The tales of Sindbad the sailor are a part of the collection of Indian, Persian, and Arabic folktales known as The Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights. The Sindbad tales originate in the eighth and ninth centuries CE and may have been influenced by Greek tales of Odysseus. In the tales, the old sailor Sindbad tells of his seven voyages to different parts of the world. On the first voyage, Sindbad and his companions land on an island that turns out to be a whale. After the whale is awakened by the fire the travelers build on his back, he dives into the depths. Eventually Sindbad is rescued and finds favor with a king. On the second voyage, Sindbad is marooned on an island, but with the help of a giant bird, he is able to collect many diamonds before returning home. The third voyage involves confrontations with a race of wicked dwarfs and a Cyclops-like giant who reminds us of Homer's Polyphemus. The giant eats several sailors before Sindbad is rescued. During the fourth voyage Sindbad is shipwrecked in a land of cannibals, but he avoids insanity by not eating the food. In the kingdom to which he escapes he is given a wife who soon dies. The custom of the country demands that he be buried with his wife but he manages to escape from the tombs, carrying with him the treasures buried with the dead. A monster, who turns out to be the mythical Old Man of the Sea, captures the shipwrecked Sindbad on the fifth voyage and demands a ride on the sailor's back. Sindbad gets the monster drunk and kills him. Sindbad's ship sinks on the sixth voyage. The survivors are washed up on the island of Sri Lanka, where they find jewels. After his companions die, Sindbad collects the jewels and leaves for a distant land on a raft. He presents the king of that land with the jewels and is given a ship to return to his home, which is Baghdad. The final voyage is the most complex. Sindbad escapes his ship as it is being swallowed by a whale. He manages to get to an island and to build a raft. After floating down a river, he is rescued and taken to a man who gives him his daughter as a wife. When the islanders grow wings, Sindbad hopes to fly home on one of them. The winged men, including the one on which he is flying, however, turn out to be agents of the Devil, and when flying high in the sky Sindbad praises Allah, he is dropped onto a mountain top. He returns to find his wife and then sails with her for home, having been away for twety-seven years.
