The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 5 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (red novels txt) 📖

third hemistitch Lane’s Shaykh very properly reads “baghtatan” (suddenly) for “burhatan”=during a long time.

 

[FN#34] “Uns” (which the vulgar pronounce Anas) “al-Wujud”=Delight of existing things, of being, of the world. Uns wa jud is the normal pun=love-intimacy and liberality; and the caranomasia (which cannot well be rendered in English) reappears again and again. The story is throughout one of love; hence the quantity of verse.

 

[FN#35] The allusion to a “written N” suggests the elongated not the rounded form of the letter as in Night cccxxiv.

 

[FN#36] The fourteenth Arabic letter in its medial form resembling an eye.

 

[FN#37] This is done by the man passing his fingers over the brow as if to wipe off perspiration; the woman acknowledges it by adjusting her head-veil with both hands. As a rule in the Moslem East women make the first advances; and it is truly absurd to see a great bearded fellow blushing at being ogled. During the Crimean war the fair sex of Constantinople began by these allurements but found them so readily accepted by the Giaours that they were obliged to desist.

 

[FN#38] The greatest of all explorers and discoverers of the world will be he who finds a woman confessing inability to keep a secret.

 

[FN#39] The original is intensely prosaic�and so am I.

 

[FN#40] Arab. “Sunnat,” the practice of the Prophet. For this prayer and other silly and superstitious means of discovering the “right direction” (which is often very wrongly directed) see Lane, M.E. chapt. xi.

 

[FN#41] Arab. “Bahr (sea or river) al-Kunuz”: Lane (ii. 576) ingeniously identifies the site with the Upper Nile whose tribes, between Assouan (Syene) and Wady al-Subu’a are called the “Kunuz”�lit. meaning “treasures” or “hoards.” Philae is still known as the “Islet of Anas (for Uns) al-Wujud;” and the learned and accurate Burckhardt (Travels in Nubia p. 5) records the local legend that a mighty King called Al-Wujud built the Osirian temples. I can give no information concerning Jabal al-Sakla (Thakla), the Mount of the woman bereft of children, beyond the legend contained in Night ccclxxix.

 

[FN#42] A religious mendicant (lit. a pauper), of whom there are two great divisions. The Shara’i acts according to the faith: the others (La Shara’i, or irreligious) are bound by no such prejudices and are pretty specimens of scoundrels. (Pilgrimage i.22.)

 

[FN#43] Meaning his lips and palate were so swollen by drought.

 

[FN#44] It is a pious act in time of mortal danger to face the Kiblah or Meccan temple, as if standing in prayer.

 

[FN#45] Still the belief of the Badawi who tries to work upon the beast’s compassion: “O great King I am a poor man, with wife and family, so spare me that Allah spare thee!” and so forth. If not famished the lion will often stalk off looking behind him as he goes; but the man will never return by the same path; “for,”

says he, “haply the Father of Roaring may repent him of a wasted opportunity.” These lion-tales are very common, witness that of Androcles at Rome and a host of others. Una and her lion is another phase. It remained for M. Jules Gerard, first the chasseur and then the tueur, du lion, to assail the reputation of the lion and the honour of the lioness.

 

[FN#46] Abu Haris=Father of spoils: one of the lion’s hundred titles.

 

[FN#47] “They” again for “she.”

 

[FN#48] Jaxartes and Oxus. The latter (Jayhun or Amu, Oxus or Bactros) is famous for dividing Iran from Turan, Persia from Tartaria. The lands to its north are known as Ma wara al-Nahr (Mawerannahar) or “What is behind the stream,”=Transoxiana and their capitals were successively Samarcand and Bokhara.

 

[FN#49] Arab. “Dani was gharib”=friend and foe. The lines are partly from the Mac. Edit. and partly from the Bresl. Edit., v.

55.

 

[FN#50] Arab. “Wa Rahmata-hu!” a form now used only in books.

 

[FN#51] Before noted. The relationship, like that of foster-brother, has its rights, duties and privileges.

 

[FN#52] Arab. “Istikharah,” before explained as praying for direction by omens of the rosary, opening the Koran and reading the first verse sighted, etc., etc. At Al-Medinah it is called Khirah and I have suggested (Pilgrimage, ii. 287) that it is a relic of the Azlam or Kidah (divining arrows) of paganism. But the superstition is not local: we have the Sortes Virgilianae (Virgil being a magician) as well as Coranicae.

 

[FN#53] Arab. “Wujud al-Habib,” a pun, also meaning, “Wujud my beloved.”

 

[FN#54] Arab. “Khilal,” as an emblem of attenuation occurring in Al-Hariri (Ass. of Alexandria, etc.); also thin as a spindle (Maghzal), as a reed, and dry as a pair of shears. In the Ass. of Barka’id the toothpick is described as a beautiful girl. The use of this cleanly article was enjoined by Mohammed:—“Cleanse your mouths with toothpicks; for your mouths are the abode of the guardian angels; whose pens are the tongues, and whose ink is the spittle of men; and to whom naught is more unbearable than remains of food in the mouth.” A mighty apparatus for a small matter; but in very hot lands cleanliness must rank before godliness.

 

[FN#55] The sense is ambiguous. Lane renders the verse:—“Thou resemblest it (rose) not of my portion” and gives two explanations “because HE is of my portion,” or, “because HIS

cheek cannot be rosy if MINE is not.” Mr. Payne boldly translates�

 

“If the rose ape his cheek, ‘Now God forfend,’ I say, ‘That of my portion aught to pilfer thou shouldst try’.”

 

[FN#56] Arab. “lif” (not “fibres which grow at the top of the trunk,” Lane ii. 577); but the fibre of the fronds worked like the cocoa-nut fibre which forms the now well-known Indian “coir.”

This “lif” is also called “filfil” or “fulfil” which Dr. Jonathan Scott renders “pepper” (Lane i. 8) and it forms a clean succedaneum for one of the uncleanest articles of civilisation, the sponge. It is used in every Hammam and is (or should be) thrown away after use.

 

[FN#57] Arab. “Shinf;” a course sack, a “gunny-bag;” a net compared with such article.

 

[FN#58] The eunuch tells him that he is not a “Sandali”=one whose penis and testes are removed; and consequently the highest valued. There are many ways of making the castrato; in some (as here) only the penis is removed, in other the testes are bruised or cut off; but in all cases the animal passion remains, for in man, unlike other animals, the fons veneris is the brain. The story of Abelard proves this. Juvenal derided the idea of married eunuchs and yet almost all of these neutrals have wives with whom they practise the manifold plaisirs de la petite oie (masturbation, tribadism, irrumation, tete-beche, feuille-de-rose, etc.), till they induce the venereal orgasm. Such was the account once given to me by a eunuch’s wife; and I need hardly say that she, like her confrerie, was to be pitied. At the critical moment she held up a little pillow for her husband to bite who otherwise would have torn her cheeks or breasts.

 

[FN#59] In real life the eunuch, as a rule, avoids all allusion to his misfortune, although the slave will often describe his being sold merrily enough.

 

[FN#60] The visits are in dreamland. The ringdove thanks the Lord for her (his?) suffering in the holy martyrdom of love.

 

[FN#61] Arab. “Hazar;” I have explained it as meaning “(the bird of) a thousand (songs).”

 

[FN#62] The “Bulbul” had his day with us but he departed with Tommy Moore. We usually English the word by “nightingale;” but it is a kind of shrike or butcher-bird (Lanius Boulboul. Lath.).

 

[FN#63] The “Hamam” is a lieu commun in Arabic poetry. I have noticed the world-wide reverence for the pigeon and the incarnation of the Third Person of the Hindu Triad (Shiva), as Kapoteshwara (Kapota-ishwara)”=pigeon or dove-god (Pilgrimage iii. 218).

 

[FN#64] Arab. “Hamam al-Ayk.” Mr. Payne’s rendering is so happy that we must either take it from him or do worse.

 

[FN#65] All primitive peoples translate the songs of birds with human language; but, as I have noticed, the versions differ widely. The pigeon cries, “Allah! Allah!” the dove “Karim, Tawwa”

(Bountiful, Pardoner!) the Kata or sand-grouse “Man sakat salam”

(who is silent is safe) yet always betrays itself by its lay of “Kat-ta” and lastly the cock “Uzkuru ‘llah ya ghafilun”

(Remember, or take the name of Allah, ye careless!).

 

[FN#66] “Nay,” the Dervish’s reed pipe, symbol of the sighing absent lover (i.e. the soul parted from the Creator) so famed by the Mullah-i-Rum and Sir William Jones.

 

[FN#67] Ba’albak=Ba’al (the God)-city (bek in Coptic and ancient Egyptian.) Such, at least, is the popular derivation which awaits a better. No cloth has been made there since the Kurd tribe of gallant robbers known as the “Harfush” (or blackguards) lorded it over old “Heliopolis.”

 

[FN#68] Thinking her to be a Jinn or Ghul in the shape of a fair woman. This Arab is a strange contrast to the English fisherman, and yet he is drawn with truth.

 

[FN#69] Arab. “Habbaza!” (good this!) or “Habba” (how good!): so “Habba bihi,” how dear he is to me.

 

[FN#70] Arab. “Zind,” and “Zindah” the names of the two sticks, upper and lower, hard and soft, by which fire was kindled before flint and steel were known. We find it in Al-Hariri (Ass. of Banu Haram) “no one sought ire from my fire-stick (i.e. from me as a fire-stick) and failed.” See Night dccciii.

 

[FN#71] Arab. “Nazih” i.e. travelled far and wide.

 

[FN#72] “Rajab,” lit.=“worshipping:” it is the seventh lunar month and still called “Shahr-i-Khuda” (God’s month) by the Persians because in pre-Islamitic times it formed with Muharram (or in its stead Safar), Zu ‘l-ka’adah and Zu-‘l-Hijjah (Nos. 1

or 2; 7,11 and 12) the yearly peace, during which a man might not kill his father’s murderer. The idea must have taken deep root, as Arab history records only six “impious (or sacrilegious) wars,” waged despite the law. Europeans compare it with the Treuga Dei (truce of God) a seven-years peace established about A.D. 1032, by a Bishop of Aquitaine; and followed in A.D. 1245 by the Pax Regis (Royal Peace) under Louis VIII. of France. This compelled the relations of a murdered man to keep the peace for forty days after the offence was committed.

 

[FN#73] His Majesty wrote sad doggrel. He is better at finessing, and his message was a trick because Rose-in-Hood had told him that at home there were special obstacles to the marriage.

 

[FN#74] Arab. “Majzub”=drawn, attracted (literally); the popular term for one absorbed in the contemplation of the Deity. During this process the soul is supposed to quit the body leaving the latter irresponsible for its actions. I remember a scandal being caused in a village near Tunis by one of these men who suddenly started up from his seat in a dusty corner and, in presence of a small crowd of people, had connection with a she-donkey. The supporters of the holy man declared that the deed was proof positive of his exceptional holiness; but there were lewd fellows, Moslems Voltaireans, who had their doubts and held that the reverend man had so acted “for the gallery.” A similar story is told with due reserve by the late Abbe Hamilton in his book on the Cyrenaic. There are three grand divisions of the Sufis; (1) Mukiman, the stationaries; (2) Salikan, the travellers, or progressives, and (3) Wasilan, those who reach the desired end.

And No. 2 has two classes: the Salik-i-majzub, one progressing in Divine Love; and the other, who has made greater progress, is the Majzub-i-Salik (Dabistan iii. 251).

 

[FN#75] Arab. “Sundus,” a kind of brocade (low Lat. brocare to figure cloth),