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ASLEEP AND AWAKE.[1]
There was once [at Baghdad], in the Khalifate of Haroun er Reshid, a man, a merchant, who had a son by name Aboulhusn el Khelia.[2] The merchant died and left his son great store of wealth, which he divided into two parts, one of which he laid up and spent of the other half; and he fell to companying with Persians[3] and with the sons of the merchants and gave himself up to good eating and good drinking, till all that he had with him of wealth[4] was wasted and gone; whereupon he betook himself to his friends and comrades and boon-companions and expounded to them his case, discovering to them the failure of that which was in his hand of wealth; but not one of them took heed of him neither inclined unto him.
- ↑ Breslau Text, vol. iv. pp. 134–189, Nights cclxxii.–ccxci. This is the story familiar to readers of the old “Arabian Nights” as “Abon Hassan, or the Sleeper Awakened” and is the only one of the eleven tales added by Galland to his version of the (incomplete) MS. of the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night procured by him from Syria, the Arabic original of which has yet been discovered. (See my “Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night,” Vol. IX. pp. 264 et seq.) The above title is of course intended to mark the contrast between the everyday (or waking) hours of Aboulhusn and his fantastic life in the Khalif’s palace, supposed by him to have passed in a dream, and may also be rendered “The Sleeper and the Waker.”
- ↑ i.e. The Wag.
- ↑ Always noted for debauchery.
- ↑ i.e. the part he had taken for spending money.
