The Arabian Nights | Page 4

while after the Caliph died, when nobody knew very exactly what had really
happened. At last some storyteller thought of writing down the tales, and fixing them into
a kind of framework, as if they had all been narrated to a cruel Sultan by his wife.
Probably the tales were written down about the time when Edward I. was fighting Robert

Bruce. But changes were made in them at different times, and a great deal that is very
dull and stupid was put in, and plenty of verses. Neither the verses nor the dull pieces are
given in this book.
People in France and England knew almost nothing about "The Arabian Nights" till the
reigns of Queen Anne and George I., when they were translated into French by Monsieur
Galland. Grown-up people were then very fond of fairy tales, and they thought these
Arab stories the best that they had ever read. They were delighted with Ghouls (who lived
among the tombs) and Geni, who seemed to be a kind of ogres, and with Princesses who
work magic spells, and with Peris, who are Arab fairies. Sindbad had adventures which
perhaps came out of the Odyssey of Homer; in fact, all the East had contributed its
wonders, and sent them to Europe in one parcel. Young men once made a noise at
Monsieur Galland's windows in the dead of night, and asked him to tell them one of his
marvellous tales. Nobody talked of anything but dervishes and vizirs, rocs and peris. The
stories were translated from French into all languages, and only Bishop Atterbury
complained that the tales were not likely to be true, and had no moral. The bishops was
presently banished for being on the side of Prince Charlie's father, and had leisure to
repent of being so solemn.
In this book "The Arabian Nights" are translated from the French version of Monsieur
Galland, who dropped out the poetry and a great deal of what the Arabian authors thought
funny, though it seems wearisome to us. In this book the stories are shortened here and
there, and omissions are made of pieces only suitable for Arabs and old gentlemen. The
translations are by the writers of the tales in the Fairy Books, and the pictures are by Mr.
Ford.
I can remember reading "The Arabian Nights" when I was six years old, in dirty yellow
old volumes of small type with no pictures, and I hope children who read them with Mr.
Ford's pictures will be as happy as I was then in the company of Aladdin and Sindbad the
Sailor.

The Arabian Nights
In the chronicles of the ancient dynasty of the Sassanidae, who reigned for about four
hundred years, from Persia to the borders of China, beyond the great river Ganges itself,
we read the praises of one of the kings of this race, who was said to be the best monarch
of his time. His subjects loved him, and his neighbors feared him, and when he died he
left his kingdom in a more prosperous and powerful condition than any king had done
before him.
The two sons who survived him loved each other tenderly, and it was a real grief to the
elder, Schahriar, that the laws of the empire forbade him to share his dominions with his
brother Schahzeman. Indeed, after ten years, during which this state of things had not
ceased to trouble him, Schahriar cut off the country of Great Tartary from the Persian
Empire and made his brother king.

Now the Sultan Schahriar had a wife whom he loved more than all the world, and his
greatest happiness was to surround her with splendour, and to give her the finest dresses
and the most beautiful jewels. It was therefore with the deepest shame and sorrow that he
accidentally discovered, after several years, that she had deceived him completely, and
her whole conduct turned out to have been so bad, that he felt himself obliged to carry out
the law of the land, and order the grand-vizir to put her to death. The blow was so heavy
that his mind almost gave way, and he declared that he was quite sure that at bottom all
women were as wicked as the sultana, if you could only find them out, and that the fewer
the world contained the better. So every evening he married a fresh wife and had her
strangled the following morning before the grand-vizir, whose duty it was to provide
these unhappy brides for the Sultan. The poor man fulfilled his task with reluctance, but
there was no escape, and every day saw a girl married and a wife dead.
This behaviour caused the greatest horror in the town, where nothing was heard but cries
and lamentations. In one