Endless Inspiration: One Thousand and One Nights in Comparative Perspective 9781463241872

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Endless Inspiration

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Endless Inspiration

One Thousand and One Nights in Comparative Perspective

Edited by

Orhan Elmaz

gp 2020

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2020 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. ‫ܗ‬

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2020

ISBN 978-1-4632-0720-5

ISSN 1935-6838

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available from the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction.............................................................................. 1 SECTION 1: LITERATURE ....................................................... 11 Shahrazad in Twentieth-Century Fiction: Approaches and Considerations................................................................. 13 Richard van Leeuwen (University of Amsterdam)

“We Are Not in Baghdad Anymore”: Textual Travels and Hausa Intertextual Adaptation of Selected Tales of One Thousand and One Nights in Northern Nigeria .................. 35 Abdalla Uba Adamu (Bayero University Kano) Enchanted Storytelling: Muḥammad Khuḍayyir between Borges and Shahrazad ..................................................... 61 Fabio Caiani and Catherine Cobham (University of St Andrews)

Two Perspectives, One Shahrazad: Turkish Poetry and One Thousand and One Nights ............................................... 93 Neslihan Demirkol (University of Münster) and Mehmet Kalpaklı (Bilkent University) SECTION 2. MANUSCRIPTS ....................................................115 Source of Inspiration, Matter of Translation, Joseph von Hammer and the 1001 Nights........................................ 117 Sibylle Wentker (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

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‘Oh Leader of Women in the World, oh Shahrazad!’ The Ending of the One Thousand and One Nights in the Earliest Turkish Translation and its Relationship to the Arabic Versions ............................................................. 137 Johannes Thomann (University of Zürich)

Learning Over-Nights: Calcutta One as an Adaptation for Learners of Arabic ......................................................... 169 Orhan Elmaz (University of St Andrews) SECTION 3. MIDDLE EASTERN NARRATIVE CULTURES .................213 In and Out of the Nights: The Thousand and One Nights as an Introduction to Middle Eastern Narrative Culture ..... 215 Ulrich Marzolph (University of Göttingen)

From Shahriyār’s Palace to the Streets of Morocco: A Comparative Study of the Moroccan Oral Tale ‘Ḥātim and the Queen Cobra’ with the ‘Story of Ḥāsib Karīm alDīn and the Queen Cobra’ in the One Thousand and One Nights ............................................................................ 243 Driss Cherkaoui (College of William and Mary) SECTION 4. PERFORMING ARTS .............................................271 The Slippers That Keep Coming Back: Gender and Race in Two Swedish Theatre Adaptations, Abu Casem’s Slippers (1908) and The Weaver of Baghdad (1923) .................... 273 Tetz Rooke (University of Gothenburg) Miguel Gomes’s Arabian Nights trilogy: representing the Portuguese crisis through the imaginary world of The Thousand and One Nights ............................................. 309 Ana Vera (University of Copenhagen) Russian Orientalist Ballet and Non-Russian National Opera: From Diaghilev to Miroshnichenko................................ 323 Firuza Melville (University of Cambridge)

INTRODUCTION ‫انتي من هاليوم وحدج شهرزادي‬ ‫واني وحدي بعينج انتي شهريار‬ ‫يا حلاة البسمة من اجمل شفاة‬ ‫ويا جمال الأبيض الشابه سمار‬ ‫يا قراري اللي اتخذته بكل قوايه‬ ‫والحمد لله على هذا القرار‬

You alone are, from this day on, my Shahrazad And, only I am, in your eyes, Shahriyar Oh, the sweetness of a smile from most beautiful lips Ah, the beauty of white [hair]: turning grey is turning dark What a decision I took with all my strength Thank God that I took it

(Maʾmūn al-Naṭṭāḥ, 2017)

This volume deals with One Thousand and One Nights from a comparative perspective, bringing old and new together by exploring parallels and possible origins of its tales, as well as some of the wealth of modern and contemporary material that it has originated and continues to inspire well beyond the literary genre. It attempts to better comprehend the emergence and canonization of the tales and texts on one hand, and our contemporary understanding of the Nights on the other. Thus, it highlights the dynamic nature and autonomous life that the tale collection acquired by virtue of its distinctive features that are calling for research, originating a sheer endless list of works, some of which are discussed here (‘The Arabian Nights Bibliography’). Within the limited scope of a single volume, the chapters included aim at bridging any borders imposed by time and space as well as genre, and—most of all—language with a strong emphasis to underline the transcultural character of the Nights and how the collection lends itself to adaptation. In fact, what we 1

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know in European literature as the Nights was even born as a transnational text 300 years ago: Antoine Galland’s first translation of collections of what became the pleasing ‘Oriental’ tales under the title Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes Arabes in twelve volumes between 1704 and 1717. Its popularity gave rise to many more translations into other languages based on different editions of these and similar tales. Their popularity was partly because they fed into preconceived ideas about ‘Oriental’ eroticism. However, the Nights met with an eager reception at the beginning of the various colonial enterprises in the Middle East and North Africa, and, with colonialism, the ‘Orient’, albeit often misrepresented (Kabbani 2004), came to figure widely in European literature, painting, music, and fashion.1 Arguably, the enthusiasm with which the Nights were met in colonial Europe gave rise to the quest for the ‘complete’ Arabic text of the Nights, first editions of which also appeared in the first half of the nineteenth century, during the beginning of the Romantic era. Interestingly, one of the first—if not the first—Jewish (Bukhara) Tajik books published in the Hebrew script in 1914 was ʿAzaryo Yusupov’s partial ‘translation’—rather, transcription—of the Nights ‘from the script of the Muslims into the Jewish script’ (tarjuma shuda az khati musulmonon ba khati yahudí) under the title Hazoru yak shaḇ (pace Nosonovskij 1995: 190–191). The interest in the magical and wonderful world of these captivating tales has led to a significant reception of these tales virtually all over the world now. In the exact same manner, the ‘original’ tales of those early translations and editions were born prior to the ninth century in Baghdad—a centre of the Islamic world at the time—by collecting and incorporating earlier tales from other literary traditions and elaborating on them while appropriating them into the local The Nights have also served as a motif on stamps: in 1965 Hungary pioneered in issuing a series of 9 stamps with motifs from the Nights, and some other countries followed including but not limited to individual emirates of the U.A.E., the Comoro Islands, Mali, Syria, and Monaco. 1

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culture at the same time (Abbott 1949). This acculturation process was repeated in several cycles in at least two different places (Cairo and Damascus), so that already within the same corpus we find tales featuring the great Abbasid Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (736–809) of the eighth and ninth centuries as well as tales mentioning the coffeehouses of fifteenth century Cairo. At times, these tales are transformations of other, earlier tales, and at times, they have striking parallels with other and later tales, which clearly demonstrates how entangled the literary world is, in the past and in present times. Although the assumed Persian vorlage of the so-called Arabian Nights has not come down to us, we can certainly point to two remarkable features of the collection that go beyond the imagination of Persian literature and point towards older Indian literature. The first is the framing story, which encloses all other tales in which not infrequently the character of one tale becomes the narrator of another, adding layers of complexity and depth to the collection on one hand and immense suspense on the other. The second is the incorporation of talking animals as the protagonists of didactic fables. Both distinctive features are characteristic of Sanskrit literature out of which the Arabic Nights and the famous fable collection Kalīla wa-Dimna (‘Kalila and Dimna’) ultimately evolved through irretrievable Middle Persian intermediaries. It is worth mentioning here that both ideas made their way into Europe—centuries before Galland’s monumental translation—in mediaeval times already, partly through travellers to the East, and demonstrably also through Arabic intermediaries. For reasons of brevity, only examples of embedded story-telling utilizing a frame-tale in mediaeval European literatures shall be mentioned here. Although in traces, this can already be found in works of Petrus Alfonsi (fl. 1106–1130), Ramon Llull (1232– 1315), Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), Giovanni Sercambi (1347–1424), and Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533); while a much earlier example of potential influence of the frame story of the Nights is the originally Old French romance of Floris and Blancheflor compiled between 1155

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and 1173. (Irwin 1994: 91–102, Marzolph and van Leeuwen 2004: I, 372 and II, 551–552). One should thus not underestimate the far-reaching consequences of the translation movement of scholarship and Arab fiction from Arabic into Latin and Castilian—at the Escuela de Traductores de Toledo (‘Toledo School of Translators’) during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—and the role of Islamic Iberia as a melting pot of cultures for the examination of the direct or indirect influence that versions of the Nights have had on individual authors and literary works and the broader impact of Arabic literature on the development of world literatures. Similarly, research has to consider not only the two different strands of transmission of the Arabic text of the Nights, namely the Syrian and Egyptian ones, but also pre-Galland, nonArabic channels of transmission and pay regard to the oral nature of the material with all that this entails in the Arabic context. Only more recently, scholars have been considering and exploring Ottoman translations of the Nights and their reception and interaction with Persian translations (Thomann 2016). Yet, for instance, it has been argued that in Romania the Nights was circulating in a translation made from Greek following its publication as Aravikón Mythologikón, periéchon diigíseis kai symvevikóta lían períerga kai oraía (‘Arabian Mythology, containing narrations and happenings very peculiar and fascinating’, 1757– 1762). Also known as Halima, this edition itself goes back to early-eighteenth century Italian versions of tales from the Nights and the compilation Thousand and One Days (Anghelescu 1974, Papachristophorou 2004, Marzolph and van Leeuwen 2004: II, 726). Indeed, judging by its title, this also seems to be the source of Bucharester by choice Visar [Vissarion] Dodani’s (1857–1939) partial translation of the Nights into Albanian as Halima apo përrallë arabishte: plot me ngjarje të bukura të shijëshme dhe shumë të mrekulluëshme (‘Halima or Arabic tales: full of beautiful, delightful and most wonderful happenings’). Other than this, there are several other partial translations from different languages into Albanian: Faik Konica [Konitza] translated a few tales under the title Nën hien e hurmave: Prralla t’Arabisë (‘In the Shade of Date Palms: Tales of Arabia’, 1924) and Dhimitër Falos

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a few story cycles (1929–1932), while a more extensive translation was made from French by Mustafa Greblleshi (1986). It seems that the only full translation into Albanian was made from ‘Serbo-Croatian’ by Himi Agani (1965–1985), namely Marko Vidojković’s translation (1949–1954) of Salʹe’s translation into Russian (1929–1939), the first translation of the second Calcutta edition of the Nights in Arabic (1839–1842). However, the mere existence of a printed translation of the Nights cannot tantamount to the popularity of its tales in a given language area, and likewise, the lack thereof cannot mean that tales of the Nights were unknown or unpopular in a given narrative culture because certain tales might have circulated orally. The following example may serve to illustrate this point. Following earlier remarks in studies about similarities between the Nights and Macedonian folktales and Serbian folk songs by Jiří Polívka and Jaša Prodanović respectively, and using a copy of the Serbian Najlepše i odabrane priče iz zbirke Hiljadu i Jedna Noć (‘Most beautiful and selected tales from the collection Thousand and One Nights’, 1922?), Haralampije Polenaković (1951) identified the first two ‘Macedonian’ folktales (from Prilep) to be printed and that were ‘communicated’ by Konstantin Miladinov (1863:64–66) as originating from the Nights: Carʺ i sinovi si (‘The Car and His Sons’, cf. Ahmad and the Fairy Perî Bânû) and Zlatarʺ i majstorʺ (‘The Goldsmith and the Master Craftsman’, cf. The Ebony Horse). This small glimpse into the Nights in Southern and South Eastern Europe does not only reinforce the question about how the Nights were disseminated and received across Europe, but also about the potential influence of the Nights on local narrative cultures. Exploring and studying these other channels of transmission in detail can enable us to map the genesis, transmission and influence of the Nights more accurately, and not only across the literary cultures of the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean in the broader sense but well into Central Asia (Vinnikov 1956: 182). In doing so, one could approximate and explore the historical development of Middle Eastern narrative culture, while documenting engagement with it by the example of the Nights.

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The present volume aims to address these very questions about the emergence and shaping of the Nights on one hand and analysing the inspiration drawn from it on the other. It evolved from the conference One Thousand and One Nights: Comparative Perspectives on Adaptation and Appropriation held at the University of St Andrews on 31 August 2017 and 1 September 2017 that was funded by the Honeyman Foundation and the School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews.2 The rationale behind this conference was to bring together the wealth of material that is based on or refers to the Nights across the variables of time, space, and genre. Twenty-two speakers (ranging from recent PhD graduates to professors in their fields) from fourteen countries from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia participated in the conference with papers on various adaptations and appropriations of the Nights. The six panels represented in the conference were storytelling, world literature, comparative literature, textual history, cinema, and performing arts, featuring papers that applied methodologies of the fields that they pertained to in their approach to understand and explain different manifestations of the Nights in these domains. The chapters in the present volume are divided into four domains, namely literature, manuscripts, narrative culture, and performing arts. Four chapters make up the section on literature, for which Richard van Leeuwen provides a conceptual introduction and outlines the theoretical framework through which to analyse the role of the Nights in world literature and how the Nights contributed to the shaping of twentieth century European literature. Abdalla Uba Adamu introduces us to a selective translation of some tales from the Nights into Hausa, which were transmutated by appropriating and localizing them and demonstrates this process by the example of two of the nine The Honeyman Foundation was set up by the generosity of A.M. (Sandy) Honeyman, a former Professor in the University of St. Andrews, and was established in 1985 with the aim of encouraging education and research, primarily in Middle Eastern languages and cultures.

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tales, which Abubakar Imam published in the 1930s. Fabio Caiani and Catherine Cobham provide a close textual analysis of three key short stories by the contemporary Iraqi writer Muhammad Khudayyir, discussing his dialogue with traditional storytelling and the Nights, more specifically Shahrazad’s way of narration, and its development from an ironic enactment to an enthusiastic appropriation. Neslihan Demirkol and Mehmet Kalpaklı discuss the lack of engagement with the Nights in Ottoman and Turkish literature alike, and compare and contrast two modern Turkish poems about Shahrazad by Sezai Karakoç and Gülten Akın, who benefit from the blank canvas that the lack of poetic tradition around her provided and thus portray Shahrazad very differently and reinvent her. Three chapters feature the section dealing with manuscripts. Sibylle Wentker lets us follow Joseph von HammerPurgstall on his mission to find a manuscript of the complete Arabic text of the Nights at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Cairo and impressively describes his difficulties trying to get his own translation published based on his memoirs and actual letter correspondence. In the next chapter, Johannes Thomann introduces us to the Turkish manuscript tradition of the Nights, and draws our attention to MS Manchester JRL Turkish 75, presenting an alternative happy ending. Orhan Elmaz analyses for the first time the linguistic standardization that distinguishes the first printed edition of the Nights (‘Calcutta I’) from the manuscript that it was (most probably) based on as well as the editor’s adaptation and manipulation of sexually charged episodes in the frame story and selected passages. The third section, on Middle Eastern narrative culture, features a chapter each by Ulrich Marzolph and Driss Cherkaoui. Marzolph advocates studying the Nights embedded in the large web of Middle Eastern storytelling traditions by the example of the story of ‘The Buried Treasure’ in the fifteenth century Kayseri manuscript and its reception and popularization across Middle Eastern and European literatures up until the twentieth century, and substantiates his argument by briefly discussing four more tales of international dissemination. Along these lines, Cherkaoui compares and contrasts the tale ‘Ḥātim and the Queen Cobra’ in

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the endangered Moroccan traditional oral storytelling tradition and its probable source in the Nights, highlighting narratological and linguistic devices of adaptation and appropriation. The last section includes three chapters on manifestations of the Nights in the performing arts. Offering a close comparative analysis of August Strindberg’s and Hjalmar Bergman’s Swedish plays, Abu Casem’s Slippers and The Weaver of Baghdad respectively, in the context of the popularity of everything Oriental at the turn of the twentieth century, Tetz Rooke also discusses the very important questions of inherent racial stereotyping and gender issues in adaptations of the Nights. Ana Vera analyses Miguel Gomes’ film trilogy Arabian Nights (2015) as an appropriation of Shahrazad’s storytelling in order to depict Portugal in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008; set in an imaginary world and narrated in real life stories that are embedded in one another, clearly communicating the idea that creativity and narration give hope in a meaningless environment. Firuza Melville takes us into the world of the nonverbal, exploring the Russian and Soviet Orientalist ballets and operas with a focus on Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Scheherazade, and mainly Diaghilev’s most famous ballet adaptation thereof and their impact well into the contemporary, demonstrating how the famous frame story still lends itself to express social matters through dichotomies represented in it. Overall, this but one volume contributes to the research into the hybrid and multifaceted Nights and comparative studies alike, featuring analyses of outstanding adaptations and appropriations of tales and features of the collection in various domains, contemporary and past, but also offering new insights into its nature, transmission, and dissemination. For, endless as the inspiration that one can draw from the Nights is, it seems that its history is equally endless.

REFERENCES

Abbott, Nabia. 1949. ‘A Ninth Century Fragment of the “Thousand Nights”: New Light on the Early History of the Arabian Nights’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 8.3: 129–164.

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Anghelescu, Mircea. 1974. ‘Les « Mille et une Nuits » dans la littérature roumaine du XVIIIe Siècle’, in Actes du XXIXe congrès international des orientalistes: Études arabes et islamiques II, ed. by Charles Pellat (Paris: L’Asiathèque), vol.1, pp. 13–17. Irwin, Robert. 1994. The Arabian Nights: A Companion (London: Penguin Books). Marzolph, Ulrich and Richard van Leeuwen (eds). 2004. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO). Miladinov, Konstantin. 1863. ‘Dve narodni bǎlgarski prikazmi (odʺ Prilepʺ)’, in Biser: Niz bisera jugoslavjanskoga; zabavnik, ed. by Nikola Stokan (Zagreb: Tiskom narodne tiskarnice dra. Ljudevita Gaja), pp. 64-66. Nosonovskij, Mihail. 1995. ‘Biblioteka i arhiv Тuzemnoevrejskogo muzeja v Samarkande: Opisʹ materialov’, in Evrei v Srednej Azii proshloe i nastojaščee [v proshlom i nastojaščem]: Èkspedicii, issledovanija, publikacii, ed. by T.D. Vyshenskaja, Trudy po Iudaike, IV (St Peterburg: Evrejskij Univerzitet), pp. 187–247. Papachristophorou, Marilena. 2007. ‘The Arabian Nights in Greece: A Comparative Survey of Greek Oral Tradition’, in The Arabian Nights in Transnational Perspective, ed. by Ulrich Marzolph (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), pp. 291– 311. Polenaković, Haralampije [Polenakoviḱ, Haralampie]. 1951. ‘“Iljada I edna noḱ” i našite narodni umotvorbi’. Makedonski Jazik, 2.5: 102–113. The Arabian Nights Bibliography, compiled by Ulrich Marzolph

[accessed 13 September 2019]. Thomann, Johannes. 2016. Die frühesten türkischen Übersetzungen von Tausendundeiner Nacht und deren Bedeutung für die arabische Textgeschichte. Asiatische Studien / Études Asiatiques, LXX.1: 171–219. Vinnikov, Isaak Natanovič. 1956. ‘Folʹklor buxarskix arabov’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, VI.1/3: 181–206.

SHAHRAZAD IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY FICTION: APPROACHES AND CONSIDERATIONS RICHARD VAN LEEUWEN (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM) In recent years, it is increasingly acknowledged that the Thousand and One Nights, the well-known Arabic collection of tales, has left a deep imprint in the work of many authors of prose fiction in Europe and beyond. From their first appearance in Europe—in Antoine Galland’s translation titled Mille et une nuit, which was published from 1704–1717—the tales of Shahrazad and their settings and heroes have become common phenomena not only in European literature and culture, but also in global culture more generally. In recent publications, I have tried to explore the literary traces of the Nights, in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries in particular, and to reflect on the nature of these traces within processes of literary exchange and discourses of orientalism. The most ambitious of these efforts was a collection of connected essays about twentieth-century prose literature aimed at presenting an overview of the main authors influenced by the Nights, on a global scale, an inventory of the types of influence, and an analysis of the most important works. The intention was not to compile a ‘complete’ survey of texts influenced by the Nights, but rather to show the structural importance of this influence by analysing

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some key works of twentieth-century literature, while at the same time assessing the scope of Shahrazad’s reach.1 In this chapter, I would like to discuss some methodological questions which are relevant to this kind of research and which could serve as a starting point for further investigations. Both general approaches and specific examples of authors and texts from the twentieth century will be discussed. The most important question is perhaps if it is viable at all to compile a survey like this, which combines an inventory with an analysis, since, presumably, this would require two possibly contradictory formats, an encyclopaedic overview and coherent critical essays. However, as we will see, it is precisely the need to combine various frameworks, which is important for a good comprehension of Shahrazad’s global trajectory. Here we will discuss obstacles and limitations which are connected to a project of this kind.

FRAMEWORKS

Among the difficulties of compiling a survey that covers the whole world, whether in the field of history or the field of culture, is that in its holistic approach, it lacks significant structural divisions, boundaries and differentiations. For a meaningful approach, demarcations are required to organize the material and instil them with characteristics that provide insights and coherence. These demarcations are by their nature based on ideological or disciplinary considerations. Whoever intends to discuss the influence of the Nights on a global scale has to ask first if it is possible to design a single, coherent theoretical approach to discuss and arrange the material, and how to demarcate and differentiate the various components. Although there is no exhaustive inventory, even superficial inquiries show that the number of authors in the twentieth century who were inspired and influenced by the Nights is vast, and Richard van Leeuwen, The Thousand and One Nights in Twentieth-Century Fiction; id., ‘A Thousand and One Nights and the Novel’; id., ‘Religion and Oriental tales in the 18th century: the emergence of the fantastic genre’.

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that the amount of material relevant to our question is overwhelming. Apart from the sheer number of texts, the researcher also has to deal with a corpus that is enormously diverse. Even when restricted to novels, the variation in types and trends, conceptions, structures and styles tend to preclude a welldemarcated and unified theoretical approach. The evident starting point is the notion of intertextuality, but as a concept, it is rather a general principle than a coherent methodological framework, since it can include all kinds of references which are endowed with significance through the interpretation of the critic. It would be possible to base an inventory on frameworks of national literary traditions, but these are founded at least partly on ideological premises that may obscure parts of processes, which are inherently processes of exchange and transition, destabilizing the convergence of political and cultural boundaries. Historical frameworks seem to be inadequate, too, since developments in different literary fields in various parts of the world do not necessarily coincide, while, especially from a global perspective, divisions into historical literary trends and genres sometimes seem to be arbitrary and artificial, and not generally applicable. For instance, the emergence of modernism in Arabic literature is conceptualized differently by critics than comparable trends in Europe, depending on different historical contexts. Moreover, should ‘magical realism’ be treated as a separate genre, or merely as a new, historically situated, exploration of the old theme of the relationship between fiction and reality? Questions such as these prevent a clearly delimited unifying theoretical framework. All the approaches mentioned above have useful functions, but it seems that none of them can serve as a coherent framework excluding the others. It seems more useful to approach the diversity of the material with an equally flexible and varied set of methodological tools. Similar arguments can be used to evaluate the relevance of the notions of orientalism, as conceived by Edward Said in his famous work Orientalism (1978). At first sight, it would seem that Said’s paradigm of orientalism is highly relevant for an appreciation of the reception of the Nights in Europe. After all, the European trajectory of Shahrazad coincided with the intensifica-

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tion of the relationship with the Oriental ‘other’ from 1700 onwards and the subsequent spread of European colonial hegemony. However, it should be clear that Said’s Orientalism was intended first of all as a cultural critique and not as a methodological manual. Apart from this, its focus is primarily ideological and political, analysing the intersection of colonial interests with cultural appropriation. It has no interest in the more technical aspects of cultural, and more specifically literary, exchange between literary fields. Because of its political focus, it tends to neglect, and even obscure, the textual mechanisms involved in the transition of a literary text from one literary field to another, and since it is fixated on the ‘appropriation’ and ‘distortion’ of the indigenous cultural heritages, it cannot perceive these heritages as inherently powerful and autonomous. Hence, it cannot see the transition of a literary work from the periphery to the centre as influence, but only as appropriation; it cannot acknowledge hybridity, but only forms of ‘distortion’.2 The deficiencies of orientalism, in the Saidian sense, and as a tool to examine processes of cultural exchange, have come to light particularly in recent years when globalization began to blur the binary models of cultural interaction, which make way for more complex interrelationships. To name an example, if the Japanese author Haruki Murakami uses stereotypes from the Nights, should this be seen as orientalism, or as a form of occidentalism, or both? When Arabic authors incorporate visions of the Nights into their work, should they a priori be acquitted from the accusation of being ‘orientalist’ only because the Nights belongs to their own heritage? What about several Argentinian authors who use ‘orientalism’ to describe their position vis-à-vis Spain, the former coloniser, but also to situate Argentine culture within the periphery and within their own indigenous cultural context? It seems clear that, although processes described by Said are certainly at work here, the term ‘orientalism’ is no Van Leeuwen, ‘European Translations of the Thousand and One Nights; id., ‘How Shahrazad survived orientalism’.

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longer adequate to capture an increasingly complex reality. To be sure, Said’s paradigm remains relevant as a part of the processes that are reconstructed, of course, especially in cases when authors themselves problematize perceptions of Oriental ‘others’ and comment on specific orientalist discourses. Moreover, while, as we will see, exoticism represents only part of the many potential kinds of influence, it always remained an attractive phenomenon. If these textual, historical and discursive frameworks are insufficient as a unifying approach to arrange and analyse the material, is there an approach that is more useful? It would seem that an approach from the perspective of ‘world literature’, in some form or another, could be helpful as a framework, because it can to some extent be stripped of unifying constraints. Within a paradigm of world literature, it is possible to lay priority not on the political aspects imposed by the perspective from national traditions, but on textual mechanisms and the various implications of textual transmission between cultural/ literary fields. Although it can take political boundaries and concomitant power balances into account, it also leaves room for specific mechanisms of literary transmission, connected with the intrinsic properties of texts as a medium, and of the value and properties of specific texts. A text may provide examples of narrative concepts, techniques and styles without necessarily conforming to a discursive hegemony determined by political interests. A world literature approach should comprise aspects of intertextuality, literary history and ‘orientalist’ or ‘non-orientalist’ othering, but these approaches should be seen as components within a process that consists primarily of a proliferation of texts. To summarize, a world literature approach can be viable for a discussion of the influence of the Nights if it takes into account the following issues: - It may seem obvious, but it has only been acknowledged in recent years that translations are the most important mechanism for the transmission of literary texts from one literary field to another. Although the process of translation is by no means free of political aspects, it is crucial as a means to introduce literary works to other literary fields.

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RICHARD VAN LEEUWEN Therefore, in a world literature approach, it should be acknowledged that effects of translation, such as forms of hybridity, adaptation and acculturation, should not be seen as cultural appropriation or reprehensible distortion, but rather as necessary interventions for the presentation of literary works to other audiences. Questions of authenticity can occur in the discursive context, but in principle, a translated work is detached from its previous environment and enters a new constellation of literary authority and interpretation. -

-

-

-

Translations, as hybrid texts, are part of a zone of cultural transition and exchange, in which the transmission of cultural artefacts, visions and discourses are being negotiated. This zone also contains literary works that are influenced by these translations and as a result are hybrid, too, in the sense that they deviate from established conventions and show how the translated work is incorporated into the new literary field.

The term ‘reception’ for the analysis of the effects of cultural exchange should perhaps be substituted by the terms ‘incorporation’ of a literary work into another literary field, and its ‘influence’ on authors in another literary field. These terms allow more agency and autonomy for the literary work in question, with its inherent literary and textual particularities. The impact of political interests, ideological discourses, cultural and political boundaries and unequal power balances should not be neglected, but they should not be confined to narrow binary paradigms and not be considered an all-encompassing framework. To put it quite simply, an author and his audience may be interested in a narrative structure without any conscious or unconscious political prejudice or agenda.

It should be acknowledged that in the present circumstances the idea of a global literature is highly distorted by the clear predominance of the Western literary field. Far from undermining the notion of

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world literature, as such, this reveals how the proliferation of literature and the critical and scholarly context is steered by complex historical forces. World literature is not something that ‘exists’ in a neutral form; it is always shaped by historical circumstances and power balances. This does not mean that certain literary landscapes are a priori excluded, but rather that the landscape of global literature is unevenly exposed and mapped, and that this unevenness is part of the development of world literature itself. All these issues are highly relevant for an assessment of the trajectory of the Nights from the realm of Arabic literature—or, perhaps more precisely, of Mameluke and Ottoman-Arabic literature—to a global cultural phenomenon. The crucial role of translations, the text as a medium, the importance of narrative form, aspects of hybridity, political contexts, hegemonic Western modernity, literary interests, narrative concepts, imagined others, all these factors together have shaped what may be called the incorporation of the Nights into world literature and the influence of the Nights on various authors and literatures. The transition of the work to the European literary field is, from this perspective, only a phase in a much broader process, which is still continuing. It is not without importance, of course, since through the channels provided by the predominance of Western modernity the work was able to spread over the globe. The main dynamics of this process, however, was not only the European preoccupation with a colonial other, but also, and perhaps more so, the intrinsic qualities of a complex and intriguing literary work.

CRITERIA AND CAVEATS

After taking heed of all these intricate considerations, the actual difficulties only begin. How to proceed to actually select, analyse, and order the material? How to demarcate the corpus, differentiate between its cores and margins, and conceptualize the various influences? The first issue to be addressed is the source text, usually called the Thousand and One Nights. It is important to realize that for a broad view of the influences of the Nights a

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thorough knowledge of the textual corpus is essential, not only to discover hidden references in other texts, but also to recognize narrative structures, narrative strategies and conceptual parallels. Comparisons must be made from the perspective of the Nights, rather than from the perspective of individual authors or works, in order to be able to assess the structural interrelationships and to group authors together according to themes and narrative elements taken from the Nights that they have in common. It is the textual potential of the Nights that defines and demarcates the field; that connects with individual authors in specific ways; and that provides the basic rationale of intertextuality. But how do we define the Nights as a textual source? Since there is no clearly defined corpus of texts, it is not so easy to answer this question. In Arabic, we have an early version of the work (mid-fifteenth century), several later versions (eighteenth century), and several printed editions (nineteenth and twentieth centuries). The impact of these versions is relative, of course, since most authors who were influenced by the Nights did not know Arabic and had to rely on translations. These translations differed substantially from each other, not only in the material they included, but also in style and cultural outlook. Galland’s Mille et une nuit (1704–1717) reveals the influence of the early French Enlightenment and the literary conventions of the time; Edward Lane’s version (1838–1840) reflects the ethnographic view of the text and its context, which was combined with an archaizing style and severe bowdlerization; John Payne’s translation probably had a German source that was remoulded to accommodate Pre-Raphaelite taste; Maximilian Habicht’s compilation has a rather balanced style, but consists of the material of Habicht’s own, rather haphazard edition; Richard Burton’s Nights and Supplemental Nights (1885–1888) show the discontents of the Victorian age, with its colonial and sexual preoccupations, combined with an exuberant and experimental style and a rather recalcitrant world-view; Joseph Mardrus’ collection of Thousand and One Nights tales (1899–1904) is stylized to conform to the aestheticist taste of fin de siècle modernity, inspiring a revival of art nouveau orientalism; Enno Littmann’s translation

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(1921–1928), finally, shows the rigours of scholarly orientalism and philological fidelity, characteristic of the twentieth century. All these translations have been reprinted several times until the present day in many languages. They have their merits and their deficiencies, and breathe the spirit of their times. They are diverse renderings of a rather unstable corpus of source texts, resulting in a steadily expanding reservoir of stories and corresponding images. Although a literary scholar would probably prefer to differentiate between these components of the Nights tradition, it is possible to see the corpus of Arabic texts and their translations as the nucleus of a textual network that from there kept expanding and proliferating. Translations were re-translated into other languages and served as a source for anthologies and re-workings for all kinds of editions, ranging from pornography to children’s literature; authors imitated, disassembled and reassembled the work according to their needs. As a result of the unstable character of the texts, the Nights became a major source of inspiration for all kinds of literary experiments, which not only facilitated its incorporation into non-Arabic literary landscapes, but also contributed to the reshaping of these landscapes by providing a rich spectrum of literary models, concepts and structures. It is this apparently disorderly metamorphosis of the Nights, which makes it difficult to define its influences: authors were often influenced by very distant impressions they had of the work, distorted by various layers of emulation, interpretation and refashioning. At every point, the corpus is not defined but dynamic, even fluid, being steered and redirected rather than confined and domesticated. If it is difficult to demarcate the corpus of material on one side—the source texts, it is equally hard to define a corpus of material on the other side—the works influenced by the Nights. Again, translations play a crucial role, since it is impossible for any researcher to read all works in their original languages. As a consequence, a complete overview of works is unthinkable and the researcher has to rely on translations that are available in the main world languages. This results in important restrictions. First, in spite of his proficiency, a translator may have made

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mistakes, or the text may contain inaccuracies or specific interpretations that are not recognizable as such. This makes it impossible to analyse the text on the level of words and sentences, while mistakes might undermine the analysis. Second, the reliance on translations prevents a full view of the potentially interesting material, since, presumably, mostly only canonical works will be translated. This can be a disadvantage, since, as we know, literary influence often moves through the channels of popular and less-canonical literature. Still, because they are probably selected for their literary interest, the available works may be more interesting from a literary and narratological perspective. In all cases, the inventory of texts will be biased by Western-centred processes of selection, evaluation and editing. These problems connected with compiling the corpus in practice melt down to a pre-selection of the research material. For the subsequent more refined selection some criteria have to be formulated. For instance, it may be required that authors in one way or another explicitly mention their indebtedness to the Nights, either in their fictional work or in interviews or essays. Here a single reference might suffice, since it possibly provides a key to the understanding of the work as a whole. It is also possible, of course, that an author includes a reference to the Nights only to suggest a distant intertextual association or an indication of a cultural or literary context, without implying a structural connection. This, however, is subject to the interpretation of the critic who may be convinced of a deeper (perhaps unconscious?) relationship. It is at his discretion to argue for a meaningful association contributing to a better comprehension of the work. It remains possible, evidently, that a work is obviously related to the Nights without an explicit reference. A second criterion may be that the association of a work with the Nights should not be limited to a casual reference, but should result in new insight with regard to its interpretation. A novel can be constructed as a frame story, inspired by the Nights, as a mere technique to arrange the material without the intention to add a layer of meaning to the contents. But this form may also have been chosen by the author to show something about the nature of texts and narratives, or to experiment with

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the interaction of different levels within the story. A work may also be embedded in a broader intertextual framework, as in the case of the Argentine authors Fernández, Arlt, Borges and Piglia, who each refer to each other and to the Nights as sources of inspiration, especially for various forms of textual experiments. Here, the intertextual framework of the Nights can only be understood correctly if texts are compared to each other. Finally, for some authors it is crucial to situate their work in its cultural and political environment. A case in point is Ernst Jünger, whose apocalyptic visions inspired by the Nights can only be understood in the light of the political turmoil of his time. Whatever criteria are used, the choice will always be susceptible to criticism and debate. Authors of lesser stature may be included because their work illustrates a specific aspect of the questions and themes involved, while major authors may be excluded because their references to the Nights add little to the analysis of their work and may only be meant to insert a colourful connotation.

THEMES As remarked above, because of the diversity of the material and the ambivalence of the corpus, it does not seem viable to work with unifying theoretical approaches and it is inevitable to adhere to the perspective from the Nights. This is the more profitable, since an analysis of the corpus of the Nights shows that it is for good reason that it became such an influential text. During the course of time, Shahrazad became the iconic model of the storyteller, and her intriguing procedure seems to lay bare the very essence of the process of narration. This essence lies, first, in the intrigue of the framing story, the account of the interaction between Shahrazad and Shahriyar. The plot is based on the motif of adultery, the traumatized response of Shahriyar, and the act of narration as a way out of the fatal cycle of sexuality and death. This motif not only touches upon the primordial relationship between men and women, but also presents storytelling as a medium of the imagination countering both traumatic experiences and violent responses. This example of the nexus of sex-

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uality, trauma and narration shows how the telling of stories can be linked to all kinds of disruptive experiences. Second, the construction of the Nights as a framing story containing a variety of tales produces an enormously rich reservoir of narrative devices. The frame is not only meant to hold the tales together, as a vessel, so to speak, but is an important part of the narrative strategy of the work. It presents various narrative levels interacting to conceive a plot, since the stories are intended to save Shahrazad’s life; it juxtaposes a diegetic reality and imagined stories as a kind of binary, supplemental process of perceiving and constructing reality; it shows how storytelling can be a form of ritual which neutralizes destructive psychological and social forces; it exemplifies the possibility to manipulate time by storytelling and by the deferral of gratification; through the device of interruption, it illustrates the urge to construct a coherent vision of reality out of a fragmented experience; and, finally, it posits that storytelling is congruent with life itself, or with the continuation of life, which ends when/if the story ends. The self-reflexivity of the framing story enables authors not only to imagine themselves in the position of Shahrazad—writing to avoid ‘death’—, but also to problematize their relationship to the text and the relationship between text and reality. This is such a basic issue for any form of literature, that it can serve as a starting point for anyone striving to produce a literary work. Moreover, for many modern authors the Nights represents precisely this. Third, the collection of the Nights seems to be intrinsically unstable in several respects. It consists of an in principle endless proliferation of stories, without limits or bounds, of all kinds, of unrestrained imagination, although it may stop at any moment. The work is certainly not a generically coherent text, but rather a text that defies the conventions of structuring and consistency. This conceptual instability of the collection is reflected in the wider corpus related to the Arabic originals. The Nights remained a work without an author, without a clear demarcation, without generic conventions, and persistently questioning the functioning of stories and texts, and the relationship between the imagination and reality. This instability and ambivalence

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solicited, perhaps even required, the intervention of authors, to fill up the lacunae in the intriguing framework it presents; authors of various kinds have felt the urge to redefine the work according to their own visions, or to reconstruct it, or to exploit its basic ambivalence. These three sets of fundamental characteristics of the Nights, in its basic form, and enclosed in the combination of its structure and narrative concept, have stimulated authors from the eighteenth century until the present day to use the work not only as a source of inspiration, but also as material for experiments of all kinds. They represent the main incentives to revitalize the work and incorporate it into new literary genres and literary fields, and they can be seen pervading the corpus of works influenced by the Nights. Apart from these primary elements, there is a large array of more specific thematic and structural references to the Nights, ranging from spatio-temporal setups to specific plots, figures, settings, and motifs. There may be exoticism involved, but not necessarily, as sometimes the technical and structural connections are more important. Besides, exoticism, as a form of estrangement in literature, may take on different guises. It may consist of references to a vague, imaginary Orient, or to a real Orient, or to a distant, unfamiliar time; it may also refer to unfamiliar realms of psychological aberration, or of fantasy, or of memory. It can be argued that forms of exoticism related to the Nights in European literature became gradually internalized, as a part of the psyche rather than of a geographical region or specific culture. Taking the foregoing into account, a more specific inventory of kinds of influence and intertextual relationship can be envisaged as follows, keeping in mind that relationships between specific texts and the Nights may be of various kinds simultaneously, and that the list is evidently not exhaustive: 1. Spatial structures. This category reflects influences in the construction of narrative spaces within literary texts. These are generally of three kinds: first, the imitation of the ‘adventure trope’, which can be found in many romances and tales of the Nights and which serves as a spatio-temporal framework of the story, often incorporating supernatural domains; second, the

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RICHARD VAN LEEUWEN opposition between closed spaces (castles, crypts, women’s compounds, dungeons and their like) and journeys through unstructured spaces, as a basic juxtaposition of stagnation and mobility; and, third, the motif of the forbidden door, which the hero may not open. In most cases, it is narration or other forms of communication, which establishes the links between the different spatial realms. Spatial differentiation may also be related to supernatural forces, curses, talismans, or, more generally, fate. An example of a twentieth-century author who explored the spatial aspects of the Nights is Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the German author of stories and plays who straddled the decadent symbolism of the close of the nineteenth century and burgeoning modernism in the first decades of the twentieth century. In Das Märchen der 672. Nacht (The Tale of the 672nd Night; 1895), he stages the son of a merchant who lives in isolation and who is suddenly forced to leave his selfsufficient home only to enter a strange, enchanted outside world, which exposes him to an unexpected death. In Von Hofmannsthal’s unfinished novel Andreas, too, a young merchant’s son leaves the confinement of his paternal home to explore the world and roam through a seemingly enchanted realm which destabilizes his perception of reality. The epistolary form and the Oriental storyteller who figures in the notes for the continuation of the story represent the narrative component. Another example is Michel Butor’s novel Portrait de l’artiste comme jeune singe (1967), in which the narrator retires for one week to a castle in Germany filled with esoteric and alchemical books. His confinement and self-observation is contrasted and paralleled with the prince in the story of the ‘Second Qalander’, who is transformed into a monkey and sets out to roam the world. The cases of Von Hofmannsthal and Butor show how twentiethcentury authors used tropes and motifs from the Nights connected with spatial constructions, to experiment with new literary forms. In general, we can say that

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throughout the twentieth century the characteristic spatial elements of the Nights are adopted to destabilize notions and experiences of spatial coherence, which was of particular concern for modernist and postmodernists of various kinds.

2. Temporal structures. This element is obviously linked to the specific temporal regime in the Nights and its narrative implications: the stagnation of time; the manipulation of time; different temporal levels; and the motif of survival through deferral. All these devices are related to storytelling and are often connected, too, to some initial traumatic experience. They are also interrelated with issues of space and mobility, as confinement signals stagnation and mobility symbolizes the passage of time. The quintessential example in this category is of course Marcel Proust, who has acknowledged his fascination with the Nights and whose In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu 1913–1927) follows the pattern of initial trauma, postponement through narration, and redemption. Other novels are constructed around an enchantment that freezes time in order for some transformation to take place, such as Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984) and Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore (2002). In both novels, history comes to a standstill by a mysterious spell, which allows an anomaly from the past to be rectified. An example of the connection between storytelling and survival can be found in Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation to a beheading (1938). Here, a prisoner tells his life story while he is waiting for his execution. In the story some strange incidents are inserted, which suggest that the story has ‘absorbed’ the narrator and that his life depends on his continuing his story. In the end, the narrator proceeds with his story after his beheading, suggesting that the whole text was recorded after the ‘death’ of the narrator. The connection with the Nights is suggested in several ways. The procedures of these authors show how they experiment with visions of time that reflect their

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RICHARD VAN LEEUWEN consciousness of the fragmented and unreliable nature of time as a framework of a coherent vision of reality. These visions recur in all (post-)modernist trends throughout the twentieth century and often explicitly emulate narrative concepts and structures of the Nights.

3. Textuality. This category refers to the typically modernist and postmodernist inclination to consider the text as an object and to stress the textual nature of the literary work, usually by incorporating an element of self-reflexivity. This notion of textuality is not limited to the construction and conceptualization of narratives, but includes the construction of visions of reality: our experience of reality is of a textual or narrative nature and is structured as a text. The champion in this category is of course James Joyce, who in Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939) not only deconstructs the relationship between text and reality, but also explores the boundaries of the capability of language to grasp the human experience. Second best, in this respect, are Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, both members of OULIPO, the laboratory for literary experiments, and both preoccupied with intricate textual constructions in which life is replaced by texts and which reveal the intrinsic tendency of texts to regenerate themselves and proliferate endlessly. For all these authors, the mechanism of self-reflexivity and the generation of stories presented in the Nights served as an example of the fluidity and all-encompassing nature of storytelling. In the work of Abdelkebir Khatibi and Juan Goytisolo storytelling is related to sheer physical survival, as a means to invent an intellectual habitat in which the author can survive. In the words of Khatibi, in ‘Nuits blanches’ (‘Sleepless Nights’; 1988): ‘Raconte une belle histoire ou je te tue’. Here the way in which Shahrazad jeopardizes her life and saves herself by telling stories is projected into the twentieth-century feelings of cultural alienation and hybridity, in which physical and intellectual exiles converge.

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4. History. This cluster of themes is related to the narrative aspects of history and history as a form of narration. In many twentieth-century texts, the narrative devices of the Nights are used to play with notions of time and space and to emphasize the tension between real events and their representation in texts. The intervention of supernatural forces and enchantments, the interaction between reality and memory or the imagination, the manipulation of time, and the efforts to neutralize violence by storytelling are recurrent motifs. The aim of authors is often to deconstruct hegemonic visions of history, which support discourses and hierarchies of power, and to reveal the fragmented nature and subjectivity of the historical experience. An interesting group of texts in this category is the triad consisting of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Toni Morisson’s Beloved (1987), and André Brink’s Imaginings of Sand (1996). All three novels investigate the connections between history, memory, and storytelling, and show how historical narratives are rooted in collective human experiences, but are constructed to support some historical ‘truth’. All three novels are centred around a mysterious house, that is possibly enchanted. The house represents an alien element in its environment and fosters the deconstruction of dominant, coherent, historical discourses to give space to subaltern, black, alternative visions of the past. In this category, we also find novels of the type usually indicated with the term ‘magical realism’, such as Gabriel García Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) and Shame (1983), which, at the time, were considered to subvert the hegemonic discourses of literature and neo-colonial politics in the West, and which have strong connections with the Nights. Finally, David Grossman and Elias Khoury use structures and motifs from the Nights to explore how historical traumas caused by violence and war can be re-imagined in writing, not only as a means of self-

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RICHARD VAN LEEUWEN protection, but also as a means to exorcize the forces of violence from the collective consciousness. Storytelling is a ritual that conjures the demons of the past.

5. Identification. This cluster of themes and motifs concerns the various ways in which authors identify themselves and/or their characters with figures and tropes of the Nights, or use settings from the Nights as iconic places. This identification is not only elicited by the iconic and exotic status of such characters as Aladdin, Sindbad, Harun al-Rashid and Shahrazad; they are attractive mainly because, as narrative contraptions, they are flat characters, or, as Tzvetan Todorov has coined them, ‘narrated figures’ (l’homme récit). This concept indicates that a character in a story has no psychological depth or personality of his own, but consists of a set of preconceived, stereotypical and unchangeable properties. He takes no decisions himself, but is pushed forward by the events of the story. This emptiness is connected with conceptual stereotypes (the traveller, the storyteller, the ruler, the innocent boy) which make these figures appealing as narrative models that can be ‘filled’ through the imagination of authors or readers according to their own fantasies. Thus, authors like Gyula Krúdy and John Barth, representatives of Hungarian modernism and American postmodernism respectively, projected visions of themselves into the figure of Sindbad, the quintessential traveller, recreating him according to their romantic self-image. Leïla Sebbar used the character of Shahrazad to explore the cultural discourses of multi-culturalism in France in the 1970s, and more specifically forms of orientalism in the visual arts. Very interesting are the references to Aladdin in Scandinavian literature, from the midnineteenth century onwards, as a symbol of the contradictions of modernity, for instance in Adam Oehlenschläger’s Aladdin and the Magic Lamp (1805). Ernst Jünger, the controversial German right-wing thinker and writer, represented Aladdin as an

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allegorical representation of modern man, with unlimited disposition of the power of technology. His fascination with destruction and rebirth explains his admiration for the story of the ‘City of Brass’, which for him symbolized the forces of transitoriness and glory, and the sublime notion of the apocalypse.

6. Aftermaths. The works assembled in this cluster all attempt to envision a sequence to the Nights after Shahrazad’s storytelling has ended and Shahriyar has spared her life. Typically, the authors in this group are preoccupied with the political implications of the Nights, notably the resistance of Shahrazad against arbitrary, dictatorial, power, and matters concerning the freedom of speech and the emancipation of women. It is no coincidence that here we find many Arabic authors, who not only see themselves as successors of Shahrazad, but who also assess their political circumstances as the outcome of a cultural and political heritage of which the Nights is a part. The main representatives of this idea are Tawfiq al-Hakim and Taha Husayn, the two Egyptian pioneers of modernist literature and thought, who introduced the Nights into modern Arabic literature with their play Shahrazād (1934) and novels al-Qaṣr al-masḥūr (1936) and Aḥlām Shahrazād (1942). Their work not only marked the recognition of the Nights as a serious work of literature in the Arabic literary field, and not just a trivial product of popular literature. It also paved the way for authors such as Naguib Mahfouz, Tayeb Salih, Hani al-Rahib, Emil Habibi, Elias Khoury and many others, who used elements from the Nights to comment on abuses of power and political and cultural repression. They depicted the delusions of dictatorial authorities imposing forms of modernity that disrupted ties with the past and substituted fake visions of the future and political corruption for cultural authenticity and democratic reform. Their work is not optimistic, but it shows that Shahrazad has not lost her vitality and that her example can still be invoked to express political critique.

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These six categories cover a whole range of works that have appeared in the twentieth century and that represent very diverse currents and trends. Their specific historical settings differ, as do the cultural contexts in which they appeared and to which they refer. The list is of course by no means complete or exhaustive, and alternative inventories can certainly be imagined. The categorization above is no more than a first effort to organize a corpus, which is, as illustrated above, so diverse that it becomes unwieldy and difficult to process. Many works would straddle several categories, and the extent to which works owe certain techniques, concepts and strategies to the Nights directly, and not, for instance, through the intermediate link of derivative works, can be debated. After all, the Nights is as much an idea— a phenomenon of the imagination—as a literary work with specific characteristics.

CONCLUSION

As explained above, it is not easy to define the premises and corpus required for the ambitious task to present an overview of influences of the Nights on fictional literature around the globe. It is equally difficult to formulate general conclusions. However, on the basis of the hypotheses and the material discussed here, some observations can be made. First, throughout the twentieth century, the influence of the Nights can be perceived in the work of authors who have decisively contributed to the shaping of literary fields all over the world. All main trends seem to be included even in a concise and preliminary overview, from Gothic modernism and high modernism, to surrealism, magical realism, social-realism, and post-modernism to name but a few. Every time when new trends were developed and generic boundaries were explored and redefined, authors made use of the Nights as a model or as a reservoir of narrative material and techniques to experiment with new forms and new literary concepts. Throughout the twentieth century, where literary experiments occurred and literature was re-invented, Shahrazad showed her resilience and enduring vitality.

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Second, the influence of the Nights on twentieth-century fiction is only partly determined by a yearning for exotic realms and romantic escapism. Although these tendencies can certainly be found, it is mainly narrative concepts, techniques and strategies, which induced the incorporation of the Nights into world literature. The trajectory of Shahrazad spreading over the world indicates that binary oppositions between East and West have lost much of their meaning and that, moreover, the concept of exoticism should perhaps be redefined, in order to dissociate it from its narrow European connotations. The process of incorporation of the Nights into various literary landscapes not only involved its hybridization, but also a growing complexity of the discursive frameworks of which it became part. In this sense, the tendency of Shahrazad to cross boundaries of any kind keeps increasing her ability to destabilize forms of authority that attempt to capture her within pre-established political and cultural straightjackets. The Nights exemplifies the fluidity of texts and the complex mechanisms of literary exchange that are difficult to confine to specific paradigms. The Nights is not merely part of Arabic literature; it is not only part of orientalism; it is not only part of hegemonic European modernity; it is not only part of post-colonial self-identification; it is part of all this, and more. To conclude, it is important to note that this concise inventory and the broader work to which it is related, are no more than a rough sketch that should be elaborated with new and more refined research, for instance making more complete surveys of works influenced by the Nights in the various languages; discussing discursive biases and political impact; analysing the relationship of works with specific translations; examining how certain narrative devices, such as the frame story have become common phenomena in literature under the influence of the Nights; and the importance of the Nights for the (re)shaping of literary landscapes and the redefinition of generic boundaries and literary categories. In this way it will be possible to assess the deep impact of Shahrazad in world literature, not only as an icon of orientalism, but as an intricate, intriguing, work of literature, with its own vitality and cultural ‘agency’.

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REFERENCES

Leeuwen, Richard van. 2015. ‘Religion and Oriental Tales in the 18th Century: the Emergence of the Fantastic Genre’, in, Variations françaises sur les Mille et une nuits: quelles versions pour quelles effets?, ed. By Aboubakr Chraïbi and Ilaria Vitali (eds), Francofonia, 69, (Bologna: Olscki Editore), pp. 35–56. ― 2016. ‘European Translations of the Thousand and One Nights and their Reception: Orientalist falsification or literary fascination?’ CLINA, 2.1: 29–41. ― 2017. ‘A Thousand and One Nights and the Novel’, in The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions, ed. by Wail Hassan (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 103–117. ― 2018. The Thousand and One nights in Twentieth-Century Fiction (Leiden: Brill). ― forthcoming. ‘How Shahrazad Survived Orientalism’.



“WE ARE NOT IN BAGHDAD ANYMORE”: TEXTUAL TRAVELS AND HAUSA INTERTEXTUAL ADAPTATION OF SELECTED TALES OF ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS IN NORTHERN NIGERIA ABDALLA UBA ADAMU (BAYERO UNIVERSITY KANO) This chapter textually analyses how a few tales from the Nights were re-translated, in effect intertextualy transmutated as African tales in Hausa language of northern Nigeria in 1930s by Abubakar Imam in what is considered by the local intelligentsia as the quintessential Hausa storyline. The adaptation was done so skillfully that it was only in the 1970s that local readers started making connections between the stories they read in translation in Hausa language and the original. The chapter analyses two of the nine adapted stories from the Nights in order to determine the intertextual devices used to ‘mask’ the originals and pass them as Hausa. These stories are ‘The Bull and the Ass’, translated as Labarin wani jaki da sa (MJC vol. I, 54–57), and ‘Masrûr the Eunuch and Ibn al-Qâribî’ as Ba wahalle sai mai kwaɗayi (MJC vol. I, 96–98). They were chosen because of their short length and didactic messages, which parallel Hausa folktales. The chapter hopes to draw attention to the various devices used by African authors in using transnational literary sources as templates to build their own literary imaginations. The British colonized northern Nigeria from 1903 to 1960, and in 1929, the colonial administration set up a Translation 35

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Bureau. Initially it was in Kano, but in 1931 it was moved to Zaria and in 1935 renamed the Literature Bureau. The first director of the Bureau was Mr. Whiting, who was later replaced by Dr Rupert East. He eventually provided the fundamental framework for the development of literature in the region. The objectives of the Bureau were to translate books and materials from Arabic and English, write books in Hausa, produce textbooks for schools, and encourage indigenous authors. To get things started, the Bureau organized a literary competition in 1933, collecting manuscripts from prospective authors. The five books that emerged from the manuscripts as winners in the competition were Ruwan Bagaja (‘The Water of Cure’, Malam Abubakar Imam Kagara), Ganɗoki (‘Mr Inquisitive’, Malam Bello Kagara), Shaihu Umar (‘Shaykh Umar’, Malam Abubakar Bauchi), Idon Matambayi (‘The Eye of the Enquirer’, Malam Muhammadu Gwarzo), and Jiki Magayi (‘Body Language’, Rupert East and John Tafida). These books were published in 1934. The most outstanding of these five Hausa novels, in Rupert East’s view, was Abubakar Imam’s Ruwan Bagaja. However, it was clear from the plot elements and general thematic structure of the novel that it was not a Hausa tale, unlike others that had clearly identifiable Hausa settings. Abubakar Imam, in an interview with Nicholas Pweddon (1995: 87), stated that he was ‘inspired’ to write Ruwan Bagaja after reading al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt: In that story (Ruwan Bagaja) there were two characters – Abu Zaidu and Harisu – with one trying to defeat the other through cunning. I also used two men, on the basis of that technique, but I used the Hausa way of life to show how one character (Abubakar) defeats the other (Malam Zurƙe).” (emphasis mine).

However, other sources used to write Ruwan Bagaja included the core plot element from The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales (especially The Water of Life from where the book derived its title) and Sinbad the Sailor from the Nights (Mora 1989). Thus, Ruwan Bagaja marked the first emergence of intertextual adaptation of transnational tales into African languages in Nigeria. As Imam further revealed, he was taught the art of literary transmutation by Rupert East, who:

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[…]taught me many dos and don’ts. For example, he taught me never to allow a miscreant to triumph over a good character in any fictional story, such as a cheat or a fraud, even if he appears to be winning in the beginning and he is being highly respected and praised. That it is better to make him the loser at the end (Pweddon 1995: 87).

The intertextual device used by Imam in his re-reading of foreign tales into Hausa language is critical in understanding what might be called ‘contextual intertextuality’, a process in which core narrative elements are retained and re-contextualised for different audiences. Imam therefore refused to be a slave to the narrative, and he credited this to his teacher, Rupert East. […] On translation, he (Rupert East) said if someone utters something nice, either in English or in Arabic, or any other language, when translating it into Hausa you shouldn’t be enslaved to the wordings of the statement, trying to act like you’re translating the Koran or the Bible. What you’re supposed to do, as long as you fully understand what the man said, is to try and show genius in your own language just as he did in his, i.e. yours should be as nice in Hausa as his was nice in English. That way Dr. East kept teaching me various techniques of writing until I understood them all (Pwedden 1995: 87) (emphasis added).

The tutelage was taken a notch higher when East […] assembled for me many story-books in Arabic and English, especially Iranian texts. Fortunately I knew Arabic because I had learned it right from home. That’s why I could understand the Arabic books unless if the language is too advanced. I read all of these books until I understood the techniques of established writers. When Dr. East realised that I had finished he told me what to do and I set out to write. The first book I wrote was Magana Jari Ce (Knowledge is an Asset). (Pwedden 1995: 88).

Magana Jari Ce is composed of about 87 stories—mainly narrated by a parrot, Aku (although joined in a competitive mode by another parrot, Haziƙ) to various audiences and settings. In another interview, Abubakar Imam stated that he had taken the figure of the parrot and its technique of storytelling from a Persian book

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(Wali 1976). Published in 1937 in three volumes, Magana Jari Ce established itself as the quintessential example of Hausa literature because of its clever weaving of local mindsets and transnational fictional landscapes. Included in the volumes were nine stories from One Thousand and One Nights; 14 fables are from the Brothers Grimm; five stories are from a Persian version of the Indian collection Śukasaptati; two stories are from the Indian collection Pañcatantra; two fables are from Hans Christian Andersen; seven short stories are from the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio; one each is based on a Greek myth about the king of Macedonia; a story of Persian origin; a Biblical story, and a fable by W. Hauff. Only about 34 stories were either original or derived from unknown sources (Jeż 1986). All these were woven into a Hausa narrative, obscuring the originating stories and adapting the plot lines to Hausa society. The chapter operates within the larger framework of transcultural intertextuality. The intertextual relationship between a cultural product, the story, and its transmigrational adaptation is analysed as an intervention on an existing discourse formation, which includes both the original product or text and the discourses using it, originating it, deriving from it, or surrounding it. This intervention amounts to both an interpretation and an appropriation of the original text. In this regard, Landa (2005: 181) notes that like other intertextual modes (translations, critical readings), adaptations produce a ‘retroactive transformation of the original…as it is used and understood in specific contexts and instances of communicative interaction’.

I NTERTEXTUAL ADAPTATIONS AND AFRICAN LITERATURE

Bakhtin’s contention that a text ‘lives only by coming into contact with another text (with context)’ (1986: 162) has formed the fundamental core of intertextuality. Bakhtin refers to this contact as ‘dialogic’ and sees texts as utterances, rather than a mechanical contact of ‘oppositions’ possible only within a single text, devoid of both another text and context. Eventually the dialogic text becomes a monological dialectic (an idea which Bakhtin borrows from Hegel).

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It was Julia Kristeva who transformed Bakhtin’s ‘contact with text’ idea into ‘intertextuality’, which she saw as a dynamic site in which relational processes and practices are the focus of analysis instead of static structures and products. She notes that the literary word is ‘an intersection of textual surfaces rather than a point (a fixed meaning), as a dialogue among several writings’ (1986a: 35). Further, intertextuality is, according to Kristeva, a ‘redistribution of several different sign-systems’ as well as the ‘transposition of one (or several) sign-system (s) into another’ (1986b: 111). This ‘redistribution’ has appeared in so many texts around the world. However, beyond merely an acknowledgement of the significance of one text for another in the construction of a hybrid third text, there is the issue of conceptual translation of core ideas, principles, or Bakhtian ‘context’ in the third text. Thus, intertextuality actually goes beyond two juxtaposing texts: for them to form an effective contextual pair, they must convey a meaning not present in either of them. The emergence of this new context is demonstrated in the way Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights became domesticated in non-Arabic cultures. Texts are therefore conjoined with others to reflect what I call ‘textual migration’. For as Martinez (1996: 268) argues, ‘the concept of intertextuality requires…that we understand texts not as self-contained systems but as differential and historical, as traces and tracings of otherness, since they are shaped by the repetition and transformation of other textual structures’. This intertextual template extends to more than shifts in narrative location and its context. A very common reflection of this narrative shift is in filmic adaptions of books as remakes. As Horton and McDougal (1998: 3) noted, ‘in terms of intertextuality… remakes—films that to one degree or another announce to us that they embrace one or more previous movies—are clearly something of a special case, or at least a more intense one’. Intertextual adaptation of stories as a literary device suspiciously alludes to either outright plagiarism or lack of originality. Indeed, it can be argued that intertextuality, appropriation and adaptation have always featured in African literature, in the

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sense that the oral literature of many African communities operates as an open source depository of folk wisdom and history that gets adapted to various circumstances and communities, and in many ways. As Irele (2001: 37) notes, […] the mobility of the text implies that the entire process of the generation and maintenance of oral texts— composition, performance, and transmission—obeys the principle of intertextuality, which impels every instance of oral literature toward a condition of collective appropriation.

In this way, stories are retold and reimagined as they move from one context and community to another. Further, although the novel is a distinctly European device, in Africa it becomes an intertextual and adaptive depository. African novelists such as Chinua Achebe, Amos Tutola, Taban Lo Liyong, Ben Okri, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Naguib Mahfouz have all at one time or another interwoven myths and contemporary realities in their fictional narratives. However, even African novels that use the Western canon in their narrative often allude to other African novels, although without acknowledging them as such. As Ogede (2011: ix) pointed out, All texts have forebears, but it is especially enlightening to be told that some African writers read other African writers because the fact that they have often found a strong impetus to work through their own ideas with each other is seldom recognized.

In exploring how African writers alter one another’s styles while drawing from older texts to fashion new ones, Ogede (2011) demonstrates such intertextual reading as a sign of honourable acknowledgement, rather than what others might see as outright plagiarism, a practice which Ogede (2011: ix) actually refers to as ‘theft of creative thunder’. Such inter-African intertextuality, which Kurtz (2011: 24) also sees as ‘intergenerational intertextuality’ since writers appropriate from their oral traditions, European literary models and also an ‘increasing body of recent African writing’ therefore forms the basis for understanding how African literature evolves

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beyond its at least three formations of oral; written in African languages; and written in European languages. Intertextuality, adaptation or appropriation is certainly transcultural, ‘a poetic practice of interweaving elements from different national and cultural traditions in ways that require comparative, border-crossing reading strategies’ (Mai 2010: 1). This sees an influence that does not restrict itself to a particular race, nation or culture. This is shown, for instance, in how Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things intertextually pays homage to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird’ (Lemster 2010). In a similar way, Sasic (1998: 167) was able to demonstrate how the Somalian writer, Nuruddin Farah, in his Sardines, ‘meshes the complex grids of transcultural and intertextual awareness to construct a Somali novel’. A subsequent analysis of the novel linked Ancient Greek tragedy and the Somali Theatre, throwing the character of Shahrazad and the tortoise tale segment of Chinua Achebes’s Things Fall Apart into the mix.

TRAJECTORIES OF HAUSA TRANSLATIONS OF ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

Of the three largest ethnic groups in Nigeria, the Muslim Hausa have, arguably, the most extensive and well-established literary tradition. This was made possible by contact with Islam as far back as the 1300s, which exposed the area to the literary polemics and activities of the Muslim world at large. Thus while most Nigerian communities glorified their literary antecedents through extensive collections of oral traditions and folktales, the Muslim Hausa, in addition to these, had the instruments earlier than all the groups to write down their literature through the medium of the Arabic language. Moreover, while classical Arabic remained the preserve of the Muslim clerics and courtiers in Muslim Hausa communities for centuries, the Hausa language became Arabicized in the form of Ajami, which opened up exposure to literary expression for millions of literate members of the community (see Dobronravine 2004). British colonial rule from 1903 to 1960 established Western schools and enabled the Muslim Hausa to absorb the Western literary tradition.

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Thus, Islam and colonial rule led to a total transformation of the traditional Hausa society. Before the arrival of the British in 1900, the traditional Hausa society had virtually transformed itself into an Islamic polity with centuries of Islamic scholarship behind it, which was further entrenched by the reformist jihad of Shehu Usman ɗan Fodiyo in 1804. The Islamic polity thus established a cultural framework which provided inspiration for the subsequent literary tradition in Hausaland and which has sustained itself for well over five hundred years. Therefore, the scholastic tradition in Hausaland was essentially religious, having been generated and sustained by the clerics. It was this scholastic tradition that led to the main entry of One Thousand and One Nights into Hausa literature through four interfaces. The first was Arabic to Hausa in Latin script; the second was modern Hausa, but online at Facebook; the third was a reloaded version of the Arabic to Hausa version, but in modern Hausa prose and orthography. The fourth, the main subject of this chapter, was an (the?) Arabic to Hausa intertextual adaptation. The first Hausa translation of One Thousand and One Nights came about during the colonial period when Frank Edgar, a colonial official, and a local resident, Malam Mamman Kano, translated the Arabic Alf Layla wa-Layla as Dare Dubu da Ɗaya [Hausa: literally, Night Thousand and One] in five volumes. Little is known about Mr. Edgar, except that he was a colonial civil servant with a keen interest in collecting Hausa folktales, proverbs, and folk sayings. It was during this fieldwork in 1911 in northern Nigeria that he came across tales that were clearly not Hausa, traced them to One Thousand and One Nights and started collecting them. What he collected from the local Islamic clerics was their Hausa oral translations of the original Arabic, which they were fluent in. He was able to collect these Arabian tales, and with the aid of Gibb’s English translation of the French version of the Nights, he translated them into Hausa. The French version was translated from Arabic by Dr. J. C. Mardrus, while E. Powys Mathers rendered it into English. Using this as a guide, Edgar then placed his collection in a sequential order, ending on the 169th night. The precise original date of publication of the Hausa version varies from 1924 to 1927.

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However, a reprint was published by Northern Nigerian Publishing Company in 1970. Squarely targeted at adults due to its more erotic content, it was part of the British colonial policy of encouraging reading habits. There was no attempt to edit or censor the Hausa collection from the more adult stories, especially in Volume 5 of the Hausa version. However, there were local objections to the translation and its being made available in the public domain. The main objection came from Alhaji Abubakar Imam, considered the ‘father of Hausa fiction’, who was among the first five Hausa novelists to emerge as a result of a colonial literary competition in 1933. The rest of the Hausa society, prudish as it was (for instance, resisting the establishment of cinemas in the 1950s), accepted Dare Dubu da Ɗaya as legitimate, if underground, literature. In the 1970s, it was even read over the radio for a short period. However, an Islamic revival in 1979, triggered by the Iranian Islamic revolution, led to the creation of a more Islamicate northern Nigerian society and the reading of Dare Dubu da Ɗaya over the radio was banned by the stations themselves in a process of self-censorship. To make Dare Dubu da Ɗaya more ‘African’ some of the stories were illustrated with drawings of distinctly African figures and contexts. This helped to make the collection of the stories more ‘Hausa’, and for many years, Hausa readers were not aware of the foreign origins of the stories, since the characters have Islamic and Middle-Eastern names similar to those of Hausa Muslims. This is shown, for example, in the tale of ‘Fisherman and Jinni’ (One Thousand and One Nights, Vol 1). The Hausa ‘jinni’, fierce-looking with lots of big teeth, approximates the Hausa ‘dodo’ monster that eats people (especially children if they are naughty; for the illustration, see p. 23 of the 1970 Hausa edition). Further, the genie has clearly Negroid features, in contrast to Barbara Kolberg’s more stylized drawing of the genie from other illustrators (available at http://www.barbarakolberg.com/ na010.htm) The second and third trajectories were more recent, and connected. The second started in a Facebook group, Mace Mu-

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tum (‘Female, human’) into a group called Kowa (‘Everyone’). The idea behind ‘mace’ (woman) ‘mutum’ (human) is to convey the impression that females are also human. The group was based on Mace Mutum (‘Female, human’), a novel by a Hausa author, Rahma Abdulmajeed, who declared herself a feminist; and this is reflected in the book, since this focuses on the lives of four abused women who set out to avenge their treatment at the hands of their male oppressors. It was so far the biggest volume of the Hausa language novel, at over 500 pages. Controversies concerning the book (mainly its feminist theme in a patriarchal society) led to discussions about other controversial Hausa works of fiction, and Dare Dubu da Ɗaya was frequently mentioned. This led to the setting up of a separate Facebook group to solicit support for the reloading of the Dare Dubu da Ɗaya based on the original folio scripts written by Edgar, and which were available at the National Archives in Kaduna, Nigeria. In 2013, a pair of Facebook bloggers (Bukar Mada and Ɗanladi Haruna) and an academic (Professor Ibrahim Malumfashi)—who all met each other on Facebook and had been made aware by Mace Mutum (Kowa) of the discussion on reviving the book—decided to revisit the issue of reloading Dare Dubu da Ɗaya. They noted that the 1924 translated Hausa version was based on handwritten translations by Frank Edgar. Further, although the entire 1001 nights were actually translated by Edgar and his Hausa colleague, Malam Mamman Kano, only stories up to the 169th night were published. The Facebook bloggers set up a funding strategy on Facebook to continue publishing the stories, this time in a more standardized Hausa orthography and a more grammatical mode of narrative presentation, which would make the new translations easier to read for modern audiences, in contrast to Edgar’s original dense Hausa spread over many unbroken pages of narrative. They were able to re-transcribe Edgar’s handwritten folios into modern form from November 2013 to May 2015. The book was finally published in October 2015 as Labaran Dare Dubu da Ɗaya – Mujalladi na Ɗaya [The Stories of One Thousand and One Nights, Volume 1].

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The 2015 edition was planned to be published over the following years in 12 volumes, since it was self-funded. The funding strategy they came up with nevertheless did not yield the results that they expected and they decided to publish subsequent volumes when funds would become available. The first volume contained re-transcriptions up to the 35th night. It was illustrated occasionally by drawings from Burton’s edition of the translated One Thousand and One Nights, which are available on the Web. Aimed at the more modern Hausa youth, particularly the Facebook generation, the appropriated illustrations probably connect the stories with modernity more effectively than Edgar’s African illustrations. The fourth trajectory forms the main basis for this chapter. As noted earlier, nine of the stories of One Thousand and One Nights were intertextually re-adapted for Hausa audiences in Magana Jari Ce. In re-contextualizing the nine stories, Imam adopted two main strategies. The first was the narrative frame structure; the second was the re-translation and adaptation of individual stories within the frames. The frame took his readers away from Shahrazad’s Baghdad to Hausaland in Nigeria of the 1930s. Interestingly, Magana Jari Ce provides a unique instance of what can be referred to as ‘intratextuality’—when a text refers to itself, rather than referring its existence to sources outside itself. In 2000, the late Mustafa Hijazi Sayyid (2000) of the Institute of African Studies and Research at Cairo University translated Magana Jari Ce into Arabic under the title al-Kalām raʾsmāl (‘Speech is Capital’) thus re-admitting into Arabic the nine Arabic tales of One Thousand and One Nights from their sojourn in Hausa. The re-translation was made from Hausa to Arabic without the translators being aware of the Arabic intertextual origins of some of the Hausa tales, and they were passed off as African tales. This further establishes the uniqueness of Magana Jari Ce as a translational juncture that further establishes the universalism of the human narrative fiction.

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WE’RE NOT IN BAGDAD A NYMORE: IMAM’S I NTERTEXTUAL READING OF ONE THOUSAND ONE NIGHTS

As explained earlier, Magana Jari Ce, published in 1937, contained 87 intertextually reworked stories that were appropriated from transnational literatures of Europe and Middle East, with nine of the stories being from One Thousand and One Nights. These are listed, together with the English versions of the stories in Table 1. The identification of the Hausa adaptations of the One Thousand and One Nights stories in Magana Jari Ce was initially made by Jeż and Piłaszewicz (2003), itself based on an earlier work by Jeż (1986), however in Table 1, I have corrected numerous errors in the precise sources of both the Hausa and the original versions. It was also clear that Jeż (1986) based her identification of the non-African sources from the Polish translation (Kubiak, 1976) of the English versions of One Thousand and One Nights. This is because although Jeż and Piłaszewicz suggested 11 stories were appropriated by Imam in the Hausa version, I could only confirm nine from both Magana Jari Ce and the English translations by Mathers and Burton. In its mandate to facilitate the Hausa reader’s understanding of foreign literature, the colonial Translation Bureau tried to ensure that the translations removed elements, for instance, references to idols, that might be offensive to the Muslim religious sensibilities of the Hausa. As Piłaszewicz (2010: 222) points out, In its construction, Magana Jari Ce resembles the One Thousand and One Nights, but its stories are transmitted through a parrot and not told by a princess as in the Arabic work. The author skilfully blends the traditional narrative power of the Hausa stories with the charm of the borrowed plots, and the realities of African life have been introduced in a masterly way. The stories vary in their nature and the strength of their appeal, but all clearly point to some moral.

Table 1: Intertextual Adaptions in Magana Jari Ce (after Jeż and Piłaszewicz 2003)

“WE ARE NOT IN BAGHDAD ANYMORE” Magana Jari Ce Story Source

Burton’s English Translation of the Nights

Labarin wani Baƙauye da waɗansu ‘yan birni (I, 32–36)

Tale of the Sharpers With the Shroff and the Ass (875–930), Suppl. vol. I Tale of the Bull and the Ass (Told by the Vizier) (0), vol. I Masrur the Eunuch and Ibn alKaribi (400–401), vol. V Story of King Sindibad and His Falcon (5), vol. I The Ebony Horse (358–371), vol. V Tale of Kamar al-Zaman (170– 237) vol. III Tale of the Trader and the Jinni (2–3), vol. I Tale of Kamar al-Zaman (170– 237) vol. III The Story of Abou Hassan, or The Sleeper Awakened, Suppl. vol. I

Labarin wani jaki da sa (1, 49– 52) Ba wahalle sai mai kwaɗayi (I, 96–98) Saurin fushi shi ka kawo da na sani (I, 99–102) Labarin Sarkin Farisa da wani Bahindi (II, 121–127) Labarin Amjadu da Asadu (II, 150–167) Hassada ga mai rabo taki (III, 205–218) Labarin Kamaruzzan ɗan sarki Sharuzzaman (II, 138–149) Alheri danƙo ne, ba ya faɗuwa ƙasa banza (III, 64–73)

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Consequently, Imam’s translations were linguistic, compositional and contextual, and Imam adhered to the teachings of Rupert East in maintaining expertise in his native language. The main strategy Imam borrowed in the construction of Magana Jari Ce was the frame structure of One Thousand and One Nights. In prose fiction, the frame is ‘the focal point of a narrative space which designates and circumscribes it from the outside as its inside’ (Felman 2009: 316). The literary device of the frame provides a convenient location for the organization of smaller stories. In such stories, usually an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, to set the stage for a more emphasized second narrative or the collection of shorter stories, one leading to other, although not necessarily connected thematically. In his intertextual construction of Magana Jari Ce, Imam weaved his frame from three different sources, Śukasaptati from India (Haksar 2000), Ṭūṭīnāma from Persia—or more specifical-

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ly, written by a Persian expatriate then resident in Uttar Pradesh, both titles alluding to an ‘enchanted parrot’—and the Arabic Alf Layla wa-Layla, which was easy for him since he spoke fluent Arabic. Interestingly, Dare Dubu da Ɗaya was in print when Imam embarked on writing Magana Jari Ce in 1930s, but he shunned Edgar’s Hausa version and relied on the original Arabic versions of the nine stories he adapted in Magana Jari Ce. This is evidenced by the fact that with the exception of the ‘Tale of the Bull and the Ass’, which was relayed on the first night, the rest were tales that went beyond the 169th night end of the Hausa translation. In any case, Imam in an interview with Pwedden (1995) stated that Rupert East assembled for him many storybooks in Arabic and English, especially Iranian texts to work from. I emphasize this to show that although there was a local source for Imam to work with, he used the external sources for his adaptations. He started with the frame structure, using a parrot, which substitutes Shahrazad’s frame, essentially because the latter frame was occupied by a female in unsavoury circumstances. As he related to one of his biographers (Wali 1976), the idea of the parrot came from a Persian book. Kablukov (2004: 78) identified the book as Ṭūṭīnāma written by Żiyāʾ al-Dīn Nakhshabī in the 14th century. Ṭūṭīnāma itself was based on an earlier Sanskrit text, Śukasaptati, which dated from the 12th century. The 52 stories in Ṭūṭīnāma are narrated by a parrot to his owner, a woman called Khojasta, to prevent her from going out of the house for amorous affairs in the absence of her husband. The parrot is kept company by another bird, a myna. Khojasta kills the myna because the latter admonishes her about engaging in any extramarital affairs. To save himself, and at the same time achieve the objective of preventing Khojasta from going out, the male parrot starts narrating interesting stories to Khojasta for 52 nights (Qādirī and Chandra 1976). The second frame was the original source of the stories in Ṭūṭīnāma from Śukasaptati (Haksar 2000) over 800 years before Ṭūṭīnāma was appropriated by Nakshabi. The 70 stories in Śukasaptati are narrated by Lord Shuka, who takes the form of a parrot. Imam avoided direct appropriation of Śukasaptati due to

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its reference to un-Islamic deity. The collection reminds a married woman, Prabhavati, ‘to honor monogamy by distracting her from trysts with her lover’ (Snodgrass 2010: 82). The third frame Imam used was from the prologue of One Thousand and One Nights. While Shahrazad as a storyteller forms the frame of the tales, she clearly replaces the parrots of Ṭūṭīnāma and Śukasaptati. While there does not seem to be any link between the parrot and Shahrazad’s frames—the individual stories in both Ṭūṭīnāma and Śukasaptati, although told in a frame device, differ from those of One Thousand and One Nights—Imam linked the two by substituting a woman with a parrot, especially as both the parrot and Shahrazad are traumatized and endangered. Further, both frames take to storytelling to prevent the occurrence of a personal tragedy. Imam’s substitution echoes the prudish Hausa Islamic society of the 1930s—the era of Imam’s book. The parrot was handily convenient for Imam because of its position in Hausa society as a garrulous bird, and whatever its actual gender, was considered to be female. This merely reinforces the stereotype of a woman being garrulous—a perfect vehicle for a metaphorical Shahrazad. The bird’s name in Hausa is generally ‘aku’, although it is commonly called ‘aku kuturu’ due to its white scaly legs, reminiscent of the lesions on a leper’s skin (kuturu). The frame in Śukasaptati is actually the same as in Ṭūṭīnāma. In Magana Jari Ce, the parrot frame also follows similar structure, leaning towards Śukasaptati. The parrot in the Hausa story is bought by a ruler to prevent his son from going out of the palace to join his father in a battle. The prince has already killed a female mate of the parrot that advised against his going out. The surviving parrot keeps the prince enthralled every night until the king returns victoriously from the battle. In each of the three frames, there is an obstacle to the occurrence of a catastrophe. Imam, however avoided the sexual overtones of the Middle Eastern frames and stuck to moralistic tales expected of an African Muslim society. Both Khojasta and Prabhavati were obsessed with illicit affairs, while Shahrazad was fighting for her life. Imam’s ‘aku’ is a guardian entrusted to prevent a child losing his life.

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I NTERTEXTUAL COMPARISONS # 1 – The Story of a Donkey and a Bull

The first of the two stories to be analysed is The Story of a Donkey and a Bull, which is also the first story in the Nights. It was the only tale in the collection related by the vizier, Shahrazad’s father, as an allegory about his fears for her life considering how this particular tale ends. In the Hausa version, Labarin wani jaki da sa ‘The Story of a Certain Donkey and a Bull’, it is related by a parrot to tantalize a young prince into listening and prevent him from leaving the palace where assassins await him. One Thousand and One Nights version

A merchant is given the ability to understand what animals are saying after praying to God, but must not reveal this gift or he will die. One day, he hears a bull moan about the hard work he is doing every day, while the donkey does not have to do anything. The donkey advises him to pretend he is ill. And when the bull does so, he is taken care of by his owner. The merchant advises the owner to let the donkey work instead of the bull and thus, the donkey regrets his advice. The merchant again overhears a conversation between the bull and the donkey. This time the donkey advises against the bull resting, lest he be slaughtered. He does so and the merchant finds this very funny and laughs loudly. The wife of the merchant asks why he is laughing but he says he cannot disclose the reason on penalty of death. She still wants him to tell her, so he intends to tell her. However, before then, he overhears a cockerel telling his dog that if he were the merchant, he would keep his wife in check by beating her with twigs. The merchant does as he has heard, battering the wife until she repents and does not want to know the reason why the merchant laughed anymore. The Magana Jari Ce version

A farmer prays for the ability to be able to comprehend animal talk and he is granted his wish. He suddenly hears a cockerel singing and a nearby hen commends his voice, upon which he

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replies that it is because he is getting old; he could sing louder in his youth. This amuses the farmer and he laughs. Later, while resting near his barn, the farmer overhears his bull complaining to his donkey about the easy life the latter enjoys since he does nothing. The donkey admonishes the bull as being too docile and suggests the bull become aggressive next time the labourers want to drag him to the farm. The bull does precisely that, becomes aggressive and refuses to eat. The farmer realises that the bull has taken the donkey’s advice. So, he asks his labourers to saddle up the donkey to do the farm work. The donkey returns exhausted and finds the bull relaxing. The donkey, realizing that the bull will continue the easy life, warns him that he has heard the farmer is planning to take the bull to the butcher because he cannot do farm work anymore. The bull becomes frightened and immediately active so that he may not be seen as lazy and get slaughtered. The farmer, hearing all this dialogue, laughs and instructs his labourers to always be merciful to the animals because they have feelings too. The Hausa title of this tale is straight translation of the original, not a metaphor as other titles appropriated by Imam. In Hausa societies, especially in the colonial period, a farmer is more commonly associated with domestic animals than a merchant. There were possibly two reasons for this. First, Imam’s departure from the original was intended to remain faithful to the nature of the society by substituting a farmer for a merchant. Second, Imam introduced a spiritual dimension in his adaptation. Whereas in the original the merchant is already endowed with the ability to understand animal speech, the intertextual adaptation uses a spiritual register to enable the merchant acquire this gift. Thus, the farmer prays hard to God, including engaging other prayer consultants, in order to grant him the gift of understanding animal speech. Imam does not delve into why the farmer was obsessed with understanding animal speech—although the reason is alluded to at the end of the tale. Imam stripped the story to its basic skeletal message, removing the excess details about the farmer and his family. Cut off also was the wife-battering end of the original story, the possible death of the merchant if he were to reveal his gift at the

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#2 – Masrur the Eunuch and Ibn al-Káribí

The second tale is from Burton’s translation, Masrur the Eunuch and Ibn al-Káribí (Burton 1885–1888, V, 400th–401st nights). The Hausa version is Ba wahalle sai mai kwaɗayi (I, 96–98). One Thousand and One Nights Version

Masrūr, an official of Hārūn al-Rashīd once laughs in the presence of the Caliph, which annoys the Caliph. Masrūr assures the Caliph that his laughter is evoked by the memory of what he observed the previous day at the bank of the river, of a certain Ibn al-Qāribī, amusing people. The Caliph asks Masrūr to bring Ibn al-Qāribī to the palace so that he could also be amused. Masrūr goes to Ibn al-Qāribī and informs him of the palace summons and the latter agrees to come. However, Masrūr cuts a deal with him that Ibn al-Qāribī will only retain a quarter of whatever is given to him; the rest would be for Masrūr. They haggle between splitting into two, agreeing at two thirds for Masrūr and one third for Ibn al-Qāribī. They go to the Caliph who threatens Ibn al-Qāribī with three blows with a bag he is holding if he is not amused. This did not faze Ibn al-Qāribī who is apparently used to harsher treatment. His comedy routine however fails to amuse the Caliph who remains stone-faced. Since he is not amused by the routines, the Caliph decides to mete out the punishment promised, and give Ibn al-Qāribī a blow with the bag, which is full of stones—an additional fact Ibn al-Qāribī does not anticipate. Before the Caliph could strike the next blow, Ibn al-Qāribī tells him of the deal he cut with Masrūr about the latter receiving two thirds of whatever was due him. The rest of the blows should therefore be dealt to Masrūr. This amuses the Caliph who collapses in laughter. He then deals a blow to Masrūr, who cries that one third is sufficient for him and the rest should be given to Ibn al-Qāribī. This further amuses the Caliph so much that he bursts out laughing and rewards the two with stupendous riches. The Magana Jari Ce version

There was once a king who enjoyed merriment. One day he wakes up depressed and orders his messenger to summon his

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vizier to attend to him. When the vizier comes, he informs him of his depression and suggests a stroll by the river. The messenger laughs at this. The king gets annoyed and wants to know if he or the vizier is the source of his jest. The messenger explains that he was at the riverbank the previous day and saw someone making people laugh. The king asks the messenger to summon the jester. When the messenger gets to the jester, he informs him that the king wants to see him. However, the messenger cuts a deal with the jester for two thirds of whatever the jester gets, or he will go back and tell the king he has not been able to find him. The jester agrees, and they set off for the palace of the king. When they arrive, the messenger leaves, and the king asks the jester to make him laugh, or get whipped. However, try as he may, he cannot make the king laugh. The king asks if that is all he can do, and the jester answers in the affirmative. The king then tells him to get ready to be whipped since he has not laughed. The king whips him once. The jester howls in pain and asks the king to stop, informing him that he has taken his share. The king is puzzled at this. The jester explains the deal they have with his messenger. The king asks for the messenger to come and he informs him of what he has given to the jester and the remaining is his own. He eagerly comes forward thinking he is going to get riches. The king then whips him once. The messenger howls in pain and yells that he has given up the remainder since the first lash was enough for him. The king is so amused by this that he laughs and rewards the pair handsomely. The title of Imam’s adaptation of this tale is the first point of departure from the original, for it was not based on the simple translation of the original’s title. In this story, the title is a Hausa proverb, which reflects the theme of the story, for it means ‘the greedy suffer’, which is precisely what happened to Masrūr/ the messenger character. Imam also avoided the necessity of translating ‘Eunuch’ in Hausa which, although known to Hausa ruling circles, is not a common expression in Hausa and its sexual connotations would seem to be better avoided altogether in a fictional narrative aimed at formal school settings.

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Thus, Imam added a prologue to the tale by creating a context, which necessitated a miserable state of the king, which requires cheering up. In the original, such context was absent, as Masrūr simply started laughing at the memory of the jester. This could not happen in the presence of a ruler in Hausa societies as it would be considered the height of disrespect. Further, the mere act of being summoned by a ruler in Hausa is considered a high honour. Therefore, when the messenger in Imam’s adaptation informed the jester of the summons from the palace, the latter did not argue, nor did he haggle about the deal the messenger cut with him, whereas in the original Masrūr had to haggle with Ibn al-Qāribī over their share. This gave both Masrūr and Ibn al-Qāribī a level of independence not associated with courtiers or subjects in a traditional Hausa setting. Consequently, Imam’s characters in this tale tended to show more acquiescence to traditional authority, thus truly reflecting power structure in such traditional society. The lesson in both the two tales is about the dangerous consequences of avarice.

CONCLUSION

In proclaiming the ‘death of the author’, Barthes (Heath 2010) disconnected writing from the author, disagreeing with any focus on the authors’ identity to deduct any meaning from their work. Killing the author, Barthes, argued, liberated the text. This would appear to be the case in Abubakar Imam’s Magana Jari Ce. This stands out in the corpus of Hausa literature as the most intertextual adaptation of transnational stories into the Hausa language of northern Nigeria. These transnational stories shaped its very existence through a series of literary devices. Yet the masterful way the adaptations were done has tended to obscure the roots of the stories and the general impression was that these were Hausa stories, based on Hausa lifestyle. The circumstances narrated would have existed even in the absence of the transitional texts they were based on. Thus, do Imam and Shahrazad share the same motive in their stories? I argue that intertextuality merely provided us with a searchlight to uncover the authorless text in Imam’s Hausaland.

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Devices used include a framework structure borrowed from three sources, but sticking principally to One Thousand and One Nights. Also used were a series of interconnecting literary devices that revolve around the motifs he used. These recurring elements helped Imam to construct a specific mood that differed from the original story. These include redaction, simplification, selective acceptance to geographical or religious differences with Hausa societies, and semantic expansion of some plot elements, The narrative style adopted in Magana Jari Ce was closely patterned on One Thousand and One Nights in that the narrator relates a series of stories to delay the departure to war of a very strong-willed prince, whereas in the original One Thousand and One Nights, the narrator created the stories to delay the execution of a stubborn princess. In addition, Magana Jari Ce also included a series of subtexts outside the palace, which revolved around a series of attempts to lure the prince out and assassinate him to prevent his eventual accession to the throne. The parrot maintained its mandate successfully and when the king returns and learns of the evil machinations of his vizier, he has the vizier executed and the parrot appointed vizier. In Śukasaptati, the parrot loses his voice and ascends to heavens in a blaze of flowers. In Magana Jari Ce, the parrot becomes the vizier, a promotion of sorts. This further enriches the stories and creates a narrative contextual continuity more vividly than in the original text. One Thousand and One Nights also ended happily for Shahrazad, as by the end of the 1000 stories, when she has exhausted her repertoire, the king has fallen in love with her and spared her life and made her the queen. Perhaps one of the series of issues that could be asked is if there was any ‘redistribution’ in these intertextual travels of narratives from Middle East to Africa. The reason is because of the way Imam’s adapted stories mesh well with local realities and circumstances. Indeed, the ease with which these stories were adapted into Hausa culture and narrative style attests to the commonality of human societies, for none of the adaptations yielded any outcome that can be described as being totally alien

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to the society, despite the original source story being an external source.

REFERENCES

Bakhtin, Mikhail M., Michael Holquist, and Vern W. McGee. 2014. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. by Vern McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press). Barthes, Roland 2010. Image, Music, Text, trans. by Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, HarperCollins Publishers). Burton, Richard F. 1885–1888. A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Now Entituled the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. 16 vols (Printed by the Burton Club for private subscribers only) [accessed 24 October 2017]. Dobronravine, Nikolai. 2004. ‘Hausa Ajami Literature and Script: Colonial Innovations and Post-Colonial Myths in Northern Nigeria’, Sudanic Africa, 15: 85–110. Edgar, Frank. 1924. Dare Dubu Da Ɗaya. Littafi Na Biyu (Lagos: C.M.S. Bookshop; reprinted 1970 by the Northern Nigerian Publishing Company). Felman, Shoshana. 2009. ‘Turning the Screw of Interpretation’, in The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, 1900– 2000, ed. by Dorothy J. Hale (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons), pp. 316–328. Furniss, Graham. 2011. ‘On Engendering Liberal Values in the Nigerian Colonial State: The Idea behind Gaskiya Corporation’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 39: 95–119. Imam, Abubakar. Magana Jari Ce. Vol. 1. 1937. Zaria: Kamfanin Gaskiya. ― 2000. Al-kalām raʾsmāl, trans. by Muṣṭafā Ḥijāzī Sayyid (Cairo: al-Markaz al-Qawmī li-l-tarjama). Irele, Abiola F. 2001. The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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Jeż, Beata, and Stanisław Piłaszewicz. 2003. ‘Foreign influences and their adaptation to the Hausa culture in Magana Jari Ce by Abubakar Imam’, Studies of the Department of African Languages and Cultures, 33: 5–28. Jeż, Beata. 1986. ‘Funkcjonowanie wątków obcych w dziele Magana Jari Ce A.A. Imama’ [Functioning of Foreign Motifs in ‘Magana Jari Ce’ by Alhaji Abubakar Imam] (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Warsaw, Warsaw). Kablukov, Evgeni. 2004. ‘India and Central Asia: Cultural Relations in Middle Ages’, in India and Central Asia: Classical to Contemporary Periods, ed. by Braja Bihārī Kumāra (New Delhi: Concept Pub. Co), pp. 78–82. Kehinde, Ayo. 2003. ‘Intertextuality and the Contemporary African Novel’, Nordic Journal of African Studies, 12: 372–386. Kolberg, Barbara. ‘The Art of Barbara Kolberg’ [accessed 12 November 2016]. Kristeva, Julia. 1966. [1986a]. ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, trans. by Alice Jardiney, Thomas Gora and Lion S. Roudiez, in The Kristeva Reader, ed. by Julia Kristeva and Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 35–61. Kristeva, Julia. 1974 [1986b]. ‘Revolution in Poetic Language’, trans. by Margaret Waller, in The Kristeva Reader, ed. by Julia Kristeva and Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 89–136. Księga tysiąca i jednej nocy [Book of One Thousand and One Nights]. 1976, ed. by W. Kubiak (Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy). Kurtz, Roger J. 2011. ‘The intertextual imagination in Purple Hibiscus’, Ariel, 42: 23–42. Lemaster, Tracy. 2010. ‘Influence and Intertextuality in Arundhati Roy and Harper Lee’, Modern Fiction Studies, 56: 788–814, 838.

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Mai, Xiwen. 2010. ‘Transcultural Intertextuality: Reading Asian North American Poetry’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Michigan). Malumfashi, Ibrahim, Ɗanladi Z. Haruna and Bukar Mada. 2015. Labaran Dare Dubu da Ɗaya – Mujalladi na Ɗaya (Kaduna, Nigeria: Garkuwa Media Services Ltd). Mora, Abdurrahman. 1989. Abubakar Imam Memoirs. Zaria: The Northern Nigerian Publishing Company Limited. Ogede, Ode S. 2011. Intertextuality in Contemporary African literature: Looking Inward (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books). Piłaszewicz, Stanisław. 2010. ‘Literature in the Hausa Language’, in Literatures in African languages: Theoretical Issues and Sample Surveys, ed. by B. W. Andrzejewski, Stanisław Piłaszewicz and Witold Tyloch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 190–254. Pweddon, Nicholas, 1995. ‘The Abubakar Imam Interview’, Harsunan Nijeriya, XVII: 86–110. Qādirī, Muḥammad and Pramod Chandra. 1976. Ṭūṭīnāma: Tales of a Parrot – das Papageienbuch (Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt). Sasic, Borislava. 1998. ‘Nuruddin Farah’s Sardines: The Construction of a Somali Novel on the Intersection of Transcultural Intertextuality’, in Across the Lines: Intertextuality and Transcultural Communication in the New Literatures in English, ed. by Wolfgang Klooss (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp. 167–176. Shuka Saptati: Seventy Tales of the Parrot, trans. by Aditya Narayan Dhairyasheel Haksar. (New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000). Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. 2010. Encyclopedia of the Literature of Empire (New York: Facts on File Inc.).

ENCHANTED STORYTELLING: MUḤAMMAD KHUḌAYYIR BETWEEN BORGES AND SHAHRAZAD FABIO CAIANI AND CATHERINE COBHAM (UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS) [The collector of tales] whispered: ‘Wipe out the void, drink in the silence and breathe as deeply as you can. Then close your eyes and let things settle in the furrow of your memory. Examine them as if you’re seeing them for the first time. Scatter them and let them doze and don’t interrogate them. They’ll grow and flower and spread their perfume and pour out their words. The tale will come to you and open like a mute flower. Spread your hands to catch the falling leaves shining in the dawn light. The crimson letters will slash your flesh and reach your heart and mind like an antidote for your sorrows and sleepless nights’. Muḥammad Khuḍayyir, Baṣrayāthā, p. 80

During the course of the twentieth century folk literature and especially the collection of Alf Layla wa-layla, the Thousand and One Nights (henceforth, the Nights), have played a pivotal role in inspiring Arab writers to experiment with new forms of fiction. This was not always the case as Arab critics and writers had traditionally considered the collection of tales to be outside the canon of serious literature (see for instance Musawi 2003: 71–73 and Rastegar 2007: 55–65). During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the conversation between Arab writers and their literary heritage, al-turāth, has been fruitful, but initially forms of popular storytelling were not considered to be serious sources of 61

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inspiration. In Egypt, for example, Jamāl al-Ghīṭānī (1945– 2015) and Idwār al-Kharrāṭ (1926–2015) wrote highly original novels through their re-reading of classical texts such as historical chronicles and mystical poetry. During the course of the twentieth century and subsequently, numerous Arab writers have drawn on the Nights for inspiration, including notably Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm and later Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ, Najīb Maḥfūẓ and Ḥanān al-Shaykh. The Nights, especially its frame story, has also inspired feminist re-readings by Arab women writers such as Nawāl al-Saʿdāwī. The earlier European engagement with the Nights from the eighteenth century onwards is well documented. More recently, in Robert Irwin’s words, ‘the Nights has become a sourcebook for [European] modernist fiction in its playful mode’ (Irwin 1994: 278). The early short stories of Muḥammad Khuḍayyir (born in Basra in 1942), one of the most original Iraqi writers to have emerged in the late 1960s, have been praised as a fresh departure within the modern history of Iraqi and Arabic fiction as they merged what is real (wāqiʿī) with what is magic (siḥrī) in the life of ordinary people (al-ʿĀnī 1999: 103). In this chapter, through a close textual analysis of three key short stories, we will discuss how the dialogue Khuḍayyir has established with traditional storytelling and the Nights has developed in unexpected ways. Thanks to his fruitful interaction with a traditional form of storytelling, Khuḍayyir has become the author of original modern ʿajāʾib tales (tales of the fantastic), and also a theoriser and a promulgator of this new kind of Arabic fiction.

SHAHRAZAD VS U MM ʿA BBĀS: DO YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Muḥammad Khuḍayyir’s short story ‘Ḥikāyat al-mawqid’ (‘A Fireside Tale’) represents the first intriguingly ambivalent stage in the writer’s relationship with a type of traditional storytelling that finds its best-known expression in Arabic in the collection of the Nights. ‘Ḥikāyat’ opens the second part of Khuḍayyir’s first collection of short stories, al-Mamlaka al-sawdāʾ (‘The Black Kingdom’), published in 1972 in Baghdad. The second part of the

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collection includes stories that deal with war, albeit in an indirect, oblique way. As is the case in most stories of the collection, at the core of ‘Ḥikāyat’ is a void, an absence and an unresolved condition of waiting. The husband/father figure in a poor, provincial household is a soldier, who has left his family to fight in a war that remains unspecified in the story. The absent man’s young wife, their two children, the woman’s mother-in-law and an elderly neighbour (Umm ʿAbbās, the story’s only named character) are eagerly anticipating his return, their life stuck in a condition of seemingly perpetual waiting. The soldier (the husband/father character), who, in a more conventional story could have played the traditional role of a male hero, is a mere shadowy presence in this story. In fact, he is often referred to as ‘the man in the picture’ (rajul al-ṣūra) because a photograph that depicts him in uniform is hung on one of the walls of the bare room that constitutes the family’s home. The photograph is a sort of cage within which the young man’s ‘shadow’ (ẓill) is imprisoned, and from which he intermittently appears to participate in the action, although he is ignored by the people who gather in the evening around the fire to listen to Umm ʿAbbās’s tale. The story plays on the interaction between, on one hand, the main narrative of the frame story, its modernist structure and style (which we will discuss below), and its author’s implied social criticism, and, on the other hand, the folktale that Umm ʿAbbās narrates to the members of the family. The story within the story structure, the fact that we are reading a story of people who are listening to a folktale, and the very nature of the tale itself, are all elements that are immediately reminiscent of the Nights. The folktale narrated by the old neighbour is similar in style and content to one of the simpler tales from the Nights, but also to folktales in general. The tale tells the story of the Sultan’s beautiful daughter who, having fallen mysteriously ill, is healed by a beggar, thanks to the magic powers of his rooster. The beggar, who turns out to be a prince in disguise, is given the princess’s hand and becomes the new Sultan. However, one day the new Sultan decides to go back to his homeland. He leaves his magic bird behind, telling his wife that ‘his life is dependent on [it]’

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(Khuḍayyir 2005: 107), so as she watches it gradually lose all its wonderful, multi-coloured feathers, each one a different colour from the other, she understands that her husband will never come back to her. The connection to Shahrazad’s perpetual nocturnal narration is established from the very beginning. Khuḍayyir’s story begins with an extremely short sentence followed by a two-word phrase: Li-kull masāʾ ḥikāya. Ḥikāya wāḥida. ‘To every evening, a tale. One tale [only]’ (99). However, these few words are then followed by a very long sentence, which is full of parenthetical clauses and asides; a style that is typical of the rest of the story. This style allows the author to add information on the characters and setting but also gives his narrator free rein to express some seemingly impromptu comments on what is happening in the poor household on this particular evening and on Umm ʿAbbās’s story. In the following passage we can see how Umm ʿAbbās’s narration, addressed to the children, is interrupted by the main narrator, whose words are in brackets in the original: Once upon a time (You wicked turtles! Who can recall that buried day, that precious day? The young mother goes deeper down the pathways of the embers in the fireplace and melts, melts away as she waits. What can a sandgrouse be waiting for?). My little ones, the Sultan had only one daughter and—praise be to the Creator!—she would say to the moon: ‘Leave the sky, so I can take your place’. Her hair reached down to her heels, her face was like a mirror, her eyes were like a gazelle’s, her teeth... (The darkness grew silent. Only the dogs’ fitful barking continued to ask the stars for their blessing, as the light of the lamp witnessed the crime [al-ithm], and the shepherd’s soul bobbed in the kettle). (105)1 It is clear that Umm ʿAbbās’s storytelling is part of the simple way of life led by the family. The space they inhabit is quintessentially provincial, a country town, their house next to a train station somewhere between Baghdad and Basra. Their house is one room, at the centre of which lies a fireplace. This provincial world is dominated by traditional

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We propose to look at the frame story’s narrator as a typically modernist narrator whose narration contrasts starkly with Umm ʿAbbās’s traditional Shahrazadesque storytelling. The imagery used by Umm ʿAbbās sometimes relies on hyperbole but is always conventional. For example, the Sultan’s daughter is so beautiful that she thinks she can take the place of the moon—a traditional paradigm of beauty—which recurs in the Nights.2 Similarly, like the protagonists of the Nights, Umm ʿAbbās refers to the Almighty in a conventional way, and is neutral towards the characters of her tale. Conversely, the main narrator’s tone is often sarcastic. He3 is clearly impatient with Umm ʿAbbās’s clichés and is eager to interrupt her, either to take us back to some key episodes in the life of the young wife and her husband (their wedding; the day he left), or to give us poetic descriptions of the setting or insights into the young wife’s consciousness. His imagery is unorthodox and ambiguous, often obscure: we will only gradually understand what the young woman’s melting into beliefs and superstitions and it is not incidental that Umm ʿAbbās was born when Iraq was part of the Ottoman empire (Khuḍayyir 2005: 99). The shepherd’s bobbing soul in the kettle refers to a story told by the old grandmother about a bewitched shepherd whose fiddle used to play wonderful, painful melodies every night. When he died, a blacksmith designed a kettle in the shape of the fiddle, which since the death of its owner kept on playing those melodies every time ‘the water in it boiled, reaching the same temperature as the bewitched shepherd’s heart’ (101). This traditional world is also a natural world where plants and animals coexist with she-demons and jinn, and the sultans and princesses of folktales. The members of the family and their old neighbour are merged into this natural world as they are compared to animals and vegetables in a way that can be strangely evocative (for example, the young wife is described as being on the alert like ‘a black Bedouin bitch’, 103; and the grandmother who spends all her time in bed lies there ‘like a cucumber’, 100). 2 See for example Lyons 2010: 51, 115, 129, 145. 3 It is debatable whether the narrator can be seen as possessing a typically male voice, but we have tentatively assumed this in order to clearly distinguish this voice from Umm ʿAbbās’s female voice.

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the embers and ‘the crime’, mentioned in the passage quoted above, might stand for, while we may have to look elsewhere in order to grasp the full implications of his referring to ‘the wicked turtles’ (al-salāḥif al-khabītha) and the ‘sandgrouse’ (al-qaṭāt).4 While the linear, unadorned style of Umm ʿAbbās’s tale faithfully mirrors the famous stylistic plainness of the Nights, the narrator’s style is richly evocative and poetic.5 Even if Umm ʿAbbās’s tale can be seen as similar to a short tale from the Nights, she emerges as a second-rate Shahrazad. The young wife bitterly (bi-marāra) tells Umm ʿAbbās to go ahead and re-tell one of her tales after the latter confesses to the eager children that she has no new tale to tell (104). At the end of ‘Ḥikāyat’, it is clear that the tales narrated by the old neighbour are not even a meagre consolation for the young wife who realises that, yet again, the trains that stop at the station close to her house have failed to bring back her husband.6 In fact, seen In another highly significant short story in Khuḍayyir’s development, ‘Ruʾyā kharif’ (‘An Autumn Vision’, dated September 1983), the character of ‘the turtle grandmother’, a midwife, occupies a prominent part in the narrator’s vision (the story, included in the 1995 collection Ruʾyā kharīf, has been translated into English by Shakir Mustafa as ‘The Turtle Grandmother’). Perhaps the turtle in Khuḍayyir’s imagination stands for a quintessential old woman, whereas the small sandgrouse, which is clearly associated with the young woman, could stand for a young, vulnerable woman. The smallness of this desert bird is mentioned in a Prophetic ḥadīth that states that whoever builds a mosque, even if it is smaller than a sandgrouse’s nest, will be rewarded in paradise. 5 Many translators of the Nights have commented on the linearity of the style of most of its tales. Whereas some of Borges’s statements in his often quoted ‘The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights’ have recently been considered either old-fashioned (Fudge 2016: 135, 145– 146) or Orientalist avant la lettre (Kennedy 2013: 214 n. 6), his comments on the ‘stylistic poverty’ of the Nights have been echoed by most critics (see for example Fudge 2016: 139). 6 As in another story included in the second part of al-Mamlaka alsawdāʾ, ‘al-Qiṭārāt al-layliyya’ (‘Night Trains’), trains and their noise are depicted as overwhelming cosmic phenomena. Umm ʿAbbās’s narration 4

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through the disillusioned eyes of the forsaken young wife, Umm ʿAbbās’s storytelling is a bitter and poisonous ritual (ṭaqs ḥanẓalī), the end of which she welcomes, at least for this evening (112).7 This is in stark contrast to the exhilarating, vertiginous feeling that Shahrazad’s stories within stories can produce, and it also differs greatly from the main function of the tales Shahrazad narrates. The latter’s continuing narration means the prolongation of her life and the gradual transformation of Shahriyar’s worldview. In Khuḍayyir’s story, the storytelling seems to prolong the young wife’s solitude and torment, and is like a curse: you have to listen to a tale every evening until your man comes back home (113). This makes fun of the concept of ‘the ransom tale’, which is so central to the Nights as it famously informs its frame story and numerous other tales narrated by is inevitably suspended every time a train is heard approaching the station nearby: The train had a devilish sound, unearthly, echoing in the vessel of the night like stars being torn from the sky, as it rapidly approached the station in the desert [al-maḥaṭṭa al-ramliyya] like a mythical beast with iron feet. (Khuḍayyir 2005: 101)

The train, the quintessential symbol of modernity in a traditional provincial reality, fails to connect the family’s space to the modernity of the urban centres. More importantly, it fails to bring ‘the man in the picture’ back to his expectant family. In this way, the potentially lifegiving machine remains a monstrous creature which can only unsettle the natural order of the family’s traditional space, where folk tales and nature coexist: As it penetrated the virginal hymens of the night, the train woke up the plants slumbering beyond the railway (and so, that terrifying croaking sound that the individuals gathered around the fire heard every evening was nothing but the scream of the roots woken up by the screeching of the train’s heavy wheels). (Ibid.)

In his ‘Bayt min laḥm’ (1971; ‘House of Flesh’, 1978), Yūsuf Idrīs describes the bitterness of women waiting in vain for a man with reference to the same plant (colocynth) by a different name, ʿalqam (Idrīs 1971: 11). 7

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Shahrazad and her sub-narrators: your life can be spared if your would-be executioner is told a marvellous, astonishing tale. In ‘Ḥikāyat’, Umm ʿAbbās’s folktale even fails to give the heroine the solace that similar folktales give the female protagonists of certain Iraqi novels. Elsewhere, we have observed how folktales are part of the portrayal of some female characters in Ghāʾib Ṭuʿma Farmān’s ground-breaking first novel al-Nakhla wa-l-jīrān (‘The Palm Tree and the Neighbours’, 1966). These tales resonate with Tumāḍir, the young protagonist of Nakhla, who in a moment of great personal distress can relate to them, indeed, can find in them ‘a source of entertainment and dreams’ (Caiani and Cobham 2013: 99). Female imagination in the same novel, which is translated into a folktale, gives another character the ability to conjure up an alternative, better reality that transcends the pitifully poor space she, along with the other characters of the novel, inhabits (97–98). Another innovative Iraqi novelist, Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr, clearly relied on the structure of the Nights and the use of fantastic folktales in his novel Imraʾat al-ghāʿib (‘The Missing Person’s Wife’, 2004). In this novel, characters try to come to terms with the trauma of war (the novel refers to the Iran-Iraq war) by exploiting the potentially therapeutic power of folktales, which are also used to refer in an indirect way to the internal tragedy of life under a despotic regime. Like Khuḍayyir in ‘Ḥikāyat’, however, al-Ṣaqr also implies a criticism of storytelling being used as a panacea (Caiani and Cobham 2013: 183–8). In ‘Ḥikāyat’, Khuḍayyir does not turn Umm ʿAbbās’s folktale into a source of comfort or therapeutic value for the young wife. Yet, as happens often in the Nights, in ‘Ḥikāyat’ too the framed tale mirrors the framing tale. We understand that the destiny of the two male characters is the same. As the new Sultan, the owner of the marvellous rooster, is kept away from his beautiful young wife for ‘long days’ (Khuḍayyir 2005: 110), so the framing story’s young wife is kept apart from her soldier husband. When the folktale comes to its sad end and we are about to hear Umm ʿAbbās say that the Sultan is dead, yet another train stops at the station nearby and interrupts her narration. Another moment of silence ensues, followed by a moment

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of collective, concentrated focus experienced by those gathered around the fire, but their expectation is again left unfulfilled and this last train fails to bring the missing man back home. Before they realize this, we are given a powerful and erotic representation of the feelings that the young wife experiences as her hopes are stirred (again, the brackets are in the original): After the train stopped in the station came the sluggish, wearisome moments of waiting [daqāʾiq al-intiẓār al-muzayyata alshāqqa] (the young mother believes that the narrow road that stretches between the needle-like grass [al-ʿushb al-ibarī] from the station to the house is furnished with bells that will ring a warning if someone walks on it). She imagined that the bells were ringing now and wished she could say: ‘He’s come’, but she couldn’t because the women had grown used to keeping silent during this ritual. She imagined him approaching as the bells rang out: here he is, walking down the road. Time will go backwards as he approaches, time that belongs to a world without air. First, his smell will come, then the sound of his heavy trousers flapping against his heels, then the colour of him streaming through the cracks in the door – he will arrive in the blink of an eye, in a sigh of yearning, a whisper of desire, now, now, now, now now now... (a million times now). (112)

The psychological portrayal of the characters is completely absent from Umm ʿAbbās’s folktale (as it is from the Nights), whereas the complex interior life of the young wife is at the very heart of the narrator’s frame story. It is therefore not surprising that the Iraqi critic ʿĀʾid Khuṣbāk states in his study of the Iraqi fiction of the 1960s that the stories included in alMamlaka al-sawdāʾ are the best examples of what he calls ḥikāyāt al-mawqif, stories that focus on a situation, a state of mind, a certain condition, rather than on an action, an event (ḥikāyāt al-ḥadath) (Khuṣbāk 2014: 103). This is in contrast to the Nights where ‘motivation is directly wedded to action [...] [and] personality is defined by action’ (Irwin 1994: 226). ‘Ḥikāyat al-mawqid’ focuses firmly on the plight of the young wife, the fear of becoming barren that invades her consciousness and the lack of sexual and wider sensual fulfilment that a young woman without a husband has to face in this traditional social

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environment.8 All the same, we are not dealing here with fiction that offers a direct form of social criticism. The plight of the woman is evoked discreetly at first and then in an increasingly powerful way, through rich and bold imagery, where her thoughts are made to interact with Umm ʿAbbās’s folktale and the dying embers in the fire.9 The metaphor of the young woman melting away in the embers of the fireplace is sustained throughout the story and symbolises her disintegration as she is worn down by the constant waiting. The final depiction of her melting away in the frame story is interspersed with the rooster losing its feathers in the framed story. It is important to stress that Khuḍayyir makes the modernist narrator his narrator-in-chief who never relinquishes his For a few other memorable depictions of women without men in traditional Arab society, see the above-mentioned ‘Bayt min laḥm’ (1971; ‘House of Flesh’, 1978) by Yūsuf Idrīs, ʿAbd al-Malik Nūrī’s ‘Faṭṭūma’ (1948; see Caiani and Cobham 2013: 30–3 for a brief discussion of the place of this text in the history of modern Iraqi literature), Farmān’s portrayal of Salīma in al-Nakhla wa-l-jīrān (1966; for a detailed discussion of the novel see Caiani and Cobham 2013: 73–114). In the short story ‘Qūt al-qulūb’ (1994), Ḥanān al-Shaykh writes about women without men in a more positive and humorous way (the name of the protagonist and aspects of the story can be read as allusions to the Nights). 9 Such is the frame story’s stylistic richness that when the young wife understands her husband will not come back to her on this particular evening, the narrative style becomes graphic and haunting. She looks at the people who are with her by the fire, their faces effaced by shadows in the partial darkness of the room and 8

she saw them all wearing sheepskins, looking at her with buffalo’s eyes (she saw the buffalo going down to the river and the sheep being skinned in the courtyards of saints’ shrines and the houses of the rich. She saw what stomachs and bowels contain, she saw brains and bone marrow, and the look in the eye of a slaughtered animal, saw the mucus flowing and the blood soaking the earth: she saw deception and the knife blade).

(Khuḍayyir 2005: 112–13)

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control on the story as a whole. This is different from what happens in the Nights where Shahrazad is so respectful of her subnarrators that she disappears from the narrative and we almost forget about her when we lose ourselves in the mise en abyme structure of her narrative edifice. In ‘Ḥikāyat’, the main narrator exercises his control quite explicitly and, as we have seen, at times sarcastically and mischievously. The readers of ‘Ḥikāyat’ are sometimes addressed directly by the main narrator, whose disruptive voice is an original narrative device within Khuḍayyir’s early fiction. The Iraqi critic Shujāʿ Muslim al-ʿĀnī was one of the first to recognize Khuḍayyir’s achievements in the stories collected in al-Mamlaka al-sawdāʾ, and a great admirer of ‘Ḥikāyat’ (which he considers to be ‘one of [Khuḍayyir’s] best stories about war’, al-ʿĀnī 1999: 96). For al-ʿĀnī the narrator’s voice is ‘loud’, ‘boisterous’ (ṣākhib), and the way he addresses us directly fulfils the distancing role of Brechtian theatre (119) that invites the audience to adopt a more consciously critical role vis-à-vis the play (the opposite of folktales that demand that we lose ourselves in them). The fact that his voice is at times tainted by a haughty and cynical tone makes us ambivalent and potentially unsympathetic towards him. In other words, we do not quite know how to react to his invitations to laugh at Umm ʿAbbās’s expense: ‘Who feels like laughing? Have a look at the old woman as she writhes through the words of her tale as if she’s swallowed two kilos of nails before coming here’ (Khuḍayyir 2005: 105). We might smile at these inventive disparaging remarks, but we also have in mind the sympathetic and poignant passages focusing on the young wife, which make the atmosphere of the story more sombre. We might even instinctively sympathize with Umm ʿAbbās and reject the narrator’s sarcasm. By the time we reach the final anti-climax of the story (the soldier’s failure to materialise), the narrator is bitter and even angry with himself and us for being mere observers of the young woman’s plight—perhaps a voyeuristic attitude is here un-

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masked and stigmatised.10 At the very end of the story, we read of the sad way in which the characters exit the stage: the children quietly join their grandmother on their communal bed, Umm ʿAbbās does not even finish her tale nor say goodbye, as she knows her farewell greeting is never acknowledged. Nobody offers any sympathy to the forlorn young wife, ‘the shackled woman’ (113). The narrator provocatively asks us: ‘Do you want to protest? Do you want to poke fun? Do you want to wait until tomorrow evening and listen to another tale by the fireside?’ (ibid.), so undermining the notion that storytelling is entertaining, even life-enhancing. What we have in ‘Ḥikāyat’ is a short text in which Khuḍayyir can be seen to carry out a ‘creative destruction’ of an ancient narrative paradigm, or at least a critical re-configuration and use of an ancient form within a skeptical, modernist narrative context.11 It is as if a confident young Khuḍayyir at the beginning of his literary career is eager to show how eclectically creative he can be in only a few pages. In these pages we can find, in a highly condensed form, poetic realism, social realism, metaThis self-criticism is echoed in a tongue-in-cheek manner when the narrator tells us about the young wife’s visits to the local market with Umm ʿAbbās on Fridays. She feels attracted to the strangers selling their livestock there, those traditionally dressed men she sees as ‘strong and desirable’, proper men who smoke and always have things to talk about, like their houses, their wives and their children, and never turn to look at her. ‘Those who do turn to look at her are elegant men who look civilised in the way they dress, they’re employees or teachers, very bad people, their eyes as black as their hearts, who come to the market only to look [at women]’ (Khuḍayyir 2005: 107). It is quite possible that Khuḍayyir, who in the 1960s worked as a young teacher in rural areas, is casting an ironic glance at himself here. 11 Here we are using Frederic Jameson’s characterization of the genre of the novel generally, and of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude more specifically. Jameson borrows the phrase ‘creative destruction’ from Joseph Schumpeter’s description of capitalism (Jameson 2017: 21). 10

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fictional pastiche, fantastic literature,12 war literature, selfdirected irony, jokes, folklore. It is also true that at this early stage in his life as a writer, Khuḍayyir casts a skeptical glance at the power and status of a traditional form of storytelling vis-àvis a technically adventurous yet socially aware kind of fiction. His rapport with Shahrazad will change gradually but very significantly in the ensuing decades.

DEATH AND THE PAINTER: AN OTTOMAN DREAM

In ‘Ḥikāyat’, Khuḍayyir writes a dense and rich narrative within which traditional storytelling and the uncanny are parts of a composite portrayal of a young woman’s marginalised reality. In ‘Iḥtiḍār rassām’ (‘Death of a Painter’; written in 1977, published in 1978), the writer gives further expression to his fascination with the fantastical and the uncanny through a vivid representation of an artist’s imagination and by an original depiction of death. Even though a conversation with the Nights is less explicit in this later text than it is in ‘Ḥikāyat’, we will show how a comparison between some elements of this story and some features of the collection can yield fruitful critical insights that will help us characterize further the development of Khuḍayyir’s ficThe uncanny element in the story is provided by the strikingly allusive passages that focus on the shadow captured in the photograph of the missing man, the cage of his restless soul. Thanks to these strange passages we are led to understand that the soldier/husband has indeed died. The shadow in his photograph is initially said to be burnt, waiting, dried up, about to scream, the soldier depicted in it is said to be hanging by a hair: ‘who knows when the hair will break and this hidden life will come to an end?’ (Khuḍayyir 2005: 104–5). Then, we read that the mouth of the man under the glass of the framed photograph is stained by traces of food or drink: the narrator wonders whether the man in the picture is taking part in secret banquets brought to life by ‘the souls of people meeting illicitly, the souls of rubbish collectors, the souls of all those strangers’ (108). Finally, when the last train stops and Umm ʿAbbās’s tale reaches its end, the photograph shakes, its captive shadow sways, getting ready to slide out of its frame (111).

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tion vis-à-vis traditional storytelling. Largely ignored by critics, this unusual story foreshadows some of the inclinations that will be part of Khuḍayyir’s new writing (based on the fantastic element of storytelling), and it also represents an early compelling fictional representation of his later theoretical discussion on the short story genre. ‘Iḥtiḍār’ is included in Khuḍayyir’s second short story collection, Fī darajat khamsa wa-arbaʿīn miʾawī (‘At 45 Degrees Centigrade’, 1978), which is remarkable for the eclectic nature of its texts in both their form and subject matter. In ‘Iḥtiḍār’, we also admire how the writer gives shape to his fascination with the Iraq of the Ottoman period. The story’s protagonist is Maḥmūd Effendi, an old painter who taught himself how to paint while a prisoner of the British in India during the First World War. The first part of the story gives examples of how the painter, back in Baghdad after the war, uses his imagination to create his paintings. The second part of the story focuses on the final moments of the painter’s life, now that he has acquired, ‘in his dusty sidāra and dirty clothes’, the pitiful nature of one of those ‘extinct creatures who appear in our world quite unexpectedly’ (Khuḍayyir 2006: 84),13 as we are told by the narrator, whose voice is less prominent than the voice of the narrator in ‘Ḥikāyat’. It is clear that Khuḍayyir here draws a parallel between his craft as the author of literary texts and the painter who wants to chronicle with his paintings the history of Baghdad. Maḥmūd’s painting is the fruit of the interaction between his personal exWhereas we know that Maḥmūd was captured by the British during the First World War, we are not told much about the present time of the narration. At the end of the story, we read that the death of the painter is reported in a newspaper article entitled ‘Death of the last painter of ʿAbd al-Qādir Rassām’s generation’ (Khuḍayyir 2006: 89). The Istanbul educated Rassām (1882–1952) was the leader of the modern generation of Iraqi painters. We can infer that the fictional Maḥmūd dies sometime between the 1950s and the 1970s (the story was written and published in the late 1970s). 13

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perience14 and his readings (of travelogues and memoirs by historians and governors), on the one hand, and his vivid imagination on the other. We can see in what we read about Maḥmūd’s portraits a commentary on Khuḍayyir’s own fiction, especially in light of his future critical and fictional writings and, more immediately, of the second part of this story. The way in which Maḥmūd’s imagination interacts with historical characters and events is at the heart of the story. He imagines that the Ottoman governors of Baghdad come to his studio on the Tigris and sit facing him so that he can paint their portraits: ‘he painted them as if they were sitting in front of a camera’ (78). These imaginary sittings turn into a ‘symbolic opportunity’ (furṣa ramziyya) for the sitters, who, as if believing that ‘the pen point [would] capture in a brief moment the expression on their faces with grey neutrality, and forever [...]’, present their faces to the painter with a fixed expression: ‘suggestive features covered by a faint stubble; ascetic features covered with thick beards; the severity of Janissaries, girded with swords; Mameluke charm, expressed through languid glances; Ottoman might, represented by medals and scented by tobacco and opium’ (ibid.). However, these sketches of the governors sitting for their portraits in Chinese ink gather layers of significance as the painter depicts their heads surrounded by fantastic details and accessories from a lavish daily life, in some cases in a carnivalesque mockery of the powerful.15 This preamble prepares us for the haunting night journey which dominates the first part of the story, when the discreet voice of the narrator invites us to accompany Maḥmūd as he Maḥmūd starts his career as a painter by drawing the ship that carries him and his fellow prisoners from Basra to Bombay, then goes on to draw portraits of his comrades and prison guards when he is in prison there, and even makes a self-portrait (Khuḍayyir 2006: 77). 15 For example, ‘the dreadful Sultan Murad’ is depicted sitting on a millstone over a well mouth in a Baghdad courtyard with a bowl of sheep’s blood on his head, a target of soothsayers who are shown creeping out of the house to mock him (Khuḍayyir 2006: 78). 14

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follows Dāwud Pasha, the last Mameluke governor of Baghdad, on his final tour of the city in 1831. This was the year in which the city was ravaged by plague and floods, and besieged by the Ottoman army preparing to put an end to the autonomous reign of the Mameluke governor. The characters and setting of the governor’s tour are reminiscent of those in a tale from the Nights: the governor, who is in disguise, meets muleteers, dervishes, beggars, chiefs of police, customs employees, and an anthropomorphized character that is presented as either Death or Plague. Here, crucially, the fantastic element is presented explicitly as the fruit of an artist’s imagination and not as part of an astonishing reality as it is in the Nights, which produce ‘a certain kind of aesthetic pleasure, mainly by grounding the supernatural in the natural’ (Haddawy 1992: xxx). In contrast, the following is an example of Khuḍayyir’s method. At the beginning of his last tour, Dāwud, the Mameluke governor, himself infected with plague, recognises among the corpses he sees in the citadel market that of his jubūqjī16 and the narrator wonders how the painter will depict Dāwud’s expression: will the regret on his face be related more to the disruption in his tobacco supply, or to the man’s death itself? (Khuḍayyir 2006: 80). Then, as the entourage proceeds on its journey, we read that the painter decides that the governor should be confronted by a dervish with a shaven head and a luxuriant beard, who enjoys piercing his body with needles and ‘instead of blood, smoke gushes forth and rises up around his head and over the domes of the Mawla Khana, gathering between the two minarets like clouds’ (81). The narration is less a description of a hypothetical painting by Maḥmūd, or a storyteller’s description of a fantastic event as a normal occurrence (coming with an implicit invitation that we should suspend our disbelief), than an attempt to depict Maḥmūd’s imaginative construction of scenes. This is the narrative portrayal of a work in progress full of possibilities (what Çubukçu in Modern Turkish, denoting the man whose duty is to prepare the governor’s tobacco. 16

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expression will he give the governor?); suggestions (it is an expression which can hardly be distinguished from his yearning for a smoke); telling choices (the painter places the governor’s personal fishmonger and his terrified groom behind the governor and his horse, and in the background he paints part of the citadel with its towers empty of soldiers—all killed by the plague); and specific ideas about what the painter would like to include (he ‘wants’ to confront the governor with a dervish emitting smoke)—we are far from the matter of fact tone of the traditional storyteller. In ‘Ḥikāyat al-mawqid’, the main narrator’s ‘boisterous’ voice that urges us to respond to what we are reading is the most visible trait of the story’s modernist nature, what distances it from a traditional form of storytelling. In ‘Iḥtiḍār’, this nontraditional element is provided by the unveiling of the creative process of an artist, be he Maḥmūd the painter or Khuḍayyir the writer. This particular metafictional feature is absent from folktales. The key character to appear to the governor and his men is the two-faced character of Death/Plague. How does it appear to them? ‘[I]n the guise of a hunchback with a face like a rat’s, carrying an axe’ (ibid.). The ideal reader of the Nights (one whose disbelief is staunchly suspended) would immediately accept such embodiments of demons and jinn as real. Here, we are crucially told that ‘Death appeared as Maḥmūd Effendi portrayed it’: ẓahara al-mawt kamā ṣawwarahu Maḥmūd afandī (ibid.). The genesis of the depiction of Death as the hideous ratfaced hunchback is explained further at the end of the first part of the story when Dāwud, now back at the citadel after his nocturnal foray into the city, dictates to his loyal secretary, just before he dies: ‘Indeed Plague is a black crow on top of the citadel tower, a hideous hunchbacked rat’ (83). This appears to be a direct quote from an actual text (although we have no concrete evidence of this) and may be an indication that Khuḍayyir found this image of Death in the memoirs of the Mameluke governor and decided to borrow it. In the Nights, stories are narrated through a network of multiple striking parallels and astonishing coincidences. Here, there are many parallels between the first part of the story in

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which Maḥmūd the painter imagines Dāwud’s last night journey through Baghdad, and its second part, in which Khuḍayyir narrates the death of the painter:17 as the same rat-faced hunchback who claimed Dāwud’s life comes back to haunt the mind of the painter, it is with a sense of aesthetic fulfilment that we reach the exhilarating conclusion that the painter has become a character in one of his paintings. The same symmetry we admire in the stories of the Nights is present here (never more evident than in the character of Death), but with significant differences. The fantastic element in the story (the visions of the dying painter and the enigmatic finale) is not there solely to entertain us but is also a reflection on the workings of human imagination and memory, and an attempt to depict what happens in the consciousness of a dying person. In Khuḍayyir’s own ʿajāʾib storytelling, human creativity and imagination are at the forefront rather than destiny, the engine that moves the narrative in many tales in the Nights. If in the Nights, destiny or God’s will are often highlighted as ordering forces in the universe, here we have a man-made world, and a secular take on the mystery of death: there is an evocative depiction of a man’s dying moments which also effectively (and ironically) highlights the gap between the individual’s inner life and what transpires externally to the people who are physically with the individual but have no access to The correspondences between different parts of the story are numerous. In the first part, Dāwud Pasha takes the rifle of the chief of police and shoots at the dogs that the hunchback (Death) has at his service (Khuḍayyir 2006: 82); in the second part, Maḥmūd has visions of strange people coming to visit him (after his real friends have come to visit him when it is clear he has not long left to live): a woman singer who looks like a shop-window mannequin is accompanied by a man called Jisām who looks like one of the thugs (ashqiyāʾ) in the Ottoman city and she introduces him as a dog hunter. She then takes a rifle that Jisām has under his abaya and gives it to Maḥmūd (87) who will later use it to shoot at Death (88). The singer mannequin extracts from a box the head of a man with the same features as Maḥmūd (87): a warning in fine gothic style that his last moment is approaching.

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his inner world.18 In his comatose state, the painter sees Death. Death approaches from the river Tigris, on a guffa, the traditional Iraqi round-shaped riverboat. He climbs up the balcony railings: ‘a mean creature appeared opposite him, rat-faced, his two beady eyes emitting buried resentment and deadly scorn’ (88). The painter raises a rifle he was given by the singer who visited him in his dreams, and aims it at the evil creature. A ‘hoarse’ shot is released. In the world outside the mind of the painter, the noise is described as one made by a man at the moment of dying: the cry of a life pent-up in the painter’s throat, which he has finally released in the face of the night, the river and the slumbering city. The end happens quickly, but in an extraordinary scene that represents concisely a story where the tangible is indistinguishable from visions and dreams, something falls into the river, rapid footsteps are heard climbing the stairs and the room fills with the smell of gunpowder (ibid.). The end is enigmatic. As we are clearly meant to consider this scene as a vision that occurs in the mind of Maḥmūd, why do we hear the noise of something dropping in the river? And how can we explain the smell of gunpowder in the room? The mystery is never resolved, even when the visions in the painter’s mind are substituted by the seemingly tangible world of journalistic report, and in a few sentences, the story is abruptly brought to an end. After the painter is buried, a newspaper reports on his death and a photograph of the guffa tied to the railings of the balcony of the painter’s house on the Tigris comes with the caption: ‘The painter’s last journey was in this guffa’ (89). In his essay ‘The Storyteller’, Walter Benjamin highlights the difference between the information delivered by newspapers via their reporting and explanation of events, and the transfer of Unlike what happens in the Nights where the meaning of dreams is always readily available to readers and what is foretold in them is promptly realised (Irwin 1994: 193–195), the dream/nightmare sessions in ‘Iḥtiḍār’ are obscure as Maḥmūd is visited by strange characters who seem to be the ghosts of people he has met in his long life.

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experience that storytelling (especially the oral transmission of folktales and fairy tales) fulfilled in a pre-modern society (Benjamin 1999: 88–89). In his view the latter form of communication accomplishes a more genuine transmission of knowledge and counsel by relying on a narration that comes without interpretation and therefore puts the hermeneutic onus firmly upon the reader or listener, and it is in this way that the story is shared and appropriated (he mentions the Russian nineteenth century writer Nikolai Leskov and Kafka as writers who can be considered the modern heirs of the oral storytellers of old). We see an ironic dramatization of the gap separating these two forms of knowledge transfer in the finale of ‘Iḥtiḍār’, where the headline (‘Death of the Last Painter from ʿAbd al-Qādir Rassām’s Generation’, Khuḍayyir 2006: 89) and the caption accompanying the photograph not only fail to solve the mystery of what exactly happened when the painter died, but even add to the enigma: what are we to make of Maḥmūd’s mysterious last journey in the guffa? Was it not the same guffa used by Death? In other words, the hermeneutic onus is on us, the readers. On 10 June 1987, ten years after writing ‘Iḥtiḍār’, Khuḍayyir gave a lecture in Baghdad, which was later published under the title ‘Dhākirat al-ʿaṭṭār’ (‘The Perfumer’s Memory’, included in the collection of essays al-Ḥikāya al-jadīda; ‘The New Tale’, 1995). In his lecture Khuḍayyir reflects on the fruitful relationship that modern fiction can have with traditional storytelling. He takes Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’ (1842) as an excellent example of a fictional story in which the normal course of events is hijacked by a fantastic element akin to that of folk tales, the appearance of poor Akakij Akakievič’s ghost. Khuḍayyir’s lecture is in part a defence of the more resolute and conscious turn towards the fantastic that his own fiction had taken since the early 1980s. The lecture ends with a call for a new sort of Arabic fiction: Others from amongst our contemporary writers, the likes of Borges, Marquez, Calvino and Buzzati, will grasp the genius of Gogol’s storytelling inventiveness and rescue fantastic narratives from the banality of fairy tales and from the oddness of Gothic literature. They will lay down the bases for a

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new storytelling-like form of fiction [al-qiṣṣa al-ḥikāʾiyya] which I shall call ‘the new tale’. With these writers, the spirit of our era is fused with the power of a fantastic [ʿajāʾibī] and magical creation. This makes us turn to the tales of our vast Orient, buried in eternal books like the Thousand and One Nights, in which fantasy is connected with an enjoyable, incandescent reality. (Khuḍayyir 1995a: 30)

Elsewhere, Khuḍayyir reflects on fiction within the extreme political circumstances of Iraq in the 1980s and 1990s (see for example Khuḍayyir 2014 and 2015). Here, we should highlight the significance of the writer’s reference to authors like Borges, which is tellingly associated with a reconsideration of the Nights. Even before Khuḍayyir articulated in his lecture his concept of the nature of a new art of the short story, we have evidence in stories like ‘Ḥikāyat’ and ‘Iḥtiḍār’ of his fascination with the interrelatedness of the fantastic and the contingent reality, and his willingness to explore it, indeed to base his fiction on it. It is clear that once Khuḍayyir started reading writers like Borges (apparently only after the publication of his second short story collection in 1978, Khuḍayyir 2008: 117) he was inspired to go further into his explorations of the fantastic and was also encouraged to consider the Nights and the Arabic turāth as sources of inspiration for his own fiction of ‘marvels’ (ʿajāʾib). We can refer this double discovery to what Adonis said about his own experience of discovering the modernity of some Arab poets of the past like Abū Nuwās, thanks to his reading of French poets like Baudelaire: ‘I was one of those [Arab writers] who were captivated by Western culture. Some of us, however, went beyond that stage, armed with a changed awareness and new concepts which enabled us to reread our heritage with new eyes’ (Adonis 1990: 80). This acknowledgement by Adonis is echoed in Khuḍayyir’s call for a rediscovery of ‘the tales of our vast Orient’ and the Nights. It is clear that both Borges and the Nights were a great inspiration in the new stories Khuḍayyir wrote after the publication of ‘Iḥtiḍār’. In the text we will now analyse, Khuḍayyir writes an homage to the Argentinian writer in the form of a pastiche of a tale from the Nights: ‘Rumūz al-liṣṣ’ (‘The Symbols of the Thief’).

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BORGES AND THE THIEF: THE SYMBOLS OF THE MARSHES.

‘Rumūz’ is included in Ḥadāʾiq al-wujūh (‘The Gardens of the Faces’, 2008), which is an excellent example of what the author calls naṣṣ jāmiʿ, ‘an assembling text’, intended to offer an alternative hybrid form to conventional novels. This is a text in which Khuḍayyir combines different literary genres, such as fiction, autobiography and an impressionistic sort of essay writing.19 The whole book is based on the allegory of the writer (an autobiographical authorial persona) as a gardener. This wider allegorical context is one of the main features that distinguish ‘Rumūz’ from ‘Ḥikāyat’ and ‘Iḥtiḍār’. The second part of the book is divided into six sections that correspond to six gardens, which are clear symbols for six muses, six sources of inspiration in the gardener’s literary life. A discussion of ‘Rumūz’, which is part of the section dedicated to Borges, will help demonstrate Khuḍayyir’s evolving relationship with traditional storytelling. As we have mentioned above, the tale ‘Rumūz’ reads in part like a Borges-inspired tale from the Nights, ‘the infinite book’ much admired by Borges. In this tale, the emphasis is less on events and their meaning than on the way the tale takes shape through the interaction of the stories told by four different narrators: the gardener/narrator and the young teacher (both Khuḍayyir figures), the thief, and the fisherman. This collective We can see in Baṣrayāthā: ṣurat madīna (Damascus: Dār al-madā, 1993) the first such explicitly hybrid naṣṣ jāmiʿ by Khuḍayyir (the book has been translated into English as Basrayatha: The Story of a City by William M. Hutchins; London: Verso, 2008). Following this first text, we have Kurrāsat Kānūn (Amman: Dār azmina li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 2001) and the more recent Aḥlām Bāṣūrā (Baghdad & Beirut: Manshūrāt al-jamal, 2016). Even though Baṣrayāthā and Aḥlām Bāṣūrā brought together short pieces which had been previously published independently in Iraqi journals and newspapers, they can be distinguished from Khuḍayyir’s other more conventional short story collections. In fact, the short pieces collected in the nuṣūṣ jāmiʿa tend to be a mixture of fictional story and essay, and are also put into a specific context. 19

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narration of ‘Rumūz’ distinguishes it from ‘Ḥikāyat’ and ‘Iḥtiḍār’, as does the setting of the story. In ‘Rumūz’, the mysterious location provided by the Marshes with their canals, islands and bamboo thickets, is connected to adventures, ancient times and storytelling: the Marshes are ‘a stable reflection in [...] the vanishing mirror of the old world’ (Khuḍayyir 2008: 123).20 One dark and stormy night the legendary thief of the village in the Marshes where the young teacher works pays him a visit. The thief, now an old man, tells the young teacher what he saw on three successive days at sunset. This mysterious vision is at the heart of the story and is narrated several times with some variations. Its symbolism is both vivid and cryptic, in the manner of traditional folktales and of the Nights, and the pleasure of reproducing literary formulae that belong to traditional storytelling is one that Khuḍayyir embraces wholeheartedly here, hence the ‘dark and stormy night’ when the vision of the thief is first narrated. The old thief sees on the water surrounding the island where he lives an ibis (a bird called in Arabic ‘the one with the scythe’, abū minjal, because of its beak; or ‘the black hermit’, al-nāsik al-aswad). The bird glides on the water holding a serpent in its beak. When the bird raises its beak as if to greet the rays of the setting sun, the serpent wrapped around its beak looks like a golden anklet and drops of blood fall on to the water (126). Later, after the young teacher and the thief have become friends, the old man explains the significance of the vision and its symbols. Forty years before his meeting with the young teacher, the thief, then a young man ‘strong of arm and pure of Khuḍayyir evokes the atmosphere of mystery that pervades the Marshes by repeating key words like the adjective mutawārin, ‘vanishing’, ‘hidden’, which refers not only to the dimensions of this old world, but also to the shadowy figure of the legendary thief in the young teacher’s imagination before he meets him, and to the women who live on the thief’s island (Khuḍayyir 2008: 123, 124). It is probable that Khuḍayyir also has in mind the fact the Marshes—a prominent feature in some of his better known earlier stories—were drained under Saddam Hussein’s orders following the 1991 Gulf War. 20

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face’, falls under the double spell of a mysterious woman: she stirs him with her beauty and provocative behaviour, but it is her magic golden anklets which bewitch him even more and he finds it impossible to resist the temptation to steal them: ‘That was my first burglary and the beginning of the stinging in my hands when they feel the urge to possess what doesn’t belong to them’ (131). Now, after all these years, the old thief receives a warning in the shape of his vision of the ibis and the serpent. He reads into this vision a warning not to return the anklets, but ignores it. Believing that returning the anklets will bring his long and illustrious career as a thief to a fitting end, he goes consciously towards his destiny: on his way to the woman, he is killed by a snake, which, according to the fisherman who discovers the thief’s body, is then killed by an ibis. Based on obscure symbolism that alludes to repentance, retribution and fate, the tale includes modernist elements and at the same time is part of the ‘infinite time of the one thousand and one nights [that] continues its course’ (Borges 1984: 56). We have echoes of all the magical phenomena, treasure hunts, adventurous quests and uncanny coincidences typical of the Nights. Like many of the protagonists of the Nights, the protagonist in ‘Rumūz’ is unable to escape his destiny even though he is aware of the powerfully symbolic coincidences that recur in his life.21 We can venture to say that as Khuḍayyir comes closer to appropriating the world and world view of the Nights, Fate becomes more visible than it ever was in ‘Ḥikāyat’ and ‘Iḥtiḍār’. As in Dino Buzzati’s short story ‘Il colombre’ (1966), which Khuḍayyir quotes in his story ‘Dāmā, Dāmū, Dāmī’ (Khuḍayyir 1995b: 64), the protagonist at the end of his life decides to face his fate and go towards his death. In Buzzati’s story, the protagonist discovers that the sea monster he spent all his life trying to escape did not want to devour him but only wanted to give him the famous Perla del Mare (the Sea Pearl) ‘which brings its owner luck, power, love and peace of mind’ (Buzzati 2013: 8). The remains of both the thief in ‘Rumūz’ and the hero in ‘Il colombre’ are found in their boats by fishermen.

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However, it is clear that ‘Rumūz’ remains more concerned with how stories are crafted and collected, and how symbols are received or explained.22 Moreover, the story takes on a different perspective if we assume the thief to be a character in the teacher’s head. In fact, the way the thief is introduced into the story suggests that he and his stories may be taken from books: [the teacher] goes back to his hut [...] and waits for occasional visits and imaginary journeys that he chooses from the bookshelves in his hut, until, one dark and stormy night a boat dropped anchor next to the teacher’s boat [...] and the great thief strolled into the hut. (Khuḍayyir 2008: 124)

One of Borges’s stories mentioned by Khuḍayyir in his introduction to ‘Rumūz’ is ‘The Circular Ruins’ (1940), which is relevant here as its main character is ultimately revealed to have been created in the dream of another character, and features of the settings of each story are strikingly similar. Intriguingly, we can also see in ‘Rumūz’ Khuḍayyir’s playful attempt to fill the gap left by Ḥiyal al-luṣūṣ, al-Jāḥiẓ’s lost book on thieves. Khuḍayyir seems to hint at this possibility when the young bookish teacher mentions this lost book to the old thief (Khuḍayyir 2008: 126).23 This story includes a section in which Khuḍayyir sustains his allegorical depiction of the Marshes and the legendary life of the thief by using Quranic terminology. For example, the day and the night have their own symbol or āya (‘sign’, ‘miracle’, ‘marvel’; and also the word used for a Quranic ‘verse’). However, rather than giving the story a religious element, the Islamic terms contribute to the story’s symbolic dimension (Khuḍayyir 2008: 123). 23 As Philip Kennedy notes in his chapter ‘Borges and the Missing Pages of the Nights’, Borges uses a similar narrative technique in his story ‘The South’ (1953): what seems to happen here is that the protagonist has a dream while he is in hospital, in which he is the hero of an adventure inspired by the Nights (Kennedy 2013). We might conclude that the protagonist of the Borges story actually dies in hospital at the moment when he dies in his dream in a knife duel on the Pampas. This is similar to what happens to Maḥmūd Effendī in Khuḍayyir’s ‘Iḥtiḍār’ where his dreamed killing of Death coincides with his ‘real’ death on his veranda 22

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The framework within which the tale is told, and which is made to fit into Khuḍayyir’s allegorical palimpsest, is provided directly by the first person narrator/gardener, who acknowledges that the tale is being retold in the gardens and re-worked by the gardeners, the seasoned story-tellers (133), an explicit discussion on the genesis of what we are reading that is typical of metafictional discourse.24 After the body of the thief is discovered by the fisherman and brought back to the village, we are taken back to the last night on which the thief visited the teacher: at the end of his story of how he stole the woman’s golden anklets, helped by their magic powers, the old thief told the teacher: ‘My friend, you now possess the interpretation of the three symbols and you don’t need to guess what lies behind them’ (132). However, the three symbols of the story (the bird, the snake and the anklet) belong not only to ‘the time of the Marshes’ but also to what the gardener-narrator of the story can imagine about that mysterious place (123). In fact, at the end of the tale, after having heard the thief’s final words to the teacher, the narrator says: But what remains of the journey is restricted to conjecture that relies on the intuition of a teacher who stole from the thief the ability to open locks, to draw aside the veils from the kingdoms of darkness, water and golden serpents. The final part of the tale contains the inventiveness of a storyteller who has been given a charm that the magic of words cannot render worthless in a fraudulent art. (132) overlooking the Tigris. In ‘The South’ and ‘Rumūz’, Borges and Khuḍayyir are also ironically asking whether art and books are superior to the physically experienced life of action and adventure. There is no evidence Khuḍayyir has ever read ‘The South’, which makes the parallels between his work and Borges’s all the more telling. 24 In ‘al-Ḥukamāʾ al-thalātha’ (‘The Three Wise Men’, 1986) and ‘Ḥikāyāt Yūsuf’ (‘Yūsuf’s Tales’, 1987), two stories included in his collection Ruʾyā kharīf (‘An Autumn Vision’, 1995), Khuḍayyir uses the frame story device and the former ends with a metafictional aside to the reader on how the story itself was supposedly written.

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The gardener had initially promised us that the story of the thief would show us how stealing is connected to love, but here we can say that stealing is felicitously associated with storytelling (126) and so the teacher proceeds to give us his own imagined finale in which the thief is killed by the kiss of a snake-woman. The young narrator here dramatises how a woman’s wiles can prevail, a recurring trope in the Nights. In his essay ‘On Some Motifs in Baudelaire’, Benjamin reflects on the figure of the storyteller in relation to Proust’s work. He defines the story as one of the oldest forms of communication and adds: It is not the object of the story to convey a happening per se [...]; rather, it embeds it in the life of the storyteller in order to pass it on as experience to those listening. It thus bears the marks of the storyteller as the earthen vessel bears the marks of the potter’s hand. (Benjamin 1999: 156)25

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, we have shown how Khuḍayyir has moved from a seemingly skeptical take on traditional storytelling to an enthusiastic re-working of it within his own ironic enactment of the way tales are transmitted in both oral and written forms. In ‘Ḥikāyat’, the modernist narrator’s clash with a Shahrazad-like narrator, whether merely staged or genuinely heartfelt, is certainly at the core of a story that is an original and sophisticated example of social criticism. In ‘Iḥtiḍār’, the focus switches to the imaginative powers of an artist whose multifarious identities include the fictive painter Maḥmūd, the narrator of the story, and Khuḍayyir. The sensibility of this composite artist (inspired by the 1831 memoirs of the last Mamluk governor of Baghdad) enthusiastically embraces the fantastic: Khuḍayyir is moving towards his own contemporary literature of ʿajāʾib. Finally, in ‘Rumūz’, the modernist narrator does not look down on the puBenjamin uses the same image in the previously cited essay ‘The Storyteller’ (1936); see Benjamin 1999: 91.

25

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tative Nights tale; on the contrary, he enthusiastically appropriates it and embeds it within his Borgesian self-reflexive game. In an ambiguous narrative full of symbols and open to different interpretations (including one that sees the pseudo-Nights story as wholly imagined by a character, as happens in ‘Iḥtiḍār’), the narrator is seen as a crafter of stories, a finder and a transmitter (or even a thief) of stories, who uses his imagination to add to the story he finds, but remains part of an anonymous network of storytellers (the gardeners). While the thief and the teacher discuss the possible interpretations of the symbols, and whether they should be interpreted at all, the gardeners suppress their interpretation in order to preserve the suspense for the reader (128). Even as we continue to follow the story to see what happens next, our enjoyment or entertainment will not derive from questions being answered or problems solved. They rather derive from us, as readers, becoming part of the action, by, to paraphrase Borges, enriching it, misunderstanding it, changing it into something else (Borges quoted in Irwin 1994: 284). Here, we can clearly see how Khuḍayyir appropriates and reformulates Borges’s ironic questioning of the concepts of authorship, literary precursors and plagiarism. In ‘Rumūz’, storytelling is a collective endeavour in which not only ‘gardeners’ like Borges and Khuḍayyir, skilled masters of the trade, participate, but also a fisherman, an old thief and a young, bookish teacher, and in which we, the readers, are also implicitly invited to take part.26 The narrator in ‘Rumūz’ talks enigmatically of the possibility of Irwin underlines how Borges was inspired by the frame device in the Nights, not only because it promises ‘the possibility of an infinitely prolonged descent through tales within tales’, but also because it suggests ‘the possibility that the reader, as he reads a story framed within another story, may become himself uneasily aware that he too may be framed, that is, part of a story that someone else is telling’ (Irwin 1994: 284). Khuḍayyir answers a question on Borges’s influence by denying any anxiety of influence and by adding ironically: ‘In Borges’s words, the story composed by a specific author might be a dream in the mind of another author’. (Khuḍayyir 1995a: 101).

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‘the magic of words’ being used ‘in a fraudulent art’ (Khuḍayyir 2008: 132). Perhaps here he implies a challenge to stories that enchant by their comforting formulae and the musical familiarity of their images. In this way he reiterates what Khuḍayyir said on 10 June 1987 in his Baghdad lecture, about great writers like Borges saving fantastic storytelling from ‘the banality of fairy tales and from the oddness of Gothic literature’ (Khuḍayyir 1995a: 30). Although in ‘Rumūz’ there is no evident sociopolitical content, insofar as it is an exploration of storytelling, and more specifically of the use of symbols in stories (see the title of the story), the relationship of symbols to ambiguity, conveying meaning in indirect ways and challenging readers to interpret them, goes beyond entertainment, and can be construed as deeply political. Unlike other modern Arab writers who have used the Nights mainly as a ploy by which to convey their views on the sociopolitical problems of their countries (Maḥfūẓ, Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm, Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ, Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr, Nawāl alSaʿdāwī), Khuḍayyir refers to the Nights in order to, on one hand, give fictional expression to his understanding of how to write and how to read and, on the other hand, to make his own one of the most evident and felicitous purposes of folktales: to entertain.27 In Khuḍayyir, we find the same ‘intimacy and complicitous familiarity with the Nights that we find in Proust or Borges’, a familiarity that Abdelfattah Kilito fails to find in the works of other Arab writers who have drawn on the Nights for inspiration (Kilito 2014: 124; cf. Ghazoul 1996: 135).

In re-writing some of the tales of the Nights in her own modern prose, Ḥanān al-Shaykh chooses another more direct way to relate to the famous collection (see Ṣāḥibat al-dār Shahrazād, 2012; One Thousand and One Nights, 2011). 27

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REFERENCES

Whenever appropriate, the year of the first publication of a source has been added between brackets following the year of the edition used. Adonis. 1990. (1985). An Introduction to Arab Poetics, trans. by Catherine Cobham (London: Saqi). al-ʿĀnī, Shujāʿ Muslim. 1999. ‘Al-Kitāba bi-l-kāmīrā: Dirāsa fī allugha al-sīnimiyya [sic] fī adab Muḥammad Khuḍayyir’, in Qirāʾāt fī al-adab wa-l-naqd (Damascus: Manshūrāt ittihād alkuttāb al-ʿarab), pp. 102–141 [accessed 18 March 2020]. Benjamin, Walter. 1999. (1955). Illuminations, trans. by Harry Zorn, ed. by Hannah Arendt (London: Pimlico). Borges, Jorge Louis. 1984. (1980). Seven Nights, trans. by Eliot Weinberger (New York: New Directions). Buzzati, Dino. 2013. (1966). Il Colombre (Milano: Oscar Mondadori). Caiani, Fabio, and Catherine Cobham. 2013. The Iraqi Novel: Key Writers, Key Texts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Fudge, Bruce. 2016. ‘More Translators of The Thousand and One Nights’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 136, 1 (January–March): 135–146. Ghazoul, Ferial J. 1996. Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press). Haddawy, Husain. 1992. ‘Introduction’, in The Arabian Nights, trans. by Husain Haddawy (London: David Campbell), pp. xiii–xxxv. Idrīs, Yūsuf. 1971. ‘Bayt min laḥm’, in Bayt min laḥm (Cairo: ʿĀlam al-kutub). Irwin, Robert. 1994. The Arabian Nights: A Companion (London: Penguin Books). Jameson, Frederic. 2017. ‘No Magic, No Metaphor’, London Review of Books, 39, 12 (15 June), pp. 21–32.

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Kennedy, Philip F. 2013. ‘Borges and the Missing Pages of the Nights’, in Scheherazade’s Children: Global Encounters with the Arabian Nights, ed. by Philip F. Kennedy and Marina Warner (London and New York: New York University Press), pp. 195–217. Khuḍayyir, Muḥammad. 1993. Baṣrayāthā: ṣurat madīna (Damascus: Dār al-madā). ― 1995a. al-Ḥikāya al-jadīda (Amman: Dār azmina li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ). ― 1995b. Ruʾyā kharīf (Amman: Dār azmina li-l-nashr wa-ltawzīʿ). ― 2005. (1972). al-Mamlaka al-sawdāʾ (Cologne: Manshūrāt al-Jamal). ― 2006. (1978). Fī darajat khamsa wa-arbaʿīn miʾawī (Cologne & Baghdad: Manshūrāt al-Jamal). ― 2008. Ḥadāʾiq al-wujūh: Aqniʿa wa-ḥikāyāt (Damascus: Dār al-madā). ― 2014. ‘Ḥiwār maʿa al-qāṣṣ Muḥammad Khuḍayyir’, interview by Saʿdūn Halīl, al-Ḥiwār al-mutamaddin, 9 February, [accessed 18 March 2020]. ― 2015. ‘al-Adab wa-l-siyāsa: sikkīn fī al-thalj’, al-Ṣabāḥ, 12 December, [accessed 18 March 2020]. Khuṣbāk, ʿĀʾid. 2014. Bāb al-sayf: Dirāsa fī qiṣṣat al-sittīnāt alʿirāqiyya (Baghdad: Dār al-shuʾūn al-thaqāfiyya al-ʿāmma). Kilito, Abdelfattah. 2014. (2009). Arabs and the Art of Storytelling: A Strange Familiarity, trans. by Mbarek Sryfi and Eric Sellin (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press). Lyons, Malcolm C. (trans.). 2010. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Vol. 1 (London: Penguin Books). Musawi, Muhsin. 2003. The Postcolonial Arabic Novel: Debating Ambivalence (Leiden & Boston: Brill).

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Rastegar, Kamran. 2007. Literary Modernity Between the Middle East and Europe: Textual Transactions in Nineteenth-century Arabic, English, and Persian Literatures (London: Routledge).



TWO PERSPECTIVES, ONE SHAHRAZAD: TURKISH POETRY AND ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS NESLİHAN DEMİRKOL (UNIVERSITY OF MÜNSTER) AND MEHMET KALPAKLI (BİLKENT UNIVERSITY) Sezai Karakoç and Gülten Akın are two prominent figures of Turkish poetry, but although Karakoç and Akın are of the same generation, they have opposing worldviews; therefore, each addresses a different audience. Our aim is to analyse their poems as reflections of One Thousand and One Nights in modern Turkish poetry. The poems in question are written in different periods: Karakoç wrote his poem in 1953, while Akın wrote hers in 2007. Despite having differing objectives, we believe that these two poems—both entitled ‘Shahrazad’—give a glimpse of how the Nights are digested by Turkish literary circles. First, in order to position the Nights in Turkish literature, and the poets within the realm of Turkish poetry, this chapter briefly outlines the historical frame through which we can make sense of these poems. It then introduces Sezai Karakoç and Gülten Akın, and proceeds to a close reading of the poems. Last but not least, based on a close reading of the poems, some arguments are provided about how and why the Nights has had an effect on modern Turkish poetry. The international academic community has reached a consensus that the Nights is a masterpiece of and a significant contribution of Arabic literature to world literature. Hence the influence of the Nights has been mostly discussed with reference to 93

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Arabic texts, as they are the oldest known manuscripts, and the sources of Antoine Galland’s translation. Naturally, the Ottoman Turkish versions, adaptations, and translations of the Nights are generally overlooked.1 However, they have a long history in Ottoman Turkish; the earliest known translation of the Nights into Ottoman Turkish dates back to the fifteenth century, and is located in İnebey Manuscript Library in Bursa. The Bursa Municipality published this manuscript in 2016 as a volume that includes introductory articles about the manuscript, a facsimile, and a transliteration of the manuscript’s text into the modern Turkish alphabet, ornamented with charming miniatures (Eğri ed. 2016). The well-known Beyânî manuscript dates back to 1636, and is a part of the manuscript collection of the Biblothèque Nationale de France in Paris. Şinasi Tekin’s article on this manuscript, and its marginalia, gives us a hint about how popular and admirable these stories were among readers in Istanbul (1993: 240–241, 244). In his memoire about Istanbul, Antoine Galland mentions stories in circulation among Ottoman readers, such as Forty Morns and Eves, İskendernâme, and stories of consolation in the style of al-Faraj ba’d al-shidda, which were among the adaptations of Nights. His testimony provides us with an insight into the popularity of tales within the Ottoman community (1881: 242). There has been a continued interest in the Nights in the Late Ottoman era as well. We may mention, for instance, Muhayyelât-ı Aziz Efendi (The Imaginations of Aziz Efendi), written in the late eighteenth century as one of the early texts of the modern era which took its inspiration from this story compilation. In the foreword to his “imaginations”, the author Aziz Efendi states Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a list of works by international scholars dealing with One Thousand and One Nights in Turkish, we feel obliged to mention some of these esteemed scholars who have drawn attention to the Turkish translations as well as interactions between Turkish literature and One Thousand and One Nights such as Marzolph, Leeuwen, and Wassouf 2004, Leeuwen 2007, Thomann 2016, Chraïbi 2016, Marzolph 2017, and Leeuwen 2018.

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that he has discovered a book entitled Hülâsâtü’l Hayâl (‘The Essence of Fantasy’), a book that was in the fashion of the Nights and Lami’i Çelebi’s ʿİbretnâme (1526)2, and decided to create his own version of it (1999: 1). Andreas Tietze draws our attention to the intertextual relationships of Muhayyelât with the Nights, One Thousand and One Days and al-Farac ba’d al-shidda (1948). Gonca Gökalp also points out the structural and narrative similarities, along with the similarities between Muhayyelât and the Nights, considering the former to be a pioneering example of the modern Turkish novel (1999: 187–188). Following the proliferation of printing press technology throughout the Ottoman territories in the nineteenth century, translations and anthologies of, as well as selections from the Nights were published in different scripts and languages of the empire. The first printed translation—from Arabic into Ottoman Turkish—of the Nights was that by Ahmet Nazif Efendi, first published in 1842–1850 in six volumes, and later in 1870 in four volumes (Acaroğlu 1988: 14). Within the new Turkish Republic period, many different translations of the Nights were published; these were mostly from French and rarely from English, a fact that remains true to this day. Therefore, we can safely allege that the Nights has always been a well-known text and in circulation among the Ottoman audience and modern Turkish readers alike. However, there have only been few literary studies concerning the influences of Turkish translations of the Nights. Current studies focus mainly on the manuscript tradition, the linguistics of Ottoman Turkish, and the influences of the Nights on Turkish oral and folk literature.3 There are also bibliographies of the Nights in Turkish, based on the translations into A compilation of moral stories and anecdotes about Sufism by Lamîi Çelebi (d. 1532), a well-known Ottoman Divan poet. 3 For a linguistic analyses of the Bursa manuscript see Tor 1994; Tor 2010; for translations of the Nights by Armenian community in Ottoman era see Koz 2010; for the influence of the Nights on Anatolian-Turkish tales and fairy tales see Akkoyunlu 1982; Akkoyunlu 2012 and Nazlı 2011. 2

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Turkish, addressing their influences on modern Turkish literature as well as Turkish cinema (Acaroğlu 1988; Birkalan-Gedik 2004; Tülücü 1998; Kalpaklı and Demirkol 2014). In terms of its influence on modern Turkish literature, we can mention Kara Kitap (Black Book) (1990) by Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, which has an intertextual relation to the Nights; On the Road to Baghdad by Turkish-American author, Güneli Gün, which was a ‘picaresque novel of magical adventures begged, borrowed and stolen from the Thousand and One Nights’ (1991: 1); and Uykuların Doğusu (East of Sleeps) (2009) by Hasan Ali Toptaş, which was introduced as ‘an endless story just like One Thousand and One Nights’. With regards to classical Ottoman literature, research uncovers brief mentions of the Nights in the classical tradition of story-telling. Yet, we do not come across any comprehensive study of this. In short, the number of national studies about the influences of the Nights on Ottoman or modern Turkish literature falls short of expectations. Three explanations can be put forward regarding the national literary circles’ indifference towards this issue. The first of these is related to the modernisation and nationalisation process in Turkey. It is obvious that this paradigm shift not only affected political and social systems, but also reshaped the cultural and academic environment. Therefore—on the basis of Benedict Anderson’s ground-breaking study about the relationship between nation building, modern literature, and print culture—we can make this assumption about the Turkish case: on the backdrop of the newly emerging nation state, it would not be logical to expect the literary studies to primarily engage in scrutinizing a piece of ‘foreign’ work, which does not constitute a genuine part of the national identity. Moreover, this ‘foreign’ literary text fundamentally belongs to the ‘East’, a quality that the new state was trying to eliminate from the new national identity. For the founding principles of the modern Turkish state, anything borrowed, adopted, or adapted from Arab or Persian cultures, languages, or literatures should be perceived as ‘foreign’. Accordingly, it would be suitable to anticipate an increase in antipathy towards the Nights.

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Another reason for such indifference may be the reaction to supernatural features within traditional tales. The foundation of the criticism of Ottoman classical literature in the second half of the nineteenth century was that it had no connection with reality. The obsession with reality among literary circles was a result of social and cultural changes. In a period when industrialisation was accelerated by scientific discoveries and society was driven by the new rules depicted by this new way of life, ‘imaginary’ and ‘extraordinary’ tales appeared irrelevant and even childish.4 This may also explain the change in the Turkish title of the Nights in the twentieth century. While during the Ottoman period these stories were referred to as ‘tales’ (ḥikâyât), the publishers of the new republic referred to them as ‘fairy tales’ (masal) so as to emphasize the unrealistic and exotic aspect of the Nights, and perhaps to categorize them among children’s literature. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, a prominent novelist and a meticulous literary historian of Turkish literature, writes about the In the second half of nineteenth century, Turkish literary circles witnessed vivid literary discussions concerning the new path to be taken by Turkish literature. The progressive cadres of literature, such as Şinasi, Ziya Paşa, Namık Kemal, Recaizade Mahmud Ekrem, heavily criticized the classical Ottoman literature for being deeply influenced by Arabic and Persian languages and literatures, and thus for not serving the purpose of “educating the people”. Ziya Paşa’s famous article ‘Şiir ve İnşa’ (Poetry and Prose) (1868), Namık Kemal’s Tahrib-i Harabat (Destruction of Ruins) (1874), and the well-known discussion in the early 1880s between Recaizade Mahmud Ekrem and Muallim Naci about new poetry can all be cited in this respect. For more, see Şahin 2008; Donbay 2010; Tökel 1998. The critic of Ottoman poetry is not limited to these examples. The highly influential Turkologist and founding figure of modern literary studies in the early republican era, M. Fuad Köprülü, also constructed his discourse concerning Ottoman poetry taking a dismissive approach, see Köprülü 1924. Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar were two other influential literary historians of the early republican era, who also criticized the classical Ottoman poetry for not being realistic; see Gölpınarlı 1945 and Tanpınar 2003. 4

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role of ‘wonders’ in Turkish tales with reference to the Nights, and argues that the element of wonders in these stories prevents the protagonist from being left to her fate, and does not allow for a dramatic plot (2003: 26–27).Thus, we can infer that in Turkey, the Nights have not been taken as serious works of literature by the academic circles of the modern era. The third reason for the Nights being largely overlooked is also related to the definition of national literatures. Since national languages are deemed definitive, national literary studies have the tendency to exclude translations from the national literary canon. From the perspective of national literatures, anything not produced originally in the national language does not deserve any particular attention, because translation can only be a secondary product, an ‘imitation’, a ‘copy’ of the original. We are not going to embark here on a discussion about how and when a work belongs to a certain national literature, and we are not going to give a historical account of cultural paradigm shifts in translation studies, either. However, it is important to emphasize that it is possible that the Nights have not received as much academic attention as they deserve due to being a ‘translated’ work. Let us start by indicating that despite the long history the Nights enjoyed in Turkish, the themes and/or traces of them are prevalent neither in classical Ottoman poetry nor in folk poetry. Shahrazad and Shahriyar are absent as themes, characters, or images from Ottoman poetry. The main reason for this appears to be that Ottoman poetry (both folk and classical) has its own repertoire of symbols, metaphors, and characters. In classical poetry in particular, even in the genre of masnavi—tales in poetry form—the set of symbols, metaphors, and characters is very limited.5 Scanning İskender Pala’s Ansiklopedik Divan Şiiri Sözlüğü (Encyclopedic Dictionary of Divan Poetry) and Ahmet Talat Onay’s Açıklamalı Divan Şiiri Sözlüğü: Eski Türk Edebiyatında Mazmunlar ve İzahı (Annotated Dictionary of Divan Poetry: Poetic Themes in Old Turkish Literature 5

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It seems necessary to briefly refer to the general features of Ottoman poetry for a better understanding of our argument. In Ottoman poetry, both in folk and classical poetry, the main theme was love. The theme of love might be observed in different forms, such as mystical or secular. In most cases, love comes with many layers of meaning, representing the profane beloved, and the heavenly celestial one, God, simultaneously. Accordingly, the main dynamic of the poem revolves around the relationship between the lover and the beloved. Generally speaking, the beloved is unattainable and the lover restlessly tries to attract the attention of the beloved, confronts all kinds of obstacles, ceaselessly suffers, and increasingly, embraces his/her anguish as a blessing and raison d’être.6 In classical Ottoman poetry, the lover and the beloved are anonymous. In masnavis, the characters inevitably have names, but the repertoire of female and male protagonists is almost always fixed; including but not limited to Layla and Majnun, Khosrow/Farhad and Shirin, Yusuf and Zulaykha, Süheyl and Nevbahâr (Kavruk and Pala 1998: 491–493.). Folk tales per se, entail characters from masnavis, or some additional, sui generis ones, such as Kerem and Aslı, Tahir and Zühre, Arzu and Kamber, Emrah and Selvihan (Türkmen 1998: 489–490). However, in none of these traditions are Shahrazad or Shahriyar referred to, since the Nights is not a typical representation of a love story or an affair as described above. Shahrazad and Shahriyar’s story is narrated in a more realistic setting: Shahriyar is no lover, but a ruler, and Shahrazad is no beloved, but a subject. Hence, it was not possible for Ottoman poetry to find a way to bring these two characters into its repertoire. and their Explanations) would be a simple means of cross-checking the validity of this assumption. None of these works refer to One Thousand and One Nights, Shahrazad or Shahriyar as poetic themes or motifs. 6 The social, cultural and mystic references of this poetry are beyond the scope of this chapter, but for more information see Andrews 1985 as well as Andrews and Kalpaklı 2005.

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In the light of these points, the ‘Shahrazad’ poems of Sezai Karakoç and Gülten Akın, two prominent poets of modern Turkish literature, should definitely be considered as a novel poetic theme. Consequently, we consider these poems not as reuse or reclamation of tradition, but as creation of tradition. They perform the introduction of a brand new theme, symbol, or protagonist to modern Turkish poetry. Our research on modern Turkish poetry endorses this claim: the corpus of Turkish poetry we reviewed showed that the references to the Nights or its characters occur predominantly after the 1950s. There is, for example, Hilmi Yavuz’s ‘a, ş, k (bir)’ (l, o, v, e [one]) (2007: 407) and Akgün Akova’s ‘Leyla’ (2006: 26–27). Interestingly, both poets mention the Nights or Shahrazad in relation to Layla. In Hilmi Yavuz’s poem we read: […] sen Leyla’dan daha Leyla verdiğin yanıtlar için sorular aradım, sorular mı, akşamlar mı, arada kaldım… alışır mıydım, alışırdım elf leyle ve leyle… […]

[…] you are more Layla than Layla To your answers I tried to find questions, questions or evenings, I am torn apart… would I get used to it, I would elf leyle ve leyle… […]7

And in Akgün Akova’s ‘Leyla’, the poet calls Layla for a new beginning: […] her şeye yeniden başla Leyla Binbir Gece Masallarını anlatmaya, -------------------------Şehrazat’ın bir köleden gebe kaldığı için bıraktığı yerden […] […] Start everything anew Layla Restart telling The Tales of One Thousand and One Nights, ---------------------------from the point Shahrazad stopped, because 7

The translation is ours.

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she became pregnant by a slave […]8

Shahrazad also appears in two poems by Ece Ayhan: in one of these implicitly, and in the other explicitly. Ece Ayhan, yet another prominent poet and an important figure in the avant-garde poetry of the 1950s, refers to the Nights in his ‘OrtodoksluklarXIII’ (1994: 155) and calls for a male Shahrazad in his ‘Ala Ala Hey’ (1994: 39). Also, in his prose piece ‘Şiir Alınlıkları Üzerine’ (1994: 53), he depicts a boy working on a fairy tale entitled ‘Sultan of Mavera-Un-Nahr’. Here, the boy convinces himself that Shahrazad is male. Oğuz Demiralp interprets the word ‘Shahrazad’ as an intersection of two meanings, referring both to the homosexuality and the authorship of the protagonist (1995: 30). Erdoğan Kul, in his article inquiring into the mythological and tale-like elements of Ece Ayhan’s poems, also concludes that all these references to Shahrazad are in fact a representation of and a metaphor for the poet himself (2011: 77–78, 81). Before delving into our two poems of choice, we would like to offer brief portraits of Sezai Karakoç and Gülten Akın. Sezai Karakoç is among the outstanding poets of modern Turkish literature. Born in 1933, his interest in poetry started early in life, publishing his first poem in 1949. He spent some time in the capital of the new Turkish Republic, Ankara, while studying at the Faculty of Political Sciences there (Yalçın 2010b: 586–587). His foundation years of literary production overlapped with the Turkish avant-garde poetry movement, namely İkinci Yeni (literally, ‘The Second New’). Thus, his poems have some similarities in terms of form and style with this avant-garde poetry movement. However, in terms of content, the source of his poetry is very different from this new circle of poets. The main difference between Sezai Karakoç and the avant-garde poets in question is his attitude towards the poetic tradition. Karakoç has a strong sense of tradition and he argues that it is tradition, which leads a poet to the poem. Thus, any poet disregarding or 8

The translation is ours.

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rejecting the poetic tradition is bound to perish (2012: 107– 114). He considers Ottoman poetry to be the classical poetry of Turkish literature, and claims that it should be the source of modern poetry. He criticises the rejection of classical Ottoman poetry by the literary milieu, an attitude that emerged in the nineteenth century with the Ottoman modernisation project and continued into newly established republic’s modernisation process. He maintains that modern poetry cannot be in the form of classical poetry, but stresses that it should have the same essence and spirit (2016: 10–14). According to Karakoç, poetry is composed of archetypes and leitmotivs. In the course of history, in accordance with the spirit of the time, these archetypes and leitmotivs are to be represented in ever new ways. As a matter of fact, the collection and classification of these archetypes and leitmotivs constitutes the tradition of poetry. What a poet should do is both to regenerate these archetypes and leitmotivs and add new ones to them. The traditional style should also be revised and re-formatted (2012: 115–121). Sezai Karakoç is a true believer and an ideologist of Islam and Islamic culture, claiming that Islamic culture and civilisation should be interpreted anew and retain its dominance in contemporary life. The foundation of his poetic and political stance is based on the adaptation and ‘resurrection’ of Islamic culture in line with modern times. He argues that the poet, or himself as a poet, must break the chains of every kind of modern social bond and act against social codes. He must be an actor for social change, which will lead to the dominance of ‘pure Islam’ above the contemporary social codes and bonds (2012: 31–54). Gülten Akın was also born in 1933, and graduated from the Faculty of Law in Ankara in 1956. She published her first poem in 1951, and like Karakoç’s, her poems were published in the long era of the new avant-garde poetry, the Second New movement, but she kept herself separate from them. We can divide her poetry into three defined stages: The first was between the late 1950s and 1960s, when the main themes of her poems were solitude, desolation, and distrust. The second phase was throughout the 1970s, during which Akın mostly wrote about the social position of the individual, rural people, and the histor-

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ical and political reasons for immigration. The last of these three periods began in the late 1980s, continuing into the 2000s. The poems written in this phase reflect the story of an individual who has given up on society, maintaining an anxious spirit, trying to resist despite the loss of hope and faith in society (Yalçın 2010b: 62–63). Gülten Akın adopted a Marxist perspective and social realism as the thematic core of her poetry. Her leftist identity is so dominant that although most of her poems are specifically about women, she refused to be identified as a ‘female poet’ or a ‘feminist’. In her study, Ruken Alp scrutinises the elements of female sensibility in Akın’s poetry and states that it gives voice to suppressed women in an oppressive patriarchal society, which prevents women from self-realisation. According to Alp, the female figures of Akın’s poetry feel confined by social life, marriage, political system, old age, and religion (2007: 109–110). Akın expects the poet to play a role in society, to fulfil some sort of function. According to her, the basic dynamic between the poet and society is a dialectical relationship where one changes and influences the other (2001: 153–157). Correspondingly, she indicates that her poetry is rooted in folk literature and folk poems, since to her, the Turkish poetic tradition involves pragmatism. Unlike Karakoç, she does not consider the classical Ottoman poetry as the heritage of modern poets. To her, classical Ottoman poetry is the epitome of nobility and does not bear any prospect for the present and the future, while folk literature is a living, vivid tradition full of new prospects of style and form (2001: 56–62). She skilfully adapts formal and metaphoric features of epics and tales in her poems, while creating an authentic style of her own. Her poems dwell upon themes ranging from the problems of women to philosophical questions, from social issues to oppression and torment. As mentioned above, Karakoç and Akın are poles apart in terms of ideological, cultural, and poetic stances. At one of these

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poles we have ‘Şehrazat’ (2013: 11) of Karakoç, a poem written in 1953 and first published in 1957.9 Sen gecenin gündüzün dışında Sen kalbin atışında kanın akışında Sen Şehrazat bir lâmba bir hükümdar bakışında Bir ölüm kuşunun feryadını duyarsın Sen bir rüya geceleyin gündüzün Sen bir yağmur ince hazin Sen şarkılarca büyük uzun Sen yolunu kaybeden yolcuların üstüne Bir ömür boyu yağan bir ömür boyu karsın Sen merhamet sen rüzgâr sen tiril tiril kadın Sen bir mahşer içinde en aziz yalnızlığı yaşadın Sen başını çeviren cellatbaşının günü Sen öyle ki sen diye diye seni anlayamayız Şehrazat ah Şehrazat Şehrazat Sen sevgili sen can sen yarsın

You... beyond day and night You... in the heart’s beating and the flow of blood You... Shahrazad, a lamp in the gaze of a ruler You hear the wailing of a deathbird You...a dream by day and by night You... a rain, fine and sorrowful You... large and long as songs You are a lifetime of snow, pouring down for a lifetime On travellers, who have lost their ways You… compassion, you... wind, you... gossamer woman You lived the dearest saintly solitude amidst a judgement day You... the day of the chief executioner who turns his head away You... it is such that, we cannot understand you when we say ‘you’ Shahrazad, ah Shahrazad, Shahrazad You are the beloved, you are the soul, you are the friend

What strikes us first is that the poet positions Shahrazad in a fairy tale-like environment. In the first stanza, Shahrazad is located out of the realm of the real world, as in a dream, but also at close proximity to the poet, as though she has no individual identity of her own. This image is strengthened in the second The translation is ours. We owe special thanks to Prof Walter G. Andrews for his contributions to the translation. 9

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stanza with references to ‘dream’, ‘rain’, ‘songs’, and ‘snow’. Free from terrestrial temporalities, transcending human qualities, and almost penetrating under the skin of the poet, Shahrazad turns into something else, but what? A character of a tale can appear in many forms, so let us try to establish what Shahrazad turns into by looking into the rest of the poem. After the first two lines, we have a better positioning of the protagonist. We see her in a very familiar space: most probably in the room with Shahriyar, under threat of death. Every time Shahriyar fixes his gaze on her, she becomes defenceless in the face of this masculine threat and she hears the footsteps of the prospect of death: she seems to be prey. In the second stanza, the description of Shahrazad depicts an even more delicate, vulnerable, and defenceless creature. Despite being called a dream, rain, a song or snow, the attributes these things carry make it clear for the reader that Shahrazad has no power. The only action she is capable of is to snow on top of the travellers, not bothering or freezing them, but rather covering them like a soft blanket. The first line of the last stanza consolidates this image of Shahrazad. In addition to her delicacy, as a continuation of the second stanza’s last line, her nurturing and merciful character is illustrated. She is almost endowed with sainthood on behalf of her loneliness, which brings to mind the Sufi dervishes’ reclusion and suffering. The last line declares clearly how the poet conceives her, namely as a beloved one. In light of these features, we claim that in Karakoç’s poem, Shahrazad transforms into a saintly figure. Thus, the image of Shahrazad is mostly aligned with traditional gender assumptions. In this poem, Shahrazad is nothing but an object of social construction and compared to ‘angels’, deemed to be delicate creatures to be protected or threatened by men. The image of Shahrazad here is a pure representation of Karakoç’s ideology and corresponds with other female figures in his poetry. In accordance with his conservative worldview, he reflects a traditional or mystical image of women in his poems. Nebiye Arı states that, in his poems, Karakoç highlights the conventionally assumed qualities of women: motherhood and honour. He also

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employs frequently celebrated characters, such as Saint Mary, known for their virtuousness (2011: 41). Some traditional characters, for instance Layla, also appear in his poems. He even wrote a modern version of Layla and Majnun in masnavi form. Arı also reminds us that despite being an advocate of Islamic reform, Karakoç is against modern, liberal, or feminist definitions of womanhood and criticises women who leave their houses and duties as mothers, and accuses them of the death of household and family life (2011: 43). Therefore, the Shahrazad in his poem is a proper representation of a saintly female figure in Karakoç’s literary world. At the other pole, we have Akın’s ‘Şehrazad’ (2007: 21–22), a thoroughly different representation. Akın’s ‘Şehrazad’ was published, rather recently, in 2007. In general, it shows traces of the third phase of her poetry; in other words, we have a daunted but resolute figure in the poem. Many times, Akın constructs the backbone of her poems with alternate references to herself and other people. As with her other poems, in ‘Şehrazad’, Akın refers to herself and becomes a part of the poem. In the end, it becomes hard to distinguish Shahrazad and Akın from one another, and to tell whose story we are reading. Şehrazad o binbir kara geceden ulaştı masalsı aydınlığa sesler rüzgâra sığındı onunla uçtu uzağa içinde kendine çevrik bir ok sen acemi durdun avcısın, ya hiç yakalayamadın ya tuttuğun kaydı elinden hızla acıyla sınandın, övgüyle sınandın

benzettiler, etiketler “gördüm, gördüm” dedi kimileri

Shahrazad, out of those thousand and one dark nights reached a fairytalelike light voices took refuge in the wind and flew far away with her in you, an arrow, turned back on yourself you stood awkwardly, you are a hunter, either you could not catch anything or whatever you caught slipped quickly from your hands you were tested by pain, you were tested by praise they compared you, labels “I saw her, I saw her” some of

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them said “she had a halo”

bitimsiz geceye sakladın şimdi hepsi düştü Gülten gizde kaldın

you bundled and wrapped up the left-overs saved them for an endless night now it was all a dream Gülten you were left in mystery

[…]

[…]

ince tülbentlerden süzdümdü onu

I had strained her through fine muslin How were you mixed in, solid and viscous 10

sen nerde katıldın katı ve kalın

The first stanza of the poem provides the reader with a summary of Shahrazad’s life. Surviving ‘one thousand and one dark nights’, this Shahrazad also finds herself in a mythical environment, a kind of heaven. However, the rest of the poem provides details about that ‘one thousand and one dark nights’ and relates how she ended up there, from Shahrazad’s perspective. The second stanza begins with a reference to Shahrazad’s self-sacrificial act. Hesitant and doubtful about what to do, Shahrazad still positions herself before danger. However, this act of self-sacrifice does not carry connotations of traditional womanhood but a sense of something stronger, especially when she is called a ‘hunter’. Shahrazad is expected to fulfil the role of prey: sleep with Shahriyar and die; or metaphorically be hunted. Yet, the Shahrazad of the poem is not a passive character: she refuses to be prey and instead tries to become a hunter, even though she does not know how this is to be done. Thus, she becomes a hunter who cannot hunt, and who has never kept what she hunted. She has been tested in different ways. These are all The translation is ours. We owe special thanks to Prof Walter G. Andrews for his contributions to the translation. 10

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tricks of society, to mould her the way it sees fit. That is why she is forced to be, or at least be labelled as tame, saintly, and pure. This is as if to say she is pushed to adopt the true nature of a woman. Thus through ‘one thousand and one dark nights’, she tries to gather her strength and fight against traditional roles in a realm in which she is inexperienced and all alone. However, all of her efforts are in vain. The third stanza is a declaration of Shahrazad’s defeat by society. Whatever she gains in terms of her strength, she has to give up, as ‘it was all a dream’ to oppose society. If we recall the first stanza once again, Shahrazad, ‘reached a fairytalelike light’. Considering these points, we can infer that the end of the tale, ‘marriage’, was the ‘fairytalelike light’, but from Shahrazad’s perspective, it is the end of the hunt where she turns into prey once again, despite her wish to be a hunter. At the very end, despite the meticulous act of refining Shahrazad, and saving her from a set of social constructions, someone ruins everything. We argue that that ‘someone’ is Shahriyar, who represents patriarchal society and its demands of women. This poem represents Akın’s ideas concerning the social position of women. In her poems, she keeps trying to leave the indoors and become a part of the street, reaching for the sky. She claims that women are forced to obey moral rules, contend with male egoism and poverty, and thus content themselves with the little joys of life. The woman who spends her life without love and spiritual satisfaction has to survive a deeply rooted sense of solitude and melancholy (Yalçın 2010a: 62–63). In her essay about the creativity of women, she states that women are generally driven out of the realm of production. They are given secondary duties and brought up accordingly. They are trained to be submissive and tame. They are expected to be chosen, to be loved, but not to choose or to love. Hence, they are kept away from the creative realm, as it is seen as a form of revolt, especially when the creative process is enacted by women. The modern woman fights against traditional gender roles and assumptions, and thus in turn faces more oppression and prohibition, which drives her to depression and sorrow (Akın 2001: 68– 73). This dynamic is present in the poem as well. Shahrazad

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tries her best throughout the poem, but the last line hints at her disappointment, or sense of defeat, before society.

CONCLUSION

The two Shahrazad poems are written by two important poets of Turkish literature, who are of the same era but represent different and opposing literary and political ideologies. Our question is why these two poets chose the Nights, or particularly Shahrazad, to incorporate in their work. We can think of two possible answers. The first one is a rather technical one and relates to the largely ignored part of literary endeavour, that is literary markets. Our position is that by the time these two poems were written, new translations of the Nights had been recently published. Selâmi Münir Yurdatap’s new translation of the Nights was published in 1950, only three years before Karakoç’s poem. In 2001, Alim Şerif Onaran’s translation from French was published by the same publishing house, which also publishes Akın’s poems. It was highly promoted, with special emphasis on it being the first unabridged translation of the compilation. Thus, we may assume that this new translation caught Akın’s attention and inspired her poem a few years later. Taking into account their own remarks about reading, and how closely they follow newly published books and translations (Yalçın 2010b: 586; Akın 2001: 92–94), we can say that the dynamics of the literary market triggered both poems. Yet, this is not enough of an explanation on its own. Many translations are published every year and many of them are read by poets, but not all of them become a source of literary inspiration. It is obvious that the Nights has been and still is a source of inspiration for many well-known authors and poets all over the world, but it has been overlooked in modern Turkish literature. So, what was it that actually inspired Karakoç’s and Akın’s poems? Our assumption is that the Nights or Shahrazad is an effective and easily managed literary theme for Turkish poets. On the one hand, these stories look like a part of tradition, but on the other, there is no poetic convention concerning them or the characters within the Nights. We have images of Layla, Shirin,

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Zühre, and Aslı in poetry, but Shahrazad is free from such a poetic convention, and thus available to be shaped from scratch. We claim that this is the fundamental reason behind having two essentially different Shahrazads featuring both poems. Where Karakoç feels free to create a ‘beloved’ out of Shahrazad—an almost mystical one—Akın draws a portrait of a female defeated by social order. Both poets are free from the ball and chain of the poetic tradition: as there is no poetic tradition that says Shahrazad cannot be a holy beloved, there is also none that commands that she was not fighting against the established values of the patriarchal system either. Through different visions of Shahrazad, Karakoç could practice what he preaches about the duty of the poet, which is to enrich the poetic repertoire with new images and metaphors, while Akın devised a soulmate to tell stories and converse with through the dark nights of her poetry. Both poets, it seems, benefit from the lack of poetic tradition around Shahrazad, and take the liberty to interpret her image. It is obvious that, though neglected for a long time, the Nights have great potential to become an integral part of the poetic repertoire within modern Turkish literature.

REFERENCES

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Alp, Ruken. 2007. Gülten Akın Şiirlerinde Kadın Duyarlığı (unpublished dissertation, Bilkent University). Anderson, Benedict. 2003. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, New York: Verso). Andrews, Walter G. 1985. Poetry’s Voice, Society’s Song: Ottoman Lyric Poetry (Seattle: University of Washington Press). Andrews, Walter G. and Mehmet Kalpaklı. 2005. The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press). Arı, Nebiye. 2011. ‘Meryem’den Judy Garland’a Sezai Karakoç Şiirinde “Kadın”, Şehrengiz Dergisi, 10: 41–44. Birkalan-Gedik, Hande. 2004. ‘The Arabian Nights in Turkish: Translations, Reception, Issues in Turkish Literature’, FABULA, 45.3–4: 221–236. Chraïbi, Aboubakr (ed.). 2016. Arabic manuscripts of the Thousand and One Nights Presentation and Critical Editions of Four Noteworthy Texts Observations on Some Osmanli Translations (Paris: espaces&signes). Demiralp, Oğuz. 1995. Okuma Defteri (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları). Donbay, Ali. 2010. ‘Tanzimat Dönemi Tenkit Anlayışı Çerçevesinde: Ziya Paşa’nın “Şiir ve İnşa” Makalesi’, Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, 10: 181–187. Ece Ayhan. 1994. Bütün Yort Savul’lar (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları). Eğri, Saadetin (ed.). 2016. Binbir Gece Masalları Bursa Nüshası (Bursa: Bursa Büyükşehir Belediyesi). Galland, Antoine. 1881. Journal d’Antoine Galland Pendant Son Séjours à Constantinople Tome 1, published and annotated by Charles Schefer (Paris: Ernest Leroux). Giridî Ali Aziz Efendi. 1999. Muhayyelât-ı Aziz Efendi, ed. by Hüseyin Alacatlı (Ankara: Akçağ Basım Yayın).

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Gökalp, G. Gonca. 1999. ‘Osmanlı Dönemi Türk Romanının Başlangıcında Beş Eser’, Hacettepe Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 16: 185–202 . Gölpınarlı, Abdülbaki. 1945. Divan Edebiyatı Beyanındadır (Istanbul: Marmara Kitabevi). Gün, Güneli. 1991. On the Road to Baghdad: a picaresque novel of magical adventures, begged, borrowed, and stolen from the thousand and one nights, 1st edn, (London: Virago Press Ltd). Kalpaklı, Mehmet, and Neslihan Demirkol (eds). 2010. Binbir Gece’ye Bakışlar (İstanbul: Turkuaz Kitapçılık ve Yayıncılık). ― 2014. ‘Eternal Narratives of the Silk Road: The Thousand and One Nights from Samarkand to Istanbul’, Bulletin of IICAS, 19: 81–97. Karakoç, Sezai. 2012. Edebiyat Yazıları I, (İstanbul: Diriliş Yayınları). ― 2013. ‘Şehrazat’, in Şahdamar-Körfez-Sesler- Şiirler II (İstanbul: Diriliş Yayınları), pp. 11. ― 2016. Edebiyat Yazıları II (İstanbul: Diriliş Yayınları) . Kavruk, Hasan and İskender Pala. 1998. ‘Hikâye (Türk Edebiyatı / Divan Edebiyatı)’, in TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, XVII, pp. 491–493. Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad. 1924. Bugünkü Edebiyat (Istanbul: İkbal Kitaphanesi). Koz, Sabri. ‘Fransızca’dan Türkçe’ye Ermeni Harfleriyle Binbir Gece Masalları’, in Binbir Gece’ye Bakışlar, ed. by Mehmet Kalpaklı and Neslihan Demirkol (İstanbul: Turkuaz Kitapçılık ve Yayıncılık), pp. 85–112. Kul, Erdoğan. 2011. ‘Ece Ayhan’ın Şiirlerinde Mitolojik ve Masalsı Öğeler’, Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Türkoloji Dergisi, 18.2: 69–86. Leeuwen, Richard. 2007. The Thousand and One Nights: Space, Travel and Transformation, (London: Routledge). ― 2018. The Thousand and One Nights and twentieth-century fiction: Intertextual readings (Leiden: Brill) .

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Marzolph, Ulrich, and Richard van Leeuwen. 2004. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, (Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO). Marzolph, Ulrich. 2017. Relief After Hardship: The Ottoman Turkish Model for the Thousand and One Days (Detroit: Wayne State University Press). Nazlı, Atiye. 2011. Binbir Gece Masallarının Anadolu Türk Masallarına Etkileri Üzerine Bir Araştırma (unpublished dissertation, Selçuk University). Onay, Ahmet Talat. 2019. Açıklamalı Divan Şiiri Sözlüğü Eski Türk Edebiyatında Mazmunlar ve İzahı, ed. Cemal Kurnaz (Istanbul: Kurgan Edebiyat). Pala, İskender. 2016. Ansiklopedik Divan Şiiri Sözlüğü (Istanbul: Kapı Yayınları). Pamuk, Orhan. 1990. Kara Kitap, 1st edn (İstanbul: Can Yayınları). Şahin, Veysel. 2008. ‘Namık Kemal’in Mektuplarında Dil ve Edebiyat Üzerine Tenkitler’, Turkish Studies International Periodical for the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic, 3.4: 687–715. Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi. 2003. 19uncu Asır Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi (İstanbul: Çağlayan Kitabevi). Tekin, Şinasi. 1993. ‘Binbir Gece’nin İlk Türkçe Tercümeleri ve Bu Hikâyelerdeki Gazeller Üzerine’, Türk Dilleri Araştırmaları Talat Tekin Armağanı, 3/Simurg: 239–255. Thomann, Johannes. 2016. ‘Die frühesten türkischen Übersetzungen von Tausendundeiner Nacht und deren Bedeutung für die arabische Textgeschichte’, Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques, 70.1: 171–219. Tietze, Andreas. 1948. ‘Azīz efendis Muhayyelat’, Oriens, 1.2: 248–329. Tökel, Dursun Ali. 1998. ‘Muallim Naci–Recâizâde Mahmud Ekrem Tartışmaları Zâviyesinden Tanzimatta Tenkit Faaliyetlerine Umumi Bir Bakış’, Ondokuz Mayıs Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 11.1: 240–252.

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Toptaş, Hasan Ali. 2009. Uykuların Doğusu, 1st edn (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları). Tor, Gülseren. 1994. Elf Leyletin ve Leyle Hikâyelerinde Cümle (Metin-İnceleme), (unpublished dissertation, Çukurova University). ―

2010. ‘Birbir Gece Hikâyeleri’nin 15. Yüzyılda Yapılmış Türkçe Çevirisinde (Bursa Nüshası) Üslup’, in Binbir Gece’ye Bakışlar, ed. by Mehmet Kalpaklı and Neslihan Demirkol, (İstanbul: Turkuaz Kitapçılık ve Yayıncılık), pp. 125–164.

Tülücü, Süleyman. 2004. ‘Binbir Gece Masalları Üzerine (Seçilmiş Bir Bibliyografya ile)’, Atatürk Üniversitesi İlâhiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 22: 1–53. Türkmen, Fikret. 1998. ‘Hikâye (Türk Edebiyatı/ Halk Edebiyatı)’, in TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, XVII, pp. 488–491. Yalçın, Murat (ed.). 2010a. ‘Gülten Akın’, in Tanzimat’tan Bugüne Edebiyatçılar Ansiklopedisi, I (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları), pp. 62–63. ― 2010b. ‘Sezai Karakoç’, in Tanzimat’tan Bugüne Edebiyatçılar Ansiklopedisi, II (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları), pp. 586– 589. Yavuz, Hilmi. 2007. ‘a, ş, k (bir)’, in Büyü’sün, Yaz! Toplu Şiirler (1969–2005) (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları), pp. 405–408. Yurdatap, Selami Münir (trans.). 2006. Binbir Gece Masalları (İstanbul: Elips Kitap).



SOURCE OF INSPIRATION, MATTER OF TRANSLATION, JOSEPH VON HAMMER AND THE 1001 NIGHTS SIBYLLE WENTKER (AUSTRIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES) As a translator of the Nights, Joseph von Hammer plays a prominent role in the development of its scholarship and in the presentation to the German readership until today, since his translation of the Nights are still available in print (HammerPurgstall 1986). There are no doubts about his important contribution to the field of the Nights. Yet, the Nights does not play an enormous role in Hammer’s scholarly life in relation to other fields that he worked on, including Persian literature, Mongolian history in Iran and in Central Asia, Ottoman history, and Classical Arabic literature. Despite of the diversity of Hammer’s interests, in the early phase of his scholarly career his work followed a certain pattern. Through his translation of key texts, Hammer started researching the contents of previous translations. The translation of the Nights is but one of his many scholarly enterprises. The story told here is more than only the story of a translation. It is primarily the story of the hunt for manuscripts in general and manuscripts of the Nights in particular. Overall, Hammer’s contribution to the study of the Nights is highly interesting for the historian of Orientalism. The following pages will shed light on the reception of the Nights in Europe by examining Hammer’s involvement.

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I.

If we want to summarize Joseph von Hammer’s activities around the Nights, we can say that he bought a manuscript of the Nights, translated and published it, and shared some interesting details concerning the form and origin of the Nights with the scholarly community of that period. It is by mere chance that the events surrounding the purchase of this manuscript are also the most exiting in Hammer’s life. This is emphasized because—in contrast to many other scholars on Oriental matters of that period— Hammer spent most of his life in Vienna.1 Hammer was born in Graz in 1774 as Joseph Hammer and in the wake of his father’s ennoblement, his name became Joseph von Hammer. In 1835, he inherited the estate and the name of the Counts of Purgstall in Styria and thus he became known as Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. From the age of 13, he was educated at the Oriental Academy in Vienna with the clear purpose to serve his country in the foreign service, which he did until his retirement. After five years of language training, Hammer had to wait for another five years to be sent abroad on a mission to Constantinople. He spent the five years of waiting for a post with making excerpts of Ḥājjī Khalīfa’s bibliographic encyclopedia Kashf al-Ẓunūn (‘The Revelation of Thoughts’) with its more than 14,500 title entries and he catalogued Islamic For a brief overview see: Wentker 2008, with literature. Hammer wrote a very long memoir of his life consisting of roughly 6000 pages. Reinhart Bachofen von Echt published 1941 an abridged version (about a tenth of the original) and changed too much of the text to remain of great value, see Wentker 2005. Recently published only online in three pdf volumes: Höflechner and Wagner (2011). The typoscript of the original memoir by Hammer-Purgstall typed in full length by Reinhard Bachofen von Echt is available as a scan on the aforementioned website, and it is preserved in the original in the archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (AOeAW, Nachlass Hammer-Purgstall, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben). For this chapter, I only use the original memoir in my translation into English, henceforth quoted as AOeAW, divided into books and cahiers, numbers quoted. 1

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manuscripts in the Kaiserliche Hofbibliothek (‘Imperial Court Library’) (Hammer 1820). What may seem a bit strange from our perspective becomes understandable when we bear in mind that in the end of the eighteenth century still much was needed in order to gain intelligence on the Ottoman Empire, not only in terms of language skills but also cultural knowledge. For this purpose, the students of the Oriental Academy were not only employed for the translation of diplomatic correspondence, but also for scholarly projects. In the Viennese context it is worth mentioning, that the collective work on the new edition of Franz Mesgnien de Meninski’s famous Lexicon Arabico-Persico-Turcicum (‘Arabic-Persian-Turkish Lexicon’, 1680–87) was carried out by the students at the Oriental Academy and Hammer was also involved in this. Austria was not alone in this mixing of scholarly and political matters in the curriculum for former dragomans or diplomats. Similarly, the French students of the École spéciale des Langues orientales (‘Special School for Oriental Languages’) in Paris translated many Oriental manuscripts for further use in the Bibliothèque du Roi (‘King’s Library’) (Bléchet 1997). The need for professional intelligence in the nineteenth century triggered a treasure hunt for manuscripts, very much similar to those for antiquities. Hundreds of manuscripts filling the libraries in Europe were purchased along this competitive sellout during the nineteenth century, and Hammer was eagerly taking part in this treasure hunt. During his lifetime, he bought around 500 manuscripts, which he sold in two tranches to the Imperial Court Library in Vienna. Two collections of the today Austrian National Library consist mainly of manuscripts, which Hammer-Purgstall collected and sold to the Imperial Court Library in Vienna: ‘Historia Ottomanica’ and ‘Neuer Fonds’ (Flügel 1977, III: III-XXI).

II.

For Hammer, the occupation with manuscripts and bibliographic and literary matters was very beneficial for his literary work. Although not alone with his scholarly interests, he remains an exceptional scholar within the caste of gentlemen-scholars of the foreign service, because his unlimited interest for everything

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related to what we would call ‘Oriental Studies’ today. The structure of education and occupation within the Staatskanzlei, that is the Austrian foreign office, allowed him a thorough bibliographic training enabling him later to search for specific texts in manuscripts. The foreign minister, Franz de Paula (1736– 1818, Austrian foreign minister, see ADB 1894, xxxviii: 138– 158), also an alumnus of the Oriental Academy, tasked Hammer with buying a complete manuscript of the Nights for him and sent him to Constantinople. In Constantinople, Hammer was not very challenged, so he could go on with research and further language learning, until he reached the point, as he writes in his memoirs, that he could speak Turkish like a Turk, and Arabic in various dialects as well. In 1800, the internuntius in Constantinople, Peter Philipp Herbert von Rathkeal (1735–1802, see ADB 1907, LIII: 210–215), sent him to Egypt to inspect the Austrian consulates after the convention of al-ʿArīsh made travels to Egypt possible again. In the midst of travel, Hammer had to realize that the British still held the blockade, so a further travel seemed impossible. By accident, Hammer was able to join Sir Sidney Smith (1764–1849, British admiral; see Shankland 1976) on his ship HMS Tiger and served him as an interpreter on the ship and other occasions. It is a phase in Hammer’s life where he was not only in danger due to war but also in a position to observe high politics, because he participated in important negotiations with the Ottomans as interpreter to Sidney Smith. Sir Sidney was in Hammer’s description of the events very glad to have him, and in return, he persuaded the Austrian internuntius Rathkeal to let Hammer accompany him together with the British forces in Egypt. There he stayed almost one year.

III.

Hammer landed in Abukir (Abū Qīr) and stayed in Rosette (Rashīd) for several months before he could go on to Cairo. In Rosette, he already tried to buy manuscripts and had the opportunity to see manuscript collections. Hammer went to Cairo as soon as he could and lived in the house of the Austrian honorary consul Carlo Rossetti (1736–1820, Venetian merchant and diplomat, see Wurzbach 1874, xxvii, 62). Rossetti came from a Le-

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vantine trading family. These families were popular as official representatives of European nations in consular and intercultural relations. Rossetti served several countries as diplomatic intermediator and was rewarded with Austrian nobility, taking the name Rossetti von Rosenhügel, in reward for the many Egyptian antiquities, which Rossetti transferred to the Antikenkabinett (‘Royal Cabinet of Antiquities’). In Cairo, Hammer met the British travellers Cripps and Clarke. Edward Daniel Clarke was a fellow at Jesus College and became a renowned travel writer, publishing six volumes of Travels (Clarke 1813–1823). Together with his student John Marten Cripps, he travelled from 1799 on to Scandinavia, Russia and the Orient (Speake 2003, I, 256) ‘Cripps was an insignificant, good, very rich young man, on who’s expenses Clarke travelled as a kind of tutor’, Hammer (AOeAW 8, 1: 15) writes in his memoirs, giving a vivid picture of the events. They shaped their travel as a very touristic event and bought whatever they could lay their hands on. After their return to England in 1803, the Monthly Magazine reported on 1 April that they had ‘brought home a greater variety of material and literary curiosities, minerals, plants, pictures, busts, and manuscripts than was ever, as is supposed, brought by any individual into England before’. (Speake 2003, 1: 257). The touristic shopping fever of the two English travellers was supported by strong self-confidence. Hammer (AOeAW 8, 1: 20-22) reports the quite peculiar circumstances of the purchase of a complete manuscript of the Nights as follows: ‘His (Clarke’s) first question then was if I had succeeded to find a complete manuscript of 1001 Nights. I answered with regret, no! [...] He then asked me what the title of 1001 was in Arabic, and I told him “Elf leila wa leila”. He wrote the words down with a pencil and said to his companion: “Come on, Cripps, let’s find the [the manuscript of] 1001 Nights right away!” I laughed at him since my many efforts on the book markets and the manifold orders with several booksellers had not led to any results in the last months. “Do not care,” he said with confidence, “please await me here in a few hours, and I will be back with the 1001 Nights!” Again, I laughed at him, but promised to wait for him here

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SIBYLLE WENTKER since I wanted to read through an Arabic manuscript anyway, I had bought in Jerusalem. It was noon and the August heat was the strongest. Clarke and his travel companion were not disturbed by this. I saw through the window how they mounted donkeys while protecting themselves against the sun with open umbrellas. In this manner they trotted about in the lanes exclaiming repeatedly and out of full heart “elf leile wel leila”. The people passing by, Franks and others equally thought them to be mad. In less than two hours Clarke and Cripps were back with the affirmation that they had a complete manuscript of 1001 Nights. The owner of the manuscript accompanied them. They would pay the price already negotiated, when I would have confirmed that this was all true. [...] I pounced upon it and to my embarrassment I could see that it was really a complete manuscript’.

Hammer’s embarrassment is to be understood out of the circumstance that he was outpaced in less than a day in his long pursued efforts by two absolute amateurs in the field who did not even know Arabic. For several reasons it is unclear how Hammer should have been able to check the ‘completeness’ of the manuscript, whatever this means at this times in regard to the Nights. In the limited time at his disposal he could only check the beginning and the end of the manuscript together with its size that he would estimate as sufficient to cover the whole corpus. As many things connected to Hammer’s occupation with the Nights, the following events were not straightforward. The manuscript, approved and paid, was sent home on a British ship. It was transferred on the ship from Athens together with Lord Elgin’s collection of Greek manuscripts that he had confiscated. At Corfu, the ship shipwrecked and the manuscript of the Nights was—although rescued—destroyed because the ink was blurred. With some satisfaction Hammer (AOeAW 8, 1: 23) wrote, ‘[…] so Clarke has managed to snatch away from me the first finding of a complete copy of the Nights, to such I had actually lent him my helping hand, but, easy gain, easy pain. The happy the finding of the manuscript, the unhappy was its final fate, through which it became completely useless’.

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Clarke does not refer to the manuscript hunt for the Nights in his report on the stay in Egypt. It has to remain open if that means that he did not find this episode as interesting as Hammer did, or that Hammer has made this story up entirely. Christian Maximilian Habicht (1825,12: II) reports ‘Der bekannte Englische Reisende Edward Daniel Clarke erzählt in seinem großen Reisewerke (Travels in various countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, 2. Part, Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land, Section the first, London 1812, 4. Pref., p. XVIII, Cap. II, p. 51) daß er im Jahre 1801 in Konstantinopel auf dem großen Büchermarkte (dessen Verzeichnis er im Anhange gibt) vergeblich eine Handschrift der 1001 Nacht gesucht, indem dieses Werk, als eine große Kompilazion, mannigfaltig, nach Verschiedenheit der Schreiber oder Besteller, verfaßt, (so daß selten zwei Handschriften davon übereinstimmend), sich nur in Privathänden befinde. Erst in Kahiro traf er eine schöne Abschrift in vier Foliobänden, welche Hammer, der ihn dahin begleitet hatte, durchsah und ihm den Inhalt derselben angab, worauf Clarke sie kaufte‚. Clarke refers in the above quoted passage in much fewer words than Habicht to the purchase of the manuscript. He only writes in the passage quoted by Habicht: ‘The manuscript of “The Arabian Nights”, or, as it is called, “Alif Lila wa Lilin”, is not easily procured [...]. We could not obtain this work in Constantinople, but afterwards we bought a very fine copy of it in Grand Cairo’. Only in 1803, Hammer was lucky enough to get hold of a manuscript of the dearly desired Nights. The Austrian general Consul in Cairo, Carlo Rossetti, was able to buy two manuscripts of the Nights. He sent one to Count Andreij Jakovlevič Italinskij,2 the Russian consul in Constantinople, who was interested in the Orient and whom Hammer taught Arabic, and he sent the other to Hammer to Constantino(1743–1827), originally a medical doctor, he entered the Russian diplomatic service and served in Constantinople, in Russia, and from 1817 in Rome, where he died, see Allgemeines deutsches Conversations-Lexicon 1840, V: 703–704.

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ple, where Hammer was based from 1802–1806. He writes about the manuscript that it was copied 1217 AH/1797 in Cairo by Scheich Ali Alanßari (Shaykh ʿAlī al-Anṣārī), and that he, Hammer, translated it in the years 1804–1806 in Constantinople into French. (Hammer and Zinserling 1823-1824, III, 462). Habicht (1825, XII, I) wrote in his introduction about four manuscripts: The destroyed Clarke manuscript, the manuscripts of Italinskij and Hammer, which are said to be identical, and that of a French merchant Varsy who had originally lived in Rosette and later in Marseille. Also with this manuscript Hammer had a close relation. Hammer writes in his memoirs that he actually was the person who rescued the house of the merchant’s widow Varsy from being plundered by Ottoman troops after the reconquest of Rosette from the French. He writes that Sir Sidney Smith commissioned him to protect the house from Ottoman troops. The night he spent there, he was occupied with reading various manuscripts the son of the house had collected and worked with. Hammer does not mention a manuscript of the Nights among those manuscripts remaining in the house, but later during his stay in Rosette he met a French renegade Mameluke, who swapped with him a manuscript containing several stories of the Nights against a dictionary in Hammer’s possession, since the renegade could not read Arabic. That was probably the manuscript that he is said to have sent to the foreign minister Thugut. (AOeAW 6, 2: 1–10).

IV.

Acquiring the manuscript was adventurous, and so was the publication of Hammer’s translation (1986). This took place in 1824 only, roughly 20 years after Hammer had translated the text. In the meantime, Hammer not only lost his translation, but indeed his original manuscript as well. Eventually, he was only able to publish a secondary translation in German, which later was translated back into French. The circumstances are quite complicated, and Hammer refers to them in detail in the Vorrede

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(‘Preface’) to the first volume of his translation. After having read the manuscript Rossetti had sent to him, Hammer reported to Silvestre de Sacy,3 with whom he had been in written contact since 1803, about the end, which differed from the end in Galland’s translation. In Hammer’s manuscript, King Shahriyar changes his mind about killing Shahrazad, when she presents to him the three sons she has given birth to during their marriage, which has lasted for one thousand and one nights. De Sacy reported this to the Professor of Arabic at the Collège de France, Jean-Jacques-Antoine Caussin de Perceval, who had been the curator of the Manuscript Collections of the Royal Library until the French revolution and had written about the Nights in 1806 (Michaud 1811–1862, VII: 258–259). Hammer brought his manuscript and his French translation in 1810 to Paris, when he himself tried desperately to save as many manuscripts as possible from those Napoleon had confiscated from the Imperial Court Library in Vienna. Shortly after that, Hammer obviously demanded the manuscript and the translation back since he feared it would be published without him even being mentioned.4 He sent both to his esteemed publisher Johann Friedrich Cotta, who had a German translation from the French made by August Ernst Zinserling, a German historian. Originally, Cotta wanted Friedrich Schlegel to translate Hammer’s text, but he followed the advice of the Swiss historian Johannes von Müller, also a good friend of Hammer, to ask Zinserling (Fischer 2014: 784). Joseph von Hammer had no contact with Zinserling. This is probably the reason why Hammer did not write very friendly (1758–1838), Arabist, see Michaud 1843, XXXVII: 241–268. The reviewer of the 1828 published translation into French claimed later that this was an unjust accusation by Hammer, since Caussin’s book had been published 1806 already. Hammer showed him his translation only in 1810, but Hammer did refer to a future, probably not realised project in fear of intellectual theft by Caussin. The question whether Hammer’s fear was justified, has to remain open. See review in Nouveau Journal Asiatique 3 (1829): 162–168. 3 4

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about Zinserling’s achievements; much to the contrary, he calls his translation ‘poor’.5 Hammer then sent his translation again to de Sacy, who with it stayed until 1820, when Hammer had it transferred to England, because he hoped that the text would be published there together with an English translation. On the way to England, the manuscript of his French translation disappeared, and Hammer thought that it had got lost on the way. As it turned out much later, too late to influence publication of the Nights, the manuscript had indeed arrived in England at the publisher Murray, but the publisher had forgotten about it.6 To make things even worse, not only the French translation, but also the Arabic manuscript was not in Hammer’s hands any more in 1820. This was due to his friend and sponsor Count Wacław Rzewuski. Rzewuski was a parade example of a gentleman-orientalist and very colourful figure.7 Born in 1788 in Poland into a famous family of high nobility and political relevance, he grew up from the age of five in Vienna, where he— probably triggered by his uncle Jan Potocki (1761–1815), the author of the novel Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse (‘The Manuscript Found in Saragossa’)—studied Oriental languages. He entered military service until he was wounded in the battle of Aspern. Hammer writes in his memoirs (AOeAW 18, 2: 14) that he met Rzewuski in the Viennese society after his return from his last post abroad in Iași in 1808. They quickly realised their Hammer uses the German word mißglückt (‘failed’), see AOeAW 37, 3: 7. Hammer writes in his memoirs, which he started in 1841, ‘The French manuscript which I thought lost through two decades, was found some years ago, alas!, too late, in the Murray’s magazines. [...] Only his son discovered his father’s negligence and confessed this in a letter to me’, see Höflechner and Wagner 2011: I, 42–43. In the original typescript this passage cannot be identified. In the Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv (StLA, ‘Styrian Provincial Archives’) eight letters of Murray are preserved according to Höflechner and Wagner 2011: III, 1832. 7 Literature about him is scarce, besides the chapter in Michaud (1811– 1862: XXXVII, 158), Wurzbach 1856–1891: XXVII: 353–355, and B. Lizet 2002. 5 6

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similar interests and became close friends. Hammer was often guest in Rzewuski’s house. When he lost his apartment due to bombardment during the siege of Vienna in 1809, he stayed in Rzewuski’s house for months, and Hammer named his second daughter Rosalie after the good mother Rozalia Rzewuska, née Lubomirska. Shortly after their acquaintance, Rzewuski offered financial help for any scholarly enterprise, and Hammer suggested a journal, which published six issues from 1809–1819 with the title Fundgruben des Orients or Mines d’Orient (‘Oriental Treasure Troves’). While Hammer did most of the editorial work, Rzewuski took care of the finances, but not very reliably, as Hammer deplored in his memoirs (AOeAW 27, 3: 6).8 In fact, Rzewuski was an exceptional, unsteady figure, whose unsteadiness did not only destroy his marriage. Due to his excessive money spending, his vast estates in Poland and his highly esteemed horse breeding were ruined as well. Following the fashion of the time, Rzewuski bought a large collection of more than 100 Oriental manuscripts, including the collections of two Austrian orientalists, Bernhard von Jenisch and Jacob von Wallenburg, after their death. Hammer was generously allowed to use whichever manuscript he needed for his work, and so he could not refuse lending Rzewuski the precious Arabic manuscript of the Nights on his request, when Rzewuski and his wife returned 1814 to Poland in an attempt to save their estates from financial breakdown. Hammer probably feared that he might not see the manuscript again, because he writes in his memoirs that he had considered selling it to Rzewuski. For Hammer, the consequences of the Rzewuskis’ leaving Austria were bad in many respects. He lost not only a good friend and financier of his journal, which inevitably came to an end, but he also lost his manuscript of the Nights. Rzewuski Hammer deplores ‘[...] how many beautiful predispositions, spirits, and plans lay in the enterprising and educated mind of the Count, which perished all later under the force of the rambling weeds of exorbitant waste and exaggerated pomposity’.

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travelled to the Orient in 1818–1819,9 where he lived with the Bedouins. Hammer writes repeatedly how much his friend had changed. In 1821, Hammer received his last letter and much later, he wrote in his memoirs about it: ‘The last letter shows, how many, although sometimes accidental thoughts and good literary plans brooded in this true Polish head, and it shows how much it is to be deplored that such a rich well of spirit and talent lost itself starving morally and politically in the deserts of Arabia and the steppes of the Ukraine’ (AOeAW 32, 4: 22). Rzewuski died in the Polish uprising against the Russians 1831 after the battle of Ďačov. He is said to have been slain by his own Cossacks. This at least is what Hammer writes in his memoirs (AOeAW 39, 2: 7–8). Rzewuski’s estates were confiscated by the Russians, including the manuscripts. The catalogue of Oriental manuscripts of the Imperatorskaja publičnaja biblioteka (‘Imperial Public Library’) in St. Petersburg reported in 1852 that nine manuscripts of Rzewuski had been incorporated into the collection, of which number 142 is Hammer’s manuscript in four volumes (Dorn 1852: XV and 138). The fate of the manuscript is indeed a sad one. It was returned to Poland in the 1920s, where it perished during the German invasion of Poland in 1939 (Vasilʹeva 2014, esp. p. 116).10 All material being lost, Hammer pursued the publication of Zinserling’s German translation, which was furnished with an introduction by Hammer as the ‘French translator’. With the exception of some of the stories, which were also missing in Zinserling’s translation, the twice translated text was published 1823–1824 in three volumes by the publisher Cotta and widely announced throughout German literary journals (Hammer/Zinserling 1823–1824). Hammer dedicated his translations to the former foreign minister Thugut and the former internuntius in Constantinople Rathkeal as the main motors for this enSee in detail Chelhod 1995. I owe Firuza Melville many thanks for bringing this reference to my knowledge. 9

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terprise: Thugut had asked him to organize a manuscript of the Nights for him, and Rathkeal allowed him to pursue his Egyptian adventure at the side of Sidney Smith. In February 1826, Hammer received a letter by a young man, Guillaume-Stanislas Trébutien (1800–1870).11 Trébutien came from a monarchist catholic family, studied Oriental languages and lived a lifetime in Caen, where he translated numerous Persian works from into French. Overall, Trébutien sent 83 letters to Hammer, making this correspondence a rather large one in the vast collection of letters to Hammer. Hammer does not mention Trébutien very often in his memoirs; they reflect his feelings of much later times. In his first letter, Trébutien praised Hammer as an eminent orientalist with international reputation. It is not clear altogether how, but, Trébutien had been acquainted with Mr. Spencer Smith, the brother of Sir Sidney Smith and also an orientalist, who obviously had given him Hammer’s address when Trébutien had revealed to him his interests in Oriental languages and literature. Already in his first letter, Trébutien sent examples of his translations from Persian. A very intense correspondence developed quickly. In the first years, they exchanged almost every month letters and books and interesting quotations from diverse journals. When Trébutien visited Vienna, Hammer’s wife Karoline received him well and was rewarded with charming letters in return as well. Concerning the Nights, matters developed very quickly, too: Already on 23 May 1826, in his fourth letter to Hammer, Trébutien reports that he had seen the announcement of an English translation of Hammer’s translation of the Nights in a scholarly journal. He took this opportunity to offer Hammer to do the same into French. Subsequently, in 1828 the Contes inéditess de (1800–1870), orientalist and translator, see Pouillon 2008: 940. All letters from Trébutien to Hammer are kept within the holdings of Hammer’s correspondence in the StLA, A. Hainfeld Herrschaft (privat) K 46, H. 835. Unfortunately, there are no copies of Hammer’s letters to Trébutien.

11

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mille et une nuits, extraits de l’original arabe, par M. de Hammer, et traduits en français par M. G. S. Trébutien (‘Unpublished Tales of One Thousand and One Nights, excerpted from the Arabic original, by M. von Hammer, and translated into French by Mr. G. S. Trébutien) were published in three volumes. A review in the Nouveau Journal Asiatique acknowledged Trébutien’s efforts in the translation of Hammer’s text to which he had added 25 new stories and 94 anecdotes although they were mainly variants or repeating already existing ones. Yet, the review is mainly not about Trébutien but about Hammer.12

V.

Hammer was not a scholar we call in German a Stubengelehrter, somebody who pursues his work alone in his chamber. Throughout his life, he employed a giant network of communication, visible in his equally giant correspondence. Scholarship without a network was not possible; a great wealth of information was shared in letters, which we can see especially in Hammer’s correspondence with hundreds of collegues. Manuscripts and excerpts were sent about, sometimes, as we have seen they got lost. Regarding the Nights, I have already named Isaac Silvestre de Sacy. De Sacy is one of the most renowned Arabists of his time. At the time Hammer started corresponding with him, he was still a young professor for Arabic at the École spéciale des langues orientales (‘Special School for Oriental Languages’). There are 134 letters covering scholarly questions in detail between Hammer and de Sacy from 1803 until latter’s death in 1837, in some of which they also discuss many questions concerning the Nights.13 The manuscript of Hammer’s translation was in de Sacy’s hands for years, which worried Hammer, who feared that he might not win the race for a first full translation of the text. In his letter dated 27 May 1806, Hammer was Nouveau Journal Asiatique, 3 (1829): 162–168. Eighty letters of de Sacy until 1819 are published in Höflechner and Wagner 2011: II. 12 13

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very disappointed that de Sacy did not believe his quotations from al-Masʿūdī’s work about the Indian Persian origin of the Nights, because de Sacy’s manuscript was incomplete (See Höflechner and Wagner 2011: II, 725–727). Hammer published a review of his own translation in 1826, something he did frequently, in the journal Jahrbücher der Literatur (‘Annals of Literature’) together with a review of Habicht’s so-called ‘Tunisian’ manuscript of the Nights. At this early stage of research on the Nights, Hammer already rejected Habicht’s claim of having found a most original manuscript by mere philological considerations. Hammer concluded that the style of the text in terms of language and phraseology more Egyptian than Tunisian. The fact that Hammer, on the other hand, tried to promote ‘his’ manuscript as the more vivid in storytelling in comparison to that of Habicht shows that one of his aims was to remain unrivalled in his presentation of a full German translation. Hammer’s judgement was actually right as it was discovered later that Habicht had glued together bits and pieces of stories into a ‘ghost manuscript’, as Robert Irwin puts it (2016: 32). Furthermore, Hammer stated rightly that the frame story of the Nights offered the perfect framework to editors to add stories to the original set of stories: ‘Arabian editors then wove into this old Persian frame much colourful, Arabic weave’.14 Hammer quoted al-Masʿūdī who had identified the Sindbad story and the ‘Book of the Wesirs’ as initially independent stories, which were integrated into the corpus of the Nights. Hammer also remarked on the different times that the stories are set in: on the one hand, there are stories set in Baghdad of Hārūn al-Rashīd, and, on the other hand, stories set in the medieval Cairo of Baybars al-Bunduqdārī centuries later. In the following, Hammer is quite firm in his opinion that the origin of the compilation of the Nights has to be Egypt, ‘because customs, manners, localisation and language bear an Egyptian stamp’.15 14 15

Jahrbücher der Literatur, Januar, Februar, März 1826, p. 2. ibid., p. 3.

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VI.

What can we say about the importance of the Nights for Hammer apart from the above? The phase in which Hammer came into contact with the Nights, meaning the first decade of the nineteenth century, was dominated for him by several translation projects. The most famous one is certainly the translation of the divan of the Persian poet Ḥāfeẓ into German which had a great impact on German literary history, for instance, on Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan (‘West-Eastern Divan’) that was directly inspired and influenced by Hammer’s work. Hammer’s translation of the very important and notoriously difficult Tārikh-e Waṣṣāf (‘The History of the Panegyrist’)—a Persian text from the beginning of the fourteenth century about the Mongols in Iran—is not widely known. In addition to that, Hammer translated Persian poetry which lead to the publication of the in fact first history of Persian literature in German with the flowery title Geschichte der Schönen Redekünste Persiens (‘The History of the Beautiful Rhetoric of Persia’). The initial inspiration for the occupation with the Nights lay in the treasure hunt like search for complete manuscripts, a hot topic in those days. Hammer did not think twice about whether or not to buy or to take whatever he could bring back home. In this completely unreflected cultural sell-out, Hammer was indeed part of what Edward Said later depicted as Orientalism, although Orientalism should rather be classified as a mindset rather than a method. Despite the tremendous work and effort spent on the translation of the text, it does not come with surprise that Hammer as savant orientaliste (‘Orientalist scholar’) was a leading and respected scholar of his time. His illustrious network, serves as proof that Hammer was involved in the main debates of that time, and his work, as demonstrated by the example of the Nights, was widely read and discussed. Unfortunately, today Hammer’s work is judged harshly, and without going into details here, the main accusation against his work lies in the manifold mistakes in terms of philology. There are plenty of examples for mistakes of this kind, for example, when Hammer gives

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the title of the Nights embarrassingly wrong as elf lejal wa leilet16 on the very first page of the introduction to his translation of the Nights, while he emphasises quite proudly his achievements with regards to the Nights. Today, we may find this faux pas rather amusing. Amusement apart, we have to evaluate the achievements of Hammer in the context of his time and without the resources that researchers use and enjoy today, almost two hundred years later. Furthermore, it remains true what I have stated earlier (Wentker 2008:11). The university reforms in Germany and Austria resulted in a tremendous professionalization in various academic fields, including Oriental Studies. Consequently, the savant orientaliste without a university degree was excluded and as such, people like Hammer, Italinskij, and Rossetti, who were diplomats, were not part of academic circles, let alone adventurers like Rzewuski and many others. The network employed in the pursuit of the Nights is impressive. The crème de la crème of mostly French orientalists were in contact with Hammer regarding the Nights. We also see in this example of the Nights the continuation of the Republic of Letters of the seventeenth century in the early nineteenth century developed in published form. It is a last reflection of the achievements of the ‘lovers’ of the Orient before they were overtaken by the researchers on the Orient.

REFERENCES

ADB. Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. 1875–1912. 56 vols (Leipzig). Allgemeines deutsches Conversations-Lexicon für die Gebildeten eines jeden Standes, 10 vols, Leipzig 1839–1841. Bléchet, Francoise. 1997. ‘Les interprètes orientalistes de la Bibliothèque du Roi’, in Istanbul et les langues orientales, ed. by Frédéric Hitzel (Paris: Éds. L'Harmattan), pp. 89–102. The number alf ‘a thousand’ demands the counted noun to be in the singular not the plural, which is basic grammar knowledge. The correct title is Alf layla wa-layla ‘One Thousand and One Nights’.

16

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Chelhod, Joseph. 1995. ‘Le voyage en orient du Comte Wenceslas Rzewuski effectué durant les années 1818 et 1819’, Arabica, 43: 404–418. Clarke, Edward Daniel. 1813–1823. Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa, 3 vols (London). Dorn, Boris Andreevich. 1852. Catalogue des manuscrits et xylographes orientaux de la Bibliothèque impériale publique de St. Pétersbourg (St. Petersburg). Fischer, Bernhard. 2014. Johann Friedrich Cotta: Verleger— Entrepreneur—Politiker (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag). Flügel, Gustav. 1977. Die arabischen, persischen, türkischen Handschriften der kaiserlichen und königlichen Hofbibliothek zu Wien, vol. 3 (Hildesheim/New York). Habicht, Christian Maximilian. 1825. Tausend und Eine Nacht. Arabische Erzählungen (Breslau). Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph. Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben. 1774– 1852. AOeAW = Archiv der ÖAW (Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences), Vienna. Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph v. 1986. Märchen aus Hundert und Einer Nacht (Nördlingen). Hammer, Joseph v. 1820. Codices arabicos, persicos, turcicos, bibliothecae caesareo-regio-palatinae Vindobonensis (Vindobona). Hammer, Joseph v./A. E. Zinserling. 1823–24. Der Tausend und Einen Nacht noch nicht übersetzte Mährchen, Erzählungen und Anekdoten, 3 vols (Stuttgart/Tübingen). Hammer, Joseph v. 1839. ‘Note sur l’origine persane des Mille et une nuits’, Journal Asiatique 3rd series, 8: 171–176. Höflechner, Walter and Alexandra Wagner (eds). 2011. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. Erinnerungen und Briefe, 3 vols (Graz) [accessed 22 March 2020] Irwin, Robert. 2016. Die Welt von Tausendundeiner Nacht (Frankfurt: Insel).

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Lizet, Bernadette. 2002. Impressions D'Orient et D'Arabie: un cavalier Polonais chez les Bédouins, 1817–1819 (Paris: José Corti/Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle). Marics, Alexandra. 2016. Die Briefe Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacys an Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall – translatorisch beleuchtet, (unpublished doctoral thesis, University Graz) [accessed 22 March 2020] Meninski, Franziscus à Mesgnien. 1780–1787. Lexicon ArabicoPersico-Turcicum adiecta ad singulas voces et phrases significatione Latina, ad usitatiores etiam Italica (...) secundis curis recognitum et auctum (Viennae). Michaud, Louis Gabriel. 1811–1862. Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne, 85 vols (Paris). Pouillon, François (ed.). 2008. Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue française (Paris). Shankland, Peter. 1975. Beware of Heroes: Sir Sidney Smith’s War Against Napoleon (London). Speake, Jennifer. 2003. Literature of Travel and Exploration: An encyclopedia (New York: Dearborn). Olga Vasilʹeva. 2014. ‘Ex bibliotheca orientali Wenceslai Severini comitis Rzewuski’, Bibliotheca Nostra: Śląski Kwartalnik Naukowy, 4 (38): 111–127. Wentker, Sibylle. 2005. ‘Joseph von Hammer-Purgstalls erste Reise nach Istanbul im Spiegel seiner „Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben“’, Osmanlı Araştırmaları, 25: 225–247. ― 2008. ‘Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall. Ein Leben zwischen Orient und Okzident’, in Wanderer zwischen Orient und Okzident, ed. by Hannes D. Galter and Siegfried Haas (Graz), pp. 1–12. Wurzbach, Constantin. 1856–1891. Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Österreich, 60 vols (Wien).



‘OH LEADER OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD, OH SHAHRAZAD!’ THE ENDING OF THE ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS IN THE EARLIEST TURKISH TRANSLATION AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO THE ARABIC VERSIONS JOHANNES THOMANN (UNIVERSITY OF ZÜRICH) The introduction or frame-tale of the One Thousand and One Nights is known throughout the world. It distinguishes its collection of stories from others and might have been the main reason for the Nights to become part of and influence world literature. The path to this was paved by myriads of translations into virtually all literary languages on Earth.1 The earliest translation of the Nights into any language was into Turkish, two and a half centuries earlier than Galland’s translation into French. The translation into Old Anatolian Turkish is dated to the fifteenth century.2 It is of special significance to the more general question if there was a coherent composition of the Arabic vorlage of the Nights in the fifteenth century and, if so, which stories formed part of this composition (Thomann 2016).

1 2

For a brief survey, see Marzolph and van Leeuwen 2004: II, 724–27. Kalpaklı and Demirkol 2010: 85; see next section for more references.

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The actual incentive to undertake this study was the discovery of the ending of the Nights in that early Turkish translation. This new evidence holds a key to the question, which of the different versions of the ending of the frame story that exist in later Arabic manuscripts might have existed in the fifteenth century. In the present study, the focus is set on the later parts of the Nights and its very ending. In a first section, the Arabic manuscript tradition will be outlined, particularly that of the later parts of the Nights. In the second part, the Turkish translation and its manuscript tradition will be briefly summed up. The third part is devoted to MS Manchester JRL Turkish 75 and its content. The fourth part will contain a summary of the narrative structure of the final part of the Turkish translation in comparison with the corresponding Arabic version. Finally, a summary of the results will be presented.

THE ARABIC MANUSCRIPT TRADITION OF THE NIGHTS

Three Arabic manuscripts have been known for a long time to contain a different and more elaborate ending than the one in Zotenbergs Egyptian Recension (ZER, Grotzfeld 1985). The Arabic edition published in Breslau from 1825–1843 is the only printed edition which contains the Arabic text of this more elaborate ending (Habicht and Fleischer 1825–1843: XI, 84–399 and XII, 384–427). However, the two cycles Shād Bakht and Baybars were separated from the ending, and their narrative function as a preparation for the conclusion could not be recognised. It is the merit of Heinz Grotzfeld to have reunited the parts, which originally formed an entity. One can hope that the German translation published by Claudia Ott in 2016, and which is a pleasure to read, will draw the attention of a wider public to this attractive literary composition. In 1887, Hermann Zotenberg (1887: 214) described a manuscript located in Paris (BnF Arabe 2619) and found that it contains the same ending as the Breslau edition. In his opinion it was ‘écrit au XVIIe siècle ou au commencement du XVIIIe’ (‘written in the seventeenth century or at the beginning of the eighteenth’, ibid.). Anke Osigus, who collated the manuscript,

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refers to Zotenberg’s dating, adds the account of de Slane on the acquisition of the manuscript, and concludes that it entered the collection at the time of Napoleon’s campaign to Egypt (Osigus 2010: 120). A Berlin manuscript described by Wilhelm Ahlwardt in 1896 (StB, Wetzstein 662) contains ‘Geschichten, wie die Art von 1001 Nacht’ (‘stories of the kind of the 1001 Nights’), and the ending of the Nights, but ‘[d]as Ganze ist aber nur ein abgekürzter Text jenes Werkes’. (‘The whole is only an abbreviated text of that work’, 1887–1899: VIII, 66–67, n. 9103–9104). Grotzfeld (1985: 78) has shown that it belongs to the family of manuscripts that agree with the text in the Breslau edition, and that the part in question contains the date 1173 AH/ 1759 in the colophon. Helmut Ritter (1949: 287–289) published a very detailed description of a manuscript in Kayseri containing the last part of the Nights. He dates it to ‘frühestens 10. jh. h.’ (‘tenth century of the hijra at earliest’), which denotes only an approximate terminus post quem, and leaves open any later date. Nevertheless, later authors interpreted his statement in different ways. Grotzfeld (1985: 78) quotes Ritter’s German statement in brackets, but writes ‘Ritter gives the 16th or the 17th century as the date of its transcription’. In another publication, he even writes ‘Die [...] Handschrift [...] die aus dem 16. Jh. stammen dürfte’ (‘The ]...] manuscript [...] which might be of the sixteenth century’), again quoting Ritter in brackets (Grotzfeld and Grotzfeld 2012: 46). Anke Osigus (2010: 115) interprets Ritter’s statement as sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. Ibrahim Akel (2016: 72) writes referring to Ritter: ‘Selon lui, ce manuscrit [...] date probablement du tout début du Xe siècle de l’hégire (XVIe siècle de J.C.)’. (‘According to him, this manuscript probably dates to the very beginning of the tenth century of the Hijra (sixteenth century).3 Claudia Ott, who has collated the original manuscript, Akel is obviously mistaking German frühestens ‘at the earliest’ (adverb) for frühesten ‘earliest’ (adjective).

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opts for a similarly early dating (2016: 388). However, no codicological argument has been brought forward, which would sustain the proposed dates. The only trace in the manuscript for a terminus ante quem is the waqf stamp with the name of Râşid Efendi, which could not be later than 1798, since Râşid Efendi died in this year.4 As the binding indicates, the manuscript was in the possession of Râşid Efendi in Istanbul before it entered the library in Kayseri.5 Meḥmed Râşid Efendi was appointed Reʾîs ül-Küttâb three times, which originally designated the chief of scribes. However, during Râşid Efendi’s activities, a bureaucratic reform brought changes to his office, functioning now as a foreign minister. He was the liaison for foreign ambassadors. Therefore, it is not unlikely that his interest in the Nights was elicited by questions of French or other Western European diplomats, who had read Galland’s translations or one of the many derived versions in other European languages. In 2016, Ibrahim Akel published the description of a fourth manuscript (Cairo, Azhar Library, ṣ 9483 and ʿ 133413 adab). It consists of two codices that were the last two volumes of a fourvolume set of the Nights. Akel points out that the last volume contains a final part of the Nights, which agrees with the text in the Kayseri manuscript. The colophon at the end of the text indicates the date 17 Dhū l-Qaʿda 1132 AH, which corresponds to 20 September 1720 (Akel 2016: 84–85). In conclusion, there is no textual witness that can be demonstrably dated to earlier than the eighteenth century. The earliest evidence for the existence of the text is 1720, the date of the Cairo manuscript. Therefore, the text contained in this group of manuscripts and in the Breslau edition could have been written as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century, if only the Arabic manuscript tradition is taken into consideration. HowevThere are two stamps, one on f. 1v, one on f. 152v; for biographical information on Râşid Efendi see Süreyya 1891–1893: II, 351–52, and Süreyya 1996: IV, 1356. 5 Oral communication by Claudia Ott (1 September 2017). 4

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er, the late dates of the manuscripts cannot serve as an argument that the text has to be late as well, considering the many examples of classical Arabic texts of which only late manuscripts exist.6 It has been argued that the text in its narrative structure fits well to the beginning in its oldest transmitted text, attested by the famous Galland manuscript (MS Paris BnF Arabe 3609– 3611), and that both texts are by the same author (Thomann 2017a: 485). The Galland manuscript has an owner’s note with the date 1536, and by numismatic evidence, its text cannot have been written earlier than 1425.7 There is a difference of two centuries between the attested date of the beginning of the Nights and the attested end, and it seems doubtful to consider them as belonging to the same version. However, the situation changes when the Turkish manuscript tradition is taken into consideration.

THE TURKISH MANUSCRIPT TRADITION OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

The translation was made in the mid-fifteenth century by an unknown author (Proverbio 2016 and Thomann 2016). The date was established by linguistic characteristics of the text (Tekin 1993). Numismatic evidence, the mentioning of Florentine florins, points to the same epoch (Thomann 2016: 184–185). There is a group of manuscripts, which contain the beginning and typically the first 56 nights up to the story of ‘Nūr alDīn and Badr al-Dīn’.8 The oldest of these manuscripts (MS Bursa İl Halk Kütüphanesi, Genel 1217) was the subject of a doctoral Notorious are, for instance, classical Ismaili works, which typically exist in copies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, cf. Thomann 2017b: 137. 7 See Grotzfeld and Grotzfeld 2012: 30–32; Grotzfeld, 1996–1997: 54– 63; Schultz 2015: 24; Thomann 2016: 184. 8 In the checklist of manuscripts in Thomann 2016, nos. 1, 12, 13 (N. 1–100), 42, 44, 45, 46 (N. 1–22), 47 (prologue only), 51. 6

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dissertation (Tor 1994), and a facsimile edition of it with a transliteration in Latin script was published in 2016.9 A second group of manuscripts contains typically the Nights 650 to 700 with parts of the romance of ‘ʿUmar ibn al-Nuʿmān’.10 A third group of three manuscripts contains the later parts following ‘ʿUmar ibn al-Nuʿmān’.11 There are more manuscripts, which have to date not been studied thoroughly, which contain other parts of the Arabian Nights.12 Most important is a set of nine volumes (MS Paris BNF Turc 356.2–10) which contains the Nights 1 to 764.13 It was described as a seventeenth century translation (Tekin 1993). However, this holds only for the beginning, in the later parts it agrees with earlier manuscripts, which are dependent on the oldest translation.14 In contrast to the Arabic version, the Turkish translation can be dated more easily on linguistic grounds due to the distinct language shift of Turkish both in grammar and in vocabulary, which took place in the sixteenth century (Tekin 1993: 247). Combining the evidence, it becomes clear that the extant manuscripts allow for an almost complete reconstruction of the content of the first Turkish translation and therefore also of the Arabic version available in the mid-fifteenth century. Nonetheless, that could be wishful thinking, since any evidence that this version of the ending is already attested in the fifteenth century Turkish translation would decide the case, and I am happy to be able to provide this evidence here for the first time.

For further studies, see Şeşen 1991 and Tor 2010. This group includes nos. 39, 56, and 58 in Thomann 2016. 11 These are nos. 52, 43.9 in Thomann 2016, and MS Manchester Turkish (not in Thomann 2016); cf. Proverbio 2016: 389. 12 Reference is here made to manuscripts nos. 2(?), 3 (?), 14 (N. 359– 408), 36 (N. 99–120), 50 (N. 190–467), 53 (?) in Thomann 2016. 13 For details, see Zotenberg 1887: 187–191, Tekin 1993, Osigus 2010: 94–97, and Thomann 2016 no. 43. 14 Independently Proverbio 2016: 389 for volume 9 and Thomann 2016: 182–184 for volume 8. 9

10

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There are three manuscripts of the last volume of a Turkish edition of five volumes of the Nights: MS Manchester JRL Turkish 75 (M), MS Paris BnF Turc 356.10 (X), and MS Uppsala UL Sturtzenbeck 29 (U) (Proverbio 2016: 389). They all start with night 700 in the later part of the story of ʿUmar ibn al-Nuʿmān. Manuscript U can be dated to the late seventeenth century and has an owner’s entry from the year 1708.15 Its text ends with night 751, still in the story of ʿUmar ibn al-Nuʿmān (Proverbio 2016: 395). Manuscript X was written in 1636.16 It contains the end of the ʿUmar ibn al-Nuʿmān cycle and a number of fables up to the night 762.17

THE MANUSCRIPT M ANCHESTER 75 (M) AND ITS CONTENT

Manuscript M is lavishly decorated and was produced at the end of the sixteenth century. It contains the 700th to 789th nights.18 According to Proverbio’s description, it contains after the fables the cycles of Shād Bakht and Sultan Baybars, and ends within the story of the Concubine and the Caliph.19 It has gone unnoticed that M in fact contains the entire ending of the frame story. This part of M will be the main focus of the present study, but first a summary of its content is in order. In its earlier parts, M agrees closely with the manuscripts U and X. In the first third (ff. 1v– 87r) it contains the last part of the ʿUmar ibn al-Nuʿmān cycle with the embedded stories ‘The Hashish Eater’ (ANE no. 42), ‘The Sleeper and the Waker’ (ANE 263) and ‘Jamīl and Buthayna’ (Proverbio 2016: 390–395). It See Proverbio 2016: 389, Thomann 2016: 210 no. 52, and Torenberg 1849: 62, n. 109. 16 See Proverbio 2016: 389, Thomann 2016: 207, n. 43, Osigus 2010: 94–97, and Zotenberg 1887: 189. 17 See Proverbio 2016: 397, Osigus 2010: 96, and Zotenberg 1887: 189. 18 See Proverbio 2016: 389 and Schmidt 2011: 173–174; not in Osigus 2010 and Thomann 2016. 19 Proverbio’s description (2016: 389, 400) is somewhat contradictory concerning the last page of M (f. 254v and f. 257r), which is said to end abruptly. 15

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follows a series of unconnected fables and anecdotes. After that M is the only manuscript to contain the relatively long cycle of ‘Shād Bakht and His Vizier al-Rahwān’ (ANE no. 286). In the Arabic version, it contains 28 embedded stories, while the Turkish version has 24. The shorter cycle of ‘Baybars and the Sixteen Captains of Police’ follows (ANE no. 319). In this case, the shortening is more rigorous in the Turkish version, which contains only four first stories (ANE no. 320–323). These stories found their way into another Turkish collection of stories, preserved in a manuscript of the Atatürk Library in Istanbul (MS Belediyye O. 98, see Şeşen 1991: 590).

THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF THE ENDING IN THE TURKISH VERSION

The last story of the Baybars cycle is King Shahriyar’s own story, the beginning of the Nights’ frame story. It is conspicuous that the Turkish version is more than twice in length (2450 words) of the corresponding Arabic version (960 words). The translator did not translate the text in the Baybars cycle but followed the text at the beginning of the Nights. In the Arabic story in the Baybars cycle, the names of the king, his brother and of the daughter of the vizier are anonymised, but in the Turkish version mentions the names Şehryâr, Şâh Zubân and Şehrazât appear occasionally.20 The episode of the ʿIfrît and the girl—which is missing in the Arabic version—appears in full length in the Turkish text.21 At the ending, the focus is not set on the king and the vizier’s daughter and her story telling, but on the people of the city, who become aware that the killing of women has come to an end. They pray that this may continue and thus the Baybars cycle ends. Her last story had a therapeutic effect on King Shahriyar and he is liberated from his obsession. In the Arabic verM f. 241r l. 1, f. 241r l. 7, f. 242v ll. 2, 10, 12, f. 243r ll. 3, 7, 10, f. 243v l. 4, f. 248r l. 7. 21 M f. 244v–245r. 20

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sion, Shahrazad adds another two stories on concubines, of which only the shorter with a happy ending was included in the Turkish version. The remaining part of the frame story in the Turkish version is obviously based on the older Arabic version but important scenes are cut out. It starts with the king’s silent monologue:22 ‘Oh God! A woman like this has never fallen into anyone’s hand and she won’t, either. This is a favour and a kindness of God—Exalted is He—that He matched [her] with me. He cast someone like her into my net and she became the reason for my liberation from that evil acting’.

Then he stands up, kisses her on the forehead, and says, ‘Oh mistress Shahrazad! God may forgive what was in the past. What was in my heart in the past has disappeared. My soul may be sacrificed for you’. In the next scene, the king speaks to an assembly of nobles of the empire, who acclaim him. He confesses his guilt, avows his repentance, and promises never to return to his former habits. Next, he honours the vizier, Shahrazad’s father, by giving him a robe saying, ‘well done you for having brought up (besledüñ ‘you (sg.) brought up’) the woman, who liberated herself and the believers from fear and perishing’. Further, he announces his wedding with Shahrazad. Upon which the city is decorated for the upcoming wedding feast. The king gives numerous presents to the vizier, and orders him to bring the king’s brother from Samarkand to the capital. Meanwhile, in a short scene, Shahrazad receives one group of women after another, who praise her as their leader and give their blessings for the wedding. King Shahriyar’s brother comes from Samarkand and the wedding feast, which is described in some detail, begins. It lasts for seven days and all parts of society participate, receive dishes and beverages, while songs and music from lute, harp, flute and M f. 255r l. 20–22; see text, transliteration and translation of the remaining text of M in the Appendix. 22

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JOHANNES THOMANN

tambourine are in the air. All praise King Shahriyar and finally, Shahriyar goes with his brother to a private place, and narrates to his brother all the stories he had heard from Shahrazad. There can be no doubt that the translation was made from an Arabic source, which had the same story line as the text preserved in the Arabic manuscripts. All motifs of the Turkish version are also found in the Arabic text of the early manuscripts, and it has no resemblance with the ending in Zotenberg’s Egyptian Recension. However, the Turkish text is much shorter than the extant Arabic text. This has been observed in other parts of the Nights, too. Especially passages that are called dramatic visualizations, detailed description of locations and objects, are occasionally omitted in the translation (Thomann 2016: 178). However, in the case of the ending of the frame story, the Turkish translation has changed the general character of the story by its omissions. In the Arabic version, a triumphal procession of Shahrazad over several stations is depicted: From the changed behaviour of the king towards her, to her appearance at the assembly of the elite of the empire. She imposes conditions on the king’s marriage proposal. In the farewell scene at the departure of her father to Samarkand, her superior position is marked by the act of donating money to him. The climax of her triumph is a strange ceremony in a hammam were she and her sister are dressed in a sequence of more and more fantastic costumes generally regarded as inappropriate for women. The sixth dresses are green, the most precious fabric, and a colour reserved for men. Finally, the two sisters appear in male dresses, with swords fastened and decorated with emblems. Such attributes were the privilege of Mamluk military elite. The dresses were called khilʿa, ‘honorary robe’, and were used to place someone in office, normally a privilege for men. The entire ceremony seems to refer to the investiture of a sultan who receives seven robes as the sign of his power over the seven climates (Thomann 2017a: 384–385). These symbolic actions evoke the image of a utopian society, in which women are liberated from their subaltern role and are able to transcend the glass ceiling of the male elite. Other elements of this utopia are the end of violence and the abolition of autocracy. The killing is stopped, and

‘OH LEADER OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD, OH SHAHRAZAD!’

147

the power is delegated to a pluralistic system of administrators (Thomann 2017a: 484). This utopian ending is well prepared for by the previous stories and story cycles. In the Shād Bakht cycle, the ill-advised king is brought to his senses by his vizier’s stories. At first, an up and down of examples for trust betrayed and mistrust unfounded is given. Finally, the king is confronted with his own situation in a mirroring story, which opens his eyes for his mistake. This narration serves as a model for how to break out from the seemingly endless sequence of the nights (Thomann 2017a:481– 482). In the Baybars cycle, the stories depict an image of Cairo and Damascus as places of a violent and suppressive society in which women and other subaltern members of society fight back against the threats of a powerful elite. At the end of a sequence of ever more cruel stories, the listening King Shahriyar is confronted with his own situation in a mirroring story, and his own destiny is set in the context of these previous stories (Thomann 2017a: 477–482). In King Shahriyar’s words, Shahrazad is his liberator, who freed him from his compulsion. This is precisely Shahrazad’s outspoken intention in the prologue when she explains why she would become the king’s concubine. However, she promises more. In the version of Galland’s manuscript, but not in the Egyptian strand, she promises to be the liberator of mankind. This also becomes true in the utopian end, when the people of the city and from abroad express their joy and are at peace. This last topic is the dominating theme in the Turkish translation. Crowd scenes with happy people fill most of the space in narration. Nevertheless, the role of Shahrazad is much reduced, while King Shahriyar becomes the main character in the public sphere. Besides him, Shahrazad’s father, the vizier, takes all the credit for having brought her up. Yet, Shahrazad’s space is reduced to a gathering of women, and her mission is restricted to women only. The long hammam scene in the Arabic version is shrunk to one short phrase: ‘Thereafter, Shahriyar invited his brother to go along to a cabinet’. The expression halvet ‘cabinet’ is the same

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JOHANNES THOMANN

expression by which the private room in the hammam is called in the Arabic version, to which the two couples retire after the ceremony with the seven robes. The possibility that some text is missing here in the Turkish manuscript cannot be ruled out, but it seems more plausible that the cut was made intentionally by the translator, who followed a clear agenda to minimize the two sisters’ roles in the narration, and to set the focus on the king, his brother and the vizier. Whoever was responsible for these changes, the story in the Arabic version was met with incomprehension, or even with aversion. There might have been a similar attitude at work, when the entire final part, including the cycles of Shād Bakht and Baybars, was replaced in the Arabic redaction known as Zotenberg’s Egyptian Recension.

CONCLUSION

In the present chapter, it has been shown that the elaborate ending in the Arabic manuscript tradition is equal in age with the well-known beginning of the frame story. In the future, the two parts should be taken as a unit in any interpretation of the frame story and the Nights as a whole. The concluding part is on a par with the opening part concerning its artful narrative composition. Furthermore, it is an excellent example of preparing the ending of a story by repeating entities of decreasing sizes, mirroring the increasing sizes of entities at the beginning. There would be much more to say on its narrative devices, but the focus of my study is the ending in the Turkish version. The very concise style of the Turkish version has a particular charm, and some of its striking phrases, which have no parallel in the Arabic text make it worthwhile reading. One of them is the title of the present study, the acclamation of the women in the palace: yâ reʾîse-yi nisvân-ı d-dünyâ, yā Şehrazâd (‘Oh leader of women in the world, oh Shahrazad!’).

‘OH LEADER OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD, OH SHAHRAZAD!’

149

A PPENDIX I: TEXT, TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION OF THE END OF THE NIGHTS IN M Remark

The Arabic transcription is as faithful to the manuscript as possible. The transliteration in Latin script is added at the risk of raising criticism among specialists of Turkish linguistics, as it is not intended to be a reconstruction of the historical pronunciation of the text. It is meant as an aid for those readers who are not used to read Turkish texts in Arabic script. It follows the transliteration system used in the İslam Ansiklopedisi, and it resembles modern Turkish orthography, but diacritics are used to indicate the Arabic consonantal letters, and [ė] is distinguished from [e]. The vowels are in accordance with the vowel signs in the manuscript, even if the position of them is often ambiguous. However, long vowels in Arabic and Persian words are marked with â, î, û as in modern standard orthography, not with ā, ī, ū as in the İslam Ansiklopedisi. Original Text

‫ُچوْنِكه ُصْبح ُاولِْدي َشْهِرَياْر َاِيْتِدي َوالَّلِه ُبُنْڭ ِمْثِل َعْوَرْت‬ ِ ‫ِكْمَسهُنوْڭ َالَِنه ِكْرَمِدي َو ِكِرَسْں َدُكْلُدْر ُبو َالَّلُه َتَعالَي ُنوْڭ لُْط‬ ‫ف َوَكَرِمُدْر‬

‫ِكه َبُنوِمَله اِْشَلِدي ُبُنوْڭ ِكِبي ِكَمْسَنه َبُنوْم َٓاُغَمه ِبَرْقِدي َوُاوْل‬ ‫َيَرَمْز ِفِعْلَدْن َبُنوْم َخَلاُصَمه َسَبْب ِقْلِدي ِدِيْب طُُروَكْلِدي َو َشْهَرَزاِد‬ ‫َباِشْنَده ُاوْپِدي َوَايْتِدي اِي َسّتي َشْهَرَزاْد َعَفي الَّلُه َعَّما َسَلَف‬

255v

‫ُشوْل َنْسَنه ِكه َقْلُبْمَده َواِرِدي َجِميِع ِكْتِدي َبُنوْم ُروُحْم َسڭَه‬ ‫س َشْهَرَزاْد َدِخي طُُروْب َپاِدَشاُهوْڭ َالِيْن ُاوْپِدي‬ ْ ‫ِفِدي ُاولُْسوْن َپ‬

‫َو ُقو لِيْن ُبْيِنَنه َصْلِدي ِديَناْر َزاْذ ُبو َحاِل ُكوُرْب َو َپاِدَشاْهَدْن‬ ‫ُبو ُسوِزي اِِشِدْب ُكوْڭِل َو ُكوِزي َفَرُح ُسُروْر ِبْرلَه طُْلِدي َبْعَدُه‬

‫‪JOHANNES THOMANN‬‬

‫ص َمْمَلَكْت‬ ‫َشْهِرَياْر طَْشَره ِچِقْب َتْخْت ُاَزَره ُاوُتْرِدي َخَوا ِّ‬ ‫َو َاْرَكاِن َدْولَْت َحاِضْر َكِلْب َهْر ِبِرِسي ِيْرلُو ِيِرْنَده َقَراْر ِقْلِديَلْر‬

‫ُنَّواْب َو ُحَّجاْب َاطَاَل الَّلُه َبَقٓاءَ اْلأَِميِر ِدِديَلْر َالَّلُه َتَعالَي َپاِدَشاُهْڭ‬ ‫ُعْمِر نِي ُاوُزوْن َاْيَلُسوْن ِدُيو َچِغْرشِديَلْر َو ِييْر ُاوْيِديَلْر َپاِدَشاْه‬ ‫َوِزيِر َيانَِنه ُاوُقِدي َو َاِغْر ِخْلَعْت َكُيوْرِدي اِْكَراُم اِْنَعاْم ِقْلِدي‬

‫َو َاْنَدْن ُصڭَْره َاَّوْل ِديَواْن َاْهِلَنه َبْقِدي ُشوْل ِكه َشْهَرَزاْد‬ ‫ِبْرلَه ُبو ِبيْڭ ِبْر ِكيَچه اِِچْنَده َكْنُدو َاَراِسْنَده َكْچِدي ِبالُْكِّلَّيه‬ ‫اِْعَلاْم اِْتِدي ِبُلوْڭ َو َاَكاْه ُاولُْڭ ُاوْل َيَرَمْز َنْسَنه ِكه ُسَّنْت اِْتِمِشُدوْم‬ ‫ُرُجوْع ِقْلُدوْم َتْوَبه َو اِْسِتْغَفاْر َاْيَلُدوْم ُبُكوْنَدْن ِكُرو ُاوْل اِْتُدوُكْم‬ ‫اِْشَلَره َپِشيَماْن ُاولُْدوْم ِدِدي َو َدِخي ِبُلوْڭ اِي ِديَواْن َاْهِل‬

‫ُدُكوْن َاْيَلِيْب َشْهَرَزاِد نَِكاْح اُِدْب َالَِسَرْم َخَبْر َداْر ُاولُْڭ ِدِدي‬

‫‪256r‬‬

‫ُبو َحاِضْر ُاولَْن ِكِشيلَْر ُچوْنِكه ُبو ُسِزي َشْهِرَياْر َاْغِزْنَدْن اِِشْتِديَلْر‬ ‫ِييْر ُاوپُ◌ـيـ َفَرْح ُاولِْديَلْر َو ِبْر ِبِرَنه ُمْشَتِليْب َپاِدَشاَه َخْير ُدَعالَْر‬ ‫ِقْلِديَلْر َوِزيَر َتْحِسيْن اِْتِديَلْر َٓاَفِريْن َسڭَه ُاولُْسوْن ِكه ُاوْل طَِريَقه‬

‫ِعَياْل َبْسَلُدوْڭ ِكه َهْم َكْنُدِوي َوَهْم ِكُرو َقَلاْن ُمُسْلَماْنَلِري ُبوْنَجه‬ ‫َخْوف َخَطْرَدْن ُقْرَتْرِدي ِدِديَلْر َهْرِكْز ُاوْل طَِريَقه ِعَياْل َنه ُوُجوَده‬

‫َكْلِدي َو َنه َكَلَجْكُدْر ِدِديَلْر ُو َمْجِليْس َتَماْم ُاولِْدي طَِغْلِديَلْر َهْر ِبِري‬ ‫ص َو َعَواْم ِبْلِديَلْر ُاوْل‬ ‫ُاوَدلُو ُاوَده ِسَنه ِكْتِديَلْر ُبو َخَبِري َخَوا ّْ‬

‫َشْهْرَده َنَقَدْر ِكِشي َواِرَسه ُبو َحالَْدْن َخَبْرَداْر ُاولُْب َپاِدَشاَه‬ ‫ش ِدُيو َيَراَغ‬ ‫نِْتُدوِكْن َو َنْيَلُدوِكْن ِبْلِديَلْر َوُدُكوْن َاْيَلَسه َكَرِكِم ْ‬

‫‪150‬‬

‫‪151‬‬

‫’!‪‘OH LEADER OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD, OH SHAHRAZAD‬‬

‫َمْشُغوْل ُاولِْديَلْر ُاوْل َشْهر ِكه َقْحَطاِن ِصيْن ُدْر َاَراْسَته‬ ‫ِقْلِديَلْر َبَزاِيْب ِيَمْكَلْر َو اِْچَمْكَلْر َاْيَلِديَلْر َوِضُع َشِريْف َخَواْصَدْن‬

‫َو َعَواْمَدْن َهْر ِبِرِسي َاْنَواْع ُدْرلُْو َهَداَيا َالِْب َوِزيْر َقاتَِنه َواْرِديَلْر‬ ‫َو َدِخي ِيِميْن ِقْلِديَلْر ِكه َشْهُروْڭ َبَزِكِني ِبْر ِييْل َتَماْم ُاولَْماِيْنَجه‬ ‫ِكَدْر َمَيالَْر َوَهْم َاْيَله ِقْلِديَلْر َپاِدَشاْه ُبو َنْسَنَلِري اِِشْتِدي‬

‫ُبُوْرِدي ُكوْسَلْر َچِلْنِدي َو َنِفيْرلَْر ُاُرلِْدي َعالَْم َفَرْح َوُسُروِر ِبْرلَه‬

‫‪256v‬‬

‫طُْلِدي َٓاْنَدْن ُصڭَْره َشْهِرَياْر َوِزيِر َقاتَِنه ُاوُقِدي َلا ُيَعُّد َوَلا ُيْحَصي‬

‫َماْللَْر ِويْرِدي َهْر َنوْعَدْن َو َهْر ِصنْفَدْن َعَطالَْر َاْيَلِدي َو َاِيْتِدي‬

‫َكْل َواْر َسَمْرَقْنْد ِوَلاَيِتْنَدْن َشاْه ُزَباِن َكُتوْر َكْلُسوْن ُدُكوَن َحاِضْر‬ ‫ُاولُْسوْن ُيْلَداْش ُاولَْماِغُچوْن ُاَمَراَدْن ُاوْن ِبيْڭ ِكِشي ِبَله ُقوْشِدي‬

‫َوِزيْر َيَراِغِني َتَماْم اِِدْب ِچْقِدي َوَسَمْرَقْند ُيو لَِنه َرَواَنه ُاولِْدي‬ ‫َاَّما َشْهَرَزاْد َسَراِي ُاوُتُرْدِدي ُاوْل َشْهُروْڭ َخاُتوْنَلِري َوُاولُو َمِلْكَلُرْڭ‬

‫ِقْزلَِري ُبُلْك ُبُلْك َفْوج َفْوْج َو طُوْنَلْر َكِيْب َمْوج َمْوْج َكُلوْرلَِرِدي‬

‫َخْير ُدَعالَْر اِِدْب ُمَباَرْك ُاولُْسوْن َيا َر ئَِسَة نِْسَواِن الُّدْنَيا َيا َشْهَرَزاْد‬ ‫ِدْرلَِرِدي َشْهِرَياْر ُدُكوْن اُِچوْن َقْيُدو َاْسَباْب ُكوْرَمَكه َمْشُغوْل‬

‫ُاولِْدي َناَكاْه َخَبْر ِيِتْشِدي ِكه ُاوْش َشاْه ُزَباْن َكْلِدي ِدِديَلْر َپاِدَشاِه‬ ‫َشْهِرَياْر َجِميِع لَْشَكِريَله َاْتَلِنْب َقْرُشولَِديَلْر َالِْب َشْهَره َكْلِديَلْر‬ ‫َشْهر َخْلِق ُدَّكاْنَلْرَده َو ُزَقاْقَلْرَده ُعوُد َعْنَبْر ُبُخوْر ِقْلِديَلْر‬

‫َكْنُدولَْر َعِبيْرلَْر َوِمْسْكَلْر ُدْر تِِنْب َعِظيْم َشاِذلِيْق َاْيَلِديَلْر‬ ‫َشاْهُزَباِن َشْهِرَياِر َكْنُدو َقْصِرَنه ُقْنُدْرِدي َيِرْنَدِسي َتْخَته‬

‫‪JOHANNES THOMANN‬‬

‫‪152‬‬

‫ُاوُتْرِدي َقْرَدِشِني َيانَِنه َالِْدي ُمَغِّنيَلْر َو ُمْطِرْبَلْر َنَقَدْر َواِرَسه‬

‫‪257r‬‬

‫َحاِضْر ِكلْب ُعوْد َو َچنْك َوَناْي َوَچَغا َنه َچْلِديَلْر َاْشَعاِر َعَرْبَدْن‬ ‫َوَعَجْمَدْن َاِيْتِديَلْر َشْهِرَياْر ُبُيوْرِدي َحاِضْر ُاولَْن طََعاْمَلِري َكُتوْرِديَلْر‬ ‫َصْحِن َسَراِي َاْنَواْع ُدْرلُو نِْعَمْتَلِريَله َبَزِريَلْر ُمَناِديَلْر َشهْر اِِچْنَده‬

‫َواْي ُاوْل ِكِشَيه ِكه َكِلْب َپاِدَشاُهوڭ نِْعَمِتيْن ِييَمَيه ِدِديَلْر َاَكاِبْر‬ ‫َو َاَصاِغْر ِمَن الَْقَرِوِّي َوالَّشْهِرِّي والَْبَدِوِّي َوالَْمَدنِِّي َنَقَدْر َواِرَسه‬ ‫َكْلِديَلْر ِيِديَلْر َو ُكُتوْرِديَلْر ُمَباَرْك ُاولُْسوْن اِي َشاِه َزَماِن‬

‫َشْهِرَياْر ِدُيو َمدْحَلْر َو َثَنالَْر ِقْلِديَلْر ِيِدي ُكوْن َپَياَپْي ُبو طَِريَقه‬

‫ُدُكوْن ُاولِْدي َبِني َٓاَدْمَدْن َوَحْيَواْنَدْن ِبْر ِكَمْسَنه َقْلَمِدي اِلَّا‬ ‫َپاِدَشاُهوْڭ ُخو نِْنَدْن َو نِْعَمِتْنَدْن ِيِدي َاْنَدْن ُصڭَْره َشْهِرَياْر‬

‫َقْرَدِشِني َخْلَوْت ُصْحَبَته َدْعَوْت ِقْلِدي ُاوْل َما َجَري ِكه‬ ‫َكْنُدِويَله َوِزيْر ِقِزي َاَراِسْنَده ُبو ُاوچ ِييْل اِچَره َكْچِدي ِحَكاَياِت‬ ‫َغِريَبه َو ِقَّصَهاِي َعِجيَبه ِكه اِْسِتَماْع ِقْلِمِشِدي َو َمَواِعْظ‬ ‫َو َاْمَثاْل ِكه َخاِطِرْنَده َقْلِمِشِدي ِبالُْكِّلَّيه َتْقِريْر ِقْلِدي‬ ‫َالَْحْمُد لَِّلِه َعَلي اْل ِأْتَماْم َو لِلَّرُسوِل َاْكَمِل الَّسَلاْم تّمت‬

‫‪Transliteration23‬‬

‫‪Çünki ṣubḥ oldı Şehriyār eyitdi: ‘vallâhi bunuñ misli ʿavrat‬‬ ‫‪kimsenüñ eline girmedi ve girişen degüldür. Bu Allâhu teʿâlânuñ‬‬ ‫‪luṭfı ve keremidür ki benümile eşledi. Bunuñ gibi kimesne‬‬ ‫‪I thank Dr Neslihan Demirkol and Dr Orhan Elmaz for the valuable‬‬ ‫‪corrections in the transliteration and translation.‬‬ ‫‪23‬‬

‘OH LEADER OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD, OH SHAHRAZAD!’

153

benüm âġûma bıraḳdı ve ol yaramaz fiʿilden benüm halâṣuma sebeb ḳıldı’, dėyib ṭuru[b] geldi, ve Şehrazâdı başında öpdi ve etdi: ‘Ey sitti Şehrazâd. ʿAfâ’llâhu ʿammâ selefe. /255v/ Şol nesne ki ḳalbumda vardı cemîʿi gitdi. Benüm rûḥum saña fedâ [MS fede] olsun’. Pes Şehrazâd daḫı ṭurub pâdişâhuñ elin öpdi ve kolın boyuna ṣaldı. Dînarzâd bu ḥâli görüb ve pâdişâhdan bu sözi işidib göñli ve gözi faraḥu sürûr birle ṭoldı. Baʿdehu Şehriyâr ṭaşra çıḳıb taht üzere oturdı. Hawâṣ-ı memleket ve erkân-ı devlet ḥâżır gelib her birsi yerlü yerinde ḳarâr ḳıldılar. Nüvvâb ve ḥuccâb, ‘Eṭâle’llāhu beḳāʾe ’l-ʾemîr’, dėdiler, ‘Allâhu teʿâlâ pâdışâh ömrini uzun eylesün’, dėyü çaġrışdılar ve yer öpdiler. Pâdışâh vezîri yanına oḳudı ve aġır ḫilʿat geyürdi, ikrâmu inʿâm ḳıldı. Ve andan ṣoñra evvel dîvân ehline baḳdı, şol ki Şehrazâd birle bu biñ bir gėce içinde kendü arasında geçdi bilkülliye iʿlâm ėtdi. ‘Bilüñ ve âgâh oluñ yaramaz nesne ki sünnet ėtmişidüm. Rücûʿ ḳıldum. Tövbe ve istiġfâr eyledüm. Bugünden gėrü ol ėtdügüm işlere peşîmân oldum’, dėdi ve daḫı: ‘Bilüñ ey dîvân ehli. Dügün eyleyib Şehrazâdı nikâḥ edüb alısaram [read: alışaram]. Ḫaberdâr oluñ’, dėdi. /256r/ Bu ḥâżır olan kişiler çünki bu sözi Şehriyâr ağzından işitdiler yer öpüb feraḥ oldılar ve bir bir ne müştelib pâdişâha ḫayr duʿâlar ḳıldılar vezîre taḥsîn ėtdiler. ‘Âferîn saña olsun ki ol tarîḳe ʿiyâl besledüñ ki hem kendüvi ve hem gėrü ḳalan müsülmânları bunca ḫavf[-u] haṭardan ḳurtardı’, dėdiler. ‘Her kez ol tarîḳe ʿiyâl ne vücûda geldi ve ne gelecekdür’, dėdiler ve meclîs (!) tamâm oldı, ṭaġıldılar her biri odalu odasına gitdiler. Bu haberi havâṣ ve ʿavâm bildiler. Ol şehrde neḳadar kişi varısa bu ḥâlden haberdâr olub pâdışâha nitdügin ve neyledügin bildiler. Ve ‘dügün eylese gerekimiş’, dėyü. Yarâġa meşġûl oldılar. Ol şehr ki Ḳaḥṭān-ı Ṣîn dur ârâsta ḳıldılar bezeyib yemekler ve içmekler eylediler. Vażıʿu (!) şerîf havâṣdan ve ʿavâmdan her birisi envâʿ dürlü hedâyâ alıb vezîr ḳâtına vardılar ve daḫı yemîn ḳıldılar ki şehrüñ bezekini bir yıl tamâm olmayınca gider mayalar ve hem eyle ḳıldılar. Pâdışâh bu nesneleri işitdi, buyurdı kûslar çalındı ve nefîrler uruldı. ʿÂlem feraḥ ve sürûr birle /256v/ ṭoldı. Andan ṣoñra Şehriyâr vezîri ḳatına oḳudı. Lâ yuʿaddu ve lâ yuḥṣâ mâllar vėrdi: her nevʿden ve her ṣınıfdan ʿaṭâlar eyledi ve eyitdi, ‘gel var Semerḳand vilâyetinden

154

JOHANNES THOMANN

Şâhzubānı getür gelsün dügüne ḥâżır olsun’. Yoldaş olmaġiçün ümerâdan on biñ kişi bile ḳoşdı. Vezîr yarâġını tamâm ėdib çıḳdı ve Semerḳand yolına revâne oldı. Ammâ Şehrazâd sarâyı oturuddı. Ol şehrüñ hatunları ve ulu meliklerüñ ḳızları bölük bölük fevc fevc ve ṭonlar geyib mevc mevc gelürlerdi. Ḫayr duʿâlar ėdib, ‘Mübârek olsun, yâ reʾîset-e nisvân-ı d-dünyâ yâ Şehrazâd’ derlerdi. Şehriyâr dügün içün ḳaydu esbâb görmege meşġûl oldı. Nâgâh haber yetişdi ki, ‘üş Şâhzubân geldi’, dėdiler. Pâdişâh-ı Şehriyār cemîʿ-i leşkerile atlanıb ḳarşuladılar alıb şehre geldiler. Şehr halḳı dükkânlarda zuḳâḳlarda ʿûd-u ʿanbar buhûr ḳıldılar. Kendüler ʿabîrler ve miskler dürtenib ʿaẓîm şâzılık (!) eylediler. Şâhzubânı Şehriyârı kendü ḳaṣrına ḳondurdı. Yarındası taḥta oturdı ḳardaşını yanına aldı. Muġannîler ve muṭribler neḳadar varise /257r/ ḥâżır gelüb, ʿûd ve çeng ve nêy ve çağâna çaldılar. Eşʿâr-ı ʿarabdan ve ʿacemden eyitdiler. Şehriyâr buyurdı ḥâżır olan ṭaʿâmları getürdiler, ṣaḥn-ı sarâyı envâʿ dürlü niʿmetlerile bezediler. Münâdîler şehr içinde, ‘vay ol kişiye ki gelib pâdişâhuñ niʿmetin yemeye’ dediler. Ekâbir ve aṣâgir mine l-ḳaraviyyi ve ş-şehriyyi ve l-bedeviyyi ve l-medeniyyi neḳadar varise geldiler yediler ve götürdiler. ‘Mübârek olsun ey şâh-ı zaman-ı Şehriyâr’, dėyü. Medḥler ve senâlar ḳıldılar. Yedi gün peyâpey bu ṭarîḳe dügün oldı. Benî Âdemden ve ḥayvândan bir kimesne ḳalmadı illâ pâdişâhuñ hunından ve niʿmetinden yedi. Andan ṣoñra Şehriyâr ḳardaşını ḫalvet ṣoḥbete daʿvet ḳıldı. Ol mâ cerâ ki kendüvile vezîr ḳızı arasında bu üç yıl içre geçdi. Ḥikâyât-ı garîbe ve ḳıṣṣahâ-yı ʿacîbe ki istimâʿ ḳılmışdı ve mevâʿiẓ ve emsâl ki ḫâṭırında ḳalmışdı bilkülliye taḳrîr ḳıldı. Elḥamdü lillâhi ʿale’l-itmâm ve li-r-resûli ekmeli s-selâm. Temmet. Translation

When the morning came, Shahriyar said [to himself]: ‘Oh God! A woman like this has never fallen into anyone’s hand and she won’t, either. This is a favour and a kindness of God–Exalted is He–that He matched [her] with me. He cast someone like her into my net and she became the reason for my liberation from that evil acting’, he said and he stood up and kissed Shahrazad on her head and said [to her]: ‘Oh lady Shahrazad! May God forgive

‘OH LEADER OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD, OH SHAHRAZAD!’

155

what was in the past. What was in my heart disappeared. My soul, let it be sacrificed for you’. Then Shahrazad stood up and kissed the hand of the king, and she put her arm on his neck. Dinarzad saw this happening and heard the king’s words. Her heart and her eyes became full of joy and happiness. After that, Shahriyar left and took place on his throne. The noblemen of the empire and the pillars of power arrived, and everyone went to their designated place. The servants and administrators of the palace cheered, ‘God prolong the emir’s life. God is Exalted, may he prolong his life’, they exclaimed and kissed the ground. The king invited the vizier at his side and had him dressed with a heavy honorary robe, and he bestowed him with honour. Hereafter he looked around at his people of the assembly and declared outright having spent thousand and one nights with Shahrazad: ‘Know and be aware of the insane course of action which I had made my habit. I have quit and repented. Henceforth I will continue this way. I have repented’. Moreover, ‘Know, oh people of the council! I will prepare a wedding-feast. I will marry Shahrazad. I am on fire [for her]. Be informed!’ The people who were present from the beginning at Shahriyar’s speech kissed the ground and were full of joy. Everybody made good prayers for the king and applauded the vizier. They said: ‘Well done, you, for having brought a child in a way that she liberated both herself and all other Muslims from fear and danger. Not always are children like this born and they will not be born, either’. The assembly finished, and they dispersed, everybody went to their room. This news was made known to [all] noblemen and ordinary people. Everybody in town was informed and they knew everything the king had made and done. [The king] ordered: ‘The wedding-feast shall take place’. [Everything] useful was set in motion. They decorated that city, which is Qaḥtān of China. They prepared food and drink. Everybody, noblemen and ordinary people of low and high status received all kinds of gifts. They went to the vizier and took an oath that they would decorate the city within a year and that was what they did. The king heard these people and ordered the big drums and the trumpets to be played. The world filled up with joy and pleasure. Subsequently, the king ordered the vizier

156

JOHANNES THOMANN

to join him. He bestowed on him possessions that can neither be counted nor listed. He made him all kinds and sorts of presents, and [further] he said: ‘Come on, go to the province of Samarqand and get Shahzuban to attend the wedding-feast’. He gave an escort of ten thousand persons from the commanders to accompany him. When the vizier had finished the necessary affairs, he departed and set out for Samarqand. What concerns Shahrazad, she was sat in the palace. Women of the town and daughters of the great kings, group by group, in crowds, wearing [festive] clothes came around in waves. They offered good prayers and cheered, ‘Blessings! Oh Shahrazad, oh leader of all the women in the world!’ Shahriyar was engaged in looking after the preparations for the wedding-feast. Suddenly, news came and people were saying ‘Oh! Shazuban has arrived’. Hence, King Shahriyar gathered his entire army and mounted his horse to go and welcome [Shahzuban] and took him to the city. The people staged aloe, amber and incense outside of their shops. They put on perfume and musk, and were very joyful. [Shahriyar] accommodated Shahzuban in his own palace. The next day, Shahriyar sat down on the throne and placed Shahzuban at his side. All musicians and singers came in and played the lute, the harp, the flute and the tambourine. The recited poetry of the Arabs and the Persians. Shahriyar commanded and present [servants] brought food and adorned the courtyard of the palace with all kinds of food. Heralds in the town proclaimed, ‘Woe to the one who will not come to eat the king’s meal’. The old and young among the rural, city, Bedouin and urban population all of them came and ate, enjoying themselves and saying, ‘Blessings, oh Shahriyar, King of the Age!’ The wedding-feast went on like this for seven days in a row. Not a single human or animal was left that did not consume the king’s blood [red wine] and food. After that, Shahriyar invited his brother to a meeting in private. It so happened that he spent these three years with the daughter of the vizier. He delivered the strange tales and wonderful stories that he heard and the parables and admonitions that he remembered in their entirety. All praise belongs to God for completing [this] and the best peace be upon the Messenger. It is finished.

‘OH LEADER OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD, OH SHAHRAZAD!’

157

A PPENDIX II: THE COMPOSITION OF THE NIGHTS IN A RABIC AND TURKISH MANUSCRIPT TRADITION

The charts with the contents of Arabic and Turkish manuscripts are updated versions of the charts published in Thomann 2016: 191–92 (illustrations by the author). The abbreviation for the Arabic manuscripts are: G = Galland MS, V = Vatican, Z = Maillet MS, K = Kayseri, D = ‘Tunis’ MS. (last part only), P = Paris, B = Berlin, T = Tubingen, M = Manchester. The abbreviations of the Turkish manuscripts in the following list of stories refer to the checklist in Thomann 2016: 198–214. The editions are: Ma = Mahdi, Ha = Habicht, Bu = Būlāq and Ca = Calcutta II.



Abbrevia-

ANE

Titles

Arab.

2OldMen

–

Two Old Men

Z

–

3Apples

21

The Three Apples

G

Ma 1, 186; Ha

tions

Mss.

Turk. Mss.

Arabic editions

1, 350; Bu 1, 51; Ca 1,141

Abdallah

–

ʿAbdallāh

–

Ajib

–

ʿAjīb

–

Ala

63

ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Abū l-

C

Ha 7,40; Bu 1,

ʿAlī Ibn Bakkār and

G, V,

Ma 380; Ha 2,

AliBakkar 60

Amgad

–

Shāmāt

Shams an-Nahār

Anecdotes

Attaf

ʿAṭṭāf

24

319; Bu 1, 320;

24

Ca 1, 760

Amjad and Asʿad

Anecdotes – 415

Z

416 Ca 1, 64

Z refers to the Maillet manuscript.

– Z

– Ch43

–

158

JOHANNES THOMANN

Azadbakht 268

The History of

Ch11

Āzādbakht and His

Ha 6, 191

Son Aziz

41

ʿAzīz and ʿAzīza

Z

Baybars

319

Baybars and the Six- K, D, teen Captains of Po-

P, B Z

lice Baz

–

Bāz al-Ashhab Abū

CityBrass

180

The City of Brass

ConcCal

343

The Concubine and

Lahaba

Bu 1, 235; Ca 1, 567 Ch26

Ha 11, 321

– Ch15

Ha 6, 343; Bu

1, 37; Ca 3, 83

K, D,

Ha 12, 398

ConcMam 344

The Concubine of al- K, D,

Ha 12, 402

Craft

181

The Craft and Malice

–

F01

44

The Birds and Beasts K, D

Ch50

Bu 1, 301; Ca, 1,

F02

45

The Hermits

K, D

Ch50

Bu 1, 305; Ca

F03

–

The Pious Shepherd

K, D

Ch50

–

F04

46

The Water-fowl and

K, D

Ch50

Bu 1, 307; Ca

F05

47

The Wolf and the

K, D

Bu 1, 308; Ca

F06

48

The Falcon and the

K, D

Bu 1, 305; Ca

the Caliph Maʾmūn

P, B P, B

of Women

and the Carpenter

the Tortoise Fox

Partridge

716

1, 726

1, 726 1, 732 1, 726

‘OH LEADER OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD, OH SHAHRAZAD!’

159

F07

–

Fayrūz and Samʿān

K, D

Ch50

F08

–

The Two Eagles and

K, D

Ch50

F09

49

The Mouse and the

K, D

Ch50

Bu 1, 314; Ca

F10

50

The Cat and the

K, D

Ch50

Bu 1, 315; Ca

F11

51

The Fox and the

K, D

Bu 1, 315; Ca

F12

52

The Flea and the

K, D

Bu 1, 316; Ca

F13

53

The Saker and the

K, D

Bu 1, 317; Ca

F14

54

The Sparrow and the K, D

Bu 1, 317; Ca

F15

55

The Hedgehog and

K, D

Bu 1, 317; Ca

F16

56

The Merchant and

K, D

Bu 1, 319; Ca

F17

–

The Butcher and His K, D

F18

57

The Thief and His

K, D

Bu 1, 319; Ca

F19

58

The Foolish Weaver

K, D

Bu 1, 319; Ca

F20

59

The Sparrow and the K, D

Bu 1, 319; Ca

F21

–

The Weasel and the

the Weasel

Ichneumon Crow Crow

Mouse Birds

Eagle

the Wood-pigeons the Two Sharpers

Os 202

1, 747; Os 190 1, 748 1, 749 1, 750 1, 753 1, 754

1, 754; Os 218 1, 757

Wife

Monkey

Peacock

Sparrow

K, D, P

1, 757 1, 758 1, 759

160

JOHANNES THOMANN

F22

–

Cats and Candles

K, D,

F23

–

The Jealous Crane

K, D,

F24

–

The King and the

K, D,

F25

–

The King and His

K, D,

F26

–

The Crane and the

Fisherman 8

Francolines Son

P P P

Ch50

Crab

The Fisherman and the Jinnī

G, V, Z

Os 190

Ch46, Ma 1, 86; Ha 1, 47, 50, 66; Bu 1, 10; 52, 53 Ca 1,20 58

Ghanim

36

Ghānim Ibn Ayyūb

Z

Ha 4, 365; Bu

Gharib

210

Ghārib and ʿAjīb

C

Ha 9, 4; Bu 2,

Hunch-

23

The Hunchback’s

G, V,

Ma 1, 280; Ha

back

Tale

InsQays

342

King Ins Ibn Qays

Iram

70

The City of Many-

1,125; Ca 1, 320 105; Ca 3, 236

Z

2, 123; Bu 1,

73; Ca 1, 199 Ha 12, 116

and His Daughter columned Iram

Jansah

178

The Story of Jānshāh

Judar

209

Jūdar and His Breth- C ren

Ch30

Ha 7, 171; Bu 1, 451; Ca 2, 141

Ch8

Bu 1, 637; Ca 2, 617

Ha 9, 311; Bu 2, 86; Ca 3, 194

‘OH LEADER OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD, OH SHAHRAZAD!’ Jullanar

227

Jullanār

G

161

Ma 481; Ha 9,

400; Bu 2, 242; Ca 3, 540

Kalila

Kalīla wa-Dimna

Z

Khaylagan –

Khaylajān Ibn

Z

Manma-

–

Manmanam

MuhSab

228

King Muḥammad Ibn

nam

–

Hāman al-Fārisī

Ch50 Bu 2, 263; Ca

Sabāʾiq and the Mer-

3, 589

chant Ḥasan NurAnis

NurBadr

NurDam

35

22

341

–

Nūr ad-Dīn ʿAlī und

Ma 1, 434; Ha

Anīs al-Jalīs

2, 67; Bu 1,

106; Ca 1, 278

Nūr ad-Dīn ʿAlī and

Ma 1, 226; Ha

Ḥasan

Ca 1, 258

His Son Badr al-Dīn

2, 4; Bu 1, 54;

Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī of

Ha 12, 50

Damaskus and the

Damsel Sitt al-Milāḥ Porter

14

The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad

QamarZam

61

G, V, Z

Qamar az-Zamān and Budūr

QamarKhan

Qamar Khān

Quwwat

Quwwat al-Qulūb

ShadBakht 286

King Shād Bakht and K, D,

His Vizier al-Rahwān P, B, Z

Ch45, Ma 1, 126; Ha 47, 52, 1, 146; Bu 1, 53, 58 25; Ca 1,56

Ma 533; Ha 3,

166; Bu 1, 343; Ca 1, 811

Ha 11, 84

162

JOHANNES THOMANN

Sayf

229

Prince Sayf al-Mulūk

Ch‡

Ha 4, 189; Bu 2,

Serpents

176

Queen of the Ser-

Ch†

Bu 1, 657; Ca

Sindbad

179

Sindbād the Seaman

Ch50

Bu 2, 2; Ca 3, 4

Tag al-

40

Tāj al-Mulūk and the Z

Ch50

Bu 1, 228; Ca

Tawaddud 157

Tawaddud

Ch14

Bu 1, 614; Ca

Trader

The Trader and the

Muluk

4

pents

Princess Dunyā

Jinnī

G, V, Z

266; Ca 3, 595 2, 282

1, 552 2, 489

Ch46, Ma 72; Ha 1,

47, 50, 25; Bu 1, 5; Ca 52, 43, 1, 8 58

Tuhfat Qul 339

Tuḥfat al-Qulūb und

Umar

ʿUmar ibn an-

39

Zumurrud 82

Ha 11, 400

Hārūn al-Rashīd Nuʿmān

ʿAlī Shār and Zumurrud

M, T, Z

C

Ch18, Bu 1, 139; Ca Ch46, 1, 350 61

Ha 7, 262; Bu 1, 484; Ca 2, 212

‘OH LEADER OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD, OH SHAHRAZAD!’

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REFERENCES

Ahlwardt, Wilhelm. 1887–1899. Verzeichniss der arabischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin: A. Asher & Co.). Akel, Ibrahim. 2016. ‘Liste des manuscrits arabes des Nuits’ in Arabic Manuscripts of the Thousand and One Nights: Presentation and Critical Editions of Four Noteworthy Texts: Observations on Some Osmanli Translations, ed. by Aboubakr Chraïbi (Paris: espaces&signes), pp. 65–114. Burton, Richard Francis. 1886. Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night with Notes, Anthropological and Explanatory (London). Eğri, Sadettin (ed.). 2016. Binbir Gece Masalları. Elfü Leyletin ve Leyle Hikâyetleri. Bursa Nüshası (Bursa: Bursa Büyükşehir Belediyesi). Findley, Carter Vaughn. 1980. Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: the Sublime Porte, 1789–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Grotzfeld, Heinz. 1985. ‘Neglected Conclusions of the Arabian nights: Gleanings in Forgotten and Overlooked Recensions’, Journal of Arabic Literature, XIV: 73–87. ― 1993. Märchen aus 1001 Nacht (München: Eugen Diedrichs). ― 1996–1997. ‘The Age of the Galland Manuscript of the Nights: Numismatic Evidence for Dating a Manuscript?’ Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, I: 50–64. Grotzfeld, Heinz, and Sophia Grotzfeld. 2012. Die Erzählungen aus Tausendundeiner Nacht, 2., von den Verfassern aktualisierte Auflage (Dortmund: Orientkunde). Habicht, Maximilian, and Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer. 1825– 1843. Tausendundeine Nacht: arabisch (Breslau: Grass, Barth & Co.). Habicht, Maximilian, Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen, and Karl Schall. 1826. Tausend und Eine Nacht. Arabische Erzäh-

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Haddawy, Husain. 2010. The Arabian Nights, ed. by D. HellerRoazen (New York: W.W. Norton & Company). Henning, Max. 1895–1897. Tausend und eine Nacht (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam). Kalpaklı, Mehmet, and Neslihan Demirkol (eds). 2010. Binbir gece’ye bakışlar (İstanbul: Turkuaz Yayınları). Kalpaklı, Mehmet, and Neslihan Demirkol. 2014. ‘Eternal Narratives of the Silk Road: The Thousand and One Nights from Samarkand to Istanbul’ Bulletin of IICAS, XIX: 81–97. Littmann, Enno. 1921–1928. Die Erzählungen aus den tausend und ein Nächten, 6 Bände: Vollständige deutsche Ausgabe in sechs Bänden. Zum ersten mal nach dem arabischen Urtext der Calcuttaer Ausgabe vom Jahre 1839 übertragen (Leipzig: Insel Verlag). Mahdi, Muhsin. 1984–1994. The Thousand and One Nights (Alf Layla wa-Layla) From the Earliest Known Sources: Arabic Text Edited with Introduction and Notes, 3 vols (Leiden: Brill). Marzolph, Ulrich, and Richard van Leeuwen. 2004. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO). Osigus, Ange. 2010. Ein Fabelzyklus in 1001 Nacht: Literatur- und textkritische Analyse, Leicht überarbeitete Fassung (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Göttingen) [accessed 19 August 2015]. Ott, Claudia. 2016. Tausendundeine Nacht: das glückliche Ende: nach der Handschrift der Raşid-Efendi-Bibliothek Kayseri erstmals ins Deutsche übertragen (München: C.H. Beck Verlag). Payne, John. 1901. Tales from the Arabic of the Breslau and Calcutta (1814–18) Editions of the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night not Occurring in the Other Printed Texts of the Work, now First Done into English (London). Proverbio, Delio Vania. 2016. ‘The Arabian Nights Through some Ancient-Osmanlı Translation’, in Arabic Manuscripts of the Thousand and One Nights: Presentation and Critical Edi-

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tions of Four Noteworthy Texts: Observations on Some Osmanli Translations, ed. by Aboubakr Chraïbi (Paris: espaces&signes), pp. 368–429. Ritter, Helmut. 1949. ‘Philologika XIII: Arabische Handschriften in Anatolien und Istanbul’ Oriens, II: 236–314. Schmidt, Jan. 2011. A Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts in the John Rylands University Library at Manchester (Leiden: Brill). Schultz, Warren C. 2015. Numismatic Nights: Gold, silver, and copper coins in the Mahdi A manuscript of Alf Layla wa-Layla (Berlin: EB-Verlag). Şeşen, Ramazan. 1991. ‘Binbir gece masallarının İstanbul kütüphanelerindeki yazmalarıyla basma nüshalarının mukayesesi’, in Prof. Dr. Bekir Kütükoğlu’na armağan, ed. by Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu (İstanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi basımevi), pp. 569–590. Süreyyā, Meḥmed. 1891–1893. Sicill-i ʿosmânî (İstanbul: Matbaai Âmire). ― 1996. Sicill-i Osmanî, ed. by Nuri Akbayar and Seyit Ali Kahraman (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları). Tekin, Şinasi. 1993. ‘Binbir gece’nin ilk türkçe tercümeleri ve bu hikâyelerdeki gazeller üzerine’ Türk Dilleri Araştırmaları, III: 239–255. Thomann, Johannes. 2016. ‘Die frühesten türkischen Übersetzungen von Tausendundeiner Nacht und deren Bedeutung für die arabische Textgeschichte’ Asiatische Studien, LXX: 171–219. ― 2017a. ‘The End of the Arabian Nights in Early MS Tradition’ in Contacts and Interaction: proceedings of the 27th Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants Helsinki 2014, ed. by J. Hämeen-Anttila, P. Koskikallio, and I. Lindstedt (Leuven: Peeters), pp. 477–485. ― 2017b. ‘“Few things more perfect”: Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib’s Criterion for the Visibility of the Lunar Crescent and the Dustūr al-munajjimīn’, in Science in the City of Fortune: The Dustūr

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JOHANNES THOMANN al-munajjimīn and its World, ed. by Eva Orthmann and Petra G. Schmidl (Berlin: EB-Verlag), pp. 137–170.

― 2020. ‘Reshaping the Frame Story of the Thousand and One Nights: The Coherence of Prologue and Epilogue in the Earliest Existing Arabic MSS’ in The Thousand and One Nights Sources and Transformations in Literature, Art, and Science, ed. by William E. Granara and Ibrahim Akel (Leiden: Brill), pp. 23–38. Tor, Gülseren. 1994. Elf leyletin ve leyle hikâyelerinde cümle (metin-inceleme) (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Çukurova Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü). ― 2010. ‘Binbir gece hikâyeleri’nin 15. yüzyılda yapılmış türkçe çevirisinde (Bursa nüshası) üslup (biçem)’ in Binbir gece’ye bakışlar ed. by Mehmet Kalpaklı and Neslihan Demirkol (Istanbul: Turkuaz Yayınları), pp. 125–164. Tornberg, Carl Johan. 1849. Codices arabici, persici et turcici bibliothecae regiae universitatis Upsaliensis (Uppsala: Universitetsbibliotek). Zotenberg, Hermann. 1887. ‘Notice sur quelques manuscrits des Mille et une Nuits et la traduction de Galland’ Notice et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, XXVIII: 167–320.

LEARNING OVER-NIGHTS: CALCUTTA ONE AS AN ADAPTATION FOR LEARNERS OF ARABIC ORHAN ELMAZ (UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS)* This chapter is devoted to an analysis of the first printed edition of the Nights in Arabic as an adaptation in terms of language and contents since it was intended to be used as a textbook to learn conversational Arabic in the early nineteenth century. This is the first attempt to study editor al-Shirwānī’s modifications to his assumed source text, an indirect copy of the eighteenth-century Russell manuscript, an edition that covers the frame story as far as the beginning of Shahrazad’s tale of the first night. The frame story is the most famous and best-known section of the Nights. In just over 2,000 words, it contains enough variation in grammar, syntax and semantics for the purpose of a linguistic study of the alterations, simplifications and mostly standardizations introduced by the editor. However, the frame story also features some infamous scenes of sexual nature. In the following, I will evaluate the editor’s liberal adaptation of these and another adult humorous scene from the more explicit and well-known story cycle of the Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad. The study will be concluded with a discussion of the appropriateness I am most grateful to Dr Miranda Morris for her very helpful and valuable comments and suggestions. *

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of the first Calcutta edition (henceforth C1) in the context of contemporary children’s literature in Arabic in terms of both contents and with respect to the multiglossic reality of Arabic, more notably, its standardised language, having levelled out most of the Levantine colloquial features of the assumed original Russell manuscript. This will highlight the timeless value of the Nights as a source of inspiration and the asset of its linguistically hybrid manuscripts like the one underlying C1 to diversify the teaching of Arabic by including colloquial language to facilitate real life conversations for students. The amount of modern hybrid texts that are written in standard Arabic and include colloquialisms or entire dialogues in a colloquial or regional variety of Arabic has been rather scarce but is increasing gradually. In fact, this modern trend is diametrically contrary to al-Shirwāni’s approach analysed at the beginning of this chapter, who aimed to eliminate all the colloquial colouring in the manuscript which he edited in an attempt to create the first, albeit partial, printed edition of the Nights in conversational standard Arabic.

‘CALCUTTA ONE’

The Nights’ popularity with European readers must have led the College of Fort William in Calcutta to commission Shuekh Uhmud bin Moohummud Shirwanee ool Yumunee (Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Anṣārī [al-]Shirwānī al-Yamānī, 1785–1837) to create the first printed edition of the Nights in Arabic that came to be known as the ‘Calcutta One’ or ‘First Calcutta’ edition.1 It is dedicated to the council members of the College, namely John Herbert Harington, John Fombelle, and James Stuart, and pubThe first to print a section of the Nights in Arabic appears to be the Scotsman John Richardson, who included the tale of the 162nd night, namely the ‘Tale of the Barber’s Fifth Brother’ in his Grammar of the Arabick Language (1776: 201–210, cf. Irwin 1994: 47, 60), which was meant to be a resource ‘for the service of the honourble East India Company’.

1

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lished in two volumes in 1814 and 1818. It should be noted that Arabic books published in India were difficult to get hold of in Europe (Sacy 1817: 677). Each volume contains the tales of one hundred nights, with the Sindbad cycle included at the end of the second volume (Zotenberg 1887: 216). The editor was employed as a teacher of Arabic at the College of Fort William in Calcutta since 1805 (Fück 1955: 139) or more likely 1810 (Mahdi 1984–1994, III: 91, and Al-Mesri 2015: 79, 84), an academy established for young British civil servants employed by the East India Company.2 Due to its language and style, the Nights did not enjoy prestige within the context of Arabic literature. Its format of prose with intermittent poetic insertions and its affinity with the vivid, spoken colloquial language lends itself well to live performances by wandering storytellers (ḥakawātī). However, within Arabic literary circles, the Nights were not highly regarded and many educated Arabs even today do not consider oral tales worthy of serious recognition and share a negative attitude toward colloquialism (El-Shamy 2004: 12). Yet, it is this closeness to the spoken idiom and the deviations from classical Arabic grammar that caught al-Shirwānī’s attention, and especially the fact that he believed that the manuscript of the Nights he had access to was of Ottoman Syrian provenance. In his preface in Persian, the lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent at that time, he expresses his belief that ‘this book’ was originally intended for learners of Arabic who would acquire conversational Arabic through reading it. Although we can safely reject the claim of Al-Shirwānī aspired to re-establish Arabic Studies in India (GAL S II: 850–851, Al-Mesri 2015), and he edited several works in Arabic, among others the first edition of al-Fīrūzābādī’s dictionary al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ in 1811, the incomplete edition of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity (Rasāʾil ikhwān al-ṣafā) in 1812, and al-Mutanabbī’s poetry in 1814. His son Muḥammad ʿAbbās Rifʿat Shirwānī (Storey 1970: 226) and his grandson Abū al-Qāsim Muḥtasham (Storey 1972: 916) were both literary figures and contributed to the study of Ottoman history and Persian literature, respectively.

2

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learning how to speak Arabic by reading the manuscript or his edition of the Nights alone (rather than, for instance, a corpus of dialogues), the language curriculum at Fort William College did include instruction in oral skills in the languages taught there (Sacy 1817: 677–678). C1 deviates from the Russell manuscript which was brought from Aleppo (1750–1771, University of Manchester, JRL Arabic MS 647 [40]) and of which al-Shirwānī is assumed to have possessed an indirect copy (Mahdi 1984–1994, III: 91).3 Duncan Black Macdonald questioned whether many of the differences were ‘due to al-Shirwānī’s pedagogical attitude or to the MS which he used’ (1922: 314). Based on Mahdi’s introduction to his edition of the oldest extant manuscript of the Nights from Syria, Eva Sallis concluded that al-Shirwānī’s edition was meant to introduce the learner to a ‘more colloquial idiom’ (1999: 30). His edition of the Nights was intended to be used as a textbook, and extracts from the Nights even provided material for language exams for officers in the military and civil service later in the nineteenth century (Jarrett 1880). Yet, although al-Shirwānī remarks on the presence of some mistakes or colloquialisms (alfāẓ-e malḥūneh) and confirms that they are not due to the editor’s (moṣaḥḥeḥ) negligence but reflect the realities of spoken Arabic, he seems to have disliked colloquialisms and to have been something of a linguistic purist (cf. Mahdi 1984–1994, I: 15).

THE EDITION: L ANGUAGE – GRAMMAR

As al-Shirwānī mentions in his Persian preface, the underlying text of the manuscript deviates from the standards of Classical Arabic (cf. examples from the manuscript which Galland used and Mahdi edited in Halflants 2012: 118–119), and he presents some corrections in terms of verb form, gender agreement and number, and not least, contents in order to comply with the About the history and relevance of the Russell manuscript, see Starkey 2013: 242–253. 3

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grammar of standard Arabic. For instance, he changed the reflexive verb form (V tafaʿʿala) in fa-lammā aqbalū ʿalayhi taraḥḥabū bihi into the correct transitive form (II faʿʿala) falammā aqbalū ʿalayhi raḥḥabū bihi ‘when they approached him, they greeted/welcomed him’, simply because sensu stricto the reflexive or quasi-passive verb in form V does not convey the transitive sense of greeting or welcoming someone of form II in Classical Arabic. He also corrected the gender of the incorrectly third person singular feminine verb in ḥīnaʾidhin ( [sic!]) sabaqati al-mubashshirūna ‘at that time came the messengers [of glad tidings]’ into the correctly corresponding masculine one, and has simplified the temporal adverb into ʿinda dhālika sabaqa al-mubashshirūna, ‘thereupon came the messengers [of glad tidings]’. One can observe that many masculine singular accusative objects are missing the correct case ending in the Russell manuscript indicated by superscripted empty angular brackets () in the transliteration below (including all case endings where a reading in Standard Arabic is possible). This might be because this ending is usually not pronounced, but al-Shirwānī added the required alif in the following examples: li-anna fīhi siyaran (< siyar) kathīratan, ‘because there are many stories in it’, wayataḍammanu (< yataḍammanuhu) ayḍan siyaran (< siyar) jalīlatan, ‘and it also contains splendid stories’, and wa-llāhi law kuntu anā la-mā kuntu raḍītu bi-qatli alfi imraʾatin wa-ākhira al-amri aṣīru majnūnan (< majnūn), ‘by God, if it were me, killing a thousand women would not satisfy me and in the end I would go mad’. In at least one case, there is an unnecessary and wrong accusative ending in the manuscript that al-Shirwānī deleted: wa-dhakara (< wa-arsala yadhkuru) lahu fī ākhiri al-kitābi almarjūwa (< al-marjūwā), ‘and at the end of the letter he expressed the hope’. Other than the accusative case, there are also mistakes with the genitive case that he corrected, for instance in fa-lammā aqbala (< qadima) akhūhu (< akhīhi) min al-ṣaydi, ‘and when his brother returned from the hunt’, where the subject, that is the brother, must be put in the nominative case (akhūhu) rather than in the genitive as in the manuscript (akhīhi).

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Another grammatical mistake which al-Shirwānī has corrected pertains to the use of the correct pluralization in al-jawāri al-ḥasanīna (sic!) al-abkāru, ‘and beautiful virgin slave-girls’, in which he corrected both plurals. He added the necessary long vowel to the defective jawārin since it is determined by the prefixed article and replaced the unsuitable masculine plural attribute with a more balanced phrase implementing the external feminine plural, al-jawārī al-mubdiʿātu bi-l-ḥusni al-abkāru, ‘and virgin slave-girls of outstanding beauty’.

THE EDITION: L ANGUAGE – CLARIFICATION AND E MPHASIS

In addition to changes (‘corrections’) in terms of language, alShirwānī clarified the text of the manuscript for the reader in terms of content when he corrected and simplified it. Two examples serve to illustrate this. When Shahzaman kills his wife and her lover in his matrimonial bed and cuts them into pieces, the subject of the second verb, ‘to cut into pieces’ is ambiguous in the manuscript. It is not a third person singular masculine verb and hence does not refer back to Shahzaman, which causes confusion by apparently bringing a new agent into the scene. In C1, the passage thus reads wa-ḍarabahumā jamīʿan ḍarbatan wāḥidatan fa-jaʿalahumā (< fa-jaʿalhumā) arbaʿa qiṭaʿin, ‘he hit both of them and finished them in one stroke and he (< I/you sg. (m./f.)/ she) cut them into four pieces’. Here al-Shirwānī corrected the manuscript and disambiguated clearly the agent of the second verb to identify the killer as Shahzaman. An example of emphasis concerns the list of things that Shahriyar had prepared for his brother. In the original manuscript, we find a long genitive compound: ‘[he ordered] the presenting of gifts like … and (that of) a letter in which he told him …’ (iḥḍāru al-hadāyā mithla … wa-kitābin yadhkuru lahu fīhi). AlShirwānī breaks this by starting a new sentence ‘and he wrote him a letter in which he told him’ (wa-kataba lahu kitāban yadhkuru lahu fīhi), where the direct object is governed by its etymologically related verb for emphasis, thus reminding his students of the ‘cognate object’ or ‘absolute object’ (mafʿūl muṭlaq) in Arabic.

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THE EDITION: L ANGUAGE – ORTHOGRAPHY

Most of al-Shirwānī’s interventions, however, lie within the field of dialectal phonetics and orthography, especially the restoration of interdentals and glottal stops (hamza), for instance in the bull’s complaint to the donkey: anta nāyimun wa-anā yaqḍānu, ‘you are asleep and I am awake’, which al-Shirwānī corrected orthographically and etymologically into anta nāʾimun wa-anā yaqẓānu, thus standardizing the statement. The same is true for wa-ʿabbā al-aḥmāla wa-shāla al-atqāla ‘he packed the luggage and lifted the baggage’,4 which he rendered into Standard Arabic waʿabbaʾa al-aḥmāla wa-shāla al-athqāla, and ishtadda ghayḍuhu, ‘his anger grew’ into ishtadda ghayẓuhu. An interesting case is found in the spelling of kharaja li-liqāʾihi, ‘he came out to meet him’ which is written in the original manuscript strangely as with a lengthening madda over the instead of the expected hamza above a dotless of the print edition. Another deviation from standard Arabic orthography worthy of mention is al-Shirwānī’s Quranic orthography of ḥayātun ‘life’, which he renders into defective , probably in order to It is interesting to note that in the Russell manuscript the is represented in dialectal orthography of al-athqāl as al-atqāl with the expected stopping of /θ/ as /t/. Research suggests that the pronunciation of /q/ as /q/ in Aleppo is a male practice (going ultimately back to Barthelémy’s Dictionnaire arabe-français: Dialectes de Syrie of 1935, cf. Barbot 1981, II: 439–441). Similarly, for Damascene Arabic (Daher 1998) and Egyptian Arabic (Bassiouney 2009: 158–161), it has been claimed that the pronunciation of as /ʾ/ is more often realised by women. However, trusting postclassical authors, the phonetic shift /q/ as /ʾ/ is historical and characteristic of ‘commoners’ speech’ and is thus likely to apply to our manuscript as well so that we might expect that standard Arabic al-athqāl was pronounced as common Levantine or Egyptian colloquial Arabic il-atʾāl (cf. al-Sūsuwa 2013: 47–48,148–149). The preservation of the could thus be regarded as etymological or conservative spelling which is still observed in colloquial writing (in song texts and lyric videos on YouTube, for instance) today, even when it is pronounced as /ʾ/. 4

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raise the question of defective orthography in the Quran with his students.

THE EDITION: L ANGUAGE – STANDARDIZATION

We can also identify some Levantine Arabic features in lexicon and morphology which al-Shirwānī has concealed in his printed edition through standardizing the text rather than levelling it by using some pan-Arab dialectal features in order to preserve at least some of the lively, dialectal character (cf. Bassiouney 2009: 117–119). One of the most striking examples is wa-baqā min alghayḍi lā yaqshaʿu wa-lā yasmaʿu, ‘he became blind and deaf with anger’ which al-Shirwānī elevated into standard Arabic wa-ṣāra min al-ghayẓi lā yarā wa-lā yasmaʿu by eliminating all colloquial features. He changed the Levantine verb modificator baqā into the more common (colloquial and standard) Arabic verb ṣāra (instead of literary aṣbaḥa) ‘to become’, corrected the etymology of ghayẓ ‘anger’ and restored the correct interdental, and substituted the standard verb raʾā, yarā ‘to see’ instead of the colloquial qishiʿ, yiqshaʿ (probably pronounced ishiʿ, yiʾshaʿ see fn.4 above, and not the pan-Arab colloquial shāf, yishūf, either).5 Similarly, in the Russell manuscript, the dialogue between Shahrazad and her father, during which she urges him to marry her to the bloodthirsty King Shahriyar, demonstrates colloquial features: there is no gender disambiguation in the plural forms of the verb, and the dialectal continuous or habitual aspect marker b- is used (assuming that the text really hails from Aleppo, we add the vowel –a– to it for the first person singular in the Understanding baqā to mean ṣāra ‘to become’ makes perfect sense in this context, although this does not comply with the examples given by Fischer (2002: 151) from modern Arabic dialects. Similarly, the verb for ‘to see’ used in the original manuscript, qashaʿa, is said to be of Syriac origin by the priest Jarjis Shalḥat (see Qenshrin). However, the root √qšʿ is not attested in Aramaic. Furthermore, this verb had been already widely used in mediaeval times among a wide variety of Arabic dialects (see Behnstedt & Woidich 2011–2014, III: 335) which further denies the claim of a specifically Syriac influence here. 5

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transliteration, see Sabuni 1980: 113).6 Shahrazad then speaks in a hybrid form of Aleppo Arabic, somewhere between colloquial and standard Arabic: wa-law annī bamūt wa-bahlik fa-akūnu ṣirtu bi-sawiyyati al-banāti alladhīna qutilū wa-mātū ʿalā yadika biamri al-maliki, ‘even if I were to die and perish and become like the girls who were killed and died at your hand by the order of the king’. Interestingly, as stated in his preface, al-Shirwānī’s aim is to bring his readership closer to spoken (standard) Arabic, and he neither introduced the feminine plural forms of the relative pronoun alladhī ‘who, which’, nor feminine plural verbs. His only modifications are limited to dropping the aspectual marker b-, to insert the particle qad between fa-akūnu and the past tense verb ṣirtu for the future perfect tense ‘I shall have become’, and simplify bi-sawiyyati through mithla. He thus rendered her statement into spoken Standard Arabic: wa-law annī amūtu wa-ahliku fa-akūnu qad ṣirtu mithla al-banāti alladhīna qutilū wa-mātū ʿalā yadika bi-amri al-maliki. Her father, Shahriyar’s vizier, is not at all happy about his daughter’s plans to marry the king and reprimands her in colloquial language: yā qalīlata al-ʿaqli inti (!) mā btaʿrafī …, ‘Oh, you small-minded one. You don’t know ...’ Here, alShirwānī adjusted the spelling of the second person singular feminine pronoun by dropping the gender disambiguating but colloquial long ending , and translated the colloquial negation of the verb into Standard Arabic using another verb for ‘to know’, notably one that is used less frequently: yā qalīlata al-ʿaqli anti lā taʿlamīna. Again, his rendering eliminates the intimacy of living colloquial speech and introduces instead an artificial barrier between the reader and the characters, thus disengaging the former from the plot (cf. Perteghella 2002: 51).7 In Barth’s postmodern adaptation of the Nights Dunyazadiad (1972) focusing on Shahrazad’s sister, Dunyazade speaks with a modern colloquial voice, see Jones 2005: 123. 7 At the same time, al-Shirwānī did not consider changing the wording or describing the father’s fear for his daughter in order to explain his emotional reaction to his daughter’s expressed wish, the way one finds 6

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Another dialectal verb feature is found in the donkey’s advice to the bull, where al-Shirwānī also removed the aspectual marker b-: wa-tajʿalu rūḥaka mayyit kāna awfaqa laka wa-kunta btalqā min al-rāḥati aḍʿāfa mā anā fīhi, ‘and pretend you are dead [tired]: it will be better for you and you will get much more rest than I do’. Here he substituted nafs ‘soul’ for rūḥ ‘spirit’,8 and added the necessary accusative case ending for the predicate of the verb jaʿala ‘(here:) to pretend’ yielding: wa-tajʿalu nafsaka mayyitan kāna awfaqa laka wa-kunta talqā min al-rāḥati aḍʿāfa mā anā fīhi.

THE EDITION: L ANGUAGE – ARABICIZATION

Al-Shirwānī’s language purism can be further demonstrated by his Arabicizing of certain loanwords, which must have been common in northern Levantine Arabic dialects at the time. He translates colloquial sarāyit al-malik, ‘the Court of the King’ into dāru ḥukūmati al-maliki in order to eliminate the Persian sarāy, which might have entered the local dialect via Ottoman Turkish or Kurdish. Nevertheless, the word sarāy or sarāyat is used frequently in Modern Standard Arabic and modern Arabic dialects, including Khorasan Arabic tharāy ‘house’, Sudanese Arabic serāya ‘a European house’, and Chadian Arabic sorôya ‘a flatroofed mud house’ (Behnstedt & Woidich 2011–2014, II: 64). Very similar to this is the case of etymologically Iranian dard ‘pain’ in the long passage where Shahriyar realises what his it in the fifteenth century Ottoman Turkish translation (‘Bursa manuscript’). There, the father’s fear of being forced to execute his daughter the morning after her wedding in the usual manner since the king would never sleep with any of his wives twice is spelled out (ṣabāḥ olduġınlayın seni baŋa ḳatl ėtmege vėre ‘so that he gives me you to kill when the morning breaks’, see Bursa 2016: fol. 1b). About the linguistic characteristics of this translation, which might be based on a Persian translation of the Nights, see Tor 2010. 8 Both, nafs ‘soul’ and rūḥ ‘spirit’ can be used to mark the identity of the object and the verbal subject in modern Arabic dialects, including those of Sanaa (Watson 1993: 137) and Cairo (Woidich 2006: 354).

LEARNING OVER-NIGHTS

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wife and slave girls were doing. This word is still used in other languages in the region, including Arabic spoken in southeastern Turkey (Lahdo 2009: 167) and Iraq (Clarity 2003: 156a s.r. d-r-d) as well as some neo-Aramaic dialects (Khan 2008: 502), and reflects language contact: fa-lammā raʾā al-maliku Shahrayāru mā jarā min zawjatihi wa-waṣāʾifihi (< wa-jawārh) ghaḍiba jiddan ḥattā annahu kharaja min ʿaqlihi thumma qāla mā salima aḥadun (< aḥadan [!]) min ruzʾi (< dardi) hādhihi al-dunyā aldaniyyati, ‘When King Shahriyar saw what was happening with his wife and his slave-girls, he became so angry that he lost his mind and he said: “Nobody is safe from worldly suffering”’. Al-Shirwānī, however, also used another word for ‘palace’ in the Russell manuscript, one which seems to be already used in Classical and ‘Middle’ (or: ‘Literary Mixed’) Arabic, for instance in Ibn Jubayr’s (d. 1217) description of the Sicilian city Tharma in his travelogue: al-balāṭ. Al-Shirwānī replaced al-balāṭ with the Arabic al-qaṣr in dakhala al-maliku Shāhzamānu ilā alqaṣri (