The Chessmen Museum owns an enchanting Thousand and One Nights chess game. The story behind this collection of fairy tales is anything but magical though…
Centuries ago, a sultan called Sjahriaar was cheated on and so he didn´t trust women anymore, yet he didn´t want to go through life without them either. His solution was to marry a different woman every day, only to have her killed after the wedding night, before she would have a chance to commit adultery.
Sheherazade and sultan Sjahriaar
Legend has it that the daughter of the grand vizier, Sheherazade, could not stand and witness this bloodbath any longer and she came up with a plan. She married the sultan and on their wedding night she told him a thrilling story. However, at the end of the night the story hadn´t finished.
Curious about how the story would end, the sultan decided to let her live for another night. The next night, Sheherazade continued her story, but again dawn came and again the tale hadn´t finished. This way, the smart woman spent 1001 nights telling the sultan exciting stories. After all those nights the sultan had come to love her and he had lost his fear of women cheating on him. The couple got married and lived happily ever after.
Different origins
This is roughly the most common history of the collection of the Thousand and One Nights tales and their narrator. It has proved impossible to trace the real origin of the fairy tales, since they have been passed down by oral tradition over the centuries and what´s more, they come from different countries. The oldest versions of the stories date back to 9th century India. European countries were introduced to a number of stories from the Middle East in the Middle Ages, but from the 18th century onwards, the collection of Thousand and One Nights tales gained popularity.
Oriental specialist Antoine Galland translated the fairy tales to French and for the first time ever they were published under the now familiar name. Galland based part of the stories on the original Arabic literature. His books were instant best-sellers and in most of the other European countries various translations and adaptations of the stories were published. Galland´s publishers got a whiff of money and pushed him to translate more stories. This didn’t happen fast enough to their liking and so they accepted other fairy tales as well. The origin of these tales was a bit uncertain but they chose to publish them as part of their Thousand and One Nights collection anyway. Books just happened to sell more quickly if they had the words ´translation of original oriental tales´ on their cover.
Aladdin and his magic lamp
Aladdin and Alibaba
Nowadays there are doubts about the origins of some of the well-known tales of the collection, like the stories about Aladdin and the magic lamp or Alibaba and the forty thieves. A priest friend of Galland told him many oriental stories. Galland took notes while listening and later on he used these notes to turn them into complete stories, which contained a lot of European elements. In the 19th century, Richard Burton, the English explorer and translator of Thousand and One Nights, brought attention to this fact, in the tale of Aladdin for example. In an authentic Arabic story, the sultan would have never left his palace before morning prayers and the game of draughts as described in a scene in a coffee house was unknown to the Arabic world too.
Theme-wise, these tales show a lot of similarities to countless European fairy tales, which made later scientists suspect that we are looking at an oriental version of European stories. They also match the common image of the magical Middle East in Europe. The morals of the stories also vary. The heroes of the European fairy tales are more often than not characters in an ideal and fictional magical world, like in the Grimm brothers´ stories. They also add educational value: good behaviour is ultimately rewarded. The characters from the Arabic tales on the other hand, are much more realistic and more human. The world in which the story is set is a realistic and common environment and the hero is often a cunning thief.
Fairy tales influenced by different cultures and religions
Professional storytellers used to tell the oriental tales for recreation in coffee shops and tearooms. The art of narrating and a great knowledge of stories were some of the ten abilities of education. Arabic tales, therefore, were not meant for children but for adults, mainly men. The fairy tales from different Arabic countries and periods in time, pre-Islamic, for example, are a mixture of traditions, cultures and narrative genres. Mythological tales from Ancient Egypt or Babylon, as well as Christianity and Judaism have all left their traces in the oriental fairy tale.
Islamic influence is the prevailing one. Because of the Islam, fairy tales from different regions were presented under the collective title of Thousand and One Nights. The actions of many of the tales´ characters are based on the five pillars of Islam: the declaration of faith, praying five times a day, charity or alms-giving, fasting during Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca. In Galland´s edited stories this isn´t always the case. His translations aren´t always accurate either, although that wasn´t unusual in that period in time. Translators didn´t always strive for a correct representation of the text, but would aim for a text that would be appealing to the reader.
Thousand and One Nights chess game
The variations in the visual representation of Thousand and One Nights are also endless. In the Chessmen Museum you can admire different versions of the stories: from a Disney chess game to a brightly coloured one in an oriental design.