EWANA Center

Menu
Menu
H » Cultural and Literary Heritage » Folktales » One Thousand and One Nights

One Thousand and One Nights

By /
  • Lotfi Akalay (1943 – 2019, Morocco) – Les nuits d’Azed (‘The nights of Azed’, 1996). This novel is a modern retelling of the One Thousand and One Nights tales. The narrator of this novel, Azed, uses the technique of storytelling to avoid repudiation after her wedding night to Kamal, who, like Shahriyar, had caught his wife cheating while out hunting. Azed tells the story of the handsome Mokhtar and his rich wife Fetéma. While Mokhtar is eternally tempted by other women, Fetéma falls for Larbi, a country gendarme, with whom she tries to set up a trap for Mokhtar (reference). The novel’s stories reflect on present day Moroccan society, with topics such as sexual harassment, prostitution, and illegal emigration (reference).
  • Rajāʾ ʿĀlim (1970-, Saudi Arabia) – Sīdī Waḥdānah (1998, English trans. My Thousand and One Nights: A Novel of Mecca, 2007). This novel uses characters and elements of A Thousand and One Nights, stories from ancient traditions, and references to Sufi mysticism (reference). It is set in Mecca and narrated by a young woman, Jamū, who tells the story of her late aunt’s past, who’s life next to the grand mosque was filled with riddles and strange happenings.
  • The first part of Wāsīnī al-Arʿaj’s (1954-, Algeria) 1993 two-volume work Fājiʿat Al-Laylah al-Sābiʿah Baʿda al-Alf – Raml al-Māyah (‘The disaster of the thousand and seventh night – the sand of a hundred’) refers to One Thousand and One Nights to address the issues of contemporary Algeria. It uses a similar frame story to One Thousand and One Nights, and starts where this latter ended, with the story of Maʿarūf the Cobbler and his wife Fāṭimah, which it retells in a manner that can be interpreted as a critique of authoritarianism (reference). The heroine of the novel continues to tell the story of ‘al-Bashīr al-Mūriskū’, the basis of many side-stories, through which it links to the history of Muslims (Moriscos) in Andalusia (see also H: Historical Novels: Al-Andalus (Andalusia) (711-1492 CE)). It uses both the Modern Standard Arabic and the Algerian dialect (reference) (also in L: Language and Dialects: Algerian dialect). (For the second part of the volume, al-Makhṭuṭah al-Sharqīyyah (‘The Eastern manuscript’, 2002) see: S: Speculative Fiction: Dystopia).
  • ʿAlī Aḥmad Bākthīr’s (1910 – 1969, Egypt) play Sirr Shahrazād (‘The secret of Shahrazad’, 1953). In this play, Shahrazad is a modern, cultured woman who studies music, marries Shahriyar, and through her openness manages to change his outlook on life (reference). She also manages to get him to stop marrying and murdering a different woman every night.
  • Rachid Boudjedra (written elsewhere as Rashīd Būjdirah, 1941-, Algeria) – Les 1001 Années de la nostalgie (‘1001 years of Nostalgia’, 1979). This novel is a satire of the imaginary Algerian Saharan village of Manama, which is confronted with an American film company, symbolic for American cultural imperialism, wanting to make a film adaption of One Thousand and One Nights. When the confrontation between the film crew and the inhabitants erupts into violence, the scenes are used for the movie. The main protagonist of the novel is an only child in a family of nine sets of twins and spends much time looking for the house in Manama where historian Ibn Khaldun presumably wrote his important work (reference)(also in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Cinema and S: Social Issues and Societal Change: Globalization and Consumerism).
  • Alfrīd Faraj’s (1929 – 2005, Egypt) play Hallaq Baghdād (‘The barber of Baghdad’, 1963) and ʿAlī Janāḥ al-Tabrīzī wa Tābiʿuhu Quffah (1969, English trans. The Caravan, or Ali Janah al-Tabrizi and His Servant Quffah, 1989).

Hallaq Baghdād consists of two stories that each centre a barber, Abū al-Faḍūl, and refer to a collection attributed to the classical writings of al-Jāhiz as well as the stories of A Thousand and One Nights. The barber, a son of the 1952 revolution in Egypt, helps his clients’ fight against exploitation and injustice, such as the widower Zayn al-Nisāʾ who needs to fight off two admirers, and the young couple Yūsuf an Yāsmīnah, who face duress in spite of their love for each other (reference). But when his barber’s permit is revoked by the tyrannic authorities, however, he is forced to other means of making a living (reference).

 

In ʿAlī Janāḥ al-Tabrīzī wa Tābiʿuhu Quffah, al-Faraj draws on one of the themes of One Thousand and One Nights: “that of a wealthy merchant whose caravan of fabulous goods has been delayed and who needs ‘temporary credit’” (reference). The story centres ʿAlī, a lord who has wasted all his money and talks a poor cobbler into serving him. They travel to the east together while pretending that the lord is a rich man whose caravan is still to come. He soon becomes a myth, and through his charms marries a Princess. However, when the King is no longer convinced that ʿAlī’s caravan is coming, he imprisons him. ʿAlī eventually escapes and flees together with the cobbler and his wife (also in L: Cultural and Literary Heritage: Philosophical heritage: German authors and philosophers).

  • Kamel Daoud’s (1970-, Algeria) – Zobor ou Les psaumes (2017, English trans. Zabor, or the Psalms, 2020). After the protagonist of this novel, Zabor, lost his mother, he finds comfort and refuge in endless reading and writing. He is convinced that if he writes, he will keep death far away and thus does so obsessively, with stories that are as elaborate as possible, to keep his fellow villagers alive, all the while scarcely leaving his own room (reference). Like Scheherazade, he tells stories to prevent others from dying, especially when his estranged father falls ill. Day and night Zabor and his (imaginary) dog sit by his side (also in D: Death: Death).
Image of Zabor au les Pslams generated through DALL·E by Desiree Custers
  • Assia Djebber (written elsewhere as Assiya Jabbār, 1936 – 2015, Algeria) – Ombre Sultane (1987, English trans. A Sister to Sheherazade, 1987). Two co-wives of an autocratic husband form the centre of this novel, the westernized Isma and her culturally indigenous colleague Hajila (reference). Isma conspires with Hajila against their subversiveness to the patriarchal home, leading to their relationship turning into a hybrid western-Arab feminist sisterhood, which interrogates the patriarchal social and cultural values in the Algerian context in which the story takes place (reference) (also in S: Social Issues and Societal Change: Patriarchism).
  • ʿAzzaldīn Shukrī Fashīr (1966-, Egypt) – Kul Hadha al-Harāʾ (‘All that nonsense’, 2017). Evoking One Thousand and One Nights, this novel sheds light on the many taboos of Egyptian society. It tells of a ‘male Scheherazade’, ʿUmar, who recounts to his girlfriend, the American-Egyptian Amal, stories of his friends’ imprisonment and the Arab spring revolution, including the August 2013 Rabaa massacre and the harassments that took place (reference). The story takes place in 24 hours, during which the two do not leave the bed, and ʿUmar’s stories are only interrupted by sex, eating, and napping (also in 2013 Protests Egypt against Morsi).
  • Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s (1898 – 1987, Egypt) play Shams al-Nahār (‘Princess sunshine’, 1965) picks out a story from the One Thousand and One Nights tradition in which a princess wishes to marry a man that she deserves, rather than a wealthy man. She invites all men of the village to present themselves, and eventually takes an interest in a poor, untutored man who has a strong personality in addition to his own conditions for the princess: that she leads an ordinary life with him. She accepts, and the two go off on a trip in which she learns not only how to work, but also how to be independent of her would be fiancé. This last development led to her love for Ḥamdān, a man of her own class. She marries him with the support of the broken-hearted, poor man (reference).
  • Ṭaha Ḥusayn (1889 – 1973, Egypt) – Aḥlām Shahrazād (1951, English trans. The Dreams Shahrazad, 1974). This novel starts on the 1009th night, when Sharazad tells the story of a king’s daughter called Fātina, who refuses to get married. The author uses the stories of Fātina to criticize conditions in Egypt during World War II. Shahrazad turns the confused king Sharayar into an enlightened man who thinks and who realizes that knowledge can only be obtained through effort (also in 1940 – 1945 World War II).   
  • ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Madanī’s (1938-, Tunisia) short story ‘Madīnat al-Nuḥās’ (‘Brass city’) in the collection Khurāfat (‘Myths’, 1968), follows One Thousand and One Nights in that Shahrazad tells king Shahriyar a series of stories. But the stories are set in a time of “aeroplanes, spies, and nuclear installations” (reference). The story ends by suggesting a number of alternative endings, but finally she thinks that she might simply be looking into an infinite mirror.
  • Najīb Maḥfūẓ (1911 – 2006, Egypt) – Layalī Alf Laylah (1979, English trans. Arabian Nights and Days, 1982). Continuing the narrative of One Thousand and One Nights through seventeen fairy tales, this novel allegorically depicts and criticizes the corruption of the Egyptian political elite and religious fanatism at the time of its writing. The supernatural characters of the original One Thousand and One Nights, including Aladdin, Scheherazade, and Sinbad, continue to live in the city in which the story is set, and interfere in the lives of its citizens, pushing them to, amongst others, murder, theft, and corruption (reference).
  • Hānī al-Rāhib (1939 – 2000, Syria) – Alf Laylah wa-Laylatān (‘One Thousand and Two Nights’, 1977). This novel portrays the Arab defeat in 1967 and uncovers its causes as being cultural rather than military and economic (reference). In the novel, the characters of One Thousand and One Nights are continuously referred to and are compared with the Syrian setting post-1967, both by the author and the protagonists themselves, and throughout the story jinns, magic places, etc., are mentioned as means of sudden transformation (reference) (also in 1967 al-Naksah).
  • Leïla Sebbar’s (1941-, Algeria) Shérazade trilogy that includes Shérazade 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts (1982, English trans. Sherazade : Aged 17, Dark Curly Hair, Green Eyes, Missing, 1991), Les carnets de Shérazade (‘Scheherazade’s Notebooks’, 1985) and Le fou de Shérazade (‘Crazy about Scheherazade’, 1991). This series, written over a period of ten years, centres a 17-year-old female character from Algerian descent, Shérazade, living in France. It describes the young ‘beur’ woman’s struggle to find her identity in “a French society laden with stereotypes and misconceptions about the Maghrib” (reference). The heroine of the series is contrasted with the original Scheherazade, through which the differences between the old and new generation of Algerian women are portrayed. In the first part, Shérazade makes a journey across Paris, in the second, she travels across France on a seven-day trip in the cabin of a truck, and in the last she travels to the Middle East. The reader sees her communicate with other French people, especially a man named Julien, and follows her growing desire for a nomadic lifestyle (W: Outside the Arab World: Europe: France).  
  • Saʿdallah Wannūs’s (1941 – 1997, Syria) play al-Malik huwa al-Malik (‘The king is the king’, 1977) draws on two tales of the One Thousand and One Nights tradition and tackles the theme of how to govern. When a bored king picks one of his subjects, a bankrupt merchant, to make him king for a day, his entire entourage, including his wife, really do believe he is the king. The new king continues all the wrongdoings of the previous regime, which shows the moral of the play: to achieve universal justice, regimes, not persons, must be removed (reference).
  • Written by IbrāhīmʿAbbās (?, Saudi Arabia) and co-written/translated to English by Yāsir Bahjatt, ḤWJN (2013, English trans. HWJN, 2013) is a fantasy/science fiction novel which became a bestseller in Saudi Arabia before it was banned for promoting devil-worship, idolatry, and sorcery. Its story centres on a love relationship between a medical student, the young woman Sawsan, and a 90-year-old jinni, Ḥawjan, which is among others mediated through a Ouija board (reference). The novel also contains satire on the rich part of Saudi society in its “portrayal of the privileged wealthy Saudi teens” (reference).
  • Hudā Ḥamad (1981-, Oman) – Sindarīlā Musqaṭ (‘Muscat’s cinderella’, 2016) This novel focusses on a group of eight women living in Muscat, Oman, who meet once a month in one of the city’s restaurants to share and listen to each other’s stories, presenting an intimate picture of city life and the issues faced by the difference women. Its narrator, Zabīdah, brings everyone together and receives the help of a benevolent djinn in prolonging the hours they spend outside of their work and at times depressing homelife, as long as she returns home before midnight (C: Cities: Oman: Muscat).

Refrences:

In order of appearance

  1. Justin Mcguinness. 1996. “Book Reviews”, The Journal of North African Studies 1(3): 306-313, p. 311
  2. Su’ad al-Mana. 2008. “The Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf”, in Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide 1873-1999, eds Radwa Ashour, Ferial J. Ghazoul, Hasna Reda-Mekdashi, translated by Mandy McClure. The American University in Cairo Press: Cairo, pp 254-282, p. 273
  3. Laṭrūsh ʿĀʾshah. 2017. “ʿAtabāt Riwāyah. ‘Fājiʿat Al-Laylah al-Sābiʿah Baʿda al-Alf – Raml al-Māyah’ li-l-Riwāʾī Wāsīnī al-Arʿaj’s” in Mujalad al-Badr al-Mujalad 9(10): pp. 405-416, p. 406-7
  4. Dr. Hanane Rabahi, Dr. Nadia Ghounane, and Prof. Ilhem Serir Mortad. 2018. “Language Diversity in Al Araj’s ‘The Disaster of the Seventh Night after the Thousand’”, in Global Journal of Human-Social Science (G) XVIII(V): 9-13, p. 11
  5. Nuqūsh al-Mahdī. 2017. “Ḥusayn ʿAlī Muḥammad – Qirāʾah fī Masraḥiyyah ‘Sirr Shahrazād’ li-ʿAlī Aḥmad Bākathīr.” www.alantologia.com, 16 June 2017, https://alantologia.com/page/17343/ (last accessed 1 November 2023)
  6. Mildred Mortimer. 1981. “Reviewd work: ‘Les 1001 Années de la nostalgie’ by Rachid Boudjedra.” The French Review 54(4): 617-618, p. 618
  7. Muḥammad Mandūr. 2020. Fī al-Masraḥ al-Maṣrī al-Muʿāṣir. Hindawi: York House, Sheet Street, Windsor, p. 204, 205 (Re-publication of the 1971 book: retrieved from https://www.hindawi.org/books/80509160/, last accessed 27 August 2022)
  8. Roger Allen. 1998. The Arabic Literary Heritage: The Development of Its Genres and Criticism. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, p. 345
  9. Ismail Slimani and Samira Bechelaghem. 2022. “Hybridité textuelle et altérité identitaire dans ‘Zabor ou les psaumes’ de Kamel Daoud.” Multilinguales 18, accessed through https://journals.openedition.org/multilinguales/9241 (last accessed 1 November 2023)
  10. Yomi Olusegun-Joseph. 2018. “Differing from her sister’s voice: (Re)configured womanhood in Assia Djebar’s ‘A Sister to Sherezade’.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 54(2): 226-238, p. 229
  11. Aljazeera. 2017. “‘Kul hatha al-Harāʾ’.. Thawrah Maṣr wa Abṭābilhā Sardiyan.” www.aljazeera.net, 2 February 2017 https://www.aljazeera.net/news/cultureandart/2017/2/12/كل-هذا-الهراء-ثورة-مصر-وأبطالها-سرديا#:~:text=يستطيع%20كل%20قارئ%20أن%20يجد,2012%20بعنوان%20″باب%20الخروج (last accessed 27 August, 2022)
  12. Ali al-Raʿi. 1992. “Arabic Drama since the thirties.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 358-404, p. 382-3
  13. Paul Starkey. 1995. “Quest for Freedom: the Case of Izz Al-Din Al-Madanï”, JAL 36(1-2): 67-79, p. 70
  14. Muṣṭafā Yaʿalā. 2020. “al-ʿAjīb Afqā lil-Khilāṣ fī ‘Layālī Alf Laylah’ li-Najīb Maḥfuẓ” www.diwanalarab.com, 27 September 2020 www.diwanalarab.com/العجيب-أفقا-للخلاص-في-ليالي-ألف-ليلة-لنجيب (last accessed 22 September 2022)
  15. Mahmoud Saeed. 2000. “Remembering Hani al-Rahib: Death Ends Novelist’s Portrayal of Arab World in Crisis.” Al Jadid, 6(31) www.aljadid.com/content/remembering-hani-al-rahib-death-ends-novelists-portrayal-arab-world-crisis (last accessed 28 September 2022)
  16. Nicole Kaplan. 2001. “Re-visualising Beur identity in Sebbar’s trilogy”, in The Journal of North African Studies 6(4): 27-46, p. 30
  17. Ali al-Raʿi. 1992. “Arabic Drama since the thirties.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muḥammad MuṣṭafāBadawī. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 358-404, p. 394
  18. Jörg Matthias Determann. 2021. Islam Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World. I.B. Tauris: London and New York, p. 8
 

Leave a Recommendation

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top