ABSTRACT
THE discussion of the origins of that famous collection of tales known as the Arabian Nights has been in progress now for a century and a half, and much learned literature on the subject has accumulated during that time. This is not the place to enter upon a consideration of that great topic, and the reader interested to have a concise and authoritative summary of the present state of knowledge and speculation is recommended to peruse the article ‘Alf Layla wa-Layla’ contributed by Professor Enno Littmann to the new edition (Fasc. 6, Leiden and London, 1956) of The Encyclopaedia of Islam. The Nights are mentioned here simply because it is impossible to appreciate the function and scope of fiction in medieval Persian literature without bearing in mind the Persian source of many of the stories put into the mouth of the beautiful Scheherezade. In this chapter three works of fiction will be described that belong more or less closely to the Arabian Nights genre, and acquired literary form in approximately the same era. It should however be remembered that many hundreds of the stories occurring not only in the self-confessed collections of anecdotes-of which the most comprehensive is
—but also in the works of
many epic and didactic poets have been fished out of the same abounding ocean. The Sindb#d-n#ma, the hero of which has nothing but his name in common with
Sindbad the Sailor, has attracted the attention of scholars since the early years of the eighteenth century, when Pétis de la Croix brought this cycle of stories to the notice of a public whose curiosity had so lately and powerfully been stirred by Galland’s Mille et Une Nuits. In 1884 W.H.Clouston, that talented vulgarisateur of orientalia, published a version of The Book of Sindib#d. B.Carra de Vaux, who noted that the historian
writing in 947, had mentioned the ‘Book of Sindib!d’ in the same
context as the ‘Thousand Nights,’ summarized the framework of the collection as follows: ‘A king entrusts the education of his son to the sage Sindib!d. The prince is ordered by his tutor to keep silence for seven days; during this time he is calumniated by the favourite queen and the king is on the point of putting him to death. Seven viziers, by each telling one or two stories succeed in postponing his execution and on the eighth day the prince, who has recovered the use of his speech, is proved innocent.’ The family resemblance to the Nights is obvious.
