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

wilt carry the hoes I will break wind once for every step we take.” He was as good as his word and when they were to part he cried, “And now for thy bakhshish!” which consisted of a volley of fifty, greatly to the delight of the boys.

 

[FN#227] No porcelain was ever, as far as we can discover, made in Egypt or Syria of the olden day; but, as has been said, there was a regular caravan-intercourse with China At Damascus I dug into the huge rubbish-heaps and found quantities of pottery, but no China.

The same has lately been done at Clysma, the artificial-mound near Suez, and the glass and pottery prove it to have been a Roman work which defended the mouth of the old classical-sweet-water canal.

 

[FN#228] Arab. “L� baas ba-z�lik,” conversational-for “L� jaram”=

there is no harm in it, no objection to it, and, sometimes, “it is a matter of course.”

 

[FN#229] A white emerald is yet unknown; but this adds only to the Oriental-extravagance of the picture. I do not think with Lane (ii.

426) that “abyaz” here can mean “bright.” Dr. Steingass suggests a clerical-error for “khazar” (green).

 

[FN#230] Arab. “Shar�rif” plur. of Shurr�fah=crenelles or battlements; mostly trefoil-shaped; remparts coquets which a six-pounder would crumble.

 

[FN#231] Pronounce Abul-Muzaffar=Father of the Conqueror.

 

[FN#232] I have explained the word in my “Zanzibar, City, Island and Coast,” vol. i. chaps. v There is still a tribe, the Wadoe, reputed cannibal-on the opposite low East African shore These blacks would hardly be held ” sons of Adam.” “Zanj ” corrupted to “Zinj ” (plur Zun�j) is the Persian “Zany” or “Zangi,” a black, altered by the Arabs, who ignore the hard g; and, with the suffixion of the Persian -b�r (region, as in Malabar) we have Zang-bar which the Arabs have converted to “Zanjibar,” in poetry “Murk al-Zun�j”=Land of the Zang. The term is old; it is the Zingis or Zingisa of Ptolemy and the Zingium of Cosmas Indicopleustes; and it shows the influence of Persian navigation in pre-Islamitic ages.

For further details readers will consult “The Lake Regions of Central-Africa” vol. i. chaps. ii

 

[FN#233] Arab. “Kaw�rib” plur. of “K�rib” prop. a dinghy, a small boat belonging to a ship Here it refers to the canoe (a Carib word) pop. “dug-out” and classically “monoxyle,” a boat made of a single tree-trunk hollowed by fire and trimmed with axe and adze. Some of these rude craft which, when manned, remind one of saturnine Caliph Omar’s “worms floating on a log of wood,” measure 60 feet long and more.

 

[FN#234] i.e. A descendant of Mohammed in general-and especially through Husayn Ali-son. Here the text notes that the chief of the bazar was of this now innumerable stock, who inherit the title through the mother as well as through the father.

 

[FN#235] Arab. “Hasab” (=quaneity), the honour a man acquires for himself; opposed to “Nasab” (genealogy) honours inherited from ancestry: the Arabic well expresses my old motto (adopted by Chinese Gordon),

“Honour, not Honours.”

 

[FN#236] Note the difference between “Takaddum” ( = standing in presence of, also superiority in excellence) and “Tak�dum”

(priority in time).

 

[FN#237] Lane (ii. 427) gives a pleasant Eastern illustration of this saying.

 

[FN#238] A Koranic fancy; the mountains being the pegs which keep the earth in place. “And he hath thrown before the earth, mountains firmly rooted, lest it should move with you.” (Koran, chaps. xvi.) The earth when first created was smooth and thereby liable to a circular motion, like the celestial-orbs; and, when the Angels asked who could stand on so tottering a frame, Allah fixed it the next morning by throwing the mountains in it and pegging them down.

A fair prolepsis of the Neptunian theory.

 

[FN#239] Easy enough for an Englishman to avoid saying “by God,”

but this common incident in Moslem folk-lore appeals to the peoples who are constantly using the word Allah Wallah, Billah, etc. The Koran expressly says, “Make not Allah the scope (object, lit.

arrow-butt) of your oaths” (chaps. ii. 224), yet the command is broken every minute.

 

[FN#240] This must be the ubiquitous Khizr, the Green Prophet; when Ali appears, as a rule he is on horseback.

 

[FN#241] The name is apparently imaginary; and a little below we find that it was close to Jinn land. China was very convenient for this purpose: the medieval-Moslems, who settled in considerable numbers at Canton and elsewhere, knew just enough of it to know their own ignorance of the vast empire. Hence the Druzes of the Libanus still hold that part of their nation is in the depths of the Celestial-Empire.

 

[FN#242] I am unwilling to alter the old title to “City of Copper”

as it should be; the pure metal having been technologically used long before the alloy of copper and zinc. But the Maroccan City (Night dlxvi. et seq.) was of brass (not copper). The Hindus of Upper India have an Iram which they call Hari Chand’s city (Colonel Tod); and I need hardly mention the Fata Morgana, Island of Saint Borondon; Cape Fly-away; the Flying Dutchman, etc. etc., all the effect of “looming.”

 

[FN#243] This sword which makes men invisible and which takes place of Siegfried’s Tarnkappe (invisible cloak) and of “Fortunatus’ cap” is common in Moslem folk-lore. The idea probably arose from the venerable practice of inscribing the blades with sentences, verses and magic figures.

 

[FN#244] Arab. “‘Uk�b,” in books an eagle (especially black) and P. N. of constellation but in Pop. usage= a vulture. In Egypt it is the Neophron Percnopterus (Jerdon) or N. Gingianus (Latham), the Dij�jat Far’aun or Pharaoh’s hen. This bird has been known to kill the B�shah sparrow-hawk (Jerdon i. 60); yet, curious to say, the reviewers of my “Falconry in the Valley of the Indus” questioned the fact, known to so many travellers, that the falcon is also killed by this “tiger of the air,” despite the latter’s feeble bill (pp. 35-38). I was faring badly at their hands when the late Mr.

Burckhardt Barker came to the rescue. Falconicide is popularly attributed, not only to the vulture, but also to the crestless hawk-eagle (Nis�tus Bonelli) which the Hindus call Mor�ng�=peacock slayer.

 

[FN#245] Here I translate “Nah�s”=brass, as the “kumkum”

(cucurbite) is made of mixed metal, not of copper.

 

[FN#246] Mansur al-Nimr�, a poet of the time and a prot�g� of Yahya’s son, Al-Fazl.

 

[FN#247] This was at least four times Mansur’s debt.

 

[FN#248] Intendant of the Palace to Harun al-Rashid. The Bres.

Edit. (vii. 254) begins They tell that there arose full enmity between Ja’afar Barmecide and a Sahib of Misr” (Wazir or Governor of Egypt). Lane (ii. 429) quotes to this purpose amongst Arab; historians Fakhr al-Din. (De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe i., p. 26, edit. ii.)

 

[FN#249] Arab. “Arman�yah” which Egyptians call after their mincing fashion “Irminiyeh” hence “Ermine” (Mus Ponticus).

Armaniyah was much more extensive than our Armenia, now degraded to a mere province of Turkey, and the term is understood to include the whole of the old Parthian Empire.

 

[FN#250] Even now each Pasha-governor must keep a “Wak�l” in Constantinople to intrigue and bribe for him at head-quarters.

 

[FN#251] The symbol of generosity, of unasked liberality, the “black hand” being that of niggardness.

 

[FN#252] Arab. R�h =pure (and old) wine. Arabs, like our classics, usually drank their wine tempered. So Imr al-Keys in his Mu’allakah says, “Bring the well tempered wine that seems to be saffron-tinctured; and, when water-mixed, o’erbrims the cup.” (v.

2.)

 

[FN#253] There is nothing that Orientals relish more than these “goody-goody” preachments; but they read and forget them as readily as Westerns.

 

[FN#254] Lane (ii. 435) ill-advisedly writes “Sher,” as “the word is evidently Persian signifying a Lion.” But this is only in the debased Indian dialect, a Persian, especially a Shirazi, pronounces “Sh�r.” And this is how it is written in the Bresl. Edit., vii.

262. “Sh�r” is evidently a fancy name, possibly suggested by the dynastic name of the Ghurjistan or Georgian Princes.

 

[FN#255] Again old experience, which has learned at a heavy cost how many a goodly apple is rotten at the core.

 

[FN#256] This couplet has occurred in Night xxi. I give Torrens (p. 206) by way of specimen.

 

[FN#257] Arab. “Z�ka” = merely tasting a thing which may be sweet with a bitter after-flavour

 

[FN#258] This tetraseich was in Night xxx. with a difference.

 

[FN#259] The lines have occurred in Night xxx. I quote Torrens, p.

311.

 

[FN#260] This tetrastich is in Night clxix. I borrow from Lane (ii. 62).

 

[FN#261] The rude but effective refrigerator of the desert Arab who hangs his water-skin to the branch of a tree and allows it to swing in the wind.

 

[FN#262] Arab “Khum�siyah” which Lane (ii. 438) renders “of quinary stature.” Usually it means five spans, but here five feet, showing that the girl was young and still growing. The invoice with a slave always notes her height in spans measured from ankle-bone to ear and above seven she loses value as being full grown. Hence Sud�si (fem. Sud�siyah) is a slave six spans high, the Shibr or full span (9 inches) not the Fitr or short span from thumb to index. Faut is the interval-between every finger, Ratab between index and medius, and Atab between medius and annularis.

 

[FN#263] “Moon faced” now sounds sufficiently absurd to us, but it was not always so. Solomon (Cant. vi. 10) does not disdain the image “fair as the moon, clear as the sun,” and those who have seen a moon in the sky of Arabia will thoroughly appreciate it. We find it amongst the Hindus, the Persians, the Afghans, the Turks and all the nations of Europe. We have, finally, the grand example of Spenser,

 

“Her spacious forehead, like the clearest moon, etc.”

 

[FN#264] Blue eyes have a bad name in Arabia as in India: the witch Zark� of Al-Yamamah was noted for them; and “blue eyed” often means “fierce-eyed,” alluding to the Greeks and Daylamites, mortal-enemies to Ishmael. The Arabs say “ruddy of mustachio, blue of eye and black of heart.”

 

[FN#265] Before explained as used with camphor to fill the dead man’s mouth.

 

[FN#266] As has been seen, slapping on the neck is equivalent to our “boxing ears,” but much less barbarous and likely to injure the child. The most insulting blow is that with shoe sandal-or slipper because it brings foot in contact with head. Of this I have spoken before.

 

[FN#267] Arab. “Hib�l” (= ropes) alluding to the A’ak�l-fillet which binds the K�fiyah-kerchief on the Badawi’s head. (Pilgrimage, i. 346.)

 

[FN#268] Arab. “Khiy�l”; afterwards called Kara Gyuz (= “black eyes,” from the celebrated Turkish Wazir). The mise-en-sc�ne was like that of Punch, but of transparent cloth, lamp lit inside and showing silhouettes worked by hand. Nothing could be more Fescenntne than Kara Gyuz, who appeared with a phallus longer than himself and made all the Consuls-General-periodically complain of its abuse, while the dialogue, mostly in Turkish, as even more obscene. Most ingenious were Kara Gyuz’s little ways of driving on an Obstinate donkey and of tackling a huge Anatolian pilgrim. He mounted the Neddy’s back face to tail, and inserting his left thumb like a clyster, hammered it with his right when the donkey started at speed. For the huge pilgrim he used a ladder. These shows now obsolete, used to enliven the Ezbekiyah Gardens every evening and explain Ovid’s Words,

 

“Delicias videam, Nile jocose, tuas!”

 

[FN#269] Mohammed (Mishk�t al-Mas�bih ii. 360-62) says, “Change the whiteness of your hair but not with anything black.” Abu Bakr, who was two years and some months older than the Prophet, used tincture of Henna and Katam. Old Turkish officers justify