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

by A. S. Byatt

  53. An Arab idiom meaning, “I have not found thy good fortune (Ka’b = heel, glory, prosperity) do me any good.”

  54. Arab. “Yá Nakbah” = a calamity to those who have to do with thee!

  55. Koran cxii., the “Chapter of Unity.”

  56. i.e. “Delight of the vitals” (or heart).

  57. The trick is a rechauffé of the trick played on Al-Rashid and Zubaydah.

  58. “Kalb” here is not heart, but stomach. The big toes of the Moslem corpse are still tied in most countries, and in some a sword is placed upon the body; but I am not aware that a knife and salt (both believed to repel evil spirits) are so used in Cairo.

  59. The Moslem, who may not wear unmixed silk during his lifetime, may be shrouded in it. I have noted that the “Shukkah,” or piece, averages six feet in length.

  60. A vulgar ejaculation; the “hour” referring either to birth or to his being made one of the Caliph’s equerries.

  61. Here the story-teller omits to say that Masrúr bore witness to the Caliph’s statement.

  62. Arab. “Wa kuntu ráihah ursil warák,” the regular Fellah language.

  63. Arab. “’Irk al-Háshimi.” Lane remarks, “Whether it was so in Hashim himself (or only in his descendants), I do not find; but it is mentioned amongst the characteristics of his great-grandson, the Prophet.”

  64. Arab. “Bostán al-Nuzhah,” whose name made the stake appropriate.

  65. Arab. “Tamásíl” = generally carved images, which, amongst Moslems, always suggest idols and idolatry.

  66. The “Shubbák” here would be the “Mashrabiyah,” or latticed balcony, projecting from the saloon-wall, and containing room for three or more sitters. It is Lane’s “Meshrebeeyeh,” sketched in M.E. (Introduction) and now has become familiar to Englishmen.

  67. This is to show the cleverness of Abu al-Hasan, who had calculated upon the difference between Al-Rashid and Zubaydah. Such marvels of perspicacity are frequent enough in the folk-lore of the Arabs.

  68. An artful touch, showing how a tale grows by repetition. In Abu al-Hasan’s case (infra) the eyes are swollen by the swathes.

  69. A Hadis attributed to the Prophet, and very useful to Moslem husbands when wives differ overmuch with them in opinion.

  70. Arab. “Masarat fí-há,” which Lane renders, “And she threw money to her.”

  71. A saying common throughout the world, especially when the afflicted widow intends to marry again at the first opportunity.

  72. Arab. “Yá Khálati” = O my mother’s sister; addressed by a woman to an elderly dame.

  73. i.e. That I may put her to shame.

  74. Arab. “Zalábiyah.”

  75. Arab. “’Alà al-Kaylah,” which Mr. Payne renders by “Siesta-carpet.” Lane reads “Kiblah” (“in the direction of the Kiblah”) and notes that some Moslems turn the corpse’s head towards Meccah and others the right side, including the face. So the old version reads “feet towards Mecca.” But the preposition “Alà” requires the former sig.

  76. Many places in this text are so faulty that translation is mere guess-work; e.g. “Bashárah” can hardly be applied to ill-news.

  77. i.e. of grief for his loss.

  78. Arab. “Tobáni” which Lane renders “two clods.” I have noted that the Tob (Span. Adobe = At Tob) is a sunbaked brick. Beating the bosom with such material is still common amongst Moslem mourners of the lower class and the hardness of the blow gives the measure of the grief.

  79. i.e. of grief for her loss.

  80. Arab. “Ihtirák” often used in the metaphorical sense of consuming, torturing.

  81. Arab. “Haláwat,” lit. = a sweetmeat, a gratuity, a thank-offering.

  ALAEDDIN; OR, THE WONDERFUL LAMP

  1. Arab. “’Abadan,” a term much used in this MS. and used correctly. It refers always and only to future time, past being denoted by “Kattu” from Katta = he cut (in breadth, as opposed to Kadda = he cut lengthwise). See De Sacy Chrestom. ii. 443.

  2. In the text “Ibn mín,” a vulgarism for “man.” Galland adds that the tailor’s name was Mustapha—il y avait un tailleur nommé Mustafa.

  3. In classical Arabic the word is “Maghribi,” the local form of the root Gharaba = he went far away, (the sun) set, etc., whence “Maghribi” = a dweller in the Sunset-land. The vulgar, however, prefer “Maghrab” and “Maghrabi,” of which foreigners made “Mogrebin.” The “Moormen” are famed as magicians; so we find a Maghrabi Sahhár = wizard, who by the by takes part in a transformation scene like that of the Second Kalandar, in p. 10 of Spitta Bey’s Contes Árabes Modernes, etc. I may note that “Sihr,” according to Jauhari and Firozábádi = anything one can hold by a thin or subtle place, i.e., easy to handle. Hence it was applied to all sciences, “Sahhár” being = to ’Álim (or sage): and the older Arabs called poetry “Sihr al-halál”—lawful magic.

  4. i.e. blood is thicker than water, as the Highlanders say.

  5. A popular saying amongst Moslems which has repeatedly occurred in The Nights. The son is the “lamp of a dark house.”

  6. Out of respect to his brother, who was probably the senior: the H.V. expressly says so.

  7. Al-Marhúm = my late brother.

  8. This must refer to Cairo not to Al-Medinah whose title is “Al-Munawwarah” = the Illumined.

  9. A picturesque term for birth-place.

  10. In text “Yá Rájul” (for Rajul) = O man, an Egypto-Syrian form, broad as any Doric.

  11. Arab. Shúf-hu, the colloquial form of Shuf-hu.

  12. For the same sentiment see “Julnar the Sea-born,” p. 462.

  13. “I will hire thee a shop in the Chauk”—Carfax or market street says the H.V.

  14. The MS. writes the word Khwájá for Khwájah. Here we are at once interested in the scapegrace who looked Excelsior. In fact the tale begins with a strong inducement to boyish vagabondage and scampish indolence; but the Moslem would see in it the hand of Destiny bringing good out of evil. Amongst other meanings of “Khwájah” it is a honorific title given by Khorásánis to their notables. In Arab, the similarity of the word to “Khuwáj” = hunger, has given rise to a host of conceits, more or less frigid (Ibn Khallikán, iii. 45).

  15. Arab. “Wáhid min al-Tujjár,” the very vulgar style.

  16. i.e. the Saturday established as a God’s rest by the so-called “Mosaic” commandment No. 4. How it gradually passed out of observance, after so many centuries of most stringent application, I cannot discover: certainly the text in Cor. ii. 16-17 is insufficient to abolish or supersede an order given with such singular majesty and impressiveness by God and so strictly obeyed by man. The popular idea is that the Jewish Sabbath was done away with in Christ; and that sundry of the 1604 councils, e.g. Laodicea, anathematized those who kept it holy after such fashion. With the day the aim and object changed; and the early Fathers made it the “Feast of the Resurrection” which could not be kept too joyously. The “Sabbatismus” of our Sabbatarians, who return to the Israelitic practice and yet honour the wrong day, is heretical and vastly illogical; and the Sunday is better kept in France, Italy and other “Catholic” countries than in England and Scotland.

  17. All these words sárú, dakhalú, jalasú, &c. are in the plur. for the dual— popular and vulgar speech. It is so throughout the MS.

  18. The Persians apply the Arab word “Sahrá” = desert, to the waste grounds about a town.

  19. Arab. Kashákísh from kashkasha = he gathered fuel.

  20. In text “Shayy bi-lásh” which would mean lit. a thing gratis or in vain.

  21. In the text “Sabba raml” = cast in sand. It may be a clerical error for “Zaraba raml” = he struck sand i.e. made geomantic figures.

  22. Arab. Mauza’ = a place, an apartment, a saloon.

  23. Galland makes each contain quatre vases de bronze, grands comme des cuves.

  24. The Arab. is “Líwán.” Galland translates it by a “terrace” and “niche.”

  25. The idea is borrowed f
rom the lume eterno of the Rosicrucians. It is still prevalent throughout Syria where the little sepulchral lamps buried by the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans are so called. Many tales are told of their being found burning after the lapse of centuries: but the traveller will never see the marvel.

  26. The first notice of the signet-ring and its adventures is by Herodotus in the Legend of the Samian Polycrates; and here it may be observed that the accident is probably founded on fact; every fisherman knows that fish will seize and swallow spoon-bait and other objects that glitter. The text is the Talmudic version of Solomon’s seal-ring. The king of the demons, after becoming a “Bottle-imp,” prayed to be set free upon condition of teaching a priceless secret, and after cajoling the Wise One flung his signet into the sea and cast the owner into a land four hundred miles distant. Here David’s son begged his bread till he was made head cook to the King of Ammon at Mash Kernín. After a while, he eloped with Na’úzah, the daughter of his master, and presently when broiling a fish found therein his missing property. In the Moslem version, Solomon had taken prisoner Amínah, the daughter of a pagan prince, and had homed her in his Harem, where she taught him idolatry. One day before going to the Hammam he entrusted to her his signet-ring presented to him by the four angelic Guardians of sky, air, water and earth when the mighty Jinni Al-Sakhr, who was hovering about unseen, snatching away the ring, assumed the king’s shape, whereby Solomon’s form became so changed that his courtiers drove him from his own doors. Thereupon Al-Sakhr, taking seat upon the throne, began to work all manner of iniquity, till one of the Wazirs, suspecting the transformation, read aloud from a scroll of the law: this caused the demon to fly shrieking and to drop the signet into the sea. Presently Solomon, who had taken service with a fisherman, and received for wages two fishes a day, found his ring and made Al-Sakhr a “Bottle-imp.” The legend of St. Kentigern or Mungo of Glasgow, who recovered the Queen’s ring from the stomach of a salmon, is a palpable imitation of the Biblical incident which paid tribute to Cæsar.

  27. The Magician evidently had mistaken the powers of the Ring. This is against all probability and possibility, but on such abnormal traits are tales and novels founded.

  28. These are the Gardens of the Hesperides and of King Isope (Tale of Beryn Supplem. Canterbury Tales, Chaucer Soc. p. 84):—

  In mydward of this gardyn stant a feirè tre

  Of alle manner levis that under sky be,

  I-forgit and i-fourmyd, eche in his degre

  Of sylver, and of golde fyne, that lusty been to see.

  So in the Kathá (S. S.) there are trees with trunks of gold, branches of pearls, and buds and flowers of clear white pearls.

  29. The text causes some confusion by applying “Sullam” to staircase and ladder, hence probably the latter is not mentioned by Galland and Co., who speak only of an escalier de cinquante marches. “Sullam” (plur. “Salálim”) in modern Egyptian is popularly used for a flight of steps: see Spitta-Bey’s Contes Árabes Modernes, p. 70. The H. V. places under the slab a hollow space measuring four paces (kadam = 25 feet), and at one corner a wicket with a ladder. This leads to a vault of three rooms, one with the jars of gold; the second not to be swept by the skirts, and the third opening upon the garden of gems. “There thou shalt see a path, whereby do thou fare straight forwards to a lofty palace with a flight of fifty steps leading to a flat terrace; and here shalt thou find a niche wherein a lamp burneth.”

  30. In the H. V. he had thrust the lamp into the bosom of his dress, which, together with his sleeves, he had filled full of fruit, and had wound his girdle tightly around him lest any fall out.

  31. Africa (Arab. Afrikíyah) here is used in its old and classical sense for the limited tract about Carthage (Tunis) i.e., Africa Propria. But the scribe imagines it to be the P.N. of a city: so in Judar we find Fás and Miknás (Fez and Mequinez) converted into one settlement. The Maghribi, Mauritanian or Maroccan is famed for sorcery throughout the Moslem world. The Moslem “Kingdom of Afrikiyah” was composed of four provinces, Tunis, Tripoli, Constantina, and Bugia; and a considerable part of it was held by the Berber tribe of Sanhája or Sinhága, also called the Zenag, whence our modern “Senegal.” Another noted tribe which held Bajaiyah (Bugia) in Afrikiyah proper was the “Zawáwah,” the European “Zouaves.” (Ibn Khall. iv. 84.)

  32. Galland omits the name, which is outlandish enough.

  33. Meaning that he had incurred no blood-guiltiness, as he had not killed the lad and only left him to die.

  34. The H. V. explains away the improbability of the Magician forgetting his gift. “In this sore disquietude he bethought him not of the ring which, by the decree of Allah, was the means of Alaeddin’s escape; and indeed not only he but oft times those who practice the Black Art are baulked of their designs by Divine Providence.”

  35. The word is mostly derived from “’afar” = dust, and denotes, according to some, a man coloured like the ground or one who “dusts” all his rivals. “’Ifr” (fem. ’Ifrah) is a wicked and dangerous man. Al-Jannabi, I may here notice, is the chief authority for Afrikus son of Abraha and xviiith Tobba being the eponymus of “Africa.”

  36. Arab. “Ghayr an” = otherwise that, except that, a favourite form in this MS. The first word is the Syriac “Gheir” = for, a conjunction which is most unnecessarily derived by some from the Gr. yap.

  37. Galland and the H. V. make the mother deliver a little hygienic lecture about not feeding too fast after famine: exactly what an Eastern parent would not dream of doing.

  38. The lad now turns the tables upon his mother and becomes her master, having “a crow to pick” with her.

  39. Arab. “Munáfik” for whose true sense, “an infidel who pretendeth to believe in Al-Islam.” Here the epithet comes last being the climax of abuse, because the lowest of the seven hells was created for “hypocrites,” i.e. those who feign to be Moslems when they are Miscreants.

  40. Here a little abbreviation has been found necessary to avoid the whole of a twice-told tale; but nothing material has been omitted.

  41. Arab. “Taffaytu-hu.” This is the correct term = to extinguish. They relate of the great scholar Firozábádí, author of the Kámús (ob. A.H. 817 = A.D. 1414), that he married a Badawi wife in order to study the purest Arabic and once when going to bed said to her, “Uktuli’s-siráj,” the Persian “Chirágh-rá bi-kush” = Kill the lamp. “What,” she cried, “Thou an ’Álim and talk of killing the lamp instead of putting it out!”

  42. In the H. V. the mother takes the “fruits” and places them upon the ground; “but when darkness set in, a light shone from them like the rays of a lamp or the sheen of the sun.”

  43. D’Herbelot (s.v. Giabbar = Giant) connects “Jabábirah” with the Heb. Ghibbor, Ghibborim and the Pers. Div, Diván: of these were ’Ád and Shaddád, Kings of Syria: the Falastín (Philistines) ’Auj, Amálik and Banú Shayth or Seth’s descendants, the sons of God (Benu-Elohim) of the Book of Genesis (vi. 2) who inhabited Mount Hermon and lived in purity and chastity.

  44. Arab. Musawwadatayn = lit. two black things, rough copies, etc.

  45. Arab. Banú Adam, as opposed to Banú Elohim (Sons of the Gods), B. al-Jánn etc. The Banú al-Asfar = sons of the yellow, are Esau’s posterity in Edom, also a term applied by Arab historians to the Greeks and Romans whom Jewish fable derived from Idumæa: they are the people of the yellow or tawny faces. For the legend see Ibn Kkall. iii. 8, where the translator suggests that the by-name may be = the “sons of the Emperor” Flavius, confounded with “flavus,” a title left by Vespasian to his successors. The Banú al-Khashkhash = sons of the (black) poppy are the Ethiopians.

  46. Arab. Há! há! so Háka (fem. Háki) = Here for thee!

  47. So in Mediæval Europe Papal bulls and Kings’ letters were placed for respect on the head. See Duffield’s Don Quixote, Part i. xxxi.

  48. Galland makes the Juif only rusé et adroit.

  49. Arab. “Ghashím” = a “Johnny Raw” from the root “Ghashm” = inquity: Builders a
pply the word to an unhewn stone; addressed to a person it is considered slighting, if not insulting.

  50. The carat (Kírát) being most often, but not always, one twenty-fourth of the dinar.

  51. Kanání, plur. of Kinnínah.

  52. Here and below silver is specified, when as the platters in [other tales] were of gold. This is one of the many changes, contradictions and confusions which are inherent in Arab stories. See Spitta-Bey’s Contes Arabes, Preface.

  53. i.e. the Slave of the Lamp.

  54. This may be true, but my experience has taught me to prefer dealing with a Jew than with a Christian. The former will “jew” me perhaps, but his commercial cleverness will induce him to allow me some gain in order that I may not be quite disheartened: the latter will strip me of my skin and will grumble because he cannot gain more.