Editing One Thousand and One Nights (section)

==== The self-fulfilling prophecy ====
Several tales in the ''One Thousand and One Nights'' use the [[self-fulfilling prophecy]], as a special form of literary prolepsis, to foreshadow what is going to happen. This literary device dates back to the story of [[Krishna]] in ancient [[Sanskrit literature]], and [[Oedipus]] or the death of [[Heracles]] in the plays of [[Sophocles]]. A variation of this device is the self-fulfilling dream, which can be found in [[Arabic literature]] (or the dreams of [[Joseph (Genesis)|Joseph]] and his conflicts with his brothers, in the [[Book of Genesis|Hebrew Bible]]).

A notable example is "The Ruined Man who Became Rich Again through a Dream", in which a man is told in his dream to leave his native city of [[Baghdad]] and travel to [[Cairo]], where he will discover the whereabouts of some hidden treasure. The man travels there and experiences misfortune, ending up in jail, where he tells his dream to a police officer. The officer mocks the idea of foreboding dreams and tells the protagonist that he himself had a dream about a house with a courtyard and fountain in Baghdad where treasure is buried under the fountain. The man recognizes the place as his own house and, after he is released from jail, he returns home and digs up the treasure. In other words, the foreboding dream not only predicted the future, but the dream was the cause of its prediction coming true. A variant of this story later appears in [[English folklore]] as the "[[Pedlar of Swaffham]]" and [[Paulo Coelho]]'s ''[[The Alchemist (novel)|The Alchemist]]''; [[Jorge Luis Borges]]' collection of short stories ''[[A Universal History of Infamy]]'' featured his translation of this particular story into Spanish, as "The Story of the Two Dreamers".{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=193–194}}

"The Tale of Attaf" depicts another variation of the self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby [[Harun al-Rashid]] consults his library (the [[House of Wisdom]]), reads a random book, "falls to laughing and weeping and dismisses the faithful vizier [[Ja'far ibn Yahya]] from sight. Ja'afar, disturbed and upset, flees Baghdad and plunges into a series of adventures in [[Damascus]], involving Attaf and the woman whom Attaf eventually marries". After returning to Baghdad, Ja'afar reads the same book that caused Harun to laugh and weep, and discovers that it describes his own adventures with Attaf. In other words, it was Harun's reading of the book that provoked the adventures described in the book to take place. This is an early example of [[Retrocausality|reverse causation]].{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=199}}

Near the end of the tale, Attaf is given a death sentence for a crime he did not commit but Harun, knowing the truth from what he has read in the book, prevents this and has Attaf released from prison. In the 12th century, this tale was [[Latin translations of the 12th century|translated into Latin]] by [[Petrus Alphonsi]] and included in his ''[[Disciplina Clericalis]]'',<ref name="Marzolph-109">{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia|last=Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen|first=Hassan Wassouf|publisher=[[ABC-CLIO]]|year=2004|isbn=1-57607-204-5|page=109}}</ref> alongside the "[[Seven Wise Masters|Sindibad]]" story cycle.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=93}} In the 14th century, a version of "The Tale of Attaf" also appears in the ''[[Gesta Romanorum]]'' and [[Giovanni Boccaccio]]'s ''[[The Decameron]]''.<ref name="Marzolph-109" />