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[ Arab. "Al-Náim wa al-Yakzán." This excellent story is not in the Mac. or Bresl. Edits.; but is given in the Breslau Text, iv. 134-189 (Nights cclxxii.-ccxci.). It is familiar to readers of the old "Arabian Nights Entertainments" as "Abou-Hassan or the Sleeper Awakened;" and as yet it is the only one of the eleven added by Galland whose original has been discovered in Arabic: the learned Frenchman, however, supplied it with embellishments more suo, and seems to have taken it from an original fuller than our text as is shown by sundry poetical and other passages which he apparently did not invent. Lane (vol. ii. chap. 12), noting that its chief and best portion is an historical anecdote related as a fact, is inclined to think that it is not a genuine tale of The Nights. He finds it in Al-Ishákí who finished his history about the close of Sultan Mustafá the Osmanli's reign, circa A.H. 1032 (= 1623), and he avails himself of this version as it is "narrated in a simple and agreeable manner." Mr. Payne remarks, "The above title (Asleep and Awake) is of course intended to mark the contrast between the everyday (or waking) hours of Aboulhusn and his fantastic life in the Khalif's palace, supposed by him to have passed in a dream;" I may add that amongst frolicsome Eastern despots the adventure might often have happened and that it might have given a hint to Cervantes.]
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[ i.e., The Wag. See vol. i. 311: the old version calls him "the Debauchee.">[
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[ Arab. "Al-Fárs"; a people famed for cleverness and debauchery. I cannot see why Lane omitted the Persian, unless he had Persian friends at Cairo.]
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[ i.e., the half he intended for spending-money.]
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[ i.e., "men," a characteristic Arab idiom: here it applies to the sons of all time.]