section_path: Arts and culture/Literature and poetry
section_name: Literature and poetry
paragraph_text: Literature and poetry
  
  The 13th century poet Rumi (Pen name: (Arabic Script: "مولانا") (Romanized: mwlana) (Arabic word meaning "the great of our crowd")) wrote some of the finest poetry in the Persian language and remains one of the best selling poets in the United States. Other famous poets of the Persian language include Hafez (whose work was read by William Jones, Thoreau, Goethe, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Friedrich Engels), Saadi (whose poetry was cited extensively by Goethe, Hegel and Voltaire), Ferdowsi, Omar Khayyam and Amir Khusrow.
  
  One Thousand and One Nights, an anthology of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in the Arabic language during the time of the Abbasid Caliphate, has had a large influence on Western and Middle Eastern literature and popular culture with such classics as Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Sinbad the Sailor. The folk-tale 'Sinbad the Sailor' even draws inspiration directly from Hellenistic literature like the Homeric epics (translated from Greek to Arabic in the 8th century CE) and Alexander Romances (tales of Alexander the Great popular in Europe, the Middle East and India).