A Thousand and One Nights: Arabian Story-telling in World Literature

An unparalleled monument to the ageless art of story-telling, the tales of the One Thousand and
One Nights have, for many centuries, titillated the imaginations of generations the world over.
Perhaps one of the greatest Arabic, Middle Eastern, and Islamic contributions to world literature,
the many stories of the Arabian Nights, (or Alf Laylah wa-Laylah as it is known in Arabic) in their
various forms and genres, have influenced literature, music, art, and cinema, and continue to do
so until our present day. Whether through its folktales, its magical stories full of adventure, or
through its modern depictions as Hollywood feature films or Disney animated movies, almost
everyone has been influenced to some extent by at least one or another of Shahrazad’s
dazzling Arabian stories of the exotic East. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone
not familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba, or Sindbad among many others, or with such
terms as genie and ghoul, all of which became known to the West through the tales of One
Thousand and One Nights.

The One Thousand and One Nights, or the Arabian Nights, as it is also known, is constructed as
a “frame story” to which all the other tales are subsequently added. The tales themselves come
in a very wide variety of genres, including fables, adventures, mysteries, love-stories, dramas,
comedies, tragedies, horror stories, poems, burlesque, and erotica. Very simply put, the frame
story itself is one of a king, King Shahrayar, who has been betrayed by his wife, and who is off
commiserating with his brother, King Shahzaman, who had suffered a similar fate himself. On
their journey, they encounter a beautiful woman who is being held captive by the most fearsome
genie. The woman threatens to awaken the genie and thus incur certain death upon them,
unless they have sexual relations with her. This encounter reinforces King Shahrayar’s loathing
of women and confirms his paranoia that women are simply not to be trusted. While his brother
simply swears off women completely, our main protagonist, Shahrayar has a more shockingly
sinister plan in mind. He rides off back to his kingdom, and swears that he will wed every eligible
bride in the land, only to have her executed the next morning before she has had a chance to
cuckold him. As might be expected, the king soon runs out of brides to marry, and his grand
vizier’s daughter, Shahrazad, who is well-known for her penchant for story-telling, decides to
take it upon herself to marry the king despite the vehement protests of her father. Shahrazad,
however, has a plan herself : at a certain point every night, she has her young sister Dunyazad
come to the royal quarters and urge the new queen to entertain the King and her with one of her
famous stories. Shahrazad then puts her talent to good use, beginning a tale every night, but
never ending it before daybreak, thus leaving the King enthralled, and willing to spare her life
one more night so he can find out what happens with the story. Hence, whenever she finishes a
tale — never at daybreak — Shahrazad is sure to start another equally captivating tale, which
will go on for another night or so. This continues for one thousand and one nights, until finally,
the King is cured of his paranoia and decides he wants to keep his queen forever after.

As has been previously mentioned, the tales themselves combine many genres, and draw from
the very rich heritage and folkloric tradition of the entire Middle Eastern region. The stories
combine the magical, the mystical, and the mythical, with the real and the historical. Some of
the main protagonists in the tales, for example, are the famous Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid
and his Grand Vizier Ja’far Barmaki, as well as the famous poet Abu al-Nuwwas, in addition to
genies, ghouls, and mythical giant birds such as the Ruk. It is worth noting, however, that due to
the folkloric nature of the tales, the Arabian Nights were often considered plebian rather than
high literature. Furthermore, because some of the stories contain explicit sexuality and sexual
innuendo, as well as bawdy language, and themes not acceptable by polite society, they were
also deemed quite vulgar.

There are in fact several layers of the tales, the earliest manuscript tradition originating in 9th
century Baghdad, followed by a Syrian manuscript tradition, and an Egyptian manuscript
tradition, not to mention the various oral traditions. The tales were written by different hands and
seem to have accrued over the centuries, drawing from the cultural traditions of the Middle East,
as well as from those of the various regions with which the Middle East had been in contact
through trade, travel, invasions, or war, over the centuries. As a result, the tales themselves
contain elements from Persia, India, Greece, Turkey, Central Asia, in addition to references to
the Mongol invasions, the Crusades, among others. The tales were then Arabized and adapted
for a Middle Eastern and Islamic audience.

Up until the Europeans became captivated with these magical tales of the Orient, the tales
remained part of these manuscript and oral traditions. Nor were there exactly one thousand and
one nights prior to the European translations, the number itself may have been either a means
of exaggeration to portray the “many” nights, or perhaps even a mystical symbol denoting a
particular cycle of events. The first complete translation was done by Antoine Galland into
French in the early 18th century, later, many European translations would follow in various
languages, including English, French, German, and practically every other language, the most
well-known being Sir Richard Burton’s 16 volume, “The Thousand Nights and a Night” in 1885-
1888.

The first, definitive, complete printed edition in Arabic was published by the Bulaq Press in Cairo
in 1835. Printed by the “first Muslim printing press in the Arab world,” the Bulaq edition
constitutes “the last decisive act in the textual history.” (Glass/Roper, “The Printing of Arabic
Books in the Arab World”, in “Middle Eastern Languages and Print Revolution,” 2002, p.183.) All
modern translations and editions to this day are based on this corpus published by the Bulaq
Press. According to Arabian Night’s scholar Ulrich Marzolph, it was this edition that “put an end
to the development of the work’s Arabic text” after a thousand years of oral and manuscript
tradition during which the corpus was continually subject to change (Marzolph, “The Arabian
Nights in transnational perspective,” 2007, p.51). While the Library of Congress has a large
number of translations and editions of the Arabian Nights in its collections in a variety of
languages, it is worth noting that a copy of this definitive Bulaq edition of the Arabian Nights was
recently acquired and added to the collection and may be accessed in the African and Middle
Eastern Reading Room.