The Middle Eastern story collection One Thousand and One Nights — known in English as The Arabian Nights — has had a profound impact on culture around the world.

Literature The influence of the versions of The Nights on world literature is immense. Writers as diverse as Henry Fielding and Naguib Mahfouz have alluded to the work by name in their own literature. Other writers who have been influenced by The Nights include John Barth, Jorge Luis Borges, Salman Rushdie, Goethe, Walter Scott, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Nodier, Flaubert, Marcel Schwob, Stendhal, Dumas, Gérard de Nerval, Gobineau, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Hofmannsthal, Conan Doyle, W. B. Yeats, H. G. Wells, Cavafy, Calvino, Georges Perec, H. P. Lovecraft, Marcel Proust, A. S. Byatt, Rudyard Kipling and Angela Carter.

This work has been influential in the West since it was translated in the 18th century, first by Antoine Galland.L. Sprague de Camp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, p. 10 . Many imitations were written, especially in France.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Arabian fantasy", p 52 . Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba. Part of its popularity may have sprung from the increasing historical and geographical knowledge, so that places of which little was known and so marvels were plausible had to be set further "long ago" or farther "far away"; this is a process that continues, and finally culminate in the fantasy world having little connection, if any, to actual times and places. Several elements from Arabian mythology and Persian mythology are now common in modern fantasy, such as genies, magic carpets, magic lamps, etc. When L. Frank Baum proposed writing a modern fairy tale that banished stereotypical elements, he included the genie as well as the dwarf and the fairy as stereotypes to go.James Thurber, "The Wizard of Chitenango", p 64 Fantasists on Fantasy edited by Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski, .

18th century Candide, ou l'optimisme (Candide, or Optimism; 1758) by Voltaire, contains a number of references to the story of Sindbâd the Seaman, notably the underground river in Eldorado, where in Candide the heroes are picked up by a machine. In his introduction to Zadig, Voltaire wrote (NB the sultan referred to is Ulugh Beg in English transcription):

The story was first written in Chaldean, which neither you nor I understand. Later it was translated into Arabic to amuse the famous Sultan Ouloug Beg, at the same time that the Arabs and Persians were beginning to write the Thousand-and-one-Nights, the Thousand-and-one-Days etc. Ouloug Beg preferred Zadig, but the Sultanas liked the Thousand-and-One more. 'How is it possible,' said the wise Ouloug, 'that you prefer tales which have neither sense nor reason?' 'That is just why we like them so much,' replied the Sultanas.

Further references to the Arabian Nights are expressed in parallels with the stories of Khudâdâd and His Brothers, 'Alâ' al-Dîn, and the History of the Princess of Daryâbâr. Whereas the Arabian Nights focuses on the narrative themes of providence and destiny, Voltaire substituted the interference of divine power with human intervention. Nourjahad (1767), moral tale by Frances Sheridan.Irwin p.244 Vathek (1786) by William Beckford. Oriental fantasy which strongly influenced the Gothic novel.Irwin p.245-252 One Thousand and One Nights influenced The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki. A Polish noble of the late 18th century, he travelled the Orient looking for an original edition of The Nights, but never found it. Upon returning to Europe, he wrote his masterpiece, a multi-levelled frame tale.

19th century

The Nights has also inspired poetry in English, e.g. Alfred Tennyson’s poem, "Recollections of the Arabian Nights" (1830). William Wordsworth refers to his childhood reading of the stories in ’’The Prelude’’ (1805). The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas includes a scene where Edmund Dantès Adopts the pseudonym Sinbad the Sailor (1844). Edgar Allan Poe wrote a "Thousand and Second Night" as a separate tale, called "The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade" (1845). New Arabian Nights (1882) is a collection of stories by Robert Louis Stevenson.

20th century In L. Frank Baum's John Dough and the Cherub (1906), the two heroes, Chick the Cherub, a child of unknown gender and John Dough, a man made out of gingerbread, flying from Ali Dubh, reach many fabulous lands. In the chapter titled "The Palace of Romance", Chick has to weave an unending story about a Silver Pig with marvellous powers. Should he ever run out of story to tell, he and John Dough would be cast into the ocean to drown, this being the custom of the people in dealing with visitors who cannot entertain them. The Nights are referenced explicitly in several Jorge Luis Borges stories: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, “The Garden of Forking Paths”, “The Zahir”, “The Man on the Threshold”, “Brodie’s Report” and “The Book of Sand.” Other stories allude to particular tales from the Nights. A heroic fantasy novel written by L. Ron Hubbard, Slaves of Sleep (serial: 1939, book: 1948), presents a story in which a man travels to a parallel universe ruled by Arabian Nights Ifrits. A sequel, The Masters of Sleep (1950), was also published. The horse in, and protagonist of, Robert Lawson's 1953 children's historical novel, Mr. Revere and I: Being an Account of certain Episodes in the Career of Paul Revere, Esq. as Revealed by his Horse, is named Scheherazade (nicknamed "Sherry"). Iznogoud (1962), a French comics series by René Goscinny and Jean Tabary, takes place in a parody setting of The Nights. Its stories revolve around the eponymous character's failed attempts to usurp caliph Haroun El Poussah (a pun on Harun al-Rashid). In Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981), the narrator repeatedly compares his own tales of his life to Scheherazade's, and mentions that he can't "count on having even a thousand nights and a night" (page 4) in which to tell them. Rushdie also makes references to the tales in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, including the names of the main characters. John Barth has alluded to the Nights or referenced it explicitly in many of his works, such as The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991). Scheherazade appears as a character in The Tidewater Tales (1987). In addition, the "Dunyazadiad", one of a set of three novellas that make up Barth's fictional work Chimera (1972), is a re-telling of the Scheherazade framing story in which the author appears to Scheherazade from the future and recounts stories from the 1001 Nights to her in order to provide her with material with which to forestall her execution. Ramadan (1993), issue 50 of Neil Gaiman's acclaimed comic book series The Sandman, draws on several of the stories of The Nights. In this tale, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid (who is a protagonist in many of the Nights) sells the "golden age of Baghdad" to the Prince of Stories, in order that it never be forgotten. It is implied that the Thousand and One Nights is part of the result of that bargain. Two notable novels loosely based on The Nights are Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz and When Dreams Travel by Githa Hariharan. The children's novel The Storyteller's Daughter by Cameron Dokey is also loosely derived from The Nights. Larry Niven, a Science Fiction & Fantasy author, wrote The Tale of the Jenni and the Sisters. It supposedly told another tale by Scheherazade, and appeared in his short story collection N-Space (short story collection) (1990). Craig Shaw Gardner wrote a trilogy: The Other Sinbad (1990), A Bad Day for Ali Baba (1991) and Scheherazade's Night Out in 1992. A.S. Byatt: The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye (short story, 1994) In Stephen King's Misery, the protagonist is forced to write a novel under threat of death or dismemberment at the hands of a crazed fan. On several occasions throughout the story, he compares his situation to Scheherazade's. Also, the novel describes the main antagonist (Annie Wilkes) as Scheherazade. In Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon (1997), narrator Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke must tell his extended family an entertaining story in order to remain a guest at their home, a predicament similar to Scheherazade's. Kannitheevu (Virgin Island) is a long-running Indian Tamil-language newspaper comic-strip in Dina Thanthi. It debuted in 1960 with stories from the Arabian Nights, the initial one focusing on Sindbad, when he rescues young women captured by an evil magician on the "Virgin Island".சித்திரக் கதை பேசும் பொன்னியின் செல்வன். The Hindu. Arabya Rajani’r Golpo, an Indian comics series adaptation by Amar Majumdar of the Arabian Nights was published in the Bengali-language children's magazine Kishore Bharati, by Dinesh Chandra Chattopadhyay. Various stories from the collection ran as monthly comics in the Indian children's magazine Chandamama.

21st century DC Comics' 2001 Elseworlds graphic novel Green Lantern: 1001 Emerald Nights is based on the Nights. Richard Siken’s 2004 poetry book Crush begins with a poem titled "Scheherazade". Bill Willingham, creator of the comic book series Fables, used the story of The Nights as the basis of a prequel, 1001 Nights of Snowfall (2006). In the book, Snow White tells the tales of the Fables, magical literary characters, to the sultan in order to avoid her impending death. Ted Chiang's 2007 novelette The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate is a science-fiction pastiche of the Nights that uses its premise to drive a similar nesting structure of stories. David Foster's 2009 novel Sons of the Rumour is a pastiche of the Nights. P. B. Kerr's "Children of the Lamp" series draws many elements from the Nights. Benjamin Buchholz's 2011 novel One Hundred and One Nights uses the frame of Scheherazade's storytelling technique to narrate a tale about the village of Safwan, Iraq during the most recent American war. Code Name Verity is a 2012 novel by Elizabeth Wein whose main character is occasionally called Scheherazade. She is a Scottish spy who was captured by the SS in occupied France, and is writing down her story and war time secrets to spare herself torture. The Oath of the Vayuputras is a 2013 novel by Amish Tripathi that has a Parihan character named Scheherazade. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, a 2015 novel by Salman Rushdie. Shadow Spinner is a retelling of the story by Susan Fletcher illustrated by Dave Kramer, where a young girl, Marjan, rescues the fabled Shahrazad from the Sultan's wrath. The Wrath & the Dawn and The Rose & the Dagger, reimaginings of the story by Renee Ahdieh. Ghost Quartet, a song cycle by composer Dave Malloy, incorporates elements of Scheherazade's narration and her relationship to the Sultan. In Nikita Gill's 2018 poetry collection "Fierce Fairytales: & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul" she has a poem entitled "Scheherazade the Clever."2018. "Fierce Fairytales: & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul by Nikita Gill. Hachette Books. . Robert Shearman's short story collection We All Hear Stories in the Dark is heavily inspired by the Nights and has been described as a postmodern take on them. Jeanette Winterson's One Aladdin Two Lamps is a retelling of the Nights—specifically focusing on the tale of Aladdin—enquiring into contemporary debates surrounding storytelling, genetics, climate crisis, wealth inequality etc. Guillermo Stitch's 2026 novel, The Coast of Everything, a recursive Möbius strip of tales in which Scheherazade is either a character or the narrator, or both.

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