The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 13 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (summer reading list txt) 📕

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SUPPLEMENTAL

NIGHTS

To The Book Of The Thousand And One Nights With Notes Anthropological And Explanatory

 

By

Richard F. Burton VOLUME THREE

Privately Printed By The Burton Club To Henry Edward John, Lord Stanley of Alderley

 

This

The Most Innocent Volume of the Nights is Inscribed by His Old Companion, The Author.

 

Contents of the Thirteenth Volume.

 

1. The Tale of Zayn Al-Asnam

2. Alaeddin; or, The Wonderful Lamp

3. Khudadad and His Brothers

a. History of the Princess of Daryabar 4. The Caliph’s Night Adventure

a. The Story of the Blind Man, Baba Abdullah b. History of Sidi Nu’uman

c. History of Khwajah Hasan Al-Habbal 5. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

6. Ali Khwajah and the Merchant of Baghdad 7. Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri-Banu 8. The Two Sisters Who Envied Their Cadette

APPENDIX: VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES

of the Tales in Volume XIII.

 

By W. A. Clouston.

 

The Tale of Zayn Al-Asnam

Alaeddin; or, The Wonderful Lamp

Khudadad and His Brothers

The Story of the Blind Man, Baba Abdullah History of Sisi Nu’uman

History of Khwajah Hasan Al-Habbal

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Ali Khwajah and the Merchant of Baghdad

Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri-Banu

The Two Sisters Who Envied Their Cadette Additional Notes:—

 

The Tale of Zayn Al-Asnam

Alaeddin; or, The Wonderful Lamp

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri-Banu

 

The Translator’s Foreword.

 

The peculiar proceedings of the Curators, Bodleian Library, 1

Oxford, of which full particulars shall be given in due time, have dislocated the order of my volumes. The Prospectus had promised that Tome III. should contain detached extracts from the MS. known as the Wortley-Montague, and that No. IV. and part of No. V. should comprise a reproduction of the ten Tales (or eleven, including “The Princess of Dary�b�r”), which have so long been generally attributed to Professor Galland. Circumstances, however, wholly beyond my control have now compelled me to devote the whole of this volume to the Frenchman’s stories.

 

It will hardly be doubted that for a complete recueil of The Nights a retranslation of the Gallandian histoires is necessary.

The learned Professor Gustav Weil introduced them all, Germanised literally from the French, into the Dritter Band of his well-known version—Tausend und eine Nacht; and not a few readers of Mr. John Payne’s admirable translation (the Villon) complained that they had bought it in order to see Ali Baba, Aladdin, and others translated into classical English and that they much regretted the absence of their old favourites.

 

But the modus operandi was my prime difficulty. I disliked the idea of an unartistic break or change in the style, ever “T�chnat de rendre mien cet air d’antiquit�,”

 

and I aimed at offering to my readers a homogeneous sequel. My first thought for securing uniformity of treatment was to tender the French text into Arabic, and then to retranslate it into English. This process, however, when tried was found wanting; so I made inquiries in all directions for versions of the Gallandian histories which might have been published in Persian, Turkish, or Hindustani. Though assisted by the Prince of London Bibliopoles, Bernard Quaritch, I long failed to find my want: the vernaculars in Persian and Turkish are translated direct from the Arabic texts, and all ignore the French stories. At last a friend, Cameron McDowell, himself well known to the world of letters, sent me from Bombay a quaint lithograph with quainter illustrations which contained all I required. This was a version of Tot�r�m Sh�y�n (No. III.), which introduced the whole of the Gallandian Tales: better still, these were sufficiently orientalised and divested of their inordinate Gallicism, especially their lonesome dialogue, by being converted into Hindustani, the Urdu Zab�n (camp or court language) of Upper India and the Lingua Franca of the whole Peninsula.

 

During one of my sundry visits to the British Museum, I was introduced by Mr. Alexander G. Ellis to Mr. James F. Blumhardt, of Cambridge, who pointed out to me two other independent versions, one partly rhymed and partly in prose.

 

Thus far my work was done for me. Mr. Blumhardt, a practical Orientalist and teacher of the modem Prakrit tongues, kindly undertook, at my request, to English the Hindustani, collating at the same time, the rival versions; and thus, at a moment when my health was at its worst, he saved me all trouble and labour except that of impressing the manner with my own sign manual, and of illustrating the text, where required, with notes anthropological and other.

 

Meanwhile, part of my plan was modified by a visit to Paris in early 1887. At the Biblioth�que Nationale I had the pleasure of meeting M. Hermann Zotenberg, keeper of Eastern manuscripts, an Orientalist of high and varied talents, and especially famous for his admirable Chronique de Tabari. Happily for me, he had lately purchased for the National Library, from a vendor who was utterly ignorant of its history, a MS. copy of The Nights, containing the Arabic originals of Zayn al-Asnam and Alaeddin. The two volumes folio are numbered and docketed Suppl�ment Arabe, Nos. 2522-23;”

they measure 31 cent. by 20; Vol. i. contains 411 folios (822

pages) and Vol. ii. 402 (pp. 804); each page numbers fifteen lines, and each folio has its catchword. The paper is French, English and Dutch, with four to five different marks, such as G.

Gautier; D. and C. Blaew; Pro Patr� and others. The highly characteristic writing, which is the same throughout the two folios, is easily recognised as that of Michel (Mikha�l) Sabb�gh, the Syrian, author of the Colombe Messag�re, published in Paris A.D. 1805, and accompanied by a translation by the celebrated Silvestre de Sacy (Chrestomathie iii. 365). This scribe also copied, about 1810, for the same Orientalist, the Ikhw�n al-Saf�.

 

I need say nothing more concerning this MS., which M. Zotenberg purposes to describe bibliographically in volume xxviii. of Notices et extraits des Manuscrits de la Biblioth�que rationale publi�s par l’Academie des inscriptions et belles lettres. And there will be a tirage � part of 200-300 copies entitled Histoire d’ ‘Al� al-D�n ou La Lampe Merveilleuse, Texte Arabe, publi� par H. Zotenberg, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1888; including a most important contribution:—Sur quelques Manuscrits des Mille et une Nuits et la traduction de Galland.[FN#1]

 

The learned and genial author has favoured me with proof sheets of his labours: it would be unfair to disclose the discoveries, such as the Manuscript Journals in the Biblioth�que Nationale (Nos. 15277 to 15280), which the illustrious Garland kept regularly till the end of his life, and his conversations with “M. Hanna, Maronite d’Halep,” alias Jean Dipi (Dippy, a corruption of Diab): suffice it to say that they cast a clear and wholly original light upon the provenance of eight of the Gallandian histories. I can, however, promise to all “Aladdinists” a rich harvest of facts which wholly displace those hitherto assumed to be factual. But for the satisfaction of my readers I am compelled to quote the colophon of M. Zotenberg’s great “find” (vol. ii.), as it bears upon a highly important question.

 

“And the finishing thereof was during the first decade of Jam�di the Second, of the one thousand and one hundred and fifteenth year of the Hegirah (= A.D.

1703) by the transcription of the neediest of His slaves unto Almighty Allah, Ahmad bin Mohammed al-Tar�d�, in Baghdad City: he was a Sh�fi’� of school, and a Mosuli by birth, and a Baghdadi by residence, and he wrote it for his own use, and upon it he imprinted his signet. So Allah save our lord Mohammed and His Kin and Companions and assain them! Kab�kaj.”[FN#2]

 

Now as this date corresponds with A.D. 1703, whereas Galland did begin publishing until 1705-1705 the original MS. of Ahmad al-Tar�d� could not have been translated or adapted from the French; and although the transcription by Mikhail Sabbagh, writing in 1805-10, may have introduced modification borrowed from Galland, yet the scrupulous fidelity of his copy, shown by sundry marginal and other notes, lays the suspicion that changes of importance have been introduced by him. Remains now only to find the original codex of Al-Tar�d�.

 

I have noticed in my translation sundry passages which appear to betray the Christian hand; but these are mostly of scanty consequence in no wise affecting the genuineness of the text.

 

The history of Zayn al Asnam was copied from the Sabb�gh MS. and sent to me by M. Houdas, Professeur d’Arabe vulgaire a l’Ecole des langues orientales vivantes; an Arabist, whose name is favourably quoted in the French Colonies of Northern Africa M.

Zotenberg