Noting its postcolonial influence as a hybrid oriental text of universal appeal, this paper discusses the modern legacy of The Arabian Nights, its modern English translations and its fine arts illustrations and transformations, with the conclusion that the collection of tales exercises an entertaining and expansive influence on the horizon of human knowledge and understanding, regardless of borders and boundaries. Instead of dividing and walling them out, it
accommodates and brings together peoples, cultures, traditions and nations by charmingly speaking to a wide variety of audience and their dreams and views, whims and impulses, and fantasies and peculiarities, both realistic and imaginative.

Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights by Marina Warner begins with queries about the nature of attraction of what is one of the world’s greatest works of literature and finds the answer in the fact that the magical
qualities of the tales of genies and flying carpets are stimulating and inspiring to make readers feel transported from the plane of reality to the level of the creative, imaginative, and the fantastic.1 Srinivas Aravamudan’s Enlightenment Orientalism: Resisting the Rise of the Novel revolves around the same text—The Arabian Nights.2 Since its first European translation in French by Antoine Galland in early 18th century, immediately followed by what is known as its “Grub Street” English translation (more about which is to follow below), The Arabian Nights proved to be one of the earliest and most famous oriental texts to make the West get attracted to the East (Arab lands, Turkey, Persia, India, and Central Asia) as it appeared in the stories therein, fictional or realistic, and thereby influence Western Orientalism.

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