The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 13 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (summer reading list txt) 📕

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.

 

[FN#82] For “Mushayyad�t” see vol. viii. 23.

 

[FN#83] All these words s�r�, dakhal�, jalas�, &c. are in the plur. for the dual—popular and vulgar speech. It is so throughout the MS.

 

[FN#84] The Persians apply the Arab word “Sahr�”=desert, to the waste grounds about a town.

 

[FN#85] Arab. Kash�k�sh from the quadril, kashkasha = he gathered fuel.

 

[FN#86] In text “Shayy bi-l�sh” which would mean lit. a thing gratis or in vain.

 

[FN#87] 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.

 

[FN#88] Arab. Mauza’= a place, an apartment, a saloon.

 

[FN#89] Galland makes each contain quatre vases de bronze, grands comme des cuves.

 

[FN#90] The Arab. is “L�w�n,” for which see vols. iv. 71 and vii. 347. Galland translates it by a “terrace” and “niche.”

 

[FN#91] The idea is borrowed from 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.

 

[FN#92] 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 Kern�n. After a while, he eloped with Na’�zah, the daughter of his master, and presently when broiling a fish found therein his missing property. In the Moslem version, Solomon had taken prisoner Am�nah, 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 (see vol. i. 41; v. 36), 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 C sar.

 

[FN#93] 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.

 

[FN#94] 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 feir� 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 Kath� (S. S.) there are trees with trunks of gold, branches of pearls, and buds and flowers of clear white pearls.

 

[FN#95] 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. “Sal�lim”) in modern Egyptian is popularly used for a flight of steps: see Spitta-Bey’s “Contes Arabes Modernes,” p. 70. The H. V. places under the slab a hollow space measuring four paces (kadam = 2.5 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.”

 

[FN#96] 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.

 

[FN#97] Africa (Arab. Afrik�yah) here is used in its old and classical sense for the limited tract about Carthage (Tunis) net, Africa Propria. But the scribe imagines it to be the P. N. of a city: so m J�dar (vol. vi. 222) we find F�s and Mikn�s (Fez and Mequinez) converted into one settlement. The Maghribi, Mauritanian or Maroccan is famed for sorcery throughout the Moslem world: see vol. vi. 220. 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 Sanh�ja or Sinh�ga, also called the Zenag whence our modern “Senegal.” Another noted tribe which held Bajaiyah (Bugia) in Afrikiyah proper was the “Zaw�wah,” the European “Zouaves,” (Ibn Khall. iv. 84).

 

[FN#98] Galland omits the name, which is outlandish enough.

 

[FN#99] Meaning that he had incurred no blood-guiltiness, as he had not killed the lad and only left him to die.

 

[FN#100] 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.”

 

[FN#101] See vol. vii. 60. 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.”

 

[FN#102] 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 unneccessarily derived by some from the Gr. {Greek}.

 

[FN#103] 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.

 

[FN#104] The lad now turns the tables upon his mother and becomes her master, having “a crow to pick” with her.

 

[FN#105] Arab. “Mun�fik” for whose true sense, “an infidel who pretendeth to believe in Al-Islam,” see vol. vi. p. 207. Here the epithet comes last being the climax of abuse, because the lowest of the seven hells (vol. viii. 111) was created for “hypocrites,”

i.e., those who feign to be Moslems when they are Miscreants.

 

[FN#106] Here a little abbreviation has been found necessary to avoid the whole of a twice-told tale; but nothing material has been omitted.

 

[FN#107] Arab. “Taffaytu-hu.” This is the correct term = to extinguish. They relate of the great scholar Firoz�b�d�, author of the “K�m�s” (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-sir�j,” the Persian “Chir�gh-r� bi-kush” = Kill the lamp. “What,” she cried, “Thou an ‘ lim and talk of killing the lamp instead of putting it out!”

 

[FN#108] 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.”

 

[FN#109] For these fabled Giant rulers of Syria, Og King of Bashan, etc., see vols. vii. 84; ix. 109, 323. D’Herbelot (s. v.

Giabbar= Giant) connects “Jab�birah” with the Heb. Ghibbor Ghibborim and the Pers. D�v, Div�n: of these were ‘ d and Shadd�d, Kings of Syria: the Falast”in (Philistines) ‘Auj, Am�lik and Ban� 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.

 

[FN#110] The H. V. explains that the Jinni had appeared to the mother in hideous aspect, with noise and clamour, because she had scoured the Lamp roughly; but was more gentle with Alaeddin because he had rubbed it lightly. This is from Galland.

 

[FN#111] Arab. Musawwadatayn = lit. two black things, rough copies, etc.

 

[FN#112] Arab. Ban� Adam, as opposed to Ban� Elohim (Sons of the Gods), B. al-J�nn etc The Ban� 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 Idum a: in my vol. ii. 220, they are the people of the yellow or tawny faces. For the legend see Ibn Khall. iii. 8, where the translator suggests that the by-name may be = the “sees of the Emperor”

Flavius, confounded with “flavus,” a title left by Vespasian to his successors The Ban� al Khashkhash = sons of the (black) poppy are the Ethiopians.

 

[FN#113] Arab, H�! h�! so H�ka (fem. Haki) = Here for thee!

 

[FN#114] So in Medieval Europe Papal bulls and Kings’ letters were placed for respect on the head. See Duffield’s “Don Quixote,” Part i. xxxi.

 

[FN#115] Galland makes the Juif only rus� et adroit.

 

[FN#116] Arab. “Ghash�m” = a “Johnny Raw” from the root “Ghashm”

= iniquity: Builders apply the word to an unhewn stone; addressed to a person it is considered slighting, if not insulting. See vol. ii. 330.

 

[FN#117] The carat (K�r�t) being most often, but not always, one twenty-fourth of the diner. See vols. iii. 239; vii. 289.

 

[FN#118] Kan�n�, plur. of Kinn�nah.

 

[FN#119] Here and below silver is specified, whenas the platters in Night dxxxv. were of gold This is one of the many changes’

contradictions and confusions which are inherent in Arab stones.

See Spitta-Bey’s “Contes Arabes,” Preface.

 

[FN#120] i.e., the Slave of the Lamp.

 

[FN#121] 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