The Arabian Nights

During ancient times, a king discovers that his wife is unfaithful. He executes her and her lover, and to ensure that he is never again betrayed, he takes a new wife each night and kills her in the morning. Eventually, he takes as his bride for the night a young woman who tells him a story that lasts all night long. When morning comes and she is to be killed, the story is not finished, and the king allows her to live through the following night so that he can hear how the story comes out. Of course, the story doesn't end the next night either, or the next night, or the next, until 1001 nights have passed, and the king decides to let her live and make her his queen. These are the stories of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin and His Magic Lamp, and Sinbad the Sailor - stories of flying carpets, gigantic birds, and mischievous genies - stories that have captured the Western imagination for hundreds of years. Compiled in the Middle Ages, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night is the chief glory of Arabic literature.