The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume V Part 44

[FN#496] The doggrel is phenomenal.

[FN#497] He went in wonder and softened heart to see the miracle of saintly affection.

[FN#498] In Sufistical parlance, the creature is the lover and the Creator the Beloved: worldly existence is Disunion, parting, severance; and the life to come is Reunion. The basis of the idea is the human soul being a divinae particula aurae, a disjoined molecule from the Great Spirit, imprisoned in a jail of flesh; and it is so far valuable that it has produced a grand and pathetic poetry; but Common Sense asks, Where is the proof? And Reason wants to know, What does it all mean?

[FN#499] Koran xiii. 41.

[FN#500] Robinson Crusoe, with a touch of Arab prayerfulness.

Also the story of the Knight Placidus in the Gesta (cx.), Boccaccio, etc.

[FN#501] Arabs note two kinds of leprosy, "Bahak" or "Baras" the common or white, and "Juzam" the black leprosy; the leprosy of the joints, mal rouge. Both are attributed to undue diet as eating fish and drinking milk; and both are treated with tonics, especially a.r.s.enic. Leprosy is regarded by Moslems as a Scriptural malady on account of its prevalence amongst the Israelites who, as Manetho tells us, were expelled from Egypt because they infected and polluted the population. In mediaeval Christendom an idea prevailed that the Saviour was a leper; hence the term "morbus sacer"; the honours paid to the sufferers by certain Saints and the Papal address (Clement III. A.D.1189) dilectis filiis leprosis. (Farrar's Life of Christ, i.149.) For the "disgusting and impetuous l.u.s.t" caused by leprosy, see Sonnini (p.560) who visited the lepers at Canea in Candia. He is one of many who describes this symptom; but in the Brazil, where the foul malady still prevails, I never heard of it.

[FN#502] A city in Irak; famous for the three days' battle which caused the death of Yezdegird, last Sa.s.sanian king.

[FN#503] A mountain pa.s.s near Meccah famous for the "First Fealty of the Steep" (Pilgrimage ii. 126). The mosque was built to commemorate the event.

[FN#504] To my surprise I read in Mr. Redhouse's "Mesnevi"

(Trubner, 1881), "Arafat, the mount where the victims are slaughtered by the pilgrims." (p.60). This ignorance is phenomenal. Did Mr. Redhouse never read Burckhardt or Burton?

[FN#505] i.e. listening to the sermon.

[FN#506] It is sad doggrel.

[FN#507] This long story, containing sundry episodes and occupying fifty-three Nights, is wholly omitted by Lane (ii. 643) because "it is a compound of the most extravagant absurdities."

He should have enabled his readers to form their own judgment.

[FN#508] Called Jamasp (brother and minister of the ancient Persian King Gushtasp) in the translations of Trebutien and others from Von Hammer.

[FN#509] The usual term of lactation in the East, prolonged to two years and a-half, which is considered the rule laid down by the Shara' or precepts of the Prophet. But it is not unusual to see children of three and even four years hanging to their mothers' b.r.e.a.s.t.s. During this period the mother does not cohabit with her husband; the separation beginning with her pregnancy.

Such is the habit, not only of the "lower animals," but of all ancient peoples, the Egyptians (from whom the Hebrews borrowed it), the a.s.syrians and the Chinese. I have discussed its bearing upon pregnancy in my "City of the Saints": the Mormons insist upon this law of purity being observed; and the beauty, strength and good health of the younger generation are proofs of their wisdom.

[FN#510] Thus distinguis.h.i.+ng it from "Asal-kasab," cane honey or sugar. See vol. i., 271.

[FN#511] The student of Hinduism will remember the Naga-Kings and Queens (Melusines and Echidnae) who guard the earth-treasures in Naga-land. The first appearance of the snake in literature is in Egyptian hieroglyphs, where he forms the letters f and t, and acts as a determinative in the shape of a Cobra di Capello (Coluber Naja) with expanded hood.

[FN#512] In token that he was safe.

[FN#513] "Akhir al-Zaman." As old men praise past times, so prophets prefer to represent themselves as the last. The early Christians caused much scandal amongst the orderly law-loving Romans by their wild and mistaken predictions of the end of the world being at hand. The catastrophe is a fact for each man under the form of death; but the world has endured for untold ages and there is no apparent cause why it should not endure as many more.

The "latter days," as the religious dicta of most "revelations"

a.s.sure us, will be richer in sinners than in sanct.i.ty: hence "End of Time" is a facetious Arab t.i.tle for a villain of superior quality. My Somali escort applied it to one thus distinguished: in 1875, I heard at Aden that he ended life by the spear as we had all predicted.

[FN#514] Jahannam and the other six h.e.l.ls are personified as feminine; and (woman-like) they are somewhat addicted to prolix speechification.

[FN#515] These puerile exaggerations are fondly intended to act as nurses frighten naughty children.

[FN#516] Alluding to an oft-quoted saying "Lau la-ka, etc.

Without thee (O Mohammed) We (Allah) had not created the spheres," which may have been suggested by "Before Abraham was, I am" (John viii. 58); and by Gate xci. of Zoroastrianism "O Zardusht for thy sake I have created the world" (Dabistan i.

344). The sentiment is by no means "s.h.i.+'ah," as my learned friend Prof. Aloys Springer supposes. In his Mohammed (p. 220) we find an extract from a sectarian poet, "For thee we dispread the earth; for thee we caused the waters to flow; for thee we vaulted the heavens." As Baron Alfred von Kremer, another learned and experienced Orientalist, reminds me, the "s.h.i.+'ahs" have always shown a decided tendency to this kind of apotheosis and have deified or quasi-deified Ali and the Imams. But the formula is first found in the highly orthodox Burdah poem of Al-Busiri:--

"But for him (Lau la-hu) the world had never come out of nothingness."

Hence it has been widely diffused. See Les Aventures de Kamrup (pp. 146-7) and Les ?uvres de Wali (pp. 51-52), by M. Garcin de Ta.s.sy and the Dabistan (vol. i. pp. 2-3).

[FN#517] Arab. "Simiya" from the Pers., a word apparently built on the model of "Kamiya" = alchemy, and applied, I have said, to fascination, minor miracles and white magic generally like the Hindu "Indrajal." The common term for Alchemy is Ilm al-Kaf (the K-science) because it is not safe to speak of it openly as Alchemy.

[FN#518] Mare Tenebrarum = Sea of Darknesses; usually applied to the "mournful and misty Atlantic."

[FN#519] Some Moslems hold that Solomon and David were buried in Jerusalem, others on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Tiberias. Mohammed, according to the history of Al-Tabari (p. 56 vol. i. Duleux's "Chronique de Tabari") declares that the Jinni bore Solomon's corpse to a palace hewn in the rock upon an island surrounded by a branch of the "Great Sea" and set him on a throne, with his ring still on his finger, under a guard of twelve Jinns. "None hath looked upon the tomb save only two, Affan who took Bulukiya as his companion: with extreme pains they arrived at the spot, and Affan was about to carry off the ring when a thunderbolt consumed him. So Bulukiya returned."

[FN#520] Koran x.x.xviii. 34, or, "art the liberal giver."

[FN#521] i.e. of the last trumpet blown by the Archangel Israfil: an idea borrowed from the Christians. Hence the t.i.tle of certain churches--ad Tubam.

[FN#522] This may mean that the fruits were fresh and dried like dates or tamarinds (a notable wonder), or soft and hard of skin like grapes and pomegranates.

[FN#523] Arab. "Ai-lksir" meaning lit. an essence; also the philosopher's stone.

[FN#524] Name of the Jinni whom Solomon imprisoned in Lake Tiberias (See vol. i., 41).

[FN#525] Vulgarly p.r.o.nounced "Jahannum." The second h.e.l.l is usually a.s.signed to Christians. As there are seven Heavens (the planetary orbits) so, to satisfy Moslem love of symmetry, there must be as many earths and h.e.l.ls under the earth. The Egyptians invented these grim abodes, and the marvellous Persian fancy worked them into poem.

[FN#526] Arab. "Yajuj and Majuj," first named in Gen. x. 2, which gives the ethnology of Asia Minor, circ. B.C. 800. "Gomer" is the Gimri or Cymmerians; "Magog" the original Magi, a division of the Medes, "Javan" the Ionian Greeks, "Meshesh" the Moschi; and "Tires" the Turusha, or primitive Cymmerians. In subsequent times, "Magog" was applied to the Scythians, and modern Moslems determine from the Koran (chaps. xviii. and xxi.) that Yajuj and Majuj are the Russians, whom they call Moska or Moskoff from the Moskwa River,

[FN#527] I attempt to preserve the original pun; "Mukarrabin"

(those near Allah) being the Cherubim, and the Creator causing Iblis to draw near Him (karraba).

[FN#528] A vulgar version of the Koran (chaps. vii.), which seems to have borrowed from the Gospel of Barnabas. Hence Adam becomes a manner of G.o.d-man.

[FN#529] These wild fables are caricatures of Rabbinical legends which began with "Lilith," the Spirit-wife of Adam: Nature and her counterpart, Physis and Antiphysis, supply a solid basis for folk-lore. Amongst the Hindus we have Brahma (the Creator) and Viswakarma, the anti-Creator: the former makes a horse and a bull and the latter caricatures them with an a.s.s and a buffalo, and so forth.

[FN#530] This is the "Lauh al-Mahfuz," the Preserved Tablet, upon which are written all Allah's decrees and the actions of mankind good (white) and evil (black). This is the "perspicuous Book" of the Koran, chaps. vi. 59. The idea again is Guebre.

[FN#531] i.e. the night before Friday which in Moslem parlance would be Friday night.

[FN#532] Again Persian "Gaw-i-Zamin" = the Bull of the Earth.

"The cosmogony of the world," etc., as we read in the Vicar of Wakefield.

[FN#533] The Calc. Edit. ii. 614. here reads by a clerical error "bull."

[FN#534] i.e. Lakes and rivers.

[FN#535] Here some abridgement is necessary, for we have another recital of what has been told more than once.

[FN#536] This name, "King of Life," is Persian: "Tegh" or "Tigh"

means a scimitar and "Bahrwan," is, I conceive, a mistake for "Bihrun," the Persian name of Alexander the Great.

[FN#537] Arab. "Mulakat" or meeting the guest which, I have said, is an essential part of Eastern ceremony, the distance from the divan, room, house or town being proportioned to his rank or consideration.

[FN#538] Arab. "Sifr": whistling is held by the Badawi to be the speech of devils; and the excellent explorer Burckhardt got a bad name by the ugly habit.