The Thousand and One Nights

The Thousand and One Nights

The Thousand and One Nights, also called The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment, this is a 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 woman kind, 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,  of legendary stories from Iran, India, and Greece.  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.

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. 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), (1839–42). 

Aladdin.

Hero of one of the best-known stories in The Thousand and One Nights.

The son of a deceased Chinese tailor and his poor widow, Aladdin is a lazy, careless boy who meets an African magician claiming to be his uncle. The magician brings Aladdin to the mouth of a cave and bids him enter and bring out a wonderful lamp that is inside, giving him a magic ring for his safety in the meantime. Aladdin goes in and returns with the lamp but refuses to hand it over to the magician until he is safely out of the cave. The magician thereupon shuts him inside the cave with the lamp and departs. Wringing his hands in dismay in the dark, Aladdin finds that he can summon up powerful jinn, or genies, by rubbing the ring. He returns home and soon finds that rubbing the lamp also produces genies. These supernatural spirits grant him his every wish, and Aladdin eventually becomes immensely wealthy, builds a wonderful jeweled palace, and marries the beautiful daughter of the sultan. After defeating the attempts of the frustrated African magician and his even more wicked younger brother to recover the lamp, Aladdin lives in longtime marital happiness, succeeds the sultan, and reigns for many years, “leaving behind him a long line of kings.”

The story of Aladdin—like several other popular stories in The Thousand and One Nights, such as the adventures of Sindbad the Sailor—was not part of the original story collection.

Ali Baba. Fictional character, the hero of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, one of the best-known stories in The Thousand and One Nights. Ali Baba is a poor woodcutter who secretly watches as 40 thieves hide their booty in a cave, the door to which can be opened only by the verbal command of “Open, Sesame!” He later uses this magic phrase, steals riches from the cave, and lives a prosperous life. The thieves eventually suspect Ali Baba, and they hide themselves in large oil jars that, with the unsuspecting Ali’s permission, are stored overnight in Ali Baba’s courtyard.

When the slave Morgiana goes to extract oil from one of the jars, she hears a robber whisper. Morgiana realizes that the jars contain not oil but robbers lying in wait to kill her master. She pours hot oil into each jar, thus killing the robbers. Morgiana later saves Ali Baba’s life a second time, and in gratitude he frees her. She marries Ali Baba’s son, and the entire family lives prosperously on the wealth obtained from the cave that only they can enter.