Appendix B
Editorial remarks: The following is the edited version of a typescript of eighteen pages entitled “1001 Nights” found in Leo Strauss Papers.1 The typescript is corrected by pencil in Strauss’s handwriting. There is another version of the same typescript which is a photocopy whose original could not be found.2 The corrections of the second version are fewer and are by a different hand. Some of the corrections are only present in the first version of the typescript and absent in the second one: these discrepancies are indicated in the footnotes by SNAN 1 and SNAN 2; numbers in curly brackets, inserted by the editor, refer to the page numbers of the typescript; numbers in square brackets, also inserted by the editor, refer to the paragraph numbers of the typescript; numbers in parenthesis are in the original typescript and refer to the page and volume numbers of Littmann’s translation;3 underlined words are replaced by italics; crossed out words and handwritten insertions are mentioned in the footnotes; arrow symbol in the typescript, used for showing the logical consequence of ideas, is everywhere inserted by hand; Strauss’s corrections of typographical errors have not been noted. The errors are responsibility of the editor.
1001 Nights
{1} [1]1001 = 7 × 11 × 13. If one adds the two stories preceding the stories told by Shahrazad, 1003 =4 17 × 59. The overall suggestion: refutation of the nomos regarding inferiority of women; and: indictment of tyranny; and: how jealousy of a king5 is appeased.
[2]The Introductory story: it is dangerous to deceive kings; it is not dangerous to deceive demons. The kings deceive the demon out of fear of the demon: they are compelled to deceive him. Both the demon and the kings are jealous. The number of deceptions practiced by the demon’s wife: 570 (= 19 × 30) and 572 (= 13 × 11× 4).6
[3]The donkey and the seer: the man with the secret knowledge which he cannot reveal except at the danger of death – he is tempted to reveal it and hence to die but is saved by another piece of secret knowledge: of a rooster and 50 hens – of 51: the secret knowledge is knowledge of the language of brutes. The first piece of secret knowledge: the donkey is happy by doing nothing; his happiness is due to his silence on the reason7 of his happiness; he is made miserable by the revelation of his secret. The master of the animals is said to be a peasant – in fact he is a merchant. (27).
[4]The merchant8 and the demon: the merchant is saved from the demon who is set to kill him, through story tellers; certainly two of the three story tellers are also merchants. (Merchants are travelers.) The first story reminds of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac: the jealous wife wishes that the father slaughter his own son; the son who is saved goes to India. Cf. 74: Allah is a jealous God. In both the first and second story the [human]9 revenge is much milder than the crime; but the she-demon wished a greater revenge than the brother of the treacherous brothers (the fellow-men); in the third story only the proper punishment of the adulterous wife but not of the slave. The three stories describe the transformation of men into brutes (cf. the language of brutes {2} in the preceding story); both stories of demons and of the transformations of men into brutes gradually disappear.
[5]The fisherman and the demon: these stories are told not as the preceding ones10 in order to appease the demon but after the demon has been brought under control. The fisherman tells the demon the story of the vizier of King Junan to justify his action against the demon; fisher: demon = the sage11 (who heals the king by his worldly wisdom): the king or the vizier – i.e., the story told parallels the story in which the story teller acts – the fisherman will not make the mistake of the sage. The story is partly told in the form of inserted stories, of the story told by the king and story told by the vizier. In the light of the events the vizier’s suggestion amounts to this – vizier in the story : king in the story =12 king and sage : vizier. The story telling wicked vizier brings it about that the king and the sage kill one another: nothing happens to the story telling wicked vizier. /→ the vizier becomes the king/. In the vizier’s story13 the wicked vizier tries to destroy the prince but since the vizier’s ally betrays the vizier by asking the prince to pray to God, the vizier is destroyed – just as the real vizier wants to destroy the sage (of whom he is jealous). /the real vizier succeeds because he has no ally and the sage does not pray – the king is a fool/. But why does the wicked vizier succeed through telling a story of a wicked vizier and through extolling the virtue of prayer? /the wicked vizier is a prophet who denigrates his predecessors and the foolish king is the prophet’s master/. First – fisher : demon = sage : king or vizier14 (cf. 96). Then – fisher : demon = king : sage.
[6]The demon is a heretic (53 top) – through the fisherman who takes the risk of trusting the demon, the demon brings about the salvation of a prince and of a state which had been ruined by the prince’s adulterous wife who had preferred to him a most ugly negro slave, a leper-/that adulterous wife =15 the wicked vizier in the story told by the fisherman/- the wife believing in the {3} beauty of the ugly slave had transformed the people into fishes, the dumbest of all animals, and the fisherman is the enemy of the fishes.
[7]Whereas the sage refuses to tell a life-saving story because he is not free (6916 bottom), the demon connects the same refusal based on the same ground with a request to be set free so that he can tell the story (73) and the fisherman sets him free without requiring the demon to tell his story (neither the demon nor the sage tell their stories),17 to the benefit of the fisherman, the demon, and the ruined state. The sage does not wish to live /=18 Socrates – the name of the king is Junan =19 Greek – cf. 75/ /in Socrates’ time the action of the fisherman was not yet possible or necessary/.
[8]The inserted story: the victory of the wicked vizier and the destruction of the king and the sage (Socrates).
[9]The frame story: through the heretical demon, destruction of the adulterous wife who loved the ugly and leprous negro slave and of that slave.
[10]The porter and the three ladies– the frame: wine drinking – paradise on earth20 (105) – beauty and joy – graceful obscenity. Questions are forbidden (109) but the prohibition is transgressed: the three monks (former kings) tell their stories in order to escape capital punishment incurred because they asked the forbidden questions.
[11]Story of the first monk: a terrible divine punishment for incest and: an unpunished, successful act of treachery by a wicked vizier.
[12]Story of the second monk: a justly jealous demon transforms a sage who does not know philosophy and physics, into a monkey; right is on the side of the demon (142f., 155), the monk lies about him (160). In the two preceding stories (merchant-demon and fisherman-demon) the demons were not infinitely revengeful but could be appeased by storytelling or proof of superior cleverness. And: while the lover of the ugly negro slave transforms men into fishes, the demon here transforms the sage only into the external shape21 of a monkey. The inserted story told originally under duress and now again as part of the whole story {4} under duress → demon : adulterer = envied good man : envious bad man (= monk), i.e., the demon who is a descendant from the devil himself and who denies Islam (157 bottom) is perfectly pious, befriended by good spirits. But in the light of the action: the jealous demon is envious and hence miserable /→ the sage would not hate the jealous God but pity him and forgive him/. The sage regains his human form by an act of treachery on the part of the king’s daughter who knows 170 charms (154); that princess kills the demon and the demon kills her posthumously: just as the king Junan kills the sage and the sage kills the king posthumously → the demon = Socrates = envied good man – the fight between demon and princess to the benefit of the religious sage22 ≠23 the fight between king and Socrates to the benefit of the wicked vizier. /alliance between the perfectly just demon and the philosopher to the ruin of the wicked vizier and his master, the ugly negro slave, remains unspoken/.
[13]The story of the third monk: his salvation depends on his not mentioning the name of Allah – he mentions it and is punished for it (165f.) – apart from pronouncing the forbidden name, he raises forbidden questions and opens a forbidden door (176, 181) – the ten half-blind youths who had opened the forbidden door and were like him half-blinded for that reject him /but they had not pronounced the forbidden name– they never mention it/. The story confirms the truth of astrology (169ff.) → he is not punished for a killing decreed by the stars – /this is a different world than the world described in the stories of the first and second monk – cf. 162 top/.
[14]The story of the oldest sister: the 17th night – Allah’s terrible revenge ≠24 the demon’s comparatively mild revenge ≠ the oldest sister has no desire for revenge at all. (Cf. the story of the second man in merchant-demon (41–45): there two brothers changed into dogs, here two sisters changed into she-dogs). A whole {5} city (including children and animals) transformed into stone by Allah’s wrath (cf. the prince half-transformed into stone by his adulterous wife, the lover of the ugly leprous negro slave) for its unbelief – (they were25 fire worshippers) – the son of the king of the pagans is the only one to escape thanks to the treachery of an old woman who was a Muslim in secret (194) /cf. the story of the treacherous vizier in fisherman-demon and the treacherous princess and the treacherous vizier in the present cluster of stories as well as the treacherous hags or old witches later on/.
[15]The story of the she-janitor: a story of terrible revenge brought on by a slanderess out of unfounded jealousy (cf. Allah’s jealousy: 208); the human beings here do not kill nor infinitely punish /God is jealous either because He is not, or does not believe himself to be, infinitely attractive, and the reason for that is his hiddenness: He Himself is the ground of His jealousy./. /The terrible effects of God’s jealousy come about through humans who are motivated by human jealousy and may or may not believe in God’s jealousy/.
[16]The three apples: murder out of unfounded jealousy. In order to save the life of his half-guilty negro slave from the wrath of his ruler, a vizier tells a story which ends happily. A merciful vizier tells a story of a merciful vizier who punishes his nephew senselessly and threatens him (without meaning it) with still greater punishment for something which is in no way a sin (281 bottom – 282 top) in order to find out something (285) which could have been found out without that inhuman threat. In the inserted story, two orthodox demons avert the catastrophe threatened by an angry ruler; through Allah’s permission, one of these two demons is destroyed (255 bottom – 256 top) but this has no effect on the following events. /for the benefit of a negro slave who is indirectly responsible for a murder out of unfounded jealousy, a story is told of a merciful vizier and of orthodox demons and of Allah’s permission (≠26 infliction) of death of an orthodox demon – an orthodox version of the earlier story./.27
{6} [17]The hunchback. A tailor’s wife kills a hunchbacked court jester in China ruled by a Muslim; three other men are brought to believe to have killed him: a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew; all three tell stories told to them by Muslims who were mutilated; the most mutilated occurs in the Muslim’s story. Only the Christian has acted without any guile (403) – he tells a story of a perfect and happy love; the Muslim: cruel punishment for nothing by his beloved, a slave girl, who thereafter becomes his wife; the Jew: terrible revenge out of jealousy, the revenge followed by life-long repentance – but thereafter a wholly unexpected compensation for the woman murdered out of jealousy (he gets the murdered wife’s sister). The Muslim tailor is the socially lowest of the 4: a youth does not get the girl thanks to the loquacity and busybodiness of a barber who acted as a demagogue (360) and hence as a ruler of kings (352) although he belongs to a very low class, like camel-drivers (355) – contrary to the obvious fact he claims to be the silent one, a man of few words and unobtrusive, in contradistinction to his six brothers who are all mutilated, talk much and are impolite (363–66) → the barber is not mutilated (has no bodily defect). The stories of the six brothers: 1 | 2,3 | 4–6.28 The Caliph laughs only at the end of 1, 3, and 6: central stories 2–3 → [the two brothers of the barber] [the barber denigrates his brothers just as the wicked vizier denigrated a wicked vizier] [no profession is mentioned in the case of the two brothers: they might have been barbers too].29 Brothers 2–3 succeed in entering a house; the 2nd brother is called to a house where he is robbed of pleasures of love; the 3rd brother goes by himself into a house where he loses the little bit of money he had instead of getting money. At the end, the barber resurrects the dead court jester (405).
[18]Nur ed Din. The open transgression of the law in the presence of the Caliph compatible with perfect virtue and happiness.
[19]Ghānim: but it is indispensable that one should have the utmost respect for the honor of the powerful Caliph.
{7} [20]Nur– the son of a perfectly virtuous vizier, hurts the honor of his sultan (427, 446) by living together with a slave girl destined for the Sultan; he escapes to Baghdad, transgresses openly but gracefully the legal prohibition against wine drinking(434f.), his girl even seduces a pious old man into joining them in the transgression (436ff.); the Caliph vanquished by the beauty of Nur and his girl and especially by the beautiful singing of the girl, forgives them and makes Nur the king of his homeland. Nur cannot kill the wicked vizier who has driven him from his homeland, for he is impressed by the wicked vizier’s verse to the effect that both he and Nur only acted according to their nature (459).
[21]Ghanim– a young merchant comes into mortal danger through three castrated negro slaves two of whom tell the story of their castration; the 2nd is more wicked than the 1st and the 3rd is the most wicked of all; only the 2nd has nothing to do with sex; his crime is that he is a terrible liar; the 1st is really innocent. Ghanim does not touch the girl, the beloved of the Caliph, out of sacred awe of the Caliph (481) or out of fear (482, 484); the Caliph would not have been able to discover Ghanim and the girl because the Caliph is unable to transgress the law or to overcome the fear of God (485, 486).
[22]Omar and his sons– an alliance between the Christian king of Constantinople and the Muslim king of Baghdad against the Christian king Hartub; the Christian seems to plan treachery against the Muslim (533). Sharkun, the son of the Muslim king meets on the campaign the paragon Christian girl Abriza, the daughter of Hartub, whose mother is an old hag whom Abriza loathes. Abriza does not betray Sharkun to the Christian knights, she is free from all religious fanaticism (518) but she refuses to go with Sharkun to the land of Islam because the Muslim men are lascivious (522), she has a perfect command of Arabic culture while Sharkun does not know Greek. Sharkun quotes to her an Arabic poem dispraising the holy war while praising the war with faire women (530; cf. the poem 639 center). She sides with Sharkun in his fight with the Christian knights and reveals to him the treachery of the Christian king of Constantinople; she follows him to Baghdad where Sharkun’s {8} father Omar disgracefully violates her (confirming her view of Muslims); on her flight home she is murdered by a treacherous negro slave.
[23]The adventures of Omar’s daughter Nuzzath-as-Zamān, philosophically trained; her lecture on government: the king of faith (≠30 the king who protects the holy – the latter in the center is also concerned with the things of the world, he is not necessarily a believer)(602; cf. the parallel 653 bottom – 654 top); cf. also her praise of a perfect pre-Islamic king of Persia (601, 603); a single truly just man is sufficient for a whole country (607f.) → no need for many just men. The account of her lectures takes seven nights – the lectures given by the Christian girls later on take six nights – altogether thirteen nights.
[24]Sharkun marries unknowingly his half-sister Nuzzath; they are shocked by their mortal sin; she bears him a daughter; they separate immediately; no further untoward consequences because the affair is kept secret. The story of the incest, unusually short, is told in the 68th (4×17) night (622f.).
[25]The old Christian witch, Abrizza’s grandmother, murders Omar. Ban el nukum (Nuzzath’s brother) becomes the Sultan; the old witch brings him five perfect Christian girls who pretend to be Muslims; the girls know philosophy and the stories of the past; the king is interested only in the latter (652); the five girls and the witch lecture on piety (667) (Cf. 662 para. 3 on the problem of piety); the instigator of those pious lectures is the unbelieving witch (700) who plans to ruin the king, the violator of her granddaughter.
[26]Holy war against the Christians; the description is full of savage hatred and invectives (≠31 the humane relation of Sharkun and Abrizza); the Muslims march off against Constantinople; marvelous victories of the Muslims but Constantinople is not conquered (which is indicated rather than said); Sharkun is killed through the treachery of the old witch; the king finds no comfort for the death of his brother except through stories (715). The vizier tells him a story into which a story is inserted – both are love stories – the frame story is one of happy love: {9} son and daughter of kings32 – the youth had only heard of the princess – the princess originally loathes men on the basis of a dream – the happy ending brought about by a wise vizier (≠33 the prince and his father) (II 89, 85). Cf. Dan el nukum making a senile former worker the king of Damascus (II 140). The inserted story is one of unhappy love: merchant – a youth had seen the girl – a34 girl who loves him but is not loved by him dies from grief – she is of perfect sweetness, overcomes her jealousy completely – does not use force or guile against him she unhappily loves – the youth is eventually castrated – he repents his unfaithfulness to the good girl he had deserted – the alternative would have been the satiety of fulfilled love (II 59) – cf. the praise of love in the poem II 30. Cf. the poem I 83: the complete atheistic loneliness of the unhappy lover (in the 130th night) → the uselessness of religious comfort as underlying the vizier’s story telling here.
[27]In an entirely different context the witch who intends to kill the prince, tells him a most ridiculous story of a hashish eater who had a dream of approaching bliss and then a bitter awakening; i.e., she predicts his intended terrible fate to him, but then the witch’s plan comes to naught.
[28]The end: the son of Omar and Abrizza who had become a Muslim had been brought up by his Christian grandfather (Hartub) as a Christian and the Muslim king rule Baghdad jointly– nothing is said of that Christian’s becoming a Muslim – but a certain obscurity prevails (223–24).
[29]This is the first story in which Christianity-Islam is manifestly the theme. At the end of the story the first apparent change in the mood of Shechrazad’s husband (224 bottom - 225 top).
[30]The king wants to hear stories of birds, of beings which fly high (244) – Schechrazad tells stories of birds, and other animals but no longer of metamorphoses: the stories must have been told by men who know the language of animals. The 1st story describes man from the brutes’ point of view: all animals would live in {10} peace and freedom but for man’s guile. The most frightened of the animals, the duck, alarms all other animals but is caught and killed by man. According to the she-peacock, the duck perished because alone of all creatures it had not praised God (239). The male peacock mentioned at the beginning of the story has dropped out completely: a female explanation of the fate of beings. The duck [which does not fly high and is the35 pig among the birds]36 says: our danger comes from man. But the she-peacock says: our danger comes from God. The story taken literally is nonsense: birds are killed also by other brutes, not only by men. But the story makes sense if retranslated into human terms (birds : men = men : God): the duck says that all evil comes from God and the she-peacock confirms this somehow. The she-peacock’s assertion that praising God is sufficient for averting disaster is refuted by the story of the hermit and the doves. The story of the pious shepherd who is perfectly chaste (ascetic) and his male companion who is of extreme charity to beasts and birds (both live in the service to God) (to the jealous God who demands complete surrender to Him) and they do not even die (end of the story): at this point, the king shows the first sign of repentance for his cruelty and jealousy. The water bird and the turtle: the water bird sees a human corpse and believes that the man must have been a criminal [only criminals are killed: simple moralism; God is killed]37 – strikes up a friendship with a turtle – develops a doctrine of what befits the true man – is killed, as it is said because it did not praise God; the turtle is not killed. The wolf and the fox: the fox (the subject) warns the wolf (the king – 256 bottom) to be gentle to him lest man, the wily insidious being, might control the wolf; but the fox gets rid of the wolf by his own ingenuity. The inserted story told by the fox to the wolf: the stronger eats the weaker but through God’s action dies from it. The mouse and the weasel (the central story) – the weasel arranges that the mouse be killed by man [tracing everything to God ~ doing everything through God].38 The raven and the {11} cat: this edifying story of pure friendship is told at the request of the king; everything is done here by animals; the shepherd [God]39 hardly does more than looking at, whereas in the preceding unedifying story, man [God]40 is the actor.
[31]The animal stories = 146th–152nd nights = 7 nights. The next story (Abu ibn bakkar) = 153rd-169th nights = 17 nights.
[32]The story of a young prince falling in love with an odalisk of the ruler of the faithful and she with the young prince; they meet for a night; they become separated and each dies from grief. The caliph does not become jealous: because he loves the girl so much that he doesn’t believe what is reported to him about her misconduct. [A story of an unfaithful woman whose unfaithfulness is not believed by her husband, is told to a jealous king.]41
[33]Kamr az-zamān. In this story 2.65 pages on the average for a night; in the preceding stories 6.42 pages on the average for a night.
[34]A prince who is very pious hates women because of their faithlessness; a believing she-demon from the race of the devil but a believer together with a cursed he-demon brings him together with a princess who is less chaste than the prince (391–92) but very intelligent (373); she does not wish to marry him because she does not wish to be ruled by a man (375): the believing she-demon admires the pious prince; the cursed he-demon admires the intelligent princess. Prince and princess marry and are separated by some accident; the princess must pretend to be a man and marries a princess to whom she reveals her sex. The prince comes to a city of the Magians. They are reunited; the prince marries also princess number 2 and has two wives, gets a son from each; each wife tries to deceive him with a son of the other wife → the prince’s view of women was true (480.f, 484, 490) – the two wives behave like Potiphar’s wife, the sons are driven into the wilderness, one of the sons falls into the hands of fire-worshippers and the other falls under the spell of a woman who expresses pagan feelings (508f.), is compelled to kill her; son number 1 converts the daughter of the Magian who keeps him prisoner and tortures {12} him, to Islam; eventually he converts that girl’s father too and everything is forgiven. But nothing is done to the faithless wives and the Magians are tolerated. The king is more pleased with this story which includes the account of the unpunished faithless wives (569) than with any previous story.
[35]The inserted story. The caliph forgives and reunites the young couple, the male part of which had entered his harem to recover the girl who had been spirited away there – the central reason: the lover and the beloved were in his house and in his power (559) [application to God obvious]42.
[36]Ala ed-din abu esch-shamāt – twenty-one nights. An unheard of remark of Shechrazad’s sister (580 top) at the beginning of the 252nd night. A jealous old wife accused by her old husband of sterility tells him that he is sterile and advises him as to what he should do to improve his semen [she did not wish to have a child nor did her husband hitherto];43 the child born against all expectations, brought up in strict isolation out of fear of the evil eye – the impossibilities: after forty years of marriage she is still menstruating and the new-born babe looks like a one year old (572f.). The young boy sees how foolish his parents are; owing to his silly upbringing he himself is easily fooled, by a Magian who pretends to be a Muslim, a wicked pederast (581) but44 is infinitely better than the Arabs of the desert, he does not kill45 anyone (592f.); the boy’s father is opposed to traveling (584). In Baghdad he gets a marvelous wife and becomes a favorite of the caliph; his wife dies but in 625f. the wife seems to be still alive as a mistress of the caliph ?? He is disgraced and condemned to be hanged. But through a ruse a heretic who is also a criminal is hanged in his stead; he flies with a friend, on the flight they kill two Jews; a heretic tries to kill the caliph and is executed for this. Ala el din is captured by Christians and brought to Genoa together with forty other Muslims, the latter are executed by the Christians, he is saved by an old woman for service in the church, but the old woman tells him how he can force others to do the work for him. His wife has lived all the time with a Christian princess who was served by {13} a she-demon who has taken on the shape of his wife (was buried in the latter’s stead); the wife herself was brought by a mighty demon to Genoa; the princess was predestined to become the wife of Ala el din; she was a secret Muslim; her father refuses to become a Muslim and is killed by Ala el din who returns with his two wives to Egypt [a stupidly fantastic and very pro-Islamic story – Schechrazad’s king does not react].46
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[37]The king expresses his pleasure with the story told and asks her to continue; Schechrazad will tell stories of the men of generosity (84 bottom – 85 top). The 1st story of a pagan Arab (sculptures of girls) (85–86); the 2nd story of an early Muslim famous for his generosity; → generosity not specifically Islamic, no reference to anything Islamic in the first two stories. The 4th story has nothing to do with generosity but with the Muslim conquest of Andalus and with the Muslim’s finding of wealth and science in the conquered lands → still less is science specifically Islamic. The 5th story: the moral superiority of a young Bedouin to a Caliph. 6th story: the nobility of character of a poor negro and also of a deposed Caliph as well as of the ruling Caliph. 7th story (277th – 279th night – 277th night extremely short) someone believes to have discovered the paradise on earth, an extremely beautiful but uninhabited city; it was built by a ruler of the whole earth who lived more than 300 years and was an unbeliever ruling over unbelievers in imitation of the paradise in the beyond; Allah destroyed that ruler and all the people with him. 8th story: contains a reminder by Schechrazad of the fact that her fate is still uncertain; the Caliph’s bride is praised more highly than the Caliph. 9th story: a beautiful wife sleeps out of jealousy with a dirtiest and most ill-smelling man. 10th story: a man who imitates the Caliph perfectly, in some respects superior to any Caliph (136 top), is particularly generous (141), he only played the Caliph in order to reach his goal, i.e., to get back his wife; his wife {14} had revered him like a prophet or more than the prophet (147) but had rejected and tormented him out of unfounded jealousy [a true prophet rejected by his admiring wife had to become a false Caliph, a savage killer or at least threatening with death (151) in order to regain his rank].48 The stories told in each night here are particularly short. 11th story: two impudent liars, for this very reason scolded as being Manicheans by kadi. 12th story: parody of fiqh – here for the 1st time the author addresses the reader. 14th story: the story of a man whom a Caliph had crucified out of jealousy (cf. 195 para. 1 beginning). 15th story: 172 bottom – 173 top. The fate of Schechrazad is still as undecided as it was at the beginning, as the king makes clear → the 15th story is a story of demons and metamorphoses – in order to arouse the king’s interest. 16th and 17th story: a generous family of which the Caliph was jealous.
[38]The man from Yemen and his six slave girls: note the change of order, 1st yellow and black and then yellow and brown – change in the repetition regarding the yellow (dropping of the prophet) (293) – special praise of the brown one (294 bottom) who does not refer to the Koran, nor does the slim one whereas the other four refer to the Koran (cf. 284).
[39]P.409: the counter-religion of love = a frequently recurring theme. The stories on 526ff. seem to have this connection: asceticism (526–33) – falling in love on hearsay (533–35) – the absurdity of asceticism (536–37) – the fantastic story of the bird Ruch, stories of unhappy lovers. Cf. 589 bottom – 590 top on secrecy; 623 para.2–625 tyranny, human or divine (cf. Machiavelli Disc. I 26).
[40]The slave girl Tavaddud: a fantastic account of philosophy – at the end (696) a long address of Schechrazad to the king on the liberality of kings which has disappeared.
[41]3 stories of the angel of death (697ff.) – 1. Islamic – a pious man longs for death to see God, contrasted with a king 2. Islamic – only a God forgetting king 3. Jewish – a wicked Jewish king goes to hell; the kings are all stupid and wicked. {15} Immediately afterward (704) Alexander the Great confronted by a cynic wise king49 (≠ angel of death) who teaches hell and paradise after death – Alexander neither stupid nor wicked. Immediately thereafter (706) a wise old Persian king → the 2nd long address of Schechrazad to her king to the effect that religion depends on government – followed first by a Jewish and then by an Islamic pious story, then by a story of a wonderfully pious negro slave, then by a Jewish pious story, etc.
[42]For the Queen of Serpents see my references in III 812.
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[43]P.115: the beginning of the speech of the narrator is the end of a night’s tale of Schechrazad (161).
[44]Sindbad– the central story – a pagan people (145) – cannibals; they are apparently Muslim people with the custom of burying the surviving spouse alive together with the dead spouse – Sindbad becomes a murderer.
[45]Messingstadt – preaches unqualifiedly world-denial, meditatio mortis – but cf. 258: Solomon (≠ Mohammed).
[46]Ruse of women – i.e., Schechrazad’s own doings (cf. 267 and 297) but ruse of women only in stories # 1, 2, 6, 9, 11, 12, 17, and 22. Note that this story contains harmless repetitions of some stories from the 1st section.
[47]Dshaudar: the last and decisive test is incest with mother.
[48]Adshib and Gharib: the whole world is made Islamic (Abrahamitic) long before Mohammed by war and with the help of armies of demons. Contrast with the next story (Utba and Raija) which is very short: see the central poem (619), and the story of51
[49]El Mausidi and the devil: a very attractive description of the devil (645–49).
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[50]1st story: the impotence of kings vis-à-vis love; the kings’ complete dependence on their servants – these are frequently recurring themes.
[51]4th story: contains a non-public story (225–26) which was written in the {16} first place – of a pagan king (228) but: 230 – God’s revelation to Solomon (231) the pagans become Muslims (235–237). Contains an account of a vizier (≠ king) who conducts himself prudently like Odysseus with the Cyclops, etc.; the vizier (≠ king) does not have a marvelous ring from King Solomon; the whole adventure of the king and the vizier caused by the thoughtlessness of king Solomon (295) or through his complete indifference (305 bottom – 306 top).
[52]5th story: it is not said which book Hasan read (316); he is taught the best of all arts, i.e., the art of making gold, a dangerous art (319f.), a non-public art (321) by a fire worshipper (325) who cheats and torments Hasan.
[53]6th story: a monkey predicts to a fisherman that if he persuades a rich Jew to say certain things, the fisherman will become very rich and the Jew very poor (510–511) – the rich Jew says the words in question (in this connection: complete indifference of the fisherman to the Jew becoming a Muslim: 515) but nothing happens; by a series of accidents the fisherman becomes incredibly rich but nothing is said about the Jew becoming poor.
[54]7th story: a married Jewish woman’s adultery with a Christian (574, 582); in order to escape punishment for her crime, she pretends to be a Muslim (604); she becomes a Muslim; four kadis promise her their help against the Jew and to marry her; her husband is humiliated and jailed but the woman deceives the kadis who die from sorrow; the Jew is freed from jail; on her way home the woman stops in a monk’s convent where all forty monks try to seduce her; she regains her lover who also becomes a Muslim and she arranges that her husband is buried alive [a victory of wicked love presented as victory of Islam].53
[55]8th story: Nur transgresses the Islamic law re wine (639); in his drunkenness he beats his father and deprives him of one eye; he flees to Alexandria where he falls in love with a Frankish slave girl who had become a Muslim and who was the daughter of a Frankish king; while being drunk he sells her to the one-eyed vizier of the Frankish king who takes her back to her father. Nur cannot fight just as he has no brains nor self-control whereas the Frankish princess is a marvelously {17} courageous fighter and killer; she kills her three brothers in single combat and escapes with Nur to Muslim lands; she abjures all connections with Christianity and her people and family [a triumph of Islam, in fact a triumph of love – Islam used for such a triumph – the opposite (i.e., the use of Christianity for this purpose) is equally possible].54
[56]9th story: a Muslim falls in love with a Christian woman in the then Christian Akko but out of fear of hell abstains from intercourse with her (760); after the Muslim conquest of Akko, she is taken prisoner, bought by a Muslim, and becomes a Muslim; her Muslim lover even gets back the money he had spent on her while she was the wife of a Christian knight in Akko. [The whole story presupposes that she did not love her Christian husband.]55
[57]Tenth story: a young Muslim who had become poor, sells his beloved, his slave-girl, to a noble Muslim; he does not commit suicide out of fear of hell; he becomes reunited with her and again wealthy thanks to the generosity of that noble Muslim. [56also a story of a reward for Muslim piety but it also presupposes that the man and the woman love one another passionately57].
[[Volume VI]]58
[58]1st story: the necessary conflict between this world and the next – men cannot be just while living in this life (49–51); the contradistinction between reason and the Sharia (53–54; cf. 65 top); 135: this teaching of a 12-year-old boy (+ terror of enemies) achieves what the boy’s wise father and philosophy did not achieve.
[59]3rd story: the absurdity of those who believe in another better life and weep when someone they love dies; those free from that absurdity, i.e. who draw the conclusion from belief in better life, live in nakedness and promiscuity (208).
[60]4th story from end: story of apparent infidelity of a sultan’s mistress.
[61]3rd story from end: a dervish who sings very impure songs but proves to be of incorruptible chastity – and: the successful deception and ruin of a husband by his wife with a bitter end for the wife – contrasted with the adulterer’s sister who does not even remarry after her husband’s death.
{18} [62]2nd story before the last– transformation into stones of a pagan city by Allah; the single survivor, a most beautiful princess who became a Muslim; transformation into dogs of the treacherous two brothers by a she-ghost out of gratitude to the 3rd brother who had saved the she-ghost from disgrace; the Caliph demands that the two brothers be no longer punished but restored and that they be forgiven; but they do not deserve to be forgiven. The beautiful princess commits suicide when two brothers throw the decent 3rd brother into the sea.
[63]Last story: a poor shoe repairer who is so gentle that he must run away from his vicious wife; he learns to give away other people’s money which he gets by telling the untrue story that his caravan will come soon (589). He believes those untruths in his simplicity (589); he marries the king’s daughter and confesses his lies to his wife who for sheer shame helps him with her money so that he can make his lies true; by a lucky accident he finds a ring which makes him the master of a spirit who procures him everything he wants through the ring, yet his wife gets possession of the ring and does not give it to her husband or her father (cf. Schechrazad who is wiser than her father and her husband). The ring is so powerful that its possession endangers the survival of Islam; the princess alone insures the survival of Islam (633, 634). The princess dies. His abominable 1st wife finds him: he forgives her and lives to repent it (cf. 639) – out of piety (640 bottom – 641 top) he takes off the ring and would have been destroyed by his first wife but for the prompt action of his 7-year-old young son from his second wife.
1Leo Strauss Papers, box 20, folder 2, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
2Leo Strauss Papers, box 23, folder 13, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
3Littmann, Die Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten.
4“=” is inserted by hand.
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22“≠ the fight between king and Socrates to the benefit of the religious sage” is crossed out.
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57“properly” is crossed out and “passionately” inserted by hand.
58Square brackets are in the typescript and are inserted by hand.