British Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton completes his celebrated translation of The Arabian Nights.
…a.k.a. One Thousand and One Nights.
10–volumes. Three years. 1001 fables translated.
The first European version (1704–1717) was translated into French by Antoine Galland from Arabic texts and other sources. Galland’s version, the 12–volume Les Mille et Une Nuits, included stories not in the original Arabian texts. The Galland add–ons, asserted to be via an Aleppo (Syria) storyteller included the now iconic “Aladdin’s Lamp” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.”
But all classic translations have the same “framing”: A Persian king Shahryar discovers the infidelity of his new bride. Filled with rage towards “virgins” he takes one young lover after another, executing each of them in the morning. As the king has executed all the virgins in the kingdom, Scheherazade, his own daughter offers herself up to him.
However, Scheherazade does not wish to meet the “morning fate” of her predecessors. Her strategy is to start a tale each night and not finish it, so that the king must spare her until the next night to complete the tale….which she does, but then starts another tale…stretching a thousand and one Arabian nights…until…