Black bordered Foreign MTG Copyright 1996?

I believe you have a valuable card with you.

4th Edition Core Set was the first set ever printed in Asian languages and Japanese was one of the chosen languages. Back in the days, Wizards' print rules was: every card has to be printed with a black border the first time it is printed. Even though 4th Edition is a reprint set in English, it was 'brand new' in Japanese. Therefore, it was printed with black border. (The same happened to Russian 9th Edition, it was printed with black border but the English version was printed with white border.)

So, yes it is a real MTG card. Your card is more of a collection item since Unstable Mutation is not a powerful card itself. However, it being from the first Japanese print and black border 4th Edition, you may be able to fetch a good deal with a collector.

Side note: I am a collector myself and do LOVE Unstable Mutation. A white border or Time Spiral Unstable Mutation only worth about 50 cents. For a mint condition version of your card, I would easily pay $3 up to a maximum of $5 for a copy. I would pay even more for the Chinese version because later on, Wizards switched from Traditional Chinese to Simplified Chinese. That means Wizards is no longer printing cards in Traditional Chinese.

Mtg 1996

It might be a fake. There are no black boarders cards with no set symbols from 1996 (maybe one printed in another language might have been, but I never heard of them). 1996 had Alliances and Mirage. Neither had Unstable Mutation and both had set symbols on them.

They had some compilation sets in 1996. One I see is Multiverse Gift Box which had foreign cards in it, however I don't see any Arabian Nights listed in the possible cards sets

Well, I ve got a little staple of those here, if someone is interested.