The Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I.: Commonly Called the Arabian Nights' Entertainments

"I have taken as my general standard of the original text the Cairo edition lately printed; it being greatly superior to the other printed editions, and probably to every manuscript copy.[1] It appears to agree almost exactly with the celebrated MS. of Von Hammer, than which no copy more copious, I believe, exists; and contains all the tales in the old version except those which, as Von Hammer says, Galland appears to have taken from other works, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, in the Royal Library of Paris. The manuscript from which it was printed was carefully collated and corrected by a very learned man, the sheykh 'Abd-Er-Raḥmán Eṣ-Ṣaftee Esh-Sharḳáwee, who also superintended the progress of the work through the press. But in addition to the value conferred upon it by the corrections of this sheykh, the copy from which the whole of my translation is made, except in a few instances, possesses an advantage which, I believe, renders it incomparably superior to any other now existing: it has been again revised and corrected, and illustrated with numerous manuscript notes, by a person whom I think I may safely pronounce the first philologist of the first Arab college of the present day, the sheykh Moḥammad 'Eiyád Eṭ-Ṭanṭáwee, or, more properly, Eṭ-Ṭanditáee. His notes are chiefly philological, and explanatory of words which do not belong to the classical language; and many of them are of very great assistance to me; though most of them I find unnecessary, from the knowledge of the modern Arabic which I have acquired during my intercourse with the people who speak it. His corrections of the text are numerous; and as they would interest very few persons, I have mentioned but few of them in the notes to my translation, notwithstanding a strong temptation that I felt to do otherwise in order that Arabic scholars might be assisted to judge of the fidelity of my version by comparing it with the text of the Cairo edition.[2] To the pieces of poetry which are interspersed throughout the work he has paid especial attention; not only correcting the errors which he found in them, but also always adding the vowel-points, and generally, commentaries or explanations. Thus I have shewn that I am very greatly indebted to him for his learned labours. I should, however, add, that I have ventured to differ from him in interpreting a few words; having found more appropriate meanings assigned to them by Arabs in parts not visited by him, or such meanings given in printed dictionaries with which he is unacquainted; and I have also corrected a few errors which have escaped his notice.[3] Without the valuable aid which he has afforded me, I would not have attempted the translation; nor with it would I have done so were it not for the advantage that I derive from my having lived among Arabs. No translator can always be certain that, from twenty or more significations which are borne by one Arabic word, he has selected that which his author intended to convey; but, circumstanced as I am, I have the satisfaction of feeling confident that I have never given, to a word or phrase in this work, a meaning which is inconsistent with its presenting faithful pictures of Arab life and manners.