The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 5 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (best romance novels of all time txt) 📕

So his mother brought him the chest and, taking out the five leaves which had been saved when the library was lost, gave them to him saying, “These five scrolls are all thy father left thee.”

So he read them and said to her, “O my mother, these leaves are part of a book: where is the rest?” Quoth she, “Thy father made a voyage taking with him all his library and, when he was shipwrecked, every book was lost save only these five leaves. And when he was returned to me by Almighty Allah he found me with child and said to me: ‘Haply thou wilt bear a boy; so take these scrolls and keep them by thee and whenas thy son shall grow up and ask what his father left him, give these leaves to him and say, ‘Thy father left these as thine only heritance. And lo! here they are.’ ” And Hasib, now the most learned of his age, abode in all pleasure and solace, and delight of life, till there came to him the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies.[FN#578] And yet, O King, is not this tale of Bulukiya and Janshah more wondrous than the adventures of

End of Volume V.

Arabian Nights, Volume 5

Footnotes

[FN#1] This tale (one of those translated by Galland) is best and fullest in the Bresl. Edit. iii. 329.

[FN#2] Europe has degraded this autumnal festival, the Sun-f�te Mihrg�n (which balanced the vernal Nau-roz) into Michaelmas and its goose-massacre. It was so called because it began on the 16th of Mihr, the seventh month; and lasted six days, with feasts, festivities and great rejoicings in honour of the Sun, who now begins his southing-course to gladden the other half of the world.

[FN#3] “Hind�” is an Indian Moslem as opposed to “Hind�,” a pagan, or Gentoo.

[FN#4] The orig. Persian word is “Sh�h-p�r”=King’s son: the Greeks (who had no sh) (preferred ); the Romans turned it into Sapor and the Arabs (who lack the p) into S�b�r. See p. x.

Hamz� ispahanensis Annalium Libri x.: Gottwaldt, Lipsi�

mdcccxlviii.

[FN#5] The magic horse may have originated with the Hindu tale of a wooden Garuda (the bird of Vishnu) built by a youth for the purpose of a vehicle. It came with the “Moors” to Spain and appears in “Le Cheval de Fust,” a French poem of the thirteenth Century. Thence it passed over to England as shown by Chaucer’s “Half-told tale of Cambuscan (Jangh�z Khan?) bold,” as “The wondrous steed of brass

On which the Tartar King did ride;”

And Leland (Itinerary) derives “Rutlandshire” from “a man named Rutter who rode round it on a wooden horse constructed by art magic.” Lane (ii. 548) quotes the parallel story of Cleomades and Claremond which Mr. Keightley (Tales and Popular Fictions, chapt.

ii) dates from our thirteenth century. See Vol. i., p. 160.

[FN#6] All Moslems, except those of the M�liki school, hold that the maker of an image representing anything of life will be commanded on the Judgment Day to animate it, and failing will be duly sent to the Fire. This severity arose apparently from the necessity of putting down idol-worship and, perhaps, for the same reason the Greek Church admits pictures but not statues. Of course the command has been honoured with extensive breaching: for instance all the Sultans of Stambul have had their portraits drawn and painted.

[FN#7] This description of ugly old age is written with true Arab verve.

[FN#8] Arab. “Badinj�n”: Hind. Bengan: Pers. B�ding�n or Badilj�n; the Mala insana (Solanum pomiferum or S. Melongena) of the Romans, well known in Southern Europe. It is of two kinds, the red (Solanum lycopersicum) and the black (S. Melongena). The Spaniards know it as “berengeria” and when Sancho Panza (Part ii.

chapt. 2) says, “The Moors are fond of egg-plants” he means more than appears. The vegetable is held to be exceedingly heating and thereby to breed melancholia and madness; hence one says to a man that has done something eccentric, “Thou hast been eating brinjalls.”

[FN#9] Again to be understood Hibernice “kilt.”

[FN#10] i.e. for fear of the evil eye injuring the palace and, haply, himself.

[FN#11] The “Sufrah” before explained acting provision-bag and table-cloth.

[FN#12] Eastern women in hot weather, lie mother-nude under a sheet here represented by the hair. The Greeks and Romans also slept stripped and in medi�val England the most modest women saw nothing indelicate in sleeping naked by their naked husbands. The “night-cap” and the “night-gown” are comparatively modern inventions.

[FN#13] Hindu fable turns this simile into better poetry, “She was like a second and a more wondrous moon made by the Creator.”

[FN#14] “Sun of the Day.”

[FN#15] Arab. “Shirk”=worshipping more than one God. A theological term here most appropriately used.

[FN#16] The Bul. Edit. as usual abridges (vol. i. 534). The Prince lands on the palace-roof where he leaves his horse, and finding no one in the building goes back to the terrace. Suddenly he sees a beautiful girl approaching him with a party of her women, suggesting to him these couplets, “She came without tryst in the darkest hour, *

Like full moon lighting horizon’s night: Slim-formed, there is not in the world her like *

For grace of form or for gifts of sprite: ‘Praise him who made her from semen-drop,’ *

I cried, when her beauty first struck my sight: I guard her from eyes, seeking refuge with *

The Lord of mankind and of morning-light.”

The two then made acquaintance and “follows what follows.”

[FN#17] Arab. “Ak�sirah,” explained (vol. i., 75) as the plur.

of Kisr�.

[FN#18] The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own. This was systematised by the servile rulers known in history as the Mameluke Beys and to the Egyptians as the Ghuzz. Each had his household of servile pages and squires, who looked forward to filling the master’s place as knight or baron.

[FN#19] The well-known capital of Al-Yaman, a true Arabia Felix, a Paradise inhabited by demons in the shape of Turkish soldiery and Arab caterans. According to Moslem writers Sana’a was founded by Shem son of Noah who, wandering southward with his posterity after his father’s death, and finding the site delightful, dug a well and founded the citadel, Ghamd�n, which afterwards contained a Mason Carr�e rivalling (or attempting to rival) the Meccan Ka’abah. The builder was Surahb�l who, says M.C. de Perceval coloured its four faces red, white, golden and green; the central quadrangle had seven stories (the planets) each forty cubits high, and the lowest was a marble hall ceiling’d with a single slab. At the four corners stood hollow lions through whose mouths the winds roared. This palatial citadel-temple was destroyed by order of Caliph Omar. The city’s ancient name was Azal or Uzal whom some identify with one of the thirteen sons of Joktan (Genesis xi. 27): it took its present name from the Ethiopian conquerors (they say) who, seeing it for the first time, cried “Haz� Sana’ah!” meaning in their tongue, this is commodious, etc.

I may note that the word is Kisawahili (Zanzibarian) e.g. “Y�mbo s�n�—is the state good?” Sana’a was the capital of the Tab�bi’ah or Tobba Kings who judaized; and the Abyssinians with their Negush made it Christian while the Persians under Anushirw�n converted it to Guebrism. It is now easily visited but to little purpose; excursions in the neighborhood being deadly dangerous.

Moreover the Turkish garrison would probably murder a stranger who sympathised with the Arabs, and the Arabs kill one who took part with their hated and hateful conquerors. The late Mr.

Shapira of Jerusalem declared that he had visited it and Jews have great advantages in such travel. But his friends doubted him.

[FN#20] The Bresl. Edit. (iii. 347) prints three vile errors in four lines.

[FN#21] Alcove is a corruption of the Arab. Al-Kubbah (the dome) through Span. and Port.

[FN#22] Easterns as a rule sleep with head and body covered by a sheet or in cold weather a blanket. The practice is doubtless hygienic, defending the body from draughts when the pores are open; but Europeans find it hard to adopt; it seems to stop their breathing. Another excellent practice in the East, and indeed amongst barbarians and savages generally, is training children to sleep with mouths shut: in after life they never snore and in malarious lands they do not require Outram’s “fever-guard,” a swathe of muslin over the mouth. Mr. Catlin thought so highly of the “shut mouth” that he made it the subject of a book.

[FN#23] Arab. “Hanzal”=coloquintida, an article often mentioned by Arabs in verse and prose; the bright coloured little gourd attracts every eye by its golden glance when travelling through the brown-yellow waste of sand and clay. A favourite purgative (enough for a horse) is made by filling the inside with sour milk which is drunks after a night’s soaking: it is as active as the croton-nut of the Gold Coast.

[FN#24] The Bresl. Edit. iii. 354 sends him to the “land of S�n”

(China).

[FN#25] Arab. “Y� Kisrawi!”=O subject of the Kisr� or Chosro�; the latter explained in vol.i.,75.[Volume 1, Footnote # 128]

“Fars” is the origin of “Persia”; and there is a hit at the prodigious lying of the modern race, whose forefathers were so famous as truth-tellers. “I am a Persian, but I am not lying now,” is a phrase familiar to every traveller.

[FN#26] There is no such name: perhaps it is a clerical error for “Har j�h”=(a man of) any place. I know an Englishman who in Persian called himself “Mirza Abdullah-i-H�chmak�ni”=Master Abdullah of Nowhere.

[FN#27] The Bresl. Edit. (loc. cit.) gives a comical description of the Prince assuming the dress of an astrologer-doctor, clapping an old book under his arm, fumbling a rosary of beads, enlarging his turband, lengthening his sleeves and blackening his eyelids with antimony. Here, however, it would be out of place.

Very comical also is the way in which he pretends to cure the maniac by “muttering unknown words, blowing in her face, biting her ear,” etc.

[FN#28] Arab. “Sar’a”=falling sickness. Here again we have in all its simplicity the old nursery idea of “possession” by evil spirits.

[FN#29] Arab. “Nafah�t”=breathings, benefits, the Heb. Neshamah opp. to Nephesh (soul) and Ruach (spirit). Healing by the breath is a popular idea throughout the East and not unknown to Western Magnetists and Mesmerists. The miraculous cures of the Messiah were, according to Moslems, mostly performed by aspiration. They hold that in the days of Isa, physic had reached its highest development, and thus his miracles were mostly miracles of medicine; whereas, in Mohammed’s time, eloquence had attained its climax and accordingly his miracles were those of eloquence, as shown in the Koran and Ah�d�s.

[FN#30] Lit. “The rose in the sleeves or calyces.” I take my English equivalent from Jeremy Taylor, “So I have seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood,” etc.

[FN#31] These lines are from the Bresl. Edit. (v. 35). The four couplets in the Mac. Edit. are too irrelevant.

[FN#32] Polo, which Lane calls “Goff.”

[FN#33] Arab. “Muffawak”=well-notched, as its value depends upon the notch. At the end of the