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

[FN#338] See Night lxxxi.

[FN#339] Koran lxxviii. 19.

[FN#340] Arab. “Al-Mun�fik,” technically meaning one who outwardly professes Al-Islam while inwardly hating it. Thus the word is by no means synonymous with our “hypocrite,” hypocrisy being the homage vice pays to virtue; a homage, I may observe, nowhere rendered more fulsomely than among the so-called Anglo-Saxon race.

[FN#341] Arab. “Tawakkul al� ‘llah”: in the imperative the phrase is vulgarly used=“Be off!”

[FN#342] i.e. ceremonial impurity which is sui generis, a very different thing from general dirtiness.

[FN#343] A thick beard is one which does not show the skin; otherwise the wearer is a “Kausaj;” in Pers. “K�seh.” See vol.

iii., 246.

[FN#344] Arab. “Al-Khutnah.” Nowhere commanded in the Koran and being only a practice of the Prophet, the rite is not indispensable for converts, especially the aged and the sick. Our ideas upon the subject are very hazy, for modern “niceness”

allows a “Feast of the Circumcision,” but no discussion thereon.

Moses (alias Osarsiph) borrowed the rite from the Egyptian hierophants who were all thus “purified”; the object being to counteract the over-sensibility of the “sixth sense” and to harden the glans against abrasions and infection by exposure to air and friction against the dress. Almost all African tribes practise it but the modes vary and some are exceedingly curious: I shall notice a peculiarly barbarous fashion called Al-Salkh (the flaying) still practised in the Arabian province Al-As�r.

(Pilgrimage iii. 80.) There is a difference too between the Hebrew and the Moslem rite. The Jewish operator, after snipping off the foreskin, rips up the prepuce with his sharp thumb-nails so that the external cutis does not retract far from the internal; and the wound, when healed, shows a narrow ring of cicatrice. This ripping is not done by Moslems. They use a stick as a probe passed round between glans and prepuce to ascertain the extent of the frenum and that there is no abnormal adhesion.

The foreskin is then drawn forward and fixed by the forceps, a fork of two bamboo splints, five or six inches long by a quarter thick, or in some cases an iron like our compasses. This is tied tightly over the foreskin so as to exclude about an inch and a half of the prepuce above and three quarters below. A single stroke of the razor drawn directly downwards removes the skin.

The slight bleeding is stopped by burnt rags or ashes and healed with cerates, pledgets and fumigations. Thus Moslem circumcision does not prevent the skin retracting.

[FN#345] Of these 6336 versets only some 200 treat on law, civil and ceremonial, fiscal and political, devotional and ceremonial, canonical and ecclesiastical.

[FN#346] The learned young woman omitted Ukhn�kh=Enoch, because not in Koran; and if she denoted him by “Idr�s,” the latter is much out of place.

[FN#347] Some say grandson of Shem. (Koran vii. 71.) [FN#348] Koran vii. 63, etc.

[FN#349] Father-in-law of Moses. (Koran vii. 83.) [FN#350] Who is the last and greatest of the twenty-five.

[FN#351] See Night ccccxxxviii.

[FN#352] Koran ii., whose 256th Ayah is the far-famed and sublime Throne-verse which begins “Allah! there is no god but He, the Living, the Eternal One, whom nor slumber nor sleep seizeth on!”

The trivial name is taken from the last line, “His throne overstretcheth Heaven and Earth and to Him their preservation is no burden for He is the most Highest, the Supreme.” The lines are often repeated in prayers and engraved on agates, etc., as portable talismans.

[FN#353] Koran ii. 159.

[FN#354] Koran xvi. 92. The verset ends with, “He warneth you, so haply ye may be mindful.”

[FN#355] Koran lxx. 38.

[FN#356] Koran xxxix. 54.

[FN#357] The Sunnis hold that the “Anbiy�” (=prophets, or rather announcers of Allah’s judgments) were not sinless. But this dogma is branded as most irreverent and sinful by the Shi’ahs or Persian “followers of Ali,” who make capital out of this blasphemy and declare that if any prophet sinned he sinned only against himself.

[FN#358] Koran xii. 18.

[FN#359] Koran ii. 107.

[FN#360] Koran ii. 57. He (Allah) does not use the plurale majestatis.

[FN#361] Koran ii. 28.

[FN#362] Koran xvi. 100. Satan is stoned in the Min� or Mun�

basin (Night ccccxlii.) because he tempted Abraham to disobey the command of Allah by refusing to sacrifice Ishmael. (Pilgrimage iii. 248.)

[FN#363] It may also mean “have recourse to God.”

[FN#364] Abdallah ibn Abbas, before noticed, first cousin of Mohammed and the most learned of the Companions. See D’Herbelot.

[FN#365] Koran xcvi., “Blood-clots,” 1 and 2. “Read” may mean “peruse the revelation” (it was the first Koranic chapter communicated to Mohammed), or “recite, preach.”

[FN#366] Koran xxvii. 30. Mr. Rodwell (p.1) holds to the old idea that the “Basmalah” is of Jewish origin, taught to the Kuraysh by Omayyah, of Taif, the poet and Han�f (convert).

[FN#367] Koran ix.: this was the last chapter revealed and the only one revealed entire except verse 110.

[FN#368] Ali was despatched from Al-Medinah to Meccah by the Prophet on his own slit-eared camel to promulgate this chapter; and meeting the assembly at Al-‘Akabah he also acquainted them with four things; (1) No Infidel may approach the Meccah temple; (2) naked men must no longer circut the Ka’abah; (3) only Moslems enter Paradise, and (4) public faith must be kept.

[FN#369] Dictionaries give the word “Basmalah” (=saying Bismillah); but the common pronunciation is “Bismalah.”

[FN#370] Koran xvii. 110, a passage revealed because the Infidels, hearing Mohammed calling upon The Compassionate, imagined that Al-Rahm�n was other deity but Allah. The “names”

have two grand divisions, Asm� Jal�l�, the fiery or terrible attributes, and the Asm� Jam�l� (airy, watery, earthy or) amiable. Together they form the Asm� al-Husna or glorious attributes, and do not include the Ism al-A’azam, the ineffable name which is known only to a few.

[FN#371] Koran ii. 158.

[FN#372] Koran xcvi. before noticed.

[FN#373] A man of Al-Medinah, one of the first of Mohammed’s disciples.

[FN#374] Koran lxxiv. 1, etc., supposed to have been addressed by Gabriel to Mohammed when in the cave of Hira or Jabal N�r. He returned to his wife Khadijah in sore terror at the vision of one sitting on a throne between heaven and earth, and bade her cover him up. Whereupon the Archangel descended with this text, supposed to be the first revealed. Mr. Rodwell (p. 3) renders it, “O thou enwrapped in thy mantle!” and makes it No. ii. after a Fatrah or silent interval of six months to three years.

[FN#375] There are several versets on this subject (chapts. ii.

and xxx.)

[FN#376] Koran cx. 1.

[FN#377] The third Caliph; the “Writer of the Koran.”

[FN#378] Koran, v. 4. Sale translates “idols.” Mr. Rodwell, “On the blocks (or shafts) of Stone,” rude altars set by the pagan Arabs before their dwellings.

[FN#379] Koran, v. 116. The words are put into the mouth of Jesus.

[FN#380] The end of the same verse.

[FN#381] Koran, v. 89. Supposed to have been revealed when certain Moslems purposed to practise Christian asceticism, fasting, watching, abstaining from women and sleeping on hard beds. I have said Mohammed would have “no monkery in Al-Islam,”

but human nature willed otherwise. Mr. Rodwell prefers “Interdict the healthful viands.”

[FN#382] Koran, iv. 124.

[FN#383] Arab. “Mukri.” “K�ri” is one who reads the Koran to pupils; the Mukri corrects them. “With the passage of the clouds”

= without a moment’s hesitation.

[FN#384] The twenty-first, twenty-fourth and eighteenth Arabic letters.

[FN#385] Arab. “Hizb.” The Koran is divided into sixty portions, answering to “Lessons” for convenience of public worship.

[FN#386] Arab. “Jal�lah,”=saying Jalla Jal�lu-hu=magnified be His Majesty!, or glorified be His Glory.

[FN#387] Koran, xi. 50.

[FN#388] The partition-wall between Heaven and Hell which others call Al-‘Urf (in the sing. from the verb meaning he separated or parted). The Jews borrowed from the Guebres the idea of a partition between Heaven and Hell and made it so thin that the blessed and damned can speak together. There is much dispute about the population of Al-A’ar�f, the general idea being that they are men who do not deserve reward in Heaven or punishment in Hell. But it is not a “Purgatory” or place of expiating sins.

[FN#389] Koran, vii. 154.

[FN#390] A play on the word ayn, which means “eye” or the eighteenth letter which in olden times had the form of a circle.

[FN#391] From misreading these words comes the absurd popular belief of the moon passing up and down Mohammed’s sleeves. George B. Airy (The Athen�um, Nov.29, 1884) justly objects to Sale’s translation “The hour of judgment approacheth” and translates “The moon hath been dichotomised” a well-known astronomical term when the light portion of the moon is defined in a strait line: in other words when it is really a half-moon at the first and third quarters of each lunation. Others understand, The moon shall be split on the Last Day, the preterite for the future in prophetic style. “Koran Moslems” of course understand it literally.

[FN#392] Chapters liv., lv. and lvi.

[FN#393] We should say, not to utter, etc.

[FN#394] These well-known “humours of Hippocrates,” which reappear in the form of temperaments of European phrenology, are still the base of Eastern therapeutics.

[FN#395] The doctrine of the three souls will be intelligible to Spiritualists.

[FN#396] Arab. “Al-l�mi”=the l-shaped, curved, forked.

[FN#397] Arab. “Usus,” our os sacrum because, being incorruptible, the body will be built up thereon for Resurrection-time. Hence Hudibras sings (iii. 2), “The learned Rabbis of the Jews

Write there’s a bone which they call leuz, I’ the rump of man, etc.”

It is the Heb. “Uz,” whence older scholars derived os. Sale (sect. iv.) called it “El Ajb, os coccygis or rump-bone.”

[FN#398] Arab physiologists had difficulties in procuring “subjects”; and usually practised dissection on the simiads.

Their illustrated books are droll; the figures have been copied and recopied till they have lost all resemblance to the originals.

[FN#399] The liver and spleen are held to be congealed blood.

Hence the couplet,

“We are allowed two carrions (i.e. with throats uncut) and two bloods,

The fish and the locust, the liver and the spleen.”

(Pilgrimage iii. 92.)

[FN#400] This is perfectly true and yet little known to the general.

[FN#401] Koran xvii. 39.

[FN#402] Arab. “Al-malikhul�ya,” proving that the Greeks then pronounced the penultimate vowel according to the acute accent��a; not as we slur it over. In old Hebrew we have the transliteration of four Greek words; in the languages of Hindostan many scores including names of places; and in Latin and Arabic as many hundreds. By a scholar-like comparison of these remains we should find little difficulty in establishing the true Greek pronunciation since the days of Alexander the Great; and we shall prove that it was pronounced according to accent and emphatically not quantity. In the next century I presume English boys will be taught to pronounce Greek as the Greeks do.

[FN#403] Educated Arabs can quote many a verse bearing upon domestic medicine and reminding us of the lines bequeathed to Europe by the School of Salerno. Such e.g. are; “After the noon-meal, sleep, although for moments twain; After the night-meal, walk, though but two steps be ta’en; And after swiving stale, though but two drops thou drain.”

[FN#404] Arab. “Sar�dah” (Thar�dah), also called “ghaut”=crumbled bread and hashed meat in broth; or bread, milk and meat. The Sar�dah of Ghass�n, cooked with eggs and marrow, was held a dainty dish: hence the Prophet’s dictum.