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

“Nard” = tables, arose with King Ardash�r son of Babuk, and was therefore called Nardash�r (Nard Ardash�r? ). He designed it as an image of the world and its people, so the board had twelve squares to represent the months; the thirty pieces or men represented the days, and the dice were the emblems of Fate and Lot.

 

[FN#215] i.e. a weaner, a name of good omen for a girl-child: see vol. vi. 145. The Hindi translator, Tot�r�m Shayy�n, calls her Ham�dah = the Praiseworthy.

 

[FN#216] Arab. Kir�m�t: see vols. ii. 237; iv. 45. The Necromancer clearly smells a rat holding with Diderot: De par le Roi! Defense � Dieu

De faire miracle en ce lieu;

 

and the stage properties afterwards found with the holy woman, such as the gallipot of colouring ointment, justify his suspicion.

 

[FN#217] ” ‘Aj�ib” plur. of ” ‘Aj�b,” a common exclamation amongst the populace. It is used in Persian as well as in Arabic.

 

[FN#218] Evidently la force de l’imagination, of which a curious illustration was given in Paris during the debauched days of the Second Empire. Before a highly “fashionable” assembly of men appeared a youth in fleshings who sat down upon a stool, bared his pudenda and closed his eyes when, by “force of fancy,”

erection and emission took place. But presently it was suspected and proved that the stool was hollow and admitted from below a hand whose titillating fingers explained the phenomenon.

 

[FN#219] a Moslems are curious about sleeping postures and the popular saying is:—Lying upon the right side is proper to Kings; upon the left to Sages, to sleep supine is the position of Allah’s Saints and prone upon the belly is peculiar to the Devils.

 

[FN#220] This ” �As�,” a staff five to six feet long, is one of the properties of Moslem Saints and reverends who, imitating that furious old Puritan, Caliph Omar, make and are allowed to make a pretty liberal distribution of its caresses.

 

[FN#221] i.e. as she was in her own home.

 

[FN#222] Arab. “Sul�k” a Sufistical expression, the road to salvation, &c.

 

[FN#223] In the H. V. her diet consisted of dry bread and fruits.

 

[FN#224] This is the first mention of the windows in the Arabic MS.

 

[FN#225] For this “Roc” of the older writers see vols. v. 122; vi. 16-49. I may remind the reader that the O. Egyptian “Rokh,”

or “Rukh,” by some written “Rekhit,” whose ideograph is a monstrous bird with one claw raised, also denotes pure wise Spirits, the Magi, &c. I know a man who derives from it our “rook” = beak and parson.

 

[FN#226] In the H. V he takes the Lamp from his bosom, where he had ever kept it since his misadventure with the African Magician [FN#227] Here the mythical Rukh is mixed up with the mysterious bird S�murgh, for which see vol. x. 117.

 

[FN#228] The H. V. adds, “hoping thereby that thou and she and all the household should fall into perdition.”

 

[FN#229] Rank mesmerism, which has been practiced in the East from ages immemorial. In Christendom Santa Guglielma worshipped at Brunate, “works many miracles, chiefly healing aches of head.”

In the H. V. Alaeddin feigns that he is ill and fares to the Princess with his head tied up.

 

[FN#230] Mr. Morier in “The Mirza” (vol. i. 87) says, “Had the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, with all their singular fertility of invention and never-ending variety, appeared as a new book in the present day, translated literally and not adapted to European taste in the manner attempted in M. Galland’s translation, I doubt whether they would have been tolerated, certainly not read with the avidity they are, even in the dress with which he has clothed them, however imperfect that dress maybe.” But in Morier’s day the literal translation was so despised that an Eastern book was robbed of half its charms, both of style and idea.

 

[FN#231] In the MS. Of the Biblioth�que National, Supplement Arabe (No. 2523, vol. ii. fol. 147), the story which follows “Aladdin” is that of the Ten Wazirs, for which see Supp. Nights ii. In Galland the Histoire de Codadad et des ses Fr�res comes next to the tale of Zayn al-Asnam: I have changed the sequence in order that the two stories directly translated from the Arabic may be together.

 

[FN#232] M. Hermann Zotenberg lately informed me that “Khudadad and his Brothers” is to be found in a Turkish MS., “Al-Faraj ba’d al-Shiddah”—Joy after Annoy—in the Biblioth�que Nationale of Paris. But that work is a mere derivation from the Persian “Haz�r o yek Roz” for which see my vol. x. p.441. The name Khudadad is common to most Eastern peoples, the Sansk. Devadatta, the Gr.

{Greek} and Dorotheus; the Lat. Deodatus, the Ital. Diodato, and Span. Diosdado, the French Dieu-donn�, and the Arab.-Persic Allad�d, D�vd�d and Khud�baksh. Khud� is the mod. Pers. form of the old Khud��=sovereign, king, as in M�h-i-Khud��=the sovereign moon, K�m-Khud��=master of his passions, etc.

 

[FN#233] Lit. Homes (or habitations) of Bakr (see vol. v. 66), by the Turks pronounced “Diy�r-i-Bek�r.” It is the most famous of the four provinces into which Mesopotamia (Heb. Naharaym, Arab.

Al-Jaz�rah) is divided by the Arabs; viz: Diy�r Bakr (capital Am�dah); Diy�r Modhar (cap. Rakkah or Aracta); Diy�r Rab�‘ah (cap. Nisibis) and Diy�r al-Jaz�rah or Al-Jaz�rah (cap. Mosul).

As regards the “King of Harr�n,” all these ancient cities were at some time the capitals of independent chiefs who styled themselves royalties.

 

[FN#234] The Heb. Charran, the Carrh of the classics where, according to the Moslems, Abraham was born, while the Jews and Christians make him emigrate thither from “Ur (hod. Mughayr) of the Chaldees.” Hence his Arab. title “Ibrahim al-Harr�ni.” My late friend Dr. Beke had a marvellous theory that this venerable historic Harr�n was identical with a miserable village to the east of Damascus because the Fellahs call it Harr�n al-‘Aw�m�d—of the Columns—from some Gr co-Roman remnants of a paltry provincial temple. See “Jacob’s Flight,” etc., London, Longmans, 1865.

 

[FN#235] P�rozah=turquoise, is the Persian, Fir�zah and Firuzakh (De Sacy, Chrest. ii. 84) the Arab. forms. The stone is a favourite in the East where, as amongst the Russians (who affect to despise the Eastern origin of their blood to which they owe so much of its peculiar merit), it is supposed to act talisman against wounds and death in battle; and the Persians, who hold it to be a guard against the Evil Eye, are fond of inscribing “turquoise of the old rock” with one or more of the “Holy Names.”

Of these talismans a modern Spiritualist asks, “Are rings and charms and amulets magnetic, to use an analogue for what we cannot understand, and has the immemorial belief in the power of relics a natural not to say a scientific basis?”

 

[FN#236] Samaria is a well-known name amongst Moslems, who call the city Shamr�n and Shamr�n. It was built, according to Ibn Batrik, upon Mount Samir by Amri who gave it the first name; and the Tar�kh Sam�r�, by Aba al-Fath Ab� al-Hasan, is a detailed account of its garbled annals. As Nabl�s (Neapolis of Herod., also called by him Sebaste) it is now familiar to the Cookite.

 

[FN#237] In the text Zangi-i-Adam-kh’w�r afterwards called Habashi=an Abyssinian. Galland simply says un negre. In India the “Habsh�” (chief) of Jinjirah (=Al-Jazirah, the Island) was admiral of the Grand Moghul’s fleets. These negroids are still dreaded by Hind�s and Hind�s and, when we have another “Sepoy Mutiny,” a few thousands of them bought upon the Zanzibar coast, dressed, drilled and officered by Englishmen, will do us yeomans’

service.

 

[FN#238] This seems to be a fancy name for a country: the term is Persian=the Oceanland or a seaport town: from “Dary�” the sea and b�r=a region, tract, as in Zanzib�r=Black-land. The learned Weil explains it (in loco) by Gegend der Brunnen, brunnengleicher ort, but I cannot accept Scott’s note (iv. 400), “Signifying the seacoast of every country; and hence the term is applied by Oriental geographers to the coast of Malabar.”

 

[FN#239] The onager, confounded by our older travellers with the zebra, is the G�r-i-kh�r of Persia, where it is the noblest game from which kings did not disdain to take a cognomen, e.g., Bahr�m-i-G�r. It is the “wild ass” of Jeremiah (ii. 24: xiv. 6).

The meat is famous in poetry for combining the flavours peculiar to all kinds of flesh (Ibn Khallikan iii. 117; iii. 239, etc.) and is noticed by Herodotus (Clio. cxxxiii.) and by Xenophon (Cyro. lib. 1) in sundry passages: the latter describes the relays of horses and hounds which were used in chasing it then as now. The traveller Olearius (A. D. 1637) found it more common than in our present day: Shah Abbas turned thirty-two wild asses into an enclosure where they were shot as an item of entertainment to the ambassadors at his court. The skin of the wild ass’s back produces the famous shagreen, a word seemingly derived from the Pers. “Saghr�,” e.g. “Kyafash-i-Saghri”=slippers of shagreen, fine wear fit for a “young Duke”. See in Ibn Khallikan (iv. 245) an account of a “J�r” (the Arabised “G�r”) eight hundred years old.

 

[FN#240] “Dasht-i-l�-siw�-H�”=a desert wherein is none save He (Allah), a howling wilderness.

 

[FN#241] Per. “N�z o and�z”=coquetry, in a half-honest sense. The Persian “K�k� Siy�h,” i.e. “black brother” (a domestic negro) pronounces N�z�-n�z�.

 

[FN#242] In the text Nimak-har�m: on this subject see vol. viii.

12.

 

[FN#243] i.e., an Arab of noble strain: see vol. iii. 72.

 

[FN#244] In the text “Kazz�k”=Cossacks, bandits, mounted highwaymen; the word is well known in India, where it is written in two different ways, and the late Mr. John Shakespear in his excellent Dictionary need hardly have marked the origin “U”

(unknown).

 

[FN#245] Here and below the Hindostani version mounts the lady upon a camel (“Ushtur” or “Unth”) which is not customary in India except when criminals are led about the bazar. An elephant would have been in better form.

 

[FN#246] The Ashraf� (Port. Xerafim) is a gold coin whose value has greatly varied with its date from four shillings upwards. In The (true) Nights we find (passim) that, according to the minting of the VIth Ommiade, ‘Abd al-Malik bin Marw�n (A.H. 65-86=A.D.

685-703), the coinage of Baghdad consisted of three metals. “Ita quoque peregrina suis nummis nomina posuit, aureum Dinar denarium, argentem Dirhen (lege dirham), Drachma, reum fols (fuls), follem appellans. * Nam Vera moneta aurea nomine follis lignabatur, ut reorum sub Aarone Raschido cussorum qui hoc nomen servavit.” (O. G. Tychsen p. 8. Introduct. in Rem numariam Muhammedanorum.) For the dinar, daric or misk�l see The Nights, vol i. 32; ix. 294; for the dirham, i. 33, ii. 316, etc.; and for the Fals or Fils=a fish scale, a spangle of metal, vol.

i. 321. In the debased currency of the Maroccan Empire the Fals of copper or iron, a substantial coin, is worth 2,160 to the French five-franc piece.

 

[FN#247] In the Hindi, as in Galland’s version, the horse is naturally enough of Turcoman blood. I cannot but think that in India we have unwisely limited ourselves for cavalry remounts to the Western market that exports chiefly the mongrel “Gulf Arab”

and have neglected the far hardier animal, especially the G�td�n blood of the Tartar plains, which supply “excellent horses whose speed and bottom are” say travellers in general, “so justly celebrated throughout Asia.” Our predecessors were too wise to “put all the eggs in one basket.”

 

[FN#248] An act of worship, see my Pilgrimage in which “Taw�f”=circuiting, is described in detail, ii. 38; iii. 2O1 et seqq. A counterpart of this scene is found in the Histoire du Sultan Aqchid (Ikhshid) who determined to witness his own funeral.