arabian nights

Wens dis al krismis dan ek die boek dalk op my wishlist sit.
 
So which Nights are they, the Arabian, or the Thousand and One? Both appear on the title page of this, the first full English translation since Richard Burton published his version well over a century ago. The dual title neatly illustrates the hybrid nature of the work: it is part of Arabic and European literature, it contains stories and motifs that may be traced to Sanskrit, Persian and Greek literature, it hovers between the oral and the written, the popular and the highbrow, the pious and the scabrous, realism and fantasy. “Arabian”, an epithet it acquired in Europe, is a misnomer, for it was neither conceived nor written in Arabia and the great majority of the stories are set in , or rather than the . The original Arabic title, Alf layla wa-layla, translates as “A Thousand and One Nights” – but one should be cautious using the term “original”, for the earliest mention in Arabic refers to a Persian book called Har afsana, “A Thousand Tales”. An Arabic version, including the frame story about the resourceful and eloquent Shahrad and the murderous misogynist King Shahriyar (a story that may be of Indian origin, whereas the names are Persian), was around in the tenth century, but the text is not preserved, presumably because it was deemed to be “silly stuff”, in the words of a tenth-century scholar. It was anonymous, its language was not sufficiently polished, and it was too obviously fictional and fantastic in parts, all of which precluded its acceptance in highbrow circles. At the same time it was never as truly popular, in the sense of widespread among and beloved by the illiterate, as the monstrously lengthy and equally anonymous epic tales such as Sirat Antar or Sirat Bani Hilal.

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http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5561278.ece?&EMC-Bltn=PKSC4A