One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  41 Scott ends () “Years of unusual happiness passed over the heads of the fortunate adventurers of this history, until death, the destroyer of all things, conducted them to a grave which must one day be the resting-place for ages of us all, till the receiving (?) angel shall sound his trumpet.”

  42 Scott (vi. 259-267), “Story of Hyjuaje, the tyrannical Governor of Coufeh, and the Young Syed.” For the difference between the “Sayyid” (descendant of Hasan) and the “Sharíf,” derived from Husayn, see vol. v. 259. Being of the Holy House the youth can truly deny that he belongs to any place or race, as will be seen in the sequel.

  43 This masterful administrator of the Caliphate under the early Ommiades is noticed in vols. iv. 3, vii. 97. The succession to the Prophet began — as mostly happens in the proceedings of elective governments, republics, and so forth — with the choice of a nobody, “Abubakr the Veridical,” a Meccan merchant, whose chief claim was the glamour of the Apostolate. A more notable personage, and seen under the same artificial light, was “Omar the Justiciary,” also a trader of Meccah, who was murdered for an act of injustice. In Osman nepotism and corruption so prevailed, while distance began to dim the Apostolic glories, that the blood-thirsty turbulence of the Arab was aroused and caused the death of the third Caliph by what we should call in modern phrase “lynching.” Ali succeeded, if indeed we can say he succeeded at all, to an already divided empire. He was the only one of the four who could be described as a man of genius, and therefore he had a host of enemies: he was a poet, a sage, a moralist and even a grammarian; brave as a lion, strong as a bull, a successful and experienced captain, yet a complete failure as a King. A mere child in mundane matters, he ever acted in a worldly sense as he should have avoided acting, and hence, after a short and disastrous reign, he also was killed. His two sons, Hasan and Husayn, inherited all the defects and few of the merits of their sire: Hasan was a pauvre diable, whose chief characteristic was addiction to marriage, and by poetical justice one of his wives murdered him. Husayn was of stronger mould, but he fought against the impossible; for his rival was Mu’áwiyah, the Cavour of the Age, the longest-headed man in Arabia, and against Yezíd, who, like Italy of the present day, flourished and prospered by the artificial game which the far-seeing politician, his father, had bequeathed to his house — the Ommiade. The fourth of this dynasty, ‘Abd al-Malik bin Marwán, “the Father of Flies,” and his successor, Al-Walid, were happy in being served thoroughly and unscrupulously by Al-Hajjáj, the ablest of Lieutenants, whose specialty it was to take in hand a revolted province, such as Al-Hijáz, Al-Irák, or Khorásán, and to slaughter it into submission; besides deaths in battle he is computed to have slain 120,000 men. He was an unflinching preacher of the Divine Right of Kings and would observe that the Lord says, “Obey Allah an ye can” (conditional), but as regards royal government “Hearing and obeying” (absolute); ergo, all opposition was to be cut down and uprooted. However, despite his most brilliant qualities, his learning, his high and knightly sense of honour, his insight and his foresight (e.g. in building Wásit), he won an immortality of infamy: he was hated by his contemporaries, he is the subject of silly tale and offensive legend (e.g., that he was born without anus, which required opening with instruments, and he was suckled by Satan’s orders on blood), and he is still execrated as the tyrant, per excellentiam, and the oppressor of the Holy Family — the children and grand-children of the Apostle.

  The traditional hatred of Al-Hajjaj was envenomed by the accession of the Abbasides and this dynasty, the better to distinguish itself from the Ommiades, affected love for the Holy Family, especially Ali and his descendants, and a fanatical hatred against their oppressors. The following table from Ibn Khaldún (Introduct. xxii.) shows that the Caliphs were cousins, which may account for their venomous family feud.

  [First Version]

  ‘Abd Manaf

  |

  |

  | |

  Hashim Abd Shams

  | |

  Abd al-Muttalib Umayyah

  | |

  | |

  | | | | |

  Al-Abbas Abdullah Abu Talib Harb Abu ‘l-Aus

  | | | | |

  Abdullah Mohammed | Abu Sufyan Al-Hakim

  | | | | |

  Ali Fatimah married Ali Mu’awiyah Marwan

  | | (1st Ommiade)

  | | |

  Mohammed Al-Hasan Al-Husayn

  |

  Al-Saffáh

  (1st Abbaside)

  [Second Version]

  ‘Abd Manaf, father of Hashim and Abd Shams

  Hashim, father of Abd al-Muttalib

  Abd al-Muttalib, father of Al-Abbas, Abdullah, and Abu Talib

  Al-Abbas, father of Abdullah

  Abdullah, father of Ali

  Ali, father of Mohammed

  Mohammed, father of Al-Saffáh (1st Abbaside)

  Abdullah, father of Mohammed

  Mohammed, father of Fatimah, who married Ali

  (son of Abu Talib)

  Fatimah, mother of Al-Hasan and Al-Husayn

  Abu Talib, father of Ali

  Abd Shams, father of Umayyah

  Umayyah, father of Harb and Abu ‘l-Aus

  Harb, father of Abu Sufyan

  Abu Sufyan, father of Mu’awiyah (1st Ommiade)

  Abu ‘l-Aus, father of Al-Hakim

  Al-Hakim, father of Marwan

  44 [The word here translated “invited guest” reads in the MS. “Mad’úr.” In this form it is no dictionary word, but under the root “D’r” I find in the Muhít: “wa ‘l-’ámatu takúlu fulánun da’irun ya’ní ghalízun jáfin” = the common people say such a one is “da’ir,” i.e., rude, churlish. “Mad’úr” may be a synonym and rendered accordingly: as though thou wert a boor or clown. — ST]

  45 A neat specimen of the figure anachronism. Al-Hajjaj died in A.H. 95 (= A.D. 714), and Cairo was built in A.H. 358 (= A.D. 968).

  46 Perfectly true even in the present day. The city was famed for intelligence and sanguinary fanaticism; and no stranger in disguise could pass through it without detection. This ended with the massacre of 1840, which brought a new era into the Moslem East. The men are, as a rule, fine-looking, but they seem to be all show: we had a corps of them in the old Básh-Buzuks, who, after a month or two in camp, seemed to have passed suddenly from youth into old age.

  47 In text, “Yasta’amilúna al-Mrd,” which may have a number of meanings, e.g. “work frowardness” (Maradd), or “work the fruit of the tree Arák” (Marad = wild capparis) and so forth. I have chosen the word mainly because “Murd” rhymes to “Burd.” The people of Al-Yaman are still deep in the Sotadic Zone and practice; this they owe partly to a long colonization of the “‘Ajam,” or Persians. See my Terminal Essay, § “Pederasty,” .

  48 “Burd,” plur. of “Burdah” = mantle or woollen plaid of striped stuff: vol. vii. 95. They are still woven in Arabia, but they are mostly white.

  49 So in Tabari (vol. III. 127) Al Hajjáj sees a man of haughty mien (Abd al-Rahmán bin Abdullah), and exclaims, “Regarde comme il est orgueilleux: par Dieu, j’aurais envie de lui couper la tęte!”

  50 [The phrase is Koranic (viii. 24): “Wa ‘lamú anna ‘lláha yahúlu bayna ‘l-mari wa kalbi-hi,” which Rodwell translates: Know that God cometh in between man and his own heart. — ST]

  51 “Yathrib,” the classical name ?at??ppa, one of the multifarious titles of what is called in full “Madínat al-Nabi,” City of the Prophet, and vulgarly, Al-Madinah, the City. “Tayyibah,” the good, sweet, or lawful: “Al-Munawwarah” = the enlightened, i.e. by the light of The Faith and the column of (odylic) flame supposed to be based upon the Prophet’s tomb. For more, see my Pilgrimage, ii. 162. I may note how ridiculously the story-teller displays ignorance in Al-Hajjaj, who knew the Moslem’s Holy Land by heart.

  52 In text “Taawíl,” = the commentary or explanation of

  Moslem Holy Writ: “Tanzíl” = coming down, revelation of the

  Koran: “Tahrím” = rendering a
ny action “harám” or unlawful, and

  “Tahlíl” = the converse, making word or deed canonically legal.

  Those are well-known theological terms.

  53 The Banú Ghálib, whose eponymous forefather was Ghálib, son of Fihr, the well-known ancestor of Mohammed.

  54 In text “Hasab wa Nasab.” It is told of Al-Mu’izz bi Díni’llah, first Fatimite Caliph raised to the throne of Egypt, that he came forward to the elective assembly and drew his sword half way out of the scabbard and exclaimed “Házá Nasabí” (this is my genealogy); and then cast handfuls of gold amongst the crowd, crying, “Házá Hasabí” (such is my title to reign). This is as good as the traditional saying of Napoleon the Great at his first assuming the iron crown— “God gave her to me; woe for whoso toucheth her” (the crown).

  55 [In MS. “takhsa-u,” a curious word of venerable yet green old age, used in the active form with both transitive and intransitive meaning: to drive away (a dog, etc.), and to be driven away. In the Koran (xxiii. 110) we find the imper. “ikhsaú” = be ye driven away, and in two other places (ii. 61, vii. 166), the nomen agentis “khási” = “scouted” occurs, as applied to the apes into which the Sabbath-breaking Jews were transformed. In the popular language of the present day it has become equivalent with “khába,” to be disappointed, and may here be translated: thou wilt fail ignominiously. — ST]

  56 Scott introduces (), “the tyrant, struck with his magnanimity, became calm, and commanding the executioner to release the youth, said, For the present I forbear, and will not kill thee unless thy answers to my further questions shall deserve it. They then entered on the following dialogue: Hyjuawje hoping to entrap him in discourse.”

  57 See the dialogue on this subject between Al-Hajjaj and

  Yáhyá ibn Yamar in Ibn Khallikan, iv. 60.

  58 Surah xxxiii. (The Confederates), v. 40, which ends, “And Allah knoweth all things.”

  59 Surah lix. (The Emigration), v. 40: the full quotation would be, “The spoil, taken from the townsfolk and assigned by Allah to His Apostle, belongeth to Allah and to the Apostle and to his kindred and to the orphan and to the poor and to the wayfarer, that naught thereof may circulate among such only of you as be rich. What the Apostle hath given you, take. What he hath refused you, refuse. And fear ye Allah, for Allah is sure in punishing.”

  60 The House of Háshim, great-grandfather to the Prophet.

  61 Ibn Khallikan (vol. i. 354) warns us that “Al-Taî” means belonging to the Taî which is a famous tribe. This relative adjective is of irregular formation; analogy would require it to be Táîî; but the formation of relative adjectives admits some variations; thus from dahr (time) is derived duhrí (temporal) and from sahl (a plain), suhlí (plain, level). The author might also have told us that there is always a reason for such irregularities; thus “Dahrí” (from Dahr) would mean a Mundanist, one who believes in this world and not the next or another.

  62 The “Banú Thakíf” was a noble tribe sprung from Iyád (Ibn Khallikan i. 358-363); but the ignorant and fanatic scribe uses every means, fair and foul, to defame Al-Hajjaj. It was a great race and a well known, living about Táif in the Highlands East of Meccah, where they exist to the present day. Mr. Doughty (loc. cit. ii. 174) mentions a kindred of the Juhaynah Badawin called El-Thegif (Thakíf) of whom the Medinites say, “Allah ya’alan Thegíf Kuddám takuf” (God damn the Thegíf ere thou stand still). They are called “Yahud” (Jews), probably meaning pre-Islamitic Arabs, and are despised accordingly.

  63 In Arab. “Jady” = the Zodiacal sign Capricorn.

  64 We find a similar facetia in Mullah Jámí (Garden viii.).

  When a sheep leapt out of the stream, her tail happened to be

  raised, and a woolcarder said laughing:— “I have seen thy parts

  genital.” She turned her head and replied, “O miserable, for many a year I have seen thee mother-naked yet never laughed I.” This alludes to the practice of such artisans who on account of the heat in their workshops and the fibre adhering to their clothes work in naturalibus. See , the Beharistán (Abode of Spring). Printed by the Kamashastra Society for Private

  Subscribers only. Benares, 1887.

  65 This passage is not Koranic, and, according to Prof.

  Houdas, the word “Muhkaman” is never found in the Holy Volume.

  [The passage is not a literal quotation, but it evidently alludes to Koran iii. 5: “Huwa’llazí anzalá ‘alayka ‘l-kitába minhu áyâtun muhkamátun” = He it is who sent down to thee the book, some of whose signs (or versets) are confirmed. The singular “muhkamatun” is applied (xlvii.) to “Súratun,” a chapter, and in both places the meaning of “confirmed” is “not abrogated by later revelations.” Hence the sequel of my first quotation these portions are called “the mother (i.e. groundwork) of the book,” and the learned Sayyid is not far from the mark after all. — ST]

  66 Surah ii. (The Cow) v. 56, the verse beginning, “Allah! there be no God but He; … His Throne overreacheth the Heavens and the Hearth,” etc.

  67 Surah lxxiii. (The Bee) v. 92, ending with, “And he forbiddeth frowardness and wrong-doing and oppression; and He warneth you that haply may ye be warned.”

  68 Surah (Meccah) xcix. vv. 7 and 8: in text “Mithkála Zarratin,” which Mr. Rodwell () englishes “an atom’s weight of good,” and adds in a foot-note, “Lit. a single ant.” Prof. Houdas would render it, Quiconque aura fait la valeur d’un mitskal de millet en fait de bien; but I hardly think that “Zarrah” can mean “Durrah” = millet. [“Mithkál” in this context is explained by the commentators by “Wazn” = weight, this being the original meaning of the word which is a nomen instrumenti of the form “Mif’ál,” denoting “that by which the gravity of bodies is ascertained.” Later on it became the well-known technical term for a particular weight. “Zarrah,” according to some glossarists, is the noun of unity of “Zarr,” the young ones of the ant, an antlet, which is said to weigh the twelfth part of a “Kitmír” = pedicle of the date-fruit, or the hundredth part of a grain of barley, or to have no weight at all. Hence “Mukhkh al-Zarr,” the brains of the antlet, means a thing that does not exist or is impossible to be found. According to others, “Zarrah” is a particle of al-Habá, i.e. of the motes that are seen dancing in the sunlight, called “Sonnenstäubchen” in German, and “atomo solare” in Italian. Koran xxi. 48 and xxxi. 15 we find the expression “Mithkála Habbatin min Khardalin” = of the weight of a mustard-seed, used in a similar sense with the present quotation. — ST]

  69 Surah lxx. 38, Mr. Rodwell () translates, “Is it that every man of them would fain enter the Garden of Delights?”

  70 Surah xxxix. 54: they sinned by becoming apostates from Al-Islam. The verset ends, “Verily all sins doth Allah forgive: aye, Gracious, and Merciful is He.”

  71 Surah ii. 159; the quotation in the MS. is cut short.

  72 Surah ii. 107; the end of the verse is, “Yet both are readers of the Book. So with like words say they (the pagan Arabs) who have no knowledge.”

  73 Surah li. (The Scattering), v. 56.

  74 Surah ii. v. 30.

  75 Surah xl. (The Believer), v. 78. In the text it is fragmentary. I do not see why Mr. Rodwell founds upon this verset a charge against the Prophet of ignorance concerning Jewish history: Mohammed seems to have followed the Talmud and tradition rather than the Holy Writ of the Hebrews.

  76 Surah (The Believers) lxiv. 108.

  77 Surah xxxv. (The Creator or the Angels), v. 31: The sentence concludes in v. 32, “Who of His bounty hath placed us in a Mansion that shall abide for ever, therein no evil shall reach us, and therein no weariness shall touch us.”

  78 Surah (“Sad”) lix. 54; Iblis, like Satan in the Book of Job, is engaged in dialogue with the Almighty. I may here note that Scott () has partially translated these Koranic quotations, but he has given only one reference.

  79 In text “Aná min ahli zálika,” of which the vulgar equivalent would be “Kizí” (for “Kazálika,” “Kaz�
�”) = so (it is)!

  80 i.e. On an empty stomach, to “open the spittle” is = to break the fast. Sir Wm. Gull in his evidence before a committee of the House of Commons deposed that after severe labor he found a bunch of dried raisins as efficacious a “pick-me-up” as a glass of stimulants. The value of dried grapes to the Alpinist is well known.

  81 Arab. “Al-Kadíd” = jerked (charqui = chaire cuite) meat-flesh smoked, or (mostly) sun-dried.

  82 I have noticed (i. 345) one of the blunders in our last unfortunate occupation of Egypt where our soldiers died uselessly of dysenteric disease because they were rationed with heating beef instead of digestible mutton.

  83 Arab. “Al-Marham al-akbar.”

  84 [In the text: “Al-Kisrat al-yábisah ‘alŕ ‘l-Rík fa-innahá tukhlik jamí’a má ‘alŕ fum al-mádah min al-balgham,” of which I cannot make anything but: a slice of dry bread (kisrah = piece of bread) on the spittle (i.e. to break the fast), for it absorbs (lit. uses up, fourth form of “khalik” = to be worn out) all that there may be of phlegm on the mouth of the stomach. Can it be that the dish “Khushk-nán” (Pers. = dry-bread) is meant, of which the village clown in one of Spitta Bey’s tales, when he was treated to it by Harun al-Rashid thought it must be the “Hammám,” because he had heard his grandmother say, that the Hammám (bath) is the most delightful thing in the world?ST]

  85 The stomach has two mouths, sophagic above (which is here alluded to) and pyloric below.

  86 Arab. “‘Irk al-Unsá” = chordć testiculorum, in Engl. simply the cord.

  87 The “‘Ajúz” is a woman who ceases to have her monthly period: the idea is engrained in the Eastern mind and I cannot but believe in it seeing the old-young faces of men who have “married their grandmothers” for money or folly, and what not.

  88 Arab. “Al-’Akík,” vol. iii. 179: it is a tradition of the Prophet that the best of bezels for a signet-ring is the carnelian, and such are still the theory and practice of the Moslem East.

  89 Arab. “Tuhál;” in text “Tayhal.” Mr. Doughty (Arabia Deserta, i. 547) writes the word “Tahal” and translates it “ague-cake,” i.e. the throbbing enlarged spleen, left after fevers, especially those of Al-Hijáz and Khaybar. [The form “Tayhál” with a plural “Tawáhil” for the usual “Tihál” = spleen is quoted by Dozy from the valuable Vocabulary published by Schiaparelli, 1871, after an old MS. of the end of the xiii. century. It has the same relation to the verb “tayhal” = he suffered from the spleen, which “Tihál” bears to the verb “tuhil,” used passively in the same sense. The name of the disease is “Tuhál.” — ST]