Discover the Enchanting World of Arabian Nights with Tahir Shah

Moises Medina: A splendid story. I grabbed this book to learn about the Moroccan culture, I ended up learning a great deal more! A fantastic story about stories and story-tellers . Now I have a reference about that culture, a vivid description of the places that I will visit, and a guide on how to behave in the land of stories and tales.

United States on Aug 23, 2023

Bill Black: The author of this book presents himself as a person raised in a world of stories, finding himself in a place of stories but seeking his own story. The reader is taken along as he travels through Morocco seeking stories, storytellers and the places they live and perform.
Along the way, this journey provides the frame in which several stories are told and lessons provided. Just when you feel it might be a travelogue, he finds a setting for a story which you happily stop and enjoy. The book has numerous small illustrations to tease the imagination in understanding the stories. There is a glossary and list of recommended readings.
It is a book for a journeyer who wishes to understand that there is more to travel than moving along a route. It is a book to remind readers that what we read had origins in spoken words heard, enjoyed and valued.
Does he find his story? Well, telling you that now would betray the art the author teaches, and what’s the fun in that?
I have already returned to this book and enjoyed parts of it again as I have told friends about it. The book is a sequel to a prior work by the author in the same location. I have not read that book but it did not...

United States on Dec 17, 2022

DeepakDeepak: Every once in a while, one comes across a book in which every word is to be savoured, stories and anecdotes which are to be played and replayed on our 'inward eye', the lilting cadence of the poetry to be harmonised with the self and when such a book comes, one feels great pride and satisfaction in having read it. The author's quest of story in one's heart through the labyrinthine travels across Morocco and an excellent and detailed observation about the beauty of orient, celebrating its differences with the occident makes this book truly a treat to read. If time is short or you are too distracted or simply you find oral wisdom nothing but mumbo jumbo, u may skip it, but for a deeper appreciation of an ancient culture that mirrors our own, and a better understanding of self, read it slow.... soaking in the underground streams of wisdom that crisscross not only this kingdom but also the book.

India on Mar 16, 2021

barbara xella: I downloaded this book one night when I couldn't sleep, started reading it straight away, and I honestly found it hard to put it down! It's written in an incredibly catching way, I was totally drawn into the colours, sounds, scents of Morocco and was able to re-live a trip I made there more than 10 years ago. You also get trapped by the stories in the story and feel like the next priority in your life after putting down the book is rushing out to find your own story of the heart! I loved the book so much that I am going to buy a paper version of it soon. I have read other books of Tahir Shah's and I like them all, but up to now this is my absolute favourite. Looking forward to reading the ones I haven't read yet. Definitely recommended.

United Kingdom on Oct 02, 2014

sHemingway, Manchester: In searching for his story, Tahir Shah produces a pretty formidable and unusual volume on the tradition of storytelling in Morocco interwoven by the tensions of his family's adjustment to life in Fes and the spiritual goings-on in Dar Kalifa. His writing is intelligent and highly descriptive, but misses the mark a little. At one point, I was really quite drawn into the story after an initial difficulty, while toward the end, I drifted a while. In all, I felt the book was a real achievement, and niggling to me, I should've liked it more!

First, we have a unique theme for a book (storytelling) which was, in theory, an ingenious vehicle for transmitting the essence of Morocco that one may wish from a current travel book - I definitely learned something of Morocco's past AND present in reading it. Tahir makes intelligent and deep observations, and is a likeable character (though at times submitting too much to his servants, I felt!). However, sometimes the traditional stories told just left me hanging there - Without some cultural commentary, I wasn't sure what to take from many of the stories, and there's only so much dangling one can take before you decide you don't want to...

United Kingdom on Oct 02, 2013

Kim Hoag: In Arabian Nights is a wide-open window into another world, but only because Tahir Shah draws us into himself. He writes with complete honesty, showing in his prose his many questions regarding the acts of life. He is a storyteller, but that does not reflect in his book as a simple story, for the book is much more complicated--and simple--than that. The streams of his story flow merrily only to disappear beneath the sands of some trauma (or jinn); but they bubble up again and again if you wait for them.

He is a storyteller in search of the story in his heart. In the process of looking for that story, he sifts through the stories around him as well as the one he is living, and looks at each...weighing it...trying to know it. It is his awareness that he is participating in a story that makes the book so precious.

As a storyteller myself, I admire Tahir Shah's metacognitive frankness, his knowledge of story, and his awareness of the stories pressing against him from both within and without. As someone who has been to Marrakesh, he brought back to me the taste of the tepid water from goatskin bags...and it makes me smile. Like the stories of Joha (Nasrudin), you can read...

United States on Jun 21, 2013

Ita: "A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams" is the subtitle of this extraordinary book. Tahir Shah was brought up to understand that, when his father is dead, it will be his responsibility to keep alive and pass on the teaching with which he has been endowed. He knows it was not his father's intention that he should simply regurgitate what was written and told to him. What was required was much more subtle and needed his own journey of discovery, through a state he calls "Morocco." He finds energy, wisdom and guidance in dreams, Sufi teaching stories, remembrance of time spent with his father and fragments of their conversations, as well as from the people he meets in everyday life. There are obstacles, like his own ambition, to be overcome; and qualities, like a sense of selflessness, to be cultivated before the baton can be passed on.
This is a liberating book, one that promotes creativity, at a time when neuroscientists are beginning to realise the limitations of Consciousness. It is enhanced by Michael Greer's map and the detailed, but ethereal, interior illustrations of Laetitia Bermejo.

United Kingdom on Nov 11, 2010

Sporus: It would be good to hear what a Moroccan made of Tahir Shah, who brings to mind the benignly patronising tones and mythomaniac tendencies of Gerald Durrell.

He claims a storytelling gene through his father (the mildly controversial Idries Shah); but this is not an especially well-written book. The idioms are routine; while the numerous repeated observations (about Egyptian TV soap operas, about the role of the cafe house in Arab culture, about the definition of a pederast, about the Islamic attitude to guests etc.) suggest either the vocative approach to text typical of people in the television industry, an assumption that his audience is stupid (typical of people in the telev...), or an uncritical dependence on cut-and-paste production. Or all three.

Shah's ethos - that stories contain lambent and corrosive meanings capable of changing lives - is attractive. It is neither novel nor unique to Arabic culture (has he never heard of griots?!) but it does provoke several delightful anecdotes. Unfortunately his early description of the framing device in 'The Thousand Nights and One Night' (one of the world's great books) sets off a string of misgivings as he carefully...

United Kingdom on Sep 19, 2010

Pierre A. Beauchamp: This is an excellent book, which I devoured in less than a week and will read again and again and again.

However, a correction is in order here. One of the past reviewers (who did not like the book) wrote - and I quote: "The book is a journey about a story - every person has a story that is close to his or her heart. Finding that story is the hard part. Mr. Shah does indeed find the story, but guess what? The reader has no idea what it was!" Were we both reading the same book? Reader, do not be put off by such a remark. This book is not about a wild goose chase. Mr Shah does indeed find the story close to his heart and even has physical reactions and symptoms that indicate this story is the right one. Please read the book carefully -- it's there in black and white!

I must admit I did find the characters' names a bit daunting and confusing. Without knowledge of Arabic, it was difficult to tell the characters apart by name only... A future edition of this wonderful book would benefit greatly by the addition of a Character List at the front, designed especially for Western readers, as is often found in Russian novels such as War and Peace or Dr. Zhivago. Publishers,...

United States on May 27, 2010

Alexandra S/ Oregon / @portlandlpc (Instagram): First, if you haven't read The Caliph's House, do read that first. In Arabian Nights is the sequel and definitely should be read in the right order to fully appreciate his evolution of learning to live in Morocco. That said, In Arabian Nights is in a league all its own. Its the best travelogue I've ever read because he travels as many miles inward as he does across the country following an old Berber tradition of aiming to discover the story in his heart. The Moroccans he meets whereever he travels- the blind man who says "I have never had eyesight to hold me back" to the shoe cobbler whom he befriends to many, many more- challenge his way of thinking and being, and his curiosity, immense respect, and awe for the land, the Morrocan people, and their heritage in which he and his family now live is extraordinarily moving. This is also an open love letter to storytelling and a plea to not let this ancientest of ancient arts wither out. There are very few books where I get to the end and I want to go right back to the beginning and read it all over again but this was one of those rare ones.

United States on Apr 14, 2009