A101 (Hundred and One Nights)
The story collection titled the One Hundred and One Nights (مائة ليلة وليلة, Mi’at layla wa-layla), is linked to its longer sister-narrative, the Thousand and One Nights (ألف ليلة وليلة, Alf layla wa-layla). The frame story in both concerns a king who, embittered and vengeful after witnessing his wife's adultery, marries a new maiden every night, and has her executed every morning. The string of murders is interrupted when the king marries Shahrazād, a vizier’s daughter. Shahrazād delays her own death and keeps the king's attention by telling incomplete stories every night, promising their resolution the following evening if the king allows her to live on. In the end, Shahrazād wins the king’s affection, and all ends happily. Both the Thousand and One Nights and the One Hundred and One Nights contain a version of the Seven Sages narrative as one of the embedded stories that Shahrazād tells the king, usually referred to in English as the Seven Viziers.
Produced in the Maghreb or Western periphery of the Muslim world (Muslim Spain or North Africa) sometime between the 10th and 14th centuries, the Hundred and One Nights differs in several respects from the Thousand and One Nights (which was composed in the Eastern region of the Islamic world, e.g. Egypt, Iran, and/or Syria). The One Hundred and One Nights contains not only fewer but also different stories than its longer analogue, and the relationship between the frame story and the embedded tales is less persistently emphasised. The version of the Seven Viziers contained within the One Hundred and One Nights shares about half of the embedded stories with the version found in the Thousand and One Nights.
The One Hundred and One Nights was translated into Japanese, based on the Tarshūnah edition (Hyakuichiya Monogatari: Mō hitotsu no Arabian Naito [The One Hundred and One Nights: The Other “Arabian Nights”] trans. by Akiko Sumi, Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2011) and English (One Hundred and One Nights, trans. by Bruce Fudge, Library of Arabic Literature 45, New York: NYU Press, 2016).
| Identification and general Information | |
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| Reference Number | |
| Siglum of the version of the Seven Sages | A101 (Hundred and One Nights) |
| Version Number | |
| Title | مائة ليلة وليلة (Hundred and One Nights) |
| Author | |
| Tradition and Lineage | |
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| Branch of the tradition | East |
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| Language and Composition | |
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| Original language of version | Arabic |
| Language of text | Arabic |
| Regional or specific language of version | Maghrebi |
| Translated into (languages) | |
| Place of composition | Maghreb, Western Islamic world |
| Date of composition | 900 - 1350 |
| Islamic date of composition | |
| Hebrew date of composition | |
| Source for date of composition | Lerner (2018), Marzolph and Chraïbi (2012) |
| Modern Scholarship and Editions | |
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| Modern research literature | Lerner (2018), Marzolph and van Leeuwen (1994), Grotzfeld (1984), Walther (1987), Chraïbi (2008), Ott (2012), Gaudefroy-Demombynes (1911) |
| Modern Editions | Pétis de la Croix, Les Mille et un jours (1710-12), Tarshuna, Miʾat layla wa-layla (1984), Shuraybiṭ, Miʾat layla wa layla (2005), Ott, 101 Nacht (2012) |
| Notes and Commentary | |
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| Notes on the frame | |
| Pattern of embedded stories in this version |
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No connected prints |