Download
1 / 18
200 likes | 699 Views
The Thousand and one nights. ( alf layla wa-layla ) . background. The Thousand and One Nights is a compilation of different common stories from west and southeast Asia. It is commonly called Arabian Nights by English speaking people and Alf Layla Wa-Layla in Arabic.
E N D
The Thousand and one nights (alflaylawa-layla)
background • The Thousand and One Nights is a compilation of different common stories from west and southeast Asia. • It is commonly called Arabian Nights by English speaking people and Alf LaylaWa-Laylain Arabic. • The stories are from the Islamic Golden Age, and, given where they were written, are meant to promote the Islamic religion. • This compilation is written in the form of a frame story. • This means that different points of view, and really different stories, are all happening and being told at once.
Things you should definitely know • The Purpose • A king, Shahrayar, had an unfaithful wife. • The fact that she was unfaithful made the king extremely angry, and he lost all faith in women. • Thus, a good king became a tyrant. • The entire work is an effort to get him to stop with his evil ways (sleeping with a new woman every night, then killing her the next morning).
Prologue(The Story of King Shahrayar and Shahrazad, His Vizier’s daughter) • Based during the Sasanid dynasty… Around the peninsulas of India and Indochina • Two brothers (Shahrayar (Sha-ra-ra); oldest brother, great ruler, power reached to the “remotest” places. Everyone was loyal to him) and Shahzaman (Sha-za-za); Younger Brother, ruled city, given by Sha-ra-ra) • Sha-ra-ra missed his bro, so he asked his posse boy (who had two daughters)- (not sure why, but this was brought up several times)- (you understand why later) to make accommodations and such for his arrival. • Sha-za-za wanted to go, so he packed his things and came back in to tell his wifey-poo bye, only to find a kitchen boy with her… IN HIS OWN BED!!!- Low Strike on Sha-za-za. • SO.. he killed them. • Sha-za-za went on to his brother’s house and then Sha-ra-ra realized his bro was down, so he assumed he wanted to go home. • They proclaimed they were going hunting except the young brother didn’t want to go so he stayed home in the guest house.
Prologue Cont. • Sha-za-za went on to his brother’s house and then Sha-ra-ra realized his bro was down, so he assumed he wanted to go home. • They proclaimed they were going hunting except the young brother didn’t want to go so he stayed home in the guest house. • The brother saw the king’s wife and slaves “getting it on” so he magically realized that he didn’t have it that bad • Sha-ra-ra saw that Sha-za-za felt better so he asked why… and after a while he told him the whole thing. • So the brothers fake hunted and posted up in the tower again. • They saw what Sha-za-za did the first time and the kings were furious. • They went out and saw a demon emerge, so they hid in a tree. • The demon brought a glass chest with 4 locks on it, he opened the locks and a beautiful woman appeared. Demon fell asleep on her lap and the girl explained how she was his wife.
Even more prologue • The demon hid her from the world so no one would have sex with her. • She told the brothers if they didn’t mount her that she would wake the demon up and have it kill them. • They complied and then asked for to brothers’ rings to add to her collection to make 100. • The brothers realized all women are like this and so the king vowed to kill every woman the next morning after her slept with them. • The posse boy with the two daughters did the dirty work. • One of the posse boys’ daughters had an idea to stop the king. • She wanted to offer herself to him her father refused and told her of the Ox and Donkey…
The tale of the ox and the donkey Ox gets tired every day in field, donkey doesn’t To try and improve life the ox takes the donkeys advice and doesn’t perform as well or eat. Donkey’s plan backfires, causing the donkey to do the ox’s work. Donkey is very upset, while the Ox is praising the Donkey
The tale of the merchant and his wife • The story is being told to a girl named Sharazad by her father, Shahrayar Vizier. • There is a man who can understand animal language. • His wife gets angry because he won’t share his gift with her. • So, she ceases to speak to him until he tells her what the animas are saying. • If he tells her, he will die. • He overhears a dog and a chicken saying he should beat his wife mercilessly until she no longer wants to know. • He does it, and she no longer wants to know. • Vizier tells his daughter he will do the same to her if she sleeps with the king. • The story then shifts to being about Shahrazad. • She goes to sleep with the king Shahrayar, but afterwards tells him a story per her sister’s, Dinarzad, request …
The first night (the story of the merchant and the demon) • There is a merchant who has a big, happy family. • He decides to go on a journey. • He brings with him bread and dates. • On the fourth day in the journey, he stops to eat at am orchid plant. • He throws his date pits on the ground when he is finished. • As he is doing this, a demon rises from the ground telling him that one of his discarded pits had killed the son of the demon. • The merchant is deeply saddened…
The second night • The merchant begs the demon to delay his death for a year. • The demon skeptically agrees. • The merchant goes back to the orchid and meets a man walking a deer on a leash. • He tells the man of his predicament. • The deer walker vows to stay with the man until the situation is resolved.
The third night • As the merchant and the deer walker sit, another man arrives. • This man is accompanied by two dogs. • The merchant tells him his story. • Dog man vows to stay as well. • As they all sit and talk, another man arrives. • This man is accompanied by a mule. • The merchant tells his story. • Mule man stays. • As they all sit waiting, the demon appears. • The merchant is told to prepare for death.
The fourth night • The first old man is speaking to the demon to delay the death. • In the fourth night, a man is married to a woman who bores him no children. • So, he takes a mistress. • This mistress has a son, but the wife gets jealous. • So, the wife turns the wife into a cow and the son into a bull. • When the husband returns from his journey, she makes him butcher the mistress. • He begins to slaughter his son, and then it moves on to the fifth night…
The fifth night • The man does not slaughter his cow son. • The next morning, the shepherd comes to his master saying his daughter is a soothsayer. • The soothsayer daughter saw that the bull was actually the son. • So, she turned him back into a human. • Her only conditions were that the master let her marry the son and that he let her cast a spell on the wife and turn her into a deer. • She did both. • The wife deer stayed with the master until the soothsayer died and they moved to the country where this conversation is taking place. • The demon grants the master a third of the life of the merchant. • Then, the man with two dogs steps up to tell his story…
The sixth night (The Second old man’s tale) • The second old man is talking to the demon with two dogs at his side. • He says the two dogs are his brothers. • His brothers and he had little shops that they owned. • Both brothers at separate times decided to go on trading trips. • They both ended up penniless. • They both came back and got half of their brother’s money to open up new shops. • For six years, the two brothers asked their other brother to go on a trading trip with them. • He finally went, but split his money into two before he went. • He saved half for the trip and buried the other in the ground just in case their trip failed.
The seventh night • The main brother meets a woman in tattered clothes on their journey. • She asks him to marry her. • He does. • The main brother makes a good fortune on the trip, and the other brothers get jealous. • They try to kill him by throwing him in the sea from their boat. • The new wife (a she-demon who believes in Islam) saves the main brother. • She says the other brothers must be punished. • So, she gets her sister to turn them into dogs for ten years. • Then, the wife leaves and tells the main brother where to find her when dog time is over. • Main bro meets the demon on the way to meet the wife. • The demon grants the man a third of the merchant’s life.
The eighth night (The third old man’s tale) • The sheikh is up next. • He came home from a long journey to find his wife cheating on him. • She then turned him into a dog. • A butcher’s daughter sees he is a man and returns him to being a human. • He asks her to turn his wife into a mule. • She does so by telling him to sprinkle water on her when she’s sleeping. • When the sheikh is finished the demon gives him a third of the merchant’s life. • The merchant goes free, because his debt has been paid by the three old men.
How it relates • In this selection, women are presented in an almost mystical, magical way. • Most of the women possess some sort of supernatural gift. • The women also almost always mess stuff up. Then it is a woman who turns things right again. • There were the yin and yang women in almost every story. • One woman would be evil (e.g. wife who turned mistress and son into cows), and one would be the savior (e.g. soothsayers).
Ta da. • Brought to you by: • Collin Baggett, Will Clayton, and Savannah Conley
