The Annotated Arabian Nights

Yasmine Seale, trans.: The Annotated Arabian Nights. Ed. Paulo Lemos Horta (2021)

A new translation of the Thousand and One Nights can be quite a hard sell. You'll note that I've listed some 27 of them at the foot of this post - and that's just a selection ...

They range from the first - and still most influential - Antoine Galland's 12-volume French translation (1704-17), to a more recent 4-volume Spanish translation by Salvador Peña Martín (2016).

Among them there are a dozen or so English versions, at least three of them - Payne, Burton, and Lyons - claiming to be 'complete' (whatever, precisely, that can be taken to mean):

1. Anonymous (from Antoine Galland) [1706-21] (French / English)
2. George Lamb (from Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall) [1826] (French / English)
3. Henry Torrens [1838] (English)
4. Edward W. Lane [1839-40] (English)
5. John Payne [1882-89] (English)
6. Richard F. Burton [1885-88] (English)
7. Andrew Lang (mostly retold from Galland) [1898] (English)
8. Laurence Housman (mostly retold from Galland) [1907-14] (English)
9. E. Powys Mathers (from Dr. J. C. Mardrus) [1923] (French / English)
10. A. J. Arberry [1953] (English)
11. N. J. Dawood [1954-57] (English)
12. Husain Haddawy [1990-95] (English)
13. Malcolm & Ursula Lyons [2008] (English)

I'm pleased to record that there's now another to add to that tally:

Yasmine Seale: Aladdin: A New Translation (2019)

The Annotated Arabian Nights, together with her earlier single-volume Aladdin, constitute all that we've seen so far of French-Syrian poet and translator Yasmine Seale's 1001 Nights. It's possible that there may be more to come, however. According to her Wikipedia entry Seale "is the first woman to translate the entirety of The Arabian Nights from French and Arabic into English."

Yasmine Seale

The "entirety of The Arabian Nights" cannot be referring solely to Seale's and her collaborator Paulo Lemos Horta's Annotated Arabian Nights. While that book certainly presents a very extensive selection from the immense body of materials which constitute the Nights, it can certainly not be called "complete."

Gabriel Roth Horta: Paulo Lemos Horta

Richard F. Burton (1885-88) filled 16 closely-printed volumes with his own attempt to provide a complete Arabian Nights. A good deal of that consisted of annotation and commentary, but the same cannot be said of John Payne (1882-89), whose translation eventually occupied 13 volumes of text, covering much the same territory.

The most recent "complete" English version of the Egyptian recension of the Nights (by far the most extensive of the various textual traditions), by Malcolm C. & Ursula Lyons (2008), occupies three volumes and 2,700-odd pages. But even that has been (lightly) edited for repetitions and redundancies.

Perhaps the most complete (and most universally praised) modern translation, Jamel Eddine Bencheikh and André Miquel's 3-volume French version for the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (2005-07) clocks in at 3,504 pages.

Hannā Diyāb: The Book of Travels (2022)

So what precisely is Seale's contribution to the Arabian Nights tradition? Here's Wikipedia again, in their page dedicated to the One Thousand and One Nights:

A new English language translation was published in December 2021, the first solely by a female author, Yasmine Seale, which removes earlier sexist and racist references. The new translation includes all the tales from Hanna Diyab and additionally includes stories previously omitted featuring female protagonists, such as tales about Parizade, Pari Banu, and the horror story Sidi Numan.

The reference to Hannā Diyāb is to a young Syrian traveller who visited Europe in the early eighteenth century, and - among all the other adventures detailed in his recently translated travel book - seems to have been the informant "Hanna from Aleppo" who told (or wrote out for?) Antoine Galland the so-called "orphan tales" which occupy the bulk of the last four volumes - roughly a third - of his translation.

Paulo Lemos Horta: Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights (2017)

To call Hannā Diyāb the co-author of the collection, as Paulo Lemos Horta does in his 2017 book Marvellous Thieves, is therefore no real exaggeration. Galland's diary for the period 1708-15 record details of 14 stories told him by the sbove-mentioned "Hanna from Aleppo". Roughly ten of these, albeit in greatly expanded form, made it into the final text of his Mille et une nuits (1704-17):

1. Histoire d'Aladdin ou la Lampe merveilleuse [The Story of Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp] (told in 1709: May 5) [included in Galland, Vol. 9]
2. Les aventures de Calife Haroun Alraschid [The Night Adventures of Caliph Haroun-Al-Raschid] (May 10) [Vol. 10]
   1. Histoire de l'Aveugle Baba-Alidalla [The Story of the Blind Baba-Alidalla]
   2. Histoire de Sidi Nouman [History of Sidi Nouman]
3. Histoire de Cogia Hassan Alhababbal [The Story of Cogia Hassan Alhababbal] (May 29) [Vol. 10]
4. Histoire d'Ali-Baba et de quarante voleurs exterminés par une esclave [Tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves] (May 27) [Vol. 11]
5. Histoire d'Ali Cogia, Marchand de Bagdad [The Story of Ali Cogia, Merchant of Baghdad] (May 29) [Vol. 11]
6. Histoire du Cheval enchanté [The Ebony Horse] (May 13) [Vol. 11]
7. Histoire du prince Ahmed et de la fee Pari-Banou [History of Prince Ahmed and the Pari-Banou] (May 22) [Vol. 12]
8. Histoire des deux Soeurs jalouses de leur cadette [The Story of the two sisters jealous of their younger sister] (May 25) [Vol. 12]

As you can see, they include such classic tales as "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba". Galland made no reference to this indebtedness in any of his published writings. However, since he died while his translation was still in progress (the final two volumes appeared posthumously), this may have been more inadvertent than deliberate.

Publishers Weekly: Yasmine Seale has retranslated Aladdin (19/10/18)

But going back to Yasmine Seale's original translation of Aladdin. In his Guardian review of the book (2/11/18), Richard Lea quotes her as admitting that these recent discoveries of the full extent of Galland's indebtedness to Hannā Diyāb have had little effect on her version, since “the only text we have is Galland’s, and that is what I have to work with”:

But knowing the story of the tale’s construction makes Aladdin “a document of exchange, of translation on several levels, a product of both the Arabic and French literary traditions.”

Seale continues, “I’m less interested in what ‘a Frenchman’ or ‘a Syrian’ might have invented than in the particular voices of these two men”:

Both came from learned, cosmopolitan cities. They were complex products of their knowledge and experience – who isn’t? Each was familiar with and fascinated by the other’s culture and language.

As for the Nights themselves, she sees them as "part of the bloodstream of world literature. They’re furniture, like the great myths. Because of their endless, slippery nature (a sea of stories without an author) they have flowed freely across borders of language and genre.”

Robert Irwin: The Arabian Nightmare (1983)

In an earlier interview with Wendy Smith for Publisher's Weekly (10/10/18), Seale revealed something of her own background, and the reason why she sees herself as such an ideal translator for such "slippery", cross-cultural works:

My mother is Syrian, but my father was a mix: his parents were Russian and Tunisian, he had grown up in Britain, and both my parents wrote in English. I grew up speaking and hearing three languages: French, English, and Arabic. For a long time I felt that I was just going to be French; my studies focused on French literature, and that was going to be my identity. Then I thought, ‘No, I must learn Arabic and understand it properly — that’s part of my heritage.’ That’s why this work has been so pleasurable; I feel I can bring all that to the table and I don’t have to choose. Galland’s description of Topkapi Palace — which I can see from my window — finds its way into the descriptions of the mythical palaces in Aladdin, but so do Diyab’s experiences at the palace of Versailles. Aladdin is neither just an Orientalist fantasy, nor is it just the vision of a Syrian person in France; it’s both at the same time, and I find it moving that it can be both.

Edward Said: Orientalism (1978)

This sense of the Nights as a work so contaminated by diverse cultural influences that the very notion of "fidelity to the original", normally so crucial in translation, becomes literally meaningless, underlies Seale's work on both Aladdin and the Annotated Arabian Nights. As she herself puts it:

Fidelity to what? When you have a story that exists in 80 different versions, you have to make choices. To translate the Nights means continuing to shape the stories and acknowledging that you are bringing your own sensibility to them rather than pretending it doesn’t exist.

Finally, it seems, the Nights may have found a translator who not only understands but actually embodies their paradoxical nature:

I was trying to bring out the freshness, vivacity, and wit I saw in the original French; Galland was an incredibly witty and playful person. I didn’t want to do what a lot of other translators of the Nights have done, which is to translate it into deliberately archaic language. The 19th-century translators all did this, Richard Burton most famously; his translations, even by Victorian standards, are incredibly florid and elaborate. It was a way of creating this sense of distance from the world these texts came from — a sense that the East was unfathomable, strange, and alien. I wanted to bring out the modernity that is already in the text.

Lord Leighton: Sir Richard Burton (1876)

I have to acknowledge the truth in this. Much though I adore Burton's Nights, it is almost necessary to learn a new language, Burtonian, to understand them. Perhaps that's why they've had such an influence on writers who were not native speakers of English: Jorge Luis Borges, most famously, but also Hugo von Hoffmansthal in Austria and Junichiro Tanizaki in Japan.

Her comments on the actual process of translation are fascinating, too:

Translating the 14th-century Arabic texts is “a completely different experience,” Seale comments. “Galland’s style is fairly close to what we would recognize as English prose, but in the Arabic there is no punctuation; clauses are separated by the word wa, which means and, or the word fa, which can mean so, or then, or however, or because. As a translator, you have to intervene to shape the narrative and create a readable English paragraph. To want ‘authenticity’ in The Arabian Nights is a bit of a misnomer: these are stories that have continually shifted, that are constantly changing, that are made of their accretions and layers.”

Ferdinand Keller: Scheherazade and the Sultan (1880)

It's perhaps a bit cheeky - not to mention somewhat predictable - to suggest an analogy here with the legendary Scheherazade herself, subject - as well as putative author - of the Arabian Nights in much the same sense as we postulate the authors of other "inspired" writings. But then, Seale does almost invite the comparison:

"In the framing story that begins the Nights, this king kills his unfaithful wife and decides to take a new woman every night and kill her in the morning,” she explains. “Scheherazade intervenes and says, ‘I will save my sisters from this fate.’ What we know about her from the story is that she has collected books, she has a library, she has studied and memorized tales from previous times and the history of bygone ages. She is in this sense a translator and reinterpreter of these stories. Thinking about Scheherazade helped me think about the whole text as a series of conduits — stories being channeled through a series of vessels, Scheherazade being one. Every single person who has written them down, every translator, everyone who’s added to this ocean of stories, is a kind of boatman ferrying the stories along. It makes sense to me, rather than thinking about this binary of original and translation, to break down that boundary.

As for her own relationship to the text:

Translating Aladdin, Yasmine Seale says, “made me feel like there was a plan in my life all along and everything had been leading to this moment.” Speaking from a sun-drenched room in her home in Istanbul, she explains, “It was written down in the 18th century by a Frenchman, Antoine Galland, based on the story he was told by a young Syrian traveler named Hanna Diyab, so it is both a product of France and also of the Arab world. I grew up in France and studied French literature, with a particular interest in the 18th century, and then went to university and studied Arab literature. So it’s a text that combines my two great interests."

In other words, she too has "collected books", she too "has a library", and "has studied and memorized tales from previous times and the history of bygone ages."

So if we are being invited here to imagine Yasmine Seale as a Scheherazade for our own times, what better USP [= Unique Selling Point] could there be for a new translation of this most evergreen, baffling, and slippery of works, the Arabian Nights?

Seriously, how can you hesitate to add this beautifully illustrated and annotated new translation to your own bookshelf? I, for one, am thoroughly sold.

Michael Holtmann: Yasmine Seale's Annotated Arabian Nights (17/11/21)

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Jack Ross: Arabian Nights Bookcase (30-7-2021)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

The 1001 Nights:

Texts & Translations:



1. Texts [c.800-1986] [Arabic]
2. Antoine Galland [1704-1717] (French)
3. Dom Dennis Chavis & M. Cazotte [1788-89] (French)
4. Maximilian Habicht [1824-25] (German)
5. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall et al. [1826] (French / German / English)
6. Gustav Weil [1837-41] (German)
7. Henry Torrens [1838] (English)
8. Edward W. Lane [1839-40] (English)
9. John Payne [1882-89] (English)
10. Richard F. Burton [1885-88] (English)
11. Max Henning [1895-97] (German)
12. Andrew Lang [1898] (English)
13. Dr. J. C. Mardrus [1899-1904] (French)
14. Cary von Karwath [1906-14] (German)
15. Laurence Housman [1907-14] (English)
16. Enno Littmann [1921-28] (German)
17. M. A. Salye [1929-36] (Russian)
18. Francesco Gabrieli [1948] (Italian)
19. A. J. Arberry [1953] (English)
20. Rafael Cansinos-Asséns [1954-55] (Spanish)
21. N. J. Dawood [1954-57] (English)
22. René R. Khawam [1965-67 & 1985-88] (French)
23. Felix Tauer [1928-34] (Czech & German)
24. Husain Haddawy [1990-95] (English)
25. Jamel Eddine Bencheikh & André Miquel [1991-2001 & 2005-7] (French)
26. Malcolm & Ursula Lyons [2008] (English)
27. Salvador Peña Martín [2016] (Spanish)
28. Yasmine Seale [2019-2021] (English)
29. Miscellaneous



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Galland manuscript (14th Century CE)

Texts:

Arabic


1. Alph Laylé Wa Laylé. 4 vols. Beirut: Al-Maktaba Al-Thakafiyat, A.H. 1401 [= 1981].


2. Arabic Key Readers. A Thousand and One Nights: Graduated Readings for English Speaking Students – Book 1: Story of the Book, Nights 1 through 9. Retold by Michel Nicola. Troy, Michigan: International Book Centre, 1986.


3. Zotenberg, Hermann. Histoire d’Alâ al-Din ou La Lampe Merveilleuse: Texte Arabe publié avec une notice sur quelques manuscrits des Mille et une nuits. Paris; Imprimerie Nationale, 1888.



Antoine Galland: Les Mille et Une Nuits (1704-17)

Translations:

Antoine Galland (1646-1715) – [12 vols: 1704-1717] (French)


4. Galland, Antoine, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes arabes traduits par Galland. 12 vols. 1704-17. Ed. Gaston Picard. 2 vols. 1960. Paris: Garnier, 1975.


5. Galland, Antoine, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes arabes. 12 vols. 1704-17. Ed. Jean Gaulmier. 3 vols. 1965. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1990, 1985, 1991.


6. Arabian Nights Entertainments: Consisting of One Thousand and One Stories, Told by the Sultaness of the Indies, to divert the Sultan from the Execution of a bloody Vow he had made to marry a Lady every day, and have her cut off next Morning, to avenge himself for the Disloyalty of his first Sultaness, &c. Containing a better Account of the Customs, Manners, and Religion of the Eastern Nations, viz. Tartars, Persians, and Indians, than is to be met with in any Author hitherto published. Translated into French from the Arabian Mss. by M. Galland of the Royal Academy, and now done into English from the last Paris Edition. London: Andrew Bell, 1706-17. 16th ed. 4 vols. London & Edinburgh: C. Elliot, 1781.


7. The Arabian Nights. Illustrated with Engravings from Designs by R. Westall, R. A. 4 vols. London: Printed for C and J. Rivington et al., 1825.


8. Forster, the Rev. Edward, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. 1812. Rev. G. Moir Bussey. Illustrated by 24 Engravings from Designs by R. Smirke, Esq. R. A. London: Joseph Thomas / T. Tegg; and Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1840.


9. Galland, A. Las Mil y Una Noches: Cuentos orientales. Trans. Pedro Pedraza y Páez. Biblioteca Hispania. Barcelona: Editorial Ramón Sopena, 1934.


10. Mack, Robert L., ed. Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.


Denis Chavis & Jacques Cazotte (fl. 1780s / 1719-1792) – [4 vols: 1788-89] (French)


11. Chavis, Dom, and M. Cazotte, trans. La Suite des Mille et une Nuits, Contes Arabes. Cabinet des Fées 38-41. 4 vols. Geneva: Barde & Manget, 1788-89.


Maximilian Habicht et al. (1775-1839) – [15 vols: 1824-25] (German)


12. Habicht, Max., Fr. H. von der Hagen, and Carl Schall, trans. Tausend und Eine Nacht, Arabische Erzählungen. 1824-25. Ed. Karl Martin Schiller. 12 vols. Leipzig: F. W. Hendel, 1926.


Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall / Guillaume-Stanislas Trébutien / George Lamb (1774-1856 / 1800-1870 / 1784-1834) – [3 vols: 1826] (German / French / English)


13. Lamb, George, trans. New Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Selected from the Original Oriental Ms. by J. Von Hammer, and Now First Translated into English. 1826. 3 vols in 1. Milton Keynes, UK: Palala Press, 2015.


Gustav Weil (1808-1889) – [4 vols: 1837-41] (German)


14. Weil, Gustav, trans. Tausendundeine Nacht. 1837-41. Ed. Inge Dreecken. 3 vols. Wiesbaden: R. Löwit, n.d. [c. 1960s]


Henry Whitelock Torrens (1806-1852) – [1 vol: 1838] (English)


15. Torrens, Henry, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: Translated from the Arabic of the Ægyptian M.S. as edited by Wm. Hay Macnaghten, Esqr. 1838. India: Pranava Books, n.d.


Edward William Lane (1801-1876) – [3 vols: 1839-40] (English)


16. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights, Commonly Called, in England, The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. A New Translation from the Arabic, with Copious Notes. 3 vols. London: Charles Knight, 1839-41.


17. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights; Commonly Called The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Ed. Edward Stanley Poole. 3 vols. 1859. London: Chatto, 1912.


18. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Ed. Stanley Lane-Poole. 4 vols. 1906. Bohn’s Popular Library. London: G. Bell, 1925.


19. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments or The Thousand and One Nights: The Complete, Original Translation of Edward William Lane, with the Translator’s Complete, Original Notes and Commentaries on the Text. New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1927.


20. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Wood Engravings from Original Designs by William Harvey. London: Chatto and Windus, 1930.


John Payne (1842-1916) – [13 vols: 1882-89] (English)


21. Payne, John, trans. Oriental Tales: The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night [and other tales]. 1882-97. 15 vols. Herat edition (limited to 500 copies): No. 141. London: Printed for Subscribers Only, 1901.
    1. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night; Now First Completely Done into English Prose and Verse, from the Original Arabic. 9 vols (London: Villon Society, 1882-84)
    2. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 2)
    3. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 3)
    4. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 4)
    5. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 5)
    6. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 6)
    7. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 7)
    8. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 8)
    9. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 9)
    10. Tales from the Arabic of the Breslau and Calcutta (1814-’18) Editions of the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Not Occurring in the Other Printed Texts of the Work; Now First Done into English. 3 vols. (London: Villon Society, 1884)
    11. Tales from the Arabic (vol. 2)
    12. Tales from the Arabic (vol. 3)
    13. Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp; Zein ul Asnam and the King of the Jinn: Two Stories Done into English from the Recently Discovered Arabic Text (London: Villon Society, 1889)
    14. The Persian letters, with introduction and notes, done into English from the original by Montesquieu (London, 1897)
    15. A Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour and Tartarian Tales, by Thomas Simon Gueulette (London, 1897)


22. Payne, John, trans. The Portable Arabian Nights. 1882-1884. Ed. Joseph Campbell. 1952. New York: The Viking Press, 1963.


23. Payne, John, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. 1882-1884. Publisher's Note by Steven Moore. 3 vols. Ann Arbor, MI: Borders Classics, 2007.


Richard F. Burton (1821-1890) – [16 vols: 1885-88] (English)


24. Burton, Richard F, trans. A Plain and Literal Translation of The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: With Introduction, Explanatory Notes on the Manners and Customs of Moslem Men and a Terminal Essay upon the History of the Nights. 10 vols. Benares [= Stoke-Newington]: Kamashastra Society, 1885. N.p. [= Boston]: The Burton Club, n.d.


25. Burton, Richard F., trans. Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night with Notes Anthropological and Explanatory. 6 vols. Benares [= Stoke-Newington]: Kamashastra Society, 1886-88. 7 vols. N.p. [= Boston]: The Burton Club, n.d.


26. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1885. 10 vols. U.S.A.: The Burton Club, n.d. [c.1940s].


27. Burton, Richard F., trans. Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights with Notes Anthropological and Explanatory. 1886-88. 6 vols. U.S.A..: The Burton Club, n.d. [c. 1940s].


28. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1885. Decorated with 1001 Illustrations by Valenti Angelo. 3 vols. New York: The Heritage Press, 1934.


29. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1885. Decorated with 1001 Illustrations by Valenti Angelo. 3 vols. 1934. The Heritage Press. New York: The George Macy Companies, Inc., 1962.


30. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, or The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Selection of the Most Famous and Representative of these Tales. Ed. Bennett A Cerf. 1932. Introductory Essay by Ben Ray Redman. New York: Modern Library, 1959.


31. Burton, Sir Richard, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Notes by Henry Torrens, Edward Lane, John Payne. Illustrations by Arthur Szyk. 1955. The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 1983.


32. Burton, Richard F. Love, War and Fancy: The Customs and Manners of the East from Writings on The Arabian Nights. Ed. Kenneth Walker. 1884. London: Kimber Paperback Library, 1964.


33. Chagall, Marc, illus. Arabian Nights: Four Tales from a Thousand and One Nights. Introduction by Norbert Nobis. Trans. Richard F. Burton. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1988.


34. Zipes, Jack, ed. Arabian Nights: The Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights, Adapted from Richard F. Burton’s Unexpurgated Translation. Signet Classic. New York: Penguin, 1991.


35. Zipes, Jack, ed. Arabian Nights, Volume II: More Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights, Adapted from Sir Richard F. Burton’s Unexpurgated Translation. Signet Classic. New York: New American Library, 1999.


Max Henning (1861-1927) – [24 vols: 1895-97] (German)


36. Henning, Max, trans. Tausend und eine Nacht. 1895-97. Ed. Hans W. Fischer. Berlin & Darmstadt: Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft, 1957.


Andrew Lang (1844-1912) – [1 vol: 1898] (English)


37. Lang, Andrew, ed. Tales from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by H. J. Ford. 1898. London: Wordsworth Classics, 1993.


38. Lang, Andrew, trans. Tales from The Arabian Nights. 1898. Illustrated by Edmond Dulac. Afterword by Pete Hamill. The World’s Best Reading. Sydney & Auckland: Reader’s Digest, 1991.


Dr. J. C. Mardrus (1868–1949) – [16 vols: 1899-1904] (French)


39. Mardrus, Dr. J. C., trans. Le Livre des Mille et une Nuits. 16 vols. Paris: Édition de la Revue blanche, 1899-1904. Ed. Marc Fumaroli. 2 vols. Paris: Laffont, 1989.


40. Mathers, Edward Powys, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: Rendered from the Literal and Complete Version of Dr. J. C. Mardrus; and Collated with Other Sources. 1923. 8 vols. London: The Casanova Society, 1929.


41. Mardrus, Dr J. C. The Queen of Sheba: Translated into French from his own Arabic Text. Trans. E. Powys Mathers. London: The Casanova Society, n.d. [1924].


42. Mathers, E. Powys. Sung to Shahryar: Poems from the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. London: The Casanova Society, 1925.


43. Mathers, E. Powys, trans. Arabian Love Tales: Being Romances Drawn from the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Rendered into English from the Literal French Translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus. Illustrated by Lettice Sandford. London: The Folio Society, 1949.


44. Mathers, E. Powys, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: Rendered into English from the Literal and Complete French Translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus. 4 vols. 1949. 2nd ed. 1964. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.


45. The Arabian Nights: The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Rendered into English from the Literal and Complete French Translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus by Powys Mathers. Introduction by Marina Warner. 6 vols. London: The Folio Society, 2003.
    • Vol. 1: with 8 colour illustrations by Kay Nielsen, 375 pp.
    • Vol. 2: with 8 colour illustrations by Grahame Baker, 424 pp.
    • Vol. 3: with 8 colour illustrations by Debra McFarlane, 424 pp.
    • Vol. 4: with 8 colour illustrations by Roman Pisarev, 424 pp.
    • Vol. 5: with 8 colour illustrations by Jane Ray, 431 pp.
    • Vol. 6: with 8 colour illustrations by Neil Packer, 448 pp.


Cary von Karwath (?) – [19 vols: 1906-14] (German)


46. Karwath, Cary Von, trans. 1001 Nacht: Vollständige Ausgabe in 18 Taschenbüchern mit einem Zusatzband: Nach dem arabischen Urtext angeordnet und übertragen von Cary von Karwath. 1906-14. 19 vols. München: Goldmann Verlag, 1987.


Laurence Housman (1865-1959) – [4 vols: 1907-14] (English)


47. Housman, Laurence. Stories from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. 1907. New York: Doran, n.d.


48. Housman, Laurence. Sindbad the Sailor and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. 1907. Weathervane Books. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1978.


Enno Littmann (1875-1958) – [6 vols: 1921-28] (German)


49. Littmann, Enno, trans. Die Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten: Vollständige deutsche Ausgabe in zwölf Teilbänden zum ersten mal nach dem arabischen Urtext der Calcuttaer Ausgabe aus dem Jahre 1839 übertragen von Enno Littmann. 1921-28. 2nd ed. 1953. 6 vols in 12. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1976.


50. Littmann, Enno, trans. Geschichten der Liebe aus den 1001 Nächten: Aus dem arabischen Urtext übertragen von Enno Littmann. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1973.


Mikhail Alexandrovich Salye (1899-1961) – [8 vols: 1929-36] (Russian)


51. Salye, M. A., trans. Тысяча и Одна Ночь. 1929-36. 6 vols. Санкт-Петербург: «Кристалл», 2000.


Francesco Gabrieli (1904-1996) – [4 vols: 1948] (Italian)


52. Gabrieli, Francesco, ed. Le mille e una notte: Prima versione integrale dall’arabo. Trans. Francesco Gabrieli, Antonio Cesaro, Constantino Pansera, Umberto Rizzitano and Virginia Vacca. 1948. Gli struzzi 35. 4 vols. Torino: Einaudi, 1972.


53. Faccioli, Emilio, ed. Le mille e una notte: Scelta di racconti. Dall’edizione integrale diretta da Francesco Gabrieli. Letture per la Scuola Media 56. Torino: Einaudi, 1980.


Arthur John Arberry (1905-1969) – [1 vol: 1953] (English)


54. Arberry, A. J., trans. Scheherazade: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. London: Allen and Unwin, 1953.


55. Arberry, A. J., trans. Scheherazade: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. Illustrations by Asgeir Scott. 1953. A Mentor Book. New York: New American Library, 1955.


Rafael Cansinos-Asséns (1882-1964) – [3 vols: 1954-55] (Spanish)


56. Cansinos Asséns, Rafael, trans. Libro de las mil y una noches, por primera vez puestas en castellano del árabe original. Prologadas, anotadas y cotejadas con las principales versiones en otras lenguas y en la vernácula por Rafael Cansinos Asséns. 3 vols. 1954-55. Mexico: Aguilar, 1990.


Nessim Joseph Dawood (1927-2014) – [2 vols: 1954-57] (English)


57. Dawood, N. J., trans. The Thousand and One Nights: The Hunchback, Sindbad, and Other Tales. Penguin 1001. 1954. Penguin Classics L64. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955.


58. Dawood, N. J., trans. Aladdin and Other Tales from The Thousand and One Nights. Penguin Classics L71. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957.


59. Dawood, N. J., trans. Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. 1954-57. 2nd ed. 1973. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.


René R. Khawam (1917-2004) – [7 vols: 1965-67 & 1985-88] (French)


60. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Mille et une nuits. Traduction Nouvelle et Complète faite sur les Manuscrits par René R. Khawam. 4 Vols. Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1965-67.


61. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Mille et une nuits. 4 vols. 1965-67. 2nd ed. 1986. Paris: Presses Pocket, 1989.


62. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Aventures de Sindbad le Marin. Paris: Phébus, 1985.


63. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Aventures de Sindbad le Terrien. Paris: Phébus, 1986.


64. Khawam, René R., trans. Le Roman d’Aladin. Paris: Phébus, 1988.


Felix Tauer (1893-1981) – [8 vols: 1928-34] (Czech & German)


65. Tauer, Felix, trans. Tisíc a Jedna Noc. 1928-34. 5 vols. 1973. Praha: Ikar, 2001.


66. Tauer, Felix, trans. Erotische Geschichten aus den tausendundein Nächten: Aus dem arabischen Urtext der Wortley Montague-Handschrift übertragen und herausgegeben von Felix Tauer. 1966. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983.


67. Tauer, Felix, trans. Neue Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten: Die in anderen Versionen von »1001 Nacht« nicht enthaltenen Geschichten der Wortley-Montague-Handschrift der Oxforder Bodleian Library; Aus dem arabischen Urtext vollständig übertragen und erläutert von Felix Tauer. 2 vols. 1982. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1989.


Husain Haddawy (?) – [2 vols: 1990-95] (English)


68. Haddawy, Husain, trans. The Arabian Nights: Based on the Text of the Fourteenth-Century Syrian Manuscript edited by Muhsin Mahdi. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990.


69. Haddawy, Husain, trans. The Arabian Nights II: Sindbad and Other Popular Stories. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995.


70. Heller-Roazen, Daniel, ed. The Arabian Nights. The Husain Haddaway Translation Based on the Text Edited by Muhsin Mahdi: Contexts, Criticism. 1990 & 1995. A Norton Critical Edition. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.


Jamel Eddine Bencheikh & André Miquel (1930-2005 / 1929- ) – [10 vols: 1977-2001 & 2005-7] (French)


71. Miquel, André. Un Conte des Mille et Une Nuits: Ajîb et Gharîb (Traduction et perspectives d’analyse). Paris: Flammarion, 1977.


72. Miquel, André. Sept contes des Mille et Une Nuits, ou Il n’y a pas de contes innocents, suivi d’entretiens autour de Jamaleddine Bencheikh et Claude Brémond. Paris: Sindbad, 1981.


73. Bremond, Claude, ed. Les Dames de Bagdad: Conte des Mille et une nuits. Trans. André Miquel / Claude Bremond, A Chraïbi, A. Larue, and M. Sironval. La Nébuleuse du conte: Essai sur les premiers contes de Galland. Paris: Desjonquères, 1991.


74. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, ed. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes choisis. Trans. Jamel Eddine Bencheikh, André Miquel & Touhami Bencheikh. 4 vols. Folio. Paris: Gallimard, 1991-2001.


75. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits. 3 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 2005-7.


76. Album Mille et Une Nuits: Iconographie. Choisie et commentée par Margaret Sironval. Albums de la Pléiade, 44. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 2005.


Prof. Malcolm C. & Dr. Ursula Lyons (1929-2019 / ?-2016) – [3 vols: 2008] (English)


77. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. Penguin Classics Hardback. London: Penguin, 2008.


78. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 1: Nights 1 to 294. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.


79. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 2: Nights 295 to 719. Introduced & Annotated by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.


80. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 3: Nights 719 to 1001. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.


81. Lyons, Malcom C., trans. Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange. Introduction by Robert Irwin. Penguin Classics. 2014. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2015.


Salvador Peña Martín (1958- ) – [4 vols: 2016] (Spanish)


82. Peña Martín, Salvador, trans. Mil y una noches. 4 vols. 2016. Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 2018.


Yasmine Seale (1989- ) – [2 vols: 2019-2021] (English)


83. Seale, Yasmine, trans. Aladdin: A New Translation. Ed. Paulo Lemos Horta. Liveright Publishing Corporation. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.


84. Seale, Yasmine, trans. The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights. Ed. Paulo Lemos Horta. Foreword by Omar El Akkad. Afterword by Robert Irwin. Liveright Publishing Corporation. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.


Miscellaneous


85. Blyton, Enid. Tales from the Arabian Nights: Retold by Enid Blyton. Illustrated by Anne & Janet Johnstone. 1951. London: Latimer House, 1956.


86. Bull, René, illus. The Arabian Nights. Children’s Classics. Bath: Robert Frederick, 1994.


87. Ouyang, Wen-Ching, & Paulo Lemos Horta, ed. The Arabian Nights: An Anthology. Everyman’s Library 361. A Borzoi Book. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.


88. Pinson, R. W., ed. Märchen aus 1001 Nacht: Die berühmten Geschichten aus dem Morgenland. Selected by G. Blau, A. Horn & R. W. Pinson. 1979. Bindlach: Gondrom Verlaf GmbH, 2001.


89. Samsó, Julio, trans. Antología de Las Mil y Una Noches. Libro de Bolsillo: Clásicos 599. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1975.


90. Scott, Anne, ed. Tales from the Arabian Nights. Retold by Vladimir Hulpach. Trans. Vera Gissing. Illustrated by Mária Zelibská. London: Cathay Books, 1981.


91. Weber, Henry, ed. Tales of the East: Comprising the Most Popular Romances of Oriental Origin, and the Best Imitations by European Authors: with New Translations, and Additional Tales, Never Before Published: to which is prefixed an introductory dissertation, containing the account of each work, and of its author, or translator. 3 vols. Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1812.
    Vol. I:
    • The Arabian Nights [Galland (1704-17)]
    • New Arabian Nights' Entertainments [Chavis & Cazotte (1788-89)]
    Vol. II:
    • New Arabian Nights' Entertainments (cont.)
    • Persian Tales [Pétis de la Croix (1710)]
    • Persian Tales of Inatulla [Alexander Dow (1768)]
    • Oriental Tales [A. C. P., Comte de Caylus (1749)]
    • Nourjahad [Frances Sheridan (1767)]
    • "Four Additional Tales from the Arabian Nights" [Caussin de Perceval (1806)]
    Vol. III:
    • The Mogul Tales [Thomas-Simon Gueullette (1723)]
    • Turkish Tales [Pétis de la Croix (1710)]
    • Tartarian Tales [Thomas-Simon Gueullette (1723)]
    • Chinese Tales [Thomas-Simon Gueullette (1723)]
    • Tales of the Genii [James Ridley (1764)]
    • History of Abdalla the Son of Hanif [Jean Paul Bignon (1713)]


92. Wiggin, Kate Douglas & Nora A. Smith, eds. The Arabian Nights: Their Best-Known Tales. Illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1996.


93. Williams-Ellis, Amabel. The Arabian Nights Stories Retold. 1957. London: Blackie, 1972.

Jack Ross: Arabian Nights Bookcase (30-7-2021)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

Secondary Literature:

1. Abou-Hussein, Hiam & Charles Pellat. Cheherazade: Personage Littéraire. Algiers: Société Nationale d’Édition et de Diffusion, 1976.


2. Ali, Muhsin Jassim. Scheherazade in England: A Study of Nineteenth-Century English Criticism of the Arabian Nights. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1981.


3. Baroud, Mahmoud. The Shipwrecked Sailor in Arabic and Western Literature: Ibn Tufail and His Influence on European Writers. London & New York: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2012.


4. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine. Les Mille et une Nuits ou la parole prisonnière. Bibliothèque des Idées. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.


5. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, Claude Bremond and André Miquel. Mille et un Contes de la Nuit. Bibliothèque des Idées. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.


6. Campbell, Kay Hardy, Ferial J. Ghazoul, Andras Hamori, Muhsin Mahdi, Christopher M. Murphy, & Sandra Naddaff. The 1001 Nights: Critical Essays and Annotated Bibliography. Mundus Arabicus 3. Cambridge, Mass.: Dar Mahjar, 1983.


7. Caracciolo, Peter L., ed. The Arabian Nights in English Literature: Studies in the Reception of The Thousand and One Nights into British Culture. London: Macmillan, 1988.


8. Chauvin, Victor. Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux arabes publiés dans l’Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1885. 12 vols. Liège: H. Vaillant-Carmanne, Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1892-1922.
   • Vol. 1: Préface (pp. v-xxxix). 1892.
   • Vol. 2: Kalîlah. 1897.
   • Vol. 3: Louqmâne et les Fabulistes. Barlaam. Antar et les Romans de chevalerie. 1898.
   • Vol. 4: Les 1001 Nuits (1ere partie). 1900.
   • Vol. 5: Les 1001 Nuits (2ème partie). 1901.
   • Vol. 6: Les 1001 Nuits (3ème partie). 1902.
   • Vol. 7: Les 1001 Nuits (4ème partie). 1903.
   • Vol. 8: Syntipas. 1904.
   • Vol. 9: Recueils Orientaux. (pp. 57-95). 1905.
   • Vol. 10: Table des Matières. (pp. 145-46). 1907.


9. Chauvin, Victor. La Récension Égyptienne des Mille et Une Nuits. Bruxelles: Office de Publicité / Société Belge de Librairie, 1899.


10. Chebel, Malek. Psychanalyse des Mille et Une Nuits. 1996. Petite Bibliothèque Payot. Paris: Editions Payot & Rivages, 2002.


11. Diyāb, Hannā. The Book of Travels. Trans. Elias Muhanna. Foreword by Yasmine Seale. Introduction by Johannes Stephan. Afterword by Paulo Lemos Horta. Library of Arabic Literature, 87. 2021. New York: New York University Press, 2022.


12. Eliséef, Nikita. Thèmes et motifs des Mille et Une Nuits: Essai de Classification. Beirut: Institut Français de Damas, 1949.


13. Gerhardt, Mia I. The Art of Story-Telling: A Literary Study of the Thousand and One Nights. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963.


14. Ghazoul, Ferial Jabouri. The Arabian Nights: A Structural Analysis. Cairo: Cairo Associated Institution for the Study and Presentation of Arab Cultural Values, 1980.


15. Ghazoul, Ferial J. Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context. Cairo : The American University in Cairo Press, 1996.


16. Hamori, Andras. On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature. 1974. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.


17. Horta, Paulo Lemos. Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017.


18. Irwin, Robert. The Arabian Nightmare. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988.


19. Irwin, Robert. The Arabian Nights: A Companion. London: Allen Lane, 1994.


20. Kilito, Abdelfattah. L’oeil et l’aiguille: Essai sur “les mille et une nuits.” Textes à l’appui: série islam et société. Paris: Editions la Découverte, 1992.


21. Lahy-Hollebecque, Marie. Schéhérazade ou L’éducation d’un Roi. 1927. Collection Destins de Femmes. Paris: Pardès, 1987.


22. Lane, E. W. Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. 1836. Ed. E. Stanley Poole. Everyman’s Library 315. London: Dent, New York: Dutton, 1963.


23. Larzul, Sylvette. Les Traductions Françaises des Mille et Une Nuits: Études des versions Galland, Trébutien et Mardrus. Précédée de “Traditions, traductions, trahisons,” par Claude Bremond. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996.


24. Lewis, Bernard. The Muslim Discovery of Europe. 1982. London: Phoenix, 1994.


25. Lynch, Enrique. La Lección de Sheherazade. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1987.


26. Mahdi, Muhsin. The Thousand and One Nights. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.


27. Marzolph, Ulrich, & Richard van Leeuwen, with the assistance of Hassan Wassouf, ed. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2004.


28. Marzolph, Ulrich, ed. The Arabian Nights Reader. Series in Fairy-Tale Studies. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2006.


29. May, Georges. Les Mille et une nuits d’Antoine Galland, ou le chef d’oeuvre invisible. Paris: P.U.F., 1986.


30. Naddaff, Sandra. Arabesque: Narrative Structure and the Aesthetics of Repetition in the 1001 Nights. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1991.


31. Nicholson, Reynold A. A Literary History of the Arabs. 1907. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969.


32. Pinault, David. Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights. Studies in Arabic Literature 15. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992.


33. Ranelagh, E. J. The Past We Share: The Near Eastern Ancestry of Western Folk Literature. London: Quartet, 1979.


34. Sallis, Eva K. Sheherazade through the Looking Glass: The Metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights. Curzon Studies in Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999.


35. Von Grunebaum, Gustave E. Medieval Islam: A Study in Cultural Orientation. 1946. Phoenix Books 69. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.


36. Weber, Edgard. Imaginaire Arabe et Contes Erotiques. Collection Comprendre le Moyen-Orient. Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1990.

Robert Irwin: The Arabian Nights: A Companion (1994)

•

Orientalism & its Enemies,

or:


Robert Irwin: For Lust of Knowing:
The Orientalists and their Enemies (2006)

The Empire Strikes Back

I guess I kind of grew up on Edward Said's classic polemic text Orientalism (1978), so it came as quite a shock to run across this book in the public library the other day. "Like a petrol-bomb lobbed into the the flames of dissent," says the front cover. (Interesting choice of metaphor, n'est-ce pas? Is it intended to evoke the intifadah, and the petrol-bomb-throwing youths in Gaza and the West Bank? Edward Said was a Palestinian, after all, and a vociferous critic of American policy in the Middle East.) Anyway, whether that's the idea or not, the Independent reviewer goes on to claim that "Irwin is the only man alive who could have carried it off."

The back cover goes on to swell the chorus of praise: "About nine parts erudite civil charm to one part blazing napalm," says the Sunday Times, and (finally) "This is a refreshing and humane book, which will still be read for pleasure and instruction long after Said's work" (Sunday Telegraph)



So who exactly is Robert Irwin, and what is it about Said's book that so irritates him? Well, the short answer is that he's an Orientalist - an exceptionally well-read and well-informed one, too - so it's not surprising that Said's attack on the bona fides of (so-called) serious scholars as well as popular attitudes towards the East is bound to strike an adverse note with him.

He's therefore set out to provide a kind of counter-history to Said's, fleshing out all the things the latter glosses over (his almost complete lack of discussion of German Orientalist scholarship, for instance - and his misinterpretation of various crucial figures and texts), culminating with a chapter-long attack on Edward Said, both as man (not nearly so Palestinian as he liked to pretend, apparently) and scholar (not nearly so well-read as he claimed - implicitly and otherwise).



I guess you can see why I was so anxious to read the book. Any of you who've taken the trouble to scroll through the PhD thesis I've been laboriously scanning onto the computer of late will have seen just how dependent it is on the basic formulations of Edward Said. The claim that my hero has feet of clay is not in itself surprising (no informed reader could seriously claim not to have noticed some at least of the sweeping assertions and unprovable conjectures that abound in Orientalism), but it still needs a bit of demonstration. Irwin, apparently (according to a number of British journalists, at any rate), is the man for the job.

Here's a couple of samples, chosen more or less at random from various parts of his book:

While on the subject of stereotypes, it is worth considering whether it is possible or even desirable to dispense with them altogether. As a leading mathematician has pointed out: 'many stereotypes permit the economy of expression necessary for rapid communication and effective functioning. Chair is a stereotype, but one never hears complaints from bar stools, recliners, bean bags, art deco pieces, high-back dining-room varieties, precious antiques, chaises longues, or kitchen instances of the notion'. (All quotes in this post are taken from Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies. 2006 (Harmondsworth: Pengin, 2007), p.280)

Huh? Wha ...? Forgive me for being obtuse, but is Irwin saying here that racial stereotypes are somehow equivalent to different types of chair? That it's as unreasonable for people to object to being stereotyped to as "Jews," "Arabs," "Yanks," "Limeys" etc. (let alone "towelheads," "n-words," "darkies" etc. etc.) as it would be for a chair to object to being referred to as a bar stool when it is in fact a lawn recliner? Generalising descriptions such as "men," "women," "children," "New Zealanders" etc. may be fairly value-neutral (though still by no means unproblematic), but this does not (surely) apply to adverse racial stereotyping and prejudiced knee-jerk assumptions about other cultures, which are the basic target of Said's whole book?

The unspoken agenda behind Irwin's attempts to construct a wholesale apologia for Western Orientalist scholarship through the ages clearly has a lot to do with the author's own background and upbringing:

I sometimes think of myself as a living fossil, for I was taught in a school where daily chapel services and the study of Latin were compulsory for everyone (though Greek was only for the clever boys) (p.1)

And were you one of those "clever boys,' Professor Irwin? No doubt you were ... He goes on to add that it could be a bit boring at times, but then "Serious scholarship often is." In particular, "Most of what Orientalists do will seem quite dull to non-Orientalists" (p.2): collecting coins, establishing chronologies, translating texts - nothing at all of the sinister Imperialist agenda detected in it by that deliberately provocative Edward Said.

Said's greatest crime, though, is his inaccuracy and inattention to these "unglamorous" details: his claim that Orientalism is "characteristically ... essentialist, racist, patronising and ideologically motivated" (p.3) is vitiated by all of his "errors of fact and interpretation," none of which were corrected "in the expanded version [in 1995]". Some would argue that Said's book still "deserves praise and attention because of the subsequent debate and research it has provoked" (p.4). Irwin, however, is not so sure.

Much of the subsequent debate has taken place within the parameters set out by Edward Said ... One finds oneself having to discuss not what actually happened in the past, but what Said and his partisans think ought to have happened. Once one has entered the labyrinth of false turns, trompe-l'oeil perspectives and cul-de -sacs, it is quite difficult to think one's way out again and reflect rationally and dispassionately about the subject. (p.4)

In summary, "The distortion of the subject matter of Orientalism is so fundamental that to accept its broad framework as something to work with and then correct would be merely to waste one's time." (p.4) Which is why Irwin has decided to devote a whole book to the subject, including one of the most vitriolic and pitiless character-assassinations of a dead opponent I've ever had the melancholy experience of reading ... one is tempted to add.

It's a very serious set of charges that Irwin levels against Said. I have to say that I take that "inaccuracy" with a grain of salt, though. I'm pretty familiar with Iriwn's earlier The Arabian Nights: A Companion (1994 / rev. ed. 2004), which , while undoubtedly a spirited and headlong read, is unfortunately rather full of errors itself. Freud was, I fear, correct to say that we criticise in others what we fear to be true of ourselves. Why else would Irwin refer, in his brief opening sketch of the history of relations between East and West, to the Greek "victory" at Thermopylae?

In 480 BC an enormous Persian army crossed over into Europe. This army (which, by the way, included large numbers of Greeks) was defeated at Thermopylae and at Plataea and their fleet was defeated at Salamis. (p.11)

BUZZ! WRONG! As all viewers of the film 300 are aware (or people who've bothered to read Herodotus, for that matter), the battle of Thermopylae was in fact a defeat for the Greek forces, who were outflanked and massacred by the invading Persians. I know it was a very romantic and creditable defeat, and that it sowed the seeds of eventual victory etc. etc., but it was indubitably (according to all the rules of military etiquette - quite an involved subject in itself) a defeat. Just like the (so-called) "Miracle of Dunkirk" - the British withdrawal from France in the face of superior German forces, it may have been a propaganda victory, but it was - militarily - a defeat. Maybe young Robert wasn't one of those "clever boys" who were permitted to study Greek, after all.

Sorry to stress the point, and I quite accept that it's very hard to check every detail when so wholesale an account of world history is being attempted, but it seems just a little hypocritical to get so top-lofty about Said's own constitutional inaccuracy when Irwin can hardly go for a page without similarly sweeping assertions and even downright errors. "Strange all this difference should be," in fact, "'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee". ...

[Edward Said: Orientalism (1978)]

All this is rather by the by, though. The question is whether Said was wrong in his basic claim that Orientalism (both as a discipline and a mind-set) is "characteristically ... essentialist, racist, patronising and ideologically motivated." Well, let's see.

1. Essentialist:
   

   
   Another convert to Islam, René Guénon (1886-1951), was raised a catholic and dabbled with various occult and Masonic groups, but soon became disillusioned. He embarked on a quest for a primordial tradition that would be free of the contamination of the modern age (Guénon hated democracy, science, feminism and anything else that was not part of an ancient élitist tradition,) Guénon believed that in the Hindu Vedanta he had found the primordial tradition but, somewhat curiously, he decided to convert to Islam and become a Sufi, as this was more 'convenient'. There was enough of an authentic primordial tradition in Islam for it to be acceptable to him. He converted in 1912 and settled in Egypt where he produced a steady stream of treatises on the Vedanta, Sufism, occultism and the horrors of mass culture. (p.315)

   
   Sounds like a bit of a madman, no? The picture gets worse:
   

   
   His élitist views meant that his books were sought out by fascists and neo-Nazis. Since Guénon despised both academic research and common sense, it was inevitable that he would denounce both the methods and findings of Orientalists. In Orient et Occident (1924) he condemned what he saw as the fantasies and errors of the Orientalists. English translators of Oriental texts took no real effort to understand the texts they were translating. Orientalists suffered from intellectual myopia. Their failure to take the advice of the authorized representatives of the civilizations they studied was disgraceful. German Orientalists were worse than the English, and German Orientalists had a near monopoly in the interpretation of Oriental doctrines. They invariably reduced those doctrines to something systematic that they could understand. Guénon thought the Germans grossly exaggerated the importance of Buddhism in the history of Indian culture and he thought that the notion of an Indo-Aryan group of languages was absurd. German Orientalism was 'an instrument in the service of German national ambition.' According to Guénon, the West was interested in oriental philosophies 'not to learn from them ... but to strive, by brutal or insidious mean, to convert them to her own way of thinking and to preach to them'. (pp.315-16)

   
   Actually that last bit doesn't sound quite so crazy in the age of the Iraq war and the invasion of Gaza. Nor did it in the days of Hitler, one suspects. Never mind, though. Since he "despised both academic research and common sense," he was bound to turn even on that noble crew, the Orientalists. But was he alone in that? Alas, no.
   

   
   Muhammad Asad (1900-1992) was chiefly famous in his lifetime for his books Islam at the Crossroads (1934) and The Road to Mecca (1954), as well as for his translation of the Qur'an into English. He was born Leopold Weiss, a Polish Jew. He travelled widely and had an adventurous life, about which he wrote unreliably. He converted to Islam in 1926. ... Asad championed Islam against the West. In his eyes, modern Europe, with its monstrous racism, imperialism and Orientalism, was born out of the spirit of the Crusades. 'With very few exceptions, even the most eminent of European Orientalists are guilty of an unscientific partiality in their writings on Islam.' Asad traced the Orientalists' hostility back to the Crusades. (In general, Muslim historians and cultural commentators have tended to over-exaggerate the importance of the Crusades and they often attempt to make a rather dubious link between the Crusades and modern imperialism.) (p.315)

   
   How very unreasonable of them! Modern Fundamentalist Christians have so little in common with the ignorant barefoot hordes of Peter the hermit!
   


2. Racist:
   

   
   One German Orientalist remembered [Hans Heinrich] Schaeder [(1896-1957)] exclaiming to him, 'Aha, you work on Islamic philosophy! But there were no Muslim philosophers. They were all infidels.' Schaeder's view was that the Semitic Arabs were incapable of that kind of abstract and speculative thought, so that Islamic philosophy was really the creation of Persian and other races. Although the Arabs had translated a lot of Greek materials, they chose only utilitarian subjects to translate and therefore they had failed to inherit the Graeco-Latin humanism that was the special heritage of Western Europe. In the long run, Islamic culture, like all other non¬European forms of culture, was doomed to disappear. History was the story of the triumph of the West. After the Second World War Schaeder taught at Göttingen (1946-57), where his ideas were shaped by his literary romanticism and his racism.

   
   I have to say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ... But lest we get the wrong idea about this pillar of German scholarship (how remiss of Said not to explore more deeply this rich humanist tradition of tolerance and understanding!), Irwin goes on to explain:
   

   
   But at the risk of labouring the obvious, this does not mean that all he published on Sufism and Manichaeanism was worthless. On the contrary, his work on Sufism was fundamental and is of lasting value and, as Annemarie Schimmel has pointed out, two of the leading Jewish scholars who fled to the United States - Gustav von Grunebaum and Franz Rosenthal - revered Schaeder. (p.236)

   
   Even the Jews liked Schaeder, revered him, in fact ... Some of his best friends were ... I mean, does Irwin know anything about racism at all? Perhaps it's true that racists can do scholarly work which is both "fundamental and of lasting value", but isn't this in spite of their racism rather than some kind of excuse for it?


3. Patronising:
   

   
   [David Samuel] Margoliouth [(1858-1940): "an eccentric genius in several languages" (p.210)] did not think much of Arabic literature. Writing in the Encyclopaedia of Islam on al-Hariri's Maqamat, he commented that the 'reasons for this extraordinary success ... are somewhat difficult to fathom and must be accounted for by the decline of literary taste'. And in his Mohammedanism, he observed that the failure of Arabic poetry to match that of Europe was 'in the main due to the unsuitability of the Heat-Belt for continuous intellectual effort'. (p.212)

   
   The trouble is that far from being one of the also-rans, Margoliouth is one of the serious scholars whom Irwin lauds most vociferously ... Is he alone among British scholars in taking so scornful a view of the literature he studied and translated so elegantly?
   

   
   Sir Charles James Lyall (1845-1920), who devoted most of his leisure hours to the study and translation of early Arabic poetry, seems to have had similar reservations: 'To us much in these poems seems tedious and even repellent. The narrow range of the Kasida [ode], with its conventional framework, tends to produce monotony, and it is not easy to come into close touch with the life that is so realistically described.' Lyall had studied Hebrew and then Arabic at Oxford, before entering the Bengal Civil Service. While employed in the service of the Raj he took up the translation of Arabic and especially pre-Islamic poetry as a recreation. Consideration of Lyall's career as an administrator and first-rate scholar prompts the reflection that the commonest link between Orientalism and empire was that the former was often the hobby of the masters of the latter. (p.212)

   
   I'm not sure that Irwin quite understands the implications of that little quip about Orientalism's link to Empire being simply that it was a common "hobby" of Imperialists, but I can't say I find it particularly convincing as an assertion of the "purity" of this disinterested tradition of scholarship. However, it's certainly reassuring to hear that "Lyall was a brilliant translator and his translations are still worth reading today. Despite his expressed reservations about the qasidas, he rendered them into vivid, poetic English." (p.213) Bully for him!


4. Ideologically Motivated:
   

   Maxime Rodinson (1915-2004) came ... from a Jewish family ... He belonged to the Communist party from 1937 to 1958. As a loyal communist, he was obliged to argue against all the evidence that Russian Jews did not want to go to Israel. 'Through Zionism, treason penetrated the socialist world,' according to Rodinson. While Jewish doctors and other Jews were falling victim to Stalin's purges, Rodinson was maintaining that there was no such thing as Soviet anti-Semitism. He hoped that Marxism would provide the necessary ideology for the modernization of the Arab world. (pp.255-56)

   
   I mean, what can you say? let's explore a few more details about these fascinatingly openminded French scholars:
   

   
   Rodinson's La Fascination de l'Islam (1980, translated as Europe and the Mystique of Islam) is a short and astringent account of the development of Arabic and Islamic studies. He was especially critical of religious polemic and philological bias. His book tends to over-emphasize the importance of French Orientalists at the expense of those of other nations. Although Rodinson welcomed the challenge to what he judged to be the smug self-satisfaction of so many Orientalists, he thought that Said's earlier critique was overstated, based on limited reading, and unreasonably limited to French and British Orientalists. He considered the linkage made by Said between colonialism and Orientalism was too naive. Said's book was too exclusively focused on Arabs, whereas Rodinson pointed out that four out of five Muslims are not Arabs. Moreover, unlike Said, he did not helieve that the bad faith or polemical intent of a scholar necessarily and intrinsically vitiated everything that that scholar wrote. He made a speech at the Leiden Conference of Orientalists where, among other things, he pointed out that the fact that Champollion had racist ideas about the degeneracy of modern Egyptians did not affect the correctness of his decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. (pp.256-57)

   
   Devastating! Said must have quaked in his boots at so comprehensive an indictment! And this from a scholar who himself remarked about Muhammad, "in an unconscious fashion I compared him to Stalin." (p.256). It's hard to tell, but I think that's supposed to represent one of the more positive ways of seeing the Prophet. Was Rodinson unusual among French scholars in imposing this ideological bias on everything he did and said? Not according to Irwin:
   

   
   Although French Orientalism was not monopolized by Marxists, it does seem to have been dominated by the left wing. Jacques Berque (1910-95) was born in Algeria and served in colonial administration in Morocco. But slowly he came to detach himself from the colonial viewpoint, to adopt socialist positions and to identify with the oppressed. He held the chair of social history of contemporary Islam at the Collège de France and produced books on the modern history of the Arab world. His most ambitious work was a fanatically francophone-biased history of modern Egypt. As a pied-noir, he was understandably slow to accept that the colonial experiment in Algeria was doomed. He never entirely emancipated himself from chauvinism and he maintained that the Arab countries of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) 'are still for us the place of our pride and our tears' and that the French language 'still remains - I dare to proclaim it today - the Hellenism of the Arab peoples'. Having early on maintained that the future of the Arab world would be democratic, socialist and secular, he was disconcerted by the Islamic revival in Egypt, Iran and elsewhere. His was a highly literary sociology of the Arab world, embellished with sensuous evocations of the colours and smells of everyday life in that world. At a more theoretical level he struggled to trace the passage from 'the sacral to the historic' and discussed the problems of alienation and identity in rather ponderous, allusive, even flatulently vacuous essays about the characteristics of Mediterranean societies and of Islamic culture. (p.257)

As is so often the case on these occasions, the defence is forced to make so many concessions and admit so many exceptions to the rule (of pure, devoted love of learning), that it ends up sounding rather worse than the prosecution. We've run through all three major traditions of Orientalist scholarship: English, French and German, and they all come out sounding pretty much like Said's characterization of them. And if you think I'm simply quoting particularly oddball examples out of context, take a look for yourself. If you can find any scholars who don't fit the paradigm, I'll gladly recant.

The trouble is, actually, that Irwin's book comes out more like a biographical dictionary than a well-ordered essay: in essence, it's a long, disorganised catalogue of scholarly life-stories, with occasional (often foolish) asides about how inoffensive Orientalists (and the Western Academic tradition they embody) really are, or can be - some of the time, at any rate. This reaches the extreme of arguing that even the Ancient Greeks didn't really mean anything negative by the term "Barbarian":

'Barbarian' (or in Greek barbaros) was originally a linguistic concept and it applied to all non-Greek-speaking peoples. As such, it applied to both civilized and uncivilized peoples. Thus the Greeks considered the Persians to be 'barbarians', but hardly uncouth or uncultured. Greeks were impressed by the Phoenician alphabet, Lydian coinage and Egyptian sculpture. ... In general, the Greeks admired Orientals, while despising the Thracians and Scythians on their northern frontiers. 'Barbarians' were just as likely to be Westerners as Orientals. (p.10)

How foolish, then, of Edward Said to say: 'Consider the first demarcation between Orient and West. It already seems bold by the time of the Iliad.' Irwin goes on to say:

The Orientalist Bernard Lewis, in a discussion of 'insider' and 'outsider' in the world of antiquity, has suggested that the tendency to make such distinctions is common to all times and all places. However, the distinctions were not necessarily fixed and irrevocable. Though the Jews distinguished between Jew and Gentile, they were prepared to accept converts. Similarly, the Greeks distinguished between Greek and barbarian, but they allowed that it was possible to cease to be a barbarian by adopting Greek language and culture. Lewis continues: 'There is another respect in which Greeks and Jews were unique in the ancient world - in their compassion for an enemy. There is nothing elsewhere to compare with the sympathetic portrayal by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus - himself a veteran of the Persian wars - of the sufferings of the vanquished Persians ... ' (pp.10-11)

Hmm. If I understand him correctly, Irwin is saying:

• that the Greeks weren't really any more prejudiced than any other people anywhere else. They actually quite liked (some) Orientals - admired them, even. All that stuff in Aristotle's Politics about how 'the Asiatic races have both brains and skill, but are lacking in courage and will-power; so they have remained enslaved and subject' is due to the fact that he was 'understandably prejudiced in favour of what he knew best' (p.16) ... and 'not really very interested in Asia or its problems.' (p.17) Got you. When they do say something racist or imperialist, it's been quoted out of context, whereas when they say something tolerant, it (clearly) represents the mainstream of opinion.


• but actually the Greeks (and Jews) were superior to everyone else in the ancient world. Nobody else showed the least compassion for a vanquished enemy. Witness Aeschylus's Persians (which Said interprets, wrongly, as dumping onto Asia 'the feelings of emptiness, loss, and disaster' (p.11)). That Old Testament, too, what a wonderful humanist document! I've always loved the way the conquering Israelites were so sympathetic to the displaced Philistines (= Palestinians). And this wonderful tradition has continued to this very day! Watch that delightful animated film Waltz with Bashir (2008) if you want to learn how little the Israeli army really had to do with the massacres of Palestinians in Lebanese internment camps during the 1980 invasion. It was local Christians who did all the actual killing - a crucial distinction.

Irwin's book, then, is basically disappointing and a missed opportunity for what he claims to value most: rational debate. It's notable that he waited until Said (a fearsome debater, by all accounts) was safely dead and buried before compiling his own contemptible chapter-length attack on the latter's character. As one of Irwin's own heroes, Bernard Lewis, remarked of an earlier attack on himself: "it is hardly honest or fair to try to refute someone else's point of view not in terms of what he says, but of motives which you chose to attribute to him in order to make your refutation easier." (pp.302-3) In Irwin's case, this includes the accusations that he "was not fond of Arab music" (p.308 - should he have been?); that he wasn't really Palestinian (though "born in Jerusalem in 1935 ... his parents, who were Christian protestants, came from the Lebanon and Said, who was mostly educated in Egypt and then in the United States, had Egyptian and American citizenship" (p.278); that "it seems to me that, though he was to become an enthusiastic partisan for a handful of contemporary Arab novelists, he never acquired a profound knowledge of the Arab literary heritage" (p.281); and that "Throughout his life Said was a consistent critic of whatever the United states was doing in the middle East" (p.307 - as opposed to recognising and praising all those examples of benevolent American intervention, such as (to name a few): ... and ... and ... can you think of any?). As Clifford Geertz said of Orientalism itself, Irwin's book ends up leaving 'a bad taste in the mouth.'

Endless are the arguments of scholars. Is it really worth quoting so much of Irwin's text in an attempt to somehow rehabilitate Edward Said's bona fides? Probably not, not just for that purpose. But Irwin's is part of a more general attack which (largely pseudo-) scholarship, the type loved by British middlebrow newspapers, has been mounting over the past few years in defence of colonialism and Imperialism, in an attempt to reject "subaltern studies" generally. Since Said's is one of the cornerstones of this school of thought, it's important that it be discredited. I quite accept that living your life in sackcloth and ashes is hardly useful, but it's hard for me to see much essential distinction between Holocast denial and defences of the essential fairness and rightness of (say) the scramble for Africa in the nineteenth century, or (for that matter) the British-organised coup in Iran in 1953, or the attack on Suez in 1956. It may all seem like ancient history, but it's left a living legacy. There are some very disquieting asides in Irwin's book:

of course, if Said and his allies do not feel bound to respect facts, there is no reason why their critics should do so either, for if it is permissible to misrepresent Orientalism, Christianity and British imperialism, it would not be so obviously wrong similarly to misrepresent Islam, Arab history or the Palestinian predicament. (p.284)

I'd like you to think about that one for a little while. I'm not planning on telling any lies, says Irwin, but if I did I'd be perfectly justified in doing so - because they started it. This is the language of war. Irwin sees there as being two sides: "Orientalists" [= the West] and "their Enemies" [= the East, including such fifth-columnists, biting the hand that feeds them, as Edward Said]. Irwin's book may sound childish and petulant in parts, but it has a frightening agenda underlying it. There is no "Other," he is saying - no valorised opponent of Hegemony - there is simply Civilization and its Enemies.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but has he not just made the case for "Orientalism" as a basically correct description of a certain Western intellectual mindset without the need for further debate?

[Edward Said: Orientalism (1995)]