Nevertheless, the "Nights" have proved an inspiration to some modern Egyptian writers, such as Tawfiq al-Hakim (author of the Symbolist play "Shahrazad", 1934), Taha Hussein ("Scheherazade's Dreams", 1943) and Naguib Mahfouz ("Arabian Nights and Days", 1979). Idries Shah finds the Abjad numerical equivalent of the Arabic title, "alf layla wa layla", in the Arabic phrase "umm el quissa", meaning "mother of records." He goes on to state that many of the stories "are encoded Sufi teaching stories, descriptions of psychological processes, or enciphered lore of one kind or another."