The Thousand and One Nights and Orientalism in the Dutch Republic, 1700-1800

Antoine Galland’s French translation of the Thousand and One Nights appeared in 1704. One year later a pirate edition was printed in The Hague, followed by many others. Galland entertained a lively correspondence on the subject with the Dutch intellectual and statesman Gisbert Cuper (1644-1716). Dutch orientalists privately owned editions of the *Nights* and discreetly collected manuscripts of Arabic fairy tales. In 1719 the Nights were first retranslated into Dutch by the wealthy Amsterdam silk