he founding of Bagdad by the Abbasides, Persian influence
begins to make itself felt, not only in politics but in literature
also, although Arabic was the sole language of the empire of the
Caliphs. The greatest literary work in this literature is the famous
"Arabian Nights," an anonymous collection of tales connected by a
thread of narrative. Its purport is that an Eastern monarch, "to
protect himself against the craft and infidelity of women resolves
that the wife he chooses him every day shall be put to death before
the next." Two sisters devote their lives to put an end to such
massacres. The eldest, who becomes the king's wife, begs that her
sister may spend the last night of her life in their room. At dawn the
royal bride entertains her sister with a story which is cleverly left
unfinished. Such is the sultan's curiosity to hear the end, that the
bride of a night is not slain, as usual. But as soon as one tale is
ended another is begun, and for one thousand and one nights the clever
narrator keeps her audience of two in suspense. Most of the tales told
in this collection are obviously of Persian origin, and are contained
in the Hasar Afsana (The Thousand Tales) which was translated into
Arabic in the tenth century. But some authorities claim that these
stories originated in India and were brought into Persia before
Alexander's conquests. These tales are so popular that they have been
translated into every civilized language and are often termed prose
epics.
Arabic also boasts a romance of chivalry entitled "Romance of
'Antar,'" ascribed to Al Asmai (739-831), which contains the chief
events in Arab history before the advent of Mahomet and is hence often
termed the Arab Iliad.
The "Romance of Beni Hilal" and that of "Abu Zaid," which form part of
a cycle of 38 legends, are popular in Egypt to this day.
THE SHAH-NAMEH, OR EPIC OF KINGS
This Persian epic was composed by the poet Abul Kasin Mansur, who sang
so sweetly that his master termed him Firdusi, or Singer of Paradise,
by which name he is best known, although he is also called the "Homer
of the East." Mahmoud, Shah of Persia, who lived about 920 B.C.,
decided to have the chronicles of the land put into rhyme, and engaged
Firdusi for this piece of work, promising him a thousand gold pieces
for every thousand distichs he finished. Firdusi, who had long wished
to build stone embankments for the river whose overflow devastated his
native town, begg
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