# Stories from the Arabian nights (Housman, Dulac)

STORIES FROM THE
ARABIAN NIGHTS
RETOLD BY LAVRENCE HOVSMAN
ILLVSTRATED BY EDMVND DVLAC
Scheherzadè, the heroine of the Thousand One Nights.
Stories from
The Arabian Nights
Retold by Laurence Housman
With Drawings by Edmund Dulac
New York George H. Doran Company
Stories from the Arabian Nights. I
Printed in the United States of America
Preface
PREFACE
Scheherazadè, the heroine of the Thousand and One Nights, ranks among the great story-tellers of the world much as does Penelope among the weavers. Procrastination was the basis of her art; for though the task she accomplished was splendid and memorable, it is rather in the quantity than the quality of her invention—in the long spun-out performance of what could have been done far more shortly—that she becomes a figure of dramatic interest. The idea which binds the stories together is greater and more romantic than the stories themselves; and though, both in the original and in translation, the diurnal interruption of their flow is more and more taken for granted, we are never quite ​robbed of the sense that it is Scheherazadè who is speaking—Scheherazadè, loquacious and self-possessed, sitting up in bed at the renewed call of dawn to save her neck for the round of another day. Here is a figure of romance worth a dozen of the prolix stories to which it has been made sponsor; and often we may have followed the fortunes of some shoddy hero and heroine chiefly to determine at what possible point of interest the narrator could have left hanging that frail thread on which for another twenty-four hours her life was to depend.
Yes, the idea is delightful; and, with the fiction of Scheherazadè to colour them, the tales acquire a rank which they would not otherwise deserve; their prolixity is then the crowning point of their art, their sententious truisms have a flavour of ironic wit, their repetitions become humorous, their trivialities a mark of light-hearted courage; even those deeper indiscretions, which ​Burton has so faithfully recorded, seem then but a wise adaptation of vile means to a noble end. And yet we know that it is not so; for, as a matter of fact, the "Arabian Nights Entertainment" is but a miscellany gathered from various sources, of various dates, and passing down to us, even in its collocated form, under widely differing versions. None but scholars can know how little of the unadulterated originals have come into our possession; and only those whose pious opinions shut their eyes to obvious facts can object in principle to the simplification of a form which, from the point of view of mere story-telling, can so easily be bettered. Even the more accurate of the versions ordinarily available are full of abridgement, alteration, and suppression; and if you have to eliminate Scheherazadè and select your stories mainly with a view to illustration, then you have very largely done away with the reasons for treating tenderly that prolixity which ​in an impatient age tends to debar readers from an old classic.
And so, in the present version, whoever shall care to make comparison will find that the original material has been treated with considerable freedom in the direction of brevity, and with an almost uniform departure from the exact text, save where essentials of plot or character or local colour required a closer accuracy. In the case also of conflicting versions, there has been no reluctance to choose and combine in order to secure a livelier result; and a further freedom has sometimes been taken of giving to an incident more meaning and connexion than has been allowed to it in the original. That is, perhaps, the greatest licence of all, but it is the one that does least harm in formal result; for no one can read the majority of the tales in their accepted versions without perceiving that, as regards construction and the piecing of event ​with event, they are either incredibly careless or discreditably perfunctory. We have to reckon with them as the product of a race keenly alive to the value of colour and pictorial description, but a race whose constructive imagination was feeble and diffuse, lacking almost entirely that great essential for the development of art in its finer forms—the economy of means toward ends.
But because they contain, though at a low pressure, the expression of so much life, habit and custom, so many coloured and secluded interiors, so quaint a commingling of crowds, so brilliant and moving a pageantry of Eastern mediævalism, because of all these things the "Arabian Nights" will still retain their perennial charm. Those of us who read are all travellers; and never is our travelling sense so awakened perhaps, as when we dip into a book such as this where the incredible and the commonplace are so curiously blended, and where ​Jinn and Efreet and Magician have far less interest for us now than the silly staring crowds, and the bobbing camels in the narrow streets, and Scheherazadè spinning her poor thin yarn of wonders that she may share for another night the pillow of a homicidal maniac.
Contents
CONTENTS
| | PAGE |
| THE FISHERMAN AND THE GENIE | 27 |
| THE STORY OF THE KING OF THE EBONY ISLES | 53 |
| ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES | 81 |
| THE STORY OF THE MAGIC HORSE | 133 |
| THE STORY OF THE WICKED HALF-BROTHERS | 187 |
| THE STORY OF THE PRINCESS OF DERYABAR | 205 |
Illustrations
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE FISHERMAN AND THE GENIE
| Scheherazadè, the heroine of the Thousand and One Nights | Frontispiece |
| | PAGE |
| Thereupon the damsel upset the pan into the fire | 39 |
| He arrived within sight of a palace of shining marble | 47 |
THE STORY OF THE KING OF THE EBONY ISLES
| The Queen of the Ebony Isles | 57 |
| Began to heap upon me terms of the most violent and shameful abuse | 65 |
| She went on to vent her malice upon the city and islands | 75 |
ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES
| | PAGE |
| As soon as he came in she began to jeer at him | 89 |
| "Sir," said he, "I have brought my oil a great distance to sell to-morrow" | 109 |
| She poured into each jar in turn a sufficient quantity of the boiling oil to scald its occupant to death | 117 |
THE STORY OF THE MAGIC HORSE
| As he descended, the daylight in which hitherto he had been travelling faded from view | 139 |
| Till the tale of her mirror contented her | 147 |
| She gave orders for the banquet to be served | 155 |
| For many months he travelled without clue | 177 |
THE STORY OF THE WICKED HALF-BROTHERS
| The lady advanced to meet him | 197 |
THE STORY OF THE PRINCESS OF DERYABAR
| | PAGE |
| A city among the Isles named Deryabar | 209 |
| After these, maidens on white horses, with heads unveiled, bearing in their hands baskets of precious stones | 229 |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1959, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 64 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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