A Tale of the One Thousand and One Nights
The One Thousand and One Arabian Nights stories were originally oral folk tales from the Arabian and Asian regions, transmitted orally throughout the communities, leaving a mysterious origin. Travelers and merchants who passed via the Silk Route also passed along these stories during stops at various towns along their journey and told them to each other for entertainment purposes. In the 17th century, French Orientalist, Antoine Galland had come across these mythical tales in Syria and translated them from their original Arabic into French. Interestingly, the most famous of these tales, Aladdin and Ali Baba actually have no original Arabic manuscript, reinforcing the fact that these cultures and societies worked mostly on an oral basis as opposed to written.
On the turn of the 19th century, more versions of these tales appeared, namely the Calcutta I and Calcutta II versions and the Bulag text, which contained more stories and forming mostly of what we know today as the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. In 1885, the British orientalist Richard Francis Burton translated the Arabian Nights stories into English from the Calcutta II manuscript, which was quite vast in terms of volume and it proved to be a hard project to work on which took may years to complete – and until this date, it is known as one of the best translations of the tales. However, Burton’s efforts were also highly criticised due to people’s opinion that his translations were too elaborate or used too much exaggeration in his language. In fact, it was Burton’s translation of the tales, which helped to fuel the fantasies and imagery of those who went onto reproduce those tales for film.
The characters of the tales are Persian with Arabic names, and the framing and style of the stories are very Indian – giving the stories a large geographical coverage, appealing to all societies from India to Persia and Iraq, through to Turkey and Egypt where these stories have formed as an important part of deep cultural heritage. What really set these stories apart, were their zest and zeal for the imagination, romance, adventure and enchantment which were back dropped on culturally significant cities of Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus. A lot of these tales are poetic, in line with the literal richness of the Arabic and Persian languages and the stories were historical as well, some being set in historical regions and palaces of Kings and Queens.
The most famous story of them all, from which the whole volume of the stories of the One Thousand and One Night got its title from, is the story of Queen Scheherazade who was sentenced to execution by her husband the King. In a desperate bid to save her life, she would relate stories to her King on a nightly basis leaving off her stories on a cliff hanger, consequently forcing the King to wait until the next night to hear the rest of the story under suspense and this continued for one thousand nights. This and other stories have been adapted and edited for use by various film production houses, such as Disney, who famously released Aladdin – based off the original story found in the Arabian Nights.
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