Tales from the Arabic Part 38

[FN#1] A town of Khoia.s.san.

[FN#2] i.e., he dared not attempt to force her?

[FN#3] i.e. her "yes" meant "yes" and her "no" "no."

[FN#4] Lit. ignorance.

[FN#5] Lit. spoke against her due.

[FN#6] i.e. a domed monument.

[FN#7] Lit "ignorance," often used in the sense of "forwardness."

[FN#8] i.e. my present plight.

[FN#9] i.e. ten thousand dinars.

[FN#10] A similar story to this, though differing considerably in detail, will be found in my "Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night," Vol. V. p. 9, The Jewish Cadi and his pions wife.

[FN#11] Or divineress (kahinek).

[FN#12] i.e. wh.o.r.edom.

[FN#13] Or "scar" (ather).

[FN#14] ie. hearken to.

[FN#15] i.e. Persia.

[FN#16] i.e. the case with which he earned his living.

[FN#17] i.e. the ten thousand dirhems of the bond.

[FN#18] i.e. exhorted her to patience.

[FN#19] Or performing surgical operations (ilaj).

[FN#20] i.e. the open s.p.a.ce before his house.

[FN#21] Or "drew near unto."

[FN#22] i.e. a descendant of Mohammed.

[FN#23] Or the art of judging from external appearances (firaseh).

[FN#24] Sic in the text; but the pa.s.sage is apparently corrupt.

It is not plain why a rosy complexion, blue eyes and tallness should be peculiar to women in love. Arab women being commonly short, swarthy and black eyed, the attributes mentioned appear rather to denote the foreign origin of the woman; and it is probable, therefore, that this pa.s.sage has by a copyist's error, been mixed up with that which related to the signs by which the mock physician recognized her strangehood, the clause specifying the symptoms of her love lorn condition having been crowded out in the process, an accident of no infrequent occurrence in the transcription of Oriental works.

[FN#25] Yellow was the colour prescribed for the wearing of Jews by the Muslim lawm in accordance with the decree issued by Khalif Omar ben el Khettab after the taking of Jerusalem in A.D. 636.

[FN#26] i.e. Sunday.

[FN#27] Herais, a species of "risotto," made of pounded wheat or rice and meat in shreds.

[FN#28] Lit. "That have pa.s.sed the night," i.e. are stale and therefore indigestable.

[FN#29] i.e. Sat.u.r.day.

[FN#30] i.e. native of Merv.

[FN#31] Or "ruined," lit. "destroyed."

[FN#32] i.e. native of Rei, a city of Khora.s.sia.

[FN#33] The text has khenadic, ditches or valleys; but this is, in all probability, a clerical or typographical error for fenadic, inns or caravanserais.

[FN#34] It is a paramount duty of the Muslim to provide his dead brother in the faith with decent interment; it is, therefore, a common practice for the family of a poor Arab to solicit contributions toward the expenses of his burial, nor is the well-to-do true believer safe from imposition of the kind described in the text.

[FN#35] i.e. the recompense in the world to come promised to the performer of a charitable action.

[FN#36] i.e. camphor and lote-tree leaves dried and powdered (sometimes mixed with rose-water) which are strewn over the dead body, before it is wrapped in the shroud. In the case of a man of wealth, more costly perfumes (such as musk, aloes and ambergris) are used.

[FN#37] All the ablutions prescribed by the Mohammedan ritual are avoided by the occurrence, during the process, of any cause of ceremonial impurity (such as the mentioned in the text) and must be recommenced.

[FN#38] Having handled a corpse, he had become in a state of legal impurity and it beloved him therefore to make the prescribed ablution.

[FN#39] Which he had taken off for the purpose of making abulution. This was reversing the ordinary course of affairs, the dead man's clothes being the washer's prequisite.

[FN#40] i.e. till it was diminished by evaporation to two-thirds of its original volume.

[FN#41] The Mohammedan grave is a cell, hollowed out in the sides of a trench and so constructed as to keep out the earth, that the deceased may be able to sit up and answer the examining angels when they visit him in the tomb. There was, therefore, nothing improbable in Er Razi's boast that he could abide two days in the tomb.

[FN#42] Nawous, a sort of overground well or turricle of masonry, surmounted by an iron grating, on which the Gueber's body is placed for devoration by the birds.

[FN#43] Munkir [Munker] and Nakir [Nekir] are the two angels that preside at 'the examination of the tomb.' They visit a man in his grave directly after he has been buried and examine him concerning his faith; if he acknowledge that there is but one G.o.d and that Mohammed is His prophet [apostle], they suffer him to rest in peace; otherwise they beat him with [red-hot] iron maces, till he roars so loud[ly] that he is heard by all from east to west, except by man and Ginns [Jinn]."--Palmer's Koran, Introduction.

[FN#44] Lit. the oven (tennour); but this is obviously a mistake for "tombs" (cubour).

[FN#45] i.e. as a propitiatory offering on behalf of.

[FN#46] i.e. though he remain at thy charge or (as we should say) on thy hands.

[FN#47] About twenty-five s.h.i.+llings.

[FN#48] About 137 10s.

[FN#49] Meaning the sharper.