Nights!” and now, so far from holding the pauses “an intolerable
interruption to the narrative,” I attach additional importance to
these pleasant and restful breaks introduced into long and
intricate stories. Indeed beginning again I should adopt the
plan of the Cal. Edit. opening and ending every division with a
dialogue between the sisters. Upon this point, however, opinions
will differ and the critic will remind me that the consensus of
the MSS. would be wanting: The Bresl. Edit. in many places merely
interjects the number of the night without interrupting the tale;
the MS. in the Bibliotheque Nationale used by Galland contains
only cclxxxii and the Frenchman ceases to use the division after
the ccxxxvith Night and in some editions after the
cxcviith.[FN#299] A fragmentary MS. according to Scott whose
friend J. Anderson found it in Bengal, breaks away after Night
xxix; and in the Wortley Montagu, the Sultan relents at an early
opportunity, the stories, as in Galland, continuing only as an
amusement. I have been careful to preserve the balanced
sentences with which the tales open; the tautology and the prose-rhyme
serving to attract attention, e.g., “In days of yore and
in times long gone before there was a King,” etc.; in England
where we strive not to waste words this becomes “Once upon a
time.” The closings also are artfully calculated, by striking a
minor chord after the rush and hurry of the incidents, to suggest
repose: “And they led the most pleasurable of lives and the most
delectable, till there came to them the Destroyer of delights and
the Severer of societies and they became as though they had never
been.” Place this by the side of Boccaccio’s favourite
formulae:—Egli conquistò poi la Scozia, e funne re coronato (ii,
3); Et onorevolmente visse infino alla fine (ii, 4); Molte volte
goderono del loro amore: Iddio faccia noi goder del nostro (iii,
6): E cosi nella sue grossezza si rimase e ancor vi si sta (vi,
8). We have further docked this tail into: “And they lived
happily ever after.”
I cannot take up the Nights in their present condition, without
feeling that the work has been written down from the Ráwi or
Nakkál,[FN#300] the conteur or professional story-teller, also
called Kassás and Maddáh, corresponding with the Hindu Bhat or
Bard. To these men my learned friend Baron A. von Kremer would
attribute the Mu’allakat vulgarly called the Suspended Poems, as
being “indited from the relation of the Ráwi.” Hence in our text
the frequent interruption of the formula Kal’ al-Rawi = quotes
the reciter; dice Turpino. Moreover, The Nights read in many
places like a hand-book or guide for the professional, who would
learn them by heart; here and there introducing his “gag” and
“patter”. To this “business” possibly we may attribute much of
the ribaldry which starts up in unexpected places: it was meant
simply to provoke a laugh. How old the custom is and how
unchangeable is Eastern life is shown, a correspondent suggests,
by the Book of Esther which might form part of The Alf Laylah.
“On that night (we read in Chap. vi. 1) could not the King sleep,
and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles;
and they were read before the King.” The Ráwi would declaim the
recitative somewhat in conversational style; he would intone the
Saj’a or prose-rhyme and he would chant to the twanging of the
Rabáb, a one-stringed viol, the poetical parts. Dr.
Scott[FN#301] borrows from the historian of Aleppo a life-like
picture of the Story-teller. “He recites walking to and fro in
the middle of the coffee-room, stopping only now and then, when
the expression requires some emphatical attitude. He is commonly
heard with great attention; and not unfrequently in the midst of
some interesting adventure, when the expectation of his audience
is raised to the highest pitch, he breaks off abruptly and makes
his escape, leaving both his hero or heroine and his audience in
the utmost embarrassment. Those who happen to be near the door
endeavour to detain him, insisting upon the story being finished
before he departs; but he always makes his retreat good[FN#302];
and the auditors suspending their curiosity are induced to return
at the same time next day to hear the sequel. He has no sooner
made his exit than the company in separate parties fall to
disputing about the characters of the drama or the event of an
unfinished adventure. The controversy by degrees becomes serious
and opposite opinions are maintained with no less warmth than if
the fall of the city depended upon the decision.”
At Tangier, where a murder in a “coffee-house” had closed these
hovels, pending a sufficient payment to the Pasha; and where,
during the hard winter of 1885–86, the poorer classes were
compelled to puff their Kayf (Bhang, cannabis indica) and sip
their black coffee in the muddy streets under a rainy sky, I
found the Ráwi active on Sundays and Thursdays, the market days.
The favourite place was the “Soko de barra,” or large bazar,
outside the town whose condition is that of Suez and Bayrut half
a century ago. It is a foul slope; now slippery with viscous
mud, then powdery with fetid dust, dotted with graves and
decaying tombs, unclean booths, gargottes and tattered tents, and
frequented by women, mere bundles of unclean rags, and by men
wearing the haik or burnús, a Franciscan frock, tending their
squatting camels and chaffering over cattle for Gibraltar beef-eaters.
Here the market-people form a ring about the reciter, a
stalwart man affecting little raiment besides a broad waist-belt
into which his lower chiffons are tucked, and noticeable only for
his shock hair, wild eyes, broad grin and generally disreputable
aspect. He usually handles a short stick; and, when drummer and
piper are absent, he carries a tiny tom-tom shaped like an hour-glass,
upon which he taps the periods. This Scealuidhe, as the
Irish call him, opens the drama with extempore prayer, proving
that he and the audience are good Moslems: he speaks slowly and
with emphasis, varying the diction with breaks of animation,
abundant action and the most comical grimace: he advances,
retires and wheels about, illustrating every point with
pantomime; and his features, voice and gestures are so expressive
that even Europeans who cannot understand a word of Arabic divine
the meaning of his tale. The audience stands breathless and
motionless surprising strangers[FN#303] by the ingenuousness and
freshness of feeling hidden under their hard and savage exterior.
The performance usually ends with the embryo actor going round
for alms and flourishing in air every silver bit, the usual
honorarium being a few “f’lús,” that marvellous money of Barbary,
big coppers worth one-twelfth of a penny. All the tales I heard
were purely local, but Fakhri Bey, a young Osmanli domiciled for
some time in Fez and Mequinez, assured me that The Nights are
still recited there.
Many travellers, including Dr. Russell, have complained that they
failed to find a complete MS. copy of The Nights. Evidently they
never heard of the popular superstition which declares that no
one can read through them without dying—it is only fair that my
patrons should know this. Yacoub Artín Pasha declares that the
superstition dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
and he explains it in two ways. Firstly, it is a facetious
exaggeration, meaning that no one has leisure or patience to wade
through the long repertory. Secondly, the work is condemned as
futile. When Egypt produced savants and legists like Ibn al-Hajar,
Al-’Ayni, and Al-Kastalláni, to mention no others, the
taste of the country inclined to dry factual studies and positive
science; nor, indeed, has this taste wholly died out: there are
not a few who, like Khayri Pasha, contend that the mathematic is
more useful even for legal studies than history and geography,
and at Cairo the chief of the Educational Department has always
been an engineer, i.e., a mathematician. The Olema declared war
against all “futilities,” in which they included not only stories
but also what is politely entitled Authentic History. From this
to the fatal effect of such lecture is only a step. Society,
however, cannot rest without light literature; so the novel-reading
class was thrown back upon writings which had all the
indelicacy and few of the merits of The Nights.
Turkey is the only Moslem country which has dared to produce a
regular drama[FN#304] and to arouse the energies of such
brilliant writers as Muníf Pasha, statesman and scholar; Ekrem
Bey, literato and professor; Kemál Bey, held by some to be the
greatest writer in modern Osmanli-land and Abd al-Hakk Hamíd Bey,
first Secretary of the London Embassy. The theatre began in its
ruder form by taking subjects bodily from The Nights; then it
annexed its plays as we do—the Novel having ousted the Drama—
from the French; and lastly it took courage to be original. Many
years ago I saw Harun al-Rashid and the Three Kalandars, with
deer-skins and all their properties de rigueur in the court-yard
of Government House, Damascus, declaiming to the extreme
astonishment and delight of the audience. It requires only to
glance at The Nights for seeing how much histrionic matter they
contain.
In considering the style of The Nights we must bear in mind that
the work has never been edited according to our ideas of the
process. Consequently there is no just reason for translating
the whole verbatim et literatim, as has been done by Torrens,
Lane and Payne in his “Tales from the Arabic.”[FN#305] This
conscientious treatment is required for versions of an author
like Camns, whose works were carefully corrected and arranged by
a competent littérateur, but it is not merited by The Nights as
they now are. The Macnaghten, the Bulak and the Bayrut texts,
though printed from MSS. identical in order, often differ in
minor matters. Many friends have asked me to undertake the work:
but, even if lightened by the aid of Shaykhs, Munshis and
copyists, the labour would be severe, tedious and thankless:
better leave the holes open than patch them with fancy work or
with heterogeneous matter. The learned, indeed, as Lane tells us
(i. 74; iii. 740), being thoroughly dissatisfied with the plain
and popular, the ordinary and “vulgar” note of the language, have
attempted to refine and improve it and have more than once
threatened to remodel it, that is, to make it odious. This would
be to dress up Robert Burns in plumes borrowed from Dryden and
Pope.
The first defect of the texts is in the distribution and
arrangement of the matter, as I have noticed in the case of
Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi. 77). Moreover, many of the earlier
Nights are overlong and not a few of the others are overshort:
this, however, has the prime recommendation of variety. Even the
vagaries of editor and scribe will not account for all the
incoherences, disorder and inconsequence, and for the vain
iterations which suggest that the author has forgotten what he
said. In places there are dead allusions to persons and tales
which are left dark, e.g. vol. i. pp. 43, 57, 61, etc. The
digressions are abrupt and useless, leading nowhere, while sundry
pages are wearisome for excess of prolixity or hardly
intelligible for extreme conciseness. The perpetual recurrence
of mean colloquialisms and of words and idioms peculiar to Egypt
and Syria[FN#306] also takes from the pleasure of the perusal.
Yet we cannot deny that it has its use: this unadorned language
of familiar conversation, in its day adapted for the
understanding of the people, is best fitted for the Rawi’s craft
in the camp and caravan, the Harem, the bazar and the coffee-house.
Moreover, as has been well said, The Nights is the only
written half-way house between the literary and colloquial Arabic
which is accessible to all, and thus it becomes necessary to the
students who would qualify themselves for service in Moslem lands
from Mauritania to Mesopotamia. It freely uses Turkish words
like “Khátún” and Persian terms as “Sháhbandar,” thus requiring
for translation not only a somewhat archaic touch, but also a
vocabulary borrowed from various sources: otherwise the effect
would not be reproduced. In places, however, the style rises to
the highly ornate approaching the pompous; e.g. the Wazirial
addresses in the tale of King Jali’ad. The battle-scenes, mostly
admirable (vol. v. 365), are told with the conciseness of a
despatch and the vividness of an artist; the two combining to
form perfect “word-pictures.” Of the Badí’a or euphuistic style,
“Parleying euphuism,” and of AI Saj’a, the prose rhyme, I shall
speak in a future page.
The characteristics of the whole are naïveté and simplicity,
clearness and a singular concision. The gorgeousness is in the
imagery not in the language; the words are weak while the sense,
as in the classical Scandinavian books, is strong; and here the
Arabic differs diametrically from the florid exuberance and
turgid amplifications of the Persian story-teller, which sound so
hollow and unreal by the side of a chaster model. It abounds in
formulæ such as repetitions of religious phrases which are
unchangeable. There are certain stock comparisons, as Lokman’s
wisdom, Joseph’s beauty, Jacob’s grief, Job’s patience, David’s
music, and Maryam the Virgin’s chastity. The eyebrow is a Nún;
the eye a Sád, the mouth a Mím. A hero is more prudent than the
crow, a better guide than the Katá grouse, more generous than the
cock, warier than the crane, braver than the lion, more
aggressive than the panther, finer-sighted than the horse,
craftier than the fox, greedier than the gazelle, more vigilant
than the dog, and thriftier than the ant. The cup-boy is a sun
rising from the dark underworld symbolised by his collar; his
cheek-mole is a crumb of ambergris, his nose is a scymitar grided
at the curve; his lower lip is a jujube; his teeth are the
Pleiades or hailstones; his browlocks are scorpions; his young
hair on the upper lip is an emerald; his side beard is a swarm of
ants or a Lám ( -letter) enclosing the roses or anemones of his
cheek. The cup-girl is a moon who rivals the sheen of the sun;
her forehead is a pearl set off by the jet of her “idiot-fringe;”
her eyelashes scorn the sharp sword; and her glances are arrows
shot from the bow of the eyebrows. A mistress necessarily
belongs, though living in the next street, to the Wady Liwá and
to a hostile clan of Badawin whose blades are ever thirsting for
the lover’s blood and whose malignant tongues aim only at the
“defilement of separation.” Youth is upright as an Alif, or
slender and bending as a branch of the Bán-tree which we should
call a willow-wand,[FN#307] while Age, crabbed and crooked, bends
groundwards vainly seeking in the dust his lost juvenility. As
Baron de Slane says of these stock comparisons (Ibn Khall. i.
xxxvi.), “The figurative language of Moslem poets is often
difficult to be understood. The narcissus is the eye; the feeble
stem of that plant bends languidly under its dower, and thus
recalls to mind the languor of the eyes. Pearls signify both
tears and teeth; the latter are sometimes called hailstones, from
their whiteness and moisture; the lips are cornelians or rubies;
the gums, a pomegranate flower; the dark foliage of the myrtle is
synonymous with the black hair of the beloved, or with the first
down on the cheeks of puberty. The down itself is called the
izâr, or head-stall of the bridle, and the curve of the izar is
compared to the letters lâm ( ) and nûn ( ).[FN#308] Ringlets
trace on the cheek or neck the letter Waw ( ); they are called
Scorpions (as the Greek ), either from their dark colour
or their agitated movements; the eye is a sword; the eyelids
scabbards; the whiteness of the complexion, camphor; and a mole
or beauty-spot, musk, which term denotes also dark hair. A mole
is sometimes compared also to an ant creeping on the cheek
towards the honey of the mouth; a handsome face is both a full
moon and day; black hair is night; the waist is a willow-branch
or a lance; the water of the face is self-respect: a poet sells
the water of his face[FN#309] when he bestows mercenary praises
on a rich patron.”
This does not sound promising: yet, as has been said of Arab
music, the persistent repetition of the same notes in the minor
key is by no means monotonous and ends with haunting the ear,
occupying the thought and touching the soul. Like the distant
frog-concert and chirp of the cicada, the creak of the water-wheel
and the stroke of hammers upon the anvil from afar, the
murmur of the fountain, the sough of the wind and the plash of
the wavelet, they occupy the sensorium with a soothing effect,
forming a barbaric music full of sweetness and peaceful pleasure.
§ IV.
SOCIAL CONDITION.
I here propose to treat of the Social Condition which The Nights
discloses, of Al-Islam at the earlier period of its development,
concerning the position of women and about the pornology of the
great Saga-book.
A.—Al-Islam.
A splendid and glorious life was that of Baghdad in the days of
the mighty Caliph,[FN#310] when the Capital had towered to the
zenith of grandeur and was already trembling and tottering to the
fall. The centre of human civilisation, which was then confined
to Greece and Arabia, and the metropolis of an Empire exceeding
in extent the widest limits of Rome, it was essentially a city of
pleasure, a Paris of the ixth century. The “Palace of Peace” (Dár
al-Salám), worthy successor of Babylon and Nineveh, which had
outrivalled Damascus, the “Smile of the Prophet,” and Kufah, the
successor of Hira and the magnificent creation of Caliph Omar,
possessed unrivalled advantages of site and climate. The Tigris-Euphrates
Valley, where the fabled Garden of Eden has been
placed, in early ages succeeded the Nile-Valley as a great
centre of human development; and the prerogative of a central and
commanding position still promises it, even in the present state
of decay and desolation under the unspeakable Turk, a magnificent
future,[FN#311] when railways and canals shall connect it with
Europe. The city of palaces and government offices, hotels and
pavilions, mosques and colleges, kiosks and squares, bazars and
markets, pleasure grounds and orchards, adorned with all the
graceful charms which Saracenic architecture had borrowed from
the Byzantines, lay couched upon the banks of the Dijlah-Hiddekel
under a sky of marvellous purity and in a climate which makes
mere life a “Kayf”—the luxury of tranquil enjoyment. It was
surrounded by far extending suburbs, like Rusafah on the Eastern
side and villages like Baturanjah, dear to the votaries of
pleasure; and with the roar of a gigantic capital mingled the hum
of prayer, the trilling of birds, the thrilling of harp and lute,
the shrilling of pipes, the witching strains of the professional
Almah, and the minstrel’s lay.
The population of Baghdad must have been enormous when the
smallest number of her sons who fell victims to Huláku Khan in
1258 was estimated at eight hundred thousand, while other
authorities more than double the terrible “butcher’s bill.” Her
policy and polity were unique. A well regulated routine of
tribute and taxation, personally inspected by the Caliph; a
network of waterways, canaux d’arrosage; a noble system of
highways, provided with viaducts, bridges and caravanserais, and
a postal service of mounted couriers enabled it to collect as in
a reservoir the wealth of the outer world. The facilities for
education were upon the most extended scale; large sums, from
private as well as public sources, were allotted to Mosques, each
of which, by the admirable rule of Al-Islam, was expected to
contain a school: these establishments were richly endowed and
stocked with professors collected from every land between
Khorasan and Marocco;[FN#312] and immense libraries[FN#313]
attracted the learned of all nations. It was a golden age for
poets and panegyrists, koranists and literati, preachers and
rhetoricians, physicians and scientists who, besides receiving
high salaries and fabulous presents, were treated with all the
honours of Chinese Mandarins; and, like these, the humblest
Moslem—fisherman or artizan—could aspire through knowledge or
savoir faire to the highest offices of the Empire. The effect was
a grafting of Egyptian, and old Mesopotamian, of Persian and
Græco-Latin fruits, by long Time deteriorated, upon the strong
young stock of Arab genius; and the result, as usual after such
imping, was a shoot of exceptional luxuriance and vitality. The
educational establishments devoted themselves to the three main
objects recognised by the Moslem world, Theology, Civil Law and
Belles Lettres; and a multitude of trained Councillors enabled
the ruling powers to establish and enlarge that complicated
machinery of government, at once concentrated and decentralized,
a despotism often fatal to the wealthy great but never neglecting
the interests of the humbler lieges, which forms the beau idéal
of Oriental administration. Under the Chancellors of the Empire
the Kazis administered law and order, justice and equity; and
from their decisions the poorest subject, Moslem or miscreant,
could claim with the general approval of the lieges, access and
appeal to the Caliph who, as Imám or Antistes of the Faith was
High President of a Court of Cassation.
Under wise administration Agriculture and Commerce, the twin
pillars of national prosperity, necessarily flourished. A
scientific canalisation, with irrigation works inherited from the
ancients, made the Mesopotamian Valley a rival of Kemi the Black
Land, and rendered cultivation a certainty of profit, not a mere
speculation, as it must ever be to those who perforce rely upon
the fickle rains of Heaven. The remains of extensive mines prove
that this source of public wealth was not neglected; navigation
laws encouraged transit and traffic; and ordinances for the
fisheries aimed at developing a branch of industry which is still
backward even during the xixth century. Most substantial
encouragement was given to trade and commerce, to manufactures
and handicrafts, by the flood of gold which poured in from all
parts of earth; by the presence of a splendid and luxurious
court, and by the call for new arts and industries which such a
civilisation would necessitate. The crafts were distributed into
guilds and syndicates under their respective chiefs, whom the
government did not “govern too much”: these Shahbandars,
Mukaddams and Nakíbs regulated the several trades, rewarded the
industrious, punished the fraudulent and were personally
answerable, as we still see at Cairo, for the conduct of their
constituents. Public order, the sine quâ non of stability and
progress, was preserved, first, by the satisfaction of the lieges
who, despite their characteristic turbulence, had few if any
grievances; and, secondly, by a well directed and efficient
police, an engine of statecraft which in the West seems most
difficult to perfect. In the East, however, the Wali or Chief
Commissioner can reckon more or less upon the unsalaried
assistance of society: the cities are divided into quarters shut
off one from other by night, and every Moslem is expected, by his
law and religion, to keep watch upon his neighbours, to report
their delinquencies and, if necessary, himself to carry out the
penal code. But in difficult cases the guardians of the peace
were assisted by a body of private detectives, women as well as
men: these were called Tawwábún = the Penitents, because like our
Bow-street runners, they had given up an even less respectable
calling. Their adventures still delight the vulgar, as did the
Newgate Calendar of past generations; and to this class we owe
the Tales of Calamity Ahmad, Dalilah the Wily One, Saladin with
the Three Chiefs of Police (vol. iv. 271), and Al-Malik al-Záhir
with the Sixteen Constables (Bresl. Edit. xi. pp. 321– 99). Here
and in many other places we also see the origin of that
“picaresque” literature which arose in Spain and overran Europe;
and which begat Le Moyen de Parvenir. [FN#314]