The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
| Table of Contents | |
| Section | Page |
| Start of eBook | 1 |
| Story of Prince Sayf al-Muluk and the Princess Badi’a al-Jamal. | 1 |
| End of Vol. 7 | 43 |
There was once, in days of old and in ages and times long told, a King in Egypt called Asim bin Safwan,[FN#354] who was a liberal and beneficent sovran, venerable and majestic. He owned many cities and sconces and fortresses and troops and warriors and had a Wazir named Faris bin Salih,[FN#355] and he and all his subjects worshipped the sun and the fire, instead of the All-powerful Sire, the Glorious, the Victorious. Now this King was become a very old man, weakened and wasted with age and sickness and decrepitude; for he had lived an hundred and fourscore years and had no child, male or female, by reason whereof he was ever in cark and care from morning to night and from night to morn. It so happened that one day of the days, he was sitting on the throne of his Kingship, with his Emirs and Wazirs and Captains and Grandees in attendance on him, according to their custom, in their several stations, and whenever there came in an Emir, who had with him a son or two sons, or haply three who stood at the sides of their sires the King envied him and said in himself, “Every one of these is happy and rejoiceth in his children, whilst I, I have no child, and to-morrow I die and leave my reign and throne and lands and hoards, and strangers will take them and none will bear me in memory nor will there remain any mention of me in the world.” Then he became drowned in the sea of thought and for the much thronging of griefs and anxieties upon his hear, like travellers faring for the well, he shed tears and descending from his throne, sat down upon the floor,[FN#356] weeping and humbling himself before the Lord. Now when the Wazir and notables of the realm and others who were present in the assembly saw him do thus with his royal person, they feared for their lives and let the poursuivants cry aloud to the lieges, saying, “Hie ye to your homes and rest till the King recover from what aileth him.” So they went away, leaving none in the presence save the Minister who, as soon as the King came to himself, kissed ground between his hands and said, “O King of the Age and the Time, wherefore this weeping and wailing? Tell me who hath transgressed against thee of the Kings or Castellans or Emirs or Grandees, and inform me who hath thwarted thee, O my liege lord, that we may all fall on him and tear his soul from his two sides.” But he spake not neither raised his head; whereupon the Minister kissed ground before him a second time and said to him, “O Master,[FN#357] I am even as thy son and thy slave, nay, I have reared thee; yet know I not the cause of thy cark and chagrin and of this thy case; and who should know but I who should stand in my stead between thy hands? Tell me therefore why this weeping and wherefore thine affliction.” Nevertheless, the King neither opened his mouth nor raised his head, but ceased not to weep and cry with
When it was the Seven Hundred and Fifty-ninth Night,
She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Wazir said to King Asim, “Tell me the cause of this thy weeping: haply Allah shall appoint thee relief at my hands.” Replied the King, “O Wazir, I weep not for monies nor horses nor kingdoms nor aught else, but that I am become an old man, yea, very old, nigh upon an hundred and fourscore years of age, and I have not been blessed with a child, male or female; so, when I die, they will bury me and my trace will be effaced and my name cut off; the stranger will take my throne and reign and none will ever make mention of my being.” Rejoined the Minister Faris, “O King of the Age, I am older than thou by an hundred years yet have I never been blest with boon of child and cease not day and night from cark and care and concern; so how shall we do, I and thou?” Quoth Asim, “O Wazir, hast thou no device or shift in this matter?” and quoth the Minister, “Know, O King that I have heard of a Sovran in the land of Saba[FN#358] by name Solomon David-son (upon the twain be the Peace!),[FN#359] who pretendeth to prophetship and avoucheth that he hath a mighty Lord who can do all things and whose kingdom is in the Heavens and who hath dominion over all mankind and birds and beasts and over the wind and the Jinn. Moreover, he kenneth the speech of birds and the language of every other created thing; and withal, he calleth all creatures to the worship of his Lord and discourseth to them of their service. So let us send him a messenger in the King’s name and seek of him our need, beseeching him to put up prayer to his Lord, that He vouchsafe each of us boon of issue. If his Faith be soothfast and his Lord Omnipotent, He will assuredly bless each of us with a child male or female, and if the thing thus fall out, we will enter his faith and worship his Lord; else will we take patience and devise us another device.” The King cried, “This is well seen, and my breast is braodened by this thy speech; but where shall we find a messenger befitting this grave matter, for that this Solomon is no Kinglet and the approaching him is no light affair? Indeed, I will send him none, on the like of this matter, save thyself; for thou art ancient
When it was the Seven Hundred and Sixtieth Night,
She resumed, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Solomon David-son (upon both of whom be peace!) after disclosing to the Wazir Faris that which had passed between himself and his master, King Asim, said to him, “Is this that I have told thee the truth, O Wazir?” Replied Faris, “O prophet of Allah, this thou hast said is indeed sooth and verity; but when we discoursed of this matter, none was with the King and myself, nor was any ware of our case; who, then told thee of all these things?” Answered Solomon, “They were told to me by my Lord who knoweth whatso is concealed[FN#364] from the eye and what is hidden in the breasts.” Quoth Faris, “O Prophet of Allah, verily this is none other than a mighty Lord and an omnipotent God!” And he Islamized with all his many. Then said Solomon to him, “Thou hast with thee such and such presents and rarities;” and Faris replied “Yes.” The prophet continued, “I accept them all and give them in free gift unto thee. So do ye rest, thou and thy company, in the place where you have been lodging, till the fatigue of the journey shall cease from you; and to-morrow, Inshallah! thine errand shall be accomplished to the uttermost, if it be the will of Allah the Most High, Lord of heaven and earth and the light which followeth the gloom; Creator of all creatures.” So Faris returned to his quarters and passed the night in deep thought. But when morning morrowed he presented himself before the Lord Solomon, who said to him, “When thou returnest to King Asim bin Safwan and you twain are re-united, do ye both go forth some day armed with bow, bolts and brand, and fare to such a place, where ye shall find a certain tree. Mount upon it and sit silent until the midhour between noon-prayer and that of mid-afternoon, when the noontide heat hath cooled; then descend and look at the foot of the tree, whence ye will see two serpents come forth, one with a head like an ape’s
When it was the Seven Hundred and Sixty-first Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the King and the Wazir gave the serpents’ flesh to the kitchener, saying, “Cook it and ladle it out into two saucers and bring them hither without delay!”; the cook took the meat and went with it to the kitchen, where he cooked it and dressed it in skilful fashion with a mighty fine onion-sauce and hot spices; after which he ladled it out into two saucers and set them before the King and the Wazir, who took each a dish and gave their wives to eat of the meat. Then they went in that night unto them and knew them carnally, and by the good pleasure of Allah (extolled and exalted be He!) and His all-might and furtherance, they both conceived on one and the same night. The King abode three months, troubled in mind and saying in himself, “I wonder whether this thing will prove true or untrue”; till one day, as the lady his Queen was sitting, the child stirred in her womb and she felt a pain and her colour changed. So she knew that she was with child and calling the chief of her eunuchs, gave him this command, “Go to the King, wherever he may be and congratulate him saying, ’O King of the Age, I bring thee the glad tidings that our lady’s pregnancy is become manifest, for the child stirreth in her womb’.” So the eunuch went out in haste, rejoicing, and finding the King alone, with cheek on palm, pondering this thing, kissed ground between his hands and acquainted him with his wife’s pregnancy. When the King heard his words, he sprang to his feet and in the excess of his joy, he kissed[FN#369] the eunuch’s hands and head and doffing the clothes he had on, gave them to him. Moreover, he said to those who were present in his assembly, “Whoso loveth me, let him bestow largesse upon this man."[FN#370] And they gave him of coin and jewels and jacinths and horses and mules and estates and gardens what was beyond count or calculation. At that moment in came the Wazir Faris and said to Asim, “O my master, but now I was sitting alone at home and absorbed in thought, pondering the matter of the pregnancy and saying to myself, ’Would I wot an this thing be true and whether my wife Khatun[FN#371] have conceived or not!’ when, behold, an eunuch came in to me and brought me the glad tidings that his lady was indeed pregnant, for that her colour was changed and the child stirred in her womb; whereupon, in my joy, I doffed all the clothes I had on and gave them to him, together with a thousand dinars, and made him Chief of the Eunuchs.” Rejoined the King,
When it was the Seven Hundred and Sixty-second Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when King Asim seated his son, Sayf al-Muluk, upon the throne and all the people prayed for his victory and prosperity, the youth scattered gold and silver on the heads of the lieges, one and all, and conferred robes of honour and gave gifts and largesse. Then, after a moment, the Wazir Faris arose and kissing ground said, “O Emirs, O Grandees, ye ken that I am Wazir and that my Wazirate dateth from old, before the accession of King Asim bin Safwan, who hath now divested himself of the Kingship and made his son King in his stead?” Answered they, “Yes, we know that thy Wazirate is from sire after grandsire.” He continued, “And now in my turn I divest myself of office and invest this my son Sa’id, for he is intelligent, quick-witted, sagacious. What say ye all?” And they replied, “None is worthy to be Wazir to King Sayf al-Muluk but thy son, Sa’id, and they befit each other.” With this Faris arose and taking off his Wazirial turband, set it on his son’s head and eke laid his ink-case of office before him, whilst the Chamberlains and the Emirs said, “Indeed, he is deserving of the Wazirship” and the Heralds cried aloud, “Mubarak! Mubarak!—Felix sit et faustus!” After this, King Asim and Faris the Minister arose and, opening the royal treasuries, conferred magnificent robes of honour on all the Viceroys and Emirs and Wazirs and Lords of the land and other folk and gave salaries and benefactions and wrote them new mandates and diplomas with the signatures of King Sayf al-Muluk and his Wazir Sa’id. Moreover, he made distribution of money to the men-at-arms and gave guerdons, and the provincials abode in the city a full week ere they departed each to his own country and place. Then King Asim carried his son and his Wazir Sa’id back to the palace which was
“Love, at the first, is a spurt of spray[FN#387]
* Which Doom
disposes and Fates display;
Till, when deep diveth youth in passion-sea * Unbearable
sorrows his soul waylay.”
And also these two couplets,
“Had I known of Love in what fashion he * Robbeth
heart and
soul I had guarded me:
But of malice prepense I threw self away * Unwitting
of Love
what his nature be.”
And Sayf al-Muluk ceased not to weep and wail and beat face and breast, till Sa’id awoke and missing him from the bed and seeing but a single candle, said to himself, “Whither is Sayf al-Muluk gone?” Then he took the other candle and went round about the palace, till he came upon the closet where he saw the Prince lying at full length, weeping with sore weeping and lamenting aloud. So he said to him, “O my brother, for what cause are these tears and what hath befallen thee? Speak to me and tell me the reason thereof.” But Sayf al-Muluk spoke not neither raised his head and continued to weep and wail and beat hand on breast. Seeing him in this case quoth Sa’id, “I am thy Wazir and thy brother, and we were reared together, I and thou; so an thou do not unburden thy breast and discover thy secret to me, to whom shalt thou reveal it and disclose its cause?” And he went on to humble himself and kiss the ground before him a full hour, whilst Sayf al-Muluk paid no heed to him nor answered him a word, but gave not over to
When it was the Seven Hundred and Sixty-third Night,
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Sa’id, son of the Wazir Faris, had read to Sayf al-Muluk, son of King Asim, the writ on the tunic, which showed the portraiture of Badi’a al-Jamal, daughter of Shahyal bin Sharukh, a King of the Kings of the Moslem Jinns dwelling in Babel-city and in the Garden of Iram, son of ’Ad the Greater, he cried, “O my brother, knowest thou of what woman this is the presentment, that we may seek for her?” Sayf al-Muluk replied, “No, by Allah, O my brother, I know her not!” and Sa’id rejoined, “Come, read this writing on the crown.” So Sayf al-Muluk read it and cried out from his heart’s core and very vitals, saying, “Alas! Alas! Alas!” Quoth Sa’id, “O my brother, an the original of the portrait exist and her name be Badi’a al-Jamal, and she abide in the world, I will hasten to seek her, that thou mayst win thy will without delay. But, Allah upon thee, O my brother, leave this weeping and ascend thy throne, that the Officers of the State may come in to do their service to thee, and in the undurn, do thou summon the merchants and fakirs and travellers and pilgrims and paupers and ask of them concerning this city and the garden of Iram; haply by the help and blessing of Allah (extolled and exalted be He!), some one of them shall direct us thither.” So, when it was day, Sayf al-Muluk went forth and mounted the throne, clasping the tunic in his arms, for he could neither stand nor sit without it, nor would sleep visit him save it were with him; and the Emirs and Wazirs and Lords and Officers came in to him. When the Divan was complete all being assembled in
When it was the Seven Hundred and Sixty-fourth Night,
She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Sayf al-Muluk said to his sire King Asim, “Equip me a ship that I may fare therein to the China-land and search for the object of my desire. If I live I shall return to thee safe and sound.” The old King looked at his son and saw nothing for it but to do what he desired; so he gave him the leave he wanted and fitted him forty ships, manned with twenty thousand armed Mamelukes, besides servants, and presented him with great plenty of money and necessaries and warlike gear, as much as he required. When the ships were laden with water and victual, weapons and troops, Sayf al-Muluk’s father and mother farewelled him and King Asim said, “Depart, O my son, and travel in weal and health and safety. I commend thee to Him with Whom deposits are not lost."[FN#393] So the Prince bade adieu to his parents and embarked,
When it was the Seven Hundred and Sixty-fifth Night,
She resume, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Sayf al-Muluk would have cast himself into the main, his Mamelukes withheld him saying, “What will this profit thee? Thou hast done this deed by thyself, yet was it written from all eternity by the will of the Creator of Souls, that the creature might accomplish that which Allah hath decreed unto him. And indeed, at the time of thy birth, the astrologers assured thy sire that all manner troubles should befal thee. So there is naught for it but patience till Allah deliver us from this our strait.” Replied the Prince, “There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great! Neither is there refuge nor fleeing from that which He decreeth!” And he sighed and recited these couplets,
“By the Compassionate, I’m dazed about
my case for lo! *
Troubles and griefs
beset me sore; I know not whence they
grow.
I will be patient, so the folk, that I against a thing
*
Bitt’rer than
very aloes’ self,[FN#400] endured have, may
know.
Less bitter than my patience is the taste of aloes-juice;
*
I’ve borne with
patience what’s more hot than coals with
fire aglow.
In this my trouble what resource have I, save to commit
* My
case to Him who orders
all that is, for weal or woe?”
Then he became drowned in the depth of thoughts and his tears ran down upon his cheeks like torrent-rain; and he slept a while of the day, after which he awoke and sought of food somewhat. So they set meat before him and he ate his sufficiency, till they removed the food from before him, whilst the boat drove on with them they knew not whither it was wandering. It drifted with them at the will of the winds and the waves, night and day a great while, till their victual was spent and they saw themselves shent and were reduced to extreme hunger and thirst and exhaustion, when behold, suddenly they sighted an island from afar and the breezes wafted them on, till they came thither. Then, making the cock-boat fast to the coast and leaving one therein to guard it, they fared on into the island, where they found abundance of fruits of all colours and ate of them till they were satisfied. Presently, they saw a person sitting among those trees and he was long-faced, of strange favour and white of beard and body. He called to one of the Mamelukes by his name, saying, “Eat not of these fruits, for they are unripe; but come hither to me, that I may give thee to eat of the best and the ripest.” The slave looked at him and thought that he was one of the shipwrecked, who had made his way to that island; so he joyed with exceeding joy at sight of him and went close up to him, knowing not what was decreed to him in the Secret Purpose nor what was writ upon his brow. But, when he drew near, the stranger in human shape leapt upon him, for he was a Marid,[FN#401] and riding upon his shoulderblades and twisting one of his legs about his neck, let the other hang down upon his back, saying, “Walk on, fellow; for there is no escape for thee from me and thou art become mine ass.” Thereupon the Mameluke fell a-weeping and cried out to his comrades, “Alas, my lord! Flee ye forth of this wood and save yourselves, for one of the dwellers therein hath mounted on my shoulders, and the rest seek you, desiring to ride you like me."When they heard these words, all fled down to the boat and pushed off to sea; whilst the islanders followed them into the water, saying, “Whither wend ye? Come, tarry with us and we will mount on your backs and give you meat and drink, and you shall be our donkeys.” Hearing this they hastened the more seawards till they left them in the distance and fared on, trusting in Allah Almighty; nor did
When it was the Seven Hundred and Sixty-sixth Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Zanzibar-blacks took Sayf al-Muluk and his Mamelukes and set them before the King, saying, “O King, we came upon these birds among the trees.” Thereupon the King seized two of the Mamelukes and cut their throats and ate them; which, when Sayf al-Muluk saw, he feared for himself and wept and repeated these verses,
“Familiar with my heart are woes and with them
I * Who shunned
them; for familiar are
great hearts and high.
The woes I suffer are not all of single kind. * I
have, thank
Allah, varied thousands
to aby!”
Then he signed and repeated these also,
“The World hath shot me with its sorrows till
* My heart is
covered with shafts
galore;
And now, when strike me other shafts, must break *
Against th’
old points the points
that latest pour.”
When the King heard his weeping and wailing, he said, “Verily these birds have sweet voices and their song pleaseth me: put them in cages.” So they set them each in his own cage and hung them up at the King’s head that he might listen to their warbling. On this wise Sayf al-Muluk and his Mamelukes abode and the blackamoors gave them to eat and drink: and now they wept and now laughed, now spake and now were hushed, whilst the King of the blacks delighted in the sound of their voices. And so they continued for a long time. Now this King had a daughter married in another island who, hearing that her father had birds with sweet voices, sent a messenger to him seeking of him some of them. So he sent her, by her Cossid,[FN#404] Sayf al-Muluk and three of his men in four cages; and, when she saw them, they pleased her and she bade hang them up in a place over her head. The Prince fell to marvelling at that which had befallen him and calling to mind his former high and honourable estate and weeping for himself; and the three servants wept for themselves; and the King’s daughter deemed that they sang. Now it was her wont, whenever any one from the land of Egypt or elsewhere fell into her hands and he pleased her, to advance him to great favour with her; and by the decree of Allah Almighty it befel that, when she saw Sayf al-Muluk she was charmed by his beauty and loveliness and symmetry and perfect grace, and she commanded to entreat him and his companions with honour and to loose them from their cages. Now one day she took the Prince apart and would have him enjoy her; but he refused, saying, “O my lady, I am a banisht wight and with passion for a beloved one in piteous plight, nor with other will I consent to love-delight.” Then she coaxed him and importuned him, but he held aloof from her, and she could not approach him nor get her desire of him by any ways and means. At last, when she was weary of courting him in vain, she waxed wroth with him and his Mamelukes, and commanded that they should serve her and fetch her wood and water. In such condition they abode four years till Sayf al-Muluk became weary of his life and sent to intercede with the Princess, so haply she might release them and let them wend their ways and be at rest from that their hard labour. So she sent for him and said to him, “If thou wilt do my desire, I will free thee from this thy durance vile and thou shalt go to thy country, safe and sound.” And she wept and ceased not to humble herself to him and wheedle him, but he would not hearken to her words; whereupon she turned from him, in anger, and he and his companions abode on the island in the same plight. The islanders knew them for “The Princess’s birds” and durst not work them any wrong; and her heart was at ease concerning them, being assured that they could not escape from the island. So they used to absent themselves from her two and three days at a time and go round about the desert parts in al directions, gathering firewood, which they brought
When it was the Seven Hundred and Sixty-seventh Night,
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Sayf al-Muluk and his Mamelukes, having cut the wood and twisted the ropes for their raft, made an end of it and launched it upon the sea; then, after breaking their bonds with the axe, and loading the craft with fruits plucked from the island-trees, they embarked at close of day; nor did any wot of their intent. They put out to sea in their raft and paddled on four months, knowing not whither the craft
When it was the Seven Hundred and Sixty-eighth Night,
She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Sayf al-Muluk saw the gestures and gambols of the apes, he marvelled thereat and forgot that which had betided him of strangerhood and its sufferings. At nightfall they lighted waxen candles in candlesticks of gold studded with gems and set on dishes of confections and fruits of sugar-candy. So they ate; and when the hour of rest was come, the apes spread them bedding and they slept. And when morning morrowed, the young man arose, as was his wont, before sunrise and waking Sayf al-Muluk said to him, “Put thy head forth of this lattice and see what standeth beneath it.” So he put out his head and saw the wide waste and all the wold filled with apes, whose number none knew save Allah Almighty. Quoth he, “Here be great plenty of apes, for they cover the whole country: but why are they assembled at this hour?” Quoth the youth, “This is their custom. Every Sabbath,[FN#413] all the apes in the island come hither, some from two and three days’ distance, and stand here till I awake from sleep and put forth my head from this lattice, when they kiss ground before me and go about their
When it was the Seven Hundred and Sixty-ninth Night,
She resumed, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the damsel said to Sayf al-Muluk, “Then the King of the Jann, after he had acquainted me with his case, embraced me and kissed me, saying, ‘Abide here and fear nothing’; whereupon he went away from me for an hour and presently returned with these tables and carpets and furniture. He comes to me every Third[FN#420] and abideth with me three days and on Friday, at the time of mid-afternoon prayer, he departeth and is absent till the following Third. When he is here, he eateth and drinketh and kisseth and huggeth me, but doth naught else with me, and I am a pure virgin, even as Allah Almighty created me. My father’s name is Taj al-Muluk, and he wotteth not what is come of me nor hath he hit upon any trace of me. This is my story: now tell me thy tale.” Answered the Prince, “My story is a long and I fear lest while I am telling it to thee the Ifrit come.” Quoth she “He went out from me but an hour before thy entering and will not return till Third: so sit thee down and take thine ease and hearten thy heart and tell me what hath betided thee, from beginning to end.” And quoth he, “I hear and
When it was the Seven Hundred and Seventieth Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Daulat Khatun acquainted Sayf al-Muluk with the whereabouts of the soul of the Jinni who had carried her off and repeated to him his speech ending with, “And this is a secret between me and thee!” “I rejoined,” quoth she, “’To whom should I tell it, seeing that none but thou cometh hither with whom I may talk thereof?’ adding, ’By Allah, thou hast indeed set thy soul in the strongest of strongholds to which none may gain access! How should a man win to it, unless the impossible be fore-ordained and Allah decree like as the astrologers predicted?’ Thereupon the Jinni, ’Peradventure one may come, having on his finger the seal-ring of Solomon son of David (on the twain be peace!) and lay his hand with the ring on the face of the water, saying, ’By the virtue of the names engraven upon this ring, let the soul of such an one come forth!’ Whereupon the coffer will rise to the surface and he will break it open and do the like with the chests and caskets, till he come to the little box, when he will take out the sparrow and strangle it, and I shall die.’” Then said Sayf al-Muluk, “I am the King’s son of whom he spake, and this is the ring of Solomon David-son on my finger: so rise, let us go down to the sea-shore and see if his words be leal or leasing!” Thereupon the two walked down to the sea-shore and the Princess stood on the beach, whilst the Prince waded into the water to his waist and laying his hand with the ring on the surface of the sea, said, “By the virtue of the names and talismans engraven on this ring, and by the might of Sulayman bid Daud (on whom be the Peace!), let the soul of Hatim the Jinni, son of the Blue King, come forth!” Whereat the sea boiled in billows and the coffer of alabaster rose to the surface. Sayf al-Muluk took it and shattered it against the rock and broke open the chests and caskets, till he came to the little box and drew thereout the sparrow. Then the twain returned to the castle and sat down on the throne; but hardly had they done this, when lo and behold! there arose a dust-cloud terrifying and some huge thing came flying
When it was the Seven Hundred and Seventy-first Night,
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Daulat Khatun said to Sayf al-Muluk, “Rejoice in safety near hand; for the King of this city is my uncle, my father’s brother and his name is ’Ali al-Muluk,"[FN#430] adding, “Say thou then to the captain, ’Is the Sultan of the city, Ali al-Muluk, well?’” He asked but the captain was wroth with him and cried, “Thou sayest, ’I am a stranger and never in my life came hither.’ Who then told thee the name of the lord of the city?” When Daulat Khatun heard this, she rejoiced and knew him for Mu’in al-Din,[FN#431] one of her father’s captains. Now he had fared forth in search of her, after she was lost and finding her not, he never ceased cruising till he came to her uncle’s city. Then she bade Sayf al-Muluk say to him, “O Captain Mu’in al-Din, come and speak with thy mistress!” So he called out to him as she bade, whereat he was wroth with exceeding wrath and answered, “O dog, O thief, O spy, who art thou and how knowest thou me?” Then he said to one of the sailors, “Give me an ash[FN#432]-stave, that I may go to yonder plaguing Arab and break his head.” So he tookt he stick and made for Sayf al-Muluk, but, when he came to the raft, he saw a something, wondrous, beauteous, which confounded his wits and considering it straitly he made sure that it was Daulat Khatun sitting there, as she were a slice of the moon; whereat he said to the Prince, “Who is that with thee?” Replied he, “A damsel by name Daulat Khatun.” When the captain heard the Princess’s name and knew that she was his mistress and the daughter of his King, he fell down in a fainting-fit, and when he came to himself, he left the raft and whatso was thereon and riding up to the palace, craved an audience of the King; whereupon the chamberlain went in to the presence and said, “Captain Mu’in al-Din is come to bring thee good news; so bid he be brought in.” The King bade admit him; accordingly he entered and kissing ground[FN#433] said to him, “O King, thou owest me a gift for glad tidings; for thy brother’s daughter Daulat Khatun hath reached our city safe and sound, and is now on a raft in the harbour, in company with a young man like the moon on the night of its full.” When the King heard this, he rejoiced and conferred a costly robe of honour on the captain. Then he straightway bade decorate the city in honour of the safe return of his brother’s daughter, and sending for her and Sayf al-Muluk, saluted the twain
When it was the Seven Hundred and Seventy-second Night,
She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Sa’id continued, “When we set fire to the pile wherein were the Ghuls, I with the Mamelukes stood afar off to see what became of them; and, as soon the fire was burnt out, we came back and found them a heap of ashes, wherefore we praised Allah Almighty who had delivered us from them. Then we went forth about the island and sought the sea-shore, where we parted and I and two of the Mamelukes fared on till we came to a thick copse full of fruit and there busied ourselves with eating, and behold, presently up came a man tall of stature, long of beard and lengthy of ear, with eyes like cressets, driving before him and feeding a great flock of sheep.[FN#439] When he saw us he rejoiced and said to us, ’Well come, and fair welcome to you! Draw near me that I may slaughter you an ewe of these sheep and roast it and give you to eat.’ Quoth we, ‘Where is thine abode?’ And quoth he, ’Hard by yonder mountain; go on towards it till ye come to a cave and enter therein, for you will see many guests like yourselves; and do ye sit with them, whilst we make ready for you the guest-meal.’ We believed him so fared on, as he bade us, till we came to the cavern, where we found many guests, Sons of Adam like ourselves, but they were all blinded;[FN#440] and when we entered, one said, ‘I’m sick’; and another, ’I’m weak.’ So we cried to them, ’What is this you say and what is the cauase of your sickness and weakness?’ They asked, ’Who are ye?’; and we answered, ‘We are guests.’ Then said they, ’What hath made you fall into the hands of yonder accursed? But there is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great! This is a Ghul who devoureth the Sons of Adam and he hath blinded us and meaneth to eat us.’ Said we, ‘And how did he blind you?’ and they replied, ’Even as he will blind yourselves anon.’ Quoth we, ‘And how so?’ And quoth they, ’He will bring you bowls of soured milk[FN#441] and will say to you, ’Ye are weary with wayfare: take this milk and drink it.’ And when ye have drunken thereof, ye will become blind like us.’ Said I to myself, ’There is no escape for us but by contrivance.’ So I dug a hole in the ground and sat over it. After an hour or so in came the accursed Ghul with bowls of milk, whereof he gave to each of us, saying, ’Ye come from the desert and are athirst: so take this milk and drink it, whilst I roast you the flesh.’ I took the cup and carried it to my mouth but emptied it into the hole; then I cried out, ‘Alas! my sight is gone and I am blind!’ and clapping my hand to my eyes, fell a-weeping and a-wailing, whilst the accursed laughed and said, ’Fear not, thou art now become like mine other guests.’ But, as for my two comrades, they drank the milk and became blind. Thereupon the Ghul arose and stopping up the mouth of the cavern came to me and felt my ribs, but found me lean and with no flesh on my bones: so he tried another and finding him fat, rejoiced. Then he
When it was the Seven Hundred and Seventy-third Night,
She resumed, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Sa’id continued, “Now when I struck the Ghul with the sword he cried out to me, ’O man, an thou desire to slay me, strike me a second stroke!” I was about so to do when he who had directed me to the scymitar said, ’Smite him not a second time, for then he will not die but will live and destroy us!’ So I held my hand as he bade me, and the Ghul died. Then said the blind man to me, ’Open the mouth of the cave and let us fare forth; so haply Allah may help us and bring us to rest from this place.’ And I said, ’No harm can come to us now; let us rather abide here and repose and eat of these sheep and drink of this wine, for long is the land.’ Accordingly we tarried there two months, eating of the sheep and of the fruits of the island and drinking the generous grape-juice till it so chanced one day, as we sat upon the beach, we caught sight of a ship looming large in the distance; so we made signs for the crew
When it was the Seven Hundred and Seventy-fourth Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Daulat Khatun related to Badi’a al-Jamal the first part of Sayf al-Muluk’s history; how his love for her was caused by the tunic whereon her presentment was wrought; how he went forth, passion-distraught, in quest of her; how he forsook his people and his kingdom for her sake and how he had suffered all these terrors and hardships on her account. When Badi’a al-Jamal hear this, she blushed rosy red and was confounded at Daulat Khatun and said, “Verily this may never, never be; for man accordeth not with the Jann.” Then Daulat Khatun went on to praise Sayf al-Muluk and extol his comeliness and courage and cavalarice, and ceased not repeating her memories of his prowess and his excellent qualities till she ended with saying, “For the sake of Almighty Allah and of me, O sister mine, come and speak with him, though but one word!” But Badi’a al-Jamal cried, “By Allah, O sister mine, this that thou sayest I will not hear, neither will I assent to thee therein;” and it was as if she heard naught of what the other said and as if no love of Sayf al-Muluk and his beauty and bearing and bravery had gotten hold upon her heart. Then Daulat Khatun humbled herself and said, “O Badi’a al-Jamal, by the milk we have sucked, I and thou, and by that which is graven on the seal-ring of Solomon (on whom be peace!) hearken to these my words for I pledged myself in the High-builded Castle of Japhet, to show him thy face. So Allah upon thee, show it to him once, for the love of me, and look thyself on him!” And she ceased not to weep and implore her and kiss her hands and feet, till she consented and said, “For thy sake I will show him my face once and he shall have a single glance.” With that Daulat Khatun’s heart was gladdened and she kissed her hands and feet. Then she went forth and fared to the great pavilion in the garden and bade her slave-women spread it with carpets and set up a couch of gold and place the wine-vessels in order; after which she went into Sayf al-Muluk and to his Wazir Sa’id, whom she found seated in their lodging, and gave the Prince the glad tidings of the winning of his wish, saying, “Go to the pavilion in the garden, thou and thy brother, and hide yourselves there from the eyes of men so none in the palace may espy you, till I come to you with Badi’a al-Jamal.” So they rose and repaired to the appointed pavilion, where they found the couch of gold set and furnished with cushions, and meat and wine ready served. So they sat awhile, whilst Sayf al-Muluk bethought him of his beloved and his breast was straitened and love and longing assailed him: wherefore he rose and walked forth from the vestibule of the pavilion. Sa’id would have followed him, but he said to him, “O my brother, follow me not, but sit in thy stead till I return to thee.” So Sa’id abode seated, whilst Sayf al-Muluk went down into the garden, drunken with the wine of desire and distracted for excess of love-longing and passion-fire: yearning agitated him and transport overcame him and he recited these couplets,
“O passing Fair[FN#449] I have none else but
thee; * Pity this
slave in thy love’s
slavery!
Thou art my search, my joy and my desire! * None save
thyself
shall love this heart
of me:
Would Heaven I knew thou knewest of my wails * Night-long
and
eyelids oped by memory.
Bid sleep to soourn on these eyen-lids * Haply in
vision I thy
sight shall see.
Show favour then to one thus love-distraught:
* Save him from
ruin by thy cruelty!
Allah increase thy beauty and thy weal; * And be thy
ransom
every enemy!
So shall on Doomsday lovers range beneath * Thy flag,
and
beauties ’neath
thy banner be.”
Then he wept and recited these also,
“That rarest beauty ever bides my foe * Who
holds my heart and
lurks in secresy:
Speaking, I speak of nothing save her charms * And
when I’m
dumb in heart-core woneth
she.”
Then he wept sore and recited the following,
“And in my liver higher flames the fire; * You
are my wish and
longsome still I yearn:
To you (none other!) bend I and I hope * (Lovers long-
suffering are!) your
grace to earn;
And that you pity me whose frame by Love * Is waste
and weak
his heart with sore
concern:
Relent, be gen’rous, tender-hearted, kind:
* From you I’ll
ne’er remove,
from you ne’er turn!”
Then he wept and recited these also,
“Came to me care when came the love of thee,
* Cruel sleep
fled me like thy cruelty:
Tells me the messenger that thou are wroth: *
Allah forfend
what evils told me he!”
Presently Sa’id waxed weary of awaiting him and going forth in quest of him, found him walking in the garden, distraught and reciting these two couplets,
“By Allah, by th’ Almighty, by his right[FN#450]
* Who read
the Koran-Chapter ’Fatir[FN#451]
hight;
Ne’er roam my glances o’er the charms
I see; * Thy grace, rare
beauty, is my talk by
night.”
So he joined him and the twain walked about the garden together solacing themselves and ate of its fruits. Such was their case;[FN#452] but as regards the two Princesses, they came to the pavilion and entering therein after the eunuchs had richly furnished it, according to command, sat down on the couch of gold, beside which was a window that gave upon the garden. The castratos then set before them all manner rich meats and they ate, Daulat Khatun feeding her foster-sister by mouthfuls,[FN#453] till she was satisfied; when she called for divers kinds of sweetmeats, and when the neutrals brought them, they ate what they would of them and washed their hands. After this Daulat Khatun made ready wine and its service, setting on the ewers and bowls and she proceeded to crown the cups and give Badi’a al-amal to drink, filling for herself after and drinking in turn. The Badi’a al-Jamal looked from the window into the garden and gazed upon the fruits and branches that were therein, till her glance fell on Sayf al-Muluk, and she saw him wandering about the parterres, followed by Sa’id, and she heard him recite verses, raining the while railing tears. And that glance of eyes cost her a thousand signs,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
When it was the Seven Hundred and Seventy-fifth Night,
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Badi’a al-Jamal caught sight of Sayf al-Muluk as he wandered about the garden, that glance of eyes cost her a thousand sighs, and she turned to Daulat Khatun and said to her (and indeed the wine sported with her senses), “O my sister, who is that young man I see in the garden, distraught, love-abying, disappointed, sighing?” Quoth the other, “Dost thou give me leave to bring him hither, that we may look on him?”; and quoth the other, “An thou can avail to bring him, bring him.” So Daulat Khatun called to him, saying “O King’s son, come up to us and bring us thy beauty and thy loveliness!” Sayf al-Muluk recognised her voice and came up to into the pavilion; but no sooner had he set eyes on Badi’a al-Jamal, than he fell down in a swoon; whereupon Daulat Khatun sprinkled on him a little rose-water and he revived. Then he rose and kissed ground before Badi’a al-Jamal who was amazed at his beauty and loveliness; and Daulat Khatun said to her, “Know, O Princess, that this is Sayf al-Muluk, whose hand saved me by the ordinance of Allah Almighty and he it is who hath borne all manner burthens on thine account: wherefore I would have thee look upon him with favour.” Hearing this Badi’a al-Jamal laughed and said, “And who keepeth faith, that this youth should do so? For there is no true love in men.” Cried Sayf al-Muluk, “O Princess, never shall lack of faith be in me, and all men are not created alike.” And he wept before her and recited these verses,
“O thou, Badi’a ’l-Jamal, show thou
some clemency * To one
those lovely eyes opprest
with witchery!
By rights of beauteous hues and tints thy cheeks combine
* Of
snowy white and glowing
red anemone,
Punish not with disdain one who is sorely sick * By
long, long
parting waste hath waxed
this frame of me:
This is my wish, my will, the end of my desire, *
And Union is
my hope an haply this
may be!”
Then he wept with violent weeping; and love and longing got the mastery over him and he greeted her with these couplets,
“Peace be to you from lover’s wasted love,
* All noble hearts
to noble favour show:
Peace be to you! Ne’er fail your form my
dreams; * Nor hall
nor chamber the fair
sight forego!
Of you I’m jealous: none may name your
name: * Lovers to
lovers aye should bend
thee low:
So cut not off your grace from him who loves * While
sickness
wastes and sorrows overthrow.
I watch the flowery stars which frighten me; * While
cark and
care mine every night
foreslow.
Nor Patience bides with me nor plan appears:
* What shall I
say when questioned
of my foe?
God’s peace be with you in the hour of need,
* Peace sent by
lover patient bearing
woe!”
Then for the excess of his desire and ecstasy he repeated these coupletes also,
“If I to aught save you, O lords of me, incline;
* Ne’er may I
win of you my wish,
my sole design!
Who doth comprise all loveliness save only you? *
Who makes
the Doomsday dawn e’en
now before these eyne?
Far be it Love find any rest, for I am one * Who lost
for love
of you this heart, these
vitals mine.”
When he had made an end of his verses, he wept with sore weeping and she said to him, “O Prince, I fear to grant myself wholly to thee lest I find in thee nor fondness nor affection; for oftentimes man’s fidelity is small and his perfidy is great and thou knowest how the lord Solomon, son of David (on whom be the Peace!), took Bilkis to his love but, whenas he saw another fairer than she, turned from her thereto.” Sayf al-Muluk replied, “O my eye and O my soul, Allah hath not made all men alike, and I, Inshallah, will keep my troth and die beneath thy feet. Soon shalt thou see what I will do in accordance with my words, and for whatso I say Allah is my warrant.” Quoth Badi’a al-Jamal, “Sit and be of good heart and swear to me by the right of thy Faith and let us covenant together that each will not be false to other; and whichever of us breaketh faith may Almighty Allah punish!” At these words he sat down and set his hand in her hand and they sware each to other that neither of them would ever prefer to the other any one, either of man or of the Jann. Then they embraced for a whole hour and wept for excess of their joy, whilst passion overcame Sayf al-Muluk and he recited these couplets,
“I weep for longing love’s own ardency
* To her who claims the
heart and soul of me.
And sore’s my sorrow parted long from you, *
And short’s my
arm to reach the prize
I see;
And mourning grief for what my patience marred * To
blamer’s
eye unveiled my secresy;
And waxed strait that whilome was so wide * Patience
nor force
remains nor power to
dree.
Would Heaven I knew if God will ever deign to join
* Our
lives, and from our
cark and care and grief set free!”
After this mutual troth-plighting, Sayf al-Muluk arose and walked in the garden and Badi’a al-Jamal arose also and went forth also afoot followed by a slave-girl bearing somewhat of food and a flask[FN#454] of wine. The Princess sat down and the damsel set the meat and wine before her: nor remained they long ere they were joined by Sayf al-Muluk, who was received with greeting and the two embraced and sat them down.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
When it was the Seven Hundred and Seventy-sixth Night,
She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that having provided food and wine, Badi’a al-Jamal met Sayf al-Muluk with greetings, and the twain having embraced and kissed sat them down awhile to eat and drink. Then said she to him, “O King’s son, thou must now go to the garden of Iram, where dwelleth my grandmother, and seek her consent to our marriage. My slave-girl Marjanah will convey thee thither and as thou farest therein thou wilt see a great pavilion of red satin, lined with green silk. Enter the pavilion heartening thyself and thou wilt see inside it an ancient dame sitting on a couch of red gold set with pearls and jewels. Salute her with respect and courtesy: then look at the foot of the couch, where thou wilt descry a pair of sandals[FN#455] of cloth interwoven with bars of gold, embroidered with jewels. Take them and kiss them and lay them on thy head[FN#456]; then put them under thy right armpit and stand before the old woman, in silence and with thy head bowed down. If she ask thee, ’Who art thou and how camest thou hither and who led thee to this land? And why hast thou taken up the sandals?’ make her no answer, but abide silent till Marjanah enter, when she will speak with her and seek to win her aproof for thee and cause her look on thee with consent; so haply Allah Almight may incline her heart to thee and she may grant thee thy wish.” Then she called the handmaid Marjanah hight and said to her, “As thou lovest me, do my errand this day and be not neglectful therein! An thou acccomplish it, thou shalt be a free woman for the sake of Allah Almighty, and I will deal honourably by thee with gifts and there shall be none dearer to me than thou, nor will I discover my secrets to any save thee. So, by my love for thee, fulfil this my need and be not slothful therein.” Replied Marjanah, “O my lady and light of mine eyes, tell me what is it thou requirest of me, that I may accomplish it with both mine eyes.” Badi’a rejoined, “Take this mortal on thy shoulders and bear him to the bloom-garden of Iram and the pavilion of my grandmother, my father’s mother, and be careful of his safety. When thou hast brought him into her presence and seest him take the slippers and do them homage, and hearest her ask him, saying, ’Whence art thou and by what road art come and who led thee to this land, and why hast thou taken up the sandals and what is thy need that I give heed to it?’ do thou come forward in haste and salute her with the salam and say to her, ’O my lady, I am she who brought him hither and he is the King’s son of Egypt.[FN#457] ’Tis he who went to the High-builded Castle and slew the son of the Blue King and delivered the Princess Daulat Khatun from the Castle of Japhet son of Noah and brought her back safe to her father: and I have brought him to thee, that he may give thee the glad tidings of her safety: so deign thou be gracious to him.’ Then do thou say to her, ’Allah upon thee! is not this young man handsome, O my lady?’ She
Arabian Nights,
Volume 7
Footnotes
[FN#1] Mayyafarikin, whose adjective for shortness is “Fariki”: the place is often mentioned in The Nights as the then capital of Diyar Bakr, thirty parasangs from Nasibin, the classical Nisibis, between the upper Euphrates and Tigris.
[FN#2] This proportion is singular to moderns but characterised Arab and more especially Turcoman armies.
[FN#3] Such is the bathos caused by the Saja’-assonance: in the music of the Arabic it contrasts strangely with the baldness of translation. The same is the case with the Koran beautiful in the original and miserably dull in European languages, it is like the glorious style of the “Anglican Version” by the side of its bastard brothers in Hindostani or Marathi; one of these marvels of stupidity translating the “Lamb of God” by “God’s little goat.
[FN#4] This incident is taken from the Life of Mohammed who, in the “Year of Missions” (A. H. 7) sent letters to foreign potentates bidding them embrace Al-Islam, and, his seal being in three lines, Mohammed|Apostle|of Allah, Khusrau Parwiz (=the Charming) was offended because his name was placed below Mohammed’s. So he tore the letter in pieces adding, says Firdausi, these words:—
Hath
the Arab’s daring performed such feat,
Fed
on camel’s milk and the lizard’s meat,
That
he cast on Kayanian crown his eye?
Fie,
O whirling world! on thy faith and fie!
Hearing of this insult Mohammed exclaimed, “Allah shall tear his kingdom!” a prophecy which was of course fulfilled, or we should not have heard of it. These lines are horribly mutilated in the Dabistan (iii. 99).
[FN#5] This “Taklid” must not be translated “girt on the sword.” The Arab carries his weapon by a baldrick or bandoleer passed over his right shoulder. In modern days the " Majdal” over the left shoulder supports on the right hip a line of Tatarif or brass cylinders for cartridges: the other cross-belt (Al-Masdar) bears on the left side the Kharizah or bullet-pouch of hide; and the Hizam or waist-belt holds the dagger and extra cartridges. (Pilgrimage iii. 90.)
[FN#6] Arab. “Bab,” which may mean door or gate. The plural form (Abwab) occurs in the next line, meaning that he displayed all manner of martial prowess.
[FN#7] Arab. “Farrash” (also used in Persian), a man of general utility who pitches tents, speeps the floors. administers floggings, etc. etc. (Pilgrimage iii. 90.)
[FN#8] i.e. the slogan-cry of “Allaho Akbar,” which M. C. Barbier de Meynard compares with the Christian “Te Deum.”
[FN#9] The Anglo-Indian term for the Moslem rite of killing animals for food. (Pilgrimage i. 377.)
[FN#10] Arab. “tawilan jiddan” a hideous Cairenism in these days; but formerly used by Al-Mas’udi and other good writers.
[FN#11] Arab. " ’Ajwah,” enucleated dates pressed together into a solid mass so as to be sliced with a knife like cold pudding. The allusion is to the dough-idols of the Hanifah tribe, whose eating their gods made the saturnine Caliph Omar laugh.
[FN#12] Mr. Payne writes “Julned.” In a fancy name we must not look for grammar, but a quiescent lam (l) followed by nun (n) is unknown to Arabic while we find sundry cases of “lan” (fath’d lam and nun), and Jalandah means noxious or injurious. In Oman also there was a dynasty called Julandah. for which see Mr. Badger (xiii. and passim).
[FN#13] Doubtless for Jawan-mard—un giovane, a brave See vol. iv., p. 208.
[FN#14] Mr. Payne transposes the distichs, making the last first. I have followed the Arabic order finding it in the Mac. and Bul. Edits. (ii. 129).
[FN#15] Al-Irak like Al-Yaman may lose the article in verse.
[FN#16] Arab. “Ka’ka’at”: hence Jabal Ka’ka’an, the higher levels in Meccah, of old inhabited by the Jurhamites and so called from their clashing and jangling arms; whilst the Amalekites dwelt in the lower grounds called Jiyad from their generous steeds. (Pilgrimage iii. 191.)
[FN#17] Al-Shara’, a mountain in Arabia.
[FN#18] See vol. vi., 249. “This (mace) is a dangerous weapon when struck on the shoulders or unguarded arm: I am convinced that a blow with it on a head armoured with a salade (cassis caelata, a light iron helmet) would stun a man” (says La Brocquiere).
[FN#19] Oman, which the natives pronounce “Aman,” is the region best known by its capital Maskat. These are the Omana Moscha and Omanum Emporium of Ptolemy and the Periplus. Ibn Batutah writes Amman, but the best dictionaries give “Oman.” (N.B.—Mr. Badger, p. 1, wrongly derives Sachalitis from “Sawahily”: it is evidently “Sahili.”) The people bear by no means the best character: Ibn Batutah (fourteenth century) says, “their wives are most base; yet, without denying this, their husbands express nothing like jealousy on the subject.” (Lee, p. 62.)
[FN#20] The name I have said of a quasi-historical personage, son of Joktan, the first Arabist and the founder of the Tobba ("successor”) dynasty in Al-Yaman; while Jurham, his brother, established that of Al-Hijaz. The name is probably chosen because well-known.
[FN#21] Arab. “Hakim”: lit. one who orders; often confounded by the unscientific with Hakim, doctor, a philosopher. The latter re-appears in the Heb. Khakham applied in modern days to the Jewish scribe who takes the place of the Rabbi.
[FN#22] As has been seen, acids have ever been and are still administered as counter-inebriants, while hot spices and sweets greatly increase the effect of Bhang, opium, henbane, datura &c. The Persians have a most unpleasant form of treating men when dead-drunk with wine or spirits. They hang them up by the heels, as we used to do with the drowned, and stuff their mouths with human ordure which is sure to produce emesis.
[FN#23] Compare the description of the elephant-faced Vetala (Katha S.S. Fasc. xi. p. 388).
[FN#24] The lover’s name Sa’ik= the Striker (with lightning); Najmah, the beloved= the star.
[FN#25] I have modified the last three lines of the Mac. Edit. which contain a repetition evidently introduced by the carelessness of the copyist.
[FN#26] The Hindu Charvakas explain the Triad, Bramha, Vishnu and Shiva, by the sexual organs and upon Vishnu’s having four arms they gloss, “At the time of sexual intercourse, each man and woman has as many.” (Dabistan ii. 202.) This is the Eastern view of Rabelais’ “beast with two backs.”
[FN#27] Arab. “Rabbat-i,” my she Lord, fire (nar) being feminine.
[FN#28] The prose-rhyme is answerable for this galimatias.
[FN#29] A common phrase equivalent to our “started from his head.”
[FN#30] Arab. “Mariduna"=rebels (against Allah and his orders).
[FN#31] Arab. Yafis or Yafat. He had eleven sons and was entitled Abu al-Turk because this one engendered the Turcomans as others did the Chinese, Scythians, Slaves (Saklab), Gog, Magog, and the Muscovites or Russians. According to the Moslems there was a rapid falling off in size amongst this family. Noah’s grave at Karak (the Ruin) a suburb of Zahlah, in La Brocquiere’s “Valley of Noah, where the Ark was built,” is 104 ft. 10 in. Iong by 8 ft. 8 in. broad. (N.B.—It is a bit of the old aqueduct which Mr. Porter, the learned author of the “Giant Cities of Bashan,” quotes as a “traditional memorial of primeval giants”—talibus carduis pascuntur asini!). Nabi Ham measures only 9 ft. 6 in. between headstone and tombstone, being in fact about as long as his father was broad.
[FN#32] See Night dcliv., vol. vii, p. 43, infra.
[FN#33] According to Turcoman legends (evidently pose-Mohammedan) Noah gave his son, Japhet a stone inscribed with the Greatest Name, and it had the virtue of bringing on or driving off rain. The Moghuls long preserved the tradition and hence probably the sword.
[FN#34] This expresses Moslem sentiment; the convert to Al-Islam being theoretically respected and practically despised. The Turks call him a “Burma"=twister, a turncoat, and no one either trusts him or believes in his sincerity.
[FN#35] The name of the city first appears here: it is found also in the Bul. Edit., vol. ii. p. 132.
[FN#36] Arab. " ’Amala hilah,” a Syro-Egyptian vulgarism.
[FN#37] i.e. his cousin, but he will not use the word.
[FN#38] Arab. “La’ab,” meaning very serious use of the sword: we still preserve the old “sword-play.”
[FN#39] Arab. " Ikhsa,” from a root meaning to drive away a dog.
[FN#40] Arab. “Hazza-hu,” the quivering motion given to the “Harbak” (a light throw-spear or javelin) before it leaves the hand.
[FN#41] Here the translator must either order the sequence of the sentences or follow the rhyme.
[FN#42] Possibly taken from the Lions’ Court in the Alhambra=(Dar) Al-hamra, the Red House.
[FN#43] Arab. “Shazarwan” from Pers. Shadurwan, a palace, cornice, etc. That of the Meccan Ka’abah is a projection of about a foot broad in pent-house shape sloping downwards and two feet above the granite pavement: its only use appears in the large brass rings welded into it to hold down the covering. There are two breaks in it, one under the doorway and the other opposite Ishmael’s tomb; and pilgrims are directed during circuit to keep the whole body outside it.
[FN#44] The “Musafahah” before noticed, vol. vi., p. 287.
[FN#45] i.e. He was confounded at its beauty.
[FN#46] Arab. “’Ajib,” punning upon the name.
[FN#47] Arab. “Zarraf” (whence our word) from “Zarf"=walking hastily: the old “cameleopard” which originated the nursery idea of its origin. It is one of the most timid of the antelope tribe and unfit for riding.
[FN#48] Arab. “Takht,” a useful word, meaning even a saddle. The usual term is “Haudaj"=the Anglo Indian “howdah.”
[FN#49] “Thunder-King,” Arab. and Persian.
[FN#50] i.e. “He who violently assaults his peers” (the best men of the age). Batshat al- Kubra=the Great Disaster, is applied to the unhappy “Battle of Bedr” (Badr) on Ramazan 17, A.H. 2 (=Jan. 13, 624) when Mohammed was so nearly defeated that the Angels were obliged to assist him (Koran, chapts. iii. 11; i. 42; viii. 9). Mohammed is soundly rated by Christian writers for beheading two prisoners Utbah ibn Rabi’a who had once spat on his face and Nazir ibn Haris who recited Persian romances and preferred them to the “foolish fables of the Koran.” What would our forefathers have done to a man who spat in the face of John Knox and openly preferred a French play to Pentateuch ?
[FN#51] Arab. “Jilbab” either habergeon (mail-coat) or the buff-jacket worn under it.
[FN#52] A favourite way, rough and ready, of carrying light weapons, often alluded to in The Nights. So Khusrawan in Antar carried “under his thighs four small darts, each like a blazing flame.”
[FN#53] Mr. Payne very reasonably supplants here and below Fakhr Taj (who in Night dcxxxiv is left in her father’s palace and who is reported to be dead in Night dclxvii.) by Star o’ Morn. But the former is also given in the Bul. Edit. (ii. 148), so the story teller must have forgotten all about her. I leave it as a model specimen of Eastern incuriousness.
[FN#54] There is some chivalry in his unwillingness to use the magical blade. As a rule the Knights of Romance utterly ignore fair play and take every dirty advantage in the magic line that comes to hand.
[FN#55] Arab. “Hammal al-Hatabi"=one who carries to market the fuel-sticks which he picks up m the waste. In the Koran (chaps. cxi.) it is applied to Umm Jamil, wife of Mohammed’s hostile cousin, Abd al-Uzza, there termed Abu Lahab (Father of smokeless Flame) with the implied meaning that she will bear fuel to feed Hell-fire.
[FN#56] Arab. “Akyal,” lit. whose word (Kaul) is obeyed, a title of the Himyarite Kings, of whom Al-Bergendi relates that one of them left an inscription at Samarcand, which many centuries ago no man could read. This evidently alludes to the dynasty which preceded the “Tobba” and to No. xxiv. Shamar Yar’ash (Shamar the Palsied). Some make him son of Malik surnamed Nashir al-Ni’am (Scatterer of Blessings) others of Afrikus (No. xviii.), who, according to Al-Jannabi, Ahmad bin Yusuf and Ibn Ibdun (Pocock, Spec. Hist. Arab.) founded the Berber (Barber) race, the remnants of the Causanites expelled by the “robber, Joshua son of Nun,” and became the eponymus of “Africa.” This word which, under the Romans, denoted a small province on the Northern Sea-board, is, I would suggest, A’far-Kahi (Afar-land), the Afar being now the Dankali race, the country of Osiris whom my learned friend, the late Mariette Pasha, derived from the Egyptian “Punt” identified by him with the Somali country. This would make “Africa,” as it ought to be, an Egyptian (Coptic) term.
[FN#57] Herodotus (i. 80) notes this concerning the camel. Elephants are not allowed to walk the streets in Anglo-Indian cities, where they have caused many accidents.
[FN#58] Arab. Wahk or Wahak, suggesting the Roman retiarius. But the lasso pure and simple, the favourite weapon of shepherd and herdsmen was well-known to the old Egyptians and in ancient India. It forms one of the T-letters in the hieroglyphs.
[FN#59] Compare with this and other Arab battle-pieces the Pandit’s description in the Katha Sarit Sagara, e.g. “Then a confused battle arose with dint of arrow, javelin, lance, mace and axe, costing the lives of countless soldiers (N.B.— Millions are nothing to him); rivers of blood flowed with the bodies of elephants and horses for alligators, with the pearls from the heads of elephants for sands and with the heads of heroes for stones. That feast of battle delighted the flesh-loving demons who, drunk with blood instead of wine, were dancing with the palpitating trunks,” etc.. etc. Fasc. xii. 526.
[FN#60] The giraffe is here mal-place: it is, I repeat, one of the most timid of the antelope tribe. Nothing can be more graceful than this huge game as it stands under a tree extending its long and slender neck to the foliage above it; but when in flight all the limbs seem loose and the head is carried almost on a level with the back.
[FN#61] The fire-arms may have been inserted by the copier; the cross-bow (Arcubalista) is of unknown antiquity. I have remarked in my book of the Sword (p. 19) that the bow is the first crucial evidence of the distinction between the human weapon and the bestial arm, and like the hymen or membrane of virginity proves a difference of degree if not of kind between man and the so-called lower animals. I note from Yule’s Marco Polo (ii., 143) " that the cross-bow was re-introduced into European warfare during the twelfth century”; but the arbalesta was well known to the bon roi Charlemagne (Regnier Sat. X).
[FN#62] In Al-Islam this was unjustifiable homicide, excused only because the Kafir had tried to slay his own son. He should have been summoned to become a tributary and then, on express refusal, he might legally have been put to death.
[FN#63] i.e. “Rose King,” like the Sikh name “Gulab Singh"=Rosewater Lion, sounding in translation almost too absurd to be true.
[FN#64] “Repentance acquits the penitent” is a favourite and noble saying popular in Al-Islam. It is first found in Seneca; and is probably as old as the dawn of literature.
[FN#65] Here an ejaculation of impatience.
[FN#66] i.e. “King Intelligence”: it has a ludicrous sound suggesting only “Dandanha-i-Khirad,,=wisdom-teeth. The Mac. Edit. persistently keeps “Ward Shah,” copyist error.
[FN#67] i.e. Fakhr Taj, who had been promised him in marriage. See Night dcxxxlii. supra, vol. vi.
[FN#68] The name does not appear till further on, after vague Eastern fashion which, here and elsewhere I have not had the heart to adopt. The same may be found in Ariosto, passim.
[FN#69] A town in Persian Irak, unhappily far from the “Salt sea.”
[FN#70] “Earthquake son of Ennosigaius” (the Earthquake-maker).
[FN#71] Arab. “Ruba’al-Kharab” or Ruba’al-Khali (empty quarter), the great central wilderness of Arabia covering some 50,000 square miles and still left white on our maps. (Pilgrimage, i 14.)
[FN#72] Pers. “Life King”, women also assume the title of Shah.
[FN#73] Arab. “Mujauhar”: the watery or wavy mark upon Eastern blades is called the “jauhar,” lit.=jewel. The peculiarity is also called water and grain, which gives rise to a host of double-entendres, puns, paronomasias and conceits more or less frigid.
[FN#74] Etymologically meaning tyrants or giants; and applied to great heathen conquerors like Nimrod and the mighty rulers of Syria, the Anakim, Giants and other peoples of Hebrew fable. The Akasirah are the Chosroes before noticed.
[FN#75] Arab. “Asker jarrar” lit. “drawing”: so in Egyptian slang “Nas jarrar"=folk who wish to draw your money out of your pocket, greedy cheats.
[FN#76] In Turkestan: the name means “Two lights.”
[FN#77] In Armenia, mentioned by Sadik Isfahani (Transl. p. 62).
[FN#78] This is the only ludicrous incident in the tale which justifies Von Hammer’s suspicion. Compare it with the combat between Rustam and his son Sohrab.
[FN#79] I cannot understand why Trebutien, iii., 457, writes this word Afba. He remarks that it is the “Oina and Riya” of Jami, elegantly translated by M. de Chezy in the Journal Asiatique, vol. 1, 144.
[FN#80] I have described this part of the Medinah Mosque in Pilgrimage ii., 62-69. The name derives from a saying of Mohammed (of which there are many variants), “Between my tomb and my pulpit is a garden of the Gardens of Paradise” (Burckhardt, Arabia, p. 337). The whole Southern portico (not only a part) now enjoys that honoured name and the tawdry decorations are intended to suggest a parterre.
[FN#81] Mohammed’s companions (Ashab), numbering some five hundred, were divided into two orders, the Muhajirin (fugitives) or Meccans who accompanied the Apostle to Al-Medinah (Pilgrimage ii. 138) and the Ansar (Auxiliaries) or Medinites who invited him to their city and lent him zealous aid (Ibid. ii. 130). The terms constantly occur in Arab history.
[FN#82] The “Mosque of the Troops,” also called Al-Fath (victory), the largest of the “Four Mosques:” it is still a place of pious visitation where prayer is granted. Koran, chap. xxxiii., and Pilgrimage ii. 325.
[FN#83] Arab. “Al-Wars,” with two meanings. The Alfaz Adwiyah gives it=Kurkum, curcuma, turmeric, safran d’Inde; but popular usage assigns it to Usfur, Kurtum or safflower (carthamus tinctorius). I saw the shrub growing all about Harar which exports it, and it is plentiful in Al-Yaman (Niebuhr, p. 133), where women affect it to stain the skin a light yellow and remove freckles: it is also an internal remedy in leprosy. But the main use is that of a dye, and the Tob stained with Wars is almost universal in some parts of Arabia. Sonnini (p. 510) describes it at length and says that Europeans in Egypt call it “Parrot-seeds” because the bird loves it, and the Levant trader “Saffrenum.”
[FN#84] Two men of the great ’Anazah race went forth to gather Karaz, the fruit of the Sant (Mimosa Nilotica) both used for tanning, and never returned. Hence the proverb which is obsolete in conversation. See Burckhardt, Prov. 659: where it takes the place of “ad Graecas Kalendas.”
[FN#85] Name of a desert (Mafazah) and a settlement on the Euphrates’ bank between Basrah and the site of old Kufah near Kerbela; the well known visitation place in Babylonian Irak.
[FN#86] Of the Banu Sulaym tribe; the adjective is Sulami not Sulaymi.
[FN#87] Arab. “Amam-ak"=before thee (in space); from the same root as Imam=antistes, leader of prayer; and conducing to perpetual puns, e.g. “You are Imam-i (my leader) and therefore should be Amam-i” (in advance of me).
[FN#88] He was angry, as presently appears, because he had heard of certain love passages between the two and this in Arabia is a dishonour to the family.
[FN#89] Euphemy for “my daughter.”
[FN#90] The Badawin call a sound dollar “Kirsh hajar” or “Riyal hajar” (a stone dollar; but the word is spelt with the greater h).
[FN#91] Arab. Burdah and Habarah. The former often translated mantle is a thick woollen stuff, brown or gray, woven oblong and used like a plaid by day and by night. Mohammed’s Burdah woven in his Harem and given to the poet, Ka’ab, was 7 1/2 ft. long by 4 1/2: it is still in the upper Serraglio of Stambul. In early days the stuff was mostly striped; now it is either plain or with lines so narrow that it looks like one colour. The Habarah is a Burd made in Al-Yaman and not to be confounded with the Egyptian mantilla of like name (Lane, M. E. chapt. iii.).
[FN#92] Every Eastern city has its special title. Al-Medinah is entitled “Al-Munawwarah” (the Illumined) from the blinding light which surrounds the Prophet’s tomb and which does not show to eyes profane (Pilgrimage ii. 3). I presume that the idea arose from the huge lamps of “The Garden.” I have noted that Mohammed’s coffin suspended by magnets is an idea unknown to Moslems, but we find the fancy in Al-Harawi related of St. Peter, “Simon Cephas (the rock) is in the City of Great Rome, in its largest church within a silver ark hanging by chains from the ceiling.” (Lee, Ibn Batutah, p. 161).
[FN#93] Here the fillets are hung instead of the normal rag-strips to denote an honoured tomb. Lane (iii. 242) and many others are puzzled about the use of these articles. In many cases they are suspended to trees in order to transfer sickness from the body to the tree and whoever shall touch it. The Sawahili people term such articles a Keti (seat or vehicle) for the mysterious haunter of the tree who prefers occupying it to the patient’s person. Briefly the custom still popular throughout Arabia, is African and Fetish.
[FN#94] Al-Mas’udi (chap. xcv.), mentions a Hind bint Asma and tells a facetious story of her and the “enemy of Allah,” the poet Jarir.
[FN#95] Here the old Shiah hatred of the energetic conqueror of Oman crops out again. Hind’s song is that of Maysum concerning her husband Mu’awiyah which Mrs. Godfrey Clark (’Ilam-en-Nas, p. 108) thus translates:—
A hut that the winds
make tremble
Is
dearer to me than a noble palace;
And a dish of crumbs
on the floor of my home
Is
dearer to me than a varied feast;
And the soughing of
the breeze through every crevice
Is
dearer to me than the beating of drums.
Compare with Dr. Carlyle’s No. X.:—
The russet suit of camel’s
hair
With
spirits light and eye serene
Is dearer to my bosom
far
Than
all the trappings of a queen, etc. etc.
And with mine (Pilgrimage iii. 262):—
O take these purple
robes away,
Give
back my cloak of camel’s hair
And bear me from this
towering pile
To
where the black tents flap i’ the air, etc.
etc.
[FN#96] Ai-Hajjaj’s tribal name was Al-Thakifi or descendant of Thakif. According to Al-Mas’udi, he was son of Farighah (the tall Beauty) by Yusuf bin Ukayl the Thakafite and vint au monde tout difforme avec l’anus obstrue. As he refused the breast, Satan, in human form, advised suckling him with the blood of two black kids, a black buck-goat and a black snake; which had the desired effect.
[FN#97] Trebutien, iii., 465, translates these sayings into Italian.
[FN#98] Making him a “Kawwad"=leader, i.e. pimp; a true piece of feminine spite. But the Caliph prized Al-Hajjaj too highly to treat him as in the text.
[FN#99] i.e. “The overflowing,” with benefits; on account of his generosity.
[FN#100] The seventh Ommiade A. H. 96-99 (715-719). He died of his fine appetite after eating at a sitting a lamb, six fowls, seventy pomegranates, and 11 1/4 lbs. of currants. He was also proud of his youth and beauty and was wont to say, “Mohammed was the Apostle and Abu Bakr witness to the Truth; Omar the Discriminator and Othman the Bashful, Mu’awiyah the Mild and Yazid the Patient; Abd al-Malik the Administrator and Walid the Tyrant; but I am the Young King!”
[FN#101] Arab. Al-Jazirah, “the Island;” name of the region and the capital.
[FN#102] i.e. “Repairer of the Slips of the Generous,” an evasive reply, which of course did not deceive the questioner.
[FN#103] Arab. “Falastin,” now obsolete. The word has echoed far west and the name of the noble race has been degraded to “Philister,” a bourgeois, a greasy burgher.
[FN#104] Saying, “The Peace be with thee, O Prince of True Believers!”
[FN#105] Arab. “Mutanakkir,” which may also mean proud or in disguise.
[FN#106] On appointment as viceroy. See vol. iii 307.
[FN#107] The custom with outgoing Governors. It was adopted by the Spaniards and Portuguese especially in America. The generosity of Ikrimah without the slightest regard to justice or common honesty is characteristic of the Arab in story-books.
[FN#108] The celebrated half-way house between Jaffa and Jerusalem.
[FN#109] Alias the Kohistan or mountain region, Susiana (Khuzistan) whose capital was Susa; and the head-quarters of fire-worship. Azar (fire) was the name of Abraham’s father whom Eusebius calls “Athar.” (Pilgrimage iii. 336.)
[FN#110] Tenth Ommiade A.H. 105-125 (=724-743), a wise and discreet ruler with an inclination to avarice and asceticism. According to some, the Ommiades produced only three statesmen, Mu’awayah, Abd al-Malik and Hisham; and the reign of the latter was the end of sage government and wise administration.
[FN#111] About 1,250, which seems a long price; but in those days Damascus had been enriched with the spoils of the world adjacent.
[FN#112] Eleventh Ommiade dynasty, A.H. 125-126 (=743-744). Ibn Sahl (son of ease, i.e. free and easy) was a nickname; he was the son of Yazid ii. and brother of Hisham. He scandalised the lieges by his profligacy, wishing to make the pilgrimage in order to drink upon the Ka’abah-roof; so they attacked the palace and lynched him. His death is supposed to have been brought about (27th of Jamada al-Akhirah = April 16, 744) by his cousin and successor Yazid (No. iii.) surnamed the Retrencher. The tale in the text speaks well for him; but generosity amongst the Arabs covers a multitude of sins, and people say, “Better a liberal sinner than a stingy saint.”
[FN#113] The tents of black wool woven by the Badawi women are generally supported by three parallel rows of poles lengthways and crossways (the highest line being the central) and the covering is pegged down. Thus the outline of the roofs forms two or more hanging curves, and these characterise the architecture of the Tartars and Chinese; they are still preserved in the Turkish (and sometimes in the European) “Kiosque,” and they have extended to the Brazil where the upturned eaves, often painted vermilion below, at once attract the traveller’s notice.
[FN#114] See vol. iv., 159. The author of “Antar,” known to Englishmen by the old translation of Mr. Terrick Hamilton, secretary of Legation at Constantinople. There is an abridgement of the forty-five volumes of Al-Asma’i’s “Antar” which mostly supplies or rather supplied the “Antariyyah” or professional tale-tellers; whose theme was the heroic Mulatto lover.
[FN#115] The “Dakkah” or long wooden sofa, as opposed to the “mastabah” or stone bench, is often a tall platform and in mosques is a kind of ambo railed round and supported by columns. Here readers recite the Koran: Lane (M.E. chapt. iii.) sketches it in the “Interior of a Mosque.”
[FN#116] Alif, Ha and Waw, the first, twenty-seventh and twenty-sixth letters of the Arabic alphabet: No. 1 is the most simple and difficult to write caligraphically.
[FN#117] Reeds washed with gold and used for love-letters, &c.
[FN#118] Lane introduced this tale into vol. i., p. 223, notes on chapt. iii., apparently not knowing that it was in The Nights. He gives a mere abstract, omitting all the verse, and he borrowed it either from the Halbat al-Kumayt (chapt. xiv.) or from Al-Mas’udi (chapt. cxi.). See the French translation, vol. vi. p. 340. I am at pains to understand why M. C. Barbier de Maynard writes “Rechid” with an accented vowel; although French delicacy made him render, by “fils de courtisane,” the expression in the text, “O biter of thy mother’s enlarged (or uncircumcised) clitoris” (Bazar).
[FN#119] In Al-Mas’udi the Devil is “a young man fair of favour and formous of figure,” which is more appropriate to a “Tempter.” He also wears light stuffs of dyed silks.
[FN#120] It would have been more courteous in an utter stranger to say, O my lord.
[FN#121] The Arab Tempe (of fiction, not of grisly fact).
[FN#122] These four lines are in Al-Mas’udi, chapt, cxviii. Fr. Trans. vii. 313, but that author does not tell us who wrote them.
[FN#123] i.e. Father of Bitterness=the Devil. This legend of the Foul Fiend appearing to Ibrahim of Mosul (and also to Isam, N. dcxcv.) seems to have been accepted by contemporaries and reminds us of similar visitations in Europe—notably to Dr. Faust. One can only exclaim, “Lor, papa, what nonsense you are talking!” the words of a small girl whose father thought proper to indoctrinate her into certain Biblical stories. I once began to write a biography of the Devil; but I found that European folk-lore had made such an unmitigated fool of the grand old Typhon-Ahriman as to take away from him all human interest.
[FN#124] In Al-Mas’udi the Caliph exclaims, “Verily thou hast received a visit from Satan!”
[FN#125] Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxix. (Fr. transl. vii., 351) mentions the Banu Odhrah as famed for lovers and tells the pathetic tale of ’Orwah and ’Afra.
[FN#126] Jamil bin Ma’amar the poet has been noticed in Vol. ii. 102; and he has no business here as he died years before Al-Rashid was born. The tale begins like that of Ibn Mansur and the Lady Budur (Night cccxxvii.), except that Mansur does not offer his advice.
[FN#127] Arab. “Halumma,” an interjection=bring! a congener of the Heb. “Halum”; the grammarians of Kufah and Bassorah are divided concerning its origin.
[FN#128] Arab. “Nafs-i” which here corresponds with our canting “the flesh” the “Old Adam,” &c.
[FN#129] Arab. “Atmari” used for travel. The Anglo-Americans are the only people who have the common sense to travel (where they are not known) in their “store clothes” and reserve the worst for where they are known.
[FN#130] e.g. a branch or bough.
[FN#131] Arab. “Rayah kaimah,” which Lane translates a “beast standing”!
[FN#132] Tying up the near foreleg just above the knee; and even with this a camel can hop over sundry miles of ground in the course of a night. The hobbling is shown in Lane. (Nights vol. ii., p. 46.)
[FN#133] As opposed to “Severance” in the old knightly language of love, which is now apparently lost to the world. I tried it in the Lyrics of Camoens and found that I was speaking a forgotten tongue, which mightily amused the common sort of critic and reviewer.
[FN#134] More exactly three days and eight hours, after which the guest becomes a friend, and as in the Argentine prairies is expected to do friend’s duty. The popular saying is, “The entertainment of a guest is three days; the viaticum (jaizah) is a day and a night, and whatso exceedeth this is alms.”
[FN#135] Arab. “’Ashirah.” Books tell us there are seven degrees of connection among the Badawin: Sha’ab, tribe or rather race; nation (as the Anazah) descended from a common ancestor; Kabilah the tribe proper (whence les Kabyles); Fasilah (sept), Imarah; Ashirah (all a man’s connections); Fakhiz (lit. the thigh, i.e., his blood relations) and Batn (belly) his kith and kin. Practically Kabilah is the tribe, Ashirah the clan, and Bayt the household; while Hayy may be anything between tribe and kith and kin.
[FN#136] This is the true platonic love of noble Arabs, the Ishk ’uzri, noted in vol. ii., 104.
[FN#137] Arab. “’Ala raghm,” a favourite term. It occurs in theology; for instance, when the Shi’ahs are asked the cause of such and such a ritual distinction they will reply, “Ala raghmi ’l-Tasannun”: lit.=to spite the Sunnis.
[FN#138] In the text “Al-Kaus” for which Lane and Payne substitute a shield. The bow had not been mentioned but— n’importe, the Arab reader would say. In the text it is left at home because it is a cowardly, far-killing weapon compared with sword and lance. Hence the Spaniard calls and justly calls the knife the “bravest of arms” as it wants a man behind it.
[FN#139] Arab. “Rahim” or “Rihm"=womb, uterine relations, pity or sympathy, which may here be meant.
[FN#140] Reciting Fatihahs and so forth, as I have described in the Cemetery of Al-Medinah (ii. 300). Moslems do not pay for prayers to benefit the dead like the majority of Christendom and, according to Calvinistic Wahhabi-ism, their prayers and blessings are of no avail. But the mourner’s heart loathes reason and he prays for his dead instinctively like the so-termed “Protestant.” Amongst the latter, by the bye, I find four great Sommites, (1) Paul of Tarsus who protested against the Hebraism of Peter; (2) Mohammed who protested against the perversions of Christianity; (3) Luther who protested against Italian rule in Germany, and lastly (4) one (who shall be nameless) that protests against the whole business.
[FN#141] Lane transfers this to vol. i. 520 (notes to chapt. vii); and gives a mere abstract as of that preceding.
[FN#142] We learn from Ibn Batutah that it stood South of the Great Mosque and afterwards became the Coppersmiths’ Bazar. The site was known as Al-Khazra (the Green) and the building was destroyed by the Abbasides. See Defremery and Sanguinetti, i. 206.
[FN#143] This great tribe or rather nation has been noticed before (vol. ii. 170). The name means “Strong,” and derives from one Tamim bin Murr of the race of Adnan, nat. circ. A.D. 121. They hold the North-Eastern uplands of Najd, comprising the great desert Al-Dahna and extend to Al-Bahrayn. They are split up into a multitude of clans and septs; and they can boast of producing two famous sectarians. One was Abdullah bin Suffar, head of the Suffriyah; and the other Abdullah bin Ibaz (Ibadh) whence the Ibaziyah heretics of Oman who long included her princes. Mr. Palgrave wrongly writes Abadeeyah and Biadeeyah and my “Bayazi” was an Arab vulgarism used by the Zanzibarians. Dr. Badger rightly prefers Ibaziyah which he writes Ibadhiyah (Hist. of the Imams, etc.).
[FN#144] Governor of Al-Medinah under Mu’awiyah and afterwards (A.H. 64-65=683-4) fourth Ommiade. Al-Siyuti (p. 216) will not account him amongst the princes of the Faithful, holding him a rebel against Al-Zubayr. Ockley makes Ibn al-Zubayr ninth and Marwan tenth Caliph.
[FN#145] The address, without the vocative particle, is more emphatic; and the P.N. Mu’awiyah seems to court the omission.
[FN#146] This may also mean that the 500 were the woman’s “mahr” or marriage dowry and the 250 a present to buy the father’s consent.
[FN#147] Quite true to nature. See an account of the quasi-epileptic fits to which Syrians are subject and by them called Al-Wahtah in “The Inner Life of Syria,” i. 233.
[FN#148] Arab. “Wayha-k” here equivalent to Wayla-k. M. C. Barbier de Meynard renders the first “mon ami” and the second “miserable.”
[FN#149] This is an instance when the article (Al) is correctly used with one proper name and not with another. Al-Kumayt (P. N. of poet) lit. means a bay horse with black points: Nasr is victory.
[FN#150] This anecdote, which reads like truth, is ample set-off for a cart-load of abuse of women. But even the Hindu, determined misogynists in books, sometimes relent. Says the Katha Sarit Sagara: “So you see, King, honourable matrons are devoted to their husbands, and it is not the case that all women are always bad” (ii. 624). Let me hope that after all this Mistress Su’ad did not lead her husband a hardish life.
[FN#151] Al-Khali’a has been explained in vol. i. 311 {Vol 1, FN#633}: the translation of Al-Mas’udi (vi. 10) renders it “scelerat.” Abu Ali al-Husayn the Wag was a Bassorite and a worthy companion of Abu Nowas the Debauchee; but he adorned the Court of Al-Amin the son not of Al-Rashid the father.
[FN#152] Governor of Bassorah, but not in Al-Husayn’s day
[FN#153] The famous market-place where poems were recited, mentioned by Al-Hariri.
[FN#154] A quarter of Bassorah.
[FN#155] Capital of Al-Yaman, and then famed for its leather and other work (vol. v. 16).
[FN#156] The creases in the stomach like the large navel are always insisted upon. Says the Katha (ii. 525) “And he looked on that torrent river of the elixir of beauty, adorned with a waist made charming by those wave-like wrinkles,” etc.
[FN#157] Arab. Sabaj (not Sabah, as the Mac. Edit. misprints it): I am not sure of its meaning.
[FN#158] A truly Arab conceit, suggesting
The music breathing from her face;
her calves moved rhythmically, suggesting the movement and consequent sound of a musical instrument.
[FN#159] The morosa voluptas of the Catholic divines. The Sapphist described in the text would procure an orgasm (in gloria, as the Italians call it) by biting and rolling over the girl she loved; but by loosening the trouser-string she evidently aims at a closer tribadism the Arab " Musahikah.”
[FN#160] We drink (or drank) after dinner, Easterns before the meal and half-Easterns (like the Russians) before and after. We talk of liquor being unwholesome on an empty stomach; but the truth is that all is purely habit. And as the Russian accompanies his Vodka with caviare, etc., so the Oriental drinks his Raki or Mahaya (Ma al-hayat=aqua vitae) alternately with a Salatah, for whose composition see Pilgrimage i. 198. The Eastern practice has its advantages: it awakens the appetite, stimulates digestion and, what Easterns greatly regard, it is economical; half a bottle doing the work of a whole. Bhang and Kusumba (opium dissolved and strained through a pledges of cotton) are always drunk before dinner and thus the “jolly” time is the preprandial, not the postprandial.
[FN#161] “Abu al-Sakha” (pronounced Abussakha) = Father of munificence.
[FN#162] ’Arab. “Shammara,” also used for gathering up the gown, so as to run the faster.
[FN#163] i.e., blessing the Prophet and all True Believers (herself included).
[FN#164] The style of this letter is that of a public scribe in a Cairo market-place thirty years ago.
[FN#165] i.e.. she could not help falling in love with this beauty of a man.
[FN#166] “Kudrat,” used somewhat in the sense of our vague “Providence.” The sentence means, leave Omnipotence to manage him. Mr. Redhouse, who forces a likeness between Moslem and Christian theology, tells us that “Qader is unjustly translated by Fate and Destiny, an old pagan idea abhorrent to Al-Islam which reposes on God’s providence.” He makes Kaza and Kismet quasi-synonymes of “Qaza” and “Qader,” the former signifying God’s decree, the latter our allotted portion, and he would render both by dispensation. Of course it is convenient to forget the Guarded Tablet of the learned and the Night of Power and skull-lectures of the vulgar. The eminent Turkish scholar would also translate Salat by worship (du’a being prayer) because it signifies a simple act of adoration without entreaty. If he will read the Opener of the Koran, recited in every set of prayers, he will find an especial request to be “led to the path which is straight.” These vagaries are seriously adopted by Mr. E. J. W. Gibb in his Ottoman Poems (p. 245, etc.) London: Trubner and Co., 1882; and they deserve, I think, reprehension, because they serve only to mislead; and the high authority of the source whence they come necessarily recommends them to many.
[FN#167] The reader will have noticed the likeness of this tale to that of Ibn Mansur and the Lady Budur (vol. iv., 228 et seq.){Vol 4, Tale 42} For this reason Lane leaves it untranslated (iii. 252).
[FN#168] Lane also omits this tale (iii. 252). See Night dclxxxviii., vol. vii. p. 113 et seq., for a variant of the story.
[FN#169] Third Abbaside, A.H. 158-169 (=775-785), and father of Harun Al-Rashid. He is known chiefly for his eccentricities, such as cutting the throats of all his carrier-pigeons, making a man dine off marrow and sugar and having snow sent to him at Meccah, a distance of 700 miles.
[FN#170] Arab. “Mirt”; the dictionaries give a short shift, cloak or breeches of wool or coarse silk.
[FN#171] Arab. “Mayazib” plur. of the Pers. Mizab (orig. Miz-i-ab=channel of water) a spout for roof-rain. That which drains the Ka’abah on the N.-W. side is called Mizab al-Rahmah (Gargoyle of Mercy) and pilgrims stand under it for a douche of holy water. It is supposed to be of gold, but really of silver gold-plated and is described of Burckhardt and myself. (Pilgrimage iii. 164.) The length is 4 feet 10 in.; width 9 in.; height of sides 8 in.; and slope at mouth 1 foot 6 in long.
[FN#172] The Mac. and Bull Edits. have by mistake “Son of Ishak.” Lane has “Is-hale the Son of Ibrahim” following Trebutien (iii. 483) but suggests in a note the right reading as above.
[FN#173] Again masculine for feminine.
[FN#174] There are two of this name. The Upper al-Akik contains the whole site of Al-Medinah; the Lower is on the Meccan road about four miles S.W. of the city. The Prophet called it “blessed” because ordered by an angel to pray therein. The poets have said pretty things about it, e.g.
O friend, this is the
vale Akik; here stand and strive in
thought:
If not a very lover,
strive to be by love distraught!
for whose esoteric meaning see Pilgrimage ii. 24. I passed through Al-Akik in July when it was dry as summer dust and its “beautiful trees” were mere vegetable mummies.
[FN#175] Those who live in the wet climates of the Northern temperates can hardly understand the delight of a shower in rainless lands, like Arabia and Nubia. In Sind we used to strip and stand in the downfall and raise faces sky-wards to get the full benefit of the douche. In Southern Persia food is hastily cooked at such times, wine strained, Kaliuns made ready and horses saddled for a ride to the nearest gardens and a happy drinking-bout under the cypresses. If a man refused, his friends would say of him, " See how he turns his back upon the blessing of Allah!” (like an ass which presents its tail to the weather).
[FN#176] i.e. the destruction of the Barmecides.
[FN#177] He was Wazir to the Great “Saladin” (Salah al-Din = one conforming with the Faith):, ) See vol. iv. 271, where Saladin is also entitled Al-Malik c al-Nasir = the Conquering King. He was a Kurd and therefore fond of boys (like Virgil, Horace, etc.), but that perversion did not prey prevent his being one of the noblest of men. He lies in the Great Amawi Mosque of Damascus and I never visited a tomb with more reverence.
[FN#178] Arab. “Ahassa bi’l-Shurbah :” in our idiom “he smelt a rat”.
[FN#179] This and the next tale are omitted by Lane (iii. 254) on “account of its vulgarity, rendered more objectionable by indecent incidents.” It has been honoured with a lithographed reprint at Cairo A.H. 1278 and the Bresl. Edit. ix. 193 calls it the “Tale of Ahmad al-Danaf with Dalilah.”
[FN#180] “Ahmad, the Distressing Sickness,” or “Calamity;” Hasan the Pestilent and Dalilah the bawd. See vol. ii. 329, and vol. iv. 75.
[FN#181] A foetus, a foundling, a contemptible fellow.
[FN#182] In the Mac. Edit. “her husband”: the end of the tale shows the error, infra, p. 171. The Bresl. Edit., x. 195, informs us that Dalilah was a “Faylasufiyah"=philosopheress.
[FN#183] Arab. “Ibrik” usually a ewer, a spout-pot, from the Pers. Ab-riz=water-pourer: the old woman thus vaunted her ceremonial purity. The basin and ewer are called in poetry “the two rumourers,” because they rattle when borne about.
[FN#184] Khatun in Turk. is=a lady, a dame of high degree; at times as here and elsewhere, it becomes a P. N.
[FN#185] Arab. “Maut,” a word mostly avoided in the Koran and by the Founder of Christianity.
[FN#186] Arab. “Akakir,” drugs, spices, simples which cannot be distinguished without study and practice. Hence the proverb (Burckhardt, 703), Is this an art of drugs?—difficult as the druggist’s craft?
[FN#187] i.e. Beautiful as the fairy damsels who guard enchanted treasures, such as that of Al-Shamardal (vol. vi. 221).
[FN#188] i.e. by contact with a person in a state of ceremonial impurity; servants are not particular upon this point and “Salat mamlukiyah” (Mameluke’s prayers) means praying without ablution.
[FN#189] i.e. Father of assaults, burdens or pregnancies; the last being here the meaning.
[FN#190] Ex votos and so forth.
[FN#191] Arab. “Iksah,” plaits, braids, also the little gold coins and other ornaments worn in the hair, now mostly by the middle and lower classes. Low Europeans sometimes take advantage of the native prostitutes by detaching these valuables, a form of “bilking” peculiar to the Nile-Valley.
[FN#192] In Bresl. Edit. Malih Kawi (pron. ’Awi), a Cairene vulgarism.
[FN#193] Meaning without veil or upper clothing.
[FN#194] Arab. “Kallakas” the edible African arum before explained. This Colocasia is supposed to bear, unlike the palm, male and female flowers in one spathe.
[FN#195] See vol. iii. 302. The figs refer to the anus and the pomegranates, like the sycomore, to the female parts. Me nec faemina nec puer, &c., says Horace in pensive mood.
[FN#196] It is in accordance to custom that the Shaykh be attended by a half-witted fanatic who would be made furious by seeing gold and silks in the reverend presence so coyly curtained.
[FN#197] In English, “God damn everything an inch high!”
[FN#198] Burckhardt notes that the Wali, or chief police officer at Cairo, was exclusively termed Al-Agha and quotes the proverb (No. 156) “One night the whore repented and cried:—What! no Wali (Al-Agha) to lay whores by the heels?” Some of these Egyptian by-words are most amusing and characteristic; but they require literal translation, not the timid touch of the last generation. I am preparing, for the use of my friend, Bernard Quaritch, a bona fide version which awaits only the promised volume of Herr Landberg.
[FN#199] Lit. for “we leave them for the present”: the formula is much used in this tale, showing another hand, author or copyist.
[FN#200] Arab. “Uzrah.”
[FN#201] i.e. “Thou art unjust and violent enough to wrong even the Caliph!”
[FN#202] I may note that a “donkey-boy” like our “post-boy” can be of any age in Egypt.
[FN#203] They could legally demand to be recouped but the chief would have found some pretext to put off payment. Such at least is the legal process of these days.
[FN#204] i.e. drunk with the excess of his beauty.
[FN#205] A delicate way of offering a fee. When officers commanding regiments in India contracted for clothing the men, they found these douceurs under their dinner-napkins. All that is now changed; but I doubt the change being an improvement: the public is plundered by a “Board” instead of an individual.
[FN#206] This may mean, I should know her even were my eyes blue (or blind) with cataract and the Bresl. Edit. ix. 231, reads “Ayni"=my eye; or it may be, I should know her by her staring, glittering, hungry eyes, as opposed to the “Hawar” soft-black and languishing (Arab. Prov. i. 115, and ii. 848). The Prophet said “blue-eyed (women) are of good omen.” And when one man reproached another saying “Thou art Azrak” (blue-eyed!) he retorted, “So is the falcon!” “Zurk-an” in Kor. xx. 102, is translated by Mr. Rodwell “leaden eyes.” It ought to be blue-eyed, dim-sighted, purblind.
[FN#207] Arab, “Zalabiyah bi-’Asal.”
[FN#208] Arab. “Ka’ah,” their mess-room, barracks.
[FN#209] i.e. Camel shoulder-blade.
[FN#210] So in the Brazil you are invited to drink a copa d’agua and find a splendid banquet. There is a smack of Chinese ceremony in this practice which lingers throughout southern Europe; but the less advanced society is, the more it is fettered by ceremony and “etiquette.”
[FN#211] The Bresl. edit. (ix. 239) prefers these lines:—
Some of us be hawks
and some sparrow-hawks, *
And
vultures some which at carrion pike;
And maidens deem all
alike we be *
But,
save in our turbands, we’re not alike.
[FN#212] Arab. Shar a=holy law; here it especially applies to Al-Kisas=lex talionis, which would order her eye-tooth to be torn out.
[FN#213] i.e., of the Afghans. Sulaymani is the Egypt and Hijazi term for an Afghan and the proverb says “Sulaymani harami”—the Afghan is a villainous man. See Pilgrimage i. 59, which gives them a better character. The Bresl. Edit. simply says, “King Sulayman.”
[FN#214] This is a sequel to the Story of Dalilah and both are highly relished by Arabs. The Bresl. Edit. ix. 245, runs both into one.
[FN#215] Arab. “Misr” (Masr), the Capital, says Savary, applied alternately to Memphis, Fostat and Grand Cairo each of which had a Jizah (pron. Gizah), skirt, angle, outlying suburb.
[FN#216] For the curious street-cries of old Cairo see Lane (M. E. chapt. xiv.) and my Pilgrimage (i. 120): here the rhymes are of Zabib (raisins), habib (lover) and labib (man of sense).
[FN#217] The Mac. and Bul. Edits. give two silly couplets of moral advice:—
Strike with thy stubborn
steel, and never fear *
Aught
save the Godhead of Allmighty Might;
And shun ill practices
and never show *
Through
life but generous gifts to human sight.
The above is from the Bresl. Edit. ix. 247.
[FN#218] Arab. “Al-Khanakah” now more usually termed a Takiyah. (Pilgrim. i. 124.)
[FN#219] Arab. “Ka’b al-ba’id” (Bresl. Edit. ix. 255)=heel or ankle, metaph. for fortune, reputation: so the Arabs say the “Ka’b of the tribe is gone!” here “the far one"=the caravan-leader.
[FN#220] Arab. “Sharit,” from Sharata=he Scarified; “Mishrat"=a lancet and “Sharitah"=a mason’s rule. Mr. Payne renders “Sharit” by whinyard: it must be a chopper-like weapon, with a pin or screw (laulab) to keep the blade open like the snap of the Spaniard’s cuchillo. Dozy explains it=epee, synonyme de Sayf.
[FN#221] Text “Dimagh,” a Persianism when used for the head: the word properly means brain or meninx.
[FN#222] They were afraid even to stand and answer this remarkable ruffian.
[FN#223] Ahmad the Abortion, or the Foundling, nephew (sister’s son) of Zaynab the Coneycatcher. See supra, p. 145.
[FN#224] Here the sharp lad discovers the direction without pointing it out. I need hardly enlarge upon the prehensile powers of the Eastern foot: the tailor will hold his cloth between his toes and pick up his needle with it, whilst the woman can knead every muscle and at times catch a mosquito between the toes. I knew an officer in India whose mistress hurt his feelings by so doing at a critical time when he attributed her movement to pleasure.
[FN#225] Arab. “Hullah"=dress. In old days it was composed of the Burd or Rida, the shoulder-cloth from 6 to 9 or 10 feet long, and the Izar or waistcloth which was either tied or tucked into a girdle of leather or metal. The woman’s waistcloth was called Nitah and descended to the feet while the upper part was doubled and provided with a Tikkah or string over which it fell to the knees, overhanging the lower folds. This doubling of the “Hujrah,” or part round the waist, was called the “Hubkah.”
[FN#226] Arab. “Taghadda,” the dinner being at eleven a.m. or noon.
[FN#227] Arab. Ghandur for which the Dictionaries give only “fat, thick.” It applies in Arabia especially to a Harami, brigand or freebooter, most honourable of professions, slain in foray or fray, opposed to “Fatis” or carrion (the corps creve of the Klephts), the man who dies the straw-death. Pilgrimage iii. 66.
[FN#228] My fair readers will note with surprise how such matters are hurried in the East. The picture is, however, true to life in lands where “flirtation” is utterly unknown and, indeed, impossible.
[FN#229] Arab. “Zabbah,” the wooden bolt (before noticed) which forms the lock and is opened by a slider and pins. It is illustrated by Lane (M. E. Introduction).
[FN#230] i.e. I am not a petty thief.
[FN#231] Arab. Satl=kettle, bucket. Lat. Situla (?).
[FN#232] i.e. “there is no chance of his escaping.” It may also mean, “And far from him (Hayhat) is escape.”
[FN#233] Arab. “Ihtilam” the sign of puberty in boy or girl; this, like all emissions of semen, voluntary or involuntary, requires the Ghuzl or total ablution before prayers can be said, etc. See vol. v. 199, in the Tale of Tawaddud.
[FN#234] This is the way to take an Eastern when he tells a deliberate lie; and it often surprises him into speaking the truth.
[FN#235] The conjunctiva in Africans is seldom white; often it is red and more frequently yellow.
[FN#236] So in the texts, possibly a clerical error for the wine which he had brought with the kabobs. But beer is the especial tipple of African slaves in Egypt.
[FN#237] Arab. “Laun”, prop.=color, hue; but applied to species and genus, our “kind”; and especially to dishes which differ in appearance; whilst in Egypt it means any dish.
[FN#238] Arab. “Zardah"=rice dressed with honey and saffron. Vol. ii. 313. The word is still common in Turkey.
[FN#239] Arab. “Laylat Arms,” the night of yesterday (Al-barihah) not our “last night” which would be the night of the day spoken of.
[FN#240] Arab. “Yakhni,” a word much used in Persia and India and properly applied to the complicated broth prepared for the rice and meat. For a good recipe see Herklots, Appendix xxix.
[FN#241] In token of defeat and in acknowledgment that she was no match for men.
[FN#242] This is a neat touch of nature. Many a woman, even of the world, has fallen in love with a man before indifferent to her because he did not take advantage of her when he had the opportunity.
[FN#243] The slightest movement causes a fight at a funeral or a wedding-procession in the East; even amongst the “mild Hindus.”
[FN#244] Arab. “Al-Musran” (plur. of “Masir”) properly the intestines which contain the chyle. The bag made by Ali was, in fact, a “Cundum” (so called from the inventor, Colonel Cundum of the Guards in the days of Charles Second) or “French letter”; une capote anglaise, a “check upon child.” Captain Grose says (Class. Dict. etc. s.v. Cundum) “The dried gut of a sheep worn by a man in the act of coition to prevent venereal infection. These machines were long prepared and sold by a matron of the name of Philips at the Green Canister in Half Moon Street in the Strand * * * Also a false scabbard over a sword and the oilskin case for the colours of a regiment.” Another account is given in the Guide Pratique des Maladies Secretes, Dr. G. Harris, Bruxelles. Librairie Populaire. He calls these petits sachets de baudruche “Candoms, from the doctor who invented them” (Littre ignores the word) and declares that the famous Ricord compared them with a bad umbrella which a storm can break or burst, while others term them cuirasses against pleasure and cobwebs against infection. They were much used in the last century. “Those pretended stolen goods were Mr. Wilkes’s Papers, many of which tended to prove his authorship of the North Briton, No. 45, April 23, 1763, and some Cundums enclosed in an envelope” (Records of C. of King’s Bench, London, 1763). “Pour finir l’inventaire de ces curiosites du cabinet de Madame Gourdan, il ne faut pas omettre une multitude de redingottes appelees d’Angleterre, je ne sais pourquois. Vous connoissez, an surplus, ces especes de boucliers qu’on oppose aux traits empoisonnes de l’amour; et qui n’emoussent que ceux du plaisir.” (L’Observateur Anglois, Londres 1778, iii. 69.) Again we read:—
“Les capotes melancoliques
Qui pendent chez les
gros Millan (?)
S’enflent d’elles-memes,
lubriques,
Et dechargent en se
gonflant.”
Passage
Satyrique.
Also in Louis Prolat:—
“Il fuyait, me laissant une capote au cul.”
The articles are now of two kinds mostly of baudruche (sheep’s gut) and a few of caout-chouc. They are made almost exclusively in the faubourgs of Paris, giving employment to many women and young girls; Grenelle turns out the baudruche and Grenelle and Lilas the India-rubber article; and of the three or four makers M. Deschamps is best known. The sheep’s gut is not joined in any way but of single piece as it comes from the animal after, of course, much manipulation to make it thin and supple; the inferior qualities are stuck together at the sides. Prices vary from 4 1/2 to 36 francs per gross. Those of India-rubber are always joined at the side with a solution especially prepared for the purpose. I have also heard of fish-bladders but can give no details on the subject. The Cundum was unknown to the ancients of Europe although syphilis was not: even prehistoric skeletons show traces of its ravages.
[FN#245] Arab. “Ya Usta” (for “Ustaz.”) The Pers. term is Ustad=a craft-master, an artisan and especially a barber. Here it is merely a polite address.
[FN#246] In common parlance Arabs answer a question (like the classics of Europe who rarely used Yes and No, Yea and Nay), by repeating its last words. They have, however, many affirmative particles e.g. Ni’am which answers a negative “Dost thou not go?”—Ni’am (Yes!); and Ajal, a stronger form following a command, e.g. Sir (go)—Ajal, Yes verily. The popular form is Aywa (’llahi)=Yes, by Allah. The chief negatives are Ma and La, both often used in the sense of “There is not.”
[FN#247] Arab. “Khalbus,” prop. the servant of the Almah-girls who acts buffoon as well as pimp. The “Maskharah” (whence our “mask”) corresponds with the fool or jester of mediaeval Europe: amongst the Arnauts he is called “Suttari” and is known by his fox’s tails: he mounts a mare, tom-toms on the kettle-drum and is generally one of the bravest of the corps. These buffoons are noted for extreme indecency: they generally appear in the ring provided with an enormous phallus of whip-cord and with this they charge man, woman and child, to the infinite delight of the public.
[FN#248] Arab. “Shubash” pronounced in Egypt Shobash: it is the Persian Shah-bash lit.=be a King, equivalent to our bravo. Here, however, the allusion is to the buffoon’s cry at an Egyptian feast, “Shohbash ’alayk, ya Sahib al-faraj,"=a present is due from thee, O giver of the fete " Sec Lane M. E. xxvii.
[FN#249] Arab. “Ka’ak al-I’d:” the former is the Arab form of the Persian “Kahk” (still retained in Egypt) whence I would derive our word “cake.” It alludes to the sweet cakes which are served up with dates, the quatre mendiants and sherbets during visits of the Lesser (not the greater) Festival, at the end of the Ramazan fast. (Lane M.E. xxv.)
[FN#250] Arab. “Tasamah,” a rare word for a peculiar slipper. Dozy (s. v.) says only, espece de chaussure, sandale, pantoufle, soulier.
[FN#251] Arab. “Ijtila"=the displaying of the bride on her wedding night so often alluded to in The Nights.
[FN#252] Arab. Khiskhanah; a mixed word from Klaysh=canvass or stuffs generally and Pers. Khanah=house room. Dozy (s.v.) says armoire, buffet.
[FN#253] The Bresl. Edit. “Kamariyah"=Moon-like (fem.) for Moon.
[FN#254] Every traveller describes the manners and customs of dogs in Eastern cities where they furiously attack all canine intruders. I have noticed the subject in writing of Al-Medinah where the beasts are confined to the suburbs. (Pilgrimage ii. 52-54.)
[FN#255] She could legally compel him to sell her; because, being an Infidel, he had attempted to debauch a Moslemah.
[FN#256] Arab. “Halawat wa Mulabbas”; the latter etymologically means one dressed or clothed. Here it alludes to almonds, etc., clothed or coated with sugar. See Dozy (s.v.) “labas.”
[FN#257] Arab. “’Ubb” from a root=being long: Dozy (s.v.), says poche au sein; Habb al-’ubb is a woman’s ornament.
[FN#258] Who, it will be remembered, was Dalilah’s grandson.
[FN#259] Arab. “Tabut,” a term applied to the Ark of the Covenant (Koran ii. 349), which contained Moses’ rod and shoes, Aaron’s mitre, the manna-pot, the broken Tables of the Law, and the portraits of all the prophets which are to appear till the end of time—an extensive list for a box measuring 3 by 2 cubits. Europeans often translate it coffin, but it is properly the wooden case placed over an honoured grave. “Iran” is the Ark of Moses’ exposure, also the large hearse on which tribal chiefs were carried to earth.
[FN#260] i.e. What we have related is not “Gospel Truth.”
[FN#261] Omitted by Lane (iii. 252) “because little more than a repetition” of Taj al-Muluk and the Lady Dunya. This is true; but the nice progress of the nurse’s pimping is a well-finished picture and the old woman’s speech (infra p. 243) is a gem.
[FN#262] Artaxerxes; in the Mac. Edit. Azdashir, a misprint.
[FN#263] I use “kiss ground” as we say “kiss hands.” But it must not be understood literally: the nearest approach would be to touch the earth with the finger-tips and apply them to the lips or brow. Amongst Hindus the Ashtanga-prostration included actually kissing the ground.
[FN#264] The “key” is mentioned because a fee so called (miftah) is paid on its being handed to the new lodger. (Pilgrimage i. 62.)
[FN#265] The Koranic term for semen, often quoted.
[FN#266] Koran, xii. 31, in the story of Joseph, before noticed.
[FN#267] Probably the white woollens, so often mentioned, whose use is now returning to Europe, where men have a reasonable fear of dyed stuffs, especially since Aniline conquered Cochineal.
[FN#268] Arab. “samir,” one who enjoys the musamarah or night-talk outside the Arab tents. “Samar” is the shade of the moon, or half darkness when only stars shine without a moon, or the darkness of a moonless night. Hence the proverb (A. P. ii. 513) “Ma af’al-hu al-samar wa’l kamar;” I will not do it by moondarkness or by moonshine, i.e. never. I have elsewhere remarked that “Early to bed and early to rise” is a civilised maxim; most barbarians sit deep into the night in the light of the moon or a camp-fire and will not rise till nearly noon. They agree in our modern version of the old saw:—
Early to bed and early
to rise
Makes a man surly and
gives him red eyes.
The Shayks of Arab tribes especially transact most of their public business during the dark hours.
[FN#269] Suspecting that it had been sent by some Royal lover.
[FN#270] Arab. “Rubbama” a particle more emphatic than rubba,=perhaps, sometimes, often.
[FN#271] “The broken (wall)” from Hatim=breaking. It fences the Hijr or space where Ishmael is buried (vol. vi. 205); and I have described it in Pilgrimage iii. 165.
[FN#272] Arab. “Farais” (plur. of farisah): the phrase has often occurred and is=our “trembled in every nerve.” As often happens in Arabic, it is “horsey;” alluding to the shoulder-muscles (not shoulder-blades, Preston p. 89) between neck and flank which readily quiver in blood-horses when excited or frightened.
[FN#273] Arab. “Fazl"=exceeding goodness as in “Fazl wa ma’rifah"=virtue and learning.
[FN#274] Arab. “Al-Mafarik” (plur. of Mafrak),=the pole or crown of the head, where the hair parts naturally and where baldness mostly begins.
[FN#275] Arab. “Na’i al-maut”, the person sent round to announce a death to the friends and relations of the deceased and invite them to the funeral.
[FN#276] Arab. “Tair al-bayn”, any bird, not only the Hatim or black crow, which announces separation. Crows and ravens flock for food to the camps broken up for the springtide and autumnal marches, and thus become emblems of desertion and desolation. The same birds are also connected with Abel’s burial in the Koran (v. 34), a Jewish tradition borrowed by Mohammed. Lastly, here is a paranomasia in the words “Ghurab al-Bayn"=Raven of the Wold (the black bird with white breast and red beak and legs): “Ghurab” (Heb. Oreb) connects with Ghurbah=strangerhood, exile, and “Bayn” with distance, interval, disunion, the desert (between the cultivated spots). There is another and a similar pun anent the Ban-tree; the first word meaning “he fared, he left.”
[FN#277] Arab. “Tayr,” any flying thing, a bird; with true Arab carelessness the writer waits till the tale is nearly ended before letting us know that the birds are pigeons (Hamam).
[FN#278] Arab. “Karr’aynan.” The Arabs say, “Allah cool thine eye,” because tears of grief are hot and those of joy cool (Al-Asma’i); others say the cool eye is opposed to that heated by watching; and Al-Hariri (Ass. xxvii.) makes a scorching afternoon “hotter than the tear of a childless mother.” In the burning climate of Arabia coolth and refrigeration are equivalent to refreshment and delight.
[FN#279] Arab. “Muunah,” the “Mona” of Maroccan travellers (English not Italian who are scandalised by “Mona”) meaning the provisions supplied gratis by the unhappy villagers to all who visit them with passport from the Sultan. Our cousins German have lately scored a great success by paying for all their rations which the Ministers of other nations, England included, were mean enough to accept.
[FN#280] Arab. “Kaannahu huwa”; lit.=as he (was) he. This reminds us of the great grammarian, Sibawayh, whose name the Persians derive from “Apple-flavour"(Sib + bu). He was disputing, in presence of Harun al-Rashid with a rival Al-Kisa’i, and advocated the Basrian form, “Fa-iza huwa hu” (behold, it was he) against the Kufan, “Fa-iza huwa iyyahu” (behold, it was him). The enemy overcame him by appealing to Badawin, who spoke impurely, whereupon Sibawayh left the court, retired to Khorasan and died, it is said of a broken heart.
[FN#281] This is a sign of the Saudawi or melancholic temperament in which black bile pre-dominates. It is supposed to cause a distaste for society and a longing for solitude, an unsettled habit of mind and neglect of worldly affairs. I remarked that in Arabia students are subject to it, and that amongst philosophers and literary men of Mecca and Al-Medinah there was hardly one who was not spoken of as a “Saudawi.” See Pilgrimage ii. 49, 50.
[FN#282] i.e. I am a servant and bound to tell thee what my orders are.
[FN#283] A touching lesson on how bribes settle matters in the East.
[FN#284] i.e. fresh from water (Arab. “Rutub"), before the air can tarnish them. The pearl (margarita) in Arab. is Lu’lu’; the “unio” or large pearl Durr, plur. Durar. In modern parlance Durr is the second quality of the twelve into which pearls are divided.
[FN#285] i.e. the Wazir, but purposely left vague.
[FN#286] The whole of the nurse’s speech is admirable: its naive and striking picture of conjugal affection goes far to redeem the grossness of The Nights.
[FN#287] The bitterness was the parting in the morning.
[FN#288] English “Prin’cess,” too often pronounced in French fashion Princess.
[FN#289] In dictionaries “Ban” (Anglice ben-tree) is the myrobalan which produces gum benzoin. It resembles the tamarisk. Mr. Lyall (p. 74 Translations of Ancient Arab Poetry, Williams and Norgate, 1885), calls it a species of Moringa, tall, with plentiful and intensely green foliage used for comparisons on account of its straightness and graceful shape of its branches. The nut supplies a medicinal oil.
[FN#290] A sign of extreme familiarity: the glooms are the hands and the full moons are the eyes.
[FN#291] Arab. “Khal’a al-’izar”: lit.=stripping off jaws or side-beard.
[FN#292] Arab. “Shimal"=the north wind.
[FN#293] An operation well described by Juvenal—
Illa supercilium, modica
fuligine tactum,
Obliqua producit acu,
pingitque, trementes
Attolens oculos.
Sonnini (Travels in Egypt, chapt. xvi.) justly remarks that this pencilling the angles of the eyes with Kohl, which the old Levant trade called alquifoux or arquifoux, makes them appear large and more oblong; and I have noted that the modern Egyptian (especially Coptic) eye, like that of the Sphinx and the old figures looks in profile as if it were seen in full. (Pilgrimage i. 214.)
[FN#294] The same traveller notes a singular property
in the Henna-flower that when smelt closely it exhales
a “very powerful spermatic odour,” hence
it became a favourite with women as the tea-rose with
us. He finds it on the nails of mummies, and
identifies it with the Kupros of the ancient Greeks
(the moderns call it Kene or Kena) and the
(Botrus
cypri) of Solomon’s Song (i. 14). The Hebr.
is
“Copher,” a well-known word which the
A. V. translates by “a cluster of camphire (?)
in the vineyards of En-gedi”; and a note on
iv. 13 ineptly adds, “or, cypress.”
The Revised Edit. amends it to “a cluster of
henna-flowers.” The Solomonic (?) description
is very correct; the shrub affects vineyards, and
about Bombay forms fine hedges which can be smelt from
a distance.
[FN#295] Hardly the equivalent of the Arab. “Kataba” (which includes true tattooing with needles) and is applied to painting “patches” of blue or green colour, with sprigs and arabesques upon the arms and especially the breasts of women. “Kataba” would also be applied to striping the fingers with Henna which becomes a shining black under a paste of honey, lime and sal-ammoniac. This “patching” is alluded to by Strabo and Galen (Lane M. E. chapt. ii.); and we may note that savages and barbarians can leave nothing of beauty unadorned; they seem to hate a plain surface like the Hindu silversmith, whose art is shown only in chasing.
[FN#296] A violent temper, accompanied with voies de fait and personal violence, is by no means rare amongst Eastern princesses; and terrible tales are told in Persia concerning the daughters of Fath Ali Shah. Few men and no woman can resist the temptations of absolute command. The daughter of a certain Dictator all-powerful in the Argentine Republic was once seen on horseback with a white bridle of peculiar leather; it was made of the skin of a man who had boasted of her favours. The slave-girls suffer first from these masterful young persons and then it is the turn of the eunuchry.
[FN#297] A neat touch; she was too thorough-bred to care for herself first.
[FN#298] Here the ground or earth is really kissed.
[FN#299] Corresponding with our phrase, “His heart was in his mouth.”
[FN#300] Very artful is the contrast of the love-lorn Princess’s humility with her furious behaviour, in the pride of her purity, while she was yet a virginette and fancy free.
[FN#301] Arab. “Suhbat-hu” lit.=in company with him, a popular idiom in Egypt and Syria. It often occurs in the Bresl. Edit.
[FN#302] In the Mac. Edit. “Shahzaman,” a corruption of Shah Zaman=King of the Age. (See vol. i. 2)
[FN#303] For a note on this subject see vol. ii. 2.
[FN#304] i.e. bathe her and apply cosmetics to remove ail traces of travel.
[FN#305] These pretentious and curious displays of coquetry are not uncommon in handsome slave-girls when newly bought; and it is a kind of pundonor to humour them. They may also refuse their favours and a master who took possession of their persons by brute force would be blamed by his friends, men and women. Even the most despotic of despots, Fath Ali Shah of Persia, put up with refusals from his slave-girls and did not, as would the mean-minded, marry them to the grooms or cooks of the palace.
[FN#306] Such continence is rarely shown by the young Jallabs or slave-traders; when older they learn how much money is lost with the chattel’s virginity.
[FN#307] Midwives in the East, as in the less civilised parts of the West, have many nostrums for divining the sex of the unborn child.
[FN#308] Arabic (which has no written “g”) from Pers. Gulnar (Gul-i-anar) pomegranate-flower the Gulnare” of Byron who learnt his Orientalism at the Mekhitarist (Armenian) Convent, Venice. I regret to see the little honour now paid to the gallant poet in the land where he should be honoured the most. The systematic depreciation was begun by the late Mr. Thackeray, perhaps the last man to value the noble independence of Byron’s spirit; and it has been perpetuated, I regret to see, by better judges. These critics seem wholly to ignore the fact that Byron founded a school which covered Europe from Russia to Spain, from Norway to Sicily, and which from England passed over to the two Americas. This exceptional success, which has not yet fallen even to Shakespeare’s lot, was due to genius only, for the poet almost ignored study and poetic art. His great misfortune was being born in England under the Gerogium Sidus. Any Continental people would have regarded him s one of the prime glories of his race.
[FN#309] Arab. “Fi al-Kamar,” which Lane renders “in the moonlight” It seems to me that the allusion is to the Comorin Islands; but the sequel speaks simply of an island.
[FN#310] The Mac. Edit. misprints Julnar as Julnaz (so the Bul Edit. ii. 233), and Lane ’s Jullanar is an Egyptian vulgarism. He is right in suspecting the “White City” to be imaginary, but its sea has no apparent connection with the Caspian. The mermen and mermaids appear to him to be of an inferior order of the Jinn, termed Al-Ghawwasah, the Divers, who fly through air and are made of fire which at times issues from their mouths.
[FN#311] Arab. " la Kulli hal,” a popular phrase, like the Anglo-American " anyhow.”
[FN#312] In the text the name does not appear till near the end of the tale.
[FN#313] i.e. Full moon smiling.
[FN#314] These lines have occurred in vol. iii. 264. so I quote Lane ii. 499.
[FN#315] ’These lines occurred in vol. ii. 301. I quote Mr. Payne.
[FN#316] Arab. “Khadd” = cheek from the eye-orbit to the place where the beard grows; also applied to the side of a rough highland, the side-planks of a litter, etc. etc.
[FN#317] The black hair of youth.
[FN#318] This manner of listening is not held dishonourable amongst Arabs or Easterns generally; who, however, hear as little good of themselves as Westerns declare in proverb.
[FN#319] Arab. “Hasab wa nasab,” before explained as inherited degree and acquired dignity. See vol. iv. 171.
[FN#320] Arab. “Mujajat"=spittle running from the mouth: hence Lane, “is like running saliva,” which, in poetry is not pretty.
[FN#321] Arab. and Heb. “Salmandra” from Pers. Samandal (— dar—duk—dun, etc.), a Salamander, a mouse which lives in fire, some say a bird in India and China and others confuse with the chameleon (Bochart Hiero. Part ii. chapt. vi).
[FN#322] Arab. “Maha” one of the four kinds of wild cows or bovine antelopes, bubalus, Antelope defassa, A. Ieucoryx, etc.
[FN#323] These lines have occurred in vol. iii. 279; so I quote Lane (iii. 274) by way of variety; although I do not like his " bowels.”
[FN#324] The last verse (286) of chapt. ii. The Cow: “compelleth” in the sense of “burdeneth.”
[FN#325] Salih’s speeches are euphuistic.
[FN#326] From the Fatihah.
[FN#327] A truly Eastern saying, which ignores the “old maids” of the West.
[FN#328] i.e naming her before the lieges as if the speaker were her and his superior. It would have been more polite not to have gone beyond " the unique pearl and the hoarded jewel :” the offensive part of the speech was using the girl’s name.
[FN#329] Meaning emphatically that one and all were nobodies.
[FN#330] Arab Badr, the usual pun.
[FN#331] Arab. “Kirat” ( ) the bean of the Abrus precatorius, used as a weight in Arabia and India and as a bead for decoration in Africa. It is equal to four Kamhahs or wheat grains and about 3 grs. avoir.; and being the twenty fourth of a miskal, it is applied to that proportion of everything. Thus the Arabs say of a perfect man, " He is of four-and-twenty Kirat” i.e. pure gold. See vol. iii. 239.
[FN#332] The (she) myrtle: Kazimirski (A. de Biberstein) Dictionnaire Arabe-Francais (Pairs Maisonneuve 1867) gives Marsin=Rose de Jericho: myrte.
[FN#333] Needless to note that the fowler had a right to expect a return present worth double or treble the price of his gift. Such is the universal practice of the East: in the West the extortioner says, “I leave it to you, sir!”
[FN#334] And she does tell him all that the reader well knows.
[FN#335] This was for sprinkling him, but the texts omit that operation. Arabic has distinct terms for various forms of metamorphosis. " Naskh " is change from a lower to a higher, as beast to man; " Maskh " (the common expression) is the reverse, " Raskh " is from animate to inanimate (man to stone) and “Faskh” is absolute wasting away to corruption.
[FN#336] I render this improbable detail literally: it can only mean that the ship was dashed against a rock.
[FN#337] Who was probably squatting on his shop counter. The “Bakkal” (who must not be confounded with the epicier), lit. “vender of herbs” =greengrocer, and according to Richardson used incorrectly for Baddal ( ?) vendor of provisions. Popularly it is applied to a seller of oil, honey, butter and fruit, like the Ital. “Pizzicagnolo"=Salsamentarius, and in North-West Africa to an inn-keeper.
[FN#338] Here the Shaykh is mistaken: he should have said, “The Sun in old Persian.” “Almanac” simply makes nonsense of the Arabian Circe’s name. In Arab. it is “Takwim,” whence the Span. and Port. “Tacuino:” in Heb. Hakamatha-Takunah=sapientia dis positionis astrorum (Asiat. Research. iii.120).
[FN#339] i.e. for thy daily expenses.
[FN#340] Un adolescent aime toutes les femmes. Man is by nature polygamic whereas woman as a rule is monogamic and polyandrous only when tired of her lover. For the man, as has been truly said, loves the woman, but the love of the woman is for the love of the man.
[FN#341] I have already noted that the heroes and heroines of Eastern love-tales are always bonne fourchettes: they eat and drink hard enough to scandalise the sentimental amourist of the West; but it is understood that this abundant diet is necessary to qualify them for the Herculean labours of the love night.
[FN#342] Here again a little excision is necessary; the reader already knows all about it.
[FN#343] Arab. “Hiss,” prop. speaking a perception (as of sound or motion) as opposed to “Hades,” a surmise or opinion without proof.
[FN#344] Arab. “Sawik,” the old and modern name for native frumenty, green grain (mostly barley) toasted, pounded, mixed with dates or sugar and eaten on journeys when cooking is impracticable. M. C. de Perceval (iii. 54), gives it a different and now unknown name; and Mr. Lane also applies it to “ptisane.” It named the " Day of Sawaykah " (for which see Pilgrimage ii. 19), called by our popular authors the " War of the Meal-sacks.”
[FN#345] Mr. Keightley (H. 122-24 Tales and Popular Fictions, a book now somewhat obsolete) remarks, “There is nothing said about the bridle in the account of the sale (infra), but I am sure that in the original tale, Badr’s misfortunes must have been owing to his having parted with it. In Chaucer’s Squier’s Tale the bridle would also appear to have been of some importance. “He quotes a story from the Notti Piacevoli of Straparola, the Milanese, published at Venice in 1550. And there is a popular story of the kind in Germany.
[FN#346] Here, for the first time we find the name of the mother who has often been mentioned in the story. Farashah is the fem. or singular form of “Farash,” a butterfly, a moth. Lane notes that his Shaykh gives it the very unusual sense of “a locust.”
[FN#347] Punning upon Jauharah= “a jewel” a name which has an Hibernian smack.
[FN#348] In the old version “All the lovers of the Magic Queen resumed their pristine forms as soon as she ceased to live;” moreover, they were all sons of kings, princes, or persons of high degree.
[FN#349] Arab. “Munadamah,” = conversation over the cup (Lane), used somewhat in the sense of “Musamarah” = talks by moonlight.
[FN#350] Arab. “Kursi,” a word of many meanings; here it would allure to the square crate-like seat of palm-fronds used by the Rawi or public reciter of tales when he is not pacing about the coffee-house.
[FN#351] Von Hammer remarks that this is precisely the sum paid in Egypt for a Ms. copy of The Nights.
[FN#352] Arab. “Samar,” the origin of Musamarah, which see, vol. iv. 237.
[FN#353] The pomp and circumstance, with which the tale is introduced to the reader showing the importance attached to it. Lane, most inudiciously I think, transfers the Proemium to a note in chapt. xxiv., thus converting an Arabian Night into an Arabian Note.
[FN#354] ’Asim = defending (honour) or defended, son of Safwan = clear, cold (dry). Trebutien ii. 126, has Safran.
[FN#355] Faris = the rider, the Knight, son of Salih = the righteous, the pious, the just.
[FN#356] In sign of the deepest dejection, when a man would signify that he can fall no lower.
[FN#357] Arab. Ya Khawand (in Bresl. Edit. vol. iv. 191) and fem. form Khawandah (p. 20) from Pers. Khawand or Khawandagar = superior, lord, master; Khudawand is still used in popular as in classical Persian, and is universally understood in Hindostan.
[FN#358] The Biblical Sheba, whence came the Queen of many Hebrew fables.
[FN#359] These would be the interjections of the writer or story-teller. The Mac. Edit. is here a sketch which must be filled up by the Bresl. Edit. vol. iv. 189-318: “Tale of King Asim and his son Sayf al-Muluk with Badi’a al-Jamal.”
[FN#360] The oath by the Seal-ring of Solomon was the Stygian “swear” in Fairy-land. The signet consisted of four jewels, presented by as many angels, representing the Winds, the Birds, Earth (including sea) and Spirits, and the gems were inscribed with as many sentences: (1) To Allah belong Majesty and Might; (2) All created things praise the Lord; (3) Heaven and Earth are Allah’s slaves and (4) There is no god but the God and Mohammed is His messenger. For Sakhr and his theft of the signet see Dr. Weil’s, “The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud.”
[FN#361] Trebutien (ii. 128) remarks, “Cet Assaf peut etre celui auquel David adresse plusieurs de ses psaumes, et que nos interpretes disent avoir ete son maitre de chapelle (from Biblioth. Orient).
[FN#362] Mermen, monsters, beasts, etc.
[FN#363] This is in accordance with Eastern etiqette; the guest must be fed before his errand is asked. The Porte, in the days of its pride, managed in this way sorely to insult the Ambassadors of the most powerful European kingdoms and the first French Republic had the honour of abating the barbarians’ nuisance. So the old Scottish Highlanders never asked the name or clan of a chance guest, lest he prove a foe before he had eaten their food.
[FN#364] In Bresl. Edit. (301) Khafiyah: in Mac. Khainah, the perfidy.
[FN#365] So in the Mac. Edit., in the Bresl. only one “Kaba” or Kaftan; but from the sequel it seems to be a clerical error.
[FN#366] Arab. “Su’uban” (Thu’uban) popularly translated “basilisk.” The Egyptians suppose that when this serpent forms ring round the Ibn ’Irs (weasel or ichneumon) the latter emits a peculiar air which causes the reptile to burst.
[FN#367] i.e. that prophesied by Solomon.
[FN#368] Arab. “Takliyah” from kaly, a fry: Lane’s Shaykh explained it as “onions cooked in clarified butter, after which they are put upon other cooked food.” The mention of onions points to Egypt as the origin of this tale and certainly not to Arabia, where the strong-smelling root is hated.
[FN#369] Von Hammer quotes the case of the Grand Vizier Yusuf throwing his own pelisse over the shoulders of the Aleppine Merchant who brought him the news of the death of his enemy, Jazzar Pasha.
[FN#370] This peculiar style of generosity was also the custom in contemporary Europe.
[FN#371] Khatun, which follows the name (e.g. Hurmat Khatun), in India corresponds with the male title Khan, taken by the Pathan Moslems (e.g. Pir Khan). Khanum is the affix to the Moghul or Tartar nobility, the men assuming a double designation e.g. Mirza Abdallah Beg. See Oriental collections (Ouseley’s) vol. i. 97.
[FN#372] Lit. “Whatso thou wouldest do that do!” a contrast with our European laconism.
[FN#373] These are booths built against and outside the walls, made of palm-fronds and light materials.
[FN#374] Von Hammer in Trebutien (ii. 135) says, “Such rejoicings are still customary at Constantinople, under the name of Donanma, not only when the Sultanas are enceintes, but also when they are brought to bed. In 1803 the rumour of the pregnancy of a Sultana, being falsely spread, involved all the Ministers in useless expenses to prepare for a Donanma which never took place.” Lane justly remarks upon this passage that the title Sultan precedes while the feminine Sultanah follows the name.
[FN#375] These words (Bresl. Edit.) would be spoken in jest, a grim joke enough, but showing the elation of the King’s spirits.
[FN#376] A signal like a gong: the Mac. Edit. reads “Takah,” = in at the window.
[FN#377] Sayf al-Muluk = “Sword (Egyptian Sif,
Arab. Sayf, Gr.
) of the Kings”;
and he must not be called tout bonnement
Sayf. Sai’d = the forearm.
[FN#378] Arab. “Fakih” = a divine, from Fikh = theology, a man versed in law and divinity i.e. (1) the Koran and its interpretation comprehending the sacred ancient history of the creation and prophets (Chapters iii., iv., v. and vi.), (2) the traditions and legends connected with early Moslem History and (3) some auxiliary sciences as grammar, syntax and prosody; logic, rhetoric and philosophy. See p. 18 of “El-Mas’udi’s Historical Encyclopaedia etc.,” By my friend Prof. Aloys Springer, London 1841. This fine fragment printed by the Oriental Translation Fund has been left unfinished whilst the Asiatic Society of Paris has printed in Eight Vols. 8vo the text and translation of mm. Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille. What a national disgrace! And the same with the mere abridgment of Ibn Batutah by Prof. Lee (Orient. Tr. Fund 1820) when the French have the fine Edition and translation by Defremery and Sanguinetti with index etc. in 4 vols. 8vo 1858-59. But England is now content to rank in such matters as encouragement of learning, endowment of research etc., with the basest of kingdoms, and the contrast of status between the learned Societies of London and of Paris, Berlin, Vienna or Rome is mortifying to an Englishman—a national opprobrium.
[FN#379] Arab. “Maydan al-Fil,” prob. for Birkat al-Fil, the Tank of the Elephant before-mentioned. Lane quotes Al Makrizi who in his Khitat informs us that the lakelet was made abot the end of the seventh century (A.H.), and in the seventeenth year of the eighth century became the site of the stables. The Bresl. Edit. (iv. 214) reads “Maydan al-’Adl,” prob. for Al-’Adil the name of the King who laid out the Maydan.
[FN#380] Arab. “Ashab al-Ziya’,” the latter word mostly signifies estates consisting, strictly speaking of land under artificial irrigation.
[FN#381] The Bresl. Edit. (iv. 215) has “Chawashiyah” = ’Chiaush, the Turkish word, written with the Pers. “ch,” a letter which in Arabic is supplanted by “sh,” everywhere except in Morocco.
[FN#382] Arab. “Zawiyah” lit. a corner, a cell. Lane (M. F., chapt. xxiv.) renders it “a small kiosque,” and translates the famous Zawiyat al-Umyan (Blind Men’s Angle) near the south-eastern corner of the Azhar or great Collegiate Mosque of Cairo, “Chapel of the Blind” (chapt. ix.). In popular parlance it suggests a hermitage.
[FN#383] Arab. “Takht,” a Pers. word used as more emphatic than the Arab. Sarir.
[FN#384] This girding the sovereign is found in the hieroglyphs as a peculiarity of the ancient Kings of Egypt, says Von Hammer referring readers to Denon.
[FN#385] Arab. “Mohr,” which was not amongst the gifts of Solomon in Night dcclx. The Bresl. Edit. (p. 220) adds “and the bow,” which is also de trop.
[FN#386] Arab. “Batanah,” the ordinary lining opp. to Tazrib, or quilting with a layer of coton between two folds of cloth. The idea in the text is that the unhappy wearer would have to carry his cross (the girl) on his back.
[FN#387] This line has occurred in Night dccxliv. supra p. 280.
[FN#388] Arab. “Mu’attik al-Rikab” i.e. who frees those in bondage from the yoke.
[FN#389] In the Mac. Edit. and in Trebutien (ii. 143) the King is here called Schimakh son of Scharoukh, but elsewhere, Schohiali = Shahyal, in the Bresl. Edit. Shahal. What the author means by “Son of ’Ad the Greater,” I cannot divine.
[FN#390] Lit. “For he is the man who can avail thereto,” with the meaning given in the text.
[FN#391] Arab. “Jazirat,” insula or peninsula, vol. i. 2.
[FN#392] Probably Canton with which the Arabs were familiar.
[FN#393] i.e. “Who disappointeth not those who put their trust in Him.”
[FN#394] Arab. “Al-Manjanikat” plur.
of manjanik, from Gr.
,
Lat. Manganum (Engl. Mangonel from the dim.
Mangonella). Ducange Glossarium, s.v. The
Greek is applied originally to defensive weapons,
then to the artillery of the day, Ballista, catapults,
etc. The kindred Arab. form “Manjanin”
is applied chiefly to the Noria or Persian waterwheel.
[FN#395] Faghfur is the common Moslem title for the Emperors of China; in the Kamus the first syllable is Zammated (Fugh); in Al-Mas’udi (chapt. xiv.) we find Baghfur and in Al-Idrisi Baghbugh, or Baghbun. In Al-Asma’i Bagh = god or idol (Pehlewi and Persian); hence according to some Baghdad (?) and Baghistan a pagoda (?). Sprenger (Al-Mas’udi, p. 327) remarks that Baghfur is a literal translation of Tien-tse and quotes Visdelou, “pour mieux faire comprendre de quel ciel ils veulent parler, ils poussent la genealogie (of the Emperor) plus loin. Ils lui donnent le ciel pour pere, la terre pour mere, le soleil pour frere aine et la lune pour soeur ainee.”
[FN#396] Arab. “Kayf halak” = how de doo? the salutation of a Fellah.
[FN#397] i.e. subject to the Maharajah of Hind.
[FN#398] This is not a mistake: I have seen heavy hail in Africa, N. Lat. 4 degrees; within sight of the Equator.
[FN#399] Arab. “Harrakta.” here used in the sense of smaller craft, and presently for a cock-boat.
[FN#400] See vol. i. 138: here by way of variety I quote Mr. Payne.
[FN#401] This explains the Arab idea of the “Old Man of the Sea” in Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi. 50). He was not a monkey nor an unknown monster; but an evil Jinni of the most powerful class, yet subject to defeat and death.
[FN#402] These Plinian monsters abound in Persian literature. For a specimen see Richardson Dissert. p. xlviii.
[FN#403] Arab. “Anyab,” plur. of “Nab” = canine tooth (eye-tooth of man), tusks of horse and camel, etc.
[FN#404] Arab, “Kasid,” the Anglo-Indian Cossid. The post is called Barid from the Persian “buridah” (cut) because the mules used for the purpose were dock-tailed. Barid applies equally to the post-mule, the rider and the distance from one station (Sikkah) to another which varied from two to six parasangs. The letter-carrier was termed Al-Faranik from the Pers. Parwanah, a servant. In the Diwan al-Barid (Post-office) every letter was entered in a Madraj or list called in Arabic Al-Askidar from the Persian “Az Kih dari” = from whom hast thou it?
[FN#405] “Ten years” in the Bresl. Edit. iv. 244.
[FN#406] In the Bresl. Edit. (iv. 245) we find “Kalak,” a raft, like those used upon the Euphrates, and better than the “Fulk,” or ship, of the Mac. Edit.
[FN#407] Arab. “Timsah” from Coptic (Old Egypt) Emsuh or Msuh. The animal cannot live in salt-water, a fact which proves that the Crocodile Lakes on the Suez Canal were in old days fed by Nile-water; and this was necessarily a Canal.
[FN#408] So in the Bresl. Edit. (iv. 245). In the Mac. text “one man,” which better suits the second crocodile, for the animal can hardly be expected to take two at a time.
[FN#409] He had ample reason to be frightened. The large Cynocephalus is exceedingly dangerous. When travelling on the Gold Coast with my late friend Colonel De Ruvignes, we suddenly came in the grey of the morning upon a herd of these beasts. We dismounted, hobbled our nags and sat down, sword and revolver in hand. Luckily it was feeding time for the vicious brutes, which scowled at us but did not attack us. During my four years’ service on the West African Coast I heard enough to satisfy me that these powerful beasts often kill me and rape women; but I could not convince myself that they ever kept the women as concubines.
[FN#410] As we should say in English “it is a far cry to Loch Awe”: the Hindu by-word is, “Dihli (Delhi) is a long way off.” See vol. i. 37.
[FN#411] Arab. “Futah”, a napkin, a waistcloth, the Indian Zones alluded to by the old Greek travellers.
[FN#412] Arab. “Yaji (it comes) miat khwanjah”—quite Fellah talk.
[FN#413] As Trebutien shows (ii. 155) these apes were a remnant of some ancient tribe possibly those of Ad who had gone to Meccah to pray for rain and thus escaped the general destruction. See vol. i. 65. Perhaps they were the Jews of Aylah who in David’s day were transformed into monkeys for fishing on the Sabbath (Saturday) Koran ii. 61.
[FN#414] I can see no reason why Lane purposely changes this to “the extremity of their country.”
[FN#415] Koran xxii. 44, Mr. Payne remarks:—This absurd addition is probably due to some copyist, who thought to show his knowledge of the Koran, but did not understand the meaning of the verse from which the quotation is taken and which runs thus, “How many cities have We destroyed, whilst yet they transgressed, and they are laid low on their own foundations and wells abandoned and high-builded palaces!” Mr. Lane observes that the words are either misunderstood or purposely misapplied by the author of the tale. Purposeful perversions of Holy Writ are very popular amongst Moslems and form part of their rhetoric; but such is not the case here. According to Von Hammer (Trebutien ii. 154), “Eastern geographers place the Bir al-Mu’utallal (Ruined Well) and the Kasr al-Mashid (High-builded Castle) in the province of Hadramaut, and we wait for a new Niebuhr to inform
[FN#416] Arab. (from Pers.) “Aywan” which here corresponds with the Egyptian “liwan” a tall saloon with estrades.
[FN#417] This naive style of “renowning it” is customary in the East, contrasting with the servile address of the subject—“thy slave” etc.
[FN#418] Daulat (not Dawlah) the Anglo-Indian Dowlat; prop. meaning the shifts of affairs, hence, fortune, empire, kingdom. Khatun = “lady,” I have noted, follows the name after Turkish fashion.
[FN#419] The old name of Suez-town from the Greek Clysma (the shutting), which named the Gulf of Suez “Sea of Kulzum.” The ruins in the shape of a huge mound, upon which Sa’id Pasha built a Kiosk-palace, lie to the north of the modern town and have been noticed by me. (Pilgrimage, Midian, etc.) The Rev. Prof. Sayce examined the mound and from the Roman remains found in it determined it to be a fort guarding the old mouth of the Old Egyptian Sweet-water Canal which then debouched near the town.
[FN#420] i.e. Tuesday. See vol. iii. 249.
[FN#421] Because being a Jinniyah the foster-sister could have come to her and saved her from old maidenhood.
[FN#422] Arab. “Hajah” properly a needful thing. This consisted according to the Bresl. Edit. of certain perfumes, by burning which she could summon the Queen of the Jinn.
[FN#423] Probably used in its sense of a “black crow.” The Bresl. Edit. (iv. 261) has “Khatim” (seal-ring) which is but one of its almost innumerable misprints.
[FN#424] Here it is called “Tabik” and afterwards “Tabut.”
[FN#425] i.e. raising from the lower hinge-pins. See vol. ii. 214.
[FN#426] Arab. “Abrisam” or “Ibrisam” (from Persian Abrisham or Ibrisham) = raw silk or floss, i.e. untwisted silk.
[FN#427] This knightly practice, evidently borrowed from the East, appears in many romances of chivalry e.g. When Sir Tristram is found by King Mark asleep beside Ysonde (Isentt) with drawn sword between them, the former cried:—
Gif
they weren in sinne
Nought
so they no lay.
And we are told:—
Sir
Amys and the lady bright
To
bed gan they go;
And
when they weren in bed laid,
Sir
Amys his sword out-brayed
And
held it between them two.
This occurs in the old French romance of Amys and Amyloun which is taken into the tale of the Ravens in the Seven Wise Masters where Ludovic personates his friend Alexander in marrying the King of Egypt’s daughter and sleeps every night with a bare blade between him and the bride. See also Aladdin and his lamp. An Englishman remarked, “The drawn sword would be little hindrance to a man and maid coming together.” The drawn sword represented only the Prince’s honour.
[FN#428] Arab. “Ya Saki’ al-Wajh,” which Lane translates by “lying” or “liar.”
[FN#429] Kamin (in Bresl. Edit. “bayn” = between) Al-Bahrayn = Ambuscade or lurking-place of the two seas. The name of the city in Lane is “’Emareeych” imaginary but derived from Emarch (’imarah) = being populous. Trebutien (ii. 161) takes from Bresl. Edit. “Amar” and translates the port-name, “le lieu de refuge des deux mers.”
[FN#430] i.e. “High of (among) the Kings.” Lane proposes to read ’Ali al-Mulk = high in dominion.
[FN#431] Pronounce Mu’inuddeen = Aider of the Faith. The Bresl. Edit. (iv. 266) also read “Mu’in al-Riyasah” = Mu’in of the Captaincies.
[FN#432] Arab. “Shum” = a tough wood used for the staves with which donkeys are driven. Sir Gardner Wilkinson informed Lane that it is the ash.
[FN#433] In Persian we find the fuller metaphorical form, “kissing the ground of obedience.”
[FN#434] For the Shaykh of the Sea(-board) in Sindbad the Seaman see vol. vi. 50.
[FN#435] That this riding is a facetious exaggeration of the African practice I find was guessed by Mr. Keightley.
[FN#436] Arab. “Kummasra”: the root seems to be “Kamsara” = being slender or compact.
[FN#437] Lane translates, “by reason of the exhilaration produced by intoxication.” But the Arabic here has no assonance. The passage also alludes to the drunken habits of those blameless Ethiopians, the races of Central Africa where, after midday a chief is rarely if ever found sober. We hear much about drink in England but Englishmen are mere babes compared with these stalwart Negroes. In Unyamwezi I found all the standing bedsteads of pole-sleepers and bark-slabs disposed at an angle of about 20 degrees for the purpose of draining off the huge pottle-fulls of Pome (Osirian beer) drained by the occupants; and, comminxit lectum potus might be said of the whole male population.
[FN#438] This is not exaggerated. When at Hebron I saw the biblical spectacle of two men carrying a huge bunch slung to a pole, not so much for the weight as to keep the grapes from injury.
[FN#439] The Mac. and Bul. Edits. add, “and with him a host of others after his kind”; but these words are omitted by the Bresl. Edit. and apparently from the sequel there was only one Ghul-giant.
[FN#440] Probably alluding to the most barbarous Persian practice of plucking or tearing out the eyes from their sockets. See Sir John Malcolm’s description of the capture of Kirman and Morier (in Zohrab, the hostage) for the wholesale blinding of the Asterabadian by the Eunuch-King Agha Mohammed Shah. I may note that the mediaeval Italian practice called bacinare, or scorching with red-hot basins, came from Persia.
[FN#441] Arab. “Laban” as opposed to “Halib”: in Night dcclxxiv. (infra p. 365) the former is used for sweet milk, and other passages could be cited. I have noted that all galaktophagi, or milk-drinking races, prefer the artificially soured to the sweet, choosing the fermentation to take place outside rather than inside their stomachs. Amongst the Somal I never saw man, woman or child drink a drop of fresh milk; and they offered considerable opposition to our heating it for coffee.
[FN#442] Arab. “Takah” not “an aperture” as Lane has it, but an arched hollow in the wall.
[FN#443] In Trebutien (ii. 168) the cannibal is called “Goul Eli-Fenioun” and Von Hammer remarks, “There is no need of such likeness of name to prove that al this episode is a manifest imitation of the adventures of Ulysses in Polyphemus’s cave; * * * and this induces the belief that the Arabs have been acquainted with the poems of Homer.” Living intimately with the Greeks they could not have ignored the Iliad and the Odyssey: indeed we know by tradition that they had translations, now apparently lost. I cannot however, accept Lane’s conjecture that “the story of Ulysses and Polyphemus may have been of Eastern origin.” Possibly the myth came from Egypt, for I have shown that the opening of the Iliad bears a suspicious likeness to the proem of Pentaur’s Epic.
[FN#444] Arab. “Shakhtur”.
[FN#445] In the Bresl. Edit. the ship ips not wrecked but lands Sa’id in safety.
[FN#446] So in the Shah-nameth the Simurgh-bird gives one of her feathers to her protege Zal which he will throw into the fire when she is wanted.
[FN#447] Bresl. Edit. “Al-Zardakhanat” Arab. plur of Zarad-Khanah, a bastard word = armoury, from Arab. Zarad (hauberk) and Pers. Khanah = house etc.
[FN#448] Some retrenchment was here found necessary to avoid “damnable iteration.”
[FN#449] i.e. Badi’a al-Jamal.
[FN#450] Mohammed.
[FN#451] Koran xxxv. “The Creator” (Fatir) or the Angels, so called from the first verse.
[FN#452] In the Bresl. Edit. (p. 263) Sayf al-Muluk drops asleep under a tree to the lulling sound of a Sakiyah or water-wheel, and is seen by Badi’a al-Jamal, who falls in love with im and drops tears upon his cheeks, etc. The scene, containing much recitation, is long and well told.
[FN#453] Arab. “Lukmah” = a bouchee of bread, meat, fruit or pastry, and especially applied to the rice balled with the hand and delicately inserted into a friend’s mouth.
[FN#454] Arab. “Salahiyah,” also written Sarahiyah: it means an ewer-shaped glass-bottle.
[FN#455] Arab. “Sarmujah,” of which Von Hammer remarks that the dictionaries ignore it; Dozy gives the forms Sarmuj, Sarmuz, and Sarmuzah and explains them by “espece de guetre, de sandale ou de mule, qu’on chausse par-dessus la botte.”
[FN#456] In token of profound submission.
[FN#457] Arab. “Misr” in Ibn Khaldun is a land whose people are settled and civilised hence “Namsur” = we settle; and “Amsar” = settled provinces. Al-Misrayn was the title of Basrah and Kufah the two military cantonments founded by Caliph Omar on the frontier of conquering Arabia and conquered Persia. Hence “Tamsir” = founding such posts, which were planted in Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt. In these camps were stationed the veterans who had fought under Mohammed; but the
[FN#458] i.e. Waiting to be sold and wasting away in single cursedness.
[FN#459] Arab. “Ya dadati”: dadat is an old servant-woman or slave, often applied to a nurse, like its congener the Pers. Dada, the latter often pronounced Daddeh, as Daddeh Bazm-ara in the Kuisum-nameh (Atkinson’s “Customs of the Women of Persia,” London, 8vo, 1832).
[FN#460] Marjanah has been already explained. D’Herbelot derives from it the Romance name Morgante la Deconvenue, here confounding Morgana with Urganda; and Keltic scholars make Morgain = Mor Gwynn-the white maid (p. 10, Keightley’s Fairy Mythology, London, Whittaker, 1833).