She has previously translated the oldest surviving manuscript of the “1,001 Nights.” But in 2010, when her eyes fell on a beautiful Andalusian manuscript, adorned with red ink that read “The Book with the Story of the 101 Nights,” she was mesmerized. Ott - a scholar, musician and professor at the Institute for Non-European Languages and Cultures of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany - says the answer is “nowhere.” Where else can one learn about what the merchants of Qayrawan and the cannibals of the Camphor Island have in common, or catch cunning wives at love play with their passionate lovers, and, in the next moment, witness battles with knights and warriors? “Who, centuries before Leonardo da Vinci, described to us a wooden flying machine with a takeoff and landing propeller, and with what are certainly the oldest motion detectors in the history of literature?” asks Ott. Throughout the 1,001 nights, readers are entangled in thrilling stories of the East.īut how many of us have heard of the collection’s smaller sibling? Only 17 stories long, “101 Nights” offers tales replete with flying horses and every kind of miracle that one could imagine, each so exciting that it creates “a whole cosmos of its own into which we and listeners alike are drawn,” explains Claudia Ott, the translator of a recently discovered manuscript of this medieval Arabic story collection, in a lecture held earlier this month. She tells the sultan exciting stories over the course of several nights until she bears him a child, and hence, as mother to the heir of his throne, asks for Shahryar’s mercy.
Gifted with an unmatched ability to create exciting story plots, Scheherazade succeeds in saving her life and that of other women. That was at least his plan until he marries his vizier’s daughter Scheherazade.