Arabian Nights

https://blog.pgdp.net/2021/04/01/arabian-nights/

by sohkamyung • 5 years ago

192 104 5 years ago

blog.pgdp.net

HelloNurse• 5 years ago

The files at the provided link are dated 2002 and 2016, not 2021. Am I missing something?

Freak_NL• 5 years ago

The sixth supplement volume was released this year: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64384

I'm not seeing the last and seventh supplement volume (volume 17 of 17 in total), perhaps that was released recently?

Ensorceled• 5 years ago

I'm one of the lucky 10,000 who didn't know that the entirety of the Arabian Nights was on Gutenberg.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

krtkush• 5 years ago

TIL Project Gutenberg is blocked in Germany.

skytreader2• 5 years ago

Technically, Project Gutenberg blocks Germany. Anyway this also surprised me last year! Protip: Main PG is blocking DE IPs but mirrors aren't. Unfortunately, [mirrors](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/81t0ad/project_guten...) don't have the convenient search infra, just the texts. If you can get the ID somehow, then you can navigate to the text in question.

Maybe I missed a more convenient mirror. In which case I'd be really glad for links to convenient mirrors.

emanueldima• 5 years ago

https://www.gitenberg.org

SamBam• 5 years ago

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg would be displeased.

mrwnmonm• 5 years ago

I live in a place governed by the military, and they like to block things. But I have no idea why a country like Germany would do that.

emmelaich• 5 years ago

Because of Mein Kampf perhaps? Then again it's on Amazon, do they block Amazon?

bloak• 5 years ago

This might have something to do with it:

https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html

(Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin are out of copyright in the USA, but not in Germany, but obviously there's more to it than that because different countries having different copyright durations is a very normal situation.)

open-source-ux• 5 years ago

For more information on the The One Thousand and One Nights, the following BBC radio programme (broadcast just last week) discusses the origins of the stories, the translations, and their enduring popularity. It's a very stimulating discussion. Download as a MP3 if you want to listen offline:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszjwy

Programme description from the above page:

The One Thousand and One Nights are a collection of fantastical stories of flying carpets, magic and genies whose ancient origins go back to the 7th century or earlier. The tales are told by Scheherazade who uses the power of storytelling night after night to stop her Sultan husband from beheading her.
These highly influential stories were brought to the West in the 18th century, when more tales like Aladdin and Ali Baba were said to have been added by the French translator, and it has continued to evolve over the centuries. Rajan Datar and guests explore why these stories became so popular around the world and what they mean to us today.
Joining Rajan is Wen Chin Ouyang, Professor of Arabic at SOAS in London; Dr Sandra Naddaff, senior lecturer in Comparative Literature at Harvard University; and the Iranian TV producer Shabnam Rezaei.

Ambolia• 5 years ago

Unfortunately the format of most ebooks at Project Gutenberg is usually really bad. Usable on computer screen, but unusable on eBook readers.

Just checked the "mobi" version of the volume 1 from this link, and it looks like all paragraphs are just walls of texts with no paragraphs and the footnotes don't really work unless you scroll manually. I guess it's better than nothing, but not very comfortable to read.

Usually it's even worse with text from the margins, header than footer getting mixed with the normal text.

Does anybody know if there is a website or project where one could find "curated" or properly formatted books with expired Copyright? Maybe one where other people can collaborate?

nbonaparte• 5 years ago

Standard Ebooks (https://standardebooks.org) is what you’re looking for.

CAT0• 5 years ago

The Internet need something like this for all languages, not only english.

robin_reala9• 5 years ago

Arabian Nights has been on my list to produce for SE for a couple of years now, but its sheer size is imposing. I’ll probably do it in the not too distant future though.

altgans• 5 years ago

Is there an archive of the whole collection? My internet is unreliable and I usually try to get everything offline.

_ph_• 5 years ago

I had a good result by using the text version and running it through LaTex for formatting and then converted it into an ebook format. I think it involved a Perl script for marking sections.

timonoko• 5 years ago

These are sole issues of the reader software, unless of course your Ebook is some kind of closed-down kindle-type device. Coolreader and Koreader are examples of versatile and programmable softwares, which are available on Android and Linux-based E-ink readers.

riffraff3• 5 years ago

Many of the well-known modern stories, like that of Aladdin, have the more prurient elements removed or are stories that were added much later.

I wonder about the "prurient" bits? Anyone perused this version and can share what this is about?

I am quite curious to see if the version I read in my own language also has the same censoring.

gostsamo• 5 years ago

I've read part of the stories some time ago. What made me the most impression was how much the heroes of the stories spent in thinking and talking about cuckolding. Not sure if this is what the author means though.

thaumasiotes• 5 years ago

Aladdin isn't an example of a story with the prurient elements removed, it's an example of a story that was added much later. Aladdin is not present in Middle Eastern versions of the Arabian Nights at all; it first appears in a book written by a French guy.

riffraff3• 5 years ago

oh, I see, thanks.

Iv3• 5 years ago

I remember reading a story where sailors discovered an island where plant-women were growing. They were friendly and gave fruits growing on them to the sailors, but the few who tried to "embrace" them got absorbed. Yep, there was some vore hentai connoisseurs at the time.

adrian_b• 5 years ago

In the original there were frequent occurrences of the names of various anatomical parts or of various acts that are considered taboo now. Also there were many explicit descriptions of love scenes, even if a poetic language was used for them.

Of the old translations, only the French translation of Mardrus and the uncensored variant of Burton were somewhat close to the original text. Even the "uncensored" variant of Burton was more distant from the original text than the Mardrus translation.

There exists a much more recent French translation which is said to be more faithful to the original text than any of the previous translations (while the Mardrus translation was not censored, there were many places where it was not a word-by-word translation).

I do not remember precisely, because I have read it a long time ago, but I believe that the new good French translation is that by André Miquel et al.; various editions of that may be found at Amazon. I am not aware of any decent English translation.

When I was very young, I have read a translation into my language of the French translation of Mardrus. The first few volumes matched the French text, so they were quite explicit. Then it seems that someone noticed that and ordered the translators to remove any explicit parts, so the following volumes were obviously censored, lacking many words or entire scenes from the French Mardrus text.

riffraff3• 5 years ago

interesting, thanks.

gh-throw• 5 years ago

Mardrus got translated into English by Mathers. It's the edition I've read (partially—my copy is in four very fat volumes, so it's a lot of reading). Can confirm that it includes tons of stuff I'd expect to be missing from any kind of Bowdlerized or censored version. Not sure I'd recommend it for a modern reader in English given the other options available, these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Powys_Mathers

devindotcom3• 5 years ago

If you read the story "The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad" (I think... this is from memory) the women (the escalating beauty of whom as the porter meets each is incredibly phrased by Burton) eventually are fooling around with the porter and they are pointing to each other's crotches and joking about different names: "thy cleft, thy slit, thy coynte, thy clitoris" and the women suggest "the basil of the bridges" (I confess myself mystified) and "the husked sesame seed" (husked due to female circumcision).

Other translations are muuuuuch more tame. Abridged versions probably skip it entirely. When I first read the unexpurgated Burton my mind was blown on the regular.

selimthegrim2• 5 years ago

Wait until you read some Abu Nuwas

glandium• 5 years ago

This being HN, for some reason, I was expecting the article to be about the pinball.

qsort• 5 years ago

Or at least the Magic: the Gathering set.

reportgunner• 5 years ago

I thought it would be about the Magic: the Gathering set.

Iv3• 5 years ago

Funny to use Aladdin as an example: it was added later to the original manuscript.

Iv3• 5 years ago

Always fun to remind people that Aladdin is actually Chinese in the original stories.

But then, let's be fair, their depiction of China sounds like it was just a placeholder for "far away land"

somethingtoday• 5 years ago

Even to this day, the word China in Arabic (pronounced "seen") means far away.

So if your friend lives across town and you are inconvenienced, in Arabic you would say "why do you live in China?".

legends2k• 5 years ago

Surprising, China's pronunciation in Tamil is also similar, 'Seena '!

Flex247A• 5 years ago

In Hindi, we pronounce it as 'Cheen', with the 'ch' sound.

minikites• 5 years ago

Taking "the slow boat to China" is an idiom in English for a long duration or long journey.

heistus• 5 years ago

The word "china" might mean 'far' but only in a metaphorical way As is the case in many other languages. But the word for "far" or "far away" in arabic is definitely not "china / الصين"

CobrastanJorji• 5 years ago

I love that in Arabic, China is a metaphor for "far away," and in Chinese, China is basically "the central place." I am hoping to find out that the Pashto or Hindu for China means "medium far away."

axiom92• 5 years ago

On a related note, some languages become placeholder for "gibberish." For example, English speakers often say "it sounds Greek."

https://twitter.com/TommSciortino/status/1357376440170258434

fmajid• 5 years ago

Jorge Luis Borges wrote an excellent comparison of translations of the Arabian Nights, notably those of Galland, Burton, Lane and Mardrus. His conclusion was the Lane one was most faithful to the original, despite being prudishly bowdlerized, that Mardrus emphasized the sensual aspects to titillate his readers and Burton on the other hand over-emphasized the violence. I've read the Galland, Mardrus and Burton but not Lane, and can agree on his characterizations of the first three.

It's great to see they have left the footnotes, that are some of the most interesting aspects of the translation (trigger warning: Burton was a Victorian and exhibits all the casual racism of his epoch, despite being very forward-looking in surprising ways).

My favorite one is from volume 1:

[FN#543] Arab. Al-Zalamah lit. = tyrants, oppressors, applied to the police and generally to employés of Government. It is a word which tells a history.

grandpa• 5 years ago

The opening of Borges' essay is absolutely brilliant writing:

AT TRIESTE, IN 1872, in a palace with damp statues and deficient hygienic facilities, a gentleman on whose face an African scar told its tale — Captain Richard Francis Burton, the English consul — embarked on a famous translation of the Quitab aliflaila ua laila, which the roumis know by the title, The Thousand and One Nights. One of the secret aims of his work was the annihilation of another gentleman (also weatherbeaten, and with a dark Moorish beard) who was compiling a vast dictionary in England and who died long before he was annihilated by Burton. That gentleman was Edward Lane, the Orientalist, author of a highly scrupulous version of The Thousand and One Nights that had supplanted a version by Galland. Lane translated against Galland, Burton against Lane; to understand Burton we must understand this hostile dynasty.

Borges also admires Burton's footnotes:

Thus Volume Six (which I have before me) includes some three hundred notes, among which are the following: a condemnation of jails and a defense of corporal punishment and fines; some examples of the Islamic respect for bread; a legend about the hairiness of Queen Belkis’ legs; an enumeration of the four colors that are emblematic of death; a theory and practice of Oriental ingratitude; the information that angels prefer a piebald mount, while Djinns favor horses with a bright-bay coat; a synopsis of the mythology surrounding the secret Night of Power or Night of Nights; a denunciation of the superficiality of Andrew Lang; a diatribe against rule by democracy; a census of the names of Mohammed, on the Earth, in the Fire, and in the Garden; a mention of the Amalekite people, of long years and large stature; a note on the private parts of the Moslem, which for the man extend from the navel to his knees, and for the woman from the top of the head to the tips of her toes; a consideration of the asa’o [roasted beef] of the Argentine gaucho; a warning about the discomforts of “equitation” when the steed is human; an allusion to a grandiose plan for cross-breeding baboons with women and thus deriving a sub-race of good proletarians. At fifty, a man has accumulated affections, ironies, obscenities, and copious anecdotes; Burton unburdened himself of them in his notes.

devindotcom3• 5 years ago

I did not know this exists. Can't wait to look it up and read it, thanks.

gwern• 5 years ago

https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1936-borges-thetranslators...

natemcintosh• 5 years ago

I would highly recommend the musical interpretation by Rimsky-Korsakov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheherazade_(Rimsky-Korsakov). The violin soloist as Scheherazade leads the Sultan through the stories. See the Overview section of the wikipedia page for her theme, and his theme. It's a piece I always love to come back to.

Digit-Al• 5 years ago

I've enjoyed that one since I was a child. Funnily enough I listened to it just a few weeks ago after having not listened to it for years.

eternalban3• 5 years ago

This little bit of cultural misappropriation has always bugged me. Oddly enough, it is always the Europeans insisting on these Persian/Iranian matters being "Arab". I seriously wonder if this is still nursing ancient Persian Greek/Roman rivalries and is a byproduct of a chauvinist classical education of the European educated set of 19th century. I find it very strange.

In the OP, we have a female Persian name (Shahrzad, the story teller) and a male Persian name (Shahryar, the king).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights#Pe...

"The earliest mentions of the Nights refer to it as an Arabic translation from a Persian book, Hezār Afsān (aka Afsaneh or Afsana), meaning 'The Thousand Stories'."

Hezar means 1000. Afsan means fantasy/story. Now it's true that the modern version is called Hezaar-o yek Shab (Thousand and one nights). So possibly that 'one' story is the Arab contribution.

[Filed under the "The Gulf" files]

Mediterraneo102• 5 years ago

The version of these tales that became internationally famous date from a time after Persia had already been under Arabic and Muslim influence for centuries and the Persian language had become replete with Arabic borrowings. It is the same reason that many of the traditions and foreign words borrowed into the cultures of Central Asia and the Volga–Kama region are generally referred to as "Arabo-Persian", even though those peoples were dealing mainly with Persian speakers and rarely met an actual Arab.

eternalban3• 5 years ago

As I said this is a minor item.

The major one, which one sees to this day in contemporary European sources (even scholarly matter), is how Arabs translated ancient sources into Arabic. This occulation of (substantial and far reaching) contribution of Iran to "Western civilization" is unique to European sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Clas...

Arab historians themselves, to their lasting credit, had the intellectual integrity:

“It is a remarkable fact that, with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars…in the intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs…thus the founders of grammar were Sibawaih and after him, al-Farisi and Az-Zajjaj. All of them were of Persian descent…they invented rules of (Arabic) grammar…great jurists were Persians… only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus the truth of the statement of the prophet becomes apparent, ‘If learning were suspended in the highest parts of heaven the Persians would attain it”…The intellectual sciences were also the preserve of the Persians, left alone by the Arabs, who did not cultivate them…as was the case with all crafts…This situation continued in the cities as long as the Persians and Persian countries, Iraq, Khorasan and Transoxiana (modern Central Asia), retained their sedentary culture.”

- Muqaddimah, by Abū Zayd ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Khaldūn al-Ḥaḍramī, translated by F. Rosenthal (III, pp. 311-15, 271-4 [Arabic]; Frye, R.N. (1977). Golden Age of Persia, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, p.91).

Soviet Russian historians are equally factual regarding these matters. As I said, this is a remarkable feature of European version of history as far as Iran is concerned.

goto114• 5 years ago

I seriously wonder if this is still nursing ancient Persian Greek/Roman rivalries and is a byproduct of a chauvinist classical education of the European educated set of 19th century. I find it very strange.

You are overthinking this. It is called Arabian Nights (in some translations) because the stories are translated from Arabic. It is like calling the Brothers Grimm fairy tales German, even though some of the stories may have originated somewhere else.

The 19 century orientalists were certainly chauvinist by modern standards, but did not in particular elevate Arab culture above Persian culture.

Suggesting that Arab culture supplied just one story to the collection makes you the chauvinist. The stories have all kinds of origins - Persian, Indian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Syrian, even European.

goto114• 5 years ago

Fun fact about Arabian Nights: Some of the stories are only known from the French translation by Galland. By his own account he wrote them down (in French) based on narration from a Syrian Maronite storyteller who visited him in Paris. The well known story of Aladdin only exists in French - there is no known original in Arabic.

Borges suggested Galland might simply have made up the story of Aladdin on his own, others that is might be an original creation by the Maronite storyteller.

Folklorists have pointed out that the set of stories recorded from the storyteller have a number of story tropes more characteristic of European rather than Middle Eastern folk tales.

Wikipedia carefully states: "Aladdin is a folk tale most probably of Middle Eastern origin".

hassancf• 5 years ago

Sorry for being blunt but: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (of original texts in Arabic about Alaaddin that predate Galland etc).

A lot of the original stories may be verbal oral and not necessarily written, another lot may be lost (burn libraries etc) and this all happened from 400 to 1000 years ago, so not exactly yesterday.

goto114• 5 years ago

Indeed, this is why I say "no known original in Arabic."

But it is also possible that the Maronite storyteller was from a somewhat different storytelling tradition. Maronites are a Christian minority in the Levant which was traditionally involved in maritime trade, so they might have different sources for stories. In the end it is all guesswork since Gallard is the only known source of the story.

At one point a manuscript was found with Aladdin in Arabic, but it turned out to be an Arabic translation from Gallard!

Here is a great article about the question: https://ajammc.com/2017/09/14/who-wrote-aladdin/

jarenmf• 5 years ago

Indeed, Hanna Diyab is a very interesting person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanna_Diyab

defen• 5 years ago

By his own account he wrote them down (in French) based on narration from a Syrian Maronite storyteller who visited him in Paris

That sounds a lot like the origin story of Don Quixote... (within the text, it was allegedly told to Cervantes by Cide Hamete Benengeli)

goto114• 5 years ago

The storyteller did exist though. He even wrote a memoir! But he didn't write down his own stories. He narrated them for Galland, presumably in French, and Galland wrote them down... a few days later... from memory.

masterphilo• 5 years ago

Folklorists have pointed out that the set of stories recorded from the storyteller have a number of story tropes more characteristic of European rather than Middle Eastern folk tales.

Interesting, could you give us an example of these characteristics?

Islamic and European societies during the period of these stories were different in unique ways, and for that reason I'm not exactly sure how those characteristics were more similar to the one rather than the other.

bodhiandphysics• 5 years ago

So the crucial thing about story telling is that it’s not a literary genre. And that means that’s it’s often extemporaneous. In order to make up stories on the spot, storytellers use a body of elements (motifs, incidents, etc.) that they can dump in when they need them. Literary genres close to oral storytelling, like chivalric romance, the Sanskrit katha, and Arabian nights tales, usually keep this quality. (Btw, a good storyteller can do amazing things in this framework).

The issue with Alladin, Sinbad, and Ali baba, is that they lack most of the common motifs of Arabian nights tales (IE the slave whose mistake solves the problem, bedtricks, the sultan who solves everything, the discovered needed object) but do possess motifs very characteristic of 17 and 18th century French folktales (notably alladins rags to riches story, and the princesses cup trick). They also are less motif heavy in general! That doesn’t mean the translator made them up by the way... the resemblance to French folktales could be an accident, and they could be from another storytelling tradition, but they don’t seem like Arabian nights stories

NiceWayToDoIT• 5 years ago

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I., by Anonymous https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34206/34206-h/34206-h.htm

Balgair• 5 years ago

The abridged Harvard Classics copy is here, for anyone looking for another source/version: http://www.myharvardclassics.com/downloads/20120213_1/downlo...

idlewords3• 5 years ago

There's a really nice modern translation of the Arabian nights by Husain Haddawy, that is worth your time. The preface to that translation goes into a lot of fun detail about the book's complex trajectory, and its unhappy translations by Burton and others. The first volume contains the closest thing to Arabian Nights "canon". Haddawy then published a second volume with stories that glommed onto the text later, but are massively popular, including Ala-Addin and the Magic Lamp and Sinbad the Sailor.

The Burton translation is of more interest as an psychosexual glimpse into the guy's mind, and an Orientalist artifact, than for the story istelf. Burton wrote in a bizarrely archaicized English that has no counterpart in the text, which reads like all oral storytelling everywhere—repetitive, engaging, and fun.

JKCalhoun• 5 years ago

Interesting. I have made it through only a third or so of the Mathers' translation (translated to English from the French translation).

I started the Burton translation but found the wording - dense? It seemed it should be more authentic though since it was a direct English translation.

Burton, as I have glimpsed, was quite a character.

idlewords3• 5 years ago

Burton translated into a fantastical, archaicized, almost unreadable version of English of his own invention. The Haddaway introduction has some nice examples of his prose compared to a "straight" translation of the original text.

IgorPartola• 5 years ago

If someone wants to listen to some of these stories, the Myths and Legends podcast does a nice exploration and breakdown of a lot of these and other stories.

sorenso• 5 years ago

Perhaps one of the greatest Arabic, Middle Eastern, and Islamic contributions to world literature, the many stories of the Arabian Nights, in their various forms and genres, have influenced literature, music, art, and cinema, and continue to do so until our present day.

Arabian Nights

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