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of the rogues, sharpers and impostors of the time of the Khalifs and their encounters with the police of Baghdad and Cairo (who, by the by, appear like Vidocq and others, to have been drawn almost exclusively from the criminal classes and to have held their grades as the prizes of proved eminence in successful roguery), a class of fiction much favoured in the East, of which certain examples, e.g. the stories of the Barber and his Brothers, the Rogueries of Delileh the Crafty and her Daughter Zeyneb the Trickstress and the Adventures of Quicksilver Ali of Cairo (all in the Thousand and One Nights,) forcibly remind one of such “picaresque” novels of Lesage, Quevedo, Aleman and others, as Guzman de Alfarache, Lazarillo de Tormes, El Gran Tacaño, Gil Blas, etc., and from which indeed it is probable that these latter had in some respects an almost direct origin. The third subdivision embraces the most numerous section of the work, i.e. such altogether fictitious short stories and legends, romantic or sentimental, as may conveniently be classed under the general heading of contes fantastiques. To this class belong the stories of miracles and saints, in which Muslim literature is so rich, such as The Apples
of such figures as the learned slave-girl Taweddud and the female preacher in the dissertation upon the relative excellence of the sexes (Vol. IV.) proves the readiness of the Arabs to recognize moral and intellectual excellence in the weaker sex, whilst, as a compensation for the repulsive portrait of the hypocritical trickstress, so common in their pages, the authors not unfrequently present us with instances of sincere devotion and effectual piety on the part of their heroines, as well as of female saints, whose purity and zeal have gained them the power of working miracles.
