with knowledge of herbs, medicinal plants, and cures. Examples from other cultures are the jengu of Cameroon. Arabian folklore One Thousand and One Nights The One Thousand and One Nights collection includes several tales featuring "sea people", such as "Jullanâr the Sea-born and Her Son King Badr Bâsim of Persia". Unlike depictions of mermaids in other mythologies, these are anatomically identical to land-bound humans, differing only in their ability to breathe and live underwater. They can (and do) interbreed with land humans, and the children of such unions have the ability to live underwater. In the tale "Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman", the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land. The underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. In "The Adventures of Bulukiya", the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, where he encounters societies of mermaids. American folklore The Neo-Taíno nations of the Caribbean identify a mermaid called Aycayia with attributes of the goddess Jagua and the hibiscus flower of the majagua tree Hibiscus tiliaceus. In modern Caribbean culture, there is a mermaid recognized as a Haitian vodou loa called La Sirene (lit. "the mermaid"), representing wealth, beauty and the orisha Yemaya. Iara and Ipupiara In Brazilian folklore, the iara, also known as mãe-d'agua ("lady/mother of the water") is a water-dwelling beauty whom fishermen are prone to fall prey to. "Iara is a beautiful white woman who lives in a river and seduces men as she sings with her hypnotizing and enchanting voice . Once the man is seduced he is drawn into the river to be gone forever". she is reputedly golden-haired, though the blond, blue-eyed image was not attested until after mid-19th century, to the best knowledge of Camara Cascudo. Cascudo in his earlier writing contended that though the Iara was rooted in two indigenous beings, the water-devil Ipupiara (cf. below) and the Cobra-Grande, he also saw the combining of the Portuguese lore of the Enchanted Moura (moorish girl), who was obviously dark-skinned. The Iara became increasingly to be regarded as a woman-fish, after the image of the European sirens/mermaids. It is often argued that the legends of the Iara developed around the 18th century out of the indigenous