The stories and deeds of those who came before us have become lessons and mirrors for people of our own time — so that we may look upon the fateful things that befell others, take heed, and draw wisdom from the chronicles of ancient peoples. Praise be to God, who has made the histories of the past an admonition to the present.
Among such instances are the tales called A Thousand Nights and a Night, with all their storied wonders and marvels. And so it is related — though God alone knows all that is hidden — that long ago, in a time now passed and gone, there ruled a King among the Kings of the Banu Sasan, lord of the Islands of India and China, master of armies and servants and all the arrangements of power. He left behind him only two sons: one in the prime of his manhood, one still young, yet both were bold and brave knights, the elder the more accomplished horseman of the two.
The elder son rose to the empire, and he ruled the land with such justice that all the people of his kingdom loved him well. His name was King Shahryar. He gave to his younger brother, whose name was Shah Zaman, the kingship of Samarkand. Each of them governed his own realm with fairness and wisdom, and for twenty years they ruled their separate kingdoms in peace and contentment and great happiness. But at the end of those twenty years, King Shahryar felt a powerful longing to look upon his brother's face again. He consulted his Wazir — his chief minister — about making the journey himself, but the Wazir advised instead that a letter be sent, with generous gifts, inviting Shah Zaman to visit.
The King agreed, and at once ordered fine gifts to be prepared: horses with saddles set with gems, servants and slaves, beautiful silks and precious things of every kind. Then he wrote to Shah Zaman telling him of his deep love and his great desire to see him, ending his letter with these words: "We hope that our beloved brother will bestir himself and turn his face toward us. We have sent our Wazir to arrange all the details of the journey, and our one desire is to see you before we die — but if you delay or disappoint us, that disappointment may be the death of us. And so, peace be upon you."
The letter was sealed and given to the Wazir, together with all the gifts, and he was commanded to move swiftly and return without delay. "I hear and I obey," said the Minister, and he set about preparing immediately — packing loads, organising the expedition, making everything ready in three days' time. On the morning of the fourth day he took his leave of the King and set off, travelling over desert and hill, stony waste and green meadow, stopping neither by night nor by day. Wherever he passed through a realm whose king was subject to his own sovereign, he was greeted with magnificent gifts of gold and silver and fine things, and he would stay three days as custom required, then be escorted for a full day's march before riding on.
When the Wazir drew near Shah Zaman's court in Samarkand, he sent a messenger ahead to announce his arrival. Shah Zaman commanded his nobles and the great lords of his realm to ride out and meet the Wazir at a full day's journey from the city — which they did, greeting him with all honour and riding back with him in a stately procession. He entered the palace and presented himself before the King, kissed the ground before him, prayed for his health and happiness, and conveyed his brother's invitation. Shah Zaman read the letter carefully and replied, "I hear and I obey the commands of my beloved brother" — adding to the Wazir, "but we will not march until after three days of hospitality." He gave the Minister fine quarters in the palace, had tents pitched for the troops, and saw that everything they needed was provided for.
On the fourth day, Shah Zaman made ready for his journey and assembled magnificent presents worthy of his elder brother's dignity. He appointed his chief Wazir as regent in his absence, then had his tents and camels and mules brought out and encamped within sight of the city, all packed and loaded, ready to depart at dawn.
But when midnight came, it struck him that he had left behind in the palace something he meant to bring — so he slipped back alone and quietly entered his chambers. There he found his Queen, his wife, fast asleep on his own bed, clasped in the arms of a black cook, hideous to look upon, greasy and grimy from the kitchens.
When he saw this, the world turned black before his eyes. He said to himself: "If this is what happens while I am still within sight of the city, what will she do during my long absence at my brother's court?" He drew his sword, and with a single blow cut the two of them apart, then left them where they lay and returned to his camp without a word to anyone. He gave the order to depart at once, and they set out before dawn.
But as he travelled, his mind could not be stilled. Over and over he asked himself how she could have done such a thing, how she could have brought about her own end. Grief seized him utterly — his colour faded to a sickly yellow, his body grew weak, and he fell into a melancholy that threatened to consume him. The Wazir shortened the daily marches and lingered at every resting place, doing all he could to ease his King's distress.
When Shah Zaman drew close to his brother's capital, he sent riders ahead with glad tidings of his arrival, and King Shahryar rode out to meet him with his courtiers and lords and the grandees of his kingdom. They greeted one another with great joy, and the city was decorated in honour of the occasion.
But when they came together, Shahryar could not help noticing that his brother's face had changed. He was pale and drawn and clearly suffering. "What is the matter?" the elder brother asked. Shah Zaman answered only that the rigours of the road had worn him out — the change of air and water — and thanked God for being reunited with so dear a brother. He said nothing of what he had seen. Shahryar received this explanation and let the matter rest, thinking that his brother was merely homesick.
He lodged Shah Zaman in a beautiful palace overlooking the pleasure gardens, and for a time left him to himself. But as the days passed and his brother's condition did not improve, Shahryar spoke to him again: "Brother, I see that you grow thinner and paler still." "I have a wound inside me," Shah Zaman replied — and still he would not say what he had witnessed. Shahryar summoned doctors and physicians and had them treat his brother with all the skill they possessed, but their potions and remedies were useless. He could not stop brooding on what his wife had done, and no medicine could touch that kind of grief.
One day Shahryar said to him, "I am going out to hunt — come with me. Fresh air and open country may lift your spirits." But Shah Zaman declined: "My heart is not in it, brother. Please allow me to stay here quietly." So the King set out with his court and his retinue, and Shah Zaman was left alone.
The following morning, after his brother had gone, Shah Zaman moved from his room and sat down by a latticed window that looked out over the pleasure gardens below. There he sat, brooding on his wife's betrayal, sighing deeply, his heart still raw with grief. Then the door of a private entrance to the garden swung open, and out came the Queen of King Shahryar — a woman of extraordinary beauty, graceful and radiant, like a gazelle stepping lightly toward a cool stream — and with her came twenty slave-girls, ten of them women and ten of them, as it turned out, men dressed as women.
Shah Zaman drew back from the window, but he kept watching through the lattice, hidden from view. They walked directly beneath him and out into the garden, moving toward a great fountain set in the middle of a wide basin of water. There they undressed — and it became clear that the ten he had taken for women were in fact male slaves in disguise. Then from one of the trees a huge and hideous black man dropped down, embraced the Queen warmly, and lay with her. The others paired off likewise, and they continued this way until the afternoon light began to lengthen. Then the men pulled on their disguises again, the slaves returned to the palace, and the garden was empty and still once more, the postern door closed as if nothing had happened.
Shah Zaman looked upon all of this and said to himself: "By God, my own misfortune is lighter than this. My brother is a greater king than I am, and yet this disgrace happens in his own palace, and his wife gives herself to the vilest of men. This tells me that no man in this world is truly safe from the treachery of women." And at this thought, his own particular grief seemed smaller — set against this larger sorrow, he felt the grip of it loosen. He put aside his melancholy, and that evening when supper was brought to him, he ate with real appetite for the first time in weeks. He slept deeply and woke feeling rested, and began little by little to recover his strength.
When Shahryar returned from the hunt ten days later, Shah Zaman rode out to meet him. Shahryar was astonished. His brother's face was flushed with health; his eyes were clear; he ate with evident pleasure. The King stared at him and said, "Brother, when you refused to join the hunt I saw you pale and wasted, tormented by something you would not name. And now — praise be to God — you are entirely changed. Tell me what happened." Shah Zaman hesitated. "Please do not press me," he said quietly. "Tell me at least what first made you suffer," Shahryar insisted. "I promise you that as well," said Shah Zaman, "but spare me the explanation of my recovery — for I fear it will cause you pain greater than my own."
"That is all the more reason to tell me everything," said Shahryar. "I swear you must not hide anything from me."
And so Shah Zaman told him: how he had turned back for what he had forgotten, found his wife in another man's arms, killed them both, and ridden on carrying that grief like a stone in his chest. "That was the cause of my illness," he said. And then, "As for my recovery — when I saw what happened in your garden, I realised that my calamity was not mine alone. You are greater than me in years and in power, and yet you suffer something worse. Seeing that, my own sorrow seemed smaller. I was able to eat and sleep, and that is how I healed. That is the whole truth."
King Shahryar felt rage rise in him like fire — but he mastered it. "I will not call you a liar, brother," he said, "but I cannot believe it until I have seen it with my own eyes." "Then make a show of setting out for the hunt again," said Shah Zaman, "but conceal yourself with me, and you will see it, and your own eyes will be your proof." "So be it," the King agreed.
He announced a royal hunt, and his troops and tents moved out of the city. He then crept back with his brother in secret after dark, and they hid themselves in the palace. At dawn, seated at the very lattice where Shah Zaman had watched before, they looked down into the garden — and all unfolded exactly as before. The Queen called out her lover's name; he dropped from the tree; the slaves took up their games; and for two hours the garden belonged to them. Then they dressed, disappeared back into the palace, and the garden was still.
King Shahryar trembled with rage and grief. "There is no refuge," he said, "except in God." Then he turned to his brother: "Let us leave this place together — leave the throne, leave the kingdoms, leave it all — and wander through God's world until we find someone to whom this same calamity has happened. If we find no one, then death is sweeter to us than this life."
And so the two brothers slipped away through a private gate, and they walked and walked, day and night, until at last they came to a meadow with a great tree growing beside a freshwater spring at the edge of the sea. They drank from the spring and rested in the shade.
An hour had barely passed when the sea began to churn and roar as though the sky were falling, and a great black pillar rose up from the water, tall and dark as a tower, and moved toward the shore. The two Kings scrambled up into the branches of the tree and looked down in terror. What they saw was a Jinni — enormous, broad-shouldered, dark-skinned, with a coffer of clear crystal balanced upon his head. He waded ashore and strode to the foot of their tree, where he set the coffer down and drew from it a locked casket, bound with seven steel padlocks, which he opened with seven steel keys taken from his belt. And from inside the casket there stepped out a young woman.
She was beautiful beyond description: pale as moonlight, graceful and fine, as bright as the full moon rising or the sun pouring down its warmth upon the world. As the poet once said:
She rose like the dawn as she shone through the night,
And she gilded the grove with her gracious sight;
From her radiance the sun takes increase when
She unveils and shames the moonshine bright.
All beings bow down between her hands
As she shows her charms with her veil undone;
She floods the cities with torrent tears
When she flashes her glance like a bolt of the sun.
The Jinni sat her down beneath the tree and looked at her with great tenderness. "O sweetest love of my heart," he said, "O most nobly born, whom I carried off on your wedding night so that no other man might touch you first — my darling, I would sleep a little while." Then he laid his vast head upon her lap, stretched his legs out across the ground all the way to the water's edge, and fell instantly into a deep, thunderous sleep.
The young woman looked up into the tree and saw the two Kings perched near the top, silent with fright. She gently slid the Jinni's great head from her lap, setting it softly on the ground, then rose and stood beneath the tree. In a low, calm voice she said, "Come down, both of you, and have no fear of him." They were terrified. "By God, lady, spare us!" they whispered. But she replied: "Come down this instant — or I will wake my husband, and he will kill you both." And she kept her eyes on them, waiting.
They came down. And she demanded of them what no decent woman ought to demand of strangers, holding the threat of the sleeping Jinni over them like a blade. When at last, reluctantly and fearfully, they had done as she required, she drew from her sleeve a purse on a knotted cord, and on the cord were strung more than five hundred seal-rings. She held it up before them. "Do you know what these are?" They shook their heads. "These," she said, "are the rings of all the men who have been here before you — while this Ifrit slept at my feet. He locked me in a crystal coffer, sealed it with seven padlocks, sank it to the bottom of the sea, and thought himself so clever and so strong that no one could reach me. But Destiny cannot be held back by iron or water. What a woman wants, a woman finds — however hard a man may try to prevent it." She stretched out her hand. "Now give me your rings."
They gave them to her and she added them to the string.
"Go now," she said, replacing the Jinni's heavy head upon her thigh as peacefully as if she had never moved. "Go quickly, before he wakes."
They walked away in stunned silence, until the tree was out of sight and the sea was only a sound behind them. Then King Shahryar said to his brother: "If the greatest of the Jinn cannot guard his bride from this fate, what hope is there for us? Let us take comfort at least in the knowledge that we are not alone in our misfortune — and since our lot is shared by greater men than ourselves, let us return to our kingdoms and never again place our trust in women."
And so they turned and rode back to King Shahryar's encampment, arriving on the morning of the third day. Shahryar assembled his ministers and lords and gave out his orders, and the army returned to the capital. There the King took his seat upon the throne — and sent for the Chief Wazir.
"Take my wife," he said, "and put her to death. She has broken every promise she ever made me." The Wazir obeyed.
Then Shahryar, with his own sword, went to the women's quarters and killed all the concubines who had played their games in the garden. And he made a vow, cold as iron: that from that night forward, he would take a new wife each evening, spend the night with her, and have her killed the next morning — for there was not, he told himself, a single honest woman in the world, and this was the only way to be certain of his honour.
Shah Zaman meanwhile took his leave and rode back to his own kingdom, and there the story of his brother is left aside for the time being.
But in Shahryar's city, the King kept his terrible vow. Each night a new bride. Each dawn, the executioner. The Wazir who carried out the King's orders grieved for what he did, but dared not refuse. And as the months turned into years, the city grew hollow with fear. Parents wept and fled with their daughters to distant places. Mothers stayed awake through the night. Young women of marriageable age were hidden or smuggled away, until there was scarcely a girl left in the city fit to be a bride.
The day came when the King summoned his Chief Wazir — the same man who served as executioner — and told him to bring another bride as usual. The Wazir searched and could find no one. He came home in anguish, terrified of the King's anger, not knowing what he would say.
Now this Wazir had two daughters. The elder was called Shahrazad; the younger, Dunyazad. Shahrazad was a young woman of extraordinary learning. She had read widely in history and literature and philosophy; she had studied the sciences and the arts; she had memorised thousands of poems and could recite them at will. She was intelligent, witty, gracious, and well-bred. It was said that she had gathered in her memory a thousand books of histories and legends of kings and peoples gone by.
That evening, seeing her father come home with a face heavy with worry and grief, she said to him: "Father, why do I find you so changed and so burdened?" He told her everything, from beginning to end — the King's vow, the years of killings, his search that day, his empty hands. Shahrazad listened carefully.
Then she said: "Father, give me in marriage to this King. Either I will find a way to put an end to this slaughter, or I will die in the attempt — and at least I will have been a ransom for the daughters of our people."
Her father stared at her. "God protect you!" he said, his voice shaking with anger. "How can you say such a thing? You are putting your life into the mouth of a beast. There is no wisdom in this, only foolishness — and those who act without thinking pay for it with everything they have." "It must be done, Father," she said quietly. "Send me to him, and if I die, I die in a good cause." He reasoned with her; he pleaded; he grew angry; he tried every argument he knew. And then at last, at his wit's end, he said: "If you will not listen, then let me tell you what happened to the Bull and the Ass — and perhaps that will teach you what comes of giving advice where it is not wanted."
"Tell me, Father," she said. "What did happen to them?"
And so the Wazir began to tell his daughter the story — which, as fate would have it, was only the first of many, many stories yet to come.
Here ends the frame story of King Shahryar and his brother, and here begins the world of Shahrazad.