\paperw4260 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \pard\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx4896\tx5616\tx6336\tx7056\ATXts240\ATXbrdr0 \f1 \fs24 The fabulous stories told by Sheher
azade to the sleepless and vindictive Persian king Shahriyar are an inexhaustible treasure house for lovers of adventure, mystery, eroticism, cunning, and fantasy. Aladdin and Sinbad, demons and genies, thieves and phantoms, ships and \b \cf2 \ATXht10302 caravans\b0 \cf0 \ATXht0 , cities and \b \cf2 \ATXht10201 bazaars\b0 \cf0 \ATXht0 : no book provides a better illustration of the fascination of the Orient. Harun \b \cf2 \ATXht10104 al\b0 \cf0 \ATXht0 -Rashid, the Abbasid caliph who lived in Baghdad from
786 to 809, is its unwitting hero. The legends that grew up around his figure were collected long after his death. The stories in the \i Thousand and One Nights\i0 took on literary form in the fifteenth century, without attracting particular attention
in the East. The book's fame is entirely Western and dates from the publishing of the first French translation in the eighteenth century.\par
