A Thousand and One Nights

OR HOW THE EUROPEANS CREATED ARAB HATE!

A Thousand and One Nights

La ricotta. 1962-63. Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art.

1. Name the King of Samarkand who discovered his wife’s treachery.

2. King Shahriyar caught his wife in what kind of act?3. The jinnee’s girl threatened the King brothers that

she will wake the sleeping jinnee if they don’t do what?

4. After the encounter with the jinnee and the girl by the sea, what did King Shahriyar do to his wife?

5. Who’s the messianic daughter of the Vizier that took up the mission of saving the virgins of her land?

QUIZ

6. In the tale, The Young Woman and her Five Lovers, name at least one man who fell in lover to her.

7. Where did the young woman hide her suitors?8. Who is the famous sailor that lost all of his men in

one sea trip?9. Who among the sailor’s companions stranded in

the island did the monster eat first?10. What economic activity fuelled finance for the

sailors?

QUIZ

OBJECTIVES

How does one represent other cultures?

What is another culture?

Is the notion of a distinct culture (or race, or religion, or civilization) a useful one, or does it always get involved either in self-congratulation (when one discusses one's own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the 'other')?

Baghdad (Iraq), Basra (Iraq), Cairo (Egypt)

CONTEXT

• The tales were literary achievements of the Abbasid Caliphate during the leadership of Harun Al-Rashid. •The Abbasides or "Black Flags," as they were commonly called, are known in Tang dynasty chronicles as the hēiyī Dàshí, (The Black-robed Arabs).•Al-Rashid sent embassies to the Chinese Tang dynasty and established good relations with them.• In virtually every field of endeavor —in astronomy, alchemy, mathematics, medicine, optics and so forth— Arab scientists were in the forefront of scientific advance.

CONTEXT

The philosophy of ijtihad was the common ground for a debate. It is an Islamic legal term that means “independent reasoning” or “the utmost effort an individual can put forth in an activity.”

CONTEXT

During this period (also known as the Islamic Golden Age, 720-1258 AD), the Muslim world became an intellectual center for science, philosophy, medicine and education as the Abbasids championed the cause of knowledge and established the House of Wisdom in Baghdad; where both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars sought to translate and gather all the world's knowledge into Arabic.

CONTEXT

Many classic works of antiquity that would otherwise have been lost were translated into Arabic and Persian and later in turn translated into Turkish, Hebrew and Latin. During this period the Muslim world was a cauldron of cultures which collected, synthesized and significantly advanced the knowledge gained from the ancient Roman, Chinese, Indian, Persian, Egyptian, North African, Greek and Byzantine civilizations.

A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

In Arabian, it is read as Alf Layla wa Layla or literally, “A Thousand Nights and a Night.”

It took form in the 10th century and reached its final form by 14th century (medieval period in Europe).


Tales from the Arabian Nights, or to give it the original title, The Thousand and One Nights, is a collection of stories from Persia, Arabia, India, and Egypt which were brought together over hundreds of years. The names of the actual authors of the stories are lost in the mists of time as these stories were handed down orally from generation to generation. An early fragment of the collection has been found which dates from around 800 AD, but the collection grew after that until it reached its final form around 1500. At this point, the stories were in Arabic but a French translation appeared in 1717 and two English translations in the 1800s, the second by the well-known explorer and Arabist, Sir Richard Burton.


Differences in translations suppressed the material especially on the usage of explicit language. (EDUCATION AND PLEASURE FUNCTION)

Tales from the Arabian Nights is an example of a frame story, in which a number of stories are told within the context, or ‘frame’, of an ongoing story.

There are several other well-known examples of frame stories. In Italy, there is the Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio. Chaucer was influenced by Boccaccio is writing his Canterbury Tales, completed in 1400 AD, which contains 22 stories told by a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral.


Prologue narrates the background of the whole collection (which is presumably epic in scale).

The Fable of the Donkey, the Ox, and the Farmer tells in a metaphorical manner, the mission of Shahrazad.

The Young Woman and Her Five Lovers narrates the strength of a woman’s love.

Third Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor narrates the sailor’s Odyssey-like adventure meeting his dangerous foe, the cannibal giant who eats up most of his companions at sea, and eventually escaping from the giants.

I will flash a series of pictures. You have to pitch in words that come to your mind.

ACTIVITY

From Raiders of the Lost Ark movie

?BIG QUESTION

What do your words say about the Arab world and its people?

HOW WAS THE ORIENT REPRESENTED?

“The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.”

- Edward Said (From Orientalism, in The Edward Said Reader,67)

HOW WAS THE ORIENT REPRESENTED?

“Ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied.”

- Edward Said (From Orientalism, 1978)

ORIENT

The Orient signifies a system of representations framed by political forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and Western empire. The Orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and alien (‘Other‘) to the West.

ORIENTAL

The Oriental is the person represented by the thinking of Orientalism. The man is depicted as feminine, weak, yet strangely dangerous because his sexuality poses a threat to white, Western women. The woman is both eager to be dominated and strikingly exotic. The Oriental is a single image, a sweeping generalization, and a stereotype that crosses countless cultural and national boundaries.


FORM INTO YOUR MIDTERM GROUPS AND DISCUSS WHAT SCENES/INSTANCES IN THE THREE TALES DO YOU SEE THE VESTIGES/REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ORIENTAL.


AFTERWARDS, WRITE YOUR GROUP’S OBSERVATIONS IN A YELLOW PADE LIKE

THIS EXAMPLE:1. The women are represented with mystical

beauty. (Do not plagiarize me. I will deduct points if you do.)

“While Shazaman sat at one of the windows overlooking the king’s garden, he saw a door open in the palace, through which came twenty slave girls and twenty Negroes…” (Quote the whole passage; write page number in parenthesis.)

Documents

A Thousand and One Nights