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Group 4: “The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies,” “The First Dervish’s Tale,” “The Second Dervish’s Tale,” and “The Tale of the Envious and the Envied”

Summary: “The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies” 

Shahrazad begins a new cycle of stories. 

Three sisters invite a porter to dinner. One by one, the four undress and jokingly ask what they call their genitals. The sisters say the porter can stay as long as he questions nothing. 

Three one-eyed dervishes soon arrive and make music. Then, a caliph, his vizier, Ja’far, and a servant arrive. The sisters say they can stay as long as they question nothing. One sister brings out two dogs and beats them. Another sister tears her dress, revealing whip marks.

When the visitors question this, men with swords arrive to kill them. However, the sisters agree to spare their lives if each dervish tells his tale. 

Summary: “The First Dervish’s Tale” 

The son of a king and his cousin see a woman in a sepulcher. The cousin and woman descend into the sepulcher. The next day, when the king’s son returns to his father’s city, he is beaten and bound by a vizier who has plotted against the king. The vizier gouges out one of the son’s eyes and sends him to the wilderness to die. 

The king’s son goes to his uncle. Together, they enter the sepulcher, where they find the cousin and the woman turned to charcoal. Soon, the king’s son learns that the vizier has overtaken the city, so he disguises himself as a dervish. 

Summary: “The Second Dervish’s Tale” 

A king’s son, who is learned in calligraphy, travels to India. Horsemen kill all the men traveling except the son, who wanders until he reaches a city. There, he meets a tailor, who explains that to survive, the king’s son must hide his identity. For a year, the king’s son cuts wood and sells it. One day, he discovers a subterranean palace where a beautiful woman is held captive by a demon. He and the woman make love and drink wine. When the demon returns, the king’s son runs back to the tailor, leaving his shoes and axe behind.

The demon arrives at the tailor’s house and takes the king’s son to the underground palace. The demon severs the woman’s arms and then turns on the king’s son, who begs for mercy with the following tale about envy. 

Summary: “The Tale of the Envious and the Envied” 

One man envies the good fortune of his neighbor. The envied man moves away and builds a hermitage. The envious man visits the hermitage and pushes the envied man into a well. However, demons save the envied man. Soon, a king arrives, seeking a cure for his daughter, who is possessed by a demon. The envied man cures the king’s daughter and marries her. He eventually becomes king himself. Later, he summons the envious man to his palace and showers him with riches, rewarding envy with goodness.

Upon hearing this tale, the demon spares the king’s son’s life, but turns him into an ape. While sailing home, the ape wins over the captain with his human-like ways. One day, a king summons the ape who can write calligraphy. As the ape eats and plays chess like a human, the king’s daughter knows he’s under a spell. She conjures the demon, and they battle, each turning into different animals until the demon is defeated and the daughter dead. The man is restored, but he's lost one of his eyes. He becomes a dervish. 

Analysis: “The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies,” “The First Dervish’s Tale,” “The Second Dervish’s Tale,” & “The Tale of the Envious and the Envied”

The house of the three sisters is full of exotic wonders, sensual pleasures, and mysteries nested within mysteries, and it is the setting of most of the overarching story in this section. At one point, five sisters, two of whom have been turned into dogs, and seven visiting men are gathered, listening to stories from nearly everyone present. One by one, the one-eyed dervishes, the caliph, the porter, and the sisters tell how they came to be there and explain something unique about themselves. Some of them even tell other tangential stories to help make their points.

Three of the storytellers are dervishes. A dervish is a Muslim monk or mystic, who is a man who has chosen poverty as a means of and path to knowing God. Sometimes credited with supernatural powers, many dervishes lead lives of virtue and service, traveling from place to place. Many dervishes also recite praises to Allah to attain a state of ecstatic trance. Often, dervishes live in community, such as these three who seem to travel together.

Several examples of underground dwellings appear in these stories, beginning a new motif. In “The Tale of the First Dervish,” two people are turned into charcoal in their subterranean sepulcher, perhaps for engaging in the act of a forbidden love. In “The Tale of the Second Dervish,” a king’s son discovers a subterranean palace with a beautiful woman inside, the captive of a cruel demon. In these cases, the underground abodes represent the unconscious and the forbidden. The area is hidden from view and houses secrets, lust, cruelties, or crimes.

Throughout The Arabian Nights, people are turned into animals, usually as punishment for evil deeds but sometimes to spare their lives yet get rid of them as persons. Women are changed into dogs. Embattled sorcerers change shape from scorpions to serpents to eagles to wolves. However, none so far are as fascinating as the king’s son who is turned into an ape in “The Envied and the Envious.” The ape retains some of his humanity, which eventually saves him. He cries, eats meals, writes, and plays chess, winning the heart of a ship captain and the king who summons him for his calligraphy skills. These abilities, including the fact that he can write in six different languages, lead the king’s daughter, a sorceress, to recognize that the ape is actually a man who has been put under a spell by a demon. The daughter dies after saving the king’s son, and the rescued man, having lost an eye from the demon’s fire, becomes a dervish.

Perhaps none of the tales so far have been as sexually explicit as “The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies,” when the three sisters take turns taking off their clothing and sitting on the porter’s lap, and all four joke about words to name one another’s genitalia. In The Arabian Nights, sexuality is part of daily life, ranging from romantic love to bawdy lust, often fueled by wine. The handling of sexuality in these tales is surprisingly explicit and open. It is also nonjudgmental. Sex, in itself, is never considered immoral, but dishonesty and disloyalty are. Betraying one’s husband is the ultimate crime, often punishable by death without question.

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