December 1993
The huge initial popularity of Magic spurred a demand for new cards. Wizards set out to design and produce a small expansion as quickly as possible. They chose as their theme the collection of stories known as the Arabian Nights. As the tale goes, a jealous Arabian king would spend a night with each of his wives and then have her executed in the morning to be assured she wouldn’t betray him. Only one, Shahrazad, found a way to avoid this fate. She entertained the king by telling stories, always ending on a cliffhanger; each time, the king kept her alive for another day so he could find out what happened next. After 1,001 nights of this, he finally ended his wife killing habits. These stories include the tales of Ali Baba and the forty thieves, Alladin and his lamp, and Sinbad the sailor.
The Arabian Nights set was designed to evoke the atmosphere of these stories. Some of the cards portrayed character or items directly from the stories, like Alladin and his magical ring and lamp and Jandor’s ever-full magical saddlebags. Others were created to fit within the theme, such as the popular Juzam and Erhnam Djinns. One, City in a bottle, was inspired form a Sandman comic that also borrowed from the Arabian Nights tales.
Wizards first planned to print each expansion with a different back design. These cards would be mixed freely, but players would be able to tell what set the upcoming card would belong to. The playtests were done this way, and it worked fine. However, players hated the idea, so it was scrapped.
The other change in the initial plans came in the names. Originally, Magic: The Gathering was intended as the name only for the initial set. Each following set would be Magic: Something, such as Magic: Arabian Nights. Magic: The Gathering quickly gained so much name recognition, however, that Wizards decided to keep it as the name for the whole game. This left the initial set, known as The Gathering, somewhat nameless; it later became known as the basic set.
