ABSTRACT
The Thousand and One Nights is a collection of stories which have greater unity amongst themselves than any simple anthology can have, as the stories form the narrative fabric of a narrative and often concern themselves with the same themes. This collection, however, proves also to be a family of texts having such diversity in its representatives that determining the precise content of even the framing narrative is nearly impossible, as the proliferation of texts multiplies the possible images of the characters and events. Having selected almost arbitrarily which version to prefer, the scholar reacts to the ghosts of the other versions. Sheherazade had three children and was spared or, in the alternative, she educated the king through stories, changed him and had no children.
