scholar and writer, brought out his edition, not complete, as he omitted parts of many stories and some entire tales, but still a careful and accurate work. From then on the Arabian Nights kept increasing in popularity. Since then it has gone into more countries and is known more generally the whole world over than any other book except the Bible, and the stories have become part of the literature of every land that has one. Aladdin’s palace, and its unfinished window, the magic words “Open Sesame,” Ali Baba himself, these are as familiar to you as they are to a merchant of Bagdad or an Arab of the desert, as they are to a child in Italy or France. Scheherazade is as well known as the Sleeping Beauty and more so, and so is Sinbad the Sailor.
When you read the stories you must remember that they were told by a race and in a time far removed from our own. They come from a different world than any we know, with manners and beliefs quite removed from any we possess.
The people who told them believed quite simply that besides the human beings and animals and birds of the natural world there were other and magic creatures who mixed themselves up in the affairs of men, helping or hindering as they chose. They also believed in charms and talismen, in sorcerers and magicians. The genii were usually wicked and dangerous, the peris always kind and good, and there were good and bad fairies. These fairies are quite different from
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