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

the Caliphs about the middle of the twelfth century.

 

[FN#151] The wellknown Rauzah or Garden-island, of old Al-San�‘ah (Al-Mas’udi chapt. xxxi.) which is more than once noticed in The Nights. The name of the pavilion Al-Haudaj = a camel-litter, was probably intended to flatter the Badawi girl.

 

[FN#152] He was the Seventh Fatimite Caliph of Egypt: regn. A.H.

495-524 (= 1101 1129).

 

[FN#153] Suggesting a private pleasaunce in Al-Rauzah which has ever been and is still a succession of gardens.

 

[FN#154] The writer in The Athen�um calls him Ibn Miyvah, and adds that the Badawiyah wrote to her cousin certain verses complaining of her thraldom, which the youth answered abusing the Caliph. Al-�mir found the correspondence and ordered Ibn Miyah’s tongue to be cut out, but he saved himself by a timely flight.

 

[FN#155] In Night dccclxxxv. we have the passage “He was a wily thief: none could avail against his craft as he were Abu Mohammed Al-Batt�l”: the word etymologically means The Bad; but see infra.

 

[FN#156] Amongst other losses which Orientals have sustained by the death of Rogers Bey, I may mention his proposed translation of Al-Makr�z�‘s great topographical work.

 

[FN#157] The name appears only in a later passage.

 

[FN#158] Mr. Payne notes (viii. 137) “apparently some famous brigand of the time” (of Charlemagne). But the title may signify The Brave, and the tale may be much older.

 

[FN#159] In his “M�moire sur l’origine du Recueil des Contes intitul� Les Mille et une Nuits” (M�m. d’Hist. et de Litt�r.

Orientale, extrait des tomes ix., et x. des M�moires de l’Inst.

Royal Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1833). He read the Memoir before the Royal Academy on July 31, 1829. Also in his Dissertation “Sur les Mille et une Nuits” (pp. i. viii.) prefixed to the Bourdin Edit. When first the Arabist in Europe landed at Alexandria he could not exchange a word with the people the same is told of Golius the lexicographer at Tunis.

 

[FN#160] Lane, Nights ii. 218.

 

[FN#161] This origin had been advocated a decade of years before by Shaykh Ahmad al-Shiraw�ni; Editor of the Calc. text (1814-18): his Persian preface opines that the author was an Arabic speaking Syrian who designedly wrote in a modern and conversational style, none of the purest withal, in order to instruct non-Arabists.

Here we find the genus “Professor” pure and simple.

 

[FN#162] Such an assertion makes us enquire, Did De Sacy ever read through The Nights in Arabic?

 

[FN#163] Dr. Jonathan Scott’s “translation” vi. 283.

 

[FN#164] For a note on this worldwide Tale see vol. i. 52.

 

[FN#165] In the annotated translation by Mr. I. G. N. Keith-Falconer, Cambridge University Press. I regret to see the wretched production called the “Fables of Pilpay” in the “Chandos Classics” (London, F. Warne). The words are so mutilated that few will recognize them, e.g. Carchenas for K�r-sh�n�s, Chaschmanah for Chashmey-e-M�h (Fountain of the Moon), etc.

 

[FN#166] Article Arabia in Encyclop. Brit., 9th Edit., p. 263, colt 2. I do not quite understand Mr. Palgrave, but presume that his “other version” is the Bresl. Edit., the MS. of which was brought from Tunis; see its Vorwort (vol. i. p. 3).

 

[FN#167] There are three distinct notes according to De Sacy (M�m., p. 50). The first (in MS. 1508) says “This blessed book was read by the weak slave, etc. Wahabah son of Rizkallah the K�tib (secretary, scribe) of Tar�bulus al-Sh�m (Syrian Tripoli), who prayeth long life for its owner (li m�liki-h). This tenth day of the month First Rab�‘a A.H. 955 (= 1548).” A similar note by the same Wahabah occurs at the end of vol. ii. (MS. 1507) dated A.H. 973 (= 1565) and a third (MS. 1506) is undated. Evidcntly M.

Caussin has given undue weight to such evidence. For further information see “Tales of the East” to which is prefixed an Introductory Dissertation (vol. i. pp. 24-26, note) by Henry Webber, Esq., Edinburgh, 1812, in 3 vols.

 

[FN#168] “Notice sur les douze manuscrits connus des Milles et une Nuits, qui existent en Europe.” Von Hammer in Tr�butien, Notice, vol. i.

 

[FN#169] Printed from the MS. of Major Turner Macan, Editor of the Shahnamah: he bought it from the heirs of Mr. Salt, the historic Consul-General of England in Egypt and after Macan’s death it became the property of the now extinct Allens, then of Leadenhall Street (Torrens, Preface, i.). I have vainly enquired about what became of it.

 

[FN#170] The short paper by “P. R.” in the Gentleman’s Magazine (Feb. 19th, 1799, vol. lxix. p. 61) tells us that MSS. of The Nights were scarce at Aleppo and that he found only two vols.

(280 Nights) which he had great difficulty in obtaining leave to copy. He also noticed (in 1771) a MS., said to be complete, in the Vatican and another in the “King’s Library” (Biblioth�que Nationale), Paris.

 

[FN#171] Aleppo has been happy in finding such monographers as Russell and Maundrell while poor Damascus fell into the hands of Mr. Missionary Porter, and suffered accordingly.

 

[FN#172] Vol. vi. Appendix, p.452.

 

[FN#173] The numbers, however, vary with the Editions of Galland: some end the formula with Night cxcvii; others with the ccxxxvi.

: I adopt that of the De Sacy Edition.

 

[FN#174] Contes Persans, suivis des Contes Turcs. Paris; B�chet Ain�, 1826.

 

[FN#175] In the old translation we have “eighteen hundred years since the prophet Solomon died,” (B.C. 975) = A.D. 825.

 

[FN#176] Meaning the era of the Seleucides. Dr. Jonathan Scott shows (vol. ii. 324) that A.H. 653 and A.D. 1255 would correspond with 1557 of that epoch; so that the scribe has here made a little mistake of 5,763 years. Ex uno disce.

 

[FN#177] The Saturday Review (Jan. 2nd ‘86) writes, “Captain Burton has fallen into a mistake by not distinguishing between the names of the by no means identical Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al-Mustansir.” Quite true: it was an ugly confusion of the melancholy madman and parricide with one of the best and wisest of the Caliphs. I can explain (not extenuate) my mistake only by a misprint in Al-Siy�ti (p. 554).

 

[FN#178] In the Galland MS. and the Bresl. Edit. (ii. 253), we find the Barber saying that the Caliph (Al-Mustansir) was at that time (yaumaizin) in Baghdad, and this has been held to imply that the Caliphate had fallen. But such conjecture is evidently based upon insufficient grounds.

 

[FN#179] De Sacy makes the “Kalandar” order originate in A.D.

1150, but the Shaykh Shar�f b� Ali Kalandar died in A.D. 1323-24.

In Sind the first Kalandar, Osm�n-i-Marw�nd� surnamed L�l Sh�hb�z, the Red Goshawk, from one of his miracles, died and was buried at Sehw�n in A D. 1274: see my “History of Sindh” chapt.

viii. for details. The dates therefore run wild.

 

[FN#180] In this same tale H. H. Wilson observes that the title of Sultan of Egypt was not assumed before the middle of the xiith century.

 

[FN#181] Popularly called Vidyanagar of the Narsingha.

 

[FN#182] Time-measurers are of very ancient date. The Greeks had clepsydr� and the Romans gnomons, portable and ring-shaped, besides large standing town-dials as at Aquileja and San Sabba near Trieste. The “Saracens” were the perfecters of the clepsydra: Bosseret (p. 16) and the Chronicon Turense (Beckmann ii. 340 et seq.) describe the water-clock sent by Al-Rashid to Karl the Great as a kind of “cockoo-clock.” Twelve doors in the dial opened successively and little balls dropping on brazen bells told the hour: at noon a dozen mounted knights paraded the face and closed the portals. Trithonius mentions an horologium presented in A.D. 1232 by Al-Malik al-K�mil the Ayyubite Soldan to the Emperor Frederick II: like the Strasbourg and Padua clocks it struck the hours, told the day, month and year, showed the phases of the moon, and registered the position of the sun and the planets. Towards the end of the fifteenth century Gaspar Visconti mentions in a sonnet the watch proper (certi orologii piccioli e portativi); and the “animated eggs” of Nurembourg became famous. The earliest English watch (Sir Ashton Lever’s) dates from 1541: and in 1544 the portable chronometer became common in France.

 

[FN#183] An illustrated History of Arms and Armour etc. (p. 59); London: Bell and Sons, 1877. The best edition is the Guide des Amateurs d’Armes, Paris: Renouard, 1879.

 

[FN#184] Chapt. iv. Dr. Gustav Oppert “On the Weapons etc. of the Ancient Hindus;” London: Tr�bner and Co., 1880. : [FN#185] I have given other details on this subject in pp. 631-637 of “Camoens, his Life and his Lusiads.”

 

[FN#186] The morbi venerei amongst the Romans are obscure because “whilst the satirists deride them the physicians are silent.”

Celsus, however, names (De obscenarum partium vitiis, lib.

xviii.) inflammatio coleorum (swelled testicle), tubercula glandem (warts on the glans penis), cancri carbunculi (chancre or shanker) and a few others. The rubigo is noticed as a lues venerea by Servius in Virg. Georg.

 

[FN#187] According to David Forbes, the Peruvians believed that syphilis arose from connection of man and alpaca; and an old law forbade bachelors to keep these animals in the house. Francks explains by the introduction of syphilis wooden figures found in the Chinchas guano; these represented men with a cord round the neck or a serpent devouring the genitals.

 

[FN#188] They appeared before the gates of Paris in the summer of 1427, not “about July, 1422”: in Eastern Europe, however, they date from a much earlier epoch. Sir J. Gilbert’s famous picture has one grand fault, the men walk and the women ride: in real life the reverse would be the case.

 

[FN#189] Rabelais ii. c. 30.

 

[FN#190] I may be allowed to note that syphilis does not confine itself to man: a charger infected with it was pointed out to me at Baroda by my late friend, Dr. Arnott (18th Regiment, Bombay N.I.) and Tangier showed me some noticeable cases of this hippic syphilis, which has been studied in Hungary. Eastern peoples have a practice of “passing on” venereal and other diseases, and transmission is supposed to cure the patient; for instance a virgin heals (and catches) gonorrh�a. Syphilis varies greatly with climate. In Persia it is said to be propagated without contact: in Abyssinia it is often fatal and in Egypt it is readily cured by sand baths and sulphur-unguents. Lastly in lands like Unyamwezi, where mercurials are wholly unknown, I never saw caries of the nasal or facial bones.

 

[FN#191] For another account of the transplanter and the casuistical questions to which coffee gave rise, see my “First Footsteps in East Africa” (p. 76).

 

[FN#192] The first mention of coffee proper (not of Kahwah or old wine in vol. ii. 260) is in Night cdxxvi. vol. v. 169, where the coffee-maker is called Kahwahjiyyah, a mongrel term showing the modern date of the passage in Ali the Cairene. As the work advances notices become thicker, e.g.

in Night dccclxvi. where Ali Nur al-Din and the Frank King’s daughter seems to be a modernisation of the story “Ala al-Din Abu al-Sh�m�t” (vol. iv. 29); and in Abu Kir and Abu Sir (Nights cmxxx.

and cmxxxvi.) where coffee is drunk with sherbet after present fashion. The use culminates in Kamar alZaman II. where it is mentioned six times (Nights cmlxvi. cmlxx. cmlxxi. twice; cmlxxiv.

and cmlxxvii.), as being drunk after the dawn-breakfast and following the meal as a matter of course. The last notices are in Abdullah bin Fazil, Nights cmlxxviii. and cmlxxix.

 

[FN#193] It has been suggested that Japanese tobacco is an indigenous growth and sundry modern travellers in China contend that the potato and the maize, both white and yellow, have there been cultivated from time immemorial.

 

[FN#194] For these see my