The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume I Part 21

[FN#110] He speaks of his wife but euphemistically in the masculine.

[FN#111] A popular saying throughout Al-Islam.

[FN#112] Arab. "Fata": lit.=a youth; a generous man, one of n.o.ble mind (as youth-tide should be). It corresponds with the Lat.

"vir," and has much the meaning of the Ital. "Giovane," the Germ.

"Junker" and our "gentleman."

[FN#113] From the Bul. Edit.

[FN#114] The vagueness of his statement is euphemistic.

[FN#115] This readiness of shedding tears contrasts strongly with the external stoicism of modern civilization; but it is true to Arab character, and Easterns, like the heroes of Homer and Italians of Boccacio, are not ashamed of what we look upon as the result of feminine hysteria - "a good cry."

[FN#116] The formula (constantly used by Moslems) here denotes displeasure, doubt how to act and so forth. p.r.o.nounce, "La haula wa la kuwwata illa bi 'llahi 'I-Aliyyi 'I-Azim." As a rule mistakes are marvellous: Mandeville (chaps. xii.) for "La ilaha illa 'llahu wa Muhammadun Rasulu 'llah" writes "La ellec sila, Machomete rores alla." The former (la haula, etc.), on account of the four peculiar Arabic letters, is everywhere p.r.o.nounced differently. and the exclamation is called "Haulak" or "Haukal."

[FN#117] An Arab holds that he has a right to marry his first cousin, the daughter of his father's brother, and if any win her from him a death and a blood-feud may result. It was the same in a modified form amongst the Jews and in both races the consanguineous marriage was not attended by the evil results (idiotcy, congenital deafness, etc.) observed in mixed races like the English and the Anglo-American. When a Badawi speaks of "the daughter of my uncle" he means wife; and the former is the dearer t.i.tle, as a wife can be divorced, but blood is thicker than water.

[FN#118] Arab. "Kahbah;" the coa.r.s.est possible term. Hence the unhappy "Cave" of Don Roderick the Goth, which simply means The Wh.o.r.e.

[FN#119] The Arab "Banj" and Hindu "Bhang" (which I use as most familiar) both derive from the old Coptic "Nibanj" meaning a preparation of hemp (Cannabis sativa seu Indica); and here it is easy to recognise the Homeric "Nepenthe." Al- Kazwini explains the term by "garden hemp (Kinnab bostani or Shahdanaj). On the other hand not a few apply the word to the henbane (hyoscyamus niger) so much used in mediaeval Europe. The Kamus evidently means henbane distinguishing it from Hashish al harafish" = rascals'

gra.s.s, i.e. the herb Pantagruelion. The "Alfaz Adwiya" (French translation) explains "Tabannuj" by "Endormir quelqu'un en lui faisant avaler de la jusquiame." In modern parlance Tabannuj is = our anaesthetic administered before an operation, a deadener of pain like myrrh and a number of other drugs. For this purpose hemp is always used (at least I never heard of henbane); and various preparations of the drug are sold at an especial bazar in Cairo. See the "powder of marvellous virtue" in Boccaccio, iii., 8; and iv., 10. Of these intoxicants, properly so termed, I shall have something to say in a future page.

The use of Bhang doubtless dates from the dawn of civilisation, whose earliest social pleasures would be inebriants. Herodotus (iv. c. 75) shows the Scythians burning the seeds (leaves and capsules) in worship and becoming drunken with the fumes, as do the S. African Bushmen of the present day. This would be the earliest form of smoking: it is still doubtful whether the pipe was used or not. Galen also mentions intoxication by hemp.

Amongst Moslems, the Persians adopted the drink as an ecstatic, and about our thirteenth century Egypt, which began the practice, introduced a number of preparations to be noticed in the course of The Nights.

[FN#120] The rubbish heaps which outlie Eastern cities, some (near Cairo) are over a hundred feet high.

[FN#121] Arab. "Kurrat al-aye;" coolness of eyes as opposed to a hot eye ("sakhin") one red with tears. The term is true and picturesque so I translate it literally. All coolness is pleasant to dwellers in burning lands: thus in Al-Hariri Abu Z yd says of Ba.s.sorah, "I found there whatever could fill the eye with coolness." And a "cool booty" (or prize) is one which has been secured without plunging into the flames of war, or imply a pleasant prize.

[FN#122] Popularly rendered Caucasus (see Night cdxcvi): it corresponds so far with the Hindu "Udaya" that the sun rises behind it; and the "false dawn" is caused by a hole or gap. It is also the Persian Alborz, the Indian Meru (Sumeru), the Greek Olympus and the Rhiphaean Range (Veliki Camenypoys) or great starry girdle of the world, etc.

[FN#123] Arab. "Mizr" or "Mizar;" vulg. Buzah; hence the medical Lat. Buza, the Russian Buza (millet beer), our booze, the O.

Dutch "buyzen" and the German "busen." This is the old of negro and negroid Africa, the beer of Osiris, of which dried remains have been found in jars amongst Egyptian tombs. In Equatorial Africa it known as Pombe; on the Upper Nile "Merissa"

or "Mirisi" and amongst the Kafirs (Caffers) "Tshuala," "Oala" or "Boyala:" I have also heard of "Buswa"in Central Africa which may be the origin of "Buzah." In the West it became , (Romaic ), Xythum and cerevisia or cervisia, the humor ex hordeo, long before the days of King Gambrinus. Central Africans drink it in immense quant.i.ties: in Unyamwezi the standing bedsteads, covered with bark-slabs, are all made sloping so as to drain off the liquor. A chief lives wholly on beef and Pombe which is thick as gruel below. Hops are unknown: the grain, mostly Holcus, is made to germinate, then pounded, boiled and left to ferment. In Egypt the drink is affected chiefly by Berbers, Nubians and slaves from the Upper Nile, but it is a superior article and more like that of Europe than the "Pombe." I have given an account of the manufacture in The Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. ii., p. 286. There are other preparations, Umm-bulbul (mother nightie gale), Dinzayah and Subiyah, for which I must refer to the Shaykh El-Tounsy.

[FN#124] There is a terrible truth in this satire, which reminds us of the n.o.ble dame who preferred to her handsome husband the palefrenier laid, ord et infame of Queen Margaret of Navarre (Heptameron No. xx.). We have all known women who sacrificed everything despite themselves, as it were, for the most worthless of men. The world stares and scoffs and blames and understands nothing. There is for every woman one man and one only in whose slavery she is "ready to sweep the floor." Fate is mostly opposed to her meeting him but, when she does, adieu husband and children, honour and religion, life and "soul." Moreover Nature (human) commands the union of contrasts, such as fair and foul, dark and light, tall and short; otherwise mankind would be like the canines, a race of extremes, dwarf as toy-terriers, giants like mastiffs, bald as Chinese "remedy dogs," or hairy as Newfoundlands. The famous Wilkes said only a half truth when he backed himself, with an hour s start, against the handsomest man in England; his uncommon and remarkable ugliness (he was, as the Italians say, un bel brutto) was the highest recommendation in the eyes of very beautiful women.

[FN#125] Every Moslem burial-ground has a place of the kind where honourable women may sit and weep unseen by the mult.i.tude. These visits are enjoined by the Apostle:--Frequent the cemetery, 'twill make you think of futurity! Also:--Whoever visiteth the graves of his parents (or one of them) every Friday, he shall be written a pious son, even though he might have been in the world, before that, a disobedient. (Pilgrimage, ii., 71.) The buildings resemble our European "mortuary chapels." Said, Pasha of Egypt, was kind enough to erect one on the island off Suez, for the "use of English ladies who would like shelter whilst weeping and wailing for their dead." But I never heard that any of the ladles went there.

[FN#126] Arab. "Ajal"=the period of life, the appointed time of death: the word is of constant recurrence and is also applied to sudden death. See Lane's Dictionary, s.v.

[FN#127] "The dying Badawi to his tribe" (and lover) appears to me highly pathetic. The wild people love to be buried upon hill slopes whence they can look down upon the camp; and they still call out the names of kinsmen and friends as they pa.s.s by the grave-yards. A similar piece occurs in Wetzstein (p. 27, "Reisebericht ueber Hauran," etc.):--

O bear with you my bones where the camel bears his load And bury me before you, if buried I must be; And let me not be burled 'neath the burden of the vine But high upon the hill whence your sight I ever see!

As you pa.s.s along my grave cry aloud and name your names The crying of your names shall revive the bones of me: I have fasted through my life with my friends, and in my death, I will feast when we meet, on that day of joy and glee.

[FN#128] The Akasirah (plur. of Kasra=Chosroes) is here a t.i.tle of the four great dynasties of Persian Kings. 1. The Peshdadian or a.s.syrian race, proto-historics for whom dates fail, 2. The Kayanian (Medes and Persians) who ended with the Alexandrian invasion in B. C. 331. 3. The Ashkanian (Parthenians or Arsacides) who ruled till A. D. 202; and 4. The Sa.s.sanides which have already been mentioned. But strictly speaking "Kisri" and "Kasra" are t.i.tles applied only to the latter dynasty and especially to the great King a.n.u.shirwan. They must not be confounded with "Khusrau" (P. N. Cyrus, Ahasuerus? Chosroes?), and yet the three seem to have combined in "Caesar," Kaysar and Czar. For details especially connected with Zoroaster see vol. I, p. 380 of the Dabistan or School of Manners, translated by David Shea and Anthony Troyer, Paris, 1843. The book is most valuable, but the proper names are so carelessly and incorrectly printed that the student is led into perpetual error.

[FN#129] The words are the very lowest and coa.r.s.est; but the scene is true to Arab life.

[FN#130] Arab."Hayhat:" the word, written in a variety of ways is onomatopoetic, like our "heigh-ho!" it sometimes means "far from me (or you) be it!" but in popular usage it is simply "Alas."

[FN#131] Lane (i., 134) finds a date for the book in this pa.s.sage. The Soldan of Egypt, Mohammed ibn Kala'un, in the early eighth century (Hijrah = our fourteenth), issued a sumptuary law compelling Christians and Jews to wear indigo-blue and saffron-yellow turbans, the white being reserved for Moslems. But the custom was much older and Mandeville (chaps. ix.) describes it in A. D. 1322 when it had become the rule. And it still endures; although abolished in the cities it is the rule for Christians, at least in the country parts of Egypt and Syria. I may here remark that such detached pa.s.sages as these are absolutely useless for chronology: they may be simply the additions of editors or mere copyists.

[FN#132] The ancient "Mustapha" = the Chosen (prophet, i. e.

Mohammed), also t.i.tled Al-Mujtaba, the Accepted (Pilgrimage, ii., 309). "Murtaza"=the Elect, i.e. the Caliph Ali is the older "Mortada" or "Mortadi" of Ockley and his day, meaning "one pleasing to (or acceptable to) Allah." Still older writers corrupted it to "Mortis Ali" and readers supposed this to be the Caliph's name.

[FN#133] The gleam (zodiacal light) preceding the true dawn; the Persians call the former Subh-i-kazib (false or lying dawn) opposed to Subh-i-sadik (true dawn) and suppose that it is caused by the sun shining through a hole in the world- encircling Mount Kaf.

[FN#134] So the Heb. "Arun" = naked, means wearing the lower robe only; = our "in his shirt."

[FN#135] Here we have the vulgar Egyptian colloquialism "Aysh"

(--Ayyu shayyin) for the cla.s.sical "Ma" = what.

[FN#136] "In the name of Allah!" here said before taking action.

[FN#137] Arab. "Mamluk" (plur. Mamalik) lit. a chattel; and in The Nights a white slave trained to arms. The "Mameluke Beys" of Egypt were locally called the "Ghuzz," I use the convenient word in its old popular sense;

'Tis sung, there's a valiant Mameluke In foreign lands ycleped (Sir Luke)- HUDIBRAS.

And hence, probably, Moliere's "Mamamouchi"; and the modern French use "Mamalue." See Savary's Letters, No. xl.

[FN#138] The name of this celebrated succesor of Nineveh, where some suppose The Nights were written, is orig. (middle- gates) because it stood on the way where four great highways meet. The Arab. form "Mausil" (the vulgar "Mosul") is also significant, alluding to the "junction" of a.s.syria and Babylonis.

Hence our "muslin."

[FN#139] This is Mr. Thackeray's "nose-bag." I translate by "walking-shoes" the Arab "Khuff" which are a manner of loose boot covering the ankle; they are not usually embroidered, the ornament being reserved for the inner shoe.

[FN#140] i.e. Syria (says Abulfeda) the "land on the left" (of one facing the east) as opposed to Al-Yaman the "land on the right." Osmani would mean Turkish, Ottoman. When Bernard the Wise (Bohn, p. 24) speaks of "Bagada and Axiam" (Mabillon's text) or "Axinarri" (still worse), he means Baghdad and Ash-Sham (Syria, Damascus), the latter word puzzling his Editor. Richardson (Dissert, lxxii.) seems to support a hideous attempt to derive Sham from Shamat, a mole or wart, because the country is studded with hillocks! Al-Sham is often applied to Damascus-city whose proper name Dimishk belongs to books: this term is generally derived from Damashik b. Kali b. Malik b. Sham (Shem). Lee (Ibn Batutah, 29) denies that ha-Dimishki means "Eliezer of Damascus."

[FN#141] From Oman = Eastern Arabia.

[FN#142] Arab. "Tamar Hanna" lit. date of Henna, but applied to the flower of the eastern privet (Lawsonia inermis) which has the sweet scent of freshly mown hay. The use of Henna as a dye is known even in Enland. The "myrtle" alluded to may either have been for a perfume (as it is held an anti-intoxicant) or for eating, the bitter aromatic berries of the "as" being supposed to flavour wine and especially Raki (raw brandy).

[FN#143] Lane. (i. 211) pleasantly remarks, "A list of these sweets is given in my original, but I have thought it better to omit the names" (!) Dozy does not shirk his duty, but he is not much more satisfactory in explaining words interesting to students because they are unfound in dictionaries and forgotten by the people. "Akras (cakes) Laymunyah (of limes) wa Maymunyah" appears in the Bresl. Edit. as "Ma'amuniyah" which may mean "Ma'amun's cakes" or "delectable cakes." "Amshat" = (combs) perhaps refers to a fine kind of Kunafah (vermicelli) known in Egypt and Syria as "Ghazl al-banat" = girl's spinning.

[FN#144] The new moon carefully looked for by all Moslems because it begins the Ramazan-fast.

[FN#145] Solomon's signet ring has before been noticed.

[FN#146] The "high-bosomed" damsel, with b.r.e.a.s.t.s firm as a cube, is a favourite with Arab tale tellers. Fanno baruffa is the Italian term for hard b.r.e.a.s.t.s pointing outwards.

[FN#147] A large hollow navel is looked upon not only as a beauty, but in children it is held a promise of good growth.

[FN#148] Arab. "Ka'ah," a high hall opening upon the central court: we shall find the word used for a mansion, barrack, men's quarters, etc.

[FN#149] Babel = Gate of G.o.d (El), or Gate of Ilu (P. N. of G.o.d), which the Jews ironically interpreted "Confusion." The tradition of Babylonia being the very centre of witchcraft and enchantment by means of its Seven Deadly Spirits, has survived in Al-Islam; the two fallen angels (whose names will occur) being confined in a well; Nimrod attempting to reach Heaven from the Tower in a magical car drawn by monstrous birds and so forth. See p. 114, Francois Fenormant's "Chaldean Magic," London, Bagsters.

[FN#150] Arab. "Kamat Alfiyyah" = like the letter Alif, a straight perpendicular stroke. In the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the origin of every alphabet (not syllabarium) known to man, one form was a flag or leaf of water-plant standing upright. Hence probably the Arabic Alif-shape; while other nations preferred other modifications of the letter (ox's head, etc), which in Egyptian number some thirty-six varieties, simple and compound.