![\"Richard](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2019\/08\/Edward_William_Lane.jpg\")
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I\u2019m very happy to say that I own complete sets \u2014 purchased during visits to Powell\u2019s bookstore in Portland \u2014 of fairly early editions of both Sir Richard Francis Burton\u2019s and Edward William Lane\u2019s classic nineteenth-century translations of the Thousand and One Nights<\/em>. \u00a0They are, both of them, deeply flawed masterpieces by remarkable men.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Edward Lane (1801-1876) is also deservedly well known for other works,\u00a0such as his 1836 book\u00a0Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians\u00a0<\/i>and his great uncompleted\u00a0Arabic-English Lexicon<\/i>, which was published after his death (and of which I own and treasure not just one but two<\/em> different editions).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Lexicon<\/em> remains, in many respects, the greatest Arabic-English dictionary of the classical language, although its coverage from the letter nun<\/em> on is fairly sketchy. \u00a0The\u00a0W\u00f6rterbuch der Klassischen Arabischen Sprache<\/em> set out, commencing with nun<\/em> (!), to complete and ultimately to replace Lane\u2019s Lexicon<\/em>, and it will ultimately do so, I think, even if Lane\u2019s marvelous work never altogether loses its value. \u00a0But it\u2019s deeply impressive to contrast the multi-scholar effort of the W\u00f6rterbuch<\/em> with what Edward Lane was able to achieve largely by himself and without the support of modern technology. \u00a0(He was often working from manuscripts, in fact.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lane\u2019s\u00a0Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians<\/i>\u00a0<\/em>isn\u2019t about what we would call \u201cmodern\u201d Egyptians at all\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 and that, today, is what gives the book its remarkable value for us<\/em>. \u00a0The \u201cmodern Egypt\u201d described by Lane was that of the early nineteenth century, before the advent of modern communications, largely before the advent of printing in the Middle East, prior to the massive impact of European civilization, before modernity transformed the region.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lane lived in Cairo and traveled throughout the Sudan, often dressing as a Turk \u2014 the region was then under Ottoman Turkish rule \u2014 and spending day after day in mosques, coffee houses, and bazaars, conversing with the people, learning from them, taking reams of notes. \u00a0His Egypt, with its harems and dervishes and beggars and magicians and street vendors, was much closer to that of the medieval Mamluks in most regards, and thus to the world of the Nights<\/em>, than to contemporary Cairo. \u00a0So his detailed account of the now-vanished world that he was still able to see directly and with his own eyes is of irreplaceable importance.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lane published his illustrated translation of the Nights<\/em> between 1838 and 1840, with copious explanatory annotations based on the same first-hand observations from which his Manners and Customs<\/em> had drawn. \u00a0\u00a0In 1883, several years after Lane\u2019s death, his great-nephew, the orientalist Stanley Lane-Poole, published those notes as a stand-alone volume, under the title\u00a0Arabian Society in the Middle Ages.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lane\u2019s translation of the Nights<\/em> was informed by his extensive experience in Egypt, but he didn\u2019t always faithfully transmit the original Arabic. \u00a0As I\u2019ve said, many of the tales are not suited for children \u2014 and they would not have been well-received by the Victorian public. \u00a0So, a devout Christian, Lane cleaned them up. \u00a0Or, if he felt it necessary, omitted them altogether.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Posted from McCall, Idaho<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 I\u2019m very happy to say that I own complete sets \u2014 purchased during visits to Powell\u2019s bookstore in Portland \u2014 of fairly early editions of both Sir Richard Francis Burton\u2019s and Edward William Lane\u2019s classic nineteenth-century translations of the Thousand and One Nights. \u00a0They are, both of them, deeply flawed masterpieces by remarkable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n