Politics, Religion, and Love: How

Leo Strauss Read the Arabian Nights*

Rasoul Namazi / Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
München

It is difficult to find any non-Western work of literature that has had a more
lasting effect on Western thought than the One Thousand and One Nights (in
English more commonly called the Arabian Nights, hereafter Nights).1 Since
its introduction to Western readers by François Galland in 1704, this work
has not only played a key role in shaping the Western image of the East
but has also contributed to the West’s self-understanding.2 The Nights was
for some time considered a reliable source for the study of the manners, re-
ligions, and customs of Oriental societies. However, we are far from such
Orientalist naiveté, and we no longer look for the real East in the Nights. Like
other traditional texts, the Nights has been investigated and dissected by the
instruments of historical criticism, and it is now considered an expression of
creative genius, akin to a collage: a variety of stories with a variety of origins
finding their source and prototypes in Persian, ancient Indian, Mesopota-
mian, and ancient Egyptian cultures. The attention of scholars has there-
fore been mainly directed toward questions regarding sources and origins
of the stories, as well as the comparative folk-narrative study of the purely for-
mal characteristics of the stories, narrative motifs, and tale types. The Nights
is today studied “not so much as an individual work of literature but rather
as a phenomenon comprising various manifestations in different forms of
creative expression.”3 From this perspective, it would be difficult to attribute

* The work on this project was done during my stay at the Leo Strauss Center/Committee
on Social Thought, University of Chicago, as Richard Schiffrin Research Fellow. I would like
to thank Nathan Tarcov, Robert B. Pippin, Gayle McKeen, and Ralph Lerner for their gener-
ous support. James T. Robinson, the anonymous reviewers, and the editorial staff of the Jour-
nal of Religion also contributed to the improvement of this article, for which I am very grateful.
1
The edited version of Leo Strauss’s typescript on the Arabian Nights is found here as Appen-
dix A, and the Table of Concordance of stories in different versions is provided in Appendix B.
2
Robert Irwin, “Preface,” in The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West,
ed. Yuriko Yamanaka and Tetsuo Nishio (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), viii.
3
Ulrich Marzolph and Richard van Leeuwen, The Arabian Nights: An Encyclopedia (Santa Bar-
bara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004), xxiv.
© 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0022-4189/2020/10002-0002$10.00

189

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

a definite intention to the author or speak about the teaching of the Nights,
precisely because it is thought that there is not a single author behind the
whole work: there cannot be a coherent message in this book because we
are not dealing with a unified whole but rather a compilation of disparate
stories—ones that have been frequently transformed by narrators over the
centuries.
However, this is not the only perspective one can bring to bear on the
Nights. There is a reading of this work that treats it as a carefully designed
and coherent theologico-political writing composed by a thinker of high
rank with a specific intention and specific teaching. This interpretation is
found in a typescript by Leo Strauss, here published for the first time, titled
“1001 Nights,” located among his papers. No prior attempt has been made
to present the content of this typescript or collection of notes.4 In the follow-
ing presentation, the content of these notes will be discussed. Strauss’s inter-
pretative method and the theoretical background of his interpretation of
the Nights are discussed first. As Strauss comments on a considerable num-
ber of the stories contained in the long edition of the Nights (the so-called
Calcutta II), the major themes of Strauss’s interpretation are presented, while
focusing on some of the most revealing stories.5 Because the intention is to un-
derstand Strauss on the basis of his own principles, this presentation will

4
Strauss makes only a single passing remark about the Nights in his published writings, and that
for explaining a passage in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Leo Strauss, “Jerusalem and Ath-
ens,” in Studies on Platonic Political Philosophy [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983], 148).
He also mentions this work in two of his courses on Nietzsche (1967 and 1971–72). The historical
context of the composition of the notes is as follows: In a letter to Seth Benardete on Septem-
ber 27, 1960, Strauss mentions that he is “reading . . . the 1001 Nights” and he describes the work
as an equivalent of Aristophanes’s plays “under Islam.” The relationship between the Nights and
Aristophanes’s works seems to have been particularly important for Strauss, as again in Janu-
ary 24, 1961, he writes to Peter H. von Blanckenhagen that “in my free time I am reading
1001 Nights which has much in common with Aristophanes, as you can imagine.” See Leo
Strauss Papers, box 4, folder 2, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Li-
brary; Seth Benardete Papers, SB 04–05, The New School Archives & Special Collections. The
typescript cannot be precisely dated but the best estimate is that it was written after 1960. It is
reported that Muhsin Mahdi gave Strauss the German version of the Nights and Strauss com-
posed his notes while recovering from heart surgery (the source of the anecdote is Professor
Charles E. Butterworth). Mahdi went on to prepare the critical edition of the Nights and wrote sev-
eral commentaries on this work, one of them just after Strauss’s death. However, Mahdi does not
mention Strauss in any of these, and his interpretation does not follow that of his teacher; in fact
Strauss pays much attention to parts of the book that Mahdi later describes as inauthentic additions
to the original work by unscrupulous European booksellers. Muhsin Mahdi, The Thousand and One
Nights (Alf Layla Wa-Layla): From the Earliest Known Sources, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1994), esp. 3:11–101;
Muhsin Mahdi, “Remarks on the 1001 Nights,” Interpretation 3, no. 2–3 (1973): 157–68.
5
The edition used by Strauss is the translation of the Macnaghten edition or Calcutta II by
Enno Littman. It is the same version famously translated by Richard Burton and translated re-
cently by Malcolm and Ursula Lyons (Malcolm C. Lyons, Ursula Lyons, and Robert Irwin, The
Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights, 3 vols. [London: Penguin Books Limited, 2010]). In this pre-
sentation the Lyons translation is used; references to the Nights are identified by AN, followed by
volume and page numbers. Strauss’s notes are found at Leo Strauss Papers, box 20, folder 2,
Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. References to Strauss’s type-
script are identified by MS, followed by the page and paragraph numbers of the typescript.

190

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

proceed in a purely descriptive manner. I will therefore leave the critical eval-
uation of Strauss’s interpretation, as well as my reservations about his reading
of the Nights, for another occasion. Such a critical evaluation must take into
account the fact that one of the major themes of Strauss’s thought is absent
in these notes: Strauss argued that reason is incapable of refuting the claims
of divine revelation and that revelation continues to coexist with reason and
philosophy as a powerful alternative.6 In these notes Strauss abstracts from
the challenge of revelation and does not engage in a critical evaluation of the
Nights’s view of religion. Finally, in view of the character of Strauss’s notes,
the following interpretation has a tentative character and should be read in
the same spirit.

STRAUSS’S HERMENEUTICS

No aspect of Strauss’s thought has attracted more attention or has been

more contested than his claims about the art of writing, or esotericism.
He bases his thesis on esotericism on what he considered to be a well-known
characteristic of many societies, namely, persecution of thought. Strauss ar-
gues that closed societies do not recognize free thought or the right to eval-
uate and criticize the authoritative beliefs of those societies. In such socie-
ties, Strauss claims, heterodox thinkers are faced with grave dangers and
must protect themselves and their ideas. If these thinkers decide to transmit
their thoughts to other heterodox or potential heterodox readers, they have
to practice an art of esoteric writing, or writing in a way that conceals one’s
heterodox ideas from all but those who are knowledgeable about the prac-
tice of reading between the lines. Esotericism allows the majority of readers
to receive a conventional message while allowing a select group of readers to
take away the heterodox message. One of the common techniques of eso-
teric writing is to state one’s heterodox ideas by using an unsympathetic
character as a mouthpiece or to avail oneself of the immunity of a storyteller,
a narrator, or a mere expositor, thereby putting a distance between oneself
and the opinions reflected in one’s writing. This is the reason, Strauss claims,
for finding “in the greatest literature of the past so many interesting devils,
madmen, beggars, sophists, drunkards, epicureans, and buffoons.”7 These
characters might have been the way by which the persecuted freethinkers
transmitted their controversial ideas. As we shall see, Strauss’s reading of the
Nights is based on this esoteric thesis. But whatever the merits of Strauss’s
thesis regarding the interpretation of different philosophical works may be,
the Nights is a literary work. It is generally admitted that literary writers often

6
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 74. But
see Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, trans. Marcus Brainard (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 16, 29–45.
7
Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 36.

191

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

employ rhetorical devices, such as symbolism, to convey unstated meanings.

Consequently, it is a common practice among scholars to pay attention to
the unstated or indirectly conveyed intentions in literary works.
Strauss’s interest in the esoteric dimension of the Nights is closely related
to another major aspect of his thought, one that proves more controversial
than esotericism, namely his preoccupation with the relationship between
religion and various aspects of human life, especially politics and philosophy.
The religious aspects of the Nights have not escaped the notice of readers, as
religion is omnipresent in the Nights: even apart from several stories that de-
pict religious conversion, proselytism, and the struggle between the adher-
ents of different religions, religion is in one way or another present in all
the stories. This aspect of the Nights makes the work particularly important
for Strauss, because he considered the theologico-political problem the cen-
tral theme of his intellectual odyssey.8 But what is Strauss’s theologico-political
problem? At its most basic level, it is the tension between philosophy on the
one hand, and the authoritative religion or beliefs of one’s community on the
other. For Strauss, philosophy and philosophers are above all concerned with
one fundamental question: How should one live? This amounts to asking the
question of the best way of life. As man is a political animal living with other
human beings in a political community, this question is therefore essentially a
political question.9 It is a political question as it addressed and was answered
by the authoritative traditions of political societies. It is also a theological ques-
tion in that, in all premodern societies, the most authoritative tradition that
answers this question is the religious belief system of those societies.
According to Strauss, because free thought and critique of common au-
thoritative answers are the most distinctive characteristics of philosophy,
there has always been a fundamental tension between philosophy and reli-
gion. Philosophy provides its own answers to the question of the best way of
life and therefore sometimes (according to Strauss, always) enters into con-
flict with the sacred tradition of the community. Here is the origin of the
theologico-political problem. In Strauss’s interpretation of the Nights, the
question of esotericism and the theologico-political problem join together
and form the perspective through which he interprets this work. He reads
the Nights as a work intended to be read between the lines, containing het-
erodox ideas incompatible with, and critical of, the reigning religious be-
liefs of the time. Although this perspective on the Nights is unique and surely
susceptible to criticism, it is not without precedent in the study of compara-
ble writings. For instance, the idea that the authors of Kalilah wa Dimnah and
Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa voiced their criticism of sacred beliefs through esoteric

8
Leo Strauss, “Preface to Hobbes’ Politische Wissenschaft,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Phi-
losophy, no. 8 ( January 1979): 1.
9
Leo Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” in Louis Ginzberg: Jubilee Volume (New York: American Acad-
emy for Jewish Research, 1945), 366.

192

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

techniques such as putting their words in the mouth of characters, and even
animals, is shared by other scholars.10

CRITIQUE OF THE REIGNING BELIEFS

Strauss begins his notes with his famous numerological observations (MS 1.1).
One must first explain a point about this unusual practice: Strauss’s interest
in numerology is not related to the view that numbers have occult, divine, or
mystical characters. What Strauss is interested in can be described as conven-
tional numerology, that is, the idea that some writers conventionally used
numbers for transmitting their message. The importance of such practices
in medieval and early modern writings is well known.11 In his numerological
observations Strauss claims that the number 1001 in the title of the Nights is
perhaps chosen by the author to transmit a message about the content of
the work. This number is a multiple of 7, 11, and 13. The theological symbol-
ism of the number 7 is obvious, as in Abrahamic beliefs God created every-
thing in six days and took his rest on the seventh day (Genesis 1; Qur’an
7:54, 2:29, 67:3, 71:15, 78:12). Number 11 is less obvious, but coming after
10, which represents the Law (as in Ten Commandments), it stands for dis-
obedience.12 The number 13, particularly mentioned by Strauss in his read-
ing of Machiavelli, also seems to have an antitheological significance.13 These
three numbers are therefore for Strauss a kind of wink toward the theologico-
political problem or the conflict of reason and revelation. Strauss also sug-
gests that the book might be considered 1003 Nights—if one adds two stories
told before the ones told by Shahrazad. Number 1003 in its turn is a multiple
of 17 and 59. For Strauss, the number 17 represents nature (phusis), as the
Greek alphabet, the original language of the study of nature, has 17 conso-
nants: the consonants being mute like nature are put in opposition to tradition,

10
Jennifer London, “How to Do Things with Fables,” History of Political Thought 29, no. 2
(2008): 189–212; C. E. Bosworth, “The Persian Impact on Arabic Literature,” in The Cambridge
History of Arabic Literature: Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. A. Beeston, T. John-
son, R. Serjeant, and G. Smith, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 487–88;
Paul Kraus, Alchemie, Ketzerei, Apokryphen im frühen Islam, ed. Rémi Brague (Hildesheim: Georg
Olms Verlag, 1994), 167. See also Shatha Almutawa, “Imaginative Cultures and Historic Trans-
formations: Narrative in ‘Rasa’il Ikhwan Al-Ṣafa’ ” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2013).
11
In the case of Islamic thought it suffices to mention Abjad numerals. For a general intro-
duction see Vincent Foster Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003).
For a rather detailed bibliography on the use of numerology in Islam see Annemarie Schimmel,
The Mystery of Numbers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 288–90.
12
“Eleven is transgression; eleven oversteps the ten commandments,” in Friedrich Schiller,
The Piccolomini, or The First Part of Wallenstein, trans. S. T. Coleridge (London: N. Longman &
O. Rees, 1800), 30 (act 2, scene 1).
13
Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958), 52; Leo Strauss,
“Niccolo Machiavelli,” in History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 311. See the comparison with Spinoza.

193

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

which must be audible to be transmitted.14 The significance of number 59 is

not entirely clear, but it seems that for Strauss it also represents nature.15 These
numerological observations are followed by a general statement about the con-
tent of the whole work: “The overall suggestion: refutation of the nomos regard-
ing inferiority of women; and: indictment of tyranny; and: how jealousy of a king
is appeased” (MS 1.1). How these three subjects, namely a critique of nomos or
(religious) Law, a critique of tyranny, and a critique of “jealousy” are related will
gradually become clear. But what is particularly interesting is that these subjects
prove to be, one way or another, connected with religion: tyranny and jealousy
are both divine (MS 4.12, 14.39), and women represent erotic longing as a kind
of “counter-religion” (MS 14.39). It is therefore fitting to begin at the beginning
before turning to politics and love.
In Strauss’s interpretation, the critical view of the author of the Nights
toward the sacred is first reflected in the frame story of the Nights: King Shah-
riar invites his younger brother Shah Zaman to visit him. On his way to
Shahriar, Shah Zaman discovers his wife in an act of infidelity with a kitchen
boy. Enraged and jealous, Shah Zaman kills both of them and then proceeds
to visit his brother. During his visit, Shah Zaman suffers from a deep depres-
sion. He spends his time in the palace while his brother King Shahriar goes
out hunting. One day while looking out the window, Shah Zaman sees his
brother’s queen in the courtyard betraying her husband with a black slave.
Surprisingly, by witnessing the misfortune of his brother, Shah Zaman’s con-
dition improves, and he informs Shahriar about their shared affliction. Dis-
mayed by their misfortune, they both decide to roam the world in hope of
finding someone whose misfortune is greater than theirs. On their way, they
discover a jealous jinni, a male supernatural being. The demon’s wife betrays
him with men every time the demon takes a nap on the shore (AN 1:5–7). Just
as in the case of Shah Zaman, the misfortune of the demon brings joy to the
jealous kings, and they return to rule their realms.
For Strauss, the major leitmotif of many of the stories in the Nights is the
jealousy of kings, demons, and caliphs (see MS 1.1, 4.12, 5.15, 10.30). The
jealous beings encounter unfaithful women, and, being slaves of jealousy,
their anger leads to violence. King Shahriar takes revenge not only by killing
his unfaithful wife after returning to his realm, but he also takes a wife every
day and kills her the next morning—until he marries Shahrzad, who tells
14
Nasser Behnegar, “Reading ‘What Is Political Philosophy?,’ ” in Leo Strauss’s Defense of the
Philosophic Life: Reading “What Is Political Philosophy?,” ed. Rafael Major (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2013), 41 n. 5.
15
Commenting on Plato’s Laws, Strauss writes: “The Athenian suggests then that the future
city should consist of 5,040 land holders and defenders of their plots and the same number of
plots. This number has the advantage that it can be divided by all numbers up to ten; in fact,
it is susceptible of fifty-nine different divisions” (The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998], 73, 79). I owe these observations to Steven J.
Lenzner. The chapter dedicated to Discourses on Livy in Strauss’s Thoughts on Machiavelli also
consists of fifty-nine paragraphs. It should be also mentioned that fifty-nine is the seventeenth
prime number.

194

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

him stories to stay alive. For Strauss, the lesson is that it is a dangerous thing
to deceive “kings”; their jealousy must be taken into account (MS 1.2). But
who are “kings,” and why is jealousy so important? Jealousy is one of the traits
of the biblical God, “for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God”
(Exod. 34:14). Exclusiveness is the core of monotheism, therefore jealousy
is the characteristic of the god of monotheism. There is a famous hadith that
makes the same point: “Sa’d ibn ’Ubada said, If I were to see a man with my
wife, I would have struck him with the sword, and not with the flat part (side)
of it. When Allah’s Messenger heard of that, he said: Are you surprised at
Sa’d’s jealousy? By Allah, I am more jealous than he, and Allah is more jealous
than I. Because of His jealousy Allah has prohibited abomination, both open
and secret. And no person is more jealous than Allah.”16
Strauss makes this point rather forcefully: “Allah is a jealous God” (MS 1.4).
However, he also observes that “it is not dangerous to deceive demons,” as
one can see how the wife of a demon has betrayed him with 570 men without
the demon knowing about it (AN 1:6; MS 1.2). In other words, the jealousy of
a fantastic being does not seem to be as dangerous as that of a real being. But
what do such fantastic beings represent in the Nights? To answer this ques-
tion one must turn to the story of the merchant and the demon (AN 1:10–
19): in this story, a group of travelers tell stories to appease the anger of a de-
mon. In the first story, an old man tells the demon that because his wife did
not bear him any children, he took a concubine. The concubine bore him a
son. The wife became jealous and through magic turned the son and the con-
cubine into a calf and a cow, and she asked her husband to sacrifice them at
Eid al-Adha—a Muslim festival that symbolizes the story of God asking Abra-
ham to sacrifice his son as an act of submission to God’s command (Muslims
sacrifice a sheep at this ceremony in remembrance of that story). In the man’s
story, a young girl who possesses magic skills recognizes human beings in the
form of animals. For revenge she turns the jealous wife into a gazelle and re-
stores the son to his human shape. The story reminds us of and clearly points
to the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, except that here a jealous wife asks her
husband to sacrifice his son, thus confirming Strauss’s suspicion that in the
Nights divine jealousy is a theme (MS 1.4).
The second story is told by a merchant who is accompanied by two grey-
hounds. He explains to the demon that the dogs are his ungrateful brothers
whom he has rescued from bankruptcy several times. The three brothers to-
gether went on a journey, and during the trip the narrator meets a beautiful
young woman on the shore. He takes her with him onto the ship. His two

16
Imam Muslim, Sahih Muslim, vol. 4, trans. Nasiruddin Al-Khattab (Riyadh: Darussalam,
2007), 195, Hadith 3764. For the relationship between jealousy and women in the Bible,
cf. Genesis 30:1 with Numbers 5:29. Exclusivity, that is, not admitting partners, is the core
of jealousy. Jealousy of God who doesn’t suffer sharing our love with others, is also a common
theme in Islamic mysticism (Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam [Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2011], 39).

195

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

brothers become jealous and throw the couple overboard. But the beautiful
woman turns out to be an ‘ifrita, a she-demon who declares her faith in Islam
and the Prophet. The she-demon is angry with the merchant’s treacherous
brothers and offers to kill them. However, the merchant tries to appease the
demon’s anger and asks for a more lenient punishment. The she-demon
agrees to turn them into greyhounds instead of killing them (AN 1:17). As
Strauss observes, the “she-demon wished a greater revenge than the brother
of the treacherous brothers” (MS 1.4). The merchant is more humane to-
ward his fellow men than the Muslim she-demon is.
By underscoring the difference between the humane punishment of the
merchant and the inhuman cruelty of his fantastic religious lover, Strauss re-
minds us of his discussion of the “inhuman cruelty” characteristic of biblical
morality (MS 14.39). Strauss argued that one of the major concerns of early
modern thinkers such as Machiavelli was that biblical morality legitimized,
nay, made inhuman or pious cruelty a duty.17 That what is meant by the cru-
elty of these supernatural beings is divine cruelty is corroborated by another
story that a woman tells before the caliph: Once, she went on a journey and
arrived at a city of unbelieving fire worshippers. All the inhabitants of the city,
including children and animals, have been transformed by God into stone be-
cause, as she learns later from the only surviving witness, they did not heed a
mysterious voice that summoned them to convert to the True Faith of Islam.
The only inhabitant of the city who was saved was the son of the king of the
city. The prince was clandestinely proselytized by a Muslim woman, a ser-
vant of the king who treacherously concealed her religion (AN 1:110–11;
see also the story of the semipetrified prince below and MS 5.14 and
18.62).18
According to Strauss, jealousy and pious cruelty are not the only objects of
the Nights’ critique of religion. In this work, Strauss implies, religion in gen-
eral is seen as a pernicious phenomenon. In the Nights, according to Strauss’s
reading, God is depicted as a major impediment to the good life. He observes
this in the dialogue of the wise vizier Shimas with the young prince Wird
Khan. The dialogue is at first sight a long-winded repetition of the ideas com-
mon to the scholars of the time. However, in the middle of the uninteresting
back and forth some interesting points are hidden: one is that vizier Shimas
mentions that this life and the next “are at variance with one another” and
therefore one living in this world will inevitably “injure his soul in the next.”
Prince Wird Khan approves this point by describing this world as the king-
dom of an unjust king in which, as Strauss explains, “men cannot be just”
(MS 17.58). He explains the situation of those who live in the belief in an
afterlife as someone who has “fallen between two kings” (AN 3:462–64). They
live in an impossible situation created by the introduction of the belief in
17
Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 187.
18
The story seems inspired by the stories of many generations in the Qur’an who also re-
fused to heed the messengers and were consequently destroyed (Qur’an 7:59–136).

196

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

an afterlife. This view of the divine is most clearly depicted in the story of the
peahen and the duck (AN 1:613–21): A peacock and a peahen, looking for a
place to be safe from wild animals, go to live on an island. One day a duck
arrives and tells them that he is afraid of the “son of Adam.” The duck has
been warned of man’s viciousness in a dream. The duck thinks that the
son of Adam is the source of all evil and goes around warning all animals
about the danger of man. However, in the end the duck is the one who is
hunted by man. When the duck perishes, the peahen (a high-flying bird)
says that the duck perished because he did not glorify God and was pun-
ished for it. Strauss calls this “a female explanation of the fate of beings”
(MS 10.30). The duck and the peahen say in fact the same thing. As Strauss
explains, the story read literally would hardly make sense, as animals are
killed not only by man but also by other animals. The story would make
sense, then, only if it is interpreted in human terms: seen from the point
of view of animals, man is God. The peahen unknowingly unveils the message
of the duck’s symbolic warning: all evil comes from God—this is why we see
the duck and other animals take refuge in the protection of a lion. But the
peahen also obfuscates the message of the duck by hiding the real culprit,
that is, God, in whose absence all animals would live comfortably and in per-
fect harmony and friendship.
If the peahen was not such a high-flying bird (MS 8.30), she could see the
real culprit. This seems to be the reason why Strauss also refers to the re-
markable story of an old woman who lives in the desert. The old woman
feeds on bitter water and snakes. When a traveler asks her why she lives in
this earthly hell, she asks the traveler about his own country. The visitor,
who is on his way to Mecca on pilgrimage, describes his hometown: in his
city, everything exists in abundance and there are “such blessings as are only
to be found in the Paradise which Almighty God describes as being reserved
for his pious servants” (AN 2:274). The woman tells him that the “earthly”
paradise of the visitor is ruled by a tyrant who if “he wants can drive you from
your house and uproot you,” thereby reminding us, among other things, of
God’s expulsion of man from the original Paradise. Then she compares this
tyrant with the old rulers who governed with grace. The author completes
this story by narrating the story of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, the famous Muslim
governor. Al-Hajjaj rebuked the demands for a more lenient rule by saying
that “Almighty God has appointed me as your ruler.” Strauss compares this
story with book 1, chapter 26 of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy (MS 14.39).
Only in that chapter, which according to Strauss is specifically devoted to the
phenomenon of tyranny, does Machiavelli directly quote from the Bible.
Machiavelli uses a famous quotation from the New Testament (also a part
of the Magnificat that is frequently sung in Church services) to describe
the actions of King David—while the biblical passage is in fact about God.
Machiavelli is therefore describing actions similar to David’s as being “very
cruel” and the enemy to every way of life. Strauss thinks that this is Machiavelli’s

197

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

esoteric way of saying that God, like Philip of Macedon (also mentioned in
the chapter) is a cruel and inhuman tyrant.19 In other words, according to
Strauss, the author of the Nights and Machiavelli look at the biblical/Qur’anic
image of God as a violent tyrant ruling over human beings. It is therefore
not surprising that Strauss sees a relationship between Aristophanes’s come-
dies and the Nights. In Aristophanes’s Peace, Tyrgaeus succeeds in bringing
peace to Hellas by disinterring the goddess of peace against the explicit com-
mand of Zeus: “The just and pleasant life of ease and quiet cannot be brought
about except by dethroning the gods.”20

WISDOM, BELIEFS, AND POLITICAL THEOLOGY

What should one conclude from the critique of religion in the Nights? Is it
the intention of the Nights, according to Strauss, to help rid men of religion?
Does the author think that men should live their life without religion?
Strauss often argues that before Pierre Bayle, no philosopher argued for
the possibility of an atheistic society; even unbelieving thinkers thought that
some kind of religion, even in the form of a salutary myth or more precisely a
“political theology,” is necessary for the functioning of a decent political or-
der.21 The same seems to be true of the Nights: its teaching is rather the ma-
nipulation of beliefs in the service of a decent human life.
This point is intimated in the story of the fisherman and the ‘ifrit
(AN 1:19ff.). This story represents the new situation of the wise in the world
of revealed religions (MS 3.7, toward the end of the passage). The story de-
picts a poor fisherman who goes to cast his net in the river to earn his day’s
living. From the beginning, we suspect that he is no ordinary fisherman: he is
“musical” and while casting his net sings verses about his own wisdom and his
undeserved poverty (AN 1:21). The fisherman catches a brass jar in his net—
one with a lead seal imprinted with the inscription of Solomon. Unknowingly
he opens the jar, and thereby frees a heretical demon who rebelled against
Solomon and was imprisoned in the jar. During his captivity, the demon had
sworn to kill the person who freed him from the jar, and he now plans to kill
the poor fisherman. But the fisherman is very confident of his own intelligence.
He apparently knows many things about religion and its powers. First, he con-
jures the demon by “the Greatest Name of God” to answer his questions.22
19
Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 44–49; Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s New Modes and
Orders: A Study of the Discourses on Livy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 99.
20
Leo Strauss, “The Origins of Political Science and the Problem of Socrates,” ed. David
Bolotin, Christopher Bruell, and Thomas L. Pangle, Interpretation 23, no. 2 (1996): 147.
21
Strauss, Natural Right and History, 198; Leo Strauss, “The Law of Reason in The Kuzari,” in
Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 115, 130. For the
classical understanding of political theology see Augustine, The City of God 4.27.
22
Traditionally the “Greatest Name of Allah” (Ismul A’zam) is said to be hidden from ordi-
nary men. According to a hadith, the Greatest Name of Allah is “the one which if He is called
by it, He will answer” (Ibn Majah, Sunan, vol. 5, trans. Nasiruddin Al-Khattab [Riyadh: Darus-
salam, 2007], 114, Hadith 3857).

198

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

The demon is apparently shaken and tamed by the mentioning of the Great-
est Name. The fisherman benefits from the perplexity of the demon: he
tricks him into returning to the jar, and puts back the brass stopper im-
printed with the inscription of Solomon. The fisherman seems to be a master
of the art of controlling demons by using the revealed religion.
The demon begs for mercy, but the fisherman refrains from releasing him
and begins to tell a story to explain to the demon why he cannot trust him.
The story told by the fisherman is that of King Yunan and Duban the sage
(AN 1:25ff.). King Yunan, whose name means “Greece,” suffers from leprosy;
there comes a sage who has studied the books of the Greeks, the Persians,
the Arabs, and the Syrians.23 He is the master of all the sciences and manages
to cure the king with his medical knowledge and is given the most splendid
rewards. The new status of the sage arouses the jealousy of the vizier. The vi-
zier tries to convince the king that the sage is a dangerous individual possess-
ing unknown powers who might kill the king in the same way that he had
cured him. The king is at first skeptical of the vizier’s claim, but the vizier
tells a story to convince him. In the vizier’s story, a wicked vizier conspires
with a female demon to kill the prince, but the demon foolishly advises the
prince to pray to God if he wants to save himself. The prince prays and, being
saved, goes back to the king explaining how the wicked vizier wanted to kill
his son. The king kills the wicked vizier, and now King Yunan, listening to the
story, is convinced that he should also kill the sage Duban. When the sage is
brought for execution, he says that he is innocent and that killing him after
the service he has done for the king would be like “the crocodile’s reward.”
The king asks the sage to tell the story of the crocodile, but surprisingly the
sage refuses to do so. After unsuccessfully pleading with the king to spare his
life, the sage requests some delay for putting his affairs in order. When the
sage returns, he offers a magic book to the king and tells him that the book
will make his head speak after it has been cut off. All that the king should do,
he says, is read some passages from the book. The sage is beheaded, but as the
king tries to open the book, he sees that the pages are stuck together. The
king licks his fingers to open the pages, but the pages had been poisoned
by the sage, and the king dies: the king “Greece” and the sage end up killing
each other.
As Strauss mentions, nothing is said about the fate of the wicked jealous
vizier, but we can assume that he inherited the kingdom. Strauss thinks that
“the wicked vizier is a prophet who denigrates his predecessors,” that is, the
wicked viziers of the past. He has devised a plan to destroy the foolish king
(“the prophet’s master”) and his rival, the sage, in a mutual destruction

23
Compare the career of Duban with the common background of philosophers in the Is-
lamic world. See, for instance, the surviving passages from Alfarabi’s autobiography in Majid
Fakhry, Al-Farabi, Founder of Islamic Neoplatonism: His Life, Works and Influence (Oxford: Oneworld
Publications, 2002), 158ff.

199

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

(MS 2.5). The episode reminds Strauss of the conflict of Athens and Socra-
tes (MS 3.7–8, 4.12), and how two partners who could have been beneficial
to each other followed the path of mutual destruction.24 The sage of the story
who could not tell a story to save his own life should learn from the musical
fisherman, his religious knowledge and poetic powers, or from the prince
who learned the power of prayer from a demon. The fisherman is a musical
sage who has learned to use the divine art of prayer and religion to imprison
the demon.
Strauss observes the same teaching in another story of the Nights, the story
of the second dervish. This dervish, who is especially religious, was trans-
formed into a monkey by a descendant of Satan. The dervish-monkey is pre-
sented to a king who has an intelligent daughter knowledgeable about the art
of magic: a princess who knows 170 charms (10  17). She discovers the mon-
key to be a prince and pledges to release him. A fierce fight between the
king’s daughter and the demon who has put the dervish under spell takes
place. In the end the dervish is restored to his human shape but the princess
is mortally wounded and dies: the princess and the demon end up killing
each other (AN 1:74, 86, 88). Strauss imagines the possibility of an alliance
between the princess and the heretic demon against the religious dervish
and thinks that such an alliance would lead to the ruin of “the wicked vizier”
and his master “the ugly negro slave” (MS 3–4.12; for “the ugly negro slave”
see below).
Such a fruitful alliance with a descendant of Satan would be devoid of any
fanaticism. The same is true of the alliance between the fisherman and the
heretic demon who rebelled against Solomon (MS 2.6, 3.9). The fisherman
releases the demon, and the demon shows the fishermen a lake containing
four kinds of fish in different colors. He tells the fisherman that he can be-
come rich by selling the fish to a king. But when the fish are fried by the
king’s cook, the kitchen wall splits open, and a young woman appears and
speaks to the fish, and the fish speak to her. To find the mystery of the fish,
the king asks the fisherman to take him to the lake. Near the lake, the king
discovers the palace of a young prince, the lower part of whose body had
been turned into stone. The prince tells the king the story behind his con-
dition: his wife has been betraying him by committing adultery with a “lep-
rous ugly black slave” who lives in a domed shrine-like hut and sleeps on

24
The spurious story that a king killed Socrates probably finds its origin in a misunder-
standing about archon basileus, the Athenian magistracy dealing with the indictment against
Socrates for impiety. It is mentioned in Plato, Euthyphro 2a3. The same spurious story is re-
flected in al-Kindi’s anecdote about Socrates. Al-Kindi, The Philosophical Works of Al-Kindi,
trans. Peter Pormann and Peter Adamson (Karachi: OUP Pakistan, 2012), 263. Another pos-
sibility is that the story has reminded Strauss of another Socrates, “the Armenian Socrates” in
Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus, who is killed by the jealous Armenian king. See Xenophon,
Education of Cyrus 3.1.38ff. and Strauss’s discussion of the story in Leo Strauss, “Course on
Xenophon,” Session 12, 1963, https://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/xenophon-winter-1963/.

200

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

cane stalks covered with rags and tatters. Although she is mistreated by the
black slave, the princess humbles herself to him and praises him like a god.
When the prince found out about his wife’s adultery he tried to kill the black
man, but only injured him. As revenge, the wife, who knows sorcery, has
turned the lower part of the prince’s body into stone and his subjects into
the fish found in the lake. The adulterous princess lashes the prince every
day and nurses the injured black slave. The king kills the black slave and
forces the wife to lift the spell, thereby returning the citizens of the city to
their human forms. The king also rewards the fisherman and, contrary to
King Yunan and the sage, they end up helping each other.
For Strauss, the alliance of the fisherman and the demon leads to rescuing
the population of a city and the salvation of the prince of that city, betrayed
by a woman in love with a black slave. Strauss calls the fisherman “the enemy
of the fish” (MS 3.6). It seems that he has a passage in Alfarabi’s Philosophy of
Plato in mind in which the fish symbolize stupidity and men devoid of hu-
man intelligence are compared to “a fish with a shape like that of a man.”25
The fisherman is a philosopher, the enemy of stupidity, but he does not re-
main the enemy of the fish. The new fisherman-philosopher helps the fish by
transforming them into human beings. The sage is the savior of the many in
the age of revelation. Strauss also mentions that the actions of the fisherman
were not possible in the time of Socrates, namely, trusting in oaths and im-
prisoning demons with the Name of God: the revealed religions have given
birth to new theologico-political problems as well as new arms (MS 3.7). Strauss
compares the prince’s adulterous wife, who had preferred to him a most ugly
leprous black slave, with the wicked vizier in the story told by the fisherman
(MS 4.12). The wife is a prophet who believes in the beauty of the ugly slave,
and her attachment to him had transformed the people into fish, the dumb-
est of all animals.26 The new religion marks the rise of the fortunes of the ig-
noble—the black slave who fornicated with the queen of King Shahriar was
̄ “the fortunate.”
27
called Masʿud,

25
Alfarabi, “The Philosophy of Plato,” in Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. Muhsin Mahdi
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 64 (Rosenthal & Walzer, 18). I owe the reference to
Nasser Behnegar. The origin of the idea seems to be Aristotle, History of Animals 505a33–b1, in
which fish are described as animals lacking most of the sense organs.
26
This is also the message of the fantastic story of Ma’ruf the Cobbler: in that story it is
shown how a poor cobbler who has run away to another city from his ugly and troublesome
wife starts believing his own lies that he is in fact a rich merchant and that his caravan will
arrive soon with his many fantastic possessions. Only a miraculous ring can make his vain
hopes a reality (MS 18.63).
27
Mahdi, Alf Layla Wa-Layla, 128. In a famous tradition, the Prophet states that “I was sent
to the red and to the black.” On the basis of this tradition, Averroes argues that Islam is in-
tended for all mankind. Averroes, Faith and Reason in Islam: Averroes’ Exposition of Religious Ar-
guments, trans. Ibrahim Najjar (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2001), 103–4. It is said that
the Prophet, upon his triumphal return to Mecca, asked Bilal, a black African slave, to call the
people to prayer. Several prominent Meccans were unhappy about this, which occasioned the
revelation of the Qur’an 49:13: “We have created you from male and female and made you peo-
ples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of

201

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

The alliance between the sage and the irreligious demons and kings is
possible if the sage learns about the power of religion and puts it in the ser-
vice of the many.28 The sage should also learn how to appease the king and
the demon, and learn to charm them by his story telling, just like Shahrzad,
who mastered not only medicine and philosophy but also the art of storytell-
ing, and thereby managed to save her own life and that of her fellow women.
The possibility of an alliance between kings and sages is depicted not only in
the frame story of the whole work in which Shahrzad tames King Shahriar
and teaches him many things but also at the end of the story of the just King
Anushirvan (AN 2:327). At the end of this story, Shahrzad addresses the king
for the first time and approves of the opinion of “the wise men and philos-
ophers” who said that “religion depends on the king,” showing the way to-
ward an alliance between kings and sages for the subduction of religion
(MS 14.40).
However, one must remain prudent about the possibility of such an alli-
ance. Strauss reminds us of the limitations of the power of wisdom in guid-
ing human life. This is intimated in the story of Wird Khan. Before the birth
of Wird Khan, his father King Jali’ad had a dream which predicted the injus-
tice of his unborn son. The king tries to prevent the fulfilment of the proph-
ecy by giving his son an exemplary philosophic education and asking the wise
Shimas to be the vizier to his son. In the end, as Strauss explains, a twelve-
year-old boy and the fear of impending invasion of enemies succeed in do-
ing what philosophy and wise men could not do: they knock some reason
into Wird Khan (AN 3:503ff.; MS 17.58). The tale depicts the impuissance
of philosophy and wise counsel in controlling the tyrannical tendencies of
King Wird Khan.

L O V E A N D L I B E R AT I O N

According to Strauss, one of the major aspects of premodern thought is the

awareness of the limits of politics.29 He also intimates the presence of such

Allah is the most righteous of you.” Compare the Prophet’s Farewell Address: “Indeed, there is no
superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, nor of a non-Arab over an Arab, nor of a white over a black,
nor a black over a white, except by taqwa [piety].” Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal, English Translation of
Musnad Imam Ahmad Bin Hanbal (Riyadh: Dar-us-Salam Publications, 2012), Hadith 22391. Islam is
also depicted as a lean and brown slave in the story of the Yemeni and his six slaves (AN 2:83–96): in
that story, the order of the brown slave girl in the enumeration is changed, and she is particularly
praised. The same is the case of the thin slave girl. Neither of them quotes the Qur’an in their
speeches, thus separating themselves from the four others, as if they are the Qur’an and do not
need to remind us of their Qur’anic superiority (MS 14.38).
28
See “language of brutes” (MS 1.3), “mistake of the sage” (MS 2.5), “the king’s daughter
who knows 170 [17  10] charms” (MS 14.12), “address of Schechrazad to her king to the effect
that religion depends on government” (MS 15.41, italics in the original).
29
Leo Strauss, “The Spirit of Sparta or the Taste of Xenophon,” Social Research 6, no. 4
(1939): 528, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 127, “On Classical
Political Philosophy,” Social Research 12, no. 1 (1945): 117, and Natural Right and History, 151.

202

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

an awareness in the Nights: “men cannot be just while living in this life”
(MS 17.58). This means that the real remedy for the problem brought about
by revealed religions should not be sought in the sphere of politics. But
where should one discover the real remedy offered by the Nights? The answer
seems to be in love and erotic longings. This should not sound surprising, as
one can easily describe the Nights as a love story: love is the major theme of
the whole work and is the guiding motive of many of its characters. However,
Strauss gives a theologico-political twist to this observation and calls “the
counter-religion of love” a recurring theme of the work (MS 13.39). Eroti-
cism and love are somehow related to the Nights’ view of religion. To explain
what is meant here, let us first begin with some preliminary observations
about love in the Nights.
Love, eroticism, and the body are depicted as the principal targets of reli-
gious thought in the Nights. One can see this in a group of six stories (MS 14.39).
The first one is about an extremely religious son of the caliph who has cho-
sen to live ascetically. He works as a bricklayer for a trifling wage, although
he has a precious ruby in his pocket (AN 2:213–17). The following stories
prove to be a concealed criticism of the basis of the prince’s mode of life:
in the second story, an eminent man has met a remarkable schoolteacher
who masters the Qur’an, grammar, poetry, and philology. The narrator de-
scribes him as a man of intelligence, contrary to the common belief that
schoolteachers are stupid. After a while the narrator finds the teacher in
mourning. He asks him about the cause of his sadness and the teacher re-
sponds that his beloved had just died. The narrator questions him about her
identity but the teacher tells him that he had never seen her: he had fallen
in love only after hearing someone recite a poem about her, and recently
he had heard another verse, indicating that the woman of the first poem had
died. The narrator calls the teacher a fool, and Strauss describes the story
as “falling in love on hearsay” (AN 2:217–19; MS 14.39). The story reminds
us of the princess who believed in the beauty of an ugly slave. In the third
story, we meet yet another schoolmaster, who has surprised his guest with
his knowledge of jurisprudence, grammar, and philology. At night, the guest
hears a loud cry in the house and finds the teacher covered in blood and
about to die. Asked what has happened, the teacher answers that his reflec-
tion about the works of Almighty God has led him to believe that all the
members of the body created by God serve a purpose except the sexual or-
gans. He has therefore cut the useless source of his erotic longings with a ra-
zor. The narrator again calls all schoolmasters foolish and Strauss describes
the message as “the absurdity of asceticism” (AN 2:219; MS 14.39). The next
story describes a schoolmaster who loiters in a mosque (AN 2:219–20). He
cannot read or write but pretends that he does and tricks parents into send-
ing their children to him. Although he is illiterate, he pretends that he can
read the letter of a husband to his wife and tells her that her husband is dead.
The story is followed by the story of a king who desires his subject’s woman.

203

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

When the husband suspects that the king has his eyes on his wife, he refuses
to sleep with her until the king assures him that he has lost interest.30 The
next story is the fantastic story of the bird Rukh and all the incredible things
told about it, followed by several stories of unhappy lovers. One of the stories
is about a man who sees a beautiful woman and falls in love but has no house
to which he can invite her. He therefore goes to the house of his friend, called
Muslim. The friend gives him money to buy some food, but when he returns
to the house, he finds that Muslim has locked the door and is making love to
the woman. When he knocks, Muslim simply grabs the food and closes the
door, saying that God at the Day of Judgment will reward and repay him
for the favor that he has done for him (AN 2:225–27).
In the Nights, religion is the enemy of eros and erotic longings. But man is
an erotic being and love is a part of his nature. Religion must therefore mu-
tilate man’s nature. The metaphorical mutilation of human nature by reli-
gion is depicted literally in the story of the hunchback: in that story, a Mus-
lim, a Jew, and a Christian tell stories of mutilated Muslim men. Strauss
remarks that the most mutilated Muslim is the one in the story told by the
Muslim (MS 6.17; AN 1:189–97): the Muslim narrator has attended a gath-
ering for recitation of the Qur’an where the Muslim jurists were also pres-
ent. After the recitation, the table is set for a feast, and on the menu, there
is an almond dish. A young man among the guests whose thumbs and big
toes have been cut off refrains from eating the food unless he washes his
hands one hundred and twenty times, reminding us of the ritual ablutions.
The guests ask for the story behind his aversion to the dish. He says that he
was once a poor merchant when a beautiful slave girl of the caliph visited his
shop. He fell in love and married her, but before consummating the mar-
riage, he ate the same almond dish and forgot to wash his hands. In the bed-
room and about to enjoy the union, the slave girl smelled the scent of the
dish and was repulsed by the merchant’s unwashed hands. Outraged by the
merchant’s lack of manners, she cruelly cut off the merchant’s thumbs and
toes as a punishment for not washing his hands after eating it. The young
man later took an oath to wash his hands before eating the almond dish
again. Remarkably, despite the terrible punishment, the slave girl has be-
come the merchant’s wife and they continue to live together.
Strauss finds the origin of religion’s anti-erotic vision partly in the bodily
dimension of erotic desires. God is noncorporeal and lacks eros. “God is
jealous either because He is not, or does not believe Himself to be, infinitely
attractive, and the reason for that is his hiddenness: He Himself is the
ground of His jealousy” (MS 5.15). However, the God of the Nights is not
and cannot be responsible for the effects of His jealousy. In the story of the

30
Compare the story of Abu ‘Isa and Qurrat Al-‘Ain (AN 2:239), in which Isa hides his love
for the slave girl Qurrat, who is offered to the caliph.

204

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

crow and the cat we see him depicted as a mere spectator: sitting under a tree
and living in peace, a cat and a crow see a leopard coming toward them. The
crow flies to safety, but the cat, unable to save himself, asks for the crow’s help.
The crow sees a herdsman and his dogs nearby and attracts the dogs toward
the tree. The leopard runs away and is followed by the dogs. The herdsman
only observes the whole affair from afar. For Strauss, the story points to the
absence of divine providence by depicting “man” as a silent observer who does
not do anything, but only observes (AN 1:640–41; MS 11.30). The effects of
God’s jealousy on human life therefore come about through human beings,
who believe in divine punishment (MS 5.15, 15.50).31
The effects of belief in divine punishment are seen most forcefully in the
story of a young man who is robbed of the pleasure of love by a loquacious
barber. The story is narrated by a tailor who has been to a wedding, where he
meets a limping young man. As soon as the young man sees a certain barber
also attending the feast, he refuses to sit down, telling the guests that he had
sworn never to stay in the same town as this barber. Asked about his story, the
young man tells the guests that he was once rich and fell in love with a beau-
tiful young woman and arranged to meet her at her home. But before going
to the appointment, he decided to shave his beard and called the barber to
his house. The barber turns out to be a remarkable individual and claims to
be a modest man of few words who never meddles with the affairs of others.
He guesses that the young man is going to meet his lover and offers his ser-
vices to smooth things over. Exasperated by the barber’s meddling, the young
man gets rid of him and sneaks away to the house of the beautiful woman,
but, unbeknownst to him, the barber follows him. While in the woman’s room,
to the young man’s dismay, her father unexpectedly returns home and starts
punishing one of the maids for some minor infraction. The barber, who is
waiting outside, hears the wailings of the maid and thinks that the father
has caught the young man. He begins shouting in the street that his master
is being killed in this house, thereby causing an uproar and attracting a huge
crowd of people outside. The father, hearing the barber’s accusations, asks
him to search the house to see for himself that he hasn’t murdered anyone.
Meanwhile, the young man has concealed himself in a trunk. The barber
finds the trunk and leaves the house running with the trunk on his back.
The young man manages to throw himself out of the trunk, but breaks his
leg, and that is why he is limping—and why he cannot bear to see the barber
(AN 1:205–17).

31
According to Strauss, the same theme is discussed from a similar point of view in
Aristophanes’s Wasps: Philocleon is a zealous Athenian addicted to law courts and condemn-
ing his fellow men. He is tricked by his son into acquitting a defendant, but Philocleon is
afraid of having committed a sin against the gods. For Strauss, Philocleon’s addiction to
law courts and his savagery against his fellow men is the result of his belief in the punitiveness
of the gods. Philocleon is also an unerotic man and does not desire wine and other refined
pleasures. Strauss, “Origins of Political Science and the Problem of Socrates,” 147.

205

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

Strauss pays particularly close attention to the personage of the barber: he

is a busybody who is of a very low status; Strauss mentions his “camel-driver”
friends to show his status (MS 6.17). But at the same time, this busybody bar-
ber boasts of his expertise in all aspects of occult and religious sciences: he
knows the Qur’an and the reports of the Prophet, and resembles an accom-
plished religious scholar, if not more. He is described as “the ruler of kings”
and is proved to be a “demagogue” who successfully mobilizes common
people in a revolt.32 The barber tells the story of his six brothers and against
all evidence to the contrary he boasts of his own taciturnity and politeness;
he is wont to denigrate his brothers, and calls them talkative and impolite.
Strauss compares the barber to the wicked vizier (the prophet) who deni-
grated his predecessors, and surmises that the barber’s brothers were also
barbers. This is why the barber is capable of performing “miracles” and
brings the dead hunchback to life. In the barber’s story of his six brothers,
Strauss underscores the stories of the central brothers (the third and the
fourth).33 The second brother is invited to an extremely beautiful house
to enjoy making love to a beautiful woman. He enters the house but is asked
to endure anything at all if he wants to have his desire. He is slapped, his
beard is shaved, his mustache is plucked, and his eyebrows are dyed. He is
asked to dance around the house while the slave girls and eunuchs throw
objects at him. Constantly encouraged to endure everything for the union,
he obeys every command. In the end, he is thrown in the middle of a crowded
market stark naked and drunk—without enjoying love. The third brother is
a blind beggar. He goes into a house to beg for money but goes away empty-
handed. He is followed by the owner of the house. The beggar, not being
able to see the owner of the house, joins other blind beggars who eat their
food together and share their daily proceeds. They suspect that a stranger is
among them and get into a fight with the owner of the house who wanted to
steal their money. The fight attracts a crowd and they are all brought to the
governor. Before the governor, the owner of the house pretends to be blind
and accuses the others to be impostors who pretend to be blind. The gover-
nor gives some of the beggars’ money to the owner of the house and keeps
the rest for himself while punishing the beggars. Strauss observes that two of
the brothers succeed in entering a house but the second brother is robbed
of the pleasure of love while the third who is there to earn money is robbed of
the money he had. The three brothers clearly belong together (MS 6.17).

32
Cf. “Socrates does get into trouble through a certain inbetween type of man [i.e. Strep-
siades], who is not distinguished by honesty. Here we remind ourselves of the fact that the old
juryman of the Wasps . . . is also socially an inbetween type. Needless to say that the demagogues
too belong to the inbetween type” (Strauss, “Origins of Political Science and the Problem of
Socrates,” 152–53, italics added).
33
The importance of the central items in an enumeration and the central passages, para-
graphs, or chapters is one of the common principles of Strauss’s hermeneutics. For the jus-
tification of this principle, see Cicero, Orator 50 and De Oratore 2.313ff.; Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,”
371 n. 35; Leo Strauss, Xenophon’s Socrates (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), 58.

206

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

While eros is the target of religious thought, it is also the way toward lib-
eration. This is owing to the fact that for Strauss there is a link between erotic
longings and philosophy: eros is a rebellious, even the most rebellious, de-
sire. It does not obey the law and does not bend to the will of nomos. It is
the unruliest human desire and hence the target of religious thought. One
can easily see this in Genesis, where the first disobedience leads to conscious-
ness about one’s sexuality. Eros opens the way for philosophy, as the essence
of philosophy is also rebellion. In fact, for Strauss, “eros, in its highest form is
philosophy.” Eros leads man away from and beyond the city and nomos and
encourages men to disregard nomos. This is why there is a connection be-
tween women, wisdom, and nomos in the Nights. As Strauss explains, “refuta-
tion of the nomos regarding inferiority of women” is one of the major themes
of the whole work (MS 1.1). Women, representing eros as well as wisdom, are
the enemy of nomos. Elsewhere Strauss goes so far as to call “the philosophic
eros” the phusis of the philosopher.34 Eros and wine are also old allies. In the
same way that eros rebels against the law, wine loosens the tongue and
mind’s fetters that bound it to the ancestral and the sacred.35 This is why ac-
cording to Strauss, Aristophanes’s myth in Symposium “teaches that by virtue
of eros man . . . will approach a condition in which they become a serious dan-
ger to the gods.”36
In the Nights too, eros is depicted as incompatible with the sense of shame
and fear of God. In a story, Nur al-Din, a young man who knows that wine
drinking is “a great sin, forbidden in His Book by Almighty God” (AN 3:351)
learns from his companions to ignore the prohibition against wine drink-
ing. He finds it bitter at first but is told by a gracious old man (compare with
the story of the Devil below) to try it with sugar. He is next told about its uses:
“it emboldens the coward and encourages copulation.” When the young
man returns home, he in his drunkenness strikes his father and blinds him;
he leaves his parents and falls in love with a Frankish woman who can success-
fully pretend to be Christian to her Christian parents and abuse Islam. But at
the same time, this woman kills her Christian brothers and avoids being
brought back to her parents by professing Islam, and she threatens the ca-
liph with divine punishment were she, as a Muslim woman, to be separated
from her lover and returned to infidels (AN 3:423–24). The wine drinking of
the young Nur and later the beating of his father recall Aristophanes’s The

34
Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” 361.
35
The theme of wine drinking and its opposition to the sense of shame, respect for the old
laws, and established order is mentioned by Strauss in his commentary on Plato’s Laws. In the
Laws, the search for the best laws, which are to replace the old divine laws of Crete and Sparta,
gets underway when the old men of the dialogue are freed from their restraints by talking
about wine drinking, whereupon they engage in a “vicarious enjoyment of wine through a
conversation about wine” (Strauss, The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws, 19–21; Leo Strauss,
What Is Political Philosophy? [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959], 31).
36
Strauss, “Origins of Political Science and the Problem of Socrates,” 150.

207

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

Clouds, where Pheidippides beats his father after going through philosoph-
ical training at Socrates’s Thinkery. The wine drinking has prepared Nur to
ignore the patriarchal order and has put him on the path of falling in love
with a Christian woman. The opposition between eros and religion can also
be seen in the story of the wife of a Frankish knight who is in love with a Mus-
lim merchant. The merchant abstains from intercourse with the Christian
woman because of her religion, but she forsakes her husband and avoids be-
ing sent back to her Christian husband by professing her faith to Islam: an
unbeliever converts to Islam to satisfy her desire and Islam is depicted as
the handmaiden of love. One can imagine the same thing happening with
Christianity in a different context (MS 17.55).
The most striking example of the stories that depict the transgression of
the divine law in the Nights is that of Judar the fisherman (AN 2:610–48). The
fisherman is instructed by a magician to go through seven tests in order to
unravel all the mysteries (AN 2:625). In the first six tests, he must confront
several fantastic beings who try to kill him. Each time, Judar is directed by
the magician to offer himself willingly and without fear, so as to go to the
next level. The magician explains to the fisherman that these fearsome be-
ings are only images and that he should not fear them. The sixth test is to
confront a black slave and to open a door by saying “Isa [ Jesus], tell Musa
[Moses] to open the door.” The most interesting test is the seventh and last:
to succeed in this test, Judar must force the phantom of his mother to strip
off her clothes and allow him to look at her nakedness. Judar is instructed
by the magician to ignore his mother’s pleas, for if he does not he will die
(AN 2:624). At first Judar is hesitant as his mother tells him: “Have you a
heart of stone, my son, that you would shame me by uncovering my private
parts? This is unlawful.” But Judar learns to ignore her pleas and succeeds in
passing the test. In his comment on this story (MS 15.47) Strauss is probably
thinking about a similar story in Herodotus’s Histories. He explains the im-
portance of this episode many years before in a letter to Jacob Klein.37 In He-
rodotus, Candaules persuades Gyges to see his wife’s nakedness (1.8.1–2).
For Strauss, this represents questioning the basis of the patriarchal law. Shame
and fear are the instruments by which the ancestral protects itself, and the
one who questions the ancestral must first vanquish his fear and sense of
shame at doing so. As Seth Benardete, following Strauss’s lead, explains,
“to see [human beings] naked is to see them as they are, stripped of the con-
cealment of clothes. And laws are like clothes: they too conceal from us the
way things are. All laws say that certain things cannot be seen; before certain
things one must have shame.”38 The story of Judar is that of a man who
learns to do away with his cowardice and sense of shame and learns to look

37
Leo Strauss, letter to Jacob Klein, October 15, 1938, and Gesammelte Schriften, Band 3, ed.
Heinrich Meier and Wiebke Meier (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2001), 556.
38
Seth Benardete, Herodotean Inquiries (The Hague: St. Augustine’s Press, 1969), 12.

208

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

at things as they are. However, there is one major difference between the story
of Judar and that of Gyges: while Gyges sees the nakedness of a beautiful
woman, Judar sees the ugliness of his mother’s old and frail body. The sa-
cred is thus seen as an ugly old woman, or as Strauss puts it, as “treacherous
hags or old witches” (MS 5.14). The tradition seduces young men and trans-
forms them into religious zealots, like the old treacherous woman in the story
of the lady of the house who has converted the son of a king.
The story of Judar shows transgression in its brutality. However, transgres-
sion has its own charms and beauties. In fact, what leads to transgression is
often attraction to beauty. We encounter the beauty of transgression in a story
in which the Devil himself is depicted as an attractive, handsome old man
possessing eloquence and remarkable grace; he is fond of wine, can sing Ar-
abic poems of supreme beauty and is apparently himself in love (AN 2:777–
78)! It seems that he also procures women for men (AN 2:796; MS 15.49).
But the most remarkable of the stories that depict the triumph of love over
religion and the charms of transgression is the story of Nur al-Din ‘Ali and
Anis al-Jalis (AN 1:244–78). In that story we are introduced to a sultan in Basra
“who loved the poor, the beggars and all his subjects, distributing his wealth to
those who believed in Muhammad” (AN 1:244). Nur, a young man, seduces
and sleeps with a slave girl intended for that sultan. Together they travel to
Baghdad and have a drinking party in the garden of the caliph, and even
make the pious old gardener of the caliph join them in transgression
(MS 7.20). The gardener, who is aptly called Shaikh Ibrahim, is a strict fol-
lower of the injunction of the Prophet about wine and has not consumed
wine for thirteen years, but he is persuaded by the fine casuistry of Nur to
drink with them (AN 1:262–63). The caliph sees the burning lights of the
banquet in his garden from afar and at first believes that the city has been taken
from him—and in a sense it has. The vizier tries to calm the caliph’s anger
with an excuse: he tells the caliph that Ibrahim has asked the caliph’s per-
mission to have a party in the garden to celebrate his son’s circumcision.
The vizier has forgotten to tell the caliph about it. The caliph thinks that
he must join the party as he believes that the pious gardener is entertaining
the poor and the dervishes at the gathering. But before joining the gather-
ing, the caliph wants to observe it anonymously, so he climbs a high tree and
observes the party from above a tree. When the caliph sees the pious gardener,
cup in hand, drinking and singing with a young and beautiful couple, he be-
comes furious over such transgressions being committed in his garden. But
listening to the music and observing the graceful young man and woman,
the caliph joins the party and excuses the participants (cf. AN 3:351). The
story perfectly describes Strauss’s point about “the impotence of kings vis-
à-vis love” as the one of the recurring themes of the work (MS 15.50).
In his remarkable essays on the Nights, Muhsin Mahdi argued that a com-
mon theme cannot be found in the whole of the stories included in the large
editions of the Nights and thought one must look for a common theme only

209

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

in portions of the stories, namely the “Syrian branch” version.39 It seems that
Strauss had been trying to find such a common theme in all the stories in-
cluded in the Calcutta II edition and that his notes are the result of this ef-
fort. This common theme is the theologico-political solution of the Medieval
enlightenment. Theoretical radicalism and practical moderation are charac-
teristic of this solution. For Strauss, the author’s radical and critical thought
is clearly joined with practical moderation: although he leads the reader
step by step toward his esoteric radical views, he carefully bows to the com-
mon opinions of his time at every turn. Liberation from prejudices and false
opinions is reserved for those few who see through the orthodox disguise;
they are taught to live like the author, a stranger in his homeland, “praising,
speaking, seeing, doing things against [his] intent so as to please the prince.”40
It seems that for Strauss, the author of the Nights is no revolutionary; his po-
litical teaching consists of learning to live with the reigning opinions and try-
ing to find some breathing space for the life of the mind. He does not pro-
pose the root and branch elimination of the reigning beliefs. His teaching
consists only of a tactful handling of the common opinions in the interest of
a decent human life. He is a private man who lives “as a member of an imper-
fect society which he tries to humanize within the limits of the possible.”41

APPENDIX A

A Previously Unpublished Typescript by Leo Strauss on the “Arabian Nights”

The following is the edited version (edited by Rasoul Namazi) of a typescript of eigh-
teen pages titled “1001 Nights” found in Leo Strauss Papers.42 The typescript is cor-
rected by pencil in Strauss’s handwriting. There is another version of the same type-
script that is a photocopy whose original could not be found.43 The corrections of the
second version are fewer and are by a different hand. In the typescript, six volumes
are referred to, the last tale being that of Ma‘ruf the Cobbler; as there are several ex-
amples of German words and Germanicisms in the text, one can surmise that Strauss
only consulted the German translation of the Arabian Nights. The German version is
the one by Enno Littmann (1875–1958), who based his translation on the Calcutta II
edition.44

39
Mahdi, Alf Layla Wa-Layla, 141. In his notes, Strauss mentions about 144 stories included
in Calcutta II edition. Of these, only thirty-four are included in Mahdi’s edition.
40
Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 3.2; Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 168.
41
Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 17.
42
Leo Strauss Papers, box 20, folder 2, Special Collections Research Center, University of
Chicago Library.
43
Leo Strauss Papers, box 23, folder 13, Special Collections Research Center, University of
Chicago Library.
44
Die Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten, trans. Enno Littmann, 6 vols. (Leipzig:
Insel-Verlag, 1921–28).

210

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

Editorial remarks: some of the corrections are only present in the first version of the
typescript and are absent in the second one: these discrepancies are indicated in the
footnotes by MS 1 and MS 2; numbers in curly brackets, inserted by the editor, refer
to the page numbers of the typescript; numbers in square brackets, also inserted by
the editor, refer to the paragraph numbers of the typescript; numbers in parentheses
are in the original typescript and refer to the page and volume numbers of Litt-
mann’s translation; underlined words are replaced by italics; crossed out words and
handwritten insertions are mentioned in the footnotes; an arrow symbol in the type-
script, used for showing the logical consequence of ideas, is everywhere inserted by
hand; and Strauss’s corrections of typographical errors have not been noted. The er-
rors are the responsibility of the editor. I thank Professor Nathan Tarcov, Leo Strauss’s
literary executor, for giving us permission to publish the typescript, and who retains all
rights for further publication.

1001 Nights

{1} [1] 1001 5 7  11  13. If one adds the two stories preceding the stories told by
Shahrazad, 1003 545 17  59. The overall suggestion: refutation of the nomos re-
garding inferiority of women; and: indictment of tyranny; and: how jealousy of a
king46 is appeased.
[2] The Introductory story: it is dangerous to deceive kings; it is not dangerous to de-
ceive demons. The kings deceive the demon out of fear of the demon: they are com-
pelled to deceive him. Both the demon and the kings are jealous. The number of de-
ceptions practiced by the demon’s wife: 570 (5 19  30) and 572 (5 13  11  4).47
[3] The donkey and the seer : the man with the secret knowledge which he cannot re-
veal except at the danger of death—he is tempted to reveal it and hence to die but is
saved by another piece of secret knowledge: of a rooster and 50 hens—of 51: the se-
cret knowledge is knowledge of the language of brutes. The first piece of secret knowl-
edge: the donkey is happy by doing nothing; his happiness is due to his silence on the
reason48 of his happiness; he is made miserable by the revelation of his secret. The
master of the animals is said to be a peasant—in fact he is a merchant. (27).
[4] The merchant 49 and the demon: the merchant is saved from the demon who is set
to kill him, through story tellers; certainly 2 of the 3 story tellers are also merchants.
(Merchants are travelers.) The first story reminds of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac: the
jealous wife wishes that the father slaughter his own son; the son who is saved goes to
India. Cf. 74: Allah is a jealous God. In both the first and second story the [human]50
revenge is much milder than the crime; but the she-demon wished a greater revenge
than the brother of the treacherous brothers (the fellow-men); in the third story only
the proper punishment of the adulterous wife but not of the slave. The three stories
describe the transformation of men into brutes (cf. the language of brutes {2} in the
preceding story); both stories of demons and of the transformations of men into
brutes gradually disappear.
45
“5” is inserted by hand.
46
“of a king” is inserted by hand.
47
Two “5” are inserted by hand.
48
Underline not in MS 2.
49
“merchant” has a double underline, hence it is put in bold characters.
50
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.

211

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

[5] The fisherman and the demon: these stories are told not as the preceding ones51
in order to appease the demon but after the demon has been brought under control.
The fisherman tells the demon the story of the vizier of King Junan to justify his ac-
tion against the demon; fisher: demon 5 the sage52 (who heals the king by his worldly
wisdom): the king or the vizier—i.e. the story told parallels the story in which the
story teller acts—the fisherman will not make the mistake of the sage. The story is
partly told in the form of inserted stories, of the story told by the king and story told
by the vizier. In the light of the events the vizier’s suggestion amounts to this—vizier
in the story : king in the story 553 king and sage : vizier. The story telling wicked vizier
brings it about that the king and the sage kill one another: nothing happens to the story
telling wicked vizier. /→ the vizier becomes the king/. In the vizier’s story 54 the wicked
vizier tries to destroy the prince but since the vizier’s ally betrays the vizier by asking
the prince to pray to God, the vizier is destroyed—just as the real vizier wants to de-
stroy the sage (of whom he is jealous). /the real vizier succeeds because he has no ally
and the sage does not pray—the king is a fool/. But why does the wicked vizier suc-
ceed through telling a story of a wicked vizier and through extolling the virtue of
prayer? /the wicked vizier is a prophet who denigrates his predecessors and the fool-
ish king is the prophet’s master. First—fisher : demon 5 sage : king or vizier55
(cf. 96). Then—fisher : demon 5 king : sage.
[6] The demon is a heretic (53 top)—through the fisherman who takes the risk of
trusting the demon, the demon brings about the salvation of a prince and of a state
which had been ruined by the prince’s adulterous wife who had preferred to him a most ugly
negro slave, a leper—/ that adulterous wife 556 the wicked vizier in the story told by the
fisherman/—the wife believing in the {3} beauty of the ugly slave had transformed
the people into fishes, the dumbest of all animals, and the fisherman is the enemy
of the fishes.
[7] Whereas the sage refuses to tell a life-saving story because he is not free (6957
bottom), the demon connects the same refusal based on the same ground with a re-
quest to be set free so that he can tell the story (73) and the fisherman sets him free
without requiring the demon to tell his story (neither the demon nor the sage tell
their stories),58 to the benefit of the fisherman, the demon and the ruined state.
The sage does not wish to live /559 Socrates—the name of the king is Junan 560
Greek—cf. 75/ /in Socrates’ time the action of the fisherman was not yet possible
or necessary/.
[8] The inserted story: the victory of the wicked vizier and the destruction of the
king and the sage (Socrates).
[9] The frame story: through the heretical demon, destruction of the adulterous
wife who loved the ugly and leprous negro slave and [. . .] of that slave.

51
“as the preceding ones” is inserted by hand.
52
“5” is inserted by hand.
53
“5” is inserted by hand.
54
Underline not in MS 2.
55
“5” is inserted by hand.
56
“5” is inserted by hand.
57
“9” is inserted by hand.
58
Comma not in MS 2.
59
“5” is inserted by hand.
60
“5” is inserted by hand.

212

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

[10] The porter and the three ladies—the frame: wine drinking—paradise on earth61
(105)—beauty and joy—graceful obscenity. Questions are forbidden (109) but the
prohibition is transgressed: the three monks (former kings) tell their stories in order
to escape capital punishment incurred because they asked the forbidden questions.
[11] Story of the first monk: a terrible divine punishment for incest and: an un-
punished, successful act of treachery by a wicked vizier.
[12] Story of the second monk: a justly jealous demon transforms a sage who does
not know philosophy and physics, into a monkey; right is on the side of the demon
(142f., 155), the monk lies about him (160). In the two preceding stories (merchant-
demon and fisherman-demon) the demons were not infinitely revengeful but could
be appeased by storytelling or proof of superior cleverness. And: while the lover of
the ugly negro slave transforms men into fishes, the demon here transforms the sage
only into the external shape62 of a monkey. The inserted story told originally under
duress and now again as part of the whole story {4} under duress → demon : adulterer 5
envied good man : envious bad man (5 monk), i.e. the demon who is a descendant
from the devil himself and who denies Islam (157 bottom) is perfectly pious, be-
friended by good spirits. But in the light of the action: the jealous demon is envious
and hence miserable /→ the sage would not hate the jealous God but pity him and
forgive him/. The sage regains his human form by an act of treachery on the part of
the king’s daughter who knows 170 charms (154); that princess kills the demon and
the demon kills her posthumously: just as the king Junan kills the sage and the sage
kills the king posthumously → the demon 5 Socrates 5 envied good man—the fight
between demon and princess to the benefit of the religious sage63 ≠64 the fight be-
tween king and Socrates to the benefit of the wicked vizier. /alliance between the
perfectly just demon and the philosopher to the ruin of the wicked vizier and his
master, the ugly negro slave, remains unspoken/.
[13] The story of the third monk: his salvation depends on his not mentioning the
name of Allah—he mentions it and is punished for it (165f.)—apart from pro-
nouncing the forbidden name, he raises forbidden questions and opens a forbid-
den door (176, 181)—the 10 half blind youths who had opened the forbidden door
and were like him half blinded for that reject him /but they had not pronounced
the forbidden name —they never mention it/. The story confirms the truth of astrol-
ogy (169ff.) → he is not punished for a killing decreed by the stars—/this is a dif-
ferent world than the world described in the stories of the first and second monk—
cf. 162 top/.
[14] The story of the oldest sister: the 17th night—Allah’s terrible revenge ≠65 the
demon’s comparatively mild revenge ≠ the oldest sister has no desire for revenge at
all. (Cf. the story of the second man in merchant-demon (41–45): there 2 brothers
changed into dogs, here 2 sisters changed into she-dogs). A whole {5} city (including
children and animals) transformed into stone by Allah’s wrath (cf. the prince half-
transformed into stone by his adulterous wife, the lover of the ugly leprous negro
slave) for its unbelief—(they were66 fire worshippers)—the son of the king of the
61
“earth” is crossed out in one of the typescripts, but the strikethrough is not in MS 2.
62
“shape” is inserted by hand.
63
“≠ the fight between king and Socrates to the benefit of the religious sage” is crossed out.
64
“≠” is inserted by hand.
65
“≠” is inserted by hand.
66
“are” is crossed out and “were” is inserted by hand.

213

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

pagans is the only one to escape thanks to the treachery of an old woman who was a
Muslim in secret (194) /cf. the story of the treacherous vizier in fisherman-demon
and the treacherous princess and the treacherous vizier in the present cluster of sto-
ries as well as the treacherous hags or old witches later on/.
[15] The story of the she-janitor: a story of terrible revenge brought on by a
slanderess out of unfounded jealousy (cf. Allah’s jealousy: 208); the human beings
here do not kill nor infinitely punish /God is jealous either because He is not, or
does not believe himself to be, infinitely attractive, and the reason for that is his hid-
denness: He Himself is the ground of His jealousy. /The terrible effects of God’s jeal-
ousy come about through humans who are motivated by human jealousy and may or
may not believe in God’s jealousy/.
[16] The three apples: murder out of unfounded jealousy. In order to save the life of
his half-guilty negro slave from the wrath of his ruler, a vizier tells a story which ends
happily. A merciful vizier tells a story of a merciful vizier who punishes his nephew
senselessly and threatens him (without meaning it) with still greater punishment
for something which is in no way a sin (281 bottom–282 top) in order to find out
something (285) which could have been found out without that inhuman threat.
In the inserted story 2 orthodox demons avert the catastrophe threatened by an an-
gry ruler; through Allah’s permission 1 of these 2 demons is destroyed (255 bottom–
256 top) but this has no effect on the following events. /for the benefit of a negro
slave who is indirectly responsible for a murder out of unfounded jealousy, a story
is told of a merciful vizier and of orthodox demons and of Allah’s permission
(≠67 infliction) of death of an orthodox demon—an orthodox version of the earlier
story.68
{6} [17] The hunchback. A tailor’s wife kills a hunchbacked court jester in China
ruled by a Muslim; 3 other men are brought to believe to have killed him: a Christian,
a Muslim and a Jew; all three tell stories told to them by Muslims who were mutilated;
the most mutilated occurs in the Muslim’s story. Only the Christian has acted without
any guile (403)—he tells a story of a perfect and happy love; the Muslim: cruel pun-
ishment for nothing by his beloved, a slave girl, who thereafter becomes his wife; the
Jew: terrible revenge out of jealousy, the revenge followed by life-long repentance—
but thereafter a wholly unexpected compensation for the woman murdered out of
jealousy (he gets the murdered wife’s sister). The Muslim tailor is the socially lowest
of the 4: a youth does not get the girl thanks to the loquacity and busybodiness of a
barber who acted as a demagogue (360) and hence as a ruler of kings (352) although
he belongs to a very low class, like camel-drivers (355)—contrary to obvious fact he
claims to be the silent one, a man of few words and unobtrusive, in contradistinction
to his 6 brothers who are all mutilated, talk much and are impolite (363–66) → the
barber is not mutilated (has no bodily defect). The stories of the 6 brothers: 1 | 2,3 |
4–6.69 The Caliph laughs only at the end of 1, 3, and 6: central stories 2–3 → [the two
brothers of the barber] [the barber denigrates his brothers just as the wicked vizier
denigrated a wicked vizier] [no profession is mentioned in the case of the 2 broth-
ers: they might have been barbers too].70 Brothers 2–3 succeed in entering a house;

67
“≠” is inserted by hand.
68
“/.” is not in MS 2.
69
Two vertical lines are inserted by hand.
70
Four previous square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.

214

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

the 2nd brother is called to a house where he is robbed of pleasures of love ; the 3rd
brother goes by himself into a house where he loses the little bit of money he had
instead of getting money. At the end, the barber resurrects the dead court jester (405).
[18] Nur ed Din. The open transgression of the law in the presence of the Caliph
[is] compatible with perfect virtue and happiness.
[19] Ghanim:
̄ but it is indispensable that one should have the utmost respect for
the honor of the powerful Caliph.
{7} [20] Nur —the son of a perfectly virtuous vizier, hurts the honor of his sultan
(427, 446) by living together with a slave girl destined for the Sultan; he escapes
to Baghdad, transgresses openly but gracefully the legal prohibition against wine
drinking (434f.), his girl even seduces a pious old man into joining them in the trans-
gression (436ff.); the Caliph vanquished by the beauty of Nur and his girl and espe-
cially by the beautiful singing of the girl, forgives them and makes Nur the king of his
homeland. Nur cannot kill the wicked vizier who has driven him from his homeland,
for he is impressed by the wicked vizier’s verse to the effect that both he and Nur only
acted according to their nature (459).
[21] Ghanim —a young merchant comes into mortal danger through 3 castrated ne-
gro slaves 2 of whom tell the story of their castration; the 2nd is more wicked than the
1st and the 3rd is the most wicked of all; only the 2nd has nothing to do with sex; his
crime is that he is a terrible liar; the 1st is really innocent. Ghanim does not touch the
girl, the beloved of the Caliph, out of sacred awe of the Caliph (481) or out of fear
(482, 484); the Caliph would not have been able to discover Ghanim and the girl be-
cause the Caliph is unable to transgress the law or to overcome the fear of God (485,
486).
[22] Omar and his sons —an alliance between the Christian king of Constantinople
and the Muslim king of Baghdad against the Christian king Hartub; the Christian
seems to plan treachery against the Muslim (533). Sharkun, the son of the Muslim
king meets on the campaign the paragon Christian girl Abriza, the daughter of Har-
tub, whose mother is an old hag whom Abriza loathes. Abriza does not betray Shar-
kun to the Christian knights, she is free from all religious fanaticism (518) but she
refuses to go with Sharkun to the land of Islam because the Muslim men are lasciv-
ious (522), she has a perfect command of Arabic culture while Sharkun does not
know Greek. Sharkun quotes to her an Arabic poem dispraising the holy war while
praising the war with faire women (530; cf. the poem 639 center). She sides with
Sharkun in his fight with the Christian knights and reveals to him the treachery of
the Christian king of Constantinople; she follows him to Baghdad where Sharkun’s
{8} father Omar disgracefully violates her (confirming her view of Muslims); on her
flight home she is murdered by a treacherous negro slave.
[23] The adventures of Omar’s daughter Nuzzath-as-Zaman, ̄ philosophically
trained; her lecture on government: the king of faith (≠71 the king who protects the
holy—the latter in the center is also concerned with the things of the world, he is
not necessarily a believer) (602; cf. the parallel 653 bottom–654 top); cf. also her
praise of a perfect pre-Islamic king of Persia (601, 603); a single truly just man is suf-
ficient for a whole country (607f.) → no need for many just men. The account of her
lectures takes 7 nights—the lectures given by the Christian girls later on take 6 nights—
altogether 13 nights.

71
“≠” is inserted by hand.

215

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

[24] Sharkun marries unknowingly his half-sister Nuzzath; they are shocked by
their mortal sin; she bears him a daughter; they separate immediately; no further un-
toward consequences because the affair is kept secret. The story of the incest, unusu-
ally short, is told in the 68th (417) night (622f.).
[25] The old Christian witch, Abrizza’s grandmother, murders Omar. Ban el
nukum (Nuzzath’s brother) becomes the Sultan; the old witch brings him 5 perfect
Christian girls who pretend to be Muslims; the girls know philosophy and the stories
of the past; the king is interested only in the latter (652); the 5 girls and the witch
lecture on piety (667) (Cf. 662 para. 3 on the problem of piety); the instigator of
those pious lectures is the unbelieving witch (700) who plans to ruin the king, the
violator of her granddaughter.
[26] Holy war against the Christians; the description is full of savage hatred and
invectives (≠72 the humane relation of Sharkun and Abrizza); the Muslims march
off against Constantinople; marvelous victories of the Muslims but Constantinople
is not conquered (which is indicated rather than said); Sharkun is killed through
the treachery of the old witch; the king finds no comfort for the death of his brother
except through stories (715). The vizier tells him a story into which a story is inserted—
both are love stories—the frame story is one of happy love: {9} son and daughter of
kings73 – the youth had only heard of the princess – the princess originally loathes
men on the basis of a dream—the happy ending brought about by a wise vizier
(≠74 the prince and his father) (II 89, 85). Cf. Dan el nukum making a senile former
worker the king of Damascus (II 140). The inserted story is one of unhappy love: mer-
chant—a youth had seen the girl—a75 girl who loves him but is not loved by him dies
from grief—she is of perfect sweetness, overcomes her jealousy completely—does
not use force or guile against him she unhappily loves—the youth is eventually cas-
trated—he repents his unfaithfulness to the good girl he had deserted—the alterna-
tive would have been the satiety of fulfilled love (II 59)—cf. the praise of love in the
poem II 30. Cf. the poem I 83: the complete atheistic loneliness of the unhappy lover
(in the 130th night) → the uselessness of religious comfort as underlying the vizier’s
story telling here.
[27] In an entirely different context the witch who intends to kill the prince, tells
him a most ridiculous story of a hashish eater who had a dream of approaching bliss
and then a bitter awakening; i.e. she predicts his intended terrible fate to him, but
then the witch’s plan comes to naught.
[28] The end: the son of Omar and Abrizza who had become a Muslim had been
brought up by his Christian grandfather (Hartub) as a Christian and the Muslim king
rule Baghdad jointly —nothing is said of that Christian’s becoming a Muslim—but a certain
obscurity prevails (223–24).
[29] This is the first story in which Christianity-Islam is manifestly the theme. At
the end of the story the first apparent change in the mood of Shechrazad’s husband
(224 bottom–225 top).
[30] The king wants to hear stories of birds, of beings which fly high (244)—
Schechrazad tells stories of birds, and other animals but no longer of metamorphoses:

72
“≠” is inserted by hand.
73
“a” is crossed out and “s” is inserted by hand.
74
“≠” is inserted by hand.
75
“the” is crossed out and “a” is inserted by hand.

216

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

the stories must have been told by men who know the language of animals. The
1st story describes man from the brutes’ point of view: all animals would live in {10}
peace and freedom but for man’s guile. The most frightened of the animals, the
duck, alarms all other animals but is caught and killed by man. According to the
she-peacock, the duck perished because alone of all creatures it had not praised
God (239). The male peacock mentioned at the beginning of the story has dropped
out completely: a female explanation of the fate of beings. The duck [which does not
fly high and is the76 pig among the birds]77 says: our danger comes from man. But the
she-peacock says: our danger comes from God. The story taken literally is nonsense:
birds are killed also by other brutes, not only by men. But the story makes sense if
retranslated into human terms (birds : men 5 men : God): the duck says that all evil
comes from God and the she-peacock confirms this somehow. The she-peacock’s as-
sertion that praising God is sufficient for averting disaster is refuted by the story of
the hermit and the doves. The story of the pious shepherd who is perfectly chaste
(ascetic) and his male companion who is of extreme charity to beasts and birds (both
live in the service to God) (to the jealous God who demands complete surrender to
Him) and they do not even die (end of the story): at this point the king shows the first sign
of repentance for his cruelty and jealousy. The water bird and the turtle: the water bird sees
a human corpse and believes that the man must have been a criminal [only criminals
are killed: simple moralism; God is killed]78—strikes up a friendship with a turtle—
develops a doctrine of what befits the true man—is killed, as it is said because it did not
praise God; the turtle is not killed. The wolf and the fox: the fox (the subject) warns
the wolf (the king—256 bottom) to be gentle to him lest man, the wily insidious be-
ing, might control the wolf; but the fox gets rid of the wolf by his own ingenuity. The
inserted story told by the fox to the wolf : the stronger eats the weaker but through God’s action
dies from it. The mouse and the weasel (the central story)—the weasel arranges that
the mouse be killed by man [tracing everything to God ~ doing everything through
God].79 The raven and the {11} cat: this edifying story of pure friendship is told at
the request of the king; everything is done here by animals; the shepherd [God]80
hardly does more than looking at, whereas in the preceding unedifying story, man
[God]81 is the actor.
[31] The animal stories 5 146th–152nd nights 5 7 nights. The next story (Abu
ibn bakkar) 5 153rd–169th nights 5 17 nights.
[32] The story of a young prince falling in love with an odalisk of the ruler of the
faithful and she with the young prince; they meet for a night; they become separated
and each dies from grief. The caliph does not become jealous: because he loves the
girl so much that he doesn’t believe what is reported to him about her misconduct.
[A story of an unfaithful woman whose unfaithfulness is not believed by her husband, is told to a
jealous king.]82
[33] Kamr az-zaman. ̄ In this story 2.65 pages on the average for a night; in the pre-
ceding stories 6.42 pages on the average for a night.

76
“a” is crossed out and “the” is inserted by hand.
77
Two square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
78
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
79
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
80
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
81
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
82
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.

217

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

[34] A prince who is very pious hates women because of their faithlessness; a believ-
ing she-demon from the race of the devil but a believer together with a cursed he-
demon brings him together with a princess who is less chaste than the prince (391–
92) but very intelligent (373); she does not wish to marry him because she does not wish
to be ruled by a man (375): the believing she-demon admires the pious prince; the cursed
he-demon admires the intelligent princess. Prince and princess marry and are sepa-
rated by some accident; the princess must pretend to be a man and marries a princess
to whom she reveals her sex. The prince comes to a city of the Magians. They are re-
united; the prince marries also princess number 2 and has 2 wives, gets a son from
each; each wife tries to deceive him with a son of the other wife → the prince’s view
of women was true (480f., 484, 490)—the 2 wives behave like Potiphar’s wife, the sons
are driven into the wilderness, one of the sons falls into the hands of fire-worshippers
and the other falls under the spell of a woman who expresses pagan feelings (508f.),
is compelled to kill her; son number 1 converts the daughter of the Magian who
keeps him prisoner and tortures {12} him, to Islam; eventually he converts that girl’s
father too and everything is forgiven. But nothing is done to the faithless wives and
the Magians are tolerated. The king is more pleased with this story which includes the account
of the unpunished faithless wives (569) than with any previous story.
[35] The inserted story. The caliph forgives and reunites the young couple, the
male part of which had entered his harem to recover the girl who had been spirited
away there—the central reason: the lover and the beloved were in his house and in
his power (559) [application to God obvious].83
[36] Ala ed-din abu esch-shamat—21̄ nights. An unheard of remark of Shechrazad’s
sister (580 top) at the beginning of the 252nd night. A jealous old wife accused by her
old husband of sterility tells him that he is sterile and advises him as to what he
should do to improve his semen [she did not wish to have a child nor did her hus-
band hitherto];84 the child born against all expectations, brought up in strict isola-
tion out of fear of the evil eye—the impossibilities: after 40 years of marriage she is
still menstruating and the new born babe looks like a one year old (572f.). The young
boy sees how foolish his parents are; owing to his silly upbringing he himself is easily
fooled, by a Magian who pretends to be a Muslim, a wicked pederast (581) but85 is
infinitely better than the Arabs of the desert, he does not kill86 anyone (592f.); the
boy’s father is opposed to travelling (584). In Baghdad he gets a marvelous wife
and becomes a favorite of the caliph; his wife dies but in 625ff. the wife seems to be
still alive as a mistress of the caliph ?? He is disgraced and condemned to be hanged.
But through a ruse a heretic who is also a criminal is hanged in his stead; he flies with
a friend, on the flight they kill 2 Jews; a heretic tries to kill the caliph and is executed
for this. Ala el din is captured by Christians and brought to Genoa together with 40
other Muslims, the latter are executed by the Christians, he is saved by an old woman
for service in the church, but the old woman tells him how he can force others to do
the work for him. His wife has lived all the time with a Christian princess who was
served by {13} a she-demon who has taken on the shape of his wife (was buried in
the latter’s stead); the wife herself was brought by a mighty demon to Genoa; the prin-
cess was predestined to become the wife of Ala el din; she was a secret Muslim; her
83
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
84
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
85
“he” is crossed out.
86
“hurt” is crossed out.

218

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

father refuses to become a Muslim and is killed by Ala el din who returns with his
2 wives to Egypt [a stupidly fantastic and very pro-Islamic story—Schechrazad’s king
does not react].87
[[Volume III]]88
[37] The king expresses his pleasure with the story told and asks her to continue;
Schechrazad will tell stories of the men of generosity (84 bottom–85 top). The 1st
story of a pagan Arab (sculptures of girls) (85–86); the 2nd story of an early Muslim
famous for his generosity; → generosity not specifically Islamic, no reference to any-
thing Islamic in the first 2 stories. The 4th story has nothing to do with generosity but
with the Muslim conquest of Andalus and with the Muslim’s finding of wealth and
science in the conquered lands → still less is science specifically Islamic. The 5th story:
the moral superiority of a young Bedouin to a Caliph. 6th story: the nobility of char-
acter of a poor negro and also of a deposed Caliph as well as of the ruling Caliph.
7th story (277th–279th night—277th night extremely short) someone believes to
have discovered the paradise on earth, an extremely beautiful but uninhabited city;
it was built by a ruler of the whole earth who lived more than 300 years and was an
unbeliever ruling over unbelievers in imitation of the paradise in the beyond; Allah
destroyed that ruler and all the people with him. 8th story: contains a reminder by
Schechrazad of the fact that her fate is still uncertain; the Caliph’s bride is praised
more highly than the Caliph. 9th story: a beautiful wife sleeps out of jealousy with
a dirtiest and most ill-smelling man. 10th story: a man who imitates the Caliph per-
fectly, in some respects superior to any Caliph (136 top), is particularly generous
(141), he only played the Caliph in order to reach his goal, i.e. to get back his wife;
his wife {14} had revered him like a prophet or more than the prophet (147) but had
rejected and tormented him out of unfounded jealousy [a true prophet rejected by
his admiring wife had to become a false Caliph, a savage killer or at least threatening
with death (151) in order to regain his rank].89—The stories told in each night here
are particularly short. 11th story: 2 impudent liars, for this very reason scolded as be-
ing Manicheans by kadi. 12th story: parody of fiqh —here for the 1st time the author addresses
the reader. 14th story: the story of a man whom a Caliph had crucified out of jealousy
(cf. 195 para. 1 beginning). 15th story: 172 bottom–173 top. The fate of Schechrazad
is still as undecided as it was at the beginning, as the king makes clear → the
15th story is a story of demons and metamorphoses—in order to arouse the king’s
interest. 16th and 17th story: a generous family of which the Caliph was jealous.
[38] The man from Yemen and his 6 slave girls: note the change of order, 1st yel-
low and black and then yellow and brown—change in the repetition regarding the
yellow (dropping of the prophet) (293)—special praise of the brown one (294 bot-
tom) who does not refer to the Koran, nor does the slim one whereas the other 4 re-
fer to the Koran (cf. 284).
[39] P. 409: the counter-religion of love 5 a frequently recurring theme. The stories on
526ff. seem to have this connection: asceticism (526–33)—falling in love on hearsay
(533–35)—the absurdity of asceticism (536–37)—the fantastic story of the bird Ruch,
stories of unhappy lovers. Cf. 589 bottom-590 top on secrecy; 623 para. 2–625 tyranny,
human or divine (cf. Machiavelli Disc. I 26).

87
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
88
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
89
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.

219

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

[40] The slave girl Tavaddud: a fantastic account of philosophy—at the end (696)
a long address of Schechrazad to the king on the liberality of kings which has
disappeared.
[41] 3 stories of the angel of death (697ff.)—1. Islamic—a pious man longs for death to
see God, contrasted with a king 2. Islamic—only a God forgetting king 3. Jewish—a
wicked Jewish king goes to hell; the kings are all stupid and wicked. {15} Immediately
afterward (704) Alexander the Great confronted by a cynic wise king90 (≠ angel of
death) who teaches hell and paradise after death—Alexander neither stupid nor
wicked. Immediately thereafter (706) a wise old Persian king → the 2nd long address
of Schechrazad to her king to the effect that religion depends on government—fol-
lowed first by a Jewish and then by an Islamic pious story, then by a story of a wonder-
fully pious negro slave, then by a Jewish pious story etc. etc.
[42] For the Queen of Serpents see my references in III 812.
[[Volume IV]]91
[43] P. 115: the beginning of the speech of the narrator is the end of a night’s
tale of Schechrazad (161).
[44] Sindbad—the central story—a pagan people (145)—cannibals; they are ap-
parently Muslim people with the custom of burying the surviving spouse alive to-
gether with the dead spouse— Sindbad becomes a murderer.
[45] Messingstadt—preaches unqualifiedly world-denial, meditatio mortis—but
cf. 258: Solomon (≠ Mohammed).
[46] Ruse of women—i.e. Schechrazad’s own doings (cf. 267 and 297) but ruse
of women only in stories # 1, 2, 6, 9, 11, 12, 17, and 22. Note that this story contains
harmless repetitions of some stories from the 1st section.
[47] Dshaudar : the last and decisive test is incest with mother.
[48] Adshib and Gharib : the whole world is made Islamic (Abrahamitic) long before
Mohammed by war and with the help of armies of demons. Contrast with the next
story (Utba and Raija) which is very short: see the central poem (619), and the story
of 92
[49] El Mausidi and the devil: a very attractive description of the devil (645–49).
[[Volume V]]93
[50] 1st story: the impotence of kings vis-à-vis love; the kings’ complete depen-
dence on their servants—these are frequently recurring themes.
[51] 4th story: contains a non-public story (225–26) which was written in the {16} first
place—of a pagan king (228) but: 230—God’s revelation to Solomon (231) the pa-
gans become Muslims (235–237). Contains an account of a vizier (≠ king) who con-
ducts himself prudently like Odysseus with the Cyclops etc.; the vizier (≠ king) does
not have a marvelous ring from King Solomon; the whole adventure of the king and
the vizier caused by the thoughtlessness of king Solomon (295) or through his com-
plete indifference (305 bottom–306 top).
[52] 5th story: it is not said which book Hasan read (316); he is taught the best of
all arts, i.e. the art of making gold, a dangerous art (319f.), a non-public art (321) by a
fire worshipper (325) who cheats and torments Hasan.

90
“being” is crossed out and “king” is inserted by hand.
91
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
92
“, and the story of ” is inserted by hand.
93
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.

220

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 Politics, Religion, and Love

[53] 6th story: a monkey predicts to a fisherman that if he persuades a rich Jew to
say certain things, the fisherman will become very rich and the Jew very poor (510–
511)—the rich Jew says the words in question (in this connection: complete indif-
ference of the fisherman to the Jew becoming a Muslim: 515) but nothing hap-
pens; by a series of accidents the fisherman becomes incredibly rich but nothing
is said about the Jew becoming poor.
[54] 7th story: a married Jewish woman’s adultery with a Christian (574, 582); in
order to escape punishment for her crime, she pretends to be a Muslim (604); she
becomes a Muslim; 4 kadis promise her their help against the Jew and to marry her;
her husband is humiliated and jailed but the woman deceives the kadis who die
from sorrow; the Jew is freed from jail; on her way home the woman stops in a
monk’s convent where all 40 monks try to seduce her; she regains her lover who
also becomes a Muslim and she arranges that her husband is buried alive [a victory
of wicked love presented as victory of Islam].94
[55] 8th story: Nur transgresses the Islamic law re wine (639); in his drunkenness
he beats his father and deprives him of one eye; he flees to Alexandria where he falls
in love with a Frankish slave girl who had become a Muslim and who was the daugh-
ter of a Frankish king; while being drunk he sells her to the one-eyed vizier of the
Frankish king who takes her back to her father. Nur cannot fight just as he has no
brains nor self-control whereas the Frankish princess is a marvelously {17} coura-
geous fighter and killer; she kills her 3 brothers in single combat and escapes with
Nur to Muslim lands; she abjures all connections with Christianity and her peo-
ple and family [a triumph of Islam, in fact a triumph of love—Islam used for such
a triumph—the opposite (i.e. the use of Christianity for this purpose) is equally
possible].95
[56] 9th story: a Muslim falls in love with a Christian woman in the then Chris-
tian Akko but out of fear of hell abstains from intercourse with her (760); after the
Muslim conquest of Akko, she is taken prisoner, bought by a Muslim and becomes
a Muslim; her Muslim lover even gets back the money he had spent on her while
she was the wife of a Christian knight in Akko. [the whole story presupposes that
she did not love her Christian husband].96
[57] Tenth story: a young Muslim who had become poor, sells his beloved, his
slave-girl, to a noble Muslim; he does not commit suicide out of fear of hell; he be-
comes reunited with her and again wealthy thanks to the generosity of that noble
Muslim.[97also a story of a reward for Muslim piety but it also presupposes that the
man and the woman love one another passionately98].
[[Volume VI]]99
[58] 1st story: the necessary conflict between this world and the next—men can-
not be just while living in this life (49–51); the contradistinction between reason and
the Sharia (53–54; cf. 65 top); 135: this teaching of a 12 year old boy (1 terror of en-
emies) achieves what the boy’s wise father and philosophy did not achieve.

94
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
95
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
96
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
97
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.
98
“properly” is crossed out and “passionately” is inserted by hand.
99
Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.

221

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 The Journal of Religion

[59] 3rd story: the absurdity of those who believe in another better life and weep
when someone they love dies; those free from that absurdity, i.e. who draw the con-
clusion from belief in better life, live in nakedness and promiscuity (208).
[60] 4th story from end: story of apparent infidelity of a sultan’s mistress.
[61] 3rd story from end: a dervish who sings very impure songs but proves to be of
incorruptible chastity—and: the successful deception and ruin of a husband by his
wife with a bitter end for the wife—contrasted with the adulterer’s sister who does
not even remarry after her husband’s death.
{18} [62] 2nd story before the last—transformation into stones of a pagan city by Al-
lah; the single survivor, a most beautiful princess who became a Muslim; transfor-
mation into dogs of the treacherous 2 brothers by a she-ghost out of gratitude to the
3rd brother who had saved the she-ghost from disgrace; the Caliph demands that
the 2 brothers be no longer punished but restored and that they be forgiven; but
they do not deserve to be forgiven. The beautiful princess commits suicide when
2 brothers throw the decent 3rd brother into the sea.
[63] Last story: a poor shoe repairer who is so gentle that he must run away from
his vicious wife; he learns to give away other people’s money which he gets by tell-
ing the untrue story that his caravan will come soon (589). He believes those un-
truths in his simplicity (589); he marries the king’s daughter and confesses his lies
to his wife who for sheer shame helps him with her money so that he can make his
lies true; by a lucky accident he finds a ring which makes him the master of a spirit
who procures him everything he wants through the ring, yet his wife gets posses-
sion of the ring and does not give it to her husband or her father (cf. Schechrazad
who is wiser than her father and her husband). The ring is so powerful that its pos-
session endangers the survival of Islam; the princess alone insures the survival of
Islam (633, 634). The princess dies. His abominable 1st wife finds him: he forgives
her and lives to repent it (cf. 639)—out of piety (640 bottom–641 top) he takes off
the ring and would have been destroyed by his first wife but for the prompt action
of his 7 year old young son from his second wife.

APPENDIX B

TABLE B1
TABLE OF CONCORDANCE

No. Story MS Lyons Mahdi Littman

1 Shahriyar and His Brother 1,2 1:3 5 1:15–29,

6:675–77
2 The Bull and the Ass 3 1:7 15 1:24–26
3 The Merchant and His Wife 3 1:8 18 1:26–28
4 The Trader and the Jinnî 4 1:10 21 1:29–47
5 The First Shaykh’s Story 4 1:12 27 1:33–38
6 The Second Shaykh’s Story 4 1:15 31 1:39–44
7 The Third Shaykh’s Story 4 1:18 1:44–46
8 The Fisherman and the Jinnî 5,9 1:19 36 1:47–100
9 King Yûnân and the Sage Dûbân 5,8 1:25 44 1:56–73
10 King Sindbâd and His Falcon 46 1:28 1:62–65

222

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 TABLE B1 (Continued)

No. Story MS Lyons Mahdi Littman

11 The Husband and the Parrot 46 50

12 The Prince and the Ogress 5 1:30 52 1:65–67
13 The Ensorcelled Prince 6,7,9 1:41 68 1:86–100
14 The Porter and the Three Ladies 10 1:50 80 1:100–227
of Baghdad
15 The First Qalandar’s Tale 11 1:66 104 1:127–37
16 The Second Qalandar’s Tale 12 1:76 111 1:138–70
17 The Envier and the Envied 12 1:79 122 1:151–55
18 The Third Qalandar’s Tale 13 1:90 138 1:171–96
19 The Eldest Lady’s Tale 14 1:106 162 1:198–211
20 The Tale of the Portress 15 1:113 171 1:212–24
21 The Three Apples 16 1:126 181 1:227–312
22 Nûr al-Dîn ‘Alî and His Son Badr 16 1:129 189 1:239–312
al-Dîn Hasan
23 The Hunchback’s Tale 16 1:173 248 1:313–437
24 The Nazarene Broker’s Story 16 1:178 258 1:322–41
25 The Reeve’s Tale 16 1:189 275 1:342–55
26 The Tale of the Jewish Doctor 16 1:197 287 1:355–68
27 Tale of the Tailor 16 1:205 300 1:369–434
28 The Barber’s Tale of Himself 16 1:217 320 1:391–433
29 The Barber’s Tale of His First 16 1:219 323 1:394–400
Brother
30 The Barber’s Tale of His Second 16 1:223 328 1:400–406
Brother
31 The Barber’s Tale of His Third 16 1:226 332 1:406–10
Brother
32 The Barber’s Tale of His Fourth 16 1:228 335 1:410–15
Brother
33 The Barber’s Tale of His Fifth 16 1:231 340 1:415–27
Brother
34 The Barber’s Tale of His Sixth 16 1:237 349 1:427–32
Brother
35 Nûr al-Dîn ‘Alî and Anîs al-Jalîs 18,20 1:244 416 1:438–96
36 Ghânim ibn Ayyûb 19,21 1:278 1:496–540
37 Tale of the First Eunuch, Bukhayt 21 1:282 1:502–3
38 Tale of the Second Eunuch, Kâfûr 21 1:283 1:503–11
39 ‘Umar ibn al-Nu‘mân and His Sons 22,23,24,25, 1:304 1:540–828,
Sharrkân and Daw’ al-Makân 26,28,29 2:3–235
40 Tâj al-Mulûk and the Princess Dunyâ 26 1:475 2:3–138
41 ‘Azîz and ‘Azîza 26 1:489 2:23–80
42 The Hashish Eater 27 1:594 2:201–4
43 Hammâd the Badawî 1:605 2:221–31
44 The Birds and Beasts and the 30,31 1:613 2:236–51
Carpenter

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 TABLE B1 (Continued)

No. Story MS Lyons Mahdi Littman

45 The Hermits 30,31 1:621 2:251–56

46 The Water-fowl and the Tortoise 30,31 1:624 2:257–61
47 The Wolf and the Fox 30,31 1:627 2:261–82
48 The Falcon and the Partridge 30,31 1:632 2:270–71
49 The Mouse and the Ichneumon 30,31 1:639 2:282–84
50 The Cat and the Crow 30,31 1:640 2:284–85
51 The Fox and the Crow 30,31 1:641 2:285–94
52 The Flea and the Mouse 30,31 1:642 2:287–90
53 The Saker and the Birds 30,31 1:644 2:291–92
54 The Sparrow and the Eagle 30,31 1:645 2:292–93
55 The Hedgehog and the Wood- 30,31 1:645 2:294–98
pigeons
56 The Merchant and the Two Sharpers 1:647 2:297–98
57 The Thief and His Monkey 1:648 2:298–301
58 The Foolish Weaver 30,31 1:648 2:299–300
59 The Sparrow and the Peacock 30,31 1:649 2:301–3
60 ‘Alî ibn Bakkâr and Shams 31,32 1:650 356 2:303–76
al-Nahâr
61 Qamar al-Zamân and Budûr 33,34 1:693 2:376–601
62 Ni‘ma and Nu‘m 35 1:808 2:560–92
63 ‘Alâ’ al-Dîn Abu ’l-Shâmât 36 1:832 2:601–96
64 Hâtim of the Tribe of Tayy 37 1:884 3:85–87
65 Ma‘n ibn Zâ’ida 37 1:886 3:87–88
66 Ma‘n ibn Zâ’ida and the Badawî 37 3:88–90
67 The City of Labtayt 37 1:888 3:90–93
68 The Caliph Hishâm and the Arab 37 1:889 3:93–96
Youth
69 Ibrâhîm ibn al-Mahdî and the 37 1:891 3:96–109
Barber-surgeon
70 The City of Many-columned Iram 37 1:898 3:109–16
71 Ishâq of Mosul 37 1:903 3:117–25
72 The Sweep and the Noble Lady 37 1:908 3:125–32
73 The Mock Caliph 37 1:912 3:132–58
74 ‘Alî the Persian 37 1:928, 3:158–63
2:3
75 Hârûn al-Rashîd and the Slave-girl 37 2:6 3:164–67
and the Imâm Abû Yûsuf
76 The Lover Who Feigned Himself 37 2:8 3:167–73
a Thief
77 Ja‘far the Barmakid and the 37 2:11 3:173–76
Bean-seller
78 Abû Muhammad Hight Lazybones 37 2:13 3:176–200
79 Yahyâ ibn Khâlid with Mansûr 37 2:27 3:200–204

224

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 TABLE B1 (Continued)

No. Story MS Lyons Mahdi Littman

80 Yahyâ ibn Khâlid with a Man Who 37 2:29 3:204–9

Forged a Letter in His Name
81 Caliph al-Ma’mûn and the Strange 37 2:32 3:210–12
Scholar
82 ‘Alî Shâr and Zumurrud 37 2:33 3:212–67
83 The Loves of Jubayr ibn ‘Umayr 37 2:69 3:267–89
and the Lady Budur
84 The Man of al-Yaman and His Six 38 2:83 3:289–308
Slave-girls
85 Hârûn al-Rashîd and the Damsel 2:96 3:308–15
and Abû Nuwâs
86 The Man Who Stole the Dish of Gold 2:100 3:315–19
87 The Sharper of Alexandria and the 2:103 3:319–22
Chief of Police
88 Al-Malik al-Nâsir and the Three 2:104 3:322–28
Chiefs of Police
89 The Story of the Chief of Police 3:328–25
of Cairo
90 The Story of the Chief of the Bûlâq 3:325–27
Police
91 The Chief of the Old Cairo Police 3:327–28
92 The Thief and the Shroff 3:328–30
93 The Chief of the Qûs Police and 2:109 3:330–32
the Sharper
94 Ibrâhîm ibn al-Mahdî and the 2:110 3:332–37
Merchant’s Sister
95 The Woman Whose Hands Were Cut 2:113 3:337–39
Off for Giving Alms to the Poor
96 The Devout Israelite 2:114 3:340–42
97 Abû Hassân al-Ziyâdî and the 2:115 3:342–46
Khorasan Man
98 The Poor Man and His Friend 2:118 3:347–48
in Need
99 The Ruined Man Who Became Rich 2:119 3:348–50
Again through a Dream
100 Caliph al-Mutawakkil and His 2:120 3:350–52
Concubine Mahbûba
101 Wardân the Butcher 2:122 3:353–59
102 The King’s Daughter and the Ape 2:125 3:359–62
103 The Ebony Horse 2:127 3:362–99
104 Uns al-Wujûd and al-Ward fî 2:148 3:399–441
’l-Akmâm
105 Abû Nuwâs with the Three Boys 2:177 3:441–47

225

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 TABLE B1 (Continued)

No. Story MS Lyons Mahdi Littman

106 ‘Abdallâh ibn Ma‘mar 2:181 3:447–49

107 The Lovers of the Banû ‘Udhra 2:182 3:449–51
108 The Vizier of al-Yaman and His 2:183 3:451–53
Young Brother
109 The Loves of the Boy and Girl 2:184 3:453–54
at School
110 Al-Mutalammis and His Wife 2:185 3:455–56
Umayma
111 The Caliph Hârûn al-Rashîd and 2:186 3:456–58
Queen Zubayda in the Bath
112 Hârûn al-Rashîd and the Three Poets 2:187 3:458–60
113 Mus‘ab ibn al-Zubayr and ‘Â’isha 2:189 3:460–62
bint Talha
114 Abu ’l-Aswad and His Slave-girl 2:190 3:462
115 Hârûn al-Rashîd and the Two 2:190 3:463
Slave-girls
116 The Caliph Hârûn al-Rashîd and 2:190 3:463–64
the Three Slave-girls
117 The Miller and His Wife 2:191 3:464–66
118 The Simpleton and His Sharper 2:192 3:466–68
119 The Qâdî Abû Yûsuf with Hârûn 2:193 3:468–70
al-Rashîd and Queen Zubayda
120 The Caliph al-Hâkim and the 2:194 3:506–7
Merchant
121 King Kisrâ Anûshirwân and the 2:195 3:508–10
Village Damsel
122 The Water-carrier and the Gold- 2:196 3:510–13
smith’s Wife
123 Khusraw and Shîrîn and the 2:197 3:513–15
Fisherman
124 Yahyâ ibn Khâlid the Barmakid and 2:198 3:515–16
the Poor Man
125 Muhammad al-Amîn and the 2:199 3:516–18
Slave-girl
126 The Sons of Yahyâ ibn Khâlid and 2:200 3:518–20
Sa‘îd ibn Sâlim al-Bâhilî
127 The Woman’s Trick against Her 2:201 3:520–21
Husband
128 The Devout Woman and the Two 2:202 3:528–29
Wicked Elders
129 Ja‘far the Barmakid and the Old 2:203 3:529–31
Badawî
130 The Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khattâb 2:204 3:531–38
and the Young Badawî

226

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 TABLE B1 (Continued)

No. Story MS Lyons Mahdi Littman

131 The Caliph al-Ma’mûn and the 2:208 3:538–41

Pyramids of Egypt
132 The Thief and the Merchant 2:209 3:541–43
133 Masrûr the Eunuch and Ibn al-Qâribî 2:211 3:543–46
134 The Devotee Prince 2:213 3:546–54
135 The Unwise Schoolmaster Who Fell 39 2:217 3:554–56
in Love by Report
136 The Foolish Dominie 39 2:219 3:556–58
137 The Illiterate Who Set Up for a 39 2:219 3:558–60
Schoolmaster
138 The King and the Virtuous Wife 39 2:221 3:560–62
139 ‘Abd al-Rahmân the Maghribî’s Story 39 2:222 3:562–64
of the Rukhkh
140 ‘Adî ibn Zayd and the Princess Hind 2:223 3:564–68
141 Di‘bil al-Khuzâ‘î 2:225 3:569–71
142 Ishâq of Mosul and the Merchant 2:227 3:572–77
143 The Three Unfortunate Lovers 2:231 3:578–79
144 How Abû Hasan Brake Wind
145 The Lovers of the Banû Tayy 2:232 3:580–82
146 The Mad Lover 2:233 3:582–84
147 The Prior Who Became a Moslem 2:235 3:584–91
148 The Loves of Abû ‘Isâ and Qurrat 2:239 3:591–600
al-‘Ayn
149 Al-Amîn ibn al-Rashîd and Ibrâhîm 2:245 3:600–601
ibn al-Mahdî
150 Al-Fath ibn Khâqân 2:246 3:601–2
151 The Man’s Dispute with the Learned 2:246 3:602–13
Woman
152 Abû Suwayd and the Pretty Old 2:254 3:613–14
Woman
153 The Emir ‘Alî ibn Tâhir and the Girl 2:254 3:614–15
Mu’nis
154 The Woman Who Had a Boy and the 2:255 3:615–616
Other Who Had a Man to Lover
155 ‘Alî the Cairene and the Haunted 2:255 3:616–47
House
156 The Pilgrim Man and the Old 39 2:273 3:647–51
Woman
157 Tawaddud 40 2:275 3:651–726
158 The Angel of Death with the Proud 41 2:321 3:726–28
King
159 The Angel of Death and the Rich King 41 2:322 3:729–31
160 The Angel of Death and the King of 41 2:324 3:732–33
the Children of Israel

227

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 TABLE B1 (Continued)

No. Story MS Lyons Mahdi Littman

161 Alexander and a Certain Tribe of 41 2:325 3:734–36

Poor Folk
162 The Righteousness of King 41 2:326 3:736–38
Anûshirwân
163 The Jewish Qâdî and His Pious Wife 41 2:327 3:738–42
164 The Shipwrecked Woman and Her 41 2:330 3:742–46
Child
165 The Pious Black Slave 41 2:332 3:746–50
166 The Devout Tray-maker and His Wife 2:335 3:750–56
167 Al-Hâjjâj and the Pious Man 2:338 3:756–58
168 The Blacksmith Who Could Handle 2:340 3:758–62
Fire without Hurt
169 The Devotee to Whom Allâh Gave a 2:343 3:763–68
Cloud for Service
170 The Moslem Champion and the 2:345 3:768–75
Christian Damsel
171 The Christian King’s Daughter and 2:350 3:775–79
the Moslem
172 The Prophet and the Justice of 2:353 3:779–81
Providence
173 The Ferryman of the Nile and 2:354 3:781–84
the Hermit
174 The Island King and the Pious 2:356 3:784–91
Israelite
175 Abu ’l-Hasan and Abû Ja‘far 2:360 3:791–95
the Leper
176 Queen of the Serpents 42 2:363 3:795–860,
4:3–98
177 The Adventures of Bulûqiyâ 2:367 3:804–60,
4:3–80
178 The Story of Jânshâh 2:390 3:846–60,
4:3–74
179 Sindbâd the Seaman 44 2:453 4:99–215
180 The City of Brass 45 2:518 4:215–68
181 The Craft and Malice of Women 46 2:546 4:268–384
182 The King and His Vizier’s Wife 46 2:547 4:272–75
183 Story of the Confectioner, His Wife, 46 2:549 4:275–77
and the Parrot
184 The Fuller and His Son 46 2:550 4:277–78
185 The Rake’s Trick against the Chaste 46 2:551 4:278–80
Wife
186 The Miser and the Loaves of Bread 46 2:552 4:281–82
187 The Lady and Her Two Lovers 46 2:553 4:282–84
188 The King’s Son and the Ogress 46 2:554 4:284–87

228

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 TABLE B1 (Continued)

No. Story MS Lyons Mahdi Littman

189 The Drop of Honey 46 2:556 4:288–89

190 The Woman Who Made Her 46 2:557 4:289–90
Husband Sift Dust
191 The Enchanted Spring 46 2:558 4:291–98
192 The Vizier’s Son and the Hammâm- 46 2:562 4:299–301
keeper’s Wife
193 The Wife’s Device to Cheat Her 46 2:563 4:302–7
Husband
194 The Goldsmith and the Cashmere 46 2:567 4:308–13
Singing-girl
195 The Man Who Never Laughed 46 2:570 4:313–23
196 The King’s Son and the Merchant’s 46 2:576 4:324–27
Wife
197 The Page Who Feigned to Know the 46 2:578 4:327–29
Speech of Birds
198 The Lady and Her Five Suitors 46 2:580 4:330–41
199 The Three Wishes 46 2:587 4:341–42
200 The Stolen Necklace 46 2:588 4:343–45
201 The Two Pigeons 46 2:589 4:345–46
202 Prince Bahrâm and the Princess 46 2:589 4:346–51
al-Datmâ
203 The House with the Belvedere 46 2:593 4:352–65
204 The King’s Son and the ‘Ifrît’s 46 2:601 4:365–68
Mistress
205 The Sandal-wood Merchant and 46 2:603 4:370–76
the Sharpers
206 The Debauchee and the Three-year- 46 2:607 4:377–78
old Child
207 The Stolen Purse 46 2:608 4:378–81
208 The Fox and the Folk 46 4:383
209 Jûdar and His Brethren 47 2:610 4:384–448
210 Gharîb and ‘Ajîb 48 2:648 4:448–642
211 ‘Utba and Rayyâ 48 2:757 4:642–49
212 Hind bint al-Nu‘mân and al-Hajjâj 2:762 4:649–52
213 Khuzayma ibn Bishr and ‘Ikrima 2:764 4:652–59
al-Fayyâd
214 Yûnus the Scribe and the Caliph 2:768 4:659–65
Walîd ibn Sahl
215 Hârûn al-Rashîd and the Arab Girl 2:771 4:665–68
216 Al-Asma‘î and the Girls of Basra 2:773 4:668–73
217 Ibrâhîm of Mosul and the Devil 49 2:776 4:673–77
218 The Lovers of the Banû ‘Udhra 2:779 4:677–87
219 The Badawî and His Wife 2:784 4:688–95
220 The Lovers of Basra 2:789 4:695–702

229

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 TABLE B1 (Continued)

No. Story MS Lyons Mahdi Littman

221 Ishâq of Mosul and His Mistress 2:794 4:702–7

and the Devil
222 The Lovers of al-Madîna 2:796 4:707–11
223 Al-Malik al-Nâsir and His Vizier 2:799 4:712–14
224 Dalîla the Crafty 2:801 4:714–55
225 The Adventures of Mercury ‘Alî 2:824 4:755–809
of Cairo
226 Ardashîr and Hayât al-Nufûs 50 2:855, 5:3–88
3:3
227 Jullanâr 3:3 5:88–158
228 King Muhammâd ibn Sabâ’ik and 51 3:91 5:228–329
the Merchant Hasan
229 Prince Sayf al-Mulûk 3:95 5:237–329
230 Hasan of Basra 52 3:145 5:329–528
231 Khalîfa the Fisherman 53 3:261 5:528–85
232 Masrûr and Zayn al-Mawâsif 54 3:293 5:585–656
233 ‘Alî Nûr al-Dîn and Maryam the 55 3:341 5:657–798
Girdle-girl
234 The Man of Upper Egypt and His 56 3:428 5:798–805
Frankish Wife
235 The Ruined Man of Baghdad and 57 3:432 5:805–17
His Slave-girl
236 Jalî‘âd and Shimâs 58 3:439 6:3–147
237 The Mouse and the Cat 3:441 6:7–10
238 The Fakir and His Jar of Butter 3:444 6:13–15
239 The Fishes and the Crab 3:447 6:18–20
240 The Crow and the Serpent 3:449 6:22–23
241 The Wild Ass and the Jackal 3:450 6:24–26
242 The Unjust King and the Pilgrim 3:452 6:27–30
Prince
243 The Crows and the Hawk 3:454 6:32–34
244 The Serpent-charmer and His Wife 3:456 6:35–37
245 The Spider and the Wind 3:458 6:39–40
246 The Two Kings 3:463 6:47–50
247 The Blind Man and the Cripple 3:465 6:51–53
248 The Foolish Fisherman 3:485 6:86–87
249 The Boy and the Thieves 3:486 6:89–90
250 The Man and His Wife 3:489 6:92–94
251 The Merchant and the Robbers 3:490 6:96–98
252 The Jackals and the Wolf 3:493 6:100–103
253 The Shepherd and the Rogue 3:495 6:104–5
254 The Francolin and the Tortoises 3:500 6:114–18
255 Abû Qîr and Abû Sîr 3:519 6:147–91

230

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
 TABLE B1 (Continued)

No. Story MS Lyons Mahdi Littman

256 ‘Abdallâh the Fisherman and 59 3:544 6:191–223

‘Abdallâh the Merman
257 Tale of Hârûn al-Rashîd and Abû 3:561 6:368–94
Hasan the Merchant of Oman
258 Ibrâhîm and Jamîla 3:576 6:395–426
259 Abu ’l-Hasan of Khorasan 60 3:594 6:426–51
260 Qamar al-Zamân and the Jeweller’s 61 3:608 6:451–532
Wife
261 ‘Abdallâh ibn Fâdil and His Brothers 62 3:654 6:532–99
262 Ma‘rûf the Cobbler 63 3:690 6:599–675
Note.—Story numbers and titles are borrowed from Encyclopedia and follow Burton’s edition.
Encyclopedia 5 Ulrich Marzolph and Richard van Leeuwen, The Arabian Nights: An Encyclopedia
(Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004). Burton 5 Richard F. Burton, Arabian Nights with Intro-
duction & Explanatory Notes, 16 vols. (Beirut: Khayat, 1966). MS 5 Leo Strauss Papers, box 20,
folder 2, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library; references are by
the paragraph numbers of the typescript. Mahdi 5 Husain Haddawy, The Arabian Nights: Based
on the Text Edited by Muhsin Mahdi (London: Norton, 1990); references are by page numbers.
Lyons 5 Malcolm C. Lyons, Ursula Lyons, and Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001
Nights, 3 vols. (London: Penguin, 2010); references are by the volume and page numbers.
Littman 5 Enno Littman, Die Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten—Vollständige Deutsche
Ausgabe in sechs Bänden zum ersten Mal nach dem arabischen Urtext der Calcuttaer Ausgabe aus dem
Jahre 1839, 6 vols. (Leipzig: Insel–Verlag, 1921–28); references are by the volume and page
numbers.

231

This content downloaded from 138.246.002.168 on April 28, 2020 14:54:08 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).