![]() ![]() While his brother simply swears off women completely, our main protagonist, Shahrayar has a more shockingly sinister plan in mind. This encounter reinforces King Shahrayar’s loathing of women and confirms his paranoia that women are simply not to be trusted. The woman threatens to awaken the genie and thus incur certain death upon them, unless they have sexual relations with her. On their journey, they encounter a beautiful woman who is being held captive by the most fearsome genie. Very simply put, the frame story itself is one of a king, King Shahrayar, who has been betrayed by his wife, and who is off commiserating with his brother, King Shahzaman, who had suffered a similar fate himself. The tales themselves come in a very wide variety of genres, including fables, adventures, mysteries, love-stories, dramas, comedies, tragedies, horror stories, poems, burlesque, and erotica. Co., Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.The One Thousand and One Nights, or the Arabian Nights, as it is also known, is constructed as a “frame story” to which all the other tales are subsequently added. ![]() 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. 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. 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. (The following is a post by Muhannad Salhi, Arab World Specialist, African and Middle Eastern Division.)Īn 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.
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