The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume I Part 25

[FN#280] This march of the tribe is a lieu commun of Arab verse e.g. the poet Labid's n.o.ble elegy on the "Deserted Camp." We shall find scores of instances in The Nights.

[FN#281] I have heard of such sands in the Desert east of Damascus which can be crossed only on boards or camel furniture; and the same is reported of the infamous Region "Al-Ahklaf" ("Unexplored Syria").

[FN#282] Hence the Arab. saying "The bark of a dog and not the gleam of a fire;" the tired traveller knows from the former that the camp is near, whereas the latter shows from great distances.

[FN#283] Dark blue is the colour of mourning in Egypt as it was of the Roman Republic. The Persians hold that this tint was introduced by Kay Kawus (B. C. 600) when mourning for his son Siyawush. It was continued till the death of Husayn on the 10th of Muharram (the first month, then representing the vernal equinox) when it was changed for black. As a rule Moslems do not adopt this symbol of sorrow (called "Hidad") looking upon the practice as somewhat idolatrous and foreign to Arab manners. In Egypt and especially on the Upper Nile women dye their hands with indigo and stair. their faces black or blacker.

[FN#284] The older Roc, of which more in the Tale of Sindbad.

Meanwhile the reader curious about the Persian Simurgh (thirty bird) will consult the Dabistan, i., 55,191 and iii., 237, and Richardson's Diss. p. xlviii. For the Anka (Enka or Unka--long necked bird) see Dab. iii., 249 and for the Huma (bird of Paradise) Richardson lxix. We still lack details concerning the Ben or Bennu (nycticorax) of Egypt which with the Article pi gave rise to the Greek "phoenix."

[FN#285] Probably the Haledj of Forskal (p. xcvi. Flor. aegypt.

Arab.), "lignum tenax, durum, obscuri generic." The Bres. Edit. has "akul"=teak wood, vulg. "Saj."

[FN#286] The knocker ring is an invention well known to the Romans.

[FN#287] Arab. "Sadr"; the place of honour; hence the "Sudder Adawlut" (Supreme Court) in the Anglo-Indian jargon.

[FN#288] Arab. "Ahlan wa sahlan wa marhaba," the words still popularly addressed to a guest.

[FN#289] This may mean "liquid black eyes"; but also, as I have noticed, that the lashes were long and thick enough to make the eyelids appear as if Kohl-powder had been applied to the inner rims.

[FN#290] A slight parting between the two front incisors, the upper only, is considered a beauty by Arabs; why it as hard to say except for the racial love of variety. "Sugar" (Thug) in the text means, primarily, the opening of the mouth, the gape: hence the front teeth.

[FN#291] i.e. makes me taste the bitterness of death, "bursting the gall-bladder" (Mararah) being our "breaking the heart."

[FN#292] Almost needless to say that forbidden doors and rooms form a lieu-commun in Fairie: they are found in the Hindu Katha Sarit Sagara and became familiar to our childhood by "Bluebeard."

[FN#293] Lit. "apply Kohl to my eyes," even as Jezebel "painted her face," in Heb. put her eyes in painting (2 Kings ix. 30).

[FN#294] Arab. "Al-Barkuk," whence our older "Apric.o.c.k."

Cla.s.sically it is "Burkuk" and Pers. for Arab. "Mishrnish," and it also denotes a small plum or damson. In Syria the side next the sun" shows a glowing red flush.

[FN#295] Arab. "Hazar" (in Persian, a thousand) = a kind of mocking bird.

[FN#296] Some Edits. make the doors number a hundred, but the Princesses were forty and these coincidences, which seem to have significance and have none save for Arab symmetromania, are common in Arab stories.

[FN#297] Arab. "Majur": hence possibly our "mazer," which is popularly derived from Masarn, a maple.

[FN#298] A compound scent of ambergris, musk and aloes.

[FN#299] The ends of the bridle-reins forming the whip.

[FN#300] The flying horse is Pegasus which is a Greek travesty of an Egyptian myth developed India.

[FN#301] The Bres. Edit. wrongly says "the seventh."

[FN#302] Arab. "Sharmutah" (plur. Sharamit) from the root Sharmat, to shred, a favourite Egyptian word also applied in vulgar speech to a strumpet, a punk, a piece. It is also the popular term for strips of jerked or boucaned meat hung up m the sun to dry, and cla.s.sically called "Kadid."

[FN#303] Arab. "Izar," the man's waistcloth opposed to the Rida or shoulder-cloth, is also the sheet of white calico worn by the poorer Egyptian women out of doors and covering head and hands. See Lane (M. E., chaps. i.). The rich prefer a "Habarah" of black silk, and the poor, when they have nothing else, use a bed-sheet.

[FN#304] i.e. "My clears."

[FN#305] Arab. "La tawakhizna:" lit. "do not chastise (or blame) us;" the pop. expression for, "excuse (or pardon) us."

[FN#306] Arab. "Maskhut," mostly applied to change of shape as man enchanted to monkey, and in vulgar parlance applied to a statue (of stone, etc.). The list of metamorphoses in Al-Islam is longer than that known to Ovid. Those who have seen Petra, the Greek town of the Hauran and the Roman ruins in Northern Africa will readily detect the bests upon which these stories are built. I shall return to this subject in The City of Iram (Night cclxxvi.) and The City of Bra.s.s (dlxvii.).

[FN#307] A picturesque phrase enough to express a deserted site, a spectacle familiar to the Nomades and always abounding in pathos to the citizens.

[FN#308] The olden "Harem" (or gynaeceum, Pers. Zenanah, Serraglio): Harim is also used by synecdoche for the inmates; especially the wife.

[FN#309] The pearl is supposed in the East to lose 1% per ann. of its splendour and value.

[FN#310] Arab. "Fa.s.s," properly the bezel of a ring; also a gem cut en cabochon and generally the contenant for the contenu.

[FN#311] Arab. "Mihrab" = the arch-headed niche in the Mosque-wall facing Meccah-wards. Here, with his back to the people and fronting the Ka'abah or Square House of Meccah (hence called the "Kiblah" = direction of prayer), stations himself the Imam, artistes or fugleman, lit. "one who stands before others;" and his bows and prostrations give the time to the congregation. I have derived the Mihrab from the niche in which the Egyptian G.o.d was shrined: the Jews ignored it, but the Christians preserved it for their statues and altars. Maundrell suggests that the empty niche denotes an invisible G.o.d. As the niche (symbol of Venus) and the minaret (symbol of Priapus) date only from the days of the tenth Caliph, Al-Walid (A.H. 86-96=105-115), the Hindus charge the Moslems with having borrowed the two from their favourite idols--The Linga-Yoni or Cunnus phallus (Pilgrimage ii. 140), and plainly call the Mihrab a Bhaga= Cunnus (Dabistan ii. 152). The Guebres further term Meccah "Mah-gah," locus Lunae, and Al-Medinah, "Mahdinah," = Moon of religion. See Dabistan i., 49, etc.

[FN#312] Arab "Kursi," a stool of palm-fronds, etc., X-shaped (see Lane's ill.u.s.tration, Nights i., 197), before which the reader sits.

Good Moslems will not hold the Holy Volume below the waist nor open it except when ceremonially pure. Englishmen in the East should remember this, for to neglect the "Adab al-Kuran" (respect due to Holy Writ) gives great scandal.

[FN#313] Mr. Payne (i. 148) quotes the German Zuckerpuppchen.

[FN#314] The Persian poets have a thousand conceits in praise of the "mole," (Khal or Shamah) for which Hafiz offered "Samarkand and Bokhara" (they not being his, as his friends remarked). Another "topic" is the flight of arrows shot by eyelashes.

[FN#315] Arab. "Suha" a star in the Great Bear introduced only to balance "wushat" = spies, enviers, enemies, whose "evil eye" it will ward off.

[FN#316] In Arab tales beauty is always "soft-sided," and a smooth skin is valued in proportion to its rarity.

[FN#317] The myrtle is the young hair upon the side face

[FN#318] In other copies of these verses the fourth couplet swears "by the scorpions of his brow" i.e. the accroche-caeurs, the beau-catchers, bell-ropes or aggravators," as the B.P. calls them.

In couplet eight the poet alludes to his love's "Unsur," or element his nature made up of the four cla.s.sicals, and in the last couplet he makes the nail paring refer to the moon not the sun.

[FN#319] This is regular formula when speaking of Guebres.

[FN#320] Arab. "Faraiz"; the orders expressly given in the Koran which the reader will remember, is Uncreate and Eternal. In India "Farz" is applied to injunctions thrice repeated; and "Wajib" to those given twice over. Elsewhere scanty difference is made between them.

[FN#321] Arab. "Kufr" = rejecting the True Religion, i.e. Al-Islam, such rejection being "Tughyan" or rebellion against the Lord. The "terrible sound" is taken from the legend of the prophet Salih and the proto-historic tribe of Thamud which for its impiety was struck dead by an earthquake and a noise from heaven. The latter, according to some commentators, was the voice of the Archangel Gabriel crying "Die all of you" (Koran, chapts. vii., xviii., etc.). We shall hear more of it in the "City of many-columned Iram." According to some, Salih, a mysterious Badawi prophet, is buried in the Wady al-Shaykh of the so-called Sinaitic Peninsula.

[FN#322] Yet they kept the semblance of man, showing that the idea arose from the basaltic statues found in Hauranic ruins. Mohammed in his various marches to Syria must have seen remnants of Greek and Roman settlements; and as has been noticed "Sesostris"

[FN#323] Arab. "Shuhada"; highly respected by Moslems as by other religionists; although their princ.i.p.al if not only merit seems as a rule to have been intense obstinacy and devotion to one idea for which they were ready to sacrifice even life. The Martyrs-category is extensive including those killed by falling walls; victims to the plague, pleurisy and pregnancy, travellers drowned or otherwise lost when journeying honestly, and chaste lovers who die of "broken hearts" i.e. impaired digestion. Their souls are at once stowed away in the crops of green birds where they remain till Resurrection Day, "eating of the fruits and drinking of the streams of Paradise," a place however, whose topography is wholly uncertain. Thus the young Prince was rewarded with a manner of anti-Purgatory, a preparatory heaven.

[FN#324] Arab. "Su'uban:" the Badawin give the name to a variety of serpents all held to be venomous; but m tales the word, like "Tannin," expresses our "dragon" or "c.o.c.katrice."

[FN#325] She was ashamed to see the lady doing servile duty by rubbing her feet. This ma.s.sage, which B. de la Brocquiere describes in 1452 as "kneading and pinching," has already been noticed. The French term is apparently derived from the Arab. "Mas-h."

[FN#326] Alluding to the Most High Name, the hundredth name of G.o.d, the Heb. Shem hamphorash, unknown save to a favoured few who by using it perform all manner of miracles.