A List of Medical Texts
Nights 52-69
We start with a surprise death: Ghabdan kills off a character. And so far, he gets away with it!
Our attention shifts to the prince and princess, before landing on Princess Nuzhat for most of it. She gets what is becoming a somewhat standard role reversal in The Arabian Nights. She is first captured by a bad guy: a Bedouin slaver who “was a bastard, a highway robber, a betrayer of companions, a thief and a wily schemer” (p. 356, night 55). After a while, he sells her to a merchant. The merchant recognizes her value and eventually sells her to Prince Sharkan, Nuzhat’s half-brother.
You can see how The Arabian Nights is a story for merchants. We get details on the purchase terms of Princess Nuzhat from the slaver to merchant and merchant to prince. We can calculate the merchant’s profit percentage (37.5%). I believe we are also meant to admire his shrewd negotiations. As part of the merchant’s sale to the prince, the merchant also receives “an order written freeing him in perpetuity from having to pay tithes or taxes on his goods.” (pp. 366-367, night 59)
In part, the merchant recognizes the value of Princess Nuzhat from what she claims to have read. I always like a good list of books in a book. Nuzhat has read the following: the Preface to Science, Galen’s commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, the Tadhkira, the Burhan, the Mufradat of Ibn al-Baitar, and the Meccan Canon of Avicenna. (pp. 363-364, night 58). The Preface and Tadhkira have titles that are too general to find precisely, but the others are discussed here, here, and here respectively.
After Nuzhat is sold to Prince Sharkan, his court is impressed with her knowledge. She gives a long discourse (nights 60-66). Eventually she says, “I cannot produce all that is to be found here in one session, but good will come of it if it is spread over a period of days” (night 67, p. 381). But she doesn’t. She stops, and Sharkan rushes their marriage. A big tone shift here, which had been looming for pages. Sharkan deflowers and impregnates his sister. They realize their incest too late, and as a reader, I didn’t really think they would go there. It made me think of Shahrazad avoiding sex through stories. If Nuzhat had kept going with her discourse (however boring or disjointed it was compared to the rest of the Nights), they may have learned of their familial status before making a mistake. Nuzhat gets a baby daughter from it; we’ll see the other ramifications later.
Regarding Magic cards, I don’t see anything new here. I thought Ghadban the character may have been an inspiration for Ghazban Ogre. Could be! “Ghazban” is not a real Arabic word, but “Ghadban” (غاضب) is “angry.” An old article claims that “Ghazban” was supposed to be an adaptation of “treacherous.” If the Ghazban Ogre really is a depiction of “Ghadban” the brutish black slave, it might be a bit racist! As if the Ghaban Ogress controversy weren’t bad enough . . .