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ONCE UPON A TIME, as all best-loved stories start, there lived a king who had become disillusioned with marriage. He was so afraid of his wife's possible infidelity that he decided to marry a new wife each night, and have her killed in the morning before she could betray his love. Shahrazada was the unlucky girl selected one night, but, anxious to save her life, she told the king a story that was not finished when morning came. The king wanted to hear the end of Shahrazada's tale, and so spared her life for another night. On the next night she finished the first story and was halfway through another when morning came, so the king spared her life yet again. And so it went on night after night for 1001 nights. The tales that Shahrazada is said to have told the king - a collection of fairy tales and love stories - have been passed down from generation to generation, told and retold a million times by people who have thrilled to the adventures related in the tales of The Thousand and One Nights (or The Arabian Nights Entertainments), the world's best-known work of Arab literature. But the tales of the Arabian Nights are not purely works of invention, figments of a fertile imagination. They are based on a real place, with recognizable people appearing in the stories. For once, fact is stranger than fiction. The world of the Arabian Nights is the world of medieval Baghdad, founded in 762 by the Muslim Abbasid dynasty as the capital of an Islamic kingdom that stretched from Egypt to India. Its ruler, Harun ar-Rashid, was the fifth Abbasid caliph, and the most powerful man of his day, a romantic hero whose glittering reign (786 - 809) is the subject of so many of the Arabian Nights tales. Harun was a connoisseur of music and poetry, a generous patron of the arts. The tales in which he appears portray him as the ideal ruler: just, honourable, and generous: disguised and accompanied by a few close friends, he rambled around Baghdad at night, championing the oppressed and punishing rogues and cheats. Some of the more scurrilous tales, it is true, represent Baghdad's ruler as a drunkard. Since the Koran expressly forbids alcohol, this would have been scandalous, and therefore unlikely, behaviour for a devout caliph. The city he ruled over provides the setting for many of the tales. Baghdad was a rich city, soaking up the mercantile wealth of the East. It was said to be so rich that you would be as unlikely to find a poor man in Baghdad as a Koran in the house of an atheist. Baghdad's leading men, still more their many wives, enjoyed the high life. They competed among themselves in conspicuous consumption, building luxurious houses, and sponsoring lavish entertainments. In his vast Golden Palace, the caliph presided over a court life that was polished, opulent, and fabulously rich. There were theologians, scholars, and philosophers to cater for the intellect, while bards, jesters, and singing girls catered for the emotions. The slave trade in Baghdad was a thriving industry, and gifted slave girls went through a rigorous physical and intellectual training before being put on the luxury slave market. Vocal music was encouraged, and royal concubines whose skill of voice and verse charmed the heart of the caliph might hope to emerge from the seclusion of the harem into prominence. Harun's redoubtable mother, Khayzuran, who dominated affairs of state until her death in 789, started her career as a slave girl. His most important wife, an Arab princess by the name of Zubaydah, was also a forceful personality, dazzling the court with her style and grace, and eating only from gold and silver dishes that were studded with gems. But life in Harun's Baghdad was not all pleasure, and Harun not always the munificent benefactor of entertainment and enjoyment. Despite his impressive gifts and winning personality, he was also capricious, and at times cruel, small-minded, and vindictive. This darker side of his character is illustrated by the tragic fate of the celebrated Barmakid family. Muslim, but Persian rather than Arab, the Barmakids had been the devoted administrators and counsellors of the Abbasids for three generations. They ran the government and their personal wealth was at the disposal of Harun's extravagant court. But Arab oil and Persian water would not mix, and in 803 Harun turned against his trusted servants, and had Jafar Barmakid, for long his companion at private parties and court festivities, murdered. While Jafar's corpse was displayed on a Baghdad bridge, the rest of his family were imprisoned and their goods confiscated. Contemporaries suggested that Harun's wrath had been provoked by a love affair between Jafar and the caliph's own sister Abbasah, and even alleged that in his fury Harun had Abbasah buried alive. Quite what provoked this revenge will never be known, but it probably owes much to Harun's resentment at Barmakid influence over affairs of state, and to feuds between his Persian subjects, who tolerated Jews and Christians, and his more orthodox Arab subjects. The queen mother, Khayzuran, the Persians' most important champion at court, was dead, and the favourite wife, the haughty Zubaydah, is said to have despised them. Whatever else the court of Harun was, it was obviously a hotbed of jealousy and intrigue. After the disgrace of the Barmakids, Harun's reign was troubled. Faced with internal revolt and racial conflict, the caliph attempted to solve his problems by dividing his state between two of his sons, one a pure-blooded Arab, the other the son of a Persian slave woman. But this division only institutionalized the rifts, and Harun, for all his many gifts, was no able administrator. Without the Barmakids to help him, his empire crumbled. When he died in 809, the civil war that had been brewing broke out almost immediately, and the authority of the Abbasid caliphs was soon diminished. But reminders of the brilliant Islamic culture presided over by Harun are to be found in the art and architecture of his reign that still survive in the modern Islamic world. It is therefore appropriate that those he treated best - the poets and storytellers who entertained his court - should have rewarded their generous patron and his glittering city of Baghdad with immortality in the tales of the Arabian Nights. Bill Hutchings |
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page last updated 1 APRIL 2000 |
