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characters from the Sasanian period of Persian history—those kings ruling Persia and parts of Asia from 226 to 641 CE, with Shahryar ruling some part of the Indies and China. Yet Scheherazade’s stories contain allusions to much-later times and cultures, as well as references to materials, substances and inventions that had yet to come into existence, let alone use. Coffee, tobacco, gunpowder, firearms, artillery—even Islam itself, which was not founded until the seventh century—make appearances in stories told by a woman allegedly living during Europe’s early Dark Ages, when Rome was only in the first stages of its long decline.
    In the greater scheme of things, however, this doesn’t matter one bit. As the patron saint of storytellers, Scheherazade is a cosmically immortal figure, as magical as the awesome genies she describes. She is able to move forward and backward in time to employ whatever stories she chooses from whichever period suits her immediate purpose. As a character with a personal history, Scheherazade’s repertoire may be gleaned from her readings of thechronicles stored in her father’s house, but her stock has no limits; it cannot be restricted by mere temporal parameters.
    Still, mysteries of origin and dispersal remain. So many stories embody echoes of other tales from outside the collection that the
Nights
can seem a kind of narrative vortex, absorbing and recycling stories from other sources into a perfectly elastic text. Some material dealing with universal mythological themes, like the transformation of men into beasts, would have appeared independently, but it is clear from both Muslim and European literary history that elements of
The Thousand and One Nights
and other tales appeared interchangeably in both the East and the West centuries before the work’s actual publication. It is known that stories from the
Nights
were circulating in “westernized” versions in Europe many centuries before their printed appearance, cropping up in oral form in Germany, France, Italy and Spain, although it is unclear whether manuscript versions of sundry
Nights
tales were in circulation. All the same, it is likely some
Nights
stories were present in Europe from around the twelfth century, arriving through Arabized Sicily or Moorish Spain to be absorbed into the European folklore tradition.
    This is no one-way street, since it also appears that the basis of some
Nights
stories owes a debt to western tales as well as vice versa. The striking similarity between Sindbad’s fight with a carnivorous, one-eyed giant during his third voyage and Odysseus’s battle with the Cyclops Polyphemus in
The Odyssey
is too close for pure coincidence. Canto 28 of
Orlando Furioso
, a sixteenth-century epic poem by the Italian Ludovico Ariosto, contains a version of the story of Shahryar and his brother Shazaman that initiates the
Nights
’ frame tale, in which King Astolfo and his companion King Jocundo—both suffering adulterous wives—undertake a bitter journey to prove that a faithful woman does not exist. Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
contains a reference in “The Squire’s Tale” to amechanical brass horse capable of flying, very similar to the
Nights
’ “The Ebony Horse,” while Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century Italian
Decameron
likewise contains stories with strong similarities to tales found either within the
Nights
or other eastern collections.
    There are also elements of the
Nights
found in the Old Testament story contained in The Book of Esther, known to have been written in Persia no later than the third century BCE . Here Esther the Jewess becomes the soothing queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus (the historical Artaxerxes II) and so is able to save both herself and her people from a royal edict ordering the Jews’ destruction—a scenario similar in outline to Scheherazade marrying Shahryar to end his murderous spree.