rulers Introduction The Arabian Nights or The Thousand and One Nights is a collection of fables fairy tales adventure stories and historical anecdotes from across India Persia and the Arab world The stories were collected over several centuries by storytellers authors translators and scholars The oldest Arabic manuscript a few handwritten pages discovered in 1948 comes from Syria and dates back to the early 800s The stories are also mentioned in Ibn Al Nadim's Fihrist Catalogue of Books in Baghdad in 938 AD A fourteenth century Syrian manuscript now in the Bibliothèque Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris contains some three hundred tales Their roots may reach back for many centuries yet the stories in The Arabian Nights continue to captivate The beauty of these tales lies in the way they weave the extraordinary and the supernatural into everyday life Ordinary men and women meet demons and genies princes and princesses ghouls and magicians Kings and queens disguise themselves as ordinary people to meet their subjects and learn to become better
And through simple storytelling Shahrazade a beautiful and clever woman changes an angry and violent man Shahriyar into a patient generous and kindhearted husband and father The Arabian Nights has become part of the world's cultural heritage The tales have left their mark on music art and common speech The expressions open sesame and genie as well as images of flying carpets and magic lamps are now widely used in films television and children's books When I was a girl growing up in Lebanon my grandmother Hanneh had only to say Kaan ya maa kaan in Arabic or Once there was and there was not for all the children to gather around to hear her retell a story from The Arabian Nights Many of the stories she told had courageous heroines and princesses who helped their men in time of need Hanneh had much in common with these heroines the daughter of a village sheikh she left her father's house as a bride decked with gold jewelry sold every one of her bracelets and necklaces to educate her children then used the rest of her dowry to dig a well in the house so that the family would have running water I dedicate this book to her memory Wafa Tarnowska
Shahriyar Meets Shahrazade Long ago when tales traveled along the Silk Road from China to Persia there lived two Persian kings They were brothers and each was handsome brave and loving One brother ruled from the city of Ctesiphon in the west and the other from Samarkand in the east so neither saw the sun set at the same time as the other The elder brother was called Shahriyar The younger brother was called Shahzaman Both brothers had married for love not for money or status and both were blissfully happy with their wives They were also kept extremely busy year after year dealing with affairs of state However not everything went well with the brothers marriages A time came when both of their wives betrayed them Shahzaman was so saddened by this that he became a hermit and vowed never to come close to a woman again As for Shahriyar he was convinced that all women were treacherous However he also missed their laughter and their warmth their embraces and their jokes their wit and their grace What should he do Instead of seeking someone
