The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume I Part 24

(Psalm iv. 3) =filii viri, not homines.

[FN#238] This posture is terribly trying to European legs; and few white men (unless brought up to it) can squat for any time on their heels. The ''tailor-fashion," with crossed legs, is held to be free and easy.

[FN#239] Arab. "Kata"=Pterocles Alchata, the well-known sand-grouse of the desert. It is very poor white flesh.

[FN#240] Arab. "Khubz" which I do not translate "cake" or ''bread,'' as thee would suggest the idea of our loaf. The staff of life in the East is a thin flat circle of dough baked in the oven or on the griddle, and corresponding with the Scotch "scone," the Spanish tortilla and the Australian "flap-jack."

[FN#241] Arab. "Harisah," a favourite dish of wheat (or rice) boiled and reduced to a paste with shredded meat, spices and condiments. The "bangles" is a pretty girl eating with him.

[FN#242] These lines are repeated with a difference in Night cccx.x.x. They affect Rims cars, out of the way, heavy rhymes: e. g.

here Sakarij (plur. of Sakruj, platters, porringers); Tayahij (plur. of Tayhuj, the smaller caccabis-partridge); Tabahij (Persian Tabahjah, an me et or a stew of meat, onions, eggs, etc.) Ma'arij ("in stepped piles" like the pyramids Lane ii 495, renders "on the stairs"); Makarij (plur. of Makraj, a small pot); Damalij (plur. of dumluj, a bracelet, a bangle); Dayabij (brocades) and Tafarij (openings, enjoyments). In Night cccx.x.x. we find also Sikabij (plur. of Sikbaj, marinated meat elsewhere explained); Fararij (plur. of farruj, a chicken, vulg. farkh) and Dakakij (plur. of Gr.

dakujah,, a small Jar). In the first line we have also (though not a rhyme) Gharanik Gr. , a crane, preserved in Romaic. The weeping and wailing are caused by the remembrance that all these delicacies have been demolished like a Badawi camp.

[FN#243] This is the vinum coctum, the boiled wine, still a favourite in Southern Italy and Greece.

[FN#244] Eastern topers delight in drinking at dawn: upon this subject I shall have more to say in other Nights.

[FN#245] Arab. "Adab," a crux to translators, meaning anything between good education and good manners. In mod. Turk. "Edibiyyet"

(Adabiyat) = belles lettres and "Edebi' or "Edib" = a litterateur.

[FN#246] The Caliph Al-Maamun, who was a bad player, used to say, "I have the administration of the world and am equal to it, whereas I am straitened in the ordering of a s.p.a.ce of two spans by two spans." The "board" was then "a square field of well-dressed leather."

[FN#247] The Rabbis (after Matth. xix. 12) count three kinds of Eunuchs; (1) Seris chammah=of the sun, i.e. natural, (2) Seris Adam=manufactured per homines; and (3) Seris Chammayim--of G.o.d (i.e.. religious abstainer). Seris (castrated) or Abd (slave) is the general Hebrew name.

[FN#248] The "Lady of Beauty."

[FN#249] "Kaf" has been noticed as the mountain which surrounds earth as a ring does the finger:: it is popularly used like our Alp and Alpine. The "circ.u.mambient Ocean" (Bahr al-muhit) is the Homeric Ocean-stream.

[FN#250] The pomegranate is probably chosen here because each fruit is supposed to contain one seed from Eden-garden. Hence a host of superst.i.tions (Pilgrimage iii., 104) possibly connected with the Chaldaic-Babylonian G.o.d Rimmon or Ramanu. Hence Persephone or Ishtar tasted the "rich pomegranate's seed." Lenormant, loc. cit.

pp. 166, 182.

[FN#251] i.e. for the love of G.o.d--a favourite Moslem phrase.

[FN#252] Arab. "Bab," also meaning a chapter (of magic, of war, etc.), corresponding with the Persian "Dar" as in Sad-dar, the Hundred Doors. Here, however, it is figurative "I tried a new mode." This scene is in the Mabinogion.

[FN#253] I use this Irish term = crying for the dead, as English wants the word for the praefica, or myrialogist. The practice is not encouraged in Al-Islam; and Caliph Abu Bakr said, ; "Verily a corpse is sprinkled with boiling water by reason of the lamentations of the living, i.e. punished for not having taken measures to prevent their profitless lamentations. But the practice is from Negroland whence it reached Egypt, and the people have there developed a curious system in the "weeping-song" I have noted this in "The Lake Regions of Central Africa." In Zoroastrianism (Dabistan, chaps. xcvii.) tears shed for the dead form a river in h.e.l.l, black and frigid.

[FN#254] These lines are hardly translatable. Arab. "Sabr" means "patience" as well as "aloes," hereby lending itself to a host of puns and double entendres more or less vile. The aloe, according to Burckhardt, is planted in graveyards as a lesson of patience: it is also slung, like the dried crocodile, over house doors to prevent evil spirits entering: "thus hung without earth and water," says Lane (M.E., chaps. xi.), "it will live for several years and even blossom. Hence (?) it is called Sabr, which signifies patience. But Sibr as well as Sabr (a root) means "long sufferance." I hold the practice to be one of the many Inner African superst.i.tions. The wild Gallas to the present day plant aloes on graves, and suppose that when the plant sprouts the deceased has been admitted to the gardens of Wak, the Creator. (Pilgrimage iii. 350.)

[FN#255] Every city in the East has its specific t.i.tle: this was given to Baghdad either on account of its superior police or simply because it was the Capital of the Caliphate. The Tigris was also called the "River of Peace (or Security)."

[FN#256] This is very characteristic: the pa.s.sengers finding themselves in difficulties at once take command. See in my Pilgrimage (I. chaps. xi.) how we beat and otherwise maltreated the Captain of the "Golden Wire."

[FN#257] The fable is probably based on the currents which, as in Eastern Africa, will carry a ship fifty miles a day out of her course. We first find it in Ptolemy (vii. 2) whose Maniolai Islands, of India extra Gangem, cause iron nails to fly out of ships, the effect of the Lapis Herculeus (Loadstone). Rabelais (v.

c. 37) alludes to it and to the vulgar idea of magnetism being counteracted by Skordon (Scordon or garlic). Hence too the Adamant (Loadstone) Mountains of Mandeville (chaps. xxvii.) and the "Magnetic Rock" in Mr Puttock's clever "Peter Wilkins." I presume that the myth also arose from seeing craft built, as on the East African Coast, without iron nails. We shall meet with the legend again. The word Jabal ("Jebel" in Egypt) often occurs in these pages. The Arabs apply it to any rising ground or heap of rocks; so it is not always = our mountain. It has found its way to Europe e. g. Gibraltar and Monte Gibello (or Mongibel in poetry) "Mt. Ethne that men clepen Mounte Gybelle." Other special senses of Jabal will occur.

[FN#258] As we learn from the Nubian Geographer the Arabs in early ages explored the Fortunate Islands (Jazirat al-Khalidat=Eternal Isles), or Canaries, on one of which were reported a horse and horseman in bronze with his spear pointing west. Ibn al-Ward) notes two images of hard stone, each an hundred cubits high, and upon the top of each a figure of copper pointing with its hand backwards, as though it would say:--Return for there is nothing behind me!" But this legend attaches to older doings. The 23rd Tobba (who succeeded Bilkis), Malik bin Sharhabil, (or Sharabil or Sharahil) surnamed Nashir al-Ni'am=scatterer of blessings, lost an army in attempting the Western sands and set up a statue of copper upon whose breast was inscribed in antique characters:--

There is no access behind me, Nothing beyond, (Saith) The Son of Sharabil.

[FN#259] i.e. I exclaimed "Bismillah!"

[FN#260] The lesser ablution of hands, face and feet; a kind of "washing the points." More in Night ccccxl.

[FN#261] Arab. "Ruka'tayn"; the number of these bows which are followed by the prostrations distinguishes the five daily prayers.

[FN#262] The "Beth Kol" of the Hebrews; also called by the Moslems "Hatif"; for which ask the Spiritualists. It is the Hindu "voice divine" or "voice from heaven."

[FN#263] These formulae are technically called Tasmiyah, Tahlil (before noted) and Takbir: i.e. "testifying" is Tashhid.

[FN#264] Arab. "Samn," (Pers. "Raughan" Hind. "Ghi") the "single sauce" of the East; fresh b.u.t.ter set upon the fire, skimmed and kept (for a century if required) in leather bottles and demijohns.

Then it becomes a hard black ma.s.s, considered a panacea for wounds and diseases. It is very "filling": you say jocosely to an Eastern threatened with a sudden inroad of guests, "Go, swamp thy rice with Raughan." I once tried training, like a Hindu Pahlawan or athlete, on Gur (raw sugar), milk and Ghi; and the result was being blinded by bile before the week ended.

[FN#265] These handsome youths are always described in the terms we should apply to women.

[FN#266] The Bull Edit. (i. 43) reads otherwise:--I found a garden and a second and a third and so on till they numbered thirty and nine; and, in each garden, I saw what praise will not express, of trees and rills and fruits and treasures. At the end of the last I sighted a door and said to myself, "What may be in this place?; needs must I open it and look in!" I did so accordingly and saw a courser ready saddled and bridled and picketed; so I loosed and mounted him, and he flew with me like a bird till he set me down on a terrace-roof; and, having landed me, he struck me a whisk with his tail and put out mine eye and fled from me. Thereupon I descended from the roof and found ten youths all blind of one eye who, when they saw me exclaimed, "No welcome to thee, and no good cheer!" I asked them, "Do ye admit me to your home and society?"

and they answered, "No, by Allah' thou shalt not live amongst us."

So I went forth with weeping eyes and grieving heart, but Allah had written my safety on the Guarded Tablet so I reached Baghdad in safety, etc. This is a fair specimen of how the work has been curtailed in that issue.

[FN#267] Arabs date pregnancy from the stopping of the menses, upon which the foetus is supposed to feed. Kalilah wa Dimnah says, "The child's navel adheres to that of his mother and thereby he sucks"

(i. 263).

[FN#268] This is contrary to the commands of Al-Islam, Mohammed expressly said "The Astrologers are liars, by the Lord of the Ka'abah!"; and his saying is known to almost all Moslems, lettered or unlettered. Yet, the further we go East (Indiawards) the more we find these practices held in honour. Turning westwards we have:

Iuridicis, Erebo, Fisco, fas vivere rapto: Militibus, Medicis, Tortori occidere ludo est; Mentiri Astronomis, Pictoribus atque Poetis.

[FN#269] He does not perform the Wuzu or lesser ablution because he neglects his dawn prayers.

[FN#270] For this game see Lane (M. E. Chapt. xvii.) It is usually played on a checked cloth not on a board like our draughts; and Easterns are fond of eating, drinking and smoking between and even during the games. Torrens (p. 142) translates "I made up some dessert," confounding "Mankalah" with "Nukl" (dried fruit, quatre-mendiants).

[FN#271] Quoted from Mohammed whose saying has been given.

[FN#272] We should say "the night of the thirty-ninth."

[FN#273] The bath first taken after sickness.

[FN#274] Arab. "Dikak" used by way of soap or rather to soften the skin: the meal is usually of lupins, "Adas"="Revalenta Arabica,"

which costs a penny in Egypt and half-a-crown in England.

[FN#275] Arab. "Sukkar-nabat." During my day (1842-49) we had no other sugar in the Bombay Presidency.

[FN#276] This is one of the myriad Arab instances that the decrees of "Anagke," Fate, Destiny, Weird, are inevitable. The situation is highly dramatic; and indeed The Nights, as will appear in the Terminal Essay, have already suggested a national drama.

[FN#277] Having lately been moved by Ajib.

[FN#278] Mr. Payne (i. 131) omits these lines which appear out of place; but this mode of inappropriate quotation is a characteristic of Eastern tales.

[FN#279] Anglice "him."