[FN#134] For this some MSS. have “Fahlawiyah” = Pehlevi

[FN#135] i.e.  Lower Roman, Grecian, of Asia Minor, etc., the word is still applied throughout Marocco, Algiers and Northern Africa to Europeans in general.

[FN#136] De Sacy (Dissertation prefixed to the Bourdin Edition) notices the “thousand and one,” and in his Memoire “a thousand:”  Von Hammer’s MS. reads a thousand, and the French translation a thousand and one.  Evidently no stress can be laid upon the numerals.

[FN#137] These names are noticed in my vol. i. 14, and vol. ii. 3.  According to De Sacy some MSS. read “History of the Wazir and his Daughters.”

[FN#138] Lane (iii. 735) has Wizreh or Wardeh which guide us to Wird Khan, the hero of the tale.  Von Hammer’s MS. prefers Djilkand (Jilkand), whence probably the Isegil or Isegild of Langles (1814), and the Tseqyl of De Sacy (1833).  The mention of “Simas” (Lane’s Shemmas) identifies it with “King Jali’ad of Hind,” etc. (Night dcccxcix.) Writing in A.D. 961 Hamzah Isfahani couples with the libri Sindbad and Schimas, the libri Baruc and Barsinas, four nouvelles out of nearly seventy.  See also Al-Makri’zi’s Khitat or Topography (ii. 485) for a notice of the Thousand or Thousand and one Nights.

[FN#139] alluding to the “Seven Wazirs” alias “The Malice of Women” (Night dlxxviii.), which Von Hammer and many others have carelessly confounded with Sindbad the Seaman We find that two tales once separate have now been incorporated with The Nights, and this suggests the manner of its composition by accretion.

[FN#140] Arabised by a most “elegant” stylist, Abdullah ibn al-Mukaffa (the shrivelled), a Persian Guebre named Roz-bih (Day good), who islamised and was barbarously put to death in A.H. 158 (= 775) by command of the Caliph al-Mansur (Al-Siyuti p. 277).  “He also translated from Pehlevi the book entitled Sekiseran, containing the annals of Isfandiyar, the death of Rustam, and other episodes of old Persic history,” says Al-Mas’udi chapt. xxi.  See also Ibn Khallikan (1, 43) who dates the murder in A.H. 142 (= 759-60).

[FN#141] “Notice sur Le Schah-namah de Firdoussi,” a posthumous publication of M. de Wallenbourg, Vienna, 1810, by M. A. de Bianchi.  In sect. iii.  I shall quote another passage of Al-Mas’udi (viii. 175) in which I find a distinct allusion to the “Gaboriaudetective tales” of The Nights.

[FN#142] Here Von Hammer shows his customary inexactitude.  As we learn from Ibn Khallikan (Fr. Tr.  I. 630), the author’s name was Abu al-Faraj Mohammed ibn Is’hak pop. known as Ibn Ali Ya’kub al-Warrak, the bibliographe, librarian, copyist.  It was published (vol. i Leipzig, 1871) under the editorship of G. Fluegel, J. Roediger, and A. Mueller.

[FN#143] See also the Journ.  Asiat., August, 1839, and Lane iii. 736-37

[FN#144] Called “Afsanah” by Al-Mas’udi, both words having the same sense = tale story, parable, “facetiae.”  Moslem fanaticism renders it by the Arab “Khurafah” = silly fables, and in Hindostan it = a jest:  “Bat-ki bat, khurafat-ki khurafat” (a word for a word, a joke for a joke).