Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights by Paulo Lemos Horta (review)

The Thousand and One Nights, also known in English as the Arabian Nights, has long been a valuable collection not only of stories, but also of evidence of the ravages of colonialism in the form of embellishments, additions, subtractions, mutations, collaborations, translations, and outright theft. Several different European translators of the tales began with a variety of Arabic manuscripts, then added and replaced elements based on their own travels in the Middle East and their own relationships with the people of the Levant. In Marvels & Tales 28.2 (2014), Ruth B. Bottigheimer describes this as a process of cultural exchange: “In the porous, lively Mediterranean world, literary and narrative influences flowed both westward and eastward across linguistic, cultural, and political boundaries. We owe much of our tradition to this vibrant fusion and percolating reciprocity” (316). Reciprocity notwithstanding, Orientalism is rather one-sided; with Marvellous Thieves, Paulo Lemos Horta aims to give voice to those creators hitherto subsumed under European names like Antoine Galland, Edward William Lane, and Richard Francis Burton. Using recently discovered and underexplored primary sources, he offers a compelling and complicating view of the Middle Easterners, like Hanna Diyab, who worked with and alongside the Europeans without commensurate recognition. “Seen through this prism,” Horta writes, “these legendary authors of the Arabian Nights appear as masters in an unacknowledged workshop, or in some cases as little more than ventriloquists” (15). Horta details the messy, complex process of story creation as it intersects with subjects and subalterns of empire.

Horta’s analysis begins with Hanna Diyab, the Maronite Christian from Syria who introduced Galland to the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba—the “orphan tales” that do not exist in the Arabic source manuscript Galland used. Diyab’s memoir, recently identified at the Vatican Library, “suggests ways in which the orphan tales may have been influenced not only by the stories that circulated within Aleppo but also by the perspective of a young man marked by the storytelling culture of the road and the marvels of Paris” (21). As examined by Horta, Diyab’s notes say as much about Diyab’s experience of France and his opinion of his French master as they do about the Western view of the Arab world. They provide a nuanced perspective of a cross-cultural exchange with quite unequal power dynamics.

Further influences Horta traces include the translation by Henry Torrens of the Macan manuscript, an Arabic source containing the full 1,001 nights of storytelling. Though Torrens’s translation has not endured, it heavily influenced Burton’s, and Horta argues that “it is the invisible thread that weaves through the history of the Arabian Nights in English” (93). Torrens was the first translator to convey all the poetry in verse without abridgement, showing his earnest interest in the Arabic language, but his roles as both a product and a proponent of British colonialism shape his version of the text. Horta treats Torrens and other colonial figures with sensitivity, despite their problematic involvements.

Horta also examines the connections made by famed translator Edward Lane, who relied on the expertise of locals when he lived in Egypt and worked on the Arabian Nights; locals like Osman, an Australian Scot who had been enslaved by Turks and converted to Islam. Horta notes, “Osman’s case offers a rare glimpse into the gray area occupied by those individuals who sought to cross the seemingly impenetrable divide between Europe and the Middle East” (141). Through Osman, Lane developed a particular fascination with Maghrebi magician Sheikh Abd al-Qadir, a fascination that Horta credits with inspiring the magician in the tale of Aladdin, as well as “the role of the young boy as the key mediator between the everyday and the supernatural” (152). The second local who contributed to Lane’s translation is Cairo bookseller Sheikh Ahmad, a “dubious character” whose licentious views on women quickly found a home in Lane’s version of the text (190). Lane...