One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  267 Arabs date pregnancy from the stopping of the menses, upon which the foetus is supposed to feed. Kalilah wa Dimnah says, “The child’s navel adheres to that of his mother and thereby he sucks” (i. 263).

  268 This is contrary to the commands of Al-Islam, Mohammed expressly said “The Astrologers are liars, by the Lord of the Ka’abah!”; and his saying is known to almost all Moslems, lettered or unlettered. Yet, the further we go East (Indiawards) the more we find these practices held in honour. Turning westwards we have:

  Iuridicis, Erebo, Fisco, fas vivere rapto:

  Militibus, Medicis, Tortori occidere ludo est;

  Mentiri Astronomis, Pictoribus atque Poetis.

  269 He does not perform the Wuzu or lesser ablution because he neglects his dawn prayers.

  270 For this game see Lane (M. E. Chapt. xvii.) It is usually played on a checked cloth not on a board like our draughts; and Easterns are fond of eating, drinking and smoking between and even during the games. Torrens () translates “I made up some dessert,” confounding “Mankalah” with “Nukl” (dried fruit, quatre-mendiants).

  271 Quoted from Mohammed whose saying has been given.

  272 We should say “the night of the thirty-ninth.”

  273 The bath first taken after sickness.

  274 Arab. “Dikák” used by way of soap or rather to soften the skin: the meal is usually of lupins, “Adas”=“Revalenta Arabica,” which costs a penny in Egypt and half-a-crown in England.

  275 Arab. “Sukkar-nabát.” During my day (1842-49) we had no other sugar in the Bombay Presidency.

  276 This is one of the myriad Arab instances that the decrees of “Anagké,” Fate, Destiny, Weird, are inevitable. The situation is highly dramatic; and indeed The Nights, as will appear in the Terminal Essay, have already suggested a national drama.

  277 Having lately been moved by Ajib.

  278 Mr. Payne (i. 131) omits these lines which appear out of place; but this mode of inappropriate quotation is a characteristic of Eastern tales.

  279 Anglicè “him.”

  280 This march of the tribe is a lieu commun of Arab verse e.g. the poet Labid’s noble elegy on the “Deserted Camp.” We shall find scores of instances in The Nights.

  281 I have heard of such sands in the Desert east of Damascus which can be crossed only on boards or camel furniture; and the same is reported of the infamous Region “Al-Ahkláf” (“Unexplored Syria”).

  282 Hence the Arab. saying “The bark of a dog and not the gleam of a fire;” the tired traveller knows from the former that the camp is near, whereas the latter shows from great distances.

  283 Dark blue is the colour of mourning in Egypt as it was of the Roman Republic. The Persians hold that this tint was introduced by Kay Kawús (B. C. 600) when mourning for his son Siyáwush. It was continued till the death of Husayn on the 10th of Muharram (the first month, then representing the vernal equinox) when it was changed for black. As a rule Moslems do not adopt this symbol of sorrow (called “Hidád”) looking upon the practice as somewhat idolatrous and foreign to Arab manners. In Egypt and especially on the Upper Nile women dye their hands with indigo and stair. their faces black or blacker.

  284 The older Roc, of which more in the Tale of Sindbad. Meanwhile the reader curious about the Persian Símurgh (thirty bird) will consult the Dabistan, i., 55,191 and iii., 237, and Richardson’s Diss. p. xlviii. For the Anka (Enka or Unka — long necked bird) see Dab. iii., 249 and for the Humá (bird of Paradise) Richardson lxix. We still lack details concerning the Ben or Bennu (nycticorax) of Egypt which with the Article pi gave rise to the Greek “phoenix.”

  285 Probably the Haledj of Forskal (p. xcvi. Flor. Ægypt. Arab.), “lignum tenax, durum, obscuri generic.” The Bres. Edit. has “ákúl”=teak wood, vulg. “Sáj.”

  286 The knocker ring is an invention well known to the

  Romans.

  287 Arab. “Sadr”; the place of honour; hence the “Sudder

  Adawlut” (Supreme Court) in the Anglo-Indian jargon.

  288 Arab. “Ahlan wa sahlan wa marhabá,” the words still popularly addressed to a guest.

  289 This may mean “liquid black eyes”; but also, as I have noticed, that the lashes were long and thick enough to make the eyelids appear as if Kohl-powder had been applied to the inner rims.

  290 A slight parting between the two front incisors, the upper only, is considered a beauty by Arabs; why it as hard to say except for the racial love of variety. “Sugar” (Thug) in the text means, primarily, the opening of the mouth, the gape: hence the front teeth.

  291 i.e. makes me taste the bitterness of death, “bursting the gall-bladder” (Marárah) being our “breaking the heart.”

  292 Almost needless to say that forbidden doors and rooms form a lieu-commun in Fairie: they are found in the Hindu Katha Sarit Sagara and became familiar to our childhood by “Bluebeard.”

  293 Lit. “apply Kohl to my eyes,” even as Jezebel “painted her face,” in Heb. put her eyes in painting (2 Kings ix. 30).

  294 Arab. “Al-Barkúk,” whence our older “Apricock.” Classically it is “Burkúk” and Pers. for Arab. “Mishrnish,” and it also denotes a small plum or damson. In Syria the side next the sun” shows a glowing red flush.

  295 Arab. “Hazár” (in Persian, a thousand) = a kind of mocking bird.

  296 Some Edits. make the doors number a hundred, but the Princesses were forty and these coincidences, which seem to have significance and have none save for Arab symmetromania, are common in Arab stories.

  297 Arab. “Májur”: hence possibly our “mazer,” which is popularly derived from Masarn, a maple.

  298 A compound scent of ambergris, musk and aloes.

  299 The ends of the bridle-reins forming the whip.

  300 The flying horse is Pegasus which is a Greek travesty of an Egyptian myth developed India.

  301 The Bres. Edit. wrongly says “the seventh.”

  302 Arab. “Sharmutah” (plur. Sharámít) from the root Sharmat, to shred, a favourite Egyptian word also applied in vulgar speech to a strumpet, a punk, a piece. It is also the popular term for strips of jerked or boucaned meat hung up m the sun to dry, and classically called “Kadíd.”

  303 Arab. “Izár,” the man’s waistcloth opposed to the Ridá or shoulder-cloth, is also the sheet of white calico worn by the poorer Egyptian women out of doors and covering head and hands. See Lane (M. E., chaps. i.). The rich prefer a “Habárah” of black silk, and the poor, when they have nothing else, use a bed-sheet.

  304 i.e. “My clears.”

  305 Arab. “Lá tawákhizná:” lit. “do not chastise (or blame) us;” the pop. expression for, “excuse (or pardon) us.”

  306 Arab. “Maskhút,” mostly applied to change of shape as man enchanted to monkey, and in vulgar parlance applied to a statue (of stone, etc.). The list of metamorphoses in Al-Islam is longer than that known to Ovid. Those who have seen Petra, the Greek town of the Haurán and the Roman ruins in Northern Africa will readily detect the bests upon which these stories are built. I shall return to this subject in The City of Iram (Night cclxxvi.) and The City of Brass (dlxvii.).

  307 A picturesque phrase enough to express a deserted site, a spectacle familiar to the Nomades and always abounding in pathos to the citizens.

  308 The olden “Harem” (or gynæceum, Pers. Zenanah, Serraglio): Harím is also used by synecdoche for the inmates; especially the wife.

  309 The pearl is supposed in the East to lose 1% per ann. of its splendour and value.

  310 Arab. “Fass,” properly the bezel of a ring; also a gem cut en cabochon and generally the contenant for the contenu.

  311 Arab. “Mihráb” = the arch-headed niche in the Mosque-wall facing Meccah-wards. Here, with his back to the people and fronting the Ka’abah or Square House of Meccah (hence called the “Kiblah” = direction of prayer), stations himself the Imám, artistes or fugleman, lit. “one who stands before others;” and his bows and prostrations give the time to the con
gregation. I have derived the Mihrab from the niche in which the Egyptian God was shrined: the Jews ignored it, but the Christians preserved it for their statues and altars. Maundrell suggests that the empty niche denotes an invisible God. As the niche (symbol of Venus) and the minaret (symbol of Priapus) date only from the days of the tenth Caliph, Al-Walid (A.H. 86-96=105-115), the Hindus charge the Moslems with having borrowed the two from their favourite idols — The Linga-Yoni or Cunnus phallus (Pilgrimage ii. 140), and plainly call the Mihrab a Bhaga= Cunnus (Dabistan ii. 152). The Guebres further term Meccah “Mah-gah,” locus Lunæ, and Al-Medinah, “Mahdinah,” = Moon of religion. See Dabistan i., 49, etc.

  312 Arab “Kursi,” a stool of palm-fronds, etc., X-shaped (see Lane’s illustration, Nights i., 197), before which the reader sits. Good Moslems will not hold the Holy Volume below the waist nor open it except when ceremonially pure. Englishmen in the East should remember this, for to neglect the “Adab al-Kúran” (respect due to Holy Writ) gives great scandal.

  313 Mr. Payne (i. 148) quotes the German Zuckerpüppchen.

  314 The Persian poets have a thousand conceits in praise of the “mole,” (Khál or Shámah) for which Hafiz offered “Samarkand and Bokhara” (they not being his, as his friends remarked). Another “topic” is the flight of arrows shot by eyelashes.

  315 Arab. “Suhá” a star in the Great Bear introduced only to balance “wushát” = spies, enviers, enemies, whose “evil eye” it will ward off.

  316 In Arab tales beauty is always “soft-sided,” and a smooth skin is valued in proportion to its rarity.

  317 The myrtle is the young hair upon the side face

  318 In other copies of these verses the fourth couplet swears “by the scorpions of his brow” i.e. the accroche-cæurs, the beau-catchers, bell-ropes or aggravators,” as the B.P. calls them. In couplet eight the poet alludes to his love’s “Unsur,” or element his nature made up of the four classicals, and in the last couplet he makes the nail paring refer to the moon not the sun.

  319 This is regular formula when speaking of Guebres.

  320 Arab. “Faráiz”; the orders expressly given in the Koran which the reader will remember, is Uncreate and Eternal. In India “Farz” is applied to injunctions thrice repeated; and “Wájíb” to those given twice over. Elsewhere scanty difference is made between them.

  321 Arab. “Kufr” = rejecting the True Religion, i.e. Al-Islam, such rejection being “Tughyán” or rebellion against the Lord. The “terrible sound” is taken from the legend of the prophet Sálih and the proto-historic tribe of Thámúd which for its impiety was struck dead by an earthquake and a noise from heaven. The latter, according to some commentators, was the voice of the Archangel Gabriel crying “Die all of you” (Koran, chapts. vii., xviii., etc.). We shall hear more of it in the “City of many-columned Iram.” According to some, Salih, a mysterious Badawi prophet, is buried in the Wady al-Shaykh of the so-called Sinaitic Peninsula.

  322 Yet they kept the semblance of man, showing that the idea arose from the basaltic statues found in Hauranic ruins. Mohammed in his various marches to Syria must have seen remnants of Greek and Roman settlements; and as has been noticed “Sesostris”

  323 Arab. “Shuhadá”; highly respected by Moslems as by other religionists; although their principal if not only merit seems as a rule to have been intense obstinacy and devotion to one idea for which they were ready to sacrifice even life. The Martyrs-category is extensive including those killed by falling walls; victims to the plague, pleurisy and pregnancy, travellers drowned or otherwise lost when journeying honestly, and chaste lovers who die of “broken hearts” i.e. impaired digestion. Their souls are at once stowed away in the crops of green birds where they remain till Resurrection Day, “eating of the fruits and drinking of the streams of Paradise,” a place however, whose topography is wholly uncertain. Thus the young Prince was rewarded with a manner of anti-Purgatory, a preparatory heaven.

  324 Arab. “Su’ubán:” the Badawin give the name to a variety of serpents all held to be venomous; but m tales the word, like “Tannín,” expresses our “dragon” or “cockatrice.”

  325 She was ashamed to see the lady doing servile duty by rubbing her feet. This massage, which B. de la Brocquière describes in 1452 as “kneading and pinching,” has already been noticed. The French term is apparently derived from the Arab. “Mas-h.”

  326 Alluding to the Most High Name, the hundredth name of God, the Heb. Shem hamphorash, unknown save to a favoured few who by using it perform all manner of miracles.

  327 i e. the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

  328 i.e. Settled by the Koran.

  329 The uglier the old woman the better procuress she is

  supposed to make. See the Santa Verdiana in Boccaccio v., 10. In

  Arab. “Ajuz” (old woman) is highly insulting and if addressed to an

  Egyptian, whatever be her age she will turn fiercely and resent it.

  The polite term is Shaybah (Pilgrimage hi., 200).

  330 The four ages of woman, considered after Demosthenes in her three-fold character, prostitute for pleasure, concubine for service and wife for breeding.

  331 Arab. “Jilá” (the Hindostani Julwa) = the displaying of the bride before the bridegroom for the first time, in different dresses, to the number of seven which are often borrowed for the occasion. The happy man must pay a fee called “the tax of face-unveiling” before he can see her features. Amongst Syrian Christians he sometimes tries to lift the veil by a sharp movement of the sword which is parried by the women present, and the blade remains entangled in the cloth. At last he succeeds, the bride sinks to the ground covering her face with her hands and the robes of her friends: presently she is raised up, her veil is readjusted and her face is left bare.

  332 Arab. “Ishá”= the first watch of the night, twilight, supper-time, supper. Moslems have borrowed the four watches of the Romans from 6 (a.m. or p.m.) to 6, and ignore the three original watches of the Jews, even, midnight and cockcrow (Sam. ii. 19, Judges vii. 19, and Exodus xiv. 24).

  333 A popular Arab hyperbole.

  334 Arab. “Shakáik al-Nu’uman,” lit. the fissures of Nu’uman, the beautiful anemone, which a tyrannical King of Hirah, Nu’uman Al-Munzir, a contemporary of Mohammed, attempted to monopolize.

  335 Arab. “Andam”=here the gum called dragon’s blood; in other places the dye-wood known as brazil.

  336 I need hardly say that in the East, where bells are unused, clapping the hands summons the servants. In India men cry “Quy hye” (Koi hái?) and in Brazil whistle “Pst!” after the fashion of Spain and Portugal.

  337 The moles are here compared with pearls; a simile by no means common or appropriate.

  338 A parody on the testification of Allah’s Unity.

  339 Arab. “Simát” (prop. “Sumát”); the “dinner-table,” composed of a round wooden stool supporting a large metal tray, the two being called “Sufrah” (or “Simat”): thus “Sufrah házirah!” means dinner is on the table. After the meal they are at once removed.

  340 In the text “Dastúr,” the Persian word before noticed;

  “Izn” would be the proper Arabic equivalent.

  341 In the Moslem East a young woman, single or married, is not allowed to appear alone in the streets; and the police have a right to arrest delinquents. As a preventive of intrigues the precaution is excellent. During the Crimean war hundreds of officers, English, French and Italian, became familiar with Constantinople; and not a few flattered themselves on their success with Turkish women. I do not believe that a single bona fide case occurred: the “conquests” were all Greeks, Wallachians, Armenians or Jewesses.

  342 Arab. “Azím”: translators do not seem to know that this word in The Nights often bears its Egyptian and slang sense, somewhat equivalent to our “deuced” or “mighty” or “awfully fine.”

  343 This is a very serious thing amongst Moslems and scrupulous men often make great sacrifices to avoid taking an oath.
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  344 We should say “into the noose.”

  345 The man had fallen in love with her and determined to mark her so that she might be his.

  346 Arab. “Dajlah,” in which we find the Heb. Hid-dekel.

  347 Such an execution would be contrary to Moslem law: but people would look leniently upon the peccadillo of beheading or sacking a faithless wife. Moreover the youth was of the blood royal and A quoi bon être prince? as was said by a boy of viceroyal family in Egypt to his tutor who reproached him for unnecessarily shooting down a poor old man.

  348 Arab. “Shirk,” partnership, evening or associating gods with God; polytheism: especially levelled at the Hindu triadism, Guebre dualism and Christian Trinitarianism.

  349 Arab. “Shatm” — abuse, generally couched in foulest language with especial reference to the privy parts of female relatives.

  350 When a woman is bastinadoed in the East they leave her some portion of dress and pour over her sundry buckets of water for a delicate consideration. When the hands are beaten they are passed through holes in the curtain separating the sufferer from mankind, and made fast to a “falakah” or pole.

  351 Arab. “Khalifah,” Caliph. The word is also used for the successor of a Santon or holy man.

  352 Arab. “Sár,” here the Koranic word for carrying out the venerable and undying lex talionis the original basis of all criminal jurisprudence. Its main fault is that justice repeats the offence.

  353 Both these sons of Harun became Caliphs, as we shall see in The Nights.

  354 “Dog” and “hog” are still highly popular terms of abuse. The Rabbis will not defile their lips with “pig;” but say “Dabhar akhir”=“another thing.”

  355 The “hero eponymus” of the Abbaside dynasty, Abbas having been the brother of Abdullah the father of Mohammed. He is a famous personage in AI-Islam (D’Herbelot).