A more accurate version, corrected from the Arabic, with a style
admirably direct, easy, and simple, was published by Dr. Jonathan
Scott in 1811. This is the text of the present edition.
The Moslems delight in stories, but are generally ashamed to show a
literary interest in fiction. Hence the world's most delightful story
book has come to us with but scant indications of its origin. Critical
scholarship, however, has been able to reach fairly definite
conclusions.
The reader will be interested to trace out for himself the
similarities in the adventures of the two Persian queens,
Schehera-zade, and Esther of Bible story, which M. de Goeje has
pointed out as indicating their original identity (_Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, "Thousand and One Nights"). There are two or three
references in tenth-century Arabic literature to a Persian collection
of tales, called _The Thousand Nights_, by the fascination of which
the lady Schehera-zade kept winning one more day's lease of life. A
good many of the tales as we have them contain elements clearly
indicating Persian or Hindu origin. But most of the stories, even
those with scenes laid in Persia or India, are thoroughly Mohammedan
in thought, feeling, situation, and action.
The favorite scene is "the glorious city," ninth-century Bagdad, whose
caliph, Haroun al Raschid, though a great king, and heir of still
mightier men, is known to fame chiefly by the favor of these tales.
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