THOC'SAND AND ONE mairr,z, more commonly called the. Arabian Enterbiinments, from the adopted in our first translation from I al land's version. A well-known collection of oriental tales, which has acquired in the west a popularity never attained by any other eastern composition. The his tory of the work has been the subject of much investigation, especially by De Sacy, Von Hammer, and our last learned translator Mr. Lane, from whom we bor row most of this article. It is the opinion of Mr. Lane that the work. in its present form. is the ramposition of a single au thor living in Egypt ; and that it was most probably "not commenced earlier than the last quarter of the 15th cent u ry of our era, and completed before the termination of the first quarter of the next century, soon after the conquest of Egypt by the Osmanlee Turks in 1517." But the origin of the tales is a much more difficult subject of inquiry. It seems to be now established (from the discover ies of De Sacy and Von Hammer) that there was an ancient Persian collection of stories, known by the name of the lie zar illztineh, (the "'Thousand Fanciful Tales,") of nnknown antiquity. but eer.
thinly older than the 9th century of out era ; that the framework of this collec tion was the same with that of the modern, namely, the story of the cruel king Sha kryar and his ingenious queen Chehrit zal ; and that this was very early trans lated into Arabic by the name of the Thousand Nights. But Mr. Lane differs from these learned orientalists in still believing that the early work was only a model ; that the greater proportion of the modern tales arc really Arabian, es pecially all those founded on the supposed adventures of the Khalif Houton and his (recut 7.1berle. a few only being dis tinctly of Persian or Indian original. THREN'ODY, a species of short, occa sional poem, composed on the occasion of the funeral of some distinguished person age.