Editing One Thousand and One Nights

{{short description|Collection of Middle Eastern folk tales}}
{{Redirect2|1001 Nights|Arabian Nights|other uses|One Thousand and One Nights (disambiguation)|and|1001 Nights (disambiguation)|and|Arabian Nights (disambiguation)}}
{{Infobox book
| name              = One Thousand and One Nights
| image             = Cassim.jpg
| caption           = ''[[Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves|Cassim in the Cave]]''<br />by [[Maxfield Parrish]] (1909)
| orig_lang_code    = ar
| language          = [[Classical Arabic|Arabic]]
| subject           = 
| genre             = [[Frame story]], [[folklore]]
| set_in            = [[Middle Ages]]
| wikisource        = One Thousand and One Nights
}}
{{Arab culture}}

'''''One Thousand and One Nights''''' ({{langx|ar|أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ}}, {{Transliteration|ar|Alf Laylah wa-Laylah}}),<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia|author=Marzolph, Ulrich|title=Arabian Nights|encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia of Islam|edition=3rd|editor=Kate Fleet |editor2=Gudrun Krämer |editor3=Denis Matringe |editor4=John Nawas |editor5=Everett Rowson|year=2007|quote=Arabian Nights, the work known in Arabic as ''Alf layla wa-layla''|doi=10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_0021}}</ref> is a collection of [[History of the Middle East|Middle Eastern]] [[List of fairy tales|folktales]] compiled in the Arabic language during the [[Islamic Golden Age]]. It is often known in English as '''''The Arabian Nights''''', from the first English-language edition ({{c.|1706–1721}}), which rendered the title as '''''The Arabian Nights' Entertainments'''''.<ref>See illustration of title page of Grub St Edition in Yamanaka and Nishio (p. 225)</ref>

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 literature|Arabic]], [[Persian literature|Persian]], and [[Mesopotamian myths|Mesopotamian]] literature.<ref>{{cite book|title=Translating Myth |editor=Ben Pestell |editor2=Pietra Palazzolo |editor3=Leon Burnett |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YOoyDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT87|year=2016|publisher=Routledge|page=87|isbn=978-1-134-86256-6 }}</ref> Most tales, however, were originally folk stories from the [[Abbasid]] and [[Mamluk Sultanate|Mamluk eras]], while others, especially the frame story, are probably drawn from the [[Middle Persian literature#"Pahlavi" literature|Pahlavi Persian work]] {{transliteration|fa|Hezār Afsān}} ({{langx|fa|هزار افسان}}, {{lit|A Thousand Tales}}), which in turn may be translations of [[Indian literature|older Indian texts]].<ref>{{Citation| last=Marzolph| encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia of Islam| title=Arabian Nights| year=2007| publisher=Brill| volume=I| location=Leiden| postscript=.}}</ref>

Common to all the editions of the ''Nights'' is the [[framing device]] of the story of the ruler [[List of One Thousand and One Nights characters#Shahryar|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 (poetry)|verse]] is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are single [[couplet]]s or [[quatrain]]s, although some are longer.

Some of the stories commonly associated with the ''Arabian Nights''—particularly "[[Aladdin|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 [[Syria|Syrian]] writer [[Hanna Diyab]] during the latter's visit to [[Paris]].<ref>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. [http://www.wollamshram.ca/1001/index.htm Text of "Alaeddin and the enchanted lamp"]</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Horta |first=Paulo Lemos |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OuMZDgAAQBAJ&q=Hanna+Diyab+syrian&pg=PA2 |title=Marvellous Thieves |date=2017-01-16 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-97377-0 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Doyle |first=Laura |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LWYGEAAAQBAJ&q=Hanna+Diyab+syrian&pg=PT78 |title=Inter-imperiality: Vying Empires, Gendered Labor, and the Literary Arts of Alliance |date=2020-11-02 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-1-4780-1261-0 |language=en}}</ref> Other stories, such as "[[Sinbad the Sailor|The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor]]", had an independent existence before being added to the collection.

==Synopsis==
{{See also|List of stories within One Thousand and One Nights|List of One Thousand and One Nights characters}}
[[File:Ferdinand Keller - Scheherazade und Sultan Schariar (1880).jpg|thumb|Scheherazade and Shahryar by [[Ferdinand Keller (painter)|Ferdinand Keller]], 1880]]
The main [[frame story]] concerns Shahryār, a king who ruled an empire that stretched from Persia to India.<ref>''The Arabian Nights'', translated by Malcolm C. Lyons and Ursula Lyons (Penguin Classics, 2008), vol. 1, p. 1</ref> Shahryār is shocked to learn that his brother's wife is unfaithful. Discovering that his own wife's infidelity has been even more flagrant, he has her killed. In his bitterness and grief, he decides that all women are the same. Shahryār begins to marry a succession of [[virgin]]s only to execute each one the next morning, before she has a chance to dishonor him.

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.
[[File:Fisherman 2.jpg|thumb|1898 illustration of ''[[The Fisherman and the Jinni]]'' by [[René Bull]]]]
The tales vary widely: they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, [[Burlesque (literature)|burlesques]], and various forms of [[erotica]]. Numerous stories depict [[jinn]], [[ghoul]]s, ape people, [[Sorcerer (fantasy)|sorcerers]], [[Magician (fantasy)|magicians]], and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally. Common [[protagonist]]s include the historical [[Abbasid caliph]] [[Harun al-Rashid]], his [[Grand Vizier]], [[Ja'far ibn Yahya|Jafar al-Barmaki]], and the famous poet [[Abu Nuwas]], despite the fact that these figures lived some 200 years after the fall of the [[Sassanid Empire]], in which the frame tale of Scheherazade is set. Sometimes a character in Scheherazade's tale will begin telling other characters a story of their own, and that story may have another one told within it, resulting in a richly layered narrative texture.

Versions differ, at least in detail, as to final endings (in some Scheherazade asks for a pardon, in some the king sees their children and decides not to execute his wife, in some other things happen that make the king distracted) but they all end with the king giving his wife a pardon and sparing her life.

The narrator's standards for what constitutes a [[cliffhanger]] seem broader than in modern literature. While in many cases a story is cut off with the hero in danger of losing their life or another kind of deep trouble, in some parts of the full text Scheherazade stops her narration in the middle of an exposition of abstract philosophical principles or complex points of [[Islamic philosophy]], and in one case during a detailed description of [[Medicine in medieval Islam#Human anatomy and physiology|human anatomy]] according to [[Galen]]—and in all of these cases she turns out to be justified in her belief that the king's curiosity about the sequel would buy her another day of life.

A number of [[Story within a story|stories within]] the ''One Thousand and One Nights'' also feature [[science fiction]] elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", where the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the [[Elixir of life|herb of immortality]] leads him to explore the seas, journey to the [[Garden of Eden]] and to [[Jahannam]], and travel across the [[cosmos]] to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of [[Galaxy|galactic]] science fiction;<ref name=Irwin>{{cite book |title=The Arabian Nights: A Companion|first=Robert|last=Irwin|publisher=[[I.B. Tauris|Tauris Parke Paperbacks]]|year=2003|isbn=1-86064-983-1|page=209}}</ref> along the way, he encounters societies of [[jinn]]s,<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights: A Companion|first=Robert|last=Irwin|publisher=[[I.B. Tauris|Tauris Parke Paperbacks]]|year=2003|isbn=1-86064-983-1|page=204}}</ref> [[mermaid]]s, talking [[Serpent (symbolism)|serpents]], talking [[tree]]s, and other forms of life.<ref name=Irwin/> In another ''Arabian Nights'' tale, the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater [[submarine]] society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of [[primitive communism]] where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. Other ''Arabian Nights'' tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights: A Companion|first=Robert|last=Irwin|publisher=[[I.B. Tauris|Tauris Parke Paperbacks]]|year=2003|isbn=1-86064-983-1|pages=211–212}}</ref> "The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on an [[archaeological]] expedition<ref name="Hamori 1971 p.9">{{cite journal |title=An Allegory from the Arabian Nights: The City of Brass|first=Andras|last=Hamori|journal=[[Bulletin of the School of Oriental & African Studies]]|volume=34|issue=1|year=1971|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|pages=9–19 [9]|doi=10.1017/S0041977X00141540 |s2cid=161610007 }}</ref> across the [[Sahara]] to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that [[Solomon]] once used to trap a [[jinn]],{{sfn|Pinault|1992|pp=148–149, 217–219}} and, along the way, encounter a [[mummified]] queen, [[petrified]] inhabitants,<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights: A Companion|first=Robert|last=Irwin|publisher=[[I.B. Tauris|Tauris Parke Paperbacks]]|year=2003|isbn=1-86064-983-1|page=213}}</ref> life-like [[humanoid robot]]s and [[automata]], seductive [[marionette]]s dancing without strings,<ref name="Hamori 1971 pp.12–13">{{cite journal|title=An Allegory from the Arabian Nights: The City of Brass|first=Andras|last=Hamori|journal=[[School of Oriental and African Studies|Bulletin of the School of Oriental & African Studies]]|volume=34|issue=1|year=1971|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|pages=9–19 [12–13]|doi=10.1017/S0041977X00141540 |s2cid=161610007 }}</ref> and a brass horseman [[robot]] who directs the party towards the ancient city. "The Ebony Horse" features a robot{{sfn|Pinault|1992|pp=10–11}} in the form of a flying mechanical horse controlled using keys that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun,<ref>{{cite book|title=One Thousand and One Arabian Nights|last=Geraldine McCaughrean|first=Rosamund Fowler|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=1999|isbn=0-19-275013-5|pages=247–251}}</ref> while the "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the form of an uncanny [[Sailor|boatman]].{{sfn|Pinault|1992|pp=10–11}} "The City of Brass" and "The Ebony Horse" can be considered early examples of proto-science fiction.<ref>[http://www.islamscifi.com/?Academic_Literature Academic Literature] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170630231017/http://www.islamscifi.com/?Academic_Literature |date=2017-06-30 }}, Islam and Science Fiction</ref>

==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 (writer)|Robert Irwin]] summarises their findings:

{{blockquote|In the 1880s and 1890s a lot of work was done on the ''Nights'' by [[Hermann Zotenberg|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.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=48}}}}

===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''.<ref name="Reynolds p.271">Reynolds p. 271</ref> 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.<ref name="EI2">{{Cite encyclopedia|author=Hamori, A.|title=S̲h̲ahrazād|year=2012|encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia of Islam|edition=2nd|publisher=Brill|editor=P. Bearman|editor2=Th. Bianquis|editor3=C.E. Bosworth|editor4=E. van Donzel|editor5=W.P. Heinrichs|doi=10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_6771}}</ref> Indian folklore is represented in the ''Nights'' by certain animal stories, which reflect influence from ancient [[Sanskrit literature|Sanskrit fables]]. The influence of the ''[[Panchatantra]]'' and ''[[Baital Pachisi]]'' is particularly notable.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48511/48511-h/48511-h.htm|title=Vikram and the Vampire, or, Tales of Hindu devilry, by Richard Francis Burton—A Project Gutenberg eBook|page=xiii|website=www.gutenberg.org}}</ref>

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,<ref>Artola. ''Pancatantra'' Manuscripts from South India in the ''Adyar Library Bulletin''. 1957. pp. 45&nbsp;ff.</ref> Lao,<ref>K. Raksamani. ''The Nandakaprakarana attributed to Vasubhaga, a Comparative Study''. University of Toronto Thesis. 1978. pp. 221&nbsp;ff.</ref> Thai,<ref>E. Lorgeou. ''Les entretiensde Nang Tantrai''. Paris. 1924.</ref> and [[Old Javanese]].<ref>C. Hooykaas. Bibliotheca Javaneca No. 2. Bandoeng. 1931.</ref> 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.<ref>A. K. Warder. ''Indian Kāvya Literature: The art of storytelling, Volume VI''. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 1992. pp. 61–62, 76–82.</ref>

The ''Panchatantra'' and various tales from ''Jatakas'' were first translated into Persian by [[Borzūya]] in 570 CE;<ref>[http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106622 IIS.ac.uk Dr Fahmida Suleman, "Kalila wa Dimna"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131103111055/http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106622 |date=2013-11-03 }}, in ''Medieval Islamic Civilization, An Encyclopaedia'', Vol. II, pp. 432–433, ed. Josef W. Meri, New York-London: Routledge, 2006</ref> they were later translated into Arabic by [[Ibn al-Muqaffa]] in 750 CE.<ref>''The Fables of Kalila and Dimnah'', translated from the Arabic by Saleh Sa'adeh Jallad, 2002. Melisende, London, {{ISBN|1-901764-14-1}}</ref> The Arabic version was translated into several languages, including Syriac, Greek, Hebrew and Spanish.<ref>Kalilah and Dimnah; or, The fables of Bidpai; being an account of their literary history, [https://archive.org/stream/kalilahdimnahorf00bdpkuoft#page/n19/mode/2up p. xiv]</ref>

===Persian prototype: {{transliteration|fa|Hezār Afsān}}===
[[File:Kelileh va Demneh.jpg|thumb|A page from Kelileh va Demneh dated 1429, from Herat, a Persian version of the original ancient Indian [[Panchatantra]] – depicts the manipulative jackal-vizier, Dimna, trying to lead his lion-king into war.]]
The earliest mentions of the ''Nights'' refer to it as an Arabic translation from a Persian book, {{transliteration|fa|Hezār Afsān}} (also known as ''Afsaneh'' or ''Afsana''), meaning 'The Thousand Stories'. In the tenth century, [[Ibn al-Nadim]] compiled a catalogue of books (the "[[Fihrist]]") in Baghdad. He noted that the [[Sasanian dynasty|Sassanid]] kings of Iran enjoyed "evening tales and fables".{{sfn|Pinault|1992|p=1}} Al-Nadim then writes about the Persian {{transliteration|fa|Hezār 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.{{sfn|Pinault|1992|p=4}}

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".{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=49–50}} In the same century [[Al-Masudi]] also refers to the {{transliteration|fa|Hezār Afsān}}, saying the Arabic translation is called {{transliteration|ar|Alf Khurafa}} ('A Thousand Entertaining Tales'), but is generally known as {{transliteration|ar|Alf Layla}} ('A Thousand Nights'). He mentions the characters Shirāzd (Scheherazade) and Dināzād.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=49}}

No physical evidence of the {{transliteration|fa|Hezār Afsān}} has survived,<ref name="Reynolds p.271"/> so its exact relationship with the existing later Arabic versions remains a mystery.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=51}} Apart from the Scheherazade frame story, several other tales have Persian origins, although it is unclear how they entered the collection.<ref>Eva Sallis ''Scheherazade Through the Looking-Glass: The Metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights'' (Routledge, 1999), p. 2 and note 6</ref> 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 {{transliteration|pal|Bakhtiyārnāma}}).{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=76}}

In the 1950s, the [[Iraqi people|Iraqi]] scholar [[Safa Khulusi]] suggested (on internal rather than historical evidence) that the Persian writer [[Ibn al-Muqaffa']] was responsible for the first Arabic translation of the frame story and some of the Persian stories later incorporated into the Nights. This would place genesis of the collection in the eighth century.<ref>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.</ref><ref>Safa Khulusi, The Influence of Ibn al-Muqaffa' on The Arabian Nights. ''Islamic Review'', Dec 1960, pp. 29–31</ref>

===Evolving Arabic versions===
[[File:Princess Parizade Bringing Home the Singing Tree.jpg|thumb|[[The Sisters Envious of Their Cadette|The story of ''Princess Parizade'' and the ''Magic Tree'']] by [[Maxfield Parrish]], 1906<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=ATkQAAAAYAAJ&dq=princess+parizade&pg=PA543 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.</ref>]]

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''.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=51}} The first reference to the Arabic version under its full title ''The One Thousand and One Nights'' appears in Cairo in the 12th century.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=50}} Professor Dwight Reynolds describes the subsequent transformations of the Arabic version:

{{blockquote|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 [[Ja'far ibn Yahya|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.<ref name="Reynolds p.270">Reynolds p. 270</ref>}}

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 [[Galland Manuscript]]. It and surviving copies of it are much shorter and include fewer tales than the Egyptian tradition. It is represented in print by the so-called ''Calcutta I'' (1814–1818) and most notably by the 'Leiden edition' (1984).<ref name=beaustyle>Beaumont, Daniel. Literary Style and Narrative Technique in the Arabian Nights. p. 1. In ''The Arabian nights encyclopedia'', Volume 1</ref>{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=55}} The Leiden Edition, prepared by [[Muhsin Mahdi]], is the only [[critical edition]] of 1001 Nights to date,<ref name="Marzolph, Ulrich 2017">{{Cite encyclopedia|author=Marzolph, Ulrich|title=Arabian Nights|encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia of Islam|edition=3rd|editor1=Kate Fleet|editor2=Gudrun Krämer|editor3=Denis Matringe|editor4=John Nawas|editor5=Everett Rowson|publisher=Brill|year=2017|doi=10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_0021}}</ref> believed to be most stylistically faithful representation of medieval Arabic versions currently available.<ref name=beaustyle/>{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=55}}

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,<ref name="sallis">[[Eva Sallis|Sallis, Eva]]. 1999. Sheherazade through the looking glass: the metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights. pp. 18–43</ref> and were being included as late as in the 18th and 19th centuries.

All extant substantial versions of both [[recension]]s share a small common core of tales:<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.172872|title=The Book Of Thousand Nights And One Night |volume=IX |last1=Payne|first1=John|date=1901|location=London|page=[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.172872/page/n317 289]|access-date=19 March 2018}}</ref>

* The Merchant and the Genie
* [[The Fisherman and the Jinni|The Fisherman and the Genie]]
* The Porter and the Three Ladies
* [[The Three Apples]]
* [[s:Tale of Núr al-Dín Alí and His Son Badr al-Dín Hasan|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.<ref name="sallis" /><ref>Pinault, David. Story-telling techniques in the Arabian nights. pp. 1–12. Also in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, v. 1</ref>

=== 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" ([[Hermann Zotenberg|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.
[[File:Arabic manuscript with parts of Arabian Nights, collected by scholar and traveler Heinrich Friedrich von Diez, 19th century CE.jpg|thumb|Arabic manuscript with parts of Arabian Nights, collected by Heinrich Friedrich von Diez, 19th century CE, origin unknown]]
The ''Nights'' were next printed in Arabic in two volumes in Calcutta by the [[British East India Company]] in 1814–1818. Each volume contained one hundred tales.

Soon after, the Prussian scholar [[Christian Habicht (historian)|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.<ref name="Marzolph, Ulrich 2017" />

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).<ref>''[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009733325 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).</ref> This claimed to be based on an older Egyptian manuscript (which has never been found).

A major recent edition, which reverts to the [[Syria]]n recension, is a critical edition based on the fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Syrian manuscript in the [[Bibliothèque Nationale]], originally used by Galland.<ref name="BnF manuscript">{{cite web |title=Les Mille et une nuits |url=https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8433372b |website=Bibliothèque nationale de France |access-date=29 September 2020}}</ref> This edition, known as the Leiden text, was compiled in Arabic by [[Muhsin Mahdi]] (1984–1994).<ref>''The Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-layla), from the Earliest Known Sources'', ed. by Muhsin Mahdi, 3 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1984–1994), {{ISBN|90-04-07428-7}}.</ref> Mahdi argued that this version is the earliest extant one (a view that is largely accepted today) and that it reflects most closely a "definitive" coherent text ancestral to all others that he believed to have existed during the [[Mamluk]] period (a view that remains contentious).<ref name="sallis" /><ref>Madeleine Dobie, 2009. Translation in the contact zone: Antoine Galland's Mille et une nuits: contes arabes. p. 37. In [[Saree Makdisi]] and [[Felicity Nussbaum]] (eds.): "The Arabian Nights in Historical Context: Between East and West"</ref>{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=1–9}} Still, even scholars who deny this version the exclusive status of "the only ''real'' Arabian Nights" recognize it as being the best source on the original ''style'' and linguistic form of the medieval work.<ref name="beaustyle" />{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=55}}

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.<ref>''Alf laylah wa-laylah: bi-al-ʻāmmīyah al-Miṣrīyah: layālī al-ḥubb wa-al-ʻishq'', ed. by Hishām ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz and ʻĀdil ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd (Cairo: Dār al-Khayyāl, 1997), {{ISBN|977-19-2252-1}}.</ref>

===Modern translations===
{{main|Translations of One Thousand and One Nights}}
[[File:William-Strang-Sindbad-AliBaba-titlepage.JPG|thumb|''Sindbad the sailor and Ali Baba and the forty thieves'' by [[William Strang]], 1896]]
The first European version (1704–1717) was translated into [[French language|French]] by [[Antoine Galland]]<ref name=EB1911>{{cite EB1911 |wstitle=Thousand and One Nights |volume=28 |page=883 |first=Michael Jan de |last=Goeje |author-link=Michael Jan de Goeje}}</ref> from an Arabic text of the Syrian recension and other sources. This 12-volume work,<ref name=EB1911/> ''[[Les mille et une nuits|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|Aladdin's Lamp]]", and "[[Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves]]" (as well as several other lesser-known tales) appeared first in Galland's translation and cannot be found in any of the original manuscripts. He wrote that he heard them from the Christian Maronite storyteller [[Hanna Diab]] during Diab's visit to Paris. Galland's version of the ''Nights'' was immensely popular throughout Europe, and later versions were issued by Galland's publisher using Galland's name without his consent.

As scholars were looking for the presumed "complete" and "original" form of the Nights, they naturally turned to the more voluminous texts of the Egyptian recension, which soon came to be viewed as the "standard version". The first translations of this kind, such as that of [[Edward William Lane|Edward Lane]] (1840, 1859), were [[bowdlerized]]. Unabridged and unexpurgated translations were made, first by [[John Payne (poet)|John Payne]], under the title ''The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night'' (1882, nine volumes), and then by [[Sir Richard Francis Burton]], entitled ''[[The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night]]'' (1885, ten volumes)&nbsp;– the latter was, according to some assessments, partially based on the former, leading to charges of [[plagiarism]].<ref name=sallis2/><ref name=encyclo>Marzolph, Ulrich and Richard van Leeuwen. 2004. ''The Arabian nights encyclopedia'', Volume 1. pp. 506–508</ref>

In view of the [[Human sexuality|sexual]] imagery in the source texts (which Burton emphasized even further, especially by adding extensive footnotes and appendices on Oriental sexual mores<ref name=encyclo/>) and the strict [[Victorian morality|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.<ref name=EB1911/>  It has, however, been criticized for its "archaic language and extravagant idiom" and "obsessive focus on sexuality" (and has even been called an "eccentric [[wikt:ego-trip|ego-trip]]" and a "highly personal reworking of the text").<ref name=encyclo/>

Later versions of the ''Nights'' include that of the [[French people|French]] doctor [[J. C. Mardrus]], issued from 1898 to 1904. It was translated into English by [[Powys Mathers]], and issued in 1923. Like Payne's and Burton's texts, it is based on the Egyptian recension and retains the erotic material, indeed expanding on it, but it has been criticized for inaccuracy.<ref name=sallis2>Sallis, Eva. 1999. Sheherazade through the looking glass: the metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights. pp. 4 ''passim''</ref>

[[Muhsin Mahdi]]'s 1984 Leiden edition, based on the Galland Manuscript, was rendered into English by Husain Haddawy (1990).<ref>''The Arabian Nights'', trans. by Husain Haddawy (New York: Norton, 1990).</ref> This translation has been praised as "very readable" and "strongly recommended for anyone who wishes to taste the authentic flavour of those tales".{{sfn|Irwin|2004}} An additional second volume of ''Arabian nights'' translated by Haddawy, composed of popular tales ''not'' present in the Leiden edition, was published in 1995.<ref>''The Arabian Nights II: Sindbad and Other Popular Stories'', trans. by Husain Haddawy (New York: Norton, 1995).</ref> Both volumes were the basis for a single-volume reprint of selected tales of Haddawy's translations.<ref>''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).</ref>

A new English translation was published by Penguin Classics in three volumes in 2008.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Buchan |first=James |date=2008-12-27 |title=1,001 flights of fancy |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/dec/27/arabian-nights-malcolm-c-lyons |access-date=2023-06-28 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=truyen audio full |url=https://www.truyenvietaudio.com/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180806122214/http://truyenvietaudio.com/ |url-status=usurped |archive-date=August 6, 2018 |website=2023-06-28}}</ref> It is translated by Malcolm C. Lyons and Ursula Lyons with introduction and annotations by Robert Irwin. This is the first complete translation of the Macnaghten or Calcutta II edition (Egyptian recension) since Burton's. It contains, in addition to the standard text of 1001 Nights, the so-called "orphan stories" of ''[[Aladdin]]'' and ''[[Ali Baba]]'' as well as an alternative ending to ''The seventh journey of [[Sindbad]]'' from [[Antoine Galland]]'s original French. As the translator himself notes in his preface to the three volumes, "[N]o attempt has been made to superimpose on the translation changes that would be needed to 'rectify' ... accretions, ... repetitions, non sequiturs and confusions that mark the present text," and the work is a "representation of what is primarily oral literature, appealing to the ear rather than the eye".<ref>[http://www.pen.org/blog/?p=4056 PEN American Center]. Pen.org. Retrieved on 2013-09-23.</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights|url=http://www.theomnivore.co.uk/Book/Classification/Fiction/Genre/Classic_Fiction/1527-The_Arabian_Nights_Tales_of_1001_Nights/Default.aspx|access-date=12 July 2024|website=[[The Omnivore]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120913024501/http://www.theomnivore.co.uk/Book/Classification/Fiction/Genre/Classic_Fiction/1527-The_Arabian_Nights_Tales_of_1001_Nights/Default.aspx|archive-date=13 Sep 2012}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/15/new-arabian-nights-translation-to-strip-away-earlier-versions-racism-and-sexism|title=New Arabian Nights translation to strip away earlier versions' racism and sexism|first=Alison|last=Flood|work=www.theguardian.com|date=December 15, 2021|access-date=December 15, 2021}}</ref>

===Timeline===
[[File:Arabian nights manuscript.jpg|thumb|Arabic manuscript of ''The Thousand and One Nights'' dating back to the 14th century]]
Scholars have assembled a timeline concerning the publication history of ''The Nights'':<ref>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.</ref>{{sfn|Irwin|2004}}<ref>"The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century", by Martha Pike Conant, Ph.D. Columbia University Press (1908)</ref>
* 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.<ref name="Reynolds p.270"/>
* 10th century: mention of ''Hezār Afsān'' in [[Ibn al-Nadim]]'s "Fihrist" (Catalogue of books) in [[Baghdad]]. He attributes a pre-Islamic [[Sasanian dynasty|Sassanid]] Persian origin to the collection and refers to the frame story of Scheherazade telling stories over a thousand nights to save her life.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=49–50}}
* 10th century: reference to ''The Thousand Nights'', an Arabic translation of the Persian ''Hezār Afsān'' ("Thousand Stories"),  in ''Muruj Al-Dhahab'' ([[The Meadows of Gold]]) by [[Al-Mas'udi]].{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=49}}
* 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).{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=50}}
* 14th century: existing Syrian manuscript in the [[Bibliothèque nationale de France]] in Paris (contains about 300 tales).<ref name="BnF manuscript" />
* 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.<ref>{{cite book |year=2009 |orig-date=1995 |editor1-last=Mack |editor1-first=Robert L. |title=Arabian Nights' Entertainments |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZK0VDAAAQBAJ&q=%22collection+in+about+1721%22&pg=PR16 |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=xvi, xxv |isbn=978-0-19-283479-9 |access-date=2 July 2018 }}</ref>
* 1768: first [[Polish language|Polish]] translation, 12 volumes. Based, as with many European versions, on the [[French language|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.{{sfn|Irwin|2010|p=474}}
* 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".{{sfn|Irwin|2010|p=497}}
* Early 19th century: [[Modern Persian]] translations of the text are made, variously under the title ''Alf leile va leile'', ''Hezār-o yek šhab'' ({{lang|fa|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.<ref>Ganjavi, Mahdi. The Hidden Story of One Thousand and One Nights in Persian. Presentation at the University of British Columbia. Dec 2021</ref> It was later illustrated by [[Sani ol Molk]] (1814–1866)  for [[Mohammad Shah Qajar]].<ref>
Ulrich Marzolph, ''The Arabian nights in transnational perspective'', 2007, {{ISBN|978-0-8143-3287-0}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=tknULXNl21oC&pg=PA230 p. 230].</ref>
* 1825–1838: the Breslau/Habicht edition is published in [[Arabic]] in eight volumes. Christian Maximilian Habicht (born in [[Breslau]], [[Kingdom of Prussia|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.<ref name="Marzolph, Ulrich 2017"/> Using versions of ''Nights'', tales from Al-Najjar, and other stories of unknown origin, Habicht published his version in Arabic and [[German language|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 (poet)|John Payne]] publishes an English version translated entirely from Calcutta II, adding some tales from Calcutta I and Breslau.
* 1885–1888: [[Sir Richard Francis Burton]] publishes [[The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night|an English translation]] from several sources (largely the same as Payne<ref name=sallis2/>). His version accentuated the sexuality of the stories ''vis-à-vis'' Lane's [[bowdlerized]] translation.
* 1889–1904: J. C. Mardrus publishes a French version using Bulaq and Calcutta II editions.
* 1973: First [[Polish language|Polish]] translation based on the original language edition, but compressed 12 volumes to 9, by [[Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy]].
* 1984: [[Muhsin Mahdi]] publishes an Arabic edition based on the oldest surviving Arabic manuscript (based on the oldest surviving Syrian manuscript currently held in the Bibliothèque Nationale).
* 1986–1987: French translation by Arabist [[René R. Khawam]].
* 1990: Husain Haddawy publishes an English translation of Mahdi.
* 1991: French translation by Arabists Jamel-Eddine Bencheikh and [[André Miquel]] for the [[Bibliothèque de la Pléiade]].
* 2008: New Penguin Classics translation (in three volumes) by Malcolm C. Lyons and Ursula Lyons of the Calcutta II edition

==Literary themes and techniques==
[[File:Thousand_and_One_Nights_21.jpg|thumb|Illustration of ''One Thousand and One Nights'' by [[Sani ol Molk]], Iran, 1853]]

The ''One Thousand and One Nights'' and various tales within it make use of many innovative [[literary technique]]s, which the storytellers of the tales rely on for increased drama, suspense, or other emotions.<ref name=Heath/> Some of these date back to earlier [[Persian literature|Persian]], [[Indian literature|Indian]] and [[Arabic literature]], while others were original to the ''One Thousand and One Nights''.

===Frame story===
The ''One Thousand and One Nights'' employs an early example of the [[frame story]], or [[framing device]]: the character [[Scheherazade]] narrates a set of tales (most often [[fairy tale]]s) to the Sultan [[Shahrayar|Shahriyar]] over many nights. Many of Scheherazade's tales are themselves frame stories, such as the ''[[Sinbad the Sailor|Tale of Sinbad the Seaman and Sinbad the Landsman]]'', which is a collection of adventures related by Sinbad the Seaman to Sinbad the Landsman.

In [[folkloristics]], the frame story is classified as ATU 875B*, "Storytelling Saves a Wife from Death".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Uther |first1=Hans-Jorg |author-link=Hans-Jörg Uther |title=The Types of International Folktales: Animal tales, tales of magic, religious tales, and realistic tales, with an introduction. FF Communications |date=2004 |publisher=Academia Scientiarum Fennica |page=499 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HVQsAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Storytelling+Saves+a+Wife+from+Death%22}}</ref>

===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.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia|last=Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen|first=Hassan Wassouf|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=2004|isbn=1-57607-204-5|pages=3–4}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite book
 | last=Burton
 | first=Richard
 | author-link=Richard Francis Burton
 | title=The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1
 | publisher=[[Project Gutenberg]]
 | date=September 2003
 | url=http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/11001108.txt
 | access-date=2008-10-17
 | archive-date=2012-01-18
 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120118141047/http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/11001108.txt
 }}</ref> 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 "[[#Unreliable narrator|The Seven Viziers]]". In yet another tale Scheherazade narrates, "[[The Fisherman and the Jinni]]", the "Tale of the Wazir and the Sage [[List of One Thousand and One Nights characters#Duban|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'',<ref name=Heath-360/> such as the tale of "[[The Three Apples]]" (see [[#Crime fiction elements|Crime fiction elements]] below).

===Fate and destiny===
A common [[Theme (literature)|theme]] in many ''Arabian Nights'' tales is [[wikt:fate|fate]] and [[destiny]]. Italian filmmaker [[Pier Paolo Pasolini]] observed:{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=200}}

{{blockquote|[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''.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=198}} The plot devices often used to present this theme are [[coincidence]],{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=199–200}} [[Retrocausality|reverse causation]], and the [[self-fulfilling prophecy]] (see Foreshadowing section below). {{Clear}}

===Foreshadowing===
[[File:The Valley of Diamonds by Maxfield Parrish.jpg|thumb|[[Sindbad]] and the Valley of Diamonds, from the Second Voyage]]

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."<ref>{{cite journal|first=Peter|last=Heath|title=Reviewed work(s): ''Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights'' by David Pinault|journal=[[International Journal of Middle East Studies]]|volume=26|issue=2|date=May 1994|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|pages=358–360 [359]|doi=10.1017/s0020743800060633|s2cid=162223060 }}</ref> A notable example is in the tale of "The Three Apples" (see [[#Crime fiction elements|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''.<ref name=Heath-360/>

==== 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 (Genesis)|Joseph]] and his conflicts with his brothers, in the [[Book of Genesis|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 (novel)|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".{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=193–194}}

"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 [[Retrocausality|reverse causation]].{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=199}}

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 [[Latin translations of the 12th century|translated into Latin]] by [[Petrus Alphonsi]] and included in his ''[[Disciplina Clericalis]]'',<ref name="Marzolph-109">{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia|last=Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen|first=Hassan Wassouf|publisher=[[ABC-CLIO]]|year=2004|isbn=1-57607-204-5|page=109}}</ref> alongside the "[[Seven Wise Masters|Sindibad]]" story cycle.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=93}} In the 14th century, a version of "The Tale of Attaf" also appears in the ''[[Gesta Romanorum]]'' and [[Giovanni Boccaccio]]'s ''[[The Decameron]]''.<ref name="Marzolph-109" />

===Repetition===
[[File:One_Thousand_and_One_Nights26.jpg|thumb|Illustration of ''One Thousand and One Nights'' by [[Sani ol molk]], Iran, 1849–1856]]

''[[Leitwortstil]]'' is "the purposeful [[Repetition (rhetorical device)|repetition]] of words" in a given literary piece that "usually expresses a [[Motif (narrative)|motif]] or [[Theme (literature)|theme]] important to the given story." This device occurs in the ''One Thousand and One Nights'', which binds several tales in a story cycle. The storytellers of the tales relied on this technique "to shape the constituent members of their story cycles into a coherent whole".<ref name=Heath>{{cite journal|first=Peter|last=Heath|title=Reviewed work(s): ''Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights'' by David Pinault|journal=[[International Journal of Middle East Studies]]|volume=26|issue=2|date=May 1994|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|pages=358–360 [359–60]|doi=10.1017/s0020743800060633|s2cid=162223060 }}</ref>

Another technique used in the ''One Thousand and One Nights'' is [[thematic patterning]], which is:<blockquote>[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.<ref name="Heath-360">{{cite journal|first=Peter|last=Heath|title=Reviewed work(s): ''Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights'' by David Pinault|journal=[[International Journal of Middle East Studies]]|volume=26|issue=2|date=May 1994|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|pages=358–360 [360]|doi=10.1017/s0020743800060633|s2cid=162223060 }}</ref></blockquote>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 ending]]s of previous variants and reworks the plot to give it a [[tragic]] ending instead, with the younger brother being poisoned by his elder brothers.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia|last=Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen|first=Hassan Wassouf|publisher=[[ABC-CLIO]]|year=2004|isbn=1-57607-204-5|page=4}}</ref>

===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]].<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia|last=Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen|first=Hassan Wassouf|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=2004|isbn=1-57607-204-5|pages=97–98}}</ref><ref>"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'').</ref>

===Unreliable narrator===
The literary device of the [[unreliable narrator]] was used in several fictional medieval [[Arabic literature|Arabic tales]] of the ''One Thousand and One Nights''. In one tale, "The Seven Viziers" (also known as "Craft and Malice of Women or The Tale of the King, His Son, His Concubine and the Seven Wazirs"), a [[courtesan]] accuses a king's son of having assaulted her, when in reality she had failed to seduce him (inspired by the [[Qur'anic]]/[[Biblical]] story of [[Joseph in Islam|Yusuf]]/[[Joseph (Hebrew Bible)|Joseph]]). Seven [[vizier]]s 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.{{sfn|Pinault|1992|p=59}} The unreliable narrator device is also used to generate [[suspense]] in "The Three Apples" and [[humor]] in "The Hunchback's Tale" (see [[#Crime fiction elements|Crime fiction elements]] below).

=== Genre elements ===
{{Anchor|Crime fiction elements}}

====Crime fiction====
[[File:Godefroy Durand - Morgiane.jpg|thumb|Illustration depicting [[Morgiana (character)|Morgiana]] and the thieves from ''[[Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves]]'']]
An example of the [[murder mystery]]<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights Reader|first=Ulrich|last=Marzolph|publisher=[[Wayne State University Press]]|year=2006|isbn=0-8143-3259-5|pages=240–242}}</ref> and [[Thriller (genre)|suspense thriller]] genres in the collection, with multiple [[plot twist]]s{{sfn|Pinault|1992|pp=93,95,97}} and [[detective fiction]] elements{{sfn|Pinault|1992|pp=91,93}} was "[[The Three Apples]]", also known as ''Hikayat al-sabiyya 'l-maqtula'' ('The Tale of the Murdered Young Woman').<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights Reader|first=Ulrich|last=Marzolph|publisher=[[Wayne State University Press]]|year=2006|isbn=0-8143-3259-5|page=240}}</ref>

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 ibn Yahya|Ja'far]], three days to find the culprit or be executed. At the end of three days, when Ja'far is about to be executed for his failure, two men come forward, both claiming to be the murderer. As they tell their story it transpires that, although the younger of them, the woman's husband, was responsible for her death, some of the blame attaches to a slave, who had taken one of the apples mentioned in the title and caused the woman's murder.

Harun then gives Ja'far three more days to find the guilty slave. When he yet again fails to find the culprit, and bids his family goodbye before his execution, he discovers by chance his daughter has the apple, which she obtained from Ja'far's own slave, Rayhan. Thus the mystery is solved.

Another ''Nights'' tale with [[crime fiction]] elements was "The Hunchback's Tale" story cycle which, unlike "The Three Apples", was more of a [[suspense]]ful [[comedy]] and [[courtroom drama]] rather than a murder mystery or detective fiction. The story is set in a fictional China and begins with a hunchback, the emperor's favourite [[comedian]], being invited to dinner by a [[tailor]] couple. The hunchback accidentally chokes on his food from laughing too hard and the couple, fearful that the emperor will be furious, take his body to a [[Medicine in medieval Islam|Jewish doctor]]'s [[Bimaristan|clinic]] and leave him there. This leads to the next tale in the cycle, the "Tale of the Jewish Doctor", where the doctor accidentally trips over the hunchback's body, falls down the stairs with him, and finds him dead, leading him to believe that the fall had killed him. The doctor then dumps his body down a chimney, and this leads to yet another tale in the cycle, which continues with twelve tales in total, leading to all the people involved in this incident finding themselves in a [[courtroom]], all making different claims over how the hunchback had died.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia|last=Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen|first=Hassan Wassouf|publisher=[[ABC-CLIO]]|year=2004|isbn=1-57607-204-5|pages=2–4}}</ref> Crime fiction elements are also present near the end of "The Tale of Attaf" (see [[#Foreshadowing|Foreshadowing]] above).

{{Anchor|Horror fiction elements}}

==== Horror fiction ====
[[Haunting]] is used as a [[plot device]] in [[gothic fiction]] and [[horror fiction]], as well as modern [[paranormal fiction]]. Legends about [[haunted house]]s have long appeared in literature. In particular, the ''Arabian Nights'' tale of "Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad" revolves around a house haunted by [[jinn]].<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East & West|last=Yuriko Yamanaka|first=Tetsuo Nishio|publisher=[[I.B. Tauris]]|year=2006|isbn=1-85043-768-8|page=83}}</ref> The ''Nights'' is almost certainly the earliest surviving literature that mentions [[ghoul]]s, and many of the stories in that collection involve or reference ghouls. A prime example is the story ''The History of Gherib and His Brother Agib'' (from ''Nights'' vol. 6), in which Gherib, an outcast prince, fights off a family of ravenous Ghouls and then enslaves them and converts them to [[Islam]].<ref>{{cite web|title=''The Story of Gherib and his Brother Agib''|work=Thousand Nights and One Night|author=Al-Hakawati|access-date=October 2, 2008|url=http://www.al-hakawati.net/english/Stories_Tales/laila170.asp|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081221142538/http://www.al-hakawati.net/english/Stories_Tales/laila170.asp|archive-date=December 21, 2008|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

Horror fiction elements are also found in "The City of Brass" tale, which revolves around a [[ghost town]].<ref name=Hamori>{{cite journal|doi=10.1017/S0041977X00141540|title=An Allegory from the Arabian Nights: The City of Brass|first=Andras|last=Hamori|journal=[[Bulletin of the School of Oriental & African Studies]]|volume=34|issue=1|year=1971|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|pages=9–19 [10]|s2cid=161610007}} The hero of the tale is an historical person, [[Musa bin Nusayr]].</ref>

The horrific nature of [[Scheherazade]]'s situation is magnified in [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Misery (novel)|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''.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Necronomicon Files: The Truth Behind Lovecraft's Legend |author=Daniel Harms |author2=John Wisdom Gonce III |publisher=Weiser|year=2003|isbn=978-1-57863-269-5|pages=87–90}}</ref>

{{Anchor|Fantasy and science fiction elements}}

==== Fantasy and science fiction ====
[[File:More tales from the Arabian nights-14566176968.jpg|thumb|An illustration of the ''story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou'', ''More tales from the Arabian nights'' by Willy Pogany (1915)]]

Several stories within the ''One Thousand and One Nights'' feature early [[science fiction]] elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", in which the [[protagonist]] Bulukiya's quest for the [[Elixir of life|herb of immortality]] leads him to explore the seas, journey to [[Paradise]] and to [[Hell]], and travel across the [[cosmos]] to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of [[Galaxy|galactic]] science fiction;{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=209}} along the way, he encounters societies of [[jinn]],{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=204}} [[mermaid]]s, talking [[Serpent (symbolism)|serpents]], talking trees, and other forms of life.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=209}} In "[[Abu al-Husn and His Slave-Girl Tawaddud]]", the heroine Tawaddud gives an impromptu [[lecture]] on the mansions of the [[Moon]], and the benevolent and sinister aspects of the planets.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=190}}

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 [[Amazons|Amazon]] societies dominated by women, lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=211–212}}

"The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on an [[archaeological]] expedition<ref name="Hamori 1971 p.9" /> across the [[Sahara]] to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that [[Solomon]] once used to trap a [[jinni]],{{sfn|Pinault|1992|pp=148–149, 217–219}} and, along the way, encounter a [[mummified]] queen, [[petrified]] inhabitants,{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=213}} lifelike [[humanoid robot]]s and [[automata]], seductive [[marionette]]s dancing without strings,<ref name="Hamori 1971 pp.12–13" /> and a brass horseman [[robot]] who directs the party towards the ancient city,{{sfn|Pinault|1992|pp=10–11}} which has now become a [[ghost town]].<ref name=Hamori/> The "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the form of an uncanny [[Sailor|boatman]].{{sfn|Pinault|1992|pp=10–11}}

===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.<ref>[http://www.mythfolklore.net/1001nights/burton/kamar.htm Burton Nights]. Mythfolklore.net (2005-01-01). Retrieved on 2013-09-23.</ref> 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:

{{Verse translation|{{abyat|shaterbyshater=1|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}}|{{transliteration|ar|Wa-laqad nadimtu 'alá tafarruqi shamlinā}}
::{{transliteration|ar|Dahran wa-fāḍa ad-dam'u min ajfānī}}
{{transliteration|ar|Wa-nadhartu in 'āda az-zamānu yalummunā}}
::{{transliteration|ar|la 'udtu adhkuru furqatan bi-lisānī}}
{{transliteration|ar|Hajama as-surūru 'alayya ḥattá annahu}}
::{{transliteration|ar|min faraṭi mā sarranī abkānī}}
{{transliteration|ar|Yā 'aynu ṣāra ad-dam'u minki sijyatan}}
::{{transliteration|ar|tabkīna min faraḥin wa-aḥzānī}}|lang=ar|italicsoff=no|rtl1=y}}

Translations:

{{Verse translation|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|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.|italicsoff=no|attr1=Literal translation|attr2=Burton's verse translation}}

==In world culture==
{{Main|Translations of One Thousand and One Nights|List of works influenced by One Thousand and One Nights}}
The influence of the versions of ''The Nights'' on world literature is immense. Writers as diverse as [[Henry Fielding]] to [[Naguib Mahfouz]] have alluded to the collection by name in their own works. Other writers who have been influenced by the ''Nights'' include [[John Barth]], [[Jorge Luis Borges]], [[Salman Rushdie]], [[Orhan Pamuk]], [[Goethe]], [[Walter Scott]], [[Thackeray]], [[Wilkie Collins]], [[Elizabeth Gaskell]], [[Nodier]], [[Flaubert]], [[Marcel Schwob]], [[Stendhal]], [[Alexandre Dumas|Dumas]], [[Victor Hugo|Hugo]], [[Gérard de Nerval]], [[Gobineau]], [[Pushkin]], [[Tolstoy]], [[Hugo von Hofmannsthal|Hofmannsthal]], [[Conan Doyle]], [[W. B. Yeats]], [[H. G. Wells]], [[Cavafy]], [[Calvino]], [[Georges Perec]], [[H. P. Lovecraft]], [[Marcel Proust]], [[A. S. Byatt]] and [[Angela Carter]].{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=290}}

Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture, such as [[Aladdin]], [[Sinbad]] and [[Ali Baba]]. Part of its popularity may have sprung from improved standards of historical and geographical knowledge. The marvelous beings and events typical of fairy tales seem less incredible if they are set further "long ago" or farther "far away"; this process culminates in the [[fantasy world]] having little connection, if any, to actual times and places. Several elements from [[Arabian mythology]] are now common in modern [[fantasy]], such as [[genie]]s, [[bahamut]]s, [[magic carpet]]s, magic lamps, etc. When [[L. Frank Baum]] proposed writing a modern fairy tale that banished stereotypical elements, he included the genie as well as the dwarf and the fairy as stereotypes to go.<ref>James Thurber, "The Wizard of Chitenango", p. 64 ''Fantasists on Fantasy'' edited by Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski, {{ISBN|0-380-86553-X}}.</ref>

In 1982, the [[International Astronomical Union]] (IAU) began naming features on [[Saturn]]'s moon [[Enceladus (moon)|Enceladus]] after characters and places in [[Richard Francis Burton|Burton]]'s translation<ref name="NameCategories">Blue, J.; (2006) [http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/append6.html ''Categories for Naming Planetary Features'']. Retrieved November 16, 2006.</ref> because "its surface is so strange and mysterious that it was given the ''Arabian Nights'' as a name bank, linking fantasy landscape with a literary fantasy."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.iau.org/static/publications/IB104.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.iau.org/static/publications/IB104.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live|title=IAU Information Bulletin No. 104 |website=Iau.org|access-date=2021-11-06}}</ref>

===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.<ref>Reynolds p. 272</ref> 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".{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=81–82}}

Nevertheless, the ''Nights'' have proved an inspiration to some modern Egyptian writers, such as [[Tawfiq al-Hakim]] (author of the [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolist]] play ''Shahrazad'', 1934), [[Taha Hussein]] (''Scheherazade's Dreams'', 1943)<ref name="Encyclopaedia Iranica">{{cite web|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/alf-layla-wa-layla |title=Encyclopaedia Iranica |publisher=Iranicaonline.org |access-date=2013-10-18}}</ref> and [[Naguib Mahfouz]] (''[[Arabian Nights and Days]]'', 1979). [[Idries Shah]] finds the [[Abjad numerals|Abjad]] numerical equivalent of the Arabic title, ''alf layla wa layla'', in the Arabic phrase ''ʾumm al-qiṣṣa'', meaning 'mother of stories'. He goes on to state that many of the stories "are encoded [[Sufi]] [[teaching stories]], descriptions of psychological processes, or enciphered lore of one kind or another".<ref name="Sufis">{{cite book|last=Shah|first=Idries|title=The Sufis|publisher=Octagon Press|orig-date=1964|year=1977|location=London, UK|pages=174–175|isbn=0-86304-020-9}}</ref>

On a more popular level, film and TV adaptations based on stories like Sinbad and Aladdin enjoyed long lasting popularity in Arabic speaking countries.

{{Anchor|Possible early influence on European literature}}

===Early European literature===
Although the first known translation into a European language appeared in 1704, it is possible that the ''Nights'' began exerting its influence on Western culture much earlier. Christian writers in Medieval Spain translated many works from Arabic, mainly philosophy and mathematics, but also Arab fiction, as is evidenced by [[Juan Manuel]]'s story collection ''[[El Conde Lucanor]]'' and [[Ramón Llull]]'s ''The Book of Beasts''.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=92–94}}

Knowledge of the work, direct or indirect, apparently spread beyond Spain. Themes and motifs with parallels in the ''Nights'' are found in [[Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' (in ''[[The Squire's Tale]]'' the hero travels on a flying brass horse) and [[Boccaccio]]'s ''[[Decameron]]''. Echoes in [[Giovanni Sercambi]]'s ''Novelle'' and [[Ariosto]]'s ''[[Orlando Furioso]]'' suggest that the story of Shahriyar and Shahzaman was also known.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=96–99}} Evidence also appears to show that the stories had spread to the [[Balkans]] and a translation of the ''Nights'' into [[Romanian language|Romanian]] existed by the 17th century, itself based on a Greek version of the collection.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=61–62}}

{{Anchor|Western literature from the 18th century onwards}}

=== Western literature (18th century onwards) ===
==== Galland translations (1700s) ====
[[File:CC No 08 Arabian Nights.jpg|thumb|left|''[[Classic Comics]]'' issue #8]]
[[File:First European edition of Arabian Nights, Les Mille et une Nuit, by Antoine Galland, 1730 CE, Paris.jpg|thumb|First European edition of Arabian Nights, "Les Mille et une Nuit", by Antoine Galland, Vol. 11, 1730 CE, Paris]]
[[File:Arabian Nights, Tousend und Eine Nacht Arabische Erzahlungen, translated into German by Gustav Weil, Vol .4, 1866 CE.jpg|thumb|Arabian Nights, "Tausend und eine Nacht. Arabische Erzählungen", translated into German by Gustav Weil, Vol .4, 1866 CE, Stuttgart]]
The modern fame of the ''Nights'' derives from the first known European translation by [[Antoine Galland]], which appeared in 1704. According to [[Robert Irwin (writer)|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''".{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=14}}

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.<ref>Reynolds pp. 279–281</ref>

Galland's version provoked a spate of pseudo-Oriental imitations. At the same time, some French writers began to parody the style and concoct far-fetched stories in superficially Oriental settings. These [[tongue-in-cheek]] pastiches include [[Antoine Hamilton|Anthony Hamilton]]'s ''Les quatre Facardins'' (1730), [[Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon|Crébillon]]'s ''[[The Sofa: A Moral Tale|Le sopha]]'' (1742) and [[Diderot]]'s ''[[Les bijoux indiscrets]]'' (1748). They often contained veiled allusions to contemporary French society. The most famous example is [[Voltaire]]'s ''[[Zadig]]'' (1748), an attack on religious bigotry set against a vague pre-Islamic Middle Eastern background.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=238–241}} The English versions of the "Oriental Tale" generally contained a heavy moralising element,{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=242}} with the notable exception of [[William Beckford (novelist)|William Beckford]]'s fantasy ''[[Vathek]]'' (1786), which had a decisive influence on the development of the [[Gothic novel]]. The Polish nobleman [[Jan Potocki]]'s novel ''[[Saragossa Manuscript]]'' (begun 1797) owes a deep debt to the ''Nights'' with its Oriental flavour and labyrinthine series of embedded tales.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=245–260}}

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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.millar-project.ed.ac.uk/manuscripts/html_output/6.html|title=The manuscripts, Letter from Andrew Millar to Robert Wodrow, 5 August, 1725. Andrew Millar Project. University of Edinburgh.|website=www.millar-project.ed.ac.uk|access-date=2016-06-03}}</ref>

==== 19th century–20th century ====
The ''Nights'' continued to be a favourite book of many British authors of the Romantic and Victorian eras. According to [[A. S. Byatt]], "In British Romantic poetry the Arabian Nights stood for the wonderful against the mundane, the imaginative against the prosaically and reductively rational."<ref>{{cite book|last=Byatt |first=A. S. |author-link=A. S. Byatt |title=On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-674-00451-1 |page=167}}</ref> In their autobiographical writings, both [[Coleridge]] and [[Thomas de Quincey|de Quincey]] refer to nightmares the book had caused them when young. [[Wordsworth]] and [[Tennyson]] also wrote about their childhood reading of the tales in their poetry.<ref>Wordsworth in Book Five of ''[[The Prelude]]''; Tennyson in his poem "Recollections of the ''Arabian Nights''". (Irwin, pp. 266–269)</ref> [[Charles Dickens]] was another enthusiast and the atmosphere of the ''Nights'' pervades the opening of his last novel ''[[The Mystery of Edwin Drood]]'' (1870).{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=270}}

Several writers have attempted to add a thousand and second tale,{{sfn|Byatt|2001|p=168}} including [[Théophile Gautier]] (''La mille deuxième nuit'', 1842)<ref name="Encyclopaedia Iranica"/> and [[Joseph Roth]] (''Die Geschichte von der 1002 Nacht'', 1939).{{sfn|Byatt|2001|p=168}} [[Edgar Allan Poe]] wrote "[[The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade]]" (1845), a short story depicting the eighth and final voyage of [[Sinbad the Sailor]], along with the various mysteries Sinbad and his crew encounter; the anomalies are then described as footnotes to the story. While the king is uncertain—except in the case of the elephants carrying the world on the back of the turtle—that these mysteries are real, they are actual modern events that occurred in various places during, or before, Poe's lifetime. The story ends with the king in such disgust at the tale Scheherazade has just woven, that he has her executed the very next day.

Another important literary figure, the [[Irish people|Irish]] poet [[W. B. Yeats]] was also fascinated by the Arabian Nights, when he wrote in his prose book, ''[[A Vision]]'' an autobiographical poem, titled The Gift of [[Harun Al-Rashid]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/exhibition/readingeurope/content/ire/NatLibIre_01.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/exhibition/readingeurope/content/ire/NatLibIre_01.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live|title=The Cat and the Moon and Certain Poems by William Butler Yeats}}</ref> in relation to his joint experiments with his wife [[Georgie Hyde-Lees]], with [[automatic writing]], a technique used by many occultists in order to discern messages from the subconscious mind or from other spiritual beings, when the hand moves a pencil or a pen, writing only on a simple sheet of paper and when the person's eyes are shut. Also, the gifted and talented wife, is playing in Yeats's poem as "a gift" herself, given only allegedly by the caliph to the Christian and Byzantine philosopher [[Qusta ibn Luqa|Qusta Ibn Luqa]], who acts in the poem as a personification of W. B. Yeats. In July 1934 he was asked by Louis Lambert, while in a tour in the United States, which six books satisfied him most. The list that he gave placed the Arabian Nights, secondary only to William Shakespeare's works.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y5GuCwAAQBAJ&q=Yeats+ethel+mannin+arabian+nights&pg=PA291|title=In Excited Reverie: Centenary Tribute to W.B. Yeats|first1=A. Norman|last1=Jeffares | author1-link = A. Norman Jeffares |first2=K. G. W.|last2=Cross|year=1965|publisher=Springer|via=Google Books|isbn=978-1-349-00646-5}}</ref>

Modern authors influenced by the ''Nights'' include [[James Joyce]], [[Marcel Proust]], [[Jorge Luis Borges]], [[John Barth]] and [[Ted Chiang]].

{{Anchor|Cinema and television}}

=== Film, radio and television ===
{{Main|Category: Films based on One Thousand and One Nights}}
[[File:Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (1917).webm|thumb|thumbtime=6|''Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp'' (1917)]]

Stories from the ''One Thousand and One Nights'' have been popular subjects for films, beginning with [[Georges Méliès]]' ''[[The Palace of the Arabian Nights|Le Palais des Mille et une nuits]]'' (1905).

The critic Robert Irwin singles out the two versions of ''The Thief of Baghdad'' ([[The Thief of Bagdad (1924 film)|1924 version]] directed by Raoul Walsh; [[The Thief of Bagdad (1940 film)|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."{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=291–292}}  Michael James Lundell calls ''Il fiore'' "the most faithful adaptation, in its emphasis on sexuality, of ''The 1001 Nights'' in its oldest form".<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1093/adaptation/aps022|title=Pasolini's Splendid Infidelities: Un/Faithful Film Versions of ''The Thousand and One Nights''|first=Michael|last=Lundell|journal=Adaptation|volume=6|issue=1|year=2013|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|pages=120–127}}</ref>

''Alif Laila'' ({{translation|One Thousand Nights}}; 1933) was a [[Hindi]]-language fantasy film based on ''One Thousand and One Nights'' from the early era of [[Indian cinema]], directed by Balwant Bhatt and [[Shanti Dave]]. [[K. Amarnath]] made, ''[[Alif Laila (1953 film)|Alif Laila]]'' (1953), another Indian fantasy film in Hindi based on the folktale of [[Aladdin]].<ref name="RajadhyakshaWillemen1999"/> [[Niren Lahiri]]'s ''Arabian Nights'', an adventure-fantasy film adaptation of the stories, released in 1946.<ref>{{cite web |title=Arabian Nights (1946) |url=https://indiancine.ma/EHD/info |website=Indiancine.ma}}</ref> A number of Indian films based on the ''Nights'' and ''The Thief of Baghdad'' were produced over the years, including ''[[Baghdad Ka Chor]]'' (1946), ''[[Baghdad Thirudan]]'' (1960), and ''[[Baghdad Gaja Donga]]'' (1968).<ref name="RajadhyakshaWillemen1999">{{cite book|last1=Rajadhyaksha|first1=Ashish|last2=Willemen|first2=Paul|title=Encyclopaedia of Indian cinema|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R0EOAQAAMAAJ|year=1999|publisher=British Film Institute|isbn=978-1-57958-146-6}}</ref> A television series, [[Thief of Baghdad (TV series)|''Thief of Baghdad'']], was also made in India which aired on [[Zee TV]] between 2000 and 2001.

[[UPA (animation studio)|UPA]], an American animation studio, produced an animated feature version of ''[[1001 Arabian Nights (1959 film)|1001 Arabian Nights]]'' (1959), featuring the cartoon character [[Mr. Magoo]].<ref name="MaltinMiceMagic">{{cite book |title=Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons |last=Maltin |first=Leonard |year=1987 |publisher=New American Library |isbn=0-452-25993-2 |pages=341–342}}</ref>

The 1949 animated film ''[[The Singing Princess]]'', another movie produced in Italy, is inspired by The Arabian Nights. The animated feature film, ''[[One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (film)|One Thousand and One Arabian Nights]]'' (1969), produced in Japan and directed by [[Osamu Tezuka]] and Eichii Yamamoto, featured [[Psychedelic art|psychedelic]] imagery and sounds, and erotic material intended for adults.<ref>[http://www.thespinningimage.co.uk/cultfilms/displaycultfilm.asp?reviewid=4107 One Thousand and One Arabian Nights Review (1969)]. Thespinningimage.co.uk. Retrieved on 2013-09-23.</ref>

''[[Alif Laila]]'' (''The Arabian Nights''), a 1993–1997 Indian TV series based on the stories from ''One Thousand and One Nights'' produced by [[Sagar Films|Sagar Entertainment Ltd]], aired on [[DD National]] starts with Scheherazade telling her stories to Shahryār, and contains both the well-known and the lesser-known stories from ''One Thousand and One Nights''. Another Indian television series, ''Alif Laila'', based on various stories from the collection aired on [[Dangal TV]] in 2020.<ref>{{cite web |title=Dangal TV's new fantasy drama Alif Laila soon on TV |url=https://news.abplive.com/videos/entertainment/television-dangal-tvs-new-fantasy-drama-alif-laila-soon-on-tv-1164749 |website=[[ABP News]] |language=en |date=2020-02-24}}</ref>

''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)|Yousuf Shaaban]], [[Nelly (Egyptian entertainer)|Nelly]], [[Sherihan]] and [[Yehia El-Fakharany]]. Each series premiered on every yearly month of [[Ramadan]] between the 1980s and 1990s.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMD6lI_driU&list=PL9KkecclNUBSJGb1T2A0lrvYWhhK_m0g6&index=1|title=ألف ليلة وليلة ׀ ليلى والإشكيف׃ تتر بداية|date=14 June 2016 |access-date=6 November 2021|publisher=[[YouTube]]}}</ref>

One of the best known Arabian Nights-based films is the 1992 [[Walt Disney Animation Studios|Walt Disney animated]] movie ''[[Aladdin (1992 Disney film)|Aladdin]]'', which is loosely based on the story of the same name.

''[[Arabian Nights (TV miniseries)|Arabian Nights]]'' (2000), a two-part television mini-series adopted for BBC and ABC studios, starring [[Mili Avital]], [[Dougray Scott]], and [[John Leguizamo]], and directed by [[Steve Barron]], is based on the translation by [[Sir Richard Francis Burton]].

[[Shabnam Rezaei]] and Aly Jetha created, and the Vancouver-based [[Big Bad Boo]] Studios produced ''[[1001 Nights (TV series)|1001 Nights]]'' (2011), an animated television series for children, which launched on [[Teletoon (Canada)|Teletoon]] and airs in 80 countries around the world, including Discovery Kids Asia.<ref>[http://kidscreen.com/2013/06/13/1001-nights-heads-to-discovery-kids-asia/ 1001 Nights heads to Discovery Kids Asia]. Kidscreen (2013-06-13). Retrieved on 2013-09-23.</ref>

''[[Arabian Nights (2015 film)|Arabian Nights]]'' (2015, in Portuguese: ''As Mil e uma Noites''), a three-part film directed by [[Miguel Gomes (director)|Miguel Gomes]], is based on ''One Thousand and One Nights''.<ref>[http://www.indiewire.com/article/the-most-ambitious-movie-at-this-years-cannes-film-festival-is-arabian-nights-20150522 The Most Ambitious Movie At This Year's Cannes Film Festival is 'Arabian Nights']. Retrieved on 2015-01-18.</ref>

''Alf Leila Wa Leila'', a popular [[Egypt]]ian 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.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8MukEws594&list=PLU-ZPntr7KxZkvwQOXiAunsd5dIZVgYsd&index=1 ألف ليلة وليلة .. الليلة الأولى: حكاية شهريار ولقائه الأول مع شهرزاد]. [[Egyptian Radio]].</ref>

''[[Aladdin (2019 film)|Aladdin]]'' (2019) is a [[Musical film|musical]] [[fantasy film]] directed by [[Guy Ritchie]] from a screenplay he co-wrote with [[John August]]. Co-produced by [[Walt Disney Pictures]] and [[Rideback (production company)|Rideback]], it is a live-action remake of Disney's [[Aladdin (1992 Disney film)|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 (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 (Rimsky-Korsakov)|Scheherazade]]''  Op. 35 (1888)<ref>See [http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/alf-layla-wa-layla Encyclopædia Iranica] (NB: Some of the dates provided there are wrong)</ref>
* [[Johann Strauss II]]: ''[[Indigo und die vierzig Räuber]]'' (1871)
* [[Johann Strauss II]]: ''[[Tausend und eine Nacht]]'' (1871)
* [[Tigran Chukhajian]]: ''Zemire'' (1891)
* [[Maurice Ravel]]: ''Shéhérazade'' (1898)
* [[Ferrucio Busoni]]: [[Piano Concerto (Busoni)|Piano Concerto]] in C major (1904)
* [[Henri Rabaud]]: ''[[Mârouf, savetier du Caire]]'' (1914)
* [[Carl Nielsen]]: ''[[Aladdin (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 (band)|Renaissance]]: ''[[Scheherazade and Other Stories]]'' (1975)
* [[Doce]]: "Ali-Bábá, um homem das Arábias" (1981)
* [[Icehouse (band)|Icehouse]]: "[[No Promises (Icehouse song)|No Promises]]" (from the album ''[[Measure for Measure (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 (album)|Harem]]'') (2003)
* [[Ch!pz]]: "[[1001 Arabian Nights (song)]]" (from the album ''[[The World of Ch!pz]]'') (2006)
* [[Nightwish]]: "Sahara" (2007)
* [[Rock On!! (soundtrack)|Rock On!!]]: "Sinbad the Sailor" (2008)
* [[Abney Park (band)|Abney Park]]: "Scheherazade" (2013)

'''Musical theatre'''

* "A Thousand and One Nights" (from ''[[Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier]]'') (2013)
* ''[[Ghost Quartet]]'' (2014)

===Games===
Popular modern games with an ''Arabian Nights'' theme include the ''[[Prince of Persia]]'' series, ''[[Crash Bandicoot: Warped]],'' ''[[Sonic and the Secret Rings]]'', ''[[List of Disney's Aladdin video games|Disney's Aladdin]]'', ''[[Bookworm Adventures]]'', and the pinball table ''[[Tales of the Arabian Nights (pinball)|Tales of the Arabian Nights]].'' Additionally, the popular card game ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' released an expansion set titled ''[[Magic: The Gathering expansion sets, 1993–1995#Arabian Nights|Arabian Nights]]''.

The Demoman in ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' has a set titled One Thousand and One Demoknights, including three weapons and one cosmetic item.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Demoknights|title=One Thousand and One Demoknights|author=Valve|access-date=August 15, 2024}}</ref>

''Sultan’s Game'', developed by Double Cross and released for Steam on March 30, 2025, is “a card-based simulation and narrative game, inspired by ''The One Thousand and One Nights'',” in which players are commanded by the Sultan “to play a cruel game. Each week you draw a card, and have to complete its challenge within seven days. Forced to make dreadful choices to beat the Sultan’s Game and save your own life, you will have to find a way to survive not just the Game, but its consequences too.”<ref>{{Cite web |title=Sultan’s Game on Steam |url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3117820/Sultans_Game/}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Quah |first=Mason |date=2025-04-03 |title=Sultan's Game: 13 Beginner Tips |url=https://www.thegamer.com/sultans-game-beginner-tips-tricks-guide/ |access-date=2025-04-15 |website=TheGamer |language=en}}</ref>

===Illustrators===
Many artists have illustrated the ''Arabian nights'', including: Pierre-Clément Marillier for ''Le Cabinet des Fées'' (1785–1789), [[Gustave Doré]], Léon Carré (Granville, 1878 – Alger, 1942), Roger Blachon, Françoise Boudignon, André Dahan, Amato Soro, [[Albert Robida]], Alcide Théophile Robaudi and Marcelino Truong; Vittorio Zecchin (Murano, 1878 – Murano, 1947) and [[Emanuele Luzzati]]; The German Morgan; [[Mohammed Racim]] (Algiers, 1896 – Algiers 1975), Sani ol-Molk (1849–1856), [[Anton Pieck]] and Emre Orhun, [[Virginia Frances Sterrett]] (1928).

Famous illustrators for British editions include: [[Arthur Boyd Houghton]], [[John Tenniel]], [[John Everett Millais]] and [[George John Pinwell]] for Dalziel's Illustrated Arabian Nights Entertainments, published in 1865; [[Walter Crane]] for Aladdin's Picture Book (1876); [[Frank Brangwyn]] for the 1896 edition of [[Edward William Lane|Lane]]'s translation; [[Albert Letchford]] for the 1897 edition of Burton's translation; [[Edmund Dulac]] for Stories from the Arabian Nights (1907), Princess Badoura (1913) and Sindbad the Sailor & Other Tales from the Arabian Nights (1914). Others artists include [[John D. Batten]], (Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights, 1893), [[Kay Nielsen]], [[Eric Fraser (illustrator)|Eric Fraser]], [[Errol le Cain]], [[Maxfield Parrish]], [[W. Heath Robinson]] and [[Arthur Szyk]] (1954).<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/12/arabian-nights-illustration | work=The Guardian | first=Robert | last=Irwin | title=The Arabian Nights: a thousand and one illustrations | date=March 12, 2011}}</ref>

===Comic books===
* ''[[Classics Illustrated]]'' #8 (1947)<ref>[https://www.comics.org/issue/535327/ "Classics Illustrated #8 <nowiki>[</nowiki>HRN 51<nowiki>]</nowiki> - Arabian Nights"], Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Apr. 27, 2021.</ref> – [[abridged]] version of ''One Thousand and One Nights'' in comic book form.
* [[Carl Barks]], the creator of [[Scrooge McDuck]], wrote two substantial adventure stories{{which|date=May 2025}} based on the ''Nights''.
* "Desert Shadows", ''Wet Dreams'' (Heavy Metal, 2000), by [[Alfonso Azpiri]].
* "Ramadan", ''[[The Sandman (comic book)|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==
<gallery widths="168" heights="200">
File:Sultan from arabian nights.jpg|The Sultan
File:One Thousand and One Nights19.jpg|''One Thousand and One Nights'' book
File:Harun Al-Rashid and the World of the Thousand and One Nights.jpg|[[Harun ar-Rashid]], a leading character of the 1001 Nights
File:Sinbad the Sailor (5th Voyage).jpg|The fifth voyage of Sindbad
File:Harvey W, 1001 nights (12).jpg|[[William Harvey (artist)|William Harvey]], ''The Fifth Voyage of Es-Sindbad of the Sea'', 1838–40, woodcut
File:Harvey W, 1001 nights (19).jpg|[[William Harvey (artist)|William Harvey]], ''The Story of the City of Brass'', 1838–40, woodcut
File:Harvey W, 1001 nights (11).jpg|[[William Harvey (artist)|William Harvey]], ''The Story of the Two Princes El-Amjad and El-As'ad'', 1838–40, woodcut
File:Harvey W, 1001 nights (14).jpg|[[William Harvey (artist)|William Harvey]], ''The Story of Abd Allah of the Land and Abd Allah of the Sea''
File:Harvey W, 1001 nights (3).jpg|[[William Harvey (artist)|William Harvey]], ''The Story of the Fisherman'', 1838–40, woodcut
File:Gross F, 9. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 1, 1838.jpg|[[Friedrich Gross]], ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 66. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 1, 1838.jpg|[[Friedrich Gross]], ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 72. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 1, 1838.jpg|[[Friedrich Gross]], ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 269. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 2, 1839.jpg|[[Friedrich Gross]], ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 436. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 2, 1839.jpg|[[Friedrich Gross]], ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 231. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 1, 1838.jpg|[[Friedrich Gross]], ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 251. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 2, 1839.jpg|[[Friedrich Gross]], ante 1830, woodcut
File:Gross F, 109. Nacht, 1001 Nacht, Bd 1, 1838.jpg|[[Friedrich Gross]], ante 1830, woodcut
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 3, 1896 (1).jpg|[[Frank Brangwyn]], ''Story of Abon-Hassan the Wag'' ("He found himself upon the royal couch"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 1, 1896 (2).jpg|[[Frank Brangwyn]], ''Story of the Merchant'' ("Sheherezade telling the stories"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 4, 1896 (1).jpg|[[Frank Brangwyn]], ''Story of Ansal-Wajooodaud, Rose-in-Bloom'' ("The daughter of a Visier sat at a lattice window"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 5, 1896 (2).jpg|[[Frank Brangwyn]], ''Story of Gulnare'' ("The merchant uncovered her face"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 5,1896 (3).jpg|[[Frank Brangwyn]], ''Story of Beder Basim'' ("Whereupon it became eared corn"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 6, 1896 (4).jpg|[[Frank Brangwyn]], ''Story of Abdalla'' ("Abdalla of the sea sat in the water, near the shore"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 3, 1896 (5).jpg|[[Frank Brangwyn]], ''Story of Mahomed Ali'' ("He sat his boat afloat with them"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
File:Brangwyn, Arabian Nights, Vol 4, 1896 (6).jpg|[[Frank Brangwyn]], ''Story of the City of Brass'' ("They ceased not to ascend by that ladder"), 1895–96, watercolour and tempera on millboard
</gallery>

==See also==
{{portal|Novels}}
* [[Arabic literature]]
* [[Ghost stories]]
* [[Hamzanama]]
* [[List of One Thousand and One Nights characters|List of ''One Thousand and One Nights'' characters]]
* [[List of stories within One Thousand and One Nights|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|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)|''One Hundred and One Nights'' (book)]] – a similar medieval tale collection using the same frame story as ''One Thousand and One Nights''

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== General and cited sources ==
* {{Cite book |last=Irwin |first=Robert |date=2004 |title=The Arabian Nights: A Companion |edition=TPB |location=London |publisher=I.B. Tauris |isbn=1-86064-983-1 |oclc=693781081}}
* {{Cite book |last=Irwin |first=Robert |date=2010 |title=The Arabian Nights: A Companion |edition=EBook (PDF) |location=London |publisher=I.B. Tauris |isbn=978-0-85771-051-2 |oclc=843203755}}
* Ulrich Marzolph (ed.). ''The Arabian Nights Reader'' (Wayne State University Press, 2006).
* Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen, Hassan Wassouf (2004).''The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia''.
* Charles Pellat, [http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/alf-layla-wa-layla "Alf Layla Wa Layla"] in ''[[Encyclopædia Iranica]]''.  Online access June 2011.
* {{cite book|first=David |last=Pinault |title=Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights |publisher=[[Brill Publishers]] |year=1992 |isbn=90-04-09530-6}}
* Dwight Reynolds, "''A Thousand and One Nights'': A History of the Text and Its Reception" in ''The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature'' Vol 6. (CUP 2006).
* Eva Sallis, ''Scheherazade Through the Looking-Glass: The Metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights'' (Routledge, 1999).
* Yamanaka, Yuriko and Nishio, Tetsuo (ed.). ''The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West'' (I.B. Tauris, 2006). {{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.&nbsp;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–), {{doi|10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_0021}}
* Nurse, Paul McMichael. ''Eastern Dreams: How the Arabian Nights Came to the World'' Viking Canada: 2010. General popular history of the 1001 Nights from its earliest days to the present.
* Shah, Tahir, ''[[In Arabian Nights]]: A search of Morocco through its stories and storytellers'' (Doubleday, 2007).
* [http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14634-0/ ''The Islamic Context of The Thousand and One Nights''] by Muhsin J. al-Musawi, Columbia University Press, 2009.
* ''Where Is A Thousand Tales? [Hezar Afsan Kojast?]'' by [[Bahram Beyzai]], Roshangaran va Motale'ate Zanan, 2012.

==External links==
{{Commons category|Arabian Nights}}
{{Wikiquote|One Thousand and One Nights}}
{{Wikisource|One Thousand and One Nights}}
{{Wikisourcelang|ar|ألف ليلة وليلة}}
*[https://archive.org/details/1001Nights_201703/page/n113 ''1001 Nights'']
*[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/128 ''The Arabian Nights Entertainments''], Selected and Edited by [[Andrew Lang]], Longmans, Green and Co., 1918 (1898)
*{{librivox book | title=The Arabian Nights | author=Anonymous}}
*[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0081kdb ''The Arabian Nights''], BBC Radio 4 discussion with Robert Irwin, Marina Warner and Gerard van Gelder (''In Our Time'', October 18, 2007)
*[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34206 ''The Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I'' by Lane-Poole, Poole, Harvey, and Lane] – HTML, EPUB, Kindle, plain text
*[http://www.wollamshram.ca/1001/index.htm ''The Thousand Nights and a Night'' in several classic translations], including the Sir Richard Francis Burton unexpurgated translation and John Payne translation, with additional material.

{{One Thousand and One Nights|state=expanded}}
{{Aladdin}}
{{Sinbad the Sailor}}
{{Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves}}
{{Arabic literature}}
{{Persian literature |state=collapsed}}
{{Panchatantra}}
{{Fantasy fiction}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:One Thousand And One Nights}}
[[Category:One Thousand and One Nights| ]]
[[Category:Islamic literature]]
[[Category:Arab culture]]
[[Category:Arabian mythology]]
[[Category:Medieval Arabic literature]]
[[Category:Frame stories]]
[[Category:Iranian folklore]]
[[Category:Iraqi folklore]]
[[Category:Egyptian folklore]]
[[Category:Persian literature]]
[[Category:Persian mythology]]
[[Category:Articles containing video clips]]
[[Category:Arabic erotic literature]]
[[Category:Erotic fiction]]
[[Category:Books about folklore]]
[[Category:ATU 850-999]]
[[Category:Books illustrated by John Tenniel]]
[[Category:Works subject to expurgation]]
[[Category:Panchatantra]]
[[Category:Fantasy adventure]]