The Arabian Nights and the Abbasid Caliphate

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12/8/2011 The Arabian Nights and the Abbasid Caliphate The Arabian Nights is a collection of stories, fairy tales, love stories, and historical anecdotes of various ethnic sources, including Indian, Persian, and Arabic traditions. The novel itself is made up of a great deal of tales told by Shahrazad. Shahrazad entertains the king with her embellish Islam governed all facets of life during this time including moral, spiritual, social, and intellectual aspects. For this reason, each story has within it some aspect of Islam that Shahrazad emphasizes in her stories. Shahrazad tells stories to the king in an attempt to prolong her life as well as save the lives of the other young girls. The first story by Shahrazad is the Merchant and the Demon. The merchant in this story rests and begins to eat. The pits from the dates were thrown onto the ground, cleans up, and say his prayers. Suddenly there appears an old demon, sword in hand, feet on the ground and head in the clouds, who says "I must kill you as you killed him," because one of the dates pits the merchant tossed away struck the demon's son and killed him. This is the justice of the pre-Islamic law of "blood for blood," no matter what the intentions of the people involved. The Islamic world in this time period took a life for a life no matter what the circumstances, so the demon in return for losing his sons life wants to take the life of the merchant. The Merchant then replies with Muslim piety, he prays unto the gods that it was an accident and to allow him to live another day. But the Demon is of the pre-Islamic law, and replies, "By God, I must kill you, as you killed my son." These words spoken by the demon are solid examples of how the Islamic people would come about this situation in this time period. When those take a life away their life is taken away as well, even if it was an accident. In the

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