The Arabian Nights Adventures (British Edition)

By Tahir Shah

For a thousand nights, ruthless King Shahriyar weds a new bride at dusk, only to have her executed the following dawn. Fearing for their lives, the kingdom's young women are in hiding, or have already fled.

 

A request arrives for Scheherazade, the wise and beautiful daughter of the chief vizier, to be married to the cruel and cold-blooded king. But rather than flee, she accepts the invitation.

 

Having received instructions from the friendly Blue Witch, Scheherazade is wed to the king. In the royal apartment, an hourglass is turned, the falling grains of sand marking the last hours of her life. Rather than resigning herself to fate, Scheherazade does something none of the other brides dared to do...

 

She begins to tell a story.

 

Casting a pinch of magic dust into the brazier, the tale she spins comes to life in the fire's flames. At first, all is well, and the king is amused. But, suddenly, the story goes awry - thrown off-kilter by a spell cast by King Shahriyar's own magician.

 

Scheherazade finds herself magically transported to a distant desert caravanserai, where she is joined by three others - Sindbad the Sailor, Aladdin, and Ali Baba. The lives of all four depend on getting the story back on track. And the only way to do that is to locate the story's seed - the seed of The Thousand and One Nights.

 

A fabulous tale of mystery, magic, and a daring quest, The Arabian Nights Adventures throws together the main protagonists from the greatest and most important collection of stories ever assembled.

 

An award-winning writer, storyteller, and expert in The Thousand and One Nights, Tahir Shah brings the ancient treasury of tales to life in a vibrant new way, recalibrating it for the time in which we live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781914960215

Book preview

Books By Tahir Shah

Travel

Trail of Feathers

Travels With Myself

Beyond the Devil’s Teeth

In Search of King Solomon’s Mines

House of the Tiger King

In Arabian Nights

The Caliph’s House

Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Journey Through Namibia

Novels

Jinn Hunter: Book One – The Prism

Jinn Hunter: Book Two – The Jinnslayer

Jinn Hunter: Book Three – The Perplexity

Hannibal Fogg and the Supreme Secret of Man

Hannibal Fogg and the Codex Cartographica

Casablanca Blues

Eye Spy

Godman

Paris Syndrome

Timbuctoo

Nasrudin

Travels With Nasrudin

The Misadventures of the Mystifying Nasrudin

The Peregrinations of the Perplexing Nasrudin

The Voyages and Vicissitudes of Nasrudin

Nasrudin in the Land of Fools

Teaching Stories

The Arabian Nights Adventures

Scorpion Soup

Tales Told to a Melon

The Afghan Notebook

The Caravanserai Stories

Ghoul Brothers

Hourglass

Imaginist

Jinn’s Treasure

Jinnlore

Mellified Man

Skeleton Island

Wellspring

When the Sun Forgot to Rise

Outrunning the Reaper

The Cap of Invisibility

On Backgammon Time

The Wondrous Seed

The Paradise Tree

Mouse House

The Hoopoe’s Flight

The Old Wind

A Treasury of Tales

Daydreams of an Octopus and Other Stories

Miscellaneous

The Reason to Write

Zigzag Think

Being Myself

Research

Cultural Research

The Middle East Bedside Book

Three Essays

Anthologies

The Anthologies

The Clockmaker’s Box

The Tahir Shah Fiction Reader

The Tahir Shah Travel Reader

Edited by

Congress With a Crocodile

A Son of a Son, Volume I

A Son of a Son, Volume II

Screenplays

Casablanca Blues: The Screenplay

Timbuctoo: The Screenplay

Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd

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First published by Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd, 2021

VERSION 03112021

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ADVENTURES

© TAHIR SHAH

Tahir Shah asserts the right to be identified as the Author of the Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Visit the author’s website at:

Tahirshah.com

ISBN 978-1-914960-21-5

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

For Sebastian

A magical boy, and a bridge –

Between Occident & Orient

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Thirty-one

Thirty-two

Thirty-three

Thirty-four

Thirty-five

Thirty-six

Thirty-seven

One

SEIZED BY THE

royal guard, the queen was dragged from the palace, and out to a bare patch of ground beyond the city walls…

…A patch of ground damp with blood.

The hood was jerked down into place.

A warrant bearing the king’s coat of arms was presented to the executioner.

The prisoner was ordered to kneel.

Her delicate neck was forced against the wooden block, her nightdress flapping in the breeze.

Wheeling up into the dawn light, the axe fell.

Without ceremony or remorse, the queen’s limp body was interred beside a thousand others.

As it was lowered into the grave, a desert wind tinged with dread tore through the capital.

Every young woman yet to be married was hidden away, for fear she’d be sent an invitation to her own wedding – a marriage to the cold-blooded King Shahriyar.

A marriage that invariably ended the same way – in a dawn appointment with the executioner’s axe.

Yet another queen for a single night.

Two

A PALL OF

terror hung over the land.

The king’s spies were everywhere – searching for young women to be married at sunset, then executed at dawn. No one dared go out of their homes, in case an informant remembered they had a daughter, a sister, cousin, or niece.

Some families disguised their girls as boys, and smuggled them over the mountains to far-off lands. Most simply locked them away, refusing to allow them out, in fear theirs would be the next delicate neck on the executioner’s block.

In the shadow of the palace, the king’s vizier, Jafar, was sitting at the window of his home, pondering yet again how to put the bloodbath to an end. His wife blustered in, broke down in tears, and implored her husband to plead with the king.

‘There’s nothing I can do,’ he answered. ‘He’s made up his mind. However hard I try, I can’t talk sense into him. As you know, he’s vowed to continue in this way – vengeance for the queen’s infidelity.’

At that moment, the vizier’s daughter entered. Her name was Scheherazade, and she was the apple of his eye. As keenly quick-witted as she was beautiful, she was blessed with a radiance that touched all who met her.

In her hand was a magnificent unopened envelope, her name inscribed beautifully on the front.

As soon as he saw it, the vizier choked back tears.

Unlike her father, Scheherazade didn’t seem fearful so much as resolute.

‘Dearest father,’ she said, her tone reflective, ‘I’ve made my decision.’

Her father stared deep into his daughter’s eyes.

‘I shall have a doctor swear that you’re deranged!’ he cried. ‘Or have you smuggled over the border!’

‘No, father,’ Scheherazade answered. Opening the envelope, she read her name on the wedding invitation. ‘I shall agree to his wishes, and be the king’s next bride.’

Jafar leapt up.

‘No no no!’ he wailed, pulling his beloved daughter close, and scolding her at the same time. ‘Put such senseless thoughts out of your head at once!’

But Scheherazade was adamant.

‘If I don’t wed him, another girl will be beheaded at dawn,’ she said.

Bereft, the vizier replied:

‘But at least it wouldn’t be my daughter’s head that falls.’

All morning, Scheherazade pleaded with her parents, and all morning they refused to let her be wed to the tyrannical king.

After what seemed like an eternity of argument, she motioned to the window. A splendid blue butterfly was flapping inside the glass, desperately trying to escape.

‘See how it yearns to reach its destiny,’ she said, opening the window.

Her father frowned as the insect flapped out into the sky.

‘A pigeon could feast on it as soon as it’s free.’

Scheherazade smiled.

‘But, what if, by some strange quirk of fate, that little butterfly could prevent all the other butterflies from being trapped?’

And so it was that, with much sorrow, the vizier and his wife agreed to allow their daughter to wed King Shahriyar.

Three

AS WORD OF

the engagement was proclaimed throughout the kingdom, and a trousseau was prepared, Scheherazade took one last stroll alone through the market.

Covering herself with a simple cloak, she slipped out from the back door, promising to be back in time for the procession to the palace at dusk.

But rather than heading into the city, Scheherazade made her way in the opposite direction. Her feet moving as briskly as they could manage, she ventured over the river, across the floodplain, and into the forest.

Every parent warned their children to keep far away from that place, for fear that the witches living there would turn them into frogs. The ears of every child in the kingdom had heard stories of the dark arts, and had nightmares of the sorcery lurking there.

Every single child was terrified, that is, except the vizier’s daughter.

While the other children followed their parents’ advice, Scheherazade