LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 8, 1854._

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Notes.

ARABIAN TALES AND THEIR SOURCES.

The Arabians have been the immediate instruments in transmitting to us
those Oriental tales, of which the conception is so brilliant, and the
character so rich and varied, and which, after having been the delight of
our childhood, never lose entirely the spell of their enchantment over our
maturer age. But while many of these tales are doubtless of Arabian origin,
it is not to be supposed that all are equally so. If we may believe the
French translator of the _Thousand and One Tales_, that publication does
not include the thirty-sixth part of the great Arabian collection, which is
not confined to books, but has been the traditional inheritance of a
numerous class, who, like the minstrels of the West, gained their
livelihood by reciting, what would interest the feelings of their hearers.
This class of Eastern story-tellers was common throughout the whole extent
of Mahomedan dominion in Turkey, Persia, and even to the extremity of
India.

The sudden rise of the Saracen empire, and its rapid transition from
barbarism to refinement, and from the deepest ignorance to the most
extensive cultivation of literature and science, is an extraordinary
phenomenon in the history of mankind. A century scarcely elapsed from the
age of Amrou, the general of Caliph Omar, who is said to have burned the
great Alexandrian library, to the period when the family of the Abbasides,
who mounted the throne of the Caliphs A.D. 750, introduced a passionate
love of art, science, and even poetry. The celebrated Haroun Al Raschid
never took a journey without at least a hundred men of science in his
train. But the most munificent patron of Arabic literature was Al Mamoun,
the seventh Caliph of the race of the Abbasides, and son of Haroun Al
Raschid. Having succeeded to the throne A.D. 813, he rendered Bagdad the
centre of literature: collecting from the subject provinces of Syria,
Armenia, and Egypt the most important books which could be discovered, as
the most precious tribute that could be rendered, and causing them to be
translated into Arabic for general use. When Al Mamoun dictated the terms
of peace to Michael, the Greek emperor, the tribute which he demanded from
him was a collection of Greek authors.

The Arabian tales had their birth after this period; and when the Arabians
had yielded to the Tartars, Turks, and Persians