One Thousand and One Nights

“One Thousand and One Nights” is an Arab book of stories that contains legends, stories, anecdotes and others. There are many stories written in verse and characterized like art. There are many dialogues and monologs, Turkish loanwords and archaism.

All of the stories are bound by the Emperor Shahryar and Scheherezade.

Shahryar, the ruler of India and Persia, is the witness of his brother’s and wife’s infidelity. He was so hurt by their act that he concluded that all women are infidel, and he decided to sleep with a different woman every night and execute her in the morning. He did It for three years, and then he met Scheherezade.

She was beautiful and smart, and she started telling him a story he enjoyed so much that he decided to put off her execution just to hear the end of the story.

She talked about nights and nights. She would always end the story when it got interesting. After a 1001 night, the Emperor was convinced that Scheherezade was faithful, noble and kind. In the meantime, she gave birth to three of his sons, so he decided to spare her life.

Scheherezade told him stories about Sinbad the Sailor and many others and everything was possible in her stories. The main characters rise from poverty to richness and the other way around, depending on what they deserve. Nothing is ever finished and there is always the possibility for a story to go on.

The Emperor brought some of his best men to write her stories down and today they are known under the name “One Thousand and One Nights”.

One Thousand and One Nights has an Indian-Persian core and Egyptian-Bagdad stories.

The book begins with a Persian book of fairytales “Thousand Stories” that was translated into Arabic in the 9th century under the title “Thousand Nights”. Some new stories were added in the translation, and some of them were adapted to Islam.

During the crusade, the book got to Egypt where new stories were added. By the end of the 18th century, the book had 1001 stories.

The rest of the world found out about these stories in 1704 when J.A. Galanda translated them.

This one of a kind work tells many stories by unknown authors from the Arabic literature, and they uncover the medieval world in the Orient. The stories make the reader feel as if they were real and as if the reader is traveling with the main characters.

This work of art became valuable in every world literature.