The female protagonists of the Arabian Nights are finally getting their due, thanks to a major new translation by Yasmine Seale, the first by a woman, into English. From the "formidable" Princess Budur to Dalila the Crafty, a "master of ruses and rackets" who could "lure a snake from its lair," the female protagonists of the Arabian Nights are finally getting more fleshed out roles.
The Annotated Arabian Nights, out this month, is a rebuttal to Richard Francis Burton's 1885 translation, "stripping away the Orientalism and the extra, inserted racism and misogyny Burton brought to the stories," according to editor Paulo Lemos Horta. "If nothing else, this new model finally knocks Burton's off its pedestal," he hopes.
The Arabian Nights, also known as The Thousand and One Nights, is a collection of Middle Eastern and Indian folk tales that dates back to the ninth century. The tale of Shahrazad, the daughter of a vizier who has been married to the homicidal monarch Shahriyar, who kills a new wife every day, frames the stories. Shahrazad weaves a new narrative every night, leaving it unfinished so that the king will keep her alive to hear the conclusion the next day.
Antoine Galland's Les Mille et Une Nuits, published in the early 18th century, was the first European translation of the tales; Galland includes stories such as Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves for the first time, based on a four-volume Syrian manuscript.
“The new edition came as a response to a break in the mystery of the authorship of the most famous Nights tales that were only added in the French translation of the early 1700s – Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Pari Banu,” said Horta, a literary historian and academic.
“The French translator, Antoine Galland, had mentioned something in his private diary about a Syrian in Paris in 1709 who would have given him these tales missing in the Arabic manuscript … He said nothing of the kind in print. In the absence of more news, over the centuries Galland has been credited as the author, inventor, and creator of these tales [and] for three centuries we imagined the tales added by Galland’s hand to the Nights in French reflected his stay in Istanbul, a French fantasy of the Orient.”
After the discovery of Diyab's Book of Travels in the Vatican collection, the "elusive Syrian" from Galland's diary was recognised as Hanna Diyab, and "this finding called for a modern translation of all the legendary tales recounted to Galland," according to Horta.
“Among these Hanna Diyab tales, only Aladdin and Ali Baba existed in modern versions,” he added.
Seale, a French-Syrian translator and poet who previously collaborated with Horta on a solitary translation of Aladdin, is the first woman to translate both the main cycle of tales and all the tales added from Diyab's narrative into English, according to Horta. Although Malcolm Lyons' praised 2008 version includes a few stories translated by his wife Ursula Lyons, it leaves out the stories of female characters such as Parizade and Pari Banu.
Horta believes that the horror storey Sidi Numan, in which a husband, unable to understand why his wife only eats a single grain of rice for dinner, follows her at night and finds her feasting on a fresh corpse alongside a ghoul at a cemetery, is the best example of how female characters get their due in Seale's translation. When he confronts her later, she transforms him into a dog, but he avenges himself by transforming her into a mare.
“We are given to understand that his wife’s strangeness may be a product of his failure to read her,” Seale said. “It is easier for him to believe that his wife is a supernatural creature than to engage with the part of her that eludes his grasp.”
Meanwhile, in The Porter and the Three Women of Baghdad, the women live blissfully alone, without a male. "A mystery" attracts the attention of a porter and passing merchants, who turn out to be the Caliph Harun al Rashid and his vizier Jafar in disguise, according to Horta. The women, together with three dervishes who recite their stories, will welcome them to their nightly revelry. The guests had made a promise not to ask any questions. In addition, the ladies are given the opportunity to recount their own stories. The storey is a rediscovery and a revelation in Seale's retelling."
The English-speaking world had "for too long" depended on obsolete versions of the Arabian Nights, according to publisher WW Norton.
“Seale’s distinctly contemporary and lyrical translations break decisively with this masculine dynasty, finally stripping away the deliberate exoticism of Orientalist renderings while reclaiming the vitality and delight of the stories,” said the publisher.