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What makes these fables and fairy-tales so enchanting, generation after generation, beyond the skillfully detailed settings, the complex characters, and the occasional moral overtones, is the oceanic sense of humility and duty conveyed in the most ubiquitous sense. These Arabs were as prone to cunning and treachery as any humans alive, but great care is taken to illustrate how the worst follies occur as the result of foolishness and lack of experience, as represented by faith in imposters, dependence on jinnies, attachment to wealth, overconfidence, idolatry, laziness, and the worst of all sins: betrayal. Loyalty was often the most dangerous condition of the human spirit, certainly not less so for the Arabs than the Mongols or Turks or any to follow this magical civilization of dreamers and tinkerers, subdued by only by centuries of political and military intrigue, but incapable of being extinguished. Viewing success as a goal, they perceived failure only as opportunity for wisdom, education, and courage. Loyalty reenforced this arrangement, Loyalty first and foremost to Allah, who guided them and strengthened them in all trials, and a sense of loyalty to each other that sustained them with an impenetrable concept of collective identity.
The
bridge between Man and God was the prophet Mohammed, a man of no
special ability or talent beyond the receipt of divine revelation. He
is not generally held to have walked on water or turned water to
wine. His role is much less pedantic. Through Mohammed flowed the
word of God, upon which Mohammed himself clearly placed a higher
premium than his own life. What is necessary about
Mohammed is that landmark quality of familiarity that distinguishes
his message, that
which proceeded from an Arab, from the faith traditions of others.
When the characters in Nights express
gratitude, amazement, or encouragement, they say not just “There is
no God but Allah,” but also the next exclusive qualifier : “...And
Mohammed was his prophet.” Not Moses, Not Ahura Mazda or Thomas
Aquinas or Jafari even. The message is one of reverence, overtly for
God, but specifically for the God of the Arab. It
says “you will be ok” or “this fortune has come to you”
because Allah helped, which is great, but also because you are an
Arab. Where the
inhabitants of two major continents would struggle for familial
supremacy under the Persian, Arab, or Turkish Banner over the coming
years, it would be that unifying quality of Islam that penetrated
most deeply into the annals of each of their cultural histories.
Islam, the gift of peace, received by the world from the hands of
Arabs.
Through
their treatment of Allah in the many fanciful encounters of poor
people, princes, dervishes, merchants, and foreigners, modern
audiences can glimpse the many survival advantages with which Allah
imbued the Arab. Allah is a sort of a social seal against iniquity.
He is a monitor of personal conduct, as always. But he is also an
omnipresent third party who arbitrates trade negotiations and other
social exchanges. A consumer will plea for a discount by invoking the
merchant's charitable nature, and by confidently asserting that Allah
will bless them for their kindness. Allah is the protector of truth,
and will be invoked as such to emphasize a speaker's sincerity, or to
witness a promise or pact, effectively granting legitimacy to
seemingly rocky impractical agreements. Allah would punish
trespassers, liars, cheats, braggarts, and cowards in peculiar ways,
which, at least in the narrative sense, seemed purposefully
constructed to educate them. When all else fails, for example, an
accused person or a victim of imminent harm may appeal to Allah for
safety, at which point, the threat is often deflated, but is almost
always replaced by some immediate task or service that often seems
burdensome, but is often followed by incredible fortunes which speak
to the Arabs sense of Self within the greater Self.
Elevation and promotion were common themes in many stories of impoverished, sometimes even shiftless, characters, who are shown taking risks, innovating, thinking on their feet, trusting others, or not, depending on their own instinct. Such is the basis of the Arab's optimism, and the continuity of the Arab identity. More-so, however, it is the keystone of what later solidifies into Arab nationalism, as Arabs learn over and over that they are better off trusting each other than trusting any other. Social stature, however, was rightly perceived as fleeting, or at best, fragile. A palace was a sign of human authority, and reflected a reverent sense of duty and social organization, but it was also a tangible, and therefore temporal, thing. And like all things, a palace could be built in a night, taken away in a moment, and yet restored either on a whim or as the result of epic conquest, only to be destroyed or neglected, or worse. Love for a princess, however, could make a poor man King, and a palatial life would soon evolve naturally around them, as evidence of Allah's most divine element of grace: human affection.
Elevation and promotion were common themes in many stories of impoverished, sometimes even shiftless, characters, who are shown taking risks, innovating, thinking on their feet, trusting others, or not, depending on their own instinct. Such is the basis of the Arab's optimism, and the continuity of the Arab identity. More-so, however, it is the keystone of what later solidifies into Arab nationalism, as Arabs learn over and over that they are better off trusting each other than trusting any other. Social stature, however, was rightly perceived as fleeting, or at best, fragile. A palace was a sign of human authority, and reflected a reverent sense of duty and social organization, but it was also a tangible, and therefore temporal, thing. And like all things, a palace could be built in a night, taken away in a moment, and yet restored either on a whim or as the result of epic conquest, only to be destroyed or neglected, or worse. Love for a princess, however, could make a poor man King, and a palatial life would soon evolve naturally around them, as evidence of Allah's most divine element of grace: human affection.
With
the supremacy of Allah taken to be such a principle theme in Nights,
it is interesting to note how the characters conduct themselves in
the presence of other cultures and faiths. A hodgepodge of strangers
assemble for relief among strange women who perform vividly unnatural
rights after their own fashion of mysticism, but the major outcome of
the scene is a series of shared personal histories that are, by turns,
moving, comical, terrifying, impossible, and inspiring. Inevitably, a
group of odd characters with unfathomable intentions collide in space
and time, and the device is always similar: the characters begin
often under awkward or even adversarial circumstances, usually as
strangers, and usually always across some cultural divide, as in
slave meets ship captain, or the pauper who engages the prince (or
princess) or the merchant conversing with the soldier. However, once
each has told his or her story of how they arrived, who they were,
where they came from, whatever conflict they had found themselves in
was attenuated by the bonding element of the shared story. By
humanizing themselves and each other in this fashion, it is clear
that the citizens of ninth century Baghdad were not only well
accustomed to tall tales from strange people on march or caravan from
some remote corner of the world, they must have found them quite
endearing.
A narrative is a
difficult thing to construct, and a nuanced narrative requires a
mastery of the human condition. These tales represent more than just
a peace of cultural heritage, or a window into the political,
economic, and social landscapes. They allow modern audiences to
understand just how far back in time the human imagination can be
traced. For westerners of the period, civilization beyond the church
was wholly absent of any literary development. The fall of the
western Roman empire left Europe in an intellectual vacuum known as
the Dark Ages. The Platonic thought patterns the church retained
persisted until the Arabs reacquainted Latin and Anglo audiences with
Aristotle, a pretty thoughtful gift in light of the Crusades that
opened the gates of Enlightenment, which like sunshine, always flows
from the east. Westerners now take Vergil and Herodotus and Plutarch
for granted, as they do hieroglyphs, another Easter-egg puzzle also
surreptitiously unlocked as a consequence of western aggression. But
each of these would perhaps still be lost to the world had they not
been preserved by our eastern kinsmen for the six hundred more years
we needed to evolve to appreciate what they intuitively ascribed
value. The love of story, and the understanding of its myriad roles
in the human experience, is arguably as advanced an art form as it is
an exacting science.
No
culture has ever survived that would not evaluate its own existence,
decisions, and consequences. The sheer volume of substance contained
within even the fewest passages from the thousand accounts of life
and circumstance as presented in the Penguin anthology is not in and
of itself novel. Even the most illiterate among barbarians could spin
a decent yarn. But the specific scenic use of interpersonal dialogue
for character development shows that as early as the Abbasid empire,
Arabs were keen on the idea that learning about each other and
indulging in someone else's accounts was vital to their growth and
development, in both senses, practical and moral.
While
it should be granted these tales were not all authored by some
homogeneous Arab collective, the weight of influence of these tales in
Medieval Arabia, down to the modern western audiences which revisit
these iconic stories year after year, can not be dismissed. The tales
we hear as children form our models for the world. They provide us
with a context in which to understand our lives and to navigate our
ever-complicating futures. Most importantly, however, they anchor us
to a time and a place, and to a set of values and habits that define
our character. The story of the Arabs is the story of Islam that
predominated the stories of the Turks, Mongols, Ethiopians, Persians,
and all the other cultures to whom those names would have been highly
audible topics of relentless existential concern.
Through a well told story, both the character and the reader are altered for the better. One's sense of honesty or duty is reenforced. One's sense of adventure or curiosity expands. And One's ethical bearings are finely tuned by weighted examination of conflict and consequence. Effectively, for those of most faith traditions, a thing or event that makes one better is analogous to a thing which brings one closer to God, or to universal truth, or to wisdom, which is also divine. For those whom God is distant, courage and patience must often be drawn from the finite and exhaustible reservoir of self. For the Arabs of Baghdad in the 9th century and the thousand years that followed, God, who was kept close, provided and infinite well of strength to carry on, while binding to the Arab soul a profound regard for the strength of community, the warmth of family, and the dignity of the self.
Image Source: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2008/11/27/arabian.jpg
Through a well told story, both the character and the reader are altered for the better. One's sense of honesty or duty is reenforced. One's sense of adventure or curiosity expands. And One's ethical bearings are finely tuned by weighted examination of conflict and consequence. Effectively, for those of most faith traditions, a thing or event that makes one better is analogous to a thing which brings one closer to God, or to universal truth, or to wisdom, which is also divine. For those whom God is distant, courage and patience must often be drawn from the finite and exhaustible reservoir of self. For the Arabs of Baghdad in the 9th century and the thousand years that followed, God, who was kept close, provided and infinite well of strength to carry on, while binding to the Arab soul a profound regard for the strength of community, the warmth of family, and the dignity of the self.
Image Source: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2008/11/27/arabian.jpg