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

by A. S. Byatt

  26. Outside this noble gate, the Bab al-Nasr, there is a great cemetery wherein, by the by, lies Burckhardt, my predecessor as a Hájj to Meccah and Al-Medinah. Hence many beggars are always found squatting in its neighbourhood.

  27. Friends sometimes walk alongside the rider holding the stirrup in sign of affection and respect, especially to the returning pilgrim.

  28. Equivalent to our Alas! It is a woman’s word never used by men; and foreigners must be most careful of this distinction under pain of incurring something worse than ridicule. I remember an officer in the Bombay Army who, having learned Hindostani from women, always spoke of himself in the feminine and hugely scandalized the Sepoys.

  29. i.e., a neighbour. The “quarters” of a town in the East are often on the worst of terms. See my Pilgrimage.

  30. In the patriarchal stage of society the mother waits upon her adult sons. Even in Dalmatia I found, in many old-fashioned houses, the ladies of the family waiting upon the guests. Very pleasant, but somewhat startling at first.

  31. Here the apodosis would be “We can all sup together.”

  32. Arab. “Záwiyah” (= oratory), which is to a Masjid what a chapel is to a church.

  33. Arab. “Kasr,” prop. a palace: so the Tuscan peasant speaks of his “palazzo.”

  34. This sale of a free-born Moslem was mere felony. But many centuries later Englishmen used to be sold and sent to the plantations in America.

  35. Arab. “Kawwás,” lit. an archer, suggesting les archers de la Sainte Hermandade. In former days it denoted a serjeant, an apparitor, an officer who executed magisterial orders. In modern Egypt he became a policeman (Pilgrimage, i. 29). As “Cavass” he appears in gorgeous uniform and sword, an orderly attached to public offices and Consulates.

  36. A purely imaginary King.

  37. The Bresl. Edit. (ix. 370) here and elsewhere uses the word “Nútiyá” = Nautá, for the common Bahríyah or Malláh.

  38. Arab. “Tawáf,” the name given to the sets (Ashwát) of seven circuits with the left shoulder presented to the Holy House; that is walking “widdershins” or “against the sun” (“with the sun” being like the movement of a watch). For the requisites of this rite see Pilgrimage, iii. 234.

  39. Arab. “Akh;” brother has a wide signification amongst Moslems and may be used in addressing or referring to any of the Saving Faith.

  40. Said by the master when dismissing a servant and meaning, “I have not failed in my duty to thee!” The answer is, “Allah acquit thee thereof!”

  41. A Moslem prison is like those of Europe a century ago; to think of it gives gooseflesh. Easterns laugh at our idea of penitentiary and the Arabs of Bombay call it “Al-Bistán” (the Garden) because the court contains a few trees and shrubs. And with them a garden always suggests an idea of Paradise. There are indeed only two efficacious forms of punishment all the world over, corporal for the poor and fines for the rich, the latter being the severer form.

  42. i.e., he shall answer for this.

  43. A pun upon “Khalíyah” (bee-hive) and “Khaliyah” (empty). Khalíyah is properly a hive of bees with a honey-comb in the hollow of a tree-trunk, opposed to Kawwárah, hive made of clay or earth (Al-Hariri; Ass. of Tiflis). There are many other terms, for Arabs are curious about honey. Pilgrimage, iii. 110.

  44. Lane (iii. 237) supposes by this title that the author referred his tale to the days of the Caliphate. “Commander of the Faithful” was, I have said, the style adopted by Omar in order to avoid the clumsiness of “Caliph” (successor) of the Caliph (Abu Bakr) of the Apostle of Allah.

  45. Eastern thieves count four modes of housebreaking; (1) picking out burnt bricks; (2) cutting through unbaked bricks; (3) wetting a mud wall and (4) boring through a wooden wall (Vikram and the Vampire p. 172).

  46. Arab. “Zabbat,” literally a lizard (fem.), also a wooden lock, the only one used throughout Egypt. An illustration of its curious mechanism is given in Lane (Modern Egypt., Introduc.)

  47. Arab. “Dabbús.” The Eastern mace is well known to English collectors; it is always of metal, and mostly of steel, with a short handle like our facetiously called “life-preserver.” The head is in various forms, the simplest a ball, smooth and round, or broken into sundry high and angular ridges like a melon, and in select weapons shaped like the head of some animal, bull, etc.

  48. The red habit is a sign of wrath and vengeance and the Persian Kings like Fath Al Shah, used to wear it when about to order some horrid punishment, such as the “Shakk;” in this a man was hung up by his heels and cut into two from the fork downwards to the neck, when a turn of the chopper left that untouched. White robes denoted peace and mercy as well as joy The “white” hand and “black” hand have been explained. A “white death” is quiet and natural, with forgiveness of sins. A “black death” is violent and dreadful, as by strangulation; a “green death” is robing in rags and patches like a dervish; and a “red death” is by war or bloodshed (A. P., ii. 670). Among the mystics it is the resistance of man to his passions.

  49. This in the East is the way “pour se faire valoir;” whilst Europeans would hold it a mere “bit of impudence,” aping dignity.

  50. The Chief Mufti or Doctor of the Law, an appointment first made by the Osmanli Mohammed II., when he captured Constantinople in A.D. 1453. Before that time the functions were discharged by the Kázi al-Kuzát (Kazi-in-Chief), the Chancellor.

  51. So called because here lived the makers of crossbows (Arab. Bunduk now meaning a fire-piece, musket, etc.). It is the modern district about the well-known Khan al-Hamzawi.

  52. Pronounced “Goodareeyyah,” and so called after one of the troops of the Fatimite Caliphs. The name “Yamániyah” is probably due to the storyteller’s inventiveness.

  53. 53.I have noted that as a rule in The Nights poetical justice is administered with much rigour and exactitude. Here, however, the tale-teller allows the good brother to be slain by the two wicked brothers as he permitted the adulterous queens to escape the sword of Kamar al-Zaman. Dr. Steingass brings to my notice that I have failed to do justice to the story of Sharrkán, where I note that the interest is injured by the gratuitous incest. But this has a deeper meaning and a grander artistic effect. Sharrkán begins with most unbrotherly feelings towards his father’s children by a second wife. But Allah’s decree forces him to love his half-sister despite himself, and awe and repentance convert the savage, who joys at the news of his brother’s reported death, to a loyal and devoted subject of the same brother. But Judar with all his goodness proved himself an arrant softy and was no match for two atrocious villains. And there may be overmuch of forgiveness as of every other good thing.

  54. In such case the “’iddah” would be four months and ten days.

  55. Not quite true. Weil’s German version, from a MS. in the Ducal Library of Gotha, gives the “Story of Judar of Cairo and Mahmud of Tunis” in a very different form. It has been pleasantly “translated (from the German) and edited” by Mr. W. F. Kirby of the British Museum, under the title of The New Arabian Nights (London: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co.), and the author kindly sent me a copy. New Arabian Nights seems now to have become a fashionable title applied without any signification: such at least is the case with the pleasant collection of Nineteenth Century Novelettes, published under that designation by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, 1884.

  JULNAR THE SEA-BORN AND HER SON KING BADR BASIM OF PERSIA

  1. In the Macnaghten Edition “Shahzamán,” a corruption of Sháh Zamán = King of the Age.

  2. [In a note to a tale not included in this edition Burton wrote:] Antar notes the “Spears of Khatt” and “Rudaynian lances.” Rudaynah is said to have been the wife of one Samhár, the Ferrara of lances; others make her the wife of Al-Ka’azab and hold Samhár to be a town in Abyssinia where the best weapons were manufactured.

  3. i.e., bathe her and apply cosmetics to remove all traces of travel.

  4. These pretentious and curious display
s of coquetry are not uncommon in handsome slave-girls when newly bought; and it is a kind of pundonor to humour them. They may also refuse their favours and a master who took possession of their persons by brute force would be blamed by his friends, men and women. Even the most despotic of despots, Fath Ali Shah of Persia, put up with refusals from his slave-girls and did not, as would the mean-minded, give them in marriage to the grooms or cooks of the palace.

  5. Such continence is rarely shown by the young Jallabs or slave-traders; when older they learn how much money is lost with the chattel’s virginity.

  6. Midwives in the East, as in the less civilized parts of the West, have many nostrums for divining the sex of the unborn child.

  7. Arabic (which has no written “g”) from Pers. Gulnár (Gul-i-anár), pomegranate-flower, the “Gulnare” of Byron who learnt his Orientalism at the Mekhitarist (Armenian) Convent, Venice. I regret to see the little honour now paid to the gallant poet in the land where he should be honoured the most. The systematic depreciation was begun by the late Mr. Thackeray, perhaps the last man to value the noble independence of Byron’s spirit; and it has been perpetuated, I regret to see, by better judges. These critics seem wholly to ignore the fact that Byron founded a school which covered Europe from Russia to Spain, from Norway to Sicily, and which from England passed over to the two Americas. This exceptional success, which has not yet fallen even to Shakespeare’s lot, was due to genius only, for the poet almost ignored study and poetic art. His great misfortune was being born in England under the Georgium Sidus. Any Continental people would have regarded him as one of the prime glories of his race.

  8. Arab. “Fí al-Kamar,” which Lane renders “in the moonlight.” It seems to me that the allusion is to the Comorin Islands; but the sequel speaks simply of an island.

  9. Arab. “’Alà Kulli hál,” a popular phrase, like the Anglo-American “anyhow.”

  10. In the text the name does not appear till near the end of the tale.

  11. i.e., Full moon smiling.

  12. I quote Mr. Payne.

  13. This manner of listening is not held dishonourable amongst Arabs or Easterns generally; who, however, hear as little good of themselves as Westerns declare in proverb.

  14. 14. Arab. “Hasab wa nasab,” before explained as inherited degree and acquired dignity. Arab. “Hasab” (= quantity), the honour a man acquires for himself; opposed to “Nasab” (genealogy), honours inherited from ancestry: the Arabic well expresses my old motto (adopted by Chinese Gordon), Honour, not Honours.

  15. Arab. “Mujájat” = spittle running from the mouth: hence Lane, “is like running saliva,” which, in poetry is not pretty.

  16. Arab. and Heb. “Salmandra” from Pers. Samandal (—dar—duk—dun, etc.), a Salamander, a mouse which lives in fire, some say a bird in India and China and others confuse with the chameleon (Bochart, Hierozoicon, Part ii. chap. vi).

  17. Arab. “Mahá” one of the four kinds of wild cows or bovine antelopes, bubalus, Antelope defassa, A. leucoryx, etc.

  18. I quote Lane (iii. 274) by way of variety; although I do not like his “bowels.”

  19. The last verse (286) of chap. ii. The Cow: “compelleth” in the sense of “burdeneth.”

  20. Salih’s speeches are euphuistic.

  21. From the Fatihah.

  22. A truly Eastern saying, which ignores the “old maids” of the West.

  23. i.e., naming her before the lieges as if the speaker were her and his superior. It would have been more polite not to have gone beyond “the unique pearl and the hoarded jewel”: the offensive part of the speech was using the girl’s name.

  24. Meaning emphatically that one and all were nobodies.

  25. Arab. Badr, the usual pun.

  26. Arab. “Kirát” (), the bean of the Abrus precatorius, used as a weight in Arabia and India and as a bead for decoration in Africa. It is equal to four Kamhahs or wheat-grains and about 3 grs. avoir.; and being the twenty-fourth of a miskal, it is applied to that proportion of everything. Thus the Arabs say of a perfect man, “He is of four-and-twenty Kirat” i.e., pure gold.

  27. The (she) myrtle: Kazimirski (A. de Biberstein) Dictionnaire Arabe-Français (Paris, Maisonneuve, 1867) gives Marsín = Rose de Jericho: myrte.

  28. Needless to note that the fowler had a right to expect a return present worth double or treble the price of his gift. Such is the universal practice of the East: in the West the extortioner says, “I leave it to you, sir!”

  29. And she does tell him all that the reader well knows.

  30. This was for sprinkling him, but the texts omit that operation. Arabic has distinct terms for various forms of metamorphosis. “Naskh” is change from a lower to a higher, as beast to man; “Maskh” (the common expression) is the reverse; “Raskh” is from animate to inanimate (man to stone) and “Faskh” is absolute wasting away to corruption.

  31. I render this improbable detail literally: its only significance can be that the ship was dashed against a rock.

  32. Who was probably squatting on his shop-counter. The “Bakkál” (who must not be confounded with the épicier), lit. “vender of herbs” = greengrocer, and according to Richardson used incorrectly for Baddál (?) vendor of provisions. Popularly it is applied to a seller of oil, honey, butter and fruit, like the Ital. “Pizzicagnolo” = Salsamentarius, and in North-West Africa to an inn-keeper.

  33. Here the Shaykh is mistaken: he should have said, “The Sun in old Persian.” “Almanac” simply makes nonsense of the Arabian Circe’s name. In Arab. it is “Takwím,” whence the Span. and Port. “Tacuino”: in Heb. Hakamathá-Takunah = sapientia dispositionis astrorum (Asiat. Research, iii. 120).

  34. i.e., for thy daily expenses.

  35. Un adolescent aime toutes les femmes. Man is by nature polygamic whereas woman as a rule is monogamic and polyandrous only when tired of her lover. For the man, as has been truly said, loves the woman, but the love of the woman is for the love of the man.

  36. I have already noted that the heroes and heroines of Eastern love-tales are always bonnes fourchettes: they eat and drink hard enough to scandalize the sentimental amourist of the West; but it is understood that this abundant diet is necessary to qualify them for the Herculean labours of the love night.

  37. Here again a little excision is necessary; the reader already knows all about it.

  38. Arab. “Hiss,” prop. speaking a perception (as of sound or motion) as opposed to “Hadas,” a surmise or opinion without proof.

  39. Arab. “Sawík,” the old and modern name for native frumenty, green grain (mostly barley) toasted, pounded, mixed with dates or sugar and eaten on journeys when cooking is impracticable. M. C. de Perceval (iii. 54), gives it a different and now unknown name; and Mr. Lane also applies it to “ptisane.” It named the “Day of Sawaykah” (for which see Pilgrimage, ii. 19), called by our popular authors the “War of the Meal-sacks.”

  40. Mr. Keightley (H. 122-24 Tales and Popular Fictions, a book now somewhat obsolete) remarks, “There is nothing said about the bridle in the account of the sale (infra), but I am sure that in the original tale, Badr’s misfortunes must have been owing to his having parted with it. In Chaucer’s Squier’s Tale the bridle would also appear to have been of some importance.” He quotes a story from the Notti Piacevoli of Straparola, the Milanese, published at Venice in 1550. And there is a popular story of the kind in Germany.

  41. Here, for the first time we find the name of the mother who has often been mentioned in the story. Faráshah is the fem. or singular form of “Farásh,” a butterfly, a moth. Lane notes that his Shaykh gives it the very unusual sense of “a locust.”

  42. Punning upon Jauharah = “a jewel,” a name which has an Hibernian smack.

  43. In the old version “All the lovers of the Magic Queen resumed their pristine forms as soon as she ceased to live;” moreover, they were all sons of kings, princes, or persons of high degree.

  KHALIFAH THE FISHERMAN OF BAGHDAD

  1. This i
s so rare, even amongst the poorest classes in the East, that it is mentioned with some emphasis.

  2. A beauty amongst the Egyptians, not the Arabs.

  3. True Fellah “chaff.”

  4. Alluding to the well-known superstition, which has often appeared in The Nights, that the first object seen in the morning, such as a crow, a cripple, or a cyclops, determines the fortunes of the day. Notices in Eastern literature are as old as the days of the Hitopadesa; and there is a something instinctive in the idea to a race of early risers. At an hour when the senses are most impressionable the aspect of unpleasant spectacles has double effect.