A plain and literal translation of the Arabian nights entertainments, now entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. Volume 7 (of 17)

412

Arab. “Yají (it comes) miat khwánjah”—quite Fellah talk.

413

As Trébutien shows (ii. 155) these apes were a remnant of some ancient tribe possibly those of Ád 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.

414

I can see no reason why Lane purposely changes this to “the extremity of their country.”

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 (Trébutien ii. 154), “Eastern geographers place the Bir al-Mu’utallal (Ruined Well) and the Kasr al-Mashíd (High-builded Castle) in the province of Hadramaut, and we wait for a new Niebuhr to inform us what are the monuments or the ruins so called.” His text translates puits arides et palais de plâtre (not likely!). Lane remarks that Mashíd mostly means “plastered,” but here = Mushayyad, lofty, explained in the Jalálayn Commentary as = rafí’a, high-raised. The two places are also mentioned by Al-Mas’údi; and they occur in Al-Kazwíni (see Night dccclviii.): both of these authors making the Koran directly allude to them.

416

Arab. (from Pers.) Aywán which here corresponds with the Egyptian “líwán” a tall saloon with estrades.

417

This naïve style of “renowning it” is customary in the East, contrasting with the servile address of the subject—“thy slave” etc.

418

Daulat (not Dawlah) the Anglo-Indian Dowlat; prop. meaning the shifts of affairs, hence, fortune, empire, kingdom. Khátún = “lady,” I have noted, follows the name after Turkish fashion.

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 Sá’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.

420

i.e. Tuesday. See vol. iii, 249.

421

Because being a Jinniyah the foster-sister could have come to her and saved her from old maidenhood.

422

Arab. “Hájah” 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.

423

Probably used in its sense of a “black crow.” The Bresl. Edit. (iv. 261). has “Khátim” (seal-ring) which is but one of its almost innumerable misprints.

424

Here it is called “Tábik” and afterwards “Tábút.”

425

i.e. raising from the lower hinge-pins. See vol. ii 214.

426

Arab. Abrísam or Ibrísam (from Persian Abrísham or Ibrísham) = raw silk or floss, i.e. untwisted silk.

427

This knightly practice, evidently borrowed from the East, appears in many romances of chivalry e.g. When Sir Tristran is found by King Mark asleep beside Ysonde (Isentt) with drawn sword between them, the former cried:—

428

Arab. “Ya Sáki’ al-Wajh,” which Lane translates by “lying” or “liar.”

429

Kamín (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 (’imárah) = being populous. Trébutien (ii. 161) takes from Bresl. Edit. “Amar” and translates the port-name, “le lieu de refuge des deux mers.”

430

i.e. “High of (among) the Kings.” Lane proposes to read ’Ali al-Mulk = high in dominion.

431

Pronounce Mu’inuddeen = Aider of the Faith. The Bresl. Edit. (iv. 266) also reads “Mu’in al-Riyásah” = Mu’in of the Captaincies.

432

Arab. Shúm = a tough wood used for the staves with which donkeys are driven. Sir Gardner Wilkinson informed Lane that it is the ash.

433

In Persian we find the fuller metaphorical form, “kissing the ground of obedience.”

434

For the Shaykh of the Sea(-board) in Sindbad the Seaman see vol. vi. 50.

435

That this riding is a facetious exaggeration of the African practice I find was guessed by Mr. Keightley.

436

Arab. “Kummasra”: the root seems to be “Kamsara” = being slender or compact.

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 Pombe (Osirian beer) drained by the occupants; and, comminxit lectum potus might be said of the whole male population.

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.

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.

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 Kirmán 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 mediæval Italian practice called bacinare, or scorching with red-hot basins, came from Persia.

441

Arab. “Laban” as opposed to “Halíb”: 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.

442

Arab. Tákah not “an aperture” as Lane has it, but an arched hollow in the wall.

443

In Trébutien (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 all this episode is a manifest imitation of the adventures of Ulysses in Polyphemus’ 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.

444

Arab. Shakhtúr.

445

In the Bresl. Edit. the ship is not wrecked but lands Sa’id in safety.

446

So in the Shah-nameh the Símurgh-bird gives one of her feathers to her protégé Zál which he will throw into the fire when she is wanted.

447

Bresl. Edit. Al-Zardakhánát Arab. plur. of Zarad-Khánah, a bastard word = armoury, from Arab. Zarad (hauberk) and Pers. Khánah = house etc.

448

Some retrenchment was here found necessary to avoid “damnable iteration.”

449

i.e. Badi’a al-Jamal.

450

Mohammed.

451

Koran xxxv. “The Creator” (Fátir) or the Angels, so called from the first verse.

452

In the Bresl. Edit. (p. 263) Sayf al-Muluk drops asleep under a tree to the lulling sound of a Sákiyah or water-wheel, and is seen by Badi’a al-Jamal, who falls in love with him and drops tears upon his cheeks, etc. The scene, containing much recitation is long and well told.

453

Arab. “Lukmah” = a bouchée of bread, meat, fruit or pastry, and especially applied to the rice balled with the hand and delicately inserted into a friend’s mouth.

454

Arab. “Saláhiyah,” also written Saráhiyah: it means an ewer-shaped glass-bottle.

455

Arab “Sarmújah,” of which Von Hammer remarks that the dictionaries ignore it; Dozy gives the forms Sarmúj, Sarmúz and Sarmúzah and explains them by “espèce de guêtre, de sandale ou de mule, qu’on chausse par-dessus la botte.”

456

In token of profound submission.

457

Arab. “Misr” in Ibn Khaldún is a land whose people are settled and civilised hence “Namsur” = we settle; and “Amsár” = 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 “Tamsír” = 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 spoils of the East soon changed them to splendid cities where luxury and learning flourished side by side. Sprenger (Al-Mas’údi pp. 19, 177) compares them ecclesiastically with the primitive Christian Churches such as Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch. But the Moslems were animated with an ardent love of liberty and Kufah under Al-Hajjaj the masterful, lost 100,000 of her turbulent sons without the thirst for independence being quenched. This can hardly be said of the Early Christians who, with the exception of a few staunch-hearted martyrs, appear in history as pauvres diables and poules mouillées, ever oppressed by their own most ignorant and harmful fancy that the world was about to end.

458

i.e. Waiting to be sold and wasting away in single cursedness.

459

Arab. “Yá dádati”: dádat is an old servant-woman or slave, often applied to a nurse, like its congener the Pers. Dádá, the latter often pronounced Daddeh, as Daddeh Bazm-árá in the Kuisum-nameh (Atkinson’s “Customs of the Women of Persia,” London, 8vo. 1832).

460

Marjánah has been already explained. D’Herbelot derives from it the Romance name Morgante la Déconvenue, here confounding Morgana with Urganda; and Keltic scholars make Morgain = Mor Gwynn—the white maid (p. 10, Keightley’s Fairy Mythology, London, Whittaker, 1833).