Arabian Nights' Entertainments (Alf Laylah wa Laylah, 'A Thousand Nights and a Night'), in Christian lands, the best known product of Arabian literature. The name and plan of this work are very ancient. Masûdî in his famous history, Golden Meadows, written in 943, mentions the Persian Hezâr Afsâne, translated into Arabic with the name A Thousand Nights and a Night. Mohammed-ibn-Ishâq, in his work Al Fihrist, written in 987, mentions the Persian work as well known to him, and as containing about two hundred tales divided into a thousand nights. He thus relates its origin. A Persian king used to marry a new bride every day, and put her to death next morning. One wife was Shahrazâd (Scheherazade), who had understanding and discretion. As they sat together she began a tale, and late at night she broke it off at such an interesting point that the king next morning spared her life, and at night begged her to continue her tale. So she did a thousand nights. Meantime she bore him a child. Presenting the child to him, she told him of the craft she had used; and the king, whose love she had now gained, admired her policy and let her live. Mohammed adds that the book was written for the Princess Homai, daughter of Bahman Artaxerxes, and that it had been translated into Arabic with alterations, some new tales being substituted for old.
The much-befiled Princess Homai is half mythical, like the Babylonian Semiramis, an accredited doer of many things whose author is unknown. Masûdî tells that her mother was a Jewess whom Bahman had married, and who delivered her people from bondage: in short, she was the Esther of Israelitic tradition. But Persian poets and Arabian historians do not make it clear whether the name Shahrazâd belonged to the mother or the daughter. Tábarî calls Esther the mother of Bahman Artaxerxes (Longimanus); this is implied in the biblical story, as Ahasuerus seems to be Hebrew for Xerxes.
The occasion of the book written for the Princess Homai resembles the story told in the Hebrew Bible about Esther, her mother or grandmother, by some Persian Jew two or three centuries B.C. The likeness is closer between the biblical story and that of Shahrazâd as it appears in the Arabian Nights, the surviving representative of the Persian Thousand and One Nights. In both, the Persian king is offended with his queen; from the Persian book we cannot tell why; in the Hebrew, because she has insulted him at a banquet before his princes and lords; in the Arabian, for a fouler reason. In all three, thereafter, the king has a new wife daily. The Persian and the Arabic consign her next morning to death; the Hebrew merely to the seclusion of the harem. All three tell that the king at length honoured as queen the one that gained his lasting love; the Arabic makes her the grand-vizier's daughter; the Hebrew, the vizier's foster-daughter. The Persian ascribes to her her people's deliverance from bondage; the Hebrew, their salvation from massacre; the Arabic originates her hardy resolution to marry the blood-thirsty king in her zeal to save the daughters of her people. In all three the king is charmed at night with recitals from the past. In the Persian story she is aided by the king's housekeeper, in the Arabian by her own sister, in the Hebrew by the king's chamberlain.
A quotation by Makrizi from Ibn Saïd of about 1250, mentions the Thousand and One Nights as a romantic work. Meantime the work seems to have, in the course of centuries, had the experience of a celebrated pair of hose which lost their identity by universal patching, and to have been edited into its present form about 1450 in Egypt, and most probably in Cairo. How much of the Princess Homai's book remains in it we cannot tell, nor where to look for this remainder. The Persian origin of some of the tales is evident; equally evident the Indian origin of others, notwithstanding the location in Bagdad, and the presence of the Calif Haroun Al-Raschid. But in a great part of the work both form and matter appear to be Arabian. The foundation of many tales in history or legend or older tales limits their age. The story of the city whose inhabitants are turned into fishes, the Christians into blue, the Magians into red, the Jews into yellow, the Moslems into white, cannot well be older than the year 1301, when the sultan of Egypt, to distinguish true believers from infidels, ordered Christians to wear blue turbans, and Jews yellow, while white turbans were reserved for Moslems alone. The story told by the purveyor of the sultan of Cashgar is taken, and considerably spoiled in the taking, from the Chronicle of Ibn-Al-Jauzi, who died in 1200. It is the story of Qamar, slave of the princess mother of Al Moqtadir, who was calif from 910 to 932. Others are traced by Mr Lane.
The Thousand and One Nights has never been patronised or protected by the literary classes of the East. The puritanical spirit of high Mohammedan literature demands an apology from any merely entertaining author for not better employing his time. The Thousand and One Nights accordingly bears the penalty of being neither religious nor scientific. Its style is mean; it has been much handed about in fragments among the comparatively uneducated; told by professional story-tellers so as to suit the rough audiences of Eastern towns; and copied from such men's dictation, individual taste or fancy filling many a blank.
Various editions differ considerably in the telling and order of the stories. The best are the not well-printed Bulâq edition, the very similar but well-printed Calcutta edition of 1839, and the Breslau edition. No MS. appears to be older than 1548, the date of that used by Antoine Galland. His French translation, published in Paris, 1704-8, in 12 vols., was long supposed to be the fruit of his own imagination. It much misrepresents his original, and the Eastern life. Rendered into English, it is the most popular form of the Thousand and One Nights in Britain. He inserted into it ten tales of unknown origin; but in 1887
Burton found the Arabic text of two of these (including Aladdin) in a Parisian library. In 1840 E. W. Lane, prepared by several years spent in Cairo entirely among Arabs in the Arabian manner, published his scholarly translation, in which he has sacrificed the coarseness of the original and much of its wearisome length. His notes are admirable, and often as delightful as the text. Payne's translation, complete but not very accurate, was published for subscribers in 9 vols. 1882-4. Sir Richard Burton's varied learning and rare mastery of English and Arabic make his translation, printed for subscribers in 10 vols. (1000 copies, at 'Benares,' 1885-87, with elaborate notes, excursions, and six vols. of supplement), an incomparably accurate representation of the original. Lady Burton's edition of her husband's work, 'prepared for household reading' by J. H. McCarthy, omits only 215 out of 3215 pages, and has also scholarly notes and appendices (6 vols. 1888).