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"The pleasure we derive from perusing the Thousand-and-One Stories makes us regret that we possess only a comparatively small part of these truly enchanting fictions."
—Andrew Crichton’s "History of Arabia."
Larger excerpt:
With the Arabs the want of epic and dramatic
poetry was abundantly compensated by a species
of composition which in some degree combined the
nature of both. It is to their brilliant imagination
that we owe those beautiful tales, which surprise
us not more by their prodigious number than their
exhaustless variety. With the Arabian Nights'
Entertainments, the Alif Lila iva Lilin, or the
Thousand-and-One Stories told by the Sultaness
of the Indies, who is not acquainted ? The plea-
sure we derive from their perusal makes us regret
that we possess only a comparatively small part of
these truly enchanting fictions. The author or
authors of this immense collection of tales are unknown, and the learned in Europe differ as to
their origin. Von Hammer, on the authority of
Masoudi, suggested some years ago that they were
not originally Arabian, but translated from the
Indian or Persian in the reign of the Caliph Al-
mamoun, an opinion certainly opposed by the cir-
cumstance, that a foreigner could scarcely have suc-
ceeded in giving so accurate a description of Arabian
life and scenery. Mons. Galland, who first sup-
plied a French version (A. D. 1706), supposed that
not more than a six-and-thirtieth part of them were
known in Europe ; and a late traveller (Dr Daniel
Clarke) has given a list of 172 tales contained in a
manuscript purchased by him in Egypt, divided in
the same manner as the celebrated Nights' Entertain-
ments. It rarely happens, this author remarks,
that any two copies of the Alif Lila wa Lilin re-
semble each other ; and the title is indiscriminately
bestowed on every compilation of popular stories
that embraces the same number of parts, a fact
which may help to account for our comparative de-
ficiency in this department of Oriental literature.
Besides those committed to writing, a vast num-
ber of these diverting legends had no more du-
rable tablet than the memory of itinerating story-
tellers. Crowds of both sexes in every region of
the Mohammedan world still earn their livelihood
by their wonderful talent for recital ; and they
never fail to attract an audience ; for the indolent
natives of Turkey, Persia, and India, willingly bury
their present cares in the pleasing dreams of the
imagination. The Africans, in the midst of their
deserts, assemble nightly round the blazing fire in
their tents, and learn to forget their own hardships and fatigues in the captivating narrative of ideal ad-
ventures. The public squares of the cities in the
Levant abound with these wandering reciters, and
their assistance is called in to fill up the heavy hours
of the palace and the seraglio. Their art is even
prescribed as a substitute for medicine ; and physi-
cians not unfrequently recommend them to their
patients in order to sooth pain,, to calm the agitated
spirits, or produce sleep after long watchfulness.
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