Foreword
A Few Words About the Stories
Hildegarde Hawthorne
A good story belongs to the whole world. At that point East and West meet, no matter how different they may be in training, government, religion or habit of living.
The stories known as the Thousand and One Nights are very old. They are known to have existed in their present form as early as the Thirteenth Century, and many of them were told, quite possibly, as early as the Ninth. They followed naturally upon the half-spoken, half-chanted poems celebrating heroic deeds and reciting gallant adventures which the Arabs were accustomed to listen to from one of their number as they rested in the evening about their camp-- fire in the desert. They were handed down from one to another, since there were no books and both history and romance must live in man’s memory or else die. That man who had a genius for memorizing and for improvising was a great man in his tribe, and people would come from far away to hear one of these orators.
After the spoken word came the written word, as always. And so the Thousand and One Nights came finally to be written in the beautiful Arabic scrip, on fine pieces of parchment. Men still recited them, but they were usually readers then, who had memorized them. They altered them somewhat, and other collections were written, but on the whole the stories kept their form and it was always Scheherazade, or Shirazad as it is often spelled, who told them to save her life from the unjust decree of the sultan whom she had married. The stories originally numbered about 250, split up into the thousand and one parts in which the sultaness told them, but since that first definite collection other tales have been added and there have been some changes, not very important.
Europe first came to know the stories in 1704–1712, when Antoine Galland, a Frenchman, published a translation in twelve volumes. They had a great success among the rather restricted public who could get hold of the books, and gradually their fame spread. In 1811 a certain Jonathan Scott brought out a partial translation in English, which did not become generally known, and in 1840 E. W. Lane, the scholar and writer, brought out his edition, not complete, as he omitted parts of many stories and some entire tales, but still a careful and accurate work. From then on the Arabian Nights kept increasing in popularity. Since then it has gone into more countries and is known more generally the whole world over than any other book except the Bible, and the stories have become part of the literature of every land that has one. Aladdin’s palace, and its unfinished window, the magic words “Open Sesame,” Ali Baba himself, these are as familiar to you as they are to a merchant of Bagdad or an Arab of the desert, as they are to a child in Italy or France. Scheherazade is as well known as the Sleeping Beauty and more so, and so is Sinbad the Sailor.
When you read the stories you must remember that they were told by a race and in a time far removed from our own. They come from a different world than any we know, with manners and beliefs quite removed from any we possess.
The people who told them believed quite simply that besides the human beings and animals and birds of the natural world there were other and magic creatures who mixed themselves up in the affairs of men, helping or hindering as they chose. They also believed in charms and talismen, in sorcerers and magicians. The genii were usually wicked and dangerous, the peris always kind and good, and there were good and bad fairies. These fairies are quite different from those of Western fancy, however, not tiny creatures but persons with the appearance of men and women, capable of vanishing and of changing themselves into what form they chose. The genii might be controlled if you found the proper charm or talisman, but the fairies and the peris were too clever for that. All these strange beings, with talking birds and animals, are to be found in the tales.
Justice and good government as we think of them did not exist. The caliph was a tyrant with unlimited power, the officials under him ruled by graft and fear, if they were bad, and they usually were. A good vizier or imaun could not depend upon being safe because he was good. His caliph could have him executed for a whim no matter how good he might be. So the main business was to please the caliph.
The beggars were legion. Some of them were religious brotherhoods, like the dervishes and the calenders, others just plain beggars. The people were cruel, and used to seeing death and torture. Beatings were a popular form of punishment, executions were public. Hands were cut off for trifling offences, and heads for those not much more serious. All these things are reflected in the stories. Everything was in extremes, there was the most marvellous luxury side by side with the most terrible poverty, slaves were common, pirates and robbers abounded. It was a wild world, where any adventure might be waiting around the corner. The women were kept secluded, but they managed to get out more or less, or to circumvent their masters in one way or another, and some of them had a quite amazing amount of freedom, if they were rich and widowed, or powerful in their connections.
Of course very little was known of the outside world, and so all sorts of things were imagined about it. Valleys strewn with diamonds, islands where queer people and queerer animals were found, fantastic birds and serpents, giants, dwarfs and what not, lay in wait for the bold traveler who left Bagdad and set out to see for himself. It was a highly colored life, and it lost nothing in the tales men told of it.
Only a very few of the stories are contained in this book, but they are among the most famous. You will find the English a little quaint, not just what is used to tell a story today, but not enough so to be a bother. As you read you must fancy that it is Scheherazade who is speaking, in her low and musical voice, while her slave girl lies at her feet and the sultan sits beside her on the rich couch with its Eastern hangings. Remember that she is telling each story to save her life, and the lives of the many maidens who would follow her to death if she should fail to hold the interest of her husband. She breaks off as day comes, and always she tries to do this at a point that will make him anxious to hear more. It is she who invented the continued story. Through the tall, narrow windows, with their arched tops, veiled with silken curtains, the sun at length pierces, and at that signal she must stop—safe, she hopes, for another day.
And now I will stop, and let you get to the tales themselves.
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