ABSTRACT
Sindbad the Sailor, in seven wondrous voyages, allegedly crossed the Indian Ocean from places identified on the eastern coast of Africa to Ceylon, going as far as East India and China (C.R.B. 1911). The cycle of fantastic tales was added to the collection of One Thousand and One Nights from the seventeenth century on, mostly in Western compilations, and is probably based on a wide range of seafarers’ narratives from antique times to travelling accounts of Persian, Indian and Arab mariners. The hero, at the time of telling his stories, was said to have lived in Baghdad under the rule of Harun al-Rashid, supposedly starting his voyages from the southern Mesopotamian port of Basra.
