What do you know about the Arabian Nights fairy tales? Most are content with the well-known stereotype: this is the famous Arab fairy tale about the beautiful Scheherazade, who became a hostage of King Shahriyar. The eloquent girl befuddled the king and thereby bought herself freedom. It's time to find out the bitter (or rather, salty) truth.
And of course, among her stories were stories about Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and other brave men, but it turned out that all this was complete nonsense.
Fairy tales have come to us after many centuries of censorship and translation, so there is little left of the original. In fact, the heroes of Scheherazade's fairy tales were not as sweet, kind and morally stable as the characters in the Disney cartoon. So if you want to save good memory about your favorite childhood characters, stop reading immediately. For everyone else, welcome to a world you may never have known existed. The first documented information describing the story of Scheherazade as a well-known work comes from the pen of the 10th century historian al-Masudi. Subsequently, the collection was rewritten and modified more than once depending on the time of life and the language of the translator, but the core remained the same, so if not the original story, then very close to the original, has reached us.
It begins, oddly enough, not with the tears of a young beauty about to say goodbye to life, but with two brothers, each of whom ruled their own country. After twenty years of separate rule, the elder brother, whose name was Shahriyar, invited the younger brother, Shahzeman, to his domain. He agreed without thinking twice, but as soon as he left the capital, he “remembered one thing” that he had forgotten in the city. Upon his return, he found his wife in the arms of a black slave.
Angry, the king hacked them both to death, and then with a clear conscience went to his brother. While visiting, he became sad because his wife was no longer alive, and he stopped eating. Although his elder brother tried to cheer him up, it was all to no avail. Then Shahriyar suggested going hunting, but Shahzeman refused, continuing to sink into depression. So, sitting by the window and indulging in black melancholy, the unfortunate king saw how the wife of his absent brother had an orgy with slaves at the fountain. The king immediately cheered up and thought: “Wow, my brother will have more serious problems.”
Shahryar returned from hunting, finding his brother with a smile on his face. There was no need to question him for long; he immediately told everything frankly. The reaction was unusual. Instead of acting like the younger brother, the older brother suggested going on a trip and seeing if other husbands’ wives cheated on them. 
They were unlucky, and their wanderings dragged on: they could not find their unfaithful wives until they came across an oasis located on the seashore. A genie emerged from the depths of the sea with a chest under his arm. He pulled out a woman (a real one) from the chest and said: “I want to sleep on you,” and so he fell asleep. This woman, seeing the kings hiding on the palm tree, ordered them to go down and take possession of it right there on the sand. Otherwise, she would have awakened the genie, and he would have killed them.
The kings agreed and fulfilled her wish. After the act of love, the woman asked each of them for rings. They gave it away, and she added the jewelry to the other five hundred and seventy (!) that were kept in her casket. So that the brothers would not languish in guesswork, the seductress explained that all the rings once belonged to men who took possession of her secretly from the genie. The brothers looked at each other and said: “Wow, this genie will have more serious problems than ours,” and returned to their countries. After that, Shahriyar cut off the head of his wife and all the “accomplices,” and he himself decided to take one girl per night. 
Nowadays, this story may seem chauvinistic, but it is much more reminiscent of a script for a film for adults. Think for yourself: no matter what the heroes do, no matter where they go, they either have to watch the act of intercourse or participate in it. Similar scenes are repeated more than once throughout the book. What's there, younger sister Scheherazade personally observed the wedding night of her relative: “And the king then sent for Dunyazade, and she came to her sister, hugged her and sat on the floor near the bed. And then Shahriyar took possession of Shahrazade, and then they began to talk.”
Other distinguishing feature tales of a thousand and one nights is that their heroes act absolutely without reason, and often the events themselves look extremely ridiculous. This is how, for example, the tale of the first night begins. One day a merchant went to some country to collect debts. He felt hot and sat down under a tree to eat dates and bread. “Having eaten a date, he threw the stone - and suddenly he sees: in front of him is an ifrit tall, and in his hands he has a naked sword. Ifrit approached the merchant and said to him: “Get up, I will kill you, like you killed my son!” - “How did I kill your son?” - asked the merchant. And the ifrit replied: “When you ate the date and threw the stone, it hit my son in the chest, and he died at that very moment.” Just think about it: the merchant killed the genie with a date stone. If only the enemies of Disney's Aladdin knew about this secret weapon. 
In our folk tale There are also a lot of absurdities like: “The mouse ran, waved its tail, the pot fell, the testicles broke,” but you definitely won’t meet such crazy characters as in the story of the fifth night. It tells the story of King al-Sinbad, who long years trained a falcon to help him hunt. And then one day the king, together with his retinue, caught a gazelle, and then the devil pulled him to say: “Anyone whose head the gazelle jumps over will be killed.” The gazelle, naturally, jumped over the king's head. Then the subjects began to whisper: why did the owner promise to kill everyone whose head a gazelle jumps over, but he still hasn’t committed suicide? Instead of doing what he promised, the king chased the gazelle, killed it and hung the carcass on the croup of his horse.
Getting ready to rest after the chase, the king came across a source of life-giving moisture dripping from a tree. Three times he filled the cup, and three times the falcon knocked it over. Then the king got angry and cut off the falcon’s wings, and he pointed his beak upward, where a baby echidna was sitting on the branches of a tree, emitting poison. It’s hard to say what the moral of this story is, but the character who told it in the book said that it was a parable about envy. 
Of course, it is stupid to demand a coherent dramatic line from a book that is at least 11 centuries old. That is why the purpose of the above-described persiflage was not to rudely ridicule it, but to show that it can be an excellent bedtime reading that will definitely make anyone laugh modern man. The tales of the Arabian Nights are a product of time, which, having passed through the centuries, unwittingly turned into a comedy, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Despite the wide popularity of this historical monument, there are incredibly few film adaptations of it, and those that exist usually show the famous Aladdin or Sinbad the Sailor. However, the most striking film version of the fairy tales was the French film of the same name. It does not retell all the plots of the book, but presents a bright and absurd story that is worthy of Monty Python films and at the same time corresponds to the crazy spirit of fairy tales.
For example, Shahriyar in the film is a king who dreams of simultaneously growing roses, writing poetry and touring in a traveling circus. The vizier is an old pervert, so worried about the king's absent-mindedness that he himself goes to bed with his wife so that he understands how flighty women are. And Scheherazade is an extravagant girl who offers to give birth to her child to everyone she meets. By the way, she is played by the young and beautiful Catherine Zeta-Jones, who appears naked before the audience more than once throughout the film. We've listed at least four reasons why you should watch this movie. Surely after this you will want to read the book “A Thousand and One Nights” even more. 
Almost two and a half centuries have passed since Europe first became acquainted with the Arabian tales of the Arabian Nights in Galland's free and far from complete French translation, but even now they enjoy the constant love of readers. The passage of time did not affect the popularity of Shahrazad's stories; Along with countless reprints and secondary translations from Galland’s publication, publications of “Nights” appear again and again in many languages of the world, translated directly from the original, to this day. The influence of “The Arabian Nights” on the work of various writers was great - Montesquieu, Wieland, Hauff, Tennyson, Dickens. Pushkin also admired Arabic tales. Having first become acquainted with some of them in Senkovsky’s free adaptation, he became so interested in them that he purchased one of the editions of Galland’s translation, which was preserved in his library.
It’s hard to say what attracts more in the tales of “A Thousand and One Nights” - the entertaining plot, the bizarre interweaving of the fantastic and the real, bright pictures urban life of the medieval Arab East, fascinating descriptions amazing countries or the liveliness and depth of experiences of the heroes of fairy tales, the psychological justification of situations, a clear, definite morality. The language of many of the stories is magnificent - lively, imaginative, rich, devoid of circumlocutions and omissions. Speech of heroes best fairy tales“Nights” is clearly individual, each of them has their own style and vocabulary, characteristic of the social environment from which they came.
What is “The Book of a Thousand and One Nights”, how and when was it created, where were Shahrazad’s tales born?
“A Thousand and One Nights” is not the work of an individual author or compiler - the entire Arab people is a collective creator. As we now know it, “A Thousand and One Nights” is a collection of tales in Arabic, united by a framing story about the cruel king Shahriyar, who took for himself every evening new wife and in the morning he killed her. The history of the Arabian Nights is still far from clear; its origins are lost in the depths of centuries.
The first written information about the Arabic collection of fairy tales, framed by the story of Shahryar and Shahrazad and called “A Thousand Nights” or “One Thousand and One Nights,” we find in the works of Baghdad writers of the 10th century - the historian al-Masudi and the bibliographer an-Nadim, who talk about it how long ago and good famous work. Already at that time, information about the origin of this book was quite vague and it was considered a translation of the Persian collection of fairy tales “Khezar-Efsane” (“A Thousand Tales”), allegedly compiled for Humai, the daughter of the Iranian king Ardeshir (IV century BC). The content and nature of the Arabic collection mentioned by Masudi and an-Nadim are unknown to us, since it has not survived to this day.
The evidence of the named writers about the existence in their time of the Arabic book of fairy tales “One Thousand and One Nights” is confirmed by the presence of an excerpt from this book dating back to the 9th century.
Subsequently, the literary evolution of the collection continued until the 14th–15th centuries. More and more fairy tales of different genres and different types were put into the convenient frame of the collection. social origin. We can judge the process of creating such fabulous collections from the message of the same an-Nadim, who says that his elder contemporary, a certain Abd-Allah al-Jahshiyari - a personality, by the way, is quite real - decided to compile a book of thousands of tales of the “Arabs, Persians, Greeks and other peoples,” one per night, each containing fifty sheets, but he died after having collected only four hundred and eighty stories. He took material mainly from professional storytellers, whom he called from all over the caliphate, as well as from written sources.
Al-Jahshiyari’s collection has not reached us, and other fairy-tale collections called “One Thousand and One Nights,” which were sparingly mentioned by medieval Arab writers, have also not survived. These collections of fairy tales apparently differed from each other in composition; they only had in common the title and the frame fairy tale.
In the course of creating such collections, several successive stages can be outlined.
The first suppliers of material for them were professional folk storytellers, whose stories were initially recorded from dictation with almost stenographic accuracy, without any literary processing. A large number of such stories in Arabic, written in Hebrew letters, are kept in the State Public library named after Saltykov-Shchedrin in Leningrad; ancient lists date back to the 11th–12th centuries. Subsequently, these records went to booksellers, who subjected the text of the tale to some literary processing. Each fairy tale was considered at this stage not as component collection, but as a completely independent work; therefore, in the original versions of the tales that have reached us, later included in the “Book of One Thousand and One Nights,” there is still no division into nights. The breakdown of the text of the fairy tales took place at the last stage of their processing, when they fell into the hands of the compiler who compiled the next collection of “A Thousand and One Nights”. In the absence of material for the required number of “nights,” the compiler replenished it from written sources, borrowing from there not only short stories and anecdotes, but also long knightly romances.
The last such compiler was that unknown-named learned sheikh, who compiled the most recent collection of tales of the Arabian Nights in Egypt in the 18th century. Fairy tales also received the most significant literary treatment in Egypt, two or three centuries earlier. This 14th–16th century edition of The Book of the Thousand and One Nights, usually called “Egyptian,” is the only one that has survived to this day, is presented in most printed editions, as well as in almost all manuscripts of the Nights known to us, and serves as specific material for studying the tales of Shahrazad.
From the previous, perhaps earlier, collections of “The Book of the Thousand and One Nights,” only single tales have survived, not included in the “Egyptian” edition and presented in a few manuscripts of individual volumes of “Nights” or existing in the form independent stories having, however, a division into nights. These stories include the most popular fairy tales among European readers: “Alad Din and the Magic Lamp”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” and some others; The Arabic original of these tales was at the disposal of the first translator of the Arabian Nights, Galland, through whose translation they became known in Europe.
When studying the Arabian Nights, each tale should be considered separately, since organic connection there is no difference between them, and they are before inclusion in the collection for a long time existed independently. Attempts to group some of them into groups based on their supposed origin - India, Iran or Baghdad - are not well founded. The plots of Shahrazad's stories were formed from individual elements that could penetrate Arab soil from Iran or India independently of one another; in their new homeland they were overgrown with purely native layers and from ancient times became the property of Arab folklore. This, for example, happened with the framing tale: having come to the Arabs from India through Iran, it lost many of its original features in the mouths of the storytellers.
More appropriate than an attempt to group, say, according to a geographical principle, should be considered the principle of uniting them, at least conditionally, into groups according to the time of creation or according to their belonging to the social environment where they existed. The oldest, most enduring fairy tales in the collection, which may have existed in one form or another already in the first editions in the 9th-10th centuries, include those stories in which the element of fantasy is most strongly manifested and acts supernatural beings actively interfering in people's affairs. These are the tales “About the Fisherman and the Spirit”, “About the Ebony Horse” and a number of others. For my long literary life they, apparently, were repeatedly subjected to literary processing; This is evidenced by their language, which claims a certain sophistication, and the abundance of poetic passages, undoubtedly interspersed into the text by editors or copyists.
Of more recent origin is a group of tales reflecting the life and everyday life of a medieval Arab trading city. As can be seen from some topographical details, the action takes place mainly in the capital of Egypt - Cairo. These short stories are usually based on some touching love story, complicated by various adventures; the persons acting in it belong, as a rule, to the trade and craft nobility. In style and language, fairy tales of this kind are somewhat simpler than fantastic ones, but they also contain many poetic quotations of predominantly erotic content. It is interesting that in urban novels the most vivid and strong personality often a woman appears who boldly breaks the barriers that harem life puts before her. A man, weakened by debauchery and idleness, is invariably rendered a simpleton and doomed to second roles.
Other characteristic This group of tales is a sharply expressed antagonism between the townspeople and the Bedouin nomads, who are usually the subject of the most caustic ridicule in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.
The best examples of urban short stories include “The Tale of the Lover and the Beloved”, “The Tale of Three Apples” (including “The Tale of the Vizier Nur-ad-din and his brother”), “The Tale of Kamar-az-Zaman and the Jeweler’s Wife” , as well as most of the stories united by The Tale of the Hunchback.
Finally, the most recent in time of creation are tales of the picaresque genre, apparently included in the collection in Egypt, during its last processing. These stories also developed in an urban environment, but they reflect the life of small artisans, day laborers and poor people doing odd jobs. These tales most vividly reflected the protest of the oppressed sections of the population of the medieval eastern city. The curious forms in which this protest was sometimes expressed can be seen, for example, from the “Tale of Ghanim ibn Ayyub” (see this edition, vol. II, p. 15), where a slave, whom his master wants to set free, argues that referring to the books of lawyers that he does not have the right to do this, since he did not teach his slave any craft and by freeing him he condemns the latter to starvation.
Pictorial tales are characterized by the caustic irony of depicting representatives of secular power and the clergy in the most unsightly form. The plot of many of these stories is a complex fraud, the purpose of which is not so much to rob as to fool some simpleton. Brilliant examples of picaresque stories - “The Tale of Delilah the Cunning and Ali-Zeybak of Cairo,” replete with the most incredible adventures, “The Tale of Ala-ad-din Abu-sh-Shamat”, “The Tale of Maruf the Shoemaker”.
Stories of this type came into the collection directly from the mouths of the storytellers and were subjected to only minor literary processing. This is indicated first of all by their language, not alien to dialectisms and colloquial turns of speech, the saturation of the text with dialogues, lively and dynamic, as if directly overheard in the city square, as well as the complete absence of love poems - the listeners of such tales, apparently, were not hunters of sentimental poetic outpourings. Both in content and form, the picaresque stories represent one of the most valuable parts of the collection.
In addition to the tales of the three categories mentioned, the Book of One Thousand and One Nights includes a number major works and a significant number of short anecdotes, undoubtedly borrowed by the compilers from various literary sources. These are the huge knightly novels: “The Tale of King Omar ibn al-Numan”, “The Tale of Adjib and Gharib”, “The Tale of the Prince and the Seven Viziers”, “The Tale of Sinbad the Sailor” and some others. In the same way, edifying parables and stories, imbued with the idea of the frailty of earthly life (“The Tale of the Copper City”), edifying stories-questionnaires such as “Mirror” (the story of the wise girl Tawaddud), anecdotes about famous Muslim mystics-Sufis, etc. . n. Small stories, as already mentioned, were apparently added by the compilers to fill the required number of nights.
Fairy tales of a particular group, born in a certain social environment, naturally had the greatest distribution in this environment. The compilers and editors of the collection themselves were well aware of this, as evidenced by the following note, rewritten into one of the later manuscripts of “Nights” from an older original: “The storyteller should tell in accordance with those who listen to him. If these are common people, let him tell the stories from the Arabian Nights about ordinary people- these are the stories at the beginning of the book (obviously referring to tales of the picaresque genre. - M.S.), and if these people belong to the rulers, then they should be told stories about kings and battles between knights, and these stories - at the end books."
We find the same indication in the text of the “Book” itself - in “The Tale of Seif-al-Muluk”, which appeared in the collection, apparently, at a rather late stage of its evolution. It says that a certain storyteller, who alone knew this tale, yielding to persistent requests, agrees to let it be rewritten, but sets the following condition for the scribe: “Do not tell this tale at a crossroads or in the presence of women, slaves, slaves, fools and children. Read it from the emirs 1
Emir - military leader, commander.
Kings, viziers and men of knowledge from the interpreters of the Koran and others."
In their homeland, the tales of Scheherazade in different social layers met since ancient times different attitude. If fairy tales have always enjoyed enormous popularity among the general public, representatives of Muslim scholastic science and the clergy, guardians of the “purity” of the classical Arabic language, invariably spoke of them with undisguised contempt. Even in the 10th century, an-Nadim, speaking about “A Thousand and One Nights,” disdainfully noted that it was written “thinly and tediously.” A thousand years later, he also had followers who declared this collection an empty and harmful book and prophesied all sorts of troubles to its readers. Representatives of the progressive Arab intelligentsia look at Shahrazad's tales differently. Fully recognizing the great artistic, historical and literary value of this monument, literary scholars of the United Arab Republic and other Arab countries are studying it in depth and comprehensively.
The negative attitude towards “A Thousand and One Nights” by reactionary Arab philologists of the 19th century had a sad effect on the fate of its printed editions. Scientific critical text“Nights” don’t exist yet; The first complete edition of the collection, published in Bulaq, near Cairo, in 1835 and reprinted several times subsequently, reproduces the so-called “Egyptian” edition. In the Bulak text, the language of fairy tales underwent significant processing under the pen of an anonymous “scientific” theologian; the editor sought to bring the text closer to the classical norms of literary speech. To a somewhat lesser extent, the activity of the processor is noticeable in the Calcutta edition, published by the English scientist Macnaghten in 1839–1842, although the Egyptian edition of “Nights” is also presented there.
The Bulak and Calcutta editions are the basis for the existing translations of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. The only exception is the above-mentioned incomplete French translation of Galland, carried out in the 18th century from handwritten sources. As we have already said, Galland’s translation served as the original for numerous translations into other languages and for more than a hundred years remained the only source of acquaintance with the Arabian tales of the Arabian Nights in Europe.
Among other translations of the “Book” into European languages, mention should be made English translation parts of the collection, made directly from the Arabic original famous expert language and ethnography of medieval Egypt - William Lane. Len's translation, in spite of its incompleteness, can be considered the best existing English translation in accuracy and conscientiousness, although its language is somewhat difficult and stilted.
Another English translation, made in the late 80s of the last century by the famous traveler and ethnographer Richard Burton, pursued very specific goals, far from science. In his translation, Burton in every possible way emphasizes all the somewhat obscene passages of the original, choosing the harshest word, the most rude option, and in the field of language, inventing extraordinary combinations of archaic and ultra-modern words.
Burton's tendencies are most clearly reflected in his notes. Along with valuable observations from the life of the Middle Eastern peoples, they contain a huge number of “anthropological” comments, verbosely explaining every obscene allusion that comes across in the collection. By piling up dirty anecdotes and details characteristic of the contemporary morals of the jaded and idle European residents in Arab countries, Burton seeks to slander the entire Arab people and uses this to defend the policy of the whip and rifle he propagates.
The tendency to emphasize all the more or less frivolous features of the Arabic original is also characteristic of the sixteen-volume French translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, completed in the first years of the 20th century by J. Mardrus.
From German translations“Books”, the newest and best is the six-volume translation of the famous Semitic scholar E. Liggman, first published in the late 20s of our century.
The history of studying translations of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights in Russia can be outlined very briefly.
Before the Great October revolution There were no Russian translations directly from Arabic, although translations from Gallan began to appear already in the 60s of the 18th century. The best of them is the translation by Yu. Doppelmayer, published in late XIX century.
Somewhat later, a translation by L. Shelgunova was published, made with abbreviations from the English edition of Len, and six years after that an anonymous translation from the edition of Mardrus appeared - the most complete collection of “The Thousand and One Nights” that existed at that time in Russian.
The translator and editor tried, to the best of their ability, to maintain in the translation closeness to the Arabic original, both in terms of content and style. Only in those cases where the accurate rendering of the original was incompatible with the norms of Russian literary speech, did this principle have to be deviated from. Thus, when translating poetry, it is impossible to preserve the obligatory rhyme according to the rules of Arabic versification, which must be uniform throughout the poem; only external structure verse and rhythm.
Intending these tales exclusively for adults, the translator remained faithful to the desire to show the Russian reader “The Book of One Thousand and One Nights” as it is, even while conveying the obscene parts of the original. In Arab fairy tales, as in the folklore of other peoples, things are naively called by their proper names, and most of the dirty, from our point of view, details do not have a pornographic meaning; all these details are more of a rude joke than deliberate obscenity.
In this edition, the translation edited by I. Yu. Krachkovsky is printed without significant changes, while maintaining the main goal of being as close as possible to the original. The translation language has been somewhat simplified - excessive literalism has been softened, and in some places idiomatic expressions that are not immediately understandable have been deciphered.
M. Salie
The story of King Shahryar and his brother
Glory to Allah, Lord of the worlds! Greetings and blessings to the lord of the messengers, our lord and ruler Muhammad! May Allah bless him and greet him with eternal blessings and greetings, lasting until the Day of Judgment!
And after that, truly, the legends about the first generations became an edification for the subsequent ones, so that a person could see what events happened to others and learn, and so that, delving into the legends about past peoples and what happened to them, he would abstain from sin Praise be to him who made the tales of the ancients a lesson for subsequent nations.
Such legends include stories called “A Thousand and One Nights”, and the sublime stories and parables contained in them.
They tell in the traditions of peoples about what happened, passed and has long passed (and Allah is more knowledgeable in the unknown and wise and glorious, and most generous, and most favorable, and merciful), that in ancient times and past centuries and for centuries there was a king from the kings of the Sasan family on the islands of India and China 2
The descendants of the semi-mythical king Sasan, or Sassanids, ruled Persia in the 3rd–7th centuries. The inclusion of King Shahriyar among them is a poetic anachronism, of which there are many in “1001 Nights.”
Master of troops, guards, servants and servants. And he had two sons - one adult, the other young, and both were brave knights, but the elder surpassed the younger in valor. And he reigned in his country and ruled his subjects fairly, and the inhabitants of his lands and kingdom loved him, and his name was King Shahriyar; and his younger brother’s name was King Shahzeman, and he reigned in Persian Samarkand. Both of them stayed in their lands, and each of them in the kingdom was a fair judge of his subjects for twenty years and lived in complete contentment and joy. This continued until the elder king wanted to see his younger brother and ordered his vizier 3
The vizier is the first minister in the Arab caliphate.
Go and bring him. The vizier carried out his order and set off and rode until he safely arrived in Samarkand. He went in to Shahzeman, said hello to him and said that his brother missed him and wanted him to visit him; and Shahzeman agreed and got ready to go. He ordered to take out his tents, equip camels, mules, servants and bodyguards and installed his vizier as ruler of the country, while he himself headed to the lands of his brother. But when midnight came, he remembered one thing that he had forgotten in the palace, and he returned and, entering the palace, saw that his wife was lying in bed, hugging a black slave from among his slaves.
In one of the cities of Persia lived two brothers, the elder Kasym and the younger Ali Baba. After the death of their father, the brothers equally divided the small inheritance that they received. Kasim married a very rich woman, took up trade, and his wealth increased. Ali Baba married a poor woman and earned his living by chopping wood.
One day Ali Baba was chopping wood near a rock, when suddenly armed horsemen appeared. Ali Baba got scared and hid. There were forty horsemen - they were robbers. The leader approached the rock, parted the bushes that grew in front of it, and said: “Sesame, open!” The door opened and the robbers carried the loot into the cave.
When they left, Ali Baba came to the door and also said: “Sesame, open!” Door opened. Ali Baba went into a cave full of various treasures, put everything he could into bags and brought the treasures home.
To count the gold, Ali Baba's wife asked Kasim's wife for a measure, supposedly to measure grain. Kasim's wife thought it strange that the poor woman was about to measure something, and she poured a little wax into the bottom of the measure. Her trick was a success - the measure stuck to the bottom gold coin. Seeing that his brother and his wife were measuring gold, Kasym demanded to know where the wealth came from. Ali Baba revealed the secret.
Once in the cave, Kasym was taken aback by what he saw and forgot the magic words. He listed all the grains and plants he knew, but the treasured “Open Sesame!” never said it.
Meanwhile, robbers attacked a rich caravan and seized enormous wealth. They went to the cave to leave the loot there, but in front of the entrance they saw harnessed mules and guessed that someone had found out their secret. Having found Kasim in the cave, they killed him, and cut his body into pieces and hung it over the door so that no one else would dare to enter the cave.
Kasim's wife, worried that her husband had been gone for several days, turned to Ali Baba for help. Ali Baba realized where his brother might be and went into the cave. Seeing his dead brother there, Ali Baba wrapped his body in a shroud to bury him according to the commandments of Islam, and, waiting until nightfall, went home.
Ali Baba offered Kasim's wife to become his second wife, and in order to arrange the funeral of the murdered man, Ali Baba entrusted this to Kasym's slave Marjana, who was famous for her intelligence and cunning. Marjana went to the doctor and asked him for medicine for her sick Mr. Kasim. This went on for several days, and Ali Baba, on the advice of Marjana, began to often go to his brother’s house and express grief and sadness. The news spread throughout the city that Kasym was seriously ill. Also, Marjana brought home a shoemaker late at night, having previously blindfolded him and confused the way. Having paid well, she ordered the dead man to be stitched up. After washing the dead Kasim and putting a shroud on him, Marjana told Ali Baba that it was already possible to announce her brother’s death.
When the period of mourning ended, Ali Baba married his brother’s wife, moved with his first family to Kasim’s house, and transferred his brother’s shop to his son.
Meanwhile, the robbers, seeing that there was no Kasym’s corpse in the cave, realized that the murdered man had an accomplice who knew the secret of the cave and they needed to find him at all costs. One of the robbers went into the city, disguised as a merchant, to find out if anyone had died in Lately. By chance he found himself in the shop of a shoemaker, who, boasting of his keen eyesight, told how he had recently stitched up a dead man in the dark. For a good fee, the shoemaker brought the robber to Kasym’s house, since he remembered all the turns of the road along which Marjana led him. Finding himself in front of the gate of the house, the robber drew a white sign on it so that he could use it to find the house.
Early in the morning, Marjana went to the market and noticed a sign on the gate. Sensing something was wrong, she painted the same signs on the gates of neighboring houses.
When the robber brought his comrades to Kasym’s house, they saw the same signs on other houses that were identical. For an unfulfilled task, the leader of the robber executed him.
Then another robber, having also paid the shoemaker well, said to take him to Kasym’s house and put a red sign there.
Again Marjana went to the market and saw a red sign. Now she painted red signs on the neighboring houses and the robbers again could not find the desired house. The robber was also executed.
Then the leader of the robbers got down to business. He also paid the shoemaker generously for his service, but did not put a sign on the house. He counted the number of houses in the block he needed. Next he bought forty wineskins. He poured oil into two of them, and put his people into the rest. Disguised as a merchant trading olive oil, the leader drove up to Ali Baba’s house and asked the owner to stay overnight. Good Ali Baba agreed to shelter the merchant and ordered Marjana to prepare various dishes and a comfortable bed for the guest, and the slaves placed the wineskins in the courtyard.
Meanwhile, Marjana ran out of butter. She decided to borrow it from the guest and give him the money in the morning. When Marjana approached one of the wineskins, the robber sitting in it decided that it was their chieftain who had come. Since he was already tired of sitting hunched over, he asked when the time would come to go out. Marjana is not confused, she is low in a male voice She told me to be patient a little longer. She did the same with the other robbers.
Having collected oil, Marjana boiled it in a cauldron and poured it on the heads of the robbers. When all the robbers died, Marjana began to follow their leader.
Meanwhile, the leader discovered that his assistants were dead and secretly left Ali Baba's house. And Ali Baba, as a sign of gratitude, gave Marjana freedom; from now on she was no longer a slave.
But the leader planned to take revenge. He changed his appearance and opened a textile shop, opposite the shop of Ali Baba's son Muhammad. And soon good rumors spread about him. The leader, disguised as a merchant, became friends with Muhammad. Muhammad truly fell in love with his new friend and one day invited him home for a Friday meal. The leader agreed, but on the condition that the food would be without salt, since it was extremely disgusting to him.
Having heard the order to cook food without salt, Marjana was very surprised and wanted to look at such an unusual guest. The girl immediately recognized the leader of the robbers, and looking closer, she saw a dagger under his clothes.
Marjana dressed in luxurious clothes and put a dagger in her belt. Entering during the meal, she began to entertain the men with dancing. During the dance, she pulled out a dagger, played with it and plunged it into the guest's chest.
Seeing the trouble Marjana saved them from, Ali Baba married her to his son Muhammad.
Ali Baba and Muhammad took all the treasures of the robbers and lived in complete contentment, a most pleasant life, until the Destroyer of pleasures and the Destroyer of gatherings came to them, overthrowing palaces and erecting graves.
The Tale of the Merchant and the Spirit
One day a very rich merchant went on business. On the way, he sat down under a tree to rest. While resting, he ate dates and threw the stone on the ground. Suddenly, an efreet with a drawn sword emerged from the ground. The bone fell into the heart of his son, and the son died, the merchant will pay for this with his life. The merchant asked the ifrit for a year's grace to settle his affairs.
A year later, the merchant arrived at the appointed place. Crying, he awaited his death. An old man with a gazelle approached him. Having heard the merchant's story, the old man decided to stay with him. Suddenly another old man approached with two hunting dogs, and then a third with a piebald mule. When the ifrit appeared with a sword, the first old man invited the ifrit to listen to his story. If she seems surprising, then the ifrit will give the old man a third of the merchant’s blood.
The story of the first elder
Gazelle is the daughter of an old man's uncle. He lived with her for about thirty years, but did not have a child. Then he took a concubine and she gave him a son. When the boy was fifteen years old, the old man left on business. During his absence, the wife turned the boy into a calf, and his mother into a cow and gave them to the shepherd, and told her husband that the wife had died and the son had run away to an unknown place.
The old man cried for a year. The holiday has arrived. The old man ordered the cow to be slaughtered. But the cow that the shepherd brought began to moan and cry, since it was a concubine. The old man felt sorry for her and he ordered to bring another, but the wife insisted on this, the fattest cow in the herd. Having slaughtered her, the old man saw that she had neither meat nor fat. Then the old man ordered the calf to be brought. The calf began to cry and rub against his legs. The wife insisted that he be slaughtered, but the old man refused, and the shepherd took him away.
The next day, the shepherd told the old man that, having taken the calf, he came to his daughter, who had learned witchcraft. Seeing the calf, she said that he was the son of the master and the master’s wife turned him into a calf, and the cow that was slaughtered was the mother of the calf. Hearing this, the old man went to the shepherd’s daughter so that she could cast a spell on her son. The girl agreed, but on the condition that he would marry her to her son and allow her to bewitch his wife. The old man agreed, the girl bewitched her son, and turned her wife into a gazelle. Now the son's wife has died, and the son has gone to India. An old man with a gazelle rides towards him.
Ifrit found the story amazing and gave the old man a third of the merchant's blood. Then a second old man came forward with two dogs and offered to tell his story. If it seems more amazing than the first, the ifrit will give him a third of the merchant’s blood.
The Second Elder's Story
The two dogs are the old man's older brothers. The father died and left his sons thousands of dinars each, and each son opened a shop. The elder brother sold everything he had and went traveling. A year later he returned as a beggar: the money was gone, his happiness had changed. The old man counted his profit and saw that he had made a thousand dinars and now his capital was two thousand. He gave half to his brother, who again opened a shop and began trading. Then the second brother sold his property and went traveling. He returned a year later, also poor. The old man counted his profits and saw that his capital was again two thousand dinars. He gave half of it to his second brother, who also opened a shop and began trading.
Time passed and the brothers began to demand that the old man go travel with them, but he refused. Six years later, he agreed. His capital was six thousand dinars. He buried three, and divided three between himself and his brothers.
During the trip, they made money and suddenly met a beautiful girl, dressed like a beggar, who asked for help. The old man took her on his ship, took care of her, and then they got married. But his brothers became jealous and decided to kill him. While sleeping, they threw their brother and wife into the sea. But the girl turned out to be an ifrit. She saved her husband and decided to kill his brothers. Her husband asked her not to do this, then the ifrit turned the brothers into two dogs and cast a spell that her sister would free them no earlier than ten years later. Now the time has come and the old man and his brothers go to his wife’s sister.
Ifrit found the story amazing and gave the old man a third of the merchant's blood. Then a third old man came forward with a mule and offered to tell his story. If she seems more amazing than the first two, the ifrit will give him the rest of the merchant's blood.
The Third Elder's Story
A mule is an old man's wife. One day he caught her with her lover and his wife turned him into a dog. He came to the butcher's shop to pick up the bones, but the butcher's daughter was a witch and she bewitched him. The girl gave him magic water so that he could sprinkle it on his wife and turn her into a mule. When the ifrit asked if this was true, the mule nodded his head, indicating that it was true.
Ifrit found the story amazing, gave the old man the rest of the merchant's blood and released the latter.
A Fisherman's Tale
There lived one poor fisherman with his family. Every day he cast the net into the sea four times. One day he caught a copper jug, sealed with a lead stopper with the seal of the ring of Suleiman ibn Daoud. The fisherman decided to sell it at the market, but first look at the contents of the jug. A huge ifrit came out of the jug, disobeyed King Suleiman, and the king imprisoned him in the jug as punishment. Having learned that the king had been dead for almost two thousand years, the ifrit, out of anger, decided to kill his savior. The fisherman doubted how such a huge ifrit could fit in such a small jug. To prove that he was telling the truth, the ifrit turned into smoke and entered the jug. The fisherman sealed the vessel with a cork and threatened to throw it into the sea if the ifrit wanted to repay goodness with evil, telling the story about King Yunan and the doctor Duban.
The Tale of the Vizier King Yunan
King Yunan lived in the city of the Persians. He was rich and great, but leprosy developed on his body. None of the doctors could heal him with any medicine. One day, the doctor Duban, who possessed much knowledge, came to the king’s city. He offered his help to Yunan. The doctor made a hammer and put the potion into it. He attached a handle to the hammer. The doctor ordered the king to sit on his horse and drive the ball with a hammer. The king's body was covered with sweat and the medicine from the hammer spread over his body. Then Yunan washed himself in the bathhouse and the next morning there was no trace of his illness left. In gratitude, he presented the doctor Duban with money and all kinds of benefits.
The vizier of King Yunan, jealous of the doctor, whispered to the king that Duban wanted to excommunicate Yunan from reigning. In response, the king told the story of King al-Sinbad.
The story of King al-Sinbad
One of the kings of the Persians, as-Sinbad loved hunting. He raised a falcon and never parted with it. One day, while hunting, the king chased a gazelle for a long time. After killing her, he felt thirsty. And then he saw a tree with water flowing from the top. He filled his cup with water, but the falcon knocked it over. The king filled the cup again, but the falcon knocked it over again. When the falcon turned the cup over for the third time, the king cut off its wings. Dying, the falcon showed the king that there was an echidna sitting on the top of the tree, and the flowing liquid was its poison. Then the king realized that he had killed his friend who had saved him from death.
In response, the vizier of King Yunan told the story of the treacherous vizier.
The story of a treacherous vizier
One king had a vizier and a son who loved hunting. The king ordered the vizier to always be near his son. One day the prince went hunting. The vizier, seeing the big beast, sent the prince after him. Chasing the beast, the young man got lost and suddenly saw crying girl who said she was a lost Indian princess. The prince took pity on her and took her with him. Driving past the ruins, the girl asked to stop. Seeing that she had been gone for a long time, the prince followed her and saw that she was a ghoul who wanted to eat the young man together with her children. The prince realized that the vizier had arranged this. He returned home and told his father about what had happened, who killed the vizier.
Believing his vizier that the doctor Duban had decided to kill him, King Yunan ordered the executioner to cut off the doctor’s head. No matter how the doctor cried or asked the king to spare him, no matter how the king’s entourage intervened, Yunan was adamant. He was sure that the doctor was a spy who had come to destroy him.
Seeing that his execution was inevitable, the doctor Duban asked for a delay in order to distribute his medical books to his relatives. The doctor decided to give one book, the most valuable, to the king. On the orders of the doctor, the king put the severed head on a plate and rubbed it with a special powder to stop the bleeding. The doctor's eyes opened and he ordered the book to be opened. To open the stuck pages, the king moistened his finger with saliva. The book opened and he saw empty pages. And then the poison spread throughout Yunan’s body: the book was poisoned. She repaid the king with evil for his evil.
After listening to the fisherman, the ifrit promised that he would reward him for letting him out of the jug. Ifrit led the fisherman to a pond surrounded by mountains in which colorful fish swam and told him to fish here no more than once a day.
The fisherman sold the caught fish to the king. While the cook was frying it, the kitchen wall parted and a beautiful young woman came out and spoke to the fish. The cook fainted from fear. When she woke up, the fish were burned. The king's vizier, having heard her story, bought fish from a fisherman and ordered the cook to fry it in front of him. Convinced that the woman was telling the truth, he told this to the king. The king bought fish from a fisherman and ordered it to be fried. Seeing that when the fish was fried, the wall moved apart and a slave came out of it and spoke to the fish, the king decided to find out the secret of the fish.
The fisherman led the king to the pond. No one the king asked about the pond and the fish knew anything. The king went to the mountains and saw a palace there. There was no one in the palace except a beautiful crying young man whose lower half of his body was made of stone.
The story of an enchanted youth
The young man's father was a king and lived in the mountains. The young man married his uncle's daughter. They lived together for five years and he thought his wife loved him great love, but one day the young man overheard the conversation of the slaves. The girls said that every evening his wife pours sleeping pills into his drink, and she goes to her lover. The young man did not drink the drink his wife prepared for him and pretended to be asleep. Seeing that his wife left, putting on her best clothes, he followed her. The wife came to a wretched hut and entered it, and the young man climbed onto the roof. In the hut lived a black, ugly slave who was her lover. Seeing them together, the young man struck the slave in the neck with his sword. He thought he killed him, but in fact he only wounded him. In the morning he found his wife in tears. She explained her sadness by saying that her parents and brothers had died. The wife built a tomb in the palace to retire there with her sorrows. In fact, she carried the slave there and cared for him. Three years passed like this, her husband did not interfere with her, but one day he reproached her for treason. Then she turned him into half stone, half man, turned the city residents into fish, and the city into mountains. In addition, every morning she beats her husband with a whip until he bleeds, and then goes to her lover.
Hearing the young man's story, the king killed the slave, and dressed in his clothes, lay down in his place. When the young man's wife came, the king, changing his voice, told her that the moans of the young man and the crying of the enchanted inhabitants were tormenting him. Let her free them, health returns to him. When the woman bewitched the young man and the inhabitants, and the city again became the same as before, the king killed her. Since the king had no children, he adopted the young man and generously rewarded the fisherman. He married one of the fisherman’s daughters himself, and married the other to Zamukh to a disenchanted young man. The fisherman became the richest man of his time, and his daughters were the wives of kings until death came to them.
Thousand and One Nights
Arabian tales
The story of King Shahryar
AND Once upon a time there was an evil and cruel king Shahriyar. Every day he took a new wife, and the next morning he killed her. Fathers and mothers hid their daughters from King Shahriyar and ran away with them to other lands.
Soon there was only one girl left in the whole city - the daughter of the vizier, the king's chief adviser, Shahrazad.
The vizier left the royal palace sadly and returned to his home, crying bitterly. Shahrazad saw that he was upset about something and asked:
Oh, father, what is your grief? Maybe I can help you?
For a long time the vizier did not want to reveal to Shahrazade the reason for his grief, but finally he told her everything. After listening to her father, Shahrazad thought and said:
Do not be sad! Take me to Shahryar tomorrow morning and don’t worry - I will remain alive and unharmed. And if what I have planned succeeds, I will save not only myself, but also all the girls whom King Shahriyar has not yet managed to kill.
No matter how much the vizier begged Shahrazad, she stood her ground, and he had to agree.
And Shahrazada had a little sister - Dunyazade. Shahrazad went to her and said:
When they bring me to the king, I will ask his permission to send for you, so that we can last time to be together. And you, when you come and see that the king is bored, say: “Oh sister, tell us a fairy tale so that the king will be more cheerful.” And I'll tell you a story. This will be our salvation.
And Shahrazad was a smart and educated girl. She read many ancient books, legends and stories. And there was no person in the whole world who knew more fairy tales than Shahrazad, the daughter of the vizier of King Shahriyar.
The next day, the vizier took Shahrazad to the palace and said goodbye to her, shedding tears. He never hoped to see her alive again.
Shahrazad was brought to the king, and they had dinner together, and then Shahrazad suddenly began to cry bitterly.
What happened to you? - the king asked her.
O king, said Shahrazad, I have a little sister. I want to look at her one more time before I die. Let me send for her, and let her sit with us.
“Do as you please,” the king said and ordered Dunyazada to be brought.
Dunyazada came and sat on the pillow next to her sister. She already knew what Shahrazad was planning, but she was still very scared.
And King Shahriyar could not sleep at night. When midnight came, Dunyazade noticed that the king could not sleep, and said to Shahrazad:
Oh sister, tell us a story. Maybe our king will feel more cheerful and the night will seem less long to him.
Willingly, if the king orders me,” said Shahrazad. The king said:
Tell me, and make sure the tale is interesting. And Shahrazad began to tell. The king listened so deeply that he did not notice how it was getting light. And Shahrazad had just reached the very interesting place. Seeing that the sun was rising, she fell silent, and Dunyazada asked her:
The king really wanted to hear the continuation of the tale, and he thought: “Let him finish it in the evening, and tomorrow I will execute her.”
In the morning the vizier came to the king, neither alive nor dead from fear. Shahrazad met him, cheerful and pleased, and said:
You see, father, our king spared me. I began to tell him a fairy tale, and the king liked it so much that he allowed me to finish telling it that evening.
The delighted vizier entered the king, and they began to deal with the affairs of the state. But the king was distracted - he could not wait until evening to finish listening to the tale.
As soon as it got dark, he called Shahrazad and told her to continue the story. At midnight she finished the story.
The king sighed and said:
It's a shame it's already over. After all, there is still a long time until morning.
O king, said Shahrazad, where is this fairy tale compared to the one I would tell you if you would allow me!
Tell me quickly! - the king exclaimed, and Shahrazad began a new fairy tale.
And when morning came, she again stopped at the most interesting place.
The king no longer thought of executing Shahrazad. He couldn't wait to hear the story to the end.
This happened on the second and third night. For a thousand nights, almost three years, Shahrazad told King Shahryar her wonderful tales. And when the thousand and first night came and she finished the last story, the king said to her:
O Shahrazad, I am used to you and will not execute you, even if you don’t know a single fairy tale anymore. I don’t need new wives, not a single girl in the world can compare with you.
This is how the Arab legend tells about where the wonderful tales of the Arabian Nights came from.
Aladdin and the magic lamp
IN One Persian city lived a poor tailor Hasan. He had a wife and a son named Aladdin. When Aladdin was ten years old, his father said:
Let my son be a tailor like me,” and began to teach Aladdin his craft.
But Aladdin did not want to learn anything. As soon as his father left the shop, Aladdin ran outside to play with the boys. From morning to evening they ran around the city, chasing sparrows or climbing into other people's gardens and filling their bellies with grapes and peaches.
The tailor tried to persuade his son and punished him, but to no avail. Soon Hassan fell ill with grief and died. Then his wife sold everything that was left after him and began to spin cotton and sell yarn to feed herself and her son.
So much time passed. Aladdin turned fifteen years old. And then one day, when he was playing on the street with the boys, a man in a red silk robe and a large white turban approached them. He looked at Aladdin and said to himself: “This is the boy I am looking for. Finally I found it!
This man was a Maghreb - a resident of the Maghreb. He called one of the boys and asked him who Aladdin was and where he lived. And then he came up to Aladdin and said:
Are you not the son of Hassan, the tailor?
“I am,” Aladdin answered. - But my father died a long time ago. Hearing this, the Maghreb man hugged Aladdin and began to cry loudly.
Know, Aladdin, I am your uncle,” he said. “I have been in foreign lands for a long time and have not seen my brother for a long time.” Now I came to your city to see Hassan, and he died! I recognized you immediately because you look like your father.
Then the Maghrebian gave Aladdin two gold pieces and said:
Give this money to your mother. Tell her that your uncle has returned and will come to you for dinner tomorrow. Let her cook a good dinner.
Aladdin ran to his mother and told her everything.
Are you laughing at me?! - his mother told him. - After all, your father didn’t have a brother. Where did you suddenly get an uncle?
How can you say that I don’t have an uncle! - Aladdin shouted. - He gave me these two gold pieces. Tomorrow he will come to us for dinner!
The next day Aladdin's mother prepared a good dinner. Aladdin was sitting at home in the morning, waiting for his uncle. In the evening there was a knock on the gate. Aladdin rushed to open it. A Maghrebi man entered, followed by a servant who carried a large dish with all sorts of sweets on his head. Entering the house, the Maghreb man greeted Aladdin’s mother and said:
Please show me the place where my brother sat at dinner.
“Right here,” said Aladdin’s mother.
The Maghribian began to cry loudly. But he soon calmed down and said:
Don't be surprised that you've never seen me. I left here forty years ago. I have been to India, the Arab lands and Egypt. I've been traveling for thirty years. Finally, I wanted to return to my homeland, and I said to myself: “You have a brother. He may be poor, and you still haven’t helped him in any way! Go to your brother and see how he lives.” I drove for many days and nights and finally found you. And now I see that although my brother died, he left behind a son who will earn money by craft, like his father.
We all love fairy tales. Fairy tales are not just entertainment. Many fairy tales contain encrypted wisdom of humanity, hidden knowledge. There are fairy tales for children, and there are fairy tales for adults. Sometimes some are confused with others. And sometimes about everyone famous fairy tales We have a completely wrong idea.
Aladdin and his magic lamp. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. What collection are these tales from? Are you sure? Are you firmly convinced that we're talking about about the collection of fairy tales "A Thousand and One Nights"? However, none of the original lists of this collection contain the tale of Aladdin and his magic lamp. It appeared only in modern editions of One Thousand and One Nights. But who and when inserted it there is not known exactly.
Just as in the case of Aladdin, we have to state the same fact: not a single authentic copy of the famous collection of fairy tales contains the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It appeared in the first translation of these fairy tales into French. The French orientalist Galland, preparing a translation of “A Thousand and One Nights,” included in it Arabian tale“Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” from another collection.
The modern text of the Arabian Nights fairy tales is, rather, not Arabic, but Western. If we follow the original, which, by the way, is a collection of Indian and Persian (and not Arabic) urban folklore, then only 282 short stories should remain in the collection. Everything else is late layers. Neither Sinbad the Sailor, nor Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, nor Aladdin and magic lamp not in the original. Almost all of these tales were added by the French orientalist and first translator of the collection, Antoine Galland.
Initially, these tales had a slightly different name - “Tales from a Thousand Nights.” As we have already noted, they were formed in India and Persia: they were told in bazaars, in caravanserais, in the courts of noble people and among the people. Over time, they began to be recorded.
It must be said that in the East this book has long been viewed critically. “A Thousand and One Nights” was not considered a highly artistic literary work for a long time, because its stories did not have a pronounced scientific or moral subtext.
It is interesting that the original tales of "A Thousand and One Nights" in to a greater extent full of eroticism rather than magic. If in the version familiar to us, Sultan Shahriyar indulged in sadness and therefore demanded every night new woman(and executed her the next morning), then in the original the Sultan from Samarkand was angry with all the women because he had caught his beloved wife cheating (with a black slave - behind a willow hedge in the garden of the palace). Fearing that his heart would be broken again, he killed women.
And only the beautiful Scheherazade managed to quell his thirst for revenge. Among the stories she told there were many that children for those who love fairy tales You can't read: about lesbians, homosexual princes, sadistic princesses, and beautiful girls who gave their love to animals, since there were no sexual taboos in these fairy tales.
