Database: The One Thousand and One Nights
Drawing on a rich tradition of Indian and Persian literature, the Arabic collection of folk-tales, One Thousand and One Nights, first appeared in ninth-century Baghdad. Despite its name, it initially included about two hundred stories, which used the setting of the time—the great cities of Baghdad and Damascus, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, or the life of the bazaar—as a backdrop.
At the center of the compilation is the famous frame story of Shahrazad, a brilliant woman who volunteers to marry the king Shahryar. After his first wife cheated on him and broke his heart, the king reacted by marrying a new woman every night and having her executed in the morning, so no one could be unfaithful to him again. To save her life, and that of other women, each night Shahrazad tells the king a portion of a story, always ending with a cliffhanger so the king will have to spare her life another night. These stories take many forms, from child-friendly animal tales to highly erotic poems. Some last only a few paragraphs, other dozens of pages. They cover many topics and touch on many themes, among them justice and the unjust treatment Shahryar has inflicted on his wives. The theme of women acting to save lives by telling stories was a popular one. Pictured here are scenes from the Sindbadnama, in which the women of the harem tell stories to save a young prince's life.
The One Thousand and One Nights was described with contempt by the tenth century bookseller Ibn al-Nadim, who considered its themes unfit for a cultivated audience. But his opinion was obviously not shared, as the compilations popularity throughout Abbasid society helped it survive and spread to the entire empire and beyond. Storytellers and scribes from various cultures have added, subtracted, and altered individual stories ever since. Some of its most famous tales, Aladdin or Ali Baba, were even added as late as the eighteenth century. This long cross-cultural evolution helps explain the universal appeal of the One Thousand and One Nights.