Read Online Eastern Dreams by Paul Nurse - Free Book Online Page B

Similar echoes can be heard in the troubled backstory of Ahasuerus and his first queen, Vashti (deposed and executed for an act of disobedience, whereupon a succession of virgins are brought before the king so he might choose a successor), and the motif of night recital is found in Esther 6:1 when Ahasuerus, suffering from sleeplessness, commands that the Persian “Book of Chronicles” be brought before him and read aloud to pass the time.
    Even the
Nights
’ most famous device, the concept of a frame tale through which other stories are presented, appears as a vehicle in other cultures. In the
Nights
, it is the method whereby Scheherazade saves her life. In
The Odyssey
, Odysseus relates his adventures to King Alcinous while residing at the latter’s court. In the
Canterbury Tales
it is a group of pilgrims, travelling through England to the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket, who exchange stories with one another en route; in the
Decameron
, a number of people escaping the plague by fleeing into the Italian countryside do likewise. The
Arabian Nights
contains a unique difference, however. While these other characters tell stories for diversion or explanation, Scheherazade lives under perpetual threat as she plays an intellectual cat-and-mouse game with the sultan’s rage, trying tobreak the circle of marriage and death destroying her world. Should she fail, the deadly cycle will continue unabated. This makes her recitations not merely the framework whereby other tales are hung, but itself the most important story in the book; it is the story necessary for life to continue.
    Scheherazade herself is a figure of mystery, since her origins are not readily apparent. Her phonetically accurate name,
Shahrazad
, is Persian, meaning “City Freer” (likewise, “Dunyazad”—Dinarzade—means “World Freer”), and from references in al-Masudi and Ibn al-Nadim, it is likely her story appeared in some form in
Hazar Afsanah
. Some believe Scheherazade has her precedent in the Indian legend of
Kanakamanjari
, the tale of a woman who maintains her king’s love for half a year by telling him stories every night, but only concluding them on the following evening. This makes literary sense, as
Hazar Afsanah
is known to have contained Indian stories, perhaps based on recycled Jataka tales of the Buddha or the Hindu
Hitopadesha
, a collection of Sanskrit fables.
    But there is also a reference to a similar storytelling persona in Greek Byzantium, which had a tradition of reciting fantastical “evening stories” about romantic histories, fables, and proverbs as an enjoyable diversion from the humdrum cares of the daylight hours. The titles of a number of these tales are included in al-Nadim’s work, including one called “Shatariyus the King, and the Reason for his Marrying Shahrazad the Storyteller.” The complication does not end there, since there is one
Nights
story (“The Tale of the Two Kings and the Vizier’s Daughters”) in which Scheherazade actually tells her own tale and that of the sultan, but this time set in China, with the king’s brother Shazaman ruling part of Persia. All this leaves Scheherazade’s origins as alluringly mysterious as her character, and also indicates that the story of a king and a tale-spinning woman was not exclusive to the Muslim world during the first millennium.
    So an innate truth about
The Thousand and One Nights
is that this personification of Middle Eastern literature—the most famous Arabic storybook in the world—is actually an international compendium of tales culled from India, Persia, Arabia, Ottoman Turkey and Egypt, probably infused as well with stories surviving from Hebrew, Greek and perhaps even Roman sources. Parented by multinational sires and a Muslim mother—literally, in Scheherazade’s case—the
Nights
may owe at least part of its longevity to its development at a time and a