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THE ARABIAN NIGHTS TALES OF 1001 NIGHTS VOLUME 3 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 3 Nights 719 to 1001 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 This translation first published in Penguin Classics hardback 2008 Published in paperback 2010 Translation of Nights 719 to 1001 copyright © Malcolm C. Lyons, 2008 Translation of ‘The story of Aladdin, or The Magic Lamp’ 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: Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul/The Bridgeman Art Library 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: 978-0-14-194356-5 Editorial Note Introduction The Arabian Nights: Nights 719 to 1001 The Story of Aladdin, or The Magic Lamp 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 Christians of medieval Europe believed Asia to be a region of fabulous riches, strange marvels and wise sages. Cannibals and dog- headed men dwelt there and lambs grew from the soil as plants. The Travels of Sir John de Mandeville, written sometime between 1357 and 1371, gave an account of the marvels of Asia that was supposedly based on the author’s journeyings. However, Mandeville’s Travels was no kind of Rough Guide to Asia, providing reliable information for prospective travellers. It was, rather, a work of entertainment in which interesting facts were mixed in with even more interesting fictions. Some of the wonders conjured up by Mandeville are common to The Arabian Nights and to The Seven Voyages of Sindbad. These include the giant bird known as the rukh, the Amazon warrior women, the Magnetic Mountain, the Fountain of Youth and the earthly paradise. In later centuries, Galland, Lane and Burton were to use their translations of The Arabian Nights as vehicles for instructive glosses and footnotes about Islamic and Arab manners and customs. But medieval Christian storytellers were not so interested in such things, and they had little sense of the otherness of the Arab world. They did not compose or adapt stories featuring veiled women, harems, eunuchs and camels. There seems to have been no attempt to produce a translation of the Nights that might have served any educational purpose. Instead,