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= One_Thousand_and_One_Nights =
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Introduction
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'One Thousand and One Nights' (, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern
folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden
Age. It is often known in English as 'The Arabian Nights', from the
first English-language edition (), which rendered the title as 'The
Arabian Nights' Entertainments'.
The work was collected over many centuries by various authors,
translators, and scholars across West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia,
and North Africa. Some tales trace their roots back to ancient and
medieval Arabic, Persian, and Mesopotamian literature. Most tales,
however, were originally folk stories from the Abbasid and Mamluk
eras, while others, especially the frame story, are probably drawn
from the Pahlavi Persian work (, ), which in turn relied partly on
Indian elements.
Common to all the editions of the 'Nights' is the framing device of
the story of the ruler Shahryar being narrated the tales by his wife
Scheherazade, with one tale told over each night of storytelling. The
stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other
tales, while some are self-contained. Some editions contain only a few
hundred nights of storytelling, while others include 1001 or more. The
bulk of the text is in prose, although verse is occasionally used for
songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems
are single couplets or quatrains, although some are longer.
Some of the stories commonly associated with the 'Arabian
Nights'--particularly "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" and "Ali Baba
and the Forty Thieves"--were not part of the collection in the
original Arabic versions, but were instead added to the collection by
French translator Antoine Galland after he heard them from Syrian
writer Hanna Diyab during the latter's visit to Paris. Other stories,
such as "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor", had an independent
existence before being added to the collection.
Synopsis
======================================================================
The main frame story concerns Shahryār, a king who ruled an empire
that stretched from Persia to India. The story begins with Zaman, the
brother of Shahryār, setting out on a journey to visit his brother at
his palace. Early in the preparations, he remembers that he's left
something inside his own palace, and returns to retrieve it--only to
find that his wife has been making love to a black cook in their own
bed. He kills them both, and continues on his journey, keeping the
event a secret. Then Shahryār finds that his own wife, as well as his
numerous slave girls, have been engaging in secret orgies with black
men. Shahryār has his wife killed. In his bitterness and grief, he
decides that all women are the same. Shahryār begins to marry a
succession of virgins only to execute each one the next morning,
before she has a chance to dishonor him.
Eventually, the Vizier, whose duty it is to provide them, cannot find
any more virgins. Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter, offers herself
as the next bride and her father reluctantly agrees. On the night of
their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, but does
not end it. The king, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced
to postpone her execution in order to hear the conclusion. The next
night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins another one, and
the king, eager to hear the conclusion of that tale as well, postpones
her execution once again. This goes on for one thousand and one
nights, hence the name.
The tales vary widely: they include historical tales, love stories,
tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques, and various forms of erotica.
Numerous stories depict jinn, ghouls, ape people, sorcerers,
magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with
real people and geography, not always rationally. Common protagonists
include the historical Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, his Grand
Vizier, Jafar al-Barmaki, and the famous poet Abu Nuwas, despite the
fact that these figures lived some 200 years after the fall of the
Sassanid Empire, in which the frame tale of Scheherazade is set.
Sometimes a character in Scheherazade's tale will begin telling other
characters a story of their own, and that story may have another one
told within it, resulting in a richly layered narrative texture.
Versions differ, at least in detail, as to final endings (in some
Scheherazade asks for a pardon, in some the king sees their children
and decides not to execute his wife, in some other things happen that
make the king distracted) but they all end with the king giving his
wife a pardon and sparing her life.
The narrator's standards for what constitutes a cliffhanger seem
broader than in modern literature. While in many cases a story is cut
off with the hero in danger of losing their life or another kind of
deep trouble, in some parts of the full text Scheherazade stops her
narration in the middle of an exposition of abstract philosophical
principles or complex points of Islamic philosophy, and in one case
during a detailed description of human anatomy according to Galen--and
in all of these cases she turns out to be justified in her belief that
the king's curiosity about the sequel would buy her another day of
life.
A number of stories within the 'One Thousand and One Nights' also
feature science fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of
Bulukiya", where the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of
immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey to the Garden of
Eden and to Jahannam, and travel across the cosmos to different worlds
much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic
science fiction; along the way, he encounters societies of jinns,
mermaids, talking serpents, talking trees, and other forms of life. In
another 'Arabian Nights' tale, the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman
gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater
submarine society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of
society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of
primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not
exist. Other 'Arabian Nights' tales deal with lost ancient
technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and
catastrophes which overwhelmed them. "The City of Brass" features a
group of travellers on an archaeological expedition across the Sahara
to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel
that Solomon once used to trap a jinn, and, along the way, encounter a
mummified queen, petrified inhabitants, life-like humanoid robots and
automata, seductive marionettes dancing without strings, and a brass
horseman robot who directs the party towards the ancient city. "The
Ebony Horse" features a robot in the form of a flying mechanical horse
controlled using keys that could fly into outer space and towards the
Sun, while the "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the
form of an uncanny boatman. "The City of Brass" and "The Ebony Horse"
can be considered early examples of proto-science fiction.
History, versions and translations
======================================================================
The history of the 'Nights' is extremely complex and modern scholars
have made many attempts to untangle the story of how the collection as
it currently exists came about. Robert Irwin summarises their
findings:
Possible Indian influence
===========================
Devices found in Sanskrit literature such as frame stories and animal
fables are seen by some scholars as lying at the root of the
conception of the 'Nights'. The motif of the wise young woman who
delays and finally removes an impending danger by telling stories has
been traced back to Indian sources. Indian folklore is represented in
the 'Nights' by certain animal stories, which reflect influence from
ancient Sanskrit fables. The influence of the 'Panchatantra' and
'Baital Pachisi' is particularly notable.
It is possible that the influence of the 'Panchatantra' is via a
Sanskrit adaptation called the 'Tantropakhyana'. Only fragments of the
original Sanskrit form of the 'Tantropakhyana' survive, but
translations or adaptations exist in Tamil, Lao, Thai, and Old
Javanese. The frame story follows the broad outline of a concubine
telling stories in order to maintain the interest and favour of a
king--although the basis of the collection of stories is from the
'Panchatantra'--with its original Indian setting.
The 'Panchatantra' and various tales from 'Jatakas' were first
translated into Persian by Borzūya in 570 CE; they were later
translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa in 750 CE. The Arabic version
was translated into several languages, including Syriac, Greek, Hebrew
and Spanish.
Persian prototype: {{transliteration|fa|Hezār Afsān}}
=======================================================
The earliest mentions of the 'Nights' refer to it as an Arabic
translation from a Persian book, (also known as 'Afsaneh' or
'Afsana'), meaning 'The Thousand Stories'. In the tenth century, Ibn
al-Nadim compiled a catalogue of books (the "Fihrist") in Baghdad. He
noted that the Sassanid kings of Iran enjoyed "evening tales and
fables". Al-Nadim then writes about the Persian , explaining the frame
story it employs: a bloodthirsty king kills off a succession of wives
after their wedding night. Eventually one has the intelligence to save
herself by telling him a story every evening, leaving each tale
unfinished until the next night so that the king will delay her
execution.
However, according to al-Nadim, the book contains only 200 stories. He
also writes disparagingly of the collection's literary quality,
observing that "it is truly a coarse book, without warmth in the
telling". In the same century Al-Masudi also refers to the , saying
the Arabic translation is called ('A Thousand Entertaining Tales'),
but is generally known as ('A Thousand Nights'). He mentions the
characters Shirāzd (Scheherazade) and Dināzād.
No physical evidence of the has survived, so its exact relationship
with the existing later Arabic versions remains a mystery. Apart from
the Scheherazade frame story, several other tales have Persian
origins, although it is unclear how they entered the collection. These
stories include the cycle of "King Jali'ad and his Wazir Shimas" and
"The Ten Wazirs or the History of King Azadbakht and his Son" (derived
from the seventh-century Persian ).
In the 1950s, the Iraqi scholar Safa Khulusi suggested (on internal
rather than historical evidence) that the Persian writer Ibn
al-Muqaffa' was responsible for the first Arabic translation of the
frame story and some of the Persian stories later incorporated into
the Nights. This would place genesis of the collection in the eighth
century.
Evolving Arabic versions
==========================
In the mid-20th century, the scholar Nabia Abbott found a document
with a few lines of an Arabic work with the title 'The Book of the
Tale of a Thousand Nights', dating from the ninth century. This is the
earliest known surviving fragment of the 'Nights'. The first reference
to the Arabic version under its full title 'The One Thousand and One
Nights' appears in Cairo in the 12th century. Professor Dwight
Reynolds describes the subsequent transformations of the Arabic
version:
Two main Arabic manuscript traditions of the Nights are known: the
Syrian and the Egyptian. The Syrian tradition is primarily represented
by the earliest extensive manuscript of the 'Nights', the Galland
Manuscript written sometime between AD 1450 and 1593. It and surviving
copies of it are much shorter and include fewer tales than the
Egyptian tradition. It is represented in print by the so-called
'Calcutta I' (1814-1818) and most notably by the 'Leiden edition'
(1984). The Leiden Edition, prepared by Muhsin Mahdi, is the only
critical edition of 1001 Nights to date, believed to be most
stylistically faithful representation of medieval Arabic versions
currently available.
Texts of the Egyptian tradition emerge later and contain many more
tales of much more varied content; a much larger number of originally
independent tales have been incorporated into the collection over the
centuries, most of them after the Galland manuscript was written, and
were being included as late as in the 18th and 19th centuries.
All extant substantial versions of both recensions share a small
common core of tales:
* The Merchant and the Genie
* The Fisherman and the Genie
* The Porter and the Three Ladies
* The Three Apples
* Nur al-Din Ali and Shams al-Din (and Badr al-Din Hasan)
* Nur al-Din Ali and Anis al-Jalis
* Ali Ibn Bakkar and Shams al-Nahar
The texts of the Syrian recension do not contain much beside that
core. It is debated which of the Arabic recensions is more "authentic"
and closer to the original: the Egyptian ones have been modified more
extensively and more recently, and scholars such as Muhsin Mahdi have
suspected that this was caused in part by European demand for a
"complete version"; but it appears that this type of modification has
been common throughout the history of the collection, and independent
tales have always been added to it.
Printed Arabic editions
=========================
The first printed Arabic-language edition of the 'One Thousand and One
Nights' was published in 1775. It contained an Egyptian version of
'The Nights' known as "ZER" (Zotenberg's Egyptian Recension) and 200
tales. No copy of this edition survives, but it was the basis for an
1835 edition by Bulaq, published by the Egyptian government.
The 'Nights' were next printed in Arabic in two volumes in Calcutta by
the British East India Company in 1814-1818. Each volume contained one
hundred tales.
Soon after, the Prussian scholar Christian Maximilian Habicht
collaborated with the Tunisian Mordecai ibn al-Najjar to create an
edition containing 1001 nights both in the original Arabic and in
German translation, initially in a series of eight volumes published
in Breslau in 1825-1838. A further four volumes followed in 1842-1843.
In addition to the Galland manuscript, Habicht and al-Najjar used what
they believed to be a Tunisian manuscript, which was later revealed as
a forgery by al-Najjar.
Both the ZER printing and Habicht and al-Najjar's edition influenced
the next printing, a four-volume edition also from Calcutta (known as
the 'Macnaghten' or 'Calcutta II' edition). This claimed to be based
on an older Egyptian manuscript (which has never been found).
A major recent edition, which reverts to the Syrian recension, is a
critical edition based on the fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Syrian
manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, originally used by Galland.
This edition, known as the Leiden text, was compiled in Arabic by
Muhsin Mahdi (1984-1994). Mahdi argued that this version is the
earliest extant one (a view that is largely accepted today) and that
it reflects most closely a "definitive" coherent text ancestral to all
others that he believed to have existed during the Mamluk period (a
view that remains contentious). Still, even scholars who deny this
version the exclusive status of "the only 'real' Arabian Nights"
recognize it as being the best source on the original 'style' and
linguistic form of the medieval work.
In 1997, a further Arabic edition appeared, containing tales from the
Arabian Nights transcribed from a seventeenth-century manuscript in
the Egyptian dialect of Arabic.
Modern translations
=====================
The first European version (1704-1717) was translated into French by
Antoine Galland from an Arabic text of the Syrian recension and other
sources. This 12-volume work, 'Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes
traduits en français' ('The Thousand and one nights, Arab stories
translated into French'), included stories that were not in the
original Arabic manuscript. "Aladdin's Lamp", and "Ali Baba and the
Forty Thieves" (as well as several other lesser-known tales) appeared
first in Galland's translation and cannot be found in any of the
original manuscripts. He wrote that he heard them from the Christian
Maronite storyteller Hanna Diab during Diab's visit to Paris.
Galland's version of the 'Nights' was immensely popular throughout
Europe, and later versions were issued by Galland's publisher using
Galland's name without his consent.
As scholars were looking for the presumed "complete" and "original"
form of the Nights, they naturally turned to the more voluminous texts
of the Egyptian recension, which soon came to be viewed as the
"standard version". The first translations of this kind, such as that
of Edward Lane (1840, 1859), were bowdlerized. Unabridged and
unexpurgated translations were made, first by John Payne, under the
title 'The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night' (1882, nine
volumes), and then by Sir Richard Francis Burton, entitled 'The Book
of the Thousand Nights and a Night' (1885, ten volumes) - the latter
was, according to some assessments, partially based on the former,
leading to charges of plagiarism.
In view of the sexual imagery in the source texts (which Burton
emphasized even further, especially by adding extensive footnotes and
appendices on Oriental sexual mores) and the strict Victorian laws on
obscene material, both of these translations were printed as private
editions for subscribers only, rather than published in the usual
manner. Burton's original 10 volumes were followed by a further six
(seven in the Baghdad Edition and perhaps others) entitled 'The
Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night', which were
printed between 1886 and 1888. It has, however, been criticized for
its "archaic language and extravagant idiom" and "obsessive focus on
sexuality" (and has even been called an "eccentric ego-trip" and a
"highly personal reworking of the text").
Later versions of the 'Nights' include that of the French doctor J. C.
Mardrus, issued from 1898 to 1904. It was translated into English by
Powys Mathers, and issued in 1923. Like Payne's and Burton's texts, it
is based on the Egyptian recension and retains the erotic material,
indeed expanding on it, but it has been criticized for inaccuracy.
Muhsin Mahdi's 1984 Leiden edition, based on the Galland Manuscript,
was rendered into English by Husain Haddawy (1990). This translation
has been praised as "very readable" and "strongly recommended for
anyone who wishes to taste the authentic flavour of those tales". An
additional second volume of 'Arabian nights' translated by Haddawy,
composed of popular tales 'not' present in the Leiden edition, was
published in 1995. Both volumes were the basis for a single-volume
reprint of selected tales of Haddawy's translations.
A new English translation was published by Penguin Classics in three
volumes in 2008. It is translated by Malcolm C. Lyons and Ursula Lyons
with introduction and annotations by Robert Irwin. This is the first
complete translation of the Macnaghten or Calcutta II edition
(Egyptian recension) since Burton's. It contains, in addition to the
standard text of 1001 Nights, the so-called "orphan stories" of
'Aladdin' and 'Ali Baba' as well as an alternative ending to 'The
seventh journey of Sindbad' from Antoine Galland's original French. As
the translator himself notes in his preface to the three volumes,
"[N]o attempt has been made to superimpose on the translation changes
that would be needed to 'rectify' ... accretions, ... repetitions, non
sequiturs and confusions that mark the present text," and the work is
a "representation of what is primarily oral literature, appealing to
the ear rather than the eye". The Lyons translation includes all the
poetry (in plain prose paraphrase) but does not attempt to reproduce
in English the internal rhyming of some prose sections of the original
Arabic. Moreover, it streamlines somewhat and has cuts. In this sense
it is not, as claimed, a complete translation. This translation was
generally well-received upon release.
A new English language translation was published in December 2021, the
first solely by a female author, Yasmine Seale, which removes earlier
sexist and racist references. The new translation includes all the
tales from Hanna Diyab and additionally includes stories previously
omitted featuring female protagonists, such as tales about Parizade,
Pari Banu, and the horror story Sidi Numan.
Timeline
==========
Scholars have assembled a timeline concerning the publication history
of 'The Nights':
* One of the oldest Arabic manuscript fragments from Syria (a few
handwritten pages) dating to the early ninth century. Discovered by
scholar Nabia Abbott in 1948, it bears the title 'Kitab Hadith Alf
Layla' ("The Book of the Tale of the Thousand Nights") and the first
few lines of the book in which Dinazad asks Shirazad (Scheherazade) to
tell her stories.
* 10th century: mention of 'Hezār Afsān' in Ibn al-Nadim's "Fihrist"
(Catalogue of books) in Baghdad. He attributes a pre-Islamic Sassanid
Persian origin to the collection and refers to the frame story of
Scheherazade telling stories over a thousand nights to save her life.
* 10th century: reference to 'The Thousand Nights', an Arabic
translation of the Persian 'Hezār Afsān' ("Thousand Stories"), in
'Muruj Al-Dhahab' (The Meadows of Gold) by Al-Mas'udi.
* 12th century: a document from Cairo refers to a Jewish bookseller
lending a copy of 'The Thousand and One Nights' (this is the first
appearance of the final form of the title).
* 14th century: existing Syrian manuscript in the Bibliothèque
nationale de France in Paris (contains about 300 tales).
* 1704: Antoine Galland's French translation is the first European
version of 'Nights'. Later volumes were introduced using Galland's
name, though the stories were written by unknown persons at the behest
of the publisher, who wanted to capitalize on the popularity of the
collection.
* c. 1706 - c. 1721: an anonymously translated 12-volume English
version appears in Europe, dubbed the "Grub Street" version. This is
entitled 'Arabian Nights' Entertainments'--the first known use of the
common English title of the work.
* 1768: first Polish translation, 12 volumes. Based, as with many
European versions, on the French translation.
* 1775: Egyptian version of 'Nights' called "ZER" (Hermann Zotenberg's
Egyptian Recension) with 200 tales (no extant edition).
* 1804-1806, 1825: Austrian polyglot and orientalist Joseph von
Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856) translates a subsequently lost manuscript
into French between 1804 and 1806. His French translation, which was
partially abridged and included Galland's "orphan stories", has been
lost, but its translation into German, published in 1825, survives.
* 1814: Calcutta I, the earliest existing Arabic printed version, is
published by the British East India Company. A second volume was
released in 1818. Both had 100 tales each.
* 1811: Jonathan Scott (1754-1829), an Englishman who learned Arabic
and Persian in India, produces an English translation, mostly based on
Galland's French version, supplemented by other sources. Robert Irwin
calls it the "first literary translation into English", in contrast to
earlier translations from French by "Grub Street hacks".
* Early 19th century: Modern Persian translations of the text are
made, variously under the title 'Alf leile va leile', 'Hezār-o yek
šhab' (), or, in distorted Arabic, 'Alf al-leil'. Muhammad Baqir
Khurasani Buzanjirdi (b.1770) finalized his translation in 1814,
patronized by Henry Russell, 2nd Baronet (1783-1852), British Resident
in Hyderabad. Three decades later, Abdul Latif Tasuji completed his
translation. It was later illustrated by Sani ol Molk (1814-1866) for
Mohammad Shah Qajar.
Ulrich Marzolph, 'The Arabian nights in transnational perspective',
2007, , [
https://books.google.com/books?id=tknULXNl21oC&pg=PA230
p. 230].
* 1825-1838: the Breslau/Habicht edition is published in Arabic in
eight volumes. Christian Maximilian Habicht (born in Breslau, Prussia,
1775) collaborated with the Tunisian Mordecai ibn al-Najjar to create
this edition containing 1001 nights. In addition to the Galland
manuscript, they used what they believed to be a Tunisian manuscript,
which was later revealed as a forgery by al-Najjar. Using versions of
'Nights', tales from Al-Najjar, and other stories of unknown origin,
Habicht published his version in Arabic and German.
* 1842-1843: Four additional volumes by Habicht.
* 1835: Bulaq version: these two volumes, printed by the Egyptian
government, are the oldest printed and published version of 'Nights'
in Arabic by a non-European. It is primarily a reprinting of the ZER
text.
* 1839-1842: Calcutta II (4 volumes) is published. It claims to be
based on an older Egyptian manuscript (this has never been found).
This version contains many elements and stories from the Habicht
edition.
* 1838: Torrens version in English.
* 1838-1840: Edward William Lane publishes an English translation.
Notable for Lane's exclusion of content he found immoral and for his
anthropological notes on Arab customs.
* 1882-1884: John Payne publishes an English version translated
entirely from Calcutta II, adding some tales from Calcutta I and
Breslau.
* 1885-1888: Sir Richard Francis Burton publishes an English
translation from several sources (largely the same as Payne). His
version accentuated the sexuality of the stories 'vis-à-vis' Lane's
bowdlerized translation.
* 1889-1904: J. C. Mardrus publishes a French version using Bulaq and
Calcutta II editions.
* 1973: First Polish translation based on the original language
edition, but compressed 12 volumes to 9, by Państwowy Instytut
Wydawniczy.
* 1984: Muhsin Mahdi publishes an Arabic edition based on the oldest
surviving Arabic manuscript (based on the oldest surviving Syrian
manuscript currently held in the Bibliothèque Nationale).
* 1986-1987: French translation by Arabist René R. Khawam.
* 1990: Husain Haddawy publishes an English translation of Mahdi.
* 1991: French translation by Arabists Jamel-Eddine Bencheikh and
André Miquel for the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
* 2008: New Penguin Classics translation (in three volumes) by Malcolm
C. Lyons and Ursula Lyons of the Calcutta II edition
Literary themes and techniques
======================================================================
The 'One Thousand and One Nights' and various tales within it make use
of many innovative literary techniques, which the storytellers of the
tales rely on for increased drama, suspense, or other emotions. Some
of these date back to earlier Persian, Indian and Arabic literature,
while others were original to the 'One Thousand and One Nights'.
Frame story
=============
The 'One Thousand and One Nights' employs an early example of the
frame story, or framing device: the character Scheherazade narrates a
set of tales (most often fairy tales) to the Sultan Shahriyar over
many nights. Many of Scheherazade's tales are themselves frame
stories, such as the 'Tale of Sinbad the Seaman and Sinbad the
Landsman', which is a collection of adventures related by Sinbad the
Seaman to Sinbad the Landsman.
In folkloristics, the frame story is classified as ATU 875B*,
"Storytelling Saves a Wife from Death".
Embedded narrative
====================
Another technique featured in the 'One Thousand and One Nights' is an
early example of the "story within a story", or 'embedded narrative'
technique: this can be traced back to earlier Persian and Indian
storytelling traditions, most notably the 'Panchatantra' of ancient
Sanskrit literature. The 'Nights', however, improved on the
'Panchatantra' in several ways, particularly in the way a story is
introduced. In the 'Panchatantra', stories are introduced as didactic
analogies, with the frame story referring to these stories with
variants of the phrase "If you're not careful, that which happened to
the louse and the flea will happen to you." In the 'Nights', this
didactic framework is the least common way of introducing the story:
instead, a story is most commonly introduced through subtle means,
particularly as an answer to questions raised in a previous tale.
The general story is narrated by an unknown narrator, and in this
narration the stories are told by Scheherazade. In most of
Scheherazade's narrations there are also stories narrated, and even in
some of these, there are some other stories. This is particularly the
case for the "Sinbad the Sailor" story narrated by Scheherazade in the
'One Thousand and One Nights'. Within the "Sinbad the Sailor" story
itself, the protagonist Sinbad the Sailor narrates the stories of his
seven voyages to Sinbad the Porter. The device is also used to great
effect in stories such as "The Three Apples" and "The Seven Viziers".
In yet another tale Scheherazade narrates, "The Fisherman and the
Jinni", the "Tale of the Wazir and the Sage Duban" is narrated within
it, and within that there are three more tales narrated.
Dramatic visualization
========================
Dramatic visualization is "the representing of an object or character
with an abundance of descriptive detail, or the mimetic rendering of
gestures and dialogue in such a way as to make a given scene 'visual'
or imaginatively present to an audience". This technique is used in
several tales of the 'One Thousand and One Nights', such as the tale
of "The Three Apples" (see Crime fiction elements below).
Fate and destiny
==================
A common theme in many 'Arabian Nights' tales is fate and destiny.
Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini observed:
Though invisible, fate may be considered a leading character in the
'One Thousand and One Nights'. The plot devices often used to present
this theme are coincidence, reverse causation, and the self-fulfilling
prophecy (see Foreshadowing section below).
Foreshadowing
===============
Early examples of the foreshadowing technique of repetitive
designation, now known as "Chekhov's gun", occur in the 'One Thousand
and One Nights', which contains "repeated references to some character
or object which appears insignificant when first mentioned but which
reappears later to intrude suddenly in the narrative." A notable
example is in the tale of "The Three Apples" (see Crime fiction
elements below).
Another early foreshadowing technique is 'formal patterning', "the
organization of the events, actions and gestures which constitute a
narrative and give shape to a story; when done well, formal patterning
allows the audience the pleasure of discerning and anticipating the
structure of the plot as it unfolds." This technique is also found in
'One Thousand and One Nights', where it takes the form of a repeating
story-cliffhanger-story-cliffhanger pattern.
The self-fulfilling prophecy
==============================
Several tales in the 'One Thousand and One Nights' use the
self-fulfilling prophecy, as a special form of literary prolepsis, to
foreshadow what is going to happen. This literary device dates back to
the story of Krishna in ancient Sanskrit literature, and Oedipus or
the death of Heracles in the plays of Sophocles. A variation of this
device is the self-fulfilling dream, which can be found in Arabic
literature (or the dreams of Joseph and his conflicts with his
brothers, in the Hebrew Bible).
A notable example is "The Ruined Man who Became Rich Again through a
Dream", in which a man is told in his dream to leave his native city
of Baghdad and travel to Cairo, where he will discover the whereabouts
of some hidden treasure. The man travels there and experiences
misfortune, ending up in jail, where he tells his dream to a police
officer. The officer mocks the idea of foreboding dreams and tells the
protagonist that he himself had a dream about a house with a courtyard
and fountain in Baghdad where treasure is buried under the fountain.
The man recognizes the place as his own house and, after he is
released from jail, he returns home and digs up the treasure. In other
words, the foreboding dream not only predicted the future, but the
dream was the cause of its prediction coming true. A variant of this
story later appears in English folklore as the "Pedlar of Swaffham"
and Paulo Coelho's 'The Alchemist'; Jorge Luis Borges' collection of
short stories 'A Universal History of Infamy' featured his translation
of this particular story into Spanish, as "The Story of the Two
Dreamers".
"The Tale of Attaf" depicts another variation of the self-fulfilling
prophecy, whereby Harun al-Rashid consults his library (the House of
Wisdom), reads a random book, "falls to laughing and weeping and
dismisses the faithful vizier Ja'far ibn Yahya from sight. Ja'afar,
disturbed and upset, flees Baghdad and plunges into a series of
adventures in Damascus, involving Attaf and the woman whom Attaf
eventually marries". After returning to Baghdad, Ja'afar reads the
same book that caused Harun to laugh and weep, and discovers that it
describes his own adventures with Attaf. In other words, it was
Harun's reading of the book that provoked the adventures described in
the book to take place. This is an early example of reverse causation.
Near the end of the tale, Attaf is given a death sentence for a crime
he did not commit but Harun, knowing the truth from what he has read
in the book, prevents this and has Attaf released from prison. In the
12th century, this tale was translated into Latin by Petrus Alphonsi
and included in his 'Disciplina Clericalis', alongside the "Sindibad"
story cycle. In the 14th century, a version of "The Tale of Attaf"
also appears in the 'Gesta Romanorum' and Giovanni Boccaccio's 'The
Decameron'.
Repetition
============
'Leitwortstil' is "the purposeful repetition of words" in a given
literary piece that "usually expresses a motif or theme important to
the given story." This device occurs in the 'One Thousand and One
Nights', which binds several tales in a story cycle. The storytellers
of the tales relied on this technique "to shape the constituent
members of their story cycles into a coherent whole".
Another technique used in the 'One Thousand and One Nights' is
thematic patterning, which is: [T]he distribution of recurrent
thematic concepts and moralistic motifs among the various incidents
and frames of a story. In a skillfully crafted tale, thematic
patterning may be arranged so as to emphasize the unifying argument or
salient idea which disparate events and disparate frames have in
common. Several different variants of the "Cinderella" story, which
has its origins in the ancient Greek story of Rhodopis, appear in the
'One Thousand and One Nights', including "The Second Shaykh's Story",
"The Eldest Lady's Tale" and "Abdallah ibn Fadil and His Brothers",
all dealing with the theme of a younger sibling harassed by two
jealous elders. In some of these, the siblings are female, while in
others they are male. One of the tales, "Judar and His Brethren",
departs from the happy endings of previous variants and reworks the
plot to give it a tragic ending instead, with the younger brother
being poisoned by his elder brothers.
Sexual humour
===============
The 'Nights' contain many examples of sexual humour. Some of this
borders on satire, as in the tale called "Ali with the Large Member"
which pokes fun at the obsession with male genital.
Unreliable narrator
=====================
The literary device of the unreliable narrator was used in several
fictional medieval Arabic tales of the 'One Thousand and One Nights'.
In one tale, "The Seven Viziers" (also known as "Craft and Malice of
Women or The Tale of the King, His Son, His Concubine and the Seven
Wazirs"), a courtesan accuses a king's son of having abused her, when
in reality she had failed to rape him (inspired by the
Qur'anic/Biblical story of Yusuf/Joseph). Seven viziers attempt to
save his life by narrating seven stories to prove the unreliability of
women, and the courtesan responds by narrating a story to prove the
unreliability of viziers. The unreliable narrator device is also used
to generate suspense in "The Three Apples" and humor in "The
Hunchback's Tale" (see Crime fiction elements below).
Crime fiction
===============
An example of the murder mystery and suspense thriller genres in the
collection, with multiple plot twists and detective fiction elements
was "The Three Apples", also known as 'Hikayat al-sabiyya 'l-maqtula'
('The Tale of the Murdered Young Woman').
In this tale, Harun al-Rashid comes to possess a chest, which, when
opened, contains the body of a young woman. Harun gives his vizier,
Ja'far, three days to find the culprit or be executed. At the end of
three days, when Ja'far is about to be executed for his failure, two
men come forward, both claiming to be the murderer. As they tell their
story it transpires that, although the younger of them, the woman's
husband, was responsible for her death, some of the blame attaches to
a slave, who had taken one of the apples mentioned in the title and
caused the woman's murder.
Harun then gives Ja'far three more days to find the guilty slave. When
he yet again fails to find the culprit, and bids his family goodbye
before his execution, he discovers by chance his daughter has the
apple, which she obtained from Ja'far's own slave, Rayhan. Thus the
mystery is solved.
Another 'Nights' tale with crime fiction elements was "The Hunchback's
Tale" story cycle which, unlike "The Three Apples", was more of a
suspenseful comedy and courtroom drama rather than a murder mystery or
detective fiction. The story is set in a fictional China and begins
with a hunchback, the emperor's favourite comedian, being invited to
dinner by a tailor couple. The hunchback accidentally chokes on his
food from laughing too hard and the couple, fearful that the emperor
will be furious, take his body to a Jewish doctor's clinic and leave
him there. This leads to the next tale in the cycle, the "Tale of the
Jewish Doctor", where the doctor accidentally trips over the
hunchback's body, falls down the stairs with him, and finds him dead,
leading him to believe that the fall had killed him. The doctor then
dumps his body down a chimney, and this leads to yet another tale in
the cycle, which continues with twelve tales in total, leading to all
the people involved in this incident finding themselves in a
courtroom, all making different claims over how the hunchback had
died. Crime fiction elements are also present near the end of "The
Tale of Attaf" (see Foreshadowing above).
Horror fiction
================
Haunting is used as a plot device in gothic fiction and horror
fiction, as well as modern paranormal fiction. Legends about haunted
houses have long appeared in literature. In particular, the 'Arabian
Nights' tale of "Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad"
revolves around a house haunted by jinn. The 'Nights' is almost
certainly the earliest surviving literature that mentions ghouls, and
many of the stories in that collection involve or reference ghouls. A
prime example is the story 'The History of Gherib and His Brother
Agib' (from 'Nights' vol. 6), in which Gherib, an outcast prince,
fights off a family of ravenous Ghouls and then enslaves them and
converts them to Islam.
Horror fiction elements are also found in "The City of Brass" tale,
which revolves around a ghost town.
The horrific nature of Scheherazade's situation is magnified in
Stephen King's 'Misery', in which the protagonist is forced to write a
novel to keep his captor from torturing and killing him. The influence
of the 'Nights' on modern horror fiction is certainly discernible in
the work of H. P. Lovecraft. As a child, he was fascinated by the
adventures recounted in the book, and he attributes some of his
creations to his love of the '1001 Nights'.
Fantasy and science fiction
=============================
Several stories within the 'One Thousand and One Nights' feature early
science fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya",
in which the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality
leads him to explore the seas, journey to Paradise and to Hell, and
travel across the cosmos to different worlds much larger than his own
world, anticipating elements of galactic science fiction; along the
way, he encounters societies of jinn, mermaids, talking serpents,
talking trees, and other forms of life. In "Abu al-Husn and His
Slave-Girl Tawaddud", the heroine Tawaddud gives an impromptu lecture
on the mansions of the Moon, and the benevolent and sinister aspects
of the planets.
In another '1001 Nights' 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, in that the
underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where
concepts like money and clothing do not exist. Other 'Arabian Nights'
tales also depict Amazon societies dominated by women, lost ancient
technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and
catastrophes which overwhelmed them.
"The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on an
archaeological expedition across the Sahara to find an ancient lost
city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that Solomon once used to
trap a jinni, and, along the way, encounter a mummified queen,
petrified inhabitants, lifelike humanoid robots and automata,
marionettes dancing without strings, and a brass horseman robot who
directs the party towards the ancient city, which has now become a
ghost town. The "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the
form of an uncanny boatman.
Poetry
========
There is an abundance of Arabic poetry in 'One Thousand and One
Nights'. It is often deployed by stories' narrators to provide
detailed descriptions, usually of the beauty of characters. Characters
also occasionally quote or speak in verse in certain settings. The
uses include but are not limited to:
* Giving advice, warning, and solutions.
* Praising God, royalties and those in power.
* Pleading for mercy and forgiveness.
* Lamenting wrong decisions or bad luck.
* Providing riddles, laying questions, challenges.
* Criticizing elements of life, wondering.
* Expressing feelings to others or one's self: happiness, sadness,
anxiety, surprise, anger.
In a typical example, expressing feelings of happiness to oneself from
Night 203, Prince Qamar Al-Zaman, standing outside the castle, wants
to inform Queen Bodour of his arrival. He wraps his ring in a paper
and hands it to the servant who delivers it to the Queen. When she
opens it and sees the ring, joy conquers her, and out of happiness she
chants this poem:
In world culture
======================================================================
The influence of the versions of 'The Nights' on world literature is
immense. Writers as diverse as Henry Fielding to Naguib Mahfouz have
alluded to the collection by name in their own works. Other writers
who have been influenced by the 'Nights' include John Barth, Jorge
Luis Borges, A. S. Byatt, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, Constantine P.
Cavafy, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave
Flaubert, Elizabeth Gaskell, Arthur de Gobineau, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Victor Hugo, H. P. Lovecraft, Gérard
de Nerval, Charles Nodier, Orhan Pamuk, Georges Perec, Marcel Proust,
Alexander Pushkin, Salman Rushdie, Marcel Schwob, Walter Scott,
Stendhal, William Makepeace Thackeray, Leo Tolstoy, H. G. Wells, and
W. B. Yeats.
Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural
icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba. Part
of its popularity may have sprung from improved standards of
historical and geographical knowledge. The marvelous beings and events
typical of fairy tales seem less incredible if they are set further
"long ago" or farther "far away"; this process culminates in the
fantasy world having little connection, if any, to actual times and
places. Several elements from Arabian mythology are now common in
modern fantasy, such as genies, bahamuts, magic carpets, magic lamps,
etc. When L. Frank Baum proposed writing a modern fairy tale that
banished stereotypical elements, he included the genie as well as the
dwarf and the fairy as stereotypes to go.
In 1982, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) began naming
features on Saturn's moon Enceladus after characters and places in
Burton's translation because "its surface is so strange and mysterious
that it was given the 'Arabian Nights' as a name bank, linking fantasy
landscape with a literary fantasy."
In Arab culture
=================
There is little evidence that the 'Nights' was particularly treasured
in the Arab world. It is rarely mentioned in lists of popular
literature and few pre-18th-century manuscripts of the collection
exist. Fiction had a low cultural status among Medieval Arabs compared
with poetry, and the tales were dismissed as 'khurafa' (improbable
fantasies fit only for entertaining women and children). According to
Robert Irwin, "Even today, with the exception of certain writers and
academics, the 'Nights' is regarded with disdain in the Arabic world.
Its stories are regularly denounced as vulgar, improbable, childish
and, above all, badly written".
Nevertheless, the 'Nights' have proved an inspiration to some modern
Egyptian writers, such as Tawfiq al-Hakim (author of the Symbolist
play 'Shahrazad', 1934), Taha Hussein ('Scheherazade's Dreams', 1943)
and Naguib Mahfouz ('Arabian Nights and Days', 1979). Idries Shah
finds the Abjad numerical equivalent of the Arabic title, 'alf layla
wa layla', in the Arabic phrase 'ʾumm al-qiṣṣa', meaning 'mother of
stories'. He goes on to state that many of the stories "are encoded
Sufi teaching stories, descriptions of psychological processes, or
enciphered lore of one kind or another".
On a more popular level, film and TV adaptations based on stories like
Sinbad and Aladdin enjoyed long lasting popularity in Arabic speaking
countries.
Early European literature
===========================
Although the first known translation into a European language appeared
in 1704, it is possible that the 'Nights' began exerting its influence
on Western culture much earlier. Christian writers in Medieval Spain
translated many works from Arabic, mainly philosophy and mathematics,
but also Arab fiction, as is evidenced by Juan Manuel's story
collection 'El Conde Lucanor' and Ramón Llull's 'The Book of Beasts'.
Knowledge of the work, direct or indirect, apparently spread beyond
Spain. Themes and motifs with parallels in the 'Nights' are found in
Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales' (in 'The Squire's Tale' the hero
travels on a flying brass horse) and Boccaccio's 'Decameron'. Echoes
in Giovanni Sercambi's 'Novelle' and Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso'
suggest that the story of Shahriyar and Shahzaman was also known.
Evidence also appears to show that the stories had spread to the
Balkans and a translation of the 'Nights' into Romanian existed by the
17th century, itself based on a Greek version of the collection.
Galland translations (1700s)
==============================
The modern fame of the 'Nights' derives from the first known European
translation by Antoine Galland, which appeared in 1704. According to
Robert Irwin, Galland "played so large a part in discovering the
tales, in popularizing them in Europe and in shaping what would come
to be regarded as the canonical collection that, at some risk of
hyperbole and paradox, he has been called the real author of the
'Nights'".
The immediate success of Galland's version with the French public may
have been because it coincided with the vogue for 'contes de fées'
('fairy stories'). This fashion began with the publication of Madame
d'Aulnoy's 'Histoire d'Hypolite' in 1690. D'Aulnoy's book has a
remarkably similar structure to the 'Nights', with the tales told by a
female narrator. The success of the 'Nights' spread across Europe and
by the end of the century there were translations of Galland into
English, German, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Russian, Flemish and Yiddish.
Galland's version provoked a spate of pseudo-Oriental imitations. At
the same time, some French writers began to parody the style and
concoct far-fetched stories in superficially Oriental settings. These
tongue-in-cheek pastiches include Anthony Hamilton's 'Les quatre
Facardins' (1730), Crébillon's 'Le sopha' (1742) and Diderot's 'Les
bijoux indiscrets' (1748). They often contained veiled allusions to
contemporary French society. The most famous example is Voltaire's
'Zadig' (1748), an attack on religious bigotry set against a vague
pre-Islamic Middle Eastern background. The English versions of the
"Oriental Tale" generally contained a heavy moralising element, with
the notable exception of William Beckford's fantasy 'Vathek' (1786),
which had a decisive influence on the development of the Gothic novel.
The Polish nobleman Jan Potocki's novel 'Saragossa Manuscript' (begun
1797) owes a deep debt to the 'Nights' with its Oriental flavour and
labyrinthine series of embedded tales.
The work was included on a price-list of books on theology, history,
and cartography, which was sent by the Scottish bookseller Andrew
Millar (then an apprentice) to a Presbyterian minister. This is
illustrative of the title's widespread popularity and availability in
the 1720s.
19th century–20th century
===========================
The 'Nights' continued to be a favourite book of many British authors
of the Romantic and Victorian eras. According to A. S. Byatt, "In
British Romantic poetry the Arabian Nights stood for the wonderful
against the mundane, the imaginative against the prosaically and
reductively rational." In their autobiographical writings, both
Coleridge and de Quincey refer to nightmares the book had caused them
when young. Wordsworth and Tennyson also wrote about their childhood
reading of the tales in their poetry. Charles Dickens was another
enthusiast and the atmosphere of the 'Nights' pervades the opening of
his last novel 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' (1870).
Several writers have attempted to add a thousand and second tale,
including Théophile Gautier ('La mille deuxième nuit', 1842) and
Joseph Roth ('Die Geschichte von der 1002 Nacht', 1939). Edgar Allan
Poe wrote "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade" (1845), a
short story depicting the eighth and final voyage of Sinbad the
Sailor, along with the various mysteries Sinbad and his crew
encounter; the anomalies are then described as footnotes to the story.
While the king is uncertain--except in the case of the elephants
carrying the world on the back of the turtle--that these mysteries are
real, they are actual modern events that occurred in various places
during, or before, Poe's lifetime. The story ends with the king in
such disgust at the tale Scheherazade has just woven, that he has her
executed the very next day.
Another important literary figure, the Irish poet W. B. Yeats was also
fascinated by the Arabian Nights, when he wrote in his prose book, 'A
Vision' an autobiographical poem, titled The Gift of Harun Al-Rashid,
in relation to his joint experiments with his wife Georgie Hyde-Lees,
with automatic writing, a technique used by many occultists in order
to discern messages from the subconscious mind or from other spiritual
beings, when the hand moves a pencil or a pen, writing only on a
simple sheet of paper and when the person's eyes are shut. Also, the
gifted and talented wife, is playing in Yeats's poem as "a gift"
herself, given only allegedly by the caliph to the Christian and
Byzantine philosopher Qusta Ibn Luqa, who acts in the poem as a
personification of W. B. Yeats. In July 1934 he was asked by Louis
Lambert, while in a tour in the United States, which six books
satisfied him most. The list that he gave placed the Arabian Nights,
secondary only to William Shakespeare's works.
Modern authors influenced by the 'Nights' include James Joyce, Marcel
Proust, Jorge Luis Borges, John Barth and Ted Chiang.
Film, radio and television
============================
Stories from the 'One Thousand and One Nights' have been popular
subjects for films, beginning with Georges Méliès' 'Le Palais des
Mille et une nuits' (1905).
The critic Robert Irwin singles out the two versions of 'The Thief of
Baghdad' (1924 version directed by Raoul Walsh; 1940 version produced
by Alexander Korda) and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Il fiore delle Mille e
una notte' (1974) as ranking "high among the masterpieces of world
cinema." Michael James Lundell calls 'Il fiore' "the most faithful
adaptation, in its emphasis on sexuality, of 'The 1001 Nights' in its
oldest form".
'Alif Laila' (; 1933) was a Hindi-language fantasy film based on 'One
Thousand and One Nights' from the early era of Indian cinema, directed
by Balwant Bhatt and Shanti Dave. K. Amarnath made, 'Alif Laila'
(1953), another Indian fantasy film in Hindi based on the folktale of
Aladdin. Niren Lahiri's 'Arabian Nights', an adventure-fantasy film
adaptation of the stories, released in 1946. A number of Indian films
based on the 'Nights' and 'The Thief of Baghdad' were produced over
the years, including 'Baghdad Ka Chor' (1946), 'Baghdad Thirudan'
(1960), and 'Baghdad Gaja Donga' (1968). A television series, 'Thief
of Baghdad', was also made in India which aired on Zee TV between 2000
and 2001.
UPA, an American animation studio, produced an animated feature
version of '1001 Arabian Nights' (1959), featuring the cartoon
character Mr. Magoo.
The 1949 animated film 'The Singing Princess', another movie produced
in Italy, is inspired by The Arabian Nights. The animated feature
film, 'One Thousand and One Arabian Nights' (1969), produced in Japan
and directed by Osamu Tezuka and Eichii Yamamoto, featured psychedelic
imagery and sounds, and erotic material intended for adults.
'Alif Laila' ('The Arabian Nights'), a 1993-1997 Indian TV series
based on the stories from 'One Thousand and One Nights' produced by
Sagar Entertainment Ltd, aired on DD National starts with Scheherazade
telling her stories to Shahryār, and contains both the well-known and
the lesser-known stories from 'One Thousand and One Nights'. Another
Indian television series, 'Alif Laila', based on various stories from
the collection aired on Dangal TV in 2020.
'Alf Leila Wa Leila', Egyptian television adaptations of the stories
was broadcast between the 1980s and early 1990s, with each series
featuring a cast of big name Egyptian performers such as Hussein
Fahmy, Raghda, Laila Elwi, Yousuf Shaaban, Nelly, Sherihan and Yehia
El-Fakharany. Each series premiered on every yearly month of Ramadan
between the 1980s and 1990s.
One of the best known Arabian Nights-based films is the 1992 Walt
Disney animated movie 'Aladdin', which is loosely based on the story
of the same name.
'Arabian Nights' (2000), a two-part television mini-series adopted for
BBC and ABC studios, starring Mili Avital, Dougray Scott, and John
Leguizamo, and directed by Steve Barron, is based on the translation
by Sir Richard Francis Burton.
Shabnam Rezaei and Aly Jetha created, and the Vancouver-based Big Bad
Boo Studios produced '1001 Nights' (2011), an animated television
series for children, which launched on Teletoon and airs in 80
countries around the world, including Discovery Kids Asia.
'Arabian Nights' (2015, in Portuguese: 'As Mil e uma Noites'), a
three-part film directed by Miguel Gomes, is based on 'One Thousand
and One Nights'.
'Alf Leila Wa Leila', a popular Egyptian radio adaptation was
broadcast on Egyptian radio stations for 26 years. Directed by famed
radio director Mohamed Mahmoud Shabaan also known by his nickname
'Baba Sharoon', the series featured a cast of respected Egyptian
actors, among them Zouzou Nabil as Scheherazade and Abdelrahim El
Zarakany as Shahryar.
'Aladdin' (2019) is a musical fantasy film directed by Guy Ritchie
from a screenplay he co-wrote with John August. Co-produced by Walt
Disney Pictures and Rideback, it is a live-action remake of Disney's
1992 animated feature film of the same title.
'Aladdin 3477: The Jinn of Wisdom' (2025) is the first in a trilogy of
live-action sci-fi films written and directed by 'Star Wars' artist
Matt Busch. The films take place 1,500 years in the future, yet stay
closer to the original Arabian Nights tale than the Disney versions,
including taking place in Asia.
Music
=======
The 'Nights' has inspired many pieces of music, including:
Classical
* François-Adrien Boieldieu: 'Le calife de Bagdad' (1800)
* Carl Maria von Weber: 'Abu Hassan' (1811)
* Luigi Cherubini: 'Ali Baba' (1833)
* Robert Schumann: 'Scheherazade' (1848)
* Peter Cornelius: 'Der Barbier von Bagdad' (1858)
* Ernest Reyer: 'La statue' (1861)
* C. F. E. Horneman: 'Aladdin' (overture), (1864)
* Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: 'Scheherazade' Op. 35 (1888)
* Johann Strauss II: 'Indigo und die vierzig Räuber' (1871)
* Johann Strauss II: 'Tausend und eine Nacht' (1871)
* Tigran Chukhajian: 'Zemire' (1891)
* Maurice Ravel: 'Shéhérazade' (1898)
* Ferrucio Busoni: Piano Concerto in C major (1904)
* Henri Rabaud: 'Mârouf, savetier du Caire' (1914)
* Carl Nielsen: 'Aladdin' suite (1918-1919)
* Collegium musicum: 'Suita po tisic a jednej noci' (1969)
* Fikret Amirov: 'Arabian Nights' (ballet, 1979)
* Ezequiel Viñao: 'La noche de las noches' (1990)
* Carl Davis: 'Aladdin' (ballet, 1999)
Pop, rock, and metal
* Umm Kulthum: "Alf leila wa leila" (1969)
* Renaissance: 'Scheherazade and Other Stories' (1975)
* Doce: "Ali-Bábá, um homem das Arábias" (1981)
* Icehouse: "No Promises" (from the album 'Measure for Measure')
(1986)
* Kamelot: "Nights of Arabia" (from the album 'The Fourth Legacy')
(1999)
* Sarah Brightman: "Harem" and "Arabian Nights" (from the album
'Harem') (2003)
* Ch!pz: "1001 Arabian Nights (song)" (from the album 'The World of
Ch!pz') (2006)
* Nightwish: "Sahara" (2007)
* Rock On!!: "Sinbad the Sailor" (2008)
* Abney Park: "Scheherazade" (2013)
Musical theatre
* "A Thousand and One Nights" (from 'Twisted: The Untold Story of a
Royal Vizier') (2013)
* 'Ghost Quartet' (2014)
Games
=======
Popular modern games with an 'Arabian Nights' theme include the
'Prince of Persia' series, 'Crash Bandicoot: Warped,' 'Sonic and the
Secret Rings', 'Disney's Aladdin', 'Bookworm Adventures', and the
pinball table 'Tales of the Arabian Nights.' Additionally, the popular
card game 'Magic: The Gathering' released an expansion set titled
'Arabian Nights'.
The Demoman in 'Team Fortress 2' has a set titled One Thousand and One
Demoknights, including three weapons and one cosmetic item.
'Sultan’s Game', developed by Double Cross and released for Steam on
March 30, 2025, is “a card-based simulation and narrative game,
inspired by 'The One Thousand and One Nights',” in which players are
commanded by the Sultan “to play a cruel game. Each week you draw a
card, and have to complete its challenge within seven days. Forced to
make dreadful choices to beat the Sultan’s Game and save your own
life, you will have to find a way to survive not just the Game, but
its consequences too.” In addition to the challenges imposed by the
Sultan, the game includes a variety of narrative events that explore
themes such as survival, betrayal, ambition, lust, and poetic
justice.Just over three months after its release, the game surpassed
one million copies sold.
Illustrators
==============
Many artists have illustrated the 'Arabian nights', including:
Pierre-Clément Marillier for 'Le Cabinet des Fées' (1785-1789),
Gustave Doré, Léon Carré (Granville, 1878 - Alger, 1942), Roger
Blachon, Françoise Boudignon, André Dahan, Amato Soro, Albert Robida,
Alcide Théophile Robaudi and Marcelino Truong; Vittorio Zecchin
(Murano, 1878 - Murano, 1947) and Emanuele Luzzati; The German Morgan;
Mohammed Racim (Algiers, 1896 - Algiers 1975), Sani ol-Molk
(1849-1856), Anton Pieck and Emre Orhun, Virginia Frances Sterrett
(1928).
Famous illustrators for British editions include: Arthur Boyd
Houghton, John Tenniel, John Everett Millais and George John Pinwell
for Dalziel's Illustrated Arabian Nights Entertainments, published in
1865; Walter Crane for Aladdin's Picture Book (1876); Frank Brangwyn
for the 1896 edition of Lane's translation; Albert Letchford for the
1897 edition of Burton's translation; Edmund Dulac for Stories from
the Arabian Nights (1907), Princess Badoura (1913) and Sindbad the
Sailor & Other Tales from the Arabian Nights (1914). Others
artists include John D. Batten, (Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights,
1893), Kay Nielsen, Eric Fraser, Errol le Cain, Maxfield Parrish, W.
Heath Robinson and Arthur Szyk (1954).
Comic books
=============
* 'Classics Illustrated' #8 (1947) - abridged version of 'One Thousand
and One Nights' in comic book form.
* Carl Barks, the creator of Scrooge McDuck, wrote two substantial
adventure stories based on the 'Nights'.
* "Desert Shadows", 'Wet Dreams' (Heavy Metal, 2000), by Alfonso
Azpiri.
* "Ramadan", 'The Sandman' #50 (DC Vertigo, June 1993), by Neil Gaiman
(story) and P. Craig Russell (art).
* 'One Thousand and One Nights' by Jeon Jin Seok (story) and Han
Seughee (art) - a manhwa rewriting of the 'Nights' for female Korean
teenagers.
* 'Les 1001 nuits de Scheherazade'. Paris: Albin Michel, 2001, by Eric
Maltaite.
* '"2001 Nights"' - 1984 science-fiction manga by Yukinobu Hoshino
about humanities' venture into deep space. Similar to the 'Nights', it
consists of several loosely connected short stories.
Gallery
======================================================================
File:Sultan from arabian nights.jpg|The Sultan
File:One Thousand and One Nights19.jpg|'One Thousand and One Nights'
book
File:Harun Al-Rashid and the World of the Thousand and One
Nights.jpg|Harun ar-Rashid, a leading character of the 1001 Nights
File:Sinbad the Sailor (5th Voyage).jpg|The fifth voyage of Sindbad
File:Harvey W, 1001 nights (12).jpg|William Harvey, 'The Fifth Voyage
of Es-Sindbad of the Sea', 1838-40, woodcut
File:Harvey W, 1001 nights (19).jpg|William Harvey, 'The Story of the
City of Brass', 1838-40, woodcut
File:Harvey W, 1001 nights (11).jpg|William Harvey, 'The Story of the
Two Princes El-Amjad and El-As'ad', 1838-40, woodcut
File:Harvey W, 1001 nights (14).jpg|William Harvey, 'The Story of Abd
Allah of the Land and Abd Allah of the Sea'
File:Harvey W, 1001 nights (3).jpg|William Harvey, 'The Story of the
Fisherman', 1838-40, woodcut
File:Gross F, 9. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 1, 1838.jpg|Friedrich Gross,
ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 66. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 1, 1838.jpg|Friedrich Gross,
ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 72. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 1, 1838.jpg|Friedrich Gross,
ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 269. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 2, 1839.jpg|Friedrich Gross,
ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 436. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 2, 1839.jpg|Friedrich Gross,
ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 231. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 1, 1838.jpg|Friedrich Gross,
ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 251. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 2, 1839.jpg|Friedrich Gross,
ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 109. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 1, 1838.jpg|Friedrich Gross,
ante 1830, woodcut
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 3, 1896 (1).jpg|Frank Brangwyn,
'Story of Abon-Hassan the Wag' ("He found himself upon the royal
couch"), 1895-96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 1, 1896 (2).jpg|Frank Brangwyn,
'Story of the Merchant' ("Sheherezade telling the stories"), 1895-96,
watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 4, 1896 (1).jpg|Frank Brangwyn,
'Story of Ansal-Wajooodaud, Rose-in-Bloom' ("The daughter of a Visier
sat at a lattice window"), 1895-96, watercolour and tempera on
millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 5, 1896 (2).jpg|Frank Brangwyn,
'Story of Gulnare' ("The merchant uncovered her face"), 1895-96,
watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 5,1896 (3).jpg|Frank Brangwyn,
'Story of Beder Basim' ("Whereupon it became eared corn"), 1895-96,
watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 6, 1896 (4).jpg|Frank Brangwyn,
'Story of Abdalla' ("Abdalla of the sea sat in the water, near the
shore"), 1895-96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 3, 1896 (5).jpg|Frank Brangwyn,
'Story of Mahomed Ali' ("He sat his boat afloat with them"), 1895-96,
watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 4, 1896 (6).jpg|Frank Brangwyn,
'Story of the City of Brass' ("They ceased not to ascend by that
ladder"), 1895-96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
See also
======================================================================
* Arabic literature
* Ghost stories
* Hamzanama
* List of 'One Thousand and One Nights' characters
* List of stories from 'The Book of One Thousand and One Nights'
(translation by R. F. Burton)
* List of works influenced by 'One Thousand and One Nights'
* Persian literature
* Shahnameh
* The Panchatantra - an ancient Indian collection of interrelated
animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose, arranged within a frame
story
* 'One Hundred and One Nights' (book) - a similar medieval tale
collection using the same frame story as 'One Thousand and One Nights'
General and cited sources
======================================================================
*
*
* Ulrich Marzolph (ed.). 'The Arabian Nights Reader' (Wayne State
University Press, 2006).
* Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen, Hassan Wassouf (2004).'The
Arabian Nights Encyclopedia'.
* Charles Pellat,
[
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/alf-layla-wa-layla "Alf Layla
Wa Layla"] in 'Encyclopædia Iranica'. Online access June 2011.
*
* Dwight Reynolds, "'A Thousand and One Nights': A History of the Text
and Its Reception" in 'The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature' Vol
6. (CUP 2006).
* Eva Sallis, 'Scheherazade Through the Looking-Glass: The
Metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights' (Routledge, 1999).
* Yamanaka, Yuriko and Nishio, Tetsuo (ed.). 'The Arabian Nights and
Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West' (I.B. Tauris, 2006). .
Further reading
======================================================================
* Chauvin, Victor Charles; Schnurrer, Christian Friedrich von.
'Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux Arabes, publiés
dans l'Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1885'. Líege H. Vaillant-Carmanne.
1892-1922.
* El-Shamy, Hasan. "A 'Motif Index of Alf Laylah Wa Laylah': Its
Relevance to the Study of Culture, Society, the Individual, and
Character Transmutation". 'Journal of Arabic Literature', vol. 36, no.
3, 2005, pp. 235-268. . Accessed 22 Apr. 2020.
* Horta, Paulo Lemos, 'Marvellous Thieves: The Secret Authors of the
Arabian Nights' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
* Kennedy, Philip F., and Marina Warner, eds. Scheherazade's Children:
Global Encounters with the Arabian Nights. NYU Press, 2013. .
* Marzolph, Ulrich, 'Arabian Nights', in 'Encyclopaedia of Islam', 3rd
ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2007-), .
* Nurse, Paul McMichael. 'Eastern Dreams: How the Arabian Nights Came
to the World' Viking Canada: 2010. General popular history of the 1001
Nights from its earliest days to the present.
* Shah, Tahir, 'In Arabian Nights: A search of Morocco through its
stories and storytellers' (Doubleday, 2007).
* [
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14634-0/ 'The Islamic
Context of The Thousand and One Nights'] by Muhsin J. al-Musawi,
Columbia University Press, 2009.
* 'Where Is A Thousand Tales? [Hezar Afsan Kojast?]' by Bahram Beyzai,
Roshangaran va Motale'ate Zanan, 2012.
External links
======================================================================
*[
https://archive.org/details/1001Nights_201703/page/n113 '1001
Nights']
*[
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/128 'The Arabian Nights
Entertainments'], Selected and Edited by Andrew Lang, Longmans, Green
and Co., 1918 (1898)
*
*[
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0081kdb 'The Arabian Nights'], BBC
Radio 4 discussion with Robert Irwin, Marina Warner and Gerard van
Gelder ('In Our Time', October 18, 2007)
*[
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34206 'The Thousand and One Nights,
Vol. I' by Lane-Poole, Poole, Harvey, and Lane] - HTML, EPUB, Kindle,
plain text
*[
http://www.wollamshram.ca/1001/index.htm 'The Thousand Nights and a
Night' in several classic translations], including the Sir Richard
Francis Burton unexpurgated translation and John Payne translation,
with additional material.
License
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