One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  “Allah, my patience fails: I have no ward; *

  My breast is straitened and clean cut my cord;

  To whom shall wretched slave of case complain *

  Save to his Lord? O thou of lords the Lord!”

  Then, having ended his verse, he rose and donned his clothes but he knew not whither to go or whence to come; so he fed on the herbs of the earth and the fruits of the trees and he drank of the streams, and fared on night and day till he came in sight of a city; whereupon he rejoiced and hastened his pace; but when he reached it, — And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

  When it Was the Two Hundred and Thirty-sixth Night,

  She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when he reached the city the shades of evening closed around him and the gates were shut. Now by the decrees of Pate and man’s lot this was the very city wherein he had been a prisoner and to whose King his brother Amjad was Minister. When As’ad saw the gate was locked, he turned back and made for the burial-ground, where finding a tomb without a door, he entered therein and lay down and fell asleep, with his face covered by his long sleeve.396 Meanwhile, Queen Marjanah, coming up with Bahram’s ship, questioned him of As’ad. Now the Magian, when Queen Marjanah overtook him with her ships, baffled her by his artifice and gramarye; swearing to her that he was not with him and that he knew nothing of him. She searched the ship, but found no trace of her friend, so she took Bahram and, carrying him back to her castle, would have put him to death, but he ransomed himself from her with all his good and his ship; and she released him and his men. They went forth from her hardly believing in their deliverance, and fared on ten days’ journey till they came to their own city and found the gate shut, it being eventide. So they made for the burial-ground, thinking to lie the night there and, going round about the tombs, as Fate and Fortune would have it, saw the building wherein As’ad lay wide open; whereat Bahram marvelled and said, “I must look into this sepulchre.” Then he entered and found As’ad lying in a corner fast asleep, with his head covered by his sleeve; so he raised his head, and looking in his face, knew him for the man on whose account he had lost his good and his ship, and cried, “What! art thou yet alive?” Then he bound him and gagged him without further parley, and carried him to his house, where he clapped heavy shackles on his feet and lowered him into the underground dungeon aforesaid prepared for the tormenting of Moslems, and he bade his daughter by name Bostán,397 torture him night and day, till the next year, when they would again visit the Mountain of Fire and there offer him up as a sacrifice. Then he beat him grievously and locking the dungeon door upon him, gave the keys to his daughter. By and by, Bostan opened the door and went down to beat him, but finding him a comely youth and a sweet-faced with arched brows and eyes black with nature’s Kohl,398 she fell in love with him and asked him, “What is thy name?” “My name is As’ad,” answered he; whereat she cried, “Mayst thou indeed be happy as thy name,399 and happy be thy days! Thou deservest not torture and blows, and I see thou hast been injuriously entreated.” And she comforted him with kind words and loosed his bonds. Then she questioned him of the religion of Al-Islam and he told her that it was the true and right Faith and that our lord Mohammed had approved himself by surpassing miracles400 and signs manifest, and that fire-worship is harmful and not profitable; and he went on to expound to her the tenets of Al-Islam till she was persuaded and the love of the True Faith entered her heart. Then, as Almighty Allah had mixed up with her being a fond affection for As’ad, she pronounced the Two Testimonies401 of the Faith and became of the people of felicity. After this, she brought him meat and drink and talked with him and they prayed together: moreover, she made him chicken stews and fed him therewith, till he regained strength and his sickness left him and he was restored to his former health. Such things befel him with the daughter of Bahram, the Magian; and so it happened that one day she left him and stood at the house-door when behold, she heard the crier crying aloud and saying, “Whoso hath with him a handsome young man, whose favour is thus and thus, and bringeth him forth, shall have all he seeketh of money; but if any have him and deny it, he shall be hanged over his own door and his property shall be plundered and his blood go for naught.” Now As’ad had acquainted Bostan bint Bahram with his whole history: so, when she heard the crier, she knew that it was he who was sought for and, going down to him, told him the news. Then he fared forth and made for the mansion of the Wazir, whom, when As’ad saw, exclaimed, “By Allah, this Minister is my brother Amjad!” Then he went up (and the damsel walking behind him) to the Palace, where he again saw his brother, and threw himself upon him; whereupon Amjad also knew him and fell upon his neck and they embraced each other, whilst the Wazir’s Mamelukes dismounted and stood round them. They lay awhile insensible and, when they came to themselves, Amjad took his brother and carried him to the Sultan, to whom he related the whole story, and the Sultan charged him to plunder Bahram’s house. — And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

  When it was the Two Hundred and Thirty-seventh Night,

  She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Sultan ordered Amjad to plunder Bahram’s house and to hang its owner. So Amjad despatched thither for that purpose a company of men, who sacked the house and took Bahram and brought his daughter to the Wazir by whom she was received with all honour, for As’ad had told his brother the torments he had suffered and the kindness she had done him. Thereupon Amjad related in his turn to As’ad all that had passed between himself and the damsel; and how he had escaped hanging and had become Wazir; and they made moan, each to other, of the anguish they had suffered for separation. Then the Sultan summoned Bahram and bade strike off his head; but he said, “O most mighty King, art thou indeed resolved to put me to death?” Replied the King, “Yes, except thou save thyself by becoming a Moslem.” Quoth Bahram, “O King, bear with me a little while!” Then he bowed his head groundwards and presently raising it again, made pro fession of The Faith and islamised at the hands of the Sultan. They all rejoiced at his conversion and Amjad and As’ad told him all that had befallen them, whereat he wondered and said, “O my lords, make ready for the journey and I will depart with you and carry you back to your father’s court in a ship.” At this they rejoiced and wept with sore weeping but he said, “O my lords, weep not for your departure, for it shall reunite you with those you love, even as were Ni’amah and Naomi.” “And what befel Ni’amah and Naomi?” asked they. “They tell,” replied Bahram, “(but Allah alone is All knowing) the following tale of

  Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents

  FOOTNOTES VOLUME III.

  1 This “horripilation,” for which we have the poetical term “goose-flesh,” is often mentioned in Hindu as in Arab literature.

  2 How often we have heard this in England!

  3 As a styptic. The scene in the text has often been enacted in Egypt where a favourite feminine mode of murdering men is by beating and bruising the testicles. The Fellahs are exceedingly clever in inventing methods of manslaughter. For some years bodies were found that bore no outer mark of violence, and only Frankish inquisitiveness discovered that the barrel of a pistol had been passed up the anus and the weapon discharged internally Murders of this description are known in English history; but never became popular practice.

  4 Arab. “Zakar,” that which betokens masculinity. At the end of the tale we learn that she also gelded him; thus he was a “Sandal),” a rasé.

  5 See vol. i. . {see Volume 1, Note 188}

  6 The purity and intensity of her love had attained to a something of prophetic strain.

  7 Lane corrupts this Persian name to Sháh Zemán (i. 568).

  8 i.e. the world, which includes the ideas of Fate, Time,

  Chance.

  9 Arab. “Bárid,” silly, noyous, contemptible; as in the proverb

  Two things than ice are colder cold: —

  An old
man young, a young man old.

  A “cold-of-countenance”=a fool: “May Allah make cold thy face!”=may it show want and misery. “By Allah, a cold speech!”=a silly or abusive tirade (Pilgrimage, ii. 22).

  10 The popular form is, “often the ear loveth before the eye.”

  11 Not the first time that royalty has played this prank, nor the last, perhaps.

  12 i.e. the Lady Dunya.

  13 These magazines are small strongly-built rooms on the ground floor, where robbery is almost impossible.

  14 Lit. “approbation,” “benediction”; also the Angel who keeps the Gates of Paradise and who has allowed one of the Ghilmán (or Wuldán) the boys of supernatural beauty that wait upon the Faithful, to wander forth into this wicked world.

  15 In Europe this would be a plurale majestatis, used only by Royalty. In Arabic it has no such significance, and even the lower orders apply it to themselves; although it often has a soupçon of “I and thou.”

  16 Man being an “extract of despicable water” (Koran xxxii. 7) ex spermate genital), which Mr. Rodwell renders “from germs of life,” “from sorry water.”

  17 i.e. begotten by man’s seed in the light of salvation

  (Núr al-hudá).

  18 The rolls of white (camphor-like) scarf-skin and sordes which come off under the bathman’s glove become by miracle of Beauty, as brown musk. The Rubber or Shampooer is called in Egypt “Mukayyis” (vulgarly “Mukayyisáti”) or “bagman,” from his “Kís,” a bag-glove of coarse woollen stuff. To “Johnny Raws” he never fails to show the little rolls which come off the body and prove to them how unclean they are, but the material is mostly dead scarf-skin

  19 The normal phrase on such occasions (there is always a “dovetail” de rigueur) “Allah give thee profit!”

  20 i.e. We are forced to love him only, and ignore giving him a rival (referring to Koranic denunciations of “Shirk,” or attributing a partner to Allah, the religion of plurality, syntheism not polytheism): see, he walks tottering under the weight of his back parts wriggling them whilst they are rounded like the revolving heavens.

  21 Jannat al-Na’ím (Garden of Delight); the fifth of the seven Paradises made of white diamond; the gardens and the plurality being borrowed from the Talmud. Mohammed’s Paradise, by the by, is not a greater failure than Dante’s. Only ignorance or pious fraud asserts it to be wholly sensual; and a single verse is sufficient refutation: “Their prayer therein shall be ‘Praise unto thee, O. Allah!’ and their salutation therein shall be ‘Peace!’ and the end of their prayer shall be, ‘Praise unto God, the Lord of all creatures”’ (Koran x. 10-11). See also lvi. 24- 26. It will also be an intellectual condition wherein knowledge will greatly be increased (lxxxviii viii. 17-20). Moreover the Moslems, far more logical than Christians, admit into Paradise the so-called “lower animals.”

  22 Sed vitam faciunt balnea, vine, Venus! The Hammam to Easterns is a luxury as well as a necessity; men sit there for hours talking chiefly of money and their prowess with the fair; and women pass half the day in it complaining of their husbands’ over-amativeness and contrasting their own chaste and modest aversion to camel congress.

  23 The frigidarium or cold room, coolness being delightful to the Arab.

  24 The calidarium or hot room of the bath.

  25 The Angel who acts door-keeper of Hell; others say he specially presides over the torments of the damned (Koran xliii. 78).

  26 The Door-keeper of Heaven before mentioned who, like the Guebre Zamiyád has charge of the heavenly lads and lasses, and who is often charged by poets with letting them slip.

  27 Lane (i. 616), says “of wine, milk, sherbet, or any other beverage.” Here it is wine, a practice famed in Persian poetry, especially by Hafiz, but most distasteful to a European stomach. We find the Mu allakah of Imr al-Keys noticing “our morning draught.” Nott (Hafiz) says a “cheerful cup of wine in the morning was a favourite indulgence with the more luxurious Persians. And it was not uncommon among the Easterns, to salute friend by saying.”May your morning potation be agreeable to you!” In the present day this practice is confined to regular debauchees.

  28 Koran xii. 31. The words spoken by Zulaykhá’s women friends and detractors whom she invited to see Beauty Joseph.

  29 A formula for averting fascination. Koran, chaps. cxiii. 1. “Falak” means “cleaving” hence the breaking forth of light from darkness, a “wonderful instance of the Divine power.”

  30 The usual delicate chaff.

  31 Such letters are generally written on a full-sized sheet of paper (“notes” are held slighting in the East) and folded till the breadth is reduced to about one inch. The edges are gummed, the ink, much like our Indian ink, is smeared with the finger upon the signet ring; the place where it is to be applied is slightly wetted with the tongue and the seal is stamped across the line of junction to secure privacy. I have given a specimen of an original love-letter of the kind in “Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley,” chaps. iv.

  32 Arab. “Salb” which may also mean hanging, but the usual term for the latter in The Nights is “shanak.” Crucifixion, abolished by the superstitious Constantine, was practised as a servile punishment as late as the days of Mohammed Ali Pasha the Great e malefactors were nailed and tied to the patibulum or cross-piece without any sup pedaneum or foot-rest and left to suffer tortures from flies and sun, thirst and hunger. They often lived three days and died of the wounds mortifying and the nervous exhaustion brought on by cramps and convulsions. In many cases the corpses were left to feed the kites and crows; and this added horror to the death. Moslems care little for mere hanging. Whenever a fanatical atrocity is to be punished, the malefactor should be hung in pig-skin, his body burnt and the ashes publicly thrown into a common cesspool.

  33 Arab “Shaytán” the insolent or rebellious one is a common

  term of abuse. The word I. Koramc, and borrowed as usual from the

  Jews. “Satan” occurs four times in the O.T. of which two are in

  Job where, however, he is a subordinate angel.

  34 Arab. “Alak” from the Koran xxii. 5. “ O men…consider that we first created you of dust (Adam); afterwards of seed (Rodwell’s “moist germs of life”); afterwards of a little coagulated (or clots of) blood.” It refers to all mankind except Adam, Eve and Isa. Also chaps. xcvi. 2, which, as has been said was probably the first composed at Meccah. Mr. Rodwell (v. 10) translates by ‘Servant of God” what should be “Slave of Allah,” alluding to Mohammed’s original name Abdullah. See my learned friend Aloys Sprenger, Leben, etc., i.155.

  35 The Hindus similarly exaggerate: “He was ready to leap out of his skin in his delight” (Katha, etc., ).

  36 A star in the tail of the Great Bear, one of the “Banát al-Na’ash,” or a star close to the second. Its principal use is to act foil to bright Sohayl (Canopus) as in the beginning of Jámí’s Layla-Majnún: —

  To whom Thou’rt hid, day is darksome night:

  To whom shown, Sohá as Sohayl is bright.

  See also al-Hariri (xxxii. and xxxvi.). The saying, “I show her Soha and she shows me the moon” (A. P. i. 547) arose as follows. In the Ignorance a beautiful Amazon defied any man to take her maidenhead; and a certain Ibn al-Ghazz won the game by struggling with her till she was nearly senseless. He then asked her, “How is thine eye-sight: dost thou see Soha?” and she, in her confusion, pointed to the moon and said, “That is it!”

  37 The moon being masculine (lupus) and the sun feminine.

  38 The “five Shaykhs” must allude to that number of Saints whose names are doubtful; it would be vain to offer conjectures. Lane and his “Sheykh” (i. 617) have tried and failed.

  39 The beauties of nature seem always to provoke hunger in

  Orientals, especially Turks, as good news in Englishmen.

  40 Pers. “Lájuward”: Arab. “Lázuward”; prob. the origin of our “azure,” through the Romaic and the Ital. azzurro; and, more evidently still, of lapis lazuli, for which do not see the
Dictionaries.

  41 Arab. “Maurid.” the desert-wells where caravans drink: also the way to water wells.

  42 The famous Avicenna, whom the Hebrews called Aben Sina. The early European Arabists, who seem to have learned Arabic through Hebrew, borrowed their corruption, and it long kept its place in Southern Europe.

  43 According to the Hindus there are ten stages of love- sickness: (1) Love of the eyes (2) Attraction of the Manas or mind; (3) Birth of desire; (4) Loss of sleep; (5) Loss of flesh; (6) Indifference to objects of sense; (7) Loss of shame, (8) Distraction of thought (9) Loss of consciousness; and (10) Death.

  44 We should call this walk of “Arab ladies” a waddle: I have never seen it in Europe except amongst the trading classes of Trieste, who have a “wriggle” of their own.

  45 In our idiom six doors.

  46 They refrained from the highest enjoyment, intending to marry.

  47 Arab. “Jihád,” lit. fighting against something; Koranically, fighting against infidels non- believers in Al-lslam (chaps. Ix. 1). But the “Mujáhidún” who wage such war are forbidden to act aggressively (ii. 186). Here it is a war to save a son.

  48 The lady proposing extreme measures is characteristic: Egyptians hold, and justly enough, that their women are more amorous than men.