Episode 152 Show Notes

Source: Middle Eastern Folklore

This week on MYTH, we’re heading back to the magical wonders of The Thousand and One Nights for the second of the epic voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. You’ll learn that you shouldn’t nap in strange places, that you can do a lot with just a turban, and that diamonds are a bird’s best friend. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet a creature that is a half-human being. Literally. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 152, “Big Bird”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Back in Episode 143, we caught up with our old friend the clever tale weaver Scheherazade and her 1001 Nights. We also met the poor Sinbad the porter as he stopped to rest on a bench outside a rich man’s house on a particularly hot day in Baghdad. There, he complained loudly to Allah about the injustice of the world that allowed a few men to live in such extravagant wealth and comfort while most others toiled away in poverty. The home’s owner, who turned out to be the very rich and very famous Sinbad the Sailor, overhead this comment and summoned his poor namesake in for an audience. Convinced he was about to be punished for having the audacity to criticize the very wealthy, he is instead treated to join in at the sumptuous feast and to hear the tales of how Sinbad the Sailor came into his wealth through Fame and Fortune.
After regaling his audience with the story of his First Voyage (AKA Episode 143), the wealthy merchant sent the poor porter home with a gift of 100 gold pieces and asks him to come back the next day for the story of the Second Voyage. As you may remember, Sinbad the Sailor had gotten stranded and left for dead on his first trip out on the high seas, so he had vowed to himself to never leave Baghdad again if he ever made it back alive. Of course, just like many of us have done after swearing off alcohol after a particularly heavy night of drinking, he soon broke that promise for the promise of excitement and adventure. The life of a moderately wealthy trader was an easy one but not a particularly interesting one, and Sinbad soon grew bored of being idle and stationary. His thoughts turned once more to the sea.
Thus it was that he soon found himself getting together a collection of goods and loading them on a ship to set out on the ocean to see new cities and trade with them. As before, he joined together with a group of other merchants that he trusted who all planned on going to more or less the same places. There’s safety in numbers, even if that hadn’t helped out ol’ Sinbad last time. Well, it hadn’t kept him from being accidentally left for dead, but they had been perfect gentlemen in the way they dealt with his goods both when they thought he was dead and when he turned up alive again, so it hadn’t been a complete loss.
This convoy sailed from island to island and Sinbad proved as shrewd at bargaining as ever, turning a tidy sum on the sale and trade of the things he had brought along. One day, the ships weighed anchor at a secluded beach on an isolated island. Although the area was covered in trees ladened with succulent looking fruit and dotted with a number of cool, clear springs of fresh water, it appeared to be entirely uninhabited. There was no sign of any dwelling nor even of any people using this place as a temporary base like Sinbad and his companions were currently doing. Despite his previous experience with the unexpected, this didn’t set any alarm bells ringing in Sinbad’s mind, nor in anyone else’s. While his companions wandered thither and yon snagging fruit and gathering exotic flowers, the savvy sailor himself found a shady spot for a light lunch washed down by a particularly fine vintage of wine. The warmth of the sun through the foliage mixed with the soothing song of the wine in his veins soon lulled the man to sleep beneath the tree, a brook nearby murmuring a lullaby.
Any idea what happened next? If you guessed ‘Sinbad gets left behind by the convoy of merchants for the second time in a row’, then you my friend are more clever than our eponymous sailor. He woke some unknown time later with a start. It took him a moment to realize what had caused him to awaken. It wasn’t a sound so much as it was a lack of any sound. To his growing horror, Sinbad raced to the beach to discover that, yes indeed, he had been marooned alone on an uncharted island yet again. Peering out over the ocean, he could just see the mainsail of his ship disappearing over the horizon. Well, shit.
Cursing himself for not following through on his promise to never leave home again, Sinbad began to search the area for any means of escape. Heading inward, he found the tallest tree he could see and climbed it. Looking first towards the ocean, he saw nothing at all that would help him, only open, empty water. Turning the other way, he spied inland. Here, his hope was rewarded – far away was a flash of dazzling white, so far off in the distance that he couldn’t even guess what it might be. It was the only thing he saw in any direction that wasn’t empty island or desolate ocean, so Sinbad shimmied back down and headed that way, gathering up the provisions he had brought ashore as he went.
It was a long hike to get anywhere near the strange object, but his sense of direction proved true. In time, the young sailor drew near enough to begin seeing flashes of that same dazzling white through the trees. He broke through into the clearing around the object to find that it was no less strange up close. It appeared to be an enormous ball of purest white and of staggeringly immense proportions. Reaching out a tentative hand, he found that it was shockingly soft and smooth to the touch. The surface appeared to be utterly unblemished, which also meant no hand or footholds of any kind, so climbing would be impossible. With no other ideas, he picked a direction and began walking around the white orb looking for any opening or point of differentiation. There was none to be found. Making a second circuit, Sinbad counted fifty paces to circle the thing, and at least that many tall, likely more.
By the time he had finished his explorations, the sun was setting and the sky was growing dark very, very quickly. Too quickly, in fact. Looking up, Sinbad saw some enormous shadow like a titanic thundercloud passing overhead and blotting out what little sunlight was left. This figure banked and circled overhead, revealing itself in the light of the dying sun as it did. Sinbad saw that hovering above him was the largest bird he had ever seen. He remembered having heard stories of the legendary roc which was supposed to live in this part of the sea. For context, these enormous mythological birds are said to be large enough to pick up an elephant in each talon and fly away with them, so yeah. That’s a fucking big bird. More pieces fell into place, and Sinbad realized to his horror that the gargantuan white object must be the bird’s egg. He had just inadvertently invaded this monster’s nest. Well shit again.
There was no time to escape and no place nearby to hide, so Sinbad did the only thing he could think of – he squeezed as close to the egg as he could and held still. His gambit paid off – the roc didn’t notice the motionless human hanging around as it settled down atop its egg. For his part, the terrified sailor found himself crouching down next to an enormous leg the size of a tree trunk. Thinking quickly, he realized that this monstrous bird was a mortal threat, yes, but it was also a golden opportunity to escape the desolate island. Taking off his turban, he unwound it into a long length of strong linen which he used to bind himself fast to the roc’s leg. It wouldn’t be comfortable but, as long as his knots held, he should be able to hitch a ride with the bird the next time that it took off to hunt. There was no way that an island this small could feed a monster that big, so it would almost certainly carry Sinbad somewhere more likely to be inhabited.
The abandoned sailor passed a fitful night of terrible sleep tied to the roc’s leg but, at sunrise the next morning, he felt the bird stirring. In a flap of wings like the crack of thunder and a gust of wind like a hurricane, the roc launched itself into the air, carrying its stowaway with it. It rose higher and higher into the sky until the earth itself was lost to view beneath Sinbad. Before he could get used to this cold, windy new existence, the creature suddenly swooped into a steep dive. It fell to earth with such terrifying speed that the mortal man lost consciousness from pure G-forces.
When he came to, Sinbad looked around groggily and realized that they had landed again. There was no telling how long before they were airborne again so, without taking time to inspect his new surroundings, Sinbad hastily untied the turban – and not a moment too soon. Even as he was still stumbling away on unsteady legs, the enormous bird pounced upon an equally titanic serpent that was slithering nearby. With several swift strikes of its wickedly sharp beak, it slew the snake. Clutching its prize, the roc then launched itself back into the air and was lost from sight.
Sinbad watched it go with some admiration and then, with a moment of peace at last, he finally examined the spot he now found himself in. About the only good thing he could say about it was that it wasn’t an isolated island inhabited by a massive brooding bird of prey. Even so, he couldn’t help but wonder if his exploits had gained him anything over that desolate island. He stood in a deep valley with steep cliffs on either side towering up to mountains that stretched up into the clouds. The sheer, rocky walls were beyond his skill at climbing, especially with no gear to speak of. He was trapped.
Figuring one direction was as good as another, Sinbad started walking along the valley floor in search of some way out of this cage. He didn’t find one, but he did notice that the ground throughout this valley was littered with raw diamonds, some of them bigger than anything he’d ever seen before. By like, a lot. And that was great and all, but you can’t eat diamonds and they aren’t much use to someone lost alone in the wilderness, so Sinbad left them where they lay and kept exploring. Night was falling before he had completed a circuit of the valley, so he crawled into a small cave he had spotted earlier. After making sure that no creepy crawlies were in there with him, the exhausted sailor sealed the entrance behind him with rocks, ate a meager meal from his dwindling provisions, and went to sleep.
The wisdom of closing up the cave entrance soon showed itself. As the sun set, the valley came alive with the hissing and dry rasping slither of countless enormous serpents. He hoped he was safe in his little hideaway, that the snakes didn’t know where he was and wouldn’t be able to get to him if they did, but he’d seen the size of the one the roc had killed. His fitful sleep was troubled by terrible nightmares of being devoured alive.
Sinbad only knew that morning had come by the silence outside. That terrible hissing had finally ceased, which hopefully meant that all of the serpents had retreated back to their own dens to sleep the day away. Trembling with anxiety, the man unblocked the cave and crawled out into blinding daylight. The valley was still and empty except for himself. Hoisting his rapidly diminishing supplies onto his shoulder, the sailor continued to explore the valley, His way was still littered with a vast fortune in diamonds, which he kicked contemptuously out of his way as he went. What use were diamonds to him? Their sparkling facets mocked him. Around midday, he collapsed into an exhausted heap on a large stone to rest.
Hardly had he closed his eyes to snooze when a loud thump startled him out of his doze. Something had fallen to earth very, very close to where he sat. Looking around, he spotted a huge piece of fresh meat lying in the dust. Even as he was wondering at the inexplicable hunk of butchered beast, another thumped to earth a little ways away. And then another. And another. They were being rolled over the edge of the cliff face to plummet into the valley below.
And now at last, Sinbad knew where he was. He’d heard fabulous sailor’s tales about a valley filled with diamonds but too deep and treacherous for even the most intrepid explorer to brave. Clever merchants had devised a unique way of retrieving the gems for sale, though Sinbad had always thought these stories to be tall tales, entertaining lies told around campfires at night. Now he knew that they were absolutely true.
See, these merchants knew that the rocky walls of the valley were home to a vast number of eagles. When these raptors came to their eyries to hatch their young, that was when the merchants came with wagonloads of fresh meat to huck into the valley. The carcasses fell with such force upon the diamond-studded valley floor that some would get embedded in the meat and stick there. The eagles would then retrieve the meat to carry to their nests high on the rocky cliffs. These were close enough to the top for daring merchants to climb down, scare off the parent birds, and retrieve the gems. Everyone wins – the merchants get rich and the eagles get fed.
Up until that moment, Sinbad had given up any hope of escaping. There was simply no way for a man to climb out of the deep valley of glittering stones and he’d expected his bones to have a kingly tomb amongst them. Now though, he realized there was a way out. A very dangerous way, but any hope was better than none. Picking his way back through the valley, Sinbad collected the largest and finest of the diamonds that he’d seen, packing them securely away in his leather bag with his provisions. This, he tied securely to his belt.
All that done, the intrepid sailor then sought out the juiciest hunk of meat he could find. He soon found one that suited his purpose and, unwinding his turban again, he used the linen to bind the meat to his own back. Once he was confident that everything was securely fastened, he lay face-down on the ground and waited for the eagles. He didn’t have to wait long. The sky was soon filled with the beating of wings. The eagles were coming.
Closing his eyes, Sinbad prayed with all his might that these eagles were as big as everything else in this godforsaken valley. Based on the size of the meat being hurled down, he figured it was a reasonable bet but if he was wrong, this was going to go very badly. The flapping got louder and closer and, to his joy and terror, Sinbad felt himself being lifted off the ground by the meat strapped to his back. The ground receded slowly from view but, from his vantage point, he couldn’t see how much farther he had to go. It felt like forever but eventually the eagle reached its nest and dropped its prize inside.
The first hurdle was behind him but now the second had arrived: getting out of the nest without being torn to bloody shreds by hungry eagle babies. Luckily for our plucky sailor, the merchants had set up a very observant watch and had already spotted the diamond-studded meat being dropped off. They rushed over to scare off the bird and were very surprised to find a dirty and disheveled Sinbad attached to it. Surprise almost immediately gave way to anger. Instead of bringing back a wealth of diamonds along with the meat, this bird had brought a disguised person thus (in their minds anyway) robbing them of their deserved prize.
The story doesn’t mention Sinbad stripping any diamonds off the meat he used as bait, but logic doesn’t often matter in the face of greed. Sinbad suffered their abuse until they got the worst of it out of their system before speaking up. “Guys, guys, can you take it easy for just a minute? If you had any idea of the shit I’ve been through over the last two days, you’d be a lot nicer to me right now. And if human sympathy doesn’t work (as I suspect it won’t), then how about diamonds? Instead of getting whatever a random hunk of meat happened to land on, I went through the valley and picked out the very best gems. There’s more than enough here for all of you as well as myself. Consider it a reward for your assistance.”
That got their attention. The merchants gathered around to verify that this great mass of diamonds was in fact real (it was) and then they listened in amazement as Sinbad recounted the tale of how he had come to be in this predicament. They were duly impressed with the clever scheme he had used to escape the fatal valley now that their own greed was assuaged. They led the exhausted and filthy man to their camp to clean up and recuperate, as well as to sort the gathered diamonds. After appraising this horde, the merchants declared that in all their time meat fishing in this valley, they had never seen any stones to compare with the size and beauty of the ones that Sinbad had brought along with him.
The sailor chatted with his rescuer and learned that each merchant claimed a particular nest or set of nests as their own to watch over and recover from. It was a matter of chance and skill to drop the carcasses on the best stones so that the eagles in your nest would be the ones to retrieve them. Thus Sinbad and his reward belonged only to this one merchant. In thanks, the sailor offered the merchant as much of the recovered treasure as he wanted for his trouble. It was a legitimate offer; Sinbad would have been legitimately fine with the merchant claiming all of the diamonds, but he had lucked into being snagged by an honorable and reasonable man. He took only a single stone, large but nowhere near the largest, and declared himself satisfied. With this one diamond, his fortune was made – he would never need to work ever again.
Sinbad stayed with the merchants for several days to recover from his harrowing ordeal. When they had finished up their strange style of bird fishing and packed up to head home, he decided to go with them. It wasn’t like he had any other real options and SInbad was an explorer by nature. Seeing a strange city was exactly the sort of excitement he’d hoped to find on the high seas. It was a lot safer and more comfortable than the death-defying adventures he’d had so far.
Of course, just because he had joined up with the merchant caravan didn’t mean the dangers were over. The way back lay across the mountains which were, as we’ve already seen, infested with enormous serpents by the thousands. Fortunately, these men were used to dealing with these deadly creatures and the convoy made it safely across without incident. They left the mountains and journeyed on to the seashore where the merchants’ ships were beached and waiting. They set sail for the island of Rohat where the camphor trees (whose bark has medicinal properties) grow so large that a hundred men could easily shelter beneath the branches of a single tree. The bark of these great trees would be cut high up on the trunk and a bucket placed beneath to capture the flowing sap. This could be hardened and distilled into camphor, but the tree usually died after it was harvested so the substance was fairly rare and expensive.
The island of Rohat also proved to be home to the mysterious rhinoceros, a beast described as larger than a buffalo but smaller than an elephant with a single horn a cubit, or 1.5 feet, long. These majestic creatures are a lot less exotic to us now thanks to zoos, documentaries, and the internet, but they must have been a truly incredible sight for Sinbad. The rhinos on this particular island apparently had the figure of a man traced in thin white lines along the length of their horns. It was apparently common there for the rhinos to get into fights with the elephants that also lived there. This conflict usually ended with the elephant impaled on the rhino’s great horn to be lifted and carried away – to what end I don’t know since rhinos are herbivores (but maybe Sinbad didn’t know that). Unfortunately, the weight of the dead elephant would slow the victorious beast down and the flow of the corpse’s lifesblood would soon blind it. This combination made it easy pickings for the roc, who would dive down and snatch both of them up in its talons to feed to its young. Welcome to the jungle, bitch.
At this point, Sinbad seems to sense that his peddler audience doubts his fantastical tale of gargantuan beasts (at least two of which are real and the third is likely an exaggeration of eagles or based on prehistoric bones). “What, you don’t believe me? I swear on my mother’s grave that it’s all true but if you doubt me, go and see for yourself. But anyway, I won’t bore you with any of the other incredible shit I saw. If you’re having trouble with an elephant fighting a rhinoceros, I doubt you’ll believe the rest.’
Before the party left Rohat, Sinbad traded some of his diamonds for more mundane goods to trade on the way home. By the time the ships reached Balsora, he had made a small fortune through successful trading. From there, our intrepid sailor made his way home to Baghdad. Having gone from being a moderately wealthy man to a fabulously wealthy one, his first act upon entering the city was to give a large chunk of it away to the poor. The rest, he invested wisely and settled down with every intention of never leaving dry land ever again. Both times he’d gone to sea he’d ended up in deadly, harrowing adventures, but then he’d also survived all of them and made a shit ton of money. And since we know that there are seven voyages of the great Sinbad the Sailor, you already know that this peace and tranquility won’t last.
But by this time, it was getting late back in the present day. The elder Sinbad bestowed another 100 gold pieces on the younger porter and once again invited him to come back the next day for the story of the third voyage. Two days of being an attentive audience for an engaging if unbelievable story had already made him more money than lugging and hauling for the rich ever had. His long years of scrimping and saving and slaving away were already beginning to fade away and feel like a bad dream.
He hurried home once more to deliver the money to his wife, who of course agreed that he had to stay on this gravy train as long as possible. Thus it was that, early the next day, Sinbad rose and went again to the home of Sinbad the Sailor. But alas you and I will have to wait until some other time to hear of the third voyage. But while we wait for the ever-restless sailor to set sail once more, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s strangely acrobatic creature is the nasnas.
In a lot of Arabic folklore, there are accounts of a number of different creatures who are either full or part djinn, a class of spirits who could be either good or evil depending on the individual. The nasnas is one such being, a descendant of a specific type of djinn known as a shiqq and a human. Since shiqq are of lower rank than other djinn and usually described as being half-formed and monstrous in appearance as well as in temperment, it should come as no surprise that their children are no more beautiful.
According to Edward Lane, the 19th century translator of The Thousand and One Nights, the nasnas is half a human being, quite literally. It has half a head, half a body, one arm, and one leg that it hops around on. If you’re familiar with Plato’s Symposium or the much more entertaining Origin of Love from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, then this sounds an awful lot like the creatures that human beings were threated to be turned into for continuing to defy the gods. Despite having only one foot, the nasnas is said to be surprisingly speedy and agile. In some versions, they also have a tail that they use for balance; in others, they instead have a single great batlike wing.
If you encounter a nasnas however, you likely won’t realize it at first since, like many djinn, it has the ability to alter its form. The creature most often takes the form of a feeble old man seeking someone’s help in crossing a body of water. If the victim takes the bait, the nasnas will transform back into its true self halfway across and use its single hand to drown the unfortunate soul trying to help it. They are as strong as they are nimble and very few can escape from the iron grip of that single clutching hand. In Somalia, a related creature known as a xunguruuf (hunguruf) is said to be able to kill with a single touch, melting the flesh off a person’s bones in mere seconds.
One giveaway that you are dealing with a nasnas and not an actual old man in need of help is that the half-djinn cannot speak, even in disguise. Since it only has half of its vocal cords, it can only make a strange, high-pitched keening or hooting noise that is said to be incredibly unsettling to hear. This is not true in every tale of the nasnas however, since there are plenty of stories that absolutely have them carrying on conversations.
Though they are strong and fast, they do only have half a brain so they are easily tricked. One legend says that there was once a group of travelers arriving in a land that was strange to them where there were many nasnas living at that time. Their journey had been long and hard and their supplies were running low. When this band of travelers saw the monstrous nasnas standing in a glade near some trees, they cornered and killed it, butchering and roasting its flesh over a fire they built nearby. It feels super close to cannibalism for me, what with being half human and all, but apparently eating them is not an uncommon thing in these tales. It is even said that their flesh is quite sweet and delicate.
Anyway, the men were chowing down on nasnas meat, which was quite juicy and tender. One of them wondered aloud ‘how did this nasnas get so fat?” From the branches of a tree nearby came the voice of another nasnas who was hiding from the intruders. “He ate a lot of mastic (an evergreen shrub that can be used to make a chewing gum), and that made him fat.” Recognizing the voice of another of the monsters (see, I told you they can speak sometimes), they quickly brought that nasnas down and killed it as well. From a second tree came a second voice. “Well that wasn’t very clever of him. If he’d just stayed quiet and talked to himself in his head instead of out loud to you all, he’d still be alive.” And no, I don’t think the poor critter got the irony.
Having just given himself away like his brethren that he was critiquing, he soon joined him in the afterlife. The hunters then searched the rest of the trees for more of the monstrous beasties since this area was apparently lousy with them, but found no more hiding in the branches. However, from a hole in the ground nearby came a third voice. “Woof, that was too close. Luckily, I’m smart enough to hide in this hole and stay quiet, so they’ll never find me.” Which, of course, is how they found and killed him too. Thus the travelers went from starving to having an abundance of food all thanks to the inability of the nasnas to keep its monologuing internal. So if you’re ever concerned that you’ve got a nasnas hiding in the bushes waiting to jump out and drown you, try asking aloud if there are any nasnas hiding nearby. Chances are that they’ll loudly promise you that there certainly are not.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Instagram as MythsYourTeacherHatedPod, on Tumblr as MythsYourTeacherHated, on Bluesky as MythsPodcast, and on Mastodon as MythsYourTeacherHated. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff.
Next time, it’s off to Greece for one of the most famous hero and monster duos of all time: Perseus and Medusa. You’ll learn that Zeus is into some kinky shit, that you shouldn’t be a creep to women, and that fate has a way of catching up to you. Then, in Gods and Monsters, chariot races can be murder. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.