Tricksters in Arabian Nights
What stood out for me in Arabian Nights was the large amount of tricksters found in the stories. The heroine Scheherazade, the three old men who help the merchant, the fisherman, the physician, and the Sultan could all be considered tricksters. I would consider these characters to be not foolish but rather wise and well spoken. Scheherazade is able to trick her husband, the Sultan, into not killing her and she instead stalls him with elaborate and lengthy stories. The three old men who help the merchant manage to convince the genie to spare the merchants life with what I believed to be made up stories, but I could be wrong. The physician manages to kill the Sultan from the story within a story by tricking him into licking a poisoned book. The fisherman tricks the genie into sparing his life by betting the Genie that he couldn't fit back into his lamp. Finally, the Sultan from the fisherman's story manages to trick the enchantress into believing he was the slave, allowing him to change everything back to normal and to kill her. The other characters generally have a poor experience when meeting these trickster; most of characters that interacted with the tricksters ended up dead or they were dissuaded from their original plan. Also, the other characters generally don't realize what is going on until it is too late for them.
Scheherazade. Web Source: Wikipedia
The latter half of Arabian Nights had a trickster, but it wasn't Aladdin. I considered the magician from Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp to be probably the best trickster from the section. He convinces Aladdin and his mother that he is a long lost uncle, he convinces Aladdin to retrieve the lamp, and he tricks the princess into trading the magic lamp for a useless lamp. However, I found him to be foolish because he gives Aladdin a genie from the start since he gave him a magic ring and also leaves him with the magic lamp. He could have easily overpowered Aladdin after he got him out of the cave.
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