The Tale of Ali Baba and the Forty
Thieves
Part 2
Catagory:Fiction
Author:Thousand Nights and One Night ( POWYS MATHERS)
Posted Date:03/28/2025
Posted By:utopia online
hundred. of years, the store house of generations of robbers, descendants, perhaps, of the mighty Babylonian thieves. When he had recovered a little from his astonishment, he cried: ‘As Allah lives, O Ali Baba, it is a Destiny of fair white face which has led you from your asses and firewood to a bath of gold, such as neither Sulaiman nor Alexander saw! O excellent woodcutter, you hear magic words of potency, and straight you have them off by heart! Surely He Who rewards all men has made you master of the fruit of countless crimes, that you may put it to the innocent uses of your family!’ Having thus eased his conscience, Ali Baba emptied the food out of one of the bags and replaced it with close-packed golden coins. Taking no thought for the silver, he carried the great weight on his shoulders to the outer end of the gallery; then he repeated the task, until he had collected together as many sacks of treasure as he supposed his asses could carry. Standing by his spoils, he cried: ‘Open, Sesame!’ and, as soon as the two halves of the rocky door had moved asunder, went forth and led his asses to the entrance. He loaded the sacks of gold upon their backs and hid them carefully with brushwood; then he spoke the magic words of closing and waited until the surface of the rock was once more undisturbed. Ali Baba urged his asses forward with respectful shouts and not with those curses and sounding oaths which it is usually necessary to employ. Though, like all men of his profession, Ali Baba would often address his cattle as zabb-worshippers, parts of your sister, sons of a bugger, and fruits of bawdry, he loved them as his own children and only flavoured his speech in order to make them listen to reason. On this occasion he felt it to be unjust to give them such names, when they were carrying more gold than there was in the Sultan’s treasury; so he exhorted them inoffensively and let them take their own time back to the city. At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of morning and discreetly
fell silent.
But when the eight-hundred-and-fifty-third night had
come
SHE SAID:
When he arrived before his house, Ali Baba found that the door of the courtyard was fastened on the inside with a great wooden bolt, so, wishing to see whether his knowledge of magic would be available in any place besides the cave, he cried out: ‘Open, Sesame!’ At once the bolt was shot and the door stood open, so that he was able to drive the asses into the little courtyard without announcing his presence. ‘Shut, Sesame!’ he exclaimed, and at once the door closed of itself and the bolt moved into position. When Ali Baba’s wife saw the donkeys in the courtyard and her husband beginning to discharge them, she ran out, beating her hands together, and crying: ‘O my husband, how did you open the door after I had bolted it?’ Instead of answering, Ali Baba said: ‘These sacks are from Allah, good wife. Help me to carry them into the house instead of tormenting me with questions about bolts.’ The woman came forward to help and, as she handled each sack, became convinced that they all contained money.
Though she only supposed that the money was old copper coins, she at once grew very frightened and became certain that her husband had joined himself to a robber band or some such terrible institution. When all the sacks were in the house, she could contain herself no longer; so she began to beat her cheeks and tear her garments, crying: ‘O woe upon us, woe upon us! The poor children! O gallows!’ ‘Gallows in your eye, vile wretch!’ answered Ali Baba in some indignation. ‘What are you grumbling about?’ ‘Bad luck has entered the house with these sacks, O son of my uncle!’ she wept. ‘Load them again on the asses and take them to some far place, I pray you!’ ‘Allah
confound all women, for they are fools!’ cried Ali Baba. ‘Do you think I stole the sacks? Let me assure you that Allah showed me my Destiny in the forest this morning! First I will empty the things, and then tell you
how I came by them.’ He poured out flashing streams of gold upon the mat, until all the sacks were empty; then he sat down proudly on top of the glittering mound and told the women his adventure. But nothing would be gained
by repeating it in this place.
When his wife heard the story, her fear gave way to an extravagant joy, and she cried: ‘O day of milk, O white, white day! Glory be to Allah Who has made these ill-gotten riches well-gotten, by setting them in the path of His poor slaves!’ She squatted down on her heels before the gold and began to count the incalculable dinars one by one. ‘What would you do, poor woman?’ asked Ali Baba with a laugh. ‘You could never count all that. Rise up now and help me to dig a ditch in the kitchen where we can hide all traces of the gold. If we leave it here it may stir the cupidity of our neighbours and the police.’ But his wife, who loved order in all things and wished to know exactly how rich they were, cried: ‘I must at least weigh it or measure it. Give me but time to go to one of the neighbours for a measure and you shall know how\ much we have. I will do the measuring while you dig the ditch, and
thus, before putting the gold away, we can have a clear knowledge of our children’s inheritance.’ Although Ali Baba found this step superfluous, he would not argue with his wife on so fortunate a day. ‘Go quickly, then,’ he said, ‘and
take great care not to say a single word about my discovery.’
Ali Baba's wife went straight to the house of Kasim, which was near by, and sought out the presence of Kasim’s wife, a vulgar and pretentious woman (she had never visited Ali Baba and his wife and had
never given any sugared chick-peas to his children, such as the very
poor give to the very poor). After greeting, she begged for the loan of a wooden measure for some minutes.
When Kasim’s wife heard the word ‘measure,’ she was astonished, for she knew that Ali Baba was a very poor man and could only buy a day’s or a week’s supply of grain at a time. Under other circumstances she would have refused to lend the wooden vessel, but her curiosity was so excited that she cried: ‘Allah increase His blessings upon you, O
mother of Ahmad! Do you want the large measure or the small one?’ ‘The small one, if you please, my mistress,’ answered the poor woman, and Kasim’s wife went into the kitchen to fetch the thing. But she was a bawd’s client and had the mind of one may Allah refuse His blessing to all such!—therefore feeling curious to know what
kind of grain her poor relation wished to measure, she conceived a true harlot’s trick and rubbed some suet on the under side of the measure.Then she returned to the poor woman and handed her what she wished, with many excuses for keeping her waiting. When Ali Baba’s wife reached home, she set down the wooden measure upon the great pile of gold and began to fill and empty it,
marking a single stroke in black charcoal upon the wall for each measure. As she was finishing her work, Ali Baba entered from digging a hole in the kitchen floor. His wife proudly showed him the marks on the wall and then left him to bury the treasure, while she herself returned in all haste to Kasim’s wife. She did not know, poor creature,
that a golden dinar had stuck to the suet on the underside of the measure. She gave back the measure to her rich kinswoman, that whore’s daughter, and thanked her, saying: ‘I wished to bring it back at once, my
mistress, so that you would not mind my borrowing it again at some other time.’ Her visitor’s back was hardly turned when Kasim’s wife inverted the measure and saw, not beans, barley, or oats stuck to the place of her
contriving, but a bright dinar of gold. Her face became the colour of saffron and her eyes of pitch. In a devouring jealousy, she cried: ‘Ruin seize their house! How have these rats got gold to measure?’ So furious was she that she could not wait for her husband to return from his shop but sent her servant in all haste to fetch him. When he crossed the threshold, quite out of breath, she showered him with a clatter of shrill abuse, as if she had caught him doing something to a little boy.
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