The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 10 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (essential reading TXT) 📖

Finally the plot of “King Omar” is well worked out; and the gathering of all the actors upon the stage before the curtain drops may be improbable but it is highly artistic.

 

The long Crusading Romance is relieved by a sequence of sixteen fabliaux, partly historiettes of men and beasts and partly apologues proper—a subject already noticed. We have then (iii.

162) the saddening and dreary love-tale of Ali bin Bakk�r, a Persian youth and the Caliph’s concubine Shams al-Nah�r. Here the end is made doleful enough by the deaths of the “two martyrs,” who are killed off, like Romeo and Juliet,[FN#288] a lesson that the course of true Love is sometimes troubled and that men as well as women can die of the so-called “tender passion.” It is followed (iii. 212) by the long tale of Kamar al-Zam�n, or Moon of the Age, the first of that name, the “Camaralzaman” whom Galland introduced into the best European society. Like “The Ebony Horse” it seems to have been derived from a common source with “Peter of Provence” and “Cleomades and Claremond”; and we can hardly wonder at its wide diffusion: the tale is brimful of life, change, movement, containing as much character and incident as would fill a modern three-volumer and the Supernatural pleasantly jostles the Natural; Dahnash the Jinn and Maym�nah daughter of Al-Dimiry�t,[FN#289] a renowned King of the Jann, being as human in their jealousy about the virtue of their lovers as any children of Adam, and so their metamorphosis to fleas has all the effect of a surprise. The troupe is again drawn with a broad firm touch. Prince Charming, the hero, is weak and wilful, shifty and immoral, hasty and violent: his two spouses are rivals in abominations as his sons, Amjad and As’ad, are examples of a fraternal affection rarely found in half-brothers by sister-wives. There is at least one fine melodramatic situation (iii. 228); and marvellous feats of indecency, a practical joke which would occur only to the canopic mind (iii. 300-305), emphasise the recovery of her husband by that remarkable “blackguard,” the Lady Bud�r. The interpolated tale of Ni’amah and Naomi (iv. I), a simple and pleasing narrative of youthful amours, contrasts well with the boiling passions of the incestuous and murderous Queens and serves as a pause before the grand denouement when the parted meet, the lost are found, the unwedded are wedded and all ends merrily as a xixth century novel.

 

The long tale of Al� al-Din, our old friend “Aladdin,” is wholly out of place in its present position (iv. 29): it is a counterpart of Ali N�r al-Din and Miriam the Girdle-girl (vol.

ix. i); and the mention of the Shahbandar or Harbour-master (iv.

29), the Kunsul or Consul (p. 84), the Kaptan (Capitano), the use of cannon at sea and the choice of Genoa city (p. 85) prove that it belongs to the xvth or xvith century and should accompanyKamar al-Zam�n II. and Ma’aruf at the

end of The Nights. Despite the lutist Zubaydah being carried off by the Jinn, the Magic Couch, a modification of Solomon’s carpet, and the murder of the King who refused to islamize, it is evidently a European tale and I believe with Dr. Bacher that it is founded upon the legend of “Charlemagne’s” daughter Emma and his secretary Eginhardt, as has been noted in the counterpart (vol. ix. 1).

 

This quasi-historical fiction is followed hy a succession of fabliaux, novelle and historiettes which fill the rest of the vol. iv. and the whole of vol. v. till we reach the terminal story, The Queen of the Serpents (vol. v. pp. 304-329). It appears to me that most of them are historical and could easily be traced. Not a few are in Al-Mas’udi; for instance the grim Tale of Hatim of Tayy (vol. iv. 94) is given bodily in “Meads of Gold” (iii. 327); and the two adventures of Ibrahim al-Mahdi with the barber-surgeon (vol. iv. 103) and the Merchant’s sister (vol.

iv. 176) are in his pages (vol. vii. 68 and 18). The City of Lubtayt (vol. iv. 99) embodies the legend of Don Rodrigo, last of the Goths, and may have reached the ears of Washington Irving; Many-columned Iram (vol. iv. 113) is held by all Moslems to be factual and sundry writers have recorded the tricks played by Al-Maamun with the Pyramids of Jizah which still show his handiwork.[FN#290] The germ of Isaac of Mosul (vol. iv. 119) is found in Al-Mas’udi who (vii. 65) names “Bur�n” the poetess (Ibn Khall. i. 268); and Harun al-Rashid and the Slavegirl (vol. iv.

153) is told by a host of writers. Ali the Persian is a rollicking tale of fun from some Iranian jest-book: Abu Mohammed hight Lazybones belongs to the cycle of “Sindbad the Seaman,”

with a touch of Whittington and his Cat; and Zumurrud (“Smaragdine”) in Ali Shar (vol. iv. 187) shows at her sale the impudence of Miriam the Girdle-girl and in bed the fescennine device of the Lady Budur. The “Ruined Man who became Rich,” etc.

(vol. iv. 289) is historical and Al-Mas’udi (vii. 281) relates the coquetry of Mahb�bah the concubine (vol. iv. 291): the historian also quotes four couplets, two identical with Nos. 1

and 2 in The Nights (vol. iv. 292) and adding:—

 

Then see the slave who lords it o’er her lord * In lover privacy and public site:

Behold these eyes that one like Ja’afar saw: * Allah on Ja’afar reign boons infinite!

 

Uns al-Wuj�d (vol. v. 32) is a love-tale which has been translated into a host of Eastern languages; and The Lovers of the Banu Ozrah belong to Al-Mas’udi’s “Martyrs of Love” (vii.

355), with the ozrite “Ozrite love” of Ibn Khallikan (iv. 537).

“Harun and the Three Poets” (vol. v. 77) has given to Cairo a proverb which Burckhardt (No. 561) renders “The day obliterates the word or promise of the Night,” for

 

The promise of night is effaced by day.

 

It suggests Congreve’s Doris:—

 

For who o’er night obtain’d her grace,

She can next day disown, etc.

 

“Harun and the three Slavegirls” (vol. v. 81) smacks of Gargantua (lib. i. c. 11): “It belongs to me, said one: ‘Tis mine, said another”; and so forth. The Simpleton and the Sharper (vol. v. 83) like the Foolish Dominie (vol. v. 118) is an old Joe Miller in Hindu as well as Moslem folk-lore. “Kisra Anushirw�n”

(vol. v. 87) is “The King, the Owl and the Villages of AlMas’udi” (iii. 171), who also notices the Persian monarch’s four seals of office (ii. 204); and “Masrur the Eunuch and Ibn Al-K�ribi” (vol. v. 109) is from the same source as Ibn al-Magh�zili the Reciter and a Eunuch belonging to the Caliph Al-Mu’tazad (vol. viii. 161). In the Tale of Tawaddud (vol. v. 139) we have the fullest development of the disputations and displays of learning then so common in Europe, teste the “Admirable Crichton”; and these were affected not only by Eastern tale-tellers but even by sober historians. To us it is much like “padding” when Nuzhat al-Zam�n (vol. ii. 156 etc.) fags her hapless hearers with a discourse covering sixteen mortal pages; when the Wazir Dandan (vol. ii. 195, etc.) reports at length the cold speeches of the five high-bosomed maids and the Lady of Calamities and when Wird Khan, in presence of his papa (Nights cmxiv-xvi.) discharges his patristic exercitations and heterogeneous knowledge. Yet Al-Mas’udi also relates, at dreary extension (vol. vi. 369) the disputation of the twelve sages in presence of Barmecide Yahya upon the origin, the essence, the accidents and the omnes res of Love; and in another place (vii.

181) shows Honayn, author of the Book of Natural Questions, undergoing a long examination before the Caliph Al-W�sik (Vathek) and describing, amongst other things, the human teeth. See also the dialogue or catechism of Al-Hajj�j and Ibn Al-Kirr�ya in Ibn Khallikan (vol. i. 238-240).

 

These disjecta membra of tales and annals are pleasantly relieved by the seven voyages of Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi. 1-83). The “Arabian Odyssey” may, like its Greek brother, descend from a noble family, the “Shipwrecked Mariner” a Coptic travel-tale of the twelfth dynasty (B. C. 3500) preserved on a papyrus at St.

Petersburg. In its actual condition “Sindbad,” is a fanciful compilation, like De Foe’s “Captain Singleton,” borrowed from travellers’ tales of an immense variety and extracts from Al-Idr�si, Al-Kazw�ni and Ibn al-Wardi. Here we find the Polyphemus, the Pygmies and the cranes of Homer and Herodotus; the escape of Aristomenes; the Plinian monsters well known in Persia; the magnetic mountain of Saint Brennan (Brandanus); the aeronautics of “Duke Ernest of Bavaria”[FN#291] and sundry cuttings from Moslem writers dating between our ninth and fourteenth centuries.[FN#292] The “Shayhk of the Seaboard”

appears in the Persian romance of K�maraupa translated by Francklin, all the particulars absolutely corresponding. The “Odyssey” is valuable because it shows how far Eastward the mediaeval Arab had extended: already in The Ignorance he had reached China and had formed a centre of trade at Canton. But the higher merit of the cento is to produce one of the most charming books of travel ever written, like Robinson Crusoe the delight of children and the admiration of all ages.

 

The hearty life and realism of Sindbad are made to stand out in strong relief by the deep melancholy which pervades “The City of Brass” (vol. vi. 83), a dreadful book for a dreary day. It is curious to compare the doleful verses (pp. 103, 105) with those spoken to Caliph Al-Mutawakkil by Abu al-Hasan Ali (A1-Mas’udi, vii. 246). We then enter upon the venerable Sindibad-nameh, the Malice of Women (vol. vi. 122), of which, according to the Kitab al-Fihrist (vol. i. 305), there were two editions, a Sinzib�d al-Kab�r and a Sinzib�d al-Sagh�r, the latter being probably an epitome of the former. This bundle of legends, I have shown, was incorporated with the Nights as an editor’s addition; and as an independent work it has made the round of the world.

 

Space forbids any detailed notice of this choice collection of anecdotes for which a volume would be required. I may, however, note that the “Wife’s device” (vol. vi. 152) has its analogues in the Kath� (chapt. xiii.) in the Gesta Romanorum (No. xxviii.) and in Boccaccio (Day iii. 6 and Day vi. 8), modified by La Fontaine to Richard Minutolo (Contes lib. i. tale 2): it is quoted almost in the words of The Nights by the Shaykh al-Nafz�wi (p. 207).

That most witty and indecent tale The Three Wishes (vol. vi. 180) has forced its way disguised as a babe into our nurseries.

Another form of it is found in the Arab proverb “More luckless than Bas�s” (Kamus), a fair Israelite who persuaded her husband, also a Jew, to wish that she might become the loveliest of women.

Jehovah granted it, spitefully as Jupiter; the consequence was that her contumacious treatment of her mate made him pray that the beauty might be turned into a bitch; and the third wish restored her to her original state.

 

The Story of J�dar (vol. vi. 207) is Egyptian, to judge from its local knowledge (pp. 217 and 254) together with its ignorance of Marocco (p. 223). It shows a contrast, in which Arabs delight, of an almost angelical goodness and forgiveness with a well-nigh diabolical malignity, and we find the same extremes in Ab� S�r the noble-minded Barber and the hideously inhuman Ab� K�r. The excursion to Mauritania is artfully managed and gives a novelty to the mise-en-sc�ne. Ghar�b and Aj�b (vi. 207, vii. 91) belongs to the cycle of Antar and King Omar bin Nu’man: its exaggerations make it a fine type of Oriental Chauvinism, pitting the superhuman virtues, valour, nobility and success of all that is Moslem, against the scum of the earth which is non-Moslem.