Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange (Hardcover Classics) Read Free Page B

‘Ali is given a heroic role in two of the stories, might suggest that the compiler had Shi‘i sympathies. On the other hand there is no sign of any particular hostility towards the Umaiyad caliphs, which one might have expected from a Shi‘ite.
Relief after Grief
    Besides belonging to the category of
‘aja’ib
, many of the stories in
Tales of the Marvellous
can also be described as belonging to the genre of
faraj ba‘d al-shidda
, or ‘relief after grief’. In this kind of story the protagonist or protagonists undergo many hardships or tests before attaining success and happiness. The most famous collection of such stories was made by the Iraqi judge and anthologist al-Tanukhi (940–94). ‘Relief after grief’ can be seen as a quasi-religious genre in which the protagonists’ patience and trust in God will ultimately be rewarded by Him. (It is easy for a modern, secularized reader to miss how the tales of marvels,magic, adventure and thwarted love in both
Tales of the Marvellous
and the
Nights
are suffused with an Islamic religiosity.) In
Tales of the Marvellous
the characters who suffer before attaining a happy end are often separated lovers. Examples of the tribulations endured by lovers and their ultimate happy reunion include ‘The King of the Two Rivers’, ‘Talha, the Son of the Qadi of Fustat’, ‘Sul and Shumul’, ‘Miqdad and Mayasa’ and ‘Budur and ‘Umair’. In the opening of this last story the restless and depressed caliph Harun al-Rashid demands to be told ‘a story of infatuated lovers and of a happy outcome to affliction’. Of course, just as the protagonists in this kind of story must bear their hardships with patience (
sabr
), so too must those who read or listen to these tales. It is striking how anxious the compiler is to signal in the titles to the tales those stories which, after troubles, will end happily. The description ‘relief after grief’ occurs repeatedly in the titles of a majority of the stories (but this excessive repetition has not been reproduced on the English contents page).
    Patience must be the correct response to a tale of suspense. In Beatrix Potter’s
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
, the rabbit is told by his mother: ‘You may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr McGregor’s garden.’ The person who reads this does not want the rabbit to go into Mr McGregor’s garden for he knows that if the rabbit does so something bad will happen to him, and yet at the same time he does want the rabbit to break the interdiction, for otherwise there will be no story. So it is with ‘The Forty Girls’ in
Tales of the Marvellous
, where the prince is told by the sorceress that he may explore every room but one. It is as if he is compelled by that very interdiction to go through the forbidden door. Prolepsis is a closely related way of generating narrative suspense. Thus, if at the beginning of a story an astrologer predicts some dreadful thing, the reader or listener waits and, as he waits, he wants and does not want the predicted disaster to happen.
Love
    Delaying the climax is the stock-in-trade of the love stories. These tend towards the lachrymose, and verses mostly of a melancholy kind adorn these stories. Poetry was the language of love, for prose was seen as a poor vehicle for the expression of the emotions. Poetry both conveyed passion and served to instruct lovers on the etiquette of love. Inmedieval Arab storytelling love comes at first glance (a second glance would count as ogling and would therefore be sinful). It is even possible to fall in love by report as in ‘Julnar’, in which Badr falls in love with Jauhara as soon as he hears her described. Or one might fall in love through seeing a portrait, as with Mahliya, when she sees a painting of Mauhub. Regular dating and the slow growth of love over weeks, months or years was not envisaged by the storytellers. Although passion is celebrated, the sexual act is not lingered over.