The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 6, Sir Richard Francis Burton [ebook and pdf reader TXT] 📗

by Mr. W. F. Kirby, of the British Museum, under the title of “The New Arabian Nights”

(London: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co.), and the author kindly sent me a copy. “New Arabian Nights” seems now to have become a fashionable title applied without any signification: such at least is the pleasant collection of Nineteenth Century Novelettes, published under that designation by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, 1884.

 

[FN#312] Von Hammer holds this story to be a satire on Arab superstition and the compulsory propagation, the compelle intrare, of Al-Islam. Lane (iii. 235) omits it altogether for reasons of his own. I differ with great diffidence from the learned Baron whose Oriental reading was extensive; but the tale does not seem to justify his explanations. It appears to me simply one of the wilder romances, full of purposeful anachronisms (e.g. dated between Abraham and Moses, yet quoting the Koran) and written by someone familiar with the history of Oman. The style too is peculiar, in many places so abrupt that much manipulation is required to make it presentable: it suits, however, the rollicking, violent brigand-like life which it depicts. There is only one incident about the end which justifies Von Hammer’s suspicion.

 

[FN#313] The Persian hero of romance who converses with the Simurgh or Griffin.

 

[FN#314] �The word is as much used in Egypt as wunderbar in Germany. As an exclamation is equivalent to “mighty fine!”

 

[FN#315] In modern days used in a bad sense, as a freethinker, etc. So Dalilah the Wily is noted to be a philosopheress.

 

[FN#316] The game is much mixed up after Arab fashion. The “Tufat” is the Siy�hgosh= Black-ears, of India (Felis caracal), the Persian lynx, which gives very good sport with Dachshunds.

Lynxes still abound in the thickets near Cairo [FN#317] The “Sons of Kaht�n,” especially the Ya’arubah tribe, made much history in Oman. Ya’arub (the eponymus) is written Ya’arab and Ya’arib; but Ya’arub (from Ya’arubu Aorist of ‘Aruba) is best, because according to all authorities he was the first to cultivate primitive Arabian speech and Arabic poetry. (Caussin de Perceval’s Hist. des Arabes i.50, etc.) [FN#318] He who shooteth an arrow by night. See the death of Antar shot down in the dark by the archer Jaz�r, son of J�b�r, who had been blinded by a red hot sabre passed before his eyes. I may note that it is a mere fiction of Al-Asma’i, as the real ‘Antar (or ‘Antarah) lived to a good old age, and probably died the “straw death.”

 

[FN#319] See vol. ii., p. 77, for a reminiscence of masterful King Kulayb and his Him� or domain. Here the phrase would mean, “None could approach them when they were wroth; none were safe from their rage.”

 

[FN#320] The sons of Nabh�n (whom Mr. Badger calls Nebh�n) supplied the old Maliks or Kings of Oman. (History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman, etc., London, Hakluyt Soc. 1871.) [FN#321] This is a sore insult in Arabia, where they have not dreamt of a “Jawab-club,” like that of Calcutta in the old days, to which only men who had been half a dozen times “jawab’d” (=

refused in Anglo-lndian jargon) could belong. “I am not a stallion to be struck on the nose,” say the Arabs.

 

[FN#322] Again “inverted speech”: it is as if we said, “Now, you’re a damned fine fellow, so,” etc. “Allah curse thee! Thou hast guarded thy women alive and dead;” said the man of Sulaym in admiration after thrusting his spear into the eye of dead Rabi’ah.

 

[FN#323] The Badawi use javelins or throw-spears of many kinds, especially the prettily worked Mizr�k (Pilgrimage i. 349); spears for footmen (Shalfah, a bamboo or palm-stick with a head about a hand broad), and the knightly lance, a male bamboo some 12 feet long with iron heel and a long tapering point often of open work or damascened steel, under which are tufts of black ostrich feathers, one or two. I never saw a crescent-shaped head as the text suggests. It is a “Pundonor” not to sell these weapons: you say, “Give me that article and I will satisfy thee!” After which the Sons of the Sand will haggle over each copper as if you were cheapening a sheep. (Ibid. iii. 73.)

 

[FN#324] The shame was that Gharib had seen the girl and had fallen in love with her beauty instead of applying for her hand in recognised form. These punctilios of the Desert are peculiarly nice and tetchy; nor do strangers readily realise them.

 

[FN#325] The Arabs derive these Noachid� from Imlik, great-grandson of Shem, who after the confusion of tongues settled at Sana’a, then moved North to Meccah and built the fifth Ka’abah.

The dynastic name was Arkam, M. C. de Perceval’s “Arcam,” which he would identify with Rekem (Numbers xxxi. 8). The last Arkam fell before an army sent by Moses to purge the Holy Land (Al-Hijaz) of idolatry. Commentators on the Koran (chaps. vii.) call the Pharaoh of Moses Al-Walid and derive him from the Amalekites: we have lately ascertained that this Mene-Ptah was of the Shepherd-Kings and thus, according to the older Moslems, the Hyksos were of the seed of Imlik. (Pilgrimage ii. 116, and iii.

190.) In Syria they fought with Joshua son of Nun. The tribe or rather nationality was famous and powerful: we know little about it and I may safely predict that when the Amalekite country shall have been well explored, it will produce monuments second in importance only to the Hittites. “A nomadic tribe which occupied the Peninsula of Sinai” (Smith’s Dict. of the Bible) is peculiarly superficial, even for that most superficial of books.

 

[FN#326] The Amalekites were giants and lived 500 years.

(Pilgrimage, loc. cit.)

 

[FN#327] His men being ninety against five hundred.

 

[FN#328] Arab. “Kaum” (pron. G�m) here=a razzia, afterwards=a tribe. Relations between Badawi tribes are of three kinds; (1) Ash�b, allies offensive and defensive, friends who intermarry; (2) K�m�n (plur. of Kaum) when the blood-feud exists, and (3) Akhwan= brothers. The last is a complicated affair, “Akh�wat” or brotherhood, denotes the tie between patron and client (a noble and an ignoble tribe) or between the stranger and the tribe which claims an immemorial and unalienable right to its own lands.

Hence a small fee (Al-Rifkah) must be paid and the traveller and his beast become “dakh�l,” or entitled to brother-help. The guardian is known in the West as Raf�k; Rab�‘a in Eastern Arabia; Ghaf�r in “Sinai ;” amongst the Somal, Abb�n and the Gallas Mog�s�. Further details are given in Pilgrimage iii. 85-87.

 

[FN#329] Arab. “M�l,” here=Badawi money, flocks and herds, our “fee” from feoh, vieh, cattle; as pecunia from pecus, etc., etc.

 

[FN#330] The litholatry of the old Arabs is undisputed: Man�t the goddess-idol was a large rude stone and when the Meccans sent out colonies these carried with them stones of the Holy Land to be set up and worshipped like the Ka’abah. I have suggested (Pilgrimage iii. 159) that the famous Black Stone of Meccah, which appears to me a large aerolite, is a remnant of this worship and that the tomb of Eve near Jeddah was the old “Sakhrah taw�lah” or Long Stone (ibid. iii. 388). Jeddah is now translated the grandmother, alluding to Eve, a myth of late growth: it is properly Juddah=a plain lacking water.

 

[FN#331] The First Adites, I have said, did not all perish: a few believers retired with the prophet Hud (Heber ?) to Hazramaut.

The Second Adites, who had M�rib of the Dam for capital and Lukman for king, were dispersed by the Flood of Al-Yaman. Their dynasty lasted a thousand years, the exodus taking place according to De Sacy in A.D. 150-170 or shortly after A.D. 100

(C. de Perceval), and was overthrown by Ya’arub bin Kaht�n, the first Arabist; see Night dcxxv.

 

[FN#332] This title has been noticed: it suggests the “Saint Abraham” of our medaeval travellers. Every great prophet has his agnomen: Adam the Pure (or Elect) of Allah, Noah the N�jiy (or saved) of Allah; Moses (Kal�m) the Speaker with Allah; Jesus the R�h (Spirit breath) or Kal�m (the word) of Allah. For Mohammed’s see Al-Busiri’s Mantle-poem vv. 31-58.

 

[FN#333] Koran (chaps. iii. 17), “Verily the true religion in the sight of Allah is Islam” i.e. resigning or devoting myself to the Lord, with a suspicion of “Salvation” conveyed by the root Salima, he was safe.

 

[FN#334] Arab. “S�‘ikah,” which is supposed to be a stone. The allusion is to Antar’s sword, “Dh�mi,” made of a stone, black, brilliant and hard as a rock (an aerolite), which had struck a camel on the right side and had come out by the left. The blacksmith made it into a blade three feet long by two spans broad, a kind of falchion or chopper, cased it with gold and called it Dh�mi (the “Trenchant”) from its sharpness. But he said to the owner:—

 

The sword is trenchant, O son of the Ghalib clan, Trenchant in sooth, but where is the sworder-man?

 

Whereupon the owner struck off the maker’s head, a most satisfactory answer to all but one.

 

[FN#335] Arab. “Kut�‘ah”: lit. a bit cut off, fragment, nail-paring, and here un diminutif. I have described this scene in Pilgrimage iii. 68. Latro often says, “Thy gear is wanted by the daughter of my paternal uncle” (wife), and thus parades his politeness by asking in a lady’s name.

 

[FN#336] As will appear the two brothers were joined by a party of horsemen.

 

[FN#337] “Four” says the Mac. Edit. forgetting Falhun with characteristic inconsequence.

 

[FN#338] Muhammad (the deserving great praise) is the name used by men; Ahmad (more laudable) by angels, and Mahm�d (praised) by devils. For a similar play upon the name, “Allah Allah Muhammad ast” (God is God the praisworthy) see Dabistan ii. 416.

 

[FN#339] The Mac. Edit. here gives “S�s,” but elsewhere “S�s�,”

which is the correct form

 

[FN#340] Sapor the Second (A.D. 310-330) was compelled to attack the powerful Arab hordes of Oman, most of whom, like the Tayy, Aus and Khazraj, the Banu Nabh�n and the Hin�wi left Al-Yaman A.D. 100-170, and settled in the north and north-east of Al-Najd This great exodus and dispersion of the tribes was caused, as has been said, by the bursting of the Dam of M�rib originally built by Abd al-Shams Sab�, father of Himyar. These Yamanian races were plunged into poverty and roamed northwards, planting themselves amongst the Arabs of Ma’add son of Adn�n. Hence the kingdom of Ghassan in Syria whose phylarchs under the Romans (i.e. Greek Emperors of Constantinople) controlled Palestine Tertia, the Arabs of Syria and Palestine, and the kingdom of H�rah, whose Lakhmite Princes, dependent upon Persia, managed the Arabs of the Euphrates, Oman and Al-Bahrayn. The Ma’addites still continued to occupy the central plateau of Arabia, a feature analogous with India “above the Ghauts.”

 

[FN#341] I have described (Pilgrimage i. 370) the grisly spot which a Badawi will dignify by the name of Wady al-Ward=Vale of Roses.

 

[FN#342] Koran xiii. 3, “Of every fruit two different kinds “

i.e. large and small, black and white, sweet and sour.

 

[FN#343] A graft upon an almond tree, which makes its kernel s..veet and gives it an especial delicacy of favour. See Russell’s (excellent) Natural History of Aleppo, p. 21.

 

[FN#344] So called from the flavour of the kernel it is well-known at Damascus where a favourite fruit is the dried apricot with an almond by way of kernel. There are many preparations of apricots, especially the “Mare’s skin” (Jild al-fares or Kamar al-din) a paste folded into sheets and exactly resembling the article from which it takes a name. When wanted it is dissolved in water and eaten as a