#jinn galland

[choujinx]

SOUL EATER NOT! (2011-2014) by ookubo atsushi

[dreaming-wavelength]

Look how cute he is. Ape sitting on head.

[raffaellopalandri]

The Power of Effort Over Wishes: My Three Wishes to a Genie

Daily writing promptYou have three magic genie wishes, what are you asking for?View all responses If a genie offered me three wishes, my first instinct would be to reject them for myself. Photo by Boris Hamer on Pexels.com The reason is simple: I believe that what we receive without effort lacks the value and fulfilment of something we earn through our hard work, perseverance, and…

[enddaysengine]

Janni (Paths Beyond)

When I was a teenager, cracking open the 3.0 Monster Manual for the first time, the Janni didn't excite me. Two decades on, however, they get my vote for the best genies in the d20 games. Why? One of the reasons I appreciate the Janni is they are much closer to the typical benevolent jinn with nary a wish in sight. While jinni in folklore have magical powers, they don't grant wishes; they use other magic to complete their tasks. 

The genies from ʻAlāʼ ad-Dīn's ring and lamp are by far the most famous wish-granters. There is, however, an entire thing about whether the Aladdin stories are genuine or Antoine Galland's inventions because we have no textual evidence for their existence before Les mille et une nuits. There is a wish-granter in the oldest extant version of ʾAlf Laylah wa-Laylah, but the ifrit in The Fisherman and the Jinni is extremely old and desperate. It certainly isn't magically compelled to grant wishes to anyone. 

The Janni are great because they avoid that old orientalist trope entirely and match up well with more modern tales of the jinn too. These genies live alongside mortals on the Material Plane but are often invisible, using their magic to hide from prying eyes. While the elemental planes don't exist in Arabic folklore, there is a belief that other worlds exist and that the jinn have their own kingdoms on those worlds — so janni possessing the plane shift power makes sense. 

Speaking of that plane shift, janni are an easy way to get low-level adventurers onto the planes and back again without portals. They are limited in where they can travel, but they aren't restricted to the Elemental Planes either; remember that the Astral is a valid target for janni. The stat block backs this up; janni are trained in the Arcana skill. This tells us a bit about how they look at the world. They take the approach of philosophy, metaphysics, and intense study — which conveniently loops back around to folklore. Jinn are best known as shapeshifters and tricksters, so get ready to crack out your jann wizards specializing in illusion and transmutation!

Adak the Thunderbolt is one of the premier wizards in the astral city of Yulgamot. While the janni is no slouch with evocation, in reality she is an illusionist — her epithet comes from her bold and decisive mannerism, not out of any affinity for lightning. From Yulgamot, Adak studies the relationship between the Inner Planes and the Astral, hoping to unlock the arcane secrets of matter and mind. She regularly hires adventurers as bodyguards for her expeditions across the planes and she is willing to mentor those who impress her.

The qareen are a Janni lineage who plane shift not to the Astral Plane but to the Ethereal and the Dreamlands. Every qareen has a spiritual double, a mortal on Golarian born at the same moment as the genie. Traditionally, the qareen serve as invisible guardians to their doubles, but many are mischievous pranksters or even sadistic torturers who infiltrate their twin's dreamscape to wreak havoc. When a qareen outlive their mortal counterpart, they join wandering military bands on the ethereal plane, ensuring the dream world and the mortal realm remain separate. 

Janni can only persist on the Elemental Planes for about two days, forcing them to keep on the move. The Opine Vault is one of the few places they can take up permanent residence on the Inner Planes. Upon her ascension to the Peerless Empire's throne, Sultana Ashadieeyah bint Khalid received a flawless moonstone from the reigning Kelish Padishah Emperor. She enchanted this gem to create the Settled Jewel, making the Vault a safe haven for Janni on the Plane of Earth. Janni now serve as administrators and bureaucrats throughout the city, but the Fossilized King Ayrzul plans on stealing the stone and using it for his own purposes. 

Further Reading

El-Zein, Amira. Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn. Syracuse University Press, 2017.

Irwin, Robert. The Arabian Nights: A Companion. London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2010.

Lebling, Robert W. Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar. London: Tauris Parke, 2014.

[legend-collection]

Ghoul

A ghoul is a demon-like being or monstrous humanoid, often associated with graveyards and the consumption of human flesh. The concept originated in pre-Islamic Arabian religion. Modern fiction often uses the term to label a specific kind of monster.

By extension, the word ghoul is also used in a derogatory sense to refer to a person who delights in the macabre or whose occupation directly involves death, such as a gravedigger or graverobber.

The term was first used in English literature in 1786 in William Beckford's Orientalist novel Vathek, which describes the ghūl of Arabic folklore. This definition of the ghoul has persisted until modern times with ghouls appearing in popular culture.

In Arabic folklore, the ghul is said to dwell in cemeteries and other uninhabited places. A male ghoul is referred to as ghul while the female is called ghulah. A source identified the Arabic ghoul as a female creature who is sometimes called Mother Ghoul (ʾUmm Ghulah) or a relational term such as Aunt Ghoul. She is portrayed in many tales luring hapless characters, who are usually men, into her home where she can eat them.

Some state that a ghoul is a desert-dwelling, shape-shifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. It lures unwary people into the desert wastes or abandoned places to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, drinks blood, steals coins, and eats the dead, then taking the form of the person most recently eaten. One of the narratives identified a ghoul named Ghul-e Biyaban, a particularly monstrous character believed to be inhabiting the wilderness of Afghanistan and Iran.

Al-Dimashqi describes the ghoul as cave-dwelling animals who only leave at night and avoid the light of the sun. They would eat both humans as well as animals.

It was not until Antoine Galland translated One Thousand and One Nights into French that the Western concept of ghouls was introduced into European society. Galland depicted the ghoul as a monstrous creature that dwelled in cemeteries, feasting upon corpses.

Ghouls are not mentioned in the Quran, but in hadith. Exegetes of the Quran (tafsir) conjectured that the ghouls might be burned jinn or devils. Accordingly, the jinn and shayatin (devils) once had access to the heavens, where they eavesdropped, and returned to Earth to pass hidden knowledge to the soothsayers. When Jesus was born, three heavenly spheres were forbidden to them. With the arrival of Muhammad, the other four were forbidden. The marid among the shayatin continued to rise to the heavens, but were burned by comets. If these comets didn't burn them to death, they were deformed and driven to insanity. They then fell to the deserts and were doomed to roam the earth as ghouls.

In one hadith it is said, lonely travellers can escape a ghoul's attack by repeating the adhan (call to prayer). When reciting the Throne Verse, a ghoul, in contrast to a devil, might decide to convert to Islam.

The ghoul could appear in male and female shape, but usually appeared female to lure on male travelers to devour them. Al-Masudi reports that on his journey to Syria, Umar slew a ghoul with his sword. According to History of the Prophets and Kings, the rebellious (maradatuhum) among the devils and the ghouls have been chased away to the deserts and mountains and valleys a long time ago.

A ghoul is said to have stolen dates from the house of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari. When she got captured, she promised to teach Ayat Al-Kursi, as a prayer to protect the house from devils and other misfortune, if he releases her. Muhammad told him that the ghoul spoke the truth, although she is a liar.

Other Muslim scholars, like Abī al-Sheikh al-Aşbahânī, describe the ghoul as a kind of female jinn that was able to change its shape and appear to travelers in the wilderness to delude and harm.

In ancient Mesopotamia, there was a folklore monster called 'Gallu' that could be regarded as one of the origins of the arabic ghoul. Gallu was an Akkadian demon of the underworld responsible for the abduction of vegetation god Dumuzid to the realm of death.

The word ghoul entered the English tradition and was further identified as a grave-robbing creature that feeds on dead bodies and children. In the West, ghouls have no specific shape and have been described by Edgar Allan Poe as "neither man nor woman... neither brute nor human."

In "Pickman's Model", a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, ghouls are members of a subterranean race. Their diet of dead human flesh mutated them into bestial humanoids able to carry on intelligent conversations with the living. The story has ghouls set underground with ghoul tunnels that connect ancient human ruins with deep underworlds. Lovecraft hints that the ghouls emerge in subway tunnels to feed on train wreck victims.

Lovecraft's vision of the ghoul, shared by associated authors Clark Ashton-Smith and Robert E. Howard, has heavily influenced the collective idea of the ghoul in American culture. Ghouls as described by Lovecraft are dog-faced and hideous creatures but not necessarily malicious. Though their primary (perhaps only) food source is human flesh, they do not seek out or hunt living people. They are able to travel back and forth through the wall of sleep. This is demonstrated in Lovecraft's "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" in which Randolph Carter encounters Pickman in the dream world after his complete transition into a mature ghoul.

Ghouls in this vein, are also changelings in the traditional way. The ghoul parent abducts a human infant and replaces it with one of its own. Ghouls appear entirely human as children but begin to take on the "ghoulish" appearance as they age past adulthood. The fate of the replaced human children is not entirely clear but Pickman offers a clue in the form of a painting depicting mature ghouls as they encourage a human child while it cannibalizes a corpse. This version of the ghoul appears in stories by authors such as Neil Gaiman, Brian Lumley, and Guillermo del Toro.

[writingwithcolor]

Using Jinn /Djinn vs Genie in story

Anonymous asked:

Hello!

I want to write a story where the main character unknowingly makes a wish, the wish granter well-intendedly grants it, but the MC lives to regret the wish. (Note: MC isn't Muslim I learned Islam and Magic are not compatible from other posts)

From what I've researched it seems that wishes granted by Jinn are more like deals with the devil. The wish is granted in exchange for a piece of your soul. I want the exchange to be more like the Genie from Aladdin.

Should I use the term Genie? I think this would make it clear that the character is abiding by western genie abilities/limitations, and I thought it would distinguish that I'm not referencing real life Jinn. Would a Genie be seen as a completely separate mythical creature or would the concept of a Genie just feel like a culturally appropriated Jinn to Muslim readers?

Furthermore, would it be appropriate if the genie appear as an Arab person to acknowledge the cultural roots? Would this be considered good representation or is that harmful? Would it be okay or better to subvert the trope and make them another ethnicity?

Please be blunt and tell me if I should think of another way to accomplish the wish fulfillment!

Thank you for your time

Note: Niki isn’t Muslim and is speaking on the topic of cultural appropriation only. 

You want your story to feature a wish-granting character, and you want to base this character on the Genie character in Disney’s Aladdin in order to avoid appropriating Arab/Muslim jinn. Here’s the issue: the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin is already an appropriation of jinn.

The word “genie” is an anglicization of the word “jinni” (جني) which is the singular form of “jinn” (جن). It was coined by Antoine Galland when he translated The Thousand and One Nights from Arabic to French in the early 18th century*. The Thousand and One Nights, a collection of mostly Arab and Muslim folk tales, quickly gained in popularity in Europe and was re-translated, back-translated, retold and adapted multiples times over the next couple of centuries. Disney’s Aladdin is probably the best-known of those retellings, and it certainly did a lot to popularize genies in Western media.

But despite having been absorbed into Western popular culture, genies remain firmly associated with orientalist stereotypes and are frequently portrayed with vaguely “oriental” characteristics. For example, in Neil Gaiman’s October Tale, the genie first appears wearing a turban and “pointy shoes.” Genies may feel like a part of Western mythos by now, but they clearly retain cultural markers that tie them to their origins.

In my opinion, calling your character a genie to avoid having to deal with the cultural and religious context surrounding jinn is not an appropriate solution to your problem. 

You have two options:

1) Call your character a jinni

Call your character a jinni and do your best to portray them as accurately as possible to their culture of origin. 

This includes faithfulness to the way jinn are portrayed in Islam, and specificity to the national or ethnic group you’re drawing on, as there are variations in different cultures. 

You will need to do quite a bit of in-depth research to ensure your portrayal is respectful, accurate, and doesn’t rely on orientalist tropes. 

You will also probably need to give thought to the context surrounding the jinni’s presence in your story. 

How did they get here? 

What circumstances led your human character to encountering them? 

And what are the implications for the backstory and future of your characters and world?

2) Alternatively, call them something else entirely

Alternatively, if you would like to have the freedom to use this character as you please, call them something else entirely. There are plenty of wish-granting beings in Western folk tales and mythologies that you could use instead.

Caveat: I’m not Muslim and would strongly recommend seeking out additional advice from Muslim sources if you decide to go with option 1 and portray jinn in your story. You can start by reading the posts by our Muslim mods on this topic: Djinn tag on WWC

- Niki

*A note on The Thousand and One Nights: Antoine Galland’s translation took many liberties with the source material, interpreting and altering some stories, and adding several others which weren’t part of the original Arabic manuscript. Aladdin’s Lamp is one of them. It is believed that these additional stories were written by the Syrian writer Hanna Diyab, who shared them with Galland when they met in Paris. Galland included them in his published work without crediting Diyab.

[minus-moscow]

@thewinedarksea Mythology Meme ↳ 3c. Objects | Aladdin’s Ring

Aladdin (Arabic: علاء الدين‎) is a folk tale of Middle Eastern origin. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (“The Arabian Nights”), and one of the best known—but it was not part of the original Arabic text, being added in the 18th century by Frenchman Antoine Galland, who attributed the tale to Syrian storyteller Youhenna Diab. The story begins with Aladdin an impoverished young ne'er-do-well who lives in “one of the cities of China”. He is recruited by a sorcerer from the Maghreb, who passes himself off as the brother of Aladdin’s late father, Mustapha the tailor, convincing Aladdin and his mother of his good will by pretending to set him up as a wealthy merchant. The sorcerer’s real motive is to persuade young Aladdin to retrieve a wonderful oil lamp from a booby-trapped magic cave. After the sorcerer attempts to double-cross him, Aladdin finds himself trapped in the cave. Fortunately, Aladdin is still wearing a magic ring the sorcerer has lent him. When he rubs his hands in despair, he inadvertently rubs the ring and a jinn (or genie) appears who releases him from the cave so that he can return to his mother, fortunately still carrying the lamp. When his mother tries to clean the lamp, so they can sell it to buy food for their supper, a second far more powerful genie appears who is bound to do the bidding of the person holding the lamp.

link

[creepy-crowleys]

And here we go:  An oddly-shaped green ring inscribed with Infernal characters, apparently part of a set with three others and somehow related to the Jinn.  The bees are calling it the Djinn Ring of Air and 

We see Antoine Galland. It is 1709. A Syrian storyteller recites a tale to the Frenchman, the very story Ptahmose speaks to his children. Galland puts the words to pen and paper, placing it in his translation of The Thousand and One Nights. Not one of the original stories, but it is old. It travelled as a word virus, from out of time, through countless mouths and ears, to reach Galland's ear, to reach his pen, to reach Ptahmose, to reach his children. But over the years, something was lost in the translation. What was a cautionary tale diluted into romantic adventure. The message was lost. DO NOT RUB THE LAMP.

There’s something else but they’re being vague about it.  I can’t make it out.

In an case, finding the other three would probably go a long way towards earning Amir’s favor, right?  I’m going to check the other places marked on the map, see what I can turn up.

[mmwm]

Welcome to day 9 of 28 Days of Have Heaven, a short month of posts about heaven, paradise, perfection and desire, perfect places, art, theology, gardens, and more, using the Enya song “China Roses” as a jumping off point. Each post will look at these elements in itself, which may not obviously connect with the others, and which may only peripherally be related. I won’t attempt to tie the posts together. They’ll all be listed here, as they are posted ________________________________________________________________

We’re in the midst of a dozen days or so playing with some of the lyrics and elements in the song “China Roses.” It’s packed with interesting plants and allusions, and since I don’t know what was in lyricist Roma Ryan’s head when she concocted this magic, I feel I can construe the lines as I wish (“who can say the way it should be?,” after all).

Yesterday, the topic was the key of heaven. Today’s topic is a thousand nights and one night.

As I mentioned at the start, taken as a whole, the lyrics span time from dawn through day to evening, night, and moon rise, evoking an exotic Eden, mythic and romantic, scented with heady fragrances, planted with unusual specimens made lush by rain and river, under a swirl of celestial motion. Explicit in the words and implicit in the connotations, histories, and mythologies are repetitions and reverberations of these conjurings, a journey through time in a day, time in an eon, eternity in the cosmos.

Here again are the lyrics:

China Roses

Who can tell me if we have heaven, Who can say the way it should be; Moonlight holly, the Sappho Comet, Angel’s tears below a tree.

You talk of the break of morning As you view the new aurora, Cloud in crimson, the key of heaven, One love carved in acajou.

One told me of China Roses, One a thousand nights and one night, Earth’s last picture, the end of evening Hue of indigo and blue.

A new moon leads me to Woods of dreams and I follow. A new world waits for me; My dream, my way.

I know that if I have heaven There is nothing to desire. Rain and river, a world of wonder May be paradise to me.

*

a thousand nights and one night:

There are some plant varieties named Arabian Nights, Scheherazade, and Aladdin, though none I could find called 1001 Nights or any version of that.

Dahlia ‘Arabian Night’ has “profuse and showy warm, deep-red flowers, almost black looking with slightly incurved petals. … The fully double flowers, up to 4 in. wide (10 cm), feature small green floral bracts in their center.”

There’s an “Arabian Night” lavender (Lavender x intermedia ‘Arabian Night’), a cross between the English lavender hybrids (or lavandins) — from which its scent derives — and the French lavender, with dark purple foliage and a low, sprawling habit.

‘Arabian Nights’ jasmine (Jasminum sambac ‘Arabian Nights’) blooms at night and is similar to the ‘Grand Duke of Tuscany’ cultivar, but smaller. It’s native to a small region in the eastern Himalayas in Bhutan and neighbouring Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, but is cultivated and naturalised in many spots, including southern Florida, the Bahamas, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.

There ‘Aladdin’ petunias (Petunia x hybrida Aladdin™ Arabian Nights Mix)

and a Tulipa ‘Aladdin’, an elegant lily-flowered tulip sporting scarlet goblet-shaped flowers with fine yellow edges.

A variety of orienpet, which is a hybrid oriental x trumpet lily, is called ‘Scheherazade’. It’s huge, from 4-8 feet tall on a rigid stem, waxy, very fragrant, with dinner plate-sized deep red flowers edged with gold to white. It’s fragrant in the evening. As one article puts it, “Scheherazade lives on in our gardens as a dark, red, fragrant lily with recurved flowers edged in gold with white margins. Like its timeless namesake this lily is hardy and perennial.”

*

Flower names aside, almost certainly “a thousand nights and one night” in the song refers to the famous, fabulous collection of stories dating back to the 9th century commonly called “1001 Nights” or “The Arabian Nights.” For one thing, the sleeve design for the album The Memory of Trees, on which “China Roses” appears, is an adaptation of The Young King of the Black Isles, a Maxfield Parrish painting (1906), shown on the left below, that’s based on the story of the same name from The Thousand Nights and One Night; Enya herself is shown as the crying young king on his throne (right).

*

Each of the “1001 Nights” stories, told by Scheherazade to King Shahryār to prevent him from killing her, ends when dawn — the break of morning — arrives, the dangerous time when 1,000 women before her were executed dawn by dawn by the king.

The collection conjures an exotic world. That world may not seem a heaven to me, but it has become a sort of dreamy (also nightmarey) land of jinns, ghouls, magic lamps, flying carpets, sexual and romantic love, and of the power of fate, destiny, and stories themselves in our lives. As novelist A.S. Byatt remarks in “Narrate Or Die: Why Scheherazade keeps on talking” in the New York Times (1999), “[i]n British Romantic poetry, ‘The Arabian Nights’ stood for the wonderful against the mundane, the imaginative against the prosaically and reductively rational.”

“The Tale of the Eldest of Three Ladies of Baghdad” – Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen

Byatt, in the New York Times article cited above, connects Scheherazade’s storytelling with our own narratives, with storytelling in general, in its ability to keep us alive and hopeful:

“This story has everything a tale should have. Sex, death, treachery, vengeance, magic, humor, warmth, wit, surprise and a happy ending. Though it appears to be a story against women, it actually marks the creation of one of the strongest and cleverest heroines in world literature. Shahrazad, who has been better known in the West as Scheherazade, triumphs because she is endlessly inventive and keeps her head. The stories in ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ (interchangeably known as ‘The Arabian Nights’) are stories about storytelling without ever ceasing to be stories about love and life and death and money and food and other human necessities. … [S]torytelling is intrinsic to biological time, which we cannot escape. Life, Pascal said, is like living in a prison from which every day fellow prisoners are taken away to be executed. We are all, like Scheherazade, under sentence of death, and we all think of our lives as narratives, with beginnings, middles and ends.

“Storytelling in general, and ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ in particular, consoles us for endings with endless new beginnings. … Storytellers like … Scheherazade can offer readers and listeners an infinity of incipits, an illusion of inexhaustibility.”

That infinity of new beginnings, new auroras, that storytelling offers perhaps consoles us because it reminds us, below consciousness, of the ever-new eternity of heaven.

“If you think about why any story moves us, it’s because of a quaking moment of recognition. It’s never the shock of the new, it’s the shock of the familiar.” — Joshua Oppenheimer

*

“The Thousand Nights and One Night” (Persian Hezār-o yek šab, Arabic Kitāb ‘alf layla wa-layla) is a collection of tales that trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Greek, Indian, Jewish, and Turkish folklore and literature. The earliest Arabic versions, dating from the 9th century in Syria, contained about 300 nights, with the rest added by Arab writers and European translators over time. A 14th-century Syrian manuscript has no narrative ending, while an early 19th-century Egyptian publication ends with the King pardoning Scheherazade.

The first publication in Europe was a French translation (Galland’s) in the early 1700s, loosely adapted from a 14th-century Syrian text. Richard Burton’s 19th century version is probably the most famous. Translations and editions by Malcolm and Ursula Lyons (2008) and Joseph Charles Mardrus (French, 1926-1932) are also considered standards now. The stories best known to Westerners (especially those who watch cartoons and Disney movies) are “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (where ‘Open Sesame’ comes from) and “Aladdin” (both added by Galland) and “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad,” from a 1637 Turkish edition.

“The Overseer’s Tale” – Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen

*

The Thousand Nights and One Night is a frame story, i.e., the tales are told within another story, the story of a Vizier’s daughter, Scheherazade, and a betrayed and vengeful King Shahryār. Wikipedia summarises:

“Shahryār is shocked to learn that his brother’s wife is unfaithful; discovering that his own wife’s infidelity has been even more flagrant, he has her killed. In his bitterness and grief, he decides that all women are the same. Shahryār begins to marry a succession of virgins only to execute each one the next morning, before she has a chance to dishonor him. Eventually the vizier, whose duty it is to provide them, cannot find any more virgins. Scheherazade …, the vizier’s daughter, offers herself as the next bride and her father reluctantly agrees. On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, but does not end it. The king, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear the conclusion. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins another one, and the king, eager to hear the conclusion of that tale as well, postpones her execution once again. This goes on for one thousand and one nights, hence the name.

The tales include “historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques, and various forms of erotica. Numerous stories depict jinns, ghouls, apes, sorcerers, magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally. … Sometimes a character in Scheherazade’s tale will begin telling other characters a story of his own, and that story may have another one told within it, resulting in a richly layered narrative texture.”

Scheherazade tells her stories and is pardoned each morning for three years, during which she bears three sons by the king, until finally she tells him she’s out of stories and is prepared to be killed. But! The king has fallen for her and her entrancing stories; he  declares her wise and makes her his forever Queen.

“The Tale of the Third Dervish” – Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen

The themes of the stories include fate, destiny, self-fulfilling prophecy, coincidence, guarded treasures, good and evil, love, the rise from poverty to prosperity, the oppressor and the oppressed, trust and betrayal, et al.  The clever Scheherazade incorporates foreshadowing, allegory, fantasy and magical elements, parables, the use of an unreliable narrator, repetition, poetry, satire, and stories-within-stories as she weaves her tales that span genres of romance, fairy tales, crime fiction, horror, fantasy, and even science fiction.

As Jaimie L. Elliott writes in an article at Myth Conceptions, “A Thousand Nights and One Night is vulgar, satirical, humorous, sexist, racist, xenophobic, violent, and brimming with magic. A Thousand Nights and One Night is also lyrical, profound, tragic, tolerant, serene, beautiful, and replete with the mundane.”

*

The orchestral suite “Scheherazade” (1888) by Russian composer Nicolay Rimsky-Korsakov was inspired by The Thousand Nights and One Night and tells the story with “a kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images.” The suite is structured in four movements, originally untitled but later given names by one of Rimsky-Korsakov’s students; the composer himself didn’t intend for the suite to portray the tale as a whole or in part but rather “meant these hints [themes] to direct but slightly the hearer’s fancy on the path which my own fancy had traveled, and to leave more minute and particular conceptions to the will and mood of each” (Rimsky-Korsakov quoted in an essay at Britannica)

_____________________________________________________________________________

The illustrations here are from watercolours by Danish artist Kay Nielsen, painted by him in during World War I but never published until 2018, by Taschen. (More)

Some Resources: Literature / Arabian Nights at TV Tropes frame tales: comparison of Decameron and 1001 Nights by Douglas Galbi at purple motes The 10 Greatest Stories From 1,001 Nights by Courtney Stanley at Culture Trip, 28 October 2016 A Thousand Nights and One Night by Jaimie L. Elliott at Myth Conceptions One Thousand and One Nights at Wikipedia

*

Tomorrow: Earth’s last picture

*

Astronomers Locate a New Planet by Matthew Olzmann

“Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.” —Reuters, 8/24/2011

Like the universe’s largest engagement ring, it twirls and sparkles its way through infinity. The citizens of the new world know about luxury. They can live for a thousand years. Their hearts are little clocks with silver pendulums pulsing inside, Eyes like onyx, teeth like pearl. But it’s not always easy. They know hunger. They starve. A field made of diamond is impossible to plow; shovels crumble and fold like paper animals. So frequent is famine, that when two people get married, one gives the other a locket filled with dirt. That’s the rare thing, the treasured thing, there. It takes decades to save for, but the ground beneath them glows, and people find a way.

On Earth, when my wife is sleeping, I like to look out at the sky. I like to watch TV shows about supernovas, and contemplate things that are endless like the heavens and, maybe, love. I can drink coffee and eat apples whenever I want. Things grow everywhere, and so much is possible, but on the news tonight: a debate about who can love each other forever and who cannot.

There was a time when it would’ve been illegal for my wife to be my wife. Her skin, my household of privilege. Sometimes, I wish I could move to another planet. Sometimes, I wonder what worlds are out there. I turn off the TV because the news rarely makes the right decision on its own. But even as the room goes blacker than the gaps between galaxies, I can hear the echoes: who is allowed to hold the ones they wish to hold, who can reach into the night, who can press his or her own ear against another’s chest and listen to a heartbeat telling stories in the dark.

Featured image: The cover of volume 2 of The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights, Malcolm & Ursula Lyons., Penguin Classics.

Write 28 Days: Have Heaven ~ Day 9 :: Fairy Tales Welcome to day 9 of 28 Days of Have Heaven, a short month of posts about heaven, paradise, perfection and desire, perfect places, art, theology, gardens, and more, using the Enya song "China Roses" as a jumping off point.

[ageeksnerdyworld]

Friendly reminder that Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves are all Arabic characters and stories. Some free facts:

–All three are part of the story collection One Thousand and One Nights. Better known by it’s English title Arabian Nights.

–Arabian Nights is told in the “story within a story” format. The main story is about the king who learns that his wife has been cheating. He executes her and then proceeds to marry a bunch of virgins only to kill them on the wedding night. Then Scheherazade, daughter of the vizier, offers to marry the king. To escape being executed she tells him a story but does not finish. Curious as to the ending the king postpones her death. Night after night she tells him a new tale. Continuing for 1001 nights. Thus the title of the story collection.

–Arabian Nights contains some real life historical figures. Jafar al-Barmaki: Grand Vizier to Harun al-Rashid. Harun himself. The poet Abu Nuwas.

–Jafar is in multiple stories. None of which are Aladdin’s tale. And Jafar is a protagonist in each of them.

–Lots of famous authors are said to have taken inspiration from the stories: Geoffrey Chaucher, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Dickens, James Joyce, Conan Doyle, Alexandre Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, H. G. Wells, Yeats, Salman Rushdie, H. P. Lovecraft & many more.

–Sinbad the Sailor went on seven voyages in his story. The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor is also told in the story within a story format. He tells the stories to another man named Sinbad. The second one is a poor porter.

–Sinbad the Sailor is from Baghdad. The start of the story takes place there so it’s safe to assume Sinbad the Porter is from Baghdad as well.

–Each voyage has something horrible happens to Sinbad. Mostly almost dying. In one voyage he almost got eaten by cannibals. Another he was buried alive and had to escape via catacombs. Another he was attacked by a giant bird.

–Edgar Allan Poe wrote an eighth voyage for Sinbad the Sailor entitled The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade. It’s partly paying homage/in celebration of the collection and part humor. Crazy things happen in it and angered by this the king repeatedly interrupts Scheherazade. At the end of Poe’s tale the king has her executed.

–Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp was not originally in Arabian Nights. It was added later by a 18th century Frenchman Antoine Galland. Galland added the story when he translated the collection.

–Despite not being in the original draft Aladdin’s story is the most well known.

–Aladdin had a father named Mustafa. He was a tailor but is dead at the time of the story. Aladdin’s mom does appear in the story. He was not an orphan.

–An unnamed sorcerer is the one to convince Aladdin to get the lamp. Who does so by pretending to be Aladdin’s long-lost uncle. The sorcerer traps him in the cave. Then after Aladdin marries the princess the sorcerer steals the lamp. Aladdin uses the ring genie to find the sorcerer and kills him.

–There were two genies (or jinn) in the story. One from the lamp and another from a ring.

–The ring genie is the one who saves Aladdin from the cave.

–He takes the lamp home & his mother is the one to rub it. The second genie is more powerful but does not obey Aladdin as Aladdin didn’t rub the lamp.

–The princess’ name in the story is Badroulbadour. Translates to “full moon of full moons”. The moon is a measure of female beauty throughout Arabian Nights so this is basically saying that she’s the most beautiful woman in the world by comparing her to the moon twice.

–The princess is arranged to marry the vizier’s son. Not the vizier himself. But Aladdin foils that plan by having the genie bring them to his house. Genie transports their bed there & Aladdin makes the genie take the groom outside in the cold until morning. And Aladdin sleeps next to Badroulbadour.

--The first sorcerer takes revenge on Aladdin by stealing the lamp. Then having the lamp genie transport the castle somewhere else. With Badroulbadour in it. Aladdin uses the ring genie to get there.

--The sorcerer’s brother cross-dresses as a female faith healer to fool Aladdin and kill him. The sorcerer killed the real faith healer. But the lamp genie tells Aladdin about it. Aladdin kills the sorcerer and everyone lives happily ever after.

–Originally the story of Aladdin takes place somewhere in China. Most historians don’t know why it’s stated to take place there because everything else is Arabic. Names, descriptions of places, etc. so it was changed. But explanation for this is that at the time the stories were written, around the 15th century, the Middle East stretched all the way to present day China.

–Ali Baba was the son of a wealthy merchant. When his dad died his elder brother, Cassim, marries into wealth and builds on the business. Ali marries poor and became a woodcutter.

–While cutting wood one day Ali overhears 40 thieves opening thier secret cave treasure stash. He goes in after they leave and steals a single bag of gold.

–He borrows a scale from his sister-in-law. Unbeknownst to Ali she planted some wax on the scale. So Cassim and his wife find out about the gold. Ali then reveals the cave and it’s secret password to his brother.

–Cassim goes in but in his excitement & greed he forgets the password to get out. The thieves find him and kill him. They display his chopped up body in the cave entrance as a warning.

–Ali takes his brother’s body home. He gives one of the slaves girls a task to make everyone think Cassim died of natural causes.

–The girl pretends that Cassim is sick. Then employs a tailor, who probably is Aladdin’s dad as he is only mentioned as being named Mustafa, to stitch the body. She accomplishes this by blindfolding him.

–The thieves go back to the cave and find the body missing. While in town to investigate they hear Mustafa saying he stitched up a body. They make him mark the door of the place he did this.

–But the slave girl sees them so she goes around marking all the doors in the village. She does this again the next night when they chip the steps to Ali’s house. The leader of the group kills the unsuccessful thivees. The third time the leader goes to Ali’s house himself pretending to need his help. He hides all the remaining 37 thieves in giant vases.

–The slave girl kills them all in the middle of the night by pouring boiling oil over them. Ali rewards her by giving her her freedom.

–The leader becomes a merchant himself to enact revenge on Ali. He befriends Ali’s son and goes to dinner at the Baba residence. The slave girl recognizes him and stabs him in the heart. Ali rewards her by marrying her to his son.

–In Disney’s Aladdin there’s many references to the story. And in the movie franchise’s third installment Aladdin and the King of Thieves Cassim is Aladdin’s dad and the leader of the group. King of Thieves is very different from the story as Aladdin takes on Ali’s role. Also employs part of the story of King Midas.

[priestofdeath-blog]

Incredibly unimpressive and messy doodle of Jinn Galland

[legend-collection]

Ghoul

The ghoul or ghul is said to dwell in cemeteries and other uninhabited places. A male ghoul is referred to as ghul while the female is called ghulah. A source identified the Arabic ghoul as a female creature who is sometimes called Mother Ghoul (ʾUmm Ghulah) or a relational term such as Aunt Ghoul. She is portrayed in many tales luring hapless characters, who are usually men, into her home where she can eat them.

Some state that a ghoul is a desert-dwelling, shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. It lures unwary people into the desert wastes or abandoned places to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, drinks blood, steals coins, and eats the dead, then taking the form of the person most recently eaten. One of the narratives identified a ghoul named Ghul-e Biyaban, a particularly monstrous character believed to be inhabiting the wilderness of Afghanistan and Iran.

It was not until Antoine Galland translated One Thousand and One Nights into French that the Western concept of ghouls was introduced into European society. Galland depicted the ghoul as a monstrous creature that dwelled in cemeteries, feasting upon corpses.

Ghoul are not mentioned in the Quran, but in hadith. While some consider the ghoul to be a type of jinn, other exegetes of the Quran (tafsir) conjectured that the ghouls are burned devils. Accordingly, the shayatin (devils) once had access to the heavens, where they eavesdropped, and returned to Earth to pass hidden knowledge to the soothsayers. When Jesus was born, three heavenly spheres were forbidden to them. With the arrival of Muhammad, the other four were forbidden. The marid among the shayatin continued to rise to the heavens, but were burned by comets. If these comets didn't burn them to death, they were deformed and driven to insanity. They then fell to the deserts and were doomed to roam the earth as ghouls.

In one hadith it is said, lonely travelers can escape a ghoul's attack by repeating the call to prayer  When reciting the Verse of the Throne, a ghoul might decide to convert to Islam. The ghoul could appear in male and female shape, but usually appears female to lure on male travelers to devour them. Al-Masudi reports that on his journey to Syria, Umar slayed a ghoul with his sword. According to Tarikh al-Tabari, the rebellious (maradatuhum) among the devils and the ghouls have been chased away to the deserts and mountains and valleys, a long time ago.

[priestofdeath-blog]

Jinn Galland