The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume III Part 36

In Antar his beloved Abla is a tamarisk (T. Orientalis). Others compare with the palm-tree (Solomon), the Cypress (Persian, esp.

Hafiz and Firdausi) and the Arak or wild Capparis (Arab.).

[FN#309] Ubi aves ibi angel). All African travellers know that a few birds flying about the bush, and a few palm-trees waving in the wind, denote the neighbourhood of a village or a camp (where angels are scarce). The reason is not any friends.h.i.+p for man but because food, animal and vegetable, is more plentiful Hence Albatrosses, Mother Carey's (Mater Cara, the Virgin) chickens, and Cape pigeons follow s.h.i.+ps.

[FN#310] The stanza is called Al-Mukhammas=cinquains; the quatrains and the "bob," or "burden" always preserve the same consonance. It ends with a Koranic lieu commun of Moslem morality.

[FN#311] Moslem port towns usually have (or had) only two gates.

Such was the case with Bayrut, Tyre, Sidon and a host of others; the faubourg-growth of modern days has made these obsolete. The portals much resemble the entrances of old Norman castles--Arques for instance. (Pilgrimage i. 185.)

[FN#312] Arab. "Lisam"; before explained.

[FN#313] i.e. Life of Souls (persons, etc.).

[FN#314] Arab. "Insanu-ha"=her (i.e. their) man: i.e. the babes of the eyes: the a.s.syrian Ishon, dim. of Ish=Man; which the Hebrews call "Babat" or "Bit" (the daughter) the Arabs "Bubu (or Hadakat) al-Aye"; the Persians "Mardumak-i-chashm" (mannikin of the eye); the Greeks and the Latins pupa, pupula, pupilla. I have noted this in the Lyricks of Camoens (p. 449).

[FN#315] Ma'an bin Za'idah, a soldier and statesman of the eighth century.

[FN#316] The mildness of the Caliph Mu'awiyah, the founder of the Ommiades, proverbial among the Arabs, much resembles the "meekness" of Moses the Law-giver, which commentators seem to think has been foisted into Numbers xii. 3.

[FN#317] Showing that there had been no consummation of the marriage which would have demanded "Ghusl," or total ablution, at home or in the Hammam.

[FN#318] I have noticed this notable desert-growth.

[FN#319] 'The "situation" is admirable, solution appearing so difficult and catastrophe imminent.

[FN#320] This quatrain occurs in Night ix.: I have borrowed from Torrens (p. 79) by way of variety.

[FN#321] The belief that young pigeon's blood resembles the virginal discharge is universal; but the blood most resembling man's is that of the pig which in other points is so very human.

In our day Arabs and Hindus rarely submit to inspection the nuptial sheet as practiced by the Israelites and Persians. The bride takes to bed a white kerchief with which she staunches the blood and next morning the stains are displayed in the Harem. In Darfour this is done by the bridegroom. "Prima Venus debet esse cruenta," say the Easterns with much truth, and they have no faith in our complaisant creed which allows the hymen-membrane to disappear by any but one accident.

[FN#322] Not meaning the two central divisions commanded by the King and his Wazir.

[FN#323] Ironice.

[FN#324] Arab. "Rasy"=praising in a funeral sermon.

[FN#325] Arab. "Manaya," plur. of "Maniyat" = death. Mr. R. S.

Poole (the Academy, April 26, 1879) reproaches Mr. Payne for confounding "Muniyat" (desire) with "Maniyat" (death) but both are written the same except when vowel-points are used.

[FN#326] Arab. "Iddat," alluding to the months of celibacy which, according to Moslem law, must be pa.s.sed by a divorced woman before she can re-marry.

[FN#327] Arab. "Talak bi'l-Salasah"=a triple divorce which cannot be revoked; nor can the divorcer re-marry the same woman till after consummation with another husband. This subject will continually recur.

[FN#328] An allusion to a custom of the pagan Arabs in the days of ignorant Heathenism The blood or brain, soul or personality of the murdered man formed a bird called Sady or Hamah (not the Huma or Humai, usually translated "ph?nix") which sprang from the head, where four of the five senses have their seat, and haunted his tomb, crying continually, "Uskuni!"=Give me drink (of the slayer's blood) ! and which disappeared only when the vendetta was accomplished. Mohammed forbade the belief. Amongst the Southern Slavs the cuckoo is supposed to be the sister of a murdered man ever calling or vengeance.

[FN#329] To obtain a blessing and show how he valued it.

[FN#330] Well-known tribes of proto-historic Arabs who flourished before the time of Abraham: see Koran (chaps. xxvi. et pa.s.sim).

They will be repeatedly mentioned in The Nights and notes.

[FN#331] Arab. "Amtar"; plur. of "Matr," a large vessel of leather or wood for water, etc.

[FN#332] Arab. "Asafiri," so called because they attract sparrows (asafir) a bird very fond of the ripe oily fruit. In the Romance of "Antar" Asafir camels are beasts that fly like birds in fleetness. The reader must not confound the olives of the text with the hard unripe berries ("little plums pickled in stale") which appear at English tables, nor wonder that bread and olives are the beef-steak and potatoes of many Mediterranean peoples It is an excellent diet, the highly oleaginous fruit supplying the necessary carbon,

[FN#333] Arab. "Tamer al-Hindi"=the "Indian-date," whence our word "Tamarind." A sherbet of the pods, being slightly laxative, is much drunk during the great heats; and the dried fruit, made into small round cakes, is sold in the bazars. The traveller is advised not to sleep under the tamarind's shade, which is infamous for causing ague and fever. In Sind I derided the "native nonsense," pa.s.sed the night under an "Indian date-tree"

and awoke with a fine specimen of ague which lasted me a week.

[FN#334] Moslems are not agreed upon the length of the Day of Doom when all created things, marshalled by the angels, await final judgment; the different periods named are 40 years, 70, 300 and 50,000. Yet the trial itself will last no longer than while one may milk an ewe, or than "the s.p.a.ce between two milkings of a she-camel." This is bringing down Heaven to Earth with a witness; but, after all, the Heaven of all faiths, including "Spiritualism," the latest development, is only an earth more or less glorified even as the Deity is humanity more or less perfected.

[FN#335] Arab. "Al-Kamarani," lit. "the two moons." Arab rhetoric prefers it to "Shamsani," or {'two suns," because lighter (akhaff), to p.r.o.nounce. So, albeit Omar was less worthy than Abu-Bakr the two are called "Al-Omarani," in vulgar parlance, Omarayn.

[FN#336] Alluding to the angels who appeared to the Sodomites in the shape of beautiful youths (Koran xi.).

[FN#337] Koran x.x.xiii. 38.

[FN#338] "Niktu-hu taklidan" i.e. not the real thing (with a woman). It may also mean "by his incitement of me." All this scene is written in the worst form of Persian-Egyptian blackguardism, and forms a curious anthropological study. The "black joke" of the true and modest wife is inimitable.

[FN#339] Arab. "Jamiz" (in Egypt "Jammayz") = the fruit of the true sycomore (F. Sycomorus) a magnificent tree which produces a small tasteless fig, eaten by the poorer cla.s.ses in Egypt and by monkeys. The "Tin" or real fig here is the woman's parts; the "mulberry- fig," the a.n.u.s. Martial (i. 65) makes the following distinction:--

Dicemus ficus, quas scimus in arbore nasci, Dicemus ficos, Caeciliane, tuos.

And Modern Italian preserves a difference between fico and fica.

[FN#340] Arab. "Ghaniyat Azara" (plur. of Azra = virgin): the former is properly a woman who despises ornaments and relies on "beauty unadorned" (i.e. in bed).

[FN#341] "Nihil usitatius apud monachos, cardinales, sacrificulos," says Johannes de la Casa Beneventius Episcopus, quoted by Burton Anat. of Mel. lib. iii. Sect. 2; and the famous epitaph on the Jesuit,

Ci-git un Jesuite: Pa.s.sant, serre les fesses et pa.s.se vite!

[FN#342] Arab. "Kiblah"=the fronting-place of prayer, Meccah for Moslems, Jerusalem for Jews and early Christians. See Pilgrimage (ii. 321) for the Moslem change from Jerusalem to Meccah and ibid. (ii. 213) for the way in which the direction was shown.

[FN#343] The Koran says (chaps. ii.): "Your wives are your tillage: go in therefore unto your tillage in what manner so ever ye will." Usually this is understood as meaning in any posture, standing or sitting, lying, backwards or forwards. Yet there is a popular saying about the man whom the woman rides (vulg. St.

George, in France, le Postillon); "Cursed be who maketh woman Heaven and himself earth!" Some hold the Koranic pa.s.sage to have been revealed in confutation of the Jews, who pretended that if a man lay with his wife backwards, he would beget a cleverer child.

Others again understand it of preposterous venery, which is absurd: every ancient law-giver framed his code to increase the true wealth of the people--population--and severely punished all processes, like onanism, which impeded it. The Persians utilise the hatred of women for such misuse when they would force a wive to demand a divorce and thus forfeit her claim to Mahr (dowry); they convert them into catamites till, after a month or so, they lose all patience and leave the house.

[FN#344] Koran lit 9: "He will be turned aside from the Faith (or Truth) who shall be turned aside by the Divine decree;" alluding, in the text, to the preposterous venery her lover demands.

[FN#345] Arab. "Futuh" meaning openings, and also victories, benefits. The lover congratulates her on her mortifying self in order to please him.

[FN#346] "And the righteous work will be exalt": (Koran x.x.xv. 11) applied ironically.

[FN#347] A prolepsis of Tommy Moore:--

Your mother says, my little Venus, There's something not quite right between us, And you're in fault as much as I, Now, on my soul, my little Venus, I swear 'twould not be right between us, To let your mother tell a lie.

But the Arab is more moral than Mr. Little. as he purposes to repent.

[FN#348] Arab. "Khunsa" flexible or flaccid, from Khans=bending inwards, i.e. the mouth of a water-skin before drinking. Like Mukhannas, it is also used for an effeminate man, a pa.s.sive sodomite and even for a eunuch. Easterns still believe in what Westerns know to be an impossibility, human beings with the parts and proportions of both s.e.xes equally developed and capable of reproduction; and Al-Islam even provides special rules for them (Pilgrimage iii. 237). We hold them to be Buffon's fourth cla.s.s of (duplicate) monsters belonging essentially to one or the other s.e.x, and related to its opposite only by some few characteristics. The old Greeks dreamed, after their fas.h.i.+on, a beautiful poetic dream of a human animal uniting the contradictory beauties of man and woman. The duality of the generative organs seems an old Egyptian tradition, at least we find it in Genesis (i. 27) where the image of the Deity is created male and female, before man was formed out of the dust of the ground (ii. 7). The old tradition found its way to India (if the Hindus did not borrow the idea from the Greeks); and one of the forms of Mahadeva, the third person of their triad, is ent.i.tled "Ardhanari"=the Half-woman, which has suggested to them some charming pictures. Europeans, seeing the left breast conspicuously feminine, have indulged in silly surmises about the "Amazons."