The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume VIII Part 34

[FN#358] i.e. fair faced boys and women. These lines are from the Bresl. Edit. x. 160.

[FN#359] i.e. the Chief Kazi. For the origin of the Office and t.i.tle see vol. ii. 90, and for the Kazi al-Arab who administers justice among the Badawin see Pilgrimage iii. 45.

[FN#360] Arab. "Raas al-Mal"=capital, as opposed to Riba or Ribh=interest. This legal expression has been adopted by all Moslem races.

[FN#361] Our Aden which is thus noticed by Abulfeda (A.D. 1331): "Aden in the lowlands of Tehamah * * * also called Abyana from a man (who found it?), built upon the seash.o.r.e, a station (for land travellers) and a sailing-place for merchant s.h.i.+ps India-bound, is dry and sunparcht (Kas.h.i.+fah, squalid, s...o...b..tic) and sweet water must be imported. * * * It lies 86 parasangs from San'a but Ibn Haukal following the travellers makes it three stages. The city, built on the skirt of a wall-like mountain, has a watergate and a landgate known as Bab al-Sakayn. But 'Adan La'ah (the modest, the timid, the less known as opposed to Abyan, the better known?) is a city in the mountains of Sabir, Al-Yaman, whence issued the supporters of the Fatimite Caliphs of Egypt." 'Adan etymologically means in Arab. and Heb. pleasure ( ), Eden (the garden), the Heaven in which spirits will see Allah and our "Coal-hole of the East," which we can hardly believe ever to have been an Eden. Mr. Badger who supplied me with this note described the two Adens in a paper in Ocean Highways, which he cannot now find. In the 'Ajaib al-Makhlukat, Al-Kazwini (ob. A.D. 1275) derives the name from Ibn Sinan bin Ibrahim; and is inclined there to place the Bir al-Mu'attal (abandoned well) and the Kasr alMas.h.i.+d (lofty palace) of Koran xxii. 44; and he adds "Kasr al-Misyad" to those mentioned in the tale of Sayf al-Muluk and Badi'a al-Jamal.

[FN#362] Meaning that she had been carried to the Westward of Meccah.

[FN#363] Arab. "Zahrawiyah" which contains a kind of double entendre. Fatimah the Prophet's only daughter is ent.i.tled Al-Zahra the "bright-blooming"; and this is also an epithet of Zohrah the planet Venus. For Fatimah see vol. vi. 145. Of her Mohammed said, "Love your daughters, for I too am a father of daughters" and, "Love them, they are the comforters, the dearlings." The Lady appears in Moslem history a dreary young woman (died aet. 28) who made this world, like Honorius, a h.e.l.l in order to win a next-world heaven. Her t.i.tles are Zahra and Batul (Pilgrimage ii. 90) both signifying virgin. Burckhardt translates Zahra by "bright blooming" (the etymological sense): it denotes literally a girl who has not menstruated, in which state of purity the Prophet's daughter is said to have lived and died.

"Batul" has the sense of a "clean maid" and is the t.i.tle given by Eastern Christians to the Virgin Mary. The perpetual virginity of Fatimah even after motherhood (Hasan and Husayn) is a point of orthodoxy in Al-Islam as Juno's with the Romans and Uma's with the Hindu wors.h.i.+ppers of s.h.i.+va. During her life Mohammed would not allow Ali a second wife, and he held her one of the four perfects, the other three being Asia wife of "Pharaoh," the Virgin Mary and Khadijah his own wife. She caused much scandal after his death by declaring that he had left her the Fadak estate (Abulfeda I, 133, 273) a castle with a fine palmorchard near Khaybar. Abu Bakr dismissed the claim quoting the Apostle's Hadis, "We prophets are folk who will away nothing: what we leave is alms-gift to the poor," and s.h.i.+'ahs greatly resent his decision. (See Dabistan iii. 51?52 for a different rendering of the words.) I have given the popular version of the Lady Fatimah's death and burial (Pilgrimage ii. 315) and have remarked that Moslem historians delight in the obscurity which hangs over her last resting-place, as if it were an honour even for the receptacle of her ashes to be concealed from the eyes of men. Her repute is a curious comment on Tom Hood's

"Where woman has never a soul to save."

[FN#364] For Sharif and Sayyid, descendants of Mohammed, see vol. iv. 170.

[FN#365] These lines have occurred with variants in vol. iii.

257, and iv. 50.

[FN#366] Arab. "Hazrat," esp. used in India and corresponding with our mediaeval "praesentia vostra."

[FN#367] This wholesale slaughter by the tale-teller of wors.h.i.+pful and reverend men would bring down the gallery like a Spanish tragedy in which all the actors are killed.

[FN#368] They are called indifferently "Ruhban"=monks or "Batarikah"=patriarchs. See vol. ii. 89.

[FN#369] Arab. "Khilal." The toothpick, more esteemed by the Arabs than by us, is, I have said, often used by the poets as an emblem of attenuation without offending good taste. Nizami (Layla u Majnun) describes a lover as "thin as a toothpick." The "elegant" Hariri (a.s.s. of Barkaid) describes a toothpick with feminine attributes, "shapely of shape, attractive, provocative of appet.i.te, delicate as the leanest of lovers, polished as a poinard and bending as a green bough."

[FN#370] From Bresl. Edit. x. 194.

[FN#371] Trebutien (vol. ii. 344 et seq.) makes the seven monks sing as many anthems, viz. (1) Congregamini; (2) Vias tuas demonstra mihi; (3) Dominus illuminatis; (4) Custodi linguam; (5) Unam petii a Domino; (6) Nec adspiciat me visus, and (7) Turbatus est a furore oculus meus. Danis the Abbot chaunts Anima mea turbata est valde.

[FN#372] A neat and characteristic touch: the wilful beauty eats and drinks before she thinks of her lover. Alas for Masrur married.

[FN#373] The unfortunate Jew, who seems to have been a model husband (Orientally speaking), would find no pity with a coffee-house audience because he had been guilty of marrying a Moslemah. The union was null and void therefore the deliberate murder was neither high nor petty treason. But, The Nights, though their object is to adorn a tale, never deliberately attempt to point a moral and this is one of their many charms.

[FN#374] These lines have repeatedly occurred. I quote Mr.

Payne.

[FN#375] i.e. by the usual expiation. See vol. iii. 136.

[FN#376] Arab. "Shammiri"=up and ready!

[FN#377] I borrow the t.i.tle from the Bresl. Edit. x. 204. Mr.

Payne prefers "Ali Noureddin and the Frank King's Daughter." Lane omits also this tale because it resembles Ali Shar and Zumurrud (vol. iv. 187) and Ala al-Din Abu al-Shamat (vol. iv. 29), "neither of which is among the text of the collection." But he has unconsciously omitted one of the highest interest. Dr. Bacher (Germ. Orient. Soc.) finds the original in Charlemagne's daughter Emma and his secretary Eginhardt as given in Grimm's Deutsche Sagen. I shall note the points of resemblance as the tale proceeds. The correspondence with the King of France may be a garbled account of the letters which pa.s.sed between Harun al-Ras.h.i.+d and Nicephorus, "the Roman dog."

[FN#378] Arab. "Allaho Akbar," the Moslem slogan or war-cry. See vol. ii. 89.

[FN#379] The gate-keeper of Paradise. See vol. iii. 15, 20.

[FN#380] Negroes. Vol. iii. 75.

[FN#381] Arab. "Nakat," with the double meaning of to spot and to handsel especially dancing and singing women; and, as Mr.

Payne notes in this acceptation it is practically equivalent to the English phrase "to mark (or cross) the palm with silver." I have translated "Anwa" by Pleiads; but it means the setting of one star and simultaneous rising of another foreshowing rain.

There are seven Anwa (plur. of nawa) in the Solar year viz.

Al-Badri (Sept.-Oct.); Al-Wasmiyy (late autumn and December); Al-Waliyy (to April); Al-Ghamir (June); Al-Busriyy (July); Barih al-Kayz (August) and Ahrak al-Hawa extending to September 8.

These are tokens of approaching rain, metaphorically used by the poets to express "bounty". See Preston's Hariri (p. 43) and Chenery upon the a.s.s. of the Banu Haram.

[FN#382] i.e. They trip and stumble in their hurry to get there.

[FN#383] Arab. "k.u.mm" = sleeve or petal. See vol. v. 32.

[FN#384] Arab. "Kirab" = sword-case of wood, the sheath being of leather.

[FN#385] Arab. "Akr kayrawan," both rare words.

[FN#386] A doubtful tradition in the Mishkat al-Masabih declares that every pomegranate contains a grain from Paradise. See vol.

i. 134. The Koranic reference is to vi. 99.

[FN#387] Arab. "Aswad," lit. black but used for any dark colour, here green as opposed to the lighter yellow.

[FN#388] The idea has occurred in vol. i. 158.

[FN#389] So called from the places where they grow.

[FN#390] See vol. vii. for the almond-apricot whose stone is cracked to get at the kernel.

[FN#391] For Roum see vol. iv. 100: in Morocco "Roumi" means simply a European. The tetrastich alludes to the beauty of the Greek slaves.

[FN#392] Arab. "Ahlan" in adverb form lit. = "as one of the household": so in the greeting "Ahlan wa Sahlan" (and at thine ease), wa Marhaba (having a wide free place).

[FN#393] For the Sufrah table-cloth see vol. i. 178.

[FN#394] See vol. iii. 302, for the unclean allusion in fig and sycamore.

[FN#395] In the text "of Tor": see vol. ii. 242. The pear is mentioned by Homer and grows wild in South Europe. Dr. Victor Hehn (The Wanderings of Plants, etc.) comparing the Gr.

with the Lat. Pyrus, suggests that the latter pa.s.sed over to the Kelts and Germans amongst whom the fruit was not indigenous. Our fine pears are mostly from the East. e.g. the "bergamot" is the Beg Armud, Prince of Pears, from Angora.

[FN#396] i.e. "Royal," it may or may not come from Sultaniyah, a town near Baghdad. See vol. i. 83; where it applies to oranges and citrons.

[FN#397] 'Andam = Dragon's blood: see vol. iii. 263.

[FN#398] Arab. "Jamar," the palm-pith and cabbage, both eaten by Arabs with sugar.

[FN#399] Arab. "Anwar" = lights, flowers (mostly yellow): hence the Moroccan "N'war," with its usual abuse of Wakf or quiescence.

[FN#400] Mr. Payne quotes Eugene Fromentin, "Un Ete dans le Sahara," Paris, 1857, p. 194. Apricot drying can be seen upon all the roofs at Damascus where, however, the season for each fruit is unpleasantly short, ending almost as soon as it begins.

[FN#401] Arab. "Jalajal" = small bells for falcons: in Port.

cascaveis, whence our word.