In The Great Khan’s Tent Episode 25: The Arabian Nights Part 23

In this episode, we continue the story of “The Story of the Tailor” with Night 32 and the story of the “The Barber’s Story of his Fifth Brother” and go on to Night 33 and the story of the “The Barber’s Story of his Sixth Brother”.

Both of these brothers are seemingly different that what has been described by the Barber with his other brothers. The Fifth brother is clearly more courageous going as far as fighting back against what happened to him quite competently and getting his revenge on those who wronged him, while still having the traits that resulted in his finding himself in a dangerous situation. The beginning of the fifth brother’s story, where he dreams of wealth and what he shall do with it, is a common theme among folklore where the future is dreamed of but back in reality, something occurs that results in the shattering of that dream.

The sixth brother’s story is also different than that of his other brothers as the his form of being tricked, is not malicious, but rather is shown as something jovial and eccentric and his reaction to this shows how he approaches the situation using his smarts. It is only after a series of unfortunate events, where others are the cause of his misfortune, that causes him to suffer as he did.

It is interesting to note that in the sixth’s brother’s story the Barmakids are mentioned once again, however, this is an unnamed character meant to show the weird nature of the rich. Unfortunately it is unclear on who this is based on. He clearly is not based any of the main Barmakids, as they were already long dead especially by the time of the Caliph al-Muntasir bi’llah. The only plausible explanation might be that these were their descendants, from their children since there is no indication that the entire family was killed, or were distant relatives.

In the next episode, we will continue the series "Tales from Central Asia"!