Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp | Page 2

commences precisely where the third volume of
Galland's MS. ends, to wit, (see my Terminal essay, p. 265, note1) with
the 281st Night, in the middle of the story of Camaralzaman [FN#4]
and contains, (inter alia) besides the continuation of this latter (which
ends with Night CCCXXIX), the stories of the Sleeper Awakened
(Nights CCCXXX-CCCC), Ganem (Nights
CCCCXXVIII-CCCCLXX1V), Zeyn Alasnam (Nights CCCCLXXV-
CCCCXCI), Aladdin (Nights CCCCXCII-DLXIX) and three others not
found in Galland's version. The MS. ends in the middle of the 631st
night with the well-known Story of King Bekhtzad (Azadbekht) and his
son or the Ten Viziers, (which will be found translated in my " Tales
from the Arabic," Vol. I. pp. 61 et seq.) and contains, immediately after
Night CCCCXXVII and before the story of Ganem, a note in Arabic, of
which the following is a translation:
"The fourth volume of the wonders and marvels of the stories of the
Thousand Nights and One Night was finished by the hand of the
humblest of His' servants in the habit of a minister of religion (Kahin,
lit. a diviner, Cohen), the [Christian] priest Dionysius Shawish, a scion
(selil) of the College of the Romans (Greeks, Europeans or Franks, er
Roum), by name St. Athanasius, in Rome the Greatest (or Greater,
utsma, fem. of aatsem, qu re Constantinople ?) on the
seven-and-twentieth of the month Shubat (February) of the year one
thousand seven hundred fourscore and seven, [he being] then teacher of
the Arabic tongue in the Library of the Sultan, King of France, at Paris
the Greatest."
From this somewhat incoherent note we may assume that the MS. was
written in the course of the year 1787 by the notorious Syrian
ecclesiastic Dom Denis Chavis, the accomplice of Cazotte in the
extraordinary literary atrocity shortly afterward perpetrated by the latter
under the name of a sequel or continuation of the Thousand and One
Nights [FN#6] (v. Cabinet des Fees, vols. xxxviii--xli), [FN#7] and in

all probability (cf. the mention in the above note of the first part, i.e.
Nights CCLXXXI-CCCCXXVII, as the fourth volume) to supply the
place of Galland's missing fourth volume for the Bibliotheque Royale;
but there. is nothing, except a general similarity of style and the
occurrence in the former of the rest of Camaralzaman and (though not
in the same order) of four of the tales supposed to have been contained
in the latter, to show that Dom Chavis made his copy from a text
identical with that used by the French savant. In the notes to his edition
of the Arabic text of Aladdin, M. Zotenberg gives a number of extracts
from this MS., from which it appears that it is written in a very vulgar
modern Syrian style and abounds in grammatical errors, inconsistencies
and incoherences of every description, to say nothing of the fact that
the Syrian ecclesiastic seems, with the characteristic want of taste and
presumption which might be expected from the joint-author of "Les
Veillees Persanes," to have, to a considerable extent, garbled the
original text by the introduction of modern European phrases and turns
of speech a la Galland. For the rest, the MS. contains no note or other
indication, on which we can found any opinion as to the source from
which the transcriber (or arranger) drew his materials; but it can hardly
be doubted, from internal evidence, that he had the command of some
genuine text of the Nights, similar to, if not identical with, that of
Galland, which he probably "arranged" to suit his own (and his
century's) distorted ideas of literary fitness. The discovery of the
interpolated tales contained in this MS. (which has thus presumably
lain unnoticed for a whole century, under, as one may say, the very
noses of the many students of Arabic literature who would have
rejoiced in such a find) has, by a curious freak of fortune, been delayed
until our own day in consequence of a singular mistake made by a
former conservator of the Paris Bibliotheque, the well-known
Orientalist, M. Reinaud, who, in drawing up the Catalogue of the
Arabic MSS. in the collection described (or rather misdescribed) it
under the following heading:
"Supplement Arabe 1716. Thousand and One Nights, 3rd and 4th parts.
This volume begins with Night CCLXXXII and ends with Night
DCXXXI. A copy in the handwriting of Chavis. It is from this copy
and in accordance with the instructions (d'apres la indications) of this
Syrian monk that Cazotte composed (redigea) the Sequel to the

Thousand and One Nights, Cabinet des Fees, " xxxvii et xl (should be tt.
xxxviii-xli)."
It is of course evident that M. Reinaud had never read the MS. in
question nor that numbered 1723 in the Supplement Arabe, or he would
at once have recognized that the latter, though not in