Categorizing the Uncategorizable: Wealth and Power as Represented in "Sinbad the Sailor" Ari Mostow College

Two salient features of wonder create an immediate source of dissonance within “The Story of Sindbad the Sailor” in Hussain Haddaway’s translation of Sindbad and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights. First, the Qur’an explains, “There were wonders among our signs” (Sura 18:9). As established within Islamic precedent, wonders signify the possibility of profound meaning, waiting to be interpreted, and thus beg the act of deciphering. On the other hand, the tenth century Islamic scholar al-Raghib al-Isfahani (qtd. in Mottahedeh) explains that “’ajab and ta’ajjub are states which come to a person at the time of that person’s ignorance of the sabab [cause] of something” (30). Thus, inherent in the idea of wonder is some underlying lack of knowledge, and a resistance to taxonomical placement within a system – despite one’s yearning to do so. Through this lens, the epistemic instability of wonder in “The Story of Sindbad the Sailor” undermines established power by occupying an ambiguous, liminal space between firm categories; it is only when Sindbad converts wonder to material terms within a political or economic system of exchange that power can be regained.

Though “The Story of Sindbad the Sailor” deals with wonder and...