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

by A. S. Byatt

  2. i.e., the wife. The scene in the text was common at Cairo twenty years ago; and no one complained of the stick. See Pilgrimage, i. 120.

  3. Arab. “Udum, Udum” (plur. of Idám) = “relish,” olives, cheese, pickled cucumbers, etc.

  ALI THE PERSIAN

  1. This “Cry of Haro” often occurs throughout The Nights. In real life it is sure to collect a crowd, especially if an Infidel (non-Moslem) be its cause.

  2. In the East a cunning fellow always makes himself the claimant or complainant.

  3. On the Euphrates some 40 miles west of Baghdad. The word is written “Anbár” and pronounced “Ambár” as is usual with the “n” before “b;” the case of the Greek double Gamma.

  4. Syene on the Nile.

  5. The tale is in the richest Rabelaisian humour; and the requisitions of the “Saj’a” (rhymed prose) in places explain the grotesque combinations. It is difficult to divine why Lane omits it: probably he held a hearty laugh not respectable.

  THE MAN WHO STOLE THE DISH OF GOLD

  1. In all hot-damp countries it is necessary to clothe dogs, morning and evening especially: otherwise they soon die of rheumatism and loin disease.

  2. The Moslems borrowed the horrible idea of a “jealous God” from their kinsmen, the Jews. Every race creates its own Deity after the fashion of itself: Jehovah is distinctly a Hebrew; the Christian Theos is originally a Judæo-Greek and Allah a half-Badawi Arab. In this tale Allah, despotic and unjust, brings a generous and noble-minded man to beggary, simply because he fed his dogs off gold plate. Wisdom and morality have their infancy and youth: the great value of such tales as these is to show and enable us to measure man’s development.

  3. In Trébutien (Lane, ii. 501) the merchant says to ex-Dives, “Thou art wrong in charging Destiny with injustice. If thou art ignorant of the cause of thy ruin I will acquaint thee with it. Thou feddest the dogs in dishes of gold and leftest the poor to die of hunger.” A superstition, but intelligible.

  THE RUINED MAN WHO BECAME RICH AGAIN THROUGH A DREAM

  1. The tale is told by Al-Isháki in the reign of Al-Maamun.

  2. The speaker in dreams is the Heb. “Waggid,” which the learned and angry Graetz (Geschichte, etc. vol. ix.) absurdly translates “Traumsouffleur.”

  THE EBONY HORSE

  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-fête Mihrgán (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.

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

  4. The orig. Persian word is “Sháh-púr” = King’s son: the Greeks (who had no sh) preferred ; the Romans turned it into Sapor and the Arabs (who lack the p) into Sábúr. See p. x. Hamzae ispahanensis Annalium Libri x.: Gottwaldt, Lipsiæ, 1848.

  5. The magic horse may have originated with the Hindu tale of a wooden Garuda (the bird of Vishnu) built by a youth as a vehicle. It came with the “Moors” to Spain and appears in “Le Cheval de Fust,” a French poem of the 13th Cent. Thence it passed over to England as shown by Chaucer’s “Half-told tale of Cambuscan (Janghíz 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, chap. ii, dates from our thirteenth century. See vol. i., p. 181.

  6. All Moslems, except those of the Máliki 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. “Badinján”: Hind. Bengan: Pers. Bádingán or Badilján; the Mala insana (Solarium pomiferum or S. Melongena) of the Romans, well known in Southern Europe. It is of two kinds, the red (Solarium lycopersicum) and the black (S. Melongena). The Spaniards know it as “berengeria” and when Sancho Panza (Part ii. chap. 2) says, “The Moors are fond of egg-plants,” he means more than appears. It is held to be exceedingly heating and thereby to breed melancholia and madness; hence one says to a man showing eccentricity, “Thou hast been eating brinjalls.”

  9. Again to be understood Hibernicé “kilt.”

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

  11. The “Sufrah” before explained as 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 mediæval England the most modest women saw nothing indelicate in sleeping naked by their naked husbands. The “night-cap” and the “nightgown” are 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. “Akásirah,” (vol. i., 84) plur. of Kisrá.

  18. The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own. This was systematized 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 demons 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, Ghamdán, which afterwards contained a Maison Carrée rivalling (or attempting to rival) the Meccan Ka’abah. The builder was Surahbíl 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 “Hazá Sana’ah!” meaning in their tongue, this is commodious, etc. I may note that the word is Kisawahili (Zanzibarian), e.g., “Yámbo sáná—is the state go
od?” Sana’a was the capital of the Tabábi’ah or Tobba Kings who judaized; and the Abyssinians with their Negush made it Christian while the Persians under Anushirwán converted it to Guebrism. It is now easily visited but to little purpose; excursions in the neighbourhood being deadly dangerous. Moreover the Turkish garrison would probably murder a stranger who sympathized 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 advantage 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. This 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 drunk 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 Sín” (China).

  25. Arab. “Yá Kisrawi!” = O subject of the Kisrá or Chosroë; noted i., 84. “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 jáh” = (a man of) any place. I know an Englishman who in Persian called himself “Mirza Abdullah-i-Híchmakáni” = Master Abdullah of Nowhere.

  27. The Bresl. Edit. (Joe. 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, 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. “Nafahát”= 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 Ahádís.

  HOW ABU HASAN BRAKE WIND

  1. This is a favourite Badawi dish, but too expensive unless some accident happen to the animal. Old camel is much like bull-beef, but the young meat is excellent, although not relished by Europeans because, like strange fish, it has no recognized flavour. I have noticed it in my First Footsteps (p. 68, etc.). There is an old idea in Europe that the maniacal vengeance of the Arab is increased by eating this flesh; the beast is certainly vindictive enough; but a furious and frantic vengefulness characterizes the North American Indian who never saw a camel. Mercy and pardon belong to the elect, not to the miserables who make up “humanity.”

  2. i.e., of the Province Hazramaut, the Biblical Hazarmaveth (Gen. x. 26). The people are the Swiss of Arabia and noted for thrift and hard bargains; hence the saying, “If you meet a serpent and a Hazrami, slay the Hazrami.” To prove how ubiquitous they are it is related that a man, flying from their society, reached the uttermost parts of China where he thought himself safe. But, as he was about to pass the night in some ruin, he heard a voice hard by him exclaim, “O ’Imád al-Din!” (the name of the patron-saint of Hazramaut). Thereupon he arose and fled and he is, they say, flying still.

  3. Arab. “Fál,” alluding to the Sortes Coranicae and other silly practices known to the English servant-girl when curious about her future and her futur.

  4. i.e., in Arab-land (where they eat dates) and Ajam, or lands non-Arab (where bread is the staff of life); that is, all the world over.

  5. This story is curious and ethnologically valuable. The Badawi who eructates as a civility has a mortal hatred to a crepitus ventris; and were a bystander to laugh at its accidental occurrence, he would at once be cut down as a “pundonor.” The same is the custom amongst the Highlanders of Afghanistan, and its artificial nature suggests direct derivation; for the two regions are separated by a host of tribes, Persians and Baloch, Sindis and Panjábis who utterly ignore the point of honour and behave like Europeans. The raids of the pre-Islamitic Arabs over the lands lying to the northeast of them are almost forgotten; still, there are traces, and this may be one of them.

  THE ANGEL OF DEATH WITH THE PROUD KING AND THE DEVOUT MAN

  1. The popular English idea of the Arab horse is founded upon utter unfact. Book after book tells us, “There are three distinct breeds of Arabians— the Attechi, a very superior breed; the Kadishi, mixed with these and of little value; and the Kochlani, highly prized and very difficult to procure.” “Attechi” may be At-Tázi (the Arab horse, or hound) or some confusion with “At” (Turk.), a horse. “Kadish” (Gadish or Kidish) is a nag, a gelding, a hackney, a “pacer” (generally called “Rahwán”). “Kochlani” is evidently “Kohláni,” the Kohl-eyed, because the skin round the orbits is dark as if powdered. This is the true blue blood; and the bluest of all is “Kohláni al-Ajúz” (of the old woman), a name thus accounted for: an Arab mare dropped a filly when in flight; her rider perforce galloped on and presently saw the foal appear in camp, when it was given to an old woman for nursing and grew up to be famous. The home of the Arab horse is the vast plateau of Al-Najd: the Tahámah or lower maritime regions of Arabia, like Malabar, will not breed good beasts. The pure blood all descends from five collateral lines called Al-Khamsah (the Cinque). Literary and pedantic Arabs derive them from the mares of Mohammed, a native of the dry and rocky region, Al-Hijaz, whither horses are all imported. Others go back (with the Koran, chap. xxviii) to Solomon, possibly Salmán, a patriarch fourth in descent from Ishmael and some 600 years older than the Hebrew King. The Badawi derive the five from Rabí’at al-Faras (R. of the mare) fourth in descent from Adnán, the fount of Arab genealogy. But they differ about the names: those generally given are Kahilan (Kohaylat), Sakláwi (which the Badawin pronounce Sagláwi), Abayán, and Hamdáni; others substitute Manákhi (the long-maned), Tanís and Jalfún. These require no certificate amongst Arabs; for strangers a simple statement is considered enough. The Badawin despise all half-breeds (Arab sires and country mares), Syrian, Turkish, Kurdish and Egyptian. They call these (first mentioned in the reign of Ahmes, 1600 B.C.) the “sons of horses;” as opposed to “sons of mares,” or thoroughbreds. Nor do they believe in city-bred animals. I have great doubts concerning our old English sires, such as the Darley Arabian which looks like a Kurdish half-bred, the descendant of those Cappadocians so much prized by the Romans: in Syria I rode a “Harfúshí” (Kurd) the very image of it. There is no difficulty in buying Arab stallions except the price. Of course the tribe does not like to part with what may benefit the members generally; but offers of £500 to £1,000 would
overcome men’s scruples. It is different with mares, which are almost always the joint property of several owners. The people too dislike to see a hat on a thoroughbred mare: “What hast thou done that thou art ridden by that ill-omened Kafir?” the Badawin used to mutter when they saw a highly respectable missionary at Damascus mounting a fine Ruwalá mare. The feeling easily explains the many wars about horses occurring in Arab annals, e.g., about Dáhis and Ghabrá. (C. de Perceval, Essais, vol. ii.)

  2. The stricter kind of Eastern Jew prefers to die on the floor, not in bed, as was the case with the late Mr. Emmanuel Deutsch, who in his well-known article on the Talmud had the courage to speak of “Our Saviour.” But as a rule the Israelite, though he mostly appears as a Deist, a Unitarian, has a fund of fanatical feelings which crop up in old age and near death. The “converts” in Syria and elsewhere, whose Judaism is intensified by “conversion,” when offers are made to them by the missionaries repair to the Khákhám (scribe) and, after abundant wrangling determine upon a modus vivendi. They are to pay a proportion of their wages, to keep careful watch in the cause of Israel and to die orthodox. In Istria there is a legend of a Jew Prior in a convent who was not discovered till he announced himself most unpleasantly on his death-bed. For a contrary reason to Jewish humility, the Roman Emperors preferred to die standing.