and consequently the others are inauspicious.  Hence as Sir Wm. Ouseley says (Travels ii. 21), the number Thousand and One is a favourite in the East (Olivier, Voyages vi. 385, Paris 1807), and quotes the Cistern of the “Thousand and One Columns” at Constantinople.  Kaempfer (Amoen, Exot. p. 38) notes of the Takiyahs or Dervishes’ convents and the Mazars or Santons’ tombs near Koniah (Iconium), “Multa seges sepulchralium quae virorum ex omni aevo doctissimorum exuvias condunt, mille et unum recenset auctor Libri qui inscribitur Hassaaer we jek mesaar (Hazar ve yek Mezar), i.e., mille et unum mausolea.”  A book, The Hazar o yek Ruz ( = 1001 Days), was composed in the mid-xviith century by the famous Dervaysh Mukhlis, Chief Sofi of Isfahan:  it was translated into French by Petis de la Croix, with a preface by Cazotte, and was englished by Ambrose Phillips.  Lastly, in India and throughout Asia where Indian influence extends, the number of cyphers not followed by a significant number is indefinite:  for instance, to determine hundreds the Hindus affix the required figure to the end and for 100 write 101; for 1000, 1001.  But the grand fact of the Hazar Afsanah is its being the archetype of The Nights, unquestionably proving that the Arab work borrows from the Persian bodily its cadre or frame-work, the principal characteristic; its exordium and its denouement, whilst the two heroines still bear the old Persic names.

Baron Silvestre de Sacy[FN#159]—­clarum et venerabile nomen—­is the chief authority for the Arab provenance of The Nights.  Apparently founding his observations upon Galland,[FN#160] he is of opinion that the work, as now known, was originally composed in Syria[FN#161] and written in the vulgar dialect; that it was never completed by the author, whether he was prevented by death or by other cause; and that imitators endeavoured to finish the work by inserting romances which were already known but which formed no part of the original recueil, such as the Travels of Sindbad the Seaman, the Book of the Seven Wazirs and others.  He accepts the Persian scheme and cadre of the work, but no more.  He contends that no considerable body of prae-Mohammedan or non-Arabic fiction appears in the actual texts[FN#162]; and that all the tales, even those dealing with events localised in Persia, India, China and other infidel lands and dated from ante-islamitic ages mostly with the naivest anachronism, confine themselves to depicting the people, manners and customs of Baghdad and Mosul, Damascus and Cairo, during the Abbaside epoch, and he makes a point of the whole being impregnated with the strongest and most zealous spirit of Mohammedanism.  He points out that the language is the popular or vulgar dialect, differing widely from the classical and literary; that it contains many words in common modern use and that generally it suggests the decadence of Arabian literature.  Of one tale he remarks:—­The History of the loves of Camaralzaman and Budour, Princess