Referenced By / The Story of Sidi Nouman

"The Story of Sidi Nouman" had made its way into European popular culture as early as Vathek, which features cemetery-dwelling ghouls but does not reference the tale specifically, in 1782. It stayed there until the early decades of the 20th Century and has largely been forgotten since.

What made the story popular are its horror beats, those being Nouman's observation of Amine's peculiar eating habits, his discovery that in addition to beautiful she's also evil, and the particular grotesque quality of corpse-eating. It's these elements that have made their way into other works.

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Comic Books

• 1952 — "Food For Thought!" (Dark Mysteries #10): Phil Stewart marries a white woman named Kadira who was raised by a cannibal tribe in Africa, though he does not know the cannibal part. He discovers that she sneaks out at night regularly and believes her to be two-timing him. When he follows her one night, he learns that she kills and eats people. He still tries to make their marriage work, but Kadira ends up eating herself.
• 1997 — Vampirella: "Leanhaum-Shee": A serial killer gets bewitched by Vampirella and believing her to be a leanhaum-shee goes about psychologically and ritualistically getting rid of her. Part of this includes writing a diary that falsely represents his and Vampirella's relationship as that of Sidi Nouman and Amine. The three story elements of eating only rice grains, going out at night to dine on humans, and turning him into a (figurative) dog are all there. A psychiatrist reading the diary identifies its content as being identical to "The Story of Sidi Nouman".

Literature

• 1818 — Marriage by Susan Edmonstone Ferrier: With a hint of jealousy, Emily berates her cousin Mary for her indecorum regarding Lady Mathilda's misfortune. One bit she throws at her is "I do look upon you as a sort of intellectual goule — you really do remind me of the lady in the Arabian Nights, whose taste or appetite, which you will, led her to scorn every thing that did not savour of the church-yard."
• 1821 — "Vampirismus": The part of the story ranging from Aurelia's refusal of food, to her sneaking out at night to the cemetery, to her corpse meal alongside a group of half-naked old women, to her attack on her husband when he confronts her is almost identical to Amine's dealings in "The Story of Sidi Nouman".
• 1823 — Liber Amoris by William Hazlitt: When the narrator realizes that Sarah Walker does not in the slightest return his feelings, he compares his newfound view of her, without respect and tenderness and pity, to embracing the false Florimel in Secret Love or, The Maiden Queen and Sidi Nouman's discovery that his wife is a ghoul.
• 1824 — The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea by James Fenimore Cooper: Once Long Tom Coffin has consumed the bulk of food and drink offered to him, he continues eating small bits of sirloin that he picks at with his jack-knife. His manner of eating so gets compared to how the "female ghoul of the Arabian Tales" picked up her rice with a bodkin.
• 1825 — "Gemmalie": Gemmalie is a ghoul who takes no pleasure in human entertainment and hardly partakes when its offered to her. When it's up to her, she only leaves whatever dwelling she resides in when the dark of night has set in and continues to do so when married to Charles. He doesn't know because she leaves after she's put him in a supernatural sleep. Her nightly trips only ever are to cemeteries or corpse-covered battlefields left to the ravens, where she dines on the abandoned bodies. When Charles learns what she is, he recalls the horrifying story of Sidi Nouman as he perishes.
• 1827 — "The Brown Man": The Brown Man takes Nora as his wife, but barely provides her with food and eats nothing himself in her presence. It is at night that he gets up, after assuring that she is asleep, to stealth over to the cemetery of Mucruss Abbey and dine on corpse flesh. The Brown Man also is accompanied by a horse and dog, which may or may not have been inspired by "The Story of Sidi Nouman".
• 1827 — Hamel, the Obeah Man by Cynric R. Williams: Roland's poor appetite at breakfast gets compared to how Amina picked rice with a bodkin. It is contrasted by how his company Fillbeer eats with joy comparable to Falstaff and Bardolph.
• 1827 — "Masetto and His Mare" by Thomas Hood: With the help of a tattered volume of Arabian Nights and "The Story of Sidi Nonman" therein, Corvetto convinces Masetto that his mare is actually Corvetto's wife magically changed into a horse to get him to hand her over. Corvetto sells the mare and Masetto later encounters her being beaten by her new owner. He buys her back and defends himself against the townsfolk's mocking of his credulity with the aforementioned volume.
• 1836 — Chairolas, Prince of Paida by Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Henrietta Ponsonby invites Edwin Ferrers to have dinner with her and her family. Ferrers is hesitant because Ponsonby's father is the major so Ponsonby teases him with ridiculous reasons as to why he'd refuse, such as that the food is poisoned or that he is a ghoul.
• 1837 — The Phantom Ship: Amine, a minor sorceress with maternal Arab heritage, resolves to become friends with the undead Schriften to understand his motives and possibly get him to ease up on his vendetta against her husband Philip. She discusses this strategy with him, quippingly proposing that she shall "make love to the ghoul." A little further in the discussion, the subject of Amine's use of magic comes up, which Philip disapproves of. He asks her if he can be sure he is "wedded to one mortal" as himself.
  • 1839 — "The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains": Like the ghoul Amine, the werewolf Christina presents herself as a human woman with a poor appetite. She marries a man whose children she murders in wolf form. Once they're buried, she sneaks out at night to dig up their corpses in wolf form yet dine on their flesh in human form.
• 1838 — "The Wild Swans": In Hans Christian Andersen's version, the princess is not accused of eating her own children, but is thought to be a lamia (original) or ghoul (some translations) because she is observed sneaking out at night to the cemetery where corpse-eating monsters dwell. Andersen's take on the fairy tale may have been inspired by "Vampirismus".
• 1839 — Antoine by Xavier Boniface Saintine: Sophie argues that the blackcurrant seeds are too precious to eat more voraciously than grain by grain. Victor remarks that's awfully like "la Goule des Mille et Une Nuits" and that a mere needle won't do here. In jest, Sophie offers him knitting needles.
• 1845 — The Fortunes of the Scattergood Family by Albert Smith: The Chicksand Family that manages a lodge gets compared to "the ghoul of the Eastern story" in that normally the live miserly, but they throw a feast when a new tenant arrives.
• 1846 — The Debutante, or, The London Season by Catherine Grace Frances: Alicia Barrington secretly breaks her husband's trust by reading a letter from his father addressed to him. It reveals that their family has lost its wealth. Not knowing how to bring this up, she thinks of herself as the "husband of Amina in the Arabian tale" after discovering her to be a ghoul.
• 1847 — Le Whip-Poor-Will, ou, les pionniers de l'Orégon by Amedee Bouis: Bonvouloir compliments Obermann on his efficient table manners, comparing his wielding of the fork to the wielding of an ear-pick by "la Goule des Mille et une Nuits."
• 1847 — Wuthering Heights: When Heathcliff, after having gone out of his mind or having encountered Catherine as an undead, refuses dinner and locks himself up upstairs (never to be observed eating again), Nelly wonders if he is "a ghoul or a vampire," before chiding herself to get such silly notions in her head.
• 1849 — The Pale Lady by Alexandre Dumas: The pale lady reminds the narrator of the female ghoul in the Arabian Nights because, unlike the other guests at the impromptu dinner, she hardly partakes in eating and chatting. No word crosses her lips as she takes only a few crumbs of bread and a single glass of water. She is the last one to tell her story, which reveals that her paleness and poor appetite are because once she was the target of a vampire. Although he's gone now and her health has returned, her pallor is permanent. As an aside, The Pale Lady is one of two English translations of Dumas's Les mille et un fantomes: Une journee a Fontenay-aux-Roses, the other being Horror at Fontenay. The French title is a play on Les mille et une nuits, while the English title The Pale Lady emphasizes the importance of the lady to the final atmosphere of the story.
• 1850 — A Christmas Tree by Charles Dickens: The ghostly narrator uses the christmas tree as a focus point for his imagination. A decoration of a dog reminds him of Nouman's canine transformation and a picture of rice reminds him of the female ghoul Amine, who could only eat rice grain by grain.
• 1850 — The History of Pendennis by William Makepeace Thackeray: Blanche Amory barely eats in public, but out of sight is a glutton. Her behavior gets compared to Amina, "who scarcely ate at dinner more than the six grains of rice," but would consume substantial portions of meat on her own.
• 1853 — Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell: Invited to dinner by Mr. Holbrook, the narrator, Miss Matty, and Miss Pole are served peas, but not cutlery with which to comfortably eat them. Matty solves the situation on her end by using the tips of the fork to skewer the peas one by one, "much as Aminé ate her grains of rice after her previous feast with the Ghoul."
• 1854 — The Newcomes by William Makepeace Thackeray: Colonel Thomas Newcome compares Mrs. Brown waking up at night to secretively unlock a closet downstairs to Amina sneaking away to be with her ghoul associate.
• 1857 — The Fitz-Boodle Papers by William Makepeace Thackeray: George Fitz-Boodle notes that a woman he once loved, Ottilia, drove him to disgust with her gluttony. It's not that he finds women who never eat in public any better, comparing such women to Amine and her unnatural manner of eating rice, but Ottilia took it too far in the other direction.
• 1858 — The Secret of a Life by M. M. Bell: People who meet Terese Stanhope for the first time notice something is off about her. She is small and with her pale skin, black eyes, and dark hair comes across as a walking corpse or spirit by the reckoning of both Kate and Dr. Hunt. All the same, she's also deemed exceptionally pretty, which combined with her poor appetite causes Dr. Hunt to compare Terese to "the lady in the Arabian Nights, who eats her rice with a bodkin." He has to assure Kate that he doesn't think that Terese is literally a ghoul.
• 1861 — The Adventures of Philip by William Makepeace Thackeray: Looking back on his almost-marriage to Agnes Twysden, Philip is relieved he didn't marry her. In explaining why, he claims he'd have been as unhappy in such a marriage as the man who married Amina, "who dined upon grains of rice, but supped upon cold dead body."
• 1863 — "Desert Sands" (The Amber Gods) by Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford: A man he's just met goes on a rant to the protagonist about Mrs. Vivian, comparing her to all manner of monstrosities hiding behind beauty and allure. One such comparison goes "I remembered, when I used to see her, the beautiful Ghoul whom the Arabian prince married unawares."
• 1864 — Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Maud witnesses Madame de la Rougierre illegally looking through her father's papers, but is far more concerned about not being discovered and finding out just what De la Rougierre might do to keep her activities secret. The next morning, Madame de la Rougierre visits Maud in her room when the girl calls in sick and Maud describes the eerieness of fake pleasantries as akin to the dread "with which the deceived husband in the Arabian Nights met his ghoul wife after his nocturnal discovery."
• 1865 — The Vampire by Alexandre Dumas: Ziska, a Moorish ghoul, publically eats in a manner similar to Amine. She consumes only grains of rice and picks them up one by one with two little ivory sticks. "The History of Sidi Nouman" as written by Galland is also mentioned when a number of people gathered at the inn discuss folkloric creatures. The story teller notes that Amine ate with two little ivory sticks too.
• 1866 — Histoires américaines by Édouard Auger: After taking some sea biscuits and finding several infested with bugs, the protagonist crumbles his stash into tiny pieces akin to "the size of the grains of rice that the ghoul from the Thousand and One Nights pricked with her toothpick'' in order not to accidentally eat a bug.
• 1866 — Farnorth by Theo Kennedy: Clara Silvester tries to get Zoé to reveal what supposed scandals her father is up to that causes him to sleep poorly, but Zoé knows nothing. Once alone, in frustration Clara mutters to herself: "What is the ghoul this man rises in the night to feed, as Amina did? Shall I ever trace it?"
• 1868 — "Blue Beard's Cabinet" (Graffiti D'Italia) by William Wetmore Story: Blue Beard gives his two months-fresh wife Fatima the keys to his castle when he's about to be away for some time. With explicit instruction not to open the Cabinet of Death, he does give her a tour of all the cabinets and doors she can open to enjoy their content. One cabinet stores objects from the "vaguer regions of Romance", among which Amina's bodkin. Incidentally, his menagerie of fantastic creatures includes "two vampires and a red-lipped female ghoule."
• 1868 — "The Rag-Man and the Rag-Woman" by Edward Everett Hale: George Haliburton tries to get Anna Davenport to meet with Bertha Traill, but she vehemently refuses. Exasperated, with a touch of sarcasm he counters: "Why in the world not? Bertha is not the ghoul Amine. She does not eat people's hearts with the end of a bodkin."
• 1869 — "Brierley Grange" by Astley H. Baldwin: Mrs. Crutchapple has taken an interest in the Arabian Nights and one night gets to reading "The Tale of Sidi Nouman". It disturbs her and with that her ability to sleep.
• 1871 — "Charley Maiden Aunt" (Harper's Bazaar, March 4): Charley Knapp's aunt Penelope gets compared to the ghoul in the Arabian Nights for never showing herself until after dark.
• 1888 — The Quick or the Dead by Amélie Rives: Barbara's and Dering's flirting leads to a moment where Barbara is compared to the churchyard-dwelling Amina and Dering to a living corpse.
• 1891 — One Life, One Love by Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Daisy would've preferred for her guide not to rush the cemetery part of the tour as she would've liked to properly appreciate its history. Cyril protests thus: "Why should a girl want to prowl about a cemetery, unless she is a ghoul, and is mapping out the place in order to go back there in the night and dig?"
• 1904 — The Castaway by Hallie Erminie Rives: During a meal, William Lamb asks if it is true that George Gordon limits his daily sustenance to barley-water and two soda biscuits. John Hobhouse semi-affirms that Gordon rarely consumes more than dry toast, water-cress, a glass of claret. William Lamb, who appreciates food, disapprovingly declares Gordon "a ghoul eating rice with a needle."
• 1906 — "Amina": Waldo meets a woman named Amina in Persia and comes along with her, only to find that she is a ghoul who would've fed him to her offspring if not for the intervention of the consul and his men.
• 1908 — Rose Campion's Platonic by Adam Lilburn: Reynold Messenger was deeply smitten by a Parisian thought-reader named Beatrix until he witnessed her scarf down a steak. In explaining his disgust to Rose Campion, he compares Beatrix to Amine, insisting that a beautiful woman should need no more nourishment than rose-leaves and bonbons. Rose shoots back that he remembers "The Story of Sidi Nouman" incorrectly because it was Amine's secret voracity that was the problem. In public, she only ate rice grain by grain and that displeased her husband.
• 1909 — Rhymes and Rhythms and Arabian Nights Entertainments by William Ernest Henley: A little boy enthusiastically gets lost in the magic of Arabian Nights and imagines all its stories before him. He spares "The Story of Sidi Nouman" five lines of which the first three are dedicated to the ghoul and the last two are dedicated to Amine.
• 1912 — The Ghoul by Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield: Yasmin at most samples the rations Private Parkins brings her and then goes off by herself into the desert towards the corpse-filled area of a recent battlefield. Parkins is in particular disturbed by how much alike Yasmin's picking at rice reminds him of the eating habits of "Ameeneh, the ghoulbride in The Arabian Nights."
• 1916 — Diagnosing Linda by Anne O'Hagan: The protagonist muses about Linda Blair's remarkably thorough apathy and finds it as uncanny as "the ghoul wife of the Arabian Nights, the kalte Herz of some German legend, [and] the unfortunate touch of Midas."
• 1926 — The Queerness of Celia by Amélie Rives: Celia Gibbs has dinner with Hilary Fraser, but ponderings keep her from eating much. In jest, Hilary notes that she eats "as daintily as Amina with her grains of rice and her bodkin." Celia play-acts offense at being called a ghoul, to which Hilary changes the comparison to "daintily as the enchanted white cat" from "The White Cat".
• 1932 — "The White Glass Deer" by Marion Neville: Home alone, Maida frightens herself by rereading an illustrated version of "The Story of Sidi Nouman". Of all monsters, she is most afraid of ghouls and imagining them to be hiding in the nooks and crannies of her house, she opts to take a walk with her dog.
• 1934 — "The Ghoul": In a narrative structure modelled after "The Story of Sidi Nouman", a human woman by the name Amina dies and is buried. Her husband prevents a ghoul from eating Amina's corpse by delivering the ghoul eight corpses slain by his own hand in return.
• 1945 — "Black Widow" (Curious Relations) by William D'Arfey: When her parents forbid her from marrying Reverend Septimus Hotblack, Emmeline Mountfaucon goes on a hunger strike. Normally a good eater, the most she does during this time is toy with her food, "like Amina with a grain of rice."
• 1947 — Friends and Lovers by Helen MacInnes: David compliments Penny for her good appetite, comparing women that find it important to look good by eating little in public to "the princess in The Thousand and One Nights" who ate only rice grain by grain. Penny doesn't understand the comparison because she's only ever read or heard simplified versions of the core stories, of which "The Story of Sidi Nouman" is not one in the slightest. David explains that the princess ate rice grains by day, drugged her husband's coffee in the evening, and went out eating freshly buried corpses with a ghoul at night. Penny finds being differentiated from a cannibalistic corpse eater an amusing but curious compliment.

Theatre

• 1831 — La Sonnambula by Vincenzo Bellini: All characters have names that have been Italian for some centuries, except for Amina. (The opera popularized the name in Italy.) She is the somnabulist of the title and therefore on many evenings escapes her house to wander, somewhat like Amina from "The Story of Sidi Nouman" stealths out at night.

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