1.  The Introduction (with a single incidental story “The Bull and
     the Ass").
2.  The Trader and the Jinni (with three incidentals). 3.  The Fisherman and the Jinni (with four). 4.  The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (with six). 5.  The Tale of the Three Apples. 6.  The Tale of Nur-al-Din Ali and his son Badr al-Din Hasan. 7.  The Hunchback’s Tale (with eleven incidentals). 8.  Nur al-Din and Anis al-Jalis. 9.  Tale of Ghanim bin ’Ayyub (with two incidentals). 10.  Ali bin Bakkar and Shams al-Nahar (with two). 11.  Tale of Kamar al-Zaman. 12.  The Ebony Horse; and 13.  Julnar the Seaborn.

These forty-two tales, occupying one hundred and twenty Nights, form less than a fifth part of the whole collection which in the Mac.  Edit.[FN#169] contains a total of two hundred and sixty-four Hence Dr. Patrick Russell,[FN#170] the Natural Historian of Aleppo,[FN#171] whose valuable monograph amply deserves study even in this our day, believed that the original Nights did not outnumber two hundred, to which subsequent writers added till the total of a thousand and one was made up.  Dr. Jonathan Scott,[FN#172] who quotes Russell, “held it highly probable that the tales of the original Arabian Nights did not run through more than two hundred and eighty Nights, if so many.”  So this suggestion I may subjoin, “habent sue fate libelli.”  Galland, who preserves in his Mille et une Nuits only about one fourth of The Nights, ends them in No. cclxiv[FN#173] with the seventh voyage of Sindbad:  after that he intentionally omits the dialogue between the sisters and the reckoning of time, to proceed uninterruptedly with the tales.  And so his imitator, Petis de la Croix,[FN#174] in his Mille et un Jours, reduces the thousand to two hundred and thirty-two.

The internal chronological evidence offered by the Collection is useful only in enabling us to determine that the tales were not written after a certain epoch:  the actual dates and, consequently, all deductions from them, are vitiated by the habits of the scribes.  For instance we find the Tale of the Fisherman and the Jinni (vol. i. 41) placed in A.H.  I69 = A.D. 785,[FN#175] which is hardly possible.  The immortal Barber in the “Tailor’s Tale” (vol. i. 304) places his adventure with the unfortunate lover on Safar 10, A.H. 653 ( = March 25th, 1255) and 7,320 years of the era of Alexander.[FN#176] This is supported in his Tale of Himself (vol. i. pp. 317-348), where he dates his banishment from Baghdad during the reign of the penultimate Abbaside, Al-Mustansir bi ’llah[FN#177] (A.H. 623-640 = 1225-1242), and his return to Baghdad after the accession of another Caliph who can be no other but Al-Muntasim bi ’llah (A.H. 640-656 = A.D. 1242-1258).  Again at the end of the tale (vol. i. 350) he is described as “an ancient man, past his ninetieth year” and “a very old man” in the days of Al-Mustansir (vol. i. 318); So that the Hunchback’s adventure