Published by Good Press, 2019

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      EAN 4057664115249

Table of Contents

       Preface

       The Arabian Nights

       The Story of the Merchant and the Genius

       The Story of the First Old Man and of the Hind

       The Story of the Second Old Man, and of the Two Black Dogs

       The Story of the Fisherman

       The Story of the Greek King and the Physician Douban

       The Story of the Husband and the Parrot

       The Story of the Vizir Who Was Punished

       The Story of the Young King of the Black Isles

       The Story of the Three Calenders, Sons of Kings, and of Five Ladies of Bagdad

       The Story of the First Calender, Son of a King

       The Story of the Second Calender, Son of a King

       The Story of the Envious Man and of Him Who Was Envied

       The Story of the Third Calender, Son of a King

       The Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor

       First Voyage

       Second Voyage

       Third Voyage

       Fourth Voyage

       Fifth Voyage

       Sixth Voyage

       Seventh and Last Voyage

       The Little Hunchback

       The Story of the Barber's Fifth Brother

       The Story of the Barber's Sixth Brother

       The Adventures of Prince Camaralzaman and the Princess Badoura

       Noureddin and the Fair Persian

       Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

       The Adventures of Haroun-al-Raschid, Caliph of Bagdad

       The Story of the Blind Baba-Abdalla

       The Story of Sidi-Nouman

       The Story of Ali Colia, Merchant of Bagdad

       The Enchanted Horse

       The Story of Two Sisters Who Were Jealous of Their Younger Sister

Preface

       Table of Contents

      The stories in the Fairy Books have generally been such as old women in country places tell to their grandchildren. Nobody knows how old they are, or who told them first. The children of Ham, Shem and Japhet may have listened to them in the Ark, on wet days. Hector's little boy may have heard them in Troy Town, for it is certain that Homer knew them, and that some of them were written down in Egypt about the time of Moses.

      People in different countries tell them differently, but they are always the same stories, really, whether among little Zulus, at the Cape, or little Eskimo, near the North Pole. The changes are only in matters of manners and customs; such as wearing clothes or not, meeting lions who talk in the warm countries, or talking bears in the cold countries. There are plenty of kings and queens in the fairy tales, just because long ago there were plenty of kings in the country. A gentleman who would be a squire now was a kind of king in Scotland in very old times, and the same in other places. These old stories, never forgotten, were taken down in writing in different ages, but mostly in this century, in all sorts of languages. These ancient stories are the contents of the Fairy books.

      Now "The Arabian Nights," some of which, but not nearly all, are given in this volume, are only fairy tales of the East. The people of Asia, Arabia, and Persia told them in their own way, not for children, but for grown-up people. There were no novels then, nor any printed books, of course; but there were people whose profession it was to amuse men and women by telling tales. They dressed the fairy stories up, and made the characters good Mahommedans, living in Bagdad or India. The events were often supposed to happen in the reign of the great Caliph, or ruler of the Faithful, Haroun al Raschid, who lived in Bagdad in 786–808 A.D. The vizir who accompanies the Caliph was also a real person of the great family of the Barmecides. He was put to death by the Caliph in a very cruel way, nobody ever knew why. The stories must have been told in their present shape a good long while after the Caliph died, when nobody knew very exactly what had really happened. At last some storyteller thought of writing down the tales, and fixing them into a kind