[171]. Aleppo has been happy in finding such monographers as Russell and Maundrell while poor Damascus fell into the hands of Mr. Missionary Porter, and suffered accordingly.
[172]. Vol. vi. Appendix, p. 452.
[173]. The numbers, however, vary with the Editions of Galland: some end the formula with Night cxcvii; others with the ccxxxvi.: I adopt that of the De Sacy Edition.
[174]. Contes Persans; suivis des Contes Turcs. Paris; Béchet Ainé, 1826.
[175]. In the old translation we have “eighteen hundred years since the prophet Solomon died,” (B.C. 975) = A.D. 825.
[176]. Meaning the era of the Seleucides. Dr. Jonathan Scott shows (vol. ii. 324) that A.H. 653 and A.D. 1255 would correspond with 1557 of that epoch; so that the scribe has here made a little mistake of 5,763 years. Ex uno disce.
[177]. The Saturday Review (Jan. 2nd ’86) writes, “Captain Burton has fallen into a mistake by not distinguishing between the names of the by no means identical Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al-Mustansir.” Quite true: it was an ugly confusion of the melancholy madman and parricide with one of the best and wisest of the Caliphs. I can explain (not extenuate) my mistake only by a misprint in Al-Siyúti (p. 554).
[178]. In the Galland MS. and the Bresl. Edit. (ii. 253), we find the Barber saying that the Caliph (Al-Mustansir) was at that time (yaumaizin) in Baghdad; and this has been held to imply that the Caliphate had fallen. But such conjecture is evidently based upon insufficient grounds.
[179]. De Sacy makes the “Kalandar” order originate in A.D. 1150; but the Shaykh Sharíf bú Ali Kalandar died in A.D. 1323–24. In Sind the first Kalandar, Osmán-i-Marwándí surnamed Lál Sháhbáz, the Red Goshawk, from one of his miracles, died and was buried at Sehwán in A.D. 1274: see my “History of Sindh” chapt. viii. for details. The dates therefore run wild.
[180]. In this same tale H. H. Wilson observes that the title of Sultan of Egypt was not assumed before the middle of the xiith century.