The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume V Part 41

[FN#370] Koran xvii. 110, a pa.s.sage revealed because the Infidels, hearing Mohammed calling upon The Compa.s.sionate, imagined that Al-Rahman was other deity but Allah. The "names"

have two grand divisions, Asma Jalali, the fiery or terrible attributes, and the Asma Jamali (airy, watery, earthy or) amiable. Together they form the Asma al-Husna or glorious attributes, and do not include the Ism al-A'azam, the ineffable name which is known only to a few.

[FN#371] Koran ii. 158.

[FN#372] Koran xcvi. before noticed.

[FN#373] A man of Al-Medinah, one of the first of Mohammed's disciples.

[FN#374] Koran lxxiv. 1, etc., supposed to have been addressed by Gabriel to Mohammed when in the cave of Hira or Jabal Nur. He returned to his wife Khadijah in sore terror at the vision of one sitting on a throne between heaven and earth, and bade her cover him up. Whereupon the Archangel descended with this text, supposed to be the first revealed. Mr. Rodwell (p. 3) renders it, "O thou enwrapped in thy mantle!" and makes it No. ii. after a Fatrah or silent interval of six months to three years.

[FN#375] There are several versets on this subject (chapts. ii.

and x.x.x.)

[FN#376] Koran cx. 1.

[FN#377] The third Caliph; the "Writer of the Koran."

[FN#378] Koran, v. 4. Sale translates "idols." Mr. Rodwell, "On the blocks (or shafts) of Stone," rude altars set by the pagan Arabs before their dwellings.

[FN#379] Koran, v. 116. The words are put into the mouth of Jesus.

[FN#380] The end of the same verse.

[FN#381] Koran, v. 89. Supposed to have been revealed when certain Moslems purposed to practise Christian asceticism, fasting, watching, abstaining from women and sleeping on hard beds. I have said Mohammed would have "no monkery in Al-Islam,"

but human nature willed otherwise. Mr. Rodwell prefers "Interdict the healthful viands."

[FN#382] Koran, iv. 124.

[FN#383] Arab. "Mukri." "Kari" is one who reads the Koran to pupils; the Mukri corrects them. "With the pa.s.sage of the clouds"

= without a moment's hesitation.

[FN#384] The twenty-first, twenty-fourth and eighteenth Arabic letters.

[FN#385] Arab. "Hizb." The Koran is divided into sixty portions, answering to "Lessons" for convenience of public worship.

[FN#386] Arab. "Jalalah,"=saying Jalla Jalalu-hu=magnified be His Majesty!, or glorified be His Glory.

[FN#387] Koran, xi. 50.

[FN#388] The part.i.tion-wall between Heaven and h.e.l.l which others call Al-'Urf (in the sing. from the verb meaning he separated or parted). The Jews borrowed from the Guebres the idea of a part.i.tion between Heaven and h.e.l.l and made it so thin that the blessed and d.a.m.ned can speak together. There is much dispute about the population of Al-A'araf, the general idea being that they are men who do not deserve reward in Heaven or punishment in h.e.l.l. But it is not a "Purgatory" or place of expiating sins.

[FN#389] Koran, vii. 154.

[FN#390] A play on the word ayn, which means "eye" or the eighteenth letter which in olden times had the form of a circle.

[FN#391] From misreading these words comes the absurd popular belief of the moon pa.s.sing up and down Mohammed's sleeves. George B. Airy (The Athenaeum, Nov.29, 1884) justly objects to Sale's translation "The hour of judgment approacheth" and translates "The moon hath been dichotomised" a well-known astronomical term when the light portion of the moon is defined in a strait line: in other words when it is really a half-moon at the first and third quarters of each lunation. Others understand, The moon shall be split on the Last Day, the preterite for the future in prophetic style. "Koran Moslems" of course understand it literally.

[FN#392] Chapters liv., lv. and lvi.

[FN#393] We should say, not to utter, etc.

[FN#394] These well-known "humours of Hippocrates," which reappear in the form of temperaments of European phrenology, are still the base of Eastern therapeutics.

[FN#395] The doctrine of the three souls will be intelligible to Spiritualists.

[FN#396] Arab. "Al-lami"=the l-shaped, curved, forked.

[FN#397] Arab. "Usus," our os sacrum because, being incorruptible, the body will be built up thereon for Resurrection-time. Hence Hudibras sings (iii. 2),

"The learned Rabbis of the Jews Write there's a bone which they call leuz, I' the rump of man, etc."

It is the Heb. "Uz," whence older scholars derived os. Sale (sect. iv.) called it "El Ajb, os coccygis or rump-bone."

[FN#398] Arab physiologists had difficulties in procuring "subjects"; and usually practised dissection on the simiads.

Their ill.u.s.trated books are droll; the figures have been copied and recopied till they have lost all resemblance to the originals.

[FN#399] The liver and spleen are held to be congealed blood.

Hence the couplet,

"We are allowed two carrions (i.e. with throats uncut) and two bloods, The fish and the locust, the liver and the spleen."

(Pilgrimage iii. 92.)

[FN#400] This is perfectly true and yet little known to the general.

[FN#401] Koran xvii. 39.

[FN#402] Arab. "Al-malikhuliya," proving that the Greeks then p.r.o.nounced the penultimate vowel according to the acute accent?ia; not as we slur it over. In old Hebrew we have the transliteration of four Greek words; in the languages of Hindostan many scores including names of places; and in Latin and Arabic as many hundreds. By a scholar-like comparison of these remains we should find little difficulty in establishing the true Greek p.r.o.nunciation since the days of Alexander the Great; and we shall prove that it was p.r.o.nounced according to accent and emphatically not quant.i.ty. In the next century I presume English boys will be taught to p.r.o.nounce Greek as the Greeks do.

[FN#403] Educated Arabs can quote many a verse bearing upon domestic medicine and reminding us of the lines bequeathed to Europe by the School of Salerno. Such e.g. are;

"After the noon-meal, sleep, although for moments twain; After the night-meal, walk, though but two steps be ta'en; And after swiving stale, though but two drops thou drain."

[FN#404] Arab. "Saridah" (Tharidah), also called "ghaut"=crumbled bread and hashed meat in broth; or bread, milk and meat. The Saridah of Gha.s.san, cooked with eggs and marrow, was held a dainty dish: hence the Prophet's dictum.

[FN#405] Koran v. 92. "Lots"=games of chance and "images"=statues.

[FN#406] Koran ii. 216. The word "Maysar" which I have rendered "gambling" or gaming (for such is the modern application of the word), originally meant what St. Jerome calls and explains thereby the verse (Ezek. xxi. 22), "The King held in his hand the lot of Jerusalem" i.e. the arrow whereon the city-name was written. The Arabs use it for casting lots with ten azlam or headless arrows (for dice) three being blanks and the rest notched from one to seven. They were thrown by a "Zarib" or punter and the stake was generally a camel. Amongst so excitable a people as the Arabs, this game caused quarrels and bloodshed, hence its prohibition: and the theologians, who everywhere and at all times delight in burdening human nature, have extended the command, which is rather admonitory than prohibitive, to all games of chance. Tarafah is supposed to allude to this practice in his Mu'allakah.

[FN#407] Liberal Moslems observe that the Koranic prohibition is not absolute, with threat of h.e.l.l for infraction. Yet Mohammed doubtless forbade all inebriatives and the occasion of his so doing is well known. (Pilgrimage ii. 322.)

[FN#408] I have noticed this soured milk in Pilgrimage i. 362.

[FN#409] He does not say the "Caliph" or successor of his uncle Mohammed.

[FN#410] The Jewish Korah (Numbers xvi.) fabled by the Koran (xxviii. 76), following a Talmudic tradition, to have been a man of immense wealth. The notion that lying with an old woman, after the menses have ceased, is unwholesome, dates from great antiquity; and the benefits of the reverse process were well known to good King David. The faces of children who sleep with their grandparents (a bad practice now waxing obsolete in England), of a young wife married to an old man and of a young man married to an old woman, show a peculiar wizened appearance, a look of age overlaying youth which cannot be mistaken.

[FN#411] Arab. "Hindiba"(=endubium): the modern term is Shakuriyah=chicoree. I believe it to be very hurtful to the eyes.

[FN#412] Arab. "Khuffash" and "Wat.w.a.t": in Egypt a woman is called "Wat.w.a.tiyah" when the hair of her privities has been removed by applying bats' blood. I have often heard of this; but cannot understand how such an application can act depilatory.