Charmante Aux Animaux (La)

Historias De Carres > Autumn-Winter 2010

Nightly Sheherezade led King Shahryar into the windings of her tales. Her 146^th story conjures up a marvellous island stocked with free and happy animals and inhabited by only one hunter armed with his bow … If many storytellers hide behind the One Thousand and One Nights, where India, Persia, the Arabian empire, the Baghdad of Caliph Harun al-Rushid all mingle, it’s largely Joseph-Charles Mardrus and his translation we should thank for this story. Two carved doors of the Fatimid Period of Egypt (Cairo Museum and the Met) inspire the interlacing adorning this carre, while the door knockers, marking the angles, symbolize those gates to the Orient: Persia, Syria, Egypt and the Maghreb.