The Thousand and One Nights

1. The Thousand and One Nights A little bit of background info

2. History • The writer Antoine Galland translated the tales into French in the early 18th century. • Probably developed over several centuries • Original stories being passed down through various oral and written sources.

3. Scheherazade’s Stories • The tales in the collection in a frame story. • Scheherazade is a spellbinding storyteller who delayed the endings of her tales till the next night so the captivated sultan would keep postponing her execution in order to hear the ends of her stories. After one thousand and one nights of tales, he abandons his plan to kill Scheherazade, and the couple remain happily married.

4. Popularity • This collection of tales is the best known and most widely read of Arabic literature in the West. • The stories of Ali Baba, Aladdin, and Sindbad are known all over the world today.

5. Perceptions of the Jinnee/Genie/Jinni • Genies are spirits in cultures of the Middle East and Africa. • An evil spirit that could take the shape of an animal or person. It could be found in every kind of nonliving thing, even air and fire. • They were said to have magical powers and are favorite figures in Islamic literature.

6. Perceptions continued… • In ancient Rome, genii were spirits that watched over every man. • They were responsible for forming a man’s character and caused all actions. • For the ancient Semites the Jinn were spirits of vanished ancient peoples who acted during the night • They could make themselves invisible or change shape into animals at will.

7. Even more perceptions! •  In Islam-associated mythology, the Jinn were said to be controllable by magically binding them to objects, as Solomon most famously did.

8. Sources ELEMENTS OF LITERATURE World Literature (textbook) http://circa71.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/a-brief-history-of-jinn-or-genies/ Google Images