This last line is the printer’s note.
The Author’s Preface may be translated as follows:—
“Rolling up the observances of preamble and cancelling the rules of entitulation, it is humbly declared that, while for a certain season turning over the sheets of these pages of revelations and inspirations, in the college of desire and the library of imagination, a well-worn book with a lengthy appendix, entitled Khulāsat-al-Khayāl, (compiled) from the Syriac and Hebrew and other languages laid by in the vault of oblivion, was seen of my warning-beholding eye. When it had been entirely perused and its strange matter considered, as they would form an esoteric scrip, a philosophic volume, such as would cause heedfulness and consideration, and yield counsel and admonition, like the ·Ibret-Numā of Lami’ī and the Elf Leyle of Asma’ī, certain of the strange stories and wonderful tales of that book were selected and separated, and having been arranged, dervish-fashion, in simple style, were made the adornment of the reed-pen of composition, and offered to the notice of them of penetration. For all that this book is of the class of phantasms, still, as it has been written in conformity with the position of the readers of (these) times, it is of its virtues that its perusal will of a surety dispel sadness of heart; and when this has been proved, saying:—
Unworthy though the reed-pen’s labour be,
A blessing may it gain, ‘Azíz! for thee,
I implore that my poor name be raised aloft on the tongues of prayers.”
Then come the three Mukhayyalāt, or Phantasms, each consisting of a principal story with several subordinate tales.
The First Mukhayyal is largely made up of incidents from the following stories in the Thousand and One Nights: Kamer-uz-Zemān, Zeyn ul Esnām, Prince Amjad, and the Enchanted Horse. Here are all woven into one connected whole, along with a lot about a king of the Jinn and the City of Jábulqá, and some stories that are new to me.
The Second Mukhayyal I have translated and published under the title of the “Story of Jewád.”
The Third consists of a number of stories that I have never met before.