One Thousand and One Nights –ألف ليلة وليلة- is a book that includes a collection of stories from West and South Asia, in addition to folk tales that were collected and translated into Arabic during the Golden Age of Islam. The book is also known as the Arabian Nights in the English language, since the first English version of it was published in the year 1706, and its old Arabic name is “Asmar al-Layyāl for the Arabs, which contains humor and brings about mirth,” according to its publisher, William Macnington.
The work was collected over centuries, by authors, translators, and scholars from West, Central, and South Asia, and North Africa. The tales go back to the ancient and medieval centuries of the Arab, Persian, Indian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations. Most of the tales were essentially folk tales from the Caliphate era, and others, especially the frame story, were most likely drawn from the Persian Pahlavi work “A Thousand Fables” (Persian: hazar afsan), which in turn was partly based on Indian literature. On the other hand, there are those who say that the origin of these narratives is Babylonian.
What is common to all versions of the Nights is the prequel, the frame story about the ruler Shahrayar and his wife Scheherazade, which is included in all the tales. The stories basically start from this story, and some stories are framed within other stories, while others begin and end on their own. Some printed copies contain only a few hundred nights, others include a thousand and one nights or more. The bulk of the text is in prose, although poetry is sometimes used to express heightened emotion, and sometimes songs and riddles are used. Most poems are single stanzas or quatrains, and some are longer.
There are some famous stories contained in One Thousand and One Nights, such as “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp,” “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” and “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.” There are also some folk tales in the Middle East that are considered almost certain, It is not part of the One Thousand and One Nights found in Arabic versions, but it was added by the French orientalist Antoine Galland and other European translators, and Antoine Galland had worked on translating the book into French in 1704.
The main frame story of the tales of “One Thousand and One Nights” tells the story of a king named Shahryar. The matter began when the king discovered that his brother’s wife was a traitor and he was shocked by that matter. What increased that was the discovery of his wife’s betrayal of him as well. It was an intolerable matter for him, so he decided Executing her, he saw that all women are wrong. King Shahryar married virgins daily, killing the bride on the wedding night, before she had the opportunity to betray him. After a while, the minister who was charged with providing a bride for the king did not find any more virgins. Then his daughter Scheherazade offered herself to be the king’s bride, and her father reluctantly agreed. On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade began telling the king a story but did not finish it, which aroused the king’s curiosity to hear the end of the story, and necessarily prompted him to postpone her execution to listen to the end of the story. The next night, when she finished one story, she began a new one, and the king longed to hear its ending as well, and so on, until it completed the Thousand and One Nights for him.
The stories vary and are diverse, and include historical, romantic, tragic, comedic, poetic, fantasy, and mythological stories, in addition to several types of sexual stories. There are many stories describing jinn, ghouls, and monkeys, and there are also stories about witches, sorcerers, and mythical places, which often overlap with real people and places that exist on the ground, but they are not always logical.
Author: Abdullah Ibn Al-Muqaffa
Abu Muhammad Abdullah bin Al-Muqaffa (106 – 142 AH) (724 AD – 759 AD) (in Persian: Ibn Muqaffa – Abu Muhammad Abdullah Roozbeh bin Dazawayh) is a Persian thinker who was born a Magian but converted to Islam, and lived during both the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates.
He studied Persian, learned Arabic from the books of writers, and participated in the Marbad market. Transferring from Pahlavi to Arabic Kalila and Dimna. In the transmitted books, he has minor literature and major literature in which he talks about the sultan, his relationship with the subjects, and the subjects’ relationship with him, and small literature about refining the soul and training it to do good deeds, and among his works is also an introduction to Kalila and Dimna.
His biography
He is Abdullah bin Al-Muqaffa, Persian in origin. He was born in a village in Persia called Jur. Other historians attribute his birth to Basra. His name was Roozbeh Pour Dadawayh (Roozbeh bin Dadawayh), and his nickname was “Abu Amr.” When he converted to Islam, he was called Abdullah and was nicknamed Abu Muhammad, and his father’s nickname was Al-Muqaffa’. Because he was accused of extending his hand and stealing from the money of Muslims and the Islamic State, so Al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf Al-Thaqafi abused him and punished him, hitting him on the fingers of his hands until they spasmed and contracted (i.e., they became swollen and their fingers were crooked, then paralyzed). Ibn Khallikan said in his interpretation: Al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf al-Thaqafi, during the days of his rule in Iraq and Persia, had given his relatives the tax of Persia, so he extended his hand and took the money. So he tortured him and his hand exploded, so he was called Al-Muqaffa’, and it was said that he was called Al-Muqaffa’ because he worked in Al-Qaffa’ and sold them, but the first opinion is the common and well-known one, and on the basis of it Ruzbah was known as Ibn Al-Muqaffa’.
Ibn al-Muqaffa was raised on the Magian doctrine of Manichaeism and was active in spreading its teachings and translating them into Arabic, including a book on the biography of Mazdak, one of the advocates of dualism and one of its leaders who renewed its principles. Until he converted to Islam at the hands of Issa bin Ali, his name was changed to Abdullah and he was given the nickname Abu Muhammad. The period of his conversion to Islam did not last long, as he was killed by Sufyan bin Muawiyah bin Yazid bin Al-Malhab at the direction of Al-Mansur, who was accused of heresy, as the justifications for his killing were that he was a heretic from the group that pretended to be a hypocritical Islam. And deceit. However, there is no evidence in the works of Ibn al-Muqaffa’ that indicates his heresy, and there was no material evidence directing accusations against him to prove his heresy and justify his killing, as heresy was not the real reason for his death, but rather it was a cover-up. Despite this, the possibility that he became a heretic after his conversion to Islam is possible. Some historians indicate that his conversion to Islam was only to preserve his dignity and out of greed for fame.
