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

Al-Azhar of Cairo.

 

[FN#24] This thoroughly dramatic scene is told with a charming na�vet�. No wonder that The Nights has been made the basis of a national theatre amongst the Turks.

 

[FN#25] Arab. “Taysh” lit.=vertigo, swimming of head.

 

[FN#26] Here Tr�butien (iii. 265) reads “la ville de Kha�tan (so the Mac. Edit. iv. 708) capital du royaume de Sohatan.” Ikhtiy�n Lane suggests to be fictitious: Khatan is a district of Tartary east of K�shgar, so called by S�dik al-Isfah�ni p. 24.

 

[FN#27] This is a true picture of the tact and savoir faire of the Cairenes. It was a study to see how, under the late Khedive they managed to take precedence of Europeans who found themselves in the background before they knew it. For instance, every Bey, whose degree is that of a Colonel was made an “Excellency” and ranked accordingly at Court whilst his father, some poor Fellah, was ploughing the ground. Tanf�k Pasha began his ill-omened rule by always placing natives close to him in the place of honour, addressing them first and otherwise snubbing Europeans who, when English, were often too obtuse to notice the petty insults lavished upon them.

 

[FN#28] Arab. “Kath�r” (pron. Katir)=much: here used in its slang sense, “no end.”

 

[FN#29] i.e. “May the Lord soon make thee able to repay me; but meanwhile I give it to thee for thy own free use.”

 

[FN#30] Punning upon his name. Much might be written upon the significance of names as ominous of good and evil; but the subject is far too extensive for a footnote.

 

[FN#31] Lane translates “�nisa-kum” by “he hath delighted you by his arrival”; Mr. Payne “I commend him to you.”

 

[FN#32] Arab. “Fat�r�t,”=light food for the early breakfast of which the “Fat�rah”-cake was a favourite item. See vol. i. 300.

 

[FN#33] A dark red dye (Lane).

 

[FN#34] Arab. “Jad�d,” see vol. viii. 121.

 

[FN#35] Both the texts read thus, but the reading has little sense. Ma’aruf probably would say, “I fear that my loads will be long coming.”

 

[FN#36] One of the many formulas of polite refusal.

 

[FN#37] Each bazar, in a large city like Damascus, has its tall and heavy wooden doors which are locked every evening and opened in the morning by the Ghafir or guard. The “silver key,” however, always lets one in.

 

[FN#38] Arab. “Wa l� Kabbata h�miyah,” a Cairene vulgarism meaning, “There came nothing to profit him nor to rid the people of him.”

 

[FN#39] Arab. “Kammir,” i.e. brown it before the fire, toast it.

 

[FN#40] It is insinuated that he had lied till he himself believed the lie to be truth—not an uncommon process, I may remark.

 

[FN#41] Arab. “Rij�l”=the Men, equivalent to the Walis, Saints or Santons; with perhaps an allusion to the Rij�l al-Ghayb, the Invisible Controls concerning whom I have quoted Herklots in vol.

ii. 211.

 

[FN#42] A saying attributed to Al-Hariri (Lane). It is good enough to be his: the Persians say, “Cut not down the tree thou plantedst,” and the idea is universal throughout the East.

 

[FN#43] A quotation from Al-Hariri (Ass. of the Badawin). Ash’ab (ob. A.H. 54), a Medinite servant of Caliph Osman, was proverbial for greed and sanguine, Micawber-like expectation of “windfalls.”

The Scholiast Al-Shar�shi (of Xeres) describes him in Theophrastic style. He never saw a man put hand to pocket without expecting a present, or a funeral go by without hoping for a legacy, or a bridal procession without preparing his own house, hoping they might bring the bride to him by mistake. * When asked if he knew aught greedier than himself he said “Yes; a sheep I once kept upon my terrace-roof seeing a rainbow mistook it for a rope of hay and jumping to seize it broke its neck!”

Hence “Ash’ab’s sheep” became a by-word (Preston tells the tale in full, p. 288).

 

[FN#44] i.e. “Show a miser money and hold him back, if you can.”

 

[FN#45] He wants �40,000 to begin with.

 

[FN#46] i.e. Arab. “Sab�hat al-‘urs” the morning after the wedding. See vol. i. 269.

 

[FN#47] Another sign of modern composition as in Kamar alZaman II.

 

[FN#48] Arab. “Al-Jink” (from Turk.) are boys and youths mostly Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Turks, who dress in woman’s dress with long hair braided. Lane (M. E. chapts. xix. and xxv.) gives same account of the customs of the “Gink” (as the Egyptians call them) but cannot enter into details concerning these catamites.

Respectable Moslems often employ them to dance at festivals in preference to the Ghaw�zi-women, a freak of Mohammedan decorum.

When they grow old they often preserve their costume, and a glance at them makes a European’s blood run cold.

 

[FN#49] Lane translates this, “May Allah and the Rijal retaliate upon thy temple!”

 

[FN#50] Arab. “Y� aba ‘l-lith�mayn,” addressed to his member.

Lathm the root means kissing or breaking; so he would say, “O

thou who canst take her maidenhead whilst my tongue does away with the virginity of her mouth.” “He breached the citadel”

(which is usually square) “in its four corners” signifying that he utterly broke it down.

 

[FN#51] A mystery to the Author of Proverbs (xxx. 18-19), There be three things which are too wondrous for me, The way of an eagle in the air;

The way of a snake upon a rock;

And the way of a man with a maid.

 

[FN#52] Several women have described the pain to me as much resembling the drawing of a tooth.

 

[FN#53] As we should say, “play fast and loose.”

 

[FN#54] Arab. “N�h�-ka” lit.=thy prohibition but idiomatically used=let it suffice thee!

 

[FN#55] A character-sketch like that of Princess Dunya makes ample amends for a book full of abuse of women. And yet the superficial say that none of the characters have much personal individuality.

 

[FN#56] This is indeed one of the touches of nature which makes all the world kin.

 

[FN#57] As we are in Tartary “Arabs” here means plundering nomades, like the Persian “Iliy�t” and other shepherd races.

 

[FN#58] The very cruelty of love which hates nothing so much as a rejected lover. The Princess, be it noted, is not supposed to be merely romancing, but speaking with the second sight, the clairvoyance, of perfect affection. Men seem to know very little upon this subject, though every one has at times been more or less startled by the abnormal introvision and divination of things hidden which are the property and prerogative of perfect love.

 

[FN#59] The name of the Princess meaning “The World,” not unusual amongst Moslem women.

 

[FN#60] Another pun upon his name, “Ma’aruf.”

 

[FN#61] Arab. “Nak�,” the mound of pure sand which delights the eye of the Badawi leaving a town. See vol. i. 217, for the lines and explanation in Night cmlxiv. vol. ix. p. 250.

 

[FN#62] Euphemistic: “I will soon fetch thee food.” To say this bluntly might have brought misfortune.

 

[FN#63] Arab. “Kafr”=a village in Egypt and Syria e.g. Capernaum (Kafr Nahum).

 

[FN#64] He has all the bonhomie of the Cairene and will do a kindness whenever he can.

 

[FN#65] i.e. the Father of Prosperities: pron. Aboosa’�d�t; as in the Tale of Hasan of Bassorah.

 

[FN#66] Koran lxxxix. “The Daybreak” which also mentions Thamud and Pharaoh.

 

[FN#67] In Egypt the cheapest and poorest of food, never seen at a hotel table d’h�te.

 

[FN#68] The beautiful girls who guard ensorcelled hoards: See vol. vi. 109.

 

[FN#69] Arab. “As�kir,” the ornaments of litters, which are either plain balls of metal or tapering cones based on crescents or on balls and crescents. See in Lane (M. E. chapt. xxiv.) the sketch of the Mahmal.

 

[FN#70] Arab. “Amm”=father’s brother, courteously used for “father-in-law,” which suggests having slept with his daughter, and which is indecent in writing. Thus by a pleasant fiction the husband represents himself as having married his first cousin.

 

[FN#71] i.e. a calamity to the enemy: see vol. ii. 87 and passim.

 

[FN#72] Both texts read “Asad” (lion) and Lane accepts it: there is no reason to change it for “H�sid” (Envier), the Lion being the Sultan of the Beasts and the most majestic.

 

[FN#73] The Cairene knew his fellow Cairene and was not to be taken in by him.

 

[FN#74] Arab. “Hiz�m”: Lane reads “Khiz�m”=a nose-ring for which see appendix to Lane’s M. E. The untrained European eye dislikes these decorations and there is certainly no beauty in the hoops which Hindu women insert through the nostrils, camel-fashion, as if to receive the cord-acting bridle. But a drop-pearl hanging to the septum is at least as pretty as the heavy pendants by which some European women lengthen their ears.

 

[FN#75] Arab. “Shamt�,” one of the many names of wine, the “speckled” alluding to the bubbles which dance upon the freshly filled cup.

 

[FN#76] i.e. in the cask. These “merry quips” strongly suggest the dismal toasts of our not remote ancestors.

 

[FN#77] Arab. “A’l�j” plur. of “‘Ilj” and rendered by Lane “the stout foreign infidels.” The next line alludes to the cupbearer who was generally a slave and a non-Moslem.

 

[FN#78] As if it were a bride. See vol. vii. 198. The stars of Jauz� (Gemini) are the cupbearer’s eyes.

 

[FN#79] i.e. light-coloured wine.

 

[FN#80] The usual homage to youth and beauty.

 

[FN#81] Alluding to the cup.

 

[FN#82] Here Abu Nowas whose name always ushers in some abomination alluded to the “Ghul�miyah” or girl dressed like boy to act cupbearer. Civilisation has everywhere the same devices and the Bordels of London and Paris do not ignore the “she-boy,”

who often opens the door.

 

[FN#83] Abdallah ibn al-Mu’tazz, son of Al-Mu’tazz bi ‘llah, the 13th Abbaside, and great-great-grandson of Harun al-Rashid. He was one of the most renowned poets of the third century (A.H.) and died A.D. 908, strangled by the partisans of his nephew Al-Muktadir bi ‘llah, 18th Abbaside.

 

[FN#84] Jaz�rat ibn Omar, an island and town on the Tigris north of Mosul. “Some versions of the poem, from which these verses are quoted, substitute El-Mutireh, a village near Samara (a town on the Tigris, 60 miles north of Baghdad), for El-Jezireh, i.e.

Jeziret ibn Omar.” (Payne.)

 

[FN#85] The Convent of Abdun on the east bank of the Tigris opposite the Jezirah was so called from a statesman who caused it to be built. For a variant of these lines see Ibn Khallikan, vol.

ii. 42; here we miss “the shady groves of Al-Mat�rah.”

 

[FN#86] Arab. “Ghurrah” the white blaze on a horse’s brow. In Ibn Khallikan the bird is the lark.

 

[FN#87] Arab. “T�y’i”=thirsty used with J�y’i=hungry.

 

[FN#88] Lit. “Kohl’d with Ghunj” for which we have no better word than “coquetry.” But see vol. v. 80. It corresponds with the Latin crissare for women and cevere for men.

 

[FN#89] i.e. gold-coloured wine, as the Vino d’Oro.

 

[FN#90] Compare the charming song of Abu Mij�n translated from the German of Dr. Weil in Bohn’s Edit. of Ockley (p. 149), When the Death-angel cometh mine eyes to close, Dig my grave ‘mid the vines on the hill’s fair side; For though deep in earth may my bones repose, The juice of the grape shall their food provide.

Ah, bury me not in a barren land,

Or Death will appear to me dread and drear!

While fearless I’ll wait what he hath in hand I An the scent of the vineyard my spirit cheer.

 

The glorious old drinker!

 

[FN#91] Arab. “Rub’a al-Khar�b” in Ibn al-Wardi Central Africa south of the Nile-sources, one of the richest regions in the world. Here it prob. alludes to the Rub’a