The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume VI Part 15

[FN#123] The Arabs have no word for million; so Messer Marco Miglione could not have learned it from them. On the other hand the Hindus have more quadrillions than modern Europe.

[FN#124] This formula, according to Moslems, would begin with the beginning "There is no ilah but Allah and Adam is the Apostle (rasul = one sent, a messenger, not nabi = prophet) of Allah."

And so on with Noah, Moses, David (not Solomon as a rule) and Jesus, to Mohammed.

[FN#125] This son of Barachia has been noticed before. The text embroiders the Koranic chapter No. xxvii.

[FN#126] The Bresl. Edit. (vi. 371) reads "Samm-hu"=his poison, prob. a clerical error for "Sahmhu"=his shaft. It was a duel with the "s.h.i.+hab" or falling stars, the meteors which are popularly supposed, I have said, to be the arrows shot by the angels against devils and evil spirits when they approach too near Heaven in order to overhear divine secrets.

[FN#127] A fancy sea from the Lat. "Carcer" ( ?).

[FN#128] Andalusian = Spanish, the Vandal-land, a term accepted by the Moslem invader.

[FN#129] This fine description will remind the traveller of the old Haurani towns deserted since the sixth century, which a silly writer miscalled the "Giant Cities of Bashan." I have never seen anything weirder than a moonlight night in one of these strong places whose masonry is perfect as when first built, the snowy light pouring on the jet-black basalt and the breeze sighing and the jackal wailing in the desert around.

[FN#130] "Zanj," I have said, is the Arab. form of the Persian "Zang-bar" (=Black-land), our Zanzibar. Those who would know more of the etymology will consult my "Zanzibar," etc., chaps. i.

[FN#131] Arab. "Tanjah"=Strabo {Greek letters} (derivation uncertain), Tingitania, Tangiers. But why the terminal s ?

[FN#132] Or Amidah, by the Turks called "Kara (black) Amid" from the colour of the stones and the Arabs "Diyar-bakr" (Diarbekir), a name which they also give to the whole province--Mesopotamia.

[FN#133] Mayyafarikin, an episcopal city in Diyar-bakr: the natives are called Fariki; hence the abbreviation in the text.

[FN#134] Arab. "Ayat al-Najat," certain Koranic verses which act as talismans, such as, "And wherefore should we not put our trust in Allah ?" (xiv. 15); "Say thou, 'Naught shall befall us save what Allah hath decreed for us,' " (ix. 51), and sundry others.

[FN#135] These were the "Brides of the Treasure," alluded to in the story of Hasan of Ba.s.sorah and elsewhere.

[FN#136] Arab. "Isharah," which may also mean beckoning. Easterns reverse our process: we wave hand or finger towards ourselves; they towards the object; and our fas.h.i.+on represents to them, Go away!

[FN#137] i.e. musing a long time and a longsome.

[FN#138] Arab. "Dihliz" from the Persian. This is the long dark pa.s.sage which leads to the inner or main gate of an Eastern city, and which is built up before a siege. It is usually furnished with Mastabah-benches of wood and masonry, and forms a favourite lounge in hot weather. Hence Lot and Moses sat and stood in the gate, and here man speaks with his enemies.

[FN#139] The names of colours are as loosely used by the Arabs as by the Cla.s.sics of Europe; for instance, a light grey is called a "blue or a green horse." Much nonsense has been written upon the colours in Homer by men who imagine that the semi-civilised determine tints as we do. They see them but they do not name them, having no occasion for the words. As I have noticed, however, the Arabs have a complete terminology for the varieties of horse-hues. In our day we have witnessed the birth of colours, named by the dozen, because required by women's dress.

[FN#140] For David's miracles of metallurgy see vol. i. 286.

[FN#141] Arab. "Khwarazm," the land of the Chorasmioi, who are mentioned by Herodotus (iii. 93) and a host of cla.s.sical geographers. They place it in Sogdiana (hod. Sughd) and it corresponds with the Khiva country.

[FN#142] Arab. "Burka'," usually applied to a woman's face-veil and hence to the covering of the Ka'abah, which is the "Bride of Meccah."

[FN#143] Alluding to the trick played upon Bilkis by Solomon who had heard that her legs were hairy like those of an a.s.s: he laid down a pavement of gla.s.s over flowing water in which fish were swimming and thus she raised her skirts as she approached him and he saw that the report was true. Hence, as I have said, the depilatory.

[FN#144] I understand the curiously carved windows cut in arabesque-work of marble. (India) or basalt (the Hauran) and provided with small panes of gla.s.s set in emeralds where tin would be used by the vulgar.

[FN#145] Arab. "Bulad" from the Pers. "Pulad." Hence the name of the famous Druze family "Jumblat," a corruption of "Jan- pulad"=Life o' Steel.

[FN#146] Pharaoh, so called in Koran (x.x.xviii. 11) because he tortured men by fastening them to four stakes driven into the ground. Sale translates "the contriver of the stakes" and adds, "Some understand the word figuratively, of the firm establishment of Pharaoh's kingdom, because the Arabs fix their tents with stakes; but they may possibly intend that prince's obstinacy and hardness of heart." I may note that in "Tasawwuf," or Moslem Gnosticism, Pharaoh represents, like Prometheus and Job, the typical creature who upholds his own dignity and rights in presence and despight of the Creator. Sahib the Sufi declares that the secret of man's soul (i.e. its emanation) was first revealed when Pharaoh declared himself G.o.d; and Al-Ghazali sees in his claim the most n.o.ble aspiration to the divine, innate in the human spirit. (Dabistan, vol. iii.)

[FN#147] In the Calc. Edit. "Tarmuz, son of the daughter," etc.

According to the Arabs Tadmur (Palmyra) was built by Queen Tadmurah, daughter of Ha.s.san bin Uzaynah.

[FN#148] It is only by some such drought that I can account for the survival of those marvellous Haurani cities in the great valley S. E. of Damascus.

[FN#149] So Moses described his own death and burial.

[FN#150] A man's "aurat" (shame) extends from the navel (included) to his knees, a woman's from the top of the head to the tips of her toes. I have before noticed the Hindostani application of the word.

[FN#151] Arab. "Jum'ah" ( = the a.s.sembly) so called because the General Resurrection will take place on that day and it witnessed the creation of Adam. Both these reasons are evidently after- thoughts; as the Jews received a divine order to keep Sat.u.r.day, and the Christians, at their own sweet will, transferred the weekly rest-day to Sunday, wherefore the Moslem preferred Friday.

Sabbatarianism, however, is unknown to Al-Islam and business is interrupted, by Koranic order ([xii. 9-10), only during congregational prayers in the Mosque. The most a Mohammedan does is not to work or travel till after public service. But the Moslem hardly wants a "day of rest;" whereas a Christian, especially in the desperately dull routine of daily life and toil, without a gleam of light to break the darkness of his civilised and most unhappy existence, disctinctly requires it.

[FN#152] Mankind, which sees itself everywhere and in everything, must create its own a.n.a.logues in all the elements, air (Sylphs), fire (Jinns), water (Mermen and Mermaids) and earth (Kobolds), These merwomen were of course seals or manatees, as the wild women of Hanno were gorillas.

[FN#153] Here begins the Sindibad-namah, the origin of Dolopathos (thirteenth century by the Trouvere Harbers); of the "Seven Sages" (John Holland in 1575); the "Seven Wise Masters" and a host of minor romances. The Persian Sindibad-Namah a.s.sumed its present shape in A.D. 1375: Professor Falconer printed an abstract of it in the Orient. Journ. (x.x.xv. and x.x.xvi. 1841), and Mr. W. A. Clouston reissued the "Book of Sindibad," with useful notes in 1884. An abstract of the Persian work is found in all edits. of The Nights; but they differ greatly, especially that in the Bresl. Edit. xii. pp. 237-377, from which I borrow the introduction. According to Hamzah Isfahani (ch. xli.) the Reguli who succeeded to Alexander the Great and preceded Sapor caused some seventy books to be composed, amongst which were the Liber Maruc, Liber Barsinas, Liber Sindibad, Liber s.h.i.+mas, etc., etc.

[FN#154] Eusebius De Praep. Evang. iii. 4, quotes Prophesy concerning the Egyptian belief in the Lords of the Ascendant whose names are given {Greek letters}: in these "Almenichiaka" we have the first almanac, as the first newspaper in the Roman "Acta Diurna."

[FN#155] "Al-Mas'udi," the "Herodotus of the Arabs," thus notices Sindibad the Sage (in his Muruj, etc., written about A.D. 934).

"During the reign of Kurush (Cyrus) lived Al-Sindibad who wrote the Seven Wazirs, etc." Al-Ya'akubi had also named him, circ.

A.D. 880. For notes on the name Sindibad, see Sindbad the Seaman, Night dx.x.xvi. I need not enter into the history of the "Seven Sages," a book evidently older than The Nights in present form; but refer the reader to Mr. Clouston, of whom more in a future page.

[FN#156] Evidently borrowed from the Christians, although the latter borrowed from writers of the most remote antiquity. Yet the saying is the basis of all morality and in few words contains the highest human wisdom.

[FN#157] It is curious to compare the dry and business-like tone of the Arab style with the rhetorical luxuriance of the Persian: p.10 of Mr. Clouston's "Book of Sindibad."

[FN#158] In the text "Isfidaj," the Pers. Isped (or Safed) ab, lit. = white water, ceruse used for women's faces suggesting our "Age of Bis.m.u.th," Blanc Rosati, Creme de l'Imperatrice, Perline, Opaline, Milk of Beauty, etc., etc.

[FN#159] Commentators compare this incident with the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife and with the old Egyptian romance and fairy tale of the brothers Anapon and Saton dating from the fourteenth century, the days of Pharaoh Ramses Miamun (who built Pi-tum and Ramses) at whose court Moses or Osarsiph is supposed to have been reared (Cambridge Essays 1858). The incident would often occur, e.g. Phaedra-c.u.m-Hippolytus; Fausta-c.u.m-Crispus and Lucinian; Asoka's wife and Kunala, etc., etc. Such things happen in every-day life, and the situation has recommended itself to the folk lore of all peoples.

[FN#160] Another version of this tale is given in the Bresl.

Edit. (vol. viii. pp. 273-8: Night 675-6). It is the "Story of the King and the Virtuous Wife" in the Book of Sindibad. In the versions Arabic and Greek (Syntipas) the King forgets his ring; in the Hebrew Mishle Sandabar, his staff, and his sandals in the old Spanish Libro de los Engannos et los Asayamientos de las Mugeres.

[FN#161] One might fancy that this is Biblical, Bathsheba and Uriah. But such "villanies" must often have occurred in the East, at different times and places, without requiring direct derivation. The learned Prof. H. H. Wilson was mistaken in supposing that these fictions "originate in the feeling which has always pervaded the East unfavourable to the dignity of women."

They belong to a certain stage of civilisation when the s.e.xes are at war with each other; and they characterise chivalrous Europe as well as misogynous Asia; witness Jankins, clerk of Oxenforde; while aesop's fable of the Lion and the Man also explains their frequency.

[FN#162] The European form of the tale is "Toujours perdrix," a sentence often quoted but seldom understood. It is the reproach of M. l'Abbe when the Count (proprietor of the pretty Countess) made him eat partridge every day for a month; on which the Abbe says, "Alway partridge is too much of a good thing!" Upon this text the Count speaks. A correspondent mentions that it was told by Horace Walpole concerning the Confessor of a French King who reproved him for conjugal infidelities. The degraded French (for "toujours de la perdrix" or "des perdrix") suggests a foreign origin. Another friend refers me to No. x. of the "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles" (compiled in A.D. 1432 for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI.) whose chief personage "un grand seigneur du Royaulme d'Angleterre," is lectured upon fidelity by the lord's mignon, a "jeune et gracieux gentil homme de son hostel." Here the partridge became pastes d'anguille. Possibly Scott refers to it in Redgauntlet (chapt. iv.); "One must be very fond of partridge to accept it when thrown in one's face." Did not Voltaire complain at Potsdam of "toujours perdrix" and make it one of his grievances? A similar story is that of the chaplain who, weary of the same diet, uttered "grace" as follows:--

Rabbits hot, rabbits cold, Rabbits tender, and rabbits tough, Rabbits young, and rabbits old I thank the Lord I've had enough.

And I as cordially thank my kind correspondents.

[FN#163] The great legal authority of the realm.

[FN#164] In all editions the Wazir here tells the Tale of the Merchant's Wife and the Parrot which, following Lane, I have transferred to vol. i. p. 52. But not to break the tradition I here introduce the Persian version of the story from the "Book of Sindibad." In addition to the details given in the note to vol.

i., 52 {Vol1, FN#90}; I may quote the two talking-birds left to watch over his young wife by Rajah Rasalu (son of Shalivahana the great Indian monarch circ. A.D. 81), who is to the Punjab what Rustam is to Persia and Antar to Arabia. In the "Seven Wise Masters" the parrot becomes a magpie and Mr. Clouston, in some clever papers on "Popular Tales and Fictions" contributed to the Glasgow Evening Times (1884), compares it with the history, in the Gesta Romanorum, of the Adulteress, the Abigail, and the Three c.o.c.ks, two of which crowed during the congress of the lady and her lover. All these evidently belong to the Sindibad cycle.

[FN#165] In the days of the Caliph Al-Mustakfi bi 'llah (A.H.

333=944) the youth of Baghdad studied swimming and it is said that they could swim holding chafing-dishes upon which were cooking-pots and keep afloat till the meat was dressed. The story is that of "The Washerman and his Son who were drowned in the Nile," of the Book of Sindibad.

[FN#166] Her going to the bath suggested that she was fresh from coition..