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The Omayyad Mosque, Damascus |
The religious aspect of the Arabian Nights is, to me, one of
the most fascinating features of the story collection. It is important to point
out at the start that the Nights themselves are not inherently
religious. They are secular stories that deal with everyday dreams of love and
nightmares of terror and magic in a society with a state religion. The piety of
Muslims obliges them to give a blessing to the Prophet every time his name is
mentioned, the reader is obliged to don gloves before picking up the Koran etc.
- and this whole wonderful culture is embraced by the authors of the stories
and their characters. My intention on this page is to siphon off the Western
images and mumbo-jumbo that have become associated with the Nights and
get to their pure Islamic heart.
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The knowledge of Islam in the Western world is appalling. I
speak here as someone who loves discovering for myself the diversity of beliefs
and cultures in this world of ours. It is not the remit of this page to discuss
Islam in detail, there are other sites for that; however it may surprise some
Western Christians to discover that Muslims and Christians worship the same God
and both claim the great patriarchs Abraham, Moses and Noah as their own. This
is simply because both religions, together with Judaism, came from the same
stem. Muslims revere Solomon (see The Magic of
the Jinn) and Jesus; and the Koran preaches tolerance with those of other
faiths:
Sura 29:45 - "Dispute not, unless in kindly sort, with
the people of the book; save with such of them as have dealt wrongfully with
you: And say ye, 'We believe in what has been sent down to us and hath been
sent down to you. Our God and your God is one, and to him are we
self-surrendered'"
Having said this, it seems that the prevailing Islamic
viewpoint about the Arabian Nightsis that they purvey stereotypical
characters and ideas about Arabia as being a land with a boundary containing a
world of magical people and jinn; and that Westerners believe that this is what
Arabia is really like. I'm sorry to be controversial, but, although this may
have been the case in Victorian times, nowadays it is absurd. In reality,
people intelligent enough to read the Nightswill not be troubled by
the stereotypical images - and if they read them as children, they will learn
as they grow up that the world is not quite as they thought; just as Islamic
children who happen to read the Arthurian romances would have to learn that
Merlin doesn't exist, and Arthur never will come again. It's all part of
growing up.
Nowadays Islamic authorities hate the Nights. When the
stories were first being written Islam was at the height of its powers -
however many Muslim countries have sadly descended into poverty. In their view
one of the major reasons for this has been that they are experiencing the wrath
of God for the failure of their faith, and so they are reverting to the roots
of their religion. This means that there is no longer any room for the
licentiousness contained in the Arabian Nights. On top of this the
Nights has become the property of the West, and is esteemed as a
classic by the West; which is another reason for the Islamic world to shun the
story collection.
However, despite this the references to Islam in the
Arabian Nights reflected the genuine religious devotion of the
characters and authors; and often inspire in the reader (as they did in me) a
desire to find out more about Islam. Because the stories are secular the
authors found it necessary to cleanse their souls by apotheosising each story
with a dedication to God. This dedication is known as a Bismillah - after the
similar dedications that head nearly all of the suras of the Koran "In the
name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful" (rendered in Arabic as
Bismillahi 'rrahmani 'rrahim). One of the greatest of these
dedications is that found at the very beginning of the work. Sir Richard
Burton's translation of this can be found at the head of the main page of this site.