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"The Arabian Nights" also known as "The Thousand and One Nights" is a classic assembly of stories whose origins branch from the eighth and tenth centuries from Arabic, Persian and Indian cultures (WHO wrote the actual stories is uncertain). This collection of stories is the most famous piece of Arabic literature in the west. Famous characters such as Ali Baba, Aladdin and Sinbad all stem from these adventurous tales. The collection of prose tales, uses a narrative technique called a "frame tale," where a story is "composed for the purpose of including a group of shorter stories" (Fiero, 19).  The specific frame story used in "The Arabian Nights" focuses on an Indian fairy tale: "Shahrasad (in English, Scheherazade) marries a king who fears female infidelity so greatly that he kills each new wife on the morning after the wedding night. In order to forestall her own death, Scheherazade entertains the king by telling stories, each of which she carefully brings to a climax just before dawn, so that, in order to learn the ending, the king must allow her to live." (Fiero, 19). The storytelling techniques of Scheherazade has a "humanizing" effect on the kind who, after exactly a thousand nights begins to love his witty wife (so he decides not to behead her like the rest!) Within the story lies 250 tales which include fantasy, romance and erotica. "The Arabian Nights" has been translated into various languages throughout time. In the 1700s, Jean Antoine Galland executed the first translation in French and in the 1880's John Payne and Sir Richard Francis Burton did an English translation. Since then, the stories have been translated into various other languages including Persian and Egyptian. Stories such as Aladdin focus on the lower people in society; rogues, tricksters and vagabonds were all added during the Egyptian translations of the stories. Islam, from the very beginning, has had the status of being a state-sponsored religion. Islam holds ethnic diversity, where theocratic rule brought together an assimilation of many different people. The main languages of the Islamic world include: Arabic, Persian and Turkish (but there are many, many others). Like "The Arabian Nights," Islam "absorbed" different styles of art from non-Arab people as it expanded. "The Arabian Nights" can be compared with the ever-changing styles of Islam; as the stories of "The Thousand and One Nights" expanded, so did its content and art styles. Muhammad had a dictum where people were to "seek knowledge," like the western world in order to understand the happenings of the natural world. A burst of literacy happened during the 1300-1500s and people began to explore literature from all over the world. The availability of paper was an important factor in the burst for knowledge, "and in the production of new types of literature, such as scientific treatises, cookbooks, poems and tales, paper provided a major advance over parchment and papyrus, expensive materials from whose surfaces ink could easily be erased." If paper wasn't easily attainable and knowledge wasn't sought after, like Muhammad had asked, "The Arabian Nights" would have never graced this Earth. <!--more-->The story of the nights circulated in various manuscript forms until they were eventually written down and put into definitive form (its original version). This happened in the second part of the thirteenth century in the Mamluk domain in Syria or Egypt. This version, which is now lost, served as an archetype for copies of the text afterwards. The branches of the stories that came from Syria is now held at the Bibliotheque in Paris in three volumes, this manuscript is the oldest and more similar to the original texts written in the fourteenth century). Copyist that translated the stories added stories, fables and anecdotes from Indian, Persian and Turkish cultures from oral and written traditions. These facts added to the diversity of the stories which lends to the many layers of culture and styles seen in the stories. The mania for competing the unfinished stories led some copyists to forgery: Stories like "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp" were not among the basic eleven of the original works and cannot be found in any of the Arabic manuscripts during the early time period the stories were written. Galland who wrote a French translation, was given the story of Aladdin around 1787 and it was added to the stories during this time period. The "Arabian Nights" have been translated and exposed in many editions: The Mahdi Edition, English, French, Egyptian, etc.

The stories of "The Thousand and One Nights" continues to inspire many Western readers about the ideas of the "romantic" East. Most stories during this time period focused on tribal wars, heroic deeds and brave warriors. Shortly after the printing press was invented, people began printing cheap books, some with illustrations. "The Arabian Nights" was different for its time because it was pure entertainment. The stories are fun and adventurous which is why they became so popular. "The Arabian Nights" inspired stories of romance and fairy tales in a time period when mostly poetry, riddles, lullabies and war tales were circulating. "The Arabian Nights" were collected over many centuries from Persia, India and Arabia and include a vast assortment of subjects and styles. The stories include: Adventure fantasies, erotica, animal fables and display an accurate descriptions of the daily entertainments of the Islamic world. The stories are compared to the Islamic art in the way that they loop into each other, linking each story to the last. This technique is a principe of the design in Islamic art, where repetition and "infinite extension" loop within each other to "form a meandering overall pattern" (Fiero, 19).

"The Thousand and One Nights" can be compared to various stories in the United States today. Collections of stories and fairy tales are incredibly important to our society. Stories like "The Three Little Pigs" compares to the story of the king and his bride in "The Arabian Nights". The new bride of the king has to find a way to keep the king from killing her, she does this by being clever enough to tell him stories that keep him entertained. In "The Three Little Pigs," the pigs have to work to find ways of convincing the wolf not to blow their houses down. Eventually the pigs win, like the bride, and their intelligence leads them to victory (staying alive!) The comparison of the two stories seems strange, since "The Arabian Nights" is well written and is a literary masterpiece, but the two stories have similar bones. "The Arabian Nights" serves the same purpose in Islamic culture as do our fairy tales about little pigs and magic carpets. The story of "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp" was made into a Disney movie and is loved by millions of children every year. This collection of stories made many of its characters household names, what child doesn't know who Aladdin, Sinbad or Ali Baba? What kid doesn't know the song "Arabian Nights" from Aladdin the movie? These stories are still relevant today because they inspired generations of writers and readers to dream and feel free to explore parts of the world they aren't familiar with. This collection of stories should be preserved because the themes and literary advancements in the texts were so far before their times. The stories speak and will continue to speak to generations to come. Anyone can pick up a copy of "The Thousand and One Nights" and be entertained. The stories are not strictly Islamic in lesson, they speak to every culture. Entertainment is what we live for today- people during the time when these stories were written looked at them like we do movies today. The tales let people escape from their lives and dream about the lives of the characters in the stories they read. "The Arabian Nights" is not only a literary classic, but a fine example of pure entertainment.

Work Cited

"ARABIAN Nights." Literary Cavalcade 52.8 (2000): 20. Middle Search Plus. EBSCO. Web. 2 May 2011.

"Arabian Nights." The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Volume 22. 15th Edition. Peter B. Norton, Chicago. Print.

"Arabian Nights." World Book Encyclopedia. Volume 1-A. Chicago. pgs 582-583.     Print.

Fiero, Gloria K. The Humanistic Tradition: McGraw-Hill, 2011. Print.

Haddawy, Husain. "The Arabian Nights." Norton &amp; Company, 1995. Print.

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