One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  173 The usual preliminary of a wrestling bout.

  174 In Eastern wrestling this counts as a fair fail. So Ajax fell on his back with Ulysses on his breast. (Iliad xxxii., 700, etc.)

  175 So biting was allowed amongst the Greeks in the , the final struggle on the ground.

  176 Supposed to be names of noted wrestlers. “Kayim” (not El-Kim as Torrens has it) is a term now applied to a juggler or “professor” of legerdemain who amuses people in the streets with easy tricks. (Lane, M. E., chaps. xx.)

  177 Lit. “laughed in his face” which has not the unpleasant meaning it bears in English.

  178 Arab. “Abu riyáh”=a kind of child’s toy. It is our “bull-roarer” well known in Australia and parts of Africa.

  179 The people of the region south of the Caspian which is called “Sea of Daylam.” It has a long history; for which see D’Herbelot, s.v. “Dilem.”

  180 Coptic convents in Egypt still affect these drawbridges over the keep-moat.

  181 Koran iv., xxii. etc., meaning it is lawful to marry women taken in war after the necessary purification although their husbands be still living. This is not permitted with a free woman who is a True Believer. I have noted that the only concubine slave-girl mentioned in the Koran are these “captives possessed by the right hand.”

  182 The Amazonian dame is a favourite in folk-lore and is an ornament to poetry from the Iliad to our modern day. Such heroines, apparently unknown to the Pagan Arabs, were common in the early ages of Al-Islam as Ockley and Gibbon prove, and that the race is not extinct may be seen in my Pilgrimage (iii. 55) where the sister of Ibn Rumi resolved to take blood revenge for her brother.

  183 And Solomon said, “O nobles, which of you will bring me her throne ?” A terrible genius (i.e. an If rit of the Jinn named Dhakwan or the notorious Sakhr) said, “ I will bring it unto thee before thou arise from thy seat (of justice); for I am able to perform it, and may be trusted” (Koran, xxvii. 38-39). Balkís or Bilkís (says the Durrat al-Ghawwás) daughter of Hozád bin Sharhabíl, twenty-second in the list of the rulers of Al- Yaman, according to some murdered her husband, and became, by Moslem ignorance, the Biblical “ Queen of Sheba.” The Abyssinians transfer her from Arabian Saba to Ethiopia and make her the mother by Solomon of Menelek, their proto-monarch; thus claiming for their royalties an antiquity compared with which all reigning houses in the world are of yesterday. The dates of the Tabábi’ah or Tobbas prove that the Bilkis of history ruled Al-Yaman in the early Christian era.

  184 Arab. “Fass,” fiss or fuss; the gem set in a ring; also applied to a hillock rounded en cabochon. In The Nights it is used to signify “a fine gem.”

  185 This prominence of the glutæi muscles is always insisted upon, because it is supposed to promise well in a bed-fellow. In Somali land where the people are sub- steatopygous, a rich young man, who can afford such luxury, will have the girls drawn up in line and choose her to wife who projects furthest behind

  186 The “bull” is only half mine.

  187 A favourite Arab phrase, the “hot eye” is one full of tears.

  188 i.e., “Coral,” coral branch, a favourite name for a slave-girl, especially a negress. It is the older “Morgiana.” I do not see why Preston in Al-Haríni’s “Makamah (Séance) of Singar” renders it pearls, because Golius gives “small pearls,” when it is evidently “coral.” Richardson (Dissert. xlviii.) seems to me justified in finding the Pari (fairy) Marjan of heroic Persian history reflected in the Fairy Morgain who earned off King Arthur after the battle of Camelon.

  189 Arab. “‘Ud Jalaki”=Jalak or Jalik being a poetical and almost obsolete name of Damascus.

  190 The fountain in Paradise whose water shall be drunk with “pure” wine mixed and sealed with musk (for clay). It is so called because it comes from the “Sanam” (Sanima, to be high) boss or highest ridge of the Moslem Heaven (Koran lv. 78 and lxxxiii. 27). Mr. Rodwell says “it is conveyed to the highest apartments in the Pavilions of Paradise.” (?)

  191 This “hysterical” temperament is not rare even amongst the bravest Arabs.

  192 An idea evidently derived from the Æolipyla (olla animatoria) the invention of Hero Alexandrinus, which showed that the ancient Egyptians could apply the motive force of steam.

  193 Kuthayyir ibn Abi Jumah, a poet and far-famed Ráwí or Tale-reciter, mentioned by Ibn Khallikan he lived at Al-Medinah and sang the attractions of one Azzah, hence his soubriquet Sáhib (lover of) Azzah. As he died in A. H. 105 (=726), his presence here is a gross anachronism the imaginary Sharrkan flourished before the Caliphate of Abd al-Malik bin Marwán A. H. 65-86.

  194 Jamíl bin Ma’amar, a poet and lover contemporary with

  Al-Kuthayrir.

  195 Arab. “Tafazzal,” a word of frequent use in conversation=“favour me,” etc.

  196 The word has a long history. From the Gr. or is the Lat. stibium; while the Low Latin “antimonium” and the Span. Althimod are by metathesis for Al-Ithmid. The dictionaries define the substance as a stone from which antimony is prepared, but the Arabs understand a semi-mythical mineral of yellow colour which enters into the veins of the eyes and gives them Iynx-like vision. The famous Anz nicknamed Zarká (the blue eyed) of Yamámah (Province) used it; and, according to some, invented Kohl. When her (protohistoric) tribe Jadis had destroyed all the rival race of Tasm, except Ribáh ibn Murrah; the sole survivor fled to the Tobba of Al-Yaman, who sent a host to avenge him. The king commanded his Himyarites to cut tree-boughs and use them as screens (again Birnam wood). Zarká from her Utum, or peel-tower, saw the army three marches off and cried, “O folk, either trees or Himyar are coming upon you!” adding, in Rajaz verse: —

  I swear by Allah that trees creep onward, or that Himyar beareth somewhat which he draweth along!

  She then saw a man mending his sandal. But Jadis disbelieved; Cassandra was slain and, when her eyes were cut out the vessels were found full of Ithmid. Hence Al-Mutanabbi sang:

  “Sharper-sighted than Zarká of Jau” (Yamámah).

  See C. de Perceval i. 101; Arab. Prov. i. 192; and Chenery .

  (The Assemblies of Al-Hariri; London, Williams and Norgate, 1867).

  I have made many enquiries into the true nature of Ithmid and

  failed to learn anything: on the Upper Nile the word is=Kohl.

  197 The general colour of chessmen in the East, where the game is played on a cloth more often than a board.

  198 Arab. “Al-fil,” the elephant=the French fol or fou and our bishop. I have derived “elephant” from Píl (old Persian, Sansk. Pilu) and Arab. Fil, with the article Al-Fil, whence the Greek the suffix — as being devoted to barbarous words as Obod-as (Al Ubayd), Aretas (Al-Háris), etc. Mr. Isaac Taylor (The Alphabet i. 169), preserves the old absurdity of “eleph-ant or ox-like (!) beast of Africa.” Prof. Sayce finds the word al-ab (two distinct characters) in line 3, above the figure of an (Indian) elephant, on the black obelisk of Nimrod Mound, and suggests an Assyrian derivation.

  199 Arab. “Shaukat” which may also mean the “pride” or “mainstay” (of the army).

  200 Lit. “smote him on the tendons of his neck.” This is the famous shoulder-cut (Tawash shuh) which, with the leg-cut (Kalam), formed, and still forms, the staple of Eastern attack with the sword.

  201 Arab. “Dirás.” Easterns do not thresh with flails. The material is strewed over a round and smoothed floor of dried mud in the open air and threshed by different connivances. In Egypt the favourite is a chair-like machine called “Norag,” running on iron plates and drawn by bulls or cows over the corn. Generally, however, Moslems prefer the old classical , the Tribulum of Virgil and Varro, a slipper-shaped sled of wood garnished on the sole with large-headed iron nails, or sharp fragments of flint or basalt. Thus is made the “Tibn” or straw, the universal hay of the East, which our machines cannot imitate.

  202 These numbers appear to be grossly exaggerated, but they were possible in the days of sword and armour: at the battle of Saffayn the Caliph Ali is said
to have cut down five hundred and twenty-three men in a single night.

  203 Arab. “Bika’á”: hence the “Buka’ah” or Cœlesyria.

  204 Richardson in his excellent dictionary (note 103) which modern priggism finds “unscientific “ wonderfully derives this word from Arab. “Khattáf,” a snatcher (i.e. of women), a ravisher. It is an evident corruption of “captivus” through Italian and French

  205 These periodical and fair-like visitations to convents are still customary; especially amongst the Christians of Damascus.

  206 Camphor being then unknown.

  207 The “wrecker” is known all over the world; and not only barbarians hold that ships driven ashore become the property of the shore

  208 Arab. “Jokh”: it is not a dictionary word, but the only term in popular use for European broadcloth.

  209 The second person plural is used because the writer would involve the subjects of his correspondent in the matter.

  210 This part of the phrase, which may seem unnecessary to the European, is perfectly intelligible to all Orientalists. You may read many an Eastern letter and not understand it. Compare Boccacoo iv. 1.

  211 i.e. he was greatly agitated

  212 In text “Li-ajal a al-Taudi’a,” for the purpose of farewelling, a low Egyptianism; emphatically a “Kalám wáti.” (Pilgrimage thee iii. 330.)

  213 In the Mac. Edit. Sharrkan speaks, a clerical error.

  214 The Farsakh (Germ. Stunde) a measure of time rather than distance, is an hour’s travel or its equivalent, a league, a meile=three English stat. miles. The word is still used in Persia its true home, but not elsewhere. It is very old, having been determined as a lineal measure of distance by Herodotus (ii. 5 and 6 ; v. 53), who computes it at 30 furlongs (=furrow-lengths, 8 to the stat. mile). Strabo (xi.) makes it range from 40 to 60 stades (each=606 feet 9 inches), and even now it varies between 1,500 to 6,000 yards. Captain Francklin (Tour to Persia) estimates it = about four miles. (Pilgrimage ii. 113.)

  215 Arab. “Ashhab.” Names of colours are few amongst semi civilised peoples, but in Arabia there is a distinct word for every shade of horseflesh.

  216 She had already said to him “Thou art beaten in everything!”

  217 Showing that she was still a Christian.

  218 This is not Badawi sentiment: the honoratioren amongst wild people would scorn such foul play; but amongst the settled Arabs honour between men and women is unknown and such “hocussing” would be held quite fair.

  219 The table of wine, in our day, is mostly a japanned tray with glasses and bottles, saucers of pickles and fruits and, perhaps, a bunch of flowers and aromatic herbs. During the Caliphate the “wine-service” was on a larger scale.

  220 Here the “Bhang” (almost a generic term applied to hellebore, etc.) may be hyoscyamus or henbane. Yet there are varieties of Cannabis, such as the Dakha of South Africa capable of most violent effect. I found the use of the drug well known to the negroes of the Southern United States and of the Brazil, although few of their owners had ever heard of it.

  221 Amongst Moslems this is a reference to Adam who first “sinned against himself,’ and who therefore is called “ Safíyu’llah,” the Pure of Allah. (Pilgrimage iii. 333.)

  222 Meaning, an angry, violent man.

  223 Arab. “Inshád,” which may mean reciting the verse of another or improvising one’s own. In Modern Egypt “Munshid” is the singer or reciter of poetry at Zikrs (Lane M. E. chaps. xxiv.). Here the verses are quite bad enough to be improvised by the hapless Princess.

  224 The negro skin assumes this dust colour in cold, fear, concupiscence and other mental emotions.

  225 He compares her glance with the blade of a Yamani sword, a lieu commun of Eastern poetry. The weapons are famous in The Nights; but the best sword-cutlery came from Persia as the porcelain from China to Sana’á. Here, however, is especial allusion as to the sword “Samsam” or “Samsamah.” It belonged to the Himyarite Tobba, Amru bin Ma’ad Kurb, and came into the hands of Harun al-Rashid. When the Emperor of the Greeks sent a present of superior sword-blades to him by way of a brave, the Caliph, in the presence of the Envoys, took “Samsam” in hand and cut the others in twain as if they were cabbages without the least prejudice to the edge of “Samsam.”

  226 This touch of pathos is truly Arab. So in the “Romance of Dalhamah” (Lane, M. E. xxiii.) the infant Gundubah sucks the breast of its dead mother and the King exclaims, “If she had committed this crime she would not be affording the child her milk after she was dead.”

  227 Arab. “Sadda’l-Aktár,” a term picturesque enough to be preserved in English. “Sadd,” I have said, is a wall or dyke, the term applied to the great dam of water- plants which obstructs the navigation of the Upper Nile, the lilies and other growths floating with the current from the (Victoria) Nyanza Lake. I may note that we need no longer derive from India the lotus-llily so extensively used by the Ancient Egyptians and so neglected by the moderns that it has well nigh disappeared. All the Central African basins abound in the Nymphæa and thence it found its way down the Nile Valley.

  228 Arab. “Al Marhúmah”: equivalent to our “late lamented.”

  229 Vulgarly pronounced “Mahmal,” and by Egyptians and Turks “Mehmel.” Lane (M. E. xxiv.) has figured this queenly litter and I have sketched and described it in my Pilgrimage (iii. 12).

  230 For such fits of religious enthusiasm see my Pilgrimage (iii. 254).

  231 “Irák” (Mesopotamia) means “a level country beside the banks of a ever.”

  232 “Al Kuds,” or “Bays al-Mukaddas,” is still the popular name of Jerusalem, from the Heb. Yerushalaim ha-Kadushah (legend on shekel of Simon Maccabeus).

  233 “Follow the religion of Abraham” says the Koran (chaps. iii. 89). Abraham, titled “Khalílu’llah,” ranks next in dignity to Mohammed, preceding Isa, I need hardly say that his tomb is not in Jerusalem nor is the tomb itself at Hebron ever visited. Here Moslems (soi disant) are allowed by the jealousies of Europe to close and conceal a place which belongs to the world, especially to Jews and Christians. The tombs, if they exist, lie in a vault or cave under the Mosque.

  234 Abá, or Abáyah, vulg. Abayah, is a cloak of hair, goat’s or camel’s; too well known to require description.

  235 Arab. “Al-Wakkád,” the man who lights and keeps up the bath-fires.

  236 Arab. “Má al-Khaláf” (or “Khiláf”) a sickly perfume but much prized, made from the flowers of the Salix Ægyptiaca.

  237 Used by way of soap; like glasswort and other plants.

  238 i.e., “Thou art only just recovered.”

  239 To “Nakh” is to gurgle “Ikh! Ikh!” till the camel kneels. Hence the space called “Barr al-Manákhah” in Al-Medinah (Pilgrimage i. 222, ii. 91). There is a regular camel vocabulary amongst the Arabs, made up like our “Gee” (go ye!), etc. of significant words worn down.

  240 Arab. “Laza,” the Second Hell provided for Jews.

  241 The word has been explained (vol. i. 112).[see Volume 1, note 199] It is trivial, not occurring in the Koran which uses “Arabs of the Desert ;” “Arabs who dwell in tents,” etc. (chaps. ix. and xxxiii.). “A’arábi” is the classical word and the origin of “Arab” is disputed. According to Pocock (Notæ Spec. Hist. Arab.): “Diverse are the opinions concerning the denomination of the Arabs; but the most certain of all is that which draws it from Arabah, which is part of the region of Tehama (belonging to Al-Medinah Pilgrimage ii. 118), which their father Ismail afterwards inhabited.” Tehamah (sierra caliente) is the maritime region of Al Hijaz, the Moslems Holy Land; and its “Arabah,” a very small tract which named a very large tract, must not be confounded, as some have done, with the Wady Arabah, the ancient outlet of the Dead Sea. The derivation of “Arab” from “Ya’arab” a fancied son of Joktan is mythological. In Heb. Arabia may be called “Eretz Ereb” (or “Arab”)=land of the West; but in Arabic “Gharb” (not Ereb) is the Occident and the Arab dates long before the Hebrew.

  242 �
��When thine enemy extends his hand to thee, cut it off if thou can, or kiss it,” wisely said Caliph al-Mansur.

  243 The Tartur was a peculiar turban worn by the Northern Arabs and shown in old prints. In modern Egypt the term is applied to the tall sugar-loaf caps of felt affected mostly by regular Dervishes. Burckhardt (Proverbs 194 and 398) makes it the high cap of felt or fur proper to the irregular cavalry called Dely or Delaty. In Dar For (Darfour) “Tartur” is a conical cap adorned with beads and cowries worn by the Manghwah or buffoon who corresponds with the Egyptian “Khalbús” or “Maskharah” and the Turkish “Sutari.” For an illustration see Plate iv. fig. 10 of Voyage au Darfour par Mohammed El Tounsy (The Tunisian), Paris, Duprat, 1845.

  244 The term is picturesque and true; we say “gnaw,” which is not so good.

  245 Here, meaning an Elder, a Chief, etc.; the word has been almost naturalised in English. I have noted that Abraham was the first “Shaykh.”

  246 This mention of weighing suggests the dust of Dean Swift and the money of the Gold Coast It was done, I have said, because the gold coin, besides being “sweated” was soft and was soon worn down.

  247 Fem. of Nájí (a deliverer, a saviour)=Salvadora.

  248 This, I have noted, is according to Koranic command (chaps. iv. 88). “When you are saluted with a salutation, salute the person with a better salutation.” The longer answer to “Peace be with (or upon) thee! “ is still universally the custom. The “Salem” is so differently pronounced by every Eastern nation that the observant traveller will easily make of it a Shibboleth.

  249 The Badawi, who was fool as well as rogue, begins to fear that he has kidnapped a girl of family.

  250 These examinations being very indecent are usually done in strictest privacy. The great point is to make sure of virginity.

  251 This is according to strict Moslem law: the purchaser may not look at the girl’s nakedness till she is his, and he ought to manage matters through an old woman.