The Arabian Nights

By Burton, Richard

Book Id: WPLBN0003466886
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 49.37 MB
Reproduction Date: 2014

Title:	The Arabian Nights
Author:	Burton, Richard
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Sacred Texts, Legends and Sagas, Arabian Nights
Collections:	Sacred Texts
Historic Publication Date:	1850
Publisher:	Internet Sacred Text Archive (ISTA)


Citation APA MLA Chicago Richard, B. B. (1850). The Arabian Nights. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.cc/

Description
Description: The stories of ?The Arabian Nights ?(and stories within stories, and stories within stories within stories) are famously told by the Princess Shahrazad, under the threat of death should the king lose interest in her tale. Collected over the centuries from India, Persia, and Arabia, and ranging from adventure fantasies, vivacious erotica, and animal fables, to pointed Sufi tales, these stories provided the daily entertainment of the medieval Islamic world at the height of its glory. No one knows exactly when a given story originated, and many circulated orally for centuries before being written down; but in the process of telling and retelling, they were modified to reflect the general life and customs of the Arab society that adapted them—a distinctive synthesis that marks the cultural and artistic history of Islam. This translation is of the complete text of the Mahdi edition, the definitive Arabic edition of a fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript, which is the oldest surviving version of the tales and considered to be the most authentic.