The Arabian Nights, also known as One Thousand and One Nights, is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age, compiled by various authors over many hundreds of years.
Though each collection features different stories, they are set within a frame story of the sultan Shahrayar and Scheherazade:
After discovering that his first wife is unfaithful, Shahrayar kills her. Then, loathing all womankind, he marries and kills a new virgin each day until no more candidates can be found. Scheherazade, his vizier's daughter, having devised a scheme to save herself and others, offers herself as the next bride. Each evening she tells a story, leaving it incomplete and promising to finish it the following night. The king, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear the end. The next evening, she finishes that story and then begins another, following the same pattern for 1,001 nights.
