The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume XV Part 24

"ikhsau" = be ye driven away, an in two other places (ii. 61, vii. 166), the nomen agentis "khasi" = "scouted" occurs, as applied to the apes into which the Sabbath-breaking Jews were transformed. In the popular language of the present day it has become equivalent with "khaba," to be disappointed, and may here be translated: thou wilt fail ignominiously.--ST]

[FN#56] Scott introduces (p. 262), "the tyrant, struck with his magnanimity, became calm, and commanding the executioner to release the youth, said, For the present I forbear, and will not kill thee unless thy answers to my further questions shall deserve it. They then entered on the following dialogue: Hyjuawje hoping to entrap him in discourse."

[FN#57] See the dialogue on this subject between Al-Hajjaj and Yahya ibn Yamar in Ibn Khallikan, iv. 60.

[FN#58] Surah x.x.xiii. (The Confederates), v. 40, which ends, "And Allah knoweth all things."

[FN#59] Surah lix. (The Emigration), v. 40: the full quotation would be, "The spoil, taken from the townsfolk and a.s.signed by Allah to His Apostle, belongeth to Allah and to the Apostle and to his kindred and to the orphan and to the poor and to the wayfarer, that naught thereof may circulate among such only of you as be rich. What the Apostle hath given you, take. What he hath refused you, refuse. And fear ye Allah, for Allah is sure in punis.h.i.+ng."

[FN#60] The House of Has.h.i.+m, great-grandfather to the Prophet.

[FN#61] Ibn Khallikan (vol. i. 354) warns us that "Al-Tai" means belonging to the Tai which is a famous tribe. This relative adjective is of irregular formation; a.n.a.logy would require it to be Taii; but the formation of relative adjectives admits some variations; thus from dahr (time) is derived duhri (temporal) and from sahl (a plain), suhli (plain, level). The author might also have told us that there is always a reason for such irregularities; thus "Dahri" (from Dahr) would mean a Mundanist, one who believes in this world and not the next or another.

[FN#62] The "Banu Thakif" was a n.o.ble tribe sprung from Iyad (Ibn Khallikan i. 358-363); but the ignorant and fanatic scribe uses every means, fair and foul, to defame Al-Hajjaj. It was a great race and a well known, living about Taif in the Highlands East of Meccah, where they exist to the present day. Mr. Doughty (loc.

cit. ii. 174) mentions a kindred of the Juhaynah Badawin called El-Thegif (Thakif) of whom the Medinites say, "Allah ya'alan Thegif Kuddam takuf" (G.o.d d.a.m.n the Thegif ere thou stand still).

They are called "Yahud" (Jews), probably meaning pre-Islamitic Arabs, and are despised accordingly.

[FN#63] In Arab. "Jady" = the Zodiacal sign Capricorn.

[FN#64] We find similar facetia in Mullah Jami (Garden viii.).

When a sheep leapt out of the stream, her tail happened to be raised, and a woolcarder said laughing:--"I have seen thy parts genital." She turned her head and replied, "O miserable, for many a year I have seen thee mother-naked yet never laughed I." This alludes to the practice of such artisans who on account of the heat in their workshops and the fibre adhering to their clothes work in naturalibus. See p. 178, the Beharistan (Abode of Spring). Printed by the Kamashastra Society for Private Subscribers only. Benares, 1887.

[FN#65] This pa.s.sage is not Koranic, and, according to Prof.

Houdas, the word "Muhkaman" is never found in the Holy Volume.

[The pa.s.sage is not a literal quotation, but it evidently alludes to Koran iii. 5: "Huwa'llazi anzala ?alayka ?l-kitaba minhu ayatun muh-kamatun" = He it is who sent down to thee the book, some of whose signs (or versets) are confirmed. The singular "muhkamatun" is applied (xlvii.) to "Saratun," a chapter, and in both places the meaning of "confirmed" is "not abrogated by later revelations." Hence the sequel of my first quotation these portions are called "the mother (i.e. groundwork) of the book,"

and the learned Sayyid is not far from the mark after all.--ST]

[FN#66] Surah ii. (The Cow) v. 56, the verse beginning, "Allah!

there be no G.o.d but He; ... His Throne overreacheth the Heavens and the Hearth," etc.

[FN#67] Surah lxxiii. (The Bee) v. 92, ending with, "And he forbiddeth frowardness and wrong-doing and oppression; and He warneth you that haply may ye be warned."

[FN#68] Surah (Meccah) xcix. vv. 7 and 8: in text "Mithkala Zarratin," which Mr. Rodwell (p. 28) englishes "an atom's weight of good," and adds in a foot-note, "Lit. a single ant." Prof.

Houdas would render it, Quiconque aura fait la valeur d'un mitskal de millet en fait de bien; but I hardly think that "Zarrah" can mean "Durrah" = millet. ["Mithkal" in this context is explained by the commentators by "Wazn" = weight, this being the original meaning of the word which is a nomen instrumenti of the form "Mif'al," denoting "that by which the gravity of bodies is ascertained." Later on it became the well-known technical term for a particular weight. "Zarrah," according to some glossarists, is the noun of unity of "Zarr," the young ones of the any, an antlet, which is said to weigh the twelfth part of a "Kitmir" = pedicle of the date0fruit, or the hundredth part of a grain of barley, or to have no weight at all. Hence "Mukhkh al-Zarr," the brains of the antlet, means a thing that does not exist or is impossible to be found. According to others, "Zarrah" is a particle of al-Haba, i.e. of the motes that are seen dancing in the sunlight, called "Sonnenstaubchen" in German, and "atomo solare" in Italian. Koran xxi. 48 and x.x.xi. 15 we find the expression "Mithkala Habbatin min Khardalin" = of the weight of a mustard-seed, used in a similar sense with the present quotation.--ST]

[FN#69] Surah lxx. 38, Mr. Rodwell (p. 60) translates, "Is it that every man of them would fain enter the Garden of Delights?"

[FN#70] Surah x.x.xix. 54: they sinned by becoming apostates from Al-Islam. The verset ends, "Verily all sins doth Allah forgive: aye, Gracious, and Merciful is He."

[FN#71] Surah ii. 159; the quotation in the MS. is cut short.

[FN#72] Surah ii. 107; the end of the verse is, "Yet both are readers of the Book. So with like words say they (the pagan Arabs) who have no knowledge."

[FN#73] Surah li. (The Scattering), v. 56.

[FN#74] Surah ii. v. 30.

[FN#75] Surah xl. (The Believer), v. 78. In the text it is fragmentary. I do not see why Mr. Rodwell founds upon this verset a charge against the Prophet of ignorance concerning Jewish history: Mohammed seems to have followed the Talmud and tradition rather than the Holy Writ of the Hebrews.

[FN#76] Surah (The Believers) lxiv. 108.

[FN#77] Surah x.x.xv. (The Creator or the Angels), v. 31: The sentence concludes in v. 32, "Who of His bounty hath placed us in a Mansion that shall abide for ever, therein no evil shall reach us, and therein no weariness shall touch us."

[FN#78] Surah ("Sad") lix. 54; Iblis, like Satan in the Book of Job, is engaged in dialogue with the Almighty. I may here note that Scott (p. 265) has partially translated these Koranic quotations, but he has given only one reference.

[FN#79] In text "Ana min ahli zalika," of which the vulgar equivalent would be "Kizi" (for "Kazalika," "Kaza") = so (it is)!

[FN#80] i.e. On an empty stomach, to "open the spittle" is = to break the fast. Sir Wm. Gull in his evidence before a committee of the House of Commons deposed that after severe labor he found a bunch of dried raisins as efficacious a "pick-me up" as a gla.s.s of stimulants. The value of dried grapes to the Alpinist is well known.

[FN#81] Arab. "Al-Kadid" = jerked (charqui = chaire cuite) meat-flesh smoked, or (mostly) sun-dried.

[FN#82] I have noticed (i. 345) one of the blunders in our last unfortunate occupation of Egypt where our soldiers died uselessly of dysenteric disease because they were rationed with heating beef instead of digestible mutton.

[FN#83] Arab. "Al-Marham al-akbar."

[FN#84] [In the text: "Al-Kisrat al-yabisah 'ala 'l-Rik fa-innaha tukhlik jami'a ma 'ala fum al-madah min al-balgham," of which I cannot make anything but: a slice of dry bread (kisrah = piece of bread) on the spittle (i.e. to break the fast), for it absorbs (lit. uses up, fourth form of "khalik" = to be worn out) all that there may be of phlegm on the mouth of the stomach. Can it be that the dish "Khushk-nan" (Pers. = dry bread) is meant, of which the village clown in one of Spitta Bey's tales, when he was treated to it by Harun al-Ras.h.i.+d thought it must be the "Hammam,"

because he has heard his grandmother say, that the Hammam (bath) is the most delightful thing in the world??ST]

[FN#85] The stomach has two mouths, oesophagic above (which is here alluded to) and pyloric below.

[FN#86] Arab. "'Irk al-Unsa" = chordae testiculorum, in Engl.

simply the cord.

[FN#87] The "'Ajuz" is a woman who ceases to have her monthly period: the idea is engrained in the Eastern mind and I cannot but believe in it seeing the old-young faces of men who have "married their grandmothers" for money or folly, and what not.

[FN#88] Arab. "Al-'Akik," vol. iii. 179: it is a tradition of the Prophet that the best of bezels for a signet-ring is the carnelian, and such are still the theory and practice of the Moslem East.

[FN#89] Arab. "Tuhal;" in text "Tayhal." Mr. Doughty (Arabia Deserta, i. 547) writes the word "Tahal" and translates it "ague-cake," i.e. the throbbing enlarged spleen, left after fevers, especially those of Al-Hijaz and Khaybar. [The form "Tayhal" with a plural "Tawahil" for the usual "Tihal" = spleen is quoted by Dozy from the valuable Vocabulary published by Schiaparelli, 1871, after an old MS. of the end of the xiii.

century. It has the same relation to the verb "tayhal" = he suffered from the spleen, which "Tihal" bears the same verb "tuhil," used pa.s.sively in the same sense. The name of the disease is "Tuhal."--ST]

[FN#90] In text "Kasalah" = a shock of corn, a.s.semblage of sheaves. It may be a clerical error for "Kasabah" = stalk, haulm, straw.

[FN#91] Of course the conversation drifts into matters s.e.xual and inter-s.e.xual: in a similar story, "Tawad dud," the learned slave girl, "hangs her head down for shame and confusion" (vol. v.

225); but the young Sayyid speaks out bravely as becomes a male masculant.

[FN#92] [In the text: "Allati lau nazarat ila 'l-sama la-a'shab (fourth form of 'ashab with the affirmative 'la') al-Safa (pl. of Safat), wa lau nazarat ila 'l-arz la amtar taghru ha (read thaghru-ha) Luluan lam yuskab wa riku-ha min al-Zulal a'zab (for a'zab min al-Zulal)," which I would translate: Who if she look upon the heavens, the very rocks cover themselves with verdure, and an she look upon the earth, her lips rain unpierced pearls (words of virgin eloquence) and the dews of whose mouth are sweeter than the purest water. - ST.]

[FN#93] These lines have often occurred before: see index (vol.

x. 395) "Wa lau anunaha li 'l-Mushrikin," etc. I have therefore borrowed from Mr. Payne, vol. viii. 78, whose version is admirable.

[FN#94] For the Jahin-h.e.l.l, see vol. viii. 111.

[FN#95] For the Seven Ages of womankind (on the Irish model) see vol. ix. 175. Some form of these verses is known throughout the Moslem East to prince and peasant. They usually begin:--

From the tenth to the twentieth year * To the gaze a charm doth appear;

and end with:--

From sixty to three score ten * On all befal Allah's malison.