One Thousand and One Nights
The great Arabic story cycle of Scheherazade, assembled over a thousand years from Indian, Persian, and Arabic sources by unnamed storytellers and compilers.
- Original byline
- Anonymous
- Published
- Date not recorded
- Form
- Other works
- Authorship
- Still unknown
- Reason for anonymity
- Unrecorded
- Copyright
- Public domain
- Reference
- Wikipedia
The authorship story
One Thousand and One Nights is not a book with an author but an ocean with tributaries: a Persian frame tale, Indian story cores, ninth century Baghdad papyri, Cairo manuscripts, and finally the European translations that added Aladdin and Ali Baba from the oral telling of the Syrian Hanna Diyab. Scheherazade, telling stories each night to postpone her execution, is the fiction that binds it. No compiler of the medieval Arabic corpus is named in the record; the Nights grew by accretion in the hands of professional storytellers and copyists. It is world literature's greatest work of collective anonymity.
Questions readers ask
Who wrote One Thousand and One Nights?
Nobody knows. No author for One Thousand and One Nights has been identified in the documented record.
Can I read One Thousand and One Nights for free?
Yes. One Thousand and One Nights is in the public domain and the full text is free to read at the Internet Archive.
Related works
- Still unknown
Amduat
An ancient Egyptian netherworld book describing the sun god's journey through the twelve hours of night. Like all Egyptian funerary literature, it names no author.
- Still unknown
Book of Caverns
An ancient Egyptian netherworld book depicting the sun god's passage over six caverns of the underworld. No author is recorded in the tradition.
- Still unknown
Book of the Dead
The ancient Egyptian collection of funerary spells guiding the dead through the afterlife. Tradition associates such texts with the god Thoth; no historical author exists in the record.
- Still unknown
Book of the Earth
An ancient Egyptian funerary composition showing the sun's night journey through the earth god Aker. Anonymous, like all Egyptian netherworld books.