One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition, which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.
Scheherazade and Shahryar by Ferdinand Keller, 1880
A page from Kelileh va Demneh dated 1429, from Herat, a Persian version of the original ancient Indian Panchatantra – depicts the manipulative jackal-vizier, Dimna, trying to lead his lion-king into war.
The story of Princess Parizade and the Magic Tree by Maxfield Parrish, 1906
Antoine Galland was a French orientalist and archaeologist, most famous as the first European translator of One Thousand and One Nights, which he called Les mille et une nuits. His version of the tales appeared in twelve volumes between 1704 and 1717 and exerted a significant influence on subsequent European literature and attitudes to the Islamic world. Jorge Luis Borges has suggested that Romanticism began when his translation was first read.
The first European edition of Arabian Nights, Les Mille et une Nuits, by Antoine Galland, 1730 AD, Paris