Bedreddin Hassan has buried his father, and Bassora has buried his fortune with him: stripped of the vizierate and hunted by the Sultan's order, he flees to his father's tomb, where a money-changer buys the cargo of a ship that may never come for a thousand dinars. He sleeps on the tomb — and wakes, by the hands of two jinn who disputed all night over his beauty, in Cairo, dressed for a wedding that is not his. In the Vizier's palace his cousin is displayed in seven dresses before a bridegroom she has never chosen, while the stranger from Bassora showers gold into the singers' tambourines. Part Two of Five.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
A note on what is not read here. In Payne's book this tale is told by the Vizier Jaafer inside "The Three Apples". That frame tale is not read in this programme: a husband's murder of his wife is its plot engine, and it is excluded whole under this shelf's rule that violent tales are excluded, never softened. No completeness is claimed for that stretch of the book. Within Part Two itself, one brief passage — a single blow struck by the Ifrit to silence Bedreddin — has been passage-cut at scripting, on this shelf's precedent that a detachable act of violence is cut rather than carried; the threats spoken around it are dialogue only and are never enacted. The tale of Bedreddin Hassan is otherwise read whole in five parts, in Payne's order.
Chapters:
00:35 Introduction
01:17 Noureddin Ali of Cairo and His Son Bedreddin Hassan — Part Two
Fresh in-house rendering from John Payne's translation, The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (1882–84).
Narrated by Violetta.
Music: "Urgent Rhythms" (instrumental) — opening and closing theme, with a short excerpt at the tale's mid-point break.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
