Sinbad the Sailor

Sinbad the Sailor (also spelled Sindbad; Arabic: السندباد البحري ‎‎ as-Sindibādu al-Baḥriyy) is a fictional sailor and the hero of a story-cycle of Middle Eastern origin; he is described as living in Baghdad, during the Abbasid Caliphate. During his voyages throughout the seas east of Africa and south of Asia, he has fantastic adventures going to magical places, meeting monsters, and encountering supernatural phenomena.

The tales of Sinbad are a relatively late addition to the One Thousand and One Nights – they don't feature in the earliest 14th-century manuscript, and appear as an independent cycle in 17th and 18th century collections. The first known point at which they are associated with the Nights is a Turkish collection dated 1637. One of several possible etymologies of the name is Sindh and the Persian word bâd, which means wind. This would give a plausible meaning of "India-wind".

Traceable influences include the Homeric epics (long familiar in the Arabic-speaking world, having been translated into that language as long ago as the 8th century A.D., at the court of the Caliph al-Mahdi), Pseudo-Callisthenes's "Life of Alexander" from the late-3rd/early 4th century A.D. via the 9th century "Book of Animals" of al-Jahiz, and, even earlier, in the ancient Egyptian "Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor". More "recent" sources include Abbasid works such the "Wonders of the Created World", reflecting the experiences of 13th century Arab mariners who braved the Indian Ocean.

The Sinbad cycle is set in the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid. It first appeared in English as tale 120 in Volume 6 of Sir Richard Burton's 1885 translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.

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