is a sufficient voucher for the authenticity of the copy in the Bibliotheque Nationale,) contains a text essentially identical with that of Shawish.  Moreover, it is evident, from a comparison with Galland’s rendering and making allowance for the latter’s system of translation, that the Arabic version of Aladdin given him by Hanna must either have been derived from the Baghdad text or from some other practically identical source, and it is therefore probable that Shawish, having apparently been employed to make up the missing portion of Galland’s Arabic text and not having the Hanna Ms. at his command, had (with the execrable taste and want of literary morality which distinguished Cazotte’s monkish coadjutor) endeavoured to bring his available text up to what he considered the requisite standard by modernizing and Gallicizing its wording and (in particular) introducing numerous European phrases and turns of speech in imitation of the French translator.  The whole question is, of course, as yet a matter of more or less probable hypothesis, and so it must remain until further discoveries and especially until the reappearance of Galland’s missing text, which I am convinced must exist in some shape or other and cannot much longer, in the face of the revived interest awakened in the matter and the systematic process of investigation now likely to be employed, elude research.

M. Zotenberg’s publication having been confined to the text of Aladdin, I have to thank my friend Sir R. F. Burton for the loan of his Ms. copy of Zeyn Alasnam, (the Arabic text of which still remains unpublished) as transcribed by M. Houdas from the Sebbagh Ms.

Zein ul Asnam and the king of the jinn.

There [FN#21] was [once] in the city of Bassora a mighty Sultan and he was exceeding rich, but he had no child who should be his successor [FN#22] after him.  For this he grieved sore and fell to bestowing alms galore upon the poor and the needy and upon the friends [FN#23] of God and the devout, seeking their intercession with God the Most High, so He to whom belong might and majesty should of His favour vouchsafe him a son.  And God accepted his prayer, for his fostering of the poor, and answered his petition; so that one night of the nights he lay with the queen and she went from him with child.  When the Sultan knew this, he rejoiced with an exceeding joy, and as the time of her child-bearing drew nigh, he assembled all the astrologers and those who smote the sand [FN#24] and said to them, “It is my will that ye enquire concerning the child that shall be born to me this month, whether it will be male or female, and tell me what will betide it of chances and what will proceed from it.” [FN#25] So the geomancers smote their [tables of] sand and the astrologers took their altitudes [FN#26] and observed the star of the babe [un]born and said to the Sultan, “O King of the age and