the turbans which, in 1301, Mahommed b. Kalaʽun of Egypt commanded his Moslem, Christian and Jewish subjects respectively to wear.[1] Again, in the story of the humpback, whose scene is laid in the 9th century, the talkative barber says, “this is the year 653” (= A.D. 1255; Lane, i. 332, writes 263, but see his note), and mentions the caliph Mostanṣir (d. 1242), who is incorrectly called son of Mostaḍī.[2] In the same story several places in Cairo are mentioned which did not exist till long after the 9th century (see Lane i. 379).[3] The very rare edition of the first 200 nights published at Calcutta in 1814 speaks of cannon, which are first mentioned in Egypt in 1383; and all editions sometimes speak of coffee, which was discovered towards the end of the 14th century, but not generally used till 200 years later. In this and other points, e.g. in the mention of a mosque founded in 1501 (Lane iii. 608), we detect the hand of later interpolators, but the extent of such interpolations can hardly perhaps be determined even by a collation of all copies. For the nature and causes of the variations between different copies the reader may consult Lane, iii. 678, who explains how transpositions actually arise by transcribers trying to make up a complete set of the tales from several imperfect copies.
Many of the tales in the Nights have an historical basis, as Lane has shown in his notes. Other cases in point might he added: thus the chronicle of Ibn al-Jauzī (d. A.D. 1200) contains a narrative of Ḳamar, slave girl of Shaghb, the mother of Moqtadir, which is the source of the tale in Lane i. 310 seq., and of another to be found in M‘Naghten iv. 557 seq.; the latter is the better story, but departs so far from the original that the author must have had no more than a general recollection of the narrative he drew on.[4] There are other cases in the Nights of two tales which are only variations of a single theme, or even in certain parts agree almost word for word. Some tales are mere compounds of different stories put together without any art, but these perhaps are, as Lane conjectures, later additions to the book; yet the collector himself was no great literary artist. We must picture him as a professional story-teller equipped with a mass of miscellaneous reading, a fluent power of narration, and a ready faculty for quoting, or at a push improvising, verses. His stories became popular, and were written down as he told them—hardly written by himself, else we should not have so many variations in the text, and such insertions of “the narrator says,” “my noble sirs,” and the like. The frequent coarseness of tone is proper to the condition of Egyptian society under the Mameluke sultans, and would not have been tolerated in Bagdad in the age to which so many of the tales refer. Yet with all their faults the Nights have beauties enough to deserve their popularity, and to us their merit is enhanced by the pleasure we feel in being transported into so entirely novel a state of society.
The Thousand and One Nights became known in Europe through A. Galland’s French version (12 vols. 12mo, Paris, 1704–1712); the publication was an event in literary history, the influence of which can be traced far and wide. This translation, however, left much to be desired in point of accuracy, and especially failed to reproduce the colour of the original with the exactness which those who do not read merely for amusement must desire. It was with a special view to the remedying of these defects that E. W. Lane produced in 1840 his admirably accurate, if somewhat stilted, translation, enriched with most valuable notes and a discussion of the origin of the work (new edition, with some additional notes, 3 vols. 8vo, London, 1859). Lane’s translation omits the tales which he deemed uninteresting or unfit for a European public. Sir Richard Burton’s unexpurgated English translation, with elaborate notes, was issued in 10 vols., 1885–1886, with six supplementary vols., 1887–1888. A new French version (1809 seq.) was undertaken by J. C. Mardrus. Of the Arabic text of the Nights the principal editions are—(1) M‘Naghten’s edition (4 vols. 8vo, Calcutta, 1839–1842);. (2) the Breslau edition (12 vols., 12mo, 1835–1843), the first 8 vols. by Habicht, the rest by Fleischer (compare as to the defects of Habicht’s work, Fleischer, De glossis Habichtianis. Leipzig, 1836); (3) the first Būlāq edition (4 vols., 1862–1863). See the Bibliographie des ouvr. arabes (1901), vol. iv., by V. Chauvin, (M. J. de G.)
THRACE, a name which was applied at various periods
to areas of different extent. For the purposes of this article
it will be taken in its most restricted sense, as signifying the
Roman province which was so called after the district that
intervened between the river Ister (Danube) and the Haemus
Mountains (Balkan) had been formed into the separate provinces
of Moesia, and the region between the rivers Strymon and Nestus,
which included Philippi, had been added to Macedonia. The
boundaries of this were—towards the N. the Haemus, on the E.
the Euxine Sea, on the S. the Propontis, the Hellespont and
the Aegean, and towards the W. the Nestus. The most distinguishing
features of the country were the chain of Rhodope
(Despoto-dagh) and the river Hebrus (Maritza). The former
separates at its northernmost point from the Haemus, at right
angles, and runs southward at first, nearly parallel to the Nestus,
until it approaches the sea, when it takes an easterly direction
(See Virg. Georg. iii. 351). Several of the summits of this chain
are over 7000 ft. in height. The Hebrus, together with its
tributaries which flow into it from the north, east and west,
drains almost the whole of Thrace. It starts from near the
point of junction of Haemus and Rhodope, and at first takes
an easterly direction, the chief town which lies on its banks
in the earlier part of its course being Philippopolis; but when
it reaches the still more important city of Hadrianopolis it
makes a sharp bend towards the south, and enters the sea nearly
opposite the island of Samothrace. The greater part of the
country is hilly and irregular, though there are considerable
plains; but besides Rhodope two other tolerably definite chains
intersect it, one of which descends from Haemus to Adrianople,
while the other follows the coast of the Euxine at no great
distance inland. One district in the extreme north-west of
Thrace lay beyond the watershed separating the streams that
flow into the Aegean from those that reach the Danube: this
was the territory of Sardica, the modern Sophia. In the later
Roman period two main lines of road passed through the country.
One of these skirted the southern coast, being a continuation
of the Via Egnatia, which ran from Dyrrhachium to Thessalonica,
thus connecting the Adriatic and the Aegean; it became of the
first importance after the foundation of Constantinople, because
it was the direct line of communication between that city and
Rome. The other followed a north-westerly course through
the interior, from Constantinople by Hadrianopolis and Philippopolis
to the Haemus, and thence by Naissus (Nish) through
Moesia in the direction of Pannonia, taking the same route by
which the railway now runs from Constantinople to Belgrade.
The climate of Thrace was regarded by the Greeks as very severe,
and that country was spoken of as the home of the north wind,
Boreas. The coast in the direction of the Euxine also was
greatly feared by sailors, as the harbours were few and the sea
proverbially tempestuous; but the southern shore was more
attractive to navigators, and here we find the Greek colonies
of Abdera and Mesambria on the Aegean, Perinthus on the
Propontis, and, the most famous of all, Byzantium, at the
meeting-point of that sea and the Bosporus. Another place
which proved attractive to colonists of that race was the curious
narrow strip of ground, called the Thracian Chersonese, that
intervened between the Hellespont and the Bay of Melas, which
penetrates far into the land on its northern side. Among the
cities that occupied it the most important were Sestos and
Callipolis (Gallipoli). In order to prevent the incursions of the
Thracians, a wall was built across its isthmus, which was less
than 5 m. in breadth. The north-eastern portion of the
Aegean, owing to its proximity to the coast of Thrace, was known
as the Thracian Sea, and in this were situated the islands of
Thasos, Samothrace and Imbros.
History.—The most striking archaeological monuments of the prehistoric period are the sepulchral mounds, which are found by thousands in various parts of the country, especially in the neighbourhood of the ancient towns. As Roman implements
