Sultan Schahriar discovers that the love of his life has
been cheating him and then has her put to death. Afterwards he is convinced
women are evil and marries a new wife every evening, but then has her killed in
the morning. It was the grand-vizir that had the job of bringing the sultan new
women each day and one day his daughter suggested that he send her. He
reluctantly tells the sultan and informs Scheherazade that she will marry the
sultan. Before she goes she has one last wish and tells her sister to wake her
up an hour before dawn and tell her to begin telling one of her stories. Her
sister does this and the sultan agrees that she should tell a story.
Scheherazade begins telling a story about a wealthy
merchant. While traveling the merchant encounters a genius (genie) who says he
will kill the merchant because the merchant threw a stone and it struck the
genies son in the eye and killed him. The genie raises his weapon to kill the
man…and Scheherazade stops telling the story to get the sultan’s permission to
finish it the next morning. The sultan agrees and the story continues the next
day…the merchant begs the genie to let him go and say goodbye to is family,
promising to return after 1 year so the genie can kill him. The genie agrees
and after a year the merchant returns to the same spot. While he is waiting for
the genie he meets 2 old men. The genie appears and right before he is about to
kill the merchant, one of the old men interjects and proposes to the genie that
he tells a story and if it is a good story then he won’t kill the merchant. The
genie agrees.
The old man begins to tell the genie the story, but Scheherazade
is still telling this story to the Sultan every morning and her life keeps
being spared one day at a time. So the man begins his story and explains how
the deer with him is his wife and they have an adopted son. The old man leaves
for a year and asks his wife to watch his mother and child while he is gone.
The wife turns his son into a calf and a slave of his into a cow and then when
the old man returns she tells him that they have disappeared. For a holiday
feast, the wife kills the slave that is now a cow to eat and tries to get his
son that is now a calf killed but he couldn’t do it, even though he didn’t know
it was his son. The man discovers its his son and gets him changed back to a
human and then has the wife changed into the deer that she is now. Now the
merchant is talking to the genie again and the other old man with them
interjects and offers to tell the genie yet a better story, to which he agrees.
The second old man begins his story (this is still
Scheherazade telling these stories to the sultan) and explains how the two
black dogs with him are his brothers. All 3 brothers were merchants and two of
them decided to go travel, they each came back penniless and the brother who
did not travel (the old man telling the genie the story) gave them his money
each time. A while later they all decide to travel together and the brother who
had not previously traveled got married, but his brothers became jealous and
threw him and his wife into the ocean. The wife was a fairy, so she saved her
husband and they went to an island. The fairy turned his 2 brothers into dogs
for 10 years and after the ten years were almost done they set out to find the
fairy and found the old man with the deer for a wife along the way. The genie
agrees that these were great stories so he spares the merchants life and leaves
them alone. Scheherazade then tells the sultan that as great as her past
stories were, none of them compare to another story.
Scheherazade begins to tell the sultan about a story of a
fisherman. He was very old and poor and was married with a wife and three kids.
While fishing, the man catches a pot that is sealed and once he opens it a
genie comes out. The genie says the man gets one wish, but it is only to decide
the way that the genie will kill him. The genie begins to explain that he
rebelled against the king of the genies and was shut in the vase and after 300
years the genie vowed to himself that whoever freed him would die. The
fisherman tells the genie that he doesn’t think he can actually fit in the
vase, so the genie goes in the vase to prove it but then the man shuts the lid
and traps the genie. The man then says he is afraid that if he lets the genie
out he will be treated like Douban was by a Greek king, starting another story.
The fisherman now starts telling the story of a Greek king
that was ill and a physician named Douban came to see him. Douban tells the
king to play polo with a club that has medicine on the handle. The king does
this and the next morning he is cured. The king gave Douban many riches and the
kings grand-vizir grew very jealous of Douban. The king tells the grand-vizir
not the be jealous and begins to tell him a story that was told to King Sindbad
by his own vizir.
The King begins a story about a man with a beautiful wife.
Before the husband left to travel he buys a parrot and when he gets back the
parrot tells him some bad things the wife had done. The wife then had slaves
dump water on the parrot and when the husband came back to ask the parrot what
happened, the parrot says it rained a lot the night before. The man knew that
it hadn’t rained and killed the parrot for lying. The king then tells his vizir
that his is why he will not listen to him and the vizir begins to tell a story to
the king about yet another king who had a son that liked to hunt and on each
hunting trip the king would have his son take the grand-vizir with him. The boy
got lost one day and encountered an ogre who brought him back to her children
to eat the boy. The boy escaped and went home and the king had the grand-vizir
killed because he did not keep track of the boy.
The king who was cured by the physician decides to have
Douban killed after hearing these stories and being told by his grand-vizir
that Douban is plotting to assassinate him. Douban is killed, but his head is
placed on a book like he asked for and he can still talk this way. The king
begins to turn the pages and lick his fingers after each page, which each page
had poison on. The King then dies and we return to the fisherman and the genie.
The genie begs to not be thrown back into the sea and eventually the fisherman lets
him out so the genie can reward him for sparing him.
The genie takes the fisherman to a magic lake where he
catches great fish and is told by the genie to take them to the sultan. The
sultan asks to see where these fish came from. Once they are there, the sultan
sets off on his own and finds a palace where he finds a man that is half person
and half stone. This person then begins a story to the sultan of how he became
like this.
It winds up the man used to be a king and after he punished
a slave that his wife adored she turned him into the half-statue that he is
now. The wife then turned the capital into the lake where the fisherman caught
the fish and she comes and beats her husband with a whip every day. The sultan
tricks the wife into turning the man back into his former self and also turning
the lake back into a kingdom. Everyone ends up happy and the sultan gives the
fisherman a lot of wealth.
This starts another one of Scheherazade’s stories to the
sultan. A magician encounters a poor boy named Aladdin one day who claims to be
his uncle. The magician buys Aladdin all new things and leads him to the
desert, where he gives Aladdin a magical ring and sends him into a cave to
retrieve a lamp. Aladdin gets the lamp, but refuses to let the magician have it
until he is helped out of the cave. Instead of helping him, the magician (who
is actually not Aladdin’s uncle) collapses the cave, leaving Aladdin trapped.
The magician forgot to take the magic ring though and when Aladdin rubs it a
genie comes out.
Aladdin has the genie get them out of the cave and then
returns home to his mother. He shows her the lamp and yet another genie comes
out of it, prompting Aladdin to wish it for some food. One day, Aladdin sees
the princess bathing and immediately wants to marry her. He sends his mother to
the sultan with jewels to request the marriage and the sultan agrees, but says
to wait three months. After three months the princess marries the son of the
sultan’s conspiring grand-vizir. Aladdin learns this and asks the genie of the
lamp to bring them both to him. The genie brings a bed with the new couple in
it, then kicks the grand-vizir’s son outside and Aladdin spends the night with
the princess.
Each night, Aladdin keeps having the genie bring the
princess to spend the night with him and eventually the grand-vizir’s son tells
the sultan he no longer wants to be married to the princess. After hearing
this, Aladdin’s mother goes back to the sultan and reminds him of his promise.
The sultan agrees that Aladdin can marry the princess, as long as he comes to
the palace with a parade. He wishes the genie for all the things for a parade
and the wish gets granted. He then has the genie build a massive palace and
marries the princess. After seeing the palace, the grand-vizir warns the sultan
that he thinks Aladdin is using some form of enchantment.
The magician who trapped Aladdin in the cave learns that he
escaped and is using the magic lamp, so he travels halfway across the world to
trick one of the princess’s slaves into giving him the magic lamp. He obtains
the lamp and has the palace transported to a far away land. The sultan has
Aladdin brought to him and tells Aladdin to either go find the princess or be
killed. Aladdin rubs his magic ring and has the genie take him to the palace
and princess, which he does.
Aladdin devises a plan and tells the princess to go to the
magician and inform him that she has moved on from Aladdin and to feast with
the magician. He also gives her something to put in his drink, which she does.
The powder was poisonous and the magician dies shortly afterwards.
Aladdin goes to the dead magician and receives his lamp,
upon which he has the genie transport them back to their original home. Soon
after, we learn that the magician has an evil brother, who has come from far
away to trick Aladdin. The magician kills the holy woman of the town and goes
into town wearing her clothes. The princess hears that the holy woman has
walked into town and tells the princess that the palace needs a Roc egg for decoration.
The princess tells this to Aladdin and he then commands the genie. This command
infuriates the genie, who tells Aladdin that the holy woman is the magician in disguise.
Aladdin then kills the magician and lives happily ever after.
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