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Influence of Cultures on The Thousand and One Nights Essay examples

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Stories like Sindbad, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp and other popular stories are very common today in the western culture. Animated movies were also made for the entertainment of kids on these popular stories. One might wonder that where these stories originated and how it came down and made place in the western culture. Although these stories are very popular in both the western culture and the eastern culture but the original literary work is not so popular in common people. Theses stories are some of the stories from the Arabic work "The Thousand and One Nights." The work of "The Thousand and One Nights" represents basically a female that is a strong and clever idol and continuously imaginative and creative. It is an anonymous work …show more content…

(Lawall 1586)
The same is claimed by Goitein as he says that "the first element in the tile of popular book: ‘One Thousand Nights' is very old, as it is an adaptation of the Persian hezar efsane, which means ‘A Thousand Stories,' according to various Muslim writers the name of a pre-Islamic collection of tales and fables."(301-02) W. F. Kirby states while reviewing the work that "Our first reference to The Thousand and One Nights by name dates back to the work of Masoudi in the tenth century where it is said to be based on a Persian work."(112-24) All of these authors date back the work to the same era. Although the time period it was originated has been a topic of study but the author of the work is unknown and not talked about by any of these reviewers.
The title of this work has a history also, that how it is called The Thousand and One Nights. As the work was and adaptation of the Persian hezar efsane which literally means ‘thousand stories', it got its name of Alf Laila. (Youssef) This title was changed to "The Thousand and One Nights" later as Goitein discusses:
A marginal note in a fragmentary manuscript of the Fihrist states that the book was called "One Thousand and One Nights" see D. B. Macdonald, ib., p. 367. However, unless new evidence is forthcoming, it stands to reason that the two tenth century authors actually spoke of a book of "One Thousand Nights," a

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