[FN#170] The short paper by “P.  R.” in the Gentleman’s Magazine (Feb. 19th, 1799, vol. lxix. p. 61) tells us that MSS. of The Nights were scarce at Aleppo and that he found only two vols. (280 Nights) which he had great difficulty in obtaining leave to copy.  He also noticed (in 1771) a MS., said to be complete, in the Vatican and another in the “King’s Library” (Bibliotheque Nationale), Paris.

[FN#171] Aleppo has been happy in finding such monographers as Russell and Maundrell while poor Damascus fell into the hands of Mr. Missionary Porter, and suffered accordingly.

[FN#172] Vol. vi.  Appendix, p.452.

[FN#173] The numbers, however, vary with the Editions of Galland:  some end the formula with Night cxcvii; others with the ccxxxvi. : I adopt that of the De Sacy Edition.

[FN#174] Contes Persans, suivis des Contes Turcs.  Paris; Bechet Aine, 1826.

[FN#175] In the old translation we have “eighteen hundred years since the prophet Solomon died,” (B.C. 975) = A.D. 825.

[FN#176] Meaning the era of the Seleucides.  Dr. Jonathan Scott shows (vol. ii. 324) that A.H. 653 and A.D. 1255 would correspond with 1557 of that epoch; so that the scribe has here made a little mistake of 5,763 years.  Ex uno disce.

[FN#177] The Saturday Review (Jan. 2nd ’86) writes, “Captain Burton has fallen into a mistake by not distinguishing between the names of the by no means identical Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al-Mustansir.”  Quite true:  it was an ugly confusion of the melancholy madman and parricide with one of the best and wisest of the Caliphs.  I can explain (not extenuate) my mistake only by a misprint in Al-Siyuti (p. 554).

[FN#178] In the Galland MS. and the Bresl.  Edit. (ii. 253), we find the Barber saying that the Caliph (Al-Mustansir) was at that time (yaumaizin) in Baghdad, and this has been held to imply that the Caliphate had fallen.  But such conjecture is evidently based upon insufficient grounds.

[FN#179] De Sacy makes the “Kalandar” order originate in A.D. 1150, but the Shaykh Sharif bu Ali Kalandar died in A.D. 1323-24.  In Sind the first Kalandar, Osman-i-Marwandi surnamed Lal Shahbaz, the Red Goshawk, from one of his miracles, died and was buried at Sehwan in A D. 1274:  see my “History of Sindh” chapt. viii. for details.  The dates therefore run wild.

[FN#180] In this same tale H. H. Wilson observes that the title of Sultan of Egypt was not assumed before the middle of the xiith century.

[FN#181] Popularly called Vidyanagar of the Narsingha.

[FN#182] Time-measurers are of very ancient date.  The Greeks had clepsydrae and the Romans gnomons, portable and ring-shaped, besides large standing town-dials as at Aquileja and San Sabba near Trieste.  The “Saracens” were the perfecters of the clepsydra:  Bosseret (p. 16) and the Chronicon Turense (Beckmann ii. 340 et seq.) describe the water-clock sent by Al-Rashid to Karl the Great as a kind of “cockoo-clock.”