The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume II Part 19

It is the "groaning-chair" of Poor Robin's Almanac (1676) and we find it alluded to in Boccaccio, the cla.s.sical sedile which according to scoffers has formed the papal chair (a curule seat) ever since the days of Pope Joan, when it has been held advisable for one of the Cardinals to ascertain that His Holiness possesses all the instruments of virility. This "Kursi al-wiladah" is of peculiar form on which the patient is seated. A most interesting essay might be written upon the various positions preferred during delivery, e.g. the wild Irish still stand on all fours, like the so-called "lower animals." Amongst the Moslems of Waday, etc., a cord is hung from the top of the hut, and the woman in labour holds on to it standing with her legs apart, till the midwife receives the child.

[FN#148] Some Orientalists call "lullilooing" the trilling cry, which is made by raising the voice to its highest pitch and breaking it by a rapid succession of touches on the palate with the tongue-tip, others "Ziraleet" and Zagaleet, and one traveller tells us that it began at the marriage-festival of Isaac and Rebecca (!).

Arabs term it cla.s.sically "Tahlil" and vulgarly "Zaghrutah" (Plur.

Zagharit) and Persians "Kil." Finally in Don Quixote we have "Lelilies," the battle-cry of the Moors (Duffield iii. 289). Dr.

Buchanan likens it to a serpent uttering human sounds, but the good missionary heard it at the festival of Jagannath. (Pilgrimage iii.

197 )

[FN#149] i.e. "Light of the Place" (or kingdom) and "Delight of the Age."

[FN#150] It is utterly absurd to give the old heroic Persian name Afridun or Furaydun, the destroyer of Zohak or Zahhak to a Greek, but such anachronisms are characteristic of The Nights and are evidently introduced on purpose. See Boccaccio, ix. 9.

[FN#151] Arab. "Yunan" lit. Ionia, which applies to all Greece, insular and continental, especially to ancient Greece.

[FN#152] In 1870 I saw at Sidon a find of some hundreds of gold "Philippi" and "Alexanders."

[FN#153] M. Riche has (p. 21), "Ces talismans travailles par le ciseau du celebre Califaziri," adding in a note, "Je pense que c'est un sculpteur Arabe."

[FN#154] This periphrase, containing what seems to us a useless negative, adds emphasis in Arabic.

[FN#155] This bit of geographical information is not in the Bull Edit.

[FN#156] In Pers. = a tooth, the popular word.

[FN#157] This preliminary move, called in Persian Nakl-i Safar, is generally mentioned. So the Franciscan monks in California, when setting out for a long journey through the desert, marched three times round the convent and pitched tents for the night under its walls.

[FN#158] In Arab. "Khazinah" or "Khaznah" lit. a treasure, representing 1,000 "Kis" or purses (each=5). The sum in the text is 7,000 purses X 5=35,000.

[FN#159] Travellers often prefer such sites because they are sheltered from the wind, and the ground is soft for pitching tents; but many have come to grief from sudden torrents following rain.

[FN#160] Arab "Ghabah" not a forest in our sense of the word, but a place where water sinks and the trees (mostly Mimosas), which elsewhere are widely scattered, form a comparatively dense growth and collect in thickets. These are favourite places for wild beasts during noon-heats.

[FN#161] At various times in the East Jews and Christians were ordered to wear characteristic garments, especially the Zunnar or girdle.

[FN#162] The description is borrowed from the Coptic Convent, which invariably has an inner donjon or keep. The oldest monastery in the world is Mar Antonios (St. Anthony the Hermit) not far from Suez.

(Gold Mines of Midian, p. 85.)

[FN#163] "Dawahi," plur. of Dahiyah = a mishap. The t.i.tle means "Mistress of Misfortunes" or Queen of Calamities (to the enemy); and the venerable lady, as will be seen, amply deserved her name, which is p.r.o.nounced Zat al-Dawahi.

[FN#164] Arab. "Kunfuz"=hedgehog or porcupine.

[FN#165] These flowers of speech are mere familiarities, not insults. In societies where the s.e.xes are separated speech becomes exceedingly free. "etourdie que vous etes," says M. Riche, toning down the text.

[FN#166] Arab. "Zirt," a low word. The superlative "Zarrat"

(fartermost) or, "Abu Zirt" (Father of farts) is a facetious term among the bean-eating Fellahs and a deadly insult amongst the Badawin (Night ccccx.). The latter prefer the word Taggaa (Pilgrimage iii. 84). We did not disdain the word in farthingale=pet en air.

[FN#167] Arab. "kicked" him, i.e. with the sharp corner of the shovel-stirrup. I avoid such expressions as "spurring" and "p.r.i.c.king over the plain," because apt to give a wrong idea.

[FN#168] Arab. "Allaho Akbar!" the cla.s.sical Moslem slogan.

[FN#169] Arab horses are never taught to leap, so she was quite safe on the other side of a brook nine feet broad.

[FN#170] "Batrik" (vulg. Bitrik)=patricius, a t.i.tle given to Christian knights who commanded ten thousand men; the Tarkhan (or n.o.bb) heading four thousand, and the Kaumas (Arab. Kaid) two hundred. It must not be confounded with Batrak (or Batrik)=patriarcha. (Lane's Lex.)

[FN#171] Arab. "Kazi al-Kuzat," a kind of Chief Justice or Chancellor. The office wag established under the rule of Harun al Ras.h.i.+d, who so ent.i.tled Abu Yusuf Ya'akab al-Ansari: therefore the allusion is anachronistic. The same Caliph also caused the Olema to dress as they do still.

[FN#172] The allusion is Koranic: "O men, if ye be in doubt concerning the resurrection, consider that He first created you of the dust of the ground (Adam), afterwards of seed" (chaps. xxii.).

But the physiological ideas of the Koran are curious. It supposes that the Mani or male s.e.m.e.n is in the loins and that of women in the breast bone (chaps Ix.x.xvi.); that the mingled seed of the two (chaps. Ixxvi.) fructifies the ovary and that the child is fed through the navel with menstruous blood, hence the cessation of the catamenia. Barzoi (Kalilah and Dimnah) says:-- "Man's seed, falling into the woman's womb, is mixed with her seed and her blood: when it thickens and curdles the Spirit moves it and it turns about like liquid cheese; then it solidifies, its arteries are formed, its limbs constructed and its joints distinguished. If the babe is a male, his face is placed towards his mother's back; if a female, towards her belly." (P. 262, Mr. L G.N. Keith- Falconer's translation.) But there is a curious prolepsis of the spermatozoa-theory. We read (Koran chaps. vii.), "Thy Lord drew forth their posterity from the loins of the sons of Adam;" and the commentators say that Allah stroked Adam's back and extracted from his loins all his posterity, which shall ever be, in the shape of small ants; these confessed their dependence on G.o.d and were dismissed to return whence they came." From this fiction it appears (says Sale) that the doctrine of pre-existence is not unknown to the Mohammedans, and there is some little conformity between it and the modern theory of generatio ex animalculis in semine marium. The poets call this Yaum-i-Alast = the Day of Am-I-not (-your Lord)?

which Sir William Jones most unhappily translated "Art thou not with thy Lord ?" (Alasta bi Rabbi- k.u.m); fand they produce a grand vision of unembodied spirits appearing in countless millions before their Creator.

[FN#173] The usual preliminary of a wrestling bout.

[FN#174] In Eastern wrestling this counts as a fair fail. So Ajax fell on his back with Ulysses on his breast. (Iliad x.x.xii., 700, etc.)

[FN#175] So biting was allowed amongst the Greeks in the , the final struggle on the ground.

[FN#176] Supposed to be names of noted wrestlers. "Kayim" (not El-Kim as Torrens has it) is a term now applied to a juggler or "professor" of legerdemain who amuses people in the streets with easy tricks. (Lane, M. E., chaps. xx.)

[FN#177] Lit. "laughed in his face" which has not the unpleasant meaning it bears in English.

[FN#178] Arab. "Abu riyah"=a kind of child's toy. It is our "bull-roarer" well known in Australia and parts of Africa.

[FN#179] The people of the region south of the Caspian which is called "Sea of Daylam." It has a long history; for which see D'Herbelot, s.v. "Dilem."

[FN#180] Coptic convents in Egypt still affect these drawbridges over the keep-moat.

[FN#181] Koran iv., xxii. etc., meaning it is lawful to marry women taken in war after the necessary purification although their husbands be still living. This is not permitted with a free woman who is a True Believer. I have noted that the only concubine slave-girl mentioned in the Koran are these "captives possessed by the right hand."

[FN#182] The Amazonian dame is a favourite in folk-lore and is an ornament to poetry from the Iliad to our modern day. Such heroines, apparently unknown to the Pagan Arabs, were common in the early ages of Al-Islam as Ockley and Gibbon prove, and that the race is not extinct may be seen in my Pilgrimage (iii. 55) where the sister of Ibn Rumi resolved to take blood revenge for her brother.

[FN#183] And Solomon said, "O n.o.bles, which of you will bring me her throne ?" A terrible genius (i.e. an If rit of the Jinn named Dhakwan or the notorious Sakhr) said, " I will bring it unto thee before thou arise from thy seat (of justice); for I am able to perform it, and may be trusted" (Koran, xxvii. 38-39). Balkis or Bilkis (says the Durrat al-Ghawwas) daughter of Hozad bin Sharhabil, twenty-second in the list of the rulers of Al- Yaman, according to some murdered her husband, and became, by Moslem ignorance, the Biblical " Queen of Sheba." The Abyssinians transfer her from Arabian Saba to Ethiopia and make her the mother by Solomon of Menelek, their proto-monarch; thus claiming for their royalties an antiquity compared with which all reigning houses in the world are of yesterday. The dates of the Tababi'ah or Tobbas prove that the Bilkis of history ruled Al-Yaman in the early Christian era.

[FN#184] Arab. "Fa.s.s," fiss or fuss; the gem set in a ring; also applied to a hillock rounded en cabochon. In The Nights it is used to signify "a fine gem."

[FN#185] This prominence of the glutaei muscles is always insisted upon, because it is supposed to promise well in a bed-fellow. In Somali land where the people are sub- steatopygous, a rich young man, who can afford such luxury, will have the girls drawn up in line and choose her to wife who projects furthest behind

[FN#186] The "bull" is only half mine.

[FN#187] A favourite Arab phrase, the "hot eye" is one full of tears.

[FN#188] i.e., "Coral," coral branch, a favourite name for a slave-girl, especially a negress. It is the older "Morgiana." I do not see why Preston in Al-Harini's "Makamah (Seance) of Singar"

renders it pearls, because Golius gives "small pearls," when it is evidently "coral." Richardson (Dissert. xlviii.) seems to me justified in finding the Pari (fairy) Marjan of heroic Persian history reflected in the Fairy Morgain who earned off King Arthur after the battle of Camelon.

[FN#189] Arab. "'Ud Jalaki"=Jalak or Jalik being a poetical and almost obsolete name of Damascus.

[FN#190] The fountain in Paradise whose water shall be drunk with "pure" wine mixed and sealed with musk (for clay). It is so called because it comes from the "Sanam" (Sanima, to be high) boss or highest ridge of the Moslem Heaven (Koran lv. 78 and lx.x.xiii. 27).

Mr. Rodwell says "it is conveyed to the highest apartments in the Pavilions of Paradise." (?)

[FN#191] This "hysterical" temperament is not rare even amongst the bravest Arabs.