قصة الكتاب :
One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of tales from the Middle East and India whose exact date and authorship remain uncertain. It was compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age and first referred to as the Arabian Nights in the English language edition of the work that was published between 1706 and 1721. The various works were the collective efforts of authors, translators, scribes and scholars across West, Central and South Asia as well as Africa over centuries. What almost all editions of the Nights have in common is the frame story of the ruler Shahryar and his wife Scheherazade. \r\n

\r\nThe story of Shahryar and Scheherazade is set in Central Asia and goes like this. King Shahryar is shocked to discover that his wife has been regularly unfaithful to him. Enraged by this discovery, the king kills her as well as all her lovers. He loathes womankind as a result of this and vows to enact his vengeance by taking a virgin as a wife every night and have her killed the next morning. Every new wife of his is forced to face this cruel fate until the young Scheherazade, the elder daughter of the king’s vizier comes up with a plan to save the country’s young women from this cruel fate. She insists that her father give her in marriage to the king. Scheherazade is a gifted story-teller and starts telling the king stories which she never completes in one night. Eager to know how each story ends, the king keeps postponing the execution. The story-telling continues every night as does the saga of the incomplete ending, leading to a continued putting off of the execution day after day after day till the king abandons his wicked plan altogether. Scheherazade manages to change the king’s heart and erase his pain with the power of her beautifully spun tales. The entire collection comprises of tales that are meant to suspend imagination and engage the reader completely. Stories have the power to heal and touch people in ways nothing else can and the frame story drives that point home. \r\n

\r\nThe stories collected in the book appear to have diverse geographical origins ranging from Iran, Iraq, India, Egypt, Turkey and even Greece. When the title was initially conceived, the number one thousand and one was chosen merely to signify the large number of tales in the collection. It was later that this was taken literally and stories were later added on to the initial compilation to add up to the indicated number. Most of the stories that are most popular in the West like that of Aladdin, Alibaba and Sindbad were tales that were later added to the original corpus. The mesmerizing stories are erotic, brutal, poetic and witty and tell of the real and the supernatural, power and punishment, love and marriage, wealth and poverty and the endless twists and turns of fate. The book has made its indelible mark in world literature and has inspired several written, musical and artistic works. \r\n