Talk:One Thousand and One Nights

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One Thousand and One Nights is a former featured article candidate. Please view the links under Article milestones below to see why the nomination was archived. For older candidates, please check the archive.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
April 17, 2006	Featured article candidate	Not promoted

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Anthropology: Oral tradition

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Persian language revisited.

Hezār Afsān is a completely different (and, alas, lost) Persian work. Soundofmusicals (talk) 19:20, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Since Hezar Afsan is lost, it seems we can’t conclude whether it is significantly different or not. Ff11 (talk) 20:52, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Science fiction in the Thousand and One Nights?

There is a substantial paragraph dedicated to the supposed "proto-science fiction" elements of The Thousand and One Nights. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, absurd. Fantastic undersea realms and/or celestial realms appear in premodern literature and folklore across Eurasia (and probably elsewhere as well, although I know less about this). The same is true of enchanted objects that grant their owner the power of flight. It is ridiculous to apply the label "proto-science fiction" to narratives that incorporate supernatural elements that can be misconstrued to permit superficial analogies with space travel, aviation, et cetera. This is the same kind of sloppy and/or wishful thinking as claiming that premodern stories about dragons are "proto-paleontology" and classing them with Jurassic Park on the grounds that both dragons and dinosaurs are big scary scaly things. 2600:1017:B801:43AD:8477:164A:68E:BA8 (talk) 01:30, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article has become a drama and is not realistic as it was

The original page name was The Arabian Nights as it is known in the English language, and this is what the encyclopedia should consider more importantly. Why was the name of the article changed? It is better to return it as it was 91.186.231.120 (talk) 14:19, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Persian

@Derpenemich: the Thousand and One Nights is not preserved in Persian, only Arabic. Why would we then list a Persian name first before the Arabic one? Look at the talk archives - the issue of the "Persianness" of the text has been discussed to death. The fact is that it only exists in Arabic and was written in Arabic, though based on Persian stories to some extent. This appears to be yet another attempt to claim the Thousand and One Nights for Iran.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:39, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's true that the text as we know it was preserved in Arabic and that the earliest known surviving manuscripts are in Arabic. But historically Persian culture was erased from history and that the manuscript incorporates a rich tapestry of stories from various cultures, including Persian, Indian, and others. The Persian influence is significant because many of the tales that were eventually included in the collection originated in Persian literature and were integrated into the Arabic text.This interaction reflects a cultural exchange rather than a singular cultural ownership. This is no way trying to revise anything and claim that this manuscript is purely owned by Persians. Derpenemich (talk) 12:59, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then why don’t we add Persian titles to the Decameron - some of its stories have Persian origins. That’s not a valid argument.—-Ermenrich (talk) 13:00, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See also #Persian language revisited. above. The title you are adding does not refer to the Thousand and One Nights.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:48, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Probable Featured Article Candidate

I would like to start an RfC on whether contributors to this article feel that this is a probable featured article candidate. I feel this is a highly notable subject (more impact in popular culture than Shakespeare) and very scholarly-written compared to the last time it went through the failed featured article candidacy in April 2006 (it never had a good article candidacy). I am wholly unfamiliar with the subject though, but I am starting this RfC anyway. Sir Kenneth Kho (talk) 08:27, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]