burton--1001-nights--sample

to mine will know as much of the Moslem East and more than many
Europeans who have spent half their lives in Orient lands. For facility
of reference an index of anthropological notes is appended to each
volume. *
The reader will kindly bear with the following technical details.
Steinhaeuser and I began and ended our work with the first Bulak
(“Bul.”) Edition printed at the port of Cairo in A.H. 1251 = A.D. 1835.
But when preparing my MSS. for print I found the text incomplete,
many of the stories being given in epitome and not a few ruthlessly
mutilated with head or feet wanting. Like most Eastern scribes the
Editor could not refrain from “improvements,” which only debased the
book; and his sole title to excuse is that the second Bulak Edition
(4 vols. A.H. 1279 = A.D. 1863), despite its being “revised and corrected
by Sheik Mahommed Qotch Al-Adewi,” is even worse; and the
same may be said of the Cairo Edit. (4 vols. A.H. 1297 = A.D. 1881).
The Calcutta (“Calc.”) Edition, with ten lines of Persian preface by the
Editor, Ahmed al-Shirwani (A.D. 1814), was cut short at the end of the
first two hundred Nights, and thus made room for Sir William Hay
Macnaghten’s Edition (4 vols. royal 4to) of 1839-42. This (“Mac.”),
as by far the least corrupt and the most complete, has been assumed
for my basis with occasional reference to the Breslau Edition (“Bres.”)
wretchedly edited from a hideous Egyptian MS. by Dr. Maximilian
Habicht (1825-43). The Bayrut Text “Alif-Leila we Leila” (4 vols. gt.
8vo, Beirut, 1881-83) is a melancholy specimen of The Nights taken
entirely from the Bulak Edition by one Khalil Sarkis and converted to
Christianity; beginning without Bismillah, continued with scrupulous
*
These indexes are omitted from the volumes of the present edition.
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