Les mille et une nuits

Les mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français (lit. 'The Thousand and One Nights, Arab stories translated into French'), published in 12 volumes between 1704 and 1717, was the first European version of The Thousand and One Nights tales.

The French translation by Antoine Galland (1646–1715) derived from an Arabic text of the Syrian recension of the medieval work as well as from other sources. It included stories not found in the original Arabic manuscripts — the so-called "orphan tales" — such as the famous "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", which first appeared in print in Galland's collection. Literary scholars Ruth B. Bottigheimer and Paulo Lemos Horta have argued that Hanna Diyab should be understood as the original author of some of the orphan tales, and even that several of them, including Aladdin, were partly inspired by Diyab's own life.

Immensely popular at the time of initial publication by the house of the late Claude Barbin, and enormously influential later, Galland's published tales were supplemented by subsequent volumes, introduced using Galland's name - although some stories were produced by others at the behest of a publisher wanting to capitalize on the popularity of Galland's work.