Like Ali Baba and Aladdin, Sinbad is a hero from the 1,001 Arabian Nights. Begin by reading at least one of the stories — but why not all of them? There are quite a few choices for books. After we show you a few of those and summarize the story, we’ll share curriculum connections that make reading this story into a complete unit.
The traditional story is “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.” It was translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton in the 19th century, and the classic version is good for older students and skilled readers. Andrew Lang’s translation is, like Burton’s, from the original French, but it’s more recent.
Rashin Kheiriyeh has illustrated a very cute version for younger kids.
Quentin Blake’s version is my personal favorite.
Albert Seligman has put together another version with historical illustrations.
The story begins in Baghdad, Iraq, where a porter named Sinbad finds himself in a lavish palace. Thinking about how hard his life was and how easy the palace’s owner must have it, he began to sing about the inequities of life. John Yeoman’s version gives these words for the song:
There’s some that’s born to pass their days
In having fun in different ways,
They play the lute, and dance and dine,
And sing their songs and drink their wine.
While others hardly rest at all;
Like me, they’re at men’s back and call.
The owner of the mansion calls to him. His name is also Sinbad, but he is Sinbad the Sailor. He wants to tell the porter about the troubles of his life, and how he made his fortune.
There are seven voyages and seven stories, but they all have a similar pattern:
- Sinbad decides to travel and reaches an island.
- He has a surprising and challenging adventure that leaves him in great trouble with few resources. In the first adventure, the island turns out to be a whale. In the next, Sinbad is snapped up by a roc, a giant mythical bird. And so on.
- Sinbad is frightened and discouraged, but his resourcefulness and hard work — plus some luck and the kindness of strangers — always gets him out of the pickle he’s in and he makes his fortune again.
- He finds a way home, distributes alms to the poor from his great fortune, and settles in once again to his life of wealth and ease…until the next time he gets the urge to travel.
Read the stories together or split them up among the students and have each student or group tell the story that they read. Challenge the students to find a pattern in the stories and see if their answer is the same as ours, above.
At last, Sinbad the Sailor turns to Sinbad the Porter and says, “You see all the suffering and hard work I had to go through to gain my wealth.”
The porter acknowledges the hard work and apologizes for being jealous of Sinbad’s good fortune. The porter continues to live comfortably in the palace for the rest of his life.
Once you’ve read one or more of the stories, work on curriculum connections.
English
Storytelling
There are many retellings of these stories, but they are always adventure tales. Sinbad is not a super hero or a fairy tale prince– just a guy who has led an exciting and sometimes magical life. Ask students to think of books or movies showing adventures. Do they enjoy this type of story?
Look back through the stories and find the repeated phrases that show the pattern of the stories. Here are some things we noticed:
- The collection of stories begins with a scenario explaining why Sinbad is telling the stories, and ends with a moral: instead of being jealous of others, work hard to improve your life.
- Sinbad always begins his tales by describing his life before the adventure — in most, a life of wealth and ease.
- He includes lots of details and keeps the story moving with plenty of action.
- Some of the events are realistic, some are exaggerated, and some are fantastic or magical.
- He ends each story with a resolution describing his new wealth and how he shares it.
Challenge kids to write their own adventure story. Will they use the same kind of pattern that Sinbad uses in his?
Once students have written their stories, have them tell the stories aloud instead of reading them.
Social studies
Visit our lessons on Ancient Mesopotamia to find a map of modern Iraq showing Baghdad.
According to Professor David Kuchta, these seven journeys include stops in Salahiya (Timor), Serendib (Sri Lanka), Cape Comorin (India), Sind (Pakistan), the Isle of Bells near Sumatra, and Kela, Malaysia. Other scholars have similar lists. Although of course Sinbad’s adventures are folktales, these locations were real places that merchants and traders from Iraq visited. They are stops along what is sometimes called the Maritime Silk Road, the Spice Routes, or the Incense Route.
Trade routes
The theme of geography that has to do with trade is Movement. Different places have different natural resources that can be used for raw materials. Different cultures also have different technologies for using raw materials. People from one place can acquire goods from another place, learn other culture’s technologies, and carry raw materials home to use for new purposes. These movements of things usually come about through trade.
People can trade within their own neighborhood, swapping their vegetables for someone else’s chickens or teaching someone else a skill in exchange for something they have made. Over years and centuries, many groups of people traveled along well-worn paths to trade hubs in other cities. A place like Damascus, Baghdad, Samarkand, or Xi’an would become a center for merchants and traders to meet and exchange goods. They often also shared ideas and stories.
One of the most ancient trade routes we know of is the Silk Road, an overland route between China in Asia and Greece in Europe. Merchants and traders brought silk, porcelain, spices, and other wonderful things across the desert on the backs of camels. They returned to Asia with Western goods, including silver from the New World with which to buy more Eastern goods.
The Silk Road was — and in fact is — a long, difficult, dangerous journey. Modern estimates figure that it took 70 pack animals to carry as much as one modern commercial truck. The route passed through the Gobi desert, mountains, and miles of lonely land inhabited by thieves and ruffians. Once people in the West learned about the amazing things going on in the East, they began developing alternative routes over water.
Early Mediterraneans got a good start with the routes shown above and in the video below. What they called the Erythraean Sea is now called by different names.
The maps above show the common routes in the 1st century CE. A century later, they had gone further East, developing what is called the Maritime Silk Road, the Incense Route, or the Spice Routes. The red lines on the map below show the routes taken from 200CE through 1500CE.
Have students find the places Sinbad is said to have gone on this map. Not all modern countries are labeled, so you may want to use your classroom world map or globe to identify some of these places. You’ll notice that while there are quite a few bodies of water involved, they center on the Indian Ocean.
- National Geographic has a video about the Indian Ocean.
- The Indian Ocean in World History website has lots of great resources to explore. Don’t miss their maps.
- Twinkl introduces the Indian Ocean for kids.
Once you’re confident about the Indian Ocean’s basic geography, have a look at the interactive Internet Infrastructure Map or the Submarine Cable Map to see how modern global internet cables follow the old East-West routes, including the Maritime Silk Road. Find The Indian Ocean on these maps to center your understanding.
Natural resources
Once you’ve mapped Sinbad’s voyages, revisit the stories to identify the natural resources found on the islands he visits. For example, the second voyage of Sinbad finds him on an island with plenty of natural diamonds. Our state, Arkansas, also has natural diamonds, but the island Sinbad visited in the story might be based on the Golconda region along the Malabar Coast of India.
The other places he visited yielded more gems, spices, coconuts and aloe, and many more valuable natural resources.
Sinbad’s behavior wasn’t always admirable, but in general he gathered goods and traded them, amassing a fortune on every voyage. He also learned and shared technologies. For example, he made a saddle with the help of other craftsmen. He made felt from wool and covered the saddle in leather, as well as designing the wooden saddle frame and metal stirrups. We could also expect that his skills as a storyteller helped him make the influential friends who helped him. Perhaps, like Othello, he was also able to woo his wife with his stories.
For each of the voyages, identify the natural resources Sinbad found that helped him make his fortune. Looking back at the map of the voyages, use reference books or internet search to determine whether the place he is thought to have visited really has or had those resources.
Download our worksheet, Sinbad’s Resources to organize the answers.
