In the Name of the most merciful God!

After bestowing every kind of eulogy and praise on the Creator of heaven and earth, we proceed to set forth the nature and true intent of these pages, which is this. The narrations, tales, and fables of Hazerut Nekhsheby, (the mercy of the Almighty rest upon him!) in the Tootinameh, or Tales of a Parrot, being composed in a difficult and abstruse style, Mahommed Kadery (may God amend his condition!) for the sake of distinctness and illustration, and in order to render them intelligible to all descriptions of men, has written them in familiar and easy language, so as to comprise the epistolary style and ordinary conversation befitting persons of high rank. This is one of the above-mentioned Tales.