This is a recent interview by
Gulf News of (here very defensive sounding) Colombia Professor Muhsin Al Musawi on the
Nights.
What is most interesting to me is Al Musawi's critique of what he sees as Western interference into the legacy of the culture of the
Nights.
Excerpts below, entire interview (unfortunately with pop up ads and the like) here:
http://gulfnews.com/culture/books/the-enduring-lure-of-the-arabian-nights-1.1876775
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“The Arabian Nights” was largely ignored simply because it was not an
elite piece of literature, and it wasn’t until the French (1704-12) and
English (1706) translations were published that it was taken seriously.
To tell the Arab intelligentsia how it was received by eminent poets,
writers and essayists was not an ordinary matter, especially as this
intelligentsia suffers from a Western dependency complex.
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You have a new project, almost ready: “The Arabian Nights: A Source
Record”. The preliminary title suggests a lot but also seems to hide
more.
I can quote from the introduction as it has not appeared
yet, and I hope readers will use it with due acknowledgement to us as
well as to the newspaper. This quote introduces the reader to early
scholarly discussion of origins:
Aside from Edward William Lane’s
(1801-76) enduring contribution to the sociological interest in the
tales in its colonial dimension, his endeavour to establish a “sound”
text, albeit with scriptural tone and style, still elicits scholarly
interest. No less pertinent is the British periodical criticism of the
years 1838-41, which, while highly informed by the British imperial
quest, was mainly provoked by the latter’s significant achievement. It
is only a sign of this encompassing imperial spirit that this criticism
took into account German and French contributions to assimilate or
debate within a broad colonial spectrum. While the evangelical spirit
was bent on replacing Eastern cultures with that of the empire, the
Orientalist was keen on preserving local traditions to ensure a better
and solid acculturation beyond the vagaries of change.
Lane was no minor
figure in this encounter, as his lexicon, studies of the “manners” of
the Egyptians and translation of “The Thousand and One Nights” elicited
further communications and interests. A case in point is the Athenaeum
effort to elucidate the involved history of the “Nights”. Although
taking into account contemporaneous views of de Sacy, von Hammer,
Schlegel and Lane, the Athenaeum critic of the 1830s was fully aware of
the pitfalls of basing final judgments regarding the date of composition
on scattered references to historical events. No great value must be
set on these allusions in a book that passed into many redactions and
underwent a number of omissions, changes and interpolations. A “careful
and critical examination of the tales,” he postulated, “would convince
the reader that they were chiefly composed by illiterate persons,
unacquainted with the history of their country; and it is unfair,
therefore, to assume the accuracy of some particular date referred to,
considering the numberless anachronisms contained in the work, and urge
it as an argument either in favour or against opinions respecting the
authorship, or age when written.”
Disapproving of Lane’s conclusion that
the social and cultural setting points to an Egyptian origin, the
reviewer observed that Islam regulates and models manners and customs in
the whole Muslim East, establishing social conformity to which the
“Nights” plainly attests. As for the very distinctive Egyptian traits,
the reviewer urged that they be seen in the light of the tendency of
copyists and compilers to impose their regional predilections on the
text.
But what about the discussion of manuscripts, before Brill’s print of Galland’s Arabic manuscript?
Writing
about manuscripts is a challenge, for no matter how authoritative and
painstaking the search is, there are two sides to the question. One
relates to availability of manuscripts, and the second to orality,
transmission and storytelling. While Arabic scholarship was not
enthusiastically drawn to popular culture, European scholarship was more
interested in reading the tales as both manifestations of culture and
life, as they deemed, and as indices of the spirit and language
varieties of the region. Hence the interest in origin.
The Athenaeum
reviewer was not alone; but his recapitulations were in response to an
ongoing discussion that received further impetus after the publication
of Lane’s annotated edition. Lane was keen on establishing that the work
was by one single author who composed it between 1475 and 1525 (preface
to “The Arabian Nights Entertainments”, London, 1839-41). Silvestre de
Sacy had already dwelt on this issue (as documented by Chauvin and
Littmann) in “Journal des savants”, 1817, 678; “Recherches sur l’Origine
du Recueil des Contes Intitules les Mille et Une Nuits”, Paris, 1829;
and in the “Memoires de l’Academie des Inscriptions &
Belles-Lettres”, x, 1833, 30.
In these interventions de Sacy
debated both single authorship and connectedness with Persian and Indian
collections, dismissing the early reference by Al Masudi (336/947,
re-edited in 346/957) as spurious. Just opposite to these views were
Joseph von Hammer’s (“Wiener Jahrbücher”, 1819, 236; JA, 1e serie, x; 3e
serie, viii; preface to his “Die noch Nicht übersetzten Erzaehlungen”)
where he built his argument on Al Masudi, stressing therefore the
genuineness of this as evidence of a collection of non-Arab origin.
