Von Hammer began by summoning into Court the “Herodotus of the Arabs, (Ali Abú al-Hasan) Al-Mas’údi who, in A.H. 333 (= 944) about one generation before the founding of Cairo, published at Bassorah the first edition of his far-famed Murúj al-Dahab wa Ma’ádin al-Jauhar, Meads of Gold and Mines of Gems. The Styrian Orientalist[[129]] quotes with sundry misprints[[130]] an ampler version of a passage in Chapter lxviii., which is abbreviated in the French translation of M. C. Barbier de Meynard.[[131]]
“And, indeed, many men well acquainted with their (Arab) histories[[132]] opine that the stories above mentioned and other trifles were strung together by men who commended themselves to the Kings by relating them, and who found favour with their contemporaries by committing them to memory and by reciting them. Of such fashion[[133]] is the fashion of the books which have come down to us translated from the Persian (Fárasiyah), the Indian (Hindíyah),[[134]] and the Græco-Roman (Rúmíyah)[[135]]: we have noted the judgment which should be passed upon compositions of this nature. Such is the book entituled Hazár Afsánah or The Thousand Tales, which word in Arabic signifies Khuráfah (Facetiæ): it is known to the public under the name of The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night, (Kitab Alf Laylah wa Laylah).[[136]] This is an history of a King and his Wazir, the minister’s daughter and a slave-girl (járiyah) who are named Shírzád (lion-born) and Dínár-zád (ducat-born).[[137]] Such also is the Tale of Farzah,[[138]] (alii Firza), and Simás, containing details concerning the Kings and Wazirs of Hind: the Book of Al-Sindibád[[139]] and others of a similar stamp.”
Von Hammer adds, “quoting chapt. cxvi, of Al-Mas’údi that Al-Mansúr (second Abbaside A.H. 136–158 = 754–775, and grandfather of Al-Rashíd) caused many translations of Greek and Latin, Syriac and Persian (Pehlevi) works to be made into Arabic, specifying the Kalílah wa Damnah,”[[140]] the Fables of Bidpái (Pilpay), the Logic of Aristotle, the Geography of Ptolemy and the Elements of Euclid. Hence he concludes “L’original des Mille et une Nuits * * * selon toute vraisemblance, a été traduit au temps du Khalife Mansur, c’est-à-dire trente ans avant le règne du Khalife Haroun al-Raschid, qui, par la suite, devait lui-même jouer un si grand rôle dans ces histoires.” He also notes that, about a century after Al-Mas’udi had mentioned the Hazár Afsánah, it was versified and probably remodelled by one “Rásti,” the Takhallus or nom de plume of a bard at the Court of Mahmúd, the Ghaznevite Sultan who, after a reign of thirty-three years, ob. A.D. 1030.[[141]]
Von Hammer some twelve years afterwards (Journ. Asiat. August, 1839) brought forward, in his “Note sur l’origine Persane des Mille et une Nuits,” a second and an even more important witness: this was the famous Kitab al-Fihrist,[[142]] or Index List of (Arabic) works, written (in A.H. 387 = 987) by Mohammed bin Is’hák al-Nadím (cup-companion or equerry), “popularly known as Ebou Yacoub el-Werrek.”[[143]] The following is an extract (p. [304]) from the Eighth Discourse which consists of three arts (funún).[[144]] “The first section on the history of the confabulatores nocturni (tellers of night tales) and the relaters of fanciful adventures, together with the names of books treating upon such subjects. Mohammed ibn Is’hák saith:—The first who indited themes of imagination and made books of them, consigning these works to the libraries, and who ordered some of them as though related by the tongues of brute beasts, were the palæo-Persians (and the Kings of the First Dynasty). The Ashkanian Kings of the Third Dynasty appended others to them and they were augmented and amplified in the days of the Sassanides” (the fourth and last royal house). “The Arabs also translated them into Arabic, and the loquent and eloquent polished and embellished them and wrote others resembling them. The first work of such kind was entituled ‘The Book of Hazár Afsán,’ signifying Alf Khuráfah, the argument whereof was as follows. A King of their Kings was wont, when he wedded a woman and had lain one night with her, to slay her on the next morning. Presently he espoused a damsel of the daughters of the Kings, Shahrázád[[145]] hight, one endowed with intellect and erudition and, whenas she lay with him, she fell to telling him tales of fancy; moreover she used to connect the story at the end of the night with that which might induce the King to preserve her alive and to ask her of its ending on the next night until a thousand nights had passed over her. Meanwhile he cohabited with her till she was blest by boon of child of him, when she acquainted him with the device she had wrought upon him; wherefore he admired her intelligence and inclined to her and preserved her life. That King had also a Kahramánah (nurse and duenna, not entremetteuse), hight Dínárzád (Dunyázád?), who aided the wife in this (artifice). It is also said that this book was composed for (or, by) Humái daughter of Bahman[[146]] and in it were included other matters. Mohammed bin Is’hak adds:—And the truth is, Inshallah,[[147]] that the first who solaced himself with hearing night-tales was Al-Iskandar (he of Macedon) and he had a number of men who used to relate to him imaginary stories and provoke him to laughter: he, however, designed not therein merely to please himself, but that he might thereby become the more cautious and alert. After him the Kings in like fashion made use of the book entitled ‘Hazár Afsán.’ It containeth a thousand nights, but less than two hundred night-stories, for a single history often occupied several nights. I have seen it complete sundry times; and it is, in truth, a corrupted book of cold tales.”[[148]]
A writer in The Athenæum,[[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-Gharnáti = 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-illah[[152]] 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 Meyyah[[154]] 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 Bettál[[155]] 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 Khitat[[156]] 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 Bettál[[158]] 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. Kæmpfer (Amœn, Exot. p. 38) notes of the Takiyahs or Dervishes’ convents and the Mazárs or Santons’ tombs near Koníah (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 Rúz (= 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 Sacy[[159]]—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 Syria[[161]] 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 texts[[162]]; 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.