It is a curious fact—­and one perhaps not very generally known—­that the Tale of Zayn al-Asnam is one of two (the other being that of Khudadad) which Galland repudiated, as having been foisted into his 8th volume without his knowledge, as he expressly asserts in the “Avertissement” to the 9th vol., promising to remove them in a second edition, which, however, he did not live to see.  I understand that M. Herrmann Zotenberg purposes showing, in his forthcoming edition of “Aladdin,” that these two histoires (including that of the Princess of Daryabar, which is interwoven with the tale of Khudadad and his Brothers) were Turkish tales translated by M. Petis de la Croix and were intended to appear in his “Mille et un Jours,” which was published, after his death, in 1710; and that, like most of the tales in that work, they were derived from the Turkish collection entitled “Al-Faraj ba’d al-Shiddah,” or Joy after Affliction.  But that Turkish story-book is said to be a translation of the Persian collection entitled “Hazar u Yek Ruz” (the Thousand and One Days), which M. Petis rendered into French.

In the preface to Petis’ work it is stated that during his residence in Persia, in 1675, he made a transcript of the “Hazar u Yek Ruz,” by permission of the author, a dervish named Mukhlis, of Isfahan.  That transcript has not, I understand, been found; but Sir William Ouseley brought a manuscript from Persia which contained a portion of the “Hazar u Yek Ruz,” and which he says ("Travels” vol. ii. p. 21, note) agreed so far with the French version.  And it does seem strange that Petis should go to the Turkish book for tales to include in his “Mille et un Jours” when he had before him a complete copy of the Persian original, and even if he did so, how came his French rendering of the tales in question into the hands of Galland’s publisher?  The tales are not found in Petis’ version, which is regularly divided into 1001 Days, and the Turkish work, judging from the titles of the eleven first tales, of which I have seen a transcript by M. Zotenberg, has a number of stories which do not occur in the Persian.[FN#375] But I think it very unlikely that the tales of Khudadad and the Princess foisted into Galland’s 8th volume, were translated from the Turkish collection.  In Galland the story of the Princess Daryabar is inserted in that of Khudadad; while in the Turkish story-book they are separate tales, the 6th recital being under the title, “Of the Vazir with the Daughter of the Prince of Daryaban,” and the 9th story is “Of the Sons of the Sovereign of Harran with Khudadad.”  This does not seem to support the assertion that these tales in Galland were derived from the Turkish versions:  and it is not to be supposed, surely, that the translator of the versions in Galland conceived the idea of fusing the two stories together?