[Sca-cooks] looking for middle eastern

[David Friedman]

...

>(3) The Book of The Thousand Nights and A Night.  Translated and Annotated
>by Sir Richard Burton.  Privately Printed by the Burton Club.  Printed in
>the USA
>
>While not the most readable, at 16 volumes this is the most exhaustive
>translation of the collected tales.

Tastes differ--I'm very fond of the Burton translation.

>
>It is my understanding that the original collection of these tales has been
>reliably date to before 956 A.D.

I don't think that is correct--unless you mean that the existing 
versions are the result of a process that started that early.

What you may be thinking of is the mention of the Sheharazade frame 
story in the _Fihrist_ of al-Nadim. But that doesn't tell us that the 
tales in the surviving versions of the Nights go back that far--only 
that the frame story does. As best I recall, surviving versions are 
believed to be about 15th century and later.

There are probably individual stories lifted from sources, most 
likely Indian, that can be identified as earlier. But as far as I 
know, there is no evidence that the stories of the Nights as we have 
it were collected earlier.

-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com