Orientalia: A Thousand and One Nights in Venice

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In a Venetian version of the Arabian Nights, Saddo Drisdi-the Italianized version of his Turkish name, Sa'dullah Idrisi-the last surviving Turk in the city of Venice, captivates seven children who have fled the Austrians and crept stealthily into the Fondaco dei Turchi, an ancient entrepot now slipping into decay, with tales of princesses and corsairs, sultanas and doges, saints and warriors. The year is 1838 and the city on the lagoon is languishing under Austro-Hungarian domination: very little survives of the one-time splendor of the Serenissima. The old man gathers the children around him to recount countless stories of Venetians and Ottomans, filled with savage battles, passionate love affairs, women abducted, saints’ relics pilfered, and evildoers turned into stone. These are the doings that filled the centuries-old histories between the Serenissima and the Sublime Porte, between Venice and Constantinople, hovering between mythology and history. Orientalia is a seductive account shrouded in legend that reconstructs with scholarly precision the past and the iconography of a Venice now (perhaps) lost.