The last compiler of the collection “One Thousand and One Nights” was an unknown scholar, a sheikh by name, who in the 18th century in Egypt assembled the most time-recent collection of tales “One Thousand and One Nights.” The most significant literary processing of the stories also took place in Egypt, two or three centuries earlier.
This edition of the 14th–16th centuries of “The Book of One Thousand and One Nights,” usually called the “Egyptian” version, is the only one preserved up to the present day. It is presented in most printed editions and in almost all the manuscripts of the “Nights” known to us, and it serves as specific source material for studying the tales of Shahrazad.