AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES,
ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE
RELIGION, MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE MAHOMMEDANS.”
The sixth volume, whose second title is “Tales | selected from the Manuscript copy | of the | 1001 Nights | brought to Europe by Edward Wortley Montague, Esq.,” ends with a general Appendix, of which ten pages are devoted to a description of the Codex and a Catalogue of its contents. Scott’s sixth volume, like the rest of his version, is now becoming rare, and it is regretable that when Messieurs Nimmo and Bain reprinted, in 1882, the bulk of the work (4 vols. 8vo) they stopped short at volume five.
Lastly we find a third list dating from 1835 in the “Catalogi | Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium | Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ | Pars Secunda | Arabicos | complectens. | Confecit | Alexander Nicoll, J.C.D. | Nuper Linguæ Heb. Professor Regius, necnon Ædis Christi Canonicus. | Editionem absolvit | et Catalogum urianum[[2]] aliquatenus emendavit | G. B. Pusey, S.T.B. | Viri desideratissimi Successor. | Oxonii, | E Typographio Academico | MDCCCXXXV.” This is introduced under the head, “Codicis Arabici Mahommedani Narrationes Fictæ sive Historiæ Romanenses | in Quarto” (pp. 145–150).
I am not aware that any attempt has been made to trace the history of the Wortley Montague MS.; but its internal evidence supplies a modicum of information.
By way of colophon to the seventh and last volume we have, “On this wise end to us the Stories of the Kings and histories of various folk as foregoing in the Thousand Nights and a Night, perfected and completed, on the eighteenth day of Safar the auspicious, which is of the months of (the year A. H.) one thousand one hundred and seventy-eight” (= A.D. 1764–65).
“Copied by the humblest and neediest of the poor, Omar-al-Safatí, to whose sins may Allah be Ruthful!
“An thou find in us fault deign default supply,
And hallow the Faultless and Glorify.”