The Ninth Century Fragment

Discovered in the dry Egyptian desert just after the Second World War, this single leaf from a book, written on both sides, set the world of Nights historians ablaze!

A Ninth Century fragment of the Arabian Nights

This image is copyright. It appears here courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

You see here pages two and three (i.e. the pages containing the story).

For a close-up, please click here or on the image.

Why is this document so special?

Essentially a single leaf of a book that has been written on both sides, 242 x 130 mm; this document proved to be much more than just a pretty picture!

  1. It is the earliest known example of the Arabian Nights manuscript.
  2. It is the first dated example of the use of paper outside China.
  3. It is the earliest dated survival of a paper book in the West.

It was Nabia Abbott (1897-1981) who discovered these qualities and published her findings in The Journal of Near Eastern Studies, VIII (1949).

What does it say?

The first page (on the left side) contains the title (Kitab Hadith Alf Layla - The Book of Tales from a Thousand Nights) and reads:

"A book of tales from a Thousand Nights.
There is neither strength nor power except in God the Highest, the Mightiest."

The reverse of this page contains the beginning of the story:

"In the name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate.
NIGHT
And when it was the following night
said Dinazad, 'O my Delectable One, if you are
not asleep, relate to me the tale
which you promised me and quote striking examples of the
excellencies and shortcomings, the cunning and stupidity
the generosity and avarice, and the courage and cowardice
that are in man, instinctive or acquired
or pertaining to his distinctive characteristics
or to courtly manners, Syrian or Bedouin.'
And Shirazad related to her a tale of elegant beauty..."

From this point onward there are only discontinuous fragments of around 5 more lines.

As you can see, in this version of the very opening of the frame story there is no mention of Shahriar or Shahzaman, leaving the question as to how the frame story might have continued or what other stories might have been contained within to mere speculation.

How do we know it came from the ninth century?

All around the edge margins of the document are the scribblings of a legal witness called Ahmad ibn Mahfuz; who, according to Carla Hosein of the Oriental Institute Museum, "used the manuscript as scrap paper." She also told me that "it is thanks to the dates contained in several phrases he tried out that the piece can be securely dated to Safar, 266 AH, which is October, 879 AD."

I am indebted to Carla C. Hosein of the Chicago Oriental Institute Museum for providing me with this information.