The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume IV Part 26

Edit. (vii. 254) begins They tell that there arose full enmity between Ja'afar Barmecide and a Sahib of Misr" (Wazir or Governor of Egypt). Lane (ii. 429) quotes to this purpose amongst Arab; historians Fakhr al-Din. (De Sacy's Chrestomathie Arabe i., p. 26, edit. ii.)

[FN#249] Arab. "Armaniyah" which Egyptians call after their mincing fas.h.i.+on "Irminiyeh" hence "Ermine" (Mus Ponticus).

Armaniyah was much more extensive than our Armenia, now degraded to a mere province of Turkey, and the term is understood to include the whole of the old Parthian Empire.

[FN#250] Even now each Pasha-governor must keep a "Wakil" in Constantinople to intrigue and bribe for him at head-quarters.

[FN#251] The symbol of generosity, of unasked liberality, the "black hand" being that of n.i.g.g.ardness.

[FN#252] Arab. Rah =pure (and old) wine. Arabs, like our cla.s.sics, usually drank their wine tempered. So Imr al-Keys in his Mu'allakah says, "Bring the well tempered wine that seems to be saffron-tinctured; and, when water-mixed, o'erbrims the cup." (v.

2.)

[FN#253] There is nothing that Orientals relish more than these "goody-goody" preachments; but they read and forget them as readily as Westerns.

[FN#254] Lane (ii. 435) ill-advisedly writes "Sher," as "the word is evidently Persian signifying a Lion." But this is only in the debased Indian dialect, a Persian, especially a s.h.i.+razi, p.r.o.nounces "s.h.i.+r." And this is how it is written in the Bresl. Edit., vii.

262. "Shar" is evidently a fancy name, possibly suggested by the dynastic name of the Ghurjistan or Georgian Princes.

[FN#255] Again old experience, which has learned at a heavy cost how many a goodly apple is rotten at the core.

[FN#256] This couplet has occurred in Night xxi. I give Torrens (p. 206) by way of specimen.

[FN#257] Arab. "Zaka" = merely tasting a thing which may be sweet with a bitter after-flavour

[FN#258] This tetraseich was in Night x.x.x. with a difference.

[FN#259] The lines have occurred in Night x.x.x. I quote Torrens, p.

311.

[FN#260] This tetrastich is in Night clxix. I borrow from Lane (ii. 62).

[FN#261] The rude but effective refrigerator of the desert Arab who hangs his water-skin to the branch of a tree and allows it to swing in the wind.

[FN#262] Arab "Khumasiyah" which Lane (ii. 438) renders "of quinary stature." Usually it means five spans, but here five feet, showing that the girl was young and still growing. The invoice with a slave always notes her height in spans measured from ankle-bone to ear and above seven she loses value as being full grown. Hence Sudasi (fem. Sudasiyah) is a slave six spans high, the s.h.i.+br or full span (9 inches) not the Fitr or short span from thumb to index. Faut is the interval-between every finger, Ratab between index and medius, and Atab between medius and annularis.

[FN#263] "Moon faced" now sounds sufficiently absurd to us, but it was not always so. Solomon (Cant. vi. 10) does not disdain the image "fair as the moon, clear as the sun," and those who have seen a moon in the sky of Arabia will thoroughly appreciate it. We find it amongst the Hindus, the Persians, the Afghans, the Turks and all the nations of Europe. We have, finally, the grand example of Spenser,

"Her s.p.a.cious forehead, like the clearest moon, etc."

[FN#264] Blue eyes have a bad name in Arabia as in India: the witch Zarka of Al-Yamamah was noted for them; and "blue eyed" often means "fierce-eyed," alluding to the Greeks and Daylamites, mortal-enemies to Ishmael. The Arabs say "ruddy of mustachio, blue of eye and black of heart."

[FN#265] Before explained as used with camphor to fill the dead man's mouth.

[FN#266] As has been seen, slapping on the neck is equivalent to our "boxing ears," but much less barbarous and likely to injure the child. The most insulting blow is that with shoe sandal-or slipper because it brings foot in contact with head. Of this I have spoken before.

[FN#267] Arab. "Hibal" (= ropes) alluding to the A'akal-fillet which binds the Kufiyah-kerchief on the Badawi's head. (Pilgrimage, i. 346.)

[FN#268] Arab. "Khiyal"; afterwards called Kara Gyuz (= "black eyes," from the celebrated Turkish Wazir). The mise-en-scene was like that of Punch, but of transparent cloth, lamp lit inside and showing silhouettes worked by hand. Nothing could be more Fescenntne than Kara Gyuz, who appeared with a phallus longer than himself and made all the Consuls-General-periodically complain of its abuse, while the dialogue, mostly in Turkish, as even more obscene. Most ingenious were Kara Gyuz's little ways of driving on an Obstinate donkey and of tackling a huge Anatolian pilgrim. He mounted the Neddy's back face to tail, and inserting his left thumb like a clyster, hammered it with his right when the donkey started at speed. For the huge pilgrim he used a ladder. These shows now obsolete, used to enliven the Ezbekiyah Gardens every evening and explain Ovid's Words,

"Delicias videam, Nile jocose, tuas!"

[FN#269] Mohammed (Mishkat al-Masabih ii. 360-62) says, "Change the whiteness of your hair but not with anything black." Abu Bakr, who was two years and some months older than the Prophet, used tincture of Henna and Katam. Old Turkish officers justify black dyes because these make them look younger and fiercer. Henna stains white hair orange red; and the Persians apply after it a paste of indigo leaves, the result is successively leek-green, emerald-green, bottle-green and lastly lamp-black. There is a stage in life (the youth of old age) when man uses dyes: presently he finds that the whole face wants dye; that the contrast between juvenile coloured hair and ancient skin is ridiculous and that it is time to wear white.

[FN#270] This prejudice extends all over the East: the Sanskrit saying is "Kvachit kana bhaveta sadhus" now and then a monocular is honest. The left eye is the worst and the popular idea is, I have said, that the damage will come by the injured member

[FN#271] The Arabs say like us, "Short and thick is never quick"

and "Long and thin has little in."

[FN#272] Arab. "Ba'azu layali," some night when his mistress failed him.

[FN#273] The fountain in Paradise before noticed.

[FN#274] Before noticed as the Moslem St. Peter (as far as the keys go).

[FN#275] Arab. "Munkasir" = broken, frail, languis.h.i.+ng the only form of the maladive allowed. Here again we have masculine for feminine: the eyelids show love-desire, but, etc.

[FN#276] The river of Paradise.

[FN#277] See Night xii. "The Second Kalandar's Tale " vol. i. 113.

[FN#278] Lane (ii. 472) refers for specimens of calligraphy to Herbin's "Developpements, etc." There are many more than seven styles of writing as I have shown in Night xiii.; vol. i. 129.

[FN#279] Amongst good Moslems this would be a claim upon a man.

[FN#280] These lines have occurred twice already: and first appear in Night xxii. I have borrowed from Mr. Payne (iv. 46).

[FN#281] Arab. "Ya Nasrani", the address is not intrinsically slighting but it may easily be made so. I have elsewhere noted that when Julian (is said to have) exclaimed "Vicisti Nazarene!" he was probably thinking in Eastern phrase "Nasarta, ya Nasrani!"

[FN#282] Thirst is the strongest of all pleas to an Eastern, especially to a Persian who never forgets the sufferings of his Imam, Husayn, at Kerbela: he would hardly withhold it from the murderer of his father. There is also a Hadis, "Thou shalt not refuse water to him who thirsteth in the desert."

[FN#283] Arab. "Zimmi" which Lane (ii. 474) aptly translates a "tributary." The Koran (chaps. ix.) orders Unbelievers to Islamize or to "pay tribute by right of subjection" (lit. an yadin=out of hand, an expression much debated). The least tribute is one dinar per annum which goes to the poor-rate. and for this the Kafir enjoys protection and almost all the civil rights of Moslems. As it is a question of "loaves and fishes" there is much to say on the subject; "loaves and fishes" being the main base and foundation of all religious establishments.

[FN#284] This tetrastich has before occurred, so I quote Lane (ii.

444).

[FN#285] In Night x.x.xv. the same occurs with a difference.

[FN#286] The old rite, I repeat, has lost amongst all but the n.o.blest of Arab tribes the whole of its significance; and the traveller must be careful how he trusts to the phrase "Nahnu malihin" we are bound together by the salt.

[FN#287] Arab. "Alama" = Ala-ma = upon what ? wherefore ?

[FN#288] Arab. "Mauz"; hence the Linnean name Musa (paradisiaca, etc.). The word is explained by Sale (Koran, chaps. x.x.xvii. 146) as "a small tree or shrub;" and he would identify it with Jonah's gourd.

[FN#289] Lane (ii. 446) "bald wolf or empowered fate," reading (with Mac.) Kaza for Kattan (cat).

[FN#290] i.e. "the Orthodox in the Faith." Ras.h.i.+d is a proper name, witness that scourge of Syria, Ras.h.i.+d Pasha. Born in 1830, of the Haji n.a.z.ir Agha family, Darrah-Beys of Macedonian Draina, he was educated in Paris where he learned the usual-hatred of Europeans: he entered the Egyptian service in 1851, and, presently exchanging it for the Turkish, became in due time Wali (Governor-General) of Syria which he plundered most shamelessly.

Recalled in 1872, he eventually entered the Ministry and on June 15 1876, he was shot down, with other villains like himself, by gallant Captain Hasan, the Circa.s.sian (Yarham-hu 'llah !).

[FN#291] Quoted from a piece of verse, of which more presently.

[FN#292] This tetrastich has occurred before (Night cxciii.). I quote Lane (ii. 449), who quotes Dryden's Spanish Friar,