The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume III Part 38

[FN#391] Here the formula means "I am sorry for it, but I couldn't help it."

[FN#392] A n.o.ble name of the Persian Kings (meaning the planet Mars) corrupted in Europe to Varanes.

[FN#393] Arab. "Jallab," one of the three muharramat or forbiddens, the Harik al-hajar (burner of stone) the Kati'

al-shajar (cutter of trees, without reference to Hawarden N. B.) and the Bayi' al-bashar (seller of men, vulg. Jallab). The two former worked, like the Italian Carbonari, in desert places where they had especial opportunities for crime. (Pilgrimage iii. 140.) None of these things must be practiced during Pilgrimage on the holy soil of Al-Hijaz--not including Jeddah.

[FN#394] The verses contain the tenets of the Murjiy sect which attaches infinite importance to faith and little or none to works. Sale (sect. viii.) derives his "Morgians" from the "Jabrians" (Jabari), who are the direct opponents of the "Kadarians" (Kadari), denying free will and free agency to man and ascribing his actions wholly to Allah. Lane (ii. 243) gives the orthodox answer to the heretical question:--

Water could wet him not if G.o.d please guard His own; *

Nor need man care though bound of hands in sea he's thrown: But if His Lord decree that he in sea be drowned; *

He'll drown albeit in the wild and wold he wone.

It is the old quarrel between Predestination and Freewill which cannot be solved except by a.s.suming a Law without a Lawgiver.

[FN#395] Our proverb says: Give a man luck and throw him into the sea.

[FN#396] As a rule Easterns, I repeat, cover head and face when sleeping especially in the open air and moonlight. Europeans find the practice difficult, and can learn it only by long habit.

[FN#397] Pers. = a flower-garden. In Galland, Bahram has two daughters, Bostama and Cavam a. In the Bres. Edit. the daughter is "Bostan" and the slave-girl "Kawam."

[FN#398] Arab. "Kahil"=eyes which look as if darkened with antimony: hence the name of the n.o.ble Arab breed of horses "Kuhaylat" (Al-Ajuz, etc.).

[FN#399] "As'ad"=more (or most) fortunate.

[FN#400] This is the vulgar belief, although Mohammed expressly disclaimed the power in the Koran (chaps. xiii. 8), "Thou art commissioned to be a preacher only and not a worker of miracles."

"Signs" (Arab. Ayat) may here also mean verses of the Koran, which the Apostle of Allah held to be his standing miracles. He despised the common miracula which in the East are of everyday occurrence and are held to be easy for any holy man. Hume does not believe in miracles because he never saw one. Had he travelled in the East he would have seen (and heard of) so many that his scepticism (more likely that testimony should be false than miracles be true) would have been based on a firmer foundation. It is one of the marvels of our age that whilst two-thirds of Christendom (the Catholics and the "Orthodox"

Greeks) believe in "miracles" occurring not only in ancient but even in our present days, the influential and intelligent third (Protestant) absolutely "denies the fact."

[FN#401] Arab. "Al-Shahadatani"; testifying the Unity and the Apostleship.