Husain Haddawy's rapturously received translation of The Arabian Nights is based on a landmark reconstruction of the earliest extant manuscript version. These stories (and stories within stories, and stories within stories within stories), told by the Princess Shahrazad under the threat of death if she ceases to amuse, first reached the West around 1700. They fired in the European imagination an appetite for the mysterious and exotic which has never left it. Collected over centuries from India, Persia, and Arabia, and ranging from vivacious erotica, animal fables, and adventure fantasies to pointed Sufi tales, the stories of The Arabian Nights provided the daily entertainment of the medieval Islamic world at the height of its glory.\\The present new translation by Husain Haddawy is of the Mahdi edition, the definitive Arabic edition of a fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, which is the oldest surviving version of the tales and is considered to be the most authentic. This early version is without the embellishments and additions that appear in later Indian and Egyptian manuscripts, on which all previous English translations were based.--publisher description.

First published as a Norton paperback: New York : W W Norton & Co Inc, 1995.\\Muslim Journeys Collection. Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys.

Prologue: the story of King Shahrayar and Shahrazad, His Vizier's Daughter --The story of the merchant and the demon -- The story of the fisherman and the demon -- The story of the porter and the three ladies -- The story of the three apples -- The story of the hunchback -- The story of the Nur al-Din Ali ibn-Bakkar and the slave-girl Shams al-Nahar -- The story of the slave-girl Anis al Jalis and Nur al-Din Ali ibn-Khaqan -- The story of Jullanar of the sea. Prologue: the story of King Shahrayar and Shahrazad, His Vizier's Daughter -- The story of the merchant and the demon -- The story of the fisherman and the demon -- The story of the porter and the three ladies -- The story of the three apples -- The story of the hunchback -- The story of the Nur al-Din Ali ibn-Bakkar and the slave-girl Shams al-Nahar -- The story of the slave-girl Anis al Jalis and Nur al-Din Ali ibn-Khaqan -- The story of Jullanar of the sea.