The Merchant and the Genie

Also known as Sawdagar aur Jinn

• 4 minute read
• Ages 8-12
• Alif Laila Stories

This is the first story Scheherazade ever told, and she stopped it in the middle at dawn, which is the only reason there were ever nine hundred and ninety-nine more.

The date stone

A merchant was riding home across the desert with saddlebags of money and a bag of dates.

At noon he stopped under a tree by a spring, and ate some bread and some dates, and threw the stones away as he ate, over his shoulder, without looking.

He was brushing the crumbs off his coat when the air in front of him changed.

Something enormous was standing there with a drawn sword.

"Get up," it said. "You are going to die."

The merchant could not speak for a moment.

"What have I done?"

"You threw a date stone," said the jinn. "It struck my son in the eye as he was passing, and he is dead. So you will die, the way he did, and there is nothing to discuss."

A year

The merchant did not argue that it was an accident, because he could see it would not help.

He said something else instead.

"I have a wife and children and debts and men who work for me, and none of them know where I am or what happens to what I owe them. Let me go home and settle all of it. Give me a year. I will come back to this tree on this day next year and you may do as you like."

"You will not come back."

"I will swear it."

And the jinn, who had not expected to be spoken to reasonably, agreed.

The three old men

The merchant went home and settled everything, and told his family, and they wept for a year.

And on the day, he came back to the tree and sat down under it to wait, which surprised nobody who knew him and would have surprised the jinn very much.

While he waited, an old man came along the road leading a chained gazelle, and asked why he was sitting there, and stayed when he heard.

Then a second old man came with two black dogs on a lead, and stayed.

Then a third with a mule, and stayed.

And then the air changed, and the jinn was there with his sword out.

The bargain of stories

The first old man stood up.

"Before you do that," he said, "let me tell you the story of myself and this gazelle. And if you find it more astonishing than anything you have heard, will you give me a third of this man's blood?"

The jinn considered it.

"Tell it."

So he told it, and it was astonishing, and the jinn gave him a third.

The second old man told the story of himself and the two dogs, and the jinn gave him another third.

And the third old man told the story of himself and the mule, and when he had finished the jinn stood there for a while with nothing left to take.

Then he put up his sword and went, and the merchant went home.

Why this story matters

Scheherazade told this on her first night and stopped it just as the jinn raised the sword, and the King of Benares postponed her death by one morning to hear the end of it.

Which is the whole shape of the Thousand and One Nights in one story: three men save a life by telling tales, and outside the story a woman was doing exactly the same thing as she told it.