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carefully everywhere substituted, for the traces of Zendic or Sabæan formulas and doctrines that may be supposed to have existed in the original, the distinctive legends and catchwords of the Muslim faith and cosmogony, whilst avoiding a too obvious exposure to the charge of anachronism by such expedients as the substitution of Solomon and Abraham for the greater prophet whose name is so constantly in the mouth of the personages of Arab fiction. And this adaptation of the scenes and persons of foreign countries to the illustration and glorification of Arab thought and Arab personality is still more accentuated by the fact that the men and manners represented are for the most part limited to those of the period of the early Baghdadi Khalifs of the house of Abbas, commencing with the second of that dynasty, Abou Jaafer el Mensour (A.D. 754) and practically ending with the sixteenth, his great-grandson’s great-grandson Aboulabbas el Mutezid Billah, A.D. 892–922.[1] Of this period far the most brilliant portion is that comprised between the years 786 and 809 and wholly occupied by the reign of the fifth Khalif of the house of Abbas, the celebrated Haroun er Reshid Billah, Aaron the Orthodox (or Well-advised[2]) in or by God, not the Just, as in most versions. (The
- ↑ The only later Khalifs mentioned in the Nights are the thirty-sixth (of the house of Abbas) El Mustensir (A.D. 1225–1242) and (by implication) the thirty-seventh and last, El Mustesim Billah (A.D. 1242–1258), in whose reigns the scene of the Barber’s Story and that of the Tailor (see Vol. I.) is laid, the intervening three centuries and a quarter being wholly unrepresented in the work, so far as the Khalifate of Baghdad is concerned.
- ↑ Lit. He who follows in the right way.
