Story time, Twitter! The prediction of yet another snowstorm has left me irrationally angry, so the tale I’m telling today from the 1001 Nights contains EXTRA MURDER, as well as deeply questionable medical practices and revenge served cold.
It’s the story of the Sage Duban and King Yunan. It’s not as long as my previous story threads, but you may want to mute me if you’re not interested.
“Duban” is one of the original tales, and Haddawy’s translation has it begin on the eleventh night. So, congratulations to Shahrazad for surviving nearly a fortnight with the world’s worst husband. The young women he hasn’t yet married and killed salute you!
Today’s tale is also a good and hopefully not too confusing example of the 1001 Night’s famous “story within a story” framework. So, grab your totem and let’s go Inception this up.
(Random fact: in checking it was “totem from Inception,” I found a website selling these things for hundreds of dollars so if we could have a revolution and destroy capitalism at some point soon, that would be great.)
Anyway! The story opens, and we’re already a couple levels in. Shahrazad is telling the tale of “The Fisherman and the Jinni,” in which a poor fisherman has accidentally caught a vengeful, evil jinni (in bottle form!) in his net who promptly declares he’s going to kill him.
A life lesson... don’t open bottles in the 1001 Nights. Ever. For another example, see here:
Regardless, our fisherman is clever. I won’t delve deeply into his particular tale, but suffice to say that he manages to recapture the jinn in the bottle. He’s getting ready to hurl the bottle back into the sea when the jinn begs him to stop.
The jinn is suddenly having regrets, you see, probably related to his understandable fear of being trapped in a bottle for another 1000 years. He begs the fisherman for mercy, claiming the whole “swearing to murder him” thing was a joke.
The fisherman, oddly enough, does not buy this, and says their situation is like that of the Sage Duban and King Yunan. The jinn asks him to explain. I mean, why not, dude’s been in a bottle for multiple millennia. I’d kill some time too. So, the fisherman starts his tale...
It is said that in one of the ancient Persian cities of Zuman (Armenia today) there was a king named Yunan. Now, King Yunan was doing pretty good for himself at the whole ancient autocrat thing, except he was suffering from leprosy and growing desperate for a cure.
Fortunately for Yunan, there’s a newcomer in his city: the sage Duban. Duban is said to be a renowned scholar. He’s studied ALL the ancient scientific texts (the Greek, the Persian, the Indian, AND the Syraic!) Duban is an excellent botanist and hey—a healer as well!
Duban also has a good heart because he no sooner hears of King Yunan’s predicament, then he presents himself at court and offers to help.* He claims that not only can he heal the king of leprosy, he can do so without medicine or ointment.
*OKAY, probably for many thousands of dinars and general fame, as well, but I’m assuming ancient Persian medical school was expensive, okay? I’m an American millennial in 2018; there is little that makes me more sympathetic than student loan debt.
Either way, King Yunan is astonished… and quite eager. He loads Duban with robes of honor and kind words, and swears that if Duban can heal him, they’ll totally be friends forever, and Yunan will fork over so much gold even Duban’s grandkids will be rich.
Sage Duban says he's on it and goes "home."
He takes a curved mallet and hollows out the handle. Using his accumulated wisdom and top secret scientific know-how, he fills the handle with a combination of herbs, spices, drugs, and considering the era, probably a dangerous amount of mercury and/or arsenic.
Duban prepares a ball in a similar manner and then goes back to the king. He tells King Yunan to get on his horse, take the mallet in hand and hit the ball until he’s sweating profusely. Yes. Duban plans to cure King Yunan of leprosy with a rousing game of polo. Polo. Leprosy.
Pictured: the height of medical science in the 1001 Nights. 
But doctor polo works! Yunan plays until he begins to perspire which gets the medicine oozing out of the handle and circulating through his body (which, tbh, seems to skirt the “no ointment” claim, but okay, Duban. Points for presentation.)
King Yunan takes a bath, goes to sleep and wakes up cured. Specifically, he wakes to find his skin pure and shining like silver, which I KNOW is a common medieval Arabic metaphor-- but also maybe mercury and/or arsenic poisoning.
Yunan, of course, is thrilled and thanks Duban in spectacular fashion. There are MORE robes of honor! He wines and dines him, loads him with dinars, even puts him on his own horse! Takes him by the hand and SWEARS they’ll be friends for life.
But the thing about kings… they’re shifty. And a royal court can be a deadly place for an ambitious newcomer. So, it’s not long before one of Yunan’s viziers starts getting jealous of the king’s new bestie.
Pictured: King Yunan’s vizier. I dislike this movie. It is deeply problematic and does a horrible injustice to name and legacy of Ja’far ibn Yahya. But…. there is literally no more accurate GIF for this situation. There's even about to be a parrot!
Our jealous vizier kisses the ground, puts on his best “concerned” face and sidles up to King Yunan. He claims he has a terrible warning… King Yunan has allowed a deadly enemy into his presence, one who will destroy their very kingdom… Duban
The king rightly tells him off, reminding the vizier that Duban saved his life (!) and swearing to give him even MORE money and favors, and accurately accusing the vizier of jealousy. The vizier presses his point, making the claim that a man with such skills is an obvious danger.
Which… is a fair point? But still very ungrateful. And rude. Dude’s a guest, come on.
Anyway, there’s only one way to settle such a dispute in the 1001 Nights: a good, old-fashioned “story-fight!" So down the Inception frame we go.
King Yunan starts with a tale about a paranoid husband who buys a parrot to spy on his wife while he’s traveling (just go with it). The parrot reports back that the man’s wife is cheating on him, to which the wife says bullshit.
*I’m paraphrasing. I literally make a living writing fantasy novels and even my creativity is at an end when I try to think of the response any rational person would have to “My parrot says you’ve taken another lover!”
And the wife is PREPARED. Next time her husband goes out, and she wants to sneak her lover in (because the bird was right!), she and her servants fake a thunderstorm by flashing mirrors and spraying water at the parrot while grinding stones beneath it.
So, when the husband asks again if his wife is cheating, the bird is forced to apologize and admit he saw nothing because of the thunderstorm.
The husband is furious! He shouts that there was no such storm and clearly the parrot is wife-maligning liar. And so he SMITES it… only to learn later that the parrot was of course telling the truth.
Should have run faster, little feathered one.
Now back to King Yunan, who finishes this tale and says he fears if he listens to the jealous vizier and kills Sage Duban, he too will one day be like the regretful parrot-murderer. And he doesn’t want that! Truly, who among us would?
But the jealous vizier is ready to fight back with a tale of his own about a young prince. This young prince is out hunting one day with HIS vizier, who encourages him to pursue a wounded beast into a mysterious grove.
Inside the mysterious grove is a beautiful woman who tricks the prince into rescuing her—and then turns out to be a she-ghoul! A she-ghoul who intends to feed to prince to her children!
The prince escapes but blames his vizier for telling him to go into the grove. This vizier loses his head, and I have to be honest, I sort of lose the point OUR jealous vizier is trying to make, but he apparently wins story-fight and is right about Duban??
Or maybe Sage Duban’s skills really do make King Yunan skittish. Nevertheless, Yunan is convinced. The whole “curing his leprosy and saving his life” thing was pretty cool, but Duban is too dangerous to keep alive.
King Yunan orders Duban to present himself at court, and Duban does so, still bright with good cheer. He humbly greets the king, his new BFF and asks how he can be of service.
Yunan: “You can die, foreign spy!!”
Duban is understandably distressed by the news of his imminent execution and what follows is pretty sad. He begs for his life, reminding the king THAT HE SAVED HIS LIFE WITH A GAME OF POLO and maybe he could take the paranoia elsewhere, yeah?
Duban goes even further, telling King Yunan that if he spares him, God will also spare him. But if the king destroys Duban… so will God destroy the king.
By the way, EVERYONE ELSE—the court, the nobles, the soldiers—are all #TeamDuban. They try to convince the king to spare him, but Yunan is sticking by the word of that one sketchy vizier.
Duban is hysterical. He doesn’t want to die! He did a good deed! Bitterly, he points this out, saying to be rewarded in such a manner is like “the reward of the crocodile.” To which, the king is all “Ooo, what’s the story of the crocodile??”
At this, Sage Duban loses it and shouts, “This is not the time for a story!!!” Which, to be honest, whenever a character does this in the Nights, I crack up.
Pictured: A ticked-off medieval physician. Granted, this particular doctor is angry because his companions starting eating without him which is a *slightly* lesser offense than premeditated murder.
Anyway, poor Duban begs to at LEAST be granted enough of a reprieve so that he can say good-bye to his family, settle his affairs, and more mysteriously…obtain a secret book of wisdom for this not-so-wise king.
King Yunan is immediately intrigued about Secret Book. How exciting! What, pray tell, is so awesome about this book, Sage Duban?
Oh, just that if you put a SEVERED HEAD ON A PLATTER WHILE READING THE BOOK ALOUD, THE DEAD HEAD WILL TALK TO YOU.
Now, bringing up this book might be a mistake on Duban’s part (you think??) because if you’ve learned anything from my earlier threads, it should be that bored kings in the 1001 Nights are a serious societal threat.
And Yunan is--as you may have figured by now--sort of witless and definitely an ass. He WANTS to see that severed head talk. You know that NONE of his other king friends have anything as cool as a talking head! So, he takes Sage Duban up on this offer.
Our poor, doomed sage goes homes to kiss his wife and grandkids goodbye, settle his worldly affairs…and make one last visit to his secret lab.
The next morning, Duban returns to the king with the mysterious book and a platter upon which he scatters a strange powder. The sage tells Yunan to open the book upon his death, read out one of the questions, and that his severed head will answer.
But first--he begs a final time for his life, warning again, “Spare me, and God will spare you. Destroy me, and God will destroy you in turn!”
But King Yunan isn’t even pretending to listen. He’s just bouncing in his royal cushion, waiting to see a severed head talk. A severed head! Speaking! He’ll be the talk of all the kings in the world. Haha, “talk!”
He snaps his fingers, and the executioner strikes, beheading Duban with a single blow. They put the head on the platter, it stops bleeding…
AND IT OPENS ITS EYES.
King Yunan is thrilled! Success! Maybe he even cackles a bit and asks what’s next. Dead Duban’s Head speaks! He tells Yunan to open the book. The king does so, but the first page is empty.
And strangely enough, the rest of the pages are a bit… stuck. Huh, must be old paper.
Dead Duban’s Head tells the king to keep going through the pages, he’ll find the words soon enough. So, Yunan obeys, licking his finger to help flick through the pages. Now, he’s beginning to feel a bit woozy. He’s swaying, his limbs beginning to feel heavy…
And too late, he realizes Duban has poisoned the pages.
King Yunan collapses while the royal court screams and scatters (you know shifty vizier was OUT OF THERE). Then Dead Duban’s Head has some WORDS for unjust tyrant kings:
“For too long they ruled us arbitrarily, but suddenly vanished their powerful rule. Had they been just, they would have happily lived BUT THEY WERE SELFISH UNGRATEFUL DESPOTS AND SO DIE, YOU SON OF A JACKAL!”
Or so I assume. I mean, things get lost in translation. Either way, Yunan dies twitching on the floor, and Duban’s head falls forever silent. Brilliant scientist-sage is OUT.
And this, my friends, is why you don’t lick your finger while reading. ESPECIALLY while handling your “weird” college roommate’s history books. Weird is subjective, Katelyn!
Anyway, this is one of the darker tales from the Nights and a rather horrible, undeserved end for poor Sage Duban. But was it? I mean… what WAS a physician with such incredible skills doing just wandering from royal court to royal court?
Maybe jealous vizier was on to something! Because I’ll be honest. I’ve worked in healthcare. Some doctors, some patients, eh….
Alas, we’ll never know. Duban’s tale ends, and Shahrazad returns to the story of the bickering fisherman and the jinni and her own terrible king. (Just push him off the balcony, sister. Everyone will understand.)
I’ll confess some disappointment because I thought I remembered more science in this tale. I have a soft spot for medical history and was all ready to turn this into "A Learning Thread," and now all I’m left with is some dubious polo equipment.
But I hope you enjoyed and learned a valuable lesson about not spreading germs and treating your doctors with respect.
If you want to read another story, there’s the “City of Brass” thread linked above and another about mermaids (!) here:
And if you have a couple bucks and want to help an excellent group put together an anthology of women telling THEIR stories, here’s a great place to donate: unbound.com/books/cut-from…
