Introduction
Story Of King Shahryar and His Brother
a. Tale of the Bull and the Ass
1. Tale of the Trader and the Jinni
a. The First Shaykh’s Story
b. The Second Shaykh’s Story
c. The Third Shaykh’s Story
2. The Fisherman and the Jinni
a. Tale of the Wazir and the Sage Duban
ab. Story of King Sindibad and His Falcon
ac. Tale of the Husband and the Parrot
ad. Tale of the Prince and the Ogress
b. Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince
3. The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad
a. The First Kalandar’s Tale
b. The Second Kalandar’s Tale
ba. Tale of the Envier and the Envied
c. The Third Kalandar’s Tale
d. The Eldest Lady’s Tale
e. Tale of the Portress
Conclusion of the Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies
4. Tale of the Three Apples
5. Tale of Nur Al-din Ali and his Son
6. The Hunchback’s Tale
a. The Nazarene Broker’s Story
b. The Reeve’s Tale
c. Tale of the Jewish Doctor
d. Tale of the Tailor
e. The Barber’s Tale of Himself
ea. The Barber’s Tale of his First Brother
eb. The Barber’s Tale of his Second Brother
ec. The Barber’s Tale of his Third Brother
ed. The Barber’s Tale of his Fourth Brother
ee. The Barber’s Tale of his Fifth Brother
ef. The Barber’s Tale of his Sixth Brother
The End of the Tailor’s Tale
The Translator’s Foreword.
This work, labourious as it may appear, has been to me a labour of
love, an unfailing source of solace and satisfaction. During my long
years of official banishment to the luxuriant and deadly deserts of
Western Africa, and to the dull and dreary half clearings of South
America, it proved itself a charm, a talisman against ennui and
despondency. Impossible even to open the pages without a vision
starting into view; with out drawing a picture from the pinacothek of
the brain; without reviving a host of memories and reminiscences which
are not the common property of travellers, however widely they may have
travelled. From my dull and commonplace and "respectable" surroundings,
the Jinn bore me at once to the land of my pre-dilection, Arabia, a
region so familiar to my mind that even at first sight, it seemed a
reminiscence of some by gone metem-psychic life in the distant Past.
Again I stood under the diaphanous skies, in air glorious as aether,
whose every breath raises men's spirits like sparkling wine. Once more
I saw the evening star hanging like a solitaire from the pure front of
the western firmament; and the after glow transfiguring and
transforming, as by magic, the homely and rugged features of the scene
into a fairy land lit with a light which never shines on other soils or
seas. Then would appear the woollen tents, low and black, of the true
Badawin, mere dots in the boundless waste of lion tawny clays and
gazelle brown gravels, and the camp fire dotting like a glow worm the
village centre. Presently, sweetened by distance, would be heard the
wild weird song of lads and lasses, driving or rather pelting, through
the gloaming their sheep and goats; and the measured chant of the
spearsmen gravely stalking behind their charge, the camels; mingled
with bleating of the flocks and the bellowing of the humpy herds; while
the reremouse flitted overhead with his tiny shriek, and the rave of
the jackal resounded through deepening glooms, and—most musical of
music—the palm trees answered the whispers of the night breeze with the
softest tones of falling water.
And then a shift of scene. The Shaykhs and "white beards" of the tribe
gravely take their places, sitting with outspread skirts like hillocks
on the plain, as the Arabs say, around the camp fire, whilst I reward
their hospitality and secure its continuance by reading or reciting a
few pages of their favourite tales. The women and children stand
motionless as silhouettes outside the ring; and all are breathless with
attention; they seem to drink in the words with eyes and mouths as well
as with ears. The most fantastic flights of fancy, the wildest
improbabilities, the most impossible of impossibilities, appear to them
utterly natural, mere matters of every day occurrence. They enter
thoroughly into each phase of feeling touched upon by the author: they
take a personal pride in the chivalrous nature and knightly prowess of
Taj al-Mulúk; they are touched with tenderness by the self sacrificing
love of Azízah; their mouths water as they hear of heaps of untold gold
given away in largesse like clay; they chuckle with delight every time
a Kázi or a Fakír—a judge or a reverend—is scurvily entreated by some
Pantagruelist of the Wilderness; and, despite their normal solemnity
and impassibility, all roar with laughter, sometimes rolling upon the
ground till the reader's gravity is sorely tried, at the tales of the
garrulous Barber and of Ali and the Kurdish Sharper. To this
magnetising mood the sole exception is when a Badawi of superior
accomplishments, who sometimes says his prayers, ejaculates a startling
"Astagh-faru'llah"—I pray Allah's pardon!—for listening, not to
Carlyle's "downright lies," but to light mention of the sex whose name
is never heard amongst the nobility of the Desert.
Nor was it only in Arabia that the immortal Nights did me such notable
service: I found the wildlings of Somali land equally amenable to its
discipline; no one was deaf to the charm and the two women cooks of my
caravan, on its way to Harar, were in continently dubbed by my men
"Shahrazad" and "Dinazad."
It may be permitted me also to note that this translation is a natural
outcome of my Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah. Arriving at Aden in
the (so called) winter of 1852, I put up with my old and dear friend,
Steinhaeuser, to whose memory this volume is inscribed; and, when
talking over Arabia and the Arabs, we at once came to the same
conclusion that, while the name of this wondrous treasury of Moslem
folk lore is familiar to almost every English child, no general reader
is aware of the valuables it contains, nor indeed will the door open to
any but Arabists. Before parting we agreed to "collaborate" and produce
a full, complete, unvarnished, uncastrated copy of the great original,
my friend taking the prose and I the metrical part; and we corresponded
upon the subject for years. But whilst I was in the Brazil,
Steinhaeuser died suddenly of apoplexy at Berne in Switzerland and,
after the fashion of Anglo India, his valuable MSS. left at Aden were
dispersed, and very little of his labours came into my hands.
Thus I was left alone to my work, which progressed fitfully amid a host
of obstructions. At length, in the spring of 1879, the tedious process
of copying began and the book commenced to take finished form. But,
during the winter of 1881-82, I saw in the literary journals a notice
of a new version by Mr. John Payne, well known to scholars for his
prowess in English verse, especially for his translation of "The Poems
of Master Francis Villon, of Paris." Being then engaged on an
expedition to the Gold Coast (for gold), which seemed likely to cover
some months, I wrote to the "Athenæum" (Nov. 13, 1881) and to Mr.
Payne, who was wholly unconscious that we were engaged on the same
work, and freely offered him precedence and possession of the field
till no longer wanted. He accepted my offer as frankly, and his
priority entailed another delay lasting till the spring of 1885. These
details will partly account for the lateness of my appearing, but there
is yet another cause. Professional ambition suggested that literary
labours, unpopular with the vulgar and the half educated, are not
likely to help a man up the ladder of promotion. But common sense
presently suggested to me that, professionally speaking, I was not a
success, and, at the same time, that I had no cause to be ashamed of my
failure. In our day, when we live under a despotism of the lower
"middle class" Philister who can pardon anything but superiority, the
prizes of competitive services are monopolized by certain "pets" of the
_Médiocratie_, and prime favourites of that jealous and potent
majority—the Mediocrities who know "no nonsense about merit." It is
hard for an outsider to realise how perfect is the monopoly of common
place, and to comprehend how fatal a stumbling stone that man sets in
the way of his own advancement who dares to think for himself, or who
knows more or who does more than the mob of gentlemen-employés who know
very little and who do even less.
Yet, however behindhand I may be, there is still ample room and verge
for an English version of the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments."
Our century of translations, popular and vernacular, from (Professor
Antoine) Galland's delightful abbreviation and adaptation (A.D. 1704),
in no wise represent the eastern original. The best and latest, the
Rev. Mr. Foster's, which is diffuse and verbose, and Mr. G. Moir
Bussey's, which is a re-correction, abound in gallicisms of style and
idiom; and one and all degrade a chef d'oeuvre of the highest
anthropological and ethnographical interest and importance to a mere
fairy book, a nice present for little boys.
After nearly a century had elapsed, Dr. Jonathan Scott (LL.D.
H.E.I.C.'s S., Persian Secretary to the G. G. Bengal; Oriental
Professor, etc., etc.), printed his "Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters,
translated from the Arabic and Persian," (Cadell and Davies, London,
A.D. 1800); and followed in 1811 with an edition of "The Arabian
Nights' Entertainments" from the MS. of Edward Wortley Montague (in 6
vols., small 8vo, London: Longmans, etc.). This work he (and he only)
describes as "Carefully revised and occasionally corrected from the
Arabic." The reading public did not wholly reject it, sundry texts were
founded upon the Scott version and it has been imperfectly reprinted (4
vole., 8vo, Nimmo and Bain, London, 1883). But most men, little recking
what a small portion of the original they were reading, satisfied
themselves with the Anglo French epitome and metaphrase. At length in
1838, Mr. Henry Torrens, B.A., Irishman, lawyer ("of the Inner Temple")
and Bengal Civilian, took a step in the right direction; and began to
translate, "The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night," (1 vol.,
8vo, Calcutta: W. Thacker and Co.) from the Arabic of the Ægyptian (!)
MS. edited by Mr. (afterwards Sir)William H. Macnaghten. The attempt,
or rather the intention, was highly creditable; the copy was carefully
moulded upon the model and offered the best example of the _verbatim et
literatim_ style. But the plucky author knew little of Arabic, and
least of what is most wanted, the dialect of Egypt and Syria. His prose
is so conscientious as to offer up spirit at the shrine of letter; and
his verse, always whimsical, has at times a manner of Hibernian whoop
which is comical when it should be pathetic. Lastly he printed only one
volume of a series which completed would have contained nine or ten.
That amiable and devoted Arabist, the late Edward William Lane does not
score a success in his "New Translation of the Tales of a Thousand and
One Nights" (London: Charles Knight and Co., MDCCCXXXIX.) of which
there have been four English editions, besides American, two edited by
E. S. Poole. He chose the abbreviating Bulak Edition; and, of its two
hundred tales, he has omitted about half and by far the more
characteristic half: the work was intended for "the drawing room
table;" and, consequently, the workman was compelled to avoid the
"objectionable" and aught "approaching to licentiousness." He converts
the Arabian Nights into the Arabian Chapters, arbitrarily changing the
division and, worse still, he converts some chapters into notes. He
renders poetry by prose and apologises for not omitting it altogether:
he neglects assonance and he is at once too Oriental and not Oriental
enough. He had small store of Arabic at the time—Lane of the Nights is
not Lane of the Dictionary—and his pages are disfigured by many
childish mistakes. Worst of all, the three handsome volumes are
rendered unreadable as Sale's Koran by their anglicised Latin, their
sesquipedalian un English words, and the stiff and stilted style of
half a century ago when our prose was, perhaps, the worst in Europe.
Their cargo of Moslem learning was most valuable to the student, but
utterly out of place for readers of "The Nights;" re-published, as
these notes have been separately (London, Chatto, 1883), they are an
ethnological text book.
Mr. John Payne has printed, for the Villon Society and for private
circulation only, the first and sole complete translation of the great
compendium, "comprising about four times as much matter as that of
Galland, and three times as much as that of any other translator;" and
I cannot but feel proud that he has honoured me with the dedication of
"The Book of The Thousand Nights and One Night." His version is most
readable: his English, with a sub-flavour of the Mabinogionic
archaicism, is admirable; and his style gives life and light to the
nine volumes whose matter is frequently heavy enough. He succeeds
admirably in the most difficult passages and he often hits upon choice
and special terms and the exact vernacular equivalent of the foreign
word, so happily and so picturesquely that all future translators must
perforce use the same expression under pain of falling far short. But
the learned and versatile author bound himself to issue only five
hundred copies, and "not to reproduce the work in its complete and
uncastrated form." Consequently his excellent version is caviaire to
the general—practically unprocurable.
And here I hasten to confess that ample use has been made of the three
versions above noted, the whole being blended by a _callida junctura_
into a homogeneous mass. But in the presence of so many predecessors a
writer is bound to show some _raison d'être_ for making a fresh attempt
and this I proceed to do with due reserve.
Briefly, the object of this version is to show what "The Thousand
Nights and a Night" really is. Not, however, for reasons to be more
fully stated in the Terminal Essay, by straining _verbum reddere
verbo_, but by writing as the Arab would have written in English. On
this point I am all with Saint Jerome (Pref. in Jobum) "Vel verbum e
verbo, vel sensum e sensu, vel ex utroque commixtum, et medie
temperatum genus translationis." My work claims to be a faithful copy
of the great Eastern Saga book, by preserving intact, not only the
spirit, but even the _mécanique_, the manner and the matter. Hence,
however prosy and long drawn out be the formula, it retains the scheme
of The Nights because they are a prime feature in the original. The
Ráwí or reciter, to whose wits the task of supplying details is left,
well knows their value: the openings carefully repeat the names of the
_dramatis personæ_ and thus fix them in the hearer's memory. Without
the Nights no Arabian Nights! Moreover it is necessary to retain the
whole apparatus: nothing more ill advised than Dr. Jonathan Scott's
strange device of garnishing The Nights with fancy head pieces and tail
pieces or the splitting up of Galland's narrative by merely prefixing
"Nuit," etc., ending moreover, with the ccxxxivth Night: yet this has
been done, apparently with the consent of the great Arabist Sylvestre
de Sacy (Paris, Ernest Bourdin). Moreover, holding that the
translator's glory is to add something to his native tongue, while
avoiding the hideous hag like nakedness of Torrens and the bald
literalism of Lane, I have carefully Englished the picturesque turns
and novel expressions of the original in all their outlandishness; for
instance, when the dust cloud raised by a tramping host is described as
"walling the horizon." Hence peculiar attention has been paid to the
tropes and figures which the Arabic language often packs into a single
term; and I have never hesitated to coin a word when wanted, such as
"she snorted and snarked," fully to represent the original. These, like
many in Rabelais, are mere barbarisms unless generally adopted; in
which case they become civilised and common currency.
Despite objections manifold and manifest, I have preserved the balance
of sentences and the prose rhyme and rhythm which Easterns look upon as
mere music. This "Saj'a," or cadence of the cooing dove, has in Arabic
its special duties. It adds a sparkle to description and a point to
proverb, epigram and dialogue; it corresponds with our "artful
alliteration" (which in places I have substituted for it) and,
generally, it defines the boundaries between the classical and the
popular styles which jostle each other in The Nights. If at times it
appear strained and forced, after the wont of rhymed prose, the scholar
will observe that, despite the immense copiousness of assonants and
consonants in Arabic, the strain is often put upon it intentionally,
like the _Rims cars_ of Dante and the Troubadours. This rhymed prose
may be "un English" and unpleasant, even irritating to the British ear;
still I look upon it as a _sine quâ non_ for a complete reproduction of
the original. In the Terminal Essay I shall revert to the subject.
On the other hand when treating the versical portion, which may
represent a total of ten thousand lines, I have not always bound myself
by the metrical bonds of the Arabic, which are artificial in the
extreme, and which in English can be made bearable only by a tour de
force. I allude especially to the monorhyme, _Rim continuat or tirade
monorime_, whose monotonous simplicity was preferred by the Troubadours
for threnodies. It may serve well for three or four couplets but, when
it extends, as in the Ghazal-canzon, to eighteen, and in the Kasidah,
elegy or ode, to more, it must either satisfy itself with banal rhyme
words, when the assonants should as a rule be expressive and emphatic;
or, it must display an ingenuity, a smell of the oil, which assuredly
does not add to the reader's pleasure. It can perhaps be done and it
should be done; but for me the task has no attractions: I can fence
better in shoes than in sabots. Finally I print the couplets in Arab
form separating the hemistichs by asterisks.
And now to consider one matter of special importance in the book—its
_turpiloquium_. This stumbling-block is of two kinds, completely
distinct. One is the simple, naïve and child like indecency which, from
Tangiers to Japan, occurs throughout general conversation of high and
low in the present day. It uses, like the holy books of the Hebrews,
expressions "plainly descriptive of natural situations;" and it treats
in an unconventionally free and naked manner of subjects and matters
which are usually, by common consent, left undescribed. As Sir William
Jones observed long ago, "that anything natural can be offensively
obscene never seems to have occurred to the Indians or to their
legislators; a singularity (?) pervading their writings and
conversation, but no proof of moral depravity." Another justly
observes, _Les peuples primitifs n'y entendent pas malice: ils
appellent les choses par leurs noms et ne trouvent pas condamnable ce
qui est naturel_. And they are prying as children. For instance the
European novelist marries off his hero and heroine and leaves them to
consummate marriage in privacy; even Tom Jones has the decency to bolt
the door. But the Eastern story teller, especially this unknown "prose
Shakespeare," must usher you, with a flourish, into the bridal chamber
and narrate to you, with infinite gusto, everything he sees and hears.
Again we must remember that grossness and indecency, in fact _les
turpitudes_, are matters of time and place; what is offensive in
England is not so in Egypt; what scandalises us now would have been a
tame joke _tempore Elisæ_. Withal The Nights will not be found in this
matter coarser than many passages of Shakespeare, Sterne, and Swift,
and their uncleanness rarely attains the perfection of Alcofribas
Nasier, "divin maître et atroce cochon." The other element is absolute
obscenity, sometimes, but not always, tempered by wit, humour and
drollery; here we have an exaggeration of Petronius Arbiter, the
handiwork of writers whose ancestry, the most religious and the most
debauched of mankind, practised every abomination before the shrine of
the Canopic Gods.
In accordance with my purpose of reproducing the Nights, not
_virginibus puerisque_, but in as perfect a picture as my powers
permit, I have carefully sought out the English equivalent of every
Arabic word, however low it may be or "shocking" to ears polite;
preserving, on the other hand, all possible delicacy where the
indecency is not intentional; and, as a friend advises me to state, not
exaggerating the vulgarities and the indecencies which, indeed, can
hardly be exaggerated. For the coarseness and crassness are but the
shades of a picture which would otherwise be all lights. The general
tone of The Nights is exceptionally high and pure. The devotional
fervour often rises to the boiling point of fanaticism. The pathos is
sweet, deep and genuine; tender, simple and true, utterly unlike much
of our modern tinsel. Its life, strong, splendid and multitudinous, is
everywhere flavoured with that unaffected pessimism and constitutional
melancholy which strike deepest root under the brightest skies and
which sigh in the face of heaven:—
Vita quid est hominis? Viridis floriscula mortis;
Sole Oriente oriens, sole cadente cadens.
Poetical justice is administered by the literary Kází with exemplary
impartiality and severity; "denouncing evil doers and eulogising deeds
admirably achieved." The morale is sound and healthy; and at times we
descry, through the voluptuous and libertine picture, vistas of a
transcendental morality, the morality of Socrates in Plato. Subtle
corruption and covert licentiousness are utterly absent; we find more
real"vice" in many a short French roman, say La Dame aux Camélias, and
in not a few English novels of our day than in the thousands of pages
of the Arab. Here we have nothing of that most immodest modern modesty
which sees covert implication where nothing is implied, and "improper"
allusion when propriety is not outraged; nor do we meet with the
Nineteenth Century refinement; innocence of the word not of the
thought; morality of the tongue not of the heart, and the sincere
homage paid to virtue in guise of perfect hypocrisy. It is, indeed,
this unique contrast of a quaint element, childish crudities and
nursery indecencies and "vain and amatorious" phrase jostling the
finest and highest views of life and character, shown in the
kaleidoscopic shiftings of the marvellous picture with many a "rich
truth in a tale's pretence", pointed by a rough dry humour which
compares well with "wut; "the alternations of strength and weakness, of
pathos and bathos, of the boldest poetry (the diction of Job) and the
baldest prose (the Egyptian of today); the contact of religion and
morality with the orgies of African Apuleius and Petronius Arbiter—at
times taking away the reader's breath—and, finally, the whole dominated
everywhere by that marvellous Oriental fancy, wherein the spiritual and
the supernatural are as common as the material and the natural; it is
this contrast, I say, which forms the chiefest charm of The Nights,
which gives it the most striking originality and which makes it a
perfect expositor of the medieval Moslem mind.
Explanatory notes did not enter into Mr. Payne's plan. They do with
mine: I can hardly imagine The Nights being read to any profit by men
of the West without commentary. My annotations avoid only one subject,
parallels of European folklore and fabliaux which, however interesting,
would overswell the bulk of a book whose speciality is anthropology.
The accidents of my life, it may be said without undue presumption, my
long dealings with Arabs and other Mahommedans, and my familiarity not
only with their idiom but with their turn of thought, and with that
racial individuality which baffles description, have given me certain
advantages over the average student, however deeply he may have
studied. These volumes, moreover, afford me a long sought opportunity
of noticing practices and customs which interest all mankind and which
"Society" will not hear mentioned. Grote, the historian, and Thackeray,
the novelist, both lamented that the bégueulerie of their countrymen
condemned them to keep silence where publicity was required; and that
they could not even claim the partial licence of a Fielding and a
Smollett. Hence a score of years ago I lent my best help to the late
Dr. James Hunt in founding the Anthropological Society, whose
presidential chair I first occupied (pp. 2-4 Anthropologia; London,
Balliere, vol. i., No. I, 1873). My motive was to supply travellers
with an organ which would rescue their observations from the outer
darkness of manuscript, and print their curious information on social
and sexual matters out of place in the popular book intended for the
Nipptisch and indeed better kept from public view. But, hardly had we
begun when "Respectability," that whited sepulchre full of all
uncleanness, rose up against us. "Propriety" cried us down with her
brazen blatant voice, and the weak kneed brethren fell away. Yet the
organ was much wanted and is wanted still. All now known barbarous
tribes in Inner Africa, America and Australia, whose instincts have not
been overlaid by reason, have a ceremony which they call "making men."
As soon as the boy shows proofs of puberty, he and his coevals are
taken in hand by the mediciner and the Fetisheer; and, under priestly
tuition, they spend months in the "bush," enduring hardships and
tortures which impress the memory till they have mastered the "theorick
and practick" of social and sexual relations. Amongst the civilised
this fruit of the knowledge tree must be bought at the price of the
bitterest experience, and the consequences of ignorance are peculiarly
cruel. Here, then, I find at last an opportunity of noticing in
explanatory notes many details of the text which would escape the
reader's observation, and I am confident that they will form a
repertory of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric phase. The student who
adds the notes of Lane ("Arabian Society," etc., before quoted) to mine
will know as much of the Moslem East and more than many Europeans who
have spent half their lives in Orient lands. For facility of reference
an index of anthropological notes is appended to each volume.
The reader will kindly bear with the following technical details.
Steinhaeuser and I began and ended our work with the first Bulak
("Bul.") Edition printed at the port of Cairo in A.H. 1251 = A.D. 1835.
But when preparing my MSS. for print I found the text incomplete, many
of the stories being given in epitome and not a few ruthlessly
mutilated with head or feet wanting. Like most Eastern scribes the
Editor could not refrain from "improvements," which only debased the
book; and his sole title to excuse is that the second Bulak Edition (4
vols. A.H. 1279 = A.D. 1863), despite its being "revised and corrected
by Sheik Mahommed Qotch Al-Adewi," is even worse; and the same may be
said of the Cairo Edit. (4 vols. A.H. 1297 = A. D. 1881). The Calcutta
("Calc.") Edition, with ten lines of Persian preface by the Editor,
Ahmed al-Shirwani (A.D. 1814), was cut short at the end of the first
two hundred Nights, and thus made room for Sir William Hay Macnaghten's
Edition (4 vols. royal 4to) of 1839-42. This ("Mac."), as by far the
least corrupt and the most complete, has been assumed for my basis with
occasional reference to the Breslau Edition ("Bres.") wretchedly edited
from a hideous Egyptian MS. by Dr. Maximilian Habicht (1825-43). The
Bayrut Text "Alif-Leila we Leila" (4 vols. gt. 8vo, Beirut, 1881-83) is
a melancholy specimen of The Nights taken entirely from the Bulak
Edition by one Khalil Sarkis and converted to Christianity; beginning
without Bismillah, continued with scrupulous castration and ending in
ennui and disappointment. I have not used this missionary production.
As regards the transliteration of Arabic words I deliberately reject
the artful and complicated system, ugly and clumsy withal, affected by
scientific modern Orientalists. Nor is my sympathy with their prime
object, namely to fit the Roman alphabet for supplanting all others.
Those who learn languages, and many do so, by the eye as well as by the
ear, well know the advantages of a special character to distinguish,
for instance, Syriac from Arabic, Gujrati from Marathi. Again this
Roman hand bewitched may have its use in purely scientific and literary
works; but it would be wholly out of place in one whose purpose is that
of the novel, to amuse rather than to instruct. Moreover the devices
perplex the simple and teach nothing to the learned. Either the reader
knows Arabic, in which case Greek letters, italics and "upper case,"
diacritical points and similar typographic oddities are, as a rule with
some exceptions, unnecessary; or he does not know Arabic, when none of
these expedients will be of the least use to him. Indeed it is a matter
of secondary consideration what system we prefer, provided that we
mostly adhere to one and the same, for the sake of a consistency which
saves confusion to the reader. I have especially avoided that of Mr.
Lane, adopted by Mr. Payne, for special reasons against which it was
vain to protest: it represents the debased brogue of Egypt or rather of
Cairo; and such a word as Kemer (ez-Zeman) would be utterly
un-pronounceable to a Badawi. Nor have I followed the practice of my
learned friend, Reverend G. P. Badger, in mixing bars and acute
accents; the former unpleasantly remind man of those hateful dactyls
and spondees, and the latter should, in my humble opinion, be applied
to long vowels which in Arabic double, or should double, the length of
the shorts. Dr. Badger uses the acute symbol to denote accent or stress
of voice; but such appoggio is unknown to those who speak with purest
articulation; for instance whilst the European pronounces Mus-cat', and
the Arab villager Mas′-kat; the Children of the Waste, "on whose
tongues Allah descended," articulate Mas-kat. I have therefore followed
the simple system adopted in my "Pilgrimage," and have accented Arabic
words only when first used, thinking it unnecessary to preserve
throughout what is an eyesore to the reader and a distress to the
printer. In the main I follow "Johnson on Richardson," a work known to
every Anglo-Orientalist as the old and trusty companion of his studies
early and late; but even here I have made sundry deviations for reasons
which will be explained in the Terminal Essay. As words are the
embodiment of ideas and writing is of words, so the word is the spoken
word; and we should write it as pronounced. Strictly speaking, the
e-sound and the o-sound (viz. the Italian o-sound not the English which
is peculiar to us and unknown to any other tongue) are not found in
Arabic, except when the figure Imálah obliges: hence they are called
"Yá al-Majhúl" and "Waw al-Majhúl" the unknown y (í) and u. But in all
tongues vowel-sounds, the flesh which clothes the bones (consonants) of
language, are affected by the consonants which precede and more
especially which follow them, hardening and softening the articulation;
and deeper sounds accompany certain letters as the sád ( ) compared
with the sín ( ). None save a defective ear would hold, as Lane does,
"Maulid" ( = birth-festival) "more properly pronounced 'Molid.'" Yet I
prefer Khokh (peach) and Jokh (broad cloth) to Khukh and Jukh; Ohod
(mount) to Uhud; Obayd (a little slave) to Ubayd; and Hosayn (a
fortlet, not the P. N. Al-Husayn) to Husayn. As for the short e in such
words as "Memlúk" for "Mamluk" (a white slave), "Eshe" for "Asha"
(supper), and "Yemen" for "Al-Yaman," I consider it a flat Egyptianism,
insufferable to an ear which admires the Badawi pronunciation. Yet I
prefer "Shelebi" (a dandy) from the Turkish Chelebi, to "Shalabi;"
"Zebdani" (the Syrian village) to "Zabdani," and "Fes and Miknes" (by
the figure Imálah) to "Fas and Miknás,", our "Fez and Mequinez."
With respect to proper names and untranslated Arabic words I have
rejected all system in favour of common sense. When a term is
incorporated in our tongue, I refuse to follow the purist and mortify
the reader by startling innovation. For instance, Aleppo, Cairo and
Bassorah are preferred to Halab, Kahirah and Al-Basrah; when a word is
half naturalised, like Alcoran or Koran, Bashaw or Pasha, which the
French write Pacha; and Mahomet or Mohammed (for Muhammad), the modern
form is adopted because the more familiar. But I see no advantage in
retaining,, simply because they are the mistakes of a past generation,
such words as "Roc" (for Rukh),), Khalif (a pretentious blunder for
Khalífah and better written Caliph) and "genie" ( = Jinn) a mere Gallic
corruption not so terrible, however, as "a Bedouin" ( = Badawi).). As
little too would I follow Mr. Lane in foisting upon the public such
Arabisms as "Khuff" (a riding boot), "Mikra'ah" (a palm rod) and a host
of others for which we have good English equivalents. On the other hand
I would use, but use sparingly, certain Arabic exclamations, as
"Bismillah" ( = in the name of Allah!) and "Inshallah" ( = if Allah
please!), (= which have special applications and which have been made
familiar to English ears by the genius of Fraser and Morier.
I here end these desultory but necessary details to address the reader
in a few final words. He will not think lightly of my work when I
repeat to him that with the aid of my annotations supplementing Lane's,
the student will readily and pleasantly learn more of the Moslem's
manners and customs, laws and religion than is known to the average
Orientalist; and, if my labours induce him to attack the text of The
Nights he will become master of much more Arabic than the ordinary Arab
owns. This book is indeed a legacy which I bequeath to my fellow
countrymen in their hour of need. Over devotion to Hindu, and
especially to Sanskrit literature, has led them astray from those (so
called) "Semitic" studies, which are the more requisite for us as they
teach us to deal successfully with a race more powerful than any
pagans—the Moslem. Apparently England is ever forgetting that she is at
present the greatest Mohammedan empire in the world. Of late years she
has systematically neglected Arabism and, indeed, actively discouraged
it in examinations for the Indian Civil Service, where it is
incomparably more valuable than Greek and Latin. Hence, when suddenly
compelled to assume the reins of government in Moslem lands, as
Afghanistan in times past and Egypt at present, she fails after a
fashion which scandalises her few (very few) friends; and her crass
ignorance concerning the Oriental peoples which should most interest
her, exposes her to the contempt of Europe as well as of the Eastern
world. When the regrettable raids of 1883-84, culminating in the
miserable affairs of Tokar, Teb and Tamasi, were made upon the gallant
Sudani negroids, the Bisharin outlying Sawakin, who were battling for
the holy cause of liberty and religion and for escape from Turkish
task-masters and Egyptian tax-gatherers, not an English official in
camp, after the death of the gallant and lamented Major Morice, was
capable of speaking Arabic. Now Moslems are not to be ruled by raw
youths who should be at school and college instead of holding positions
of trust and emolument. He who would deal with them successfully must
be, firstly, honest and truthful and, secondly, familiar with and
favourably inclined to their manners and customs if not to their law
and religion. We may, perhaps, find it hard to restore to England those
pristine virtues, that tone and temper, which made her what she is; but
at any rate we (myself and a host of others) can offer her the means of
dispelling her ignorance concerning the Eastern races with whom she is
continually in contact.
In conclusion I must not forget to notice that the Arabic
ornamentations of these volumes were designed by my excellent friend
Yacoub Artin Pasha, of the Ministry of Instruction, Cairo, with the aid
of the well-known writing artist, Shaykh Mohammed Muunis the Cairene.
My name, Al-Hajj Abdullah ( = the Pilgrim Abdallah) was written by an
English calligrapher, the lamented Professor Palmer who found a
premature death almost within sight of Suez.