What are the 1001 stories in One Thousand and One Nights?

Question

Recently I bought a One Thousand and One Nights book hoping that I would read 1001 stories. But then I find out that the number of stories varies depending on the version.

Some versions have 200 - 300 stories (not nights), which encompass far less than the 1001 nights. Richard Francis Burton's version has indeed 1001 nights (in 10 volumes plus 6 supplementary), but it is not the only version, as other compilations exist in the Middle East or Egypt organized by scholars.

What would be a good modern source for accessing the 1001 nights in One Thousand and One Nights - in terms of accessibility and faithfulness to the original work?

Answer 1

The framing story of 1001 nights allows the number of nights to be nowhere close to the number of stories.

Sometimes, one story would last for 3 or more nights due to the introduction of so called Red Herrings. Shaharazad would start a story one night, then in that story a character would tell a story to a different character as a way of teaching him some lesson, and that story within a story would end in the middle, on a cliffhanger.

Then she would continue the story within a story and end it as a lesson to a character, then continue the original story, which would end on a cliffhanger. Once she finished that story she would return to a minor character of that or a previous story within a story and start a new story.

The number of stories and the number of nights doesn't even have to be close.

Example:

There once was a prince named A who had a mischievous nature. He would often get bored and his servant named C would try to find a way to keep him amused. They had many funny adventures together. For example, one time (long story ending on a cliffhanger. Next night that story is over)... The father of prince A, a sultan named B, often despaired about A's fate. B worried that A wouldn't be his worthy successor and that the kingdom would come to ruin once A became sultan. He had reason to worry because of the way B became sultan. Many years ago... (long story of how B became sultan, the night ending on a cliffhanger in the middle of that story)... So, to prove that his son A would be a good ruler, Sultan B sent him on a quest (long story of a quest). During that quest A and C had to take a sleep in an inn. (Long description and story of how the innkeeper got his fortune and why he made an inn at that exact place). To amuse his prince A and the other patrons, servant C told them a funny story (servant's story) then they continued on the quest... And so on and so forth.

And that's just one story, stretched on 20 nights, with dozen of smaller stories contained in it!

Answer 2

I have interpreted your question ‘What are the stories in 1001 nights’ to mean ‘What are the specific titles of the numerous stories contained within the work’? Now since it would be time consuming and tedious (though not impossible) to dive in and list each story myself, I will not be doing that and instead will simply point you to a site where all the hard work has been carried out already.

There is a Wikipedia page detailing each of the stories appearing in Richard Burton's The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night here and another webpage which is more comprehensive, not confined solely to Burton.

Secondly you ask for a “modern version” faithful to the original Arabic. Two choices are: 1. Yasmine Seale’s The Annotated Arabian Nights, published by Liveright, November 2021, and 2. The Arabian Nights by Muhsin Mahdi as translated by Hussain Haddawy – publ. Knopf-Doubleday 1992.

The most convenient translations, on account of being both free (no cost) and accessible online, are those by Richard Francis Burton and John Payne, both available at the Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg and Wikisource.

It is to be noted that Burton and Payne in addition to using Arabic sources both borrow from Antoine Galland's French translation published between 1704 and 1717, which was the first in a European language and contained additional stories passed on to him orally by a Maronite story teller from Aleppo (Hanna Diyab), which are not found in documentary sources.

The Arabic version that has the greatest claim to being original is a 14th century manuscript at the Bibliothèque national de France. Muhsin Mahdi based his 1984 version of The Arabian Nights upon this oldest surviving Arabic manuscript, referred to as the 'Galland manuscript'.

(I acknowledge the significant time interval between my answer and the two previous answers, and I suspect in the space of almost five years new developments beyond the 2018 context would have taken place which may account for the variation).

Answer 3

"1001 Nights" refers to the story that links all the other stories together (framing device); the story of the king who slays his unfaithful wife and decides to marry a new woman each day and kill her the next morning. When he marries Shaharazad she begins telling him a story (and stories within that story) that takes all night and still isn't finished by morning. The king postpones her execution for one day so he can hear the rest of the tale the following night. Shaharazad keeps this up for 1001 nights but the "Thousand Nights and A Night" is (I think) a loose collection of folktales without a definite text. Richard Burton was an amazing guy, but his translation is not fun to read. I liked the Penguin Press paperback edition I read years ago. Any version not aimed at kids will have a lot of sex and violence- think Game of Thrones not Aesop's Fables.