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eBook Category: Classic Literature
eBook Description: Bawdy and exotic, 1001 Arabian Nights features the wily and seductive Shahrazad, who saves her own life by telling tales of magical transformation, genies and wishes, flying carpets and fantastical journeys, terror and passion to entertain and appease the brutal King Shahryar. First introduced in the West in 1704, the stories of The Thousand and One Nights are most familiar to American readers in sanitized children's versions. This edition, based on Richard F. Burton's unexpurgated translation, restores the sensuality and lushness of the original Arabic. Here are the famous adventures of Sindbad, "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," and "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp." Here too are less familiar stories, such as "Prince Behram and the Princess Al-Datma," a delightful early version of The Taming of the Shrew, and "The Wily Dalilah and her Daughter Zaynab," a hilarious tale about two crafty women who put an entire city of men in their place. Intricate and imaginative, these stories-within-stories told over a thousand and one nights continue to captivate readers as they have for centuries. [Publisher Note: Contains footnotes to assist the translation.]

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com/Fictionwise Classic, Published: 1885
Fictionwise Release Date: June 2003

This eBook is also available in the following bundle(s):

• Fictionwise Classics [Authors A-G Bundle]

This eBook is part of the following series:

• 1001 Arabian Nights Series

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Words: 170544
Reading time: 487-682 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
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Otbah and Rayya

I went one year on the pilgrimage to the Holy House of Allah, and when I had accomplished my pilgrimage, I turned back for visitation of the tomb of the Prophet, whom Allah bless and keep! One night, as I sat in the garden,[FN#80] between the tomb and the pulpit, I heard a low moaning in a soft voice; so I listened to it and it said,

"Have the doves that moan in the lotus-tree * Woke grief in thy heart and bred misery? Or doth memory of maiden in beauty deckt * Cause this doubt in thee, this despondency? O night, thou art longsome for love-sick sprite * Complaining of Love and its ecstacy: Thou makest him wakeful, who burns with fire * Of a love, like the live coal's ardency. The moon is witness my heart is held * By a moonlight brow of the brightest blee: I reckt not to see me by Love ensnared * Till ensnared before I could reck or see."

Then the voice ceased and not knowing whence it came to me I abode perplexed; but lo! it again took up its lament and recited,

"Came Rayya's phantom to grieve thy sight * In the thickest gloom of the black-haired Night! And hath love of slumber deprived those eyes * And the phantom-vision vexed thy sprite? I cried to the Night, whose glooms were like * Seas that surge and billow with might, with might: 'O Night, thou art longsome to lover who * Hath no aid nor help save the morning light!' She replied, 'Complain not that I am long: * 'Tis love is the cause of thy longsome plight!'"

Now, at the first of the couplets, I sprang up and made for the quarter whence the sound came, nor had the voice ended repeating them, ere I was with the speaker and saw a youth of the utmost beauty, the hair of whose side face had not sprouted and in whose cheeks tears had worn twin trenches.--And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

When it was the Six Hundred and Eighty-first Night,

She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Abdullah bin Ma'amar al-Kaysi thus continued:--So I sprang up and made for the quarter whence the sound came, nor had the voice ended repeating the verses, ere I was with the speaker and saw a youth on whose side face the hair had not sprouted and in whose cheeks tears had worn twin trenches. Quoth I to him, "Fair befal thee for a youth!"; and quoth he, "And thee also! Who art thou?" I replied, "Abdullah bin Ma'amar al-Kaysi;" and he said, "Dost thou want aught?" I rejoined, "I was sitting in the garden and naught hath troubled me this night but thy voice. With my life would I ransom thee! What aileth thee?" He said, "Sit thee down." So I sat down and he continued, "I am Otbah bin al-Hubab bin al-Mundhir bin al-Jamuh the Ansari.[FN#81] I went out in the morning to the Mosque Al-Ahzab[FN#82] and occupied myself there awhile with prayer-bows and prostrations, after which I withdrew apart, to worship privily. But lo! up came women, as they were moons, walking with a swaying gait, and surrounding a damsel of passing loveliness, perfect in beauty and grace, who stopped before me and said, 'O Otbah, what sayst thou of union with one who seeketh union with thee?' Then she left me and went away; and since that time I have had no tidings of her nor come upon any trace of her; and behold, I am distracted and do naught but remove from place to place." Then he cried out and fell to the ground fainting. When he came to himself, it was as if the damask of his cheeks were dyed with safflower,[FN#83] and he recited these couplets,

"I see you with my heart from far countrie * Would Heaven you also me from far could see My heart and eyes for you are sorrowing; * My soul with you abides and you with me. I take no joy in life when you're unseen * Or Heaven or Garden of Eternity."