Ara'bian Nights or The Thousand and One Nights, a celebrated collection of Eastern tales, supposed to have been derived by the Arabians from India, through the medium of Persia. They were first introduced into Europe in the beginning of the eighteenth century by means of the French translation of Antoine Galland. The story which connects the tales of The Thousand and One Nights is as follows: The sultan Shahriyar made a law that every one of his future wives should be put to death the morning after marriage. At length one of them, Shahrazad, the generous daughter of the grand vizier, succeeded by a strategem in abolishing the cruel custom. By breaking off each night in the middle of an interesting tale, she led the sultan to delay her execution day after day, until he had fallen in love with her and decided to let her live. The tales have been translated into almost all languages and have attained a wider circulation than any other book except the Bible.