Literature · Premium
The voice of Sheherazade: origin and secrets of "One Thousand and One Nights"
"One Thousand and One Nights" is not a book with a single author, but a mosaic of stories originating from India and Persia. The oldest core was called Hazār Afsān, Persian for "The Thousand Tales", and was a collection of orally transmitted folk stories. Later, these stories were translated into Arabic and underwent additions, with new real settings and historical characters. In 1704, the orientalist Antoine Galland translated into French a Syrian manuscript that contained only a few hundred stories. Given its enormous success, to satisfy the public Galland added tales that did not exist in the original, such as "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", inspired by what a Syrian passing through Paris had told him. A literary "fake" that became more famous than the original. This teaches us that stories are alive, they travel, and they transform over time.
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