Scene from The Arabian Nights, 18th-century illustration. Also known as One Thousand and One Nights, the stories were told by the female storyteller Scheherazade to a Persian king who planned to behead her. She avoided this fate by telling stories each night that were left unfinished for the following night. This scene depicts the telling of one of the stories told by a barber about his brothers. This illustration is from an 1839 edition of the first European translation of The Arabian Nights by French orientalist Antoine Galland (1646-1715). Galland's original edition ('Les mille et une nuits') was published in 12 volumes between 1704 and 1717.