One Thousand and One Nights

Each pleasure that does not forward the soul to God is not so much as a pleasure as a calamity.

One Thousand and One Nights is a medieval Middle-Eastern literary work that consists of a number of stories being told by Queen Scheherazade to her mad husband, King Shahryar.

Frame story

Scheherazade … had read much, and had so admirable a memory, that she never forgot any thing she had read. She had successfully applied herself to philosophy, medicine, history, and the liberal arts; and her poetry excelled the compositions of the best writers of her time.

• Scheherazade … possessed courage, wit, and penetration, infinitely above her sex. She had read much, and had so admirable a memory, that she never forgot any thing she had read. She had successfully applied herself to philosophy, medicine, history, and the liberal arts; and her poetry excelled the compositions of the best writers of her time. Besides this, she was a perfect beauty, and all her accomplishments were crowned by solid virtue.
  • The Arabian Nights Entertainments (1811) as translated by Jonathan Scott, Vol. I, p. 20

The History of Aladdin

• "Who will change old lamps for new ones? New lamps for old?"

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

• "Open Sesame!"

Tale of Zummurud and Ali-Shar

• When I was alive
  I was dust which was,
  But now I am dust in dust
  I am dust which never was.

• On the black road of life think not to find
  Either a friend or lover to your mind;
  If you must love, oh then, love solitude,
  For solitude alone is true and kind.

Tale of King Umar al-Numan

• Maslamah ibn Dinar said: "Each pleasure that does not forward the soul to God is not so much as a pleasure as a calamity."

• I hope that Allah will not make me immortal, for death is his greatest gift to any true believer.

• Each man envies, the strong openly, the weak in secret.

Quotes about One Thousand and One Nights

• It is a book so vast that it is not necessary to have read it, for it is a part of our memory.
  • Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights (1984), p. 57

• I'd like every single Arab to read One Thousand and One Nights. They [would] learn a lot from them, especially [because] these stories were written away from the influence of religion. It's interesting to see how we were open, how we had a dialogue with each other, how we wanted to understand, how we respected each other. There was a great dignity, and I'd like this to be restored again.
  • Hanan al-Shaykh, "Scheherazade: From Storytelling 'Slave' To 'First Feminist'" at NPR (9 June 2013)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on One Thousand and One Nights at Wikipedia
• Works related to One Thousand and One Nights at Wikisource
• Media related to Arabian Nights at Wikimedia Commons