The Art of Storytelling in the Timbuktu Manuscripts
The tale of One Thousand and One Nights in Timbuktu
B-reel animationSAVAMA-DCI
According to the author of the Tarikh al-fattash, a famous West African chronicle, in the 16th century Timbuktu had 100,000 inhabitants, including 25,000 students. A quarter of this population was literate in Arabic.
The author of this chronicle also claimed that around 50 women in Timbuktu could recite the Quran by heart. All this goes to show that Timbuktu, through its ulamas and trade, was deeply immersed in Arab culture.
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The story One Thousand and One Nights was part of this culture.
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The One Thousand and One Nights is a tale of Persian origin that offers us a mirror of Arab civilization in all its guises. The story recounts the anger of the sultan Shahryar who, on discovering his wife’s infidelity, has her killed.
To avoid being deceived again, he decides to murder the woman he married the night before each morning. After several executions, a learned woman named Scheherazade, the grand vizier’s daughter, volunteers to be the next bride.
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To put an end to her husband’s cruelty, every night she begins to tell the sultan the start of a story, but always takes care to stop before finishing it.
His curiosity piqued, the sultan postpones her murder until the following day. This merry-go-round is repeated for a thousand and one nights, giving the tale its name and celebrating the ingenuity of the woman who escapes death.
Manuscrit: Récit de la femme servante, savante et affectueuse (717)SAVAMA-DCI
The story of a clever and affectionate servant girl
“… the sultan replied, saying: ‘You have done well, oh servant girl. [Now,] tell me about what makes the heart better and what makes it bad’. She replied: ‘[Remember], there are five things that make the heart better and five others that make it bad.
The five that make it better are reason, knowledge, devotion, certainty, and contentment. While the five that make it bad are foolishness, ignorance, greed, lust, and lies.
Some scholars have said: ‘When the body is suffering, neither eating nor drinking can help. Similarly, when a heart is attached to vile pleasures, no sermon can be of use to it ...’”
B-reel animationSAVAMA-DCI
The story of One Thousand and One Nights was often told to children to educate them. In this passage, the servant girl teaches the king about the attributes that make a man good or bad.
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