In The Great Khan’s Tent Episode 23: The Arabian Nights Part 21

In the Great Khan’s Tent

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In this episode, we continue the story “The Story of the Tailor” in Night 30 and begin the story of “The Barber’s Story of Himself” and “The Barber’s Story of his First Brother” in Night 31.

As you go through this story, which is hilarious due to the actions and characteristics of the Barber himself, you can note how he portrays himself to how he actually is especially when he claims to be a man of little speech.

The story of the First Brother focuses on the actions of a love-sick man who falls for a married woman and how they deal with his feelings. Although it is meant to be a humorous tale, the actions of all the characters in the first brother’s stories are downright mean sometimes.

It should be noted that the presence of the character of the Caliph, this time al-Muntasir bi’llah (reigned 861-862 CE), clearly mark this tale as being created or at least written down a good time after the death of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid and is clearly a later story included in the One Thousand and One Nights.

Finally, a note of housekeeping. The numerical symbols on the titles will now be in Arabic character, rather than the Roman characters. This is due to the finicky and complicated nature of Roman numbers themselves. The back catalog will be updated going forward to adapt to this change.