(The following is a post by Muhannad Salhi, Arab World Specialist, African and Middle Eastern Division.)
An unparalleled monument to the ageless art of story-telling, the tales of the One Thousand and One Nights have, for many centuries, titillated the imaginations of generations the world over. Perhaps one of the greatest Arabic, Middle Eastern, and Islamic contributions to world literature, the many stories of the Arabian Nights, (or Alf Laylah wa-Laylah as it is known in Arabic) in their various forms and genres, have influenced literature, music, art, and cinema, and continue to do so until our present day. Whether through its folktales, its magical stories full of adventure, or through its modern depictions as Hollywood feature films or Disney animated movies, almost everyone has been influenced to some extent by at least one or another of Shahrazad’s dazzling Arabian stories of the exotic East. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone not familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba, or Sindbad among many others, or with such terms as genie and ghoul, all of which became known to the West through the tales of One Thousand and One Nights.

As has been previously mentioned, the tales themselves combine many genres, and draw from the very rich heritage and folkloric tradition of the entire Middle Eastern region. The stories combine the magical, the mystical, and the mythical, with the real and the historical. Some of the main protagonists in the tales, for example, are the famous Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid and his Grand Vizier Ja’far Barmaki, as well as the famous poet Abu al-Nuwwas, in addition to genies, ghouls, and mythical giant birds such as the Ruk. It is worth noting, however, that due to the folkloric nature of the tales, the Arabian Nights were often considered plebian rather than high literature. Furthermore, because some of the stories contain explicit sexuality and sexual innuendo, as well as bawdy language, and themes not acceptable by polite society, they were also deemed quite vulgar.
Up until the Europeans became captivated with these magical tales of the Orient, the tales remained part of these manuscript and oral traditions. Nor were there exactly one thousand and one nights prior to the European translations, the number itself may have been either a means of exaggeration to portray the “many” nights, or perhaps even a mystical symbol denoting a particular cycle of events. The first complete translation was done by Antoine Galland into French in the early 18th century, later, many European translations would follow in various languages, including English, French, German, and practically every other language, the most well-known being Sir Richard Burton’s 16 volume, “The Thousand Nights and a Night” in 1885-1888.

The first, definitive, complete printed edition in Arabic was published by the Bulaq Press in Cairo in 1835. Printed by the “first Muslim printing press in the Arab world,” the Bulaq edition constitutes “the last decisive act in the textual history.” (Glass/Roper, “The Printing of Arabic Books in the Arab World”, in “Middle Eastern Languages and Print Revolution,” 2002, p.183.) All modern translations and editions to this day are based on this corpus published by the Bulaq Press. According to Arabian Night’s scholar Ulrich Marzolph, it was this edition that “put an end to the development of the work’s Arabic text” after a thousand years of oral and manuscript tradition during which the corpus was continually subject to change (Marzolph, “The Arabian Nights in transnational perspective,” 2007, p.51). While the Library of Congress has a large number of translations and editions of the Arabian Nights in its collections in a variety of languages, it is worth noting that a copy of this definitive Bulaq edition of the Arabian Nights was recently acquired and added to the collection and may be accessed in the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room.
Comments (7)
Very informative with amusing images!
Is there a English translation of the Bulaq edition?
Did Gustav Klimt have a copy? Was he referencing the book/ illustrations with his gold paint works ?
The Pasolini film of the Arabian nights exhibited his brilliance succinctly.
His characters range from extremely beautiful to downright ugly.
One of my favourite movies of all time. I think, second favourite.
3enough for me
In David Yellin’s translation of the Arabian Nights into Hebrew, we find that there are poems in the story of the merchant and the genie at the beginning of the Nights.
While Yellin declared that he translated it from the Bulaq edition, there are no such poems in the Bulaq edition.
Where did he take these poems from?
Thank you.
Greetings and thank you for your comment. I am not sure where Yellin would have obtained the poems he translate from to be honest, perhaps he used one of the other editions of the Arabian Nights.