Arabian Nights

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights has delighted readers for over a millennia. It is a collection of tales from the early days of Islam that is framed in a story about a beautiful girl, Scheherazade, who agrees to marry king Shahryar in order to end his practice of sleeping with a virgin each night and then killing her in the morning so she can’t be unfaithful to him as his wife had been. In order to win the king’s heart and keep him from killing her, Scheherazade tells him these fascinating stories night after night, each one ending with a cliffhanger that can only be resolved the following night, until he agrees not to kill her.

My favorite stories are the Barber’s tales of his six brothers, Aladdin and the magic lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and the Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. These tales are still fascinating even today, not only for children but even for adults. Not only do they entertain but they also are a window into the culture, religion and ethics of early Islam and Arabia.