A good story belongs to the whole world. At that point East and West meet, no matter how different they may be in training, government, religion or habit of living.
The stories known as the Thousand and One Nights are very old. They are known to have existed in their present form as early as the Thirteenth Century, and many of them were told, quite possibly, as early as the Ninth. They followed naturally upon the half-spoken, half-chanted poems celebrating heroic deeds and reciting gallant adventures which the Arabs were accustomed to listen to from one of their number as they rested in the evening about their camp-
