A thousand and one night, ed. J.-Sh. Mardrryus. Edited by Mardrryus J.-Sh.

The first stories, which formed the basis of the Arab fairy tales “Thousands of and One Night”, were part of the ancient Persian manuscript collection, which over the centuries has repeatedly corresponded and modified. It had instructive stories, and Cairo tales, and parables, and poetic excerpts borrowed from a wide variety of sources. A peculiar frame uniting this variegated literary mixture was a story about King Shakhriyare and a talented storyteller Shahrazade. For the first time, Europeans met the characters of “thousands and one night” at the beginning of the 18th century. This happened thanks to the French Orientalist, Antique and Translator Antoine Gallan. It was he who translated many tales of this cycle. The compact twenty -month -old resulting in the result was a huge success. Galllan did not set himself the task of careful work with the original sources. In an effort to achieve the interest of the public, he inserted several fairy tales into his free translations, which were not in the ancient manuscripts of “thousands of fairy tales”. For example, this is a fairy tale about Ali Babe and forty robbers. Scientists still argue about the origin of this story. For a long time, Gallan’s presentation was considered exemplary, and his volumes were repeatedly reprinted. However, at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries in France, a much more complete translation of fairy tales “Thousands of and One Night” appeared. He was performed by a French military doctor, poet and translator Joseph Sharl Mardrryus. This man called himself a "Muslim by birth and Parisian by chance." He was born in Cairo and, together with the mission of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, traveled at the end of the 19th century the whole east. Its translation of the fairy tales “thousands and one night” is considered exemplary. In contrast to the translation of Gallan, who was reduced in accordance with European literary tastes of the XVIII century, the texts of Mardrus convey all the stylistic features of the original. Therefore, the basis of a single -volume publication, which retains the plot of all the tales of the cycle, is based on the translation of Mardrryus. In St. Petersburg, it was printed at the very beginning of the 20th century. Colorful illustrations for fairy tales in this book were made at the beginning of the last century by French artist Leon Carre, who was fascinated by the East and spent most of his life in Algeria.