A plain and literal translation of the Arabian nights entertainments, now entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. Volume 7 (of 17). Народное творчество

21

Arab “Hákim”: lit. one who orders; often confounded by the unscientific with Hakím, a doctor, a philosopher. The latter re-appears in the Heb. Khákhám applied in modern days to the Jewish scribe who takes the place of the Rabbi.

22

As has been seen, acids have ever been and are still administered as counter-inebriants, while hot spices and sweets greatly increase the effect of Bhang, opium, henbane, datura, &c. The Persians have a most unpleasant form of treating men when dead-drunk with wine or spirits. They hang them up by the heels, as we used to do with the drowned, and stuff their mouths with human ordure which is sure to produce emesis.

23

Compare the description of the elephant-faced Vetála (Kathá S.S. Fasc. xi. p. 388).

24

The lover’s name Sá’ik = the Striker (with lightning); Najmah, the beloved = the star.

25

I have modified the last three lines of the Mac. Edit. which contain a repetition evidently introduced by the carelessness of the copyist.

26

The Hindu Charvakas explain the Triad, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, by the sexual organs and upon Vishnu’s having four arms they gloss, “At the time of sexual intercourse, each man and woman has as many.” (Dabistan ii. 202). This is the Eastern view of Rabelais’ “beast with two backs.”

27

Arab. “Rabbat-i,” my she Lord, fire (nár) being feminine.

28

The prose-rhyme is answerable for this galimatias.

29

A common phrase equivalent to our “started from his head.”

30

Arab. “Máridúna” = rebels (against Allah and his orders).

31

Arab. Yáfis or Yáfat. He had eleven sons and was entitled Abú al-Turk because this one engendered the Turcomans as others did the Chinese, Scythians, Slaves (Saklab), Gog, Magog, and the Muscovites or Russians. According to the Moslems there was a rapid falling off in size amongst this family. Noah’s grave at Karak (the Ruin) a suburb of Zahlah, in La Brocquière’s “Valley of Noah, where the Ark was built,” is 104 ft. 10 in. long by 8 ft. 8 in. broad. (N.B.—It is a bit of the old aqueduct which Mr. Porter, the learned author of the “Giant Cities of Bashan,” quotes as a “traditional memorial of primeval giants”—talibus carduis pascuntur asini!). Nabi Ham measures only 9 ft. 6 in. between headstone and tombstone, being in fact about as long as his father was broad.

32

See Night dcliv., vol. vii., p. 43, infra.

33

According to Turcoman legends (evidently post-Mohammedan) Noah gave his son Japhet a stone inscribed with the Greatest Name, and it had the virtue of bringing on or driving off rain. The Moghuls long preserved the tradition and hence probably the sword.

34

This expresses Moslem sentiment; the convert to Al-Islam being theoretically respected and practically despised. The Turks call him a “Burmá” = twister, a turncoat, and no one either trusts him or believes in his sincerity.

35

The name of the city first appears here: it is found also in the Bul. Edit., vol. ii, p. 132.

36

Arab. “’Amala hílah,” a Syro-Egyptian vulgarism.

37

i.e. his cousin, but he will not use the word.

38

Arab. “La’ab,” meaning very serious use of the sword: we still preserve the old “sword-play.”

39

Arab. “Ikhsa,” from a root meaning to drive away a dog.

40

Arab. “Hazza-hu,” the quivering motion given to the “Harbak” (a light throw-spear or javelin) before it leaves the hand.

41

Here the translator must either order the sequence of the sentences or follow the rhyme.

42

Possibly taken from the Lions’ Court in the Alhambra = (Dár) Al-hamrá, the Red House.

43

Arab. “Sházarwán” from Pers. Shadurwán, a palace, cornice, etc. That of the Meccań Ka’abah is a projection of about a foot broad in pent house shape sloping downwards and two feet above the granite pavement: its only use appears in the large brass rings welded into it to hold down the covering. There are two breaks in it, one under the doorway and the other opposite Ishmael’s tomb; and pilgrims are directed during circuit to keep the whole body outside it.

44

The “Musáfahah” before noticed, (vol. vi., p. ).

45

i.e. He was confounded at its beauty.

46

Arab. “’Ajíb,” punning upon the name.

47

Arab. “Zarráf” (whence our word) from “Zarf” = walking hastily: the old “camelopard” which originated the nursery idea of its origin. It is one of the most timid of the antelope tribe and unfit for riding.

48

Arab. “Takht,” a useful word, meaning even a saddle. The usual term is “Haudaj” = the Anglo-Indian “howdah.”

49

“Thunder-King,” Arab. and Persian.

50

i.e. “He who violently assaults his peers” (the best men of the age). Batshat al-Kubrá = the Great Disaster, is applied to the unhappy “Battle of Bedr” (Badr) on Ramazan 17, A.H. 2 (= Jan. 13, 624) when Mohammed was so nearly defeated that the Angels were obliged to assist him (Koran, chapts. iii. 11; i. 42; viii. 9). Mohammed is soundly rated by Christian writers for beheading two prisoners Utbah ibn Rabí’a who had once spat on his face and Nazir ibn Háris who recited Persian romances and preferred them to the “foolish fables of the Koran.” What would our forefathers have done to a man who spat in the face of John Knox and openly preferred a French play to the Pentateuch?

51

Arab. “Jilbáb” either habergeon (mail-coat) or the buff-jacket worn under it.

52

A favourite way, rough and ready, of carrying light weapons; often alluded to in The Nights. So Khusrawán in Antar carried “under his thighs four small darts, each like a blazing flame.”

53

Mr. Payne very reasonably supplants here and below Fakhr Taj (who in Night dcxxxiv. is left in her father’s palace and who is reported to be dead in Night dclxvii.) by Star o’ Morn. But the former is also given in the Bul. Edit. (ii. 148), so the story-teller must have forgotten all about her. I leave it as a model specimen of Eastern incuriousness.

54

There is some chivalry in his unwillingness to use the magical blade. As a rule the Knights of Romance utterly ignore fair play and take every dirty advantage in the magic line that comes to hand.

55

Arab. “Hammál al-Hatabi” = one who carries to market the fuel-sticks which he picks up in the waste. In the Koran (chapt. cxi.) it is applied to Umm Jamíl, wife of Mohammed’s hostile cousin, Abd al-Uzza, there termed Abú Lahab (Father of smokeless Flame) with the implied meaning that she will bear fuel to feed Hell-fire.

56

Arab. “Akyál,” lit. whose word (Kaul) is obeyed, a title of the Himyarite Kings, of whom Al-Bergendi relates that one of them left an inscription at Samarcand, which many centuries ago no man could read. This evidently alludes to the dynasty which preceded the “Tobba” and to No. xxiv. Shamar Yar’ash (Shamar the Palsied). Some make him son of Malik surnamed Náshir al-Ni’am (Scatterer of Blessings) others of Afríkús (No. xviii.), who, according to Al-Jannabi, Ahmad bin Yusuf and Ibn Ibdun (Pocock, Spec. Hist. Arab.) founded the Berber (Barbar) race, the remnants of the Causanites expelled by the “robber, Joshua son of Nún,” and became the eponymous of “Africa.” This word which, under the Romans, denoted a small province on

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