The Arabian nights entertainments (Longman 1898)

For other versions of this work, see One Thousand and One Nights.

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS

The Lang Fairy Books

Crown Edition

The Arabian Nights Entertainments. With 4 Coloured Plates and 63 Illustrations

The Blue Fairy Book. With 4 Coloured Plates and 128 Illustrations.

The Book of Romance. With 8 Coloured Plates and 43 Illustrations.

The Brown Fairy Book. With 8 Coloured Plates and 42 Illustrations.

The Crimson Fairy Book. With 8 Coloured Plates and 45 Illustrations.

The Green Fairy Book. With 4 Coloured Plates and 100 Illustrations.

The Grey Fairy Book. With 4 Coloured Plates and 50 Illustrations.

The Lilac Fairy Book. With 6 Coloured Plates and 46 Illustrations.

The Olive Fairy Book. With 8 Coloured Plates and 43 Illustrations.

The Orange Fairy Book. With 8 Coloured Plates and 50 Illustrations.

The Pink Fairy Book. With 4 Coloured Plates and 68 Illustrations.

The Red Book of Heroes. By Mrs. Lang. With 8 Coloured Plates and 40 Illustrations.

The Red Fairy Book. With 4 Coloured Plates and 91 Illustrations.

The Violet Fairy Book. With 8 Coloured Plates and 59 Illustrations.

The Yellow Fairy Book. With 4 Coloured Plates and 105 Illustrations.

THE
ARABIAN NIGHTS
ENTERTAINMENTS

Selected and Edited by

ANDREW LANG

With Numerous Illustrations by

H. J. FORD

Crown Edition

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.

LONDON • NEW YORK • TORONTO

1929

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.

55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
221 EAST 20TH STREET, CHICAGO
TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON
128 UNIVERSITY AVENUE, TORONTO

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. Ltd.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, E C 4, LONDON
53 NICOL ROAD, BOMBAY
6 OLD COURT HOUSE STREET, CALCUTTA
167 MOUNT ROAD, MADRAS

LANG

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS

COPYRIGHT • 1898

BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.

First Edition September 1898
Reprinted November 1902, October 1905
February 1909, March 191 1, March 1914
June 1916, July 1918, October 1920
February, 1923, March 1926, August 1929

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To

EVELYN AND MARJORY SELLAR

IN MEMORY OF

URRARD AND BONNY DUNDEE

PREFACE

The stories in the Fairy Books have generally been such as old women in country places tell to their grandchildren. Nobody knows how old they are, or who told them first. The children of Ham, Shem, and Japhet may have listened to them in the Ark, on wet days. Hector’s little boy may have heard them in Troy Town, for it is certain that Homer knew them, and that some of them were written down in Egypt about the time of Moses.

People in different countries tell them differently, but they are always the same stories, really, whether among little Zulus, at the Cape, or little Eskimo, near the North Pole. The changes are only in matters of manners and customs; such as wearing clothes or not, meeting lions who talk in warm countries, or talking bears in the cold countries. There are plenty of kings and queens in the fairy tales, just because long ago there were plenty of kings in the country. A gentleman who would be a squire now was a kind of king in Scotland in very old times, and the same in other places. These old stories, never forgotten, were taken down in writing in different ages, but mostly in this century, in all sorts of languages. These ancient stories are the contents of the Fairy Books.

Now ‘The Arabian Nights,’ some of which, but not nearly all, are given in this volume, are only fairy tales of the East. The people of Asia, Arabia, and Persia told them in their own way, not for children, but for grown-up people. There were no novels then, nor any printed books, of course; but there were people whose profession it was to amuse men and women by telling tales. They dressed the fairy stories up, and made the characters good Mahommedans, living in Bagdad or India. The events were often supposed to happen in the reign of the great Caliph, or ruler of the Faithful, Haroun al Raschid, who lived in Bagdad in a. d. 786-808. The vizir who accompanies the Caliph was also a real person of the great family of the Barmecides. He was put to death by the Caliph in a very cruel way, nobody ever knew why. The stories must have been told in their present shape a good long while after the Caliph died, when nobody knew very exactly what had really happened. At last some storyteller thought of writing down the tales, and fixing them into a kind of framework, as if they had all been narrated to a cruel Sultan by his wife. Probably the tales were written down about the time when Edward I was fighting Robert Bruce. But changes were made in them at different times, and a great deal that is very dull and stupid was put in, and plenty of verses. Neither the verses nor the dull pieces are given in this book.

People in France and England knew almost nothing about ‘The Arabian Nights’ till the reigns of Queen Anne and George I, when they were translated into French by Monsieur Galland. Grown-up people were then very fond of fairy tales, and they thought these Arab stories the best that they had ever read. They were delighted with Ghouls (who live among the tombs) and Geni, who seem to be a kind of ogres, and with Princesses who work magic spells, and with Peris, who are Arab fairies. Sinbad had adventures which perhaps came out of the Odyssey of Homer; in fact, all the East had contributed its wonders, and sent them to Europe in one parcel. Young men once made a noise at Monsieur Galland’s windows in the dead of night, and asked him to tell them one of his marvellous tales. Nobody talked of anything but dervishes and vizirs, rocs and peris. The stories were translated from French into all languages, and only Bishop Atterbury complained that the tales were not likely to be true, and had no moral. The Bishop was presently banished for being on the side of Prince Charlie’s father, and had leisure to repent of being so solemn.

In this book ‘The Arabian Nights’ are translated from the French version of Monsieur Galland, who dropped out the poetry and a great deal of what the Arabian authors thought funny, though it seems wearisome to us. In this book the stories are shortened here and there, and omissions are made of pieces only suitable for Arabs and old gentlemen. The translations are by the writers of the tales in the Fairy Books, and the pictures are by Mr. Ford.

I can remember reading ‘The Arabian Nights’ when I was six years old, in dirty yellow old volumes of small type with no pictures, and I hope children who read them with Mr. Ford’s pictures will be as happy as I was then in the company of Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor.

Contents

ILLUSTRATIONS

Coloured Plates

Thus They Rode All Day	Frontispiece
The Genius Commands the Young man to Slay the Princess Facing page	80
The End of the Dragon	130
The Prince and the Princess Arrive at the Capital of Persia on the Enchanted Horse	374

In Text

	Page
Scheherazade, Dinarzade, and the Sultan	3
The Genius and the Merchants	9
The Calf Begs for its Life	15
The Genius Comes out of the Jar	25
The Prince Falls in with the Ogress	35
The King Turns over the Leaves of the Book	39
The Girl Upsets the Frying-pan	43
I Became Half Man and Half Marble	49
The Man is Astonished at the Beauty of the Porteress	55
Zobeida Prepares to Whip the Dog	61
The King’s Son Begs for his Life	71
The Princess Veils Herself when she Sees the Monkey	95
She Cut the Lion’s Body into Two Pieces	98
‘I Burn, I Burn!’	100
The Overthrow of the Brazen Horseman	105
The Young Men Sew up Agib in the Sheepskin	113
Agib entertained By the Ladies	115
The Black Horse Leaves Agib on the Terrace	119
Sindbad Curses his Fate	123
Sindbad Carried off by the Roc	133
Sindbad in the Valley of Serpents	137
The Giant Enters	143
The Giants Hurl Rocks at Sinbad and his companions	147
Sindbad Lowered into the Cavern	157
The First Roc Aims a Stone at the Ship	165
The Old Man of the Sea	169
Sindbad Left by the Elephants in their Burial-place	183
The Death of the Hunchback	189
Alnaschar Kicks over his Basket	199
The Lady Shows Alnaschar the Coffers PacKed with Gold	205
The Barmecide’s Feast	211
She could not Weary Gazing at Camaralzaman	221
Caschcasch is Unable to Decide Which is the Fairer	227
Camaralzaman Ill-treats the Qrand-Vizir	231
The King of China Looks at the Ring on the Princess’s Finger	235
Badoura Recognizes Camaralzaman	241
The Bird Flies off with the Talisman	247
Camaralzaman Watches the Birds	255
The Talisman is Discovered in one of the Jars	259
The Beautiful Persian is Brought to Khacan	269
Noureddin Gets Rid of the Two Little Slaves	273
Saouy Tries to Take the Beautiful Persian from Noureddin	279
The Fair Persian Lights the Candles	285
Noureddin offers the Beautiful Persian to the Fisherman	289
Noureddin Led to execution	293
The Slave of the Ring Appears to Aladdin	297
Aladdin’s Mother Brings the Slaves with the Forty Basins of Gold before the Sultan	303
The African Magician Gets the Lamp from the Slave	309
The Death of the African Magician	313
The Dervish Separates the Smoke and the Palace Appears in the Rock	323
The Dervish Anoints the Right Eye of Baba-Abdalla	329
Amina eating the rice	333
She Opened the Gate, Intending to Crush Me as I passed Through	337
Amina is Transformed into a Horse	344
The gold Pieces Fall out of the Jar of Olives	349
The Indian Shows off the Enchanted Horse before the King of Persia	359
Prince Firouz Schah in the Chamber of the Princess of Bengal	367
The Sultan of Cashmere Rescues the Princess of Bengal from the Indian	381
The Prince of Persia and the Princess of Bengal Escape from the Sultan of Cashmere	387
The Sisters Launch the Cradle in the Canal	393
Prince Rahman Prunes the Dervish’s Beard	401
The Princess Climbs over the Black Stones	409
Parizade Shows the Singing Tree to the Sultan	421

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS