Note 376 — ALI NUR AL-DIN AND MIRIAM THE GIRDLE-GIRL.[376]

I borrow the title from the Bresl. Edit. x. 204. Mr. Payne prefers “Ali Noureddin and the Frank King’s Daughter.” Lane omits also this tale because it resembles Ali Shar and Zumurrud (vol. iv. 187) and Alá al-Din Abu al-Shámát (vol. iv. 29), “neither of which is among the text of the collection.” But he has unconsciously omitted one of the highest interest. Dr. Bacher (Germ. Orient. Soc.) finds the original in Charlemagne’s daughter Emma and his secretary Eginhardt as given in Grimm’s Deutsche Sagen. I shall note the points of resemblance as the tale proceeds. The correspondence with the King of France may be a garbled account of the letters which passed between Harun al-Rashid and Nicephorus, “the Roman dog.”