The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume VII Part 27

This occurs in the old French romance of Amys and Amyloun which is taken into the tale of the Ravens in the Seven Wise Masters where Ludovic personates his friend Alexander in marrying the King of Egypt's daughter and sleeps every night with a bare blade between him and the bride. See also Aladdin and his lamp. An Englishman remarked, "The drawn sword would be little hindrance to a man and maid coming together." The drawn sword represented only the Prince's honour.

[FN#428] Arab. "Ya Saki' al-Wajh," which Lane translates by "lying" or "liar."

[FN#429] Kamin (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 ('imarah) = being populous. Trebutien (ii. 161) takes from Bresl. Edit. "Amar" and translates the port-name, "le lieu de refuge des deux mers."

[FN#430] i.e. "High of (among) the Kings." Lane proposes to read 'Ali al-Mulk = high in dominion.

[FN#431] p.r.o.nounce Mu'inuddeen = Aider of the Faith. The Bresl. Edit. (iv. 266) also read "Mu'in al-Riyasah" = Mu'in of the Captaincies.

[FN#432] Arab. "Shum" = a tough wood used for the staves with which donkeys are driven. Sir Gardner Wilkinson informed Lane that it is the ash.

[FN#433] In Persian we find the fuller metaphorical form, "kissing the ground of obedience."

[FN#434] For the Shaykh of the Sea(-board) in Sindbad the Seaman see vol. vi. 50.

[FN#435] That this riding is a facetious exaggeration of the African practice I find was guessed by Mr. Keightley.

[FN#436] Arab. "k.u.mmasra": the root seems to be "Kamsara" = being slender or compact.

[FN#437] Lane translates, "by reason of the exhilaration produced by intoxication." But the Arabic here has no a.s.sonance. The pa.s.sage 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 Pome (Osirian beer) drained by the occupants; and, comminxit lectum potus might be said of the whole male population.

[FN#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.

[FN#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.

[FN#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 Kirman 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 mediaeval Italian practice called bacinare, or scorching with red-hot basins, came from Persia.

[FN#441] Arab. "Laban" as opposed to "Halib": in Night dcclxxiv. (infra p. 365) the former is used for sweet milk, and other pa.s.sages 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.

[FN#442] Arab. "Takah" not "an aperture" as Lane has it, but an arched hollow in the wall.

[FN#443] In Trebutien (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 al this episode is a manifest imitation of the adventures of Ulysses in Polyphemus's 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.

[FN#444] Arab. "Shakhtur".

[FN#445] In the Bresl. Edit. the s.h.i.+p ips not wrecked but lands Sa'id in safety.

[FN#446] So in the Shah-nameth the Simurgh-bird gives one of her feathers to her protege Zal which he will throw into the fire when she is wanted.

[FN#447] Bresl. Edit. "Al-Zardakhanat" Arab. plur of Zarad-Khanah, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d word = armoury, from Arab. Zarad (hauberk) and Pers. Khanah = house etc.

[FN#448] Some retrenchment was here found necessary to avoid "d.a.m.nable iteration."

[FN#449] i.e. Badi'a al-Jamal.

[FN#450] Mohammed.

[FN#451] Koran x.x.xv. "The Creator" (Fatir) or the Angels, so called from the first verse.

[FN#452] In the Bresl. Edit. (p. 263) Sayf al-Muluk drops asleep under a tree to the lulling sound of a Sakiyah or water-wheel, and is seen by Badi'a al-Jamal, who falls in love with im and drops tears upon his cheeks, etc. The scene, containing much recitation, is long and well told.

[FN#453] Arab. "Lukmah" = a bouchee of bread, meat, fruit or pastry, and especially applied to the rice balled with the hand and delicately inserted into a friend's mouth.

[FN#454] Arab. "Salahiyah," also written Sarahiyah: it means an ewer-shaped gla.s.s-bottle.

[FN#455] Arab. "Sarmujah," of which Von Hammer remarks that the dictionaries ignore it; Dozy gives the forms Sarmuj, Sarmuz, and Sarmuzah and explains them by "espece de guetre, de sandale ou de mule, qu'on chausse par-dessus la botte."

[FN#456] In token of profound submission.

[FN#457] Arab. "Misr" in Ibn Khaldun is a land whose people are settled and civilised hence "Namsur" = we settle; and "Amsar" = settled provinces. Al-Misrayn was the t.i.tle of Basrah and Kufah the two military cantonments founded by Caliph Omar on the frontier of conquering Arabia and conquered Persia. Hence "Tamsir" = 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 fluorished side by side. Sprenger (Al-Mas'udi 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 mouillees, ever oppressed by their own most ignorant and harmful fancy that the world was about to end.

[FN#458] i.e. Waiting to be sold and wasting away in single cursedness.

[FN#459] Arab. "Ya dadati": dadat is an old servant-woman or slave, often applied to a nurse, like its congener the Pers.

Dada, the latter often p.r.o.nounced Daddeh, as Daddeh Bazm-ara in the Kuisum-nameh (Atkinson's "Customs of the Women of Persia," London, 8vo, 1832).

[FN#460] Marjanah has been already explained. D'Herbelot derives from it the Romance name Morgante la Deconvenue, here confounding Morgana with Urganda; and Keltic scholars make Morgain = Mor Gwynn-the white maid (p. 10, Keightley's Fairy Mythology, London, Whittaker, 1833).