Who has read this book ?

[OilSheikh]

It was not originally written by an author but was narrated by a Princess
The stories of this book are centuries old


It is


1001 Arabian Nights

[Smudger]

I haven't, but wasn't the Kama Sutra an extract of/related to it?

[Smudger]

OK, on looking at Amazon, it appears not, but there are still some mucky stories in there, not just the children's classics...

[OilSheikh]

From 1300 :



Timeline [ FROM WIKI ]

Arabic Manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights dating back to the 1300s
Scholars have assembled a timeline concerning the publication history of The Nights:[29][30][31]
One of the oldest Arabic manuscript fragments from Syria (a few handwritten pages) dating to the early 9th century. Discovered by scholar Nabia Abbott in 1948, it bears the title Kitab Hadith Alf Layla ("The Book of the Tale of the Thousand Nights") and the first few lines of the book in which Dinazad asks Shirazad (Scheherazade) to tell him stories.[19]
10th century – Mention of Hazār Afsān in Ibn al-Nadim's "Fihrist" (Catalogue of books) in Baghdad. He attributes a pre-Islamic Sassanian Persian origin to the collection and refers to the frame story of Scheherazade telling stories over a thousand nights to save her life. However, according to al-Nadim, the book contains only 200 stories. Curiously, al-Nadim also writes disparagingly of the collection's literary quality, observing that "it is truly a coarse book, without warmth in the telling".[32]
10th century – Reference to The Thousand Nights, an Arabic translation of the Persian Hazār Afsān ("Thousand Stories"), in Muruj Al-Dhahab (The Meadows of Gold) by Al-Masudi.[12]
11th century – Mention of The Nights by Qatran Tabrizi in the following couplet in Persian:
هزار ره صفت هفت خوان و رويين دژ فرو شنيدم و خواندم من از هزار افسان A thousand times, accounts of Rouyin Dezh and Haft Khān I heard and read from Hazār Afsān (literally Thousand Fables)[citation needed] 12th century; - A document from Cairo refers to a Jewish bookseller lending a copy of The Thousand and One Nights (this is the first appearance of the final form of the title).[18]
14th century – Existing Syrian manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (contains about 300 tales).
1704 – Antoine Galland's French translation is the first European version of The Nights. Later volumes were introduced using Galland's name though the stories were written by unknown persons at the behest of the publisher wanting to capitalize on the popularity of the collection.
1706 – An anonymously translated version in English appears in Europe dubbed the "Grub Street" version. This is entitled The Arabian Nights' Entertainment - the first known use of the common English title of the work.
1775 – Egyptian version of The Nights called "ZER" (Hermann Zotenberg's Egyptian Recension) with 200 tales (no surviving edition exists).
1814 – Calcutta I, the earliest existing Arabic printed version, is published by the British East India Company. A second volume was released in 1818. Both had 100 tales each.
Early 19th century: Modern Persian translations of the text are made, variously under the title Alf leile va leile, Hezār-o yek šab (هزار و یک شب), or, in distorted Arabic, Alf al-leil. One early extant version is that illustrated by Sani al-Molk (1814–1866) for Mohammad Shah Qajar.[33]
1825–1838 – The Breslau/Habicht edition is published in Arabic in 8 volumes. Christian Maxmilian Habicht (born in Breslau, Kingdom of Prussia, 1775) collaborated with the Tunisian Murad Al-Najjar and created this edition containing 1001 stories. Using versions of The Nights, tales from Al-Najjar, and other stories from unknown origins Habicht published his version in Arabic and German.
1842–1843 – Four additional volumes by Habicht.
1835 Bulaq version – These two volumes, printed by the Egyptian government, are the oldest printed (by a publishing house) version of The Nights in Arabic by a non-European. It is primarily a reprinting of the ZER text.
1839–1842 – Calcutta II (4 volumes) is published. It claims to be based on an older Egyptian manuscript (which was never found). This version contains many elements and stories from the Habicht edition.
1838 – Torrens version in English.
1838–1840 – Edward William Lane publishes an English translation. Notable for its exclusion of content Lane found "immoral" and for its anthropological notes on Arab customs by Lane.
1882–1884 – John Payne publishes an English version translated entirely from Calcutta II, adding some tales from Calcutta I and Breslau.
1885–1888 – Sir Richard Francis Burton publishes an English translation from several sources (largely the same as Payne[24]). His version accentuated the sexuality of the stories vis-à-vis Lane's bowdlerized translation.
1889–1904 – J. C. Mardrus publishes a French version using Bulaq and Calcutta II editions.
1984 – Muhsin Mahdi publishes an Arabic edition which he claims is faithful to the oldest Arabic versions surviving (primarily based on the Syrian manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in combination with other early manuscripts of the Syrian branch).
1990 – Husain Haddawy publishes an English translation of Mahdi.
2008 — New Penguin Classics translation (in three volumes) by Malcolm C. Lyons and Ursula Lyons of the Calcutta II edition

[Bluecube]

I read an abbreviated version years ago. I thought it was pretty good. It's quite famous too. Ali Baba for example was one of the stories in it.

[OilSheikh]

Penguin has translated the entire book into 3 English volumes. Cost - £250 on Amazon UK!

For a book so old, you would think it wouldn't cost much!

[g8ina]

I have a fairly early Burton ewdition, not a first by any means, but early nontheless. Nice. In a similar vein I also have an early of the Rubiyat of Omar Kayam. Equally nice.

[Phage]

Passed down from my family I have some books on the Russian Skazki (folklore tales) which I still adore. Most are dated pre-revolution (quelle surprise) and contain the original stories and illustrations by Ivan Bilibin.

The stories themselves pre-date Christianity, and are most likely based on the pagan mythology of the earliest settelers in Eastern Europe.

Sad to admit I haven't read 1001 Nights. New Years resolution !

[Jake_UK]

Sad to admit I haven't read 1001 Nights. New Years resolution !

Check out Gutenburg and places like that (see ebook thread). The Richard Burton translation is there for example. Definitely a book worth reading.

[Aradria]

From what I've heard, it's mostly sex.