The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, Four Parts

The work has been collected over the centuries, by authors, translators and scholars from West, Central and South Asia and North Africa.
The tales of One Thousand and One Nights date back to the ancient and medieval periods of the Arab, Persian, Indian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations. Most of the tales were originally folk tales from the Caliphate period, and some, especially the frame story, were probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work “One Thousand Tales”, which in turn was partly based on Indian literature.
On the other hand, there are those who say that the origin of these stories is Babylonian. What is common to all versions of the Nights is the beginning, the frame story about the ruler Shahryar and his wife Scheherazade, which is included in all the tales. The stories basically start from this story, some stories are framed within other tales, while others begin and end on their own.
Some printed editions contain only a few hundred Nights of One Thousand and One Nights, and others include one or more of One Thousand and One Nights. The bulk of the text is in prose, although poetry is occasionally used to express heightened emotion, and songs and riddles are sometimes used. Most of the poems are single stanzas or quatrains, but some are longer.