![]() ![]() The narrator's standards for what constitutes a cliffhanger seem broader than in modern literature. Versions differ, at least in detail, as to final endings (in some Scheherazade asks for a pardon, in some the king sees their children and decides not to execute his wife, in some other things happen that make the king distracted) but they all end with the king giving his wife a pardon and sparing her life. Sometimes a character in Scheherazade's tale will begin telling other characters a story of their own, and that story may have another one told within it, resulting in a richly layered narrative texture. Common protagonists include the historical Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, his Grand Vizier, Jafar al-Barmaki, and the famous poet Abu Nuwas, despite the fact that these figures lived some 200 years after the fall of the Sassanid Empire, in which the frame tale of Scheherazade is set. Numerous stories depict jinn, ghouls, ape people, sorcerers, magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally. The tales vary widely: they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques, and various forms of erotica. This goes on for one thousand and one nights, hence the name. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins another one, and the king, eager to hear the conclusion of that tale as well, postpones her execution once again. The king, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear the conclusion. On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, but does not end it. Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter, offers herself as the next bride and her father reluctantly agrees. Shahryār begins to marry a succession of virgins only to execute each one the next morning, before she has a chance to dishonor him.Įventually the Vizier (Wazir), whose duty it is to provide them, cannot find any more virgins. In his bitterness and grief, he decides that all women are the same. Discovering that his own wife's infidelity has been even more flagrant, he has her killed. ![]() The main frame story concerns Shahryār whom the narrator calls a " Sasanian king" ruling in "India and China." Shahryār is shocked to learn that his brother's wife is unfaithful. ![]() Scheherazade and Shahryar by Ferdinand Keller, 1880 Other stories, such as " The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor", had an independent existence before being added to the collection. Some of the stories commonly associated with the Arabian Nights-particularly " Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp" and " Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves"-were not part of the collection in its original Arabic versions but were added to the collection by Antoine Galland after he heard them from the Syrian Maronite Christian storyteller Hanna Diab on Diab's visit to Paris. Most of the poems are single couplets or quatrains, although some are longer. The bulk of the text is in prose, although verse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights of storytelling, while others include 1001 or more. The stories proceed from this original tale some are framed within other tales, while some are self-contained. Ĭommon to all the editions of the Nights is the framing device of the story of the ruler Shahryar being narrated the tales by his wife Scheherazade, with one tale told over each night of storytelling. A Thousand Tales), which in turn may be translations of older Indian texts. Most tales, however, were originally folk stories from the Abbasid and Mamluk eras, while others, especially the frame story, are probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hezār Afsān ( Persian: هزار افسان, lit. Some tales trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Sanskrit, Persian, and Mesopotamian literature. The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and North Africa. 1706–1721), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition ( c. One Thousand and One Nights ( Arabic: أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, romanized: ʾAlf Laylah wa-Laylah) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. ![]()
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