Part 46

[FN#486] Moslems like the Classics (Aristotle and others) hold the clitoris (Zambϊr) to be the sedes et scaturigo veneris which, says Sonnini, is mere profanity. In the babe it protrudes beyond the labiζ and snipping off the head forms female circumcision. This rite is supposed by Moslems to have been invented by Sarah who so mutilated Hagar for jealousy and was afterwards ordered by Allah to have herself circumcised at the same time as Abraham. It is now (or should be) universal in Al-Islam and no Arab would marry a girl "unpurified" by it. Son of an "uncircumcised" mother (Ibn al-bazrα) is a sore insult. As regards the popular idea that Jewish women were circumcised till the days of Rabbi Gershom (A.D.1000) who denounced it as a scandal to the Gentiles, the learned Prof. H. Graetz informs me, with some indignation, that the rite was never practised and that the great Rabbi contended only against polygamy. Female circumcision, however, is I believe the rule amongst some outlying tribes of Jews. The rite is the proper complement of male circumcision, evening the sensitiveness of the genitories by reducing it equally in both sexes: an uncircumcised woman has the venereal orgasm much sooner and oftener than a circumcised man, and frequent coitus would injure her health; hence I believe, despite the learned historian, that it is practised by some Eastern Jews. "Excision" is universal amongst the negroids of the Upper Nile (Werne), the Somαl and other adjacent tribes. The operator, an old woman, takes up the instrument, a knife or razor-blade fixed into a wooden handle, and with three sweeps cuts off the labia and the head of the clitoris. The parts are then sewn up with a packneedle and a thread of sheepskin; and in Dar-For a tin tube is inserted for the passage of urine. Before marriage the bridegroom trains himself for a month on beef, honey and milk; and, if he can open his bride with the natural weapon, he is a sworder to whom no woman in the tribe can deny herself. If he fails, he tries penetration with his fingers and by way of last resort whips out his whittle and cuts the parts open. The sufferings of the first few nights must be severe. The few Somαli prostitutes who practised at Aden always had the labiζ and clitoris excised and the skin showing the scars of coarse sewing. The moral effect of female circumcision is peculiar. While it diminishes the heat of passion it increases licentiousness, and breeds a debauchery of mind far worse than bodily unchastity, because accompanied by a peculiar cold cruelty and a taste for artificial stimulants to "luxury." It is the sexlessness of a spayed canine imitated by the suggestive brain of humanity.

[FN#487] Koran vi. So called because certain superstitions about

Cattle are therein mentioned.

[FN#488] Koran iv. So called because it treats of marriages, divorces, etc.

[FN#489] Sνdi (contracted from Sayyidν = my lord) is a title still applied to holy men in Marocco and the Maghrib; on the East African coast it is assumed by negro and negroid Moslems, e.g. Sidi Mubαrak Bombay; and "Seedy boy" is the Anglo-Indian term for a Zanzibar-man. "Khawwαs" is one who weaves palm-leaves (Khos) into baskets, mats, etc.: here, however, it may be an inherited name.

[FN#490] i.e. in spirit; the "strangers yet" of poor dear Richard

Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton.

[FN#491] Al-Hakk = the Truth, one of the ninety-nine names of

Allah.

[FN#492] The Moslem is still unwilling to address Salαm (Peace be with you) to the Christian, as it is obligatory (Farz) to a Moslem (Koran, chapt. iv. and lxviii.). He usually evades the difficulty by saluting the nearest Moslem or by a change of words Allah Yahdν-k (Allah direct thee to the right way) or "Peace be upon us and the righteous worshipers of Allah" (not you) or Al-Samm (for Salam) alayka = poison to thee. The idea is old: Alexander of Alexandria in his circular letter describes the Arian heretics as "men whom it is not lawful to salute or to bid God-speed."

[FN#493] Koran xxxvi. 82. I have before noted that this famous phrase was borrowed from the Hebrews, who borrowed it from the Egyptians.

[FN#494] The story of Moses and Khizr has been noticed before. See Koran chapt. xviii. 64 et seq. It is also related, says Lane (ii. 642), by Al-Kazwνni in the Ajαib al-Makhlϊkαt. This must be "The Angel and the Hermit" in the Gesta Romanorum, Tale lxxx. which possibly gave rise to Parnell's Hermit; and Tale cxxvii. "Of Justice and Equity." The Editor says it "contains a beautiful lesson:" I can find only excellent excuses for "doing evil that good may come of it."

[FN#495] Koran chapt. v.108.

[FN#496] The doggrel is phenomenal.

[FN#497] He went in wonder and softened heart to see the miracle of saintly affection.

[FN#498] In Sufistical parlance, the creature is the lover and the Creator the Beloved: worldly existence is Disunion, parting, severance; and the life to come is Reunion. The basis of the idea is the human soul being a divinζ particula aurζ, a disjoined molecule from the Great Spirit, imprisoned in a jail of flesh; and it is so far valuable that it has produced a grand and pathetic poetry; but Common Sense asks, Where is the proof? And Reason wants to know, What does it all mean?

[FN#499] Koran xiii. 41.

[FN#500] Robinson Crusoe, with a touch of Arab prayerfulness.

Also the story of the Knight Placidus in the Gesta (cx.),

Boccaccio, etc.

[FN#501] Arabs note two kinds of leprosy, "Bahak" or "Baras" the common or white, and "Juzam" the black leprosy; the leprosy of the joints, mal rouge. Both are attributed to undue diet as eating fish and drinking milk; and both are treated with tonics, especially arsenic. Leprosy is regarded by Moslems as a Scriptural malady on account of its prevalence amongst the Israelites who, as Manetho tells us, were expelled from Egypt because they infected and polluted the population. In mediζval Christendom an idea prevailed that the Saviour was a leper; hence the term "morbus sacer"; the honours paid to the sufferers by certain Saints and the Papal address (Clement III. A.D.1189) dilectis filiis leprosis. (Farrar's Life of Christ, i.149.) For the "disgusting and impetuous lust" caused by leprosy, see Sonnini (p.560) who visited the lepers at Canea in Candia. He is one of many who describes this symptom; but in the Brazil, where the foul malady still prevails, I never heard of it.

[FN#502] A city in Irak; famous for the three days' battle which caused the death of Yezdegird, last Sassanian king.

[FN#503] A mountain pass near Meccah famous for the "First Fealty of the Steep" (Pilgrimage ii. 126). The mosque was built to commemorate the event.

[FN#504] To my surprise I read in Mr. Redhouse's "Mesnevi" (Trubner, 1881), "Arafat, the mount where the victims are slaughtered by the pilgrims." (p.60). This ignorance is phenomenal. Did Mr. Redhouse never read Burckhardt or Burton?

[FN#505] i.e. listening to the sermon.

[FN#506] It is sad doggrel.

[FN#507] This long story, containing sundry episodes and occupying fifty-three Nights, is wholly omitted by Lane (ii. 643) because "it is a compound of the most extravagant absurdities." He should have enabled his readers to form their own judgment.

[FN#508] Called Jamasp (brother and minister of the ancient Persian King Gushtasp) in the translations of Trebutien and others from Von Hammer.

[FN#509] The usual term of lactation in the East, prolonged to two years and a-half, which is considered the rule laid down by the Shara' or precepts of the Prophet. But it is not unusual to see children of three and even four years hanging to their mothers' breasts. During this period the mother does not cohabit with her husband; the separation beginning with her pregnancy. Such is the habit, not only of the "lower animals," but of all ancient peoples, the Egyptians (from whom the Hebrews borrowed it), the Assyrians and the Chinese. I have discussed its bearing upon pregnancy in my "City of the Saints": the Mormons insist upon this law of purity being observed; and the beauty, strength and good health of the younger generation are proofs of their wisdom.

[FN#510] Thus distinguishing it from "Asal-kasab," cane honey or sugar. See vol. i., 271.

[FN#511] The student of Hinduism will remember the Nαga-Kings and

Queens (Melusines and Echidnζ) who guard the earth-treasures in

Naga-land. The first appearance of the snake in literature is in

Egyptian hieroglyphs, where he forms the letters f and t, and

acts as a determinative in the shape of a Cobra di Capello

(Coluber Naja) with expanded hood.

[FN#512] In token that he was safe.

[FN#513] "Akhir al-Zamαn." As old men praise past times, so prophets prefer to represent themselves as the last. The early Christians caused much scandal amongst the orderly law-loving Romans by their wild and mistaken predictions of the end of the world being at hand. The catastrophe is a fact for each man under the form of death; but the world has endured for untold ages and there is no apparent cause why it should not endure as many more. The "latter days," as the religious dicta of most "revelations" assure us, will be richer in sinners than in sanctity: hence "End of Time" is a facetious Arab title for a villain of superior quality. My Somali escort applied it to one thus distinguished: in 1875, I heard at Aden that he ended life by the spear as we had all predicted.

[FN#514] Jahannam and the other six Hells are personified as feminine; and (woman-like) they are somewhat addicted to prolix speechification.

[FN#515] These puerile exaggerations are fondly intended to act as nurses frighten naughty children.

[FN#516] Alluding to an oft-quoted saying "Lau lα-ka, etc. Without thee (O Mohammed) We (Allah) had not created the spheres," which may have been suggested by "Before Abraham was, I am" (John viii. 58); and by Gate xci. of Zoroastrianism "O Zardusht for thy sake I have created the world" (Dabistan i. 344). The sentiment is by no means "Shi'ah," as my learned friend Prof. Aloys Springer supposes. In his Mohammed (p. 220) we find an extract from a sectarian poet, "For thee we dispread the earth; for thee we caused the waters to flow; for thee we vaulted the heavens." As Baron Alfred von Kremer, another learned and experienced Orientalist, reminds me, the "Shi'ahs" have always shown a decided tendency to this kind of apotheosis and have deified or quasi-deified Ali and the Imams. But the formula is first found in the highly orthodox Burdah poem of Al-Busiri:—

"But for him (Lau lα-hu) the world had never come out of nothingness."

Hence it has been widely diffused. See Les Aventures de Kamrup (pp. 146-7) and Les uvres de Wali (pp. 51-52), by M. Garcin de Tassy and the Dabistan (vol. i. pp. 2-3).

[FN#517] Arab. "Sνmiyα" from the Pers., a word apparently built on the model of "Kαmiyα" = alchemy, and applied, I have said, to fascination, minor miracles and white magic generally like the Hindu "Indrajal." The common term for Alchemy is Ilm al-Kαf (the K-science) because it is not safe to speak of it openly as Alchemy.

[FN#518] Mare Tenebrarum = Sea of Darknesses; usually applied to the "mournful and misty Atlantic."

[FN#519] Some Moslems hold that Solomon and David were buried in Jerusalem, others on the shore of Lake Tiberias. Mohammed, according to the history of Al-Tabari (p. 56 vol. i. Duleux's "Chronique de Tabari") declares that the Jinni bore Solomon's corpse to a palace hewn in the rock upon an island surrounded by a branch of the "Great Sea" and set him on a throne, with his ring still on his finger, under a guard of twelve Jinns. "None hath looked upon the tomb save only two, Affan who took Bulukiya as his companion: with extreme pains they arrived at the spot, and Affan was about to carry off the ring when a thunderbolt consumed him. So Bulukiya returned."

[FN#520] Koran xxxviii. 34, or, "art the liberal giver."

[FN#521] i.e. of the last trumpet blown by the Archangel Israfil: an idea borrowed from the Christians. Hence the title of certain churches—ad Tubam.

[FN#522] This may mean that the fruits were fresh and dried like dates or tamarinds (a notable wonder), or soft and hard of skin like grapes and pomegranates.

[FN#523] Arab. "Ai-lksνr" meaning lit. an essence; also the philosopher's stone.

[FN#524] Name of the Jinni whom Solomon imprisoned in Lake

Tiberias (See vol. i., 41).

[FN#525] Vulgarly pronounced "Jahannum." The second hell is usually assigned to Christians. As there are seven Heavens (the planetary orbits) so, to satisfy Moslem love of symmetry, there must be as many earths and hells under the earth. The Egyptians invented these grim abodes, and the marvellous Persian fancy worked them into poem.

[FN#526] Arab. "Yαjϊj and Majuj," first named in Gen. x. 2, which gives the ethnology of Asia Minor, circ. B.C. 800. "Gomer" is the Gimri or Cymmerians; "Magog" the original Magi, a division of the Medes, "Javan" the Ionian Greeks, "Meshesh" the Moschi; and "Tires" the Turusha, or primitive Cymmerians. In subsequent times, "Magog" was applied to the Scythians, and modern Moslems determine from the Koran (chaps. xviii. and xxi.) that Yajuj and Majuj are the Russians, whom they call Moska or Moskoff from the Moskwa River,

[FN#527] I attempt to preserve the original pun; "Mukarrabin" (those near Allah) being the Cherubim, and the Creator causing Iblis to draw near Him (karraba).

[FN#528] A vulgar version of the Koran (chaps. vii.), which seems to have borrowed from the Gospel of Barnabas. Hence Adam becomes a manner of God-man.

[FN#529] These wild fables are caricatures of Rabbinical legends which began with "Lilith," the Spirit-wife of Adam: Nature and her counterpart, Physis and Antiphysis, supply a solid basis for folk-lore. Amongst the Hindus we have Brahma (the Creator) and Viswakarmα, the anti-Creator: the former makes a horse and a bull and the latter caricatures them with an ass and a buffalo, and so forth.

[FN#530] This is the "Lauh al-Mahfϊz," the Preserved Tablet, upon which are written all Allah's decrees and the actions of mankind good (white) and evil (black). This is the "perspicuous Book" of the Koran, chaps. vi. 59. The idea again is Guebre.

[FN#531] i.e. the night before Friday which in Moslem parlance would be Friday night.

[FN#532] Again Persian "Gαw-i-Zamνn" = the Bull of the Earth.

"The cosmogony of the world," etc., as we read in the Vicar of

Wakefield.

[FN#533] The Calc. Edit. ii. 614. here reads by a clerical error "bull."

[FN#534] i.e. Lakes and rivers.

[FN#535] Here some abridgement is necessary, for we have another recital of what has been told more than once.

[FN#536] This name, "King of Life," is Persian: "Tegh" or "Tigh" means a scimitar and "Bahrwαn," is, I conceive, a mistake for "Bihrϊn," the Persian name of Alexander the Great.

[FN#537] Arab. "Mulαkαt" or meeting the guest which, I have said, is an essential part of Eastern ceremony, the distance from the divan, room, house or town being proportioned to his rank or consideration.

[FN#538] Arab. "Sifr": whistling is held by the Badawi to be the speech of devils; and the excellent explorer Burckhardt got a bad name by the ugly habit.

[FN#539] The Arabs call "Shikk" (split man) and the Persians "Nνmchahrah" (half-face) a kind of demon like a man divided longitudinally: this gruesome creature runs with amazing speed and is very cruel and dangerous. For the celebrated soothsayers "Shikk" and "Sαtih" see Chenery's Al-Hariri, p. 371.

[FN#540] Arab. "Takht" (Persian) = a throne or a capital.

[FN#541] Arab. "Wady al-Naml"; a reminiscence of the Koranic Wady (chaps. xxvii.), which some place in Syria and others in Tαif.

[FN#542] This is the old, old fable of the River Sabbation which

Pliny ((xxx). 18) reports as "drying up every Sabbath-day"

(Saturday): and which Josephus reports as breaking the Sabbath by

flowing only on the Day of Rest.

[FN#543] They were keeping the Sabbath. When lodging with my Israelite friends at Tiberias and Safet, I made a point of never speaking to them (after the morning salutation) till the Saturday was over.

[FN#544] Arab. "La'al" and "Yαkϊt," the latter also applied to the garnet and to a variety of inferior stones. The ruby is supposed by Moslems to be a common mineral thoroughly "cooked" by the sun, and produced only on the summits of mountains inaccessible even to Alpinists. The idea may have originated from exaggerated legends of the Badakhshαn country (supposed to be the home of the ruby) and its terrors of break-neck foot-paths, jagged peaks and horrid ravines: hence our "balas-ruby" through the Spanish corruption "Balaxe." Epiphanius, archbishop of Salamis in Cyprus, who died A.D. 403, gives, m a little treatise (De duodecim gemmis rationalis summi sacerdotis Hebrζorum Liber, opera Fogginii, Romae, 1743, p. 30), a precisely similar description of the mode of finding jacinths in Scythia. "In a wilderness in the interior of Great Scythia," he writes, "there is a valley begirt with stony mountains as with walls. It is inaccessible to man, and so excessively deep that the bottom of the valley is invisible from the top of the surrounding mountains. So great is the darkness that it has the effect of a kind of chaos. To this place certain criminals are condemned, whose task it is to throw down into the valley slaughtered lambs, from which the skin has been first taken off. The little stones adhere to these pieces of flesh. Thereupon the eagles, which live on the summits of the mountains, fly down following the scent of the flesh, and carry away the lambs with the stones adhering to them. They, then, who are condemned to this place watch until the eagles have finished their meal, and run and take away the stones." Epiphanius, who wrote this, is spoken of in terms of great respect by many ecclesiastical writers, and St. Jerome styles the treatise here quoted, "Egregium volumen, quod si legere volueris, plenissimam scientiam consequeris ," and, indeed, it is by no means improbable that it was from the account of Epiphanius that this story was first translated into Arabic. A similar account is given by Marco Polo and by Nicolς de Conti, as of a usage which they had heard was practiced in India, and the position ascribed to the mountain by Conti, namely, fifteen days' journey north of Vijanagar, renders it highly probable that Golconda was alluded to. He calls the mountain Albenigaras, and says that it was infested with serpents. Marco Polo also speaks of these serpents, and while his account agrees with that of Sindbad, inasmuch as the serpents, which are the prey of Sindbad's Rukh, are devoured by the Venetian's eagles, that of Conti makes the vultures and eagles fly away with the meat to places where they may be safe from the serpents. (Introd. p. xiii., India in the Fifteenth Century, etc., R. H. Major, London, Hakluyt Soc. MDCCCLVII.)

[FN#545] Elder Victory: "Nasr" is a favourite name with Moslems.

[FN#546] These are the "Swan-maidens" of whom Europe in late years has heard more than enough. It appears to me that we go much too far for an explanation of the legend; a high-bred girl is so like a swan in many points that the idea readily suggests itself. And it is also aided by the old Egyptian (and Platonic) belief in pre-existence and by the Rabbinic and Buddhistic doctrine of ante-natal sin, to say nothing of metempsychosis. (Joseph Ant. xvii.. 153.)

[FN#547] The lines have occurred before. I quote Mr. Payne for variety.

[FN#548] Arab. "Al-Khayαl": it is a synonym of "al-Tayf' and the nearest approach to our "ghost," as has been explained. In poetry it is the figure of the beloved seen when dreaming.

[FN#549] He does not kiss her mouth because he intends to marry her.

[FN#550] It should be "manifest" excellence. (Koran xxvii. 16.)

[FN#551] The phrase is Koranic used to describe Paradise, and Damascus is a familiar specimen of a city under which a river, the Baradah, passes, distributed into a multitude of canals.

[FN#552] It may be noted that rose-water is sprinkled on the faces of the "nobility and gentry, " common water being good enough for the commonalty. I have had to drink tea made in compliment with rose-water and did not enjoy it.

[FN#553] The "Valley Flowery:" Zahrαn is the name of a place near

Al-Medinah.

[FN#554] The Proud or Petulant.

[FN#555] i.e. Lion, Son of ( ?).

[FN#556] i.e. Many were slain.

[FN#557] I venture to draw attention to this battle-picture which is at once simple and highly effective.

[FN#558] Anglicθ a quibble, evidently evasive.

[FN#559] In text "Anα A'amil," etc., a true Egypto-Syrian vulgarism.

[FN#560] i.e. magical formulζ. The context is purposely left vague.

[FN#561] The repetition is a condescension, a token of kindness.

[FN#562] This is the common cubic of 18 inches: the modern vary from 22 to 26.

[FN#563] I have noticed the two-humped Bactrian camel which the Syrians and Egyptians compare with an elephant. See p. 221 (the neo-Syrian) Book of Kalilah and Dimnah.

[FN#564] The Noachian dispensation revived the Islam or true religion first revealed to Adam and was itself revived and reformed by Moses.

[FN#565] Probably a corruption of the Turkish "Kara Tαsh" = black stone, in Arab. "Hαjar Jahannam" (hell-stone), lava, basalt.

[FN#566] A variant of lines in Night xx., vol. i., 211.

[FN#567] i.e. Daughter of Pride: the proud.

[FN#568] In the Calc. Edit. by misprint "Maktab." Jabal Mukattam is the old sea-cliff where the Mediterranean once beat and upon whose North-Western slopes Cairo is built.

[FN#569] Arab. "Kutb"; lie. an axle, a pole; next a prince; a high order or doyen in Sainthood especially amongst the Sufi-gnostics.

[FN#570] Lit. "The Green" (Prophet), a mysterious personage confounded with Elijah, St. George and others. He was a Moslem, i.e. a ewe believer in the Islam of his day and Wazir to Kaykobad, founder of the Kayanian dynasty, sixth century B.C. We have before seen him as a contemporary of Moses. My learned friend Ch. Clermone-Ganneau traces him back, with a multitude of his similars (Proteus, Perseus, etc.), to the son of Osiris (p. 45, Horus et Saint Georges).

[FN#571] Arab. "Waled," more ceremonious than "ibn." It is, by the by, the origin of our "valet" in its sense of boy or servant who is popularly addressed Yα waled. Hence I have seen in a French book of travels "un petit Iavelet."

[FN#572] Arab. "Azal" = Eternity (without beginning); "Abad" =

Infinity (eternity without end).

[FN#573] The Moslem ritual for slaughtering (by cutting the throat) is not so strict as that of the Jews; but it requires some practice; and any failure in the conditions renders the meat impure, mere carrion (fatνs).

[FN#574] The Wazir repeats all the words spoken by the Queen—but "in iteration there is no recreation."

[FN#575] A phrase always in the Moslem's mouth: the slang meaning of "we put our trust in Allah" is "let's cut our stick."

[FN#576] Koran liii. 14. This "Sidrat al-Muntahα" (Zizyphus lotus) stands m the seventh heaven on the right hand of Allah's throne: and even the angels may not pass beyond it.

[FN#577] Arab. "Habash" the word means more than "Abyssinia" as it includes the Dankali Country and the sea-board, a fact unknown to the late Lord Stratford de Redcliffe when he disputed with the Porte. I ventured to set him right and suffered accordingly.

[FN#578] Here ends vol. ii. of the Mac. Edit.