A virtuous man finds himself contractually bound to an otherworldly foe. Having dealt his opponent a deathly blow, he now faces a claim for retribution, which will take place in a year’s time. Torn by the fear of dying but firm in keeping his promise, our hero sets out and finds his foe on New Year’s Day. He is prepared to face his death.
My readers may be forgiven for believing that this story is about Gawain and the Green Knight, given how I’ve spent the last several entries writing about the myth’s genealogy, its mediocre film adaptations and its unironic rapport with US politics.
And yet, this same narrative structure also applies to one of the core tales of tale The Arabian Nights, known as “The Trader and the Djinn”1. Replace Gawain with the anonymous trader and the Green Knight with an angry djinn ―an invisible spirit from Islamic mythology― hellbent on avenging his dead son, and you have the backbone of the very first story that Scheherazade choses to share with Sultan Shahryar on their wedding night, hoping the tale will enthrall him enough to keep him from beheading her the next morning.
The Trader and the Djinn, abridged
A merchant pauses during his travels to eat some dates and tosses their seeds, somehow inadvertently killing an invisible djinn who was nearby. The djinn’s father manifests and demands his life in compensation. After much pleading and poetry recitation, the djinn accepts postponing the trader’s death by a year, so that he can leave his affairs in order. Much like Sir Gawain but with far less moral ostentation, our hero leaves to meet and be killed by the djinn because he is a man of his word.
However, if Gawain and the Green Knight‘s telling of this story marks the Christianization of Arthurian myths, the outcome of its Islamic counterpart is remarkably different. Whereas Sir Gawain is spared by the Green Knight after (sort of) passing his test of virtue, Scheherazade’s djinn is very much determined to kill this story’s protagonist.
Our merchant is ultimately spared by no actions of his own, but rather by the kairos ―or good timing― of three travelers who happen to wander by at that exact place and time. Amazed by the events taking place, they each decide to stay and barter with the djinn to buy back the trader’s life in exchange for sharing their own, individual stories, which all just happen to be equally wondrous. The djinn is satisfied with the trade and our protagonist’s life is spared.
#TestOfVirtue v. #LifeBuyback
While the takeaway of Sir Gawain’s Christian tale is that salvation is an individual path where one must remain virtuous in the face of temptation (#TestOfVirtue), its Islamic counterpart implies that salvation depends on the serendipitous kindness of strangers, and the ability to conduct a good barter (#LifeBuyback). Both coincide in that overcoming certain death is achievable only by having faith in your Creator, since they are ultimately responsible for writing the happy endings to their respective stories.
However, Scheherazade’s “The Trader and the Djinn” has the added complexity of its role within The Arabian Nights. The endgame of the tale is not just to entertain the Sultan to spare her life: it is also a (frankly, not very subtle) vehicle to introduce the notion of stories as currency, and of human life as a commodity that can be purchased. Just as the djinn accepts three stories in exchange for the life of his son’s murderer, Scheherazade is inducing her husband to accept what will turn out to be one thousand and one stories in exchange for her life, and that of all the women in the kingdom.
Gawain’s story, and the trader and the djinn’s, are ultimately hers as well:
A virtuous woman finds herself contractually bound to a powerful man. In lieu of the women who had dealt his opponent’s ego a deathly blow, she now faces a claim for retribution, which will take place at sunrise. Torn by the fear of dying but firm in keeping her promise, our heroine awaits the end of the night. She is prepared to face her death.
To pitch to the Sultan a story that is so close to her own on their very first night together is an incredible power move. And yet, her gamble pays off, leading Scheherazade to continue testing the boundaries of Shahryar’s misogyny over the following thousand nights.
Coming up next: A thought experiment: My very own Scheherazade Kill-O-Meter. For someone fixated on murdering his wives on a daily basis, Shahryar is surprisingly easy to entrance through storytelling. Had I been in the Sultan’s shoes, how many nights would Scheherazade had lived? (Answer: only 7).
And a fun fact: While the Galland (1717) and Burton (c.1880) translations of The Arabian Nights have been historically popular, I am currently reading the Muhsin Mahdi translation (1990) which is very faithful to the original 14th century Syrian manuscript that is considered the authentic source of the stories.
Despite the academic value of this translation, it carries the voids of the original source material, including a huge gap in the third traveler’s story:
‘The third man told the demon a story that was even stranger and more amazing than the first two. The demon was very much amazed and swaying with delight, said “I grant you one-third of my claim on him [the trader] for his crime.” Then the demon released the merchant and departed.’
Yes. That’s it. So what is most puzzling? That a trader killed a djinn by tossing a date seed, or that Scheherazade survived for a night after saying this?
Both Gawain and the Green Night and The Arabian Nights are synchronous, making this comparison even more interesting. The former dates from the 14th century, the same period attributed to the latter’s Syrian manuscript (aka the Galland manuscript), recognized as its earliest extensive source material.