place acting as a crossroads between cultures. Attracting both eastern and western influences into its oeuvre, an entire fictional world was created based on Islam at its heightâan imaginary, super-geographical realm given breath by its narratorâs ability to conjure life with her beguiling voice.
*
al-hakawait
: combining
wati
and
haka
in the sense of someone possessing the popular expertise for relating a tale or fable. The word for âstorytellerâ varies from region to region in the Arab world.
Chapter 2
A FRENCHMAN ABROAD
To be lucky in the beginning is everything
.
â MIGUEL DE CERVANTES,
DON QUIXOTE
By the time
Alf Laila wa Laila
reached the sixteenth century, it had become a veritable warehouse of eastern stories culled from many different sources, a work that had survived as popular entertainment in the Muslim world for more than six centuries, and would thrive for five more. Stories from
The Thousand and One Nights
continued to be heard and read in coffee houses, marketplaces and homes from Morocco to Constantinople and beyond as far as the China Sea; during the Ottoman Empire, they even became the basis for a national theatre in Turkey.
At around the same time, a phenomenon was taking place in Europe that would have a profound effect on the
Nights:
a growing consciousness of the Asian world. From about the early seventeenth century through the nineteenth, a period later described as an âOriental Renaissance,â Europeans began a process of ârediscoveringâ the Eastâparticularly India, but also the Near andMiddle Eastâthrough increased interaction with Asian lands and peoples. Some European travellers had always smoothed their way by learning indigenous languages, but with merchant companies pushing outward along routes pioneered by Renaissance explorers, the new international trade reality sparked a revival of interest in eastern languages and cultures. The Portuguese in Africa, the French and British on the Indian subcontinent and the Dutch in the East Indies were all instrumental in bringing together aspects of eastern and western civilizations as never before. The sustained interaction with Asian peoples created a necessity for linguists versed in eastern languages and protocols to translate exchanges, inaugurating the development of oriental studiesâwhat we describe today as âIslamicâ or âAsianâ Studies.
In the wake of the explorers and traders came the evangelists, many of whom advocated the study of Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic and Persian for churchmen looking to spread the Gospel and counteract the effects of rival Muslim missionary work. If trade initiated the first wave of eastern interest and study, then Christianity gave rise to the second, sealing the need for some level of understanding of Muslim peoples to discover how best to approach them.
These were practical considerations for two linked groups, but they were not the only ones. In an increasingly secular environment encouraged by the doctrine of deism, Europeans were now willing to view Islam and the East with a less jaundiced eye than previous generations. The increasing EastâWest interaction prompted a growing interest in oriental matters among Europeâs general population, particularly the leisured classes. Some were sincerely interested in studying the complexities of this unveiling universe, while others were simply on the lookout for fresh amusements, yet all are indicative of a burgeoning European preoccupation with Asia. Even as the Turks advanced on Central Europe in the late seventeenth century (actually laying siege to Vienna in 1683), the formal studyof Persian had already been inaugurated in France; professorships of Arabic were being established in European universities; and various scholars were active in publishing the first eastern dictionaries, grammars and translations of principal Asian texts.
It was during this period of growing European