throughout the East, begins with the orthodox Moslem "Bismillah,"
etc. "King Sapor" is prefaced by a Christian form which to the
Trinitarian formula adds, "Allah being One"; this, again, is not
translated, because it repeats the "Ebony Horse" (vol. v. 1). No
iv., which opens with the Bismillah, is found in the Sabbagh MS.
of The Nights (see Suppl. vol. iii.) as the Histoire de Haroun
al-Raschid et de la descendante de Chosroes. Albondoqani (Nights
lxx.-lxxvii.). No. v., which also has the Moslem invocation, is
followed by the "Caliph and the Three Kalandars," where, after
the fashion of this our MS., the episodes (vol. i., 104-130) are
taken bodily from "The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad"
(i. 82), and are converted into a separate History. No. vi. has
no title to be translated, being a replica of the long sea-tale
in vol. vii., 264. Nos. vii., viii., ix., x. and xi. lack
initiatory invocation betraying Christian or Moslem provenance.
No. viii. is the History of Si Mustafa and of Shaykh Shahab al-
Din in the Turkish Tales: it also occurs in the Sabbagh MS.
(Nights ccclxxxvi.-cdviii.). The Bimaristan (No. ix.), alias Ali
Chalabi (Halechalbe), has already appeared in my Suppl. vol. iv.
35. No. xii., "The Caliph and the Fisherman," makes Harun
al-Rashid the hero of the tale in "The Fisherman and the Jinni"
(vol. i. 38); it calls the ensorcelled King of the Black Islands
Mahmud, and his witch of a wife Sitt al-Muluk, and it also
introduces into the Court of the Great Caliph Hasan Shuman and
Ahmad al-Danaf, the prominent personages in "The Rogueries of
Dalilah" (vol. vii. 144) and its sister tale (vii. 172). The two
last Histories, which are ingenious enough, also lack initial
formulae.

Dr. Russell (the historian of Aleppo) brought back with him a