Ibn Al-Nadim  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

Timeline

Scholars have assembled a timeline concerning the publication history of The Nights:

• Oldest Arabic manuscript fragment (a few handwritten pages) from Syria dating to the early 800s discovered by scholar Nabia Abbott in 1948.

• 900s AD — Mention of The Nights in Ibn Al-Nadim's "Fihrist" (Catalogue of books) in Baghdad. He mentions the book's history and its Persian origins.

• 900s — Second oldest reference to The Nights in Muruj Al-Dhahab (The Meadows of Gold) by Al-Masudi.

• 1000s AD — Mention of the original Arabic name of the One Thousand and One Nights by Qatran Tabrizi in the following couplet in Persian:

هزار ره صفت هفت خوان و رويين دژ </br> فرو شنيدم و خواندم من از هزار افسان </br>

A thousand times, accounts of Rouyin Dezh and Haft Khān </br> I heard and read from Hezār Afsān (literally Thousand Fables)

• 1300s — Existing Syrian manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (contains about 300 tales).

• 1704 — Antoine Galland's French translation is the first European version of The Nights. Later volumes were introduced using Galland's name though the stories were written by unknown persons at the behest of the publisher wanting to capitalize on the popularity of the collection.

• 1706 — An anonymously translated version in English appears in Europe dubbed the "Grub Street" version.

• 1714 — The Thousand and One Days: Persian Tales by Ambrose Philips. The earliest English translation with an attributed author.
• 1775 — Egyptian version of The Nights called "ZER" (Hermann Zotenberg's Egyptian Recension) with 200 tales (no surviving edition exists).

• 1814 — Calcutta I, the earliest existing Arabic printed version, is published by the British East India Company. A second volume was released in 1818. Both had 100 tales each.

• 1825-1838 — The Breslau/Habicht edition is published in Arabic in 8 volumes. Christian Maxmilian Habicht (born in Breslau, Germany, 1775) collaborated with the Tunisian Murad Al-Najjar and created this edition containing 1001 stories. Using versions of The Nights, tales from Al-Najjar, and other stories from unknown origins Habicht published his version in Arabic and German.

• 1842-1843 — Four additional volumes by Habicht.

• 1835 Bulaq version — These two volumes, printed by the Egyptian government, are the oldest printed (by a publishing house) version of The Nights in Arabic by a non-European. It is primarily a reprinting of the ZER text.

• 1839-1842 — Calcutta II (4 volumes) is published. It claims to be based on an older Egyptian manuscript (which was never found). This version contains many elements and stories from the Habicht edition.

• 1838 — Torrens version in English.

• 1838-1840 — Edward William Lane publishes an English translation. Notable for its exclusion of content Lane found "immoral" and for its anthropological notes on Arab customs by Lane.

• 1882-1884 — John Payne publishes an English version translated entirely from Calcutta II, adding some tales from Calcutta I and Breslau.

• 1885-1888 — Sir Richard Francis Burton publishes an English translation from several sources. His version accentuated the sexuality of the stories vis-à-vis Lane's bowdlerized translation.

• 1889-1904 — J. C. Mardrus publishes a French version using Bulaq and Calcutta II editions.

• 1984 — Muhsin Mahdi publishes an Arabic translation he says is faithful to the oldest Arabic versions surviving.

• 1990s — Husain Haddawy publishes an English translation of Mahdi.