The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume X Part 7

29), the Kunsul or Consul (p. 84), the Kaptan (Capitano), the use of cannon at sea and the choice of Genoa city (p. 85) prove that it belongs to the xvth or xvith century and should accompanyKamar al-Zaman II. and Ma'aruf at the end of The Nights. Despite the lutist Zubaydah being carried off by the Jinn, the Magic Couch, a modification of Solomon's carpet, and the murder of the King who refused to islamize, it is evidently a European tale and I believe with Dr. Bacher that it is founded upon the legend of "Charlemagne's" daughter Emma and his secretary Eginhardt, as has been noted in the counterpart (vol. ix. 1).

This quasi-historical fiction is followed hy a succession of fabliaux, novelle and historiettes which fill the rest of the vol. iv. and the whole of vol. v. till we reach the terminal story, The Queen of the Serpents (vol. v. pp. 304-329). It appears to me that most of them are historical and could easily be traced. Not a few are in Al-Mas'udi; for instance the grim Tale of Hatim of Tayy (vol. iv. 94) is given bodily in "Meads of Gold" (iii. 327); and the two adventures of Ibrahim al-Mahdi with the barber-surgeon (vol. iv. 103) and the Merchant's sister (vol.

iv. 176) are in his pages (vol. vii. 68 and 18). The City of Lubtayt (vol. iv. 99) embodies the legend of Don Rodrigo, last of the Goths, and may have reached the ears of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving; Many-columned Iram (vol. iv. 113) is held by all Moslems to be factual and sundry writers have recorded the tricks played by Al- Maamun with the Pyramids of Jizah which still show his handiwork.[FN#290] The germ of Isaac of Mosul (vol. iv. 119) is found in Al-Mas'udi who (vii. 65) names "Buran" the poetess (Ibn Khall. i. 268); and Harun al-Ras.h.i.+d and the Slave-girl (vol. iv.

153) is told by a host of writers. Ali the Persian is a rollicking tale of fun from some Iranian jest-book: Abu Mohammed hight Lazybones belongs to the cycle of "Sindbad the Seaman,"

with a touch of Whittington and his Cat; and Zumurrud ("Smaragdine") in Ali Shar (vol. iv. 187) shows at her sale the impudence of Miriam the Girdle-girl and in bed the fescennine device of the Lady Budur. The "Ruined Man who became Rich," etc.

(vol. iv. 289) is historical and Al-Mas'udi (vii. 281) relates the coquetry of Mahbubah the concubine (vol. iv. 291): the historian also quotes four couplets, two identical with Nos. 1 and 2 in The Nights (vol. iv. 292) and adding:--

Then see the slave who lords it o'er her lord * In lover privacy and public site: Behold these eyes that one like Ja'afar saw: * Allah on Ja'afar reign boons infinite!

Uns al-Wujud (vol. v. 32) is a love-tale which has been translated into a host of Eastern languages; and The Lovers of the Banu Ozrah belong to Al-Mas'udi's "Martyrs of Love" (vii.

355), with the ozrite "Ozrite love" of Ibn Khallikan (iv. 537).

"Harun and the Three Poets" (vol. v. 77) has given to Cairo a proverb which Burckhardt (No. 561) renders "The day obliterates the word or promise of the Night," for

The promise of night is effaced by day.

It suggests Congreve's Doris:--

For who o'er night obtain'd her grace, She can next day disown, etc.

"Harun and the three Slave-girls" (vol. v. 81) smacks of Gargantua (lib. i. c. 11): "It belongs to me, said one: 'Tis mine, said another"; and so forth. The Simpleton and the Sharper (vol. v. 83) like the Foolish Dominie (vol. v. 118) is an old Joe Miller in Hindu as well as Moslem folk-lore. "Kisra a.n.u.s.h.i.+rwan"

(vol. v. 87) is "The King, the Owl and the Villages of Al- Mas'udi" (iii. 171), who also notices the Persian monarch's four seals of office (ii. 204); and "Masrur the Eunuch and Ibn Al- Karibi" (vol. v. 109) is from the same source as Ibn al-Maghazili the Reciter and a Eunuch belonging to the Caliph Al-Mu'tazad (vol. viii. 161). In the Tale of Tawaddud (vol. v. 139) we have the fullest development of the disputations and displays of learning then so common in Europe, teste the "Admirable Crichton"; and these were affected not only by Eastern tale- tellers but even by sober historians. To us it is much like "padding" when Nuzhat al-Zaman (vol. ii. 156 etc.) f.a.gs her hapless hearers with a discourse covering sixteen mortal pages; when the Wazir Dandan (vol. ii. 195, etc.) reports at length the cold speeches of the five high-bosomed maids and the Lady of Calamities and when Wird Khan, in presence of his papa (Nights cmxiv-xvi.) discharges his patristic exercitations and heterogeneous knowledge. Yet Al-Mas'udi also relates, at dreary extension (vol. vi. 369) the disputation of the twelve sages in presence of Barmecide Yahya upon the origin, the essence, the accidents and the omnes res of Love; and in another place (vii.

181) shows Honayn, author of the Book of Natural Questions, undergoing a long examination before the Caliph Al-Wasik (Vathek) and describing, amongst other things, the human teeth. See also the dialogue or catechism of Al-Hajjaj and Ibn Al-Kirriya in Ibn Khallikan (vol. i. 238-240).

These disjecta membra of tales and annals are pleasantly relieved by the seven voyages of Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi. 1-83). The "Arabian Odyssey" may, like its Greek brother, descend from a n.o.ble family, the "s.h.i.+pwrecked Mariner" a Coptic travel-tale of the twelfth dynasty (B. C. 3500) preserved on a papyrus at St.

Petersburg. In its actual condition "Sindbad," is a fanciful compilation, like De Foe's "Captain Singleton," borrowed from travellers' tales of an immense variety and extracts from Al- Idrisi, Al-Kazwini and Ibn al-Wardi. Here we find the Polyphemus, the Pygmies and the cranes of Homer and Herodotus; the escape of Aristomenes; the Plinian monsters well known in Persia; the magnetic mountain of Saint Brennan (Branda.n.u.s); the aeronautics of "Duke Ernest of Bavaria''[FN#291] and sundry cuttings from Moslem writers dating between our ninth and fourteenth centuries.[FN#292] The "Shayhk of the Seaboard"

appears in the Persian romance of Kamaraupa translated by Francklin, all the particulars absolutely corresponding. The "Odyssey" is valuable because it shows how far Eastward the mediaeval Arab had extended: already in The Ignorance he had reached China and had formed a centre of trade at Canton. But the higher merit of the cento is to produce one of the most charming books of travel ever written, like Robinson Crusoe the delight of children and the admiration of all ages.

The hearty life and realism of Sindbad are made to stand out in strong relief by the deep melancholy which pervades "The City of Bra.s.s" (vol. vi. 83), a dreadful book for a dreary day. It is curious to compare the doleful verses (pp. 103, 105) with those spoken to Caliph Al-Mutawakkil by Abu al-Hasan Ali (A1-Mas'udi, vii. 246). We then enter upon the venerable Sindibad-nameh, the Malice of Women (vol. vi. 122), of which, according to the Kitab al-Fihrist (vol. i. 305), there were two editions, a Sinzibad al- Kabir and a Sinzibad al-Saghir, the latter being probably an epitome of the former. This bundle of legends, I have shown, was incorporated with the Nights as an editor's addition; and as an independent work it has made the round of the world.

s.p.a.ce forbids any detailed notice of this choice collection of anecdotes for which a volume would be required. I may, however, note that the "Wife's device" (vol. vi. 152) has its a.n.a.logues in the Katha (chapt. xiii.) in the Gesta Romanorum (No. xxviii.) and in Boccaccio (Day iii. 6 and Day vi. 8), modified by La Fontaine to Richard Minutolo (Contes lib. i. tale 2): it is quoted almost in the words of The Nights by the Shaykh al-Nafzawi (p. 207).

That most witty and indecent tale The Three Wishes (vol. vi. 180) has forced its way disguised as a babe into our nurseries.

Another form of it is found in the Arab proverb "More luckless than Basus" (Kamus), a fair Israelite who persuaded her husband, also a Jew, to wish that she might become the loveliest of women.

Jehovah granted it, spitefully as Jupiter; the consequence was that her contumacious treatment of her mate made him pray that the beauty might be turned into a b.i.t.c.h; and the third wish restored her to her original state.

The Story of Judar (vol. vi. 207) is Egyptian, to judge from its local knowledge (pp. 217 and 254) together with its ignorance of Marocco (p. 223). It shows a contrast, in which Arabs delight, of an almost angelical goodness and forgiveness with a well-nigh diabolical malignity, and we find the same extremes in Abu Sir the n.o.ble-minded Barber and the hideously inhuman Abu Kir. The excursion to Mauritania is artfully managed and gives a novelty to the mise-en-scene. Gharib and Ajib (vi. 207, vii. 91) belongs to the cycle of Antar and King Omar bin Nu'man: its exaggerations make it a fine type of Oriental Chauvinism, pitting the superhuman virtues, valour, n.o.bility and success of all that is Moslem, against the sc.u.m of the earth which is non-Moslem. Like the exploits of Friar John of the Chopping-knives (Rabelais i. c.

27) it suggests ridicule cast on impossible battles and tales of giants, paynims and paladins. The long romance is followed by thirteen historiettes all apparently historical: compare "Hind, daughter of Al-Nu'man" (vol. viii. 7-145) and "Isaac of Mosul and the Devil" (vol. vii. 136-139) with Al Mas'udi v. 365 and vi.

340. They end in two long detective-tales like those which M.

Gaboriau has popularised, the Rogueries of Dalilah and the Adventures of Mercury Ali, based upon the principle, "One thief wots another." The former, who has appeared before (vol. ii.

329), seems to have been a noted character: Al-Mas'udi says (viii. 175) "in a word this Shaykh (Al-'Ukab) outrivalled in his rogueries and the ingenuities of his wiles Dallah (Dalilah?) the Crafty and other tricksters and coney-catchers, ancient and modern."

The Tale of Ardas.h.i.+r (vol. vii. 209-264) lacks originality: we are now entering upon a series of pictures which are replicas of those preceding. This is not the case with that charming Undine, Julnar the Sea-born (vol. vii. 264-308) which, like Abdullah of the Land and Abdullah of the Sea (vol. ix. Night cmxl.), describes the vie intime of mermen and merwomen. Somewhat resembling Swift's inimitable creations, the Houyhnhnms for instance, they prove, amongst other things, that those who dwell in a denser element can justly blame and severely criticise the contradictory and unreasonable prejudices and predilections of mankind. Sayf al-Muluk (vol. viii. Night dcclviii.), the romantic tale of two lovers, shows by its introduction that it was originally an independent work and it is known to have existed in Persia during the eleventh century: this novella has found its way into every Moslem language of the East even into Sindi, which calls the hero "Sayfal." Here we again meet the Old Man of the Sea or rather the Shaykh of the Seaboard and make acquaintance with a Jinn whose soul is outside his body: thus he resembles Hermotimos of Klazamunae in Apollonius, whose spirit left his mortal frame a discretion. The author, philanthropically remarking (vol. viii. 4) "Knowest thou not that a single mortal is better, in Allah's sight than a thousand Jinn?" brings the wooing to a happy end which leaves a pleasant savour upon the mental palate.

Hasan of Ba.s.sorah (vol. viii. 7-145) is a Master Shoetie on a large scale like Sindbad, but his voyages and travels extend into the supernatural and fantastic rather than the natural world.

Though long the tale is by no means wearisome and the characters are drawn with a fine firm hand. The hero with his hen-like persistency of purpose, his weeping, fainting and versifying is interesting enough and proves that "Love can find out the way."

The charming adopted sister, the model of what the feminine friend should be; the silly little wife who never knows that she is happy till she loses happiness; the violent and hard-hearted queen with all the cruelty of a good woman, and the manners and customs of Amazon land are outlined with a life-like vivacity.

Khalifah the next tale (vol. viii. 147-184) is valuable as a study of Eastern life, showing how the fisherman emerges from the squalor of his surroundings and becomes one of the Caliph's favourite cup-companions. Ali Nur al-Din (vol. viii. 264) and King Jali'ad (vol. ix., Night dcccxciv) have been noticed elsewhere and there is little to say of the concluding stories which bear the evident impress of a more modern date.

Dr. Johnson thus sums up his notice of The Tempest. "Whatever might have been the intention of their author, these tales are made instrumental to the production of many characters, diversified with boundless invention, and preserved with profound skill in nature; extensive knowledge of opinions, and accurate observation of life. Here are exhibited princes, courtiers and sailors, all speaking in their real characters. There is the agency of airy spirits and of earthy goblin, the operations of magic, the tumults of a storm, the adventures of a desert island, the native effusion of untaught affection, the punishment of guilt, and the final happiness of those for whom our pa.s.sions and reason are equally interested."

We can fairly say this much and far more for our Tales. Viewed as a tout ensemble in full and complete form, they are a drama of Eastern life, and a Dance of Death made sublime by faith and the highest emotions, by the certainty of expiation and the fulness of atoning equity, where virtue is victorious, vice is vanquished and the ways of Allah are justified to man. They are a panorama which remains ken-speckle upon the mental retina. They form a phantasmagoria in which archangels and angels, devils and goblins, men of air, of fire, of water, naturally mingle with men of earth; where flying horses and talking fishes are utterly realistic: where King and Prince meet fisherman and pauper, lamia and cannibal; where citizen jostles Badawi, eunuch meets knight; the Kazi hob-n.o.bs with the thief; the pure and pious sit down to the same tray with the bawd and the pimp; where the professional religionist, the learned Koranist and the strictest moralist consort with the wicked magician, the scoffer and the debauchee- poet like Abu Nowas; where the courtier jests with the boor and where the sweep is bedded with the n.o.ble lady. And the characters are "finished and quickened by a few touches swift and sure as the glance of sunbeams." The work is a kaleidoscope where everything falls into picture; gorgeous palaces and pavilions; grisly underground caves and deadlywolds; gardens fairer than those of the Hesperid; seas das.h.i.+ng with clas.h.i.+ng billows upon enchanted mountains; valleys of the Shadow of Death; air-voyages and promenades in the abysses of ocean; the duello, the battle and the siege; the wooing of maidens and the marriage- rite. All the splendour and squalor, the beauty and baseness, the glamour and grotesqueness, the magic and the mournfulness, the bravery and the baseness of Oriental life are here: its pictures of the three great Arab pa.s.sions, love, war and fancy, ent.i.tle it to be called "Blood, Musk and Has.h.i.+sh."[FN#293] And still more, the genius of the story-teller quickens the dry bones of history, and by adding Fiction to Pact revives the dead past: the Caliphs and the Caliphate return to Baghdad and Cairo, whilst Asmodeus kindly removes the terrace-roof of every tenement and allows our curious glances to take in the whole interior. This is perhaps the best proof of their power. Finally, the picture- gallery opens with a series of weird and striking adventures and shows as a tail-piece, an idyllic scene of love and wedlock in halls before reeking with l.u.s.t and blood.

I have noticed in my Foreword that the two main characteristics of The Nights are Pathos and Humour, alternating with highly artistic contrast, and carefully calculated to provoke tears and smiles in the coffee-house audience which paid for them. The sentimental portion mostly breathes a tender pa.s.sion and a simple sadness: such are the Badawi's dying farewell (vol i. 75); the lady's broken heart on account of her lover's hand being cut off (vol. i. 277); the Wazir's death, the mourner's song and the "tongue of the case" (vol. ii. 10); the murder of Princess Abrizah with the babe sucking its dead mother's breast (vol. ii.

128); and, generally, the last moments of good Moslems (e. g.

vol. 167), which are described with inimitable terseness and navete. The sad and the gay mingle in the character of the good Hammam-stoker who becomes Roi Crotte and the melancholy deepens in the Tale of the Mad Lover (vol. v. 138); the Blacksmith who could handle fire without hurt (vol. v. 271); the Devotee Prince (vol. v. iii) and the whole Tale of Azizah (vol. ii. 298), whose angelic love is set off by the sensuality and selfishness of her more fortunate rivals. A new note of absolutely tragic dignity seems to be struck in the Sweep and the n.o.ble Lady (vol. iv.

125), showing the piquancy of sentiment which can be evolved from the common and the unclean. The pretty conceit of the Lute (vol.

v. 244) is afterwards carried out in the Song (vol. viii. 281), which is a masterpiece of originality[FN#294] and (in the Arabic) of exquisite tenderness and poetic melancholy, the wail over the past and the vain longing for reunion. And the very depths of melancholy, of majestic pathos and of true sublimity are reached in Many-columned Iram (vol. iv. 113) and the City of Bra.s.s (vol.

vi. 83): the metrical part of the latter shows a luxury of woe; it is one long wail of despair which echoes long and loud in the hearer's heart.

In my Foreword I have compared the humorous vein of the comic tales with our northern "wut," chiefly for the dryness and slyness which pervade it. But it differs in degree as much as the pathos varies. The staple article is Cairene "chaff," a peculiar banter possibly inherited from their pagan forefathers: instances of this are found in the c.o.c.k and Dog (vol. i. 22), the Eunuch's address to the Cook (vol. i. 244), the Wazir's exclamation, "Too little pepper!" (vol. i. 246), the self- communing of Judar (vol. vi. 219), the Has.h.i.+sh-eater in Ali Shar (vol. iv. 213), the scene between the brother-Wazirs (vol. i.

197), the treatment of the Gobbo (vol. i. 221, 228), the Water of Zemzem (vol. i. 284), and the Eunuchs Bukhayt and Kafur[FN#295]

(vol. ii. 49, 51). At times it becomes a masterpiece of fun, of rollicking Rabelaisian humour underlaid by the caustic mother-wit of Sancho Panza, as in the orgie of the Ladies of Baghdad (vol.

i. 92, 93); the Holy Ointment applied to the beard of Luka the Knight-- "unxerunt regem Salomonem" (vol. ii. 222); and Ja'afar and the Old Badawi (vol. v. 98), with its reminiscence of "chaffy" King Amasis. This reaches its acme in the description of ugly old age (vol. v. 3); in The Three Wishes, the wickedest of satires on the alter s.e.xus (vi. 180); in Ali the Persian (vol.

iv. 139); in the Lady and her Five Suitors (vol. vi. 172), which corresponds and contrasts with the dully told Story of Upakosa and her Four Lovers of the Katha (p. 17); and in The Man of Al- Yaman (vol. iv. 245) where we find the true Falstaffian touch.

But there is sterling wit, sweet and bright, expressed without any artifice of words, in the immortal Barber's tales of his brothers, especially the second, the fifth and the sixth (vol. i.

324, 325 and 343). Finally, wherever the honest and independent old debauchee Abu Nowas makes his appearance the fun becomes fescennine and milesian.

B.--The Manner of the Nights.

And now, after considering the matter, I will glance at the language and style of The Nights. The first point to remark is the peculiarly happy framework of the Recueil, which I cannot but suspect set an example to the Decamerone and its host of successors.[FN#296] The admirable Introduction, a perfect mise- en-scene, gives the amplest raison d'etre of the work, which thus has all the unity required for a great romantic recueil. We perceive this when reading the contemporary Hindu work the Katha Sarit Sagara,[FN#297] which is at once so like and so unlike The Nights: here the preamble is insufficient; the whole is clumsy for want of a thread upon which the many independent tales and fables should be strung[FN#298]; and the consequent disorder and confusion tell upon the reader, who cannot remember the sequence without taking notes.

As was said in my Foreword "without The Nights no Arabian Nights!" and now, so far from holding the pauses "an intolerable interruption to the narrative," I attach additional importance to these pleasant and restful breaks introduced into long and intricate stories. Indeed beginning again I should adopt the plan of the Cal. Edit. opening and ending every division with a dialogue between the sisters. Upon this point, however, opinions will differ and the critic will remind me that the consensus of the MSS. would be wanting: The Bresl. Edit. in many places merely interjects the number of the night without interrupting the tale; the MS. in the Bibliotheque Nationale used by Galland contains only cclx.x.xii and the Frenchman ceases to use the division after the ccx.x.xvith Night and in some editions after the cxcviith.[FN#299] A fragmentary MS. according to Scott whose friend J. Anderson found it in Bengal, breaks away after Night xxix; and in the Wortley Montagu, the Sultan relents at an early opportunity, the stories, as in Galland, continuing only as an amus.e.m.e.nt. I have been careful to preserve the balanced sentences with which the tales open; the tautology and the prose- rhyme serving to attract attention, e. g., "In days of yore and in times long gone before there was a King," etc.; in England where we strive not to waste words this becomes "Once upon a time." The closings also are artfully calculated, by striking a minor chord after the rush and hurry of the incidents, to suggest repose: "And they led the most pleasurable of lives and the most delectable, till there came to them the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies and they became as though they had never been." Place this by the side of Boccaccio's favourite formulae:--Egli conquist poi la Scozia, e funne re coronato (ii, 3); Et onorevolmente visse infino alla fine (ii, 4); Molte volte G.o.derono del loro amore: Iddio faccia noi G.o.der del nostro (iii, 6): E cosi nella sue grossezza si rimase e ancor vi si sta (vi, 8). We have further docked this tail into: "And they lived happily ever after."

I cannot take up the Nights in their present condition, without feeling that the work has been written down from the Rawi or Nakkal,[FN#300] the conteur or professional story-teller, also called Ka.s.sas and Maddah, corresponding with the Hindu Bhat or Bard. To these men my learned friend Baron A. von Kremer would attribute the Mu'allakat vulgarly called the Suspended Poems, as being "indited from the relation of the Rawi." Hence in our text the frequent interruption of the formula Kal' al-Rawi = quotes the reciter; dice Turpino. Moreover, The Nights read in many places like a hand-book or guide for the professional, who would learn them by heart; here and there introducing his "gag" and "patter". To this "business" possibly we may attribute much of the ribaldry which starts up in unexpected places: it was meant simply to provoke a laugh. How old the custom is and how unchangeable is Eastern life is shown, a correspondent suggests, by the Book of Esther which might form part of The Alf Laylah.

"On that night (we read in Chap. vi. 1) could not the King sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the King." The Rawi would declaim the recitative somewhat in conversational style; he would intone the Saj'a or prose-rhyme and he would chant to the tw.a.n.ging of the Rabab, a one-stringed viol, the poetical parts. Dr.

Scott[FN#301] borrows from the historian of Aleppo a life-like picture of the Story-teller. "He recites walking to and fro in the middle of the coffee-room, stopping only now and then, when the expression requires some emphatical att.i.tude. He is commonly heard with great attention; and not unfrequently in the midst of some interesting adventure, when the expectation of his audience is raised to the highest pitch, he breaks off abruptly and makes his escape, leaving both his hero or heroine and his audience in the utmost embarra.s.sment. Those who happen to be near the door endeavour to detain him, insisting upon the story being finished before he departs; but he always makes his retreat good[FN#302]; and the auditors suspending their curiosity are induced to return at the same time next day to hear the sequel. He has no sooner made his exit than the company in separate parties fall to disputing about the characters of the drama or the event of an unfinished adventure. The controversy by degrees becomes serious and opposite opinions are maintained with no less warmth than if the fall of the city depended upon the decision."

At Tangier, where a murder in a "coffee-house" had closed these hovels, pending a sufficient payment to the Pasha; and where, during the hard winter of 1885-86, the poorer cla.s.ses were compelled to puff their Kayf (Bhang, cannabis indica) and sip their black coffee in the muddy streets under a rainy sky, I found the Rawi active on Sundays and Thursdays, the market days.

The favourite place was the "Soko de barra," or large bazar, outside the town whose condition is that of Suez and Bayrut half a century ago. It is a foul slope; now slippery with viscous mud, then powdery with fetid dust, dotted with graves and decaying tombs, unclean booths, gargottes and tattered tents, and frequented by women, mere bundles of unclean rags, and by men wearing the haik or burnus, a Franciscan frock, tending their squatting camels and chaffering over cattle for Gibraltar beef- eaters. Here the market-people form a ring about the reciter, a stalwart man affecting little raiment besides a broad waist-belt into which his lower chiffons are tucked, and noticeable only for his shock hair, wild eyes, broad grin and generally disreputable aspect. He usually handles a short stick; and, when drummer and piper are absent, he carries a tiny tom-tom shaped like an hour- gla.s.s, upon which he taps the periods. This Scealuidhe, as the Irish call him, opens the drama with extempore prayer, proving that he and the audience are good Moslems: he speaks slowly and with emphasis, varying the diction with breaks of animation, abundant action and the most comical grimace: he advances, retires and wheels about, ill.u.s.trating every point with pantomime; and his features, voice and gestures are so expressive that even Europeans who cannot understand a word of Arabic divine the meaning of his tale. The audience stands breathless and motionless surprising strangers[FN#303] by the ingenuousness and freshness of feeling hidden under their hard and savage exterior.

The performance usually ends with the embryo actor going round for alms and flouris.h.i.+ng in air every silver bit, the usual honorarium being a few "f'lus," that marvellous money of Barbary, big coppers worth one-twelfth of a penny. All the tales I heard were purely local, but Fakhri Bey, a young Osmanli domiciled for some time in Fez and Mequinez, a.s.sured me that The Nights are still recited there.

Many travellers, including Dr. Russell, have complained that they failed to find a complete MS. copy of The Nights. Evidently they never heard of the popular superst.i.tion which declares that no one can read through them without dying--it is only fair that my patrons should know this. Yacoub Artin Pasha declares that the superst.i.tion dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and he explains it in two ways. Firstly, it is a facetious exaggeration, meaning that no one has leisure or patience to wade through the long repertory. Secondly, the work is condemned as futile. When Egypt produced savants and legists like Ibn al- Hajar, Al-'Ayni, and Al-Kastallani, to mention no others, the taste of the country inclined to dry factual studies and positive science; nor, indeed, has this taste wholly died out: there are not a few who, like Khayri Pasha, contend that the mathematic is more useful even for legal studies than history and geography, and at Cairo the chief of the Educational Department has always been an engineer, i. e., a mathematician. The Olema declared war against all "futilities," in which they included not only stories but also what is politely ent.i.tled Authentic History. From this to the fatal effect of such lecture is only a step. Society, however, cannot rest without light literature; so the novel- reading cla.s.s was thrown back upon writings which had all the indelicacy and few of the merits of The Nights.

Turkey is the only Moslem country which has dared to produce a regular drama[FN#304] and to arouse the energies of such brilliant writers as Munif Pasha, statesman and scholar; Ekrem Bey, literato and professor; Kemal Bey, held by some to be the greatest writer in modern Osmanli-land and Abd al-Hakk Hamid Bey, first Secretary of the London Emba.s.sy. The theatre began in its ruder form by taking subjects bodily from The Nights; then it annexed its plays as we do--the Novel having ousted the Drama-- from the French; and lastly it took courage to be original. Many years ago I saw Harun al-Ras.h.i.+d and the Three Kalandars, with deer-skins and all their properties de rigueur in the court-yard of Government House, Damascus, declaiming to the extreme astonishment and delight of the audience. It requires only to glance at The Nights for seeing how much histrionic matter they contain.

In considering the style of The Nights we must bear in mind that the work has never been edited according to our ideas of the process. Consequently there is no just reason for translating the whole verbatim et literatim, as has been done by Torrens, Lane and Payne in his "Tales from the Arabic."[FN#305] This conscientious treatment is required for versions of an author like Cam?ns, whose works were carefully corrected and arranged by a competent litterateur, but it is not merited by The Nights as they now are. The Macnaghten, the Bulak and the Bayrut texts, though printed from MSS. identical in order, often differ in minor matters. Many friends have asked me to undertake the work: but, even if lightened by the aid of Shaykhs, Muns.h.i.+s and copyists, the labour would be severe, tedious and thankless: better leave the holes open than patch them with fancy work or with heterogeneous matter. The learned, indeed, as Lane tells us (i. 74; iii. 740), being thoroughly dissatisfied with the plain and popular, the ordinary and "vulgar" note of the language, have attempted to refine and improve it and have more than once threatened to remodel it, that is, to make it odious. This would be to dress up Robert Burns in plumes borrowed from Dryden and Pope.

The first defect of the texts is in the distribution and arrangement of the matter, as I have noticed in the case of Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi. 77). Moreover, many of the earlier Nights are overlong and not a few of the others are overshort: this, however, has the prime recommendation of variety. Even the vagaries of editor and scribe will not account for all the incoherences, disorder and inconsequence, and for the vain iterations which suggest that the author has forgotten what he said. In places there are dead allusions to persons and tales which are left dark, e. g. vol. i. pp. 43, 57, 61, etc. The digressions are abrupt and useless, leading nowhere, while sundry pages are wearisome for excess of prolixity or hardly intelligible for extreme conciseness. The perpetual recurrence of mean colloquialisms and of words and idioms peculiar to Egypt and Syria[FN#306] also takes from the pleasure of the perusal.

Yet we cannot deny that it has its use: this unadorned language of familiar conversation, in its day adapted for the understanding of the people, is best fitted for the Rawi's craft in the camp and caravan, the Harem, the bazar and the coffee- house. Moreover, as has been well said, The Nights is the only written half-way house between the literary and colloquial Arabic which is accessible to all, and thus it becomes necessary to the students who would qualify themselves for service in Moslem lands from Mauritania to Mesopotamia. It freely uses Turkish words like "Khatun" and Persian terms as "Shahbandar," thus requiring for translation not only a somewhat archaic touch, but also a vocabulary borrowed from various sources: otherwise the effect would not be reproduced. In places, however, the style rises to the highly ornate approaching the pompous; e. g. the Wazirial addresses in the tale of King Jali'ad. The battle-scenes, mostly admirable (vol. v. 365), are told with the conciseness of a despatch and the vividness of an artist; the two combining to form perfect "word-pictures." Of the Badi'a or euphuistic style, "Parleying euphuism," and of AI Saj'a, the prose rhyme, I shall speak in a future page.

The characteristics of the whole are navete and simplicity, clearness and a singular concision. The gorgeousness is in the imagery not in the language; the words are weak while the sense, as in the cla.s.sical Scandinavian books, is strong; and here the Arabic differs diametrically from the florid exuberance and turgid amplifications of the Persian story-teller, which sound so hollow and unreal by the side of a chaster model. It abounds in formulae such as repet.i.tions of religious phrases which are unchangeable. There are certain stock comparisons, as Lokman's wisdom, Joseph's beauty, Jacob's grief, Job's patience, David's music, and Maryam the Virgin's chast.i.ty. The eyebrow is a Nun; the eye a Sad, the mouth a Mim. A hero is more prudent than the crow, a better guide than the Kata grouse, more generous than the c.o.c.k, warier than the crane, braver than the lion, more aggressive than the panther, finer-sighted than the horse, craftier than the fox, greedier than the gazelle, more vigilant than the dog, and thriftier than the ant. The cup-boy is a sun rising from the dark underworld symbolised by his collar; his cheek-mole is a crumb of ambergris, his nose is a scymitar grided at the curve; his lower lip is a jujube; his teeth are the Pleiades or hailstones; his browlocks are scorpions; his young hair on the upper lip is an emerald; his side beard is a swarm of ants or a Lam ( -letter) enclosing the roses or anemones of his cheek. The cup-girl is a moon who rivals the sheen of the sun; her forehead is a pearl set off by the jet of her "idiot-fringe;"

her eyelashes scorn the sharp sword; and her glances are arrows shot from the bow of the eyebrows. A mistress necessarily belongs, though living in the next street, to the Wady Liwa and to a hostile clan of Badawin whose blades are ever thirsting for the lover's blood and whose malignant tongues aim only at the "defilement of separation." Youth is upright as an Alif, or slender and bending as a branch of the Ban-tree which we should call a willow-wand,[FN#307] while Age, crabbed and crooked, bends groundwards vainly seeking in the dust his lost juvenility. As Baron de Slane says of these stock comparisons (Ibn Khall. i.

x.x.xvi.), "The figurative language of Moslem poets is often difficult to be understood. The narcissus is the eye; the feeble stem of that plant bends languidly under its dower, and thus recalls to mind the languor of the eyes. Pearls signify both tears and teeth; the latter are sometimes called hailstones, from their whiteness and moisture; the lips are cornelians or rubies; the gums, a pomegranate flower; the dark foliage of the myrtle is synonymous with the black hair of the beloved, or with the first down on the cheeks of p.u.b.erty. The down itself is called the izar, or head-stall of the bridle, and the curve of the izar is compared to the letters lam ( ) and nun ( ).[FN#308] Ringlets trace on the cheek or neck the letter Waw ( ); they are called Scorpions (as the Greek ), either from their dark colour or their agitated movements; the eye is a sword; the eyelids scabbards; the whiteness of the complexion, camphor; and a mole or beauty-spot, musk, which term denotes also dark hair. A mole is sometimes compared also to an ant creeping on the cheek towards the honey of the mouth; a handsome face is both a full moon and day; black hair is night; the waist is a willow-branch or a lance; the water of the face is self-respect: a poet sells the water of his face[FN#309] when he bestows mercenary praises on a rich patron."