The Arabian Nights

A collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age, framed by the story of King Shahryar and his wife Scheherazade, who tells him a new tale each night and pauses at dawn to postpone her execution. The tales — including Aladdin's lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Sinbad the Sailor — entered world literature through Antoine Galland's French translation in the early 18th century and have been adapted, retold, and reimagined across every medium since. Carnegie wrote in his autobiography: 'I should add to this the fairy tales of childhood, and especially the Arabian Nights, by which I was carried into a new world. I was in dreamland as I devoured those stories.'