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Sinbad the Sailor
The following text has been drawn from Sir Richard Burton's exhaustive translation of "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night", more commonly known as "The Arabian Nights". The story of "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor" tells the tale of Sinbad who ventures out to sea, at first to acquire wealth, but afterwards in search of adventure. During these voyages he encounters many obstacles including giant animals, monsters, and savage cannibals, yet always seems to escape with an even greater fortune than when he started out. A classic tale of fantasy, "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor" is presented here in this edition in its original and unexpurgated form.
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Published January 1, 2007
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* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author
Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.
See also: Anonymous
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 16, 2021
The seven voyages of Sinbad fascinated me from the time when, as a child, I first saw the Ray Harryhausen fantasy film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). It was screened on the “Creature Feature” late-night program on Channel 20, an independent TV station serving the Washington, D.C., area; and Harryhausen’s mastery of special-effects magic brought to vivid life a wide variety of intriguing creatures, including a Cyclops, a rukh (roc), and a particularly large and ferocious dragon. “Someday,” I said to myself, “I must read the original stories.” And thanks to the famed adventurer and translator Sir Richard Burton, I was able to enjoy these enthralling tales of maritime adventure.
The tales of The Arabian Nights, or The 1001 Nights – use whichever title you prefer – were probably first set down in their present form sometime in the late 15th century; and when Sir Richard Burton set himself to the task of providing a complete, unedited translation of the stories, it was a characteristically bold undertaking. Burton was truly a polymath – a bold soldier on the battlefield, a diligent scholar and student of the cultures he visited, a linguist who is said to have spoken 29 languages fluently. He disguised himself as a Muslim and successfully made the hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca, in an era when Europeans were forbidden from doing so on pain of death. Not fearing the conservative social and cultural norms of his time, he translated the Kama Sutra. And, of course, he translated The 1001 Nights, from which this excerpted collection is drawn.
The Sinbad stories, like all the stories from The 1001 Nights, are told by Scheherezade, a princess who must spin out one tale after another in order to avoid being executed by her husband who likes to wed a new bride each night and then have her killed the following morning. About halfway through the cycle of stories (from nights 536 through 565), Scheherezade tells her husband the story of one Sinbad the Porter, a poor young man of Baghdad who carries burdens for hire. One day, Sinbad the Porter sees a great estate of wealth behind a gate, and reflects,
Many others are in luck and from miseries are free,
And Fortune never loads them with loads the like of mine…
The estate turns out to be that of Sinbad the Sailor, who befriends his impoverished namesake and tries to offer encouragement by recounting the stories of his voyages. Sinbad the Sailor (hereafter simply Sinbad) recalls how he squandered a rich inheritance from his father and found himself poor – a reversal that made him recall a saying ascribed to King Solomon: “Three things are better than other three: the day of death is better than the day of birth, a live dog is better than a dead lion, and the grave is better than want.”
Sinbad recalls how, knowing that he had to do something to look out for his own survival, he sold his remaining worldly belongings and resolved to seek his fortune as a merchant seaman, reasoning that “who seeketh Fame without toil and strife/The impossible seeketh, and wasteth life.”
The cycle of the voyages quickly becomes familiar to the reader: Sinbad sets out on a voyage, and at first things go well and prosperously for his maritime commercial venture. But then, somehow, he is left alone – whether because of shipwreck, or mutiny, or piracy, or because his shipmates simply forget him and leave him behind. And then Sinbad begins encountering terrible and supernatural dangers, along with wondrous and magical marvels.
The Second Voyage of Sinbad is illustrative in that regard. Abandoned by his shipmates, marooned and stranded, Sinbad bewails his foolishness in leaving Baghdad and seeking his fortune at sea. He then finds the egg of “a huge bird, called the ‘Rukh,’ which feedeth its young on elephants”, and ties himself to the egg of the Rukh. Soon, the Rukh returns and lifts its egg into the air, carrying Sinbad along with it.
Sinbad is brought back to land; but after seeing the Rukh carry away a giant serpent for its dinner, the sailor is dismayed to find that the valley to which the giant bird has carried him “swarmed with snakes and vipers, each as big as a palm tree, that would have made but one gulp of an elephant; and they came out at night, hiding during the day, lest the Rukhs and eagles pounce on them and tear them to pieces, as was their wont, why I wot not. And I repented of what I had done and said, ‘By Allah, I have made haste to bring destruction upon myself!’”
Like Odysseus before him, Sinbad is a stranded sailor, beset by enemies of superior size and strength, and he must use his wits if he is to survive.
At the same time, Sinbad invariably finds opportunities to thrive as well as survive. On this second voyage, for example, the bad news in the valley is, of course, the giant serpents that will devour Sinbad if they get half a chance. But the good news is that, when Sinbad “took courage and [started] walking along the Wady”, he “found that its soil was of diamond”. If he survives, therefore, he might make his way home to Baghdad a rich man.
To get out of the valley in which he is trapped, Sinbad resorts to another ingenious expedient, just as he did when he found the rukh’s egg; seeing that merchants who want to get diamonds out of the valley do so by taking the carcasses of slaughtered animals and “cast[ing] them down from the mountain-tops into the valley-sole, where, the meat being fresh and sticky with blood, some of the gems cleave to it. There they leave it till mid-day, when the eagles and vultures swoop down upon it and carry it in their claws to the mountain-summits”. It is then a simple matter for Sinbad to scoop up a choice haul of diamonds, conceal himself under a large piece of meat to which he has tied himself, and wait to be carried out of the valley.
Sinbad’s third voyage continues the cycle. Happy for a time with his prosperity at home, he eventually becomes restless and starts yearning to get back to sea – only to regret that decision when he and his men are overpowered by apes (!) who take the ship and leave them marooned on an unknown island. And then things get worse when “there came down upon us, from the top of the castle, a huge creature in the likeness of a man, black of colour, tall and big of bulk, as if he were a great date-tree, with eyes like coals of fire and eye-teeth like boar’s tusks and a vast big gape like the mouth of a well”.
Like Polyphemus in the Odyssey, this giant is a cannibal, who promptly murders, cooks, and eats one of Sinbad’s men. And like Odysseus, Sinbad must figure out a way to use his wits to ensure that he and his surviving men will not end up as food for the giant.
On the fourth voyage, Sinbad, buried alive in a cavern, once again laments his unfortunate fate: “As often as I say, I have escaped from one calamity, I fall into a worse. By Allah, this is an abominable death to die! Would Heaven I had died a decent death and been washed and shrouded like a man and a Moslem. Would I had been drowned at sea or perished in the mountains! It were better than to die this miserable death!”
Yet what often also happens in these tales is that Sinbad subsequently drops the self-pity and moves forward toward a moment of what Aristotle would have called anagnorisis (recognition) – accepting that his own actions have brought him to the place where he now is.
On the seventh voyage – after his ship has been wrecked by a tempest and an attack by three giant fish, and Sinbad himself has been thrown into the sea, he reproaches himself for abandoning a land-bound ease and comfort, and adds, “O Sinbad, O seaman, thou repentest not and yet thou art ever suffering hardships and travails; yet thou wilt not renounce sea-travel; or, an thou say, ‘I renounce,’ thou liest in thy renouncement. Endure then with patience that which thou sufferest, for verily thou deservest all that betideth thee!” And on that note of self-recognition, Sindbad then sets out to find a solution to his problems, and finds one.
Not that all of Sinbad's stratagems for survival are equally likely to enlist reader sympathy. One expedient that he adopts, from the fourth voyage, may have some readers wishing that Sinbad would get eaten by the first rukh or giant serpent, or blasted into oblivion by the first djinn or ifrit, that can be conveniently found. You can decide for yourself how you feel when you get to that point in Sinbad's travels.
The seven voyages of Sinbad have inspired or influenced literary works by writers including Edgar Allan Poe, Alexandre Dumas, James Joyce, and John Barth. Sinbad’s adventures, according to Wikipedia, have also been adapted into 33 films, 18 comic books, 14 television productions, 7 video games, a French stage musical, a single by the Japanese band Pink Lady, and a movement from an orchestral suite by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; and one need not have the wisdom of Duban to understand why. These are great tales of adventure, and they will continue to inspire and entrance readers who will want to listen to Sinbad the Sailor’s adventures every bit as much as Sinbad the Porter once did.
The tales of The Arabian Nights, or The 1001 Nights – use whichever title you prefer – were probably first set down in their present form sometime in the late 15th century; and when Sir Richard Burton set himself to the task of providing a complete, unedited translation of the stories, it was a characteristically bold undertaking. Burton was truly a polymath – a bold soldier on the battlefield, a diligent scholar and student of the cultures he visited, a linguist who is said to have spoken 29 languages fluently. He disguised himself as a Muslim and successfully made the hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca, in an era when Europeans were forbidden from doing so on pain of death. Not fearing the conservative social and cultural norms of his time, he translated the Kama Sutra. And, of course, he translated The 1001 Nights, from which this excerpted collection is drawn.
The Sinbad stories, like all the stories from The 1001 Nights, are told by Scheherezade, a princess who must spin out one tale after another in order to avoid being executed by her husband who likes to wed a new bride each night and then have her killed the following morning. About halfway through the cycle of stories (from nights 536 through 565), Scheherezade tells her husband the story of one Sinbad the Porter, a poor young man of Baghdad who carries burdens for hire. One day, Sinbad the Porter sees a great estate of wealth behind a gate, and reflects,
Many others are in luck and from miseries are free,
And Fortune never loads them with loads the like of mine…
The estate turns out to be that of Sinbad the Sailor, who befriends his impoverished namesake and tries to offer encouragement by recounting the stories of his voyages. Sinbad the Sailor (hereafter simply Sinbad) recalls how he squandered a rich inheritance from his father and found himself poor – a reversal that made him recall a saying ascribed to King Solomon: “Three things are better than other three: the day of death is better than the day of birth, a live dog is better than a dead lion, and the grave is better than want.”
Sinbad recalls how, knowing that he had to do something to look out for his own survival, he sold his remaining worldly belongings and resolved to seek his fortune as a merchant seaman, reasoning that “who seeketh Fame without toil and strife/The impossible seeketh, and wasteth life.”
The cycle of the voyages quickly becomes familiar to the reader: Sinbad sets out on a voyage, and at first things go well and prosperously for his maritime commercial venture. But then, somehow, he is left alone – whether because of shipwreck, or mutiny, or piracy, or because his shipmates simply forget him and leave him behind. And then Sinbad begins encountering terrible and supernatural dangers, along with wondrous and magical marvels.
The Second Voyage of Sinbad is illustrative in that regard. Abandoned by his shipmates, marooned and stranded, Sinbad bewails his foolishness in leaving Baghdad and seeking his fortune at sea. He then finds the egg of “a huge bird, called the ‘Rukh,’ which feedeth its young on elephants”, and ties himself to the egg of the Rukh. Soon, the Rukh returns and lifts its egg into the air, carrying Sinbad along with it.
Sinbad is brought back to land; but after seeing the Rukh carry away a giant serpent for its dinner, the sailor is dismayed to find that the valley to which the giant bird has carried him “swarmed with snakes and vipers, each as big as a palm tree, that would have made but one gulp of an elephant; and they came out at night, hiding during the day, lest the Rukhs and eagles pounce on them and tear them to pieces, as was their wont, why I wot not. And I repented of what I had done and said, ‘By Allah, I have made haste to bring destruction upon myself!’”
Like Odysseus before him, Sinbad is a stranded sailor, beset by enemies of superior size and strength, and he must use his wits if he is to survive.
At the same time, Sinbad invariably finds opportunities to thrive as well as survive. On this second voyage, for example, the bad news in the valley is, of course, the giant serpents that will devour Sinbad if they get half a chance. But the good news is that, when Sinbad “took courage and [started] walking along the Wady”, he “found that its soil was of diamond”. If he survives, therefore, he might make his way home to Baghdad a rich man.
To get out of the valley in which he is trapped, Sinbad resorts to another ingenious expedient, just as he did when he found the rukh’s egg; seeing that merchants who want to get diamonds out of the valley do so by taking the carcasses of slaughtered animals and “cast[ing] them down from the mountain-tops into the valley-sole, where, the meat being fresh and sticky with blood, some of the gems cleave to it. There they leave it till mid-day, when the eagles and vultures swoop down upon it and carry it in their claws to the mountain-summits”. It is then a simple matter for Sinbad to scoop up a choice haul of diamonds, conceal himself under a large piece of meat to which he has tied himself, and wait to be carried out of the valley.
Sinbad’s third voyage continues the cycle. Happy for a time with his prosperity at home, he eventually becomes restless and starts yearning to get back to sea – only to regret that decision when he and his men are overpowered by apes (!) who take the ship and leave them marooned on an unknown island. And then things get worse when “there came down upon us, from the top of the castle, a huge creature in the likeness of a man, black of colour, tall and big of bulk, as if he were a great date-tree, with eyes like coals of fire and eye-teeth like boar’s tusks and a vast big gape like the mouth of a well”.
Like Polyphemus in the Odyssey, this giant is a cannibal, who promptly murders, cooks, and eats one of Sinbad’s men. And like Odysseus, Sinbad must figure out a way to use his wits to ensure that he and his surviving men will not end up as food for the giant.
On the fourth voyage, Sinbad, buried alive in a cavern, once again laments his unfortunate fate: “As often as I say, I have escaped from one calamity, I fall into a worse. By Allah, this is an abominable death to die! Would Heaven I had died a decent death and been washed and shrouded like a man and a Moslem. Would I had been drowned at sea or perished in the mountains! It were better than to die this miserable death!”
Yet what often also happens in these tales is that Sinbad subsequently drops the self-pity and moves forward toward a moment of what Aristotle would have called anagnorisis (recognition) – accepting that his own actions have brought him to the place where he now is.
On the seventh voyage – after his ship has been wrecked by a tempest and an attack by three giant fish, and Sinbad himself has been thrown into the sea, he reproaches himself for abandoning a land-bound ease and comfort, and adds, “O Sinbad, O seaman, thou repentest not and yet thou art ever suffering hardships and travails; yet thou wilt not renounce sea-travel; or, an thou say, ‘I renounce,’ thou liest in thy renouncement. Endure then with patience that which thou sufferest, for verily thou deservest all that betideth thee!” And on that note of self-recognition, Sindbad then sets out to find a solution to his problems, and finds one.
Not that all of Sinbad's stratagems for survival are equally likely to enlist reader sympathy. One expedient that he adopts, from the fourth voyage, may have some readers wishing that Sinbad would get eaten by the first rukh or giant serpent, or blasted into oblivion by the first djinn or ifrit, that can be conveniently found. You can decide for yourself how you feel when you get to that point in Sinbad's travels.
The seven voyages of Sinbad have inspired or influenced literary works by writers including Edgar Allan Poe, Alexandre Dumas, James Joyce, and John Barth. Sinbad’s adventures, according to Wikipedia, have also been adapted into 33 films, 18 comic books, 14 television productions, 7 video games, a French stage musical, a single by the Japanese band Pink Lady, and a movement from an orchestral suite by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; and one need not have the wisdom of Duban to understand why. These are great tales of adventure, and they will continue to inspire and entrance readers who will want to listen to Sinbad the Sailor’s adventures every bit as much as Sinbad the Porter once did.
January 18, 2020
I decided to read this because it keeps being referenced in another book I'm reading, Pax. I have 3 different versions of The Tales of The Arabian Nights downloaded, and found this in Richard Francis Burton's version. I found it very entertaining. Sinbad the sailor is probably the luckiest person that ever lived. 7 times, he sails forth on a merchant ship. And 7 times, he's shipwrecked on an island where he escapes some awful possible death. And every time, he comes home to add to his riches. He escapes the ginormous roc birds, cyclops giants, and being buried alive among other things. This is definitely a classic of the Tales and well worth a read if you never have.
June 21, 2023
I’m not sure how they came up with the excellent Harryhausen movies from these works. Translated from 1001 Nights, Sinbad the sailor takes seven voyages and gets shipwrecked in every one. Somehow he is always the only person who survives. This is not the Sinbad from the movies. Sinbad is a merchant and buys passage to trade his goods around the known world. There isn’t a single sword in the stories. That being said, as with any of the 1001 tales, there are some good parts. Interesting adventures await, but don’t expect the character to be anything like the pop culture icon.
April 30, 2021
Derived from Greek sources, these stories seemed familiar to me though I'd never read any of the Sinbad stories before. Turns out Sinbad is a nutcase of a liar, a psychopath, a serial killer, an unreliable narrator...
As luck would have it, everyone onboard died except me.
As luck would have it, the storm killed everyone but I got away unscathed.
As luck would have it, everyone was poisoned but I was fine.
As luck would have it, the monster ate all the crew but not me of course... and more of this all throughout. Funny he always escapes with the riches.
Don't go sailing with Sinbad. You'll wind up dead and robbed.
And that poor woman he killed down in the cavern. What a gent and a hero!
Enjoyed the stories, found them funny, amused by the Hero's blatant lies. :)
**different version
As luck would have it, everyone onboard died except me.
As luck would have it, the storm killed everyone but I got away unscathed.
As luck would have it, everyone was poisoned but I was fine.
As luck would have it, the monster ate all the crew but not me of course... and more of this all throughout. Funny he always escapes with the riches.
Don't go sailing with Sinbad. You'll wind up dead and robbed.
And that poor woman he killed down in the cavern. What a gent and a hero!
Enjoyed the stories, found them funny, amused by the Hero's blatant lies. :)
**different version
April 27, 2012
This is the first book I've ever read, I was 8 years old and I barely knew how to read. I found the book and had the child curiosity to know what's inside, I started reading and it turned out to be a pleasing experience it took me like a month to finish it but it was definitely a fascinating book full of magical places and supernatural creatures
Sinbad was the hero during his voyages throughout the seas, he has fantastic adventures meeting monsters and encountering supernatural phenomena.
Sinbad was the hero during his voyages throughout the seas, he has fantastic adventures meeting monsters and encountering supernatural phenomena.
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July 10, 2023Accessed via this website: https://americanliterature.com/author...
April 13, 2015
Fantastical journeys – ferocious trolls, cannibals, giant serpents and much more – told in a straight-forward way as Sinbad accounts for his presumed and near death experiences. Unbelievable but entertaining. Listened to this on B. J. Harrison's Classic Tales Podcast.
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