Earliest extensive manuscript of the Thousand and One Nights
Two folios of the Galland Manuscript
The three-volumeGalland Manuscript (Paris,Bibliothèque Nationale, MSS arabes 3609, 3610 and 3611),[1] sometimes also referred to as theSyrian Manuscript, is the earliest extensive manuscript of theThousand and One Nights (the only earlier witness being a ninth-century fragment of a mere sixteen lines).[2] Its text extends to 282 nights, breaking off in the middle of theTale of Qamar al-Zamān and Budūr.[3] The dating of the manuscript has been the subject of significant debate, which has revolved, unusually, around what types of coins are mentioned in the text and what real-life coin-issues they refer to.Muhsin Mahdi, the manuscript's modern editor, thought that it was fourteenth-century, while Heinz Grotzfeld dated it to the second half of the fifteenth. It is agreed to belong to the fourteenth or fifteenth century and to originate in Syria.[4]
A direct copy of the Galland Manuscript from 1592/1593 CE is preserved in theVatican Library as the second part of the two-volume Cod. Vat. Ar. 782,[3] and has been digitised.[5] The Galland Manuscript was also the source for much of theChavis Manuscript, an attempt in the 1780s byDenis Chavis to forge a more Arabic complete manuscript of theNights, which was itself in turn influential on the development of editions and translations of theNights.[6]
The Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-layla), from the Earliest Known Sources, ed. by Muhsin Mahdi, 3 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1984-1994),ISBN9004074287
The Arabian Nights, trans. by Husain Haddawy (New York: Norton, 1990) [repr. along with selections fromThe Arabian Nights II: Sindbad and Other Popular Stories, trans. by Husain Haddawy (New York: Norton, 1995) asThe Arabian Nights: The Husain Haddawy Translation Based on the Text Edited by Muhsin Mahdi, Contexts, Criticism, ed. by Daniel Heller-Roazen (New York: Norton, 2010)]
^Nabia Abbott, "New Light on the Early History of theArabian Nights",Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 8.3 (July 1949), 133.
^ab'Manuscripts', inThe Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, ed. by Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen, and Hassan Wassouf, 2 vols (Santa Barbara (CA): ABC-Clio, 2004), I, 635-57 (p. 635).
^Heinz Grotzfeld, 'The Age of the Galland Manuscript of theNights,' inThe Arabian Nights Reader, ed. by Ulrich Marzolph (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006), 105-21,ISBN0814332595 [repr. from Heinz Grotzfeld, 'The Age of the Galland Manuscript of theNights: Numismatic Evidence for Dating a Manuscript',Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 1 (1996-97), 50-64].
^Muhsin Mahdi,The Thousand and One Nights (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 51-61;ISBN9004102043 (repr. from parts ofThe Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-layla), from the Earliest Known Sources, ed. by Muhsin Mahdi, 3 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1984-1994),ISBN9004074287).
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