Summarize the Textual History of the 1001 Nights

The history behind successfully translating the Arabian nights is long and complicated, however throughout all the madness certain aspects of this search remain the same. Translators are constantly searching for the oldest a manuscript of the Nights. The Nights have indefinitely received multiple additions since the older versions. Irwin tells us that a purpose of the Nights was to be read aloud by storytellers. And of course the storyteller needed no exact copy of the Nights "he needed only an\ outline of a story on which he could embroider on." Therefore the question of criticism is raised 'should the Nights be criticized as a single work of an ingenious author (for there is evidence stating the Nights  is in fact the work of one man), or should they be treated as a body of tales which differing cultures have all made diverse contributions to? Thus the search for the single oldest version of the manuscript rages on. The diversity of writing style awithin the text makes this a difficult factor in the
Another significant difficulty in translating the Nights  is its the problem of cross-contamination. Many manuscripts which are significant landmarks in our search of the first Nights of the nights have been translated from somewhere else and have flaws of grammar and meaning in them. This means we are often using flawed manuscripts for our own translations. We face many difficulties in the translating of this document however the search rages on and every step we take we are closer to uncovering another seceret in the Arabian Nights.