Rising to Wealth and Falling into Poverty

The vizier took his leave, kissed the king’s hand, and departed. The king, the enchanted young man, and the fisherman lived peacefully thereafter, and the fisherman became one of the richest men of his time, with daughters married to kings.

These final sentences of “The Tale of the Enchanted King,” round out a cycle of stories begun in “The Story of the Fisherman and the Demon.” Initially, the fisherman is so poor that he does not have enough food to feed his family, so he casts his nets four times each day on the outskirts of the city. His nets often catch useless objects, such as a dead donkey, a jar of mud and sand, or broken pots and stones. However, when he pulls in a long-necked jar with a stopper, his luck begins to change. Although the story takes many twists and turns, the poor fisherman, by virtue of his cunning and bravery, is favored by the king, who rewards not only him but his children too.

And a short time later, the king also died, and his men asked each other, ‘Whom shall we make king?’ The answer was, ‘The vizier,’ and the envied became a monarch, a sovereign king.

“The Tale of the Envious and the Envied” begins with two neighbors who live in adjoining houses. One envies the other so actively that the envied man leaves the city and builds a hermitage that he furnishes modestly. However, his devotion to God and his goodness are so great that he becomes famous as a teacher of the Quran, and his success continues. The envious man visits the envied and pushes him into a well, but the envied is saved by a group of demons. Despite the attempted murder, the envied doesn’t wish to punish the envious. When the king comes to the hermitage because his daughter is ill, the envied man saves her. The king rewards him by first making him his son-in-law. Then, when the king’s vizier dies, the king makes him vizier. When the king dies, the envied man becomes king, all because of his devotion to God and his kindness toward someone who envied him.

My Lord Nur al-Din, have you not heard the saying ‘He who spends without reckoning, becomes poor without knowing it’? My lord, this enormous expense and lavish giving will erode even mountains.

In “The Story of the Slave-Girl and Nur al-Din Ali ibn-Khaqan,” after Nur al-Din’s father, the vizier, dies, Nur al-Din is left with a fortune. After the burial, one of his father’s friends visits Nur al-Din and encourages him to stop mourning and be cheerful, advice that the young man takes quite seriously. Nur al-Din invites his friends and the slave-girl whom he loves to lavish banquets with abundant entertainments. He dispenses gifts and favors with abandon, with no cares about making his fortune last. When Nur al-Din’s steward cautions him for spending too much, he ignores him. Soon, the same steward tells him that his fortune has run out. Although things turn out well in the end for Nur al-Din, his foolishness causes him pain and heartache. His friends abandon him, and he even tries to sell his beloved, Anis al-Jalis, to recoup his losses.

Storytelling as Salvation

‘Fiend and King of the demon kings, if I tell you what happened to me and that deer, and you find it strange and amazing, indeed stranger and more amazing than what happened to you and the merchant, will you grant me a third of your claim on him for his crime and guilt?’ The demon replied, ‘I will.’

Early in The Arabian Nights, in “The Story of the Merchant and the Demon,” a merchant has been doomed to die at the hands of a demon because he has accidentally killed the demon’s son. The merchant bargains with the demon to wait until he has settled his affairs, but he appears on the appointed day to accept his fate. As the merchant sits, waiting for the demon to appear, three old men approach and sit with him. They listen to the merchant’s sad story, and filled with sympathy, they offer to help. Here, the first old man presents the demon with the bargain aimed at saving the merchant. One by one, the three old men tell their tales, and little by little, the demon releases his hold on the merchant’s life. These tales establish that not only is storytelling Shahrazad’s salvation, but storytelling also can and will be the salvation of characters throughout the collection. 

Then her sister Dinarzad said, ‘What an entertaining story!’ Shahrazad replied, ‘Tomorrow night I shall tell you something even stranger, more wonderful, and more entertaining if the king spares me and let me live.’

While these lines are taken from “The First Old Man’s Tale,” this conversation recurs hundreds of times between the tales of The Arabian Nights, providing that glue that holds all the distinct tales together. Shahrazad is a masterful storyteller who invents story after story, many of them woven together by threads of characters, plots, and themes, for hundreds of nights in a row. Early in the collection, readers learn that Shahrazad has read books of literature, philosophy, and medicine. She knows poetry by heart and has studied history. This wealth of wisdom and background fuels the stories Shahrazad tells and encourages others to become educated too. In the beginning, when Shahrazad turns to her husband and says, “May I have your permission to tell a story?” and he replies yes, the collection is put into motion, and the stories save many lives. 

‘Hurry up, young man, and tell me your story.’ The young man replied, ‘Lend me your ears, your eyes, and your mind.’ The king replied, ‘My ears, my eyes, and my mind are ready.’

In “The Tale of the Enchanted King,” while traveling to solve the mystery of four fish, a king comes upon a handsome young man seated behind a curtain in a room in a palace. The young man is human from his navel to his head but black stone from his navel to his feet. The king feels sad and sorry for the young man. The king praises god and begs the young man to tell his story. The young man shares his history with the king, who becomes an active participant in the man’s tale. A witch breaks the spell and frees the enchanted man from the bondage of his stony body. The man accompanies the king back to his city and marries one of the fisherman’s fair daughters. Telling his story saves the young man. Not only were the king’s ears, eyes, and mind ready, so was his kind heart. 

The Danger of Rage, Jealousy, Greed, and Pride

It happened that King Yunan had a vizier who was sinister, greedy, envious, and fretful, and when he saw that the sage had found favor with the king . . . he feared that the king would dismiss him and appoint the sage in his place; therefore, he envied the sage and harbored ill will against him, for ‘nobody is free from envy.’

In “The Tale of King Yunan and the Sage Duran,” an envious vizier turns his king against a benevolent sage whom the king has favored. The vizier accuses the sage of intending to destroy the king’s power, steal his wealth, and do him great harm. However, the king does not believe his vizier and proceeds to tell him a story about a jealous man who kills a parrot who has told him that his wife is cheating. The man doubts the parrot’s story, but when he learns the parrot told the truth, the man regrets killing the bird. The king tells his vizier that he does not want to live to regret killing the sage. In a complicated turn of events, the king does die, and so does the sage, tainted by the words of his envious vizier. 

O demon, consider the mercy of the envied on the envious, who had envied him from the beginning, borne him great malice, pursued him, followed him, and thrown him into the well to kill him. Yet the envied did not respond in kind, but instead of punishing the envious, he forgave him and treated him magnanimously.

In this instance, in “The Tale of the Envious and the Envied,” the lesson about the dangers of envy is reversed. Instead of repaying envy with punishment, the man who is the subject of the envy repays the envier with kindness. He tells this story to convince the demon not to kill him, and the story works. Instead of killing the man, the demon turns him into an ape. Repaying evil with kindness is an anomaly in The Arabian Nights, but in this case, it serves as a cautionary tale that saves the storyteller’s life. Later, the ape is transformed back into human form, so the man’s life is truly saved after all.

The tailor cried out, ‘All of this comes of your pride, you dirty pimp. By God, if it was within my power, I would have you beaten a hundred times and paraded throughout the city.’

In “The Tale of the Fifth Brother,” the barber’s fifth brother is a poor man who inherits a bit of money when his father dies. He spends it on a collection of glass that he hopes to sell at a profit so he can then buy more and more glass to sell until he is rich. The fifth brother plans to buy jewels, perfumes, a fine house, slaves, and horses, and he hopes to eat, drink, and carouse with everyone in the city. Once rich, he will hire a broker to find him a wife who is the daughter of a vizier. On his wedding night, he will reject her again and again until she feels humiliated and learns that he is her master. As the fifth brother imagines all of this, he imagines kicking his wife and kicks his meager basket of glass instead, breaking it all. His pompous pride and greed have undone him, and he is left a poor man again.

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