This is my report about the Arabian Nights

1. Arabian Nights
(Background)Reporter: Almira M. Murillo

2. The Arabian Nights: One Thousand
and One Nights
The Arabian Nights, also called One Thousand and One Nights, is a collection
of stories and folk tales from West and South Asia that was compiled during
the Islamic Golden Age. It took centuries to collect all of these together, and
various translators, authors, and scholars have contributed. These stories trace
back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Egyptian, and
Mesopotamian literature. Many of these were originally folk tales from the
Caliphate Era, while others are drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hazār
Afsān. Reporter: Almira M. Murillo

3. The original core of stories came from Persia and
India in the eighth century. After being translated
into Arabic, they were called Alf Layla, or The
Thousand Nights. There were significantly fewer
stories in the collection at that time. Somewhere
in the ninth or tenth century, more Arab stories
were added in Iraq, probably including ones that
referred to Caliph Harun al-Rashid.
Reporter: Almira M. Murillo

4. In the thirteenth century:
Additional Syrian or Egyptian stories were added,
and as the years went on, more tales were added
by authors and translators until the total was
indeed brought up to one thousand and one.
(This ClassicNote focuses on those stories most
commonly known and taught.)
Reporter: Almira M. Murillo

5. Reporter: Almira M. Murillo
Though the different editions of The Arabian Nights vary
greatly, the frame story of the ruler Shahrayar and his wife
Scheherazade is common to all. All of the stories branch
from this tale in some way. A story is often interrupted by a
character who insists on telling another tale, which leads
into the following story. Most of The Arabian Nights is
written in prose, but verse is occasionally used in songs
and riddles, or to relay great amounts of emotion. Most of
these poems are single couplets or quatrains.

6. Reporter: Almira M. Murillo
The Arabian Nights uses common
motifs:
magic and fantasy,
 flying
a rise from poverty to riches and a fall
back down again

7. Example
• "Aladdin's Lamp" tells of a peasant boy who is tricked by an evil
magician into retrieving a magic genie lamp from a cave.
However, Aladdin outsmarts him, keeping the lamp for himself.
Through the genie's power, Aladdin grows rich and marries the
sultan's daughter. When the magician steals the lamp back,
Aladdin and his wife thwart and kill the villain. The magician's
brother then attempts to avenge the dead man, but is equally
defeated, so that Aladdin lives happily ever after.
Reporter: Almira M. Murillo

8. The Fisherman and the Jinni
• "The Fisherman and the Jinni" tells the story of a fisherman
whose nets retrieve a yellow jar from the sea. He opens it to
release a dangerous genie, who has been trapped for hundreds
of years and had decided to kill the man who rescues him. The
fisherman tricks the genie into returning to the jar, and then tells
him the story of "The Vizier and the Sage Duban," detailed
below. After the story, the genie promises to reward the
fisherman, and indeed shows him a magic lake full of strange
fish. The fisherman sells the fish to the sultan, who explores the
area of the lake to meet a sad prince who had been turned half
to stone. He helps the prince, and then rewards everyone
involved.
Reporter: Almira M. Murillo

9. Reporter: Almira M. Murillo

10. Characterization
• Fisherman- he is poor and have a family; only depends
on fishing as a livelihood ; the one who rescued the
Jinni
• Jinni- the smoke that emerged and formed into a genie
who was trapped in the lamp for four hundred years
• Sultan- to whom he sells his fishes
• The prince- the man who sultan saw crying when he
went to the pond, and ends up helping him
Reporter: Almira M. Murillo

11. Implication of the Title
The Fisherman and the Jinni
Simply about a poor fisherman
who saved a Jinni from being
prisoned inside a lamp
Reporter: Almira M. Murillo