One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  227 No porcelain was ever, as far as we can discover, made in Egypt or Syria of the olden day; but, as has been said, there was a regular caravan-intercourse with China At Damascus I dug into the huge rubbish-heaps and found quantities of pottery, but no China. The same has lately been done at Clysma, the artificial-mound near Suez, and the glass and pottery prove it to have been a Roman work which defended the mouth of the old classical-sweet-water canal.

  228 Arab. “Lб baas ba-zбlik,” conversational-for “Lб jaram”= there is no harm in it, no objection to it, and, sometimes, “it is a matter of course.”

  229 A white emerald is yet unknown; but this adds only to the Oriental-extravagance of the picture. I do not think with Lane (ii. 426) that “abyaz” here can mean “bright.” Dr. Steingass suggests a clerical-error for “khazar” (green).

  230 Arab. “Sharбrif” plur. of Shurrбfah=crenelles or battlements; mostly trefoil-shaped; remparts coquets which a six-pounder would crumble.

  231 Pronounce Abul-Muzaffar=Father of the Conqueror.

  232 I have explained the word in my “Zanzibar, City, Island and Coast,” vol. i. chaps. v There is still a tribe, the Wadoe, reputed cannibal-on the opposite low East African shore These blacks would hardly be held “ sons of Adam.” “Zanj “ corrupted to “Zinj “ (plur Zunъj) is the Persian “Zany” or “Zangi,” a black, altered by the Arabs, who ignore the hard g; and, with the suffixion of the Persian -bбr (region, as in Malabar) we have Zang- bar which the Arabs have converted to “Zanjibar,” in poetry “Murk al-Zunъj”=Land of the Zang. The term is old; it is the Zingis or Zingisa of Ptolemy and the Zingium of Cosmas Indicopleustes; and it shows the influence of Persian navigation in pre-Islamitic ages. For further details readers will consult “The Lake Regions of Central-Africa” vol. i. chaps. ii

  233 Arab. “Kawбrib” plur. of “Kбrib” prop. a dinghy, a small boat belonging to a ship Here it refers to the canoe (a Carib word) pop. “dug-out” and classically “monoxyle,” a boat made of a single tree-trunk hollowed by fire and trimmed with axe and adze. Some of these rude craft which, when manned, remind one of saturnine Caliph Omar’s “worms floating on a log of wood,” measure 60 feet long and more.

  234 i.e. A descendant of Mohammed in general-and especially through Husayn Ali-son. Here the text notes that the chief of the bazar was of this now innumerable stock, who inherit the title through the mother as well as through the father.

  235 Arab. “Hasab” (=quaneity), the honour a man acquires for himself; opposed to “Nasab” (genealogy) honours inherited from ancestry: the Arabic well expresses my old motto (adopted by Chinese Gordon), “Honour, not Honours.”

  236 Note the difference between “Takaddum” ( = standing in presence of, also superiority in excellence) and “Takбdum” (priority in time).

  237 Lane (ii. 427) gives a pleasant Eastern illustration of this saying.

  238 A Koranic fancy; the mountains being the pegs which keep the earth in place. “And he hath thrown before the earth, mountains firmly rooted, lest it should move with you.” (Koran, chaps. xvi.) The earth when first created was smooth and thereby liable to a circular motion, like the celestial-orbs; and, when the Angels asked who could stand on so tottering a frame, Allah fixed it the next morning by throwing the mountains in it and pegging them down. A fair prolepsis of the Neptunian theory.

  239 Easy enough for an Englishman to avoid saying “by God,” but this common incident in Moslem folk-lore appeals to the peoples who are constantly using the word Allah Wallah, Billah, etc. The Koran expressly says, “Make not Allah the scope (object, lit. arrow-butt) of your oaths” (chaps. ii. 224), yet the command is broken every minute.

  240 This must be the ubiquitous Khizr, the Green Prophet; when Ali appears, as a rule he is on horseback.

  241 The name is apparently imaginary; and a little below we find that it was close to Jinn land. China was very convenient for this purpose: the medieval-Moslems, who settled in considerable numbers at Canton and elsewhere, knew just enough of it to know their own ignorance of the vast empire. Hence the Druzes of the Libanus still hold that part of their nation is in the depths of the Celestial-Empire.

  242 I am unwilling to alter the old title to “City of Copper” as it should be; the pure metal having been technologically used long before the alloy of copper and zinc. But the Maroccan City (Night dlxvi. et seq.) was of brass (not copper). The Hindus of Upper India have an Iram which they call Hari Chand’s city (Colonel Tod); and I need hardly mention the Fata Morgana, Island of Saint Borondon; Cape Fly-away; the Flying Dutchman, etc. etc., all the effect of “looming.”

  243 This sword which makes men invisible and which takes place of Siegfried’s Tarnkappe (invisible cloak) and of “Fortunatus’ cap” is common in Moslem folk-lore. The idea probably arose from the venerable practice of inscribing the blades with sentences, verses and magic figures.

  244 Arab. “‘Ukбb,” in books an eagle (especially black) and P. N. of constellation but in Pop. usage= a vulture. In Egypt it is the Neophron Percnopterus (Jerdon) or N. Gingianus (Latham), the Dijбjat Far’aun or Pharaoh’s hen. This bird has been known to kill the Bбshah sparrow-hawk (Jerdon i. 60); yet, curious to say, the reviewers of my “Falconry in the Valley of the Indus” questioned the fact, known to so many travellers, that the falcon is also killed by this “tiger of the air,” despite the latter’s feeble bill (p-38). I was faring badly at their hands when the late Mr. Burckhardt Barker came to the rescue. Falconicide is popularly attributed, not only to the vulture, but also to the crestless hawk-eagle (Nisжtus Bonelli) which the Hindus call Morбngб=peacock slayer.

  245 Here I translate “Nahбs”=brass, as the “kumkum” (cucurbite) is made of mixed metal, not of copper.

  246 Mansur al-Nimrн, a poet of the time and a protйgй of

  Yahya’s son, Al-Fazl.

  247 This was at least four times Mansur’s debt.

  248 Intendant of the Palace to Harun al-Rashid. The Bres. Edit. (vii. 254) begins They tell that there arose full enmity between Ja’afar Barmecide and a Sahib of Misr” (Wazir or Governor of Egypt). Lane (ii. 429) quotes to this purpose amongst Arab; historians Fakhr al-Din. (De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe i., , edit. ii.)

  249 Arab. “Armanнyah” which Egyptians call after their mincing fashion “Irminiyeh” hence “Ermine” (Mus Ponticus). Armaniyah was much more extensive than our Armenia, now degraded to a mere province of Turkey, and the term is understood to include the whole of the old Parthian Empire.

  250 Even now each Pasha-governor must keep a “Wakнl” in

  Constantinople to intrigue and bribe for him at head-quarters.

  251 The symbol of generosity, of unasked liberality, the “black hand” being that of niggardness.

  252 Arab. Rбh =pure (and old) wine. Arabs, like our classics, usually drank their wine tempered. So Imr al-Keys in his Mu’allakah says, “Bring the well tempered wine that seems to be saffron-tinctured; and, when water-mixed, o’erbrims the cup.” (v. 2.)

  253 There is nothing that Orientals relish more than these “goody-goody” preachments; but they read and forget them as readily as Westerns.

  254 Lane (ii. 435) ill-advisedly writes “Sher,” as “the word is evidently Persian signifying a Lion.” But this is only in the debased Indian dialect, a Persian, especially a Shirazi, pronounces “Shнr.” And this is how it is written in the Bresl. Edit., vii. 262. “Shбr” is evidently a fancy name, possibly suggested by the dynastic name of the Ghurjistan or Georgian Princes.

  255 Again old experience, which has learned at a heavy cost how many a goodly apple is rotten at the core.

  256 This couplet has occurred in Night xxi. I give Torrens () by way of specimen.

  257 Arab. “Zбka” = merely tasting a thing which may be sweet with a bitter after-flavour

  258 This tetraseich was in Night xxx. with a difference.

  259 The lines have occurred in Night xxx. I quote Torrens, .

  260 This tetrastich is in Night cl
xix. I borrow from Lane (ii. 62).

  261 The rude but effective refrigerator of the desert Arab who hangs his water-skin to the branch of a tree and allows it to swing in the wind.

  262 Arab “Khumбsiyah” which Lane (ii. 438) renders “of quinary stature.” Usually it means five spans, but here five feet, showing that the girl was young and still growing. The invoice with a slave always notes her height in spans measured from ankle-bone to ear and above seven she loses value as being full grown. Hence Sudбsi (fem. Sudбsiyah) is a slave six spans high, the Shibr or full span (9 inches) not the Fitr or short span from thumb to index. Faut is the interval-between every finger, Ratab between index and medius, and Atab between medius and annularis.

  263 “Moon faced” now sounds sufficiently absurd to us, but it was not always so. Solomon (Cant. vi. 10) does not disdain the image “fair as the moon, clear as the sun,” and those who have seen a moon in the sky of Arabia will thoroughly appreciate it. We find it amongst the Hindus, the Persians, the Afghans, the Turks and all the nations of Europe. We have, finally, the grand example of Spenser,

  “Her spacious forehead, like the clearest moon, etc.”

  264 Blue eyes have a bad name in Arabia as in India: the witch Zarkб of Al-Yamamah was noted for them; and “blue eyed” often means “fierce-eyed,” alluding to the Greeks and Daylamites, mortal-enemies to Ishmael. The Arabs say “ruddy of mustachio, blue of eye and black of heart.”

  265 Before explained as used with camphor to fill the dead man’s mouth.

  266 As has been seen, slapping on the neck is equivalent to our “boxing ears,” but much less barbarous and likely to injure the child. The most insulting blow is that with shoe sandal-or slipper because it brings foot in contact with head. Of this I have spoken before.

  267 Arab. “Hibбl” (= ropes) alluding to the A’akбl-fillet which binds the Kъfiyah-kerchief on the Badawi’s head. (Pilgrimage, i. 346.)

  268 Arab. “Khiyбl”; afterwards called Kara Gyuz (= “black eyes,” from the celebrated Turkish Wazir). The mise-en-scиne was like that of Punch, but of transparent cloth, lamp lit inside and showing silhouettes worked by hand. Nothing could be more Fescenntne than Kara Gyuz, who appeared with a phallus longer than himself and made all the Consuls-General-periodically complain of its abuse, while the dialogue, mostly in Turkish, as even more obscene. Most ingenious were Kara Gyuz’s little ways of driving on an Obstinate donkey and of tackling a huge Anatolian pilgrim. He mounted the Neddy’s back face to tail, and inserting his left thumb like a clyster, hammered it with his right when the donkey started at speed. For the huge pilgrim he used a ladder. These shows now obsolete, used to enliven the Ezbekiyah Gardens every evening and explain Ovid’s Words,

  “Delicias videam, Nile jocose, tuas!”

  269 Mohammed (Mishkбt al-Masбbih ii. 360-62) says, “Change the whiteness of your hair but not with anything black.” Abu Bakr, who was two years and some months older than the Prophet, used tincture of Henna and Katam. Old Turkish officers justify black dyes because these make them look younger and fiercer. Henna stains white hair orange red; and the Persians apply after it a paste of indigo leaves, the result is successively leek-green, emerald-green, bottle-green and lastly lamp-black. There is a stage in life (the youth of old age) when man uses dyes: presently he finds that the whole face wants dye; that the contrast between juvenile coloured hair and ancient skin is ridiculous and that it is time to wear white.

  270 This prejudice extends all over the East: the Sanskrit saying is “Kvachit kбnб bhaveta sбdhus” now and then a monocular is honest. The left eye is the worst and the popular idea is, I have said, that the damage will come by the injured member

  271 The Arabs say like us, “Short and thick is never quick” and “Long and thin has little in.”

  272 Arab. “Ba’azu layбli,” some night when his mistress failed him.

  273 The fountain in Paradise before noticed.

  274 Before noticed as the Moslem St. Peter (as far as the keys go).

  275 Arab. “Munkasir” = broken, frail, languishing the only form of the maladive allowed. Here again we have masculine for feminine: the eyelids show love-desire, but, etc.

  276 The river of Paradise.

  277 See Night xii. “The Second Kalandar’s Tale “ vol. i. 113.

  278 Lane (ii. 472) refers for specimens of calligraphy to Herbin’s “Dйveloppements, etc.” There are many more than seven styles of writing as I have shown in Night xiii.; vol. i. 129.

  279 Amongst good Moslems this would be a claim upon a man.

  280 These lines have occurred twice already: and first appear in Night xxii. I have borrowed from Mr. Payne (iv. 46).

  281 Arab. “Ya Nasrбni”, the address is not intrinsically slighting but it may easily be made so. I have elsewhere noted that when Julian (is said to have) exclaimed “Vicisti Nazarene!” he was probably thinking in Eastern phrase “Nasarta, yб Nasrбni!”

  282 Thirst is the strongest of all pleas to an Eastern, especially to a Persian who never forgets the sufferings of his Imam, Husayn, at Kerbela: he would hardly withhold it from the murderer of his father. There is also a Hadis, “Thou shalt not refuse water to him who thirsteth in the desert.”

  283 Arab. “Zimmi” which Lane (ii. 474) aptly translates a “tributary.” The Koran (chaps. ix.) orders Unbelievers to Islamize or to “pay tribute by right of subjection” (lit. an yadin=out of hand, an expression much debated). The least tribute is one dinar per annum which goes to the poor-rate. and for this the Kafir enjoys protection and almost all the civil rights of Moslems. As it is a question of “loaves and fishes” there is much to say on the subject; “loaves and fishes” being the main base and foundation of all religious establishments.

  284 This tetrastich has before occurred, so I quote Lane (ii. 444).

  285 In Night xxxv. the same occurs with a difference.

  286 The old rite, I repeat, has lost amongst all but the noblest of Arab tribes the whole of its significance; and the traveller must be careful how he trusts to the phrase “Nahnu mбlihin” we are bound together by the salt.

  287 Arab. “Alбma” = Alб-mб = upon what ? wherefore ?

  288 Arab. “Mauz”; hence the Linnean name Musa (paradisiaca, etc.). The word is explained by Sale (Koran, chaps. xxxvii. 146) as “a small tree or shrub;” and he would identify it with Jonah’s gourd.

  289 Lane (ii. 446) “bald wolf or empowered fate,” reading (with Mac.) Kazб for Kattan (cat).

  290 i.e. “the Orthodox in the Faith.” Rбshid is a proper name, witness that scourge of Syria, Rбshid Pasha. Born in 1830, of the Haji Nazir Agha family, Darrah-Beys of Macedonian Draina, he was educated in Paris where he learned the usual-hatred of Europeans: he entered the Egyptian service in 1851, and, presently exchanging it for the Turkish, became in due time Wali (Governor-General) of Syria which he plundered most shamelessly. Recalled in 1872, he eventually entered the Ministry and on June 15 1876, he was shot down, with other villains like himself, by gallant Captain Hasan, the Circassian (Yarham-hu ‘llбh !).

  291 Quoted from a piece of verse, of which more presently.

  292 This tetrastich has occurred before (Night cxciii.). I quote Lane (ii. 449), who quotes Dryden’s Spanish Friar,

  “There is a pleasure sure in being mad

  Which none but madmen know.”

  293 Lane (ii. 449) gives a tradition of the Prophet, “Whoso is in love, and acteth chastely, and concealeth (his passion) and dieth, dieth a martyr.” Sakar is No. 5 Hell for Magi Guebres, Parsis, etc., it is used in the comic Persian curse, “Fi’n-nбri wa Sakar al-jadd w’al-pidar”=ln Hell and Sakar his grandfather and his father.

  294 Arab. “Sifr”: I have warned readers that whistling is considered a kind of devilish speech by the Arabs, especially the Badawin, and that the traveller must avoid it. It savours of idolatry: in the Koran we find (chaps. viii. 35), “Their prayer at the House of God (Ka’abah) is none other than whistling and hand-clapping;” and tradition say
s that they whistled through their fingers. Besides many of the Jinn have only round holes by way of mouths and their speech is whistling a kind of bird language like sibilant English.

  295 Arab. ‘Kнl wa kбl”=lit. “it was said and he said;” a popular phrase for chit chat, tittle-tattle, prattle and prate, etc.

  296 Arab. “Hadis.” comparing it with a tradition of the

  Prophet.

  297 Arab. “Mikashshah,” the thick part of a midrib of a palm-frond soaked for some days in water and beaten out till the fibres separate. It makes an exceedingly hard, although not a lasting broom.

  298 Persian, “the youth, the brave;” Sansk. Yuvбn: and Lat. Juvenis. The Kurd, in tales, is generally a sturdy thief; and in real-life is little better.

  299 Arab. “Yб Shatir ;” lit. O clever one (in a bad sense).

  300 Lane (ii. 453) has it. “that I may dress thy hair’” etc.

  This is Bowdlerising with a witness.

  301 The sign of respect when a personage dismounts.