The Arabian Nights

Now “The Arabian Nights,” some of which, but not nearly all, are given in

this volume, are only fairy tales of the East. The people of Asia, Arabia, and

Persia told them in their own way, not for children, but for grown-up people.

There were no novels then, nor any printed books, of course; but there were

people whose profession it was to amuse men and women by telling tales. They

dressed the fairy stories up, and made the characters good Mahommedans, living

in Bagdad or India. The events were often supposed to happen in the reign of the

great Caliph, or ruler of the Faithful, Haroun al Raschid, who lived in Bagdad in

786-808 A. D. The vizir who accompanies the Caliph was also a real person of

the great family of the Barmecides. He was put to death by the Caliph in a very

cruel way, nobody ever knew why. The stories must have been told in their

present shape a good long while after the Caliph died, when nobody knew very

exactly what had really happened. At last some storyteller thought of writing

down the tales, and fixing them into a kind of framework, as if they had all been

narrated to a cruel Sultan by his wife. Probably the tales were written down

about the time when Edward I. Was fighting Robert Bruce. But changes were

made in them at different times, and a great deal that is very dull and stupid was

put in, and plenty of verses. Neither the verses nor the dull pieces are given in

this book