Arabian Nights: Sindbad (Andrew Lang) Week 6: Middle East - Assignments - Reading - Resources - Images

Resources

Tales from The 1001 Nights website provides texts taken from Burton, Lang, Payne, Scott, and Dixon. There is also a "Tale of the Day" here.

The Andrew Lang's The Arabian Nights Entertainments, with illustrations by Rene Bull, H.J. Ford and W. Heath Robinson, is available online.

The Arabian Nights Books website provides descriptions of all the major English-language editions, with a special section about illustrations.

The ELF website contains a wonderful version of Arabian Nights online, with Illustrated selections from the Lang and Burton editions, as well as a discussion forum. It's a little confusing, but just choose whether you want to look at the Lang or the Burton edition in the dropdown box, and then click on the Contents link to get the table of contents for that edition.

Edmund Dulac's illustrations to both the Arabian Nights and Omar Khayyam are available online.

Although it is not yet in the public domain, the English translation by Husain Haddawy, The Arabian Nights, is highly recommended. Haddawy bases his translation on the most conservative Arabic edition of the text, which attempts to uncover the original layer of stories (insofar as that is possible!). Haddawy also published a second volume, Sindbad and Other Popular Stories, which contains some of the well-known stories that were added to the Nights tradition later on.

Edgar Allan Poe is the author of a satirical tale, The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade: "Stop! said the king -- I can't stand that, and I won't. You have already given me a dreadful headache with your lies. The day, too, I perceive, is beginning to break. How long have we been married?"