The Arabian Nights

This is an extract of one of the earliest translations of the "Arabian Nights" into English, made by Sir Richard Francis Burton. I got the "flat" ASCII text from a gopher server that has been unavailable for some years now. I have no idea who scanned/typed the text.

This extract is not nearly complete. The "arabian nighs" form a huge text corpus, and in translating them, Burton performed a gargantuan work. At ca. 350 pages per volume and 16 volumes, the full text corpus will contain some 11MByte. I have no idea whether it has been digitized in its totality (books.google.com seems to contain some scanned volumes, but the content is not visible). This present extract (of about 1.2 MByte) contains an estimated 10% of Burton's work. In an appendix to volume 10, Burton enumerates 262 "top level" stories, some of them with up to 28 sub-stories!

In 1996, I HTML'ed the text and split it up to make it better readable. For those who don't mind spoilers, there is also (partially) annotated table of contents.

Before diving into the universe of the Nights, you should take heed of this Warning! These texts might not be suitable for children or PC-challenged adults; they contain racist and sexist language and contents. Burton's translation is not unchallenged -- quite to the contrary, modern translators consider it very opinionated and tinted by his prejudices.

Intro Story

The Tale Of The Bull And The Ass

The Fisherman And The Jinni

The Tale Of The Ensorceled Prince

The Porter And The Three Ladies Of Baghdad

The First Kalandar's Tale

The Second Kalandar's Tale

The Third Kalandar's Tale

The Eldest Lady's Tale

The Tale Of The Three Apples

Tale of Nur Al-Din Ali and his son Badr Al-Din Hasan

The City Of Many-Columned Iram And Abdullah Son Of Abi Kilabah

The Sweep And The Noble Lady

The Man Who Stole The Dish Of Gold Wherein The Dog Ate

The Ruined Man Who Became Rich Again Through A Dream

The Ebony Horse

The Angel Of Death With The Proud And The Devout Man

Sindbad The Seaman And Sindbad The Landsman

First Voyage Of Sindbad Hight The Seaman

The Second Voyage Of Sindbad The Seaman

The Third Voyage Of Sindbad The Seaman

The Fourth Voyage Of Sindbad The Seaman

The Fifth Voyage Of Sindbad The Seaman

The Sixth Voyage Of Sindbad The Seaman

The Seventh Voyage Of Sindbad The Seaman

The Lady And Her Five Suitors

Khalifah The Fisherman Of Baghdad

Abu Kir The Dyer And Abu Sir The Barber

The Sleeper And The Waker

Story Of The Larrikin And The Cook

Aladdin; Or, The Wonderful Lamp

Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves

Conclusion


This page was last changed created on Jan 17 1995, 13:56 by mfx@dasburo.com (then @cs.tu-berlin.de; I should have been working on my PhD thesis instead ;-). CSS markup added in 2007, after too many people commented upon the "bare" layout of the pages.

Comments and corrections are welcome.