One Nights" as that which veils the origin of the Homeric
poems. It is said that a certain Caliph Shahryar, having been
deceived by his wife, slew her, and afterwards married a wife
only for one day, slaying her on the morning after. When this
slaughter of women had continued some time he became wedded to
one Shahrazad, daughter of his Vizir, who, by telling the
Commander of the Faithful exciting stories and leaving them
unfinished every dawn, so provoked the Caliph's curiosity that
he kept her alive, and at last grew so fond of her that he had
no thought of putting her to death. As for the authorship of
the stories, they are certainly not the work of one mind, and
have probably grown with the ages into their present form. The
editions published for Christian countries do not represent
the true character of these legends, which are often
exceedingly sensual. The European versions of this
extraordinary entertainment began in 1704 with the work of one
Antoine Galland, Professor of Arabic at the College of France,
a Frenchman who, according to Sir Richard Burton, possessed
"in a high degree that art of telling a tale which is far more
captivating than culture or scholarship." Sir R. Burton (see
Vol. XIX) summed up what may be definitely believed of the
Nights in the following conclusion: The framework of the book
is purely Persian perfunctorily Arabised, the archetype being
the Hazar Afsanah. The oldest tales may date from the reign of
Al-Mansur, in the eighth century; others belong to the tenth
century; and the latest may be ascribed to the sixteenth. The
work assumed its present form in the thirteenth century. The
author is unknown, "for the best reason; there never was one."