The actual moment is an opportune one for the reappearance of the work. Egypt just now holds a foremost place in the eyes of the world, and it is of Egypt that the Thousand and One Nights have most to tell. Indian or Persian as many of the tales are in their origin, their setting is almost purely Egyptian; and though the place may be nominally Baghdad or India, or even furthest China, it is in mediæval Cairo, in the days of the Memlooks, that the scene of the Arabian Nights is really laid. The people described are not Hindoos or Chinese, but Arabs and Egyptians as they lived and moved in the fifteenth century, when some of the beautiful mosques and tombs, that still make Cairo the delight of artists, were being built, and the devastating hand of the Ottoman Turk had not yet been laid on the land of the Pharaohs. For a minute picture of Arabian society as it was in the Middle Ages, the Thousand and One Nights have no rival, and it is Mr. Lane's appreciation of this picture, and the wealth of illustration lavished upon it in his Notes, that render his edition the most complete commentary we possess on Muslim life and manners, religion and literature, and make it an indispensable supplement to his famous Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. The poetry of Eastern life is rapidly fading away under the effacing touch of European civilisation; the characteristic society in which an Haroon-Er-Rasheed, an Aboo-Nuwas, a Kafoor, a Saladin, or a Kaït-Bey, revelled and jested and conquered, is fast becoming matter of history rather than of experience, a field for the antiquary instead of the traveller; and it is well that we can reconstruct it in the pages of the Thousand and One Nights, whose compiler saw it when it was still almost in its Golden Prime, and in the Modern Egyptians, whose author knew it when it still preserved the romantic character which has charmed and fascinated readers of every age and condition.
Stanley Lane-Poole.
The Day of Tell-el-Kebeer, 1882.
THE EDITOR'S PREFACE.
A new edition of this work having been required, Mr. Lane was requested to undertake the correction of the press. But severe literary labours allowing him no leisure for this object, he named me, as his pupil in the study of Arabic, familiar with his writings, and for many years resident with him in Cairo, to fill, in some measure, his place. I have undertaken this duty with great diffidence, from a sense of my own deficiencies and his extensive knowledge; but I have felt that I could at least insure the correctness of the text, and a scrupulous adherence to his wishes. The present edition is printed, without any variations of my own (except those which are marked as such, and have been submitted to Mr. Lane), from a copy of the first and complete edition, with corrections and additions made by Mr. Lane, from time to time, since its first publication. These, however, from the accuracy with which the translation was made, and the fulness of the Notes, are not very numerous. The same reasons have also caused my own notes to be few: I believe that my Uncle's notes are complete in themselves; and that I have sometimes erred, even in the rare exceptions I have made, on the side of unnecessary addition.