Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of M. Zorenberg's long and
interesting introduction is a series of extracts from the (as yet
unpublished) MS. Diary regularly kept by Galland, the last four volumes
(1708-15) of which are preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale.
These extracts effectually settle the question of the origin of the
interpolated tales, as will be seen from the following abstract.
On the 25th March, 1709, Galland records having that day made the
acquaintance of a Maronite scholar, by name Youhenna Diab, [12] who
had been brought from Aleppo to Paris by Paul Lucas, the celebrated
traveller, and with whom he evidently at once broached the question
of the Nights, [13] probably complaining to him of the difficulty (or
rather impossibility) of obtaining a perfect copy of the work; whereupon
Hanna (as he always calls him) appears to have volunteered to help him
to fill the lacune by furnishing him with suitable Oriental stories for
translation in the same style as those already rendered by him and then
and there (says Galland) "told me some very fine Arabian tales, which
he promised to put into writing for me." There is no fresh entry on the
subject till May 5 following, when (says Galland) "The Maronite Hanna
finished telling me the tale of the Lamp." [14]
Hanna appears to have remained in Paris till the autumn of the year 1709
and during his stay, Galland's Diary records the communication by him to
the French savant of the following stories, afterwards included in the
ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth volumes of the latter's translation,
(as well as of several others which he probably intended to translate,
had he lived,) [15] i.e. (May 10, 1709) "Babe Abdalla" and "Sidi
Nouman," (May 13, 1709) "The Enchanted Horse," (May 22, 1709) "Prince
Ahmed and Pari Banou," (May 25, 1709) "The Two Sisters who envied their
younger Sister," (May 27, 1709) "All Baba and the Forty Thieves," (May
29, 1709) "Cogia Hassan Alhabbal" and (May 31, 1709) "Ali Cogia." The
Maronite seems to have left for the East in October, 1709, (Galland says
under date October 25, "Received this evening a letter from Hanna, who
writes me from Marseilles, under date the 17th, in Arabic, to the effect
that he had arrived there in good health,") but not without having
at least in part fulfilled his promise to put in writing the tales
communicated by him to Galland, as appears by the entry of November 3,
1710, "Began yesterday to read the Arabian story of the Lamp, which
had been written me in Arabic more than a year ago by the Maronite of
Damascus [16] whom M. Lucas brought with him, with a view to putting it
into French. Finished reading it this morning. Here is the title of this
tale, 'Story of Aladdin, son of a tailor, and that which befell him with
an African Magician on account of (or through) a lamp.'" (The Diary
adds that he began that evening to put his translation into writing and
finished it in the course of the ensuing fortnight.) And that of January
10, 1711, "Finished the translation of the tenth volume of the 1001
Nights after the Arabic text which I had from the hand (de la main) of
Hanna or Jean Dipi, [17] whom M. Lucas brought to France on his return
from his last journey in the Levant." The only other entry bearing upon
the question is that of August 24, 1711, in which Galland says, "Being
quit of my labours upon the translation etc. of the Koran, I read a part
of the Arabian Tales which the Maronite Hanna had told me and which I
had summarily reduced to writing, to see which of them I should select
to make up the eleventh volume of the Thousand and One Nights."
From these entries it appears beyond question that Galland received from
the Maronite Hanna, in the Spring and Summer of 1709, the Arabic text
of the stories of Aladdin, Baba Abdalla, Sidi Nouman and Cogia Hassan
Alhabbal, i.e. the whole of the tales included in his ninth and tenth
volumes (with the exception of The Sleeper Awakened, of which he does
not speak) and that he composed the five remaining tales contained
in his eleventh and twelfth volumes (i.e. Ali Baba, Ali Cogia, The
Enchanted Horse, Prince Ahmed and Pari Banou and The Two Sisters who
envied their younger Sister,) upon the details thereof taken down from
Hanna's lips and by the aid of copious summaries made at the time. These
entries in Galland's diary dispose, therefore, of the question of
the origin of the "interpolated" tales, with the exception (1) of The
Sleeper Awakened (with which we need not, for the present, concern
ourselves farther) and (2) of Nos. 1 and 2a and b, i.e. Zeyn Alasnam,
Codadad and his brothers and The Princess of Deryabar (forming, with
Ganem, his eighth volume), as to which Galland, as I pointed out in my
terminal essay (p. 264), cautions us, in a prefatory note to his ninth
volume, that these two stories form no part of the Thousand and
One Nights and that they had been inserted and printed without the
cognizance of the translator, who was unaware of the trick that had been
played him till after the actual publication of the volume, adding
that care would be taken to expunge the intrusive tales from the second
edition (which, however, was never done, Galland dying before the
republication and it being probably found that the stranger tales had
taken too firm a hold upon public favour to be sacrificed, as originally
proposed); and the invaluable Diary supplies the necessary supplemental
information as to their origin. "M. Petis de la Croix," says Galland
under date of January 17, 1710, "Professor and King's Reader of the
Arabic tongue, who did me the honour to visit me this morning, was
extremely surprised to see two of the Turkish [18] Tales of his
translation printed in the eighth volume of the 1001 Nights, which
I showed him, and that this should have been done without his
participation."
Petis de la Croix, a well-known Orientalist and traveller of the time,
published in the course of the same year (1710) the first volume of a
collection of Oriental stories, similar in form and character to the
1001 Nights, but divided into "Days" instead of "Nights" and called "The
Thousand and One Days, Persian Tales," the preface to which (ascribed
to Cazotte) alleges him to have translated the tales from a Persian work
called Hezar [o] Yek Roz, i.e. "The Thousand and One Days," the MS. of
which had in 1675 been communicated to the translator by a friend
of his, by name Mukhlis, (Cazotte styles him "the celebrated Dervish
Mocles, chief of the Soufis of Ispahan") during his sojourn in the
Persian capital. The preface goes on to state that Mukhlis had, in his
youth, translated into Persian certain Indian plays, which had been
translated into all the Oriental languages and of which a Turkish
version existed in the Bibliotheque Royale, under the title of Alfaraga
Badal-Schidda (i.e. El Ferej bad esh Shiddeh), which signified "Joy
after Affliction"; but that, wishing to give his work an original air,
he converted the aforesaid plays into tales. Cazotte's story of the
Indian plays savours somewhat of the cock and the bull and it is
probable that the Hezar o Yek Roz (which is not, to my knowledge,
extant) was not derived from so recondite a source, but was itself
either the original of the well-known Turkish collection or (perhaps) a
translation of the latter. At all events, Zeyn Alasnam, Codadad and the
Princess of Deryabar occur in a copy (cited by M. Zotenberg), belonging
to the Bibliotheque Nationale, of El Ferej bad esh Shidded (of which
they form the eighth, ninth and sixth stories respectively) and in a
practically identical form, except that in Galland's vol. viii. the two
latter stories are fused into one. Sir William Ouseley is said to have
brought from Persia a MS. copy of a portion of the Hezar o Yek Roz which
he describes as agreeing with the French version, but, in the absence
of documentary proof and in view of the fact that, notwithstanding the
unauthorized incorporation of three of the tales of his original with
Galland's Vol. viii, the published version of the Thousand and One Days
is apparently complete and shows no trace of the omission, I am inclined
to suspect Petis de la Croix of having invented the division into
Days, in order to imitate (and profit by the popularity of) his fellow
savant's version of the Thousand and One Nights. Galland's publisher was
doubtless also that of Petis de la Croix and in the latter capacity
had in hand a portion of the MS. of the 1001 Days, from which, no
doubt weary of waiting till Galland (who was now come to the end of
his genuine Arabic MS. of the 1001 Nights and was accordingly at a
standstill, till he met with Hanna,) should have procured fresh material
to complete the copy for his eighth volume, of which Ganem only was then
ready for publication, he seems to have selected (apparently on his own
responsibility, but, it must be admitted, with considerable taste and
judgment,) the three tales in question from the MS. of the 1001 Days, to
fill up the lacune. It does not appear whether he found Codadad and the
Princess of Deryabar arranged as one story ready to his hand or himself
performed (or procured to be performed) the process of fusion, which, in
any case, was executed by no unskilful hand. Be this as it may, Galland
was naturally excessively annoyed at the publisher's unceremonious
proceeding, so much so indeed as for a time to contemplate renouncing
the publication of the rest of the work, to spare himself (as he says
in his Diary, under date of Dec. 12, 1709) similar annoyances
(mortifications) to that which the printing of the eighth volume had
caused him. Indeed, the effect of this incident was to induce him, not
only to change his publisher, but to delay the publication of the next
volume (which, as we learn from the Diary, was ready for the press at
the end of November or the beginning of December, 1709) for a whole
year, at the end of which time (Diary, November 21, 1710) he made
arrangements with a new (and presumably more trustworthy) publisher, M.
Florentin de Laune, for the printing of Vol. ix.