A plain and literal translation of the Arabian nights entertainments, now entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. Volume 6 (of 17)

287

  Here the apodosis would be “We can all sup together.”

288

  Arab. “Záwiyah” (= oratory), which is to a Masjid what a chapel is to a church.

289

  Arab. “Kasr,” prop. a palace: so the Tuscan peasant speaks of his “palazzo.”

290

  This sale of a free-born Moslem was mere felony. But many centuries later Englishmen used to be sold and sent to the plantations in America.

291

  Arab. “Kawwás,” lit. an archer, suggesting les archers de la Sainte Hermandade. In former days it denoted a sergeant, an apparitor, an officer who executed magisterial orders. In modern Egypt he became a policeman (Pilgrimage i. 29). As “Cavass” he appears in gorgeous uniform and sword, an orderly attached to public offices and Consulates.

292

  A purely imaginary King.

293

  The Bresl. Edit. (ix. 370) here and elsewhere uses the word “Nútiyá” = Nautá, for the common Bahríyah or Malláh.

294

  Arab. “Tawáf,” the name given to the sets (Ashwát) of seven circuits with the left shoulder presented to the Holy House; that is walking “widdershins” or “against the sun” (“with the sun” being like the movement of a watch). For the requisites of this rite see Pilgrimage iii. 234.

295

  Arab. “Akh”; brother has a wide signification amongst Moslems and may be used to and of any of the Saving Faith.

296

  Said by the master when dismissing a servant and meaning, “I have not failed in my duty to thee!” The answer is, “Allah acquit thee thereof!”

297

  A Moslem prison is like those of Europe a century ago; to think of it gives goose-flesh. Easterns laugh at our idea of penitentiary and the Arabs of Bombay call it “Al-Bistán” (the Garden) because the court contains a few trees and shrubs. And with them a garden always suggests an idea of Paradise. There are indeed only two efficacious forms of punishment all the world over, corporal for the poor and fines for the rich, the latter being the severer form.

298

  i.e. he shall answer for this.

299

  A pun upon “Khalíyah” (bee-hive) and “Khaliyah” (empty). Khalíyah is properly a hive of bees with a honey-comb in the hollow of a tree-trunk, opposed to Kawwárah, hive made of clay or earth (Al-Hariri; Ass. of Tiflis). There are many other terms, for Arabs are curious about honey. Pilgrimage iii. 110.

300

  Lane (iii. 237) supposes by this title that the author referred his tale to the days of the Caliphate. “Commander of the Faithful” was, I have said, the style adopted by Omar in order to avoid the clumsiness of “Caliph” (successor) of the Caliph (Abu Bakr) of the Apostle of Allah.

301

  Eastern thieves count four modes of housebreaking; (1) picking out burnt bricks; (2) cutting through unbaked bricks; (3) wetting a mud wall and (4) boring through a wooden wall (Vikram and the Vampire p. 172).

302

  Arab. “Zabbat,” lit. a lizard (fem.) also a wooden lock, the only one used throughout Egypt. An illustration of its curious mechanism is given in Lane (M. E. Introduction).

303

  Arab. “Dabbús.” The Eastern mace is well known to English collectors; it is always of metal, and mostly of steel, with a short handle like our facetiously called “life-preserver.” The head is in various forms, the simplest a ball, smooth and round, or broken into sundry high and angular ridges like a melon, and in select weapons shaped like the head of some animal, bull, etc. See Night dcxlvi.

304

  The red habit is a sign of wrath and vengeance and the Persian Kings like Fath Ali Shah, used to wear it when about to order some horrid punishment, such as the “Shakk”; in this a man was hung up by his heels and cut in two from the fork downwards to the neck, when a turn of the chopper left that untouched. White robes denoted peace and mercy as well as joy. The “white” hand and “black” hand have been explained. A “white death” is quiet and natural, with forgiveness of sins. A “black death” is violent and dreadful, as by strangulation: a “green death” is robing in rags and patches like a dervish; and a “red death” is by war or bloodshed (A. P. ii. 670). Among the mystics it is the resistance of man to his passions.

305

  This in the East is the way “pour se faire valoir”; whilst Europeans would hold it a mere “bit of impudence,” aping dignity.

306

  The Chief Mufti or Doctor of the Law, an appointment first made by the Osmanli Mohammed II., when he captured Constantinople in A.D. 1453. Before that time the functions were discharged by the Kázi al-Kuzát (Kazi-in-Chief), the Chancellor.

307

  So called because here lived the makers of crossbows (Arab. Bunduk now meaning a fire-piece, musket, etc.) It is the modern district about the well-known Khan al-Hamzawi.

308

  Pronounced “Goodareeyyah,” and so called after one of the troops of the Fatimite Caliphs. The name “Yamániyah” is probably due to the story-teller’s inventiveness.

309

  I have noted that as a rule in The Nights poetical justice is administered with much rigour and exactitude. Here, however, the tale-teller allows the good brother to be slain by the two wicked brothers as he permitted the adulterous queens to escape the sword of Kamar al-Zaman. Dr. Steingass brings to my notice that I have failed to do justice to the story of Sharrkán (vol. ii., p. ), where I note that the interest is injured by the gratuitous incest. But this has a deeper meaning and a grander artistic effect. Sharrkán begins with most unbrotherly feelings towards his father’s children by a second wife. But Allah’s decree forces him to love his half-sister despite himself, and awe and repentance convert the savage, who joys at the news of his brother’s reported death, to a loyal and devoted subject of the same brother. But Judar with all his goodness proved himself an arrant softy and was no match for two atrocious villains. And there may be overmuch of forgiveness as of every other good thing.

310

  In such case the “‘iddah” would be four months and ten days.

311

  Not quite true. Weil’s German version, from a MS. in the Ducal Library of Gotha, gives the “Story of Judar of Cairo and Mahmud of Tunis” in a very different form. It has been pleasantly “translated (from the German) and edited” by Mr. W. F. Kirby, of the British Museum, under the title of “The New Arabian Nights” (London: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co.), and the author kindly sent me a copy. “New Arabian Nights” seems now to have become a fashionable title applied without any signification: such at least is the pleasant collection of Nineteenth Century Novelettes, published under that designation by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, 1884.

312

  Von Hammer holds this story to be a satire on Arab superstition and the compulsory propagation, the compelle intrare, of Al-Islam. Lane (iii. 235) omits it altogether for reasons of his own. I differ with great diffidence from the learned Baron whose Oriental reading was extensive; but the tale does not seem to justify his explanations. It appears to me simply one of the wilder romances, full of purposeful anachronisms (e.g. dated between Abraham and Moses, yet quoting the Koran) and written by someone familiar with the history of Oman. The style too is peculiar, in many places so abrupt that much manipulation is required to make it presentable: it suits, however, the rollicking, violent, brigand-like life which it depicts. There is only one incident about the end which justifies Von Hammer’s suspicion.

313

  The Persian hero of romance who converses with the Simurgh or Griffin.

314

  The word is as much used in Egypt as wunderbar in Germany. As an exclamation it is equivalent to “mighty fine!”

315

  In modern days used in a bad sense, as a freethinker, etc. So Dalilah the Wily is noted to be a philosopheress.

316

  The game is much mixed up after Arab fashion. The “Tufat” is the Siyáhgosh = Black-ears, of India (Felis caracal), the Persian lynx, which gives very good sport with Dachshunds. Lynxes still abound in the thickets near Cairo.

317

  The “Sons of Kahtán,” especially the Ya’arubah tribe, made much history in Oman. Ya’arub (the eponymus) is written Ya’arab and Ya’arib; but Ya’arub (from Ya’arubu, Aorist of ‘Aruba) is best, because according to all authorities he was the first to cultivate primitive Arabian speech and Arabic poetry. (Caussin de Perceval’s Hist. des Arabes i. 50, etc.)

318

  He who shooteth an arrow by night. See the death of Antar shot down in the dark by the archer Jazár, son of Jábir, who had been blinded by a red-hot sabre passed before his eyes. I may note that it is a mere fiction of Al-Asma’i, as the real ‘Antar (or ‘Antarah) lived to a good old age, and probably died the “straw-death.”

319

  See vol. ii., p. , for a reminiscence of masterful King Kulayb and his Himà or domain. Here the phrase would mean, “None could approach them when they were wroth; none were safe from their rage.”

320

  The sons of Nabhán (whom Mr. Badger calls Nebhán) supplied the old Maliks or Kings of Oman (History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman, etc., London, Hakluyt Soc. 1871).

321

  This is a sore insult in Arabia, where they have not dreamt of a “Jawáb-club,” like that of Calcutta in the old days, to which only men who had been half a dozen times “jawab’d” (= refused in Anglo-Indian jargon) could belong. “I am not a stallion to be struck on the nose,” say the Arabs.

322

  Again “inverted speech”: it is as if we said, “Now, you’re a damned fine fellow, so,” etc. “Allah curse thee! Thou hast guarded thy women alive and dead;” said the man of Sulaym in admiration after thrusting his spear into the eye of dead Rabí’ah.

323

  The Badawi use javelins or throw-spears of many kinds, especially the prettily worked Mizrák (Pilgrimage i. 349); spears for footmen (Shalfah, a bamboo or palm-stick with a head about a hand broad), and the knightly lance, a male bamboo some 12 feet long with iron heel and a long tapering point often of open work or damascened steel, under which are tufts of black ostrich feathers, one or two. I never saw a crescent-shaped head as the text suggests. It is a “Pundonor” not to sell these weapons: you say, “Give me that article and I will satisfy thee!” After which the Sons of the Sand will haggle over each copper as if you were cheapening a sheep (Ibid. iii. 73).

324

  The shame was that Gharib had seen the girl and had fallen in love with her beauty; instead of applying for her hand in recognised form. These punctilios of the Desert are peculiarly nice and tetchy; nor do strangers readily realise them.

325

  The Arabs derive these Noachidæ from Imlik, great-grandson of Shem, who after the confusion of tongues settled at Sana’a, then moved North to Meccah and built the fifth Ka’abah. The dynastic name was Arkam, M. C. de Perceval’s “Arcam,” which he would identify with Rekem (Numbers xxxi. 8). The last Arkam fell before an army sent by Moses to purge the Holy Land (Al-Hijaz) of idolatry. Commentators on the Koran (chapt. vii.) call the Pharaoh of Moses Al-Walíd and derive him from the Amalekites: we have lately ascertained that this Mene-Ptah was of the Shepherd-Kings and thus, according to the older Moslems, the Hyksos were of the seed of Imlik. (Pilgrimage ii. 116; and iii. 190.) In Syria they fought with Joshua son of Nun. The tribe or rather nationality was famous and powerful: we know little about it and I may safely predict that when the Amalekite country shall have been well explored, it will produce monuments second in importance only to the Hittites. “A nomadic tribe which occupied the Peninsula of Sinai” (Smith’s Dict. of the Bible) is peculiarly superficial, even for that most superficial of books.

326

  The Amalekites were giants and lived 500 years (Pilgrimage, loc. cit.).

327

  His men being ninety against five hundred.

328

  Arab. “Kaum” (pron. Gúm) here = a razzia, afterwards = a tribe. Relations between Badawi tribes are of three kinds; (1) Asháb, allies offensive and defensive, friends who intermarry; (2) Kímán (plur. of Kaum) when the blood-feud exists, and (3) Akhwán = brothers. The last is a complicated affair; “Akháwat” or brotherhood, denotes the tie between patron and client (a noble and an ignoble tribe) or between the stranger and the tribe which claims an immemorial and unalienable right to its own lands. Hence a small fee (Al-Rifkah) must be paid and the traveller and his beast become “dakhíl,” or entitled to brother-help. The guardian is known in the West as Rafík; Rabí’a in Eastern Arabia; Ghafír in “Sinai;” amongst the Somal, Abbán and the Gallas Mogásá. Further details are given in Pilgrimage iii. 85–87.

329

  Arab. “Mál,” here = Badawi money, flocks and herds, our “fee” from feoh, vieh, cattle; as pecunia from pecus, etc., etc.

330

  The litholatry of the old Arabs is undisputed: Manát the goddess-idol was a large rude stone and when the Meccans sent out colonies these carried with them stones of the Holy Land to be set up and worshipped like the Ka’abah. I have suggested (Pilgrimage iii. 159) that the famous Black Stone of Meccah, which appears to me a large aerolite, is a remnant of this worship and that the tomb of Eve near Jeddah was the old “Sakhrah tawílah” or Long Stone (ibid. iii. 388). Jeddah is now translated the grandmother, alluding to Eve, a myth of late growth: it is properly Juddah = a plain lacking water.

331

  The First Adites, I have said, did not all perish: a few believers retired with the prophet Hud (Heber?) to Hazramaut. The Second Adites, who had Márib of the Dam for capital and Lukman for king, were dispersed by the Flood of Al-Yaman. Their dynasty lasted a thousand years, the exodus taking place according to De Sacy in A.D. 150–170 or shortly after A.D. 100 (C. de Perceval), and was overthrown by Ya’arub bin Kahtán, the first Arabist; see Night dcxxv.

332

  This title has been noticed: it suggests the “Saint Abraham” of our mediæval travellers. Every great prophet has his agnomen: Adam the Pure (or Elect) of Allah; Noah the Nájiy (or saved) of Allah; Moses (Kalím) the Speaker with Allah; Jesus the Rúh (Spirit, breath) or Kalám (the word) of Allah. For Mohammed’s see Al-Busiri’s Mantle-poem vv. 31–58.

333

  Koran (chapt. iii. 17) “Verily the true religion in the sight of Allah is Islam” i.e. resigning or devoting myself to the Lord, with a suspicion of “Salvation” conveyed by the root Salima, he was safe.

334

  Arab. “Sá’ikah,” which is supposed to be a stone. The allusion is to Antar’s sword, “Dhámi,” made of a stone, black, brilliant and hard as a rock (an aerolite), which had struck a camel on the right side and had come out by the left. The blacksmith made it into a blade three feet long by two spans broad, a kind of falchion or chopper, cased it with gold and called it Dhámi (the “Trenchant”) from its sharpness. But he said to the owner:—

The sword is trenchant, O son of the Ghalib clan,Trenchant in sooth, but where is the sworder-man?

Whereupon the owner struck off the maker’s head, a most satisfactory answer to all but one.

335

  Arab. “Kutá’ah”: lit. a bit cut off, fragment, nail-paring, and here un diminutif. I have described this scene in Pilgrimage iii. 68. Latro often says, “Thy gear is wanted by the daughter of my paternal uncle” (wife), and thus parades his politeness by asking in a lady’s name.

336

  As will appear the two brothers were joined by a party of horsemen.

337

  “Four” says the Mac. Edit. forgetting Falhun with characteristic inconsequence.

338

  Muhammad (the deserving great praise) is the name used by men; Ahmad (more laudable) by angels, and Mahmúd (praised) by devils. For a similar play upon the name, “Allah, Allah, Muhammad ast” (God is God the praiseworthy), see Dabistan ii. 416.

339

  The Mac. Edit. here gives “Sás,” but elsewhere “Sásá,” which is the correct form.

340

  Sapor the Second (A.D. 310–330) was compelled to attack the powerful Arab hordes of Oman, most of whom, like the Tayy, Aus and Khazraj, the Banu Nabhán and the Hináwi left Al-Yaman A.D. 100–170, and settled in the north and north-east of Al-Najd. This great exodus and dispersion of the tribes was caused, as has been said, by the bursting of the Dam of Márib originally built by Abd al-Shams Sabá, father of Himyar. These Yamanian races were plunged into poverty and roamed northwards, planting themselves amongst the Arabs of Ma’add son of Adnán. Hence the kingdom of Ghassan in Syria whose phylarchs under the Romans (i.e. Greek Emperors of Constantinople) controlled Palestine Tertia, the Arabs of Syria and Palestine; and the kingdom of Hírah, whose Lakhmite Princes, dependent upon Persia, managed the Arabs of the Euphrates, Oman and Al-Bahrayn. The Ma’addites still continued to occupy the central plateau of Arabia, a feature analogous with India “above the Ghauts.”

341

  I have described (Pilgrimage i. 370) the grisly spot which a Badawi will dignify by the name of Wady al-Ward = Vale of Roses.

342

  Koran xiii. 3, “Of every fruit two different kinds,” i.e. large and small, black and white, sweet and sour.

343

  A graft upon an almond-tree, which makes its kernel sweet and gives it an especial delicacy of flavour. See Russell’s (excellent) Natural History of Aleppo, p. 21.

344

  So called from the flavour of the kernel: it is well-known at Damascus where a favourite fruit is the dried apricot with an almond by way of kernel. There are many preparations of apricots, especially the “Mare’s skin” (Jild al-faras or Kamar al-din) a paste folded into sheets and exactly resembling the article from which it takes a name. When wanted it is dissolved in water and eaten as a relish with bread or biscuit (Pilgrimage i. 289).

345

  “Anta Kamá takúl” = the vulgarest Cairene.

346

  This may be Ctesiphon, the ancient capital of the Chosroës, on the Tigris below Baghdad; and spoken of elsewhere in The Nights; especially as, in Night dclxvii., it is called Isbanir Al-Madáin; Madáin Kisrá (the cities of Chosroes) being the Arabic name of the old dual city.

347

  Koran vi. 103. The translation is Sale’s which I have generally preferred, despite many imperfections: Lane renders this sentence, “The eyes see not Him, but He seeth the eyes;” and Mr. Rodwell, “No vision taketh in Him (?), but He taketh in all vision;” and (better) “No eyesight reacheth to Him.”

348

  Sale (sect. 1.) tells us all that was then known of these three which with Yá’úk and Nasr and the three “daughters of God,” Goddesses or Energies (the Hindu Saktis) Allát, Al-Uzzá and Manát mentioned in the Koran were the chiefs of the pre-Islamitic Pantheon. I cannot but suspect that all will be connected with old Babylonian worship. Al-Baydáwi (on Kor. lxxi. 22) says of Wadd, Suwá’a, Yaghus, Ya’úk and Nasr that they were names of pious men between Adam and Noah, afterwards deified: Yaghús was the giant idol of the Mazhaj tribe at Akamah of Al-Yaman and afterwards at Najrán Al-Uzzá was widely worshipped: her idol (of the tree Semurat) belonging to Ghatafán was destroyed after the Prophet’s order by Khálid bin Walíd. Allát or Al-Lát is written by Pocock (spec. 110) “Ilahat” i.e. deities in general. But Herodotus evidently refers to one god when he makes the Arabs worship Dionysus as Ὀροτὰλ and Urania as Ἀλιλάτ and the “tashdid” in Allát would, to a Greek ear, introduce another syllable (Alilat). This was the goddess of the Kuraysh and Thakíf whose temple at Táif was circuited like the Ka’abah before Mohammed destroyed it.

349

  Shays (Shayth) is Ab Seth (Father Seth) of the Hebrews, a name containing the initial and terminal letters of the Egypto-Phœnico-Hebrew Alphabet and the “Abjad” of the Arabs. Those curious about its connection with the name of Allah (El), the Zodiacal signs and with the constellations, visions but not wholly uninteresting, will consult “Unexplored Syria” (vol. i. 33).

350

  The exclamation of an honest Fellah.

351

  This is Antar with the Chosroë who “kissed the Absian hero between the eyes and bade him adieu, giving him as a last token a rich robe.” The coarser hand of the story-teller exaggerates everything till he makes it ridiculous.

352

  The context suggests that this is a royal form of “throwing the handkerchief;” but it does not occur elsewhere. In fact, the European idea seems to have arisen from the oriental practice of sending presents in napkins or kerchiefs.

353

  i.e. if the disappointed suitor attack me.

354

  i.e. if ever I be tempted to deny it.

355

  Arab. “Musáfahah,” the Arab fashion of shaking hands. The right palms are applied flat to each other; then the fingers are squeezed and the hand is raised to the forehead (Pilgrimage ii. 332).

356

  A city and province of Khuzistán, the old Susiana. Dasht may be either the town in Khorasan or the “forests” (dasht) belonging to Ahwáz (Ahuaz in D’Herbelot).

357

  This is the contest between “Antar and the Satrap Khosrewan at the Court of Monzar,” but without its tragical finish.

358

  Elliptical “he rode out in great state, that is to say if greatness can truly be attributed to man,” for, etc.

359

  According to D’Herbelot (s.v. Rostac) it is a name given to the villages of Khorasan as “Souad” (Sawád) to those of Irak and Makhlaf to those of Al-Yaman: there is, however, a well-known Al-Rustak (which like Al-Bahrayn always takes the article) in the Province of Oman West of Maskat; and as it rhymes with “Irak” it does well enough. Mr. Badger calls this ancient capital of the Ya’arubah Imáms “er-Rasták” (Imams of Oman).

360

  i.e. a furious knight.

361

  In the Mac. Edit. “Hassán,” which may rhyme with Nabhán, but it is a mere blunder.

362

  In Classical Arabic Irak (like Yaman, Bahrayn and Rusták) always takes the article.

363

  The story-teller goes back from Kufah founded in Omar’s day to the times of Abraham.

364

  This manœuvre has often been practised; especially by the first Crusaders under Bohemond (Gibbon) and in late years by the Arab slavers in Eastern Intertropical Africa. After their skirmishes with the natives they quartered and “brittled” the dead like game, roasted and boiled the choice pieces and pretended to eat the flesh. The enemy, who was not afraid of death, was struck with terror by the idea of being devoured; and this seems instinctive to the undeveloped mind.