Arabian Nights

"The Arabian Nights Entertainment," also called "The Thousand and One Nights," or, more exactly, "The Thousand Nights and a Night," has come to be considered one of the chief products of Arabian Literature. It belongs to the period of the Sultans of Bagdad, but yet it has undergone many alterations, and in its present form shows traces of transfer to Egyptian soil. The date of the accepted version is not earlier than 1450 A. D.

The story recites that a Persian King married a new bride every day, putting yesterday's bride to death. Meanwhile the kingdom was full of anguish, for no mother knew when her daughter would be chosen and no maiden was safe from the fatal summons to wed and to die. Sche-her-e-zade, the daughter of the vizier, implored her parents to allow her to put a stop to this dreadful barbarity by a stratagem. She was to offer to marry the King, and, as she was very beautiful, there was no doubt of his complying; then she proposed to carry out a plan which would save herself and her companions. After many futile expostulations the parents consented and bade their daughter, as they supposed, an everlasting farewell. Her plan was soon revealed; she began telling marvelous and interminable stories that could not be completed in one night, and the Kingly curiosity was at fever-point; the loving wife in a thousand and one nights so gaining her husband's admiration and affection that he could not part with her. To some unknown romancer who invented this legend of a kind and wise maiden we owe the enchantments of our childhood; the Tale of the Forty Thieves, Aladdin's Lamp, Sinbad the Sailor, The Tent of Peri Banon, and others. "The Arabian Nights Entertainment" is valuable to older minds as showing the thoughts, habits, customs, something of the history and all the minutiae of daily life among the Persians and Arabs of several centuries. But religious and refined Mohammedans, having exact views of the duty and mission of authors, refuse to accept this entertaining work as true literature. It was left to the uneducated and the professional story-teller, and, thus passing from mouth to mouth, the text has varied. It was first introduced into Europe through a translation from the Arabic into French by Antoine Galland in 1704-08. The MS. used by him was dated 1548, and there has been found no older source. Sir Richard Burton's translation is valuable for his learned notes on the text. Lady Burton issued an expurgated edition of her husband's work prepared by J. H. McCarthy for household reading. Among the best translations of the Arabian Nights from the original is that of the celebrated Oriental scholar, Edward Lane.

The origin and authors of the Tales are still unknown. Some authorities divide the stories into three portions, traceable respectively to a Persian, an Indian and an Arabian origin. The fact that Haroun-al-Raschid figures in several of the stories goes to prove that they, at least, must have been written after his death; while the omission of any mention of coffee and tobacco (except a few interpolations) shows that the work must have been composed before the introduction of those products into Western Asia, or in the latter half of the fifteenth century.

"Many of the Tales," says Mr. Lane, in his Preface to this remarkable work, "are doubtless of different and early origins, and its general plan is probably borrowed from a much older production bearing the same title." Mr. Lane gives it as his opinion that some of the authors must have been Egyptian, because the description of Arab life as it is seen in Cairo is minutely accurate in all respects. It is equally certain that all of the Tales did not originate in the land of the Nile. The figure of Haroun-al-Raschid and the doings of the City of Peace (Bagdad) lead us to the Eastern Capital of the Mohammedan Empire. But apart from critical and historical data, "The Arabian Nights Entertainment," so called from the number of nights occupied in their recital, opened to Europe a wealth of anecdote, a fertility of daring fancy, which has not ceased to amuse and to interest.