Thursday, December 17, 2015

Arabian Nights

Arabian nights or as the literal translation of the Arabic name “one thousand and one nights” is one of the most famous and probably advanced collections of fiction stories in the Arabic literature. The collection was published in a book with the same name, which was translated to many languages and became very famous worldwide.

The book tells the story of a king called Shahriar, who used to marry a new wife each day and kills her by dawn. Shahriar kept this habit for long time, until all the girls in the city were either killed or escaped to save their lives.

One day, one of the guards of Shahriar told him that the prime minister has a beautiful daughter whom he was hiding for long time, her name was Shahrzad. The king immediately called for his prime minister, and asked to marry his daughter, the prime minister was chocked, but couldn’t say a word other than, yes my lord; then he went home, and sadly told his daughter about the king proposal, and asked her to escape, while he will stay and probably be killed. Shahrzad was a smart girl, she asked her father not to be worried and to proceed with the wedding arrangements. She simply had a plan, every night she will start a new fiction story to the king, and keeps telling the story until dawn, then she stops and promises to continue the next night; once a story is finished, she immediately starts a new one. The king was impressed by the stories, and was always eager to know how each one will end. Shahrzad kept doing this for long, long time, until Shahriar forgot about his bad habit, and they lived happily ever after. (Muhammad A. Muhammad, Egypt, 2015)

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