The Romance of Antar

IT is generally believed that this celebrated Arabian Romance was composed, in the eighth century, from traditionary tales which had been long current in the East, by El-Asma’ee, a famous philologist and poet at the court of Haroon Er-Rasheed. Other authors and sources (for instance, Johainah and Abu Obeidah) are mentioned in the work, but these, according to Von Hammer, have been inserted by story-tellers in the coffeehouses. Lane, in his admirable work on the Modern Egyptians, remarks that the ’Ulamà (learned men) 'in general despise the romance, and ridicule the assertion that El-Asma’ee was its author': their opinion, however, on a question of this kind, is of little value.The complete work is usually bound up in forty-five volumes of various sizes—presenting a mass sufficient to appal the most indefatigable of translators; not to speak of the impossibility of finding European readers who would wade through the translation, if published. An abridged copy of this voluminous work, done by some learned Syrians (and hence called the Shamiyeh, or Syrian Antar, to distinguish it from the original, which was known as the Hijaziyeh, or Arabian Antar), having been obtained by Mr Terrick Hamilton, during his residence at Constantinople, in his capacity of Oriental Secretary to the British Embassy there, he was induced by its comparative brevity to undertake the task of translating it into English.