The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 9 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (ebook reader library .TXT) 📕

[FN#159] Arab. ”Luss” = thief, robber, rogue, rascal, the Persian “Luti” of popular usage. This is one of the many ”Simpleton stories” in which Eastern folk-lore abounds. I hear that Mr. Clouston is preparing a collection, and look forward to it with interest.

[FN#160] Arab. “Tibn” for which see vol. i 16.

[FN#161] A fanciful origin of “D�v�n” (here an audience-chamber) which may mean demons (plural of D�v) is attributed to a King of Persia. He gave a series of difficult documents and accounts to his scribes and surprised at the quickness and cleverness with which they were ordered exclaimed, “These men be Divs!” Hence a host of secondary meanings as a book of Odes with distichs rhymed in alphabetical order and so forth.

[FN#162] In both cases the word “Jab�birah” is used, the plur. of Jabb�r, the potent, especially applied to the Kings of the Canaanites and giants like the mythical Og of Bashan. So the Heb.

Jabb�rah is a title of the Queens of Judah.

[FN#163] Arab. “Kit�b al-Kaz�”= the Book of Judgments, such as the Kazi would use when deciding cases in dispute, by legal precedents and the Rasm or custom of the country.

[FN#164] i.e. sit before the King as referee, etc.

[FN#165] This massacre of refractory chiefs is one of the grand moyens of Eastern state-craft, and it is almost always successful because circumstances require it; popular opinion approves of it and it is planned and carried out with discretion and secrecy.

The two familiar instances in our century are the massacre of the Mamelukes by Mohammed Ali Pasha the Great and of the turbulent chiefs of the Omani Arabs by our ancient ally Sayyid Sa’�d, miscalled the “Im�m of Maskat.”

[FN#166] The metaphor (Sabaka) is from horse-racing, the Arabs being, I have said, a horsey people.

[FN#167] Arab. “Kurd�s” = A body of horse.

[FN#168] Arab. “Ibn ‘Irs.” See vol. iii. 147.

[FN#169] Arab. “Al Hind-al-Aks�.” The Sanskrit Sindhu (lands on the Indus River) became in Zend “Hendu” and hence in Arabic Sind and Hind, which latter I wish we had preserved instead of the classical “India” or the poetical “Ind.”

[FN#170] i.e. by geomancy: see vol. iii. 269 for a note on Al-Raml. The passage is not in the Mac. Edit.

[FN#171] This address gave the boy Wazirial rank. In many parts of Europe, England included, if the Sovereign address a subject with a title not belonging to him, it is a disputed point if the latter can or cannot claim it.

[FN#172] Koran, chapter of Joseph xii. 28, spoken by Potiphar after Joseph’s innocence had been proved by a witness in Potiphar’s house or according to the Talmud (Sepher H�djascher) by an infant in the cradle. The texts should have printed this as a quotation (with vowel points).

[FN#173] Arab. “Al-‘Az�z,” alluding to Joseph the Patriarch entitled in Egypt “Az�z al-Misr”= Magnifico of Misraim (Koran xii. 54). It is generally believed that Ismail Pasha, whose unwise deposition has caused the English Government such a host of troubles and load of obloquy, aspired to be named “‘Az�z” by the Porte; but was compelled to be satisfied with Khad�v (vulg.

written Khedive, and pronounced even “K�div�”), a Persian title, which simply means prince or Rajah, as Khad�v-i-Hind.

[FN#174] i.e. The Throne room.

[FN#175] For the “Daw�t” or wooden inkcase containing reeds see vol. v. 239 and viii. 178. I may remark that its origin is the Egyptian “Pes,” of which there is a specimen in the British Museum inscribed, “Am�sis the good god and Lord of the two Lands.”

[FN#176] i.e. I am governed by the fear of Allah in my dealings to thee and thy subjects.

[FN#177] Arabic has no single word for million although the Maroccans have adopted “Mily�n” from the Spaniards (see p. 100 of the Rudimentos del �rabe vulgar que se habla en el imperio de Marruccos por El P. Fr. Jos� de Lerchundi, Madrid 1872): This lack of the higher numerals, the reverse of the Hindu languages, makes Arabic “arithmology” very primitive and almost as cumbrous as the Chinese.

[FN#178] i.e. I am thy slave to slay or to pardon.

[FN#179] Arab. ”Matta’aka ‘llah”=Allah permit thee to enjoy, from the root mate’, whence cometh the Maroccan Mat�‘i=my, mine, which answers to Bit�‘i in Egypt.

[FN#180] Arab. “Khit�b” = the exordium of a letter preceding its business-matter and in which the writer displays all his art. It ends with “Amm� ba’d,” lit.=but after, equivalent to our “To proceed.” This “Khit�b” is mostly skipped over by modern statesmen who will say, “Now after the nonsense let us come to the sense”; but their secretaries carefully weigh every word of it, and strongly resent all shortcomings.

[FN#181] Strongly suggesting that the King had forgotten how to read and write. So not a few of the Amirs of Sind were analphabetic and seemed rather proud of it: “a Baloch cannot write, but he always carries a signet-ring.” I heard of an old English lady of the past generation in Northern Africa who openly declared “A Warrington shall never learn to read or write.”

[FN#182] Arab. “�min,” of which the Heb. form is Amen from the root Amn=stability, constancy. In both tongues it is a particle of affirmation or consent=it is true! So be it! The Hebrew has also “Amanah”=verily, truly.

[FN#183] To us this seems a case of “hard lines” for the unhappy women; but Easterns then believed and still believe in the divinity which cloth hedge in a King, in his reigning by the “grace of God,” and in his being the Viceregent of Allah upon earth; briefly in the old faith of loyalty which great and successful republics are fast making obsolete in the West and nowhere faster than in England.

[FN#184] Ab� S�r is a manifest corruption of the old Egyptian Pousiri, the Busiris of our classics, and it gives a name to sundry villages in modern Egypt where it is usually pronounced “B�s�r”. Ab� K�r lit. = the Father of Pitch, is also corrupted to Abou Kir (Bay); and the townlet now marks the site of jolly old Canopus, the Chosen Land of Egyptian debauchery.

[FN#185] It is interesting to note the superior gusto with which the Eastern, as well as the Western tale-teller describes his scoundrels and villains whilst his good men and women are mostly colourless and unpicturesque. So Satan is the true hero of Paradise-Lost and by his side God and man are very ordinary; and Mephistopheles is much better society than Faust and Margaret.

[FN#186] Arab. “Dukh�n,” lit. = smoke, here tobacco for the Chibouk, “Timb�k” or “Tumb�k” being the stronger (Persian and other) variety which must be washed before smoking in the Sh�shah or water pipe. Tobacco is mentioned here only and is evidently inserted by some scribe: the “weed” was not introduced into the East before the end of the sixteenth century (about a hundred years after coffee), when it radically changed the manners of society.

[FN#187] Which meant that the serjeant, after the manner of such officials, would make him pay dearly before giving up the key.

Hence a very severe punishment in the East is to “call in a policeman” who carefully fleeces all those who do not bribe him to leave them in freedom.

[FN#188] Arab. “M� D�hiyatak?” lit. “What is thy misfortune?”

The phrase is slighting if not insulting.

[FN#189] Amongst Moslems the plea of robbing to keep life and body together would be accepted by a good man like Abu Sir, who still consorted with a self-confessed thief.

[FN#190] To make their agreement religiously binding. See vol.

iv. 36.

[FN#191] Arab. “Ghaliy�n”; many of our names for craft seem connected with Arabic: I have already noted “Carrack” = harr�k: to which add Uskuf in Marocco pronounced ‘Skuff = skiff; Kat�rah = a cutter; B�rijah = a barge; etc. etc.

[FN#192] The patient is usually lathered in a gib gasin of tinned brass, “Mambrino’s helmet” with a break in the rim to fit the throat; but the poorer classes carry only a small cup with water instead of soap and water ignoring the Italian proverb, “Barba ben saponata mezza fatta” = well lathered is half shaved. A napkin fringed at either end is usually thrown over the Figaro’s shoulder and used to wipe the razor.

[FN#193] Arab. “Nusf.” See vol. ii. 37.

[FN#194] Arab. “Bat�rikh” the roe (sperm or spawn) of the salted Fas�kh (fish) and the B�r� (mugil cephalus) a salt-water fish caught in the Nile and considered fair eating. Some write But�rgh� from the old Egyptian town Bur�t, now a ruin between Tinnis and Damietta (Sonnini).

[FN#195] Arab. “Kapt�n,” see vol. iv. 85.

[FN#196] Arab. “Any�b,” plur. of N�b applied to the grinder teeth but mostly to the canines or eye teeth, tusks of animals, etc. (See vol. vii. p. 339) opp. To Saniyah, one of the four central incisors, a camel in the sixth year and horse, cow, sheep and goat in fourth year.

[FN#197] The coffee (see also vol. viii. 274) like the tobacco is probably due to the scribe; but the tale appears to be comparatively modern. In The Nights men eat, drink and wash their hands but do not smoke and sip coffee like the moderns.

See my Terminal Essay �2.

[FN#198] Arab. “Mi’lakah” (Bresl. Edit. x, 456). The fork is modern even in the East and the Moors borrow their term for it from fourchette. But the spoon, which may have begun with a cockle-shell, dates from the remotest antiquity.

[FN#199] Arab. “Sufrah” properly the cloth or leather upon which food is placed. See vol. i. 178.

[FN#200] i.e. gaining much one day and little another.

[FN#201] Lit. “Rest thyself” i.e. by changing posture.

[FN#202] Arab. “Unn�bi” = between dark yellow and red.

[FN#203] Arab. “N�lah” 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.

[FN#204] Still a popular form of “bilking” in the Wak�lahs or Caravanserais of Cairo: but as a rule the Baww�b (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.

[FN#205] 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.

[FN#206] Not simply, “such and such events happened to him”

(Lane); but, “a curious chance befel him.”

[FN#207] Arab. “Har�mi,” lit. = one who lives on unlawful gains; popularly a thief.

[FN#208] i.e. he turned on the water, hot and cold.

[FN#209] Men