The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 16 - Sir Richard Francis Burton (uplifting books for women txt) 📗

to introduce Divinity itself as speaking in this context, we must not forget that the person spoken of is no less illustrious individual than Harun al-Rash�d, and that a decidedly satirical and humorous vein runs through the whole tale. Moreover, I doubt that “li-ahad” could be used as equivalent for “li-ghayr�,” “to some other than myself,” while it frequently occurs in the emphatic sense of “one who is somebody, a person of consequence.”

The damsel and her mother, on the other hand, allude repeatedly to the state of utter helplessness in which they find themselves in default of their natural protector, and which has reduced them from an exalted station to the condition of nobodies. I speak, of course, here as elsewhere, “under correction.”—ST.]

 

[FN#163] In text “Hmsh.” The Dicts. give Himmas and Himmis, forms never heard, and Forsk. (Flora �gypt.-Arab. p. lxxi.) “Homos,”

also unknown. The vulg. pron. is, “Hummus” or as Lane (M.E.

chapt. v.) has it “Hommus” (chick-peas). The word applies to the pea, while “Mal�n” is the plant in pod. It is the cicer arietinum concerning which a classical tale is told. “Cicero (pron. Kikero) was a poor scholar in the University of Athens, wherewith his enemies in Rome used to reproach him, and as he passed through the streets would call out ‘O Cicer, Cicer, O,’ a word still used in Cambridge, and answers to a Servitor in Oxford.” Quaint this approximation between “Cicer” the vetch and “Sizar” which comes from “size” = rations, the Oxford “battel.”

 

[FN#164] Arab. “Yulakkimu,” from “Lukmah” = a mouthful: see vols.

i. 266; vii. 367.

 

[FN#165] Arab. “Jarazat Kuzb�n” (plur. or “Kaz�b,” see vol. ii.

66) = long and slender sticks.

 

[FN#166] i.e. a witch; see vol. viii. 131.

 

[FN#167] So in the phrase “Otbah hath the colic,” first said concerning Otbah b. Rab�‘a by Ab� Jahl when the former advised not marching upon Badr to attack Mohammed. Tabari, vol. ii. 491.

 

[FN#168] Compare the French “Brr!”

 

[FN#169] i.e. to whom thou owest a debt of apology or excuse, “Ghar�m” = debtor or creditor.

 

[FN#170] Arab. “Jur�b al-‘uddah,” i.e. the manacles, fetters, etc.

 

[FN#171] The following three sentences are taken from the margin of (MS.) p. 257, and evidently belong to this place.

 

[FN#172] In text “Bghb” evidently for “Baght” or preferably “Baghtatan.”

 

[FN#173] This is a twice-told tale whose telling I have lightened a little without omitting any important detail. Gauttier reduces the ending of the history to less than five pages.

 

[FN#174] The normal idiom for “I accept.”

 

[FN#175] In text Khila’t dakk al-Matrakah,” which I have rendered literally: it seems to signify an especial kind of brocade.

 

[FN#176] The Court of Baghdad was, like the Urd� (Horde or Court) of the “Grand Mogul,” organised after the ordinance of an army in the field, with its centre, the Sovran, and two wings right and left, each with its own Wazir for Commander, and its vanguard and rearguard.

 

[FN#177] Being the only son he had a voice in the disposal of his sister. The mother was the Kab�rah = head of the household, in Marocco Al-S�dah = Madame m�re; but she could not interfere singlehanded in affairs concerning the family. See Pilgrimage, vol. iii. 198. Throughout Al-Islam in default of a father the eldest brother gives away the sisters, and if there be no brother this is done by the nearest male relation on the “sword” side.

The mother has no authority in such matters nor indeed has anyone on the “spindle” side.

 

[FN#178] Alluding to the Wali and his men.

 

[FN#179] Arab. “Kunyah” (the pop. mispronunciation of “Kinyah”) is not used here with strict correctness. It is a fore-name or bye-name generally taken from the favourite son, Ab� (father of) being prefixed. When names are written in full it begins the string, e.g., Abu Mohammed (fore-name), K�sim (true name), ibn Ali (father’s name), ibn Mohammed (grandfather’s), ibn Osman (great-grandfather), Al-Hariri (= the Silkman from the craft of the family), Al-Basri (of Bassorah). There is also the “Lakab”

(sobriquet), e.g. Al-Bunduk�n� or Bad�‘u’l-Zam�n (Rarity of the Age), which may be placed either before or after the “Kunyah”

when the latter is used alone. Chenery (Al-Hariri, p.315) confines the “Kunyah” to fore-names beginning with Ab�; but it also applies to those formed with Umm (mother), Ibn (son), Bint (daughter), Akh (brother) and Ukht (sister). See vol. iv. 287. It is considered friendly and graceful to address a Moslem by this bye-name.

-Gaudent pr�nomine molles Auricul�.

 

[FN#180] In text “Y� Kaw�k�,” which M. Houdas translates “O

piailleur,” remarking that here it would be = poule mouill�e.

 

[FN#181] “‘Alakah kh�rijah” = an extraordinary drubbing.

 

[FN#182] In text “Ij’aln� f� kll,” the latter word being probably, as M. Houdas suggests, a clerical error for “Kal-a” or “Kil�a” = safety, protection.

 

[FN#183] I am surprised that so learned and practical an Arabist as the Baron de Slane in his Fr. translation of Ibn Khald�n should render le surnom d’Er-Rechid (le prudent), for “The Rightly Directed,” the Orthodox (vol. ii. 237), when (ibid. p.

259) he properly translates “Al-Khulaf� al-rashid�n” by Les Califes qui marchent dans la voie droite.

 

[FN#184] MSS. pp. 476-504. This tale is laid down on the same lines as “Ab� al-Husn and his Slave-girl Tawaddud,” vol. vi. 189.

It is carefully avoided by Scott, C. de Perceval, Gauttier, etc.

 

[FN#185] Lit. an interpreter woman; the word is the fem. of Tarjum�n, a dragoman whom Mr. Curtis calls a Drag o’ men; see vol. i. 100. It has changed wonderfully on its way from its “Semitic” home to Europe which has naturalised it as Drogman, Truchman and Dolmetsch.

 

[FN#186] For this word of many senses, see vols. i. 231; ix.

221. M. Caussin de Perceval (viii. 16), quoting d’Herbelot (s.v.), notes that the Abbasides thus entitled the chief guardian of the Harem.

 

[FN#187] See vols. iv. 100; viii. 268. In his Introduction (p.

22) to the Assemblies of Al-Hariri Chenery says, “This prosperity had now passed away, for God had brought the people of Rum (so the Arabs call the Byzantines, whom Ab� Zayd here confounds with the Franks) on the land,” etc. The confusion is not Abu Zayd’s: “Rum�” in Marocco and other archaic parts of the Moslem world is still synonymous with our “European.”

 

[FN#188] This obedience to children is common in Eastern folk-lore: see Suppl. vol. i. 143, in which the royal father orders his son to sell him. The underlying idea is that the parents find their offspring too clever for them; not, as in the “New World,” that Youth is entitled to take precedence and command of Age.

 

[FN#189] In text “Fa min tumma” for “thumma”—then, alors.

 

[FN#190] Such as the headstall and hobbles the cords and chains for binding captives, and the mace and sword hanging to the saddle-bow.

 

[FN#191] i.e. not a well-known or distinguished horseman, but a chance rider.

 

[FN#192] These “letters of Mutalammis,” as Arabs term our Litter� Bellerophonte�, or “Uriah’s letters,” are a lieu commun in the East and the Prince was in luck when he opened and read the epistle here given by mistake to the wrong man. Mutalammis, a poet of The Ignorance, had this sobriquet (the “frequent asker,” or, as we should say, the Solicitor-General), his name being Jar�r bin ‘Abd al-Mas�h. He was uncle to Tarafah of the Mu’-allakah or prize poem, a type of the witty dissolute bard of the jovial period before Al-Islam arose to cloud and dull man’s life. One day as he was playing with other children Mutalammis was reciting a panegyric upon his favourite camel, which ran:—

 

I mount a he-camel, dark-red and firm-fleshed; or a she-camel of Himyar, fleet of foot and driving the pebbles with her crushing hooves.

 

“See the he-camel turned to a she,” cried the boy, and the phrase became proverbial to express inelegant transition (Arab. Prov.

ii. 246). The uncle bade his nephew put out his tongue and seeing it dark-coloured said, “That black tongue will be thy ruin!” Tarafah, who was presently entitled Ibn al-‘Ishrin (the son of twenty years), grew up a model reprobate who cared nothing save for three things, “to drink the dark-red wine foaming as the water mixeth with it, to urge into the fight a broad-backed steed, and to while away the dull day with a young beauty.” His apology for wilful waste is highly poetic:—

 

I see that the grave of the careful, the hoarder, differeth not from the grave of the debauched, the spendthrift: A hillock of earth covers this and that, with a few flat stones laid together thereon.

 

See the whole piece in Chenery’s Al-Hariri (p. 360), from which this note is borrowed. At last uncle and nephew fled from ruin to the Court of ‘Amr� bin Munz�r III., King of Hira, who in the tale of Al-Mutalammis and his wife Umaymah (The Nights, vol. v.

74) is called Al-Nu’um�n bin Munzir but is better known as ‘Amr�

bin Hind (his mother). The King, who was a derocious personage nicknamed Al-Muharrik or the Burner, because he had thrown into the fire ninety-nine men and one woman of the Tam�m tribe in accordance with a vow of vengeance he had taken to slaughter a full century, made the two strangers boon-companions to his boorish brother K�b�s. Tarafah, offended because kept at the tent-door whilst the master drank wine within, bitterly lampooned him together with ‘Abd Amr� a friend of the King; and when this was reported his death was determined upon. Amr�, the King, seeing the anxiety of the two poets to quit his Court, offered them letters of introduction to Ab� K�rib, Governor of Al-Hajar (Bahrayn) under the Persian King and they were accepted. The uncle caused his letter to be read by a youth, and finding that it was an order for his execution destroyed it and fled to Syria; but the nephew was buried alive. Amr�, the King, was afterwards slain by the poet-warrior, Amr� bin Kulthum, also of the “Mu’allak�t,” for an insult offered to his mother by Hind: hence the proverb, “Quicker to slay than ‘Amr� bin Kulsum” (A.P. ii.

233).

 

[FN#193] See vols. i. 192; iii. 14; these correspond with the “Stathmoi,” Stationes, Mansiones or Castra of Herodotus, Terps.

cap. 53, and Xenophon. An. i. 2, 10.

 

[FN#194] In text “Ittik�” viiith of wak�: the form “Takw�” is generally used = fearing God, whereby one guards oneself from sin in this life and from retribution in the world to come.

 

[FN#195] This series of puzzling questions and clever replies is still as favourite a mental exercise in the East as it was in middle-aged Europe. The riddle or conundrum began, as far as we know, with the Sphinx, through whose mouth the Greeks spoke: nothing less likely than that the grave and mysterious Scribes of Egypt should ascribe aught so puerile to the awful emblem of royal majesty—Abu Haul, the Father of Affright. Josephus relates how Solomon propounded enigmas to Hiram of Tyre which none but Abdimus, son of the captive Abd�mon, could answer. The Tale of Tawaddud offers fair specimens of such exercises, which were not disdained by the most learned of Arabian writers. See Al-Hariri’s Ass. xxiv, which proposes twelve enigmas involving abstruse and technical points of Arabic, such as: “What be the word, which as ye will is a particle beloved, or the name of that which compriseth the slender-waisted milch camel!” Na’am = “Yes”

or “cattle,” the latter word containing the Harf, or slender camel. Chenery, p. 246.

 

[FN#196] For the sundry meanings and significance of “Sal�m,”

here=Heaven’s blessing, see vols. ii. 24, vi. 232.

 

[FN#197] This is the nursery version of the Exodus, old as Josephus and St. Jerome, and