The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume XII Part 29

[FN#424] i.e. an thou prank or adorn thyself: I have translated literally, but the couplet strongly suggests "nonsense verses."

[FN#425] Arab. "Santir:" Lane (M.E., chapt. xviii.) describes it as resembling the Kanun (dulcimer or zither) but with two oblique peg-pieces instead of one and double chords of wire (not treble strings of lamb's gut) and played upon with two sticks instead of the little plectra. Dozy also gives Santir from {Greek}, the Fsaltrun of Daniel.

[FN#426] i.e. That which is ours shall be thine, and that which is inc.u.mbent on thee shall be inc.u.mbent on us = we will a.s.sume thy debts and responsibilities.

[FN#427] This pa.s.sage is sadly disjointed in the text: I have followed Mr. Payne's ordering.

[FN#428] The Arab of n.o.ble tribe is always the first to mount his own mare: he also greatly fears her being put out to full speed by a stranger, holding that this should be reserved for occasions of life and death; and that it can be done to perfection only once during the animal's life.

[FN#429] The red (Ahmar) dromedary like the white-red (Sabah) were most valued because they are supposed best to bear the heats of noon; and thus "red camels" is proverbially used for wealth.

When the head of Abu Jahl was brought in after the Battle of Bedr, Mahommed exclaimed, "'Tis more acceptable to me than a red camel!"

[FN#430] i.e. Couriers on dromedaries, the only animals used for sending messages over long distances.

[FN#431] These guest-fires are famous in Arab poetry. So Al-Hariri (a.s.s. of Banu Haram) sings:--

A beacon fire I ever kindled high;

i.e. on the hill-tops near the camp, to guide benighted travellers. Also the Lamiyat al-Ajam says:--

The fire of hospitality is ever lit on the high stations.

This natural telegraph was used in a host of ways by the Arabs of The Ignorance; for instance, when a hated guest left the camp they lighted the "Fire of Rejection," and cried, "Allah, bear him far from us!" Nothing was more ign.o.ble than to quench such fire: hence in obloquy of the Fazar tribe it was said:--

Ne'er trust Fazar with an a.s.s, for they Once roasted a.s.s-pizzle, the rabble rout: And, when sight they guest, to their dams they say, "p.i.s.s quick on the guest-fire and put it out!"

(Al-Mas"udi vi. 140.)

[FN#432] i.e. of rare wood, set with rubies.

[FN#433] i.e. whose absence pained us.

[FN#434] Mr. Payne and I have long puzzled over these enigmatical and possibly corrupt lines: he wrote to me in 1884, "This is the first piece that has beaten me." In the couplet above (vol. xii.

230) "Rayhani" may mean "my basil-plant" or "my food" (the latter Koranic), "my compa.s.sion," etc.; and Susani is equally ancipitous "My lilies" or "my sleep": see Bard al-Susan = les douceurs du sommeil in Al-Mas'udi vii. 168.

[FN#435] The "Nika" or sand hill is the swell of the throat: the Ghaur or lowland is the fall of the waist: the flower is the breast anent which Mr. Payne appropriately quotes the well-known lines of Fletcher:

"Hide, O hide those hills of snow, That thy frozen bosom bears, On whose tops the pinks that grow Are of those that April wears."

[FN#436] Easterns are right in regarding a sleepy languorous look as one of the charms of women, and an incitement to love because suggestive only of bed. Some men also find the same pleasure in a lacrymose expression of countenance, seeming always to call for consolation: one of the most successful women I know owes her exceptional good fortune to this charm.

[FN#437] Arab. "Hajib,"eyebrow or chamberlain; see vol. iii. 233.

The pun is cla.s.sical used by a host of poets including Al-Hariri.

[FN#438] Arab. "Tarfah." There is a Tarfia Island in the Guadalquivir and in Gibraltar a "Tarfah Alto" opposed to "Tarfali bajo." But it must not be confounded with Tarf = a side, found in the Maroccan term for "The Rock" Jabal al-Tarf = Mountain of the Point (of Europe).

[FN#439] For Solomon and his flying carpet see vol. iii. 267.

[FN#440] Arab. "Bilad al-Maghrib (al-Aksa," in full) = the Farthest Land of the setting Sun, shortly called Al-Maghrib and the people "Maghribi." The earliest occurrence of our name Morocco or Marocco I find in the "Marakiyah" of Al-Mas'udi (iii.

241), who apparently applies it to a district whither the Berbers migrated.

[FN#441] The necklace-pearls are the cup-bearer's teeth.

[FN#442] In these unregenerate days they would often be summoned to the houses of the royal family; but now they had "got religion" and, becoming freed women, were resolved to be "respectable." In not a few Moslem countries men of wealth and rank marry professional singers who, however loose may have been their artistic lives, mostly distinguish themselves by decency of behaviour often pushed to the extreme of rigour. Also jeune coquette, vieille devote is a rule of the world, Eastern and Western.

[FN#443] Bresl. Edit., vol. xii p. 383 (Night mi). The king is called as usual "Shahrban," which is nearly synonymous with Shahryar.

[FN#444] i.e. the old Sindibae-Nameh (see vol. vi. 122), or "The Malice of Women" which the Bresl. Edit. ent.i.tles, "Tale of the King and his Son and his Wife and the Seven Wazirs." Here it immediately follows the Tale of Al-Abbas and Mariyah and occupies pp. 237-383 of vol. xii, (Nights dcccclxxix-m).

[FN#445] i.e. Those who commit it.

[FN#446] The connection between this pompous introduction and the story which follows is not apparent. The "Tale of the Two Kings and the Wazir's Daughters" is that of Shahrazad told in the third person, in fact a rechauffe of the Introduction. But as some three years have pa.s.sed since the marriage, and the denouement of the plot is at hand, the Princess is made, with some art I think, to lay the whole affair before her husband in her own words, the better to bring him to a "sense of his duty."

[FN#447] Bresl. Edit., vol. xii. Pp. 384-412.

[FN#448] This clause is taken from the sequence, where the older brother's kingdom is placed in China.

[FN#449] For the Tobbas = "Successors" or the Himyaritic kings, see vol. i. 216.

[FN#450] Kayasirah, opp. to Akasirah, here and in many other places.

[FN#451] See vol. ii. 77. King Kulayb ("little dog") al-Wa'il, a powerful chief of the Banu Ma'ad in the Kasin district of Najd, who was connected with the war of Al-Basus. He is so called because he lamed a pup (kulayb) and tied it up in the midst of his Hima (domain, place of pasture and water), forbidding men to camp within sound of its bark or sight of his fire. Hence "more masterful than Kulayb," A.P. ii. 145, and Al-Hariri a.s.s. Xxvi.

(Chenery, p. 448). This angry person came by his death for wounding in the udder a trespa.s.sing camel (Sorab) whose owner was a woman named Basus. Her friend (Jasus) slew him; and thus arose the famous long war between the tribes Wa'il Bakr and Taghlib.

It gave origin to the saying, "Die thou and be an expiation for the shoe-latchet of Kulayb."

[FN#452] Arab. "Mukhaddarat," maidens concealed behind curtains and veiled in the Harem.

[FN#453] i.e. the professional Rawis or tale-reciters who learned stories by heart from books like "The Arabian Nights." See my Terminal Essay, vol. x. 144.

[FN#454] Arab. "Bid'ah," lit. = an innovation, a new thing, an invention, any change from the custom of the Prophet and the universal practice of the Faith, where it be in the cut of the beard or a question of state policy. Popularly the word = heterodoxy, heresy; but theologically it is not necessarily used in a bad sense. See vol. v. 167.

[FN#455] About three parts of this sentence have been supplied by Mr. Payne, the careless scribe having evidently omitted it.

[FN#456] Here, as in the Introduction (vol. i. 24), the king consummates his marriage in presence of his virgin sister-in-law, a process which decency forbids amongst Moslems.

[FN#457] Al-Mas'udi (vol. iv. 213) uses this term to signify viceroy in "Shahryar Sajastan."

[FN#458] i.e. his indifference to the principles of right and wrong, which is a manner of moral intoxication.

[FN#459] i.e. hath mentioned the office of Wazir (in Koran xx.

30).

[FN#460] i.e. Moslems, who practice the Religion of Resignation.

[FN#461] Koran x.x.xiii. 35. This is a proemium to the "revelation" concerning Zayd and Zaynab.

[FN#462] i.e. I have an embarras de richesse in my repertory.

[FN#463] The t.i.tle is from the Bresl. Edit. (vol. xii. pp. 398- 402). Mr. Payne calls it "The Favourite and her Lover."