Series:Arabian Nights Entertainments

The stories that become the Arabian Nights developed during the 8th-12th century. The oldest extant version known is a 14th or 15th Syrian edition in the Bibliothèque National (France). The first translation into a European language was the Galland translation (of this Syrian version) into French in 1704, and is used to give the date listed for this series. The first translation into English was done anonymously in 1706 from the Galland translation. For more details, see the Wikipedia entry for One Thousand and One Nights. For more information on the Galland translation and its importance, see the Wikipedia entry for Antoine Galland. For complete details, see The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia.

Science Fiction in the Arabian Nights (from Wikipedia): "Several stories within the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) also feature science fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", where the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey to the Garden of Eden and to Jahannam, and travel across the cosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic science fiction; along the way, he encounters societies of jinns, mermaids, talking serpents, talking trees, and other forms of life. In "Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman", the protagonist gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater submarine society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. Other Arabian Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them. "The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on an archaeological expedition across the Sahara to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that Solomon once used to trap a jinn, and, along the way, encounter a mummified queen, petrified inhabitants, lifelike humanoid robots and automata, seductive marionettes dancing without strings, and a brass horseman robot who directs the party towards the ancient city. "The Ebony Horse" features a robot in the form of a flying mechanical horse controlled using keys that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun, while the "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the form of an uncanny boatman. "The City of Brass" and "The Ebony Horse" can be considered early examples of proto-science fiction."

Since the Arabian Nights per se has no copyright, it has been published in many variations in many ways, and a complete list of all publications would be excessive, and almost surely incomplete. (The OCLC lists 5,436 entries for this title as of Oct. 2011; 2,753 in English.). This title series attempts to organize those editions which attempt to be reasonably faithful to the "historic original", but does not include the many books that use the "Arabian Nights" as a starting point for original story-telling, such as books that go by titles such as "The New Arabian Nights". It also does not include most books that do very limited extracts from the Arabian Nights (e.g. only "Sinbad"), but does include books with multiple stories, as well as adaptations for younger readers.

We have included all of the documented 18th century English editions, and the more important 19th century editions. In a few cases reprint edition dates may only be listed in the publication notes, and not as separate publications. 20th century editions are included when an editor chooses to add one, and no systematic effort has been taken to be comprehensive here. A good determination (and documentation) of important editions up to about 1880 can be found in an appendix to Sir Richard Burton's translation, p. 416, and we have used that as a source for some of the publications listed herein. We have attempted to include the first known editions in the 80 (known) languages into which the Arabian Nights has been translated, but generally have not included later publications in those languages. Contents for most of these editions are not available to us, so we have estimated based on page length or other available date whether they appear to include multiple stories from the Arabian Nights.

For ease of reference, the first known appearances (in publication form, i.e. not in hand-written manuscript form) for the languages into which the Arabian Nights/Thousand and One Nights has been translated, in chronological order, is shown on the left below, and an alphabetical list is shown on the right.