s, as well in actual contents as in
the details and diction of such stories as are common to all. The Tunis
MS. of the 1001 Nights (which is preserved in the Breslau University
Library and which formed the principal foundation of Habicht's Edition
of the Arabic text) affords a striking example of this process, which we
are here enabled to see in mid-operation, the greater part of the tales
of which it consists having not yet been adapted to the framework of
the Nights. It is dated A.H. 1144 (A.D. 1732) and of the ten volumes of
which it consists, i, ii (Nights I--CCL) and x (Nights DCCCLXXXV-MI) are
alone divided into Nights, the division of the remaining seven volumes
(i.e. iii--ix, containing, inter alia, the Story of the Sleeper
Awakened) being the work of the German editor. It is my belief,
therefore, that the three "interpolated" tales identified as forming
part of the Baghdad MS. of 1703 are comparatively modern stories added
to the genuine text by Rawis (story-tellers) or professional writers
employed by them, and I see no reason to doubt that we shall yet
discover the Arabic text of the remaining eight, either in Hanna's
version (as written down for Galland) or in some as yet unexamined MS.
of the Nights or other work of like character.

V.

M. Zotenberg has, with great judgment, taken as his standard for
publication the text of Aladdin given by the Sebbagh MS., inasmuch as
the Shawish MS. (besides being, as appears from the extracts given. [20]
far inferior both in style and general correctness,) is shown by the
editor to be full of modern European phrases and turns of speech and
to present so many suspicious peculiarities that it would be difficult,
having regard, moreover, to the doubtful character and reputation of the
Syrian monkish adventurer who styled himself Dom Denis Chavis, to resist
the conviction that his MS. was a forgery, i.e. professedly a copy of a
genuine Arabic text, but in reality only a translation or paraphrase in
that language of Galland's version,--were it not that the Baghdad MS.
(dated before the commencement, in 1704, of Galland's publication
and transcribed by a man--Mikhail Sebbagh--whose reputation, as a
collaborator of Silvestre de Sacy and other distinguished Orientalists,
is a sufficient voucher for the authenticity of the copy in the
Bibliotheque Nationale,) contains a text essentially identical with that
of Shawish. Moreover, it is evid