Supplemental Nights to The Book of the Thousand and One Nights | Page 5

inform them that my "Anthropological Notes" are by no means
exhausted, and that I can produce a complete work only by means of a somewhat
extensive Supplement. I therefore propose to print (not publish), for private circulation
only, five volumes, bearing the title–
Supplemental Nights to the book of The Thousand Nights and a Night
This volume and its successor (Nos. i. and ii.) contain Mr. John Payne's Tales from the
Arabic; his three tomes being included in my two. The stories are taken from the Breslau
Edition where they are distributed among the volumes between Nos. iv and xii., and from
the Calcutta fragment of 1814. I can say little for the style of the story-stuff contained in
this Breslau text, which has been edited with phenomenal incuriousness. Many parts are
hopelessly corrupted, whilst at present we have no means of amending the commissions
and of supplying the omissions by comparison with other manuscripts. The Arabic is not
only faulty, but dry and jejune, comparing badly with that of the "Thousand Nights and a
Night," as it appears in the Macnaghten and the abridged Bulak Texts. Sundry of the tales
are futile; the majority has little to recommend it, and not a few require a diviner rather
than a translator. Yet they are valuable to students as showing the different sources and
the heterogeneous materials from and of which the great Saga-book has been
compounded. Some are, moreover, striking and novel, especially parts of the series
entitled King Shah Bakht and his Wazir Al- Rahwan (pp. 191-355). Interesting also is the
Tale of the "Ten Wazirs" (pp. 55-155), marking the transition of the Persian
Bakhtiyár-Námeh into Arabic. In this text also and in this only is found Galland's popular
tale "Abou-Hassan; or, the Sleeper Awakened," which I have entitled "The Sleeper and
the Waker."
In the ten volumes of "The Nights" proper, I mostly avoided parallels of folk-lore and
fabliaux which, however interesting and valuable to scholars, would have over-swollen
the bulk of a work especially devoted to Anthropology. In the "Supplementals," however,
it is otherwise; and, as Mr. W.A. Clouston, the "Storiologist," has obligingly agreed to
collaborate with me, I shall pay marked attention to this subject, which will thus form
another raison d'ête for the additional volumes.
Richard F. Burton
Junior Travellers' Club, December 1, 1886

Supplemental Nights
To The Book Of The
Thousand Nights And A Night

The Sleeper and the Waker.[FN#1]

It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that there was once at Baghdad, in the Caliphate
of Harun al-Rashid, a man and a merchant, who had a son Abú al-Hasan-al-Khalí'a by
name.[FN#2] The merchant died leaving great store of wealth to his heir who divided it
into two equal parts, whereof he laid up one and spent of the other half; and he fell to
companying with Persians[FN#3] and with the sons of the merchants and he gave himself
up to good drinking and good eating, till all the wealth[FN#4] he had with him was
wasted and wantoned; whereupon he betook himself to his friends and comrades and
cup-companions and expounded to them his case, discovering to them the failure of that
which was in his hand of wealth. But not one of them took heed of him or even deigned
answer him. So he returned to his mother (and indeed his spirit was broken) and related
to her that which had happened to him and what had befallen him from his friends, how
they had neither shared with him nor required him with speech. Quoth she, "O Abu
al-Hasan, on this wise are the sons[FN#5] of this time: an thou have aught, they draw
thee near to them,[FN#6] and if thou have naught, they put thee away from them." And
she went on to condole with him, what while he bewailed himself and his tears flowed
and he repeated these lines:--
"An wane my wealth, no mane will succour me, * When my wealth waxeth all men
friendly show: How many a friend, for wealth showed friendliness * Who, when my
wealth departed, turned to foe!"
Then he sprang up and going to the place wherein was the other half of his good, took it
and lived with it well; and he sware that he would never again consort with a single one
of those he had known, but would company only with the stranger nor entertain even him
but one night and that, when it morrowed, he would never know him more. Accordingly
he fell to sitting every eventide on the bridge over Tigris and looking at each one who
passed by him; and if he saw him to be a stranger, he made friends with him and caroused
with him all night till morning. Then he dismissed him and would