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at various times and by various hands, of tales and anecdotes of all kinds and drawn from a variety of sources, some having been expressly composed or re-written for the purpose, whilst others are in whole or in part borrowed or adapted from independent works. Some of these additions, such as The Malice of Women (almost the only survival in which story of the old Book of Sindibad appears to be the framework, the short stories for the introduction of which it serves as an excuse being, with occasional exceptions, purely Arabic in character and bearing signs of a comparatively modern redaction, subject, of course, to the limitation implied in the absence of any mention of firearms or coffee), Jelyaad and Shimas (apparently an old Indian story which has undergone comparatively little alteration) and Seif el Mulouk are proved to have existed in an independent form before the middle of the eleventh century. The Queen of the Serpents is also, in all probability, a very old story of Persian origin, largely altered (especially in the two incidental tales, the Adventures of Beloukiya[1] and the Story of Janshah) by the Arab author or authors in the process of adaptation to Muslim manners and customs, and the History of Gherib and his brother Agib is, to all appearance, a rearrangement of some old Bedouin romance,[2] notwithstanding the mention[3] therein
- ↑ Taken, so far at least as the main incidents extend, bodily from the Annals of Et Teberi.
- ↑ The frequent occurrence of Persian names (e.g. Kundemir, King of Cufa, Merdas, Chief of the Benou Kehtan, the Arabs par excellence, Jawamerd and Courejan, vizier and son of Julned ben Kerker, King of Yemen, etc.) may perhaps be taken to indicate a Persian Muslim as the composer or arranger of the story.
- ↑ Vol. VI. pp. 150–1.
