One Thousand and One Nights

Cookie Monster meets the Genie of the toothpaste tube.

Kermit the Frog is "Sinbad the Surfer" in a 1981 episode of The Muppet Show.

Bert and Ernie discover a magical lamp in a 2008 Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures sketch.

Ernie stars in an Ali Baba and his Forty Thieves pageant.

The Count has a night out at the theater to see A Thousand and One Arabian Nights.

One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of folk tales and other stories. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English language edition (1706), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.

The original concept is most likely derived from a pre-Islamic Persian prototype that probably relied partly on Indian elements, but the work as we have it was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators and scholars across the Middle East and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Caliphate era, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hazār Afsān. Though the oldest Arabic manuscript dates from the 14th century, scholarship generally dates the collection's genesis to around the 9th century.

All the editions of the Nights share a frame story of the ruler Shahryar (from Persian: شهريار, meaning "king" or "sovereign") and his wife Scheherazade (from Persian: شهرزاده, meaning "of noble lineage"). Shahryar has descended into madness after his queen betrayed him. Every night, he marries a new woman, then executes her in the morning. Scheherazade, daughter of the royal vizier, volunteers herself as Shahryar's next bride to save the kingdom. Aided by her sister Dunyazade (from Persian: دنیازاد), she stalls her execution by telling the king stories, forcing him to spare her if he wants to hear the ending.

The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights, while others include 1,001 or more.

Some of the best-known stories of The Nights, particularly "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," while almost certainly genuine Middle-Eastern folk tales, were not part of The Nights in Arabic versions, but were interpolated into the collection by French translator Antoine Galland, who himself learned them from the Syrian writer and traveler Hanna Diyab.

Sesame Street derives the first half of its name from "Open Sesame," the password to the Forty Thieves' den in Antoine Galland's rendition of "Ali Baba." The show's theme song includes another allusion to the Nights during the bridge, which mentions a magic carpet. This item originates in another Galland-Diyab story, "Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Pari Banu."

The Muppet Show

The Muppet Show episode 518, with guest star Marty Feldman, presented the Muppets' take on One Thousand and One Nights. In a framing story, Feldman plays a disheveled Scheherezade, telling Muppet versions of the classic stories to the Swedish Chef's Caliph:

• Kermit the Frog plays Sinbad the Sailor, who claims to be "Sinbad the Surfer" when he's challenged by an evil genie (Sweetums).

• Gonzo plays Aladdin, who is granted a wish by the Genie of the Lamp (Feldman). Gonzo's wish involves a palace, and a chorus of dancing chickens, singing "In a Persian Market."

• A puppet version of Feldman appears as Ali Baba, with Fozzie Bear as the head of the Forty Thieves (or, as it turns out, the Three Bears). To escape being boiled in oil, Fozzie sings "Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight." When he yells "Open Sesame," the cast of Sesame Street emerges.

Also, The Miss Piggy Calendar 1980 features a photo of Miss Piggy in an Arabian Nights-themed costume, reclining on a divan and being fanned by frogs.

Sesame Street

• "The Monster's Three Wishes" is a Sesame Street story with Cookie Monster in the Aladdin role, encountering a Genie in his toothpaste tube. The story first appeared in the 1973 book The Sesame Street 1, 2, 3 Storybook. In the story, the Genie offers Cookie Monster three wishes, and the monster decides that he wants a million cookies. But first he needs something to keep them in, so he wishes for a dish. The dish is too small for a million cookies, so his second wish is for a box. That's also too small, so he wishes for a truck to carry all the cookies in. When he finds he's out of wishes and can't get the million cookies, he eats the truck instead.

• An audio adaptation of "The Monster's Three Wishes" was recorded for the 1974 album C is for Cookie, with Herbert Birdsfoot as the narrator and Oscar the Grouch as the Genie.

• The story was adapted for the TV show in 1974, as a segment in Season 5. In the TV version, Bob narrates the story, and Cookie Monster's wishes are slightly different — he wishes for a truck right at the start, but he's given a tiny toy truck. He then wishes for a bigger truck, and finally for the biggest truck of all. The ending is the same, with Cookie Monster eating the biggest truck.

• In a "Sesame Street News Flash" sketch from Season 8, Aladdin's magic lamp is electrical, as opposed to the oil lamp traditionally used in the story. When Aladdin asks the Genie for help turning the light on, the Genie shoots back that he isn't an electrician, so Kermit suggests that Aladdin screw in a light bulb, plug the lamp into an electrical outlet, and turn on the switch. In addition to his magic lamp, Aladdin has a magic toaster and a magic hot-comb.

• In The Sesame Street Storytime Calendar 1982, the month of January parodied this story with Ernie playing the role of Aladdin and Big Bird portraying the Genie.

• In a Monsterpiece Theater segment, the forty thieves insist that they be introduced along with Ali Baba before the story begins, but by the time Alistair Cookie finishes counting them, the show has run out of time. Alistair then announces that next week's story will be "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves." ("Me think me can get that one in.")

• Herry Monster played "Scheherryzade" in the 1991 book/tape set Scheherryzade and the Arabian Nights. The cranky Queen of Arabia has outlawed bedtime stories, until Scheherryzade tells her the story of Sinbad the Sailor (played by Grover). Sinbad is shipwrecked on an island, where he encounters a giant bird and a Cyclops. The Queen is so pleased with Scheherryzade's story that she allows bedtime stories to be told again. (Like the 2008 Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures segment, this story mixes an Arabian story with a character from Greek mythology, the Cyclops. However, there is a precedent for combining these two stories; Antoine Galland, who translated the story from Arabic to French in the early eighteenth century, altered the depiction of Sinbad's monstrous foe by describing the giant as one-eyed.)

• Aladdin and the Genie appear in the 1996 storybook Elmo's Lift-and-Peek Around the Corner Book.

• David Alan Grier guest starred as Aladdin in Episode 4025 of Sesame Street. Aladdin who visits Sesame Street to show off his amazing genie — but the genie takes the day off, and Aladdin is stuck trying to show off by himself.

• In a 2008 Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures sketch, Ernie and Bert visit an Arabian town, where Ernie finds a dusty old lamp. He rubs it and a genie waitress comes out and grants them three wishes. Ernie wishes for a "Duckie Touch," where everything he touches turns into Rubber Duckies. (This sketch mixes the story of Aladdin from the Nights with the King Midas story from Greek mythology.)

• In a 2009 Abby's Flying Fairy School sketch, Abby and her classmates accidentally release Gene the Genie from his bottle; he intends to celebrate his release by spending one thousand and one nights in Las Vegas.

• In The Sesame Street Dictionary, Ernie plays the titular character of Ali Baba and his Forty Thieves in a pageant.

• Also in The Sesame Street Dictionary, Count von Count visits the theater to see A Thousand and One Arabian Nights.

Jim Henson's Creature Shop

• Jim Henson's Creature Shop provided effects for Arabian Nights, a 2002 TV-movie by Hallmark Entertainment. The Creature Shop created two digital dragons who guard the treasures of Arabia.