The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 1 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (classic literature list TXT) 📕

Allah’ thou shalt not live amongst us.”

So I went forth with weeping eyes and grieving heart, but Allah had

written my safety on the Guarded Tablet so I reached Baghdad in safety, etc. This is a fair specimen of how the work has been curtailed in that issue.

 

[FN#267] Arabs date pregnancy from the stopping of the menses, upon

which the f�tus is supposed to feed. Kalilah wa Dimnah says, “The child’s navel adheres to that of his mother and thereby he sucks”

(i. 263).

 

[FN#268] This is contrary to the commands of Al-Islam, Mohammed expressly said “The Astrologers are liars, by the Lord of the Ka’abah!”; and his saying is known to almost all Moslems, lettered

or unlettered. Yet, the further we go East (Indiawards) the more we

find these practices held in honour. Turning westwards we have: Iuridicis, Erebo, Fisco, fas vivere rapto: Militibus, Medicis, Tortori occidere ludo est; Mentiri Astronomis, Pictoribus atque Poetis.

 

[FN#269] He does not perform the Wuzu or lesser ablution because he

neglects his dawn prayers.

 

[FN#270] For this game see Lane (M. E. Chapt. xvii.) It is usually

played on a checked cloth not on a board like our draughts; and Easterns are fond of eating, drinking and smoking between and even

during the games. Torrens (p. 142) translates “I made up some dessert,” confounding “Mankalah” with “Nukl” (dried fruit, quatre-mendiants).

 

[FN#271] Quoted from Mohammed whose saying has been given.

 

[FN#272] We should say “the night of the thirty-ninth.”

 

[FN#273] The bath first taken after sickness.

 

[FN#274] Arab. “Dik�k” used by way of soap or rather to soften the

skin: the meal is usually of lupins, “Adas”=“Revalenta Arabica,”

which costs a penny in Egypt and half-a-crown in England.

 

[FN#275] Arab. “Sukkar-nab�t.” During my day (1842-49) we had no other sugar in the Bombay Presidency.

 

[FN#276] This is one of the myriad Arab instances that the decrees

of “Anagk�,” Fate, Destiny, Weird, are inevitable. The situation is

highly dramatic; and indeed The Nights, as will appear in the Terminal Essay, have already suggested a national drama.

 

[FN#277] Having lately been moved by Ajib.

 

[FN#278] Mr. Payne (i. 131) omits these lines which appear out of place; but this mode of inappropriate quotation is a characteristic

of Eastern tales.

 

[FN#279] Anglic� “him.”

 

[FN#280] This march of the tribe is a lieu commun of Arab verse e.g. the poet Labid’s noble elegy on the “Deserted Camp.” We shall

find scores of instances in The Nights.

 

[FN#281] I have heard of such sands in the Desert east of Damascus

which can be crossed only on boards or camel furniture; and the same is reported of the infamous Region “Al-Ahkl�f” (“Unexplored Syria”).

 

[FN#282] Hence the Arab. saying “The bark of a dog and not the gleam of a fire;” the tired traveller knows from the former that the camp is near, whereas the latter shows from great distances.

 

[FN#283] Dark blue is the colour of mourning in Egypt as it was of

the Roman Republic. The Persians hold that this tint was introduced

by Kay Kaw�s (B. C. 600) when mourning for his son Siy�wush. It was

continued till the death of Husayn on the 10th of Muharram (the first month, then representing the vernal equinox) when it was changed for black. As a rule Moslems do not adopt this symbol of sorrow (called “Hid�d”) looking upon the practice as somewhat idolatrous and foreign to Arab manners. In Egypt and especially on

the Upper Nile women dye their hands with indigo and stair. their faces black or blacker.

 

[FN#284] The older Roc, of which more in the Tale of Sindbad.

Meanwhile the reader curious about the Persian S�murgh (thirty bird) will consult the Dabistan, i., 55,191 and iii., 237, and Richardson’s Diss. p. xlviii. For the Anka (Enka or Unka—long necked bird) see Dab. iii., 249 and for the Hum� (bird of Paradise)

Richardson lxix. We still lack details concerning the Ben or Bennu

(nycticorax) of Egypt which with the Article pi gave rise to the Greek “ph�nix.”

 

[FN#285] Probably the Haledj of Forskal (p. xcvi. Flor. �gypt.

Arab.), “lignum tenax, durum, obscuri generic.” The Bres. Edit.

has

“�k�l”=teak wood, vulg. “S�j.”

 

[FN#286] The knocker ring is an invention well known to the Romans.

 

[FN#287] Arab. “Sadr”; the place of honour; hence the “Sudder Adawlut” (Supreme Court) in the Anglo-Indian jargon.

 

[FN#288] Arab. “Ahlan wa sahlan wa marhab�,” the words still popularly addressed to a guest.

 

[FN#289] This may mean “liquid black eyes”; but also, as I have noticed, that the lashes were long and thick enough to make the eyelids appear as if Kohl-powder had been applied to the inner rims.

 

[FN#290] A slight parting between the two front incisors, the upper

only, is considered a beauty by Arabs; why it as hard to say except

for the racial love of variety. “Sugar” (Thug) in the text means, primarily, the opening of the mouth, the gape: hence the front teeth.

 

[FN#291] i.e. makes me taste the bitterness of death, “bursting the

gall-bladder” (Mar�rah) being our “breaking the heart.”

 

[FN#292] Almost needless to say that forbidden doors and rooms form

a lieu-commun in Fairie: they are found in the Hindu Katha Sarit Sagara and became familiar to our childhood by “Bluebeard.”

 

[FN#293] Lit. “apply Kohl to my eyes,” even as Jezebel “painted her

face,” in Heb. put her eyes in painting (2 Kings ix. 30).

 

[FN#294] Arab. “Al-Bark�k,” whence our older “Apricock.”

Classically it is “Burk�k” and Pers. for Arab. “Mishrnish,” and it

also denotes a small plum or damson. In Syria the side next the sun” shows a glowing red flush.

 

[FN#295] Arab. “Haz�r” (in Persian, a thousand) = a kind of mocking

bird.

 

[FN#296] Some Edits. make the doors number a hundred, but the Princesses were forty and these coincidences, which seem to have significance and have none save for Arab symmetromania, are common

in Arab stories.

 

[FN#297] Arab. “M�jur”: hence possibly our “mazer,” which is popularly derived from Masarn, a maple.

 

[FN#298] A compound scent of ambergris, musk and aloes.

 

[FN#299] The ends of the bridle-reins forming the whip.

 

[FN#300] The flying horse is Pegasus which is a Greek travesty of an Egyptian myth developed India.

 

[FN#300] The Bres. Edit. wrongly says “the seventh.”

 

[FN#302] Arab. “Sharmutah” (plur. Shar�m�t) from the root Sharmat,

to shred, a favourite Egyptian word also applied in vulgar speech to a strumpet, a punk, a piece. It is also the popular term for strips of jerked or boucaned meat hung up m the sun to dry, and classically called “Kad�d.”

 

[FN#303] Arab. “Iz�r,” the man’s waistcloth opposed to the Rid�

or

shoulder-cloth, is also the sheet of white calico worn by the poorer Egyptian women out of doors and covering head and hands.

See

Lane (M. E., chaps. i.). The rich prefer a “Hab�rah” of black silk,

and the poor, when they have nothing else, use a bed-sheet.

 

[FN#304] i.e. “My clears.”

 

[FN#305] Arab. “L� taw�khizn�:” lit. “do not chastise (or blame) us;” the pop. expression for, “excuse (or pardon) us.”

 

[FN#306] Arab. “Maskh�t,” mostly applied to change of shape as man

enchanted to monkey, and in vulgar parlance applied to a statue (of

stone, etc.). The list of metamorphoses in Al-Islam is longer than

that known to Ovid. Those who have seen Petra, the Greek town of the Haur�n and the Roman ruins in Northern Africa will readily detect the bests upon which these stories are built. I shall return

to this subject in The City of Iram (Night cclxxvi.) and The City of Brass (dlxvii.).

 

[FN#307] A picturesque phrase enough to express a deserted site, a

spectacle familiar to the Nomades and always abounding in pathos to

the citizens.

 

[FN#308] The olden “Harem” (or gyn�ceum, Pers. Zenanah, Serraglio):

Har�m is also used by synecdoche for the inmates; especially the wife.

 

[FN#309] The pearl is supposed in the East to lose 1% per ann. of its splendour and value.

 

[FN#310] Arab. “Fass,” properly the bezel of a ring; also a gem cut

en cabochon and generally the contenant for the contenu.

 

[FN#311] Arab. “Mihr�b” = the arch-headed niche in the Mosque-wall

facing Meccah-wards. Here, with his back to the people and fronting

the Ka’abah or Square House of Meccah (hence called the “Kiblah”

=

direction of prayer), stations himself the Im�m, artistes or fugleman, lit. “one who stands before others;” and his bows and prostrations give the time to the congregation. I have derived the

Mihrab from the niche in which the Egyptian God was shrined: the Jews ignored it, but the Christians preserved it for their statues

and altars. Maundrell suggests that the empty niche denotes an invisible God. As the niche (symbol of Venus) and the minaret (symbol of Priapus) date only from the days of the tenth Caliph, Al-Walid (A.H. 86-96=105-115), the Hindus charge the Moslems with having borrowed the two from their favourite idols—The Linga-Yoni

or Cunnus phallus (Pilgrimage ii. 140), and plainly call the Mihrab

a Bhaga= Cunnus (Dabistan ii. 152). The Guebres further term Meccah

“Mah-gah,” locus Lun�, and Al-Medinah, “Mahdinah,” = Moon of religion. See Dabistan i., 49, etc.

 

[FN#312] Arab “Kursi,” a stool of palm-fronds, etc., X-shaped (see

Lane’s illustration, Nights i., 197), before which the reader sits.

Good Moslems will not hold the Holy Volume below the waist nor open

it except when ceremonially pure. Englishmen in the East should remember this, for to neglect the “Adab al-K�ran” (respect due to Holy Writ) gives great scandal.

 

[FN#313] Mr. Payne (i. 148) quotes the German Zuckerp�ppchen.

 

[FN#314] The Persian poets have a thousand conceits in praise of the “mole,” (Kh�l or Sh�mah) for which Hafiz offered “Samarkand and

Bokhara” (they not being his, as his friends remarked). Another “topic” is the flight of arrows shot by eyelashes.

 

[FN#315] Arab. “Suh�” a star in the Great Bear introduced only to balance “wush�t” = spies, enviers, enemies, whose “evil eye” it will ward off.

 

[FN#316] In Arab tales beauty is always “soft-sided,” and a smooth

skin is valued in proportion to its rarity.

 

[FN#317] The myrtle is the young hair upon the side face [FN#318] In other copies of these verses the fourth couplet swears

“by the scorpions of his brow” i.e. the accroche-c�urs, the beau-catchers, bell-ropes or aggravators,” as the B.P. calls them.

In couplet eight the poet alludes to his love’s “Unsur,” or element

his nature made up of the four classicals, and in the last couplet

he makes the nail paring refer to the moon not the sun. I [FN#319] This is regular formula when speaking of Guebres.

 

[FN#320] Arab. “Far�iz”; the orders expressly given in the Koran which the reader will remember, is Uncreate and Eternal. In India “Farz” is applied to injunctions thrice repeated; and “W�j�b” to those given twice over. Elsewhere scanty difference is made between

them.

 

[FN#321] Arab. “Kufr” = rejecting the True Religion, i.e.

Al-Islam,

such rejection being “Tughy�n” or rebellion against the Lord. The “terrible sound” is taken from the legend of the prophet S�lih and

the proto-historic tribe of Th�m�d which for its impiety was struck

dead by an earthquake and a noise from heaven. The latter, according to some commentators, was the voice of the Archangel Gabriel crying “Die all of you” (Koran, chapts. vii., xviii., etc.). We shall hear more of it in the “City of many-columned Iram.” According to some, Salih, a mysterious Badawi prophet, is buried in the Wady al-Shaykh of the so-called Sinaitic Peninsula.

 

[FN#322] Yet they kept the semblance of man, showing that the idea

arose from the basaltic statues found in Hauranic ruins. Mohammed in his various marches to Syria must