Arabia was opened to English readers first by Sale’s translation of the ‘Kuran,’ in 1734; and by English versions of the ‘Arabian Nights’ from 1712 onward.  The latter were derived from Galland’s translation of the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ which began to appear, in French, in 1704.  Next to nothing was generally known of Oriental literature from that time until the end of the eighteenth century.  The East India Company fostered the study of the classics of the extreme Orient; and the first Napoleon opened Egypt,—­his savans marched in the centre of the invading squares.

The flagship of the English fleet which blockaded Napoleon’s army carried an Austro-German diplomatist and scholar,—­Baron von Hammer-Purgstall,—­part of whose mission was to procure a complete manuscript of the ‘Arabian Nights.’  It was then supposed that these tales were the daily food of all Turks, Arabians, and Syrians.  To the intense surprise of Von Hammer, he learned that they were never recited in the coffee-houses of Constantinople, and that they were not to be found at all outside of Egypt.

His dismay and disappointment were soon richly compensated, however, by the discovery of the Arabian romance of ‘Antar,’ the national classic, hitherto unknown in Europe, except for an enthusiastic notice which had fallen by chance into the hands of Sir William Jones.  The entire work was soon collected.  It is of interminable length in the original, being often found in thirty or forty manuscript volumes in quarto, in seventy or eighty in octavo.  Portions of it have been translated into English, German, and French.  English readers can consult it best in ‘Antar,’ a Bedouin romance, translated from the Arabic by Terrick Hamilton, in four volumes 8vo (London, 1820).  Hamilton’s translation, now rare, covers only a portion of the original; and a new translation, suitably abridged, is much needed.

The book purports to have been written more than a thousand years ago,—­in the golden prime of the Caliph Harun-al-Rashid (786-809) and of his sons and successors, Amin (809-813) and Mamun (813-834),—­by the famous As-Asmai (born 741, died about 830).  It is in fact a later compilation, probably of the twelth century. (Baron von Hammer’s MS. was engrossed in the year 1466.) Whatever the exact date may have been, it was probably not much later than A.D. 1200.  The main outlines of Antar’s life are historical.  Many particulars are derived from historic accounts of the lives of other Arabian heroes (Duraid and others) and are transferred bodily to the biography of Antar.  They date back to the sixth century.  Most of the details must be imaginary, but they are skillfully contrived by a writer who knew the life of the desert Arab at first hand.  The verses with which the volumes abound are in many cases undoubtedly Antar’s. (They are printed in italics in what follows.) In any event, the book in its present form has been the delight of all Arabians for many centuries.  Every wild Bedouin of the desert knew much of the tale by heart, and listened to its periods and to its poems with quivering interest.  His more cultivated brothers of the cities possessed one or many of its volumes.  Every coffee-house in Aleppo, Bagdad, or Constantinople had a narrator who, night after night, recited it to rapt audiences.