The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume I Part 20

[FN#68] As Solomon began to reign (according to vulgar chronometry) in B.C. 1015, the text would place the tale circ.

A.D. 785, = A.H. 169. But we can lay no stress on this date which may be merely fanciful. Professor Tawney very justly compares this Moslem Solomon with the Hindu King, Vikramaditya, who ruled over the seven divisions of the world and who had as many devils to serve him as he wanted.

[FN#69] Arab. "Ya Ba'id:" a euphemism here adopted to prevent using grossly abusive language. Others will occur in the course of these pages.

[FN#70] i. e. about to fly out; "My heart is in my mouth." The Fisherman speaks with the dry humour of a Fellah.

[FN#71] "Sulayman," when going out to ease himself, entrusted his seal-ring upon which his kingdom depended to a concubine "Aminah"

(the "Faithful"), when Sakhr, transformed to the King's likeness, came in and took it. The prophet was reduced to beggary, but after forty days the demon fled throwing into the sea the ring which was swallowed by a fish and eventually returned to Sulayman. This Talmudic fable is hinted at in the Koran (chaps.

x.x.xviii.), and commentators have extensively embroidered it.

Asaf, son of Barkhiya, was Wazir to Sulayman and is supposed to be the "one with whom was the knowledge of the Scriptures"

(Koran, chaps. x.x.xvii.), i.e. who knew the Ineffable Name of Allah. See the manifest descendant of the Talmudic Koranic fiction in the "Tale of the Emperor Jovinian" (No. lix.) of the Gesta Romanorum, the most popular book of mediaeval Europe composed in England (or Germany) about the end of the thirteenth century.

[FN#72] Arab. "k.u.mkam," a gourd-shaped bottle of metal, china or gla.s.s, still used for sprinkling scents. Lane gives an ill.u.s.tration (chaps. viii., Mod. Egypt.).

[FN#73] Arab. meaning "the Mother of Amir," a nickname for the hyena, which bites the hand that feeds it.

[FN#74] The intellect of man is stronger than that of the Jinni; the Ifrit, however, enters the jar because he has been adjured by the Most Great Name and not from mere stupidity. The seal-ring of Solomon according to the Rabbis contained a chased stone which told him everything he wanted to know.

[FN#75] The Mesmerist will notice this shudder which is familiar to him as preceding the "magnetic" trance.

[FN#76] Arab. "Bahr" which means a sea, a large river, a sheet of water, etc., lit. water cut or trenched in the earth. Bahri in Egypt means Northern; so Yamm (Sea, Mediterranean) in Hebrew is West.

[FN#77] In the Bull Edit. "Ruyan," evidently a clerical error.

The name is fanciful not significant.

[FN#78] The geography is ultra-Shakespearean. "Fars" (whence "Persia") is the central Province of the grand old Empire now a mere wreck, "Rum" (which I write Roum, in order to avoid Jamaica) is the neo-Roman or Byzantine Empire, while "Yunan" is the cla.s.sical Arab term for Greece (Ionia) which unlearned Moslems believe to be now under water.

[FN#79] The Sun greets Mohammed every morning even as it dances on Easter Day for Christendom. Risum teneatis?

[FN#80] Arab. "Nadim," a term often occurring. It denotes one who was intimate enough to drink with the Caliph, a very high honour and a dangerous. The last who sat with "Nudama" was Al-Razi bi'llah A.H. 329 = 940. See Al-Siyuti's famous "History of the Caliphs" translated and admirably annotated by Major H. S.

Jarrett, for the Bibliotheca Indica, Calcutta, 1880.

[FN#81]Arab. Maydan (from Persian); Lane generally translates it "horse course ' and Payne "tilting yard." It is both and something more; an open s.p.a.ce, in or near the city, used for reviewing troops, races, playing the Jerid (cane-spear) and other sports and exercises: thus Al-Maydan=Gr. hippodrome. The game here alluded to is our -'polo," or hockey on horseback, a favourite with the Persian Kings, as all old ill.u.s.trations of the Shahnamah show. Maydan is also a natural plain for which copious Arabic has many terms, Fayhah or Sath (a plain generally), Khabt (a low-lying plain), Bat'ha (a low sandy flat), Mahattah (a plain fit for halting) and so forth. (Pilgrimage iii., 11.)

[FN#82] For details concerning the "Ghusl" see Night xliv.

[FN#83] A popular idiom and highly expressive, contrasting the upright bearing of the self-satisfied man with the slouch of the miserable and the skirt-trailing of the woman in grief. I do not see the necessity of such Latinisms as "dilated" or "expanded."

[FN#84] All these highest signs of favour foreshow, in Eastern tales and in Eastern life, an approaching downfall of the heaviest; they are so great that they arouse general jealousy.

Many of us have seen this at native courts.

[FN#85] This phrase is contained in the word "ihdak"

=encompa.s.sing, as the conjunctive does the pupil.

[FN#86] I have noted this formula, which is used even in conversation when about to relate some great unfact.

[FN#87] We are obliged to English the word by "valley," which is about as correct as the "brook Kedron," applied to the grisliest of ravines. The Wady (in old Coptic wah, oah, whence "Oasis") is the bed of a watercourse which flows only after rains. I have rendered it by "Fiumara" (Pilgrimage i., 5, and ii., 196, etc.), an Italian or rather a Sicilian word which exactly describes the "wady."

[FN#88] I have described this scene which Mr. T. Wolf ill.u.s.trated by an excellent lithograph in "Falconry, etc." (London, Van Voorst, MDCCCLII.)

[FN#89] Arab. "Kaylulah," mid-day sleep; called siesta from the sixth canonical hour.

[FN#90] This parrot-story is world-wide in folk-lore and the belief in metempsychosis, which prevails more or less over all the East, there lends it probability. The "Book of Sindibad" (see Night dlxxix. and "The Academy," Sept. 20, 1884, No. 646) converts it into the "Story of the Confectioner, his Wife and the Parrot," and it is the base of the Hindostani text- book, "Tota-Kahani" (Parrot-chat), an abridgement of the Tutinamah (Parrot-book) of Nakhshabi (circ. A.D. 1300), a congener of the Sanskrit "Suka Saptati," or Seventy Parrot-stories. The tale is not in the Bull. or Mac. Edits. but occurs in the Bresl. (i., pp.

90, 91) much mutilated; and better in the Calc. Edit I cannot here refrain from noticing how vilely the twelve vols. of the Breslau Edit have been edited; even a table of contents being absent from the first four volumes.

[FN#91] The young "Turk" is probably a late addition, as it does not appear in many of the MSS., e. g. the Bresl. Edit. The wife usually spreads a cloth over the cage; this in the Turkish translation becomes a piece of leather.

[FN#92] The Hebrew-Syrian month July used to express the height of summer. As Herodotus tells us (ii. 4) the Egyptians claimed to be the discoverers of the solar year and the portioners of its course into twelve parts.

[FN#93] This proceeding is thoroughly characteristic of the servile cla.s.s; they conscientiously conceal everything from the master till he finds a clew; after which they tell him everything and something more.

[FN#94] Until late years, merchants and shopkeepers in the nearer East all carried and held it a disgrace to leave the house unarmed.

[FN#95] The Bresl. Edit. absurdly has Jazirah (an island).

[FN#96] The Ghulah (fem. of Ghul) is the Heb. Lilith or Lilis; the cla.s.sical Lamia; the Hindu Yogini and Dakini, the Chaldean Utug and Gigim (desert-demons) as opposed to the Mas (hill-demon) and Telal (who steal into towns); the Ogress of our tales and the Bala yaga (Granny-witch) of Russian folk-lore. Etymologically "Ghul" is a calamity, a panic fear; and the monster is evidently the embodied horror of the grave and the graveyard.

[FN#97] Arab. "Shabb" (Lat. juvenis) between p.u.b.erty and forty or according to some fifty; when the patient becomes a "Rajul ikhtiyar" (man of free will) politely termed, and then a Shaykh or Shaybah (gray-beard, oldster).

[FN#98] Some proverbial name now forgotten. Torrens (p. 48) translates it "the giglot" (Fortune?) but "cannot discover the drift."

[FN#99] Arab. "Ihtizaz," that natural and instinctive movement caused by good news suddenly given, etc.

[FN#100] Arab. "Kohl," in India, Surmah, not a "collyrium," but powdered antimony for the eyelids. That sold in the bazars is not the real grey ore of antimony but a galena or sulphuret of lead.

Its use arose as follows. When Allah showed Himself to Moses on Sinai through an opening the size of a needle, the Prophet fainted and the Mount took fire: thereupon Allah said, "Henceforth shalt thou and thy seed grind the earth of this mountain and apply it to your eyes!" The powder is kept in an etui called Makhalah and applied with a thick blunt needle to the inside of the eyelid, drawing it along the rim; hence etui and probe denote the s.e.xual rem in re and in cases of adultery the question will be asked, "Didst thou see the needle in the Kohl-pot ?" Women mostly use a preparation of soot or lamp-black (Hind. Kajala, Kajjal) whose colour is easily distinguished from that of Kohl. The latter word, with the article (Al-Kohl) is the origin of our "alcohol;" though even M. Littre fails to show how "fine powder" became "spirits of wine." I found this powder (wherewith Jezebel "painted" her eyes) a great preservative from ophthalmia in desert-travelling: the use in India was universal, but now European example is gradually abolis.h.i.+ng it.

[FN#101] The tale of these two women is now forgotten.

[FN#102] Arab. "Atadakhkhal." When danger threatens it is customary to seize a man's skirt and cry "Dakhil-ak!" ( = under thy protection). Among n.o.ble tribes the Badawi thus invoked will defend the stranger with his life. Foreigners have brought themselves into contempt by thus applying to women or to mere youths.

[FN#103] The formula of quoting from the Koran.

[FN#104] Lit. "Allah not desolate me" (by thine absence). This is still a popular phrase - La tawahishna = Do not make me desolate, i.e. by staying away too long, and friends meeting after a term of days exclaim "Auhashtani!"=thou hast made me desolate, Je suis desole.

[FN#105] Charming simplicity of manners when the Prime Minister carries the fish (shade of Vattel!)!) to the cookmaid. The "Gesta Romanorum" is nowhere more nave.

[FN#106] Arab. "Kahilat al-taraf" = lit. eyelids lined with Kohl; and figuratively "with black lashes and languorous look." This is a phrase which frequently occurs in The Nights and which, as will appear, applies to the "lower animals" as well as to men. Moslems in Central Africa apply Kohl not to the thickness of the eyelid but upon both outer lids, fixing it with some greasy substance.

The peculiar Egyptian (and Syrian) eye with its thick fringes of jet-black lashes, looking like lines of black drawn with soot, easily suggests the simile. In England I have seen the same appearance amongst miners fresh from the colliery.

[FN#107] Of course applying to her own case.

[FN#108] Prehistoric Arabs who measured from 60 to 100 cubits high: Koran, chaps. xxvi., etc. They will often be mentioned in The Nights.

[FN#109] I Arab. "Dastur" (from Persian) = leave, permission. The word has two meanings (see Burckhardt, Arab. Prov. No. 609) and is much used, ea. before walking up stairs or entering a room where strange women might be met. So "Tarik" = Clear the way (Pilgrimage, iii., 319). The old Persian occupation of Egypt, not to speak of the Persian speaking Circa.s.sians and other rulers has left many such traces in popular language. One of them is that horror of travelers - "Bakhs.h.i.+sh" p.r.o.n. bakh-sheesh and shortened to s.h.i.+sh from the Pers. "bakhs.h.i.+sh." Our "Christmas box" has been most unnecessarily derived from the same, despite our reading:--

Gladly the boy, with Christmas box in hand.

And, as will be seen, Persians have bequeathed to the outer world worse things than bad language, e.g. heresy and sodomy.