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One Thousand and One Nights, is a collection of ancient folktales with roots stretching across centuries and cultures. The origins of these stories are intertwined with the rich tapestry of the Canaanites, Mesopotamian, Persian, and Indian traditions. While the exact origin remains elusive, the collection likely evolved through a process of cultural exchange and oral storytelling.

However, beyond its enchanting tales, One Thousand and One Nights, serves as a powerful narrative that unveils the often harsh realities faced by women across different epochs. The collection, with its poignant stories and subtle social commentary, reveals a persistent dark theme that transcends cultural and temporal boundaries.

The stories of One Thousand and One Nights, also known as "The Arabian Nights," were initially circulated through a process of cultural exchange and oral storytelling, until a definitive manuscript, often considered the original, was transcribed in the second half of the thirteenth century within the Mamluk domain, possibly in Syria or Egypt. While this original version is lost, subsequent copies, most likely edited, were based on this archetype, which evidenced by similarities in substance, form, and style among these early copies.

These copies revolve around a core set of stories, likely constituting the original and present in the current translations. Subsequently, two manuscript branches emerged: the Syrian and the Egyptian. Among the Syrian branch, four manuscripts are identified, with the oldest and closest to the original located in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (nos. 3609-3611), dating back to the fourteenth century. The remaining three Syrian manuscripts were transcribed much later, in the sixteenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, respectively.

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