the “Ana” of great men in which Easterns as well as Westerns
delight: the gravest writers do not disdain to relieve the
dullness of chronicles and annals by means of such discussions,
humorous or pathetic, moral or grossly indecent. The dates must
greatly vary: some of the anecdotes relating to the early Caliphs
appear almost contemporary; others, like Ali of Cairo and Abu al-Shamat,
may be as late as the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt
(sixteenth century). All are distinctly Sunnite and show fierce
animus against the Shi’ah heretics, suggesting that they were
written after the destruction of the Fatimite dynasty (twelfth
century) by Salah al-Din (Saladin the Kurd) one of the latest
historical personages and the last king named in The Nights.
[FN#253] These anecdotes are so often connected with what a
learned Frenchman terms the “regne féerique de Haroun er-Réschid,”[FN#254
] that the Great Caliph becomes the hero of this
portion of The Nights. Aaron the Orthodox was the central figure
of the most splendid empire the world had seen, the Viceregent of
Allah combining the powers of Cæsar and Pope, and wielding them
right worthily according to the general voice of historians. To
quote a few: Ali bin Talib al-Khorásáni described him, in A.D.
934, a century and-a-half after his death when flattery would be
tongue-tied, as, “one devoted to war and pilgrimage, whose bounty
embraced the folk at large.” Sa’adi (ob. A.D. 1291) tells a tale
highly favourable to him in the “Gulistan” (lib. i. 36). Fakhr
al-Din[FN#255] (xivth century) lauds his merits, eloquence,
science and generosity; and Al-Siyuti (nat. A.D. 1445) asserts
“He was one of the most distinguished of Caliphs and the most
illustrious of the Princes of the Earth” (p. 290). The Shaykh
al-Nafzáwi[FN#256] (sixteenth century) in his Rauz al-Átir fí
Nazáh al-Khátir = Scented Garden-site for Heart-delight, calls
Harun (chapt. vii.) the “Master of munificence and bounty, the
best of the generous.” And even the latest writers have not
ceased to praise him. Says Alí Azíz Efendi the Cretan, in the
Story of Jewád[FN#257] (p. 81), “Harun was the most bounteous,
illustrious and upright of the Abbaside Caliphs.”
The fifth Abbaside was fair and handsome, of noble and majestic
presence, a sportsman and an athlete who delighted in polo and
archery. He showed sound sense and true wisdom in his speech to
the grammarian-poet Al-Asma’î, who had undertaken to teach him:—
“Ne m’enseignez jamais en public, et ne vous empressez pas trop
de me donner des avis en particulier. Attendez ordinairement que
je vous interroge, et contentez vous de me donner une response
précise à ce que je vous demanderai, sans y rien ajouter de
superflu. Gardez vous surtout de vouloir me préoccuper pour vous
attirer ma creance, et pour vous donner de l’autorité. Ne vous
etendez jamais trop en long sur les histoires et les traditions
que vous me raconterez, si je ne vous en donne la permission.
Lorsque vous verrai que je m’eloignerai de l’équité dans mes
jugements, ramenez-moi avec douceur, sans user de paroles
fâcheuses ni de réprimandes. Enseignez-moi principalement les
choses qui sont les plus necessaires pour les dis cours que je
dois faire en public, dans les mosquées et ailleurs; et ne parlez
point en termes obscurs, ou mystérieux, ni avec des paroles trop
recherchées.”[FN#258]
He became well read in science and letters, especially history
and tradition, for “his understanding was as the understanding of
the learned;” and, like all educated Arabs of his day, he was a
connoisseur of poetry which at times he improvised with success.
[FN#259] He made the pilgrimage every alternate year and
sometimes on foot, while “his military expeditions almost
equalled his pilgrimages.” Day after day during his Caliphate he
prayed a hundred “bows,” never neglecting them, save for some
especial reason, till his death; and he used to give from his
privy purse alms to the extent of a hundred dirhams per diem. He
delighted in panegyry and liberally rewarded its experts, one of
whom, Abd al-Sammák the Preacher, fairly said of him, “Thy
humility in thy greatness is nobler than thy greatness.” “No
Caliph,” says Al-Niftawayh, “had been so profusely liberal to
poets, lawyers and divines, although as the years advanced he
wept over his extravagance amongst other sins.” There was
vigorous manliness in his answer to the Grecian Emperor who had
sent him an insulting missive:—“In the name of Allah! From the
Commander of the Faithful Harun al-Rashid, to Nicephorus the
Roman dog. I have read thy writ, O son of a miscreant mother!
Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt see my reply.” Nor did he cease
to make the Byzantine feel the weight of his arm till he
“nakh’d”[FN#260] his camel in the imperial Court-yard; and this
was only one instance of his indomitable energy and hatred of the
Infidel. Yet, if the West is to be believed, he forgot his
fanaticism in his diplomatic dealings and courteous intercourse
with Carolus Magnus.[FN#261] Finally, his civilised and well
regulated rule contrasted as strongly with the barbarity and
turbulence of occidental Christendom, as the splendid Court and
the luxurious life of Baghdad and its carpets and hangings
devanced the quasi-savagery of London and Paris whose palatial
halls were spread with rushes.
The great Caliph ruled twenty-three years and a few months (A.H.
170–193 = A.D. 786–808); and, as his youth was chequered and his
reign was glorious, so was his end obscure.[FN#262] After a
vision foreshadowing his death,[FN#263] which happened, as
becomes a good Moslem, during a military expedition to Khorasan,
he ordered his grave to be dug and himself to be carried to it in
a covered litter: when sighting the fosse he exclaimed, “O son of
man thou art come to this!” Then he commanded himself to be set
down and a perfection of the Koran to be made over him in the
litter on the edge of the grave. He was buried (æt. forty-five)
at Sanábád, a village near Tús.
Aaron the Orthodox appears in The Nights as a headstrong and
violent autocrat, a right royal figure according to the Moslem
ideas of his day. But his career shows that he was not more
tyrannical or more sanguinary than the normal despot of the East,
or the contemporary Kings of the West: in most points, indeed, he
was far superior to the historic misrulers who have afflicted the
world from Spain to furthest China. But a single great crime, a
tragedy whose details are almost incredibly horrible, marks his
reign with the stain of infamy, with a blot of blood never to be
washed away. This tale, “full of the waters of the eye,” as
Firdausi sings, is the massacre of the Barmecides; a story which
has often been told and which cannot here be passed over in
silence. The ancient and noble Iranian house, belonging to the
“Ebná” or Arabised Persians, had long served the Ommiades till,
early in our eighth century, Khálid bin Bermek,[FN#264] the
chief, entered the service of the first Abbaside and became Wazir
and Intendant of Finance to Al-Saffah. The most remarkable and
distinguished of the family, he was in office when Al-Mansur
transferred the capital from Damascus, the headquarters of the
hated Ommiades, to Baghdad, built ad hoc. After securing the
highest character in history by his personal gifts and public
services, he was succeeded by his son and heir Yáhyá (John), a
statesman famed from early youth for prudence and profound
intelligence, liberality and nobility of soul.[FN#265] He was
charged by the Caliph Al-Mahdi with the education of his son
Harun, hence the latter was accustomed to call him father; and,
until the assassination of the fantastic tyrant Al-Hádi, who
proposed to make his own child Caliph, he had no little
difficulty in preserving the youth from death in prison. The
Orthodox, once seated firmly on the throne, appointed Yáhyá his
Grand Wazir. This great administrator had four sons, Al-Fazl,
Ja’afar, Mohammed, and Musa,[FN#266] in whose time the house of
Bermek rose to that height from which decline and fall are, in
the East, well nigh certain and immediate. Al-Fazl was a foster-brother
of Harun, an exchange of suckling infants having taken
place between the two mothers for the usual object, a tightening
of the ties of intimacy: he was a man of exceptional mind, but he
lacked the charm of temper and manner which characterised
Ja’afar.
The poets and rhetoricians have been profuse in their praises of
the cadet who appears in The Nights as an adviser of calm sound
sense, an intercessor and a peace-maker, and even more remarkable
than the rest of his family for an almost incredible magnanimity
and generosity—une générosité effrayante. Mohammed was famed
for exalted views and nobility of sentiment and Musa for bravery
and energy: of both it was justly said, “They did good and harmed
not.”[FN#267]
For ten years (not including an interval of seven) from the time
of Al-Rashid’s accession (A.D. 786) to the date of their fall,
(A.D. 803), Yahya and his sons, Al-Fazl and Ja’afar, were
virtually rulers of the great heterogeneous empire, which
extended from Mauritania to Tartary, and they did notable service
in arresting its disruption. Their downfall came sudden and
terrible like “a thunderbolt from the blue.” As the Caliph and
Ja’afar were halting in Al-’Umr (the convent) near Anbár-town on
the Euphrates, after a convivial evening spent in different
pavilions, Harun during the dead of the night called up his page
Yásir al-Rikhlah[FN#268] and bade him bring Ja’afar’s head. The
messenger found Ja’afar still carousing with the blind poet Abú
Zakkár and the Christian physician Gabriel ibn Bakhtiashú, and
was persuaded to return to the Caliph and report his death; the
Wazir adding, “An he express regret I shall owe thee my life;
and, if not, whatso Allah will be done.” Ja’afar followed to
listen and heard only the Caliph exclaim “O sucker of thy
mother’s clitoris, if thou answer me another word, I will send
thee before him!” whereupon he at once bandaged his own eyes and
received the fatal blow. Al-Asma’í, who was summoned to the
presence shortly after, recounts that when the head was brought
to Harun he gazed at it, and summoning two witnesses commanded
them to decapitate Yasir, crying, “I cannot bear to look upon the
slayer of Ja’afar!” His vengeance did not cease with the death:
he ordered the head to be gibbetted at one end and the trunk at
the other abutment of the Tigris bridge where the corpses of the
vilest malefactors used to be exposed; and, some months
afterwards, he insulted the remains by having them burned—the
last and worst indignity which can be offered to a Moslem. There
are indeed pity and terror in the difference between two such
items in the Treasury-accounts as these: “Four hundred thousand
dinars (£200,000) to a robe of honour for the Wazir Ja’afar bin
Yahya;” and, “Ten kírát, (5 shill.) to naphtha and reeds for
burning the body of Ja’afar the Barmecide.”
Meanwhile Yahya and Al-Fazl, seized by the Caliph Harun’s command
at Baghdad, were significantly cast into the prison “Habs al-Zanádikah”—of
the Guebres—and their immense wealth which, some
opine, hastened their downfall, was confiscated. According to
the historian, Al-Tabari, who, however, is not supported by all
the annalists, the whole Barmecide family, men, women, and
children, numbering over a thousand, were slaughtered with only
three exceptions; Yahya, his brother Mohammed, and his son Al-Fazl.
The Caliph’s foster-father, who lived to the age of
seventy-four, was allowed to die in jail (A.H. 805) after two
years’ imprisonment at Rukkah. Al-Fazl, after having been
tortured with two hundred blows in order to make him produce
concealed property, survived his father three years and died in
Nov. A.H. 808, some four months before his terrible foster-brother.
A pathetic tale is told of the son warming water for
the old man’s use by pressing the copper ewer to his stomach.
The motives of this terrible massacre are variously recounted,
but no sufficient explanation has yet been, or possibly ever will
be, given. The popular idea is embodied in The Nights. [FN#269]
Harun, wishing Ja’afar to be his companion even in the Harem, had
wedded him, pro formâ, to his eldest sister Abbásah, “the
loveliest woman of her day,” and brilliant in mind as in body;
but he had expressly said “I will marry thee to her, that it may
be lawful for thee to look upon her but thou shalt not touch
her.” Ja’afar bound himself by a solemn oath; but his mother
Attábah was mad enough to deceive him in his cups and the result
was a boy (Ibn Khallikan) or, according to others, twins. The
issue was sent under the charge of a confidential eunuch and a
slave-girl to Meccah for concealment; but the secret was divulged
to Zubaydah who had her own reasons for hating husband and wife
and cherished an especial grievance against Yahya.[FN#270] Thence
it soon found its way to head-quarters. Harun’s treatment of
Abbásah supports the general conviction: according to the most
credible accounts she and her child were buried alive in a pit
under the floor of her apartment.
But, possibly, Ja’afar’s perjury was only “the last straw.”
Already Al-Fazl bin Rabî’a, the deadliest enemy of the
Barmecides, had been entrusted (A.D. 786) with the Wazirate which
he kept seven years. Ja’afar had also acted generously but
imprudently in abetting the escape of Yahya bin Abdillah, Sayyid
and Alide, for whom the Caliph had commanded confinement in a
close dark dungeon: when charged with disobedience the Wazir had
made full confession and Harun had (they say) exclaimed, “Thou
hast done well!” but was heard to mutter, “Allah slay me an I
slay thee not.”[FN#271] The great house seems at times to have
abused its powers by being too peremptory with Harun and
Zubaydah, especially in money matters;[FN#272] and its very
greatness would have created for it many and powerful enemies and
detractors who plied the Caliph with anonymous verse and prose.
Nor was it forgotten that, before the spread of Al-Islam, they
had presided over the Naubehár or Pyræthrum of Balkh; and Harun
is said to have remarked anent Yahya, “The zeal for magianism,
rooted in his heart, induces him to save all the monuments
connected with his faith.”[FN#273] Hence the charge that they
were “Zanádakah,” a term properly applied to those who study the
Zend scripture, but popularly meaning Mundanists, Positivists,
Reprobates, Atheists; and it may be noted that, immediately after
al-Rashid’s death, violent religious troubles broke out in
Baghdad. Ibn Khallikan[FN#274] quotes Sa’id ibn Salim, a
well-known grammarian and traditionist who philosophically
remarked, “Of a truth the Barmecides did nothing to deserve Al-Rashid’s
severity, but the day (of their power and prosperity)
had been long and whatso endureth long waxeth longsome.” Fakhr
al-Din says (p. 27), “On attribue encore leur ruine aux manières
fières et orgueilleuses de Djafar (Ja’afar) et de Fadhl (Al-Fazl
), manières que les rois ne sauroient supporter.” According
to Ibn Badrún, the poet, when the Caliph’s sister
’Olayyah[FN#275] asked him, “O my lord, I have not seen thee
enjoy one happy day since putting Ja’afar to death: wherefore
didst thou slay him?” he answered, “My dear life, an I thought
that my shirt knew the reason I would rend it in pieces!” I
therefore hold with Al Mas’udi,
“As regards the intimate cause (of the catastrophe) it is unknown
and Allah is Omniscient.”
Aaron the Orthodox appears sincerely to have repented his
enormous crime. From that date he never enjoyed refreshing
sleep: he would have given his whole realm to recall Ja’afar to
life; and, if any spoke slightingly of the Barmecides in his
presence, he would exclaim, “God damn your fathers! Cease to
blame them or fill the void they have left.” And he had ample
reason to mourn the loss. After the extermination of the wise
and enlightened family, the affairs of the Caliphate never
prospered: Fazl bin Rabí’a, though a man of intelligence and
devoted to letters, proved a poor substitute for Yahya and
Ja’afar; and the Caliph is reported to have applied to him the
couplet:—
No sire to your sire,[FN#276] I bid you spare * Your calumnies or
their place replace.
His unwise elevation of his two rival sons filled him with fear
of poison, and, lastly, the violence and recklessness of the
popular mourning for the Barmecides,[FN#277] whose echo has not
yet died away, must have added poignancy to his tardy penitence.
The crime still “sticks fiery off” from the rest of Harun’s
career: it stands out in ghastly prominence as one of the most
terrible tragedies recorded by history, and its horrible details
make men write passionately on the subject to this our
day.[FN#278]
As of Harun so of Zubaydah it may be said that she was far
superior in most things to contemporary royalties, and she was
not worse at her worst than the normal despot-queen of the
Morning-land. We must not take seriously the tales of her
jealousy in The Nights, which mostly end in her selling off or
burying alive her rivals; but, even were all true, she acted
after the recognised fashion of her exalted sisterhood. The
secret history of Cairo, during the last generation, tells of
many a viceregal dame who committed all the crimes, without any
of the virtues which characterised Harun’s cousin-spouse. And
the difference between the manners of the Caliphate and the
“respectability” of the nineteenth century may be measured by the
Tale called “Al-Maamun and Zubaydah.”[FN#279] The lady, having
won a game of forfeits from her husband, and being vexed with him
for imposing unseemly conditions when he had been the winner,
condemned him to lie with the foulest and filthiest kitchen-wench
in the palace; and thus was begotten the Caliph who succeeded and
destroyed her son.
Zubaydah was the grand-daughter of the second Abbaside Al-Mansur,
by his son Ja’afar whom The Nights persistently term Al-Kasim:
her name was Amat al-Azíz or Handmaid of the Almighty; her
cognomen was Umm Ja’afar as her husband’s was Abú Ja’afar; and
her popular name “Creamkin” derives from Zubdah,[FN#280] cream or
fresh butter, on account of her plumpness and freshness. She was
as majestic and munificent as her husband; and the hum of prayer
was never hushed in her palace. Al-Mas’udi[FN#281] makes a
historian say to the dangerous Caliph Al-Káhir, “The nobleness
and generosity of this Princess, in serious matters as in her
diversions, place her in the highest rank”; and he proceeds to
give ample proof. Al-Siyuti relates how she once filled a poet’s
mouth with jewels which he sold for twenty thousand dinars. Ibn
Khallikan (i. 523) affirms of her, “Her charity was ample, her
conduct virtuous, and the history of her pilgrimage to Meccah and
of what she undertook to execute on the way is so well-known that
it were useless to repeat it.” I have noted (Pilgrimage iii. 2)
how the Darb al-Sharki or Eastern road from Meccah to Al-Medinah
was due to the piety of Zubaydah who dug wells from Baghdad to
the Prophet’s burial place and built not only cisterns and
caravanserais, but even a wall to direct pilgrims over the
shifting sands. She also supplied Meccah, which suffered
severely from want of water, with the chief requisite for public
hygiene by connecting it, through levelled hills and hewn rocks,
with the Ayn al-Mushásh in the Arafat subrange; and the fine
aqueduct, some ten miles long, was erected at a cost of 1,700,000
to 2,000,000 of gold pieces. [FN#282] We cannot wonder that her
name is still famous among the Badawin and the “Sons of the Holy
Cities.” She died at Baghdad, after a protracted widowhood, in
A.H. 216 and her tomb, which still exists, was long visited by
the friends and dependents who mourned the loss of a devout and
most liberal woman.
The reader will bear with me while I run through the tales and
add a few remarks to the notices given in the notes: the glance
must necessarily be brief, however extensive be the theme. The
admirable introduction follows, in all the texts and MSS. known
to me, the same main lines but differs greatly in minor details
as will be seen by comparing Mr. Payne’s translation with Lane’s
and mine. In the Tale of the Sage Dúbán appears the speaking
head which is found in the Kamil, in Mirkhond and in the Kitáb
al-Uyún: M. C. Barbier de Meynard (v. 503) traces it back to an
abbreviated text of Al-Mas’udi. I would especially recommend to
students The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (i. 82),
whose mighty orgie ends so innocently in general marriage. Lane
(iii. 746) blames it “because it represents Arab ladies as acting
like Arab courtesans”; but he must have known that during his day
the indecent frolic was quite possible in some of the highest
circles of his beloved Cairo. To judge by the style and changes
of person, some of the most “archaic” expressions suggest the
hand of the Ráwi or professional tale-teller; yet as they are in
all the texts they cannot be omitted in a loyal translation. The
following story of The Three Apples perfectly justifies my notes
concerning which certain carpers complain. What Englishman would
be jealous enough to kill his cousin-wife because a blackamoor in
the streets boasted of her favours? But after reading what is
annotated in vol. i. 6, and purposely placed there to give the
key-note of the book, he will understand the reasonable nature of
the suspicion; and I may add that the same cause has commended
these “skunks of the human race” to debauched women in England.
The next tale, sometimes called “The Two Wazírs,” is notable for
its regular and genuine drama-intrigue which, however, appears
still more elaborate and perfected in other pieces. The richness
of this Oriental plot-invention contrasts strongly with all
European literatures except the Spaniard’s, whose taste for the
theatre determined his direction, and the Italian, which in
Boccaccio’s day had borrowed freely through Sicily from the East.
And the remarkable deficiency lasted till the romantic movement
dawned in France, when Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas showed
their marvellous powers of faultless fancy, boundless imagination
and scenic luxuriance, “raising French Poetry from the dead and
not mortally wounding French prose.”[FN#283] The Two Wazirs is
followed by the gem of the volume, The Adventure of the
Hunchback-jester (i. 225), also containing an admirable surprise
and a fine development of character, while its “wild but natural
simplicity” and its humour are so abounding that it has echoed
through the world to the farthest West. It gave to Addison the
Story of Alnaschar[FN#284] and to Europe the term “Barmecide
Feast,” from the “Tale of Shacabac” (vol. i. 343). The
adventures of the corpse were known in Europe long before Galland
as shown by three fabliaux in Barbazan. I have noticed that the
Barber’s Tale of himself (i. 317) is historical and I may add
that it is told in detail by Al-Mas’udi (chapt. cxiv).
Follows the tale of Núr al-Dín Alí, and what Galland miscalls
“The Fair Persian,” a brightly written historiette with not a few
touches of true humour. Noteworthy are the Slaver’s address
(vol. ii. 15), the fine description of the Baghdad garden (vol.
ii. 21–24), the drinking-party (vol. ii. 25), the Caliph’s frolic
(vol. ii. 31–37) and the happy end of the hero’s misfortunes
(vol. ii. 44) Its brightness is tempered by the gloomy tone of
the tale which succeeds, and which has variants in the Bagh o
Bahar, a Hindustani versionof the Persian “Tale of the Four
Darwayshes;” and in the Turkish Kirk Vezir or “Book of the Forty
Vezirs.” Its dismal péripéties are relieved only by the witty
indecency of Eunuch Bukhayt and the admirable humour of Eunuch
Kafur, whose “half lie” is known throughout the East. Here also
the lover’s agonies are piled upon him for the purpose of
unpiling at last: the Oriental tale-teller knows by experience
that, as a rule, doleful endings “don’t pay.”
The next is the long romance of chivalry, “King Omar bin al-Nu’man
” etc., which occupies an eighth of the whole repertory and
the best part of two volumes. Mr. Lane omits it because “obscene
and tedious,” showing the license with which he translated; and
he was set right by a learned reviewer,[FN#285] who truly
declared that “the omission of half-a-dozen passages out of four
hundred pages would fit it for printing in any language[FN#286]
and the charge of tediousness could hardly have been applied more
unhappily.” The tale is interesting as a picture of mediæval
Arab chivalry and has many other notable points; for instance,
the lines (iii. 86) beginning “Allah holds the kingship!” are a
lesson to the manichæanism of Christian Europe. It relates the
doings of three royal generations and has all the characteristics
of Eastern art: it is a phantasmagoria of Holy Places, palaces
and Harems; convents, castles and caverns, here restful with
gentle landscapes (ii. 240) and there bristling with furious
battle-pictures (ii. 117, 221–8, 249) and tales of princely
prowess and knightly derring-do. The characters stand out well.
King Nu’man is an old lecher who deserves his death; the ancient
Dame Zát al-Dawáhi merits her title Lady of Calamities (to her
foes); Princess Abrizah appears as a charming Amazon, doomed to a
miserable and pathetic end; Zau al-Makán is a wise and pious
royalty; Nuzhat al-Zamán, though a longsome talker, is a model
sister; the Wazir Dandán, a sage and sagacious counsellor,
contrasts with the Chamberlain, an ambitious miscreant; Kánmakán
is the typical Arab knight, gentle and brave:—
Now managing the mouthes of stubborne steedes