A plain and literal translation of the Arabian nights entertainments, now entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. Volume 6 (of 17). Народное творчество

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and Sindbad are equally conscious of the value of ivory. Pliny (viii. 3) quotes Herodotus about the buying of ivories and relates how elephants, when hunted, break their “cornua” (as Juba called them) against a tree trunk by way of ransom. Ælian, Plutarch, and Philostratus speak of the linguistic intelligence and religious worship of the “half-reason with the hand,” which the Hindus term “Háthí” = unimanus. Finally, Topsell’s Gesner (p. 152) makes elephants bury their tusks, “which commonly drop out every tenth year.” In Arabian literature the elephant is always connected with India.

104

  This is a true “City of Brass.” (Nuhás asfar = yellow copper), as we learn in Night dcclxxii. It is situated in the “Maghrib” (Mauritania), the region of magic and mystery; and the idea was probably suggested by the grand Roman ruins which rise abruptly from what has become a sandy waste. Compare with this tale “The City of Brass” (Night cclxxii). In Egypt Nuhás is vulg. pronounced Nihás.

105

  The Bresl. Edit. adds that the seal-ring was of stamped stone and iron, copper and lead. I have borrowed copiously from its vol. vi. pp. 343, et seq.

106

  As this was a well-known pre-Islamitic bard, his appearance here is decidedly anachronistic, probably by intention.

107

  The first Moslem conqueror of Spain whose lieutenant, Tárik, the gallant and unfortunate, named Gibraltar (Jabal al-Tarik).

108

  The colours of the Banú Umayyah (Ommiade) Caliphs were white; of the Banú Abbás (Abbasides) black, and of the Fatimites green. Carrying the royal flag denoted the generalissimo or plenipotentiary.

109

  i.e. Old Cairo, or Fustat: the present Cairo was then a Coptic village founded on an old Egyptian settlement called Lui-Tkeshroma, to which belonged the tanks on the hill and the great well, Bir Yusuf, absurdly attributed to Joseph the Patriarch. Lui is evidently the origin of Levi and means a high priest (Brugsh ii. 130) and his son’s name was Roma.

110

  I cannot but suspect that this is a clerical error for “Al-Samanhúdi,” a native of Samanhúd (Wilkinson’s “Semenood”) in the Delta on the Damietta branch, the old Sebennytus (in Coptic Jem-nuti = Jem the God), a town which has produced many distinguished men in Moslem times. But there is also a Samhúd lying a few miles down stream from Denderah and, as its mounds prove, it is an ancient site.

111

  Egypt had not then been conquered from the Christians.

112

  Arab. “Kízán fukká’a,” i.e. thin and slightly porous earthenware jars used for Fukká’a, a fermented drink, made of barley or raisins.

113

  I retain this venerable blunder: the right form is Samúm, from Samm, the poison-wind.