Come aboard a magic carpet, if you will. Most likely you've heard of the "Thousand and One Arabian Nights", or the "Thousand Nights and a Night", or perhaps you know these magical tales as "The Arabian Nights Entertainments". Or, perhaps, you sadly know nothing of them at all! Especially in this age of increasing illiteracy, and more reliance than ever on visual information, not to mention the shear quantity of data most of us are required to deal with on a daily basis, there is such a pressing need to get to know and love the massive amount of literary wealth all of mankind (No offense, ladies!) has produced, from the very first tales spun in mime around primevil campfires to the latest "hot" modern novel!
Perhaps "The Arabian Nights" is not a bad place to start. And if your a bookworm and reader anyway, you may be aquainted with them.

No one is completely sure from whence came these tales. Though it seems certain they existed in one form or another prior to the 10th century. No single author or authors have been assigned to them, and while many of them appear to have been oral in origin, others appear to have been deliberately composed for print.

And while they have a decidedly "Oriental" feel to them, their origins seem to stem from Arabia in the west, China in the east, India in the south and Persia in the north.

No one has been able to assign a birthplace to the tales, and perhaps it would be clearly a diservice to them to do so!

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The Arabian Nights made their first appearance in Europe early in the 18th century, first in France, with England and Germany close behind. In no ways were these (or any editions in truth!) definitive editions. Some collections had fewer tales, others more. Not even the same cadre of individual stories could be absolutely assured of inclusion in any given version of the Nights.

As a rule, the framework of the tales remained intact, with Sharhazad/Sheherazade spinning her tales night after night to the bitter king Sharyar, in a teasing, provocative, and ultimately successful attempt to keep the king's executioner's blade comfortably distanced from her sweet, fragrant neck.

But all this aside, people read the tales. They very quickly adopted them into their cultural families, where they have become somewhat of a mainstay in Western literary culture.

Even people who are not avid readers have usually at least heard of the tales. There have been popular films and stageplays based on the Arabian Nights. Novels and short stories have used one or more of these works as jumping off points for their own story lines. The opulent and exotic atmosphere of the old Islamic and pre-Islamic world, where one can find the Jinn, sorcerers, beautiful princesses, bold and handsome princes, mermaids and mermen, flying horses, magical (and usually lost) ancient cities, flying carpets, and immeasurable hidden treasures, has been adopted, reworked and given back to us in countless ways. There's no reason to think they will not be with us still, for many years to come!

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Arabian Nights Part 2
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