Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp Part 6

When the Lady Bedrulbudour saw this, she cried out and said to him, "What hath this holy anch.o.r.ess done, that thou burthenest thyself with the sore burden of her blood? Hast thou no fear of G.o.d, that thou dost this and hast slain Fatimeh, who was a holy woman and whose divine gifts were renowned?" Quoth he to her, "I have not slain Fatimeh; nay, I have slain him who slew her; for that this is the brother of the accursed Maugrabin enchanter, who took thee and by his sorcery transported the palace with thee to the land of Africa. Yea, this accursed one was his brother and came to this country and wrought these frauds, slaying Fatimeh and donning her clothes and coming hither, so he might take vengeance on me for his brother. Moreover, it was he who taught thee to seek of me a Roc's egg, so my destruction should ensue thereof; and if thou mis...o...b.. of my word, come and see whom I have slain." So saying, he did off the Maugrabin's chin veil and the Lady Bedrulbudour looked and saw a man whose beard covered his face; whereupon she at once knew the truth and said to Alaeddin, "O my beloved, twice have I cast thee into danger of death;" and he said to her, "O Lady Bedrulbudour, thanks to thine eyes, [670] no harm [hath betided me thereof; nay,] I accept with all joy everything that cometh to me through thee." When the princess heard this, she hastened to embrace him and kissed him, saying, "O my beloved, all this was of my love for thee and I knew not what I did; [671] nor indeed am I negligent of thy love." [672] Whereupon Alaeddin kissed her and strained her to his breast and love redoubled between them.

Presently, in came the Sultan; so they told him of all that had pa.s.sed with the Maugrabin enchanter's brother and showed him the latter, as he lay dead; whereupon he bade burn him and scatter his ashes to the winds.

Thenceforward Alaeddin abode with his wife the Lady Bedrulbudour in all peace and pleasure and was delivered from all perils. Then, after a while, the Sultan died and Alaeddin sat down on the throne of the kingdom and ruled and did justice among the people; and all the folk loved him and he lived with his wife, the Lady Bedrulbudour, in all cheer and solace and contentment till there came to them the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Societies.

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 1: i.e. (1) Zeyn Alasnam, (2) Codadad. (3) The Sleeper Awakened. (4) Aladdin. (5) Baba Abdallah. (6) Sidi Nouman. (7) Cogia Ha.s.san Alhabbah (8) Ali Baba. (9) Ali Cogia. (10) Prince Ahmed and Pari-Banou. (11) The Sisters who envied their younger Sister.]

[Footnote 2: "M. Galland was aware of the imperfection of the MS. used by him and (unable to obtain a more perfect copy) he seems to have endeavoured to supply the place of the missing portions by incorporating in his translation a number of Persian, Turkish and Arabic Tales, which had no connection with his original and for which it is generally supposed that he probably had recourse to Oriental MSS. (as yet unidentified) contained in the Royal Libraries of Paris." Vol. IX. p.

263. "Of these the Story of the Sleeper Awakened is the only one which has been traced to an Arabic original and is found in the Breslau edition of the complete work, printed by Dr. Habicht from a MS. of Tunisian origin, apparently of much later date than the other known copies.....Galland himself cautions us that the Stories of Zeyn Alasnam and Codadad do not belong to the Thousand and One Nights and were published (how he does not explain) without his authority." p. 264. "It is possible that an exhaustive examination of the various MS. copies of the Thousand and One Nights known to exist in the public libraries of Europe Might yet cast some light upon the origin of the interpolated tales; but, in view of the strong presumption afforded by internal evidence that they are of modern composition and form no part of the authentic text, it can hardly be expected, where the result and the value of that result are alike so doubtful, that any competent person will be found to undertake so heavy a task, except as incidental to some more general enquiry. The only one of the eleven which seems to me to bear any trace of possible connection with the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night is Aladdin, and it may be that an examination of the MS. copies of the original work within my reach will yet enable me to trace the origin of that favourite story." pp. 268-9.]

[Footnote 3: Histoire d' 'Ala Al-Din ou la Lampe Merveilleuse. Texte Arabe, Publie avec une notice de quelques Ma.n.u.scrits des Mille et Une Nuits et la traduction de Galland. Par H. Zotenberg. Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1888.]

[Footnote 4: For the sake of uniformity and convenience of reference, I use, throughout this Introduction, Galland's spelling of the names which occur in his translation, returning to my own system of transliteration in my rendering of the stories themselves.]

[Footnote 5: i.e. G.o.d's.]

[Footnote 6: "La suite des Mille et une Nuits, Contes Arabes trafluits par Dom Chavis et M. Cazotte. Paris 1788." The Edinburgh Review (July, 1886) gives the date of the first edition as 1785; but this is an error, probably founded upon the antedating of a copy of the Cabinet des Fees, certain sets of which (though not actually completed till 1793) are dated, for some publisher's reason, 1785. See also following note.]

[Footnote 7: These four (supplemental) vols. of the Cabinet des Fees (printed in 1793, though antedated 1788 and 1789) do not form the first edition of Chavis and Cazotte's so-called Sequel, which was in 1793 added, by way of supplement, to the Cabinet des Fees, having been first published in 1788 (two years after the completion-in thirty-seven volumes-of that great storehouse of supernatural fiction) under the t.i.tle of "Les Veillees Persanes" or "Les Veillees du Sultan Schahriar avec la Sultane Scheherazade, histoires incroyables, amusantes et morales, traduites par M. Cazotte et D. Chavis, faisant suite aux Mille et Une Nuits."]

[Footnote 8: I cannot agree with my friend Sir R. F. Burton in his estimate of these tales, which seem to me, even in Caussin de Perceval's corrector rendering and in his own brilliant and masterly version, very inferior, in style, conduct and diction, to those of "the old Arabian Nights," whilst I think "Chavis and Cazotte's Continuation" utterly unworthy of republication, whether in part or "in its entirety." Indeed, I confess the latter version seems to me so curiously and perversely and unutterably bad that I cannot conceive how Cazotte can have perpetrated it and can only regard it as a bad joke on his part. As Caussin de Perceval remarks, it is evident that Shawish (whether from ignorance or carelessness) must, in many instances, have utterly misled his French coadjutor (who had no knowledge of Arabic) as to the meaning of the original, whilst it is much to be regretted that a writer of exquisite genius and one of the first stylists of the 18th century, such as the author of the Diable Amoureux, (a masterpiece to be ranked with Manon Lescaut and Le Neveu de Rameau,) should have stooped to the commission of the flagrant offences against good taste and artistic morality which disfigure well nigh every line of the so-called "Sequel to the 1001 Nights." "Far be it" (as the Arabs say) that we should do so cruel a wrong to so well and justly beloved a memory as that of Jacques Cazotte as to attempt to perpetuate the remembrance of a literary crime which one can hardly believe him to have committed in sober earnest! Rather let us seek to bury in oblivion this his one offence and suffer kind Lethe with its beneficent waters to wash this "adulterous blot" from his else unsullied name.]

[Footnote 9: Lit. "Servants" (ibad) i.e. of G.o.d.]

[Footnote 10: i.e. he who most stands in need of G.o.d's mercy.]

[Footnote 11: Kebikej is the name of the genie set over the insect kingdom. Scribes occasionally invoke him to preserve their ma.n.u.scripts from worms.-Note by M. Zotenberg.]

[Footnote 12: Galland calls him "Hanna, c'est... dire Jean Baptiste,"

the Arabic Christian equivalent of which is Youhenna and the Muslim Yehya, "surnomme Diab." Diary, October 25, 1709.]

[Footnote 13: At this date Galland had already published the first six (of twelve) volumes of his translation (1704-5) and as far as I can ascertain, in the absence of a reference copy (the British Museum possessing no copy of the original edition), the 7th and 8th volumes were either published or in the press. Vol. viii. was certainly published before the end of the year 1709, by which time the whole of vol. ix. was ready for printing.]

[Footnote 14: i.e. Aladdin.]

[Footnote 15: Galland died in 1715, leaving the last two volumes of his translation (which appear by the Diary to have been ready for the prep on the 8th June, 1713) to be published in 1717.]

[Footnote 16: Aleppo.]

[Footnote 17: i.e. Yonhenna Diab.]

[Footnote 18: For "Persian." Galland evidently supposed, in error, that Petis de la Croix's forthcoming work was a continuation of his "Contes Turcs" published in 1707, a partial translation (never completed) of the Turkish version of "The Forty Viziers," otherwise "The Malice of Women," for which see Le Cabinet des Fees, vol. xvi. where the work is, curiously enough, attributed (by the Table of Contents) to Galland himself.]

[Footnote 19: See my terminal essay. My conclusions there stated as to the probable date of the original work have since been completely confirmed by the fact that experts a.s.sign Galland's original (imperfect) copy of the Arabic text to the latter part of the fourteenth century, on the evidence of the handwriting, etc.]

[Footnote 20: In M. Zotenberg's notes to Aladdin.]

[Footnote 21: Night CCCCXCVII.]

[Footnote 22: Khelifeh.]

[Footnote 23: Or "favourites" (auliya), i.e. holy men, devotees, saints.]

[Footnote 24: i.e. the geomancers. For a detailed description of this magical process, (which is known as "sand-tracing," Kharu 'r reml,) see posl, p. 199, note 2.{see FN#548}]

[Footnote 25: i.e. "What it will do in the course of its life"]

[Footnote 26: Or "ascendants" (tewali).]

[Footnote 27: i.e. "Adornment of the Images." This is an evident mistake (due to some ignorant copyist or reciter of the story) of the same kind as that to be found at the commencement of the story of Ghanim ben Eyoub, (see my Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol I. p. 363 et seq.), where the hero is absurdly stated to have been surnamed at birth the "Slave of Love," a sobriquet which could only have attached itself to him in after-life and as a consequence of his pa.s.sion for Fitoeh. Sir R. F. Burton suggests, with great probability, that the name, as it stands in the text, is a contraction, by a common elliptical process, of the more acceptable, form Zein-ud-din ul Asnam, i.e.

Zein-ud-din (Adornment of the Faith) [he] of the Images, Zein (adornment) not being a name used by the Arabic-speaking races, unless with some such addition as ud-Din ("of the Faith"), and the affix ul Asnam ( "[He] of the Images") being a sobriquet arising from the circ.u.mstances of the hero's after-life, unless its addition, as recommended by the astrologers, is meant as an indication of the latter's fore-knowledge of what was to befall him thereafter. This noted, I leave the name as I find it in the Arabic MS.]

[Footnote 28: Sheji nebih. Burton, "Valiant and intelligent."]

[Footnote 29: Syn. "his describers" (wasifihi).]

[Footnote 30: Wa huwa hema caiou fihi bads wasifihi shiran. Burton (apparently from a different text), "and presently he became even as the poets sang of one of his fellows in semblance."]

[Footnote 31: Milah, plural of melih, a fair one.]

[Footnote 32: Khemseh senin. Burton, "fifteen."]

[Footnote 33: Shabb, adult, man between sixteen and thirty.]

[Footnote 34: Femu ghefir min el aalem. Burton, "All the defenders of the realm."]

[Footnote 35: Night CCCCXCVIII.]

[Footnote 36: Syn. "depose."]

[Footnote 37: Lit. "that which proceeded from him."]

[Footnote 38: See ante, p. 3, note.{see FN#23}]

[Footnote 39: Night CCCCXCIX.]

[Footnote 40: i.e. imposed on me the toil, caused me undertake the weariness, of coming to Cairo for nothing.]

[Footnote 41: Forgetting his mother.]

[Footnote 42: i.e. no mortal.]

[Footnote 43: Keszr abouka 'l fulani (vulg. for abika'l fulan). Burton, "Such a palace of thy sire."]