You have to hand it to Shahrazad. She tells one very compelling story. And she does this by telling a story within a story within a story. Think about it. The main story of The Arabian Nights, is her own. She reminds us of this with some small word or phrase found within the text. She then goes on to tell stories to King Shahryar. And in her stories, she had her characters tell stories to each other. And so the stories and storytellers come full circle.
The stories themselves deal with magic and things that would be outside the experiance of the average Muslim of the time period. Now they most likely believed in things like magic and jinnis. This was so that they would have something or someone to blame when the unexpected happened.
One of my favorite stories so far is “The Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince.” Which is told […]
Original post by kathryn