The Influence of The Thousand and One Nights in A Thousand Nights in a Night Novel by Sawsan Jamil Hassan

Revealing the feminist narrative discourse that the narrator introduces in feminist fiction is an attempt to uncover the reality of women. It also becomes evident that Scheherazade, in the original story of “The Thousand and One Nights,” was able to narrate and shape the image of women, thereby preserving their presence in front of Shahryar, who represents the male gender. In this context, Sawsan Jamil writes her novel “A Thousand Nights in One Night,” inspired by The Thousand and One Nights, as a model of female authorship. Through her work, she addresses the issue of femininity under the authority of masculinity in society from various perspectives.
The comparative-descriptive approach has been selected to compare the novel "Thousand Nights in One Night" and the introductory story of Thousand and One Nights in this examination.
The title encompasses the themes of night and its significance in both vigil and conversation. The narrator, addresses a man with the title “Mawlay” and identifies herself with the word Scheherazade through the available stories considered narrator’s memories experiences. In Jamil's novel, the title has its own significance and purpose. Furthermore, there are notable differences between the mythical Shahrazad and Dima, who embodies the identity of an Arab woman. They do not fully conform to the Scheherazadean archetype, as the narrative also explores the identity of women in contemporary Arab society, particularly through Dima's life experiences. This exploration highlights the challenges she faces in relation to the expectations associated with Scheherazade's
Sawsan employs innovative narrative techniques to explore the restoration of heritage, infusing it with contemporary significance and experience. She redefines the traditional roles of Scheherazade and Shahrayar, inviting a deeper examination of the dynamics between male and female characters and the implications of their relationship. Through the character of Dima, Sawsan articulates a vivid portrayal of self from the perspective of the other, expressing her views in the form of intellectual reflections and striving to assert her femininity through storytelling. 
Introduction:
The literary creativity presented in the feminist novel has its own specific features, highlighting the level of culture in which it is immersed in order to express its vision regarding women. Hence, several phenomena and effects may contribute, from the treasures of the literary heritage to the horizons of the new civilization, in the context of the feminist novel. Certainly, the Arab feminist novel, thanks to its benefit from the literary heritage, such as the mother novel The Thousand and One Nights, awakened the horizons of women’s awareness. Resorting to the characteristics of literary heritage figures, especially the characters of The Thousand and One Nights for instance, unveils the goal of demonstrating the ability of novelists to refer the situation to the past, to build ideas and meanings for the reality in which they live, and to describe the life they wish for in two important ways. Sawsan Jamil Hassan, the Syrian novelist, in her novel A Thousand Nights in a Night including in the path of feminist narrative discourse, touched on the title, contents and connotations that are unique to the characters of The Thousand and One Nights and its heritage data throughout the extension and expansion of her work.
Method:
The research topic necessitates the use of comparative criticism. The researcher aims to explore the influences of Sawsan Jamil's novel, which incorporates elements from The Thousand and One Nights. This analysis employs a comparative approach to examine the narrative structure and to identify the similarities and differences between the two works. The goal is to uncover the reasons behind the relationship with The Thousand and One Nights and to understand the evolution of the night features in Sawsan's novel as an example of feminist literature.
Results and Discussion:
In Jamil’s novel, the title has a temporal characteristic that runs through the novel and creates a special time field, like The Thousand and One Nights. One of the most important features of the two novels is that they both rely on the number in their titles. The timeline in The Thousand and One Nights is associated with the darkness of the night and the night in the title of the novel by Jamil focuses on setting up a narration session with the love between Dima and Mawlay in one spacious night, not multiple nights. There are two types of characters in the two stories: Scheherazade and Shahryar relate to the narrative heritage, and Dima and Mowlay grow in the literary creativity of Sawsan Jamil. Like The Thousand and One Nights, the multiple voices of women are present in Jamil’s novel, and each voice is linked to an essential nature associated with the social status of women within the narrative discourse. By following the narrative path in A Thousand nights in one Night, we found women whose inner worlds we can penetrate in three voices:

The voice of the traditional woman
The voice of the obedient woman
The voice of the strong woman.

The novel contains representative memories within the original text that talk about the image of women and the conditions of Dima, whose role is like the contemporary Scheherazade, the owner of pain and hop, not just the owner of beauty and body within the framework of the male world, and tries to create multiple stories like Scheherazade, but without the adventures of the nights. Dima, like Scheherazade, does not come from the depths of myths and tales that are a thousand years old, but she comes from the reality of society to be a witness to her deep desire to revive a new life in a space of freedom.
Conclusion:
Sawsan Jamil used heritage to bring characters from it to enter the creative narrative world and obtain new narrative techniques about the path of restoring heritage and loading it with a contemporary role and experience. Sawsan Jamil added a new role to the traditional role of Scheherazade and Shahrayar and opened a door for closer consideration of what indicates the relationship between male and female and what is announced about their relationship. Sawsan Jamil sought to describe a vivid and forgiving image of the self on the other side, while expressing her opinion through Dima in many places in the form of intellectual and mental impressions, seeking to prove her feminine self through narration. However, the ego in Scheherazade’s character tries to escape from the other being in Shahryar’s character so that she can save herself and her kind from his oppression and narcissism through the act of narration.