The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 10 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (highly recommended books .TXT) 📕

Nor does he mourn as they mourn who have no hope: he has an absolute conviction in future compensation; and, meanwhile, his lively poetic impulse, the poetry of ideas, not of formal verse, and his radiant innate idealism breathe a soul into the merest matter of squalid work-a-day life and awaken the sweetest harmonies of Nature epitomised in Humanity.

Such was the Moslem at a time when “the dark clouds of ignorance and superstition hung so thick on the intellectual horizon of Europe as to exclude every ray of learning that darted from the East and when all that was polite or elegant in literature was classed among the Studia Arabum”[FN#126]

Nor is the shady side of the picture less notable. Our Arab at his worst is a mere barbarian who has not forgotten the savage. He is a model mixture of childishness and astuteness, of simplicity and cunning, concealing levity of mind under solemnity of aspect. His stolid instinctive conservatism grovels before the tyrant rule of routine, despite that turbulent and licentious independence which ever suggests revolt against the ruler: his mental torpidity, founded upon physical indolence, renders immediate action and all manner of exertion distasteful: his conscious weakness shows itself in overweening arrogance and intolerance. His crass and self-satisfied ignorance makes him glorify the most ignoble superstitions, while acts of revolting savagery are the natural results of a malignant fanaticism and a furious hatred of every creed beyond the pale of Al-Islam.

It must be confessed that these contrasts make a curious and interesting tout ensemble.

� I

THE ORIGIN OF THE NIGHTS.

A.—The Birth place.

Here occur the questions, Where and When was written and to Whom do we owe a prose-poem which, like the dramatic epos of Herodotus, has no equal?

I proceed to lay before the reader a proc�s-verbal of the sundry pleadings already in court as concisely as is compatible with intelligibility, furnishing him with references to original authorities and warning him that a fully-detailed account would fill a volume. Even my own reasons for decidedly taking one side and rejecting the other must be stated briefly. And before entering upon this subject I would distribute the prose-matter of our Recueil of Folk-lore under three heads

1. The Apologue or Beast-fable proper, a theme which may be of any age, as it is found in the hieroglyphs and in the cuneiforms.

2. The Fairy-tale, as for brevity we may term the stories based upon supernatural agency: this was a favourite with olden Persia; and Mohammed, most austere and puritanical of the “Prophets,”

strongly objected to it because preferred by the more sensible of his converts to the dry legends of the Talmud and the Koran, quite as fabulous without the halo and glamour of fancy.

3. The Histories and historical anecdotes, analects, and acroamata, in which the names, when not used achronistically by the editor or copier, give unerring data for the earliest date � quo and which, by the mode of treatment, suggest the latest.

Each of these constituents will require further notice when the subject-matter of the book is discussed. The metrical portion of The Nights may also be divided into three categories, viz.:—

1. The oldest and classical poetry of the Arabs, e.g. the various quotations from the “Suspended Poems.”

2. The mediaeval, beginning with the laureates of Al-Rashid’s court, such as Al-Asma’� and Ab� Now�s, and ending with Al-Har�r�

A.H. 446-516 = 1030-1100.

3. The modern quotations and the pi�ces de circonstance by the editors or copyists of the Compilation.[FN#127]

Upon the metrical portion also further notices must be offered at the end of this Essay.

In considering the uncle derivatur of The Nights we must carefully separate subject-matter from language-manner. The neglect of such essential difference has caused the remark, “It is not a little curious that the origin of a work which has been known to Europe and has been studied by many during nearly two centuries, should still be so mysterious, and that students have failed in all attempts to detect the secret.” Hence also the chief authorities at once branched off into two directions. One held the work to be practically Persian: the other as persistently declared it to be purely Arab.

Professor Galland, in his Epistle Dedicatory to the Marquise d’O, daughter of his patron M. de Guillerague, showed his literary acumen and unfailing sagacity by deriving The Nights from India via Persia; and held that they had been reduced to their present shape by an Auteur Arabe inconnu. This reference to India, also learnedly advocated by M. Langl�s, was inevitable in those days: it had not then been proved that India owed all her literature to far older civilisations and even that her alphabet the N�gari, erroneously called Devan�gari, was derived through Ph�nicia and Himyar-land from Ancient Egypt. So Europe was contented to compare The Nights with the Fables of Pilpay for upwards of a century. At last the Pehlevi or old Iranian origin of the work found an able and strenuous advocate in Baron von Hammer-Purgstall [FN#128] who worthily continued what Galland had begun: although a most inexact writer, he was extensively read in Oriental history and poetry. His contention was that the book is an Arabisation of the Persian Haz�r Afs�nah or Thousand Tales and he proved his point.

Von Hammer began by summoning into Court the “Herodotus of the Arabs, (Ali Ab� al-Hasan) Al-Mas’�di who, in A.H. 333 (=944) about one generation before the founding of Cairo, published at Bassorah the first edition of his far-famed Mur�j al-Dahab wa Ma’�din al-Jauhar, Meads of Gold and Mines of Gems. The Styrian Orientalist[FN#129] quotes with sundry misprints[FN#130] an ampler version of a passage in Chapter lxviii., which is abbreviated in the French translation of M. C. Barbier de Meynard.[FN#131]

“And, indeed, many men well acquainted with their (Arab) histories[FN#132] opine that the stories above mentioned and other trifles were strung together by men who commended themselves to the Kings by relating them, and who found favour with their contemporaries by committing them to memory and by reciting them.

Of such fashion[FN#133] is the fashion of the books which have come down to us translated from the Persian (F�rasiyah), the Indian (Hind�yah),[FN#134] and the Gr�co-Roman (R�m�yah)[FN#135]: we have noted the judgment which should be passed upon compositions of this nature. Such is the book entituled Haz�r Afs�nah or The Thousand Tales, which word in Arabic signifies Khur�fah (Faceti�): it is known to the public under the name of �[he Boot of a Thousand Nights and a Night, (Kitab Alf Laylah wa Laylah).[FN#136] This is an history of a King and his Wazir, the minister’s daughter and a slavegirl (j�riyah) who are named Sh�rz�d (lion-born) and D�n�r-z�d (ducat-born).[FN#137] Such also is the Tale of Farzah,[FN#138]

(alii Firza), and Sim�s, containing details concerning the Kings and Wazirs of Hind: the Book of Al-Sindib�d[FN#139] and others of a similar stamp.”

Von Hammer adds, quoting chaps. cxvi. of Al-Mas’�di that Al-Mans�r (second Abbaside A.H. 136-158 = 754-775, and grandfather of Al-Rash�d) caused many translations of Greek and Latin, Syriac and Persian (Pehlevi) works to be made into Arabic, specifying the “Kal�lah wa Damnah,”[FN#140] the Fables of Bidp�i (Pilpay), the Logic of Aristotle, the Geography of Ptolemy and the Elements of Euclid. Hence he concludes “L’original des Mille et une Nuits

* selon toute vraisemblance, a �t� traduit au temps du Khalife Mansur, c’est-�-dire trente ans avant le r�gne du Khalife Haroun al-Raschid, qui, par la suite, devait lui-m�me jouer un si grand r�le dans ces histoires.” He also notes that, about a century after Al-Mas’udi had mentioned the Haz�r Afs�nah, it was versified and probably remodelled by one “R�sti,” the Takhallus or nom de plume of a bard at the Court of Mahm�d, the Ghaznevite Sultan who, after a reign of thirty-three years, ob. A.D. 1030.[FN#141]

Von Hammer some twelve years afterwards (Journ. Asiat August, 1839) brought forward, in his “Note sur l’origine Persane des Mille et une Nuits,” a second and an even more important witness: this was the famous Kitab al-Fihrist,[FN#142] or Index List of (Arabic) works, written (in A.H. 387 = 987) by Mohammed bin Is’h�k al-Nad�m (cup-companion or equerry), “popularly known as Ebou Yacoub el-Werrek.”[FN#143] The following is an extract (p. 304) from the Eighth Discourse which consists of three arts (fun�n).[FN#144] “The first section on the history of the confabulatores nocturni (tellers of night tales) and the relaters of fanciful adventures, together with the names of books treating upon such subjects.

Mohammed ibn Is’hak saith: The first who indited themes of imagination and made books of them, consigning these works to the libraries, and who ordered some of them as though related by the tongues of brute beasts, were the pal�o-Persians (and the Kings of the First Dynasty). The Ashkanian Kings of the Third Dynasty appended others to them and they were augmented and amplified in the days of the Sassanides (the fourth and last royal house). The Arabs also translated them into Arabic, and the loquent and eloquent polished and embellished them and wrote others resembling them. The first work of such kind was entituled �The Book of Hazar Afs�n,’ signifying Alf Khur�fah, the argument whereof was as follows. A King of their Kings was wont, when he wedded a woman and had lain one night with her, to slay her on the next morning.

Presently he espoused a damsel of the daughters of the Kings, Shahr�z�d[FN#145] hight, one endowed with intellect and erudition and, whenas she lay with him, she fell to telling him tales of fancy; moreover she used to connect the story at the end of the night with that which might induce the King to preserve her alive and to ask her of its ending on the next night until a thousand nights had passed over her. Meanwhile he cohabited with her till she was blest by boon of child of him, when she acquainted him with the device she had wrought upon him; wherefore he admired her intelligence and inclined to her and preserved her life. That King had also a Kahram�nah (nurse and duenna, not entremetteuse), hight D�n�rz�d (Duny�z�d?), who aided the wife in this (artifice). It is also said that this book was composed for (or, by) Hum�i daughter of Bahman[FN#146] and in it were included other matters. Mohammed bin Is’hak adds: —And the truth is, Inshallah,[FN#147] that the first who solaced himself with hearing night-tales was Al-Iskandar (he of Macedon) and he had a number of men who used to relate to him imaginary stories and provoke him to laughter: he, however, designed not therein merely to please himself, but that he might thereby become the more cautious and alert. After him the Kings in like fashion made use of the book entitled �Haz�r Afs�n.’ It containeth a thousand nights, but less than two hundred night-stories, for a single history often occupied several nights. I have seen it complete sundry times; and it is, in truth, a corrupted book of cold tales.”[FN#148]

A writer in The Athen�um,[FN#149] objecting to Lane’s modern date for The Nights, adduces evidence to prove the greater antiquity of the work. (Abu al-Hasan) Ibn Sa’id (bin Musa al-Gharnati = of Granada) born in A.H. 615 = 1218 and ob. Tunis A.H. 685 = 1286, left his native city and arrived at Cairo in A.H. 639 = 1241. This Spanish poet and historian wrote Al-Muhall� bi al-Ash’�r (The Adorned with Verses), a Topography of Egypt and Africa, which is apparently now lost. In this he quotes from Al-Kurtubi, the Cordovan;[FN#150] and he in his turn is quoted by the Arab historian of Spain, Ab� al-Abb�s Ahmad bin Mohammed al Makk�ri, in the “Windwafts of Perfume from the Branches of Andalusia the Blooming”[FN#151] (A.D. 1628-29). Mr. Payne (x.