Alf Layla Wa-Layla

Alf Layla Wa-Layla is an Arabian name of  ‘The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments’ or ‘A Thousand and One Nights’. ‘A Thousand and One Nights’ is a collection of stories and folk tales that have a long history. The first tales were folktales from Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, and India. The stories were retold and crafted by Muslim storytellers to reflect Abbasid culture and society and recently Muhsin Mahdi, an Iraqi scholar of Arabian history, literature, and philosophy publishes a definitive modern edition of the Syrian archetype. All stories in ‘A Thousand and One Nights’ were written in Arabic and based on Islamic culture.

The collection of stories started with “The Story of King Shahrayar and Shahrazad”. One day, Shahrayar, the king of Persia, found that his wife was planning on running away from him with another man. He was outraged and ordered his wife to be executed. After that night, each day the king took a new wife, but at the end of each night, he ordered his servants to execute her. The people were horrified by the king’s behavior. At long last when the king called for a new queen, the vizier’s own daughter, Scheherazade, intervened, begging her father to send her in place of any other girls. Scheherazade told an interesting story for the king every single night to avoid death and Shahriyar postponed execution to listen the story left. Night after night, Scheherazade told another story, reaching the middle at dawn and entranced by her stories, the king kept her with him, and 1,001 nights passed. On night 1,001, when Scheherazade has no more stories, the king was in love with her, and thanks to her tales, he had become a wiser man, versed in the tales of this world. Finally, he made Scheherazade his queen, and justice and kindness reigned once again.

The stories told by Shahrazad are now famous tales such as Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and his magic lamp, and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. In most stories of ‘A Thousand and One Nights’, good always prevails against evil, and faith always overcomes unbelief and the stories depict the true human being that can exist in the human world. It is not just fun, but it’s also giving lessons for human wisdom and behavior.

Illustration of Scheherazade