The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume V Part 33

[FN#15] Arab. "s.h.i.+rk"=wors.h.i.+pping more than one G.o.d. A theological term here most appropriately used.

[FN#16] The Bul. Edit. as usual abridges (vol. i. 534). The Prince lands on the palace-roof where he leaves his horse, and finding no one in the building goes back to the terrace. Suddenly he sees a beautiful girl approaching him with a party of her women, suggesting to him these couplets,

"She came without tryst in the darkest hour, *

Like full moon lighting horizon's night: Slim-formed, there is not in the world her like *

For grace of form or for gifts of sprite: 'Praise him who made her from s.e.m.e.n-drop,' *

I cried, when her beauty first struck my sight: I guard her from eyes, seeking refuge with *

The Lord of mankind and of morning-light."

The two then made acquaintance and "follows what follows."

[FN#17] Arab. "Akasirah," explained (vol. i., 75) as the plur.

of Kisra.

[FN#18] The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own. This was systematised by the servile rulers known in history as the Mameluke Beys and to the Egyptians as the Ghuzz. Each had his household of servile pages and squires, who looked forward to filling the master's place as knight or baron.

[FN#19] The well-known capital of Al-Yaman, a true Arabia Felix, a Paradise inhabited by demons in the shape of Turkish soldiery and Arab caterans. According to Moslem writers Sana'a was founded by Shem son of Noah who, wandering southward with his posterity after his father's death, and finding the site delightful, dug a well and founded the citadel, Ghamdan, which afterwards contained a Mason Carree rivalling (or attempting to rival) the Meccan Ka'abah. The builder was Surahbil who, says M.C. de Perceval coloured its four faces red, white, golden and green; the central quadrangle had seven stories (the planets) each forty cubits high, and the lowest was a marble hall ceiling'd with a single slab. At the four corners stood hollow lions through whose mouths the winds roared. This palatial citadel-temple was destroyed by order of Caliph Omar. The city's ancient name was Azal or Uzal whom some identify with one of the thirteen sons of Joktan (Genesis xi. 27): it took its present name from the Ethiopian conquerors (they say) who, seeing it for the first time, cried "Haza Sana'ah!" meaning in their tongue, this is commodious, etc.

I may note that the word is Kisawahili (Zanzibarian) e.g. "Yambo sana--is the state good?" Sana'a was the capital of the Tababi'ah or Tobba Kings who judaized; and the Abyssinians with their Negush made it Christian while the Persians under a.n.u.s.h.i.+rwan converted it to Guebrism. It is now easily visited but to little purpose; excursions in the neighborhood being deadly dangerous.

Moreover the Turkish garrison would probably murder a stranger who sympathised with the Arabs, and the Arabs kill one who took part with their hated and hateful conquerors. The late Mr.

Shapira of Jerusalem declared that he had visited it and Jews have great advantages in such travel. But his friends doubted him.

[FN#20] The Bresl. Edit. (iii. 347) prints three vile errors in four lines.

[FN#21] Alcove is a corruption of the Arab. Al-Kubbah (the dome) through Span. and Port.

[FN#22] Easterns as a rule sleep with head and body covered by a sheet or in cold weather a blanket. The practice is doubtless hygienic, defending the body from draughts when the pores are open; but Europeans find it hard to adopt; it seems to stop their breathing. Another excellent practice in the East, and indeed amongst barbarians and savages generally, is training children to sleep with mouths shut: in after life they never snore and in malarious lands they do not require Outram's "fever-guard," a swathe of muslin over the mouth. Mr. Catlin thought so highly of the "shut mouth" that he made it the subject of a book.

[FN#23] Arab. "Hanzal"=coloquintida, an article often mentioned by Arabs in verse and prose; the bright coloured little gourd attracts every eye by its golden glance when travelling through the brown-yellow waste of sand and clay. A favourite purgative (enough for a horse) is made by filling the inside with sour milk which is drunks after a night's soaking: it is as active as the croton-nut of the Gold Coast.

[FN#24] The Bresl. Edit. iii. 354 sends him to the "land of Sin"

(China).

[FN#25] Arab. "Ya Kisrawi!"=O subject of the Kisra or Chosroe; the latter explained in vol.i.,75.[Volume 1, Footnote # 128]

"Fars" is the origin of "Persia"; and there is a hit at the prodigious lying of the modern race, whose forefathers were so famous as truth-tellers. "I am a Persian, but I am not lying now," is a phrase familiar to every traveller.

[FN#26] There is no such name: perhaps it is a clerical error for "Har jah"=(a man of) any place. I know an Englishman who in Persian called himself "Mirza Abdullah-i-Hichmakani"=Master Abdullah of Nowhere.

[FN#27] The Bresl. Edit. (loc. cit.) gives a comical description of the Prince a.s.suming the dress of an astrologer-doctor, clapping an old book under his arm, fumbling a rosary of beads, enlarging his turband, lengthening his sleeves and blackening his eyelids with antimony. Here, however, it would be out of place.

Very comical also is the way in which he pretends to cure the maniac by "muttering unknown words, blowing in her face, biting her ear," etc.

[FN#28] Arab. "Sar'a"=falling sickness. Here again we have in all its simplicity the old nursery idea of "possession" by evil spirits.

[FN#29] Arab. "Nafahat"=breathings, benefits, the Heb. Neshamah opp. to Nephesh (soul) and Ruach (spirit). Healing by the breath is a popular idea throughout the East and not unknown to Western Magnetists and Mesmerists. The miraculous cures of the Messiah were, according to Moslems, mostly performed by aspiration. They hold that in the days of Isa, physic had reached its highest development, and thus his miracles were mostly miracles of medicine; whereas, in Mohammed's time, eloquence had attained its climax and accordingly his miracles were those of eloquence, as shown in the Koran and Ahadis.

[FN#30] Lit. "The rose in the sleeves or calyces." I take my English equivalent from Jeremy Taylor, "So I have seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood," etc.

[FN#31] These lines are from the Bresl. Edit. (v. 35). The four couplets in the Mac. Edit. are too irrelevant.

[FN#32] Polo, which Lane calls "Goff."

[FN#33] Arab. "m.u.f.fawak"=well-notched, as its value depends upon the notch. At the end of the third hemist.i.tch Lane's Shaykh very properly reads "baghtatan" (suddenly) for "burhatan"=during a long time.

[FN#34] "Uns" (which the vulgar p.r.o.nounce Anas) "al- Wujud"=Delight of existing things, of being, of the world. Uns wa jud is the normal pun=love-intimacy and liberality; and the caranomasia (which cannot well be rendered in English) re-appears again and again. The story is throughout one of love; hence the quant.i.ty of verse.

[FN#35] The allusion to a "written N" suggests the elongated not the rounded form of the letter as in Night cccxxiv.

[FN#36] The fourteenth Arabic letter in its medial form resembling an eye.

[FN#37] This is done by the man pa.s.sing his fingers over the brow as if to wipe off perspiration; the woman acknowledges it by adjusting her head-veil with both hands. As a rule in the Moslem East women make the first advances; and it is truly absurd to see a great bearded fellow blus.h.i.+ng at being ogled. During the Crimean war the fair s.e.x of Constantinople began by these allurements but found them so readily accepted by the Giaours that they were obliged to desist.

[FN#38] The greatest of all explorers and discoverers of the world will be he who finds a woman confessing inability to keep a secret.

[FN#39] The original is intensely prosaic?and so am I.

[FN#40] Arab. "Sunnat," the practice of the Prophet. For this prayer and other silly and superst.i.tious means of discovering the "right direction" (which is often very wrongly directed) see Lane, M.E. chapt. xi.

[FN#41] Arab. "Bahr (sea or river) al-Kunuz": Lane (ii. 576) ingeniously identifies the site with the Upper Nile whose tribes, between a.s.souan (Syene) and Wady al-Subu'a are called the "Kunuz"?lit. meaning "treasures" or "h.o.a.rds." Philae is still known as the "Islet of Anas (for Uns) al-Wujud;" and the learned and accurate Burckhardt (Travels in Nubia p. 5) records the local legend that a mighty King called Al-Wujud built the Osirian temples. I can give no information concerning Jabal al-Sakla (Thakla), the Mount of the woman bereft of children, beyond the legend contained in Night ccclxxix.

[FN#42] A religious mendicant (lit. a pauper), of whom there are two great divisions. The Shara'i acts according to the faith: the others (La Shara'i, or irreligious) are bound by no such prejudices and are pretty specimens of scoundrels. (Pilgrimage i.22.)

[FN#43] Meaning his lips and palate were so swollen by drought.

[FN#44] It is a pious act in time of mortal danger to face the Kiblah or Meccan temple, as if standing in prayer.

[FN#45] Still the belief of the Badawi who tries to work upon the beast's compa.s.sion: "O great King I am a poor man, with wife and family, so spare me that Allah spare thee!" and so forth. If not famished the lion will often stalk off looking behind him as he goes; but the man will never return by the same path; "for,"

says he, "haply the Father of Roaring may repent him of a wasted opportunity." These lion-tales are very common, witness that of Androcles at Rome and a host of others. Una and her lion is another phase. It remained for M. Jules Gerard, first the cha.s.seur and then the tueur, du lion, to a.s.sail the reputation of the lion and the honour of the lioness.

[FN#46] Abu Haris=Father of spoils: one of the lion's hundred t.i.tles.

[FN#47] "They" again for "she."

[FN#48] Jaxartes and Oxus. The latter (Jayhun or Amu, Oxus or Bactros) is famous for dividing Iran from Turan, Persia from Tartaria. The lands to its north are known as Ma wara al-Nahr (Mawerannahar) or "What is behind the stream,"=Transoxiana and their capitals were successively Samarcand and Bokhara.

[FN#49] Arab. "Dani was gharib"=friend and foe. The lines are partly from the Mac. Edit. and partly from the Bresl. Edit., v.

55.

[FN#50] Arab. "Wa Rahmata-hu!" a form now used only in books.

[FN#51] Before noted. The relations.h.i.+p, like that of foster- brother, has its rights, duties and privileges.

[FN#52] Arab. "Istikharah," before explained as praying for direction by omens of the rosary, opening the Koran and reading the first verse sighted, etc., etc. At Al-Medinah it is called Khirah and I have suggested (Pilgrimage, ii. 287) that it is a relic of the Azlam or Kidah (divining arrows) of paganism. But the superst.i.tion is not local: we have the Sortes Virgilianae (Virgil being a magician) as well as Coranicae.

[FN#53] Arab. "Wujud al-Habib," a pun, also meaning, "Wujud my beloved."

[FN#54] Arab. "Khilal," as an emblem of attenuation occurring in Al-Hariri (a.s.s. of Alexandria, etc.); also thin as a spindle (Maghzal), as a reed, and dry as a pair of shears. In the a.s.s. of Barka'id the toothpick is described as a beautiful girl. The use of this cleanly article was enjoined by Mohammed:--"Cleanse your mouths with toothpicks; for your mouths are the abode of the guardian angels; whose pens are the tongues, and whose ink is the spittle of men; and to whom naught is more unbearable than remains of food in the mouth." A mighty apparatus for a small matter; but in very hot lands cleanliness must rank before G.o.dliness.

[FN#55] The sense is ambiguous. Lane renders the verse:--"Thou resemblest it (rose) not of my portion" and gives two explanations "because HE is of my portion," or, "because HIS cheek cannot be rosy if MINE is not." Mr. Payne boldly translates?

"If the rose ape his cheek, 'Now G.o.d forfend,' I say, 'That of my portion aught to pilfer thou shouldst try'."