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Night, I am more than ever of opinion that none of the eleven “interpolated” stories properly belongs to the original work, that is to say, to the collection as first put into definite form somewhere about the fourteenth century.[1] “The Sleeper Awakened” was identified by the late Mr. Lane as a historical anecdote given by the historian El Ishaki, who wrote in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and the frequent mention of coffee in both MSS. of Aladdin justifies us in attributing the composition of the story to (at earliest) the sixteenth century, whilst the modern vulgarisms in which they abound point to a still later date. Zeyn Alasnam (in the Sebbagh MS. at least) is written in a much purer and more scholarly style than Aladdin, but its pre-existence in El Ferej bad esh Shiddeh (even if we treat as apocryphal Petis de la Croix’s account of the Hezar o Yek Roz) is sufficient, in the absence of contrary evidence, to justify us in refusing to consider it as belonging to the Thousand Nights and One Night proper. As shown by Galland’s own experience, complete copies of the genuine work
- ↑ See my terminal essay. My conclusions there stated as to the probable date of the original work have since been completely confirmed by the fact that experts assign Galland’s original (imperfect) copy of the Arabic text to the latter part of the fourteenth century, on the evidence of the handwriting, etc.
