THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS

According to legend, the stories that make up the Arabian Nights are the episodic narrative of an extended, interwoven tale told by Scheherazade to her new husband, a king named Shahriar. His first wife had committed adultery and, stung by her betrayal and now mistrusting of all women, Shahriar has married several times since, each time executing the new bride the morning after the wedding. But the clever Scheherazade’s story telling so captivates the king that he repeatedly stays her execution and finally abandons it altogether. This tale frames an entire collection of stories that intertwine with one another while, by means of meandering, tangential detours, they hold the audience in suspense, just as they did the unwitting king.

The Arabian Nights originated in the oral folk traditions of several cultures, including those of India, Iran (Persia), Iraq, Egypt, and Turkey. The original compilation may have been an Islamic adaptation of an earlier Persian manuscript called Hazar Afsanah (A Thousand Tales) that was translated into Arabic in the ninth century. Although the manuscript is now lost, tenth-century Islamic scholars mention such a work, which had notable similarities to the Arabian Nights. By the end of the thirteenth century, the principal tales were compiled and written down. The book’s Arabic title, Alf layla wa layla, means Thousand and One Nights; over time, the collection’s anonymous editors added new tales to justify that title.

The popularity of the Arabian Nights in the West began with a French Orientalist named Antoine Galland. In 1704 his translation of the work into French introduced the exotic tales to a welcoming European audience and gave rise to a cottage industry of translations and imitations to feed Europe’s (especially England’s) newly stimulated appetite for the Orient. Several notable translations into English followed, one by Edward William Lane in 1841 and John Payne’s in 1884. Sir Richard Burton’s translation (1885-1888) is the most renowned, in part because it retained the explicit erotic quality of the original. The Arabian Nights comprises a variety of genres, from adventure tales to love stories, from comedies to tragedies, from spiritual legends to historical accounts. Through the ages, painters, novelists, poets, composers, and filmmakers have drawn inspiration and material from its pages. Indeed, many of the Arabian Nights stories have merged with Western folklore and are now as familiar to readers as the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and the stories of Hans Christian Andersen.