The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume VII Part 19

[FN#91] Arab. Burdah and Habarah. The former often translated mantle is a thick woollen stuff, brown or gray, woven oblong and used like a plaid by day and by night. Mohammed's Burdah woven in his Harem and given to the poet, Ka'ab, was 7 1/2 ft.

long by 4 1/2: it is still in the upper Serraglio of Stambul.

In early days the stuff was mostly striped; now it is either plain or with lines so narrow that it looks like one colour.

The Habarah is a Burd made in Al-Yaman and not to be confounded with the Egyptian mantilla of like name (Lane, M.

E. chapt. iii.).

[FN#92] Every Eastern city has its special t.i.tle. Al-Medinah is ent.i.tled "Al-Munawwarah" (the Illumined) from the blinding light which surrounds the Prophet's tomb and which does not show to eyes profane (Pilgrimage ii. 3). I presume that the idea arose from the huge lamps of "The Garden." I have noted that Mohammed's coffin suspended by magnets is an idea unknown to Moslems, but we find the fancy in Al-Harawi related of St.

Peter, "Simon Cephas (the rock) is in the City of Great Rome, in its largest church within a silver ark hanging by chains from the ceiling." (Lee, Ibn Batutah, p. 161).

[FN#93] Here the fillets are hung instead of the normal rag-strips to denote an honoured tomb. Lane (iii. 242) and many others are puzzled about the use of these articles. In many cases they are suspended to trees in order to transfer sickness from the body to the tree and whoever shall touch it.

The Sawahili people term such articles a Keti (seat or vehicle) for the mysterious haunter of the tree who prefers occupying it to the patient's person. Briefly the custom still popular throughout Arabia, is African and Fetish.

[FN#94] Al-Mas'udi (chap. xcv.), mentions a Hind bint Asma and tells a facetious story of her and the "enemy of Allah," the poet Jarir.

[FN#95] Here the old s.h.i.+ah hatred of the energetic conqueror of Oman crops out again. Hind's song is that of Maysum concerning her husband Mu'awiyah which Mrs. G.o.dfrey Clark ('Ilam-en-Nas, p. 108) thus translates:--

A hut that the winds make tremble Is dearer to me than a n.o.ble palace; And a dish of crumbs on the floor of my home Is dearer to me than a varied feast; And the soughing of the breeze through every crevice Is dearer to me than the beating of drums.

Compare with Dr. Carlyle's No. X.:--

The russet suit of camel's hair With spirits light and eye serene Is dearer to my bosom far Than all the trappings of a queen, etc. etc.

And with mine (Pilgrimage iii. 262):--

O take these purple robes away, Give back my cloak of camel's hair And bear me from this towering pile To where the black tents flap i' the air, etc. etc.

[FN#96] AI-Hajjaj's tribal name was Al-Thakifi or descendant of Thakif. According to Al-Mas'udi, he was son of Farighah (the tall Beauty) by Yusuf bin Ukayl the Thakafite and vint au monde tout difforme avec l'a.n.u.s obstrue. As he refused the breast, Satan, in human form, advised suckling him with the blood of two black kids, a black buck-goat and a black snake; which had the desired effect.

[FN#97] Trebutien, iii., 465, translates these sayings into Italian.

[FN#98] Making him a "Kawwad"=leader, i.e. pimp; a true piece of feminine spite. But the Caliph prized Al-Hajjaj too highly to treat him as in the text.

[FN#99] i.e. "The overflowing," with benefits; on account of his generosity.

[FN#100] The seventh Ommiade A. H. 96-99 (715-719). He died of his fine appet.i.te after eating at a sitting a lamb, six fowls, seventy pomegranates, and 11 1/4 lbs. of currants. He was also proud of his youth and beauty and was wont to say, "Mohammed was the Apostle and Abu Bakr witness to the Truth; Omar the Discriminator and Othman the Bashful, Mu'awiyah the Mild and Yazid the Patient; Abd al-Malik the Administrator and Walid the Tyrant; but I am the Young King!"

[FN#101] Arab. Al-Jazirah, "the Island;" name of the region and the capital.

[FN#102] i.e. "Repairer of the Slips of the Generous," an evasive reply, which of course did not deceive the questioner.

[FN#103] Arab. "Falastin," now obsolete. The word has echoed far west and the name of the n.o.ble race has been degraded to "Philister," a bourgeois, a greasy burgher.

[FN#104] Saying, "The Peace be with thee, O Prince of True Believers!"

[FN#105] Arab. "Mutanakkir," which may also mean proud or in disguise.

[FN#106] On appointment as viceroy. See vol. iii 307.

[FN#107] The custom with outgoing Governors. It was adopted by the Spaniards and Portuguese especially in America. The generosity of Ikrimah without the slightest regard to justice or common honesty is characteristic of the Arab in story-books.

[FN#108] The celebrated half-way house between Jaffa and Jerusalem.

[FN#109] Alias the Kohistan or mountain region, Susiana (Khuzistan) whose capital was Susa; and the head-quarters of fire-wors.h.i.+p. Azar (fire) was the name of Abraham's father whom Eusebius calls "Athar." (Pilgrimage iii. 336.)

[FN#110] Tenth Ommiade A.H. 105-125 (=724-743), a wise and discreet ruler with an inclination to avarice and asceticism.

According to some, the Ommiades produced only three statesmen, Mu'awayah, Abd al-Malik and Hisham; and the reign of the latter was the end of sage government and wise administration.

[FN#111] About 1,250, which seems a long price; but in those days Damascus had been enriched with the spoils of the world adjacent.

[FN#112] Eleventh Ommiade dynasty, A.H. 125-126 (=743-744).

Ibn Sahl (son of ease, i.e. free and easy) was a nickname; he was the son of Yazid II. and brother of Hisham. He scandalised the lieges by his profligacy, wis.h.i.+ng to make the pilgrimage in order to drink upon the Ka'abah-roof; so they attacked the palace and lynched him. His death is supposed to have been brought about (27th of Jamada al-Akhirah = April 16, 744) by his cousin and successor Yazid (No. iii.) surnamed the Retrencher. The tale in the text speaks well for him; but generosity amongst the Arabs covers a mult.i.tude of sins, and people say, "Better a liberal sinner than a stingy saint."

[FN#113] The tents of black wool woven by the Badawi women are generally supported by three parallel rows of poles lengthways and crossways (the highest line being the central) and the covering is pegged down. Thus the outline of the roofs forms two or more hanging curves, and these characterise the architecture of the Tartars and Chinese; they are still preserved in the Turkish (and sometimes in the European) "Kiosque," and they have extended to the Brazil where the upturned eaves, often painted vermilion below, at once attract the traveller's notice.

[FN#114] See vol. iv., 159. The author of "Antar," known to Englishmen by the old translation of Mr. Terrick Hamilton, secretary of Legation at Constantinople. There is an abridgement of the forty-five volumes of Al-Asma'i's "Antar"

which mostly supplies or rather supplied the "Antariyyah" or professional tale-tellers; whose theme was the heroic Mulatto lover.

[FN#115] The "Dakkah" or long wooden sofa, as opposed to the "mastabah" or stone bench, is often a tall platform and in mosques is a kind of ambo railed round and supported by columns. Here readers recite the Koran: Lane (M.E. chapt.

iii.) sketches it in the "Interior of a Mosque."

[FN#116] Alif, Ha and Waw, the first, twenty-seventh and twenty-sixth letters of the Arabic alphabet: No. 1 is the most simple and difficult to write caligraphically.

[FN#117] Reeds washed with gold and used for love-letters, &c.

[FN#118] Lane introduced this tale into vol. i., p. 223, notes on chapt. iii., apparently not knowing that it was in The Nights. He gives a mere abstract, omitting all the verse, and he borrowed it either from the Halbat al-k.u.mayt (chapt. xiv.) or from Al-Mas'udi (chapt. cxi.). See the French translation, vol. vi. p. 340. I am at pains to understand why M. C. Barbier de Maynard writes "Rechid" with an accented vowel; although French delicacy made him render, by "fils de courtisane," the expression in the text, "O biter of thy mother's enlarged (or uncirc.u.mcised) c.l.i.toris" (Bazar).

[FN#119] In Al-Mas'udi the Devil is "a young man fair of favour and formous of figure," which is more appropriate to a "Tempter." He also wears light stuffs of dyed silks.

[FN#120] It would have been more courteous in an utter stranger to say, O my lord.

[FN#121] The Arab Tempe (of fiction, not of grisly fact).

[FN#122] These four lines are in Al-Mas'udi, chapt, cxviii.

Fr. Trans. vii. 313, but that author does not tell us who wrote them.

[FN#123] i.e. Father of Bitterness=the Devil. This legend of the Foul Fiend appearing to Ibrahim of Mosul (and also to Isam, N. dcxcv.) seems to have been accepted by contemporaries and reminds us of similar visitations in Europe--notably to Dr. Faust. One can only exclaim, "Lor, papa, what nonsense you are talking!" the words of a small girl whose father thought proper to indoctrinate her into certain Biblical stories. I once began to write a biography of the Devil; but I found that European folk-lore had made such an unmitigated fool of the grand old Typhon-Ahriman as to take away from him all human interest.

[FN#124] In Al-Mas'udi the Caliph exclaims, "Verily thou hast received a visit from Satan!"

[FN#125] Al-Mas'udi, chapt. cxix. (Fr. transl. vii., 351) mentions the Banu Odhrah as famed for lovers and tells the pathetic tale of 'Orwah and 'Afra.

[FN#126] Jamil bin Ma'amar the poet has been noticed in Vol.

ii. 102; and he has no business here as he died years before Al-Ras.h.i.+d was born. The tale begins like that of Ibn Mansur and the Lady Budur (Night cccxxvii.), except that Mansur does not offer his advice.

[FN#127] Arab. "Halumma," an interjection=bring! a congener of the Heb. "Halum"; the grammarians of Kufah and Ba.s.sorah are divided concerning its origin.

[FN#128] Arab. "Nafs-i" which here corresponds with our canting "the flesh" the "Old Adam," &c.

[FN#129] Arab. "Atmari" used for travel. The Anglo-Americans are the only people who have the common sense to travel (where they are not known) in their "store clothes" and reserve the worst for where they are known.