The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 8, Sir Richard Francis Burton [feel good fiction books .txt] 📗

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[FN#362] Meaning that she had been carried to the Westward of Meccah.

 

[FN#363] Arab. “Zahraw�yah” which contains a kind of double entendre. F�timah the Prophet’s only daughter is entitled Al-Zahr� the “bright-blooming”; and this is also an epithet of Zohrah the planet Venus. For Fatimah see vol. vi. 145. Of her Mohammed said, “Love your daughters, for I too am a father of daughters” and, “Love them, they are the comforters, the dearlings.” The Lady appears in Moslem history a dreary young woman (died �t. 28) who made this world, like Honorius, a hell in order to win a next-world heaven. Her titles are Zahr� and Bat�l (Pilgrimage ii. 90) both signifying virgin. Burckhardt translates Zahr� by “bright blooming” (the etymological sense): it denotes literally a girl who has not menstruated, in which state of purity the Prophet’s daughter is said to have lived and died.

“Bat�l” has the sense of a “clean maid” and is the title given by Eastern Christians to the Virgin Mary. The perpetual virginity of Fatimah even after motherhood (Hasan and Husayn) is a point of orthodoxy in Al-Islam as Juno’s with the Romans and Um�‘s with the Hind� worshippers of Shiva. During her life Mohammed would not allow Ali a second wife, and he held her one of the four perfects, the other three being Asia wife of “Pharaoh,” the Virgin Mary and Khadijah his own wife. She caused much scandal after his death by declaring that he had left her the Fadak estate (Abulfeda I, 133, 273) a castle with a fine palmorchard near Khaybar. Abu Bakr dismissed the claim quoting the Apostle’s Hadis, “We prophets are folk who will away nothing: what we leave is alms-gift to the poor,” and Sh�‘ahs greatly resent his decision. (See Dabistan iii. 51�52 for a different rendering of the words.) I have given the popular version of the Lady Fatimah’s death and burial (Pilgrimage ii. 315) and have remarked that Moslem historians delight in the obscurity which hangs over her last resting-place, as if it were an honour even for the receptacle of her ashes to be concealed from the eyes of men. Her repute is a curious comment on Tom Hood’s “Where woman has never a soul to save.”

 

[FN#364] For Sharif and Sayyid, descendants of Mohammed, see vol. iv. 170.

 

[FN#365] These lines have occurred with variants in vol. iii.

257, and iv. 50.

 

[FN#366] Arab. “Hazrat,” esp. used in India and corresponding with our medi�val “pr�sentia vostra.”

 

[FN#367] This wholesale slaughter by the tale-teller of worshipful and reverend men would bring down the gallery like a Spanish tragedy in which all the actors are killed.

 

[FN#368] They are called indifferently “Ruhb�n”=monks or “Bat�rikah”=patriarchs. See vol. ii. 89.

 

[FN#369] Arab. “Khil�l.” The toothpick, more esteemed by the Arabs than by us, is, I have said, often used by the poets as an emblem of attenuation without offending good taste. Nizami (Layla u Majn�n) describes a lover as “thin as a toothpick.” The “elegant” Hariri (Ass. of Barkaid) describes a toothpick with feminine attributes, “shapely of shape, attractive, provocative of appetite, delicate as the leanest of lovers, polished as a poinard and bending as a green bough.”

 

[FN#370] From Bresl. Edit. x. 194.

 

[FN#371] Tr�butien (vol. ii. 344 et seq.) makes the seven monks sing as many anthems, viz. (1) Congregamini; (2) Vias tuas demonstra mihi; (3) Dominus illuminatis; (4) Custodi linguam; (5) Unam petii a Domino; (6) Nec adspiciat me visus, and (7) Turbatus est a furore oculus meus. D�nis the Abbot chaunts Anima mea turbata est vald�.

 

[FN#372] A neat and characteristic touch: the wilful beauty eats and drinks before she thinks of her lover. Alas for Masrur married.

 

[FN#373] The unfortunate Jew, who seems to have been a model husband (Orientally speaking), would find no pity with a coffee-house audience because he had been guilty of marrying a Moslemah. The union was null and void therefore the deliberate murder was neither high nor petty treason. But, The Nights, though their object is to adorn a tale, never deliberately attempt to point a moral and this is one of their many charms.

 

[FN#374] These lines have repeatedly occurred. I quote Mr.

Payne.

 

[FN#375] i.e. by the usual expiation. See vol. iii. 136.

 

[FN#376] Arab. “Shammir�”=up and ready!

 

[FN#377] I borrow the title from the Bresl. Edit. x. 204. Mr.

Payne prefers “Ali Noureddin and the Frank King’s Daughter.” Lane omits also this tale because it resembles Ali Shar and Zumurrud (vol. iv. 187) and Al� al-Din Abu al-Sh�m�t (vol. iv. 29), “neither of which is among the text of the collection.” But he has unconsciously omitted one of the highest interest. Dr. Bacher (Germ. Orient. Soc.) finds the original in Charlemagne’s daughter Emma and his secretary Eginhardt as given in Grimm’s Deutsche Sagen. I shall note the points of resemblance as the tale proceeds. The correspondence with the King of France may be a garbled account of the letters which passed between Harun al-Rashid and Nicephorus, “the Roman dog.”

 

[FN#378] Arab. “Allaho Akbar,” the Moslem slogan or war-cry. See vol. ii. 89.

 

[FN#379] The gate-keeper of Paradise. See vol. iii. 15, 20.

 

[FN#380] Negroes. Vol. iii. 75.

 

[FN#381] Arab. “Nakat,” with the double meaning of to spot and to handsel especially dancing and singing women; and, as Mr.

Payne notes in this acceptation it is practically equivalent to the English phrase “to mark (or cross) the palm with silver.” I have translated “Anw�” by Pleiads; but it means the setting of one star and simultaneous rising of another foreshowing rain.

There are seven Anw� (plur. of nawa) in the Solar year viz.

Al-Badri (Sept.-Oct.); Al-Wasmiyy (late autumn and December); Al-Waliyy (to April); Al-Gham�r (June); Al-Busriyy (July); B�rih al-Kayz (August) and Ahr�k al-Haw� extending to September 8.

These are tokens of approaching rain, metaphorically used by the poets to express “bounty”. See Preston’s Hariri (p. 43) and Chenery upon the Ass. of the Banu Haram.

 

[FN#382] i.e. They trip and stumble in their hurry to get there.

 

[FN#383] Arab. “Kumm” = sleeve or petal. See vol. v. 32.

 

[FN#384] Arab. “Kir�b” = sword-case of wood, the sheath being of leather.

 

[FN#385] Arab. “Akr kayraw�n,” both rare words.

 

[FN#386] A doubtful tradition in the Mishk�t al-Mas�bih declares that every pomegranate contains a grain from Paradise. See vol.

i. 134. The Koranic reference is to vi. 99.

 

[FN#387] Arab. “Aswad,” lit. black but used for any dark colour, here green as opposed to the lighter yellow.

 

[FN#388] The idea has occurred in vol. i. 158.

 

[FN#389] So called from the places where they grow.

 

[FN#390] See vol. vii. for the almond-apricot whose stone is cracked to get at the kernel.

 

[FN#391] For Roum see vol. iv. 100: in Morocco “Roumi” means simply a European. The tetrastich alludes to the beauty of the Greek slaves.

 

[FN#392] Arab. “Ahlan” in adverb form lit. = “as one of the household”: so in the greeting “Ahlan wa Sahlan” (and at thine ease), wa Marhab� (having a wide free place).

 

[FN#393] For the Sufrah table-cloth see vol. i. 178.

 

[FN#394] See vol. iii. 302, for the unclean allusion in fig and sycamore.

 

[FN#395] In the text “of Tor”: see vol. ii. 242. The pear is mentioned by Homer and grows wild in South Europe. Dr. Victor Hehn (The Wanderings of Plants, etc.) comparing the Gr.

with the Lat. Pyrus, suggests that the latter passed over to the Kelts and Germans amongst whom the fruit was not indigenous. Our fine pears are mostly from the East. e.g. the “bergamot” is the Beg Armud, Prince of Pears, from Angora.

 

[FN#396] i.e. “Royal,” it may or may not come from Sultan�yah, a town near Baghdad. See vol. i. 83; where it applies to oranges and citrons.

 

[FN#397] ‘Andam = Dragon’s blood: see vol. iii. 263.

 

[FN#398] Arab. “Jam�r,” the palm-pith and cabbage, both eaten by Arabs with sugar.

 

[FN#399] Arab. “Anw�r” = lights, flowers (mostly yellow): hence the Moroccan “N’w�r,” with its usual abuse of Wakf or quiescence.

 

[FN#400] Mr. Payne quotes Eugene From�ntin, “Un Et� dans le Sahara,” Paris, 1857, p. 194. Apricot drying can be seen upon all the roofs at Damascus where, however, the season for each fruit is unpleasantly short, ending almost as soon as it begins.

 

[FN#401] Arab. “Jal�jal” = small bells for falcons: in Port.

cascaveis, whence our word.

 

[FN#402] Khulanj�n. Sic all editions; but Khalanj, or Khaulanj adj. Khalanji, a tree with a strong-smelling wood which held in hand as a chaplet acts as perfume, as is probably intended. In Span. Arabic it is the Erica-wood. The “Muhit” tells us that is a tree parcel yellow and red growing in parts of India and China, its leaf is that of the Tamarisk (Tarf�); its flower is coloured red, yellow and white; it bears a grain like mustard-seed (Khardal) and of its wood they make porringers. Hence the poet sings,

 

“Yut ‘amu ‘l-shahdu f� ‘l-jif�ni, wa yuska * Labanu ‘l-Bukhti fi Kus�‘i ‘l-Khalanji:

Honey’s served to them in platters for food; * Camels’ milk in bowls of the Khalanj wood.”

 

The pl. Khal�nij is used by Himy�n bin Kah�fah in this “bayt”, “Hatt� iz� m� qazati ‘l-Haw�ij� * Wa malaat Hal�ba-h�

‘l-Khal�nij�:

Until she had done every work of hers * And with sweet milk had filled the porringers.”

 

[FN#403] In text Al-Sh�‘ir Al-Walah�n, vol. iii. 226.

 

[FN#404] The orange I have said is the growth of India and the golden apples of the Hesperides were not oranges but probably golden nuggets. Captain Rolleston (Globe, Feb. 5, ‘84, on “Morocco-Lixus”) identifies the Garden with the mouth of the Lixus River while M. Antichan would transfer it to the hideous and unwholesome Bissagos Archipelago.

 

[FN#405] Arab. “Iky�n,” the living gold which is supposed to grow in the ground.

 

[FN#406] For the Kubbad or Captain Shaddock’s fruit see vol. ii.

310, where it is misprinted Kub�d.

 

[FN#407] Full or Fill in Bresl. Edit. = Arabian jessamine or cork-tree ( ). The Bul. and Mac. Edits. read “filfil” =

pepper or palm-fibre.

 

[FN#408] Arab. “Sumbul al-‘Anbari”; the former word having been introduced into England by patent medicines. “Sumbul” in Arab.

and Pers. means the hyacinth, the spikenard or the Sign Virgo.

 

[FN#409] Arab. “Lis�n al-Hamal” lit. = Lamb’s tongue.

 

[FN#410] See in Bresl. Edit. X, 221. Taif, a well-known town in the mountain region East of Meccah, and not in the Holy Land, was once famous for scented goat’s leather. It is considered to be a “fragment of Syria” (Pilgrimage ii. 207) and derives its name =

the circumambulator from its having circuited pilgrim-like round Ka’abah (Ibid.).

 

[FN#411] Arab. “Mikhaddah” = cheek-pillow: Ital. guanciale. In Bresl. Edit. Mudawwarah (a round cushion) Sinjabiyah (of Ermine).

For “Mudawwarah” see vol. iv. 135.

 

[FN#412] “Coffee” is here evidently an anachronism and was probably inserted by the copyist. See vol. v. 169, for its first metnion. But “Kahwah” may have preserved its original meaning =

strong old wine (vol. ii. 261); and the amount of wine-drinking and drunkenness proves that the coffee movement had not set in.

 

[FN#413] i.e. they are welcome. In Marocco “L� baas” means, “I am pretty well” (in health).

 

[FN#414] The Rose (Ward) in Arab. is masculine, sounding to us most uncouth. But there is a fem. form Wardah = a single rose.

 

[FN#415] Arab. “Akm�m,” pl. of Kumm, a sleeve, a petal. See vol.

iv. 107 and supra p. 267. The Moslem woman will show any part of her person rather than her face, instinctively knowing that the latter may be recognised whereas the former cannot. The traveller in the outer East will see ludicrous situations in