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

by A. S. Byatt

  17. i.e., gaining much one day and little another.

  18. Lit. “Rest thyself,” i.e., by changing posture.

  19. Arab. “’Unnábi” = between dark yellow and red.

  20. Arab. “Nílah,” lit. = indigo, but here applied to all the materials for dyeing. The word is Sanskrit, and the growth probably came from India, although during the Crusaders’ occupation of Jerusalem it was cultivated in the valley of the lower Jordan. I need hardly say that it has nothing to do with the word “Nile” whose origin is still sub judice. And yet I lately met a sciolist who pompously announced to me this philological absurdity as a discovery of his own.

  21. Still popular form of “bilking” in the Wakálahs or Caravanserais of Cairo: but as a rule the Bawwáb (porter or doorkeeper) keeps a sharp eye on those he suspects. The evil is increased when women are admitted into these places; so periodical orders for their exclusion are given to the police.

  22. Natives of Egypt always hold this diaphoresis a sign that the disease has abated and they regard it rightly in the case of bilious remittents to which they are subject, especially after the hardships and sufferings of a sea-voyage with its alternations of fasting and over-eating.

  23. Not simply, “such and such events happened to him” (Lane); but, “a curious chance befel him.”

  24. Arab. “Harámi,” lit. = one who lives on unlawful gains; popularly a thief.

  25. Meaning he turned on the water, hot and cold.

  26. Men are often seen doing this in the Hammam. The idea is that the skin when free from sebaceous exudation sounds louder under the clapping. Easterns judge much by the taste of the perspiration, especially in horse-training, which consists of hand-gallops for many successive miles. The sweat must not taste over salt and when held between thumb and forefinger and the two drawn apart must not adhere in filaments.

  27. Lit. “Aloes for making Nadd;” see vol. i. 364. “Eagle-wood” (the Malay Aigla and Agallochum, the Sansk. Agura) gave rise to many corruptions as lignum aloes, the Portuguese Páo d’ Aguila, etc. “Calamba” or “Calambak” was the finest kind. See Colonel Yule in the Voyage of Linschoten (vol. i. 120 and 150) edited for the Hakluyt Soc. (1885) by my learned and most amiable friend, the late Arthur Coke Burnell.

  28. The Hammam is one of those unpleasant things which are left “Alà júdi-k” = to thy generosity; and the higher the bather’s rank the more he or she is expected to pay. See Pilgrimage, i. 103. In 1853 I paid at Cairo 3 piastres and twenty paras, something more than sixpence, but now five shillings would be asked.

  29. This is something like the mythical duchess in England who could not believe that the poor were starving when sponge-cakes were so cheap.

  30. This magnificent “Bakhshish” must bring water into the mouths of all the bath-men in the coffee-house assembly.

  31. i.e., the treasurer did not, as is the custom of such gentry, demand and receive a large “Bakhshish” on the occasion.

  32. A fair specimen of clever Fellah chaff.

  33. In the first room of the Hammam, called the Maslakh or stripping-place, the keeper sits by a large chest in which he deposits the purses and valuables of his customers and also makes it the caisse for the pay. Something of the kind is now done in the absurdly called “Turkish baths” of London.

  34. This is the rule in Egypt and Syria and a clout hung over the door shows that women are bathing. I have heard, but only heard, that in times and places when eunuchs went in with the women youths managed by long practice to retract the testicles so as to pass for castratos. It is hard to say what perseverance may not effect in this line; witness Orsini and his abnormal development of hearing, by exercising muscles which are usually left idle.

  35. This reference to Allah shows that Abu Sir did not believe his dyer-friend.

  36. Arab. “Dawá” (lit. remedy, medicine) the vulgar term: [Burton here cross-references a note to a tale not included in this edition that reads:] This is the popular idea of a bushy “veil of nature” in women: it is always removed by depilatories and vellication. When Bilkis Queen of Sheba discovered her legs by lifting her robe (Koran, xxvii.), Solomon was minded to marry her, but would not do so till the devils had by a depilatory removed the hair. The popular preparation (called Núrah) consists of quicklime, 7 parts, and Zirník or orpiment, 3 parts: it is applied in the Hammam to a perspiring skin, and it must be washed off immediately the hair is loosened or it burns and discolours. The rest of the body-pile (Sha’arat opp. to Sha’ar = hair) is eradicated by applying a mixture of boiled honey with turpentine or other gum, and rolling it with the hand till the hair comes off. Men, I have said, remove the pubes by shaving, and pluck the hair of the arm-pits, one of the vestiges of pre-Adamite man. A good depilatory is still a desideratum, the best perfumers of London and Paris have none which they can recommend. The reason is plain: the hair-bulb can be eradicated only by destroying the skin.

  37. Arab. “Má Kahara-ní” = or none hath overcome me.

  38. Bresl. Edit. “The King of Isbániya.” For the “Ishbán” (Spaniards) an ancient people descended from Japhet, son of Noah, and who now are no more, see Al-Mas’udi (Fr. Transl. i. 361). The “Herodotus of the Arabs” recognizes only the “Jalálikah” or Gallicians, thus bearing witness to the antiquity and importance of the Gallego race.

  39. Arab. “Sha’r,” properly, hair of body, pile, especially the pecten. See Burckhardt (Prov. No. 202), “grieving for lack of a cow she made a whip of her bush,” said of those who console themselves by building castles in Spain. The “parts below the waist” is the decent Turkish term for the privities.

  40. The drowning is a martyr’s death, the burning is a foretaste of Hell-fire.

  41. Meaning that if the trick had been discovered the Captain would have taken the barber’s place. We have seen (page 34) the Prime Minister superintending the royal kitchen and here the Admiral fishes for the King’s table. It is even more naïve than the Court of Alcinöus.

  42. Bresl. Edit. xi. 32: i.e., save me from disgrace.

  43. Arab. “Khinsir” or “Khinsar,” the little finger or the middle finger. In Arabic each has its own name or names which is also that of the corresponding toe, e.g., Ibhám (thumb); Sabbábah, Musabbah or Da’áah (forefinger); Wastá (medius); Binsir (annularis, ring-finger) and Khinsar (minimus). There are also names for the several spaces between the fingers. See the English Arabic Dictionary (London: Kegan Paul and Co., 1881) by the Rev. Dr. Badger, a work of immense labour and research, but which, I fear, has been to the learned author a labour of love not of profit.

  44. Meaning of course that the King signed towards the sack in which he supposed the victim to be, but the ring fell off before it could take effect. The Eastern story-teller often balances his multiplicity of words and needless details by a conciseness and an elliptical style which make his meaning a matter of divination.

  45. [Barton here cross-references a note to a tale not included in this edition that reads:] Alluding to the Fishár or “Squeeze of the tomb.” This is the Jewish Hibbut hakkeber which all must endure, save those who lived in the Holy Land or died on the Sabbath-eve (Friday night). Then comes the questioning by the Angels Munkar and Nakir (vulgarly called Nákir and Nakír) for which see Lane (M. E. chap. xviii.). In Egypt a “Mulakkin” (intelligencer) is hired to prompt and instruct the dead. Moslems are beginning to question these facts of their faith: a Persian acquaintance of mine filled his dead father’s mouth with flour and finding it in loco on opening the grave, publicly derided the belief. But the Mullahs had him on the hip, after the fashion of reverends, declaring that the answers were made through the whole body, not only by the mouth. At last the Voltairean had to quit Shiraz.

  THE SLEEPER AND THE WAKER

  1. Arab. “Al-Náim wa al-Yakzán.” This excellent story is not in the Mac. or Bresl. Edits.; but is given in the Breslau Text, iv. 134-189. It is familiar to readers of the old “Arabian Nights Entertainments” as “Abou-Hassan or the Sleeper Awakened;” and as
yet it is the only one of the eleven added by Galland whose original has been discovered in Arabic: the learned Frenchman, however, supplied it with embellishments more suo, and seems to have taken it from an original fuller than our text as is shown by sundry poetical and other passages which he apparently did not invent. Lane (vol. ii. chap. 12), noting that its chief and best portion is an historical anecdote related as a fact, is inclined to think that it is not a genuine tale of The Nights. He finds it in Al-Isháki who finished his history about the close of Sultan Mustafá the Osmanli’s reign, circa A.H. 1032 (= 1623) and he avails himself of this version as it is “narrated in a simple and agreeable manner.” Mr. Payne remarks, (“The above title (Asleep and Awake) is of course intended to mark the contrast between the everyday (or waking) hours of Aboulhusn and his fantastic life in the Khalif’s palace, supposed by him to have passed in a dream;” I may add that amongst frolicsome Eastern despots the adventure might often have happened and that it might have given a hint to Cervantes.

  2. i.e. The Wag. The old version calls him “the Debauchee.”

  3. Arab. “Al-Fárs;” a people famed for cleverness and debauchery. I cannot see why Lane omitted the Persians, unless he had Persian friends at Cairo.

  4. i.e. the half he intended for spending-money

  5. i.e. “men,” a characteristic Arab idiom: here it applies to the sons of all time.

  6. i.e. make much of thee.

  7. In Lane the Caliph is accompanied by “certain of his domestics.”

  8. Arab. “Khubz Mutabbak,”= bread baked in a platter, instead of in an oven, an earthen jar previously heated, to the sides of which the scones or bannocks of dough are applied: “it is lighter than oven-bread, especially if it be made thin and leavened.” See Al-Shakúrí, a medical writer quoted by Dozy.

  9. In other parts of The Nights Harun al-Rashid declines wine-drinking.

  10. The ’Allámah (doctissimus) Sayce (p. 212, Comparative Philology, London, Trübner, 1885) goes far back for Khalifah = a deputy, a successor. He begins with the Semitic (Hebrew?) root “Khaliph” = to change, exchange: hence “Khaleph” = agio. From this the Greeks got their and Cicero his “Collybus,” a money-lender.

  11. Arab. “Harfúsh,” (in Bresl. Edit. iv. 138, “Kharfúsh”), in popular parlance a “blackguard.” I have to thank Mr. Alexander J. Cotheal, of New York, for sending me a MS. copy of this tale.

  12. Arab. “Ta’ám,” in Egypt and Somaliland = millet seed (Holcus Sorghum) cooked in various ways. In Barbary it is applied to the local staff of life, Kuskusú, wheaten or other flour damped and granulated by hand to the size of peppercorns, and lastly steamed (as we steam potatoes), the cullender-pot being placed over a long-necked jar full of boiling water. It is served with clarified butter, shredded onions and meat; and it represents the Risotto of Northern Italy. Europeans generally find it too greasy for digestion. This Barbary staff of life is of old date and is thus mentioned by Leo Africanus in early sixth century. “It is made of a lump of Dow, first set upon the fire, in a vessel full of holes and afterwards tempered with Butter and Pottage.” So says good Master John Pory, A Geographical Historie of Africa, by John Leo, a Moor, London, 1600, impensis George Bishop.

  13. Arab. “Bi al-Salám” (pron. “Bissalám”) = in the Peace (of Allah).

  14. And would bring him bad luck if allowed to go without paying.

  15. i.e. of the first half, as has been shown.

  16. Arab. “Kumájah” from the Persian Kumásh = bread unleavened and baked in ashes. Egyptians use the word for bannocks of fine flour.

  17. Arab. “Kalí,” our “alcali.”

  18. These lines have occurred twice (see p. 74); I quote Mr. Payne.

  19. Arab. “Yá ’llah, yá ’lláh;” vulg. used for “Look sharp!” e.g. “Yá ’llah jári, yá walad” = “Be off at once, boy.”

  20. Arab. “Banj akrítashí,” a term which has occurred before.

  21. A natural clock, called by West Africans Cokkerapeek = Cock-speak. All the world over it is the subject of superstition: see Giles’s “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio” (i. 177), where Miss Li, who is a devil, hears the cock crow and vanishes.

  22. In Lane Al-Rashid “found at the door his young men waiting for him and ordered them to convey Abu-l-Hasan upon a mule and returned to the palace; Abu-l-Hasan being intoxicated and insensible. And when the Khaleefeh had rested himself in the palace, he called for,” etc.

  23. Arab. “Kursi,” Assyrian “Kussú”=throne; and “Korsái” in Aramaic (or Nabathean as Al-Mas’udi calls it), the second growth-period of the “Semitic” family, which supplanted Assyrian and Babylonian, and became, as Arabic now is, the common speech of the “Semitic” world.

  24. Arab. “Makán mahjúb,” which Lane renders by “a private closet,” and Payne by a “privy place,” suggesting that the Caliph slept in a numéro cent. So, when starting for the “Trakki Campaign,” Sir Charles Napier (of Sind), in his zeal for lightening officers’ baggage, inadvertently chose a water-closet tent for his head-quarters—magno cum risu not of the staff, who had a strange fear of him, but of the multitude who had not.

  25. Arab. “Dar al-Salam,” one of the seven “Gardens” into which the Mohammedan Paradise is divided. Man’s fabled happiness began in a Garden (Eden) and the suggestion came naturally that it would continue there.

  26. Branch of Pearl.

  27. Arab. “Kahbah,” the lowest word, effectively used in contrast with the speaker’s surroundings.

  28. Arab. “Yá kabírí,” = mon brave, my good man.

  29. This exaggeration has now become familiar to English speech.

  30. Like an Eastern he goes to the water-closet the first thing in the morning, or rather dawn, and then washes ceremonially before saying the first prayer. In Europe he would probably wait till after breakfast.

  31. I have explained why an Eastern does not wash in the basin as Europeans do in note 97 for “Tale of Nur al-Din and His Son.”

  32. i.e. He was so confused that he forgot. All Moslems know how to pray, whether they pray or not.

  33. The dawn-prayer consists of only four inclinations (raka’át); two “Farz” (divinely appointed), and two Sunnah (the custom of the Apostle). For the Raka’áh see Lane, M.E. chapt. iii.; it cannot be explained without illustrations.

  34. After both sets of prayers, Farz and Sunnah, the Moslem looks over his right shoulder and says “The Peace (of Allah) be upon you and the ruth of Allah,” and repeats the words over the left shoulder. The salutation is addressed to the Guardian Angels or to the bystanders (Moslems) who, however, do not return it.

  35. i.e. Ibrahim of Mosul the musician.

  36. Arab. “Líyúth” plur. of “Layth,” a lion: here warriors are meant.

  37. The Abbasides traced their descent from Al-Abbas, Mohammed’s uncle, and justly held themselves as belonging to the family of the Prophet.

  38. Arab. “Nímshah” = “half-sword.”

  39. i.e. May thy dwelling-place never fall into ruin. The prayer has, strange to say, been granted. “The present city on the Eastern bank of the Tigris was built by Haroun al-Rashid, and his house still stands there and is an object of reverent curiosity.” So says my friend Mr. Grattan Geary (vol. i. p. 212, Through Asiatic Turkey, London: Low, 1878). He also gives a sketch of Zubaydah’s tomb on the western bank of the Tigris near the suburb which represents old Baghdad: it is a pineapple dome springing from an octagon, both of brick once revetted with white stucco.

  40. In the Bresl. Edit. four hundred. I prefer the exaggerated total.

  41. i.e. the raised recess at the upper end of an Oriental saloon, and the place of honour, which Lane calls by its Egyptian name “Líwán.” See his vol. i. 312 and his M.E. chapt. i.

  42. “Bit o’Musk.”

  43. “A gin,” a snare.

  44. “A gift,” a present. It is instructive to compare Abu al-Hasan with Sancho Panza, sprightly Arab wit with grave Spanish humour.

  45. i.e. he fell do
wn senseless. The old version has “his head knocked against his knees.”

  46. Arab. “Waddí” vulg. Egyptian and Syrian for the classical “Addí” (ii. of Adú = preparing to do). No wonder that Lane complains (iii. 376) of the “vulgar style, abounding in errors.”

  47. O Apple, O Repose o’ Hearts, O Musk, O Choice Gift.

  48. Arab. “Doghrí,” a pure Turkish word, in Egypt meaning “truly, with truth,” straightforwardly; in Syria = straight (going), directly.

  49. Arab. “Máristán.”

  50. Arab. “Janzir,” another atrocious vulgarism for “Zanjír,” which, however, has occurred before.

  51. Arab. “Arafshah.”

  52. In the “Mishkát al-Masábih” (ii. 341), quoted by Lane, occurs the Hadis, “Shut your doors anights and when so doing repeat the Basmalah; for the Devil may not open a door shut in Allah’s name.” A pious Moslem in Egypt always ejaculates, “In the name of Allah, the Compassionating,” etc., when he locks a door, covers up bread, doffs his clothes, etc., to keep off devils and dæmons.