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THE ARABIAN NIGHTS TALES OF 1001 NIGHTS VOLUME 2 MALCOLM C. LYONS, sometime Sir Thomas Adams Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University and a life Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, is a specialist in the field of classical Arabic Literature. His published works include the biography Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War, The Arabian Epic: Heroic and Oral Storytelling, Identification and Identity in Classical Arabic Poetry and many articles on Arabic literature. URSULA LYONS, formerly an Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Cambridge University and, since 1976, an Emeritus Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, specializes in modern Arabic literature. ROBERT IRWIN is the author of For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies, The Middle East in the Middle Ages, The Arabian Nights: A Companion and numerous other specialized studies of Middle Eastern politics, art and mysticism. His novels include The Limits of Vision, The Arabian Nightmare, The Mysteries of Algiers and Satan Wants Me. Volume 2 Nights 295 to 719 Translated by MALCOLM C. LYONS, with URSULA LYONS Introduced and Annotated by ROBERT IRWIN PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN CLASSICS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England www.penguin.com Translation of Nights 295 to 719 copyright © Malcolm C. Lyons, 2008 Translation of alternative version of ‘The seventh journey of Sindbad’ copyright © Ursula Lyons, 2008 Introduction and Glossary copyright © Robert Irwin, 2008 All rights reserved The moral right of the translators and editor has been asserted Text illustrations design by Coralie Bickford-Smith; images: Gianni Dagli Orti/Turkish and Islamic Art Museum, Istanbul/The Art Archive Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser ISBN: 978-0-14-194352-7 Editorial Note Introduction The Arabian Nights: Nights 295 to 719 Glossary Maps The ‘Abbasid Caliphate in the Ninth Century Baghdad in the Ninth Century Cairo in the Fourteenth Century Index of Nights and Stories This new English version of The Arabian Nights (also known as The Thousand and One Nights) is the first complete translation of the Arabic text known as the Macnaghten edition or Calcutta II since Richard Burton’s famous translation of it in 1885–8. A great achievement in its time, Burton’s translation nonetheless contained many errors, and even in the 1880s his English read strangely. In this new edition, in addition to Malcolm Lyons’s translation of all the stories found in the Arabic text of Calcutta II, Ursula Lyons has translated the tales of Aladdin and Ali Baba, as well as an alternative ending to ‘The seventh journey of Sindbad’, from Antoine Galland’s eighteenth-century French. (For the Aladdin and Ali Baba stories no original Arabic text has survived and consequently these are classed as ‘orphan stories’.) The text appears in three volumes, each with an introduction, which, in Volume 1, discusses the strange nature of the Nights; in Volume 2, their history and provenance; and, in Volume 3, the influence the tales have exerted on writers through the centuries. Volume 1 also includes an explanatory note on the translation, a note on the text and an introduction to the ‘orphan stories’ (‘Editing Galland’), in addition to a chronology and suggestions for further reading. Footnotes, a glossary and maps appear in all three volumes. As often happens in popular narrative, inconsistencies and contradictions abound in the text of the Nights. It would be easy to emend these, and where names have been misplaced this has been done to avoid confusion. Elsewhere, however, emendations for which there is no textual authority would run counter to the fluid and uncritical spirit of the Arabic narrative. In such circumstances no changes have been made. The medieval Arabic story collection of Alf Layla wa-Layla, or the Thousand and One Nights, is best known in English as The Arabian Nights. It is reasonable to ask how old this classic work of Oriental fiction is, who wrote or compiled it and how many stories it contains. But such questions are almost impossible to answer. The collection was put together in a haphazard, unpoliced fashion over many centuries. In the opening story which frames all the other stories in the Nights, the monarch Shahriyar, who has been sexually betrayed by his wife, cuts off her head and, thereafter, he takes a different virgin to bed every night and has her killed in the morning. In order to break the bloody cycle, Shahrazad, daughter of the king’s vizier, volunteers to give herself to Shahriyar, but, in order to avert her execution, she starts to tell a story to her sister, Dunyazad, whom she has brought with her into Shahriyar’s bedroom. Shahrazad leaves her story unfinished at the break of dawn, and Shahriyar spares her life in order to hear the rest. And so things proceed, with Shahrazad finishing one tale only to start a new one. This goes on night after night until, after a thousand and one nights, Shahriyar repents of his decision to have her killed. This frame story of a clever bride telling stories to a jealous king in order to prolong her life goes back to a lost Sanskrit original dating from

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Translated by Malcolm C. Lyons