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Uns el Wujoud and the Vizier’s Daughter Rosebud, The Enchanted Horse, the Queen of the Serpents, Hassan of Bassora and the King’s Daughter of the Jinn, Jouder and his Brothers, Seif el Mulouk and Bediya el Jemal, Marouf, etc., etc. Under the second head may be classed stories apparently purely fictitious, but whose scene is laid in some definite historical epoch, in which are introduced historical personages and whose incidents and descriptions reproduce the manners and local circumstance of such cities as Baghdad, Bassora, Mosul, Damascus and Cairo and such periods as those of the Khalifs of the Abbaside dynasty or the Eyoubite Sultans of Egypt. These also are for the most part of considerable length and comprise such tales as the Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad, Noureddin and the Fair Persian, Ali ben Bekkar and Shemsennehar, Ghanim ben Eyoub, Alaeddin Abou esh Shamat, The Voyages of Sindbad, Abdallah ben Fazil and his brothers, Ali Noureddin and the King’s Daughter of the Franks, etc., etc. In this subdivision must also be included the stories or nouvelles[1] detailing the doings
- ↑ In many of the stories of this class (and indeed in the Nights generally, whenever roguery of any kind is in question) the crafty, perfidious old woman (such as Dhat ed Dewahi or Delileh) who assumes the character of a devotee and avails herself of this disguise to strip, rob, kidnap and murder her dupes or her enemies, is a familiar figure. Women are indeed generally presented in the work as creatures entirely governed by their sensual instincts, sectaries of the God Wünsch, lacking reason and religion, although, on the other hand, instances are not wanting in which female characters (e.g. Abrizeh) are painted in the most heroic colours, or (as Azizeh) hallowed to all time with the tenderest haloes of sentiment and sacrifice, and the introduction
