According to the Breslau edition of the Nights (vol. ii, p. 11), Nûr ad-Dîn ‘Alî, after his quarrel with his brother Shams ad-Dîn Muḥammad, leaves Cairo in the morning, and arrives at Bilbais at mid-day, then at
in the evening. For
Macnaghten (vol. i, p. 151) reads
; but there can be no doubt that the original reading was
, as will be shown. According to Breslau, Nûr ad-Dîn at
sleeps in the
, “ post-horse station.” Historically, a place called
appears in the Mamlûk postal service as the next station north of Bilbais on the route out of Cairo, and corresponding exactly to the
of the tale (e.g. Qalqashandî, ed. 1919, vol. xiv, p. 376); it was at as-Sa‘îdîya that two roads branched respectively to Damietta and Gazza.