that the work has been written down from the Ráwi or Nakkál,[300] the
conteur or professional story-teller, also called Kassás and Maddáh,
corresponding with the Hindu Bhat or Bard. To these men my learned
friend Baron A. von Kremer would attribute the Mu’allakát vulgarly
called the Suspended Poems, as being “indited from the relation of the
Ráwi.” Hence in our text the frequent interruption of the formula Kál’
al-Ráwi = quotes the reciter; _dice Turpino_. Moreover, The Nights read
in many places like a hand-book or guide for the professional, who would
learn them by heart; here and there introducing his “gag” and “patter.”
To this “business” possibly we may attribute much of the ribaldry which
starts up in unexpected places: it was meant simply to provoke a laugh.
How old the custom is and how unchangeable is Eastern life is shown, a
correspondent suggests, by the Book of Esther which might form part of
The Alf Laylah. “On that night (we read in Chap. vi. 1) could not the
King sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the
chronicles; and they were read before the King.” The Ráwi would declaim
the recitative somewhat in conversational style; he would intone the
Saj’a or prose-rhyme and he would chant to the twanging of the Rabáb, a
one-stringed viol, the poetical parts. Dr. Scott[301] borrows from the
historian of Aleppo a life-like picture of the Story-teller. “He recites
walking to and fro in the middle of the coffee-room, stopping only now
and then, when the expression requires some emphatical attitude. He is
commonly heard with great attention; and not unfrequently in the midst
of some interesting adventure, when the expectation of his audience is
raised to the highest pitch, he breaks off abruptly and makes his
escape, leaving both his hero or heroine and his audience in the utmost
embarrassment. Those who happen to be near the door endeavour to detain
him, insisting upon the story being finished before he departs; but he
always makes his retreat good[302]; and the auditors suspending their
curiosity are induced to return at the same time next day to hear the
sequel. He has no sooner made his exit than the company in separate
parties fall to disputing about the characters of the drama or the event
of an unfinished adventure. The controversy by degrees becomes serious
and opposite opinions are maintained with no less warmth than if the
fall of the city depended upon the decision.”
At Tangier, where a murder in a “coffee-house” had closed these hovels,
pending a sufficient payment to the Pasha; and where, during the hard
winter of 1885–86, the poorer classes were compelled to puff their Kayf
(Bhang, _cannabis indica_) and sip their black coffee in the muddy
streets under a rainy sky, I found the Ráwi active on Sundays and
Thursdays, the market-days. The favourite place was the “Soko de barra,”
or large bazar, outside the town whose condition is that of Suez and
Bayrut half a century ago. It is a foul slope; now slippery with viscous
mud, then powdery with fetid dust, dotted with graves and decaying
tombs, unclean booths, gargottes and tattered tents, and frequented by
women, mere bundles of unclean rags, and by men wearing the haik or
burnús, a Franciscan frock, tending their squatting camels and
chaffering over cattle for Gibraltar beef-eaters. Here the market-people
form ring about the reciter, a stalwart man affecting little raiment
besides a broad waist-belt into which his lower chiffons are tucked, and
noticeable only for his shock hair, wild eyes, broad grin and generally
disreputable aspect. He usually handles a short stick; and, when drummer
and piper are absent, he carries a tiny tom-tom shaped like an
hour-glass, upon which he taps the periods. This Scealuidhe, as the
Irish call him, opens the drama with extempore prayer, proving that he
and the audience are good Moslems: he speaks slowly and with emphasis,
varying the diction with breaks of animation, abundant action and the
most comical grimace: he advances, retires and wheels about,
illustrating every point with pantomime; and his features, voice and
gestures are so expressive that even Europeans who cannot understand a
word of Arabic divine the meaning of his tale. The audience stands
breathless and motionless surprising strangers[303] by the ingenuousness
and freshness of feeling hidden under their hard and savage exterior.
The performance usually ends with the embryo actor going round for alms
and flourishing in air every silver bit, the usual honorarium being a
few “f’lús,” that marvellous money of Barbary, big coppers worth
one-twelfth of a penny. All the tales I heard were purely local, but
Fakhri Bey, a young Osmanli domiciled for some time in Fez and Mequinez,
assured me that The Nights are still recited there.
Many travellers, including Dr. Russell, have complained that they failed
to find a complete MS. copy of The Nights. Evidently they never heard of
the popular superstition which declares that no one can read through
them without dying—it is only fair that my patrons should know this.
Yacoub Artín Pasha declares that the superstition dates from the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and he explains it in two ways.
Firstly, it is a facetious exaggeration, meaning that no one has leisure
or patience to wade through the long repertory. Secondly, the work is
condemned as futile. When Egypt produced savants and legists like Ibn
al-Hajar, Al-’Ayni, and Al-Kastalláni, to mention no others, the taste
of the country inclined to dry factual studies and positive science;
nor, indeed, has this taste wholly died out: there are not a few who,
like Khayri Pasha, contend that the mathematic is more useful even for
legal studies than history and geography, and at Cairo the chief of the
Educational Department has always been an engineer, _i.e._, a
mathematician. The Olema declared war against all “futilities,” in which
they included not only stories but also what is politely entitled
Authentic History. From this to the fatal effect of such lecture is only
a step. Society, however, cannot rest without light literature; so the
novel-reading class was thrown back upon writings which had all the
indelicacy and few of the merits of The Nights.
Turkey is the only Moslem country which has dared to produce a regular
drama[304] and to arouse the energies of such brilliant writers as Muníf
Pasha, statesman and scholar; Ekrem Bey, literato and professor; Kemál
Bey held by some to be the greatest writer in modern Osmanli-land and
Abd al-Hakk Hamíd Bey, first Secretary of the London Embassy. The
theatre began in its ruder form by taking subjects bodily from The
Nights; then it annexed its plays as we do—the Novel having ousted the
Drama—from the French; and lastly it took courage to be original. Many
years ago I saw Harun al-Rashid and the Three Kalandars, with deer-skins
and all their properties de rigueur, in the courtyard of Government
House, Damascus, declaiming to the extreme astonishment and delight of
the audience. It requires only to glance at The Nights for seeing how
much histrionic matter they contain.
In considering the style of The Nights we must bear in mind that the
work has never been edited according to our ideas of the process.
Consequently there is no just reason for translating the whole verbatim
et literatim, as has been done by Torrens, Lane and Payne in his “Tales
from the Arabic.”[305] This conscientious treatment is required for
versions of an author like Camoens whose works were carefully corrected
and arranged by a competent littérateur, but it is not merited by The
Nights as they now are. The Macnaghten, the Bulak and the Bayrut texts,
though printed from MSS. identical in order, often differ in minor
matters. Many friends have asked me to undertake the work: but, even if
lightened by the aid of Shaykhs, Munshis and copyists, the labour would
be severe, tedious and thankless: better leave the holes open than patch
them with fancy work or with heterogeneous matter. The learned, indeed,
as Lane tells us (i. 74; iii. 740), being thoroughly dissatisfied with
the plain and popular, the ordinary and “vulgar” note of the language,
have attempted to refine and improve it and have more than once
threatened to remodel it, that is, to make it odious. This would be to
dress up Robert Burns in plumes borrowed from Dryden and Pope.
The first defect of the texts is in the distribution and arrangement of
the matter, as I have noticed in the case of Sindbad the Seaman (vol.
vi. 77). Moreover, many of the earlier Nights are overlong and not a few
of the others are overshort: this, however, has the prime recommendation
of variety. Even the vagaries of editor and scribe will not account for
all the incoherences, disorder and inconsequence, and for the vain
iterations which suggest that the author has forgotten what he said. In
places there are dead allusions to persons and tales which are left
dark, _e.g._ vol. i. pp. 43, 57, 61, etc. The digressions are abrupt and
useless, leading nowhere, while sundry pages are wearisome for excess of
prolixity or hardly intelligible for extreme conciseness. The perpetual
recurrence of mean colloquialisms and of words and idioms peculiar to
Egypt and Syria[306] also takes from the pleasure of the perusal. Yet we
cannot deny that it has its use: this unadorned language of familiar
conversation in its day, adapted for the understanding of the people, is
best fitted for the Rawi’s craft in the camp and caravan, the Harem, the
bazar and the coffee-house. Moreover, as has been well said, The Nights
is the only written half-way house between the literary and colloquial
Arabic which is accessible to all, and thus it becomes necessary to the
students who would qualify themselves for service in Moslem lands from
Mauritania to Mesopotamia. It freely uses Turkish words like “Khátún”
and Persian terms as “Sháhbandar,” thus requiring for translation not
only a somewhat archaic touch, but also a vocabulary borrowed from
various sources: otherwise the effect would not be reproduced. In
places, however, the style rises to the highly ornate approaching the
pompous; _e.g._ the Wazirial addresses in the tale of King Jali’ad. The
battle-scenes, mostly admirable (vol. v. 365), are told with the
conciseness of a despatch and the vividness of an artist; the two
combining to form perfect “word-pictures.” Of the Badí’a or euphuistic
style, “parleying euphuism,” and of Al-Saj’a, the prose rhyme, I shall
speak in a future page.
The characteristics of the whole are naïveté and simplicity, clearness
and a singular concision. The gorgeousness is in the imagery not in the
language; the words are weak while the sense, as in the classical
Scandínavian books, is strong; and here the Arabic differs diametrically
from the florid exuberance and turgid amplifications of the Persian
story-teller, which sound so hollow and unreal by the side of a chaster
model. It abounds in formulæ such as repetitions of religious phrases
which are unchangeable. There are certain stock comparisons, as Lokman’s
wisdom, Joseph’s beauty, Jacob’s grief, Job’s patience, David’s music,
and Maryam the Virgin’s chastity. The eyebrow is a Nún; the eye a Sád,
the mouth a Mím. A hero is more prudent than the crow, a better guide
than the Katá grouse, more generous than the cock, warier than the
crane, braver than the lion, more aggressive than the panther,
finer-sighted than the horse, craftier than the fox, greedier than the
gazelle, more vigilant than the dog, and thriftier than the ant. The
cup-boy is a sun rising from the dark underworld symbolised by his
collar; his cheek-mole is a crumb of ambergris, his nose is a scymitar
grided at the curve; his lower lip is a jujube; his teeth are the
Pleiades, or hailstones; his browlocks are scorpions; his young hair on
the upper lip is an emerald; his side beard is a swarm of ants or a Lám
(l-letter) enclosing the roses or anemones of his cheek. The cup-girl is
a moon who rivals the sheen of the sun; her forehead is a pearl set off
by the jet of her “idiot-fringe;” her eyelashes scorn the sharp sword;
and her glances are arrows shot from the bow of the eyebrows. A mistress
necessarily belongs, though living in the next street, to the Wady Liwá
and to a hostile clan of Badawin whose blades are ever thirsting for the
lover’s blood and whose malignant tongues aim only at the “defilement of
separation.” Youth is upright as an Alif, or slender and bending as a
branch of the Bán-tree which we should call a willow-wand,[307] while
Age, crabbed and crooked, bends groundwards vainly seeking in the dust
his lost juvenility. As Baron de Slane says of these stock comparisons
(Ibn Khall. i. xxxvi.), “The figurative language of Moslem poets is
often difficult to be understood. The _narcissus_ is the eye; the
_feeble_ stem of that plant bends _languidly_ under its flower, and thus
recalls to mind the languor of the eyes. _Pearls_ signify both _tears_
and _teeth_; the latter are sometimes called _hailstones_, from their
whiteness and moisture; the _lips_ are _cornelians_ or _rubies_; the
_gums_, a _pomegranate flower_; the dark _foliage_ of the _myrtle_ is
synonymous with the _black hair_ of the beloved, or with the first down
on the cheeks of puberty. The _down_ itself is called the _izâr_, or
head-stall of the bridle, and the curve of the izar is compared to the
letters lâm (ل) and nûn (ن).[308] Ringlets trace on the cheek or
neck the letter Wâw (و); they are called _Scorpions_ (as the Greek
σκορπίος), either from their dark colour or their agitated movements;
the _eye_ is a _sword_; the _eyelids scabbards_; the _whiteness_ of the
complexion, _camphor_; and a _mole_ or _beauty-spot_, _musk_, which term
denotes also _dark hair_. A _mole_ is sometimes compared also to an
_ant_ creeping on the cheek towards the _honey_ of the mouth; a
_handsome face_ is both a _full moon_ and _day_; _black hair_ is
_night_; the _waist_ is a _willow-branch_ or a _lance_; the _water of
the face_ is _self-respect_: a poet _sells the water of his face_[309]
when he bestows mercenary praises on a rich patron.”
This does not sound promising: yet, as has been said of Arab music, the
persistent repetition of the same notes in the minor key is by no means
monotonous and ends with haunting the ear, occupying the thought and
touching the soul. Like the distant frog-concert and chirp of the
cicada, the creak of the water-wheel and the stroke of hammers upon the
anvil from afar, the murmur of the fountain, the sough of the wind and
the plash of the wavelet, they occupy the sensorium with a soothing
effect, forming a barbaric music full of sweetness and peaceful
pleasure.
§ IV.
SOCIAL CONDITION.
I here propose to treat of the Social Condition which The Nights
discloses, of Al-Islam at the earlier period of its development,
concerning the position of women and about the pornology of the great
Saga-book.
A.—AL-ISLAM.
A splendid and glorious life was that of Baghdad in the days of the
mighty Caliph,[310] when the Capital had towered to the zenith of
grandeur and was already trembling and tottering to the fall. The centre
of human civilization, which was then confined to Greece and Arabia, and
the metropolis of an Empire exceeding in extent the widest limits of
Rome, it was essentially a city of pleasure, a Paris of the ixth
century. The “Palace of Peace” (Dár al-Salám), worthy successor of
Babylon and Nineveh, which had outrivalled Damascus, the “Smile of the
Prophet,” and Kufah, the successor of Hira and the magnificent creation
of Caliph Omar, possessed unrivalled advantages of site and climate. The
Tigris-Euphrates Valley, where the fabled Garden of Eden has been
placed, in early ages succeeded the Nile-Valley as a great centre of
human development; and the prerogative of a central and commanding
position still promises it, even in the present state of decay and
desolation under the unspeakable Turk, a magnificent future,[311] when
railways and canals shall connect it with Europe. The city of palaces
and government offices, hotels and pavilions, mosques and colleges,
kiosks and squares, bazars and markets, pleasure grounds and orchards,
adorned with all the graceful charms which Saracenic architecture had
borrowed from the Byzantines, lay couched upon the banks of the
Dijlah-Hiddekel under a sky of marvellous purity and in a climate which
makes mere life a “Kayf”—the luxury of tranquil enjoyment. It was
surrounded by far-extending suburbs, like Rusáfah on the Eastern side
and villages like Baturanjah, dear to the votaries of pleasure; and with
the roar of a gigantic capital mingled the hum of prayer, the trilling
of birds, the thrilling of harp and lute, the shrilling of pipes, the
witching strains of the professional Almah, and the minstrel’s lay.
The population of Baghdad must have been enormous when the smallest
number of her sons who fell victims to Huláku Khan in 1258 was estimated
at eight hundred thousand, while other authorities more than double the
terrible “butcher’s bill.” Her policy and polity were unique. A
well-regulated routine of tribute and taxation, personally inspected by
the Caliph; a network of waterways, canaux d’arrosage; a noble system of
highways, provided with viaducts, bridges and caravanserais, and a
postal service of mounted couriers enabled it to collect as in a
reservoir the wealth of the outer world. The facilities for education
were upon the most extended scale; large sums, from private as well as
public sources, were allotted to Mosques, each of which, by the
admirable rule of Al-Islam, was expected to contain a school: these
establishments were richly endowed and stocked with professors collected
from every land between Khorasan and Marocco[312]; and immense
libraries[313] attracted the learned of all nations. It was a golden age
for poets and panegyrists, koranists and literati, preachers and
rhetoricians, physicians and scientists who, besides receiving high
salaries and fabulous presents, were treated with all the honours of
Chinese Mandarins; and, like these, the humblest Moslem—fisherman or
artizan—could aspire through knowledge or savoir faire to the highest
offices of the Empire. The effect was a grafting of Egyptian, and old
Mesopotamian, of Persian and Græco-Latin fruits, by long Time
deteriorated, upon the strong young stock of Arab genius; and the
result, as usual after such imping, was a shoot of exceptional
luxuriance and vitality. The educational establishments devoted
themselves to the three main objects recognized by the Moslem world,
Theology, Civil Law and Belles Lettres; and a multitude of trained
Councillors enabled the ruling powers to establish and enlarge that
complicated machinery of government, at once concentrated and
decentralized, a despotism often fatal to the wealthy great but never
neglecting the interests of the humbler lieges, which forms the beau
idéal of Oriental administration. Under the Chancellors of the empire
the Kazis administered law and order, justice and equity; and from their
decisions the poorest subject, Moslem or miscreant, could claim with the
general approval of the lieges, access and appeal to the Caliph who, as
Imám or Antistes of the Faith was High President of a Court of
Cassation.
Under wise administration Agriculture and Commerce, the twin pillars of
national prosperity, necessarily flourished. A scientific canalisation,
with irrigation-works inherited from the ancients, made the Mesopotamian
Valley a rival of Kemi the Black Land, and rendered cultivation a
certainty of profit, not a mere speculation as it must ever be to those
who perforce rely upon the fickle rains of Heaven. The remains of
extensive mines prove that this source of public wealth was not
neglected; navigation laws encouraged transit and traffic; and
ordinances for the fisheries aimed at developing a branch of industry
which is still backward even during the xixth century. Most substantial
encouragement was given to trade and commerce, to manufactures and
handicrafts, by the flood of gold which poured in from all parts of
earth; by the presence of a splendid and luxurious court, and by the
call for new arts and industries which such a civilization would
necessitate. The crafts were distributed into guilds and syndicates
under their respective chiefs, whom the government did not “govern too
much”: these Shahbandars, Mukaddams and Nakíbs regulated the several
trades, rewarded the industrious, punished the fraudulent and were
personally answerable, as we still see at Cairo, for the conduct of
their constituents. Public order, the sine quâ non of stability and
progress, was preserved first, by the satisfaction of the lieges who,
despite their characteristic turbulence, had few if any grievances; and,
secondly, by a well-directed and efficient police, an engine of
state-craft which in the West seems most difficult to perfect. In the
East, however, the Wali or Chief Commissioner can reckon more or less
upon the unsalaried assistance of society: the cities are divided into
quarters shut off one from other by night, and every Moslem is expected,
by his law and religion, to keep watch upon his neighbours, to report
their delinquencies and, if necessary, himself to carry out the penal
code. But in difficult cases the guardians of the peace were assisted by
a body of private detectives, women as well as men: these were called
Tawwábún = the Penitents, because like our Bow-street runners, they had
given up an even less respectable calling. Their adventures still
delight the vulgar, as did the Newgate Calendar of past generations; and
to this class we owe the Tales of Calamity Ahmad, Dalilah the Wily One,
Saladin with the three Chiefs of Police (vol. iv. 271), and Al-Malik
al-Záhir with the Sixteen Constables (Bresl. Edit. xi. pp. 321–99). Here
and in many other places we also see the origin of that “picaresque”
literature which arose in Spain and overran Europe; and which begat Le
Moyen de Parvenir.[314]
I need say no more on this heading, the civilisation of Baghdad
contrasting with the barbarism of Europe then Germanic, The Nights
itself being the best expositor. On the other hand the action of the
state-religion upon the state, the condition of Al-Islam during the
reign of Al-Rashid, its declension from the primitive creed and its
relation to Christianity and Christendom, require a somewhat extended
notice. In offering the following observations it is only fair to
declare my standpoints.
1. All forms of “faith,” that is, belief in things unseen, not
subject to the senses and therefore unknown and (in our present
stage of development) unknowable, are temporary and transitory; no
religion hitherto promulgated amongst men shows any prospect of
being final or otherwise than finite.
2. Religious ideas, which are necessarily limited, may all be traced
home to the old seat of science and art, creeds and polity in the
Nile-valley and to this day they retain the clearest signs of their
origin.
3. All so-called “revealed” religions consist mainly of three
portions, a cosmogony more or less mythical, a history more or less
falsified and a moral code more or less pure.
Al-Islam, it has been said, is essentially a fighting faith and never
shows to full advantage save in the field. The exceeding luxury of a
wealthy capital, the debauchery and variety of vices which would spring
up therein, naturally as weeds in a rich fallow, and the cosmopolitan
views which suggest themselves in a meeting-place of nations, were sore
trials to the primitive simplicity of the “Religion of Resignation”—the
saving faith. Harun and his cousin-wife, as has been shown, were
orthodox and even fanatical; but the Barmecides were strongly suspected
of heretical leanings; and while the many-headed showed itself, as
usual, violent, and ready to do battle about an Azan-call, the learned,
who sooner or later leaven the masses, were profoundly dissatisfied with
the dryness and barrenness of Mohammed’s creed, so acceptable to the
vulgar, and were devising a series of schisms and innovations.