It is manifest that such a mass of tales and stories was not composed at any one time, or in any one place.  Many must have floated around in drinking-rooms and in houses of revelry for a long time before they were put into one collection.  Even to this day the story of Ali Baba is current among the Bedouins in Sinai.  Whenever the digest was first made, it is certain that stories were added at a later time.  This is evident from the divergences seen in the different manuscripts, and by the additional stories collected by Payne and Burton.  But in their present form, everything points to the final redaction of the ‘Nights’ in Egypt.  Of all the cities mentioned, Cairo is described the most minutely; the manners and customs of the personae are those of Egyptian society—­say from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century.  For this we have the warrant of Mr. Lane, than whom no one is to be heard upon this subject with greater respect.  That such stories as these were popular in Egypt seems to follow from the fact that the only mention of them is found in Makrisi’s ‘Description of Cairo’ (1400) and in Abu al-Mahasin, another historian of Egypt (1470).  The collection cannot have been made later than 1548, the date placed by a reader on the manuscript used by Galland.  But that its date is not much earlier is shown by various chance references.  The mention of coffee (discovered in the fourteenth century); of cannon (first mentioned in Egypt in 1383); of the wearing of different-colored garments by Muslims, Jews, and Christians (instituted in 1301 by Muhammad ibn Kelauen); of the order of Carandaliyyah (which did not exist until the thirteenth century); of Sultani peaches (the city Sultaniyyah was founded in the middle of the thirteenth century)—­point to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as the approximate date of the final composition of the ‘Nights.’  This is supported by the mention of the office of the Sheikh al-Islam, an office not created before the year 1453.  Additions, such as the ’Story of Abu Ker and Abu Zer,’ were made as late as the sixteenth century; and tobacco, which is mentioned, was not introduced into Europe until the year 1560.  The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries are a period of the revival of letters in Egypt, which might well have induced some Arab lover of folk-lore to write down a complete copy of these tales.  The Emperor Salah-al-din (1169) is the last historical personage mentioned, and there is absolutely no trace of Shiite heresy to be found in the whole collection.  This omission would be impossible had they been gathered up at the time of the heretical Fatimide dynasty (900-1171).