SOURCE: von Grunebaum, Gustave E. “The Arabian Nights.” Midway: A Magazine of Discovery in the Arts and Sciences 14 (spring 1963): 41-63.

In the following essay, originally published in Medieval Islam in 1953, von Grunebaum notes several influential elements from classical literature of the Hellenistic age in The Arabian Nights, contending that stories that center on sailors and related geographic details, as well as on tales of love, reflect narrative patterns of the Greek novel.

The classical contribution to the formation of Islamic civilization in general has been freely recognized, but the survival of classical traditions in Arabic literature is only now beginning to be traced and appraised in its true importance. The all too strict separation between oriental and classical studies is as responsible for the relative backwardness of our knowledge in this field as is the character of the Greco-Roman contribution itself. While, for example, the Indian or the...