Free Thinking Landmark - 1001 Nights

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2015

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

It's three hundred years since the death of Antoine Galland, a French orientalist and archaeologist, whose translation of The One Thousand and One Nights kick-started its adventures in the West via the works of English orientalists, Richard Burton, Edward Lane and John Payne. Philip Dodd asks a panel of experts on these hugely influential tales, plus story-tellers who continue to wrest new life out of them. He talks to Scholars Robert Irwin and Wen-chin Ouyang, the theatre director Tim Supple and Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.4	It is related, but God knows and sees best what lies hidden in the old accounts of bygone peoples and times,
0:41.1	that long ago, in the peninsulas of India and Indochina, there lived two kings who were brothers.
0:49.2	The older brother was named Shahrajar, the younger Shahzaman.
0:56.4	Hello, the opening of a collection of stories, and these stories are like nothing in the
1:02.3	world, flying carpets and magic, gins and delirious sex. Writers from Voltaire to Jorghé
1:09.7	Louise Borges have loved this collection, whose sources
1:13.0	stretch from India to Arab Islam, but whose most famous stories such as Aladdin may be European
1:20.2	19th century editions. 1001 Knights begins with a king whose wife betrays him and he vows to avenge himself on all women.
1:31.1	Each night he demands a virgin and in the morning he kills her.
1:35.8	That is until Scheherazade his vizier's clever daughter decides to intervene.
1:42.4	The vizier carried Shahrazad to the king, who was gladdened at the sight and asked,
1:47.3	Has thou brought me my need?
1:49.5	And the vizier answered, I have.
1:52.8	But when the king took Shahrazad to his bed and fell to toying with her and wished to go into her, she wept.
1:59.9	Which made him ask, what aileth thee?
2:03.4	She replied, O king of the age, I have a younger sister, and leave would I take leave of her this
2:09.6	night before I see the dawn. So he sent at once for Dunyazette, and she came, and he permitted her to
2:16.2	take her seat near the foot of the couch.
2:19.3	Then the king arose and did away with his bride's maidenhead, and the three fell asleep.
	...

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