Most of the tales told in this collection are obviously of Persian origin, and are contained in the Hasar Afsana (The Thousand Tales) which was translated into Arabic in the tenth century.

But some authorities claim that these stories originated in India and were brought into Persia before Alexander's conquests.

These tales are so popular that they have been translated into every civilized language and are often termed prose epics.
Arabic also boasts a romance of chivalry entitled "Romance of 'Antar,'" ascribed to Al Asmai (739-831), which contains the chief events in Arab history before the advent of Mahomet and is hence often termed the Arab Iliad.
The "Romance of Beni Hilal" and that of "Abu Zaid," which form part of a cycle of 38 legends, are popular in Egypt to this day.
THE SHAH-NAMEH, OR EPIC OF KINGS This Persian epic was composed by the poet Abul Kasin Mansur, who sang so sweetly that his master termed him Firdusi, or Singer of Paradise, by which name he is best known, although he is also called the "Homer of the East." Mahmoud, Shah of Persia, who lived about 920 B.C., decided to have the chronicles of the land put into rhyme, and engaged Firdusi for this piece of work, promising him a thousand gold pieces for every thousand distichs he finished.

Firdusi, who had long wished to build stone embankments for the river whose overflow devastated his native town, begged the king to withhold payment until the work was done.
At the end of thirty-three years, when the poem was completed, the grand vizier, after counting its sixty-thousand couplets, concluded not to pay for it in gold, and sent instead sixty thousand small pieces of silver.

On receiving so inadequate a reward, Firdusi became so angry that, after distributing the money among the bearers and writing an insulting poem to the king, he fled first to Mazinderan and then to Bagdad, where he lingered until shortly before his death, when he returned to Tous.