Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/326

292 (A.D. 1225–1242), and state that, after his expulsion from Baghdad by the latter, he did not return till he heard he was dead and another Khalif (i.e. El Mustazim) come to the throne. The Calcutta Edition of 1814–18 is silent as to both date and reign, whilst the Boulac Edition gives the former as A.H. 763 (A.D. 1362), a time when both Baghdad and Bassora, the two cities in which the scene of the tale is laid, were in possession of the successors of Genghiz Khan, and makes the latter the (six months’) reign of the parricide El Muntesir Billah, A.H. 247–8 (A.D. 861–2). The first is an evident error, as the barber is described in as an old man past his ninetieth year and he speaks of himself in his own story as already an old man at the time of his adventure with the Khalif in question; so that, even if we suppose him to have been then sixty years old, this would only bring us back (after making some necessary allowance for the space which must have elapsed between the flight of the lame youth from Baghdad and his encounter with his persecutor at Bassora ) to (say) the year of the Hegira 743 (A.D. 1343), at earliest, or nearly a hundred years after the fall of the Khalifate. The second date is also a manifest error, as, putting aside the fact that the time covered by the story of the barber must be estimated at (at least)