One Thousand and One Nights

This overarching tale includes “The Tale of the First Dervish,” “The Tale of the Second Dervish,” “The Tale of the Third Dervish,” “The Tale of the First Girl,” and “The Tale of the Second Girl.”

The tale beings with a young Baghdadi bachelor who works as a porter. One day, a beautiful young woman leads him into “a magnificent, lofty house” (244). There, he meets two other beautiful young women. When he requests to stay with them, noting that “women cannot be truly happy without men” (246), the girls invite him in. They feast and drink wine, and the young women take turns seducing him. When the night comes and the women ask the porter to leave, he begs them to stay until the next day. They agree on one condition: “[Y]ou obey us strictly and ask no questions about anything you see” (249).

After this, three wandering dervishes join the group. The dervishes are all without a left eye and seek shelter at the house. The young women agree on the same condition, that they do not “speak of that which does not concern them” (251). Soon, three men join them: the Abbasid caliph Haroun al-Rashid, his Vizier Ja’afar, and his executioner Masrur, who have disguised themselves and are wandering the city of Baghdad. They also agree not to speak of that which does not concern them.

They are all put to the test when one of the women reminds the others that they must fulfill their duty. One of the women brings forth two dogs and the other woman proceeds to beat them. After this, one of the women orders the other to play the lute while another wails, beats her breast, and faints, revealing “the marks of lashing” (254). The sight deeply disturbs the men, who resolve to question the young women. When they do so, the women admonish them for breaking their oath and have them chained to one another, demanding: “[E]ach of you will now tell us the true story of his life. You have but one hour to live” (257). They free the porter, but he refuses to go until he hears the others’ stories, and so the first dervish launches into his tale.

The first dervish loses his left eye when his father’s vizier takes over his kingdom. Fleeing to his uncle’s kingdom, he finds out that his cousin has been in love with and in a forbidden relationship with his half-sister. For this crime, both are turned to cinders. After this, he finds out that his father’s vizier has come for the kingdom of his uncle, so he disguises himself as a dervish and flees to Baghdad. He is freed after he relates his tale, but like the porter, he refuses to go until he hears his companions’ stories. 

The second dervish was a learned prince whose caravan was robbed on the way to India by “a mounted band of Arab highwaymen” (264). He is forced to work for a living and, while working, he comes across a hidden palace with an imprisoned princess. When the jinnee holding her hostage learns of their affair, he kills the woman and turns the dervish into an ape. As an ape, he is adopted by the captain of a ship and comes to serve the king of an unidentified city. The king’s daughter, a powerful sorceress, recognizes that the ape is a man and tries to free him. In doing so, she battles the jinnee fiercely. She wins but dies, saying: “Fate enabled me to burn him before I was burnt myself” (276). The dervish, now a man, is told by the king to leave in peace, so he comes to Baghdad. He is freed after he relates his tale, but like the porter, he refuses to go until he hears his companions’ stories. 

The third dervish, also a prince, embarks on a sea journey and shipwrecks on Magnetic Mountain. On the mountain, he is given a task to complete to earn his escape. He completes the task but makes a misstep during his rescue, so he is “thrown into the sea” (281) and ends up on another island. On this island, he meets and befriends another youth, learns that he is prophesied to kill him, and then accidentally kills him and fulfills this prophesy. After wandering, he comes upon a palace and a group of one-eyed men who welcome him. The men direct the dervish to “ask no questions about our lost eyes or anything you may see us do” (284). When he does just this, they task him with a supernatural test. He fails and is exiled from the palace, after which he comes to Baghdad. He is also freed after he relates his tale, but like the others, he refuses to go until he hears his companions’ stories.

After the Vizier tells an invented tale for his party, the women free them all. The next morning, the caliph orders that all the parties be brought to him. Once they assemble, the first girl tells her story.

She relates that she and the two other young women are sisters through her father. The two dogs are, however, her full sisters. After their multiple husbands squander their dowries, her full sisters come to live with her. Because she longed to “travel abroad in quest of profit and amusement” (290), she takes her sisters on a sea voyage. On one island, she encounters a beautiful palace and a handsome prince whose entire kingdom has been petrified. She convinces the prince to return to Baghdad with her, and the two fall in love. On their return voyage to Baghdad, her jealous sisters cast them both into the ocean, killing the prince. The young woman survives and intervenes to save a jinniyah, a female spirit, who rewards her by turning her sisters into dogs and tasking her with beating them daily with the caveat: “I shall come back and change you into the same shape” (295), if they do not abide.

The second girl is widowed young and approached by an old woman who tricks her into marrying “a young man of such beauty that [she] felt [her] heart leap on seeing him” (297). The youth makes her swear that she will never love anyone but him, and she promises this happily. However, the old woman tricks her into a situation which leads her husband to believe that she has been unfaithful. He orders her death, but the old woman intervenes, and the youth decides that “she must bear upon her body the marks of shame until her dying day” (299), flogging her. Abandoned, she seeks out her two half-sisters. She notes that the three have lived together ever since, “never allowing the thought of marriage to cross [their] minds again” (301).

After hearing their stories, the caliph has them recorded and calls for the jinniyah that spelled the two sisters into dogs. The caliph has her restore the women and promises to find the husband who wronged the second girl. This ends up being his son, Al-Amin. The caliph reunites them, marries three of the sisters to the dervishes, and marries the third sister himself.

This tale is about Khalifah, a poor fisherman living in Baghdad. While fishing one morning, Khalifah catches three talking apes. One of the apes advises Khalifah to go to the marketplace and find Abu Sa’adah, a Jewish money-changer, and exchange one exquisite fish for the ape. The ape promises Khalifah that he will enrich him, and indeed, after he negotiates this exchange, he begins to earn more money.

Fearing that his newfound fortune may be stolen, he takes it with him and manages to lose it as well as his clothes. While he is struggling, he chances upon the caliph, Haroun Al-Rashid. The caliph, hunting to forget his obsession with his favorite concubine Kut-al-Kulub, is mistaken by Khalifah for an ordinary man and recruited to work as his apprentice. The caliph decides to play a prank on Khalifah and play along, tasking all his slaves with buying Khalifa’s fish. In the meanwhile, the caliph’s jealous wife, Lady Zubaidah, drugs and sells Kut-al-Kulub at the marketplace by placing her in a chest. Khalifah buys the chest and, upon opening it, finds Kut-al-Kulub in it. She advises Khalifah to return her to the caliph and on how to behave in his presence so that he may win his favor. He succeeds in doing this, and the caliph “bestowed upon him a generous reward, giving him fifty thousand dinars, a magnificent robe of honour, a noble mare, and slaves from the Sudan” (326).

This is a tale about a wealthy Baghdadi merchant who squanders his fortune and is forced into hard labor. In his dream one night, he hears a voice advising: “Your fortune lies in Cairo. Go and seek it there” (328). Once he arrives in Cairo, he is unable to pay for lodging and sleeps in the courtyard of a mosque. Mistaken for a thief, the police beat and arrest him. When he relates his story to the Chief of Police, he faces ridicule. The chief tells him that he too dreams of a voice telling him: “Go to Baghdad, and in a cobbled street lined with palm-trees you will find […] a great sum of money lies buried. Go there and dig it up” (329). Obviously, he says, he did not go. He admonishes the merchant for chasing “one idle dream” (329) and gives him money to get back to Baghdad. The merchant, however, immediately recognizes the house described by the chief and, upon his return to Baghdad, digs up the treasure.

This is a tale about Judar and his two older brothers, Salem and Seleem. After their father, a wealthy merchant, passes away, the brothers drag Judar and their mother through court to secure as much of the inheritance as possible. This brings Judar and his mother to poverty, but he manages to make enough money to improve their lot. His mother even feeds Salem and Seleem, who squander all their money. When Judar finds out, he reconciles with and warmly invites his brothers into his home.

As the breadwinner, he goes to fish regularly. One day, he comes across a man who promises him money if he throws him into the lake to see if he would survive. If not, he asks Judar to deliver the news to a Jewish merchant who will reward him for this. The man dies, and upon delivering the news, Judar receives 100 dinars. The next day, the drowned man’s brother approaches Judar and asks him to do the same, and so Judar receives another 100 dinars. Judar remarks, “May Allah send me a Moor each day to drown, that I may earn a hundred pieces of gold!” (336).

On the third day, he is approached by yet another brother, Abdul Samad, but this one survives being thrown into the lake. He tells Judar that he and his brothers are sorcerers and that they all sought a powerful book called The Lore of the Ancients. The sorcerer tells Judar that only he can open the treasure where the book lies and enlists his help. Judar succeeds in this quest and asks the sorcerer for a magic saddle-bag, which produces food upon request, as his reward. The sorcerer gives him that and more and sends him back to Egypt with an escort.

Judar and his mother can live well with the help of the bag. Judar tells his mother to hide the bag, but she divulges its secrets to Salem and Seleem. The two brothers hatch a plot to sell Judar to the chief captain of Suez, under whom he spends a year as a galley-slave. In the meanwhile, his brothers abuse their mother and fight over the bag. Their fight is overhead by an officer working for the King of Egypt who passes the story on to the king. He throws the brothers into prison and gives their mother an allowance.

Shipwrecked, Judar seeks reprieve with Bedouins, who take him to pilgrimage to Mecca. In Mecca, Judar meets his old sorcerer friend, Abdul Samad, who shelters him, divines the status of his family, and gives him a magic ring holding a jinnee. The jinnee returns Judar to Egypt, where he finds his mother and frees his brothers from prison, pardoning them for their treachery yet again.

Judar decides to revenge his family and punish the King of Egypt by taking his entire treasury. After his jinnee does this, he has him build a magnificent palace for the family. The king comes to fear Judar, but they eventually make peace, and Judar marries his daughter. After the king dies, Judar inherits the throne. Although he appoints his brothers as viziers, they long for more power and poison Judar. Salem takes his ring and kills Seleem, taking the throne and purporting to marry Judar’s widow. She poisons Salem and “took the ring and broke it to pieces, so that none should ever use it. She also tore the magic bag” (371). She then organizes the selection of a new king.

This tale is about a poor Cairene cobbler named Ma’aruf who is married to an abusive wife. A jinnee hears his cries and vows to “take [him] to a land where [his] wife shall never find [him]” (376). The jinnee sets him down in a place named Ikhtiyan-al-Khatan. In this town, he meets an old acquaintance from Cairo named Ali who teaches Ma’aruf how to get a start in business by lying: “Where candour fails, cunning thrives” (379). He and Ma’aruf pretend that the cobbler is a rich man waiting on his massive caravan to arrive, but Ma’aruf begins to peddle this story and exaggerate to such an extent that even Ali is shocked. He even begins to accrue massive loans to the city’s merchants but refuses to back down from the story about his mythical caravan.

Eventually, this story reaches the king. Ma’aruf manages to sell him on his story as well and secure marriage to the king’s daughter. Ma’aruf eventually admits his big lie to the princess, who tells him: “[Y]ou are a subtle rogue!” (385), but she stays with him and helps him flee.

After fleeing, Ma’aruf comes across a poor peasant and helps him with his work because the peasant kindly offers to share his food with him. While plowing, Ma’aruf discovers a secret underground chamber and finds within it a ring with a jinnee. He uses the jinnee to return to Ikhtiyan-al-Khatan and finally produce his fabled caravan.

While dining with the king and his jealous vizier one night, Ma’aruf gets drunk and tells them the whole story. When they ask to see his ring, “[w]ithout a moment’s thought the foolish cobbler slipped the ring from his finger and handed it to the Vizier” (400). The Vizier uses the ring to banish Ma’aruf and the king. When he attempts to take the princess, she manages to seduce and trick him into taking off the ring. Donning the ring, she tells the jinnee to throw the Vizier in a dungeon and restore her husband and father.

When the king tries to recover the ring, however, the Princess says: “The ring shall stay on my finger. I myself will look after it in future” (402). The two have a child and the young prince eventually saves his father from his first abusive wife.

In the Epilogue, Shahrazad finishes her stories. We find out that she has been telling them for a thousand and one nights, and in that while, she had borne three sons. She asks Shahriyar not to kill her for the sake of her sons, and Shahriyar tells her that she was loved even before she bore children: “[B]ecause I found you chaste and tender, wise and eloquent” (405). He notes that “repentance has come to [him] through her” (406), and the two live happily until their death.