Here is the story "The Story of the Forty Maidens": Introduction and
Translation by Bruce Fudge.
You can find it here - Middle Eastern Literatures, 2013
Vol. 16, No. 2, 203–216, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2013.843262
Or download it here -
https://www.academia.edu/5439477/The_Story_of_the_Forty_Maidens_Introduction_and_Translation
From the story's intro:
"The story is found in the collection known as Kitāb al-ḥikāyāt al-ʿajıb̄ a wa-l-akhbār algharıb̄
a (The Book of the Wonderful Stories and Strange Reports), which is based on a
unique Istanbul manuscript (Aya Sofya 3397), first brought to orientalist attention by
Helmut Ritter and subsequently published by Hans Wehr in 1956.2 Although 42 tales
are listed, only 18 are preserved in what seems to have been the first of two volumes.
Four of these are very similar versions of tales found in the Thousand and One Nights:
‘the Barber’s Six Brothers’ (in the Ḥikāyāt as ‘Story of the Six’), ‘Jullanār of the Sea’,
‘Abū Muḥammad the Lazy’ and ‘Jubayr ibn ʿUmayr and the Lady Budūr’ (which
appears in the Ḥikāyāt as ‘ʿUmayr bin Jubayr’). As the Istanbul manuscript has been
dated to the early eighth/14th century, it is at least as old as the oldest known manuscript
of the Nights, that used by Antoine Galland and the basis of the critical edition of Muhsin
Mahdi. This makes it of particular interest for the history of the Thousand and One Nights
itself as well as Arabic narrative in general."
