History Literature / ArabianNights

** Another famous story, ''Les Soeurs Jalouses de leur Cadette'' ("Story of the Sisters envious of their Cadette", or ''Parizade'', in other printings), does not belong to the original corpus of the compilation. Instead, according to Galland's diary, the tale was provided by a Syrian named Hanna Diyab in the early-1700s, before Galland adapted the story and published it as part of his French language translation.

* InterspeciesRomance: In the tale of ''Hassan of Basra'' or ''Hassan of Bassora'', the titular Hassan is a humble seller in Basra who ends up marrying the youngest daughter of the King of the Djnni, who rules in the Islands of Waq-el-Waq over the other classes of djinni.

** Many male ''jinn'' are this. On second thought, the ''jenniya'', too..

* ArduousDescentToTerraFirma: In the first part of the tale, Hasan of Basra (or Hassan of Bassora), Hassan is kidnapped by a Persian magician and brought to a very high mountain on a remote island, in order to fetch some wildbushes to prepare an alchemical potion. Hasan enters a camel's hide, which some eagles bring to the top of the mountain. Hasan tosses the bushes to the magician, who abandons him up the mountain to die, just as he has done to other victims. Hasan, then, wanders off to the edge of the mountain and, seeing the ocean beneath him, decides to jump into the water. It may not be ''terra firma'' just yet, but he manages to swim for long enough to reach a safer shore.

* CanonImmigrant: Many of the stories do not appear in the earliest manuscripts. This includes three of the most famous tales in the series -- "Literature/SinbadTheSailor," "[[Literature/{{Aladdin}} Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp]]," and "Literature/AliBabaAndTheFortyThieves." "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba" for their part do not appear in any manuscript or copy before [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Galland Antoine Galland's]] translation. In Burton's translation, only "Sinbad" makes the main collection; "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba" are relegated to the supplemental volumes.

** A big example comes in the latter half of "The Fisherman and the Jinni," wherein the titular fisherman is led by the titular ''jinni'' to a lake that is full of fish of four different colors. Each day the fisherman brings four of these fish, one of each color, to the Sultan to be fried and eaten, but due to the strange things that happens when he goes to cook them, the Sultan comes to realize that these are no ordinary fish. On trying to find out what's so special about these fish, he comes across a man who is half [[TakenForGranite turned to stone]], who is more than willing to tell him; long story short, the man's adulterous wife turned their entire city into the lake, and the fish are its people, with the four colors representing the four religions that they belonged to. ''[[FridgeHorror And the Sultan was trying to cook them and eat them]]''. Ouch.

* ActionGirl: "Ali Nur Al-Din and Miriam the Girdle-Girl". The ''Arabian Nights'' have their share of warrior women but Miriam is perhaps unique in that her boyfriend Nur Al-Din is an admitted Lover Not A Fighter, kind of clueless, and basically a coward, while she is the brave fighter who protects the both of them. In one sequence when Miriam's family is pursuing the lovers, she asks Nur Al-Din for help, he begs off, and she proceeds to kill all three of her brothers one at a time in single combat.

In fact, early Arabic-language versions only contain about 300 nights. The 701 others were added later; most of the additions were by Arab writers, but European translators added some other folktales they'd collected in their editions. Some of these additions were based on other Arabian sources, but others, including ''Literature/{{Aladdin}}'' and ''Literature/AliBabaAndTheFortyThieves'', were stolen by Antoine Galland (the French translator) from Syrian Maronite writer Hanna Diyab, who recounted those tales to Galland and based them on various aspects of his own life. Diyab's autobiography was found in 1993 and greatly expanded our understanding of these stories. More on this in the Other Wiki.