The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume IX Part 19

[FN#243] Here Lane translates "Wajh" lit. "the desire of seeing the face of G.o.d," and explains in a note that a "Muslim holds this to be the greatest happiness that can be enjoyed in Paradise." But I have noted that the tenet of seeing the countenance of the Creator, except by the eyes of spirit, is a much disputed point amongst Moslems.

[FN#244] Artful enough is this contrast between the squalid condition of the starving fisherman and the gorgeous belongings of the Merman.

[FN#245] Lit. "Verily he laughed at me so that I set him free."

This is a fair specimen of obscure conciseness.

[FN#246] Arab. "Mishannah," which Lane and Payne translate basket: I have always heard it used of an old gunny-bag or bag of plaited palm-leaves.

[FN#247] Arab. "Kaff Shurayk" applied to a single bun. The Shurayk is a bun, an oblong cake about the size of a man's hand (hence the term "Kaff"=palm) with two long cuts and sundry oblique crosscuts, made of leavened dough, glazed with egg and Samn (clarified b.u.t.ter) and flavoured with spices (cinnamon, curc.u.ma, artemisia and prunes mahalab) and with aromatic seeds, (Rihat al-'ajin) of which Lane (iii. 641) specifies aniseed, nigella, absinthium, (Artemisia arborescens) and Kafurah (A.

camphorata Monspeliensis) etc. The Shurayk is given to the poor when visiting the tombs and on certain fetes.

[FN#248] "Mother of Prosperities."

[FN#249] Tribes of pre-historic Arabs who were sent to h.e.l.l for bad behaviour to Prophets Salih and Hud. See vol. iii. 294.

[FN#250] "Too much for him to come by lawfully."

[FN#251] To protect it. The Arab. is "Jah"=high station, dignity.

[FN#252] The European reader, especially feminine, will think this a hard fate for the pious first wife but the idea would not occur to the Moslem mind. After bearing ten children a woman becomes "Umm al-banati w'al-banin"=a mother of daughters and sons, and should hold herself unfit for love-disport. The seven ages of womankind are thus described by the Arabs and I translate the lines after a well-known (Irish) model:--

From ten years to twenty-- Of beauty there's plenty.

From twenty to thirty-- Fat, fair and alert t'ye.

From thirty to forty-- Lads and la.s.ses she bore t'ye.

From forty to fifty-- An old'un and shifty.

From fifty to sixty-- A sorrow that sticks t'ye.

From sixty to seventy-- A curse of G.o.d sent t'ye.

For these and other sentiments upon the subject of women and marriage see Pilgrimage ii. 285-87.

[FN#253] Abdullah, as has been said, means "servant or rather slave of Allah."

[FN#254] Again the "Come to my arms, my slight acquaintance," of the Anti-Jacobin.

[FN#255] Arab. "Nukl," e.g. the quatre mendicants as opposed to "Fakihah"=fresh fruit. The Persians, a people who delight in gross practical jokes, get the confectioner to coat with sugar the droppings of sheep and goats and hand them to the bulk of the party. This pleasant confection is called "Nukl-i-peshkil"-- dung-dragees.

[FN#256] The older name of Madinat al-Nabi, the city of the Prophet; vulg. called Al-Medinah per excellentiam. See vol. iv.

114. In the Mac. and Bul. texts we have "Tayyibah"=the goodly, one of the many t.i.tles of that Holy City: see Pilgrimage ii. 119.

[FN#257] Not "visiting the tomb of," etc. but visiting the Prophet himself, who is said to have declared that "Ziyarah"

(visitation) of his tomb was in religion the equivalent of a personal call upon himself.

[FN#258] Arab. "Nafakah"; for its conditions see Pigrimage iii.

224. I have again and again insisted upon the Anglo-Indian Government enforcing the regulations of the Faith upon pauper Hindi pilgrims who go to the Moslem Holy Land as beggars and die of hunger in the streets. To an "Empire of Opinion" this is an unmitigated evil (Pilgrimage iii. 256); and now, after some thirty-four years, there are signs that the suggestions of common sense are to be adopted. England has heard of the extraordinary recklessness and inconsequence of the British-Indian "fellow- subject."

[FN#259] The Ka'abah of Meccah.

[FN#260] When Moslems apply "Nabi!" to Mohammed it is in the peculiar sense of "prophet" ({Greek})=one who speaks before the people, not one who predicts, as such foresight was adjured by the Apostle. Dr. A. Neubauer (The Athenaeum No. 3031) finds the root of "Nabi!" in the a.s.syrian Nabu and Heb. Noob (occurring in Exod. vii. 1. "Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet." i.e.

orator, speaker before the people), and holds it to be a Canaanite term which supplanted "Roeh" (the Seer) e.g. 1 Samuel ix. 9. The learned Hebraist traces the cult of Nebo, a secondary deity in a.s.syria to Palestine and Ph?nicia, Palmyra, Edessa (in the Nebok of Abgar) and Hierapolis in Syria or Mabug (Nabog?).

[FN#261] I cannot find "Dandan" even in Lib. Quintus de Aquaticis Animalibus of the learned Sam. Bochart's "Hierozocon"

(London, 1663) and must conjecture that as "Dandan" in Persian means a tooth (vol. ii. 83) the writer applied it to a sun-fish or some such well-fanged monster of the deep.

[FN#262] A favourite proverb with the Fellah, when he alludes to the Pasha and to himself.

[FN#263] An euphemistic answer, unbernfen as the Germans say.

[FN#264] It is a temptation to derive this word from b?uf a l'eau, but I fear that the theory will not hold water. The "buffaloes" of Alexandria laughted it to scorn.

[FN#265] Here the writer's zoological knowledge is at fault.

Animals, which never or very rarely see man, have no fear of him whatever. This is well-known to those who visit the Gull-fairs at Ascension Island, Santos and many other isolated rocks; the hen birds will peck at the intruder's ankles but they do not rise from off their eggs. For details concerning the "Gull-fair" of the Summer Islands consult p. 4 "The History of the Bermudas,"

edited by Sir J. H. Lefroy for the Hakluyt Society, 1882. I have seen birds on Fernando Po peak quietly await a second shot; and herds of antelopes, the most timed of animals, in the plains of Somali-land only stared but were not startled by the report of the gun. But Arabs are not the only moralists who write zoological nonsense: witness the notable verse,

"Birds in their little nests agree,"

when the feathered tribes are the most pugnacious of breathing beings.

[FN#266] Lane finds these details "silly and tiresome or otherwise objectionable," and omits them.

[FN#267] Meaning, "Thou hast as yet seen little or nothing." In most Eastern tongues a question often expresses an emphatic a.s.sertion. See vol. i. 37.

[FN#268] Easterns wear as a rule little clothing but it suffices for the essential purposes of decency and travellers will live amongst them for years without once seeing an accidental "exposure of the person." In some cases, as with the Nubian thong-ap.r.o.n, this demand of modesty requires not a little practice of the muscles; and we all know the difference in a Scotch kilt worn by a Highlander and a c.o.c.kney sportsman.

[FN#269] Arab. "Shiraj"=oil extracted from rape seed but especially from sesame. The Persians p.r.o.nounce it "Siraj"

(apparently unaware that it is their own word "Shirah"=juice in Arabic garb) and have coined a participle "Musayrij" e.g., Bu-i- musayrij, taint of sesame-oil applied especially to the Jews who very wisely prefer, in Persia and elsewhere, oil which is wholesome to b.u.t.ter which is not. The Moslems, however, declare that its immoderate use in cooking taints the exudations of the skin.

[FN#270] Arab. "Nakkarun" probably congeners of the redoubtable "Dandan."

[FN#271] Bresl. Edit. xi. 78. The Mac. says "They are all fish"

(Kullu-hum) and the Bul. "Their food (aklu-hum) is fish."

[FN#272] Arab. "Az'ar," usually=having thin hair. The general term for tailless is "abtar." See Koran cviii. 3, when it means childless.

[FN#273] A common formula of politeness.

[FN#274] Bresl. Edit. xi. 82; meaning, "You will probably keep it for yourself." Abdullah of the Sea is perfectly logical; but grief is not. We weep over the deaths of friends mostly for our own sake: theoretically we should rejoice that they are at rest; but practically we are afflicted by the thought that we shall never again see their pleasant faces.

[FN#275] i.e. about rejoicing over the newborns and mourning over the dead.

[FN#276] i.e. Ishak of Mosul, for whom see vol. iv. 119. The Bresl. Edit. has Fazil for Fazl.

[FN#277] Abu Dalaf al-Ijili, a well-known soldier equally famed for liberality and culture.

[FN#278] Arab. "Takhmish," alluding to the familiar practice of tearing face and hair in grief for a loss, a death, etc.

[FN#279] i.e. When he is in the very prime of life and able to administer fiers coups de canif.

"For ladies e'en of most uneasy virtue Prefer a spouse whose age is short of thirty."

Don Juan 1. 62.