The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 4 - Sir Richard Francis Burton (robert munsch read aloud txt) 📗

137) from his MS. But I hope eventually to make use of it.

 

[FN#135] The first girl calls gold “Titer” (pure, unalloyed metal); the second “Asjad” (gold generally) and the third “Ibr�z”

(virgin ore, the Greek {Greek letters}. This is a law of Arab rhetoric never to repeat the word except for a purpose and, as the language can produce 1,200,000 (to 100,000 in English) the copiousness is somewhat painful to readers.

 

[FN#136] Arab. “Shakes” before noticed.

 

[FN#137] Arab. “Kuss�’�”=the curling cucumber: the vegetable is of the cheapest and the poorer classes eat it as “kitchen” with bread.

 

[FN#138] Arab. “Haram-hu,” a double entendre. Here the Barlawi means his Harem the inviolate part of the house; but afterwards he makes it mean the presence of His Honour.

 

[FN#139] Toledo? this tale was probably known to Washington Irving. The “Land of Roum ” here means simply Frank-land as we are afterwards told that its name was Andalusia the old Vandal-land, a term still applied by Arabs to the whole of the Iberian Peninsula.

 

[FN#140] Arab. “Am�im” (plur. of Im�mah) the common word for turband which I prefer to write in the old unclipt fashion. We got it through the Port. Turbante and the old French Tolliban from the (now obsolete) Persian term Dolband=a turband or a sash.

 

[FN#141] Sixth Ommiade Caliph, A.D. 705-716, from “T�rik” we have “Gibraltar”=Jabal-al-T�rik.

 

[FN#142] Arab. “Yun�n” = Ionia, applied to ancient Greece as “Roum” is to the Gr�co-Roman Empire.

 

[FN#143] Arab. “Bahram�ni ;” prob. alluding to the well-known legend of the capture of Somanath (Somnauth) from the Hindus by Mahmud of Ghazni. In the Aj�‘ib al-Hind (before quoted) the Brahmins are called Abrahamah.

 

[FN#144] i.e. “Peace be with thee!”

 

[FN#145] i.e. in the palace when the hunt was over. The bluntness and plain-speaking of the Badawi, which caused the revelation of the Koranic chapter “Inner Apartments” (No. xlix.) have always been favourite themes with Arab tale-tellers as a contrast with citizen suavity and servility. Moreover the Badawi, besides saying what he thinks, always tells the truth (unless corrupted by commerce with foreigners); and this is a startling contrast with the townsfolk.

To ride out of Damascus and have a chat with the Ruwal� is much like being suddenly transferred from amongst the trickiest of Mediterranean people to the bluff society of the Scandinavian North. And the reason why the Turk will never govern the Arab in peace is that the former is always trying to finesse and to succeed by falsehood, when the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is wanted.

 

[FN#146] Koran. xvi. 112.

 

[FN#147] A common and expressive way of rewarding the tongue which “spoke poetry.” The Jewels are often pearls.

 

[FN#148] Ibrahim Abu Ish�k bin al-Mahdi, a pretender to the Caliphate of well known wit and a famed musician surnamed from his corpulence “Al-Tann�n”=the Dragon or, according to others (Lane ii.

336), “Al-Tin”= the fig. His adventurous history will be found in Ibn Khallikan D’Herbelot and Al-Siyuti.

 

[FN#149] The Ragha of the Zendavesta, and Rages of the Apocrypha (Tobit, Judith, etc.), the old capital-of Media Proper, and seat of government of Daylam, now a ruin some miles south of Teheran which was built out of its remains. Rayy was founded by Hoshang the primeval-king who first sawed wood, made doors and dug metal. It is called Rayy al-Mahdiyyah because Al-Mahdi held his court there.

Harun al-Rashid was also born in it (A.H. 145). It is mentioned by a host of authors and names one of the Makamat of Al-Hariri.

 

[FN#150] Human blood being especially impure.

 

[FN#151] Jones, Brown and Robinson.

 

[FN#152] Arab. “Kumm ,” the Moslem sleeve is mostly (like his trousers) of ample dimensions and easily converted into a kind of carpet-bag by depositing small articles in the middle and gathering up the edge in the hand. In this way carried the weight would be less irksome than hanging to the waist. The English of Queen Anne’s day had regular sleeve-pockets for memoranda, etc., hence the saying, to have in one’s sleeve.

 

[FN#153] Arab. “Khuff” worn under the “B�b�g” (a corruption of the Persian p�-push=feet-covers, papooshes, slippers). [Lane M. E.

chaps. i.]

 

[FN#154] Done in hot weather throughout the city, a dry line for camels being left in mid-street to prevent the awkward beasts slipping. The watering of the Cairo streets of late years has been excessive; they are now lines of mud in summer as well as in winter and the effluvia from the droppings of animals have, combined with other causes, seriously deteriorated the once charming climate. The only place in Lower Egypt, which has preserved the atmosphere of 1850, is Suez.

 

[FN#155] Arab. “Hur�k:” burnt rag, serving as tinder for flint and steel, is a common styptic.

 

[FN#156] Of this worthy, something has been said and there will be more in a future page.

 

[FN#157] i.e. the person entitled to exact the blood-wite.

 

[FN#158] Al-Maamum was a man of sense with all his fanaticism One of his sayings is preserved “Odious is contentiousness in Kings, more odious vexation in judges uncomprehending a case; yet more odious is shallowness of doctors in religions and most odious are avarice in the rich, idleness in youth, jesting in age and cowardice in the soldier.”

 

[FN#159] The second couplet is not in the Mac. Edit. but Lane’s Shaykh has supplied it (ii. 339)

 

[FN#160] Adam’s loins, the “Day of Alast,” and the Imam (who stands before the people in prayer) have been explained. The “Seventh Imam” here is Al-Maamun, the seventh Abbaside the Ommiades being, as usual, ignored.

 

[FN#161] He sinned only for the pleasure of being pardoned, which is poetical-and hardly practical-or probable.

 

[FN#162] The Kat� (sand-grouse) always enters into Arab poetry because it is essentially a desert bird, and here the comparison is good because it lays its eggs in the waste far from water which it must drink morning and evening. Its cry is interpreted “man sakat, salam” (silent and safe), but it does not practice that precept, for it is usually betrayed by its piping ” Kata! Kata!” Hence the proverb, “More veracious than the sand-grouse,” and “speak not falsely, for the Kata sayeth sooth,” is Komayt’s saying. It is an emblem of swiftness: when the brigand poet Shanfara boasts, “The ash-coloured Katas can drink only my leavings, after hastening all night to slake their thirst in the morning,” it is a hyperbole boasting of his speed. In Sind it is called the “rock pigeon” and it is not unlike a grey partridge when on the wing.

 

[FN#163] Joseph to his brethren, Koran, xii. 92, when he gives them his “inner garment” to throw over his father’s face.

 

[FN#164] Arab. “Hajj�m”=a cupper who scarifies forehead and legs, a bleeder, a (blood-) sucker. The slang use of the term is to thrash, lick, wallop. (Burckhardt. Prov. 34.) [FN#165] The Bresl. Edit. (vii. 171-174) entitles this tale, “Story of Shadd�d bin Ad and the City of Iram the Columned ;” but it relates chiefly to the building by the King of the First Adites who, being promised a future Paradise by Prophet H�d, impiously said that he would lay out one in this world. It also quotes Ka’ab al-Ahb�r as an authority for declaring that the tale is in the “Pentateuch of Moses.” Iram was in al-Yaman near Adan (our Aden) a square of ten parasangs (or leagues each= 18,000 feet) every way, the walls were of red (baked) brick 500 cubits high and 20 broad, with four gates of corresponding grandeur. It contained 300,000

Kasr (palaces) each with a thousand pillars of gold-bound jasper, etc. (whence its title). The whole was finished in five hundred years, and, when Shaddad prepared to enter it, the “Cry of Wrath”

from the Angel of Death slew him and all his many. It is mentioned in the Koran (chaps. Ixxxix. 6-7) as “Irem adorned with lofty buildings (or pillars).” But Ibn Khaldun declares that commentators have embroidered the passage; Iram being the name of a powerful clan of the ancient Adites and “im�d” being a tent-pole: hence “Iram with the numerous tents or tent-poles.” Al-Bayzawi tells the story of Abdullah ibn Kilabah (D’Herbelot’s Colabah). At Aden I met an Arab who had seen the mysterious city on the borders of Al-Ahk�f, the waste of deep sands, west of Hadramaut; and probably he had, the mirage or sun-reek taking its place. Compare with this tale “The City of Brass” (Night dlxv.).

 

[FN#166] The biblical-“Sheba,” named from the great-grandson of Joctan, whence the Queen (Bilkis) visited Solomon It was destroyed by the Flood of M�rib.

 

[FN#167] The full title of the Holy City is “Madinat al-Nab)” =

the City of the Prophet, of old Yasrib (Yathrib) the Iatrippa of the Greeks (Pilgrimage, ii. 119). The reader will remember that there are two “Yasribs:” that of lesser note being near Hujr in the Yam�mah province.

 

[FN#168] “Ka’ab of the Scribes,” a well-known traditionist and religious poet who died (A.H. 32) in the Caliphate of Osman. He was a Jew who islamised; hence his name (Ahb�r, plur. of Hibr, a Jewish scribe, doctor of science, etc. Jarrett’s El-Siyuti, p. 123). He must not be confounded with another Ka’ab al-Ahb�r the Poet of the (first) Cloak-poem or “Burdah,” a noble Arab who was a distant cousin of Mohammed, and whose tomb at Hums (Emesa) is a place of pious visitation. According to the best authorities (no Christian being allowed to see them) the cloak given to the bard by Mohammed is still preserved together with the Khirkah or Sanjak Sherif (“Holy Coat” or Banner, the national oriflamme) at Stambul in the Upper Seraglio. (Pilgrimage, i. 213.) Many authors repeat this story of Mu’awiyah, the Caliph, and Ka’ab of the Burdah, but it is an evident anachronism, the poet having been dead nine years before the ruler’s accession (A.H. 41).

 

[FN#169] Koran, lxxxix. 6-7.

 

[FN#170] Arab. “Kahram�n” from Pers., braves, heroes.

 

[FN#171] The Deity in the East is as whimsical-a despot as any of his “shadows” or “vice regents.” In the text Shadd�d is killed for mere jealousy a base passion utterly unworthy of a godhead; but one to which Allah was greatly addicted.

 

[FN#172] Some traditionist, but whether Sha’abi, Shi’abi or Shu’abi we cannot decide.

 

[FN#173] The Hazarmaveth of Genesis (x. 26) in South Eastern Arabia. Its people are the Adramitae (mod. Hazrami) of Ptolemy who places in their land the Arabi� Emporium, as Pliny does his Massola. They border upon the Homerit� or men of Himyar, often mentioned in The Nights. Hazramaut is still practically unknown to us, despite the excursions of many travellers; and the hard nature of the people, the Swiss of Arabia, offers peculiar obstacles to exploration.

 

[FN#174] i.e. the prophet Hud generally identified (?) with Heber.

He was commissioned (Koran, chaps. vii.) to preach Al-Islam to his tribe the Adites who worshipped four goddesses, S�kiyah (the rain-giver), R�zikah (food-giver), H�fizah (the saviouress) and S�limah (who healed sickness). As has been seen he failed, so it was useless to send him.

 

[FN#175] Son of Ibraham al-Mosili, a musician poet and favourite with the Caliphs Harun al-Rashid and Al-Maamun. He made his name immortal-by being the first who reduced Arab harmony to systematic rules, and he wrote a biography of musicians referred to by Al-Hariri in the S�ance of Singar.

 

[FN#176] This must not be confounded with the “pissing against the wall” of I Kings, xiv. 10, where watering against a wall denotes a man as opposed to a woman.

 

[FN#177] Arab. “Zamb�l” or “Zimb�l,” a limp basket made of plaited palm-leaves and generally two handled. It is used for many purposes, from carrying poultry to carrying earth.

 

[FN#178] Here we have again the