The Book of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights Quiz

Answer: She has an affair with a slave

Every day, King Shahryar's first wife goes bathing with her handmaids. Whilst there, the Queen has 'relations' with a slave. Unfortunately this is seen by Shah Zaman, Shahryar's brother, and the lovers are executed. The betrayal of his wife makes Shahryar go mad and believe that all women will betray him.

Answer: To prevent her husband from executing her

Shocked by his first wife's betrayal, every night, King Shahryar marries a new bride and has her executed the next morning. This continues until Scheherazade, the Grand Vizier's daughter, marries the king. Every night she tells him stories stopping at dawn with a cliff-hanger, so the king will delay the execution in order to hear the end of the story. Traditionally Scheherazade tells her stories to save her husband from his tyrannical ways more than to save herself from the gallows, but the latter reason for the story telling is the more famous.

The story of Shahryar and Scheherazade is believed to have come from the fourteenth century and frames the much older collection of stories called "The Thousand Legends."

Answer: Scheherazade's father

Scheherazade's father, the Grand Vizier, tells "The Ass, the Ox, and the Labourer" to his daughter to try to stop her from marrying the King who would kill her. There are two morals in the tale, the first is that you shouldn't put yourself in unnecessary danger, the second, and less palatable moral, seems to say 'beat a woman who isn't obedient'.

This is a threat towards Scheherazade should she try to marry Shahryar against her fathers wishes. Not too surprisingly, Scheherazade becomes quite angry with her father and promptly marries the King anyway.

Answer: They go insane

It is a popular Arab myth that anyone who reads all of The Nights will go mad. This myth is similar to the legendary condition known as 'the motif of harmful sensation' which states that a person can be harmed by experiencing extreme sensations, this probably comes from Greek mythology in stories such as "Medusa" and "The Basilisk." Perhaps in the case of The Nights though, the myth may come from the premise that as Scheherazade's stories cure Shahryar of his madness they might have the reverse effect on anyone who is sane.

In fact it would be close to impossible to hear all of the collection as the tales vary from storyteller to storyteller.

Answer: The Tale of Nur Al-Din Ali and his son Badr Al-Din Hasan

Harun al-Rashid does not appear in "The Tale of Nur Al-Din Ali and his son Badr Al-Din Hasan" but the story is told to him by Vizier Ja'afar. Harun al-Rashid was a real life Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad 786-809 AD. Son of Caliph al-Mahdi and a former Yemeni slave girl, al-Khayzuran, Harun was very close to his mother whose high intelligence and strong personality was said to have greatly influenced his and his father's reigns. Harun was a scholar and poet and a great fan of The Nights, writing many of the stories. Harun would often go out into Baghdad in disguise to see what his people really thought of him, this is how he is depicted in The Nights.

Answer: City of peace

Madinat as-Salam (city of peace) is how Baghdad is dubbed by Scheherazade, which was an accurate description prior to 1258, but it's now become sadly ironic.

Answer: Sinbad the Porter

The story begins with Sinbad the Porter caring a heavy parcel through Baghdad on a hot day. Overcome by the heat, Sinbad the Porter seeks refuge in a grand house owned by Sinbad the Sailor, now an old man. The aging Sailor, impressed by his namesake, decides to tell the porter the stories of his seven voyages.

Answer: Antoine Galland

"Aladdin" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" are probably the most famous of the stories, but ironically they don't appear in any Arab manuscripts and they were probably written by a European. Antoine Galland was a 17th century French anthropologist and archaeologist who wrote the first translation of The Nights to be published in Europe.

It is in this translation that "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba" first appear. Galland is believed to have got the outline of the stories from a Syrian storyteller, Youhenna Diab, while working at the French embassy in Constantinople.

Although its not certain Galland added the two stories to the collection, their style and pace are very different to the other tales, and the palace protocol in "Aladdin" is much more French than Arabian.

Answer: False

"The Fisherman and the Genie" and "The Merchant and the Genie" are not the same story. The first is about a fisherman who finds a genie who makes him rich. The latter story is about a merchant who accidentally kills the son of a genie and then is forced to tell stories to save himself. Traditionally one of these stories is the first to be told by Scheherazade.

Answer: Bottle

"The genie is out of the bottle" is the famous saying, meaning "now it's done it can't be reversed," but in the origin of that proverb the fisherman is able to trick the genie back into the bottle.

Answer: The Persian Empire

In the earliest versions Shahryar and Scheherazade are King and Queen of several unnamed islands between India and China which were part of the Persian Empire; in some later texts it became India and China. However, most of Scheherazade's stories are set in Baghdad.

Answer: Alf laylah wa-laylah

Alf Laylah wa-Laylah (A Thousand Nights and a Night) is how The Nights are known in the Middle East; it appears on almost every translation of The Nights. It was originally called A Thousand Legends, one thousand being the Arab term for a large, unspecified number.

Answer: Dogs

As punishment for throwing their eldest sister along with her lover into the sea, the two sisters are turned into black dogs by a genie.

Answer: She tastes a cake that he's made

Badr Al-Din Hasan is carried to Cairo by an Ifrit, where he rescues his cousin from marrying an evil hunchback. The two fall in love but before they can do anything about it, Hasan is taken again by the Ifrit to Damascus where Hasan becomes a baker. He is only found ten years later when his mother and uncle go in to Damascus and buy a cake from Hasan's bakery. Recognising the recipe as her own, Hasan's mother realises that she has found her long lost son. Hasan is taken back to Cairo where he is reunited with his long lost love.

Answer: Kasim's son (Ali's nephew)

Morgiana, at the beginning of the story, is a slave owned by Ali Baba, but through her quick thinking and great bravery she manages to save Ali Baba from the forty thieves and their malevolent leader many times, earning her freedom. Although in most of the TV and movie adaptations Morgiana marries Ali Baba, in the traditional version Ali Baba is already married and Morgiana falls for and marries Ali Baba's nephew, Kasim's son. Andrew Lang's translation in "The Blue Fairy Book" has her marrying Ali Baba's son.

Answer: His brothers

The Barber of Baghdad is wrongfully implicated in criminal activities, so to show that he has a pure heart he tells the caliph the stories of his six brothers, Bacbouc the hump-back, Backbarah the Toothless, Backbac who was blind, Alcouz who only had one eye, Alnaschar who was very lazy and Schacabac who had a hare lip.

Answer: Eye

The three Kalandars are all former Princes who have each lost one eye in very strange circumstances. The first had his eye removed by a vengeful vizier, the second Kalandar's eye was burnt by a spark released in the death throes of an Ifrit and the third had his eye gouged out by a magic horse.

Answer: She does all of these

This story follows on from "The Fisherman and the Genie" and depicts a Prince with an unfaithful wife. The prince discovers this and confronts his wife's lover, severely injuring him. Little does the Prince know that his wife has been practising witchcraft and as revenge she turns his capital city in to a lake, transforming his people into fish and turns his legs into black marble.

Answer: Dunyazade

Dunyazade, Scheherazade's sister, often listens in on the stories told by her sister and at the end, in some versions, she marries Shahryar's brother.

Answer: It can fly

King Sabur is given gifts from three sages; one of them gives an ebony horse and in return asks for the king's daughter's hand in marriage. The king's first son objects to this as an insult to his sister and prevents the marriage. Annoyed by this, the sage tricks the prince onto the ebony horse which then flies away seemingly never to return.

Answer: Prince Housain

The flying carpet in one of the most enduring images in The Nights and it is affiliated with many stories, but traditionally Prince Housain in "The Three Brothers" is the only person to fly on a magic carpet.

Answer: The Cyclops

"The Cyclops" and "The Third Voyage of Sinbad" have very similar storylines. This isn't surprising as classical mythologies were very popular in the Islamic world during the period when The Nights were compiled.

Answer: The Tale of the Three Apples

"The Tale of the Three Apples" is perhaps the closest The Nights come to a murder mystery. It emerges that the simple act of buying an ill girl three apples has had devastating consequences.

Answer: Scheherazade

The Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov is most famed for composing "The Flight of the Bumblebee," but he also wrote the nationalistic symphonic suite "Scheherazade" which was inspired by The Nights.

Answer: 3

In some but not all versions, after the last story Shahryar awakes to find Scheherazade telling her three children that at the end of a thousand and one nights of storytelling, her husband released her from the threat of execution and professed his love for her.

The audience is left wondering, was Queen Scheherazade faithfully recounting the story of her life or was the whole tale of the thousand and one nights just a story itself, made up by Scheherazade to tell her children.