Middle East
Explore tales associated with Middle Eastern storytelling, including selections from the Arabian Nights. Their narrators, settings and publication routes cross regions and languages. The source note identifies the version followed rather than assigning a story’s entire history to one place.
16 stories are in this region right now.
See also: Turkey.
Arabian Nights
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Ali Baba overhears Open, Sesame, loads his donkeys with gold—and Morgiana outwits chalk marks, oil-jar assassins, and a guest who will eat no salt.
Arabian Nights
Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp
A false uncle sends Aladdin into a treasure cave for a lamp; genies raise a palace—until "New lamps for old!" carries it to Africa.
Arabian Nights
The Barber’s Story of His Fifth Brother
Idle Alnaschar invests his inheritance in glass, kicks the basket in a daydream of marrying the vizir's daughter—then walks into a deadlier trap.
Arabian Nights
The Barber’s Tale of Himself
A Baghdad barber who boasts that he is a man of few words explains how his silence nearly got him executed alongside ten robbers.