Sinbad the Sailor
Sinbad the Sailor (/ˈsɪnbæd/; Arabic: سندباد البحري, romanized: Sindibādu l-Bahriyy or Sindbad) is a fictional mariner and the hero of a story-cycle.
In the course of seven voyages throughout the seas east of Africa and south of Asia, he has fantastic adventures in magical realms, encountering monsters and witnessing supernatural phenomena.
Later sources include Abbasid works such as the "Wonders of the Created World", reflecting the experiences of 13th century Arab mariners who braved the Indian Ocean.
The earliest separate publication of the Sinbad tales in English found in the British Library is an adaptation as The Adventures of Houran Banow, etc.
[5][6][7] Like the 1001 Nights, the Sinbad story-cycle has a frame story which goes as follows: in the days of Harun al-Rashid, Caliph of Baghdad, a poor porter (one who carries goods for others in the market and throughout the city) pauses to rest on a bench outside the gate of a rich merchant's house, where he complains to God about the injustice of a world which allows the rich to live in ease while he must toil and yet remain poor.
Sinbad hatches a plan to blind the beast with the two red-hot iron spits with which the monster has been kebabbing and roasting the ship's company.
The naked savages amongst whom he finds himself feed his companions a herb which robs them of their reason (Burton theorises that this might be bhang), prior to fattening them for the table.
Too late Sinbad learns of a peculiar custom of the land: on the death of one marriage partner, the other is buried alive with his or her spouse, both in their finest clothes and most costly jewels.
Such episodes continue; soon he has a sizable store of bread and water, as well as the gold and gems from the corpses, but is still unable to escape, until one day a wild animal shows him a passage to the outside, high above the sea.
From here, a passing ship rescues him and carries him back to Baghdad, where he gives alms to the poor and resumes his life of pleasure.
Burton's footnote comments: "This tale is evidently taken from the escape of Aristomenes the Messenian from the pit into which he had been thrown, a fox being his guide.
It is in an earlier episode, featuring the 'Lotus Eaters', that Odysseus' men are fed a similar magical fruit which robs them of their senses.
"When I had been a while on shore after my fourth voyage; and when, in my comfort and pleasures and merry-makings and in my rejoicing over my large gains and profits, I had forgotten all I had endured of perils and sufferings, the carnal man was again seized with the longing to travel and to see foreign countries and islands."
(Burton's footnote discusses possible origins for the old man—the orang-utan, the Greek god Triton—and favours the African custom of riding on slaves in this way).
He falls asleep as he journeys through the darkness and awakens in the city of the king of Serendib (Sri Lanka/Ceylon), "diamonds are in its rivers and pearls are in its valleys".
The king marvels at what Sinbad tells him of the great Haroun al-Rashid, and asks that he take a present back to Baghdad on his behalf, a cup carved from a single ruby, with other gifts including a bed made from the skin of the serpent that swallowed an elephant[a] ("And whoso sitteth upon it never sickeneth"), and "A hundred thousand miskals of Sindh lign-aloesa.
And so, at his wife's suggestion, Sinbad sells all his possessions and returns with her to Baghdad, where at last he resolves to live quietly in the enjoyment of his wealth, and to seek no more adventures.
Burton includes a variant of the seventh tale, in which Haroun al-Rashid asks Sinbad to carry a return gift to the king of Serendib.
"Here I went in to the Caliph and, after saluting him and kissing hands, informed him of all that had befallen me; whereupon he rejoiced in my safety and thanked Almighty Allah; and he made my story be written in letters of gold.
Sinbad's quasi-iconic status in Western culture has led to his name being recycled for a wide range of uses in both serious and not-so-serious contexts, frequently with only a tenuous connection to the original tales.
Many films, television series, animated cartoons, novels, and video games have been made, most of them featuring Sinbad not as a merchant who stumbles into adventure, but as a dashing dare-devil adventure-seeker.
The 1952 Russian film Sadko (based on Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Sadko) was overdubbed and released in English in 1962 as The Magic Voyage of Sinbad, while the 1963 Japanese film Dai tozoku (whose main character was a heroic pirate named Sukezaemon) was overdubbed and released in English in 1965 as The Lost World of Sinbad.
