This is, I repeat, a little unfortunate, because it complicates the problem as to the nature of the Arabic on which he drew. The gain of the book as a collection of tales carries with it loss from the point of view of literary history. Now what was the book which he called by the title usually rendered _Prince and Dervish_? Bar Hisdai names it “King’s Son and Nazirite” (_Ben ha-Melek we-ha-Nazir_). By Nazirite he means ascetic, and Dervish is a fair reproduction which we owe to W. A. Meisel (1847). A Dervish is not the same as the biblical Nazirite, inasmuch as the former devoted himself to a much wider range of austerities than the latter. But Bar Hisdai undoubtedly intends his Nazirite to be identical with the Dervish type. How comes he to use the word in this extended sense? The answer is easily found. Bar Hisdai was a hero-worshipper, and the object of his cult was David Kimhi, the famous grammarian of Provence. Almost pathetic is Bar Hisdai’s admiration for Kimhi. Now the latter, in his Hebrew dictionary (included in the _Miklol_) defines the verb _nazar_ as meaning “to abstain from eating and drinking and pleasures” (compare Zechariah 7. 3). This was not a new idea, for the same interpretation is given by Rashi (_loc. cit._), and is adumbrated in the talmudic use of the verb. But I doubt whether Bar Hisdai would have employed the _noun_ but for Kimhi’s emphatic definition. The Hebrew title, which is Bar Hisdai’s own invention, well fits the contents. Briefly, these consist of a framework into which are built a number of fables. An Indian king, fearing that his son will become a devotee of the ascetic life, places him (like Johnson’s Rasselas) in a beautiful palace, where he is kept ignorant of human miseries. But he comes under the influence of a hermit (the Nazirite), who impresses on the prince the vanity of life, and converts him (despite the king’s active hostility) to the new way of thinking. It is in the course of this narrative that the fables and parables are introduced. Obviously, however, Ibn Hisdai was much impressed by the narrative as such. “No king nor king’s son, but a slave of slaves was I until thou didst set me free to understand and obey God’s Law”--thus does Ibn Hisdai’s romance sum up the moral at its close, the speaker being the prince, and the one addressed the Nazirite.