The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume VII Part 20

[FN#130] e.g. a branch or bough.

[FN#131] Arab. "Rayah kaimah," which Lane translates a "beast standing"!

[FN#132] Tying up the near foreleg just above the knee; and even with this a camel can hop over sundry miles of ground in the course of a night. The hobbling is shown in Lane. (Nights vol. ii., p. 46.)

[FN#133] As opposed to "Severance" in the old knightly language of love, which is now apparently lost to the world. I tried it in the Lyrics of Camoens and found that I was speaking a forgotten tongue, which mightily amused the common sort of critic and reviewer.

[FN#134] More exactly three days and eight hours, after which the guest becomes a friend, and as in the Argentine prairies is expected to do friend's duty. The popular saying is, "The entertainment of a guest is three days; the viatic.u.m (jaizah) is a day and a night, and whatso exceedeth this is alms."

[FN#135] Arab. "'Ashirah." Books tell us there are seven degrees of connection among the Badawin: Sha'ab, tribe or rather race; nation (as the Anazah) descended from a common ancestor; Kabilah the tribe proper (whence les Kabyles); Fasilah (sept), Imarah; Ashirah (all a man's connections); Fakhiz (lit. the thigh, i.e., his blood relations) and Batn (belly) his kith and kin. Practically Kabilah is the tribe, Ashirah the clan, and Bayt the household; while Hayy may be anything between tribe and kith and kin.

[FN#136] This is the true platonic love of n.o.ble Arabs, the Ishk 'uzri, noted in vol. ii., 104.

[FN#137] Arab. "'Ala raghm," a favourite term. It occurs in theology; for instance, when the Shi'ahs are asked the cause of such and such a ritual distinction they will reply, "Ala raghmi 'l-Tasannun": lit.=to spite the Sunnis.

[FN#138] In the text "Al-Kaus" for which Lane and Payne subst.i.tute a shield. The bow had not been mentioned but-- n'importe, the Arab reader would say. In the text it is left at home because it is a cowardly, far-killing weapon compared with sword and lance. Hence the Spaniard calls and justly calls the knife the "bravest of arms" as it wants a man behind it.

[FN#139] Arab. "Rahim" or "Rihm"=womb, uterine relations, pity or sympathy, which may here be meant.

[FN#140] Reciting Fatihahs and so forth, as I have described in the Cemetery of Al-Medinah (ii. 300). Moslems do not pay for prayers to benefit the dead like the majority of Christendom and, according to Calvinistic Wahhabi-ism, their prayers and blessings are of no avail. But the mourner's heart loathes reason and he prays for his dead instinctively like the so-termed "Protestant." Amongst the latter, by the bye, I find four great Sommites, (1) Paul of Tarsus who protested against the Hebraism of Peter; (2) Mohammed who protested against the perversions of Christianity; (3) Luther who protested against Italian rule in Germany, and lastly (4) one (who shall be nameless) that protests against the whole business.

[FN#141] Lane transfers this to vol. i. 520 (notes to chapt.

vii); and gives a mere abstract as of that preceding.

[FN#142] We learn from Ibn Batutah that it stood South of the Great Mosque and afterwards became the Coppersmiths' Bazar.

The site was known as Al-Khazra (the Green) and the building was destroyed by the Abbasides. See Defremery and Sanguinetti, i. 206.

[FN#143] This great tribe or rather nation has been noticed before (vol. ii. 170). The name means "Strong," and derives from one Tamim bin Murr of the race of Adnan, nat. circ. A.D.

121. They hold the North-Eastern uplands of Najd, comprising the great desert Al-Dahna and extend to Al-Bahrayn. They are split up into a mult.i.tude of clans and septs; and they can boast of producing two famous sectarians. One was Abdullah bin Suffar, head of the Suffriyah; and the other Abdullah bin Ibaz (Ibadh) whence the Ibaziyah heretics of Oman who long included her princes. Mr. Palgrave wrongly writes Abadeeyah and Biadeeyah and my "Bayazi" was an Arab vulgarism used by the Zanzibarians. Dr. Badger rightly prefers Ibaziyah which he writes Ibadhiyah (Hist. of the Imams, etc.).

[FN#144] Governor of Al-Medinah under Mu'awiyah and afterwards (A.H. 64-65=683-4) fourth Ommiade. Al-Siyuti (p. 216) will not account him amongst the princes of the Faithful, holding him a rebel against Al-Zubayr. Ockley makes Ibn al-Zubayr ninth and Marwan tenth Caliph.

[FN#145] The address, without the vocative particle, is more emphatic; and the P.N. Mu'awiyah seems to court the omission.

[FN#146] This may also mean that the 500 were the woman's "mahr" or marriage dowry and the 250 a present to buy the father's consent.

[FN#147] Quite true to nature. See an account of the quasi- epileptic fits to which Syrians are subject and by them called Al-Wahtah in "The Inner Life of Syria," i. 233.

[FN#148] Arab. "Wayha-k" here equivalent to Wayla-k. M. C.

Barbier de Meynard renders the first "mon ami" and the second "miserable."

[FN#149] This is an instance when the article (Al) is correctly used with one proper name and not with another. Al- k.u.mayt (P. N. of poet) lit. means a bay horse with black points: Nasr is victory.

[FN#150] This anecdote, which reads like truth, is ample set- off for a cart-load of abuse of women. But even the Hindu, determined misogynists in books, sometimes relent. Says the Katha Sarit Sagara: "So you see, King, honourable matrons are devoted to their husbands, and it is not the case that all women are always bad" (ii. 624). Let me hope that after all this Mistress Su'ad did not lead her husband a hardish life.

[FN#151] Al-Khali'a has been explained in vol. i. 311 {Vol 1, FN#633}: the translation of Al-Mas'udi (vi. 10) renders it "scelerat." Abu Ali al-Husayn the Wag was a Ba.s.sorite and a worthy companion of Abu Nowas the Debauchee; but he adorned the Court of Al-Amin the son not of Al-Rashid the father.

[FN#152] Governor of Ba.s.sorah, but not in Al-Husayn's day

[FN#153] The famous market-place where poems were recited, mentioned by Al-Hariri.

[FN#154] A quarter of Ba.s.sorah.

[FN#155] Capital of Al-Yaman, and then famed for its leather and other work (vol. v. 16).

[FN#156] The creases in the stomach like the large navel are always insisted upon. Says the Katha (ii. 525) "And he looked on that torrent river of the elixir of beauty, adorned with a waist made charming by those wave-like wrinkles," etc.

[FN#157] Arab. Sabaj (not Sabah, as the Mac. Edit. misprints it): I am not sure of its meaning.

[FN#158] A truly Arab conceit, suggesting?

The music breathing from her face;

her calves moved rhythmically, suggesting the movement and consequent sound of a musical instrument.

[FN#159] The morosa voluptas of the Catholic divines. The Sapphist described in the text would procure an o.r.g.a.s.m (in gloria, as the Italians call it) by biting and rolling over the girl she loved; but by loosening the trouser-string she evidently aims at a closer tribadism the Arab " Musahikah."

[FN#160] We drink (or drank) after dinner, Easterns before the meal and half-Easterns (like the Russians) before and after.

We talk of liquor being unwholesome on an empty stomach; but the truth is that all is purely habit. And as the Russian accompanies his Vodka with caviare, etc., so the Oriental drinks his Raki or Mahaya (Ma al-hayat=aqua vitae) alternately with a Salatah, for whose composition see Pilgrimage i. 198.

The Eastern practice has its advantages: it awakens the appet.i.te, stimulates digestion and, what Easterns greatly regard, it is economical; half a bottle doing the work of a whole. Bhang and Kusumba (opium dissolved and strained through a pledges of cotton) are always drunk before dinner and thus the "jolly" time is the preprandial, not the postprandial.

[FN#161] "Abu al-Sakha" (p.r.o.nounced Abussakha) = Father of munificence.

[FN#162] 'Arab. "Shammara," also used for gathering up the gown, so as to run the faster.

[FN#163] i.e., blessing the Prophet and all True Believers (herself included).

[FN#164] The style of this letter is that of a public scribe in a Cairo market-place thirty years ago.

[FN#165] i.e.. she could not help falling in love with this beauty of a man.

[FN#166] "Kudrat," used somewhat in the sense of our vague "Providence." The sentence means, leave Omnipotence to manage him. Mr. Redhouse, who forces a likeness between Moslem and Christian theology, tells us that "Qader is unjustly translated by Fate and Destiny, an old pagan idea abhorrent to Al-Islam which reposes on G.o.d's providence." He makes Kaza and Kismet quasi-synonymes of "Qaza" and "Qader," the former signifying G.o.d's decree, the latter our allotted portion, and he would render both by dispensation. Of course it is convenient to forget the Guarded Tablet of the learned and the Night of Power and skull-lectures of the vulgar. The eminent Turkish scholar would also translate Salat by worship (du'a being prayer) because it signifies a simple act of adoration without entreaty. If he will read the Opener of the Koran, recited in every set of prayers, he will find an especial request to be "led to the path which is straight." These vagaries are seriously adopted by Mr. E. J. W. Gibb in his Ottoman Poems (p. 245, etc.) London: Trubner and Co., 1882; and they deserve, I think, reprehension, because they serve only to mislead; and the high authority of the source whence they come necessarily recommends them to many.

[FN#167] The reader will have noticed the likeness of this tale to that of Ibn Mansur and the Lady Budur (vol. iv., 228 et seq.){Vol 4, Tale 42} For this reason Lane leaves it untranslated (iii. 252).

[FN#168] Lane also omits this tale (iii. 252). See Night dclx.x.xviii., vol. vii. p. 113 et seq., for a variant of the story.

[FN#169] Third Abbaside, A.H. 158-169 (=775-785), and father of Harun Al-Rashid. He is known chiefly for his eccentricities, such as cutting the throats of all his carrier-pigeons, making a man dine off marrow and sugar and having snow sent to him at Meccah, a distance of 700 miles.

[FN#170] Arab. "Mirt"; the dictionaries give a short shift, cloak or breeches of wool or coa.r.s.e silk.

[FN#171] Arab. "Mayazib" plur. of the Pers. Mizab (orig.

Miz-i-ab=channel of water) a spout for roof-rain. That which drains the Ka'abah on the N.-W. side is called Mizab al-Rahmah (Gargoyle of Mercy) and pilgrims stand under it for a douche of holy water. It is supposed to be of gold, but really of silver gold-plated and is described of Burckhardt and myself.

(Pilgrimage iii. 164.) The length is 4 feet 10 in.; width 9 in.; height of sides 8 in.; and slope at mouth 1 foot 6 in long.

[FN#172] The Mac. and Bull Edits. have by mistake "Son of Ishak." Lane has "Is-hale the Son of Ibrahim" following Trebutien (iii. 483) but suggests in a note the right reading as above.

[FN#173] Again masculine for feminine.