One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  124 His instinct probably told him that this opponent was a low fellow but such insults are common when “renowning it.”

  125 Arab. “Dare’ “ or “Dira’,” a habergeon, a coat of ring- mail, sometimes worn in pairs. During the wretched “Sudan” campaigns much naďve astonishment was expressed by the English Press to hear of warriors armed cap-ŕ-pie in this armour like medieval knights. They did not know that every great tribe has preserved, possibly from Crusading times, a number of hauberks, even to hundreds. I have heard of only one English traveller who had a mail jacket made by Wilkinson of Pall Mall, imitating in this point Napoleon III. And (according to the Banker-poet, Rogers) the Duke of Wellington. That of Napoleon is said to have been made of platinum-wire, the work of a Pole who received his money and an order to quit Paris. The late Sir Robert Clifton (they say) tried its value with a Colt after placing it upon one of his coat-models or mannequins. It is easy to make these hauberks arrow-proof or sword-proof, even bullet-proof if Arab gunpowder be used: but against a modern rifle-cone they are worse than worthless as the fragments would be carried into the wound. The British serjeant was right in saying that he would prefer to enter battle in his shirt: and he might even doff that to advantage and return to the primitive custom of man — gymnomachy.

  126 Arab. “Jamal” (by Badawin pronounced “Gamal” like the Hebrew) is the generic term for “Camel” through the Gr. : “Ibl” is also the camel-species but not so commonly used. “Hajín” is the dromedary (in Egypt, “Dalúl” in Arabia), not the one- humped camel of the zoologist (C. dromedarius) as opposed to the two-humped (C. Bactrianus), but a running i.e. a riding camel. The feminine is Nákah for like mules females are preferred. “Bakr” (masc.) and “Bakrah” (fem.) are camel-colts. There are hosts of special names besides those which are general. Mr. Censor is singular when he states (p.40) “the male (of the camel) is much the safer animal to choose ;” and the custom of t e universal Ease disproves his assertion. Mr. McCoan (“Egypt as it is”) tells his readers that the Egyptian camel has two humps, in fact, he describes the camel as it is not.

  127 So, in the Romance of Dalhamah (Zát al-Himmah, the heroine the hero Al-Gundubah (“one locust-man”) smites off the head of his mother’s servile murderer and cries, I have taken my blood-revenge upon this traitor slave’” (Lane, M. E. chaps. xx iii.)

  128 This gathering all the persons upon the stage before the curtain drops is highly artistic and improbable.

  129 He ought to have said his dawn prayers.

  130 Here begins what I hold to be the oldest subject matter in The Nights, the apologues or fables proper; but I reserve further remarks for the Terminal Essay. Lane has most objectionably thrown this and sundry of the following stories into a note (vol. ii., p-69).

  131 In beast stories generally when man appears he shows to disadvantage.

  132 Shakespeare’s “stone bow” not Lane’s “cross-bow” (ii. 53).

  133 The goad still used by the rascally Egyptian donkey-boy is a sharp nail at the end of a stick; and claims the special attention of societies for the protection of animals.

  134 “The most ungrateful of all voices surely is the voice of asses” (Koran xxxi. 18); and hence the “braying of hell” (Koran Ixvii.7). The vulgar still believe that the donkey brays when seeing the Devil. “The last animal which entered the Ark with Noah was the Ass to whose tail Iblis was clinging. At the threshold the ass seemed troubled and could enter no further when Noah said to him:— “Fie upon thee! come in.” But as the ass was still troubled and did not advance Noah cried:— “Come in, though the Devil be with thee!”, so the ass entered and with him Iblis. Thereupon Noah asked:— “O enemy of Allah who brought thee into the Ark ?”, and Iblis answered:— “Thou art the man, for thou saidest to the ass, come in though the Devil be with thee!” (Kitáb al-Unwán fi Makáid al-Niswán quoted by Lane ii. 54).

  135 Arab. “Rihl,” a wooden saddle stuffed with straw and matting. In Europe the ass might complain that his latter end is the sausage. In England they say no man sees a dead donkey: I have seen dozens and, unfortunately, my own.

  136 The English reader will not forget Sterne’s old mare. Even Al-Hariri, the prince of Arab rhetoricians, does not distain to use “pepedit,” the effect being put for the cause — terror. But Mr. Preston () and polite men translate by “fled in haste” the Arabic farted for fear.”

  137 This is one of the lucky signs and adds to the value of the beast. There are some fifty of these marks, some of them (like a spiral of hair in the breast which denotes that the rider is a cuckold) so ill-omened that the animal can be bought for almost nothing. Of course great attention is paid to colours, the best being the dark rich bay (“red” of Arabs) with black points, or the flea-bitten grey (termed Azrak=blue or Akhzar=green) which whitens with age. The worst are dun, cream coloured, piebald and black, which last are very rare. Yet according to the Mishkát al- Masábih (Lane 2, 54) Mohammed said, The best horses are black (dark brown?) with white blazes (Arab. “Ghurrah”) and upper lips; next, black with blaze and three white legs (bad, because white- hoofs are brittle):next, bay with white blaze and white fore and hind legs.” He also said, “Prosperity is with sorrel horses;” and praised a sorrel with white forehead and legs; but he dispraised the “Shikál,” which has white stockings (Arab. “Muhajjil”) on alternate hoofs (e.g. right hind and left fore). The curious reader will consult Lady Anne Blunt’s “Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, with some Account of the Arabs and their Horses” (1879); but he must remember that it treats of the frontier tribes. The late Major Upton also left a book “Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia” (1881); but it is a marvellous production deriving e.g. Khayl (a horse generically) from Kohl or antimony (). What the Editor was dreaming of I cannot imagine. I have given some details concerning the Arab horse especially in Al-Yaman, among the Zú Mohammed, the Zú Husayn and the Banu Yam in Pilgrimage iii. 270. As late as Marco Polo’s day they supplied the Indian market via Aden; but the “Eye o Al-Yaman” has totally lost the habit of exporting horses.

  138 The shovel-iron which is the only form of spur.

  139 Used for the dromedary: the baggage-camel is haltered.

  140 Arab. “Harwalah,” the pas gymnastique affected when circumambulating the Ka’abah (Pilgrimage iii. 208).

  141 “This night” would be our “last night”: the Arabs, I repeat, say “night and day,” not “day and night.”

  142 The vulgar belief is that man’s fate is written upon his skull, the sutures being the writing.

  143 Koran ii. 191.

  144 Arab. “Tasbíh”=saying, “Subhán’ Allah.” It also means a rosary (Egypt. Sebhah for Subhah) a string of 99 beads divided by a longer item into sets of three and much fingered by the would- appear pious. The professional devotee carries a string of wooden balls the size of pigeons’ eggs.

  145 The pigeon is usually made to say, ‘ “Wahhidú Rabba-kumu ‘‘llazi khalaka-kum, yaghfiru lakum zamba-kum” = “Unify (Assert the Unity of) your Lord who created you; so shall He forgive your sin!” As might be expected this “language” is differently interpreted. Pigeon-superstitions are found in all religions and I have noted (Pilgrimage iii, 218) how the Hindu deity of Destruction- reproduction, the third Person of their Triad, Shiva and his Spouse (or active Energy), are supposed to have dwelt at Meccah under the titles of Kapoteshwara (Pigeon-god) and Kapoteshí (Pigeon-goddess).

  146 I have seen this absolute horror of women amongst the

  Monks of the Coptic Convents.

  147 After the Day of Doom, when men’s actions are registered, that of mutual retaliation will follow and all creatures (brutes included) will take vengeance on one another.

  148 The Comrades of the Cave, famous in the Middle Ages of Christianity (Gibbon chaps. xxxiii.), is an article of faith with Moslems, being part subject of chapter xviii., the Koranic Surah termed the Cave. These Rip Van Winkle-tales begin with Endymion so famous amongst the Classics and Epimenides of Crete who slept fifty-se
ven years; and they extend to modern days as La Belle au Bois dormant. The Seven Sleepers are as many youths of Ephesus (six royal councillors and a shepherd, whose names are given on the authority of Ali); and, accompanied by their dog, they fled the persecutions of Dakianús (the Emperor Decius) to a cave near Tarsús in Natolia where they slept for centuries. The Caliph Mu’awiyah when passing the cave sent into it some explorers who were all killed by a burning wind. The number of the sleepers remains uncertain, according to the Koran (ibid. v. 21) three, five or seven and their sleep lasted either three hundred or three hundred and nine years. The dog (ibid. v. 17) slept at the cave-entrance with paws outstretched and, according to the general, was called “Katmir” or “Kitmir;” but Al-Rakím (v. 8) is also applied to it by some. Others hold this to be the name of the valley or mountain and others of a stone or leaden tablet on which their names were engraved by their countrymen who built a chapel on the spot (v. 20). Others again make the Men of Al-Rakím distinct from the Cave-men, and believe (with Bayzáwi) that they were three youths who were shut up in a grotto by a rock-slip. Each prayed for help through the merits of some good deed: when the first had adjured Allah the mountain cracked till light appeared; at the second petition it split so that they saw one another and after the third it opened. However that may be, Kitmir is one of the seven favoured animals: the others being the Hudhud (hoopoe) of Solomon (Koran xxii. 20); the she-camel of Sálih (chaps. Ixxxvii.); the cow of Moses which named the Second Surah; the fish of Jonah; the serpent of Eve, and the peacock of Paradise. For Koranic revelations of the Cave see the late Thomas Chenery ( The Assemblies of Al-Hariri: Williams and Norgate, 1870) who borrows from the historian Tabari.

  149 These lines have occurred in Night cxlvi.: I quote Mr.

  Payne by way of variety.

  150 The wolf (truly enough to nature) is the wicked man without redeeming traits; the fox of Arab folk-lore is the cunning man who can do good on occasion. Here the latter is called “Sa’alab” which may, I have noted, mean the jackal; but further on “Father of a Fortlet” refers especially to the fox. Herodotus refers to the gregarious Canis Aureus when he describes Egyptian wolves as being “not much bigger than foxes” (ii. 67). Canon Rawlinson, in his unhappy version, does not perceive that the Halicarnassian means the jackal and blunders about the hyena.

  151 The older “Leila” or “Leyla”: it is a common name and is here applied to woman in general. The root is evidently “layl”=nox, with, probably, the idea, “She walks in beauty like the night.”

  152 Arab. Abu ‘l-Hosayn; his hole being his fort (Unexplored

  Syria, ii. 18).

  153 A Koranic phrase often occurring.

  154 Koran v. 35.

  155 Arab. “Bází,” Pers. “Báz” (here Richardson is wrong s.v.); a term to a certain extent generic, but specially used for the noble Peregrine (F. Peregrinator) whose tiercel is the Sháhín (or “Royal Bird”). It is sometimes applied to the goshawk (Astur palumbarius) whose proper title, however, is Shah-báz (King-hawk). The Peregrine extends from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin and the best come from the colder parts: in Iceland I found that the splendid white bird was sometimes trapped for sending to India. In Egypt “Bazi” is applied to the kite or buzzard and “Hidyah” (a kite) to the falcon (Burckhardt’s Prov. 159, 581 and 602). Burckhardt translates “Hidáyah,” the Egyptian corruption, by “an ash-grey falcon of the smaller species common throughout Egypt and Syria.”

  156 Arab. “Hijl,” the bird is not much prized in India because it feeds on the roads. For the Shinnár (caccabis) or magnificent partridge of Midian as large as a pheasant, see “Midian Revisted” ii. 18.

  157 Arab. “Súf;” hence “Súfi,”=(etymologically) one who wears woollen garments, a devotee, a Santon; from =wise; from =pure, or from Safá=he was pure. This is not the place to enter upon such a subject as “Tasawwuf,” or Sufyism; that singular reaction from arid Moslem realism and materialism, that immense development of gnostic and Neo-platonic transcendentalism which is found only germinating in the Jewish and Christian creeds. The poetry of Omar-i-Khayyám, now familiar to English readers, is a fair specimen; and the student will consult the last chapter of the Dabistan “On the religion of the Sufiahs.” The first Moslem Sufi was Abu Háshim of Kufah, ob. A. H. 150=767, and the first Convent of Sufis called “Takiyah” (Pilgrimage i. 124) was founded in Egypt by Saladin the Great.

  158 i.e. when she encamps with a favourite for the night.

  159 The Persian proverb is “Marg-i-amboh jashni dáred” — death in a crowd is as good as a feast.

  160 Arab. “Kanát”, the subterranean water-course called in Persia “Kyáriz.” Lane (ii. 66) translates it “brandish around the spear (Kanát is also a cane-lance) of artifice,” thus making rank nonsense of the line. Al-Hariri uses the term in the Ass. of the Banu Haram where “Kanát” may be a pipe or bamboo laid underground.

  161 From Al-Tughrái, the author of the Lámiyat al-Ajam, the “Lay of the Outlander;” a Kasidah (Ode) rhyming in Lám (the letter “l” being the ráwi or binder). The student will find a new translation of it by Mr. J. W. Redhouse and Dr. Carlyle’s old version (No. liii.) in Mr. Clouston’s “Arabian Poetry.” Muyid al-Din al-Hasan Abu Ismail nat. Ispahan ob. Baghdad A.H. 182) derived his surname from the Tughrá, cypher or flourish (over the “Bismillah” in royal and official papers) containing the name of the prince. There is an older “Lamiyat al-Arab” a pre-Islamitic L-poem by the “brigand-poet” Shanfara, of whom Mr. W. G. Palgrave has given a most appreciative account in his “Essays on Eastern Questions,” noting the indomitable self-reliance and the absolute individualism of a mind defying its age and all around it. Al-Hariri quotes from both.

  162 The words of the unfortunate Azízah, vol. ii., .

  163 Arab. “Háwí”=a juggler who plays tricks with snakes: he is mostly a Gypsy. The “recompense” the man expects is the golden treasure which the ensorcelled snake is supposed to guard. This idea is as old as the Dragon in the Garden of the Hesperides — and older.

  164 The “Father of going out (to prey) by morning”; for dawn is called Zanab Sirhán the Persian Dum-i-gurg=wolf’s tail, i.e. the first brush of light; the Zodiacal Light shown in morning. Sirhán is a nickname of the wolf — Gaunt Grim or Gaffer Grim, the German Isengrin or Eisengrinus (icy grim or iron grim) whose wife is Hersent, as Richent or Hermeline is Mrs. Fox. In French we have lopez, luppe, leu, e.g.

  Venant ŕ la queue, leu, leu,

  i.e. going in Indian file. Hence the names D’Urfé and Saint-Loup. In Scandinavian, the elder sister of German, Ulf and in German (where the Jews were forced to adopt the name) Wolff whence “Guelph.” He is also known to the Arabs as the “sire of a she-lamb,” the figure metonymy called “Kunyat bi ‘l-Zidd” (lucus a non lucendo), a patronymic or by-name given for opposition and another specimen of “inverted speech.”

  165 Arab. “Bint’ Arús” = daughter of the bridegroom, the Hindustani Mungus (vulg. Mongoose); a well-known weasel-like rodent often kept tame in the house to clear it of vermin. It is supposed to know an antidote against snake-poison, as the weasel eats rue before battle (Pliny x. 84; xx. 13). In Modern Egypt this viverra is called “Kitt (or Katt) Far’aun” = Pharaoh’s cat: so the Percnopter becomes Pharaoh’s hen and the unfortunate (?) King has named a host of things, alive and dead. It was worshipped and mummified in parts of Ancient Egypt e.g. Heracleopolis, on account of its antipathy to serpents and because it was supposed to destroy the crocodile, a feat with Ćlian and others have overloaded with fable. It has also a distinct antipathy to cats. The ichneumon as a pet becomes too tame and will not leave its master: when enraged it emits an offensive stench. I brought home for the Zoological Gardens a Central African specimen prettily barred. Burckhardt (Prov. 455) quotes a line: —

  Rakas’ Ibn Irsin wa zamzama l-Nimsu,

  (Danceth Ibn Irs whileas Nims doth sing)

  and explains Nims by ichneumon and Ibn Irs as a “species of small weasel or ferret, very common in Egy
pt: it comes into the house, feeds upon meat, is of gentle disposition although not domesticated and full of gambols and frolic.”

  166 Arab. “Sinnaur” (also meaning a prince). The common name is Kitt which is pronounced Katt or Gatt; and which Ibn Dorayd pronounces a foreign word (Syriac?). Hence, despite Freitag, Catus (which Isidore derives from catare, to look for) = gatto, chat, cat, an animal unknown to the Classics of Europe who used the mustela or putorius vulgaris and different species of viverrć. The Egyptians, who kept the cat to destroy vermin, especially snakes, called it Mau, Mai, Miao (onomatopoetic): this descendent of the Felis maniculata originated in Nubia; and we know from the mummy pits and Herodotus that it was the same species as ours. The first portraits of the cat are on the monuments of “Beni Hasan,” B.C. 2500. I have ventured to derive the familiar “Puss” from the Arab. “Biss (fem. :Bissah”), which is a congener of Pasht (Diana), the cat-faced goddess of Bubastis (Pi-Pasht), now Zagázig. Lastly, “tabby (brindled)-cat” is derived from the Attábi (Prince Attab’s) quarter at Baghdad where watered silks were made. It is usually attributed to the Tibbie, Tibalt, Tybalt, Thibert or Tybert (who is also executioner), various forms of Theobald in the old Beast Epic; as opposed to Gilbert the gib-cat, either a tom-cat or a gibbed (castrated) cat.

  167 Arab. “Ikhwán al-Safá,” a popular term for virtuous friends who perfectly love each other in all purity: it has also a mystic meaning. Some translate it “Brethren of Sincerity,” and hold this brotherhood to be Moslem Freemasons, a mere fancy (see the Mesnevi of Mr. Redhouse, Trubner 1881). There is a well-known Hindustani book of this name printed by Prof. Forbes in Persian character and translated by Platts and Eastwick.

  168 Among Eastern men there are especial forms for “making brotherhood.” The “Munhbolá-bhái” (mouth-named brother) of India is well-known. The intense “associativeness” of these races renders isolation terrible to them, and being defenceless in a wild state of society has special horrors. Hence the origin of Caste for which see Pilgrimage (i. 52). Moslems, however, cannot practise the African rite of drinking a few drops of each other’s blood. This, by the by, was also affected in Europe, as we see in the Gesta Romanoru, Tale lxvii., of the wise and foolish knights who “drew blood (to drink) from the right arm.”