Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp Part 7

[Footnote 44: i.e. it is not like the journey to Cairo and back.]

[Footnote 45: i.e. in G.o.d grant thou mayst.]

[Footnote 46: Or "jade" (yeshm).]

[Footnote 47: Night D.]

[Footnote 48: "Edh dheheb el atic." Burton, "antique golden pieces"; but there is nothing to show that the gold was coined.]

[Footnote 49: The "also" in this clause seems to refer to the old man of the dream.]

[Footnote 50: Keszr, lit. palace, but commonly meaning, in modern Arabic, an upper story or detached corps de logis (pavilion in the French sense, an evident misnomer in the present case).]

[Footnote 51: Lit. "put the key in the lock and opened it and behold, the door of a palace (hall) opened."]

[Footnote 52: Takeli, sing. form of tac, a window. Burton, "recess for lamps."]

[Footnote 53: Lit. "till he join thee with."]

[Footnote 54: Or "Cairo," the name Misr being common to the country and its capital.]

[Footnote 55: Badki tecouli[na]. Badki (lit. after thee) is here used in the modern sense of "still" or "yet." The interrogative prefix A appears to have dropped out, as is not uncommon in ma.n.u.scripts of this kind.

Burton, "After thou a.s.suredst me, saying, &c."]

[Footnote 56: Here she adopts her son's previous idea that the old man of the dream was the Prophet in person.]

[Footnote 57: Night DI.]

[Footnote 58: Cudoum. The common form of welcome to a guest.]

[Footnote 59: Or "upper room" (keszr).]

[Footnote 60: Eight; see ante, p. 14. {see FN#46}]

[Footnote 61: Edh dheheb el kedim.]

[Footnote 62: Edh dhelieb er yemli, lit. sand. (i.e. alluvial) gold, gold in its native state, needing no smelting to extract it. This, by the way, is the first mention of the thrones or pedestals of the images.]

[Footnote 63: Lit. "[With] love and honour" (hubban wa kerametan). a familar phrase implying complete a.s.sent to any request. It is by some lexicologists supposed to have arisen from the circ.u.mstance of a man answering another, who begged of him a wine-jar (hubb), with the words, "Ay, I will give thee a jar and a cover (kerameh) also," and to have thus become a tropical expression of ready compliance with a pet.i.tion, as who should say, "I will give thee what thou askest and more."]

[Footnote 64: The slave's att.i.tude before his master.]

[Footnote 65: The like.]

[Footnote 66: Night DII.]

[Footnote 67: i.e. invoked blessings upon him in the manner familiar to readers of the Nights.]

[Footnote 68: Lit. thou [art] indulged therein (ent musamih fiha).]

[Footnote 69: Mehmy (vulg. for mehma, whatsoever) telebtaha minni min en miam. Burton, "whatso of importance thou wouldst have of me."]

[Footnote 70: Lit. "in a seeking (request) ever or at all" (fi tilbeti abdan). Burton, "in thy requiring it."]

[Footnote 71: "Tal aleyya" wect, i.e. I am weary of waiting. Burton, "My tarrying with thee hath been long."]

[Footnote 72: Or "difficult" (aziz); Burton, "singular-fare."]

[Footnote 73: Lit. "If the achievement thereof (or attainment thereunto) will be possible unto thee [by or by dint of] fort.i.tude,"]

[Footnote 74: Lit. "Wealth [is] in (or by) blood."]

[Footnote 75: El berr el atfer. Burton translates, "the wildest of wolds," apparently supposing atfer to be a mistranscription for aefer, which is very possible.]

[Footnote 76: Kewaribji, a word formed by adding the Turkish affix ji to the Arabic kewarib, plural of carib, a small boat. The common form of the word is caribji. Burton reads it, "Kewariji, one who uses the paddle."]

[Footnote 77: Lit "inverted" (mecloubeh). Burton, "the reverse of man's."]

[Footnote 78: Night DIII.]

[Footnote 79: Wehsh. Burton, "a lion."]

[Footnote 80: Lit. "then they pa.s.sed on till" (thumma fatou ila [an]).]

[Footnote 81: Sic (ashjar anber); though what the Arabic author meant by "trees of ambergris" is more than I can say. The word anber (pro.

pounced amber) signifies also "saffron"; but the obbligato juxtaposition of aloes and sandal-wood tends to show that what is meant is the well-known product of the sperm-whale. It is possible that the mention of this latter may be an interpolation by some ignorant copyist, who, seeing two only of the three favourite Oriental scents named, took upon himself to complete the odoriferous trinity, so dear to Arab writers, by the addition of ambergris.]

[Footnote 82: Yas, Persian form of yasm, yasmin or yasimin. Sir R. F.

Burton reads yamin and supposes it to be a copyist's error for yasmin, but this is a mistake; the word in the text is clearly yas, though the final s, being somewhat carelessly written in the Arabic MS, might easily be mistaken for mn with an undotted noun.]

[Footnote 83: Lit. "perfect or complete (kamil) of fruits and flowers."]

[Footnote 84: Lit. "many armies" (asakir, pl. of asker, an army), but asker is constantly used in post-cla.s.sical Arabic (and notably in the Nights) for "a single soldier," and still more generally the plural (asakir), as here, for "soldiers."]

[Footnote 85: Syn. "the gleaming of a brasier" (berc kanoun). Kanoun is the Syrian name of two winter months, December (Kanoun el awwal or first) and January (Kanoun eth thani or second).]

[Footnote 86: So as to form a magic barrier against the Jinn, after the fashion of the mystical circles used by European necromancers.]

[Footnote 87: Night DIV.]

[Footnote 88: Fe-halan tuata, the time-honoured "Ask and it shall be given unto thee."]

[Footnote 89: Sic (berec ed dunya); but dunya (the world) is perhaps meant to be taken here by synecdoche m the sense of "sky."]

[Footnote 90: Syn. "darkness was let down like a curtain."]

[Footnote 91: Lit. "like an earthquake like the earthquakes"; but the second "like" (mithl) is certainly a mistranscription for "of" (min).]