Its roots lie both in the ancient Indian frame-tale fables written in Sanskrit and Persian storytelling evinced in the Persian origins of the names of Scheherazade and Shahriyar, but it was catalysed into the One Thousand and One Nights through an Arabic literary tradition. As a literary text, it’s known for its lack of a discrete origin story – there is no single author, date or manuscript to which we can pinpoint the exact beginning of its history. There is no singular way to recount the Nights’ rich and complex history.
While Scheherazade encapsulates the Nights as the singular authorial woman whose voice not only bookends the narrative cycles, but echoes and is weaved throughout the tales, her ingenious storytelling is the result of multiple skilful storytellers, most unknown, who composed, expanded, and translated these fictional tales in places, languages, and traditions that stretch from premodern India to 18th century France and indeed, our own contemporary present-day. In her call to ‘Listen’ both as command and invitation, Scheherazade engages the King and us, listeners of different kinds, as active participants in the story-telling process, as she artfully weaves together captivating narrative cycles that generate new story upon story to keep the King on tenterhooks and crucially, keep her, and her fellow female compatriots, alive. ‘ turned to the king and said, ‘May I tell a story?’Īnd she said, ‘Listen” (Seale, Arabian Nights, 2021) In her new translation of the Alf Layla wa Layla – the One Thousand and One Nights – Yasmine Seale captures the intimacy of the moment in which the story-telling contract is issued between Scheherazade and King Shahryar, the powerful tyrant engaged in acts of murder against the women of his lands.
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