One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents

  FOOTNOTES VOLUME IX.

  1 Arab. “Wa lб rajma ghaybin:” lit. = without stone-throwing (conjecture) of one latent.

  2 i.e. saying Bismillah, etc. See vol. v. 206.

  3 Where he was to await her.

  4 As a rule, amongst Moslems the rider salutes the man on foot and the latter those who sit. The saying in the text suggests the Christian byword anent Mohammed and the Mountain, which is, I need hardly say, utterly unknown to Mahommedans.

  5 The story-teller does not remember that “the city-folk trust to the locking of the gates” (dccclxxxix.); and forgets to tell us that the Princess took the keys from the Wazir whom she had hocussed. In a carefully corrected Arabic Edition of The Nights, a book much wanted, the texts which are now in a mutilated state would be supplied with these details.

  6 Which probably would not be the last administered to him by the Amazonian young person, who after her mate feared to approach the dead blackamoor must have known him to be cowardly as Cairenes generally are. Moreover, he had no shame in his poltroonery like the recreant Fellah-soldiers, in the wretched Sawбkin campaign against the noble Sъdбni negroids, who excused their running away by saying, “We are Egyptians” i.e. too good men and Moslems to lose our lives as becomes you Franks and dog-Christians. Yet under Mohammed Ali the Great, Fellah-soldiers conquered the “colligated” Arabs (Pilgrimage iii. 48) of Al-Asir (Ophir) at Bissel and in Wahhabi-land and put the Turks to flight at the battle of Nazib, and the late General Jochmus assured me that he saved his command, the Ottoman cavalry in Syria, by always manњuvring to refuse a pitched battle. But Mohammed Ali knew his men. He never failed to shoot a runaway, and all his officers, even the lieutenants, were Turks or Albanians. Sa’id Pasha was the first to appoint Fellah-officers and under their command the Egyptian soldier, one of the best in the East, at once became the worst. We have at last found the right way to make them fight, by officering them with Englishmen, but we must not neglect the shooting process whenever they dare to turn tail.

  7 “Al-walhбn” (as it should be printed in previous places, instead of Al-walahбn) is certainly not a P.N. in this place.

  8 Arab. “Kundur,” Pers. and Arab. manna, mastich, frankincense, the latter being here meant.

  9 So Emma takes the lead and hides her lover under her cloak during their flight to the place where they intended to lie concealed. In both cases the women are the men.

  10 Or “Bartъt,” in which we recognise the German Berthold.

  11 i.e. Head of Killaut which makes, from the Muhнt , “the name of a son of the sons of the Jinn and the Satans.”

  12 i.e. attacked her after a new fashion: see vol. i. 136.

  13 i.e. Weevil’s dung; hence Suez = Suways the little weevil, or “little Sus” from the Maroccan town: see The Mines of Midian for a note on the name. Near Gibraltar is a fiumara called Guadalajara i.e. Wady al-Khara, of dung. “Bartъs” is evidently formed “on the weight” of “Bartъt;” and his metonym is a caricature, a chaff fit for Fellahs.

  14 Arab. “Al-Din al-a’raj,” the perverted or falsified Faith, Christianity having been made obsolete and abolished by the Mission of Mohammed, even as Christianity claims to have superseded the Mosaic and Noachian dispensations. Moslems are perfectly logical in their deductions, but logic and truth do not always go together.

  15 The “Breaker of Wind” (faswah = a fizzle, a silent crepitus) “son of Children’s dung.”

  16 Arab. “Ammб laka au ‘alayk” lit. = either to thee (be the gain) or upon thee (be the loss). This truly Arabic idiom is varied in many ways.

  17 In addition to what was noted in vol. iii. 100 and viii. 51, I may observe that in the “Masnavi” the “Baghdad of Nulliquity” is opposed to the Ubiquity of the World. The popular derivation is Bagh (the idol-god, the slav “Bog”) and dбd a gift, he gave (Persian). It is also called Al-Zaurб = a bow, from the bend of the Tigris where it was built.

  18 Arab. “Jawбsнs” plur. of Jбsъs lit. the spies.

  19 The Caliph could not “see” her “sweetness of speech”; so we must understand that he addressed her and found out that she was fluent of tongue. But this idiomatic use of the word “see” is also found in the languages of Southern Europe: so Camoens (Lus. 1. ii.), “Ouvi * * * vereis” lit. = “hark, you shall see” which sounds Hibernian.

  20 Here “Farz” (Koranic obligation which it is mortal sin to gainsay) follows whereas it should precede “Sunnat” (sayings and doings of the Apostle) simply because “Farz” jingles with “Arz” (earth).

  21 Moslems, like modern Agnostics, hold that Jesus of Nazareth would be greatly scandalized by the claims to Godship advanced for him by his followers.

  22 Koran ix. 33: See also v. 85. In the passage above quoted

  Mr. Rodwell makes the second “He” refer to the deity.

  23 Koran xxvi. 88, 89. For a very indifferent version (and abridgment) of this speech, see Saturday Review, July 9, 1881.

  24 Koran iv. 140.

  25 Arab. “Furбt” from the Arab. “Faruta” = being sweet, as applied to water. Al-Furбtбni = the two sweet (rivers), are the Tigris and Euphrates. The Greeks, who in etymology were satisfied with Greek, derived the latter from {euphrainein} (to gladden, lжtificare, for which see Pliny and Strabo, although both are correct in explaining “Tigris”) and Selden remarks hereon, “Talibus nugis nugantur Grжculi.” But not only the “Grжculi”; e.g. Parkhurst’s good old derivations from the Heb. “Farah” of fero, fructus, Freya (the Goddess), frayer (to spawn), friand, fry (of fish), etc., etc.

  26 The great Caliph was a poet; and he spoke verses as did all his contemporaries: his lament over his slave-girl Haylanah (Helen) is quoted by Al-Suyuti, .

  27 “The Brave of the Faith.”

  28 i.e., Saladin. See vol. iv. p. {271}.

  29 usually called the Horns of Hattin (classically Hittin) North of Tiberias where Saladin by good strategy and the folly of the Franks annihilated the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. For details see the guide-books. In this action (June 23, 1187), after three bishops were slain in its defence, the last fragment of the True Cross (or rather the cross verified by Helena) fell into Moslem hands. The Christians begged hard for it, but Saladin, a conscientious believer, refused to return to them even for ransom “the object of their iniquitous superstition.” His son, however, being of another turn, would have sold it to the Franks who then lacked money to purchase. It presently disappeared and I should not be surprised if it were still lying, an unknown and inutile lignum in some Cairene mosque.

  30 Akkб (Acre) was taken by Saladin on July 29, 1187. The Egyptian states that he was at Acre in 1184 or three years before the affair of Hattin (Night dcccxcv.).

  31 Famous Sufis and ascetics of the second and third centuries A.H. For Bishr Barefoot, see vol. ii. p. {203}. Al-Sakati means “the old-clothes man;” and the names of the others are all recorded in D’Herbelot.

  32 i.e., captured, forced open their gates.

  33 Arab. “Al-Sбhil” i.e. the seaboard of Syria; properly

  Phњnicia or the coast-lands of Southern Palestine. So the

  maritime lowlands of continental Zanzibar are called in the plur.

  Sawбhil = “the shores” and the people Sawбhнlн = Shore-men.

  34 Arab. “Al-Khizбnah” both in Mac. Edit. and Breslau x. 426. Mr. Payne has translated “tents” and says, “Saladin seems to have been encamped without Damascus and the slave-merchant had apparently come out and pitched his tent near the camp for the purposes of his trade.” But I can find no notice of tents till a few lines below.

  35 Bahб al-Dнn ibn Shaddбd, then Kбzi al-Askar (of the Army) or Judge-Advocate-General under Saladin.

  36 i.e. “abide with” thy second husband, the Egyptian.

  37 A descendant of Hбshim, the Apostle’s great-grandfather from whom the Abbasides were directly descended. The Ommiades were less directly akin to Mohammed, be
ing the descendants of Hashim’s brother, Abd al-Shams. The Hashimis were famed for liberality; and the quality seems to have been inherited. The first Hбshim got his name from crumbling bread into the Sarнd or brewis of the Meccan pilgrims during “The Ignorance.” He was buried at Ghazzah (Gaza) but his tomb was soon forgotten.

  38 i.e. thy lover.

  39 i.e. of those destined to hell; the especial home of

  Moslem suicides.

  40 Arab. “Ummбl” (plur. of ‘Бmil) viceroys or governors of provinces.

  41 A town of Irбk Arabi (Mesopotamia) between Baghdad and

  Bassorah built upon the Tigris and founded by Al-Hajjaj: it is so

  called because the “Middle” or half-way town between Basrah and

  Kufah. To this place were applied the famous lines: —

  In good sooth a right noble race are they;

  Whose men “yea” can’t say nor their women “nay.”

  42 i.e. robed as thou art.

  43 i.e. his kinsfolk of the Hashimis.

  44 See vol. ii. 24. {Vol2, FN#49}

  45 Arab. “Sur’itu” = I was possessed of a Jinn, the common Eastern explanation of an epileptic fit long before the days of the Evangel. See vol. iv. 89.

  46 Arab. “Zн’ah,” village, feof or farm.

  47 Arab. “Tarнkah.”

  48 “Most of the great Arab musicians had their own peculiar fashion of tuning the lute, for the purpose of extending its register or facilitating the accompaniment of songs composed in uncommon keys and rhythms or possibly of increasing its sonority, and it appears to have been a common test of the skill of a great musician, such as Ishac el-Mausili or his father Ibrahim, to require him to accompany a difficult song on a lute purposely untuned. As a (partial) modern instance of the practice referred to in the text, may be cited Paganini’s custom of lowering or raising the G string of the violin in playing certain of his own compositions. According to the Kitab el-Aghani, Ishac el-Mausili is said to have familiarized himself, by incessant practice, with the exact sounds produced by each division of the strings of the four course lute of his day, under every imaginable circumstance of tuning.” It is regrettable that Mr. Payne does not give us more of such notes.

  49 See vol. vii. 363 for the use of these fumigations.

  50 In the Mac. Edit. “Aylah” for Ubullah: the latter is one of the innumerable canals, leading from Bassorah to Ubullah-town a distance of twelve miles. Its banks are the favourite pleasure- resort of the townsfolk, being built over with villas and pavilions (now no more) and the orchards seem to form one great garden, all confined by one wall. See Jaubert’s translation of Al-Idrisi, vol. i. p-69. The Aylah, a tributary of the Tigris, waters (I have noted) the Gardens of Bassorah.

  51 Music having been forbidden by Mohammed who believed with the vulgar that the Devil has something to do with it. Even Paganini could not escape suspicion in the nineteenth century.

  52 The “Mahr,” or Arab dowry consists of two parts, one paid down on consummation and the other agreed to be paid to the wife, contingently upon her being divorced by her husband. If she divorce him this portion, which is generally less than the half, cannot be claimed by her; and I have related the Persian abomination which compels the woman to sacrifice her rights. See vol. iii. , 343.

  53 i.e. the cost of her maintenance during the four months of single blessedness which must or ought to elapse before she can legally marry again.