And the kind-hearted, simple-minded Stoker serves as a foil to
the villains, the kidnapping Badawi and Ghazbán the detestable
negro. The fortunes of the family are interrupted by two
episodes, both equally remarkable. Taj al-Mulúk[FN#287] is the
model lover whom no difficulties or dangers can daunt. In Azíz
and Azízah (ii. 291) we have the beau ideal of a loving woman:
the writer’s object was to represent a “softy” who had the luck
to win the love of a beautiful and clever cousin and the mad
folly to break her heart. The poetical justice which he receives
at the hands of women of quite another stamp leaves nothing to be
desired. Finally the plot of “King Omar” is well worked out; and
the gathering of all the actors upon the stage before the curtain
drops may be improbable but it is highly artistic.
The long Crusading Romance is relieved by a sequence of sixteen
fabliaux, partly historiettes of men and beasts and partly
apologues proper—a subject already noticed. We have then (iii.
162) the saddening and dreary love-tale of Ali bin Bakkár, a
Persian youth and the Caliph’s concubine Shams al-Nahár. Here
the end is made doleful enough by the deaths of the “two
martyrs,” who are killed off, like Romeo and Juliet,[FN#288] a
lesson that the course of true Love is sometimes troubled and
that men as well as women can die of the so-called “tender
passion.” It is followed (iii. 212) by the long tale of Kamar
al-Zamán, or Moon of the Age, the first of that name, the
“Camaralzaman” whom Galland introduced into the best European
society. Like “The Ebony Horse” it seems to have been derived
from a common source with “Peter of Provence” and “Cleomades and
Claremond”; and we can hardly wonder at its wide diffusion: the
tale is brimful of life, change, movement, containing as much
character and incident as would fill a modern three-volumer and
the Supernatural pleasantly jostles the Natural; Dahnash the Jinn
and Maymúnah daughter of Al-Dimiryát,[FN#289] a renowned King of
the Jann, being as human in their jealousy about the virtue of
their lovers as any children of Adam, and so their metamorphosis
to fleas has all the effect of a surprise. The troupe is again
drawn with a broad firm touch. Prince Charming, the hero, is
weak and wilful, shifty and immoral, hasty and violent: his two
spouses are rivals in abominations as his sons, Amjad and As’ad,
are examples of a fraternal affection rarely found in half-brothers
by sister-wives. There is at least one fine
melodramatic situation (iii. 228); and marvellous feats of
indecency, a practical joke which would occur only to the canopic
mind (iii. 300–305), emphasise the recovery of her husband by
that remarkable “blackguard,” the Lady Budúr. The interpolated
tale of Ni’amah and Naomi (iv. I), a simple and pleasing
narrative of youthful amours, contrasts well with the boiling
passions of the incestuous and murderous Queens and serves as a
pause before the grand denouement when the parted meet, the lost
are found, the unwedded are wedded and all ends merrily as a
xixth century novel.
The long tale of Alá al-Din, our old friend “Aladdin,” is wholly
out of place in its present position (iv. 29): it is a
counterpart of Ali Nûr al-Din and Miriam the Girdle-girl (vol.
ix. i); and the mention of the Shahbandar or Harbour-master (iv.
29), the Kunsul or Consul (p. 84), the Kaptan (Capitano), the use
of cannon at sea and the choice of Genoa city (p. 85) prove that
it belongs to the xvth or xvith century and should accompany
Kamar al-Zamàn II. and Ma’aruf at the
end of The Nights. Despite the lutist Zubaydah being carried off
by the Jinn, the Magic Couch, a modification of Solomon’s carpet,
and the murder of the King who refused to islamize, it is
evidently a European tale and I believe with Dr. Bacher that it
is founded upon the legend of “Charlemagne’s” daughter Emma and
his secretary Eginhardt, as has been noted in the counterpart
(vol. ix. 1).
This quasi-historical fiction is followed hy a succession of
fabliaux, novelle and historiettes which fill the rest of the
vol. iv. and the whole of vol. v. till we reach the terminal
story, The Queen of the Serpents (vol. v. pp. 304–329). It
appears to me that most of them are historical and could easily
be traced. Not a few are in Al-Mas’udi; for instance the grim
Tale of Hatim of Tayy (vol. iv. 94) is given bodily in “Meads of
Gold” (iii. 327); and the two adventures of Ibrahim al-Mahdi with
the barber-surgeon (vol. iv. 103) and the Merchant’s sister (vol.
iv. 176) are in his pages (vol. vii. 68 and 18). The City of
Lubtayt (vol. iv. 99) embodies the legend of Don Rodrigo, last of
the Goths, and may have reached the ears of Washington Irving;
Many-columned Iram (vol. iv. 113) is held by all Moslems to be
factual and sundry writers have recorded the tricks played by Al-Maamun
with the Pyramids of Jizah which still show his
handiwork.[FN#290] The germ of Isaac of Mosul (vol. iv. 119) is
found in Al-Mas’udi who (vii. 65) names “Burán” the poetess (Ibn
Khall. i. 268); and Harun al-Rashid and the Slave-girl (vol. iv.
153) is told by a host of writers. Ali the Persian is a
rollicking tale of fun from some Iranian jest-book: Abu Mohammed
hight Lazybones belongs to the cycle of “Sindbad the Seaman,”
with a touch of Whittington and his Cat; and Zumurrud
(“Smaragdine”) in Ali Shar (vol. iv. 187) shows at her sale the
impudence of Miriam the Girdle-girl and in bed the fescennine
device of the Lady Budur. The “Ruined Man who became Rich,” etc.
(vol. iv. 289) is historical and Al-Mas’udi (vii. 281) relates
the coquetry of Mahbúbah the concubine (vol. iv. 291): the
historian also quotes four couplets, two identical with Nos. 1
and 2 in The Nights (vol. iv. 292) and adding:—
Then see the slave who lords it o’er her lord * In lover privacy
and public site:
Behold these eyes that one like Ja’afar saw: * Allah on Ja’afar
reign boons infinite!
Uns al-Wujúd (vol. v. 32) is a love-tale which has been
translated into a host of Eastern languages; and The Lovers of
the Banu Ozrah belong to Al-Mas’udi’s “Martyrs of Love” (vii.
355), with the ozrite “Ozrite love” of Ibn Khallikan (iv. 537).
“Harun and the Three Poets” (vol. v. 77) has given to Cairo a
proverb which Burckhardt (No. 561) renders “The day obliterates
the word or promise of the Night,” for
The promise of night is effaced by day.
It suggests Congreve’s Doris:—
For who o’er night obtain’d her grace,
She can next day disown, etc.
“Harun and the three Slave-girls” (vol. v. 81) smacks of
Gargantua (lib. i. c. 11): “It belongs to me, said one: ’Tis
mine, said another”; and so forth. The Simpleton and the Sharper
(vol. v. 83) like the Foolish Dominie (vol. v. 118) is an old Joe
Miller in Hindu as well as Moslem folk-lore. “Kisra Anushirwán”
(vol. v. 87) is “The King, the Owl and the Villages of Al-Mas’udi
” (iii. 171), who also notices the Persian monarch’s four
seals of office (ii. 204); and “Masrur the Eunuch and Ibn Al-Káribi
” (vol. v. 109) is from the same source as Ibn al-Magházili
the Reciter and a Eunuch belonging to the Caliph Al-Mu’tazad
(vol. viii. 161). In the Tale of Tawaddud (vol. v. 139) we have
the fullest development of the disputations and displays of
learning then so common in Europe, teste the “Admirable
Crichton”; and these were affected not only by Eastern tale-tellers
but even by sober historians. To us it is much like
“padding” when Nuzhat al-Zamán (vol. ii. 156 etc.) fags her
hapless hearers with a discourse covering sixteen mortal pages;
when the Wazir Dandan (vol. ii. 195, etc.) reports at length the
cold speeches of the five high-bosomed maids and the Lady of
Calamities and when Wird Khan, in presence of his papa (Nights
cmxiv-xvi.) discharges his patristic exercitations and
heterogeneous knowledge. Yet Al-Mas’udi also relates, at dreary
extension (vol. vi. 369) the disputation of the twelve sages in
presence of Barmecide Yahya upon the origin, the essence, the
accidents and the omnes res of Love; and in another place (vii.
181) shows Honayn, author of the Book of Natural Questions,
undergoing a long examination before the Caliph Al-Wásik (Vathek)
and describing, amongst other things, the human teeth. See also
the dialogue or catechism of Al-Hajjáj and Ibn Al-Kirríya in Ibn
Khallikan (vol. i. 238–240).
These disjecta membra of tales and annals are pleasantly relieved
by the seven voyages of Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi. 1–83). The
“Arabian Odyssey” may, like its Greek brother, descend from a
noble family, the “Shipwrecked Mariner” a Coptic travel-tale of
the twelfth dynasty (B. C. 3500) preserved on a papyrus at St.
Petersburg. In its actual condition “Sindbad,” is a fanciful
compilation, like De Foe’s “Captain Singleton,” borrowed from
travellers’ tales of an immense variety and extracts from Al-Idrísi,
Al-Kazwíni and Ibn al-Wardi. Here we find the
Polyphemus, the Pygmies and the cranes of Homer and Herodotus;
the escape of Aristomenes; the Plinian monsters well known in
Persia; the magnetic mountain of Saint Brennan (Brandanus); the
aeronautics of “Duke Ernest of Bavaria”[FN#291] and sundry
cuttings from Moslem writers dating between our ninth and
fourteenth centuries.[FN#292] The “Shayhk of the Seaboard”
appears in the Persian romance of Kámaraupa translated by
Francklin, all the particulars absolutely corresponding. The
“Odyssey” is valuable because it shows how far Eastward the
mediæval Arab had extended: already in The Ignorance he had
reached China and had formed a centre of trade at Canton. But
the higher merit of the cento is to produce one of the most
charming books of travel ever written, like Robinson Crusoe the
delight of children and the admiration of all ages.
The hearty life and realism of Sindbad are made to stand out in
strong relief by the deep melancholy which pervades “The City of
Brass” (vol. vi. 83), a dreadful book for a dreary day. It is
curious to compare the doleful verses (pp. 103, 105) with those
spoken to Caliph Al-Mutawakkil by Abu al-Hasan Ali (Al–Mas’udi,
vii. 246). We then enter upon the venerable Sindibad-nameh, the
Malice of Women (vol. vi. 122), of which, according to the Kitab
al-Fihrist (vol. i. 305), there were two editions, a Sinzibád al-Kabír
and a Sinzibád al-Saghír, the latter being probably an
epitome of the former. This bundle of legends, I have shown, was
incorporated with the Nights as an editor’s addition; and as an
independent work it has made the round of the world.
Space forbids any detailed notice of this choice collection of
anecdotes for which a volume would be required. I may, however,
note that the “Wife’s device” (vol. vi. 152) has its analogues in
the Kathá (chapt. xiii.) in the Gesta Romanorum (No. xxviii.) and
in Boccaccio (Day iii. 6 and Day vi. 8), modified by La Fontaine
to Richard Minutolo (Contes lib. i. tale 2): it is quoted almost
in the words of The Nights by the Shaykh al-Nafzáwi (p. 207).
That most witty and indecent tale The Three Wishes (vol. vi. 180)
has forced its way disguised as a babe into our nurseries.
Another form of it is found in the Arab proverb “More luckless
than Basús” (Kamus), a fair Israelite who persuaded her husband,
also a Jew, to wish that she might become the loveliest of women.
Jehovah granted it, spitefully as Jupiter; the consequence was
that her contumacious treatment of her mate made him pray that
the beauty might be turned into a bitch; and the third wish
restored her to her original state.
The Story of Júdar (vol. vi. 207) is Egyptian, to judge from its
local knowledge (pp. 217 and 254) together with its ignorance of
Marocco (p. 223). It shows a contrast, in which Arabs delight,
of an almost angelical goodness and forgiveness with a well-nigh
diabolical malignity, and we find the same extremes in Abú Sír
the noble-minded Barber and the hideously inhuman Abú Kír. The
excursion to Mauritania is artfully managed and gives a novelty
to the mise-en-scène. Gharíb and Ajíb (vi. 207, vii. 91) belongs
to the cycle of Antar and King Omar bin Nu’man: its exaggerations
make it a fine type of Oriental Chauvinism, pitting the
superhuman virtues, valour, nobility and success of all that is
Moslem, against the scum of the earth which is non-Moslem. Like
the exploits of Friar John of the Chopping-knives (Rabelais i. c.
27) it suggests ridicule cast on impossible battles and tales of
giants, paynims and paladins. The long romance is followed by
thirteen historiettes all apparently historical: compare “Hind,
daughter of Al-Nu’man” (vol. viii. 7–145) and “Isaac of Mosul and
the Devil” (vol. vii. 136–139) with Al Mas’udi v. 365 and vi.
340. They end in two long detective-tales like those which M.
Gaboriau has popularised, the Rogueries of Dalilah and the
Adventures of Mercury Ali, based upon the principle, “One thief
wots another.” The former, who has appeared before (vol. ii.
329), seems to have been a noted character: Al-Mas’udi says
(viii. 175) “in a word this Shaykh (Al-’Ukáb) outrivalled in his
rogueries and the ingenuities of his wiles Dállah (Dalilah?) the
Crafty and other tricksters and coney-catchers, ancient and
modern.”
The Tale of Ardashir (vol. vii. 209–264) lacks originality: we
are now entering upon a series of pictures which are replicas of
those preceding. This is not the case with that charming Undine,
Julnár the Sea-born (vol. vii. 264–308) which, like Abdullah of
the Land and Abdullah of the Sea (vol. ix. Night cmxl.),
describes the vie intime of mermen and merwomen. Somewhat
resembling Swift’s inimitable creations, the Houyhnhnms for
instance, they prove, amongst other things, that those who dwell
in a denser element can justly blame and severely criticise the
contradictory and unreasonable prejudices and predilections of
mankind. Sayf al-Mulúk (vol. viii. Night dcclviii.), the
romantic tale of two lovers, shows by its introduction that it
was originally an independent work and it is known to have
existed in Persia during the eleventh century: this novella has
found its way into every Moslem language of the East even into
Sindi, which calls the hero “Sayfal.” Here we again meet the Old
Man of the Sea or rather the Shaykh of the Seaboard and make
acquaintance with a Jinn whose soul is outside his body: thus he
resembles Hermotimos of Klazamunae in Apollonius, whose spirit
left his mortal frame à discretion. The author,
philanthropically remarking (vol. viii. 4) “Knowest thou not that
a single mortal is better, in Allah’s sight than a thousand
Jinn?” brings the wooing to a happy end which leaves a pleasant
savour upon the mental palate.
Hasan of Bassorah (vol. viii. 7–145) is a Master Shoetie on a
large scale like Sindbad, but his voyages and travels extend into
the supernatural and fantastic rather than the natural world.
Though long the tale is by no means wearisome and the characters
are drawn with a fine firm hand. The hero with his hen-like
persistency of purpose, his weeping, fainting and versifying is
interesting enough and proves that “Love can find out the way.”
The charming adopted sister, the model of what the feminine
friend should be; the silly little wife who never knows that she
is happy till she loses happiness; the violent and hard-hearted
queen with all the cruelty of a good woman, and the manners and
customs of Amazon land are outlined with a life-like vivacity.
Khalífah the next tale (vol. viii. 147–184) is valuable as a
study of Eastern life, showing how the fisherman emerges from the
squalor of his surroundings and becomes one of the Caliph’s
favourite cup-companions. Ali Nur al-Din (vol. viii. 264) and
King Jali’ad (vol. ix., Night dcccxciv) have been noticed
elsewhere and there is little to say of the concluding stories
which bear the evident impress of a more modern date.
Dr. Johnson thus sums up his notice of The Tempest. “Whatever
might have been the intention of their author, these tales are
made instrumental to the production of many characters,
diversified with boundless invention, and preserved with profound
skill in nature; extensive knowledge of opinions, and accurate
observation of life. Here are exhibited princes, courtiers and
sailors, all speaking in their real characters. There is the
agency of airy spirits and of earthy goblin, the operations of
magic, the tumults of a storm, the adventures of a desert island,
the native effusion of untaught affection, the punishment of
guilt, and the final happiness of those for whom our passions and
reason are equally interested.”
We can fairly say this much and far more for our Tales. Viewed
as a tout ensemble in full and complete form, they are a drama of
Eastern life, and a Dance of Death made sublime by faith and the
highest emotions, by the certainty of expiation and the fulness
of atoning equity, where virtue is victorious, vice is vanquished
and the ways of Allah are justified to man. They are a panorama
which remains ken-speckle upon the mental retina. They form a
phantasmagoria in which archangels and angels, devils and
goblins, men of air, of fire, of water, naturally mingle with men
of earth; where flying horses and talking fishes are utterly
realistic: where King and Prince meet fisherman and pauper, lamia
and cannibal; where citizen jostles Badawi, eunuch meets knight;
the Kazi hob-nobs with the thief; the pure and pious sit down to
the same tray with the bawd and the pimp; where the professional
religionist, the learned Koranist and the strictest moralist
consort with the wicked magician, the scoffer and the debauchee-poet
like Abu Nowas; where the courtier jests with the boor and
where the sweep is bedded with the noble lady. And the
characters are “finished and quickened by a few touches swift and
sure as the glance of sunbeams.” The work is a kaleidoscope
where everything falls into picture; gorgeous palaces and
pavilions; grisly underground caves and deadlywolds; gardens
fairer than those of the Hesperid; seas dashing with clashing
billows upon enchanted mountains; valleys of the Shadow of Death;
air-voyages and promenades in the abysses of ocean; the duello,
the battle and the siege; the wooing of maidens and the marriage-rite.
All the splendour and squalor, the beauty and baseness,
the glamour and grotesqueness, the magic and the mournfulness,
the bravery and the baseness of Oriental life are here: its
pictures of the three great Arab passions, love, war and fancy,
entitle it to be called “Blood, Musk and Hashish.”[FN#293] And
still more, the genius of the story-teller quickens the dry bones
of history, and by adding Fiction to Pact revives the dead past:
the Caliphs and the Caliphate return to Baghdad and Cairo, whilst
Asmodeus kindly removes the terrace-roof of every tenement and
allows our curious glances to take in the whole interior. This
is perhaps the best proof of their power. Finally, the picture-gallery
opens with a series of weird and striking adventures and
shows as a tail-piece, an idyllic scene of love and wedlock in
halls before reeking with lust and blood.
I have noticed in my Foreword that the two main characteristics
of The Nights are Pathos and Humour, alternating with highly
artistic contrast, and carefully calculated to provoke tears and
smiles in the coffee-house audience which paid for them. The
sentimental portion mostly breathes a tender passion and a simple
sadness: such are the Badawi’s dying farewell (vol i. 75); the
lady’s broken heart on account of her lover’s hand being cut off
(vol. i. 277); the Wazir’s death, the mourner’s song and the
“tongue of the case” (vol. ii. 10); the murder of Princess
Abrízah with the babe sucking its dead mother’s breast (vol. ii.
128); and, generally, the last moments of good Moslems (e.g.
vol. 167), which are described with inimitable terseness and
naïveté. The sad and the gay mingle in the character of the good
Hammam-stoker who becomes Roi Crotte and the melancholy deepens
in the Tale of the Mad Lover (vol. v. 138); the Blacksmith who
could handle fire without hurt (vol. v. 271); the Devotee Prince
(vol. v. iii) and the whole Tale of Azízah (vol. ii. 298), whose
angelic love is set off by the sensuality and selfishness of her
more fortunate rivals. A new note of absolutely tragic dignity
seems to be struck in the Sweep and the Noble Lady (vol. iv.
125), showing the piquancy of sentiment which can be evolved from
the common and the unclean. The pretty conceit of the Lute (vol.
v. 244) is afterwards carried out in the Song (vol. viii. 281),
which is a masterpiece of originality[FN#294] and (in the Arabic)
of exquisite tenderness and poetic melancholy, the wail over the
past and the vain longing for reunion. And the very depths of
melancholy, of majestic pathos and of true sublimity are reached
in Many-columned Iram (vol. iv. 113) and the City of Brass (vol.
vi. 83): the metrical part of the latter shows a luxury of woe;
it is one long wail of despair which echoes long and loud in the
hearer’s heart.
In my Foreword I have compared the humorous vein of the comic
tales with our northern “wut,” chiefly for the dryness and
slyness which pervade it. But it differs in degree as much as
the pathos varies. The staple article is Cairene “chaff,” a
peculiar banter possibly inherited from their pagan forefathers:
instances of this are found in the Cock and Dog (vol. i. 22), the
Eunuch’s address to the Cook (vol. i. 244), the Wazir’s
exclamation, “Too little pepper!” (vol. i. 246), the self-communing
of Judar (vol. vi. 219), the Hashish-eater in Ali Shár
(vol. iv. 213), the scene between the brother-Wazirs (vol. i.
197), the treatment of the Gobbo (vol. i. 221, 228), the Water of
Zemzem (vol. i. 284), and the Eunuchs Bukhayt and Kafur[FN#295]
(vol. ii. 49, 51). At times it becomes a masterpiece of fun, of
rollicking Rabelaisian humour underlaid by the caustic mother-wit
of Sancho Panza, as in the orgie of the Ladies of Baghdad (vol.
i. 92, 93); the Holy Ointment applied to the beard of Luka the
Knight— “unxerunt regem Salomonem” (vol. ii. 222); and Ja’afar
and the Old Badawi (vol. v. 98), with its reminiscence of
“chaffy” King Amasis. This reaches its acme in the description
of ugly old age (vol. v. 3); in The Three Wishes, the wickedest
of satires on the alter sexus (vi. 180); in Ali the Persian (vol.
iv. 139); in the Lady and her Five Suitors (vol. vi. 172), which
corresponds and contrasts with the dully told Story of Upakosa
and her Four Lovers of the Kathá (p. 17); and in The Man of Al-Yaman
(vol. iv. 245) where we find the true Falstaffian touch.
But there is sterling wit, sweet and bright, expressed without
any artifice of words, in the immortal Barber’s tales of his
brothers, especially the second, the fifth and the sixth (vol. i.
324, 325 and 343). Finally, wherever the honest and independent
old debauchee Abu Nowas makes his appearance the fun becomes
fescennine and milesian.
B.—The Manner of the Nights.
And now, after considering the matter, I will glance at the
language and style of The Nights. The first point to remark is
the peculiarly happy framework of the Recueil, which I cannot but
suspect set an example to the Decamerone and its host of
successors.[FN#296] The admirable Introduction, a perfect mise-en-scène,
gives the amplest raison d’être of the work, which thus
has all the unity required for a great romantic recueil. We
perceive this when reading the contemporary Hindu work the Kathá
Sarit Ságara,[FN#297] which is at once so like and so unlike The
Nights: here the preamble is insufficient; the whole is clumsy
for want of a thread upon which the many independent tales and
fables should be strung[FN#298]; and the consequent disorder and
confusion tell upon the reader, who cannot remember the sequence
without taking notes.