Arabian Nights, a collection of about 200 stories, is probably the most famous piece of Arabic literature in the West. It includes the adventures of such well-known characters as Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sinbad.
The Arabian Nights, also called The Thousand and One Nights, begins with the story of King Shahriyar, who has learned that his wife has been unfaithful. He orders her killed and vows to marry a new maiden each night and have her beheaded the next morning. One of the king’s officials has a beautiful and talented daughter, named Scheherazade, who insists on being the ruler’s bride. She asks her sister to come to the bedchamber on the wedding night and request permission for Scheherazade to tell one last story. The king agrees, and she tells a tale so entertaining that he allows her to live another day to finish it. One story leads to another, and Scheherazade tells tales for a thousand and one nights. By then, the king has fallen in love with her.
The stories of the Arabian Nights are folk tales from Arabia, Egypt, India, Persia, and other countries. The work in its present form was written in Arabic about 1500. In the early 1700’s, Jean Antoine Galland translated the Arabian Nights into French. John Payne and Sir Richard Francis Burton wrote English translations of the collection in the 1880’s.
