One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  When it was the Five Hundred and Thirty-sixth Night,

  She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that quoth King Karazdan to his Ministers and high lords, “He who healed me of my sickness is none other than Hasib Karim al-Din here present. Therefore I make him my Chief Wazir in the stead of the Wazir Shamhur; and whoso loveth him loveth me, and whoso honoureth him honoureth me, and he who obeyeth him obeyeth me.” “Hearkening and obedience,” answered they and all rising flocked to kiss Hasib’s hand and salute him and give him joy of the Wazirate. Then the King bestowed on him a splendid dress of gold brocade, set with pearls and gems, the least of which was worth five thousand gold pieces. Moreover, he presented to him three hundred male white slaves and the like number of concubines, in loveliness like moons, and three hundred Abyssinian577 slave-girls, beside five hundred mules laden with treasure and sheep and oxen and buffaloes and bulls and other cattle beyond count; and he commanded all his Wazirs and Emirs and Grandees and Notables and Mamelukes and his subjects in general to bring him gifts. Presently Hasib took horse and rode, followed by the Wazirs and Emirs and lords and all the troops, to the house which the King had set apart for him, where he sat down on a chair; and the Wazirs and Emirs came up to him and kissed hands and gave him joy of his Ministership, vying with one another in suit and service. When his mother and his household knew what had happened, they rejoiced with exceeding joy and congratulated him on his good fortune; and his quondam comrades the woodcutters also came and gave him joy. Then he mounted again and, riding to the house of the late Wazir Shamhur, laid hands on all that was therein and transported it to his own abode. On this wise did Hasib, from a dunsical know-nothing, unskilled to read writing, become, by the decree of Allah Almighty, an adept in every science and versed in all manner of knowledge, so that the fame of his learning was blazed abroad over the land and he became renowned as an ocean of lore and skill in medicine and astronomy and geometry and astrology and alchemy and natural magic and the Cabbala and Spiritualism and all other arts and sciences. One day, he said to his mother, “My father Daniel was exceeding wise and learned; tell me what he left by way of books or what not!” So his mother brought him the chest and, taking out the five leaves which had been saved when the library was lost, gave them to him saying, “These five scrolls are all thy father left thee.” So he read them and said to her, “O my mother, these leaves are part of a book: where is the rest?” Quoth she, “Thy father made a voyage taking with him all his library and, when he was shipwrecked, every book was lost save only these five leaves. And when he was returned to me by Almighty Allah he found me with child and said to me: ‘Haply thou wilt bear a boy; so take these scrolls and keep them by thee and whenas thy son shall grow up and ask what his father left him, give these leaves to him and say, ‘Thy father left these as thine only heritance. And lo! here they are.’ “ And Hasib, now the most learned of his age, abode in all pleasure and solace, and delight of life, till there came to him the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies.578 And yet, O King, is not this tale of Bulukiya and Janshah more wondrous than the adventures of

  Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents

  FOOTNOTES VOLUME V.

  1 This tale (one of those translated by Galland) is best and fullest in the Bresl. Edit. iii. 329.

  2 Europe has degraded this autumnal festival, the Sun-fκte Mihrgαn (which balanced the vernal Nau-roz) into Michaelmas and its goose-massacre. It was so called because it began on the 16th of Mihr, the seventh month; and lasted six days, with feasts, festivities and great rejoicings in honour of the Sun, who now begins his southing-course to gladden the other half of the world.

  3 “Hindν” is an Indian Moslem as opposed to “Hindϊ,” a pagan, or Gentoo.

  4 The orig. Persian word is “Shαh-pϊr”=King’s son: the Greeks (who had no sh) (preferred ); the Romans turned it into Sapor and the Arabs (who lack the p) into Sαbϊr. See p. x. Hamzζ ispahanensis Annalium Libri x.: Gottwaldt, Lipsiζ mdcccxlviii.

  5 The magic horse may have originated with the Hindu tale of a wooden Garuda (the bird of Vishnu) built by a youth for the purpose of a vehicle. It came with the “Moors” to Spain and appears in “Le Cheval de Fust,” a French poem of the thirteenth Century. Thence it passed over to England as shown by Chaucer’s “Half-told tale of Cambuscan (Janghνz Khan?) bold,” as

  “The wondrous steed of brass

  On which the Tartar King did ride;”

  And Leland (Itinerary) derives “Rutlandshire” from “a man named Rutter who rode round it on a wooden horse constructed by art magic.” Lane (ii. 548) quotes the parallel story of Cleomades and Claremond which Mr. Keightley (Tales and Popular Fictions, chapt. ii) dates from our thirteenth century. See Vol. i., .

  6 All Moslems, except those of the Mαliki school, hold that the maker of an image representing anything of life will be commanded on the Judgment Day to animate it, and failing will be duly sent to the Fire. This severity arose apparently from the necessity of putting down idol-worship and, perhaps, for the same reason the Greek Church admits pictures but not statues. Of course the command has been honoured with extensive breaching: for instance all the Sultans of Stambul have had their portraits drawn and painted.

  7 This description of ugly old age is written with true

  Arab verve.

  8 Arab. “Badinjαn”: Hind. Bengan: Pers. Bαdingαn or Badiljαn; the Mala insana (Solanum pomiferum or S. Melongena) of the Romans, well known in Southern Europe. It is of two kinds, the red (Solanum lycopersicum) and the black (S. Melongena). The Spaniards know it as “berengeria” and when Sancho Panza (Part ii. chapt. 2) says, “The Moors are fond of egg-plants” he means more than appears. The vegetable is held to be exceedingly heating and thereby to breed melancholia and madness; hence one says to a man that has done something eccentric, “Thou hast been eating brinjalls.”

  9 Again to be understood Hibernice “kilt.”

  10 i.e. for fear of the evil eye injuring the palace and, haply, himself.

  11 The “Sufrah” before explained acting provision-bag and table-cloth.

  12 Eastern women in hot weather, lie mother-nude under a sheet here represented by the hair. The Greeks and Romans also slept stripped and in mediζval England the most modest women saw nothing indelicate in sleeping naked by their naked husbands. The “night-cap” and the “night-gown” are comparatively modern inventions.

  13 Hindu fable turns this simile into better poetry, “She was like a second and a more wondrous moon made by the Creator.”

  14 “Sun of the Day.”

  15 Arab. “Shirk”=worshipping more than one God. A theological term here most appropriately used.

  16 The Bul. Edit. as usual abridges (vol. i. 534). The Prince lands on the palace-roof where he leaves his horse, and finding no one in the building goes back to the terrace. Suddenly he sees a beautiful girl approaching him with a party of her women, suggesting to him these couplets,

  “She came without tryst in the darkest hour, *

  Like full moon lighting horizon’s night:

  Slim-formed, there is not in the world her like *

  For grace of form or for gifts of sprite:

  ‘Praise him who made her from semen-drop,’ *

  I cried, when her beauty first struck my sight:

  I guard her from eyes, seeking refuge with *

  The Lord of mankind and of morning-light.”

  The two then made acquaintance and “follows what follows.”

  17 Arab. “Akαsirah,” explained (vol. i., 75) as the plur. of Kisrα.

  18 The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own. This was systematised by the servile rulers known in history as the Mameluke Beys and to the Egyptians as the Ghuzz. Each had his household of servile pages and squires, who looked forward to filling the master’s place as knight or baron.

  19 The well-known capital of Al-Yaman, a true Arabia Felix, a Paradise inhabited by d
emons in the shape of Turkish soldiery and Arab caterans. According to Moslem writers Sana’a was founded by Shem son of Noah who, wandering southward with his posterity after his father’s death, and finding the site delightful, dug a well and founded the citadel, Ghamdαn, which afterwards contained a Mason Carrιe rivalling (or attempting to rival) the Meccan Ka’abah. The builder was Surahbνl who, says M.C. de Perceval coloured its four faces red, white, golden and green; the central quadrangle had seven stories (the planets) each forty cubits high, and the lowest was a marble hall ceiling’d with a single slab. At the four corners stood hollow lions through whose mouths the winds roared. This palatial citadel-temple was destroyed by order of Caliph Omar. The city’s ancient name was Azal or Uzal whom some identify with one of the thirteen sons of Joktan (Genesis xi. 27): it took its present name from the Ethiopian conquerors (they say) who, seeing it for the first time, cried “Hazα Sana’ah!” meaning in their tongue, this is commodious, etc. I may note that the word is Kisawahili (Zanzibarian) e.g. “Yαmbo sαnα — is the state good?” Sana’a was the capital of the Tabαbi’ah or Tobba Kings who judaized; and the Abyssinians with their Negush made it Christian while the Persians under Anushirwαn converted it to Guebrism. It is now easily visited but to little purpose; excursions in the neighborhood being deadly dangerous. Moreover the Turkish garrison would probably murder a stranger who sympathised with the Arabs, and the Arabs kill one who took part with their hated and hateful conquerors. The late Mr. Shapira of Jerusalem declared that he had visited it and Jews have great advantages in such travel. But his friends doubted him.

  20 The Bresl. Edit. (iii. 347) prints three vile errors in four lines.

  21 Alcove is a corruption of the Arab. Al-Kubbah (the dome) through Span. and Port.

  22 Easterns as a rule sleep with head and body covered by a sheet or in cold weather a blanket. The practice is doubtless hygienic, defending the body from draughts when the pores are open; but Europeans find it hard to adopt; it seems to stop their breathing. Another excellent practice in the East, and indeed amongst barbarians and savages generally, is training children to sleep with mouths shut: in after life they never snore and in malarious lands they do not require Outram’s “fever-guard,” a swathe of muslin over the mouth. Mr. Catlin thought so highly of the “shut mouth” that he made it the subject of a book.

  23 Arab. “Hanzal”=coloquintida, an article often mentioned by Arabs in verse and prose; the bright coloured little gourd attracts every eye by its golden glance when travelling through the brown-yellow waste of sand and clay. A favourite purgative (enough for a horse) is made by filling the inside with sour milk which is drunks after a night’s soaking: it is as active as the croton-nut of the Gold Coast.

  24 The Bresl. Edit. iii. 354 sends him to the “land of Sνn”

  (China).

  25 Arab. “Yα Kisrawi!”=O subject of the Kisrα or Chosroλ; the latter explained in vol.i.,75.[Volume 1, Footnote # 128] “Fars” is the origin of “Persia”; and there is a hit at the prodigious lying of the modern race, whose forefathers were so famous as truth-tellers. “I am a Persian, but I am not lying now,” is a phrase familiar to every traveller.

  26 There is no such name: perhaps it is a clerical error

  for “Har jαh”=(a man of) any place. I know an Englishman who in

  Persian called himself “Mirza Abdullah-i-Hνchmakαni”=Master

  Abdullah of Nowhere.

  27 The Bresl. Edit. (loc. cit.) gives a comical description of the Prince assuming the dress of an astrologer-doctor, clapping an old book under his arm, fumbling a rosary of beads, enlarging his turband, lengthening his sleeves and blackening his eyelids with antimony. Here, however, it would be out of place. Very comical also is the way in which he pretends to cure the maniac by “muttering unknown words, blowing in her face, biting her ear,” etc.

  28 Arab. “Sar’a”=falling sickness. Here again we have in all its simplicity the old nursery idea of “possession” by evil spirits.

  29 Arab. “Nafahαt”=breathings, benefits, the Heb. Neshamah opp. to Nephesh (soul) and Ruach (spirit). Healing by the breath is a popular idea throughout the East and not unknown to Western Magnetists and Mesmerists. The miraculous cures of the Messiah were, according to Moslems, mostly performed by aspiration. They hold that in the days of Isa, physic had reached its highest development, and thus his miracles were mostly miracles of medicine; whereas, in Mohammed’s time, eloquence had attained its climax and accordingly his miracles were those of eloquence, as shown in the Koran and Ahαdνs.

  30 Lit. “The rose in the sleeves or calyces.” I take my English equivalent from Jeremy Taylor, “So I have seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood,” etc.

  31 These lines are from the Bresl. Edit. (v. 35). The four couplets in the Mac. Edit. are too irrelevant.

  32 Polo, which Lane calls “Goff.”

  33 Arab. “Muffawak”=well-notched, as its value depends upon the notch. At the end of the third hemistitch Lane’s Shaykh very properly reads “baghtatan” (suddenly) for “burhatan”=during a long time.

  34 “Uns” (which the vulgar pronounce Anas) “al- Wujud”=Delight of existing things, of being, of the world. Uns wa jud is the normal pun=love-intimacy and liberality; and the caranomasia (which cannot well be rendered in English) re-appears again and again. The story is throughout one of love; hence the quantity of verse.

  35 The allusion to a “written N” suggests the elongated not the rounded form of the letter as in Night cccxxiv.

  36 The fourteenth Arabic letter in its medial form resembling an eye.

  37 This is done by the man passing his fingers over the brow as if to wipe off perspiration; the woman acknowledges it by adjusting her head-veil with both hands. As a rule in the Moslem East women make the first advances; and it is truly absurd to see a great bearded fellow blushing at being ogled. During the Crimean war the fair sex of Constantinople began by these allurements but found them so readily accepted by the Giaours that they were obliged to desist.

  38 The greatest of all explorers and discoverers of the world will be he who finds a woman confessing inability to keep a secret.

  39 The original is intensely prosaicand so am I.

  40 Arab. “Sunnat,” the practice of the Prophet. For this prayer and other silly and superstitious means of discovering the “right direction” (which is often very wrongly directed) see Lane, M.E. chapt. xi.

  41 Arab. “Bahr (sea or river) al-Kunuz”: Lane (ii. 576) ingeniously identifies the site with the Upper Nile whose tribes, between Assouan (Syene) and Wady al-Subu’a are called the “Kunuz”lit. meaning “treasures” or “hoards.” Philae is still known as the “Islet of Anas (for Uns) al-Wujud;” and the learned and accurate Burckhardt (Travels in Nubia ) records the local legend that a mighty King called Al-Wujud built the Osirian temples. I can give no information concerning Jabal al-Sakla (Thakla), the Mount of the woman bereft of children, beyond the legend contained in Night ccclxxix.

  42 A religious mendicant (lit. a pauper), of whom there are two great divisions. The Shara’i acts according to the faith: the others (La Shara’i, or irreligious) are bound by no such prejudices and are pretty specimens of scoundrels. (Pilgrimage i.22.)

  43 Meaning his lips and palate were so swollen by drought.

  44 It is a pious act in time of mortal danger to face the

  Kiblah or Meccan temple, as if standing in prayer.

  45 Still the belief of the Badawi who tries to work upon the beast’s compassion: “O great King I am a poor man, with wife and family, so spare me that Allah spare thee!” and so forth. If not famished the lion will often stalk off looking behind him as he goes; but the man will never return by the same path; “for,” says he, “haply the Father of Roaring may repent him of a wasted opportunity.” These lion-tales are very common, witness that of Androcles at Rome and a host of others. Una and her lion is another phase. It remained for M. Jules Gerard, first the chasseur and then the tueur, du lion, to
assail the reputation of the lion and the honour of the lioness.

  46 Abu Haris=Father of spoils: one of the lion’s hundred titles.

  47 “They” again for “she.”

  48 Jaxartes and Oxus. The latter (Jayhun or Amu, Oxus or

  Bactros) is famous for dividing Iran from Turan, Persia from

  Tartaria. The lands to its north are known as Ma wara al-Nahr

  (Mawerannahar) or “What is behind the stream,”=Transoxiana and

  their capitals were successively Samarcand and Bokhara.

  49 Arab. “Dani was gharib”=friend and foe. The lines are partly from the Mac. Edit. and partly from the Bresl. Edit., v. 55.

  50 Arab. “Wa Rahmata-hu!” a form now used only in books.

  51 Before noted. The relationship, like that of foster- brother, has its rights, duties and privileges.

  52 Arab. “Istikharah,” before explained as praying for direction by omens of the rosary, opening the Koran and reading the first verse sighted, etc., etc. At Al-Medinah it is called Khirah and I have suggested (Pilgrimage, ii. 287) that it is a relic of the Azlam or Kidah (divining arrows) of paganism. But the superstition is not local: we have the Sortes Virgilianae (Virgil being a magician) as well as Coranicae.

  53 Arab. “Wujud al-Habib,” a pun, also meaning, “Wujud my beloved.”