But the contents (with due regard to the possibility of later
insertions), references in other writings, and the dialect show that
our _Arabian Nights_ took form in Egypt very soon after the year 1450.
The author, doubtless a professional teller of stories, was, like his
Schehera-zade, a person of extensive reading and faultless memory,
fluent of speech, and ready on occasion to drop into poetry. The
coarseness of the Arabic narrative, which does not appear in our
translation, is characteristic of Egyptian society under the Mameluke
sultans. It would have been tolerated by the subjects of the caliph in
old Bagdad no more than by modern Christians.
More fascinating stories were never told. Though the oath of an
Oriental was of all things the most sacred, and though Schah-riar had
"bound himself by a solemn vow to marry a new wife every night, and
command her to be strangled in the morning," we well believe that he
forswore himself, and granted his bride a stay of execution until he
could find out why the ten polite young gentlemen, all blind of the
right eye, "having blackened themselves, wept and lamented, beating
their heads and breasts, and crying continually, 'This is the fruit of
our idleness and curiosity.'" To be sure, when the golden door has
been opened, and the black horse has vanished with that vicious switch
of his tail, we have a little feeling of having been "sold,"--a
feeling which great art never gives.
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