The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 01 (of 10)
General
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 01 (of 10)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
will know as much of the Moslem East and more than many Europeans who
have spent half their lives in Orient lands. For facility of reference
an index of anthropological notes is appended to each volume.
The reader will kindly bear with the following technical details.
Steinhaeuser and I began and ended our work with the first Bulak
("Bul.") Edition printed at the port of Cairo in A.H. 1251 = A.D. 1835.
But when preparing my MSS. for print I found the text incomplete, many
of the stories being given in epitome and not a few ruthlessly
mutilated with head or feet wanting. Like most Eastern scribes the
Editor could not refrain from "improvements," which only debased the
book; and his sole title to excuse is that the second Bulak Edition (4
vols. A.H. 1279 = A.D. 1863), despite its being "revised and corrected
by Sheik Mahommed Qotch Al-Adewi," is even worse; and the same may be
said of the Cairo Edit. (4 vols. A.H. 1297 = A. D. 1881). The Calcutta
("Calc.") Edition, with ten lines of Persian preface by the Editor,
Ahmed al-Shirwani (A.D. 1814), was cut short at the end of the first
two hundred Nights, and thus made room for Sir William Hay Macnaghten's
Edition (4 vols. royal 4to) of 1839-42. This ("Mac."), as by far the
least corrupt and the most complete, has been assumed for my basis with
occasional reference to the Breslau Edition ("Bres.") wretchedly edited
from a hideous Egyptian MS. by Dr. Maximilian Habicht (1825-43). The
Bayrut Text "Alif-Leila we Leila" (4 vols. gt. 8vo, Beirut, 1881-83) is
a melancholy specimen of The Nights taken entirely from the Bulak
Edition by one Khalil Sarkis and converted to Christianity; beginning
without Bismillah, continued with scrupulous castration and ending in
ennui and disappointment. I have not used this missionary production.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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