One Thousand and One Nights

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by Richard Burton


  Sharper and the Merchant, The, ii. 46

  Sharper, Story of the Old, ii. 187.

  Sharpers who cheated each his Fellow, The Two, ii. 28.

  Sharpers, The Money-Changer and the Ass, The, ii. 41.

  Shehriyar, Shehrzad and, ii. 111, iii. 141, 157.

  Shehrzad and Shehriyar, ii. 111, iii. 141, 157.

  Sindbad the Sailor and Hindbad the Porter, iii. 199.

  Sindbad the Sailor, The Seventh Voyage of, iii. 224.

  Sindbad the Sailor, The Sixth Voyage of, iii. 203.

  Singer and the Druggist, The, i. 229.

  Sitt el Milah, Noureddin Ali of Damascus and, iii. 3.

  Sixteen Officers of Police, El Melik ez Zahir Rukneddin Bibers el Bunducdari and the, ii. 117.

  Sixteenth Officer’s Story, The, ii. 193.

  Sixth Officer’s Story, The, ii. 146.

  Sixth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor, The, iii. 203.

  Solomon, David and, i. 275.

  Son, The History of King Azadbekht and his, i. 61.

  Son and his Governor, Story of the Man of Khorassan, his, i. 218

  Son, Story of King Ibrahim and his, i. 138.

  Son, The Rich Man and his Wasteful, i. 252.

  Sons, Story of King Suleiman Shah and his, i. 150.

  Sons, The Merchant and his, i. 81.

  Speedy Relief of God, Of the, i. 174.

  Suleiman Shah and his Sons, Story of King, i. 150.

  Tai, En Numan and the Arab of the Benou. i. 203.

  Temam (Abou), Story of Ilan Shah and, i. 126.

  Ten Viziers, The, i. 61

  Tenth Officer’s Story, The, ii. 172

  Term, Of the Appointed, i. 147.

  Thief, A Merry Jest of a, ii. 186.

  Thiefs Story, The, ii. 165.

  Thief and the Woman, The, i. 278

  Things, The King who knew the Quintessence of, i. 239

  Third Officer’s Story, The, ii. 137.

  Thirteenth Officer’s Story, The, ii. 181.

  Three Men and our Lord Jesus, The, i. 282.

  Three Young Men, El Hejjaj and the, i. 53.

  Tither, The Unjust King and the, i. 273.

  Trust in God, Of, 114.

  Tuhfet el Culoub and Er Reshid, ii. 203.

  Twelfth Officer’s Story, The, ii. I79.

  Two Kings and the Vizier’s Daughters, The, iii. 145

  Unjust King and the Tither, The, i. 272

  Unlucky Merchant, The, i 73.

  Uselessness of Endeavour against Persistent Ill Fortune, Of the, i. 70

  Vizier, The King of Hind and his, ii. 105.

  Vizier Er Rehwan, King Shah Bekht and his, i. 215.

  Vizier’s Daughters, The Two Kings and the, iii. 145,

  Viziers, Story of King Dadbin and his. i. 104.

  Viziers, The Ten, i. 61.

  Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor, The Seventh, iii. 224.

  Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor, The Sixth, iii. 203.

  Wasteful Son, The Rich Man and his, i. 252.

  Weaver who became a Physician by his Wife’s Commandment, The ii. 21.

  Wife, The King and his Chamberlain’s, ii. 53.

  Wife, The Old Woman and the Draper’s, ii. 55.

  Wife, Firouz aad his, i. 209.

  Wife, The Fuller and his, i. 261.

  Wife and the Learned Man, Khelbes and his, i. 301.

  Woman accused of Lewdness, The Pious, ii. 5.

  Woman of the Barmecides, Haroun er Reshid and the, i. 57.

  Woman, The Thief and the, i. 278.

  Woman (The Old) and the Draper’s Wife, ii. 55.

  Woman (The Old), the Merchant and the King, i. 265.

  Women’s Craft, ii. 287.

  Young Men, El Hejjaj and the Three, i. 53.

  Zubeideh, El Mamoun and, i. 199

  John Payne’s translation: detailed table of contents

  VOLUME XIII. Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp

  To

  Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, K.C.M.G.,

  H.B.M. CONSUL, TRIESTE.

  My Dear Burton,

  I give myself the pleasure of placing your name in the forefront

  of another and final volume of my translation of the Thousand and

  One Nights, which, if it have brought me no other good, has at

  least been the means of procuring me your friendship.

  Believe me,

  Yours always,

  John Payne.

  John Payne’s translation: detailed table of contents

  Twelve years this day, — a day of winter, dreary

  With drifting snows, when all the world seemed dead

  To Spring and hope, — it is since, worn and weary

  Of doubt within and strife without, I fled

  From the mean workday miseries of existence,

  From spites that slander and from hates that lie,

  Into the dreamland of the Orient distance

  Under the splendours of the Syrian sky,

  And in the enchanted realms of Eastern story,

  Far from the lovelessness of modern times,

  Garnered the rainbow-remnants of old glory

  That linger yet in those ancestral climes;

  And now, the tong task done, the journey over,

  From that far home of immemorial calms,

  Where, as a mirage, on the sky-marge hover

  The desert and its oases of palms,

  Lingering, I turn me back, with eyes reverted

  To this stepmother world of daily life,

  As one by some long pleasant dream deserted,

  That wakes anew to dull unlovely strife:

  Yet, if non’ other weal the quest have wrought me.

  The long beloved labour now at end,

  This gift of gifts the untravelled East hath brought me,

  The knowledge of a new and valued friend.

  5th Feb. 1889.

  John Payne’s translation: detailed table of contents

  INTRODUCTION.

  I.

  The readers of my translation of the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night will remember that, in the terminal essay (1884) on the history and character of the collection, I expressed my conviction that the eleven (so-called) “interpolated” tales, though, in my judgment, genuine Oriental stories, had (with the exception of the Sleeper Awakened and Aladdin) no connection with the original work, but had been procured by Galland from various (as yet) unidentified sources, for the purpose of supplying the deficiencies of the imperfect MS. of the Nights from which he made his version. My opinion as to these talcs has now been completely confirmed by the recent discovery (by M. Zotenberg, Keeper of Oriental MSS. in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris) of two Arabic MSS. of the Nights, both containing three of the missing stories, i.e. (1) Zeyn Alasnam, (3) The Sleeper Awakened and (4) Aladdin, and by the publication (also by M. Zotenberg) of certain extracts from Galland’s diary, giving particulars of the circumstances under which the “interpolated” tales were incorporated with his translation of the Arabian Nights. The Arabic text of the Story of Aladdin, as given by the completer and more authentic of the newly-discovered MSS., has recently been made by M. Zotenberg the subject of a special publication, in the preface to which (an exhaustive bibliographical essay upon the various Texts of the Thousand and One Nights, considered in relation to Galland’s translation) he gives, in addition to the extracts in question from Galland’s Diary, a detailed description of the two MSS. aforesaid, the more interesting particulars of which I now proceed to abstract for the benefit of my readers.

  II.

  The first MS. commences precisely where the third volume of Galland’s MS. ends, to wit, (see my Terminal essay, , note1) with the 281st Night, in the middle of the story of Camaralzaman and contains, (inter alia) besides the continuation of this latter (which ends with Night CCCXXIX), the stories of the Sleeper Awakened (Nights CCCXXX-CCCC), Ganem (Nights CCCCXXVIII-CCCCLXX1V), Zeyn Alasnam (Nights CCCCLXXV-CCCCXCI), Aladdin (Nights CCCCXCII-
DLXIX) and three others not found in Galland’s version. The MS. ends in the middle of the 631st night with the well-known Story of King Bekhtzad (Azadbekht) and his son or the Ten Viziers, (which will be found translated in my “Tales from the Arabic,” Vol. I. p et seq.) and contains, immediately after Night CCCCXXVII and before the story of Ganem, a note in Arabic, of which the following is a translation:

  “The fourth volume of the wonders and marvels of the stories of the Thousand Nights and One Night was finished by the hand of the humblest of His’ servants in the habit of a minister of religion (Kahin, lit. a diviner, Cohen), the [Christian] priest Dionysius Shawish, a scion (selil) of the College of the Romans (Greeks, Europeans or Franks, er Roum), by name St. Athanasius, in Rome the Greatest (or Greater, utsma, fem. of aatsem, qu re Constantinople?) on the seven-and-twentieth of the month Shubat (February) of the year one thousand seven hundred fourscore and seven, [he being] then teacher of the Arabic tongue in the Library of the Sultan, King of France, at Paris the Greatest.”

  From this somewhat incoherent note we may assume that the MS. was written in the course of the year 1787 by the notorious Syrian ecclesiastic Dom Denis Chavis, the accomplice of Cazotte in the extraordinary literary atrocity shortly afterward perpetrated by the latter under the name of a sequel or continuation of the Thousand and One Nights (v. Cabinet des Fees, vols. xxxviii — xli), and in all probability (cf. the mention in the above note of the first part, i.e. Nights CCLXXXI-CCCCXXVII, as the fourth volume) to supply the place of Galland’s missing fourth volume for the Bibliotheque Royale; but there. is nothing, except a general similarity of style and the occurrence in the former of the rest of Camaralzaman and (though not in the same order) of four of the tales supposed to have been contained in the latter, to show that Dom Chavis made his copy from a text identical with that used by the French savant. In the notes to his edition of the Arabic text of Aladdin, M. Zotenberg gives a number of extracts from this MS., from which it appears that it is written in a very vulgar modern Syrian style and abounds in grammatical errors, inconsistencies and incoherences of every description, to say nothing of the fact that the Syrian ecclesiastic seems, with the characteristic want of taste and presumption which might be expected from the joint-author of “Les Veillees Persanes,” to have, to a considerable extent, garbled the original text by the introduction of modern European phrases and turns of speech a la Galland. For the rest, the MS. contains no note or other indication, on which we can found any opinion as to the source from which the transcriber (or arranger) drew his materials; but it can hardly be doubted, from internal evidence, that he had the command of some genuine text of the Nights, similar to, if not identical with, that of Galland, which he probably “arranged” to suit his own (and his century’s) distorted ideas of literary fitness. The discovery of the interpolated tales contained in this MS. (which has thus presumably lain unnoticed for a whole century, under, as one may say, the very noses of the many students of Arabic literature who would have rejoiced in such a find) has, by a curious freak of fortune, been delayed until our own day in consequence of a singular mistake made by a former conservator of the Paris Bibliotheque, the well-known Orientalist, M. Reinaud, who, in drawing up the Catalogue of the Arabic MSS. in the collection described (or rather misdescribed) it under the following heading:

  “Supplement Arabe 1716. Thousand and One Nights, 3rd and 4th parts. This volume begins with Night CCLXXXII and ends with Night DCXXXI. A copy in the handwriting of Chavis. It is from this copy and in accordance with the instructions (d’apres la indications) of this Syrian monk that Cazotte composed (redigea) the Sequel to the Thousand and One Nights, Cabinet des Fees, xxxvii et xl (should be tt. xxxviii-xli).”

  It is of course evident that M. Reinaud had never read the MS. in question nor that numbered 1723 in the Supplement Arabe, or he would at once have recognized that the latter, though not in the handwriting of the Syrian ecclesiastic, was that which served for the production of the “Sequel” in question; but, superficial as was the mistake, it sufficed to prevent the examination by students of the MS. No. 1716 and so retarded the discovery of the Arabic originals of Aladdin and its fellows till the acquisition (some two years ago) by the Bibliotheque Nationale of another (and complete) MS. of the Thousand and One Nights, which appears to have belonged to the celebrated Orientalist M. Caussin de Perceval, although the latter could not have been acquainted with it at the time (1806) he published his well-known edition and continuation of Galland’s translation, in the eighth and ninth volumes of which, by the by, he gives a correct version of the tales so fearfully garbled by Chavis and Cazotte in their so-called translation as well nigh to defy recognition and to cause Orientalists in general to deny the possibility of their having been derived from an Oriental source until the discovery of the actual Arabic originals so barbarously maltreated

  This MS. is in the handwriting of of Sebbagh, the well-known Syrian collaborator of Silvestre de Sacy, and is supposed to have been copied by him at Paris between the years 1805 and 1810 for some European Orientalist (probably de Perceval himself) from a Baghdad MS. of the early part of the 18th century, of which it professes to be an exact reproduction, as appears from a terminal note, of which the following is a translation:

  “And the finishing of it was in the first tenth (decade) of Jumada the Latter [in the] year one thousand one hundred and fifteen of the Hegira (October, 1703) in the handwriting of the neediest of the faithful unto God the Most High, Ahmed ibn Mohammed et Teradi, in the city of Baghdad, and he the Shafiy by sect and the Mosuli by birth and the Baghdadi by sojourn, and indeed he wrote it for himself and set upon it his seal, and God bless and keep our lord Mohammed and his companions! Kebikej (ter).”

  This MS. contains the three “interpolated” tales aforesaid, i.e. the Sleeper Awakened (Nights CCCXXXVII-LXXXVI), Zeyn Alasnam (Nights CCCCXCVII-DXIII) and Aladdin (Nights DXIV-XCI), the last two bearing traces of a Syrian origin, especially Aladdin, which is written in a much commoner and looser style than Zeyn Alasnam. The two tales are evidently the work of different authors, Zeyn Alasnam being incomparably superior in style and correctness to Aladdin, which is defaced by all kinds of vulgarisms and solecisms and seems, moreover, to have been less correctly copied than the other. Nevertheless, the Sebbagh text is in every respect preferable to that of Shawish (which appears to abound in faults and errors of every kind, general and particular,) and M. Zotenberg has, therefore, exercised a wise discretion in selecting the former for publication.

  III.

  Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of M. Zorenberg’s long and interesting introduction is a series of extracts from the (as yet unpublished) MS. Diary regularly kept by Galland, the last four volumes (1708-15) of which are preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale. These extracts effectually settle the question of the origin of the interpolated tales, as will be seen from the following abstract.

  On the 25th March, 1709, Galland records having that day made the acquaintance of a Maronite scholar, by name Youhenna Diab, who had been brought from Aleppo to Paris by Paul Lucas, the celebrated traveller, and with whom he evidently at once broached the question of the Nights, probably complaining to him of the difficulty (or rather impossibility) of obtaining a perfect copy of the work; whereupon Hanna (as he always calls him) appears to have volunteered to help him to fill the lacune by furnishing him with suitable Oriental stories for translation in the same style as those already rendered by him and then and there (says Galland) “told me some very fine Arabian tales, which he promised to put into writing for me.” There is no fresh entry on the subject till May 5 following, when (says Galland) “The Maronite Hanna finished telling me the tale of the Lamp.”

  Hanna appears to have remained in Paris till the autumn of the year 1709 and during his stay, Galland’s Diary records the communication by him to the French savant of the following stories, afterwards included in the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth volumes of the latter’s translation, (as well as of several others which he
probably intended to translate, had he lived,) i.e. (May 10, 1709) “Babe Abdalla” and “Sidi Nouman,” (May 13, 1709) “The Enchanted Horse,” (May 22, 1709) “Prince Ahmed and Pari Banou,” (May 25, 1709) “The Two Sisters who envied their younger Sister,” (May 27, 1709) “All Baba and the Forty Thieves,” (May 29, 1709) “Cogia Hassan Alhabbal” and (May 31, 1709) “Ali Cogia.” The Maronite seems to have left for the East in October, 1709, (Galland says under date October 25, “Received this evening a letter from Hanna, who writes me from Marseilles, under date the 17th, in Arabic, to the effect that he had arrived there in good health,”) but not without having at least in part fulfilled his promise to put in writing the tales communicated by him to Galland, as appears by the entry of November 3, 1710, “Began yesterday to read the Arabian story of the Lamp, which had been written me in Arabic more than a year ago by the Maronite of Damascus whom M. Lucas brought with him, with a view to putting it into French. Finished reading it this morning. Here is the title of this tale, ‘Story of Aladdin, son of a tailor, and that which befell him with an African Magician on account of (or through) a lamp.’” (The Diary adds that he began that evening to put his translation into writing and finished it in the course of the ensuing fortnight.) And that of January 10, 1711, “Finished the translation of the tenth volume of the 1001 Nights after the Arabic text which I had from the hand (de la main) of Hanna or Jean Dipi, whom M. Lucas brought to France on his return from his last journey in the Levant.” The only other entry bearing upon the question is that of August 24, 1711, in which Galland says, “Being quit of my labours upon the translation etc. of the Koran, I read a part of the Arabian Tales which the Maronite Hanna had told me and which I had summarily reduced to writing, to see which of them I should select to make up the eleventh volume of the Thousand and One Nights.”

  From these entries it appears beyond question that Galland received from the Maronite Hanna, in the Spring and Summer of 1709, the Arabic text of the stories of Aladdin, Baba Abdalla, Sidi Nouman and Cogia Hassan Alhabbal, i.e. the whole of the tales included in his ninth and tenth volumes (with the exception of The Sleeper Awakened, of which he does not speak) and that he composed the five remaining tales contained in his eleventh and twelfth volumes (i.e. Ali Baba, Ali Cogia, The Enchanted Horse, Prince Ahmed and Pari Banou and The Two Sisters who envied their younger Sister,) upon the details thereof taken down from Hanna’s lips and by the aid of copious summaries made at the time. These entries in Galland’s diary dispose, therefore, of the question of the origin of the “interpolated” tales, with the exception (1) of The Sleeper Awakened (with which we need not, for the present, concern ourselves farther) and (2) of Nos. 1 and 2a and b, i.e. Zeyn Alasnam, Codadad and his brothers and The Princess of Deryabar (forming, with Ganem, his eighth volume), as to which Galland, as I pointed out in my terminal essay (), cautions us, in a prefatory note to his ninth volume, that these two stories form no part of the Thousand and One Nights and that they had been inserted and printed without the cognizance of the translator, who was unaware of the trick that had been played him till after the actual publication of the volume, adding that care would be taken to expunge the intrusive tales from the second edition (which, however, was never done, Galland dying before the republication and it being probably found that the stranger tales had taken too firm a hold upon public favour to be sacrificed, as originally proposed); and the invaluable Diary supplies the necessary supplemental information as to their origin. “M. Petis de la Croix,” says Galland under date of January 17, 1710, “Professor and King’s Reader of the Arabic tongue, who did me the honour to visit me this morning, was extremely surprised to see two of the Turkish Tales of his translation printed in the eighth volume of the 1001 Nights, which I showed him, and that this should have been done without his participation.”

 

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