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1001 NIGHTS

Question 1. People’s everyday lives are reflected on such websites as twitter, face book, hi5, etc. people share their opinions, experiences and sometimes feelings regarding different issues with others. As I followed some people on twitter, I was able to see certain activities from their lives on a daily basis. Even though we did not spend much time on twitter, it was enough to see these people’s moods. I could learn how they were feeling or what was going on in their lives in that particular moment or what happened that day and why they wanted other users to know about it. As I observed, most of the people write about their activities during a day. They express their feelings about some interesting aspects of a daily life or write about some occurrence that made them feel bad or good. In some cases, twitter works as an information source as people ask each other different questions. For instance, they might ask what the homework for Tuesday English class is. I think all the activities on twitter are referring to teleological time. If there is no purpose in life, then what are we living for? However, sometimes when things go wrong, it’s very hard to see a path, a reason that you living for. But time goes by and heals all the wounds, and we are back to linear time that relates to a purpose of life.
Question 2. 1001 Nights is a series of stories within stories; in other words, the book offers a chain of stories. For example, Herein tells the story of King Shahryar and his younger brother, Shah Zaman, King of Samarcand, who discover their own wives are disloyal and become enraged toward all women. The story begins with King Shahryar sending his Wazir with presents and invitation to his brother Shah Zaman. Shah Zaman accepts the invitation and pays his bother a visit.
King Shahryar concludes that all women are innately unfaithful and, to make sure that he is nobody’s fool, starts killing each wife of his after the wedding night.

This results in shortage of women after some time; the king's Wazir has problems getting new women, and tells about it to his daughter Scheherazade. The latter offers herself as bride for the night. The Wazir responds to Scheherazade’s suggestion with a story about the bull and the ass. Such allegorical tales, dotted into the main story, are characteristic for the Arabic Nights. Such technique of storytelling keeps the reader’s curiosity alive. In spite of the father’s resistance, Scheherazade manages her way to the king’s bed. As the king and Scheherazade’s sister, Dunyazade, who also finds herself in the king’s bedroom, suffer from sleeplessness, Scheherazade tells another story titled The fisherman and the Jinni.

As I have mentioned above, 1001 nights also known as Arabian Nights, consist of stories into the stories; this is an interesting approach to narration. Different stories carry different messages of a didactic nature. The story of King Shahryan and His Brother has a dramatic ending, whereas The Tale of the Bull and the Ass ends happily. In these two stories we are dealing with entropic or chaotic time in which events are completely random.
Question 3. Collections of tales of the One Thousand and One Nights already existed in the tenth century. The tales provide a good source of different aspects of life. One of these aspects is the treatment of women in Arabic countries. However, time did not change the approach of Arabic cultures to the feminine part of humanity. In Islamic countries, women are considered subordinates and are treated badly. Reports about abuses committed against women are published in Islamic press on a daily basis. In Arabic countries, it is thought that women's lives have less significance than those of men's. Although the prophet Muhammad granted women with certain rights that dramatically improved women’s condition compared to that that women had before Islam, after Muhammad’s death the attitude toward women in Arabic countries slowly deteriorated and returned to pre-Islamic norms. I believe the Nights will not cause any controversy in a modern Arab reader as he/she will not find anything drastically “disrespectful” or “harmful” in how women are treated in the book. Unfortunately, the situation has not changed much. http://www.uga.edu/islam/Islamwomen.html)

Assigment 2

Q 1: I personally was never a big fan of Twitter; as a matter of fact I made a bet with my friends that I would never ever be on twitting. But even in my wildest dreams, I never thought that I would have to be active on Twitter for an assignment for school. So, yes I lost the bet..:(… I found Twitter sort of useless and boring. Some people take it way too seriously and update it like every other minute; every move they make and every breath they take, it’s ridiculous. I understand its peer pressure and people naturally just love talking about themselves and their life, in most cases bragging about what they are doing or complaining about their personal issues. I prefer not to share too much information on Twitter because you never know who may read it, so your privacy is pretty limited. Anyway, based on all he peoples updates that I read, it seems to me that there are three types of time that persist in our online lives and reality. Some of the things people wrote about relate to entropic time of their life. These people are very random and sometimes don’t make any sense at all or have too many things happening at once which makes their life chaotic. And then you have people stuck in stellar time, where they write about things that affect them the most that somehow influenced their physical and emotional state to be and respond in a certain way. Lastly, Teleological time; I saw people writing about something that happened and then describing why or how it happened. My life is based on teleological and stellar time but sometimes it’s also entropic/ chaotic.

Q2:

In the “Tale of the trader and the Jinni”, the time frame is probably stellar or chaotic. Chaotic because when Ifrit sort of jumped out with a knife threatening to kill the merchant, it was a very random and an unexpected event. It’s also Stellar time because it suggests that everything happens for a reason and we have to learn from our mistakes and hopefully warn or teach others. It’s because stellar time intermingles scenarios that affect our daily lives. And then like a similar story “The Fisher man and the Jenni” , also follows similar time frame.

Q:3

These works in 1001 Nights derive from Arabic cultures. In these stories, women are portrayed very badly. They were taken advantage of and accused of things such as cheating, lying, stealing, witchcraft and much more. Many years ago in Arabic cultures, women had absolutely no rights and were treated as property with no respect or appreciation for anything they did for men. They were looked down upon and made a fool of. Nowadays, more modernized societies in the Arabic culture treat women better and provide them with similar opportunities and advantages as men get. Women are freer to do what they please, to work, learn, and have a say in the way their life is being planned out. The “Quran” provides it’s believers with like a set of rules, religiously implanting knowledge into the brains of Islamic people, encouraging them to be more open minded about a woman’s ability and respect her enough to see her as an equal body and to love her and to provide for her and the family.

http://www.islamfortoday.com/ruqaiyyah09.htm

Everyday we wake up, we have list of things to do. Some has school, homework, go to work, etc. But not all them were done accordingly. Some gets disturbed by new things and some by other valid reason. They all want to share their good/bad feeling either with someone close or through twitter or facebook. What happened in their life, who they hate/love, why they are happy and sad, etc? They post their different feeling and get commented with advice, inspirational words. They feel good and make an attempt to move on. Next day they have the same schedule, trying to move forward. Not getting disappointed by past and in hope of getting things done this time. But life is not a simple path; it has lots of turns and red lights on its way. According to me, stellar time is most influenced by twitter. People not only share their feeling but also share what affect their life. For instance, someone posted “I hate rain” other day, so now I know that that particular person hates rain. From twitter, I came to know that when the homework was due, who did what through out the day, etc. If life is just about you then, there is no meaning of life. If there are no ups and downs then life is boring. As a personal example, before I came to US, life was much comfortable with mom and dad. I don’t have to do anything (laundry, cook food, clean my room, etc). However, after my first step into the United States, life changed dramatically and as unexpected. I suffered a lot to continue my living. Even though I suffered, I am happy now. I can tell dad and mom that I am earning for my expenses, and I am independent. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Arab_societies)

2. In 1001 Nights, all the stories are connected to each other. Story with in the story connects each story like a stairs, first then second. One story finishes and other begins leaving the first one incomplete. Once you start reading you get lost in the current story and forget about the past story. In my point of view, Teleological time is related to all of the story. “In the Tale of the Bull and the Ass” when the merchant finished his story, his daughter Shahrazad said “I will do to thee as did the husband to the wife” She was not convinsed by her dad story and finally did what she liked and married to the king. Her sister Dunyazade asks Scheherazade to tell a story. With the permissoin of king, she started telling story of The Fisherman and The Jinni where a young man tells the story of his life to Sultan. After that story there she started other story of The Tale of The Ensorceled Prince, where the same Sultan kills the sick lover. So one story leads to the second one and the process continues. Due to this fact, the main story was unknown and was never completed. This was just to live one more night.

3. I got an opportunity to do some research on women in third world countries (Especially Arab). Women in these places have throughout history, experienced discrimination, lack and absent of their freedoms and rights. Some of these practices are based on religious beliefs, but many of the limitations are cultural and from tradition rather than religion. Women have no rights, no powers. They were sold into marriage by their guardians for a price paid to the guardian, the husband could terminate the union at his will, and women had little or no property or succession rights. In other tribes, women were of low status or even worse. Women enjoyed no rights whatsoever and were treated no better than a commodity. Not only they were slaved, but they could also be inherited as a possession. A woman was regarded as unwise and incapable of effectively managing her inherited property. In “The Tale of the Bull and the Ass”, merchant’s wife was beaten by her husband and she wasn’t able to do anything. Instead, she told her she will told him not to ask the same question again in her life time. However, the world is changing rapidly. Women’s progress until recently was slow and extremely limited but it’s growing. In the more conservative countries, greater opportunities for education, through university level, are being made available to women. In Egypt, women serve in Parliament and the cabinet (Kuwait and Iran). Recently a woman was named director of the national television stations, a very powerful position. In Syria, the Minister of Culture is a woman. In Jordan, there has been tremendous economic development, which has had an enormous impact on the status of women. In just a decade, women have won the right to vote and run for election. They now have a woman Minister of Social Development and four women on our Consultative Council, the equivalent of Congress. All these advances have happened rapidly. Today, it is estimated that 17 percent of the total Jordanian working force consists of women. (http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/05/16/the-role-of-women-is-changing-in-the-arab-world-a.html) You can watch this video by Queen Rania from Jordan which clearly talks about the women in Arab world regarding their status and improvements. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEC8p5VN1-I&feature=PlayList&p=3E983CAB138B5C6A&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=38).

1001 Nights

1. Everyday we wake up, we have list of things to do. Some has school, homework, go to work, etc. But not all them were done accordingly. Some gets disturbed by new things and some by other valid reason. They all want to share their good/bad feeling either with someone close or through twitter or facebook. What happened in their life, who they hate/love, why they are happy and sad, etc? They post their different feeling and get commented with advice, inspirational words. They feel good and make an attempt to move on. Next day they have the same schedule, trying to move forward. Not getting disappointed by past and in hope of getting things done this time. But life is not a simple path; it has lots of turns and red lights on its way. According to me, stellar time is most influenced by twitter. People not only share their feeling but also share what affect their life. For instance, someone posted “I hate rain” other day, so now I know that that particular person hates rain. From twitter, I came to know that when the homework was due, who did what through out the day, etc. If life is just about you then, there is no meaning of life. If there are no ups and downs then life is boring. As a personal example, before I came to US, life was much comfortable with mom and dad. I don’t have to do anything (laundry, cook food, clean my room, etc). However, after my first step into the United States, life changed dramatically and as unexpected. I suffered a lot to continue my living. Even though I suffered, I am happy now. I can tell dad and mom that I am earning for my expenses, and I am independent. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Arab_societies)

2. In 1001 Nights, all the stories are connected to each other. Story with in the story connects each story like a stairs, first then second. One story finishes and other begins leaving the first one incomplete. Once you start reading you get lost in the current story and forget about the past story. In my point of view, Teleological time is related to all of the story. “In the Tale of the Bull and the Ass” when the merchant finished his story, his daughter Shahrazad said “I will do to thee as did the husband to the wife” She was not convinsed by her dad story and finally did what she liked and married to the king. Her sister Dunyazade asks Scheherazade to tell a story. With the permissoin of king, she started telling story of The Fisherman and The Jinni where a young man tells the story of his life to Sultan. After that story there she started other story of The Tale of The Ensorceled Prince, where the same Sultan kills the sick lover. So one story leads to the second one and the process continues. Due to this fact, the main story was unknown and was never completed. This was just to live one more night.

3. I got an opportunity to do some research on women in third world countries (Especially Arab). Women in these places have throughout history, experienced discrimination, lack and absent of their freedoms and rights. Some of these practices are based on religious beliefs, but many of the limitations are cultural and from tradition rather than religion. Women have no rights, no powers. They were sold into marriage by their guardians for a price paid to the guardian, the husband could terminate the union at his will, and women had little or no property or succession rights. In other tribes, women were of low status or even worse. Women enjoyed no rights whatsoever and were treated no better than a commodity. Not only they were slaved, but they could also be inherited as a possession. A woman was regarded as unwise and incapable of effectively managing her inherited property. In “The Tale of the Bull and the Ass”, merchant’s wife was beaten by her husband and she wasn’t able to do anything. Instead, she told her she will told him not to ask the same question again in her life time. However, the world is changing rapidly. Women’s progress until recently was slow and extremely limited but it’s growing. In the more conservative countries, greater opportunities for education, through university level, are being made available to women. In Egypt, women serve in Parliament and the cabinet (Kuwait and Iran). Recently a woman was named director of the national television stations, a very powerful position. In Syria, the Minister of Culture is a woman. In Jordan, there has been tremendous economic development, which has had an enormous impact on the status of women. In just a decade, women have won the right to vote and run for election. They now have a woman Minister of Social Development and four women on our Consultative Council, the equivalent of Congress. All these advances have happened rapidly. Today, it is estimated that 17 percent of the total Jordanian working force consists of women. (http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/05/16/the-role-of-women-is-changing-in-the-arab-world-a.html) You can watch this video by Queen Rania from Jordan which clearly talks about the women in Arab world regarding their status and improvements. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEC8p5VN1-I&feature=PlayList&p=3E983CAB138B5C6A&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=38).

Several of these stories portray women as being promiscuous and having a large sexual appetite. I think people in Islamic countries today would tend to disagree with this portrayal and would point to Hollywood as a place where this type of woman would be more likely to exist. I think Islamic countries tend to view their relationships between husband and wife as 'better' than in the West evidenced by their lower divorce rates.
Several of these stories mentioned Allah and his supreme authority. I think that these depictions are accurate even to the present day and stories that focused more on Allah and Islams' spiritual teachings and beliefs are likeley to be better received.

In (No. 94) The King And The Virtuous Wife the king visits another man's wife and asks her for a drink and realizes that he wants to sleep with her and lets her know. She responds by getting him to read of the punishment from Allah if he were to commit adultery and he repents and changes his mind. The wife tells her husband of this when he comes homes but he thinks that the king and his wife had sex, so he stops sleeping with her. At this point the narrator starts telling a story about how the wife's friends explain to the king that a good piece of land is not being sown but not being given to another to be sown either. The king approached the husband who explained that he did not want to compete with a lion (King) for the land.
The story the wifes' friends use to explain what is going on in her relationship seemed confusing at first. Upon further examination I'd say it was an example of Teological time since their dialogue with the king and then his dialogue with the husband was was clearly a means to an end.