Editing One Thousand and One Nights (section)

====Crime fiction====
[[File:Godefroy Durand - Morgiane.jpg|thumb|Illustration depicting [[Morgiana (character)|Morgiana]] and the thieves from ''[[Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves]]'']]
An example of the [[murder mystery]]<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights Reader|first=Ulrich|last=Marzolph|publisher=[[Wayne State University Press]]|year=2006|isbn=0-8143-3259-5|pages=240–242}}</ref> and [[Thriller (genre)|suspense thriller]] genres in the collection, with multiple [[plot twist]]s{{sfn|Pinault|1992|pp=93,95,97}} and [[detective fiction]] elements{{sfn|Pinault|1992|pp=91,93}} was "[[The Three Apples]]", also known as ''Hikayat al-sabiyya 'l-maqtula'' ('The Tale of the Murdered Young Woman').<ref>{{cite book|title=The Arabian Nights Reader|first=Ulrich|last=Marzolph|publisher=[[Wayne State University Press]]|year=2006|isbn=0-8143-3259-5|page=240}}</ref>

In this tale, [[Harun al-Rashid]] comes to possess a chest, which, when opened, contains the body of a young woman. Harun gives his vizier, [[Ja'far ibn Yahya|Ja'far]], three days to find the culprit or be executed. At the end of three days, when Ja'far is about to be executed for his failure, two men come forward, both claiming to be the murderer. As they tell their story it transpires that, although the younger of them, the woman's husband, was responsible for her death, some of the blame attaches to a slave, who had taken one of the apples mentioned in the title and caused the woman's murder.

Harun then gives Ja'far three more days to find the guilty slave. When he yet again fails to find the culprit, and bids his family goodbye before his execution, he discovers by chance his daughter has the apple, which she obtained from Ja'far's own slave, Rayhan. Thus the mystery is solved.

Another ''Nights'' tale with [[crime fiction]] elements was "The Hunchback's Tale" story cycle which, unlike "The Three Apples", was more of a [[suspense]]ful [[comedy]] and [[courtroom drama]] rather than a murder mystery or detective fiction. The story is set in a fictional China and begins with a hunchback, the emperor's favourite [[comedian]], being invited to dinner by a [[tailor]] couple. The hunchback accidentally chokes on his food from laughing too hard and the couple, fearful that the emperor will be furious, take his body to a [[Medicine in medieval Islam|Jewish doctor]]'s [[Bimaristan|clinic]] and leave him there. This leads to the next tale in the cycle, the "Tale of the Jewish Doctor", where the doctor accidentally trips over the hunchback's body, falls down the stairs with him, and finds him dead, leading him to believe that the fall had killed him. The doctor then dumps his body down a chimney, and this leads to yet another tale in the cycle, which continues with twelve tales in total, leading to all the people involved in this incident finding themselves in a [[courtroom]], all making different claims over how the hunchback had died.<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=2–4}}</ref> Crime fiction elements are also present near the end of "The Tale of Attaf" (see [[#Foreshadowing|Foreshadowing]] above).

{{Anchor|Horror fiction elements}}