by Robert Irwin
I was told by Abi’l-Husain, who was told by Abi Fadl b. Bahmad of Siraf, who was famous for his expeditions to the most distant countries separated by seas. I was told, he said, by one of the Indian Maisur (a word which means one who is born in India as a Moslem), how he was in a certain Indian state where the King was of good character. He would however neither take nor give facing anyone, but would turn his hand behind his back and take and give thus. This was out of respect for his office, and in accordance with their practice. This particular King died, when his throne was seized by an usurper: a son of the former king, who was suited to reign, fled for fear of his life from the man who had seized the power. It is a practice of the Indian kings that if one of them leave his seat for any purpose, he must have on him a vest, with a pocket containing all sorts of precious gems, such as rubies, folded in satin. The value of these gems is sufficient to found a kingdom with if necessary. Indeed they say he is no king who leaves his seat without having on his person sufficient for the establishment of a great kingdom should a disaster compel him to take flight.
When the catastrophe which has been mentioned befell the realm, the son of the deceased king took his vest and fled with it. He afterwards related how he walked for three days. During these he tasted no food, having with him neither silver nor gold wherewith he could purchase any, being too proud to beg, and unable to exhibit what he had on his person. So, he said, I sat on the kerb, and presently an Indian approached with a wallet on his shoulder. He put this down, and sat down in front of me. I asked him where he was going. He mentioned a certain Judain (an Indian word for hamlet). I told him that I was making for the same, and suggested that we should be companions, to which he agreed. I was hoping that he would offer me some of his food. He took up his wallet, ate, while I watched him, but offered me nothing, while I was unwilling to take the initiative and ask. He then packed up his wallet, and started to walk. I started walking after him, hoping that humanity, good fellowship and honour would induce him to behave differently. However he acted at night as he had acted in the day. Next morning we started walking again, and his conduct was the same as before. This went on for seven days, during which I tasted nothing. On the eighth I found myself very weak, without power to move. Then I noticed a hamlet by the roadside, and men building with a foreman directing them. So I quitted my companion and went up to the manager and asked him to employ me for a wage to be paid me in the evening like the others. He said, Very well, hand them the mortar. So I proceeded to take the mortar, and in accordance with the royal custom I kept turning my hand behind my back to hand them the mortar: only whenever I recollected that this was a mistake and might forfeit me my life, I hastened to correct it and turn my hand in the right direction before I attracted attention. However, he said, a woman who was standing there noticed me and told her master about me, adding that I must certainly be of a royal family. So he told her to see that I did not go off with the other bricklayers, and she retained me, they went off. The master then brought me oil and scent for ablution, which is their mode of showing honour. When I had washed they brought rice and fish, which I ate. The woman then offered herself in marriage to me, and I made the contract, which was immediately carried out. I remained with her four years, looking after her estate, as she was a woman of fortune. One day, when I was seated at the door of her house, there appeared a native of my country. I asked him in, and when he entered, inquired whence he came. He mentioned my own country, and I asked him, What are you doing here? He replied: We had a virtuous King, and when he died his throne was seized by a man who was not of the royal blood: the former king had a son qualified to reign, who, fearing for his life, took to flight. The usurper oppressed his subjects, who rose and put him to death. We are now wandering over the countries in search of the son of the deceased king with the intention of setting him on his father’s seat: only we have no trace of him – I said to him Do you know me? He said, No. – I told him that I was the person he was seeking, and produced the tokens: he admitted the truth of what I said, and made obeisance. I bade him conceal our business till we had reached the country, and he agreed. I then went to my wife and told her the facts, including the whole story! I then gave her the vest, with an account of its contents and its purpose. I told her I was going with the man, and if his story turned out to be true, the token should be that my messenger should come to her and remind her of the vest: in that case she was to come away with him. If the story proved to be a plot, then the vest was to be her property. The prince went with the man, whose story proved to be true. When he approached the city he was greeted with homage, and was seated on the throne. He sent someone to fetch his wife. When they were reunited and he was established on his throne, he ordered a vast mansion to be erected, to which everyone who passed through his territory should be brought to be entertained there for three days, and furnished with provisions for three more. This he did having in his mind the man who had been his companion on his journey, who, he imagined, would fall into his hand. He also in building this mansion wished to manifest gratitude to Almighty God for deliverance from his troubles while saving people from the distress which had befallen him. After a year he inspected the guests – he had been in the habit of inspecting them every month, and not seeing the man he wanted, dismissing them – and on a particular day saw the man among them. When his eye fell on him, he gave him a betel leaf, which is the highest honour that a sovereign can bestow on a subject. When the King did this, the man made obeisance and kissed the ground. The King bade him rise and looking at him perceived that he did not recognize the King. He ordered the man to be well looked after, and entertained, and when this was done summoned him and said: Do you know me? The man said: How could I fail to know the King, who is so mighty and exalted! The King said: I was not referring to that: do you know who I was before this state? The man said, No. The King then reminded him of the story and how he had withheld food from the prince for seven days when they were on the road. The man was abashed, and the King ordered him to be taken back to the mansion, and entertained. Presently he was found to be dead. The Indian liver is abnormally large, and chagrin had been too much for this man, whose liver it affected so that he died.
Tanukhi’s Indian tale in Faraj ba'd al-Shidda, trans.
D. S. Margoliouth, in Lectures on Arabic
Historians (Calcutta, 1930), pp. 142–6
The next stories also come from Faraj ba'd al-Shidda.
My sources for this story are: 'Ali ibn Muhammad al-Ansari and 'Ubayd Allah ibn Muhammad al-'Abqasi (the wording of the story is theirs); they were told it by Abu’l-Fath al-Qattan, who had it from a member of the merchant classes who lost all his money and became door-keeper in Baghdad to Abu Ahmad al-Husayn b. Musa al-Musawi the 'Alid, naqib of the Talibis; this man was told the story by his maternal uncle, a money-changer.
The lads and I were at one of our mate’s for a drinking-session; we had brought along a pretty little slave-boy, and as we were eating water-melon, each of us had a knife. The boy started fooling around with one of us, trying to take his knife away from him; the man pretended to be angry with him, made a feint with the knife, and accidentally stabbed him through the heart. He died instantly.
We all made as if to escape, but the man who was giving the party told us not to be such heels and that it was sink or swim together. So we slit open the boy’s belly and threw his guts into the latrine, cut off his head and limbs and, taking one each, went off in different directions to dispose of them. I got given the head, which I wrapped in a cloth and bundled into my sleeve.
I had not gone far when I walked straight into the arms of the muhtasib’s men. They immediately latched on to my sleeve and said they were looking for counterfeit coins, and that the muhtasib’s orders were for all parcels to be sealed and brought to him for inspection. I tried wheedling and I tried bribery, but to no avail; they frogmarched me off towards the mubtasib’s office. I realized that I was done for, for I could see no way out. But then I caught sight of t
he gate of a narrow alley, quite small enough to be mistaken for a house door, and saw my chance.
‘If you only want to seal my bundle,’ I said to the men, ‘why are you hanging on to my arm and sleeve as though I were a thief? I’m willing to come with you to the muhtasib; let go of me!’ So they let go and marched me along between them instead. As we passed the gate, I broke into a run, darted through, locked it, made sure it was fast, ran down to the end of the alley, where I found the drain of a privy with its cover raised for cleaning, chucked the cloth and its contents into the drain, came out at the other end at a run, and kept on running until I reached home, where I thanked God for saving my life and swore never to drink wine again.
'Ubayd Allah b. Muhammad [al-Sarawi] told me this story, which was told to him by Abu Ahmad al-Husayn b. Musa al-Musawi, the 'Alid and naqib:
One day, when we were gossiping together, an old servant of mine told me he had once vowed by divorce never to go to another party, attend a funeral or leave anything to be looked after. Why was this? I asked him; he replied:
I once sailed down to Basra from Baghdad; the evening I arrived, I was walking up the waterfront when I bumped into a man who hailed me as X, kept beaming at me, and started asking after people I didn’t know and begging me to come and stay with him. Being a stranger and not knowing my way around, I thought I might as well spend the night at his house and put off looking for somewhere to stay until the next day, so I played along with him and he dragged me off to his house (I had a stout travelling-pack, and a lot of money in my sleeve-pocket). There I found a party in full swing with everyone drinking – clearly the man had gone out to relieve himself, mistaken me for a friend of his, and been too drunk to realize his error. The guests included a man with a pretty little slave-boy. Soon everyone lay down to sleep, and I squeezed in among them. Presently, I saw one of the guests get up, go over to the slave-boy, bugger him, and return to his place, which was next to the boy’s owner, who immediately woke up and went over to the boy to bugger him.
‘What are you doing?’ says the boy. ‘You were here not a minute ago, buggering about.’
‘No I wasn’t,’ says the man.
‘ Well, someone was, and I thought it was you, so I never lifted a finger – it never occurred to me that anyone would dare to horn in on you.’
The man gave a snort of rage and got up again, drawing a knife from his belt.
I was shaking with fright, and if the man had come close enough to see how I was trembling, he would certainly have thought I was the culprit and killed me. However, the Lord had other plans for me, so he began his search for the guilty party with the man lying next to him (who was feigning sleep in the hope of saving his skin), feeling his heart to see how hard it was beating. Satisfied, he put his hand over his mouth and stabbed him. The body twitched and was still. Leading his slave, the man opened the door and stole off.
I was terribly frightened. I was a stranger; when the owner of the house woke up and failed to recognize me, he was bound to think I was the murderer, and I would be put to death. Leaving my pack behind, and pausing only to collect my cloak and shoes, I slipped out and walked and walked with no idea of where to go. It was the middle of the night, and I was terrified of meeting the night-watch. Suddenly, I spotted the furnace of a bath-house, as yet unlit, and thought of hiding there until the bath-house opened. I crept inside and settled myself in the hearth of the furnace. But before long, I heard hooves, and a man’s voice saying: ‘I can see you, you bastard!’ Into the furnace came the man – and there I was, half-dead with fright, not daring to move – and, finding nothing, poked his head into the hearth and brandished a sword; but since I was out of reach, I sat tight. Having drawn a blank, the man went out again and came back with a girl, thrust her into the furnace, slit her throat and departed, leaving the corpse behind.
Pulling off the anklets which I saw glittering on her legs, I made off, and wandered around in a daze until I came to the door of a bath-house which had opened; in I went, hid the anklets in a bundle with my clothes, which I gave to the bath-house keeper, and stayed in the baths until morning. Then I set out with my bundle and was about to take to the road when I realized I was near the house of a friend of mine, and made my way there instead. I knocked at the door; he opened it, was delighted to see me and asked me in, whereupon I thrust my bundle of valuables into his house, and begged him to hide the anklets. At the sight of them, his face changed.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘Where did you get these anklets?’
I told him my night’s adventures and he disappeared into the women’s quarters. Re-emerging, he asked me if I would recognize the murderer. Not by sight, I said, as it had been too dark to see his face, but I would know his voice if I heard it again.
Leaving orders for a meal to be prepared, he went out about his business, but soon returned in the company of a young soldier whom, with a nod to me, he engaged in conversation.
‘That’s the man,’ I said.
We sat down to eat; wine was brought, the soldier was plied with it, got drunk and fell asleep where he sat, whereupon my friend locked the door and slit his throat.
‘The girl he murdered was my sister,’ he explained. ‘This man debauched her, and though I had heard some gossip to that effect, I didn’t believe it. Still, I threw my sister out and refused to have anything to do with her. Apparently she ran off to him – though I had no idea what was going on until he killed her – but when I recognized the anklets, I went and asked the women what had become of her, and they told me she was at So-and-So’s. I said I had forgiven her, and they were to send for her and have her fetched home. From their stammered replies, I realized he had killed her, just as you said. So I killed him. Now let’s go and bury him.’ So we stole out at night and buried him, after which I made my way back to the waterfront and fled to Baghdad, swearing never to go to another party or ask anyone to look after anything for me.
As for funerals: once, when I was in Baghdad, I went out on some business one hot day at noon and ran into two men carrying a bier. I said to myself, ‘This must be the funeral of some pauper from out of town; I’ll do my soul a bit of good by helping these two to carry the bier,’ and put my shoulder to it, relieving one of the bearers – who immediately vanished without a trace.
‘Bearer! bearer!’ I shouted; but the other man said:
‘Keep walking and shut up. The “bearer”’s gone.’
‘I most certainly will not; I’m going to drop it right here,’ I retorted.
‘You most certainly will,’ returned the other, ‘or I shall scream blue murder.’
Somewhat abashed, I reminded myself of the good this would do my soul, and together we carried the bier to the funeral mosque; but no sooner had we set it down than the remaining bearer disappeared. ‘What’s the matter with these bastards?’ I said to myself. ‘Well, I certainly mean to earn my reward. Here, gravedigger,’ I called, fetching some money out of my sleeve, ‘where is he to be buried?’
‘Search me,’ he said; so I had to give him two dirhams to dig a grave; and just as the bier was poised over it for the corpse to be emptied in, the gravedigger leapt back and dealt me such a clout that my turban was knocked sideways.
‘Murderer!’ he screamed.
This fetched a crowd, who all wanted to know what he was shouting about.
‘This man,’ says the gravedigger, ‘brings me this corpse, with no head to it, and asks me to bury it,’ and as he twitched back the shroud, they saw that the body was indeed headless.
Not only was I utterly flabbergasted, but the crowd nearly beat me to death, before carrying me off to the chief of police, where the gravedigger told his tale, and, as there were no witnesses to the crime, I was stripped for whipping to make me confess. So bemused was I that I still had nothing to say for myself; but luckily, the chief of police had an intelligent clerk who, noting my perplexity, asked him to wait while he conducted an investigation; he thought I was inno
cent. His request was granted; he interrogated me in private and I told him exactly what had happened, adding and omitting nothing. He then had the corpse removed from the bier which, on examination, proved to bear the legend: ‘property of Such-and-Such a mosque in Such-and-Such a quarter’. He proceeded to the mosque, in disguise, with his men, and found a tailor, whom he asked whether they had a bier, pretending that he needed it for a funeral, and was told that the mosque did own a bier, but that it had been taken away to be used that morning and not returned.
‘Who took it?’ asked the clerk.
‘The people who live over there,’ said the tailor, gesturing towards a house. The clerk sent his men to raid it, and found a group of unmarried men, whom he arrested and sent to the police station. He then reported to his chief, who questioned them, and to whom they confessed that they had fallen out over a pretty little slave-boy and had killed him, thrown his head into a pit they had dug in the house, and carried him out headless on the bier; the two bearers were two of their number, and had fled on a pre-arranged signal.
The men were executed; I was released; and that is the reason I have sworn never to attend another funeral.
Julia Ashtiany, 'Al-Tanukhi’s Al-Faraj ba'd al-Shidda as a
Literary Source’, in Alan Jones (ed.), Arabicus Felix: Essays in
Honour of A. F. L. Beeston on his Eightieth Birthday
(Reading, Berks., 1991), pp. 108-11
COMMENTARY
People who claimed descent from the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law 'Ali ibn Abi Talib enjoyed special privileges and were represented by an officer known as a naqib. One of his chief duties was to check that the genealogies of those claiming such a distinguished descent were genuine.