In one of the first stories of Arabian Nights, “The Fisherman and Jinni”, there is an obscure expression in which the Arabic word ʻahd( عهد ) should mean magic as plot of the story necessitates. In Arabic, ʻahd means oath, will, testament and so on, but never means magic. Whereas in the old Persian verse and prose, one can find the Persian word band( بند ) meaning both oath and magic. Therefore, this Arabic expression and possibly the whole story could have an original Pahlavi or Persian version, translated into Arabic, and the Persian band mistranslated intoʻahd -instead of siḥr (magic). Accordingly, the story of “The Fisherman and Jinni” could be one of the originally Persian stories of Arabian Nights, or at least the above mentioned expression may be counted as a rhetoric story-telling technique in the Iranian magic stories that its mistranslation has become prevalent in Arabian narrations once, and finally established in Arabian Nights.
