Shahrazad’s pharmacy: women’s bodies of knowledge in “The Tale of the Porter and the Three Ladies”

At first glance, a group of flowers purchased in “The Tale of the Porter and the Three Ladies,” a story cycle from the The Thousand and One Nights, seems to function merely as a way to establish the tale’s setting. However, a majority of these flowers appear in pharmacological literature contemporaneous with the Nights, where they are medically indicated to facilitate feasting and sexual activity, address symptoms of melancholy, enhance women’s beauty, and regulate reproduction. All of these indications have specific relevance to the narratives presented in the story cycle. This article suggests that the flowers, read in the context of Islamicate medical theory, popular medical tradition, and literary metaphor, enable a new re-reading of the story cycle and its ending. Rather than objects of a patriarchal system, the women of the story can be read as subjects of a gendered discourse of knowledge through which they affect their world in significant ways.