Supplemental Nights to The Book of the Thousand and One Nights - Sir Richard Francis Burton (little readers TXT) 📗

collects revenue; in Marocco a commissioner sent by His Sharifian Majesty.

 

[FN#153] Our older word for divers=Arab “Ghaww�s�n”: a single pearl (in the text Jauhar=the Port. AIjofar) is called “habbah”=grain or seed.

 

[FN#154] The kindly and generous deed of one Moslem to another, and by no means rare in real life.

 

[FN#155] “Eunuch,” etymologically meaning chamberlain ( +

), a bed-chamber-servant or slave, was presently confined to castrated men found useful for special purposes, like gelded horses, hounds, and cockerels turned to capons. Some writers hold that the creation of the semivir or apocopus began as a punishment in Egypt and elsewhere; and so under the Romans amputation of the “peccant part” was frequent: others trace the Greek “invalid,” i.e., impotent man, to marital jealousy, and not a few to the wife who wished to use the sexless for hard work in the house without danger to the slavegirls. The origin of the mutilation is referred by Ammianus Marcellinus (lib. iv. chap.

17), and the Classics generally, to Semiramis, an “ancient queen”

of decidedly doubtful epoch, who thus prevented the propagation of weaklings. But in Genesis (xxxvii. 36; xxxix. 1, margin) we find Potiphar termed a “Sar�m” (castrato), an “extenuating circumstance” for Mrs. P. Herodotus (iii. chap. 48) tells us that Periander, tyrant of Corinth, sent three hundred Corcyrean boys to Alyattes for castration , and that Panionios of Chios sold caponised lads for high prices (viii. 105): he notices (viii. 104 and other places) that eunuchs “of the Sun, of Heaven, of the hand of God,” were looked upon as honourable men amongst the Persians whom Stephanus and Brissonius charge with having invented the name (Dabistan i. 171). Ctesias also declares that the Persian kings were under the influence of eunuchs. In the debauched ages of Rome the women found a new use for these effeminates, who had lost only the testes or testiculi=the witnesses (of generative force): it is noticed by Juvenal (i. 22; ii. 365-379; vi. 366)

 

—sunt quos imbelles et mollia semper Oscula delectant.

 

So Martial,

 

—vult futui Gallia, non parere, And Mirabeau knew (see Kad�sah) “qu’ils mordent les femmes et les liment avec une pr�cieuse continuit�.” (Compare my vol. ii. 90; v. 46.) The men also used them as catamites (Horace i. Od.

xxxvii.).

 

“Contaminato cum grege turpium, Morbo virorum.”

 

In religion the intestabilis or intestatus was held illomened, and not permitted to become a priest (Seneca Controv. ii. 4), a practice perpetuated in the various Christian churches. The manufacture was forbidden, to the satisfaction of Martial, by Domitian, whose edict Nero confirmed; and was restored by the Byzantine empire, which advanced eunuchs, like Eutropius and Narses, to the highest dignities of the realm. The cruel custom to the eternal disgrace of mediaeval Christianity was revived in Rome for providing the choirs in the Sistine Chapel and elsewhere with boys’ voices. Isaiah mentions the custom (Ivi. 3-6).

Mohammed, who notices in the Koran (xxiv. 31), “such men as attend women and have no need of women,” i.e., “have no natural force,” expressly forbade (iv. 118), “changing Allah’s creatures,” referring, say the commentators, to superstitious earcropping of cattle, tattooing, teeth-sharpening, sodomy, tribadism, and slave-gelding. See also the “Hid�yah,” vol. iv.

121; and the famous divine AI-Siy�ti, the last of his school, wrote a tractate Fi ‘I-Tahr�mi Khidmati ‘I-Khisy�n=on the illegality of using eunuchs. Yet the Harem perpetuated the practice throughout AI-Islam and African jealousy made a gross abuse of it. To quote no other instance, the Sultan of D�r-For had a thousand eunuchs under a Malik or king, and all the chief offices of the empire, such as Ab (father) and B�b (door), were monopolised by these neutrals. The centre of supply was the Upper Nile, where the operation was found dangerous after the age of fifteen, and when badly performed only one in four survived. For this reason, during the last century the Coptic monks of Girgah and Zawy al-Dayr, near Assiout, engaged in this scandalous traffic, and declared that it was philanthropic to operate scientifically (Prof. Panuri and many others). Eunuchs are now made in the Sud�n, Nubia, Abyssinia, Kordof�n, and D�r-For, especially the Messalmiyah district: one of those towns was called “Taw�shah” (eunuchry) from the traffic there conducted by Fukah� or religious teachers. Many are supplied by the district between Majarah (Majarash?) and the port Masawwah; there are also dep�ts at Mbadr, near Tajurrah-harbour, where Yusuf Bey, Governor in 1880, caponised some forty boys, including the brother of a hostile African chief: here also the well-known Abu Bakr was scandalously active. It is calculated that not less than eight thousand of these unfortunates are annually exported to Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. Article IV. of the AngIo-Egyptian Convention punishes the offense with death, and no one would object to hanging the murderer under whose mutilating razor a boy dies. Yet this, like most of our modern “improvements” in Egypt, is a mere brutum fulmen. The crime is committed under our very eyes, but we will not see it.

 

The Romans numbered three kinds of eunuchs:—1. Castrati, clean-shaved, from Gr. ; 2. Spadones, from , when the testicles are torn out, not from “Spada,” town of Persia; and, 3.

Thlibii, from , to press, squeeze, when the testicles are bruised, &c. In the East also, as I have stated (v. 46), eunuchs are of three kinds:—1. Sandali, or the clean-shaved, the classical apocopus. The parts are swept off by a single cut of a razor, a tube (tin or wooden) is set in the urethra, the wound is cauterised with boiling oil, and the patient is planted in a fresh dunghill. His diet is milk; and if under puberty, he often survives. This is the eunuque aqueduc, who must pass his water through a tube. 2. The eunuch whose penis is removed: he retains all the power of copulation and procreation without the wherewithal; and this, since the discovery of caoutchouc, has often been supplied. 3. The eunuch, or classical Thlibias and Semivir, who has been rendered sexless by removing the testicles (as the priests of Cybele were castrated with a stone knife), or by bruising (the Greek Thl�sias), twisting, searing, or bandaging them. A more humane process has lately been introduced: a horsehair is tied round the neck of the scrotum and tightened by slow degrees till the circulation of the part stops and the bag drops off without pain. This has been adopted in sundry Indian regiments of Irregular Cavalry, and it succeeded admirably: the animals rarely required a day’s rest. The practice was known to the ancients. See notes on Kad�sah in Mirabeau. The Eunuchata virgo was invented by the Lydians, according to their historian Xanthus. Zachias (Quaest. medico-legal.) declares that the process was one of infibulation or simple sewing up the vulva; but modern experience has suggested an operation like the “spaying” of bitches, or mutilation of the womb, in modern euphuism “baby-house.” Dr. Robert (“Journey from Delhi to Bombay, M�ller’s Archiv. 1843”) speaks of a eunuch’d woman who after ovariotomy had no breasts, no pubes, no rotundities, and no desires. The Australians practice exsection of the ovaries systematically to make women barren. Miklucho Maclay learned from the traveller Retsch that about Lake Parapitshurie men’s urethras were split, and the girls were spayed: the latter showing two scars in the groin. They have flat bosoms, but feminine forms, and are slightly bearded; they mix with the men, whom they satisfy mechanically, but without enjoyment (?). MacGillivray, of the “Rattlesnake,” saw near Cape York a woman with these scars: she was a surdo-mute, and had probably been spayed to prevent increase. The old Scandinavians, from Norway to Iceland, systematically gelded “sturdy vagrants” in order that they might not beget bastards. The Hottentots before marriage used to cut off the left testicle, meaning by such semi-castration to prevent the begetting of twins. This curious custom, mentioned by the Jesuit Tochard, Boeving, and Kolbe, is now apparently obsolete—

at least, the traveller Fritsch did not find it.

 

[FN#156] Arab. “Har�m”=“forbidden,” sinful.

 

[FN#157] In Chavis and Cazotte, who out-galland’d Galland in transmogrifying the Arabic, this is the “Story of Illage (AI-H�jj) Mahomet and his sons; or, the Imprudent Man.” The tale occurs in many forms and with great modifications. See, for instance, the Gesta Romanorum “Of the miraculous recall of sinners and of the consolation which piety offers to the distressed,” the adventures of the knight Placidus, vol. ii. 99.

Charles Swan, London. Rivington, 1824.

 

[FN#158] i.e. For fear of the “eye”; see vol. i. 123 and passim.

In these days the practice is rare; but, whenever you see at Cairo an Egyptian dame daintily dressed and leading by the hand a grimy little boy whose eyes are black with flies and whose dress is torn and unclean, you see what has taken its place. And if you would praise the brat you must not say “Oh, what a pretty boy!”

but “Inshallah!”—the Lord doth as he pleaseth.

 

[FN#159] The adoption of slave lads and lasses was and is still common among Moslems.

 

[FN#160] I have elsewhere noted this “pathetic fallacy” which is a lieu commun of Eastern folk-lore and not less frequently used in the mediaeval literature of Europe before statistics were invented.

 

[FN#161] Arab. “Yaskut min ‘Aynayh,” lit.=fall from his two eyes, lose favour.

 

[FN#162] i.e. killing a man.

 

[FN#163] i.e. we can slay him whenever we will.

 

[FN#164] In Chavis and Cazotte “Story of Abosaber the Patient.”

“Ab�-S�bir” would mean “Father of the Patient (one).”

 

[FN#165] Arab. “Dihk�n,” in Persian a villager; but here something more, a villageelder or chief. AI-Mas’udi (chap.

xxiv.), and other historians apply the term to a class of noble Persians descended from the ten sons of Wahkert, the first,“Dihk�n,” the fourth generation from King Kayomars.

 

[FN#166] Reminding one not a little of certain anecdotes anent Quakers, current in England and English-speaking lands.

 

[FN#167] Arab. “Karyah,” a word with a long history. The root seems to be Karaha, he met; in Chald. Karih and K�ria (emphatic K�rita)=a town or city; and in Heb. Kirjath, Kiry�thayim, etc. We find it in Carthage= Kart� h�disah, or New Town as opposed to Utica (At�kah)=Old Town; in Carchemish and in a host of similar compounds. In Syria and Egypt Kariyah, like Kafr, now means a hamlet, a village.

 

[FN#168] i.e. wandering at a venture.

 

[FN#169] Arab. “Sakhrah,” the old French Corv�e, and the “Beg�r”

of India.

 

[FN#170] Arab. “Matm�rah:” see vol. ii. 39, where it was used as an “underground cell.” The word is extensively used in the Maghrib or Western Africa.

 

[FN#171] Arab. “Y� Ab� S�bir.” There are five vocative particles in Arabic; “Y�,” common to the near and far; “Ay�” (ho!) and “Hay�” (holla!) addressed to the far, and “Ay” and “A”

(A-‘Abda-ll�hi, O Abdullah), to those near. All govern the accusative of a noun in construction in the literary language only; and the vulgar use none but the first named. The English-speaking races neglect the vocative particle, and I never heard it except in the Southern States of the AngloAmerican Union=Oh, Mr. Smith.

 

[FN#172] He was not honest enough to undeceive them; a neat Quaker-like touch.

 

[FN#173] Here the oath is justified; but the reader will have remarked that the name of Allah is often taken in vain. Moslems, however, so far from holding this a profanation deem it an acknowledgment of the Omnipotence and Omnipresence. The Jews from whom the Christians have borrowed had an interest in concealing the name of their tribal divinity; and therefore made it ineffable.

 

[FN#174] i.e. the grave, the fosse commune of slain men.

 

[FN#175] A fancy name; “Zawash” in Pers. is = the planet Jupiter, either borrowed from Greece, or both descended from some long forgotten ancestor.

 

[FN#176] In Chavis and Cazotte “Story of Bhazad (!)