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It may be permitted me also to note that this translation is a

natural outcome of my Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah.

Arriving at Aden in the (so called) winter of 1852, I put up with

my old and dear friend, Steinhaeuser, to whose memory this volume

is inscribed; and, when talking over Arabia and the Arabs, we at

once came to the same conclusion that, while the name of this

wondrous treasury of Moslem folk lore is familiar to almost every

English child, no general reader is aware of the valuables it

contains, nor indeed will the door open to any but Arabists.

Before parting we agreed to "collaborate" and produce a full,

complete, unvarnished, uncastrated copy of the great original, my

friend taking the prose and I the metrical part; and we

corresponded upon the subject for years. But whilst I was in the

Brazil, Steinhaeuser died suddenly of apoplexy at Berne in

Switzerland and, after the fashion of Anglo India, his valuable

MSS.