This MS. is in the handwriting of of Sebbagh, the well-known
Syrian collaborator of Silvestre de Sacy, and is supposed to have
been copied by him at Paris between the years 1805 and 1810 for
some European Orientalist (probably de Perceval himself) from a
Baghdad MS. of the early part of the 18th century, of which it
professes to be an exact reproduction, as appears from a terminal
note, of which the following is a translation:

"And the finishing of it was in the first tenth (decade) of
Jumada the Latter [in the] year one thousand one hundred and
fifteen of the Hegira (October, 1703) in the handwriting of the
neediest of the faithful [FN#9] unto God [FN#10] the Most High,
Ahmed ibn Mohammed et Teradi, in the city of Baghdad, and he the
Shafiy by sect and the Mosuli by birth and the Baghdadi by
sojourn, and indeed he wrote it for himself and set upon it his
seal, and God bless and keep our lord Mohammed and his
companions! Kebikej [FN#11] (ter)."

This MS. contains the three "interpolated" tales aforesaid, i.e.
the Sleeper Awakened (Nights CCCXXXVII-LXXXVI), Zeyn Alasnam
(Nights CCCCXCVII-DXIII) and Aladdin (Nights DXIV-XCI), the last
two bearing traces of a Syrian origin, especially Aladdin, which
is written in a much commoner and looser style than Zeyn Alasnam.
The two tales are evidently the work of different authors, Zeyn
Alasnam being incomparably superior in style and correctness to
Aladdin, which is defaced by all kinds of vulgarisms and
solecisms and seems, moreover, to have been less correctly copied
than the other. Nevertheless, the Sebbagh text is in every
respect preferable to that of Shawish (which appears to abound in
faults and errors of every kind, general and particular,) and M.