The Arabian garden as Paradise (from The Pictorial Gallery of Fine Arts, 1847)
They noticed a door inlaid with ivory and ebony and adorned with plates of gold. Over it hung a curtain of silk, and there was a delicate lock on it made of white silver. The sheikh made quick work of it and they found themselves in a passage paved with marble and with curtains running along both sides on which wild beasts and birds were embroidered in gold and silver thread.
At the end of the passage, they arrived in a room made of marble so polished that the floor looked as if it were made of running water. In the middle of the ceiling was a giant golden dome, and entering it, they discovered a pavilion. It was raised on columns of red gold and inside were birds made of gold and emeralds arranged around a fountain. By the fountain was a couch on which lay a girl whose beauty shone like the sun. Her hair was black, her cheeks were rosy and her eyes danced with light. She was wearing a dress of brilliant pearls and a crown of red gold and on her forehead were two shining yellow gems.
The emir and his friends had never seen a girl so beautiful. They looked at one another, each with the same question burning in his heart: was this the sole living person in the City of Brass?
Or were there more? On either side of her, it looked as if there was a slave standing stock still, one white and the other black, one carrying a steel spear and the other a bejeweled sword. Their weapons were raised, but they were as still as statues . . .
“Peace be to thee, O damsel!” said the emir.
But the wazir said, “You should know that this damsel is dead! There is no life in her.”
“She looked at me with love! Her eyes flashed with joy! I’ve never seen anyone so full of life!”
“She has been skillfully embalmed,” said the wazir, “and her eyes have been taken out and quicksilver has been put beneath them, then they’ve been put back in place so that they gleam.”
The sheikh stepped up and read an inscription on a gold tablet beneath the girl’s feet:
All the world’s things are borrowed, and what you borrow from it, it will take back. The world is like the confused visions of the sleeper and the dream of the dreamer. Where is Adam, father of mankind? Where are Noah and his descendants? Where are the kings of India and Iraq? Where are the Caesars?
I am Tedmur, daughter of the king of the Amalekites. I ruled justly and acted impartially to all my subjects, so that they enjoyed happy and easy lives. I built an impregnable city of brass to make sure that we were all safe and I laid up such stores of wealth that we could be sure we would never run out.
Then there alighted among us the Terminator of Delights and the Separator of Companions, the Desolator of Abodes, the Destroyer of all Creatures Great and Small.
Child of Adam, let not hope make game of thee.
The emir tried to hold him back, but the wazir mounted the steps to where the princess lay and reached out to take one of the jewels from her forehead. At that moment the slaves revealed they were not statues but automata, one plunging the spear into his back and the other decapitating him with a swift sweep of his sword.
The story of Perceval is about how at the heart of the cosmos you may find your true self, the Self, the creative principle of the cosmos. The story of the City of Brass is about how at the center of everything is death.1
The mustard seed and the seed of death.
* * *
Omar was a wealthy merchant in Cairo. When he died it turned out he had divided his fortune four ways—between his three sons and his wife. But the two elder sons quickly ran through their portions and then tried to get their hands on their brother Judar’s, pursuing the case through court after court until they were all destitute. So Judar took his mother to live with him and every day he went fishing on the banks of the Nile to try to earn a few coppers. The brothers soon became wretched naked beggars, so Judar took them in too. They did nothing to help and yet they resented living on their younger brother’s charity.
Then Judar happened to go through a very lean patch. For several days he caught nothing, not even a single sprat. He decided to go further afield and fish in Lake Karun, and it was here that a rich merchant called Abdul came to find him.
Abdul explained that his own father had been a student of magic and that his prized possession had been a book called The Fables of the Ancients. This contained details of all the great hidden treasures of the world—and how to find them. The greatest treasure trove of all was the one belonging to an enchanter called Al-Shamardal. The treasure consisted of a celestial planisphere, a ring with a seal on it and a phial of ointment. If you pasted that ointment on your eyes, you could see where all the other treasures of the Earth were buried! His father had tried to find this treasure, but the red jinn who controlled it had got wind of this and hidden themselves at the bottom of Lake Karun. Before he died his father had consulted an astrologer who had told him that the treasure of Al-Shamardal could only be seized with the help of a young fisherman of Cairo called Judar, son of Omar.
Judar explained he could not possibly leave his mother to fend for herself, so Abdul gave him plenty of money to go and leave with her.
When Judar returned, Abdul said, “Mount behind me,” and together they rode until midafternoon prayer, when they stopped to eat.
They rode like this for four days, and Judar noticed that there always seemed to be plenty to eat and drink in the saddlebags, though he never saw Abdul replenish them.
Then one morning Abdul said, “Judar, this is the day the astrologer said was appointed for the retrieving of the treasure.”
They rode until midday again, when they came to a river. Abdul brought from out of his saddlebags a hollow wand and three tablets of red carnelian, which he placed on the wand. Next he brought out a dish, some charcoal and some incense, and said to Judar, “I am about to begin the necessary conjurations and fumigations, but once I have begun I cannot speak or the charm will be broken. So listen very carefully to what I am going to say.”
“Teach me,” said Judar.
Abdul gave him the instructions from The Fables of the Ancients:
“When I have recited the spell and thrown the incense on the fire, the water will dry up from the riverbed and you will be able to see a golden door there with two metal rings on it. Give three knocks in rapid succession and you will hear a voice ask, ‘Who knocks at the door of the treasure, unknowing how to solve the secrets?’ You must answer: ‘I am Judar, the son of Omar.’ And the door will open and there will come toward you a figure with a burning sword in his hand. He will say to you, ‘If you be that man, stretch forth thy neck, that I may strike off your head.’ Then stretch forth your neck and fear not, for when he lifts his hand and smites you with his sword, he will fall down before you, and you will see in him a body sans soul. But if you gainsay him, he will slay you.
“When you have done this, go down the tunnel until you see another door. This door will fly open and you will see two dragons, which will open their mouths and fly at you. Put forth both hands and they will each bite each a hand and fall down dead, but if you resist them, they will slay you.
“Then go to the next door and knock, whereupon your mother will come forth and say ‘Welcome, O my boy! Come that I may greet you!’ But you must reply, ‘Keep back from me and take off your dress.’ And she will answer, ‘O my son, I am your mother—why would you strip me naked?’ Then you must take your sword and brandish it, saying, ‘Strip!’ whereupon she will wheedle and humble herself, but do not be beguiled, nor cease to threaten her with death till she doffs all that is on her and falls down. Whereupon the enchantment will be dissolved and the charms undone and you will be safe as to your life.
“Then enter the hall of treasure, where you will see gold lying in heaps. Pay no heed, but look for a curtain at the end of the hall. Draw back the curtain and there you will see the enchanter Al-Shamardal.”
“How will I be able to endure these terrors?” said Judar.
“Fear not, for they are semblances without life.”
Judar did as he was told, and it all went as Abdul had said until he came to the last door and his mother.
“I’m glad to see you, my boy.”
“What are you?”
“O my son, I am your mother who carried you for nine months and suckled you and reared you.”
“Take off your clothes.”
“You are my son. Why would you strip me naked?”
“Strip or I will strike off your head with this sword.”
As he redoubled his threats, she took off some of her clothes.
She removed each article very slowly, all the while pleading, until she had nothing left on but her last undergarment.
“Will you dishonor me and shame me? This is unlawful, my boy.”
At this point he could not go on. “What you are saying is right. Leave that last garment on.”
“He has failed!” she cried. “He is no real man. Beat him!”
And demons rushed on him, covering him with blows and thrusting him back up the corridors and through the doors until he was ejected out into the daylight and the waters closed over the riverbed and the door.
“Didn’t I warn you not to swerve from my directions?” said Abdul. “Now you must abide with me till this day next year.”
He told Judar that although he had escaped with his life this time, if he tripped up a second time he would certainly be killed.
A year later Judar went through the same process until his mother appeared before him again, saying, “Welcome, O my boy!”
But this time it was different. “How am I your son, you accursed spirit?” said Judar, and he made her take off all her clothes, at which point she fell down dead.
Then Judar entered the hall of treasures. The enchanter Al-Shamardal lay on a couch of gold with the ring on his finger, the celestial planisphere hanging over his head and the phial on his breast. Judar took them from the sleeping form and was swept up above the ground.
Abdul embraced him. “Ask what you will and be not ashamed, for you are deserving.”
“I ask first of Allah and then of you that you give me yonder saddlebags.”
Abdul gladly gave Judar his saddlebags, and two more filled with gold and jewels. Then he sent Judar off on a mule with a slave to guide him.
Judar traveled day and night until he entered Cairo by the Gate of Victory. There he saw his mother sitting and begging. He almost lost his wits with pain as she explained that his brothers had cheated her of all she possessed and sent her out to beg.
Judar took her home and took food out of the saddlebags and laid out a meal for her. It is worth detailing: they had roast chicken and peppered rice, sausages and stuffed cucumbers and stuffed lamb and stuffed ribs of mutton and vermicelli with broken almonds and nuts and honey and sugar and fritters and almond cakes.
Later he built a fine palace and said to his mother, “Tell me, will you live with me in this palace?”
Later still, he saw the king’s daughter. He looked fixedly at her and said, “Ah!” and his limbs were loosened, for love and longing and passion and pining were upon him, and soon he married her.
Then Judar and his wife and mother lived together in their palace. A eunuch sat on a golden throne at the front. He was more than capable of seeing off Judar’s brothers or anyone else who wanted to cause trouble.
* * *
In The Arabian Nights: A Companion, the scholar and novelist Robert Irwin describes how entertainments like the story of Judar and his brothers had parallels in descriptions of real-life adventures. Treasure hunting was a popular way of making a living in Egypt in the Middle Ages, as it is today. Manuals detailed the elaborate precautions set up to guard the treasures hidden in the pyramids. A thirteenth-century treatise on treasure hunting described passageways lined with sword-wielding statues. The treasure hunters were advised to beat the ground in front of them with a long stick to activate trip wires, so that the swords would fall harmlessly in front of them. There were trapdoors, revolving doors, collapsing staircases and sudden firestorms. The treatise also warned that spells were needed to ward off attacks by demons.
In the fifteenth century a sultan was visited by a Sufi saint called Sheikh al-Dashuti. They argued about whether Mohammed really had journeyed through the heavens and the sultan said he was a bit skeptical. The sheikh told him that if he plunged his head into a bowl of water just for an instant, he would understand. When the sheikh raised his head from the bowl, he said that in that instant he had experienced many lifetimes.
From childhood onwards the nineteenth-century essayist Thomas de Quincey often had experiences that felt to him like omniscience. Later in life these were enhanced by drugs. Were they delusions?
De Quincey’s writings are full of visions of the interconnectedness of everything. He wrote that walking endlessly round the streets of London he had the sense that all had been laid out for him as in a game. As he walked, it seemed to him that there was a spider somewhere in London sending invisible threads across the globe.
Borges was intrigued by another passage in de Quincey with a similar theme. In his Autobiographical Sketches, de Quincey wrote that he remained fascinated all his life by a mysterious, unfathomable and sublime passage in tales of the Arabian nights. Its grandeur, he said, had made him restless all his life.2
At the opening of the tale, a magician living in the central depths of Africa is introduced to us as one made aware by his secret art of an enchanted lamp endowed with supernatural powers available to for the service of any man whatever who should get it into his keeping. But . . . the lamp is imprisoned in subterraneous chambers, and from these it can be released only by the hands of an innocent child. But this is not enough: the child must have a special horoscope written in the stars, or else a peculiar destiny written in his constitution, entitling him to take possession of the lamp. Where shall such a child be found? Where shall he be sought? The magician knows: he applies his ear to the earth; he listens to the innumerable sounds of footsteps that at the moment of his experiment are tormenting the surface of the globe, and amongst them all, at a distance of six thousand miles, playing in the streets of Bagdad, he distinguishes the peculiar steps of the child Aladdin. Through this mighty labyrinth of sounds, . . . one solitary infant’s feet are distinctly recognized on the banks of the Tigris, distant by four hundred and forty days’ march of an army or a caravan. These feet, these steps, the sorcerer knows, and challenges in his heart as the feet, as the steps of that innocent boy, through whose hands only he could have a chance for reaching the lamp. . . .
The wicked magician, . . . having laid aside as useless many billions of earthly sounds, and having fastened his murderous attention upon one insulated tread, has the power, still more unsearchable, of reading in that hasty movement an alphabet of new and infinite symbols; for, in order that the sound of the child’s feet should be significant and intelligible, . . . the pulses of the heart, the motions of the will, the phantoms of the brain must repeat themselves in secret hieroglyphics uttered by the flying footsteps. Even the inarticulate or brutal sounds of the globe must be all so many languages and ciphers that somewhere have their corresponding keys—have their own grammar and syntax, and thus the least things in the universe must be secret mirrors to the greatest.
Part of what intrigued Borges was that this episode appeared in no known version of the Arabian nights, but it was nevertheless an accurate account of the mystical beliefs of the age when these stories originated.
A sense of the interweaving of everything, however far away in space and time, is integral to idealism and its mind-before-matter account of the cosmos. According to this mystical view, the entire material universe is held together by a unifying force, which is the great Cosmic Mind. In Jewish tradition God spoke the cosmos into existence and therefore everything in it is connected in the same way that language is connected—by meaning and intention. The sequence of letters by which God called the cosmos into existence is the sequence of the Hebrew letters in the Torah.
Mystical ideas on how to tune into the creative powers of the cosmos were preserved in secret societies, and members of these societies sometimes allude to such ideas in their published writings. The nineteenth-century French novelist Honoré de Balzac had one of the most energetically creative imaginations in human history, and in his titanic sequence of novels La Comédie Humaine he tried to create a cosmos grand and varied enough to rival the material cosmos. He also wrote about a quality he called “specialism.” He described it as “the formula of God” and a path to the infinite known to the people of greatest genius. He was, of course, thinking in the first instance of himself:
Specialism . . . consists of seeing the things of the material universe and the things of the spiritual universe in all their ramifications, original and causative. Jesus had the gift of Specialism. He saw in each fact its root and results, in the past where it had its rise, and in the future where it would grow and spread. His sight pierced into the understanding of others. The perfection of the inner eye gives rise to the gift of specialism.
* * *
Because we are so far removed from idealism and its way of thinking about the world, there is a danger that our impression of it and its claims becomes caricatured—especially with regard to the ontological status of the material world. Is idealism really suggesting that the world is totally unreal? Does an apple or a table really cease to exist the instant you stop looking at it? This extreme, unlikely proposition might seem to be one of the implications of idealism and part of its baggage.
I am not denying that there have been world-denying and also world-hating impulses in the history of religion, but idealism encompasses some extremely sophisticated thinking about the different orders of reality and the ontological status of the objects and contents of different types of experience—and no more so than in Islamic mysticism.
According to the medieval poet and philosopher Al-Kashani, everything intelligible, everything that comes from the world of the unseen into the world of sense experience, is a communication from God. Everything in the outer world is a creation of God’s mind, of His imagination. To put it another way, the physical world is not a subjective illusion—you and I are not subjectively hallucinating it. It is rather an objective illusion.
The material world is not therefore sheer illusion. It is not something that exists nowhere or has no ontological status. It has a level of reality because everything that exists on the material plane has a corresponding existence in the higher, more spiritual planes. In this sense the whole world is a forest of symbols, although the meaning of these symbols maybe hidden from everyday human intelligence.
Knowers are mystics and visionaries with powers of imagination beyond the ordinary. They have what Sufis call “veridical dreams,” which are visions of a higher, more real, reality. These dreams may then be interpreted by reason so that reason and imagination work together in harmony.
Knowers also have waking veridical dreams in which the symbolic structure and meaning of the material world—what God intends to communicate through it—become clear to them.
We have all experienced the difference between ordinary, banal dreams and significant dreams in which we sense we are being told something important. Similarly in our waking lives all—or most of us—have had experiences where life seems to be trying to tell us something. Among Sufi mystics, these experiences and the distinctions they give rise to are the focus of a great deal of attention and thought.
* * *
Arabian ideals and ideas of the interconnectedness of the cosmos would eventually give birth to their shadow. Scientific materialism would come to see the whole cosmos as interconnected, with every part connected to every other part, no matter how far away—not by the intentions of a Cosmic Mind but by impersonal forces like gravity.
We will see later that science can now give us experimental proof that we can affect the behavior of subatomic particles just by thinking about them. We will see, too, that it can show us that the movement of one electron can affect the movement of another electron on the other side of the cosmos.
Could it be that the tales of the Arabian nights are more than just entertainment, and that the esoteric lore that underlies them is an accurate description of the cosmos?
The Arabian garden as Paradise (from The Pictorial Gallery of Fine Arts, 1847)