Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp | Page 4

1709) "All Baba and
the Forty Thieves," (May 29, 1709) "Cogia Hassan Alhabbal" and
(May 31, 1709) "Ali Cogia." The Maronite seems to have left for the
East in October, 1709, (Galland says under date October 25, "Received
this evening a letter from Hanna, who writes me from Marseilles, under
date the 17th, in Arabic, to the effect that he had arrived there in good
health,") but not without having at least in part fulfilled his promise to
put in writing the tales communicated by him to Galland, as appears by
the entry of November 3, 1710, "Began yesterday to read the Arabian
story of the Lamp, which had been written me in Arabic more than a
year ago by the Maronite of Damascus [FN#16] whom M. Lucas
brought with him, with a view to putting it into French. Finished
reading it this morning. Here is the title of this tale, 'Story of Aladdin,
son of a tailor, and that which befell him with an African Magician on
account of (or through) a lamp.'" (The Diary adds that he began that
evening to put his translation into writing and finished it in the course
of the ensuing fortnight.) And that of January 10, 1711, "Finished the
translation of the tenth volume of the 1001 Nights after the Arabic text
which I had from the hand (de la main) of Hanna or Jean Dipi, [FN#17]
whom M. Lucas brought to France on his return from his last journey in
the Levant." The only other entry bearing upon the question is that of
August 24, 1711, in which Galland says, "Being quit of my labours
upon the translation etc. of the Koran, I read a part of the Arabian Tales
which the Maronite Hanna had told me and which I had summarily
reduced to writing, to see which of them I should select to make up the
eleventh volume of the Thousand and One Nights."
From these entries it appears beyond question that Galland received
from the Maronite Hanna, in the Spring and Summer of 1709, the
Arabic text of the stories of Aladdin, Baba Abdalla, Sidi Nouman and
Cogia Hassan Alhabbal, i.e. the whole of the tales included in his ninth
and tenth volumes (with the exception of The Sleeper Awakened, of
which he does not speak) and that he composed the five remaining tales

contained in his eleventh and twelfth volumes (i.e. Ali Baba, Ali Cogia,
The Enchanted Horse, Prince Ahmed and Pari Banou and The Two
Sisters who envied their younger Sister,) upon the details thereof taken
down from Hanna's lips and by the aid of copious summaries made at
the time. These entries in Galland's diary dispose, therefore, of the
question of the origin of the "interpolated" tales, with the exception (1)
of The Sleeper Awakened (with which we need not, for the present,
concern ourselves farther) and (2) of Nos. 1 and 2a and b, i.e. Zeyn
Alasnam, Codadad and his brothers and The Princess of Deryabar
(forming, with Ganem, his eighth volume), as to which Galland, as I
pointed out in my terminal essay (p. 264), cautions us, in a prefatory
note to his ninth volume, that these two stories form no part of the
Thousand and One Nights and that they had been inserted and printed
without the cognizance of the translator, who was unaware of the trick
that had been played him till after the actual publication of the volume,
adding that care would be taken to expunge the intrusive tales from the
second edition (which, however, was never done, Galland dying before
the republication and it being probably found that the stranger tales had
taken too firm a hold upon public favour to be sacrificed, as originally
proposed); and the invaluable Diary supplies the necessary
supplemental information as to their origin. "M. Petis de la Croix," says
Galland under date of January 17, 1710, "Professor and King's Reader
of the Arabic tongue, who did me the honour to visit me this morning,
was extremely surprised to see two of the Turkish [FN#18] Tales of his
translation printed in the eighth volume of the 1001 Nights, which I
showed him, and that this should have been done without his
participation."
Petis de la Croix, a well-known Orientalist and traveller of the time,
published in the course of the same year (1710) the first volume of a
collection of Oriental stories, similar in form and character to the 1001
Nights, but divided into "Days" instead of "Nights" and called "The
Thousand and One Days, Persian Tales," the preface to which (ascribed
to Cazotte) alleges him to have translated the tales from a Persian work
called Hezar [o] Yek Roz, i.e. "The Thousand and One Days," the MS.
of which had in 1675 been communicated to the