Part 41

[FN#6] All Moslems, except those of the Mαliki school, hold that the maker of an image representing anything of life will be commanded on the Judgment Day to animate it, and failing will be duly sent to the Fire. This severity arose apparently from the necessity of putting down idol-worship and, perhaps, for the same reason the Greek Church admits pictures but not statues. Of course the command has been honoured with extensive breaching: for instance all the Sultans of Stambul have had their portraits drawn and painted.

[FN#7] This description of ugly old age is written with true

Arab verve.

[FN#8] Arab. "Badinjαn": Hind. Bengan: Pers. Bαdingαn or Badiljαn; the Mala insana (Solanum pomiferum or S. Melongena) of the Romans, well known in Southern Europe. It is of two kinds, the red (Solanum lycopersicum) and the black (S. Melongena). The Spaniards know it as "berengeria" and when Sancho Panza (Part ii. chapt. 2) says, "The Moors are fond of egg-plants" he means more than appears. The vegetable is held to be exceedingly heating and thereby to breed melancholia and madness; hence one says to a man that has done something eccentric, "Thou hast been eating brinjalls."

[FN#9] Again to be understood Hibernice "kilt."

[FN#10] i.e. for fear of the evil eye injuring the palace and, haply, himself.

[FN#11] The "Sufrah" before explained acting provision-bag and table-cloth.

[FN#12] Eastern women in hot weather, lie mother-nude under a sheet here represented by the hair. The Greeks and Romans also slept stripped and in mediζval England the most modest women saw nothing indelicate in sleeping naked by their naked husbands. The "night-cap" and the "night-gown" are comparatively modern inventions.

[FN#13] Hindu fable turns this simile into better poetry, "She was like a second and a more wondrous moon made by the Creator."

[FN#14] "Sun of the Day."

[FN#15] Arab. "Shirk"=worshipping more than one God. A theological term here most appropriately used.

[FN#16] The Bul. Edit. as usual abridges (vol. i. 534). The Prince lands on the palace-roof where he leaves his horse, and finding no one in the building goes back to the terrace. Suddenly he sees a beautiful girl approaching him with a party of her women, suggesting to him these couplets,

"She came without tryst in the darkest hour, *

Like full moon lighting horizon's night:

Slim-formed, there is not in the world her like *

For grace of form or for gifts of sprite:

'Praise him who made her from semen-drop,' *

I cried, when her beauty first struck my sight:

I guard her from eyes, seeking refuge with *

The Lord of mankind and of morning-light."

The two then made acquaintance and "follows what follows."

[FN#17] Arab. "Akαsirah," explained (vol. i., 75) as the plur. of Kisrα.

[FN#18] The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own. This was systematised by the servile rulers known in history as the Mameluke Beys and to the Egyptians as the Ghuzz. Each had his household of servile pages and squires, who looked forward to filling the master's place as knight or baron.

[FN#19] The well-known capital of Al-Yaman, a true Arabia Felix, a Paradise inhabited by demons in the shape of Turkish soldiery and Arab caterans. According to Moslem writers Sana'a was founded by Shem son of Noah who, wandering southward with his posterity after his father's death, and finding the site delightful, dug a well and founded the citadel, Ghamdαn, which afterwards contained a Mason Carrιe rivalling (or attempting to rival) the Meccan Ka'abah. The builder was Surahbνl who, says M.C. de Perceval coloured its four faces red, white, golden and green; the central quadrangle had seven stories (the planets) each forty cubits high, and the lowest was a marble hall ceiling'd with a single slab. At the four corners stood hollow lions through whose mouths the winds roared. This palatial citadel-temple was destroyed by order of Caliph Omar. The city's ancient name was Azal or Uzal whom some identify with one of the thirteen sons of Joktan (Genesis xi. 27): it took its present name from the Ethiopian conquerors (they say) who, seeing it for the first time, cried "Hazα Sana'ah!" meaning in their tongue, this is commodious, etc. I may note that the word is Kisawahili (Zanzibarian) e.g. "Yαmbo sαnα—is the state good?" Sana'a was the capital of the Tabαbi'ah or Tobba Kings who judaized; and the Abyssinians with their Negush made it Christian while the Persians under Anushirwαn converted it to Guebrism. It is now easily visited but to little purpose; excursions in the neighborhood being deadly dangerous. Moreover the Turkish garrison would probably murder a stranger who sympathised with the Arabs, and the Arabs kill one who took part with their hated and hateful conquerors. The late Mr. Shapira of Jerusalem declared that he had visited it and Jews have great advantages in such travel. But his friends doubted him.

[FN#20] The Bresl. Edit. (iii. 347) prints three vile errors in four lines.

[FN#21] Alcove is a corruption of the Arab. Al-Kubbah (the dome) through Span. and Port.

[FN#22] Easterns as a rule sleep with head and body covered by a sheet or in cold weather a blanket. The practice is doubtless hygienic, defending the body from draughts when the pores are open; but Europeans find it hard to adopt; it seems to stop their breathing. Another excellent practice in the East, and indeed amongst barbarians and savages generally, is training children to sleep with mouths shut: in after life they never snore and in malarious lands they do not require Outram's "fever-guard," a swathe of muslin over the mouth. Mr. Catlin thought so highly of the "shut mouth" that he made it the subject of a book.

[FN#23] Arab. "Hanzal"=coloquintida, an article often mentioned by Arabs in verse and prose; the bright coloured little gourd attracts every eye by its golden glance when travelling through the brown-yellow waste of sand and clay. A favourite purgative (enough for a horse) is made by filling the inside with sour milk which is drunks after a night's soaking: it is as active as the croton-nut of the Gold Coast.

[FN#24] The Bresl. Edit. iii. 354 sends him to the "land of Sνn"

(China).

[FN#25] Arab. "Yα Kisrawi!"=O subject of the Kisrα or Chosroλ; the latter explained in vol.i.,75.[Volume 1, Footnote # 128] "Fars" is the origin of "Persia"; and there is a hit at the prodigious lying of the modern race, whose forefathers were so famous as truth-tellers. "I am a Persian, but I am not lying now," is a phrase familiar to every traveller.

[FN#26] There is no such name: perhaps it is a clerical error

for "Har jαh"=(a man of) any place. I know an Englishman who in

Persian called himself "Mirza Abdullah-i-Hνchmakαni"=Master

Abdullah of Nowhere.

[FN#27] The Bresl. Edit. (loc. cit.) gives a comical description of the Prince assuming the dress of an astrologer-doctor, clapping an old book under his arm, fumbling a rosary of beads, enlarging his turband, lengthening his sleeves and blackening his eyelids with antimony. Here, however, it would be out of place. Very comical also is the way in which he pretends to cure the maniac by "muttering unknown words, blowing in her face, biting her ear," etc.

[FN#28] Arab. "Sar'a"=falling sickness. Here again we have in all its simplicity the old nursery idea of "possession" by evil spirits.

[FN#29] Arab. "Nafahαt"=breathings, benefits, the Heb. Neshamah opp. to Nephesh (soul) and Ruach (spirit). Healing by the breath is a popular idea throughout the East and not unknown to Western Magnetists and Mesmerists. The miraculous cures of the Messiah were, according to Moslems, mostly performed by aspiration. They hold that in the days of Isa, physic had reached its highest development, and thus his miracles were mostly miracles of medicine; whereas, in Mohammed's time, eloquence had attained its climax and accordingly his miracles were those of eloquence, as shown in the Koran and Ahαdνs.

[FN#30] Lit. "The rose in the sleeves or calyces." I take my English equivalent from Jeremy Taylor, "So I have seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood," etc.

[FN#31] These lines are from the Bresl. Edit. (v. 35). The four couplets in the Mac. Edit. are too irrelevant.

[FN#32] Polo, which Lane calls "Goff."

[FN#33] Arab. "Muffawak"=well-notched, as its value depends upon the notch. At the end of the 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) re-appears 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 prosaicand 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), silk worked in high relief with gold and silver. The idea is figurative meaning it was hung outside and inside with fine stuff, like the Ka'abah, the "Bride of Meccah." The "lords" means simply the lost girl.

[FN#76] Arab. "Ayn" lit. eye, also a fount, "the eye of the landscape" (a noble simile); and here a helper, guard, assistant.

[FN#77] "Lord" for lady, i.e. she.

[FN#78] Arab. "Fi'l-khawafik"=in the four quarters or among the flappers (standards) or amid palpitations of heart. The bride alludes to a festal reception in a town, with burning incense, drums, flags, etc., etc.

[FN#79] In Egypt the shorter "honey-moon" lasts a week; and on the seventh day (pop. called Al-Subu'a) bride and bridegroom receive visits with all ceremony, of course in separate apartments. The seventh day (like the fortieth, the end of six months and the anniversary) is kept for births and deaths with Khatmahs (perlections) of the Koran "Saylah" family gatherings and so forth. The fortieth day ends the real honey-moon. See Night dccxcii.

[FN#80] I have noted the popular practice, amongst men as well as women, of hiring the Hammam for private parties and picnicking in it during the greater part of the day. In this tale the bath would belong to the public and it was a mere freak of the bride to bathe with her bridegroom. "Respectable" people do not.

[FN#81] She speaks in the last line as the barber or the bathman.

[FN#82] Here the "Ana" begin; and they mostly date themselves. Of the following forty-nine, Lane (vol. Ii. P. 578 et seq.) gives only twenty-two and transforms them to notes in chapt. xviii. He could hardly translate several of them in a work intended to be popular. Abu Nowαs is a person carefully to be avoided; and all but anthropological students are advised to "skip" over anecdotes in which his name and abominations occur.

[FN#83] Arab. "Ghilmαn," the counter part, I have said, of the so-called "Houris."

[FN#84] Mosul boasts of never having been polluted with idolatrous worship, an exemption which it owes to being a comparatively modern place.

[FN#85] The Aleppines were once noted for debauchery; and the saying is still "Halabi Shelebi" (for Chelebi)=the Aleppine is a fellow fine.

[FN#86] Mr. Payne omits the last line. It refers to what Persian boys call, in half-Turkish phrase, "Alish Takish," each acting woman after he has acted man. The best wine is still made in monasteries and the co-called Sinai convent is world-famous for its "Rαki" distilled from raisins.

[FN#87] i.e. what a difference there is between them!

[FN#88] Arab. "Salli ala 'l-Nabi," a common phrase; meaning not only praise hm to avert the evil eye; but also used when one would impose silence upon a babbler. The latter will shuffle off by ejaculating "Al" and continue his chatter. (Pilgrimage ii.279.)

[FN#89] Arab. "Sukαt" (plur. of Sαki, cupbearer, our old "skinker"): the pure gold (tibr) is the amber-coloured wine, like the Vino d'oro of the Libanus.

[FN#90] That is, fair, white and read: Turkish slaves then abounded at Baghdad.

[FN#91] A Wady near Meccah where one of Mohammed's battles was fought. The line means his waist is a thread connected broad breast and large hind quarters.

[FN#92] Arab. "Zaurα" which may mean crooked, alluding to the well-known rib.

[FN#93] A pun. Bakr was the name of the eponymus chief and it also means virgin, as in Abu Bakr.

[FN#94] Arab. "Jαmi'ayn"=two cathedrals, any large (and consequently vicious) city.

[FN#95] Arab. "Almα," before noticed: I cannot translate "damask-lipped" to suit European taste.

[FN#96] Sherbet flavoured with musk or apple to cool the mouth of "hot coppers."

[FN#97] Arab. "In'αsh" lit. raising from his bier. The whole tone is rollicking and slangy.

[FN#98] i.e. In spite of himself: the phrase often occurs.