“While she was enjoying these, thinking only of her own pleasures, a lion suddenly appeared.  As it attacked, she screamed, but the handsome man did not come to help her.  Instead, he jumped on his horse and galloped away, for he was a coward.  She ran after him, calling, ‘Don’t you remember what you swore?’ But he ignored her and was gone.  Alas! The lion could run much faster than she.  He soon caught up with her and, with his mighty paw, broke her neck, whereupon he devoured her.  By the time her husband arrived he found only her clothes and her hair, because lions eat people’s bones as well.  All he could do was go back to his village, where he lived in peace for many more years.”

Can’t anyone be trusted?

Politely, the storyteller remarked, “As you see, sire, everybody can be deceived by sweet-sounding words.” The king reflected on this for a while, then asked, “Is there then no loyalty, no friendship? Can nobody he trusted?” “Indeed there is, wise king,” spoke the storyteller, “as is shown in this next tale.”

Courtesy Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Newly crowned rulers needed wise advice at the start of their reigns. One such coronation in Persia is shown here in Jamshid Enthroned, from Majma al-tawarikh (Compendium of history), painted by Hafiz-i Abru, Herat, 1425.

The gazelle and her friends. “A crow, a mouse, a gazelle, and a tortoise had formed a friendship.  They lived in a wood near a stream.  One day a hunter was pursuing the gazelle, but the crow flew down, perched on the man’s head, and started pecking him furiously.  The hunter turned to get rid of the crow, but he could not hit it.  Meanwhile, the gazelle escaped.  While he was resting after the crow’s attack, the hunter spotted the tortoise, quickly picked it up, and put it in his net.  Then he set off for home.

“He had not gone far when he found the gazelle lying on the path, apparently wounded.  If it was the same gazelle he had been pursuing so hotly, he thought, one of his arrows must have hit it.  In any case, he put his net down to pick up the gazelle, but she jumped up just in time and walked away with a limp.  The hunter ran after her, thinking it would be easy to catch her, but it was not.While the gazelle limped deeper and deeper into the forest, the mouse arrived and started gnawing the strings of the net until the tortoise could creep out.  When the hunter came back exhausted, having lost sight of the gazelle, he found his net torn and the tortoise gone.  There you see the strength of friendship.”