#96 - One Thousand and One Nights

I actually skipped reading this one because I just didn't have the patience for short stories, and I think the history of this book and its artwork is much more fascinating than the stories themselves.

You've probably heard the general idea of Arabian Nights: a Persian king is going to execute his new bride, Scheherazade, the morning after the wedding (yeah, he's a jerk), but she delays him by telling a story.  Then every night for 1,001 nights, she starts a new story to further postpone her execution. The 1,001 stories run the gamut of genres, and are collected in what we in North America usually now call Arabian Nights.  The most famous story is undoubtedly Aladdin, thanks to Disney.  
The stories themselves are really ancient, which is what I think is most interesting about them.  They're believed to be from around the 9th century, but they were collected over centuries all around the Middle East and North Africa.  The oldest surviving text is from the 14th century:

There's an interesting site, http://www.mythfolklore.net/1001nights/index.htm, that has cataloged a lot of images from various versions of Arabian Nights, from different eras and parts of the world.  I think the pictures are pretty amazing.