Audiobook The Arabian Nights: 5 Famous Stories. One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights, is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories compiled during the Islamic Golden Age. The beautiful Sheherazade, threatened with death, manages to postpone the fatal day by telling one marvellous story every night. The stories themselves are folk tales, fairy tales and poems collected over many centuries, from ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Mesopotamian, Indian, and Egyptian folklore and literature.