The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 10 eBook

The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 10 by Richard Francis Burton

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Table of Contents

Page 1

Terminal Essay

Preliminary

The reader who has reached this terminal stage will hardly require my assurance that he has seen the mediaeval Arab at his best and, perhaps, at his worst.  In glancing over the myriad pictures of this panorama, those who can discern the soul of goodness in things evil will note the true nobility of the Moslem’s mind in the Moyen Age, and the cleanliness of his life from cradle to grave.  As a child he is devoted to his parents, fond of his comrades and respectful to his “pastors and masters,” even schoolmasters.  As a lad he prepares for manhood with a will and this training occupies him throughout youthtide:  he is a gentleman in manners without awkwardness, vulgar astonishment or mauvaise-honte.  As a man he is high-spirited and energetic, always ready to fight for his Sultan, his country and, especially, his Faith:  courteous and affable, rarely failing in temperance of mind and self-respect, self-control and self-command:  hospitable to the stranger, attached to his fellow citizens, submissive to superiors and kindly to inferiors—­if such classes exist:  Eastern despotisms have arrived nearer the idea of equality and fraternity than any republic yet invented.  As a friend he proves a model to the Damons and Pythiases:  as a lover an exemplar to Don Quijote without the noble old Caballero’s touch of eccentricity.  As a knight he is the mirror of chivalry, doing battle for the weak and debelling the strong, while ever “defending the honour of women.”  As a husband his patriarchal position causes him to be loved and fondly loved by more than one wife:  as a father affection for his children rules his life:  he is domestic in the highest degree and he finds few pleasures beyond the bosom of his family.  Lastly, his death is simple, pathetic end edifying as the life which led to it.

Considered in a higher phase, the mediaeval Moslem mind displays, like the ancient Egyptian, a most exalted moral idea, the deepest reverence for all things connected with his religion and a sublime conception of the Unity and Omnipotence of the Deity.  Noteworthy too is a proud resignation to the decrees of Fate and Fortune (Kaza wa Kadar), of Destiny and Predestination—­a feature which ennobles the low aspect of Al-Islam even in these her days of comparative degeneration and local decay.  Hence his moderation in prosperity, his fortitude in adversity, his dignity, his perfect self-dominance and, lastly, his lofty quietism which sounds the true heroic ring.  This again is softened and tempered by a simple faith in the supremacy of Love over Fear, an unbounded humanity and charity for the poor and helpless:  an unconditional forgiveness of the direst injuries ("which is the note of the noble"); a generosity and liberality which at times seem impossible and an enthusiasm for universal benevolence and beneficence which, exalting kindly deeds done to man above every form of holiness, constitute the

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“A voice divinely sweet, a voice no less
Divinely sad.”

Nor does he mourn as they mourn who have no hope:  he has an absolute conviction in future compensation; and, meanwhile, his lively poetic impulse, the poetry of ideas, not of formal verse, and his radiant innate idealism breathe a soul into the merest matter of squalid work-a-day life and awaken the sweetest harmonies of Nature epitomised in Humanity.

Such was the Moslem at a time when “the dark clouds of ignorance and superstition hung so thick on the intellectual horizon of Europe as to exclude every ray of learning that darted from the East and when all that was polite or elegant in literature was classed among the Studia Arabum"[FN#126] Nor is the shady side of the picture less notable.  Our Arab at his worst is a mere barbarian who has not forgotten the savage.  He is a model mixture of childishness and astuteness, of simplicity and cunning, concealing levity of mind under solemnity of aspect.  His stolid instinctive conservatism grovels before the tyrant rule of routine, despite that turbulent and licentious independence which ever suggests revolt against the ruler:  his mental torpidity, founded upon physical indolence, renders immediate action and all manner of exertion distasteful:  his conscious weakness shows itself in overweening arrogance and intolerance.  His crass and self-satisfied ignorance makes him glorify the most ignoble superstitions, while acts of revolting savagery are the natural results of a malignant fanaticism and a furious hatred of every creed beyond the pale of Al-Islam.

It must be confessed that these contrasts make a curious and interesting tout ensemble.

Section I
the origin of the nights.

A.—­The Birth place.

Here occur the questions, Where and When was written and to Whom do we owe a prose-poem which, like the dramatic epos of Herodotus, has no equal?

I proceed to lay before the reader a proces-verbal of the sundry pleadings already in court as concisely as is compatible with intelligibility, furnishing him with references to original authorities and warning him that a fully-detailed account would fill a volume.  Even my own reasons for decidedly taking one side and rejecting the other must be stated briefly.  And before entering upon this subject I would distribute the prose-matter of our Recueil of Folk-lore under three heads

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1.  The Apologue or Beast-fable proper, a theme which may be of any age, as it is found in the hieroglyphs and in the cuneiforms.

2.  The Fairy-tale, as for brevity we may term the stories based upon supernatural agency:  this was a favourite with olden Persia; and Mohammed, most austere and puritanical of the “Prophets,” strongly objected to it because preferred by the more sensible of his converts to the dry legends of the Talmud and the Koran, quite as fabulous without the halo and glamour of fancy.

3.  The Histories and historical anecdotes, analects, and acroamata, in which the names, when not used achronistically by the editor or copier, give unerring data for the earliest date a quo and which, by the mode of treatment, suggest the latest.

Each of these constituents will require further notice when the subject-matter of the book is discussed.  The metrical portion of The Nights may also be divided into three categories, viz.:—­

1.  The oldest and classical poetry of the Arabs, e.g. the various quotations from the “Suspended Poems.”

2.  The mediaeval, beginning with the laureates of Al-Rashid’s court, such as Al-Asma’i and Abu Nowas, and ending with Al-Hariri A.H. 446-516 = 1030-1100.

3.  The modern quotations and the pieces de circonstance by the editors or copyists of the Compilation.[FN#127]

Upon the metrical portion also further notices must be offered at the end of this Essay.

In considering the uncle derivatur of The Nights we must carefully separate subject-matter from language-manner.  The neglect of such essential difference has caused the remark, “It is not a little curious that the origin of a work which has been known to Europe and has been studied by many during nearly two centuries, should still be so mysterious, and that students have failed in all attempts to detect the secret.”  Hence also the chief authorities at once branched off into two directions.  One held the work to be practically Persian:  the other as persistently declared it to be purely Arab.

Professor Galland, in his Epistle Dedicatory to the Marquise d’O, daughter of his patron M. de Guillerague, showed his literary acumen and unfailing sagacity by deriving The Nights from India via Persia; and held that they had been reduced to their present shape by an Auteur Arabe inconnu.  This reference to India, also learnedly advocated by M. Langles, was inevitable in those days:  it had not then been proved that India owed all her literature to far older civilisations and even that her alphabet the Nagari, erroneously called Devanagari, was derived through Phoenicia and Himyar-land from Ancient Egypt.  So Europe was contented to compare The Nights with the Fables of Pilpay for upwards of a century.  At last the Pehlevi or old Iranian origin of the work found an able and strenuous advocate in Baron von Hammer-Purgstall [FN#128] who worthily continued what Galland had begun:  although a most inexact writer, he was extensively read in Oriental history and poetry.  His contention was that the book is an Arabisation of the Persian Hazar Afsanah or Thousand Tales and he proved his point.

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Von Hammer began by summoning into Court the “Herodotus of the Arabs, (Ali Abu al-Hasan) Al-Mas’udi who, in A.H. 333 (=944) about one generation before the founding of Cairo, published at Bassorah the first edition of his far-famed Muruj al-Dahab wa Ma’adin al-Jauhar, Meads of Gold and Mines of Gems.  The Styrian Orientalist[FN#129] quotes with sundry misprints[FN#130] an ampler version of a passage in Chapter lxviii., which is abbreviated in the French translation of M. C. Barbier de Meynard.[FN#131]

“And, indeed, many men well acquainted with their (Arab) histories[FN#132] opine that the stories above mentioned and other trifles were strung together by men who commended themselves to the Kings by relating them, and who found favour with their contemporaries by committing them to memory and by reciting them.  Of such fashion[FN#133] is the fashion of the books which have come down to us translated from the Persian (Farasiyah), the Indian (Hindiyah),[FN#134] and the Graeco-Roman (Rumiyah)[FN#135]:  we have noted the judgment which should be passed upon compositions of this nature.  Such is the book entituled Hazar Afsanah or The Thousand Tales, which word in Arabic signifies Khurafah (Facetioe):  it is known to the public under the name of ’[he Boot of a Thousand Nights and a Night, (Kitab Alf Laylah wa Laylah).[FN#136] This is an history of a King and his Wazir, the minister’s daughter and a slave-girl (jariyah) who are named Shirzad (lion-born) and Dinar-zad (ducat-born).[FN#137] Such also is the Tale of Farzah,[FN#138] (alii Firza), and Simas, containing details concerning the Kings and Wazirs of Hind:  the Book of Al-Sindibad[FN#139] and others of a similar stamp.”

Von Hammer adds, quoting chaps. cxvi. of Al-Mas’udi that Al-Mansur (second Abbaside A.H. 136-158 = 754-775, and grandfather of Al-Rashid) caused many translations of Greek and Latin, Syriac and Persian (Pehlevi) works to be made into Arabic, specifying the “Kalilah wa Damnah,"[FN#140] the Fables of Bidpai (Pilpay), the Logic of Aristotle, the Geography of Ptolemy and the Elements of Euclid.  Hence he concludes “L’original des Mille et une Nuits * * * selon toute vraisemblance, a ete traduit au temps du Khalife Mansur, c’est-a-dire trente ans avant le regne du Khalife Haroun al-Raschid, qui, par la suite, devait lui-meme jouer un si grand role dans ces histoires.”  He also notes that, about a century after Al-Mas’udi had mentioned the Hazar Afsanah, it was versified and probably remodelled by one “Rasti,” the Takhallus or nom de plume of a bard at the Court of Mahmud, the Ghaznevite Sultan who, after a reign of thirty-three years, ob.  A.D. 1030.[FN#141]

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Von Hammer some twelve years afterwards (Journ.  Asiat August, 1839) brought forward, in his “Note sur l’origine Persane des Mille et une Nuits,” a second and an even more important witness:  this was the famous Kitab al-Fihrist,[FN#142] or Index List of (Arabic) works, written (in A.H. 387 = 987) by Mohammed bin Is’hak al-Nadim (cup-companion or equerry), “popularly known as Ebou Yacoub el-Werrek."[FN#143] The following is an extract (p. 304) from the Eighth Discourse which consists of three arts (funun).[FN#144] “The first section on the history of the confabulatores nocturni (tellers of night tales) and the relaters of fanciful adventures, together with the names of books treating upon such subjects.  Mohammed ibn Is’hak saith:  The first who indited themes of imagination and made books of them, consigning these works to the libraries, and who ordered some of them as though related by the tongues of brute beasts, were the palaeo-Persians (and the Kings of the First Dynasty).  The Ashkanian Kings of the Third Dynasty appended others to them and they were augmented and amplified in the days of the Sassanides (the fourth and last royal house).  The Arabs also translated them into Arabic, and the loquent and eloquent polished and embellished them and wrote others resembling them.  The first work of such kind was entituled ’The Book of Hazar Afsan,’ signifying Alf Khurafah, the argument whereof was as follows.  A King of their Kings was wont, when he wedded a woman and had lain one night with her, to slay her on the next morning.  Presently he espoused a damsel of the daughters of the Kings, Shahrazad[FN#145] hight, one endowed with intellect and erudition and, whenas she lay with him, she fell to telling him tales of fancy; moreover she used to connect the story at the end of the night with that which might induce the King to preserve her alive and to ask her of its ending on the next night until a thousand nights had passed over her.  Meanwhile he cohabited with her till she was blest by boon of child of him, when she acquainted him with the device she had wrought upon him; wherefore he admired her intelligence and inclined to her and preserved her life.  That King had also a Kahramanah (nurse and duenna, not entremetteuse), hight Dinarzad (Dunyazad?), who aided the wife in this (artifice).  It is also said that this book was composed for (or, by) Humai daughter of Bahman[FN#146] and in it were included other matters.  Mohammed bin Is’hak adds:  —­And the truth is, Inshallah,[FN#147] that the first who solaced himself with hearing night-tales was Al-Iskandar (he of Macedon) and he had a number of men who used to relate to him imaginary stories and provoke him to laughter:  he, however, designed not therein merely to please himself, but that he might thereby become the more cautious and alert.  After him the Kings in like fashion made use of the book entitled ‘Hazar Afsan.’  It containeth a thousand nights, but less than two hundred night-stories, for a single history often occupied several nights.  I have seen it complete sundry times; and it is, in truth, a corrupted book of cold tales."[FN#148]

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A writer in The Athenoeum,[FN#149] objecting to Lane’s modern date for The Nights, adduces evidence to prove the greater antiquity of the work. (Abu al-Hasan) Ibn Sa’id (bin Musa al-Gharnati = of Granada) born in A.H. 615 = 1218 and ob.  Tunis A.H. 685 = 1286, left his native city and arrived at Cairo in A.H. 639 = 1241.  This Spanish poet and historian wrote Al-Muhalla bi al-Ash’ar (The Adorned with Verses), a Topography of Egypt and Africa, which is apparently now lost.  In this he quotes from Al-Kurtubi, the Cordovan;[FN#150] and he in his turn is quoted by the Arab historian of Spain, Abu al-Abbas Ahmad bin Mohammed al Makkari, in the “Windwafts of Perfume from the Branches of Andalusia the Blooming"[FN#151] (A.D. 1628-29).  Mr. Payne (x. 301) thus translates from Dr. Dozy’s published text.

“Ibn Said (may God have mercy upon him!) sets forth in his book, El Muhella bi-s-Shaar, quoting from El Curtubi the story of the building of the Houdej in the Garden of Cairo, the which was of the magnificent pleasaunces of the Fatimite Khalifs, the rare of ordinance and surpassing, to wit that the Khalif El Aamir bi-ahkam-illah[FN#152] let build it for a Bedouin woman, the love of whom had gotten the mastery of him, in the neighbourhood of the ’Chosen Garden’[FN#153] and used to resort often thereto and was slain as he went thither; and it ceased not to be a pleasuring-place for the Khalifs after him.  The folk abound in stories of the Bedouin girl and Ibn Meyyah[FN#154] of the sons of her uncle (cousin?) and what hangs thereby of the mention of El-Aamir, so that the tales told of them on this account became like unto the story of El Bettal[FN#155] and the Thousand Nights and a Night and what resembleth them.”

The same passage from Ibn Sa’id, corresponding in three MSS., occurs in the famous Khitat[FN#156] attributed to Al-Makrizi (ob.  A.D. 1444) and was thus translated from a Ms. in the British Museum by Mr. John Payne (ix. 303)

“The Khalif El-Aamir bi-ahkam-illah set apart, in the neighbourhood of the Chosen Garden, a place for his beloved the Bedouin maid (Aaliyah)[FN#157] which he named El Houdej.  Quoth Ibn Said, in the book El-Muhella bi-l-ashar, from the History of El Curtubi, concerning the traditions of the folk of the story of the Bedouin maid and Ibn Menah (Meyyah) of the sons of her uncle and what hangs thereby of the mention of the Khalif El Aamir bi-ahkam-illah, so that their traditions (or tales) upon the garden became like unto El Bettal[FN#158] and the Thousand Nights and what resembleth them.”

This evidently means either that The Nights existed in the days of Al-’Amir (xiith cent.) or that the author compared them with a work popular in his own age.  Mr. Payne attaches much importance to the discrepancy of titles, which appears to me a minor detail.  The change of names is easily explained.  Amongst the Arabs, as amongst the wild Irish, there is divinity (the proverb says luck) in odd numbers

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Baron Silvestre de Sacy[FN#159]—­clarum et venerabile nomen—­is the chief authority for the Arab provenance of The Nights.  Apparently founding his observations upon Galland,[FN#160] he is of opinion that the work, as now known, was originally composed in Syria[FN#161] and written in the vulgar dialect; that it was never completed by the author, whether he was prevented by death or by other cause; and that imitators endeavoured to finish the work by inserting romances which were already known but which formed no part of the original recueil, such as the Travels of Sindbad the Seaman, the Book of the Seven Wazirs and others.  He accepts the Persian scheme and cadre of the work, but no more.  He contends that no considerable body of prae-Mohammedan or non-Arabic fiction appears in the actual texts[FN#162]; and that all the tales, even those dealing with events localised in Persia, India, China and other infidel lands and dated from ante-islamitic ages mostly with the naivest anachronism, confine themselves to depicting the people, manners and customs of Baghdad and Mosul, Damascus and Cairo, during the Abbaside epoch, and he makes a point of the whole being impregnated with the strongest and most zealous spirit of Mohammedanism.  He points out that the language is the popular or vulgar dialect, differing widely from the classical and literary; that it contains many words in common modern use and that generally it suggests the decadence of Arabian literature.  Of one tale he remarks:—­The History of the loves of Camaralzaman and Budour, Princess

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All this, with due deference to so high an authority, is very superficial.  Granted, which nobody denies, that the archetypal Hazar Afsanah was translated from Persic into Arabic nearly a thousand years ago, it had ample time and verge enough to assume another and a foreign dress, the corpus however remaining untouched.  Under the hands of a host of editors, scribes and copyists, who have no scruples anent changing words, names and dates, abridging descriptions and attaching their own decorations, the florid and rhetorical Persian would readily be converted into the straight-forward, business-like, matter of fact Arabic.  And what easier than to islamise the old Zoroasterism, to transform Ahriman into Iblis the Shaytan, Jan bin Jan into Father Adam, and the Divs and Peris of Kayomars and the olden Guebre Kings into the Jinns and Jinniyahs of Sulayman?  Volumes are spoken by the fact that the Arab adapter did not venture to change the Persic names of the two heroines and of the royal brothers or to transfer the mise-en-scene any whither from Khorasan or outer Persia.  Where the story has not been too much worked by the literato’s pen, for instance the “Ten Wazirs” (in the Bresl.  Edit. vi.  I9I-343) which is the Guebre Bakhtiyar-namah, the names and incidents are old Iranian and with few exceptions distinctly Persian.  And at times we can detect the process of transition, e.g. when the Mazin of Khorasan[FN#163] of the Wortley Montagu Ms. becomes the Hasan of Bassorah of the Turner Macan Ms. (Mac.  Edit.).

Evidently the learned Baron had not studied such works as the Tota-kahani or Parrot-chat which, notably translated by Nakhshabi from the Sanskrit Suka-Saptati,[FN#164] has now become as orthodoxically Moslem as The Nights.  The old Hindu Rajah becomes Ahmad Sultan of Balkh, the Prince is Maymun and his wife Khujisteh.  Another instance of such radical change is the later Syriac version of Kaliliah wa Dimnah,[FN#165] old “Pilpay” converted to Christianity.  We find precisely the same process in European folk-lore; for instance the Gesta Romanorum in which, after five hundred years, the life, manners and customs of the Romans lapse into the knightly and chivalrous, the Christian and ecclesiastical developments of mediaeval Europe.  Here, therefore, I hold that the Austrian Arabist has proved his point whilst the Frenchman has failed.

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Mr. Lane, during his three years’ labour of translation, first accepted Von Hammer’s view and then came round to that of De Sacy; differing, however, in minor details, especially in the native country of The Nights.  Syria had been chosen because then the most familiar to Europeans:  the “Wife of Bath” had made three pilgrimages to Jerusalem; but few cared to visit the barbarous and dangerous Nile-Valley.  Mr. Lane, however, was an enthusiast for Egypt or rather for Cairo, the only part of it he knew; and, when he pronounces The Nights to be of purely “Arab,” that is, of Nilotic origin, his opinion is entitled to no more deference than his deriving the sub-African and negroid Fellah from Arabia, the land per excellentiam of pure and noble blood.  Other authors have wandered still further afield.  Some finding Mosul idioms in the Recueil, propose “Middlegates” for its birth-place and Mr. W. G. P. Palgrave boldly says “The original of this entertaining work appears to have been composed in Baghdad about the eleventh century; another less popular but very spirited version is probably of Tunisian authorship and somewhat later."[FN#166]

B.—­The Date.

The next point to consider is the date of The Nights in its present form; and here opinions range between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries.  Professor Galland began by placing it arbitrarily in the middle of the thirteenth.  De Sacy, who abstained from detailing reasons and who, forgetting the number of editors and scribes through whose hands it must have passed, argued only from the nature of the language and the peculiarities of style, proposed le milieu du neuvieme siecle de l’hegire ( = A.D. 1445-6) as its latest date.  Mr. Hole, who knew The Nights only through Galland’s version, had already advocated in his “Remarks” the close of the fifteenth century; and M. Caussin (de Perceval), upon the authority of a supposed note in Galland’s Ms.[FN#167] (vol. iii. fol. 20, verso), declares the compiler to have been living in A.D. 1548 and 1565.  Mr. Lane says “Not begun earlier than the last fourth of the fifteenth century nor ended before the first fourth of the sixteenth,” i.e. soon after Egypt was conquered by Selim, Sultan of the Osmanli Turks in A.D. 1517.  Lastly the learned Dr. Weil says in his far too scanty Vorwort (p. ix. 2nd Edit.):-"Das wahrscheinlichste duerfte also sein, das im 15.  Jahrhundert ein Egyptier nach altern Vorbilde Erzaehlungen fuer 1001 Naechte theils erdichtete, theils nach muendlichen Sagen, oder fruehern schriftlichen Aufzeichnungen, bearbeitete, dass er aber entweder sein Werk nicht vollendete, oder dass ein Theil desselben verloren ging, so dass das Fehlende von Andern bis ins 16.  Jahrhundert hinein durch neue Erzaehlungen ergaenzt wurde.”

But, as justly observed by Mr. Payne, the first step when enquiring into the original date of The Nights is to determine the nucleus of the Repertory by a comparison of the four printed texts and the dozen MSS. which have been collated by scholars.[FN#168] This process makes it evident that the tales common to all are the following thirteen:—­

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1.  The Introduction (with a single incidental story “The Bull and
     the Ass").
2.  The Trader and the Jinni (with three incidentals). 3.  The Fisherman and the Jinni (with four). 4.  The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (with six). 5.  The Tale of the Three Apples. 6.  The Tale of Nur-al-Din Ali and his son Badr al-Din Hasan. 7.  The Hunchback’s Tale (with eleven incidentals). 8.  Nur al-Din and Anis al-Jalis. 9.  Tale of Ghanim bin ’Ayyub (with two incidentals). 10.  Ali bin Bakkar and Shams al-Nahar (with two). 11.  Tale of Kamar al-Zaman. 12.  The Ebony Horse; and 13.  Julnar the Seaborn.

These forty-two tales, occupying one hundred and twenty Nights, form less than a fifth part of the whole collection which in the Mac.  Edit.[FN#169] contains a total of two hundred and sixty-four Hence Dr. Patrick Russell,[FN#170] the Natural Historian of Aleppo,[FN#171] whose valuable monograph amply deserves study even in this our day, believed that the original Nights did not outnumber two hundred, to which subsequent writers added till the total of a thousand and one was made up.  Dr. Jonathan Scott,[FN#172] who quotes Russell, “held it highly probable that the tales of the original Arabian Nights did not run through more than two hundred and eighty Nights, if so many.”  So this suggestion I may subjoin, “habent sue fate libelli.”  Galland, who preserves in his Mille et une Nuits only about one fourth of The Nights, ends them in No. cclxiv[FN#173] with the seventh voyage of Sindbad:  after that he intentionally omits the dialogue between the sisters and the reckoning of time, to proceed uninterruptedly with the tales.  And so his imitator, Petis de la Croix,[FN#174] in his Mille et un Jours, reduces the thousand to two hundred and thirty-two.

The internal chronological evidence offered by the Collection is useful only in enabling us to determine that the tales were not written after a certain epoch:  the actual dates and, consequently, all deductions from them, are vitiated by the habits of the scribes.  For instance we find the Tale of the Fisherman and the Jinni (vol. i. 41) placed in A.H.  I69 = A.D. 785,[FN#175] which is hardly possible.  The immortal Barber in the “Tailor’s Tale” (vol. i. 304) places his adventure with the unfortunate lover on Safar 10, A.H. 653 ( = March 25th, 1255) and 7,320 years of the era of Alexander.[FN#176] This is supported in his Tale of Himself (vol. i. pp. 317-348), where he dates his banishment from Baghdad during the reign of the penultimate Abbaside, Al-Mustansir bi ’llah[FN#177] (A.H. 623-640 = 1225-1242), and his return to Baghdad after the accession of another Caliph who can be no other but Al-Muntasim bi ’llah (A.H. 640-656 = A.D. 1242-1258).  Again at the end of the tale (vol. i. 350) he is described as “an ancient man, past his ninetieth year” and “a very old man” in the days of Al-Mustansir (vol. i. 318); So that the Hunchback’s adventure

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As little can we learn from inferences which have been drawn from the body of the book:  at most they point to its several editions or redactions.  In the Tale of the “Ensorcelled Prince” (vol. i. 77) Mr. Lane (i. 135) conjectured that the four colours of the fishes were suggested by the sumptuary laws of the Mameluke Soldan, Mohammed ibn Kala’un, “subsequently to the commencement of the eighth century of the Flight, or fourteenth of our era.”  But he forgets that the same distinction of dress was enforced by the Caliph Omar after the capture of Jerusalem in A.D. 636; that it was revived by Harun al-Rashid, a contemporary of Carolus Magnus and that it was noticed as a long standing grievance by the so-called Mandeville in A.D. 1322.  In the Tale of the Porter and the Ladies of Baghdad the “Sultani oranges” (vol. i. 83) have been connected with Sultaniyah city in Persian Irak, which was founded about the middle of the thirteenth century:  but “Sultani” may simply mean “royal,” a superior growth.  The same story makes mention (vol. i. 94) of Kalandars or religious mendicants, a term popularly corrupted, even in writing, to Karandal.[FN#179] Here again “Kalandar” may be due only to the scribes as the Bresl.  Edit. reads Sa’aluk = asker, beggar.  The Khan al-Masrur in the Nazarene Broker’s story (i. 265) was a ruin during the early ninth century A.H. = A.D. 1420; but the Bab Zuwaylah (i. 269) dates from A.D. 1087.  In the same tale occurs the Darb al-Munkari (or Munakkari) which is probably the Darb al-Munkadi of Al-Makrizi’s careful topography, the Khitat (ii. 40).  Here we learn that in his time (about A.D. 1430) the name had become obsolete, and the highway was known as Darb al-Amir Baktamir al-Ustaddar from one of two high officials who both died in the fourteenth century (circ.  A.D. 1350).  And lastly we have the Khan al-Jawali built about A.D. 1320.  In Badr al-Din Hasan (vol. i. 237) “Sahib” is given as a Wazirial title and it dates only from the end of the fourteenth century.[FN#180] In Sindbad the Seaman, there is an allusion (vol. vi. 67) to the great Hindu Kingdom, Vijayanagar of the Narasimha,[FN#181] the great power of the Deccan; but this may be due to editors or scribes as the despotism was founded only in the fourteenth century(A.D. 1320).  The Ebony Horse (vol. v. 1) apparently dates before Chaucer; and “The Sleeper and The Waker” (Bresl.  Edit. iv. 134-189) may precede Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew”:  no stress, however, can be laid

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On the other hand, a study of the vie intime in Al-Islam and of the manners and customs of the people proves that the body of the work, as it now stands, must have been written before A.D. 1400.  The Arabs use wines, ciders and barley-beer, not distilled spirits; they have no coffee or tobacco and, while familiar with small-pox (judri), they ignore syphilis.  The battles in The Nights are fought with bows and javelins, swords, spears (for infantry) and lances (for cavalry); and, whenever fire-arms are mentioned, we must suspect the scribe.  Such is the case with the Madfa’ or cannon by means of which Badr Al-Din Hasan breaches the bulwarks of the Lady of Beauty’s virginity (i. 223).  This consideration would determine the work to have been written before the fourteenth century.  We ignore the invention-date and the inventor of gunpowder, as of all old discoveries which have affected mankind at large:  all we know is that the popular ideas betray great ignorance and we are led to suspect that an explosive compound, having been discovered in the earliest ages of human society, was utilised by steps so gradual that history has neglected to trace the series.  According to Demmin[FN#183], bullets for stuffing with some incendiary composition, in fact bombs, were discovered by Dr. Keller in the Palafites or Crannogs of Switzerland; and the Hindu’s Agni-Astar ("fire-weapon"), Agni-ban ("fire-arrow”) and Shatagni ("hundred-killer"), like the Roman Phalarica, and the Greek fire of Byzantium, suggest explosives.  Indeed, Dr. Oppert[FN#184] accepts the statement of Flavius Philostratus that when Appolonius of Tyana, that grand semi-mythical figure, was travelling in India, he learned the reason why Alexander of Macedon desisted from attacking the Oxydracae who live between the Ganges and the Hyphasis (Satadru or Sutledge):- “These holy men, beloved by the gods, overthrow their enemies with tempests and thunderbolts shot from their walls.”  Passing over the Arab sieges of Constantinople (A.D. 668) and Meccah (A.D. 690) and the disputed passage in Firishtah touching the Tufang or musket during the reign of Mahmud the Ghaznevite[FN#185] (ob.  A.D. 1030), we come to the days of Alphonso the Valiant, whose long and short guns, used at the Siege of Madrid in A.D. 1084, are preserved in the Armeria Real.  Viardot has noted that the African Arabs first employed cannon in A.D. 1200, and that the Maghribis defended Algeciras near Gibraltar with great guns in A. D. 1247, and utilised them to besiege Seville in A.D. 1342.  This last feat of arms introduced the cannon into barbarous Northern Europe, and it must have been known to civilised Asia for many a decade before that date.

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The mention of wine in The Nights, especially the Nabiz or fermented infusion of raisins well known to the prae-Mohammeden Badawis, perpetually recurs.  As a rule, except only in the case of holy personages and mostly of the Caliph Al-Rashid, the “service of wine” appears immediately after the hands are washed; and women, as well as men, drink, like true Orientals, for the honest purpose of getting drunk-la recherche de l’ideal, as the process has been called.  Yet distillation became well known in the fourteenth century.  Amongst the Greeks and Romans it was confined to manufacturing aromatic waters, and Nicander the poet (B.C. 140) used for a still the term , like the Irish “pot” and its produce “poteen.”  The simple art of converting salt water into fresh, by boiling the former and passing the steam through a cooled pipe into a recipient, would not have escaped the students of the Philosopher’s “stone;” and thus we find throughout Europe the Arabic modifications of Greek terms Alchemy, Alembic (Al- ), Chemistry and Elixir; while “Alcohol” (Al-Kohl), originally meaning “extreme tenuity or impalpable state of pulverulent substances,” clearly shows the origin of the article.  Avicenna, who died in A.H. 428 = 1036, nearly two hundred years before we read of distillation in Europe, compared the human body with an alembic, the belly being the cucurbit and the head the capital:-he forgot one important difference but n’importe.  Spirits of wine were first noticed in the xiiith century, when the Arabs had overrun the Western Mediterranean, by Arnaldus de Villa Nova, who dubs the new invention a universal panacea; and his pupil, Raymond Lully (nat.  Majorca A.D. 1236), declared this essence of wine to be a boon from the Deity.  Now The Nights, even in the latest adjuncts, never allude to the “white coffee” of the “respectable” Moslem, the Raki (raisin-brandy) or Ma-hayat (aqua-vitae) of the modern Mohametan:  the drinkers confine themselves to wine like our contemporary Dalmatians, one of the healthiest and the most vigorous of seafaring races in Europe.

Syphilis also, which at the end of the xvth century began to infect Europe, is ignored by The Nights.  I do not say it actually began:  diseases do not begin except with the dawn of humanity; and their history, as far as we know, is simple enough.  They are at first sporadic and comparatively non-lethal:  at certain epochs which we can determine, and for reasons which as yet we cannot, they break out into epidemics raging with frightful violence:  they then subside into the endemic state and lastly they return to the milder sporadic form.  For instance, “English cholera” was known of old:  in 1831 (Oct. 26) the Asiatic type took its place and now, after sundry violent epidemics, the disease is becoming endemic on the Northern seaboard of the Mediterranean, notably in Spain and Italy.  So small-pox (Al-judri, vol. i. 256) passed over from Central Africa to Arabia in the year of Mohammed’s

Page 14

Page 15

The Nights, I have said, belongs to the days before coffee (A.D. 1550) and tobacco (A.D. 1650) had overspread the East.  The former, which derives its name from the Kafa or Kaffa province, lying south of Abyssinia proper and peopled by the Sidama Gallas, was introduced to Mokha of Al-Yaman in A.D. 1429-30 by the Shaykh al-Shazili who lies buried there, and found a congenial name in the Arabic Kahwah=old wine.[FN#191] In The Nights (Mac.  Edit.) it is mentioned twelve times[FN#192]; but never in the earlier tales:  except in the case of Kamar al-Zaman ii. it evidently does not belong to the epoch and we may fairly suspect the scribe.  In the xvith century coffee began to take the place of wine in the nearer East; and it gradually ousted the classical drink from daily life and from folk-tales.

It is the same with tobacco, which is mentioned only once by The Nights (cmxxxi.), in conjunction with meat, vegetables and fruit and where it is called “Tabah.”  Lane (iii. 615) holds it to be the work of a copyist; but in the same tale of Abu Kir and Abu Sir, sherbet and coffee appear to have become en vogue, in fact to have gained the ground they now hold.  The result of Lord Macartney’s Mission to China was a suggestion that smoking might have originated spontaneously in the Old World.[FN#193] This is un-doubtedly true.  The Bushmen and other wild tribes of Southern Africa threw their Dakha (cannabis indica) on the fire and sat round it inhaling the intoxicating fumes.  Smoking without tobacco was easy enough.  The North American Indians of the Great Red Pipe Stone Quarry and those who lived above the line where nicotiana grew, used the kinni-kinik or bark of the red willow and some seven other succedanea.[FN#194] But tobacco proper, which soon superseded all materials except hemp and opium, was first adopted by the Spaniards of Santo Domingo in A.D. 1496 and reached England in 1565.  Hence the word, which, amongst the so-called Red Men, denoted the pipe, the container, not the contained, spread over the Old World as a generic term with additions, like ’’Tutun,’’[FN#195] for special varieties.  The change in English manners brought about by the cigar after dinner has already been noticed; and much of the modified sobriety of the present day may be attributed to the influence of the Holy Herb en cigarette.  Such, we know from history was its effect amongst Moslems; and the normal wine-parties of The Nights suggest that the pipe was unknown even when the latest tales were written.

C.

We know absolutely nothing of the author or authors who produced our marvellous Recueil.  Galland justly observes (Epist.  Dedic.), “probably this great work is not by a single hand; for how can we suppose that one man alone could own a fancy fertile enough to invent so many ingenious fictions?” Mr. Lane, and Mr. Lane alone, opined that the work was written in Egypt by one person or at most by two, one ending what the other had begun, and that he or

Page 16

Moreover, the style of the several Tales, which will be considered in a future page (Section iii.), so far from being homogeneous is heterogeneous in the extreme.  Different nationalities show them selves; West Africa, Egypt and Syria are all represented and, while some authors are intimately familiar with Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, others are equally ignorant.  All copies, written and printed, absolutely differ in the last tales and a measure of the divergence can be obtained by comparing the Bresl.  Edit. with the Mac. text:  indeed it is my conviction that the MSS. preserved in Europe would add sundry volumes full of tales to those hitherto translated; and here the Wortley Montagu copy can be taken as a test.  We may, I believe, safely compare the history of The Nights with the so-called Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, a collection of immortal ballads and old Epic formulae and verses traditionally handed down from rhapsode to rhapsode, incorporated in a slowly-increasing body of poetry and finally welded together about the age of Pericles.

To conclude.  From the data above given I hold myself justified in drawing the following deductions:—­

1.  The framework of the book is purely Persian perfunctorily arabised; the archetype being the Hazar Afsanah.[FN#196]

2.  The oldest tales, such as Sindibad (the Seven Wazirs) and King Jili’ad, may date from the reign of Al-Mansur, eighth century A.D.

3.  The thirteen tales mentioned above (p. 78) as the nucleus of the Repertory, together with “Dalilah the Crafty,"[FN#197] may be placed in our tenth century.

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4.  The latest tales, notably Kamar al-Zaman the Second and Ma’aruf the Cobbler, are as late as the sixteenth century.

5.  The work assumed its present form in the thirteenth century.

6.  The author is unknown for the best reason; there never was one:  for information touching the editors and copyists we must await the fortunate discovery of some MSS.

Section ii. 
The nights in Europe.

The history of The Nights in Europe is one of slow and gradual development.  The process was begun (1704-17) by Galland, a Frenchman, continued (1823) by Von Hammer an Austro-German, and finished by Mr. John Payne (1882-84) an Englishman.  But we must not forget that it is wholly and solely to the genius of the Gaul that Europe owes “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments” over which Western childhood and youth have spent so many spelling hours.  Antoine Galland was the first to discover the marvellous fund of material for the story-teller buried in the Oriental mine; and he had in a high degree that art of telling a tale which is far more captivating than culture or scholarship.  Hence his delightful version (or perversion) became one of the world’s classics and at once made Sheherazade and Dinarzarde, Haroun Alraschid, the Calendars and a host of other personages as familiar to the home reader as Prospero, Robinson Crusoe, Lemuel Gulliver and Dr. Primrose.  Without the name and fame won for the work by the brilliant paraphrase of the learned and single-minded Frenchman, Lane’s curious hash and latinized English, at once turgid and emasculated, would have found few readers.  Mr. Payne’s admirable version appeals to the Orientalist and the “stylist,” not to the many-headed; and mine to the anthropologist and student of Eastern manners and customs.  Galland did it and alone he did it:  his fine literary flaire, his pleasing style, his polished taste and perfect tact at once made his work take high rank in the republic of letters nor will the immortal fragment ever be superseded in the infallible judgment of childhood.  As the Encyclopaedia Britannica has been pleased to ignore this excellent man and admirable Orientalist, numismatologist and litterateur, the reader may not be unwilling to see a short sketch of his biography.[FN#198]

Antoine Galland was born in A.D. 1646 of peasant parents “poor and honest” at Rollot, a little bourg in Picardy some two leagues from Montdidier.  He was a seventh child and his mother, left a widow in early life and compelled to earn her livelihood, saw scant chance of educating him when the kindly assistance of a Canon of the Cathedral and President of the College de Noyon relieved her difficulties.  In this establishment Galland studied Greek and Hebrew for ten years, after which the “strait thing at home” apprenticed him to a trade.  But he was made for letters; he hated manual labour and he presently removed en cachette to Paris, where he

Page 18

In Syria Galland was unable to buy a copy of The Nights:  as he expressly states in his Epistle Dedicatory, il a fallu le faire venir de Syrie.  But he prepared himself for translating it by studying the manners and customs, the religion and superstitions of the people; and in 1675, leaving his chief, who was ordered back to Stambul, he returned to France.  In Paris his numismatic fame recommended him to mm.  Vaillant, Carcary and Giraud who strongly urged a second visit to the Levant, for the purpose of collecting, and he set out without delay.  In 1691 he made a third journey, travelling at the expense of the Compagnie des Indes-Orientales, with the main object of making purchases for the Library and Museum of Colbert the magnificent.  The commission ended eighteen months afterwards with the changes of the Company, when Colbert and the Marquis de Louvois caused him to be created “Antiquary to the King,” Louis le Grand, and charged him with collecting coins and medals for the royal cabinet.  As he was about to leave Smyrna, he had a narrow escape from the earthquake and subsequent fire which destroyed some fifteen thousand of the inhabitants:  he was buried in the ruins; but, his kitchen being cold as becomes a philosopher’s, he was dug out unburnt.[FN#201]

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Galland again returned to Paris where his familiarity with Arabic and Hebrew, Persian and Turkish recommended him to mm.  Thevenot and Bignon:  this first President of the Grand Council acknowledged his services by a pension.  He also became a favourite with D’Herbelot whose Bibliotheque Orientale, left unfinished at his death, he had the honour of completing and prefacing.[FN#202] President Bignon died within the twelvemonth, which made Galland attach himself in 1697 to M. Foucault, Councillor of State and Intendant (governor) of Caen in Lower Normandy, then famous for its academy:  in his new patron’s fine library and numismatic collection he found materials for a long succession of works, including a translation of the Koran.[FN#203] They recommended him strongly to the literary world and in 1701 he was made a member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres.

At Caen Galland issued in 1704,[FN#204] the first part of his Mille et une Nuits, Contes Arabes traduits en Francois which at once became famous as “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.”  Mutilated, fragmentary and paraphrastic though the tales were, the glamour of imagination, the marvel of the miracles and the gorgeousness and magnificence of the scenery at once secured an exceptional success; it was a revelation in romance, and the public recognised that it stood in presence of a monumental literary work.  France was a-fire with delight at a something so new, so unconventional, so entirely without purpose, religious, moral or philosophical:  the Oriental wanderer in his stately robes was a startling surprise to the easy-going and utterly corrupt Europe of the ancien regime with its indecently tight garments and perfectly loose morals.  “Ils produisirent,” said Charles Nodier, a genius in his way, “des le moment de leur publication, cet effet qui assure aux productions de l’esprit une vogue populaire, quoiqu’ils appartinssent a une litterature peu connue en France; et que ce genre de composition admit ou plutot exigeat des details de moeurs, de caractere, de costume et de localites absolument etrangers a toutes les idees etablies dans nos contes et nos romans.  On fut etonne du charme que resultait du leur lecture.  C’est que la verite des sentimens, la nouveaute des tableaux, une imagination feconde en prodiges, un coloris plein de chaleur, l’attrait d’une sensibilite sans pretention, et le sel d’un comique sans caricature, c’est que l’esprit et le naturel enfin plaisent partout, et plaisent a tout le monde."[FN#205]

The Contes Arabes at once made Galland’s name and a popular tale is told of them and him known to all reviewers who, however, mostly mangle it.  In the Biographie Universelle of Michaud[FN#206] we find:—­Dans les deux premiers volumes de ces contes l’exorde etait toujours, “Ma chere soeur, si vous ne dormez pas, faites-nous un de ces contes que vous savez.”  Quelques jeunes gens, ennuyes de cette plate uniformite, allerent une nuit qu’il faisait tres-grand froid, frapper

Page 20

The Nights was at once translated from the French[FN#207] though when, where and by whom no authority seems to know.  In Lowndes’ “Bibliographer’s Manual” the English Editio Princeps is thus noticed, “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments translated from the French, London, 1724, 12mo, 6 vols.” and a footnote states that this translation, very inaccurate and vulgar in its diction, was often reprinted.  In 1712 Addison introduced into the Spectator (No. 535, Nov. 13) the Story of Alnaschar ( = Al-Nashshar, the Sawyer) and says that his remarks on Hope “may serve as a moral to an Arabian tale which I find translated into French by Monsieur Galland.”  His version appears, from the tone and style, to have been made by himself, and yet in that year a second English edition had appeared.  The nearest approach to the Edit.  Princeps in the British Museum[FN#208] is a set of six volumes bound in three and corresponding with Galland’s first half dozen.  Tomes i. and ii. are from the fourth edition of 1713, Nos. iii. and iv. are from the second of 1712 and v. and vi. are from the third of 1715.  It is conjectured that the two first volumes were reprinted several times apart from their subsequents, as was the fashion of the day; but all is mystery.  We (my friends and I) have turned over scores of books in the British Museum, the University Library and the Advocates’ Libraries of Edinburgh and Glasgow:  I have been permitted to put the question in “Notes and Queries” and in the “Antiquary”; but all our researches hitherto have been in vain.

The popularity of The Nights in England must have rivalled their vogue in France, judging from the fact that in 1713, or nine years after Galland’s Edit.  Prin. appeared, they had already reached a fourth issue.  Even the ignoble national jealousy which prompted Sir William Jones grossly to abuse that valiant scholar, Auquetil du Perron, could not mar their popularity.  But as there are men who cannot read Pickwick, so they were not wanting who spoke of “Dreams of the distempered fancy of the East."[FN#209] “When the work was first published in England,” says Henry Webber,[FN#210] “it seems to have made a considerable impression upon the public.”  Pope in 1720 sent two volumes (French? or English?) to Bishop Atterbury, without making any remark on the work; but, from his very silence, it may be presumed that he was not displeased with the perusal.  The bishop, who does not appear

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The only fault found in France with the Contes Arabes was that their style is peu correcte; in fact they want classicism.  Yet all Gallic imitators, Trebutien included, have carefully copied their leader and Charles Nodier remarks:—­“Il me semble que l’on n’a pas rendu assez de justice au style de Galland.  Abondant sans etre prolixe, naturel et familier sans etre lache ni trivial, il ne manque jamais de cette elegance qui resulte de la facilite, et qui presente je ne sais quel melange de la naivete de Perrault et de la bonhomie de La Fontaine.”

Our Professor, with a name now thoroughly established, returned in 1706 to Paris, where he was an assiduous and efficient member of the Societe Numismatique and corresponded largely with foreign Orientalists.  Three years afterwards he was made Professor of Arabic at the College de France, succeeding Pierre Dippy; and, during the next half decade, he devoted himself to publishing his valuable studies.  Then the end came.  In his last illness, an attack of asthma complicated with pectoral mischief, he sent to Noyon for his nephew Julien Galland[FN#212] to assist him in ordering his MSS. and in making his will after the simplest military fashion:  he bequeathed his writings to the Bibliotheque du Roi, his Numismatic Dictionary to the Academy and his Alcoran to the Abbe Bignon.  He died, aged sixty-nine on February 17, 1715, leaving his second part of The Nights unpublished.[FN#213]

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Professor Galland was a French litterateur of the good old school which is rapidly becoming extinct.  Homme vrai dans les moindres choses (as his Eloge stated); simple in life and manners and single-hearted in his devotion to letters, he was almost childish in worldly matters, while notable for penetration and acumen in his studies.  He would have been as happy, one of his biographers remarks, in teaching children the elements of education as he was in acquiring his immense erudition.  Briefly, truth and honesty, exactitude and indefatigable industry characterised his most honourable career.

Galland informs us (Epist.  Ded.) that his Ms. consisted of four volumes, only three of which are extant,[FN#214] bringing the work down to Night cclxxxii., or about the beginning of “Camaralzaman.”  The missing portion, if it contained like the other volumes 140 pages, would end that tale together with the Stories of Ghanim and the Enchanted (Ebony) Horse; and such is the disposition in the Bresl.  Edit. which mostly favours in its ordinance the text used by the first translator.  But this would hardly have filled more than two-thirds of his volumes; for the other third he interpolated, or is supposed to have interpolated, the ten[FN#215] following tales.

1.  Histoire du prince Zeyn Al-asnam et du Roi des Genies.[FN#216] 2.  Histoire de Codadad et de ses freres. 3.  Histoire de la Lampe merveilleuse (Aladdin). 4.  Histoire de l’aveugle Baba Abdalla. 5.  Histoire de Sidi Nouman. 6.  Histoire de Cogia Hassan Alhabbal. 7.  Histoire d’Ali Baba, et de Quarante Voleurs extermines par une Esclave. 8.  Histoire d’Ali Cogia, marchand de Bagdad. 9.  Histoire du prince Ahmed et de la fee Peri-Banou. 10.  Histoire de deux Soeurs jalouses de leur Cadette.[FN#217]

Concerning these interpolations which contain two of the best and most widely known stories in the work, Aladdin and the Forty Thieves, conjectures have been manifold but they mostly run upon three lines.  De Sacy held that they were found by Galland in the public libraries of Paris.  Mr. Chenery, whose acquaintance with Arabic grammar was ample, suggested that the Professor had borrowed them from the recitations of the Rawis, rhapsodists or professional story-tellers in the bazars of Smyrna and other ports of the Levant.  The late Mr. Henry Charles Coote (in the “Folk-Lore Record,” vol. iii.  Part ii. p. 178 et seq.), “On the source of some of M. Galland’s Tales,” quotes from popular Italian, Sicilian and Romaic stories incidents identical with those in Prince Ahmad, Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Envious Sisters, suggesting that the Frenchman had heard these paramythia in Levantine coffee-houses and had inserted them into his unequalled corpus fabularum.  Mr. Payne (ix. 268) conjectures the probability “of their having been composed at a comparatively recent period by an inhabitant of Baghdad, in imitation of the legends of Haroun er Rashid and other well-known

Page 23

As regards Aladdin, the most popular tale of the whole work, I am convinced that it is genuine, although my unfortunate friend, the late Professor Palmer, doubted its being an Eastern story.  It is laid down upon all the lines of Oriental fiction.  The mise-en-scene is China, “where they drink a certain warm liquor” (tea); the hero’s father is a poor tailor; and, as in “Judar and his Brethren,” the Maghribi Magician presently makes his appearance, introducing the Wonderful Lamp and the Magical Ring.  Even the Sorcerer’s cry, “New lamps for old lamps !”—­a prime point—­is paralleled in the Tale of the Fisherman’s Son,[FN#218] where the Jew asks in exchange only old rings and the Princess, recollecting that her husband kept a shabby, well-worn ring in his writing-stand, and he being asleep, took it out and sent it to the man.  In either tale the palace is transported to a distance and both end with the death of the wicked magician and the hero and heroine living happily together ever after.

All Arabists have remarked the sins of omission and commission, of abridgment, amplification and substitution, and the audacious distortion of fact and phrase in which Galland freely indulged, whilst his knowledge of Eastern languages proves that he knew better.  But literary license was the order of his day and at that time French, always the most begueule of European languages, was bound by a rigorisme of the narrowest and the straightest of lines from which the least ecart condemned a man as a barbarian and a tudesque.  If we consider Galland fairly we shall find that he errs mostly for a purpose, that of popularising his work; and his success indeed justified his means.  He has been derided (by scholars) for “He Monsieur!” and “Ah Madame!”; but he could not write “O mon sieur” and “O ma dame;” although we can borrow from biblical and Shakespearean English, “O my lord!” and “O my lady!” “Bon Dieu! ma soeur” (which our translators English by “O heavens,” Night xx.) is good French for Wa’llahi—­by Allah; and “cinquante cavaliers bien faits” ("fifty handsome gentlemen on horseback”) is a more familiar picture than fifty knights.  “L’officieuse Dinarzade” (Night lxi.), and “Cette plaisante querelle des deux freres” (Night 1xxii.) become ridiculous only in translation—­“the officious Dinarzade” and “this pleasant quarrel;” while “ce qu’il y de remarquable”

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The list of absolute mistakes, not including violent liberties, can hardly be held excessive.  Professor Weil and Mr. Payne (ix. 271) justly charge Galland with making the Trader (Night i.) throw away the shells (ecorces) of the date which has only a pellicle, as Galland certainly knew; but dates were not seen every day in France, while almonds and walnuts were of the quatre mendiants.  He preserves the ecorces, which later issues have changed to noyaux, probably in allusion to the jerking practice called Inwa.  Again in the “First Shaykh’s Story” (vol. i. 27) the “maillet” is mentioned as the means of slaughtering cattle, because familiar to European readers:  at the end of the tale it becomes “le couteaufuneste.”  In Badral Din a “tarte a la creme,” so well known to the West, displaces, naturally enough, the outlandish “mess of pomegranate-seeds.”  Though the text especially tells us the hero removed his bag-trousers (not only “son habit”) and placed them under the pillow, a crucial fact in the history, our Professor sends him to bed fully dressed, apparently for the purpose of informing his readers in a foot-note that Easterns “se couchent en calecon” (Night lxxx.).  It was mere ignorance to confound the arbalete or cross-bow with the stone-bow (Night xxxviii.), but this has universally been done, even by Lane who ought to have known better; and it was an unpardonable carelessness or something worse to turn Nar (fire) and Dun (in lieu of) into “le faux dieu Nardoun” (Night lxv.):  as this has been untouched by De Sacy, I cannot but conclude

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Fitnah[FN#219] is by no means “Force de coeurs.”  Lastly the denouement of The Nights is widely different in French and in Arabic; but that is probably not Galland’s fault, as he never saw the original, and indeed he deserves high praise for having invented so pleasant and sympathetic a close, inferior only to the Oriental device.[FN#220]

Galland’s fragment has a strange effect upon the Orientalist and those who take the scholastic view, be it wide or narrow.  De Sacy does not hesitate to say that the work owes much to his fellow-countryman’s hand; but I judge otherwise:  it is necessary to dissociate the two works and to regard Galland’s paraphrase, which contains only a quarter of The Thousand Nights and a Night, as a wholly different book.  Its attempts to amplify beauties and to correct or conceal the defects and the grotesqueness of the original, absolutely suppress much of the local colour, clothing the bare body in the best of Parisian suits.  It ignores the rhymed prose and excludes the verse, rarely and very rarely rendering a few lines in a balanced style.  It generally rejects the proverbs,

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The Nights has been translated into every far-extending Eastern tongue, Persian, Turkish and Hindostani.  The latter entitles them Hikayat al-Jalilah or Noble Tales, and the translation was made by Munshi Shams al-Din Ahmad for the use of the College of Fort George in A.H. 1252 = 1836.[FN#221] All these versions are direct from the Arabic:  my search for a translation of Galland into any Eastern tongue has hitherto been fruitless.

I was assured by the late Bertholdy Seemann that the “language of Hoffmann and Heine” contained a literal and complete translation of The Nights; but personal enquiries at Leipzig and elsewhere convinced me that the work still remains to be done.  The first attempt to improve upon Galland and to show the world what the work really is was made by Dr. Max Habicht and was printed at Breslau (1824-25), in fifteen small square volumes.[FN#222] Thus it appeared before the “Tunis Manuscript"[FN#223] of which it purports to be a translation.  The German version is, if possible, more condemnable than the Arabic original.  It lacks every charm of style; it conscientiously shirks every difficulty; it abounds in the most extraordinary blunders and it is utterly useless as a picture of manners or a book of reference.  We can explain its laches only by the theory that the eminent Professor left the labour to his collaborateurs and did not take the trouble to revise their careless work.

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The next German translation was by Aulic Councillor J. von Hammer-Purgstallt who, during his short stay at Cairo and Constantinople, turned into French the tales neglected by Galland.  After some difference with M. Caussin (de Perceval) in 1810, the Styrian Orientalist entrusted his Ms. to Herr Cotta the publisher of Tubingen.  Thus a German version appeared, the translation of a translation, at the hand of Professor Zinserling,[FN#224] while the French version was unaccountably lost en route to London.  Finally the “Contes inedits,” etc., appeared in a French translation by G. S. Trebutien (Paris, mdcccxxviii.).  Von Hammer took liberties with the text which can compare only with those of Lane:  he abridged and retrenched till the likeness in places entirely disappeared; he shirked some difficult passages and he misexplained others.  In fact the work did no honour to the amiable and laborious historian of the Turks.

The only good German translation of The Nights is due to Dr. Gustav Weil who, born on April 24, 1808, is still (1886) professing at Heidelburg.[FN#225] His originals (he tells us) were the Breslau Edition, the Bulak text of Abd al-Rahman al-Safati and a Ms. in the library of Saxe Gotha.  The venerable savant, who has rendered such service to Arabism, informs me that Aug.  Lewald’s “Vorhalle” (pp. i.-xv.)[FN#226] was written without his knowledge.  Dr. Weil neglects the division of days which enables him to introduce any number of tales:  for instance, Galland’s eleven occupy a large part of vol. iii.  The Vorwort wants development, the notes, confined to a few words, are inadequate and verse is everywhere rendered by prose, the Saj’a or assonance being wholly ignored.  On the other hand the scholar shows himself by a correct translation, contrasting strongly with those which preceded him, and by a strictly literal version, save where the treatment required to be modified in a book intended for the public.  Under such circumstances it cannot well be other than longsome and monotonous reading.

Although Spain and Italy have produced many and remarkable Orientalists, I cannot find that they have taken the trouble to translate The Nights for themselves:  cheap and gaudy versions of Galland seem to have satisfied the public.[FN#227] Notes on the Romaic, Icelandic, Russian (?) and other versions, will be found in a future page.

Professor Galland has never been forgotten in France where, amongst a host of editions, four have claims to distinction;[FN#228] and his success did not fail to create a host of imitators and to attract what De Sacy justly terms “une prodigieuse importation de marchandise de contrabande.”  As early as 1823 Von Hammer numbered seven in France (Trebutien, Preface xviii.) and during later years they have grown prodigiously.  Mr. William F. Kirby, who has made a special study of the subject, has favoured me with detailed bibliographical notes on Galland’s imitators which are printed in Appendix No.  II.

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Section iii. 
The matter and the manner of the nights.

A.—­The Matter.

Returning to my threefold distribution of this Prose Poem (Section Section I) into Fable, Fairy Tale and historical Anecdote[FN#229], let me proceed to consider these sections more carefully.

The Apologue or Beast-fable, which apparently antedates all other subjects in The Nights, has been called “One of the earliest creations of the awakening consciousness of mankind.”  I should regard it, despite a monumental antiquity, as the offspring of a comparatively civilised age, when a jealous despotism or a powerful oligarchy threw difficulties and dangers in the way of speaking “plain truths.”  A hint can be given and a friend or foe can be lauded or abused as Belins the sheep or Isengrim the wolf when the Author is debarred the higher enjoyment of praising them or dispraising them by name.  And, as the purposes of fables are twofold—­

          Duplex libelli dos est:  quod risum movet,
          Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet—­

The speaking of brute beasts would give a piquancy and a pleasantry to moral design as well as to social and political satire.

The literary origin of the fable is not Buddhistic:  we must especially shun that “Indo-Germanic” school which goes to India for its origins, when Pythagoras, Solon, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle and possibly Homer sat for instruction at the feet of the Hir-seshtha, the learned grammarians of the pharaohnic court.  Nor was it AEsopic, evidently AEsop inherited the hoarded wealth of ages.  As Professor Lepsius taught us, “In the olden times within the memory of man, we know only of one advanced culture; of only one mode of writing, and of only one literary development, viz. those of Egypt.”  The invention of an alphabet, as opposed to a syllabary, unknown to Babylonia, to Assyria and to that extreme bourne of their civilising influence, China, would for ever fix their literature—­poetry, history and criticism,[FN#230] the apologue and the anecdote.  To mention no others The Lion and the Mouse appears in a Leyden papyrus dating from B.C 1200-1166 the days of Rameses iii. (Rhampsinitus) or Hak On, not as a rude and early attempt, but in a finished form, postulating an ancient origin and illustrious ancestry.  The dialogue also is brought to perfection in the discourse between the Jackal Koufi and the Ethiopian Cat (Revue Egyptologique ivme. annee Part i.).  Africa therefore was the home of the Beast-fable not as Professor Mahaffy thinks, because it was the chosen land of animal worship, where

Oppida tote canem venerantur nemo Dianam;[FN#231]

but simply because the Nile-land originated every form of literature between Fabliau and Epos.

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From Kemi the Black-land it was but a step to Phoenicia, Judaea,[FN#232] Phrygia and Asia Minor, whence a ferry led over to Greece.  Here the Apologue found its populariser in {Greek}, AEsop, whose name, involved in myth, possibly connects with
      :—­ “AEsopus et Aithiops idem sonant” says the sage.  This
would show that the Hellenes preserved a legend of the land whence the Beast-fable arose, and we may accept the fabulist’s aera as contemporary with Croesus and Solon (B.C. 570,) about a century after Psammeticus (Psamethik 1st) threw Egypt open to the restless Greek.[FN#233] From Africa too the Fable would in early ages migrate eastwards and make for itself a new home in the second great focus of civilisation formed by the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.  The late Mr. George Smith found amongst the cuneiforms fragmentary Beast-fables, such as dialogues between the Ox and the Horse, the Eagle and the Sun.  In after centuries, when the conquests of Macedonian Alexander completed what Sesostris and Semiramis had begun, and mingled the manifold families of mankind by joining the eastern to the western world, the Orient became formally hellenised.  Under the Seleucidae and during the life of the independent Bactrian Kingdom (B.C. 255-125), Grecian art and science, literature and even language overran the old Iranic reign and extended eastwards throughout northern India.  Porus sent two embassies to Augustus in B.C. 19 and in one of them the herald Zarmanochagas (Shramanacharya) of Bargosa, the modern Baroch in Guzerat, bore an epistle upon vellum written in Greek (Strabo xv.  I section 78).  “Videtis gentes populosque mutasse sedes” says Seneca (De Cons. ad Helv. c. vi.).  Quid sibi volunt in mediis barbarorum regionibus Graecae artes?  Quid inter Indos Persasque Macedonicus sermo?  Atheniensis in Asia turba est.”  Upper India, in the Macedonian days would have been mainly Buddhistic, possessing a rude alphabet borrowed from Egypt through Arabia and Phoenicia, but still in a low and barbarous condition:  her buildings were wooden and she lacked, as far as we know, stone-architecture—­the main test of social development.  But the Bactrian Kingdom gave an impulse to her civilisation and the result was classical opposed to vedic Sanskrit.  From Persia Greek letters, extending southwards to Arabia, would find indigenous imitators and there AEsop would be represented by the sundry sages who share the name Lokman.[FN#234] One of these was of servile condition, tailor, carpenter or shepherd; and a “Habashi” (AEthiopian) meaning a negro slave with blubber lips and splay feet, so far showing a superficial likeness to the AEsop of history.

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The AEsopic fable, carried by the Hellenes to India, might have fallen in with some rude and fantastic barbarian of Buddhistic “persuasion” and indigenous origin:  so Reynard the Fox has its analogue amongst the Kafirs and the Vai tribe of Mandengan negroes in Liberia[FN#235] amongst whom one Doalu invented or rather borrowed a syllabarium.  The modern Gypsies are said also to have beast-fables which have never been traced to a foreign source (Leland).  But I cannot accept the refinement of difference which Professor Benfey, followed by Mr. Keith-Falconer, discovers between the AEsopic and the Hindu apologue:—­ “In the former animals are allowed to act as animals:  the latter makes them act as men in the form of animals.”  The essence of the beast-fable is a reminiscence of Homo primigenius with erected ears and hairy hide, and its expression is to make the brother brute behave, think and talk like him with the superadded experience of ages.  To early man the “lower animals,” which are born, live and die like himself, showing all the same affects and disaffects, loves and hates, passions, prepossessions and prejudices, must have seemed quite human enough and on an equal level to become his substitutes.  The savage, when he began to reflect, would regard the carnivor and the serpent with awe, wonder and dread; and would soon suspect the same mysterious potency in the brute as in himself:  so the Malays still look upon the Uran-utan, or Wood-man, as the possessor of superhuman wisdom.  The hunter and the herdsman, who had few other companions, would presently explain the peculiar relations of animals to themselves by material metamorphosis, the bodily transformation of man to brute giving increased powers of working him weal and woe.  A more advanced stage would find the step easy to metempsychosis, the beast containing the Ego (alias soul) of the human:  such instinctive belief explains much in Hindu literature, but it was not wanted at first by the Apologue.

This blending of blood, this racial baptism would produce a fine robust progeny; and, after our second century, AEgypto-Graeco-Indian stories overran the civilised globe between Rome and China.  Tales have wings and fly farther than the jade hatchets of proto-historic days.  And the result was a book which has had more readers than any other except the Bible.  Its original is unknown.[FN#236] The volume, which in Pehlevi became the Javidan Khirad ("Wisdom of Ages”) or the Testament of Hoshang, that ancient guebre King, and in Sanskrit the Panchatantra ("Five Chapters"), is a recueil of apologues and anecdotes related by the learned Brahman, Vishnu Sharma for the benefit of his pupils the sons of an Indian Rajah.  The Hindu original has been adapted and translated into a number of languages; Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac, Greek and Latin, Persian and Turkish, under a host of names.[FN#237] Voltaire[FN#238] wisely remarks of this venerable production:—­Quand on fait reflexion que presque toute la terre a ete enfatuee

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The main difference between the classical apologue and the fable in The Nights is that while AEsop and Gabrias write laconic tales with a single event and a simple moral, the Arabian fables are often “long-continued novelle involving a variety of events, each characterised by some social or political aspect, forming a narrative highly interesting in itself, often exhibiting the most exquisite moral, and yet preserving, with rare ingenuity, the peculiar characteristics of the actors."[FN#240] And the distinction between the ancient and the mediaeval apologue, including the modern which, since “Reineke Fuchs,” is mainly German, appears equally pronounced.  The latter is humorous enough and rich in the wit which results from superficial incongruity:  but it ignores the deep underlying bond which connects man with beast.  Again, the main secret of its success is the strain of pungent satire, especially in the Renardine Cycle, which the people could apply to all unpopular “lordes and prelates, gostly and worldly.”

Our Recueil contains two distinct sets of apologues. [FN#241] The first (vol. iii.) consists of eleven, alternating with five anecdotes (Nights cxlvi.—­cliii.), following the lengthy and knightly romance of King Omar bin al Nu’man and followed by the melancholy love tale of Ali bin Bakkar.  The second series in vol. ix., consisting of eight fables, not including ten anecdotes (Nights cmi.—­cmxxiv.), is injected into the romance of King Jali’ad and Shimas mentioned by Al-Mas’udi as independent of The Nights.  In both places the Beast-fables are introduced with some art and add variety to the subject-matter, obviating monotony—­ the deadly sin of such works—­and giving repose to the hearer or reader after a climax of excitement such as the murder of the Wazirs.  And even these are not allowed to pall upon the mental palate, being

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Some of the apologues in The Nights are pointless enough, rien moins qu’amusants; but in the best specimens, such as the Wolf and the Fox[FN#243] (the wicked man and the wily man), both characters are carefully kept distinct and neither action nor dialogue ever flags.  Again The Flea and the Mouse (iii. 151), of a type familiar to students of the Pilpay cycle, must strike the home-reader as peculiarly quaint.

Next in date to the Apologue comes the Fairy Tale proper, where the natural universe is supplemented by one of purely imaginative existence.  “As the active world is inferior to the rational soul,” says Bacon with his normal sound sense, “so Fiction gives to Mankind what History denies and in some measure satisfies the Mind with Shadows when it cannot enjoy the Substance.  And as real History gives us not the success of things according to the deserts of vice and virtue, Fiction corrects it and presents us with the fates and fortunes of persons rewarded and punished according to merit.”  But I would say still more.  History paints or attempts to paint life as it is, a mighty maze with or without a plan:  Fiction shows or would show us life as it should be, wisely ordered and laid down on fixed lines.  Thus Fiction is not the mere handmaid of History:  she has a household of her own and she claims to be the triumph of Art which, as Goeethe remarked, is “Art because it is not Nature.”  Fancy, la folle du logis, is “that kind and gentle portress who holds the gate of Hope wide open, in opposition to Reason, the surly and scrupulous guard."[FN#244] As Palmerin of England says and says well, “For that the report of noble deeds doth urge the courageous mind to equal those who bear most commendation of their approved valiancy; this is the fair fruit of Imagination and of ancient histories.”  And, last but not least, the faculty of Fancy takes count of the cravings of man’s nature for the marvellous, the impossible, and of his higher aspirations for the Ideal, the Perfect:  she realises the wild dreams and visions of his generous youth and portrays for him a portion of that “other and better world,” with whose expectation he would console his age.

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The imaginative varnish of The Nights serves admirably as a foil to the absolute realism of the picture in general.  We enjoy being carried away from trivial and commonplace characters, scenes and incidents; from the matter of fact surroundings of a work-a-day world, a life of eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, fighting and loving, into a society and a mise-en-scene which we suspect can exist and which we know does not.  Every man at some turn or term of his life has longed for supernatural powers and a glimpse of Wonderland.  Here he is in the midst of it.  Here he sees mighty spirits summoned to work the human mite’s will, however whimsical, who can transport him in an eye-twinkling whithersoever he wishes; who can ruin cities and build palaces of gold and silver, gems and jacinths; who can serve up delicate viands and delicious drinks in priceless chargers and impossible cups and bring the choicest fruits from farthest Orient:  here he finds magas and magicians who can make kings of his friends, slay armies of his foes and bring any number of beloveds to his arms.  And from this outraging probability and out-stripping possibility arises not a little of that strange fascination exercised for nearly two centuries upon the life and literature of Europe by The Nights, even in their mutilated and garbled form.  The reader surrenders himself to the spell, feeling almost inclined to enquire “And why may it not be true?’’[FN#245] His brain is dazed and dazzled by the splendours which flash before it, by the sudden procession of Jinns and Jinniyahs, demons and fairies, some hideous, others preternaturally beautiful; by good wizards and evil sorcerers, whose powers are unlimited for weal and for woe; by mermen and mermaids, flying horses, talking animals, and reasoning elephants; by magic rings and their slaves and by talismanic couches which rival the carpet of Solomon.  Hence, as one remarks, these Fairy Tales have pleased and still continue to please almost all ages, all ranks and all different capacities.

Dr. Hawkesworth[FN#246] observes that these Fairy Tales find favour “because even their machinery, wild and wonderful as it is, has its laws; and the magicians and enchanters perform nothing but what was naturally to be expected from such beings, after we had once granted them existence.”  Mr. Heron “rather supposes the very contrary is the truth of the fact.  It is surely the strangeness, the unknown nature, the anomalous character of the supernatural agents here employed, that makes them to operate so powerfully on our hopes, fears, curiosities, sympathies, and, in short, on all the feelings of our hearts.  We see men and women, who possess qualities to recommend them to our favour, subjected to the influence of beings, whose good or ill will, power or weakness, attention or neglect, are regulated by motives and circumstances which we cannot comprehend:  and hence, we naturally tremble for their fate, with the same anxious concern, as we should for a friend

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The Fairy Tale in The Nights is wholly and purely Persian.  The gifted Iranian race, physically the noblest and the most beautiful of all known to me, has exercised upon the world-history an amount of influence which has not yet been fully recognised.  It repeated for Babylonian art and literature what Greece had done for Egyptian, whose dominant idea was that of working for eternity a .  Hellas and Iran instinctively chose as their characteristic the idea of Beauty, rejecting all that was exaggerated and grotesque; and they made the sphere of Art and Fancy as real as the world of Nature and Fact.  The innovation was hailed by the Hebrews.  The so-called Books of Moses deliberately and ostentatiously ignored the future state of rewards and punishments, the other world which ruled the life of the Egyptian in this world:  the lawgiver, whoever he may have been, Osarsiph or Moshe, apparently held the tenet unworthy of a race whose career he was directing to conquest and isolation in dominion.  But the Jews, removed to Mesopotamia, the second cradle of the creeds, presently caught the infection of their Asiatic media; superadded Babylonian legend to Egyptian myth; stultified The Law by supplementing it with the “absurdities of foreign fable” and ended, as the Talmud proves, with becoming the most wildly superstitious and “other worldly’’ of mankind.

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The same change befel Al-Islam.  The whole of its supernaturalism is borrowed bodily from Persia, which had “imparadised Earth by making it the abode of angels.”  Mohammed, a great and commanding genius, blighted and narrowed by surroundings and circumstances to something little higher than a Covenanter or a Puritan, declared to his followers,

“I am sent to ’stablish the manners and customs;”

and his deficiency of imagination made him dislike everything but “women, perfumes, and prayers,” with an especial aversion to music and poetry, plastic art and fiction.  Yet his system, unlike that of Moses, demanded thaumaturgy and metaphysical entities, and these he perforce borrowed from the Jews who had borrowed them from the Babylonians:  his soul and spirit, his angels and devils, his cosmogony, his heavens and hells, even the Bridge over the Great Depth are all either Talmudic or Iranian.  But there he stopped and would have stopped others.  His enemies among the Koraysh were in the habit of reciting certain Persian fabliaux and of extolling them as superior to the silly and equally fictitious stories of the “Glorious Koran.”  The leader of these scoffers was one Nazr ibn Haris who, taken prisoner after the Battle of Bedr, was incontinently decapitated, by apostolic command, for what appears to be a natural and sensible preference.  It was the same furious fanaticism and one-idea’d intolerance which made Caliph Omar destroy all he could find of the Alexandrian Library and prescribe burning for the Holy Books of the Persian Guebres.  And the taint still lingers in Al-Islam:  it will be said of a pious man, “He always studies the Koran, the Traditions and other books of Law and Religion; and he never reads poems nor listens to music or to stories.”

Mohammed left a dispensation or rather a reformation so arid, jejune and material that it promised little more than the “Law of Moses,” before this was vivified and racially baptised by Mesopotamian and Persic influences.  But human nature was stronger than the Prophet and, thus outraged, took speedy and absolute revenge.  Before the first century had elapsed, orthodox Al-Islam was startled by the rise of Tasawwuf or Sufyism[FN#248] a revival of classic Platonism and Christian Gnosticism, with a mingling of modern Hylozoism; which, quickened by the glowing imagination of the East, speedily formed itself into a creed the most poetical and impractical, the most spiritual and the most transcendental ever invented; satisfying all man’s hunger for “belief” which, if placed upon a solid basis of fact and proof, would forthright cease to be belief.

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I will take from The Nights, as a specimen of the true Persian romance, “The Queen of the Serpents” (vol. v. 298), the subject of Lane’s Carlylean denunciation.  The first gorgeous picture is the Session of the Snakes which, like their Indian congeners the Naga kings and queens, have human heads and reptile bodies, an Egyptian myth that engendered the “old serpent” of Genesis.  The Sultanah welcomes Hasib Karim al-Din, the hapless lad who had been left in a cavern to die by the greedy woodcutters; and, in order to tell him her tale, introduces the “Adventures of Bulukiya”:  the latter is an Israelite converted by editor and scribe to Mohammedanism; but we can detect under his assumed faith the older creed.  Solomon is not buried by authentic history “beyond the Seven (mystic) Seas,” but at Jerusalem or Tiberias; and his seal-ring suggests the Jam-i-Jam, the crystal cup of the great King Jamshid.  The descent of the Archangel Gabriel, so familiar to Al-Islam, is the manifestation of Bahman, the First Intelligence, the mightiest of the Angels who enabled Zarathustra-Zoroaster to walk like Bulukiya over the Dalati or Caspian Sea. [FN#249] Amongst the sights shown to Bulukiya, as he traverses the Seven Oceans, is a battle royal between the believing and the unbelieving Jinns, true Magian dualism, the eternal duello of the Two Roots or antagonistic Principles, Good and Evil, Hormuzd and Ahriman, which Milton has debased into a common-place modern combat fought also with cannon.  Sakhr the Jinni is Eshem chief of the Divs, and Kaf, the encircling mountain, is a later edition of Persian Alborz.  So in the Mantak al-Tayr (Colloquy of the Flyers) the Birds, emblems of souls, seeking the presence of the gigantic feathered biped Simurgh, their god, traverse seven Seas (according to others seven Wadys) of Search, of Love, of Knowledge, of Competence, of Unity, of Stupefaction, and of Altruism (i.e. annihilation of self), the several stages of contemplative life.  At last, standing upon the mysterious island of the Simurgh and “casting a clandestine glance at him they saw thirty birds[FN#250] in him; and when they turned their eyes to themselves the thirty birds seemed one Simurgh:  they saw in themselves the entire Simurgh; they saw in the Simurgh the thirty birds entirely.”  Therefore they arrived at the solution of the problem “We and Thou;” that is, the identity of God and Man; they were for ever annihilated in the Simurgh and the shade vanished in the sun (Ibid. iii. 250).  The wild ideas concerning Khalit and Malit (vol. v. 319) are again Guebre.  “From the seed of Kayomars (the androgyne, like pre-Adamite man) sprang a tree shaped like two human beings and thence proceeded Meshia and Meshianah, first man and woman, progenitors of mankind;” who, though created for “Shidistan, Light-land,” were seduced by Ahriman.  This “two-man-tree” is evidently the duality of Physis and Anti-physis, Nature and her counterpart, the battle between Mihr, Izad or Mithra with his Surush

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Thirdly and lastly we have the histories, historical stories and the “Ana” of great men in which Easterns as well as Westerns delight:  the gravest writers do not disdain to relieve the dullness of chronicles and annals by means of such discussions, humorous or pathetic, moral or grossly indecent.  The dates must greatly vary:  some of the anecdotes relating to the early Caliphs appear almost contemporary; others, like Ali of Cairo and Abu al-Shamat, may be as late as the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt (sixteenth century).  All are distinctly Sunnite and show fierce animus against the Shi’ah heretics, suggesting that they were written after the destruction of the Fatimite dynasty (twelfth century) by Salah al-Din (Saladin the Kurd) one of the latest historical personages and the last king named in The Nights. [FN#253] These anecdotes are so often connected with what a learned Frenchman terms the “regne feerique de Haroun er-Reschid,"[FN#254] that the Great Caliph becomes the hero of this portion of The Nights.  Aaron the Orthodox was the central figure of the most splendid empire the world had seen, the Viceregent of Allah combining the powers of Caesar and Pope, and wielding them right worthily according to the general voice of historians.  To quote a few:  Ali bin Talib al-Khorasani described him, in A.D. 934, a century and-a-half after his death when flattery would be tongue-tied, as, “one devoted to war and pilgrimage, whose bounty embraced the folk at large.”  Sa’adi (ob.  A.D. 1291) tells a tale highly favourable to him in the “Gulistan” (lib. i. 36).  Fakhr al-Din[FN#255] (xivth century) lauds his merits, eloquence, science and generosity; and Al-Siyuti (nat.  A.D. 1445) asserts “He was one of the most distinguished of Caliphs and the most illustrious of the Princes of the Earth” (p. 290).  The Shaykh al-Nafzawi[FN#256] (sixteenth century) in his Rauz al-Atir fi Nazah al-Khatir = Scented Garden-site for Heart-delight, calls Harun (chapt. vii.) the “Master of munificence and bounty, the best of the generous.”  And even the latest writers have not ceased to praise him.  Says Ali Aziz Efendi the Cretan, in the Story of Jewad[FN#257] (p. 81), “Harun was the most bounteous, illustrious and upright of the Abbaside Caliphs.”

The fifth Abbaside was fair and handsome, of noble and majestic presence, a sportsman and an athlete who delighted in polo and archery.  He showed sound sense and true wisdom in his speech to the grammarian-poet Al-Asma’i, who had undertaken to teach him:—­ “Ne m’enseignez jamais en public, et ne vous empressez pas trop de me donner des avis en particulier.  Attendez ordinairement que je vous interroge, et contentez vous de me donner une response precise a ce que je vous demanderai, sans y rien ajouter de superflu.  Gardez vous surtout de vouloir me preoccuper pour vous attirer ma creance, et pour vous donner de l’autorite.  Ne vous etendez jamais trop en long sur les histoires et les traditions que vous me raconterez, si je ne vous en donne la permission.  Lorsque vous verrai que je m’eloignerai de l’equite dans mes jugements, ramenez-moi avec douceur, sans user de paroles facheuses ni de reprimandes.  Enseignez-moi principalement les choses qui sont les plus necessaires pour les dis cours que je dois faire en public, dans les mosquees et ailleurs; et ne parlez point en termes obscurs, ou mysterieux, ni avec des paroles trop recherchees.’’[FN#258]

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He became well read in science and letters, especially history and tradition, for “his understanding was as the understanding of the learned;” and, like all educated Arabs of his day, he was a connoisseur of poetry which at times he improvised with success. [FN#259] He made the pilgrimage every alternate year and sometimes on foot, while “his military expeditions almost equalled his pilgrimages.”  Day after day during his Caliphate he prayed a hundred “bows,” never neglecting them, save for some especial reason, till his death; and he used to give from his privy purse alms to the extent of a hundred dirhams per diem.  He delighted in panegyry and liberally rewarded its experts, one of whom, Abd al-Sammak the Preacher, fairly said of him, “Thy humility in thy greatness is nobler than thy greatness.""No Caliph,” says Al-Niftawayh, “had been so profusely liberal to poets, lawyers and divines, although as the years advanced he wept over his extravagance amongst other sins.”  There was vigorous manliness in his answer to the Grecian Emperor who had sent him an insulting missive:—­“In the name of Allah!  From the Commander of the Faithful Harun al-Rashid, to Nicephorus the Roman dog.  I have read thy writ, O son of a miscreant mother!  Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt see my reply.”  Nor did he cease to make the Byzantine feel the weight of his arm till he “nakh’d"[FN#260] his camel in the imperial Court-yard; and this was only one instance of his indomitable energy and hatred of the Infidel.  Yet, if the West is to be believed, he forgot his fanaticism in his diplomatic dealings and courteous intercourse with Carolus Magnus.[FN#261] Finally, his civilised and well regulated rule contrasted as strongly with the barbarity and turbulence of occidental Christendom, as the splendid Court and the luxurious life of Baghdad and its carpets and hangings devanced the quasi-savagery of London and Paris whose palatial halls were spread with rushes.

The great Caliph ruled twenty-three years and a few months (A.H. 170-193 = A.D. 786-808); and, as his youth was chequered and his reign was glorious, so was his end obscure.[FN#262] After a vision foreshadowing his death,[FN#263] which happened, as becomes a good Moslem, during a military expedition to Khorasan, he ordered his grave to be dug and himself to be carried to it in a covered litter:  when sighting the fosse he exclaimed, “O son of man thou art come to this!” Then he commanded himself to be set down and a perfection of the Koran to be made over him in the litter on the edge of the grave.  He was buried (aet. forty-five) at Sanabad, a village near Tus.

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Aaron the Orthodox appears in The Nights as a headstrong and violent autocrat, a right royal figure according to the Moslem ideas of his day.  But his career shows that he was not more tyrannical or more sanguinary than the normal despot of the East, or the contemporary Kings of the West:  in most points, indeed, he was far superior to the historic misrulers who have afflicted the world from Spain to furthest China.  But a single great crime, a tragedy whose details are almost incredibly horrible, marks his reign with the stain of infamy, with a blot of blood never to be washed away.  This tale, “full of the waters of the eye,” as Firdausi sings, is the massacre of the Barmecides; a story which has often been told and which cannot here be passed over in silence.  The ancient and noble Iranian house, belonging to the “Ebna” or Arabised Persians, had long served the Ommiades till, early in our eighth century, Khalid bin Bermek,[FN#264] the chief, entered the service of the first Abbaside and became Wazir and Intendant of Finance to Al-Saffah.  The most remarkable and distinguished of the family, he was in office when Al-Mansur transferred the capital from Damascus, the headquarters of the hated Ommiades, to Baghdad, built ad hoc.  After securing the highest character in history by his personal gifts and public services, he was succeeded by his son and heir Yahya (John), a statesman famed from early youth for prudence and profound intelligence, liberality and nobility of soul.[FN#265] He was charged by the Caliph Al-Mahdi with the education of his son Harun, hence the latter was accustomed to call him father; and, until the assassination of the fantastic tyrant Al-Hadi, who proposed to make his own child Caliph, he had no little difficulty in preserving the youth from death in prison.  The Orthodox, once seated firmly on the throne, appointed Yahya his Grand Wazir.  This great administrator had four sons, Al-Fazl, Ja’afar, Mohammed, and Musa,[FN#266] in whose time the house of Bermek rose to that height from which decline and fall are, in the East, well nigh certain and immediate.  Al-Fazl was a foster-brother of Harun, an exchange of suckling infants having taken place between the two mothers for the usual object, a tightening of the ties of intimacy:  he was a man of exceptional mind, but he lacked the charm of temper and manner which characterised Ja’afar.

The poets and rhetoricians have been profuse in their praises of the cadet who appears in The Nights as an adviser of calm sound sense, an intercessor and a peace-maker, and even more remarkable than the rest of his family for an almost incredible magnanimity and generosity—­une generosite effrayante.  Mohammed was famed for exalted views and nobility of sentiment and Musa for bravery and energy:  of both it was justly said, “They did good and harmed not."[FN#267]

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For ten years (not including an interval of seven) from the time of Al-Rashid’s accession (A.D. 786) to the date of their fall, (A.D. 803), Yahya and his sons, Al-Fazl and Ja’afar, were virtually rulers of the great heterogeneous empire, which extended from Mauritania to Tartary, and they did notable service in arresting its disruption.  Their downfall came sudden and terrible like “a thunderbolt from the blue.”  As the Caliph and Ja’afar were halting in Al-’Umr (the convent) near Anbar-town on the Euphrates, after a convivial evening spent in different pavilions, Harun during the dead of the night called up his page Yasir al-Rikhlah[FN#268] and bade him bring Ja’afar’s head.  The messenger found Ja’afar still carousing with the blind poet Abu Zakkar and the Christian physician Gabriel ibn Bakhtiashu, and was persuaded to return to the Caliph and report his death; the Wazir adding, “An he express regret I shall owe thee my life; and, if not, whatso Allah will be done.”  Ja’afar followed to listen and heard only the Caliph exclaim “O sucker of thy mother’s clitoris, if thou answer me another word, I will send thee before him!” whereupon he at once bandaged his own eyes and received the fatal blow.  Al-Asma’i, who was summoned to the presence shortly after, recounts that when the head was brought to Harun he gazed at it, and summoning two witnesses commanded them to decapitate Yasir, crying, “I cannot bear to look upon the slayer of Ja’afar!” His vengeance did not cease with the death:  he ordered the head to be gibbetted at one end and the trunk at the other abutment of the Tigris bridge where the corpses of the vilest malefactors used to be exposed; and, some months afterwards, he insulted the remains by having them burned—­the last and worst indignity which can be offered to a Moslem.  There are indeed pity and terror in the difference between two such items in the Treasury-accounts as these:  “Four hundred thousand dinars (L200,000) to a robe of honour for the Wazir Ja’afar bin Yahya;” and, “Ten kirat, (5 shill.) to naphtha and reeds for burning the body of Ja’afar the Barmecide.”

Meanwhile Yahya and Al-Fazl, seized by the Caliph Harun’s command at Baghdad, were significantly cast into the prison “Habs al-Zanadikah”—­of the Guebres—­and their immense wealth which, some opine, hastened their downfall, was confiscated.  According to the historian, Al-Tabari, who, however, is not supported by all the annalists, the whole Barmecide family, men, women, and children, numbering over a thousand, were slaughtered with only three exceptions; Yahya, his brother Mohammed, and his son Al-Fazl.  The Caliph’s foster-father, who lived to the age of seventy-four, was allowed to die in jail (A.H. 805) after two years’ imprisonment at Rukkah.  Al-Fazl, after having been tortured with two hundred blows in order to make him produce concealed property, survived his father three years and died in Nov.  A.H. 808, some four months before his terrible foster-brother.  A pathetic tale is told of the son warming water for the old man’s use by pressing the copper ewer to his stomach.

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The motives of this terrible massacre are variously recounted, but no sufficient explanation has yet been, or possibly ever will be, given.  The popular idea is embodied in The Nights. [FN#269] Harun, wishing Ja’afar to be his companion even in the Harem, had wedded him, pro forma, to his eldest sister Abbasah, “the loveliest woman of her day,” and brilliant in mind as in body; but he had expressly said “I will marry thee to her, that it may be lawful for thee to look upon her but thou shalt not touch her.”  Ja’afar bound himself by a solemn oath; but his mother Attabah was mad enough to deceive him in his cups and the result was a boy (Ibn Khallikan) or, according to others, twins.  The issue was sent under the charge of a confidential eunuch and a slave-girl to Meccah for concealment; but the secret was divulged to Zubaydah who had her own reasons for hating husband and wife and cherished an especial grievance against Yahya.[FN#270] Thence it soon found its way to head-quarters.  Harun’s treatment of Abbasah supports the general conviction:  according to the most credible accounts she and her child were buried alive in a pit under the floor of her apartment.

But, possibly, Ja’afar’s perjury was only “the last straw.”  Already Al-Fazl bin Rabi’a, the deadliest enemy of the Barmecides, had been entrusted (A.D. 786) with the Wazirate which he kept seven years.  Ja’afar had also acted generously but imprudently in abetting the escape of Yahya bin Abdillah, Sayyid and Alide, for whom the Caliph had commanded confinement in a close dark dungeon:  when charged with disobedience the Wazir had made full confession and Harun had (they say) exclaimed, “Thou hast done well!” but was heard to mutter, “Allah slay me an I slay thee not."[FN#271] The great house seems at times to have abused its powers by being too peremptory with Harun and Zubaydah, especially in money matters;[FN#272] and its very greatness would have created for it many and powerful enemies and detractors who plied the Caliph with anonymous verse and prose.  Nor was it forgotten that, before the spread of Al-Islam, they had presided over the Naubehar or Pyraethrum of Balkh; and Harun is said to have remarked anent Yahya, “The zeal for magianism, rooted in his heart, induces him to save all the monuments connected with his faith."[FN#273] Hence the charge that they were “Zanadakah,” a term properly applied to those who study the Zend scripture, but popularly meaning Mundanists, Positivists, Reprobates, Atheists; and it may be noted that, immediately after al-Rashid’s death, violent religious troubles broke out in Baghdad.  Ibn Khallikan[FN#274] quotes Sa’id ibn Salim, a well-known grammarian and traditionist who philosophically remarked, “Of a truth the Barmecides did nothing to deserve Al-Rashid’s severity, but the day (of their power and prosperity) had been long and whatso endureth long waxeth longsome.”  Fakhr al-Din says (p. 27), “On attribue encore leur ruine aux manieres fieres et orgueilleuses de

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“As regards the intimate cause (of the catastrophe) it is unknown and Allah is Omniscient.”

Aaron the Orthodox appears sincerely to have repented his enormous crime.  From that date he never enjoyed refreshing sleep:  he would have given his whole realm to recall Ja’afar to life; and, if any spoke slightingly of the Barmecides in his presence, he would exclaim, “God damn your fathers!  Cease to blame them or fill the void they have left.”  And he had ample reason to mourn the loss.  After the extermination of the wise and enlightened family, the affairs of the Caliphate never prospered:  Fazl bin Rabi’a, though a man of intelligence and devoted to letters, proved a poor substitute for Yahya and Ja’afar; and the Caliph is reported to have applied to him the couplet:—­

No sire to your sire,[FN#276] I bid you spare * Your calumnies or
     their place replace.

His unwise elevation of his two rival sons filled him with fear of poison, and, lastly, the violence and recklessness of the popular mourning for the Barmecides,[FN#277] whose echo has not yet died away, must have added poignancy to his tardy penitence.  The crime still “sticks fiery off” from the rest of Harun’s career:  it stands out in ghastly prominence as one of the most terrible tragedies recorded by history, and its horrible details make men write passionately on the subject to this our day.[FN#278]

As of Harun so of Zubaydah it may be said that she was far superior in most things to contemporary royalties, and she was not worse at her worst than the normal despot-queen of the Morning-land.  We must not take seriously the tales of her jealousy in The Nights, which mostly end in her selling off or burying alive her rivals; but, even were all true, she acted after the recognised fashion of her exalted sisterhood.  The secret history of Cairo, during the last generation, tells of many a viceregal dame who committed all the crimes, without any of the virtues which characterised Harun’s cousin-spouse.  And the difference between the manners of the Caliphate and the “respectability” of the nineteenth century may be measured by the Tale called “Al-Maamun and Zubaydah."[FN#279] The lady, having won a game of forfeits from her husband, and being vexed with him for imposing unseemly conditions when he had been the winner, condemned him to lie with the foulest and filthiest kitchen-wench in the palace; and thus was begotten the Caliph who succeeded and destroyed her son.

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Zubaydah was the grand-daughter of the second Abbaside Al-Mansur, by his son Ja’afar whom The Nights persistently term Al-Kasim:  her name was Amat al-Aziz or Handmaid of the Almighty; her cognomen was Umm Ja’afar as her husband’s was Abu Ja’afar; and her popular name “Creamkin” derives from Zubdah,[FN#280] cream or fresh butter, on account of her plumpness and freshness.  She was as majestic and munificent as her husband; and the hum of prayer was never hushed in her palace.  Al-Mas’udi[FN#281] makes a historian say to the dangerous Caliph Al-Kahir, “The nobleness and generosity of this Princess, in serious matters as in her diversions, place her in the highest rank”; and he proceeds to give ample proof.  Al-Siyuti relates how she once filled a poet’s mouth with jewels which he sold for twenty thousand dinars.  Ibn Khallikan (i. 523) affirms of her, “Her charity was ample, her conduct virtuous, and the history of her pilgrimage to Meccah and of what she undertook to execute on the way is so well-known that it were useless to repeat it.”  I have noted (Pilgrimage iii. 2) how the Darb al-Sharki or Eastern road from Meccah to Al-Medinah was due to the piety of Zubaydah who dug wells from Baghdad to the Prophet’s burial place and built not only cisterns and caravanserais, but even a wall to direct pilgrims over the shifting sands.  She also supplied Meccah, which suffered severely from want of water, with the chief requisite for public hygiene by connecting it, through levelled hills and hewn rocks, with the Ayn al-Mushash in the Arafat subrange; and the fine aqueduct, some ten miles long, was erected at a cost of 1,700,000 to 2,000,000 of gold pieces. [FN#282] We cannot wonder that her name is still famous among the Badawin and the “Sons of the Holy Cities.”  She died at Baghdad, after a protracted widowhood, in A.H. 216 and her tomb, which still exists, was long visited by the friends and dependents who mourned the loss of a devout and most liberal woman.

The reader will bear with me while I run through the tales and add a few remarks to the notices given in the notes:  the glance must necessarily be brief, however extensive be the theme.  The admirable introduction follows, in all the texts and MSS. known to me, the same main lines but differs greatly in minor details as will be seen by comparing Mr. Payne’s translation with Lane’s and mine.  In the Tale of the Sage Duban appears the speaking head which is found in the Kamil, in Mirkhond and in the Kitab al-Uyun:  M. C. Barbier de Meynard (v. 503) traces it back to an abbreviated text of Al-Mas’udi.  I would especially recommend to students The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (i. 82), whose mighty orgie ends so innocently in general marriage.  Lane (iii. 746) blames it “because it represents Arab ladies as acting like Arab courtesans”; but he must have known that during his day the indecent frolic was quite possible in some of the highest circles of his beloved Cairo.  To judge by the style and

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The next tale, sometimes called “The Two Wazirs,” is notable for its regular and genuine drama-intrigue which, however, appears still more elaborate and perfected in other pieces.  The richness of this Oriental plot-invention contrasts strongly with all European literatures except the Spaniard’s, whose taste for the theatre determined his direction, and the Italian, which in Boccaccio’s day had borrowed freely through Sicily from the East.  And the remarkable deficiency lasted till the romantic movement dawned in France, when Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas showed their marvellous powers of faultless fancy, boundless imagination and scenic luxuriance, “raising French Poetry from the dead and not mortally wounding French prose.’’[FN#283] The Two Wazirs is followed by the gem of the volume, The Adventure of the Hunchback-jester (i. 225), also containing an admirable surprise and a fine development of character, while its “wild but natural simplicity” and its humour are so abounding that it has echoed through the world to the farthest West.  It gave to Addison the Story of Alnaschar[FN#284] and to Europe the term “Barmecide Feast,” from the “Tale of Shacabac” (vol. i. 343).  The adventures of the corpse were known in Europe long before Galland as shown by three fabliaux in Barbazan.  I have noticed that the Barber’s Tale of himself (i. 317) is historical and I may add that it is told in detail by Al-Mas’udi (chapt. cxiv).

Follows the tale of Nur al-Din Ali, and what Galland miscalls “The Fair Persian,” a brightly written historiette with not a few touches of true humour.  Noteworthy are the Slaver’s address (vol. ii. 15), the fine description of the Baghdad garden (vol. ii. 21-24), the drinking-party (vol. ii. 25), the Caliph’s frolic (vol. ii. 31-37) and the happy end of the hero’s misfortunes (vol. ii. 44) Its brightness is tempered by the gloomy tone of the tale which succeeds, and which has variants in the Bagh o Bahar, a Hindustani versionof the Persian “Tale of the Four Darwayshes;” and in the Turkish Kirk Vezir or “Book of the Forty Vezirs.”  Its dismal peripeties are relieved only by the witty indecency of Eunuch Bukhayt and the admirable humour of Eunuch Kafur, whose “half lie” is known throughout the East.  Here also the lover’s agonies are piled upon him for the purpose of unpiling at last:  the Oriental tale-teller knows by experience that, as a rule, doleful endings “don’t pay.”

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The next is the long romance of chivalry, “King Omar bin al-Nu’man” etc., which occupies an eighth of the whole repertory and the best part of two volumes.  Mr. Lane omits it because “obscene and tedious,” showing the license with which he translated; and he was set right by a learned reviewer,[FN#285] who truly declared that “the omission of half-a-dozen passages out of four hundred pages would fit it for printing in any language[FN#286] and the charge of tediousness could hardly have been applied more unhappily.”  The tale is interesting as a picture of mediaeval Arab chivalry and has many other notable points; for instance, the lines (iii. 86) beginning “Allah holds the kingship!” are a lesson to the manichaeanism of Christian Europe.  It relates the doings of three royal generations and has all the characteristics of Eastern art:  it is a phantasmagoria of Holy Places, palaces and Harems; convents, castles and caverns, here restful with gentle landscapes (ii. 240) and there bristling with furious battle-pictures (ii. 117, 221-8, 249) and tales of princely prowess and knightly derring-do.  The characters stand out well.  King Nu’man is an old lecher who deserves his death; the ancient Dame Zat al-Dawahi merits her title Lady of Calamities (to her foes); Princess Abrizah appears as a charming Amazon, doomed to a miserable and pathetic end; Zau al-Makan is a wise and pious royalty; Nuzhat al-Zaman, though a longsome talker, is a model sister; the Wazir Dandan, a sage and sagacious counsellor, contrasts with the Chamberlain, an ambitious miscreant; Kanmakan is the typical Arab knight, gentle and brave:—­

Now managing the mouthes of stubborne steedes
Now practising the proof of warlike deedes;

And the kind-hearted, simple-minded Stoker serves as a foil to the villains, the kidnapping Badawi and Ghazban the detestable negro.  The fortunes of the family are interrupted by two episodes, both equally remarkable.  Taj al-Muluk[FN#287] is the model lover whom no difficulties or dangers can daunt.  In Aziz and Azizah (ii. 291) we have the beau ideal of a loving woman:  the writer’s object was to represent a “softy” who had the luck to win the love of a beautiful and clever cousin and the mad folly to break her heart.  The poetical justice which he receives at the hands of women of quite another stamp leaves nothing to be desired.  Finally the plot of “King Omar” is well worked out; and the gathering of all the actors upon the stage before the curtain drops may be improbable but it is highly artistic.

The long Crusading Romance is relieved by a sequence of sixteen fabliaux, partly historiettes of men and beasts and partly apologues proper—­a subject already noticed.  We have then (iii. 162) the saddening and dreary love-tale of Ali bin Bakkar, a Persian youth and the Caliph’s concubine Shams al-Nahar.  Here the end is made doleful enough by the deaths of the “two martyrs,” who are killed off, like Romeo and Juliet,[FN#288] a lesson

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The long tale of Ala al-Din, our old friend “Aladdin,” is wholly out of place in its present position (iv. 29):  it is a counterpart of Ali Nur al-Din and Miriam the Girdle-girl (vol. ix. i); and the mention of the Shahbandar or Harbour-master (iv. 29), the Kunsul or Consul (p. 84), the Kaptan (Capitano), the use of cannon at sea and the choice of Genoa city (p. 85) prove that it belongs to the xvth or xvith century and should accompanyKamar al-Zaman ii. and Ma’aruf at the end of The Nights.  Despite the lutist Zubaydah being carried off by the Jinn, the Magic Couch, a modification of Solomon’s carpet, and the murder of the King who refused to islamize, it is evidently a European tale and I believe with Dr. Bacher that it is founded upon the legend of “Charlemagne’s” daughter Emma and his secretary Eginhardt, as has been noted in the counterpart (vol. ix. 1).

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This quasi-historical fiction is followed hy a succession of fabliaux, novelle and historiettes which fill the rest of the vol. iv. and the whole of vol. v. till we reach the terminal story, The Queen of the Serpents (vol. v. pp. 304-329).  It appears to me that most of them are historical and could easily be traced.  Not a few are in Al-Mas’udi; for instance the grim Tale of Hatim of Tayy (vol. iv. 94) is given bodily in “Meads of Gold” (iii. 327); and the two adventures of Ibrahim al-Mahdi with the barber-surgeon (vol. iv. 103) and the Merchant’s sister (vol. iv. 176) are in his pages (vol. vii. 68 and 18).  The City of Lubtayt (vol. iv. 99) embodies the legend of Don Rodrigo, last of the Goths, and may have reached the ears of Washington Irving; Many-columned Iram (vol. iv. 113) is held by all Moslems to be factual and sundry writers have recorded the tricks played by Al-Maamun with the Pyramids of Jizah which still show his handiwork.[FN#290] The germ of Isaac of Mosul (vol. iv. 119) is found in Al-Mas’udi who (vii. 65) names “Buran” the poetess (Ibn Khall. i. 268); and Harun al-Rashid and the Slave-girl (vol. iv. 153) is told by a host of writers.  Ali the Persian is a rollicking tale of fun from some Iranian jest-book:  Abu Mohammed hight Lazybones belongs to the cycle of “Sindbad the Seaman,” with a touch of Whittington and his Cat; and Zumurrud ("Smaragdine”) in Ali Shar (vol. iv. 187) shows at her sale the impudence of Miriam the Girdle-girl and in bed the fescennine device of the Lady Budur.  The “Ruined Man who became Rich,” etc. (vol. iv. 289) is historical and Al-Mas’udi (vii. 281) relates the coquetry of Mahbubah the concubine (vol. iv. 291):  the historian also quotes four couplets, two identical with Nos. 1 and 2 in The Nights (vol. iv. 292) and adding:—­

Then see the slave who lords it o’er her lord * In lover privacy
     and public site: 
Behold these eyes that one like Ja’afar saw:  * Allah on Ja’afar
     reign boons infinite!

Uns al-Wujud (vol. v. 32) is a love-tale which has been translated into a host of Eastern languages; and The Lovers of the Banu Ozrah belong to Al-Mas’udi’s “Martyrs of Love” (vii. 355), with the ozrite “Ozrite love” of Ibn Khallikan (iv. 537).  “Harun and the Three Poets” (vol. v. 77) has given to Cairo a proverb which Burckhardt (No. 561) renders “The day obliterates the word or promise of the Night,” for

The promise of night is effaced by day.

It suggests Congreve’s Doris:—­

For who o’er night obtain’d her grace,
She can next day disown, etc.

“Harun and the three Slave-girls” (vol. v. 81) smacks of Gargantua (lib. i. c. 11):  “It belongs to me, said one:  ’Tis mine, said another”; and so forth.  The Simpleton and the Sharper (vol. v. 83) like the Foolish Dominie (vol. v. 118) is an old Joe Miller in Hindu as well as Moslem folk-lore.  “Kisra Anushirwan” (vol. v. 87) is “The King, the Owl and the Villages

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These disjecta membra of tales and annals are pleasantly relieved by the seven voyages of Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi. 1-83).  The “Arabian Odyssey” may, like its Greek brother, descend from a noble family, the “Shipwrecked Mariner” a Coptic travel-tale of the twelfth dynasty (B.  C. 3500) preserved on a papyrus at St. Petersburg.  In its actual condition “Sindbad,” is a fanciful compilation, like De Foe’s “Captain Singleton,” borrowed from travellers’ tales of an immense variety and extracts from Al-Idrisi, Al-Kazwini and Ibn al-Wardi.  Here we find the Polyphemus, the Pygmies and the cranes of Homer and Herodotus; the escape of Aristomenes; the Plinian monsters well known in Persia; the magnetic mountain of Saint Brennan (Brandanus); the aeronautics of “Duke Ernest of Bavaria’’[FN#291] and sundry cuttings from Moslem writers dating between our ninth and fourteenth centuries.[FN#292] The “Shayhk of the Seaboard” appears in the Persian romance of Kamaraupa translated by Francklin, all the particulars absolutely corresponding.  The “Odyssey” is valuable because it shows how far Eastward the mediaeval Arab had extended:  already in The Ignorance he had reached China and had formed a centre of trade at Canton.  But the higher merit of the cento is to produce one of the most charming books of travel ever written, like Robinson Crusoe the delight of children and the admiration of all ages.

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The hearty life and realism of Sindbad are made to stand out in strong relief by the deep melancholy which pervades “The City of Brass” (vol. vi. 83), a dreadful book for a dreary day.  It is curious to compare the doleful verses (pp. 103, 105) with those spoken to Caliph Al-Mutawakkil by Abu al-Hasan Ali (A1-Mas’udi, vii. 246).  We then enter upon the venerable Sindibad-nameh, the Malice of Women (vol. vi. 122), of which, according to the Kitab al-Fihrist (vol. i. 305), there were two editions, a Sinzibad al-Kabir and a Sinzibad al-Saghir, the latter being probably an epitome of the former.  This bundle of legends, I have shown, was incorporated with the Nights as an editor’s addition; and as an independent work it has made the round of the world.

Space forbids any detailed notice of this choice collection of anecdotes for which a volume would be required.  I may, however, note that the “Wife’s device” (vol. vi. 152) has its analogues in the Katha (chapt. xiii.) in the Gesta Romanorum (No. xxviii.) and in Boccaccio (Day iii. 6 and Day vi. 8), modified by La Fontaine to Richard Minutolo (Contes lib. i. tale 2):  it is quoted almost in the words of The Nights by the Shaykh al-Nafzawi (p. 207).  That most witty and indecent tale The Three Wishes (vol. vi. 180) has forced its way disguised as a babe into our nurseries.  Another form of it is found in the Arab proverb “More luckless than Basus” (Kamus), a fair Israelite who persuaded her husband, also a Jew, to wish that she might become the loveliest of women.  Jehovah granted it, spitefully as Jupiter; the consequence was that her contumacious treatment of her mate made him pray that the beauty might be turned into a bitch; and the third wish restored her to her original state.

The Story of Judar (vol. vi. 207) is Egyptian, to judge from its local knowledge (pp. 217 and 254) together with its ignorance of Marocco (p. 223).  It shows a contrast, in which Arabs delight, of an almost angelical goodness and forgiveness with a well-nigh diabolical malignity, and we find the same extremes in Abu Sir the noble-minded Barber and the hideously inhuman Abu Kir.  The excursion to Mauritania is artfully managed and gives a novelty to the mise-en-scene.  Gharib and Ajib (vi. 207, vii. 91) belongs to the cycle of Antar and King Omar bin Nu’man:  its exaggerations make it a fine type of Oriental Chauvinism, pitting the superhuman virtues, valour, nobility and success of all that is Moslem, against the scum of the earth which is non-Moslem.  Like the exploits of Friar John of the Chopping-knives (Rabelais i. c. 27) it suggests ridicule cast on impossible battles and tales of giants, paynims and paladins.  The long romance is followed by thirteen historiettes all apparently historical:  compare “Hind, daughter of Al-Nu’man” (vol. viii. 7-145) and “Isaac of Mosul and the Devil” (vol. vii. 136-139) with Al Mas’udi v. 365 and vi. 340.  They end in two long detective-tales like those which M. Gaboriau has popularised, the Rogueries of Dalilah and the Adventures of Mercury Ali, based upon the principle, “One thief wots another.”  The former, who has appeared before (vol. ii. 329), seems to have been a noted character:  Al-Mas’udi says (viii. 175) “in a word this Shaykh (Al-’Ukab) outrivalled in his rogueries and the ingenuities of his wiles Dallah (Dalilah?) the Crafty and other tricksters and coney-catchers, ancient and modern.”

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The Tale of Ardashir (vol. vii. 209-264) lacks originality:  we are now entering upon a series of pictures which are replicas of those preceding.  This is not the case with that charming Undine, Julnar the Sea-born (vol. vii. 264-308) which, like Abdullah of the Land and Abdullah of the Sea (vol. ix.  Night cmxl.), describes the vie intime of mermen and merwomen.  Somewhat resembling Swift’s inimitable creations, the Houyhnhnms for instance, they prove, amongst other things, that those who dwell in a denser element can justly blame and severely criticise the contradictory and unreasonable prejudices and predilections of mankind.  Sayf al-Muluk (vol. viii.  Night dcclviii.), the romantic tale of two lovers, shows by its introduction that it was originally an independent work and it is known to have existed in Persia during the eleventh century:  this novella has found its way into every Moslem language of the East even into Sindi, which calls the hero “Sayfal.”  Here we again meet the Old Man of the Sea or rather the Shaykh of the Seaboard and make acquaintance with a Jinn whose soul is outside his body:  thus he resembles Hermotimos of Klazamunae in Apollonius, whose spirit left his mortal frame a discretion.  The author, philanthropically remarking (vol. viii. 4) “Knowest thou not that a single mortal is better, in Allah’s sight than a thousand Jinn?” brings the wooing to a happy end which leaves a pleasant savour upon the mental palate.

Hasan of Bassorah (vol. viii. 7-145) is a Master Shoetie on a large scale like Sindbad, but his voyages and travels extend into the supernatural and fantastic rather than the natural world.  Though long the tale is by no means wearisome and the characters are drawn with a fine firm hand.  The hero with his hen-like persistency of purpose, his weeping, fainting and versifying is interesting enough and proves that “Love can find out the way.”  The charming adopted sister, the model of what the feminine friend should be; the silly little wife who never knows that she is happy till she loses happiness; the violent and hard-hearted queen with all the cruelty of a good woman, and the manners and customs of Amazon land are outlined with a life-like vivacity.  Khalifah the next tale (vol. viii. 147-184) is valuable as a study of Eastern life, showing how the fisherman emerges from the squalor of his surroundings and becomes one of the Caliph’s favourite cup-companions.  Ali Nur al-Din (vol. viii. 264) and King Jali’ad (vol. ix., Night dcccxciv) have been noticed elsewhere and there is little to say of the concluding stories which bear the evident impress of a more modern date.

Dr. Johnson thus sums up his notice of The Tempest.  “Whatever might have been the intention of their author, these tales are made instrumental to the production of many characters, diversified with boundless invention, and preserved with profound skill in nature; extensive knowledge of opinions, and accurate observation of life.  Here are exhibited princes, courtiers and sailors, all speaking in their real characters.  There is the agency of airy spirits and of earthy goblin, the operations of magic, the tumults of a storm, the adventures of a desert island, the native effusion of untaught affection, the punishment of guilt, and the final happiness of those for whom our passions and reason are equally interested.”

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We can fairly say this much and far more for our Tales.  Viewed as a tout ensemble in full and complete form, they are a drama of Eastern life, and a Dance of Death made sublime by faith and the highest emotions, by the certainty of expiation and the fulness of atoning equity, where virtue is victorious, vice is vanquished and the ways of Allah are justified to man.  They are a panorama which remains ken-speckle upon the mental retina.  They form a phantasmagoria in which archangels and angels, devils and goblins, men of air, of fire, of water, naturally mingle with men of earth; where flying horses and talking fishes are utterly realistic:  where King and Prince meet fisherman and pauper, lamia and cannibal; where citizen jostles Badawi, eunuch meets knight; the Kazi hob-nobs with the thief; the pure and pious sit down to the same tray with the bawd and the pimp; where the professional religionist, the learned Koranist and the strictest moralist consort with the wicked magician, the scoffer and the debauchee-poet like Abu Nowas; where the courtier jests with the boor and where the sweep is bedded with the noble lady.  And the characters are “finished and quickened by a few touches swift and sure as the glance of sunbeams.”  The work is a kaleidoscope where everything falls into picture; gorgeous palaces and pavilions; grisly underground caves and deadlywolds; gardens fairer than those of the Hesperid; seas dashing with clashing billows upon enchanted mountains; valleys of the Shadow of Death; air-voyages and promenades in the abysses of ocean; the duello, the battle and the siege; the wooing of maidens and the marriage-rite.  All the splendour and squalor, the beauty and baseness, the glamour and grotesqueness, the magic and the mournfulness, the bravery and the baseness of Oriental life are here:  its pictures of the three great Arab passions, love, war and fancy, entitle it to be called “Blood, Musk and Hashish."[FN#293] And still more, the genius of the story-teller quickens the dry bones of history, and by adding Fiction to Pact revives the dead past:  the Caliphs and the Caliphate return to Baghdad and Cairo, whilst Asmodeus kindly removes the terrace-roof of every tenement and allows our curious glances to take in the whole interior.  This is perhaps the best proof of their power.  Finally, the picture-gallery opens with a series of weird and striking adventures and shows as a tail-piece, an idyllic scene of love and wedlock in halls before reeking with lust and blood.

I have noticed in my Foreword that the two main characteristics of The Nights are Pathos and Humour, alternating with highly artistic contrast, and carefully calculated to provoke tears and smiles in the coffee-house audience which paid for them.  The sentimental portion mostly breathes a tender passion and a simple sadness:  such are the Badawi’s dying farewell (vol i. 75); the lady’s broken heart on account of her lover’s hand being cut off (vol. i. 277); the

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In my Foreword I have compared the humorous vein of the comic tales with our northern “wut,” chiefly for the dryness and slyness which pervade it.  But it differs in degree as much as the pathos varies.  The staple article is Cairene “chaff,” a peculiar banter possibly inherited from their pagan forefathers:  instances of this are found in the Cock and Dog (vol. i. 22), the Eunuch’s address to the Cook (vol. i. 244), the Wazir’s exclamation, “Too little pepper!” (vol. i. 246), the self-communing of Judar (vol. vi. 219), the Hashish-eater in Ali Shar (vol. iv. 213), the scene between the brother-Wazirs (vol. i. 197), the treatment of the Gobbo (vol. i. 221, 228), the Water of Zemzem (vol. i. 284), and the Eunuchs Bukhayt and Kafur[FN#295] (vol. ii. 49, 51).  At times it becomes a masterpiece of fun, of rollicking Rabelaisian humour underlaid by the caustic mother-wit of Sancho Panza, as in the orgie of the Ladies of Baghdad (vol. i. 92, 93); the Holy Ointment applied to the beard of Luka the Knight—­ “unxerunt regem Salomonem” (vol. ii. 222); and Ja’afar and the Old Badawi (vol. v. 98), with its reminiscence of “chaffy” King Amasis.  This reaches its acme in the description of ugly old age (vol. v. 3); in The Three Wishes, the wickedest of satires on the alter sexus (vi. 180); in Ali the Persian (vol. iv. 139); in the Lady and her Five Suitors (vol. vi. 172), which corresponds and contrasts with the dully told Story of Upakosa and her Four Lovers of the Katha (p. 17); and in The Man of Al-Yaman (vol. iv. 245) where we find the true Falstaffian touch.  But there is sterling wit, sweet and bright, expressed without any artifice of words, in the immortal Barber’s tales of his brothers, especially the second, the fifth and the sixth (vol. i. 324, 325 and 343).  Finally, wherever the honest and independent old debauchee Abu Nowas makes his appearance the fun becomes fescennine and milesian.

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B.—­The Manner of the Nights.

And now, after considering the matter, I will glance at the language and style of The Nights.  The first point to remark is the peculiarly happy framework of the Recueil, which I cannot but suspect set an example to the Decamerone and its host of successors.[FN#296] The admirable Introduction, a perfect mise-en-scene, gives the amplest raison d’etre of the work, which thus has all the unity required for a great romantic recueil.  We perceive this when reading the contemporary Hindu work the Katha Sarit Sagara,[FN#297] which is at once so like and so unlike The Nights:  here the preamble is insufficient; the whole is clumsy for want of a thread upon which the many independent tales and fables should be strung[FN#298]; and the consequent disorder and confusion tell upon the reader, who cannot remember the sequence without taking notes.

As was said in my Foreword “without The Nights no Arabian Nights!” and now, so far from holding the pauses “an intolerable interruption to the narrative,” I attach additional importance to these pleasant and restful breaks introduced into long and intricate stories.  Indeed beginning again I should adopt the plan of the Cal.  Edit. opening and ending every division with a dialogue between the sisters.  Upon this point, however, opinions will differ and the critic will remind me that the consensus of the MSS. would be wanting:  The Bresl.  Edit. in many places merely interjects the number of the night without interrupting the tale; the Ms. in the Bibliotheque Nationale used by Galland contains only cclxxxii and the Frenchman ceases to use the division after the ccxxxvith Night and in some editions after the cxcviith.[FN#299] A fragmentary Ms. according to Scott whose friend J. Anderson found it in Bengal, breaks away after Night xxix; and in the Wortley Montagu, the Sultan relents at an early opportunity, the stories, as in Galland, continuing only as an amusement.  I have been careful to preserve the balanced sentences with which the tales open; the tautology and the prose-rhyme serving to attract attention, e. g., “In days of yore and in times long gone before there was a King,” etc.; in England where we strive not to waste words this becomes “Once upon a time.”  The closings also are artfully calculated, by striking a minor chord after the rush and hurry of the incidents, to suggest repose:  “And they led the most pleasurable of lives and the most delectable, till there came to them the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies and they became as though they had never been.”  Place this by the side of Boccaccio’s favourite formulae:—­Egli conquisto poi la Scozia, e funne re coronato (ii, 3); Et onorevolmente visse infino alla fine (ii, 4); Molte volte goderono del loro amore:  Iddio faccia noi goder del nostro (iii, 6):  E cosi nella sue grossezza si rimase e ancor vi si sta (vi, 8).  We have further docked this tail into:  “And they lived happily ever after.”

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I cannot take up the Nights in their present condition, without feeling that the work has been written down from the Rawi or Nakkal,[FN#300] the conteur or professional story-teller, also called Kassas and Maddah, corresponding with the Hindu Bhat or Bard.  To these men my learned friend Baron A. von Kremer would attribute the Mu’allakat vulgarly called the Suspended Poems, as being “indited from the relation of the Rawi.”  Hence in our text the frequent interruption of the formula Kal’ al-Rawi = quotes the reciter; dice Turpino.  Moreover, The Nights read in many places like a hand-book or guide for the professional, who would learn them by heart; here and there introducing his “gag” and “patter”.  To this “business” possibly we may attribute much of the ribaldry which starts up in unexpected places:  it was meant simply to provoke a laugh.  How old the custom is and how unchangeable is Eastern life is shown, a correspondent suggests, by the Book of Esther which might form part of The Alf Laylah.  “On that night (we read in Chap. vi. 1) could not the King sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the King.”  The Rawi would declaim the recitative somewhat in conversational style; he would intone the Saj’a or prose-rhyme and he would chant to the twanging of the Rabab, a one-stringed viol, the poetical parts.  Dr. Scott[FN#301] borrows from the historian of Aleppo a life-like picture of the Story-teller.  “He recites walking to and fro in the middle of the coffee-room, stopping only now and then, when the expression requires some emphatical attitude.  He is commonly heard with great attention; and not unfrequently in the midst of some interesting adventure, when the expectation of his audience is raised to the highest pitch, he breaks off abruptly and makes his escape, leaving both his hero or heroine and his audience in the utmost embarrassment.  Those who happen to be near the door endeavour to detain him, insisting upon the story being finished before he departs; but he always makes his retreat good[FN#302]; and the auditors suspending their curiosity are induced to return at the same time next day to hear the sequel.  He has no sooner made his exit than the company in separate parties fall to disputing about the characters of the drama or the event of an unfinished adventure.  The controversy by degrees becomes serious and opposite opinions are maintained with no less warmth than if the fall of the city depended upon the decision.”

At Tangier, where a murder in a “coffee-house” had closed these hovels, pending a sufficient payment to the Pasha; and where, during the hard winter of 1885-86, the poorer classes were compelled to puff their Kayf (Bhang, cannabis indica) and sip their black coffee in the muddy streets under a rainy sky, I found the Rawi active on Sundays and Thursdays, the market days.  The favourite place was the “Soko de barra,” or large bazar, outside

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Many travellers, including Dr. Russell, have complained that they failed to find a complete Ms. copy of The Nights.  Evidently they never heard of the popular superstition which declares that no one can read through them without dying—­it is only fair that my patrons should know this.  Yacoub Artin Pasha declares that the superstition dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and he explains it in two ways.  Firstly, it is a facetious exaggeration, meaning that no one has leisure or patience to wade through the long repertory.  Secondly, the work is condemned as futile.  When Egypt produced savants and legists like Ibn al-Hajar, Al-’Ayni, and Al-Kastallani, to mention no others, the taste of the country inclined to dry factual studies and positive science; nor, indeed, has this taste wholly died out:  there are not a few who, like Khayri Pasha, contend that the mathematic is more useful even for legal studies than history and geography, and at Cairo the chief of the Educational Department has always been an engineer, i. e., a mathematician.  The Olema declared war against all “futilities,” in which they included not only stories but also what is politely entitled Authentic History.  From this to the fatal effect of such lecture is only a step.  Society, however, cannot rest without light literature; so the novel-reading class was thrown back upon writings which had all the indelicacy and few of the merits of The Nights.

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Turkey is the only Moslem country which has dared to produce a regular drama[FN#304] and to arouse the energies of such brilliant writers as Munif Pasha, statesman and scholar; Ekrem Bey, literato and professor; Kemal Bey, held by some to be the greatest writer in modern Osmanli-land and Abd al-Hakk Hamid Bey, first Secretary of the London Embassy.  The theatre began in its ruder form by taking subjects bodily from The Nights; then it annexed its plays as we do—­the Novel having ousted the Drama—­ from the French; and lastly it took courage to be original.  Many years ago I saw Harun al-Rashid and the Three Kalandars, with deer-skins and all their properties de rigueur in the court-yard of Government House, Damascus, declaiming to the extreme astonishment and delight of the audience.  It requires only to glance at The Nights for seeing how much histrionic matter they contain.

In considering the style of The Nights we must bear in mind that the work has never been edited according to our ideas of the process.  Consequently there is no just reason for translating the whole verbatim et literatim, as has been done by Torrens, Lane and Payne in his “Tales from the Arabic."[FN#305] This conscientious treatment is required for versions of an author like Camoens, whose works were carefully corrected and arranged by a competent litterateur, but it is not merited by The Nights as they now are.  The Macnaghten, the Bulak and the Bayrut texts, though printed from MSS. identical in order, often differ in minor matters.  Many friends have asked me to undertake the work:  but, even if lightened by the aid of Shaykhs, Munshis and copyists, the labour would be severe, tedious and thankless:  better leave the holes open than patch them with fancy work or with heterogeneous matter.  The learned, indeed, as Lane tells us (i. 74; iii. 740), being thoroughly dissatisfied with the plain and popular, the ordinary and “vulgar” note of the language, have attempted to refine and improve it and have more than once threatened to remodel it, that is, to make it odious.  This would be to dress up Robert Burns in plumes borrowed from Dryden and Pope.

The first defect of the texts is in the distribution and arrangement of the matter, as I have noticed in the case of Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi. 77).  Moreover, many of the earlier Nights are overlong and not a few of the others are overshort:  this, however, has the prime recommendation of variety.  Even the vagaries of editor and scribe will not account for all the incoherences, disorder and inconsequence, and for the vain iterations which suggest that the author has forgotten what he said.  In places there are dead allusions to persons and tales which are left dark, e. g. vol. i. pp. 43, 57, 61, etc.  The digressions are abrupt and useless, leading nowhere, while sundry pages are wearisome for excess of prolixity or hardly intelligible for extreme conciseness.  The perpetual recurrence of mean colloquialisms and

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The characteristics of the whole are naivete and simplicity, clearness and a singular concision.  The gorgeousness is in the imagery not in the language; the words are weak while the sense, as in the classical Scandinavian books, is strong; and here the Arabic differs diametrically from the florid exuberance and turgid amplifications of the Persian story-teller, which sound so hollow and unreal by the side of a chaster model.  It abounds in formulae such as repetitions of religious phrases which are unchangeable.  There are certain stock comparisons, as Lokman’s wisdom, Joseph’s beauty, Jacob’s grief, Job’s patience, David’s music, and Maryam the Virgin’s chastity.  The eyebrow is a Nun; the eye a Sad, the mouth a Mim.  A hero is more prudent than the crow, a better guide than the Kata grouse, more generous than the cock, warier than the crane, braver than the lion, more aggressive than the panther, finer-sighted than the horse, craftier than the fox, greedier than the gazelle, more vigilant than the dog, and thriftier than the ant.  The cup-boy is a sun rising from the dark underworld symbolised by his collar; his cheek-mole is a crumb of ambergris, his nose is a scymitar grided at the curve; his lower lip is a jujube; his teeth are the Pleiades or hailstones; his browlocks are scorpions; his young hair on the upper lip is an emerald; his side beard is a swarm of ants or a Lam ( -letter) enclosing the roses or anemones of his cheek.  The cup-girl is a moon who rivals the sheen of the sun; her forehead is a pearl set off by the jet of her “idiot-fringe;” her eyelashes scorn the sharp sword; and her glances are arrows shot from the bow of the eyebrows.  A

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This does not sound promising:  yet, as has been said of Arab music, the persistent repetition of the same notes in the minor key is by no means monotonous and ends with haunting the ear, occupying the thought and touching the soul.  Like the distant frog-concert and chirp of the cicada, the creak of the water-wheel and the stroke of hammers upon the anvil from afar, the murmur of the fountain, the sough of the wind and the plash of the wavelet, they occupy the sensorium with a soothing effect, forming a barbaric music full of sweetness and peaceful pleasure.

Section iv. 
Social condition.

I here propose to treat of the Social Condition which The Nights discloses, of Al-Islam at the earlier period of its development, concerning the position of women and about the pornology of the great Saga-book.

A.—­Al-Islam.

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A splendid and glorious life was that of Baghdad in the days of the mighty Caliph,[FN#310] when the Capital had towered to the zenith of grandeur and was already trembling and tottering to the fall.  The centre of human civilisation, which was then confined to Greece and Arabia, and the metropolis of an Empire exceeding in extent the widest limits of Rome, it was essentially a city of pleasure, a Paris of the ixth century.  The “Palace of Peace” (Dar al-Salam), worthy successor of Babylon and Nineveh, which had outrivalled Damascus, the “Smile of the Prophet,” and Kufah, the successor of Hira and the magnificent creation of Caliph Omar, possessed unrivalled advantages of site and climate.  The Tigris-Euphrates Valley, where the fabled Garden of Eden has been placed, in early ages succeeded the Nile- Valley as a great centre of human development; and the prerogative of a central and commanding position still promises it, even in the present state of decay and desolation under the unspeakable Turk, a magnificent future,[FN#311] when railways and canals shall connect it with Europe.  The city of palaces and government offices, hotels and pavilions, mosques and colleges, kiosks and squares, bazars and markets, pleasure grounds and orchards, adorned with all the graceful charms which Saracenic architecture had borrowed from the Byzantines, lay couched upon the banks of the Dijlah-Hiddekel under a sky of marvellous purity and in a climate which makes mere life a “Kayf”—­the luxury of tranquil enjoyment.  It was surrounded by far extending suburbs, like Rusafah on the Eastern side and villages like Baturanjah, dear to the votaries of pleasure; and with the roar of a gigantic capital mingled the hum of prayer, the trilling of birds, the thrilling of harp and lute, the shrilling of pipes, the witching strains of the professional Almah, and the minstrel’s lay.

The population of Baghdad must have been enormous when the smallest number of her sons who fell victims to Hulaku Khan in 1258 was estimated at eight hundred thousand, while other authorities more than double the terrible “butcher’s bill.”  Her policy and polity were unique.  A well regulated routine of tribute and taxation, personally inspected by the Caliph; a network of waterways, canaux d’arrosage; a noble system of highways, provided with viaducts, bridges and caravanserais, and a postal service of mounted couriers enabled it to collect as in a reservoir the wealth of the outer world.  The facilities for education were upon the most extended scale; large sums, from private as well as public sources, were allotted to Mosques, each of which, by the admirable rule of Al-Islam, was expected to contain a school:  these establishments were richly endowed and stocked with professors collected from every land between Khorasan and Marocco;[FN#312] and immense libraries[FN#313] attracted the learned of all nations.  It was a golden age for poets and panegyrists, koranists and literati, preachers and rhetoricians, physicians and

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Under wise administration Agriculture and Commerce, the twin pillars of national prosperity, necessarily flourished.  A scientific canalisation, with irrigation works inherited from the ancients, made the Mesopotamian Valley a rival of Kemi the Black Land, and rendered cultivation a certainty of profit, not a mere speculation, as it must ever be to those who perforce rely upon the fickle rains of Heaven.  The remains of extensive mines prove that this source of public wealth was not neglected; navigation laws encouraged transit and traffic; and ordinances for the fisheries aimed at developing a branch of industry which is still backward even during the xixth century.  Most substantial encouragement was given to trade and commerce, to manufactures and handicrafts, by the flood of gold which poured in from all parts of earth; by the presence of a splendid and luxurious court, and by the call for new arts and industries which such a civilisation would necessitate.  The crafts were distributed into guilds and syndicates under their respective chiefs, whom the government did not “govern too much”:  these Shahbandars, Mukaddams and Nakibs regulated the several trades, rewarded the industrious, punished the fraudulent and were personally answerable, as we still see at Cairo, for the conduct of their constituents.  Public order, the sine qua non of stability and progress, was preserved, first, by the satisfaction of the lieges who, despite their characteristic turbulence, had few if any grievances; and, secondly, by a well directed and efficient police, an engine of statecraft which in the West seems most difficult to perfect. 

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I need say no more on this heading, the civilisation of Baghdad contrasting with the barbarism of Europe then Germanic, The Nights itself being the best expositor.  On the other hand the action of the state-religion upon the state, the condition of Al-Islam during the reign of Al-Rashid, its declension from the primitive creed and its relation to Christianity and Christendom, require a somewhat extended notice.  In offering the following observations it is only fair to declare my standpoints.

1.  All forms of “faith,” that is, belief in things unseen, not subject to the senses, and therefore unknown and (in our present stage of development) unknowable, are temporary and transitory:  no religion hitherto promulgated amongst men shows any prospect of being final or otherwise than finite.

2.  Religious ideas, which are necessarily limited, may all be traced home to the old seat of science and art, creeds and polity in the Nile-Valley and to this day they retain the clearest signs of their origin.

3.  All so-called “revealed” religions consist mainly of three portions, a cosmogony more or less mythical, a history more or less falsified and a moral code more or less pure.

Al-Islam, it has been said, is essentially a fighting faith and never shows to full advantage save in the field.  The faith and luxury of a wealthy capital, the debauchery and variety of vices which would spring up therein, naturally as weeds in a rich fallow, and the cosmopolitan views which suggest themselves in a meeting-place of nations, were sore trials to the primitive simplicity of the “Religion of Resignation”—­the saving faith.  Harun and his cousin-wife, as has been shown, were orthodox and even fanatical; but the Barmecides were strongly suspected of heretical leanings; and while the many- headed showed itself, as usual, violent, and ready to do battle about an Azan-call, the learned, who sooner or later leaven the masses, were profoundly dissatisfied with the dryness and barrenness of Mohammed’s creed, so acceptable to the vulgar, and were devising a series of schisms and innovations.

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In the Tale of Tawaddud (vol. v. 189) the reader has seen a fairly extended catechism of the Creed (Din), the ceremonial observances (Mazhab) and the apostolic practices (Sunnat) of the Shafi’i school which, with minor modifications, applies to the other three orthodox.  Europe has by this time clean forgotten some tricks of her former bigotry, such as “Mawmet” (an idol!) and “Mahommerie” (mummery[FN#315]), a place of Moslem worship:  educated men no longer speak with Ockley of the “great impostor Mahomet,” nor believe with the learned and violent Dr. Prideaux that he was foolish and wicked enough to dispossess “certain poor orphans, the sons of an inferior artificer” (the Banu Najjar!).  A host of books has attempted, though hardly with success, to enlighten popular ignorance upon a crucial point; namely, that the Founder of Al-Islam, like the Founder of Christianity, never pretended to establish a new religion.  His claims, indeed, were limited to purging the “School of Nazareth” of the dross of ages and of the manifold abuses with which long use had infected its early constitution:  hence to the unprejudiced observer his reformation seems to have brought it nearer the primitive and original doctrine than any subsequent attempts, especially the Judaizing tendencies of the so-called “Protestant” churches.  The Meccan Apostle preached that the Hanafiyyah or orthodox belief, which he subsequently named Al-Islam, was first taught by Allah, in all its purity and perfection, to Adam and consigned to certain inspired volumes now lost; and that this primal Holy Writ received additions in the days of his descendants Shis (Seth) and Idris (Enoch?), the founder of the Sabian (not “Sabaean”) faith.  Here, therefore, Al-Islam at once avoided the deplorable assumption of the Hebrews and the Christians,—­an error which has been so injurious to their science and their progress,—­of placing their “firstman” in circa B. C. 4000 or somewhat subsequent to the building of the Pyramids:  the Pre-Adamite[FN#316] races and dynasties of the Moslems remove a great stumbling-block and square with the anthropological views of the present day.  In process of time, when the Adamite religion demanded a restoration and a supplement, its pristine virtue was revived, restored and further developed by the books communicated to Abraham, whose dispensation thus takes the place of the Hebrew Noah and his Noachidae.  In due time the Torah, or Pentateuch, superseded and abrogated the Abrahamic dispensation; the “Zabur” of David (a book not confined to the Psalms) reformed the Torah; the Injil or Evangel reformed the Zabur and was itself purified, quickened and perfected by the Koran which means the Reading or the Recital.  Hence Locke, with many others, held Moslems to be unorthodox, that is, anti-Trinitarian Christians who believe in the Immaculate Conception, in the Ascension and in the divine mission of Jesus; and when Priestley affirmed that “Jesus was sent from God,” all Moslems do the same. 

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The Talmud had been completed a full century before Mohammed’s time and the Evangel had been translated into Arabic; moreover travel and converse with his Jewish and Christian friends and companions must have convinced the Meccan Apostle that Christianity was calling as loudly for reform as Judaism had done. [FN#319] An exaggerated Trinitarianism or rather Tritheism, a “Fourth Person” and Saint-worship had virtually dethroned the Deity; whilst Mariolatry had made the faith a religio muliebris, and superstition had drawn from its horrid fecundity an incredible number of heresies and monstrous absurdities.  Even ecclesiastic writers draw the gloomiest pictures of the Christian Church in the fourth and seventh centuries, and one declares that the “Kingdom of Heaven had become a Hell.”  Egypt, distracted by the blood- thirsty religious wars of Copt and Greek, had been covered with hermitages by a yens aeterna of semi-maniacal superstition.  Syria, ever “feracious of heresies,” had allowed many of her finest tracts to be monopolised by monkeries and nunneries.[FN#320] After many a tentative measure Mohammed seems to have built his edifice upon two bases, the unity of the Godhead and the priesthood of the pater-familias.  He abolished for ever the “sacerdos alter Christus” whose existence, as some one acutely said, is the best proof of Christianity, and whom all know to be its weakest point.  The Moslem family, however humble, was to be the model in miniature of the State, and every father in Al-Islam was made priest and pontiff in his own house, able unaided to marry himself, to circumcise (to baptise as it were) his children, to instruct them in the law and canonically to bury himself (vol. viii. 22).  Ritual, properly so called, there was none; congregational prayers were merely those of the individual en masse, and the only admitted approach to a sacerdotal order were the Olema or scholars learned in the legistic and the Mullah or schoolmaster.  By thus abolishing the priesthood Mohammed reconciled ancient with modern wisdom.  “Scito dominum,” said Cato, “pro tota familia rem divinam facere”:  “No priest at a birth, no priest at a marriage, no priest at a death,” is the aspiration of the present Rationalistic School.

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The Meccan Apostle wisely retained the compulsory sacrament of circumcision and the ceremonial ablutions of the Mosaic law; and the five daily prayers not only diverted man’s thoughts from the world but tended to keep his body pure.  These two institutions had been practiced throughout life by the Founder of Christianity; but the followers who had never seen him, abolished them for purposes evidently political and propagandist.  By ignoring the truth that cleanliness is next to godliness they paved the way for such saints as Simon Stylites and Sabba who, like the lowest Hindu orders of ascetics, made filth a concominant and an evidence of piety:  even now English Catholic girls are at times forbidden by Italian priests a frequent use of the bath as a sign post to the sin of “luxury.”  Mohammed would have accepted the morals contained in the Sermon on the Mount much more readily than did the Jews from whom its matter was borrowed.[FN#321] He did something to abolish the use of wine, which in the East means only its abuse; and he denounced games of chance, well knowing that the excitable races of sub-tropical climates cannot play with patience, fairness or moderation.  He set aside certain sums for charity to be paid by every Believer and he was the first to establish a poor-rate (Zakat):  thus he avoided the shame and scandal of mendicancy which, beginning in the Catholic countries of Southern Europe, extends to Syria and as far East as Christianity is found.  By these and other measures of the same import he made the ideal Moslem’s life physically clean, moderate and temperace.

But Mohammed, the “master mind of the age,” had, we must own, a “genuine prophetic power, a sinking of self in the Divine not distinguishable in kind from the inspiration of the Hebrew prophets,” especially in that puritanical and pharisaic narrowness which, with characteristic simplicity, can see no good outside its own petty pale.  He had insight as well as outsight, and the two taught him that personal and external reformation were mean matters compared with elevating the inner man.  In the “purer Faith,” which he was commissioned to abrogate and to quicken, he found two vital defects equally fatal to its energy and to its longevity.  These were (and are) its egoism and its degradation of humanity.  Thus it cannot be a “pleroma”:  it needs a Higher Law.[FN#322] As Judaism promised the good Jew all manner of temporal blessings, issue, riches, wealth, honour, power, length of days, so Christianity offered the good Christian, as a bribe to lead a godly life, personal salvation and a future state of happiness, in fact the Kingdom of Heaven, with an alternative threat of Hell.  It never rose to the height of the Hindu Brahmans and Lao-Tse (the “Ancient Teacher"); of Zeno the Stoic and his disciples the noble Pharisees[FN#323] who believed and preached that Virtue is its own reward.  It never dared to say, “Do good for Good’s sake;"[FN#324] even now it does not declare with Cicero,

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A no less defect in the “School of Galilee” is its low view of human nature.  Adopting as sober and authentic history an Osirian-Hebrew myth which Philo and a host of Rabbis explain away, each after his own fashion, Christianity dwells, lovingly as it were, upon the “Fall” of man[FN#325] and seems to revel in the contemptible condition to which “original sin” condemned him; thus grovelling before God ad majorem Dei gloriam.  To such a point was and is this carried that the Synod of Dort declared, Infantes infidelium morientes in infantia reprobatos esse statui mus; nay, many of the orthodox still hold a Christian babe dying unbaptised to be unfit for a higher existence, and some have even created a “limbo” expressly to domicile the innocents “of whom is the kingdom of Heaven.”  Here, if any where, the cloven foot shows itself and teaches us that the only solid stratum underlying priestcraft is one composed of L s. d.

And I never can now believe it, my Lord! (Bishop) we come to this earth Ready damned, with the seeds of evil sown quite so thick at our birth, sings Edwin Arnold.[FN#326] We ask, can infatuation or hypocrisy—­for it must be the one or the other—­go farther?  But the Adamical myth is opposed to all our modern studies.  The deeper we dig into the Earth’s “crust,” the lower are the specimens of human remains which occur; and hitherto not a single “find” has come to revive the faded glories of

          Adam the goodliest man of men since born (!)
          His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.

Thus Christianity, admitting, like Judaism, its own saints and santons, utterly ignores the progress of humanity, perhaps the only belief in which the wise man can take unmingled satisfaction.  Both have proposed an originally perfect being with hyacinthine locks, from whose type all the subsequent humans are degradations physical and moral.  We on the other hand hold, from the evidence of our senses, that early man was a savage very little superior to the brute; that during man’s millions of years upon earth there has been a gradual advance towards perfection, at times irregular and even retrograde, but in the main progressive; and that a comparison of man in the xixth century with the caveman[FN#327] affords us the means of measuring past progress and of calculating the future of humanity.

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Mahommed was far from rising to the moral heights of the ancient sages:  he did nothing to abate the egotism of Christianity; he even exaggerated the pleasures of its Heaven and the horrors of its Hell.  On the other hand he did much to exalt human nature.  He passed over the “Fall” with a light hand; he made man superior to the angels; he encouraged his fellow creatures to be great and good by dwelling upon their nobler not their meaner side; he acknowledged, even in this world, the perfectability of mankind, including womankind, and in proposing the loftiest ideal he acted unconsciously upon the grand dictum of chivalry—­Honneur oblige.[FN#328] His prophets were mostly faultless men; and, if the “Pure of Allah” sinned, he “sinned against himself.”  Lastly, he made Allah predetermine the career and fortunes, not only of empires, but of every created being; thus inculcating sympathy and tolerance of others, which is true humanity, and a proud resignation to evil as to good fortune.  This is the doctrine which teaches the vulgar Moslem a dignity observed even by the “blind traveller,” and which enables him to display a moderation, a fortitude, and a self-command rare enough amongst the followers of the “purer creed.”

Christian historians explain variously the portentous rise of Al-Islam and its marvellous spread over vast regions, not only of pagans and idolators but of Christians.  Prideaux disingenuously suggests that it “seems to have been purposely raised up by God, to be a scourge to the Christian Church for not living in accordance with their most holy religion.”  The popular excuse is by the free use of the sword; this, however, is mere ignorance:  in Mohammed’s day and early Al-Islam only actual fighters were slain:[FN#329] the rest were allowed to pay the Jizyah, or capitation-tax, and to become tributaries, enjoying almost all the privileges of Moslems.  But even had forcible conversion been most systematically practiced, it would have afforded an insufficient explanation of the phenomenal rise of an empire which covered more ground in eighty years than Rome had gained in eight hundred.  During so short a time the grand revival of Monotheism had consolidated into a mighty nation, despite their eternal blood-feuds, the scattered Arab tribes; a six-years’ campaign had conquered Syria, and a lustre or two utterly overthrew Persia, humbled the Graeco-Roman, subdued Egypt and extended the Faith along northern Africa as far as the Atlantic.  Within three generations the Copts of Nile-land had formally cast out Christianity, and the same was the case with Syria, the cradle of the Nazarene, and Mesopotamia, one of his strongholds, although both were backed by all the remaining power of the Byzantine empire.  Northwestern Africa, which had rejected the idolatro-philosophic system of pagan and imperial Rome, and had accepted, after lukewarm fashion, the Arian Christianity imported by the Vandals, and the “Nicene mystery of the Trinity,” hailed with enthusiasm the doctrines

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I cannot quit this subject without a passing reference to an admirably written passage in Mr. Palgrave’s travels[FN#333] which is essentially unfair to Al-Islam.  The author has had ample opportunities of comparing creeds:  of Jewish blood and born a Protestant, he became a Catholic and a Jesuit (Pere Michel Cohen)[FN#334] in a Syrian convent; he crossed Arabia as a good Moslem and he finally returned to his premier amour, Anglicanism.  But his picturesque depreciation of Mohammedanism, which has found due appreciation in more than one popular volume, [FN#335] is a notable specimen of special pleading, of the ad captandum in its modern and least honest form.  The writer begins by assuming the arid and barren Wahhabi-ism, which he had personally studied, as a fair expression of the Saving Faith.  What should we say to a Moslem traveller who would make the Calvinism of the sourest Covenanter, model, genuine and ancient Christianity?  What would sensible Moslems say to these propositions of Professor

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In Al-Rashid’s day a mighty change had passed over the primitive simplicity of Al-Islam, the change to which faiths and creeds, like races and empires and all things sublunary, are subject.  The proximity of Persia and the close intercourse with the Graeco-Romans had polished and greatly modified the physiognomy of the rugged old belief:  all manner of metaphysical subtleties had cropped up, with the usual disintegrating effect, and some of these threatened even the unity of the Godhead.  Musaylimah and Karmat had left traces of their handiwork:  the Mutazilites (separatists or secessors) actively propagated their doctrine of a created and temporal Koran.  The Khariji or Ibazi, who rejects and reviles Abu Turab (Caliph Ali), contended passionately with the Shi’ah who reviles and

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B.—­Woman.

The next point I propose to consider is the position of womanhood in The Nights, so curiously at variance with the stock ideas concerning the Moslem home and domestic policy still prevalent, not only in England, but throughout Europe.  Many readers of these volumes have remarked to me with much astonishment that they find the female characters more remarkable for decision, action and manliness than the male; and are wonderstruck by their masterful attitude and by the supreme influence they exercise upon public and private life.

I have glanced at the subject of the sex in Al-Islam to such an extent throughout my notes that little remains here to be added.  Women, all the world over are what men make them; and the main charm of Amazonian fiction is to see how they live and move and have their being without any masculine guidance.  But it is the old ever-new fable

          “Who drew the Lion vanquished?  ‘Twas a man!’’

The books of the Ancients, written in that stage of civilisation when the sexes are at civil war, make women even more than in real life the creatures of their masters:  hence from the dawn of literature to the present day the sex has been the subject of disappointed abuse and eulogy almost as unmerited.  Ecclesiastes, perhaps the strangest specimen of an “inspired volume” the world has yet produced, boldly declares “One (upright) man among a thousand I have found; but a woman among all have I not found” (vol. vii. 28), thus confirming the pessimism of Petronius:—­

          Femina nulla bona est, et si bona contigit ulla
          Nescio quo fato res male facta bona est.

In the Psalms again (xxx. 15) we have the old sneer at the three insatiables, Hell, Earth and the Parts feminine (os vulvae); and Rabbinical learning has embroidered these and other texts, producing a truly hideous caricature.  A Hadis attributed to Mohammed runs, “They (women) lack wits and faith.  When Eve was created Satan rejoiced saying:—­Thou art half of my host, the trustee of my secret and

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The Nights, as might be expected from the emotional East, exaggerate these views.  Women are mostly “Sectaries of the god Wuensch”; beings of impulse, blown about by every gust of passion; stable only in instability; constant only in inconstancy.  The false ascetic, the perfidious and murderous crone and the old hag-procuress who pimps like Umm Kulsum,[FN#341] for mere pleasure, in the luxury of sin, are drawn with an experienced and loving hand.  Yet not the less do we meet with examples of the dutiful daughter, the model lover matronly in her affection, the devoted wife, the perfect mother, the saintly devotee, the learned preacher, Univira the chaste widow and the self-sacrificing heroic woman.  If we find (vol. iii. 216) the sex described as:—­

          An offal cast by kites where’er they list,

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and the studied insults of vol. iii. 318, we also come upon an admirable sketch of conjugal happiness (vol. vii. ? 43); and, to mention no other, Shahryar’s attestation to Shahrazad’s excellence in the last charming pages of The Nights.[FN#342] It is the same with the Katha whose praise and dispraise are equally enthusiastic; e.g., “Women of good family are guarded by their virtue, the sole efficient chamberlain; but the Lord himself can hardly guard the unchaste.  Who can stem a furious stream and a frantic woman?” (i. 328).  “Excessive love in woman is your only hero for daring” (i. 339).  “Thus fair ones, naturally feeble, bring about a series of evil actions which engender discernment and aversion to the world; but here and there you will find a virtuous woman who adorneth a glorious house as the streak of the moon arrayeth the breadth of the Heavens” (i. 346).  “So you see, King, honourable matrons are devoted to their husbands and ’tis not the case that women are always bad” (ii. 624).  And there is true wisdom in that even balance of feminine qualities advocated by our Hindu-Hindi class-book the Toti-nameh or Parrot volume.  The perfect woman has seven requisites.  She must not always be merry (1) nor sad (2); she must not always be talking (3) nor silently musing (4); she must not always be adorning herself (5) nor neglecting her person (6); and, (7) at all times she must be moderate and self possessed.

The legal status of womankind in Al-Islam is exceptionally high, a fact of which Europe has often been assured, although the truth has not even yet penetrated into the popular brain.  Nearly a century ago one Mirza Abu Talib Khan, an Amildar or revenue collector, after living two years in London, wrote an “apology” for, or rather a vindication of, his countrywomen which is still worth reading and quoting.[FN#343] Nations are but superficial judges of one another:  where customs differ they often remark only the salient distinctive points which, when examined, prove to be of minor importance.  Europeans seeing and hearing that women in the East are “cloistered” as the Grecian matron was wont
             and ; that wives may not walk out with
their husbands and cannot accompany them to “balls and parties”; moreover, that they are always liable, like the ancient Hebrew, to the mortification of the “sister-wife,” have most ignorantly determined that they are mere serviles and that their lives are not worth living.  Indeed, a learned lady, Miss Martineau, once visiting a Harem went into ecstasies of pity and sorrow because the poor things knew nothing of—­say trigonometry and the use of the globes.  Sonnini thought otherwise, and my experience, like that of all old dwellers in the East, is directly opposed to this conclusion.

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I have noted (Night cmlxii.) that Mohammed, in the fifth year of his reign,[FN#344] after his ill-advised and scandalous marriage[FN#345] with his foster-daughter Zaynab, established the Hijab or veiling of women.  It was probably an exaggeration of local usage:  a modified separation of the sexes, which extended and still extends even to the Badawi, must long have been customary in Arabian cities, and its object was to deliver the sexes from temptation, as the Koran says (xxxii. 32), “purer will this (practice) be for your hearts and their hearts."[FN#346] The women, who delight in restrictions which tend to their honour, accepted it willingly and still affect it, they do not desire a liberty or rather a licence which they have learned to regard as inconsistent with their time-honoured notions of feminine decorum and delicacy, and they would think very meanly of a husband who permitted them to be exposed, like hetairae, to the public gaze.[FN#347] As Zubayr Pasha, exiled to Gibraltar for another’s treason, said to my friend, Colonel Buckle, after visiting quarters evidently laid out by a jealous husband, “We Arabs think that when a man has a precious jewel, ’tis wiser to lock it up in a box than to leave it about for anyone to take.”  The Eastern adopts the instinctive, the Western prefers the rational method.  The former jealously guards his treasure, surrounds it with all precautions, fends off from it all risks and if the treasure go astray, kills it.  The latter, after placing it en evidence upon an eminence in ball dress with back and bosom bared to the gaze of society, a bundle of charms exposed to every possible seduction, allows it to take its own way, and if it be misled, he kills or tries to kill the misleader.  It is a fiery trial and the few who safely pass through it may claim a higher standpoint in the moral world than those who have never been sorely tried.  But the crucial question is whether Christian Europe has done wisely in offering such temptations.

The second and main objection to Moslem custom is the marriage-system which begins with a girl being wedded to a man whom she knows only by hearsay.  This was the habit of our forbears not many generations ago, and it still prevails amongst noble houses in Southern Europe, where a lengthened study of it leaves me doubtful whether the “love-marriage,” as it is called, or wedlock with an utter stranger, evidently the two extremes, is likely to prove the happier.  The “sister-wife” is or would be a sore trial to monogamic races like those of Northern Europe where Caia, all but the equal of Caius in most points mental and physical and superior in some, not unfrequently proves herself the “man of the family,” the “only man in the boat.”  But in the East, where the sex is far more delicate, where a girl is brought up in polygamy, where religious reasons separate her from her husband, during pregnancy and lactation, for three successive years; and where often enough like the Mormon damsel she would hesitate

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Mirza Abu Talib “the Persian Prince"[FN#348] offers six reasons why “the liberty of the Asiatic women appears less than that of the Europeans,” ending with,

          I’ll fondly place on either eye
          The man that can to this reply.

He then lays down eight points in which the Moslem wife has greatly the advantage over her Christian sisterhood; and we may take his first as a specimen.  Custom, not contrary to law, invests the Mohammedan mother with despotic government of the homestead, slaves, servants and children, especially the latter:  she alone directs their early education, their choice of faith, their marriage and their establishment in life; and in case of divorce she takes the daughters, the sons going to the sire.  She has also liberty to leave her home, not only for one or two nights, but for a week or a fortnight, without consulting her husband; and whilst she visits a strange household, the master and all males above fifteen are forbidden the Harem.  But the main point in favour of the Moslem wife is her being a “legal sharer”:  inheritance is secured to her by Koranic law; she must be dowered by the bridegroom to legalise marriage and all she gains is secured to her; whereas in England a “Married Woman’s Property Act” was completed only in 1882 after many centuries of the grossest abuses.

Lastly, Moslems and Easterns in general study and intelligently study the art and mystery of satisfying the physical woman.  In my Foreword I have noticed among barbarians the system of “making men,"[FN#349] that is, of teaching lads first arrived at puberty the nice conduct of the instrumentum paratum plantandis avibus:  a branch of the knowledge-tree which our modern education grossly neglects, thereby entailing untold miseries upon individuals, families and generations.  The mock virtue, the most immodest modesty of England and of the United States in the xixth century, pronounces the subject foul and fulsome:"Society” sickens at all details; and hence it is said abroad that the English have the finest women in Europe and least know how to use them.  Throughout the East such studies are aided by a long series of volumes, many of them written by learned physiologists, by men of social standing and by religious dignitaries high in office.  The Egyptians especially delight in aphrodisiac literature treating, as the Turks say, de la partie au-dessous de la taille; and from fifteen hundred to two thousand copies of a new work, usually lithographed in cheap form, readily sell off. 

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1.  Kitab al-Bah by Al-Nahli.

2.  Kitab al’-Ars wa al’-Arais (Book of the Bridal and the Brides) by Al-Jahiz.

3.  Kitab al-Kiyan (Maiden’s Book) by Ibn Hajib al-Nu’man.

4.  Kitab al-Izah fi asrar al-Nikah (Book of the Exposition on the Mysteries of married Fruition).

5.  Kitab Jami’ al-Lizzah (The Compendium of Pleasure) by Ibn Samsamani.

6.  Kitab Barjan (Yarjan?) wa Janahib (? ?)[FN#352]

7.  Kitab al-Munakahah wa al-Mufatahah fi Asnaf al-Jima’ wa Alatih (Book of Carnal Copulation and the Initiation into the modes of Coition and its Instrumentation) by Aziz al-Din al-Masihi.[FN#353]

To these I may add the Lizzat al-Nisa (Pleasures of Women), a text-book in Arabic, Persian and Hindostani:  it is a translation and a very poor attempt, omitting much from, and adding naught to, the famous Sanskrit work Ananga-Ranga (Stage of the Bodiless One i.e.  Cupido) or Hindu Art of Love (Ars Amoris Indica).[FN#354] I have copies of it in Sanskrit and Marathi,Guzrati and Hindostani:  the latter is an unpaged 8vo of pp. 66, including eight pages of most grotesque illustrations showing the various san (the Figurae Veneris or positions of copulation), which seem to be the triumphs of contortionists.  These pamphlets lithographed in Bombay are broad cast over the land.[FN#355]

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It must not be supposed that such literature is purely and simply aphrodisiacal.  The learned Sprenger, a physician as well as an Arabist, says (Al-Mas’udi p. 384) of a tractate by the celebrated Rhazes in the Leyden Library, “The number of curious observations, the correct and practical ideas and the novelty of the notions of Eastern nations on these subjects, which are contained in this book, render it one of the most important productions of the medical literature of the Arabs.”  I can conscientiously recommend to the Anthropologist a study of the “Kutub al-Bah.”

C.—­Pornography.

Here it will be advisable to supplement what was said in my Foreword (p. xiii.) concerning the turpiloquium of The Nights.  Readers who have perused the ten volumes will probably agree with me that the naive indecencies of the text are rather gaudis-serie than prurience; and, when delivered with mirth and humour, they are rather the “excrements of wit” than designed for debauching the mind.  Crude and indelicate with infantile plainness; even gross and, at times, “nasty” in their terrible frankness, they cannot be accused of corrupting suggestiveness or subtle insinuation of vicious sentiment.  Theirs is a coarseness of language, not of idea; they are indecent, not depraved; and the pure and perfect naturalness of their nudity seems almost to purify it, showing that the matter is rather of manners than of morals.  Such throughout the East is the language of every man, woman and child, from prince to peasant, from matron to prostitute:  all are as the naive French traveller said of the Japanese:  “si grossiers qu’ils ne scavent nommer les choses que par leur nom.”  This primitive stage of language sufficed to draw from Lane and Burckhardt strictures upon the “most immodest freedom of conversation in Egypt,” where, as all the world over, there are three several stages for names of things and acts sensual.  First we have the mot cru, the popular term, soon followed by the technical and scientific, and, lastly, the literary or figurative nomenclature, which is often much more immoral because more attractive, suggestive and seductive than the “raw word.”  And let me observe that the highest civilisation is now returning to the language of nature.  In La Glu of M. J. Richepin, a triumph of the realistic school, we find such “archaic” expressions as la petee, putain, foutue a la six-quatre-dix; un facetieuse petarade; tu t’es foutue de, etc.  Eh vilain bougre! and so forth.[FN#356] To those critics who complain of these raw vulgarisms and puerile indecencies in The Nights I can reply only by quoting the words said to have been said by Dr. Johnson to the lady who complained of the naughty words in his dictionary—­“You must have been looking for them, Madam!”

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But I repeat (p. xiv.) there is another element in The Nights and that is one of absolute obscenity utterly repugnant to English readers, even the least prudish.  It is chiefly connected with what our neighbours call le vice contre nature—­as if anything can be contrary to nature which includes all things.[FN#357] Upon this subject I must offer details, as it does not enter into my plan to ignore any theme which is interesting to the Orientalist and the Anthropologist.  And they, methinks, do abundant harm who, for shame or disgust, would suppress the very mention of such matters:  in order to combat a great and growing evil deadly to the birth-rate—­the mainstay of national prosperity—­the first requisite is careful study.  As Albert Bollstoedt, Bishop of Ratisbon, rightly says.—­Quia malum non evitatum nisi cognitum, ideo necesse est cognoscere immundiciem coitus et multa alla quae docentur in isto libro.  Equally true are Professor Mantegazza’s words:[FN#358] Cacher les plates du coeur humain au nom de la pudeur, ce n’est au contraire qu’hypocrisie ou peur.  The late Mr. Grote had reason to lament that when describing such institutions as the far-famed of Thebes, the Sacred Band annihilated at Chaeroneia, he was compelled to a reticence which permitted him to touch only the surface of the subject.  This was inevitable under the present rule of Cant[FN#359] in a book intended for the public:  but the same does not apply to my version of The Nights, and now I proceed to discuss the matter serieusement, honnetement, historiquement; to show it in decent nudity not in suggestive fig-leaf or feuille de vigne.

D.—­Pederasty.

The “execrabilis familia pathicorum” first came before me by a chance of earlier life.  In 1845, when Sir Charles Napier had conquered and annexed Sind, despite a fraction (mostly venal) which sought favour with the now defunct “Court of Directors to the Honourable East India Company,” the veteran began to consider his conquest with a curious eye.  It was reported to him that Karachi, a townlet of some two thousand souls and distant not more than a mile from camp, supported no less than three lupanars or borders, in which not women but boys and eunuchs, the former demanding nearly a double price,[FN#360] lay for hire.  Being then the only British officer who could speak Sindi, I was asked indirectly to make enquiries and to report upon the subject; and I undertook the task on express condition that my report should not be forwarded to the Bombay Government, from whom supporters of the Conqueror’s policy could expect scant favour, mercy or justice.  Accompanied by a Munshi, Mirza Mohammed Hosayn of Shiraz, and habited as a merchant, Mirza Abdullah the Bushiri[FN#361] passed many an evening in the townlet, visited all the porneia and obtained the fullest details, which were duly despatched to Government House.  But the “Devil’s Brother” presently quitted Sind leaving in his office my unfortunate official:  this found its way with sundry other reports[FN#362] to Bombay and produced the expected result.  A friend in the Secretariat informed me that my summary dismissal from the service had been formally proposed by one of Sir Charles Napier’s successors, whose decease compels me parcere sepulto.  But this excess of outraged modesty was not allowed.

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Subsequent enquiries in many and distant countries enabled me to arrive at the following conclusions:—­

1.  There exists what I shall call a “Sotadic Zone,” bounded westwards by the northern shores of the Mediterranean (N.  Lat. 43 ) and by the southern (N.  Lat. 30 ).  Thus the depth would be 780 to 800 miles including meridional France, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and Greece, with the coast-regions of Africa from Marocco to Egypt.

2.  Running eastward the Sotadic Zone narrows, embracing Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and Chaldaea, Afghanistan, Sind, the Punjab and Kashmir.

3.  In Indo-China the belt begins to broaden, enfolding China, Japan and Turkistan.

4.  It then embraces the South Sea Islands and the New World where, at the time of its discovery, Sotadic love was, with some exceptions, an established racial institution.

5.  Within the Sotadic Zone the Vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and South of the limits here defined practice it only sporadically amid the opprobrium of their fellows who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation and look upon it with the liveliest disgust.

Before entering into topographical details concerning pederasty, which I hold to be geographical and climatic, not racial, I must offer a few considerations of its cause and origin.  We must not forget that the love of boys has its noble, sentimental side.  The Platonists and pupils of the Academy, followed by the Sufis or Moslem Gnostics, held such affection, pure as ardent, to be the beau ideal which united in man’s soul the creature with the Creator.  Professing to regard youths as the most cleanly and beautiful objects in this phenomenal world, they declared that by loving and extolling the chef-d’oeuvre, corporeal and intellectual, of the Demiurgus, disinterestedly and without any admixture of carnal sensuality, they are paying the most fervent adoration to the Causa causans.  They add that such affection, passing as it does the love of women, is far less selfish than fondness for and admiration of the other sex which, however innocent, always suggest sexuality;[FN#363] and Easterns add that the devotion of the moth to the taper is purer and more fervent than the Bulbul’s love for the Rose.  Amongst the Greeks of the best ages the system of boy-favourites was advocated on considerations of morals and politics.  The lover undertook the education of the beloved through precept and example, while the two were conjoined by a tie stricter than the fraternal.  Hieronymus the Peripatetic strongly advocated it because the vigorous disposition of youths and the confidence engendered by their association often led to the overthrow of tyrannies.  Socrates declared that “a most valiant army might be composed of boys and their lovers; for that of all men they would be most ashamed to desert one another.”  And even Virgil, despite the foul flavour of Formosum pastor Corydon, could write:—­

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          Nisus amore pio pueri.

The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only sporadically.  Hence the male feminisme whereby the man becomes patiens as well as agens, and the woman a tribade, a votary of mascula Sappho,[FN#364] Queen of Frictrices or Rubbers.[FN#365] Prof.  Mantegazza claims to have discovered the cause of this pathological love, this perversion of the erotic sense, one of the marvellous list of amorous vagaries which deserve, not prosecution but the pitiful care of the physician and the study of the psychologist.  According to him the nerves of the rectum and the genitalia, in all cases closely connected, are abnormally so in the pathic, who obtains, by intromission, the venereal orgasm which is usually sought through the sexual organs.  So amongst women there are tribads who can procure no pleasure except by foreign objects introduced a posteriori.  Hence his threefold distribution of sodomy; (1) Peripheric or anatomical, caused by an unusual distribution of the nerves and their hyperaesthesia; (2) Luxurious, when love a tergo is preferred on account of the narrowness of the passage; and (3) the Psychical.  But this is evidently superficial:  the question is what causes this neuropathy, this abnormal distribution and condition of the nerves.[FN#366]

As Prince Bismarck finds a moral difference between the male and female races of history, so I suspect a mixed physical temperament effected by the manifold subtle influences massed together in the word climate.  Something of the kind is necessary to explain the fact of this pathological love extending over the greater portion of the habitable world, without any apparent connection of race or media, from the polished Greek to the cannibal Tupi of the Brazil.  Walt Whitman speaks of the ashen grey faces of onanists:  the faded colours, the puffy features and the unwholesome complexion of the professed pederast with his peculiar cachetic expression, indescribable but once seen never forgotten, stamp the breed, and Dr. G. Adolph is justified in declaring “Alle Gewohnneits-paederasten erkennen sich einander schnell, oft met einen Thick.”  This has nothing in common with the feminisme which betrays itself in the pathic by womanly gait, regard and gesture:  it is a something sui generic; and the same may be said of the colour and look of the young priest who honestly refrains from women and their substitutes.  Dr. Tardieu, in his well-known work, “Etude Medico-regale sur les Attentats aux Moeurs,” and Dr. Adolph note a peculiar infundibuliform disposition of the “After” and a smoothness and want of folds even before any abuse has taken place, together with special forms of the male organs in confirmed pederasts.  But these observations have been rejected by Caspar, Hoffman, Brouardel and Dr. J. H. Henry Coutagne (Notes sur la Sodomie, Lyon, 1880), and it is a medical question whose discussion would here be out of place.

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The origin of pederasty is lost in the night of ages; but its historique has been carefully traced by many writers, especially Virey,[FN#367] Rosenbaum[FN#368] and M. H. E. Meier.[FN#369] The ancient Greeks who, like the modern Germans, invented nothing but were great improvers of what other races invented, attributed the formal apostolate of Sotadism to Orpheus, whose stigmata were worn by the Thracian women;

                         —­Omnemque refugerat Orpheus
          Foemineam venerem;—­
          Ille etiam Thracum populis fuit auctor, amorem
          In teneres transferre mares:  citraque juventam
          AEtatis breve ver, et primos carpere flores. 
                                   Ovid Met. x. 79-85.

Euripides proposed Laius father of Oedipus as the inaugurator, whereas Timaeus declared that the fashion of making favourites of boys was introduced into Greece from Crete, for Malthusian reasons said Aristotle (Pol. ii. 10), attributing it to Minos.  Herodotus, however, knew far better, having discovered (ii. c. 80) that the Orphic and Bacchic rites were originally Egyptian.  But the Father of History was a traveller and an annalist rather than an archaeologist and he tripped in the following passage (i. c. 135), “As soon as they (the Persians) hear of any luxury, they instantly make it their own, and hence, among other matters, they have learned from the Hellenes a passion for boys” ("unnatural lust,” says modest Rawlinson).  Plutarch (De Malig, Herod. xiii.)[FN#370] asserts with much more probability that the Persians used eunuch boys according to the Mos Graeciae, long before they had seen the Grecian main.

In the Holy Books of the Hellenes, Homer and Hesiod, dealing with the heroic ages, there is no trace of pederasty, although, in a long subsequent generation, Lucian suspected Achilles and Patroclus as he did Orestes and Pylades, Theseus and Pirithous.  Homer’s praises of beauty are reserved for the feminines, especially his favourite Helen.  But the Dorians of Crete seem to have commended the abuse to Athens and Sparta and subsequently imported it into Tarentum, Agrigentum and other colonies.  Ephorus in Strabo (x. 4 Section 21) gives a curious account of the violent abduction of beloved boys ({Greek}) by the lover ({Greek}); of the obligations of the ravisher ({Greek}) to the favourite ({Greek})[FN#371] and of the “marriage-ceremonies” which lasted two months.  See also Plato, Laws i. c. 8.  Servius (Ad AEneid. x. 325) informs us “De Cretensibus accepimus, quod in amore puerorum intemperantes fuerunt, quod postea in Lacones et in totam Graeciam translatum est.”  The Cretans and afterwards their apt pupils the Chalcidians held it disreputable for a beautiful boy to lack a lover.  Hence Zeus, the national Doric god of Crete, loved Ganymede;[FN#372] Apollo, another Dorian deity, loved Hyacinth, and Hercules, a Doric hero who grew to be a sun-god, loved Hylas and a host of others: 

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          Inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinaedos,

followed by Firmicus (vii. 14) who speaks of “Socratici paedicones.”  It is the modern fashion to doubt the pederasty of the master of Hellenic Sophrosyne, the “Christian before Christianity;” but such a world-wide term as Socratic love can hardly be explained by the lucus-a-non-lucendo theory.  We are overapt to apply our nineteenth century prejudices and prepossessions to the morality of the ancient Greeks who would have specimen’d such squeamishness in Attic salt.

The Spartans, according to Agnon the Academic (confirmed by Plato, Plutarch and Cicero), treated boys and girls in the same way before marriage:  hence Juvenal (xi. 173) uses ’’Lacedaemonius” for a pathic and other writers apply it to a tribade.  After the Peloponnesian War, which ended in B.C. 404, the use became merged in the abuse.  Yet some purity must have survived, even amongst the Boeotians who produced the famous Narcissus,[FN#376] described by Ovid (Met. iii. 339);—­

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          Multi ilium juvenes, multae cupiere puellae;
          Nulli ilium juvenes, nullae tetigere puellae:[FN#377]

for Epaminondas, whose name is mentioned with three beloveds, established the Holy Regiment composed of mutual lovers, testifying the majesty of Eros and preferring to a discreditable life a glorious death.  Philip’s redactions on the fatal field of Chaeroneia form their fittest epitaph.  At last the Athenians, according to AEschines, officially punished Sodomy with death; but the threat did not abolish bordels of boys, like those of Karachi; the Porneia and Pornoboskeia, where slaves and pueri venales “stood,” as the term was, near the Pnyx, the city walls and a certain tower, also about Lycabettus (AEsch. contra Tim.); and paid a fixed tax to the state.  The pleasures of society in civilised Greece seem to have been sought chiefly in the heresies of love—­Hetairesis[FN#378] and Sotadism.

It is calculated that the French of the sixteenth century had four hundred names for the parts genital and three hundred for their use in coition.  The Greek vocabulary is not less copious, and some of its pederastic terms, of which Meier gives nearly a hundred, and its nomenclature of pathologic love are curious and picturesque enough to merit quotation.

To live the life of Abron (the Argive), i.e. that of a , pathic or passive lover.

The Agathonian song.

Aischrourgia = dishonest love, also called Akolasia, Akrasia,
Arrenokoitia, etc.

Alcinoan youths, or “non conformists,”

          In cute curanda plus aequo operate Juventus.

Alegomenos, the “unspeakable,” as the pederast was termed by the
Council of Ancyra:  also the Agrios, Apolaustus and Akolastos.

Androgyne, of whom Ansonius wrote (Epig. lxviii. 15):—­

          Ecce ego sum factus femina de puero.

Badas and badizein = clunes torquens:  also Batalos= a catamite.

Catapygos, Katapygosyne = puerarius and catadactylium from Dactylion, the ring, used in the sense of Nerissa’s, but applied to the corollarium puerile.

Cinaedus (Kinaidos), the active lover ({Greek}) derived either from his kinetics or quasi {Greek} = dog modest.  Also Spatalocinaedus (lascivia fluens) = a fair Ganymede.

Chalcidissare (Khalkidizein), from Chalcis in Euboea, a city famed for love a posteriori; mostly applied to le lechement des testicules by children.

Clazomenae = the buttocks, also a sotadic disease, so called from the Ionian city devoted to Aversa Venus; also used of a pathic,

          —­et tergo femina pube vir est.

Embasicoetas, prop. a link-boy at marriages, also a “night-cap” drunk before bed and lastly an effeminate; one who perambulavit omnium cubilia (Catullus).  See Encolpius’ pun upon the Embasicete in Satyricon, cap. iv.

Epipedesis, the carnal assault.

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Geiton lit. “neighbour” the beloved of Encolpius, which has produced the Fr. Giton = Bardache, Ital. bardascia from the Arab.  Baradaj, a captive, a slave; the augm. form is Polygeiton.

Hippias (tyranny of) when the patient (woman or boy) mounts the agent.  Aristoph.  Vesp. 502.  So also Kelitizein = peccare superne or equum agitare supernum of Horace.

Mokhtheria, depravity with boys.

Paidika, whence paedicare (act.) and paedicari (pass.):  so in the
Latin poet:—­

          PEnelopes primam DIdonis prima sequatur,
          Et primam CAni, syllaba prima REmi.

Pathikos, Pathicus, a passive, like Malakos (malacus, mollis, facilis), Malchio, Trimalchio (Petronius), Malta, Maltha and in Hor. (Sat. ii. 25)

          Malthinus tunicis demissis ambulat.

Praxis = the malpractice.

Pygisma = buttockry, because most actives end within the nates, being too much excited for further intromission.

Phoenicissare ({Greek})= cunnilingere in tempore menstruum, quia hoc vitium in Phoenicia generate solebat (Thes.  Erot.  Ling.  Latinae); also irrumer en miel.

Phicidissare, denotat actum per canes commissum quando lambunt cunnos vel testiculos (Suetonius):  also applied to pollution of childhood.

Samorium flores (Erasmus, Prov. xxiii ) alluding to the androgynic prostitutions of Samos.

Siphniassare ({Greek}, from Siphnos, hod.  Sifanto Island) = digito podicem fodere ad pruriginem restinguendam, says Erasmus (see Mirabeau’s Erotika Biblion, Anoscopie).

Thrypsis = the rubbing.

Pederastia had in Greece, I have shown, its noble and ideal side:  Rome, however, borrowed her malpractices, like her religion and polity, from those ultra-material Etruscans and debauched with a brazen face.  Even under the Republic Plautus (Casin. ii. 21) makes one of his characters exclaim, in the utmost sang-froid, “Ultro te, amator, apage te a dorso meo!” With increased luxury the evil grew and Livy notices (xxxix. 13), at the Bacchanalia, plura virorum inter sese quam foeminarum stupra.  There were individual protests; for instance, S. Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus (Consul U.C. 612) punished his son for dubia castitas; and a private soldier, C. Plotius, killed his military Tribune, Q. Luscius, for unchaste proposals.  The Lex Scantinia (Scatinia?), popularly derived from Scantinius the Tribune and of doubtful date (B.C. 226?), attempted to abate the scandal by fine and the Lex Julia by death; but they were trifling obstacles to the flood of infamy which surged in with the Empire.  No class seems then to have disdained these “sterile pleasures:”  l’on n’attachoit point alors a cette espece d’amour une note d’infamie, comme en pais de chretiente, says Bayle under “Anacreon.”  The great Caesar, the Cinaedus calvus of Catullus, was the husband of all the wives and the wife of all the husbands in Rome (Suetonius, cap.  Iii.); and his soldiers sang in his praise, Gallias Caesar, subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem (Suet. cies. xlix.); whence his sobriquet “Fornix Birthynicus.”  Of Augustus the people chaunted

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          Videsne ut Cinaedus orbem digito temperet?

Tiberius, with his pisciculi and greges exoletorum, invented the Symplegma or nexus of Sellarii, agentes et patientes, in which the spinthriae (lit. women’s bracelets) were connected in a chain by the bond of flesh[FN#379] (Seneca Quaest.  Nat.).  Of this refinement which in the earlier part of the nineteenth century was renewed by sundry Englishmen at Naples, Ausonius wrote (Epig. cxix.  I),

          Tres uno in lecto:  stuprum duo perpetiuntur;

And Martial had said (xii. 43)

          Quo symplegmate quinque copulentur;
          Qua plures teneantur a catena; etc.

Ausonius recounts of Caligula he so lost patience that he forcibly entered the priest M. Lepidus, before the sacrifice was completed.  The beautiful Nero was formally married to Pythagoras (or Doryphoros) and afterwards took to wife Sporus who was first subjected to castration of a peculiar fashion; he was then named Sabina after the deceased spouse and claimed queenly honours.  The “Othonis et Trajani pathici” were famed; the great Hadrian openly loved Antinous,and the wild debaucheries of Heliogabalus seem only to have amused, instead of disgusting, the Romans.

Uranopolis allowed public lupanaria where adults and meritorii pueri, who began their career as early as seven years, stood for hire:  the inmates of these cauponae wore sleeved tunics and dalmatics like women.  As in modern Egypt pathic boys, we learn from Catullus, haunted the public baths.  Debauchees had signals like freemasons whereby they recognised one another.  The Greek Skematizein was made by closing the hand to represent the scrotum and raising the middle finger as if to feel whether a hen had eggs, tater si les poulettes ont l’oeuf:  hence the Athenians called it Catapygon or sodomite and the Romans digitus impudicus or infamis, the “medical finger"[FN#380] of Rabelais and the Chiromantists.  Another sign was to scratch the head with the minimus—­digitulo caput scabere Juv. ix. 133).[FN#381] The prostitution of boys was first forbidden by Domitian; but Saint Paul, a Greek, had formally expressed his abomination of Le Vice (Rom. i. 26; i.  Cor. vi. 8); and we may agree with Grotius (de Verit. ii. c. 13) that early Christianity did much to suppress it.  At last the Emperor Theodosius punished it with fire as a profanation, because sacro-sanctum esse debetur hospitium virilis animae.

In the pagan days of imperial Rome her literature makes no difference between boy and girl.  Horace naively says (Sat. ii. 118):—­

          Ancilla aut verna est praesto puer;

and with Hamlet, but in a dishonest sense:—­

                    —­Man delights me not
          Nor woman neither.

Similarly the Spaniard Martial, who is a mine of such pederastic allusions (xi. 46):—­

          Sive puer arrisit, sive puella tibi.

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That marvellous Satyricon which unites the wit of Moliere[FN#382] with the debaucheries of Piron, whilst the writer has been described, like Rabelais, as purissimus in impuritate, is a kind of Triumph of Pederasty.  Geiton the hero, a handsome, curly-pated hobbledehoy of seventeen, with his calinerie and wheedling tongue, is courted like one of the sequor sexus:  his lovers are inordinately jealous of him and his desertion leaves deep scars upon the heart.  But no dialogue between man and wife in extremis could be more pathetic than that in the scene where shipwreck is imminent.  Elsewhere every one seems to attempt his neighbour:  a man alte succinctus assails Ascyltos; Lycus, the Tarentine skipper, would force Encolpius and so forth:  yet we have the neat and finished touch (cap. vii.):—­“The lamentation was very fine (the dying man having manumitted his slaves) albeit his wife wept not as though she loved him.  How were it had he not behaved to her so well?”

Erotic Latin glossaries[FN#383] give some ninety words connected with pederasty and some, which “speak with Roman simplicity,” are peculiarly expressive.  “Averse Venus” alludes to women being treated as boys:  hence Martial, translated by Piron, addresses Mistress Martial (x. 44):—­

          Teque puta, cunnos, uxor, habere duos.

The capillatus or comatus is also called calamistratus, the darling curled with crisping-irons; and he is an Effeminatus, i.e., qui muliebria patitur; or a Delicatus, slave or eunuch for the use of the Draucus, Puerarius (boy-lover) or Dominus (Mart. xi. 7I).  The Divisor is so called from his practice Hillas dividere or caedere, something like Martial’s cacare mentulam or Juvenal’s Hesternae occurrere caenae.  Facere vicibus (Juv. vii. 238), incestare se invicem or mutuum facere (Plaut.  Trin. ii. 437), is described as “a puerile vice,” in which the two take turns to be active and passive:  they are also called Gemelli and Fratres = compares in paedicatione.  Illicita libido is = praepostera seu postica Venus, and is expressed by the picturesque phrase indicare (seu incurvare) aliquem.  Depilatus, divellere pilos, glaber, laevis and nates pervellere are allusions to the Sotadic toilette.  The fine distinction between demittere and dejicere caput are worthy of a glossary, while Pathica puella, puera, putus, pullipremo pusio, pygiaca sacra, quadrupes, scarabaeus and smerdalius explain themselves.

From Rome the practice extended far and wide to her colonies, especially the Provincia now called Provence.  Athenaeus (xii. 26) charges the people of Massilia with “acting like women out of luxury”; and he cites the saying “May you sail to Massilia!” as if it were another Corinth.  Indeed the whole Keltic race is charged with Le Vice by Aristotle (Pol. ii. 66), Strabo (iv. 199) and Diodorus Siculus (v. 32).  Roman civilisation carried pederasty also to Northern Africa, where it took firm root, while the negro and negroid races to the South ignore the erotic perversion, except where imported by foreigners into such kingdoms as Bornu and Haussa.  In old Mauritania, now Marocco,[FN#384] the Moors proper are notable sodomites; Moslems, even of saintly houses, are permitted openly to keep catamites, nor do their disciples think worse of their sanctity for such licence:  in one case the English wife failed to banish from the home “that horrid boy.”

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Yet pederasty is forbidden by the Koran.  In chapter iv. 20 we read:  “And if two (men) among you commit the crime, then punish them both,” the penalty being some hurt or damage by public reproach, insult or scourging.  There are four distinct references to Lot and the Sodomites in chapters vii. 78; xi. 77-84; xxvi.  I60-I74 and xxix. 28-35.  In the first the prophet commissioned to the people says, “Proceed ye to a fulsome act wherein no creature hath foregone ye?  Verily ye come to men in lieu of women lustfully.”  We have then an account of the rain which made an end of the wicked and this judgment on the Cities of the Plain is repeated with more detail in the second reference.  Here the angels, generally supposed to be three, Gabriel, Michael and Raphael, appeared to Lot as beautiful youths, a sore temptation to the sinners and the godly man’s arm was straitened concerning his visitors because he felt unable to protect them from the erotic vagaries of his fellow townsmen.  He therefore shut his doors and from behind them argued the matter:  presently the riotous assembly attempted to climb the wall when Gabriel, seeing the distress of his host, smote them on the face with one of his wings and blinded them so that all moved off crying for aid and saying that Lot had magicians in his house.  Hereupon the “Cities” which, if they ever existed, must have been Fellah villages, were uplifted:  Gabriel thrust his wing under them and raised them so high that the inhabitants of the lower heaven (the lunar sphere) could hear the dogs barking and the cocks crowing.  Then came the rain of stones:  these were clay pellets baked in hell-fire, streaked white and red, or having some mark to distinguish them from the ordinary and each bearing the name of its destination like the missiles which destroyed the host of Abrahat al-Ashram.[FN#385] Lastly the “Cities” were turned upside down and cast upon earth.  These circumstantial unfacts are repeated at full length in the other two chapters; but rather as an instance of Allah’s power than as a warning against pederasty, which Mohammed seems to have regarded with philosophic indifference.  The general opinion of his followers is that it should be punished like fornication unless the offenders made a public act of penitence.  But here, as in adultery, the law is somewhat too clement and will not convict unless four credible witnesses swear to have seen rem in re.  I have noticed (vol. i. 211) the vicious opinion that the Ghilman or Wuldan, the beautiful boys of Paradise, the counter parts of the Houris, will be lawful catamites to the True Believers in a future state of happiness:  the idea is nowhere countenanced in Al-Islam; and, although I have often heard debauchees refer to it, the learned look upon the assertion as scandalous.

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As in Marocco so the Vice prevails throughout the old regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and all the cities of the South Mediterranean seaboard, whilst it is unknown to the Nubians, the Berbers and the wilder tribes dwelling inland.  Proceeding Eastward we reach Egypt, that classical region of all abominations which, marvellous to relate, flourished in closest contact with men leading the purest of lives, models of moderation and morality, of religion and virtue.  Amongst the ancient Copts Le Vice was part and portion of the Ritual and was represented by two male partridges alternately copulating (Interp. in Priapi Carm. xvii).  The evil would have gained strength by the invasion of Cambyses (B.C. 524), whose armies, after the victory over Psammenitus. settled in the Nile-Valley and held it, despite sundry revolts, for some hundred and ninety years.  During these six generations the Iranians left their mark upon Lower Egypt and especially, as the late Rogers Bey proved, upon the Fayyum, the most ancient Delta of the Nile.[FN#386] Nor would the evil be diminished by the Hellenes who, under Alexander the Great, “liberator and saviour of Egypt” (B.C. 332), extinguished the native dynasties:  the love of the Macedonian for Bagoas the Eunuch being a matter of history.  From that time and under the rule of the Ptolemies the morality gradually decayed; the Canopic orgies extended into private life and the debauchery of the men was equalled only by the depravity of the women.  Neither Christianity nor Al-Islam could effect a change for the better; and social morality seems to have been at its worst during the past century when Sonnini travelled (A.D. 1717).  The French officer, who is thoroughly trustworthy, draws the darkest picture of the widely spread criminality, especially of the bestiality and the sodomy (chaps. xv.), which formed the “delight of the Egyptians.”  During the Napoleonic conquest Jaubert in his letter to General Bruix (p.  I9) says, “Les Arabes et les Mamelouks ont traite quelques-uns de nos prisonniers comme Socrate traitait, dit-on, Alcibiade.  Il fallait perir ou y passer.”  Old Anglo-Egyptians still chuckle over the tale of Sa’id Pasha and M. de Ruyssenaer, the high-dried and highly respectable Consul-General for the Netherlands, who was solemnly advised to make the experiment, active and passive, before offering his opinion upon the subject.  In the present age extensive intercourse with Europeans has produced not a reformation but a certain reticence amongst the upper classes:  they are as vicious as ever, but they do not care for displaying their vices to the eyes of mocking strangers.

Syria and Palestine, another ancient focus of abominations, borrowed from Egypt and exaggerated the worship of androgynic and hermaphroditic deities.  Plutarch (De Iside) notes that the old Nilotes held the moon to be of “male-female sex,” the men sacrificing to Luna and the women to Lunus.[FN#387] Isis also was a hermaphrodite, the idea being that Aether or Air (the lower heavens) was the menstruum of generative nature; and Damascius explained the tenet by the all-fruitful and prolific powers of the atmosphere.  Hence the fragment attributed to Orpheus, the song of Jupiter (Air):—­

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               All things from Jove descend
          Jove was a male, Jove was a deathless bride;
          For men call Air, of two fold sex, the Jove.

Julius Pirmicus relates that “The Assyrians and part of the Africians” (along the Mediterranean seaboard?) “hold Air to be the chief element and adore its fanciful figure (imaginata figura), consecrated under the name of Juno or the Virgin Venus. * * * Their companies of priests cannot duly serve her unless they effeminate their faces, smooth their skins and disgrace their masculine sex by feminine ornaments.  You may see men in their very temples amid general groans enduring miserable dalliance and becoming passives like women (viros muliebria pati), and they expose, with boasting and ostentation, the pollution of the impure and immodest body.”  Here we find the religious significance of eunuchry.  It was practiced as a religious rite by the Tympanotribas or Gallus,[FN#388] the castrated votary of Rhea or Bona Mater, in Phrygia called Cybele, self mutilated but not in memory of Atys; and by a host of other creeds:  even Christianity, as sundry texts show,[FN#389] could not altogether cast out the old possession.  Here too we have an explanation of Sotadic love in its second stage, when it became, like cannibalism, a matter of superstition.  Assuming a nature-implanted tendency, we see that like human sacrifice it was held to be the most acceptable offering to the God-goddess in the Orgia or sacred ceremonies, a something set apart for peculiar worship.  Hence in Rome as in Egypt the temples of Isis (Inachidos limina, Isiacae sacraria Lunae) were centres of sodomy, and the religious practice was adopted by the grand priestly castes from Mesopotamia to Mexico and Peru.

We find the earliest written notices of the Vice in the mythical destruction of the Pentapolis (Gen. xix.), Sodom, Gomorrah (= ’Amirah, the cultivated country), Adama, Zeboim and Zoar or Bela.  The legend has been amply embroidered by the Rabbis who make the Sodomites do everything a l’envers:  e.g., if a man were wounded he was fined for bloodshed and was compelled to fee the offender; and if one cut off the ear of a neighbour’s ass he was condemned to keep the animal till the ear grew again.  The Jewish doctors declare the people to have been a race of sharpers with rogues for magistrates, and thus they justify the judgment which they read literally.  But the traveller cannot accept it.  I have carefully examined the lands at the North and at the South of that most beautiful lake, the so-called Dead Sea, whose tranquil loveliness, backed by the grand plateau of Moab, is an object of admiration to all save patients suffering from the strange disease “Holy Land on the Brain."[FN#390] But I found no traces of craters in the neighbourhood, no signs of vulcanism, no remains of “meteoric stones”:  the asphalt which named the water is a mineralised vegetable washed out of the limestones, and the sulphur and salt are

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The old commentators on the Sodom-myth are most unsatisfactory, e.g.  Parkhurst, s.v.  Kadesh.  “From hence we may observe the peculiar propriety of this punishment of Sodom and of the neighbouring cities.  By their sodomitical impurities they meant to acknowledge the Heavens as the cause of fruitfulness independently upon, and in opposition to, Jehovah;[FN#391] therefore Jehovah, by raining upon them not genial showers but brimstone from heaven, not only destroyed the inhabitants, but also changed all that country, which was before as the garden of God, into brimstone and salt that is not sown nor beareth, neither any grass groweth therein.”  It must be owned that to this Pentapolis was dealt very hard measure for religiously and diligently practicing a popular rite which a host of cities even in the present day, as Naples and Shiraz, to mention no others, affect for simple luxury and affect with impunity.  The myth may probably reduce itself to very small proportions, a few Fellah villages destroyed by a storm, like that which drove Brennus from Delphi.

The Hebrews entering Syria found it religionised by Assyria and Babylonia, whence Accadian Ishtar had passed west and had become Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth or Ashirah,[FN#392] the Anaitis of Armenia, the Phoenician Astarte and the Greek Aphrodite, the great Moon-goddess,[FN#393] who is queen of Heaven and Love.  In another phase she was Venus Mylitta = the Procreatrix, in Chaldaic Mauludata and in Arabic Moawallidah, she who bringeth

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The Phoenicians spread this androgynic worship over Greece.  We find the consecrated servants and votaries of Corinthian Aphrodite called Hierodouli (Strabo viii. 6), who aided the ten thousand courtesans in gracing the Venus-temple:  from this excessive luxury arose the proverb popularised by Horace.  One of the headquarters of the cult was Cyprus where, as Servius relates (Ad AEn. ii. 632), stood the simulacre of a bearded Aphrodite with feminine body and costume, sceptered and mitred like a man.  The sexes when worshipping it exchanged habits and here the virginity was offered in sacrifice:  Herodotus (i. c. 199) describes this defloration at Babylon but sees only the shameful part of the custom which was a mere consecration of a tribal rite.  Everywhere girls before marriage belong either to the father or to the clan and thus the maiden paid the debt due to the public before becoming private property as a wife.  The same usage prevailed in ancient Armenia and in parts of Ethiopia; and Herodotus tells us that a practice very much like the Babylonian “is found also in certain parts of the Island of Cyprus:”  it is noticed by Justin (xviii. c. 5) and probably it explains the “Succoth Benoth” or Damsels’ booths which the Babylonians bans planted to the cities of Samaria.[FN#395] The Jews seem very successfully to have copied the abominations of their pagan neighbours, even in the matter of the “dog."[FN#396] In the reign of wicked Rehoboam (B.C. 975) “There were also sodomites in the land and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord cast out before the children of Israel” (I Kings xiv. 20).  The scandal was abated by zealous King Asa (B.C. 958) whose grandmother[FN#397] was high-priestess of Priapus (princeps in sacris Priapi):  he took away the sodomites out of the land” (I Kings xv.  I2).  Yet the prophets were loud in their complaints, especially the so-called Isaiah

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Syria has not forgotten her old “praxis.”  At Damascus I found some noteworthy cases amongst the religious of the great Amawi Mosque.  As for the Druses we have Burckhardt’s authority (Travels in Syria, etc., p. 202), “unnatural propensities are very common amongst them.”

The Sotadic Zone covers the whole of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia now occupied by the “unspeakable Turk,” a race of born pederasts; and in the former region we first notice a peculiarity of the feminine figure, the mammae inclinatae, jacentes et pannosae, which prevails over all this part of the belt.  Whilst the women to the North and South have, with local exceptions, the mammae stantes of the European virgin,[FN#398] those of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and Kashmir lose all the fine curves of the bosom, sometimes even before the first child; and after it the hemispheres take the form of bags.  This cannot result from climate only; the women of Maratha-land, inhabiting a damper and hotter region than Kashmir, are noted for fine firm breasts even after parturition.  Le Vice of course prevails more in the cities and towns of Asiatic Turkey than in the villages; yet even these are infected; while the nomad Turcomans contrast badly in this point with the Gypsies, those Badawin of India.  The Kurd population is of Iranian origin, which means that the evil is deeply rooted:  I have noted in The Nights that the great and glorious Saladin was a habitual pederast.  The Armenians, as their national character is, will prostitute themselves for gain but prefer women to boys:  Georgia supplied Turkey with catamites whilst Circassia sent concubines.  In Mesopotamia the barbarous invader has almost obliterated the ancient civilisation which is ante-dated only by the Nilotic:  the mysteries of old Babylon nowhere survive save in certain obscure tribes like the Mandaeans, the Devil-worshippers and the Ali-ilahi.  Entering Persia we find the reverse of Armenia; and, despite Herodotus, I believe that Iran borrowed her pathologic love from the peoples of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and not from the then insignificant Greeks.  But whatever may be its origin, the corruption is now bred in the bone.  It begins in boyhood and many Persians account for it by paternal severity.  Youths arrived at puberty find none of the facilities with which Europe supplies fornication.  Onanism[FN#399] is to a certain extent discouraged by circumcision, and meddling with the father’s slave-girls and concubines would be risking cruel punishment if not death.  Hence they use each other by turns, a

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The cities of Afghanistan and Sind are thoroughly saturated with Persian vice, and the people sing

          Kadr-i-kus Aughan danad, kadr-i-kunra Kabuli: 
          The worth of coynte the Afghan knows:  Cabul prefers the
other chose![FN#403]

The Afghans are commercial travellers on a large scale and each caravan is accompanied by a number of boys and lads almost in woman’s attire with kohl’d eyes and rouged cheeks, long tresses and henna’d fingers and toes, riding luxuriously in Kajawas or camel-panniers:  they are called Kuch-i safari, or travelling wives, and the husbands trudge patiently by their sides.  In Afghanistan also a frantic debauchery broke out amongst the women when they found incubi who were not pederasts; and the scandal was not the most insignificant cause of the general rising at Cabul (Nov. 1841), and the slaughter of Macnaghten, Burnes and other British officers.

Resuming our way Eastward we find the Sikhs and the Moslems of the Panjab much addicted to Le Vice, although the Himalayan tribes to the north and those lying south, the Rajputs and Marathas, ignore it.  The same may be said of the Kash mirians who add another Kappa to the tria Kakista, Kappado clans, Kretans, and Kilicians:  the proverb says,

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          Agar kaht-i-mardum uftad, az in sih jins kam giri;
          Eki Afghan, dovvum Sindi[FN#404] siyyum
badjins-i-Kashmiri: 

          Though of men there be famine yet shun these three-
          Afghan, Sindi and rascally Kashmiri.

M. Louis Daville describes the infamies of Lahore and Lakhnau where he found men dressed as women, with flowing locks under crowns of flowers, imitating the feminine walk and gestures, voice and fashion of speech, and ogling their admirers with all the coquetry of bayaderes.  Victor Jacquemont’s Journal de Voyage describes the pederasty of Ranjit Singh, the “Lion of the Panjab,” and his pathic Gulab Singh whom the English inflicted upon Cashmir as ruler by way of paying for his treason.  Yet the Hindus, I repeat, hold pederasty in abhorrence and are as much scandalised by being called Gand-mara (anus-beater) or Gandu (anuser) as Englishmen would be.  During the years 1843-44 my regiment, almost all Hindu Sepoys of the Bombay Presidency, was stationed at a purgatory called Bandar Gharra,[FN#405] a sandy flat with a scatter of verdigris-green milk-bush some forty miles north of Karachi the headquarters.  The dirty heap of mud-and-mat hovels, which represented the adjacent native village, could not supply a single woman; yet only one case of pederasty came to light and that after a tragical fashion some years afterwards.  A young Brahman had connection with a soldier comrade of low caste and this had continued till, in an unhappy hour, the Pariah patient ventured to become the agent.  The latter, in Arab.  Al-Fa’il =the “doer,” is not an object of contempt like Al-Maful = the “done”; and the high caste sepoy, stung by remorse and revenge, loaded his musket and deliberately shot his paramour.  He was hanged by court martial at Hyderabad and, when his last wishes were asked, he begged in vain to be suspended by the feet; the idea being that his soul, polluted by exiting “below the waist,” would be doomed to endless trans-migrations through the lowest forms of life.

Beyond India, I have stated, the Sotadic Zone begins to broaden out, embracing all China, Turkistan and Japan.  The Chinese, as far as we know them in the great cities, are omnivorous and omnifutuentes:  they are the chosen people of debauchery, and their systematic bestiality with ducks, goats, and other animals is equalled only by their pederasty.  Kaempfer and Orlof Toree (Voyage en Chine) notice the public houses for boys and youths in China and Japan.  Mirabeau (L’Anandryne) describes the tribadism of their women in hammocks.  When Pekin was plundered the Harems contained a number of balls a little larger than the old musket-bullet, made of thin silver with a loose pellet of brass inside somewhat like a grelot;[FN#406] these articles were placed by the women between the labia and an up-and-down movement on the bed gave a pleasant titillation when nothing better was to be procured.  They have every artifice of luxury, aphrodisiacs, erotic perfumes

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Passing over to America we find that the Sotadic Zone contains the whole hemisphere from Behring’s Straits to Magellan’s.  This prevalence of “mollities” astonishes the anthropologist, who is apt to consider pederasty the growth of luxury and the especial product of great and civilised cities, unnecessary and therefore unknown to simple savagery, where the births of both sexes are about equal and female infanticide is not practiced.  In many parts of the New World this perversion was accompanied by another depravity of taste—­confirmed cannibalism.[FN#411] The forests and campos abounded in game from the deer to the pheasant-like penelope, and the seas and rivers produced an unfailing supply of excellent fish and shell-fish;[FN#412] yet the Brazilian Tupis preferred the meat of man to every other food.

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A glance at Mr. Bancroft[FN#413] proves the abnormal development of sodomy amongst the savages and barbarians of the New World.  Even his half-frozen Hyperboreans “possess all the passions which are supposed to develop most freely under a milder temperature” (i. 58).  “The voluptuousness and polygamy of the North American Indians, under a temperature of almost perpetual winter, is far greater than that of the most sensual tropical nations” (Martin’s Brit.  Colonies iii. 524).  I can quote only a few of the most remarkable instances.  Of the Koniagas of Kadiak Island and the Thinkleets we read (i. 81-82), “The most repugnant of all their practices is that of male concubinage.  A Kadiak mother will select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at women s work, associating him with women and girls, in order to render his effeminacy complete.  Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he is married to some wealthy man who regards such a companion as a great acquisition.  These male concubines are called Achnutschik or Schopans” (the authorities quoted being Holmberg, Langsdorff, Billing, Choris, Lisiansky and Marchand).  The same is the case in Nutka Sound and the Aleutian Islands, where “male concubinage obtains throughout, but not to the same extent as amongst the Koniagas.”  The objects of “unnatural” affection have their beards carefully plucked out as soon as the face-hair begins to grow, and their chins are tattooed like those of the women.  In California the first missionaries found the same practice, the youths being called Joya (Bancroft, i. 415 and authorities Palon, Crespi, Boscana, Mofras, Torquemada, Duflot and Fages).  The Comanches unite incest with sodomy (i. 515).  “In New Mexico, according to Arlegui, Ribas, and other authors, male concubinage prevails to a great extent; these loathsome semblances of humanity, whom to call beastly were a slander upon beasts, dress themselves in the clothes and perform the functions of women, the use of weapons being denied them” (i. 585).  Pederasty was systematically practiced by the peoples of Cueba, Careta, and other parts of Central America.  The Caciques and some of the headmen kept harems of youths who, as soon as destined for the unclean office, were dressed as women.  They went by the name of Camayoas, and were hated and detested by the good wives (i. 733-74).  Of the Nahua nations Father Pierre de Gand (alias de Musa) writes, “Un certain nombre de pratres n’avaient point de femmes, sed eorum loco pueros quibus abutebantur.  Ce peche etait si commun dans ce pays que, jeunes ou vieux, tous etaient infectes; ils y etaient si adonnes que memes les enfants de six ens s’y livraient” (Ternaux,Campans, Voyages, Serie i.  Tom. x. p. 197).  Among the Mayas of Yucatan Las Casas declares that the great prevalence of “unnatural” lust made parents anxious to see their progeny wedded as soon as possible (Kingsborough’s Mex. 

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We have authentic details concerning Le Vice in Peru and its adjacent lands, beginning with Cieza de Leon, who must be read in the original or in the translated extracts of Purchas (vol. v. 942, etc.), not in the cruelly castrated form preferred by the Council of the Hakluyt Society.  Speaking of the New Granada Indians he tells us that “at Old Port (Porto Viejo) and Puna, the Deuill so farre prevayled in their beastly Deuotions that there were Boyes consecrated to serue in the Temple; and at the times of their Sacrifices and Solemne Feasts, the Lords and principall men abused them to that detestable filthinesse;” i.e. performed their peculiar worship.  Generally in the hill-countries the Devil, under the show of holiness, had introduced the practice; for every temple or chief house of adoration kept one or two men or more which were attired like women, even from the time of their childhood, and spake like them, imitating them in everything; with these, under pretext of holiness and religion, principal men on principal days had commerce.  Speaking of the arrival of the Giants[FN#414] at Point Santa Elena, Cieza says (chap. lii.), they were detested by the natives, because in using their women they killed them, and their men also in another way.  All the natives declare that God brought upon them a punishment proportioned to the enormity of their offence.  When they were engaged together in their accursed intercourse, a fearful and terrible fire came down from Heaven with a great noise, out of the midst of which there issued a shining Angel with a glittering sword, wherewith at one blow they were all killed and the fire consumed them.[FN#415] There remained a few bones and skulls which God allowed to bide unconsumed by the fire, as a memorial of this punishment.  In the Hakluyt Society’s bowdlerisation we read of the Tumbez Islanders being “very vicious, many of them committing the abominable offence” (p. 24); also, “If by the advice of the Devil any Indian commit the abominable crime, it is thought little of and they call him a woman.”  In chapters lii. and lviii. we find exceptions.  The Indians of Huancabamba, “although so near the peoples of Puerto Viejo and Guayaquil, do not commit the abominable sin;” and the Serranos, or island mountaineers, as sorcerers and magiclans inferior to the coast peoples, were not so much addicted to sodomy.

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The Royal Commentaries of the Yncas shows that the evil was of a comparatively modern growth.  In the early period of Peruvian history the people considered the crime “unspeakable:”  if a Cuzco Indian, not of Yncarial blood, angrily addressed the term pederast to another, he was held infamous for many days.  One of the generals having reported to the Ynca Ccapacc Yupanqui that there were some sodomites, not in all the valleys, but one here and one there, “nor was it a habit of all the inhabitants but only of certain persons who practised it privately,” the ruler ordered that the criminals should be publicly burnt alive and their houses, crops and trees destroyed:  moreover, to show his abomination, he commanded that the whole village should so be treated if one man fell into this habit (Lib. iii. cap. 13).  Elsewhere we learn, “There were sodomites in some provinces, though not openly nor universally, but some particular men and in secret.  In some parts they had them in their temples, because the Devil persuaded them that the Gods took great delight in such people, and thus the Devil acted as a traitor to remove the veil of shame that the Gentiles felt for this crime and to accustom them to commit it in public and in common.”

During the times of the Conquistadores male concubinage had become the rule throughout Peru.  At Cuzco, we are told by Nuno de Guzman in 1530 “The last which was taken, and which fought most couragiously, was a man in the habite of a woman, which confessed that from a childe he had gotten his liuing by that filthinesse, for which I caused him to be burned.”  V. F. Lopez[FN#416] draws a frightful picture of pathologic love in Peru.  Under the reigns which followed that of Inti-Kapak (Ccapacc) Amauri, the country was attacked by invaders of a giant race coming from the sea:  they practiced pederasty after a fashion so shameless that the conquered tribes were compelled to fly(p. 271).  Under the pre-Yncarial Amauta, or priestly dynasty, Peru had lapsed into savagery and the kings of Cuzco preserved only the name.  “Toutes ces hontes et toutes ces miseres provenaient de deux vices infames, la bestialite et la sodomie.  Les femmes surtout etaient offensees de voir la nature frustree de tous ses droits.  Wiles pleuraient ensemble en leurs reunions sur le miserable etat dans loquel elles etaient tombees, sur le mepris avec lequel elles etaient traitees. * * * * Le monde etait renverse, les hommes s’aimaient et etaient jaloux les uns des autres. * * * Elles cherchaient, mais en vain, les moyens de remedier au mal; elles employaient des herbes et des recettes diaboliques qui leur ramenaient bien quelques individus, mais ne pouvaient arreter les progres incessants du vice.  Cet etat de choses constitua un veritable moyen age, qui aura jusqu’a l’etablissement du gouvernement des Incas” (p. 277).

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When Sinchi Roko (the xcvth of Montesinos and the xcist of Garcilazo) became Ynca, he found morals at the lowest ebb.  “Ni la prudence de l’Inca, ni les lois severes qu’il avait promulguees n’avaient pu extirper entierement le peche contre nature.  I1 reprit avec une nouvelle violence, et les femmes en furent si jalouses qu’un grand nombre d’elles tuerent leurs maris.  Les devins et les sorciers passaient leurs journees a fabriquer, avec certaines herbes, des compositions magiques qui rendaient fous ceux qui en mangaient, et les femmes en faisaient prendre, soit dans les aliments, soit dans la chicha, a ceux dont elles etaient jalouses’’ (p. 291).

I have remarked that the Tupi races of the Brazil were infamous for cannibalism and sodomy; nor could the latter be only racial as proved by the fact that colonists of pure Lusitanian blood followed in the path of the savages.  Sr.  Antonio Augusto da Costa Aguiar[FN#417] is outspoken upon this point.  “A crime which in England leads to the gallows, and which is the very measure of abject depravity, passes with impunity amongst us by the participating in it of almost all or of many (de quasi todos, ou de muitos) Ah! if the wrath of Heaven were to fall by way of punishing such crimes (delictos), more than one city of this Empire, more than a dozen, would pass into the category of the Sodoms and Gomorrains” (p. 30).  Till late years pederasty in the Brazil was looked upon as a peccadillo; the European immigrants following the practice of the wild men who were naked but not, as Columbus said, “clothed in innocence.”  One of Her Majesty’s Consuls used to tell a tale of the hilarity provoked in a “fashionable” assembly by the open declaration of a young gentleman that his mulatto “patient” had suddenly turned upon him, insisting upon becoming agent.  Now, however, under the influences of improved education and respect for the public opinion of Europe, pathologic love amongst the Luso-Brazilians has been reduced to the normal limits.

Outside the Sotadic Zone, I have said, Le Vice is sporadic, not endemic:  yet the physical and moral effect of great cities where puberty, they say, is induced earlier than in country sites, has been the same in most lands, causing modesty to decay and pederasty to flourish.  The Badawi Arab is wholly pure of Le Vice; yet San’a the capital of Al-Yaman and other centres of population have long been and still are thoroughly infected.  History tells us of Zu Shanatir, tyrant of “Arabia Felix,” in A.D. 478, who used to entice young men into his palace and cause them after use to be cast out of the windows:  this unkindly ruler was at last poniarded by the youth Zerash, known from his long ringlets as “Zu Nowas.”  The negro race is mostly untainted by sodomy and tribadism.  Yet Joan dos Sanctos[FN#418] found in Cacongo of West Africa certain “Chibudi, which are men attyred like women and behaue themselves womanly, ashamed to be called men; are also married to men, and esteem that vnnaturale damnation an honor.”  Madagascar also delighted in dancing and singing boys dressed as girls.  In the Empire of Dahomey I noted a corps of prostitutes kept for the use of the Amazon-soldieresses.

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North of the Sotadic Zone we find local but notable instances.  Master Christopher Burrough[FN#419] describes on the western side of the Volga “a very fine stone castle, called by the name Oueak, and adioyning to the same a Towne called by the Russes, Sodom, * * * which was swallowed into the earth by the justice of God, for the wickednesse of the people.”  Again:  although as a rule Christianity has steadily opposed pathologic love both in writing and preaching, there have been remarkable exceptions.  Perhaps the most curious idea was that of certain medical writers in the middle ages:  “Usus et amplexus pueri, bene temperatus, salutaris medicine” (Tardieu).  Bayle notices (under “Vayer”) the infamous book of Giovanni della Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, “De laudibus Sodomiae,"[FN#420] vulgarly known as “Capitolo del Forno.”  The same writer refers (under “Sixte iv.”) to the report that the Dominican Order, which systematically decried Le Vice, had presented a request to the Cardinal di Santa Lucia that sodomy might be lawful during three months per annum, June to August; and that the Cardinal had underwritten the petition “Be it done as they demand.”  Hence the Faeda Venus of Battista Mantovano.  Bayle rejects the history for a curious reason, venery being colder in summer than in winter, and quotes the proverb “Aux mods qui n’ont pas d’ R, peu embrasser et bien boire.”  But in the case of a celibate priesthood such scandals are inevitable:  witness the famous Jesuit epitaph Ci-git un Jesuite, etc.

In our modern capitals, London, Berlin and Paris for instance, the Vice seems subject to periodical outbreaks.  For many years, also, England sent her pederasts to Italy, and especially to Naples, whence originated the term “Il vizio Inglese.”  It would be invicious to detail the scandals which of late years have startled the public in London and Dublin:  for these the curious will consult the police reports.  Berlin, despite her strong devour of Phariseeism, Puritanism and Chauvinism in religion, manners and morals, is not a whit better than her neighbours.  Dr. Gaspar,[FN#421] a well-known authority on the subject, adduces many interesting cases, especially an old Count Cajus and his six accomplices.  Amongst his many correspondents one suggested to him that not only Plato and Julius Caesar but also Winckelmann and Platen(?) belonged to the Society; and he had found it flourishing in Palermo, the Louvre, the Scottish Highlands and St. Petersburg to name only a few places.  Frederick the Great is said to have addressed these words to his nephew, “Je puis vous assurer, par mon experience personelle, que ce plaisir est peu agreable a cultiver.”  This suggests the popular anecdote of Voltaire and the Englishman who agreed upon an “experience” and found it far from satisfactory.  A few days afterwards the latter informed the Sage of Ferney that he had tried it again and provoked the exclamation, “Once a philosopher:  twice a sodomite!” The last revival of the kind in Germany is a society at Frankfort and its neighbourhood, self-styled Les Cravates Noires, in opposition, I suppose, to Les Cravates Blanches of A. Belot.

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Paris is by no means more depraved than Berlin and London; but, whilst the latter hushes up the scandal, Frenchmen do not:  hence we see a more copious account of it submitted to the public.  For France of the xviith century consult the “Histoire de la Prostitution chez tous les Peuples du Monde,” and “La Prance devenue Italienne,” a treatise which generally follows"L’Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules” by Bussy, Comte de Rabutin.[FN#422] The headquarters of male prostitution were then in the Champ Flory, i.e., Champ de Flore, the privileged rendezvous of low courtesans.  In the xviiith century, “quand le Francais a tete folle,” as Voltaire sings, invented the term “Peche philosophique,” there was a temporary recrudescence; and, after the death of Pidauzet de Mairobert (March, 1779), his “Apologie de la Secte Anandryne” was published in L’Espion Anglais.  In those days the Allee des Veuves in the Champs Elysees had a “fief reserve des Ebugors"[FN#423]—­“veuve” in the language of Sodom being the maitresse en titre, the favourite youth.

At the decisive moment of monarchical decomposition Mirabeau[FN#424] declares that pederasty was reglementee and adds, Le gout des pederastes, quoique moins en vogue que du temps de Henri iii. (the French Heliogabalus), sous le regne desquel les hommes se provoquaient mutuellement[FN#425] sous les portiques du Louvre, fait des progres considerables.  On salt que cette ville (Paris) est un chef-d’oeuvre de police; en consequence, il y a des lieux publics autorises a cet effet.  Les jeunes yens qui se destinent a la professign, vent soigneusement enclasses; car les systemes reglementaires s’etendent jusques-la.  On les examine; ceux qui peuvent etre agents et patients, qui vent beaux, vermeils, bien faits, poteles, sont reserves pour les grands seigneurs, ou se font payer tres-cher par les eveques et les financiers.  Ceux qui vent prives de leurs testicules, ou en termes de l’art (car notre langue est plus chaste qui nos moeurs), qui n’ont pas le poids du tisserand, mais qui donnent et recoivent, forment la seconde classe; ils vent encore chers, parceque les femmes en usent tandis qu’ils servent aux hommes.  Ceux qui ne sont plus susceptibles d’erection tant ils sont uses, quoiqu’ils aient tous ces organes necessaires au plaisir, s’inscrivent comme patiens purs, et composent la troisieme classe:  mais celle qui preside a ces plaisirs, verifie leur impuissance.  Pour cet effet, on les place tout nus sur un matelas ouvert par la moitie inferieure; deux filles les caressent de leur mieux, pendant qu’une troisieme frappe doucement avec desorties naissantes le siege des desire veneriens.  Apres un quart d’heure de cet essai, on leur introduit dans l’anus un poivre long rouge qui cause une irritation considerable; on pose sur les echauboulures produites par les orties, de la moutarde fine de Caudebec, et l’on passe le gland au camphre.  Ceux qui resistent a ces epreuves et ne donnent aucun signe d’erection, servent comme patiens a un tiers de paie seulement.[FN#426]

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The Restoration and the Empire made the police more vigilant in matters of politics than of morals.  The favourite club, which had its mot de passe, was in the Rue Doyenne, old quarter St Thomas de Louvre; and the house was a hotel of the xviith century.  Two street-doors, on the right for the male gynaeceum and the left for the female, opened at 4 p.m. in winter and 8 p.m. in summer.  A decoy-lad, charmingly dressed in women’s clothes, with big haunches and small waist, promenaded outside; and this continued till 1826 when the police put down the house.

Under Louis Philippe, the conquest of Algiers had evil results, according to the Marquis de Boissy.  He complained without ambages of moeurs Arabes in French regiments, and declared that the result of the African wars was an effrayable debordement pederastique, even as the verole resulted from the Italian campaigns of that age of passion, the xvith century.  From the military the fleau spread to civilian society and the Vice took such expansion and intensity that it may be said to have been democratised in cities and large towns; at least so we gather from the Dossier des Agissements des Pederastes.  A general gathering of “La Sainte Congregation des glorieux Padarastes” was held in the old Petite Rue des Marais where, after the theatre, many resorted under pretext of making water.  They ranged themselves along the walls of a vast garden and exposed their podices:  bourgeois, richards and nobles came with full purses, touched the part which most attracted them and were duly followed by it.  At the Allee des Veuves the crowd was dangerous from 7 to 8 p.m.:  no policeman or ronde de nun’ dared venture in it; cords were stretched from tree to tree and armed guards drove away strangers amongst whom, they say, was once Victor Hugo.  This nuisance was at length suppressed by the municipal administration.

The Empire did not improve morals.  Balls of sodomites were held at No. 8 Place de la Madeleine where, on Jan. 2, ’64, some one hundred and fifty men met, all so well dressed as women that even the landlord did not recognise them.  There was also a club for sotadic debauchery called the Cent Gardes and the Dragons de l’Imperatrice.[FN#427] They copied the imperial toilette and kept it in the general wardrobe:  hence “faire l’Imperatrice” meant to be used carnally.  The site, a splendid hotel in the Allee des Veuves, was discovered by the Procureur-General, who registered all the names; but, as these belonged to not a few senators and dignitaries, the Emperor wisely quashed proceedings.  The club was broken up on July 16, ’64.  During the same year La Petite Revue, edited by M. Loredan Larchy, son of the General, printed an article, “Les echappes de Sodome”:  it discusses the letter of M. Castagnary to the Progres de Lyons and declares that the Vice had been adopted by plusieurs corps de troupes.  For its latest developments as regards the chantage of the tantes (pathics), the reader will consult the last issues of Dr. Tardieu’s well-known Etudes.[FN#428] He declares that the servant-class is most infected; and that the Vice is commonest between the ages of fifteen and twenty five.

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The pederasty of The Nights may briefly be distributed into three categories.  The first is the funny form, as the unseemly practical joke of masterful Queen Budur (vol. iii. 300-306) and the not less hardi jest of the slave-princess Zumurrud (vol. iv. 226).  The second is in the grimmest and most earnest phase of the perversion, for instance where Abu Nowas[FN#429] debauches the three youths (vol. v. 64 69); whilst in the third form it is wisely and learnedly discussed, to be severely blamed, by the Shaykhah or Reverend Woman (vol v. 154).

To conclude this part of my subject, the eclaircissement des obscanites.  Many readers will regret the absence from The Nights of that modesty which distinguishes “Amadis de Gaul,” whose author, when leaving a man and a maid together says, “And nothing shall be here related; for these and suchlike things which are conformable neither to good conscience nor nature, man ought in reason lightly to pass over, holding them in slight esteem as they deserve.”  Nor have we less respect for Palmerin of England who after a risque scene declares, “Herein is no offence offered to the wise by wanton speeches, or encouragement to the loose by lascivious matter.”  But these are not oriental ideas, and we must e’en take the Eastern as we find him.  He still holds “Naturalla non sunt turpia,” together with “Mundis omnia munda”; and, as Bacon assures us the mixture of a lie cloth add to pleasure, so the Arab enjoys the startling and lively contrast of extreme virtue and horrible vice placed in juxtaposition.

Those who have read through these ten volumes will agree with me that the proportion of offensive matter bears a very small ratio to the mass of the work.  In an age saturated with cant and hypocrisy, here and there a venal pen will mourn over the “Pornography” of The Nights, dwell upon the “Ethics of Dirt” and the “Garbage of the Brothel”; and will lament the “wanton dissemination (!) of ancient and filthy fiction.”  This self-constituted Censor morum reads Aristophanes and Plato, Horace and Virgil, perhaps even Martial and Petronius, because “veiled in the decent obscurity of a learned language”; he allows men Latine loqui; but he is scandalised at stumbling-blocks much less important in plain English.  To be consistent he must begin by bowdlerising not only the classics, with which boys’ and youths’ minds and memories are soaked and saturated at schools and colleges, but also Boccaccio and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Rabelais; Burton, Sterne, Swift, and a long list of works which are yearly reprinted and republished without a word of protest.  Lastly, why does not this inconsistent puritan purge the Old Testament of its allusions to human ordure and the pudenda; to carnal copulation and impudent whoredom, to adultery and fornication, to onanism, sodomy and bestiality?  But this he will not do, the whited sepulchre!  To the interested critic of the Edinburgh Review (No. 335 of July, 1886), I return my warmest thanks for his direct and deliberate falsehoods:—­lies are one-legged and short-lived, and venom evaporates.[FN#430] It appears to me that when I show to such men, so “respectable” and so impure, a landscape of magnificent prospects whose vistas are adorned with every charm of nature and art, they point their unclean noses at a little heap of muck here and there lying in a field-corner.

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                              Section V
        on the prose-rhyme and the poetry of the nights

A.—­The Saj’a.

According to promise in my Foreword (p. xiii.), I here proceed to offer a few observations concerning the Saj’a or rhymed prose and the Shi’r, or measured sentence, that is, the verse of The Nights.  The former has in composition, metrical or unmetrical three distinct forms.  Saj’a mutawazi (parallel), the most common is when the ending words of sentences agree in measure, assonance and final letter, in fact our full rhyme; next is Saj’a mutarraf (the affluent), when the periods, hemistichs or couplets end in words whose terminal letters correspond, although differing in measure and number; and thirdly, Saj’a muwazanah (equilibrium) is applied to the balance which affects words corresponding in measure but differing in final letters.[FN#431]

Al-Saj’a, the fine style or style fleuri, also termed Al-Badi’a, or euphuism, is the basis of all Arabic euphony.  The whole of the Koran is written in it; and the same is the case with the Makamat of Al-Hariri and the prime masterpieces of rhetorical composition:  without it no translation of the Holy Book can be satisfactory or final, and where it is not the Assemblies become the prose of prose.  Thus universally used the assonance has necessarily been abused, and its excess has given rise to the saying “Al-Saj’s faj’a”—­prose rhyme’s a pest.  English translators have, unwisely I think, agreed in rejecting it, while Germans have not.  Mr Preston assures us that “rhyming prose is extremely ungraceful in English and introduces an air of flippancy”:  this was certainly not the case with Friedrich Rueckert’s version of the great original and I see no reason why it should be so or become so in our tongue.  Torrens (Pref. p. vii.) declares that “the effect of the irregular sentence with the iteration of a jingling rhyme is not pleasant in our language:”  he therefore systematically neglects it and gives his style the semblance of being “scamped” with the object of saving study and trouble.  Mr. Payne (ix. 379) deems it an “excrescence born of the excessive facilities for rhyme afforded by the language,” and of Eastern delight in antithesis of all kinds whether of sound or of thought; and, aiming elaborately at grace of style, he omits it wholly, even in the proverbs.

The weight of authority was against me but my plan compelled me to disregard it.  The dilemma was simply either to use the Saj’a or to follow Mr. Payne’s method and “arrange the disjecta membra of the original in their natural order”; that is, to remodel the text.  Intending to produce a faithful copy of the Arabic, I was compelled to adopt the former, and still hold it to be the better alternative.  Moreover I question Mr. Payne’s dictum (ix. 383) that “the Seja-form is utterly foreign to the genius of English prose and that its

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B.—­The Verse.

The Shi’r or metrical part of The Nights is considerable amounting to not less than ten thousand lines, and these I could not but render in rhyme or rather in monorhyme.  This portion has been a bugbear to translators.  De Sacy noticed the difficulty of the task (p. 283).  Lane held the poetry untranslatable because abounding in the figure Tajnis, our paronomasia or paragram, of which there are seven distinct varieties,[FN#433] not to speak of other rhetorical flourishes.  He therefore omitted the greater part of the verse as tedious and, through the loss of measure and rhyme, “generally intolerable to the reader.”  He proved his position by the bald literalism of the passages which he rendered in truly prosaic prose and succeeded in changing the facies and presentment of the work.  For the Shi’r, like the Saj’a, is not introduced arbitrarily; and its unequal distribution throughout The Nights may be accounted for by rule of art.  Some tales, like Omar bin al-Nu’man and Tawaddud, contain very little because the theme is historical or realistic; whilst in stories of love and courtship as that of Rose-in-hood, the proportion may rise to one-fifth of the whole.  And this is true to nature.  Love, as Addison said, makes even the mechanic (the British mechanic!) poetical, and Joe Hume of material memory once fought a duel about a fair object of dispute.

Before discussing the verse of The Nights it may be advisable to enlarge a little upon the prosody of the Arabs.  We know nothing of the origin of their poetry, which is lost in the depths of antiquity, and the oldest bards of whom we have any remains belong to the famous epoch of the war Al-Basus, which would place them about A.D. 500.  Moreover, when the Muse of Arabia first shows she is not only fully developed

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Scholars are agreed upon the fact that many of the earliest and best Arab poets were, as Mohammed boasted himself, unalphabetic[FN#434] or rather could neither read nor write.  They addressed the ear and the mind, not the eye.  They “spoke verse,” learning it by rote and dictating it to the Rawi, and this reciter again transmitted it to the musician whose pipe or zither accompanied the minstrel’s song.  In fact the general practice of writing began only at the end of the first century after The Flight.

The rude and primitive measure of Arab song, upon which the most complicated system of metres subsequently arose, was called Al-Rajaz, literally “the trembling,” because it reminded the highly imaginative hearer of a pregnant she-camel’s weak and tottering steps.  This was the carol of the camel-driver, the lover’s lay and the warrior’s chaunt of the heroic ages; and its simple, unconstrained flow adapted it well for extempore effusions.  Its merits and demerits have been extensively discussed amongst Arab grammarians, and many, noticing that it was not originally divided into hemistichs, make an essential difference between the Sha’ir who speaks poetry and the Rajiz who speaks Rajaz.  It consisted, to describe it technically, of iambic dipodia (U-U-), the first three syllables being optionally long or short It can generally be read like our iambs and, being familiar, is pleasant to the English ear.  The dipodia are repeated either twice or thrice; in

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For many generations the Sons of the Desert were satisfied with Nature’s teaching; the fine perceptions and the nicely trained ear of the bard needing no aid from art.  But in time came the inevitable prosodist under the formidable name of Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Khalil, i.  Ahmad, i.  Amru, i.  Tamim al-Farahidi (of the Farahid sept), al-Azdi (of the Azd clan), al Yahmadi (of the Yahmad tribe), popularly known as Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Basri, of Bassorah, where he died aet. 68, scanning verses they say, in A.H. 170 (= 786-87).  Ibn Khallikan relates (i. 493) on the authority of Hamzah al-Isfahani how this “father of Arabic grammar and discoverer of the rules of prosody” invented the science as he walked past a coppersmith’s shop on hearing the strokes of a hammer upon a metal basin:  “two objects devoid of any quality which could serve as a proof and an illustration of anything else than their own form and shape and incapable of leading to any other knowledge than that of their own nature."[FN#435] According to others he was passing through the Fullers’ Bazar at Basrah when his ear was struck by the Dak dak (Arabic letters) and the Dakak-dakak (Arabic letters) of the workmen.  In these two onomapoetics we trace the expression which characterises the Arab tongue:  all syllables are composed of consonant and vowel, the latter long or short as B and B ; or of a vowelled consonant followed by a consonant as Bal, Bau (Arabic) .

The grammarian, true to the traditions of his craft which looks for all poetry to the Badawi,[FN#436] adopted for metrical details the language of the Desert.  The distich, which amongst Arabs is looked upon as one line, he named “Bayt,” nighting-place, tent or house; and the hemistich Misra’ah, the one leaf of a folding door.  To this “scenic” simile all the parts of the verse were more or less adapted.  The metres, our feet, were called “Arkan,” the stakes and stays of the tent; the syllables were “Usul” or roots divided into three kinds:  the first or “Sabab” (the tent-rope) is composed of two letters, a vowelled and a quiescent consonant as “Lam."[FN#437] The “Watad” or tent peg of three letters is of two varieties; the Majmu’, or united, a foot in which the two first consonants are moved by vowels and the last is jazmated or made quiescent by apocope as “Lakad”; and the Mafruk, or disunited, when the two moved consonants are separated by one jazmated, as “Kabla.”  And lastly the “Fasilah” or intervening space, applied to the main pole of the tent, consists of four letters.

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The metres were called Buhur or “seas” (plur. of Bahr), also meaning the space within the tent-walls, the equivoque alluding to pearls and other treasures of the deep.  Al-Khalil, the systematiser, found in general use only five Dairah (circles, classes or groups of metre); and he characterised the harmonious and stately measures, all built upon the original Rajaz, as Al-Tawil (the long),[FN#438] Al-Kamil (the complete), Al-Wafir (the copious), Al-Basit (the extended) and Al-Khafif (the light).[FN#439] These embrace all the Mu’allakat and the Hamasah, the great Anthology of Abu Tammam; but the crave for variety and the extension of foreign intercourse had multiplied wants and Al-Khalil deduced from the original five Dairah, fifteen, to which Al-Akhfash (ob.  A.D. 830) added a sixteenth, Al-Khabab.  The Persians extended the number to nineteen:  the first four were peculiarly Arab; the fourteenth, the fifteenth and seventeenth peculiarly Persian and all the rest were Arab and Persian.[FN#440]

Arabic metre so far resembles that of Greece and Rome that the value of syllables depends upon the “quantity” or position of their consonants, not upon accent as in English and the Neo-Latin tongues.  Al-Khalil was doubtless familiar with the classic prosody of Europe, but he rejected it as unsuited to the genius of Arabic and like a true Eastern Gelehrte he adopted a process devised by himself.  Instead of scansion by pyrrhics and spondees, iambs and trochees, anapaests and similar simplifications he invented a system of weights ("wuzun").  Of these there are nine[FN#441] memorial words used as quantitive signs, all built upon the root “fa’l” which has rendered such notable service to Arabic and Hebrew[FN#442] grammar and varying from the simple “fa’al,” in Persian “fa’ul” (U _), to the complicated “Mutafa’ilun"(UU — U -) , anapaest + iamb.  Thus the prosodist would scan the Shahnameh of Firdausi as

               Fa’ulun, fa’ulun, fa’ulun, fa’al. 
                U — — U — — U — — —

These weights also show another peculiarity of Arabic verse.  In English we have few if any spondees:  the Arabic contains about three longs to one short; hence its gravity, stateliness and dignity.  But these longs again are peculiar, and sometimes strike the European ear as shorts, thus adding a difficulty for those who would represent Oriental metres by western feet, ictus and accent.  German Arabists can register an occasional success in such attempts:  Englishmen none.  My late friend Professor Palmer of Cambridge tried the tour de force of dancing on one leg instead of two and notably failed:  Mr. Lyall also strove to imitate Arabic metre and produced only prose bewitched.[FN#443] Mr. Payne appears to me to have wasted trouble in “observing the exterior form of the stanza, the movement of the rhyme and (as far as possible) the identity in number of the syllables composing the beits.”  There is only one part of his admirable version concerning which I have heard competent readers complain; and that is the metrical, because here and there it sounds strange to their ears.

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I have already stated my conviction that there are two and only two ways of translating Arabic poetry into English.  One is to represent it by good heroic or lyric verse as did Sir William Jones; the other is to render it after French fashion, by measured and balanced Prose, the little sister of Poetry.  It is thus and thus only that we can preserve the peculiar cachet of the original.  This old world Oriental song is spirit-stirring as a “blast of that dread horn,” albeit the words be thin.  It is heady as the “Golden Wine” of Libanus, to the tongue water and brandy to the brain—­the clean contrary of our nineteenth century effusions.  Technically speaking, it can be vehicled only by the verse of the old English ballad or by the prose of the Book of Job.  And Badawi poetry is a perfect expositor of Badawi life, especially in the good and gladsome old Pagan days ere Al-Islam, like the creed which it abolished, overcast the minds of men with its dull grey pall of realistic superstition.  They combined to form a marvellous picture—­those contrasts of splendour and squalor amongst the sons of the sand.  Under airs pure as aether, golden and ultramarine above and melting over the horizon into a diaphanous green which suggested a resection of Kaf, that unseen mountain-wall of emerald, the so-called Desert, changed face twice a year; now brown and dry as summer-dust; then green as Hope, beautified with infinite verdure and broad sheetings of rain-water.  The vernal and autumnal shiftings of camp, disruptions of homesteads and partings of kith and kin, friends and lovers, made the life many-sided as it was vigorous and noble, the outcome of hardy frames, strong minds and spirits breathing the very essence of liberty and independence.  The day began with the dawn-drink, “generous wine bought with shining ore,” poured into the crystal goblet from the leather bottle swinging before the cooling breeze.  The rest was spent in the practice of weapons, in the favourite arrow game known as Al-Maysar, gambling which at least had the merit of feeding the poor; in racing for which the Badawin had a mania, and in the chase, the foray and the fray which formed the serious business of his life.  And how picturesque the hunting scenes; the greyhound, like the mare, of purest blood; the falcon cast at francolin and coney; the gazelle standing at gaze; the desert ass scudding over the ground-waves; the wild cows or bovine antelopes browsing with their calves and the ostrich-chickens flocking round the parent bird!  The Musamarah or night-talk round the camp-fire was enlivened by the lute-girl and the glee-man, whom the austere Prophet described as “roving distraught in every vale” and whose motto in Horatian vein was, “To day we shall drink, to-morrow be sober, wine this day, that day work.”  Regularly once a year, during the three peaceful months when war and even blood revenge were held sacrilegious, the tribes met at Ukadh (Ocaz) and other fairsteads, where they held high festival and the bards strave

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The poetical forms in The Nights are as follows:—­The Misra’ah or hemistich is half the “Bayt” which, for want of a better word, I have rendered couplet:  this, however, though formally separated in MSS., is looked upon as one line, one verse; hence a word can be divided, the former part pertaining to the first and the latter to the second moiety of the distich.  As the Arabs ignore blank verse, when we come upon a rhymeless couplet we know that it is an extract from a longer composition in monorhyme.  The Kit’ah is a fragment, either an occasional piece or more frequently a portion of a Ghazal (ode) or Kasidah (elegy), other than the Matla, the initial Bayt with rhyming distichs.  The Ghazal and Kasidah differ mainly in length:  the former is popularly limited to eighteen couplets:  the latter begins at fifteen and is of indefinite number.  Both are built upon monorhyme, which appears twice in the first couplet and ends all the others, e g., aa + ba + ca, etc.; nor may the same assonance be repeated, unless at least seven couplets intervene.  In the best poets, as in the old classic verse of France, the sense must be completed in one couplet and not run on to a second; and, as the parts cohere very loosely, separate quotation can generally be made without injuring their proper effect.  A favourite form is the Ruba’i or quatrain, made familiar to English ears by Mr. Fitzgerald’s masterly adaptation of Omar-i-Khayyam:  the movement is generally aa + ba, but it also appears as ab + cb, in which case it is a Kit’ah or fragment.  The Murabba, tetrastichs or four fold-song, occurs once only in The Nights (vol.i. 98); it is a succession of double Bayts or of four lined stanzas rhyming aa + bc + dc + ec:  in strict form the first three hemistichs rhyme with one another only, independently of the rest of the poem, and the fourth with that of every other stanza, e.g., aa + ab + cb + db.  The Mukhammas, cinquains or pentastichs (Night cmlxiv.), represents a stanza of two distichs and a hemistich in monorhyme, the fifth line being the “bob” or burden:  each succeeding stanza affects a new rhyme, except in the fifth line, e.g., aaaab + ccccb + ddddb and so forth.  The Muwwal is a simple popular song in four to six lines; specimens of it are given in the Egyptian grammar of my friend the late Dr. Wilhelm Spitta.[FN#444] The Muwashshah, or ornamented verse, has two main divisions:  one applies to our acrostics in which the initials form

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Mr. Lane (Lex.) lays down, on the lines of Ibn Khallikan (i. 476, etc.) and other representative literati, as our sole authortties for pure Arabic, the precedence in following order.  First of all ranks the Jahili (Ignoramus) of The Ignorance, the
     :  these pagans left hemistichs, couplets, pieces and elegies
which once composed a large corpus and which is now mostly forgotten.  Hammad al-Rawiyah, the Reciter, a man of Persian descent (ob.  A.H. 160=777) who first collected the Mu’allakat, once recited by rote in a seance before Caliph Al-Walid two thousand poems of prae-Mohammedan bards.[FN#445] After the Jahili stands the Mukhadram or Muhadrim, the “Spurious,” because half Pagan half Moslem, who flourished either immediately before or soon after the preaching of Mohammed.  The Islami or full-blooded Moslem at the end of the first century A.H ( = 720) began the process of corruption in language; and, lastly he was followed by the Muwallad of the second century who fused Arabic with non-Arabic and in whom purity of diction disappeared.

I have noticed (I Section A.) that the versical portion of The Nights may be distributed into three categories.  First are the olden poems which are held classical by all modern Arabs; then comes the mediaeval poetry, the effusions of that brilliant throng which adorned the splendid Court of Harun al-Rashid and which ended with Al-Hariri (ob.  A.H. 516); and, lastly, are the various pieces de circonstance suggested to editors or scribes by the occasion.  It is not my object to enter upon the historical part of the subject:  a mere sketch would have neither value not interest whilst a finished picture would lead too far:  I must be contented to notice a few of the most famous names.

Of the prae-Islamites we have Adi bin Zayd al-Ibadi the “celebrated poet” of Ibn Khallikan (i. 188); Nabighat (the full-grown) al-Zubyani who flourished at the Court of Al-Nu’man in ad. 580-602, and whose poem is compared with the “Suspendeds,’’[FN#446] and Al-Mutalammis the “pertinacious” satirist, friend and intimate with Tarafah of the “Prize Poem.”  About Mohammed’s day we find Imr al-Kays “with whom poetry began,” to end with Zu al-Rummah; Amru bin Madi Karab al-Zubaydi, Labid; Ka’b ibn Zuhayr, the father one of the Mu’al-lakah-poets, and the son author of the Burdah or Mantle-poem (see vol. iv. 115), and Abbas

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The well known names of the Harun-cycle are Al-Asma’i, rhetorician and poet, whose epic with Antar for hero is not forgotten (ob.  A.H. 2I6); Isaac of Mosul (Ishak bin Ibrahim of Persian origin); Al-’Utbi “the Poet” (ob.  A.H. 228); Abu al-Abbas al-Rakashi; Abu al-Atahiyah, the lover of Otbah; Muslim bin al-Walid al-Ansari; Abu Tammam of Tay, compiler of the Hamasah (ob.  A.H. 230), “a Muwallad of the first class” (says Ibn Khallikan i. 392); the famous or infamous Abu Nowas, Abu Mus’ab (Ahmad ibn Ali) who died in A.H. 242; the satirist Dibil al-Khuzai (ob.  A.H. 246) and a host of others quos nunc perscribere longum est.  They were followed by Al-Bohtori “the Poet” (ob.  A.H. 286); the royal author Abdullah ibn al-Mu’tazz (ob.  A.H. 315); Ibn Abbad the Sahib (ob.  A.H. 334); Mansur al-Hallaj the martyred Sufi; the Sahib ibn Abbad, Abu Faras al-Hamdani (ob.  A.H. 357); Al-Nami (ob.  A.H. 399) who had many encounters with that model Chauvinist Al-Mutanabbi, nicknamed Al-Mutanabbih (the “wide awake"), killed A.H. 354; Al-Manazi of Manazjird (ob. 427); Al-Tughrai author of the Lamiyat al-’Ajam (ob.  A.H. 375); Al-Hariri the model rhetorician (ob.  A.H. 516); Al-Hajiri al-Irbili, of Arbela (ob.  A.H. 632); Baha al-Din al-Sinjari (ob.  A.H. 622); Al-Katib or the Scribe (ob.  A.H. 656); Abdun al-Andalusi the Spaniard (our xiith century) and about the same time Al-Nawaji, author of the Halbat al-Kumayt or"Race course of the Bay horse”—­poetical slang for wine.[FN#448]

Of the third category, the pieces d’occasion, little need be said:  I may refer readers to my notes on the doggrels in vol. ii. 34, 35, 56, 179, 182, 186 and 261; in vol. v. 55 and in vol. viii. 50.

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Having a mortal aversion to the details of Arabic prosody, I have persuaded my friend Dr. Steingass to undertake in the following pages the subject as far as concerns the poetry of The Nights.  He has been kind enough to collaborate with me from the beginning, and to his minute lexicographical knowledge I am deeply indebted for discovering not a few blemishes which would have been “nuts to the critic.”  The learned Arabist’s notes will be highly interesting to students:  mine ( SectionV.) are intended to give a superficial and popular idea of the Arab’s verse mechanism.

“The principle of Arabic Prosody (called ’Aruz, pattern standard, or ’Ilm al-’Aruz, science of the ’Aruz), in so far resembles that of classical poetry, as it chiefly rests on metrical weight, not on accent, or in other words a verse is measured by short and long quantities, while the accent only regulates its rhythm.  In Greek and Latin, however, the quantity of the syllables depends on their vowels, which may be either naturally short or long, or become long by position, i.e. if followed by two or more consonants.  We all remember from our school-days what a fine string of rules had to be committed to and kept in memory, before we were able to scan a Latin or Greek verse without breaking its neck by tripping over false quantities.  In Arabic, on the other hand, the answer to the question, what is metrically long or short, is exceedingly simple, and flows with stringent cogency from the nature of the Arabic Alphabet.  This, strictly speaking, knows only consonants (Harf, pl.  Huruf).  The vowels which are required, in order to articulate the consonants, were at first not represented in writing at all.  They had to be supplied by the reader, and are not improperly called “motions” (Harakat), because they move or lead on, as it were, one letter to another.  They are three in number, a (Fathah), i (Kasrah), u (Zammah), originally sounded as the corresponding English vowels in bat, bit and butt respectively, but in certain cases modifying their pronunciation under the influence of a neighbouring consonant.  When the necessity made itself felt to represent them in writing, especially for the sake of fixing the correct reading of the Koran, they were rendered by additional signs, placed above or beneath the consonant, after which they are pronounced, in a similar way as it is done in some systems of English shorthand.  A consonant followed by a short vowel is called a “moved letter” (Muharrakah); a consonant without such vowel is called “resting” or “quiescent” (Sakinah), and can stand only at the end of a syllable or word.

And now we are able to formulate the one simple rule, which determines the prosodical quantity in Arabic:  any moved letter, as ta, li, mu, is counted short; any moved letter followed by a quiescent one, as taf, fun, mus, i.e. any closed syllable beginning and terminating with a consonant and having a short vowel between, forms a long quantity.  This is certainly a relief in comparison with the numerous rules of classical Prosody, proved by not a few exceptions, which for instance in Dr. Smith’s elementary Latin Grammar fill eight closely printed pages.

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Before I proceed to show how from the prosodical unities, the moved and the quiescent letter, first the metrical elements, then the feet and lastly the metres are built up, it will be necessary to obviate a few misunderstandings, to which our mode of transliterating Arabic into the Roman character might give rise.

The line:: 

   “Love in my heart they lit and went their ways,” (vol. i. 232)

runs in Arabic: 

   “Akamu al-wajda fi kalbi wa saru” (Mac.  Ed. i. 179).

Here, according to our ideas, the word akamu would begin with a short vowel a, and contain two long vowels a and u; according to Arabic views neither is the case.  The word begins with “Alif,” and its second syllable ka closes in Alif after Fathah (a), in the same way, as the third syllable mu closes in the letter Waw (w) after Zammah (u).

The question, therefore, arises, what is “Alif.”  It is the first of the twenty-eight Arabic letters, and has through the medium of the Greek Alpha nominally entered into our alphabet, where it now plays rather a misleading part.  Curiously enough, however, Greek itself has preserved for us the key to the real nature of the letter.  In ’ the initial a is preceded by the so called spiritus lends (’), a sign which must be placed in front or at the top of any vowel beginning a Greek word, and which represents that slight aspiration or soft breathing almost involuntarily uttered, when we try to pronounce a vowel by itself.  We need not go far to find how deeply rooted this tendency is and to what exaggerations it will sometimes lead.  Witness the gentleman who, after mentioning that he had been visiting his “favourite haunts” on the scenes of his early life, was sympathetically asked, how the dear old ladies were.  This spiritus lends is the silent h of the French “homme” and the English “honour,” corresponding exactly to the Arabic Hamzah, whose mere prop the Alif is, when it stands at the beginning of a word:  a native Arabic Dictionary does not begin with Bab al-Alif (Gate or Chapter of the Alif), but with Bab al-Hamzah.  What the Greeks call Alpha and have transmitted to us as a name for the vowel a, is in fact nothing else but the Arabic Hamzah-Alif,(~)moved by Fathah, i.e. bearing the sign(~) for a at the top (~), just as it might have the sign Zammah (~) superscribed to express u (~), or the sign Kasrah (~) subjoined to represent i(~).  In each case the Hamzah-Alif, although scarcely audible to our ear, is the real letter and might fitly be rendered in transliteration by the above mentioned silent h, wherever we make an Arabic word begin with a vowel not preceded by any other sign.  This latter restriction refers to the sign ’, which in Sir Richard Burton’s translation of The Nights, as frequently in books published in this country, is used to represent the Arabic letter ~ in whose very name ’Ayn it occurs.  The ’Ayn is “described as produced by a smart compression of the upper part of the windpipe and forcible emission of breath,” imparting a guttural tinge to a following or preceding vowel-sound; but it is by no means a mere guttural vowel, as Professor Palmer styles it.  For Europeans, who do not belong to the Israelitic dispensation, as well as for Turks and Persians, its exact pronunciation is most difficult, if not impossible to acquire.

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In reading Arabic from transliteration for the purpose of scanning poetry, we have therefore in the first instance to keep in mind that no Arabic word or syllable can begin with a vowel.  Where our mode of rendering Arabic in the Roman character would make this appear to be the case, either Hamzah (silent h), or ‘Ayn (represented by the sign’) is the real initial, and the only element to be taken in account as a letter.  It follows as a self-evident corollary that wherever a single consonant stands between two vowels, it never closes the previous syllable, but always opens the next one.  Our word “Akamu,” for instance, can only be divided into the syllables:  A (properly Ha)-ka-mu, never into Ak-a-mu or Ak-am-u.

It has been stated above that the syllable ka is closed by the letter Alif after Fathah, in the same way as the syllable mu is closed by the letter Waw, and I may add now, as the word fi is closed by the letter Ya (y).  To make this perfectly clear, I must repeat that the Arabic Alphabet, as it was originally written, deals only with consonants.  The signs for the short vowel-sounds were added later for a special purpose, and are generally not represented even in printed books, e.g. in the various editions of The Nights, where only quotations from the Koran or poetical passages are provided with the vowel-points.  But among those consonants there are three, called weak letters (Huruf al-’illah), which have a particular organic affinity to these vowel sounds:  the guttural Hamzah, which is akin to a, the palatal Ya, which is related to i, and the labial Waw, which is homogeneous with u.  Where any of the weak letters follows a vowel of its own class, either at the end of a word or being itself followed by another consonant, it draws out or lengthens the preceding vowel and is in this sense called a letter of prolongation (Harf al-Madd).  Thus, bearing in mind that the Hamzah is in reality a silent h, the syllable ka might be written kah, similarly to the German word “sah,” where the h is not pronounced either, but imparts a lengthened sound to the a.  In like manner mu and fi are written in Arabic muw and fiy respectively, and form long quantities not because they contain a vowel long by nature, but because their initial “Muharrakah” is followed by a “Sakinah,” exactly as in the previously mentioned syllables taf, fun, mus.[FN#449] In the Roman transliteration, Akamu forms a word of five letters, two of which are consonants, and three vowels; in Arabic it represents the combination H(a)k(a)hm(u)w, consisting also of five letters but all consonants, the intervening vowels being expressed in writing either merely by superadded external signs, or more frequently not at all.  Metrically it represents one short and two long quantities (U — -), forming in Latin a trisyllable foot, called Bacchius, and in Arabic a quinqueliteral “Rukn” (pillar) or “Juz” (part, portion), the technical designation for which we shall introduce presently.

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There is one important remark more to be made with regard to the Hamzah:  at the beginning of a word it is either conjunctive, Hamzat al-Wasl, or disjunctive, Hamzat al-Kat’.  The difference is best illustrated by reference to the French so-called aspirated h, as compared with the above-mentioned silent h.  If the latter, as initial of a noun, is preceded by the article, the article loses its vowel, and, ignoring the silent h altogether, is read with the following noun almost as one word:  le homme becomes l’homme (pronounced lomme) as le ami becomes l’ami.  This resembles very closely the Arabic Hamzah Wasl.  If, on the other hand, a French word begins with an aspirated h, as for instance heros, the article does not drop its vowel before the noun, nor is the h sounded as in the English word “hero,” but the effect of the aspirate is simply to keep the two vowel sounds apart, so as to pronounce le eros with a slight hiatus between, and this is exactly what happens in the case of the Arabic Hamzah Kat’.

With regard to the Wasl, however, Arabic goes a step further than French.  In the French example, quoted above, we have seen it is the silent h and the preceding vowel which are eliminated; in Arabic both the Hamzah and its own Harakah, i.e. the short vowel following it, are supplanted by their antecedent.  Another example will make this clear.  The most common instance of the Hamzah Wasl is the article al (for h(a)l=the Hebrew hal), where it is moved by Fathah.  But it has this sound only at the beginning of a sentence or speech, as in “Al-Hamdu” at the head of the Fatihah, or in “Allahu” at the beginning of the third Surah.  If the two words stand in grammatical connection, as in the sentence “Praise be to God,” we cannot say “Al-Hamdu li-Allahi,” but the junction (Wasl) between the dative particle li and the noun which it governs must take place.  According to the French principle, this junction would be effected at the cost of the preceding element and li Allahi would become l’Allahi; in Arabic, on the contrary, the kasrated l of the particle takes the place of the following fathated Hamzah and we read li ’llahi instead.  Proceeding in the Fatihah we meet with the verse “Iyyaka na’budu wa iyyaka nasta’inu,” Thee do we worship and of Thee do we ask aid.  Here the Hamzah of iyyaka (properly hiyyaka with silent h) is disjunctive, and therefore its pronunciation remains the same at the beginning and in the middle of the sentence, or, to put it differently, instead of coalescing with the preceding wa into wa’yyaka, the two words are kept separate by the Hamzah, reading wa iyyaka, just as it was the case with the French Le heros.

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If the conjunctive Hamzah is preceded by a quiescent letter, this takes generally Kasrah:  “Talat al-Laylah,” the night was longsome, would become Talati ’l-Laylah.  If, however, the quiescent letter is one of prolongation, it mostly drops out altogether, and the Harakah of the next preceding letter becomes {he connecting vowel between the two words, which in our parlance would mean that the end vowel of the first word is shortened before the elided initial of the second.  Thus “fi al-bayti,” in the house, which in Arabic is written f(i)y h(a)l-b(a)yt(i) and which we transliterate fi ’l-bayti, is in poetry read fil-bayti, where we must remember that the syllable fil, in spite of its short vowel, represents a long quantity, because it consists of a moved letter followed by a quiescent one.  Fil would be overlong and could, according to Arabic prosody, stand only in certain cases at the end of a verse, i.e. in pause, where a natural tendency prevails to prolong a sound.

The attentive reader will now be able to fix the prosodical value of the line quoted above with unerring security.  For metrical purposes it syllabifies into:  A-ka-mul-vaj-da fi kal-bi wa sa-ru, containing three short and eight long quantities.  The initial unaccented a is short, for the same reason why the syllables da and wa are so, that is, because it corresponds to an Arabic letter, the Hamzah or silent h, moved by Fathah.  The syllables ka, fi, bi, sa, ru are long for the same reason why the syllables mul, waj, kal are so, that is, because the accent in the transliteration corresponds to a quiescent Arabic letter, following a moved one.  The same simple criterion applies to the whole list, in which I give in alphabetical order the first lines and the metre of all the poetical pieces contained in the Mac. edition, and which will be found at the end of this volume. {This appendix is not included in the electronic text}

The prosodical unities, then, in Arabic are the moved and the quiescent letter, and we are now going to show how they combine into metrical elements, feet, and metres.

i.  The metrical elements (Usul) are: 

1.  The Sabab,[FN#450] which consists of two letters and is either khafif (light) or sakil (heavy).  A moved letter followed by a quiescent, i.e. a closed syllable, like the afore-mentioned taf, fun, mus, to which we may now add fa=fah, ’i=’iy, ’u=’uw, form a Sabab khafif, corresponding to the classical long quantity (-).  Two moved letters in succession, like mute, ’ala, constitute a Sabab sakil, for which the classical name would be Pyrrhic (U U).  As in Latin and Greek, they are equal in weight and can frequently interchange, that is to say, the Sabab khafif can be evolved into a sakil by moving its second Harf, or the latter contracted into the former, by making its second letter quiescent.

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2.  The Watad, consisting of three letters, one of which is quiescent.  If the quiescent follows the two moved ones, the Watad is called majmu’ (collected or joined), as fa’u (=fa’uw), mafa (=mafah), ’ilun, and it corresponds to the classical Iambus (U — ).  If, on the contrary, the quiescent intervenes or separates between the two moved letters, as in fa’i ( = fah’i), latu (=lahtu), taf’i, the Watad is called mafruk (separated), and has its classical equivalent in the Trochee (- U)

3.  The Fasilah,[FN#451] containing four letters, i.e. three moved ones followed by a quiescent, and which, in fact, is only a shorter name for a Sabab sakil followed by a Sabab khafif, as mute + fa, or ’ala + tun, both of the measure of the classical Anapaest (U U -)

ii.  These three elements, the Sabab, Watad and Fasilah, combine further into feet Arkaan, pl. of Rukn, or Ajzaa, pl. of Juz, two words explained supra p. 236.  The technical terms by which the feet are named are derivatives of the root fa’l, to do, which, as the student will remember, serves in Arabic Grammar to form the Auzan or weights, in accordance with which words are derived from roots.  It consists of the three letters Fa (f), ’Ayn (’), Lam (l), and, like any other Arabic root, cannot strictly speaking be pronounced, for the introduction of any vowel-sound would make it cease to be a root and change it into an individual word.  The above fa’l, for instance, where the initial Fa is moved by Fathah (a), is the Infinitive or verbal noun, “to do,” “doing.”  If the ’Ayn also is moved by Fathah, we obtain fa’al, meaning in colloquial Arabic “he did” (the classical or literary form would be fa’ala).  Pronouncing the first letter with Zammah (u), the second with Kasrah (i), i.e., fu’il, we say “it was done” (classically fu’ila).  Many more forms are derived by prefixing, inserting or subjoining certain additional letters called Huruf al-Ziyadah (letters of increase) to the original radicals:  fa’il, for instance, with an Alif of prolongation in the first syllable, means “doer”; maf’ul (=maf’uwl), where the quiescent Fa is preceded by a fathated Mim (m), and the zammated ’Ayn followed by a lengthening Waw, means “done”; Mufa’alah, where, in addition to a prefixed and inserted letter, the feminine termination ah is subjoined after the Lam, means “to do a thing reciprocally.”  Since these and similar changes are with unvarying regularity applicable to all roots, the grammarians use the derivatives of Fa’l as model-forms for the corresponding derivations of any other root, whose letters are in this case called its Fa, ’Ayn and Lam.  From a root, e.g., which has Kaf (k) for its first letter or Fa, Ta (t) for its second letter or ’Aye, and Ba (b) for its third letter or Lam

          fa’l would be katb =to write, writing;
          fa’al would be katab =he wrote;
          fu’il would be kutib =it was written;
          fa’il would be katib =writer, scribe;
          maf’ul would be maktub=written, letter;
          mufa’alah would be mukatabah = to write reciprocally,
correspondence.

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The advantage of this system is evident.  It enables the student, who has once grasped the original meaning of a root, to form scores of words himself, and in his readings, to understand hundreds, nay thousands, of words, without recourse to the Dictionary, as soon as he has learned to distinguish their radical letters from the letters of increase, and recognises in them a familiar root.  We cannot wonder, therefore, that the inventor of Arabic Prosody readily availed himself of the same plan for his own ends.  The Taf’il, as it is here called, that is, the representation of the metrical feet by current derivatives of fa’l, has in this case, of course, nothing to do with the etymological meaning of those typical forms.  But it proves none the less useful in another direction:  in simply naming a particular foot it shows at the same time its prosodical measure and character, as will now be explained in detail.

We have seen supra p. 236 that the word Akamu consists of a short syllable followed by two long ones (U — -), and consequently forms a foot, which the classics would call Bacchius.  In Latin there is no connection between this name and the metrical value of the foot:  we must learn both by heart.  But if we are told that its Taf’il in Arabic is Fa’ulun, we understand at once that it is composed of the Watad majmu’ fa’u (U -) and the Sabab khafif lun (-), and as the Watad contains three, the Sabab two letters, it forms a quinqueliteral foot or Juz khamasi.

In combining into feet, the Watad has the precedence over the Sabab and the Fasilah, and again the Watad majmu’ over the Watad mafruk.  Hence the Prosodists distinguish between Ajza asliyah or primary feet (from Asl, root), in which this precedence is observed, and Ajza far’iyah or secondary feet (from Far’= branch), in which it is reversed.  The former are four in number:- -

1.  Fa’u.lun, consisting,as we have just seen, of a Watad majmu’ followed by a Sabab khafif = the Latin Bacchius (U — -).

2.  Mafa.’i.lun, i.e.  Watad majmu’ followed by two Sabab khafif = the Latin Epitritus primus (U — — -).

3.  Mufa.’alatun, i.e.  Watad majmu’ followed by Fasilah = the Latin Iambus followed by Anapaest (U — UU -).

4.  Fa’i.la.tun, i.e.  Watad mafruk followed by two Sabab khafif = the Latin Epitritus secundus (-U- -).

The number of the secondary feet increases to six, for as Nos. 2 and 4 contain two Sabab, they “branch out” into two derived feet each, according to both Sabab or only one changing place with regard to the Watad.  They are: 

5.  Fa.’ilun, i.e.  Sabab khafif followed by Watad majmu’= the Latin Creticus (-U-).  The primary Fa’u.lun becomes by transposition Lun.fa’u.  To bring this into conformity with a current derivative of fa’l, the initial Sabab must be made to contain the first letter of the root, and the Watad the two remaining ones in their proper order.  Fa is therefore substituted for lun, and ’ilun for fa’u, forming together the above Fa.’ilun.  By similar substitutions, which it would be tedious to specify in each separate case, Mafa.’i.lun becomes: 

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6.  Mus.taf.’ilun, for ’I.lun.mafa, i.e. two Sabab khafif, followed by Watad majmu’ = the Latin Epitritus tertius (- -U-), or: 

7.  Fa.’ila.tun, for Lun.mafa.’i, i.e.  Watad majmu’ between two Sabab khafif = the Latin Epitritus secundus (-U- -).

8.  Mutafa.’ilun (for ’Alatun.mufa, the reversed Mufa.’alatun), i.e.  Fasilah followed by Watad majmu’=the Latin Anapaest succeeded by Iambus (UU-U-).  The last two secondary feet are transpositions of No. 4, Fa’i.la.tun, namely: 

9.  Maf.’u.latu, for La.tun.fa’i, i.e. two Sabab khafif, followed by Watad mafruk = the Latin Epitritus quartus (- — -U).

10.  Mus.taf’i.lun, for Tun.fa’i.la, i.e.  Watad mafruk between two Sabab khafif=the Latin Epitritus tertius (- -U-).[FN#452]

The “branch"-foot Fa.’ilun (No. 5), like its “root” Fa’u.lun (No. 1), is quinqueliteral.  All other feet, primary or secondary, consist necessarily of seven letters, as they contain a triliteral Watad (see supra i. 2) with either two biliteral Sabab khafif (i. 1) or a quadriliteral Fasilah (i. 3).  They are, therefore, called Saba’i = seven lettered.

iii.  The same principle of the Watad taking precedence over Sabab and Fasilah, rules the arrangement of the Arabic metres, which are divided into five circles (Dawair, pl. of Dairah), so called for reasons presently to be explained.  The first is named: 

A. Dairat al-Mukhtalif, circle of “the varied” metre, because it is composed of feet of various length, the five-lettered Fa’ulun (supra ii. 1) and the seven-lettered Mafa’ilun (ii. 2) with their secondaries Fa’ilun, Mustaf.’ilun and Fa.’ilatun (ii. 5-7), and it comprises three Buhur or metres (pi. of Bahr, sea), the Tawil, Madid and Basit.

   1.  Al-Tawil, consisting of twice

     Fa’u.lun Mafa.’ilun Fa’u.lun Mafa.’ilun,

the classical scheme for which would be

U - - | U - - - | U - - | U - - - |

If we transfer the Watad Fa’u from the beginning of the line to the end, it would read: 

Lun.mafa’i Lun.fa’u Lun.mafa’i Lun.fa’u which, after the substitutions indicated above (ii. 7 and 5), becomes: 

   2.  Al-Madid, consisting of twice

     Fa.’ilatun Fa.’ilun Fa.’ilatun Fa.’ilun.

which may be represented by the classical scheme

- U - - | - U - | - U - - | - U - |

If again, returning to the Tawil, we make the break after the Watad of the second foot we obtain the line: 

     ’Ilun.fa’u.  Lum.mafa ’Ilun.fa’u Lun.mafa, and as metrically

’Ilun.fa’u (two Sabab followed by Watad) and Lun.mafa (one Sabab followed by Watad) are=’Ilun.mafa and Lun.fa’u respectively, their Taf’il is effected by the same substitutions as in ii. 5 and 6, and they become: 

   3.  Basit, consisting of twice

     Mustaf.’ilun Fa.’ilun Mustaf.’ilun Fa.’ilun,

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in conformity with the classical scheme: 

- - U - | - U - | - - U - | - U - |

Thus one metre evolves from another by a kind of rotation, which suggested to the Prosodists an ingenious device of representing them by circles (hence the name Dairah), round the circumference of which on the outside the complete Taf’il of the original metre is written, while each moved letter is faced by a small loop, each quiescent by a small vertical stroke[FN#453] inside the circle.  Then, in the case of this present Dairat al-Mukhtalif for instance, the loop corresponding to the initial f of the first Fa’ulun is marked as the beginning of the Tawil, that corresponding to its l (of the Sabab fun) as the beginning of the Madid, and that corresponding to the ’Ayn of the next Mafa’ilun as the beginning of the Basit.  The same process applies to all the following circles, but our limited space compels us simply to enumerate them, together with their Buhur, without further reference to the mode of their evolution.

B. Dairat al-Mutalif, circle of “the agreeing” metre, so called because all its feet agree in length, consisting of seven letters each.  It contains: 

1.  Al-Wafir, composed of twice

          Mufa.’alatun Mufa.’alatun Mufa.’alatun (ii. 3)

= U - U U - | U - U U - | U - U U - |

where the Iambus in each foot precedes the Anapaest, and its reversal: 

2.  Al-Kamil, consisting of twice

          Mutafa.’ilun Mutafa.’ilun Mutafa.’ilun (ii. 8)

= U U - U - | U U - U - | U U - U - |

where the Anapaest takes the first place in every foot.

C. Dairat al-Mujtalab, circle of “the brought on” metre, so called because its seven-lettered feet are brought on from the first circle.

1.  Al-Hazaj, consisting of twice

          Mafa.’ilun Mafa.’ilun Mafa.’ilun (ii. 2)

= U - - - | U - - - | U - - - | U - - - |

2.  Al-Rajaz, consisting of twice

          Mustaf.’ilun Mustaf.’ilun Mustaf.’ilun,

and, in this full form, almost identical with the Iambic Trimeter of the Greek Drama: 

- - U - | - - U - | - - U - |

3.  Al-Ramal, consisting of twice

          Fa.’ilatun Fa.’ilatun Fa.’ilatun,

the trochaic counterpart of the preceding metre

= - U - - | - U - - | - U - - |

D. Dairat al-Mushtabih, circle of “the intricate” metre, so called from its intricate nature, primary mingling with secondary feet, and one foot of the same verse containing a Watad majmu’, another a Watad mafruk, i.e. the iambic rhythm alternating with the trochaic and vice versa.  Its Buhur are: 

1.  Al-Sari’, twice

Mustaf.’ilun Mustaf.’ilun Maf’u.latu (ii. 6 and 9)
= - - U - | - - U - | - - - U |

2.  Al-Munsarih, twice

Mustaf.’ilun Mafu.latu Mustaf.’ilun (ii. 6. 9. 6)
= - - U - | - - - U | - - U - |

3.  Al-Khafif, twice

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Fa.’ilatun Mustaf’i.lun Fa.’ilatun (ii. 7.10.7)
= - U - - | - - U - | - U - - |

4.  Al-Muzari’, twice

Mafa.’ilun Fa’i.latun Mafa.’ilun (ii. 2.4.2)
= U - - - | - U - - | U - - - |

5.  Al-Muktazib, twice

Maf’u.latu Mustaf.’ilun Maf’u.latu (ii. 9.6.9)
= - - - U | - - U - | - - - U |

6.  Al-Mujtass, twice

Mustaf’i.lun Fa.’ilatun Mustaf’ i.lun (ii. 10.7.10)
= - - U - | - U - - | - - U - |

E. Dairat al-Muttafik, circle of “the concordant” metre, so called for the same reason why circle B is called “the agreeing,” i.e. because the feet all harmonise in length, being here, however, quinqueliteral, not seven-lettered as in the Matalif.  Al-Khalil the inventor of the ’’Ilm al-’Aruz, assigns to it only one metre: 

1.  Al-Mutakarib, twice

Fa’ulun Fa’ulun Fa’ulun Fa’ulun (ii. 1)
= U - - | U - - | U - - |

Later Prosodists added: 

2.  Al-Mutadarak, twice

Fa’ilun Fa’ilun Fa’ilun Fa’ilun (ii. 5)
= - U - | - U - | - U - |

The feet and metres as given above are, however, to a certain extent merely theoretical; in practice the former admit of numerous licenses and the latter of variations brought about by modification or partial suppression of the feet final in a verse.  An Arabic poem (Kasidah, or if numbering less than ten couplets, Kat’ah) consists of Bayts or couplets, bound together by a continuous rhyme, which connects the first two lines and is repeated at the end of every second line throughout the poem.  The last foot of every odd line is called ’Aruz (fem. in contradistinction of Aruz in the sense of Prosody which is masc.), pl.  A’airiz, that of every even line is called Zarb, pl.  Azrub, and the remaining feet may be termed Hashw (stuffing), although in stricter parlance a further distinction is made between the first foot of every odd and even line as well.

Now with regard to the Hashw on the one hand, and the ’Aruz and Zarb on the other, the changes which the normal feet undergo are of two kinds:  Zuhaf (deviation) and ’Illah (defect).  Zuhaf applies, as a rule, occasionally and optionally to the second letter of a Sabab in those feet which compose the Hashw or body-part of a verse, making a long syllable short by suppressing its quiescent final, or contracting two short quantities in a long one, by rendering quiescent a moved letter which stands second in a Sabab sakil.  In Mustaf’ilun (ii. 6. = — — U -), for instance, the s of the first syllable, or the f of the second, or both may be dropped and it will become accordingly Mutaf’ilun, by substitution Mafa’ilun (U — U -), or Musta’ilun, by substitution, Mufta’ilun (- U U -), or Muta’ilun, by substitution Fa’ilatun (U U U -).[FN#454] This means that wherever the foot Mustaf.’ilun occurs in the Hashw of a poem, we can represent it by the scheme U U U — i.e. the Epitritus tertius can, by poetical licence, change into Diiambus, Choriambus

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’Illah, the second way of modifying the primitive or normal feet, applies to both Sabab and Watad, but only in the ’Aruz and Zarb of a couplet, being at the same time constant and obligatory.  Besides the changes already mentioned, it consists in adding one or two letters to a Sabab or Watad, or curtailing them more or less, even to cutting them off altogether.  We cannot here exhaust this matter any more than those touched upon until now, but must be satisfied with an example or two, to show the proceeding in general and indicate its object.

We have seen that the metre Basit consists of the two lines: 

          Mustaf.’ilun Fa.’ilun Mustaf’ilun Fa’ilun
          Mustaf’ilun Fa’ilun Mustaf’ilun Fa’ilun.

This complete form, however, is not in use amongst Arab poets.  If by the Zuhaf Khabn, here acting as ’Illah, the Alif in the final Fa’ilun is suppressed, changing it into Fa’ilun (U U -), it becomes the first ’Aruz, called makhbunah, of the Basit, the first Zarb of which is obtained by submitting the final Fa’ilun of the second line to the same process.  A second Zarb results, if in Fa’ilun the final n of the ’Watad ’ilun is cut off and the preceding l made quiescent by the ‘Illah Kat’ thus giving Fa’il and by substitution Fa’lun (- -).  Thus the formula becomes:—­

Mustaf’ilun Fa’ilun Mustaf’ilun Fa’ilun
Mustaf’ilun Fa’ilun Mustaf’ilun{Fa’ilun
{Fa’lun

As in the Hashw, i.e. the first three feet of each line, the Khabn can likewise be applied to the medial Fa’ilun, and for Mustaf’ilun the poetical licences, explained above, may be introduced, this first ’Aruz or Class of the Basit with its two Zarb or subdivisions will be represented by the scheme

U U     | U     | U U     |
— — U — | — U — | — — U U | U U —

U U | U { U U —
— — U — | — U — { — —

that is to say in the first subdivision of this form of the Basit both lines of each couplet end with an Anapaest and every second line of the other subdivision terminates in a Spondee.

The Basit has four more A’ariz, three called majzuah, because each line is shortened by a Juz or foot, one called mashturah (halved), because the number of feet is reduced from four to two, and we may here notice that the former kind of lessening the number of feet is frequent with the hexametrical circles (B.  C. D.), while the latter kind can naturally only occur in those circles whose couplet forms an octameter

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Mustaf’ilun Fa’ilun Mustaf’ilun
{ Mustaf’il n
Mustaf’ilun Fa’ilun{ Mustaf’ilun
{ Maf’uulun,

which, with its allowable licenses, may be represented by the scheme: 

U U     | U     |
— — U — | — U — | — — U —

{ U U
U U | U { — — U —
— — U — | — U — { — — U —
{ U
{ — — —

The above will suffice to illustrate the general method of the Prosodists, and we must refer the reader for the remaining classes and subdivisions of the Basit as well as the other metres to more special treatises on the subject, to which this Essay is intended merely as an introduction, with a view to facilitate the first steps of the student in an important, but I fear somewhat neglected, field of Arabic learning.

If we now turn to the poetical pieces contained in The Nights, we find that out of the fifteen metres, known to al-Khalil, or the sixteen of later Prosodists, instances of thirteen occur in the Mac.  N. edition, but in vastly different proportions.  The total number amounts to 1,385 pieces (some, however, repeated several times), out of which 1,128 belong to the first two circles, leaving only 257 for the remaining three.  The same disproportionality obtains with regard to the metres of each circle.  The Mukhtalif is represented by 331 instances of Tawil and 330 of Basit against 3 of Madid; the Mutalif by 321 instances of Kamil against 143 of Wafir; the Mujtalab by 32 instances of Ramal and 30 of Rajaz against 1 of Hazaj; the Mushtabih by 72 instances of Khafif and 52 of Sari’ against 18 of Munsarih and 15 of Mujtass; and lastly the Muttafik by 37 instances of Mutakarib.  Neither the Mutadarak (E. 2), nor the Muzari’ and Muktazib (D. 4.5) are met with.

Finally it remains for me to quote a couplet of each metre, showing how to scan them, and what relation they bear to the theoretical formulas exhibited on p. 242 to p. 247.

It is characteristic for the preponderance of the Tawil over all the other metres, that the first four lines, with which my alphabetical list begins, are written in it.  One of these belongs to a poem which has for its author Baha al-Din Zuhayr (born A.D. 1186 at Mekkah or in its vicinity, ob. 1249 at Cairo), and is to be found in full in Professor Palmer’s edition of his works, p. 164.  Sir Richard Burton translates the first Bayt (vol. i. 290): 

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An I quit Cairo and her pleasances * Where can I hope to find so gladsome ways?

Professor Palmer renders it: 

          Must I leave Egypt where such joys abound? 
          What place can ever charm me so again ?

In Arabic it scans: 

U - U | U - - - | U - U |  U - U - |
A-arhalu’en Misrin wa tibi na’imihil[FN#455]
U - U | U - - - | U - U |  U - U - |
Fa-ayyu makanin ba’daha li-ya shaiku.

In referring to iii.  A. I. p. 242, it will be seen that in the Hashw Fa’ulun (U — -) has become Fa’ulu (U — U) by a Zuhaf called Kabz (suppression of the fifth letter of a foot if it is quiescent) and that in the ’Aruz and Zarb Mafa’ilun (U — — -) has changed into Mafa’ilun (U — U -) by the same Zuhaf acting as ’Illah.  The latter alteration shows the couplet to be of the second Zarb of the first ’Aruz of the Tawil.  If the second line did terminate in Mafa’ilun, as in the original scheme, it would be the first Zarb of the same ’Aruz; if it did end in Fa’ulun (U - -) or Mafa’il (U — -) it would represent the third or fourth subdivision of this first class respectively.  The Tawil has one other ’Aruz, Fa’ulun, with a twofold Zarb, either Fa’ulun also, or Mafa’ilun.

The first instance of the Basit occurring in The Nights are the lines translated vol. i. p. 25: 

Containeth Time a twain of days, this of blessing, that of bane *
     And holdeth Life a twain of halves, this of pleasure, that
     of pain.

In Arabic (Mac.  N. i.  II): 

- - U - | - U - | - - U - | U U - |
Al-Dahru yaumani za amnun wa za hazaru

- - U - | - U - | - - U - | U U - |
Wa’l-’Ayshu shatrani za safwun wa za kadaru.

Turning back to p. 243, where the A’ariz and Azrub of the Basit are shown, the student will have no difficulty to recognise the Bayt as one belonging to the first Zarb of the first ’Aruz.

As an example of the Madid we quote the original of the lines (vol. v. 131):—­

I had a heart, and with it lived my life * ’Twas seared with fire
     and burnt with loving-lowe.

They read in Arabic:—­

- U - - | - U - | U U - |
Kana li kalbun a’ishu bihi

- U - - | - U - | U - |
Fa’ktawa bi’l-nari wa’htarak.

If we compare this with the formula (iii.  A. 2. p. 242), we find that either line of the couplet is shortened by a foot; it is, therefore, majzu.  The first ’Aruz of this abbreviated metre is Fa’ilatun (- U — -), and is called sahihah (perfect) because it consists of the normal third foot.  In the second ’Aruz, Fa’ilatun loses its end syllable tun by the ’Illah Hafz (suppression of a final Sabab khafif), and becomes Fa’ila (- U -), for which Fa’ilun is substituted.  Shortening the first syllable of Fa’ilun, i.e. eliminating the Alif by Khabn, we obtain the third ’Aruz Fa’ilun (U U -) as that of the present lines, which has two Azrub:  Fa’ilun, like the ’Aruz, and Fa’lun (- -), here, again by Khabn, further reduced to Fa’al (U -).

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Ishak of Mosul, who improvises the piece, calls it “so difficult and so rare, that it went nigh to deaden the quick and to quicken the dead”; indeed, the native poets consider the metre Madid as the most difficult of all, and it is scarcely ever attempted by later writers.  This accounts for its rare occurrence in The Nights, where only two more instances are to be found, Mac.  N. ii. 244 and iii. 404.

The second and third circle will best be spoken of together, as the Wafir and Kamil have a natural affinity to the Hazaj and Rajaz.  Let us revert to the line:—­

U - - - | U - - - | U - - |
Akamu ’l-wajda fi kalbi wa saru.

Translated, as it were, into the language of the Prosodists it will be:—­

          Mafa’ilun[FN#456] ’Mafa’ilun Fa’ulun,

and this, standing by itself, might prima facie be taken for a line of the Hazaj (iii.  C. I), with the third Mafa’ilun shortened by Hafz (see above) into Mafa’i for which Fa’ulun would be substituted.  We have seen (p. 247) that and how the foot Mufa’alatun can change into Mafa’ilun, and if in any poem which otherwise would belong to the metre Hazaj, the former measure appears even in one foot only along with the latter, it is considered to be the original measure, and the poem counts no longer as Hazaj but as Wafir.  In the piece now under consideration, it is the second Bayt where the characteristic foot of the Wafir first appears:—­

U - - - | U - U U | U - - |
Naat ’anni’l-rubu’u wa sakiniha

U - U U - | U - U U - | U - - |
Wa kad ba’uda ’l-mazaru fa-la mazaru.

Anglice (vol. iii. 296):—­

Far lies the camp and those who camp therein; * Far is her tent
     shrine where I ne’er shall tent.

It must, however, be remarked that the Hazaj is not in use as a hexameter, but only with an ’Aruz majzuah or shortened by one foot.  Hence it is only in the second ’Aruz of the Wafir, which is likewise majzuah, that the ambiguity as to the real nature of the metre can arise;[FN#457] and the isolated couplet:—­

U - - - | U - - -  | U - - |
Yaridu ’l-mar-u an yu’ta munahu

U - - - | U - - -  | U - - |
Wa yaba ’llahu illa ma yuridu

Man wills his wish to him accorded be, * But Allah naught accords
     save what he wills (vol. iv. 157),

being hexametrical, forms undoubtedly part of a poem in Wafir although it does not contain the foot Mufa’alatun at all.  Thus the solitary instance of Hazaj in The Nights is Abu Nuwas’ abomination, beginning with:—­

U - - -  | U - - - |

          Fa-la tas’au ila ghayri

U - - -  | U - - - |
Fa-’indi ma’dinu ’l-khayri (Mac.  N. ii. 377).

Steer ye your steps to none but me * Who have a mine of luxury
     (vol. v. 65).

If in the second ’Aruz of the Wafir, Maf’ailun (U — — -) is further shortened to Mafa’ilun (U — U -), the metre resembles the second ’Aruz of Rajaz, where, as we have seen, the latter foot can, by licence, take the place of the normal Mustaf’ilun (- — U -).

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The Kamil bears a similar relation to the Rajaz, as the Wafir bears to the Hazaj.  By way of illustration we quote from Mac.  N. ii. 8 the first two Bayts of a little poem taken from the 23rd Assembly of Al Hariri:—­

- - U - | - - U - | U U - U - |
Ya khatiba ’l-dunya ’l-daniyyati innaha

U U - U - | U U - U - | - - - |
Sharaku ’l-rada wa kararatu ’l-akdari

- - U - | - - U - | - - U - |
Darun mata ma azhakat fi yaumiha

- - U - | - - U - | - - - |
Abkat ghadan bu’dan laha min dari.

In Sir Richard Burton’s translation (vol. iii. 319):—­

O thou who woo’st a World unworthy, learn * ’Tis house of evils,
     ’tis Perdition’s net: 
A house where whoso laughs this day shall weep * The next; then
     perish house of fume and fret.

The ’Aruz of the first couplet is Mutafa’ilun, assigning the piece to the first or perfect (sahihah) class of the Kamil.  In the Hashw of the opening line and in that of the whole second Bayt this normal Mutafa’ilun has, by licence, become Mustaf’ilun, and the same change has taken place in the ’Aruz of the second couplet; for it is a peculiarity which this metre shares with a few others, to allow certain alterations of the kind Zuhaf in the ’Aruz and Zarb as well as in the Hashw.  This class has three subdivisions:  the Zarb of the first is Mutafa’ilun, like the ’Aruz the Zarb of the second is Fa’alatun (U U — -), a substitution for Mutafa’il which latter is obtained from Mutafa’ilun by suppressing the final n and rendering the l quiescent; the Zarb of the third is Fa’lun (- — -) for Mutfa, derived from Mutafa’ilun by cutting off the Watad ’ilun and dropping the medial a of the remaining Mutafa.

If we make the ’Ayn of the second Zarb Fa’alatun also quiescent by the permitted Zuhaf Izmar, it changes into Fa’latun, by substitution Maf ’ulun (- — -) which terminates the rhyming lines of the foregoing quotation.  Consequently the two couplets taken together, belong to the second Zarb of the first ’Aruz of the Kamil, and the metre of the poem with its licences may be represensed by the scheme: 

-        | -        |  -        |
U U - U - | U U - U - | U U - U - |

-        | -        |  -      |
U U - U - | U U - U - | U U - - |

Taken isolated, on the other hand, the second Bayt might be of the metre Rajaz, whose first ’Aruz Mustaf’ilun has two Azrub:  one equal to the Aruz, the other Maf’ulun as above, but here substituted for Mustaf’il after applying the ‘Illah Kat’ (see p 247) to Mustaf’ilun.  If this were the metre of the poem throughout the scheme with the licences peculiar to the Rajaz would be: 

U U     | U U     | U U     |
- - U U | - - U - | - - U - |

U U     | U U     | U     |
- - U - | - - U - | - - - |

The pith of Al-Hariri’s Assembly is that the knight errant not to say the arrant wight of the Romance, Abu Sayd of Saruj accuses before the Wali of Baghdad his pretended pupil, in reality his son, to have appropriated a poem of his by lopping off two feet of every Bayt.  If this is done in the quoted lines, they read: 

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- - U - | - - U - |
Ya khatiba ’l-dunya ’l-dandy.

U U - U | U U - U - |
Yati innaha sharaku ’l-rada

- - U - | - - U - |
Darun mata ma azhakat,

- - U - | - - U - |
Fi yaumiha abkat ghada,

with a different rhyme and of a different variation of metre.  The amputated piece belongs to the fourth Zarb of the third ’Aruz of Kamil, and its second couplet tallies with the second subdivision of the second class of Rajaz.

The Rajaz, an iambic metre pure and simple, is the most popular, because the easiest, in which even the Prophet was caught napping sometimes, at the dangerous risk of following the perilous leadership of Imru ’l-Kays.  It is the metre of improvisation, of ditties, and of numerous didactic poems.  In the latter case, when the composition is called Urjuzah, the two lines of every Bayt rhyme, and each Bayt has a rhyme of its own.  This is the form in which, for instance, Ibn Malik’s Alfiyah is written, as well as the remarkable grammatical work of the modern native scholar, Nasif al-Yaziji, of which a notice will be found in Chenery’s Introduction to his Translation of Al-Hariri.

While the Hazaj and Rajaz connect the third circle with the first and second, the Ramal forms the link between the third and fourth Dairah.  Its measure Fa’ilatun (- U — -) and the reversal of it, Maf’ulatu (- — — U), affect the trochaic rhythm, as opposed to the iambic of the two first-named metres.  The iambic movement has a ring of gladness about it, the trochaic a wail of sadness:  the former resembles a nimble pedestrian, striding apace with an elastic step and a cheerful heart; the latter is like a man toiling along on the desert path, where his foot is ever and anon sliding back in the burning sand (Raml, whence probably the name of the metre).  Both combined in regular alternation, impart an agitated character to the verse, admirably fit to express the conflicting emotions of a passion stirred mind.

Examples of these more or less plaintive and pathetic metres are numerous in the Tale of Uns al-Wujud and the Wazir’s Daughter, which, being throughout a story of love, as has been noted, vol. v. 33, abounds in verse, and, in particular, contains ten out of the thirty two instances of Ramal occurring in The Nights.  We quote: 

Ramal, first Zarb of the first ’Aruz (Mac.  N. ii. 361): 

- U - - | U U - - | - U - |
Inna li ’l-bulbuli sautan fi ’l-sahar

- U - - | U U - - | - U - |
Ashghala ’l-ashika ’an husni ’l-water

The Bulbul’s note, whenas dawn is nigh * Tells the lover from strains of strings to fly (vol. v. 48).

Sari’, second Zarb of the first ’Aruz (Mac.  N. ii. 359): 

U - U - | - - U - | - U - |
Wa fakhitin kad kala fi nauhihi

- - U - | - - U - | - U - |
Ya Daiman shukran ’ala balwati

I heard a ringdove chanting soft and plaintively, * “I thank
     Thee, O Eternal for this misery” (vol. v. 47).

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Khafif, full or perfect form (sahih), both in Zarb and ’Aruz
(Mac.  N. ii. 356): 

- U - - | U - U - | - U - - |
Ya li-man ashtaki ’l-gharama ’llazi bi

U U - - | U - U - | - U - - |
Wa shujuni wa furkati ’an habibi

O to whom now of my desire complaining sore shall I * Bewail my
     parting from my fere compelled thus to fly (vol. v. 44).

Mujtass, the only ’Aruz (majzuah sahihah, i.e. shortened by one foot and perfect) with equal Zarb (Mac.  N. ii. 367): 

- - U - | U U - - |
Ruddu ’alayya habibi

- - U - | - U - - |
La hajatan li bi-malin

To me restore my dear * I want not wealth untold (vol. v. 55).

As an instance of the Munsarih, I give the second occurring in The Nights, because it affords me an opportunity to show the student how useful a knowledge of the laws of Prosody frequently proves for ascertaining the correct reading of a text.  Mac.  N. i. 33 we find the line: 

- U U - | - U U - | - U U - |
Arba’atun ma ’jtama’at kattu iza.

This would be Rajaz with the licence Mufta’ilun for Mustaf’ilun.  But the following lines of the fragment evince, that the metre is Munsarih; hence, a clerical error must lurk somewhere in the second foot.  In fact, on page 833 of the same volume, we find the piece repeated, and here the first couplet reads

- U U - | - U - U | - U U - |
Arba’atun ma ’jtama’na kattu siwa

U - U - | - U - U | - U U - |
Ala aza mujhati wa safki dami

Four things which ne’er conjoin unless it be * To storm my vitals
     and to shed my blood (vol. iii. 237).

The Mutakarib, the last of the metres employed in The Nights, has gained a truly historical importance by the part which it plays in Persian literature.  In the form of trimetrical double-lines, with a several rhyme for each couplet, it has become the “Nibelungen"-stanza of the Persian epos:  Firdausi’s immortal “Book of Kings” and Nizami’s Iskander-namah are written in it, not to mention a host of Masnawis in which Sufic mysticism combats Mohammedan orthodoxy.  On account of its warlike and heroical character, therefore, I choose for an example the knightly Jamrakan’s challenge to the single fight in which he conquers his scarcely less valiant adversary Kaurajan, Mac.  N. iii. 296: 

U - - | U - U | U - - | U - - |
Ana ’l-Jamrakanu kawiyyn ’l-janani

U - - | U - U | U - - | U - - |
Jami’u ’l-fawarisi takhsha kitali.

Here the third syllable of the second foot in each line is shortened by licence, and the final Kasrah of the first line, standing in pause, is long, the metre being the full form of the Mutakarib as exhibited p. 246, iii.  E. 1.  If we suppress the Kasrah of al-Janani, which is also allowable in pause, and make the second line to rhyme with the first, saying, for instance: 

U — — | U — U | U — — | U —
Ana ’l-Jamrakanu kawiyyu ’l-janan

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U — — | U — — | U — — | U —
La-yaksha kitali shija’u ’l-zaman,

we obtain the powerful and melodious metre in which the Shahnamah sings of Rustam’s lofty deeds, of the tender love of Rudabah and the tragic downfall of Siyawush

Shall I confess that in writing the foregoing pages it has been my ambition to become a conqueror, in a modest way, myself:  to conquer, I mean, the prejudice frequently entertained, and shared even by my accomplished countryman, Rueckert, that Arabic Prosody is a clumsy and repulsive doctrine.  I have tried to show that it springs naturally from the character of the language, and, intimately connected, as it is, with the grammatical system of the Arabs, it appears to me quite worthy of the acumen of a people, to whom, amongst other things, we owe the invention of Algebra, the stepping-stone of our whole modern system of Mathematics I cannot refrain, therefore, from concluding with a little anecdote anent al-Khalil, which Ibn Khallikan tells in the following words.  His son went one day into the room where his father was, and on finding him scanning a piece of poetry by the rules of Prosody he ran out and told the people that his father had lost his wits.  They went in immediately and related to al-Khalil what they had heard, on which he addressed his son in these terms: 

“Had you known what I was saying, you would have excused me, and had you known what you said, I should have blamed you But you did not understand me, so you blamed me, and I knew that you were ignorant, so I pardoned you.”

L’Envoi.

Here end, to my sorrow, the labours of a quarter-century, and here I must perforce say with the “poets’ Poet,”

“Behold!  I see the haven nigh at hand,
To which I mean my wearie course to bend;
Vere the main shete, and bear up with the land
The which afore is fairly to be ken’d.”

Nothing of importance now indeed remains for me but briefly to estimate the character of my work and to take cordial leave of my readers, thanking them for the interest they have accorded to these volumes and for enabling me thus successfully to complete the decade.

Without pudor malus or over-diffidence I would claim to have fulfilled the promise contained in my Foreword.  The anthropological notes and notelets, which not only illustrate and read between the lines of the text, but assist the student of Moslem life and of Arabo-Egyptian manners, customs and language in a multitude of matters shunned by books, form a repertory of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric phase, sexual as well as social.

To assert that such lore is unnecessary is to state, as every traveller knows, an “absurdum.”  Few phenomena are more startling than the vision of a venerable infant, who has lived half his long life in the midst of the wildest anthropological vagaries and monstrosities, and yet who absolutely ignores all that India or Burmah enacts under his very eyes.  This is crass ignorance, not the naive innocence of Saint Francis who, seeing a man and a maid in a dark corner, raised his hands to Heaven and thanked the Lord that there was still in the world so much of Christian Charity.

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Against such lack of knowledge my notes are a protest; and I may claim success despite the difficulty of the task.  A traveller familiar with Syria and Palestine, Herr Landberg, writes, “La plume refuserait son service, la langue serait insuffisante, si celui qui connait la vie de tous les jours des Orientaux, surtout des classes elevees, voulait la devoiler.  L’Europe est bien loin d’en avoir la moindre idee.”

In this matter I have done my best, at a time too when the hapless English traveller is expected to write like a young lady for young ladies, and never to notice what underlies the most superficial stratum.  And I also maintain that the free treatment of topics usually taboo’d and held to be “alekta”—­unknown and unfitted for publicity—­will be a national benefit to an “Empire of Opinion,” whose very basis and buttresses are a thorough knowledge by the rulers of the ruled.  Men have been crowned with gold in the Capitol for lesser services rendered to the Respublica.

That the work contains errors, shortcomings and many a lapsus, I am the first and foremost to declare.  Yet in justice to myself I must also notice that the maculae are few and far between; even the most unfriendly and interested critics have failed to point out an abnormal number of slips.  And before pronouncing the “Vos plaudite!” or, as Easterns more politely say, “I implore that my poor name may be raised aloft on the tongue of praise,” let me invoke the fair field and courteous favour which the Persian poet expected from his readers.

          (Veil it, an fault thou find, nor jibe nor jeer:—­
          None may be found of faults and failings clear!)

Richard F. Burton.

Athenaeum Club, September 30, ’86.

Appendix

Memorandum

I make no apology for the number and extent of bibliographical and other lists given in this Appendix:  they may cumber the book but they are necessary to complete my design.  This has been to supply throughout the ten volumes the young Arabist and student of Orientalism and Anthropology with such assistance as I can render him; and it is my conviction that if with the aid of this version he will master the original text of the “Thousand Nights and a Night,” he will find himself at home amongst educated men in Egypt and Syria, Najd and Mesopotamia, and be able to converse with them like a gentleman; not, as too often happens in Anglo-India, like a “Ghorawala” (groom).  With this object he will learn by heart what instinct and inclination suggest of the proverbs and instances, the verses, the jeux d’esprit and especially the Koranic citations scattered about the text; and my indices will enable him to hunt up the tale or the verses which he may require for quotation wven when writing an ordinary letter to a “native” correspondent.  Thus he will be spared the wasted labour of wading through volumes in order to pick up a line.

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The following is the list of indices:—­

Appendix I.

I. Index to the Tales in the ten Volumes. 
II.  Alphabetical Table of the Notes (Anthropological, etc.)
     prepared by F. Steingass, Ph.D. 
Iii.  Alphabetical Table of First Lines (metrical portion) in
     English and Arabic, prepared by Dr. Steingass. 
IV.  Tables of Contents of the various Arabic texts. 
     A. The Unfinished Calcutta Edition (1814-18). 
     B. The Breslau Text (1825-43) from Mr. Payne’s Version. 
     C. The MacNaghten or Turner-Macan Text (A.D. 1839-42) and
          the Bulak Edition (A.H. 1251 = A.D. 1835-36), from Mr.
          Payne’s Version. 
     D. The same with Mr. Lane’s and my Version.

Appendix ii.

Contributions to the Bibliography of the Thousand and One Nights, and their Imitations, with a Table shewing the contents of the principal editions and translations of The Nights.  By W. F. Kirby, Author of “Ed-Dimiryaht, and Oriental Romance”; “The New Arabian Nights,” $c.

Appendix I

Index I

Index to the Tales and Proper Names.

N.B.—­The Roman numerals denote the volume {page numbers have been omitted}

Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman, ix. 
Abdullah bin Fazl and his brothers, ix. 
Abdullah bin Ma’amar with the Man of Bassorah and his slave-girl,
v. 
Abd al-Rahman the Moor’s story of the Rukh, v. 
Abu Hasan al-Ziyadi and the Khorasan Man, iv. 
Abu Hasan, how he brake Wind, v. 
Abu Isa and Kurrat al-Aye, The Loves of, v. 
Abu Ja’afar the Leper, Abu al-Hasan al-Durraj and, v. 
Abu Kir the Dyer and Abu Sir the Barber, ix. 
Abu al-Aswad and his squinting slave-girl, v. 
Abu al Husn and his slave-girl Tawaddud, v. 
Abu al Hasan al-Durraj and Abu Ja’afar the Leper, v. 
Abu al Hasan of Khorasan, ix. 
Abu Mohammed highs Lazybones, iv. 
Abu Nowas, Harun al-Rashid with the damsel and, iv. 
Abu Nowas and the Three Boys, v. 
Abu Sir the Barber, Abu Kir the Dyer and, ix. 
Abu Suwayd and the handsome old woman, v. 
Abu Yusuf with Harun al-Rashid and his Wazir Ja’afar, The Imam,
iv. 
Abu Yusuf with Al-Rashid and Zubaydah, The Imam, iv. 
Adam, The Birds and Beasts and the Son of, iii. 
Adi bin Zayd and the Princess Hind, v. 
Ajib, The History of Gharib and his brother, vi. 
Ala al-Din Abu al-Shamat, iv. 
Alexandria (The Sharper of) and the Master of Police, iv. 
Ali bin Bakkar and Shams al-Nahar, iii. 
Ali of Cairo, The Adventures of Mercury, vii. 
Ali Nur al-Din and Miriam the Girdle-Girl, viii. 
Ali the Persian and the Kurd Sharper, iv. 
Ali Shar and Zumurrud, iv. 
Ali bin Tahir and the girl Muunis, v. 
Al Malik al-Nasir (Saladin) and the Three Chiefs of Police, iv. 
Almsgiving, The Woman whose hands were cut off for,

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Page 134

Page 135

Page 136

Page 137

Page 138

Page 139

Page 140

Index II

Alphabetical Table of the Notes
(Anthropological, &c.)

Prepared by F. Steingass, Ph.D.

[Index ii is not included]

Index III.-A

Alphabetical Table of First Lines
(Metrical Portion) in English.

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Prepared by Dr. Steingass.

A beloved familiar o’erreigns my heart viii. 70.  A boy of twice ten is fit for a king! iii. 303.  A breeze of love on my soul did blow viii. 222.  A damsel ’twas the firer’s art had decked with snares and sleight, i. 219, x. 59.  A dancer whose figure is like a willow branch, ix. 222.  A dancer whose form is like branch of Ban! ix. 221.  A dog, dog-fathered, by dog-grandsire bred, viii. 15.  A fan whose breath is fraught with fragrant scent, viii. 273.  A fair one, to idolaters if she her face should show, ix. 197.  A friend in need is he who, ever true iii. 149.  A guest hath stolen on my head and honour may he lack, viii. 295.  A hag to whom th’ unlawful lawfullest, i. 174.  A heart bore thee off in chase of the fair ix. 282.  A heart, by Allah!- never soft to lover wight, vii. 222.  A Houri, by whose charms my heart is moved to sore distress, vii. 105.  A house where flowers from stones of granite grow, iii. 19.  A Jinniyah this, with her Jinn, to show, v. 149.  A King who when hosts of the foe invade, ii.l.  A lutanist to us inclined, viii. 283.  A maiden ’twas, the dresser’s art had decked with cunning sleight, viii. 32.  A merchant I spied whose lovers, viii. 264.  A messenger from thee came bringing union-hope, iii. 188.  A moon she rises, willow-wand she waves iii. 237, viii. 303.  A moon, when he bends him those eyes lay bare, viii. 284.  A moon which blights you if you dare behold, ii. 4.  A night whose stars refused to run their course, iii. 299 A palace whereon be blessings and praise, iv. 134.  A place secure from every thought of fear i. 114.  A sage, I feel a fool before thy charms iii. 272. , A slave of slaves there standeth at thy door, i. 89. 
A sun on wand in knoll of sand she showed, i. 217; x. 58. 
A thin-waist maid who shames the willow-wand, ii. 285. 
A term decreed my lot I ’spy, viii. 83. 
A trifle this an his eyes be sore, v. 127. 
A tree whilere was I the Bulbul’s home, viii. 281. 
A wand uprising from a sandy knoll, ix.  A warrior showing such open hand, iv. 97.  A wasted body, heart empierced to core, ii. 314.  A youth slim waisted from whose locks and brow, i. 68.  A zephyr bloweth from the lover’s site, viii. 90.  Above the rose of cheek is thorn of lance, iii. 331.  Act on sure grounds, nor hurry fast, iv. 189.  Add other wit to thy wit, counsel craving, iv. 189.  Affright me funerals at every time, v. 111.  After thy faring never chanced I ’spy, viii. 142.  Ah, fare thee not; for I’ve no force thy faring to endure, viii. 63.  Ah! for lowe of love and longing suffer ye as suffer we? viii. 68.  Ah Khalid! this one is a slave of love distraught, iv. 158.  Ah, often have I sought the fair! how often fief and fain, vii. 138.  Alack and alas!  Patience taketh flight, viii. 263.  Alas, alack and wellaway for blamer’s calumny! viii. 285.  Albe by me I had through day and night, iii. 267.  Albe to lover adverse be his love, iii. 266.  Albeit my vitals quiver ’neath this ban, iii.

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Bare hills and camp-ground desolate, v. 130. 
Baulks me my Fate as tho’ she were my foe, viii. 130. 
Be as thou wilt, for Allah is bountiful, viii. 277. 
Be as thou wilt, for Allah still is bounteous Lord, ii. 202. 
Be mild to brother mingling, iv. 110. 
Be mild what time thou’rt ta’en with anger and despite, iv. 221. 
Be mild when rage shall come to afflict thy soul, iv. 54. 
Be praises mine to all-praiseworthy Thee, ii. 261. 
Be proud; I’ll crouch!  Bully; I’ll bear!  Despise; I’ll pray! iii.
188. 
Be sure all are villains and so bide safe iii. 142. 
Bear our salams, O Dove, from this our stead, viii. 236. 
Beareth for love a burden sore this soul of me, viii. 66. 
Beauty they brought with him to make compare, i. 144. 
Beguiled as Fortune who her guile displays, iv. 22. 
Behind the veil a damsel sits with gracious beauty dight, viii.
210. 
Behold a house that’s like the Dwelling of Delight, viii. 183. 
Behold this lovely garden! ’tis as though ii. 240. 
Belike my Fortune may her bridle turn,i. 52. 
Belike Who Yusuf to his kin restored, iv. 103. 
Beloved, why this strangeness, why this hate? iv. 234. 
Bethink thee not of worldly state, iii. 328
Bid thou thy phantom distance keep, vii 108. 
Better ye ’bide and I take my leave, i. 154. 
Beware her glance I rede thee ’tis like wizard wight, ii. 295. 
Beware of losing hearts of men by shine injurious deed, x. 50. 
Beware that eye glance which hath magic might, iii. 252. 
Black girls in acts are white, and ’tis as though, iv. 251. 
Black girls not white are they, iv. 251. 
Blame not! said I to all who blamed me viii. 95. 
Blest be his beauty; blest the Lord’s decree, i. 177. 
Blighted by her yet am I not to blame, viii. 255. 
Blows from my lover’s land a zephyr coolly sweet, ii. 311. 
Boon fortune sought him in humblest way, viii. 301. 
Boy-like of back side, in the deed of kind, v. 157. 
Breeze of East who bringest me gentle air, vii. 122. 
Brighter than moon at full with kohl’d eyes she came, viii. 279. 
Bring gold and gear an a lover thou, viii. 214. 

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Came a merchant to pay us a visit, viii. 265. 
Came Rayya’s phantom to grieve thy sight, vii. 91. 
Came the writ whose contents a new joy revealed, viii. 222. 
Came to match him in beauty and loveliness rare, viii. 298. 
Came to me care when came the love of thee, vii. 366. 
Came your writ to me in the dead of the night, ix. 2. 
Captured me six all bright with youthful blee, iv. 260. 
Carry the trust of him whom death awaits, v. 114. 
Cease then to blame me, for thy blame cloth anger bring, x. 39. 
Cease ye this farness; ’bate this pride of you, iv. 136. 
Chide not the mourner for bemourning woe, iii. 291. 
Choice rose that gladdens heart to see her sight, viii. 275. 
Clear’s the wine, the cup’s fine, i. 349. 
Cleave fast to her thou lovest and let the envious rail amain,
iv. 198. 
Close press appear to him who views th’ inside, viii. 267. 
Clove through the shades and came to me in night so dark and
sore, vii. 138. 
Come back and so will I! i. 63. 
Come with us, friend, and enter thou, viii. 267. 
Confide thy case to Him, the Lord who made mankind, i. 68. 
Consider but thy Lord, His work shall bring, viii. 20. 
Consider thou, O man, what these places to thee showed, vi. 112. 
Console thy lover, fear no consequence, v. 74. 
Consort not with the Cyclops e’en a day, iv. 194. 
Containeth time a twain of days, i. 25. 
Converse with men hath scanty weal except, iv. 188. 
Count not that I your promises forgot, iii. 238. 
Cut short this strangeness, leave unruth of you, v. 245. 
Culvers of Liwa! to your nests return vii. 115.

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Dark falls the night:  my tears unaided rail, iii. 11.  Dark falls the night and passion comes sore pains to gar me dree, ii. 140.  Daughter of nobles, who shine aim shalt gain, v. 54.  Dawn heralds daylight:  so wine passround viii. 276.  Dear friend! ah leave thy loud reproach and blame, iii. 110.  Dear friend, ask not what burneth in my breast, i. 265.  Dear friend, my tears aye flow these cheeks adown, iii. 14.  Deep in mine eyeballs ever dwells the phantom form of thee, viii. 61.  Deign grant thy favours; since ’tis time I were engraced, v. 148.  Describe me! a fair one said, viii. 265.  Did Azzah deal behest to sun o’ noon, ii. 102.  Did not in love-plight joys and sorrows meet, iii. 182.  Dip thou with spoons in saucers four and gladden heart and eye, viii. 223.  Displaying that fair face, iv. 195.  Divinely were inspired his words who brought me news of you, iv. 207.  Do you threaten me wi’ death for my loving you so well? vii. 221.  Drain not the bowl, save from dear hand like shine, i. 88.  Drain not the bowl but with lovely wight viii. 209.  Drain not the bowl save with a trusty friend, i. 88.  Drawn in thy shoulders are and spine thrust out, viii:  297.  Drink not pure wine except from hand of slender youth, ix. 198.  Drink not strong wine save at the slender dearling’s hand, v. 66.  Drink not upon thy food in haste but wait awhile, v. 222.  Drink the clear draught, drink free and fain, i. 88.  Drive off the ghost that ever shows, vii. 109.  Dumb is my tongue and scant my speech for thee, viii. 258.

Each portion of her charms we see, vii.131.  Each thing of things hath his appointed tide, v. 294.  Easy, O Fate! how long this wrong, this injury, iii. 329.  Eight glories meet, all, all conjoined in thee, iii. 271.  Enough for lovers in this world their ban and bane, iv. 205.  Enough of tears hath shed the lover wight, iii. 206.  Enrobes with honour sands of camp her foot-step wandering lone, iv. 204.  Escape with thy life if oppression betide thee, i. 209.  Even not beardless one with girl, nor heed, iii. 303.  Ever thy pomp and pride, O House! display, viii. 207.

Face that with Sol in Heaven ramping vies, iii. 167.  Fain had I hid thy handwork, but it showed, iii. 280.  Fain leaving life that fleets thou hast th’ eternal won, ii. 281.  Fair youth shall die by stumbling of the tongue, iii. 221.  Familiar with my heart are woes and with them I, vii. 340.  Far is the fane and patience faileth me, v. 41.  Fare safely, Masrur! an her sanctuary viii. 237.  Farewell thy love, for see, the Cafilah’s on the move, iv. 254.  Farewelling thee indeed is like to bidding life farewell, viii. 62.  Fate the wolf’s soul snatched up from wordly stead, iii. 146.  Fate frights us when the thing is past and gone, iii. 318.  Fate hath commanded I become thy fere, iii. 312.  Fie on this wretched world an so it be, i. 40.  Fight for my mother (an I live) I’ll take, ii. 239.  Fire is cooler than fires in my breast, iv. 245.  Fly, fly with life whenas evils

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Gainsay women; he obeyeth Allah best who saith them nay, ix. 282.  Garb of Fakir, renouncement, lowliness, v. 297.  Garth Heaven-watered wherein clusters waved, viii. 266.  Get thee provaunt in this world ere thou wend upon thy way, ii. 139.  Give back mine eyes their sleep long ravished, i. 99.  Give me brunettes, so limber, lissom, lithe of sway, iv. 258.  Give me brunettes; the Syrian spears so limber and so straight, viii. 158.  Give me the Fig sweet-flavoured, beauty clad, viii. 269.  Give thou my message twice, iii. 166.  Gladsome and gay forget shine every grief, i. 57.  Glory to Him who guides the skies, vii. 78.  Gnostic’s heart-homed in the heavenly Garth, v. 264.  Go, gossip! re-wed thee, for Prime draweth near, v. 135.  Go, visit her thou lovest, and regard not, iii. 235, viii. 305.  God make thy glory last in joy of life, viii. 99.  Gone is my strength, told is my tale of days, iii. 55.  Goodly of gifts is she, and charm those perfect eyes, iii. 57. 
Granados of finest skin, like the breasts, viii. 267. 
Grant me the kiss of that left hand ten times, iv. 129. 
Grape bunches likest as they sway, viii. 266. 
Grapes tasting with the taste of wine, viii. 266. 
Grief, cark and care in my heart reside, iv. 19. 
Grow thy weal and thy welfare day by day, i. 204.

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Had I known of love in what fashion he, vii. 330. 
Had I wept before she did in my passion for Su’ada, vii. 275. 
Had she shown her shape to idolator’s sight, viii. 279. 
Hadst thou been leaf in love’s loyalty, iii. 77. 
Had we known of thy coming we fain had dispread, i. 117. 
Had we wist of thy coming, thy way had been strown, i. 271. 
Haply and happily may Fortune bend her rein, viii. 67. 
Haply shall Allah deign us twain unite, viii. 141. 
Haply shall Fortune draw her rein, iii. 251. 
Happy is Eloquence when thou art named, i. 47. 
Hast quit the love of Moons or dost persist? iv. 240. 
Hast seen a Citron-copse so weighed adown, viii. 272. 
Haste to do kindness thou dost intend, iv. 181. 
Haste to do kindness while thou hast the power, iii. 136. 
Have the doves that moan in the lotus tree, vii. 91. 
He blames me for casting on him my sight, viii. 283. 
He came and cried they, Now be Allah blest! iii. 215. 
He came in sable hued sacque, iv. 263. 
He came to see me, hiding ’neath the shirt of night, iv. 252. 
He comes; and fawn and branch and moon delight these eyne, iv.
142. 
He cometh robed and bending gracefully, ii. 287. 
He heads his arrows with piles of gold, iv. 97. 
He is Caliph of Beauty in Yusuf’s lieu, ii. 292. 
He is gone who when to this gate thou go’st, ii. 14. 
He is to thee that daily bread thou canst nor loose nor bind, i.
39. 
He’ll offer sweetmeats with his edged tongue, iii. 115. 
He made me drain his wine of honeyed lips, v. 72. 
He missed not who dubbed thee, “World’s delight,” v. 33. 
He plucks fruits of her necklace in rivalry, ii. 103. 
He prayeth and he fasteth for an end he cloth espy, ii. 264. 
He seized my heart and freed my tears to flow, viii. 259. 
He showed in garb anemone-red, iv. 263. 
He thou trustedst most is thy worst un friend, iii. 143. 
He whom the randy motts entrap, iii. 216
Hearkening, obeying, with my dying mouth, ii. 321. 
Heavy and swollen like an urine-bladder blown, iv. 236. 
Her fair shape ravisheth if face to face she did appear, v. 192
Her fore-arms, dight with their bangles, show, v. 89. 
Her golden yellow is the sheeny sun’s, iv. 257. 
Her lip-dews rival honey-sweets, that sweet virginity, viii. 33. 
Her smiles twin rows of pearls display, i. 86. 
Here!  Here! by Allah, here!  Cups of the sweet, the dear! i. 89. 
Here the heart reads a chapter of devotion pure, iii. 18. 
Hind is an Arab filly purest bred, vii. 97. 
His cheek-down writeth (O fair fall the goodly scribe!) ii. 301. 
His cheekdown writeth on his cheek with ambergris on pearl, ii.
301. 
His eyelids sore and bleared, viii. 297. 
His face as the face of the young moon shines, i. 177. 
His honeydew of lips is wine; his breath, iv. 195. 
His looks have made me drunken, not his wine, iii. 166. 
His lovers said, Unless he deign to give us all a

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I am he who is known on the day of fight, vi. 262. 
I am distraught, yet verily, i. 138. 
I am going, O mammy, to fill up my pot, i.311. 
I am not lost to prudence, but indeed, ii. 98. 
I am taken:  my heart burns with living flame, viii. 225. 
I am the wone where mirth shall ever smile, i. 175. 
I am when friend would raise a rage that mote, iv. 109. 
I and my love in union were unite, viii. 247. 
I ask of you from every rising sun, i. 238. 
I asked of Bounty, “Art thou free?” v. 93. 
I asked the author of mine ills, ii. 60. 
I bade adieu, my right hand wiped my tears away, ii. 113. 
I attained by my wits, x. 44. 
I bear a hurt heart, who will sell me for this, vii. 115. 
I call to mind the parting day that rent our loves in twain,
viii. 125. 
I can’t forget him, since he rose and showed with fair design,
ix. 253. 
I ceased not to kiss that cheek with budding roses dight,viii.
329. 
I clips his form and wax’d drunk with his scent, ii. 292. 
I came to my dear friend’s door, of my hopes the goal, v. 58. 
I craved of her a kiss one day, but soon as she beheld, iv. 192. 
I cried, as the camels went off with them viii. 63. 
I’d win good will of everyone, but whoso envies me, ix. 342. 
I deemed my brethren mail of strongest steel, i. 108. 
I deemed you coat-o’-mail that should withstand, i. 108. 
I die my death, but He alone is great who dieth not, ii. 9. 
I drank the sin till my reason fled, v. 224
I drink, but the draught of his glance, not wine, i. 100. 
I drooped my glance when seen thee on the way, iii. 331. 
I dyed what years have dyed, but this my staining, v. 164. 
I embrace him, yet after him yearns my soul, ix. 242. 
I ever ask for news of you from whatso breezes pass, viii. 53. 
I feed eyes on their stead by the valley’s side, iii. 234
I fix my glance on her, whene’er she wends, viii. 158. 
I fly the carper’s injury, ii. 183. 
I gave her brave old wine that like her cheeks blushed red, i.
89. 
I had a heart and with it lived my life, v. 131. 
I have a friend with a beard, viii. 298. 
I have a friend who hath a beard, iv. 194. 
I have a friend, whose form is fixed within mine eyes, iv. 246. 
I have a froward yard of temper ill, viii. 293. 
I have a lover and when drawing him, iv. 247. 
I have a sorrel steed, whose pride is fain to bear the rein, ii.
225. 
I have borne for thy love what never bore iii. 183. 
I have fared content in my solitude, iii. 152. 
I have no words though folk would have me talk, ix. 276
I have won my wish and my need have scored, vii. 59. 
I have wronged mankind, and have ranged like wind, iii. 74. 
I have a yard that sleeps in base and shameful way, viii. 293. 
I have sorrowed on account of our disunion, viii. 128. 
I heard a ring-dove chanting plaintively v.47. 
I hid what I endured of him and yet it came to light,

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Jamil, in Holy War go fight! to me they say:  ii. 102. 
Jahannam, next Laza, and third Hatim, v. 240. 
Jamrkan am I! and a man of might, vii. 23. 
Joy from stroke of string cloth to me incline, viii. 227. 
Joy is nigh, O Masrur, so rejoice in true rede, viii. 221. 
“Joy needs shall come,” a prattler ’gan to prattle:  in. 7. 
Joy of boughs, bright branch of Myrobalan! viii. 213. 
Joy so o’ercometh me, for stress of joy, v. 355. 
Joyance is come, dispelling cark and care, v. 61.

Kingdom with none endures:  if thou deny this truth, where be the
Kings of earlier earth? i. 129. 
Kinsmen of mine were those three men who came to thee, iv. 289. 
Kisras and Caesars in a bygone day, ii. 41. 
Kiss then his fingers which no fingers are, iv. 147.

Page 153

Lack of good is exile to man at home, ix. 199.  Lack gold abaseth man and cloth his worth away, ix. 290.  Lady of beauty, say, who taught thee hard and harsh design, iii. 5.  Laud not long hair, except it be dispread, ii. 230.  Laud to my Lord who gave thee all of loveliness, iv. 143.  Leave this blame, I will list to no enemy’s blame! iii. 61.  Leave this thy design and depart, O man! viii. 212.  Leave thou the days to breed their ban and bate, ii. 41.  Leave thy home for abroad an wouldest rise on high, ix. 138.  Let days their folds and plies deploy, ii. 309.  Let destiny with slackened rein its course appointed fare! viii. 70.  Let Fate with slackened bridle fare her pace, iv. 173.  Let Fortune have her wanton way, i. 107.  Let thy thought be ill and none else but ill, iii. 142.  Leyla’s phantom came by night, viii. 14.  Life has no sweet for me since forth ye fared, iii. 177.  Like are the orange hills when zephyr breathes, viii. 272.  Like a tree is he who in wealth cloth wone, ii. 14.  Like fullest moon she shines on happiest night, v. 347.  Like moon she shines amid the starry sky, v.32.  Like peach in vergier growing, viii. 270.  Like the full moon she shineth in garments all of green, viii. 327.  Lion of the wold wilt thou murder me, v. 40.  Long as earth is earth, long as sky is sky, ix.317.  Long have I chid thee, but my chiding hindereth thee not, vii. 225.  Long have I wept o’er severance ban and bane, i. 249.  Long I lamented that we fell apart, ii. 187.  Long, long have I bewailed the sev’rance of our loves, iii. 275.  Long was my night for sleepless misery, iv. 263.  Longsome is absence; Care and Fear are sore, ii. 295.  Longsome is absence, restlessness increaseth, vii. 212.  Look at the I.ote-tree, note on boughs arrayed, viii. 271.  Look at the apricot whose bloom contains, viii. 268.  Look on the Pyramids and hear the twain, v. 106.  Love, at first sight, is a spurt of spray, vii. 280.  Love, at the first, is a spurt of spray, vii. 330.  Love for my fair they chide in angry way. iii. 233.  Love in my breast they lit and fared away, iii. 296.  Love in my heart they lit and went their ways, i. 232.  Love-longing urged me not except to trip in speech o’er free, ix. 322.  Love smote my frame so sore on parting day, ii. 152.  Love’s tongue within my heart speaks plain to thee, iv. 135.  Love’s votaries I ceased not to oppose, iii. 290.  Lover with his beloved loseth will and aim, v. 289.  Lover, when parted from the thing he loves, viii. 36.  Luck to the Rubber whose deft hand o’er-plies, iii. 17.

Make me not (Allah save the Caliph!) one of the betrayed vii.
129. 
Make thy game by guile for thou’rt born in a time, iii. 141. 
Man is known among men as his deeds attest, ix. 164. 
Man wills his wish to him accorded be, iv. 
Many whose ankle rings are dumb have tinkling belts, iii. 302. 
Masrur joys life made fair by all delight of days, nil. 234. 
May Allah never make you parting dree,

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Page 155

Naught came to salute me in sleep save his shade, vii. 111. 
Naught garred me weep save where and when of severance spake he,
viii. 63. 
Nears my parting fro, my love, nigher draws the severance-day,
viii. 308. 
Need drives a man into devious roads, ii. 14. 
Needs must I bear the term by Fate decreed, ii. 41. 
Ne’er cease thy gate be Ka’abah to mankind, iv. 148. 
Ne’er dawn the severance-day on any wise, viii. 49. 
Ne’er incline thee to part, ii. 105. 
Ne’er was a man with beard grown over. long, viii. 298. 
News my wife wots is not locked in a box! i. 311. 
News of my love fill all the land, I swear, iii. 287. 
No breeze of Union to the lover blows, viii. 239. 
No!  I declare by Him to whom all bow, v. 152. 
No longer beguile me, iii. 137. 
“No ring-dove moans from home on branch in morning light, ii.
152. 
None but the good a secret keep, And good men keep it unrevealed,
i. 87. 
None but the men of worth a secret keep, iii. 289. 
None keepeth a secret but a faithful person, iv. 233. 
None other charms but shine shall greet mine eyes, i. 156. 
None wotteth best joyance but generous youth v. 67. 
Not with his must I’m drunk, but verily, v. 158. 
Now an, by Allah, unto man were fully known, iii. 128. 
Now, an of woman ask ye, I reply, iii. 214. 
Now blame him not; for blame brings only vice and pain, ii. 297. 
Now, by my life, brown hue hath point of comeliness, iv. 258. 
Now, by thy life, and wert thou just my life thou hadst not
ta’en, i. 182. 
Now, by your love! your love I’ll ne’er forget, viii, 315. 
Now I indeed will hide desire and all repine, v. 267. 
Now is my dread to incur reproaches which. 59. 
Now love hast banished all that bred delight, iii. 259. 
Now with their says and said no more vex me the chiding race, iv.
207.

Page 156

O adornment of beauties to thee write I vii. 176. 
O beauty’s Union! love for thee’s my creed, iii. 303. 
O best of race to whom gave Hawwa boon of birth, v. 139. 
O bibber of liquor, art not ashamed v. 224. 
O breeze that blowest from the land Irak viii. 103. 
O child of Adam let not hope make mock and flyte at thee vi. 116
O culver of the copse, with salams I greet, v. 49. 
O day of joys to either lover fain! v. 63. 
O dwelling of my friends, say is there no return, viii. 319. 
O fair ones forth ye cast my faithful love, ix. 300. 
O fertile root and noble growth of trunk, ii. 43. 
O fisherman no care hast thou to fear, v. 51. 
O flier from thy home when foes affright! v. 290. 
O friends of me one favour more I pray v. 125. 
O glad news bearer well come! ii. 326. 
O hail to him whose locks his cheeks o’er shade, x. 58. 
O Hayat al-Nufuis be gen’rous and incline vii. 217. 
O heart, an lover false thee, shun the parting bane, viii.94. 
O heart! be not thy love confined to one, iii. 232. 
O hope of me! pursue me not with rigour and disdain, iii. 28. 
O joy of Hell and Heaven! whose tormentry, iii. 19. 
O Keener, O sweetheart, thou fallest not short, i. 311. 
O Kings of beauty, grace to prisoner ta’en, viii. 96. 
O Lord, by the Five Shaykhs, I pray deIiver me, vii. 226. 
O Lord, how many a grief from me hast driven, v. 270. 
O Lord, my foes are fain to slay me in despight, viii. 117. 
O Lords of me, who fared but whom my heart e’er followeth, iv 239
O Love, thou’rt instant in thy cruellest guise, iv. 204. 
O lover thou bringest to thought a tide, v. 50. 
O Maryam of beauty return for these eyne, viii. 321. 
O Miriam thy chiding I pray, forego, ix. 8. 
O moon for ever set this earth below, iii. 323. 
O Moslem! thou whose guide is Alcoran iv. 173. 
O most noble of men in this time and stound, iv. 20. 
O my censor who wakest amorn to see viii. 343. 
O my friend, an I rendered my life, my sprite, ix. 214. 
O my friend! reft of rest no repose I command, ii. 35. 
O my friends, have ye seen or have ye heard vi. 174. 
O my heart’s desire, grows my misery, vii. 248. 
O my Lord, well I weet thy puissant hand, vi. 97. 
O Night of Union, Time’s virginal prize viii. 328. 
O my lords, shall he to your minds occur ix. 299. 
O Night here I stay!  I want no morning light, iv. 144. 
O passing Fair I have none else but thee, vii. 365. 
O pearl-set mouth of friend, iv. 231. 
O pearly mouth of friend, who set those pretty pearls in line,
iv. 231. 
O Rose, thou rare of charms that dost contain, viii. 275. 
O sire, be not deceived by worldly joys, v. 114. 
O son of mine uncle! same sorrow I bear, iii. 61. 
O spare me, thou Ghazban, indeed enow for me, ii. 126. 
O Spring-camp have ruth on mine overthrowing, viii. 240. 
O thou Badi’a ’l-Jamal, show thou some clemency, vii. 368. 

Page 157

Page 158

Pardon my fault, for tis the wont, i. 126. 
Pardon the sinful ways I did pursue, ii. 38. 
Part not from one whose wont is not to part from you, iii. 295
Parting ran up to part from lover twain iii. 209. 
Pass round the cup to the old and the young man, too, viii. 278. 
Pass o’er my fault, for ’tis the wise man’s wont, viii. 327. 
Patience hath fled, but passion fareth not v. 358. 
Patience with sweet and with bitter Fate! viii. 146. 
Patient I seemed, yet Patience shown by me, vii.96. 
Patient, O Allah! to Thy destiny I bow iii.328. 
Pause ye and see his sorry state since when ye fain withdrew,
viii. 66. 
Peace be to her who visits me in sleeping phantasy, viii. 241. 
Peace be to you from lover’s wasted love vii. 368. 
Peace be with you, sans you naught compensateth me, viii. 320. 
Perfect were lover’s qualities in him was brought amorn, viii.
255. 
Pink cheeks and eyes enpupil’d black have dealt me sore despight,
viii. 69. 
Pleaseth me more the fig than every fruit viii. 269. 
Pleaseth me yon Hazar of mocking strain v.48. 
Pleasure and health, good cheer, good appetite, ii. 102. 
Ply me and also my mate be plied, viii. 203. 
Poverty dims the sheen of man whate’er his wealth has been, i.
272
Pray’ee grant me some words from your lips, belike, iii. 274. 
Pray, tell me what hath Fate to do betwixt us twain? v. 128. 
Preserve thy hoary hairs from soil and stain, iv. 43. 
Prove how love can degrade, v. 134.

Page 159

Quince every taste conjoins, in her are found, i. 158. 
Quoth I to a comrade one day, viii. 289. 
Quoth our Imam Abu Nowas, who was, v. 157. 
Quoth she (for I to lie with her forbare), iii. 303. 
Quoth she, “I see thee dye thy hoariness,” iv. 194. 
Quoth she to me,—­and sore enraged, viii. 293. 
Quoth she to me—­I see thou dy’st thy hoariness, viii. 295. 
Quoth they and I had trained my taste thereto, viii. 269. 
Quoth they, Black letters on his cheek are writ! iv. 196. 
Quoth they, Maybe that Patience lend thee ease! iii. 178. 
Quoth they, Thou rav’st on him thou lov’st, iii. 258. 
Quoth they, “Thou’rt surely raving mad for her thou lov’st, viii.
326.

Racked is my heart by parting fro my friends, i. 150.  Rain showers of torrent tears, O Eyne, and see, viii. 250.  Rebel against women and so shalt thou serve Allah the more, iii. 214.  Red fruits that fill the hand, and shine with sheen, viii. 271.  Rely not on women:  Trust not to their hearts, i. 13.  Reserve is a jewel, Silence safety is, i. 208.  Restore my heart as ’twas within my breast, viii. 37.  Right near at hand, Umaymah mine! v. 75.  Robe thee, O House, in richest raiment Time, viii. 206.  Roll up thy days and they shall easy roll, iv. 220.  Rosy red Wady hot with summer glow, ix.6.  Round with big and little, the bowl and cup, ii. 29.

Said I to slim-waist who the wine engraced, viii. 307. 
Salam from graces treasured by my Lord, iii. 273. 
Salams fro’ me to friends in every stead, iii. 256. 
Say, canst not come to us one momentling, iv. 43. 
Say, cloth heart of my fair incline to him, v. 127. 
Say him who careless sleeps what while the shaft of Fortune
flies, i. 68. 
Say me, on Allah’s path has death not dealt to me, iv. 247. 
Say me, will Union after parting e’er return to be, viii. 320. 
Say then to skin “Be soft,” to face “Be fair,” i. 252. 
Say thou to the she-gazelle, who’s no gazelle, v. 130. 
Say to angry lover who turns away, v. 131
Say to the charmer in the dove-hued veil, i. 280. 
Say to the fair in the wroughten veil, viii. 291
Say to the pretty one in veil of blue, iv. 264. 
Say what shall solace one who hath nor home nor stable stead,
ii.124. 
Say, will to me and you the Ruthful union show, viii. 323. 
Scented with sandal and musk, right proudly cloth she go, v. 192. 
Seeing thy looks wots she what thou desir’st, v. 226. 
Seest not how the hosts of the Rose display, viii. 276. 
Seest not that Almond plucked by hand, viii. 270. 
Seest not that musk, the nut-brown musk, e’er claims the highest
price, iv. 253. 
Seest not that pearls are prized for milky hue, iv. 250. 
Seest not that rosery where Rose a flowering displays, viii. 275. 
Seest not the bazar with its fruit in rows, iii. 302. 
Seest not the Lemon when it taketh form, viii. 272. 
Seest not we want for joy four things all told, i. 86. 

Page 160

Page 161

Take all things easy; for all worldly things, iv. 220.  Take thy life and fly whenas evils threat; let the ruined house tell its owner’s fate, i. 109.  Take, O my lord to thee the Rose, viii. 275.  Take patience which breeds good if patience thou can learn, iv. 221.  Take warning, O proud, iv. 118.  Tear-drops have chafed mine eyelids and rail down in wondrous wise, v. 53.  Tell her who turneth from our love to work it injury sore, i. 181.  Tell whoso hath sorrow grief never shall last, i. 15.  That cheek-mole’s spot they evened with a grain, i. 251.  That jetty hair, that glossy brow, i. 203.  That night th’ astrologer a scheme of planets drew, i. 167.  That pair in image quits me not one single hour, ii. 173.  That rarest beauty ever bides my foe, vii. 366.  That sprouting hair upon his face took wreak, v. 161.  The birds took flight at eve and winged their way, viii. 34.  The blear-eyed scapes the pits, i. 265.  The boy like his father shall surely show, i.310.  The breeze o’ morn blows uswards from her trace, viii. 206.  The bushes of golden hued rose excite, viii. 276.  The Bulbul’s note, whenas dawn is nigh, v.48.  The caravan-chief calleth loud o’ night, viii. 239.  The chambers were like a bee-hive well stocked, ix. 292.  The coming unto thee is blest, viii. 167.  The company left with my love by night, ix. 27.  The Compassionate

Page 162

Page 163

Page 164

Page 165

Umm Amr’, thy boons Allah repay! v. 118. 
Under my raiment a waste body lies, v. 151. 
Under these domes how many a company, vi.91. 
Union, this severance ended, shall I see some day? iii. 12. 
Unjust it were to bid the world be just i. 237. ,
Uns al-Wujud dost deem me fancy free, v. 43. 
Unto thee, As’ad!  I of passion pangs complain, iii. 312. 
Unto thy phantom deal behest, vii. 109. 
Upsprings from table of his lovely cheek vii. 277.

Veiling her cheeks with hair a-morn she comes, i. 218. 
Verily women are devils created for us, iii. 322. 
Vied the full moon for folly with her face, viii. 291. 
Virtue in hand of thee hath built a house, iv. 138. 
Visit thy lover, spurn what envy told, i. 223. 
Void are the private rooms of treasury, iv. 267.

Wail for the little partridges on porringer and plate, i. 131. 
Wands of green chrysolite bare issue which, viii. 275. 
’Ware how thou hurtest man with hurt of hearts, ii. 197. 
’Ware that truth thou speak, albe sooth when said, x. 23. 
Was’t archer shot me, or was’t shine eyes, v. 33. 
Watch some tall ship she’ll joy the sight of thee, ii. 20. 
Watered steel-blade, the world perfection calls, vii. 173. 
Waters of beauty e’er his cheeks flow bright, viii. 299. 
We joy in full Moon who the wine bears round, viii. 227. 
We left not taking leave of thee (when bound to other goal),
viii. 63. 
We lived on earth a life of fair content, v. 71. 
We lived till saw we all the marvels Love can bear,

Page 166

Page 167

Page 168

Index III.-B

Alphabetical Table of First Lines
(Metrical Portion) in Arabic.

Prepared by Dr. Steingass.

[Index iii-B is not included]

INDEX IV.—­A.

Page 169

Table of contents of the unfinished Calcutta (1814-18) edition
      (first two hundred nights only) of the Arabic text of the
      book of the thousand nights and one night.

Night
introduction—­
a.  The Bull and the Ass
1.  The Trader and the Jinni i [1]
a.  The First Old Man’s Story ii [2]
b.  The Second Old Man’s Story iv [4]
(The Third Old Man’s Story is wanting.)
2.  The Fisherman and the Jinni viii [8]
a.  The Physician Duban xi [11]
aa.  The Merchant and the Parrot xiv [14]
ab.  The Prince and the Ogress xv [15]
b.  The Ensorcelled Youth xxi [21]
3.  The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad xxviii [28]
a.  The First Kalandar’s Tale xxxix [39]
b.  The Second Kalandar’s Tale xlii [42]
ba.  The Envier and the Envied xlvi [46]
c.  The Third Kalandar’s Tale liii [53]
d.  The Eldest Lady’s Tale lxiv [64]
(The Story of the Portress is wanting.)
4.  The Three Apples lxviii [68]
5.  Nur al-Din Ali and his Son Badr al-Din Hassan lxxii [72]
6.  Isaac of Mosul’s Story of Khadijah and the Caliph Al-Maamun xciv [94]
7.  The Hunchback’s Tale ci [101]
a.  The Nazarene Broker’s Story cix [109]
b.  The Cook’s Story cxxi [121]
(The Reeve or Comptroller’s Tale in the Bresl., Mac.
and Bull Edits.)
c.  The Jewish Physician’s Story cxxix [124]
d.  Tale of the Tailor cxxxvi [136]
e.  The Barber’s Tale of Himself cxliii [143]
ea.  The Barber’s Tale of his First Brother cxlv [145]
eb.  The Barber’s Tale of his Second Brother cxlviii [148]
ec.  The Barber’s Tale of his Third Brother cli [151]
ed.  The Barber’s Tale of his Fourth Brother clii [152]
ee.  The Barber’s Tale of his Fifth Brother cliv [154]
ef.  Story of the Barber’s Sixth

Page 170

INDEX IV.—­B.

Table of contents of the Breslau (Tunis) edition of the Arabic
      text of the book of the thousand nights and one night,
      from Mr. Payne’s version.

Night
introduction.—­Story of King Shehriyar and his Brother
a.   Story of the Ox and the Ass
1.   The Merchant and the Genie                                               i    [1]
a.   The First Old Man’s Story                                           iv    [4]
b.   The Second Old Man’s Story                                          vi    [6]
c.   The Third Old Man’s Story                                         viii    [8]
2.   The Fisherman and the Genie                                           viii    [8]
a.   Story of the Physician Duban                                        xi   [11]
aa.   Story of the Jealous Man and the Parrot[FN#458]               xiv   [14]
ab.   Story of the King’s Son and the Ogress                         xv   [15]
b.   Story of the Enchanted Youth                                       xxi   [21]
3.   The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad                          xxviii   [28]
a.   The First Calender’s Story                                      xxxvii   [37]
b.   The Second Calender’s Story                                         xl   [40]
ba.   The Envier and the Envied                                    xlvi   [46]
c.   The Third Calender’s Story                                        liii   [53]
d.   The Eldest Lady’s Story                                          lxiii   [63]
e.   Story of the Portress                                            lxvii   [67]
4.   The Three Apples                                                      lxix   [69]
5.   Noureddin Ali of Cairo and his son Bedreddin Hassan                  lxxii   [72]
6.   Story of the Hunchback                                                 cii  [102]
a.   The Christian Broker’s Story                                      cvii  [107]
b.   The Controller’s Story                                            cxix  [119]
Page 171
c.   The Jewish Physician’s Story                                     cxxix  [129]
d.   The Tailor’s Story                                             cxxxvii  [137]
e.   The Barber’s Story                                               cxlix  [149]
ea.   Story of the Barber’s First Brother                            cl  [150]
eb.   Story of the Barber’s Second Brother                         cliv  [154]
ec.   Story of the Barber’s Third Brother                         clvii  ]157]
ed.   Story of the Barber’s Fourth Brother                        clvii  [157]
ee.   Story of the Barber’s Fifth Brother                           clx  [160]
ef.   Story of the Barber’s Sixth Brother                         clxiv  [164]
7.   Ali ben Bekkar and Shemsennehar                                      clxix  [169]
8.   Noureddin Ali and the Damsel Enis el Jelis                           cxcix  [199]
9.   Kemerezzeman and Budour                                            ccxviii  [218]
10.   The Enchanted Horse                                                 ccxliv  [244]
11.   The Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor                                      ccl  [250]
a.   The First Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                           cclii  [252]
b.   The Second Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                         ccliii  [253]
c.   The Third Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                            cclv  [255]
d.   The Fourth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                          cclix  [259]
e.   The Fifth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                         cclxiii  [263]
f.   The Sixth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                          cclxvi  [266]
g.   The Seventh Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                        cclxix  [269]
12.   Asleep and Awake                                                    cclxxi  [271]
a.   The Lackpenny and the Cook                                    cclxxiii  [273]
13.   Seif el Mulouk and Bediya el-Jemal                                   ccxci  [291]
14.   Khelif the Fisherman[FN#459]                                        cccxxi  [321]
15.   Ghanim ben Eyoub the Slave of Love                                cccxxxii  [332]
a.   Story of the Eunuch Sewab[FN#460]                             cccxxxiv  [334]
b.   Story of the Eunuch Kafour                                    cccxxxiv  [334]
16.   Uns el Wujoud and the Vizier’s Daughter Rose-in-bud                 cccxli  [341]
17.   The Merchant of Oman                                                cccliv  [354]
18.   Ardeshir and Heyat en Nufous                                       ccclxiv  [364]
19.   Hassan of Bassora and the King’s Daughter of the Jinn            ccclxxxvi  [386]
20.   Haroun er Rashid and the Three Poets                             ccccxxxii  [432]
21.   Omar ben Abdulaziz and the Poets                                 ccccxxxii  [432]
22.   El Hejjaj and the Three Young Men                                ccccxxxiv  [434]
23.   Er Reshid and the Woman of the Barmecides                        ccccxxxiv  [434]
Page 172
24.   The Ten Viziers; or the History of King Azadbekht and his Son     ccccxxxv  [435]
a.   The Unlucky Merchant                                            ccccxl  [440]
b.   The Merchant and his Sons                                     ccccxliv  [444]
c.   Abu Sabir                                                   ccccxlviii  [448]
d.   Prince Bihzad                                                 ccccliii  [453]
e.   King Dadbin and his Viziers                                     cccclv  [455]
f.   King Bekhtzeman                                                cccclxi  [461]
g.   King Bihkerd                                                  cccclxiv  [464]
h.   Ilan Shah and Abou Temam                                      cccclxvi  [466]
i.   King Ibrahim and his Son                                      cccclxxi  [471]
j.   King Suleiman Shah and his Sons                               cccclxxv  [475]
k.   The Prisoner and how God gave him Relief                     cccclxxxv  [485]
25.   The City of Brass                                              cccclxxxvii  [487]
26.   Nimeh ben er Rebya and Num his Slave-girl                               di  [501]
27.   Alaeddin Abou es Shamat                                                dxx  [520]
28.   Hatim Tai; his Generosity after Death                                dxxxi  [531]
29.   Maan ben Zaideh and the three Girls                                 dxxxii  [532]
30.   Maan ben Zaideh and the Bedouin                                     dxxxii  [532]
31.   The City of Lebtait                                                 dxxxii  [532]
32.   The Khalif Hisham and the Arab Youth                                dxxxiv  [534]
33.   Ibrahim ben el Mehdi and the Barber-Surgeon                         dxxxiv  [534]
34.   The City of Iram                                                  dxxxviii  [538]
35.   Isaac of Mosul’s Story of Khedijeh and the Khalif Mamoun               dxl  [540]
36.   The Mock Khalif                                                     dxliii  [543]
37.   The Imam Abou Yousuf with Er Reshid and Jaafar                         dlv  [555]
38.   The Lover who feigned himself a Thief to save his Mistress’s
Honour                                                               dlvii  [557]
39.   Abou Mohammed the Lazy                                              dlviii  [558]
40.   Jaafar ben Yehya and Abdulmelik ben Salih                             dlxv  [565]
41.   Jaafar ben Yehya[FN#461] and the Man who forged a Letter in
his Name                                                             dlxvi  [566]
42.   Er Reshid and the Barmecides                                        dlxvii  [567]
43.   Ibn es Semmak and Er Reshid                                        dlxviii  [568]
44.   El Mamoun and Zubeideh                                             dlxviii  [568]
45.   Ali Shir[FN#462] and Zummurrud                                       dlxix  [569]
46.   The Loves of Budour and Jubeir ben Umeir                          dlxxxvii  [587]
Page 173
47.   The Man of Yemen and his Six Slave-girls                              dxcv  [595]
48.   Haroun Er Reshid with the Damsel and Abou Nuwas                         dc  [600]
49.   The Man who stole the Dog’s Dish of Gold                              dcii  [602]
50.   El Melik en Nasir and the Three Masters of Police                    dciii  [603]
a.   Story of the Chief of the New Cairo Police                        dciv  [604]
b.   Story of the Chief of the Boulac Police                            dcv  [605]
c.   Story of the Chief of the Old Cairo Police                         dcv  [605]
51.   The Thief and the Money-changer                                        dcv  [605]
52.   Ibrahim ben el Mehdi and the Merchant’s Sister                        dcvi  [606]
53.   King Kelyaad[FN#463] of Hind and his Vizier Shimas                    dcix  [609]
a.   The Cat and the Mouse                                             dcix  [609]
b.   The Fakir and his Pot of Butter                                    dcx  [610]
c.   The Fishes and the Crab                                           dcxi  [611]
d.   The Crow and the Serpent                                          dcxi  [611]
e.   The Fox and the Wild Ass                                          dcxi  [611]
f.   The Unjust King and the Pilgrim Prince                           dcxii  [612]
g.   The Crows and the Hawk                                          dcxiii  [613]
h.   The Serpent-Charmer and his Wife                                 dcxiv  [614]
i.   The Spider and the Wind                                           dcxv  [615]
j.   The Two Kings                                                    dcxvi  [616]
k.   The Blind Man and the Cripple                                    dcxvi  [616]
1.   The Foolish Fisherman                                           dcxxvi  [626]
m.   The Boy and the Thieves                                        dcxxvii  [627]
n.   The Man and his Wilful Wife                                    dcxxvii  [627]
o.   The Merchant and the Thieves                                    dcxxix  [629]
p.   The Foxes and the Wolf                                           dcxxx  [630]
q.   The Shepherd and the Thief                                     dcxxxii  [632]
r.   The Heathcock and the Tortoises                                dcxxxiv  [634]
54.   The Woman whose Hands were cut off for Almsgiving                    dcxli  [641]
55.   The Poor Man and His Generous Friend                               dcxliii  [643]
56.   The Ruined Man who became Rich again through a Dream                dcxliv  [644]
57.   Abou Nuwas with the Three Boys and the Khalif Haroun er Reshid       dcxlv  [645]
58.   The Lovers of the Benou Udhreh[FN#464]                              dcxlvi  [646]
59.   El Mutelemmis and his Wife Umeimeh                                dcxlviii  [648]
60.   Haroun er Reshid and Zubeideh in the Bath                         dcxlviii  [648]
61.   Musab ben ez Zubeir and Aaisheh his Wife                            dcxlix  [649]
Page 174
62.   Aboulaswed and his Squinting Slave-girl                               dcli  [651]
63.   Haroun er Reshid and the Two Girls                                    dcli  [651]
64.   Haroun er Reshid and the Three Girls                                  dcli  [651]
65.   The Simpleton and the Sharper                                        dclii  [652]
66.   The Imam Abou Yousuf with Er Reshid and Zubeideh                     dclii  [652]
67.   The Khalif El Hakim and the Merchant                                dcliii  [653]
68.   Kisra Anoushirwan and the Village Damsel                            dcliii  [653]
69.   The Water-Carrier and the Goldsmith’s Wife                           dcliv  [654]
70.   Khusrau and Shirin and the Fisherman                                 dclvi  [656]
71.   Yehya ben Khalid and the Poor Man                                    dclvi  [656]
72.   Mohammed el Amin and Jaafar ben el Hadi                             dclvii  [657]
73.   The Woman’s Trick against her Husband                              dclviii  [658]
74.   The Devout Woman and the Two Wicked Elders                           dclix  [659]
75.   El Fezl ben Rebiya[FN#465] and the Old Bedouin                        dclx  [660]
76.   En Numan and the Arab of the Benou Tai                                dclx  [660]
77.   The Draper and the Thief[FN#466]                                     dclxi  [661]
78.   Mesrour and Ibn el-Caribi                                           dclxii  [662]
79.   The Devout Prince                                                   dclxiv  [664]
80.   The Schoolmaster who fell in Love by Report                          dclxv  [665]
81.   The Foolish Schoolmaster                                            dclxvi  [666]
82.   The Ignorant Man who set up for a Schoolmaster                     dclxvii  [667]
83.   Adi ben Zeid and the Princess Hind                                dclxviii  [668]
84.   Dibil el Khuzai; with the Lady and Muslim ben el Welid               dclxx  [670]
85.   Isaac of Mosul and the Merchant                                      dclxx  [670]
86.   The Three Unfortunate Lovers                                       dclxxii  [672]
87.   The Lovers of the Benou Tai                                       dclxxiii  [673]
88.   The Mad Lover                                                      dclxxiv  [674]
89.   Firouz and his Wife                                                 dclxxv  [675]
90.   The Apples of Paradise                                             dclxxvi  [676]
91.   The Loves of Abou Isa and Curret el Ain                          dclxxviii  [678]
92.   El Amin and his Uncle Ibrahim ben el Mehdi                        dclxxxii  [682]
93.   El Feth ben Khacan and El Mutawekkil                             dclxxxiii  [683]
94.   The Man’s Dispute with the Learned Woman of the relative
Excellence of the Sexes                                          dclxxxiii  [683]
95.   Abou Suweid and the Handsome Old woman                           dclxxxvii  [687]
Page 175
96.   Ali ben Tahir and the Girl Mounis                               dclxxxviii  [688]
97.   The Woman who had a Boy and the other who had a Man to Lover    dclxxxviii  [688]
98.   The Haunted House in Baghdad                                    dclxxxviii  [688]
99.   The History of Gherib and his brother Agib                        dcxcviii  [698]
100.   The Rogueries of Delileh the Crafty and her daughter
Zeyneb the Trickstress                                              dcclvi  [756]
101.   The Adventures of Quicksilver Ali of Cairo                         dcclxvi  [766]
102.   Joudar and his Brothers                                           dcclxxvi  [776]
103.   Julnar of the Sea and her Son King Bedr Basim of Persia            dccxciv  [794]
104.   Mesrour and Zein el Mewasif                                        dcccxxi  [821]
105.   Ali Noureddin and the Frank King’s Daughter                       dcccxxxi  [831]
106.   The Man of Upper Egypt and his Frank Wife                         dccclxii  [862]
107.   The Ruined Man of Baghdad and his Slave-girl                      dccclxiv  [864]
108.   Aboukir the Dyer and Abousir the Barber                          dccclxvii  [867]
109.   Abdallah the Fisherman and Abdallah the Merman                  dccclxxvii  [877]
110.   King Shah Bekht and his Vizier Er Rehwan                         dccclxxxv  [885]
a.   The Man of Khorassan, his Son and his Governor              dccclxxxvi  [886]
b.   The Singer and the Druggist                               dccclxxxviii  [888]
c.   The King who knew the Quintessence of Things                   dcccxci  [891]
d.   The Rich Man who gave his Fair Daughter in Marriage to
the Poor Old Man                                              dcccxcii  [892]
e.   The Rich Man and his Wasteful Son                            dcccxciii  [893]
f.   The King’s Son who fell in Love with the Picture              dcccxciv  [894]
g.   The Fuller and his Wife                                       dcccxcvi  [896]
h.   The Old Woman, the Merchant and the King                      dcccxcvi  [896]
i.   The Credulous Husband                                       dcccxcviii  [898]
j.   The Unjust King and the Tither                                dcccxcix  [899]
ja.   Story of David and Solomon                               dcccxcix  [899]
k.   The Thief and the Woman                                       dcccxcix  [899]
l.   The Three Men and our Lord Jesus                                dcccci  [901]
la.   The Disciple’s Story                                       dcccci  [901]
m.   The Dethroned King whose Kingdom and Good were Restored
to Him                                                          dcccci  [901]
n.   The Man whose Caution was the Cause of his Death              dcccciii  [903]
o.   The Man who was lavish of his House and his Victual to
one whom he knew not                                           dcccciv  [904]
p.   The Idiot and the Sharper                                       dccccv  [905]
Page 176
q.   Khelbes and his Wife and the Learned Man                       dccccvi  [906]
r.   The Pious Woman accused of Lewdness                           dccccvii  [907]
s.   The Journeyman and the Girl                                    dccccix  [909]
t.   The Weaver who became a Physician by his Wife’s Commandment    dccccix  [909]
u.   The Two Sharpers who cheated each his Fellow                   dccccxi  [911]
v.   The Sharpers with the Money-Changer and the Ass               dccccxiv  [914]
w.   The Sharper and the Merchants                                  dccccxv  [915]
wa.   The Hawk and the Locust                                  dccccxvi  [916]
x.   The King and his Chamberlain’s Wife                          dccccxvii  [917]
xa.   The Old Woman and the Draper’s Wife                     dccccxvii  [917]
y.   The foul-favoured Man and his Fair Wife                     dccccxviii  [918]
z.   The King who lost Kingdom and Wife and Wealth and God
restored them to him                                         dccccxvix  [919]
za.   Selim and Selma                                         dccccxxii  [922]
zb.   The King of Hind and his Vizier                       dccccxxviii  [928]
111.   El Melik er Zahir Rukneddin Bibers el Bunducdari and
the Sixteen Officers of Police                                    dccccxxx  [930]
a.   The First Officer’s Story                                     dccccxxx  [930]
b.   The Second Officer’s Story                                  dccccxxxii  [932]
c.   The Third Officer’s Story                                   dccccxxxii  [932]
d.   The Fourth Officer’s Story                                  dccccxxxiv  [934]
e.   The Fifth Officer’s Story                                   dccccxxxiv  [934]
f.   The Sixth Officer’s Story                                   dccccxxxiv  [934]
g.   The Seventh Officer’s Story                                 dccccxxxiv  [934]
h.   The Eighth Officer’s Story                                   dccccxxxv  [935]
ha.   The Thief’s Story                                    dccccxxxviii  [938]
i.   The Ninth Officer’s Story                                 dccccxxxviii  [938]
j.   The Tenth Officer’s Story                                 dccccxxxviii  [938]
k.   The Eleventh Officer’s Story                              dccccxxxviii  [938]
l.   The Twelfth Officer’s Story                                dccccxxxxix  [939]
m.   The Thirteenth Officer’s Story                             dcccccxxxix  [939]
n.   The Fourteenth Officer’s Story                             dccccxxxxix  [939]
na.   A Merry Jest of a Thief                                   dccccxl  [940]
nb.   Story of the Old Sharper                                  dccccxl  [940]
o.   The Fifteenth Officer’s Story                                  dccccxl  [940]
p.   The Sixteenth Officer’s Story                                  dccccxl  [940]
112.   Abdallah ben Nafi and the King’s Son of Cashghar                  dccccxli  [941]
a.   Story of Tuhfet el Culoub and Haroun er Reshid               dccccxlii  [942]
Page 177
113.   Noureddin Ali and Sitt el Milah                                 dcccclviii  [958]
114.   El Abbas and the King’s Daughter of Baghdad                      dcccclxvi  [966]
115.   The Malice of Women                                             dcccclxxix  [979]
a.   The King and his Vizier’s Wife                               dcccclxxx  [980]
b.   The Merchant’s Wife and the Parrot                           dcccclxxx  [980]
c.   The Fuller and his Son                                       dcccclxxx  [980]
d.   The Lover’s Trick against the Chaste Wife                    dcccclxxx  [980]
e.   The Niggard and the Loaves of Bread                          dcccclxxx  [980]
f.   The Lady and her Two Lovers                                  dcccclxxx  [980]
g.   The King’s Son and the Ogress                               dcccclxxxv  [985]
h.   The Drop of Honey                                          dcccclxxxvi  [986]
i.   The Woman who make her Husband Sift Dust                   dcccclxxxvi  [986]
j.   The Enchanted Springs                                      dcccclxxxvi  [986]
k.   The Vizier’s Son and the Bathkeeper’s Wife               dcccclxxxviii  [988]
1.   The Wife’s Device to Cheat her Husband                     dcccclxxxix  [989]
m.   The Goldsmith and the Cashmere Singing-Girl                    dccccxc  [990]
n.   The Man who never Laughed again                               dccccxci  [991]
o.   The King’s Son and the Merchant’s Wife                      dccccxciii  [993]
p.   The Man who saw the Night of Power                          dccccxciii  [993]
q.   The Stolen Necklace                                          dccccxciv  [994]
r.   Prince Behram of Persia and the Princess Ed Detma            dccccxciv  [994]
s.   The House with the Belvedere                                  dccccxcv  [995]
t.   The Sandalwood Merchant and the Sharpers                   dccccxcviii  [998]
u.   The Debauchee and the Three-year-old Child                 dccccxcviii  [998]
v.   The Stolen Purse                                             dccccxcix  [999]
w.   The Fox and the Folk[FN#467]                                         m [1000]
116.   The Two Kings and the Vizier’s Daughters                                mi [1001]
117.   The Favourite and her Lover                                             mi [1001]
118.   The Merchant of Cairo and the Favourite of the Khalif
El Mamoun El Hakim bi Amrillah                                          mi [1001]
Conclusion.

INDEX IV.—­C.

Table of contents of the Mcnaughten or Turner Macan text (1839-42) and
      Bulak edition (A.H. 1251 = A.D. 1835-36) Of the Arabic text of
      the book of the thousand nights and A night; as translated by
      Mr. John Payne.

Page 178

Night
introduction.—­Story of King Shehriyar and his Brother
a.   Story of the Ox and the Ass
1.   The Merchant and the Genie                                               i    [1]
a.   The First Old Man’s Story                                            i    [1]
b.   The Second Old Man’s Story                                          ii    [2]
c.   The Third Old Man’s Story                                           ii    [2]
2.   The Fisherman and the Genie                                            iii    [3]
a.   Story of the Physician Douban                                       iv    [4]
aa.   Story of King Sindbad and his Falcon[FN#468]                    v    [5]
ab.   Story of the King’s Son and the Ogress                          v    [5]
b.   Story of the Enchanted Youth                                       vii    [7]
3.   The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad                              ix    [9]
a.   The First Calender’s Story                                          xi   [11]
b.   The Second Calender’s Story                                        xii   [12]
ba.   Story of the Envier and the Envied[FN#469]                   xiii   [13]
c.   The Third Calender’s Story                                         xiv   [14]
d.   The Eldest Lady’s Story                                           xvii   [17]
e.   The Story of the Portress                                        xviii   [18]
4.   The Three Apples                                                       xix   [19]
5.   Noureddin Ali of Cairo and his Son Bedreddin Hassan                     xx   [20]
6.   Story of the Hunchback                                                 xxv   [25]
a.   The Christian Broker’s Story                                       xxv   [25]
b.   The Controller’s Story                                           xxvii   [27]
c.   The Jewish Physician’s Story                                    xxviii   [28]
d.   The Tailor’s Story                                                xxix   [29]
e.   The Barber’s Story                                                xxxi   [31]
ea.   Story of the Barber’s First Brother                          xxxi   [31]
eb.   Story of the Barber’s Second Brother                         xxxi   [31]
ec.   Story of the Barber’s Third Brother                         xxxii   [32]
ed.   Story of the Barber’s Fourth Brother                        xxxii   [32]
ee.   Story of the Barber’s Fifth Brother                         xxxii   [32]
ef.   Story of the Barber’s Sixth Brother                        xxxiii   [33]
7.   Noureddin Ali and the Damsel Enis el Jelis                           xxxiv   [34]
8.   Ghanim ben Eyoub the Slave of Love                                   xxxix   [39]
a.   Story of the Eunuch Bekhit                                       xxxix   [39]
b.   Story of the Eunuch Kafour                                       xxxix   [39]
9.   The History of King Omar ben Ennuman and his Sons Sherkan
and Zoulmekan                                                          xlv   [45]
Page 179
a.   Story of Taj el Mulouk and the Princess Dunya                     cvii  [107]
aa.   Story of Aziz and Azizeh                                     cvii  [107]
b.   Bakoun’s Story of the Hashish-Eater                             cxliii  [143]
c.   Hemmad the Bedouin’s Story                                       cxliv  [144]
10.   The Birds and Beasts and the Son of Adam                             cxlvi  [146]
11.   The Hermits                                                        cxlviii  [148]
12.   The Waterfowl and the Tortoise                                     cxlviii  [148]
13.   The Wolf and the Fox                                               cxlviii  [148]
a.   The Hawk and the Partridge                                       cxlix  [149]
14.   The Mouse and the Weasel                                                cl  [150]
15.   The Cat and the Crow                                                    cl  [150]
16.   The Fox and the Crow                                                    cl  [150]
a.   The Mouse and the Flea                                             cli  [151]
b.   The Falcon and the Birds                                          clii  [152]
c.   The Sparrow and the Eagle                                         clii  [152]
17.   The Hedgehog and the Pigeons                                          clii  [152]
a.   The Merchant and the Two Sharpers                                 clii  [152]
18.   The Thief and his Monkey                                              clii  [152]
a.   The Foolish Weaver                                                clii  [152]
19.   The Sparrow and the Peacock                                           clii  [152]
20.   Ali ben Bekkar and Shemsennehar                                      cliii  [153]
21.   Kemerezzeman and Budour                                               clxx  [170]
a.   Nimeh ben er Rebya and Num his Slave-girl                     ccxxxvii  [237]
22.   Alaeddin Abou esh Shamat                                               ccl  [250]
23.   Hatim et Tai; his Generosity after Death                             cclxx  [270]
24.   Maan ben Zaideh and the three Girls                                 cclxxi  [271]
25.   Maan ben Zaideh and the Bedouin                                     cclxxi  [271]
26.   The City of Lebtait                                                cclxxii  [272]
27.   The Khalif Hisham and the Arab Youth                               cclxxii  [272]
28.   Ibrahim ben el Mehdi and the Barber-surgeon                       cclxxiii  [273]
29.   The City of Irem                                                   cclxxvi  [276]
30.   Isaac of Mosul’s Story of Khedijeh and the Khalif Mamoun           cclxxix  [279]
31.   The Scavenger and the Noble Lady of Baghdad                       cclxxxii  [282]
32.   The Mock Khalif                                                   cclxxxvi  [286]
33.   Ali the Persian and the Kurd Sharper                                ccxciv  [294]
Page 180
34.   The Imam Abou Yousuf with Haroun er Reshid and his Vizier
Jaafer                                                              ccxcvi  [296]
35.   The Lover who feigned himself a Thief to save his Mistress’s
Honour                                                             ccxcvii  [297]
36.   Jaafer the Barmecide and the Bean-Seller                            ccxcix  [299]
37.   Abou Mohammed the Lazy                                                 ccc  [300]
38.   Yehya ben Khalid and Mensour                                          cccv  [305]
39.   Yehya ben Khalid and the Man who forged a Letter in his Name         cccvi  [306]
40.   The Khalif El Mamoun and the Strange Doctor                         cccvii  [307]
41.   Ali Shar and Zumurrud                                              cccviii  [308]
42.   The Loves of Jubeir ben Umeir and the Lady Budour                 cccxxvii  [327]
43.   The Man of Yemen and his six Slave-girls                          cccxxxiv  [334]
44.   Haroun er Reshid with the Damsel and Abou Nuwas                 cccxxxviii  [338]
45.   The Man who stole the Dog’s Dish of Gold                             cccxl  [340]
46.   The Sharper of Alexandria and the Master of Police                  cccxli  [341]
47.   El Melik en Nasir and the three Masters of Police                 cccxliii  [343]
a.   Story of the Chief of the New Cairo Police                    cccxliii  [343]
b.   Story of the Chief of the Boulac Police                        cccxliv  [344]
c.   Story of the Chief of the Old Cairo Police                     cccxliv  [344]
48.   The Thief and the Money-Changer                                    cccxliv  [344]
49.   The Chief of the Cous Police and the Sharper                        cccxlv  [345]
50.   Ibrahim ben el Mehdi and the Merchant’s Sister                     cccxlvi  [346]
51.   The Woman whose Hands were cut off for Almsgiving                cccxlviii  [348]
52.   The Devout Israelite                                             cccxlviii  [348]
53.   Abou Hassan ez Ziyadi and the Man from Khorassan                   cccxlix  [349]
54.   The Poor Man and his Generous Friend                                 cccli  [351]
55.   The Ruined Man who became Rich again through a Dream                 cccli  [351]
56.   El Mutawekkil and his Favourite Mehboubeh                            cccli  [351]
57.   Werdan the Butcher’s Adventure with the Lady and the Bear          cccliii  [353]
58.   The King’s Daughter and the Ape                                      ccclv  [355]
59.   The Enchanted Horse                                                ccclvii  [357]
60.   Uns el Wujoud and the Vizier’s Daughter Rose-in-bud                ccclxxi  [371]
61.   Abou Nuwas with the three Boys and the Khalif Haroun er
Reshid                                                            ccclxxxi  [381]
62.   Abdallah ben Maamer with the Man of Bassora and his
Slave-girl                                                      ccclxxxiii  [383]
Page 181
63.   The Lovers of the Benou Udhreh                                  ccclxxxiii  [383]
64.   The Vizier of Yemen and his young Brother                        ccclxxxiv  [384]
65.   The Loves of the Boy and Girl at School                           ccclxxxv  [385]
66.   El Mutelemmis and his Wife Umeimeh                                ccclxxxv  [385]
67.   Haroun er Reshid and Zubeideh in the Bath                         ccclxxxv  [385]
68.   Haroun er Reshid and the three Poets                             ccclxxxvi  [386]
69.   Musab ben er Zubeir and Aaisheh his Wife                         ccclxxxvi  [386]
70.   Aboulaswed and his squinting Slave-girl                         ccclxxxvii  [387]
71.   Haroun er Reshid and the two Girls                              ccclxxxvii  [387]
72.   Haroun er Reshid and the three Girls                            ccclxxxvii  [387]
73.   The Miller and his Wife                                         ccclxxxvii  [387]
74.   The Simpleton and the Sharper                                  ccclxxxviii  [388]
75.   The Imam Abou Yousuf with Haroun er Reshid and Zubeideh        ccclxxxviii  [388]
76.   The Khalif El Hakim and the Merchant                             ccclxxxix  [389]
77.   King Kisra Anoushirwan and the Village Damsel                    ccclxxxix  [389]
78.   The Water-Carrier and the Goldsmith’s Wife                           cccxc  [390]
79.   Khusrau and Shirin and the Fisherman                                cccxci  [391]
80.   Yehya ben Khalid and the Poor Man                                   cccxci  [391]
81.   Mohammed el Amin and Jaafer ben el Hadi                            cccxcii  [392]
82.   Said ben Salim and the Barmecides                                  cccxcii  [392]
83.   The Woman’s Trick against her Husband                             cccxciii  [393]
84.   The Devout Woman and the two Wicked Elders                         cccxciv  [394]
85.   Jaafer the Barmecide and the Old Bedouin                            cccxcv  [395]
86.   Omar ben el Khettab and the Young Bedouin                           cccxcv  [395]
87.   El Mamoun and the Pyramids of Egypt                              cccxcviii  [398]
88.   The Thief turned Merchant and the other Thief                    cccxcviii  [398]
89.   Mesrour and Ibn el Caribi                                          cccxcix  [399]
90.   The Devout Prince                                                    cccci  [401]
91.   The Schoolmaster who Fell in Love by Report                          cccii  [402]
92.   The Foolish Schoolmaster                                           cccciii  [403]
93.   The Ignorant Man who set up for a Schoolmaster                     cccciii  [403]
94.   The King and the Virtuous Wife                                      cccciv  [404]
95.   Abdurrehman the Moor’s Story of the Roc                             cccciv  [404]
96.   Adi ben Zeid and the Princess Hind                                   ccccv  [405]
97.   Dibil el Khuzai with the Lady and Muslim ben el Welid              ccccvii  [407]
Page 182
98.   Isaac of Mosul and the Merchant                                    ccccvii  [407]
99.   The Three Unfortunate Lovers[FN#470]                                ccccix  [409]
100.   The Lovers of the Benou Tai                                          ccccx  [410]
101.   The Mad Lover                                                       ccccxi  [411]
102.   The Apples of Paradise                                             ccccxii  [412]
103.   The Loves of Abou Isa and Curret el Ain                            ccccxiv  [414]
104.   El Amin and his Uncle Ibrahim ben el Mehdi                       ccccxviii  [418]
105.   El Feth ben Khacan and El Mutawekkil                               ccccxix  [419]
106.   The Man’s Dispute with the Learned Woman of the relative
Excellence of the Sexes                                            ccccxix  [419]
107.   Abou Suweid and the Handsome Old Woman                           ccccxxiii  [423]
108.   Ali ben Tahir and the Girl Mounis                                 ccccxxiv  [424]
109.   The Woman who had a Boy and the other who had a Man to Lover      ccccxxiv  [424]
110.   The Haunted House in Baghdad                                      ccccxxiv  [424]
111.   The Pilgrim and the Old Woman who dwelt in the Desert            ccccxxxiv  [434]
112.   Aboulhusn and his Slave-girl Taweddud                            ccccxxxvi  [436]
113.   The Angel of Death with the Proud King and the Devout Man         cccclxii  [462]
114.   The Angel of Death and the Rich King                              cccclxii  [462]
115.   The Angel of Death and the King of the Children of Israel        cccclxiii  [463]
116.   Iskender Dhoulkernein and a certain Tribe of Poor Folk            cccclxiv  [464]
117.   The Righteousness of King Anoushirwan                             cccclxiv  [464]
118.   The Jewish Cadi and his Pious Wife                                 cccclxv  [465]
119.   The Shipwrecked Woman and her Child                               cccclxvi  [466]
120.   The Pious Black Slave                                            cccclxvii  [467]
121.   The Devout Platter-maker and his Wife                           cccclxviii  [468]
122.   El Hejjaj ben Yousuf and the Pious Man                             cccclxx  [470]
123.   The Blacksmith who could Handle Fire without Hurt                 cccclxxi  [471]
124.   The Saint to whom God gave a Cloud to serve Him and the
Devout King                                                     cccclxxiii  [473]
125.   The Muslim Champion and the Christian Lady                       cccclxxiv  [474]
126.   Ibrahim ben el Khawwas and the Christian King’s Daughter        cccclxxvii  [477]
127.   The Justice of Providence                                      cccclxxviii  [478]
128.   The Ferryman of the Nile and the Hermit                          cccclxxix  [479]
129.   The King of the Island                                           cccclxxix  [479]
130.   Abulhusn ed Durraj and Abou Jaafer the Leper                     cccclxxxi  [481]
Page 183
131.   The Queen of the Serpents                                       cccclxxxii  [482]
a.   The Adventures of Beloukiya                                 cccclxxxvi  [486]
b.   The Story of Janshah                                          ccccxcix  [499]
132.   Sindbad the Sailor and Sindbad the Porter                           dxxxvi  [536]
a.   The First Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                        dxxxviii  [538]
b.   The Second Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                         dxliii  [543]
c.   The Third Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                           dxlvi  [546]
d.   The Fourth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                             dl  [550]
e.   The Fifth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                            dlvi  [556]
f.   The Sixth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                            dlix  [559]
g.   The Seventh Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor                        dlxiii  [563]
133.   The City of Brass                                                    dlxvi  [566]
134.   The Malice of Women                                               dlxxviii  [578]
a.   The King and his Vizier’s Wife                                dlxxviii  [578]
b.   The Merchant’s Wife and the Parrot                              dlxxix  [579]
c.   The Fuller and his Son                                          dlxxix  [579]
d.   The Lover’s Trick against the Chaste Wife                        dlxxx  [580]
e.   The Niggard and the Loaves of Bread                              dlxxx  [580]
f.   The Lady and her Two Lovers                                     dlxxxi  [581]
g.   The King’s Son and the Ogress                                   dlxxxi  [581]
h.   The Drop of Honey                                              dlxxxii  [582]
i.   The Woman who made her Husband sift Dust                       dlxxxii  [582]
j.   The Enchanted Springs                                          dlxxxii  [582]
k.   The Vizier’s Son and the Bathkeeper’s Wife                     dlxxxiv  [584]
l.   The Wife’s Device to Cheat her Husband                         dlxxxiv  [584]
m.   The Goldsmith and the Cashmere Singing-girl                    dlxxxvi  [586]
n.   The Man who never Laughed again                               dlxxxvii  [587]
o.   The King’s Son and the Merchant’s Wife                            dxci  [591]
p.   The Page who feigned to know the Speech of Birds                 dxcii  [592]
q.   The Lady and her five Suitors                                   dxciii  [593]
r.   The Man who saw the Night of Power                               dxcvi  [596]
s.   The Stolen Necklace                                              dxcvi  [596]
t.   The two Pigeons                                                 dxcvii  [597]
u.   Prince Behram of Persia and the Princess Ed Detma               dxcvii  [597]
v.   The House with the Belvedere                                   dxcviii  [598]
w.   The King’s Son and the Afrit’s Mistress                           dcii  [602]
Page 184
x.   The Sandal-wood Merchant and the Sharpers                        dciii  [603]
y.   The Debauchee and the Three-year-old Child                         dcv  [605]
z.   The Stolen Purse                                                   dcv  [605]
135.   Jouder and his Brothers                                               dcvi  [606]
136.   The History of Gherib and his Brother Agib                          dcxxiv  [624]
137.   Otbeh and Reyya                                                     dclxxx  [680]
138.   Hind Daughter of En Numan and El Hejjaj                            dclxxxi  [681]
139.   Khuzeimeh ben Bishr and Ikrimeh el Feyyaz                         dclxxxii  [682]
140.   Younus the Scribe and the Khalif Welid ben Sehl                   dclxxxiv  [684]
141.   Haroun er Reshid and the Arab Girl                                 dclxxxv  [685]
142.   El Asmai and the three Girls of Bassora                           dclxxxvi  [686]
143.   Ibrahim of Mosul and the Devil                                   dclxxxvii  [687]
144.   The Lovers of the Benou Udhreh                                  dclxxxviii  [688]
145.   The Bedouin and his Wife                                             dcxci  [691]
146.   The Lovers of Bassora                                              dcxciii  [693]
147.   Isaac of Mosul and his Mistress and the Devil                        dcxcv  [695]
148.   The Lovers of Medina                                                dcxcvi  [696]
149.   El Melik en Nasir and his Vizier                                   dcxcvii  [697]
150.   The Rogueries of Delileh the Crafty and her Daughter Zeyneb
the Trickstress                                                   dcxcviii  [698]
151.   The Adventures of Quicksilver Ali of Cairo:  a Sequel to the
Rogueries of Delileh the Crafty                                    dccviii  [708]
152.   Ardeshir and Heyat en Nufous                                        dccxix  [719]
153.   Julnar of the Sea and her Son King Bedr Basim of Persia         dccxxxviii  [738]
154.   King Mohammed ben Sebaik and the Merchant Hassan                    dcclvi  [756]
a.   Story of Prince Seif el Mulouk and the Princess Bediya
el Jemal                                                      dcclviii  [758]
155.   Hassan of Bassora and the King’s Daughter of the Jinn           dcclxxviii  [778]
156.   Khelifeh the Fisherman of Baghdad                                dcccxxxii  [832]
157.   Mesrour and Zein el Mewasif                                        dcccxlv  [845]
158.   Ali Noureddin and the Frank King’s Daughter                      dccclxiii  [863]
159.   The Man of Upper Egypt and his Frank Wife                         dcccxciv  [894]
160.   The Ruined Man of Baghdad and his Slave girl                      dcccxcvi  [896]
161.   King Jelyaad of Hind and his Vizier Shimas:  whereafter ensueth
the History of King Wird Khan son of King Jelyaad and his
Women and Viziers                                                 dcccxcix  [899]
Page 185
a.   The Cat and the Mouse                                            dcccc  [900]
b.   The Fakir and his Pot of Butter                                dccccii  [902]
c.   The Fishes and the Crab                                       dcccciii  [903]
d.   The Crow and the Serpent                                      dcccciii  [903]
e.   The Fox and the Wild Ass                                       dcccciv  [904]
f.   The Unjust King and the Pilgrim Prince                          dccccv  [905]
g.   The Crows and the Hawk                                         dccccvi  [906]
h.   The Serpent-Charmer and his Wife                              dccccvii  [907]
i.   The Spider and the Wind                                      dccccviii  [908]
j.   The Two Kings                                                  dccccix  [909]
k.   The Blind Man and the Cripple                                   dccccx  [910]
l.   The Foolish Fisherman                                       dccccxviii  [918]
m.   The Boy and the Thieves                                     dccccxviii  [918]
n.   The Man and his Wilful Wife                                   dccccxix  [919]
o.   The Merchant and the Thieves                                   dccccxx  [920]
p.   The Foxes and the Wolf                                        dccccxxi  [921]
q.   The Shepherd and the Thief                                    dccccxxi  [921]
r.   The Heathcock and the Tortoises                              dccccxxiv  [924]
162.   Aboukir the Dyer and Abousir the Barber                           dccccxxx  [930]
163.   Abdallah the Fisherman and Abdallah the Merman                     dccccxl  [940]
164.   The Merchant of Oman                                             dccccxlvi  [946]
165.   Ibrahim and Jemileh                                               dcccclii  [952]
166.   Aboulhusn of Khorassan                                            dcccclix  [959]
167.   Kemerezzeman and the Jeweller’s Wife                            dcccclxiii  [963]
168.   Abdallah ben Fazil and his Brothers                           dcccclxxviii  [978]
169.   Marouf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimeh                     dcccclxxxix-mi  [989-1001]
Conclusion.

INDEX IV.—­D.

Comparison of the same with Mr. Lane’s
and my version.

Introduction and

Nos. 1 to 6 of the preceding list from Volume I. of my Edition.

      Nos. 7 to 9aa of the preceding list from Volume ii. of my Edition.
          (contd.)

      Nos. 9aa to 21 of the preceding list from Volume iii. of my Edition.
          (contd.)

      Nos. 21 to 58 of the preceding list from Volume iv. of my Edition.
          (contd.)

      Nos. 59 to 131 of the preceding list from Volume V. of my Edition.
          (contd.)

      Nos. 132 to 136 of the preceding list from Volume vi. of my Edition.
          (contd.)

Page 186

      Nos. 136 to 154a of the preceding list from Volume vii. of my Edition.
          (contd.)

      Nos. 154a to 158 of the preceding list from Volume viii. of my Edition.
          (contd.)

      Nos. 158 to 168 of the preceding list from Volume ix. of my Edition.
          (contd.)

Nos. 169 and conclusion of the preceding list from Volume X. of my Edition.

For full details, see contents pages of each of the respective Volumes.

Appendix II

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, AND THEIR IMITATIONS, WITH A TABLE SHOWING THE CONTENTS OF THE PRINCIPAL EDITIONS IND TRANSLATIONS OF THE NIGHTS.

By W. F. Kirby
Author of “Ed-Dimiryaht:  an Oriental Romance,” “The New Arabian
Nights,” &c.

The European editions of the Thousand and One Nights, even excluding the hundreds of popular editions which have nothing specially noticeable about them, are very numerous; and the following Notes must, I am fully aware, be incomplete, though they will, perhaps, be found useful to persons interested in the subject.  Although I believe that editions of most of the English, French, and German versions of any importance have passed through my hands, I have not had an opportunity of comparing many in other languages, some of which at least may be independent editions, not derived from Galland.  The imitations and adaptations of The Nights are, perhaps, more numerous than the editions of The Nights themselves, if we exclude mere reprints of Galland; and many of them are even more difficult of access.

In the following Notes, I have sometimes referred to tales by their numbers in the Table.

Galland’s Ms. and Translation.

The first Ms. of The Nights known in Europe was brought to Paris by Galland at the close of the 17th century; and his translation was published in Paris, in twelve small volumes, under the title of “Les Mille et une Nuit:  Contes Arabes, traduits en Francois par M. Galland.”  These volumes appeared at intervals between 1704 and 1717.  Galland himself died in 1715, and it is uncertain how far he was responsible for the latter part of the work.  Only the first six of the twelve vols. are divided into Nights, vol. 6 completing the story of Camaralzaman, and ending with Night 234.  The Voyages of Sindbad are not found in Galland’s Ms., though he has intercalated them as Nights 69-90 between Nos. 3 and 4.  It should be mentioned, however, that in some texts (Bresl., for instance) No. 133 is placed much earlier in the series than in others.

Page 187

The stories in Galland’s last six vols. may be divided into two classes, viz., those known to occur in genuine texts of The Nights, and those which do not.  To the first category belong Nos. 7, 8, 59, 153 and 170; and some even of these are not found in Galland’s own Ms., but were derived by him from other sources.  The remaining tales (Nos. 191-198) do not really belong to The Nights; and, strange to say, although they are certainly genuine Oriental tales, the actual originals have never been found.  I am inclined to think that Galland may, perhaps, have written and adapted them from his recollection of stories which he himself heard related during his own residence in the East, especially as most of these tales appear to be derived rather from Persian or Turkish than from Arabian sources.

The following Preface appeared in vol. 9 which I translate from Talander’s German edition, as the original is not before me: 

“The two stories with which the eighth volume concludes do not properly belong to the Thousand and One Nights.  They were added and printed without the previous knowledge of the translator, who had not the slightest idea of the trick that had been played upon him until the eighth volume was actually on sale.  The reader must not, therefore, be surprised that the story of the Sleeper Awakened, which commences vol. 9, is written as if Scheherazade had related it immediately after the story of Ganem, which forms the greater part of vol. 8.  Care will be taken to omit these two stories in a new edition, as not belonging to the work.”

It is, perhaps, not to be wondered at that when the new edition was actually published, subsequently to Galland’s death, the condemned stories were retained, and the preface withdrawn; though No. 170 still reads as if it followed No. 8.

The information I have been able to collect respecting the disputed tales is very slight.  I once saw a Ms. advertised in an auction catalogue (I think that of the library of the late Prof.  H. H. Wilson) as containing two of Galland’s doubtful tales, but which they were was not stated.  The fourth and last volume of the Ms. used by Galland is lost; but it is almost certain that it did not contain any of these tales (compare Payne, ix. 265 note).

The story of Zeyn Alasnam (No. 191) is derived from the same source as that of the Fourth Durwesh, in the well-known Hindustani reading-book, the Bagh o Bahar.  If it is based upon this, Galland has greatly altered and improved it, and has given it the whole colouring of a European moral fairy tale.

The story of Ali Baba (No. 195) is, I have been told, a Chinese tale.  It occurs under the title of the Two Brothers and the Forty-nine Dragons in Geldart’s Modern Greek Tales.  It has also been stated that the late Prof.  Palmer met with a very similar story among the Arabs of Sinai (Payne, ix. 266).

The story of Sidi Nouman (No 194b) may have been based partly upon the Third Shaykh’s Story (No. 1c), which Galland omits.  The feast of the Ghools is, I believe, Greek or Turkish, rather than Arabic, in character, as vampires, personified plague, and similar horrors are much commoner in the folk-lore of the former peoples.

Page 188

Many incidents of the doubtful, as well as of the genuine tales, are common in European folk-lore (versions of Nos. 2 and 198, for instance, occur in Grimm’s Kinder und Hausmaerchen), and some of the doubtful tales have their analogues in Scott’s Ms., as will be noticed in due course.

I have not seen Galland’s original edition in 12 vols.; but the Stadt-Bibliothek of Frankfort-on-Main contains a copy, published at La Haye, in 12 vols. (with frontispieces), made up of two or more editions, as follows:—­

Vol. i. (ed. 6) 1729; vols. ii. iii. iv. (ed. 5) 1729; vols. v. vi. viii. (ed. 5) 1728; vol. vii. (ed. 6) 1731; vols. ix. to xi, (ed. not noted) 1730; and vol. xii. (ed. not noted) 1731.

The discrepancies in the dates of the various volumes look (as Mr. Clouston has suggested) as if separate volumes were reprinted as required, independently of the others.  This might account for vols. v. vi. and viii. of the fifth edition having been apparently reprinted before vols. ii. iii. and iv.

The oldest French version in the British Museum consists of the first eight vols., published at La Haye, and likewise made up of different editions, as follows:—­

i. (ed. 5) 1714; ii. iii. iv. (ed. 4) 1714; v. vi. (ed. 5) 1728; vii. (ed. 5) 1719; viii. ("suivant la copie imprimee a Paris”) 1714.

Most French editions (old and new) contain Galland’s Dedication, “A Madame la Marquise d’O., Dame du Palais de Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne,” followed by an “Avertissement.”  In addition to these, the La Haye copies have Fontenelle’s Approbation prefixed to several volumes, but in slightly different words, and bearing different dates.  December 27th, 1703 (vol. i.); April 14th, 1704 (vol. vi.); and October 4th, 1705 (vol. vii.).  This is according to the British Museum copy; I did not examine the Frankfort copy with reference to the Approbation.  The Approbation is translated in full in the old English version as follows:  “I have read, by Order of my Lord Chancellor, this Manuscript, wherein I find nothing that ought to hinder its being Printed.  And I am of opinion that the Publick will be very well pleased with the Perusal of these Oriental Stories.  Paris, 27th December, 1705 [apparently a misprint for 1703] (Signed) Fontenelle.”

In the Paris edition of 1726 (vide infra), Galland says in his Dedication, “Il a fallu le faire venir de Syrie, et mettre en Francois, le premier volume que voici, de quatre seulement qui m’ont ete envoyez.”  So, also, in a Paris edition (in eight vols. 12mo) of 1832; but in the La Haye issue of 1714, we read not “quatre” but “six” volumes.  The old German edition of Talander (vide infra) does not contain Galland’s Dedication (Epitre) or Avertissement.

The earliest French editions were generally in 12 vols., or six; I possess a copy of a six-volume edition, published at Paris in 1726.  It may be the second, as the title-page designates it as “nouvelle edition, corrigee.”

Page 189

Galland’s work was speedily translated into various European languages, and even now forms the original of all the numerous popular editions.  The earliest English editions were in six volumes, corresponding to the first six of Galland, and ending with the story of Camaralzaman; nor was it till nearly the end of the 18th century that the remaining half of the work was translated into English.  The date of appearance of the first edition is unknown to bibliographers; Lowndes quotes an edition of 1724 as the oldest; but the British Museum contains a set of six vols., made up of portions of the second, third and fourth editions, as follows:—­

Vols. i. ii. (ed. 4) 1713; vols. iii. iv. (ed. 2) 1712; and vols. v. vi. (ed. 3) 1715.

Here likewise the separate volumes seem to have been reprinted independently of each other; and it is not unlikely that the English translation may have closely followed the French publication, being issued volume by volume, as the French appeared, as far as vol. vi.  The title-page of this old edition is very quaint: 

“Arabian Nights Entertainments, consisting of One thousand and one Stories, told by the Sultaness of the Indies to divert the Sultan from the Execution of a Bloody Vow he had made, to marry a Lady every day, and have her head cut off next Morning, to avenge himself for the Disloyalty of the first Sultaness, also containing a better account of the Customs, Manners and Religion of the Eastern Nations, viz., Tartars, Persians and Indians, than is to be met with in any Author hitherto published.  Translated into French from the Arabian MSS. by Mr. Galland of the Royal Academy, and now done into English.  Printed for Andrew Bell at the Cross Keys and Bible, in Cornhill.”

The British Museum has an edition in 4to published in 1772, in farthing numbers, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  It extends to 79 numbers, forming five volumes.

The various editions of the Old English version appear to be rare, and the set in the British Museum is very poor.  The oldest edition which I have seen containing the latter half of Galland’s version is called the 14th edition, and was published in London in four volumes, in 1778.  Curiously enough, the “13th edition,” also containing the conclusion, was published at Edinburgh in three volumes in 1780.  Perhaps it is a reprint of a London edition published before that of 1778.  The Scotch appear to have been fond of The Nights, as there are many Scotch editions both of The Nights and the imitations.

Revised or annotated editions by Piguenit (4 vols., London, 1792) and Gough (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1798) may deserve a passing notice.

A new translation of Galland, by Rev. E. Forster, in five vols. 4to, with engravings from pictures by Robert Smirke, R.A., appeared in 1802, and now commands a higher price than any other edition of Galland.  A new edition in 8vo appeared in 1810.  Most of the recent popular English versions are based either upon Forster’s or Scott’s.

Page 190

Another translation from Galland, by G. S. Beaumont (four vols. 8vo), appeared in 1811. (Lowndes writes Wiliam Beaumont.)

Among the various popular editions of later date we may mention an edition in two vols., 8vo, published at Liverpool (1813), and containing Cazotte’s Continuation; an edition published by Griffin and Co., in 1866, to which Beckford’s “Vathek” is appended; an edition “arranged for the perusal of youthful readers,” by the Hon. Mrs. Sugden (Whittaker & Co., 1863); and “Five Favourite Tales from The Arabian Nights in words of one syllable, by A. & E. Warner” (Lewis, 1871).

Some of the English editions of Galland aim at originality by arranging the tales in a different order.  The cheap edition published by Dicks in 1868 is one instance.

An English version of Galland was published at Lucknow, in four vols., 8vo, in 1880.

I should, perhaps, mention that I have not noticed De Sacy’s “Mille et une Nuit,” because it is simply a new edition of Galland; and I have not seen either Destain’s French edition (mentioned by Sir R. F. Burton), nor Cardonne’s Continuation (mentioned in Cabinet des Fees, xxxvii. p. 83).  As Cardonne died in 1784, his Continuation, if genuine, would be the earliest of all.

The oldest German version, by Talander, seems to have appeared in volumes, as the French was issued; and these volumes were certainly reprinted when required, without indication of separate editions, but in slightly varied style, and with alteration of date.  The old German version is said to be rarer than the French.  It is in twelve parts—­some, however, being double.  The set before me is clearly made up of different reprints, and the first title-page is as follows:  “Die Tausend und eine Nacht, worinnen seltzame Arabische Historien und wunderbare Begebenheiten, benebst artigen Liebes-Intriguen, auch Sitten und Gewohnheiten der Morgenlaender, auf sehr anmuthige Weise, erzehlet werden; Erstlich vom Hru.  Galland, der Koenigl.  Academie Mitgliede aus der Arabischen Sprache in die Franzoesische und aus selbiger anitzo ins Deutsche uebersetzt:  Erster und Anderer Theil.  Mit der Vorrede Herru Talanders.  Leipzig Verlegts Moritz Georg Weidmann Sr.  Konigl.  Maj. in Hohlen und Churfuerstl.  Durchl. zu Sachsen Buchhaendler, Anno 1730.”  Talander’s Preface relates chiefly to the importance of the work as illustrative of Arabian manners and customs, &c.  It is dated from “Liegnitz, den 7 Sept., Anno 1710,” which fixes the approximate date of publication of the first part of this translation.  Vols. i. and ii. of my set (double vol. with frontispiece) are dated 1730, and have Talander’s preface; vols. iii. and iv. (divided, but consecutively paged, and with only one title-page and frontispiece and reprint of Talander’s preface) are dated 1719; vols. v. and vi. (same remarks, except that Talander’s preface is here dated 1717) are dated 1737; vol. vii. (no frontispiece; preface dated 1710) is dated 1721; vol. viii (no frontispiece nor preface, nor does Talander’s name appear on the title-page) is dated 1729; vols. ix. and x. (divided, but consecutively paged, and with only one title-page and frontispiece; Talander’s name and preface do not appear, but Galland’s preface to vol. ix., already mentioned, is prefixed) are dated 1731; and vols. xi. and xii. (same remarks, but no preface) are dated 1732.

Page 191

Galland’s notes are translated, but not his preface and dedication.

There is a later German translation (6 vols. 8vo, Bremen, 1781- 1785) by J. H. Voss, the author of the standard German translation of Homer.

The British Museum has just acquired a Portuguese translation of Galland, in 4 volumes:  “As Mil e uma Noites, Contos Arabes,” published by Ernesto Chardron, Editor, Porto e Braga, 1881.

There are two editions of a modern Greek work in the British Museum (1792 and 1804), published at Venice in three small volumes.  The first volume contains Galland (Nos. 1-6 of the table) and vols. ii. and iii. chiefly contain the Thousand and One Days.  It is, apparently, translated from some Italian work.

Several editions in Italian (Mille ed una Notte) have appeared at Naples and Milan; they are said by Sir R. F. Burton to be mere reprints of Galland.

There are, also, several in Dutch, one of which, by C. Van der Post, in 3 vols. 8vo, published at Utrecht in 1848, purports, I believe, to be a translation from the Arabic, and has been reprinted several times.  The Dutch editions are usually entitled, “Arabische Vertellinge.”  A Danish edition appeared at Copenhagen in 1818, under the title of “Prindsesses Schehezerade.  Fortaellinger eller de saakatle Tusende og een Nat.  Udgivna paa Dansk vid Heelegaan.”  Another, by Rasmassen, was commenced in 1824; and a third Danish work, probably founded on the Thousand and One Nights, and published in 1816, bears the title, “Digt og Eventyr fra Osterland, af arabiska og persischen utrykta kilder.”

I have seen none of these Italian, Dutch or Danish editions; but there is little doubt that most, if not all, are derived from Galland’s work.

The following is the title of a Javanese version, derived from one of the Dutch editions, and published at Leyden in 1865, “Eenige Vertellingen uit de Arabisch duizend en een Nacht.  Naar de Nederduitsche vertaling in het Javaansch vertaald, door Winter-Roorda.”

Mr. A. G. Ellis has shown me an edition of Galland’s Aladdin (No. 193) in Malay, by M. Van der Lawan (?) printed in Batavia, A.D. 1869.

CAZZOTTE’S continuation, and the composite editions of
the Arabian nights.

We shall speak elsewhere of the Cabinet des Fees; but the last four volumes of this great collection (38 to 41), published at Geneva from 1788 to 1793, contain a work entitled, “Les Veillees du Sultan Schahriar avec la Sultane Scheherazade; histoires incroyables, amusantes et morales, traduites de l’arabe par M. Cazotte et D. Chavis.  Faisant suite aux Mille et une Nuits.”  Some copies bear the abridged title of “La suite des Mille et une Nuits.  Contes Arabes, traduits par Dom Chavis et M. Cazotte.”

This collection of tales was pronounced to be spurious by many critics, and even has been styled “a bare-faced forgery” by a writer in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1886.  It is, however, certain that the greater part, if not all, of these tales are founded on genuine Eastern sources, though very few have any real claim to be regarded as actually part of the Thousand and One Nights.

Page 192

Translations of the originals of most of these tales have been published by Caussin de Perceval and Gauttier; and a comparison clearly shows the great extent to which Chavis and Cazotte have altered, amplified and (in a literary sense) improved their materials.

It is rather surprising that no recent edition of this work seems to have been issued, perhaps owing to the persistent doubts cast upon its authenticity, only a few of the tales, and those not the best, having appeared in different collections.  My friend, Mr. A. G. Ellis, himself an Oriental scholar, has remarked to me that he considers these tales as good as the old “Arabian Nights”; and I quite agree with him that Chavis and Cazotte’s Continuation is well worthy of re-publication in its entirety.

The following are the principal tales comprised in this collection, those included in our Table from later authors being indicated.

1.  The Robber Caliph, or the Adventures of Haroun Alraschid with the Princess of Persia, and the beautiful Zutulbe. (No. 246.)

2.  The Power of Destiny, being the History of the Journey of Giafar to Damas, containing the Adventures of Chelih and his Family. (No. 280.)

3.  History of Halechalbe and the Unknown Lady. (No. 204c.)

4.  Story of Xailoun the Idiot.

5.  The Adventures of Simoustapha and the Princess Ilsetilsone.  (No. 247.)

6.  History of Alibengiad, Sultan of Herak, and of the False Birds of Paradise.

7.  History of Sinkarib and his Two Viziers. (No. 249.)

8.  History of the Family of the Schebandad of Surat.

9.  Story of Bohetzad and his Ten Viziers. (No. 174.)

10.  Story of Habib and Dorathil-Goase. (No. 251.)

11.  History of the Maugraby, or the Magician.

Of these, Nos. 4, 6, 8 and 11 only are not positively known in the original.  No. 11 is interesting, as it is the seed from which Southey’s “Thalaba the Destroyer” was derived.

On the word Maugraby, which means simply Moor, Cazotte has the following curious note:  “Ce mot signifie barbare, barbaresque plus proprement.  On jure encore par lui en Provence, en Languedoc, et en Gascogne Maugraby; ou ailleurs en France Meugrebleu.”

The Domdaniel, where Zatanai held his court with Maugraby and his pupilmagicians, is described as being under the sea near Tunis.  In Weil’s story of Joodar and Mahmood (No. 201) the Magician Mahmood is always called the Moor of Tunis.

No. 3 (=our No. 204c) contains the additional incident of the door opened only once a year which occurs in our No. 9a, aa.

Moore probably took the name Namouna from Cazotte’s No. 5, in which it occurs.  In the same story we find a curious name of a Jinniyah, Setelpedour.  Can it be a corruption of Sitt El Budoor?

For further remarks on Cazotte’s Continuation, compare Russell’s History of Aleppo, i. p. 385; and Russell and Scott, Ouseley’s Oriental Collections, i. pp. 246, 247; ii. p. 25; and the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for February, 1779.

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An English version under the title “Arabian Tales, or a Continuation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,” translated by Robert Heron, was published in Edinburgh in 1792 in 4 vols., and in London in 1794 in 3 vols.  It was reprinted in Weber’s “Tales of the East” (Edinburgh, 1812); and, as already mentioned, is included in an edition of the Arabian Nights published in Liverpool in 1813.

A German translation forms vols. 5 to 8 of the “Blaue Bibliothek,” published in Gotha in 1790 and 1791; and the British Museum possesses vols. 3 and 4 of a Russian edition, published at Moscow in 1794 and 1795, which is erroneously entered in the catalogue as the Arabian Nights in Russian.

Respecting the work of Chavis and Cazotte, Sir R. F. Burton remarks, “Dom Dennis Chavis was a Syrian priest of the order of Saint Bazil, who was invited to Paris by the learned minister, Baron Arteuil, and he was assisted by M. Cazotte, a French author, then well known, but wholly ignorant of Arabic.  These tales are evidently derived from native sources; the story of Bohetzad (King Bakhtiyar) and his Ten Wazirs is taken bodily from the Bres.  Edit. [not so; but the original Arabic had long been known in the French libraries].  As regards the style and treatment, it is sufficient to say that the authors out-Gallanded Galland, while Heron exaggerates every fault of his original.”

The first enlarged edition of Galland in French was published by Caussin de Perceval, at Paris, in 9 vols., 8vo (1806).  In addition to Galland’s version, he added four tales (Nos. 21a, 22, 32 and 37), with which he had been furnished by Von Hammer.  He also added a series of tales, derived from MSS. in the Parisian libraries, most of which correspond to those of Cazotte.

The most important of the later French editions was published by E. Gauttier in 7 vols. in 1822; it contains much new matter.  At the end, the editor gives a list of all the tales which he includes, with arguments.  He has rather oddly distributed his material so as to make only 568 nights.  The full contents are given in our Table; the following points require more special notice.  Vol. i.  Gauttier omits the Third Shaykh’s story (No. 1c) on account of its indecency, although it is really no worse than any other story in The Nights.  In the story of the Fisherman, he has fallen into a very curious series of errors.  He has misunderstood King Yunan’s reference to King Sindbad (Burton i. p. 50) to refer to the Book of Sindibad (No. 135); and has confounded it with the story of the Forty Vazirs, which he says exists in Arabic as well as in Turkish.  Of this latter, therefore, he gives an imperfect version, embedded in the story of King Yunan (No. 2a).  Here it may be observed that another imperfect French version of the Forty Vazirs had previously been published by Petis de la Croix under the title of Turkish Tales.  A complete German version by Dr. Walter F. A. Behrnauer was published at Leipzig in 1851, and an English version by Mr. E. J. W. Gibb has appeared while these sheets are passing through the press.

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Vol. ii.  After No. 6 Gauttier places versions of Nos. 32 and 184 by Langles.  The Mock Caliph is here called Aly-Chah.  The other three tales given by Caussin de Perceval from Von Hammer’s MSS. are omitted by Gauttier.  Vol. v. (after No. 198) concludes with two additional tales (Nos. 207h and 218) from Scott’s version.  But the titles are changed, No. 207h being called the Story of the Young Prince and the Green Bird, and No. 218 the Story of Mahmood, although there is another story of Mahmood in vol. 1. (==No. 135m) included as part of the Forty Vazirs.

Vol. vi. includes the Ten Vazirs (No. 174), derived, however, not from the Arabic, but from the Persian Bakhtyar Nameh.  Three of the subordinate tales in the Arabic version are wanting in Gauttier’s, and another is transferred to his vol. vii., but he includes one, the King and Queen of Abyssinia (No. 252), which appears to be wanting in the Arabic.  The remainder of the volume contains tales from Scott’s version, the title of Mazin of Khorassaun (No. 215) being altered to the Story of Azem and the Queen of the Genii.

Vol. vii. contains a series of tales of which different versions of six only (Nos. 30, 174, 246, 248, 249 and 250) were previously published.  Though these have no claim to be considered part of The Nights, they are of sufficient interest to receive a passing mention, especially as Gauttier’s edition seems not to have been consulted by any later writer on The Nights, except Habicht, who based his own edition mainly upon it.  Those peculiar to Gauttier’s edition are therefore briefly noticed.

Princess Ameny (No. 253)—­A princess who leaves home disguised as a man, and delivers another princess from a black slave.  The episode (253b) is a story of enchantment similar to Nos. 1a-c.

Aly Djohary (No. 254)—­Story of a young man’s expedition in search of a magical remedy.

The Princes of Cochin China (No. 255)—­The princes travel in search of their sister who is married to a Jinni, who is under the curse of Solomon.  The second succeeds in breaking the spell, and thus rescues both his brother, his sister, and the Jinni by killing a bird to which the destiny of the last is attached.  (This incident is common in fiction; we find it in the genuine Nights in Nos. 154a and 201.)

The Wife with Two Husbands (No. 256)—­A well-known Eastern story; it may be found in Wells’ “Mehemet the Kurd,” pp. 121-127, taken from the Forty Vazirs.  Compare Gibbs, the 24th Vazir’s Story, pp. 257-266.

The Favourite (No. 257)—­One of the ordinary tales of a man smuggled into a royal harem in a chest (compare Nos. 6b and 166).

Zoussouf and the Indian Merchant (No. 258)—­Story of a ruined man travelling to regain his fortune.

Prince Benazir (No. 258)—­Story of a Prince promised at his birth, and afterwards given up by his parents to an evil Jinni, whom he ultimately destroys. (Such promises, especially, as here, in cases of difficult labour, are extremely common in folk-tales; the idea probably originated in the dedication of a child to the Gods.) Gauttier thinks that this story may have suggested that of Maugraby to Cazotte; but it appears to me rather doubtful whether it is quite elaborate enough for Cazotte to have used it in this manner.

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Selim, Sultan of Egypt (No. 261)—­This and its subordinate tales chiefly relate to unfaithful wives; that of Adileh (No. 261b) is curious; she is restored to life by Jesus (whom Gauttier, from motives of religious delicacy, turns into a Jinni!) to console her disconsolate husband, and immediately betrays the latter.  These tales are apparently from the Forty Vazirs; cf.  Gibbs, the 10th Vazir’s Story, pp. 122-129 (= our No. 261) and the Sixth Vazir’s Story, pp. 32-84 (= No. 261b.)

The bulk of the tales in Gauttier’s vol. vii. are derived from posthumous MSS. of M. Langles, and several have never been published in English.  Gauttier’s version of Heycar (No. 248) was contributed by M. Agoub.

The best-known modern German version (Tausend und Eine Nacht, Arabische Erzahlungen, Deutsch von Max.  Habicht, Fr. H. von der Hagen und Carl Schall.  Breslau, 15 vols. 12mo) is mainly based upon Gauttier’s edition, but with extensive additions, chiefly derived from the Breslau text.  An important feature of this version is that it includes translations of the prefaces of the various editions used by the editors, and therefore supplies a good deal of information not always easily accessible elsewhere.  There are often brief notes at the end of the volumes.

The fifth edition of Habicht’s version is before me, dated 1840; but the preface to vol. i. is dated 1824, which may be taken to represent the approximate date of its first publication.  The following points in the various vols. may be specially noticed:—­

Vol. i. commences with the preface of the German editor, setting forth the object and scope of his edition; and the prefaces of Gauttier and Galland follow.  No. 1c, omitted by Gauttier, is inserted in its place.  Vols. ii. and iii. (No. 133), notes, chiefly from Langles, are appended to the Voyages of Sindbad; and the destinations of the first six are given as follows:—­

I.   Voyage to Sumatra.        IV.   Voyage to the Sunda Islands. 
II.   Voyage to Ceylon.         V.   Voyage to the Sunda Islands. 
Iii.  Voyage to Selahath.       Vi.   Voyage to Zeilan.

Vol. v. contains an unimportant notice from Galland, with additional remarks by the German editors, respecting the division of the work into Nights.

Vol. vi. contains another unimportant preface respecting Nos. 191 and 192.

Vol. x.  Here the preface is of more importance, relating to the contents of the volume, and especially to the Ten Vazirs (No. 174).

Vol. xi. contains tales from Scott.  The preface contains a full account of his MSS., and the tales published in his vol. vi.  This preface is taken partly from Ouseley’s Oriental Collections, and partly from Scott’s own preface.

Vol. xii. contains tales from Gauttier, vol. vii.  The preface gives the full contents of Clarke’s and Von Hammer’s MSS.

Vol. xiii. includes Caussin de Perceval’s Preface, the remaining tales from Gauttier’s vol. vii. (ending with Night 568), and four tales from Caussin which Gauttier omits (Nos. 21a, 22, 37 and 202).

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Vols. xiv. and xv. (extending from Night 884 to Night 1001) consist of tales from the Breslau edition, to which a short preface, signed by Dr. Max.  Habicht, is prefixed.  The first of these tales is a fragment of the important Romance of Seyf Zul Yesn (so often referred to by Lane), which seems to have been mixed with Habicht’s Ms. of The Nights by mistake. (Compare Payne, Tales, iii. 243.)

In this fragment we have several incidents resembling The Nights; there is a statue which sounds an alarm when an enemy enters a city (cf.  Nos. 59 and 137); Seyf himself is converted to the faith of Abraham, and enters a city where a book written by Japhet is preserved.  The text of this story has lately been published; and Sir R. F. Burton informs me that he thinks he has seen a complete version in some European language; but I have not succeeded in obtaining any particulars concerning it.

On account of the interest and importance of the work, I append to this section an English version of the fragment translated into German by Habicht. (From the extreme simplicity of the style, which I have preserved, I suspect that the translation is considerably abridged.)

There is an Icelandic version of The Nights (pusund og ein Nott.  Arabiskar Soegur.  Kaupmannahoefn, 1857, 4 vols. roy. 8vo), which contains Galland’s tales, and a selection of others, distributed into 1001 Nights, and apparently taken chiefly from Gauttier, but with the addition of two or three which seem to be borrowed from Lane (Nos. 9a, 163, 165, &c.).  It is possibly derived immediately from some Danish edition.

There is one popular English version which may fairly be called a composite edition; but it is not based upon Gauttier.  This is the “Select Library Edition.  Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, selected and revised for general use.  To which are added other specimens of Eastern Romance.  London:  James Burns, 1847. 2 vols.”

It contains the following tales from The Nights:  Nos. 134, 3, 133, 162, 1, 2, 155, 191, 193, 192, 194, 194a, 194c, 21, 198, 170, 6.

No. 134 is called the City of Silence, instead of the City of Brass, and is certainly based partly upon Lane.  In No. 155, Manar Al Sana is called Nur Al Nissa.  One story, “The Wicked Dervise,” is taken from Dow’s “Persian Tales of Inatulla;” another “The Enchanters, or the Story of Misnar,” is taken from the “Tales of the Genii.”  Four other tales, “Jalaladdeen of Bagdad,” “The two Talismans,” “The Story of Haschem,” and “Jussof, the Merchant of Balsora,” clearly German imitations, are said to be translated from the German of Grimm, and there are two others, “Abdullah and Balsora,” and “The King and his Servant,” the origin of which I do not recognise, although I think I have read the last before.

Grimm’s story of Haschem concludes with the hero’s promotion to the post of Grand Vizier to Haroun Al-Rashid, in consequence of the desire of the aged “Giafar” to end his days in peaceful retirement!  The principal incident in Jalaladdeen, is that of the Old Woman in the Chest, borrowed from the wellknown story of the Merchant Abudah in the “Tales of the Genii,” and it is thus an imitation of an imitation,

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The commencement of the story of Saif Zul Yezn (ZU’L
YAZAN) according to Habicht’s german version.

In very ancient times, long before the age of Mohammed, there lived a King of Yemen, named Zul Yezn.  He was a Himyarite of the race of Fubbaa (Tabba’) and had large armies and a great capital.  His Minister was named Yottreb (Yathrab == Medinat), and was well skilled in the knowledge of the ancients.  He once had a vision in which the name of the Prophet was revealed to him, with the announcement of his mission in later times; and he was also informed that he would be the last of the Prophets.  In consequence of this vision he believed in the Prophet before his advent; but he concealed his faith.  One day the King held a review of his troops, and was delighted with their number and handsome appearance.  He said to the Wazir, “Is there any person on earth whose power can compare with mine?” “O yes,” answered the Wazir, “there is King Baal-Beg, whose troops fill the deserts and the cultivated lands, the plains and the valleys.”  “I must make war upon him, then,” exclaimed the King, “and destroy his power.”  He immediately ordered the army to prepare to march, and after a few days the drums and trumpets were heard.  The King and his Wazir set forth in magnificent array, and after a rapid march, they arrived before the holy city Medina, which may God keep in high renown!  The Wazir then said to the King, “Here is the holy house of God, and the place of great ceremonies.  No one should enter here who is not perfectly pure, and with head and feet bare.  Pass around it with your companions, according to the custom of the Arabs.”  The King was so pleased with the place that he determined to destroy it, to carry the stones to his own country, and to rebuild it there, that the Arabs might come to him on pilgrimage, a nd that he might thus exalt himself above all Kings.  He pondered over this plan all night, but next morning he found his body fearfully swollen.  He immediately sent for his Wazir, and lamented over his misfortune.  “This is a judgment sent upon you,” replied the Wazir, “by the Lord of this house.  If you alter your intention of destroying the temple, you will be healed at once.”  The King gave up his project, and soon found himself cured.  Soon afterwards he said to himself, “This misfortune happened to me at night, and left me next day of its own accord; but I will certainly destroy the house.”  But next morning his face was so covered with open ulcers that he could no longer be recognised.  The Wazir then approached him and said, “O King, renounce your intention, for it would be rebellion against the Lord of Heaven and Earth, who can destroy every one who opposes him.”  When the King heard this, he reflected awhile and said, “What would you wish me to do?” The Wazir replied, “Cover the house with carpets from Yemen.”  The King resolved to do this, and when night came

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It happened by the gracious decree of God, that hunters who were chasing gazelles surprised a female with a fawn; the former took to flight, and the hunters carried off the little one.  When the mother returned from the pasture, and found her fawn gone, she traversed the desert in all directions in search of it, and at length the crying of the deserted child attracted her.  She lay down by the child, and the child sucked her.  The gazelle left him again to go to graze, but always returned to the little one when she was satisfied.  This went on till it pleased God that she should fall into the net of a hunter.  But she became enraged, tore the net, and fled.  The hunter pursued her, and overtook her when she reached the child, and was about to give him suck.  But the arrival of the hunter compelled the gazelle to take to flight, and the child began to cry, because he was not yet satisfied.  The hunter was astonished at the sight, and when he lifted the child up, he saw the purse under his head, and a string of jewels round his neck.  He immediately took the child with him, and went to a town belonging to an Abyssinian king named Afrakh, who was a dependent of King Saif Ar-Raad.  He handed over the child to him, saying that he had found it in the lair of a gazelle.  When the King took the child into his care, it smiled at him, and God awakened a feeling of love towards him in the King’s heart; and he then noticed the mole on his cheek.  But when his Wazir Sikar Diun, the brother of Sikar Divas, who was Wazir to King Saif Ar-Raad, entered and saw the child, God filled his heart with hate towards him.  “Do not believe what this man told you,” he said, when the King told him the wonderful story of the discovery, “it can only be the child of a mother who has come by it wrongly, and has abandoned it in the desert, and it would be better to kill it.”  “I cannot easily consent to this,” said the King.  But he had hardly spoken, when the palace was filled with sounds of rejoicing, and he was informed that his wife had just been safely delivered of a child.  On this news he took the boy on his arm, and went to his wife, and found that the new-born child was a girl, and that she had a red mole on her cheek.  He wondered when he saw this, and said to Sikar Diun, “See how beautiful they are!” But when the Wazir saw it, he slapped his face, and cast his cap on the ground, exclaiming, “Should these two moles unite, I prophesy the downfall of Abyssinia, for they presage a great calamity.  It would be better to kill either the boy or your daughter.”  “I will kill neither of them,” replied the King, “for they have been guilty of no crime.”  He immediately provided nurses for the two children, naming his daughter Shama (Mole) and the boy Wakhs[FN#471] El Fellat (Lonely one, or Desert); and he reared them in separate apartments, that they might not see each other.  When they were ten years old, Wakhs El Fellat grew very strong, and soon became a practised horseman, and surpassed

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Now this Sudun had built his fortress on the summit of a high hill.  It was very secure, and he defended it with the edge of the sword.  It was his usual resort, from whence he sallied forth on plundering expeditions, and rendered the roads unsafe.  At length the news of him reached King Saif Ar-Raad, who sent against him three thousand men, but he routed and destroyed them all.  Upon this, the King sent a larger number against him, who experienced the same fate.  He then despatched a third army, upon which Sudun fortified himself afresh, and reared the walls of his fortress so high that an eagle could scarcely pass them.  We will now return to Shama, who went to Wakhs El Fellat, and reproached him with the conditions he had agreed to, and added, “It would be better for you to leave this place, and take me with you, and we will put ourselves under the protection of some powerful king.”  “God forbid,” replied he, “that I should take you with me in so dishonourable a manner.”  As he still positively refused to consent, she grew angry, and left him.  Wakhs El Fellat lay down to rest, but he could not sleep.  So he rose up, mounted his horse, and rode away at midnight; and in the morning he met a horseman who stationed himself in his path, but who was so completely armed that his face was concealed.  When Wakhs El Fellat saw him, he cried to him, “Who are you, and where are you going?” But instead of replying, he pressed upon him, and aimed a blow which Wakhs El Fellat successfully parried.  A fight then commenced between them, which lasted till nearly evening.  At last the difference in their strength became perceptible, and Wakhs El Fellat struck his adversary so violent a blow with his javelin that his horse fell to the ground.  He then dismounted, and was about to slay him, when the horseman cried to him, “Do not kill me, O brave warrior, or you will repent when repentance will no more avail you.”  “Tell me who you are?” returned Wakhs El Fellat.  “I am Shama, the daughter of King Afrakh,” replied the horseman.  “Why have you acted thus?” asked he.  “I wished to try whether you would be able to hold your own against Sudun’s people,” she replied.  “I have tried you now, and found you so valiant that I fear no longer on your account.  Take me with you, O hero.”  “God forbid that I should do so,” he returned; “what would Sikar Diun and the others say?  They would say that if Shama had not been with him, he would never have been able to prevail against Sudun.”  She then raised her eyes to heaven, and said, “O God, permit him to fall into some danger from which I alone may deliver him!” Upon this Wakhs El Fellat pursued his journey, without giving any attention to her words.  On the third day he arrived at the valley where the fortress of Sudun was situated, when he began to work his way along behind the trees; and towards evening he arrived at the fortress itself, which he found to be surrounded with a moat; and the gates were closed.  He was still undecided what

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When the slaves saw this, they mounted the walls, and wept and lamented.  But Shama cried out, “Take his head, and let us hasten our return before morning dawns.”  “What,” said Wakhs El Fellat, “should I kill so brave a man in so treacherous a manner, when he is so noble and magnanimous?” He then went up to Sudun, kissed his head, and said, “Rise up, O warrior of the age, for you and your companions are safe from me.”  They now all embraced each other, and made an offensive and defensive compact.  “Take me with you alive, O brave man,” said Sudun, “and hand me over to the King as his daughter’s dowry.  If he consents, well; but if not, take my head, and woo your wife.”  “God forbid,” said Wakhs El Fellat, “that I should act thus after your magnanimity.  Rather return to the castle, and assure your companions of your safety.”  All this passed under the eyes of the other armed men.  They rejoiced at the knightly conduct of both , and now came down, fell at the feet of Sudun and embraced him.  They then did the same to Wakhs El Fellat, whose hands they kissed and loaded him with praises.  After this, they all returned to the castle, and agreed to set out presently.  They took with them whatever treasures there were, and Wakhs El Fellat commanded them to release the prisoners and restore them their goods.  They now all mounted their horses and journeyed to the country of King Afrakh, greatly rejoiced at the mutual love of the warriors.  When they approached the town, Shama parted from them, that nothing should be known of her absence in the company.  During this time, King Afrakh and Sikar Diun had amused themselves with hunting, jesting, and sporting, and sent out scouts daily to look for Wakhs El Fellat.  “What can have become of him?” said the King once to Sikar Diun.  “Sudun has certainly killed him,” replied the latter, “and you will never see him again.”  While they were thus talking, they observed a great cloud of dust, and as it drew nearer, they could see the armed men more distinctly.  The company was led by a black knight, by whose side rode a younger white horseman.  When the King saw this, he exclaimed, “Wakhs El Fellat has returned, in company with Sudun and his host.”  “Wait a little,” replied Sikar Dian, “till we are certain of it.”  But when they drew nearer, and they could doubt no

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This conversation was interrupted by a tumult caused by the arrival of Wakhs El Fellat and Sudun, who came to pay their respects to the King.  The King invited them to sit down, but Sudun remained standing, and when he asked him again, he replied, “You craven, was the world too narrow for you that you desired my head as your daughter’s dowry?” “Sit down,” said the King, “for I know that you are angry.”  “How can I sit down,” returned Sudun, “when you have ordered my death?” “God forbid that I should act so unjustly,” said the King; “it was Sikar Diun.”  “What,” said he, “do you accuse me of such an action in my presence?” “Did you not make this condition with Wakhs El Fellat,” said the King, “and send him on his errand?” Sikar Diun then turned to Sudun, and said, “Sit down, brave warrior, for we only did so from love to you, that we might be able to make a treaty with you, and that you might join our company.”  After this answer, Sudun concealed his anger, and sat down.  Refreshments were now brought in, and after partaking of them, Wakhs El Fellat and Sudun returned to their tents.  Several days passed in this manner, and at length Sudun said to Wakhs El Fellat, “O my master, it is time for you to demand Shama in marriage, now you have won her with the edge of the sword.  You have fulfilled their conditions long since by bringing them my head, but you have made no further progress at present.  Ask for her once more, and if they will not give her up, I will fall upon them with the sword, and we will carry Shama off, and then lay waste the city.” 

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* * * * *

(Here Habicht’s fragment ends.)

Scott’sMSS.  And translations.

In 1800, Jonathan Scott, ll.D., published a volume of “Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters, translated from the Arabic and Persian,” based upon a fragmentary Ms., procured by J. Anderson in Bengal, which included the commencement of the work (Nos. 1-3) in 29 Nights; two tales not divided into Nights (Nos. 264 and 135) and No. 21.

Scott’s work includes these two new tales (since republished by Kirby and Clouston), with the addition of various anecedotes, &c., derived from other sources.  The “Story of the Labourer and the Chair” has points of resemblance to that of “Malek and the Princess Chirine” (Shirin?) in the Thousand and One Days; and also to that of “Tuhfet El Culoub” (No. 183a) in the Breslau Edition.  The additional tales in this Ms. and vol. of translations are marked “A” under Scott in our Tables.  Scott published the following specimens (text and translation) in Ouseley’s Oriental Collections (1797 and following years) No. 135m (i. pp. 245-257) and Introduction (ii. pp. 160-172; 228- 257).  The contents are fully given in Ouseley, vol. ii. pp. 34, 35.

Scott afterwards acquired an approximately complete Ms. in 7 vols., written in 1764 which was brought from Turkey by E. Wortley Montague.  Scott published a table of contents (Ouseley, ii. pp. 25-34), in which, however, the titles of some few of the shorter tales, which he afterwards translated from it, are omitted, while the titles of others are differently translated.  Thus “Greece” of the Table becomes “Yemen” in the translation; and “labourer” becomes “sharper.”  As a specimen, he subsequently printed the text and translation of No. 145 (Ouseley, ii. pp. 349-367).

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This Ms., which differs very much from all others known, is now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

In 1811, Scott published an edition of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, in 6 vols., vol. 1 containing a long introduction, and vol. 6, including a series of new tales from the Oxford Ms. (There is a small paper edition; and also a large paper edition, the latter with frontispieces, and an Appendix including a table of the tales contained in the Ms.) It had originally been Scott’s intention to retranslate the Ms.; but he appears to have found it beyond his powers.  He therefore contented himself with re-editing Galland, altering little except the spelling of the names, and saying that Galland’s version is in the main so correct that it would be useless repetition to go over the work afresh.  Although he says that he found many of the tales both immoral and puerile, he translated most of those near the beginning, and omitted much more (including several harmless and interesting tales, such as No. 152) towards the end of his Ms. than near the beginning.  The greater part of Scott’s additional tales, published in vol. 6, are included in the composite French and German editions of Gauttier and Habicht; but, except Nos. 208, 209, and 215, republished in my “New Arabian Nights,” they have not been reprinted in England, being omitted in all the many popular versions which are professedly based upon Scott, even in the edition in 4 vols., published in 1882, which reprints Scott’s Preface.

The edition of 1882 was published about the same time as one of the latest reissues of Lane’s Thousand and One Nights; and the Saturday Review of Nov. 4, 1882 (p. 609), published an article on the Arabian Nights, containing the following amusing passage:  “Then Jonathan Scott, ll.D.  Oxon, assures the world that he intended to retranslate the tales given by Galland; but he found Galland so adequate on the whole that he gave up the idea, and now reprints Galland, with etchings by M. Lalauze, giving a French view of Arab life.  Why Jonathan Scott, ll.D., should have thought to better Galland, while Mr. Lane’s version is in existence, and has just been reprinted, it is impossible to say.”

The most interesting of Scott’s additional tales, with reference to ordinary editions of The Nights, are as follows:—­

No. 204b is a variant of No. 37.

No. 204c is a variant of 3e, in which the wife, instead of the husband, acts the part of a jealous tyrant. (Compare Cazotte’s story of Halechalbe.)

No. 204e.  Here we have a reference to the Nesnas, which only appears once in the ordinary versions of The Nights (No. 132b; Burton, v., p. 333).

No. 206b. is a variant of No. 156.

No. 207c.  This relates to a bird similar to that in the Jealous
Sisters (No. 198), and includes a variant of 3ba.

No. 207h.  Another story of enchanted birds.  The prince who seeks them encounters an “Oone” under similar circumstances to those under which Princess Parizade (No. 198) encounters the old durwesh.  The description is hardly that of a Marid, with which I imagine the Ons are wrongly identified.

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No. 208 contains the nucleus of the famous story of Aladdin (No. 193).

No. 209 is similar to No. 162; but we have again the well incident of No. 3ba, and the exposure of the children as in No. 198.

No. 215.  Very similar to Hasan of Bassorah (No. 155).  As Sir R. F. Burton (vol. viii., p. 60, note) has called in question my identification of the Islands of WakWak with the Aru Islands near New Guinea, I will quote here the passages from Mr. A. R. Wallace’s Malay Archipelago (chap. 31) on which I based it:—­“The trees frequented by the birds are very lofty. . . . .  One day I got under a tree where a number of the Great Paradise birds were assembled, but they were high up in the thickest of the foliage, and flying and jumping about so continually that I could get no good view of them. . . . .  Their voice is most extraordinary.  At early morn, before the sun has risen, we hear a loud cry of ‘Wawk—­wawk—­wawk, w k—­w k—­w k,’ which resounds through the forest, changing its direction continually.  This is the Great Bird of Paradise going to seek his breakfast. . . . .  The birds had now commenced what the people here call ‘sacaleli,’ or dancing-parties, in certain trees in the forest, which are not fruit-trees as I at first imagined, but which have an immense head of spreading branches and large but scattered leaves, giving a clear space for the birds to play and exhibit their plumes.  On one of these trees a dozen or twenty full-plumaged male birds assemble together, raise up their wings, stretch out their necks, and elevate their exquisite plumes, keeping them in a continual vibration.  Between whiles they fly across from branch to branch in great excitement, so that the whole tree is filled with waving plumes in every variety of attitude and motion.”

No. 216bc appears to be nearly the same as No. 42.

No. 225 is a variant of No. 135q.

Weil’stranslation.

The only approximately complete original German translation is “Tausend und eine Nacht.  Arabische Erzaehlungen.  Zum Erstenmale aus dem Urtexte vollstaendig und treu uebersetzt von Dr. Gustav Weil,” four vols., Stuttgart.  The first edition was in roy. 8vo, and was published at Stuttgart and Pforzheim in 1839-1842; the last volume I have not seen; it is wanting in the copy in the British Museum.  This edition is divided into Nights, and includes No. 25b.  In the later editions, which are in small square 8vo, but profusely illustrated, like the larger one, this story is omitted (except No. 135m, which the French editors include with it), though Galland’s doubtful stories are retained; and there is no division into Nights.  The work has been reprinted several times, and the edition quoted in our Table is described as “Zweiter Abdruck der dritten vollstandig umgearbeiteten, mit Anmerkungen und mit einer Einleitung versehenen Auflage” (1872).

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Weil has not stated from what sources he drew his work, except that No. 201 is taken from a Ms. in the Ducal Library at Gotha.  This is unfortunate, as his version of the great transformation scene in No. 3b (Burton, vol. i., pp. 134, 135), agrees more closely with Galland than with any other original version.  In other passages, as when speaking of the punishment of Aziz (No. 9a, aa), Weil seems to have borrowed an expression from Lane, who writes “a cruel wound;” Weil saying “a severe (schwere) wound.”

Whereas Weil gives the only German version known to me of No. 9 (though considerably abridged) he omits many tales contained in Zinserling and Habicht, but whether because his own work was already too bulky, or because his original MSS. did not contain them, I do not know; probably the first supposition is correct, for in any case it was open to him to have translated them from the printed texts, to which he refers in his Preface.

Two important stories (Nos. 200 and 201) are not found in any other version; but as they are translated in my “New Arabian Nights,” I need not discuss them here.  I will, however, quote a passage from the story of Judar and Mahmood, which I omitted because it is not required by the context, and because I thought it a little out of place in a book published in a juvenile series.  It is interesting from its analogy to the story of Semele.

When King Kashuk (a Jinni) is about to marry the daughter of King Shamkoor, we read (New Arabian Nights, p. 182), “Shamkoor immediately summoned my father, and said, ’Take my daughter, for you have won her heart.’  He immediately provided an outfit for his daughter, and when it was completed, my father and his bride rode away on horseback, while the trousseau of the Princess followed on three hundred camels.”  The passage proceeds (the narrator being Daruma, the offspring of the marriage), “When my father had returned home, and was desirous of celebrating his marriage Kandarin (his Wazir) said to him, ’Your wife will be destroyed if you touch her, for you are created of fire, and she is created of earth, which the fire devours.  You will then bewail her death when it is too late.  To-morrow,’ continued he, ’I will bring you an ointment with which you must rub both her and yourself; and you may then live long and happily together.’  On the following day he brought him a white ointment, and my father anointed himself and his bride with it, and consummated his marriage without danger.”

I may add that this is the only omission of the smallest consequence in my rendering of either story.

I have heard from more than one source that a complete German translation of The Nights was published, and suppressed; but I have not been able to discover the name of the author, the date, or any other particulars relating to the subject.

    Von Hammer’s Ms., And the translations derived from it.

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Several complete copies of The Nights were obtained by Europeans about the close of the last or the beginning of the present century; and one of these (in 4 vols.) fell into the bands of the great German Orientalist, Joseph von Hammer.  This Ms. agrees closely with the printed Bul. and Mac. texts, as well as with Dr. Clarke’s Ms., though the names of the tales sometimes vary a little.  One story, “The two Wazirs,” given in Von Hammer’s list as inedited, no doubt by an oversight, is evidently No. 7, which bears a similar title in Torrens.  One title, “Al Kavi,” a story which Von Hammer says was published in “Mag.  Encycl.,” and in English (probably by Scott in Ouseley’s Oriental Collections, vide antea p. 491) puzzled me for some time; but from its position, and the title I think I have identified it as No. 145, and have entered it as such.  No. 9a in this as well as in several other MSS., bears the title of the Two Lovers, or of the Lover and the Beloved.

Von Hammer made a French translation of the unpublished tales, which he lent to Caussin de Perceval, who extracted from it four tales only (Nos. 21a, 22, 32 and 37), and only acknowledged his obligations in a general way to a distinguished Orientalist, whose name he pointedly suppressed.  Von Hammer, naturally indignant, reclaimed his Ms., and had it translated into German by Zinserling.  He then sent the French Ms. to De Sacy, in whose hands it remained for some time, although he does not appear to have made any use of it, when it was despatched to England for publication; but the courier lost it on the journey, and it was never recovered.

Zinserling’s translation was published under the title, “Der Tausend und einen Nacht noch nicht uebersetzte Maehrchen, Erzaehlungen und Anekdoten, zum erstenmale aus dem Arabischen in’s Franzoesische uebersetzt von Joseph von Hammer, und aus dem Franzoesischen in’s Deutsche von Aug.  E. Zinserling, Professor.” (3 vols., Stuttgart and Tuebingen, 1823.) The introductory matter is of considerable importance, and includes notices of 12 different MSS., and a list of contents of Von Hammer’s Ms. The tales begin with No. 23, Nos. 9-19 being omitted, because Von Hammer was informed that they were about to be published in France. (This possibly refers to Asselan Riche’s “Scharkan,” published in 1829.) The tales and anecdotes in this edition follow the order of The Nights.  No. 163 is incomplete, Zinserling giving only the commencement; and two other tales (Nos. 132b and 168) are related in such a confused manner as to be unintelligible, the former from transposition (perhaps in the sheets of the original Ms.) and the latter from errors and omissions.  On the other hand, some of the tales (No. 137 for instance) are comparatively full and accurate.

A selection from the longer tales was published in English in 3 vols. in 1826, under the title of “New Arabian Nights Entertainments, selected from the original Oriental Ms. by Jos. von Hammer, and now first translated into English by the Rev. George Lamb.”  I have only to remark that No. 132b is here detached from its connection with No. 132, and is given an independent existence.

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A complete French re-translation of Zinserling’s work, also in 3 vols., by G. S. Trebutien (Contes inedits des Mille et une Nuits), was published in Paris in 1828; but in this edition the long tales are placed first, and all the anecdotes are placed together last.

The various MSS. mentioned by Von Hammer are as follows:—­

     I. Galland’s Ms. in Paris.

II.  Another Paris Ms., containing 870 Nights. (No. 9 is specially noticed as occurring in it.) This seems to be the same as a Ms. subsequently mentioned by Von Hammer as consulted by Habicht.

     Iii.  Scott’s Ms. (Wortley Montague).

     IV.  Scott’s Ms. (Anderson).

     V. Dr. Russell’s Ms. from Aleppo (224 Nights).

Vi.  Sir W. Jones’ Ms., from which Richardson extracted No. 6ee for his grammar.

     VII.  A. Ms. at Vienna (200 Nights).

     VIII.  Ms. in Italinski’s collection.

     Ix.  Clarke’s Ms.

     X. An Egyptian Ms. at Marseilles.

     XI.  Von Hammer’s Ms.

     XII.  Habicht’s Ms. (==Bres. text).

     XIII.  Caussin’s Ms.

     XIV.  De Sacy’s Ms.

     XV.  One or more MSS. in the Vatican.

Translations of the printed texts.

These are noticed by Sir R. F. Burton in his “Foreword” (vol. i., pp. x-xii.) and consequently can be passed over with a brief mention here.

Torrens’ edition (vol. 1) extends to the end of Night 50 (Burton, ii., p. 118).

Lane’s translation originally appeared in monthly half-crown parts, from 1839 to 1841.  It is obvious that he felt himself terribly restricted in space; for the third volume, although much thicker than the others, is not only almost destitute of notes towards the end, but the author is compelled to grasp at every excuse to omit tales, even excluding No. 168, which he himself considered “one of the most entertaining tales in the work” (chap. xxix., note 12), on account of its resemblance to Nos. 1b and 3d.  Part of the matter in Lane’s own earlier notes is apparently derived from No. 132a, which he probably did not at first intend to omit.  Sir R. F. Burton has taken 5 vols. to cover the same ground which Lane has squeezed into his vol. 3.  But it is only fair to Lane to remark that in such cases the publisher is usually far more to blame than the author.

In 1847 appeared a popular edition of Lane, entitled, “The Thousand and One Nights, or the Arabian Nights Entertainments, translated and arranged for family reading, with explanatory notes.  Second edition.”  Here Galland’s old spelling is restored, and the “explanatory notes,” ostentatiously mentioned on the title page, are entirely omitted.  This edition was in 3 vols.  I have seen a copy dated 1850; and think I have heard of an issue in 1 vol.; and there is an American reprint in 2 vols.  The English issue was ultimately withdrawn from circulation in consequence of Lane’s protests. (Mr. S. L. Poole’s Life of E. W. Lane, p. 95.) It contains the woodcut of the Flying Couch, which is wanting in the later editions of the genuine work; but not Galland’s doubtful tales, as Poole asserts.

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Several editions of the original work, edited by Messrs. E. S. and S. L. Poole, have appeared at intervals from 1859 to 1882.  They differ little from the original edition except in their slightly smaller size.

The short tales included in Lane’s notes were published separately as one of Knight’s Weekly Volumes, in 1845, under the title of “Arabian Tales and Anecdotes, being a selection from the notes to the new translation of the Thousand and One Nights, by E. W. Lane, Esq.”

Finally, in 1883, Mr. Stanley Lane Poole published a classified and arranged edition of Lane’s notes under the title of “Arabian Society in the Middle Ages.”

Mr. John Payne’s version of the Mac. edition was issued in 9 vols. by the Villon Society to subscribers only.  It appeared from 1882 to 1884, and only 500 copies were printed.  Judging from the original prospectus, it seems to have been the author’s intention to have completed the work in 8 vols., and to have devoted vol. 9 to Galland’s doubtful tales; but as they are omitted, he must have found that the work ran to a greater length than he had anticipated, and that space failed him.  He published some preliminary papers on the Nights in the New Quarterly Magazine for January and April, 1879.

Mr. Payne subsequently issued “Tales from the Arabic of the Breslau and Calcutta (1814-18) editions of the Thousand Nights and One Night, not occurring in the other printed texts of the work.” (Three vols., London, 1884.) Of this work, issued, like the other, by the Villon Society, to subscribers only, 750 copies were printed, besides 50 on large paper.  The third volume includes indices of all the tales in the four principal printed texts.

Finally we have Sir R. F. Burton’s translation now in its entirety before his subscribers.  It is restricted to 1,000 copies. (Why not 1,001?) The five supplementary vols. are to include tales wanting in the Mac. edition, but found in other texts (printed and Ms.), while Lady Burton’s popular edition will allow of the free circulation of Sir R. F. Burton’s work among all classes of the reading public.

Collections of selected tales.

There are many volumes of selections derived from Galland, but these hardly require mention; the following may be noticed as derived from other sources: 

1.  Caliphs and Sultans, being tales omitted in the usual editions of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.  Re-written and re-arranged by Sylvanus Hanley, F. L. S., etc., London, 1868; 2nd edition 1870.

Consists of portions of tales chiefly selected from Scott, Lamb, Chavis and Cazotte, Trebutien and Lane; much abridged, and frequently strung together, as follows:—­

Nos. 246, 41, 32 (including Nos. 111, 21a, and 89); 9a (including 9aa [which Hanley seems, by the way, to have borrowed from some version which I do not recognise], 22 and 248); 155, 156, 136, 162; Xailoun the Silly (from Cazotte); 132 and 132a; and 169 (including 134 and 135x).

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2.  Ilam-en-Nas.  Historical tales and anecdotes of the time of the early Kalifahs.  Translated from the Arabic and annotated by Mrs. Godfrey Clerk, author of “The Antipodes, and Round the World.”  London, 1873.

Many of these anecdotes, as is candidly admitted by the authoress in her Preface, are found with variations in the Nights, though not translated by her from this source.

3.  The New Arabian Nights.  Select tales not included by Galland or Lane.  By W. F. Kirby, London, 1882.

Includes the following tales, slightly abridged, from Weil and Scott:  Nos. 200, 201, 264, 215, 209, and 208.

Two editions have appeared in England, besides reprints in America and Australia.

Separate editions of single or composite tales.

6e (ee).—­The Barber’s Fifth Brother.

Mr. W. A. Clouston (in litt.) calls attention to the version of this story by Addison in the “Spectator,” No. 535, Nov. 13, 1712, after Galland.  There is good reason to suppose that this is subsequent to the first English edition, which, however, Addison does not mention.  There is also an English version in Faris’ little Arabic Grammar (London, 1856), and likewise in Richardson’s Arabic Grammar.  The latter author extracted it from a Ms. belonging to Sir W. Jones.

5.—­Nur Al-din and Badr Al-din Hasan.

There are two Paris editions of the “Histoire de Chems-Eddine et de NourEddine,” edited by Prof.  Cherbonneau.  The first (1852) contains text and notes, and the second (1869) includes text, vocabulary and translations.

7.—­Nur Al-din and Anis Al-jalis.

An edition by Kasimiraki of “Enis’ el-Djelis, ou histoire de la belle Persane,” appeared in Paris in 1867.  It includes text, translation and notes.

9.—­King Omar Bin Al-nu’aman.

There is a French abridgment of this story entitled, “Scharkan, Conte Arabe, suivi de quelques anecdotes orientales; traduit par M. Asselan Riche, Membre de la Societe Asiatique de Paris” (Paris and Marseilles, 12mo, 1829, pp. 240).  The seven anecdotes appended are as follows:  (1) the well-known story of Omar’s prisoner and the glass of water; (2) Elhedjadj and a young Arab; (3)=our No. 140; (4) Anecdote of Elhedjadj and a story-teller; (5)=our No. 86; (6) King Bahman and the Moubed’s parable of the Owls; (7)=our No. 145.

133.—­Sindbad the Seaman.

This is the proper place to call attention to a work specially relating to this story, “Remarks on the Arabian Nights Entertainments; in which the origin of Sindbad’s Voyages and other Oriental Fictions is particularly described.  By Richard Hole, ll.D.” (London, 1797, pp. iv. 259.)

It is an old book, but may still be consulted with advantage.

There are two important critical editions of No. 133, one in French and one in German.

1.  Les Voyages de Sind-bad le marin et la ruse des Femmes.  Contes arabes.  Traduction litterale, accompagnee du Texte et des Notes.  Par L. Langles (Paris, 1814).

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The second story is our No. 184.

2.  Die beiden Sindbad oder Reiseabenteuer Sindbads des Seefabrers.  Nach einer zum ersten Male in Europa bedruckten Aegyptischen Handschrift unmittelbar und wortlich treu aus den Arabischen uebersetzt und mit erklaerenden Anmerkungen, nebst zwei sprachlichen Beilagen zum Gebrauch fuer abgehende Orientalisten herausgegeben von J. G. H. Reinsch (Breslau, 1826).

135.—­The Craft and Malice of Women.

The literature of this cluster of tales would require a volume in itself, and I cannot do better than refer to Mr. W. A. Clouston’s “Book of Sindibad” (8vo, Glasgow, 1884) for further information.  This book, though privately printed and limited to 300 copies, is not uncommon.

136.—­Judar and His Brethren.

An edition of this story, entitled “Histoire de Djouder le Pecheur,” edited by Prof.  Houdas, was published in the Bibliotheque Algerienne, at Algiers, in 1865.  It includes text and vocabulary.

174.—­The Ten Wazirs.

This collection of tales has also been frequently reprinted separately.  It is the Arabic version of the Persian Bakhtyar Nameh, of which Mr. Clouston issued a privately-printed edition in 1883.

The following versions have come under my notice:—­

1.  Nouveaux Contes Arabes, ou Supplement aux Mille et une Nuits suivies de Melanges de Litterature orientale et de lettres, par l’Abbe * * * (Paris, 1788, pp. 425).

This work consists chiefly of a series of tales selected and adapted from the Ten Vazirs.  “Written in Europe by a European, and its interest is found in the Terminal Essay, on the Mythologia Aesopica” (Burton in litt.).

2.  Historien om de ti Vezirer og hoorledes det gik dem med Kong Azad Bachts Soen, oversat af Arabisk ved R. Rask (8vo, Kobenhavn, 1829).

3.  Habicht, x. p. vi., refers to the following:—­Historia decem Vezirorum et filii regis Azad-Bacht insertis xiii. aliis narrationibus, in usum tironum Cahirensem, edid.  G. Knoes, Goettingen, 1807, 8vo.

He also states that Knoes published the commencement in 1805, in his “Disquisitio de fide Herodoti, quo perhibet Phoenices Africam navibus circumvectos esse cum recentiorum super hac re sententiis excussis.—­Adnexurn est specimen sermonis Arabici vulgaris s. initium historiae filii regis Azad-Bacht e Codice inedito.”

4.  Contes Arabes.  Histoire des dix Vizirs (Bakhtyar Nameh) Traduite et annotee par Rene Basset, Professeur A l’ecole superieure des lettres d’Algerie.  Paris, 1883.

Chavis and Cazotte (antea pp. 471, 472) included a version of the Ten Vazirs in their work; and others are referred to in our Table of Tales.

248.—­The Wise Heycar.

Subsequently to the publication of Gauttier’s edition of The Nights, Agoub republished his translation under the title of “Le sage Heycar, conte Arabe” (Paris, 1824).

A few tales published by Scott in Ouseley’s Oriental Collections have already been noticed (antea, pp. 434, 435).

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     Translations of cognate oriental romances illustrative
                         of the nights.

1.  Les Mille et Un Jours.  Contes Persanes.

“In imitation of the Arabian Nights, was composed a Persian collection entitled ‘Hazar Yek Ruz or the Thousand and One Days,’ of which Petis de la Croix published a French rendering [in 1710], which was done into English [by Dr. King, and published in 2 vols. (with the Turkish Tales=Forty Vezirs) as early as 1714; and subsequently] by Ambrose Phillips” (in 1738) (Clouston, in litt).  Here, and occasionally elsewhere, I have quoted from some MSS. notes on The Nights by Mr. W. A. Clouston, which Sir R. F. Burton kindly permitted me to inspect.  Mr. Clouston then quotes Cazotte’s Preface (not in my edition of the Thousand and One Days), according to which the book was written by the celebrated Dervis Mocles (Mukhlis), chief of the Sofis (Sufis?) of lspahan, founded upon certain Indian comedies.  Petis de la Croix was on friendly terms with Mukhlis, who allowed him to take a copy of his work in 1675, during his residence in Ispahan. (I find these statements confirmed in the Cabinet des Fees, xxxvii. pp. 266, 274, 278, and in Weber’s “Tales of the East,” i. pp. xxxvi., xxxxii.)

The framework of the story is the same as Nos. 9a and 152:  a Princess, who conceives an aversion to men from dreaming of the self-devotion of a doe, and the indifference and selfishness of a stag.  Mr. Clouston refers to Nakhshabi’s Tuti Nama (No. 33 of Kaderi’s abridgment, and 39 of India Office Ms. 2,573 whence he thinks it probable that Mukhlis may have taken the tale.) But the tale itself is repeated over and over again in many Arabic, Persian, and Turkish collections; in fact, there are few of commoner occurrence.

The tales are told by the nurse in order to overcome the aversion of the Princess to men.  They are as follows: 

Introduction and Conclusion:  Story of the Princess of Cashmir.
1.  Story of Aboulcassem Bafry.
2.  Story of King Ruzvanchad and the Princess Cheheristani.
     a.  Story of the young King of Thibet and the Princess of
          the Naimans.
     b.  Story of the Vazir Cavercha.
3.  Story of Couloufe and the Beautiful Dilara.
4.  Story of Prince Calaf and the Princess of China.
     a.  Story of Prince Fadlallah, son of Bei-Ortoc, King of
          Moussel=Nos. 184 and 251.
5.  Story of King Bedreddin-Lolo, and his Vazir Atalmulk,
     surnamed the Sad Vazir.
     a.  Story of Atalmulk and the Princess Zelica Beghume.
     b.  Story of Prince Seyf-el-Molouk.
     c.  Story of Malek and the Princess Chirine.
     d.  Story of King Hormuz, surnamed the King without
          trouble.
          da.  Story of Avicenna.
     e.  Story of the fair Arouya.  Cf.  Nos. 135q and 225.

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This work has many times been reprinted in France, where it holds a place only second to The Nights.

Sir R. F. Burton remarks, concerning the Persian and Turkish Tales of Petis de la Crois (the latter of which form part of the Forty Vazirs, No. 251), “Both are weak and servile imitations of Galland by an Orientalist who knew nothing of the East.  In one passage in the story of Fadlallah, we read of ’Le Sacrifice du Mont Arafate,’ which seems to have become a fixture in the European brain.  I found the work easy writing and exceedingly hard reading.”

The following tales require a passing notice:—­

1.  Story of Aboulcassem Bafry.—­A story of concealed treasure; it has also some resemblance to No. 31.

2.  Ruzvanchad and Cheheristani.—­Cheheristani is a jinniyah, who is pursued by the King, under the form of a white doe; marries him, and becomes the mother of Balkis, the Queen of Sheba.  She exacts a promise from him never to rebuke her for any of her actions:  he breaks it, and she leaves him for a time.

2a.  The Young King of Thibet.—­Two imposters obtain magic rings by which they can assume the shapes of other persons.

2a, b.  The Vazir Cavercha.—­This is one of Scott’s stories (No. 223 of our Table).  It goes back at least as far as the Ring of Polycrates.  It is the 8th Vezir’s Story in Mr. Gibbs’ Forty Vezirs (pp. 200-205).

4.  Prince Calaf.—­This story is well known, and is sometimes played as a comedy.  The Princess Turandot puts riddles to her suitors, and beheads them if they fail to answer.

5b.  Story of Prince Seyj-el-Molouk.—­This story is perhaps an older version than that which appears in The Nights (No. 154a).  It is placed long after the time of Solomon; Saad is devoured by ants (Weber (ii. p. 426) has substituted wild beasts!); and when Seyf enters the palace of Malika (=Daulet Khatoon), the jinni surprises them, and is overpowered by Seyf’s ring.  He then informs him of the death of Saad; and that Bedy al-Jernal was one of the mistresses of Solomon; and has also long been dead.

5b.  Malek and Chirine.—­Resembles No. 264; Malek passes himself off as the Prophet Mohammed; burns his box (not chair) with fireworks on his weddingday, and is thus prevented from ever returning to the Princess.

5f.  Adventures of Aboulfawaris.—­Romantic travels, resembling Nos. 132a and 133.

2.  Antar.—­This is the most famous of the Badawi romances.  It resembles No. 137 in several particulars, but is destitute of supernaturalism.  An English abridgment in 4 vols. was published in 1820; and the substance of vol. 1 had appeared, as a fragment, in the previous year, under the title of “Antar, a Bedoueen Romance translated from the Arabic by Terrick Hamilton, Esq., Oriental Secretary to the British Embassy at Constantinople.”  I have also seen vol. 1 of a French translation, published about 1862, and extending to the death of Shas.

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Lane (Modern Egyptians, ch. 21-23) describes several other Arab romances, which have not yet been translated; viz.  Aboo-Zeyd; Ez-Zahir, and Delhemeh.

3.  Glaive-des-COURONNES (Seif el-Tidjan) Roman traduit de l’Arabe.  Par M. le Dr. Perron (Paris, 1862).

A romantic story of Arab chivalry, less overloaded with supernaturalism than No. 137; but more supernatural than Antar.  The hero marries (among other wives) two jinniyahs of the posterity of Iblis.  In ch. 21 we have an account of a magical city much resembling the City of Brass (No. 134) and defended by similar talismans.

4.  Mehemet the Kurd, and other tales, from Eastern sources, by Charles Wells, Turkish Prizeman of King’s College, London, and Member of the Royal Asiatic Society (London, 1865).

The first story, taken from an Arabic Ms., is a narrative of a handsome simpleminded man, with whom Princesses fall in love, and who is raised to a mighty throne by their enchantments.  Some of the early incidents are not unlike those in the well-known German story of Lucky Hans (Hans im Glueck).  In one place there is an enchanted garden, where Princesses disport themselves in feather-dresses (as in No. 155, &c.), and where magic apples grow. (Note that apples are always held in extraordinary estimation in The Nights, cf.  Nos. 4 and 264.) Among the shorter stories we find No. 251h; a version of Nos. 9a and 152 (probably that referred to by Mr. Clouston as in the Tuti Nama); a story “The Prince Tailor,” resembling No. 251; No. 256, and one or two other tales not connected with The Nights. (Most of Wells’ shorter tales are evidently taken from the Forty Vezirs.)

5.  Recueil des contes populaires de la Kabylie du Djardjara, recueillis et traduits par J. Riviere (Paris, 1882).  I have not seen this book; but it can hardly fail to illustrate The Nights.

6.  The story of Jewad, Romance by ’Ali ’Aziz Efendi the Cretan.  Translated from the Turkish by E. J. W. Gibb, M.R.A.S., &c.  (Glasgow, 1884).

A modern Turkish work, written in A. H. 1211 (1796-97).  It contains the following tales:—­

The Story of Jew d.

1.  The Story of Eb -’Ali-Sin ;. 2.  The Story of Monia Em n. 3.  The Story of Ferah-N z, the daughter of the King of China.
     a.  The Story of Khoja ’Abdu-llah.
4.  The Story told by Jew d to Iklilu’l Mulk.
     a.  The Story of Sh b r and Hum .
     c.  The Story of Ghazanfer and R hila.
5.  The Story of Qara Khan.

The following deserve notice from our present point of view:—­

The Story of Jewad.—­Here we have magical illusions, as in Nos. 247 and 251a.  Such narratives are common in the East; Lane (Nights, ch. i., note 15) is inclined to attribute such illusions to the influence of drugs; but the narratives seem rather to point to so-called electro-biology, or the Scotch Glamour (such influences, as is notorious, acting far more strongly upon Orientals than upon Europeans).

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2.  The Story of Monia Em n corresponds to the Story of Naerdan and Guzulbec, in Caylus’ Oriental Tales.  A story of magical illusions.

3.  The Story of Ferah N z.—­Here again we have a variant of Nos. 9a and 152.

3a.  Khoja ’Abdu-ltab.—­This is a version of the Story of Aboulcassem in the Thousand and One Days.

4a.  Sh b r and Hum .—­The commencement of this story might have suggested to Southey the adventures of Thalaba and Oneida in the Gardens of Aloadin; the remainder appears to be taken from the Story of the young King of Thibet, in the Thousand and One Days.

5.  Qara Khan.—­The principal part of this story is borrowed from the First Voyage of Aboulfawaris in the Thousand and One Days; it has some resemblance to the story of the Mountain of Loadstone in No. 3c.

7.  FRUeCHTE des ASIATISCHEN Geist, von A. T. Hartmann. 2 vols., 12mo (Muenster) 1803.  A collection of anecdotes, &c., from various Eastern sources, Arabic, Indian, &c.  I think it not impossible that this may be the work referred to by Von Hammer in the preface to Zinserling’s “1001 Nacht” (p. xxvii. note) as “Asiatische Perleuschnur von Hartmann.”  At least I have not yet met with any work to which the scanty indication would apply better.

8.  Tuti-Nama.  I could hardly pass over the famous Persian and Turkish “Parrot-Book” quite without notice; but its tales have rarely any direct connection with those in The Nights, and I have not attempted to go into its very extensive bibliography.

DR. CLARKE’S M.S.

Dr. Edward Daniel Clarke has given an account of an important Ms. nearly agreeing with Bul. and Mac., which he purchased in Egypt, in his “Travels in various countries of Europe, Asia and Africa.”  Part ii.  Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land.  Section i. (1812) App. iii., pp. 701-704.  Unfortunately, this Ms. was afterwards so damaged by water during a shipwreck that it was rendered totally illegible.  The list of tales (as will be seen by the numbers in brackets, which correspond to our Table, as far as the identifications are safe) will show the approximate contents of the Ms., but the list (which is translated into German by Habicht in the preface to his vol. 12) was evidently compiled carelessly by a person nearly ignorant of Arabic, perhaps with the aid of an interpreter, Maltese, or other, and seems to abound with the most absurd mistakes.  The full text of Clarke’s App. iii. is as follows:  “List of One Hundred and Seventy-two Tales, contained in a manuscript copy of the ‘Alif Lila va Lilin,’ or ’Arabian Nights,’ as it was procured by the Author in Egypt.”

N.B.—­The Arabic words mentioned in this list are given as they appeared to be pronounced in English characters, and of course, therefore, adapted to English pronunciation.

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The number of tales amounts to 172, but one tale is supposed to occupy many nights in the recital, so that the whole number is divided into “One Thousand and One Nights.”  It rarely happens that any two copies of the Alif Lila va Lilin resemble each other.  This title is bestowed upon any collection of Eastern tales divided into the same number of parts.  The compilation depends upon the taste, the caprice, and the opportunities of the scribe, or the commands of his employer.  Certain popular stories are common to almost all copies of the Arabian Nights, but almost every collection contains some tales which are not found in every other.  Much depends upon the locality of the scribe.  The popular stories of Egypt will be found to differ materially from those of Constantinople.  A nephew of the late Wortley Montague, living in Rosetta, had a copy of the Arabian Nights, and upon comparing the two manuscripts it appeared that out of the 172 tales here enumerated only 37 were found in his manuscript.  In order to mark, therefore, the stories which were common to the two manuscripts, an asterisk has been prefixed to the thirty-seven tales which appeared in both copies.

    1.  The Bull and the Ass (a).
    2.  The Merchant and the Hobgoblin (1; Habicht translates Kobold!).
    3.  The Man and the Antelope (1a).
    4.  The Merchant and Two Dogs (1b).
    5.  The Old Man and the Mule (1c).
   6.  The History of the Hunters (2).
  7&8.  The History of King Unam and the Philosopher Reinan (2a).
   9.  History of King Sinbad and Elbase (2a, ab).
  10.  History of the Porter (3).
  11.  History of Karanduli.
   12.  Story of the Mirror.
   13.  Story of the Three Apples (4).
  14.  Of Shensheddin Mohammed, and his Brother Noureddin (5).
  15.  Of the Taylor, Little Hunchback, the Jew and the Christian (6).
   16.  The History of Noureddin Ali (7).
   17.  Ditto of Gaumayub, &c. (8).
  18.  The History of King Omar and Oman and his Children. (This tale
        is extremely long, and occupies much of the manuscript) (9).
  19.  Of the Lover and the Beloved (9a).
   20.  Story of the Peacock, the Goose, the Ass, the Horse, &c. (10).
   21.  Of the Pious Man (11).
   22.  Of the Pious Shepherd.
   23.  Of the Bird and the Turtle (12).
   24.  Of the Fox, the Hawk, &c. (13).
   25.  Of the Lord of the Beasts.
  26.  Of the Mouse and the Partridge (14).
   27.  Of the Raven and the Cat (15).
   28.  Of the Raven, the Fox, the Mouse, the Flea, &c., &c. (16).
   29.  Story of the Thief (18).
  30.  Of Aul Hassan and the Slave Shemsney Har (20).
  31.  Of Kamrasaman, &c. (21).
   32.  Of Naam and Nameto la (21a).
  33.  Of Aladin Abuskelmat (22).
  34.  Of Hallina Die (23).
   35.  Story of Maan Jaamnazida (24).
   36.  History of the Town Litta

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Page 231

IMITATIONS AND MISCELLANEOUS WORKS HAVING MORE OR LESS
CONNECTION WITH THE NIGHTS.

Page 232

The success of Galland’s work led to the appearance of numerous works more or less resembling it, chiefly in England and France.  Similar imitations, though now less numerous, have continued to appear down to the present day.

The most important of the older works of this class were published in French in the “Cabinet des Fees” (Amsterdam and Geneva, 1785-1793; 41 vols.); in English in “Tales of the East:  comprising the most popular Romances of Oriental origin, and the best imitations by European authors, with new translations and additional tales never before published, to which is prefixed an introductory dissertation, containing an account of each work and of its author or translator.  By Henry Weber, Esq.” (Edinburgh, 1812, 3 vols.); and in German in “Tausand und ein Tag.  Morgenlaendische Erzaehlungen aus dem Persisch, Turkisch und Arabisch, nach Petis de la Croix, Galland, Cardonne, Chavis und Cazotte, dem Grafen Caylus, und Anderer.  Uebersetzt von F. H. von der Hagen” (Prenzlau, 1827-1837, 11 vols.).  In the “Cabinet des Fees” I find a reference to an older collection of tales (partly Oriental) called the “Bibliotheque des Fees et des Genies,” by the Abbe de la Porte, which I have not seen, but which is, in part, incorporated in the “Cabinet.”  It formed only 2 vols. 12mo, and was published in 1765.

The examination of these tales is difficult, for they comprise several classes, not always clearly defined:—­

1.  Satires on The Nights themselves (e.g. the Tales of the
     Count of Hamilton).
2.  Satires in an Oriental garb (e.g.  Beckford’s Vathek). 3.  Moral tales in an Oriental garb (e.g.  Mrs. Sheridan’s
     Nourjahad).
4.  Fantastic tales with nothing Oriental about them but the
     name (e.g.  Stevenson’s New Arabian Nights).
5.  Imitations pure and simple (e.g.  G. Meredith’s Shaving of
     Shagpat).
6.  Imitations more or less founded on genuine Oriental sources
     (e.g. the Tales of the Comte de Caylus).
7.  Genuine Oriental Tales (e.g.  Mille et une Jours, translated
     by Petis de la Croix).

Most of the tales belonging to Class 7 and some of those belonging to Class 6 have been treated of in previous sections.  The remaining tales and imitations will generally need only a very brief notice; sometimes only the title and the indication of the class to which they belong.  We will begin with an enumeration of the Oriental contents of the Cabinet des Fees, adding W. i., ii. and iii. to show which are included in Weber’s “Tales of the East":—­

7-11. 1001 Nuits (W. 1). 12, 13.  Les Aventures d’Abdalla (W. iii). 14, 15. 1001 Jours (Persian tales, W. ii.). 16.  Histoire de la
          Sultane de Perse et des Visirs.  Contes Turcs (Turkish
          tales, W. 3==our 251).
16.  Les Voyages de Zulma dans le pays des Fees. 17, 18.  Contes de Bidpai. 19.  Contes Chinois, on les Aventures merveilleuses du Mandarin

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(Weber also includes, in his vol. ii.  Nos. 21a, 22, 32 and 37, after Caussin de Perceval.)

12, 13.  The Adventures of Abdallah, the Son of Hanif (Class 5 or 6).

Originally published in 1713; attributed to M. de Bignon, a young Abbe.  A series of romantic travels, in which Eastern and Western fiction is mixed; for instance, we have the story of the Nose-tree, which so far as I know has nothing Oriental about it.

16.  The Voyages of Zulma in Fairy Land (Class 4).

European fairy tales, with nothing Oriental about them but the names of persons and places.  The work is unfinished.

17, 18.  The Tales of Bidpai (translated by Galland) are Indian,
          and therefore need no further notice here.

19-23.  Chinese, Tartarian and Mogul Tales (Class 6).

Published in 1723, and later by Thomas Simon Gueulette.

Concerning these tales, Mr. Clouston remarks (in litt.):  “Much of the groundwork of these clever imitations of the Arabian Nights has been, directly or indirectly, derived from Eastern sources; for instance, in the so-called Tartar tales, the adventures of the Young Calender find parallels, (1) in the well-known Bidpai tale of the Brahman, the Sharpers and the Goat (Kalila and Dimna, Panchatantra, Hitopadesa, &c.) and (2) in the worldwide story of the Farmer who outwitted the Six Men (Indian Antiquary, vol. 3) of which there are many versions current in Europe, such as the Norse tale of Big Peter and Little Peter, the Danish tale of Great Claus and Little Claus; the German tale (Grimm) of the Little Farmer; the Irish tale of Little Fairly (Samuel Lover’s collection of Irish Fairy Legends and Stories); four Gaelic versions in Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands; a Kaba’il version in Riviere’s French collection (Contes populaires Kabylies); Uncle Capriano in Crane’s recently published Italian Popular Tales; and a Latin mediaeval version (written probably in the I **1th century) in which the hero is called ‘Unibos,’ because he had only one cow.”

25.  Oriental Tales (Class 6).

Mr. Clouston observes, “Appeared in 1749,[FN#472] and on the title page are said to have been translated from MSS. in the Royal French Library.  The stories are, however, largely the composition of De Caylus himself, and those elements of them which are traceable to Asiatic sources have been considerably Frenchified.”

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Nevertheless they are not without interest, and are nearly all of obviously Oriental origin.  One of the stories is a fantastic account of the Birth of Mahomet, including romantic travels largely borrowed from No. 132a.  Another story is a version of that of the Seven Sleepers.  Other noteworthy tales are the story of the Dervish Abounader, which resembles Nos. 193 and 216d; and the story of Naerdan and Guzulbec, which is a tale of magical illusions similar to that of Monia Emin, in the Turkish story of Jewad.

The Count de Caylus was the author of various European as well as Oriental fairy tales.  Of his Oriental collection, Sir R. F. Burton remarks:—­“The stories are not Eastern but Western fairy tales proper, with kings and queens, giants and dwarfs, and fairies, good and bad.  ‘Barbets’ act as body guard and army.  Written in good old style, and free language, such as, for instance, son petenlaire, with here and there a touch of salt humour, as in Rosanie ’Charmante reine (car on n’a jamais parle autrement a une reine, quel que laide qu’elle ait ete).’”

29, 30.  Tales of the Genii (Class 3).

Written in the middle of the last century by Rev. James Ridley, but purporting to be translated from the Persian of Horam, the son of Asmar, by Sir Charles Morell.

These tales have been reprinted many times; but it is very doubtful if they are based on any genuine Oriental sources.  The amount of Oriental colouring may be guessed from the story of Urad, who having consented to become the bride of a Sultan on condition that he should dismiss all his concubines, and make her his sole queen (like Harald Harfagr on his marriage with Ragnhilda), is presented to his loving subjects as their Sultana!

32.  Adventures of Zeloide and Amanzarifdine.  Indian Tales, by M.
     de Moncrif (Class 4).  Ordinary European Fairy Tales, with
     the scene laid in the East.

33.  Nourjahad, by Mrs. Sheridan (Class 3).

An unworthy favourite is reformed by a course of practical moral lessons conveyed by the Sultan through supposed supernatural agencies.  Mr. Clouston regards it as “one of the very best of the imitations of Eastern fiction.  The plot is ingeniously conceived and well wrought out, and the interest never flags throughout.”

34.  Pajon’s Oriental Tales (Class 5).  These demand no special
     notice.

In addition to the above, the following Oriental works are mentioned in the Cabinet des Fees, but not reprinted: 

   1.  Apologues orientaux, par l’abbe Blanchet.
   2.  Melanges de litterature orientale, par Cardonne. (Paris, 2
vols. 1770.)
   3.  Nerair et Meloe, roman oriental, par H. B. Deblanes (1759).
   4.  Contes orientaux, par M. de la Dixmerie.
   5.  Les Cinq Cent Matinees et une demie, contes Syriens, par le
chevalier de Duclos.
   6.  Abassai, conte oriental, par Mademoiselle Fault (ou
Fauques) 1752.

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This is the same as the Count de Caylus’ Oriental Tales.  Sir R. F. Burton has received the following memorandum, respecting a copy of an earlier edition of the same work:  “Contes Orientaux, tires des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque du Roy de France, ornes de figures en taille douce.  A la Haye, 1743, 2 vols. 12mo, polished calf gilt, gilt edges, arms in gilt on the sides.

“The Preface says, ’M.  Petit et M. Galland n’ont en aucune connaissance des manuscrits dont cet ouvrage est tire.’

“The Tales are from the MSS. and translations sent by those despatched by the French Ministers to Constantinople to learn Arabic, &c., and so become fit to act as Dragomans and Interpreters to the French Embassy.”

There is a copy of this work in the British Museum; it proves, as I expected, to be the series of tales subsequently attributed to the Count de Caylus.

In addition to the above, the following, of which I can only give the names, are mentioned in the Cabinet des Fees, but not reprinted:—­

 1.  Alma-Moulin, conte oriental, 1779.
 2.  Gengiskan, histoire orientale, par M. de St. M.
 3.  Almanzor et Zelira, conte arabe, par M. Bret. (1772). {From
     “les mercures.”}
 4.  Almerine et Zelima, ou les Dangers de la Beaute, conte
     orientale, 1773. {From “les mercures.”}
 5.  Les Ames, conte arabe, par M. B--------. {From “les
     mercures.”}
 6.  Balky, conte oriental, 1768. {From “les mercures.”}
 7.  Mirza, ou Is necessite d’etre utile (1774). {From “les
     mercures.”}
 8.  Zaman, histoire orientale, par M. B. {From “les mercures.”}
 9.  Anecdotes Orientales, par Mayol, 1752.12mo.
 10.  Contes tres moguls.
 11.  Foka ou les Metamorphoses, conte

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The remaining imitations, &c., known to me I shall place roughly in chronological order, premising that I fear the list must be very incomplete, and that I have met with very few except in English and French.

A.—­French

1.  Zadig, ou la Destinee, par Voltaire[FN#473] probably partakes of classes 2 and 6; said to be partly based on Gueulette’s “Soirees Bretonnes,” published in 1712.  The latter is included in Cabinet des Fees, Vol. 32.

2.  Vathek, an Arabian Tale, by William Beckford.  I include this book here because it was written and first published in French.  Its popularity was once very great, and it contains some effective passages, though it belongs to Class 2, and is rather a parody than an imitation of Oriental fiction.  The Caliph Vathek, after committing many crimes at the instance of his mother, the witch Carathis, in order to propitiate Eblis, finally starts on an expedition to Istakar.  On the way, he seduces Nouronihar, the beautiful daughter of the Emir Fakreddin, and carries her with him to the Palace of Eblis, where they am condemned to wander eternally, with their hearts surrounded with flames.

This idea (which is certainly not Oriental, so far as I know) took the fancy of Byron, who was a great admirer of Vathek, and he has mixed it with genuine Oriental features in a powerful passage in the Giaour, beginning: 

          “But thou, false infidel! shalt writhe
          Beneath avenging Monkir’s scythe;
          And from its torment ’scape alone
          To wander round lost Eblis’ throne;
          And fire unquenched, unquenchable,
          Around, within thy heart shall dwell;
          Nor ear can hear, nor tongue can tell
          The tortures of that inward hell!” &c.

How errors relative to Eastern matters are perpetuated is illustrated by the fact that I have seen these lines quoted in some modern philosophical work as descriptive of the hell in which the Mohammedans believe!

Southey, in Thalaba, b. 1., speaks of the Sarsar, “the Icy Wind of Death,” an expression which he probably borrowed from Vathek.

3.  The Count of Hamilton’s Fairy Tales.  Written shortly after
     the first publication of Galland’s work.  There is an English
     Translation among Bohn’s Extra Volumes.

4.  Les Mille et un Fadaises, par Cazotte.  Class 1.  I have not
     seen them.

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5.  La Mille et deuxieme Nuit, par Theophilus Gautier (Paris,
     1880).  Probably Class 1 or 2; I have not seen it.

B.—­English.

1.  The Vision of Mirza (Addison in the “Spectator").  Class 3.

2.  The Story of Amurath.  Class 3.  I do not know the author.  I read it in a juvenile book published about the end of last century, entitled the Pleasing Instructor.

3.  The Persian Tales of Inatulla of Delhi.  Published in 1768, by Colonel Alexander Dow at Edinburgh.  A French translation appeared at Amsterdam in two vols. and in Paris in one vol. (1769).  Class 6.  Chiefly founded on a wellknown Persian work, of which a more correct, though still incomplete, version was published in 3 vols. by Jonathan Scott in 1799, under the title of Bahar Danush, or Garden of Knowledge.

5.  Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson.  Class 3.  Too well known to need
     comment.

6.  Almoran and Hamet, by Dr. Hawksworth.  Class 3.  Very popular at the beginning of the present century, but now forgotten.

7.  Oriental Fairy Tales (London, 1853).  Class 4.  A series of very pretty fairy tales, by an anonymous author, in which the scene is laid in the East (especially Egypt).

8.  The Shaving of Shagpat, by George Meredith (London, 1855).  Class 5.  I prefer this to most other imitations of an Oriental tale.

9.  The Thousand and One Humbugs.  Classes 1 and 2.  Published in “Household Words,” vol. xi. (1855) pp. 265-267, 289-292, 313-316.  Parodies on Nos. 1, 195, 6d, and 6e,f.

10.  Eastern Tales, by many story-tellers.  Compiled and edited from ancient and modern authors by Mrs. Valentine, author of “Sea Fights and Land Battles,” &c. (Chandos Classics.)

In her preface, the authoress states that the tales “are gathered from both ancient and modern French, Italian and English sources.”

Contains 14 tales, some genuine, others imitations, One, “Alischar and Smaragdine,” is a genuine story of The Nights (No. 41 of our Table), and is probably taken from Trebutien.  Three tales, “Jalaladeen,” “Haschem,” and “Jussuf,” are Grimm’s imitations, taken probably from the composite English edition of 1847, and with the same illustrations.  “The Seven Sleepers” and the “Four Talismans” are from the Count de Caylus’ tales; “Halechalbe” and “Bohetzad” (our No. 174) are from Chavis and Cazotte; “The Enchanters” and “Urad” are from the “Tales of the Genii”; and “The Pantofles” is the well-known story of the miser Casem and his slippers, but I know not where it first appeared.  The remaining three tales are unknown to me, and as I have seen no volume of Italian Oriental tales, some, no doubt, are derived from the Italian sources of which the authoress spoke.  They are the following:  “The Prince and the Lions,” “The City of the Demons” (a Jewish story purporting to have been written in England) and “Sadik Beg.”

11.  New Arabian Nights, by R. L. Stevenson (London, 1882).

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12.  More New Arabian Nights.  The Dynamiter.  By R. L. Stevenson
     and Vander Grift (London, 1882).  Class 4.

Of these tales, Sir R. F. Burton observes, “The only visible connection with the old Nights is in the habit of seeking adventures under a disguise.  The method is to make the main idea possible and the details extravagant.  In another ’New Arabian Nights,’ the joint production of MM.  Brookfield, Besant and Pollock, the reverse treatment is affected, the leading idea being grotesque and impossible, and the details accurate and lifelike.”

C.—­German.

It is quite possible that there are many imitations in German, but I have not met with them.  I can only mention one or two tales by Hauff (the Caliph turned Stork, and the Adventures of Said); a story called “Ali and Gulhindi,” by what author I do not now remember; and some imitations said to be by Grimm, already mentioned in reference to the English composite edition of 1847.  They are all European fairy tales, in an Eastern dress.

CONCLUSION.

Among books specially interesting to the student of The Nights, I may mention Weil’s “Biblische Legenden der Muselmaenner, aus arabischen Quellen zusammengetragen, und mit juedischen Sagen verglichen” (Frankfort-on-Main, 1845).  An anonymous English translation appeared in 1846 under the title of “The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud,” and it also formed one of the sources from which the Rev. S. Baring-Gould compiled his “Legends of Old Testament Characters” (2 vols., 1871).  The late Prof.  Palmer’s “Life of Haroun Al-Raschid” (London, 1881), is not much more than a brief popular sketch.  The references to The Nights in English and other European literatures are innumerable; but I cannot refrain from quoting Mark Twain’s identification of Henry the Eighth with Shahryar (Huckleberry Finn, chap. xxiii).

“My, you ought to have seen old Henry the Eighth when he was in bloom.  He was a blossom.  He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning.  And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs.  “Fetch up Nell Gwynn,” he says.  They fetch her up.  Next morning, “Chop off her head.”  And they chop it off.  “Fetch up Jane Shore,” he says; and up she comes.  Next morning, “Chop off her head.”  And they chop it off.  “Ring up Fair Rosamun.”  Fair Rosamun answers the bell.  Next morning, “Chop off her head.”  And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night, and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book—­which was a good name, and stated the case.  You don’t know kings, Jim, but I know them, and this old rip of ourn is one of the cleanest I’ve struck in history.  Well, Henry, he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country.  How does he do it—­give notice?—­give the country a show?  No. 

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COMPARATIVE TABLE OF THE TALES IN THE PRINCIPAL
     EDITIONS OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, viz.:—­

 1.  Galland.
 2.  Caussin de Perceval.
 3.  Gauttier.
 4.  Scott’s MS. (Wortley Montague).
 5.  Ditto (Anderson; marked A).
 6.  Scott’s Arabian Nights.
 7.  Scott’s Tales and Anecdotes (marked A).
 8.  Von Hammer’s MS.
 9.  Zinserling.
10.  Lamb.
11.  Trebutien.
12.  Bul. text.
13.  Lane.
14.  Bres. text.
15.  Habicht.
16.  Weil.
17.  Mac. text.
18.  Torrens.
19.  Payne.
20.  Payne’s Tales from the Arabic (marked I. II.  III.) 21.  Calc. 22.  Burton.

As nearly all editions of The Nights are in several volumes, the volumes are indicated throughout, except in the case of some of the texts.  Only those tales in No. 5, not included in No. 4, are here indicated in the same column.  All tales which there is good reason to believe do not belong to the genuine Nights are marked with an asterisk.

The blank column may be used to enter the contents of some other
edition.
                                                        | Galland. |"Bul.”  Text.  Burton.
                                                        | |Caussin de Perceval. | |Lane. |
                                                        | | |Gauttier. | | |"Bres.”  Text. |
                                                        | | | |Scott’s MS. | | | |Habicht. |
                                                        | | | | |Scott. | | | | |Weil. |
                                                        | | | | | |Von Hammer’s MS. | | | | |"Mac.”  Text |
                                                        | | | | | | |Zinserling.| | | | | | |Torrens. |
                                                        | | | | | | | |Lamb. | | | | | | | |Payne. |
                                                        | | | | | | | | |Trebutien | | | | | | |Calc. |
                                                       [| 1.| 2.| 3.|4,5|6,7| 8.| 9.|10.|11.|12.|13.|14.|15.|16.|17.|18.|19.|20.| |22.]

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . | — |...|...| 1 | — |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + |...| 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
Story of King Shahryar and his brother . . . | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
a.  Tale of the Bull and the Ass . . . . | 1 | 1 | 1 | A | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
1.  Tale of the Trader and the Jinni . . . . | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
a.  The First Shaykh’s Story . . . . . | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
b.  The Second Shaykh’s Story . . . . . | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
c.  The Third Shaykh’s Story . . . . . | — | — |...| 1 | — |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | — |...| 1
2.  The Fisherman and the Jinni . . . . . | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
a.  Tale of the Wazir and the Sage Duban . . | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
ab.  Story of King Sindibad and his Falcon . | — | — |...| ? | — |VHa|...|...|...| + | — | — | — | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | — |...| 1
ac.  Tale of the Husband and the Parrot . . | 1 | 1 | 1 | ? | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| — | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | — | — | — | + |...| 1
ad.  Tale of the Prince and the Ogress . . | 1 | 1 | 1 | ? | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
b.  Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince . . . . | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
3.  The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad . . | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 2 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
a.  The First Kalandar’s Tale . . . . . | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 2 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
b.  The Second Kalandar’s Tale . . . . . | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 2 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
ba.  Tale of the Envier and the Envied . . | 2 | 1 | 1 | ? | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| — | 1 | + | 2 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
c.  The Third Kalandar’s Tale . . . . . | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 2 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
d.  The Eldest Lady’s Tale . . . . . . | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 2 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
e.  Tale of the Portress . . . . . . | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 2 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | — |...| 1
Conclusion of the Story of the Porter and
three Ladies . . . . . . . . | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 2 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1
4.  Tale of the Three Apples . . . . . . | 3 | 2 | 2 |...| 2 |VHa|...|...|...| + | 1 | + | 3 | 1 | + | 1 | 1 | + |...| 1

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      VHa (Full contents from Introd. to No. 4 not given:  3e and 4 are apparently wanting.)
      VHb (Nos. 10-19 represented by 7 Fables.)
      VHc (Would include subordinate tales.)

Page 264

N.B.—­In using this Table, some allowance must be made for differences in the titles of many of the tales in different editions.  For the contents of the printed text, I have followed the lists in Mr. Payne’s “Tales from the Arabic,” vol. iii.

And here I end this long volume with repeating in other words and other tongue what was said in “L’Envoi":—­

Hide thou whatever here is found of fault;
And laud The Faultless and His might exalt!

After which I have only to make my bow and to say

“Salam.”

Arabian Nights, Volume 10
Footnotes

[FN#1] Arab.  “Zarabin” (pl. of zarbun), lit. slaves’ shoes or sandals (see vol. iii. p. 336) the chaussure worn by Mamelukes.  Here the word is used in its modern sense of stout shoes or walking boots.

[FN#2] The popular word means goodness, etc.

[FN#3] Dozy translates “’Urrah"=Une Megere:  Lane terms it a “vulgar word signifying a wicked, mischievous shrew.”  But it is the fem. form of ’Urr=dung; not a bad name for a daughter of Billingsgate.

[FN#4] i.e. black like the book of her actions which would be shown to her on Doomsday.

[FN#5] The “Kunafah” (vermicelli-cake) is a favourite dish of wheaten flour, worked somewhat finer than our vermicelli, fried with samn (butter melted and clarified) and sweetened with honey or sugar.  See vol. v. 300.

[FN#6] i.e.  Will send us aid.  The Shrew’s rejoinder is highly impious in Moslem opinion.

[FN#7] Arab.  Asal Katr; “a fine kind of black honey, treacle” says Lane; but it is afterwards called cane-honey (’Asal Kasab).  I have never heard it applied to “the syrup which exudes from ripe dates, when hung up.”

[FN#8] Arab. “’Aysh,” lit.=that on which man lives:  “Khubz” being the more popular term.  “Hubz and Joobn” is well known at Malta.

[FN#9] Insinuating that he had better make peace with his wife by knowing her carnally.  It suggests the story of the Irishman who brought over to the holy Catholic Church three several Protestant wives, but failed with the fourth on account of the decline of his “Convarter.”

[FN#10] Arab.  “Asal Kasab,” i.e.  Sugar, possibly made from sorgho-stalks Holcus sorghum of which I made syrup in Central Africa.

[FN#11] For this unpleasant euphemy see vol. iv. 215.

[FN#12] This is a true picture of the leniency with which women were treated in the Kazi’s court at Cairo; and the effect was simply deplorable.  I have noted that matters have grown even worse since the English occupation, for history repeats herself; and the same was the case in Afghanistan and in Sind.  We govern too much in these matters, which should be directed not changed, and too little in other things, especially in exacting respect for the conquerors from the conquered.

[FN#13] Arab.  “Bab al-’Ali"=the high gate or Sublime Porte; here used of the Chief Kazi’s court:  the phrase is a descendant of the Coptic “Per-ao” whence “Pharaoh.”

Page 265

[FN#14] “Abu Tabak,” in Cairene slang, is an officer who arrests by order of the Kazi and means “Father of whipping” (=tabaka, a low word for beating, thrashing, whopping) because he does his duty with all possible violence in terrorem.

[FN#15] Bab al-Nasr the Eastern or Desert Gate:  see vol. vi. 234.

[FN#16] This is a mosque outside the great gate built by Al-Malik al-’Adil Tuman Bey in A.H. 906 (=1501).  The date is not worthy of much remark for these names are often inserted by the scribe—­for which see Terminal Essay.

[FN#17] Arab. “’Amir” lit.=one who inhabiteth, a peopler; here used in technical sense.  As has been seen, ruins and impure places such as privies and Hammam-baths are the favourite homes of the Jinn.  The fire-drake in the text was summoned by the Cobbler’s exclamation and even Marids at times do a kindly action.

[FN#18] The style is modern Cairene jargon.

[FN#19] Purses or gold pieces see vol. ix. 313.

[FN#20] i.e.  I am a Cairene.

[FN#21] Arab.  “Darb al-Ahmar,” a street still existing near to and outside the noble Bab Zuwaylah, for which see vol. i. 269.

[FN#22] Arab. “’Attar,” perfume-seller and druggist; the word is connected with our “Ottar” (’Atr).

[FN#23] Arab.  “Mudarris” lit.=one who gives lessons or lectures (dars) and pop. applied to a professor in a collegiate mosque like Al-Azhar of Cairo.

[FN#24] This thoroughly dramatic scene is told with a charming naivete.  No wonder that The Nights has been made the basis of a national theatre amongst the Turks.

[FN#25] Arab.  “Taysh” lit.=vertigo, swimming of head.

[FN#26] Here Trebutien (iii. 265) reads “la ville de Khaitan (so the Mac.  Edit. iv. 708) capital du royaume de Sohatan.”  Ikhtiyan Lane suggests to be fictitious:  Khatan is a district of Tartary east of Kashgar, so called by Sadik al-Isfahani p. 24.

[FN#27] This is a true picture of the tact and savoir faire of the Cairenes.  It was a study to see how, under the late Khedive they managed to take precedence of Europeans who found themselves in the background before they knew it.  For instance, every Bey, whose degree is that of a Colonel was made an “Excellency” and ranked accordingly at Court whilst his father, some poor Fellah, was ploughing the ground.  Tanfik Pasha began his ill-omened rule by always placing natives close to him in the place of honour, addressing them first and otherwise snubbing Europeans who, when English, were often too obtuse to notice the petty insults lavished upon them.

[FN#28] Arab.  “Kathir” (pron.  Katir)=much:  here used in its slang sense, “no end.”

[FN#29] i.e.  “May the Lord soon make thee able to repay me; but meanwhile I give it to thee for thy own free use.”

[FN#30] Punning upon his name.  Much might be written upon the significance of names as ominous of good and evil; but the subject is far too extensive for a footnote.

Page 266

[FN#31] Lane translates “Anisa-kum” by “he hath delighted you by his arrival”; Mr. Payne “I commend him to you.”

[FN#32] Arab.  “Faturat,"=light food for the early breakfast of which the “Fatirah"-cake was a favourite item.  See vol. i. 300.

[FN#33] A dark red dye (Lane).

[FN#34] Arab.  “Jadid,” see vol. viii. 121.

[FN#35] Both the texts read thus, but the reading has little sense.  Ma’aruf probably would say, “I fear that my loads will be long coming.”

[FN#36] One of the many formulas of polite refusal.

[FN#37] Each bazar, in a large city like Damascus, has its tall and heavy wooden doors which are locked every evening and opened in the morning by the Ghafir or guard.  The “silver key,” however, always lets one in.

[FN#38] Arab.  “Wa la Kabbata hamiyah,” a Cairene vulgarism meaning, “There came nothing to profit him nor to rid the people of him.”

[FN#39] Arab.  “Kammir,” i.e. brown it before the fire, toast it.

[FN#40] It is insinuated that he had lied till he himself believed the lie to be truth—­not an uncommon process, I may remark.

[FN#41] Arab.  “Rijal"=the Men, equivalent to the Walis, Saints or Santons; with perhaps an allusion to the Rijal al-Ghayb, the Invisible Controls concerning whom I have quoted Herklots in vol. ii. 211.

[FN#42] A saying attributed to Al-Hariri (Lane).  It is good enough to be his:  the Persians say, “Cut not down the tree thou plantedst,” and the idea is universal throughout the East.

[FN#43] A quotation from Al-Hariri (Ass. of the Badawin).  Ash’ab (ob.  A.H. 54), a Medinite servant of Caliph Osman, was proverbial for greed and sanguine, Micawber-like expectation of “windfalls.”  The Scholiast Al-Sharishi (of Xeres) describes him in Theophrastic style.  He never saw a man put hand to pocket without expecting a present, or a funeral go by without hoping for a legacy, or a bridal procession without preparing his own house, hoping they might bring the bride to him by mistake. * * * When asked if he knew aught greedier than himself he said “Yes; a sheep I once kept upon my terrace-roof seeing a rainbow mistook it for a rope of hay and jumping to seize it broke its neck!” Hence “Ash’ab’s sheep” became a by-word (Preston tells the tale in full, p. 288).

[FN#44] i.e.  “Show a miser money and hold him back, if you can.”

[FN#45] He wants L40,000 to begin with.

[FN#46] i.e.  Arab.  “Sabihat al-’urs” the morning after the wedding.  See vol. i. 269.

[FN#47] Another sign of modern composition as in Kamar al-Zaman II.

[FN#48] Arab.  “Al-Jink” (from Turk.) are boys and youths mostly Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Turks, who dress in woman’s dress with long hair braided.  Lane (M.  E. chapts. xix. and xxv.) gives same account of the customs of the “Gink” (as the Egyptians call them) but cannot enter into details concerning these catamites.  Respectable Moslems often employ them to dance at festivals in preference to the Ghawazi-women, a freak of Mohammedan decorum.  When they grow old they often preserve their costume, and a glance at them makes a European’s blood run cold.

Page 267

[FN#49] Lane translates this, “May Allah and the Rijal retaliate upon thy temple!”

[FN#50] Arab.  “Ya aba ’l-lithamayn,” addressed to his member.  Lathm the root means kissing or breaking; so he would say, “O thou who canst take her maidenhead whilst my tongue does away with the virginity of her mouth.”  “He breached the citadel” (which is usually square) “in its four corners” signifying that he utterly broke it down.

[FN#51] A mystery to the Author of Proverbs (xxx. 18-19),

There be three things which are too wondrous for me,
The way of an eagle in the air;
The way of a snake upon a rock;
And the way of a man with a maid.

[FN#52] Several women have described the pain to me as much resembling the drawing of a tooth.

[FN#53] As we should say, “play fast and loose.”

[FN#54] Arab.  “Nahi-ka” lit.=thy prohibition but idiomatically used=let it suffice thee!

[FN#55] A character-sketch like that of Princess Dunya makes ample amends for a book full of abuse of women.  And yet the superficial say that none of the characters have much personal individuality.

[FN#56] This is indeed one of the touches of nature which makes all the world kin.

[FN#57] As we are in Tartary “Arabs” here means plundering nomades, like the Persian “Iliyat” and other shepherd races.

[FN#58] The very cruelty of love which hates nothing so much as a rejected lover.  The Princess, be it noted, is not supposed to be merely romancing, but speaking with the second sight, the clairvoyance, of perfect affection.  Men seem to know very little upon this subject, though every one has at times been more or less startled by the abnormal introvision and divination of things hidden which are the property and prerogative of perfect love.

[FN#59] The name of the Princess meaning “The World,” not unusual amongst Moslem women.

[FN#60] Another pun upon his name, “Ma’aruf.”

[FN#61] Arab.  “Naka,” the mound of pure sand which delights the eye of the Badawi leaving a town.  See vol. i. 217, for the lines and explanation in Night cmlxiv. vol. ix. p. 250.

[FN#62] Euphemistic:  “I will soon fetch thee food.”  To say this bluntly might have brought misfortune.

[FN#63] Arab.  “Kafr"=a village in Egypt and Syria e.g.  Capernaum (Kafr Nahum).

[FN#64] He has all the bonhomie of the Cairene and will do a kindness whenever he can.

[FN#65] i.e. the Father of Prosperities:  pron.  Aboosa’adat; as in the Tale of Hasan of Bassorah.

[FN#66] Koran lxxxix.  “The Daybreak” which also mentions Thamud and Pharaoh.

[FN#67] In Egypt the cheapest and poorest of food, never seen at a hotel table d’hote.

[FN#68] The beautiful girls who guard ensorcelled hoards:  See vol. vi. 109.

[FN#69] Arab.  “Asakir,” the ornaments of litters, which are either plain balls of metal or tapering cones based on crescents or on balls and crescents.  See in Lane (M.  E. chapt. xxiv.) the sketch of the Mahmal.

Page 268

[FN#70] Arab.  “Amm"=father’s brother, courteously used for “father-in-law,” which suggests having slept with his daughter, and which is indecent in writing.  Thus by a pleasant fiction the husband represents himself as having married his first cousin.

[FN#71] i.e. a calamity to the enemy:  see vol. ii. 87 and passim.

[FN#72] Both texts read “Asad” (lion) and Lane accepts it:  there is no reason to change it for “Hasid” (Envier), the Lion being the Sultan of the Beasts and the most majestic.

[FN#73] The Cairene knew his fellow Cairene and was not to be taken in by him.

[FN#74] Arab.  “Hizam”:  Lane reads “Khizam"=a nose-ring for which see appendix to Lane’s M. E. The untrained European eye dislikes these decorations and there is certainly no beauty in the hoops which Hindu women insert through the nostrils, camel-fashion, as if to receive the cord-acting bridle.  But a drop-pearl hanging to the septum is at least as pretty as the heavy pendants by which some European women lengthen their ears.

[FN#75] Arab.  “Shamta,” one of the many names of wine, the “speckled” alluding to the bubbles which dance upon the freshly filled cup.

[FN#76] i.e. in the cask.  These “merry quips” strongly suggest the dismal toasts of our not remote ancestors.

[FN#77] Arab.  “A’laj” plur. of “’Ilj” and rendered by Lane “the stout foreign infidels.”  The next line alludes to the cupbearer who was generally a slave and a non-Moslem.

[FN#78] As if it were a bride.  See vol. vii. 198.  The stars of Jauza (Gemini) are the cupbearer’s eyes.

[FN#79] i.e. light-coloured wine.

[FN#80] The usual homage to youth and beauty.

[FN#81] Alluding to the cup.

[FN#82] Here Abu Nowas whose name always ushers in some abomination alluded to the “Ghulamiyah” or girl dressed like boy to act cupbearer.  Civilisation has everywhere the same devices and the Bordels of London and Paris do not ignore the “she-boy,” who often opens the door.

[FN#83] Abdallah ibn al-Mu’tazz, son of Al-Mu’tazz bi ’llah, the 13th Abbaside, and great-great-grandson of Harun al-Rashid.  He was one of the most renowned poets of the third century (A.H.) and died A.D. 908, strangled by the partisans of his nephew Al-Muktadir bi ’llah, 18th Abbaside.

[FN#84] Jazirat ibn Omar, an island and town on the Tigris north of Mosul.  “Some versions of the poem, from which these verses are quoted, substitute El-Mutireh, a village near Samara (a town on the Tigris, 60 miles north of Baghdad), for El-Jezireh, i.e.  Jeziret ibn Omar.” (Payne.)

[FN#85] The Convent of Abdun on the east bank of the Tigris opposite the Jezirah was so called from a statesman who caused it to be built.  For a variant of these lines see Ibn Khallikan, vol. ii. 42; here we miss “the shady groves of Al-Matirah.”

[FN#86] Arab.  “Ghurrah” the white blaze on a horse’s brow.  In Ibn Khallikan the bird is the lark.

Page 269

[FN#87] Arab.  “Tay’i"=thirsty used with Jay’i=hungry.

[FN#88] Lit.  “Kohl’d with Ghunj” for which we have no better word than “coquetry.”  But see vol. v. 80.  It corresponds with the Latin crissare for women and cevere for men.

[FN#89] i.e. gold-coloured wine, as the Vino d’Oro.

[FN#90] Compare the charming song of Abu Mijan translated from the German of Dr. Weil in Bohn’s Edit. of Ockley (p. 149),

When the Death-angel cometh mine eyes to close,
Dig my grave ’mid the vines on the hill’s fair side;
For though deep in earth may my bones repose,
The juice of the grape shall their food provide. 
Ah, bury me not in a barren land,
Or Death will appear to me dread and drear! 
While fearless I’ll wait what he hath in hand I
An the scent of the vineyard my spirit cheer.

The glorious old drinker!

[FN#91] Arab.  “Rub’a al-Kharab” in Ibn al-Wardi Central Africa south of the Nile-sources, one of the richest regions in the world.  Here it prob. alludes to the Rub’a al-Khali or Great Arabian Desert:  for which see Night dclxxvi.  In rhetoric it is opposed to the “Rub’a Maskun,” or populated fourth of the world, the rest being held to be ocean.

[FN#92] This is the noble resignation of the Moslem.  What a dialogue there would have been in a European book between man and devil!

[FN#93] Arab.  “Al-’iddah” the period of four months and ten days which must elapse before she could legally marry again.  But this was a palpable wile:  she was not sure of her husband’s death and he had not divorced her; so that although a “grass widow,” a “Strohwitwe” as the Germans say, she could not wed again either with or without interval.

[FN#94] Here the silence is of cowardice and the passage is a fling at the “timeserving” of the Olema, a favourite theme, like “banging the bishops” amongst certain Westerns.

[FN#95] Arab.  “Umm al-raas,” the poll, crown of the head, here the place where a calamity coming down from heaven would first alight.

[FN#96] From Al-Hariri (Lane):  the lines are excellent.

[FN#97] When the charming Princess is so ready at the voie de faits, the reader will understand how common is such energetic action among women of lower degree.  The “fair sex” in Egypt has a horrible way of murdering men, especially husbands, by tying them down and tearing out the testicles.  See Lane M. E. chapt. xiii.

[FN#98] Arab.  “Sijn al-Ghazab,” the dungeons appropriated to the worst of criminals where they suffer penalties far worse than hanging or guillotining.

[FN#99] According to some modern Moslems Munkar and Nakir visit the graves of Infidels (non-Moslems) and Bashshir and Mubashshir ("Givers of glad tidings”) those of Mohammedans.  Petis de la Croix (Les Mille et un Jours vol. iii. 258) speaks of the “Zoubanya,” black angels who torture the damned under their chief Dabilah.

Page 270

[FN#100] Very simple and pathetic is this short sketch of the noble-minded Princess’s death.

[FN#101] In sign of dismissal (vol. iv. 62) I have noted that “throwing the kerchief” is not an Eastern practice:  the idea probably arose from the Oriental practice of sending presents in richly embroidered napkins and kerchiefs.

[FN#102] Curious to say both Lane and Payne omit this passage which appears in both texts (Mac. and Bul.).  The object is evidently to prepare the reader for the ending by reverting to the beginning of the tale; and its prolixity has its effect as in the old Romances of Chivalry from Amadis of Ghaul to the Seven Champions of Christendom.  If it provoke impatience, it also heightens expectation; “it is like the long elm-avenues of our forefathers; we wish ourselves at the end; but we know that at the end there is something great.”

[FN#103] Arab. “ala malakay bayti ’l-rahah;” on the two slabs at whose union are the round hole and longitudinal slit.  See vol. i. 221.

[FN#104] Here the exclamation wards off the Evil Eye from the Sword and the wearer:  Mr. Payne notes, “The old English exclamation ’Cock’s ‘ill!’ (i.e., God’s will, thus corrupted for the purpose of evading the statute of 3 Jac. i. against profane swearing) exactly corresponds to the Arabic”—­with a difference, I add.

[FN#105] Arab.  “Mustahakk"=deserving (Lane) or worth (Payne) the cutting.

[FN#106] Arab.  “Mashhad” the same as “Shahid"=the upright stones at the head and foot of the grave.  Lane mistranslates, “Made for her a funeral procession.”

[FN#107] These lines have occurred before.  I quote Lane.

[FN#108] There is nothing strange in such sudden elevations amongst Moslems and even in Europe we still see them occasionally.  The family in the East, however humble, is a model and miniature of the state, and learning is not always necessary to wisdom.

[FN#109] Arab.  “Farid” which may also mean “union-pearl.”

[FN#110] Trebutien (iii. 497) cannot deny himself the pleasure of a French touch making the King reply, “C’est assez; qu’on lui coupe la tete, car ces dernieres histoires surtout m’ont cause un ennui mortel.”  This reading is found in some of the MSS.

[FN#111] After this I borrow from the Bresl.  Edit. inserting passages from the Mac.  Edit.

[FN#112] i.e. whom he intended to marry with regal ceremony.

[FN#113] The use of coloured powders in sign of holiday-making is not obsolete in India.  See Herklots for the use of “Huldee” (Haldi) or turmeric-powder, pp. 64-65.

[FN#114] Many Moslem families insist upon this before giving their girls in marriage, and the practice is still popular amongst many Mediterranean peoples.

[FN#115] i.e.  Sumatran.

[FN#116] i.e.  Alexander, according to the Arabs; see vol. v. 252.

[FN#117] These lines are in vol. i. 217.

Page 271

[FN#118] I repeat the lines from vol. i. 218.

[FN#119] All these coquetries require as much inventiveness as a cotillon; the text alludes to fastening the bride’s tresses across her mouth giving her the semblance of beard and mustachios.

[FN#120] Repeated from vol. i. 218.

[FN#121] Repeated from vol. i. 218.

[FN#122] See vol. i. 219.

[FN#123] Arab.  Sawad=the blackness of the hair.

[FN#124] Because Easterns build, but never repair.

[FN#125]i.e.  God only knows if it be true or not.

[FN#126] Ouseley’s Orient.  Collect.  I, vii.

[FN#127] This three-fold distribution occurred to me many years ago and when far beyond reach of literary authorities, I was, therefore, much pleased to find the subjoined three-fold classification with minor details made by Baron von Hammer-Purgstall (Preface to Contes Inedits etc. of G. S. Trebutien, Paris, mdcccxxviii.) (1) The older stories which serve as a base to the collection, such as the Ten Wazirs ("Malice of Women”) and Voyages of Sindbad (?) which may date from the days of Mahommed.  These are distributed into two sub-classes; (a) the marvellous and purely imaginative (e.g.  Jamasp and the Serpent Queen) and (b) the realistic mixed with instructive fables and moral instances. (2) The stories and anecdotes peculiarly Arab, relating to the Caliphs and especially to Al- Rashid; and (3) The tales of Egyptian provenance, which mostly date from the times of the puissant “Aaron the Orthodox.”  Mr. John Payne (Villon Translation vol. ix. pp. 367-73) distributes the stories roughly under five chief heads as follows:  (1) Histories or long Romances, as King Omar bin Al-Nu’man (2) Anecdotes or short stories dealing with historical personages and with incidents and adventures belonging to the every-day life of the period to which they refer:  e.g. those concerning Al-Rashid and Hatim of Tayy. (3) Romances and romantic fictions comprising three different kinds of tales; (a) purely romantic and supernatural; (b) fictions and nouvelles with or without a basis and background of historical fact and (c) Contes fantastiques. (4) Fables and Apologues; and (5) Tales proper, as that of Tawaddud.

[FN#128] Journal Asiatique (Paris, Dondoy-Dupre, 1826) “Sur l’origine des Mille et une Nuits.”

[FN#129] Baron von Hammer-Purgstall’s chateau is near Styrian Graz, and, when I last saw his library, it had been left as it was at his death.

[FN#130] At least, in Trebutien’s Preface, pp. xxx.-xxxi., reprinted from the Journ.  Asiat.  August, 1839:  for corrections see De Sacy’s “Memoire.” p. 39.

[FN#131] Vol. iv. pp. 89-90, Paris mdccclxv.  Trebutien quotes, chapt. lii. (for lxviii.), one of Von Hammer’s manifold inaccuracies.

[FN#132] Alluding to Iram the Many-columned, etc.

[FN#133] In Trebutien “Siha,” for which the Editor of the Journ.  Asiat. and De Sacy rightly read “Sabil-ha.”

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[FN#134] For this some MSS. have “Fahlawiyah” = Pehlevi

[FN#135] i.e.  Lower Roman, Grecian, of Asia Minor, etc., the word is still applied throughout Marocco, Algiers and Northern Africa to Europeans in general.

[FN#136] De Sacy (Dissertation prefixed to the Bourdin Edition) notices the “thousand and one,” and in his Memoire “a thousand:”  Von Hammer’s MS. reads a thousand, and the French translation a thousand and one.  Evidently no stress can be laid upon the numerals.

[FN#137] These names are noticed in my vol. i. 14, and vol. ii. 3.  According to De Sacy some MSS. read “History of the Wazir and his Daughters.”

[FN#138] Lane (iii. 735) has Wizreh or Wardeh which guide us to Wird Khan, the hero of the tale.  Von Hammer’s MS. prefers Djilkand (Jilkand), whence probably the Isegil or Isegild of Langles (1814), and the Tseqyl of De Sacy (1833).  The mention of “Simas” (Lane’s Shemmas) identifies it with “King Jali’ad of Hind,” etc. (Night dcccxcix.) Writing in A.D. 961 Hamzah Isfahani couples with the libri Sindbad and Schimas, the libri Baruc and Barsinas, four nouvelles out of nearly seventy.  See also Al-Makri’zi’s Khitat or Topography (ii. 485) for a notice of the Thousand or Thousand and one Nights.

[FN#139] alluding to the “Seven Wazirs” alias “The Malice of Women” (Night dlxxviii.), which Von Hammer and many others have carelessly confounded with Sindbad the Seaman We find that two tales once separate have now been incorporated with The Nights, and this suggests the manner of its composition by accretion.

[FN#140] Arabised by a most “elegant” stylist, Abdullah ibn al-Mukaffa (the shrivelled), a Persian Guebre named Roz-bih (Day good), who islamised and was barbarously put to death in A.H. 158 (= 775) by command of the Caliph al-Mansur (Al-Siyuti p. 277).  “He also translated from Pehlevi the book entitled Sekiseran, containing the annals of Isfandiyar, the death of Rustam, and other episodes of old Persic history,” says Al-Mas’udi chapt. xxi.  See also Ibn Khallikan (1, 43) who dates the murder in A.H. 142 (= 759-60).

[FN#141] “Notice sur Le Schah-namah de Firdoussi,” a posthumous publication of M. de Wallenbourg, Vienna, 1810, by M. A. de Bianchi.  In sect. iii.  I shall quote another passage of Al-Mas’udi (viii. 175) in which I find a distinct allusion to the “Gaboriaudetective tales” of The Nights.

[FN#142] Here Von Hammer shows his customary inexactitude.  As we learn from Ibn Khallikan (Fr. Tr.  I. 630), the author’s name was Abu al-Faraj Mohammed ibn Is’hak pop. known as Ibn Ali Ya’kub al-Warrak, the bibliographe, librarian, copyist.  It was published (vol. i Leipzig, 1871) under the editorship of G. Fluegel, J. Roediger, and A. Mueller.

[FN#143] See also the Journ.  Asiat., August, 1839, and Lane iii. 736-37

[FN#144] Called “Afsanah” by Al-Mas’udi, both words having the same sense = tale story, parable, “facetiae.”  Moslem fanaticism renders it by the Arab “Khurafah” = silly fables, and in Hindostan it = a jest:  “Bat-ki bat, khurafat-ki khurafat” (a word for a word, a joke for a joke).

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[FN#145] Al-Mas’udi (chapt. xxi.) makes this a name of the Mother of Queen Humai or Humayah, for whom see below.

[FN#146] The preface of a copy of the Shah-nameh (by Firdausi, ob.  A.D. 1021), collated in A.H. 829 by command of Bayisunghur Bahadur Khan (Atkinson p. x.), informs us that the Hazar Afsanah was composed for or by Queen Humai whose name is Arabised to Humayah This Persian Marguerite de Navarre was daughter and wife to (Ardashir) Bahman, sixth Kayanian and surnamed Diraz-dast (Artaxerxes Longimanus), Abu Sasan from his son, the Eponymus of the Sassanides who followed the Kayanians when these were extinguished by Alexander of Macedon.  Humai succeeded her husband as seventh Queen, reigned thirty-two years and left the crown to her son Dara or Darab 1st = Darius Codomanus.  She is better known to Europe (through Herodotus) as Parysatis = Peri-zadeh or the Fairy-born.

[FN#147] i.e.  If Allah allow me to say sooth.

[FN#148] i.e. of silly anecdotes:  here speaks the good Moslem!

[FN#149] No. 622 Sept. 29, ’39, a review of Torrens which appeared shortly after Lane’s vol. i.  The author quotes from a MS. in the British Museum, No. 7334 fol. 136.

[FN#150] There are many Spaniards of this name:  Mr. Payne (ix. 302) proposes Abu Ja’afar ibn Abd al-Hakk al-Khazraji, author of a History of the Caliphs about the middle of the twelfth century.

[FN#151] The well-known Rauzah or Garden-island, of old Al-Sana’ah (Al-Mas’udi chapt. xxxi.) which is more than once noticed in The Nights.  The name of the pavilion Al-Haudaj = a camel-litter, was probably intended to flatter the Badawi girl.

[FN#152] He was the Seventh Fatimite Caliph of Egypt:  regn.  A.H. 495-524 (= 1101 1129).

[FN#153] Suggesting a private pleasaunce in Al-Rauzah which has ever been and is still a succession of gardens.

[FN#154] The writer in The Athenaeum calls him Ibn Miyvah, and adds that the Badawiyah wrote to her cousin certain verses complaining of her thraldom, which the youth answered abusing the Caliph.  Al-Amir found the correspondence and ordered Ibn Miyah’s tongue to be cut out, but he saved himself by a timely flight.

[FN#155] In Night dccclxxxv. we have the passage “He was a wily thief:  none could avail against his craft as he were Abu Mohammed Al-Battal”:  the word etymologically means The Bad; but see infra.

[FN#156] Amongst other losses which Orientals have sustained by the death of Rogers Bey, I may mention his proposed translation of Al-Makrizi’s great topographical work.

[FN#157] The name appears only in a later passage.

[FN#158] Mr. Payne notes (viii. 137) “apparently some famous brigand of the time” (of Charlemagne).  But the title may signify The Brave, and the tale may be much older.

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[FN#159] In his “Memoire sur l’origine du Recueil des Contes intitule Les Mille et une Nuits” (Mem. d’Hist. et de Litter.  Orientale, extrait des tomes ix., et x. des Memoires de l’Inst.  Royal Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1833).  He read the Memoir before the Royal Academy on July 31, 1829.  Also in his Dissertation “Sur les Mille et une Nuits” (pp. i. viii.) prefixed to the Bourdin Edit.  When first the Arabist in Europe landed at Alexandria he could not exchange a word with the people the same is told of Golius the lexicographer at Tunis.

[FN#160] Lane, Nights ii. 218.

[FN#161] This origin had been advocated a decade of years before by Shaykh Ahmad al-Shirawani; Editor of the Calc. text (1814-18):  his Persian preface opines that the author was an Arabic speaking Syrian who designedly wrote in a modern and conversational style, none of the purest withal, in order to instruct non-Arabists.  Here we find the genus “Professor” pure and simple.

[FN#162] Such an assertion makes us enquire, Did De Sacy ever read through The Nights in Arabic?

[FN#163] Dr. Jonathan Scott’s “translation” vi. 283.

[FN#164] For a note on this world-wide Tale see vol. i. 52.

[FN#165] In the annotated translation by Mr. I. G. N. Keith-Falconer, Cambridge University Press.  I regret to see the wretched production called the “Fables of Pilpay” in the “Chandos Classics” (London, F. Warne).  The words are so mutilated that few will recognize them, e.g.  Carchenas for Kar-shinas, Chaschmanah for Chashmey-e-Mah (Fountain of the Moon), etc.

[FN#166] Article Arabia in Encyclop.  Brit., 9th Edit., p. 263, colt 2.  I do not quite understand Mr. Palgrave, but presume that his “other version” is the Bresl.  Edit., the MS. of which was brought from Tunis; see its Vorwort (vol. i. p. 3).

[FN#167] There are three distinct notes according to De Sacy (Mem., p. 50).  The first (in MS. 1508) says “This blessed book was read by the weak slave, etc.  Wahabah son of Rizkallah the Katib (secretary, scribe) of Tarabulus al-Sham (Syrian Tripoli), who prayeth long life for its owner (li maliki-h).  This tenth day of the month First Rabi’a A.H. 955 (= 1548).”  A similar note by the same Wahabah occurs at the end of vol. ii. (MS. 1507) dated A.H. 973 (= 1565) and a third (MS. 1506) is undated.  Evidcntly M. Caussin has given undue weight to such evidence.  For further information see “Tales of the East” to which is prefixed an Introductory Dissertation (vol. i. pp. 24-26, note) by Henry Webber, Esq., Edinburgh, 1812, in 3 vols.

[FN#168] “Notice sur les douze manuscrits connus des Milles et une Nuits, qui existent en Europe.”  Von Hammer in Trebutien, Notice, vol. i.

[FN#169] Printed from the MS. of Major Turner Macan, Editor of the Shahnamah:  he bought it from the heirs of Mr. Salt, the historic Consul-General of England in Egypt and after Macan’s death it became the property of the now extinct Allens, then of Leadenhall Street (Torrens, Preface, i.).  I have vainly enquired about what became of it.

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[FN#170] The short paper by “P.  R.” in the Gentleman’s Magazine (Feb. 19th, 1799, vol. lxix. p. 61) tells us that MSS. of The Nights were scarce at Aleppo and that he found only two vols. (280 Nights) which he had great difficulty in obtaining leave to copy.  He also noticed (in 1771) a MS., said to be complete, in the Vatican and another in the “King’s Library” (Bibliotheque Nationale), Paris.

[FN#171] Aleppo has been happy in finding such monographers as Russell and Maundrell while poor Damascus fell into the hands of Mr. Missionary Porter, and suffered accordingly.

[FN#172] Vol. vi.  Appendix, p.452.

[FN#173] The numbers, however, vary with the Editions of Galland:  some end the formula with Night cxcvii; others with the ccxxxvi. : I adopt that of the De Sacy Edition.

[FN#174] Contes Persans, suivis des Contes Turcs.  Paris; Bechet Aine, 1826.

[FN#175] In the old translation we have “eighteen hundred years since the prophet Solomon died,” (B.C. 975) = A.D. 825.

[FN#176] Meaning the era of the Seleucides.  Dr. Jonathan Scott shows (vol. ii. 324) that A.H. 653 and A.D. 1255 would correspond with 1557 of that epoch; so that the scribe has here made a little mistake of 5,763 years.  Ex uno disce.

[FN#177] The Saturday Review (Jan. 2nd ’86) writes, “Captain Burton has fallen into a mistake by not distinguishing between the names of the by no means identical Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al-Mustansir.”  Quite true:  it was an ugly confusion of the melancholy madman and parricide with one of the best and wisest of the Caliphs.  I can explain (not extenuate) my mistake only by a misprint in Al-Siyuti (p. 554).

[FN#178] In the Galland MS. and the Bresl.  Edit. (ii. 253), we find the Barber saying that the Caliph (Al-Mustansir) was at that time (yaumaizin) in Baghdad, and this has been held to imply that the Caliphate had fallen.  But such conjecture is evidently based upon insufficient grounds.

[FN#179] De Sacy makes the “Kalandar” order originate in A.D. 1150, but the Shaykh Sharif bu Ali Kalandar died in A.D. 1323-24.  In Sind the first Kalandar, Osman-i-Marwandi surnamed Lal Shahbaz, the Red Goshawk, from one of his miracles, died and was buried at Sehwan in A D. 1274:  see my “History of Sindh” chapt. viii. for details.  The dates therefore run wild.

[FN#180] In this same tale H. H. Wilson observes that the title of Sultan of Egypt was not assumed before the middle of the xiith century.

[FN#181] Popularly called Vidyanagar of the Narsingha.

[FN#182] Time-measurers are of very ancient date.  The Greeks had clepsydrae and the Romans gnomons, portable and ring-shaped, besides large standing town-dials as at Aquileja and San Sabba near Trieste.  The “Saracens” were the perfecters of the clepsydra:  Bosseret (p. 16) and the Chronicon Turense (Beckmann ii. 340 et seq.) describe the water-clock sent by Al-Rashid to Karl the Great as a kind of “cockoo-clock.” 

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[FN#183] An illustrated History of Arms and Armour etc. (p. 59); London:  Bell and Sons, 1877.  The best edition is the Guide des Amateurs d’Armes, Paris:  Renouard, 1879.

[FN#184] Chapt. iv.  Dr. Gustav Oppert “On the Weapons etc. of the Ancient Hindus;” London:  Truebner and Co., 1880. : 

[FN#185] I have given other details on this subject in pp. 631- 637 of “Camoens, his Life and his Lusiads.”

[FN#186] The morbi venerei amongst the Romans are obscure because “whilst the satirists deride them the physicians are silent.”  Celsus, however, names (De obscenarum partium vitiis, lib. xviii.) inflammatio coleorum (swelled testicle), tubercula glandem (warts on the glans penis), cancri carbunculi (chancre or shanker) and a few others.  The rubigo is noticed as a lues venerea by Servius in Virg.  Georg.

[FN#187] According to David Forbes, the Peruvians believed that syphilis arose from connection of man and alpaca; and an old law forbade bachelors to keep these animals in the house.  Francks explains by the introduction of syphilis wooden figures found in the Chinchas guano; these represented men with a cord round the neck or a serpent devouring the genitals.

[FN#188] They appeared before the gates of Paris in the summer of 1427, not “about July, 1422”:  in Eastern Europe, however, they date from a much earlier epoch.  Sir J. Gilbert’s famous picture has one grand fault, the men walk and the women ride:  in real life the reverse would be the case.

[FN#189] Rabelais ii. c. 30.

[FN#190] I may be allowed to note that syphilis does not confine itself to man:  a charger infected with it was pointed out to me at Baroda by my late friend, Dr. Arnott (18th Regiment, Bombay N.I.) and Tangier showed me some noticeable cases of this hippic syphilis, which has been studied in Hungary.  Eastern peoples have a practice of “passing on” venereal and other diseases, and transmission is supposed to cure the patient; for instance a virgin heals (and catches) gonorrhoea.  Syphilis varies greatly with climate.  In Persia it is said to be propagated without contact:  in Abyssinia it is often fatal and in Egypt it is readily cured by sand baths and sulphur-unguents.  Lastly in lands like Unyamwezi, where mercurials are wholly unknown, I never saw caries of the nasal or facial bones.

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[FN#191] For another account of the transplanter and the casuistical questions to which coffee gave rise, see my “First Footsteps in East Africa” (p. 76).

[FN#192] The first mention of coffee proper (not of Kahwah or old wine in vol. ii. 260) is in Night cdxxvi. vol. v. 169, where the coffee-maker is called Kahwahjiyyah, a mongrel term showing the modern date of the passage in Ali the Cairene.  As the work advances notices become thicker, e.g. in Night dccclxvi. where Ali Nur al-Din and the Frank King’s daughter seems to be a modernisation of the story “Ala al-Din Abu al-Shamat” (vol. iv. 29); and in Abu Kir and Abu Sir (Nights cmxxx. and cmxxxvi.) where coffee is drunk with sherbet after present fashion.  The use culminates in Kamar al-Zaman II. where it is mentioned six times (Nights cmlxvi. cmlxx. cmlxxi. twice; cmlxxiv. and cmlxxvii.), as being drunk after the dawn-breakfast and following the meal as a matter of course.  The last notices are in Abdullah bin Fazil, Nights cmlxxviii. and cmlxxix.

[FN#193] It has been suggested that Japanese tobacco is an indigenous growth and sundry modern travellers in China contend that the potato and the maize, both white and yellow, have there been cultivated from time immemorial.

[FN#194] For these see my “City of the Saints,” p. 136.

[FN#195] Lit. meaning smoke:  hence the Arabic “Dukhan,” with the same signification.

[FN#196] Unhappily the book is known only by name:  for years I have vainly troubled friends and correspondents to hunt for a copy.  Yet I am sanguine enough to think that some day we shall succeed:  Mr. Sidney Churchill, of Teheran, is ever on the look-out.

[FN#197] In Section 3 I shall suggest that this tale also is mentioned by Al-Mas’udi.

[FN#198] I have extracted it from many books, especially from Hoeffer’s Biographie Generale, Paris, Firmin Didot, mdccclvii.; Biographie Universelle, Paris, Didot, 1816, etc. etc.  All are taken from the work of M. de Boze, his “Bozzy.”

[FN#199] As learning a language is an affair of pure memory, almost without other exercise of the mental faculties, it should be assisted by the ear and the tongue as well as the eyes.  I would invariably make pupils talk, during lessons, Latin and Greek, no matter how badly at first; but unfortunately I should have to begin with teaching the pedants who, as a class, are far more unwilling and unready to learn than are those they teach.

[FN#200] The late Dean Stanley was notably trapped by the wily Greek who had only political purposes in view.  In religions as a rule the minimum of difference breeds the maximum of disputation, dislike and disgust.

[FN#201] See in Trebutien (Avertissement iii.) how Baron von Hammer escaped drowning by the blessing of The Nights.

[FN#202] He signs his name to the Discours pour servir de Preface.

[FN#203] I need not trouble the reader with their titles, which fill up nearly a column and a half in M. Hoeffer.  His collection of maxims from Arabic, Persian and Turkish authors appeared in English in 1695.

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[FN#204] Galland’s version was published in 1704-1717 in 12 vols. 12mo., (Hoeffer’s Biographie; Grasse’s Tresor de Livres rares and Encyclop.  Britannica, ixth Edit.)

[FN#205] See also Leigh Hunt “The Book of the Thousand Nights and one Night,” etc., etc.  London and Westminster Review Art. iii., No. 1xiv. mentioned in Lane, iii., 746.

[FN#206] Edition of 1856 vol. xv.

[FN#207] To France England also owes her first translation of the Koran, a poor and mean version by Andrew Ross of that made from the Arabic (No. iv.) by Andre du Reyer, Consul de France for Egypt.  It kept the field till ousted in 1734 by the learned lawyer George Sale whose conscientious work, including Preliminary Discourse and Notes (4to London), brought him the ill-fame of having “turned Turk.”

[FN#208] Catalogue of Printed Books, 1884, p. 159, col. i.  I am ashamed to state this default in the British Museum, concerning which Englishmen are apt to boast and which so carefully mulcts modern authors in unpaid copies.  But it is only a slight specimen of the sad state of art and literature in England, neglected equally by Conservatives, Liberals and Radicals.  What has been done for the endowment of research?  What is our equivalent for the Prix de Rome?  Since the death of Dr. Birch, who can fairly deal with a Demotic papyrus?  Contrast the Societe Anthropologique and its palace and professors in Paris with our “Institute” au second in a corner of Hanover Square and its skulls in the cellar!

[FN#209] Art. vii. pp. 139-168, “On the Arabian Nights and translators, Weil, Torrens and Lane (vol. i.) with the Essai of A. Loisseleur Deslongchamps.”  The Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. xxiv., Oct. 1839-Jan. 1840.  London, Black and Armstrong, 1840.

[FN#210] Introduction to his Collection “Tales of the East,” 3 vols.  Edinburgh, 1812.  He was the first to point out the resemblance between the introductory adventures of Shahryar and Shah Zaman and those of Astolfo and Giacondo in the Orlando Furioso (Canto xxviii.).  M. E. Leveque in Les Mythes et les Legendes de l’Inde et la Perse (Paris, 1880) gives French versions of the Arabian and Italian narratives, side by side in p. 543 ff. (Clouston).

[FN#211] Notitiae Codicis MI.  Noctium.  Dr. Pusey studied Arabic to familiarise himself with Hebrew, and was very different from his predecessor at Oxford in my day, who, when applied to for instruction in Arabic, refused to lecture except to a class.

[FN#212] This nephew was the author of “Recueil des Rits et Ceremonies des Pilgrimages de La Mecque,” etc. etc.  Paris and Amsterdam, 1754, in 12mo.

[FN#213] The concluding part did not appear, I have said, till 1717:  his “Comes et Fables Indiennes de Bidpai et de Lokman,” were first printed in 1724, 2 vols. in 12mo.  Hence, I presume, Lowndes’ mistake.

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[FN#214] M. Caussin (de Perceval), Professeur of Arabic at the Imperial Library, who edited Galland in 1806, tells us that he found there only two MSS., both imperfect.  The first (Galland’s) is in three small vols. 4to. each of about pp. 140.  The stories are more detailed and the style, more correct than that of other MS., is hardly intelligible to many Arabs, whence he presumes that it contains the original (an early?) text which has been altered and vitiated.  The date is supposed to be circa A.D. 1600.  The second Parisian copy is a single folio of some 800 pages, and is divided into 29 sections and cmv.  Nights, the last two sections being reversed.  The MS. is very imperfect, the 12th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 21st-23rd, 25th and 27th parts are wanting; the sections which follow the 17th contain sundry stories repeated, there are anecdotes from Bidpai, the Ten Wazirs and other popular works, and lacunae everywhere abound.

[FN#215] Mr. Payne (ix. 264) makes eleven, including the Histoire du Dormeur eveille = The Sleeper and the Waker, which he afterwards translated from the Bresl.  Edit. in his “Tales from the Arabic” (vol. i. 5, etc.)

[FN#216] Mr. E. J. W. Gibb informs me that he has come upon this tale in a Turkish storybook, the same from which he drew his “Jewad.”

[FN#217] A litterateur lately assured me that Nos. ix. and x. have been found in the Bibliotheque Nationale (du Roi) Paris; but two friends were kind enough to enquire and ascertained that it was a mistake.  Such Persianisms as Codadad (Khudadad), Baba Cogia (Khwajah) and Peri (fairy) suggest a Persic MS.

[FN#218] Vol. vi. 212.  “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (London:  Longmans, 1811) by Jonathan Scott, with the Collection of New Tales from the Wortley Montagu MS. in the Bodleian.”  I regret to see that Messieurs Nimmo in reprinting Scott have omitted his sixth Volume.

[FN#219] Dr. Scott who uses Fitnah (iv. 42) makes it worse by adding “Alcolom (Al-Kulub?) signifying Ravisher of Hearts” and his names for the six slave-girls (vol. iv. 37) such as “Zohorob Bostan” (Zahr al-Bustan), which Galland rightly renders by “Fleur du Jardin,” serve only to heap blunder upon blunder.  Indeed the Anglo-French translations are below criticism:  it would be waste of time to notice them.  The characteristic is a servile suit paid to the original e.g. rendering hair “accomode en boucles” by “hair festooned in buckles” (Night ccxiv.), and Ile d’Ebene (Jazirat al-Abnus, Night xliii.) by “the Isle of Ebene.”  A certain surly old litterateur tells me that he prefers these wretched versions to Mr. Payne’s.  Padrone! as the Italians say:  I cannot envy his taste or his temper.

[FN#220] De Sacy (Memoire p. 52) notes that in some MSS., the Sultan, ennuye by the last tales of Shahrazad, proposes to put her to death, when she produces her three children and all ends merrily without marriage-bells.  Von Hammer prefers this version as the more dramatic, the Frenchman rejects it on account of the difficulties of the accouchements.  Here he strains at the gnat—­ a common process.

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[FN#221] See Journ.  Asiatique, iii. serie, vol. viii., Paris, 1839.

[FN#222] “Tausend und Eine Nacht:  Arabische Erzaehlungen.  Zum ersten mal aus einer Tunisischen Handschrift ergaenzt und vollstandig uebersetzt,” Von Max Habicht, F. H. von der Hagen und Karl Schatte (the offenders?).

[FN#223] Dr. Habicht informs us (Vorwort iii., vol. ix. 7) that he obtained his MS. with other valuable works from Tunis, through a personal acquaintance, a learned Arab, Herr M. Annagar (Mohammed Al-Najjar?) and was aided by Baron de Sacy, Langles and other savants in filling up the lacunae by means of sundry MSS.  The editing was a prodigy of negligence:  the corrigenda (of which brief lists are given) would fill a volume; and, as before noticed, the indices of the first four tomes were printed in the fifth, as if the necessity of a list of tales had just struck the dense editor.  After Habicht’s death in 1839 his work was completed in four vols. (ix.-xii.) by the well-known Prof.  H. J. Fleischer who had shown some tartness in his “Dissertatio Critica de Glossis Habichtianis.”  He carefully imitated all the shortcomings of his predecessor and even omitted the Verzeichniss etc., the Varianten and the Glossary of Arabic words not found in Golius, which formed the only useful part of the first eight volumes.

[FN#224] Die in Tausend und Eine Nacht noch nicht uebersetzten Naechte, Erzaehlungen und Anekdoten, zum erstenmal aus dem Arabischen in das Franzoesische uebersetzt von J. von Hammer, und aus dem Franzoesischen in das Deutsche von A. E. Zinserling, Professor, Stuttgart und Tubingen, 1823.  Drei Bde. 80 .  Trebutien’s, therefore, is the translation of a translation of a translation.

[FN#225] Tausend und Eine Nacht Arabische Erzaehlungen.  Zum erstenmale aus dem Urtexte vollstaendig und treu uebersetze von Dr. Gustav Weil.  He began his work on return from Egypt in 1836 and completed his first version of the Arabische Meisterwerk in 1838-42 (3 vols. roy. oct.).  I have the Zweiter Abdruck der dritten (2d reprint of 3d) in 4 vols. 8vo., Stuttgart, 1872.  It has more than a hundred woodcuts.

[FN#226] My learned friend Dr. Wilhelm Storck, to whose admirable translations of Camoens I have often borne witness, notes that this Vorhalle, or Porch to the first edition, a rhetorical introduction addressed to the general public, is held in Germany to be valueless and that it was noticed only for the Bemerkung concerning the offensive passages which Professor Weil had toned down in his translation.  In the Vorwort of the succeeding editions (Stuttgart) it is wholly omitted.

[FN#227] The most popular are now “Mille ed una notte.  Novelle Arabe.”  Napoli, 1867, 8vo illustrated, 4 francs; and “Mille ed une notte.  Novelle Arabe, versione italiana nuovamente emendata e corredata di note”; 4 vols. in 32 (dateless) Milano, 8vo, 4 francs.

[FN#228] These are; (l) by M. Caussin (de Perceval), Paris, 1806, 9 vols. 8vo. (2) Edouard Gauttier, Paris, 1822-24:  7 vols. 12mo; (3) M. Destain, Paris, 1823-25, 6 vols. 8vo, and (4) Baron de Sacy, Paris. 1838 (?) 3 vols. large 8vo, illustrated (and vilely illustrated).

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[FN#229] The number of fables and anecdotes varies in the different texts, but may be assumed to be upwards of four hundred, about half of which were translated by Lane.

[FN#230] I have noticed these points more fully in the beginning of chapt. iii.  “The Book of the Sword.”

[FN#231] A notable instance of Roman superficiality, incuriousness and ignorance.  Every old Egyptian city had its idols (images of metal, stone or wood), in which the Deity became incarnate as in the Catholic host; besides its own symbolic animal used as a Kiblah or prayer-direction (Jerusalem or Meccah), the visible means of fixing and concentrating the thoughts of the vulgar, like the crystal of the hypnotist or the disk of the electro-biologist.  And goddess Diana was in no way better than goddess Pasht.  For the true view of idolatry see Koran xxxix. 4.  I am deeply grateful to Mr. P. le Page Renouf (Soc. of Biblic.  Archaeology, April 6, 1886) for identifying the Manibogh, Michabo or Great Hare of the American indigenes with Osiris Unnefer ("Hare God").  These are the lines upon which investigation should run.  And of late years there is a notable improvement of tone in treating of symbolism or idolatry:  the Lingam and the Yoni are now described as “mystical representations, and perhaps the best possible impersonal representatives of the abstract expressions paternity and maternity” (Prof.  Monier Williams in “Folk-lore Record” vol. iii. part i. p. 118).

[FN#232] See Jotham’s fable of the Trees and King Bramble (Judges lxi. 8) and Nathan’s parable of the Poor Man and his little ewe Lamb (2 Sam. ix. 1).

[FN#233] Herodotus (ii. c. 134) notes that “AEsop the fable-writer ( ) was one of her (Rhodopis) fellow slaves”.  Aristophanes (Vespae, 1446) refers to his murder by the Delphians and his fable beginning, “Once upon a time there was a fight;” while the Scholiast finds an allusion to The Serpent and the Crab in Pax 1084; and others in Vespae 1401, and Aves 651.

[FN#234] There are three distinct Lokmans who are carefully confounded in Sale (Koran chapt. xxxi.) and in Smith’s Dict. of Biography etc. art.  AEsopus.  The first or eldest Lokman, entitled Al-Hakim (the Sage) and the hero of the Koranic chapter which bears his name, was son of Ba’ura of the Children of Azar, sister’s son of Job or son of Job’s maternal aunt; he witnessed David’s miracles of mail-making and when the tribe of ’Ad was destroyed, he became King of the country.  The second, also called the Sage, was a slave, an Abyssinian negro, sold to the Israelites during the reign of David or Solomon, synchronous with the Persian Kay Kaus and Kay Khusrau, also Pythagoras the Greek (!) His physique is alluded to in the saying, “Thou resemblest Lokman (in black ugliness) but not in wisdom” (Ibn Khallikan i. 145).  This negro or negroid, after a godly and edifying life, left a volume of “Amsal,” proverbs and exempla (not fables or apologues); and Easterns still

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[FN#235] I have noticed them in vol. ii. 47-49.  “To the Gold Coast for Gold.”

[FN#236] I can hardly accept the dictum that the Katha Sarit Sagara, of which more presently, is the “earliest representation of the first collection.”

[FN#237] The Pehlevi version of the days of King Anushirwan (A.D. 531-72) became the Humayun-nameh ("August Book”) turned into Persian for Bahram Shah the Ghaznavite:  the Hitopadesa ("Friendship-boon”) of Prakrit, avowedly compiled from the “Panchatantra,” became the Hindu Panchopakhyan, the Hindostani Akhlak-i-Hindi ("Moralities of Ind”) and in Persia and Turkey the Anvar-i-Suhayli ("Lights of Canopus").  Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac writers entitle their version Kalilah wa Damnah, or Kalilaj wa Damnaj, from the name of the two jackal-heroes, and Europe knows the recueil as the Fables of Pilpay or Bidpay (Bidya-pati, Lord of learning?) a learned Brahman reported to have been Premier at the Court of the Indian King Dabishlim.

[FN#238] Diet.  Philosoph.  S. V. Apocrypha.

[FN#239] The older Arab writers, I repeat, do not ascribe fables or beast-apologues to Lokman; they record only “dictes” and proverbial sayings.

[FN#240] Professor Taylor Lewis:  Preface to Pilpay.

[FN#241] In the Katha Sarit Sagara the beast-apologues are more numerous, but they can be reduced to two great nuclei; the first in chapter lx. (Lib. x.) and the second in the same book chapters lxii-lxv.  Here too they are mixed up with anecdotes and acroamata after the fashion of The Nights, suggesting great antiquity for this style of composition.

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[FN#242] Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. 266 et seq.  The fabliau is interesting in more ways than one.  Anepu the elder (Potiphar) understands the language of cattle, an idea ever cropping up in Folk-lore; and Bata (Joseph), his “little brother,” who becomes a “panther of the South (Nubia) for rage” at the wife’s impudique proposal, takes the form of a bull—­ metamorphosis full blown.  It is not, as some have called it, the “oldest book in the world;” that name was given by M. Chabas to a MS. of Proverbs, dating from B.C. 2200.  See also the “Story of Saneha,” a novel earlier than the popular date of Moses, in the Contes Populaires of Egypt.

[FN#243] The fox and the jackal are confounded by the Arabic dialects not by the Persian, whose “Rubah” can never be mistaken for “Shaghal.”  “Sa’lab” among the Semites is locally applied to either beast and we can distinguish the two only by the fox being solitary and rapacious, and the jackal gregarious and a carrion-eater.  In all Hindu tales the jackal seems to be an awkward substitute for the Grecian and classical fox, the Giddar or Kola (Cants aureus) being by no means sly and wily as the Lomri (Vulpes vulgaris).  This is remarked by Weber (Indische Studien) and Prof.  Benfey’s retort about “King Nobel” the lion is by no means to the point.  See Katha Sarit Sagara, ii. 28.

I may add that in Northern Africa jackal’s gall, like jackal’s grape (Solanum nigrum = black nightshade), ass’s milk and melted camel-hump, is used aphrodisiacally as an unguent by both sexes.  See. p. 239, etc., of Le Jardin parfume du Cheikh Nefzaoui, of whom more presently.

[FN#244] Rambler, No. lxvii.

[FN#245] Some years ago I was asked by my old landlady if ever in the course of my travels I had come across Captain Gulliver.

[FN#246] In “The Adventurer” quoted by Mr. Heron, “Translator’s Preface to the Arabian Tales of Chaves and Cazotte.”

[FN#247] “Life in a Levantine Family” chapt. xi.  Since the able author found his “family” firmly believing in The Nights, much has been changed in Alexandria; but the faith in Jinn and Ifrit, ghost and vampire is lively as ever.

[FN#248] The name dates from the second century A. H. or before A. D. 815.

[FN#249] Dabistan i. 231 etc.

[FN#250] Because Si = thirty and Murgh = bird.  In McClenachan’s Addendum to Mackay’s Encyclopaeedia of Freemasonry we find the following definition:  “Simorgh.  A monstrous griffin, guardian of the Persian mysteries.”

[FN#251] For a poor and inadequate description of the festivals commemorating this “Architect of the Gods” see vol. iii. 177, “View of the History etc. of the Hindus” by the learned Dr. Ward, who could see in them only the “low and sordid nature of idolatry.”  But we can hardly expect better things from a missionary in 1822, when no one took the trouble to understand what “idolatry” means.

[FN#252] Rawlinson (ii. 491) on Herod. iii. c. 102.  Nearchus saw the skins of these formicae Indicae, by some rationalists explained as “jackals,” whose stature corresponds with the text, and by others as “pengolens” or ant-eaters (manis pentedactyla).  The learned Sanskritist, H. H. Wilson, quotes the name Pippilika = ant-gold, given by the people of Little Thibet to the precious dust thrown up in the emmet heaps.

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[FN#253] A writer in the Edinburgh Review (July, ’86), of whom more presently, suggests that The Nights assumed essentially their present shape during the general revival of letters, arts and requirements which accompanied the Kurdish and Tartar irruptions into the Nile Valley, a golden age which embraced the whole of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and ended with the Ottoman Conquest in A. D. 1527.

[FN#254] Let us humbly hope not again to hear of the golden prime of

          “The good (fellow?) Haroun Alrasch’id,”

a mispronunciation which suggests only a rasher of bacon.  Why will not poets mind their quantities, in lieu of stultifying their lines by childish ignorance?  What can be more painful than Byron’s

“They laid his dust in Ar’qua (for Arqua) where he died?”

[FN#255] See De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe (Paris, 1826), vol. i.

[FN#256] See Le Jardin Parfume du Cheikh Nefzaoui Manuel d’Erotologie Arabe Traduction revue et corrigee Edition privee, imprime a deux cent.-vingt exemplaires, par Isidore Liseux et ses Amis, Paris, 1866.  The editor has forgotten to note that the celebrated Sidi Mohammed copied some of the tales from The Nights and borrowed others (I am assured by a friend) from Tunisian MSS. of the same work.  The book has not been fairly edited:  the notes abound in mistakes, the volume lacks an index, &c., &c.  Since this was written the Jardin Parfume has been twice translated into English as “The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui, a Manual of Arabian Erotology (sixteenth century).  Revised and corrected translation, Cosmopoli:  mdccclxxxvi.:  for the Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares and for private circulation only.”  A rival version will be brought out by a bookseller whose Committee, as he calls it, appears to be the model of literary pirates, robbing the author as boldly and as openly as if they picked his pocket before his face.

[FN#257] Translated by a well-known Turkish scholar, Mr. E. J. W. Gibb (Glasgow, Wilson and McCormick, 1884).

[FN#258] D’Herbelot (s. v.  “Asmai"):  I am reproached by a dabbler in Orientalism for using this admirable writer who shows more knowledge in one page than my critic does in a whole volume.

[FN#259] For specimens see Al-Siyuti, pp. 301 and 304, and the Shaykh al Nafzawi, pp. 134-35

[FN#260] The word “nakh” (to make a camel kneel) is explained in vol. ii. 139.

[FN#261] The present of the famous horologium-clepsydra-cuckoo clock, the dog Becerillo and the elephant Abu Lubabah sent by Harun to Charlemagne is not mentioned by Eastern authorities and consequently no reference to it will be found in my late friend Professor Palmer’s little volume “Haroun Alraschid,” London, Marcus Ward, 1881.  We have allusions to many presents, the clock and elephant, tent and linen hangings, silken dresses, perfumes, and candelabra of auricalch brought by the Legati (Abdalla Georgius Abba et Felix) of Aaron Amiralmumminim Regis Persarum who entered the Port of Pisa (A.  D. 801) in (vol. v. 178) Recueil des Histor. des Gaules et de la France, etc., par Dom Martin Bouquet, Paris, mdccxliv.  The author also quotes the lines:—­

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          Persarum Princeps illi devinctus amore
               Praecipuo fuerat, nomen habens Aaron. 
          Gratia cui Caroli prae cunctis Regibus atque
               Illis Principibus tempora cara funit.

[FN#262] Many have remarked that the actual date of the decease is unknown.

[FN#263] See Al-Siyuti (p. 305) and Dr. Jonathan Scott’s “Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters,” (p. 296).

[FN#264] I have given (vol. i. 188) the vulgar derivation of the name; and D’Herbelot (s. v.  Barmakian) quotes some Persian lines alluding to the “supping up.”  Al-Mas’udi’s account of the family’s early history is unfortunately lost.  This Khalid succeeded Abu Salamah, first entitled Wazir under Al-Saffah (Ibn Khallikan i. 468).

[FN#265] For his poetry see Ibn Khallikan iv. 103.

[FN#266] Their flatterers compared them with the four elements.

[FN#267] Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxii.

[FN#268] Ibn Khallikan (i. 310) says the eunuch Abu Hashim Masrur, the Sworder of Vengeance, who is so pleasantly associated with Ja’afar in many nightly disguises; but the Eunuch survived the Caliph.  Fakhr al-Din (p. 27) adds that Masrur was an enemy of Ja’afar; and gives further details concerning the execution.

[FN#269] Bresl.  Edit., Night dlxvii. vol. vii. pp. 258-260; translated in the Mr. Payne’s “Tales from the Arabic,” vol. i. 189 and headed “Al-Rashid and the Barmecides.”  It is far less lively and dramatic than the account of the same event given by Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxii., by Ibn Khallikan and by Fakhr al-Din.

[FN#270] Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxi.

[FN#271] See Dr. Jonathan Scott’s extracts from Major Ouseley’s “Tarikh-i-Barmaki.”

[FN#272] Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxii.  For the liberties Ja’afar took see Ibn Khallikan, i. 303.

[FN#273] Ibid. chapt. xxiv.  In vol. ii. 29 of The Nights, I find signs of Ja’afar’s suspected heresy.  For Al-Rashid’s hatred of the Zindiks see Al-Siyuti, pp. 292, 301; and as regards the religious troubles ibid. p. 362 and passim.

[FN#274] Biogr.  Dict. i. 309.

[FN#275] This accomplished princess had a practice that suggests the Dame aux Camelias.

[FN#276] i. e.  Perdition to your fathers, Allah’s curse on your ancestors.

[FN#277] See vol. iv. 159, “Ja’afar and the Bean-seller;” where the great Wazir is said to have been “crucified;” and vol. iv. pp. 179, 181.  Also Roebuck’s Persian Proverbs, i. 2, 346, “This also is through the munificence of the Barmecides.”

[FN#278] I especially allude to my friend Mr. Payne’s admirably written account of it in his concluding Essay (vol. ix.).  From his views of the Great Caliph and the Lady Zubaydah I must differ in every point except the destruction of the Barmecides.

[FN#279] Bresl.  Edit., vol. vii. 261-62.

[FN#280] Mr. Grattan Geary, in a work previously noticed, informs us (i. 212) “The Sitt al-Zobeide, or the Lady Zobeide, was so named from the great Zobeide tribe of Arabs occupying the country East and West of the Euphrates near the Hindi’ah Canal; she was the daughter of a powerful Sheik of that Tribe.”  Can this explain the “Kasim”?

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[FN#281] Vol. viii. 296.

[FN#282] Burckhardt, “Travels in Arabia” vol. i. 185.

[FN#283] The reverse has been remarked by more than one writer; and contemporary French opinion seems to be that Victor Hugo’s influence on French prose, was on the whole, not beneficial.

[FN#284] Mr. W. S. Clouston, the “Storiologist,” who is preparing a work to be entitled “Popular Tales and Fictions; their Migrations and Transformations,” informs me the first to adapt this witty anecdote was Jacques de Vitry, the crusading bishop of Accon (Acre) who died at Rome in 1240, after setting the example of “Exempla” or instances in his sermons.  He had probably heard it in Syria, and he changed the day-dreamers into a Milkmaid and her Milk-pail to suit his “flock.”  It then appears as an “Exemplum” in the Liber de Donis or de Septem Donis (or De Dono Timoris from Fear the first gift) of Stephanus de Borbone, the Dominican, ob.  Lyons, 1261:  it treated of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah xi. 2 and 3), Timor, Pietas, Scientia, Fortitudo, Consilium, Intellectus et Sapientia; and was plentifully garnished with narratives for the use of preachers.

[FN#285] The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register (new series, vol. xxx.  Sept.-Dec. 1830, London, Allens, 1839); p. 69 Review of the Arabian Nights, the Mac.  Edit. vol. i., and H. Torrens.

[FN#286] As a household edition of the “Arabian Nights” is now being prepared, the curious reader will have an opportunity of verifying this statement.

[FN#287] It has been pointed out to me that in vol. ii. p. 285, line 18 “Zahr Shah” is a mistake for Sulayman Shah.

[FN#288] I have lately found these lovers at Schloss Sternstein near Cilli in Styria, the property of my excellent colleague, Mr. Consul Faber, dating from A. D. 1300 when Jobst of Reichenegg and Agnes of Sternstein were aided and abetted by a Capuchin of Seikkloster.

[FN#289] In page 226 Dr. Steingass sensibly proposes altering the last hemistich (lines 11-12) to

At one time showing the Moon and Sun.

[FN#290] Omitted by Lane for some reason unaccountable as usual.  A correspondent sends me his version of the lines which occur in The Nights (vol. v. 106 and 107):—­

Behold the Pyramids and hear them teach
What they can tell of Future and of Past: 
They would declare, had they the gift of speech,
The deeds that Time hath wrought from first to last
* * * *
My friends, and is there aught beneath the sky
Can with th’ Egyptian Pyramids compare? 
In fear of them strong Time hath passed by
And everything dreads Time in earth and air.

[FN#291] A rhyming Romance by Henry of Waldeck (flor.  A. D. 1160) with a Latin poem on the same subject by Odo and a prose version still popular in Germany. (Lane’s Nights iii. 81; and Weber’s “Northern Romances.”)

[FN#292] e. g.  ’Ajaib al-Hind (= Marvels of Ind) ninth century, translated by J. Marcel Devic, Paris, 1878; and about the same date the Two Mohammedan Travellers, translated by Renaudot.  In the eleventh century we have the famous Sayyid al-ldrisi, in the thirteenth the ’Ajaib al-Makhlukat of Al-Kazwini and in the fourteenth the Kharidat al-Ajaib of Ibn Al-Wardi.  Lane (in loco) traces most of Sindbad to the two latter sources.

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[FN#293] So Hector France proposed to name his admirably realistic volume “Sous le Burnous” (Paris, Charpentier, 1886).

[FN#294] I mean in European literature, not in Arabic where it is a lieu commun.  See three several forms of it in one page (505) of Ibn Kallikan, vol. iii.

[FN#295] My attention has been called to the resemblance between the half-lie and Job (i. 13- 19).

[FN#296] Boccaccio (ob.  Dec. 2, 1375), may easily have heard of The Thousand Nights and a Night or of its archetype the Hazar Afsanah.  He was followed by the Piacevoli Notti of Giovan Francisco Straparola (A.  D. 1550), translated into almost all European languages but English:  the original Italian is now rare.  Then came the Heptameron ou Histoire des amans fortunez of Marguerite d’Angouleme, Reyne de Navarre and only sister of Francis I. She died in 1549 before the days were finished:  in 1558 Pierre Boaistuan published the Histoire des amans fortunez and in 1559 Claude Guiget the “Heptameron.”  Next is the Hexameron of A. de Torquemada, Rouen, 1610; and, lastly, the Pentamerone or El Cunto de li Cunte of Giambattista Basile (Naples 1637), known by the meagre abstract of J. E. Taylor and the caricatures of George Cruikshank (London 1847-50).  I propose to translate this Pentamerone direct from the Neapolitan and have already finished half the work.

[FN#297] Translated and well annotated by Prof.  Tawney, who, however, affects asterisks and has considerably bowdlerised sundry of the tales, e. g. the Monkey who picked out the Wedge (vol. ii. 28).  This tale, by the by, is found in the Khirad Afroz (i. 128) and in the Anwar-i-Suhayli (chapt. i.) and gave rise to the Persian proverb, “What has a monkey to do with carpentering?” It is curious to compare the Hindu with the Arabic work whose resemblances are as remarkable as their differences, while even more notable is their correspondence in impressioning the reader.  The Thaumaturgy of both is the same:  the Indian is profuse in demonology and witchcraft; in transformation and restoration; in monsters as wind-men, fire-men and water-men, in air-going elephants and flying horses (i. 541-43); in the wishing cow, divine goats and laughing fishes (i. 24); and in the speciosa miracula of magic weapons.  He delights in fearful battles (i. 400) fought with the same weapons as the Moslem and rewards his heroes with a “turband of honour” (i. 266) in lieu of a robe.  There is a quaint family likeness arising from similar stages and states of society:  the city is adorned for gladness, men carry money in a robe-corner and exclaim “Ha! good!” (for “Good, by Allah!"), lovers die with exemplary facility, the “soft-sided” ladies drink spirits (i. 61) and princesses get drunk (i. 476); whilst the Eunuch, the Hetaira and the bawd (Kuttini) play the same preponderating parts as in The Nights.  Our Brahman is strong in love-making; he complains of the pains of separation in this phenomenal universe; he revels in youth, “twin-brother to

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[FN#298] The Introduction (i. 1-5) leads to the Curse of Pushpadanta and Malyavan who live on Earth as Vararuchi and Gunadhya and this runs through lib. i.  Lib. ii. begins with the Story of Udayana to whom we must be truly grateful as our only guide:  he and his son Naravahanadatta fill up the rest and end with lib. xviii.  Thus the want of the clew or plot compels a division into books, which begin for instance with “We worship the elephantine proboscis of Ganesha” (lib. x. i.) a reverend and awful object to a Hindu but to Englishmen mainly suggesting the “Zoo.”  The “Bismillah” of The Nights is much more satisfactory.

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[FN#299] See pp. 5-6 Avertissement des Editeurs, Le Cabinet des Fees, vol. xxxviii:  Geneva 1788.  Galland’s Edit. of mdccxxvi ends with Night ccxxxiv and the English translations with ccxxxvi and cxcvii.  See retro p. 82.

[FN#300] There is a shade of difference in the words; the former is also used for Reciters of Traditions—­a serious subject.  But in the case of Hammad surnamed Al-Rawiyah (the Rhapsode) attached to the Court of Al-Walid, it means simply a conteur.  So the Greeks had Homeristae = reciters of Homer, as opposed to the Homeridae or School of Homer.

[FN#302] Vol. i, Preface p. v.  He notes that Mr. Dallaway describes the same scene at Constantinople where the Story-teller was used, like the modern “Organs of Government” in newspaper shape, for “reconciling the people to any recent measure of the Sultan and Vizier.”  There are women Rawiyahs for the Harems and some have become famous like the Mother of Hasan al-Basri (Ibn Khall. i, 370).

[FN#302] Hence the Persian proverb, “Baki-e-dastan farda = the rest of the tale to-morrow,” said to askers of silly questions.

[FN#303] The scene is excellently described in, “Morocco:  Its People and Places,” by Edmondo de Amicis (London:  Cassell, 1882), a most refreshing volume after the enforced platitudes and commonplaces of English travellers.

[FN#304] It began, however, in Persia, where the celebrated Darwaysh Mukhlis, Chief Sofi of Isfahan in the xviith century, translated into Persian tales certain Hindu plays of which a MS. entitled Alfaraga Badal-Schidda (Al-faraj ba’d al-shiddah = Joy after annoy) exists in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.  But to give an original air to his work, he entitled it “Hazar o yek Ruz” = Thousand and One Days, and in 1675 he allowed his friend Petis de la Croix, who happened to be at Isfahan, to copy it.  Le Sage (of Gil Blas) is said to have converted many of the tales of Mukhlis into comic operas, which were performed at the Theatre Italien.  I still hope to see The Nights at the Lyceum.

[FN#305] This author, however, when hazarding a change of style which is, I think, regretable, has shown abundant art by filling up the frequent deficiencies of the text after the fashion of Baron McGuckin de Slane in Ibn Khallikan.  As regards the tout ensemble of his work, a noble piece of English, my opinion will ever be that expressed in my Foreword.  A carping critic has remarked that the translator, “as may be seen in every page, is no Arabic scholar.”  If I be a judge, the reverse is the case:  the brilliant and beautiful version thus traduced is almost entirely free from the blemishes and carelessness which disfigure Lane’s, and thus it is far more faithful to the original.  But it is no secret that on the staff of that journal the translator of Villon has sundry enemies, vrais diables enjuppones, who take every opportunity of girding at him because he does not belong to the clique and because he does good work when theirs is mostly sham.  The sole fault I find with Mr. Payne is that his severe grace of style treats an unclassical work as a classic, when the romantic and irregular would have been a more appropriate garb.  But this is a mere matter of private judgment.

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[FN#306] Here I offer a few, but very few, instances from the Breslau text, which is the greatest sinner in this respect.  Mas. for fem., vol. i. p. 9, and three times in seven pages, Ahna and nahna for nahnu (iv. 370, 372); Ana ba-ashtari = I will buy (iii. 109):  and Ana ’Amil = I will do (v. 367).  Alayki for Alayki (i. 18), Anti for Anti (iii. 66) and generally long i for short .  ’Ammal (from ’amala = he did) tahlam = certainly thou dreamest, and ’Ammalin yaakulu = they were about to eat (ix. 315):  Aywa for Ay wa’llahi = yes, by Allah (passim).  Bita’ = belonging to, e.g.  Sara bita’k = it is become thine (ix. 352) and Mata’ with the same sense (iii. 80).  Da ’l-khurj = this saddle-bag (ix. 336) and Di (for hazah) = this woman (iii. 79) or this time (ii. 162).  Fayn as raha fayn = whither is he gone? (iv. 323).  Kama badri = he rose early (ix. 318):  Kaman = also, a word known to every European (ii. 43):  Katt = never (ii. 172):  Kawam (pronounced ’awam) = fast, at once (iv. 385) and Rih asif kawi (pron. ’awi) = a wind, strong very.  Laysh, e.g. bi tasalni laysh (ix. 324) = why do you ask me? a favourite form for li ayya shayyin:  so Mafish = ma fihi shayyun (there is no thing) in which Herr Landberg (p. 425) makes “Sha, le present de pouvoir.”  Min ajali = for my sake; and Li ajal al-taudi’a = for the sake of taking leave (Mac.  Edit. i. 384).  Rijal nautiyah = men sailors when the latter word would suffice:  Shuwayh (dim. of shayy) = a small thing, a little (iv. 309) like Moyyah (dim. of Ma) a little water:  Wadduni = they carried me (ii. 172) and lastly the abominable Wahid gharib = one (for a) stranger.  These few must suffice:  the tale of Judar and his brethren, which in style is mostly Egyptian, will supply a number of others.  It must not, however, be supposed, as many have done, that vulgar and colloquial Arabic is of modern date:  we find it in the first century of Al-Islam, as is proved by the tale of Al-Hajjaj and Al-Shabi (Ibn Khallikan, ii. 6).  The former asked “Kam ataa-k?’ (= how much is thy pay?) to which the latter answered, “Alfayn!” (= two thousand!).  “Tut,” cried the Governor, “Kam atau-ka?” to which the poet replied as correctly and classically, “Alfani.”

[FN#307] In Russian folk-songs a young girl is often compared with this tree e.g.—­

          Ivooshka, ivooshka zelonaia moia! 
          (O Willow, O green Willow mine!)

[FN#308] So in Hector France ("La vache enragee”) “Le sourcil en accent circonflexe et l’oeil en point d’interrogation.”

[FN#309] In Persian “Ab-i-ru” in India pronounced Abru.

FN#310] For further praises of his poetry and eloquence see the extracts from Fakhr al-Din of Rayy (an annalist of the xivth century A.D.) in De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe, vol. i.

[FN#311] After this had been written I received “Babylonian, das reichste Land in der Vorzeit und das lohnendste Kolonisationsfeld fuer die Gegenwart,” by my learned friend Dr. Aloys Sprenger, Heidelberg, 1886.

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[FN#312] The first school for Arabic literature was opened by Ibn Abbas, who lectured to multitudes in a valley near Meccah; this rude beginning was followed by public teaching in the great Mosque of Damascus.  For the rise of the “Madrasah,” Academy or College’ see Introduct. to Ibn Khallikan pp. xxvii-xxxii.

[FN#313] When Ibn Abbad the Sahib (Wazir) was invited to visit one of the Samanides, he refused, one reason being that he would require 400 camels to carry only his books.

[FN#314] This “Salmagondis” by Francois Beroalde de Verville was afterwards worked by Tabarin , the pseudo-Bruscambille d’Aubigne and Sorel.

[FN#315] I prefer this derivation to Strutt’s adopted by the popular, “mumm is said to be derived from the Danish word mumme, or momme in Dutch (Germ. = larva), and signifies disguise in a mask, hence a mummer.”  In the Promptorium Parvulorum we have “Mummynge, mussacio, vel mussatus”:  it was a pantomime in dumb show, e.g.  “I mumme in a mummynge;” “Let us go mumme (mummer) to nyghte in women’s apparayle.”  “Mask” and “Mascarade,” for persona, larva or vizard, also derive, I have noticed, from an Arabic word—­Maskharah.

[FN#316] The Pre-Adamite doctrine has been preached with but scant success in Christendom.  Peyrere, a French Calvinist, published (A.D. 1655) his “Praadamitae, sive exercitatio supra versibus 12, 13, 14, cap. v.  Epist.  Paul. ad Romanos,” contending that Adam was called the first man because with him the law began.  It brewed a storm of wrath and the author was fortunate to escape with only imprisonment.

[FN#317] According to Socrates the verdict was followed by a free fight of the Bishop-voters over the word “consubstantiality.”

[FN#318] Servetus burnt (in A.D. 1553 for publishing his Arian tractate) by Calvin, whom half-educated Roman Catholics in England firmly believe to have been a pederast.  This arose I suppose, from his meddling with Rabelais who, in return for the good joke Rabie laesus, presented a better anagram, “Jan (a pimp or cuckold) Cul” (Calvinus).

[FN#319] There is no more immoral work than the “Old Testament.”  Its deity is an ancient Hebrew of the worst type, who condones, permits or commands every sin in the Decalogue to a Jewish patriarch, qua patriarch.  He orders Abraham to murder his son and allows Jacob to swindle his brother; Moses to slaughter an Egyptian and the Jews to plunder and spoil a whole people, after inflicting upon them a series of plagues which would be the height of atrocity if the tale were true.  The nations of Canaan are then extirpated.  Ehud, for treacherously disembowelling King Eglon, is made judge over Israel.  Jael is blessed above women (Joshua v. 24) for vilely murdering a sleeping guest; the horrid deeds of Judith and Esther are made examples to mankind; and David, after an adultery and a homicide which deserved ignominious death, is suffered to massacre a host of his enemies,

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[FN#320] It was the same in England before the “Reformation,” and in France where, during our days, a returned priesthood collected in a few years “Peter-pence” to the tune of five hundred millions of francs.  And these men wonder at being turned out!

[FN#321] Deutsch on the Talmud:  Quarterly Review, 1867.

[FN#322] Evidently.  Its cosmogony is a myth read literally:  its history is, for the most part, a highly immoral distortion, and its ethics are those of the Talmudic Hebrews.  It has done good work in its time; but now it shows only decay and decrepitude in the place of vigour and progress.  It is dying hard, but it is dying of the slow poison of science.

[FN#323] These Hebrew Stoics would justly charge the Founder of Christianity with preaching a more popular and practical doctrine, but a degradation from their own far higher and more ideal standard.

[FN#324] Dr. Theodore Christlieb ("Modern Doubt and Christian Belief,” Edinburgh:  Clark 1874) can even now write:—­“So then the ‘full age’ to which humanity is at present supposed to have attained, consists in man’s doing good purely for goodness sake!  Who sees not the hollowness of this bombastic talk.  That man has yet to be born whose practice will be regulated by this insipid theory (dieser grauen theorie).  What is the idea of goodness per se? * * * The abstract idea of goodness is not an effectual motive for well-doing” (p. 104).  My only comment is c’est ignolile!  His Reverence acts the part of Satan in Holy Writ, “Does Job serve God for naught?” Compare this selfish, irreligious, and immoral view with Philo Judaeus (On the Allegory of the Sacred Laws, cap. 1viii.), to measure the extent of the fall from Pharisaism to Christianity.  And the latter is still infected with the “bribe-and-threat doctrine:”  I once immensely scandalised a Consular Chaplain by quoting the noble belief of the ancients, and it was some days before he could recover mental equanimity.  The degradation is now inbred.

[FN#325] Of the doctrine of the Fall the heretic Marcion wrote:  “The Deity must either be deficient in goodness if he willed, in prescience if he did not foresee, or in power if he did not prevent it.”

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[FN#326] In his charming book, “India Revisited.”

[FN#327] This is the answer to those who contend with much truth that the moderns are by no means superior to the ancients of Europe:  they look at the results of only 3000 years instead of 30,000 or 300,000.

[FN#328] As a maxim the saying is attributed to the Duc de Levis, but it is much older.

[FN#329] There are a few, but only a few, frightful exceptions to this rule, especially in the case of Khalid bin Walid, the Sword of Allah, and his ferocious friend, Darar ibn al-Azwar.  But their cruel excesses were loudly blamed by the Moslems, and Caliph Omar only obeyed the popular voice in superseding the fierce and furious Khalid by the mild and merciful Abu Obaydah.

[FN#330] This too when St. Paul sends the Christian slave Onesimus back to his unbelieving (?) master, Philemon; which in Al-Islam would have created a scandal.

[FN#331] This too when the Founder of Christianity talks of “Eating and drinking at his table!” (Luke xxn. 29.) My notes have often touched upon this inveterate prejudice the result, like the soul-less woman of Al-Islam, of ad captandum, pious fraud.  “No soul knoweth what joy of the eyes is reserved for the good in recompense for their works” (Koran xxxn. 17) is surely as “spiritual” as St. Paul (I Cor. ii., 9).  Some lies, however are very long-lived, especially those begotten by self interest.

[FN#332] I have elsewhere noted its strict conservatism which, however, it shares with all Eastern faiths in the East.  But progress, not quietism, is the principle which governs humanity and it is favoured by events of most different nature.  In Egypt the rule of Mohammed Ali the Great and in Syria the Massacre of Damascus (1860) have greatly modified the constitution of Al-Islam throughout the nearer East.

[FN#333] Chapt. viii.  “Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia;” London, Macmillan, 1865.

[FN#334] The Soc.  Jesu has, I believe, a traditional conviction that converts of Israelitic blood bring only misfortune to the Order.

[FN#335] I especially allude to an able but most superficial book, the “Ten Great Religions” by James F. Clarke (Boston, Osgood, 1876), which caricatures and exaggerates the false portraiture of Mr. Palgrave.  The writer’s admission that, “Something is always gained by learning what the believers in a system have to say in its behalf,” clearly shows us the man we have to deal with and the “depths of his self-consciousness.”

[FN#336] But how could the Arabist write such hideous grammar as “La Il h illa All h” for “La ilaha (accus.) ill’ Allah”?

[FN#337] p. 996 “Muhammad” in vol. iii.  Dictionary of Christian Biography.  See also the Illustration of the Mohammedan Creed, etc., from Al-Ghazali introduced (pp. 72-77) into Bell and Sons’ “History of the Saracens” by Simon Ockley, B.D. (London, 1878).  I regret some Orientalist did not correct the proofs:  everybody will not detect “Al-Lauh al-Mahfuz” (the Guarded Tablet) in “Allauh ho’hnehphoud” (p. 171); and this but a pinch out of a camel-load.

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[FN#338] The word should have been Arianism.  This “heresy” of the early Christians was much aided by the “Discipline of the Secret,” supposed to be of apostolic origin, which concealed from neophytes, catechumens and penitents all the higher mysteries, like the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Metastoicheiosis (transubstantiation), the Real Presence, the Eucharist and the Seven Sacraments; when Arnobius could ask, Quid Deo cum vino est? and when Justin, fearing the charge of Polytheism, could expressly declare the inferior nature of the Son to the Father.  Hence the creed was appropriately called Symbol i.e., Sign of the Secret.  This “mental reservation” lasted till the Edict of Toleration, issued by Constantine in the fourth century, held Christianity secure when divulging her “mysteries”; and it allowed Arianism to become the popular creed.

[FN#339] The Gnostics played rather a fantastic role in Christianity with their Demiurge, their AEonogony, their AEons by syzygies or couples, their Maio and Sabscho and their beatified bride of Jesus, Sophia Achamoth, and some of them descended to absolute absurdities, e.g., the Tascodrugitae and the Pattalorhinchitae who during prayers placed their fingers upon their noses or in their mouths, &c., reading Psalm cxli. 3.

[FN#340] “Kitab al-’Unwan fi Makaid al-Niswan” = The Book of the Beginnings on the Wiles of Womankind (Lane i. 38).

[FN#341] This person was one of the Amsal or Exampla of the Arabs.  For her first thirty years she whored; during the next three decades she pimped for friend and foe, and, during the last third of her life, when bed-ridden by age and infirmities, she had a buckgoat and a nanny tied up in her room and solaced herself by contemplating their amorous conflicts.

[FN#342] And modern Moslem feeling upon the subject has apparently undergone a change.  Ashraf Khan, the Afghan poet, sings,

Since I, the parted one, have come the secrets of the world to
     ken,
Women in hosts therein I find, but few (and very few) of men.

And the Osmanli proverb is, “Of ten men nine are women!”

[FN#343] His Persian paper “On the Vindication of the Liberties of the Asiatic Women” was translated and printed in the Asiatic Annual Register for 1801 (pp. 100-107); it is quoted by Dr. Jon.  Scott (Introd. vol. i. p. xxxiv. et seq.) and by a host of writers.  He also wrote a book of Travels translated by Prof.  Charles Stewart in 1810 and re-issued (3 vols. 8vo.) in 1814.

[FN#344] The beginning of which I date from the Hijrah, lit.= the separation, popularly “The Flight.”  Stating the case broadly, it has become the practice of modern writers to look upon Mohammed as an honest enthusiast at Meccah and an unscrupulous despot at Al- Medinah, a view which appears to me eminently unsound and unfair.  In a private station the Meccan Prophet was famed as a good citizen, teste his title Al-Amin =The Trusty.  But when driven from his home by

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[FN#345] It was not, however, incestuous:  the scandal came from its ignoring the Arab “pundonor.”

[FN#346] The “opportunism” of Mohammed has been made a matter of obloquy by many who have not reflected and discovered that time-serving is the very essence of “Revelation.”  Says the Rev. W. Smith ("Pentateuch,” chaps. xiii.), “As the journey (Exodus) proceeds, so laws originate from the accidents of the way,” and he applies this to successive decrees (Numbers xxvi. 32-36; xxvii. 8-11 and xxxvi. 1-9), holding it indirect internal evidence of Mosaic authorship (?).  Another tone, however, is used in the case of Al-Islam.  “And now, that he might not stand in awe of his wives any longer, down comes a revelation,” says Ockley in his bluff and homely style, which admits such phrases as, “the imposter has the impudence to say.”  But why, in common honesty, refuse to the Koran the concessions freely made to the Torah?  It is a mere petitio principii to argue that the latter is “inspired” while the former is not, moreover, although we may be called upon to believe things beyond Reason, it is hardly fair to require our belief in things contrary to Reason.

[FN#347] This is noticed in my wife’s volume on The Inner Life of Syria, chaps. xii. vol. i. 155.

[FN#348] Mirza preceding the name means Mister and following it Prince.  Addison’s “Vision of Mirza” (Spectator, No. 159) is therefore “The Vision of Mister.”

[FN#349] And women.  The course of instruction lasts from a few days to a year and the period of puberty is feted by magical rites and often by some form of mutilation.  It is described by Waitz, Reclus and Schoolcraft, Pachue-Loecksa, Collins, Dawson, Thomas, Brough Smyth, Reverends Bulmer and Taplin, Carlo Wilhelmi, Wood, A. W. Howitt, C. Z. Muhas (Mem. de la Soc.  Anthrop.  Allemande, 1882, p. 265) and by Professor Mantegazza (chaps. i.) for whom see infra.

[FN#350] Similarly certain Australian tribes act scenes of rape and pederasty saying to the young, If you do this you will be killed.

[FN#351] “Bah,” is the popular term for the amatory appetite:  hence such works are called Kutub al-Bah, lit. = Books of Lust.

[FN#352] I can make nothing of this title nor can those whom I have consulted:  my only explanation is that they may be fanciful names proper.

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[FN#353] Amongst the Greeks we find erotic specialists (1) Aristides of the Libri Milesii; (2) Astyanassa, the follower of Helen who wrote on androgvnisation; (3) Cyrene, the artist of amatory Tabellae or ex-votos offered to Priapus; (4) Elephantis, the poetess who wrote on Varia concubitus genera; (5) Evemerus, whose Sacra Historia, preserved in a fragment of Q. Eunius, was collected by Hieronymus Columnar (6) Hemitheon of the Sybaritic books, (7) Musaeus, the Iyrist; (8) Niko, the Samian girl; (9) Philaenis, the poetess of Amatory Pleasures, in Athen. viii. 13, attributed to Polycrates the Sophist; (10) Protagorides, Amatory Conversations; (11) Sotades, the Mantinaean who, says Suidas, wrote the poem “Cinaedica”; (12) Sphodrias the Cynic, his Art of Love; and (13) Trepsicles, Amatory Pleasures.  Amongst the Romans we have Aedituus, Annianus (in Ausonius), Anser, Bassus Eubius, Helvius Cinna, Laevius (of Io and the Erotopaegnion), Memmius, Cicero (to Cerellia), Pliny the Younger, Sabellus (de modo coeundi); Sisenna, the pathic Poet and translator of Milesian Fables and Sulpitia, the modest erotist.  For these see the Dictionnaire Erotique of Blondeau pp. ix. and x. (Paris, Liseux, 1885).

[FN#354] It has been translated from the Sanskrit and annotated by A.F.F. and B.F.R.  Reprint Cosmopoli:  mdccclxxxv.:  for the Kama Shastra Society, London and Benares, and for private circulation only.  The first print has been exhausted and a reprint will presently appear.

[FN#355] The local press has often proposed to abate this nuisance of erotic publication which is most debasing to public morals already perverted enough.  But the “Empire of Opinion” cares very little for such matters and, in the matter of the “native press,” generally seems to seek only a quiet life.  In England if erotic literature were not forbidden by law, few would care to sell or to buy it, and only the legal pains and penalties keep up the phenomenally high prices.

[FN#356] The Spectator (No. 119) complains of an “infamous piece of good breeding,” because “men of the town, and particularly those who have been polished in France, make use of the most coarse and uncivilised words in our language and utter themselves often in such a manner as a clown would blush to hear.”

[FN#357] See the Novelle of Bandello the Bishop (Tome 1, Paris, Liseux, 1879, small in 18) where the dying fisherman replies to his confessor, “Oh!  Oh! your reverence, to amuse myself with boys was natural to me as for a man to eat and drink; yet you asked me if I sinned against nature!” Amongst the wiser ancients sinning contra naturam was not marrying and begetting children.

[FN#358] Avis au Lecteur “L’Amour dans l’Humanite,” par P. Mantegazza, traduit par Emilien Chesneau, Paris, Fetscherin et Chuit, 1886.

[FN#359] See “H.  B.” (Henry Beyle, French Consul at Civita Vecchia) par un des Quarante H. B.” (Prosper Merimee), Elutheropolis, An mdccclxiv.  De l’Imposture du Nazareen.

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[FN#360] This detail especially excited the veteran’s curiosity.  The reason proved to be that the scrotum of the unmutilated boy could be used as a kind of bridle for directing the movements of the animal.  I find nothing of the kind mentioned in the Sotadical literature of Greece and Rome; although the same cause might be expected everywhere to the same effect.  But in Mirabeau (Kadhesch) a grand seigneur moderne, when his valet-de-chambre de confiance proposes to provide him with women instead of boys, exclaims, “Des femmes! eh! c’est comme si tu me servais un gigot sans manche.”  See also infra for “Le poids du tisserand.”

[FN#361] See Falconry in the Valley of the Indus, London, John Van Voorst, 1852.

[FN#362] Submitted to Government on Dec. 3’, ’47, and March 2, ’48, they were printed in “Selections from the Records of the Government of India.”  Bombay.  New Series.  No. xvii.  Part 2, 1855.  These are (1) Notes on the Population of Sind, etc., and (2) Brief Notes on the Modes of Intoxication, etc., written in collaboration with my late friend Assistant-Surgeon John E. Stocks, whose early death was a sore loss to scientific botany.

[FN#363] Glycon the Courtesan in Athen. xiii. 84 declares that “boys are handsome only when they resemble women,” and so the Learned Lady in The Nights (vol. v. 160) declares “Boys are likened to girls because folks say, Yonder boy is like a girl.”  For the superior physical beauty of the human male compared with the female, see The Nights, vol. iv. 15; and the boy’s voice before it breaks excels that of any diva.

[FN#364] “Mascula,” from the priapiscus, the over-development of clitoris (the veretrum muliebre, in Arabic Abu Tartur, habens cristam), which enabled her to play the man.  Sappho (nat.  B.C. 612) has been retoillee like Mary Stuart, La Brinvilliers, Marie Antoinette and a host of feminine names which have a savour not of sanctity.  Maximus of Tyre (Dissert. xxiv.) declares that the Eros of Sappho was Socratic and that Gyrinna and Atthis were as Alcibiades and Chermides to Socrates:  Ovid who could consult documents now lost, takes the same view in the Letter of Sappho to Phaon and in Tristia ii. 265.

     Lesbia quid docuit Sappho nisi amare puellas?

Suidas supports Ovid.  Longinus eulogises the (a term applied only to carnal love) of the far-famed Ode to Atthis:—­

     Ille mi par esse Deo videtur * * *
     (Heureux! qui pres de toi pour toi seule soupire * * *
     Blest as th’ immortal gods is he, etc.)

By its love symptoms, suggesting that possession is the sole cure for passion, Erasistratus discovered the love of Antiochus for Stratonice.  Mure (Hist. of Greek Literature, 1850) speaks of the Ode to Aphrodite (Frag. 1) as “one in which the whole volume of Greek literature offers the most powerful concentration into one brilliant focus of the modes in which amatory concupiscence can display itself.”  But Bernhardy, Bode, Richter, K. O. Mueller and esp.  Welcker have made Sappho a model of purity, much like some of our dull wits who have converted Shakespeare, that most debauched genius, into a good British bourgeois.

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[FN#365] The Arabic Sabhakah, the Tractatrix or Subigitatrix who has been noticed in vol. iv. 134.  Hence to Lesbianise ( ) and tribassare ( ); the former applied to the love of woman for woman and the latter to its mecanique:  this is either natural, as friction of the labia and insertion of the clitoris when unusually developed, or artificial by means of the fascinum, the artificial penis (the Persian “Mayajang"); the patte de chat, the banana-fruit and a multitude of other succedanea.  As this feminine perversion is only glanced at in The Nights I need hardly enlarge upon the subject.

[FN#366] Plato (Symp.) is probably mystical when he accounts for such passions by there being in the beginning three species of humanity, men, women and men-women or androgynes.  When the latter were destroyed by Zeus for rebellion, the two others were individually divided into equal parts.  Hence each division seeks its other half in the same sex, the primitive man prefers men and the primitive woman women.  C’est beau, but—­is it true?  The idea was probably derived from Egypt which supplied the Hebrews with androgynic humanity, and thence it passed to extreme India, where Shiva as Ardhanari was male on one side and female on the other side of the body, combining paternal and maternal qualities and functions.  The first creation of humans (Gen. i. 27) was hermaphrodite (=Hermes and Venus), masculum et foeminam creavit eos—­male and female created He them—­on the sixth day, with the command to increase and multiply (ibid. v. 28), while Eve the woman was created subsequently.  Meanwhile, say certain Talmudists, Adam carnally copulated with all races of animals.  See L’Anandryne in Mirabeau’s Erotika Biblion, where Antoinette Bourgnon laments the undoubling which disfigured the work of God, producing monsters incapable of independent self-reproduction like the vegetable kingdom.

[FN#367] De la Femme, Paris, 1827.

[FN#368] Die Lustseuche des Alterthum’s, Halle, 1839.

[FN#369] See his exhaustive article on (Grecian) “Paederastie” in the Allgemeine Encyclopaedie of Ersch and Gruber, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1837.  He carefully traces it through the several states, Dorians, AEolians, Ionians, the Attic cities and those of Asia Minor.  For these details I must refer my readers to M. Meier; a full account of these would fill a volume not the section of an essay.

[FN#370] Against which see Henri Estienne, Apologie pour Herodote, a society satire of xvith century, lately reprinted by Liseux.

[FN#371] In Sparta the lover was called           or         x
and the beloved as in Thessaly       or     x.

[FN#372] The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.  Zeus, who became Jupiter, was an ancient king, according to the Cretans, who were entitled liars because they showed his burial-place.  From a deified ancestor he would become a local god, like the Hebrew Jehovah

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[FN#373] See Dissertation sur les idees morales des Grecs et sur les dangers de lire Platon.  Par M. Aude, Bibliophile, Rouen, Lemonnyer, 1879.  This is the pseudonym of the late Octave Delepierre, who published with Gay, but not the Editio Princeps—­which, if I remember rightly, contains much more matter.

[FN#374] The phrase of J. Matthias Gesner, Comm.  Reg.  Soc.  Gottingen i. 1-32.  It was founded upon Erasmus’ “Sancte Socrate, ore pro nobis,” and the article was translated by M. Alcide Bonmaire, Paris, Liseux, 1877.

[FN#375] The subject has employed many a pen, e.g.,Alcibiade Fanciullo a Scola, D. P. A. (supposed to be Pietro Aretino—­ad captandum?), Oranges, par Juann Wart, 1652:  small square 8vo of pp. 102, including 3 preliminary pp. and at end an unpaged leaf with 4 sonnets, almost Venetian, by V. M. There is a re-impression of the same date, a small 12mo of longer format, pp. 124 with pp. 2 for sonnets:  in 1862 the Imprimerie Racon printed 102 copies in 8vo of pp. iv.-108, and in 1863 it was condemned by the police as a liber spurcissimus atque execrandus de criminis sodomici laude et arte.  This work produced “Alcibiade Enfant a l’ecole,” traduit pour la premiere fois de l’Italien de Ferrante Pallavicini, Amsterdam, chez l’Ancien Pierre Marteau, mdccclxvi.  Pallavicini (nat. 1618), who wrote against Rome, was beheaded, aet. 26 (March 5, 1644), at Avignon in 1644 by the vengeance of the Barberini:  he was a bel esprit deregle, nourri d’etudes antiques and a Memb. of the Acad.  Degl’ Incogniti.  His peculiarities are shown by his “Opere Scelte,” 2 vols. 12mo, Villafranca, mdclxiii.; these do not include Alcibiade Fanciullo, a dialogue between Philotimus and Alcibiades which seems to be a mere skit at the Jesuits and their Peche philosophique.  Then came the “Dissertation sur l’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola,” traduit de l’Italien de Giambattista Baseggio et accompagnee de notes et d’une post-face par un bibliophile francais (M.  Gustave Brunet, Librarian of Bordeaux), Paris.  J. Gay, 1861—­an octavo of pp. 78 (paged), 254 copies.  The. same Baseggio printed in 1850 his Disquisizioni (23 copies) and claims for F. Pallavicini the authorship of Alcibiades which the Manuel du Libraire wrongly attributes to M. Girol.  Adda in 1859.  I have heard of but not seen the “Amator fornaceus, amator ineptus” (Palladii, 1633) supposed by some to be the origin of Alcibiade Fanciullo; but most critics consider it a poor and insipid production.

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[FN#376] The word is from numbness, torpor, narcotism:  the flowers, being loved by the infernal gods, were offered to the Furies.  Narcissus and Hippolytus are often assumed as types of morose voluptas, masturbation and clitorisation for nymphomania:  certain mediaeval writers found in the former a type of the Saviour, and ’Mirabeau a representation of the androgynous or first Adam:  to me Narcissus suggests the Hindu Vishnu absorbed in the contemplation of his own perfections.

[FN#377] The verse of Ovid is parallel’d by the song of Al-Zahir al-Jazari (Ibn Khall. iii. 720).

          Illum impuberem amaverunt mares; puberem feminae. 
          Gloria Deo! nunquam amatoribus carebit.

[FN#378] The venerable society of prostitutes contained three chief classes.  The first and lowest were the Dicteriads, so called from Diete (Crete), who imitated Pasiphae, wife of Minos, in preferring a bull to a husband; above them was the middle class, the Aleutridae, who were the Almahs or professional musicians, and the aristocracy was represented by the Hetairai, whose wit and learning enabled them to adorn more than one page of Grecian history.  The grave Solon, who had studied in Egypt, established a vast Dicterion (Philemon in his Delphica), or bordel whose proceeds swelled the revenue of the Republic.

[FN#379] This and Saint Paul (Romans i. 27) suggested to Caravaggio his picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men turpiter ligati.

[FN#380] Properly speaking, “Medicus” is the third or ring finger, as shown by the old Chiromantist verses,

          Est pollex Veneris; sed Jupiter indice gaudet,
          Saturnus medium; Sol medicumque tenet.

[FN#381] So Seneca uses digito scalpit caput.  The modern Italian does the same by inserting the thumb-tip between the index and medius to suggest the clitoris.

[FN#382] What can be wittier than the now trite Tale of the Ephesian Matron, whose dry humour is worthy of The Nights?  No wonder that it has made the grand tour of the world.  It is found in the neo-Phaedrus, the tales of Musaeus and in the Septem Sapientes as the “Widow which was comforted.”  As the “Fabliau de la Femme qui se fist putain sur la fosse de son Mari,” it tempted Brantome and La Fontaine; and Abel Remusat shows in his Contes Chinois that it is well known to the Middle Kingdom.  Mr. Walter K. Kelly remarks, that the most singular place for such a tale is the “Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying” by Jeremy Taylor, who introduces it into his chapt. v.—­“Of the Contingencies of Death and Treating our Dead.”  But in those days divines were not mealy-mouthed.

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[FN#383] Glossarium eroticum linguae Latinae, sive theogoniae, legum et morum nuptialium apud Romanos explanatio nova, auctore P. P.  (Parisiis, Dondey-Dupre, 1826, in 8vo).  P. P. is supposed to be Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues, an engineer who made a plan of Bordeaux and who annotated the Erotica Biblion.  Gay writes, “On s’est servi pour cet ouvrage des travaux inedits de M. Ie Baron de Schonen, etc.  Quant au Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues qu’on designait comme l’auteur de ce savant volume, son existence n’est pas bien averee, et quelques bibliographes persistent a penser que ce nom cache la collaboration du Baron de Schonen et d’Eloi Johanneau.”  Other glossicists as Blondeau and Forberg have been printed by Liseux, Paris.

[FN#384] This magnificent country, which the petty jealousies of Europe condemn, like the glorious regions about Constantinople, to mere barbarism, is tenanted by three Moslem races.  The Berbers, who call themselves Tamazight (plur. of Amazigh), are the Gaetulian indigenes speaking an Africo-Semitic tongue (see Essai de Grammaire Kabyle, etc., par A. Hanoteau, Paris, Benjamin Duprat).  The Arabs, descended from the conquerors in our eighth century, are mostly nomads and camel-breeders.  Third and last are the Moors proper, the race dwelling in towns, a mixed breed originally Arabian but modified by six centuries of Spanish residence and showing by thickness of feature and a parchment-coloured skin, resembling the American Octaroon’s, a negro innervation of old date.  The latter are well described in “Morocco and the Moors,” etc. (Sampson Low and Co., 1876), by my late friend Dr. Arthur Leared, whose work I should like to see reprinted.

[FN#385] Thus somewhat agreeing with one of the multitudinous modern theories that the Pentapolis was destroyed by discharges of meteoric stones during a tremendous thunderstorm.  Possible, but where are the stones?

[FN#386] To this Iranian domination I attribute the use of many Persic words which are not yet obsolete in Egypt.  “Bakhshish,” for instance, is not intelligible in the Moslem regions west of the Nile-Valley, and for a present the Moors say Hadiyah, regalo or favor.

[FN#387] Arnobius and Tertullian, with the arrogance of their caste and its miserable ignorance of that symbolism which often concealed from vulgar eyes the most precious mysteries, used to taunt the heathen for praying to deities whose sex they ignored “Consuistis in precibus ‘Seu tu Deus seu tu Dea,’ dicere!” These men would know everything; they made God the merest work of man’s brains and armed him with a despotism of omnipotence which rendered their creation truly dreadful.

[FN#388] Gallus lit. = a cock, in pornologic parlance is a capon, a castrato.

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[FN#389] The texts justifying or enjoining castration are Matt. xviii. 8-9; Mark ix. 43-47; Luke xxiii. 29 and Col. iii. 5.  St. Paul preached (1 Corin. vii. 29) that a man should live with his wife as if he had none.  The Abelian heretics of Africa abstained from women because Abel died virginal.  Origen mutilated himself after interpreting too rigorously Matt. xix. 12, and was duly excommunicated.  But his disciple, the Arab Valerius founded (A.D. 250) the castrated sect called Valerians who, persecuted and dispersed by the Emperors Constantine and Justinian, became the spiritual fathers of the modern Skopzis.  These eunuchs first appeared in Russia at the end of the xith century, when two Greeks, John and Jephrem, were metropolitans of Kiew:  the former was brought thither in A.D. 1089 by Princess Anna Wassewolodowna and is called by the chronicles Nawje or the Corpse.  But in the early part of the last century (1715-1733) a sect arose in the circle of Uglitseh and in Moscow, at first called Clisti or flagellants, which developed into the modern Skopzi.  For this extensive subject see De Stein (Zeitschrift fuer Ethn.  Berlin, 1875) and Mantegazza, chaps. vi.

[FN#390] See the marvellously absurd description of the glorious “Dead Sea” in the Purchas v. 84.

[FN#391] Jehovah here is made to play an evil part by destroying men instead of teaching them better.  But, “Nous faisons les Dieux a notre image et nous portons dans le ciel ce que nous voyons sur la terre.”  The idea of Yahweh, or Yah, is palpably Egyptian, the Ankh or ever-living One:  the etymon, however, was learned at Babylon and is still found amongst the cuneiforms.

[FN#392] The name still survives in the Shajarat al-Ashara, a clump of trees near the village Al-Ghajar (of the Gypsies?) at the foot of Hermon.

[FN#393] I am not quite sure that Astarte is not primarily the planet Venus; but I can hardly doubt that Prof.  Max Mueller and Sir G. Cox are mistaken in bringing from India Aphrodite the Dawn and her attendants, the Charites identified with the Vedic Harits.  Of Ishtar in Accadia, however, Roscher seems to have proved that she is distinctly the Moon sinking into Amenti (the west, the Underworld) in search of her lost spouse Izdubar, the Sun-god.  This again is pure Egyptianism.

[FN#394] In this classical land of Venus the worship of Ishtar-Ashtaroth is by no means obsolete.  The Metawali heretics, a people of Persian descent and Shiite tenets, and the peasantry of “Bilad B’sharrah,” which I would derive from Bayt Ashirah, still pilgrimage to the ruins and address their vows to the Sayyidat al-Kabirah, the Great Lady.  Orthodox Moslems accuse them of abominable orgies and point to the lamps and rags which they suspend to a tree entitled Shajarat al-Sitt—­the Lady’s tree—­an Acacia Albida which, according to some travellers, is found only here and at Sayda (Sidon) where an avenue exists.  The people of Kasrawan, a Christian province in the Libanus, inhabited by a peculiarly prurient race, also hold high festival under the far-famed Cedars, and their women sacrifice to Venus like the Kadashah of the Phoenicians.  This survival of old superstition is unknown to missionary “Handbooks,” but amply deserves the study of the anthropologist.

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[FN#395] Some commentators understand “the tabernacles sacred to the reproductive powers of women;” and the Rabbis declare that the emblem was the figure of a setting hen.

[FN#396] Dog” is applied by the older Jews to the Sodomite and the Catamite, and thus they understand the “price of a dog” which could not be brought into the Temple (Deut. xxiii. 18).  I have noticed it in one of the derivations of cinaedus and can only remark that it is a vile libel upon the canine tribe.

[FN#397] Her name was Maachah and her title, according to some, “King’s mother”:  she founded the sect of Communists who rejected marriage and made adultery and incest part of worship in their splendid temple.  Such were the Basilians and the Carpocratians followed in the xith century by Tranchelin, whose sectarians, the Turlupins, long infested Savoy.

[FN#398] A noted exception is Vienna, remarkable for the enormous development of the virginal bosoni, which soon becomes pendulent.

[FN#399] Gen. xxxviii. 2-11.  Amongst the classics Mercury taught the “Art of le Thalaba” to his son Pan who wandered about the mountains distraught with love for the Nymph Echo and Pan passed it on to the pastors.  See Thalaba in Mirabeau.

[FN#400] The reader of The Nights has remarked how often the “he” in Arabic poetry denotes a “she”; but the Arab, when uncontaminated by travel, ignores pederasty, and the Arab poet is a Badawi.

[FN#401] So Mohammed addressed his girl-wife Ayishah in the masculine.

[FN#402] So amongst the Romans we have the Iatroliptae, youths or girls who wiped the gymnast’s perspiring body with swan-down, a practice renewed by the professors of “Massage”; Unctores who applied perfumes and essences; Fricatrices and Tractatrices or shampooers; Dropacistae, corn-cutters; Alipilarii who plucked the hair, etc., etc., etc.

[FN#403] It is a parody on the well-known song (Roebuck i. sect. 2, No. 1602): 

The goldsmith knows the worth of gold, jewellers worth of
     jewelry;
The worth of rose Bulbul can tell and Kambar’s worth his lord,
     Ali.

[FN#404] For “Sindi” Roebuck (Oriental Proverbs Part i. p. 99) has Kunbu (Kumboh) a Panjabi peasant, and others vary the saying ad libitum.  See vol. vi. 156.

[FN#405] See “Sind Revisited” i. 133-35.

[FN#406] They must not be confounded with the grelots lascifs, the little bells of gold or silver set by the people of Pegu in the prepuce-skin, and described by Nicolo de Conti who however refused to undergo the operation.

[FN#407] Relation des decouvertes faites par Colomb, etc., p. 137:  Bologna 1875; also Vespucci’s letter in Ramusio (i. 131) and Paro’s Recherches philosophiques sur les Americains.

[FN#408] See Mantegazza loc. cit. who borrows from the These de Paris of Dr. Abel Hureau de Villeneuve, “Frictiones per coitum productae magnum mucosae membranae vaginalis turgorem, ac simul hujus cuniculi coarctationem tam maritis salacibus quaeritatam afferunt.”

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[FN#409] Fascinus is the Priapus-god to whom the Vestal Virgins of Rome, professed tribades, sacrificed, also the neck-charm in phallus-shape.  Fascinum is the male member.

[FN#410] Captain Grose (Lexicon Balatronicum) explains merkin as “counterfeit hair for women’s privy parts.  See Bailey’s Dict.”  The Bailey of 1764, an “improved edition,” does not contain the word which is now generally applied to a cunnus succedaneus.

[FN#411] I have noticed this phenomenal cannibalism in my notes to Mr. Albert Tootle’s excellent translation of “The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse:”  London, Hakluyt Society, mdccclxxiv.

[FN#412] The Ostreiras or shell mounds of the Brazil, sometimes 200 feet high, are described by me in Anthropologia No. i.  Oct. 1873.

[FN#413] The Native Races of the Pacific States of South America, by Herbert Howe Bancroft, London, Longmans, 1875.

[FN#414] All Peruvian historians mention these giants, who were probably the large-limbed Gribs (Caraibes) of the Brazil:  they will be noticed in page 211.

[FN#415] This sounds much like a pious fraud of the missionaries, a Europeo-American version of the Sodom legend.

[FN#416] Les Races Aryennes du Perou, Paris, Franck, 1871.

[FN#417] O Brazil e os Brazileiros, Santos, 1862.

[FN#418] Aethiopia Orientalis, Purchas ii. 1558.

[FN#419] Purchas iii. 243.

[FN#420] For a literal translation see 1re Serie de la Curiosite Litteraire et Bibliographique, Paris, Liseux, 1880.

[FN#421] His best-known works are (1) Praktisches Handbuch der Gerechtlichen Medecin, Berlin, 1860; and (2) Klinische Novellen zur Gerechtlichen Medecin, Berlin, 1863.

[FN#422] The same author printed another imitation of Petronius Arbiter, the “Larissa” story of Theophile Viand.  His cousin, the Sevigne, highly approved of it.  See Bayle’s objections to Rabutin’s delicacy and excuses for Petronius’ grossness in his “Eclaircissement sur les obscenites” (Appendice au Dictionnaire Antique).

[FN#423] The Boulgrin of Rabelais, which Urquhart renders Ingle for Boulgre, an “indorser,” derived from the Bulgarus or Bulgarian, who gave to Italy the term bugiardo—­liar.  Bougre and Bougrerie date (Littre) from the xiiith century.  I cannot, however, but think that the trivial term gained strength in the xvith, when the manners of the Bugres or indigenous Brazilians were studied by Huguenot refugees in La France Antartique and several of these savages found their way to Europe.  A grand Fete in Rouen on the entrance of Henri II. and Dame Katherine de Medicis (June 16, 1564) showed, as part of the pageant, three hundred men (including fifty “Bugres” or Tupis) with parroquets and other birds and beasts of the newly explored regions.  The procession is given in the four-folding woodcut “Figure des Bresiliens” in Jean de Prest’s Edition of 1551.

[FN#424] Erotika Biblion, chaps.  Kadesch (pp. 93 et seq.), Edition de Bruxelles, with notes by the Chevalier P. Pierrugues of Bordeaux, before noticed.

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[FN#425] Called Chevaliers de Paille because the sign was a straw in the mouth, a la Palmerston.

[FN#426] I have noticed that the eunuch in Sind was as meanly paid and have given the reason.

[FN#427] Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (by Pisanus Fraxi) 4to, p.  Ix. and 593.  London.  Privately printed, mdccclxxix.

[FN#428] A friend learned in these matters supplies me with the following list of famous pederasts.  Those who marvel at the wide diffusion of such erotic perversion, and its being affected by so many celebrities, will bear in mind that the greatest men have been some of the worst:  Alexander of Macedon, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Buonaparte held themselves high above the moral law which obliges common-place humanity.  All three are charged with the Vice.  Of Kings we have Henri iii., Louis xiii. and xviii., Frederick ii.  Of Prussia Peter the Great, William ii. of Holland and Charles ii. and iii. of Parma.  We find also Shakespeare (i., xv., Edit.  Francois Hugo) and Moliere, Theodorus Beza, Lully (the Composer), D’Assoucy, Count Zintzendorff, the Grand Conde, Marquis de Villette, Pierre Louis Farnese, Duc de la Valliere, De Soleinne, Count D’Avaray, Saint Megrin, D’Epernon, Admiral de la Susse La Roche-Pouchin Rochfort S. Louis, Henne (the Spiritualist), Comte Horace de Viel Castel, Lerminin, Fievee, Theodore Leclerc, Archi-Chancellier Cambaceres, Marquis de Custine, Sainte-Beuve and Count D’Orsay.  For others refer to the three volumes of Pisanus Fraxi, Index Librorum Prohibitorum (London, 1877), Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (before alluded to) and Catena Librorum Tacendorum, London, 1885.  The indices will supply the names.

[FN#429] 0f this peculiar character Ibn Khallikan remarks (ii. 43), “There were four poets whose works clearly contraried their character.  Abu al-Atahiyah wrote pious poems himself being an atheist; Abu Hukayma’s verses proved his impotence, yet he was more salacious than a he-goat, Mohammed ibn Hazim praised contentment, yet he was greedier than a dog, and Abu Nowas hymned the joys of sodomy, yet he was more passionate for women than a baboon.”

[FN#430] A virulently and unjustly abusive critique never yet injured its object:  in fact it is generally the greatest favour an author’s unfriends can bestow upon him.  But to notice a popular Review books which have been printed and not published is hardly in accordance with the established courtesies of literature.  At the end of my work I propose to write a paper “The Reviewer Reviewed” which will, amongst other things, explain the motif of the writer of the critique and the editor of the Edinburgh.

[FN#431] 1 For detailed examples and specimens see p. 10 of Gladwin’s “Dissertations on Rhetoric,” etd., Calcutta, 1801.

[FN#432] For instance:  I, M. | take thee N. | to my wedded wife,
| to have and to hold, | from this day forward, | for better for
worse, | for richer for poorer, | in sickness and in health, | to
love and to cherish, | till death do us part, etc.  Here it
becomes mere blank verse which is, of course, a defect in prose
style.  In that delightful old French the Saj’a frequently
appeared when attention was solicited for the titles of books: 
e.g.  Lea Romant de la Rose, ou tout lart damours est enclose.

[FN#433] See Gladwin loc. cit. p. 8:  it also is = alliteration (Ibn Khall. ii., 316).

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[FN#434] He called himself “Nabiyun ummi” = illiterate prophet; but only his most ignorant followers believe that he was unable to read and write.  His last words, accepted by all traditionists, were “Aatini dawata wa kalam” (bring me ink-case and pen); upon which the Shi’ah or Persian sectaries base, not without probability, a theory that Mohammed intended to write down the name of Ali as his Caliph or successor when Omar, suspecting the intention, exclaimed, “The Prophet is delirious; have we not the Koran?” thus impiously preventing the precaution.  However that may be, the legend proves that Mohammed could read and write even when not “under inspiration.”  The vulgar idea would arise from a pious intent to add miracle to the miraculous style of the Koran.

[FN#435] I cannot but vehemently suspect that this legend was taken from much older traditions.  We have Jubal the semi-mythical who, “by the different falls of his hammer on the anvil, discovered by the ear the first rude music that pleased the antediluvian fathers.”  Then came Pythagoras, of whom Macrobius (lib. ii ) relates how this Graeco-Egyptian philosopher, passing by a smithy, observed that the sounds were grave or acute according to the weights of the hammers; and he ascertained by experiment that such was the case when different weights were hung by strings of the same size.  The next discovery was that two strings of the same substance and tension, the one being double the length of the other, gave the diapason-interval, or an eighth; and the same was effected from two strings of similar length and size, the one having four times the tension of the other.  Belonging to the same cycle of invention-anecdotes are Galileo’s discovery of the pendulum by the lustre of the Pisan Duomo; and the kettle-lid, the falling apple and the copper hook which inspired Watt, Newton and Galvani.

[FN#436] To what an absurd point this has been carried we may learn from Ibn Khallikan (i. 114).  A poet addressing a single individual does not say “My friend!” or “My friends!” but “My two friends!” (in the dual) because a Badawi required a pair of companions, one to tend the sheep and the other to pasture the camels.

[FN#437] For further details concerning the Sabab, Watad and Fasilah, see at the end of this Essay the learned remarks of Dr. Steingass.

[FN#438] e.g., the Mu’allakats of “Amriolkais,” Tarafah and Zuhayr compared by Mr. Lyall (Introduction to Translations) with the metre of Abt Vogler, e.g.,

     Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told

[FN#439] e.g., the Poem of Hareth which often echoes the hexameter

[FN#440] Gladwin, p. 80.

[FN#441] Gladwin (p. 77) gives only eight, omitting F ’ l which he or his author probably considers the Muzahaf, imperfect or apocoped form of F ’ l n, as M f ’ l of M f ’ l n.  For the infinite complications of Arabic prosody the Khafif (soft breathing) and Sahih (hard breathing); the Sadr and Aruz (first and last feet), the Ibtida and Zarb (last foot of every line); the Hashw (cushion-stuffing) or body part of verse, the ’Amud al-Kasidah or Al-Musammat (the strong) and other details I must refer readers to such specialists as Freytag and Sam.  Clarke (Prosodia Arabica), and to Dr. Steingass’s notes infra.

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[FN#442] The Hebrew grammarians of the Middle Ages wisely copied their Arab cousins by turning Fa’la into Pael and so forth.

[FN#443] Mr. Lyall, whose “Ancient Arabic Poetry” (Williams and Norgate, 1885) I reviewed in The Academy of Oct. 3, ’85, did the absolute reverse of what is required:  he preserved the metre and sacrificed the rhyme even when it naturally suggested itself.  For instance in the last four lines of No. xii. what would be easier than to write,

Ah sweet and soft wi’ thee her ways:  bethink thee well!  The day
     shall be
When some one favoured as thyself shall find her fair and fain
     and free;
And if she swear that parting ne’er shall break her word of
     constancy,
When did rose-tinted finger-tip with pacts and pledges e’er
     agree?

[FN#444] See p. 439 Grammatik des Arabischen Vulgaer Dialekts von AEgyptian, by Dr. Wilhelm Spitta Bey, Leipzig, 1880.  In pp. 489-493 he gives specimens of eleven Mawawil varying in length from four to fifteen lines.  The assonance mostly attempts monorhyme:  in two tetrastichs it is aa + ba, and it does not disdain alternates, ab + ab + ab.

[FN#445] Al-Siyuti, p. 235, from Ibn Khallikan.  Our knowledge of oldest Arab verse is drawn chiefly from the Katab al-Aghani (Song-book) of Abu al-Faraj the Isfahani who flourished A.H. 284-356 (= 897- 967):  it was printed at the Bulak Press in 1868.

[FN#446] See Lyall loc. cit. p. 97.

[FN#447] His Diwan has been published with a French translation, par R. Boucher, Paris, Labitte, 1870.

[FN#448] I find also minor quotations from the Imam Abu al-Hasan al-Askari (of Sarra man raa) ob.  A.D. 868; Ibn Makula (murdered in A.D. 862?), Ibn Durayd (ob.  A.D. 933) Al-Zahr the Poet (ob.  A.D. 963); Abu Bakr al-Zubaydi (ob.  A.D. 989), Kabus ibn Wushmaghir (murdered in A.D. 1012-13); Ibn Nabatah the Poet (ob.  A.D. 1015), Ibn al-Sa’ati (ob.  A.D. 1028); Ibn Zaydun al-Andalusi who died at Hums (Emessa, the Arab name for Seville) in A.D. 1071; Al-Mu’tasim ibn Sumadih (ob.  A.D. 1091), Al-Murtaza ibn al-Shahrozuri the Sufi (ob.  A.D. 1117); Ibn Sara al-Shantarani (of Santarem) who sang of Hind and died A.D. 1123; Ibn al-Khazin (ob.  A.D. 1124), Ibn Kalakis (ob.  A D. 1172) Ibn al-Ta’wizi (ob.  A.D. 1188); Ibn Zabadah (ob.  A.D. 1198), Baha al-Din Zuhayr (ob A.D. 1249); Muwaffak al-Din Muzaffar (ob.  A.D. 1266) and sundry others.  Notices of Al-Utayyah (vol. i. 11), of Ibn al-Sumam (vol. i. 87) and of Ibn Sahib al-Ishbili, of Seville (vol. i. 100), are deficient.  The most notable point in Arabic verse is its savage satire, the language of excited “destructiveness” which characterises the Badawi:  he is “keen for satire as a thirsty man for water:”  and half his poetry seems to consist of foul innuendo, of lampoons, and of gross personal abuse.

[FN#449] If the letter preceding Waw or Ya is moved by Fathah, they produce the diphthongs au (aw), pronounced like ou in “bout’” and se, pronounced as i in “bite.”

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[FN#450] For the explanation of this name and those of the following terms, see Terminal Essay, p. 225.

[FN#451] This Fasilah is more accurately called sughra, the smaller one, there is another Fasilah kubra, the greater, consisting of four moved letters followed by a quiescent, or of a Sabab sakil followed by a Watad majmu’.  But it occurs only as a variation of a normal foot, not as an integral element in its composition, and consequently no mention of it was needed in the text.

[FN#452] It is important to keep in mind that the seemingly identical feet 10 and 6, 7 and 3, are distinguished by the relative positions of the constituting elements in either pair.  For as it will be seen that Sabab and Watad are subject to different kinds of alterations it is evident that the effect of such alterations upon a foot will vary, if Sabab and Watad occupy different places with regard to each other.

[FN#453] i.e. vertical to the circumference.

[FN#454] This would be a Fasilah kubra spoken of in the note p. 239.

[FN#455] In pause that is at the end of a line, a short vowel counts either as long or is dropped according to the exigencies of the metre.  In the Hashw the u or i of the pronominal affix for the third person sing., masc., and the final u of the enlarged pronominal plural forms, humu and kumu, may be either short or long, according to the same exigencies.  The end-vowel of the pronoun of the first person ana, I, is generally read short, although it is written with Alif.

[FN#456] On p. 236 the word akamu, as read by itself, was identified with the foot Fa’ulun.  Here it must be read together with the following syllable as “akamulwaj,” which is Mafa’ilun.

[FN#457] Prof.  Palmer, p. 328 of his Grammar, identifies this form of the Wafir, when every Mufa’ alatum of the Hashw has become Mafa’ilun, with the second form of the Rajaz It should be Hazaj.  Professor Palmer was misled, it seems, by an evident misprint in one of his authorities, the Muhit al-Dairah by Dr. Van Dayk, p. 52.

[FN#458] Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac 134b “The Merchant’s Wife and the Parrot.”

[FN#459] This will be found translated in my “Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night,” vol. vii. p. 307, as an Appendix to the Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac version of the story, from which it differs in detail.

[FN#460] Called “Bekhit” in Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac Editions.

[FN#461] Yehya ben Khalid (Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac),

[FN#462] “Shar” (Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac).

[FN#463] “Jelyaad” (Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac.)

[FN#464] Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac, No. 63.  See my “Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night,” vol. iv., p. 211.

[FN#465] Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac, “Jaafar the Barmecide.”

[FN#466] Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac, “The Thief turned Merchant and the other Thief,” No. 88.

Page 309

[FN#467] This story will be found translated in my “Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night,” vol. v., p. 345.

[FN#468] After this I introduce the Tale of the Husband and the Parrot.

[FN#469] The Bulak Edition omits this story altogether.

[FN#470] After this I introduce How Abu Hasan brake wind.

[FN#471] Probably Wakksh al-Falak=Feral of the Wild.

[FN#472] This is the date of the Paris edition.  There was an earlier edition published at La Haye in 1743.

[FN#473] There are two other Oriental romances by Voltaire; viz., Babouc, and the Princess of Babylon.