Page "One Thousand and One Nights" Paragraph 108

There is little evidence that the Nights was particularly treasured in the Arab world.

It is rarely mentioned in lists of popular literature and few pre-18th century manuscripts of the collection exist.

Fiction had a low cultural status among Medieval Arabs compared with poetry, and the tales were dismissed as khurafa ( improbable fantasies fit only for entertaining women and children ).

According to Robert Irwin, " Even today, with the exception of certain writers and academics, the Nights is regarded with disdain in the Arabic world.

Its stories are regularly denounced as vulgar, improbable, childish and, above all, badly written.

" The Nights have proved an inspiration to some modern Egyptian writers, such as Tawfiq al-Hakim ( author of the Symbolist play Shahrazad, 1934 ), Taha Hussein ( Scheherazade's Dreams, 1943 ) and Naguib Mahfouz ( Arabian Nights and Days, 1981 ).