Reading Notes: Arabian Nights, Part A

Desert with an Arabian castle. Source: Temple University

Notes:

• Scheherazade
• Starts out with Sultan Schahriar who had his wife killed once he figured out she had deceived him and because of her he thinks all women are bad
• So he marries a different woman every day then has her killed by the grand-vizir the following morning. This makes the town fear him.
• The Grand-vizir's daughter, Scheherazade, asks her dad to let her be the next wife of the Schahriar. 
• Once married to him, she begs to let her sister spend the night and has her sister before sunrise asks her to tell one of her stories. 
• He lets her tell her story and so she begins to tell The Story of the Merchant and the Genius.
• The Story of the Merchant and the Genius
• Starts with Scheherazade saying "Sire, there was once upon a time" to show that she is actually talking to her husband and not the sister. 
• In the story: 
• merchant is on a journey to arrange his affairs, he stops on the fourth day.
• A genius approaches him mad because the Merchant accidentally killed his son with one of the stones he threw
• Scheherazade stops telling the story and asks the Sultan to let her live another day so she can tell the rest of the story. He obliges so he can hear the end of the story.
• The next morning she continues the story.
• the merchant asks for a year's grace so that he can say bye to his family and make a will which the genius let him have
• After getting all his affairs in order he went back to the genius a year later. While waiting an old man showed up and sat with him because he wanted to see the interaction between them. Two more old men arrived and also waited with them
• The old man begs for the Genius to let him tell him a story
• Part A of the Arabian nights continues on with stories inside of stories. 
• This allows Scheherazade to live more than one night as the Sultans wife

Bibliography:  Stories Scheherazade and The Story of the Merchant and the Genius from within Arabian Nights by Andrew Lang.