The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night/The Man Who Saw the Night of Power

by Unknown

THE MAN WHO SAW THE NIGHT OF POWER.

A certain man had longed all his life to look upon the Night of Power,^[1] and it befell that, one night, he looked up at the sky and saw the angels and Heaven’s gates opened and beheld all things in the act of prostration before their Lord, each in its several room. So he said to his wife, “Harkye, such an one, God hath shown me the Night of Power, and it hath been proclaimed to me, from the invisible world, that three prayers will be granted unto me; so do thou counsel me what I shall ask.” Quoth she, “O man, the perfection of man and his delight is in his yard; so do thou pray God to greaten thy yard and magnify it.” So he lifted up his hands to heaven and said, “O my God, greaten my yard and magnify it.” Hardly had he spoken when his yard became as big as a calabash and he could neither sit nor stand nor move; and when he would have lain with his wife, she fled before him from place to place. So he said to her, “O accursed woman, what is to be done? This is thy wish, by reason of thy lust.” “Nay, by Allah,” answered she; “I did not ask for this huge bulk, for which the gate of a street were too strait. Pray God to make it less.” So he raised his eyes to heaven and said, “O my God, rid me of this thing and deliver me therefrom.” And immediately his yard disappeared altogether and he became smooth [like a woman]. When his wife saw this, she said, ‘I have no occasion for thee, now thou art become yardless;” and he answered her, saying, “All this comes of thine own ill-omened counsel and the infirmity of thy judgment. I had three prayers accepted of God, wherewith I might have gotten me my good, both in this world and the next, and now two are gone in pure waste, by thy lewd wish, and there remaineth but one.” Quoth she, “Pray God the Most High to restore thee thy yard as it was.” So he prayed to his Lord and his yard was restored to its first case. Thus the man lost his three wishes by the ill counsel and lack of sense of the woman;

Return to The Malice of Women.

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1. One of the last nights of Ramazan, (supposed, on the authority of a tradition of the Prophet, to be either the 20th, 22nd, 24th or 28th of the month, on which the Koran is said to have been revealed en bloc to Gabriel, who communicated it piece-meal to Mohammed, beginning at once with chapter xcvi. (or, according to some, chapter lxxiv.). On this night the Muslims believe that the affairs of the universe are settled for the ensuing year, that all created things prostrate themselves in adoration to Allah (cf. the mediæval legend of Christmas Eve, when the cattle were fabled to worship God in the stalls, etc.), salt water becomes sweet, the angels descend to bless the faithful and all prayers, prayed in cognisance of the fact, are granted. “Verily we sent it [the Koran] down on the Night of Power, and what giveth thee to know what is the Night of Power? The Night of Power is better than a thousand months; the angels and the Spirit (Gabriel) descend therein, by leave of their Lord, with every commandment. Peace is it till the breaking of the dawn.”—Koran xcvii. “By the Manifest Book, we sent it down on a blessed night . . . . . . whereon is apportioned each determined decree, as a commandment from us.”—Koran xliv. 1, 2 and 3.