Footnote 375:
Arab. Dara’ or Dira’ = armour, whether of leather or metal; here the
coat worn under the mail.
Footnote 376:
Called from Rustak, a quarter of Baghdad. For Rusták town see vol. vi.
289.
Footnote 377:
From Damietta comes our “dimity.” The classical name was Tamiáthis
apparently Coptic græcised: the old town on the shore famed in
Crusading times was destroyed in A.H. 648 = 1251.
Footnote 378:
Easterns are always startled by a sudden summons to the presence
either of King or Kazi: here the messenger gives the youth to
understand that it is in kindness, not in anger.
Footnote 379:
_i.e._ in not sending for thee to court instead of allowing thee to
live in the city without guest-rite.
Footnote 380:
In sign of agitation: the phrase has often been used in this sense and
we find it also in Al-Mas’udi.
Footnote 381:
I would remind the reader that the “Dawát” (ink-case) contains the
reed-pens.
Footnote 382:
Two well-known lovers.
Footnote 383:
On such occasions the old woman (and Easterns are hard de dolo
vetularum) always assents to the sayings of her prey, well knowing
what the doings will inevitably be.
Footnote 384:
Travellers, Nomads, Wild Arabs.
Footnote 385:
Whither they bear thee back dead with the women crying and keening.
Footnote 386:
Arab. Aznání = emaciated me.
Footnote 387:
Either the Deity or the Love-god.
Footnote 388:
Arab. “Himà” = the tribal domain, a word which has often occurred.
Footnote 389:
“O ye who believe! seek help through patience and prayer: verily,
Allah is with the patient.” Koran ii. 148. The passage refers to one
of the battles, Bedr or Ohod.
Footnote 390:
Arab. “Sirr” (a secret) and afterwards “Kitmán” (concealment) _i.e._
Keeping a lover down-hearted.
Footnote 391:
Arab. “’Alkam” = the bitter gourd, colocynth; more usually “Hanzal.”
Footnote 392:
“For Jazírah” = insula, island, used in the sense of “peninsula,” see
vol. i. 2.
Footnote 393:
Meccah and Al-Medinah. Pilgrimage i. 338 and ii. 57, used in the
proverb “Sharr fi al-Haramayn” = wickedness in the two Holy Places.
Footnote 394:
Arab. Al-hamd (o li’llah).
Footnote 395:
_i.e._ play, such as the chase, or an earnest matter, such as war,
etc.
Footnote 396:
Arab. “Mizwad,” or Mizwád = lit. provision-bag, from Zád = viaticum;
afterwards called Kirbah (pron. Girbah, the popular term), and Sakl.
The latter is given in the Dictionaries as Askálah = scala, échelle,
stage, plank.
Footnote 397:
Those blood-feuds are most troublesome to the traveller, who may be
delayed by them for months: and, until a peace be patched up, he will
never be allowed to pass from one tribe to their enemies. A quarrel of
the kind prevented my crossing Arabia from Al-Medinah to Maskat
(Pilgrimage, ii. 297), and another in Africa from visiting the head of
the Tanganyika Lake. In all such journeys the traveller who has to
fight against Time is almost sure to lose.
Footnote 398:
_i.e._ his fighting-men.
Footnote 399:
The popular treatment of a detected horse-thief, for which see
Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia (1829), and Notes on the Bedouins and
Wahabys (1830).
Footnote 400:
Arab. “Ashírah”: see vol. vii. 121.
Footnote 401:
Arab. “Musáfahah”: see vol. vi. 287.
Footnote 402:
In the text, “To the palace of the king’s daughter.”
Footnote 403:
Arab. “Marj Salí’” = cleft meadow (here and below). Mr. Payne suggests
that this may be a mistranscription for Marj Salí’ (with a Sád) = a
treeless champaign. It appears to me a careless blunder for the Marj
akhzar (green meadow) before mentioned.
Footnote 404:
The palace, even without especial and personal reasons, not being the
place for a religious and scrupulous woman.
Footnote 405:
“_i.e._ those of El Aziz, who had apparently entered the city or
passed through it on their way to the camp of El Abbas.” This is Mr.
Payne’s suggestion.
Footnote 406:
Arab. “Hatif”; gen. = an ally.
Footnote 407:
Not wishing to touch the hand of a strange woman.
Footnote 408:
_i.e._ a mere passer-by, a stranger; alluding to her taunt.
Footnote 409:
The Bactrian or double-humped dromedary. See vol. iii. 67. Al-Mas’udi
(vii. 169) calls it “Jamal fálij,” lit. = the palsy-camel.
Footnote 410:
_i.e._ Stars and planets.
Footnote 411:
_i.e._ Sang in tenor tones which are always in falsetto.
Footnote 412:
Arab. Tahzíb = reforming morals, amending conduct, chastening style.
Footnote 413:
_i.e._ so as to show only the whites, as happens to the “mesmerised.”
Footnote 414:
_i.e._ for love of and longing for thy youth.
Footnote 415:
_i.e._ leather from Al-Táif: see vol. viii. 303. The text has by
mistake Tálifí.
Footnote 416:
_i.e._ she was at her last breath, when cured by the magic of love.
Footnote 417:
_i.e._ violateth my private apartment.
Footnote 418:
The voice (Sházz) is left doubtful: it may be girl’s, nightingale’s,
or dove’s.
Footnote 419:
Arab. “Hibá,” partly induced by the rhyme. In desert countries the
comparison will be appreciated: in Sind the fine dust penetrates into
a closed book.
Footnote 420:
_i.e._ he smuggled it in under his ’Abá-cloak: perhaps it was a better
brand than that made in the monastery.
Footnote 421:
_i.e._ the delights of Paradise promised by the Prophet.
Footnote 422:
Again, “he” for “she,” making the lover’s address more courtly and
delicate.
Footnote 423:
_i.e._ take refuge with Allah from the evil eye of her charms.
Footnote 424:
_i.e._ an thou prank or adorn thyself: I have translated literally,
but the couplet strongly suggests “nonsense verses.”
Footnote 425:
Arab. “Santír:” Lane (M. E., chapt. xviii) describes it as resembling
the Kanún (dulcimer or zither) but with two oblique peg-pieces instead
of one and double chords of wire (not treble strings of lamb’s gut)
and played upon with two sticks instead of the little plectra. Dozy
also gives Santír from ψαλτήριον, the Fsaltrún of Daniel.
Footnote 426:
_i.e._ That which is ours shall be thine, and that which is incumbent
on thee shall be incumbent on us = we will assume thy debts and
responsibilities.
Footnote 427:
This passage is sadly disjointed in the text: I have followed Mr.
Payne’s ordering.
Footnote 428:
The Arab of noble tribe is always the first to mount his own mare: he
also greatly fears her being put out to full speed by a stranger,
holding that this should be reserved for occasions of life and death;
and that it can be done to perfection only once during the animal’s
life.
Footnote 429:
The red (Ahmar) dromedary like the white-red (Sahab) were most valued
because they are supposed best to bear the heats of noon; and thus
“red camels” is proverbially used for wealth. When the head of Abu
Jahl was brought in after the Battle of Bedr, Mahommed exclaimed,
“’Tis more acceptable to me than a red camel!”
Footnote 430:
_i.e._ Couriers on dromedaries, the only animals used for sending
messages over long distances.
Footnote 431:
These guest-fires are famous in Arab poetry. So Al-Harírí (Ass. of
Banu Haram) sings:—
A beacon fire I ever kindled high;
_i.e._ on the hill-tops near the camp, to guide benighted travellers.
Also the Lamíyat al-Ajam says:—
The fire of hospitality is ever lit on the high stations.
This natural telegraph was used in a host of ways by the Arabs of The
Ignorance; for instance, when a hated guest left the camp they lighted
the “Fire of Rejection,” and cried, “Allah, bear him far from us!”
Nothing was more ignoble than to quench such fire: hence in obloquy of
the Fazár tribe it was said:—
Ne’er trust Fazár with an ass, for they
Once roasted ass-pizzle, the rabble rout:
And, when sight they guest, to their dams they say,
“Piss quick on the guest-fire and put it out!”
(Al-Mas’údi vi. 140.)
Footnote 432:
_i.e._ of rare wood, set with rubies.
Footnote 433:
_i.e._ whose absence pained us.
Footnote 434:
Mr. Payne and I have long puzzled over these enigmatical and possibly
corrupt lines: he wrote to me in 1884, “This is the first piece that
has beaten me.” In the couplet above (vol. xii. 230) “Rayháni” may
mean “my basil-plant” or “my food” (the latter Koranic), “my
compassion,” etc.; and Súsáni is equally ancipitous “My lilies” or “my
sleep”: see Bard al-Susan = les douceurs du sommeil in Al-Mas’údi vii.
168.
Footnote 435:
The “Niká” or sand hill is the swell of the throat: the Ghaur or
lowland is the fall of the waist: the flower is the breast anent which
Mr. Payne appropriately quotes the well-known lines of Fletcher:
“Hide, O hide those hills of snow,
That thy frozen bosom bears,
_On whose tops the pinks that grow_
Are of those that April wears.”
Footnote 436:
Easterns are right in regarding a sleepy languorous look as one of the
charms of women, and an incitement to love because suggestive only of
bed. Some men also find the same pleasure in a lacrymose expression of
countenance, seeming always to call for consolation: one of the most
successful women I know owes her exceptional good fortune to this
charm.
Footnote 437:
Arab. “Hájib,” eyebrow or chamberlain; see vol. iii. 233. The pun is
classical used by a host of poets including Al-Harírí.
Footnote 438:
Arab. “Tarfah.” There is a Tarfia Island in the Guadalquivir and in
Gibraltar a “Tarfah Alto” opposed to “Tarfah bajo.” But it must not be
confounded with Tarf = a side, found in the Maroccan term for “The
Rock” Jabal al-Tarf = Mountain of the Point (of Europe).
Footnote 439:
For Solomon and his flying carpet see vol. iii. 267.
Footnote 440:
Arab. “Bilád al-Maghrib (al-Aksa,” in full) = the Farthest Land of the
setting Sun, shortly called Al-Maghrib and the people “Maghribi.” The
earliest occurrence of our name Morocco or Marocco I find in the
“Marákiyah” of Al-Mas’udi (iii. 241), who apparently applies it to a
district whither the Berbers migrated.
Footnote 441:
The necklace-pearls are the cup-bearer’s teeth.
Footnote 442:
In these unregenerate days they would often be summoned to the houses
of the royal family; but now they had “got religion” and, becoming
freed women, were resolved to be “respectable.” In not a few Moslem
countries men of wealth and rank marry professional singers who,
however loose may have been their artistic lives, mostly distinguish
themselves by decency of behaviour often pushed to the extreme of
rigour. Also jeune coquette, vieille dévote, is a rule of the world,
Eastern and Western.
Footnote 443:
Bresl. Edit., vol. xii. p. 383 (Night mi). The king is called as usual
“Shahrbán,” which is nearly synonymous with Shahryár.
Footnote 444:
_i.e._ the old Sindibad-Námeh (see vol. vi. 122), or “The Malice of
Women” which the Bresl. Edit. entitles, “Tale of the King and his Son
and his Wife and the Seven Wazirs.” Here it immediately follows the
Tale of Al-Abbas and Mariyah and occupies pp. 237–383 of vol. xii.
(Nights dcccclxxix-m).
Footnote 445:
_i.e._ Those who commit it.
Footnote 446:
The connection between this pompous introduction and the story which
follows is not apparent. The “Tale of the Two Kings and the Wazir’s
Daughters” is that of Shahrazad told in the third person, in fact a
rechauffé of the Introduction. But as some three years have passed
since the marriage, and the dénoûement of the plot is at hand, the
Princess is made, with some art I think, to lay the whole affair
before her husband in her own words, the better to bring him to a
“sense of his duty.”
Footnote 447:
Bresl. Edit. vol. xii. pp. 384–412.
Footnote 448:
This clause is taken from the sequence, where the elder brother’s
kingdom is placed in China.
Footnote 449:
For the Tobbas = “Successors” or the Himyaritic kings, see vol. i.
216.
Footnote 450:
Kayásirah, opp. to Akásirah, here and in many other places.
Footnote 451:
See vol. ii. 77. King Kulayb (“little dog”) al-Wá’il, a powerful chief
of the Banu Ma’ad in the Kasín district of Najd, who was connected
with the war of Al-Basús. He is so called because he lamed a pup
(kulayb) and tied it up in the midst of his Himà (domain, place of
pasture and water), forbidding men to camp within sound of its bark or
sight of his fire. Hence “more masterful than Kulayb,” A.P. ii. 145,
and Al-Hariri Ass. xxvi. (Chenery, p. 448). This angry person came by
his death for wounding in the udder a trespassing camel (Sorab) whose
owner was a woman named Basús. Her friend (Jasús) slew him; and thus
arose the famous long war between the tribes Wá’il Bakr and Taghlib.
It gave origin to the saying, “Die thou and be an expiation for the
shoe-latchet of Kulayb.”
Footnote 452:
Arab. “Mukhaddarát,” maidens concealed behind curtains and veiled in
the Harem.
Footnote 453:
_i.e._ The professional Ráwis or tale-reciters who learned stories by
heart from books like “The Arabian Nights.” See my Terminal Essay, vol
x. 163.
Footnote 454:
Arab. “Bid’ah,” lit. = an innovation, a new thing, an invention, any
change from the custom of the Prophet and the universal practice of
the Faith, whether it be in the cut of the beard or a question of
state policy. Popularly the word = heterodoxy, heresy; but
theologically it is not necessarily used in a bad sense. See vol. v.
167.
Footnote 455:
About three parts of this sentence have been supplied by Mr. Payne,
the careless scribe having evidently omitted it.
Footnote 456:
Here, as in the Introduction (vol. i. 24), the king consummates his
marriage in presence of his virgin sister-in-law, a process which
decency forbids amongst Moslems.
Footnote 457:
Al-Mas’udi (vol. iv. 213) uses this term to signify viceroy in
“Shahryár Sajastán.”
Footnote 458:
_i.e._ his indifference to the principles of right and wrong, which is
a manner of moral intoxication.
Footnote 459:
_i.e._ hath mentioned the office of Wazir (in Koran xx. 30).
Footnote 460:
_i.e._ Moslems, who practise the Religion of Resignation.
Footnote 461:
Koran xxxiii. 35. This is a proemium to the “revelation” concerning
Zayd and Zaynab.
Footnote 462:
_i.e._ I have an embarras de richesse in my repertory.
Footnote 463:
The title is from the Bresl. Edit. (vol. xii. pp. 398–402). Mr. Payne
calls it “The Favourite and her Lover.”
Footnote 464:
The practice of fumigating gugglets is universal in Egypt (Lane, M.
E., chapt. v.); but I never heard of musk being so used.
Footnote 465:
Arab. “Laysa fi ’l-diyári dayyár”—a favourite jingle.
Footnote 466:
Arab. “Khayr Kathir” (pron. Katír) which also means “abundant
kindness.”
Footnote 467:
Dozy says of “Hunayní” (Haíní), Il semble être le nom d’un vêtement.
On which we may remark, Connu!
Footnote 468:
Arab. Harísah: see vol. i. 131. Westerns make a sad mess of this dish
when they describe it as une sorte _d’olla podrida_ (the hotch-pot),
une pâtée de viandes, de froment et de légumes secs (Al-Mas’udi viii.
438). Whenever I have eaten it, it was always a meat-pudding, for
which see vol. i. 131.
Footnote 469:
Evidently one escaped because she was sleeping with the Caliph and a
second because she had kept her assignation.
Footnote 470:
Mr. Payne entitles it, “The Merchant of Cairo and the Favourite of the
Khalif el Mamoun el Hakim bi Amrillah.”
Footnote 471:
See my Pilgrimage (i. 100): the seat would be on the same bit of
boarding where the master sits or on a stool or bench in the street.
Footnote 472:
This is true Cairene chaff, give and take; and the stranger must
accustom himself to it before he can be at home with the people.
Footnote 473:
_i.e._ In Rauzah-island: see vol. v. 169.
Footnote 474:
There is no historical person who answers to these names, “The Secure,
the Ruler by Commandment of Allah.” The cognomen applies to two
soldans of Egypt, of whom the later Abu al-Abbas Ahmad the Abbaside
(A.D. 1261–1301) has already been mentioned in The Nights (vol. v.
86). The tale suggests the earlier Al-Hakim (Abu Ali al-Mansúr, the
Fatimite, A.D. 995–1021), the God of the Druze “persuasion;” and the
tale-teller may have purposely blundered in changing Mansúr to Maamún
for fear of offending a sect which has been most dangerous in the
matter of assassination and which is capable of becoming so again.
Footnote 475:
Arab. “’Alà kulli hál” = “whatever may betide,” or “willy-nilly.” The
phrase is still popular.
Footnote 476:
The dulce desipere of young lovers, he making a buffoon of himself to
amuse her.
Footnote 477:
“The convent of Clay,” a Coptic monastery near Cairo.
Footnote 478:
_i.e._ this is the time to show thyself a man.
Footnote 479:
The Eastern succedaneum for swimming corks and other
“life-preservers.” The practice is very ancient: we find these gourds
upon the monuments of Egypt and Babylonia.
Footnote 480:
Arab. “Al-Khalíj,” the name, still popular, of the Grand Canal of
Cairo, whose banks, by-the-by, are quaint and picturesque as anything
of the kind in Holland.
Footnote 481:
A few lines higher up it was “her neck”; but the jar may have slipped
down.
Footnote 482:
We say more laconically “A friend in need.”
Footnote 483:
Arab. “Názir al-Mawárís”, the employé charged with the disposal of
legacies and seizing escheats to the Crown when Moslems die intestate.
He is usually a prodigious rascal as in the text. The office was long
kept up in Southern Europe, and Camoens was sent to Macao as “Provedor
dos defuntos e ausentes.”
Footnote 484:
Sir R. F. Burton has since found two more of “Galland’s” tales in an
Arabic text of The Nights, namely, Aladdin and Zeyn al-Asnam.
Footnote 485:
_i.e._ wondering; thus Lady Macbeth says:
“You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting,
With most _admired_ disorder.”—_Macbeth_, iii. 4.
Footnote 486:
Ludovicus Vives, one of the most learned of Spanish authors, was born
at Valentia in 1492 and died in 1540.
Footnote 487:
There was an older “Tútí Náma,” which Nakhshabí modernised, made from
a Sanskrit story-book, now lost, but its modern representative is the
“Suka Saptatí,” or Seventy (Tales) of a Parrot, in which most of
Nakhshabí’s tales are found.
Footnote 488:
According to Lescallier’s French translation of the “Bakhtyár Náma,”
made from two MSS. = “She had previously had a lover, with whom,
_unknown to her father_, she had intimate relations, and had given
birth to a beautiful boy, whose education she secretly confided to
some trusty servants.”
Footnote 489:
There is a slight mistake in the passage in p. 313 supplied from the
story in vol. vi. It is not King Shah Bakht, but the other king, who
assures his chamberlain that “the lion” had done him no injury.
Footnote 490:
Such was formerly the barbarous manner of treating the insane.
Footnote 491:
From “Tarlton’s Newes out of Purgatorie.”
Footnote 492:
A basket.
Footnote 493:
In the _fabliau_ “De la Dame qui atrappa un Prêtre, un Prévôt, et un
Forestier” (or Constant du Hamel), the lady, on the pretext that her
husband is at the door, stuffs her lovers, as they arrive
successively, unknown to each other, into a large tub full of feathers
and afterwards exposes them to public ridicule.
Footnote 494:
Until.
Footnote 495:
Requite.
Footnote 496:
Accidents.
Footnote 497:
A boarding.
Footnote 498:
The letter I is very commonly substituted for “ay” in 16th century
English books.
Footnote 499:
Oesterley mentions a Sanskrit redaction of the Vampyre Tales
attributed to Sivadása, and another comprised in the “Kathárnava.”
Footnote 500:
And well might his sapient majesty “wonder”! The humour of this
passage is exquisite.
Footnote 501:
In the Tamil version (Babington’s translation of the “Vedála Kadai”)
there are but two brothers, one of whom is fastidious in his food, the
other in beds; the latter lies on a bed stuffed with flowers, deprived
of their stalks. In the morning he complains of pains all over his
body, and on examining the bed one hair is found amongst the flowers.
In the Hindi version the king asks him in the morning whether he had
slept comfortably. “O great King,” he replied; “I did not sleep all
night.” “How so?” quoth he. “O great King, in the seventh fold of the
bedding there is a hair, which pricked me in the back, therefore I
could not sleep.” The youth who was fastidious about the fair sex had
a lovely damsel laid beside him, and he was on the point of kissing
her, but on smelling her breath he turned away his face, and went to
sleep. Early in the morning the king (who had observed through a
lattice what passed) asked him, “Did you pass the night pleasantly?”
He replied that he did not, because the smell of a goat proceeded from
the girl’s mouth, which made him very uneasy. The king then sent for
the procuress and ascertained that the girl had been brought up on
goat’s milk.
Footnote 502:
Mélusine: Revue de Mythologie, Littérature Populaire, Traditions, et
Usages. Dirigée par H. Gaidoz et E. Rolland.—Paris.
Footnote 503:
The trick of the clever Magyar in marking all the other sleepers as
the king’s mother had marked himself occurs in the folk-tales of most
countries, especially in the numerous versions of the Robbery of the
King’s Treasury, which are brought together in my work on the
Migrations of Popular Tales and Fictions (Blackwood), vol. ii., pp.
113–165.
Footnote 504:
A mythical saint, or prophet, who, according to the Muslim legend, was
despatched by one of the ancient kings of Persia to procure him some
of the Water of Life. After a tedious journey, Khizr reached the
Fountain of Immortality, but having drank of its waters, it suddenly
vanished. Muslims believe that Khizr still lives, and sometimes
appears to favoured individuals, always clothed in green, and acts as
their guide in difficult enterprises.
Footnote 505:
“Spake these words to the king”—certainly not those immediately
preceding! but that, if the king would provide for him during three
years, at the end of that period he would show Khizr to the king.
Footnote 506:
Mr. Gibb compares with this the following passage from Boethius, “De
Consolatione Philosophiæ,” as translated by Chaucer: “All thynges
seken ayen to hir propre course, and all thynges rejoysen on hir
retourninge agayne to hir nature.”
Footnote 507:
In this tale, we see, Khizr appears to the distressed man in _white_
raiment.
Footnote 508:
In an old English metrical version of the “Seven Sages,” the tutors of
the prince, in order to test his progress in general science, secretly
place an ivy leaf under each of the four posts of his bed, and when he
awakes in the morning—
“Par fay!” he said, “a ferli cas!
Other ich am of wine y-drunk,
Other the firmament is sunk,
Other wexen is the ground,
The thickness of four leavès round!
So much to-night higher I lay,
Certes, than yesterday.”
Footnote 509:
See also the same story in The Nights, vols. vii. and viii., which Mr.
Kirby considers as probably a later version. (App. vol. x. of The
Nights, p. 500.)
Footnote 510:
So, too, in the “Bahár-i-Dánish” a woman is described as being so able
a professor in the school of deceit, that she could have instructed
the devil in the science of stratagem; of another it is said that by
her wiles she could have drawn the devil’s claws; and of a third the
author declares, that the devil himself would own there was no
escaping from her cunning!
Footnote 511:
There is a similar tale by the Spanish novelist Isidro de Robles
(circa 1660), in which three ladies find a diamond ring in a fountain;
each claims it; at length they agree to refer the dispute to a count
of their acquaintance who happened to be close by. He takes charge of
the ring and says to the ladies, “Whoever in the space of six weeks
shall succeed in playing off on her husband the most clever and
ingenious trick (always having due regard to his honour) shall possess
the ring; in the meantime it shall remain in my hands.” (See Roscoe’s
“Specimens of the Spanish Novelists,” Chandos edition, p. 438 ff.)
This story was probably brought by the Moors to Spain, whence it may
have passed into France, since it is the subject of a _fabliau_, by
Haisiau the trouvère, entitled “Des Trois Dames qui trouverent un
Anel,” which is found in Méon’s edition of Barbazan, 1808, tome iii.
pp. 220–229, and in Le Grand, ed. 1781, tome iv. pp. 163–165.
Footnote 512:
Idiots and little boys often figure thus in popular tales: readers of
Rabelais will remember his story of the Fool and the Cook; and there
is a familiar example of a boy’s precocity in the story of the Stolen
Purse—“Craft and Malice of Women,” or the Seven Wazírs, vol. vi. of
The Nights.
Footnote 513: