The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume I Part 23

[FN#195] In the East blinding was a common practice, especially in the case of junior princes not required as heirs. A deep perpendicular incision was made down each corner of the eyes; the lids were lifted and the b.a.l.l.s removed by cutting the optic nerve and the muscles. The later Caliphs blinded their victims by pa.s.sing a red-hot sword blade close to the orbit or a needle over the eye-ball. About the same time in Europe the operation was performed with a heated metal basin--the well known bacinare (used by Ariosto), as happened to Pier delle Vigne (Petrus de Vinea), the "G.o.dfather of modern Italian."

[FN#196] Arab. "Khinzir" (by Europeans p.r.o.nounced "Hanzir"), prop.

a wild-boar, but popularly used like our "you pig!"

[FN#197] Striking with the shoe, the pipe-stick and similar articles is highly insulting, because they are not made, like whips and scourges, for such purpose. Here the East and the West differ diametrically. "Wounds which are given by instruments which are in one's hands by chance do not disgrace a man," says Cervantes (D. Q.

i., chaps. 15), and goes on to prove that if a Zapatero (cobbler) cudgel another with his form or last, the latter must not consider himself cudgelled. The reverse in the East where a blow of a pipe stick cost Mahommed Ali Pasha's son his life: Ishmail Pasha was burned to death by Malik Nimr, chief of Shendy (Pilgrimage, i., 203). Moreover, the actual wound is less considered in Moslem law than the instrument which caused it: so sticks and stones are venial weapons, whilst sword and dagger, gun and pistol are felonious. See ibid. (i., 336) for a note upon the weapons with which nations are policed.

[FN#198] Incest is now abominable everywhere except amongst the overcrowded poor of great and civilised cities. Yet such unions were common and lawful amongst ancient and highly cultivated peoples, as the Egyptians (Isis and Osiris), a.s.syrians and ancient Persians. Physiologically they are injurious only when the parents have const.i.tutional defects: if both are sound, the issue, as amongst the so-called "lower animals " is viable and healthy.

[FN#199] Dwellers in the Northern Temperates can hardly imagine what a dust-storm is in sun parched tropical lands. In Sind we were often obliged to use candles at mid-day, while above the dust was a sun that would roast an egg.

[FN#200] Arab. " 'Urban," now always used of the wild people, whom the French have taught us to call les Bedouins; "Badw" being a waste or desert, and Badawi (fem. Badawiyah, plur. Badawi and Bidwan), a man of the waste. Europeans have also learnt to miscall the Egyptians "Arabs": the difference is as great as between an Englishman and a Spaniard. Arabs proper divide their race into sundry successive families. "The Arab al-Araba" (or al- Aribah, or al-Urubiyat) are the autochthones, prehistoric, proto-historic and extinct tribes; for instance, a few of the Adites who being at Meccah escaped the destruction of their wicked nation, but mingled with other cla.s.ses. The "Arab al-Muta'arribah," (Arabised Arabs) are the first advenae represented by such n.o.ble strains as the Koraysh (Koreish), some still surviving. The "Arab al-Musta'aribah"

(insit.i.tious, naturalized or inst.i.tuted Arabs, men who claim to be Arabs) are Arabs like the Sinaites, the Egyptians and the Maroccans descended by intermarriage with other races. Hence our "Mosarabians" and the "Marrabais" of Rabelais (not, "a word compounded of Maurus and Arabs"). Some genealogists, however, make the Muta'arribah descendants of Kahtan (possibly the Joktan of Genesis x., a comparatively modern doc.u.ment, B.C. 700?); and the Musta'aribah those descended from Adnan the origin of Arab genealogy. And, lastly, are the "Arab al-Musta'ajimah," barbarised Arabs, like the present population of Meccah and Al-Medinah.

Besides these there are other tribes whose origin is still unknown, such as the Mahrah tribes of Hazramaut, the "Akhdam" (=serviles) of Oman (Maskat); and the "Ebna" of Al-Yaman: Ibn Ishak supposes the latter to be descended from the Persian soldiers of a.n.u.s.h.i.+rwan who expelled the Abyssinian invader from Southern Arabia.

(Pilgrimage, m., 31, etc.)

[FN#201] Arab. "Amir al-Muuminin." The t.i.tle was a.s.sumed by the Caliph Omar to obviate the inconvenience of calling himself "Khalifah" (successor) of the Khalifah of the Apostle of Allah (i.e. Abu Bakr); which after a few generations would become impossible. It means "Emir (chief or prince) of the Muumins," men who hold to the (true Moslem) Faith, the "Iman" (theory, fundamental articles) as opposed to the "Din," ordinance or practice of the religion. It once became a Wazirial time conferred by Sultan Malikshah (King King- king) on his Nizam al-Murk.

(Richardson's Dissert. [viii.)

[FN#202] This may also mean "according to the seven editions of the Koran " the old revisions and so forth (Sale, Sect. iii. and D'Herbelot "Alcoran.") The schools of the "Mukri," who teach the right p.r.o.nunciation wherein a mistake might be sinful, are seven, Harnzah, Ibn Katir, Ya'akub, Ibn Amir, Kisai, Asim and Hafs, the latter being the favourite with the Hanafis and the only one now generally known in Al-Islam.

[FN#203] Arab. "Sadd"=wall, d.y.k.e, etc. the "bund" or "band" of Anglo-India. Hence the "Sadd" on the Nile, the banks of gra.s.s and floating islands which "wall" the stream. There are few sights more appalling than a sandstorm in the desert, the "Zauba'ah" as the Arabs call it. Devils, or pillars of sand, vertical and inclined, measuring a thousand feet high, rush over the plain las.h.i.+ng the sand at their base like a sea surging under a furious whirlwind; shearing the gra.s.s clean away from the roots, tearing up trees, which are whirled like leaves and sticks in air and sweeping away tents and houses as if they were bits of paper. At last the columns join at the top and form, perhaps three thousand feet above the earth, a gigantic cloud of yellow sand which obliterates not only the horizon but even the mid-day sun. These sand-spouts are the terror of travellers. In Sind and the Punjab we have the dust- storm which for darkness, I have said, beats the blackest London fog.

[FN#204] Arab. Sar = the vendetta, before mentioned, as dreaded in Arabia as in Corsica.

[FN#205] Arab. "Ghutah," usually a place where irrigation is abundant. It especially applies (in books) to the Damascus-plain because "it abounds with water and fruit trees." The Ghutah is one of the four earthly paradises, the others being Basrah (Ba.s.sorah), s.h.i.+raz and Samarcand. Its peculiarity is the likeness to a seaport the Desert which rolls up almost to its doors being the sea and its s.h.i.+ps being the camels. The first Arab to whom we owe this admirable term for the "Companion of Job" is "Tarafah" one of the poets of the Suspended Poems: he likens (v. v. 3, 4) the camels which bore away his beloved to s.h.i.+ps sailing from Aduli. But "s.h.i.+ps of the desert" is doubtless a term of the highest antiquity.

[FN#206] The exigencies of the "Saj'a," or rhymed prose, disjoint this and many similar pas. sages.

[FN#207] The "Ebony" Islands; Scott's "Isle of Ebene," i., 217.

[FN#208] "Jarjaris" in the Bul. Edit.

[FN#209] Arab. "Takbis." Many Easterns can hardly sleep without this kneading of the muscles, this "rubbing" whose hygienic properties England is now learning.

[FN#210] The converse of the breast being broadened, the drooping, "draggle-tail" gait compared with the head held high and the chest inflated.

[FN#211] This penalty is mentioned in the Koran (chaps. v.) as fit for those who fight against Allah and his Apostle, but commentators are not agreed if the sinners are first to be put to death or to hang on the cross till they die. Pharaoh (chaps. xx.) threatens to crucify his magicians on palm-trees, and is held to be the first crucifier.

[FN#212] Arab. "'Ajami"=foreigner, esp. a Persian: the latter in The Nights is mostly a villain. I must here remark that the contemptible condition of Persians in Al-Hijaz (which I noted in 1852, Pilgrimage, i., 327) has completely changed. They are no longer, "The slippers of All and hounds of Omar:" they have learned the force of union and now, instead of being bullied, they bully.

[FN#213] The Calc. Edit. turns into Tailors (Khayyatin) and Torrens does not see the misprint.

[FN#214] i.e. Axe and sandals.

[FN#215] Lit. "Strike his neck."

[FN#216] A phrase which will frequently recur; meaning the situation suggested such words a these.

[FN#217] The smiter with the evil eye is called "A'in" and the person smitten "Ma'im" or "Ma'un."

[FN#218] Arab. "Sakiyah," the well-known Persian wheel with pots and buckets attached to the tire. It is of many kinds, the boxed, etc., etc., and it is possibly alluded to in the "pitcher broken at the fountain" (Eccleslastes xii. 6) an accident often occurring to the modern "Noria." Travellers mostly abuse its "dismal creaking"

and "mournful monotony": I have defended the music of the water-wheel in Pilgrimage ii. 198.

[FN#219] Arab. "Zikr" lit. remembering, mentioning (i. c. the names of Allah), here refers to the meetings of religious for devotional exercises; the "Zikkirs," as they are called, mostly standing or sitting in a circle while they e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e the Holy Name. These "rogations" are much affected by Darwayshes, or begging friars, whom Europe politely divides Unto "dancing" and "howling"; and, on one occasion, greatly to the scandal of certain Englanderinns to whom I was showing the Ezbekiyah I joined the ring of "howlers."

Lane (Mod. Egypt, see index) is profuse upon the subject of "Zikrs"

and Zikkits. It must not be supposed that they are uneducated men: the better cla.s.s, however, prefers more privacy.

[FN#220] As they thought he had been there for prayer or penance.

[FN#221] Arab. "Ziyarat," a visit to a pious person or place.

[FN#222] This is a paternal salute in the East where they are particular about the part kissed. A witty and not unusually gross Persian book, called the "Al-Namah" because all questions begin with "Al" (the Arab article) contains one "Al-Wajib al-busidan?"

(what best deserves bussing?) and the answer is "Kus-i-nau-pashm,"

(a bobadilla with a young bush).

[FN#223] A weight of 71-72 English grains in gold; here equivalent to the diner.

[FN#224] Compare the tale of The Three Crows in Gammer Grethel, Evening ix.

[FN#225] The comparison is peculiarly apposite; the earth seen from above appears hollow with a raised rim.

[FN#226] A hundred years old.

[FN#227] "Bahr" in Arab. means sea, river, piece of water; hence the adjective is needed.

[FN#228] The Captain or Master of the s.h.i.+p (not the owner). In Al-Yaman the word also means a "barber," in virtue of the root, Ra.s.s, a head.

[FN#229] The text has "in the character Ruka'i,"," or Rika'i,, the correspondence-hand.

[FN#230] A curved character supposed to be like the basil-leaf (rayhan). Richardson calls it "Rohani."

[FN#231] I need hardly say that Easterns use a reed, a Calamus (Kalam applied only to the cut reed) for our quills and steel pens.

[FN#232] Famous for being inscribed on the Kiswah (cover) of Mohammed's tomb; a large and more formal hand still used for engrossing and for mural inscriptions. Only seventy two varieties of it are known (Pilgrimage, ii., 82).

[FN#233] The copying and transcribing hand which is either Arabi or Ajami. A great discovery has been lately made which upsets all our old ideas of Cufic, etc. Mr. Loytved of Bayrut has found, amongst the Hauranic inscriptions, one in pure Naskhi, dating A. D. 568, or fifty years before the Hijrah; and it is accepted as authentic by my learned friend M. Ch. Clermont-Ganneau (p. 193, Pal. Explor.

Fund. July 1884). In D'Herbelot and Sale's day the Koran was supposed to have been written in rude characters, like those subsequently called "Cufic," invented shortly before Mohammed's birth by Muramir ibn Murrah of Anbar in Irak, introduced into Meccah by Bashar the Kindian, and perfected by Ibn Muklah (Al-Wazir, ob. A. H. 328=940). We must now change all that. See Catalogue of Oriental Caligraphs, etc., by G. P, Badger, London, Whiteley, 1885.

[FN#234] Capital and uncial letters; the hand in which the Ka'abah veil is inscribed (Pilgrimage iii. 299, 300).

[FN#235] A "Court hand" says Mr. Payne (i. 112): I know nothing of it. Other hands are: the Ta'alik; hanging or oblique, used for finer MSS. and having, according to Richardson, "the same a.n.a.logy to the Naskhi as our Italic has to the Roman." The Nasta' lik (not Naskh-Ta'alik) much used in India, is, as the name suggests, a mixture of the Naskhi (writing of transactions) and the Ta'alik.

The s.h.i.+kastah (broken hand) everywhere represents our running hand and becomes a hard task to the reader. The Kirma is another cursive character, mostly confined to the receipts and disburs.e.m.e.nts of the Turkish treasury. The Divani, or Court (of Justice) is the official hand, bold and round. a business character, the lines often rising with a sweep or curve towards the (left) end. The Jali or polished has a variety, the Jali-Ta'alik: the Sulsi (known in many books) is adopted for t.i.tles of volumes, royal edicts, diplomas and so forth; "answering much the same purpose as capitals with us, or the flourished letters in illuminated ma.n.u.scripts" (Richardson) The Tughrai is that of the Tughra, the Prince's cypher or flouris.h.i.+ng signature in ceremonial writings, and containing some such sentence as: Let this be executed. There are others e. g. Yakuti and Sirenkil known only by name. Finally the Maghribi (Moorish) hand differs in form and diacritical points from the characters used further east almost as much as German running hand does from English. It is curious that Richardson omits the Jali (intricate and convoluted) and the divisions of the Sulusi, Sulsi or Sulus (Thuluth) character, the Sulus al-Khafif, etc.

[FN#236] Arab. "Baghlah"; the male (Bagful) is used only for loads.

This is everywhere the rule: nothing is more unmanageable than a restive "Macho", and he knows that he can always get you off his back when so minded. From "Baghlah" is derived the name of the native craft Anglo-Indice a "Buggalow."

[FN#237] In Heb. ""Ben-Adam" is any man opp. to "Beni ish"