One Thousand and One Nights
Language | Arabic |
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Genre | Frame story, folklore |
Set in | Middle Ages |
Text | One Thousand and One Nights at Wikisource |
Part of a series on |
Arabic culture |
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One Thousand and One Nights (
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, Sanskrit, Persian, and Mesopotamian literature.[3] 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 Hezār Afsān (Persian: هزار افسان, lit. 'A Thousand Tales'), which in turn may be translations of older Indian texts.[4]
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.[5][6][7] Other stories, such as "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor", had an independent existence before being added to the collection.
Synopsis
The main
Eventually the Vizier (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,
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
A number of
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:
In the 1880s and 1890s a lot of work was done on the Nights by Zotenberg 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 title Alf Layla, or 'The Thousand Nights'. This collection then formed the basis of The 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 Caliph Harun 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.[19]
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.
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,[23] Lao,[24] Thai,[25] and Old Javanese.[26] 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.[27]
The Panchatantra and various tales from Jatakas were first translated into Persian by
Persian prototype: Hezār Afsān
The earliest mentions of the Nights refer to it as an Arabic translation from a Persian book, Hezār Afsān (also known as Afsaneh or Afsana), meaning 'The Thousand Stories'. In the tenth century,
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".[33] In the same century Al-Masudi also refers to the Hezār Afsān, saying the Arabic translation is called Alf Khurafa ('A Thousand Entertaining Tales'), but is generally known as Alf Layla ('A Thousand Nights'). He mentions the characters Shirāzd (Scheherazade) and Dināzād.[34]
No physical evidence of the Hezār Afsān has survived,[20] so its exact relationship with the existing later Arabic versions remains a mystery.[35] Apart from the Scheherazade frame story, several other tales have Persian origins, although it is unclear how they entered the collection.[36] 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 Bakhtiyārnāma).[37]
In the 1950s, the
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.[35] The first reference to the Arabic version under its full title The One Thousand and One Nights appears in Cairo in the 12th century.[41] 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 caliph Harun al-Rashid (died 809), his vizier Jafar al-Barmaki (d. 803) and the licentious poet Abu 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.[42]
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, a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Syrian manuscript now known as the
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,[46] 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:[47]
- 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.[46][48]
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
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.[45]
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).[49] This claimed to be based on an older Egyptian manuscript (which has never been found).
A major recent edition, which reverts to the
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.[54]
Modern translations
The first European version (1704–1717) was translated into
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
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[57]) 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.[55] 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").[57]
Later versions of the Nights include that of the
Muhsin Mahdi's 1984 Leiden edition, based on the Galland Manuscript, was rendered into English by Husain Haddawy (1990).[58] This translation has been praised as "very readable" and "strongly recommended for anyone who wishes to taste the authentic flavour of those tales".[59] An additional second volume of Arabian nights translated by Haddawy, composed of popular tales not present in the Leiden edition, was published in 1995.[60] Both volumes were the basis for a single-volume reprint of selected tales of Haddawy's translations.[61]
A new English translation was published by Penguin Classics in three volumes in 2008.
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.[65]
Timeline
Scholars have assembled a timeline concerning the publication history of The Nights:[66][59][67]
- 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.[42]
- 10th century: mention of Hezār Afsān in Sassanid Persian origin to the collection and refers to the frame story of Scheherazade telling stories over a thousand nights to save her life.[33]
- 10th century: reference to The Thousand Nights, an Arabic translation of the Persian Hezār Afsān ("Thousand Stories"), in Muruj Al-Dhahab (Al-Mas'udi.[34]
- 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).[41]
- 14th century: existing Syrian manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (contains about 300 tales).[50]
- 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.[68]
- 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.[69]
- 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".[70]
- Early 19th century: Sani ol Molk (1814–1866) for Mohammad Shah Qajar.[72]
- 1825–1838: the Breslau/Habicht edition is published 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.[45] 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: bowdlerizedtranslation.
- 1889–1904: J. C. Mardrus publishes a French version using Bulaq and Calcutta II editions.
- 1973: First 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.
- 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
Frame story
The One Thousand and One Nights employs an early example of the
In
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.[75]
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.[76] 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,[77] such as the tale of "The Three Apples" (see Crime fiction elements below).
Fate and destiny
A common
[E]very tale in The 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 in The One Thousand and One Nights consists of a 'disappearance' of destiny, which sinks back to the somnolence of daily life ... The protagonist of the stories is in fact destiny itself.
Though invisible, fate may be considered a leading character in the One Thousand and One Nights.[79] The plot devices often used to present this theme are coincidence,[80] 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."[81] 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.[77]
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".[82]
"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.[83]
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
Repetition
Another technique used in the One Thousand and One Nights is
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.[86]
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 obsession with penis size.[87][88]
Unreliable narrator
The literary device of the
Genre elements
Crime fiction
An example of the murder mystery[90] and suspense thriller genres in the collection, with multiple plot twists[91] and detective fiction elements[92] was "The Three Apples", also known as Hikayat al-sabiyya 'l-maqtula ('The Tale of the Murdered Young Woman').[93]
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
Horror fiction
Horror fiction elements are also found in "The City of Brass" tale, which revolves around a ghost town.[97]
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.[98]
Fantasy and science fiction
Several stories within the One Thousand and One Nights feature early
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.[102]
"The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on an
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.[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 |
Wa-laqad nadimtu 'alá tafarruqi shamlinā |
Translations:
And I have regretted the separation of our companionship |
Long, long have I bewailed the sev'rance of our loves, |
—Literal translation | —Burton's verse translation |
In world culture
The influence of the versions of The Nights on world literature is immense. Writers as diverse as
Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture, such as
In 1982, the
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.[112] 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".[113]
Nevertheless, the Nights have proved an inspiration to some modern Egyptian writers, such as
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
Knowledge of the work, direct or indirect, apparently spread beyond Spain. Themes and motifs with parallels in the Nights are found in
Western literature (18th century onwards)
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".[119]
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.[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. These
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.[124]
19th century–20th century
The Nights continued to be a favourite book of many British authors of the Romantic and Victorian eras. According to
Several writers have attempted to add a thousand and second tale,[128] including Théophile Gautier (La mille deuxième nuit, 1842)[114] and Joseph 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 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
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."[131] Michael James Lundell calls Il fiore "the most faithful adaptation, in its emphasis on sexuality, of The 1001 Nights in its oldest form".[132]
Alif Laila (transl. One Thousand Nights; 1933) was a
The 1949 animated film
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 (actor), Nelly (Egyptian entertainer), Sherihan and Yehia El-Fakharany. Each series premiered on every yearly month of Ramadan between the 1980s and 1990s.[138]
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 (2015, in Portuguese: As Mil e uma Noites), a three-part film directed by Miguel Gomes, is based on One Thousand and One Nights.[140]
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.[141]
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.
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)[142]
- 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 Concertoin 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
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:
Comic books
- abridgedversion 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.
Gallery
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The Sultan
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One Thousand and One Nights book.
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Harun ar-Rashid, a leading character of the 1001 Nights
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The fifth voyage of Sindbad
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William Harvey, The Fifth Voyage of Es-Sindbad of the Sea, 1838–40, woodcut
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William Harvey, The Story of the City of Brass, 1838–40, woodcut
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William Harvey, The Story of the Two Princes El-Amjad and El-As'ad, 1838–40, woodcut
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William Harvey, The Story of Abd Allah of the Land and Abd Allah of the Sea
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William Harvey, The Story of the Fisherman, 1838–40, woodcut
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Friedrich Gross, ante 1830, woodcut
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Friedrich Gross, ante 1830, woodcut
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Friedrich Gross, ante 1830, woodcut
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Friedrich Gross, ante 1830, woodcut
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Friedrich Gross, ante 1830, woodcut
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Friedrich Gross, ante 1830, woodcut
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Friedrich Gross, ante 1830, woodcut
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Friedrich Gross, ante 1830, woodcut
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Frank Brangwyn, Story of Abon-Hassan the Wag ("He found himself upon the royal couch"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
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Frank Brangwyn, Story of the Merchant ("Sheherezade telling the stories"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
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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
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Frank Brangwyn, Story of Gulnare ("The merchant uncovered her face"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
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Frank Brangwyn, Story of Beder Basim ("Whereupon it became eared corn"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
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Frank Brangwyn, Story of Abdalla ("Abdalla of the sea sat in the water, near the shore"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
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Frank Brangwyn, Story of Mahomed Ali ("He sat his boat afloat with them"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
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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
References
- .
Arabian Nights, the work known in Arabic as Alf layla wa-layla
- ^ See illustration of title page of Grub St Edition in Yamanaka and Nishio (p. 225)
- ISBN 978-1-134-86256-6.
- ^ 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"
- ISBN 978-0-674-97377-0.
- ISBN 978-1-4780-1261-0.
- ^ The Arabian Nights, translated by Malcolm C. Lyons and Ursula Lyons (Penguin Classics, 2008), vol. 1, p. 1
- ^ ISBN 1-86064-983-1.
- ISBN 1-86064-983-1.
- ISBN 1-86064-983-1.
- S2CID 161610007.
- ISBN 90-04-09530-6.
- ISBN 1-86064-983-1.
- S2CID 161610007.
- ^ ISBN 90-04-09530-6.
- ISBN 0-19-275013-5.
- ^ Academic Literature Archived 2017-06-30 at the Wayback Machine, Islam and Science Fiction
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 48.
- ^ a b Reynolds p. 271
- .
- ^ "Vikram and the Vampire, or, Tales of Hindu devilry, by Richard Francis Burton—A Project Gutenberg eBook". www.gutenberg.org. p. xiii.
- ^ Artola. Pancatantra Manuscripts from South India in the Adyar Library Bulletin. 1957. pp. 45ff.
- ^ K. Raksamani. The Nandakaprakarana attributed to Vasubhaga, a Comparative Study. University of Toronto Thesis. 1978. pp. 221ff.
- ^ E. Lorgeou. Les entretiensde Nang Tantrai. Paris. 1924.
- ^ C. Hooykaas. Bibliotheca Javaneca No. 2. Bandoeng. 1931.
- ^ A. K. Warder. Indian Kāvya Literature: The art of storytelling, Volume VI. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 1992. pp. 61–62, 76–82.
- ^ IIS.ac.uk Dr Fahmida Suleman, "Kalila wa Dimna" Archived 2013-11-03 at the Wayback Machine, in Medieval Islamic Civilization, An Encyclopaedia, Vol. II, pp. 432–33, ed. Josef W. Meri, New York-London: Routledge, 2006
- ISBN 1-901764-14-1
- ^ Kalilah and Dimnah; or, The fables of Bidpai; being an account of their literary history, p. xiv
- ^ Pinault p. 1
- ^ Pinault p. 4
- ^ a b Irwin 2004, pp. 49–50.
- ^ a b Irwin 2004, p. 49.
- ^ a b Irwin 2004, p. 51.
- ^ Eva Sallis Scheherazade Through the Looking-Glass: The Metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights (Routledge, 1999), p. 2 and note 6
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 76.
- ^ 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
- ^ The Thousand and One Nights; Or, The Arabian Night's Entertainments – David Claypoole Johnston – Google Books. Books.google.com.pk. Retrieved on 2013-09-23.
- ^ a b Irwin 2004, p. 50.
- ^ a b Reynolds p. 270
- ^ a b c Beaumont, Daniel. Literary Style and Narrative Technique in the Arabian Nights. p. 1. In The Arabian nights encyclopedia, Volume 1
- ^ a b c Irwin 2004, p. 55.
- ^ .
- ^ a b c Sallis, Eva. 1999. Sheherazade through the looking glass: the metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights. pp. 18–43
- ^ Payne, John (1901). The Book Of Thousand Nights And One Night. Vol. IX. London. p. 289. Retrieved 19 March 2018.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Pinault, David. Story-telling techniques in the Arabian nights. pp. 1–12. Also in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, v. 1
- ^ The Alif Laila or, Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Commonly Known as 'The Arabian Nights' Entertainments', Now, for the First Time, Published Complete in the Original Arabic, from an Egyptian Manuscript Brought to India by the Late Major Turner Macan, ed. by W. H. Macnaghten, vol. 4 (Calcutta: Thacker, 1839–42).
- ^ a b "Les Mille et une nuits". Bibliothèque nationale de France. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
- ISBN 90-04-07428-7.
- ^ Madeleine Dobie, 2009. Translation in the contact zone: Antoine Galland's Mille et une nuits: contes arabes. p. 37. In Makdisi, Saree and Felicity Nussbaum (eds.): "The Arabian Nights in Historical Context: Between East and West"
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 1–9.
- ISBN 977-19-2252-1.
- ^ a b c Goeje, Michael Jan de (1911). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 883.
- ^ a b c Sallis, Eva. 1999. Sheherazade through the looking glass: the metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights. pp. 4 passim
- ^ a b c Marzolph, Ulrich and Richard van Leeuwen. 2004. The Arabian nights encyclopedia, Volume 1. pp. 506–08
- ^ The Arabian Nights, trans. by Husain Haddawy (New York: Norton, 1990).
- ^ a b Irwin 2004.
- ^ 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).
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-06-28.
- ^ "truyen audio full". 2023-06-28.
- ^ PEN American Center. Pen.org. Retrieved on 2013-09-23.
- ^ Flood, Alison (December 15, 2021). "New Arabian Nights translation to strip away earlier versions' racism and sexism". www.theguardian.com. Retrieved December 15, 2021.
- ^ 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)
- ISBN 978-0-19-283479-9. Retrieved 2 July 2018.
- ^ Irwin 2010, p. 474.
- ^ Irwin 2010, p. 497.
- ^ Ganjavi, Mahdi. The Hidden Story of One Thousand and One Nights in Persian. Presentation at the University of British Columbia. Dec 2021
- ^
Ulrich Marzolph, The Arabian nights in transnational perspective, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8143-3287-0, p. 230.
- ^ S2CID 162223060.
- ^ Uther, Hans-Jorg (2004). The Types of International Folktales: Animal tales, tales of magic, religious tales, and realistic tales, with an introduction. FF Communications. Academia Scientiarum Fennica. p. 499.
- ISBN 1-57607-204-5.
- ^ Burton, Richard (September 2003). The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1. Project Gutenberg. Archived from the original on 2012-01-18. Retrieved 2008-10-17.
- ^ S2CID 162223060.
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 200.
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 198.
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 199–200.
- S2CID 162223060.
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 193–194.
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 199.
- ^ ISBN 1-57607-204-5.
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 93.
- ISBN 1-57607-204-5.
- ISBN 1-57607-204-5.
- ^ "Ali with the Large Member" is only in the Wortley Montague manuscript (1764), which is in the Bodleian Library, and is not found in Burton or any of the other standard translations. (Ref: Arabian Nights Encyclopedia).
- ISBN 90-04-09530-6.
- ISBN 0-8143-3259-5.
- ISBN 90-04-09530-6.
- ISBN 90-04-09530-6.
- ISBN 0-8143-3259-5.
- ISBN 1-57607-204-5.
- ISBN 1-85043-768-8.
- ^ Al-Hakawati. "The Story of Gherib and his Brother Agib". Thousand Nights and One Night. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008. Retrieved October 2, 2008.
- ^ Musa bin Nusayr.
- ISBN 978-1-57863-269-5.
- ^ a b Irwin 2004, p. 209.
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 204.
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 190.
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 211–212.
- S2CID 161610007.
- ISBN 90-04-09530-6.
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 213.
- S2CID 161610007.
- ^ Burton Nights. Mythfolklore.net (2005-01-01). Retrieved on 2013-09-23.
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 290.
- ISBN 0-380-86553-X.
- ^ Blue, J.; (2006) Categories for Naming Planetary Features. Retrieved November 16, 2006.
- ^ "IAU Information Bulletin No. 104" (PDF). Iau.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. Retrieved 2021-11-06.
- ^ Reynolds p. 272
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 81–82.
- ^ a b "Encyclopaedia Iranica". Iranicaonline.org. Retrieved 2013-10-18.
- ISBN 0-86304-020-9.
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 92–94.
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 96–99.
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 61–62.
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 14.
- ^ Reynolds pp. 279–81
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 238–241.
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 242.
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 245–260.
- ^ "The manuscripts, Letter from Andrew Millar to Robert Wodrow, 5 August, 1725. Andrew Millar Project. University of Edinburgh". www.millar-project.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
- ^ A. S. Byatt On Histories and Stories (Harvard University Press, 2001) p. 167
- ^ Wordsworth in Book Five of The Prelude; Tennyson in his poem "Recollections of the Arabian Nights". (Irwin, pp. 266–69)
- ^ Irwin 2004, p. 270.
- ^ a b Byatt p. 168
- ^ "The Cat and the Moon and Certain Poems by William Butler Yeats" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09.
- ISBN 978-1-349-00646-5– via Google Books.
- ^ Irwin 2004, pp. 291–292.
- .
- ^ ISBN 978-1-57958-146-6.
- ^ "Arabian Nights (1946)". Indiancine.ma.
- ISBN 0-452-25993-2.
- ^ One Thousand and One Arabian Nights Review (1969). Thespinningimage.co.uk. Retrieved on 2013-09-23.
- ^ "Dangal TV's new fantasy drama Alif Laila soon on TV". ABP News. 2020-02-24.
- ^ "ألف ليلة وليلة ׀ ليلى والإشكيف׃ تتر بداية". YouTube. Retrieved 6 November 2021.
- ^ 1001 Nights heads to Discovery Kids Asia. Kidscreen (2013-06-13). Retrieved on 2013-09-23.
- ^ The Most Ambitious Movie At This Year's Cannes Film Festival is 'Arabian Nights'. Retrieved on 2015-01-18.
- ^ ألف ليلة وليلة .. الليلة الأولى: حكاية شهريار ولقائه الأول مع شهرزاد. Egyptian Radio.
- ^ See Encyclopædia Iranica (NB: Some of the dates provided there are wrong)
- ^ Irwin, Robert (March 12, 2011). "The Arabian Nights: a thousand and one illustrations". The Guardian.
- ^ "Classics Illustrated #8 [HRN 51] - Arabian Nights", Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Apr. 27, 2021.
General sources
- Irwin, Robert (2004). The Arabian Nights: A Companion. London: I.B. Tauris. OCLC 693781081.
- Irwin, Robert (2010). The Arabian Nights: A Companion. London: I.B. Tauris. OCLC 843203755.
- Ch. Pellat, "Alf Layla Wa Layla" in Encyclopædia Iranica. Online Access June 2011 at [1]
- David Pinault Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights (Brill Publishers, 1992)
- 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),
- Ulrich Marzolph (ed.) The Arabian Nights Reader (Wayne State University Press, 2006)
- Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen, Hassan Wassouf,The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia (2004)
- Yamanaka, Yuriko and Nishio, Tetsuo (ed.) The Arabian Nights and Orientalism – Perspectives from East and West (I.B. Tauris, 2006) ISBN 1-85043-768-8
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. JSTOR 4183550. 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. JSTOR j.ctt9qfrpw.
- 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).
- 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
- 1001 Nights
- The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Selected and Edited by Andrew Lang, Longmans, Green and Co., 1918 (1898)
- The Arabian Nights public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- The Arabian Nights, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Robert Irwin, Marina Warner and Gerard van Gelder (In Our Time, October 18, 2007)
- The Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I by Lane-Poole, Poole, Harvey, and Lane – HTML, EPUB, Kindle, plain text
- 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.