The Arabian Nights is a collection of tales from the Islamic Golden Age, compiled by various authors over many hundreds of years.
Though each collection features different stories, they are all centered around the frame story of the sultan Shahrayar and his wife, Scheherazade. After finding out that his first wife is unfaithful, Shahrayar kills her and swears to marry a different woman each night before killing her the following morning to prevent further betrayal. Scheherazade, his vizier's daughter, concocts a plan to end this pattern. She marries Shahrayar, and then begins to tell him a story that night. However, she stops the story in the middle, so that he will be excited to hear the rest the following night. The next evening, she finishes that story and then begins another, following the same pattern for 1,001 nights, until Shahrayar has a change of heart. The stories she tells comprise the collection.