151 Stories of Arabian Nights

Of 4,000 concubines, 2,000 Greeks and 2,000 slave-born Arabians and Abyssinians were in the palace of Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, whereby Obaid bin Tahir had given him 200 whites and 200 Abyssinian and native-girls. Amongst the slave-borns, Mahbubah was extremely beautiful and played upon the flute well with an art of making verses. The Caliph fell for […]

Once a rich man became destitute and approached his friend for assistance. His friend lent him five hundred dinars to start a trading business. With a prior experience as a jeweller, the man bought gold with the money to sell them off at the jewel-market. While he was sitting, three men came and asked him

Abu Hasan Al-Ziyadi was so hugely indebted that he was shunned by everybody. One day, Khorasan met him and gave him ten thousand dirhams for safekeeping as he was going on a pilgrimage. He also told Hasan if he did not return along with the group, he could keep the money, otherwise should return it

Once there was a devout Israelite who earned his living through selling cotton yarn. With the margins, he brought in daily bread for his family. One morning, he met one of his brethren who asked for his help, and he gave him the price of the yarn. He then took a cracked, wooden trencher and

Once a King proclaimed that the people of his kingdom would never offer alms to the poor. If any of them did so, he would lose his life. One day, a beggar begged for alms to a woman. As she showed her fear of losing her hands to the King, he conjured her by the

Ibrahim bin Al-Mahdi was narrating the most remark-able thing he had ever seen, to his nephew–the Caliph Al-Maamun. One day when he was on a joyride, he smelt some tasty food from a house and went inside. When he saw the wrist of a damsel, he wished to possess it. As he waited outside, he

A young man approached Ala Al-Din, the Chief of Police in his house with a chest upon his head. He told the Chief that the chest contained goods worth forty thousand dinars, not earned, in the legal way, and wanted in exchange one thousand dinars. He said that he wanted to repent for the illegal

Once a Shroff carried a bag of gold pieces and passed by some thieves. One thief boasted that he would be the one to steal the bag of gold from him. He then began following the Shroff to his house and when the Shroff went to his room and called out the slave-girl to fetch

The Chief of Police in Alexandria was approached by a soldier. He complained him about one of the Khans who stole his one thousand gold coins. The Chief had all the Khans arrested and was about to have them whipped when suddenly a man appeared before him and confessed that he was the one who

Once a poor man, badly indebted, abandoned his family and left for a faraway country. He arrived at a city full of buildings and started following a crowd and entered a rich man’s house. He shyly sat in a corner. In a few minutes, he saw four dogs being brought by the rich man’s servants

One night, the Caliph feeling restless, began to walk on the by-ways of his palace, until he came across a chamber whose doorway had a curtain moving with the flow of air. Raising it, he found something black lay upon the bed, as if it were a man asleep with a wax taper on his

One night Haroon Al-Rashid, the Commander of the Faithful felt restless, turning sides and could not sleep, when he called Masrur to help him get a sound sleep. Masrur suggested many things such as taking a stroll into his palace-garden, or meet with his concubines residing in his palace itself, or summon the doctors of

Al-Maamun has been the most accomplished, knowledgeable Caliph in the house of Abbas. One day while presiding over the conference of the lawyers and the theologians, he noticed a stranger wearing ragged white clothes and sitting behind the law doctors. During the debate, the stranger made a goodlier response than the rest, and the Caliph

Yahya bin Khalid nurtured grudges against Abdullah bin Lalik for good reasons. Once, Haroon Al-Rashid made Abdullah ruler of Armenia. A noble man of Irak, who had lost everything, went to Abdullah with a forged letter of Yahya. Abdullah suspected the letter to be forged and told the man that after sending the letter to

Haroon Al-Rashid once sent his slave Salih to Mansur to collect a thousand thousand dirhams which he owed, failing which Mansur was to be beheaded. Salih did as he was ordered and accosted Mansur. Mansur initially lamented that all his assets will not fetch more than a hundred thousand dirhams. First Mansur went to his