Galland Manuscript

The three-volume Galland Manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MSS arabes 3609, 3610 and 3611), sometimes also referred to as the Syrian Manuscript, is the earliest extensive manuscript of the Thousand and One Nights (the only earlier witness being a ninth-century fragment of a mere sixteen lines). Its text extends to 282 nights, breaking off in the middle of the Tale of Qamar al-Zamān and Budūr. The dating of the manuscript has been the subject of significant debate, which has revolved, unusually, around what types of coins are mentioned in the text and what real-life coin-issues they refer to. Muhsin Mahdi, the manuscript's modern editor, thought that it was fourteenth-century, while Heinz Grotzfeld dated it to the second half of the fifteenth. It is agreed to belong to the fourteenth or fifteenth century and to originate in Syria.