One Thousand and One Nights

One Thousand and One Nights is a medieval Middle-Eastern literary work that consists of a number of stories being told by Queen Scheherazade to her mad husband, King Shahryar.

Quotes

Scheherazade...possessed courage, wit, and penetration, infinitely above her sex. She had read much, and had so admirable a memory, that she never forgot any thing she had read. She had successfully applied herself to philosophy, medicine, history, and the liberal arts; and her poetry excelled the compositions of the best writers of her time. Besides this, she was a perfect beauty, and all her accomplishments were crowned by solid virtue.
- Frame story (tr. Jonathan Scott, i, 1811)

"Who'll change old lamps for new ones?"
- Aladdin (tr. Anonymous, x, 1721)
- ODQ, 2nd ed. (1953) p. 14: "Who will change old lamps for new ones? New lamps for old?"

When I was alive
I was dust which was,
But now I am dust in dust
I am dust which never was.
- Zummurud and Ali-Shar (tr. E. Powys Mathers, iii, 1929)

On the black road of life think not to find
Either a friend or lover to your mind;
If you must love, oh then, love solitude,
For solitude alone is true and kind.
- Zummurud and Ali-Shar (tr. E. Powys Mathers, iii, 1929)

Maslamah ibn Dinar said: "Each pleasure that does not forward the soul to God is not so much as a pleasure as a calamity."
- King Umar al-Numan (tr. E. Powys Mathers, ii, 1929)

I hope that Allah will not make me immortal, for death is His greatest gift to any true believer.
- King Umar al-Numan (tr. E. Powys Mathers, ii, 1929)

The proverb says: "Each man envies, the strong openly, the weak in secret."
- The Wazir of King Yunan and Rayyan the Doctor (tr. E. Powys Mathers, i, 1929)

A library of books is the fairest garden in the world, and to walk there is an ecstasy.
- The Tale of the Magic Book (tr. E. Powys Mathers, vii, 1929)

I discovered fantasy and eroticism in One Thousand and One Nights, which I read in Lebanon at age fourteen. At that time and in that place, girls didn't have much social life aside from school and family; we didn't even go to the movies. My only escape from a troublesome family life was reading. My stepfather had four mysterious leather volumes in his locked closet, forbidden books that I was not supposed to see because they were “erotic.” Of course I found a way to copy the key and get in the closet when he was not around. I used a flashlight, could not mark the pages, and read quickly, skipping pages and looking for the dirty parts. My hormones were raging and my imagination went wild with those fantastic tales. When critics call me a Latin America Sheherazade I feel very flattered!
- Isabel Allende compilation of interview questions, isabelallende.com (2014)

[M]y auntie, Tití, who was the reader in the family, gave me a picture book version of “The Arabian Nights,” and I was smitten. Scheherazade, the young heroine, was a girl who looked Dominican, dark eyed, dark hair, olive skin. Then, the whole idea of a girl saving her life and that of all women in the kingdom and transforming a cruel sultan by telling stories. That book put a luminous bit of information in my head: that stories have power, that they can transform you and save you.
- Julia Alvarez, Interview, "By the Book: Julia Alvarez", The New York Times (11 April 2019)

It is a book so vast that it is not necessary to have read it, for it is a part of our memory.
- Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights (1984), p. 57

I'd like every single Arab to read One Thousand and One Nights. They [would] learn a lot from them, especially [because] these stories were written away from the influence of religion. It's interesting to see how we were open, how we had a dialogue with each other, how we wanted to understand, how we respected each other. There was a great dignity, and I'd like this to be restored again.
- Hanan al-Shaykh, "Scheherazade: From Storytelling 'Slave' To 'First Feminist'" at NPR (9 June 2013)