The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume XVI Part 30

[FN#166] i.e. a witch; see vol. viii. 131.

[FN#167] So in the phrase "Otbah hath the colic," first said concerning Otbah b. Rabi'a by Abu Jahl when the former advised not marching upon Badr to attack Mohammed. Tabari, vol. ii. 491.

[FN#168] Compare the French "Brr!"

[FN#169] i.e. to whom thou owest a debt of apology or excuse, "Gharim" = debtor or creditor.

[FN#170] Arab. "Jurab al-'uddah," i.e. the manacles, fetters, etc.

[FN#171] The following three sentences are taken from the margin of (MS.) p. 257, and evidently belong to this place.

[FN#172] In text "Bghb" evidently for "Baght" or preferably "Baghtatan."

[FN#173] This is a twice-told tale whose telling I have lightened a little without omitting any important detail. Gauttier reduces the ending of the history to less than five pages.

[FN#174] The normal idiom for "I accept."

[FN#175] In text Khila't dakk al-Matrakah," which I have rendered literally: it seems to signify an especial kind of brocade.

[FN#176] The Court of Baghdad was, like the Urdu (Horde or Court) of the "Grand Mogul," organised after the ordinance of an army in the field, with its centre, the Sovran, and two wings right and left, each with its own Wazir for Commander, and its vanguard and rearguard.

[FN#177] Being the only son he had a voice in the disposal of his sister. The mother was the Kabirah = head of the household, in Marocco Al-Sidah = Madame mere; but she could not interfere single-handed in affairs concerning the family. See Pilgrimage, vol. iii. 198. Throughout Al-Islam in default of a father the eldest brother gives away the sisters, and if there be no brother this is done by the nearest male relation on the "sword" side.

The mother has no authority in such matters nor indeed has anyone on the "spindle" side.

[FN#178] Alluding to the Wali and his men.

[FN#179] Arab. "Kunyah" (the pop. misp.r.o.nunciation of "Kinyah") is not used here with strict correctness. It is a fore-name or bye-name generally taken from the favourite son, Abu (father of) being prefixed. When names are written in full it begins the string, e.g., Abu Mohammed (fore-name), Kasim (true name), ibn Ali (father's name), ibn Mohammed (grandfather's), ibn Osman (great-grandfather), Al-Hariri (= the Silkman from the craft of the family), Al-Basri (of Ba.s.sorah). There is also the "Lakab"

(sobriquet), e.g. Al-Bundukani or Badi'u'l-Zaman (Rarity of the Age), which may be placed either before or after the "Kunyah"

when the latter is used alone. Chenery (Al-Hariri, p.315) confines the "Kunyah" to fore-names beginning with Abu; but it also applies to those formed with Umm (mother), Ibn (son), Bint (daughter), Akh (brother) and Ukht (sister). See vol. iv. 287. It is considered friendly and graceful to address a Moslem by this bye-name.

-Gaudent praenomine molles Auriculae.

[FN#180] In text "Ya Kawaki," which M. Houdas translates "O piailleur," remarking that here it would be = poule mouillee.

[FN#181] "'Alakah kharijah" = an extraordinary drubbing.

[FN#182] In text "Ij'alni fi kll," the latter word being probably, as M. Houdas suggests, a clerical error for "Kal-a" or "Kilaa" = safety, protection.

[FN#183] I am surprised that so learned and practical an Arabist as the Baron de Slane in his Fr. translation of Ibn Khaldun should render le surnom d'Er-Rechid (le prudent), for "The Rightly Directed," the Orthodox (vol. ii. 237), when (ibid. p.

259) he properly translates "Al-Khulafa al-ras.h.i.+din" by Les Califes qui marchent dans la voie droite.

[FN#184] MSS. pp. 476-504. This tale is laid down on the same lines as "Abu al-Husn and his Slave-girl Tawaddud," vol. vi. 189.

It is carefully avoided by Scott, C. de Perceval, Gauttier, etc.

[FN#185] Lit. an interpreter woman; the word is the fem. of Tarjuman, a dragoman whom Mr. Curtis calls a Drag o' men; see vol. i. 100. It has changed wonderfully on its way from its "Semitic" home to Europe which has naturalised it as Drogman, Truchman and Dolmetsch.

[FN#186] For this word of many senses, see vols. i. 231; ix.

221. M. Caussin de Perceval (viii. 16), quoting d'Herbelot (s.v.), notes that the Abbasides thus ent.i.tled the chief guardian of the Harem.

[FN#187] See vols. iv. 100; viii. 268. In his Introduction (p.

22) to the a.s.semblies of Al-Hariri Chenery says, "This prosperity had now pa.s.sed away, for G.o.d had brought the people of Rum (so the Arabs call the Byzantines, whom Abu Zayd here confounds with the Franks) on the land," etc. The confusion is not Abu Zayd's: "Rumi" in Marocco and other archaic parts of the Moslem world is still synonymous with our "European."

[FN#188] This obedience to children is common in Eastern folk-lore: see Suppl. vol. i. 143, in which the royal father orders his son to sell him. The underlying idea is that the parents find their offspring too clever for them; not, as in the "New World," that Youth is ent.i.tled to take precedence and command of Age.

[FN#189] In text "Fa min tumma" for "thumma"--then, alors.

[FN#190] Such as the headstall and hobbles the cords and chains for binding captives, and the mace and sword hanging to the saddle-bow.

[FN#191] i.e. not a well-known or distinguished horseman, but a chance rider.

[FN#192] These "letters of Mutalammis," as Arabs term our Litterae Bellerophonteae, or "Uriah's letters," are a lieu commun in the East and the Prince was in luck when he opened and read the epistle here given by mistake to the wrong man. Mutalammis, a poet of The Ignorance, had this sobriquet (the "frequent asker," or, as we should say, the Solicitor-General), his name being Jarir bin 'Abd al-Masih. He was uncle to Tarafah of the Mu'-allakah or prize poem, a type of the witty dissolute bard of the jovial period before Al-Islam arose to cloud and dull man's life. One day as he was playing with other children Mutalammis was reciting a panegyric upon his favourite camel, which ran:--

I mount a he-camel, dark-red and firm-fleshed; or a she-camel of Himyar, fleet of foot and driving the pebbles with her crus.h.i.+ng hooves.

"See the he-camel turned to a she," cried the boy, and the phrase became proverbial to express inelegant transition (Arab. Prov.

ii. 246). The uncle bade his nephew put out his tongue and seeing it dark-coloured said, "That black tongue will be thy ruin!" Tarafah, who was presently ent.i.tled Ibn al-'Ishrin (the son of twenty years), grew up a model reprobate who cared nothing save for three things, "to drink the dark-red wine foaming as the water mixeth with it, to urge into the fight a broad-backed steed, and to while away the dull day with a young beauty." His apology for wilful waste is highly poetic:--

I see that the grave of the careful, the h.o.a.rder, differeth not from the grave of the debauched, the spendthrift: A hillock of earth covers this and that, with a few flat stones laid together thereon.

See the whole piece in Chenery's Al-Hariri (p. 360), from which this note is borrowed. At last uncle and nephew fled from ruin to the Court of 'Amru bin Munzir III., King of Hira, who in the tale of Al-Mutalammis and his wife Umaymah (The Nights, vol. v.

74) is called Al-Nu'uman bin Munzir but is better known as 'Amru bin Hind (his mother). The King, who was a derocious personage nicknamed Al-Muharrik or the Burner, because he had thrown into the fire ninety-nine men and one woman of the Tamim tribe in accordance with a vow of vengeance he had taken to slaughter a full century, made the two strangers boon-companions to his boorish brother Kabus. Tarafah, offended because kept at the tent-door whilst the master drank wine within, bitterly lampooned him together with 'Abd Amru a friend of the King; and when this was reported his death was determined upon. Amru, the King, seeing the anxiety of the two poets to quit his Court, offered them letters of introduction to Abu Karib, Governor of Al-Hajar (Bahrayn) under the Persian King and they were accepted. The uncle caused his letter to be read by a youth, and finding that it was an order for his execution destroyed it and fled to Syria; but the nephew was buried alive. Amru, the King, was afterwards slain by the poet-warrior, Amru bin Kulthum, also of the "Mu'allakat," for an insult offered to his mother by Hind: hence the proverb, "Quicker to slay than 'Amru bin Kulsum" (A.P. ii.

233).

[FN#193] See vols. i. 192; iii. 14; these correspond with the "Stathmoi," Stationes, Mansiones or Castra of Herodotus, Terps.

cap. 53, and Xenophon. An. i. 2, 10.

[FN#194] In text "Ittika" viiith of waka: the form "Takwa" is generally used = fearing G.o.d, whereby one guards oneself from sin in this life and from retribution in the world to come.

[FN#195] This series of puzzling questions and clever replies is still as favourite a mental exercise in the East as it was in middle-aged Europe. The riddle or conundrum began, as far as we know, with the Sphinx, through whose mouth the Greeks spoke: nothing less likely than that the grave and mysterious Scribes of Egypt should ascribe aught so puerile to the awful emblem of royal majesty--Abu Haul, the Father of Affright. Josephus relates how Solomon propounded enigmas to Hiram of Tyre which none but Abdimus, son of the captive Abdaemon, could answer. The Tale of Tawaddud offers fair specimens of such exercises, which were not disdained by the most learned of Arabian writers. See Al-Hariri's a.s.s. xxiv, which proposes twelve enigmas involving abstruse and technical points of Arabic, such as: "What be the word, which as ye will is a particle beloved, or the name of that which compriseth the slender-waisted milch camel!" Na'am = "Yes"

or "cattle," the latter word containing the Harf, or slender camel. Chenery, p. 246.

[FN#196] For the sundry meanings and significance of "Salam,"

here=Heaven's blessing, see vols. ii. 24, vi. 232.

[FN#197] This is the nursery version of the Exodus, old as Josephus and St. Jerome, and completely changed by the light of modern learning. The Children of Israel quitted their homes about Memphis (as if a large horde of half-nomadic shepherds would be suffered in the richest and most crowded home of Egypt).

They marched by the Wady Musa that debouches upon the Gulf of Suez a short way below the port now temporarily ruined by its own folly and the ill-will of M. de Lesseps; and they made the "Sea of Sedge" (Suez Gulf) through the valley bounded by what is still called Jabal 'Atakah, the Mountain of Deliverance, and its parallel range, Abu Durayj (of small steps). Here the waters were opened and the host pa.s.sed over to the "Wells of Moses,"

erstwhile a popular picnic place on the Arabian side; but according to one local legend (for which see my Pilgrimage, i.

294-97) they crossed the sea north of Tur, the spot being still called "Birkat Far'aun"=Pharoah's Pool. Such also is the modern legend amongst the Arabs, who learned their lesson from the Christians (not the Jews) in the days when the Copts and the Greeks (ivth century) invented "Mount Sinai." And the reader will do well to remember that the native annalists of Ancient Egypt, which conscientiously relate all her defeats and subjugations by the Ethiopians, Persians, etc., utterly ignore the very name of Hebrew, Sons of Israel, etc.

I cannot conceal my astonishment at finding a specialist journal like the "Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund"

(Oct., 1887) admitting such a paper as that ent.i.tled "The Exode,"

by R. F. Hutchinson, M.D. For this writer the labours of the last half-century are non-existing. Job is still the "oldest book" in the world. The Rev. Charles Forster's absurdity, "Israel in the wilderness," gives valuable a.s.sistance. Goshen is Mr. Chester's Tell Fakus (not, however, far wrong in this) instead of the long depression by the Copts still called "Gesem"

or "Gesemeh," the frontier-land through which the middle course of the Suez Ca.n.a.l runs. "Succoth," tabernacles, is confounded with the Arab. "Sakf" = a roof. Letopolis, the "key of the Exode," and identified with the site where Babylon (Old Cairo) was afterwards built, is placed on the right instead of the left bank of the Nile. "Bahr Kulzum" is the "Sea of the Swallowing-up," in lieu of The Closing. El-Tih, "the wandering,"

is identified with Wady Musa to the west of the Suez Gulf. And so forth. What could the able Editor have been doing?

Students of this still disputed question will consult "The Shrine of Saft el-Henneh and the Land of Goschen," by Edouard Naville, fifth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Published by order of the Committee. London, Trubner, 1837.

[FN#198] Eastern fable runs wild upon this subject, and indeed a larger volume could be written upon the birth, life and death of Moses' and Aaron's rods. There is a host of legends concerning the place where the former was cut and whence it descended to the Prophet whose shepherd's staff was the glorification of his pastoral life (the rod being its symbol) and of his future career as a ruler (and flogger) of men. In Exodus (viii. 3-10), when a miracle was required of the brothers, Aaron's rod became a "serpent" (A.V.) or, as some prefer, a "crocodile," an animal wors.h.i.+pped by certain of the Egyptians; and when the King's magicians followed suit it swallowed up all others. Its next exploit was to turn the Nile and other waters of Egypt into blood (Exod. vii. 17). The third wonder was worked by Moses' staff, the dividing of the Red Sea (read the Sea of Sedge or papyrus, which could never have grown in the brine of the Suez Gulf) according to the command, "Lift thou up thy rod and stretch out thine hand over the sea," etc. (Exod. xiv. 15). The fourth adventure was when the rod, wherewith Moses smote the river, struck two blows on the rock in h.o.r.eb and caused water to come out of it (Numb. xxi. 8). Lastly the rod (this time again Aaron's) "budded and brought forth buds and bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds" (Numb. xvii. 7); thus becoming a testimony against the rebels: hence it was set in the Holiest of the Tabernacles (Heb. ix. 14) as a lasting memorial. I have described (Pilgrim. i. 301) the mark of Moses' rod at the little Hammam behind the old Phoenician colony of Tur, in the miscalled "Sinaitic" Peninsula: it is large enough to act mainmast for a s.h.i.+p. The end of the rod or rods is unknown: it died when its work was done, and like many other things, holy and unholy, which would be priceless, e.g., the true Cross or Pilate's sword, it remains only as a memory around which a host of grotesque superst.i.tions have grouped themselves.

[FN#199] In this word "Hayy" the Arab. and Heb. have the advantage of our English: it means either serpent or living, alive.