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Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Alif Layla

The book popularly called Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights in English and Alif Layla in Persian is a medieval Middle-Eastern literary epic which tells the story of Scheherazade, a Sassanid Queen, who must relate a series of stories to her malevolent husband, the King, to delay her execution. The stories are told over a period of one thousand and one nights, and every night she ends the story with a suspenseful situation, forcing the King to keep her alive for another day. The individual stories were created over many centuries, by many people and in many styles, and they have become famous in their own right.

The story takes place in the Sassanid era and begins with the Persian king Shahryar. The king rules an unnamed island "between India and China". Shahryar is so shocked by his wife's infidelity that he kills her and, believing all women to be likewise unfaithful, gives his vizier an order to get him a new wife every night. After spending one night with his bride, the king has her executed at dawn. This practice continues for some time, until the vizier's clever daughter Sheherazade forms a plan and volunteers to become Shahrayar's next wife. With the help of her sister Dunyazad, every night after their marriage she spends hours telling him stories, each time stopping at dawn with a cliffhanger, so the king will postpone the execution out of a desire to hear the rest of the tale. In the end, she has given birth to three sons, and the king has been convinced of her faithfulness and revoked his decree.

While in many cases a story is cut off with the hero in life danger or another kind of deep trouble, in some parts of the full text Scheherazade stops her narration in the middle of an exposition of abstact philosophical principles or abstruse points of Islamic theology, and in one case during a detailed description of human anatomy according to Galen. In all these cases turns out to be justified in her belief that the king's curiosity about the sequel would buy her another day of life.

The tales vary widely; they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques and Muslim religious legends. Some of the famous stories Sheherazade spins in many western translations are Aladdin's Lamp, the Persian Sindbad the Sailor, and the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves as well as the tales of Hatim who must complete his quest for answers to 7 questions.

Numerous stories depict djinns, magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography; the historical caliph Harun al-Rashid is a common protagonist, as are his alleged court poet Abu Nuwas and his vizier, Ja'far al-Barmaki. Sometimes a character in Scheherazade's tale will begin telling other characters a story of his own, and that story may have another one told within it, resulting in a richly layered narrative texture.

Contrary to popular belief, Scheherazade's stories are not just childern's entertainment. They fall in the same genre as Shakespeare's plays and carry the same elegance as that of noted poet Omar Khayyam's works. Persian lifestyle and culture can best be learnt from Alif Layla. Many of these stories have been immortalised in comics, computer games and even movies.




posted by Unknown @ 12:04 AM 

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