The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights, is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. The tales are believed to have been originally told orally, and the first written versions date back to the 9th century. The stories are interconnected and woven together through the framing device of Scheherazade, a woman who tells stories to her husband, King Shahryar, to delay her own execution.