History Literature / ArabianNights

Come the wedding night, once he started putting the moves on her, she feigned becoming upset, and pleaded to see her younger sister one last time. The King acquiesced, and allowed Shahrazad's sister Dunyazad to stay in the room with them until dawn. Even [[CoitusUninterruptus while they consummated the marriage]]. ''Awkward.'' After ''that'' and the three of them went to sleep, the sisters woke up at midnight. Just as planned, Dunyazad asked Shahrazad to tell her a story, but by the morning she was not finished, and ended the story on a CliffHanger. The awoken King was so hooked on the story that he postponed the execution for one night, in order to hear the rest. But after Shahrazad ended that story, it was still the middle of the night, and she started up another story, again ending on a cliffhanger in the morning.

* ''ComicBook/{{Fables}}'' introduced several characters from the collection in the story arc 'Arabian Nights (and Days)'. It also has a graphic novel prequel titled '1001 Nights of Snowfall', which places Literature/SnowWhite in the role of Scheherazade after she has been sent as an envoy to the Arabian lands, and is forced to tell stories of the secret histories of other ''Fables'' characters to keep her head off the chopping block.
* ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'' features the storyteller of the whole story, Scheherazade, as a playable Servant capable of summoning elements of her story, from Arabian Nights mini swordsmen to firebreathing Djinns. Interestingly, it portrayed her a bit differently than others: Her ordeal with the Sultan left her as a broken individual and made her extremely afraid to die.

* WouldHitAGirl: Depressingly common theme throughout the Nights. Does your wife backtalk you? Smack her around. Did your wife cheat on you? Kill her, and get a new one. Somewhat tempered by the prevalence of strong female characters, including Shahrazad herself, and that in the CrapsackWorld of the stories women seem equally likely [[DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale to assault, maim, and kill their male cohorts]].

The nightly routine continued. Some of the stories were simple, some complex and multi-layered; sometimes a character in one story would begin to tell a second story, and sometimes the story was never actually ended because Scheherazade had gone on two or three layers and never returned to wrap up. Or sometimes she claimed she didn't know the ending, but had another tale that was even more intriguing than the unfinished one. But all of the stories were so compelling that the King could never bear to order her execution without hearing the ending.

Unlike many legends which deal primarily with the deeds of the nobility (who after all were the ones who could afford to have a bard as a permanent resident at their palaces), ''Arabian Nights'' has the fascinating twist that it covers people from myriads of occupations in a highly-complex society.

Come the wedding night, once he started putting the moves on her, she feigned becoming upset, and pleaded to see her younger sister one last time. The King acquiesced, and allowed Shahrazad's sister Dunyazad to stay in the room with them until dawn. Even [[CoitusUninterruptus while they consummated the marriage]]. ''Awkward.'' After ''that'' and the three of them went to sleep, the sisters woke up at midnight. Just as planned, Dunyazad asked Shahrazad to tell her a story, but by the morning she was not finished, and ended the story on a CliffHanger. The awoken King was so hooked on the story that he postponed the execution for one night, in order to hear the rest. But after Scheherazade ended that story, it was still the middle of the night, and she started up another story, again ending on a cliffhanger in the morning.

Unlike many legends which deal primarily with the deeds of the nobility (who after all were the ones who could afford to have a bard as a permanent resident at their palaces), Arabian Nights has the fascinating twist that it covers people from myriads of occupations in a highly-complex society.

* CinderellaCircumstances: Several tales similar to the later story of "Literature/{{Cinderella}}" occur in several ''Arabian Nights'' tales, including "The Second Sheikh's Story," "The Eldest Lady's Tale," "Abdallah ibn Fadil and His Brothers," and "Judar and His Brethren." The latter subverts the trope by departing from the usual happy ending and instead features a tragic ending.

''The Arabian Nights'', also known as ''The Tales of One Thousand and One Nights'' (Farsi ''Hezār-o yek šab'', Arabic ''Kitāb 'alf layla wa-layla''), is a massive collection of {{Fairy Tale}}s drawn from sources as far apart as the Middle East, North Africa, India, and, to an extent, even China and Greece. It has for centuries shaped the European view of the [relative to Europe] "(Near) East" or "Orient", even though only [[SmallReferencePools some of the stories]] are widely known. [[GenieInABottle Jinni]], [[EvilChancellor evil wazirs]] and [[MagicCarpet flying carpets]] all stem from its pages.

The FramingDevice for the story cycle is the tale of King Shahryar and Shahrazad. The King's first wife had cheated on him, so he had her executed. Then, feeling that no woman could be trusted, he hit upon a plan only [[TheCaligula a powerful and insane tyrant]] could pull off: He'd marry a woman, spend the night with her, and then, in the morning, send her off to the royal Wazir (chancellor) to be executed. No woman would ever betray him again!

* GoodForBad:
** "The Story of the Chief of the Bulak Police" and "The Chief of the Kus Police and the Sharper" both are stories in which the victims--policemen--are tricked into exchanging their money for seemingly valuable items that are actually worthless.
** In "The Rogueries of Dalilah the Crafty and Her Daughter Zaynab the Coney- Catcher", Dalilah pulls a series of these, but she's not really a thief at heart--she's a widow who is upset about not getting her late husband's job.

* * ''[[WesternAnimation/OneThousandAndOneNights2011 1001 Nights]]'' (animated series)

* BadassBookworm: Sheherarzade. Not so much a fighter, but enchanting as a lover, highly intelligent and possessing NervesOfSteel.

** Many times, usually when a sorceress or a Djinn turns someone into a beast to teach him a lesson.

** A big example comes in the latter half of "The Fisherman and the Genie," wherein the titular fisherman is led by the titular genie to a lake that is full of fish of four different colors. Each day the fisherman brings four of these fish, one of each color, to the Sultan to be fried and eaten, but due to the strange things that happens when he goes to cook them, the Sultan comes to realize that these are no ordinary fish. On trying to find out what's so special about these fish, he comes across a man who is half [[TakenForGranite turned to stone]], who is more than willing to tell him; long story short, the man's adulterous wife turned their entire city into the lake, and the fish are its people, with the four colors representing the four religions that they belonged to. ''[[FridgeHorror And the Sultan was trying to cook them and eat them]]''. Ouch.

* CinderellaCircumstances: Several tales similar to the later story of "Literature/{{Cinderella}}" occur in several ''Arabian Nights'' tales, including "The Second Shaykh's Story," "The Eldest Lady's Tale," "Abdallah ibn Fadil and His Brothers," and "Judar and His Brethren." The latter subverts the trope by departing from the usual happy ending and instead features a tragic ending.

* CoitusUninterruptus: This is part of the nightly routine of the FramingDevice. Scheherazade's sister Dunyazad comes into the royal bedroom, waits politely on the bed until King Shahryar finishes having sex with her sister, then asks to hear a story.

* DoubleInLawMarriage: At the conclusion of the tales, after Night #1001, the FramingDevice ends with King Shahryar letting Scheherazade off the hook, and her sister Dunyazade marrying Shahryar's brother, King Shah Zaman. This also happens a few times in various tales within the Nights.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first tale, "Tale of the Bull and the Ass" is told not by Scherezade but by her father, the Wazir, to her, in an effort to dissuade her from her scheme.
* EarnYourHappyEnding: Scheherazade runs out of tales and tells the Sultan he can kill her. But he has fallen in love with her so he lets her live and be his queen. Though, [[ValuesDissonance from a modern perspective it could be argued]] that the story is only a BittersweetEnding as Scheherazade lives but is still stuck being marrried to an insane sultan.

* {{Filler}}: Most of the book depending on the translator. The original cycle is about 275 nights and based off an older Persian work called Hazar Afsana "a Thousand Legends". When the Egyptians copied Arabian Nights they actually tried to make 1000. Anything and everything was used including Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Chinese, Mongolian, and even European stories. This is also why some nights are very short, splitting the story several times.

** There's a Genie In A Bottle in "The Fisherman and the Jinni", which is the second story Scherezade tells. The trope pops up again over 500 Nights later in "The City of Brass". Neither tale includes the modern notion in which the genie must serve whoever liberates him from the bottle. In fact the Jinni from "The Fisherman and the Jinni" is so bitter over being stuck in a bottle for centuries that he says he will kill the fisherman, and the fisherman has to use his wits to trick the Jinni back into the bottle.

* GentlemanAndAScholar: Scheherazade is a Lady and a Scholar.

* HeroicSacrifice: Schehererzade risked not only her life but her happiness by marrying the Sultan to save her people.
* HeroicSpirit: Shehererzade's audacity and sheer nerve for 1001 nights makes her this.

* InfiniteSupplies: Subverted, Scheherazade runs out of stories eventually.

* IronLady: With due allowances for limitations by cultural context Scheherazade would qualify quite well for this.

** Many male genies are this. On a second thought, the female genies too..

** The Sultan never receives any comeuppance for having a whole bunch of girls executed. He gets to live HappilyEverAfter with Scheherazade and their children. The Conclusion reveals that his brother has been doing the same thing, and of course nothing happens to him either.

* MostWritersAreWriters: One of the reasons that the storytelling Scheherazade is so enduring is that writers and artists love how she uses the power of story to save her life, heal the Sultan's madness, and save a kingdom. It doesn't hurt that Scheherazade is also beautiful and captivating.

* NervesOfSteel: Scheherazade. Oh Yeah!

* OffWithHisHead: the penalty for marrying the sultan. Averted in Scheherazade's case.

* RocBirds: The TropeCodifier, in fact: while rocs appear in many older legends, this is the work where the most widely known and referenced story featuring them -- that of the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor -- was penned. The roc appears in two specific parts of the story:
** In Sinbad's second voyage, he becomes stranded on an island inhabited by rocs. He escapes by attaching himself to one of the enormous birds when it flies away and lets it carry him to the mainland, where it lands after reaching a valley home to monstrous snakes large enough to swallow an elephant whole -- these snakes being the rocs' main prey.
** In Sinbad's fifth voyage, he and his crew land on an island where they discover a gigantic roc egg taller than a man. They break it despite Sinbad's warnings, and the unborn chick provides enough meat to feed the whole crew. This comes to bite the crew shortly thereafter when they try to leave: the furious parents chase them and bombard their ship with massive boulders, sinking it.

!!Stories from the ''Thousand and One Nights'' with their own trope pages include:
* "Literature/{{Aladdin}}"
* "Literature/AliBabaAndTheFortyThieves"
* "Literature/SinbadTheSailor"
----

The {{FramingDevice}} for the story cycle is the tale of King Shahryar and Shahrazad. The King's first wife had cheated on him, so he had her executed. Then, feeling that no woman could be trusted, he hit upon a plan only [[TheCaligula a powerful and insane tyrant]] could pull off: He'd marry a woman, spend the night with her, and then, in the morning, send her off to the royal Wazir (chancellor) to be executed. No woman would ever betray him again!

* YourCheatingHeart: Faithless wives cheat on their husbands all the time, starting with the FramingDevice and repeated many times in the tales.
** Could be PanderingToTheBase, given Shahrazad's eavesdropping audience.

* EvilChancellor

''The Arabian Nights'', correctly known as ''The Tales of One Thousand and One Nights'' (Farsi ''Hezār-o yek šab'', Arabic ''Kitāb 'alf layla wa-layla''), is a massive collection of {{Fairy Tale}}s drawn from sources as far apart as the Middle East, North Africa, India, and, to an extent, even China and Greece. It has for centuries shaped the European view of the [relative to Europe] "(Near) East" or "Orient", even though only [[SmallReferencePools some of the stories]] are widely known. [[GenieInABottle Jinni]], [[EvilChancellor evil wazirs]] and [[MagicCarpet flying carpets]] all stem from its pages.

* ''ComicBooks/{{Fables}}'' introduced several characters from the collection in the story arc 'Arabian Nights (and Days)'. It also has a graphic novel prequel titled '1001 Nights of Snowfall', which places Literature/SnowWhite in the role of Scheherazade after she has been sent as an envoy to the Arabian lands, and is forced to tell stories of the secret histories of other ''Fables'' characters to keep her head off the chopping block.

* ''Comics/{{Fables}}'' introduced several characters from the collection in the story arc 'Arabian Nights (and Days)'. It also has a graphic novel prequel titled '1001 Nights of Snowfall', which places SnowWhite in the role of Scheherazade after she has been sent as an envoy to the Arabian lands, and is forced to tell stories of the secret histories of other ''Fables'' characters to keep her head off the chopping block.

So Shahrazad kept up the stories for three years -- in the meantime bearing Shahryar three sons -- and finally, after 1,001 nights, she said that she had told all of her tales and was ready to die. But the King had fallen in love with her, and had been calmed by her entrancing stories. He declared that no woman in the kingdom was as wise as Scheherazade, and he made her his queen for keeps this time, and they lived HappilyEverAfter.

* OffscreenInertia: In the FramingDevice, the Sultan and his brother are betrayed by their wives at the same time, and decide together to marry a new woman every day and execute her every night. They rule two separate kingdoms. We follow Sharyhar, who at some point marries Scheherazade and is stopped in his mad quest, until 1,000 nights later his soul is healed. But only then does he travel to visit his brother and tell him of how his heart has been healed -- reminding us that his brother ''hasn't stopped killing innocent women.''
* OnceAnEpisode: Most nights in the Burton translation start with "It has reached me, most auspicious king..." and finish with "...and Scheherazade peceived the dawn of day, and ceased to say her permitted say."

* PersonalRaincloud: "The Devotee to Whom Allah Gave a Cloud for Service and the Devout King" has an unusual twist on this trope--the titular devotee has a personal raincloud, but it's a reward for his piety, a permanent water supply for washing and drinking. Definitely a case of ValuesDissonance- anyone from an hot, arid climate which experiences frequent droughts immediately relates to the notion of this being a reward of infinite value.
%%* PluckyGirl: Scheherazade
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: King Shahryar is this, technically. The madness caused by his first wife's betrayal made him a misogynist, and Scheherazade's true goal was to cure him. (And she succeeded, ultimately.)

* RecursiveReality: Scheherazade tells stories of people who tell stories of people who tell stories and so on. For instance, in "The Fisherman and the Genie," the fisherman keeps the genie from killing him by telling it "The Tale of the Vizier and the Sage Duban," during which the evil wazir tells his king "The Tale of the Husband and the Parrot."

* SealedEvilInACan: What the jinni in "The Fisherman and the Jinni" became during his AndIMustScream ordeal. (He had started out as just a SealedBadassInACan but ran out of patience).

** In "The Hermits," Allah tests a shepherd's piety by sending an angel in the form of a sexy woman to tempt him. He passes.

* SelfParody: Sheherezade sometimes follows up a relatively serious tale with a {{Parody}} version of the same tale to humorous effect.

* SeriesContinuityError: At the end of the "Tale of Harun Al-Rashid and the Slave Girl and the Imam Abu Yusuf", the speaker says "So consider thou, O polite reader, the pleasantness of this anecdote...." Apparently the compiler of this particular tale forgot the FramingDevice of Scherezade telling stories to her husband.

* TheStoryteller: Scherezade herself, as well as many of the characters in her stories about other people telling stories and them telling stories about people telling stories.

** In "The Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince" said prince is turned into a stone from the waist down.
** In "The Eldest Lady's Tale" a whole city of pagans is turned into stone statues by Allah, and also all those who turn around on their way to the Talking Bird gets turned into black stones.

* UnreliableNarrator: This literary device of the unreliable narrator is used in several tales, to create suspense in "The Seven Viziers" (also known as "Craft and Malice of Women" or "The Tale of the King, His Son, His Concubine and the Seven Wazirs") and "The Three Apples," and to create humor in "The Hunchback's Tale." The ''Arabian Nights'' could be considered an UrExample or TropeMaker of the "unreliable narrator" concept.

* WouldHitAGirl: Depressingly common theme throughout the Nights. Does your wife backtalk you? Smack her around. Did your wife cheat on you? Kill her, and get a new one. Somewhat tempered by the prevalence of strong female characters, including Scheherazade herself, and that in the CrapsackWorld of the stories women seem equally likely [[DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale to assault, maim, and kill their male cohorts]].

** Could be PanderingToTheBase, given Scheherazade's eavesdropping audience.

''The Arabian Nights'', correctly known as ''One Thousand and One Nights'' (Persian ''Hezār-o yek šab'', Arabic ''Kitāb 'alf layla wa-layla''), is a massive Arabic collection of {{Fairy Tale}}s drawn from sources as far apart as the Middle East, North Africa, India, and to an extent even China and Greece. It has for centuries shaped the European view of the [relative to Europe] "(Near) East" or "Orient", even though only [[SmallReferencePools several of the stories]] are widely known. [[GenieInABottle Genies]], [[EvilChancellor evil wazirs]] and [[MagicCarpet flying carpets]] all stem from its pages.

In fact, early Arabic versions only contain about 300 nights. The 701 others were added later; most of the additions were by Arab writers, but European translators added some other folktales they'd collected in their editions. Some of these additions were based on other Arabian sources, but others, including ''Literature/{{Aladdin}}'' and ''Literature/AliBabaAndTheFortyThieves'', were stolen by Antoine Galland (the french translator) from Syrian Maronite writer Hanna Diyab, who recounted those tales to Galland and based them on various aspects of his own life. Diyab's autobiography was found in 1993 and greatly expanded our understanding of these stories. More on this in the Other Wiki.

The {{fram|ingDevice}}e for the story cycle is the tale of King Shahryar and Scheherazade. The King's first wife had cheated on him, so he had her executed. Then, feeling that no woman could be trusted, he hit upon a plan only [[TheCaligula a powerful and insane tyrant]] could pull off: He'd marry a woman, spend the night with her, and then, in the morning, send her off to the royal Wazir (aka vizier) to be executed. No woman would ever betray him again!

After a great many wives were executed in this manner (the Burton translation says the King did this for three years, which would be about 1100 wives), the Wazir was running out of marriage prospects to present to the King. Then the Wazir's daughter, Scheherazade, came to him with a plan. Since her plan involved marrying the King, the Wazir objected in the strongest manner possible, but nothing would deter the girl, and finally he brought her to the King.

Come the wedding night, once he started putting the moves on her, she feigned becoming upset, and pleaded to see her younger sister one last time. The King acquiesced, and allowed Scheherazade's sister Dunyazad to stay in the room with them until dawn. Even [[CoitusUninterruptus while they consummated the marriage]]. ''Awkward.'' After ''that'' and the three of them went to sleep, the sisters woke up at midnight. Just as planned, Dunyazad asks Scheherazade to tell her a story, but by the morning she was not finished, and ended the story on a CliffHanger. The awoken King was so hooked on the story that he postponed the execution for one night, in order to hear the rest. But after Scheherazade ended that story, it was still the middle of the night, and she started up another story, again ending on a cliffhanger in the morning.

So Scheherazade kept up the stories for three years -- in the meantime bearing Shahryar three sons -- and finally, after 1,001 nights, she said that she had told all of her tales and was ready to die. But the King had fallen in love with her, and had been calmed by her entrancing stories. He declared that no woman in the kingdom was as wise as Scheherazade, and he made her his queen for keeps this time, and they lived HappilyEverAfter.

!!Stories from the ''Arabian Nights'' with their own trope pages include:

* AdultFear: One can only imagine what Scheherazade's father goes through, consenting reluctantly to letting her wed a known tyrant and wife-killer after failing to convince her not to.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Black slaves and savages. This can be semi-justified as Scheherazade PanderingToTheBase, as the king's original wife cheated on him with a black slave. The exception may be Mesrur, the Chief Eunuch of Harun al Rashid, who's a good guy.
* AndIMustScream: Situation of the genie imprisoned in a bottle under the sea for centuries in "The Fisherman and the Genie."

** [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], however. After all, the reason why Scheherazade is telling so many stories in the first place is to delay her husband from ''executing'' her.

* FamilyUnFriendlyAesop: So many.

* MysteryArc: The tale of "The Three Apples" is an early story covering most of the tropes associated with this. "The Hunchback's Tale" also covers some of these tropes.

* {{Gasshole}}: "How Abu Hasan Brake Wind". In fairness, he only does it once, but he will NeverLiveItDown.

** Many characters, especially Sheh-herr-uh-ZAUD. If you have a version with good transliteration in a transliteration system you're familiar with, it's possible to avert this trope. If not, you'll just end up pronouncing Jafar the way they do in Disney's ''Disney/{{Aladdin}}'' and, like everything else in that movie, that isn't accurate.

* OurGhoulsAreCreepier:
** In a tale, a sorceress is seen leaving her house at night and join a ghoul in the cemetery, where they dig out and eat a corpse together.

** Many more examples follow in other stories. Ghouls are usually presented as not supernatural in any way, but just really creepy people who like to eat the dead.

In fact, early Arabic versions only contain about 300 nights. The 701 others were added later; most of the additions were by Arab writers, but European translators added some other folktales they'd collected in their editions. Some of these additions were based on other Arabian sources, but others, including ''Literature/{{Aladdin}}'' and ''Literature/AliBabaAndTheFortyThieves'', were stolen by Antoine Galland (the french translator) from Syrian Maronite writer Hanna Diyab, who recounted those tales to Galland and based them on various aspects of his own life. Diyab's autobiography was found in 1993 and greatly expanded our understanding of these stories. More on this in the {{Other Wiki}}.