quote: I suspected T at first, but then I realize that T can't spell or punctuate as well as you can. Also, he probably doesn't know what a dialectician is.
posted
Actually, I'm fairly sure it's Arabian Nights. "Nights" is referring to the nights Scherezade(sp?) spent entertaining the high muckety muck so he wouldn't kill her, thus stalling until such time that some hero-like dude could come rescue her. Or something.
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posted
We did one of these in 7th grade and were surprised when our answer was supposed to be Arabian Knights. But it could have been something else.
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posted
Maybe whoever made up the test made a mistake. Or got the title from something other than the story about Scherezade...
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quote: Oh dear. Now zgator is going to eat me for lunch.
this is Hottiespeak for "you're right, it should be an N and not a K". I guess peter was right about my posts being 90% incomprehensible.
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posted
I'm sorry, but what did you just post? I saw only "blah blah blah blahblah peter blablahblabblah incomprehensible."
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posted
She's saying that after accusing zgator of having some mis-spelled clues, she had a mis-spelled clue in her contribution. So the answer is 1001 Tales in the Arabian Nights. The Arabic "Alf Leila wa Leil" means "A thousand nights and a night".
Though that's not entirely accurate either. Scherazade's strategy was to bridge each night with a really long story. Some of the Tales went on for weeks. As long as she didn't finish a story, her husband would commute her execution.
By the end of the 1001 nights, they had three children anyway and he decided maybe women weren't all bad after all. I forget the story when he decided he would marry a different woman every day and then kill her in the morning.
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posted
Yeah! I think Scherezade was the first inventor of the cliffhanger! And her husband (a sultan or an emperor or an Ayatollah or somebody) would delay killing her because he wanted to hear how the cliffhanger ended...
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posted
The way I recall it, the husband goes on journey with a buddy of his. They meet a Genie who keeps a lady hostage. The lady plays some music to put the Genie to sleep, then "converses" with the men. They are so disgusted with her duplicity, one swears off women altogether, the other merely decides on the plan of marrying a new woman everyday, then having her executed. Pretty creepy. Though I think there is more to it than that.
[ December 06, 2003, 06:50 PM: Message edited by: Trisha the Severe Hottie ]
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posted
Nah, the sultan's first wife was an adulteress, so he stopped trusting women. From here:
quote: Now the Sultan Schahriar had a wife whom he loved more than all the world, and his greatest happiness was to surround her with splendour, and to give her the finest dresses and the most beautiful jewels. It was therefore with the deepest shame and sorrow that he accidentally discovered, after several years, that she had deceived him completely, and her whole conduct turned out to have been so bad, that he felt himself obliged to carry out the law of the land, and order the grand-vizir to put her to death. The blow was so heavy that his mind almost gave way, and he declared that he was quite sure that at bottom all women were as wicked as the sultana, if you could only find them out, and that the fewer the world contained the better. So every evening he married a fresh wife and had her strangled the following morning before the grand-vizir, whose duty it was to provide these unhappy brides for the Sultan. The poor man fulfilled his task with reluctance, but there was no escape, and every day saw a girl married and a wife dead.
Hmm, I remember a far more specific version, where he finds her with another man. Ah, the older translation has it:
quote: But when the night was half-spent he bethought him that he had forgotten in his palace somewhat which he should have brought with him, so he returned privily and entered his apartments, where he found the Queen, his wife, asleep on his own carpet bed embracing with both arms a black cook of loathsome aspect and foul with kitchen grease and grime. When he saw this the world waxed black before his sight and he said: "If such case happen while I am yet within sight of the city, what will be the doings of this damned whore during my long absence at my brother's court?" So he drew his scimitar, and cutting the two in four pieces with a single blow, left them on the carpet and returned presently to his camp without letting anyone know of what had happened. Then he gave orders for immediate departure and set out at once and began his travel; but he could not help thinking over his wife's treason, and he kept ever saying to himself: "How could she do this deed by me? How could she work her own death?" till excessive grief seized him, his color changed to yellow, his body waxed weak, and he was threatened with a dangerous malady, such a one as bringeth men to die.
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