His version of the tales appeared in twelve volumes between 1704 and 1717 and exerted a significant influence on subsequent European literature and attitudes to the Islamic world.

In 1670 he was attached to the French embassy at Istanbul because of his excellent knowledge of Greek and, in 1673, he travelled in Syria and the Levant, where he copied a great number of inscriptions, sketched and—in some cases—removed historical monuments.

During his prolonged residences abroad, he acquired a thorough knowledge of the Arabic, Turkish, and Persian languages and literatures, which, on his final return to France, enabled him to render valuable assistance to Melchisédech Thévenot, the keeper of the royal library, and to Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville.

When d'Herbelot died in 1695, Galland continued his Bibliothèque orientale ("Oriental Library"), a huge compendium of information about Islamic culture, and principally a translation of the great Arabic encyclopedia Kaşf az-Zunūn by the celebrated Ottoman scholar Kâtip Çelebi.

It was finally published in 1697 and was a major contribution to European knowledge about the Middle East, influencing writers such as William Beckford (in his oriental tale Vathek).

There he began, in 1704, the publication of Les mille et Une Nuits, which excited immense interest during the time of its appearance and is still the standard French translation.

The immediate success the tales enjoyed was partly due to the vogue for fairy stories (French: contes de fées),[9] which had been started in France in the 1690s by his friend Charles Perrault.

The most famous and eloquent encomiums of The Thousand and One Nights – by Coleridge, Thomas de Quincey, Stendhal, Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, Newman – are from readers of Galland's translation.