The Magic Carpet of the Nights
The flying carpet of the Thousand and One Nights cycle and of later oriental folklore, a woven rug that carried its riders through the air to far-off countries. Within the Nights corpus itself the carpet appears chiefly in the later tales, where Prince Husayn buys a magic carpet that bears its master wherever he wishes to go, and much of its modern fame comes from European retellings rather than from the medieval Arabic text. Its details vary widely from one telling to another, some giving it as a plain travelling rug, others as a king-sized carpet with a full retinue. The carpet's fame grew s