The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights (Modern Library Classics)

by A. S. Byatt

  44. Mr. Payne (iii. 133) omits the lines which are à propos de rien and read much like “nonsense verses.” I retain them simply because they are in the text.

  45. Arab. “Ar’ar,” the Heb. “Aroer,” which Luther and the A. V. translate “heath.” The modern Aramaic name is “Lizzáb” (Unexplored Syria, i. 68).

  46. In the old version and the Bresl. Edit. (iii. 220) the Princess beats the “Kahramánah,” but does not kill her.

  47. This is still the popular Eastern treatment of the insane.

  48. Pers. “Marz-bán” = Warden of the Marches, Margrave. The foster-brother in the East is held dear as, and often dearer than, kith and kin.

  49.

  The moderns believe most in the dawn-dream.

  QUIRINUS

  Post mediam noctem visus, quum somnia vera.

  (Horace, Sat. i. 10, 33.)

  50. The Bresl. Edit. (iii. 223) and Gallandhave “Torf”: Lane (ii. 115) “El-Tarf.”

  51. Arab. “Maghzal;” a more favourite comparison is with a toothpick. Both are used by Nizami and Al-Hariri, the most “elegant” of Arab writers.

  52. This symbolic action is repeatedly mentioned in The Nights.

  53. Arab. “Shakhs”=a person, primarily a dark spot. So “Sawád”=blackness, in Al-Hariri means a group of people who darken the ground by their shade.

  54. The first bath after sickness, I have said, is called “Ghusl al-Sihhah,”— the Washing of Health.

  55. The words “malady” and “disease” are mostly avoided during these dialogues as ill-omened words which may bring on a relapse.

  56. Solomon’s carpet of green silk which carried him and all his host through the air is a Talmudic legend generally accepted in Al-Islam though not countenanced by the Koran, chap. xxvii. When the “gnat’s wing” is mentioned, the reference is to Nimrod who, for boasting that he was lord of all, was tortured during four hundred years by a gnat sent by Allah up his ear or nostril.

  57. The absolute want of morality and filial affection in the chaste young man is supposed to be caused by the violence of his passion, and he would be pardoned because he “loved much.”

  58. I have noticed the geomantic process in my History of Sindh (chap. vii.). It is called “Zarb al-Raml” (strike the sand, the French say “frapper le sable”) because the rudest form is to make on the ground dots at haphazard, usually in four lines one above the other: these are counted and, if even-numbered, two are taken (**); if odd one (*); and thus the four lines will form a scheme say

  This is repeated three times, producing the same number of figures; and then the combination is sought in an explanatory table or, if the practitioner be expert, he pronounces off-hand. The Nights speak of a “Takht Raml” or a board, like a schoolboy’s slate, upon which the dots are inked instead of points in sand. The moderns use a “Kura’h,” or oblong die, upon whose sides the dots, odd and even, are marked; and these dice are hand-thrown to form the figure. By way of complication Geomancy is mixed up with astrology and then it becomes a most complicated kind of ariolation and an endless study. Napoleon’s Book of Fate, a chap-book which appeared some years ago, was Geomancy in its simplest and most ignorant shape. For the rude African form see my Mission to Dahome, i. 332; and for that of Darfour, pp. 360-69 of Shaykh Mohammed’s Voyage before quoted.

  59. Translators understand this of writing marriage contracts; I take it in a more general sense.

  60. These lines are repeated from the 75th night: with Mr. Payne’s permission I give his rendering (iii. 153) by way of variety.

  61. The comparison is characteristically Arab.

  62. Not her “face”: the head, and especially the back of the head, must always be kept covered, even before the father.

  63. The “Mehari,” of which the Algerine-French speak, are the dromedaries bred by the Mahrah tribe of Al-Yaman, the descendants of Mahrat ibn Haydán. They are covered by small wild camels (?) called Al-Húsh, found between Oman and Al-Shihr: others explain the word to mean “stallions of the Jinn,” and term those savage and supernatural animals, “Najáib al-Mahriyah”—nobles of the Mahrah.

  64. Arab. “Khaznah” = a thousand purses; now about £5000. It denotes a large sum of money, like the “Badrah,” a purse containing 10,000 dirhams of silver (Al-Hariri), or 80,000 (Burckhardt, Prov. 380); whereas the “Nisáb” is a moderate sum of money, gen. 20 gold dinars = 200 silver dirhams.

  65. As The Nights show, Arabs admire slender forms; but the hips and hinder cheeks must be highly developed and the stomach fleshy rather than lean. The reasons are obvious. The Persians who exaggerate everything say e.g. (Husayn Váiz in the Anvár-i-Suhayli):—

  How paint her hips and waist? Who saw

  A mountain (Koh) dangling to a straw (káh)?

  In Antar his beloved Abla is a tamarisk (T. Orientalis). Others compare with the palm tree (Solomon), the Cypress (Persian, esp. Hafiz and Fir-dausi) and the Arák or wild Capparis (Arab.).

  66. Ubi aves ibi angeli. All African travellers know that a few birds flying about the bush, and a few palm trees waving in the wind, denote the neighbourhood of a village or a camp (where angels are scarce). The reason is not any friendship for man but because food, animal and vegetable, is more plentiful. Hence Albatrosses, Mother Carey’s (Mater Cara, the Virgin) chickens, and Cape pigeons follow ships.

  67. Moslem port towns usually have (or had) only two gates. Such was the case with Bayrut, Tyre, Sidon and a host of others; the faubourg-growth of modern days has made these obsolete. The portals much resemble the entrances of old Norman castles—Arques for instance. (Pilgrimage, i. 185.)

  68. Arab. “Lisám;” before explained.

  69. i.e., Life of Souls (persons, etc.).

  70. Showing that there had been no consummation of the marriage which would have demanded “Ghusl,” or total ablution, at home or in the Hammam.

  71. The “situation” is admirable, solution appearing so difficult and catastrophe imminent.

  72. This quatrain occurs in the 9th night: I have borrowed from Torrens (p. 79) by way of variety.

  73. The belief that young pigeon’s blood resembles the virginal discharge is universal; but the blood most resembling man’s is that of the pig which in other points is so very human. In our day Arabs and Hindus rarely submit to inspection the nuptial sheet as practised by the Israelites and Persians. The bride takes to bed a white kerchief with which she staunches the blood and next morning the stains are displayed in the Harim. In Darfour this is done by the bridegroom. “Prima Venus debet esse cruenta,” say the Easterns with much truth, and they have no faith in our complaisant creed which allows the hymen-membrane to disappear by any but one accident.

  74. Not meaning the two central divisions commanded by the King and his Wazir.

  75. Arab. “Rasy” = praising in a funeral sermon.

  76. An allusion to a custom of the pagan Arabs in the days of ignorant Heathenism. The blood or brain, soul or personality of the murdered man formed a bird called Sady or Hámah (not the Humá or Humái, usually translated “phœnix”) which sprang from the head, where four of the five senses have their seat, and haunted his tomb, crying continually, “Uskúni!” = Give me drink (of the slayer’s blood)! and which disappeared only when the vendetta was accomplished. Mohammed forbade the belief. Amongst the Southern Slavs the cuckoo is supposed to be the sister of a murdered man ever calling for vengeance.

  77. To obtain a blessing and show how he valued it.

  78. Well-known tribes of proto-historic Arabs who flourished before the time of Abraham: see Koran (chap. xxvi. et passim). They will be repeatedly mentioned in The Nights and notes.

  79. Arab. “Amtár;” plur. of “Matr,” a large vessel of leather or wood for water, etc.

  80. Arab. “Asáfírí,” so called because they attract sparrows (asáfír), a bird very fond of the ripe oily fruit. In the Romance of “Antar” Asáfír camels are beasts that fly like birds in fleetness. The reader must not confound the olives of the te
xt with the hard unripe berries (“little plums pickled in stale”) which appear at English tables; nor wonder that bread and olives are the beef-steak and potatoes of many Mediterranean peoples. It is an excellent diet, the highly oleaginous fruit supplying the necessary carbon.

  81. Arab. “Tamar al-Hindi” = the “Indian-date,” whence our word “Tamarind.” A sherbet of the pods, being slightly laxative, is much drunk during the great heats; and the dried fruit, made into small round cakes, is sold in the bazars. The traveller is advised not to sleep under the tamarind’s shade, which is infamous for causing ague and fever. In Sind I derided the “native nonsense,” passed the night under an “Indian date-tree” and awoke with a fine specimen of ague which lasted me a week.

  82. Moslems are not agreed upon the length of the Day of Doom when all created things, marshalled by the angels, await final judgment; the different periods named are 40 years, 70, 300 and 50,000. Yet the trial itself will last no longer than while one may milk an ewe, or than “the space between two milkings of a she-camel.” This is bringing down Heaven to Earth with a witness; but, after all, the Heaven of all faiths, including “Spiritualism,” the latest development, is only an earth more or less glorified even as the Deity is humanity more or less perfected.

  83. Arab. “Al-Kamaráni,” lit. “the two moons.” Arab rhetoric prefers it to “Shamsáni,” or “two suns,” because lighter (akhaff) to pronounce. So, albeit Omar was less worthy than Abu-Bakr, the two are called “Al-Omaráni,” in vulgar parlance, Omarayn.

  84. Alluding to the angels who appeared to the Sodomites in the shape of beautiful youths (Koran, xi.).

  85. Koran, xxxiii. 38.

  86. A prolepsis of Tommy Moore:—

  Your mother says, my little Venus,

  There’s something not quite right between us,

  And you’re in fault as much as I,

  Now, on my soul, my little Venus,

  I swear ’twould not be right between us,

  To let your mother tell a lie.

  But the Arab is more moral than Mr. Little, as he proposes to repent.

  87. This is a mere phrase for our “dying of laughter”: the queen was on her back. And as Easterns sit on carpets, their falling back is very different from the same movement off a chair.

  88. The Lady Budur shows her noble blood by not objecting to her friend becoming her Zarrat (sister-wife). This word is popularly derived from “Zarar” = injury; and is vulgarly pronounced in Egypt “Durrah” sounding like Durrah = a parrot (see Burckhardt’s mistake in Prov. 314). The native proverb says, “Ayshat al-durrah murrah,” the sister-wife hath a bitter life. We have no English equivalent; so I translate indifferently co-wife, co-consort, sister-wife or sister in wedlock.

  HATIM OF THE TRIBE OF TAYY

  1. A noble tribe of Badawin that migrated from Al-Yaman and settled in Al-Najd. Their Chief, who died a few years before Mohammed’s birth, was Al-Hatim (the “black crow”), a model of Arab manliness and munificence; and although born in the Ignorance he will enter Heaven with the Moslems. Hatim was buried on the hill called Owárid: I have already noted this favourite practice of the wilder Arabs and the affecting idea that the Dead may still look upon his kith and kin. There is not an Arab book nor, indeed, a book upon Arabia which does not contain the name of Hatim: he is mentioned as unpleasantly often as Aristides.

  2. Lord of “Cattle-feet,” this King’s name is unknown; but the Kámús mentions two Kings called Zu ’l Kalá’a, the Greater and the Less. Lane’s Shaykh (ii. 333) opined that the man who demanded Hatim’s hospitality was one Abu ’l-Khaybari.

  3. The camel’s throat, I repeat, is not cut as in the case of other animals, the muscles being too strong: it is slaughtered by the “nahr,” i.e., thrusting a knife into the hollow at the commissure of the chest. (Pilgrimage, iii. 303.)

  4. Adi became a Moslem and was one of the companions of the Prophet.

  THE TALE OF MA’AN SON OF ZAIDAH AND THE BADAWI

  1. Arab. “Shakhs” before noticed.

  2. Arab. “Kussá’á” = the curling cucumber: the vegetable is of the cheapest and the poorer classes eat it as “kitchen” with bread.

  3. Arab. “Haram-hu,” a double entendre. Here the Badawi means his Harim, the inviolate part of the house; but afterwards he makes it mean the presence of His Honour.

  THE CITY OF MANY-COLUMNED IRAM AND ABDULLAH SON OF ABI KILABAH

  1. The Bresl. Edit. (vii. 171-174) entitles this tale, “Story of Shaddád bin Ad and the City of Iram the Columned;” but it relates chiefly to the building by the King of the First Adites who, being promised a future Paradise by Prophet Húd, impiously said that he would lay out one in this world. It also quotes Ka’ab al-Ahbár as an authority for declaring that the tale is in the “Pentateuch of Moses.” Iram was in al-Yaman near Adan (our Aden), a square of ten parasangs (or leagues each =18,000 feet) every way; the walls were of red (baked) brick 500 cubits high and 20 broad, with four gates of corresponding grandeur. It contained 300,000 Kasr (palaces) each with a thousand pillars of gold-bound jasper, etc. (whence its title). The whole was finished in five hundred years; and, when Shad-dad prepared to enter it, the “Cry of Wrath” from the Angel of Death slew him and all his many. It is mentioned in the Koran (chap. lxxxix. 6-7) as “Irem adorned with lofty buildings (or pillars).” But Ibn Khaldun declares that commentators have embroidered the passage; Iram being the name of a powerful clan of the ancient Adites and “imád” being a tent-pole: hence “Iram with the numerous tents or tent-poles.” Al-Bayzawi tells the story of Abdullah ibn Kilabah (D’Herbelot’s Colabah). At Aden I met an Arab who had seen the mysterious city on the borders of Al-Ahkáf, the waste of deep sands, west of Hadramaut; and probably he had, the mirage or sun-reek taking its place. Compare with this tale “The City of Brass.”

  2. The Biblical “Sheba,” named from the great-grandson of Joctan, whence the Queen (Bilkis) visited Solomon. It was destroyed by the Flood of Márib.

  3. The full title of the Holy City is “Madinat al-Nabi” = the City of the Prophet; of old, Yasrib (Yathrib) the Iatrippa of the Greeks (Pilgrimage, ii. 119). The reader will remember that there are two “Yasribs”: that of lesser note being near Hujr in the Yamámah-province.

  4. “Ka’ab of the Scribes,” a well-known traditionist and religious poet who died (A.H. 32) in the Caliphate of Osman. He was a Jew who islamized; hence his name (Ahbár, plur. of Hibr, a Jewish scribe, doctor of science, etc., Jarrett’s El-Siyuti, p. 123). He must not be confounded with another Ka’ab al-Ahbár the Poet of the (first) Cloak-poem or “Burdah,” a noble Arab who was a distant cousin of Mohammed, and whose tomb at Hums (Emesa) is a place of pious visitation. According to the best authorities (no Christian being allowed to see them), the cloak traditionally given to the bard by Mohammed is still preserved together with the Khirkah or Sanjak Sherif (“Holy Coat” or Banner, the national oriflamme) at Stambul in the Upper Serraglio. (Pilgrimage, i. 213.) Many authors repeat this story of Mu’awiyah, the Caliph, and Ka’ab of the Burdah, but it is an evident anachronism, the poet having been dead nine years before the ruler’s accession (A.H. 41).

  5. Koran, lxxxix. 6-7.

  6. In the text, Arabic “Kahramán,” from the Persian, braves, heroes.

  7. The Deity in the East is as whimsical a despot as any of his “shadows” or “vice-regents.” According to the text Shaddád is killed for mere jealousy—a base passion utterly unworthy of a godhead; but one to which Allah was greatly addicted.

  8. Some traditionist; but whether Sha’abi, Shi’abi or Shu’abi we cannot decide.

  9. The Hazarmaveth of Genesis (x. 26) in South Eastern Arabia. Its people are the Adramitæ (mod. Hazrami) of Ptolemy who places in their land the Aribæ Emporium, as Pliny does his Massola. They border upon the Homeritæ or men of Himyar, often mentioned in The Nights. Hazramaut is still practically unknown to us, despite the excursions of many travellers; and the hard nature of the people, the Swiss of Arabia, offers peculiar obstacles to explor
ation.

  10. 10. i.e., the prophet Hud generally identified (?) with Heber. He was commissioned (Koran, chap. vii.) to preach Al-Islam to his tribe the Adites who worshipped four goddesses, Sákiyah (the rain-giver), Rázikah (food-giver), Háfizah (the saviouress) and Sálimah (who healed sickness). As has been seen, he failed, so it was useless to send him.

  THE SWEEP AND THE NOBLE LADY

  1. I have described this scene, the wretch clinging to the curtain and sighing and crying as if his heart would break (Pilgrimage, iii. 216 and 220). The same is done at the place Al-Multazam, “the attached to” (ibid. 156) and various spots called Al-Mustajáb, “where prayer is granted” (ibid. 162). At Jerusalem the “Wailing place of the Jews” shows queer scenes; the worshippers embrace the wall with a peculiar wriggle, crying out in Hebrew, “O build Thy House, soon, without delay,” etc.