Arabian Nights, Volume One
Footnotes

[FN#1] Arab. “Al-Náim wa al-Yakzán.” This excellent story is not in the Mac. Or Bresl. Edits.; but is given in the Breslau Text, iv. 134-189 (Nights cclxxii.-ccxci.). It is familiar to readers of the old “Arabian Nights Entertainments” as “Abou-Hassan or the Sleeper Awakened;” and as yet it is the only one of the eleven added by Galland whose original has been discovered in Arabic: the learned Frenchman, however, supplied it with embellishments more suo, and seems to have taken it from an original fuller than our text as is shown by sundry poetical and other passages which he apparently did not invent. Lane (vol. ii. chap. 12), noting that its chief and best portion is an historical anecdote related as a fact, is inclined to think that it is not a genuine tale of The Nights. He finds it in Al-Ishákí who finished his history about the close of Sultan Mustafá the Osmanli’s reign, circa A.H. 1032 (= 1623), and he avails himself of this version as it is “narrated in a simple and agreeable manner.” Mr. Payne remarks, “The above title (Asleep and Awake) is of course intended to mark the contrast between the everyday (or waking) hours of Aboulhusn and his fantastic life in the Khalif’s palace, supposed by him to have passed in a dream;” I may add that amongst frolicsome Eastern despots the adventure might often have happened and that it might have given a hint to Cervantes.

[FN#2] i.e., The Wag. See vol. i. 311: the old version calls him “the Debauchee.”

[FN#3] Arab. “Al-Fárs”; a people famed for cleverness and debauchery. I cannot see why Lane omitted the Persian, unless he had Persian friends at Cairo.

[FN#4] i.e., the half he intended for spending-money.

[FN#5] i.e., “men,” a characteristic Arab idiom: here it applies to the sons of all time.

[FN#6] i.e., make much of thee.

[FN#7] In Lane the Caliph is accompanied by “certain of his domestics.”

[FN#8] Arab. “Khubz Mutabbak,” = bread baked in a platter, instead of an oven, an earthen jar previously heated, to the sides of which the scones or bannocks of dough are applied: “it is lighter than oven-bread, especially if it be made thin and leavened.” See Al-Shakúrí, a medical writer quoted by Dozy.

[FN#9] In other parts of The Nights Harun al-Rashid declines wine-drinking.

[FN#10] The ’Allámah (doctissimus) Sayce (p. 212, Comparative Philology, London, Trübner, 1885) goes far back for Khalífah = a deputy, a successor. He begins with the Semitic (Hebrew?) root “Khaliph” = to change, exchange: hence “Khaleph” = agio. From this the Greeks got their κόλλυ_oς and Cicero his “Collybus,” a money-lender.

[FN#11] Arab. “Harfúsh” (in Bresl. Edit. iv. 138, “Kharfúsh”), in popular parlance a “blackguard.” I have to thank Mr. Alexander J. Cotheal, of New York, for sending me a MS. Copy of this tale.

[FN#12] Arab. “Ta’ám,” in Egypt and Somaliland = millet seed (Holcus Sorghum) cooked in various ways. In Barbary it is applied to the local staff of life, Kuskusú, wheaten or other flour damped and granulated by hand to the size of peppercorns, and lastly steamed (as we steam potatoes), the cullender-pot being placed over a long-necked jar full of boiling water. It is served with clarified butter, shredded onions and meat; and it represents the Risotto of Northern Italy. Europeans generally find it too greasy for digestion. This Barbary staff of life is of old date and is thus mentioned by Leo Africanus in early sixth century. “It is made of a lump of Dow, first set upon the fire, in a vessel full of holes and afterwards tempered with Butter and Pottage.” So says good Master John Pory, “A Geographical Historie of Africa, by John Leo, a Moor,” London, 1600, impensis George Bishop.

[FN#13] Arab. “Bi al-Salám” (pron. “Bissalám”) = in the Peace (of Allah).

[FN#14] And would bring him bad luck if allowed to go without paying.

[FN#15] i.e., of the first half, as has been shown.

[FN#16] Arab. “Kumájah” from the Persian Kumásh = bread unleavened and baked in ashes. Egyptians use the word for bannocks of fine flour.

[FN#17] Arab. “Kalí,” our “alcali” ; for this and other abstergents see vol. i. 279.

[FN#18] These lines have occurred twice in vol. i. 117 (Night xii.); I quote Mr. Payne.

[FN#19] Arab. “Yá ’llah, yá ’lláh;” vulg. Used for “Look sharp!” e.g., “Yá ’llah jári, yá walad” = Be off at once, boy.”
[FN#20] Arab. “Banj akrítashí,” a term which has occurred before.

[FN#21] A natural clock, called West Africans Cokkerapeek = Cock-speak. All the world over it is the subject of superstition: see Giles’s “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio” (i. 177), where Miss Li, who is a devil, hears a cock crow and vanishes.

[FN#22] In Lane Al-Rashid “found at the door his young men waiting for him and ordered them to convey Abu-l-Hasan upon a mule and returned to the palace; Abu-l-Hasan being intoxicated and insensible. And when the Khaleefah had rested himself in the palace, he called for,” etc.

[FN#23] Arab. “Kursi,” Assyrian “Kussú” = throne; and “Korsái” in Aramaic (or Nabathean as Al-Mas’udi calls it), the second growth-period of the “Semitic” family, which supplanted Assyrian and Babylonian, and became, as Arabic now is, the common speech of the “Semitic” world.

[FN#24] Arab. “Makán mahjúb,” which Lane renders by “a private closet,” and Payne by a “privy place,” suggesting that the Caliph slept in a numéro cent. So, when starting for the “Trakki Campaign,” Sir Charles Napier (of Sind), in his zeal for lightening officers’ baggage, inadvertently chose a water-closet tent for his head-quarters--magno cum risu not of the staff, who had a strange fear of him, but of the multitude who had not.

[FN#25] Arab. “Dar al-Salam,” one of the seven “Gardens” into which the Mohammedan Paradise is divided. Man’s fabled happiness began in a Garden (Eden) and the suggestion came naturally that it would continue there. For the seven Heavens, see vol. viii., 111.

[FN#26] Branch of Pearl, see vol. ii. 57.

[FN#27] Arab. “Kahbah,” the lowest word (vol. i. 70), effectively used in contrast with the speaker’s surroundings.

[FN#28] Arab. “Yá kabírí,” = mon brave, my good man.

[FN#29] This exaggeration has now become familiar to English poets.

[FN#30] Like an Eastern he goes to the water-closet the first thing in the morning, or rather dawn, and then washes ceremonially before saying the first prayer. In Europe he would probably wait until after breakfast. See vol. iii. 242.

[FN#31] I have explained why an Eastern does not wash in the basin as Europeans do in vol. i. p. 241.

[FN#32] i.e., He was confused that he forgot. All Moslems know how to pray, whether they pray or not.

[FN#33] The dawn-prayer consists of only four inclinations (raka’at); two “Farz” (divinely appointed), and two Sunnah (the custom of the Apostle). For the Raka’áh see Lane, M.E. chapt. iii.; it cannot be explained without illustrations.

[FN#34] After both sets of prayers, Farz and Sunnah, the Moslem looks over his right shoulder and says, “The Peace (of Allah) be upon you and the ruth of Allah,” and repeats the words over the left shoulder. The salutation is addressed to the Guardian Angels or to the bystanders (Moslems), who, however, do not return it.

[FN#35] i.e., Ibrahim of Mosul the musician. See vol. iv. 108.

[FN#36] Arab. “Líyúth” plur. of “layth,” a lion: here warriors are meant.

[FN#37] The Abbasides traced their descent from Al-Abbas, Mohammed’s uncle, and justly held themselves as belonging to the family of the Prophet. See vol. ii. 61.

[FN#38] Arab. “Nímshah” = “half-sword.” See vol. ii. p. 193.

[FN#39] i.e., May thy dwelling-place never fall into ruin. The prayer has, strange to say, been granted. “The present city on the eastern bank of the Tigris was built by Haroun al-Rashid, and his house still stands there and is an object of reverent curiosity.” So says my friend Mr. Grattan Geary (vol. i. p. 212, “Through Asiatic Turkey,” London: Low, 1878). He also gives a sketch of Zubaydah’s tomb on the western bank of the Tigris near the suburb which represents old Baghdad; it is a pineapple dome springing from an octagon, both of brick once revetted with white stucco.

[FN#40] In the Bresl. Edit. four hundred. I prefer the exaggerated total.

[FN#41] i.e., the raised recess at the upper end of an Oriental saloon, and the place of honour, which Lane calls by its Egyptian name “Líwán.” See his vol. i. 312 and his M.E. chapt. i.: also my vol. iv. p. 71.

[FN#42] “Bit o’Musk.”

[FN#43] “A gin,” a snare.

[FN#44] “A gift,” a present. It is instructive to compare Abu al-Hasan with Sancho Panza, sprightly Arab wit with grave Spanish humour.

[FN#45] i.e., he fell down senseless. The old version has “his head knocked against his knees.”

[FN#46] Arab. “Waddi” vulg. Egyptian and Syrian for the classical “Addí” (ii. of Adú = preparing to do). No wonder that Lane complains (iii. 376) of the vulgar style, abounding in errors.”

[FN#47] O Apple, O Repose o’ Hearts, O Musk, O Choice Gift.

[FN#48] Arab. “Doghrí,” a pure Turkish word, in Egypt meaning “truly, with truth,” straightforwardly; in Syria = straight (going), directly.

[FN#49] Arab. “Máristán,” see vol. i. 288.

[FN#50] The scene is a rechauffé of Badr al-Din Hasan and his wife, i. 247.

[FN#51] Arab. “Janzír,” another atrocious vulgarism for “Zanjír,” which however, has occurred before.

[FN#52] Arab. “Arafshah.”

[FN#53] In the “Mishkát al-Masábih” (ii. 341), quoted by Lane, occurs the Hadis, “Shut your doors anights and when so doing repeat the Basmalah; for the Devil may not open a door shut in Allah’s name.” A pious Moslem in Egypt always ejaculates, “In the name of Allah, the Compassionating,” etc., when he locks a door, covers up bread, doffs his clothes, etc., to keep off devils and dæmons.

[FN#54] An Arab idiom meaning, “I have not found thy good fortune (Ka’b = heel, glory, prosperity) do me any good.”

[FN#55] Arab. “Yá Nakbah” = a calamity to those who have to do with thee!

[FN#56] Koran cxii., the “Chapter of Unity.” See vol. iii. 307

[FN#57] See vol. iii. 222.

[FN#58] Here the author indubitably speaks for himself, forgetting that he ended Night cclxxxi. (Bresl. Iv. 168), and began that following with Shahrazad’s usual formula.

[FN#59] i.e., “Delight of the vitals” (or heart).

[FN#60] The trick is a rechauffé of the trick played on Al-Rashid and Zubaydah.

[FN#61] “Kalb” here is not heart, but stomach. The big toes of the Moslem corpse are still tied in most countries, and in some a sword is placed upon the body; but I am not aware that a knife and sale (both believed to repel evil spirits) are so used in Cairo.

[FN#62] The Moslem, who may not wear unmixed silk during his lifetime, may be shrouded in it. I have noted that the “Shukkah,” or piece, averages six feet in length.

[FN#63] A vulgar ejaculation; the “hour” referring either to birth or to his being made one of the Caliph’s equerries.

[FN#64] Here the story-teller omits to say that Masrúr bore witness to the Caliph’s statement.

[FN#65] Arab. “Wa kuntu ráihah ursil warák,” the regular Fellah language.

[FN#66] Arab. “’Irk al-Háshimí.” See vol. ii. 19. Lane remarks, “Whether it was so in Hashim himself (or only in his descendants), I do not find; but it is mentioned amongst the characteristics of his great-grandson, the Prophet.”

[FN#67] Arab. “Bostán al-Nuzhah,” whose name made the stake appropriate. See vol. ii. 81.

[FN#68] Arab. “Tamásíl” = generally carved images, which, amongst Moslem, always suggest idols and idolatry.

[FN#69] The “Shubbák” here would be the “Mashrabiyah,” or latticed balcony, projecting from the saloon-wall, and containing room for three or more sitters. It is Lane’s “Mesrebeeyeh,” sketched in M.E. (Introduction) and now has become familiar to Englishmen.

[FN#70] This is to show the cleverness of Abu al-Hasan, who had calculated upon the difference between Al-Rashid and Zubaydah. Such marvels of perspicacity are frequent enough in the folk-lore of the Arabs.

[FN#71] An artful touch, showing how a tale grows by repetition. In Abu al-Hasan’s case (infra) the eyes are swollen by the swathes.

[FN#72] A Hadis attributed to the Prophet, and very useful to Moslem husbands when wives differ overmuch with them in opinion.

[FN#73] Arab. “Masarat fí-há,” which Lane renders, “And she threw money to her.”

[FN#74] A saying common throughout the world, especially when the afflicted widow intends to marry again at the first opportunity.

[FN#75] Arab. “Yá Khálati” = O my mother’s sister; addressed by a woman to an elderly dame.

[FN#76] i.e., That I may put her to shame.

[FN#77] Arab. “Zalábiyah.”

[FN#78] Arab. “‘Alá al-Kaylah,” which Mr. Payne renders by “Siesta-carpet.” Land reads “Kiblah” (“in the direction of the Kiblah”) and notes that some Moslems turn the corpse’s head towards Meccah and others the right side, including the face. So the old version reads “feet towards Mecca.” But the preposition “Alá” requires the former sig.

[FN#79] Many places in this text are so faulty that translation is mere guess-work; e.g. “Bashárah” can hardly be applied to ill-news.

[FN#80] i.e. of grief for his loss.

[FN#81] Arab. “Tobáni” which Lane renders “two clods.” I have noted that the Tob (Span. Adobe = Al-Tob) is a sunbaked brick. Beating the bosom with such material is still common amongst Moslem mourners of the lower class, and the hardness of the blow gives the measure of the grief.

[FN#82] i.e. of grief for her loss.

[FN#83] Arab. “Ihtirák” often used in the metaphorical sense of consuming, torturing.

[FN#84] Arab. “Haláwat,” lit.=a sweetmeat, a gratuity, a thank-offering.

[FN#85] Bresl. Edit., vol. vi. Pp. 182-188, Nights ccccxxxii.-ccccxxxiv.

[FN#86] “The good Caliph” and the fifth of the Orthodox, the other four being Abu Bakr, Omar, Osman and Ali; and omitting the eight intervening, Hasan the grandson of the Prophet included. He was the 13th Caliph and 8th Ommiade A.H. 99-101 (=717-720) and after a reign of three years he was poisoned by his kinsmen of the Banu Umayyah who hated him for his piety, asceticism, and severity in making them disgorge their ill-gotten gains. Moslem historians are unanimous in his praise. Europeans find him an anachorète couronné, à froide et respectable figure, who lacked the diplomacy of Mu’awiyah and the energy of Al-Hajjáj. His principal imitator was Al-Muhtadi bi’lláh, who longed for a return to the rare old days of Al-Islam.

[FN#87] Omar ’Adi bin Artah; governor of Kufah and Basrah under “the good Caliph.”

[FN#88] Jarír al-Khatafah, one of the most famous of the “Islámí” poets, i.e. those who wrote in the first century (A.H.) before the corruption of language began. (See Terminal Essay, p. 230). Ibn Khallikan notices him at full length i. 294.

[FN#89] Arab. “Bákiyah,” which may also mean eternal as opposed to “Fániyah” = temporal. Omar’s answer shows all the narrow-minded fanaticism which distinguished the early Moslems: they were puritanical as any Praise-God-Barebones, and they hated “boetry and bainting” as hotly as any Hanoverian.

[FN#90] The Saturday Review (Jan. 2, ’86), which has honoured me by the normal reviling in the shape of a critique upon my two first vols., complains of the “Curious word Abhak” as “a perfectly arbitrary and unusual group of Latin letters.” May I ask Aristarchus how he would render “Sal’am” (vol ii. 24), which apparently he would confine to “Arabic MSS.”(!). Or would he prefer A(llah) b(less) h(im) a(nd) k(eep) “W.G.B.” (whom God bless) as proposed by the editor of Ockley? But where would be the poor old “Saturnine” if obliged to do better than the authors it abuses?

[FN#91] He might have said “by more than one, including the great Labíd.”

[FN#92] Fí-hi either “in him” (Mohammed) or “in it” (his action).

[FN#93] Chief of the Banu Sulaym. According to Tabari, Abbas bin Mirdas (a well-known poet), being dissatisfied with the booty allotted to him by the Prophet, refused it and lampooned Mohammed, who said to Ali, “Cut off this tongue which attacketh me,” i.e. “Silence him by giving what will satisfy him.” Thereupon Ali doubled the Satirist’s share.

[FN#94] Arab. “Yá Bilál”: Bilal ibn Rabah was the Prophet’s freedman and crier: see vol. iii. 106. But bilal also signifies “moisture” or “beneficence,” “benefits”: it may be intended for a double entendre but I prefer the metonymy.

[FN#95] The verses of this Kasidah are too full of meaning to be easily translated: it is fine old poetry.

[FN#96] i.e. of the Koraysh tribe. For his disorderly life see Ibn Khallikan ii. 372: he died, however, a holy death, battling against the Infidels in A.H. 93 (= 711-12), some five years before Omar’s reign.

[FN#97] Arab. “Bayn farsi-k wa ’l-damí” = lit. between fæces and menses, i.e., the foulest part of his mistress’s person. It is not often that The Nights are “nasty”; but here is a case. See vol. v. 162.

[FN#98] “Jamil the Poet,” and lover of Buthaynah: see vol. ii. 102, Ibn Khallikan (i.331), and Al-Mas’udi vi. 381, who quotes him copiously. He died A.H. 82 (= 701), or sixteen years before Omar’s reign.

[FN#99] Arab. “Safíh” = the slab over the grave.

[FN#100] A contemporary and friend of Jamíl and the famous lover of Azzah. See vol. ii. 102, and Al-Mas’udi, vi. 426. The word “Kuthayyir” means “the dwarf.” Term. Essay, 231.

[FN#101] i.e. in the attitude of prayer.

[FN#102] In Bresl. Edit. “Al-Akhwass,” clerical error, noticed in Ibn Khallikan i. 526. His satires banished him to Dahlak Island in the Red Sea, and he died A.H. 179 (= 795-96).

[FN#103] Another famous poet Abú Firás Hammám or Humaym (dimin. Form), as debauched as Jarir, who died forty days before him in A.H. 110 (= 728-29), as Basrah. Cf. Term. Essay, 231.

[FN#104] A famous Christian poet. See C. de Perceval, Journ. Asiat. April, 1834, Ibn Khallikan iii. 136, and Term. Essay, 231.

[FN#105] The poet means that unlike other fasters he eats meat openly. See Pilgrimage (i. 110), for the popular hypocrisy.

[FN#106] Arab. “Bathá” the lowlands and plains outside the Meccan Valley. See al-Mas’udi, vi. 157. Mr. (now Sir) W. Muir in his Life of Mahomet, vol. i., p. ccv., remarks upon my Pilgrimage (iii.252) that in placing Arafat 12 miles from Meccah, I had given 3 miles to Muna, + 3 to Muzdalifah + 3 to Arafat = 9. But the total does not include the suburbs of Meccah and the breadth of the Arafat-Valley.

[FN#107] The words of the Azán, vol. i. 306.

[FN#108] Wine in Arabic is feminine, “Shamúl” = liquor hung in the wind to cool, a favourite Arab practice often noticed by the poets.

[FN#109] i.e. I will fall down dead drunk.

[FN#110] Arab. “Árám,” plur. of Irm, a beautiful girl, a white deer. The word is connected with the Heb. Reem (Deut. xxxiii. 17), which has been explained unicorn, rhinoceros, and aurochs. It is at the Ass. Rimu, the wild bull of the mountains, provided with a human face, and placed at the palace-entrance to frighten away foes, demon or human.

[FN#111] i.e. she who ensnares [all] eyes.

[FN#112] Imam, the spiritual title of the Caliph, as head of the Faith and leader (lit. “foreman,” Antistes) of the people at prayer. See vol. iv. 111.

[FN#113] For Yamámah see vol. ii. 104. Omar bin Abd-al-Aziz was governor of the province before he came to the Caliphate. To the note on Zarká, the blue-eyed Yamamite, I may add that Marwan was called Ibn Zarká, son of “la femme au drapeu bleu,” such being the sign of a public prostitute. Al-Mas’udi, v. 509.

[FN#114] Rain and bounty, I have said, are synonymous.

[FN#115] About £4.

[FN#116] i.e. what is thy news.

[FN#117] Bresl. Edit., vol. vi. pp. 188-9, Night ccccxxxiv.

[FN#118] Of this masterful personage and his energie indomptable I have spoken in vol. iv. 3, and other places. I may add that he built Wásit city A.H. 83 and rendered eminent services to literature and civilization amongst the Arabs. When the Ommiade Caliph Abd al-Malik was dying he said to his son Walid, “Look to Al-Hajjaj and honour him for, verily, he it is who hath covered for you the pulpits; and he is thy sword and thy right hand against all opponents; thou needest him more than he needeth thee, and when I die summon the folk to the covenant of allegiance; and he who saith with his head--thus, say thou with thy sword--thus” (Al-Siyuti, p 225) yet the historian simply observes, “the Lord curse him.”

[FN#119] i.e. given through his lieutenant.

[FN#120] “Necks” per synecdochen for heads. The passage is a description of a barber-surgeon in a series of double-entendres the “nose-pierced” (Makhzúm) is the subject who is led by the nose like a camel with halter and ring and the “breaker” (háshim) may be a breaker of bread as the word originally meant, or breaker of bones. Lastly the “wealth” (mál) is a recondite allusion to the hair.

[FN#121] Arab. “Kadr” which a change of vowel makes “Kidr” = a cooking-pot. The description is that of an itinerant seller of boiled beans (Fúl mudammas) still common in Cairo. The “light of his fire” suggests a double-entendre some powerful Chief like masterful King Kulayb. See vol. ii. 77.

[FN#122] Arab. “Al-Sufúf,” either ranks of fighting-men or the rows of thread on a loom. Here the allusion is to a weaver who levels and corrects his threads with the wooden spate and shuttle governing warp and weft and who makes them stand straight (behave aright). The “stirrup” (rikáb) is the loop of cord in which the weaver’s foot rests.

[FN#123] “Adab.” See vols. i. 132, and ix. 41.

[FN#124] Bresl. Edit., vol. vi. pp. 189-191, Night ccccxxxiv.

[FN#125] Arab. “Za’mú,” a word little used in the Cal., Mac. or Bul. Edit.; or in the Wortley Montague MS.; but very common in the Bresl. text.

[FN#126] More double-entendres. “Thou hast done justice” (’adalta) also means “Thou hast swerved from right;” and “Thou hast wrought equitably” (Akasta iv. of Kast) = “Thou hast transgressed.”

[FN#127] Koran vi. 44. Allah is threatening unbelievers, “And when they had forgotten their warnings We set open to them the gates of all things, until, when they were gladdened,” etc.

[FN#128] Arab. “Ta’dilú,” also meaning, “Ye do injustice”: quoted from Koran iv. 134.

[FN#129] Arab. “Al-Kásitúna,” before explained. Koran lxxii. 15.

[FN#130] Bresl. Edit. vol. vi. pp. 191-343, Nights ccccxxxv-cccclxxxvii. This is the old Persian Bakhtyár Námeh, i.e., the Book of Bakhtyar, so called from the prince and hero “Fortune’s Friend.” In the tale of Jili’ad and Shimas the number of Wazirs is seven, as usual in the Sindibad cycle. Here we have the full tale as advised by the Imám al Jara’í: “it is meet for a man before entering upon important undertakings to consult ten intelligent friends; if he have only five to apply twice to each; if only one, ten times at different visits, and if none, let him repair to his wife and consult her; and whatever she advises him to do let him do the clear contrary” (quoting Omar), or as says Tommy Moore,

Whene’er you’re in doubt, said a sage I once knew,
’Twixt two lines of conduct which course to pursue,
Ask a woman’s advice, and whate’er she advise
Do the very reverse, and you’re sure to be wise.

The Romance of the Ten Wazirs occurs in dislocated shape in the “Nouveaux Contes Arabes, ou Supplément aux Mille et une Nuits,” etc., par M. l’Abbé * * * Paris, 1788. It is the “Story of Bohetzad (Bakht zád=Luck born, v.p.), and his Ten Viziers,” in vol. iii., pp. 2-30 of the “Arabian Tales,” etc., published by Dom Chavis and M. Cazotte, in 1785; a copy of the English translation by Robert Heron, Edinburgh, 1792, I owe to the kindness of Mr. Leonard Smithers of Sheffield. It appears also in vol. viii. of M. C. de Perceval’s Edition of The Nights; in Gauttier’s Edition (vol. vi.), and as the “Historia Decem Vizirorum et filii Regis Azad bacht,” text and translation by Gustav Knös, of Goettingen (1807). For the Turkish, Malay and other versions see (p. xxxviii. etc.) “The Bakhtiy_r N_ma,” etc. Edited (from the Sir William. Ouseley version of 1801) by Mr. W. A. Clouston and privately printed, London, 1883. The notes are valuable but their worth is sadly injured by the want of an index. I am pleased to see that Mr. E. J. W. Gibb is publishing the “History of the Forty Vezirs; or, the Story of the Forty Morns and Eves,” written in Turkish by “Sheykh Zadah,” evidently a nom de plume (for Ahmad al Misri?), and translated from an Arabic MS. which probably dated about the xvth century.

[FN#131] In Chavis and Cazotte, the “kingdom of Dineroux (comprehending all Syria and the isles of the Indian Ocean) whose capital was Issessara.” An article in the Edinburgh Review (July, 1886), calls the “Supplement” a “bare faced forgery”; but evidently the writer should have “read up” his subject before writing.

[FN#132] The Persian form; in Arab. Sijistán, the classical Drangiana or province East of Fars=Persia proper. It is famed in legend as the feof of hero Rustam.

[FN#133] Arab. Ráwi=a professional tale teller, which Mr. Payne justly holds to be a clerical error for “Rái, a beholder, one who seeth.”

[FN#134] In Persian the name would be Bahr i Jaur=“luck” (or fortune, “bahr”) of Jaur (or Júr ) city.

[FN#135] Supply “and cared naught for his kingdom.”

[FN#136] Arab. “Atráf,” plur. of “Tarf,” a great and liberal lord.

[FN#137] Lit. “How was,” etc. Kayf is a favourite word not only in the Bresl. Edit., but throughout Egypt and Syria. Classically we should write “Má;” vulgarly “Aysh.”

[FN#138] Karmania vulg. and fancifully derived from Kirmán Pers.=worms because the silkworm is supposed to have been bred there; but the name is of far older date as we find the Asiatic Aethiopians of Herodotus (iii. 93) lying between the Germanii (Karman) and the Indus. Also Karmanía appears in Strabo and Sinus Carmanicus in other classics.

[FN#139] Arab. “Ka’íd”; lit.=one who sits with, a colleague, hence the Span. Alcayde; in Marocco it is=colonel, and is prefixed e.g. Ka’íd Maclean.

[FN#140] A favourite food; Al Hariri calls the dates and cream, which were sold together in bazars, the “Proud Rider on the desired Steed.”

[FN#141] In Bresl. Edit. vi. 198 by misprint “Kutrú”: Chavis and Cazotte have “Kassera.” In the story of Bihkard we find a P.N. “Yatrú.”

[FN#142] i.e. waylaying travellers, a term which has often occurred.

[FN#143] i.e. the royal favour.

[FN#144] i.e. When the fated hour came down (from Heaven).

[FN#145] As the Nights have proved in many places, the Asl (origin) of a man is popularly held to influence his conduct throughout life. So the Jeweller’s wife (vol. ix.) was of servile birth, which accounted for her vile conduct; and reference is hardly necessary to a host of other instances. We can trace the same idea in the sayings and folk lore of the West, e.g. Bon sang ne peut mentir, etc., etc.

[FN#146] i.e. “What deemest thou he hath done?”

[FN#147] The apodosis wanting “to make thee trust in him?”

[FN#148] In the Braj Bákhá dialect of Hindi, we find quoted in the Akhlák i Hindi, “Tale of the old Tiger and the Traveller”:--

Jo jáko paryo subháo jáe ná jío sun;
Ním na mitho hoe sichh gur ghio sun.

Ne’er shall his nature fall a man whate’er that nature be,
The Ním tree bitter shall remain though drenched with Gur
and Ghí.

The Ním (Melia Azadirachta) is the “Persian lilac” whose leaves, intensely bitter, are used as a preventive to poison: Gur is the Anglo Indian Jaggeri=raw sugar and Ghi clarified butter. Roebuck gives the same proverb in Hindostani.

[FN#149] In Chavis and Cazotte “Story of Kaskas; or the Obstinate Man.” For ill luck, see Miss Frere’s “Old Deccan Days” (p. 171), and Giles’s “Strange Stories,” &c. (p. 430), where the young lady says to Ma, “You often asked me for money; but on account of your weak luck I hitherto refrained from giving it.”

[FN#150] True to life in the present day, as many a standing hay rick has shown.

[FN#151] The “Munajjim” is a recognised authority in Egyptian townlets, and in the village republics of Southern India the “Jyoshi” is one of the paid officials.

[FN#152] Arab. “Amín” sub. and adj. In India it means a Government employé who collects revenue; in Marocco a commissioner sent by His Sharifian Majesty.

[FN#153] Our older word for divers=Arab “Ghawwásún”: a single pearl (in the text Jauhar=the Port. AIjofar) is called “habbah”=grain or seed.

[FN#154] The kindly and generous deed of one Moslem to another, and by no means rare in real life.

[FN#155] “Eunuch,” etymologically meaning chamberlain (ε_v_ + _χειv), a bed chamber servant or slave, was presently confined to castrated men found useful for special purposes, like gelded horses, hounds, and cockerels turned to capons. Some writers hold that the creation of the semivir or apocopus began as a punishment in Egypt and elsewhere; and so under the Romans amputation of the “peccant part” was frequent: others trace the Greek “invalid,” i.e., impotent man, to marital jealousy, and not a few to the wife who wished to use the sexless for hard work in the house without danger to the slave girls. The origin of the mutilation is referred by Ammianus Marcellinus (lib. iv. chap. 17), and the Classics generally, to Semiramis, an “ancient queen” of decidedly doubtful epoch, who thus prevented the propagation of weaklings. But in Genesis (xxxvii. 36; xxxix. 1, margin) we find Potiphar termed a “Sarím” (castrato), an “extenuating circumstance” for Mrs. P. Herodotus (iii. chap. 48) tells us that Periander, tyrant of Corinth, sent three hundred Corcyrean boys to Alyattes for castration _π_ τ_ _κτoμ_, and that Panionios of Chios sold caponised lads for high prices (viii. 105): he notices (viii. 104 and other places) that eunuchs “of the Sun, of Heaven, of the hand of God,” were looked upon as honourable men amongst the Persians whom Stephanus and Brissonius charge with having invented the name (Dabistan i. 171). Ctesias also declares that the Persian kings were under the influence of eunuchs. In the debauched ages of Rome the women found a new use for these effeminates, who had lost only the testes or testiculi=the witnesses (of generative force): it is noticed by Juvenal (i. 22; ii. 365-379; vi. 366)

--sunt quos imbelles et mollia semper
Oscula delectant.

So Martial,

--vult futui Gallia, non parere,

And Mirabeau knew (see Kadísah) “qu’ils mordent les femmes et les liment avec une précieuse continuité.” (Compare my vol. ii. 90; v. 46.) The men also used them as catamites (Horace i. Od. xxxvii.).

“Contaminato cum grege turpium,
Morbo virorum.”

In religion the intestabilis or intestatus was held ill omened, and not permitted to become a priest (Seneca Controv. ii. 4), a practice perpetuated in the various Christian churches. The manufacture was forbidden, to the satisfaction of Martial, by Domitian, whose edict Nero confirmed; and was restored by the Byzantine empire, which advanced eunuchs, like Eutropius and Narses, to the highest dignities of the realm. The cruel custom to the eternal disgrace of mediaeval Christianity was revived in Rome for providing the choirs in the Sistine Chapel and elsewhere with boys’ voices. Isaiah mentions the custom (Ivi. 3-6). Mohammed, who notices in the Koran (xxiv. 31), “such men as attend women and have no need of women,” i.e., “have no natural force,” expressly forbade (iv. 118), “changing Allah’s creatures,” referring, say the commentators, to superstitious earcropping of cattle, tattooing, teeth sharpening, sodomy, tribadism, and slave gelding. See also the “Hidáyah,” vol. iv. 121; and the famous divine AI Siyúti, the last of his school, wrote a tractate Fi ’I Tahrími Khidmati ’I Khisyán=on the illegality of using eunuchs. Yet the Harem perpetuated the practice throughout AI Islam and African jealousy made a gross abuse of it. To quote no other instance, the Sultan of Dár For had a thousand eunuchs under a Malik or king, and all the chief offices of the empire, such as Ab (father) and Báb (door), were monopolised by these neutrals. The centre of supply was the Upper Nile, where the operation was found dangerous after the age of fifteen, and when badly performed only one in four survived. For this reason, during the last century the Coptic monks of Girgah and Zawy al Dayr, near Assiout, engaged in this scandalous traffic, and declared that it was philanthropic to operate scientifically (Prof. Panuri and many others). Eunuchs are now made in the Sudán, Nubia, Abyssinia, Kordofán, and Dár For, especially the Messalmiyah district: one of those towns was called “Tawáshah” (eunuchry) from the traffic there conducted by Fukahá or religious teachers. Many are supplied by the district between Majarah (Majarash?) and the port Masawwah; there are also depôts at Mbadr, near Tajurrah harbour, where Yusuf Bey, Governor in 1880, caponised some forty boys, including the brother of a hostile African chief: here also the well known Abu Bakr was scandalously active. It is calculated that not less than eight thousand of these unfortunates are annually exported to Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. Article IV. of the AngIo Egyptian Convention punishes the offense with death, and no one would object to hanging the murderer under whose mutilating razor a boy dies. Yet this, like most of our modern “improvements” in Egypt, is a mere brutum fulmen. The crime is committed under our very eyes, but we will not see it.

The Romans numbered three kinds of eunuchs:--1. Castrati, clean shaved, from Gr.κ_στρoς; 2. Spadones, from σπ_ω, when the testicles are torn out, not from “Spada,” town of Persia; and, 3. Thlibii, from "λί_ω, to press, squeeze, when the testicles are bruised, &c. In the East also, as I have stated (v. 46), eunuchs are of three kinds:--1. Sandali, or the clean shaved, the classical apocopus. The parts are swept off by a single cut of a razor, a tube (tin or wooden) is set in the urethra, the wound is cauterised with boiling oil, and the patient is planted in a fresh dunghill. His diet is milk; and if under puberty, he often survives. This is the eunuque aqueduc, who must pass his water through a tube. 2. The eunuch whose penis is removed: he retains all the power of copulation and procreation without the wherewithal; and this, since the discovery of caoutchouc, has often been supplied. 3. The eunuch, or classical Thlibias and Semivir, who has been rendered sexless by removing the testicles (as the priests of Cybele were castrated with a stone knife), or by bruising (the Greek Thlásias), twisting, searing, or bandaging them. A more humane process has lately been introduced: a horsehair is tied round the neck of the scrotum and tightened by slow degrees till the circulation of the part stops and the bag drops off without pain. This has been adopted in sundry Indian regiments of Irregular Cavalry, and it succeeded admirably: the animals rarely required a day’s rest. The practice was known to the ancients. See notes on Kadísah in Mirabeau. The Eunuchata virgo was invented by the Lydians, according to their historian Xanthus. Zachias (Quaest. medico legal.) declares that the process was one of infibulation or simple sewing up the vulva; but modern experience has suggested an operation like the “spaying” of bitches, or mutilation of the womb, in modern euphuism “baby house.” Dr. Robert (“Journey from Delhi to Bombay, Müller’s Archiv. 1843”) speaks of a eunuch’d woman who after ovariotomy had no breasts, no pubes, no rotundities, and no desires. The Australians practice exsection of the ovaries systematically to make women barren. Miklucho Maclay learned from the traveller Retsch that about Lake Parapitshurie men’s urethras were split, and the girls were spayed: the latter showing two scars in the groin. They have flat bosoms, but feminine forms, and are slightly bearded; they mix with the men, whom they satisfy mechanically, but without enjoyment (?). MacGillivray, of the “Rattlesnake,” saw near Cape York a woman with these scars: she was a surdo mute, and had probably been spayed to prevent increase. The old Scandinavians, from Norway to Iceland, systematically gelded “sturdy vagrants” in order that they might not beget bastards. The Hottentots before marriage used to cut off the left testicle, meaning by such semi castration to prevent the begetting of twins. This curious custom, mentioned by the Jesuit Tochard, Boeving, and Kolbe, is now apparently obsolete--at least, the traveller Fritsch did not find it.

[FN#156] Arab. “Harám”=”forbidden,” sinful.

[FN#157] In Chavis and Cazotte, who out galland’d Galland in transmogrifying the Arabic, this is the “Story of Illage (AI Hájj) Mahomet and his sons; or, the Imprudent Man.” The tale occurs in many forms and with great modifications. See, for instance, the Gesta Romanorum “Of the miraculous recall of sinners and of the consolation which piety offers to the distressed,” the adventures of the knight Placidus, vol. ii. 99. Charles Swan, London. Rivington, 1824.

[FN#158] i.e. For fear of the “eye”; see vol. i. 123 and passim. In these days the practice is rare; but, whenever you see at Cairo an Egyptian dame daintily dressed and leading by the hand a grimy little boy whose eyes are black with flies and whose dress is torn and unclean, you see what has taken its place. And if you would praise the brat you must not say “Oh, what a pretty boy!” but “Inshallah!”--the Lord doth as he pleaseth.

[FN#159] The adoption of slave lads and lasses was and is still common among Moslems.

[FN#160] I have elsewhere noted this “pathetic fallacy” which is a lieu commun of Eastern folk lore and not less frequently used in the mediaeval literature of Europe before statistics were invented.

[FN#161] Arab. “Yaskut min ’Aynayh,” lit.=fall from his two eyes, lose favour.

[FN#162] i.e. killing a man.

[FN#163] i.e. we can slay him whenever we will.

[FN#164] In Chavis and Cazotte “Story of Abosaber the Patient.” “Abú Sábir” would mean “Father of the Patient (one).”

[FN#165] Arab. “Dihkán,” in Persian a villager; but here something more, a villageelder or chief. AI Mas’udi (chap. xxiv.), and other historians apply the term to a class of noble Persians descended from the ten sons of Wahkert, the first,”Dihkán,” the fourth generation from King Kayomars.

[FN#166] Reminding one not a little of certain anecdotes anent Quakers, current in England and English speaking lands.

[FN#167] Arab. “Karyah,” a word with a long history. The root seems to be Karaha, he met; in Chald. Karih and Kária (emphatic Kárita)=a town or city; and in Heb. Kirjath, Kiryáthayim, etc. We find it in Carthage= Kartá hádisah, or New Town as opposed to Utica (Atíkah)=Old Town; in Carchemish and in a host of similar compounds. In Syria and Egypt Kariyah, like Kafr, now means a hamlet, a village.

[FN#168] i.e. wandering at a venture.

[FN#169] Arab. “Sakhrah,” the old French Corvée, and the “Begár” of India.

[FN#170] Arab. “Matmúrah:” see vol. ii. 39, where it was used as an “underground cell.” The word is extensively used in the Maghrib or Western Africa.

[FN#171] Arab. “Yá Abá Sábir.” There are five vocative particles in Arabic; “Yá,” common to the near and far; “Ayá” (ho!) and “Hayá” (holla!) addressed to the far, and “Ay” and “A” (A ’Abda lláhi, O Abdullah), to those near. All govern the accusative of a noun in construction in the literary language only; and the vulgar use none but the first named. The English speaking races neglect the vocative particle, and I never heard it except in the Southern States of the AngloAmerican Union=Oh, Mr. Smith.

[FN#172] He was not honest enough to undeceive them; a neat Quaker like touch.

[FN#173] Here the oath is justified; but the reader will have remarked that the name of Allah is often taken in vain. Moslems, however, so far from holding this a profanation deem it an acknowledgment of the Omnipotence and Omnipresence. The Jews from whom the Christians have borrowed had an interest in concealing the name of their tribal divinity; and therefore made it ineffable.

[FN#174] i.e. the grave, the fosse commune of slain men.

[FN#175] A fancy name; “Zawash” in Pers. is = Ζε_ς the planet Jupiter, either borrowed from Greece, or both descended from some long forgotten ancestor.

[FN#176] In Chavis and Cazotte “Story of Bhazad (!) the Impatient.” The name is Persian, Bih (well, good) Zád (born). In the adj. bih we recognize a positive lost in English and German which retain the comparative (bih tar = better) and superlative (bih tarin=best).

[FN#177] i.e. the moiety kept by the bridegroom, a contingent settlement paid at divorce or on the death of the husband.

[FN#178] Arab. “Rumh”=the horseman’s lance not the footman’s spear.

[FN#179] i.e. became a highwayman (a time honoured and honourable career) in order to collect money for completing the dowry.

[FN#180] i.e. to the bride, the wedding day; not to be confounded with “going in unto” etc.

[FN#181] Probably meaning that she saw the eyes espying through the crevice without knowing whose they were.

[FN#182] A fancy name intended to be Persian

[FN#183] i.e. thy Harem, thy women.

[FN#184] i.e. thy life hath been unduly prolonged.

[FN#185] See Chavis and Cazotte, “Story of Ravia (Arwà!) the Resigned.” Dádbín (Persian)=one who looks to justice, a name hardly deserved in this case.

[FN#186] For this important province and city of Persia, see Al Mas’udí, ii. 2; iv. 86, etc. It gave one of the many names to the Caspian Sea. The adjective is Tabari, whereas Tabaráni=native of Tiberias (Tabariyah).

[FN#187] Zor khán=Lord Violence, and Kár dán=Business-knower; both Persian.

[FN#188] “Arwà” written with a terminal of yá is a woman’s P.N. in Arabic.

[FN#189] i.e. Not look down upon me with eyes of contempt. This “marrying below one” is still an Eastern idea, very little known to women in the West.

[FN#190] Chavis and Cazotte call the Dabbús a “dabour” and explain it as a “sort of scepter used by Eastern Princes, which serves also as a weapon.” For the Dabbús, or mace, see vol. vi. 249.

[FN#191] i.e. Let thy purposes be righteous as thine outward profession.

[FN#192] See vol. vi. 130. This is another lieu commun amongst Moslems; and its unfact requires only statement.

[FN#193] Afterwards called his “chamberlain,” i.e. guardian of the Harem door.

[FN#194] i.e. Chosroës, whom Chavis and Cazotte make “Cyrus.”

[FN#195] Arab. “Tákiyah,” used for the Persian Takhtrawán, common in The Nights.

[FN#196] Arab. “Kubbah,” a dome shaped tent, as elsewhere.

[FN#197] This can refer only to Abu al Khayr’s having been put to death on Kardan’s charge, although the tale teller, with characteristic inconsequence, neglected to mention the event.

[FN#198] Not referring to skull sutures, but to the forehead, which is poetically compared with a page of paper upon which Destiny writes her irrevocable decrees.


[FN#199] Said in the grimmest earnest, not jestingly, as in vol. iv. 264.

[FN#200] i.e. the lex talionis, which is the essence of Moslem, and indeed, of all criminal jurisprudence. We cannot wonder at the judgment of Queen Arwa: even Confucius, the mildest and most humane of lawgivers, would not pardon the man who allowed his father’s murderer to live. The Moslem lex talionis (Koran ii. 173) is identical with that of the Jews (Exod. xxi. 24), and the latter probably derives from immemorial usage. But many modern Rabbins explain away the Mosaical command as rather a demand for a pecuniary mulct than literal retaliation. The well known Isaac Aburbanel cites many arguments in proof of this position: he asks, for instance, supposing the accused have but one eye, should he lose it for having struck out one of another man’s two? Moreover, he dwells upon the impossibility of inflicting a punishment the exact equivalent of the injury; like Shylock’s pound of flesh without drawing blood. Moslems, however, know nothing of these frivolities, and if retaliation be demanded the judge must grant it. There is a legend in Marocco of an English merchant who was compelled to forfeit tooth for tooth at the instance of an old woman, but a profitable concession gilded the pill.

[FN#201] In Chavis and Cazotte “Story of Bhazmant (!); or the Confident Man.” “Bakht ( i ) Zamán” in Pers. would=Luck of the Time.

[FN#202] Chavis and Cazotte change the name to “Abadid,” which, like “Khadídán,” is nonsignificant.

[FN#203] Arab. “Fáris,” here a Reiter, or Dugald Dolgetti, as mostly were the hordes led by the mediaeval Italian Condottiéri.

[FN#204] So Napoleon the Great also believed that Providence is mostly favorable to “gros bataillons.”

[FN#205] Pers. and Arab.=“Good perfection.”

[FN#206] In Chavis and Cazotte “Story of Baharkan.” Bihkard (in Shiraz pronounced “Kyard”)=“Well he did.”

[FN#207] See “Katrú” in the Introduction to the Bakhtiyár námah.

[FN#208] The text has “Jaukalán” for Saulaján, the Persian “Chaugán”=the crooked bat used in Polo. See vol. 1. 46.

[FN#209] Amongst Moslems, I have noted, circumstantial evidence is not lawful: the witness must swear to what he has seen. A curious consideration, how many innocent men have been hanged by “circumstantial evidence.” See vol. v. 97.

[FN#210] In Chavis and Cazotte “Story of Abattamant (!), or the Prudent Man;” also Aylán Shah becomes Olensa after Italian fashion.


[FN#211] In Arab. idiom a long hand or arm means power, a phrase not wholly unused in European languages. Chavis and Cazotte paraphrase “He who keeps his hands crossed upon his breast, shall not see them cut off.”

[FN#212] Arab. “Jama’a atráfah,” lit.=he drew in his extremities, it being contrary to “etiquette” in the presence of a superior not to cover hands and feet. In the wild Argentine Republic the savage Gaucho removes his gigantic spurs when coming into the presence of his master.

[FN#213] About the equivalent to the Arab. or rather Egypto-Syrian form “Jiddan,” used in the modern slang sense.

[FN#214] i.e. that he become my son in law.

[FN#215] For the practice of shampooing often alluded to in The Nights, see vol. iii. 17. The king “sleeping on the boys’ knees” means that he dropped off whilst his feet were on the laps of the lads.

[FN#216] Meaning the honour of his Harem.

[FN#217] Pardon, lit.=security; the cry for quarter already introduced into English

“Or raise the craven cry Aman.”

It was Mohammed’s express command that this prayer for mercy should be respected even in the fury of fight. See vol. i. 342.

[FN#218] A saying found in every Eastern language beginning with Hebrew; Proverbs xxvi. 27, “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.”

[FN#219] i.e. a domed tomb where prayers and perlections of the Koran could be made. “Kubbah” in Marocco is still the term for a small square building with a low medianaranja cupola under which a Santon lies interred. It is the “little Waly” of our “blind travellers” in the unholy “Holy Land.”

[FN#220] i.e. to secure her assistance in arousing the king’s wrath.

[FN#221] i.e. so slow to avenge itself.

[FN#222] Story of Sultan Hebriam (!), and his Son” (Chavis and Cazotte). Unless they greatly enlarged upon the text, they had a much fuller copy than that found in the Bresl. Edit.

[FN#223] A right kingly king, in the Eastern sense of the word, would strike off their heads for daring to see omens threatening his son and heir: this would be constructive treason of the highest because it might be expected to cause its own fulfilment.


[FN#224] Mohammed’s Hadís “Kazzibú ’l Munajjimúna bi Rabbi ’I Ka’abah”=the Astrologers lied, by the Ka’abah’s Lord!

[FN#225] Arab. “Khawátín,” plur. of Khátún, a matron, a lady, vol. iv. 66.

[FN#226] See Al Mas’udi, chapt. xvii. (Fr. Transl. ii. 48-49) of the circular cavity two miles deep and sixty in circuit inhabited by men and animals on the Caucasus near Derbend.

[FN#227] Arab. “Nafas” lit.=breath. Arabs living in a land of caverns know by experience the danger of asphyxiation in such places.

[FN#228] This simple tale is told with much pathos not of words but of sense.

[FN#229] Arab. “Ajal”=the appointed day of death, also used for sudden death. See vol. i. 74.

[FN#230] i.e. the Autumnal Equinox, one of the two great festival days (the other being the New Year) of the Persians, and surviving in our Michaelmas. According to Al Mas’udí (chap. xxi.), it was established to commemorate the capture of Zahhák (Azhi Daháka), the biting snake (the Hindu Ahi) of night and darkness, the Greek Astyages, by Furaydun or Feridun. Prof. Sayce (Principles of Comparative Philology, p. 11) connects the latter with the Vedic deity Trita, who harnessed the Sun horse (Rig. v. i. 163, 2, 3), the τριτoγέvεια of Homer, a title of Athene, the Dawn goddess, and Burnouf proved the same Trita to be Thraétaona, son of Athwya, of the Avesta, who finally became Furaydún, the Greek Kyrus. See vol. v. 1.

[FN#231] In Chavis and Cazotte, “Story of Selimansha and his Family.”

[FN#232] Arab. for Pers. Pahluwán (from Pahlau) a brave, a warrior, an athlete, applied in India to a champion in any gymnastic exercise, especially in wrestling. The Frenchman calls him “Balavan”; and the Bresl. text in more than one place (p. 312) calls him “Bahwán.”

[FN#233] i.e. King (Arab.) King (Persian): we find also Sultan Malik Shah=King King King.

[FN#234] Arab. “Aulád í,” a vulgarism, plural for dual.

[FN#235] Mr. Payne translates, “so he might take his father’s leavings” i.e. heritage, reading “Ásár” which I hold to be a clerical error for Sár=Vendetta, blood revenge (Bresl. Edit. vi. 310).

[FN#236] Arab. “Al ’Ásí” the pop. term for one who refuses to obey a constituted authority and syn. with Pers. “Yághí.” “Ant ’Ásí?” Wilt thou not yield thyself? says a policeman to a refractory Fellah.


[FN#237] i.e. of the Greeks: so in Kor. xxx. 1. “Alif Lam Mim, the Greeks (Al Roum) have been defeated.” Mr. Rodwell curiously remarks that “the vowel points for ‘defeated’ not being originally written, would make the prophecy true in either event, according as the verb received an active or passive sense in pronunciation.” But in discovering this mare’s nest, a rank piece of humbug like Aio te Aeacida, etc., he forgets that all the Prophet’s “Companions,” numbering some 5000, would pronounce it only in one way and that no man could mistake “ghalabat” (active) for “ghulibat” (passive).

[FN#238] The text persistently uses “Járiyah”=damsel, slave girl, for the politer “Sabiyah”=young lady, being written in a rude and uncourtly style.

[FN#239] So our familiar phrase “Some one to back us.”

[FN#240] Arab. “’Akkada lahu ráy,” plur. of ráyat, a banner. See vol. iii. 307.

[FN#241] i.e. “What concern hast thou with the king’s health?” The question is offensively put.

[FN#242] Arab. “Masalah,” a question; here an enigma.

[FN#243] Arab. “Liallá” (i.e. li, an, lá) lest; but printed here and elsewhere with the yá as if it were “laylan,”=for a single night.

[FN#244] i.e. if my death be fated to befal to day, none may postpone it to a later date.

[FN#245] Arab. “Dustí”: so the ceremony vulgarly called “Doseh” and by the ItaloEgyptians “Dosso,” the riding over disciples’ backs by the Shaykh of the Sa’diyah Darwayshes (Lane M.E. chapt. xxv.) which took place for the last time at Cairo in 1881.

[FN#246] In Chavis and Cazotte she conjures him “by the great Maichonarblatha Sarsourat” (Míat wa arba’at ashar Súrat)=the 114 chapters of the Alcoran.

[FN#247] I have noted that Moslem law is not fully satisfied without such confession which, however, may be obtained by the bastinado. It is curious to compare English procedure with what Moslem would be in such a case as that of the famous Tichborne Claimant. What we did need hardly be noticed. An Arab judge would in a case so suspicious at once have applied the stick and in a quarter of an hour would have settled the whole business; but then what about the “Devil’s own,” the lawyers and lawyers’ fees? And he would have remarked that the truth is not less true because obtained by such compulsory means.

[FN#248] The Hudhud, so called from its cry “Hood! Hood!” It is the Lat. upupa, Gr. _πoψ from its supposed note epip or upup; the old Egyptian Kukufa; Heb. Dukiphath and Syriac Kikuphá (Bochart Hierozoicon, part ii. 347). The Spaniards call it Gallo de Marzo (March Cock) from its returning in that month, and our old writers “lapwing” (Deut. xiv. 18). This foul feeding bird derives her honours from chapt. xxvii. of the Koran (q.v.), the Hudhud was sharp sighted and sagacious enough to discover water underground which the devils used to draw after she had marked the place by her bill.


[FN#249] Here the vocative Yá is designedly omitted in poetical fashion (e.g., Khalíliyya--my friend!) to show the speaker’s emotion. See p. 113 of Captain A. Lockett’s learned and curious work the “Miet Amil” (=Hundred Regimens), Calcutta, 1814.

[FN#250] The story teller introduces this last instance with considerable art as a preface to the dénoûement.

[FN#251] See Chavis and Cazotte “Story of the King of Haram and the slave.”

[FN#252] i.e. men caught red handed.

[FN#253] Arab. “Libwah,” one of the multitudinous names for the king of beasts, still used in Syria where the animal has been killed out, soon to be followed by the bear (U. Syriacus). The author knows that lions are most often found in couples.

[FN#254] Arab. “Himyán or Hamyán,”=a girdle.

[FN#255] As he would kiss a son. I have never yet seen an Englishman endure these masculine kisses, formerly so common in France and Italy, without showing clearest signs of his disgust.

[FN#256] A cheap way of rewarding merit, not confined to Eastern monarchs, but practised by all contemporary Europe.

[FN#257] Arab. “Kasf,”=houghing a camel so as to render it helpless. The passage may read. “we are broken to bits (Kisí) by our own sin.”

[FN#258] Bresl. Edit., vol. vii. pp. 251-4, Night dlxv.

[FN#259] See vol. vi. 175. A Moslem should dress for public occasions, like the mediaeval student, in vestibus (quasi) nigris aut subfuscis; though not, except amongst the Abbasides, absolutely black, as sable would denote Jewry.

[FN#260] A well known soldier and statesman, noted for piety and austerity. A somewhat fuller version of this story, from which I have borrowed certain details, is given in the Biographical Dictionary of Ibn Khallikán (i. 303-4). The latter, however, calls the first Abd al Malik “Ibn Bahrán” (in the index Ibn Bahrám), which somewhat spoils the story. “Ibn Khallikan,” by the by, is derived popularly from “Khalli” (let go), and “Kána” (it was, enough), a favourite expression of the author, which at last superseded his real name, Abu al Abbás Ahmad. He is better off than the companion nicknamed by Mohammed Abú Horayrah=Father of the She kitten (not the cat), and who in consequence has lost his true name and pedigree.

[FN#261] In Ibn Khallikán (i. 303) he is called the “Hashimite,” from his ancestor, Hashim ibn Abd Manáf. The Hashimites and Abbasides were fine specimens of the Moslem “Pharisee,” as he is known to Christians, not the noble Purushi of authentic history.

[FN#262] Meaning a cap, but of what shape we ignore. Ibn Khallikan afterwards calls it a “Kalansúa,” a word still applied to a mitre worn by Christian priests.

[FN#263] Arab. “Lá baas,” equivalent in conversation to our “No matter,” and “All right.”

[FN#264] As a member of the reigning family, he wore black clothes, that being the especial colour of the Abbasides, adopted by them in opposition to the rival dynasty of the Ommiades, whose family colour was white, that of the Fatimites being green. The Moslems borrowed their sacred green, “the hue of the Pure,” from the old Nabatheans and the other primitive colours from the tents of the captains who were thus distinguished. Hence also amongst the Turks and Tartars, the White Horde and the Black Horde.

[FN#265] The word has often occurred, meaning date-wine or grape-wine. Ibn Khaldún contends that in Ibn Khallikan it here means the former.

[FN#266] £25,000. Ibn Khallikan (i. 304) makes the debt four millions of dirhams or £90,000-£100,000.

[FN#267] In the Biographer occurs the equivalent phrase, “That a standard be borne over his head.”

[FN#268] Here again we have a suggestion that Ja’afar presumed upon his favour with the Caliph; such presumption would soon be reported (perhaps by the austère intrigant himself) to the royal ears, and lay the foundation of ill-will likely to end in utter destruction.

[FN#269] Bresl. Edit., vol. vii. pp. 258-60, Night dlxvii.

[FN#270] Fourth Abbaside, A.D. 785-786, vol. v. 93. He was a fantastic tyrant who was bent upon promoting to the Caliphate his own son, Ja’afar; he cast Harun into prison and would probably have slain him but for the intervention of the mother of one of the two brothers, Khayzarán widow of Al-Mahdi, and Yahya the Barmecide.

[FN#271] Third Abbaside, A.D. 775-785, vol. vii. 136; ix. 334.

[FN#272] This reminds us of the Bir Al-Khátim (Well of the Signet) at Al-Medinah; in which Caliph Osman during his sixth year dropped from his finger the silver ring belonging to the founder of Al-Islam, engraved in three lines with “Mohammed / Apostle (of) / Allah /.” It had served to sign the letters sent to neighboring kings and had descended to the first three successors (Pilgrimage ii. 219). Mohammed owned three seal-rings, the golden one he destroyed himself; and the third, which was of carnelian, was buried with other objects by his heirs. The late Subhi Pasha used to declare that the latter had been brought to him with early Moslem coins by an Arab, and when he died he left it to the Sultan.


[FN#273] Mr. Payne quotes Al-Tabari’s version of this anecdote. “El-Mehdi had presented his son Haroun with a ruby ring, worth a hundred thousand dinars, and the latter being one day with his brother (the then reigning Khalif), El Hadi saw the ring on his finger and desired it. So, when Haroun went out from him, he sent after him, to seek the ring of him. The Khalif’s messenger overtook Er Reshid on the bridge over the Tigris and acquainted him with his errand; whereupon the prince, enraged at the demand, pulled off the ring and threw it into the river. When El Hadi died and Er Rashid succeeded to the throne, he went with his suite to the bridge in question and bade his Vizier Yehya ben Khalid send for divers and cause them to make search for the ring. It had then been five months in the water and no one believed it would be found. However, the divers plunged into the river and found the ring in the very place where he had thrown it in, whereat Haroun rejoiced with an exceeding joy, regarding it as a presage of fair fortune.”

[FN#274] Not historically correct. Al-Rashid made Yáhyà, father of Ja’afar, his Wazir; and the minister’s two sons, Fazl and Ja’afar, acted as his lieutenants for seventeen years from A.D. 786 till the destruction of the Barmecides in A.D. 803. The tale-teller quotes Ja’afar because he was the most famous of the house.

[FN#275] Perhaps after marrying Ja’afar to his sister. But the endearing name was usually addressed to Ja’afar’s elder brother Fazl, who was the Caliph’s foster-brother.

[FN#276] Read seventeen: all these minor inaccuracies tend to invalidate the main statement.

[FN#277] Arab. “Yar’ad” which may mean “thundereth.” The dark saying apparently means, Do good whilst thou art in power and thereby strengthen thyself.

[FN#278] The lady seems to have made the first advances and Bin Abú Hájilah quotes a sixaine in which she amorously addresses her spouse. See D’Herbelot, s.v. Abbassa.

[FN#279] The tale-teller passes with a very light hand over the horrors of a massacre which terrified and scandalised the then civilised world, and which still haunt Moslem history. The Caliph, like the eking, can do no wrong; and, as Viceregent of Allah upon Earth, what would be deadly crime and mortal sin in others becomes in his case an ordinance from above. These actions are superhuman events and fatal which man must not judge nor feel any sentiment concerning them save one of mysterious respect. For the slaughter of the Barmecides, see my Terminal Essay, vol. x.

[FN#280] Bresl. Edit., vol. vii. pp. 260-1, Night dlxviii.

[FN#281] Ibn al-Sammák (Son of the fisherman or fishmonger), whose name was Abú al-Abbás Mohammed bin Sabíh, surnamed Al-Mazkúr (Ibn al-Athir says Al-Muzakkar), was a native of Kufah (where he died in A.H. 183 = 799-80), a preacher and professional tale-teller famed as a stylist and a man of piety. Al-Siyuti (p. 292) relates of him that when honoured by the Caliph with courteous reception he said to him, “Thy humility in thy greatness is nobler than thy greatness.” He is known to have been the only theologician who, ex cathedrâ, promised Al-Rashid a place in Paradise.

[FN#282] Bresl. Edit., vol. vii. pp. 261-2, Night dlxviii.


[FN#283] Seventh Abbaside, A.H. 198-227 = 813-842. See vol. iv. 109. He was a favourite with his father, who personally taught him tradition; but he offended the Faithful by asserting the creation of the Koran, by his leaning to Shi’ah doctrine, and by changing the black garments of the Banu Abbas into green. He died of a chill at Budandun, a day’s march from Tarsus, where he was buried: for this Podendon = πόδα τείvειv= stretch out thy feet, see Al-Siyuti, pp. 326-27.

[FN#284] Sixth Abbaside, A.D. 809-13. See vol. v. 93: 152. He was of pure Abbaside blood on the father’s side and his mother Zubaydah’s. But he was unhappy in his Wazir Al-Fazl bin Rabí, the intriguer against the Barmecides, who estranged him from his brothers Al-Kásim and Al-Maamún. At last he was slain by a party of Persians, “who struck him with their swords and cut him through the nape of his neck and went with his head to Tahir bin al-Husayn, general to Al-Maamún, who set it upon a garden-wall and made proclamation, This is the head of the deposed Mohammed (Al-Amín).” Al-Siyuti, pp. 306-311. It was remarked by Moslem annalists that every sixth Abbaside met with a violent death: the first was this Mohammed al-Amin surnamed Al-Makhlú’ = The Deposed; the second sixth was Al-Musta’ín; and the last was Al-Muktadí bi’lláh.

[FN#285] Lit. “Order and acceptance.” See the Tale of the Sandal-wood Merchant and the Sharpers: vol. vi. 202.

[FN#286] This is not noticed by Al-Siyuta (p. 318) who says that his mother was a slave-concubine named Marájil who died in giving him birth. The tale in the text appears to be a bit of Court scandal, probably suggested by the darkness of the Caliph’s complexion.

[FN#287] Bresl. Edit., vol. viii. pp. 226-9, Nights dclx-i.

[FN#288] King of the Arab kingdom of Hirah, for whom see vol. v. 74. This ancient villain rarely appears in such favourable form when tales are told of him.

[FN#289] The tribe of the chieftain and poet, Hátim Táí, for whom see vol. iv. 94.

[FN#290] i.e. I will make a covenant with him before the Lord. Here the word “Allah” is introduced among the Arabs of The Ignorance.

[FN#291] i.e. the man of the Tribe of Tay.

[FN#292] A similar story of generous dealing is told of the Caliph Omar in The Nights. See vol. v. 99 et seq.

[FN#293] Bresl. Edit., vol. viii. pp. 273 8, Nights dclxxv vi. In Syria and Egypt Firúz (the Persian "Píroz") = victorious, triumphant, is usually pronounced Fayrús. The tale is a rechauffé of the King and the Wazir"s Wife in The Nights. See vol. vi. 129.

[FN#294] i.e. I seek refuge with Allah = God forfend.


[FN#295] Bresl. Edit., vol. xi. pp. 84–318, Nights dccclxxv–dccccxxx. Here again the names are Persian, showing the provenance of the tale; Shah Bakht is=King Luck and Rahwán is a corruption of Rahbán=one who keeps the (right) way; or it may be Ruhbán=the Pious. Mr. W. A. Clouston draws my attention to the fact that this tale is of the Sindibad (Seven Wise Masters) cycle and that he finds remotely allied to it a Siamese collection, entitled Nonthuk Pakaranam in which Princess Kankras, to save the life of her father, relates eighty or ninety tales to the king of Pataliput (Palibothra). He purposes to discuss this and similar subjects in extenso in his coming volumes, “Popular Tales and Fictions: their Migrations and Transformations,” to which I look forward with pleasant anticipations.

[FN#296] So far this work resembles the Bakhtiyár námeh, in which the ten Wazirs are eager for the death of the hero who relates tales and instances to the king, warning him against the evils of precipitation.

[FN#297] One pilgrimage (Hajjat al Islam) is commanded to all Moslems. For its conditions see The Nights, vol. v. 202, et seq.

[FN#298] Arab. “Hajj al Shárif.” For the expenses of the process see my Pilgrimage iii. 12. As in all “Holy Places,” from Rome to Benares, the sinner in search of salvation is hopelessly taken in and fleeced by the “sons of the sacred cities.”

[FN#299] Here a stranger invites a guest who at once accepts the invitation; such is the freedom between Moslems at Meccah and Al Medinah, especially during pilgrimagetime.

[FN#300] i.e. the master could no longer use her carnally.

[FN#301] i.e. wantoned it away.

[FN#302] Here “Al Hajj”=the company of pilgrims, a common use of the term.

[FN#303] The text says, “He went on with the caravan to the Pilgrimage,” probably a clerical error. “Hajj” is never applied to the Visitation (Ziyárah) at Al Medinah.

[FN#304] Arab. “Jáwar,” that is, he became a mujáwir, one who lives in or near a collegiate mosque. The Egyptian proverb says, “He pilgrimaged: quoth one, Yes, and for his villainy lives (yujawir) at Meccah,” meaning that he found no other place bad enough for him.

[FN#305] I have often heard of this mysterious art in the East, also of similarly making rubies and branch coral of the largest size, but, despite all my endeavours, I never was allowed to witness the operation. It was the same with alchemy, which, however, I found very useful to the “smasher.” See my History of Sindh, chapt. vii.

[FN#306] Elsewhere in The Nights specified as white woolen robes.

[FN#307] Whilst she was praying the girl could not address her; but the use of the rosary is a kind of “parergon.”


[FN#308] Arab. “Yá Hájjah” (in Egypt pronounced “Hággeh”), a polite address to an elderly woman, who is thus supposed to have “finished her faith.”

[FN#309] Arab. “Kanísah” (from Kans=sweeping) a pagan temple, a Jewish synagogue, and especially a Christian church.

[FN#310] i.e. standeth in prayer or supplication.

[FN#311] i.e. fell into hysterics, a very common complaint amongst the highly nervous and excitable races of the East.

[FN#312] Arab. “Kahramánah,” a word which has often occurred in divers senses, nurse, duenna, chamberwoman, stewardess, armed woman defending the Harem, etc.

[FN#313] Which is supposed to contain the Harem.

[FN#314] Especially mentioned because the guide very often follows his charges, especially when he intends to play them an ugly trick. I had an unpleasant adventure of the kind in Somaliland; but having the fear of the “Aborigines Protection Society” before my eyes, refrained from doing more than hinting at it.

[FN#315] i.e. otherwise than according to ordinance of Allah.

[FN#316] A well known city of lrák ’Ajamí (or Persian).

[FN#317] i.e. spare pegs and strings, plectra, thumb guards, etc.

[FN#318] Arab. “Hasír,” the fine matting used for sleeping on during the hot season in Egypt and Syria.

[FN#319] i.e. The bed where the “rough and tumble” had taken place.

[FN#320] This word, which undoubtedly derives from cuculus, cogul, cocu, a cuckoo, has taken a queer twist, nor can I explain how its present meaning arose from a shebird which lays her egg in a strange nest. Wittol, on the other hand, from Witan, to know, is rightly applied to one whom La Fontaine calls “cocu et content,” the Arab Dayyús.

[FN#321] Arab. "Shabakah," here a net like a fisherman"s, which is hung over the hole in the wall called a shop, during the temporary absence of the shopkeeper. See my Pilgrimage, i. 100.

[FN#322] i.e. of which the singer speaks.

[FN#323] i.e., she found him good at the to and fro movement; our corresponding phrase is "basket making."


[FN#324] Arab. "Mu’arris": in vol. i. 338, 1 derived the word from ’Ars marriage, like the Germ. Kupplerin. This was a mere mistake; the root is ’Ars (with a Sád not a Sín) and means a pimp who shows off or displays his wares.

[FN#325] Arab. "Akhmitu Ghazla há" lit.=thicken her yarn or thread.

[FN#326] I must again warn the reader that the negative, which to us appears unnecessary, is emphatic in Arabic.

[FN#327] i.e. By removing the goods from the "but" to the "ben." Pilgrimage i. 99.

[FN#328] Arab. "Tannúr," here the large earthern jar with a cover of the same material, round which the fire is built.

[FN#329] Being a musician the hero of the tale was also a pederast.

[FN#330] Here Mr. Payne supplies "Then they returned and sat down" (apparently changing places). He is quite correct in characterising the Bresl. Edit. as corrupt and "fearfully incoherent." All we can make certain of in this passage is that the singer mistook the Persian for his white slave (Mameluke).

[FN#331] Arab. "Bazaka," normally used in the sense of spitting; here the saliva might be applied for facilitating insertion.

[FN#332] In Persian "Áward o burd,"=brought and bore away, gen. applied to the movement of the man as in the couplet,

Chenín burd o áward o áward o burd,
Kih dáyeh pas i pardeh zi ghussah murd.

He so came and went, went and came again,
That Nurse who lay curtained to faint was fain.

[FN#333] Alluding to the fighting rams which are described by every Anglo Indian traveller. They strike with great force, amply sufficient to crush the clumsy hand which happens to be caught between the two foreheads. The animals are sometimes used for Fál or consulting futurity: the name of a friend is given to one and that of a foe to the other; and the result of the fight suggests victory or defeat for the men.

[FN#334] Arab. "Jauhar"=the jewel, the essential nature of a substance. Compare M. Alcofribas’ "Abstraction of the Quintessence."


[FN#335] In parts of the Moslem world Al Jabr=the tyranny, is the equivalent of what we call "civil law," as opposed to Al Sharí’ah, or Holy Law, the religious code; Diwan al Jabr (Civil Court) being the contrary of the Mahkamah or Kazi"s tribunal. See "First Footsteps in East Africa," p. 126.

[FN#336] i.e. in offering thee the kingship.

[FN#337] i.e. "a man of fourscore."

[FN#338] i.e. outside the city.

[FN#339] See the conclusion of the story.

[FN#340] i.e. I have said my say.

[FN#341] Arab. "Al Mutabattil," usually=one who forsakes the world. The Katarát alNaysán or rain drops in the month Naysán (April) produce pearls when falling into the oyster shells and poison in the serpent"s mouth. The allusions to them are innumerable in Persian poetry, and the idea gives rise to a host of moralities more or less insipid.

[FN#342] This is the general idea concerning the diamond in all countries where the gem is dug, but I never heard it of the pearl.

[FN#343] Arab. "Faras," properly a mare; but the writer begins by using the feminine, and then employs the masculine. It is an abominable text.

[FN#344] Arab. "Rutab wa manázil," may also mean "stations and mansions (of the moon and planets)." The double entendre was probably intended.

[FN#345] Arab. "Za íf," still a popular word, meaning feeble, sick, ailing, but especially, weak in venery.

[FN#346] See the original of this tale in King Al Af’á: Al Mas’udí, chap. xlvi.

[FN#347] He says this without any sense of shame, coolly as Horace or Catullus wrote.

[FN#348] i.e. of the caravan with which he came.

[FN#349] Arab. "Al ’Adl." In the form of Zú ’adl it = a legal witness, a man of good repute; in Marocco and other parts of the Moslem world ’Adul (plur. ’Udúl) signifies an assessor of the Kazi, a notary. Padre Lerchundy (loc. cit. p. 345) renders it notario.

[FN#350] i.e. I would marry thy daughter, not only for her own sake, but for alliance with thy family.

[FN#351] i.e. the bride"s face.

[FN#352] The Ghusl or complete ablution after car. cop.

[FN#353] Thus the girl was made lawful to him as a concubine by the "loathly ladye," whose good heart redeemed her ill looks.

[FN#354] Meaning the poor man and his own daughter.

[FN#355] Mr. Payne changes the Arab title to the far more appropriate heading, "Story of the Rich Man and his Wasteful Son." The tale begins with Æsop"s fable of the faggot; and concludes with the "Heir of Linne," in the famous Scotch ballad. Mr. Clouston refers also to the Persian Tale of Murchlis (The Sorrowful Wazir); to the Forty Vezirs (23rd Story) to Cinthio and to sundry old English chap books.

[FN#356] Arab. "Tafrík wa’l jam’a."

[FN#357] Arab. "Wafát" pop. used as death, decease, departure; but containing the idea of departing to the mercy of Allah and "paying the debt of nature." It is not so illomened a word as Maut=death.

[FN#358] i.e. gifts and presents. See vol. iv. 185.

[FN#359] i.e. Turcomans; presently called Sístán, for which see vol. ii. 218.

[FN#360] In my Pilgrimage (i. 38), 1 took from Mr. Galton"s Art of Travel, the idea of opening with a lancet the shoulder or other fleshy part of the body and inserting into it a precious stone. This was immensely derided by not a few including one who, then a young man from the country, presently became a Cabinet Minister. Despite their omniscience, however, the "dodge" is frequently practised. See how this device was practised by Jeshua Nazarenus, vol. v. 238.

[FN#361] Arab. "’Alam," a pile of stones, a flag or some such landmark. The reader will find them described in "The Sword of Midian," i. 98, and passim.

[FN#362] Mr. Clouston refers to the “Miles Gloriosus” (Plautus); to “Orlando Innamorato” of Berni (the Daughter of the King of the Distant Isles); to the “Seven Wise Masters” (“The Two Dreams,” or “The Crafty Knight of Hungary”); to his Book of Sindibad, p. 343 ff.; to Miss Busk’s Folk Lore of Rome, p. 399 (“The Grace of the Hunchback”); to Prof. Crane’s “Italian Popular Tales,” p. 167, and “The Elopement,” from Pitrè’s Sicilian collection.

[FN#363] In sign of impatience; “Look sharp!”

[FN#364] i.e. the resemblance of the supposed sister to his wife. This is a rechauffé of Kamar al Zamán iid.


[FN#365] This leaving a long lock upon the shaven poll is a very ancient practice: we find it amongst the old Egyptians. For the Shúshah or top knot of hair, see vol. i. 308. It is differently worn in the several regions of the Moslem world: the Maroccans of the Ríf country grow it not on the poll but on one side of the head. As a rule, however, it is confined to boys, and is shaved off at puberty.

[FN#366] Suspecting her to be a witch because she was old and poor. The same was the case in Europe when these unfortunates were burned during the early part of the last century and even now the country folk are often ready to beat or drown them. The abominable witchcraft acts, which arose from bibliolatry and belief in obsolete superstitions, can claim as many victims in “Protestant” countries, England and the Anglo American States as the Jesuitical Inquisition.

[FN#367] It is not easy to make sense of this passage especially when the Wazir is spoken of.

[FN#368] This is a rechauffé of the Sandal Wood Merchant and the Sharpers. Vol. vi. 202.

[FN#369] I have followed Mr. Payne’s adaptation of the text as he makes sense, whilst the Arabic does not. I suppose that the holes are disposed crosswise.

[FN#370] i.e. Thy skill is so great that thou wilt undermine my authority with the king.

[FN#371] This famous tale is first found in a small collection of Latin fables (Adolphi Fabulæ apud Leyser Hist. Poet. Medii Ævi, p. 200–8), beginning

Cæcus erat quidam, cui pulcra virago, etc.

The date is 1315, and Caxton printed it in English in 1483; hence it was adopted by Boccaccio, Day vii., Novella 9; whence Chaucer’s “Marchaundes Tale”: this, by the by, was translated by Pope in his sixteenth or seventeenth year, and christened “January and May.” The same story is inserted in La Fontaine (Contes, lib. ii., No. 8), “La Gageure des trois Commères,” with the normal poirier; and lastly it appears in Wieland’s “Oberon,” canto vi.; where the Fairy King restores the old husband’s sight, and Titania makes the lover on the pear tree invisible. Mr. Clouston refers me also to the Bahár i Dánish, or Prime of Knowledge (Scott’s translation, vol. ii., pp. 64–68); “How the Brahman learned the Tirrea Bede”; to the Turkish “Kirk Wazir” (Forty Wazirs) of the Shaykh Zadeh (xxivth Wazir’s story); to the “Comœdia Lydiæ,” and to Barbazan’s “Fabliaux et Contes” t. iii. p. 451, “La Saineresse,” the cupping woman.

[FN#372] In the European versions it is always a pear tree.

[FN#373] This supernatural agency, ever at hand and ever credible to Easterns, makes this the most satisfactory version of the world wide tale.

[FN#374] i.e. till next harvest time.

[FN#375] The “’Ashshár,” or Tither, is most unpopular in the Nile valley as in Wales; and he generally merits his ill repute. Tales concerning the villainy of these extortioners abound in Egypt and Syria. The first step in improvement will be so to regulate the tithes that the peasants may not be at the mercy of these “publicans and sinners” who, however, can plead that they have paid highly for appointment to office and must recoup themselves.

[FN#376] Arab. “’Ammir”=cause to flourish.

[FN#377] Arab. “Afkah,” a better Fakíh or theologian; all Moslem law being based upon the Koran, the Sayings (Hadis) and Doings (Sunnat) of the Prophet; and, lastly, the Rasm or immemorial custom of the country provided that it be not opposed to the other three.

[FN#378] If the number represent the days in the Moslem year it should be 354=6 months of 29 days and the rest of 30).

[FN#379] The affirmative particle “kad” preceding a verb in the past gives it a present and at times a future signification.

[FN#380] A danik, the Persian “Dáng,” is one sixth of a dirham, i.e. about one penny. See vol. ii. 204.

[FN#381] It would mightily tickle an Eastern audience to hear of a Tither being unable to do any possible amount of villainy.

[FN#382] i.e. The oath of triple divorce which is, I have said, irrevocable, and the divorcée may not be taken again by her husband till her marriage with another man (the Mustahill of The Nights) has been consummated. See vol. iv., 48.

[FN#383] i.e. thousandfold cuckold.

[FN#384] Arab. “Wadí’ah”=the blows which the Robber had given him.

[FN#385] Arab. “Sindiyán” (from the Persian) gen. used for the holm oak, the Quercus pseudococcifera, vulgarly termed ilex, or native oak, and forming an extensive scrub in Syria, For this and other varieties of Quercus, as the Mallúl and the Ballút, see Unexplored Syria, i. 68.

[FN#386] Hibernicè

[FN#387] Lit. “In the way of moderation”=at least, at the most moderate reckoning.

[FN#388] Arab. “Rasmál,” the vulg. Syrian and Egyptian form of Raas al mál=stockin trade.

[FN#389] Usually a ring or something from his person to show that all was fair play; here however, it was a watchword.

[FN#390] Arab. “Ya Madyúbah,” prob. a clerical error for “Madyúnah,” alluding to her many debts which he had paid. Here, however, I suspect the truly Egyptian term “Yá Manyúkah!”=O thou berogered; a delicate term of depreciation which may be heard a dozen times a day in the streets of Cairo. It has also a masculine form, “Yá Manyúk!”


[FN#391] About=100 lb. Mr. Sayce (Comparative Philol. p. 210) owns that Mn is old Egyptian but makes it a loan from the “Semites,” like Sús (horse), Sar (prince), Sepet (lip) and Murcabutha (chariot), and goes to its origin in the Acratan column, because “it is not found before the times when the Egyptians borrowed freely from Palestine.” But surely it is premature to draw such conclusion when we have so much still to learn concerning the dates of words in Egyptian.

[FN#392] Arab. Jámi’. This anachronism, like many of the same kind, is only apparent. The faith preached by Sayyidná Isà was the Islam of his day and dispensation, and it abrogated all other faiths till itself abrogated by the mission of Mahommed. It is therefore logical to apply to it terms which we should hold to be purely Moslem. On the other hand it is not logical to paint the drop curtain of the Ober Ammergau “Miracle play” with the Mosque of Omar and the minarets of Al Islam. I humbly represented this fact to the mechanicals of the village whose performance brings them in so large a sum every decade; but Snug, Snout and Bottom turned up the nose of contempt and looked upon me as a mere “shallow sceptic.”

[FN#393] Arab. “Talámizah,” plur. of Tilmíz, a disciple, a young attendant. The word is Syriac <Arabic letters> and there is a Heb. root <Hebrew letters> but no Arabic. In the Durrat al Ghawwás, however, Tilmíz, Bilkís, and similar words are Arabic in the form of Fa’líl and Fi’líl

[FN#394] Rúh Allah, lit.=breath of Allah, attending to the miraculous conception according to the Moslems. See vol. v. 238.

[FN#395] Readers will kindly pronounce this word “Sahrá” not Sahárá.

[FN#396] Mr. Clouston refers for analogies to this tale to his “Oriental Sources of some of Chaucer’s Tales” (Notes and Queries, 1885–86), and he finds the original of The Pardoner’s Tale in one of the Játakas or Buddhist Birth stories entitled Vedabbha Jataka. The story is spread over all Europe; in the Cento Novelle Antiche; Morlini; Hans Sachs, etc. And there are many Eastern versions, e.g. a Persian by Faríd al Dín “’Attar” who died at a great age in A.D. 1278; an Arabic version in The Orientalist (Kandy, 1884); a Tibetan in Rollston’s Tibetan Tales; a Cashmirian in Knowles’ Dict. of Kashmírí Proverbs, etc., etc., etc.

[FN#397] Arab. “’Awán” lit.=aids, helpers; the “Aun of the Jinn” has often occurred.

[FN#398] i.e. the peasant.

[FN#399] i.e. those serving on the usual feudal tenure; and bound to suit and service for their fiefs.

[FN#400] i.e. the yearly value of his fief.

[FN#401] i.e. men who paid taxes.

[FN#402] Arab. “Rasátík” plur. of Rusták. See vol. vi. 289.


[FN#403] This adventure is a rechauffé of Amjad’s adventure (vol. iii. 333) without, however, its tragic catastrophe.

[FN#404] The text is so concise as to be enigmatical. The house was finely furnished for a feast, as it belonged to the Man who was lavish, etc.

[FN#405] Arab. “Khubz Samíz;” the latter is the Arabisation of the Pers. Samíd, fine white bread, simnel, Germ. semmel.

[FN#406] The text has “Bakúlát”=pot herbs; but it is probably a clerical error for “Bakláwát.” See vol. ii. 311.

[FN#407] Egyptian like he at once calls upon Allah to witness a lie and his excuse would be that the lie was well intentioned.

[FN#408] i.e. The private bagnio which in old days every grand house possessed.

[FN#409] This is a fancy title, but it suits the tale better than that in the text (xi. 183) “The Richard who lost his wealth and his wits.” Mr. Clouston refers to similar stories in Sacchetti and other early Italian novelists.

[FN#410] Arab. “Al Muwaswis”: for “Wiswás” see vol. i. 106. This class of men in stories takes the place of our “cunning idiot,” and is often confounded with the Saudáwi, the melancholist proper.

[FN#411] Arab. “Hamhama,” an onomapoeic, like our hum, hem, and haw.

[FN#412] Arab. “Barniyah,” a vessel either of glass or pottery like that in which the manna was collected (Exod. xvi. 33).

[FN#413] A hasty man, as Ghazbán=an angry man.

[FN#414] The Bresl. Edit. misprint. “Khablas” in more places than one, now with a Sín, then with a Sád. Khalbas suggests “Khalbús,” a buffoon, for which see vol. ii. 143. In Egypt, however, the latter generally ends in a Sad (see Lane’s “Khalboos,” M. E. chap. xxvii).

[FN#415] This story is a rechauffé of the Jewish Kazi and his pious wife; see vol. v. 256.

[FN#416] The Arab form of “Nayshápúr”=reeds of (King) Shapúr: see vol. ix. 230.

[FN#417] Arab. “Alà Tarík al Satr wa al Salámah,” meaning that each other’s wives did not veil before their brothers in law as is usually done. It may also mean that they were under Allah’s protection and in best of condition.

[FN#418] i.e. he dared not rape her.


[FN#419] i.e. her “yes” meant “yes” and her “no” meant “no.”

[FN#420] “Ignorance” (Jahl) may, here and elsewhere, mean wickedness, forwardness, folly, vicious folly or uncalled for wrath. Here Arabic teaches a good lesson, for ignorance, intemperance and egoism are, I repeat, the roots of all evil.

[FN#421] So Mohammed said of a child born in adultery “The babe to the blanket (i.e. let it be nursed and reared) and the adultress to the stone.”

[FN#422] Arab. “Wa há,” etc., an interjection corresponding with the Syriac “ho” lo! (i.e., look) behold! etc.

[FN#423] This paragraph is supplied by Mr. Payne: something of the kind has evidently fallen out of the Arab text.

[FN#424] i.e. in the presence of witnesses, legally.

[FN#425] Lit. a myriad, ten thousand dirhams. See vol. iv. 281.

[FN#426] The fire was intended to defend the mother and babe from Jinns, bad spirits, the evil eye, etc. Romans lit candles in the room of the puerpara; hence the goddess Candelifera, and the term Candelaria applied to the B.V. In Brand’s Popular Antiquities (ii. 144) we find, “Gregory mentions an ordinary superstition of the old wives who dare not trust a child in a cradle by itself alone without a candle;” this was for fear of the “night hag” (Milton, P. L., ii. 662). The same idea prevailed in Scotland and in Germany: see the learned Liebrecht (who translated the Pentamerone) “Zur Folkskunde,” p. 31. In Sweden if the candle go out, the child may be carried off by the Trolls (Weckenstedt, Wendische Sagen, p. 446). The custom has been traced to the Malay peninsula, whither it was probably imported by the Hindus or the Moslems, and amongst the Tajiks in Bokhara. For the Hindu practice, see Katha S. S. 305, and Prof. Tawney’s learned note analysed above.

[FN#427] Arab. “Káhinah,” fem. of Káhin (Cohen): see Kahánah, vol. i. 28.

[FN#428] i.e. for a long time, as has been before explained.

[FN#429] i.e. at his service. Arabia was well provided with Hetairæ and public women long before the days of Al Islam.

[FN#430] Arab. “Athar”=sign, mark, trail.

[FN#431] i.e. Persia. See vol. v. 26.

[FN#432] Arab. “’Akákír” plur. of ’Akkár prop.=aromatic roots; but applied to vulgar drugs or simples, as in the Tale of the Sage Duban, i. 46.


[FN#433] Arab. “Si’at rizki h” i.e., the ease with which he earned his copious livelihood.

[FN#434] i.e. the ten thousand dirhams of the bond, beside the unpaid and contingent portion of her “Mahr” or marriage settlement.

[FN#435] Arab. “Al Házúr” from Hazr=loquacity, frivolous garrulity. Every craft in the East has a jargon of its own and the goldsmith (Zargar) is famed for speaking a language made unintelligible by the constant insertion of a letter or letters not belonging to the word. It is as if we rapidly pronounced How d’ye do=Howth doth yeth doth?

[FN#436] Arab. “Asmá al Adwiyah,” such as are contained in volumes like the “Alfáz al Adwi yah” (Nomenclature of Drugs).

[FN#437] I am compelled to insert a line in order to make sense.

[FN#438] “Galen,” who is considered by Moslems as a kind of pre Islamitic Saint; and whom Rabelais (iii. c. 7) calls Le gentil Falot Galen, is explained by Eustathius as the Serene Γαληvός from γελάω=rideo.

[FN#439] Arab. “Sáhah” the clear space before the house as opposed to the “Bathah” (Span. Patio) the inner court.

[FN#440] A naïve description of the naïve style of réclame adopted by the Eastern Bob Sawyer.

[FN#441] Which they habitually do, by the by, with an immense amount of unpleasant detail. See Pilgrimage i. 18.

[FN#442] The old French name for the phial or bottle in which the patient’s water is sent.

[FN#443] A descendant from Mohammed, strictly through his grandson Husayn. See vol. iv. 170.

[FN#444] Arab. “Al Futúh” lit. the victories; a euphemistic term for what is submitted to the “musculus guineaorum.”

[FN#445] Arab. “Firásah” lit. judging the points of a mare (faras). Of physiognomy, or rather judging by externals, curious tales are told by the Arabs. In Al Mas’udi’s (chapt. lvi.) is the original of the camel blind of one eye, etc., which the genius of Voltaire has made famous throughout Europe.


[FN#446] I here quote Mr. Payne’s note. “Sic in the text; but the passage is apparently corrupt. It is not plain why a rosy complexion, blue eyes and tallness should be peculiar to women in love. Arab women being commonly short, swarthy and blackeyed, the attributes mentioned appear rather to denote the foreign origin of the woman; and it is probable, therefore, that this passage has by a copyist’s error, been mixed up with that which relates to the signs by which the mock physician recognised her strangerhood, the clause specifying the symptoms of her love lorn condition having been crowded out in the process, an accident of no infrequent occurrence in the transcription of Oriental works.”

[FN#447] Most men would have suspected that it was her lover.

[FN#448] The sumptuary laws, compelling for instance the Jews to wear yellow turbans, and the Christians to carry girdles date from the Capture of Jerusalem in A.D. 636 by Caliph Omar. See vol. i. 77; and Terminal Essay § 11.

[FN#449] i.e. Our Sunday: the Jewish week ending with the Sabbath (Saturday). I have already noted this term for Saturn’s day, established as a God’s rest by Commandment No. iv. How it lost its honours amongst Christians none can say: the text in Col. ii. 16, 17, is insufficient to abolish an order given with such pomp and circumstance to, and obeyed, so strictly and universally by, the Hebrews, including the Founder of Christianity. The general idea is that the Jewish Sabbath was done away with by the Christian dispensation (although Jesus kept it with the usual scrupulous care), and that sundry of the Councils at Colossæ and Laodicea anathematised those who observed the Saturday after Israelitish fashion. With the day its object changed; instead of “keeping it holy,” as all pious Jews still do, the early Fathers converted it into the “Feast of the Resurrection,” which could not be kept too joyously. The “Sabbatismus” of the Sabbatarian Protestant who keeps holy the wrong day is a marvellous perversion and the Sunday feast of France, Italy, and Catholic countries generally is far more logical than the mortification day of England and the so called Reformed countries.

[FN#450] Haráis, plur. of Harísah: see vol. i. 131.

[FN#451] It would have been cooked on our Thursday night, or the Jewish Friday night and would be stale and indigestible on the next day.

[FN#452] Marw (Margiana), which the Turkomans pronounce “Mawr,” is derived by Bournouf from the Sansk. Maru or Marw; and by Sir H. Rawlinson from Marz or Marj, the Lat. Margo; Germ. Mark; English March; Old French Marche and Neo Lat. Marca. So Marzbán, a Warden of the Marches: vol. iii. 256. The adj. is not Marází, as stated in vol. iii. 222; but Marwazi, for which see Ibn Khallikan, vol. i. p. 7, etc.: yet there are good writers who use “Marází” as Rází for a native of Rayy.

[FN#453] i.e. native of Rayy city. See vol. iv. 104.

[FN#454] Normally used for fuel and at times by funny men to be put into sweetmeats by way of practical joke: these are called “Nukl i Pishkil”=goat dung bonbons. The tale will remind old Anglo Indians of the two Bengal officers who were great at such “sells” and who “swopped” a spavined horse for a broken down “buggy.”


[FN#455] In the text “khanádik,” ditches, trenches; probably (as Mr. Payne suggests) a clerical or typographical error for “Fanádik,” inns or caravanserais; the plural of “Funduk” (Span. Fonda), for which see vol. viii. 184.

[FN#456] This sentence is supplied by Mr. Payne to remedy the incoherence of the text. Moslems are bound to see True Believers decently buried and the poor often beg alms for the funeral. Here the tale resembles the opening of Hajji Baba by Mr. Morier, that admirable picture of Persian manners and morals.

[FN#457] Arab. “Al ajr” which has often occurred.

[FN#458] Arab. “Hanút,” i.e., leaves of the lotus tree to be infused as a wash for the corpse; camphor used with cotton to close the mouth and other orifices; and, in the case of a wealthy man, rose water, musk, ambergris, sandal wood, and lignaloes for fumigation.

[FN#459] Which always begin with four “Takbírs” and differ in many points from the usual orisons. See Lane (M. E. chapt. xxviii.) who is, however, very superficial upon an intricate and interesting subject. He even neglects to mention the number of Ruk’át (bows) usual at Cairo and the absence of prostration (sujúd) for which see vol. ii. 10.

[FN#460] Thus requiring all the ablutional offices to be repeated. The Shaykh, by handling the corpse, became ceremonially impure and required “Wuzu” before he could pray either at home or in the Mosque.

[FN#461] The Shaykh had left it when he went out to perform Wuzu.

[FN#462] Arab. “Satl”=the Lat. and Etruscan “Situla” and “Situlus,” a water pot.

[FN#463] Arab. “Lahd, Luhd,” the niche or cell hollowed out in the side of the oblong trench: here the corpse is deposited and covered with palm fronds etc. to prevent the earth touching it. See my Pilgrimage ii. 304.

[FN#464] For the incredible amount of torture which Eastern obstinacy will sometimes endure, see Al Mas’udi’s tale of the miserable little old man who stole the ten purses, vol. viii. 153 et seq.

[FN#465] Arab. “Jarídah” (whence the Jaríd game) a palm frond stripped of its leaves and used for a host of purposes besides flogging, chairs, sofas, bedsteads, cages, etc. etc. Tales of heroism in “eating stick” are always highly relished by the lower orders of Egyptians who pride themselves upon preferring the severest bastinado to paying the smallest amount of “rint.”

[FN#466] Arab. “Náwús,” the hollow tower of masonry with a grating over the central well upon which the Magian corpse is placed to be torn by birds of prey: it is kept up by the Parsi population of Bombay and is known to Europeans as the “Tower of Silence.” Náís and Náwús also mean a Pyrethrum, a fire temple and have a whimsical resemblance to the Greek Ναός.


[FN#467] For Munkar and Nakir, the Interrogating Angels, see vol. v. iii. According to Al Mas’udi (chapt. xxxi.) these names were given by the Egyptians to the thirteenth and fourteenth cubits marked on the Nilometer which, in his day, was expected to show seventeen.

[FN#468] The text (xi. 227) has “Tannúr”=an oven, evidently a misprint for “Kubúr”=tombs.

[FN#469] Arab. “’An Abí”=(a propitiatory offering) for my father. So in Marocco the “Powder players” dedicate a shot to a special purpose or person, crying “To my sweetheart!” “To my dead!” “To my horse!” etc.

[FN#470] For this formula see vol. i. 65. It is technically called “Haukalah” and “Haulakah,” words in the third conjugation of increased triliterals, corresponding with the quadriliteral radicals and possessing the peculiar power of Kasr=abbreviation. Of this same class is Basmalah (vol. v. 206; ix. 1).

[FN#471] This scene with the watch would be relished in the coffee house, where the tricks of robbers, like a gird at the police, are always acceptable.

[FN#472] Arab. “Lá af’al”; more commonly Má af’al. Má and Lá are synonymous negative particles, differing, however, in application. Má (Gr. μ_) precedes definites, or indefinites: Lá and Lam (Gr. o_) only indefinites as “Lá iláha” etc.

[FN#473] Alluding to the proverb, “What hast thou left behind thee, O Asám?” i.e., what didst thou see?

[FN#474] Arab. “Sayrafi,” s.s. as “Sarráf’: see vol. i. 210.

[FN#475] Arab. “Al Ma’rafah”=the place where the mane grows.

[FN#476] i.e. though the ass remain on thy hands.

[FN#477] “Halves,” i.e. of dirhams: see vol. ii. 37.

[FN#478] Arab. “Taannafú,”=the Germ. lange Nase.

[FN#479] About forty shillings.

[FN#480] About £220.

[FN#481] Characteristically Eastern and Moslem is this action of the neighbours and bystanders. A walk through any Oriental city will show a crowd of people screaming and gesticulating, with thundering yells and lightning glances, as if about to close in mortal fight, concerning some matter which in no way concerns them. Our European cockneys and badauds mostly content themselves with staring and mobbing.

[FN#482] Arab. “Muruwwah,” lit. manliness, especially in the sense of generosity. So the saying touching the “Miyán,” or Moslem of India:--

Fí ’l riuz Kuwwah:
Fí ’I Hindí muruwwah.

When rice have strength, you’ll haply find,
In Hindi man, a manly mind.

[FN#483] i.e. His claim is just and reasonable.

[FN#484] I have noted (vol. i. 17) that good Moslems shun a formal oath, although “by Allah!” is ever on their tongues. This they seem to have borrowed from Christianity, which expressly forbade it, whilst Christians cannot insist upon it too much. The scandalous scenes lately enacted in a certain legislative assembly because an M.P. did not believe in a practice denounced by his creed, will be the wonder and ridicule of our descendants.

[FN#485] Most Arabs believe that the black cloud which sometimes produces, besides famine, contagious fevers and pestilence, like that which in 1799 depopulated the cities and country of Barbary, is led by a king locust, the Sultan Jarád.

[FN#486] The text is hopelessly corrupt, and we have no other with which to collate. Apparently a portion of the tale has fallen out, making a non sens of its ending, which suggests that the kite gobbled up the two locusts at her ease, and left the falcon to himself.

[FN#487] The lines have occurred in vol. i. 265. I quote Mr. Payne.

[FN#488] The fabliau is a favourite in the East; this is the third time it has occurred with minor modifications. Of course the original was founded on fact, and the fact was and is by no means uncommon.

[FN#489] This would hardly be our Western way of treating a proposal of the kind; nor would the European novelist neglect so grand an opportunity for tall talk.

[FN#490] This is a rechauffé of “The House with the Belvedere;” see vol. vi. 188.

[FN#491] Arab. “Mastúrah,”=veiled, well guarded, confined in the Harem.

[FN#492] Arab. “’Ajúz nahs”=an old woman so crafty that she was a calamity to friends and foes.

[FN#493] Here, as in many places the text is painfully concise: the crone says only, “The Wuzu for the prayer!”

[FN#494] I have followed Mr. Payne who supplies this sentence to make the Tale run smoothly.

[FN#495] i.e. the half of the marriage settlement due to the wife on divorcement and whatever monies he may have borrowed of her.

[FN#496] Here we find the vulgar idea of a rape, which is that a man can, by mere force, possess a woman against her will. I contend that this is impossible unless he use drugs like chloroform or violence, so as to make the patient faint or she be exceptionally weak. “Good Queen Bess” hit the heart of the question when she bade Lord High Chancellor sheath his sword, she holding the scabbard mouth before him and keeping it in constant motion. But it often happens that the woman, unless she have a loathing for her violator, becomes infected with the amorous storge, relaxes her defense, feels pleasure in the outer contact of the parts and almost insensibly allows penetration and emission. Even conception is possible in such cases as is proved in that curious work, “The Curiosities of Medical Experience.”

[FN#497] i.e. thou wilt have satisfied us all three.

[FN#498] Here I follow Mr. Payne who has skilfully fine drawn the holes in the original text.

[FN#499] See vol. vii. 363; ix. 238.

[FN#500] Arab. “Musallà,” which may be either a praying carpet, a pure place in a house, or a small chapel like that near Shiraz which Hafiz immortalised,

“Bring, boy, the sup that’s in the cup; in highest Heaven man ne’er shall find
Such watery marge as Ruknábád, MusalIà’s mazes rose entwined.”

[FN#501] Arab. “Ihtidá,”=divine direction to Hudà or salvation. The old bawd was still dressed as a devotee, and keeps up the cant of her caste. No sensible man in the East ever allows a religious old woman to pass his threshold.

[FN#502] In this tale “poetical justice” is neglected, but the teller skilfully caused the wife to be ravished and not to be a particeps criminis. The lover escapes scot free because Moslems, as well as Hindus, hold that the amourist under certain conditions is justified in obtaining his object by fair means or foul. See p. 147 of “Early Ideas, a Group of Hindoo Stories,” collected and collated by Anaryan: London, Allens, 1881.

[FN#503] This is supplied from the “Tale of the King and his Wazir’s Wife,” vol. vi. 129.

[FN#504] Arab. “Ibl,” a specific name: it is presently opposed to “Nákah,” a she dromedary, and “Ráhilah,” a riding camel.

[FN#505] Here “Amsaytu” is used in its literal sense “I evened” (came at evening), and this is the case with seven such verbs, Asbaha, Amsá, Azhá, Azhara, A’tama, Zalla, and Báta, which either conjoin the sense of the sentence with their respective times, morning, evening, forenoon, noon and the first sundown watch, all day and all night or are used “elegantly,” as grammarians say, for the simple “becoming” or “being.”


[FN#506] The Badawi dogs are as dangerous as those of Montenegro but not so treacherous: the latter will sneak up to the stranger and suddenly bite him most viciously. I once had a narrow escape from an ignoble death near the slaughter house of Alexandria Ramlah, where the beasts were unusually ferocious. A pack assailed me at early dawn and but for an iron stick and a convenient wall I should have been torn to pieces.

[FN#507] These elopements are of most frequent occurrence: see Pilgrimage iii. 52.

[FN#508] The principal incidents, the loss and recovery of wife and children, occur in the Story of the Knight Placidus (Gesta Romanorum, cx.). But the ecclesiastical taleteller does not do poetical justice upon any offenders, and he vilely slanders the great Cæsar, Trajan.

[FN#509] i.e. a long time: the idiom has already been noticed. In the original we have “of days and years and twelvemonths” in order that “A’wám” (years) may jingle with “Ayyám” (days).

[FN#510] Nothing can be more beautiful than the natural parks which travellers describe on the coasts of tropical seas.

[FN#511] Arab. “Khayyál” not only a rider but a good and a hard rider. Hence the proverb “Al Khayyál” kabr maftúh=uomo a cavallo sepoltura aperta.

[FN#512] i.e. the crew and the islanders.

[FN#513] Arab. “Hadas,” a word not easy to render. In grammar Lumsden renders it by “event” and the learned Captain Lockett (Miut Amil) in an awful long note (pp. 195 to 224) by “mode,” grammatical or logical. The value of his disquisition is its proving that, as the Arabs borrowed their romance from the Persians, so they took their physics and metaphysics of grammar and syntax; logic and science in general, from the Greeks.

[FN#514] We should say the anchors were weighed and the canvas spread.

[FN#515] The rhymes are disposed in the quaintest way, showing extensive corruption. Mr. Payne has ordered them into couplets with a “bob” or refrain. I have followed suit, preserving the original vagaries of rhymes.

[FN#516] Arab. “Nuwab,” broken plur. (that is, noun of multitude) of Naubah, the Anglo Indian Nowbut. This is applied to the band playing at certain intervals before the gate of a Rajah or high official.

[FN#517] Arab. “Hájib”; Captain Trotter (“Our Mission to the Court of Morocco in 1880”: Edinburgh, Douglas, 1881) speaks, passim, of the “cheery little Hájeb or Eyebrow.” Really this is too bad: why cannot travellers consult an Orientalist when treating of Oriental subjects?


[FN#518] Suicide is rare in Moslem lands, compared with India, China, and similar “pagan” countries; for the Mussulman has the same objection as the Christian “to rush into the presence of his Creator,” as if he could do so without the Creator’s permission. The Hindu also has some curious prejudices on the subject; he will hang himself, but not by the neck, for fear lest his soul be defiled by exiting through an impure channel. In England hanging is the commonest form for men; then follow in due order drowning, cutting or stabbing, poison, and gun shot: women prefer drowning (except in the cold months) and poison. India has not yet found a Dr. Ogle to tabulate suicide; but the cases most familiar to old Anglo Indians are leaping down cliffs (as at Giruar), drowning, and starving to death. And so little is life valued that a mother will make a vow obliging her son to suicide himself at a certain age.

[FN#519] Arab. “Zarad Khánah,” before noticed: vol. vii. 363. Here it would mean a temporary prison for criminals of high degree. De Sacy, Chrestom, ii. 179.

[FN#520] Arab. “’Adúl,” I have said, means in Marocco, that land of lies and subterfuges, a public notary.

[FN#521] This sentence is inserted by Mr. Payne to complete the sense.

[FN#522] i.e. he intended to marry her when time served.

[FN#523] Arab. from Pers. Khwájah and Khawáját: see vol. vi. 46.

[FN#524] Probably meaning by one mother whom he loved best of all his wives: in the next page we read of their sister.

[FN#525] Come down, i.e. from heaven.

[FN#526] This is the Bresl. Edit.’s form of Shahryár=city keeper (like Marzbán, guardian of the Marches), for city friend. The learned Weil has preferred it to Shahryár.

[FN#527] Sic: in the Mac. Edit. “Shahrázád” and here making nonsense of the word. It is regretable that the king’s reflections do not run at times as in this text: his compunctions lead well up to the dénoûement.

[FN#528] The careless text says “couplets.” It has occurred in vol. i. 149: so I quote Torrens (p. 149).

[FN#529] In the text Salma is made to speak, utterly confusing the dialogue.

[FN#530] The well known Baloch province beginning west of Sind: the term is supposed to be a corruption of Máhí Khorán=Ichthyophagi. The reader who wishes to know more about it will do well to consult “Unexplored Baluchistan,” etc. (Griffith and Farran, 1882), the excellent work of my friend Mr. Ernest A. Floyer, long Chief of the Telegraphic Department, Cairo.

[FN#531] Meaning the last city in Makran before entering Sind. Al Sharr would be a fancy name, “The Wickedness.”

[FN#532] i.e. think of nothing but his present peril.

[FN#533] Arab. “Munkati’ah”=lit. “cut off” (from the weal of the world). See Pilgrimage i. 22.

[FN#534] The lines are in vol. i. 207 and iv. 189. 1 here quote Mr. Payne.

[FN#535] I have another proposal to make.

[FN#536] i.e. In my heart’s core: the figure has often occurred.

[FN#537] These sudden elevations, so common in the East and not unknown to the West in the Napoleonic days, explain how the legend of “Joanna Papissa” (Pope John XIII), who succeeded Leo IV. in A.D. 855 and was succeeded by Benedict III., found ready belief amongst the enemies of papacy. She was an English woman born in Germany who came to Rome and professed theology with éclat, wherefore the people enthroned her. “Pope Joan” governed with exemplary wisdom, but during a procession on Rogation Sunday she was delivered of a fine boy in the street: some make her die on the spot; others declare that she perished in prison.

[FN#538] That such things should happen in times of famine is only natural; but not at other seasons. This abomination on the part of the butcher is, however, more than once alluded toin The Nights: see vol. i. 332.

[FN#539] Opinions differ as to the site of this city, so celebrated in the mediæval history of Al Islam: most probably it stood where Hyderabad of Sind now is. The question has been ably treated by Sir Henry M. Elliot in his “History of India,” edited from his posthumous papers by Professor Dowson.

[FN#540] Which, by the by, the average Eastern does with even more difficulty than the average European. For the most part the charge to secrecy fixes the matter in his mind even when he has forgotten that it is to be kept secret. Hence the most unpleasant results.

[FN#541] Such an act appears impossible, and yet history tells us of a celebrated Sufi, Khayr al Nassáj (the Weaver), who being of dark complexion was stopped on return from his pilgrimage at Kufah by a stranger that said, “Thou art my negro slave and thy name is Khayr.” He was kept at the loom for years, till at last the man set him free, and simply said, “Thou wast not my slave” (Ibn Khall. i. 513).

[FN#542] These lines have occurred before. I quote Mr. Payne for variety.

[FN#543] Arab. “Tasill saliata ’l Munkat’ín”=lit. “raining on the drouth hardened earth of the cut off.” The metaphor is admissible in the eyes of an Arab who holds water to be the chiefest of blessings, and makes it synonymous with bounty and beneficence.”

[FN#544] Possibly this is said in mere fun; but, as Easterns are practical physiognomists, it may hint the fact that a large nose in womankind is the sign of a masculine nature.


[FN#545] Arab. “Zakát wa Sadakat,”=lit. paying of poor rate and purifying thy property by almsdeeds. See vol. i. 339.

[FN#546] I have noted (i. 293) that Kamís (Χιτώv, Chemise, Cameslia, Camisa) is used in the Hindostani and Bengali dialects. Like its synonyms prætexta and shift, it has an equivocal meaning and here probably signifies the dress peculiar to Arab devotees and devout beggars.

[FN#547] I omit here and elsewhere the parenthetical formula “Kála al Ráwi,” etc.=The Story teller sayeth, reminding the reader of its significance in a work collected from the mouths of professional Tale tellers and intended mainly for their own use.

[FN#548] The usual sign of emotion, already often mentioned.

[FN#549] It being no shame to Moslems if a slave become King.

[FN#550] Arab. “Tarbiyatí,” i.e., he was brought up in my house.

[FN#551] There is no Salic law amongst Moslems; but the Rasm or custom of AlIslam, established by the succession of the four first Caliphs, to the prejudice of Ayishah and other masterful women would be a strong precedent against queenly rule. It is the reverse with the Hindus who accept a Rani as willingly as a Rajah and who believe with Europeans that when kings reign women rule, and vice versa. To the vulgar Moslem feminine government appears impossible, and I was once asked by an Afghan, “What would happen if the queen were in childbed?”

[FN#552] Arab. “Khutbah,” the sermon preached from the pulpit (Mimbar) after the congregational prayers on Friday noon. It is of two kinds, for which see Lane, M.E., chap. iii. This public mention of his name and inscribing it upon the newly minted money are the special prerogatives of the Moslem king: hence it often happens that usurpers cause a confusion of Khutbah and coinage.

[FN#553] For a specimen of which, blowing a man up with bellows, see Al Mas’udi, chap. cxxiii.

[FN#554] i.e. a long time: the idiom has been noted before more than once.

[FN#555] i.e. with what he had heard and what he was promised.

[FN#556] Arab. “Shakhs mafsúd,” i.e. an infidel.

[FN#557] Arab. “Bunúd,” plur. of Persian “band”=hypocrisy, deceit.

[FN#558] Arab. “Burúj” pl. of Burj. lit.=towers, an astrological term equivalent to our “houses” or constellations which form the Zodiacal signs surrounding the heavens as towers gird a city; and applied also to the 28 lunar Mansions. So in Al Hariri (Ass. of Damascus) “I swear by the sky with its towers,” the incept of Koran chapt. lxxxv.; see also chapts. xv. 26 and xxv. 62. “Burj” is a word with a long history: πύργoς burg, burgh, etc.

[FN#559] Arab. “Bundukah”=a little bunduk, nut, filbert, pellet, rule, musket bullet.

[FN#560] See John Raister’s “Booke of the Seven Planets; or, Seven Wandering Motives,” London, 1598.

[FN#561] i.e. for the king whom I love as my own soul.

[FN#562] The Bresl. Edit. (xi. 318-21) seems to assume that the tales were told in the early night before the royal pair slept. This is no improvement; we prefer to think that the time was before peep of day when Easterns usally awake and have nothing to do till the dawn-prayer.

[FN#563] See vol. ii. 161.

[FN#564] Arab. Al-Fákhir. No wonder that the First Hand who moulded the Man-mud is a lieu commun in Eastern thought. The Pot and the Potter began with the old Egyptians. “Sitting as a potter at the wheel, god Cneph (in Philæ) moulds clay, and gives the spirit of life (the Genesitic “breath”) to the nostrils of Osiris.” Then we meet him in the Vedas, the Being, “by whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is fabricated.” We find him next in Jeremiah (xviii. 2) “Arise and go down unto the Potter’s house,” etc., and in Romans (ix. 20), “Hath not the Potter power over the clay?” He appears in full force in Omar-i-Khayyám (No. xxxvii.):--

For I remember stopping by the way
To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay:
An with its all obliterated Tongue
I murmur’d–“Gently, Brother, gently, pray!”

Lastly the Potter shows in the Kasidah of Hají Abdú al-Yezid (p.4):--

“The first of pots the Potter made by Chrysorrhoas’ blue-green wave;
Methinks I see him smile to see what guerdon to the world he gave.