Molded after Persian and Indian examples and transferred through a Persian collection called Hazar Afsaneh or Thousand Tales, Thousand and One Nights traveled along the Silk Road to reach the West through the French translator and orientalist Antoine Galland in the 18th century -1704-1717-. Its circulation in the Ottoman Empire in the early 17th century and its reproduction in Egypt had finalized the number of the nights to one thousand and one by the end of the 18th century. The fame of the narrative in the Arab-Ottoman world and its increasingly exotic allure made Arabian Nights a more popular alternative title instead of Thousand and One Nights. The Ottoman imperial court provided a bridge between the eastern Islamic world -India, Central Asia and the Middle East,- and western ones -Africa-. Mostly known as “orphan stories” and collected from unauthorized origins, Galland’s version of Nights was translated into different European languages to build “a rather shaky foundation” of the Nights together with the “eroticized and exoticized” French version of J. C. Mardrus -1899–1904-, Edward Lane’s “biblical” and censored British version -1838–40-, the pompous and animated version of Richard Burton -1885–88- and the first “modern translation” by Enno Littmann -1921–28- in Germany -Van Leeuwen 3-8-.

Keywords