The
Thousand and One Nights

"The Arabian Nights"
(PART I,
PART II,
PART III,
PART IV,
PART V)
Illustrations by V. Sterrett
Illustrations by E. Dulac
The Thousand and One Nights, also called The Arabian
Nights’ Entertainment, Arabic Alf laylah wa laylah,
collection of Oriental stories of uncertain date and
authorship whose tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and
Sindbad the Sailor have almost become part of
Western folklore.
As in much medieval
European literature, the stories—fairy tales,
romances, legends, fables, parables, anecdotes, and
exotic or realistic adventures—are set within a
frame story. Its scene is Central Asia or “the
islands or peninsulae of India and China,” where
King Shahryar, after discovering that during his
absences his wife has been regularly unfaithful,
kills her and those with whom she has betrayed him.
Then, loathing all womankind, he marries and kills a
new wife each day until no more candidates can be
found. His vizier, however, has two daughters,
Shahrazad (Scheherazade) and Dunyazad; and the
elder, Shahrazad, having devised a scheme to save
herself and others, insists that her father give her
in marriage to the king. Each evening she tells a
story, leaving it incomplete and promising to finish
it the following night. The stories are so
entertaining, and the king so eager to hear the end,
that he puts off her execution from day to day and
finally abandons his cruel plan.
Though the names of
its chief characters are Iranian, the frame story is
probably Indian, and the largest proportion of names
is Arabic. The tales’ variety and geographical range
of origin—India, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, and
possibly Greece—make single authorship unlikely;
this view is supported by internal evidence—the
style, mainly unstudied and unaffected, contains
colloquialisms and even grammatical errors such as
no professional Arabic writer would allow.
The first known
reference to the Nights is a 9th-century fragment.
It is next mentioned in 947 by al-Masʿūdī in a
discussion of legendary stories from Iran, India,
and Greece, as the Persian Hazār afsāna, “A Thousand
Tales,” “called by the people ‘A Thousand Nights’.”
In 987 Ibn al-Nadīm adds that Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn
ʿAbdūs al-Jashiyārī began a collection of 1,000
popular Arabic, Iranian, Greek, and other tales but
died (942) when only 480 were written.
It is clear that
the expressions “A Thousand Tales” and “A Thousand
and One…” were intended merely to indicate a large
number and were taken literally only later, when
stories were added to make up the number.
By the 20th
century, Western scholars had agreed that the Nights
is a composite work consisting of popular stories
originally transmitted orally and developed during
several centuries, with material added somewhat
haphazardly at different periods and places. Several
layers in the work, including one originating in
Baghdad and one larger and later, written in Egypt,
were distinguished in 1887 by August Müller. By the
mid-20th century, six successive forms had been
identified: two 8th-century Arabic translations of
the Persian Hazār afsāna, called Alf khurafah and
Alf laylah; a 9th-century version based on Alf
laylah but including other stories then current; the
10th-century work by al-Jahshiyārī; a 12th-century
collection, including Egyptian tales; and the final
version, extending to the 16th century and
consisting of the earlier material with the addition
of stories of the Islamic Counter-Crusades and
Oriental tales brought to the Middle East by the
Mongols. Most of the tales best known in the
West—primarily those of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and
Sindbad—were much later additions to the original
corpus.
The first European
translation of the Nights, which was also the first
published edition, was made by Antoine Galland as
Les Mille et Une Nuits, contes arabes traduits en
français, 12 vol. (vol. i to vol. x, 1704–12; vol.
xi and xii, 1717). Galland’s main text was a
four-volume Syrian manuscript, but the later volumes
contain many stories from oral and other sources.
His translation remained standard until the mid-19th
century, parts even being retranslated into Arabic.
The Arabic text was first published in full at
Calcutta (Kolkata), 4 vol. (1839–42). The source for
most later translations, however, was the so-called
Vulgate text, an Egyptian recension published at
Bulaq, Cairo, in 1835, and several times reprinted.
Meanwhile, French
and English continuations, versions, or editions of
Galland had added stories from oral and manuscript
sources, collected, with others, in the Breslau
edition, 5 vol. (1825–43) by Maximilian Habicht.
Later translations followed the Bulaq text with
varying fullness and accuracy. Among the best-known
of the 19th-century translations into English is
that of Sir Richard Burton, who used John Payne’s
little-known full English translation, 13 vol. (9
vol., 1882–84; 3 supplementary vol., 1884; vol.
xiii, 1889), to produce his unexpurgated The
Thousand Nights and a Night, 16 vol. (10 vol., 1885;
6 supplementary vol., 1886–88).