Q.1.
Character of Morgiana
Morgiana, Ali Baba’s clever and sharp-witted servant in ‘The Story of Ali Baba and the Forty
Thieves’, saved the life of Ali Baba for twice and deceived the thief for twice while he
marked the house of Ali Baba. She finally gets her reward from the master and marries his
nephew to become a family member.
The thief marked Ali Baba’s house with white chalk. Morgiana spots the white chalk mark
and suspects something is going on. So she goes and marks all of the neighbouring doors
with similar white chalk marks. Sure enough, when the thieves turn up to sneak into Ali
Baba’s house and kill him, they cannot work out which house is his, since all houses in the
area bear the same chalk mark. A second thief tries his luck, doing the same thing as the first
one, but this time marking the door with red chalk. But Morgiana once again spots the mark
soon afterwards, and duly marks all the other houses with red chalk. When the thieves turn
up, they are thwarted again. The chief imprisons the two thieves who failed in their missions,
shutting them up in the cave.
The chief hatches his own plan: once he has paid Baba Mustafa to lead him to the correct
house, he memorises its location, rather than marking it with chalk. He then takes the 37
thieves (the other two are imprisoned in the cave) and goes to Ali Baba’s house, where,
disguised in foreign clothes, the chief pretends to be a merchant from another country who is
selling oil in the city. He requests Ali Baba to spend the night in his garden, and to store his
jars of oil in his shed. The jars are, of course, where the other thieves are lying in wait, ready
to come out and join the attack on Ali Baba’s house. Ali Baba agrees, and asks Morgiana to
make some food for their guest. The chief decides to have a nap in the garden. When
Morgiana runs out of oil, she goes out into the shed to get some – only to discover the thieves
hidden in the oil jars. They assume she is their chief, however, and ask ‘Is it time to act yet?’
The quick-thinking servant imitates the chief’s voice, telling them to wait as the time to act
hasn’t arrived yet. She locates a jar that actually does contain oil, and goes back into the
house. Heating it up until it’s boiling hot, she then takes the oil out to the shed and pours it
into each and every one of the jars in which the thieves are concealed. They all burn to death.
She then locks the gate so the sleeping chief cannot escape.
Morgiana tells Ali Baba about the thieves, and how she has saved him from them. He is
grateful to her. While they are inside, the chief wakes up and discovers all of the thieves
dead, so he flees over the garden fence. The chief hatches another plan which involves
playing a longer game. Disguised once more, he sets up a market stall in the bazaar, using an
assumed name, and trades there, opposite to Kasim’s orphaned son, Ali Baba’s nephew. He
befriends the young man and, over time, the nephew invites the robber captain to Ali Baba’s
house for a meal, as his guest. When Morgiana recognises the robber chief, and spots the
dagger he has concealed under his robes, she dresses up as an exotic dancer, complete with a
dagger of her own, and asks her master if she can dance for them both. Ali Baba agrees, and
while she is walking around the table to collect coins from the men, she suddenly brings out
her dagger and stabs the chief and kills him.
Ali Baba rewards her by giving her his nephew’s hand in marriage when she tells Ali Baba
that this man was the same one that came to his house to kill him before, posing as an oil
merchant. Ali Baba grows very rich and Morgina has played a significant role in his life.
What’s more, although the tale is traditionally known by the title of ‘Ali Baba and the Forty
Thieves’, the character who demonstrates the real cunning and cleverness is not Ali Baba but
his servant girl, Morgiana, whose quick thinking and wise actions save her master not once
but twice. Of course, as in many European fairy tales, Morgiana is rewarded with her
freedom and a socially advantageous marriage to Ali Baba’s own nephew; she is free from a
life of servitude and goes on to prosper as the wife of a rich man. In this way, Morgiana’s sly
cunning reflects Scheherazade’s own cunning. She, too, wins her freedom through telling this
tale to her master, among many other tales. It is, as if, Scheherazade is subtly hinting that
good masters reward their female servants by granting them freedom and prosperity as her
own master should do when she has finished entertaining him with her stories.
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