One Thousand and One Nights is a medieval Middle-Eastern literary work that consists of a number of stories being told by Queen Scheherazade to her mad husband, King Shahryar.
Frame story
- Scheherazade … possessed courage, wit, and penetration, infinitely above her sex. She had read much, and had so admirable a memory, that she never forgot any thing she had read. She had successfully applied herself to philosophy, medicine, history, and the liberal arts; and her poetry excelled the compositions of the best writers of her time. Besides this, she was a perfect beauty, and all her accomplishments were crowned by solid virtue.
The History of Aladdin
- "Who will change old lamps for new ones? New lamps for old?"
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
- "Open Sesame!"
Tale of Zummurud and Ali-Shar
- When I was alive
I was dust which was,
But now I am dust in dust
I am dust which never was.
- On the black road of life think not to find
Either a friend or lover to your mind;
If you must love, oh then, love solitude,
For solitude alone is true and kind.
Tale of King Umar al-Numan
- Maslamah ibn Dinar said: "Each pleasure that does not forward the soul to God is not so much as a pleasure as a calamity."
- I hope that Allah will not make me immortal, for death is his greatest gift to any true believer.
- Each man envies, the strong openly, the weak in secret.
Quotes about One Thousand and One Nights
- It is a book so vast that it is not necessary to have read it, for it is a part of our memory.
- Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights (1984), p. 57
- I'd like every single Arab to read One Thousand and One Nights. They [would] learn a lot from them, especially [because] these stories were written away from the influence of religion. It's interesting to see how we were open, how we had a dialogue with each other, how we wanted to understand, how we respected each other. There was a great dignity, and I'd like this to be restored again.
External links
Encyclopedic article on One Thousand and One Nights at Wikipedia Works related to One Thousand and One Nights at Wikisource Media related to Arabian Nights at Wikimedia Commons
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