The Influential levels of "The Thousand and One Nights" in "Soulaf Baghdad" By Muhsin Jassim al-Musawi

The Thousand and One Nights, with its varied features based on the process of narration, description and dialogue between the characters in the space of time and place, reflects the reality of society in its various aspects, where the contemporary novelist seeks to enhance his novelistic effectiveness by being inspired by The Thousand and One Nights, as a source text, with the refinement of his literary faculties and his mind for creation. “Soulaf Baghdad” by Muhsin Jassim al-Musawi, the Iraqi critic and novelist, who borrowed “Baghdad” to represent the bleak Iraqi reality after the American occupation, is only the evidence of his direct, creative and indirect influence on the narrative climates of the tales of the nights from the stylistic point of view. For the spread of his ideas, his novelistic or creative experience, and his critical skill, as a literary critic, he is immersed in the concepts and techniques of narration simultaneously. Getting to know the novelist's motive for inspiration from the narrative framework of The Thousand and One Nights, explains the necessity of conducting the current research using the descriptive-analytical method. It seems to us that the narrative structure of the novel, with its overlapping narrative structure, secret places, and the presence of eccentric characters, bringing poetry, associated with the thousand and one nights. It can be said that this influence is a driving force for a project that aims to draw the atmosphere of Baghdad, the tragic past of the fifties and Baghdad, its unknown and frightening future, next to the conditions and facts of “Soulaf” with its people, with several narrations in one narration by the narrator of Scheherazade, between reality and imagination. As for the content of the fictional work, It can be said that according to the author's critical viewpoint and the many books he wrote in the field of criticism of The Thousand and One Nights and Arabic narratology has provided his novel with an artistic image with a new reading of The Thousand and One Nights and the mechanisms of intellectual vision in it.