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Introduction
The origins of The Thousand and One Nights
The Thousand and One Nights (in Arabic: Alf Layla
wa-Layla), is a collection of stories from Persia, Arabia,
India, and Egypt. Although the exact dates of these tales
are unknown, several of them are most likely from the
ninth century or earlier.
An Arabic translation of a Persian book of stories gave
the collection of stories the moniker “The Thousand and
One Nights”. Hazar Afsana (A Thousand Legends) was
the title of the Persian book, which is now lost. Around
AD 850, it was translated from Persian into Arabic, and
the title “A Thousand Legends” became “A Thousand
Nights” (Alf Layla in Arabic). Rather than literally
being 1,000, the number 1,000 meant “a lot” to Arabs.
Since 1,001 meant “a lot” to the Turks, they most likely
changed the number to that.
The frame story “Shahrayar and Shahrazad, his vizier’s
daughter”
A frame story is the most important story in a collection.
It continues through the book and brings all the other
stories together.
The use of frame stories dates back a long time. Fairy tale
collections from the Sanskrit era in India (about 200 BC
- AD 1100) frequently contained tales; one well-known
example is Kathasarit Sagara (Ocean of Stories), which
was penned by the Kashmiri poet Somadeva Bhatta
around AD 1070. The Decameron by Italian author
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) and The Canterbury Tales
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