Thousand and One Nights / Obscene Pornography or a Great Work of Culture?

  Thousand and One Nights

"The Arabian Nights"

Obscene Pornography or a Great Work of Culture?

There are always voices in the Arab world that want to censor, "purify" or even ban The Arabian Nights. The latest call comes from a group of conservative lawyers in Egypt who have gone to court over the matter. They want to take a new edition off the market and replace it with an edition from which all "obscene" words have been removed. Samir Grees explains the background to the case

There are always voices in the Arab world that want to censor, "purify" or even ban The Arabian Nights. The latest call comes from a group of conservative lawyers in Egypt who have gone to court over the matter. They want to take a new edition off the market and replace it with an edition from which all "obscene" words have been removed. Samir Grees explains the background to the case

Ilustration by Olga Dugina

​​ There can be few works that have fascinated their readers around the world as much as The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights. For some people, the tales – taken from Indian, Persian and Arabic sources and told by Scheherazade – are almost as popular as the Bible and Shakespeare. Many writers, among them Voltaire, Goethe and Borges, have said how much they admire the stories and admit how indebted they are to them.

Thousand and One Nights / The Healing Power of Storytelling

 

Thousand and One Nights

The Healing Power of Storytelling

The new German translation of Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) makes the oldest Arabic version of this famed collection of Oriental tales available for German readers for the first time. Ludwig Ammann read the new translation by Claudia Ott.Translated from the German by Jennifer Taylor-Gaida

The new German translation of Thousand and One Nights makes the oldest 15th-century version of this famed collection of Oriental tales available for German readers for the first time. Ludwig Ammann read the new translation by Claudia Ott

Interview with Claudia Ott / "Love is the Language of the Orient"

Ilustration by Olga Dugina

Interview with Claudia Ott

"Love is the Language of the Orient"

Following publication of her much praised German translation of The Thousand and One Nights, Claudia Ott has now turned her attention to the love poetry of the Orient. Mohamed Massad talked to the Arabist about the beauty and diversity of oriental poetryFollowing publication of her much praised German translation of The Thousand and One Nights, Claudia Ott has now turned her attention to the poetry of the Orient in Gold on Lapis Lazuli, an anthology of one hundred poems from three millennia of oriental love poetry. Mohamed Massad talked to the Arabist about the beauty and diversity of oriental poetry

Interview with Claudia Ott / A New Chapter in the History of Arab Literature

 

Interview with Claudia Ott

A New Chapter in the History of Arab Literature

An almost 800-year-old manuscript is shedding new light on one of the hidden jewels of Arabic literature. Orientalist and translator Claudia Ott recently identified the oldest known manuscript of "The One Hundred and One Nights". She talked to Loay Mudhoon about it

Claudia Ott: "'The Hundred and One Nights'" and 'The Thousand and One Nights' were contemporaneous with one another, the one probably better known in the west, the other in the east of the Arabian world."

​​Just a few days ago you found what is probably the earliest manuscript of "101 Nights". Can you tell us how this discovery came about?

Claudia Ott: In March this year, I was lucky enough to be invited as a musician to play at the opening of the "Treasures of the Aga Khan Museum" exhibition at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin. After the first rush was over and I had a little time to wander through the exhibition, a manuscript in a glass cabinet with art objects from Andalusia caught my eye. It was some distance away from the other manuscript treasures on show, such as the "Blue Koran" with its gold script on a lapis lazuli background.