What is common to all the editions of the Nights is the initial frame story of the ruler Shahryār and his wife Scheherazade and the framing device incorporated throughout the tales themselves.

A Thousand Tales), which in turn relied partly on Indian elements. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Abbasid and Mamluk eras, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hezār Afsān ( Persian: هزار افسان‎, lit. Some tales trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, and Mesopotamian folklore and literature. The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central and South Asia, and North Africa.

1706–1721), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition (c. One Thousand and One Nights ( Arabic: أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ‎, ʾAlf Laylah wa-Laylah) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age.

The palace of a thousand and one nights