Common to all the editions of theNights is theframing device of the story of the rulerShahryar being narrated the tales by his wifeScheherazade, 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 inprose, althoughverse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are singlecouplets orquatrains, although some are longer.
The mainframe story concerns Shahryār, a king who ruled an empire that stretched from Persia to India.[8] 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. Coincidentally, Shahryār finds that his own wife, as well as his numerous slave girls, have been engaging in secret orgies with black men.[9] Shahryār has his wife killed. In his bitterness and grief, he decides that all women are the same. Shahryār begins to marry a succession ofvirgins only to execute each one the next morning, before she has a chance to dishonor him.
Eventually theVizier (Wazir), 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 oferotica. Numerous stories depictjinn,ghouls, ape people,sorcerers,magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally. Commonprotagonists include the historicalAbbasid caliphHarun al-Rashid, hisGrand Vizier,Jafar al-Barmaki, and the famous poetAbu Nuwas, despite the fact that these figures lived some 200 years after the fall of theSassanid 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 acliffhanger 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 ofIslamic philosophy, and in one case during a detailed description ofhuman anatomy according toGalen—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 ofstories within theOne Thousand and One Nights also featurescience fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", where the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for theherb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey to theGarden of Eden and toJahannam, and travel across thecosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements ofgalactic science fiction;[10] along the way, he encounters societies ofjinns,[11]mermaids, talkingserpents, talkingtrees, and other forms of life.[10] In anotherArabian Nights tale, the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwatersubmarine society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form ofprimitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. OtherArabian Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them.[12] "The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on anarchaeological expedition[13] across theSahara to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel thatSolomon once used to trap ajinn,[14] and, along the way, encounter amummified queen,petrified inhabitants,[15] life-likehumanoid robots andautomata, seductivemarionettes dancing without strings,[16] and a brass horsemanrobot who directs the party towards the ancient city. "The Ebony Horse" features a robot[17] in the form of a flying mechanical horse controlled using keys that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun,[18] while the "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the form of an uncannyboatman.[17] "The City of Brass" and "The Ebony Horse" can be considered early examples of proto-science fiction.[19]
The history of theNights 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:
In the 1880s and 1890s a lot of work was done on theNights byZotenberg and others, in the course of which a consensus view of the history of the text emerged. Most scholars agreed that the Nights was a composite work and that the earliest tales in it came from India and Persia. At some time, probably in the early eighth century, these tales were translated into Arabic under the titleAlf Layla, or 'The Thousand Nights'. This collection then formed the basis ofThe Thousand and One Nights. The original core of stories was quite small. Then, in Iraq in the ninth or tenth century, this original core had Arab stories added to it—among them some tales about the CaliphHarun al-Rashid. Also, perhaps from the tenth century onwards, previously independent sagas and story cycles were added to the compilation [...] Then, from the 13th century onwards, a further layer of stories was added in Syria and Egypt, many of these showing a preoccupation with sex, magic or low life. In the early modern period yet more stories were added to the Egyptian collections so as to swell the bulk of the text sufficiently to bring its length up to the full 1,001 nights of storytelling promised by the book's title.[20]
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 theNights.[21] 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.[22] Indian folklore is represented in theNights by certain animal stories, which reflect influence from ancientSanskrit fables. The influence of thePanchatantra andBaital Pachisi is particularly notable.[23]
It is possible that the influence of thePanchatantra is via a Sanskrit adaptation called theTantropakhyana. Only fragments of the original Sanskrit form of theTantropakhyana survive, but translations or adaptations exist in Tamil,[24] Lao,[25] Thai,[26] andOld Javanese.[27] 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 thePanchatantra—with its original Indian setting.[28]
ThePanchatantra and various tales fromJatakas were first translated into Persian byBorzūya in 570 CE;[29] they were later translated into Arabic byIbn al-Muqaffa in 750 CE.[30] The Arabic version was translated into several languages, including Syriac, Greek, Hebrew and Spanish.[31]
A page from Kelileh va Demneh dated 1429, from Herat, a Persian version of the original ancient IndianPanchatantra – depicts the manipulative jackal-vizier, Dimna, trying to lead his lion-king into war.
The earliest mentions of theNights refer to it as an Arabic translation from a Persian book,Hezār Afsān (also known asAfsaneh orAfsana), meaning 'The Thousand Stories'. In the tenth century,Ibn al-Nadim compiled a catalogue of books (the "Fihrist") in Baghdad. He noted that theSassanid kings of Iran enjoyed "evening tales and fables".[32] Al-Nadim then writes about the PersianHezār Afsān, 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.[33]
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".[34] In the same centuryAl-Masudi also refers to theHezār Afsān, saying the Arabic translation is calledAlf Khurafa ('A Thousand Entertaining Tales'), but is generally known asAlf Layla ('A Thousand Nights'). He mentions the characters Shirāzd (Scheherazade) and Dināzād.[35]
No physical evidence of theHezār Afsān has survived,[21] so its exact relationship with the existing later Arabic versions remains a mystery.[36] Apart from the Scheherazade frame story, several other tales have Persian origins, although it is unclear how they entered the collection.[37] 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 PersianBakhtiyārnāma).[38]
In the 1950s, theIraqi scholarSafa Khulusi suggested (on internal rather than historical evidence) that the Persian writerIbn 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.[39][40]
In the mid-20th century, the scholarNabia Abbott found a document with a few lines of an Arabic work with the titleThe Book of the Tale of a Thousand Nights, dating from the ninth century. This is the earliest known surviving fragment of theNights.[36] The first reference to the Arabic version under its full titleThe One Thousand and One Nights appears in Cairo in the 12th century.[42] Professor Dwight Reynolds describes the subsequent transformations of the Arabic version:
Some of the earlier Persian tales may have survived within the Arabic tradition altered such that Arabic Muslim names and new locations were substituted for pre-Islamic Persian ones, but it is also clear that whole cycles of Arabic tales were eventually added to the collection and apparently replaced most of the Persian materials. One such cycle of Arabic tales centres around a small group of historical figures from ninth-century Baghdad, including the caliphHarun al-Rashid (died 809), his vizierJafar al-Barmaki (d. 803) and the licentious poetAbu Nuwas (d. c. 813). Another cluster is a body of stories from late medieval Cairo in which are mentioned persons and places that date to as late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.[43]
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 theNights, theGalland Manuscript written sometime between AD 1450[44] and 1593.[45] 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-calledCalcutta I (1814–1818) and most notably by the 'Leiden edition' (1984).[46][47] The Leiden Edition, prepared byMuhsin Mahdi, is the onlycritical edition of 1001 Nights to date,[48] believed to be most stylistically faithful representation of medieval Arabic versions currently available.[46][47]
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,[49] and were being included as late as in the 18th and 19th centuries.
All extant substantial versions of bothrecensions share a small common core of tales:[50]
Two pages from theGalland Manuscript containing stories that later appeared in Galland'sThe Thousand and One Nights. Written sometime between AD 1450 and 1593.
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 asMuhsin 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.[49][51]
The first printed Arabic-language edition of theOne Thousand and One Nights was published in 1775. It contained an Egyptian version ofThe 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.
Arabic manuscript with parts of Arabian Nights, collected by Heinrich Friedrich von Diez, 19th century CE, origin unknown
TheNights were next printed in Arabic in two volumes in Calcutta by theBritish East India Company in 1814–1818. Each volume contained one hundred tales.
Soon after, the Prussian scholarChristian 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 inBreslau 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.[48]
Both the ZER printing and Habicht and al-Najjar's edition influenced the next printing, a four-volume edition also from Calcutta (known as theMacnaghten orCalcutta II edition).[52] This claimed to be based on an older Egyptian manuscript (which has never been found).
A major recent edition, which reverts to theSyrian recension, is a critical edition based on the fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Syrian manuscript in theBibliothèque Nationale, originally used by Galland.[53] This edition, known as the Leiden text, was compiled in Arabic byMuhsin Mahdi (1984–1994).[54] 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 theMamluk period (a view that remains contentious).[49][55][56] Still, even scholars who deny this version the exclusive status of "the onlyreal Arabian Nights" recognize it as being the best source on the originalstyle and linguistic form of the medieval work.[46][47]
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.[57]
The first European version (1704–1717) was translated intoFrench byAntoine Galland[58] from an Arabic text of the Syrian recension and other sources. This 12-volume work,[58]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 storytellerHanna Diab during Diab's visit to Paris. Galland's version of theNights 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 ofEdward Lane (1840, 1859), werebowdlerized. Unabridged and unexpurgated translations were made, first byJohn Payne, under the titleThe Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (1882, nine volumes), and then bySir Richard Francis Burton, entitledThe 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 ofplagiarism.[59][60]
In view of thesexual imagery in the source texts (which Burton emphasized even further, especially by adding extensive footnotes and appendices on Oriental sexual mores[60]) and the strictVictorian 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) entitledThe Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night, which were printed between 1886 and 1888.[58] It has, however, been criticized for its "archaic language and extravagant idiom" and "obsessive focus on sexuality" (and has even been called an "eccentricego-trip" and a "highly personal reworking of the text").[60]
Later versions of theNights include that of theFrench doctorJ. C. Mardrus, issued from 1898 to 1904. It was translated into English byPowys 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.[59]
Muhsin Mahdi's 1984 Leiden edition, based on the Galland Manuscript, was rendered into English by Husain Haddawy (1990).[61] This translation has been praised as "very readable" and "strongly recommended for anyone who wishes to taste the authentic flavour of those tales".[62] An additional second volume ofArabian nights translated by Haddawy, composed of popular talesnot present in the Leiden edition, was published in 1995.[63] Both volumes were the basis for a single-volume reprint of selected tales of Haddawy's translations.[64]
A new English translation was published by Penguin Classics in three volumes in 2008.[65][66] 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" ofAladdin andAli Baba as well as an alternative ending toThe seventh journey ofSindbad fromAntoine 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".[67] 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.[68]
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.[69]
Scholars have assembled a timeline concerning the publication history ofThe Nights:[70][62][71]
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 titleKitab 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.[43]
10th century: mention ofHezār Afsān inIbn al-Nadim's "Fihrist" (Catalogue of books) inBaghdad. He attributes a pre-IslamicSassanid Persian origin to the collection and refers to the frame story of Scheherazade telling stories over a thousand nights to save her life.[34]
10th century: reference toThe Thousand Nights, an Arabic translation of the PersianHezār Afsān ("Thousand Stories"), inMuruj Al-Dhahab (The Meadows of Gold) byAl-Mas'udi.[35]
12th century: a document fromCairo refers to a Jewish bookseller lending a copy ofThe Thousand and One Nights (this is the first appearance of the final form of the title).[42]
1704:Antoine Galland's French translation is the first European version ofNights. 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 entitledArabian Nights' Entertainments—the first known use of the common English title of the work.[72]
1768: firstPolish translation, 12 volumes. Based, as with many European versions, on theFrench translation.
1775: Egyptian version ofNights called "ZER" (Hermann Zotenberg's Egyptian Recension) with 200 tales (no extant edition).
1804–1806, 1825: Austrian polyglot and orientalistJoseph 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.[73]
1814: Calcutta I, the earliest existing Arabic printed version, is published by theBritish 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".[74]
Early 19th century:Modern Persian translations of the text are made, variously under the titleAlf leile va leile,Hezār-o yek šhab (هزار و یک شب), 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.[75] It was later illustrated bySani ol Molk (1814–1866) forMohammad Shah Qajar.[76]
1825–1838: the Breslau/Habicht edition is published inArabic in eight volumes. Christian Maximilian Habicht (born inBreslau,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.[48] Using versions ofNights, tales from Al-Najjar, and other stories of unknown origin, Habicht published his version in Arabic andGerman.
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 ofNights 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 hisanthropological 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.
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).
Illustration ofOne Thousand and One Nights bySani ol Molk, Iran, 1853
TheOne Thousand and One Nights and various tales within it make use of many innovativeliterary techniques, which the storytellers of the tales rely on for increased drama, suspense, or other emotions.[77] Some of these date back to earlierPersian,Indian andArabic literature, while others were original to theOne Thousand and One Nights.
Another technique featured in theOne Thousand and One Nights is an early example of the "story within a story", orembedded narrative technique: this can be traced back to earlier Persian and Indian storytelling traditions, most notably thePanchatantra of ancientSanskrit literature. TheNights, however, improved on thePanchatantra in several ways, particularly in the way a story is introduced. In thePanchatantra, stories are introduced asdidactic 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 theNights, 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.[79]
The general story is narrated by an unknown narrator, and in this narration the stories are told byScheherazade. In most of Scheherazade's narrations there are also stories narrated, and even in some of these, there are some other stories.[9] This is particularly the case for the "Sinbad the Sailor" story narrated by Scheherazade in theOne 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 SageDuban" is narrated within it, and within that there are three more tales narrated.
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 theOne Thousand and One Nights,[80] such as the tale of "The Three Apples" (seeCrime fiction elements below).
[E]very tale inThe Thousand and One Nights begins with an 'appearance of destiny' which manifests itself through an anomaly, and one anomaly always generates another. So a chain of anomalies is set up. And the more logical, tightly knit, essential this chain is, the more beautiful the tale. By 'beautiful' I mean vital, absorbing and exhilarating. The chain of anomalies always tends to lead back to normality. The end of every tale inThe One Thousand and One Nights consists of a 'disappearance' of destiny, which sinks back to thesomnolence of daily life ... The protagonist of the stories is in fact destiny itself.
Though invisible, fate may be considered a leading character in theOne Thousand and One Nights.[82] The plot devices often used to present this theme arecoincidence,[83]reverse causation, and theself-fulfilling prophecy (see Foreshadowing section below).
Sindbad and the Valley of Diamonds, from the Second Voyage
Early examples of theforeshadowing technique of repetitive designation, now known as "Chekhov's gun", occur in theOne 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."[84] A notable example is in the tale of "The Three Apples" (seeCrime fiction elements below).
Another early foreshadowing technique isformal 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 inOne Thousand and One Nights, where it takes the form of a repeating story–cliffhanger–story–cliffhanger pattern.[80]
Several tales in theOne Thousand and One Nights use theself-fulfilling prophecy, as a special form of literary prolepsis, to foreshadow what is going to happen. This literary device dates back to the story ofKrishna in ancientSanskrit literature, andOedipus or the death ofHeracles in the plays ofSophocles. A variation of this device is the self-fulfilling dream, which can be found inArabic literature (or the dreams ofJoseph and his conflicts with his brothers, in theHebrew 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 ofBaghdad and travel toCairo, 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 inEnglish folklore as the "Pedlar of Swaffham" andPaulo Coelho'sThe Alchemist;Jorge Luis Borges' collection of short storiesA Universal History of Infamy featured his translation of this particular story into Spanish, as "The Story of the Two Dreamers".[85]
"The Tale of Attaf" depicts another variation of the self-fulfilling prophecy, wherebyHarun al-Rashid consults his library (theHouse of Wisdom), reads a random book, "falls to laughing and weeping and dismisses the faithful vizierJa'far ibn Yahya from sight. Ja'afar, disturbed and upset, flees Baghdad and plunges into a series of adventures inDamascus, 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 ofreverse causation.[86]
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 wastranslated into Latin byPetrus Alphonsi and included in hisDisciplina Clericalis,[87] alongside the "Sindibad" story cycle.[88] In the 14th century, a version of "The Tale of Attaf" also appears in theGesta Romanorum andGiovanni Boccaccio'sThe Decameron.[87]
Illustration ofOne Thousand and One Nights bySani ol molk, Iran, 1849–1856
Leitwortstil is "the purposefulrepetition of words" in a given literary piece that "usually expresses amotif ortheme important to the given story." This device occurs in theOne 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".[77]
Another technique used in theOne Thousand and One Nights isthematic 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.[80]
Several different variants of the "Cinderella" story, which has its origins in the ancient Greek story ofRhodopis, appear in theOne 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 thehappy endings of previous variants and reworks the plot to give it atragic ending instead, with the younger brother being poisoned by his elder brothers.[89]
TheNights contain many examples of sexual humour. Some of this borders onsatire, as in the tale called "Ali with the Large Member" which pokes fun at obsession withpenis size.[90][91]
The literary device of theunreliable narrator was used in several fictional medievalArabic tales of theOne 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"), acourtesan accuses a king's son of having assaulted her, when in reality she had failed to seduce him (inspired by theQur'anic/Biblical story ofYusuf/Joseph). Sevenviziers 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.[92] The unreliable narrator device is also used to generatesuspense in "The Three Apples" andhumor in "The Hunchback's Tale" (seeCrime fiction elements below).
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.
AnotherNights tale withcrime fiction elements was "The Hunchback's Tale" story cycle which, unlike "The Three Apples", was more of asuspensefulcomedy andcourtroom 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 favouritecomedian, being invited to dinner by atailor 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 aJewish doctor'sclinic 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 acourtroom, all making different claims over how the hunchback had died.[97] Crime fiction elements are also present near the end of "The Tale of Attaf" (seeForeshadowing above).
Haunting is used as aplot device ingothic fiction andhorror fiction, as well as modernparanormal fiction. Legends abouthaunted houses have long appeared in literature. In particular, theArabian Nights tale of "Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad" revolves around a house haunted byjinn.[98] TheNights is almost certainly the earliest surviving literature that mentionsghouls, and many of the stories in that collection involve or reference ghouls. A prime example is the storyThe History of Gherib and His Brother Agib (fromNights vol. 6), in which Gherib, an outcast prince, fights off a family of ravenous Ghouls and then enslaves them and converts them toIslam.[99]
Horror fiction elements are also found in "The City of Brass" tale, which revolves around aghost town.[100]
The horrific nature ofScheherazade's situation is magnified inStephen King'sMisery, in which the protagonist is forced to write a novel to keep his captor from torturing and killing him. The influence of theNights on modern horror fiction is certainly discernible in the work ofH. 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 the1001 Nights.[101]
An illustration of thestory of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou,More tales from the Arabian nights by Willy Pogany (1915)
Several stories within theOne Thousand and One Nights feature earlyscience fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", in which theprotagonist Bulukiya's quest for theherb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey toParadise and toHell, and travel across thecosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements ofgalactic science fiction;[102] along the way, he encounters societies ofjinn,[103]mermaids, talkingserpents, talking trees, and other forms of life.[102] In "Abu al-Husn and His Slave-Girl Tawaddud", the heroine Tawaddud gives an impromptulecture on the mansions of theMoon, and the benevolent and sinister aspects of the planets.[104]
In another1001 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 ofprimitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. OtherArabian Nights tales also depictAmazon societies dominated by women, lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them.[105]
"The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on anarchaeological expedition[13] across theSahara to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel thatSolomon once used to trap ajinni,[14] and, along the way, encounter amummified queen,petrified inhabitants,[106] lifelikehumanoid robots andautomata, seductivemarionettes dancing without strings,[16] and a brass horsemanrobot who directs the party towards the ancient city,[17] which has now become aghost town.[100] The "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the form of an uncannyboatman.[17]
There is an abundance ofArabic poetry inOne 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.[107] 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:
وَلَقدْ نَدِمْتُ عَلى تَفَرُّقِ شَمْلِنا
دَهْرًا وَفاضَ الدَّمْعُ مِنْ أَجْفاني
وَنَذَرْتُ إِنْ عادَ الزَّمانُ يَلُمُّنا
لا عُدْتُ أَذْكُرُ فُرْقَةً بِلِساني
هَجَمَ السُّرورُ عَلَيَّ حَتَّى أَنَّهُ
مِنْ فَرَطِ ما سَرَّني أَبْكاني
يا عَيْنُ صارَ الدَّمْعُ مِنْكِ سِجْيَةً
تَبْكينَ مِنْ فَرَحٍ وَأَحْزاني
Translation:
Wa-laqad nadimtu 'alá tafarruqi shamlinā Dahran wa-fāḍa ad-dam'u min ajfānī Wa-nadhartu in 'āda az-zamānu yalummunā la 'udtu adhkuru furqatan bi-lisānī Hajama as-surūru 'alayya ḥattá annahu min faraṭi mā sarranī abkānī Yā 'aynu ṣāra ad-dam'u minki sijyatan tabkīna min faraḥin wa-aḥzānī
Translations:
And I have regretted the separation of our companionship An eon, and tears flooded my eyes And I've sworn if time brought us back together I'll never utter any separation with my tongue Joy conquered me to the point of which it made me happy that I cried Oh eye, the tears out of you became a principle You cry out of joy and out of sadness
—Literal translation
Translation:
Long, long have I bewailed the sev'rance of our loves, With tears that from my lids streamed down like burning rain And vowed that, if the days deign reunite us two, My lips should never speak of severance again: Joy hath o'erwhelmed me so that, for the very stress Of that which gladdens me to weeping I am fain. Tears are become to you a habit, O my eyes, So that ye weep as well for gladness as for pain.
Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture, such asAladdin,Sinbad andAli 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 thefantasy world having little connection, if any, to actual times and places. Several elements fromArabian mythology are now common in modernfantasy, such asgenies,bahamuts,magic carpets, magic lamps, etc. WhenL. 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.[109]
In 1982, theInternational Astronomical Union (IAU) began naming features onSaturn's moonEnceladus after characters and places inBurton's translation[110] because "its surface is so strange and mysterious that it was given theArabian Nights as a name bank, linking fantasy landscape with a literary fantasy."[111]
There is little evidence that theNights 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.[112] Fiction had a low cultural status among Medieval Arabs compared with poetry, and the tales were dismissed askhurafa (improbable fantasies fit only for entertaining women and children). According to Robert Irwin, "Even today, with the exception of certain writers and academics, theNights is regarded with disdain in the Arabic world. Its stories are regularly denounced as vulgar, improbable, childish and, above all, badly written".[113]
Nevertheless, theNights have proved an inspiration to some modern Egyptian writers, such asTawfiq al-Hakim (author of theSymbolist playShahrazad, 1934),Taha Hussein (Scheherazade's Dreams, 1943)[114] andNaguib Mahfouz (Arabian Nights and Days, 1979).Idries Shah finds theAbjad numerical equivalent of the Arabic title,alf layla wa layla, in the Arabic phraseʾumm al-qiṣṣa, meaning 'mother of stories'. He goes on to state that many of the stories "are encodedSufiteaching stories, descriptions of psychological processes, or enciphered lore of one kind or another".[115]
On a more popular level, film and TV adaptations based on stories like Sinbad and Aladdin enjoyed long lasting popularity in Arabic speaking countries.
Although the first known translation into a European language appeared in 1704, it is possible that theNights 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 byJuan Manuel's story collectionEl Conde Lucanor andRamón Llull'sThe Book of Beasts.[116]
Knowledge of the work, direct or indirect, apparently spread beyond Spain. Themes and motifs with parallels in theNights are found inChaucer'sThe Canterbury Tales (inThe Squire's Tale the hero travels on a flying brass horse) andBoccaccio'sDecameron. Echoes inGiovanni Sercambi'sNovelle andAriosto'sOrlando Furioso suggest that the story of Shahriyar and Shahzaman was also known.[117] Evidence also appears to show that the stories had spread to theBalkans and a translation of theNights intoRomanian existed by the 17th century, itself based on a Greek version of the collection.[118]
Classic Comics issue #8First European edition of Arabian Nights, "Les Mille et une Nuit", by Antoine Galland, Vol. 11, 1730 CE, ParisArabian Nights, "Tausend und eine Nacht. Arabische Erzählungen", translated into German by Gustav Weil, Vol .4, 1866 CE, Stuttgart
The modern fame of theNights derives from the first known European translation byAntoine Galland, which appeared in 1704. According toRobert 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 theNights".[119]
The immediate success of Galland's version with the French public may have been because it coincided with the vogue forcontes de fées ('fairy stories'). This fashion began with the publication ofMadame d'Aulnoy'sHistoire d'Hypolite in 1690. D'Aulnoy's book has a remarkably similar structure to theNights, with the tales told by a female narrator. The success of theNights 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.[120]
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. Thesetongue-in-cheek pastiches includeAnthony Hamilton'sLes quatre Facardins (1730),Crébillon'sLe sopha (1742) andDiderot'sLes bijoux indiscrets (1748). They often contained veiled allusions to contemporary French society. The most famous example isVoltaire'sZadig (1748), an attack on religious bigotry set against a vague pre-Islamic Middle Eastern background.[121] The English versions of the "Oriental Tale" generally contained a heavy moralising element,[122] with the notable exception ofWilliam Beckford's fantasyVathek (1786), which had a decisive influence on the development of theGothic novel. The Polish noblemanJan Potocki's novelSaragossa Manuscript (begun 1797) owes a deep debt to theNights with its Oriental flavour and labyrinthine series of embedded tales.[123]
The work was included on a price-list of books on theology, history, and cartography, which was sent by the Scottish booksellerAndrew Millar (then an apprentice) to aPresbyterian minister. This is illustrative of the title's widespread popularity and availability in the 1720s.[124]
TheNights continued to be a favourite book of many British authors of the Romantic and Victorian eras. According toA. S. Byatt, "In British Romantic poetry the Arabian Nights stood for the wonderful against the mundane, the imaginative against the prosaically and reductively rational."[125] In their autobiographical writings, bothColeridge andde Quincey refer to nightmares the book had caused them when young.Wordsworth andTennyson also wrote about their childhood reading of the tales in their poetry.[126]Charles Dickens was another enthusiast and the atmosphere of theNights pervades the opening of his last novelThe Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).[127]
Several writers have attempted to add a thousand and second tale,[128] includingThéophile Gautier (La mille deuxième nuit, 1842)[114] andJoseph Roth (Die Geschichte von der 1002 Nacht, 1939).[128]Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade" (1845), a short story depicting the eighth and final voyage ofSinbad 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, theIrish poetW. B. Yeats was also fascinated by the Arabian Nights, when he wrote in his prose book,A Vision an autobiographical poem, titled The Gift ofHarun Al-Rashid,[129] in relation to his joint experiments with his wifeGeorgie Hyde-Lees, withautomatic 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 philosopherQusta 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.[130]
The critic Robert Irwin singles out the two versions ofThe Thief of Baghdad (1924 version directed by Raoul Walsh;1940 version produced by Alexander Korda) andPier Paolo Pasolini'sIl fiore delle Mille e una notte (1974) as ranking "high among the masterpieces of world cinema."[131] Michael James Lundell callsIl fiore "the most faithful adaptation, in its emphasis on sexuality, ofThe 1001 Nights in its oldest form".[132]
UPA, an American animation studio, produced an animated feature version of1001 Arabian Nights (1959), featuring the cartoon characterMr. Magoo.[135]
The 1949 animated filmThe 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 byOsamu Tezuka and Eichii Yamamoto, featuredpsychedelic imagery and sounds, and erotic material intended for adults.[136]
Alif Laila (The Arabian Nights), a 1993–1997 Indian TV series based on the stories fromOne Thousand and One Nights produced bySagar Entertainment Ltd, aired onDD National starts with Scheherazade telling her stories to Shahryār, and contains both the well-known and the lesser-known stories fromOne Thousand and One Nights. Another Indian television series,Alif Laila, based on various stories from the collection aired onDangal TV in 2020.[137]
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 asHussein Fahmy,Raghda,Laila Elwi,Yousuf Shaaban,Nelly,Sherihan andYehia El-Fakharany. Each series premiered on every yearly month ofRamadan between the 1980s and 1990s.[138]
One of the best known Arabian Nights-based films is the 1992Walt Disney animated movieAladdin, which is loosely based on the story of the same name.
Shabnam Rezaei and Aly Jetha created, and the Vancouver-basedBig Bad Boo Studios produced1001 Nights (2011), an animated television series for children, which launched onTeletoon and airs in 80 countries around the world, including Discovery Kids Asia.[139]
Arabian Nights (2015, in Portuguese:As Mil e uma Noites), a three-part film directed byMiguel Gomes, is based onOne Thousand and One Nights.[140]
Alf Leila Wa Leila, a popularEgyptian radio adaptation was broadcast on Egyptian radio stations for 26 years. Directed by famed radio director Mohamed Mahmoud Shabaan also known by his nicknameBaba Sharoon, the series featured a cast of respected Egyptian actors, among them Zouzou Nabil as Scheherazade and Abdelrahim El Zarakany as Shahryar.[141]
Aladdin 3477: The Jinn of Wisdom (2025) is the first in a trilogy of live-action sci-fi films written and directed byStar Wars artistMatt Busch. The films take place 1,500 years in the future, yet stay closer to the original Arabian Nights tale than theDisney versions, including taking place in Asia.
The Demoman inTeam Fortress 2 has a set titled One Thousand and One Demoknights, including three weapons and one cosmetic item.[143]
Sultan’s Game, developed by Double Cross and released for Steam on March 30, 2025, is “a card-based simulation and narrative game, inspired byThe 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.”[144] 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.[145]Just over three months after its release, the game surpassed one million copies sold.[146]
Frank Brangwyn,Story of Abon-Hassan the Wag ("He found himself upon the royal couch"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
Frank Brangwyn,Story of the Merchant ("Sheherezade telling the stories"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
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
Frank Brangwyn,Story of Gulnare ("The merchant uncovered her face"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
Frank Brangwyn,Story of Beder Basim ("Whereupon it became eared corn"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
Frank Brangwyn,Story of Abdalla ("Abdalla of the sea sat in the water, near the shore"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
Frank Brangwyn,Story of Mahomed Ali ("He sat his boat afloat with them"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
Frank Brangwyn,Story of the City of Brass ("They ceased not to ascend by that ladder"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
^Marzolph, Ulrich (2007). "Arabian Nights". In Kate Fleet; Gudrun Krämer; Denis Matringe; John Nawas; Everett Rowson (eds.).Encyclopaedia of Islam (3rd ed.).doi:10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_0021.Arabian Nights, the work known in Arabic asAlf layla wa-layla
^See illustration of title page of Grub St Edition in Yamanaka and Nishio (p. 225)
^Marzolph (2007), "Arabian Nights",Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. I, Leiden: Brill.
^John Payne,Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp and Other Stories, (London 1901) gives details of Galland's encounter with 'Hanna' in 1709 and of the discovery in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris of two Arabic manuscripts containing Aladdin and two more of the added tales.Text of "Alaeddin and the enchanted lamp"
^Hamori, A. (2012). "S̲h̲ahrazād". In P. Bearman; Th. Bianquis; C.E. Bosworth; E. van Donzel; W.P. Heinrichs (eds.).Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.). Brill.doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_6771.
^Safa Khulusi,Studies in Comparative Literature and Western Literary Schools, Chapter:Qisas Alf Laylah wa Laylah (One thousand and one Nights), pp. 15–85. Al-Rabita Press, Baghdad, 1957.
^Safa Khulusi, The Influence of Ibn al-Muqaffa' on The Arabian Nights.Islamic Review, Dec 1960, pp. 29–31
^Heinz Grotzfeld, 'The Age of the Galland Manuscript of theNights,' inThe Arabian Nights Reader, ed. by Ulrich Marzolph (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006), 105-21,ISBN0814332595 [repr. from Heinz Grotzfeld, 'The Age of the Galland Manuscript of theNights: Numismatic Evidence for Dating a Manuscript',Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 1 (1996-97), 50-64].
^'Manuscripts', inThe Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, ed. by Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen, and Hassan Wassouf, 2 vols (Santa Barbara (CA): ABC-Clio, 2004), I, 635-57 (p. 635).
^abcBeaumont, Daniel. Literary Style and Narrative Technique in the Arabian Nights. p. 1. InThe Arabian nights encyclopedia, Volume 1
^abcMarzolph, Ulrich (2017). "Arabian Nights". In Kate Fleet; Gudrun Krämer; Denis Matringe; John Nawas; Everett Rowson (eds.).Encyclopaedia of Islam (3rd ed.). Brill.doi:10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_0021.
^abcSallis, Eva. 1999. Sheherazade through the looking glass: the metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights. pp. 18–43
^The Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-layla), from the Earliest Known Sources, ed. by Muhsin Mahdi, 3 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1984–1994),ISBN90-04-07428-7.
^Madeleine Dobie, 2009. Translation in the contact zone: Antoine Galland's Mille et une nuits: contes arabes. p. 37. InSaree Makdisi andFelicity Nussbaum (eds.): "The Arabian Nights in Historical Context: Between East and West"
^The Arabian Nights II: Sindbad and Other Popular Stories, trans. by Husain Haddawy (New York: Norton, 1995).
^The Arabian Nights: The Husain Haddawy Translation Based on the Text Edited by Muhsin Mahdi, Contexts, Criticism, ed. by Daniel Heller-Roazen (New York: Norton, 2010).
^Dwight Reynolds. "The Thousand and One Nights: A History of the Text and its Reception".The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period. Cambridge UP, 2006.
^"The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century", by Martha Pike Conant, Ph.D. Columbia University Press (1908)
^Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen, Hassan Wassouf (2004).The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia.ABC-CLIO. p. 4.ISBN1-57607-204-5.
^Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen, Hassan Wassouf (2004).The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 97–98.ISBN1-57607-204-5.
^"Ali with the Large Member" is only in theWortley Montague manuscript (1764), which is in theBodleian Library, and is not found in Burton or any of the other standard translations. (Ref:Arabian Nights Encyclopedia).
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.JSTOR4183550. 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.JSTORj.ctt9qfrpw.
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).
Contemporary Persian and Classical Persian are the same language, but writers since 1900 are classified as contemporary. At one time, Persian was a common cultural language of much of the non-Arabic Islamic world. Today it is the official language ofIran,Tajikistan and one of the two official languages ofAfghanistan.
aka:Tantrakhyayika —Panchakhyana —Kalila wa Dimna —Calila e Dimna -The Lights of Canopus —The Fables of Bidpai/Pilpay —The Moral Philosophy of Doni —Tantri Kamandaka —Nandaka-prakarana
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