The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume XI Part 24

[FN#501] Arab. "Ihtida,"=divine direction to Huda or salvation.

The old bawd was still dressed as a devotee, and keeps up the cant of her caste. No sensible man in the East ever allows a religious old woman to pa.s.s his threshold.

[FN#502] In this tale "poetical justice" is neglected, but the teller skilfully caused the wife to be ravished and not to be a particeps criminis. The lover escapes scot-free because Moslems, as well as Hindus, hold that the amourist under certain conditions is justified in obtaining his object by fair means or foul. See p. 147 of "Early Ideas, a Group of Hindoo Stories,"

collected and collated by Anaryan: London, Allens, 1881.

[FN#503] This is supplied from the "Tale of the King and his Wazir's Wife," vol. vi. 129.

[FN#504] Arab. "Ibl," a specific name: it is presently opposed to "Nakah," a she-dromedary, and "Rahilah," a riding-camel.

[FN#505] Here "Amsaytu" is used in its literal sense "I evened"

(came at evening), and this is the case with seven such verbs, Asbaha, Amsa, Azha, Azhara, A'tama, Zalla, and Bata, which either conjoin the sense of the sentence with their respective times, morning, evening, forenoon, noon and the first sundown watch, all day and all night or are used "elegantly," as grammarians say, for the simple "becoming" or "being."

[FN#506] The Badawi dogs are as dangerous as those of Montenegro but not so treacherous: the latter will sneak up to the stranger and suddenly bite him most viciously. I once had a narrow escape from an ign.o.ble death near the slaughter-house of Alexandria-Ramlah, where the beasts were unusually ferocious. A pack a.s.sailed me at early dawn and but for an iron stick and a convenient wall I should have been torn to pieces.

[FN#507] These elopements are of most frequent occurrence: see Pilgrimage iii. 52.

[FN#508] The princ.i.p.al incidents, the loss and recovery of wife and children, occur in the Story of the Knight Placidus (Gesta Romanorum, cx.). But the ecclesiastical taleteller does not do poetical justice upon any offenders, and he vilely slanders the great Caesar, Trajan.

[FN#509] i.e. a long time: the idiom has already been noticed.

In the original we have "of days and years and twelvemonths" in order that "A'wam" (years) may jingle with "Ayyam" (days).

[FN#510] Nothing can be more beautiful than the natural parks which travellers describe on the coasts of tropical seas.

[FN#511] Arab. "Khayyal" not only a rider but a good and a hard rider. Hence the proverb "Al-Khayyal" kabr maftuh=uomo a cavallo sepoltura aperta.

[FN#512] i.e. the crew and the islanders.

[FN#513] Arab. "Hadas," a word not easy to render. In grammar Lumsden renders it by "event" and the learned Captain Lockett (Miut Amil) in an awful long note (pp. 195 to 224) by "mode,"

grammatical or logical. The value of his disquisition is its proving that, as the Arabs borrowed their romance from the Persians, so they took their physics and metaphysics of grammar and syntax; logic and science in general, from the Greeks.

[FN#514] We should say the anchors were weighed and the canvas spread.

[FN#515] The rhymes are disposed in the quaintest way, showing extensive corruption. Mr. Payne has ordered them into couplets with a "bob" or refrain. I have followed suit, preserving the original vagaries of rhymes.

[FN#516] Arab. "Nuwab," broken plur. (that is, noun of mult.i.tude) of Naubah, the Anglo-Indian Nowbut. This is applied to the band playing at certain intervals before the gate of a Rajah or high official.

[FN#517] Arab. "Hajib"; Captain Trotter ("Our Mission to the Court of Morocco in 1880": Edinburgh, Douglas, 1881) speaks, pa.s.sim, of the "cheery little Hajeb or Eyebrow." Really this is too bad: why cannot travellers consult an Orientalist when treating of Oriental subjects?

[FN#518] Suicide is rare in Moslem lands, compared with India, China, and similar "pagan" countries; for the Mussulman has the same objection as the Christian "to rush into the presence of his Creator," as if he could do so without the Creator's permission.

The Hindu also has some curious prejudices on the subject; he will hang himself, but not by the neck, for fear lest his soul be defiled by exiting through an impure channel. In England hanging is the commonest form for men; then follow in due order drowning, cutting or stabbing, poison, and gun-shot: women prefer drowning (except in the cold months) and poison. India has not yet found a Dr. Ogle to tabulate suicide; but the cases most familiar to old Anglo-Indians are leaping down cliffs (as at Giruar), drowning, and starving to death. And so little is life valued that a mother will make a vow obliging her son to suicide himself at a certain age.

[FN#519] Arab. "Zarad-Khanah," before noticed: vol. vii. 363.

Here it would mean a temporary prison for criminals of high degree. De Sacy, Chrestom, ii. 179.

[FN#520] Arab. "'Adul," I have said, means in Marocco, that land of lies and subterfuges, a public notary.

[FN#521] This sentence is inserted by Mr. Payne to complete the sense.

[FN#522] i.e. he intended to marry her when time served.

[FN#523] Arab. from Pers. Khwajah and Khawajat: see vol. vi. 46.

[FN#524] Probably meaning by one mother whom he loved best of all his wives: in the next page we read of their sister.

[FN#525] Come down, i.e. from heaven.

[FN#526] This is the Bresl. Edit.'s form of Shahryar=city-keeper (like Marzban, guardian of the Marches), for city-friend. The learned Weil has preferred it to Shahryar.

[FN#527] Sic: in the Mac. Edit. "Shahrazad" and here making nonsense of the word. It is regretable that the king's reflections do not run at times as in this text: his compunctions lead well up to the denouement.

[FN#528] The careless text says "couplets." It has occurred in vol. i. 149: so I quote Torrens (p. 149).

[FN#529] In the text Salma is made to speak, utterly confusing the dialogue.

[FN#530] The well-known Baloch province beginning west of Sind: the term is supposed to be a corruption of Mahi-Khoran=Ichthyophagi. The reader who wishes to know more about it will do well to consult "Unexplored Baluchistan," etc.

(Griffith and Farran, 1882), the excellent work of my friend Mr.

Ernest A. Floyer, long Chief of the Telegraphic Department, Cairo.

[FN#531] Meaning the last city in Makran before entering Sind.

Al-Sharr would be a fancy name, "The Wickedness."

[FN#532] i.e. think of nothing but his present peril.

[FN#533] Arab. "Munkati'ah"=lit. "cut off" (from the weal of the world). See Pilgrimage i. 22.

[FN#534] The lines are in vol. i. 207 and iv. 189. 1 here quote Mr. Payne.

[FN#535] I have another proposal to make.

[FN#536] i.e. In my heart's core: the figure has often occurred.

[FN#537] These sudden elevations, so common in the East and not unknown to the West in the Napoleonic days, explain how the legend of "Joanna Pap.i.s.sa" (Pope John XIII), who succeeded Leo IV. in A.D. 855 and was succeeded by Benedict III., found ready belief amongst the enemies of papacy. She was an English woman born in Germany who came to Rome and professed theology with eclat, wherefore the people enthroned her. "Pope Joan" governed with exemplary wisdom, but during a procession on Rogation Sunday she was delivered of a fine boy in the street: some make her die on the spot; others declare that she perished in prison.

[FN#538] That such things should happen in times of famine is only natural; but not at other seasons. This abomination on the part of the butcher is, however, more than once alluded toin The Nights: see vol. i. 332.

[FN#539] Opinions differ as to the site of this city, so celebrated in the mediaeval history of Al-Islam: most probably it stood where Hyderabad of Sind now is. The question has been ably treated by Sir Henry M. Elliot in his "History of India," edited from his posthumous papers by Professor Dowson.

[FN#540] Which, by-the-by, the average Eastern does with even more difficulty than the average European. For the most part the charge to secrecy fixes the matter in his mind even when he has forgotten that it is to be kept secret. Hence the most unpleasant results.

[FN#541] Such an act appears impossible, and yet history tells us of a celebrated Sufi, Khayr al-Na.s.saj (the Weaver), who being of dark complexion was stopped on return from his pilgrimage at Kufah by a stranger that said, "Thou art my negro slave and thy name is Khayr." He was kept at the loom for years, till at last the man set him free, and simply said, "Thou wast not my slave"

(Ibn Khall. i. 513).

[FN#542] These lines have occurred before. I quote Mr. Payne for variety.

[FN#543] Arab. "Tasill saliata 'l-Munkat'in"=lit. "raining on the drouth-hardened earth of the cut-off." The metaphor is admissible in the eyes of an Arab who holds water to be the chiefest of blessings, and makes it synonymous with bounty and beneficence."

[FN#544] Possibly this is said in mere fun; but, as Easterns are practical physiognomists, it may hint the fact that a large nose in womankind is the sign of a masculine nature.

[FN#545] Arab. "Zakat wa Sadakat,"=lit. paying of poor rate and purifying thy property by almsdeeds. See vol. i. 339.