The Arabian Nights Entertainments
by Anonymous
Sultan Shahriar's erroneous decision to hide from possible infidelities over his wives leads to the outbreak of barbarism in their kingdom and the reign of terror in his palace, but is stopped by the creator Scheherazade. The tales in which Scheherazade sets aside the muddy intentions of the Sultan every night have entered our language and our lives as never before or after any other collection of stories. Sinbad, Aladdin, Ali Baba: They all make their wonderful entrances to the stage of English literary history in "Arab Nights of Entertainment". Stories housed in this "brilliant store of fiction" usher in a pattern of literary reference and influence that remains as strong and intense today as it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
