I need say nothing more concerning this MS., which M. Zotenberg purposes to describe bibliographically in volume xxviii. of _Notices et extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale publiés par l’Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres_. And there will be a tirage à part of 200–300 copies entitled _Histoire d’ ‘Alá al-Dîn ou La Lampe Merveilleuse, Texte Arabe, publié par H. Zotenberg; Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1888_; including a most important contribution:—_Sur quelques Manuscrits des Mille et une Nuits et la traduction de Galland_.[1]
The learned and genial author has favoured me with proof sheets of his labours: it would be unfair to disclose the discoveries, such as the Manuscript Journals in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Nos. 15277 to 15280), which the illustrious Galland kept regularly till the end of his life, and his conversations with “M. Hanna, Maronite d’Halep,” alias Jean Dipi (Dippy, a corruption of Diab): suffice it to say that they cast a clear and wholly original light upon the provenance of eight of the Gallandian histories. I can, however, promise to all “Aladdinists” a rich harvest of facts which wholly displace those hitherto assumed to be factual. But for the satisfaction of my readers I am compelled to quote the colophon of M. Zotenberg’s great “find” (vol. ii.), as it bears upon a highly important question.
“And the finishing thereof was during the first decade of Jamádi the Second, of the one thousand and one hundred and fifteenth year of the Hegirah (= A.D. 1703) by the transcription of the neediest of His slaves unto Almighty Allah, Ahmad bin Mohammed al-Tarádí, in Baghdad City: he was a Sháfi’í of school, and a Mosuli by birth, and a Baghdadi by residence, and he wrote it for his own use, and upon it he imprinted his signet. So Allah save our lord Mohammed and his Kin and Companions and assain them! Kabíkaj.”[2]
Now as this date corresponds with A.D. 1703, whereas Galland did not begin publishing until 1704–1705, the original MS. of Ahmad al-Tarádí could not have been translated or adapted from the French; and although the transcription by Mikhail Sabbagh, writing in 1805–10, may have introduced modifications borrowed from Galland, yet the scrupulous fidelity of his copy, shown by sundry marginal and other notes, lays the suspicion that changes of importance have been introduced by him. Remains now only to find the original codex of Al-Tarádí.