Eastern Dreams (11 page)

The original cycle of the Sindbad tales dates from tenth-century Persia. While the etymology of “Sindbad” is uncertain and there is no universally accepted origin, one theory holds that the name denotes a traveller in Sind, the southernmost province of presentday Pakistan. While the fictional Sindbad is portrayed as a citizen of Baghdad, it is notable that in the first-person narrative of his adventures, the seafarer merely refers to “
my native place” as his land of origin without ever specifically mentioning the Abbasid capital, so it is possible that the most famous Muslim sailor of all time was by birth an Indian, or perhaps of a Persian family that had settled in the City of Peace.

Sindbad doesn't find much peace on his travels. His adventures are undoubtedly based on stories of actual voyages undertaken by Muslim merchants trading from the Middle East to the Indies and China during the Abbasid caliphate. Unlike the majority of motion pictures, which portray Sindbad as the dashing captain of a sailing
vessel, the original work has as its hero not a professional sailor but a merchant's son who squanders his inheritance in easy living and must turn trader to recoup his fortune. For all that, this Sindbad definitely possesses a mariner's wandering soul, since either through straitened circumstances or an inner restlessness, he repeatedly returns to sea for a total of seven eventful journeys before finally retiring to a luxurious private life in Baghdad.

Several times during his narrative, Sindbad remarks that even when he had money from trading, he would eventually grow weary of an indolent life on land, finding he could satisfy his roving spirit only by embarking on another voyage. “
One day my mind will become possessed with the thought of travelling about the world of men and seeing their cities and islands,” he might say, or he will allude to his being “
seized with longing for travel and diversion” when “the bad man within me yearned to go … and enjoy the sight of strange countries.” Though a merchant by trade, over time Sindbad makes enough voyages that one and all bestow on him the nickname of “Sindbad the Seafarer.”

While Galland found the Sindbad voyages highly coloured adventure stories, there is also a moral to the tales that would not have been lost on a man who'd had to make his own way in life. After hearing a
hammal
—a porter—with the same name (to avoid confusion, in many versions the porter's name is given as Hindbad) bemoaning his fate outside his gate, Sindbad invites the man inside his fine home, where over several nights he relates to this and other guests his nautical adventures—entertaining tales offered as object lessons in the difficulties the Seafarer has faced in accumulating his wealth.

It soon becomes evident that on each voyage, the Seafarer relies entirely on his own resources to extricate himself from his many predicaments, using ingenuity to escape shipwreck, man-eating giants, gargantuan serpents, the nest of the giant bird known as the
roc
and other assorted perils. Although a good Muslim, not once in his many adventures does Sindbad appeal to supernatural beings or agencies for help, but acts as the architect of his own salvation, as well as the gatherer of his own fortune.

The lesson for the porter and the other guests is clear. It does men no good to rail against their fate, for it is only by their own works that individuals rise and succeed. In this sense, Sindbad's adventures are a direct refutation of the common western prejudice that the East is home to fatalistic values and attitudes opposed to—as well as inherently inferior to—European force and action. There are times when Sindbad's resourcefulness puts western heroes like James Bond to shame, even as his generosity and forthrightness belie any so-called “oriental” duplicity.

Gently chastened, Sindbad the Porter admits the folly of complaining about his comparatively small troubles at the end of the tales, then leaves rich Sindbad's home to ply his trade with renewed vigour, and with gifts of money from his new “brother” to help him on his way. “
Know … that my story is a wonderful one,” Sindbad tells his guests at the start of his narratives, “for I came not to this high estate save after travail sore and perils galore … for whom what destiny doth write there is neither refuge or flight.” To the porter's initial envy, his wandering namesake counters that a man may live well or poorly, but it is good to recall that a fortunate estate is seldom won without considerable effort and risk—as Sindbad the Seafarer made his prosperity over seven spectacular voyages on dangerous seas.

Charmed by the Sindbad stories, Galland devoted some of his evening hours to a French translation of the manuscript. Within a short time—probably a few months at most, and apparently
before he settled permanently in Nicolas-Joseph Foucault's house in Caen—Galland fashioned a manuscript he called
Sindbad le marin
—“Sindbad the Sailor.” Presenting a copy to his patroness, the Marquise d'O, daughter of Ambassador de Guilleragues and a distinguished lady-in-waiting to the Duchesse of Bourgogne, Galland won her support and sponsorship to have
Sindbad le marin
published early in 1701. The public response was highly favourable, earning Galland widespread notice and establishing his reputation as a translator of folklore.

Sindbad
's publication, however, was only the prelude to something greater. Just as it went to press, it appears that one of Galland's Syrian friends informed him that the Sindbad tales were only a small part of a much larger Arabic collection known as
The Thousand and One Nights
. Hearing this, Galland actually recalled
Sindbad le marin
from the printers for a time while he began a search for this
Thousand and One Nights
storybook, hoping to inspect the Sindbad voyages in the larger work before his own book appeared and perhaps revise from it. This probably accounts for the delay between Galland's completion of
Sindbad le marin
in the late 1690s and its eventual publication several years later. Since there is no credible evidence that the Sindbad tales ever appeared in Arabic collections of the
Nights
, it may be that Galland misheard his friend; that the Syrian only meant the Sindbad voyages were similar to other stories found within
Alf Laila wa Laila
, but were not an accepted part of the actual work. Or the Syrian might have meant that he had heard
Sindbad
was part of
Alf Laila wa Laila
but, never having read any such work himself, was operating on hearsay alone.

Whatever the actual circumstances of the reference, Galland was intrigued by word of this new book. At once he decided to procure a copy of
Alf Laila wa Laila
to see if its tales were as worth translating as the Sindbad stories. It looks to have taken quite some
time, but by employing a Syrian buying agent in Paris, by December 1701 Galland had in his hands a three-volume Syrian manuscript dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. In an October 1701 letter to a friend, Galland makes his first recorded mention of the
Nights
: “
Three or four days ago, a friend from Aleppo … informed me by letter that he had received from his country [i.e., Ottoman Syria] a book in Arabic I had asked him to get for me. It is in three volumes, entitled … The Thousand Nights [
sic
].” He goes on to describe the work as a “
collection of stories people recite in that country…. I asked this friend to keep it for me until I came to Paris…. It will be something with which to amuse myself [translating] during the long [winter] nights.”

Once Galland had this new manuscript in his possession, it became evident that it contained much less than the 1001 Nights promised in its title, ending only at the 282nd Night. And so to his disappointment Galland believed he possessed only a part-version of
Alf Laila wa Laila
, and immediately began a second search for material to complete the work, becoming not only the first European translator of the
Arabian Nights
but also the first westerner to hunt for a mythical “full” version. In another letter written sometime in August 1702 he remarks, “
I have only four or five hundred of the Nights … which arrived for me from Aleppo, and I am waiting for the rest to come from there.”

Regardless, while waiting for the “remainder” of
The Thousand and One Nights
to arrive from Syria, and amid his librarian duties for Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, Galland sat down and began reading his new Arabic volumes with a view toward adapting
Alf Laila wa Laila
for French readers, as he had the fantastic voyages of Sindbad the Sailor.

Chapter 3

THE COMING
OF THE
NIGHTS

Say whatso thou wantest of me? Here am I, thy Slave,
and the Slave to whoso holdeth the Lamp
…

—“
ALAEDDIN; OR, THE WONDERFUL LAMP
”

Disappointed at what he thought was the incompleteness of his
Alf Laila wa Laila
manuscript, Galland still found himself as charmed by its tales as he had been with Sindbad's voyages, although he also could not have been unaware that the text lacked any mention of Sindbad among its contents.

In any case, Galland soon set about translating the manuscript into French, using his usual method of spending his evenings relaxing by working on what he considered light literature; a pleasant diversion with which to recharge his mental batteries. This had been the method with
Sindbad le marin
—admittedly a much shorter work—but after receiving the
Nights
manuscript late in 1701, Galland must have found the going relatively easy, for within two years he had enough translated stories to begin issuing volumes.

In a letter of August 1702 Galland writes, “
I have finished a clean copy of a six-hundred page work … I had started … this year upon my return to Paris, working on it only after dinner…. The other work … is entitled
The Thousand and One Nights, Arabian Tales, Translated into French
…. A thousand and one Nights! and I have only finished seventy; this can give you an idea of the length of the entire work.” For all his familiarity with the oriental collections of Parisian libraries, Galland seems to have been unaware that a nine-volume Turkish edition of
Alf Laila wa Laila
already existed, and had been housed in Paris since 1660. Nowhere before the publication of his first volumes does he mention this Ottoman translation of the
Nights
or an Arabic manuscript in Marseilles belonging to a former French consul to Egypt. As far as Galland was concerned at the time, he possessed the only copy of
Alf Laila wa Laila
in France—for all he knew, in Europe—and it was from this manuscript that he initially worked.

Once there were sufficient stories for the first volumes, Galland repeated the process he followed with
Sindbad le marin
, approaching his patroness, the Marquise d'O, with manuscript copies for her and the Duchesse of Bourgogne's enjoyment before winning the Marquise's support to see the work through the press. In his
avertissement
(“foreword”) to the first volume, Galland wrote of his appreciation for the
Nights
' fine literary qualities, in particular his delight at finding that the author (or authors) had included so many genres within one work, which seemed proof of the superiority of Arabic composition in respect to the stories of other nations.

He was particularly impressed by the ingenious nature of Scheherazade's frame tale, allowing for a “
surprising quantity and diversity of narratives, admirably linked to each other.” This quantity Galland found perhaps the work's most significant characteristic. “
I say ample collection,” he writes, “because the
Arabic original, entitled The Thousand and One Nights, consists of thirty-six parts,
*
and it is merely the translation of the premiere [part] that is being presented … to the public.”

As would some later translators, Galland saw the
Nights
as more than a simple storybook. To his mind, the work was also a useful text regarding eastern manners, customs and faith. Ironically for such a well-travelled man, he claimed that

all the Orientals, Persians, Tartars and Indians are characterized … and appear as they are, from the sovereigns down to persons of humblest condition. Thus the reader will have the pleasure of seeing and hearing them without taking the trouble of travelling to seek them [out] in their own nations.

All well and good, but in this same passage Galland also notes that the book's greatest worth lies in its overriding morality—a text offering lessons through the medium of stories. Superficially these might appear to have no purpose beyond entertainment, but in reality they contain ethical illustrations from which readers may benefit. Having already translated the moralistic
Indian Fables of Bidpai
, Galland hoped readers of what he called
Les mille et une nuits
—“The Thousand and One Nights”—might “
profit from the examples of virtues and vices that they will find [in the tales].”