Above is a rough sketch of a scene from the Thousand Nights and One Night, also commonly known as the Arabian Nights, a collection of folk stories and tales compiled in Arabic and tracing their origin to ancient sources from Arabic, Turkic, Persian, and other nearby cultures (including perhaps ancient India) -- and exhibiting clear evidence of connection to the world-wide system of celestial metaphor which forms the foundation for the myths preserved in cultures literally around the globe.
Previous posts which explore some of the connections between stories in the Thousand and One Nights include "The Arabian Nights: Can you unlock their celestial metaphors?" and "Star Myths in the Arabian Nights!"
The scene depicted in the hasty sketch above comes from the "Tale of Nur al-Din Ali and his son Badr al-Din Hasan." If you would like to read the story for yourself, you can find it in the famous English translation by the redoubtable Richard Francis Burton (published in the 1880s), or any number of other translations.
In this story, Shams al-Din Mohammed and Nur al-Din Ali, two brothers living in Cairo have a falling out, over a rather ridiculous and comical argument regarding their future children, resulting in the younger brother leaving Cairo, never to return. This younger brother, Nur al-Din Ali, eventually marries the daughter of the Wazir of Bassorah and has a son, named Badr al-Din Hasan, who grows up to be a young man of remarkable virtue, learning, piety, and physical beauty. However, after the death of his father, Hasan falls afoul of the Sultan of Bassorah, and is forced to flee in fear for his life, and without conscious thought he makes his way in great haste to the lonely cemetery where his own father is buried, where he cries himself to sleep while leaning against the stone marking his father's grave.
Richard Burton's translation tells what happens, while the youth was asleep in the graveyard:
Hasan fell a-weeping as he thought of the dignity and prosperity which had erst been his and night came upon him; so he leant his head against his father's grave and sleep overcame him: Glory to Him who sleepeth not! He ceased not slumbering till the moon rose; when his head slipped from off the tomb and he lay on his back, with limbs outstretched, his face shaining bright in the moon-light. Now the cemetery was haunted day and night by Jinns who were of the True Believers, and presently came out a Jinniyah who, seeing Hasan asleep, marvelled at his beauty and loveliness and cried, "Glory to God! this youth can be none other than one of the Wuldan of Paradise."
Then she flew firmament-wards to circle it, as was her custom, and met an Ifrit on the wing who saluted her and [she] said to him, "Whence comest thou?"
"From Cairo," he replied.
"Wilt thou come with me and look upon the beauty of the youth who sleepeth in yonder burial place?" she asked, and he answered, "I will."
So they flew till they lighted at the tomb and she showed him the youth and said, "Now didst thou ever in thy born days see aught like this?"
The Ifrit looked upon him and exclaimed, "Praise be to Him that hath no equal! But, O my sister, shall I tell thee what I have seen this day?"
Asked she, "What is that?" and he answered, "I have seen the counterpart of this youth in the land of Egypt. She is the daughter of the Wazir Shams al-Din and she is a model of beauty and loveliness, of fairest favour and formous form, and dight with symmetry and perfect grace. When she had reached the age of nineteen, the Sultan of Egypt heard of her and, sending for the Wazir her father, said to him: -- Hear me, O Wazir: it hath reached mine ear that thou hast a daughter and I wish to demand her of thee in marriage. The Wazir replied: -- O our lord the Sultan, deign accept my excuses and take compassion on my sorrows, for thou knowest that my brother, who was partner with me in the Wazirate, disappeared from amongst us many years ago and we wot not where he is. Now the cause of his departure was that one night, as we were sitting together and talking of wives and children to come, we had words on the matter and he went off in high dudgeon. But I swore that I would marry my daughter to none save to the son of my brother on the day her mother gave her birth, which was nigh upon nineteen years ago. I have lately heard that my brother died at Bassorah, where he had married the daughter of the Wazir and that she bare him a son; and I will not marry my daughter but to him in honour of my brother's memory. I recorded the date of my marriage and the conception of my wife and the birth of my daughter, and from her horoscope I find that her name is conjoined with that of her cousin; and there are damsels in foison for our lord the Sultan. [ . . . ]
Then said she [the Jinniyah], "O my brother, let us get under him and lift him up and carry him to Cairo, that we may compare him with the damsel of whom thou speakest and so determine whether of the twain is the fairer."
"To hear is to obey!" replied he. 170 - 172.
The scene in the graveyard, in which the Ifrit and the Jinniyah are conversing regarding the beauty of the sleeping Badr al-Din Hasan and the daughter of Wazir Shams al-Din Mohammed (the brother of Hasan's deceased father), actually has strong parallels to other similar scenes in other ancient episodes from other cultures, all based on the stars.
Can you think of another famous story in which a young man, who is going on a long journey away from his home, sleeps with his head upon a stone, and powerful heavenly beings fly upwards and downwards above him as he sleeps?
If you thought of the account of Jacob found in the book of Genesis, chapter 28, then I would agree with you. There, we read that Jacob took a stone or stones for his pillows and lay down to sleep, and in that sleep he had a vision of a stairway or ladder set upon the earth with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon it (Genesis 28: 11 - 22).
I would argue that both of these scenes can be clearly shown to have their foundation in celestial metaphor, and to be based upon the very same region of the night sky, containing the constellation Sagittarius above which stretches the widest and brightest part of the Milky Way band, with the winged figures of the constellations Aquila and Cygnus, the two "great birds of the Milky Way," flying above Sagittarius, with Aquila appearing to fly upwards, and Cygnus flying downwards towards Sagittarius (from the perspective of an observer in the northern hemisphere).
This famous scene, often referred to as the episode of "Jacob's Ladder," is invariably depicted in the sacred artwork of previous centuries with figures characteristic of the constellations in that region of the heavens, and with the brilliant ladder itself (and the clouds around it) corresponding quite closely to the outline of this part of the Milky Way -- the portion of the Milky Way near Sagittarius, containing the Galactic Core and the Dark Rift.
Indeed, in the drawing above I have deliberately sketched the sleeping Hasan with an outline following the depiction of the sleeping figure of Jacob found in a painting by the artist Salvatore Rosa (1615 - 1673), in which the artist has clearly chosen to depict Jacob in a posture reminiscent of the constellation Sagittarius.
That painting by Salvatore Rosa, as well as the celestial foundations of the story of Jacob's vision at Beth-El, is discussed in greater detail in my 2016 book Star Myths of the World, Volume Three (Star Myths of the Bible), as well as in this previous post about the recently-discovered Pylos Combat Agate in the western Peloponnese.
The tombstone upon which Hasan rests his head may be the constellation of Ara the Altar, which is nearby to Sagittarius and Scorpio in the sky. It is also quite likely that the looming outline of the constellation Ophiuchus, which is adjacent to that bright portion of the Milky Way, directly above Scorpio and thus very close to Sagittarius as well, plays the role of a tomb in this scene from the Thousand and One Nights. As discussed in Star Myths of the World, Volume Two (Myths of Ancient Greece), as well as in some later volumes published since, the door-shaped outline of Ophiuchus often plays the role of the very gates of the underworld in ancient myth, and certainly suggests the shape of a tomb, crypt, or tombstone (all of which may indeed by consciously shaped after Ophiuchus, since this system of celestial metaphor is actually extremely ancient, predating even the most ancient civilizations known to conventional history today).
In Star Myths of the Bible, I discuss the New Testament episode of the Gadarene or Gergesene man, described in Matthew 8, Mark 5, and Luke 8. This man is described as living among the tombs, and in my discussion beginning on page 623 of Volume Three I present evidence for identifying this scene with the same region of the night sky we are here discussing (although at the time Volumes Two and Three were published, I had not yet thought about the celestial foundations of this scene from the Tale of Nur al-Din Ali and his son Badr al-Din Hasan in the Arabian Nights).
Below is a star-chart showing the constellations in the region of the sky containing the brightest part of the Milky Way, which furnish the foundations for these various ancient stories.
The ancient myths entrusted to the different cultures of humanity point us towards the reality of an unseen or invisible realm, even a divine realm, one which is present at all times and indeed accessible to us at all times, even though (as Jacob declares in Genesis 28: 16) we often do not perceive it (or do not allow ourselves to perceive it).
Indeed, it is often while we sleep -- and our carefully-constructed egoic mind, our conscious mind, finally takes some time off from "protecting" us from the influence of this invisible realm -- that we receive its messages most strongly.
