Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6)
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6)
Translated by Richard Francis, Sir Burton
Here is a book that invented the art of suspense. Before Netflix, before television, there was Shahrazad, a queen who held death at bay through the sheer magnetism of her storytelling. This volume gathers some of the most irresistible tales ever told: the thieves' cave that opens only with "Open, Sesame"; the enslaved prince who rubs a lamp and summons a djinn of immeasurable power; a young prince named Zayn al-Asnam who must find the Ninth Statue to reclaim his kingdom, wandering from Baghdad to Cairo on a journey of transformation. These stories have circulated orally for centuries before being written down,吸收了印度、波斯和阿拉伯的智慧, and they carry every register of human experience: comedy and cruelty, lust and enlightenment, beasts that speak and hearts that deceieve. To read them is to step inside a world where every object has a secret, every wish carries a cost, and the right story told well enough can reshape reality itself.
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“The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.””
— Unknown
“He also sware himself by a binding oath that whatever wife he married he would abate her maidenhead at night and slay her next morning to make sure of his honour;””
— Unknown
“in presence, he summoned the Wazir Dandan, and the Emirs””
— Unknown
“les turpitudes, are matters of time and place;””
— Unknown
“In this world there is none thou mayst count upon * To befriend thy case in the nick of need: So live for thyself nursing hope of none * Such counsel I give thee: enow, take heed!””
— Unknown
“Apparently England is ever forgetting that she is at present the greatest Mohammedan empire in the world. Of late years she has systematically neglected Arabism and, indeed, actively discouraged it in examinations for the Indian Civil Service, where it is incomparably more valuable than Greek and Latin. Hence, when suddenly compelled to assume the reins of government in Moslem lands, as Afghanistan in times past and Egypt at present, she fails after a fashion which scandalises her few (very few) friends; and her crass ignorance concerning the Oriental peoples which should most interest her, exposes her to the contempt of Europe as well as of the Eastern world. When the regrettable raids of 1883-84, culminating in the miserable affairs of Tokar, Teb and Tamasi, were made upon the gallant Sudani negroids, the Bisharin outlying Sawakin, who were battling for the holy cause of liberty and religion and for escape from Turkish task-masters and Egyptian tax-gatherers, not an English official in camp, after the death of the gallant and lamented Major Morice, was capable of speaking Arabic. Now Moslems are not to be ruled by raw youths who should be at school and college instead of holding positions of trust and emolument. He who would deal with them successfully must be, firstly, honest and truthful and, secondly, familiar with and favourably inclined to their manners and customs if not to their law and religion.””
— Unknown
