One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  417 On such occasions Miss Modesty shuts her eye and looks as if about to faint.

  418 After either evacuation the Moslem is bound to wash or sand the part; first however he should apply three pebbles, or potsherds or clods of earth. Hence the allusion in the Koran (chapt. ix), “men who love to be purified.” When the Prophet was questioning the men of Kuba, where he founded a mosque (Pilgrimage ii., 215), he asked them about their legal ablutions, especially after evacuation; and they told him that they used three stones before washing. Moslems and Hindus (who prefer water mixed with earth) abhor the unclean and unhealthy use of paper without ablution; and the people of India call European draught- houses, by way of opprobrium, “Kághaz-khánah” = paper closets. Most old Anglo-Indians, however, learn to use water.

  419 “Miao” or “Mau” is the generic name of the cat in the

  Egyptian of the hieroglyphs.

  420 Arab. “Ya Mah’úm” addressed to an evil spirit.

  421 “Heehaw!” as we should say. The Bresl. Edit. makes the cat cry “Nauh! Nauh!” and the ass-colt “Manu! Manu!” I leave these onomatopoeics as they are in Arabic; they are curious, showing the unity in variety of hearing inarticulate sounds. The bird which is called “Whip poor Will” in the U.S. is known to the Brazilians as “Joam corta páo” (John cut wood); so differently do they hear the same notes.

  422 It is usually a slab of marble with a long slit in front and a round hole behind. The text speaks of a Kursi (= stool); but this is now unknown to native houses which have not adopted European fashions.

  423 This again is chaff as she addresses the Hunchback. The

  Bul. Edit. has “O Abu Shiháb” (Father of the shooting-star = evil

  spirit); the Bresl. Edit. “O son of a heap! O son of a

  Something!” (al-afsh, a vulgarism).

  424 As the reader will see, Arab ideas of “fun” and practical jokes are of the largest, putting the Hibernian to utter rout, and comparing favourably with those recorded in Don Quixote.

  425 Arab. “Saráwil” a corruption of the Pers. “Sharwál”; popularly called “libás” which, however, may also mean clothing in general and especially outer-clothing. I translate “bag- trousers” and “petticoat-trousers,” the latter being the divided skirt of our future. In the East, where Common Sense, not Fashion, rules dress, men, who have a protuberance to be concealed, wear petticoats and women wear trousers. The feminine article is mostly baggy but sometimes, as in India, collant- tight. A quasi-sacred part of it is the inkle, tape or string, often a most magnificent affair, with tassels of pearl and precious stones; and “laxity in the trouser-string” is equivalent to the loosest conduct. Upon the subject of “libás,” “sarwál” and its variants the curious reader will consult Dr. Dozy’s “Dictionnaire Détaillé des Noms des Vêtements chez les Arabes,” a most valuable work.

  426 The turban out of respect is not put upon the ground

  (Lane, M. E., chapt. i.).

  427 Arab. “Madfa” showing the modern date or the modernization of the tale. In Lebid “Madáfi” (plur. of Madfa’) means water-courses or leats.

  428 In Arab. the “he” is a “she;” and Habíb (“friend”) is the Attic {Greek Letters}, a euphemism for lover. This will occur throughout The Nights. So the Arabs use a phrase corresponding with the Stoic {Greek Letters}, i.e. is wont, is fain.

  429 Part of the Azán, or call to prayer.

  430 Arab. “Shiháb,” these mentors being the flying shafts shot at evil spirits who approach too near heaven. The idea doubtless arose from the showers of August and November meteors (The Perseides and Taurides) which suggest a battle raging in upper air. Christendom also has its superstition concerning these and called those of August the “fiery tears of Saint Lawrence,” whose festival was on August 10.

  431 Arab. “Tákiyah” = Pers. Arak-chin; the calotte worn under the Fez. It is, I have said, now obsolete and the red woollen cap (mostly made in Europe) is worn over the hair; an unclean practice.

  432 Often the effect of cold air after a heated room.

  433 i.e. He was not a Eunuch, as the people guessed.

  434 In Arab. “this night” for the reason before given.

  435 Meaning especially the drink prepared of the young leaves and florets of Cannabis Sativa. The word literally means “day grass” or “herbage.” This intoxicant was much used by magicians to produce ecstasy and thus to “deify themselves and receive the homage of the genii and spirits of nature.”

  436 Torrens, being an Irishman, translates “and woke in the morning sleeping at Damascus.”

  437 Arab. “Labbayka,” the cry technically called “Talbiyah” and used by those entering Meccah (Pilgrimage iii. 125-232). I shall also translate it by “Adsum.” The full cry is: —

  Here am I, O Allah, here am I!

  No partner hast Thou, here am I:

  Verily the praise and the grace and the kingdom are thine:

  No partner hast Thou: here am I!

  A single Talbiyah is a “Shart” or positive condition: and its repetition is a Sunnat or Custom of the Prophet. See Night xci.

  438 The staple abuse of the vulgar is curing parents and relatives, especially feminine, with specific allusions to their “shame.” And when dames of high degree are angry, Nature, in the East as in the West, sometimes speaks out clearly enough, despite Mistress Chapone and all artificial restrictions.

  439 A great beauty in Arabia and the reverse in Denmark, Germany and Slav-land, where it is a sign of being a were-wolf or a vampire. In Greece also it denotes a “Brukolak” or vampire.

  440 This is not physiologically true: a bride rarely conceives the first night, and certainly would not know that she had conceived. Moreover the number of courses furnished by the bridegroom would be against conception. It is popularly said that a young couple often undoes in the morning what it has done during the night.

  441 Torrens (Notes, xxiv.) quotes “Fleisher” upon the word “Ghamghama” (Diss. Crit. De Glossis Habichtionis), which he compares with “Dumbuma” and Humbuma,” determining them to be onomatopoeics, “an incomplete and an obscure murmur of a sentence as it were lingering between the teeth and lips and therefore difficult to be understood.” Of this family is “Taghúm”; not used in modern days. In my Pilgrimage (i. 313) I have noticed another, “Khyas’, Khyas’!” occurring in a Hizb al-Bahr (Spell of the Sea). Herklots gives a host of them; and their sole characteristics are harshness and strangeness of sound, uniting consonants which are not joined in Arabic. The old Egyptians and Chaldeans had many such words composed at will for theurgic operations.

  442 This may mean either “it is of Mosul fashion” or, it is of muslin.

  443 To the English reader these lines would appear the reverse of apposite; but Orientals have their own ways of application, and all allusions to Badawi partings are effective and affecting. The civilised poets of Arab cities throw the charm of the Desert over their verse by images borrowed from its scenery, the dromedary, the mirage and the well as naturally as certain of our bards who hated the country, babbled of purling rills, etc. thoroughly to feel Arabic poetry one must know the Desert (Pilgrimage iii., 63).

  444 In those days the Arabs and the Portuguese recorded everything which struck them, as the Chinese and Japanese in our times. And yet we complain of the amount of our modern writing!

  445 This is mentioned because it is the act preliminary to naming the babe.

  446 Arab. “Kahramánát” from Kahramán, an old Persian hero who conversed with the Simurgh-Griffon. Usually the word is applied to women-at-arms who defend the Harem, like the Urdu- begani of India, whose services were lately offered to England (1885), or the “Amazons” of Dahome.

  447 Meaning he grew as fast in one day as other children in a month.

  448 Arab. Al-Aríf; the tutor, the assistant-master.

  449 Arab. “Ibn harám,” a common term of abuse; and not a factual reflection on the parent. I have heard a mother apply the term to her own son
.

  450 Arab. “Khanjar” from the Persian, a syn. with the Arab. “Jambiyah.” It is noted in my Pilgrimage iii., p,75. To “silver the dagger” means to become a rich man. From “Khanjar,” not from its fringed loop or strap, I derive our silly word “hanger.” Dr. Steingass would connect it with Germ. Fänger, e.g. Hirschfänger.

  451 Again we have “Dastur” for Izn.”

  452 Arab. “Iklím”; the seven climates of Ptolemy.

  453 Arab. “Al-Ghadir,” lit. a place where water sinks, a

  lowland: here the drainage-lakes east of Damascus into which the

  Baradah (Abana?) discharges. The higher eastern plain is “Al-

  Ghutah” before noticed.

  454 The “Plain of Pebbles” still so termed at Damascus; an open space west of the city.

  455 Every Guide-book, even the Reverend Porter’s “Murray,” gives a long account of this Christian Church ‘verted to a Mosque.

  456 Arab. “Nabút”; Pilgrimage i. 336.

  457 The Bres. Edit. says, “would have knocked him into Al- Yaman,” (Southern Arabia), something like our slang phrase “into the middle of next week.”

  458 Arab. “Khádim”: lit. a servant, politely applied (like Aghá = master) to a castrato. These gentry wax furious if baldly called “Tawáshi” = Eunuch. A mauvais plaisant in Egypt used to call me The Agha because a friend had placed his wife under my charge.

  459 This sounds absurd enough in English, but Easterns always put themselves first for respect.

  460 In Arabic the World is feminine.

  461 Arab. “Sáhib” = lit. a companion; also a friend and especially applied to the Companions of Mohammed. Hence the Sunnis claim for them the honour of “friendship” with the Apostle; but the Shia’hs reply that the Arab says “Sahaba-hu’l- himár” (the Ass was his Sahib or companion). In the text it is a Wazirial title, in modern India it is = gentleman, e.g. “Sahib log” (the Sahib people) means their white conquerors, who, by the by, mostly mispronounce the word “Sáb.”

  462 Arab. “Suwán,” prop. Syenite, from Syene (Al-Suwan) but applied to flint and any hard stone.

  463 It was famous in the middle ages, and even now it is, perhaps, the most interesting to travellers after that “Sentina Gentium,” the “Bhendi Bazar” of unromantic Bombay.

  464 “The Gate of the Gardens,” in the northern wall, a Roman archway of the usual solid construction shaming not only our modern shams, but our finest masonry.

  465 Arab. “Al-Asr,” which may mean either the hour or the prayer. It is also the moment at which the Guardian Angels relieve each other (Sale’s Koran, chapt. v.).

  466 Arab. “Ya házá” = O this (one)! a somewhat slighting

  address equivalent to “Heus tu! O thou, whoever thou art.”

  Another form is “Yá hú” = O he! Can this have originated Swift’s

  “Yahoo”?

  467 Alluding to the {Greek Letters} (“minor miracles which cause surprise”) performed by Saints’ tombs, the mildest form of thaumaturgy. One of them gravely recorded in the Dabistan (ii. 226) is that of the holy Jamen, who opened the Sámran or bead- bracelet from the arm of the beautiful Chistápá with member erect, “thus evincing his manly strength and his command over himself”(!)

  468 The River of Paradise, a lieu commun of poets (Koran, chapt. cviii.): the water is whiter than milk or silver, sweeter than honey, smoother than cream, more odorous than musk; its banks are of chrysolite and it is drunk out of silver cups set around it thick as stars. Two pipes conduct it to the Prophet’s Pond which is an exact square, one month’s journey in compass. Kausar is spirituous like wine; Salsabil sweet like clarified honey; the Fount of Mildness is like milk and the Fount of Mercy like liquid crystal.

  469 The Moslem does not use the European basin because water which has touched an impure skin becomes impure. Hence it is poured out from a ewer (“ibrík” Pers. Abríz) upon the hands and falls into a basin (“tisht”) with an open-worked cover.

  470 Arab. “Wahsh,” a word of many meanings; nasty, insipid, savage, etc. The offside of a horse is called Wahshi opposed to Insi, the near side. The Amir Taymur (“Lord Iron”) whom Europeans unwittingly call after his Persian enemies’ nickname, “Tamerlane,” i.e. Taymur-I-lang, or limping Taymur, is still known as “Al-Wahsh” (the wild beast) at Damascus, where his Tartars used to bury men up to their necks and play at bowls with their heads for ninepins.

  471 For “grandson” as being more affectionate. Easterns have not yet learned that clever Western saying: — The enemies of our enemies are our friends.

  472 This was a simple bastinado on the back, not the more ceremonious affair of beating the feet-soles. But it is surprising what the Egyptians can bear; some of the rods used in the time of the Mameluke Beys are nearly as thick as a man’s wrist.

  473 The woman-like spite of the eunuch intended to hurt the grandmother’s feelings.

  474 The usual Cairene “chaff.”

  475 A necessary precaution against poison (Pilgrimage i. 84, and iii. 43).

  476 The Bresl. Edit. (ii. 108) describes the scene at greater length.

  477 The Bul. Edit. gives by mistake of diacritical points,

  “Zabdaniyah:” Raydaniyah is or rather was a camping ground to the

  North of Cairo.

  478 Arab. “La’abat” = a plaything, a puppet, a lay figure. Lane (i. 326) conjectures that the cross is so called because it resembles a man with arms extended. But Moslems never heard of the fanciful ideas of mediæval Christian divines who saw the cross everywhere and in everything. The former hold that Pharaoh invented the painful and ignominious punishment. (Koran, chapt. vii.).

  479 Here good blood, driven to bay, speaks out boldly. But, as a rule, the humblest and mildest Eastern when in despair turns round upon his oppressors like a wild cat. Some of the criminals whom Fath Ali Shah of Persia put to death by chopping down the fork, beginning at the scrotum, abused his mother till the knife reached their vitals and they could no longer speak.

  480 These repeated “laughs” prove the trouble of his spirit. Noble Arabs “show their back-teeth” so rarely that their laughter is held worthy of being recorded by their biographers.

  481 A popular phrase, derived from the Koranic “Truth is come, and falsehood is vanished: for falsehood is of short continuance” (chapt. xvii.). It is an equivalent of our adaptation from 1 Esdras iv. 41, “Magna est veritas et prævalebit.” But the great question still remains, What is Truth?

  482 In Night lxxv. these lines will occur with variants.

  483 This is always mentioned: the nearer seat the higher the honour.

  484 Alluding to the phrase “Al-safar zafar” = voyaging is victory (Pilgrimage i., 127).

  485 Arab. “Habb;” alluding to the black drop in the human heart which the Archangel Gabriel removed from Mohammed by opening his breast.

  486 This phrase, I have said, often occurs: it alludes to the horripilation (Arab. Kush’arírah), horror or gooseflesh which, in Arab as in Hindu fables, is a symptom of great joy. So Boccaccio’s “pelo arriciato” v., 8: Germ. Gänsehaut.

  487 Arab. “Hasanta ya Hasan” = Bene detto, Benedetto! the usual word-play vulgarly called “pun”: Hasan (not Hassan, as we will write it) meaning “beautiful.”

  488 Arab. “Loghah” also = a vocabulary, a dictionary; the

  Arabs had them by camel-loads.

  489 The seventh of the sixteen “Bahr” (metres) in Arabic prosody; the easiest because allowing the most license and, consequently, a favourite for didactic, homiletic and gnomic themes. It means literally “agitated” and was originally applied to the rude song of the Cameleer. De Sacy calls this doggrel “the poet’s ass” (Torrens, Notes xxvi.). It was the only metre in which Mohammed the Apostle ever spoke: he was no poet (Koran xxxvi., 69) but he occasionally recited a verse and recited it wrongly (Dabistan iii., 212). In Persian prosody Rajaz is the seventh of nineteen and has six distinct varieties (p-81), “Gladwin’s Dissertations on Rheto
ric,” etc. Calcutta, 1801). I shall have more to say about it in the Terminal Essay.

  490 “Her stature tall — I hate a dumpy woman” (Don Juan).

  491 A worthy who was Kazi of Kufah (Cufa) in the seventh century. Al-Najaf, generally entitled “Najaf al-Ashraf” (the Venerand) is the place where Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, lies or is supposed to lie buried, and has ever been a holy place to the Shi’ahs. I am not certain whether to translate “Sa’alab” by fox or jackal; the Arabs make scant distinction between them. “Abu Hosayn” (Father of the Fortlet) is certainly the fox, and as certainly “Sha’arhar” is the jackal from the Pehlevi Shagál or Shaghál.

  492 Usually by all manner of extortions and robbery, corruption and bribery, the ruler’s motto being

  Fiat injustitia ruat Coelum.

  There is no more honest man than the Turkish peasant or the private soldier; but the process of deterioration begins when he is made a corporal and culminates in the Pasha. Moreover official dishonesty is permitted by public opinion, because it belongs to the condition of society. A man buys a place (as in England two centuries ago) and retains it by presents to the heads of offices. Consequently he must recoup himself in some way, and he mostly does so by grinding the faces of the poor and by spoiling the widow and the orphan. The radical cure is high pay; but that phase of society refuses to afford it.

  493 Arab. “Malik” (King) and “Malak” (angel) the words being written the same when lacking vowels and justifying the jingle.

  [FN #494] Arab. “Hurr”; the Latin “ingenuus,” lit. freeborn; metaph. noble as opp. to a slave who is not expected to do great or good deeds. In pop. use it corresponds, like “Fatá,” with our “gentleman.”

  495 This is one of the best tales for humour and movement, and Douce and Madden show what a rich crop of fabliaux, whose leading incident was the disposal of a dead body, it produced.

  496 Other editions read, “at Bassorah” and the Bresl. (ii. 123) “at Bassorah and Kájkár” (Káshghár): somewhat like in Dover and Sebastopol. I prefer China because further off and making the improbabilities more notable.