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

black dyes because these make them look younger and fiercer. Henna stains white hair orange red; and the Persians apply after it a paste of indigo leaves, the result is successively leek-green, emerald-green, bottle-green and lastly lamp-black. There is a stage in life (the youth of old age) when man uses dyes: presently he finds that the whole face wants dye; that the contrast between juvenile coloured hair and ancient skin is ridiculous and that it is time to wear white.

 

[FN#270] This prejudice extends all over the East: the Sanskrit saying is “Kvachit k�n� bhaveta s�dhus” now and then a monocular is honest. The left eye is the worst and the popular idea is, I have said, that the damage will come by the injured member [FN#271] The Arabs say like us, “Short and thick is never quick”

and “Long and thin has little in.”

 

[FN#272] Arab. “Ba’azu lay�li,” some night when his mistress failed him.

 

[FN#273] The fountain in Paradise before noticed.

 

[FN#274] Before noticed as the Moslem St. Peter (as far as the keys go).

 

[FN#275] Arab. “Munkasir” = broken, frail, languishing the only form of the maladive allowed. Here again we have masculine for feminine: the eyelids show love-desire, but, etc.

 

[FN#276] The river of Paradise.

 

[FN#277] See Night xii. “The Second Kalandar’s Tale ” vol. i. 113.

 

[FN#278] Lane (ii. 472) refers for specimens of calligraphy to Herbin’s “D�veloppements, etc.” There are many more than seven styles of writing as I have shown in Night xiii.; vol. i. 129.

 

[FN#279] Amongst good Moslems this would be a claim upon a man.

 

[FN#280] These lines have occurred twice already: and first appear in Night xxii. I have borrowed from Mr. Payne (iv. 46).

 

[FN#281] Arab. “Ya Nasr�ni”, the address is not intrinsically slighting but it may easily be made so. I have elsewhere noted that when Julian (is said to have) exclaimed “Vicisti Nazarene!” he was probably thinking in Eastern phrase “Nasarta, y� Nasr�ni!”

 

[FN#282] Thirst is the strongest of all pleas to an Eastern, especially to a Persian who never forgets the sufferings of his Imam, Husayn, at Kerbela: he would hardly withhold it from the murderer of his father. There is also a Hadis, “Thou shalt not refuse water to him who thirsteth in the desert.”

 

[FN#283] Arab. “Zimmi” which Lane (ii. 474) aptly translates a “tributary.” The Koran (chaps. ix.) orders Unbelievers to Islamize or to “pay tribute by right of subjection” (lit. an yadin=out of hand, an expression much debated). The least tribute is one dinar per annum which goes to the poor-rate. and for this the Kafir enjoys protection and almost all the civil rights of Moslems. As it is a question of “loaves and fishes” there is much to say on the subject; “loaves and fishes” being the main base and foundation of all religious establishments.

 

[FN#284] This tetrastich has before occurred, so I quote Lane (ii.

444).

 

[FN#285] In Night xxxv. the same occurs with a difference.

 

[FN#286] The old rite, I repeat, has lost amongst all but the noblest of Arab tribes the whole of its significance; and the traveller must be careful how he trusts to the phrase “Nahnu m�lihin” we are bound together by the salt.

 

[FN#287] Arab. “Al�ma” = Al�-m� = upon what ? wherefore ?

 

[FN#288] Arab. “Mauz”; hence the Linnean name Musa (paradisiaca, etc.). The word is explained by Sale (Koran, chaps. xxxvii. 146) as “a small tree or shrub;” and he would identify it with Jonah’s gourd.

 

[FN#289] Lane (ii. 446) “bald wolf or empowered fate,” reading (with Mac.) Kaz� for Kattan (cat).

 

[FN#290] i.e. “the Orthodox in the Faith.” R�shid is a proper name, witness that scourge of Syria, R�shid Pasha. Born in 1830, of the Haji Nazir Agha family, Darrah-Beys of Macedonian Draina, he was educated in Paris where he learned the usual-hatred of Europeans: he entered the Egyptian service in 1851, and, presently exchanging it for the Turkish, became in due time Wali (Governor-General) of Syria which he plundered most shamelessly.

Recalled in 1872, he eventually entered the Ministry and on June 15

1876, he was shot down, with other villains like himself, by gallant Captain Hasan, the Circassian (Yarham-hu ‘ll�h !).

 

[FN#291] Quoted from a piece of verse, of which more presently.

 

[FN#292] This tetrastich has occurred before (Night cxciii.). I quote Lane (ii. 449), who quotes Dryden’s Spanish Friar, “There is a pleasure sure in being mad Which none but madmen know.”

 

[FN#293] Lane (ii. 449) gives a tradition of the Prophet, “Whoso is in love, and acteth chastely, and concealeth (his passion) and dieth, dieth a martyr.” Sakar is No. 5 Hell for Magi Guebres, Parsis, etc., it is used in the comic Persian curse, “Fi’n-n�ri wa Sakar al-jadd w’al-pidar”=ln Hell and Sakar his grandfather and his father.

 

[FN#294] Arab. “Sifr”: I have warned readers that whistling is considered a kind of devilish speech by the Arabs, especially the Badawin, and that the traveller must avoid it. It savours of idolatry: in the Koran we find (chaps. viii. 35), “Their prayer at the House of God (Ka’abah) is none other than whistling and hand-clapping;” and tradition says that they whistled through their fingers. Besides many of the Jinn have only round holes by way of mouths and their speech is whistling a kind of bird language like sibilant English.

 

[FN#295] Arab. ‘K�l wa k�l”=lit. “it was said and he said;” a popular phrase for chit chat, tittle-tattle, prattle and prate, etc.

 

[FN#296] Arab. “Hadis.” comparing it with a tradition of the Prophet.

 

[FN#297] Arab. “Mikashshah,” the thick part of a midrib of a palm-frond soaked for some days in water and beaten out till the fibres separate. It makes an exceedingly hard, although not a lasting broom.

 

[FN#298] Persian, “the youth, the brave;” Sansk. Yuv�n: and Lat.

Juvenis. The Kurd, in tales, is generally a sturdy thief; and in real-life is little better.

 

[FN#299] Arab. “Y� Shatir ;” lit. O clever one (in a bad sense).

 

[FN#300] Lane (ii. 453) has it. “that I may dress thy hair’” etc.

This is Bowdlerising with a witness.

 

[FN#301] The sign of respect when a personage dismounts.

(Pilgrimage i. 77.)

 

[FN#302] So the Hindus speak of “the defilement of separation” as if it were an impurity.

 

[FN#303] Lane (i. 605) gives a long and instructive note on these public royal-banquets which were expected from the lieges by Moslem subjects. The hanging-penalty is, perhaps, a tattle exaggerated; but we find the same excess in the priestly Gesta Romanorum.

 

[FN#304] Had he eaten it he would have become her guest. Amongst the older Badawin it was sufficient to spit upon a man (in entreaty) to claim his protection: so the horse-thieves when caught were placed in a hole in the ground covered over with matting to prevent this happening. Similarly Saladin (Sal�h al-Din) the chivalrous would not order a cup of water for the robber, Reynald de Ch�tillon, before putting him to death [FN#305] Arab. “Kishk” properly “Kashk”=wheat-meal-coarsely ground and eaten with milk or broth. It is de rigueur with the Egyptian Copts on the “Friday of Sorrow” (Good Friday): and Lane gives the recipe for making it (M. E. chaps. xxvi.) [FN#306] In those days distinctive of Moslems.

 

[FN#307] The euphemism has before been noticed: the Moslem reader would not like to pronounce the words “I am a Nazarene.” The same formula occurs a little lower down to save the reciter or reader from saying “Be my wife divorced,” etc.

 

[FN#308] Arab, “H�jj,” a favourite Egyptianism. We are wrong to write Hajji which an Eastern would pronounce H�j-j�.

 

[FN#309] This is Cairene “chaff.”

 

[FN#310] Whose shell fits very tight.

 

[FN#311] His hand was like a raven’s because he ate with thumb and two fingers and it came up with the rice about it like a camel’s hoof in dirty ground. This refers to the proverb (Burckhardt, 756), “He comes down a crow-claw (small) and comes up a camel-hoof (huge and round).”

 

[FN#312] Easterns have a superstitious belief in the powers of food: I knew a learned man who never sat down to eat without a ceremonious salam to his meat.

 

[FN#313] Lane (ii. 464), uses the vile Turkish corruption “Rustum,” which, like its fellow “Rustem,” would make a Persian shudder.

 

[FN#314] Arab. “Darrij” i.e. let them slide (Americanic�).

 

[FN#315] This tetrastich has occurred before: so I quote Mr. Payne (in loco).

 

[FN#316] Shaykh of Al-Butnah and J�biyah, therefore a Syrian of the Hauran near Damascus and grandson to Is� (Esau). Arab mystics (unlike the vulgar who see only his patience) recognise that inflexible integrity which refuses to utter “words of wind” and which would not, against his conscience, confess to wrong-doing merely to pacify the Lord who was stronger than himself. The Classics taught this noble lesson in the case of Prometheus versus Zeus. Many articles are called after Job e.g. Ra’ar�’ Ayyub or Ghubayr� (inula Arabica and undulata), a creeper with which he rubbed himself and got well: the Copts do the same on “Job’s Wednesday,” i.e. that before Whit Sunday O.S. Job’s father is a nickname of the camel, etc. etc.

 

[FN#317] Lane (in loco) renders “I am of their number.” But “f�

al-siy�k” means popularly “(driven) to the point of death.”

 

[FN#318] Lit. = “pathway, road”; hence the bridge well known as “finer than a hair and sharper than a sword,” over which all (except Khadijah and a chosen few) must pass on the Day of Doom; a Persian apparatus bodily annexed by Al-Islam. The old Guebres called it Puli Chin�var or Chin�vad and the Jews borrowed it from them as they did all their fancies of a future life against which Moses had so gallantly fought. It is said that a bridge over the grisly “brook Kedron” was called Sir�t (the road) and hence the idea, as that of hell-fire from Ge-Hinnom (Gehenna) where children were passed through the fire to Moloch. A doubtful Hadis says, “The Prophet declared Al-Sir�t to be the name of a bridge over hell-fire, dividing Hell from Paradise” (pp. 17, 122, Reynold’s trans.

of Al-Siyuti’s Traditions, etc.). In Koran i. 5, “Sirat” is simply a path, from sarata, he swallowed, even as the way devours (makes a lakam or mouthful of) those who travel it. The word was orig.

written with S�n but changed for easier articulation to S�d, one of the four Hur�f al-Mutabbak�t, “the flattened,” formed by the broadened tongue in contact with the palate. This Sad also by the figure Ishm�m (=conversion) turns slightly to a Z�, the intermediate between Sin and Sad.

 

[FN#319] The rule in Turkey where catamites rise to the highest rank: C’est un homme de bonne famille (said a Turkish officer in Egypt) il a �t� achet�. Hence “Alfi” (one who costs a thousand) is a well-known cognomen. The Pasha of the Syrian caravan, with which I travelled’ had been the slave of a slave and he was not a solitary instance. (Pilgrimage i. 90.) [FN#320] The device of the banquet is dainty enough for any old Italian novella; all that now comes is pure Egyptian polissonnerie speaking to the gallery and being answered by roars of laughter.

 

[FN#321] i.e. “art thou ceremonially pure and therefore fit for handling by a great man like myself?”

 

[FN#322] In past days before Egypt was “frankified” many overlanders used to wash away the traces of travel by a Turkish bath which mostly ended in the appearance of a rump wriggling little lad who offered to shampoo them. Many accepted his offices without dreaming of his usual-use or misuse.

 

[FN#323] Arab. “Im�m.” This is (to a Moslem)