroes of "adventurous" tales. In addition to the stories about Ali-Zeybak and Dalil, picaresque tales include the magnificent story of Matuf the shoemaker, the tale of the caliph the fisherman and the fisherman Khalifa, standing on the verge between stories of the "adventurous" and "picaresque" type, and some other stories.
Editions of the text
Incomplete Calcutta by V. McNaughten (1839-1842), Bulak (1835; often republished), Breslavl by M. Habicht and G. Fleischer (1825-1843), Beirut (1880-1882) cleansed of obscenities, even more refined Beirut-Jesuit , very elegant and cheap (1888-1890). The texts were published from manuscripts that differ significantly from one another, and not all of the manuscript material has yet been published. For an overview of the content of the manuscripts (the oldest is Gallanovskaya, no later than the middle of the 14th century), see Zotenberg, Burton, and briefly Chauvin (“Bibliogr. arabe”).
Translations
Book cover of 1001 Nights, edited by Burton
oldest French incomplete - A. Gallan (1704-1717), which was in turn translated into all languages; it is not literal and remade according to the tastes of the court of Louis XIV: scientific re-ed. - Loazler de'Lonchamp 1838 and Bourdain 1838-1840. It was continued by Cazotte and Chavis (1784-1793) in the same spirit. Since 1899, a literal translation (from the Bulak text) and not taking into account European decency has been published by J. Mardru.
German translations were made first according to Galland and Casotte; general code with some additions on Arabic. the original was given by Habicht, Hagen and Schall (1824-1825; 6th ed., 1881) and apparently by König (1869); from Arabic. - G. Weil (1837-1842; 3rd corrected ed. 1866-1867; 5th ed. 1889) and, more fully, from all kinds of texts, M. Henning (in the cheap Reklamovskoy "Bibli. Classics", 1895- 1900); indecency in it. transl. removed.
English translations were made first according to Galland and Casotte and received additions in Arabic. original; the best of these translations. - Jonat. Scott (1811), but the last (6th) volume, translated. from Arabic, not repeated in subsequent editions. Two-thirds of 1001 nights, with the exception of places that are uninteresting or dirty from Arabic. (according to Bulak. ed.) translated by V. Lane (1839-1841; in 1859 a revised edition was published, reprinted in 1883). Full English translated, which caused many accusations of immorality: J. Payne (1882-1889), and made according to many editions, with all kinds of explanations (historical, folklore, ethnographic, etc.) - Rich. Burton.
On the Russian language in the 19th century. translations from French appeared. . The most scientific per. - J. Doppelmeier. English transl. Lena, "reduced due to stricter censorship", translated into Russian. lang. L. Shelgunova in app. to "Painting. review" (1894): at the 1st volume there is an article by V. Chuiko, compiled according to de Gue. The first Russian translation from Arabic was made by Mikhail Alexandrovich Salie (-) in -.
For other translations, see the above-mentioned works by A. Krymsky (“Anniversary Sat. of Sun. Miller”) and V. Chauvin (vol. IV). The success of the Gallan remake prompted Petit de la Croix to print Les 1001 jours. And in popular, and even in folklore publications, "1001 days" merges with "1001 nights." According to Petit de la Croix, his "Les 1001 jours" is a Persian translation. the collection "Khezâr-yäk ruz", written on the plots of Indian comedies by the Spanish dervish Mokhlis around 1675; but we can say with full confidence what such a Persian is. the collection never existed and that Les 1001 jours was compiled by Petit de la Croix himself, from unknown sources. For example, one of his most lively, humorous tales, “Papushi Abu-Kasim,” is found in Arabic in the collection “Famarat al-avrawak” by ibn-Khizhzhe.
Other meanings
- 1001 nights (film) based on the tales of Scheherazade.
- 1001 Nights (album) - a musical album by Arab-American guitarists Shaheen and Sepehr, Tashkent.
- One Thousand and One Nights (ballet) - ballet
Nearly two and a half centuries have passed since Europe first became acquainted with the Arabic tales of the Thousand and One Nights in Galland's free and far from complete French translation, but even now they enjoy the unchanging love of readers. The passage of time did not affect the popularity of Scheherazade's stories; Along with countless reprints and secondary translations from Galland's edition, publications of the Nights appear again and again in many languages of the world, translated directly from the original, up to the present day. Great was the influence of "A Thousand and One Nights" on the work of various writers - Montesquieu, Wieland, Gauf, Tennyson, Dickens. Pushkin also admired Arab fairy tales. Having first become acquainted with some of them in a free arrangement by Senkovsky, he became so interested in them that he acquired one of the editions of Gallan's translation, which was preserved in his library.
It is difficult to say what attracts more in the fairy tales of "A Thousand and One Nights" - the entertaining plot, the bizarre interweaving of the fantastic and the real, vivid pictures of the urban life of the medieval Arab East, fascinating descriptions of amazing countries or the liveliness and depth of experiences of the heroes of fairy tales, the psychological justification of situations, clear, certain morality. The language of many stories is magnificent - lively, figurative, juicy, alien to obfuscations and omissions. The speech of the heroes of the best fairy tales of the "Nights" is brightly individual, each of them has his own style and vocabulary, characteristic of the social environment from which they came.
What is the Book of a Thousand and One Nights, how and when was it created, where were the fairy tales of Scheherazade born?
"A Thousand and One Nights" is not a work of an individual author or compiler - the collective creator is the entire Arab people. In the form in which we now know it, "A Thousand and One Nights" is a collection of fairy tales in Arabic, united by a framing story about the cruel king Shahriyar, who every evening took a new wife for himself and killed her in the morning. The origin of the Thousand and One Nights is still far from clear; its origins are lost in the mists of time.
The first written information about the Arabic collection of fairy tales, framed by the story of Shahriyar and Shahrazad and called "A Thousand Nights" or "A Thousand and One Nights", we find in the writings of Baghdad writers of the 10th century - the historian al-Masudi and the bibliographer al-Nadim, who speak about him , as about a long and well-known work. Already at that time, information about the origin of this book was rather vague and it was considered a translation of the Persian collection of fairy tales “Khezar-Efsane” (“Thousand Tales”), allegedly compiled for Humai, the daughter of the Iranian king Ardeshir (4th century BC). The content and nature of the Arabic collection mentioned by Masudi and al-Nadim are unknown to us, since it has not survived to this day.
The testimony of these writers about the existence in their time of the Arabic book of fairy tales "A Thousand and One Nights" is confirmed by the presence of an excerpt from this book dating back to the 9th century.
In the future, the literary evolution of the collection continued until the XIV-XV centuries. More and more new fairy tales of different genres and different social origins were invested in a convenient frame of the collection. We can judge the process of creating such fabulous vaults from the message of the same al-Nadim, who says that his elder contemporary, a certain Abd-Allah al-Jahshiyari - a person, by the way, is quite real - conceived to compile a book of thousands of tales of "Arabs, Persians, Greeks and other peoples, one at a time, each with fifty sheets, but he died having managed to type only four hundred and eighty stories. He took material mainly from professional storytellers, whom he called from all over the Caliphate, as well as from written sources.
The collection of al-Jahshiyari has not come down to us, nor have other fairy tales, called "A Thousand and One Nights", which are sparingly mentioned by medieval Arab writers, been preserved. The composition of these collections of fairy tales, apparently, differed from each other, they only had a title and a fairy tale-frame in common.
In the course of creating such collections, several successive stages can be outlined.
The first suppliers of material for them were professional folk narrators, whose stories were originally recorded from dictation with almost shorthand accuracy, without any literary processing. A large number of such stories in Arabic, written in Hebrew letters, are kept in the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library in Leningrad; the oldest lists date back to the 11th-12th centuries. In the future, these records were sent to booksellers, who subjected the text of the tale to some literary processing. Each fairy tale was considered at this stage not as an integral part of the collection, but as a completely independent work; therefore, in the original versions of the tales that have come down to us, later included in the “Book of a Thousand and One Nights”, there is still no division into nights. The breakdown of the text of fairy tales took place at the last stage of their processing, when they fell into the hands of the compiler, who compiled the next collection of the Thousand and One Nights. In the absence of material for the required number of "nights", the compiler replenished it from written sources, borrowing from there not only small stories and anecdotes, but also long chivalric novels.
The last such compiler was the scholarly sheikh, unknown by name, who in the 18th century in Egypt compiled the most recent collection of tales of the Thousand and One Nights. Fairy tales also received the most significant literary processing in Egypt, two or three centuries earlier. This 14th-16th-century edition of the Book of a Thousand and One Nights, usually called the “Egyptian” one, the only one that has survived to this day, is presented in most printed editions, as well as in almost all the manuscripts of the Nights known to us and serves as concrete material for study of the tales of Scheherazade.
From the previous, possibly earlier collections of the “Book of a Thousand and One Nights”, only single tales have survived that are not included in the “Egyptian” edition and are presented in a few manuscripts of separate volumes of the “Nights” or exist in the form of independent stories, which, however, have a division for the night. These stories include the most popular fairy tales among European readers: “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” and some others; the Arabic original of these tales was at the disposal of the first translator of the Thousand and One Nights, Galland, through whose translation they became known in Europe.
When studying "A Thousand and One Nights", each fairy tale should be considered separately, since there is no organic connection between them, and before being included in the collection, they existed independently for a long time. Attempts to group some of them into groups according to their place of alleged origin - from India, Iran or Baghdad - are not sufficiently substantiated. The plots of Scheherazade's stories were formed from separate elements that could penetrate Arab soil from Iran or India independently of one another; in their new homeland, they acquired purely native layers and from ancient times became the property of Arab folklore. So, for example, it happened with the framing tale: having come to the Arabs from India through Iran, it lost many of its original features in the mouths of storytellers.
More appropriate than an attempt to group, say, on a geographical basis, should be considered the principle of combining them, at least conditionally, into groups according to the time of creation or according to belonging to the social environment where they lived. The oldest, most stable tales of the collection, which probably existed in one form or another already in the first editions in the 9th-10th centuries, include those stories in which the element of fantasy is most pronounced and supernatural beings actively intervene in people's affairs. Such are the tales “About the Fisherman and the Spirit”, “About the Ebony Horse” and a number of others. During their long literary life, they, apparently, were repeatedly subjected to literary processing; this is also evidenced by their language, which claims to be of a certain sophistication, and the abundance of poetic passages, undoubtedly interspersed in the text by editors or scribes.
A group of fairy tales of later origin, reflecting the life and way of life of a medieval Arab trading city. As can be seen from some topographical details, the action in them is played out mainly in the capital of Egypt - Cairo. These short stories are usually based on some touching love story, complicated by various adventures; the persons acting in it belong, as a rule, to the trade and craft nobility. In style and language, fairy tales of this kind are somewhat simpler than fantastic ones, but they also contain many poetic quotations of predominantly erotic content. Interestingly, in urban short stories, the most striking and strong personality is often a woman who boldly breaks the barriers that harem life puts on her. The man, weakened by debauchery and idleness, is invariably brought out as a simpleton and doomed to secondary roles.
Another characteristic feature of this group of tales is the pronounced antagonism between the townspeople and the Bedouin nomads, who are usually the subject of the most caustic ridicule in the Book of a Thousand and One Nights.
The best examples of urban short stories include “The Tale of the Loving and the Beloved”, “The Tale of Three Apples” (including “The Tale of the Vizier Nur-ad-Din and his Brother”), “The Tale of Kamar-al-Zaman and the Jeweler’s Wife” , as well as most of the stories united by The Tale of the Hunchback.
Finally, the tales of the picaresque genre, apparently included in the collection in Egypt, during its last processing, are the most recent creations. These stories also took shape in the urban environment, but they already reflect the life of small artisans, day laborers and the poor, who live by odd jobs. In these tales, the protest of the oppressed strata of the population of the medieval eastern city was most vividly reflected. In what curious forms this protest was sometimes expressed can be seen, for example, from the “Tale of Ghanim ibn Ayyub” (see this edition, vol. II, p. 15), where the slave whom his master wants to set free proves, referring to the books of jurists, that he has no right to do this, since he did not teach his slave any trade and, by liberation, dooms the latter to starvation.
The picaresque tales are characterized by the caustic irony of depicting representatives of the secular authorities and the clergy in the most unattractive form. The plot of many such tales is a complex fraud, which aims not so much to rob, as to fool some simpleton. Brilliant examples of picaresque stories are “The Tale of Delil the Cunning and Ali-Zeybak of Cairo”, replete with the most incredible adventures, “The Tale of Ala-ad-Din Abu-sh-Shamat”, “The Tale of Maruf the Shoemaker”.
Stories of this type were included in the collection directly from the mouths of the narrators and underwent only minor literary processing. This is indicated primarily by their language, not alien to dialectisms and colloquial turns of speech, the saturation of the text with dialogues, lively and dynamic, as if directly overheard in the city square, as well as the complete absence of love poems - the listeners of such tales, apparently, were not hunters of sentimental poetic outpourings. Both in content and in form, picaresque stories represent one of the most valuable parts of the collection.
In addition to the tales of the three categories mentioned above, the "Book of a Thousand and One Nights" includes a number of large works and a significant number of small anecdotes, undoubtedly borrowed by the compilers from various literary sources. These are huge chivalric novels: "The Tale of King Omar ibn al-Numan", "The Tale of Adjib and Garib", "The Tale of the Prince and the Seven Wazirs", "The Tale of Sinbad the Sailor" and some others. In the same way, instructive parables and stories got there, imbued with the idea of the frailty of earthly life (“The Tale of the Copper City”), instructive stories-questionnaires of the “Mirror” type (the story of the wise girl Tawaddud), anecdotes about famous Muslim Sufi mystics, etc. The little tales, as already mentioned, seem to have been added by the compilers to fill the required number of nights.
Fairy tales of one group or another, having been born in a certain social environment, naturally had the greatest distribution in this environment. The compilers and editors of the collection were well aware of this, as evidenced by the following note, rewritten in one of the later manuscripts of the Nights from an older original: “The narrator must tell in accordance with those who listen to him. If these are commoners, let him convey the stories from "A Thousand and One Nights" about ordinary people - these are stories at the beginning of the book (obviously, they mean fairy tales of the picaresque genre. - M.S.), and if these people belong to the rulers, then it is necessary to tell them stories about kings and battles between knights, and these stories are at the end of the book.
We find the same indication in the very text of the "Book" - in "The Tale of Seif-al-Muluk", which appeared in the collection, apparently, at a rather late stage of its evolution. It says that a certain storyteller, who alone knew this tale, yielding to persistent requests, agrees to let it be copied, but sets the following condition for the scribe: “Do not tell this tale at a crossroads or in the presence of women, slaves, slaves, fools and children. Read it from the emirs 1
Emir is a military leader, commander.
Kings, viziers and people of knowledge from the interpreters of the Qur'an and others.
In their homeland, the tales of Scheherazade have met with different attitudes in different social strata since ancient times. If fairy tales have always enjoyed great popularity among the broad masses of the people, then representatives of Muslim scholastic science and the clergy, guardians of the “purity” of the classical Arabic language, invariably spoke of them with undisguised contempt. Back in the 10th century, al-Nadim, speaking of the Thousand and One Nights, remarked disdainfully that it was written “liquidly and tediously.” A thousand years later, he also found followers who declared this collection an empty and harmful book and prophesied all sorts of troubles to its readers. Representatives of the advanced Arab intelligentsia look at the fairy tales of Shahrazade differently. Recognizing in full measure the great artistic, historical and literary value of this monument, the literary critics of the United Arab Republic and other Arab countries are studying it in depth and comprehensively.
The negative attitude towards the "Thousand and One Nights" of the reactionary Arab philologists of the 19th century was sadly reflected in the fate of its printed editions. A scientific critical text of the Nights does not yet exist; the first complete edition of the collection, published in Bulak, near Cairo, in 1835 and subsequently reprinted several times, reproduces the so-called "Egyptian" edition. In the Bulak text, the language of fairy tales underwent significant processing under the pen of an anonymous "learned" theologian; the editor sought to bring the text closer to the classical norms of literary speech. To a lesser extent, the activity of the processor is noticeable in the Calcutta edition published by the English scholar Macnathan in 1839-1842, although the Egyptian edition of the Nights is also presented there.
The Bulak and Calcutta editions form the basis of the existing translations of the Book of a Thousand and One Nights. The only exception is the incomplete French translation of Galland, mentioned above, carried out in the 18th century according to manuscript sources. As we have already said, Galland's translation served as the original for numerous translations into other languages and for more than a hundred years remained the only source of acquaintance with the Arabic tales of the Thousand and One Nights in Europe.
Among other translations of the “Book” into European languages, one should mention the English translation of part of the collection, made directly from the Arabic original by a well-known expert on the language and ethnography of medieval Egypt - William Lane. Lan's translation, despite its incompleteness, can be considered the best existing English translation for accuracy and conscientiousness, although its language is somewhat difficult and grandiloquent.
Another English translation, made in the late 80s of the last century by the famous traveler and ethnographer Richard Burton, pursued very specific goals, far from science. In his translation, Burton in every possible way emphasizes all the slightly obscene places in the original, choosing the harshest word, the most rude version, inventing unusual combinations of archaic and ultramodern words in the field of language.
Burton's tendencies were most clearly reflected in his notes. Along with valuable observations from the life of the Middle Eastern peoples, they contain a huge number of "anthropological" comments, verbosely explaining every obscene hint that comes across in the collection. By heaping up dirty anecdotes and details typical of the contemporary morals of jaded and idle European residents in Arab countries, Burton seeks to slander the entire Arab people and uses this to defend the whip and rifle policy he propagates.
The tendency to emphasize all the more or less frivolous features of the Arabic original is also characteristic of the French sixteen-volume translation of The Book of a Thousand and One Nights, completed in the early years of the 20th century by J. Mardrus.
Of the German translations of the Book, the latest and best is the six-volume translation by the well-known semitologist E. Liggman, first published in the late 1920s.
The history of studying the translations of The Book of a Thousand and One Nights in Russia can be described very briefly.
Before the Great October Revolution, there were no Russian translations directly from Arabic, although translations from Gallan began to appear already in the 60s of the 18th century. The best of them is the translation by J. Doppelmeier, published at the end of the 19th century.
Somewhat later, a translation by L. Shelgunova was published, made with abridgements from the English edition of Lan, and six years later an anonymous translation from the Mardrus edition appeared - the most complete collection of the Thousand and One Nights in Russian that existed at that time.
The translator and editor did their best to keep the translation close to the Arabic original both in terms of content and style. Only in cases where the exact transmission of the original was incompatible with the norms of Russian literary speech, this principle had to be abandoned. So, when translating poetry, it is impossible to preserve the rhyme, which is obligatory according to the rules of Arabic versification, which must be the same in the entire poem, only the external structure of the verse and rhythm are transmitted.
In destining these tales exclusively for adults, the translator remained faithful to the desire to show the Russian reader "The Book of a Thousand and One Nights" as it is, and while transmitting obscene passages from the original. In Arabian tales, as well as in the folklore of other peoples, things are naively called by their proper names, and most of the obscene, from our point of view, details are not invested with a pornographic meaning, all these details are more of a rude joke than deliberate obscenity.
In this edition, the translation edited by I. Yu. Krachkovsky is printed without significant changes, while maintaining the main setting for the closest possible closeness to the original. The language of translation is somewhat simplified - excessive literalisms are softened, in some places not immediately clear idiomatic expressions are deciphered.
M. Salier
The story of King Shahriyar and his brother
Glory to Allah, Lord of the worlds! Greetings and blessings to the lord of the messengers, our lord and master Muhammad! May Allah bless him and welcome him with blessings and greetings eternal, lasting until the Day of Judgment!
And after that, truly, the tales of the first generations became an edification for subsequent ones, so that a person could see what events happened to others, and learn, and that, delving into the traditions of past peoples and what happened to them, he refrained from sin Praise be to him who made the tales of the ancients a lesson for the nations of the future.
Such legends include the stories called "A Thousand and One Nights", and the sublime stories and parables contained in them.
They tell in the traditions of the peoples about what was, passed and long ago (and Allah is more knowledgeable in the unknown and wise and glorious, and most generous, and most gracious, and merciful), that in ancient times and past centuries and centuries was on the islands India and China king from the kings of the Sasana clan 2
The descendants of the semi-mythical king Sasan, or Sassanids, ruled Persia in the 3rd-7th centuries. The attribution of King Shahriyar to them is a poetic anachronism, of which there are many in “1001 Nights”.
Lord of the troops, guards, servants and servants. And he had two sons - one adult, the other young, and both were brave knights, but the elder surpassed the younger in valor. And he reigned in his country and rightly ruled over his subjects, and the inhabitants of his lands and kingdom fell in love with him, and his name was King Shahriyar; and his younger brother was called King Shahzeman, and he reigned in Persian Samarkand. Both of them stayed in their lands, and each of them in the kingdom was a just judge of his subjects for twenty years and lived in complete contentment and joy. This continued until the elder king wished to see his younger brother and ordered his vizier 3
The vizier is the first minister in the Arab Caliphate.
Go and bring him. The vizier carried out his order and went, and rode until he arrived safely in Samarkand. He went in to Shahzeman, conveyed his greetings and said that his brother yearned for him and wished him to visit him; and Shahzeman answered with consent and got ready for the journey. He ordered his tents to be brought out, camels, mules, servants and bodyguards to be equipped, and he appointed his vizier as ruler in the country, and he himself went to the lands of his brother. But when midnight came, he remembered one thing that he had forgotten in the palace, and returned and, entering the palace, saw that his wife was lying in bed, embracing a black slave from among his slaves.
