The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 1, Sir Richard Francis Burton [8 ebook reader TXT] 📗

the orbit or a needle over the eyeball. About the same time in Europe the operation was performed

with a heated metal basin—the well known bacinare (used by Ariosto), as happened to Pier delle Vigne (Petrus de Vine�), the “godfather of modern Italian.”

 

[FN#196] Arab. “Khinz�r” (by Europeans pronounced “Hanz�r”), prop.

a wild-boar, but popularly used like our “you pig!”

 

[FN#197] Striking with the shoe, the pipe-stick and similar articles is highly insulting, because they are not made, like whips

and scourges, for such purpose. Here the East and the West differ diametrically. “Wounds which are given by instruments which are in

one’s hands by chance do not disgrace a man,” says Cervantes (D.

Q.

i., chaps. 15), and goes on to prove that if a Zapatero (cobbler) cudgel another with his form or last, the latter must not consider

himself cudgelled. The reverse in the East where a blow of a pipe stick cost Mahommed Ali Pasha’s son his life: Ishmail Pasha was burned to death by Malik Nimr, chief of Shendy (Pilgrimage, i., 203). Moreover, the actual wound is less considered in Moslem law than the instrument which caused it: so sticks and stones are venial weapons, whilst sword and dagger, gun and pistol are felonious. See ibid. (i., 336) for a note upon the weapons with which nations are policed.

 

[FN#198] Incest is now abominable everywhere except amongst the overcrowded poor of great and civilised cities. Yet such unions were common and lawful amongst ancient and highly cultivated peoples, as the Egyptians (Isis and Osiris), Assyrians and ancient

Persians. Physiologically they are injurious only when the parents

have constitutional defects: if both are sound, the issue, as amongst the so-called “lower animals ” is viable and healthy.

 

[FN#199] Dwellers in the Northern Temperates can hardly imagine what a dust-storm is in sun parched tropical lands. In Sind we were

often obliged to use candles at mid-day, while above the dust was a sun that would roast an egg.

 

[FN#200] Arab. ” ‘Urban,” now always used of the wild people, whom

the French have taught us to call les Bedouins; “Badw” being a waste or desert, and Badawi (fem. Badaw�yah, plur. Bad�wi and Bidw�n), a man of the waste. Europeans have also learnt to miscall

the Egyptians “Arabs”: the difference is as great as between an Englishman and a Spaniard. Arabs proper divide their race into sundry successive families. “The Arab al-Arab�” (or al-Aribah, or

al-Urub�yat) are the autochthones, prehistoric, proto-historic and

extinct tribes; for instance, a few of the Adites who being at Meccah escaped the destruction of their wicked nation, but mingled

with other classes. The “Arab al-Muta’arribah,” (Arabised Arabs) are the first adven� represented by such noble strains as the Koraysh (Koreish), some still surviving. The “Arab al-Musta’aribah”

(insititious, naturalized or instituted Arabs, men who claim to be

Arabs) are Arabs like the Sinaites, the Egyptians and the Maroccans

descended by intermarriage with other races. Hence our “Mosarabians” and the “Marrabais” of Rabelais (not, “a word compounded of Maurus and Arabs”). Some genealogists, however, make

the Muta’arribah descendants of Kahtan (possibly the Joktan of Genesis x., a comparatively modern document, B.C. 700?); and the Musta’aribah those descended from Adn�n the origin of Arab genealogy. And, lastly, are the “Arab al-Musta’ajimah,”

barbarised

Arabs, like the present population of Meccah and Al-Medinah.

Besides these there are other tribes whose origin is still unknown,

such as the Mahrah tribes of Hazramaut, the “Akhd�m” (=serviles) of

Oman (Maskat); and the “Ebn�” of Al-Yaman: Ibn Ishak supposes the latter to be descended from the Persian soldiers of Anushirwan who

expelled the Abyssinian invader from Southern Arabia.

(Pilgrimage,

m., 31, etc.)

 

[FN#201] Arab. “Am�r al-Muumin�n.” The title was assumed by the Caliph Omar to obviate the inconvenience of calling himself “Khal�fah” (successor) of the Khal�fah of the Apostle of Allah (i.e. Abu Bakr); which after a few generations would become impossible. It means “Emir (chief or prince) of the Muumins,” men who hold to the (true Moslem) Faith, the “Im�n” (theory, fundamental articles) as opposed to the “D�n,” ordinance or practice of the religion. It once became a Wazirial time conferred

by Sultan Malikshah (King King-king) on his Niz�m al-Murk.

(Richardson’s Dissert. [viii.)

 

[FN#202] This may also mean “according to the seven editions of the

Koran ” the old revisions and so forth (Sale, Sect. iii. and D’Herbelot “Alcoran.”) The schools of the “Mukri,” who teach the right pronunciation wherein a mistake might be sinful, are seven, Harnzah, Ibn Kat�r, Ya’ak�b, Ibn Amir, Kis�i, Asim and Hafs, the latter being the favourite with the Hanafis and the only one now generally known in Al-Islam.

 

[FN#203] Arab. “Sadd”=wall, dyke, etc. the “bund” or “band” of Anglo-India. Hence the “Sadd” on the Nile, the banks of grass and floating islands which “wall” the stream. There are few sights more

appalling than a sandstorm in the desert, the “Zauba’ah” as the Arabs call it. Devils, or pillars of sand, vertical and inclined, measuring a thousand feet high, rush over the plain lashing the sand at their base like a sea surging under a furious whirlwind; shearing the grass clean away from the roots, tearing up trees, which are whirled like leaves and sticks in air and sweeping away tents and houses as if they were bits of paper. At last the columns

join at the top and form, perhaps three thousand feet above the earth, a gigantic cloud of yellow sand which obliterates not only the horizon but even the mid-day sun. These sand-spouts are the terror of travellers. In Sind and the Punjab we have the dust-storm which for darkness, I have said, beats the blackest London fog.

 

[FN#204] Arab. S�r = the vendetta, before mentioned, as dreaded in

Arabia as in Corsica.

 

[FN#205] Arab. “Gh�tah,” usually a place where irrigation is abundant. It especially applies (in books) to the Damascus-plain because “it abounds with water and fruit trees.” The Ghutah is one

of the four earthly paradises, the others being Basrah (Bassorah),

Shiraz and Samarcand. Its peculiarity is the likeness to a seaport

the Desert which rolls up almost to its doors being the sea and its

ships being the camels. The first Arab to whom we owe this admirable term for the “Companion of Job” is “Tarafah” one of the poets of the Suspended Poems: he likens (v. v. 3, 4) the camels which bore away his beloved to ships sailing from Aduli. But “ships

of the desert” is doubtless a term of the highest antiquity.

 

[FN#206] The exigencies of the “Saj’a,” or rhymed prose, disjoint this and many similar pas. sages.

 

[FN#207] The “Ebony” Islands; Scott’s “Isle of Ebene,” i., 217.

 

[FN#208] “Jarjar�s” in the Bul. Edit.

 

[FN#209] Arab. “Takb�s.” Many Easterns can hardly sleep without this kneading of the muscles, this “rubbing” whose hygienic properties England is now learning.

 

[FN#210] The converse of the breast being broadened, the drooping,

“draggle-tail” gait compared with the head held high and the chest

inflated.

 

[FN#211] This penalty is mentioned in the Koran (chaps. v.) as fit

for those who fight against Allah and his Apostle, but commentators

are not agreed if the sinners are first to be put to death or to hang on the cross till they die. Pharaoh (chaps. xx.) threatens to

crucify his magicians on palm-trees, and is held to be the first crucifier.

 

[FN#212] Arab. “‘Ajami”=foreigner, esp. a Persian: the latter in The Nights is mostly a villain. I must here remark that the contemptible condition of Persians in Al-Hij�z (which I noted in 1852, Pilgrimage, i., 327) has completely changed. They are no longer, “The slippers of All and hounds of Omar:” they have learned

the force of union and now, instead of being bullied, they bully.

 

[FN#213] The Calc. Edit. turns into Tailors (Khayy�t�n) and Torrens

does not see the misprint.

 

[FN#214] i.e. Axe and sandals.

 

[FN#215] Lit. “Strike his neck.”

 

[FN#216] A phrase which will frequently recur; meaning the situation suggested such words a these.

 

[FN#217] The smiter with the evil eye is called “A’in” and the person smitten “Ma’�m” or “Ma’�n.”

 

[FN#218] Arab. “S�kiyah,” the well-known Persian wheel with pots and buckets attached to the tire. It is of many kinds, the boxed, etc., etc., and it is possibly alluded to in the “pitcher broken at

the fountain” (Eccleslastes xii. 6) an accident often occurring to

the modern “Noria.” Travellers mostly abuse its “dismal creaking”

and “mournful monotony”: I have defended the music of the water-wheel in Pilgrimage ii. 198.

 

[FN#219] Arab. “Zikr” lit. remembering, mentioning (i. c. the names

of Allah), here refers to the meetings of religious for devotional

exercises; the “Zikkirs,” as they are called, mostly standing or sitting in a circle while they ejaculate the Holy Name. These “rogations” are much affected by Darwayshes, or begging friars, whom Europe politely divides Unto “dancing” and “howling”; and, on

one occasion, greatly to the scandal of certain Engl�nderinns to whom I was showing the Ezbekiyah I joined the ring of “howlers.”

Lane (Mod. Egypt, see index) is profuse upon the subject of “Zikrs”

and Zikk�ts. It must not be supposed that they are uneducated men:

the better class, however, prefers more privacy.

 

[FN#220] As they thought he had been there for prayer or penance.

 

[FN#221] Arab. “Ziy�rat,” a visit to a pious person or place.

 

[FN#222] This is a paternal salute in the East where they are particular about the part kissed. A witty and not unusually gross Persian book, called the “Al-N�mah” because all questions begin with “Al” (the Arab article) contains one “Al-Wajib al-busidan?”

(what best deserves bussing?) and the answer is “Kus-i-nau-pashm,”

(a bobadilla with a young bush).

 

[FN#223] A weight of 71-72 English grains in gold; here equivalent

to the diner.

 

[FN#224] Compare the tale of The Three Crows in Gammer Grethel, Evening ix.

 

[FN#225] The comparison is peculiarly apposite; the earth seen from

above appears hollow with a raised rim.

 

[FN#226] A hundred years old.

 

[FN#227] “Bahr” in Arab. means sea, river, piece of water; hence the adjective is needed.

 

[FN#228] The Captain or Master of the ship (not the owner). In Al-Yaman the word also means a “barber,” in virtue of the root, Rass, a head.

 

[FN#229] The text has “in the character Ruk�’�,”,” or Rik�’�,, the

correspondence-hand.

 

[FN#230] A curved character supposed to be like the basil-leaf (rayh�n). Richardson calls it “Rohani.”

 

[FN#231] I need hardly say that Easterns use a reed, a Calamus (Kalam applied only to the cut reed) for our quills and steel pens.

 

[FN#232] Famous for being inscribed on the Kiswah (cover) of Mohammed’s tomb; a large and more formal hand still used for engrossing and for mural inscriptions. Only seventy two varieties of it are known (Pilgrimage, ii., 82).

 

[FN#233] The copying and transcribing hand which is either Arabi or

Ajami. A great discovery has been lately made which upsets all our

old ideas of Cufic, etc. Mr. L�ytved of Bayrut has found, amongst the Hauranic inscriptions, one in pure Naskhi, dating A. D. 568, or

fifty years before the Hijrah; and it is accepted as authentic by my learned friend M. Ch. Clermont-Ganneau (p. 193, Pal. Explor.

Fund. July 1884). In D’Herbelot and Sale’s day the Koran was supposed to have been written in rude characters, like those subsequently called “Cufic,” invented shortly before Mohammed’s birth by Mur�mir ibn Murrah of Anbar in Ir�k, introduced into Meccah by Bashar the Kindian, and perfected by Ibn Muklah (Al-Wazir, ob. A. H. 328=940). We must now change all that. See Catalogue of Oriental Caligraphs, etc., by G. P, Badger, London, Whiteley, 1885.

 

[FN#234] Capital and uncial letters; the hand in which the Ka’abah

veil is inscribed (Pilgrimage iii. 299, 300).

 

[FN#235] A “Court hand” says Mr. Payne