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One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition, which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.
In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Asia, and Africa.
In Ancient Greek ketos, Latinized as cetus, is any huge sea monster. According to the mythology, Perseus slew a cetus to save Andromeda from being sacrificed to it. The term cetacean derives from cetus. In Greek art, ceti were depicted as serpentine fish. The name of the mythological figure Ceto is derived from kētos. The name of the constellation Cetus also derives from this word.
The Leviathan is a sea serpent demon noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible, including Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, and the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch. The Leviathan is often an embodiment of chaos, threatening to eat the damned when their lives are over. In the end, it is annihilated. Christian theologians identified Leviathan with the demon of the deadly sin envy. According to Ophite diagrams, the Leviathan encapsulates the space of the material world.
Aladdin is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It is one of the best-known tales associated with One Thousand and One Nights, despite not being part of the original text; it was added by the Frenchman Antoine Galland, based on a folk tale that he heard from the Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab.
Sinbad the Sailor is a fictional mariner and the hero of a story-cycle. He is described as hailing from Baghdad during the early Abbasid Caliphate. In the course of seven voyages throughout the seas east of Africa and south of Asia, he has fantastic adventures in magical realms, encountering monsters and witnessing supernatural phenomena.
Bahamut, or Bahamoot, according to Zakariya al-Qazwini, is a monster that lies deep below, underpinning the support structure that holds up the earth.
A merman, the male counterpart of the mythical female mermaid, is a legendary creature which is human from the waist up and fish-like from the waist down, but may assume normal human shape. Sometimes mermen are described as hideous and other times as handsome.
Merfolk, Mercreatures, Mermen or Merpeople are legendary water-dwelling, human-like beings. They are attested in folklore and mythology throughout the ages in various parts of the world. Merfolk, Merpeople, or simply Mer refers to humanoid creatures that live in deep waters like Mermaids, Sirens, Cecaelia etc.
Merrow is a mermaid or merman in Irish folklore. The term is anglicised from the Irish word murúch.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1888), subtitled A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, is the only complete English language translation of One Thousand and One Nights to date – a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age – by the British explorer and Arabist Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890). It stands as the only complete translation of the Macnaghten or Calcutta II edition of the "Arabian Nights".
According to the tradition of the Physiologus and medieval bestiaries, the aspidochelone is a fabled sea creature, variously described as a large whale or vast sea turtle, and a giant sea monster with huge spines on the ridge of its back. No matter what form it is, it is always described as being so huge that it is often mistaken for a rocky island covered with sand dunes and vegetation. The name aspidochelone appears to be a compound word combining Greek aspis, and chelone, the turtle. It rises to the surface from the depths of the sea, and entices unwitting sailors with its island appearance to make landfall on its huge shell and then the whale is able to pull them under the ocean, ship and all the people, drowning them. It also emits a sweet smell that lures fish into its trap where it then devours them. In the moralistic allegory of the Physiologus and bestiary tradition, the aspidochelone represents Satan, who deceives those whom he seeks to devour.
Genies or djinns are supernatural creatures from pre-Islamic and Islamic mythology. They are associated with shapeshifting, possession and madness. In later Western popular representation, they became associated with wish-granting and often live in magic lamps or bottles. They appear in One Thousand and One Nights and its adaptations, among other stories. The wish-granting djinns from One Thousand and One Nights, however, are the divs of Persian origin, not the Arabian djinns.
The kraken is a legendary sea monster of enormous size, per its etymology something akin to a cephalopod, said to appear in the sea between Norway and Iceland. It is believed that the legend of the Kraken may have originated from sightings of giant squid, which may grow to 12–15 m in length.
Translations of One Thousand and One Nights have been made into most of the world's major languages. They include the French translation by Antoine Galland. Galland's translation was essentially based on a medieval Arabic manuscript of Syrian origin, supplemented by oral tales recorded by him in Paris from Hanna Diyab, a Maronite Arab from Aleppo.
"The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade" is a short-story by American author Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). It was published in the February 1845 issue of Godey's Lady's Book and was intended as a partly humorous sequel to the celebrated collection of Middle Eastern tales One Thousand and One Nights.
References
- 1 2 3 "Abdallah the Fisherman and Abdallah the Merman". The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. Translated by Payne, John. 1882–1884.
- ↑ Burton, Richard F., ed. (1885). "Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman". The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. The Burton Club. p. 179, Footnote 1. Archived from the original on 2024-07-08.
- ↑ Jones, Callahan (2023-04-27). "An Ode to Magic's Most Forgetful Fish". TCGplayer Infinite. Archived from the original on 2024-07-08. Retrieved 2024-07-08.
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