One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  457 Arab. “Al-ajr” which has often occurred.

  458 Arab. “Hanъt,” i.e., leaves of the lotus-tree to be infused as a wash for the corpse; camphor used with cotton to close the mouth and other orifices; and, in the case of a wealthy man, rose-water, musk, ambergris, sandal-wood, and lign-aloes for fumigation.

  459 Which always begin with four “Takbнrs” and differ in many points from the usual orisons. See Lane (M. E. chapt. xxviii.) who is, however, very superficial upon an intricate and interesting subject. He even neglects to mention the number of Ruk’бt (bows) usual at Cairo and the absence of prostration (sujъd) for which see vol. ii. 10.

  460 Thus requiring all the ablutional offices to be repeated. The Shaykh, by handling the corpse, became ceremonially impure and required “Wuzu” before he could pray either at home or in the Mosque.

  461 The Shaykh had left it when he went out to perform

  Wuzu.

  462 Arab. “Satl”=the Lat. and Etruscan “Situla” and

  “Situlus,” a water-pot.

  463 Arab. “Lahd, Luhd,” the niche or cell hollowed out in the side of the oblong trench: here the corpse is deposited and covered with palm-fronds etc. to prevent the earth touching it. See my Pilgrimage ii. 304.

  464 For the incredible amount of torture which Eastern obstinacy will sometimes endure, see Al-Mas’udi’s tale of the miserable little old man who stole the ten purses, vol. viii. 153 et seq.

  465 Arab. “Jarнdah” (whence the Jarнd-game) a palm-frond stripped of its leaves and used for a host of purposes besides flogging, chairs, sofas, bedsteads, cages, etc. etc. Tales of heroism in “eating stick” are always highly relished by the lower orders of Egyptians who pride themselves upon preferring the severest bastinado to paying the smallest amount of “rint.”

  466 Arab. “Nбwъs,” the hollow tower of masonry with a grating over the central well upon which the Magian corpse is placed to be torn by birds of prey: it is kept up by the Parsi population of Bombay and is known to Europeans as the “Tower of Silence.” Nбнs and Nбwъs also mean a Pyrethrum, a fire-temple and have a whimsical resemblance to the Greek .

  467 For Munkar and Nakir, the Interrogating Angels, see vol. v. 111. According to Al-Mas’udi (chapt. xxxi.) these names were given by the Egyptians to the thirteenth and fourteenth cubits marked on the Nilometer which, in his day, was expected to show seventeen.

  468 The text (xi. 227) has “Tannъr”=an oven, evidently a misprint for “Kubъr”=tombs.

  469 Arab. “‘An Abн”=(a propitiatory offering) for my father. So in Marocco the “Powder-players” dedicate a shot to a special purpose or person, crying “To my sweetheart!” “To my dead!” “To my horse!” etc.

  470 For this formula see vol. i. 65. It is technically called “Haukalah” and “Haulakah,” words in the third conjugation of increased triliterals, corresponding with the quadriliteral radicals and possessing the peculiar power of Kasr=abbreviation. Of this same class is Basmalah (vol. v. 206; ix. 1).

  471 This scene with the watch would be relished in the coffee-house, where the tricks of robbers, like a gird at the police, are always acceptable.

  472 Arab. “Lб af’al”; more commonly Mб af’al. Mб and Lб are synonymous negative particles, differing, however, in application. Mб (Gr. {mи}) precedes definites, or indefinites: Lб and Lam (Gr. {oy}) only indefinites as “Lб ilбha” etc.

  473 Alluding to the proverb, “What hast thou left behind thee, O Asбm?” i.e., what didst thou see?

  474 Arab. “Sayrafi,” s.s. as “Sarrбf’: see vol. i. 210.

  475 Arab. “Al-Ma’rafah”=the place where the mane grows.

  476 i.e. though the ass remain on thy hands.

  477 “Halves,” i.e. of dirhams: see vol. ii. 37.

  478 Arab. “Taannafъ,”=the Germ. lange Nase.

  479 About forty shillings.

  480 About £220.

  481 Characteristically Eastern and Moslem is this action of the neighbours and bystanders. A walk through any Oriental city will show a crowd of people screaming and gesticulating, with thundering yells and lightning glances, as if about to close in mortal fight, concerning some matter which in no way concerns them. Our European cockneys and badauds mostly content themselves with staring and mobbing.

  482 Arab. “Muruwwah,” lit. manliness, especially in the sense of generosity. So the saying touching the “Miyбn,” or Moslem of India:Ч

  Fн ‘l-ruz Kuwwah:

  Fн ‘l Hindн muruwwah.

  When rice have strength, you’ll haply find,

  In Hindi man, a manly mind.

  483 i.e. His claim is just and reasonable.

  484 I have noted (vol. i. 17) that good Moslems shun a formal oath, although “by Allah!” is ever on their tongues. This they seem to have borrowed from Christianity, which expressly forbade it, whilst Christians cannot insist upon it too much. The scandalous scenes lately enacted in a certain legislative assembly because an M.P. did not believe in a practice denounced by his creed, will be the wonder and ridicule of our descendants.

  485 Most Arabs believe that the black cloud which sometimes produces, besides famine, contagious fevers and pestilence, like that which in 1799 depopulated the cities and country of Barbary, is led by a king locust, the Sultan Jarбd.

  486 The text is hopelessly corrupt, and we have no other with which to collate. Apparently a portion of the tale has fallen out, making a non-sens of its ending, which suggests that the kite gobbled up the two locusts at her ease, and left the falcon to himself.

  487 The lines have occurred in vol. i. 265. I quote Mr.

  Payne.

  488 The fabliau is a favourite in the East; this is the third time it has occurred with minor modifications. Of course the original was founded on fact, and the fact was and is by no means uncommon.

  489 This would hardly be our Western way of treating a proposal of the kind; nor would the European novelist neglect so grand an opportunity for tall-talk.

  490 This is a rechauffй of “The House with the Belvedere;” see vol. vi. 188.

  491 Arab. “Mastъrah,”=veiled, well-guarded, confined in the

  Harem.

  492 Arab. “‘Ajъz nahs”=an old woman so crafty that she was a calamity to friends and foes.

  493 Here, as in many places the text is painfully concise: the crone says only, “The Wuzu for the prayer!”

  494 I have followed Mr. Payne who supplies this sentence to make the Tale run smoothly.

  495 i.e. the half of the marriage-settlement due to the wife on divorcement and whatever monies he may have borrowed of her.

  496 Here we find the vulgar idea of a rape, which is that a man can, by mere force, possess a woman against her will. I contend that this is impossible unless he use drugs like chloroform or violence, so as to make the patient faint or she be exceptionally weak. “Good Queen Bess” hit the heart of the question when she bade Lord High Chancellor sheath his sword, she holding the scabbard-mouth before him and keeping it in constant motion. But it often happens that the woman, unless she have a loathing for her violator, becomes infected with the amorous storge, relaxes her defense, feels pleasure in the outer contact of the parts and almost insensibly allows penetration and emission. Even conception is possible in such cases as is proved in that curious work, “The Curiosities of Medical Experience.”

  497 i.e. thou wilt have satisfied us all three.

  498 Here I follow Mr. Payne who has skilfully fine-drawn the holes in the original text.

  499 See vol. vii. 363; ix. 238.

  500 Arab. “Musallа,” which may be either a praying carpet, a pure place in a house, or a small chapel like that near Shiraz which Hafiz immortalised,

  “Bring, boy, the sup that’s in the cup; in highest Heaven man

  ne’er shall find

  Such watery marge as Ruknбbбd, MusalIа’s mazes rose entwined.”

  501 Arab. “Ihtidб,”=divine direction to Hudа or salvation. The old bawd was still dressed
as a devotee, and keeps up the cant of her caste. No sensible man in the East ever allows a religious old woman to pass his threshold.

  502 In this tale “poetical justice” is neglected, but the teller skilfully caused the wife to be ravished and not to be a particeps criminis. The lover escapes scot-free because Moslems, as well as Hindus, hold that the amourist under certain conditions is justified in obtaining his object by fair means or foul. See of “Early Ideas, a Group of Hindoo Stories,” collected and collated by Anaryan: London, Allens, 1881.

  503 This is supplied from the “Tale of the King and his

  Wazir’s Wife,” vol. vi. 129.

  504 Arab. “Ibl,” a specific name: it is presently opposed to “Nбkah,” a she-dromedary, and “Rбhilah,” a riding-camel.

  505 Here “Amsaytu” is used in its literal sense “I evened” (came at evening), and this is the case with seven such verbs, Asbaha, Amsб, Azhб, Azhara, A’tama, Zalla, and Bбta, which either conjoin the sense of the sentence with their respective times, morning, evening, forenoon, noon and the first sundown watch, all day and all night or are used “elegantly,” as grammarians say, for the simple “becoming” or “being.”

  506 The Badawi dogs are as dangerous as those of Montenegro but not so treacherous: the latter will sneak up to the stranger and suddenly bite him most viciously. I once had a narrow escape from an ignoble death near the slaughter-house of Alexandria-Ramlah, where the beasts were unusually ferocious. A pack assailed me at early dawn and but for an iron stick and a convenient wall I should have been torn to pieces.

  507 These elopements are of most frequent occurrence: see

  Pilgrimage iii. 52.

  508 The principal incidents, the loss and recovery of wife and children, occur in the Story of the Knight Placidus (Gesta Romanorum, cx.). But the ecclesiastical tale-teller does not do poetical justice upon any offenders, and he vilely slanders the great Cжsar, Trajan.

  509 i.e. a long time: the idiom has already been noticed. In the original we have “of days and years and twelvemonths” in order that “A’wбm” (years) may jingle with “Ayyбm” (days).

  510 Nothing can be more beautiful than the natural parks which travellers describe on the coasts of tropical seas.

  511 Arab. “Khayyбl” not only a rider but a good and a hard rider. Hence the proverb “Al-Khayyбl” kabr maftъh=uomo a cavallo sepoltura aperta.

  512 i.e. the crew and the islanders.

  513 Arab. “Hadas,” a word not easy to render. In grammar Lumsden renders it by “event” and the learned Captain Lockett (Miut Amil) in an awful long note (p to 224) by “mode,” grammatical or logical. The value of his disquisition is its proving that, as the Arabs borrowed their romance from the Persians, so they took their physics and metaphysics of grammar and syntax; logic and science in general, from the Greeks.

  514 We should say the anchors were weighed and the canvas spread.

  515 The rhymes are disposed in the quaintest way, showing extensive corruption. Mr. Payne has ordered them into couplets with a “bob” or refrain. I have followed suit, preserving the original vagaries of rhymes.

  516 Arab. “Nuwab,” broken plur. (that is, noun of multitude) of Naubah, the Anglo-Indian Nowbut. This is applied to the band playing at certain intervals before the gate of a Rajah or high official.

  517 Arab. “Hбjib”; Captain Trotter (“Our Mission to the Court of Morocco in 1880”: Edinburgh, Douglas, 1881) speaks, passim, of the “cheery little Hбjeb or Eyebrow.” Really this is too bad: why cannot travellers consult an Orientalist when treating of Oriental subjects?

  518 Suicide is rare in Moslem lands, compared with India, China, and similar “pagan” countries; for the Mussulman has the same objection as the Christian “to rush into the presence of his Creator,” as if he could do so without the Creator’s permission. The Hindu also has some curious prejudices on the subject; he will hang himself, but not by the neck, for fear lest his soul be defiled by exiting through an impure channel. In England hanging is the commonest form for men; then follow in due order drowning, cutting or stabbing, poison, and gun-shot: women prefer drowning (except in the cold months) and poison. India has not yet found a Dr. Ogle to tabulate suicide; but the cases most familiar to old Anglo-Indians are leaping down cliffs (as at Giruar), drowning, and starving to death. And so little is life valued that a mother will make a vow obliging her son to suicide himself at a certain age.

  519 Arab. “Zarad-Khбnah,” before noticed: vol. vii. 363. Here it would mean a temporary prison for criminals of high degree. De Sacy, Chrestom, ii. 179.

  520 Arab. “‘Adъl,” I have said, means in Marocco, that land of lies and subterfuges, a public notary.

  521 This sentence is inserted by Mr. Payne to complete the sense.

  522 i.e. he intended to marry her when time served.

  523 Arab. from Pers. Khwбjah and Khawбjбt: see vol. vi. 46.

  524 Probably meaning by one mother whom he loved best of all his wives: in the next page we read of their sister.

  525 Come down, i.e. from heaven.

  526 This is the Bresl. Edit.’s form of Shahryбr=city-keeper (like Marzbбn, guardian of the Marches), for city-friend. The learned Weil has preferred it to Shahryбr.

  527 Sic: in the Mac. Edit. “Shahrбzбd” and here making nonsense of the word. It is regretable that the king’s reflections do not run at times as in this text: his compunctions lead well up to the dйnouement.

  528 The careless text says “couplets.” It has occurred in vol. i. 149: so I quote Torrens ().

  529 In the text Salma is made to speak, utterly confusing the dialogue.

  530 The well-known Baloch province beginning west of Sind: the term is supposed to be a corruption of Mбhн-Khorбn=Ichthyophagi. The reader who wishes to know more about it will do well to consult “Unexplored Baluchistan,” etc. (Griffith and Farran, 1882), the excellent work of my friend Mr. Ernest A. Floyer, long Chief of the Telegraphic Department, Cairo.

  531 Meaning the last city in Makran before entering Sind.

  Al-Sharr would be a fancy name, “The Wickedness.”

  532 i.e. think of nothing but his present peril.

  533 Arab. “Munkati’ah”=lit. “cut off” (from the weal of the world). See Pilgrimage i. 22.

  534 The lines are in vol. i. 207 and iv. 189. 1 here quote

  Mr. Payne.

  535 i.e. I have another proposal to make.

  536 i.e. In my heart’s core: the figure has often occurred.

  537 These sudden elevations, so common in the East and not unknown to the West in the Napoleonic days, explain how the legend of “Joanna Papissa” (Pope John XIII), who succeeded Leo IV. in A.D. 855 and was succeeded by Benedict III., found ready belief amongst the enemies of papacy. She was an English woman born in Germany who came to Rome and professed theology with йclat, wherefore the people enthroned her. “Pope Joan” governed with exemplary wisdom, but during a procession on Rogation Sunday she was delivered of a fine boy in the street: some make her die on the spot; others declare that she perished in prison.

  538 That such things should happen in times of famine is only natural; but not at other seasons. This abomination on the part of the butcher is, however, more than once alluded toin The Nights: see vol. i. 332.

  539 Opinions differ as to the site of this city, so celebrated in the mediжval history of Al-Islam: most probably it stood where Hyderabad of Sind now is. The question has been ably treated by Sir Henry M. Elliot in his “History of India,” edited from his posthumous papers by Professor Dowson.

  540 Which, by-the-by, the average Eastern does with even more difficulty than the average European. For the most part the charge to secrecy fixes the matter in his mind even when he has forgotten that it is to be kept secret. Hence the most unpleasant results.

  541 Such an act appears impossible, and yet history tells us of a celebrated Sufi, Khayr al-Nassбj (the Weaver), who being of dark complexion was stopped on return from his pilgrimage at Ku
fah by a stranger that said, “Thou art my negro slave and thy name is Khayr.” He was kept at the loom for years, till at last the man set him free, and simply said, “Thou wast not my slave” (Ibn Khall. i. 513).

  542 These lines have occurred before. I quote Mr. Payne for variety.

  543 Arab. “Tasill sallata ‘l-Munkati’нn” = lit. “raining on the drouth-hardened earth of the cut-off.” The metaphor is admissible in the eyes of an Arab who holds water to be the chiefest of blessings, and makes it synonymous with bounty and beneficence.

  544 Possibly this is said in mere fun; but, as Easterns are practical physiognomists, it may hint the fact that a large nose in womankind is the sign of a masculine nature.

  545 Arab. “Zakбt wa Sadakat,” = lit. paying of poor rate and purifying thy property by almsdeeds. See vol. i. 339.

  546 I have noted (i. 293) that Kamнs ({chitуon}, Chemise, Cameslia, Camisa) is used in the Hindostani and Bengali dialects. Like its synonyms prжtexta and shift, it has an equivocal meaning and here probably signifies the dress peculiar to Arab devotees and devout beggars.

  547 I omit here and elsewhere the parenthetical formula “Kбla al-Rбwi,” etc. = The Story-teller sayeth, reminding the reader of its significance in a work collected from the mouths of professional Tale-tellers and intended mainly for their use.

  548 The usual sign of emotion, already often mentioned.

  549 It being no shame to Moslems if a slave become King.

  550 Arab. “Tarbiyatн,” i.e., he was brought up in my house.

  551 There is no Salic law amongst Moslems; but the Rasm or custom of AlIslam, established by the succession of the four first Caliphs, to the prejudice of Ayishah and other masterful women would be a strong precedent against queenly rule. It is the reverse with the Hindus who accept a Rani as willingly as a Rajah and who believe with Europeans that when kings reign women rule, and vice versa. To the vulgar Moslem feminine government appears impossible, and I was once asked by an Afghan, “What would happen if the queen were in childbed?”

  552 Arab. “Khutbah,” the sermon preached from the pulpit (Mimbar) after the congregational prayers on Friday noon. It is of two kinds, for which see Lane, M.E., chap. iii. This public mention of his name and inscribing it upon the newly-minted money are the special prerogatives of the Moslem king: hence it often happens that usurpers cause a confusion of Khutbah and coinage.