First Impressions of 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights

(Written by Tahlia Merrill Kirk, editor of Timeless Tales Magazine)

A few years ago, my husband Ron delighted me with the news that he had started reading Tales of 1,001 Nights (aka Arabian Nights) on his Kindle.

“This is great!” I squeed. “I’ve never read it, so you can tell me all about it as you go!”

I suppose I should be at least a tad embarrassed that I have zero desire to read the entirety of Arabian Nights, but have you seen the SIZE of it?! There are three volumes. All combined, they add up to a staggering 2600 pages. There isn’t even a Sparknotes available for it, that’s how big it is. So I ignore the mournful wails of my English degree--secondhand reading is good enough for me on this one.


It took him almost 5 years to get through it all (taking breaks to read other books, of course), but this week, he finally finished. Since I immediately knew that I wanted to turn this experience into a blog post, I made sure that Ron filled me in about all the interesting parts of the stories. I even had him send me relevant/funny quotes as he went.


I started writing this as one post, but there is too much to say, so we’re going to make a whole series out of it! Here are a few topics I want to cover (Let me know if there's something you really want me to discuss):

1. Which Translation Did Ron Read? (I promise it won't be as boring as it sounds)

2. Is Arabian Nights Sexist? 

3. Is Arabian Nights Sexy? 

4. How Does Aladdin Fit Into Arabian Nights?

5. Djinn and Their Kind (or not-so-kind...hehe)

6. Religion in Arabian Nights

7. The Arabian Nights Board Game

8. Doughnuts (Nope, won’t explain. Saving the best for last)


In the meantime, here’s a funny mini-tale to give you a taste of how great these stories are:

My master the sultan, here is my most remarkable experience during my time in office. I had ten thieves hanged, each on a gibbet of his own, and I told the guards to watch to see that nobody removed any of the corpses. The next day, when I came to look at them, I found two corpses hanging from the same gibbet.

‘Who has done this,’ I asked the guards, ‘and where is the gibbet belonging to this second corpse?’

They disclaimed any knowledge of the affair, but when I was about to have them flogged, they said: ‘We fell asleep last night, emir, and when we woke up we found that one of the corpses, together with its gibbet, had been stolen. We were afraid, and when we saw a passing peasant coming up towards us with his donkey, we seized him, killed him and hanged him on this gibbet in place of the corpse that had been removed.’

I was taken by surprise and asked them what the peasant had had with him. They told me that he had had a saddlebag on his donkey, and when I asked what was in it they said that they didn’t know.

‘Bring it to me,’ I told them, and when they did, I ordered them to open it. There inside it was the body of a murdered man cut into pieces. I was astonished at this sight and said to myself: ‘Glory be to God. The reason that this peasant was hanged was that he was guilty of murder, and God does not treat His servants unjustly.’

Malcolm C. Lyons. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volume 2 (The Arabian Nights or Tales from 1001 Nights) (pp. 107-108). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Caliph Stork by Wilhelm Hauff, Illustrated by Anton Lomaev

We discovered this gorgeous picture book just the other day and had to share the illustrations and this lesser-known fairy tale, The Story of Caliph Stork.

It may sound familiar as a version of the fairy tale was include in Andrew Lang's Green Fairy Book, but with such rich fodder for illustrators, and such a funny tale for storytellers to have fun with, it's surprising this isn't more well known.

The fairy tale actually has a distinct origin, written by German writer Wilhelm Hauff for his Märchen almanach auf das Jahr 1826 (Fairytale Almanac of 1826). (The Green Fairy Book retells story in chapters.)

Set in the nebulous 'Orient' (something the romantics were fascinated by, even though it was a fantasy) the plot could easily (today) be mistaken for something out of 1001 Nights. Source notes from one writer/storyteller, Aaron Shepard, who has won honors from the American Folklore Society, retold and published this tale (with very different, but also lovely illustrations by Alisher Dianov) tell us that despite it's German origin, that this tale is now told in the Middle East and has become part of their folklore!

Wow.

From Shepard's notes:

This tale—usually called “The Calif Stork” or “The Stork Calif”—is often classified as a folktale of Iraq; and folklorist Harold Courlander, who heard it twice from Muslim storytellers, believes it to be widely told in the Middle East. Yet its origin is The Caravan, a book of original fairy tales by nineteenth-century German writer Wilhelm Hauff. While folktales often make their way into written literature, in this case a written work has passed into folklore. My own retelling draws from both original and retold versions. 

The calif in this tale is patterned after Harun al-Rashid, made popular in the pages of The Thousand and One Nights.

The plot essentially goes :

The Caliph of Baghdad comes across a mysterious powder with an incantation on the bottle. It is said it can turn someone into any animal they wish. They must not, however, forget the incantation so they can turn back but above all, they must not laugh while as animals or they will be trapped in that form forever. Of course the Caliph (and his Vizier) become storks and get stuck. On a quest to find a cure, the encounter a large sad, owl, who tells them she is really the Princess of India, transformed by an evil imposter wizard, who now sits on the throne. They see an opportunity, via sneaky animal-eavesdropping and spy work, to become human again but there's a tricky clause in that one of them needs to promise his hand in marriage to the owl - without seeing what she looks like - otherwise the reversing will fail. All goes well and, of course, the princess is gorgeous, so the anxious Caliph is relieved.

If the illustration style of the images posted here, looks familiar it's because Anton Lomaev's illustrations for The Wild Swans have been circulating the internet constantly for about three years now, never failing to catch the eye (especially with all the golds and fire colors he includes in his images for that particular fairy tale. This one, however, is ultimately dominated by blues and mystery...

As an interesting tag to the tale, the sorcerer is sentenced to death while his son is given the choice of death or to smell the same black powder and become an animal forever. The son chooses the powder and becomes their pet, displayed in a cage in the garden for all to see. 

We love the last illustration in which the Caliph is making his children laugh by making fun of the Vizier when he was a stork. (And the Vizier is threatening to find that powder again as a result.)

And one day we will track down a physical copy of these lovely Lomaev illustrations (printed 2016) to put in the Fairy Tale Newsroom library!