The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume VI Part 19

Khaliyah is properly a hive of bees with a honey-comb in the hollow of a tree-trunk, opposed to Kawwarah, hive made of clay or earth (Al-Hariri; a.s.s. of Tiflis). There are many other terms, for Arabs are curious about honey. Pilgrimage iii. 110.

[FN#300] Lane (iii. 237) supposes by this t.i.tle 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.

[FN#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).

[FN#302] Arab. "Zabbat," lit. a lizard (fem.) also a wooden lock, the only one used throughout Egypt. An ill.u.s.tration of its curious mechanism is given in Lane (M. E. Introduction)

[FN#303] Arab. "Dabbus." 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-preterver "

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.

[FN#304] The red habit is a sign of wrath and vengeance and the Persian Kings like Fath Al 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 pa.s.sions.

[FN#305] This in the East is the way "pour se faire valoir"; whilst Europeans would hold it a mere "bit of impudence." aping dignity.

[FN#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 Kazi al-Kuzat (Kazi-in-Chief), the Chancellor.

[FN#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.

[FN#308] p.r.o.nounced "Goodareeyyah," and so called after one of the troops of the Fatimite Caliphs. The name "Yamaniyah" is probably due to the story-teller's inventiveness.

[FN#309] I have noted that as a rule in The Nights poetical justice is administered with much rigour and exact.i.tude. 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. Steinga.s.s brings to my notice that I have failed to do justice to the story of Sharrkan (vol. ii., p. 172), where I note that the interest is injured by the gratuitous incest But this has a deeper meaning and a grander artistic effect. Sharrkan 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.

[FN#310] In such case the "'iddah" would be four months and ten days.

[FN#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 t.i.tle 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 fas.h.i.+onable t.i.tle 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.

[FN#312] Von Hammer holds this story to be a satire on Arab superst.i.tion 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.

[FN#313] The Persian hero of romance who converses with the Simurgh or Griffin.

[FN#314] 'The word is as much used in Egypt as wunderbar in Germany. As an exclamation is equivalent to "mighty fine!"

[FN#315] In modern days used in a bad sense, as a freethinker, etc. So Dalilah the Wily is noted to be a philosopheress.

[FN#316] The game is much mixed up after Arab fas.h.i.+on. The "Tufat" is the Siyahgosh= Black-ears, of India (Felis caracal), the Persian lynx, which gives very good sport with Dachshunds.

Lynxes still abound in the thickets near Cairo

[FN#317] The "Sons of Kahtan," 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.)

[FN#318] He who shooteth an arrow by night. See the death of Antar shot down in the dark by the archer Jazar, son of Jabir, who had been blinded by a red hot sabre pa.s.sed 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."

[FN#319] See vol. ii., p. 77, for a reminiscence of masterful King Kulayb and his Hima or domain. Here the phrase would mean, "None could approach them when they were wroth; none were safe from their rage."

[FN#320] The sons of Nabhan (whom Mr. Badger calls Nebhan) supplied the old Maliks or Kings of Oman. (History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman, etc., London, Hakluyt Soc. 1871.)

[FN#321] This is a sore insult in Arabia, where they have not dreamt of a "Jawab-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-lndian jargon) could belong. "I am not a stallion to be struck on the nose," say the Arabs.

[FN#322] Again "inverted speech": it is as if we said, "Now, you're a d.a.m.ned 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 Rabi'ah.

[FN#323] The Badawi use javelins or throw-spears of many kinds, especially the prettily worked Mizrak (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.)

[FN#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.

[FN#325] The Arabs derive these Noachidae 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 x.x.xi. 8). The last Arkam fell before an army sent by Moses to purge the Holy Land (Al- Hijaz) of idolatry. Commentators on the Koran (chaps. vii.) call the Pharaoh of Moses Al-Walid 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 Hitt.i.tes. "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.

[FN#326] The Amalekites were giants and lived 500 years.

(Pilgrimage, loc. cit.)

[FN#327] His men being ninety against five hundred.

[FN#328] Arab. "Kaum" (p.r.o.n. Gum) here=a razzia, afterwards=a tribe. Relations between Badawi tribes are of three kinds; (1) Ashab, allies offensive and defensive, friends who intermarry; (2) Kiman (plur. of Kaum) when the blood-feud exists, and (3) Akhwan= brothers. The last is a complicated affair, "Akhawat" or brotherhood, denotes the tie between patron and client (a n.o.ble and an ign.o.ble 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 "dakhil," or ent.i.tled to brother-help. The guardian is known in the West as Rafik; Rabi'a in Eastern Arabia; Ghafir in "Sinai ;" amongst the Somal, Abban and the Gallas Mogasa. Further details are given in Pilgrimage iii. 85-87.

[FN#329] Arab. "Mal," here=Badawi money, flocks and herds, our "fee" from feoh, vieh, cattle; as pecunia from pecus, etc., etc.

[FN#330] The litholatry of the old Arabs is undisputed: Manat the G.o.ddess-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 wors.h.i.+pped 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 wors.h.i.+p and that the tomb of Eve near Jeddah was the old "Sakhrah tawilah" 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.

[FN#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 Marib 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 Kahtan, the first Arabist; see Night dcxxv.

[FN#332] This t.i.tle has been noticed: it suggests the "Saint Abraham" of our medaeval travellers. Every great prophet has his agnomen: Adam the Pure (or Elect) of Allah, Noah the Najiy (or saved) of Allah; Moses (Kalim) the Speaker with Allah; Jesus the Ruh (Spirit breath) or Kalam (the word) of Allah. For Mohammed's see Al-Busiri's Mantle-poem vv. 31-58.

[FN#333] Koran (chaps. 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.

[FN#334] Arab. "Sa'ikah," which is supposed to be a stone. The allusion is to Antar's sword, "Dhami," 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 Dhami (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.

[FN#335] Arab. "Kuta'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.

[FN#336] As will appear the two brothers were joined by a party of hors.e.m.e.n.

[FN#337] "Four" says the Mac. Edit. forgetting Falhun with characteristic inconsequence.

[FN#338] Muhammad (the deserving great praise) is the name used by men; Ahmad (more laudable) by angels, and Mahmud (praised) by devils. For a similar play upon the name, "Allah Allah Muhammad ast" (G.o.d is G.o.d the praisworthy) see Dabistan ii. 416.

[FN#339] The Mac. Edit. here gives "Sas," but elsewhere "Sasa,"

which is the correct form

[FN#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 Nabhan and the Hinawi 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 Marib originally built by Abd al-Shams Saba, father of Himyar. These Yamanian races were plunged into poverty and roamed northwards, planting themselves amongst the Arabs of Ma'add son of Adnan. Hence the kingdom of Gha.s.san 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 Harah, 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 a.n.a.logous with India "above the Ghauts."