When the Death-angel cometh mine eyes to close,
Dig my grave ‘mid the vines on the hill’s fair side;
For though deep in earth may my bones repose,
The juice of the grape shall their food provide.
Ah, bury me not in a barren land,
Or Death will appear to me dread and drear!
While fearless I’ll wait what he hath in hand I
An the scent of the vineyard my spirit cheer.
The glorious old drinker!
91 Arab. “Rub’a al-Kharáb” in Ibn al-Wardi Central Africa south of the Nile-sources, one of the richest regions in the world. Here it prob. alludes to the Rub’a al-Kháli or Great Arabian Desert: for which see Night dclxxvi. In rhetoric it is opposed to the “Rub’a Maskún,” or populated fourth of the world, the rest being held to be ocean.
92 This is the noble resignation of the Moslem. What a dialogue there would have been in a European book between man and devil!
93 Arab. “Al-’iddah” the period of four months and ten days which must elapse before she could legally marry again. But this was a palpable wile: she was not sure of her husband’s death and he had not divorced her; so that although a “grass widow,” a “Strohwitwe” as the Germans say, she could not wed again either with or without interval.
94 Here the silence is of cowardice and the passage is a fling at the “timeserving” of the Olema, a favourite theme, like “banging the bishops” amongst certain Westerns.
95 Arab. “Umm al-raas,” the poll, crown of the head, here the place where a calamity coming down from heaven would first alight.
96 From Al-Hariri (Lane): the lines are excellent.
97 When the charming Princess is so ready at the voie de faits, the reader will understand how common is such energetic action among women of lower degree. The “fair sex” in Egypt has a horrible way of murdering men, especially husbands, by tying them down and tearing out the testicles. See Lane M. E. chapt. xiii.
98 Arab. “Sijn al-Ghazab,” the dungeons appropriated to the worst of criminals where they suffer penalties far worse than hanging or guillotining.
99 According to some modern Moslems Munkar and Nakir visit
the graves of Infidels (non-Moslems) and Bashshir and Mubashshir
(“Givers of glad tidings”) those of Mohammedans. Petis de la
Croix (Les Mille et un Jours vol. iii. 258) speaks of the
“Zoubanya,” black angels who torture the damned under their chief
Dabilah.
100 Very simple and pathetic is this short sketch of the noble-minded Princess’s death.
101 In sign of dismissal (vol. iv. 62) I have noted that “throwing the kerchief” is not an Eastern practice: the idea probably arose from the Oriental practice of sending presents in richly embroidered napkins and kerchiefs.
102 Curious to say both Lane and Payne omit this passage which appears in both texts (Mac. and Bul.). The object is evidently to prepare the reader for the ending by reverting to the beginning of the tale; and its prolixity has its effect as in the old Romances of Chivalry from Amadis of Ghaul to the Seven Champions of Christendom. If it provoke impatience, it also heightens expectation; “it is like the long elm-avenues of our forefathers; we wish ourselves at the end; but we know that at the end there is something great.”
103 Arab. “alà malákay bayti ‘l-ráhah;” on the two slabs at whose union are the round hole and longitudinal slit. See vol. i. 221.
104 Here the exclamation wards off the Evil Eye from the Sword and the wearer: Mr. Payne notes, “The old English exclamation Cock’s ‘ill!’ (i.e., God’s will, thus corrupted for the purpose of evading the statute of 3 Jac. i. against profane swearing) exactly corresponds to the Arabic” — with a difference, I add.
105 Arab. “Mustahakk”=deserving (Lane) or worth (Payne) the cutting.
106 Arab. “Mashhad” the same as “Sháhid”=the upright stones at the head and foot of the grave. Lane mistranslates, “Made for her a funeral procession.”
107 These lines have occurred before. I quote Lane.
108 There is nothing strange in such sudden elevations amongst Moslems and even in Europe we still see them occasionally. The family in the East, however humble, is a model and miniature of the state, and learning is not always necessary to wisdom.
109 Arab. “Fárid” which may also mean “union-pearl.”
110 Trébutien (iii. 497) cannot deny himself the pleasure of a French touch making the King reply, “C’est assez; qu’on lui coupe la tête, car ces dernières histoires surtout m’ont causé un ennui mortel.” This reading is found in some of the MSS.
111 After this I borrow from the Bresl. Edit. inserting passages from the Mac. Edit.
112 i.e. whom he intended to marry with regal ceremony.
113 The use of coloured powders in sign of holiday-making is not obsolete in India. See Herklots for the use of “Huldee” (Haldí) or turmeric-powder, p-65.
114 Many Moslem families insist upon this before giving their girls in marriage, and the practice is still popular amongst many Mediterranean peoples.
115 i.e. Sumatran.
116 i.e. Alexander, according to the Arabs; see vol. v. 252.
117 These lines are in vol. i. 217.
118 I repeat the lines from vol. i. 218.
119 All these coquetries require as much inventiveness as a cotillon; the text alludes to fastening the bride’s tresses across her mouth giving her the semblance of beard and mustachios.
120 Repeated from vol. i. 218.
121 Repeated from vol. i. 218.
122 See vol. i. 219.
123 Arab. Sawád=the blackness of the hair.
124 Because Easterns build, but never repair.
125i.e. God only knows if it be true or not.
126 Ouseley’s Orient. Collect. I, vii.
127 This three-fold distribution occurred to me many years ago and when far beyond reach of literary authorities, I was, therefore, much pleased to find the subjoined three-fold classification with minor details made by Baron von Hammer- Purgstall (Preface to Contes Inédits etc. of G. S. Trébutien, Paris, mdcccxxviii.) (1) The older stories which serve as a base to the collection, such as the Ten Wazirs (“Malice of Women”) and Voyages of Sindbad (?) which may date from the days of Mahommed. These are distributed into two sub-classes; (a) the marvellous and purely imaginative (e.g. Jamasp and the Serpent Queen) and (b) the realistic mixed with instructive fables and moral instances. (2) The stories and anecdotes peculiarly Arab, relating to the Caliphs and especially to Al- Rashíd; and (3) The tales of Egyptian provenance, which mostly date from the times of the puissant “Aaron the Orthodox.” Mr. John Payne (Villon Translation vol. ix. p-73) distributes the stories roughly under five chief heads as follows: (1) Histories or long Romances, as King Omar bin Al-Nu’man (2) Anecdotes or short stories dealing with historical personages and with incidents and adventures belonging to the every-day life of the period to which they refer: e.g. those concerning Al-Rashíd and Hátim of Tayy. (3) Romances and romantic fictions comprising three different kinds of tales; (a) purely romantic and supernatural; (b) fictions and nouvelles with or without a basis and background of historical fact and (c) Contes fantastiques. (4) Fables and Apologues; and (5) Tales proper, as that of Tawaddud.
128 Journal Asiatique (Paris, Dondoy-Dupré, 1826) “Sur l’origine des Mille et une Nuits.”
129 Baron von Hammer-Purgstall’s château is near Styrian Graz, and, when I last saw his library, it had been left as it was at his death.
130 At least, in Trébutien’s Preface, pp. xxx.-xxxi., reprinted from the Journ. Asiat. August, 1839: for corrections see De Sacy’s “Mémoire.” .
131 Vol. iv. p-90, Paris mdccclxv. Trébutien quotes, chapt. lii. (for lxviii.), one of Von Hammer’s manifold inaccuracies.
132 Alluding to Iram the Many-columned, etc.
133 In Trébutien “Síhá,” for which the Editor of the Journ.
Asiat. and De S
acy rightly read “Sabíl-há.”
134 For this some MSS. have “Fahlawiyah” = Pehlevi
135 i.e. Lower Roman, Grecian, of Asia Minor, etc., the word is still applied throughout
Marocco, Algiers and Northern Africa to Europeans in general.
136 De Sacy (Dissertation prefixed to the Bourdin Edition) notices the “thousand and one,” and in his Mémoire “a thousand:” Von Hammer’s MS. reads a thousand, and the French translation a thousand and one. Evidently no stress can be laid upon the numerals.
137 These names are noticed in my vol. i. 14, and vol. ii. 3. According to De Sacy some MSS. read “History of the Wazir and his Daughters.”
138 Lane (iii. 735) has Wizreh or Wardeh which guide us to
Wird Khan, the hero of the tale. Von Hammer’s MS. prefers
Djilkand (Jilkand), whence probably the Isegil or Isegild of
Langlés (1814), and the Tséqyl of De Sacy (1833). The mention of
“Simás” (Lane’s Shemmas) identifies it with “King Jalí’ád of
Hind,” etc. (Night dcccxcix.) Writing in A.D. 961 Hamzah Isfaháni
couples with the libri Sindbad and Schimas, the libri Baruc and
Barsinas, four nouvelles out of nearly seventy. See also Al-
Makri’zi’s Khitat or Topography (ii. 485) for a notice of the
Thousand or Thousand and one Nights.
139 alluding to the “Seven Wazirs” alias “The Malice of Women” (Night dlxxviii.), which Von Hammer and many others have carelessly confounded with Sindbad the Seaman We find that two tales once separate have now been incorporated with The Nights, and this suggests the manner of its composition by accretion.
140 Arabised by a most “elegant” stylist, Abdullah ibn al- Mukaffá (the shrivelled), a Persian Guebre named Roz-bih (Day good), who islamised and was barbarously put to death in A.H. 158 (= 775) by command of the Caliph al-Mansur (Al-Siyuti ). “He also translated from Pehlevi the book entitled Sekiserán, containing the annals of Isfandiyar, the death of Rustam, and other episodes of old Persic history,” says Al-Mas’udi chapt. xxi. See also Ibn Khallikan (1, 43) who dates the murder in A.H. 142 (= 759-60).
141 “Notice sur Le Schah-namah de Firdoussi,” a posthumous
publication of M. de Wallenbourg, Vienna, 1810, by M. A. de
Bianchi. In sect. iii. I shall quote another passage of Al-
Mas’udi (viii. 175) in which I find a distinct allusion to the
“Gaboriaudetective tales” of The Nights.
142 Here Von Hammer shows his customary inexactitude. As we learn from Ibn Khallikan (Fr. Tr. I. 630), the author’s name was Abu al-Faraj Mohammed ibn Is’hak pop. known as Ibn Ali Ya’kúb al- Warrák, the bibliographe, librarian, copyist. It was published (vol. i Leipzig, 1871) under the editorship of G. Fluegel, J. Roediger, and A. Müller.
143 See also the Journ. Asiat., August, 1839, and Lane iii. 736-37
144 Called “Afsánah” by Al-Mas’udi, both words having the same sense = tale story, parable, “facetiæ.” Moslem fanaticism renders it by the Arab “Khuráfah” = silly fables, and in Hindostan it = a jest: “Bát-kí bát, khurafát-ki khurafát” (a word for a word, a joke for a joke).
145 Al-Mas’údi (chapt. xxi.) makes this a name of the Mother of Queen Humái or Humáyah, for whom see below.
146 The preface of a copy of the Shah-nameh (by Firdausi, ob. A.D. 1021), collated in A.H. 829 by command of Bayisunghur Bahadur Khán (Atkinson p. x.), informs us that the Hazar Afsanah was composed for or by Queen Humái whose name is Arabised to Humáyah This Persian Marguerite de Navarre was daughter and wife to (Ardashir) Bahman, sixth Kayanian and surnamed Diraz-dast (Artaxerxes Longimanus), Abu Sásán from his son, the Eponymus of the Sassanides who followed the Kayanians when these were extinguished by Alexander of Macedon. Humái succeeded her husband as seventh Queen, reigned thirty-two years and left the crown to her son Dárá or Dáráb 1st = Darius Codomanus. She is better known to Europe (through Herodotus) as Parysatis = Peri-zádeh or the Fairy-born.
147 i.e. If Allah allow me to say sooth.
148 i.e. of silly anecdotes: here speaks the good Moslem!
149 No. 622 Sept. 29, 39, a review of Torrens which appeared shortly after Lane’s vol. i. The author quotes from a MS. in the British Museum, No. 7334 fol. 136.
150 There are many Spaniards of this name: Mr. Payne (ix. 302) proposes Abu Ja’afar ibn Abd al-Hakk al-Khazraji, author of a History of the Caliphs about the middle of the twelfth century.
151 The well-known Rauzah or Garden-island, of old Al- Saná’ah (Al-Mas’udi chapt. xxxi.) which is more than once noticed in The Nights. The name of the pavilion Al-Haudaj = a camel- litter, was probably intended to flatter the Badawi girl.
152 He was the Seventh Fatimite Caliph of Egypt: regn. A.H. 495-524 (= 1101 1129).
153 Suggesting a private pleasaunce in Al-Rauzah which has ever been and is still a succession of gardens.
154 The writer in The Athenæum calls him Ibn Miyvah, and adds that the Badawiyah wrote to her cousin certain verses complaining of her thraldom, which the youth answered abusing the Caliph. Al-Ámir found the correspondence and ordered Ibn Miyah’s tongue to be cut out, but he saved himself by a timely flight.
155 In Night dccclxxxv. we have the passage “He was a wily thief: none could avail against his craft as he were Abu Mohammed Al-Battál”: the word etymologically means The Bad; but see infra.
156 Amongst other losses which Orientals have sustained by the death of Rogers Bey, I may mention his proposed translation of Al-Makrízí’s great topographical work.
157 The name appears only in a later passage.
158 Mr. Payne notes (viii. 137) “apparently some famous brigand of the time” (of Charlemagne). But the title may signify The Brave, and the tale may be much older.
159 In his “Mémoire sur l’origine du Recueil des Contes intitulé Les Mille et une Nuits” (Mém. d’Hist. et de Littér. Orientale, extrait des tomes ix., et x. des Mémoires de l’Inst. Royal Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1833). He read the Memoir before the Royal Academy on July 31, 1829. Also in his Dissertation “Sur les Mille et une Nuits” (pp. i. viii.) prefixed to the Bourdin Edit. When first the Arabist in Europe landed at Alexandria he could not exchange a word with the people the same is told of Golius the lexicographer at Tunis.
160 Lane, Nights ii. 218.
161 This origin had been advocated a decade of years before by Shaykh Ahmad al-Shirawáni; Editor of the Calc. text (1814-18): his Persian preface opines that the author was an Arabic speaking Syrian who designedly wrote in a modern and conversational style, none of the purest withal, in order to instruct non-Arabists. Here we find the genus “Professor” pure and simple.
162 Such an assertion makes us enquire, Did De Sacy ever read through The Nights in Arabic?
163 Dr. Jonathan Scott’s “translation” vi. 283.
164 For a note on this world-wide Tale see vol. i. 52.
165 In the annotated translation by Mr. I. G. N. Keith- Falconer, Cambridge University Press. I regret to see the wretched production called the “Fables of Pilpay” in the “Chandos Classics” (London, F. Warne). The words are so mutilated that few will recognize them, e.g. Carchenas for Kár-shínás, Chaschmanah for Chashmey-e-Máh (Fountain of the Moon), etc.
166 Article Arabia in Encyclop. Brit., 9th Edit., , colt 2. I do not quite understand Mr. Palgrave, but presume that his “other version” is the Bresl. Edit., the MS. of which was brought from Tunis; see its Vorwort (vol. i. ).
167 There are three distinct notes according to De Sacy (Mém., ). The first (in MS. 1508) says “This blessed book was read by the weak slave, etc. Wahabah son of Rizkallah the Kátib (secretary, scribe) of Tarábulus al-Shám (Syrian Tripoli), who prayeth long life for its owner (li máliki-h). This tenth day of the month First Rabí’a A.H. 955 (= 1548).” A similar note by the same Wahabah occurs at the end of vol. ii. (MS. 1507) dated A.H. 973 (= 1565) and a third (MS. 1506) is
undated. Evidcntly M. Caussin has given undue weight to such evidence. For further information see “Tales of the East” to which is prefixed an Introductory Dissertation (vol. i. p-26, note) by Henry Webber, Esq., Edinburgh, 1812, in 3 vols.
168 “Notice sur les douze manuscrits connus des Milles et une Nuits, qui existent en Europe.” Von Hammer in Trébutien, Notice, vol. i.
169 Printed from the MS. of Major Turner Macan, Editor of the Shahnamah: he bought it from the heirs of Mr. Salt, the historic Consul-General of England in Egypt and after Macan’s death it became the property of the now extinct Allens, then of Leadenhall Street (Torrens, Preface, i.). I have vainly enquired about what became of it.
170 The short paper by “P. R.” in the Gentleman’s Magazine (Feb. 19th, 1799, vol. lxix. ) tells us that MSS. of The Nights were scarce at Aleppo and that he found only two vols. (280 Nights) which he had great difficulty in obtaining leave to copy. He also noticed (in 1771) a MS., said to be complete, in the Vatican and another in the “King’s Library” (Bibliothèque Nationale), Paris.
171 Aleppo has been happy in finding such monographers as
Russell and Maundrell while poor Damascus fell into the hands of
Mr. Missionary Porter, and suffered accordingly.
172 Vol. vi. Appendix, p.452.
173 The numbers, however, vary with the Editions of Galland: some end the formula with Night cxcvii; others with the ccxxxvi. : I adopt that of the De Sacy Edition.
174 Contes Persans, suivis des Contes Turcs. Paris; Béchet
Ainé, 1826.
175 In the old translation we have “eighteen hundred years since the prophet Solomon died,” (B.C. 975) = A.D. 825.
176 Meaning the era of the Seleucides. Dr. Jonathan Scott shows (vol. ii. 324) that A.H. 653 and A.D. 1255 would correspond with 1557 of that epoch; so that the scribe has here made a little mistake of 5,763 years. Ex uno disce.
177 The Saturday Review (Jan. 2nd ‘86) writes, “Captain Burton has fallen into a mistake by not distinguishing between the names of the by no means identical Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al-Mustansir.” Quite true: it was an ugly confusion of the melancholy madman and parricide with one of the best and wisest of the Caliphs. I can explain (not extenuate) my mistake only by a misprint in Al-Siyúti ().
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