The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume IV Part 30

[FN#427] Arab. "Muwallad" (fem. "Muwalladah"); a rearling, a slave born in a Moslem land. The numbers may appear exaggerated, but even the petty King of Ashanti had, till the last war, 3333 "wives."

[FN#428] The Under-prefect of Baghdad.

[FN#429] "Ja'afar," our old Giaffar (which is painfully like "Gaffer," i.e. good father) means either a rus.h.i.+ng river or a rivulet.

[FN#430] A regular Fellah's name also that of a village (Pilgrimage i. 43) where a pleasant story is told about one Haykal.

[FN#431] The "Mountain" means the rocky and uncultivated ground South of Cairo, such as Jabal-al-Ahmar and the geological-sea-coast flanked by the old Cairo-Suez highway.

[FN#432] A popular phrase=our "sharp as a razor."

[FN#433] i.e. are men so few; a favourite Persian phrase.

[FN#434] She is a woman of rank who would cause him to be a.s.sa.s.sinated.

[FN#435] This is not Al-Hakimbi' Amri'llah the famous or infamous founder of the Druze ((Duruz)) faith and held by them to be, not an incarnation of the G.o.dhead, but the G.o.dhead itself in propria persona, who reigned A.D. 926-1021: our Hakim is the orthodox Abbaside Caliph of Egypt who dated from two centuries after him (A.D. 1261). Had the former been meant, it would have thrown back this part of The Nights to an earlier date than is generally accepted. But in a place still to come I shall again treat of the subject.

[FN#436] For an account of a similar kind which was told to me during the last few years see "Midian Revisited," i. 15. These hiding-places are innumerable in lands of venerable antiquity like Egypt; and, if there were any contrivance for detecting hidden treasure, it would make the discoverer many times a millionaire.

[FN#437] i.e. it had been given to him or his in writing, like the book left to the old woman before quoted in "Midian," etc.

[FN#438] Arab. "Kird" (p.r.o.n. in Egypt "Gird"). It is usually the hideous Abyssinian cynocephalus which is tamed by the ape-leader popularly called Kuraydati (Lane, M.E., chaps. xx.). The beast has a natural-penchant for women ; I heard of one which attempted to rape a girl in the public street and was prevented only by a sentinel's bayonet. They are powerful animals and bite like greyhounds.

[FN#439] Easterns attribute many complaints (such as toothache) to worms, visible as well as microscopic, which may be held a fair prolepsis of the "germ-theory" the bacterium. the bacillus, the microbe. Nymphomania, the disease alluded to in these two tales is always attributed to worms in the v.a.g.i.n.a.

[FN#440] b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, very rare in Arabia is fatally common amongst those most debauched of debauched races, the Egyptian proper and the Sindis. Hence the Pentateuch, whose object was to breed a larger population of fighting men, made death the penalty for lying with a beast (Deut. xxvii. 21). C. S. Sonnini (Travels, English translation, p. 663) gives a curious account of Fellah lewdness.

"The female crocodile during congress is turned upon her back ( ?) and cannot rise without difficulty. Will it be believed that there are men who take advantage of the helpless situation of the female, drive off the male, and supplant him in this frightful intercourse ? Horrible embraces, the knowledge of which was wanting to complete the disgusting history of human perversity!" The French traveller forgets to add the superst.i.tious explanation of this congress which is the sovereignest charm for rising to rank and riches. The Ajaib al-Hind tells a tale (chaps. x.x.xix.) of a certain Mohammed bin Bullishad who had issue by a she-ape: the young ones were hairless of body and wore quasi-human faces; and the father's sight had become dim by his b.e.s.t.i.a.l-practice.