In The Great Khan’s Tent Episode XIX: The Arabian Nights Part XVII

In This Episode we have concluded the story of “The Story of Nur-ud-din Ali and his Son and of Shams-ud-din Mohammad and his Daughter” with Night XXIV and beginning a new story, “The Case of the Tailor, The Hunchback or Humpback, the Jew, the Inspector, and the Christian” or known as “The story of the Humpback” with Night XXV.

This new story is, much like some of the earlier ones, a story within a story and in this episode, we are introduced to the Christian’s story, “The Story told by the Christian Broker”. This is one of the stories where there is a clear appeal to the merchant crowd being made with references to trading, weights and measures, trading methods being employed which the merchants would be aware of, and the naming of locations in Cario where merchants may have themselves stopped.

Although the story itself is set in the Iraqi city of Basra, Cario was still an important trading city. Much of the architecture and areas mentioned were build during the Fatamid period, in the 10^th and 11^th centuries well after the reign of Harun al-Rashid which may give an indication that these stories where written down or created sometime after the heyday of the Abbasid Caliphate.

We here at In the Great Khan’s Tent would like to take this opportunity to thank Sandman Stories Presents for featuring us on his podcast! We really appreciate it!