The Arabian Nights this is not a religious text. According to the Foreword, the stories within the Arabian Nights are meant to be “agreeable and entertaining,” and have “highly edifying histories and excellent lessons for the people of distinction.” The Foreword does not mention a religious agenda, or any instruction on how to perform religious prayers or sacrifices. The Arabian Nights are meant to teach lessons and be entertaining, which allows it to derail from religious expectation.

However, some might argue that introducing the foreword with “praise be to God, the Beneficence King, the Creator of the world and man” shows that these tales intend on teaching a religious agenda. But to that, I say that this is normal speech, given the times that it was written. The praise to God at the beginning of this Foreword could be similar to a dedication page, and it reflects the importance of God in the time that it was written.

Once you go into the text, you see an innumerable amount of references to God (Allah). Characters are either thanking God, or using God as a witness to their promises. However, these uses of God are the equivalent to us saying “Oh my God” or “I swear to God”.

The thing I could compare the Arabian Nights to is the works of Plato, especially his Socratic dialogues. These dialogues, like the Arabian Nights, where meant to teach many things to those who read it, whether it is philosophy or learning how to debate (this makes me think of the quote from the Foreword, “this book […] teach the reader to detect deception and protect himself from it.”). Also, like the Arabian Nights, the Socratic dialogues had a huge impact on the society that they were written in.

The most important similarity, though, is that many of the Socratic dialogues references and quotes from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Countless times, Socrates quotes these two sacred texts, just as those in The Arabian Nights describe ideas and rituals from the Quran. Such an example can be seen on the sixteenth night during the tale of the king’s son and the she-ghoul. In it, the king’s son asks God to protect him from the ghoul, quoting the Quran saying, “Everything is within your power.” There is another point, during the tenth night, where we hear the past of the demon in the jar. He “rebelled against the prophet Solomon, the son of David.” However, a quote from a sacred text it does not make the text quoting it holy.

The profanity in the stories can be seen in this general idea: It is wrong, but we still want to see it. Especially in the case of the enchanted prince, on the twenty third night, when seeing his wife begging the black man outside of the city, saying “O my lover and my heart’s desire, if you remain angry at me, whom else have I got […] who will take me in?” Ultimately, she is punished for her profane actions. Though she is punished, we still get the see what she does to get punished and killed. We see her get undressed with the man and take verbal abuse from him, being called a “cursed woman”. There seems to be a form of erotica in this scene of the princess begging and being abused by the black man.

Such erotic sections, though, are looked down upon, especially be those of royal and “pure” blood. When the prince watched the events occurring between the man and his wife, “the world started to turn black before [his] eyes.” This cheating episode is done between a person of royal blood and one without. Such cheating has not occurred between those of royal blood. Such erotic blasphemy only occurs when someone not of royal blood is involved in an affair with someone who has royal blood.  Ultimately, as seen towards the end of the enchanted prince tale, pure royal blood wins over the wicked as the king kills the enchanted prince’s twisted wife.