Tales of the Caliph was written by “Al Arawiyah,” the pseudonym of Horatio Nelson Crellin (1841-1913), a British writer who lived in London. Crellin also wrote Romances of the Old Seraglio (1894), an informal sequel to Tales of the Caliph, and a historical drama, The Nazarenes (1894).

The protagonist of Tales of the Caliph, Haroun al-Raschid (763-809), was a real person: the third ‘Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, a scholar, poet, and cultural hero for Arab Muslims. Crellin’s Haroun is the romanticized version of al-Raschid who is usually the protagonist of Arabian Nights-style stories.

Tales of the Caliph is a set of comic stories about the adventures of Haroun al-Raschid during his reign as Caliph of Baghdad. There are epic fantasies from Muslim cultures, such as The Book of Dede Korkut (9^th century C.E.) but generally they are serious religious tracts. The Arabian Nights is lightened by some humor, but Tales of the Caliph has more, which is a good thing, since it is the lightness and humor which makes the stories so much fun. Crellin is enjoying himself with Caliph and not taking what he is writing too seriously, and the result is an extremely enjoyable set of stories.

was in the habit, as every one knows, of wandering very frequently through the town after nightfall in various disguises to see for himself that justice was done, and also, it may be confessed, by no means loth to encounter such adventures as he might meet with.¹

Haroun is no glory hound. It’s just that being Caliph is so boring. So whenever he gets the chance Haroun leaves his palace disguised as a merchant, accompanied only by his faithful Grand Vizier, Giafer, and occasionally by his bodyguard, Mesrúr. Together they wander about Baghdad or sometimes other cities of Haroun's empire and see what adventures they can find and hear what stories are being told.

What results are a series of stories-within-stories in the Arabian Nights style, so that the plot of a story continually twists and changes: what begins as an investigation into palace theft becomes the kidnapping of the Caliph, which becomes a story of warring kings, which becomes the Caliph escaping from captivity with the help of a brooch which bestows invisibility, which becomes the Caliph trekking through heathen countryside, which becomes the still incognito Haroun being told by two merchants what they think of the Caliph. Which then becomes the life story of one of the merchants, and part of the merchant's story involves someone he meets telling him a story about a marriage gone wrong. And, perhaps, in the middle of that story, the wife will describe her own life story. And then....

There are those who do not enjoy this sort of thing, but they are missing out on some good literary fun.

Some of the stories involve the following: a faithful blind fisherman getting his just deserts, and his evil, selfish brother getting his (“Haroun ordered the Cadi at once to make over formally the whole of his property to his two brothers, the Caliph adding with his usual grim humor, ‘As you are a man of the law, it is fit that you do justice in a legal way.’ And then added, addressing Mesrúr, ‘And now impale him.’”²); an old man selling magic unguents to the Caliph to pay for his granddaughter's living conditions; an evil Emir imprisoning his son and attempting to rape his daughter-in-law; the discovery of the most powerful dealer in stolen goods in Baghdad, and how his elderly son, a beggar, refused to take a single piece of ill-gotten silver from him; a merchant who has earned his name of Murad Essed the Unfortunate Merchant; the Caliph's wife allowing a childhood friend to visit her in her quarters (a crime for which the Caliph nearly beheads both); a man who resembles the Caliph impersonating him, with generally good results for all concerned; and a man who makes the mistake of predicting, for the Caliph, a future which is highly illogical.

Interestingly, some of the stories have science fictional elements. Arabian Nights stories are most often supernatural, with “jinnees” and flying carpets and the like, and Tales of the Caliph is no exception. There is the invisibility brooch, and the ointments the Caliph purchases from the old man allow him to see through walls and to understand the languages of the animals. But there are also two science fictional items in the stories: a vision involving interplanetary travel to a Utopia in which “religion” is unknown because all men are Muslim and so have no need to know it, and a “magic tube” which the bearer uses to see Britain in the nineteenth century. The Caliph objects to this future: “‘What!’ he exclaimed, ‘can your magic tube, when it pretends to show us future times and other nations, invent no more probable and coherent wonders?’”³

Tales of the Caliph is entertaining and well-written. Crellin gets the tone and the pace of Arabian Nights stories just right, and obviously had fun writing the stories, and that sense of fun quickly and easily communicates itself to the readers. Pastiches of Arabian Nights had appeared in English since the middle of the eighteenth century, with an early example being Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (1759), but few of them are as charming as Tales of the Caliph.

¹ H.N. Crellin, Tales of the Caliph (London: Chatto & Windus, 1895), 5.

² Crellin, Tales of the Caliph, 71.

³ Crellin, Tales of the Caliph, 233.