her lord, Ali Shar, “Durst thou disobey me?: it shall be an ill-omened
night for thee! Nay, but it behoveth thee to do my bidding and I will
make thee my minion and appoint thee one of my Emirs.” Asked Ali Shar,
“And in what must I do thy bidding, O King of the age?” and she
answered, “Doff thy trousers and lie down on thy face.” Quoth he, “That
is a thing in my life I never did; and if thou force me thereto, verily
I will accuse thee thereof before Allah on Resurrection-day. Take
everything thou hast given me and let me go from thy city.” And he wept
and lamented; but she said, “Doff thy trousers and lie down on thy face,
or I will strike off thy head.” So he did as she bade him and she
mounted upon his back; and he felt what was softer than silk and
smoother than cream and said in himself, “Of a truth, this King is nicer
than all the women!” Now for a time she abode on his back, then she
turned over on the bed, and he said to himself, “Praised be Allah! It
seemeth his yard is not standing.” Then said she, “O Ali, it is of the
wont of my prickle that it standeth not, except they rub it with their
hands; so, come, rub it with thy hand, till it be at stand, else will I
slay thee.” So saying, she lay down on her back and taking his hand, set
it to her parts, and he found these same parts softer than silk; white,
plumply-rounded, protuberant, resembling for heat the hot room of the
bath or the heart of a lover whom love-longing hath wasted. Quoth Ali in
himself, “Verily, our King hath a coynte; this is indeed a wonder of
wonders!” And lust gat hold on him and his yard rose and stood upright
to the utmost of its height; which when Zumurrud saw, she burst out
laughing and said to him, “O my lord, all this happeneth and yet thou
knowest me not!” He asked “And who art thou, O King?”; and she answered,
“I am thy slave-girl Zumurrud.” Now whenas he knew this and was
certified that she was indeed his very slave-girl, Zumurrud, he kissed
her and embraced her and threw himself upon her as the lion upon the
lamb. Then he sheathed his steel rod in her scabbard and ceased not to
play the porter at her door and the preacher in her pulpit and the
priest[323] at her prayer-niche, whilst she with him ceased not from
inclination and prostration and rising up and sitting down, accompanying
her ejaculations of praise and of “Glory to Allah!” with passionate
movements and wrigglings and claspings of his member[324] and other
amorous gestures, till the two little eunuchs heard the noise. So they
came and peeping from behind the curtains saw the King lying on his back
and upon him Ali Shar, thrusting and slashing whilst she puffed and blew
and wriggled. Quoth they, “Verily, this be no man’s wriggle: belike this
King is a woman.”[325] But they concealed their affair and discovered it
to none. And when the morrow came, Zumurrud summoned all the troops and
the lords of the realm and said to them, “I am minded to journey to this
man’s country; so choose you a viceroy, who shall rule over you till I
return to you.” And they answered, “We hear and we obey.” Then she
applied herself to making ready the wants of the way, to wit provaunt
and provender, monies and rarities for presents, camels and mules and so
forth; after which she set out from her city with Ali Shar, and they
ceased not faring on, till they arrived at his native place, where he
entered his house and gave many gifts to his friends and alms and
largesse to the poor. And Allah vouchsafed him children by her, and they
both lived the gladdest and happiest of lives, till there came to them
the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies and the Garnerer
of graves. And glorified be He the Eternal without cease, and praised be
He in every case! And amongst other tales they tell one of
-----
Footnote 254:
Lane (ii. 435) ill-advisedly writes “Sher,” as “the word is evidently
Persian signifying a Lion.” But this is only in the debased Indian
dialect; a Persian, especially a Shirazi, pronounces “Shír.” And this
is how it is written in the Bresl. Edit., vii. 262. “Shár” is
evidently a fancy name, possibly suggested by the dynastic name of the
Ghurjistan or Georgian Princes.
Footnote 255:
Again old experience, which has learned at a heavy cost how many a
goodly apple is rotten at the core.
Footnote 256:
This couplet has occurred in Night xxi. I give Torrens (p. 206) by way
of specimen.
Footnote 257:
Arab. “Záka” = merely tasting a thing which may be sweet with a bitter
after-flavour.
Footnote 258:
This tetrastich was in Night xxx. with a difference.
Footnote 259:
The lines have occurred in Night xxx. I quote Torrens, p. 311.
Footnote 260:
This tetrastich is in Night clxix. I borrow from Lane (ii. 62).
Footnote 261:
The rude but effective refrigerator of the desert Arab who hangs his
water-skin to the branch of a tree and allows it to swing in the wind.
Footnote 262:
Arab. “Khumásiyah” which Lane (ii. 438) renders “of quinary stature.”
Usually it means five spans, but here five feet, showing that the girl
was young and still growing. The invoice with a slave always notes her
height in spans measured from ankle-bone to ear and above seven she
loses value as being full grown. Hence Sudási (fem. Sudásiyah) is a
slave six spans high, the Shibr or full span (9 inches) not the Fitr
or short span from thumb to index. Faut is the interval between every
finger; Ratab between index and medius, and Atab between medius and
annularis.
Footnote 263:
“Moon-faced” now sounds sufficiently absurd to us, but it was not
always so. Solomon (Cant. vi. 10) does not disdain the image “fair as
the moon, clear as the sun;” and those who have seen a moon in the sky
of Arabia will thoroughly appreciate it. We find it amongst the
Hindus, the Persians, the Afghans, the Turks and all the nations of
Europe. We have, finally, the grand example of Spenser:—
Her spacious forehead, like the clearest moon, etc.
Footnote 264:
Blue eyes have a bad name in Arabia as in India: the witch Zarká of
Al-Yamamah was noted for them; and “blue-eyed” often means
“fierce-eyed,” alluding to the Greeks and Daylamites, mortal enemies
to Ishmael. The Arabs say “ruddy of mustachio, blue of eye and black
of heart.”
Footnote 265:
Before explained as used with camphor to fill the dead man’s mouth.
Footnote 266:
As has been seen, slapping on the neck is equivalent to our “boxing
ears,” but much less barbarous and likely to injure the child. The
most insulting blow is that with shoe, sandal or slipper because it
brings foot in contact with head. Of this I have spoken before.
Footnote 267:
Arab. “Hibál” (= ropes) alluding to the A’akál-fillet which binds the
Kúfiyah-kerchief on the Badawi’s head (Pilgrimage, i. 346).
Footnote 268:
Arab. “Khiyál”; afterwards called Kara Gyuz (= “black eyes,” from the
celebrated Turkish Wazir). The _mise-en-scène_ was like that of Punch,
but of transparent cloth, lamp-lit inside and showing silhouettes
worked by hand. Nothing could be more Fescennine than Kara Gyuz, who
appeared with a phallus longer than himself and made all the
Consuls-General periodically complain of its abuse; while the
dialogue, mostly in Turkish, was even more obscene. Most ingenious
were Kara Gyuz’s little ways of driving on an obstinate donkey and of
tackling a huge Anatolian pilgrim. He mounted the Neddy’s back, face
to tail, and inserting his left thumb like a clyster, hammered it with
his right, when the donkey started at speed. For the huge pilgrim he
used a ladder. These shows, now obsolete, used to enliven the
Ezbekiyah Gardens every evening and explain Ovid’s words.
Delicias videam, _Nile jocose_, tuas!
Footnote 269:
Mohammed (Mishkát al-Masábih ii. 360-62) says, “Change the whiteness
of your hair but not with anything black.” Abu Bakr, who was two years
and some months older than the Prophet, used tincture of Henna and
Katam. Old Turkish officers justify black dyes because these make them
look younger and fiercer. Henna stains white hair orange red; and the
Persians apply after it a paste of indigo leaves; the result is
successively leek-green, emerald-green, bottle-green and lastly
lamp-black. There is a stage in life (the youth of old age) when man
uses dyes: presently he finds that the whole face wants dye; that the
contrast between juvenile coloured hair and ancient skin is ridiculous
and that it is time to wear white.
Footnote 270:
This prejudice extends all over the East: the Sanskrit saying is
“Kvachit káná bhaveta sádhus”—now and then a monocular is honest. The
left eye is the worst and the popular idea is, I have said, that the
damage will come by the injured member.
Footnote 271:
The Arabs say like us, “Short and thick is never quick” and “Long and
thin has little in.”
Footnote 272:
Arab. “Ba’azu layáli,” some night when his mistress failed him.
Footnote 273:
The fountain in Paradise before noticed.
Footnote 274:
Before noticed as the Moslem St. Peter (as far as the keys go).
Footnote 275:
Arab “Munkasir” = broken, frail, languishing—the only form of the
_maladive_ allowed. Here again we have masculine for feminine: the
eyelids show love-desire, but, etc.
Footnote 276:
The river of Paradise.
Footnote 277:
See Night xii, “The Second Kalandar’s Tale;” vol. i. 113.
Footnote 278:
Lane (ii. 472) refers for specimens of calligraphy to Herbin’s
“Développements, etc.” There are many more than seven styles of
writing as I have shown in Night xiii.; vol. i. 129.
Footnote 279:
Amongst good Moslems this would be a claim upon a man.
Footnote 280:
These lines have occurred twice already: and first appear in Night
xxii. I have borrowed from Mr. Payne (iv. 46).
Footnote 281:
Arab. “Ya Nasráni”; the address is not intrinsically slighting but it
may easily be made so. I have elsewhere noted that when Julian (is
said to have) exclaimed “Vicisti Nazarene!” he was probably thinking
in Eastern phrase “Nasarta, yá Nasráni!”
Footnote 282:
Thirst is the strongest of all pleas to an Eastern, especially to a
Persian who never forgets the sufferings of his Imam, Husayn, at
Kerbela: he would hardly withhold it from the murderer of his father.
There is also a Hadis, “Thou shalt not refuse water to him who
thirsteth in the desert.”
Footnote 283:
Arab. “Zimmi” which Lane (ii. 474) aptly translates a “tributary.” The
Koran (chapt. ix.) orders Unbelievers to Islamize or to “pay tribute
by right of subjection” (lit. an yadin = out of hand, an expression
much debated). The least tribute is one dinar per annum which goes to
the poor-rate; and for this the Kafir enjoys protection and _almost_
all the civil rights of Moslems. As it is a question of “loaves and
fishes” there is much to say on the subject; “loaves and fishes” being
the main base and foundation of all religious establishments.
Footnote 284:
This tetrastich has before occurred; so I quote Lane (ii. 444).
Footnote 285:
In Night xxxv. the same occurs with a difference.
Footnote 286:
The old rite, I repeat, has lost amongst all but the noblest of Arab
tribes the whole of its significance; and the traveller must be
careful how he trusts to the phrase “Nahnu málihin”—we are bound
together by the salt.
Footnote 287:
Arab. “Aláma” = Alá-má = upon what? wherefore?
Footnote 288:
Arab. “Mauz”; hence the Linnean name Musa (paradisiaca, etc). The word
is explained by Sale (Koran, chapt. xxxvii. 146) as “a small tree or
shrub;” and he would identify it with Jonah’s gourd.
Footnote 289:
Lane (ii. 446) “bald wolf or empowered fate,” reading (with Mac.) Kazá
for Kattan (cat).
Footnote 290:
_i.e._ “The Orthodox in the Faith.” Ráshid is a proper name; witness
that scourge of Syria, Ráshid Pasha. Born in 1830, of the Haji Nazir
Agha family, Darrah-Beys of Macedonian Draina, he was educated in
Paris where he learned the usual hatred of Europeans: he entered the
Egyptian service in 1851; and, presently exchanging it for the
Turkish, became in due time Wali (Governor-General) of Syria which he
plundered most shamelessly. Recalled in 1872, he eventually entered
the Ministry and on June 15, 1876, he was shot down, with other
villians like himself, by gallant Captain Hasan, the Circassian
(Yarham-hu ‘lláh!).
Footnote 291:
Quoted from a piece of verse, of which more presently.
Footnote 292:
This tetrastich has occurred before (Night cxciii.). I quote Lane (ii.
449), who quotes Dryden’s Spanish Friar:-
There is a pleasure sure in being mad
Which none but madmen know.
Footnote 293:
Lane (ii. 449) gives a tradition of the Prophet, “Whoso is in love,
and acteth chastely, and concealeth (his passion) and dieth, dieth a
martyr.” Sakar is No. 5 Hell for Magi, Guebres, Parsis, etc.; it is
used in the comic Persian curse, “Fi’n-nári wa Sakar al-jadd
w’al-pidar”—In Hell and Sakar his grandfather and his father.
Footnote 294:
Arab. “Sifr”: I have warned readers that whistling is considered a
kind of devilish speech by the Arabs, especially the Badawin; and that
the traveller must avoid it. It savours of idolatry: in the Koran we
find (chapt. viii. 35), “Their prayer at the House of God (Ka’abah) is
none other than whistling and hand-clapping;” and tradition says that
they whistled through their fingers. Besides many of the Jinn have
only round holes by way of mouths and their speech is whistling—a kind
of bird-language like sibilant English.
Footnote 295:
Arab. “Kíl wa kál” = lit. “it was said and he said;” a popular phrase
for chit-chat, tittle-tattle, prattle and prate, etc.
Footnote 296:
Arab. “Hadis,” comparing it with a tradition of the Prophet.
Footnote 297:
Arab. “Mikashshah,” the thick part of a midrib of a palm-frond soaked
for some days in water and beaten out till the fibres separate. It
makes an exceedingly hard, although not a lasting broom.
Footnote 298:
Persian, “the youth, the brave;” Sansk. Yuván; and Lat. Juvenis. The
Kurd, in tales, is generally a sturdy thief; and in real life is
little better.
Footnote 299:
Arab. “Yá Shátir;” lit. O clever one (in a bad sense).
Footnote 300:
Lane (ii. 453) has it, “that I may dress thy hair,” etc. This is
Bowdlerising with a witness.
Footnote 301:
The sign of respect when a personage dismounts (Pilgrimage i. 77).
Footnote 302:
So the Hindus speak of “the defilement of separation” as if it were an
impurity.
Footnote 303:
Lane (i. 605) gives a long and instructive note on these public royal
banquets which were expected from the lieges by Moslem subjects. The
hanging-penalty is, perhaps, a little exaggerated; but we find the
same excess in the priestly Gesta Romanorum.
Footnote 304:
Had he eaten it he would have become her guest. Amongst the older
Badawin it was sufficient to spit upon a man (in entreaty) to claim
his protection: so the horse-thieves when caught were placed in a hole
in the ground covered over with matting to prevent this happening.
Similarly Saladin (Saláh al-Din) the chivalrous would not order a cup
of water for the robber, Reynald de Châtillon, before putting him to
death.
Footnote 305:
Arab. “Kishk” properly “Kashk” = wheat-meal coarsely ground and eaten
with milk or broth. It is _de rigueur_ with the Egyptian Copts on the
“Friday of Sorrow” (Good Friday): and Lane gives the recipe for making
it (M. E. chapt. xxvi).
Footnote 306:
In those days distinctive of Moslems.
Footnote 307:
The euphemism has before been noticed: the Moslem reader would not
like to pronounce the words “I am a Nazarene.” The same formula occurs
a little lower down to save the reciter or reader from saying “Be _my_
wife divorced,” etc.
Footnote 308:
Arab. “Hájj,” a favourite Egyptianism. We are wrong to write Hajji
which an Eastern would pronounce Háj-jí.
Footnote 309:
This is Cairene “chaff.”
Footnote 310:
Whose shell fits very tight.
Footnote 311:
His hand was like a raven’s because he ate with thumb and two fingers
and it came up with the rice about it like a camel’s hoof in dirty
ground. This refers to the proverb (Burckhardt, 756), “He comes down a
crow-claw (small) and comes up a camel-hoof (huge and round).”
Footnote 312:
Easterns have a superstitious belief in the powers of food: I knew a
learned man who never sat down to eat without a ceremonious salam to
his meat.
Footnote 313:
Lane (ii. 464), uses the vile Turkish corruption “Rustum,” which, like
its fellow “Rustem,” would make a Persian shudder.
Footnote 314:
Arab. “Darrij” _i.e._ let them slide (_Americanicè_).
Footnote 315:
This tetrastich has occurred before: so I quote Mr. Payne (_in loco_).
Footnote 316:
Shaykh of Al-Butnah and Jábiyah, therefore a Syrian of the Hauran near
Damascus and grandson to Isú (Esau). Arab mystics (unlike the vulgar
who see only his patience) recognise that inflexible integrity which
refuses to utter “words of wind” and which would not, against his
conscience, confess to wrong-doing merely to pacify the Lord who was
stronger than himself. The Classics taught this noble lesson in the
case of Prometheus _versus_ Zeus. Many articles are called after Job
_e.g._ Ra’ará’ Ayyub or Ghubayrá (_inula Arabica_ and _undulata_), a
creeper with which he rubbed himself and got well:—the Copts do the
same on “Job’s Wednesday,” _i.e._ that before Whit Sunday O.S. Job’s
father is a nickname of the camel, etc. etc.
Footnote 317:
Lane (_in loco_) renders “I am of their number.” But “fí al-siyák”
means popularly “(driven) to the point of death.”
Footnote 318:
Lit. = “pathway, road”; hence the bridge well known as “finer than a
hair and sharper than a sword,” over which all (except Khadijah and a
chosen few) must pass on the Day of Doom; a Persian apparatus bodily
annexed by Al-Islam. The old Guebres called it Pul-i-Chinávar or
Chinávad and the Jews borrowed it from them as they did all their
fancies of a future life against which Moses had so gallantly fought.
It is said that a bridge over the grisly “brook Kedron” was called
Sirát (the road) and hence the idea, as that of hell-fire from
Ge-Hinnom (Gehenna) where children were passed through the fire to
Moloch. A doubtful Hadis says, “The Prophet declared Al-Sirát to be
the name of a bridge over hell-fire, dividing Hell from Paradise” (pp.
17, 122, Reynold’s trans. of Al-Siyuti’s Traditions, etc.). In Koran
i. 5, “Sirát” is simply a path, from sarata, he swallowed, even as the
way devours (makes a lakam or mouthful of) those who travel it. The
word was orig. written with Sín but changed for easier articulation to
Sád, one of the four Hurúf al-Mutabbakát (ط, ض, ص and ظ), “the
flattened,” formed by the broadened tongue in contact with the palate.
This Sad also by the figure Ishmám (= conversion) turns slightly to a
Zá, the intermediate between Sin and Sad.
Footnote 319:
The rule in Turkey where catamites rise to the highest rank: _C’est un
homme de bonne famille_ (said a Turkish officer in Egypt) _il a été
acheté_. Hence “Alfi” (one who costs a thousand) is a well-known
cognomen. The Pasha of the Syrian caravan, with which I travelled, had
been the slave of a slave and he was not a solitary instance
(Pilgrimage i. 90).
Footnote 320:
The device of the banquet is dainty enough for any old Italian
_novella_; all that now comes is pure Egyptian polissonnerie speaking
to the gallery and being answered by roars of laughter.
Footnote 321:
_i.e._ art thou ceremonially pure and therefore fit for handling by a
great man like myself?
Footnote 322:
In past days before Egypt was “frankified” many overlanders used to
wash away the traces of travel by a Turkish bath which mostly ended in
the appearance of a rump-wriggling little lad who offered to shampoo
them. Many accepted his offices without dreaming of his usual use or
misuse.
Footnote 323:
Arab. “Imám.” This is (to a Moslem) a most offensive comparison
between prayer and car. cop.
Footnote 324:
Arab “Fi zaman-hi,” alluding to a peculiarity highly prized by
Egyptians; the use of the constrictor vaginæ muscles, the sphincter
for which Abyssinian women are famous. The “Kabbázah” (= holder), as
she is called, can sit astraddle upon a man and can provoke the
venereal orgasm, not by wriggling and moving but by tightening and
loosing the male member with the muscles of her privities, milking it
as it were. Consequently the _casse-noisette_ costs treble the money
of other concubines (Ananga-Ranga, p. 127).
Footnote 325:
The little eunuchs had evidently studied the Harem.
THE LOVES OF JUBAYR BIN UMAYR AND THE LADY BUDUR.
It is related that the Commander of the Faithful, Harun al-Rashid was
uneasy[326] one night and could not sleep; so that he ceased not to toss
from side to side for very restlessness, till, growing weary of this, he
called Masrur and said to him, “Ho, Masrur, find me some one who may
solace me in this my wakefulness.” He answered, “O Prince of True
Believers, wilt thou walk in the palace-garden and divert thyself with
the sight of its blooms and gaze upon the stars and constellations and
note the beauty of their ordinance and the moon among them rising in
sheen over the water?” Quoth the Caliph, “O Masrur, my heart inclineth
not to aught of this.” Quoth he, “O my lord, there are in thy palace
three hundred concubines, each of whom hath her separate chamber. Do
thou bid all and every retire into her own apartment and then do thou go
thy rounds and amuse thyself with gazing on them without their
knowledge.” The Caliph replied, “O Masrur, the palace is my palace and
the girls are my property: furthermore my soul inclineth not to aught of
this.” Then Masrur rejoined, “O my lord, summon the doctors of law and
religion and the sages of science and poets, and bid them contend before
thee in argument and disputation and recite to thee songs and verses and
tell thee tales and anecdotes.” Replied the Caliph, “My soul inclineth
not to aught of this;” and Masrur rejoined, “O my lord, bid pretty boys
and the wits and the cup-companions attend thee and solace thee with
witty sallies.” “O Masrur,” ejaculated the Caliph, “indeed my soul
inclineth not to aught of this.” “Then, O my lord,” cried Masrur,
“strike off my head;”——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and
ceased saying her permitted say.
Now when it was the Three Hundred and Twenty-eighth Night,