Anonymous, One Thousand and One Nights

John Andrew Morrow

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 7.1.1: Iranian/ Persian Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Laetitia Nanquette (University of New South Wales)

Dates

First circulation or publication c. 850

Places

Iran (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story Collection

Resources

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The Arabian Nights

, known in Arabic as

Alf laylah wa laylah

The Thousand and One Nights

, is an anonymous collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian narratives compiled during the Islamic Golden Age (8th-15th centuries CE). Containing hundreds of fables, heroic epics, historical tales, love stories, tragedies, burlesques, debates, fairy tales, political allegories, poems, adventure fantasies, erotic and pornographic stories, murder mysteries, suspense thrillers with multiple plot twists, scatological jokes, mystical anecdotes, chronicles of low life, rhetorical debates, and comedies, the work is a veritable literary labyrinth consisting of numerous layers of stories within stories.

Although the Arabian Nights has had an immense influence on the literature and culture of the Western

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3004 words

Citation: Morrow, John Andrew. "One Thousand and One Nights". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 March 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23514, accessed 25 November 2024.]

Anonymous, One Thousand and One Nights

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