The Book of One Thousand and One Nights: Encyclopedia - The Book of One Thousand and One Nights

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabic: كتاب ألف ليلة و ليلة Kitāb 'Alf Layla wa-Layla, Persian: هزار و یک شب Hazâr-o Yak Šab) is a piece of medieval Middle-Eastern literature in the style of a frame tale. The nucleus of these stories is formed by an old Persian book called Hazâr Afsâna ('Thousand Myths', Persian: هزارافسانه). The later compiler and translator into Arabic is reputedly storyteller Abu abd-Allah Muhammed el-Gahshigar in the 9th century. The frame-story of Shahrazad seems to have been added in the 14th century. The first modern Arabic compilation, made out of Egyptian writings, was published in Cairo in 1835. The compilation is known in English under various titles: The book of a Thousand Nights and a Night (an overliteral translation of the Arabic), 1001 Arabian Nights, or simply the Arabian Nights,

During the reign of the Arab Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the 8th century, Baghdad had become an important cosmopolitan city. Merchants from Persia (Iran), China, India, Africa, and Europe were all found in Baghdad. It was during this time that many of the stories, which were originally folk stories, are thought to have been collected orally over many years and later then compiled into a single book.

The story starts with the Persian Shahryar, king of an unnamed island "between India and China" (in modern editions based on Arab transcripts he is king of India and China), who is so shocked by his wife's infidelity that he kills her and, believing all women to be likewise unfaithful, gives his vizier an order to get him a new wife every night (in some versions, every third night). After spending one night with his bride, the king has her executed at dawn. This practice continues for some time, until the vizier's clever daughter Shahrazad (the name is perhaps better-known in English as "Scheherazade" or "Shahrastini", which is a Persian name) forms a plan and volunteers to become Shahrayar's next wife. Every night after their marriage, she spends hours telling him stories, each time stopping at dawn with a cliff-hanger, so the king will postpone the execution out of a desire to hear the rest of the tale. In the end, she has given birth to three sons, and the king has been convinced of her faithfulness and revoked his decree.

The tales vary widely; they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques and Muslim religious legends. Some of the famous stories Shahrazad spins in many western translations are Aladdin's Lamp, Sindbad the Sailor, and the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves; however Aladdin and Ali Baba were in fact inserted only in the 18th century by Antoine Galland, a French orientalist, who had heard them in oral form from a Maronite story-teller from Aleppo in Syria. Numerous stories depict djinns, magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography; the historical caliph Harun al-Rashid is a common protagonist. Sometimes a character in Scheherazade's tale will begin telling other characters a story of his own, and that story may have another one told within it, resulting in a richly layered narrative texture.

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights - Editions

The first European version (and first printed edition) was a translation into French (1704 - 1717) by Antoine Galland from an earlier compilation that was written in Arabic. This book, Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français (in 12 volumes) probably included Arabic stories known to the translator but not included in the Arabic compilation. The Arabic compilation Alf Layla (A Thousand Nights), originating about 850 C.E., was in turn probably an abridged translation of an earlier Persian work called Hazar Afsanah (A Thousand Legends) but probably originated in India. The present name Alf Layla wa-Layla (literally a "A Thousand Nights and a Night", i.e. "1001 Nights") seems to have appeared at an unknown time in the Middle Ages, and expresses the idea of a transfinite number since 1000 represented conceptual infinity within Arabic mathematical circles. Legend has it that anyone who reads the whole collection will become mad.

The work is made up of a collection of stories thought to be from traditional Persian, Arabic, and Indian stories. Some elements appear in the Odyssey. However, Aladdin's Lamp and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves appeared first in Antoine Galland's translation and cannot be found in the original writings. He heard them from a Syrian Christian storyteller from Aleppo, a Maronite scholar, Youhenna Diab, whom he called 'Hanna'.

Perhaps the best-known translation to English speakers is that by Sir Richard Francis Burton, published as The Arabian Nights. Unlike previous editions, his 16-volume translation was not bowdlerized. Though published in the Victorian era, it contained all the erotic nuances of the source material. More recent and more readable versions are that of the French doctor J. C. Mardrus, translated into English by Powys Mathers, and, notably, a critical edition based on the 14th century Syrian manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale, compiled in Arabic by Muhsin Mahdi and rendered into English by Husain Haddawy, the most accurate and elegant of all to this date.

John Payne, Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp and Other Stories, (London 1901) gives details of Galland's encounter with 'Hanna' in 1709 and of the discovery in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris of two Arabic manuscripts containing Aladdin and two more of the 'interpolated' tales. He instances Galland's own experience to demonstrate the lack of regard for such entertainments in the mainstream of Islamic scholarship, with the result that

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights has an estranged cousin: The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki. A Polish noble of the late 18th century, he traveled the Orient looking for an original edition of The Book... but never found it. Upon returning to Europe, he wrote his masterpiece, a multi-leveled frame tale.

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights - Adaptations

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights - Film and television

There have been many adaptations of the Nights, for both television and the big screen, with varying degrees of faithfulness to the original stories.

The atmosphere of the Nights influenced such films as Fritz Lang's 1921 Der müde Tod, the 1924 Hollywood film The Thief of Bagdad starring Douglas Fairbanks, and its 1940 British remake.

One of Hollywood's first feature films to be based on the Nights was in 1942, with the movie named Arabian Nights. It starred Maria Montez as Scheherazade, Sabu Dastagir as Ali Ben Ali and Jon Hall as Harun al-Rashid. The storyline bears virtually no resemblance to the traditional version of the Nights. In the film Scheherazade is a dancer, who attempts to overthrow Caliph Harun al-Rashid and marry his brother. Unfortunately Scheherazade’s initial coup attempt fails and she is sold into slavery, many adventures then ensue. Maria Montez and Jon Hall also starred in the 1944 film Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

The 1980s "1001 Erotic Nights", starring Annette Haven as Scheherazade and John Leslie as Shahryar, was supposedly the first X-rated movie with a million-dollar budget.

Arguably the most successful movie based on the Nights was Aladdin, the 1992 animated movie by the Walt Disney Company, which starred Scott Weinger and Robin Williams. The film led to several sequels and a television series of the same name.

The Voyages of Sinbad have been adapted for television and film several times, the most recent of which was in the 2003 animated feature Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, which starred Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Perhaps the most famous Sinbad film was the 1958 movie The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, produced by the stop-motion animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen.

There are of course, many non-English versions of the Nights. These include numerous Bollywood movies, the famous 1974 Italian movie Il fiore delle mille e una notte and the 1990 French movie Les 1001 nuits, that starred Catherine Zeta-Jones as Scheherazade.

One of the most memorable television adaptations was the Emmy award winning miniseries Arabian Nights, directed by Steve Barron and starring Mili Avital as Scheherazade and Dougray Scott as Shahryar. It was originally shown over two nights on April 30, and May 1, 2000 on ABC in the United States and BBC One in the United Kingdom. Out of all the television and film versions of the Nights, this miniseries is perhaps one of the most faithful to the original stories.

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights - Upcoming movies

A film entitled 1001 Nights, written by Jeff Vlaming and due out 2006, is to be set in the present day and star Juliette Binoche and Laurence Fishburne. It portrays Scheherazade’s equivalent as the unfaithful wife of a mobster, who is kidnapped by her husband's henchmen and forced to tell stories in order to win her freedom.

Another film based on the Nights, is due out in 2007 and is simply named Arabian Nights. Written by Enio Rigolin, it will depict a more traditional version of the Nights set in ancient Persia.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Book of One Thousand and One Nights", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki