...Marvels Tales, relegated to a note by its nineteenth-century translator Edward Lane, and Arabic scholars have not acknowledged its importance.

The prologue tale recounts events that took place during the search for a tale titled "Sayf al-Muluk." A distinct narrative unit, the prologue tale's separate cast of characters does not appear in "Sayf al-Muluk," and hence it is as if acquiring a written copy of the tale completely achieves the prologue's purpose. The prologue, a narration about narration, arouses a feeling of "lack" or "deficit" requiring a subsequent narration to liquidate that deficit. The deficit-producing narration about narration motivates the episodes, until the lack is liquidated by a quest that results in the acquisition of a written copy of the tale.

The prologue's quest and the incidents that comprise it grow out of scenes and practices within the Arabic world of narration and tale transmission, just as the actual storytellers and writers of the Nights themselves did. Viewed in this manner, the prologue to "Sayf al-Muluk" derives its content from the written tradition of the tales in the Nights and provides the only trace of their written transmission evident within the Nights.

Prologue Tale Content

An initial approach to the "Sayf al-Muluk" prologue requires a review of its contents to lay out its constituent elements, its morphological features, and its statements about itself. The first element is the tale opener, a customary invocation that refers readers to the overall frame of the Nights tales, in which Scheherezade repeatedly resumes narrating, adding the tale she is about to narrate to her ongoing narration, just as the prologue tale sets about adding a tale to the overall collection of tales. The prologue tale's formulaic introductory words take us into the realm of the tale and introduce the first of its characters, "a just, brave, generous, liberal King ... [who] was fond of conversations over the cup, and traditions and verses, and histories and tales, and night-discourses, and the lives of the ancients." (1)

The king's love for tales sets the prologue tale's subject and determines its action: widespread knowledge of his generous rewards for good tales draws storytellers to him. The king chose Hasan, a merchant and confidante who also loved tales, to find an extraordinary story, the like of which he had never heard, and promised him rich gifts if he liked the tale Hasan found but dire punishments should he fail.

To carry out his assignment Hasan selected five qualified (literate, virtuous, reasonable, highly cultured) mamelukes from his household retainers. (2) He gave each five thousand pieces of gold and dispatched them to the corners of the known world--Persia, China, India, Morocco, and Syria/Egypt--to search for "Sayf al-Muluk" among "the learned, and the accomplished in polite literature, and the excellent in science, and the relaters of extraordinary tales and wonderful histories" and to pay its owner however much he asked for it. Hasan further promised to reward the one who brought him the tale with great gifts and the assurance that "none [would be] dearer than he."

The first four mamelukes returned empty-handed, but the fifth went to Syria and in Damascus encountered a young man hurrying to hear "an excellent sheykh, who every day seateth himself upon a stool at this time, and relateth pleasant tales and histories and night-stories, the like of which no one hath heard; and I am running that I may find for myself a place near unto him, and fear that I shall not obtain a place, on account of the crowd."

When the mameluke reached the place where the sheikh "recited amid the people," he saw a sheikh sitting on a chair, talking to the audience. When the sun set, the sheikh had ended his story and the audience dispersed. Then the fifth mameluke approached him with a respectful greeting and asked if he had "the night-story of Seyf-el-Mulook." The storyteller replied that this was not a story for "the beaten way"--that is, for the general public--nor could it be given to just anyone.

The mameluke's repeated requests finally led the storyteller to agree to give it to him for 110 dinars--that is, 110 pieces of gold--but also to say that he would attach five as yet unspecified conditions. The next morning the mameluke paid for the story and then, in a detailed catalog of writing events, sat down with writing tools and began to transcribe the story. When he had finished, the mameluke read it aloud, the sheikh corrected his transcription, and then laid out the five prohibitions. It might not be told (1) in the beaten way, (2) among women and slave girls, (3) among male black slaves and stupid persons, nor (4) among adolescent boys, but (5) only among "emeers and kings and wezeers" and persons of knowledge, such as...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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