Bibliograph

The Arabian Nights, Alf laylah wa-laylah, translated by Husain Haddawy ; based on the text of the fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript edited by Muhsin Mahdi

Type

Label

The Arabian Nights, Alf laylah wa-laylah, translated by Husain Haddawy ; based on the text of the fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript edited by Muhsin Mahdi

Language

eng

Illustrations

maps

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

The Arabian Nights

Oclc number

181139139

Responsibility statement

translated by Husain Haddawy ; based on the text of the fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript edited by Muhsin Mahdi

Sub title

Alf laylah wa-laylah

Summary

Overview: Husain Haddawy's rapturously received translation of The Arabian Nights is based on a landmark reconstruction of the earliest extant manuscript version. These stories (and stories within stories, and stories within stories within stories), told by the Princess Shahrazad under the threat of death if she ceases to amuse, first reached the West around 1700. They fired in the European imagination an appetite for the mysterious and exotic which has never left it. Collected over centuries from India, Persia, and Arabia, and ranging from vivacious erotica, animal fables, and adventure fantasies to pointed Sufi tales, the stories of The Arabian Nights provided the daily entertainment of the medieval Islamic world at the height of its glory. The present new translation by Husain Haddawy is of the Mahdi edition, the definitive Arabic edition of a fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript in the BibliothEque Nationale in Paris, which is the oldest surviving version of the tales and is considered to be the most authentic. This early version is without the embellishments and additions that appear in later Indian and Egyptian manuscripts, on which all previous English translations were based

resource.variantTitle

Alf laylah wa-laylah

Classification