NationStates Jolt Archive

Before you ask, no I am not Muslim, Arab, or reading this for school. It's just a good book.

I'm currently reading the English translation of The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights, a classic tale which is the origin of many well known myths and legends (such as the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba).

The English version was translated by Sir Richard F. Burton and includes notes on the texts and adequate explanation so that I, who am ignorant of most of the titles, professions, species, etc. within the book, can easily follow the stories. It was translated in 1884 (Actually, he'd been working on it for years but that's when he really began to compile the different tales and ready it for publishing and reading) and is currently in print throughout the world (I bought my copy a few weeks ago in Pennsylvania, USA).

However, translating is not creating. Burton did write many, many novels (The guy led a life straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, a scientist who went on constant death defying adventures and brought back unbelievable knowledge) but he didn't write The Arabian Nights and I want to know who did. I know that it probably wasn't written as one book, that it is probably merely a collection of different myths that have been circulating for millenia, but someone had to do the final collecting.

Any idea who?

Burton did write many, many novels (The guy led a life straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, a scientist who went on constant death defying adventures and brought back unbelievable knowledge)...

Not least amongst his achievements is marrying Elizabeth Taylor... :p

Any idea who?

Wikipedia gives the original collator of the folktales as Abu abd-Allah Muhammed el-Gahshigar.

Have you got to The Historic Fart yet?

Seriously? Wow, I get an answer on the first post. Holy shit, I expect at least five pages of anti-Islamic flaming before anybody even touched the subject of who wrote it. Thanks.

But no, I haven't gotten to The Historic Fart, I'm currently on Tale of Ghanim Bin Ayyub, the Distraught, the Thrall o' Love

http://www.crock11.freeserve.co.uk/arabian.htm gives some more info about it

If I recall correctly from the intro to my Signet Classics abridged addition, Burton pretty much made up many of the stories, and the rest were just folk tales from that culture. Of course, my memory's pretty dim on this, and it is only a collection intro, so I won't guarantee that this info is true. Do you have the entire Burton translation? I heard it was several volumes.

Burton didn't make up any of the stories, that is an incorrect myth. What he did was translate the complete stories. Many of the stories detail sex, violence, and acts of God in quite descriptive ways that just weren't used in European literature back then. The many translations that preceded Burton (Translated to other languages, Burton was the first to translate to English) often toned down the stories or cut them out entirely. So, when Burton made the book in English and people looked at the French copy and they said "Dear God, there is so much more!" they began saying he had added to it.

It was many, many volumes when orignally published and I would think that I don't have it all (I only have one book and it's not even the thickest book I've read) except that it doesn't say "Volume I" or "Part I of III" etc. anywhere on it.

http://www.crock11.freeserve.co.uk/arabian.htm gives some more info about it

Interesting. I actually have at least three different copies of different versions: the two different Penguin editions, and an old copy of the Grub Street version which, as best as I can tell, was printed in 1875 (it is missing the first couple of pages which would have likely given the year, but judging by the adverts for other works in the back leads me to that date). It doesn't seem to be the first edition taht is refered to one this page...

http://www.arabiannightsbooks.com/

Burton did write many, many novels (The guy led a life straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, a scientist who went on constant death defying adventures and brought back unbelievable knowledge) but he didn't write The Arabian Nights.

Also, he provided the first adequate English translation of The Kama Sutra, and had his soul bonded to that of Herman Goerring so that they are ressurected together in the afterlife.

Not least amongst his achievements is marrying Elizabeth Taylor... :pLest you confuse some of the lesser lights around here, let me say that it's not the same Richard Burton. It is, however, the same Richard Burton who is one of the maincharacters in Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series.

And the Norton Anthology of World Literature calls it an anonymous work, likely a collection of ancestral stories put together by several writers over time.

... and had his soul bonded to that of Herman Goerring so that they are ressurected together in the afterlife.

More PJF references, IIRC?

The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

What? That is possibly the most incorrect answer possible.

Lest you confuse some of the lesser lights around here, let me say that it's not the same Richard Burton.

Curse you. Now I have to wait for a discussion about Ben Johnson to repeat that same trick.

What? That is possibly the most incorrect answer possible.


That is a palpable lie.

That is a palpable lie.

OK, its not the most incorrect answer possible, but I did only say 'possibly'. Yes, answers such as '42km' or "a hundredweight of sparrows" would be more incorrect, but you have to admit that the answer you gave remains incorrect.

OK, its not the most incorrect answer possible, but I did only say 'possibly'. Yes, answers such as '42km' or "a hundredweight of sparrows" would be more incorrect, but you have to admit that the answer you gave remains incorrect.


Who can say, really

TRHSWLS Churchill did win the nobel prize for literature you know ;)

Burton didn't make up any of the stories, that is an incorrect myth. [. . .]

While it seems true that Burton didn't, Wikipedia reports that "Aladdin and Ali Baba were in fact inserted only in the 18th century by Antoine Galland, a French orientalist, who had heard them in oral form from a Maronite story-teller from Aleppo." So one still shouldn't attribute the whole work to Abu [. . .] Gahshigar.

The stories in 1001 nights are of pre-Muslim Persian origin, invented and passed on by Persian storytellers for centuries. Their origin dates back into the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid aeras. After the Arab conquest of Persia, the tales lived on in the Arab world, with further embellishment and variation.