Hi lit_fan,
Living in a Middle Eastern country, I am familiar with characters
known by children here. Most of these characters are popular, not only
in Egypt, but throughout the Middle East. The most famous of these
are:
Ali Baba
Aladdin
Sindbad the Sailor
Scheherazade
"Arabian Nights, or The Thousand and One Nights, collection of stories
from Persia, Arabia, India, and Egypt, compiled over hundreds of
years. Most of the stories originated as folk tales, anecdotes, or
fables that were passed on orally. They include the stories of Ali
Baba, Aladdin, and Sindbad the Sailor, which have become particularly
popular in Western countries.
"The stories in Arabian Nights are told by a legendary queen named
Scheherazade in a broader frame story, which starts at the beginning
of the collection and gives a context to the various stories it
contains. The frame story begins when the sultan Schahriar finds that
his wife has been unfaithful and orders her execution. He is so
enraged that he resolves to marry a new woman every night and have her
killed at daybreak. Scheherazade agrees to marry Schahriar despite the
decree and crafts a scheme to thwart him. The night after the wedding,
she tells one of the stories to her sister so that the sultan can
overhear. She stops, however, before the story comes to its
conclusion, and the sultan allows her to live another day so that he
can hear the end. She continues this pattern night after night. After
1001 nights, the sultan relents and decides to let Scheherazade live.
The earliest record of Arabian Nights is a fragment of the collection
that dates from the 800s. The collection grew during the following
centuries until it reached its present form, written in Arabic, in the
late 1400s or the 1500s. A scholar named Antoine Galland translated it
into French between 1704 and 1717, and called it Les Mille et Une
Nuits. The best known English-language versions are Arabian Nights,
translated by Edward William Lane in the 1840s, and The Thousand
Nights and a Night, translated by Richard Francis Burton in the 1880s.
The stories also have been a valuable source of information for
scholars studying early Middle Eastern culture."
Source:
"Arabian Nights," Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2000
http://encarta.msn.com
Cited on https://mailman.rice.edu/pipermail/sasialit/2000-September.txt
I hope this is helpful.
Best regards,
Rainbow |
