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)

126

  The Bresl. Edit. (vi. 371) reads “Samm-hu” = his poison, prob. a clerical error for “Sahmhu” = his shaft. It was a duel with the “Shiháb” or falling stars, the meteors which are popularly supposed, I have said, to be the arrows shot by the angels against devils and evil spirits when they approach too near Heaven in order to overhear divine secrets.

127

  A fancy sea from the Lat. “Carcer” (?).

128

  Andalusian = Spanish, the Vandal-land, a term accepted by the Moslem invader.

129

  This fine description will remind the traveller of the old Haurani towns deserted since the sixth century, which a silly writer miscalled the “Giant Cities of Bashan.” I have never seen anything weirder than a moonlight night in one of these strong places whose masonry is perfect as when first built, the snowy light pouring on the jet-black basalt and the breeze sighing and the jackal wailing in the desert around.

130

  “Zanj,” I have said, is the Arab. form of the Persian “Zang-bar” (= Black-land), our Zanzibar. Those who would know more of the etymology will consult my “Zanzibar,” etc., chapt. i.

131

  Arab. “Tanjah” = Strabo Τίγγις (derivation uncertain), Tingitania, Tangiers. But why the terminal s?

132

  Or Amidah, by the Turks called “Kara (black) Amid” from the colour of the stones; and the Arabs “Diyar-bakr” (Diarbekir), a name which they also give to the whole province—Mesopotamia.

133

  Mayyáfárikín, an episcopal city in Diyar-bakr: the natives are called Fárikí; hence the abbreviation in the text.

134

  Arab. “Ayát al-Naját,” certain Koranic verses which act as talismans, such as, “And wherefore should we not put our trust in Allah?” (xiv. 15); “Say thou, ‘Naught shall befal us save what Allah hath decreed for us.’” (ix. 51), and sundry others.

135

  These were the “Brides of the Treasure,” alluded to in the story of Hasan of Bassorah and elsewhere.

136

  Arab. “Ishárah,” which may also mean beckoning. Easterns reverse our process: we wave band or finger towards ourselves; they towards the object; and our fashion represents to them, Go away!

137

  i.e. musing a long time and a longsome.

138

  Arab. “Dihlíz” from the Persian. This is the long dark passage which leads to the inner or main gate of an Eastern city, and which is built up before a siege. It is usually furnished with Mastabah-benches of wood and masonry, and forms a favourite lounge in hot weather. Hence Lot and Moses sat and stood in the gate, and here man speaks with his enemies.

139

  The names of colours are as loosely used by the Arabs as by the Classics of Europe; for instance, a light grey is called a “blue or a green horse.” Much nonsense has been written upon the colours in Homer by men who imagine that the semi-civilised determine tints as we do. They see them but they do not name them, having no occasion for the words. As I have noticed, however, the Arabs have a complete terminology for the varieties of horse-hues. In our day we have witnessed the birth of colours, named by the dozen, because required by women’s dress.

140

  For David’s miracles of metallurgy see vol. i. 286.

141

  Arab. “Khwárazm,” the land of the Chorasmioi, who are mentioned by Herodotus (iii. 93) and a host of classical geographers. They place it in Sogdiana (hod. Sughd) and it corresponds with the Khiva country.

142

  Arab. “Burka’,” usually applied to a woman’s face-veil and hence to the covering of the Ka’abah, which is the “Bride of Meccah.”

143

  Alluding to the trick played upon Bilkís by Solomon who had heard that her legs were hairy like those of an ass: he laid down a pavement of glass over flowing water in which fish were swimming and thus she raised her skirts as she approached him and he saw that the report was true. Hence, as I have said, the depilatory (Koran xxvii.).

144

  I understand the curiously carved windows cut in arabesque-work of marble (India) or basalt (the Haurán) and provided with small panes of glass set in emeralds where tinfoil would be used by the vulgar.

145

  Arab. “Bulád” from the Pers. “Pulád.” Hence the name of the famous Druze family “Jumblat,” a corruption of “Ján-pulád” = Life o’ Steel.

146

  Pharaoh, so called in Koran (xxxviii. 11) because he tortured men by fastening them to four stakes driven into the ground. Sale translates “the contriver of the stakes” and adds, “Some understand the word figuratively, of the firm establishment of Pharaoh’s kingdom, because the Arabs fix their tents with stakes; but they may possibly intend that prince’s obstinacy and hardness of heart.” I may note that in “Tasawwuf,” or Moslem Gnosticism, Pharaoh represents, like Prometheus and Job, the typical creature who upholds his own dignity and rights in presence and despight of the Creator. Sáhib the Súfí declares that the secret of man’s soul (i.e. its emanation) was first revealed when Pharaoh declared himself god; and Al-Ghazálí sees in his claim the most noble aspiration to the divine, innate in the human spirit (Dabistan, vol. iii.).

147

  In the Calc. Edit. “Tarmuz, son of the daughter,” etc. According to the Arabs, Tadmur (Palmyra) was built by Queen Tadmurah, daughter of Hassán bin Uzaynah.

148

  It is only by some such drought that I can account for the survival of those marvellous Haurani cities in the great valley S. E. of Damascus.

149

  So Moses described his own death and burial.

150

  A man’s “aurat” (shame) extends from the navel (included) to his knees; a woman’s from the top of the head to the tips of her toes. I have before noticed the Hindostaní application of the word.

151

  Arab. “Jum’ah” (= the assembly) so called because the General Resurrection will take place on that day and it witnessed the creation of Adam. Both these reasons are evidently after-thoughts; as the Jews received a divine order to keep Saturday, and the Christians, at their own sweet will, transferred the weekly rest-day to Sunday, wherefore the Moslem preferred Friday. Sabbatarianism, however, is unknown to Al-Islam and business is interrupted, by Koranic order (lxii. 9–10), only during congregational prayers in the Mosque. The most a Mohammedan does is not to work or travel till after public service. But the Moslem hardly wants a “day of rest;” whereas a Christian, especially in the desperately dull routine of daily life and toil, without a gleam of light to break the darkness of his civilised and most unhappy existence, distinctly requires it.

152

  Mankind, which sees itself everywhere and in everything, must create its own analogues in all the elements, air (Sylphs), fire (Jinns), water (Mermen and Mermaids) and earth (Kobolds). These merwomen were of course seals or manatees, as the wild women of Hanno were gorillas.

153

  Here begins the Sindibad-namah, the origin of Dolopathos (thirteenth century by the Trouvère Harbers); of the “Seven Sages” (John Holland in 1575); the “Seven Wise Masters” and a host of minor romances. The Persian Sindibád-Námah assumed its present shape in A.D. 1375: Professor Falconer printed an abstract of it in the Orient. Journ. (xxxv. and xxxvi. 1841), and Mr. W. A. Clouston reissued the “Book of Sindibad,” with useful notes in 1884. An abstract of the Persian work is found in all edits. of The Nights; but they differ greatly, especially that in the Bresl. Edit. xii. pp. 237–377, from which I borrow the introduction. According to Hamzah Isfahání (ch. xli.) the Reguli who succeeded to Alexander the Great and preceded Sapor caused some seventy books to be composed, amongst which were the Liber Maruc, Liber Barsínas, Liber Sindibad, Liber Shimás, etc., etc., etc.

154

  Eusebius De Præp. Evang. iii. 4, quotes Prophesy concerning the Egyptian belief in the Lords of the Ascendant whose names are given ἐν τοῖς ἀλμενιχιακοῖς: in these “Almenichiaka” we have the first almanac, as the first newspaper in the Roman “Acta Diurna.”

155

  “Al-Mas’údi,” the “Herodotus of the Arabs,” thus notices Sindibad the Sage (in his Murúj etc., written about A.D. 934). “During the reign of Kurúsh (Cyrus) lived Al-Sindibad who wrote the Seven Wazirs, etc.” Al-Ya’akúbi had also named him circ. A.D. 880. For notes on the name Sindibad, see Sindbad the Seaman, Night dxxxvi. I need not enter into the history of the “Seven Sages,” a book evidently older than The Nights in present form; but refer the reader to Mr. Clouston, of whom more in a future page.

156

  Evidently borrowed from the Christians, although the latter borrowed from writers of the most remote antiquity. Yet the saying is the basis of all morality and in few words contains the highest human wisdom.

157

  It is curious to compare the dry and business-like tone of the Arab style with the rhetorical luxuriance of the Persian: p. 10 of Mr. Clouston’s “Book of Sindibad.”

158

  In the text “Isfídáj,” the Pers. Isped (or Saféd) áb, lit. = white water, ceruse used for women’s faces suggesting our “Age of Bismuth,” Blanc Rosati, Crême de l’Impératrice, Perline, Opaline, Milk of Beauty, etc., etc., etc.

159

  Commentators compare this incident with the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife and with the old Egyptian romance and fairy tale of the brothers Anapon and Saton dating from the fourteenth century, the days of Pharaoh Ramses Miamun (who built Pi-tum and Ramses) at whose court Moses or Osarsiph is supposed to have been reared (Cambridge Essays 1858). The incident would often occur, e.g. Phædra-cum-Hippolytus; Fausta-cum-Crispus and Lucinian; Asoka’s wife and Kunála, etc., etc. Such things happen in every-day life, and the situation has recommended itself to the folklore of all peoples.

160

  Another version of this tale is given in the Bresl. Edit. (vol. viii. pp. 273–8: Night 675–6). It is the “Story of the King and the Virtuous Wife” in the Book of Sindibad. In the versions Arabic and Greek (Syntipas) the King forgets his ring; in the Hebrew Mishlé Sandabar his staff, and his sandals in the old Spanish Libro de los Engannos et los Asayamientos de las Mugeres.

161

  One might fancy that this is Biblical, Bathsheba and Uriah. But such “villanies” must often have occurred in the East, at different times and places, without requiring direct derivation. The learned Prof. H. H. Wilson was mistaken in supposing that these fictions “originate in the feeling which has always pervaded the East unfavourable to the dignity of women.” They belong to a certain stage of civilisation when the sexes are at war with each other; and they characterise chivalrous Europe as well as misogynous Asia; witness Jankins, clerk of Oxenforde; while Æsop’s fable of the Lion and the Man also explains their frequency.

162

  The European form of the tale is “Toujours perdrix,” a sentence often quoted but seldom understood. It is the reproach of M. l’Abbé when the Count (proprietor of the pretty Countess) made him eat partridge every day for a month; on which the Abbé says, “Always partridge is too much of a good thing!” Upon this text the Count speaks. A correspondent mentions that it was told by Horace Walpole concerning the Confessor of a French King who reproved him for conjugal infidelities. The degraded French (for “toujours de la perdrix” or “des perdrix”) suggests a foreign origin. Another friend refers me to No. x. of the “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles” (compiled in A.D. 1432 for the amusement of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI.) whose chief personage “un grand seigneur du Royaulme d’Angleterre,” is lectured upon fidelity by the lord’s mignon, a “jeune et gracieux gentil homme de son hostel.” Here the partridge became pastés d’anguille. Possibly Scott refers to it in Redgauntlet (chapt. iv.); “One must be very fond of partridge to accept it when thrown in one’s face.” Did not Voltaire complain at Potsdam of “toujours perdrix” and make it one of his grievances? A similar story is that of the chaplain who, weary of the same diet, uttered “grace” as follows:—

Rabbits hot, rabbits cold,Rabbits tender, and rabbits tough,Rabbits young, and rabbits old—I thank the Lord I’ve had enough.

And I as cordially thank my kind correspondents.

163

  The great legal authority of the realm.

164

  In all editions the Wazir here tells the Tale of the Merchant’s Wife and the Parrot which, following Lane, I have transferred to vol. i. p. . But not to break the tradition I here introduce the Persian version of the story from the “Book of Sindibad.” In addition to the details given in the note to vol. i., ; I may quote the two talking-birds left to watch over his young wife by Rajah Rasálú (son of Shaliváhana the great Indian monarch circ. A.D. 81), who is to the Punjab what Rustam is to Persia and Antar to Arabia. In the “Seven Wise Masters” the parrot becomes a magpie and Mr. Clouston, in some clever papers on “Popular Tales and Fictions” contributed to the Glasgow Evening Times (1884), compares it with the history, in the Gesta Romanorum, of the Adulteress, the Abigail, and the Three Cocks, two of which crowed during the congress of the lady and her lover. All these evidently belong to the Sindibad cycle.

165

  In the days of the Caliph Al-Mustakfí bi ‘llah (A.H. 333 = 944) the youth of Baghdad studied swimming and it is said that they could swim holding chafing-dishes upon which were cooking-pots and keep afloat till the meat was dressed. The story is that of “The Washerman and his Son who were drowned in the Nile,” of the Book of Sindibad.

166

  Her going to the bath suggested that she was fresh from coition.

167

  Taken from the life of the Egyptian Mameluke Sultan (No. viii. regn. A.H. 825 = A.D. 1421) who would not suffer his subjects to prostrate themselves or kiss the ground before him. See D’Herbelot for details.

168

  This nauseous Joe Miller has often been told in the hospitals of London and Paris. It is as old as the Hitopadesa.

169

  Koran iv. 81, “All is from Allah;” but the evil which befals mankind, though ordered by Allah, is yet the consequence of their own wickedness (I add, which wickedness was created by Allah).

170

  The Bresl. Edit. (xii. 266) says “bathing.”

171

  This tale is much like that told in the Fifth Night (vol. i. 54). It is the story of the Prince and the Lamia in the Book of Sindibad wherein it is given with Persian rhetoric and diffuseness.

172

  Arab “Wa’ar” = rocky, hilly, tree-less ground unfit for riding. I have noted that the three Heb. words “Year” (e.g. Kiryath-Yearim = City of forest), “Choresh” (now Hirsh, a scrub), and “Pardés” (παράδεισος a chase, a hunting-park opposed to κῆπος, an orchard) are preserved in Arabic and are intelligible in Palestine (Unexplored Syria, i. 207).

173

  The privy and the bath are favourite haunts of the Jinns.

174

  Arab history is full of petty wars caused by trifles. In Egypt the clans Sa’ad and Harám and in Syria the Kays and Yaman (which remain to the present day) were as pugnacious as Highland Caterans. The tale bears some likeness to the accumulative nursery rhymes in “The House that Jack Built,” and “The Old Woman and the Crooked Sixpence;” which find their indirect original in an allegorical Talmudic hymn.

175

  This is “The Story of the Old Man who sent his Young Wife to the Market to buy Rice,” told with Persian reflections in the “Book of Sindibad.”

176

  Koran xii. 28. The words were spoken by Potiphar to Joseph.

177

  Koran iv. 78. A mis-quotation, the words are, “Fight therefore against the friends of Satan, for the craft of Satan shall be weak.”

178

  i.e. Koranic versets.

179

  In the Book of Sindibad this is the “Story of the Prince who went out to hunt and the stratagem which the Wazir practised on him.”

180

  I have noted that it is a dire affront to an Arab if his first cousin marry any save himself without his formal leave.

181

  i.e. the flowery, the splendid; an epithet of Fatimah, the daughter of the Apostle “the bright blooming.” Fátimah is an old Arab name of good omen, “the weaner:” in Egypt it becomes Fattúmah (an incrementative = “great weaner”); and so Amínah, Khadíjah and Nafísah on the banks of the Nile are barbarised to Ammúnah, Khaddúgah and Naffúsah.

182

  i.e. his coming misfortune, the phrase being euphemistic.

183

  Arab. Ráy: in theology it means “private judgment” and Ráyí (act. partic.) is a Rationalist. The Hanaff School is called “Asháb al-Ráy” because it allows more liberty of thought than the other three orthodox.

184

  The angels in Al-Islam ride piebalds.

185

  In the Bresl. Edit. “Zájir” (xii. 286).

186

  This is the “King’s Son and the Merchant’s Wife” of the Hitopadesa (chapt. i.) transferred to all the Prakrit versions of India. It is the Story of the Bath-keeper who conducted his Wife to the Son of the King of Kanuj in the Book of Sindibad.

187

  The pious Caliph Al-Muktadi bi Amri ‘llah (A.H. 467 = A.D. 1075) was obliged to forbid men entering the baths of Baghdad without drawers.

188

  This peculiarity is not uncommon amongst the so-called Aryan and Semitic races, while to the African it is all but unknown. Women highly prize a conformation which (as the prostitute described it) is always “either in his belly or in mine.”

189

  Easterns, I have said, are perfectly aware of the fact that women corrupt women much more than men do. The tale is the “Story of the Libertine Husband” in the Book of Sindibad; blended with the “Story of the Go-between and the Bitch” in the Book of Sindibad. It is related in the “Disciplina Clericalis” of Alphonsus (A.D. 1106); the fabliau of La vieille qui séduisit la jeune fille; the Gesta Romanorum (thirteenth century) and the “Cunning Siddhikari” in the Kathá-Sarit-Ságara.

190

  The Kashmír people, men and women, have a very bad name in Eastern tales, the former for treachery and the latter for unchastity. A Persian distich says:

If folk be scarce as food in dearth ne’er let three lots come near ye:First Sindi, second Jat, and third a rascally Kashmeeree.

The women have fair skins and handsome features but, like all living in that zone, Persians, Sindis, Afghans, etc., their bosoms fall after the first child and become like udders. This is not the case with Hindú women, Rajpúts, Maráthís, etc.

191

  By these words she appealed to his honour.

192

  These vehicles suggest derivation from European witchery. In the Bresl. Edit. (xii. 304) one of the women rides a “Miknasah” or broom.

193

  i.e. a recluse who avoids society.

194

  “Consecrated ground” is happily unknown to Moslems.

195

  This incident occurs in the “Third Kalandar’s Tale.” See vol. i, ; and note to p. 145.

196

  The Mac. Edit. has “Nahr” = river.

197

  i.e. marked with the Wasm or tribal sign to show their blood. The subject of Wasm is extensive and highly interesting, for many of these brands date doubtless from prehistoric ages. For instance, some of the great Anazah nation (not tribe) uses a circlet, the initial of their name (an Ayn-letter), which thus shows the eye from which it was formed. I have given some specimens of Wasm in The Land of Midian (i. 320) where, as amongst the “Sinaitic” Badawin, various kinds of crosses are preserved long after the death and burial of Christianity.

198

  i.e. from the heights. The “Sayl” is a dangerous feature in Arabia as in Southern India, where many officers have lost their lives by trying to swim it.

199

  Arab. “‘Ujb.” I use arrogance in the Spanish sense of “arrogante,” gay and gallant.

200

  In this rechauffé Paul Pry escapes without losing an eye.

201

  Eastern tale-tellers always harp upon this theme, the cunning precautions taken by mankind and their utter confusion by “Fate and Fortune.” In such matters the West remarks, “Ce que femme veut, Dieu veut.”

202

  As favourite an occupation in Oriental lands as in Southern Europe and the Brazil, where the Quinta or country villa must be built by the road-side to please the mistress.

203

  The ink-case would contain the pens; hence called in India Kalamdán = reed (pen) box. I have advised travellers to prefer the strong Egyptian article of brass to the Persian, which is of wood or papier-mâché, prettily varnished, but not to wear it in the waist-belt, as this is a sign of being a scribe (Pilgrimage i. 353).

204

  The vulgar Eastern idea is that women are quite knowing enough without learning to read and write: and at all events they should not be taught anything beyond reading the Koran, or some clearly-written book. The contrast with modern Europe is great; greater still in Anglo-America of our day, and greatest with the new sects which propose “biunes” and “bisexuals” and “women robed with the sun.”

205

  In the Bresl. Edit. the Prince ties a key to a second arrow and shoots it into the pavilion.

206

  The “box-trick” has often been played with success, by Lord Byron amongst a host of others. The readiness with which the Wazir enters into the scheme is characteristic of oriental servility: an honest Moslem should at least put in a remonstrance.

207

  This story appears familiar, but I have not found it easy to trace. In “The Book of Sindibad” (p. 83) it is apparently represented by a lacuna. In the Squire’s Tale of Chaucer Canace’s ring enables the wearer to understand bird-language, not merely to pretend as does the slave-boy in the text.

208

  The crow is an ill-omened bird in Al-Islam and in Eastern Christendom. “The crow of cursed life and foul odour,” says the Book of Kalilah and Dimna (p. 44). The Hindus are its only protectors, and in this matter they follow suit with the Guebres. I may note that the word belongs to the days before “Aryan” and “Semitic” speech had parted; we find it in Heb. Oreb; Arab. Ghuráb; Lat. Corvus; Engl. Crow, etc.

209

  Again in the Hibernian sense of being “kilt.”

210

  Quoted in Night dlxxxii.; said by Kitfír or Itfír (Potiphar) when his wife (Ráil or Zulaykha) charged Joseph with attempting her chastity and he saw that the youth’s garment was whole in front and rent in rear (Koran, chapt. xii.).

211

  This witty tale, ending somewhat grossly here, has over-wandered the world. First we find it in the Kathá (S. S.) where Upakoshá, the merry wife of Vararuchi, disrobes her suitors, a family priest, a commander of the guard and the prince’s tutor, under plea of the bath and stows them away in baskets which suggest Falstaff’s “buck-basket.” In Miss Stokes’ “Indian Fairy Tales” the fair wife of an absent merchant plays a similar notable prank upon the Kotwal, the Wazir, the Kazi and the King; and akin to this is the exploit of Temal Rámákistnan, the Madrasi Tyl Eulenspiegel and Scogin who by means of a lady saves his life from the Rajah and the High Priest. Mr. G. H. Damant (pp. 357–360 of the “Indian Antiquary” of 1873) relates the “Tale of the Touchstone,” a legend of Dinahpur, wherein a woman “sells” her four admirers. In the Persian Tales ascribed to the Dervish “Mokles” (Mukhlis) of Isfahan, the lady Aruyá tricks and exposes a Kazi, a doctor and a governor. Boccaccio (viii. 1) has the story of a lady who shut up her gallant in a chest with her husband’s sanction; and a similar tale (ix. 1) of Rinuccio and Alexander with the corpse of Scannadeo (Throkh-god). Hence a Lydgate (circ. A.D. 1430) derived the plot of his metrical tale of the “Lady Prioress and her Three Sisters”; which was modified in the Netherlandish version by the introduction of the Long Wapper, a Flemish Robin Goodfellow. Followed in English the metrical tale of “The Wright’s Chaste Wife,” by Adam of Cobham (edited by Mr. Furnivall from a MS. of circ. A.D. 1460) where the victims are a lord, a steward and a proctor. See also “The Master-Maid” in Dr. (now Sir George) Dasent’s “Popular Tales from the Norse.” Mr. Clouston, who gives these details more fully, mentions a similar Scottish story concerning a lascivious monk and the chaste wife of a miller.