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The Arabian Nights

Andrew Lang

4.03 · Rating details · 73,184 ratings · 1,799 reviews

Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 - 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.

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Paperback, 146 pages

Published September 25th 2016 by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform (first published 800)

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May 04, 2015 Petra-X Off having adventures rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015-reviews, children, books-read-a-long-time-ago, reviewed

When I was a little girl my grandmother gave me a big, blue, cloth bound edition of this book. It had the most exquisite coloured plates protected by tissue paper interleaved with the printed sheets. It was the perfect storybook for a bookish, fanciful child living in an abusive home. I spent a year reading this book. Every night I would read it and disappear from all the fear and unpleasantness around me into this realm of people in exotic clothes who could do magic. I cherished the book. I too ...more

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May 12, 2013 Manny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Manny by: Jan Kjærstad

Shelves: older-men-younger-women, translation-is-impossible, well-i-think-its-funny, islam-and-arabic, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, why-not-call-it-poetry

Ah, if only I could write like the late Sir Richard Burton! Normally I dislike translations, but to refuse to read The Arabian Nights on those grounds would be like refusing to read the Bible. I love parodying people's styles, and I have tried my utmost to parody Burton convincingly, but I can't do it. He's too clever. He has taken this unique book, a miraculous survival from the most ancient antiquity, and he has created a unique language to make it accessible to us: the backbone is a kind of S ...more

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Aug 17, 2013 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-book, culture, iranian, 10th-century, classics, literature, fantasy, fairy-tales

(996 From 1001 Books) - The Thousand and One Nights, Anonymous

The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa.

The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Greek, Indian, Jewish, Persian and Turkish folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Abbasid era, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from th (996 From 1001 Books) - The Thousand and One Nights, Anonymous

The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa.

The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Greek, Indian, Jewish, Persian and Turkish folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Abbasid era, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hezār Afsān (A Thousand Tales), which in turn relied partly on Indian elements.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1981میلادی و سپس بارها نسخه های متفات را نیز خوانده ام

هزار و یک شب؛ همیشه ماندنی، همیشه یادگار قصه ها و غصه های روزهای دور، همیشه دوست دوست

در باره ی اصل و نسب «هزار و یک شب»؛ که از شناخته ترین کتابهای جهان است، و تقریبا به همه ی زبانهای زنده ی این دنیا ترجمه شده، سخنان بسیار گفته اند، و از معتبرترین نوشته ها در این باب، یکی مطلبی است که روانشاد «مسعودی (متوفی به سال 346هجری قمری)» در «مروج الذهب» آورده، و دیگری قول روانشاد «ابن ندیم (متوفی به سال 385هجری قمری)» در «الفهرست» است.؛ از سخنان این دو چنین برمیآید، که کتاب ایرانی «هزار افسانه»، بی تردید مرجع اصلی «الف لیلة ولیله»، بوده است.؛ اما ممکن است، و گمان میرود، که خود هزار افسانه ی «پهلوی» و یا چارچوبه ی «داستان شهرزاد و شهریار»، و برخی از داستانهای آن، از منابع «هندی» گرفته شده، و از روی سرمشق و الگویی «هندی» در «ایران» پدید آمده باشد، و «الف لیل» میراث «هند» و «فرس» شاید باشد؛ چون علاوه بر مشابهت های دقیقی، که میان برخی داستانهای کهن «هزارویک شب»، و داستانهای «هندی» کهن میتوان یافت؛ که در تقدم تاریخی کتابهای «هندی» بر «هزار افسان» پارسی، حرفی و سخنی نیست، شیوه ی نقل و روایت داستانهای پیاپی و تودرتو، و درج قصه در قصه، برای مانع شدن از انجام یافتن کاری شتابزده، و نسنجیده، و به دست کردن مهلت، نظیر کتاب «طوطینامه» نیز، شگرد ویژه ی «هندیان» بوده است، و در ادبیات دیگر ملل جهان بیمانند است، و یا کمتر همانند دارد.؛ به هر حال چه «هزارافسانه» از کتاب «هندی» اقتباس شده باشد، و چه زاده ی طبع ایرانیان باشد، تردیدی نیست که همین هزار افسانه ی «پهلوی»، در دوران خلفای عباسی، به عربی ترجمه شده، و «الف لیلة ولیله» یا همان «هزارویک شب» نام گرفته است؛ البته «هزار افسانه»ی اصلی نیز بخش کوتاهی از «هزارویک شب» کنونی را، که پرحجم است، تشکیل میداده، و میدهد، چون «هزارویک شب» امروزین، به مرور فراهم آمده، و بدین حجم رسیده است، و در روزگاران دیرین، داستانهای گوناکون، از منابع «ایرانی»، «هندی»، «یونانی»، «یهود»، «عربی»، و «اسلامی» بر آن افزوده اند.؛ بنابراین کتاب، همچون مجموعه ای، که پیوسته آن را تکمیل کرده اند، به دست امروزیان رسیده است، اما این جمله در مدت زمانی دراز، رنگ و بوی اسلامی نیز، یافته است، یعنی راویان و ناقلان گوناگون، قصه های غیراسلامی را، تا آنجا که توانسته اند، به رنگ و نگار اسلام درآورده اند، و بدین علت در حال حاضر کتاب، که قسمت عمده ی آن، رنگ اسلامی و عربی دارد، گنجینه و جـُنگی از ادبیات عامیانه ی مشرق زمین، در سده های میانه است، و نقش و تصویری از کلیت تمدن، و فرهنگ دنیای اسلام را، در سده های میانی میلادی عرضه میدارد

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 04/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی ...more

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Jan 10, 2008 JG (Introverted Reader) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, anthology, reviewed, z_read_in_2008, 5_stars, own, fiction, on_the_screen

For those 2 people who don't know, The Arabian Nights is sort of a collection of short stories told in the Arabian world, as I'm told it should be called, (which seems to include India and parts of China) waaaaaay back in the day. The framework of the story is about a sultan who caught his wife cheating on him. After he has her killed, he decides to take out his revenge on the entire sex, so he marries a different wife every day and has her killed the next morning. Scheherazade is the Grand Vizi For those 2 people who don't know, The Arabian Nights is sort of a collection of short stories told in the Arabian world, as I'm told it should be called, (which seems to include India and parts of China) waaaaaay back in the day. The framework of the story is about a sultan who caught his wife cheating on him. After he has her killed, he decides to take out his revenge on the entire sex, so he marries a different wife every day and has her killed the next morning. Scheherazade is the Grand Vizier's beautiful, intelligent daughter. She realizes that this can't go on, so she comes up with a plan. She asks to be the next wife of the sultan, and she starts telling him a story on their wedding night. But buried within that story is another story. The sultan is so intrigued by the story that he decides to let her live so he can find out how the story ends. She keeps stringing him along like this, theoretically for 1000 nights, until he relents and gives her a full pardon and takes her for his real wife. But that's only a very small part of the book. The biggest part of the book is the stories Scheherazade tells the sultan. Included are Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad, and others that we've probably all heard in one form or another.

I just picked this up because I wanted to see what it was all about. This version was very readable. It was interesting to see a slice of Arabian life. I would catch myself thinking, "They treat women so badly over there" and then I would remember that when these stories were first told, women were treated badly pretty much everywhere. But then there would be some stories where the women had surprising freedom and I would catch myself wondering where things started going bad. I can't say that I know enough about the culture to comment on what's changed and what hasn't, but these stories do give you a little idea of what life is/was like in the Middle East and where they're coming from. And in these times, a little understanding can only be a good thing. ...more

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Sep 10, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, novels, middle-east-lit, classics

Arabian Nights is one of the great literary works of all time but precautions need to be made if you want to read it to your kids. First off, there is a LOT of violence in the stories and a TON of sex. Don't be an idiot like me and start reading an unabridged copy to your kids or you will have to be explaining very early on why so and so killed his wife and imprisoned another...
That being said, there are few works with as much imagination and wonder in them and taken in lighter doses, it is a be ...more

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Feb 02, 2019 Claudia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: middle-east, fairytales, classics

A review is pointless for this book. It’s a classic and everyone should read it. Those who are complaining about how women are treated in the stories should read it more carefully and should pay attention also when it was first written.

Reading this edition, two things amazed me: how well I remember all the stories, taking into consideration that last time I read them was more than 20 years ago and second, how accurate the Romanian translation I read is compared to this one.

As for this edition, ...more

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Jan 17, 2012 Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, novel, read-in-translation, middle-east

As a child I had a small selection of tales from the Arabian nights in a hardback volume with a few gorgeous full colour plates. From this a couple of stories stayed with me, a Sultan travelling in disguise meets a man who having learnt of the Sultan's weakness for baby cucumbers was intent on trying to fool him out of a fortune in exchange for them, the man although greedy is also garrulous, tells the Sultan in disguise his wicked plans enabling the Sultan to turn the tables on him and trick hi As a child I had a small selection of tales from the Arabian nights in a hardback volume with a few gorgeous full colour plates. From this a couple of stories stayed with me, a Sultan travelling in disguise meets a man who having learnt of the Sultan's weakness for baby cucumbers was intent on trying to fool him out of a fortune in exchange for them, the man although greedy is also garrulous, tells the Sultan in disguise his wicked plans enabling the Sultan to turn the tables on him and trick him and eat the cucumbers (view spoiler), then a story about the keys of Destiny - (view spoiler), and a story about a Sultan of Egypt who had a beautiful wife, excellent children, but none less had depression, then one day a mysterious old man who had spent so many years on mountain tops growing wise than he no longer needed to wear clothes ( ie his beard and hair had grown so long that it was wound about him to form a dense coat) wandered in to his palace and forced the Sultan to have an extremely unpleasant visionary experience which cures him of his depression (view spoiler).

So anyhow spotting a new translation in the Everyman series I determined to buy it - inevitably those stories were not in it. Apparently in the dim and distant past there were two story collections - the Arabian Nights and the 1000 and one nights which at one stage merged like a dream of Italo Calvino - indeed very much so as the stories became very popular in Europe through French translations, the translator spotting this, commissioned additional stories, or maybe just made up new ones to best match the taste of eighteenth century French readers.

This collection purports to get round this by drawing on medieval manuscripts, the translation preserves the frequent divisions into nights some of which are less than a page long. This breaks up the flow of the stories, but provides the reader with the sense of frustration which was meant to be experienced in the framing story.

As this version is truer to the manuscript tradition, some of the more familiar tales are missing however those given here have a certain power from their rhythm and the sense of the inevitable, that element and the attitude towards sexual adventure reminded me very strongly of Boccaccio's Decameron.

Another attraction is the sense of falling through from one story to next, as in the middle of one story a character will begin to tell a story to another character which the narrative then takes up. It is rather like If on a Winter's Night a Traveller and the effect is both disconcerting and exciting. A constant moving between narratives and framing stories all insanely nested within each other only missing an internal narrator to begin telling the story of Scheherazade to achieve a Möbius-strip narrative and for the reader to disappear without trace. ...more

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Sep 24, 2013 Manny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: older-men-younger-women, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, translation-is-impossible, well-i-think-its-funny, why-not-call-it-poetry, islam-and-arabic, parody-homage

As I say in my review, I wanted to write a parody of this wonderful book but was forced to admit defeat. Burton is too damn clever for a good parody to be possible. During my preliminary negotiations, I had however received a remarkable offer from Alfonso. A Burton parody without political incorrectness is unthinkable, and Alfonso bravely put himself forward to play the role of an evil blackamoor of hideous appearance.

It seems wrong that Alfonso's selfless devotion to literature should go unrew As I say in my review, I wanted to write a parody of this wonderful book but was forced to admit defeat. Burton is too damn clever for a good parody to be possible. During my preliminary negotiations, I had however received a remarkable offer from Alfonso. A Burton parody without political incorrectness is unthinkable, and Alfonso bravely put himself forward to play the role of an evil blackamoor of hideous appearance.

It seems wrong that Alfonso's selfless devotion to literature should go unrewarded. I am therefore proud to present:

A Fragment of the Tale of Rashid al-Bhattan and al-Fonso the Maghrabi

Now there dwelt not far from the Caliph's court another foreigner, a Darwaysh from the Maghrib named al-Fonso, a powerful magician and geomancer; from his earliest age upwards he had been addicted to witchcraft and had studied and practiced every manner of occult science, for which unholy lore the city of Africa is notorious. And the Maghrabi possessed a seal ring, a signet that once had graced the hand of Solomon Davids-son; yet so woven about with secret spells and enchantments was it, that the Maghrabi could not avail himself of its familiar, for all his arts. But by his gramarye, the Maghrabi learned how it stood with Rashid, and he thought himself a scheme whereby he might bend the ring to his will. And one day, as Rashid left the Caliph's court, the Maghribi thrust himself in Rashid's way; and addressing him, he asked if he would learn the infallible method to win the favour of any woman, even the highest and most beautiful.

The Maghrabi was a hideous blackamoor, ill-favoured and foul with grease and grime, and Rashid laughed to hear his words, believing that he spoke in jest. But the Maghrabi spoke kindly to Rashid and flattered him and used all his charms to put him at his ease; and presently he took forth the ring and instructed him in its use, telling him that he had but to rub it to gain aught that he might want, but that only one of the Isles of the Setting Sun might thus constrain the Spirit of the Ring; and Rashid still doubting, the Maghrabi put the ring on Rashid's finger and told him to rub it. Rashid did as the Maghrabi bade; and instantly before him appeared a Marid. He trembled at the terrible sight; but, hearing the Slave of the Ring say, "Ask whatso thou wantest, verily, I am thy thrall, seeing that the signet of my lord be upon thy finger", he took courage. "Command the Marid," said the Maghrabi, "that he transport us to the Caliph's Harim." Rashid did as the Maghrabi said; "Hearing and obeying," replied the Marid, and smote the earth, so that it clave in two; and taking the Maghrabi under one arm and Rashid under the other, he bore them to the innermost sanctum of the Harim.

"Hide thyself in this closet," said the Maghrabi to Rashid, when they were arrived. "As soon as thou dost espy one of the Caliph's concubines, command the Marid to make me in all ways pleasing to her; then shalt thou see the true power of the Ring." Rashid did as the Maghrabi said; and no sooner had he concealed himself, than entered a girl high-bosomed and pleasing of face, slender-waisted and heavy of hip, of whom one might soothly say as the poet¹

Eyes like two stars and hair as black as night
Lips ruby red caught in a winsome pucker
So fair a maid I ween ne'er crossed my sight
To look on her is aye to wish to embrace her.

She glanced with displeasure on the Maghrabi; but Rashid, heeding the magician's rede, rubbed the ring and commanded the Marid. The Maghrabi spake some words to the girl; and instantly her aspect changed, and she did with goodly gree suffer the Maghrabi, for all his hideousness, to kiss her and toy with her, and presently to disrobe her of her gold-purfled dress and even of her petticoat-trousers and know her carnally², whereby she joyed with great joyance. "Now command the Marid to take us hence," said the Maghrabi without even making the Ghusl-ablution, for he was a Kafir; and again Rashid commanded the Marid, and they made good their escape, leaving the Caliph's concubine swooned on the ground.

Notes

¹ I use Lane's somewhat anaemic translation.

² The Breslau Edition adds some details concerning the excessive size of the Maghrabi's manhood; the wording leaves it unclear whether or not this can be ascribed to the influence of the Ring. ...more

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Sep 20, 2016 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

When I first read One Thousand and One Nights I was literally put under the book’s spell – charmed, enchanted and bewitched. It isn’t just magic of fairytales. It is first of all magic of the oriental world. And of course I was at once mesmerized with the incredible frame tale of Shahryar and Scheherazade.
Nowhere is so much magic as in Arabian Nights: magical word opening the cave door: “‘Open, Sesame!’ And forthwith appeared a wide doorway in the face of the rock. The robbers went in, and last ...more

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Nov 25, 2015 W rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

In Urdu,this is called Alif Laila.These are familiar stories which enthralled me in my childhood.Also adapted as countless TV episodes and movies.

Fondly recall Pakistan television's series Alif Laila from the 1980s,which though made on a shoestring budget was great fun.

King Sheharyar takes a new wife each day and executes her the next day.The beautiful Sheherzade agrees to be his wife to stop him.

She tells him a story,and then another and still another.The king is so engrossed that he does not k ...more

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Jul 18, 2009 K.D. Absolutely rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Shelves: 501, childrens, classics, 1001-core

Oh, the wonders of literature! While reading this book I could not help but sing the songs or hum the tunes associated with the tales:

♪♫♪ A whole new world
A new fantastic point of view
No one to tell us no
Or where to go
Or say we're only dreaming ♪♫♪

I grew up with mostly Filipino komiks around me. Only my father loved reading books and we had very few (compared to what I have now) classics and contemporary books at home. My parents did not read to me when I was young. Those are the reasons why Oh, the wonders of literature! While reading this book I could not help but sing the songs or hum the tunes associated with the tales:

♪♫♪ A whole new world
A new fantastic point of view
No one to tell us no
Or where to go
Or say we're only dreaming ♪♫♪

I grew up with mostly Filipino komiks around me. Only my father loved reading books and we had very few (compared to what I have now) classics and contemporary books at home. My parents did not read to me when I was young. Those are the reasons why I missed all those children's books. So, reading these Tales from 1001 Nights a.k.a., The Arabian Nights was like going back to the komiks time in the province. You see, the story of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, although I read it just now, is so popular that we must all have seen it in movies, read in local adaptations as individual children's books or comics or even seen in TV ads. However, if you compare the original story to the Disney-produced movie, the carpet in the book does not fly. Rather, it just covers the distance between the entrance of the King's palace and Alladin's pavilion so that the princess, Lady Badar Al-Budur (maybe the equivalent of Princess Jasmine) will not walk on mud. The story is fantastic. I admire how the magician thinks: cunning and devious. I hate Alladin before he got rich particularly on his laziness and how he treats his old mother.

♪♫♪ A-li-ba-ba... A-li-ba-ba... ♪♫♪

I still remember the theme and my sister used to mimic it. Low key. She marches like a soldier and with eyes wide and scary. The other tale that I liked was Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves. Who would not remember ourselves shouting: Open Se-sa-me! when we saw a closed door when we were kids? Then expecting our mom or playmate to open it for us? Who says that this book treats women badly? In this tale, the maid Morgiana is so smart that she saves his master's (Ali Baba) life several times.

♪♫♪ Sinbad the Sailor
Sailing through the seas... ♪♫♪

I tried looking this up for lyrics but I think that there is a popular Hindi rock song with the same title. I remember the tune and I thought that it is similar to "Popeye the Sailor Man" or maybe as catchy as that. Well, the tale of Sinbad the Sailor is a short one and it talks about is mistake of killing his falcon. It is one of those tales inside another tale.

All of these 70+ (whew!) tales are framed into a story that Scheherazade is telling King Shahryar so that she will not be killed. The king and his brother have philandering wives who they have killed so the King does not want to have a wife anymore so he orders his vizier (assistant) to bring young pretty girls from the village and after one night of sex, the king orders his soldiers to kill the girl. To survive, the wise Scheherazade tells the 1001 tales, part-by-part. The king, so eager to know what comes next, decides not to kill her until all the tales are told.

I will not tell you if she gets eventually killed in the end.

...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Sidharth Vardhan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: list-world-library, list-daily-telegraph, 2-asia, list-1001, short-stories, shorts-readable-online, bestest

A Story to Save a Live

The beauty of the stories and the poetry of the thought that most destructive demons can be tamed back with a few stories was fascinating to me even when I first saw the serialized version on tv. What I didn’t realized was that the stories Scheherazade, that great goddess of story tellers and inventor of cliff-hangings, told the king weren’t as random but had an order in themselves.

This book has made Scherzade my favorite superhero – superhero was the word we use for o ...more

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Oct 10, 2007 Destiny Dawn Long rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: by-poc, fiction, favorites

This edition is a translation of the first 271 nights from the "1001 Nights" cycle.

One of my favorite aspects of this work is the role of Shahrazad. While many people discuss that she is telling the stories to save her own life, what people fail to recognize many times is that, really, she volunteers to be placed in the position in order to save her kingdom. She's a great literary heroine--saving the world through storytelling.

It also provides a great lens into a world that today is depicted i ...more

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Aug 26, 2009 Madeline rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, the-list

I am planning to read through this whole book someday, I swear. But it's going to be a slow process. Here, in list form, are the reasons I may or may not finish The Arabian Nights.

Reasons I May Finish This Ridiculously Long Book:
-Scheherazade (or whichever of the twenty ways to spell her name you prefer) is kind of a badass genius. Since her father is the king's vizier, she gets exempted from said batshit crazy king's plan to marry and then kill every single available virgin in the city. But she I am planning to read through this whole book someday, I swear. But it's going to be a slow process. Here, in list form, are the reasons I may or may not finish The Arabian Nights.

Reasons I May Finish This Ridiculously Long Book:
-Scheherazade (or whichever of the twenty ways to spell her name you prefer) is kind of a badass genius. Since her father is the king's vizier, she gets exempted from said batshit crazy king's plan to marry and then kill every single available virgin in the city. But she volunteers for the job anyway, based purely on her plan to keep telling the king stories until he decides she's much too interesting to kill.
-Her method of telling the stories is really complicated and interesting. She starts a story in which a man with some unsolvable problem attempts to solve it. He meets three other men. They then meet a djin. The men all tell stories to the djin. The djin tells stories. They tell a story in which a person meets another person, and tells them stories. The whole book is like some kind of reverse Jenga game: she keeps piling stories on top of stories and we can't help but be baffled that she even manages to keep them all straight in her head, much less prevent them from collapsing around her.
-It's pretty dirty. There's lots of orgies and naked slave girls running around, and since Scheherazade's sister sleeps in her bedroom and is there when the king visits her every night, I got the sense that there were some kinky three-ways going on before Story Time started.

Reasons I May Not Finish This Ridiculously Long Book:
-It's racist and misongynist to a level I have never experienced before (and I've read Stephenie Meyer and Ian Fleming, so I know misongyny when I see it). Here's an example: so, the king finds out that his wife has been cheating on him, and with a black slave, no less. Not only that, most of the cheating women (and it is always the women who sleep around) in the book are found ravenously sexing up black men. It's at this point that we break for a lovely footnote by the translator that explains how black men, owing to their insanely massive genitalia, are the paramour of choice for cheating wives. He adds that several men he knows will not allow their wives to visit Africa with them, since the danger of their being seduced by a well-hung Negro is just too high. I am not making any of this up.
-The book is ridiculously long. Did I mention that already? ...more

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Nov 27, 2009 Erik rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, detailed-review, crystal

I really need a 2.5 stars option, though I would end up using it on three-fourths of everything. As a generic, I can neither recommend nor disavow this book.

Okay so the beloved Arabian Nights, tales from a thousand and one nights. I should start with what this is NOT. This is not a linear story about a princess telling stories to a king. This is not a children's read involving genies, magic, and cyclopi (I refuse to spell this any other way, no matter the red line beneath it). This IS a collecti I really need a 2.5 stars option, though I would end up using it on three-fourths of everything. As a generic, I can neither recommend nor disavow this book.

Okay so the beloved Arabian Nights, tales from a thousand and one nights. I should start with what this is NOT. This is not a linear story about a princess telling stories to a king. This is not a children's read involving genies, magic, and cyclopi (I refuse to spell this any other way, no matter the red line beneath it). This IS a collection of stories, probably oral traditions, dating back from ancient times.

Taken on their own, many of the stories are quite fascinating. Unfortunately, as a straight through read, I quickly became bored. The stories are, with some notable exceptions, more or less the same.

"There's a beautiful girl whose eyes were like moonbeams, her lips were the color of coral, and as fresh, and she astounded with amazing astoundness all who beheld her. But she had no interest in being married, and her father the king, though he doted on her, could not accept this and so he locked her up. But on the other side of the world, there's a handsome gent whose eyes burned like saucers of the sun, his lips were sweeter than the nectar that camels walked thousands of miles to obtain and carry back, and his hair floated like all the Towers of Babylon. He, also, had no interest in being married, truly he said to HIS father the other king, "I have no interest in being married," and though his father was wroth and consulted his Wazir extensively, no plan was made. Then deus-ex-machina style, there are two omnipotent Djinnis that decide to compare the two and yadda yadda yadda. They get married." But, says the meta-princess, who is meta-telling the meta-king these stories so she doesn't get mega-decapitated, this story is not more fascinating than the other girl and guy who get screwed over, but fall in love anyway, and so on.

Congrats, you have had the Arabian Nights experience!

In short, this book, quaint translation included (he joyed with exceeding joyness!), is something that you'd have to keep by your bedside for several years. Reading one story a week, lest you get tired of it. Unfortunately it's not good enough to keep by your bedside for several years, so where does that leave it? 2.5 stars, baby.

Get from library. Read a few so you can be edumacated. Write a witty review. Have ten times more fun watching Aladdin.

Oh and I found this particular footnote moderately hilarious: "Four wives are allowed by Moslem law and for this reason. If you marry one wife she holds herself your equal, answers you and "gives herself airs"; two are always quarreling and making a hell of the house; three are "no company" and two of them always combine against the nicest to make her hours bitter. Four are company; they can quarrel and "make it up" amongst themselves, and the husband enjoys comparative peace." ...more

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May 22, 2014 Alex rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: rth-lifetime, 2014, top-100

What you thought was the Arabian Nights was more likely Richard Burton's bastardized, inflated 19th-century adaptation, which was as much about Richard Burton (and his weird ideas about sex) as it was about Arabia.

Which is sortof neither here nor there; there is no canonical version of Arabian Nights anyway. It's just an umbrella term for, basically, all of the Middle East's favorite stories. And if the version that heavily influenced guys like Borges was Burton's, isn't Burton's version the on ...more

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Sep 12, 2018 ✨Bean's Books✨ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Masterfully written!
The Sultan Schahriar had the most beautiful wife. But when he found her dishonoring him in the worst way he has no choice but to put her to death. To ensure that this blasphemy will never happen to him again every night he takes on a new bride and every morning the bride is ordered killed by the grand vizier. But one day the grand vizier's eldest daughter comes to him and tells him that she has a plan to get the sultan to stop murdering young women. But the catch is she has t ...more

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Jun 21, 2011 Shovelmonkey1 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: djinn, princess, enchanted fish and mermaids everywhere

Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: 1001 books list and a love of all things from the orient

Shelves: bookcrossing-books, middle-east, 1001-books, fantasy-fantastic, read-in-2011

Having just re-read this book i'm reminded how the flowery wording and a hint of "eastern promise" manages to white wash over the actual issues of the story. Sheharezade is actually technically being kept hostage with a death penalty hanging over her head, forced to spin yarns to save not only her skin but that of all the other virgins in the vicinty. Her tales touch on marital rape, mass murder, theft, deception, fratricide, regicide, racism and necromancy. And you all thought American Psycho w ...more

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Aug 27, 2018 Shirley Revill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, pure-nostalgia, classic

I have read this book a few times over the years and I believe I was about thirteen the first time I read this book. A wonderful classic tale. Pure nostalgia.

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Oct 31, 2020 Valérie added it · review of another edition

The fairy tales from the Arabian world go from Aladdin to Sinbad. It's unique to dive into such a world - where flying carpets and magic lamps make the present better. ...more

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Dec 27, 2009 Ana Mardoll rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: ana-reviewed

The Arabian Nights / 0-486-22289-6

I'm a bit of an "Thousand Nights" enthusiast -- I enjoy the stories immensely and I have four separate translations in my personal library. Several friends have asked me to discuss the differences between the editions, so I thought I'd present a four-way comparison and then talk about which version is best for which audience.

For the purposes of the four-way comparison, I will draw text from the opening tale of the two kingly brothers in order to highlight how e ...more

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Aug 30, 2008 Terry rated it really liked it · review of another edition

“Shahrazad turned to King Shahrayar and said, ‘May I have your permission to tell a story?’ He replied, ‘Yes,’ and Shahrazad was very happy and said, “Listen”:

Of all of the world’s story collections, surely The Arabian Nights has the best framing device—the best fictional pretext by which to justify the telling of the other stories. I mean the story of Shahrazad (as this text transliterates her name), the daughter of the vizier to King Shahrayar. Bitter over his first wife’s betrayal, Shahrayar “Shahrazad turned to King Shahrayar and said, ‘May I have your permission to tell a story?’ He replied, ‘Yes,’ and Shahrazad was very happy and said, “Listen”:

Of all of the world’s story collections, surely The Arabian Nights has the best framing device—the best fictional pretext by which to justify the telling of the other stories. I mean the story of Shahrazad (as this text transliterates her name), the daughter of the vizier to King Shahrayar. Bitter over his first wife’s betrayal, Shahrayar decides that he will avenge himself on womankind by marrying a different woman every night and having her killed in the morning. As the tally of victims rises, the vizier, who has been charged with procuring these wives from among the daughters of the kingdom’s princes, becomes more and more desperate until one day Shahrazad herself volunteers to marry the king and stubbornly refuses to be dissuaded by her father. On the night of her nuptials, Shahrazad begins to tell Shahrayar a story to while away the hours until dawn when she will be killed. When the sun rises before she can complete the tale, the king decides to spare her until the next night so that he can find out whether a demon kills the merchant against whom he has raised his sword. And so begins the endless series of narrative delays and nesting of tales by which the storyteller manages to make herself indispensable to the tyrannical king—and so too begins the tyrannical king’s education in empathy as he listens to tales of justice and injustice, of fidelity and betrayal, of statecraft and misrule. Some of the tales have more artistry than others.

Some are sentimental. Some seem intended merely to titillate. To my mind, no single tale lives up to the best of Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales are roughly contemporary to these. Still, the power of the Nights is cumulative in the way of good refrains. Again and again, we are told, “But morning overcame Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence”—only to have the tale taken up again the next night. These lapses and interruptions invest even the silliest tales with gravity, reminding us that all art is an appeal against our common death sentence, a plucky assertion of the meaningfulness of human experience against the overwhelming evidence that we are powerless and disposable. What could possibly have motivated Shahrazad, the safest of all the kingdom’s virgins, to put her body in the tyrant’s bed? One can only call it love, terrifying as it is to invoke that word: love for the victims that led her to love their killer and to gamble her life on the humanity of his heart.

Though a translator’s note informs us that “tradition has it” Shahrazad bears Shahrayar three children and somewhere along the way earns enough trust to have her death sentence lifted, the tales where never finished by their original author—whoever that may have been. Later editors have felt free to add material, including many of the tales we most commonly associate with the Nights: Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, Ali Babba and the Forty Thieves. Husain Haddawy leaves these out of his translation, following the editorial choices of Muhsin Mahdi, whose fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript is the earliest one we have. The fascinating history of the text and of its translation into Western languages is thoroughly documented in Haddawy’s introduction—convincingly enough to persuade me that I’m in the hands of a good translator as I read.
...more

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Aug 06, 2016 Diba rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Although I simply have problem with the title, since it should be One thousand and one night, the translation of Burton is worthy to read and also should be praised to introduce such a masterpiece to Western literature. Not only do these stories depict cultural and social codes of Middle East and centra Asia, but also they convey how morality and wisdom were respected in these societies. As we are living in an era that most people are biased about their originality and are focused on the small w ...more

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Jan 24, 2019 Ali rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this the second time around, and maybe even more so as I've matured. I have my favourite ones, but not enough to begin listing them as they all kept my interest much like they withheld the King's.

They were short and full of adventure. I felt like I was able to inject myself in them as if I were one of the characters, or at least watching at a close distance as the stories unfolded.

My plan was to read one per night before bed, but again, I enjoyed the stories so much I wanted t ...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Ellinor rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I listened to this on audio and it took me 8-9 months to complete it. I was surprised of quite a few things:

1. Here you have the first cliffhanger in history (well, I knew that before, but it was still surprising how early in history this method had been invented). At the same time the method of a story within a story (and often within another stroy) is used, also probably for the first time ever.

2. We think we know many of the tales mentioned but in fact we hardly do: The stories we best know ...more

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Jun 28, 2019 Clay Davis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book has stories with an amazing sense of wonder.

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Feb 04, 2013 Melanti rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fairy-tales-folklore-and-mythology, 2013, 2014, classics, anthology, 1001-books, poetry

These stories were so much funnier and bawdier than I was expecting! I was expecting more adventurous stories - more akin to what I know of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" - yet a large number of these stories featured rather licentious women! It wasn't something I was expecting out of a set of stories being told by a woman to a man who was obsessed with the idea of unfaithful wives!

This particular edition is based off the core set of tales compiled by Muhsin Mahdi which reflect only the stori ...more

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Jun 07, 2015 Sharyl rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015-reads

The origin of my desire to read the tales of The Arabian Nights came from reading another novel that I was actually Ill-equipped to tackle: John Barth's Chimera, a satire of tales and mythology that I'd either never read or barely remembered. However, that did not stop me from thoroughly enjoying the back story he created for Scheherazade.

And so, I set out to read some of these tales, and lo, there are some wild ones. The language is especially interesting, exquisitely complete, sometimes crue The origin of my desire to read the tales of The Arabian Nights came from reading another novel that I was actually Ill-equipped to tackle: John Barth's Chimera, a satire of tales and mythology that I'd either never read or barely remembered. However, that did not stop me from thoroughly enjoying the back story he created for Scheherazade.

And so, I set out to read some of these tales, and lo, there are some wild ones. The language is especially interesting, exquisitely complete, sometimes cruel. For instance, it would not be worthy of these tales to simply state that a certain man was ugly. No. One must be specific! Here is an example of such, from The Ebony Horse:

"he was an old man, a hundred years of age, with hair frosted, forehead drooping, eyebrows mangy, ears slitten, beard and mustachios stained and dyed, eyes red and goggle, cheeks bleached and hollow, flabby nose like a brinjall or eggplant, face like a cobblees apron, teeth overlapping and lips like camel's kidneys, loose and pendulous- in brief, a terror, a horror, a monster, for he was of the folk of his time the unsightliest and of his age the frightfulest. Sundry of his grinders had been knocked out and his eyeteeth were like the tusks of the Jinni who frighteneth poultry in henhouses."

I was surprised to recognize only a couple titles from the list of stories. One of these was Sinbad and his seven voyages, but the stories were completely foreign to me. The impression I will take away from the Sinbad voyages is a humorous one, because every single time Sinbad sets out on a voyage, some calamity occurs, hard times ensue, Sinbad is the only survivor, but not only does he always seem to find his way home, but he is always better off than he was before he's left! What a guy.

Aladdin's story also differed from any I had heard. For one thing, there was no concept of there being just three wishes. This tale was one I found very interesting, but the last one in this collection, Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves, might have been my favorite.

By the time Scheherazade has finished this tale, she has given birth to three sons by King Shahryar, and he pardons her. Furthermore, Scheherazade's sister, Dunyazade, marries Shahryar's brother, King Shah Zaman, in what is described as a most opulent double ceremony, the ultimate of fairy tale weddings.

This edition's table of contents is here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/burt1k1/.

It is not the unwieldy sixteen volume tome I'd encountered at first! I perceived some change in the tales, starting with The Ebony Horse. Did the style become a little easier to read, or did I just start to get used it? It was not a quick or easy read for me, but I must stand in awe of Sir Richard Burton, for the fascinating translation.

...more

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Aug 26, 2018 Calzean rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, culture-middle-east

There are stories within stories. Wives who turn their husband/lovers into animals who reap their revenge, remarry beautiful princesses who have fled a lecherous uncle who is really an evil spirit who is hiding from a witch who once was married to a Sultan who had many wives who all had affairs and many heads were cut off. The one thing I found hard to understand was that some of the stories were often only a page or so. SO how did this story telling last the whole night? Methinks there was more ...more

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Oct 04, 2016 Alexis (TheSlothReader) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 52-books-2016, audiobook

There were some stories I really loved. unfortunately all the ones that I didn't love just kind of all run together. however anyone looking to read this should definitely listen to it audibly. it makes it so much more interesting. ...more

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Boxall's 1001 Bo...: 1001 Nights Reading	1	45	Jan 26, 2021 07:38PM
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About Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang

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Andrew Gabriel Lang was a prolific Scots man of letters. He was a poet, novelist, and literary critic, and a contributor to anthropology. He now is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales.

The Young Scholar and Journalist
Andrew Gabriel Lang grew up in Selkirk in the Scottish Borders, the son of the town clerk and the eldest of eight children. The wild and beautiful landscape of his childh ...more