[FN#153] Suggesting a private pleasaunce in Al-Rauzah which has ever been and is still a succession of gardens.
[FN#154] The writer in The Athenæum calls him Ibn Miyvah, and adds that the Badawiyah wrote to her cousin certain verses complaining of her thraldom, which the youth answered abusing the Caliph. Al-Ámir found the correspondence and ordered Ibn Miyah’s tongue to be cut out, but he saved himself by a timely flight.
[FN#155] In Night dccclxxxv. we have the passage “He was a wily thief: none could avail against his craft as he were Abu Mohammed Al-Battál”: the word etymologically means The Bad; but see infra.
[FN#156] Amongst other losses which Orientals have sustained by the death of Rogers Bey, I may mention his proposed translation of Al-Makrízí’s great topographical work.
[FN#157] The name appears only in a later passage.
[FN#158] Mr. Payne notes (viii. 137) “apparently some famous brigand of the time” (of Charlemagne). But the title may signify The Brave, and the tale may be much older.
[FN#159] In his “Mémoire sur l’origine du Recueil des Contes intitulé Les Mille et une Nuits” (Mém. d’Hist. et de Littér. Orientale, extrait des tomes ix., et x. des Mémoires de l’Inst. Royal Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1833). He read the Memoir before the Royal Academy on July 31, 1829. Also in his Dissertation “Sur les Mille et une Nuits” (pp. i. viii.) prefixed to the Bourdin Edit. When first the Arabist in Europe landed at Alexandria he could not exchange a word with the people the same is told of Golius the lexicographer at Tunis.
[FN#160] Lane, Nights ii. 218.
[FN#161] This origin had been advocated a decade of years before by Shaykh Ahmad al-Shirawáni; Editor of the Calc. text (1814-18): his Persian preface opines that the author was an Arabic speaking Syrian who designedly wrote in a modern and conversational style, none of the purest withal, in order to instruct non-Arabists. Here we find the genus “Professor” pure and simple.
[FN#162] Such an assertion makes us enquire, Did De Sacy ever read through The Nights in Arabic?