Editing One Thousand and One Nights (section)

===Embedded narrative===
Another technique featured in the ''One Thousand and One Nights'' is an early example of the "[[story within a story]]", or ''embedded narrative'' technique: this can be traced back to earlier Persian and Indian storytelling traditions, most notably the ''[[Panchatantra]]'' of ancient [[Sanskrit literature]]. The ''Nights'', however, improved on the ''Panchatantra'' in several ways, particularly in the way a story is introduced. In the ''Panchatantra'', stories are introduced as [[didactic]] analogies, with the frame story referring to these stories with variants of the phrase "If you're not careful, that which happened to the louse and the flea will happen to you." In the ''Nights'', this didactic framework is the least common way of introducing the story: instead, a story is most commonly introduced through subtle means, particularly as an answer to questions raised in a previous tale.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia|last=Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen|first=Hassan Wassouf|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=2004|isbn=1-57607-204-5|pages=3–4}}</ref>

The general story is narrated by an unknown narrator, and in this narration the stories are told by [[Scheherazade]]. In most of Scheherazade's narrations there are also stories narrated, and even in some of these, there are some other stories.<ref>{{cite book
 | last=Burton
 | first=Richard
 | author-link=Richard Francis Burton
 | title=The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1
 | publisher=[[Project Gutenberg]]
 | date=September 2003
 | url=http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/11001108.txt
 | access-date=2008-10-17
 | archive-date=2012-01-18
 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120118141047/http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/11001108.txt
 }}</ref> This is particularly the case for the "[[Sinbad the Sailor]]" story narrated by Scheherazade in the ''One Thousand and One Nights''. Within the "Sinbad the Sailor" story itself, the protagonist Sinbad the Sailor narrates the stories of his seven voyages to Sinbad the Porter. The device is also used to great effect in stories such as "[[The Three Apples]]" and "[[#Unreliable narrator|The Seven Viziers]]". In yet another tale Scheherazade narrates, "[[The Fisherman and the Jinni]]", the "Tale of the Wazir and the Sage [[List of One Thousand and One Nights characters#Duban|Duban]]" is narrated within it, and within that there are three more tales narrated.