The porter and the three ladies
The porter and the three ladies is a swank from the Arabian Nights . It appears in Claudia Otts translation as The Bearer and the Three Ladies (Nights 28–37), in Gustav Weil as the history of the three calendars .
content
A lady takes a porter at the bazaar and buys oil, fruit, meat, fine specialties, then nuts, sweets, liqueurs and fragrances. Finally she stops at a splendid house with two other ladies. They relieve him of the burden and reward him, but he prefers to dine with them. They drink wine, joke and eat together. He must vow not to ask questions. Three one-eyed beggar monks join in and make music. This attracts the caliph with his vizier incognito. They are also not allowed to ask anything. One of the ladies whips two bitches one after the other and then cries with them. The other one plays the lute and sings, tears her clothes off three times and passes out, her body covered with paints of cane blows. The men want an explanation, because they are tied up by armed slaves. To be spared, they have to tell their stories.
classification
The action takes place in Baghdad . This is followed by the story of the first beggar monk , the story of the second beggar monk , the story of the third beggar monk . Caliph Harun ar-Raschid and Vizier Jaafar also accompany the following stories.
literature
- Claudia Ott (Ed.): A thousand and one nights. How it all started Based on the oldest Arabic manuscript in the edition by Muhsin Mahdi, first translated into German and appended by Claudia Ott. Title of the original Arabic edition: The Thousand And One Nights (Alf Layla wa-Layla). dtv, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-423-14611-1 , pp. 98–126 (first CH Beck, Munich 2006).