The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume X Part 66

"The good (fellow?) Haroun Alrasch'id,"

a misp.r.o.nunciation which suggests only a rasher of bacon. Why will not poets mind their quant.i.ties, in lieu of stultifying their lines by childish ignorance? What can be more painful than Byron's

"They laid his dust in Ar'qua (for Arqua) where he died?"

[FN#255] See De Sacy's Chrestomathie Arabe (Paris, 1826), vol. i.

[FN#256] See Le Jardin Parfume du Cheikh Nefzaoui Manuel d'Erotologie Arabe Traduction revue et corrigee Edition privee, imprime a deux cent.-vingt exemplaires, par Isidore Liseux et ses Amis, Paris, 1866. The editor has forgotten to note that the celebrated Sidi Mohammed copied some of the tales from The Nights and borrowed others (I am a.s.sured by a friend) from Tunisian MSS.

of the same work. The book has not been fairly edited: the notes abound in mistakes, the volume lacks an index, &c., &c. Since this was written the Jardin Parfume has been twice translated into English as "The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui, a Manual of Arabian Erotology (sixteenth century). Revised and corrected translation, Cosmopoli: mdccclx.x.xvi.: for the Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares and for private circulation only." A rival version will be brought out by a bookseller whose Committee, as he calls it, appears to be the model of literary pirates, robbing the author as boldly and as openly as if they picked his pocket before his face.

[FN#257] Translated by a well-known Turkish scholar, Mr. E. J. W.

Gibb (Glasgow, Wilson and McCormick, 1884).

[FN#258] D'Herbelot (s. v. "Asmai"): I am reproached by a dabbler in Orientalism for using this admirable writer who shows more knowledge in one page than my critic does in a whole volume.

[FN#259] For specimens see Al-Siyuti, pp. 301 and 304, and the Shaykh al Nafzawi, pp. 134-35

[FN#260] The word "nakh" (to make a camel kneel) is explained in vol. ii. 139.

[FN#261] The present of the famous horologium-clepsydra-cuckoo clock, the dog Becerillo and the elephant Abu Lubabah sent by Harun to Charlemagne is not mentioned by Eastern authorities and consequently no reference to it will be found in my late friend Professor Palmer's little volume "Haroun Alraschid," London, Marcus Ward, 1881. We have allusions to many presents, the clock and elephant, tent and linen hangings, silken dresses, perfumes, and candelabra of auricalch brought by the Legati (Abdalla Georgius Abba et Felix) of Aaron Amiralmumminim Regis Persarum who entered the Port of Pisa (A. D. 801) in (vol. v. 178) Recueil des Histor. des Gaules et de la France, etc., par Dom Martin Bouquet, Paris, mdccxliv. The author also quotes the lines:--

Persarum Princeps illi devinctus amore Praecipuo fuerat, nomen habens Aaron.

Gratia cui Caroli prae cunctis Regibus atque Illis Principibus tempora cara funit.

[FN#262] Many have remarked that the actual date of the decease is unknown.

[FN#263] See Al-Siyuti (p. 305) and Dr. Jonathan Scott's "Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters," (p. 296).

[FN#264] I have given (vol. i. 188) the vulgar derivation of the name; and D'Herbelot (s. v. Barmakian) quotes some Persian lines alluding to the "supping up." Al-Mas'udi's account of the family's early history is unfortunately lost. This Khalid succeeded Abu Salamah, first ent.i.tled Wazir under Al-Saffah (Ibn Khallikan i. 468).

[FN#265] For his poetry see Ibn Khallikan iv. 103.

[FN#266] Their flatterers compared them with the four elements.

[FN#267] Al-Mas'udi, chapt. cxii.

[FN#268] Ibn Khallikan (i. 310) says the eunuch Abu Has.h.i.+m Masrur, the Sworder of Vengeance, who is so pleasantly a.s.sociated with Ja'afar in many nightly disguises; but the Eunuch survived the Caliph. Fakhr al-Din (p. 27) adds that Masrur was an enemy of Ja'afar; and gives further details concerning the execution.

[FN#269] Bresl. Edit., Night dlxvii. vol. vii. pp. 258-260; translated in the Mr. Payne's "Tales from the Arabic," vol. i.

189 and headed "Al-Ras.h.i.+d and the Barmecides." It is far less lively and dramatic than the account of the same event given by Al-Mas'udi, chapt. cxii., by Ibn Khallikan and by Fakhr al-Din.

[FN#270] Al-Mas'udi, chapt. cxi.

[FN#271] See Dr. Jonathan Scott's extracts from Major Ouseley's "Tarikh-i-Barmaki."

[FN#272] Al-Mas'udi, chapt. cxii. For the liberties Ja'afar took see Ibn Khallikan, i. 303.

[FN#273] Ibid. chapt. xxiv. In vol. ii. 29 of The Nights, I find signs of Ja'afar's suspected heresy. For Al-Ras.h.i.+d's hatred of the Zindiks see Al-Siyuti, pp. 292, 301; and as regards the religious troubles ibid. p. 362 and pa.s.sim.

[FN#274] Biogr. Dict. i. 309.

[FN#275] This accomplished princess had a practice that suggests the Dame aux Camelias.

[FN#276] i. e. Perdition to your fathers, Allah's curse on your ancestors.

[FN#277] See vol. iv. 159, "Ja'afar and the Bean-seller;" where the great Wazir is said to have been "crucified;" and vol. iv.

pp. 179, 181. Also Roebuck's Persian Proverbs, i. 2, 346, "This also is through the munificence of the Barmecides."

[FN#278] I especially allude to my friend Mr. Payne's admirably written account of it in his concluding Essay (vol. ix.). From his views of the Great Caliph and the Lady Zubaydah I must differ in every point except the destruction of the Barmecides.

[FN#279] Bresl. Edit., vol. vii. 261-62.

[FN#280] Mr. Grattan Geary, in a work previously noticed, informs us (i. 212) "The Sitt al-Zobeide, or the Lady Zobeide, was so named from the great Zobeide tribe of Arabs occupying the country East and West of the Euphrates near the Hindi'ah Ca.n.a.l; she was the daughter of a powerful Sheik of that Tribe." Can this explain the "Kasim"?

[FN#281] Vol. viii. 296.

[FN#282] Burckhardt, "Travels in Arabia" vol. i. 185.

[FN#283] The reverse has been remarked by more than one writer; and contemporary French opinion seems to be that Victor Hugo's influence on French prose, was on the whole, not beneficial.

[FN#284] Mr. W. S. Clouston, the "Storiologist," who is preparing a work to be ent.i.tled "Popular Tales and Fictions; their Migrations and Transformations," informs me the first to adapt this witty anecdote was Jacques de Vitry, the crusading bishop of Accon (Acre) who died at Rome in 1240, after setting the example of "Exempla" or instances in his sermons. He had probably heard it in Syria, and he changed the day-dreamers into a Milkmaid and her Milk-pail to suit his "flock." It then appears as an "Exemplum" in the Liber de Donis or de Septem Donis (or De Dono Timoris from Fear the first gift) of Stepha.n.u.s de Borbone, the Dominican, ob. Lyons, 1261: it treated of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah xi. 2 and 3), Timor, Pietas, Scientia, Fort.i.tudo, Consilium, Intellectus et Sapientia; and was plentifully garnished with narratives for the use of preachers.

[FN#285] The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register (new series, vol. x.x.x. Sept.-Dec. 1830, London, Allens, 1839); p. 69 Review of the Arabian Nights, the Mac. Edit. vol. i., and H. Torrens.

[FN#286] As a household edition of the "Arabian Nights" is now being prepared, the curious reader will have an opportunity of verifying this statement.

[FN#287] It has been pointed out to me that in vol. ii. p. 285, line 18 "Zahr Shah" is a mistake for Sulayman Shah.

[FN#288] I have lately found these lovers at Schloss Sternstein near Cilli in Styria, the property of my excellent colleague, Mr.

Consul Faber, dating from A. D. 1300 when Jobst of Reichenegg and Agnes of Sternstein were aided and abetted by a Capuchin of Seikkloster.

[FN#289] In page 226 Dr. Steinga.s.s sensibly proposes altering the last hemistich (lines 11-12) to

At one time showing the Moon and Sun.

[FN#290] Omitted by Lane for some reason unaccountable as usual.

A correspondent sends me his version of the lines which occur in The Nights (vol. v. 106 and 107):--

Behold the Pyramids and hear them teach What they can tell of Future and of Past: They would declare, had they the gift of speech, The deeds that Time hath wrought from first to last * * * *

My friends, and is there aught beneath the sky Can with th' Egyptian Pyramids compare?

In fear of them strong Time hath pa.s.sed by And everything dreads Time in earth and air.

[FN#291] A rhyming Romance by Henry of Waldeck (flor. A. D. 1160) with a Latin poem on the same subject by Odo and a prose version still popular in Germany. (Lane's Nights iii. 81; and Weber's "Northern Romances.")

[FN#292] e. g. 'Ajaib al-Hind (= Marvels of Ind) ninth century, translated by J. Marcel Devic, Paris, 1878; and about the same date the Two Mohammedan Travellers, translated by Renaudot. In the eleventh century we have the famous Sayyid al-ldrisi, in the thirteenth the 'Ajaib al-Makhlukat of Al-Kazwini and in the fourteenth the Kharidat al-Ajaib of Ibn Al-Wardi. Lane (in loco) traces most of Sindbad to the two latter sources.

[FN#293] So Hector France proposed to name his admirably realistic volume "Sous le Burnous" (Paris, Charpentier, 1886).

[FN#294] I mean in European literature, not in Arabic where it is a lieu commun. See three several forms of it in one page (505) of Ibn Kallikan, vol. iii.