Another manuscript of Pétis de la Croix’s Histoire Arabe de Sindabad le Marin. A possible sub-family in the fluid transmission of the story

This article presents a newly discovered manuscript containing a version of the story of the Seven Travels of Sindbād the Sailor (Ms Cleveland, Public Library, Q 385.3A P445H) that bears witness to a crucial phase of its transmission from East to West. The manuscript contains the Arabic text of the oldest version hitherto known (written in Aleppo in 1672), along with an interlinear Latin translation, and followed by an Arabic-Latin dictionary. It also includes another version of the French translation attributed to François Pétis de la Croix (1653-1713), titled Histoire Arabe de Sindabad le Marin, also preserved in Ms Munich, Bavarian State Library, cod.gall. 799. The French translation of the story of Sindbād made by Pétis de la Croix is particularly important since it dates to four years earlier (1701) when Antoine Galland (1646-1715) published his first alleged translation within the Mille et une Nuits (1705). The present article focuses on Ms Cleveland, PL and examines it in comparison with Ms Munich, cod.gall. 799 as a crucial witness of the earliest phase of the textual history of the Seven Travels of Sindbād the Sailor.