The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 5, Sir Richard Francis Burton [best book clubs .txt] 📗

silk worked in high relief with gold and silver.

The idea is figurative meaning it was hung outside and inside with fine stuff, like the Ka’abah, the “Bride of Meccah.” The “lords” means simply the lost girl.

 

[FN#76] Arab. “Ayn” lit. eye, also a fount, “the eye of the landscape” (a noble simile); and here a helper, guard, assistant.

 

[FN#77] “Lord” for lady, i.e. she.

 

[FN#78] Arab. “Fi’l-khawafik”=in the four quarters or among the flappers (standards) or amid palpitations of heart. The bride alludes to a festal reception in a town, with burning incense, drums, flags, etc., etc.

 

[FN#79] In Egypt the shorter “honey-moon” lasts a week; and on the seventh day (pop. called Al-Subu’a) bride and bridegroom receive visits with all ceremony, of course in separate apartments. The seventh day (like the fortieth, the end of six months and the anniversary) is kept for births and deaths with Khatmahs (perlections) of the Koran “Saylah” family gatherings and so forth. The fortieth day ends the real honey-moon. See Night dccxcii.

 

[FN#80] I have noted the popular practice, amongst men as well as women, of hiring the Hammam for private parties and picnicking in it during the greater part of the day. In this tale the bath would belong to the public and it was a mere freak of the bride to bathe with her bridegroom. “Respectable” people do not.

 

[FN#81] She speaks in the last line as the barber or the bathman.

 

[FN#82] Here the “Ana” begin; and they mostly date themselves.

Of the following forty-nine, Lane (vol. Ii. P. 578 et seq.) gives only twenty-two and transforms them to notes in chapt. xviii. He could hardly translate several of them in a work intended to be popular. Abu Now�s is a person carefully to be avoided; and all but anthropological students are advised to “skip” over anecdotes in which his name and abominations occur.

 

[FN#83] Arab. “Ghilm�n,” the counter part, I have said, of the so-called “Houris.”

 

[FN#84] Mosul boasts of never having been polluted with idolatrous worship, an exemption which it owes to being a comparatively modern place.

 

[FN#85] The Aleppines were once noted for debauchery; and the saying is still “Halabi Shelebi” (for Chelebi)=the Aleppine is a fellow fine.

 

[FN#86] Mr. Payne omits the last line. It refers to what Persian boys call, in half-Turkish phrase, “Alish Takish,” each acting woman after he has acted man. The best wine is still made in monasteries and the co-called Sinai convent is world-famous for its “R�ki” distilled from raisins.

 

[FN#87] i.e. what a difference there is between them!

 

[FN#88] Arab. “Salli ala ‘l-Nabi,” a common phrase; meaning not only praise hm to avert the evil eye; but also used when one would impose silence upon a babbler. The latter will shuffle off by ejaculating “Al” and continue his chatter. (Pilgrimage ii.279.)

 

[FN#89] Arab. “Suk�t” (plur. of S�ki, cupbearer, our old “skinker”): the pure gold (tibr) is the amber-coloured wine, like the Vino d’oro of the Libanus.

 

[FN#90] That is, fair, white and read: Turkish slaves then abounded at Baghdad.

 

[FN#91] A Wady near Meccah where one of Mohammed’s battles was fought. The line means his waist is a thread connected broad breast and large hind quarters.

 

[FN#92] Arab. “Zaur�” which may mean crooked, alluding to the well-known rib.

 

[FN#93] A pun. Bakr was the name of the eponymus chief and it also means virgin, as in Abu Bakr.

 

[FN#94] Arab. “J�mi’ayn”=two cathedrals, any large (and consequently vicious) city.

 

[FN#95] Arab. “Alm�,” before noticed: I cannot translate “damask-lipped” to suit European taste.

 

[FN#96] Sherbet flavoured with musk or apple to cool the mouth of “hot coppers.”

 

[FN#97] Arab. “In’�sh” lit. raising from his bier. The whole tone is rollicking and slangy.

 

[FN#98] i.e. In spite of himself: the phrase often occurs.

 

[FN#99] Europeans usually write “Beni” for “Banu;” the oblique for the nominative. I prefer “Odhrah” or “Ozrah” to Udhrah; because the Ayn before the Z�l takes in pronunciation the more open sound.

 

[FN#100] Possibly meaning that they were shrouded together; this would be opposed to Moslem sense of decorum in modern days, but the ancient were not so squeamish. See Night cccxi.

 

[FN#101] This phase of passion in the “varium et mutabile” is often treated of by Oriental storytellers, and not unoften seen in real Eastern life.

 

[FN#102] As has been said, “S�hib” (preceding the name not following it as in India) is a Wazirial title in medi�val Islam.

 

[FN#103] This parapet was rendered obligatory by Moses (Deut.

xxii. 8) on account of the danger of leaving a flat roof without garde-fou. Eastern Christians neglect the precaution and often lose their children by the neglect.

 

[FN#104] Arab. “Lauh.” A bit of thin board washed white used for lessons as slates are amongst us, and as easily cleaned because the inks contain no minerals. It is a long parallelogram with triangular ears at the short sides; and the shape must date from ages immemorial as it is found, throughout Syria and its adjoinings, in the oldest rock inscriptions to which the form serves as a frame. Hence the “abacus” or counting table derived from the Gr. , a slab (or in Phenician “sand”), dust or sand in old days having been strewed on a table or tablet for schoolboys’ writings and mathematical diagrams.

 

[FN#105] A pre-Islamic bard and friend to Tarafah the poet of the Suspended or “Prize Poem.” The tale is familiar to all the Moslem East. Tarafah’s Laura was one Khaul�.

 

[FN#106] King of Hirah in Chald�a, a drunken and bloodthirsty tyrant. When offended by the lampoons of the two poets he sent them with litter� Bellerophonti� to the Governor of Al-Bahrayn.

Al-Mutalammis “smelt a rat” and destroyed his charged, but Tarafah was mutilated and buried alive, the victim of a trick which is old as (and older than) good King David and Uriah. Of course neither poet could read.

 

[FN#107] On this occasion, and in presence of the women only, the groom first sees or is supposed to see the face of his wife.

It is, I have said, the fashion for both to be greatly overcome and to appear as if about to faint: the groom looks especially ridiculous when so attitudinising.

 

[FN#108] This leisurely operation of the “deed of kind” was sure to be noticed; but we do not find in The Nights any allusion to that systematic prolongatio veneris which is so much cultivated by Moslems under the name Ims�k = retention, withholding i.e. the semen. Yet Eastern books on domestic medicine consist mostly of two parts; the first of general prescriptions and the second of aphrodisiacs especially those qui prolongent le plaisir as did the Gaul by thinking of sa pauvre m�re. The Ananga-Ranga, by the Reverend Koka Pandit before quoted, gives a host of recipes which are used, either externally or internally, to hasten the paroxysm of the woman and delay the orgasm of the man (p. 27). Some of these are curious in the extreme. I heard of a Hindi who made a candle of frogs’ fat and fibre warranted to retain the seed till it burned out; it failed notably because, relying upon it, he worked too vigorously. The essence of the “retaining art” is to avoid over-tension of the muscles and to pre-occupy the brain: hence in coition Hindus will drink sherbet, chew betel-nut and even smoke. Europeans ignoring the science and practice, are contemptuously compared with village-cocks by Hindu women who cannot be satisfied, such is their natural coldness, increased doubtless by vegetable diet and unuse of stimulants, with less than twenty minutes. Hence too while thousands of Europeans have cohabited for years with and have had families by “native women,” they are never loved by them:—at least I never heard of a case.

 

[FN#109] Abu ‘l Abbas al-Rak�shi, a poet of the time. The saying became proverbial (Burckhardt’s A. Proverbs No. 561) and there are variants, e.g. The night’s promise is spread with butter that melteth when day ariseth.

 

[FN#110] Koran xxvi. 5,6 or “And those who err (Arab. Al-gh�w�n) follow the footsteps of the poets,” etc.

 

[FN#111] Half-brother of Abdullah bin al-Zubayr, the celebrated pretender.

 

[FN#112] Grand-daughter of the Caliph Abu Bakr and the most beautiful woman of her day.

 

[FN#113] The Calc. Edit. by mistake reads “Izzah.” Torrens (notes i.-xi.) remarks “The word Ghoonj is applied to this sort of blandishment (i.e. an affected gait), and says Burckhardt (Prov. No. 685), “The women of Cairo flatter themselves that their Ghoonj is superior to that of all other females in the Levant.” But Torrens did not understand and Burckhardt would not explain “Ghunj” except by “assumed airs” (see No. 714). It here means the art of moving in coition, which is especially affected, even by modest women, throughout the East and they have many books teaching the genial art. In China there are professors, mostly old women, who instruct young girls in this branch of the gymnastic.

 

[FN#114] When reciting the F�tihah (opening Koranic chapter), the hands are held in this position as if to receive a blessing falling from Heaven; after which both palms are passed down the face to distribute it over the eyes and other organs of sense.

 

[FN#115] The word used is “biz�‘at” = capital or a share in a mercantile business.

 

[FN#116] This and the following names are those of noted traditionists of the eighth century, who derive back to Abdallah bin Mas’�d, a “Companion of the Apostle.” The text shows the recognised formula of ascription for quoting a “Had�s” = saying of Mohammed; and sometimes it has to pass through half a dozen mouths.

 

[FN#117] Traditionists of the seventh and eighth centuries who refer back to the “Father of the Kitten” (Abu Horayrah), an uncle of the Apostle.

 

[FN#118] Eastern story-books abound in these instances. Pilpay says in “Kalilah was Dimnah,” “I am the slave of what I have spoken and the lord of what I keep hidden.” Sa’adi follows suit, “When thou speakest not a word, thou hast thy hand upon it; when it is once spoken it hath laid its hand on thee.” Caxton, in the “Dyctes, or Sayings of Philosophers” (printed in 1477) uses almost the same words.

 

[FN#119] i.e. for her husband’s and her sin in using a man like a beast.

 

[FN#120] See the Second Lady’s story (tant�t Kadi, tant�t bandit), pp. 20-26 by my friend Yacoub Artin Pasha in the Bulletin before quoted, series ii. No. 4 of 1883. The sharpers’

trick is common in Eastern folk-lore, and the idea that underlies is always metempsychosis or metamorphosis. So, in the Kalilah wa Dimnah (new Syriac), the three rogues persuade the ascetic that he is leading a dog not a sheep.

 

[FN#121] This is the popular prejudice and it has doubtless saved many a reputation. The bat is known to Moslems as the Bird of Jesus, a legend derived by the Koran from the Gospel of Infancy (1 chapt. xv. Hone’s Apocryphal New Testament), in which the boy Jesus amuses herself with making birds of clay and commanding them to fly when (according to the Moslems) they became bats. These Apocryphal Gospels must be carefully read, if the student would understand a number of Moslem allusions to the Inj�l which no Evangel contains.

 

[FN#122] Because it quibbled away out of every question, a truly diplomatic art.

 

[FN#123] This Caliph, the orthodox Abbaside of Egypt (A.D.

1261) must not be confounded with the Druze-god, the heretical Fatimite (A.D. 996-1021). D’Herbelot (Hakem”) gives details.

Mr. S.L. Poole (The Academy, April 26, ‘79) is very severe on the slip of Mr. Payne.

 

[FN#124] The beautiful name is Persian “An�sh�n-raw�n” = Sweet