The multimedia item I chose is a picture of one of the three ladies from “The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad”. I chose this picture because it is representative of the power that women hold in A Thousand and One Nights. Specifically in “The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad”, the ladies force the porter to drink alcohol and make him promise not to question the slaves living in the house by saying: “[b]y Allah, we may not suffer thee to join us save on one condition, and this it is, that no questions be asked” (Burton 131). They manipulate him into getting drunk in order to hold the power in the palm of their hands and control the porters’ action’s. The picture is representative of this by the way the woman is standing over the Porter. She is holding a sharp sword directly towards him and there is an aura that surrounds her, whether it be a gust of wind or an article of clothing. Either way, this image is representative of the power that is held by women not only in “The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad”, but in a “A Thousand and One Nights” as a whole. Additionally, I chose the location of Baghdad because the culture is key to understanding the actions of the story. The ladies believe that they are able to talk down to the porter because “middle-or lower-class Baghdadi's in the Nights were not so lucky”; people in the lower/middle class in Baghdad were at an extreme disadvantage and were treated poorly by the upper class of society (Robert 252).This shows why the location of Baghdad, and the culture it encompasses, is an integral part in understanding the actions that the ladies took towards the porter.

Works Cited

Burnt, Richard F. "The Book of The Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments." The Dunyazad Digital      Library, n.d. Web.

Irwin, Robert. “ Political Thought in ‘The Thousand and One Nights’, Marvels and Tales: Wayne State University Press, (2004): 246-257