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Lescallier, in the Preface to his translation, makes a very extraordinary statement: he says that although nothing is known regarding the authorship and date of the romance, yet the work appears to be very ancient; and remarks that there is nothing found in the book to announce the institution of Muhammadanism—the invocation of the Deity and salutation of the Prophet, at the opening of the work, he thought likely to be an interpolation of the copyists. Now the fact is, that even in his own translation allusions to the rites of Islām, if they are not of frequent occurrence, are yet sufficiently numerous to prove beyond question that the Bakhtyār Nāma, as it exists at present in Persian, has been written, or modified, by a Muslim. To cite a few instances: At page 17 of Lescallier’s volume, we find the King, when he had abandoned his child in the desert, represented as comparing his condition to that of Jacob the Hebrew patriarch when he believed that his son Joseph was dead. M. Lescallier could never suppose that the romance was written either by a Jew or a Christian; therefore this passage clearly came from a Muslim pen. At page 27 mention is made of the “hour of mid-day prayer,” one of the five times of obligatory prayer prescribed to Muslims. At page 94 (p. 52 of the present volume) the two sons of Abū Saber are represented as having said to the merchant who purchased them of the robbers: “We are free-born and Mussulmans.” At page 140 (p. 70 of this work) the cameleer and the lady reach the city “at the hour of evening prayer.” Nevertheless M. Lescallier could not find anything in the work “qui annonce l’établissement du Mahométisme!”