In The Great Khan’s Tent Episode XXI: The Arabian Nights Part XIX

In the Great Khan’s Tent

In this Episode, we conclude the story “The Story told by the Sultan’s Steward” with Night XXVIII and beginning the story “The Story told by the Jewish Physician”.

Once again, in a similar vein to the stories told in this cycle, the main character for the story told by the Jewish Physician is a merchant, this time from Mosul, who travels to cities of Aleppo and Damascus and by the time we reach the end of this episode, he has run away to Cario. There is a clear indication that these stories all seem to focus around the travel either to or from Cario and it seems that this city was the city to go to for every merchant, at least in the stories we have encountered so far.

Another common theme that seems to be in this cycle of stories is the harm brought out by falling in love, whether it be the death of a loved one, the harm brought to the protagonist through his love for a woman, and in this story the murder of a luckless damsel by another while he was sleeping. This may be a reflection of the costs of falling in love too quickly.

An important historical figure, that of the lady Zubeydah the wife of the Khalifa Harun al-Rashid, also features in the story told by the Steward. It is interesting to note that there is no recorded reaction to this story by Harun al-Rashid, who is listening to this cycle of stories from his vizier Jaf’ar al-Barmaki, to his wife making an appearance, playing a large role in how the protagonist from the Steward’s story ends up with his eventual wife, and how he was living in his private quarters for a considerable period of time. I would make the assumption that he would not have been very pleased by this revelation.