One Thousand and One Nights
Page 771
502 A city in Irak; famous for the three days’ battle which caused the death of Yezdegird, last Sassanian king.
503 A mountain pass near Meccah famous for the “First Fealty of the Steep” (Pilgrimage ii. 126). The mosque was built to commemorate the event.
504 To my surprise I read in Mr. Redhouse’s “Mesnevi” (Trubner, 1881), “Arafat, the mount where the victims are slaughtered by the pilgrims.” (p.60). This ignorance is phenomenal. Did Mr. Redhouse never read Burckhardt or Burton?
505 i.e. listening to the sermon.
506 It is sad doggrel.
507 This long story, containing sundry episodes and occupying fifty-three Nights, is wholly omitted by Lane (ii. 643) because “it is a compound of the most extravagant absurdities.” He should have enabled his readers to form their own judgment.
508 Called Jamasp (brother and minister of the ancient Persian King Gushtasp) in the translations of Trebutien and others from Von Hammer.
509 The usual term of lactation in the East, prolonged to two years and a-half, which is considered the rule laid down by the Shara’ or precepts of the Prophet. But it is not unusual to see children of three and even four years hanging to their mothers’ breasts. During this period the mother does not cohabit with her husband; the separation beginning with her pregnancy. Such is the habit, not only of the “lower animals,” but of all ancient peoples, the Egyptians (from whom the Hebrews borrowed it), the Assyrians and the Chinese. I have discussed its bearing upon pregnancy in my “City of the Saints”: the Mormons insist upon this law of purity being observed; and the beauty, strength and good health of the younger generation are proofs of their wisdom.
510 Thus distinguishing it from “Asal-kasab,” cane honey or sugar. See vol. i., 271.
511 The student of Hinduism will remember the Nαga-Kings and
Queens (Melusines and Echidnζ) who guard the earth-treasures in
Naga-land. The first appearance of the snake in literature is in
Egyptian hieroglyphs, where he forms the letters f and t, and
acts as a determinative in the shape of a Cobra di Capello
(Coluber Naja) with expanded hood.
512 In token that he was safe.
513 “Akhir al-Zamαn.” As old men praise past times, so prophets prefer to represent themselves as the last. The early Christians caused much scandal amongst the orderly law-loving Romans by their wild and mistaken predictions of the end of the world being at hand. The catastrophe is a fact for each man under the form of death; but the world has endured for untold ages and there is no apparent cause why it should not endure as many more. The “latter days,” as the religious dicta of most “revelations” assure us, will be richer in sinners than in sanctity: hence “End of Time” is a facetious Arab title for a villain of superior quality. My Somali escort applied it to one thus distinguished: in 1875, I heard at Aden that he ended life by the spear as we had all predicted.
514 Jahannam and the other six Hells are personified as feminine; and (woman-like) they are somewhat addicted to prolix speechification.
515 These puerile exaggerations are fondly intended to act as nurses frighten naughty children.
516 Alluding to an oft-quoted saying “Lau lα-ka, etc. Without thee (O Mohammed) We (Allah) had not created the spheres,” which may have been suggested by “Before Abraham was, I am” (John viii. 58); and by Gate xci. of Zoroastrianism “O Zardusht for thy sake I have created the world” (Dabistan i. 344). The sentiment is by no means “Shi’ah,” as my learned friend Prof. Aloys Springer supposes. In his Mohammed () we find an extract from a sectarian poet, “For thee we dispread the earth; for thee we caused the waters to flow; for thee we vaulted the heavens.” As Baron Alfred von Kremer, another learned and experienced Orientalist, reminds me, the “Shi’ahs” have always shown a decided tendency to this kind of apotheosis and have deified or quasi-deified Ali and the Imams. But the formula is first found in the highly orthodox Burdah poem of Al-Busiri: —
“But for him (Lau lα-hu) the world had never come out of nothingness.”
Hence it has been widely diffused. See Les Aventures de Kamrup (p-7) and Les uvres de Wali (p-52), by M. Garcin de Tassy and the Dabistan (vol. i. p-3).
517 Arab. “Sνmiyα” from the Pers., a word apparently built on the model of “Kαmiyα” = alchemy, and applied, I have said, to fascination, minor miracles and white magic generally like the Hindu “Indrajal.” The common term for Alchemy is Ilm al-Kαf (the K-science) because it is not safe to speak of it openly as Alchemy.
518 Mare Tenebrarum = Sea of Darknesses; usually applied to the “mournful and misty Atlantic.”
519 Some Moslems hold that Solomon and David were buried in Jerusalem, others on the shore of Lake Tiberias. Mohammed, according to the history of Al-Tabari ( vol. i. Duleux’s “Chronique de Tabari”) declares that the Jinni bore Solomon’s corpse to a palace hewn in the rock upon an island surrounded by a branch of the “Great Sea” and set him on a throne, with his ring still on his finger, under a guard of twelve Jinns. “None hath looked upon the tomb save only two, Affan who took Bulukiya as his companion: with extreme pains they arrived at the spot, and Affan was about to carry off the ring when a thunderbolt consumed him. So Bulukiya returned.”
520 Koran xxxviii. 34, or, “art the liberal giver.”
521 i.e. of the last trumpet blown by the Archangel Israfil: an idea borrowed from the Christians. Hence the title of certain churches — ad Tubam.
522 This may mean that the fruits were fresh and dried like dates or tamarinds (a notable wonder), or soft and hard of skin like grapes and pomegranates.
523 Arab. “Ai-lksνr” meaning lit. an essence; also the philosopher’s stone.
524 Name of the Jinni whom Solomon imprisoned in Lake
Tiberias (See vol. i., 41).
525 Vulgarly pronounced “Jahannum.” The second hell is usually assigned to Christians. As there are seven Heavens (the planetary orbits) so, to satisfy Moslem love of symmetry, there must be as many earths and hells under the earth. The Egyptians invented these grim abodes, and the marvellous Persian fancy worked them into poem.
526 Arab. “Yαjϊj and Majuj,” first named in Gen. x. 2, which gives the ethnology of Asia Minor, circ. B.C. 800. “Gomer” is the Gimri or Cymmerians; “Magog” the original Magi, a division of the Medes, “Javan” the Ionian Greeks, “Meshesh” the Moschi; and “Tires” the Turusha, or primitive Cymmerians. In subsequent times, “Magog” was applied to the Scythians, and modern Moslems determine from the Koran (chaps. xviii. and xxi.) that Yajuj and Majuj are the Russians, whom they call Moska or Moskoff from the Moskwa River,
527 I attempt to preserve the original pun; “Mukarrabin” (those near Allah) being the Cherubim, and the Creator causing Iblis to draw near Him (karraba).
528 A vulgar version of the Koran (chaps. vii.), which seems to have borrowed from the Gospel of Barnabas. Hence Adam becomes a manner of God-man.
529 These wild fables are caricatures of Rabbinical legends which began with “Lilith,” the Spirit-wife of Adam: Nature and her counterpart, Physis and Antiphysis, supply a solid basis for folk-lore. Amongst the Hindus we have Brahma (the Creator) and Viswakarmα, the anti-Creator: the former makes a horse and a bull and the latter caricatures them with an ass and a buffalo, and so forth.
530 This is the “Lauh al-Mahfϊz,” the Preserved Tablet, upon which are written all Allah’s decrees and the actions of mankind good (white) and evil (black). This is the “perspicuous Book” of the Koran, chaps. vi. 59. The idea again is Guebre.
531 i.e. the night before Friday which in Moslem parlance would be Friday night.
532 Again Persian “Gαw-i-Zamνn” = the Bull of the Earth.
“The cosmogony of the world,” etc., as we read in the Vicar of
Wakefield.
533 The Calc. Edit. ii. 614. here reads by a clerical error “bull.”
534 i.e. Lakes and rivers.
535 Here some abridgement is necessar
y, for we have another recital of what has been told more than once.
536 This name, “King of Life,” is Persian: “Tegh” or “Tigh” means a scimitar and “Bahrwαn,” is, I conceive, a mistake for “Bihrϊn,” the Persian name of Alexander the Great.
537 Arab. “Mulαkαt” or meeting the guest which, I have said, is an essential part of Eastern ceremony, the distance from the divan, room, house or town being proportioned to his rank or consideration.
538 Arab. “Sifr”: whistling is held by the Badawi to be the speech of devils; and the excellent explorer Burckhardt got a bad name by the ugly habit.
539 The Arabs call “Shikk” (split man) and the Persians “Nνmchahrah” (half-face) a kind of demon like a man divided longitudinally: this gruesome creature runs with amazing speed and is very cruel and dangerous. For the celebrated soothsayers “Shikk” and “Sαtih” see Chenery’s Al-Hariri, .
540 Arab. “Takht” (Persian) = a throne or a capital.
541 Arab. “Wady al-Naml”; a reminiscence of the Koranic Wady (chaps. xxvii.), which some place in Syria and others in Tαif.
542 This is the old, old fable of the River Sabbation which
Pliny ((xxx). 18) reports as “drying up every Sabbath-day”
(Saturday): and which Josephus reports as breaking the Sabbath by
flowing only on the Day of Rest.
543 They were keeping the Sabbath. When lodging with my Israelite friends at Tiberias and Safet, I made a point of never speaking to them (after the morning salutation) till the Saturday was over.
544 Arab. “La’al” and “Yαkϊt,” the latter also applied to the garnet and to a variety of inferior stones. The ruby is supposed by Moslems to be a common mineral thoroughly “cooked” by the sun, and produced only on the summits of mountains inaccessible even to Alpinists. The idea may have originated from exaggerated legends of the Badakhshαn country (supposed to be the home of the ruby) and its terrors of break-neck foot-paths, jagged peaks and horrid ravines: hence our “balas-ruby” through the Spanish corruption “Balaxe.” Epiphanius, archbishop of Salamis in Cyprus, who died A.D. 403, gives, m a little treatise (De duodecim gemmis rationalis summi sacerdotis Hebrζorum Liber, opera Fogginii, Romae, 1743, ), a precisely similar description of the mode of finding jacinths in Scythia. “In a wilderness in the interior of Great Scythia,” he writes, “there is a valley begirt with stony mountains as with walls. It is inaccessible to man, and so excessively deep that the bottom of the valley is invisible from the top of the surrounding mountains. So great is the darkness that it has the effect of a kind of chaos. To this place certain criminals are condemned, whose task it is to throw down into the valley slaughtered lambs, from which the skin has been first taken off. The little stones adhere to these pieces of flesh. Thereupon the eagles, which live on the summits of the mountains, fly down following the scent of the flesh, and carry away the lambs with the stones adhering to them. They, then, who are condemned to this place watch until the eagles have finished their meal, and run and take away the stones.” Epiphanius, who wrote this, is spoken of in terms of great respect by many ecclesiastical writers, and St. Jerome styles the treatise here quoted, “Egregium volumen, quod si legere volueris, plenissimam scientiam consequeris ,” and, indeed, it is by no means improbable that it was from the account of Epiphanius that this story was first translated into Arabic. A similar account is given by Marco Polo and by Nicolς de Conti, as of a usage which they had heard was practiced in India, and the position ascribed to the mountain by Conti, namely, fifteen days’ journey north of Vijanagar, renders it highly probable that Golconda was alluded to. He calls the mountain Albenigaras, and says that it was infested with serpents. Marco Polo also speaks of these serpents, and while his account agrees with that of Sindbad, inasmuch as the serpents, which are the prey of Sindbad’s Rukh, are devoured by the Venetian’s eagles, that of Conti makes the vultures and eagles fly away with the meat to places where they may be safe from the serpents. (Introd. p. xiii., India in the Fifteenth Century, etc., R. H. Major, London, Hakluyt Soc. MDCCCLVII.)
545 Elder Victory: “Nasr” is a favourite name with Moslems.
546 These are the “Swan-maidens” of whom Europe in late years has heard more than enough. It appears to me that we go much too far for an explanation of the legend; a high-bred girl is so like a swan in many points that the idea readily suggests itself. And it is also aided by the old Egyptian (and Platonic) belief in pre-existence and by the Rabbinic and Buddhistic doctrine of ante-natal sin, to say nothing of metempsychosis. (Joseph Ant. xvii.. 153.)
547 The lines have occurred before. I quote Mr. Payne for variety.
548 Arab. “Al-Khayαl”: it is a synonym of “al-Tayf’ and the nearest approach to our “ghost,” as has been explained. In poetry it is the figure of the beloved seen when dreaming.
549 He does not kiss her mouth because he intends to marry her.
550 It should be “manifest” excellence. (Koran xxvii. 16.)
551 The phrase is Koranic used to describe Paradise, and Damascus is a familiar specimen of a city under which a river, the Baradah, passes, distributed into a multitude of canals.
552 It may be noted that rose-water is sprinkled on the faces of the “nobility and gentry, “ common water being good enough for the commonalty. I have had to drink tea made in compliment with rose-water and did not enjoy it.
553 The “Valley Flowery:” Zahrαn is the name of a place near
Al-Medinah.
554 The Proud or Petulant.
555 i.e. Lion, Son of ( ?).
556 i.e. Many were slain.
557 I venture to draw attention to this battle-picture which is at once simple and highly effective.
558 Anglicθ a quibble, evidently evasive.
559 In text “Anα A’amil,” etc., a true Egypto-Syrian vulgarism.
560 i.e. magical formulζ. The context is purposely left vague.
561 The repetition is a condescension, a token of kindness.
562 This is the common cubic of 18 inches: the modern vary from 22 to 26.
563 I have noticed the two-humped Bactrian camel which the Syrians and Egyptians compare with an elephant. See (the neo-Syrian) Book of Kalilah and Dimnah.
564 The Noachian dispensation revived the Islam or true religion first revealed to Adam and was itself revived and reformed by Moses.
565 Probably a corruption of the Turkish “Kara Tαsh” = black stone, in Arab. “Hαjar Jahannam” (hell-stone), lava, basalt.
566 A variant of lines in Night xx., vol. i., 211.
567 i.e. Daughter of Pride: the proud.
568 In the Calc. Edit. by misprint “Maktab.” Jabal Mukattam is the old sea-cliff where the Mediterranean once beat and upon whose North-Western slopes Cairo is built.
569 Arab. “Kutb”; lie. an axle, a pole; next a prince; a high order or doyen in Sainthood especially amongst the Sufi-gnostics.
570 Lit. “The Green” (Prophet), a mysterious personage confounded with Elijah, St. George and others. He was a Moslem, i.e. a ewe believer in the Islam of his day and Wazir to Kaykobad, founder of the Kayanian dynasty, sixth century B.C. We have before seen him as a contemporary of Moses. My learned friend Ch. Clermone-Ganneau traces him back, with a multitude of his similars (Proteus, Perseus, etc.), to the son of Osiris (, Horus et Saint Georges).
571 Arab. “Waled,” more ceremonious than “ibn.” It is, by the by, the origin of our “valet” in its sense of boy or servant who is popularly addressed Yα waled. Hence I have seen in a French book of travels “un petit Iavelet.”
572 Arab. “Azal” = Eternity (without beginning); “Abad” =
Infinity (eternity without end).
573 The Moslem ritual for slaughtering (by cutting the throat) is not so strict as that of the Jews; but it requires some practice; and any failure in the conditions renders the meat impure, mere carrion (fatνs).
574 The Wazir repeats all the words spoken by the Queen — but “in iteration there
is no recreation.”
575 A phrase always in the Moslem’s mouth: the slang meaning of “we put our trust in Allah” is “let’s cut our stick.”
576 Koran liii. 14. This “Sidrat al-Muntahα” (Zizyphus lotus) stands m the seventh heaven on the right hand of Allah’s throne: and even the angels may not pass beyond it.
577 Arab. “Habash” the word means more than “Abyssinia” as it includes the Dankali Country and the sea-board, a fact unknown to the late Lord Stratford de Redcliffe when he disputed with the Porte. I ventured to set him right and suffered accordingly.
578 Here ends vol. ii. of the Mac. Edit.
Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents
VOLUME VI.
I Inscribe This Volum
To My Old And Valued Correspondent,
I Whose Debt I Am Deep,
Professor Aloys Sprenger
(of Heidelberg),
Arabist, Philosopher and Friend.
Richard F. Burton.
Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents
Sindbad The Seaman1 and Sindbad The Landsman.
There lived in the city of Baghdad, during the reign of the Commander of the Faithful, Harun al-Rashid, a man named Sindbád the Hammál,2 one in poor case who bore burdens on his head for hire. It happened to him one day of great heat that whilst he was carrying a heavy load, he became exceeding weary and sweated profusely, the heat and the weight alike oppressing him. Presently, as he was passing the gate of a merchant’s house, before which the ground was swept and watered, and there the air was temperate, he sighted a broad bench beside the door; so he set his load thereon, to take rest and smell the air, — And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
When it was the Five Hundred and Thirty-seventh Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the Hammal set his load upon the bench to take rest and smell the air, there came out upon him from the court-door a pleasant breeze and a delicious fragrance. He sat down on the edge of the bench, and at once heard from within the melodious sound of lutes and other stringed instruments, and mirth-exciting voices singing and reciting, together with the song of birds warbling and glorifying Almighty Allah in various tunes and tongues; turtles, mocking-birds, merles, nightingales, cushats and stone- curlews,3 whereat he marvelled in himself and was moved to mighty joy and solace. Then he went up to the gate and saw within a great flower-garden wherein were pages and black slaves and such a train of servants and attendants and so forth as is found only with Kings and Sultans; and his nostrils were greeted with the savoury odours of all manner meats rich and delicate, and delicious and generous wines. So he raised his eyes heavenwards and said, “Glory to Thee, O Lord, O Creator and Provider, who providest whomso Thou wilt without count or stint! O mine Holy One, I cry Thee pardon for all sins and turn to Thee repenting of all offences! O Lord, there is no gainsaying Thee in Thine ordinance and Thy dominion, neither wilt Thou be questioned of that Thou dost, for Thou indeed over all things art Almighty! Extolled be Thy perfection: whom Thou wilt Thou makest poor and whom Thou wilt Thou makest rich! Whom Thou wilt Thou exaltest and whom Thou wilt Thou abasest and there is no god but Thou! How mighty is Thy majesty and how enduring Thy dominion and how excellent Thy government! Verily, Thou favourest whom Thou wilt of Thy servants, whereby the owner of this place abideth in all joyance of life and delighteth himself with pleasant scents and delicious meats and exquisite wines of all kinds. For indeed Thou appointest unto Thy creatures that which Thou wilt and that which Thou hast foreordained unto them; wherefore are some weary and others are at rest and some enjoy fair fortune and affluence, whilst others suffer the extreme of travail and misery, even as I do.” And he fell to reciting,