Forget the swashbuckling monster hunter of the movies. In the original text, Sinbad the Sailor is an aging, traumatized Baghdad merchant who squandered his inheritance, went to sea to recover his fortune, and survived seven voyages through luck, cunning, and, in one pitch-black tomb, cold-blooded murder. This deep dive reconstructs his actual biography, from the frame story with the poor porter outside his mansion to his final vow never to travel again.

Along the way we ground the tales in the Abbasid trade boom, the stitched-together dhows of Indian Ocean mariners, and the Baghdad translation movement that imported the Cyclops from Homer. We also examine the real elephant bird behind the roc, the fourth-century origin of the meat-and-diamonds trick, the value of ambergris, and how European translators and the 1958 Ray Harryhausen film sani ...