One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  A writer in The Athenum,149 objecting to Lane’s modern date for The Nights, adduces evidence to prove the greater antiquity of the work. (Abu al-Hasan) Ibn Sa’id (bin Musa al-Gharnati = of Granada) born in A.H. 615 = 1218 and ob. Tunis A.H. 685 = 1286, left his native city and arrived at Cairo in A.H. 639 = 1241. This Spanish poet and historian wrote Al-Muhallá bi al-Ash’ár (The Adorned with Verses), a Topography of Egypt and Africa, which is apparently now lost. In this he quotes from Al-Kurtubi, the Cordovan;150 and he in his turn is quoted by the Arab historian of Spain, Abú al-Abbás Ahmad bin Mohammed al Makkári, in the “Windwafts of Perfume from the Branches of Andalusia the Blooming”151 (A.D. 1628-29). Mr. Payne (x. 301) thus translates from Dr. Dozy’s published text.

  “Ibn Said (may God have mercy upon him!) sets forth in his book, El Muhella bi-s-Shaar, quoting from El Curtubi the story of the building of the Houdej in the Garden of Cairo, the which was of the magnificent pleasaunces of the Fatimite Khalifs, the rare of ordinance and surpassing, to wit that the Khalif El Aamir bi-ahkam- illah152 let build it for a Bedouin woman, the love of whom had gotten the mastery of him, in the neighbourhood of the Chosen Garden’153 and used to resort often thereto and was slain as he went thither; and it ceased not to be a pleasuring-place for the Khalifs after him. The folk abound in stories of the Bedouin girl and Ibn Meyyah154 of the sons of her uncle (cousin?) and what hangs thereby of the mention of El-Aamir, so that the tales told of them on this account became like unto the story of El Bettál155 and the Thousand Nights and a Night and what resembleth them.”

  The same passage from Ibn Sa’id, corresponding in three MSS., occurs in the famous Khitat156 attributed to Al-Makrizi (ob. A.D. 1444) and was thus translated from a MS. in the British Museum by Mr. John Payne (ix. 303)

  “The Khalif El-Aamir bi-ahkam-illah set apart, in the neighbourhood of the Chosen Garden, a place for his beloved the Bedouin maid (Aaliyah)157 which he named El Houdej. Quoth Ibn Said, in the book El-Muhella bi-l-ashar, from the History of El Curtubi, concerning the traditions of the folk of the story of the Bedouin maid and Ibn Menah (Meyyah) of the sons of her uncle and what hangs thereby of the mention of the Khalif El Aamír bi-ahkam-illah, so that their traditions (or tales) upon the garden became like unto El Bettál158 and the Thousand Nights and what resembleth them.”

  This evidently means either that The Nights existed in the days of Al-’Ámir (xiith cent.) or that the author compared them with a work popular in his own age. Mr. Payne attaches much importance to the discrepancy of titles, which appears to me a minor detail. The change of names is easily explained. Amongst the Arabs, as amongst the wild Irish, there is divinity (the proverb says luck) in odd numbers and consequently the others are inauspicious. Hence as Sir Wm. Ouseley says (Travels ii. 21), the number Thousand and One is a favourite in the East (Olivier, Voyages vi. 385, Paris 1807), and quotes the Cistern of the “Thousand and One Columns” at Constantinople. Kaempfer (Amn, Exot. ) notes of the Takiyahs or Dervishes’ convents and the Mazárs or Santons’ tombs near Koniah (Iconium), “Multa seges sepulchralium quæ virorum ex omni ævo doctissimorum exuvias condunt, mille et unum recenset auctor Libri qui inscribitur Hassaaer we jek mesaar (Hazár ve yek Mezár), i.e., mille et unum mausolea.” A book, The Hazar o yek Ruz ( = 1001 Days), was composed in the mid-xviith century by the famous Dervaysh Mukhlis, Chief Sofi of Isfahan: it was translated into French by Petis de la Croix, with a preface by Cazotte, and was englished by Ambrose Phillips. Lastly, in India and throughout Asia where Indian influence extends, the number of cyphers not followed by a significant number is indefinite: for instance, to determine hundreds the Hindus affix the required figure to the end and for 100 write 101; for 1000, 1001. But the grand fact of the Hazár Afsánah is its being the archetype of The Nights, unquestionably proving that the Arab work borrows from the Persian bodily its cadre or frame-work, the principal characteristic; its exordium and its dénoûement, whilst the two heroines still bear the old Persic names.

  Baron Silvestre de Sacy159 — clarum et venerabile nomen — is the chief authority for the Arab provenance of The Nights. Apparently founding his observations upon Galland,160 he is of opinion that the work, as now known, was originally composed in Syria161 and written in the vulgar dialect; that it was never completed by the author, whether he was prevented by death or by other cause; and that imitators endeavoured to finish the work by inserting romances which were already known but which formed no part of the original recueil, such as the Travels of Sindbad the Seaman, the Book of the Seven Wazirs and others. He accepts the Persian scheme and cadre of the work, but no more. He contends that no considerable body of præ-Mohammedan or non-Arabic fiction appears in the actual texts162 ; and that all the tales, even those dealing with events localised in Persia, India, China and other infidel lands and dated from ante-islamitic ages mostly with the naïvest anachronism, confine themselves to depicting the people, manners and customs of Baghdad and Mosul, Damascus and Cairo, during the Abbaside epoch, and he makes a point of the whole being impregnated with the strongest and most zealous spirit of Mohammedanism. He points out that the language is the popular or vulgar dialect, differing widely from the classical and literary; that it contains many words in common modern use and that generally it suggests the decadence of Arabian literature. Of one tale he remarks: — The History of the loves of Camaralzaman and Budour, Princess of China, is no more Indian or Persian than the others. The prince’s father has Moslems for subjects, his mother is named Fatimah and when imprisoned he solaces himself with reading the Koran. The Genii who interpose in these adventures are, again, those who had dealings with Solomon. In fine, all that we here find of the City of the Magians, as well as of the fire-worshippers, suffices to show that one should not expect to discover in it anything save the production of a Moslem writer.

  All this, with due deference to so high an authority, is very superficial. Granted, which nobody denies, that the archetypal Hazár Afsánah was translated from Persic into Arabic nearly a thousand years ago, it had ample time and verge enough to assume another and a foreign dress, the corpus however remaining untouched. Under the hands of a host of editors, scribes and copyists, who have no scruples anent changing words, names and dates, abridging descriptions and attaching their own decorations, the florid and rhetorical Persian would readily be converted into the straight-forward, business-like, matter of fact Arabic. And what easier than to islamise the old Zoroasterism, to transform Ahrimán into Iblís the Shaytan, Ján bin Ján into Father Adam, and the Divs and Peris of Kayomars and the olden Guebre Kings into the Jinns and Jinniyahs of Sulayman? Volumes are spoken by the fact that the Arab adapter did not venture to change the Persic names of the two heroines and of the royal brothers or to transfer the mise- en-scène any whither from Khorasan or outer Persia. Where the story has not been too much worked by the literato’s pen, for instance the “Ten Wazirs” (in the Bresl. Edit. vi. I9I-343) which is the Guebre Bakhtiyár-námah, the names and incidents are old Iranian and with few exceptions distinctly Persian. And at times we can detect the process of transition, e.g. when the Mázin of Khorásán163 of the Wortley Montagu MS. becomes the Hasan of Bassorah of the Turner Macan MS. (Mac. Edit.).

  Evidently the learned Baron had not studied such works as the Totá- kaháni or Parrot-chat which, notably translated by Nakhshabi from the Sanskrit Suka-Saptati,164 has now become as orthodoxically Moslem as The Nights. The old Hindu Rajah becomes Ahmad Sultan of Balkh, the Prince is Maymún and his wife Khujisteh. Another instance of such radical change is the later Syriac version of Kaliliah wa Dimnah,165 old “Pilpay” converted to Christianity. We find precisely the same process in European folk-lore; for instance the Gesta Romanorum in which, after five hundred years, the life, manners and customs of the Romans lapse into the knightly and chivalrous, the Christian and ecclesiastical developments of mediaeval Europe. Here, therefore, I hold that the Austrian Arabist has proved his point whilst the Frenchman has failed.

  Mr. Lane, during his three years�
� labour of translation, first accepted Von Hammer’s view and then came round to that of De Sacy; differing, however, in minor details, especially in the native country of The Nights. Syria had been chosen because then the most familiar to Europeans: the “Wife of Bath” had made three pilgrimages to Jerusalem; but few cared to visit the barbarous and dangerous Nile-Valley. Mr. Lane, however, was an enthusiast for Egypt or rather for Cairo, the only part of it he knew; and, when he pronounces The Nights to be of purely “Arab,” that is, of Nilotic origin, his opinion is entitled to no more deference than his deriving the sub-African and negroid Fellah from Arabia, the land per excellentiam of pure and noble blood. Other authors have wandered still further afield. Some finding Mosul idioms in the Recueil, propose “Middlegates” for its birth-place and Mr. W. G. P. Palgrave boldly says “The original of this entertaining work appears to have been composed in Baghdad about the eleventh century; another less popular but very spirited version is probably of Tunisian authorship and somewhat later.”166

  B. — The Date.

  The next point to consider is the date of The Nights in its present form; and here opinions range between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries. Professor Galland began by placing it arbitrarily in the middle of the thirteenth. De Sacy, who abstained from detailing reasons and who, forgetting the number of editors and scribes through whose hands it must have passed, argued only from the nature of the language and the peculiarities of style, proposed le milieu du neuvième siècle de l’hégire ( = A.D. 1445-6) as its latest date. Mr. Hole, who knew The Nights only through Galland’s version, had already advocated in his “Remarks” the close of the fifteenth century; and M. Caussin (de Perceval), upon the authority of a supposed note in Galland’s MS.167 (vol. iii. fol. 20, verso), declares the compiler to have been living in A.D. 1548 and 1565. Mr. Lane says “Not begun earlier than the last fourth of the fifteenth century nor ended before the first fourth of the sixteenth,” i.e. soon after Egypt was conquered by Selim, Sultan of the Osmanli Turks in A.D. 1517. Lastly the learned Dr. Weil says in his far too scanty Vorwort (p. ix. 2nd Edit.):-”Das wahrscheinlichste dürfte also sein, das im 15. Jahrhundert ein Egyptier nach altern Vorbilde Erzählungen für 1001 Nächte theils erdichtete, theils nach mündlichen Sagen, oder frühern schriftlichen Aufzeichnungen, bearbeitete, dass er aber entweder sein Werk nicht vollendete, oder dass ein Theil desselben verloren ging, so dass das Fehlende von Andern bis ins 16. Jahrhundert hinein durch neue Erzählungen ergänzt wurde.”

  But, as justly observed by Mr. Payne, the first step when enquiring into the original date of The Nights is to determine the nucleus of the Repertory by a comparison of the four printed texts and the dozen MSS. which have been collated by scholars.168 This process makes it evident that the tales common to all are the following thirteen: —

  1. The Introduction (with a single incidental story “The Bull and the Ass”). 2. The Trader and the Jinni (with three incidentals). 3. The Fisherman and the Jinni (with four). 4. The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (with six). 5. The Tale of the Three Apples. 6. The Tale of Núr-al-Dín Ali and his son Badr al-Dín Hasan. 7. The Hunchback’s Tale (with eleven incidentals). 8. Nur al-Dín and Anís al-Jalís. 9. Tale of Ghánim bin ‘Ayyúb (with two incidentals). 10. Alí bin Bakkár and Shams al-Nahár (with two). 11. Tale of Kamar al-Zamán. 12. The Ebony Horse; and 13. Julnár the Seaborn.

  These forty-two tales, occupying one hundred and twenty Nights, form less than a fifth part of the whole collection which in the Mac. Edit.169 contains a total of two hundred and sixty-four Hence Dr. Patrick Russell,170 the Natural Historian of Aleppo,171 whose valuable monograph amply deserves study even in this our day, believed that the original Nights did not outnumber two hundred, to which subsequent writers added till the total of a thousand and one was made up. Dr. Jonathan Scott,172 who quotes Russell, “held it highly probable that the tales of the original Arabian Nights did not run through more than two hundred and eighty Nights, if so many.” So this suggestion I may subjoin, “habent sue fate libelli.” Galland, who preserves in his Mille et une Nuits only about one fourth of The Nights, ends them in No. cclxiv173 with the seventh voyage of Sindbad: after that he intentionally omits the dialogue between the sisters and the reckoning of time, to proceed uninterruptedly with the tales. And so his imitator, Petis de la Croix,174 in his Mille et un Jours, reduces the thousand to two hundred and thirty-two.

  The internal chronological evidence offered by the Collection is useful only in enabling us to determine that the tales were not written after a certain epoch: the actual dates and, consequently, all deductions from them, are vitiated by the habits of the scribes. For instance we find the Tale of the Fisherman and the Jinni (vol. i. 41) placed in A.H. I69 = A.D. 785,175 which is hardly possible. The immortal Barber in the “Tailor’s Tale” (vol. i. 304) places his adventure with the unfortunate lover on Safar 10, A.H. 653 ( = March 25th, 1255) and 7,320 years of the era of Alexander.176 This is supported in his Tale of Himself (vol. i. p-348), where he dates his banishment from Baghdad during the reign of the penultimate Abbaside, Al-Mustansir bi ‘llah177 (A.H. 623-640 = 1225-1242), and his return to Baghdad after the accession of another Caliph who can be no other but Al- Muntasim bi ‘llah (A.H. 640-656 = A.D. 1242-1258). Again at the end of the tale (vol. i. 350) he is described as “an ancient man, past his ninetieth year” and “a very old man” in the days of Al- Mustansir (vol. i. 318); SO that the Hunchback’s adventure can hardly be placed earlier than A.D. 1265 or seven years after the storming of Baghdad by Huláku Khan, successor of Janghíz Khan, a terrible catastrophe which resounded throughout the civilised world. Yet there is no allusion to this crucial epoch and the total silence suffices to invalidate the date.178 Could we assume it as true, by adding to A.D. 1265 half a century for the composition of the Hunchback’s story and its incidentals, we should place the earliest date in A.D. 1315.

  As little can we learn from inferences which have been drawn from the body of the book: at most they point to its several editions or redactions. In the Tale of the “Ensorcelled Prince” (vol. i. 77) Mr. Lane (i. 135) conjectured that the four colours of the fishes were suggested by the sumptuary laws of the Mameluke Soldan, Mohammed ibn Kala’un, “subsequently to the commencement of the eighth century of the Flight, or fourteenth of our era.” But he forgets that the same distinction of dress was enforced by the Caliph Omar after the capture of Jerusalem in A.D. 636; that it was revived by Harun al-Rashid, a contemporary of Carolus Magnus and that it was noticed as a long standing grievance by the so-called Mandeville in A.D. 1322. In the Tale of the Porter and the Ladies of Baghdad the “Sultáni oranges” (vol. i. 83) have been connected with Sultáníyah city in Persian Irák, which was founded about the middle of the thirteenth century: but “Sultáni” may simply mean “royal,” a superior growth. The same story makes mention (vol. i. 94) of Kalandars or religious mendicants, a term popularly corrupted, even in writing, to Karandal.179 Here again “Kalandar” may be due only to the scribes as the Bresl. Edit. reads Sa’alúk = asker, beggar. The Khan al-Masrúr in the Nazarene Broker’s story (i. 265) was a ruin during the early ninth century A.H. = A.D. 1420; but the Báb Zuwaylah (i. 269) dates from A.D. 1087. In the same tale occurs the Darb al-Munkari (or Munakkari) which is probably the Darb al-Munkadi of Al-Makrizi’s careful topography, the Khitat (ii. 40). Here we learn that in his time (about A.D. 1430) the name had become obsolete, and the highway was known as Darb al-Amír Baktamír al-Ustaddar from one of two high officials who both died in the fourteenth century (circ. A.D. 1350). And lastly we have the Khan al-Jáwali built about A.D. 1320. In Badr al-Din Hasan (vol. i. 237) “Sáhib” is given as a Wazirial title and it dates only from the end of the fourteenth century.180 In Sindbad the Seaman, there is an allusion (vol. vi. 67) to the great Hindu Kingdom, Vijayanagar of the Narasimha,181 the great power of the Deccan; but this may be due to editors or scribes as the despotism was founded only in the fourteenth century(A.D. 1320). The Ebony Horse (vol. v. 1) apparently dates before Chaucer
; and “The Sleeper and The Waker” (Bresl. Edit. iv. 134-189) may precede Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew”: no stress, however, can be laid upon such resemblances, the nouvelles being world-wide. But when we come to the last stories, especially to Kamar al-Zaman II. and the tale of Ma’arúf, we are apparently in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The first contains (Night cmlxxvii.) the word Láwandiyah = Levantine, the mention of a watch = Sá’ah in the next Night182 ; and, further on (cmlxxvi.), the “Shaykh Al-Islam,” an officer invented by Mohammed II. after the capture of Stambul in A.D. 1453. In Ma’arúf the ‘Ádiliyah is named; the mosque founded outside the Bab al-Nasr by Al-Malik al-’Ádil, Túmán Bey in A.H. 906 = A.D. 1501. But, I repeat, all these names may be mere interpolations.

  On the other hand, a study of the vie intime in Al-Islam and of the manners and customs of the people proves that the body of the work, as it now stands, must have been written before A.D. 1400. The Arabs use wines, ciders and barley-beer, not distilled spirits; they have no coffee or tobacco and, while familiar with small-pox (judrí), they ignore syphilis. The battles in The Nights are fought with bows and javelins, swords, spears (for infantry) and lances (for cavalry); and, whenever fire-arms are mentioned, we must suspect the scribe. Such is the case with the Madfa’ or cannon by means of which Badr Al-Din Hasan breaches the bulwarks of the Lady of Beauty’s virginity (i. 223). This consideration would determine the work to have been written before the fourteenth century. We ignore the invention-date and the inventor of gunpowder, as of all old discoveries which have affected mankind at large: all we know is that the popular ideas betray great ignorance and we are led to suspect that an explosive compound, having been discovered in the earliest ages of human society, was utilised by steps so gradual that history has neglected to trace the series. According to Demmin183 , bullets for stuffing with some incendiary composition, in fact bombs, were discovered by Dr. Keller in the Palafites or Crannogs of Switzerland; and the Hindu’s Agni-Astar (“fire-weapon”), Agni-bán (“fire-arrow”) and Shatagni (“hundred- killer”), like the Roman Phalarica, and the Greek fire of Byzantium, suggest explosives. Indeed, Dr. Oppert184 accepts the statement of Flavius Philostratus that when Appolonius of Tyana, that grand semi-mythical figure, was travelling in India, he learned the reason why Alexander of Macedon desisted from attacking the Oxydracæ who live between the Ganges and the Hyphasis (Satadru or Sutledge):- “These holy men, beloved by the gods, overthrow their enemies with tempests and thunderbolts shot from their walls.” Passing over the Arab sieges of Constantinople (A.D. 668) and Meccah (A.D. 690) and the disputed passage in Firishtah touching the Tufang or musket during the reign of Mahmúd the Ghaznevite185 (ob. A.D. 1030), we come to the days of Alphonso the Valiant, whose long and short guns, used at the Siege of Madrid in A.D. 1084, are preserved in the Armeria Real. Viardot has noted that the African Arabs first employed cannon in A.D. 1200, and that the Maghribis defended Algeciras near Gibraltar with great guns in A. D. 1247, and utilised them to besiege Seville in A.D. 1342. This last feat of arms introduced the cannon into barbarous Northern Europe, and it must have been known to civilised Asia for many a decade before that date.