It's time to strap our boots on This is a perfect day to die
Wipe the blood out of our eyes

In this life there's no surrender
There's nothing left for us to do
Find the strength to see this through

We are the ones who will never be broken
With our final breath
We'll fight to the death
We are soldiers, we are soldiers
Woah woah woah whoa
We are soldiers

I stand here right beside you
Tonight we're fighting for our lives
Let me hear your battle cry
Your battle cry

We are the ones who will never be broken
With our final breath
We'll fight to the death
We are soldiers, we are soldiers

We are the ones who will not go unspoken (not go unspoken)
No, we will not sleep
We are not sheep
We are soldiers, we are soldiers
Yeah

We stand shoulder to shoulder
We stand shoulder to shoulder
We stand shoulder to shoulder
You can't erase us
You'll just have to face us

We stand shoulder to shoulder
We stand shoulder to shoulder
We stand shoulder to shoulder
You can't erase us
You'll just have to face us

We are the ones who will never be broken (never be broken)
With our final breath
We'll fight to the death
We are soldiers, we are soldiers

We are the ones who will not go unspoken (not go unspoken)
No, we will not sleep
We are not sheep
We are soldiers, we are soldiers
Yeah
Woah woah woah whoa
We are soldiers
Woah woah woah whoa
We are soldiers
Woah woah woah whoa
We are soldiers

the thousand and one nights – or, as i prefer to call them in the following for purely practical reasons: the arabian nights – as we perceive them three hundred years after antoine galland’s epochal french adaptation bear a distinct arabic imprint. meanwhile, the commonly accepted model for their textual history acknowledges various stages in the conceptualization and effective formation of both the collection’s characteristic frame story and the embedded repertoire. the vast majority of tales in the preserved manuscripts of the nights has been integrated into the collection during two periods of arabic influence, the so-called baghdad and cairo periods (gerhardt 1963: 115–374). these “arabic” stages are preceded by an iranian version, probably dating to pre-islamic times, which in its turn profits from both structural devices and narrative contents originating from indian tradition. considering the eminent position that iran and iranian culture hold in the early stages of the textual history of the arabian nights, surprisingly few details are known concerning the collection’s relation to and its actual position within the iranian cultural context. in the following, i will discuss links between the arabian nights and iranian culture on several levels. in surveying these links, i will treat five major areas: (1) the iranian prototype of the nights; (2) tales of alleged persian origin; (3) persian characters within the tales; (4)persian translations of the arabian nights; and (5) the position of the arabian nights in modern iran