The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night

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Title: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night—Volume 06 [Supplement]
Author: Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Language: English
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AND A NIGHT--VOLUME 06 [SUPPLEMENT] ***

[Illustration]

[Illustration: ‏‏لا لابرار كلّ شي تبر‎‎]

“TO THE PURE ALL THINGS ARE PURE.”
(Puris omnia pura)

—_Arab Proverb._

“Niuna corrotta mente intese mai sanamente parole.”

—“_Decameron_”—_conclusion_.

“Erubuit, posuitque meum Lucretia librum
Sed coram Bruto. Brute! recede, leget.”

—_Martial._

“Mieulx est de ris que de larmes escripre,
Pour ce que rire est le propre des hommes.”

—RABELAIS.

“The pleasure we derive from perusing the Thousand-and-One Stories makes
us regret that we possess only a comparatively small part of these truly
enchanting fictions.”

—CRICHTON’S “_History of Arabia_.”

[Illustration]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Supplemental
Nights
_TO THE BOOK OF THE_
Thousand Nights and a Night
_WITH NOTES ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND EXPLANATORY_
VOLUME V.

RICHARD F. BURTON

[Illustration]

PRINTED BY THE BURTON CLUB FOR PRIVATE SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

Shammar Edition

Limited to one thousand numbered sets, of which this is

Number 547

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

CONTENTS OF THE SIXTH VOLUME

PAGE
1. THE SAY OF HAYKAR THE SAGE 1

2. THE HISTORY OF AL-BUNDUKANI OR THE CALIPH HARUN AL-RASHID AND
THE DAUGHTER OF KING KISRA 39

3. THE LINGUIST-DAME, THE DUENNA AND THE KING’S SON 87

NOTE TO THE LINGUIST-DAME 112

4. THE TALE OF THE WARLOCK AND THE YOUNG COOK OF BAGHDAD 119

5. THE PLEASANT HISTORY OF THE COCK AND THE FOX 143

6. HISTORY OF WHAT BEFEL THE FOWL WITH THE FOWLER 151

7. THE TALE OF ATTAF 165

THE TALE OF ATTAF BY ALEXANDER J. COTHEAL 197

8. HISTORY OF PRINCE HABIB AND WHAT BEFEL HIM WITH THE LADY
DURRAT AL-GHAWWAS 223

Appendix I.

INDEX TO THE TALES AND PROPER NAMES 277

Appendix II.

ALPHABETICAL TABLE OF THE NOTES (ANTHROPOLOGICAL, &c.) 289

Appendix III.

NOTES ON THE STORIES CONTAINED IN VOL. VI. OF SUPPLEMENTAL
NIGHTS. BY W. F. KIRBY 351

Appendix IV.

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE
NIGHTS. BY W. F. KIRBY 356

THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE BOOK AND ITS REVIEWERS REVIEWED 385

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 455

THE TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD.

This volume has been entitled “THE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS,” a name now
hackneyed because applied to its contents as far back as 1819 in Henry
Weber’s “Tales of the East,” (Edinburgh, Ballantyne).

The original MS. was brought to France by Al-Káhin Diyúnisiús Sháwísh, a
Syrian priest of the Congregation of St. Basil, whose name has been
Frenchified to Don Dennis (or Denys) Chavis. He was a student at the
European College of Al-Kadís Ithanásiús (St. Athanasius) in Rúmiyah the
Grand (Constantinople) and was summoned by the Minister of State, Baron
de Breteuil, to Paris, where he presently became “Teacher of the Arabic
Tongue at the College of the Sultán, King of Fransá in Bárís (Paris) the
Great.” He undertook (probably to supply the loss of Galland’s ivth MS.
volume) a continuation of The Nights (proper), and wrote with his own
hand the last two leaves of the third tome, which ends with three
instead of four couplets: thus he completed Kamar al-Zamán (Night
cclxxxi.–cccxxix.) and the following tales:—

The History of the Sleeper and the Waker (Nights cccxxx.–ccclxxix.).
The History of Warlock and the Cook (ccclxxx.–cd.).
The History of the Prisoner in the Bímáristán or Madhouse
(cd.–cdxxvii.).
The History of Ghánim the Thrall o’ Love (cdxxviii.–cdlxxiv.).
The History of Zayn al-Asnám and the King of the Jánn (cdlxxv.–cdxci.).
The History of Alaeddin (cdxcii.–dlxix.), and
The History of Ten Wazirs (dlxx.).

The copy breaks off at folio 320, r^o in the middle of Night dcxxxi.,
and the date (given at the end of Night cdxxvii., folio 139) is Shubát
(February), A.D. 1787. This is the MS. numbered _Supplément Arabe_, No.
1716.

In Paris, Dom Chavis forgathered with M. Cazotte, a littérateur of the
category “light,” an _ingénieux écrivain_, distinguished for “gaiety,
delicacy, wit and Attic elegance,” and favorably known for (_inter
alia_) his poem “Olivier,” his “Diable Amoureux,” “The Lord Impromptu,”
and a travesty of The Nights called “The Thousand and One Fopperies.”
The two agreed to collaborate, the Syrian translating the Arabic into
French, and the Parisian metamorphosing the manner and matter to “the
style and taste of the day”; that is to say, working up an exaggerated
imitation, a caricature, of Galland. The work appeared, according to Mr.
A. G. Ellis, of the British Museum, who kindly sent me these notes, in
_Le Cabinet | des Fées, | ou | Collection choisie | des Contes des Fées,
| et autres contes merveilleux, | ornés de figures. | Tome
trente-huitième-(quarante-unième). | À Genève, | chez Bárde, Manget et
Compagnie, | Imprimeurs-Libraires. | Et se trouve à Paris | Rue et Hôtel
Serpente._ | 1788–89, 8^o[1] |. The half-title is _Les Veilliées
Persanes_, and on the second title-page is _Les Veilliées_ | _du |
Sultan Schahriar, avec | la Sultane Scheherazade; | Histoires
incroyables, amusantes, et morales, | traduites de l’Arabe par M.
Cazotte et | D. Chavis. Faisant suite aux mille et une Nuits. | Ornées
de 12 belles gravures. | Tome premier (—quatrième) | à Genève, | chez
Barde, Manget et Comp^e | 1793._ This 8vo.[2] bears the abridged title,
_La Suite des mille et une Nuits, Contes Arabes, traduits par Dom Chavis
et M. Cazotte_. The work was printed with illustrations at Geneva and in
Paris, MDCCLXXXVIII., and formed the last four volumes (xxxviii.–xli.)
of the great Recueil, the Cabinet des Fées, published at Geneva from
A.D. 1788 to 1793.

1. The Robber-Caliph; or, adventures of Haroun-Alraschid, with the
Princess of Persia and the fair Zutulbe.[3]

2. The Power of Destiny; or, Story of the Journey of Giafar to
Damascus, comprehending the Adventures of Chebib (Habíb) and
his family.

3 The Story of Halechalbé (Ali Chelebí) and the Unknown Lady; or,
the Bimaristan.

4. The Idiot; or, Story of Xailoun.[4]

5. The Adventures of Simustafa (=“Sí” for Sídí “Mustafa”) and the
Princess Ilsatilsone (Lizzat al-Lusún = Delight of Tongues?).

6. Adventures of Alibengiad, Sultan of Herat, and of the False
Birds of Paradise.

7. History of Sankarib and his two Viziers.

8. History of the Family of the Schebandad (Shahbandar = Consul) of
Surat.

9. The Lover of the Stars: or, Abil Hasan’s Story.

10. History of Captain Tranchemont and his Brave Companions: Debil
Hasen’s Story.

11. The Dream of Valid Hasan.

12–23. Story of Bohetzad and his Ten Viziers (with eleven subsidiary
tales).[5]

24. Story of Habib and Dorathal-Goase (=Durrat al-Ghawwás the Pearl
of the Diver); or, the Arabian Knight.

25. Story of Illabousatrous (?) of Schal-Goase, and of Camarilzaman.

26. Story of the Lady of the Beautiful Tresses.

27. The History of Habib and Dorathal-Goase; or, the Arabian Knight
continued.

28. History of Maugraby (Al-Maghrabi = the Moor); or, the Magician.

29. History of Halaiaddin (’Alà al-Din, Alaeddin, Aladdin), Prince
of Persia.

30. History of Yemaladdin (Jamál al-Dín), Prince of Great Katay.

31. History of Baha-Ildur, Prince of Cinigae.

32. History of Badrildinn (Badr al-Dín), Prince of Tartary.

33. History of the Amours of Maugraby with Auhata al-Kawakik (=Ukht
al-Kawákib, Sister of the Planets), daughter of the King of
Egypt.

34. History of the Birth of Maugraby.

Of these thirty-four only five (MS. iv., vi., vii., xxvii. and xxxii.)
have not been found in the original Arabic.

Public opinion was highly favourable to the “Suite” when first issued.
Orientalism was at that time new to Europe, and the general was startled
by its novelties, _e.g._ by “Women wearing drawers and trousers like
their husbands, and men arrayed in loose robes like their wives, yet at
the same time cherishing, as so many goats, each a venerable length of
beard.” (Heron’s Preface.) They found its “phænomena so remote from the
customs and manners of Europe, that, when exhibited as entering into the
ordinary system of human affairs, they could not fail to confer a
considerable share of amusive novelty on the characters and events with
which they were connected.” (Ditto, Preface.) Jonathan Scott roundly
pronounced the continuation a forgery. Dr. Patrick Russell (History of
Aleppo, vol. i. 385) had no good opinion of it, and Caussin de Perceval
(père, vol. viii., p. 40–46) declared the version _éloignée du goût
Orientale_; yet he re-translated the tales from the original Arabic
(_Continués_, Paris, 1806), and in this he was followed by Gauttier,
while Southey borrowed the idea of his beautiful romance, Thalaba the
Destroyer, now in Lethe from the “History of Maughraby.” Mr. A. G. Ellis
considers these tales as good as the old “Arabian Nights,” and my friend
Mr. W. F. Kirby, (Appendix to The Nights, vol. x. p. 476), quite agrees
with him that Chavis and Cazotte’s Continuation is well worthy of
republication in its entirety. It remained for the _Edinburgh Review_,
in one of those ignorant and scurrilous articles with which it
periodically outrages truth and good taste (No. 535, July, 1886), to
state, “Cazotte published his _Suite des Mille et une Nuits_, a
barefaced forgery, in 1785.” A barefaced forgery! when the original of
twenty-eight tales out of thirty-four are perfectly well known, and when
sundry of these appear in MSS. of “The Thousand Nights and a Night.”

The following is a list of the Tales (widely differing from those of
Chavis and Cazotte) which appeared in the version of Caussin de
Perceval.

VOLUME VIII.

1. Nouvelles aventures du calife Haroun Alraschid; ou histoire de
la petite fille de Chosroès Anouschirvan.

(Gauttier, Histoire du Khalyfe de Baghdad: vol. vii. 117.)

2. Le Bimaristan, ou histoire du jeune Marchand de Bagdad et de la
dame inconnue.

3. Le médecin et le jeune traiteur de Bagdad.

4. Histoire du Sage Hicar.

(Gauttier, Histoire du Sage Heycar, vii. 313).

5. Histoire du roi Azadbakht, ou des dix Visirs.

6. Histoire du marchand devenu malheureux.

7. Histoire du marchand imprudent et de ses deux enfants.

8. Histoire d’ Abousaber, ou de l’homme patient.

9. Histoire du prince Behezad.

10. Histoire du roi Dadbin, ou de la vertueuse Aroua.

11. Histoire du roi Bakhtzeman.

12. Histoire du roi Khadidan.

13. Histoire du roi Beherkerd.

14. Histoire du roi Ilanschah et d’Abouteman.

15. Histoire du roi Ibrahim et de son fils.

16. Histoire du Soleïman-schah.

17. Histoire de l’esclave sauvé du supplice.

VOLUME IX.

18. Attaf ou l’homme généreux.

(Gauttier, Histoire de l’habitant de Damas; vii. 234.)

19. Histoire du Prince Habib et de Dorrat Algoase.

20. Histoire du roi Sapor, souverain des îles Bellour; de Camar
Alzemann, fille du génie Alatrous, et Dorrat Algoase.

(Gauttier, vii. 64.)

21. Histoire de Naama et de Naam.

22. Histoire d’Alaeddin.

23. Histoire d’Abou Mohammed Alkeslan.

24. Histoire d’Aly Mohammed le joaillier, ou du faux calife.

I need hardly offer any observations upon these tales, as they have been
discussed in the preceding pages.

By an error of the late M. Reinaud (for which see p. 39 Histoire d’ ’Alâ
al-Dîn by M. H. Zotenberg, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, MDCCCLXXXVIII,)
the MS. _Supplément Arabe, No. 1716_, in the writing of Dom Chavis has
been confounded with No. 1723, which is not written by the Syrian priest
but which contains the originals of the Cazotte Continuation as noted by
M. C. de Perceval (_Les Mille et une Nuits_, etc., vol. viii. Préf. p.
17, et seqq.). It is labelled _Histoires tirées la plupart des Mille et
une Nuits_ | _Supplément Arabe_ | _Volume de_ 742 pages. The thick
quarto measures centimètres 20½ long by 16 wide; the binding is
apparently Italian and the paper is European, but the filegrane or
water-mark, which is of three varieties, a coronet, a lozenge-shaped
bunch of circles and a nondescript, may be Venetian or French. It
contains 765 pages, paginated after European fashion, but the last
eleven leaves are left blank reducing the number written to 742; and the
terminal note, containing the date, is on the last leaf. Each page
numbers 15 lines and each leaf has its catchword (_mot de rappel_). It
is not ordered by “karrás” or quires; but is written upon 48 sets of 4
double leaves. The text is in a fair Syrian hand, but not so flowing as
that of No. 1716, by Sháwísh himself, which the well-known Arabist,
Baron de Slane, described as _Bonne écriture orientale de la fin du
XVIII^e Siècle_. The colophon conceals or omits the name of the scribe,
but records the dates of incept Kánún II^d. (the Syrian winter-month
January) A.D. 1772; and of conclusion Naysán (April) of the same year.
It has head-lines disposed recto and verso, _e.g._,

Haykár —— Al-Hakím,

and parentheses in the text after European fashion with an imperfect
list at the beginning. A complete index is furnished at the end. The
following are the order and pagination of the fourteen stories:—

1. The King of Persia and his Ten Wazirs pp. 1 to 62

2. Say of the Sage Haykár 140

3. History of King Sabúr and the Three Wise Men 183

4. The Daughter of Kisrà the King (Al Bundukâni) 217

5. The Caliph and the Three Kalandars 266

6. Julnár the Sea-born 396

7. The Duenna, the Linguist-dame and the King’s Son 476

8. The Tale of the Warlock and the young Cook of Baghdad 505

9. The Man in the Bímáristán or Madhouse 538

10. The Tale of Attáf the Syrian 588

11. The History of Sultan Habíb and Durrat al-Ghawwás 628

12. The Caliph and the Fisherman 686

13. The Cock and the Fox 718

14. The Fowl-let and the Fowler 725 to 739
(finis)

Upon these tales I would be permitted to offer a few observations. No.
i. begins with a Christian formula:—“In the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Ghost” (Rúhu’l-Kudus); and it is not translated,
because it is a mere replica of the Ten Wazirs (Suppl. vol. i. 55–151).
The second, containing “The Sage Haykár,” which is famous in folk-lore
throughout the East, begins with the orthodox Moslem “Bismillah,” etc.
“King Sapor” is prefaced by a Christian form which to the Trinitarian
formula adds, “Allah being One”: this, again, is not translated, because
it repeats the “Ebony Horse” (vol. v. 1). No. iv., which opens with the
Bismillah, is found in the Sabbágh MS. of The Nights (see Suppl. vol.
iii.) as the _Histoire de Haroun al-Raschid et de la descendante de
Chosroès_. _Albondoqani_ (Nights lxx.–lxxvii.). No. v., which also has
the Moslem invocation, is followed by the “Caliph and the Three
Kalandars,” where, after the fashion of this our MS., the episodes (vol.
i., 104–130), are taken bodily from “The Porter and the Three Ladies of
Baghdad” (i. 82), and are converted into a separate History. No. vi. has
no title to be translated, being a replica of the long sea-tale in vol.
vii., 264. Nos. vii., viii., ix., x. and xi. lack initiatory invocation
betraying Christian or Moslem provenance. No. viii. is the History of Sí
Mustafá and of Shaykh Shaháb al-Dín in the Turkish Tales: it also occurs
in the Sabbágh MS. (Nights ccclxxxvi.–cdviii.). The Bímáristán (No.
ix.), alias Ali Chalabi (Halechalbé), has already appeared in my Suppl.
vol. iv. 49. No. xii., “The Caliph and the Fisherman,” makes Harun
al-Rashid the hero of the tale in “The Fisherman and the Jinni” (vol. i.
38); it calls the ensorcelled King of the Black Islands Mahmúd, and his
witch of a wife Sitt al-Mulúk, and it also introduces into the Court of
the Great Caliph Hasan Shumán and Ahmad al-Danaf, the prominent
personages in “The Rogueries of Dalílah” (vol. vii. 144) and its sister
tale (vii. 172). The two last Histories, which are ingenious enough,
also lack initial formulæ.

Dr. Russell (the historian of Aleppo) brought back with him a
miscellaneous collection comprising—

Al-Bundukani, or the Robber Caliph;
The Power of Destiny (Attaf the Syrian);
Ali Chelebi, or the Bimaristan;
King Sankharib and the Sage Haykar;
Bohetzad (Azádbakht) and the Ten Wazirs; and, lastly,
Habib, or the Arabian Knight.

The Encyclopedia Britannica (ixth edit. of MDCCCLXXVI), which omits the
name of Professor Galland, one of the marking Orientalists in his own
day, has not ignored Jacques Cazotte, remarkable for chequered life and
noble death. Born in 1720, at Dijon, where his father was Chancellor for
the Province of Burgundy, he studied with the Jesuits at home; and,
having passed through the finishing process in Paris, he was introduced
to public life by the _Administration de la Marine_. He showed early
taste for poetry as well as prose, and composed songs, tales, and an
opera—the “Thousand and one Fopperies.” His physique is described as a
tall figure, with regular features, expressive blue eyes, and fine hair,
which he wore long. At twenty-seven he became a commissary in the office
and was presently sent as Comptroller to the Windward Islands, including
the French Colony Martinique, which then as now was famous for
successful woman-kind. At these head quarters he became intimate with
Père Lavalette, Superior of the S. J. Mission, and he passed some years
of a pleasant and not unintellectual career. Returning to Paris on leave
of absence he fell in with a country-woman and an old family friend,
Madame La Poissonnier, who had been appointed head nurse to the Duke of
Burgundy; and, as the child in her charge required lulling to sleep,
Cazotte composed the favourite _romances (ballads)_, _Tout au beau
milieu des Ardennes_, and _Commère Il faut chauffer le lit_. These
_scherzi_, however, brought him more note than profit, and soon
afterwards he returned to Martinique.

During his second term of service Cazotte wrote his heroic-comic poem,
the Roman d’Olivier, in twelve cantos, afterwards printed in Paris (2
vols. 8vo, 1765); and it was held a novel and singular composition. When
the English first attacked (in 1759) Saint Pierre of Martinique,
afterwards captured by Rodney in 1762, the sprightly _littérateur_
showed abundant courage and conduct, but over-exertion injured his
health, and he was again driven from his post by sickness. He learned,
on landing in France, that his brother, whilome Vicar-General to M. de
Choiseul, Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne, had died and left him a fair
estate, Pierry, near Epernay; he therefore resigned his appointment and
retired with the title “Commissary-General to the Marine.” But presently
he lost 50,000 écus—the whole fruit of his economies—by the speculations
of Père Lavalette to whose hands he had entrusted his estates, negroes,
and effects at Martinique. These had been sold and the cheques had been
forwarded to the owner: the S. J., however, refused to honour them.
Hence the scandal of a law-suit in which Cazotte showed much delicacy
and regard for the feelings of his former tutors.

Meanwhile Cazotte had married Elizabeth Roignon, daughter to the Chief
Justice of Martinique; he returned to the Parisian world with some éclat
and he became an universal favourite on account of his happy wit and
humour, his bonhomie, his perfect frankness, and his hearty amiability.
The vogue of “Olivier” induced him to follow it up with _Le Diable
Amoureux_, a continuation or rather parody of Voltaire’s _Guerre civile
de Genève_: this work was so skilfully carried out that it completely
deceived the world; and it was followed by sundry minor pieces which
were greedily read. Unlike the esprits forts of his age, he became after
a gay youthtide an ardent Christian; he made the Gospel his rule of
life; and he sturdily defended his religious opinions; he had also the
moral courage to enter the lists with M. de Voltaire, then the
idol-in-chief of the classes and the masses.

In later life Cazotte met Dom Chavis, who was translating into a curious
jargon (Arabo-Franco-Italian) certain Oriental tales; and, although he
was nearing the Psalmist’s age-term of man, he agreed to “collaborate.”
The Frenchman used to take the pen at midnight when returning from
“social pleasures,” and work till 4–5 a.m. As he had prodigious facility
and spontaneity he finished his part of the task in two winters. Some of
the tales in the suite, especially that of “Maugraby,” are attributed
wholly to his invention; and, as a rule, his aim and object were to
diffuse his spiritual ideas and to write treatises on moral perfection
under the form of _novelle_.

Cazotte, after a well-spent and honourable life, had reason to expect
with calmness “the evening and ending of a fine day.” But this was not
to be, the Great Revolution had burst like a hurricane over the land,
and he was doomed to die a hero’s death. His character was too candid,
and his disposition too honest, for times which suggested concealment.
He had become one of the Illuminati, and La Harpe ascribed to him the
celebrated prophecy which described the minutest events of the Great
Revolution. A Royalist _pur sang_, he freely expressed his sentiments to
his old friend Ponteau, then Secretary of the Civil List. His letters
came to light shortly after the terrible day, August 10, 1792: he was
summarily arrested at Pierry and brought to Paris, where he was thrown
into prison. On Sept. 3, when violence again waxed rampant, he was
attacked by the patriot-assassins, and was saved only by the devotion of
his daughter Elizabeth, who threw herself upon the old man crying, “You
shall not reach my father’s heart before piercing mine.” The courage of
the noble pair commanded the admiration of the ruffians, and they were
carried home in triumph.

For a few weeks the family remained unmolested, but in those days
“Providence” slept and Fortune did not favour the brave. The
Municipality presently decreed a second arrest, and the venerable
littérateur, aged seventy-two, was sent before the revolutionary
tribunal appointed to deal with the pretended offences of August 10. He
was subjected to an interrogatory of thirty-six hours, during which his
serenity and presence of mind never abandoned him and impressed even his
accusers. But he was condemned to die for the all-sufficient reason:—“It
is not enough to be a good son, a good husband, a good father, one must
also prove oneself a good citizen.” He spent his last hours with his
confessor, wrote to his wife and children, praying his family not to
beweep him, not to forget him, and never to offend against their God;
and this missive, with a lock of his hair for his beloved daughter, he
finally entrusted to the ghostly father. Upon the scaffold he turned to
the crowd and cried, “I die as I have lived, truthful and faithful to my
God and my King.” His venerable head, crowned with the white honours of
age, fell on Sept. 25, 1792.

Cazotte printed many works, some of great length, as the _Œuvres
Morales_, which filled 7 vols, 8vo. in the complete edition of 1817; and
the biographers give a long list of publications, besides those
above-mentioned, romantic, ethical, and spiritual, in verse and in
prose. But he wrote mainly for his own pleasure, he never sought fame,
and consequently his reputation never equalled his merit. His name,
however, still smells sweet, passing sweet, amid the corruption and the
frantic fury of his day and the memory of the witty, genial, and
virtuous littérateur still blossoms in the dust.

During my visit to Paris in early 1887, M. Hermann Zotenberg was kind
enough to show me the MS., No. 1723, containing the original tales of
the “New Arabian Nights.” As my health did not allow me sufficient
length of stay to complete my translation, Professor Houdas (for whom,
see Appendix, p. 10, Suppl. vol. iii.) kindly consented to copy the
excerpts required, and to explain the words and phrases which a
deficiency of dictionaries and vocabularies at an outlandish port-town
rendered unintelligible to me.

In translating a MS., which has never been collated or corrected and
which abounds in errors of omission and commission, I have been guided
by one consideration only, which is, that my first and chiefest duty to
the reader is to make my book readable at the same time that it lays
before him the whole matter which the text offered or ought to have
offered. Hence I have not hesitated when necessary to change the order
of the sentences, to delete tautological words and phrases, to suppress
descriptions which are needlessly re-iterated, and in places to supply
the connecting links without which the chain of narrative is weakened or
broken. These are liberties which must be allowed, unless the
translator’s object be to produce a mutilated version of a mutilation.

Here also I must express my cordial gratitude to Mr. Alexander J.
Cotheal, Consul-General for Nicaragua, in New York. This distinguished
Arabist not only sent to me across the seas his MS. containing, _inter
alia_, “The Tale of Attaf,” he also undertook to translate it for my
collection upon my distinct assurance that its many novelties of
treatment deserved an especial version. Mr. W. F. Kirby has again
conferred upon my readers an important service by his storiological
notes. Lastly, Dr. Steingass has lent me, as before, his valuable aid in
concluding as he did in commencing this series, and on putting the
colophon to

The Sixteenth Volume

_THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND A NIGHT_.

RICHARD F. BURTON.

UNITED SERVICE CLUB,
_August 1st, 1888_.

I INSCRIBE THIS FINAL VOLUME

THE MANY EXCELLENT FRIENDS

WHO LENT ME THEIR VALUABLE AID IN COPYING AND ANNOTATING

The Thousand Nights and a Night.

THE SAY OF HAYKAR THE SAGE.[6]

=In the name of Allah, the Compassionating, the Compassionate, the
Eternal One, the Termless, the Timeless, and of Him aidance we await.
And here we begin (with the assistance of Allah Almighty and His fair
furtherance) to indite the Story of Haykar the Sage, the Philosopher,
the Wazir of Sankharib[7] the Sovran, and of the son of the wise man’s
sister Nadan[8] the Fool.=

They relate that during the days of Sankháríb the King, lord of Asúr[9]
and Naynawah[10] there was a Sage, Haykár hight, Grand Wazir of that
Sovran and his chief secretary, and he was a grandee of abundant
opulence and ampliest livelihood: ware was he and wise, a philosopher,
and endowed with lore and rede and experience. Now he had interwedded
with threescore wives, for each and every of which he had builded in his
palace her own bower; natheless he had not a boy to tend, and was he
sore of sorrow therefor. So one day he gathered together the experts,
astrologers and wizards, and related to them his case and complained of
the condition caused by his barrenness. They made answer to him, “Get
thee within and do sacrifice to the Godheads and enquire of them and
implore their favour when haply shall they vouchsafe unto thee boon of
babe.” He did whatso they bade and set corbans and victims before the
images and craved their assistance, humbling himself with prayer and
petition; withal they vouchsafed to him never a word of reply. So he
fared forth in distress and disappointment and went his ways all
disheartened. Then he returned in his humiliation to Almighty Allah[11]
and confided his secret unto Him and called for succour in the burning
of his heart, and cried with a loud voice saying “O God of Heaven and
Earth, O Creator of all creatures, I beg Thee to vouchsafe unto me a son
wherewith I may console my old age and who may become my heir, after
being present at my death and closing my eyes and burying my body.”
Hereat came a Voice from Heaven which said, “Inasmuch as at first thou
trustedst in graven images and offeredst to them victims, so shalt thou
remain childless, lacking sons and daughters. However, get thee up and
take to thee Nádán, thy sister’s child; and, after taking this nephew to
son, do thou inform him with thy learning and thy good breeding and thy
sagesse, and demise to him that he inherit of thee after thy decease.”
Hereupon the Sage adopted his nephew Nadan, who was then young in years
and a suckling, that he might teach him and train him; so he entrusted
him to eight wet-nurses and dry-nurses for feeding and rearing, and they
brought him up on diet the choicest with delicatest nurture and clothed
him with sendal and escarlate[12] and dresses dyed with Alkermes,[13]
and his sitting was upon shag-piled rugs of silk. But when Nadan grew
great and walked and shot up even as the lofty Cedar[14] of Lebanon, his
uncle taught him deportment and writing and reading[15] and philosophy
and the _omne scibile_. Now after a few days Sankharib the King looked
upon Haykar and saw how that he had waxed an old old man, so quoth he to
him, “Ho thou excellent companion,[16] the generous, the ingenious, the
judicious, the sagacious, the Sage, my Secretary and my Minister and the
Concealer of my secrets and the Councillor of my kingdom, seeing how so
it be that thou art aged and well shotten in years and nigh unto thy
death and decease, so tell me[17] who shall stand in my service after
thy demise?” Made answer Haykar, “O my lord the King, may thy head live
for ever and aye! that same shall be this Nadan, son to my sister, whom
I have taken to myself as mine own child and have reared him and have
taught him my learning and my experience, all thereof.” “Bring him to
the presence,” quoth the King, “and set him between my hands, that I
look upon him; and, if I find him fitting, I will stablish him in thy
stead. Then do thou wend thy ways and off-go from office that thou take
thy rest and tend thine old age, living the lave of thy life in the
fairest of honour.” Hereupon Haykar hied him home and carried his nephew
Nadan before the King, who considered him and was pleased with the
highmost of pleasure and, rejoicing in him, presently asked the uncle,
“Be this thine adopted son, O Haykar? I pray Allah preserve him; and,
even as thou servedst my sire Sarhádún[18] before me, even so shall this
thy son do me suite and service and fulfil my affairs and my needs and
my works, to the end that I may honour him and advance him for the sake
of thee.” Thereat Haykar prostrated himself before the presence and
said, “May thy head live, O my lord, for evermore! I desire of thee to
extend the wings of thy spirit over him for that he is my son, and do
thou be clement to his errings, so that he may serve thee as besitteth.”
The King forthwith made oath that he would stablish the youth amongst
the highmost of his friends and the most worshipful of his familiars and
that he should abide with him in all respect and reverence. So Haykar
kissed the royal hands and blessed his lord; then, taking with him Nadan
his nephew, he seated him in privacy and fell to teaching him by night
as well as by day, that he might fill him with wisdom and learning
rather than with meat and drink; and he would address him in these
terms.[19] “O dear my son,[20] if a word come to thine ears, suffer it
to die within thy heart nor ever disclose it unto other, lest haply it
become a live coal[21] to burn up thy tongue and breed pain in thy body
and clothe thee in shame and gar thee despised of God and man. O dear my
son, an thou hear a report reveal it not, and if thou behold a thing
relate it not. O dear my son, make easy thine address unto thine
hearers, and be not hasty in return of reply. O dear my son, desire not
formal beauty which fadeth and vadeth while fair report endureth unto
infinity. O dear my son, be not deceived by a woman immodest of speech
lest her snares waylay thee[22] and in her springes thou become a prey
and thou die by ignominious death. O dear my son, hanker not after a
woman adulterated by art, such as clothes and cosmetics, who is of
nature bold and immodest, and beware lest thou obey her and give her
aught that is not thine and entrust to her even that which is in thy
hand, for she will robe thee in sin and Allah shall become wroth with
thee. O dear my son, be not like unto the almond-tree[23] which leafeth
earlier than every growth and withal is ever of the latest to fruit; but
strive to resemble the mulberry-tree which beareth food the first of all
growths and is the last of any to put forth her foliage.[24] O dear my
son, bow thy head before thine inferior and soften thine utterance and
be courteous and tread in the paths of piety, and shun impudence and
louden not thy voice whenas thou speakest or laughest; for, were a house
to be builded by volume of sound, the ass would edify many a mansion
every day.[25] O dear my son, the transport of stones with a man of
wisdom is better than the drinking of wine with one blamed for folly. O
dear my son, rather pour out thy wine upon the tombs of the pious than
drain it with those who give offence by their insolence. O dear my son,
cleave to the sage that is Allah-fearing and strive to resemble him, and
approach not the fool lest thou become like unto him and learn his
foolish ways. O dear my son, whenas thou affectest a friend or a
familiar, make trial of him and then company with him, and without such
test nor praise him nor divulge thy thoughts unto one who is other than
wise. O dear my son, as long as thy boot is upon thy leg and foot, walk
therewith over the thorns and tread a way for thy sons and thy sons’
sons; and build thee a boat ere the sea break into billows and breakers
and drown thee before thou find an ark of safety. O dear my son, when
the richard eateth a snake, folks shall say that ’tis of his subtilty;
but when a pauper feedeth upon it, the world shall declare ’tis of his
poverty. O dear my son, be content with thy grade and thy good, nor
covet aught of thy fellow. O dear my son, be not neighbourly with the
ignorant nor do thou break with him bread, and joy not in the annoy of
those about thee and when thy foe shall maltreat thee meet him with
beneficence. O dear my son, fear the man who feareth not Allah and hold
him in hate. O dear my son, the fool shall fall when he trippeth; but
the wise man when he stumbleth shall not tumble, and if he come to the
ground he shall rise up quickly, and when he sickeneth he shall readily
heal himself, whereas to the malady of the ignorant and the stupid there
is no remedy. O dear my son, when a man lesser than thyself shall accost
thee, prevent him in standing respectfully before him, and if he suffice
thee not the Lord shall suffice thee in his stead. O dear my son, spare
not blows to thy child,[26] for the beating of the boy is like manuring
to the garden and binding to the purse-mouth and tethering to the cattle
and locking to the door. O dear my son, withhold thy child from
wickedness, and discipline him ere he wax great and become contumacious
to thee, thus belittling thee amongst thine equals and lowering thy head
upon the highways and in the assemblies, and thou be described as an
aider in his wrongous works. O dear my son, let no word escape thy lips
without consulting thy heart; nor stand up between two adversaries, for
out of converse with the wicked cometh enmity, and from enmity is bred
battle, and from battle ariseth slaughter, when thy testimony shall be
required; nay, do thou fly therefrom and be at rest. O dear my son,
stand not up against one stronger than thyself; but possess thy soul in
patience and long-suffering and forbearance and pacing the paths of
piety, for than this naught is more excellent. O dear my son, exult not
over the death of thy enemy by cause that after a little while thou
shalt become his neighbour. O dear my son, turn thou a deaf ear to whoso
jeereth thee, and honour him and forego him with the salam-salutation. O
dear my son, whenas the water shall stand still in stream and the bird
shall fly sky-high and the black raven shall whiten and myrrh shall wax
honey-sweet, then will the ignorant and the fool comprehend and
converse. O dear my son, an thou would be wise restrain thy tongue from
leasing and thy hand from thieving and thine eyes from evil glancing;
and then, and then only, shalt thou be called a sage. O dear my son,
suffer the wise man strike thee with his staff rather than the fool
anoint thee with his sweetest unguent.[27] O dear my son, be thou humble
in thy years of youth, that thou may be honoured in thine old age. O
dear my son, stand not up against a man in office and puissance nor
against a river in its violence, and haste not in matters of marriage;
for, an this bring weal, folk will not appraise thee and if ill they
will abuse thee and curse thee. O dear my son, company with one who hath
his hand fulfilled and well-furnisht and associate not with any whose
hand is fist-like and famisht. O dear my son, there be four things
without stability: a king and no army,[28] a Wazir in difficulty for
lack of rede; amongst the folks villany and over the lieges tyranny.
Four things also may not be hidden; to wit, the sage and the fool, the
richard and the pauper.”[29] Now when Haykar had made an end of these
injunctions and instances addrest to Nadan his nephew, he fondly deemed
in mind that the youth would bear in memory all his charges, and he wist
not that the clean contrary thereof to him would become manifest. After
this the older Minister sat in peace at home and committed to the
younger all his moneys and his negro slaves and his concubines; his
horses and camels, his flocks and herds, and all other such whereof he
was seised. Also bidding and forbiddal were left in the youth’s hand and
he was promoted and preferred by the monarch like his maternal uncle and
even more, whilst the ex-Wazir took his rest in retirement, nor was it
his habit to visit the King save once after a while, when he would fare
forth to salute him with the salam and forthwith return home. But when
Nadan made sure of all commandment being in his own hand, he jeered in
public at his uncle and raised his nose at him and fell to blaming him
whenever he made act of presence and would say, “Verily Haykar is in age
and dotage and no more he wotteth one thing from other thing.”
Furthermore he fell to beating the negro slaves and the handmaidens, and
to vending the steeds and dromedaries and applied him wilfully to waste
all that appertained to his uncle who, when he saw this lack of ruth for
the chattels and the household, incontinently drove him ignominiously
from his place. Moreover he sent to apprize the King thereof; to wit,
that he would assuredly[30] resume all his belongings and provision; and
his liege, summoning Nadan, said to him, “So long as Haykar shall be in
life, let none lord it over his household or meddle with his fortune.”
On this wise the youth’s hand was stayed from his uncle and from all his
good and he ceased to go in to him and come out from him, and even to
accost him with the salam. Presently Haykar repented of the pains and
the trouble he had taken with Nadan and he became perplext exceedingly.
Now the youth had a younger brother, Naudan[31] hight, so Haykar adopted
him in lieu of the other and tendered him and honoured him with highmost
honour and committed to him all his possessions and created him
comptroller of his household and of his affairs. But when the elder
brother beheld what had betided him, he was seized with envy and
jealousy and he fell to complaining before all who questioned him,
deriding his benefactor; and he would say, “Verily my maternal uncle
hath driven me from his doors and hath preferred my brother before me;
but, an Almighty Allah empower me, I will indeed cast him into doom of
death.” Hereat he fell to brooding over the ruin of his relative, and
after a long while he went, one day of the days, and wrote a letter to
Akhyash Abná Sháh,[32] physician to the King of Persia and ’Ajam or
Barbaria-land, and the following were its contents. “All salams that
befit and greetings that are meet from part of Sankharib, King of
Assyria and Niniveh, and from his Wazir and Secretary Haykar unto thee,
O glorious monarch, and salutations be betwixt me and thee. And
forthright, when this missive shall have reached thee, do thou arise in
haste and come to meet me and let our trysting-place be the Buk’at
Nisrín, the lowland of the Eglantine[33] of Assyria and Niniveh, that I
may commit to thee the kingdom sans fight or fray.” Furthermore he wrote
a second letter in Haykar’s name to Pharaoh,[34] lord of Misraim,[35]
with this purport:—[36]“Greetings between me and thee, O mighty
potentate; and do thou straightway, on receipt of this epistle, arise
and march upon the Buk’at Nisrin to the end that I make over to thee the
kingdom without battle or slaughter.” Now Nadan’s handwriting was the
likest to that of his mother’s brother. Then he folded the two missives
and sealed them with Haykar’s signet and cast them into the royal
palace, after which he went and indited a letter in the King’s name to
his uncle, saying:—“All salutations to my Wazir and Secretary and
Concealer of my secret, Haykar; and do thou forthright on receipt of
this present levy thy host and all that be under thee with arms and
armour complete, and march them to meet me on fifth-day[37] at the
Buk’at Nisrin. Moreover, when thou see me approach thee make thy many
prepare for mimic onset as they were my adversaries and offer me sham
fight; for that messengers from Pharaoh, King of Egypt, have been sent
to espy the strength of our armies. Accordingly, let them stand in fear
of us, for that they be our foes and our haters.” Presently, sealing
this epistle, he sent it to Haykar by one of the royal pages and himself
carrying the other letters he had addressed to the Persian and the
Egyptian, he laid them before the King and read them aloud and showed
their seals. But when Sankharib heard their contents he marvelled with
mighty great marvel and raged with exceeding rage and cried out, saying,
“What is it I have done unto Haykar that he should write such a writ to
mine adversaries? Is this my reward for all the benefits I have lavished
upon Haykar?” The other replied, “Be not grieved, O King, and sorrow
not, nor be thou an-angered: rather let us fare on the morrow to the
Buk’at Nisrin and look into the matter, whether it be fact or
falsehood.” So when Thursday came, Nadan arose, and taking the King and
his Wazirs and army-officers marched them over the wastes to the Lowland
of the Eglantine, and arrived there Sankharib, the Sovran, looked upon
Haykar and saw his host aligned in battle against himself. And when the
ex-Minister beheld his King approaching, he bade his host stir for
battle and prepare to smite the opposing ranks; to wit, those of his
liege lord, even as he had been commanded by royal rescript, nor did he
ken what manner of pit had been digged for him by Nadan. But seeing this
sight the monarch was agitated and consterned and raged with mighty
great wrath. Then quoth Nadan, “Seest thou, O King, what this sorry
fellow hath done? But chafe not, neither be thou sorrowful, but rather
do thou retire to thy palace, whither I will presently bring to thee
Haykar pinioned and bearing chains; and I will readily and without
trouble fend off from thee thy foe.” So when Sankharib hied him home in
sore anger with that which his ancient Minister had done, Nadan went to
his uncle and said, “Indeed the King hath rejoiced with exceeding joy,
and thanketh thee for acting as he bade thee, and now he hath despatched
me to order that thy men be bidden to wend their ways, and that thou
present thyself before him pinioned and fettered to the end that thou be
seen in such plight of the envoys sent by Pharaoh concerning whom and
whose master our Monarch standeth in fear.” “To hear is to obey!”
replied Haykar, and forthwith let pinion his arms and fetter his legs;
then, taking with him Nadan, his nephew, he repaired to the presence,
where he found the King perusing the other forged letter also sealed
with the ministerial signet. When he entered the throne-room he
prostrated himself, falling to the ground upon his face, and the Sovran
said to him “O Haykar, my Viceregent and Secretary and Concealer of my
secret and Councillor of my kingdom, say me, what have I wrought thee of
wrong that thou shouldst requite me with such hideous deed?” So saying
he showed him the two papers written in the handwriting and sealed with
the seal of the accused who, when he looked upon them, trembled in every
limb, and his tongue was knotted for a while, nor could he find power to
speak a word, and he was reft of all his reason and of his knowledge.
Wherefor he bowed his brow groundwards and held his peace. But when the
King beheld this his condition, he bade them slay him by smiting his
neck without the city, and Nadan cried aloud, “O Haykar, O blackavice,
what could have profited thee such trick and treason that thou do a deed
like this by thy King?”[38] Now the name of the Sworder was Abú Sumayk
the Pauper,[39] and the monarch bade him strike the neck of Haykar in
front of the Minister’s house-door and place his head at a distance of
an hundred ells from his body.[40] Hearing this Haykar fell prone before
the King and cried, “Live thou, O my lord the King, for ever and aye! An
thou desire my death be it as thou wilt and well I wot that I am not in
default and that the evil-doer exacteth according to his ill-nature.[41]
Yet I hope from my lord the King and from his benevolence that he suffer
the Sworder make over my corpse to my menials for burial, and so shall
thy slave be thy sacrifice.” Hereat the Monarch commanded the Headsman
do as he was desired, and the man, accompanied by the royal pages, took
Haykar, whom they had stripped of his outer raiment, and led him away to
execution. But when he was certified of coming death, he sent tidings
thereof to his wife, Shaghaftíní[42] hight, adding, “Do thou forthright
come forth to meet me escorted by a thousand maiden girls, whom thou
shalt habit in escarlate and sendal, that they may keen over me ere I
perish; moreover dispread for the Headsman and his varlets a table of
food and bring an abundance of good wine that they may drink and make
merry.”[43] Haykar’s wife presently obeyed his orders for she also was
ware and wise, sharp-witted, experienced and a compendium of
accomplishments and knowledge. Now when the guards[44] and the Sworder
and his varlets came to Haykar’s door, they found the tables laid out
with wine and sumptuous viands; so they fell to eating and drinking till
they had their sufficiency and returned thanks to the housemaster.[45]
Thereupon Haykar led the Headsman aside into privacy and said to him, “O
Abu Sumayk,[46] what while Sarhadun the King, sire of Sankharib the
King, determined to slay thee, I took thee and hid thee in a place
unknown to any until the Sovran sent for thee. Moreover I cooled his
temper every day till he was pleased to summon thee, and when at last I
set thee in his presence he rejoiced in thee. Therefore do thou likewise
at this moment bear in mind the benefits I wrought thee, and well I wot
that the King will repent him for my sake and will be wroth with
exceeding wrath for my slaughter, seeing that I be guiltless; so when
thou shalt bring me alive before him thy degree shall become of the
highest. For know thou that Nadan my nephew hath betrayed me and devised
for me this ill device; and I repeat that doubtless my lord will
presently rue my ruin. Learn, too, that beneath the threshold of my
mansion lieth a souterrain whereof no man is ware: so do thou conceal me
therein with the connivance of my spouse Shaghaftini. Also I have in my
prison a slave which meriteth doom of death:[47] so bring him forth and
robe him in my robes; then bid the varlets (they being drunken with
wine) do him die, nor shall they know whom they have slain. And lastly
command them to remove his head an hundred cubits from his body and
commit the corpse unto my chattels that they inter it. So shalt thou
store up with me this rich treasure of goodly deeds.” Hereupon the
Sworder did as he was bidden by his ancient benefactor, and he and his
men repairing to the presence said, “Live thy head, O King, for ever and
aye!”[48] And after this Shaghaftini, the wife of Haykar, brought meat
and drink to her husband down in the Matamor,[49] and every Friday she
would provide him with a sufficiency for the following week without the
weeting of anyone. Presently the report was spread and published and
bruited abroad throughout Assyria and Niniveh how Haykar the Sage had
been done to die and slain by his Sovran; and the lieges of all those
regions, one and all, keened[50] for him aloud and shed tears and said,
“Alas for thee, O Haykar, and alack for the loss of thy lore and thy
knowledge! Woe be to us for thee and for thy experience! Where now
remaineth to find thy like? where now shall one intelligent,
understanding and righteous of rede resemble thee and stand in thy
stead?” Presently the King fell to regretting the fate of Haykar whereof
repentance availed him naught: so he summoned Nadan and said to him,
“Fare forth and take with thee all thy friends to keen and make
ceremonious wailings for thy maternal uncle Haykar and mourn, according
to custom, in honour of him and his memory.” But Nadan, the fool, the
ignorant, the hard of heart, going forth the presence to show sorrow at
his uncle’s house, would neither mourn nor weep nor keen; nay, in lieu
thereof he gathered together lewd fellows and fornicators who fell to
feasting and carousing. After this he took to himself the concubines and
slaves belonging to his uncle, whom he would scourge and bastinado with
painful beating; nor had he any shame before the wife of his adopted
father who had entreated him as her son; but solicited her sinfully to
lie with him. On the other hand Haykar, who lay perdu in his Silo, ever
praised Allah the Compassionate,[51] and returned thanks unto Him for
saving his life and was constant in gratitude and instant in prayer and
in humbling himself before God. At times after due intervals the Sworder
would call upon him to do him honour due and procure him pleasure, after
which he would pray for his release and forthright gang his gait. Now
when the bruit spread abroad over all the lands how that Haykar the Wise
had been done to die, the rulers everywhere rejoiced, exulting in the
distress of King Sankharib who sorely regretted the loss of his Sage.
Presently, awaiting the fittest season, the Monarch of Misraim arose and
wrote a writ to the Sovran of Assyria and Niniveh of the following
tenor:—“After salams that befit and salutations that be meet and
congratulation and veneration complete wherewith I fain distinguish my
beloved brother Sankharib the King, I would have thee know that I am
about to build a bower in the air between firmament and terra firma; and
I desire thee on thy part to send me a man which is wise, a tried and an
experienced, that he may help me to edify the same: also that he make
answer to all the problems and profound questions I shall propose,
otherwise thou shalt deposit with me the taxes in kind[52] of Assyria
and Nineveh and their money-tributes for three years.” Then he made an
end of his writ and, sealing it with his signet-ring, sent it to its
destination. But when the missive reached Sankharib, he took it and read
it, he and his Wazirs and the Lords of his land; and all stood perplext
thereat and sore confounded; whilst the King waxed furious with
excessive fury, and he was distraught as to what he should do and how he
should act. Anon, however, he gathered together all the Shaykhs and
Elders and the Olema and doctors of law and the physicists and
philosophers and the charmers[53] and the astrologers and all such
persons which were in his realm, and he let read the epistle of Pharaoh
in their presence. Then he asked them, saying, “Who amongst you shall
repair to the court of Pharaoh, lord of Misraim, and reply to his
interrogations?” But they cried, “O our lord the King, do thou know
there be no one who can loose the knot of these difficulties save only
thy Wazir Haykar; and now that none shall offer an answer save Nadan,
the son of his sister, whom he hath informed with all his subtilty and
his science. Therefore, do thou summon him and haply he shall unravel
for thee a tangled skein so hard to untwist.” Sankharib did as they
advised, and when Nadan appeared in the presence said to him, “Look thou
upon this writ and comprehend its contents.” But when the youth read it
he said to the Sovran, “O my lord the King, leave alone this folk for
they point to impossibilities: what man can base a bower upon air
between heaven and earth?” As soon as King Sankharib heard these words
of Nadan, he cried out with a mighty outcry and a violent; then,
stepping down from his throne, he sat upon ashes[54] and fell to
beweeping and bewailing the loss of Haykar and crying, “Alas, for me and
woe worth the day for thee, O Caretaker of my capital and Councillor of
my kingdom! Where shall I find one like unto thee, O Haykar? Harrow now
for me, O Haykar, Oh Saviour of my secret and Manifester of my
moot-points, where now shall I fare to find thee? Woe is me for sake of
thee whom I slew and destroyed at the word of a silly boy! To him indeed
who could bring Haykar before me or who could give me the glad tidings
of Haykar being on life, I would give the half of my good; nay, the
moiety of my realm. But whence can this come? Ah me, O Haykar; happy was
he who looked upon thee in life that he might take his sufficiency of
thy semblance and fortify himself[55] therefrom. Oh my sorrow for thee
to all time! Oh my regret and remorse for thee and for slaying thee in
haste and for not delaying thy death till I had considered the
consequence of such misdeed.” And the King persisted in weeping and
wailing night and day on such wise. But when the Sworder[56] beheld the
passion of his lord and his yearning and his calling upon Haykar, he
came to the presence and prostrated himself and said, “O my lord, bid
thy varlets strike off my head!” Quoth the Monarch, “Woe to thee, what
be thy sin?” and quoth the Headsman, “O my lord, what slave ever
contrarieth the command of his master let the same be slain, and I
verily have broken thy behest.” The King continued, “Fie upon thee,[57]
O Abu Sumayk, wherein hast thou gainsaid me?” and the other rejoined, “O
my lord, thou badest me slay the Sage Haykar; but well I wotted that
right soon indeed thou wouldst regret the death of him, and the more so
for that he was a wronged man; accordingly I fared forth from thee and
hid him in a place unbeknown to any and I slew one of his slaves in his
stead. And at this moment Haykar is alive and well; and if thou bid me,
I will bring him before thee when, if thou be so minded, do thou put me
to death, otherwise grant me immunity.” Cried the King, “Fie upon thee,
O Abu Sumayk, how durst thou at such time make mock of me, I being thy
lord?” but the Sworder replied, “By thy life and the life of thy head, O
my lord, I swear that Haykar is alive and in good case!” Now when the
Monarch heard these words from the Sworder and was certified by him of
the matter, he flew for very gladness and he was like to fall a-swoon
for the violence of his joy. So he bade forthright Haykar be brought to
him and exclaimed to the Sworder, “O thou righteous slave an this thy
say be soothfast, I am resolved to enrich thee and raise thy degree
amongst all my companions;” and so saying and rejoicing mightily he
commanded the Sworder set Haykar in the presence. The man fared to the
Minister’s house forthright, and opening the souterrain went downstairs
to the tenant whom he found sitting and praising Allah and rendering to
Him thanksgivings; so he cried out and said, “O Haykar, the blessedest
of bliss hath come to thee, and do thou go forth and gladden thy heart!”
Haykar replied, “And what is to do?” whereat the man told him the whole
tale, first and last, of what had befallen his lord at the hands of
Pharaoh; then, taking him, led him to the presence. But when Sankharib
considered him, he found him as one clean wasted by want; his hair had
grown long like the pelts of wild beasts and his nails were as vulture’s
claws and his members were meagre for the length of time spent by him in
duresse and darkness, and the dust had settled upon him and changed his
colour which had faded and waxed of ashen hue. So his lord mourned for
his plight and, rising up in honour, kissed him and embraced him and
wept over him saying, “Alhamdolillah—laud to the Lord—who hath restored
thee to me on life after death!” Then he fell to soothing his sorrows
and consoled him, praying pardon of him the while; and after bestowing
robes of honour upon the Sworder and giving him due guerdon and
lavishing upon him abundant good, he busied himself about the recovery
of Haykar, who said, “O my lord the King, may thy head live for ever and
aye! All this wrong which befel me is the work of the adulterines, and I
reared me a palm-tree against which I might prop me, but it bent and
brought me to the ground: now, however, O my lord and master, that thou
hast deigned summon me before thee, may all passion pass away and dolour
depart from thee!” “Blessed and exalted be Allah,” rejoined Sankharib,
“who hath had ruth upon thee, and who, seeing and knowing thee to be a
wronged man, hath saved thee and preserved thee from slaughter.[58] Now,
however, do thou repair to the Hammam and let shave thy head and pare
thy nails and change thy clothes; after which sit at home in ease for
forty days’ space that thy health be restored and thy condition be
righted and the hue of health return to thy face; and then (but not till
then) do thou appear before me.” Hereupon the King invested him with
sumptuous robes, and Haykar, having offered thanks to his liege lord,
fared homewards in joyaunce and gladness frequently ejaculating,
“Subhána ’llahu ta’álà—God Almighty be glorified!” and right happy were
his household and his friends and all who learned that he was still on
life. Then did he as the King had bidden him and enjoyed his rest for
two-score days, after which he donned his finest dress and took horse,
followed and preceded by his slaves, all happy and exulting, and rode to
Court, while Nadan the nephew, seeing what had befallen, was seized with
sore fear and affright and became perplexed and unknowing what to do.
Now, when Haykar went in and salamed to the King, his lord seated him by
his side and said, “O my beloved Haykar, look upon this writ which was
sent to me by the King of Misraim after hearing of thy execution; and in
very deed they; to wit he and his, have conquered and chastised and
routed most of the folk of our realm, compelling them to fly for refuge
Egyptwards in fear of the tax-tribute which they have demanded of us.”
So the Minister took the missive and, after reading and comprehending
the sum of its contents, quoth he to the King, “Be not wroth, O my lord:
I will repair in person to Egypt and will return a full and sufficient
reply to Pharaoh, and I will explain to him his propositions and will
bring thee from him all the tax-tribute he demandeth of thee: moreover,
I will restore all the lieges he hath caused fly this country and I will
humiliate every foe of thee by aidance of Almighty Allah and by the
blessings of thy Majesty.” Now when the Sovran heard this answer, he
rejoiced and his heart was gladdened; whereupon he gifted Haykar with a
generous hand and once more gave immense wealth to the Sworder.
Presently the Minister said, “Grant me a delay of forty days that I
ponder this matter and devise a sufficient device.” As soon as Sankharib
granted him the required permission he returned homewards and, summoning
his huntsmen, bade them catch for him two vigorous young vultures;[59]
and, when these were brought, he sent for those who twist ropes and
commanded them make two cords of cotton each measuring two thousand
ells. He also bade bring him carpenters and ordered them to build for
him two coffers of large size, and as soon as his bidding was done he
chose out two little lads, one hight Binúhál and the other
Tabshálím.[60] Then every day he would let slaughter a pair of lambs and
therewith feed the children and the vultures, and he mounted those upon
the back of these, binding them tight, and also making fast the cords to
the legs of the fowls. He would then allow the birds to rise little by
little, prolonging the flight every day to the extent of ten cubits, the
better to teach and to train them; and they learnt their task so well
that in a short time they would rise to the full length of the tethers
till they soared in the fields of air with the boys on their backs,
after which he would let hale them down. And when he saw them perfect in
this process, he taught the lads to utter loud shouts what while they
reached the full length of the cords and to cry out, “Send us stones and
mud[61] and slaked lime that we may build a bower for King Pharaoh,
inasmuch as we now stand here all the day idle!” And Haykar ceased not
to accustom them and to instruct them until they became dexterous in
such doings as they could be. Then he quitted them and presenting
himself before King Sankharib said, “O my lord, the work is completed
even as thou couldst desire; but do thou arise and come with me that I
may show thee the marvel.” Thereupon the King and his courtiers
accompanied Haykar to a wide open space outside the city whither he sent
for the vultures and the lads; and after binding the cords he loosed
them to soar as high as the lanyards allowed in the firmament-plain,
when they fell to outcrying as he had taught them. And lastly he haled
them in and restored them to their steads. Hereat the King wondered, as
did all his suite, with extreme wonderment, and kissing his Minister
between his eyes, robed him in an honourable robe and said to him, “Go
forth in safety, O my beloved, and boast of my realm, to the land of
Egypt[62] and answer the propositions of Pharaoh and master him by the
power of Almighty Allah;” and with these words farewelled him.
Accordingly Haykar took his troops and guards, together with the lads
and the vultures, and he fared forth intending for Egypt where on
arrival he at once made for the royal Palace. And when the folk of the
capital understood that Sankharib the King had commissioned a man of his
notables to bespeak their Sovran the Pharaoh, they entered and apprized
their liege lord who sent a party of his familiars summoning him to the
presence. Presently Haykar the Sage entered unto Pharaoh; and after
prostration as befitteth before royalty said, “O my lord, Sankharib the
King greeteth thee with many salutations and salams; and hath sent me
single-handed sans other of his slaves, to the end that I answer thy
question and fulfil whatso thou requirest, and I am commanded to supply
everything thou needest; especially inasmuch as thou hast sent to the
Monarch my master for the loan of a man who can build thee a bower
between firmament and terra firma; and I, by the good aidance of Allah
Almighty and of thine august magnanimity, will edify that same for thee
even as thou desirest and requirest. But this shall be upon the
condition stablished concerning the tax-tribute of Misraim for three
years, seeing that the consent of the Kings be their fullest securities.
An thou vanquish me and my hand fall short and I fail to answer thee,
then shall my liege lord send thee the tax-tribute whereof thou
speakest; but if I bring thee all thou needest, then shalt thou forward
to my lord the tax-tribute thou hast mentioned and of him demanded.”
Pharaoh, hearing these words, marvelled and was perplexed at the
eloquence of his tongue and the sweetness of his speech and presently
exclaimed, “O man, what may be thy name?” The other replied, “Thy slave
is hight Abíkám;[63] and I am an emmet of the emmets under Sankharib the
King.” Asked Pharaoh, “Had not thy lord one more dignified of degree
than thou, that he send unto me an ant to answer me and converse with
me?” and Haykar answered, “I humbly hope of the Almighty that I may
satisfy all which is in thy heart, O my lord; for that Allah is with the
weakling the more to astound the strongling.” Hereat Pharaoh gave orders
to set apart for Abikam his guest an apartment, also for the guards and
all that were with him and provide them with rations and fodder of meat
and drink, and whatso was appropriate to their reception as properest
might be. And after the usual three days of guest-rite[64] the King of
Egypt donned his robes of brightest escarlate; and, having taken seat
upon his throne, each and every Grandee and Wazir (who were habited in
the same hue) standing with crossed arms and feet joined,[65] he sent a
summons to produce before him Haykar, now Abikam hight. Accordingly he
entered and prostrated in the King’s presence and stood up to receive
the royal behest, when Pharaoh after a long delay asked him, “O Abikam,
whom do I resemble and what may these my Lords and Ministers represent?”
Hereto the envoy answered saying, “O my lord, thou favourest Bel the
idol[66] and thy chieftains favour the servitors thereof!” Then quoth
the King, “Now do thou depart and I desire thee on the morrow come
again.” Accordingly Abikam, which was Haykar, retired as he was ordered,
and on the next day he presented himself before Pharaoh and after
prostrating stood between his hands. The King was habited in a red coat
of various tincts and his mighty men were garbed in white, and presently
he enquired saying, “O Abikam, whom do I resemble and what may these my
Lords and Ministers represent?” He replied, “O my lord, thou art like
unto the sun and thy nobles are like the rays thereof!” Then quoth the
King, “Do thou retire to thy quarters and to-morrow come hither again.”
So the other fared forth and Pharaoh commanded and charged his head men
to don pure white, himself doing the same; and, having taken seat upon
his throne, he bade Abikam be brought into the presence and when he
appeared asked him, “Whom do I resemble, and what may these my Grandees
represent?” He replied, “O my lord, thou favourest the moon and thy
servitors and guards favour the stars and planets and constellations.”
Then quoth the King, “Go thou until the morrow when do thou come hither
again;” after which he commanded his Magnates to don dresses of divers
colours and different tincts whilst he wore a robe of ruddy velvet. Anon
he seated him upon his throne and summoned Abikam, who entered the
presence and prostrated and stood up before him. The King for a fourth
time asked him, “O Abikam, whom do I resemble and what may these my
guards represent?” and he answered, “O my lord, thou art like the
auspicious month Naysán[67], and thy guards and grandees are like the
white chamomile[68] and his bloom.” Hearing these words Pharaoh rejoiced
with extreme joy and said, “O Abikam, thou hast compared me first with
Bel the idol, secondly with the sun and thirdly with the moon and lastly
with the auspicious month Naysan, and my lords with the chamomile and
his flower. But say me now unto what likenest thou Sankharib thy lord,
and what favour his Grandees?” Haykar made answer, “Heaven forfend I
mention my liege lord the while thou sittest on thy throne; but rise to
thy feet, and I will inform thee what my Master representeth and what
his court most resembleth.” Pharaoh, struck with astonishment at such
heat of tongue and valiancy of speech, arose from his seat and stood
facing Haykar and presently said, “Now tell me that I may learn what thy
lord resembleth and what his Grandees represent.” The other made reply,
“My lord resembleth the God of Heaven, and his lords represent the
Lightning and Thunder. An it be his will the winds do blow and the rains
do fall; and, when he deign order, the leven playeth and the thunder
roareth and at his behest the sun would refuse light and the moon and
stars stand still in their several courses. But he may also command the
storm-wind to arise and downpours to deluge when Naysan would be as one
who beateth the bough[69] and who scattereth abroad the blooms of the
chamomile.” Pharaoh hearing these words wondered with extreme
wonderment, then raging with excessive rage he cried, “O man, tell me
the real truth and let me know who thou art in very sooth.” “I am
Haykar,” quoth the other, “Chief Secretary and especial to Sankharib the
King; also his Wazir and Councillor of his kingdom and Keeper of his
secret.” “Thou statest fact, O Sage,” quoth Pharaoh, “and this thy say
is veridical: yet have we heard that Haykar is dead indeed, withal here
art thou alive and alert.” The Minister replied, “Yea, verily that was
the case, but Alhamdolillah—Glory to God, who knoweth all hidden things,
my master had in very deed doomed me die believing the reports of
certain traitors, but my Lord preserved me and well done to him who
relieth upon the Almighty!” Then quoth Pharaoh, “Go forth and on the
morrow do thou return hither and say me somewhat no man hath ever heard,
nor I nor my Grandees nor any of the folk in my kingdom and my capital.”
Accordingly Haykar hied him home and penned a paper wherein he said as
follows: “From Sankharib, King of Assyria and Naynawah, to Pharaoh King
of Misraim:—Peace be upon thee, O my brother! As well thou wottest,
brother needeth brother and the Kings require the aidance of other Kings
and my hope from thee is that thou wilt lend[70] me the loan of nine
hundred-weight[71] of gold which I require to expend on the pay and
allowances due to certain of my soldiery wherewith to provide for them
the necessaries of life.” After this he folded the writ and despatched
it by a messenger on the next day to Pharaoh, who perused it and was
perplext and exclaimed, “Verily and indeed never till now have I heard a
saying like unto this at all, nor hath anyone ever spoken[72] to me
after such fashion!” Haykar replied, “’Tis fact, and ’tis well an thou
own thee debtor of such sum to my lord the King.” Pharaoh accepted this
resolving of his proposition and said, “O Haykar, ’tis the like of thee
who suiteth the service of the Kings, and blessed be Allah who perfected
thee in wisdom and adorned thee with philosophy[73] and knowledge. And
now remaineth to us only one need of thee; to wit, that thou build us a
bower between firmament and terra firma.” Haykar replied, “Hearkening
and obeying! I will edify it for thee e’en as thou wishest and thou
choosest; but do thou get ready for me gypsum lime and ashlar-stone and
brick-clay and handicraftsmen, while I also bring architects and master
masons and they shall erect for thee whatso thou requirest.” So King
Pharaoh gat ready all this and fared forth with his folk to a spacious
plain without the city whither Haykar and his pages had carried the boys
and the vultures; and with the Sovran went all the great men of his
kingdom and his host in full tale that they might look upon the wonder
which the Envoy of Assyria was about to work. But when they reached the
place appointed, Haykar brought out of their boxes the vultures and
making fast the lads to their backs bound the cords to the legs of the
birds and let them loose, when they soared firmament-wards till they
were poised between heaven and earth. Hereat the lads fell to crying
aloud, “Send up to us the stones and the mud and the slaked lime that we
may build a bower for King Pharaoh, forasmuch as here we stand the whole
day idle.” At this were agitated all present, and they marvelled and
became perplext; and not less wondered the King and the Grandees his
lieges, while Haykar and his pages fell to buffeting the handicraftsmen
and to shouting at the royal guards, saying, “Provide the workmen with
that they want, nor hinder them from their work!” Whereupon cried
Pharaoh, “O Haykar, art thou Jinn-mad? Who is ever able to convey aught
of these matters to so far a height?” But he replied to the King, “O my
lord, how shall we build a bower in the lift on other wise? And were the
King my master here he would have edified two such edifices in a single
day.” Hearing this quoth Pharaoh to him, “Hie thee, O Haykar, to thy
quarters, and for the present take thy rest, seeing that we have been
admonished anent the building of the bower; but come thou to me on the
morrow.” Accordingly, Haykar fared to his lodging, and betimes on the
next day presented himself before Pharaoh, who said to him, “O Haykar,
what of the stallion of thy lord which, when he neigheth in Assyria and
Nineveh, his voice is heard by our mares in this place so that they
miscarry?[74]” Hereat Haykar left the King and faring to his place took
a tabby-cat and tying her up fell to flogging her with a sore flogging
until all the Egyptians heard her outcries and reported the matter to
the Sovran. So Pharaoh sent to fetch him and asked, “O Haykar, for what
cause didst thou scourge this cat and beat her with such beating, she
being none other but a dumb beast[75]?” He replied, “O my lord the King,
she hath done by me a wrongous deed and she hath amply merited this
whipping and these stripes.” The King asked, “And what may be this deed
she did?” whereto Haykar made answer, “Verily my master Sankharib the
King had given me a beautiful cock who had a mighty fine voice and a
strong, and he knew the hours of darkness and announced them. But as he
was in my mansion this mischief-making tabby fared there and fell upon
him last night and tare off his head; and for this cause when she
returned to me I took to punishing her with such blows and stripes.”
Pharaoh rejoined, “O Haykar, indeed I see thou art old and doting!
Between Misraim and Nineveh lie eight hundred and sixty parasangs; so
how could this cat have covered them in one night and have torn off thy
chanticleer’s head and have returned by morning to Egypt?” He replied,
“O my lord, seeing that between Egypt and Assyria is such interval how
then can the neighing of my lord the King’s stallion reach unto
Nile-land and be heard by your mares so that here they miscarry?” When
Pharaoh had pondered these words, he knew that the envoy had returned
him a full and sufficient reply, so quoth he, “O Haykar, ’tis my desire
that thou make for me two ropes of sand;” and quoth the other, “Do thou
prescribe that they bring me a cord from thy stores that I twist one
like it.” So when they had done as he bade, Haykar fared forth arear of
the palace and dug two round borings equal to the thickness of the cord;
then he collected sand from the river-bed and placed it therein, so that
when the sun arose and entered into the cylinder, the sand appeared in
the sunlight like unto ropes.[76] Thereupon quoth he to Pharaoh,
“Command thy slaves take up these ropes and I will twist thee as many of
them as thou willest.” Quoth Pharaoh, “O Haykar, we have before our eyes
a millstone which is broken; and I require of thee that thou sew up the
rent.” Accordingly the Envoy looked about him and, seeing there another
stone, said to Pharaoh, “O my lord, here am I a stranger man nor have I
with me aught of darning-gear; but I would have thee bid thy confidants
amongst the cobblers to provide me out of this other stone with
shoemaker’s awls and needles and scissors wherewith I may sew up for
thee the breach in yon millstone.” Hereat Pharaoh the King fell
a-laughing, he and his Grandees, and cried, “Blessed be Allah, who hath
vouchsafed to thee all this penetration and knowledge;” then, seeing
that the Envoy had answered all his questions and had resolved his
propositions he forthright confessed that he was conquered and he bade
them collect the tax-tribute of three years and present it to him
together with the loan concerning which Haykar had written and he robed
him with robes of honour, him and his guards and his pages; and supplied
him with viaticum, victual and moneys for the road, and said to him,
“Fare thee in safety, O honour of thy lord and boast of thy liege: who
like unto thee shall be found as a Councillor for the Kings and the
Sultans? And do thou present my salam to thy master Sankharib the Sovran
saying:—Excuse us for that which we forwarded to thee, as the Kings are
satisfied with a scanting of such acknowledgment.”[77] Haykar accepted
from him all this; then, kissing ground before him, said, “I desire of
thee, O my lord, an order that not a man of Assyria and Nineveh remain
with thee in the land of Egypt but fare forth it with me homewards.”
Hereupon Pharaoh sent a herald to make proclamation of all whereof
Haykar had spoken to him, after which the envoy farewelled the King and
set out on his march intending for the realm of Assyria and Nineveh and
bearing with him of treasures and moneys a mighty matter. When the
tidings of his approach came to the ears of Sankharib, the King rode
forth to meet his Minister, rejoicing in him with joy exceeding and
received him lovingly and kissed him, and cried, “Well come and welcome
and fair welcome to my sire and the glory of my realm and the vaunt of
my kingdom: do thou require of me whatso thou wantest and choosest, even
didst thou covet one-half of my good and of my government.” The Minister
replied, “Live, O King, for ever; and if thou would gift me bestow thy
boons upon Abu Sumayk, the Sworder, whose wise delay, furthered by the
will of Allah Almighty, quickened me with a second life,” “In thine
honour, O my beloved,” quoth the King, “I will do him honour;” and
presently he fell to questioning his envoy concerning what had befallen
him from Pharaoh and how the Lord of the Misraim had presented him with
the tax-tribute and moneys and gifts and honourable robes; and lastly,
he asked anent the instances and secrets which ended the mission. So
Haykar related all that had betided, whereat Sankharib rejoiced with
mighty great joy; and, when the converse was concluded, the King said to
him, “O Haykar, take unto thee everything thou wishest and wantest of
all this, for ’tis in the grasp of thy hand.” Haykar answered, “Live, O
King, for ever and aye; naught do I require save thy safety and the
permanency of thy rule: what shall I do with moneys and such like? But
an thou deign largesse me with aught, make over to me in free gift
Nadan, my sister’s son, that I requite him for that he wrought with me:
and I would that thou grant me his blood and make it lawfully my very
own.” Sankharib replied, “Take him, for I have given to thee that same.”
So Haykar led his nephew to his home[78] and bound his hands in bonds
and fettered his feet with heavy chains; then he beat him with a severe
bastinado and a torturing upon his soles and calves, his back, his belly
and his armpits; after which bashing he cast him into a black hole
adjoining the jakes. He also made Binuhal guardian over him and bade him
be supplied day by day with a scone of bread and a little water; and
whenever the uncle went in to or came forth from the nephew he would
revile Nadan and of his wisdom would say to him, “O dear my son, I
wrought with thee all manner of good and kindly works and thou didst
return me therefor evil and treason and death. O dear my son, ’tis said
in saws:—Whoso heareth not through his ears, through the nape of his
neck shall he hear.”[79] Hereat quoth Nadan, “O my uncle, what reason
hast thou to be wroth with me?” and quoth Haykar, “For that I raised
thee to worship and honour and made thee great after rearing thee with
the best of rearing and I educated thee so thou mightest become mine
heir in lore and contrivance and in worldly good. But thou soughtest my
ruin and destruction and thou desiredst for me doom of death; however,
the Lord, knowing me to be a wronged man, delivered me from thy
mischief, for God hearteneth the broken heart and abaseth the envious
and the vain-glorious. O dear my son,[80] thou hast been as the scorpion
who when she striketh her sting[81] upon brass would pierce it. O dear
my son, thou hast resembled the Sajálmah-bird[82] when netted in net
who, when she cannot save herself alive, she prayeth the partridges to
cast themselves into perdition with her. O dear my son, thou hast been
as the cur who, when suffering cold entereth the potter’s house to warm
himself at the kiln, and when warmed barketh at the folk on such wise
that they must beat him and cast him out, lest after barking he bite
them. O dear my son, thou hast done even as the hog who entered the
Hammam in company with the great; but after coming out he saw a stinking
fosse a-flowing[83] and went and therein wallowed. O dear my son, thou
hast become like the old and rank he-goat who when he goeth in leadeth
his friends and familiars to the slaughter-house and cannot by any means
come off safe or with his own life or with their lives. O dear my son, a
hand which worketh not neither plougheth, and withal is greedy and
over-nimble shall be cut off from its armpit. O dear my son, thou hast
imitated the tree whom men hew down, head and branch, when she said:—Had
not that in your hands been of me,[84] indeed ye would not have availed
to my felling. O dear my son, thou hast acted as did the she-cat to whom
they said:—Renounce robbing that we make thee collars of gold and feed
thee with sugar and almond cake! But she replied:—As for me, my craft is
that of my father and my mother, nor can I ever forget it. O dear my
son, thou art as a dragon mounted upon a bramble-bush, and the two
amiddlemost a stream, which when the wolf saw he cried:—A mischief on a
mischief and let one more mischievous counsel the twain of them. O dear
my son, with delicate food I fed thee and thou didst not fodder me with
the driest of bread; and of sugar and the finest wines I gave thee to
drink, while thou grudgedst to me a sup of cold water. O dear my son, I
taught thee and tendered thee with the tenderest of tending and garred
thee grow like the lofty cedar of Lebanon, but thou didst incriminate me
and confine me in fetters by thine evil courses.[85] O dear my son, I
nourished a hope that thou wouldst build me a strong tower wherein I
might find refuge from mine adversary and foil my foes; but thou hast
been to me as a burier, a grave-digger, who would thrust me into the
bowels of the earth: however, my Lord had mercy upon me. O dear my son,
I willed thee well and thou rewardedst me with ill-will and foul deed;
wherefore, ’tis now my intent to pluck out thine eyes and hack away thy
tongue and strike off thy head with the sword-edge and then make thee
meat for the wolves; and so exact retaliation from thine abominable
actions.” Hereupon Nadan made answer and said to Haykar his uncle, “Do
with me whatso thy goodness would do and then condone thou to me all my
crimes, for who is there can offend like me and can condone like thee?
And now I pray thee take me into thy service and suffer me to slave in
thy house and groom thy horses, even to sweeping away their dung, and
herd thy hogs; for verily I am the evil-doer and thou art the
beneficent; I am the sinner and thou art the pardoner.” “O dear my son,”
rejoined Haykar, “Thou favourest the tree which, albe planted by the
side of many waters, was barren of dates and her owner purposed to hew
her down, when she said:—Remove me unto another stead where if I fruit
not then fell me. But he rejoined:—Being upon the water-edge thou gavest
ne’er a date, so how shalt thou bear fruit being in other site? O dear
my son, better the senility of the eagle than the juvenility of the
raven. O dear my son, they said to the wolf:—Avoid the sheep lest haply
the dust they raise in flight may do thee a damage; but Lupus made
answer:—Verily their dust is a powder good for the eyes. O dear my son,
they brought the wolf to school that he might learn to read; but, when
quoth they to him:—Say A, B, C, D,[86] quoth he, Lamb, Sheep, Kid,
Goat,[87] even as within my belly. O dear my son, they set the ass’s
head beside a tray of meats, but he slipped down and fell to rolling
upon his back, for his nature (like that of others) may never be
changed. O dear my son, his say is stablished who said:—When thou hast
begotten a child assume him to be thy son, and when thou hast reared a
son assume him to be a slave.[88] O dear my son, whoso doeth good, good
shall be his lot; and whoso worketh evil, evil shall befal him; for that
the Lord compensateth mankind according to conduct. O dear my son,
wherewith shall I bespeak thee beyond this my speech? and verily Allah
knoweth concealed things and wotteth all secret and hidden works and
ways and He shall requite thee and order and ordain between me and thee
and shall recompense thee with that thou deservest.” Now when Nadan
heard these words from his uncle Haykar, his body began to swell and
become like a blown-up bag and his members waxed puffy, his legs and
calves and his sides were distended, then his belly split asunder and
burst till his bowels gushed forth and his end (which was destruction)
came upon him; so he perished and fared to Jahannam-fire and the
dwelling-place dire. Even so it is said in books:—“Whoever diggeth for
his brother a pit shall himself fall into it and whoso setteth up a
snare for his neighbour shall be snared therein.” And this much know we
anent the Say of Haykar the Sage, and magnification be to Allah for ever
and ever

AMEN.

TMT.[89]

THE HISTORY OF AL-BUNDUKANI.
OR,
THE CALIPH HARUN AL-RASHID AND THE DAUGHTER OF KING KISRA.

=In the name of Allah the Compassionating, the Compassionate, we here
invite, by the aidance of the Almighty and His furtherance, the History
of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid and of the Daughter of Kisra the
King.=[90]

It is related (but Allah is all-knowing of His secrets and
allkenning in whatso hath passed and preceded and preterlapsed of
the annals of folk),[91] that the Caliph (by whom I mean Harun
al-Rashid) was sitting on the throne of his kingdom one chance day
of the days which happened to be the fête of ’Arafát.[92] And as he
chanced to glance at Ja’afar the Barmaki, he said to him, “O Wazir,
I desire to disguise myself and go down from my palace into the
streets and wander about the highways of Baghdad that I may give
alms to the mesquin and miserable and solace myself with a sight of
the folk: so do thou hie with me nor let any know of our faring
forth.” “With love and good will,” quoth Ja’afar. So his lord arose
and passed from the audience-room into the inner palace where the
two donned disguise and made small their sleeves and breasts[93] and
issued forth to circle about the thoroughfares of Baghdad and her
market-streets, distributing charity to the poor and the paupers,
until the last of the day. And whilst so doing, the Commander of the
Faithful chanced to espy a woman seated at the head of a highway who
had extended the hand of beggary, showing at the same time her wrist
and crying, “Give me somewhat for the sake of Allah Almighty!”
Hereat he considered her nicely and saw that her palm and her wrist
were like whitest crystal and yet more brilliant in brightness. So
he wondered thereat, and presently pulling a dinar from his
breast-pocket he handed it to Ja’afar and said, “Bestow it upon
yonder woman.” The Minister took the ducat and leaving his lord went
up to her and placed it in her palm; and, when she closed her
fingers thereupon, she felt that the coin was bigger than a copper
or a silverling, so she looked thereat and saw that it was of gold.
Hereupon she called after Ja’afar who had passed onwards, saying,
“Ho, thou fair youth!” and when he came back to her she continued,
“The dinar wherewith thou hast gifted me, is it for Allah’s sake or
for other service?” Said he, “’Tis not from me, nay ’twas given by
yonder Youth who sent it through me.” “Ask him,” she rejoined, “and
tell me what may be his purport.” Ja’afar hied him back to the
Caliph and reported her words, whereat his lord commanded him, “Go
back and say thou to her ’tis for Almighty Allah’s sake.” The
Minister did his master’s bidding when she replied, “His reward be
upon the Almighty.” Then the Wazir returned and reported the woman’s
prayer to the Commander of the Faithful, who cried, “Hie thee to her
and enquire an she be married or virginal; and, if she be unwedded,
do thou ask her an she be willing to wive with me.”[94] So Ja’afar
fared to her and questioned her, whereat she answered, “A spinster.”
Quoth he, “The Youth who sent the dinar to thee desireth to mate
with thee;” and quoth she, “An he can pay me my dower and my money
down,[95] I will become his bride.” Hereat Ja’afar said in his
thought, “Whence can the Prince of True Believers find her dower and
her money down? Doubtless we shall have to ask a loan for him;”[96]
and presently he enquired of her what might be the amount of both.
Replied she, “As for the pin-money, this shall be the annual revenue
of Ispahán, and the income of Khorásán-city shall form the
settlement.” So Ja’afar wagged his head and going back to the
Commander of the Faithful repeated her terms; wherewith Harun was
satisfied and bespake him, “Hie thee to her and say:—He hath
accepted this and thou hast professed thyself contented.” Hearing
his words she rejoined, “What be his worth, yonder man, and how may
he attain unto such sum?” and he retorted, “Of a truth he is the
Commander of the Faithful, Harun al-Rashid.” When this reply reached
her ears she veiled her hands and feet crying, “To Allah be laud and
gratitude;” adding to Ja’afar, “An he be the Prince of True
Believers, I am satisfied therewith.” Accordingly the Wazir returned
to the Caliph and reported her consent, whereafter the twain
repaired homewards and the Caliph despatched to her a duenna and a
train of handmaidens who went and bore her to the Hammam within the
palace and bathed her. Then they brought her out and robed her in
sumptuous raiment, such as becometh the women of the Kings, and
ornaments and jewellery and what not: after which they led her to a
fine apartment which was set apart and private for her wherein also
were meat and drink and furniture, arras[97] and curtains and all
necessaries of such sort. In fine they fared to the Caliph and
apprized him of what they had done and he presently gave command to
summon the four Kazis who wrote her marriage-lines. When it was
night he paid her the first visit and taking seat opposite her he
asked, “Daughter of whom mayst thou be amongst the folk that thou
demandedst of me this dower?” “Allah advance in honour the Commander
of the Faithful,” answered she; “verily thy handmaid is of the seed
of Kisrà Anushirwán; but the shifts of time and tide brought me down
and low down.” Replied he, “They relate that thine ancestor, the
Chosroë, wronged his lieges with mighty sore wronging;”[98] and she
rejoined, “Wherefor and because of such tyranny over the folk hath
his seed come to beg their bread at the highway-heads.” Quoth he,
“They also make mention of him that in after-times he did justice to
such degree that he decided causes between birds and beasts;” and
quoth she, “Wherefor hath Allah exalted his posterity from the
highway-head and hath made them Harím to the Prince of True
Believers.” Hearing this the Caliph was wroth with mighty great
wrath[99] and sware that he would not go in unto her for a full told
year, and arising forthright went forth from her. But when the
twelvemonth had passed and the fête-day of Arafat came round again,
the Commander of the Faithful donned disguise and taking with him
Ja’afar and Masrúr the Eunuch, strolled out to wander about the
streets of Baghdad and her highways. And as they walked along, the
Caliph looked about him and beheld a booth wherein a man was turning
out Katífah-cakes[100] and he was pleased to admire his dexterity to
such degree that, returning to the Palace, he sent him one of his
Eunuchs with the message, “The Prince of True Believers requireth of
thee an hundred pancakes, and let each one of them, when filled and
folded, fit into the hollow of a man’s hand.” So the Castrato went
and gave the order as we have related and paid the price and, when
the pastrycook had made his requirement, he carried it away to the
presence. Then the Caliph took seat and bade bring sugar and
pistachios and all other such needs wherewith he fell to stuffing
the pancakes with his own hands and placing in each and every a
golden dinar. When this was done he despatched the same Eunuch to
Kisra’s daughter with the message, “This night the Commander of the
Faithful proposeth to visit thee, the year of his oath having
expired, and he sendeth to thee saying:—What is it thy heart
coveteth that he may forward it to thee?” The Castrato set forth
upon this errand and received for all reply, “Say him my heart
desireth naught, for that all I require is with me, nor is there
aught of deficiency.” Accordingly, he returned and repeated her
words to the Caliph who bade him fare forth again to her and say the
same to her a second time, whenas she, “Let him send me a thousand
dinars and a duenna in whom he confideth, so that I may disguise
myself and go down with her and distribute gold to the mean and the
mesquin.” Presently back came the slave bearing this reply, whereat
the Caliph ordered the moneys be sent to her and the woman required;
and the twain, Princess and duenna, went forth and threaded the
lanes of Baghdad and her great thoroughfares whilst the young lady
distributed her charity to the Fakirs and the paupers. But when all
the gold with her had been expended and naught of it remained, they
turned homewards making for the Palace; and, the day being sultry,
drowthiness befel the young lady. So she said to her companion, “O
mother mine, I am athirst and want a draught of water to drink;” and
said the other, “We will call aloud to the Water-carrier[101] who
shall give thee thy need.” Replied the Princess, “Drinking from the
Waterman’s jar will not be pleasant to my heart; nor will I touch
it, for ’tis like the whore[102] whereinto some man goeth every
hour: let the draught of water be from a private house and suffer
that it be given by way of kindness.” Hereupon the old woman looked
in front of her and saw a grand gateway with a door of sandalwood
over which a lamp hung by a silken cord[103] and a curtain was drawn
across it and it had two benches of marble, the whole under the
charge of a goodly concierge. Then quoth she, “From this house I
will ask a drink for thee.” So the two women went forward and stood
before the door and the duenna advancing rapped a light rap with the
ring, when behold, the entrance was opened and came forth a young
man in youthful favour fair and robed in raiments pure and rare and
said, “’Tis well!” Hereat the governante addressed him, “O my son,
indeed this my daughter is athirst and I crave of thy kindness that
thou give her a draught of water, seeing that she will not drink
from the Water-carrier.” He replied, “With love and goodwill;” and
going within brought out what was required and handed the cup to the
old woman. She took it and passed it on to her mistress and the
young lady turning her face to the wall raised her veil and drank
her sufficiency without showing a single feature.[104] After this
she returned the cup to the old woman who took it and handed it back
to the young man saying, “Allah requite thee with all of weal, O my
son!” whereto he replied, “Health to you and healing!”[105] And the
two went their way and returned to the Palace and entered therein.
On such wise fared it with these twain; but as regards the Caliph,
when he had finished filling the pancakes, he ranged them in a large
charger of porcelain; then, summoning the Eunuch he said to him,
“Take up this and carry it to the daughter of Kisra and say
her:—Here be the sweetmeats of peace, and let her know that I will
night with her this night.” The Castrato did his lord’s bidding; and
carrying the charger to the Princess’s apartment handed it to the
duenna and delivered the message, whereupon she blessed and prayed
for the Commander of the Faithful and the slave departed. Now he was
angry and disappointed for that he could not eat one pancake of them
all because they had become big by stuffing and he feared that if he
touched any thereof its place would show void. Presently it so befel
that the young lady said to the old woman, her governante, “Do thou
take up this charger and carry it to the youth who gave us the
draught of water with the intent that he may not claim an obligation
or have aught to desire of us.” Accordingly, the ancient dame took
the charger and walked off with it. But on her way she longed for a
Katifah and put forth her hand to one and took it up when she saw
that it left in the line of pancakes a gap big as a man’s palm.
Hereat she feared to touch it and replaced it saying, “’Twill be
known that I carried off one of them.” Then after returning the
pancake to its place, she passed on with the charger to the door of
that young man whom she suddenly sighted as he sat at the gateway.
She saluted him with the salam which he returned, and then said she,
“O my son, the young lady who drank the water hath sent thee all
these cates in acknowledgment for the draught thou gavest her to
drain.” Said he, “Set it down on the door-bench;” and, when she did
his bidding, he expressed his thanks to her and she ganged her gait.
Now as the youth still sat there, the Watchman of the Ward suddenly
stood before him blessing him and saying, “O my lord, this be
Arafat-day and to-night will be the Eve of the ’I´d, or Greater
Festival; so I hope from the beneficence of my master the
Chamberlain and Emir Alaeddin (whom Allah Almighty keep and
preserve!) that he will deign order me a largesse befitting the Fête
wherewith I may buy sweetmeats for my wife and children.” The other
replied, “Take this charger and wend thy ways therewith;” so the
Watchman kissed his hand and carrying it off went home and showed it
to his wife. But she cried, “O thou miserable,[106] whence gottest
thou this charger: hast thou wilfully stolen it or suddenly snatched
it?”[107] Replied her mate, “This be the property of the Emir
Alaeddin, the Chamberlain (whom Allah preserve!), and he gave it to
me as an alms-gift; so come hither all of you that we eat, for the
pancakes look toothsome.” Rejoined his wife, “Art thou Jinn-mad? Up
with thee and sell the charger and cates, for the worth must be some
thirty to forty dirhams which we will lay out for the benefit of the
little ones.” He retorted, “O woman, suffer us eat of this food
wherewith the Almighty would feed us;” but she fell to wailing and
crying out, “We will not taste thereof while the children lack caps
and slippers.”[108] And she prevailed over him with her opinion, for
indeed women are mostly the prevailers. So taking up the charger he
fared with it to the market-place and gave it for sale to a broker,
and the man began crying, “Who will buy this charger with whatso is
thereon?” Hereat up came the Shaykh of the Bazar who bid forty
dirhams therefor, and a second merchant raised its price to eighty,
when a third hent it in hand and turning it about espied graven upon
the edge, “Made by commandment of Harun al-Rashid, Commander of the
Faithful.” Hereat the trader’s wits fled him and he cried to the
broker, “Hast thou a will to work for my hanging in this matter of
the charger?” Quoth the other, “What may be the meaning of these
words?” and quoth the merchant, “This charger is the property of the
Prince of True Believers.” The broker, dying of dread, took the
charger and repaired therewith to the Palace of the Caliphate where
he craved leave to enter; and, when this was accorded, he went in
and kissed ground before the presence and blessed the Commander of
the Faithful and lastly showed to him the charger. But when the
Caliph looked at it and considered it carefully, he recognized it
with its contents, and he waxed wroth with exceeding wrath and said
in himself, “When I make aught for the eating of my household, shall
it be sent out and hawked about for sale?” adding to the broker,
“Who gave thee this charger?” “O my lord, ’twas the Watchman of one
of the wards,” replied he; and Harun rejoined, “Bring him to me
hither.” So they fared forth and fetched him bound in cords and
saying in his mind, “The whore would not suffer us eat of that was
in the charger and enjoy its sweetness, so this happened which hath
happened to us; we have eaten naught and have fallen into
misfortune.” But when they set him between the hands of the Caliph
the latter asked him, “Where haddest thou yon charger? say me sooth
or I will smite thy neck!” The Watchman answered, “Allah prolong the
life of our liege lord! verily as regards this charger it was given
to me by the Lord Alaeddin, the junior Chamberlain.” Hereat the
Prince of True Believers redoubled in rage and cried, “Bring me that
Emir with his turband in tatters, and drag him along on his face and
plunder his home.” Accordingly the magnates fared forth with their
pages; and, reaching the house, knocked at the door, when the owner
came out and, seeing the officials, asked, “What is to do?” “’Tis
against thee,” replied some of the Grandees, whereto the Chamberlain
rejoined, “Hearkening and obeying Allah and then the Commander of
the Faithful!” After this they bore him to the Palace of the
Caliphate and an Emir of them put forth his hand to the
Chamberlain’s coat and tare it and rent his turband adown his neck
saying, “O Alaeddin,[109] this is the behest of the Prince of True
Believers who hath enjoined that we do with thee on such wise and we
despoil thy house: yet there is bread and salt between us albe we
must do as we are bidden, for obedience to royal behest is of the
ways of good breeding.” Then they carried him into the presence of
the Caliph and he, after he was made to stand between the Sovran’s
hands, kissed ground and blessed Harun and said, “Allah give aidance
to our liege lord and have him in His holy keeping: what may be the
offence of thine humble slave that he hath merited such treatment as
this?” Harun raised his head and asked, “Say me, knowest thou yon
fellow?” and the other looked and seeing the guardian of the gates
corded and pinioned made answer, “Yes indeed, I know him and he is
the Watchman of our ward.” The Caliph resumed, “Whence came to thee
this charger?” and the Chamberlain replied, “Let the Commander of
the Faithful (to whom Almighty Allah vouchsafe furtherance!) learn
that I was sitting at home when there rapped a rap at the door; and
I, going forth to open, beheld an ancient dame who said to me:—O my
son, this my daughter is athirst and I beg thee of thy bounty to
give her a draught of water for she will not take drink from the
public Sakká. So I brought them out their requirement and they
satisfied themselves and went their ways. After an hour or so I came
forth and took seat by my house-door when behold, up came the old
woman bearing in hand yon charger and said:—O my son, the person to
whom thou suppliedest drink hath sent this to thee in requital for
that thou gavest her of water inasmuch as she is unwilling to be
under an obligation. Quoth I:—Set it down; when she placed it upon
the edge of the Mastabah-bench and left me. Thereupon suddenly came
up this Watchman and craved from me the Sweetmeat of the Festival,
whereto I answered:—Do thou take this charger and its contents
(whereof by the bye I had not tasted aught); and he did so and
departed. This is all I know and—The Peace.” Now when the Commander
of the Faithful heard this from the Chamberlain, his heart was
gladdened and he enquired, “O Alaeddin, what time the young lady
drank the draught of water didst thou see her face or not?” and the
Chamberlain replied in haste, “O Prince of True Believers, indeed I
did see it.” Hereat Harun was wroth with exceeding wrath and bade
summon the daughter of Kisra and when she came bade the twain be
beheaded saying, “Thou farest forth to do alms-deeds, and thou durst
display thy features to this fellow when thou drankest water at his
hand!” Hereat she turned her towards Alaeddin and replied, “Thou see
my face! Nay, this is but a lie that may work my death.” He
rejoined, “The Reed-pen wrote what ’twas bidden write![110] I
designed to say:—Verily I beheld naught of her and my tongue ran as
it did the sooner to end our appointed life-term.” Then having set
the twain upon the rug of blood the Sworder bound their hands and
tearing off a strip from their skirts bandaged their eyes,
whereafter he walked around them and said, “By leave of the
Commander of the Faithful;” and Harun cried, “Smite!” Then the
Headsman paced around them a second time saying, “By leave of the
Commander of the Faithful,” and Harun again cried, “Smite!” But when
the executioner did in like manner for the third and last time[111]
quoth he to Alaeddin, “Hast thou haply in heart aught of regret or
requirement that I may fulfil it to thee? Ask of me anything save
release, ere the Commander of the Faithful say the word and
forthright thy head fall before thy feet?” “I desire,” quoth the
Chamberlain, “that thou unbind this bandage from mine eyes so may I
look one latest look at the world and at my friends, after which do
thou work thy will.” The Sworder granted this and Alaeddin glanced
first to the right where he saw none to aidance dight, and then to
the left where he found all favour reft; and the spectators each and
every hung their heads groundwards for awe of the Caliph, nor did
any take upon himself to utter a kindly word. Whereupon the
Chamberlain cried out his loudest saying, “A counsel, O Commander of
the Faithful!” and Harun regarding him asked, “What is it thou
counsellest?” “A respite of three days’ space,” rejoined the
condemned, “when thou shalt see a marvel, indeed a miracle of
miracles;” and the Caliph retorted, “After the third day, an I see
not as thou sayest I will assuredly smite thy neck;” and bade them
bear him back to gaol. But when the appointed term ended, the Caliph
sprang up and in his impatience to see what would befal him donned a
dress distinctive of his new calling,[112] and thrusting his feet
into coarse shoon and high of heel[113] and binding about his brows
a honey-coloured turband[114] he hent in hand a pellet-bow[115] and
slung its case over his shoulders: he also took gold in pouch and
thus equipped he left the palace. Then, as he roamed about the lanes
of Baghdad and her highways, giving alms and saying in his mind,
“Haply may I sight the wonder which the Chamberlain Alaeddin
announced to me,” it befel about mid-forenoon (and he still walking)
that behold, a man came forth from the Kaysaríyah[116] or chief mart
of the merchants crying aloud, “This be a marvel, nay a miracle of
miracles.” So the Caliph questioned him saying, “What be this wonder
thou hast seen?” and he answered, “Within yon Kaysariyah is a woman
who reciteth the Koran even as it was brought down,[117] and albeit
she have not ceased declaiming from the hour of the dawn-prayer
until this time, yet hath none given her a single dirham: no, nor
even one mite;[118] and what strangeness can be stranger than this I
tell thee?” The Caliph, hearing his words entered the mart wherein
he descried an ancient dame sitting and reciting the Koran and she
had well nigh reached the end thereof. He was charmed with the
beauty of her lecture and stood there until she had finished it and
had blessed the by-standers, but when he glanced round he saw nobody
give her aught. So he thrust his hand into his pouch saying in his
mind, “Whatso[119] of coin remaineth in purse shall go to this
woman.” And he designed to gift her with the gold when suddenly the
old dame sprang from her seat and going to a merchant’s shop took
seat beside the man and said to him, “O my son, dost thou accept of
a fair young lady?” Said he, “Yea, verily,” and she continued, “Up
with thee and come that I show thee a thing whose like thou hast
never seen.” Now when the Caliph heard her words he said to himself,
“Look at yon foul old crone who playeth bawd when I held her to be a
devotee, a holy woman. Indeed I will not give her aught until I see
what work is wrought by these twain.” The trader then followed the
old woman to her home wherein both, youth and crone, entered and the
Caliph who pursued them also went in privily and took his station at
a stead whence he could see without being seen.[120] Then lo and
behold! the old trot called to her daughter who came forth from the
bower wherein she was, and the Caliph looking at this young lady
owned that he had never sighted amongst his women aught fairer than
this, a model of beauty and loveliness and brilliancy and perfect
face and stature of symmetric grace. Her eyes were black and their
sleepy lids and lashes were kohl’d with Babylonian witchery, and her
eyebrows were as bows ready to shoot the shafts of her killing
glances, and her nose was like unto the scymitar’s edge, and her
mouth for magical might resembled the signet-ring of Sulayman (upon
whom be The Peace!), and her lips were carnelians twain, and her
teeth union pearls and her mouth-dews sweeter than honey and more
cooling than the limpid fount; with breasts strutting from her bosom
in pomegranate-like rondure and waist delicate and hips of heavy
weight, and stomach soft to the touch as sendal with plait upon
plait, and she was one that excited the sprite and exalted man’s
sight even as said a certain poet in song of her like:—

Breeze-wavèd branch, full moon o’ murk or sun of undurn sheeny bright, ✿
Which is she hight who all the three hath might to place in pauper
plight, ah!
Where on the bending branch alight with grace of stature like to hers ✿
Tho’ be the branch by Zephyr deckt and in its ornaments bedight, ah!
And how can fellowèd be her brow with fullest moon that lights the darks
✿ When sun must borrow morning light from that fair forehead dazzling
bright, ah!
Were set in scales the fairest fair and balanced with a long compare ✿
Their boasts, thou haddest over-weight for beauty and their charms
were light, ah!

Now when he considered her straitly, she captured the whole of his
heart. But the young lady had not upon her clothes enough for
concealment, and here and there her body showed bare; so when she came
forth and espied the young man standing by the old woman she withdrew
into her bower and said to her mother, “Allah requite[121] thee for that
thou hast done. How can it be allowed thee by the Almighty to set me in
this state before a stranger?” “Hold thy peace,” said her parent; “man
is allowed to look, and if he have any art or part in the object looked
at ’tis well; but thereafter if he look without its being his lot, then
twere unlawful. This youth hath gazed upon thee, and if he prove to have
a portion in thee let him take it, otherwise he may wend his ways, nor
is there a flaw in aught of legal observance.” Hereat the Caliph’s heart
was cheered, for he knew that the ancient dame meant to marry the maid.
Anon quoth the old mother to the merchant, “Hast thou seen her?” and
quoth he, “Yes.” “Did she please thee?” asked the crone, and he answered
“Yea verily,” adding, “How much may be her actual marriage-settlement
and her contingent dower?” She replied, “The first shall consist of four
thousand dinars and the second shall be the same.” “This be overmuch,”
rejoined the youth, “and more than all my good; to wit, four thousand
gold pieces, the gift of which will send me forth to beg; but do thou
take of me a thousand dinars, and upon me be the arraying of the house
and the maiden’s raiment for another thousand; so will I do business and
trade with the remainder.” But the crone sware to him by Allah the
Almighty,[122] that an the four thousand failed of a single gold piece
he should never see of the damsel a single hair. He replied, “I have no
power thereto and—good day to both of you;” and he made for the door,
but the Caliph forewent him to the street and standing in a corner
suffered him to pass and gang his gait. After this Harun went back to
the old woman, and entering salam’d to her and she, returning his
salutation, asked him, “What dost thou want and what may be thy wish?”
He answered, “The young trader who went forth hence sent me to say that
he hath no intent to wed,” and she rejoined, “On this mind the man hied
away from us.” Then quoth the Caliph, “I will marry the maid, and by me
is all thou canst desire of gold and what not.” She retorted, “O
Robber,[123] all I see upon thee is not worth two hundred dirhams:
whence then canst thou procure four thousand dinars?” Quoth he, “Hast
thou grapes to sell, or wishest thou only to breed a quarrel between me
and the vineyard-keeper?”[124] and quoth she, “Doubtless I have and hold
the grapes.” “Then, I possess all thou canst desire,” said he, and said
she, “Then, we will wed thee when thou shalt have weighed out the gold.”
The Caliph cried, “I accept;” and anon entering the lodging he took seat
at the head of the chamber and in its place of honour, and said to the
house-mistress, “Go thou to Kází Such-an-one and tell him that
Al-Bundukáni requireth him.” “O Robber,” said she, “will the Kazi be
content to come at thy bidding?” The Commander of the Faithful laughed
at these words and said, “Do thou go without danger and bid him bring
his ink-case and pens and paper.” So she went off saying to herself,
“Verily, an the Judge accompany me, this my son-in-law must be a Captain
of Robbers.”[125] But when at last she arrived at the Kazi’s mansion she
saw him sitting in the middle of the room and surrounded by doctors of
divinity and a host of learned wights: so she feared to enter, and fell
to looking in through the doorway and she dreaded to fare farther and
stepped backwards; withal she kept saying, “How shall I go home without
speaking a word to the Kazi?” and the thought would hearten her heart,
so she would return to the entrance and thrust in her head and then
withdraw it. On such wise she had done many a time when the Kazi,
catching sight of her, bade one of his messengers bring her within; so
the man went to her and said, “Bespeak the Kazi!” So she went in full of
affright and salam’d to the Judge who, returning her salutation, asked
her, “What is thy want, O woman?” She answered, “There is a young man in
my house who desireth that thou come to him;” whereat he rejoined, “And
who may be this youth that I in person should hie to him; and what may
be his name?” She replied, “He pretendeth to the name of
Al-Bundukani—the Arbalestrier” (which was a by-name of the Caliph kept
concealed from the folk but well known to all officials). Hereat the
Kazi sprang to his feet without stay or delay and said to her, “O my
lady, do thou forego me,” whilst all present asked him, “O our lord,
whither away?” and he, answering them “A need hath suddenly occurred,”
went forth. Then quoth the crone in her mind, “Hapless the Kazi who is a
pleasant person, haply this son-in-law of mine hath given him to drink
of clotted gore[126] by night in some place or other and the poor man
hath yet a fear of him; otherwise what is the worth of this Robber that
the Judge should hie to his house?” When they reached the door, the Kazi
bade the ancient dame precede him;[127] so she went in and called to him
and he on entering saw the Caliph seated at the head of the chamber. He
would have kissed ground but Harun signed to him silence with a wink; so
he made his salam and sat him down saying, “’Tis well,[128] O my lord,
what may be thy want?” The Prince of True Believers replied, “I desire
thou marry me to the daughter of this ancient dame, so do thou write out
the writ.” Hereupon the Judge asked the assent of the old woman and of
her daughter; and, when they both granted it, he enquired, “What may be
the amount of the dower?” The mother replied, “Four thousand dinars of
gold and the like sum in ready coin.” “Dost thou accept?” quoth the Kazi
to the Caliph, and quoth he, “Yes.” Accordingly, the Judge wrote out the
writ upon the skirt of his Farajiyah-robe for in his agitation he had
forgotten to bring paper, and he set down the name of the Sovran and his
father and his grandfather without question for that he knew them well;
after which he enquired of the old woman her daughter’s name[129] and
that of her sire and grandsire. She wailed and cried, “Why and
wherefore?[130] Oh miserable that we are! Had her father been living how
would this Robber have availed to stand at our door, much less to marry
here? but ’twas Death that did with us this deed.” “Allah bless the
wronged,”[131] quoth the Kazi and busied himself with writing out the
writ; but whatever question he put to the crone, she wailed in reply and
buffeted her cheeks, whilst the Judge wagged his head and his heart was
like to burst and the Caliph laughed long and loud. And when the writ
was written and finished, the writer cut off from the skirt of his gown
according to the measure of the writing and gave it to Harun; then he
rose up to fare forth but he was ashamed to wear a robe in rags, so he
stripped it off and said to the old woman, “O my mother, present this to
anyone deserving it.” And so saying he left the house. Hereupon quoth
the old woman to the Caliph, “Dost thou not pay unto the Kazi his fee
for coming to thee in person and writing the writ upon his robe which he
was obliged to throw away?” “Let him go,” said the Caliph, “I will not
give him aught.” Cried she, “And why? Oh, how greedy are these robbers!
the man came to us in hopes of gain and we have stripped him instead of
robing him.” Harun laughed again, then he arose and said to her, “I now
hie me home to fetch thee the gold and the stuffs wherewith to clothe my
bride,” and the crone cried out, “O Robber, whence shalt thou find cloth
and coin? unhappy some one whom thou designest to seize and deprive of
his daily bread and reduce to poverty and penury!” The Commander of the
Faithful held his peace and went forth intending for his Palace, where
he donned the royal robes and taking seat upon his throne bade summon
marble-cutters and carpenters and plasterers and house-painters. Then,
as they came to the presence and kissed ground and blessed him and
prayed for the permanence of his empire, he had them thrown and bade
administer to them a bastinado of two hundred sticks a head.[132] And
when they prayed for mercy and said to him, “O our lord, the Commander
of the Faithful, what be our crime?” he said to the artizans, “The hall
such-and-such in the Darb-al-Záji,[133] do ye wot it well?” They
replied, “Yes,” and he resumed, “I desire that ye fare thither
forthright and ye repair the walls with marble-slabs and should
mid-afternoon come on and ye leave unfinished a place as big as a man’s
palm, I will hack off your hands and place them in lieu thereof.” “O
Prince of True Believers,” asked they, “how shall we do seeing that we
have no marble?”[134] He answered, “Take it from the government
stores[135] and collect each and every stone-cutter in Baghdad. But do
you all bear in mind that, if the household enquire who sent you, ye
must reply, Thy son-in-law; and should they demand, What is his craft,
say, We ken not; and when they require to know his name declare it to be
Al-Bundukani. And whoso of you shall speak aught beyond this him will I
crucify.” So the master-mason went forth and gathered together the
stone-cutters and took marble and ashlar from the stores and set the
material on the backs of beasts with all other needs and he repaired to
the hall,[136] and entered with his company. Hereat the old woman asked
“What is’t ye want?” “We would slab the floors and walls of this
dwelling with marble!” “And who was it sent you?” “Thy son-in-law!” “And
what may be his business?” “We know not.” “Then what is his name?”
“Al-Bundukani,” they replied. So she said to herself, “He is naught but
a Robber and Captain of thieves.” Then the masons divided and marked out
the ground, and each found that each and every had to pave and slab a
surface of a cubit or less. Such was their case; but as concerneth the
Caliph, he turned him to the chief Carpenter, and looking at him keenly
said, “Go thou likewise and assemble all thy fellows in the capital:
then do thou repair to the dwelling of Such-an-one and make the doors
and so forth, in fact everything needed of carpentry and joinery, taking
thee all the requisites from the public warehouses; nor let the
afternoon come on ere thou shalt have finished, and if all be not done I
will strike thy neck.” He also charged them even as he had charged the
marble-cutters never to divulge his dignity or even his name other than
Al-Bundukani. So the chief Carpenter went and, gathering his craftsmen,
took planks and nails and all his needs, after which they repaired to
the lodging and entered, and setting up their scaffoldings[137] fell to
work while the head man marked off a task for each hand. But the crone
was consterned and cried to the men, “And why? Who hath sent you?” “Thy
son-in-law!” “And what may be his trade?” “We know not.” “Then what may
be his name?” “Al-Bundukani.” So they pushed on their work, each urging
his fellow, whilst the old woman well-nigh waxed Jinn-mad,[138] and said
to herself, “This my son-in-law, the Robber, is naught save a viceroy of
the Jánn; and all this is of their fear, so that none dareth or deemeth
it safe to disclose the craft or even the name of him, so much do they
hold him in awe.” Lastly, the Caliph bade the plasterers and
house-painters call a meeting of their brother-craftsmen and go to the
government stores and thence take all their requirements of quicklime
and hemp[139] and so forth; and lastly, charging them as he had charged
the others who forewent them, he said, “As soon as the Izán of
mid-afternoon prayer shall be cried, if any one of you shall have left
in the lodging work unwrought, be it only the size of a man’s palm, I
will hack off his hand and set it upon the unfinished stead.”
Accordingly, they kissed ground and fared forth carrying with them all
their requirements; and, repairing to the tenement, entered therein and
slaked their lime and set up their ladders, and four or five artificers
fell to working at every wall whilst the house-painters followed them.
But when the ancient dame beheld this, her wits were wildered and she
was utterly bedazed: so said she to her daughter, “This son-in-law of
mine is none save one whose word is heard, and folk abide in awe of him;
otherwise who could work all this work in a single day whenas none other
than himself could have wrought the same within a twelvemonth? But pity
’tis he be a Robber.” Anon she went to the plasterers and said, “Who was
it sent you?” “Thy son-in-law!” “And what may be his trade?” “We know
not.” “Then what is his name?” “Al-Bundukani.” After this she passed on
to the house-painters and asked the same question and receiving the same
reply, quoth she to one of them, “I demand of thee, by God the Great, O
my son, why thou wilt not disclose to me concerning my son-in-law his
name and his craft?” Thereupon quoth the wight addressed, “No man hath
power to speak out, otherwise his life is lost;” and she repeated to
herself, “Indeed he is none but a mighty Robber, for that the Moslems
one and all dread him and his mischief.”[140] Now when mid-afternoon
came, the artizans had done the whole of their work; so they donned
their outer dresses and went forth intending for the Commander of the
Faithful, Harun the Orthodox. And when they entered all kissed ground
and said, “Under the good auspices of our lord the Prince of True
Believers we have wroughten the work of the house.” So he bestowed robes
of honour upon them and gave them gifts that contented them, after which
they fared forth about their business. Then the Caliph summoned Hammáls
or porters and set in their crates articles of furniture such as carpets
and counterpanes and sofa-cushions and hangings of arras and
prayer-rugs, besides gear of brass and all such necessaries for the
household; and to this he added two baskets containing body-raiment and
kimcob or gold cloth and stuffs inworked and studded with gems; also
jewellery and precious stones, pearls and what not: nor did he forget a
coffer containing the eight thousand pieces of gold.[141] Then he sent
them upon their errand, saying, “Take up all this and bear it to such a
house in the Darb al-Zaji and make it over to the ancient dame who
owneth the hall; and when she asketh, Who was it sent you? do ye answer,
Thy son-in-law; and should she enquire, What is his craft? respond, We
know it not; and should she demand the name, declare Al-Bundukani.”
Accordingly the porters fared forth, and reaching the tenement rapped at
the door, when the old woman came out and cried, “Who knocketh here?”
and they replied, “Open and take what we have brought of cloth and
clothes and so forth.” But when she looked upon the loads she wailed and
cried, “Indeed ye have wandered from the way: whence could all this
prosperity have befallen us? return with it to the owner thereof.” They
asked her, “Is not this hall that which was builded this day?” And when
she answered, “Yes,” quoth they, “Then ’twas hither thy son-in-law sent
us.” With these words they went in and set down whatso was with them,
but the old woman wailed and cried aloud, “’Tis not for us: ye have
wandered from your way.” “It is for you, indeed,” they rejoined, “and
thy son-in-law saith:—Adorn your dwelling and don the stuffs and dress
therewith whomso you choose: as for him, he hath much business yet will
he come to you what time the folk sleep.” “Yes, indeed,” quoth she to
herself, “Robbers never do come save by night.” And when the Hammals
went their ways the old woman fared forth to her neighbours and summoned
them to assist her in ranging the furniture and _vaiselle_;[142] so they
gathered together and entered; and, when they beheld what had befallen,
their eyes were dazed and dazzled by seeing the restoration of the hall
and by the stuffs and vases therein. So they asked her, “Whence camest
thou by all this, and who set for thee this dwelling in such condition
and at what time? Yesterday ’twas a ruin and showed neither marble nor
whitewash nor stencilling. Can it not be that we are sleeping and haply
that we see a dream-house?” She replied, “No vision is this, but
evidence of eye-sight: and what work ye behold was wrought by my
son-in-law during this one day and to-day also he sent me these stuffs
and other matters whereon ye look.” “And who may be thy son-in-law?”
asked they, “and when didst thou wed thy daughter while we wotted naught
thereof?” Answered she, “To-day all this happened;” and they rejoined,
“And what may be the bridegroom’s calling? haply he is a mighty merchant
or an Emir.” “Nor merchant nor Emir,” quoth she, “but a Robber and the
Head and Captain of Bandits!” Hereat the women were startled and cried,
“Allah upon thee, do thou charge him anent us that he plunder not aught
from our houses, seeing that we have a claim of neighbourhood and
gossipry upon you.” “Never fear,” she replied, “he is not wont to take
aught of neighbours albeit he be a Viceregent of the Jann.” So their
hearts were heartened, and they fell to ordering the furniture and
decorations; and, when they had ended the ordinance of the house, they
applied themselves to dressing the bride; and they brought her a
tirewoman and robed her in the finest robes and raiment and prepared her
and adorned her with the choicest ornaments. And while they did thus
behold, up came other porters carrying crates of meat, such as
pigeon-poults and poultry, Katás,[143] and quails,[144] lambs and
butcher’s meat, clarified butter and other cooking material, with all
manner of edibles and delicacies such as sugar and Halwá-confections and
the like thereof. The Hammals then said to the household, “Take ye this
which your son-in-law hath sent to you saying:—Do ye eat and feed your
neighbours and whomso ye please.” Quoth the old woman, “I ask you, for
Allah’s sake, to let me know what may be my son-in-law’s craft and his
name;” and quoth they, “His name is Al-Bundukani, but what his business
may be we know not;” and so saying they went their ways. Hereupon
exclaimed certain of the women who were present, “By the Apostle, he is
naught but a robber;” while others who had claims upon the old
house-mistress cried, “Be whatever may be, before the man who can do
after this fashion all the folk in Baghdad are helpless.” Presently they
served the provision and all ate their sufficiency; then they removed
the trays and set on others loaded with the confections which they also
enjoyed; and at last after dividing the orts amongst the neighbours they
reserved some of the best of meats and sweetmeats for the bridegroom’s
supper. In due time a report was bruited about the quarter that the old
woman had wedded her daughter with a robber who had enriched them with
what booty he had brought them. And these tidings spread from folk to
folk till they reached the young merchant of whom mention hath been
made, the same who had sought the maiden to wife and who had not wedded
her because refused by her mother. Also he was told that the damsel had
been married to a robber who had rebuilt the hall with marble, and the
plasterers and painters and carpenters and joiners had wrought therein
works which astounded the beholders; moreover that the bridegroom had
sent them of stuffs and jewellery a matter beyond count or compute.
Hearing this report he found the matter grievous on him and the fire of
envy flamed in his heart and he said to himself, “Naught remaineth to me
except that I wend me to the Wálí[145] and tempt him with promises and
thereby work the ruin of this robber and take the damsel to myself.”
With these words he rose up sans stay or delay and, going to the Chief
of Police related to him all that occurred and promised him a muchel of
money saying, “Whatso thou wantest can be gotten from this robber
inasmuch as he owneth good galore.” The Wali rejoiced and replied, “Be
patient until after supper-tide when the thief shall have returned home
and we will go and catch him and thou shalt carry away the young lady.”
So the trader blessed him and took himself off and waited at home until
it was supper-time and the streets were void of folk. Presently
Názúk[146] the Wali mounted horse with four hundred headsmen and smiters
of the sword, link-boys and low fellows,[147] bearing cressets and
paper-lanthorns under four head constables and rode to the house of the
old woman. Now all the gossips had departed to their abodes and were
dispersed, nor did one of them remain behind; but the household had
lighted wax candles and was expecting the bridegroom with bolted doors
when behold, the Chief of Police came up and finding all shut bade his
men knock with an easy rap. This was heard by those within the hall and
the ancient dame sprang up and went to the entrance, whence she espied
gleams of light athwart the door-chinks and when she looked out of the
window she saw the Wali and his merry men crowding the street till the
way was cut. Now the Chief had a lieutenant Shamámah[148] hight, which
was a meeting-place of ill manners and morals; for naught was dearer to
him save the straitening of a Moslem, nor was there upon his body a
single hair which affected or aided the veiling of Allah.[149] Brief he
was, even as the poet said:—

Whoreson and child of thousand pagans twain; ✿ Son of the Road to
lasting sin and bane;
The Lord of Ruth ne’er grew him e’en a hair ✿ Was not with this or that
of contact fain![150]

Now this man, who was standing beside the Chief of Police, seized the
opportunity of saying, “O Emir, what booteth our standing idle in this
stead? Better ’twere that we break down the door and rush in upon them
and snatch what we want and loot all the stuffs in the house.” Hereat
came forward another lieutenant who was called Hasan[151]—the
Handsome—for that his face was fair and his works were fairer and he was
a meeting-place of fairest deeds; and the same was wont to stand at the
Wali’s door as a symbol of ruth to mankind. So he came forward and said,
“O Emir, this were not the rede which is right and yonder man’s words
lack good counsel, seeing that none hath complained against this folk
and we know not an the accused be a thief or not: furthermore we fear
consequences for that haply this merchant speaketh with an object, they
having forbidden his marrying the girl: do not therefore cast thyself
into that shall harm thee, but rather let us enquire anent the matter
openly and publicly; and should it prove to be as reported, then the
Emir’s opinion shall prevail.” All this took place while the old woman
heard from behind the door whatso they said. Hereat she dried up with
dread and affright and going within acquainted her daughter with what
had occurred and ended with, “The Wali still is standing at the door.”
The young lady was sore terrified and said to her mother, “Do thou
bar[152] the entrance till Allah haply deign bring us comfort.” So the
old woman fared forth and bolted and barred it yet more straitly; and
when they knocked a second time she acknowledged the rap by “Who is at
the door?” and the lieutenant Shamamah replied to her and said, “O
ill-omened old woman, O accomplice of robbers, knowest thou not that he
who rappeth is the Master of Police and his young men? So open to us
forthright.” Quoth she, “We be Haríms and ne’er a man with us, therefore
we will not open to any;” and quoth he, “Open, or we will break it
down.” The old woman made no reply but returning to her daughter within
said to her, “Now look at this Robber and how from the first of this
night we have been humbled for his sake: yet had he fallen into this
trap his life had been taken, and would Heaven he may not come now and
be made prisoner by them. Ah me! Were thy father on life the Wali never
had availed to take station at our house-door or the door of any other.”
“Such be our lot,” replied the girl, and she went to the casement that
she might espy what was doing. This is how it fared with them; but as
concerneth the Caliph, when the folk had finished crowding the streets
he disguised himself and hending in hand his pellet-bow and slinging his
sword over his shoulder he went forth intending for his bride. But when
reaching the head of the street he saw lanthorns and stir of crowd[153]:
so he approached to look and he espied the Wali and his men with the
merchant standing by the Chief’s side together with the lieutenants, all
save one shouting, “Break down the door and rush in and seize the old
woman: then let us question her with torture until she confess where be
her Robber of a son-in-law.” But Hasan the fourth officer dissuaded them
saying, “O good folk, do ye fear Almighty Allah and be not over hasty,
saving that hurry is of old Harry. These be all women without a man in
the house; so startle them not; and peradventure the son-in-law ye seek
may be no thief and so we fall into an affair wherefrom we may not
escape without trouble the most troublous.” Thereupon Shamamah came up
and cried out, “O Hasan, it ill becometh thee to stand at the Wali’s
door: better ’twere for thee to sit on the witness-bench; for none
should be gate-keepers to a head policeman save they who have abandoned
good deeds and who devour ordure[154] and who ape the evil practices of
the populace.” All this and the Caliph overheard the fellow’s words and
said to himself, “’Tis well! I will indeed gladden thee, O Accurst.”
Then he turned and espied a street which was no thoroughfare, and one of
its houses at the upper end adjoined the tenement wherein was his bride;
so he went up to it and behold, its gateway showed a curtain drawn
across and a lamp hung up and an Eunuch sitting upon the door-bench. Now
this was the mansion of a certain noble who was lord over a thousand of
his peers and his name was the Emir Yúnas[155]: he was an angry man and
a violent; and on the day when he had not bastinado’d some wight he
would not break his fast and loathed his meat for the stress of his
ill-stomach. But when the Eunuch saw the Caliph he cried out at him and
sprang up to strike him exclaiming, “Woe to thee! art thou Jinn-mad?
Whither going?” But the Commander of the Faithful shouted at him saying,
“Ho! thou ill-omened slave!” and the chattel in his awe of the Caliphate
fancied that the roar was of a lion about to rend him and he ran off and
entered the presence of his owner quivering with terror. “Woe to thee!”
said his master; “what hath befallen thee?” and he, “O my lord, the
while I was sitting at the gate suddenly a man passed up the street and
entered the house-door; and, when I would have beaten him, he cried at
me with a terrible voice saying:—Ho, thou ill-omened slave! So I fled
from him in affright and came hither to thee.” Now when the Emir Yunas
heard his words, he raged with such excessive rage that his soul was
like to leave his body and he cried out saying, “Since the man addressed
thee as ‘ill-omened slave,’ and thou art my chattel, I therefore am
servile and of evil-omen. But indeed I will show him his solace!” He
then sprang to his feet and hent in hand a file-wrought mace[156]
studded with fourteen spikes, wherewith had he smitten a hill he had
shivered it; and then he went forth into the street muttering, “I
ill-omened!”[157] But the Caliph seeing him recognised him straitway and
cried, “Yunas!” whereat the Emir knew him by his voice, and casting the
mace from his hand kissed ground and said “’Tis well, O Commander of the
Faithful!” Harun replied, “Woe to thee, dog! whilst thou art the Chief
of the Emirs shall this Wali, of men the meanest, come upon thy
neighbours and oppress them and terrify them (these being women and
without a man in the house), and yet thou holdest thy peace and sittest
in ease at home nor goest out to him and ejectest him by the foulest of
ejections?” Presently the other replied, “O Prince of True Believers,
but for the dread of thee lest thou say:—This be the warder of the
watch, why hast thou exceeded with him?, I would have made for him a
night of the fulsomest, for him and for those with him. But an the
Caliph command I will forthright break them all to bits nor leave
amongst them a sound man; for what’s the worth of this Wali and all his
varlets?” “First admit us to thy mansion,” quoth the Commander of the
Faithful; so they passed in and the housemaster would have seated his
visitor for the guest-rite but he refused all offers and only said,
“Come up with us to the terrace-roof.” Accordingly they ascended and
found that between it and the dwelling of the bride was but a narrow
lane; whereupon quoth the Caliph, “O Yunas, I would find a place whence
I can look down upon these women.” “There is no other way,” quoth the
other, “save herefrom; and, if thou desire, I will fetch thee a
ladder[158] and plant it in such wise that thou canst pass across.” “Do
so,” rejoined the other, and the Emir bringing a ladder disposed it
after bridge fashion that the Caliph crossed over the lane to the house
on the other side. Then quoth he, “Go sit thee in thy stead, and when I
want thee I will call.” Yunas did as he was bidden and remained on the
watch for his lord’s summons. But the Prince of True Believers walked
over the terrace-roof with the lightest tread and not audible, lest his
footsteps frighten the inmates, till he came to the parapet[159] and
looking adown therefrom upon the hall he saw a site like the Garden of
Paradise which had been newly pranked and painted, whilst the lighted
wax-candles and candelabra showed the young lady, the bride, sitting
upon her bedstead adorned with gems and jewellery. She was like a Sun
shedding sheen in sky serene, or a full moon at the fullest seen, with
brow flower-bright and eyes black and white and beauty-spots fresh as
greenth to the sight; brief she was as one of whom the poet saith:—

She’s a wonder! her like none in universe see, ✿ For beauty and graces
and softest blee:
That fairest of blossoms she blooms on earth ✿ Than gardens the
sheeniest sheenier she:
And soft is the rose of her cheek to the touch ✿ ’Twixt apple’s and
Eglantine’s lenity,

And the forelock-falls on the brow of her ✿ Death-doom to the World and
the Faith decree;
And she shames the branchlet of Basil when ✿ She paces the Garden so
fair and free.
An water doubted her soft sweet gait ✿ She had glided with water o’er
greenery:
When she walketh the world like the Húr al-Ayn[160] ✿ By the tongue of
looks to her friends say we:—
“O Seeker, an soughtest the heart of me ✿ Heart of other thou never
hadst sought for thee:
O lover, an filled thee my love thou ne’er ✿ ’Mid lovers hadst dealt me
such tyranny.”
Praise Him who made her an idol for man ✿ And glory to Him who to her
quoth “BE!”

The Caliph was astonishment-struck at what he sighted of her beauty and
loveliness whilst her mother stood before her saying, “O my child, how
shall be our case with these tyrants,[161] especially we being women and
sans other recourse save Allah Almighty? Would Heaven I wot whence came
to us this Robber who, had thy sire been on life, would have been far
from able to stand at the door. But this is the doom of Destiny upon us
by God’s will.” Replied the young lady, “O mother mine, and how long
wilt thou put me to shame for this young man and call him ‘Robber,’ this
whom the Almighty hath made my portion; and haply had he been a good man
and no thief he had been given to some other?[162] However he is my lot,
and lauds to the Lord and gratitude for that He hath bestowed and made
my portion.” When the ancient dame heard these words she pursued, “I
hope to Heaven, O my daughter, that thy portion may not come hither this
night, otherwise sore I fear they will seize him and do him a harm and
well-away for his lost youthtide!” All this took place between mother
and daughter whilst the Caliph stood upon the terrace-roof listening to
their say and presently he picked up a pebble the size of a
vetchling[163] and, setting it between his thumb and forefinger, jerked
it at the wax candle which burned before the young lady and extinguished
the light. “Who put out yon taper?” cried the old woman, “and left the
others afire?” and so saying she rose and lighted it again. But Harun
took aim at that same and jerking another pebble once more extinguished
it and made her exclaim, “Ah me! what can have put out this also?” and
when the quenching and quickening were repeated for the third time she
cried with a loud voice saying, “Assuredly the air must have waxed very
draughty and gusty; so whenever I light a candle the breeze bloweth it
out.” Hereat laughed the young lady and putting forth her hand to the
taper would have lit it a third time when behold, her finger was struck
by a pebble and her wits fled her head. But as the mother turned towards
the terrace-wall the first glance showed to her sight her son-in-law
there sitting, so she cried to her daughter, “O my child, behold thy
bridegroom whence he cometh unto thee, but robbers arrive not save by
the roof, and had he not been a housebreaker he would have entered by
the door. However Alhamdolillah that he hath chosen the way of our
terrace, otherwise they had captured him;” presently adding “Woe to
thee, O miserable, fly hence or the watch at the door shall seize thee
and we women shall not avail to release thee after thou fallest into
their hands; nor will any have ruth upon thee; nay, they will cut off at
least one of thine extremities. So save thyself and vanish so as not to
lapse into the grip of the patrol.” But hearing these her words he
laughed and said to her, “Do thou open to me the terrace-wicket that I
come down to you and see how to act with these dogs and dog-sons.” She
replied, “Woe to thee, O miserable, deemest thou these be like unto that
poor Kazi who snipped his gown in fear of thee: he who now standeth at
the door is Nazuk Wali and hast thou authority over him also?” He
repeated, “Open to me that I may come down, otherwise I will break in
the door;” so she unbolted the terrace-wicket and he descended the
stairs and entered the hall where he took seat beside his bride and
said, “I am an-hungered: what have ye by way of food?” The ancient dame
cried, “And what food shall go down grateful to thy stomach and pleasant
when the police are at the door?” and he replied, “Bring me what ye have
and fear not.” So she arose and served up to him whatso remained of meat
and sweetmeat and he fell to morselling[164] them with mouthfuls and
soothing them with soft words till they had their sufficiency of
victual, after which she, the mother-in-law, removed the tray. Meanwhile
the Chief of Police and his varlets stood shouting at the door and
saying, “Open to us otherwise we will break in.” Presently quoth the
Caliph to the old trot, “Take this seal-ring and go thou forth to them
and place it in the Wali’s hands. An he ask thee, Who is the owner of
this signet? answer thou, Here is he with me; and if he enquire of thee,
What doth he wish and what may he want? do thou reply, He requireth a
ladder of four rungs and its gear, not forgetting a bundle of rods;[165]
also do thou, O man, enter with four of thy lieutenants and see what
else he demandeth.” When the ancient dame heard this from him she
exclaimed, “And doth the Wali also dread thee or fear this seal-ring? My
only fear is that they may now seize me and throw me and beat me with a
bastinado so painful that it will be the death of me, and they hearken
not to a word of mine, nor suffer thee to avail me aught.” Rejoined the
Caliph, “Be not alarmed, he shall not be able to gainsay my word;” and
she, “An the Wali fear thee and give ear to thee, then will I gird my
loins and suffer thee to teach me something of thy craft even were it
that of robbing slaves’ shoon.” “Go forth without affright,” said he
laughing at her words, whereupon she took the seal-ring and went as far
as behind the door and no farther, muttering to herself, “I will not
open it wholly but only a little so as to give them the signet; then if
they hearken to what saith this Robber ’tis well, otherwise I will keep
the bolt fastened as it was.” Presently she went forward and addressed
the watch saying, “What is it ye want?” and Shamamah cried in reply, “O
ill-omened old baggage, O rider of the jar,[166] O consorter of thieves,
we want the robber who is in thy house that we may take him and strike
off his hand and his foot; and thou shalt see what we will do with thee
after that.” She shrank from his words, but presently she heartened her
heart and said to him, “Amongst you is there any who can read a whit?”
“Yes,” said the Wali, and she rejoined, “Take thou this seal-ring and
see what be graven thereupon and what may be its owner’s name.”
“Almighty Allah curse him,” cried the lieutenant Shamamah, presently
adding to the Wali, “O Emir, as soon as the old crone shall come forth I
will throw her and flog her with a sore flogging; then let us enter the
door and slay her and harry the house and seize the robber; after which
I will inspect the signet and find out its owner and who sendeth it;
then, if this be one of whom we stand in shame we will say, Indeed we
read not its graving before the command was somewhat rashly carried out.
On this wise none may avail to molest us or thee.” Hereupon he drew near
the door and cried to her, “Show me that thou hast, and perhaps the
sending it may save thee.” So she opened one leaf of the door sufficient
to thrust out her hand and gave him the ring which he took and passed to
the Chief of Police. But when the Wali had considered and read the name
engraved (which was that of the Commander of the Faithful Harun the
Orthodox), his colour waxed wan and his limbs quaked with fear. “What is
to do with thee?” asked Shamamah, and the other answered, “Take and
look!” The man hent the ring in hand and coming forward to the light
read what was on it and understood that it was the signet of the Vicar
of Allah. So a colick[167] attacked his entrails and he would have
spoken but he could stammer only “Bí, Bí, Bí”[168] whereupon quoth the
Master of Police, “The rods of Allah are descending upon us, O accurst,
O son of a sire accurst: all this is of thy dirty dealing and thy greed
of gain: but do thou address thy creditor[169] and save thyself alive.”
Hereat quoth Shamamah, “O my lady, what dost thou require?” and quoth
she to herself, “Indeed I am rejoiced for that they dread my
son-in-law;” and presently she spoke aloud to him and said, “The lord of
the seal-ring demandeth of thee a ladder of four rungs, a bundle of rods
and cords and a bag containing the required gear,[170] also that the
Wali and his four lieutenants go within to him.” He replied, “O my lady
chief of this household, and where is he the owner of the signet?” “Here
is he seated in the hall,” she replied and the Wali rejoined, “What was
it he said to thee?” She then repeated the command about the Wali and
the men and the bag, whereat he asked again concerning the whereabouts
of the signet-owner and declared the gear to be ready, while all of them
bepiddled their bag-trousers with fear.[171] Then the Wali and his four
lieutenants, amongst whom was Shamamah the Accurst, entered the house,
and the Caliph commanded lieutenant Hasan (knowing him for a kindly man
of goodly ways and loath to injure his neighbour as proved by his
opposing the harshness of Shamamah), saying, “Hie thee, O Hasan, and
summon forthright Yunas the Emir of a thousand!” So this lord came in
all haste[172] and was bidden to bastinado the Wali and Shamamah which
he did with such good will that the nails fell from their toes; after
which they were carried off and thrown into gaol. Then the Caliph
largessed lieutenant Hasan; and, appointing him on the spot Chief of
Police, dismissed the watch to their barracks. And when the street was
cleared the old woman returning to the Harem said to her son-in-law,
laughing the while, “There be none in this world to fellow thee as the
Prince of Robbers! The Wali dreadeth thee and the Kazi dreadeth thee and
all dread thee, whilst I gird my loins in thy service and become a
she-robber amongst the women even as thou art a Robber amongst men, and
indeed so saith the old saw:—The slave is fashioned of his lord’s clay
and the son after the features of his sire. Had this Wali, at his first
coming, let break down the door and had his men rushed in upon us and
thou not present, what would have been our case with them? But now to
Allah be laud and gratitude!” The Caliph hearing these words laughed,
and taking seat beside his bride, who rejoiced in him, asked his
mother-in-law, “Say me, didst ever see a Robber who bore him on this
wise with the Wali and his men?” and answered she, “Never, by the life
of thee, but may Allah Almighty reprehend the Caliph for that he did by
us and punish him for wronging us, otherwise who was it forwarded thee
to us, O Robber?” Quoth the Commander of the Faithful in his mind, “How
have I wronged this ill-omened old woman that she curseth me?” and
presently he asked her, “And wherein hath the Caliph done thee an
injury?” She replied, “And what hath the Caliph left us of livelihood
and so forth when he marauded our mansion and seized all our seisins?
Even this hall was part of the plunder and they laid it waste after
taking from it all they could of marble and joinery and what-not; and
they left us paupers, as thou sawest, without aught wherewith to veil us
and naught to eat. So had it not been that Almighty Allah favoured us
with thyself, O Robber, we had been of the destroyed by famine and so
forth.” “And wherefore did the Caliph plunder you?” asked he, “And what
was the cause of his so doing?” She answered,[173] “My son was a
Chamberlain of the Commander of the Faithful, and one day as he was
sitting in this our home two women asked him for a draught of water
which he gave to them. Presently the elder brought him a porcelain
charger full of pancakes with the tidings that it had been sent as a
return gift from the young lady her companion who had drunk from his
hand; and he replied, Set it down and wend thy ways, which she did.
Presently as my son sat outside his door, the Watchman came up to offer
blessings on the occasion of the Greater Festival and he gave him the
charger and the man fared forth; but ere an hour had sped, folk came who
marauded our mansion, and seizing my son, carried him before the Caliph,
who demanded of him how the charger had come to his hands. He told him
what I have told thee, and the Commander of the Faithful asked him:—Say
me sawest thou aught of the charms of the young lady? Now my son had on
his lips to say No, but his tongue foreran him and he stammered out,
Yes, I espied her face, without really having seen her at all, for that
when drinking she had turned to the wall. The Caliph hearing this
hapless reply summoned the lady and bade smite both their necks, but in
honour of the Festival-eve he had them carried off to prison. Such be
then the reason of the wrong by the Caliph wrought, and except for this
injustice and his seizure of my son, O Robber, it had been long ere thou
hadst wedded my daughter.” When the Prince of True Believers heard the
words of her, he said in his mind, “Verily I have oppressed these
unhappies!” and he presently asked her, “What wilt thou say if I cause
the Caliph to free thy son from gaol and robe him and return his fiefs
to him and promote him in the Chamberlain’s office and return him to
thee this very night?” Hereat the old woman laughed and made answer,
“Hold thy peace! This one is no Chief of Police that he fear thee and
thou work on him whatso thou willest: this one is the Prince of True
Believers Harun al-Rashid, whose behest is heard both in Orient and in
Occident, the lord of hosts and armies, one at whose gate the lowest
menial is higher in degree than the Wali. Be not therefore beguiled by
whatso thou hast done, nor count the Caliph as one of these lest thou
cast thyself into doom of destruction, and there be an end of thy
affair, while we unfortunates abide without a man in the house, and my
son fail of being righted by him who wronged him.” But when the
Commander of the Faithful heard these words, his eyes brimmed with tears
for ruth of her; then, rising without stay or delay, he would have fared
forth when the old woman and the young lady hung about his neck crying,
“We adjure thee, by Almighty Allah, that thou draw back from this
business, for that we fear greatly on thy account.” But he replied,
“There is no help therefor,” and he made oath that perforce he must go.
Then he fared for the Palace of his kingship, and seating himself upon
the throne bade summon the Emirs and Wazirs and Chamberlains, who
flocked into the presence and kissed ground and prayed for him saying,
“’Tis well, Inshallah! and what may be the reason for calling us
together at this time o’ night?” Said he, “I have been pondering the
affair of Alaeddin the Emir, the Chamberlain, how I seized him
wrongfully and jailed him, yet amongst you all was not a single one to
intercede for him or to cheer him with your companionship.” They bussed
ground and replied, “Verily we were awe-struck by the majesty of the
Prince of True Believers; but now at this hour we implore of the
Commander of the Faithful his mercy upon his slave and chattel;” and so
saying, they bared their heads and kissing the floor did humble
obeisance. He replied, “I have accepted[174] your intercession on his
account, and I have vouchsafed to him pardon; so hie ye to him and robe
him with a sumptuous robe and bring him to me.” They did the bidding of
their lord and led the youth to the presence where he kissed ground and
prayed for the permanence of the Caliph’s rule; and the Sovran accepting
this clothed him in a coat whereon plates of gold were hammered[175] and
binding round his head a turband of fine gauze with richly embroidered
ends made him Chief Lord of the Right[176] and said to him, “Hie thee
now to thy home!” Accordingly he blessed the Prince and went forth
accompanied by all the Emirs who rode their blood-steeds, and the
Knights fared with him and escorted him in procession, with kettledrums
and clarions, till they reached his mansion. Here his mother and his
sister heard the hubbub of the multitude and the crash of the
kettledrums and were asking, “What is to do?” when the bearers of glad
tidings forewent the folk and knocked at the door saying, “We require of
you the sweetmeats of good news, for the Caliph hath shown grace to
Alaeddin the Chamberlain and hath increased his fiefs besides making him
Chief Lord of the Right.” Hearing this they rejoiced with joy exceeding
and gave to the messengers what satisfied them, and while they were
thus, behold, Alaeddin the son of the house arrived and entered therein.
His mother and sister sprang up and saluted him throwing their arms
round his neck and weeping for stress of gladness. Presently he sat down
and fell to recounting to them what had befallen him; but chancing to
look around he saw that the house had changed condition and had been
renovated; so he said, “O my mother, the time of my absence hath been
short and when was this lodging made new?” She replied, “O my son, what
day thou wast seized, they plundered our abode even to tearing up the
slabs and the doors, nor did they leave us aught worth a single dirham:
indeed we passed three days without breaking our fast upon aught of
victual.” Hearing this from her quoth he, “But whence cometh all this to
you, these stuffs and vessels and who was it rebuilded this house in a
space so short? Or haply is all this I see in the lands of dreams?” But
quoth she, “Nay, ’tis no vision but an absolute reality and ’twas all
done by my son-in-law in a single day.” “And who may be my new
brother-in-law?” he enquired, “and when didst thou give away my sister,
and who married her without my leave?”[177] “Hold thy peace, O my son,”
rejoined she, “but for him we had died of want and hunger!” “And what
may be his calling?” the Emir asked, and she answered, “A Robber!” But
when her son heard this he was like to choke with anger and he cried,
“What degree hath this robber that he become my brother-in-law? Now by
the tomb of my forbears I will assuredly smite his neck.” “Cast away
from thee such wild talk,” cried she, “for the mischief of another is
greater than thy mischief, withal naught thereof availed him[178] with a
man who wrought all thou seest in half a day.” Then she related to her
son what had befallen the Kazi and the Wali from the man and how he had
bastinado’d the police, showing him as she spoke the blood which had
poured from their bodies upon the floor for excess of flogging; and she
continued, “Presently I complained to him of my case, how the Commander
of the Faithful had seized thee and imprisoned thee when he said to
me:—At this very moment I fare to the Caliph and cause him to free thy
son and suffer him to return home; also to robe him and to increase his
fiefs; whereupon he went from us and after an hour, lo and behold! thou
appearedst; so but for him we had never seen thee any more.” When her
son heard these words, his wits were bewildered and he was confounded at
his case, so he asked her, “What may this man be styled and what may be
his name?” She answered, “We are ignorant an he have any name or not,
for however much we enquired of the marble-cutters and master artificers
and handicraftsmen, they told us only that his bye-name[179] is
Al-Bundukani without letting us know any other. Moreover on like wise
when he sent me to fetch the Kazi he bade me tell him that Al-Bundukani
had summoned him.” Now when the Emir Alaeddin heard her name
Al-Bundukani he knew that it was the Commander of the Faithful, nor
could he prevent himself springing to his feet and kissing ground seven
times; but as his mother beheld this she laughed and cried, “O thou
brawler,[180] ’tis as if he had met thee in the street and had given
thee to drink a draught of clotted blood, one beyond the common![181]
What of thy brave words when anon thou saidst:—I will smite his neck?”
“And dost thou know,” quoth he, “who may be the person thou so callest?”
and quoth she, “Who may he be?” “The Commander of the Faithful, the
Caliph Harun al-Rashid in person,” cried her son, “and what other could
have done with the Kazi and the Wali and the rest what he did?” When she
heard these words, she dried up with dread and cried, “O my son, set me
in a place of safety,[182] for he will suffer me no longer to cumber the
face of earth by reason of my often speaking at him; nor did I ever
cease to address him as ‘Robber.’” Now whilst they were speaking behold,
came up the Commander of the Faithful, whereat Alaeddin arose and kissed
ground and blessed him, but the ancient dame took to flight and hid her
in a closet. The Caliph seated himself, then he looked around and, not
seeing his mother-in-law, said to the Chamberlain, “And where may be thy
parent?” “She dreadeth,” replied Alaeddin, “and standeth in awe of the
Caliph’s majesty;” but Harun rejoined, “There is no harm for her.” Then
he bade her be summoned whereat she appeared and kissed ground and
prayed for the permanency of his kingship, and he said to her,
“Erewhiles thou girdest thy waist to aid me in stealing slaves’ shoon
and now thou fliest from thy teacher?” She blushed for shame and
exclaimed, “Pardon, O Commander of the Faithful,” and Harun
al-Rashid[183] replied, “May Allah pardon the Past.” Presently he sent
for the Princess, the daughter of the Chosroe and, summoning the Kazi,
forthright divorced her and gave her in marriage to Alaeddin, his
Chamberlain. Hereupon were spread bride-feasts which gathered together
all the Lords of the Empire and the Grandees of Baghdad, and tables and
trays of food were laid out during three successive days for the mesquin
and the miserable. The visit of entrance was paid by the two bridegrooms
on a single night when both went in unto their wives and took their joy
of them, and made perfect their lives with the liveliest enjoyment. And
ever after they passed the fairest of days till such time as came to
them the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies and all
passed away and died. So praise be to the Ever-Living who dieth not!

Such is the tale which came down to us
in completion and perfection,
and glory be to God, the
Lord of the three Worlds.
AMEN.

THE LINGUIST-DAME, THE DUENNA AND THE KING’S SON.

=We here begin,[184] with the aidance of Allah Almighty and indite the
History of the Tarjumanah[185] and the Kahramanah[186] and the young
man, the King’s Son, and whatso happed between them of controversy and
of contention and interrogation on various matters.=

It is related (but Allah is All-knowing anent what passed and preceded
us of the histories belonging to bygone peoples) that there reigned in a
city of Roum[187] a King of high degree and exalted dignity, a lord of
power and puissance. But this Sovran was issue-less, so he ceased not to
implore Allah Almighty that boon of babe might be vouchsafed to him and
presently the Lord had pity upon him and deigned grant him a man-child.
He bade tend the young Prince with tenderest tending, and caused him to
be taught every branch of knowledge, and the divine precepts of wisdom
and morals and manners; nor did there remain aught of profitable
learning wherein the Youth was not instructed; and upon this education
the King expended a mint of money. Now after the Youth grew up Time
rounded upon the Sovran his sire and his case was laid bare and he was
perplext as to himself and he wotted not whatso he should ever do.
Presently his son took heart to direct him aright, and asked, “O my
father, say me, wilt thou give ear to that wherewith I would bespeak
thee?” “Speak out,” quoth the King, “that is with thee of fair rede;”
and quoth the youth, “Rise, O my sire, that we depart this city ere any
be ware of our wending: so shall we find rest and issue from the straits
of indigence now closing around us. In this place there is no return of
livelihood to us and poverty hath emaciated us and we are set in the
sorriest of conditions than which naught can be sorrier.” “O my child,”
quoth his sire in reply, “admirable is this advice wherewith thou hast
advised us, O my son, pious and dutiful; and be the affair now upon
Allah and upon thee.” Hereupon the Youth gat all ready and arising one
night took his father and mother without any being cognisant; and the
three, entrusting themselves to the care of Allah Almighty, wandered
forth from home. And they ceased not wandering over the wilds and the
wolds till at last they saw upon their way a large city and a mighty
fine; so they entered it and made for a place whereat they alighted.
Presently the young Prince arose and went forth to stroll about the
streets and take his solace; and whilst he walked about he asked
concerning the city and who was its Sovran. They gave him tidings
thereof saying, “This be the capital of a Sultan, equitable and high in
honour amongst the Kings.” Hereupon returning to his father and mother,
quoth he to them, “I desire to sell you as slaves to this Sultan,[188]
and what say ye?” Quoth they, “We have committed our case to Almighty
Allah and then to thee, O our son; so do whatso thou wishest and judgest
good.” Hereat the Prince, repairing to the Palace, craved leave to enter
to the King and, having obtained such permission, made his obeisance in
the presence. Now when the Sultan looked upon him he saw that his
visitor was of the sons of the great, so he asked him, “What be thy
need, Ho thou the Youth?” and the other made answer, “O my lord, thy
slave is a merchant man and with me is a male captive, handy of
handicraft, God-fearing and pious and a pattern of honesty and honour in
perfect degree: I have also a bondswoman goodly in graciousness and of
civility complete in all thou canst command of bondswomen; these I
desire to vend, O my lord, to thy Highness, and if thou wouldst buy them
of thy servant they are between thy hands and at thy disposal, and we
all three are thy chattels.” When the King heard these pleasant words
spoken by the Youth, he said to him, “And where are they? Bring them
hither that I behold them; and, if they be such as thou informest me, I
will bid them be bought of thee!” Hereupon the Prince fared forth and
informed his parents of this offer and said to them, “Rise up with me
that I vend you and take from this Sultan your price wherewith I will
pass into foreign parts and win me wealth enough to redeem and free you
on my return hither. And the rest we will expend upon our case.” “O our
son,” said they, “do with us whatso thou wishest.” Anon,[189] the
parents arose and prepared to accompany him and the Youth took them and
led them into the presence of that Sultan where they made their
obeisance, and the King at first sight of them marvelled with extreme
marvel and said to them, “Are ye twain slaves to this young man?” Said
they, “Yes, O our lord;” whereupon he turned to the Youth and asked him,
“What be the price thou requirest for these two?” “O my lord,” replied
he, “give me to the price of this man slave, a mare saddled and bridled
and perfect in weapons and furniture;[190] and, as for this bondswoman,
I desire thou make over to me as her value, a suit of clothes, the
choicest and completest.” Accordingly the Sultan bade pay him all his
requirement, over and above which he largessed him with an hundred
dinars; and the Youth, after obtaining his demand and receiving such
tokens of the royal liberality, kissed the King’s hands and farewelled
his father and mother. Then he applied himself to travel, seeking
prosperity from Allah and all unknowing whither he should wend. And
whilst he was faring upon his wayfare he was met by a horseman of the
horsemen,[191] and they both exchanged salutations and welcomings, when
the stranger was highly pleased at the politeness of the King’s son and
the elegance of his expressions. Presently, pulling from his pocket a
sealed letter wrapt in a kerchief he passed it over to the Youth,
saying, “In very sooth, O my brother, affection for thee hath befallen
my heart by reason of the goodliness of thy manners and elegance of
thine address and the sweetness of thy language; and now I desire to
work thy weal by means of this missive.” “And what of welfare may that
be?” asked the Prince, whereto the horseman answered, “Take with thee
this letter and forthwith upon arriving at the Court of the King whither
thou art wending, hand to him this same; so shalt thou obtain from him
gain abundant and mighty great good and thou shalt abide with him in
degree of highmost honour. This paper (gifted to me by my teacher) hath
already brought me ample livelihood and prodigious profit, and I have
bestowed it upon thee by reason of thine elegance and good breeding and
thy courteousness in showing me respect.” Hereat the Youth, the son of
the King, answered him, “Allah requite thee with weal and grant thou
gain thy wish;” and so saying accepted the letter of that horseman with
honest heart and honourable intent, meditating in his mind, “Inshallah
ta’álà—an it be the will of God the Greatest I shall have good fortune
to my lot by the blessing of this epistle; then will I fare and set free
my father and my mother.” So the Prince resumed his route and he exulted
in himself especially at having secured the writ, by means whereof he
was promised abundant weal. Presently, it chanced that he became drowthy
with excessive drowth that waxed right sore upon him and he saw upon his
path no water to drink; and by the tortures of thirst he was like to
lose his life. So he turned round and looked at the mare he bestrode and
found her covered with a foam of sweat wholly unlike her wonted way.
Hereat dismounting he brought out the wrapper wherein the letter was
enrolled and loosing it he mopped up therewith his animal’s sweat and
squeezing it into a cup he had by him drank it off and found to his joy
that he was somewhat comforted. Then, of his extreme satisfaction with
the letter, he said to himself, “Would Heaven I knew that which is
within, and how the profit which the horseman promised should accrue to
me therefrom. So let me open it and see its contents that my heart may
be satisfied and my soul be joyed.” Then he did as he devised and
perused its purport and he mastered its meaning and the secret committed
to it, which he found as follows:—“O my lord, do thou straightway on the
arrival of him who beareth these presents slay him, nor leave him one
moment on life; because this Youth came to me and I entreated him with
honour the highmost that could be of all honouring, as a return for
which this traitor of the salt, this reprobate betrayed me in a daughter
that was by me. I feared to do him dead lest I come to shame amongst the
folk and endure disgrace, I and my tribe, wherefore I have forwarded him
to thy Highness that thou mayest torture him with torments of varied art
and end his affair and slaughter him, thus saving us from the shame
which befel us at the hands of this reprobate traitor.”[192] Now when
the young Prince read this writ and comprehended its contents, he
suspected that it was not written concerning him and he took thought in
himself, saying, “Would Heaven I knew what I can have done by this
horseman who thus seeketh diligently to destroy my life, for that this
one had with him no daughter, he being alone and wending his way without
any other save himself; and I made acquaintance with him nor passed
there between us a word which was unworthy or unmeet. Now this affair
must needs have one of two faces; to wit, the first, that such mishap
really did happen to him from some youth who favoureth me and when he
saw the likeness he gave me the letter; or, on the second count, this
must be a trial and a test sent to me from Almighty Allah, and praise be
to God the Great who inspired me to open this missive. At any rate I
thank the Most Highest and laud Him for His warding off the distress and
calamity descending upon me and wherefrom He delivered me.” Then the
young Prince ceased not wending over the wildest of wolds until he came
to a mighty grand city which he entered; and, hiring himself a lodging
in a Khan,[193] dismounted thereat; then, having tethered his mare and
fed her with a sufficiency of fodder, he fared forth to walk about the
thoroughfares. Suddenly he was met by an ancient dame who considered him
and noted him for a handsome youth and an elegant, tall of stature and
with the signs of prosperity showing manifest between his eyes. Hereat
he accosted her and questioned her of the city-folk and their
circumstances, whereto the old woman made reply with the following
purport, “Here in our city reigneth a King of exalted dignity and he
hath a daughter fair of favour, indeed the loveliest of the folk of her
time. Now she hath taken upon herself never to intermarry with any of
mankind unless it be one who can overcome her with instances and
arguments and can return a sufficient reply to all her questions; and
this is upon condition that, should he come off vanquisher he shall
become her mate, but if vanquished she will cut off his head, and on
such wise hath she done with ninety-and-nine men of the noblest blood,
as sons of the Kings and sundry others. Furthermore, she hath a towering
castle founded upon the heights that overfrown the whole of this city
whence she can descry all who pass under its walls.” As soon as the
young Prince heard these words from the old woman his heart was occupied
with the love of the King’s daughter and he passed that night as it were
to him the longsomest of nights, nor would he believe that the next morn
had morrowed. But when dawned the day and anon showed its sheen and
shone, he arose without let or stay and after saddling his mare mounted
her and turned towards the palace belonging to the King’s daughter; and
presently reaching it, took his station at the gateway. Hereat all those
present considered him and asked him saying, “What be the cause of thy
standing hereabouts?” whereto he answered, “I desire speech with the
Princess.” But when they heard these words, all fell to addressing him
with kindly words and courteous and dissuading him from his desire and
saying, “Ho thou beautiful youngling! fear[194] Allah and pity thyself
and have ruth upon thy youth; nor dare seek converse with this Princess,
for that she hath slain fourscore and nineteen men of the nobles and
sons of the kings and for thee sore we fear that thou shalt complete the
century.” The Prince, however, would not hear a word from them nor heed
their rede; neither would he be warned by the talk of others than they;
nay he persisted in standing at the Palace gateway. And presently he
asked admission to go in to the King’s daughter; but this was refused by
the Princess, who contented herself with sending forth to him her
Tarjumánah, her Linguist-dame, to bespeak him and say, “Ho thou fair
youth! art thou ready and longing to affront dangers and difficulties?”
He replied, “I am.” “Then,” quoth she, “hie thee to the King the father
of this Princess and show thyself and acquaint him with thine affair and
thine aim, after which do thou bear witness against thyself in presence
of the Kazi that an thou conquer his daughter in her propositions and
she fail of replying to a query of thine thou shalt become her mate;
whereas if she vanquish thee she shall lawfully cut off thy head,[195]
even as she hath decapitated so many before thy time. And when this is
done come thou back to us.” The Prince forthright fared for the monarch
and did as he was bidden; then he returned to the Linguist-dame and
reported all his proceedings before the King and eke the Kazi. After
this he was led in to the presence of the Princess and with him was the
afore-mentioned Tarjumánah who brought him a cushion of silk for the
greater comfort of his sitting; and the two fell to questioning and
resolving queries and problems in full sight of a large attendance.
Began the Tarjumanah, interpreting the words of her lady who was
present, “Ho thou the Youth! my mistress saith to thee, Do thou inform
me concerning an ambulant moving sepulchre whose inmate is alive.” He
answered and said, “The moving sepulchre is the whale that swallowed
Jonas (upon whom be the choicest of Salams![196]), and the Prophet was
quick in the whale’s belly.” She pursued, “Tell me concerning two
combatants who fight each other but not with hands or feet, and who
withal never say a say or speak a speech.” He answered saying, “The bull
and the buffalo who encounter each other by ramming with horns.” She
continued, “Point out to me a tract of earth which saw not the sun save
for a single time and since that never.” He answered saying, “This be
the sole of the Red Sea when Moses the Prophet (upon whom be The Peace!)
smote it with his rod and clove it asunder so that the Children of
Israel crossed over it on dry ground, which was never seen but only
once.”[197] She resumed, “Relate to me anent that which drank water
during its life-time and ate meat after its death?” He answered saying,
“This be the Rod[198] of Moses the Prophet (upon whom be The Peace!)
which, when a living branch[199] struck water from its living root and
died only when severed from the parent tree. Now Almighty Allah cast it
upon the land of Egypt by the hand of Moses, what time this Prophet
drowned Pharaoh and his host[200] and therewith clove the Red Sea, after
which that Rod became a dragon and swallowed up the wands of all the
Magicians of Misraim.” Asked she, “Give me tidings of a thing which is
not of mankind nor of the Jánn-kind, neither of the beasts nor of the
birds?” He answered saying, “This whereof thou speakest is that
mentioned by Solomon, to wit the Louse,[201] and secondly the Ant.” She
enquired, “Tell me to what end Almighty Allah created the creation and
for what aim of wisdom did He quicken this creation and for what object
did He cause death to be followed by resurrection and resurrection by
the rendering men’s accounts?” He answered saying, “God created all
creatures that they might witness His handicraft, and he did them die
that they might behold his absolute dominion and He requickened them to
the end that they learn His All-Might, and He decreed their rendering
account that they might consider His wisdom and His justice.” She
questioned him saying, “Tell me concerning three, of whom my first was
not born of father and mother and yet died; and my second was begotten
of sire and born of woman yet died not, and my third was born of father
and mother yet died not by human death?” He answered saying, “The first
were Adam and Eve,[202] the second was Elias[203] the Prophet and the
third was Lot’s wife who died not the death of the general, for that she
was turned into a pillar of salt.” Quoth she, “Relate to me concerning
one who in this world had two names?” and he answered saying, “This be
Jacob, sire of the Twelve Tribes, to whom Allah vouchsafed the title of
Israel, which is Man with El or God.”[204] She said, “Inform me
concerning the Nákús, or the Gong,[205] who was the inventor thereof and
at what time was it first struck in this world?” He answered saying,
“The Gong was invented by Noah, who first smote upon it in the Ark.” And
after this she stinted not to question him nor he to ree her riddles
until evening fell, when quoth the King’s daughter to the Linguist-dame,
“Say thou to the young man that he may now depart, and let him come to
me betimes next morning when, if I conquer him, I will give him drink of
the cup his fellows drained; and, should he vanquish me, I will become
his wife.” Then the Tarjumánah delivered her message word for word, and
the Youth went forth from the Princess with fire aflame in his heart and
spent the longest of nights hardly believing that the morn would morrow.
But when day broke and the dawn came with its sheen and shone upon all
mankind, he arose from his sleep and fared with the first light to the
palace where the King’s daughter bade the Linguist-dame introduce him,
and when he came in ordered him be seated. As soon as he had taken seat
she gave her commands to the Tarjumanah, who said, “My lady directeth
thee to inform her what may be the tree bearing a dozen boughs, each
clothed with thirty leaves and these of two colours, one half white and
the other moiety black?” He answered saying, “Now that tree is the year,
and its twelve branches are the dozen months, while the thirty leaves
upon each of these are the thirty white days and the thirty black
nights.” Hereat quoth she, “Tell me, what tree was it bore many a bough
and manifold leaves which presently became flesh and blood?” He answered
saying, “This was the Rod of Moses the Prophet (upon whom be The Peace!)
which was at first a tree but which after cutting became a serpent with
flesh and blood.” Continued she, “Inform me what became of Moses’ Rod
and Noah’s Ark, and where now be they?” He answered saying, “They are at
this tide sunken in the Lake of Tabariyyah,[206] and both, at the end of
time will be brought out by a man hight Al-Násirí.[207]” She pursued,
“Acquaint me with spun yarn, whence did it originate and who was it
first practised spinning the same?” He answered, saying, “Almighty Allah
from the beginning of mankind ordered the Archangel Gabriel to visit Eve
and say to her:—Spin for thyself and for Adam waistcloths wherewith ye
may veil your persons.”[208] She enquired, “Tell me concerning the
Asáfír,[209] and why they were so called, and who first named them with
such name?” He answered saying, “There was in the days of Moses the
Prophet (upon whom be The Peace!) a fowl called Fír, and in the time of
Solomon the King (upon whom be The Peace!) all the birds paid him
obedience, even as did all the beasts, and albeit each and every created
thing was subject to the Prophet, withal this Fír would not show
submission: so the Wise King sent a body of birds to bring him into the
presence, but he refused to present himself. Presently they returned to
the Prophet who asked them, Where be Fír? and they answered, O our lord,
’Asá Fír,[210] whence that name hath clung to the fowls.” She resumed,
“Inform me of the two Stationaries and the two Moveables and the two
Conjoineds and the two Disjoineds by jealousy and the twain which be
eternal Foes.” He answered saying, “Now the two Stationaries be Heaven
and Earth and the two Moveables are the Sun and the Moon; the two
Conjoineds are Night and Day and the two Disjoineds by jealousy are the
Soul and the Body and the two Hostiles are Death and Life.”[211] On this
wise the Linguist-dame ceased not to question him and he to reply
solving all her problems until eve closed in. Then she bade him go forth
that night and on the next day come again to her. Accordingly, the young
Prince returned to his Khan and no sooner had he made sure that the morn
had morrowed than he resolved to see if that day would bring him aught
better than had come to him before. So arising betimes he made for the
palace of the King’s daughter and was received and introduced by the
Tarjumánah who seated him as was her wont and presently she began,
saying, “My lady biddeth thee inform her of a thing which an a man do
that same ’tis unlawful; and if a man do not that same ’tis also
unlawful.” He answered, saying, “I will: this be the prayer[212] of a
drunken man which is in either case illegal.” Quoth she, “Tell me how
far is the interval between Heaven and Earth?” and he answered saying,
“That bridged over by the prayer of Moses the Prophet[213] (upon him be
The Peace!) whom Allah Almighty saved and preserved.” She said, “And how
far is it betwixt East and West?” whereto he answered saying, “The space
of a day and the course of the Sun wending from Orient unto Occident.”
Then she asked, “Let me know what was the habit[214] of Adam in
Paradise?” and he answered saying, “Adam’s habit in Eden was his flowing
hair.”[215] She continued, “Tell me of Abraham the Friend (upon whom be
The Peace!) how was it that Allah chose him out and called him
‘Friend’?”[216] He answered saying, “Verily the Lord determined to tempt
and to test him albeit he kenned right clearly that the Prophet was free
of will yet fully capable of enduring the trial; natheless, He resolved
to do on this wise that he might stablish before men the truth of His
servant’s trust in the Almighty and the fairness of his faith and the
purity of his purpose. So the Lord bade him offer to Him his son
Is’hák[217] as a Corban or Sacrifice; and of the truth of his trust he
took his child and would have slain him as a victim. But when he drew
his knife with the purpose of slaughtering the youth he was thus
addressed by the Most Highest Creator:—Now indeed well I wot that thou
gatherest[218] me and keepest my covenant: so take thou yonder ram and
slay it as a victim in the stead of Is’hak. And after this he entituled
him ‘Friend.’” She pursued, “Inform me touching the sons of Israel how
many were they at the time of the going forth from Egypt?” He answered,
saying, “When they marched out of Misraim-land they numbered six hundred
thousand fighting[219] men besides women and children.” She continued,
“Do thou point out to me, some place on earth which is higher than the
Heavens;” and he answered saying, “This is Jerusalem[220] the Exalted
and she standeth far above the Firmament.” Then the Youth turning to the
Linguist-dame, said, “O my lady, long and longsome hath been the
exposition of that which is between us, and were thy lady to ask me for
all time questions such as these and the like of them, I by the
All-might of Allah shall return a full and sufficient answer to one and
all. But, in lieu of so doing, I desire of thy mistress the Princess to
ask of her one question and only one; and, if she satisfy me of the
significance I claim therefor, let her give me to drain the cup of my
foregoers whom she overcame and slew; and if she fail in the attempt she
shall own herself conquered and become my wife——and The Peace!”[221] Now
this was said in the presence of a mighty host there present, the great
of them as well as the small thereof; so the Tarjumánah answered
willy-nilly, “Say, O Youth, whatso is the will of thee and speak out
that which is in the mind of thee.” He rejoined, “Tell thy lady that she
deign enlighten me concerning a man who was in this condition. He was
born and brought up in the highest of prosperity but Time turned upon
him and Poverty mishandled him;[222] so he mounted his father and
clothed him with his mother[223] and he fared forth to seek comfort and
happiness at the hand of Allah Almighty. Anon Death met him on the way
and Doom bore him upon his head and his courser saved him from
destruction whenas he drank water which came neither from the sky nor
from the ground. Now see thou who may be that man and do thou give me
answer concerning him.”[224] But when the Princess heard this question,
she was confused with exceeding confusion touching the reply to be
replied in presence of a posse of the people, and she was posed and
puzzled and perplext to escape the difficulty and naught availed her
save addressing the Tarjumánah and saying, “Do thou bid this Youth wend
his ways and remove himself until the morrow.” The Linguist-dame did as
she was bidden, adding, “And on the morrow (Inshallah!) there shall be
naught save weal;” and the Prince went forth leaving the folk aghast at
the question he had urged upon the King’s daughter. But as soon as he
left her the young lady commanded the Tarjumánah to let slaughter
somewhat of the most toothsome poultry and to prepare them for food as
her mistress might direct her; together with dainty meats and delicate
sweetmeats and the finest fruits fresh and dried and all manner of other
eatables and drinkables, and lastly to take a skin-bottle filled with
good old wine. Then she changed her usual garb and donned the most
sumptuous dress of all her gear; and, taking her Duenna and favourite
handmaiden with a few of her women for comitive, she repaired to the
quarters of the Youth, the King’s son; and the time of her visit was the
night-tide. Presently, reaching the Khan she said to her guardian, “Go
thou in to him alone whilst I hide me somewhere behind the door and do
thou sit between his hands;” after which she taught the old woman all
she desired her do of dissimulation and artifice. The slave obeyed her
mistress and going in accosted the young man with the salam; and,
seating herself before him, said, “Ho thou the Youth! Verily there is
here a lovely damsel, delightsome and perfect of qualities, whose peer
is not in her age, and well nigh able is she to make the sun fare
backwards[225] and to illumine the universe in lieu thereof. Now when
thou wast wont to visit us in the apartment of the Princess, this maiden
looked upon thee and found thee a fair youth; so her heart loved thee
with excessive love and desired thee with exceeding desire and to such
degree that she insisted upon accompanying me and she hath now taken
station at thy door longing to enter. So do thou grant her permission
that she come in and appear in thy presence and then retire to some
privacy where she may stand in thy service, a slave to thy will.”[226]
The Prince replied, “Whoso seeketh us let enter with weal and welfare,
and well come and welcome and fair welcome to each and every of such
guests.” Hereat the Princess went in as did all those who were with her,
and presently after taking seat they brought out and set before the
Youth their whole store of edibles and potables and the party fell to
eating and drinking and converse, exchanging happy sayings blended with
wit and disport and laughter, while the Princess made it her especial
task to toy with her host deeming that he knew her not to be the King’s
daughter. He also stinted not to take his pleasure with her; and on this
wise they feasted and caroused and enjoyed themselves and were cheered
and the converse between them was delightful. The Duenna, however, kept
plying the Prince with wine, mere and pure, until she had made him
drunken and his carousal had so mastered him that he required her of her
person: however she refused herself and questioned him of the enigma
wherewith he had overcome her mistress; whilst he, for stress of
drunkenness, was incapacitated by stammering to explain her aught
thereof. Hereupon the Princess, having doffed her upper dress, propped
herself sideways upon a divan cushion and stretched herself at full
length and the Youth for the warmth of his delight in her and his desire
to her anon recovering his speech explained to her the reply to his
riddle. The King’s daughter then joyed with mighty great joy as though
she had won the world universal;[227] and, springing to her feet
incontinently, of her extreme gladness she would not delay to finish her
disport with her wooer; but ere the morning morrowed she departed and
entered her palace. Now in so doing she clean forgot her outer robes and
the wine-service and what remained of meat and drink. The Youth had been
overcome with sleep and after slumbering he awoke at dawn when he looked
round and saw none of the company about him: withal he recognised the
princely garments which were of the most sumptuous and costly, robes of
brocade and sendal and suchlike, together with jewels and adornments;
and scattered about lay sundry articles of the wine-service and
fragments of the food they had brought with them. And from these signs
of things forgotten he learnt that the King’s daughter had visited him
in person and he was certified that she had beguiled him with her wiles
until she had wrung from him the reply to his question. So as soon as it
was morning-tide he arose and went, as was his wont, to the Princess’s
palace where he was met by the Tarjumánah who said to him, “O Youth, is
it thy pleasure that my lady expound to thee her explanation of the
enigma yesterday proposed by thee?” “I will tell the very truth,”
answered he; “and relate to thee what befel me since I saw you last, and
’twas this. When I left you there came to me a lovely bird, delightsome
and perfect of charms, and I indeed entertained her with uttermost
honour and worship; we ate and we drank together, but at night she shook
her feathers and flew away from me. And if she deny this I will produce
her plumage before her father and all present.” Now when the Sovran, the
sire of the Princess, heard these words concerning his daughter, to wit,
that the youth had conquered her in her contention and that she had
fared to his quarters to the end that she might wring from him an
explanation of the riddle which she was unable to ree or reply thereto,
he would do naught else save to summon the Cohen[228] and the Lords of
his land and the Grandees of his realm and the Notables of his kith and
kin. And when the Priest and all made act of presence, he told them the
whole tale first and last; namely, the conditions to the Youth
conditioned, that if overcome by his daughter and unable to answer her
questions he should be let drain the cup of destruction like his
fellows, and if he overcame her he should claim her to wife. Furthermore
he declared that the Youth had answered, with full and sufficient
answer, all he had been asked without doubt or hesitation; while at last
he had proposed to her an enigma which she had been powerless to solve;
and in this matter he had vanquished her twice (he having answered her
and she having failed to answer him) “For which reason,” concluded the
King, “’tis only right that he marry her; even as was the condition
between them twain; and it becometh our first duty to adjudge their
contention and decide their case according to covenant and he being
doubtless the conqueror to bid write his writ of marriage with her. But
what say ye?” They replied, “This is the rightest of redes; moreover the
Youth, a fair and a pleasant, becometh her well and she likewise
besitteth him; and their lot is a wondrous.” So they bade write the
marriage writ and the Cohen, arising forthright, pronounced the union
auspicious and began blessing and praying for the pair and all present.
In due time the Prince went in to her and consummated the marriage
according to the custom stablished by Allah and His Holy Law; and
thereafter he related to his bride all that had betided him, from
beginning to end, especially how he had sold his parents to one of the
Kings. Now when she heard these words, she had ruth upon his case and
soothed his spirit saying to him, “Be of good cheer and keep thine eyes
clear and cool of tear.” Then, after a little while the Princess
bestowed upon her bridegroom a mint of money that he might fare forth
and free his father and his mother. Accordingly the Prince, accepting
her largesse, sought the King to whom he had pledged his parents (and
they were still with him in all weal and welfare) and going in to him
made his salam and kissed ground and told him the whole tale of the past
and the conditions of death or marriage he had made with the King’s
daughter and of his wedding her after overcoming her in contention. So
the monarch honoured him with honour galore than which naught could be
more; and, when the Prince paid him over the moneys, he asked, “What be
these dirhams?” “The price of my parents thou paidest to me,” answered
the other. But the King exclaimed, “I gave thee not to the value of thy
father and mother moneys of such amount as this sum. I only largessed
thee with a mare and a suit of clothes which was not defraying a debt
but presenting thee with a present and thereby honouring thee with due
honour. Then Alhamdolillah—laud be to the Lord, who preserved thee and
enabled thee to win thy wish, and now arise and take thy parents and
return in safety to thy bride.” The Prince hereupon thanked him and
praised Allah for the royal guerdon and favours and the fair treatment
wherewith he had been entreated; after which he craved leave to receive
his parents in charge and wend his ways. And when permission was granted
to him, he wished all good wishes to the King and taking his father and
his mother in weal and welfare he went his ways with them, in joy and
gladness and gratitude for all blessings and benefits by Allah upon him
bestowed, till he had returned to his bride. Here he found that his
father-in-law had deceased during his absence, so he took seat in lieu
of him upon the throne of the kingdom; and he and his consort, during
all the days of their life in this world, ceased not eating and drinking
in health and well-being and eating and drinking in joy and happiness
and bidding and forbidding until they quitted this mundane scene to the
safeguard of the Lord God. And here endeth and is perfected the history
of the Youth, the King’s son, and the sale of his parents and his
falling into the springes of the Princess who insisted upon proposing
problems to all her wooers with the condition that if they did not reply
she would do them drain the cup of destruction and on this wise had
slain a many of men; and, in fine, how she was worsted by and she fell
to the lot of this youth whom Allah gifted with understanding to ree all
her riddles and who had confounded her with his question whereto she
availed not to reply; so she was contented to marry him and he, when his
father-in-law died, succeeded to the kingdom which he ruled so well.

M.[229]

NOTE TO P. 105.

The Músà (Moses) of the Moslems is borrowed from Jewish sources, the
Pentateuch and especially the Talmud, with a trifle of Gnosticism
which, hinted at in the Koran (chapt. xviii), is developed by later
writers, making him the “external” man, while Khizr, the Green
prophet, is the internal. But they utterly ignore Manetho whose
account of the Jewish legislator (Josephus against Apion, i. cc. 26,
27) shows the other or Egyptian part. Moses, by name Osarsiph =
Osiris-Sapi, Osiris of the underworld, which some translate rich
(Osii) in food (Siph, Seph, or Zef) was nicknamed Mosheh from the
Heb. Mashah = to draw out, because drawn from the water[230] (or
rather from the Koptic Mo = water, ushe = saved). He became a priest
at An or On (Heliopolis), after studying the learning of the
Egyptians. Presently he was chosen chief by the “lepers and other
unclean persons” who had been permitted by King Amenophis to occupy
the city Avaris lately left desolate by the Shepherd Kings. Osarsiph
ordained the polity and laws of his followers, forbidding them to
worship the Egyptian gods and enjoining them to slay and sacrifice
the sacred animals. They were joined by the “unclean of the
Egyptians” and by their kinsmen of the Shepherds, and treated the
inhabitants with a barbarity more execrable than that of the latter,
setting fire to cities and villages, casting the Egyptian priests
and prophets out of their country, and compelling Amenophis to fall
back upon Ethiopia. After some years of disorder Sethos (also called
Ramesses from his father Rampses) son of Amenophis came down with
the King from Ethiopia leading great united forces, and,
“encountering the Shepherds and the unclean people, they defeated
them and slew multitudes of them, and pursued the remainder to the
borders of Syria.” Josephus relates this account of Manetho, which
is apparently truthful, with great indignation. For the prevalence
of leprosy we have the authority of the Hebrews themselves, and
Pliny (xxvi. 2) speaking of Rubor Ægyptus, evidently white leprosy
ending in the black, assures us that it was “natural to the
Ægyptians,” adding a very improbable detail, namely that the kings
cured it by balneæ (baths) of human blood.[231]

Schiller (in “Die Sendung Moses”) argues that the mission of the
Jewish lawgiver, as adopted son (the real son?) of Pharaoh’s
daughter, became “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” by
receiving the priestly education of the royal princes, and that he
had advanced from grade to grade in the religious mysteries, even to
the highest, in which the great truth of the One Supreme, the
omniscient, omnipotent God was imparted, as the sublime acme of all
human knowledge, thus attributing to Moses before his flight into
Midian, an almost modern conception of an essentially
anthropomorphous Deity.

Further, that his conscious mission when he returned to Egypt was
not merely the deliverance of his people from the Egyptian yoke, but
the revelation to them of this great conception, and so the
elevation of that host of slaves to the position of a nation, to
whose every member the highest mystery of religion should be known
and whose institutions should be based upon it. It is remarkable
that Schiller should have accepted the fables of Manetho as history,
that he should not have suspected the fact that the Egyptian priest
wrote from motives of personal spite and jealousy, and with the
object of poisoning the mind of Ptolemy against the learned Jews
with whom he stood on terms of personal friendship. Thus he not only
accepts the story that the Hebrews were expelled from Egypt because
of the almost universal spread of leprosy among them, but explains
at length why that loathsome and horrible disease should have so
prevailed. Still Schiller’s essay, written with his own charming
eloquence, is a magnificent eulogy of the founder of the Hebrew
nation.

Goethe (“Israel in der Wüste”) on the other hand, with curious
ingenuity, turns every thing to the prejudice of the “headstrong
man” Moses, save that he does grant him a vivid sentiment of
justice. He makes him both by nature and education a grand, strong
man, but brutal (_roh_) withal. His killing the Egyptian is a secret
murder; “his dauntless fist gains him the favour of a Midianitish
priest-prince ... under the pretence of a general festival, gold and
silver dishes are swindled (by the Jews under Moses’s instigation)
from their neighbours, and at the moment when the Egyptians believe
the Israelites to be occupied in harmless feastings, a reversed
Sicilian vesper is executed; the stranger murders the native, the
guest the host; and, with a horrible cunning, only the first-born
are destroyed to the end that, in a land where the first-born
enjoyed such superior rights, the selfishness of the younger sons
might come into play, and instant punishment be avoided by hasty
flight. The artifice succeeds, the assassins are thrust out instead
of being chastised.” (Quoted from pp. 99–100 “The Hebrews and the
Red Sea,” by Alexander W. Thayer; Andover, Warren F. Draper, 1883).
With respect to the census of the Exodus, my friend Mr. Thayer, who
has long and conscientiously studied the subject, kindly supplied me
with the following notes and permitted their publication.

TRIESTE, _October 11, 1887_.

MY DEAR SIR RICHARD,

The points in the views presented by me in our
conversation upon the Hebrews and their Exodus, of which you
requested a written exposition, are, condensed, these:

Assuming that the Hebrew records, as we have them, are in the
main true, _i.e._ historic, a careful search must reveal some
one topic concerning which all the passages relating to it agree
at least substantially. Such a topic is the genealogies,
precisely that which Philippsohn the great Jewish Rabbi, Dr.
Robinson, of the Palestine researches, and all the Jewish and
Christian commentators—I know no exception—with one accord
reject! Look at these two columns, A. being the passages
containing the genealogies, B. the passages on which the
rejection of them is based:

A. │ B.
1. Genesis xxiv. 32, to xxv. 25 │ 1. Gen. xv. 13.
(Births of Jacob’s sons). │
│ 2. Ex. xii. 40, 41.
2. xxxv. 23–26 (Recapitulation of │ 3. Acts vii. 6.
the above). │
3. xlvi. 8–27 (List of Jacob and │These three give the 400 and the
his sons when they came into │ 430 years of the supposed bondage
Egypt). │ of the Bene Jacob, but are offset
│ by Gen. xv. 16 (four generations)
│ and Gal. iii. 17 (Paul’s
│ understanding of the 430 years).
4. Ex. vi. 14–27 (Lineage of Aaron│
and Moses). │
5. Numb. xxxvi. 1–2 (Lineage of │ 4. The story of Joseph, beginning
Zelophehad). │ Gen. xxxvii. 2, gives us the
│ dates in his life; viz., 17
│ when sold, 30 when he becomes
│ Prime Minister, 40 when his
│ father joins him.
6. Josh. vii. 17–18 (Lineage of │
Achan). │
7. Ruth iv. 18–22 (ditto of │
David). │
8. 1 Chron. ii. 9–15 (ditto). │
9. Mat. i. 2–6 (ditto). │
10. Luke iii. 32–37 (ditto). │ 5. 1 Chron. vi. 1–15 (Lineage of
│ Ezra’s brother Jehozadak,
│ abounding in repetitions and
│ worthless).
11. Ezra vii. 1–5 (ditto of │
Ezra). │
The lists of Princes, heads of │
tribes, the spies, the │
commission to divide │
conquered Palestine contain │
names that can be traced │
back, and all coincide with │
the above. │

1. As between the two, the column A. is in my opinion more
trustworthy than B.

2. By all the genealogies of the Davidian line we have Judah No.
1, Solomon No. 12. By Ezra’s genealogy of his own family we have
Levi No. 1, and Azariah (Solomon’s High Priest) No. 12. They
agree perfectly.

3. If there were 400 years of _Hebrew_ (Bene Jacob) slavery
between the death of Joseph and the Exodus, there were 400 - 80
= 320, between Joseph’s death and the birth of Moses. If this
was so there is no truth in the accounts of Moses and Aaron
being the great-grandchildren of Levi (Levi, Kohath, Amram,
Aaron and Moses). In fact, if Dr. Robinson be correct in saying
that at least six generations are wanting in the genealogies of
David (to fill the 400 years) the same must be lacking in _all_
the early genealogies. Reductio ad absurdum!

4. Jacob, a young man, we will say of 40, is sent to Laban for a
wife. He remains in Padan Aram twenty years (Gen. xxxi. 38),
where all his sons except Benjamin were born, that is, before he
was 60. At 30 he joined Joseph in Egypt (Gen. xlvii. 9). Joseph,
therefore, born in Padan Aram was now, instead of 40, over 70
years old! That this is so, is certain. In Judah’s exquisite
pleadings (Gen. xliv. 18–34) he speaks of Benjamin as “the child
of Jacob’s old age,” “a little one,” and seven times he calls
him “the lad.” Benjamin is some years younger than Joseph, but
when the migration into Egypt takes place—a few weeks after
Judah’s speech—Benjamin comes as father of _ten_ sons (Gen.
xlvi. 21), but here _Bene_ Benjamin is used in its broad sense
of “descendants,” for in 1 Chron. vii. 6–12 we find that the
“Bene” were sons, grandsons and _great_-grandsons. To hold that
Joseph at 40 had a younger brother who was a great-grandfather,
is, of course, utterly absurd.

5. According to Gen. xv. 18, the Exodus was to take place in the
fourth generation _born in Egypt_, as I understand it.

Born in Egypt:—

Levi (father of) Judah (father of)
Kohath Pharez
Hezron
1. Amram 1. Ram
2. Aaron 2. Amminadab
3. Eleazar 3. Nahshon
4. Phineés 4. Salma

A conspicuous character in Numbers (xiii. 6, 30; xiv. 24, etc.)
is Caleb. In the first chapter of Judges Caleb still appears,
and Othniel, the son of his younger brother Kenaz is the first
of the so-called Judges (Jud. iii. 9). This also disposes of the
400 years and confirms the view that the Exodus took place in
the fourth generation born in Egypt. Other similar proofs may be
omitted—these are amply sufficient.

6. What, then, was the origin of the notion of the 400 years of
Hebrew slavery?

If the Egyptian inscriptions and papyri prove anything, it is
this: that from the subjugation of Palestine by one of the
Thotmes down to the great invasion of the hordes from Asia Minor
in the reign of Rameses III., that country had never ceased to
be a Pharaonic province; that during these four or five
centuries every attempt to throw off the yoke had been crushed
and its Semitic peoples deported to Egypt as slaves; that
multitudes of them joined in the Exodus under Moses, and became
incorporated with the Hebrews under the constitution and code
adopted at Horeb (=Sinai? or Jebel Aráif?) These people became
“Seed of Abraham,” “Children of Israel,” by adoption, to which I
have no doubt, Paul refers in the “adoption” of Romans viii.
15–23; ix. 4; Gal. iv. 5; Eph. i. 5. In the lapse of ages this
distinction between Bene Israel and Bene Jacob was forgotten,
and therefore the very uncritical Masorites in their edition of
the Old Testament “confounded the confusion” in this matter.
With the disappearance of the 400 years and of the supposed two
or three centuries covered by the book of Judges, the
genealogies stand as facts. The mistake in the case of the
Judges is in supposing them to have been consecutive, when, in
fact, as the subjugations by neighbouring peoples were local and
extended only over one or two tribes, half a dozen of them may
have been contemporaneous.

7. Aaron and Moses were by their father Amram,
greatgrandchildern of Levi—by their mother’s his grandchildren
(Ex. vi. 20). Joseph lived to see his own great-grandchildren.
Moses must have been born _before_ Joseph’s death.

8. There is one point determined in which the Hebrew and the
Egyptian chronologers coincide. It is the invasion of Judea by
Shishak of Egypt in the fifth year of Rehoboam, son of Solomon
(1 Kings xiv. 25). Supposing the Egyptian chronology from the
time of Minephtah II. to be in the main correct, as given by
Brugsch and others, the thirteen generations, Judah—Rehoboam,
allowing three to a century, take us back to just that
Minephtah. In his reign, according to Brugsch, that Pharaoh sent
breadstuffs to the Chittim in “the time of famine.” The Hebrew
records and traditions connect Joseph’s prime ministry with a
famine. By the genealogies it could have been only this in the
time of Minephtah.

9. The Bene Jacob were but temporary sojourners in Goshen and
always intended to return to Canaan. They were independent and
had the right to do so. See what Joseph says in Gen. i. 24–25.
But before this design was executed came the great irruption of
the Northern hordes, which broke the power of the Chittim and
Philistia and devastated or depopulated all Palestine, in the
time of Ramses III. Here was an opportunity for the Bene Jacob
to enlarge their plans and to devise the conquest and possession
of Palestine. According to Josephus, supported by Stephen (Acts
vii. 22), Moses was a man “mighty in works”—a man of military
fame. The only reasonable way of understanding the beginning of
the Exodus story, is to suppose, that, in the weakened condition
of Ramses III., the Hebrew princes began to intrigue with the
enslaved Semites—the Ruthenu of the Egyptian inscriptions—and
this being discovered by the Pharaoh, Moses was compelled to
fly. Meantime the intrigues were continued and when the time for
action came, under one of Ramses’ weak successors, Moses was
recalled and took command.

10. This prepares us for the second query, which you proposed,
that is as to the numbers who joined in the Exodus.

The Masoretic text, from which the English version of the Hebrew
records is made, gives the result of the census at Sinai
(=Horeb) as being 603,550 men, “twenty years old and upwards,
that were able to go forth to war in Israel”—the tribe of Levi
_not_ included. On this basis it has been generally stated, that
the number of the Bene Israel at the Exodus was three millions.
Of late I find that two millions is the accepted number. The
absurdity of even this aggregate is manifest. How could such a
vast multitude be subsisted? How kept in order? How compelled to
observe sanitary regulations? Moreover, in the then enfeebled
state of Egypt, why should 603,550 armed men not have marched
out without ceremony? Why ask permission to go to celebrate a
sacrifice to their God?

But there is another series of objections to these two millions,
which I have never seen stated or even hinted, to which I pray
your attention.

The area of Palestine differs little from that of the three
American States, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut,
the most densely peopled of the Union, containing by the last
census a population of somewhat less than two and a half
millions.

By the second Hebrew census (Numb. xxvi.) taken just before the
death of Moses, the army was 601,730; from which the inference
has always been drawn, that at least 2,000,000, in the
aggregate, Levites 23,000 _males_ still excepted, entered and
possessed the conquered territories.

Take now one of the late maps of Palestine and mark upon it the
boundaries of the tribes as given in the book of Joshua. This
second census gives the number of each _tribal_ army to be
inserted in each tribal territory Reuben, 43,750; Judah, 76,500;
Benjamin, 45,600, etc., etc. By Josh. xii. the land was then
divided between some 40 petty kings and peoples, 31 of whom are
named as having been subjected. If, now, Joshua’s army numbered
over 600,000, why was not the conquest made complete?
Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut are divided into 27
counties. Suppose, now, that these counties were each a separate
and independent little kingdom dependent upon itself, for
defence, what resistance could be made to an army of 600,000
men, all of them grown up during forty years of life in a camp,
and in the full vigour of manhood? And yet Joshua was unable to
complete his conquest! Again, the first subjugation of a part of
the newly-conquered territory as noted in the book of Judges,
was Judah and Simeon by a king of Edom.[232] If Judah could put
an army into the field of 76,500, and Simeon 22,500, their
subjugation by a king of Edom is incredible, and the story
absurd. Next comes King Eglon of Moab and subjugates the tribes
of Reuben and Gad, east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan. And yet
Reuben has an army of over 43,000, and Gad 45,000. And so on.

Accepting the statement that Moses led over 600,000 men “able to
go to war” out of Egypt, and Joshua an equal number to the
conquest of Canaan, the story of the Exodus, of that conquest
and of the subsequent subjugations of various tribes by the
neighbouring kings are all nonsense; the books of Joshua and
Judges are incredible. The difficulty is fully met and overcome,
if we suppose the number to have been exaggerated, as it would
be by adding a cypher to the right of a line of Arabic numerals,
by which 60,000 is made 600,000; the 76,500 warriors of Judah
are reduced to 7,650, and so on.

With an army of 60,000 only, and an aggregate of half a million
of people led out of Egypt, all the history becomes instantly
rational and trustworthy.

There remains one more bubble to be exploded.

Look at these figures, in which a quadruple increase—at least 25
per centum too great—is granted.[233]

1st Generation, the Patriarchs, in number 12
2nd do. Kohath, Pharez, etc. 48
3rd do. Amram, Hezron, etc. 192
4th do. Aaron and Moses 768
—————
Aggregate 1,020
Minus 25 per cent. for deaths, children, etc. 255
—————
Actual number of Bene Jacob 765
—————

But Jacob and his sons brought with them herdsmen, shepherds,
servants, etc. Bunsen puts the number of all, masters and men,
at less than 2,000.

Let the proportion in this case be one able-bodied man in four
persons, and the increase triple.

1st Generation 500
2nd do. 1,500
3rd do. 4,500
4th do. 13,500
——————
29,000
Minus 25 per centum as above 7,250
——————
21,750
Add the real Bene Jacob 765
——————
Aggregate 22,515
——————

Were these people, while Joseph is still alive, the subjects of
slavery as described in Ex. i.? Did they build Pithom and
Ramses, store-cities?

The number is sufficient to lead in the great enterprise and to
control the mixed multitude which was at Sinai, adopted as “Bene
_Israel_,” “Seed of Abraham,” and divided among and incorporated
with the tribes; but not sufficient to warrant the supposition
that with so small a force the Hebrew leaders could for a moment
have entertained the project of conquering Palestine.

A word more on the statement in Ex. i. 11: “And they built for
Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Ramses.” All Egyptologists
agree that these cities were built by Ramses II., or certainly
not later than his reign. If the Hebrew genealogies are
authentic, this was long before the coming of Jacob and his sons
into Egypt.

(Signed) A. W. THAYER.

THE TALE OF THE WARLOCK AND THE YOUNG COOK OF BAGHDAD.

=Here we begin with the aidance of Allah Almighty, the Tale of the
Warlock and the Young Cook of Baghdad.=[234]

It is related (and Allah is All-knowing!) of a certain man which was a
Warlock, that Destiny drave him from town to town until at last he
entered Baghdad-city and dismounted at a Khán of the Khans where he
spent the night of arrival. Then, rising betimes next morning, he walked
about the highways and wandered around the lanes and he stinted not
passing from market-street to market-street, solacing himself with a
sight of many places, till he reached the Long Bazar, whence he could
descry the whole site of the city. Now he narrowly considered the land,
and, lo and behold! it was a capital sans peer amongst the cities,
wherethrough coursed the Dajlah River blended with the River Furát[235]
and over the united stream were thrown seven bridges of boats; all these
were bound one to other for the folk to pass over on their several
pursuits, especially for the pleasure-seekers who fared forth to the
palm-orchards and the vergiers abounding in fruits while the birds were
hymning Allah, the Sole, the All-conquering. Now one day as this Warlock
was amusing himself amongst the markets he passed by the shop of a Cook
before whom were set for sale dressed meats of all kinds and
colours;[236] and, looking at the youth, he saw that he was rising
fourteen and beautiful as the moon on the fourteenth night; and he was
elegant and habited in a habit as it had just come from the tailor’s
hand for its purity and excellent fit, and one had said that he (the
artisan) had laboured hard thereat, for the sheen of it shimmered like
unto silver.[237] Then the Warlock considering the face of this Cook saw
his colour wan as the hue of metal leaves[238] and he was lean of
limb;[239] so he took station facing him and said to him, “The Peace be
upon thee, O my brother,” and said the other in reply, “And upon thee be
The Peace and the ruth of Allah and His blessings: so well come to thee
and welcome and fair welcome. Honour me, O my lord, by suffering me to
serve thee with the noonday meal.” Hereat the Wizard entered the shop
and the Kitchener took up two or three platters white as the whitest
silver; and, turning over into each one a different kind of meat set
them between the hands of the stranger who said to him, “Seat thee, O my
son.” And when his bidding was obeyed he added, “I see thee ailing and
thy complexion is yellow exceedingly: what be this hath affected thee
and what is thy disorder and what limb of thy limbs paineth thee and is
it long since thou art in such case?” Now when the Cook heard this say
he drew a sigh of regret from the depths of his heart and the soles of
his feet and quoth he weeping, “Allah upon thee, O my lord, remind me
not of that hath betided me!” But quoth the other “Tell me what may be
thy disease and whereof dost thou complain; nor conceal from me thy
pain; for that I am a physician and by aidance of Allah an experienced;
and I have a medicine for thy malady.” Hereat the youth fell to moaning
and groaning and presently replied, “In very sooth, O my lord, I have
nor pain nor complaint, save that I am a lover.” The Warlock asked, “Art
thou indeed a lover?” whereto the Cook make answer, “And not only a
lover but a lover parted from his beloved.” “On whom hangeth thy heart,
say me?” continued the Mediciner and the youth replied, “Leave me for
the nonce till such time as I am quit of my business, and return to me
about mid-afternoon, that I may inform thee of mine affair and acquaint
thee with the case I am in.” The Warlock rejoined, “Arise now to thy
work lest it be miswrought by loitering;” and so saying he ate whatso of
meats had been served up to him and fared forth to thread the Bazars of
Baghdad and solace himself by seeing the city. But when it was the hour
of Al-’Asr—the mid-afternoon prayer—he went back to the Cook and found
that by this time he had wrought all his work, and as soon as the youth
sighted him he rejoiced in him and his spirits were cheered and he said
in his mind, “Haply joy shall come to me from the healing hand of this
Mediciner;” so he shut his shop and taking with him his customer hied
him to his own home. Now this young Kitchener was of amplest means which
he had inherited from either parent; so as soon as they entered his
quarters he served up food and the two ate and drank and were gladdened
and comforted. After this quoth the guest to his host, “Now relate to me
the manner of thy story and what is the cause of thy disorder?” “O my
lord,” quoth the youth, “I must inform thee that the Caliph Al-Mu’tazid
bi’llah,[240] the Commander of the Faithful, hath a daughter fair of
favour, and gracious of gesture; beautiful, delightsome and dainty of
waist and flank, a maiden in whom all the signs and signals of
loveliness are present, and the _tout ensemble_ is independent of
description: seer never saw her like and relator never related of aught
that eveneth her in stature and seemlihead and graceful bearing of
head.” Now albeit a store of suitors galore, the grandees and the Kings,
asked her from the Caliph, her sire refused to part with her, nor gave
her neither would he give her to any one thereof. And every Friday when
fare the folk to the Mosques that they pray the prayers of meeting-day,
all the merchants and men who buy and sell and the very artisans and
what not, leave their shops and warehouses[241] and taverns[242]
unbolted and wide open and flock to congregational devotions. And at
such time this rare maiden cometh down from her palace and solaceth
herself with beholding the Bazars and anon she entereth the Hammam and
batheth therein and straightway goeth forth and fareth homewards. But
one Friday said I to myself, “I will not go to the Mosque, for I would
fain look upon her with a single look;” and when prayer-time came and
the folk flocked to the fane for divine service, I hid myself within my
shop. Presently that august damsel appeared with a comitive of forty
handmaidens all as full moons newly risen and each fairer than her
fellows, while she amiddlemost rained light upon them as she were the
irradiating sun; and the bondswomen would have kept her from sight by
thronging around her and they carried her skirts by means of bent
rods[243] golden and silvern. I looked at her but one look when
straightway my heart fell in love to her burning as a live coal and from
mine eyes tears railed and until now I am still in that same yearning,
and what yearning!” And so saying the youth cried out with an outcry
whereby his soul was like to leave his body. “Is this case still thy
case?” asked the Warlock, and the youth answered, “Yes, O my lord;” when
the other enquired, “An I bring thee and her together what wilt thou
give me?” and the young Cook replied, “My money and my life which shall
be between thy hands!” Hereupon quoth the Mediciner, “Up with thee and
bring me a phial of metal and seven needles and a piece of fresh
Lign-aloes;[244] also a bit of cooked meat,[245] and somewhat of
sealing-clay and the shoulder-blade of a sheep together with felt and
sendal of seven kinds.” The youth fared forth and did his bidding, when
the Sage took the shoulder-blades and wrote upon them Koranic versets
and adjurations which would please the Lord of the Heavens and, wrapping
them in felt, swathed them with silken stuff of seven-fold sorts. Then,
taking the phial he thrust the seven needles into the green Lign-aloes
and set it in the cooked meat which he made fast with the sealing-clay.
Lastly he conjured over these objects with a Conjuration[246] which was,
“I have knocked, I have knocked at the hall doors of Earth to summon the
Jánn, and the Jánn have knocked for the Jánn against the Shaytán.”
Hereat appeared to me the son of Al bin Imrán[247] with a snake and
baldrick’d with a basilisk and cried:—Who be this trader and son of a
slave-girl who hath knocked at the ground for us this evening? Then do
thou, O youth, reply:—I am a lover and of age youthful and my love is to
a young lady; and unto your gramarye I have had recourse, O folk of
manliness and generosity and masterful deeds: so work ye with me and
confirm mine affair and aid me in this matter. See ye not how
Such-an-one, daughter of Such-an-one, oppression and wrong to me hath
done, nor is she with me in affection as she was anon? They shall answer
thee:—Let it be, as is said, in the tail;[248] then do thou set the
objects upon a fire exceeding fierce and recite then over them:—This be
the business; and were Such-an-one, daughter of Such-an-one, within the
well of Káshán[249] or in the city Ispahan or in the towns of men who
with cloaks buttoned tight and ever ready good-fame to blight,[250] let
her come forth and seek union with the beloved. Whereto she will
reply:—“Thou art the lord and I am the bondswoman.” Now the youth abode
marvelling at such marvel-forms and the Warlock having repeated to him
these words three times, turned to him and said, “Arise to thy feet and
perfume and fumigate thy person and don thy choicest dress and dispread
thy bed, for at this very hour thou shalt see thy mistress by thy side.”
And so saying the Sage cast out of hand the shoulder-blades and set the
phial upon the fire. Thereupon the youth arose without stay or delay and
bringing a bundle of raiment the rarest, he spread it and habited
himself, doing whatso the Wizard had bidden him; withal could he not
believe that his mistress would appear. However ere a scanty space of
time had elapsed, lo and behold! the young lady bearing her bedding[251]
and still sleeping passed through the house-door and she was bright and
beautiful as the easting sun. But when the youth the Cook sighted her,
he was perplext and his wits took flight with his sense and he cried
aloud saying, “This be naught save a wondrous matter!” “And the same,”
quoth the Sage, “is that requiredst thou.” Quoth the Cook, “And thou, O
my lord, art of the Hallows of Allah,” and kissed his hand and thanked
him for his kindly deed. “Up with thee and take thy pleasure,” cried the
Warlock; so the lover crept under the coverlet into the bed and he threw
his arms round the fair one and kissed her between the eyes; after which
he bussed her on the mouth. She sensed a sensation in herself and
straightway awaking opened her eyes and beheld a youth embracing her, so
she asked him, “Ho thou, who art thou?” Answered he, “One by thine eyes
a captive ta’en and of thy love the slain and of none save thyself the
fain.” Hereat she looked at him with a look which her heart for
love-longing struck and again asked him, “O my beloved; say me then, who
art thou, a being of mankind or of Jánn-kind?” whereto he answered, “I
am human and of the most honourable.” She resumed, “Then who was it
brought me hither to thee?” and he responded, “The Angels and the
Spirits, the Jinns and the Jánn.” “Then I swear thee, O my dearling,”
quoth she, “that thou bid them bear me hither to thine arms every
night,” and quoth he, “Hearkening and obeying, O my lady, and for me
also this be the bourne of all wishes.” Then, each having kissed other,
they slept in mutual embrace until dawn. But when the morning morrowed
and showed its sheen and shone, behold, the Warlock appeared and,
calling the youth who came to him with a smiling face, said to him, “How
was it with thy soul this night?”[252] and both lovers cried, “We were
in the Garden of Paradise together with the Húr and Ghilmán:[253] Allah
requite thee for us with all weal.” Then they passed into the Hammam and
when they had bathed, the youth said, “O my lord, what shall we do with
the young lady and how shall she hie to her household and what shall be
the case of me without her?” “Feel no grief,” said the other, “and quit
all care of anything: e’en as she came so shall she go; nor shall any of
Almighty Allah’s creatures know aught of her.” Hereat the Sage dismissed
her by the means which conveyed her, nor did she cease to bear her
bedding with her every night and to visit the youth with all joyance and
delight. Now after a few weeks had gone by, this young lady happening to
be upon the terrace-roof of her palace in company with her mother,
turned her back to the sun, and when the heat struck her between the
shoulders her belly swelled; so her parent asked her, “O my daughter,
what hast thou that thou juttest out after this wise?” “I wot naught
thereof,” answered she; so the mother put forth her hand to the belly of
her child and found her pregnant; whereupon she screamed and buffeted
her face and asked, “Whence did this befal thee?” The women-attendants
all heard her cries and running up to her enquired, “What hath caused
thee, O our lady, such case as this?” whereto she replied, “I would
bespeak the Caliph.” So the women sought him and said, “O our lord, thou
art wanted by our lady;” and he did their bidding and went to his wife,
but at first sight he noted the condition of his daughter and asked her,
“What is to do with thee and what hath brought on thee such calamity?”
Hereupon the Princess told him how it was with her and he exclaimed as
he heard it, “O my daughter, I am the Caliph and Commander of the
Faithful, and thou hast been sought to wife of me by the Kings of the
earth one and all, but thou didst not accept them as connections and now
thou doest such deed as this! I swear the most binding of oaths and I
vow by the tombs of my sires and my grandsires, an thou say me sooth
thou shalt be saved; but unless thou tell me truth concerning whatso
befel thee and from whom came this affair and the quality of the man’s
intention theewards, I will slaughter thee and under earth I will
sepulchre thee.” Now when the Princess heard from her father’s mouth
these words and had pondered this swear he had sworn she replied, “O my
sire, albeit lying may save yet is truth-telling the more saving side.
Verily, O my father, ’tis some time before this day that my bed beareth
me up every night and carrieth me to a house of the houses wherein
dwelleth a youth, a model of beauty and loveliness, who causeth every
seer to languish; and he beddeth with me and sleepeth by my side until
dawn, when my couch uplifteth me and returneth with me to the Palace:
nor wot I the manner of my going and the mode of my coming is alike
unknown to me.” The Caliph hearing these her words marvelled at this her
tale with exceeding marvel and fell into the uttermost of wonderment,
but bethinking him of his Wazir, a man of penetrative wit, sagacious,
astute, argute exceedingly, he summoned him to the presence and
acquainted him as soon as he came with this affair and what had befallen
his daughter; to wit, how she was borne away in her bed without knowing
whither or aught else. Quoth the Minister after taking thought for a
full-told hour, “O Caliph of the Time and the Age, I have a device by
whose virtue I do opine we shall arrive at the stead whither wendeth the
Princess;” and quoth the Caliph, “What may be this device of thine?”
“Bid bring me a bag;” rejoined the Wazir, “which I will let fill with
millet;”[254] so they brought him one and he after stuffing the same
with grain set it upon the girl’s bed and close to her where lay her
head, leaving the mouth open to the intent that when during the coming
night her couch might be carried away, the millet in going and returning
might be shed upon the path. “Allah bless thee, Ho thou the Wazir!”
cried the Caliph: “this device of thine is passing good and fair fall it
for a sleight than which naught can be slyer and good luck to it for a
proof than which naught can be better proven.” Now as soon as it was
even-tide, the couch was carried off as had happened every night and the
grain was strown broadcast upon the path, like a stream, from the
gateway of the Palace to the door of the young Cook’s lodging, wherein
the Princess nighted as was her wont until dawn of day. And when morn
appeared the Sage came and carried off with him the youth to the Hammam
where he found privacy and said to him, “O my son, an thou ask me aught
touching thy mistress’s kith and kin, I bid thee know that they have
indeed discovered her condition and against thee they have devised a
device.” Exclaimed the youth, “Verily we are Allah’s and unto Him are we
returning! What may be thy rede in this affair? An they slay me I shall
be a martyr on Allah’s path;[255] but do thou wend thy ways and save
thyself and may the Almighty requite thee with all of welfare; thee,
through whom mine every wish I have won, and the whole of my designs I
have fulfilled; after which let them do with me as they desire.” The
Warlock replied, “O my son, grieve not neither fear, for naught shall
befal thee of harm, and I purpose to show thee marvels and miracles
wroughten upon them.” When the youth heard these words his spirits were
cheered, and joying with joy exceeding he replied, “Almighty Allah
reward thee for me with fullest welfare!” Then the twain went forth the
Hammam and hied them home. But as soon as morning morrowed, the Wazir
repaired to the Caliph; and, both going to the Princess together, found
her in her bower and the bag upon her bed clean empty of millet, at
sight of which the Minister exclaimed, “Now indeed we have caught our
debtor. Up with us and to horse, O Caliph of the Age, and sum and
substance of the Time and the Tide, and follow we the millet and track
its trail.” The Commander of the Faithful forthright gave orders to
mount, and the twain, escorted by their host, rode forth on the traces
of the grain till they drew near the house, when the youth heard the
jingle and jangle[256] of horses’ tramp and the wrangle and cangle of
men’s outcries. Upon this said the Cook to the Warlock, “Here they draw
near to seize me, O my lord, what is there now for me to do?” and said
the other, “Rise and fill me an ewer with water; then mount therewith to
the terrace-roof and pour the contents round and about the house, after
which come down to me.” The youth did his bidding, and meanwhile the
Caliph and the Wazir and the soldiery had approached the house when, lo
and behold! the site had become an island amiddlemost a main dashing
with clashing billows.[257] But when the Commander of the Faithful
sighted this sea, he was perplexed with mighty great perplexity and
enquired of the Wazir, “At what time did such great water appear in this
place?” The Minister replied, “I never knew that here was any stream,
albe well I wot that the Tigris river floweth amiddlemost the capital;
but this is a magical current.” So saying he bade the soldiery urge
their horses into the water sans fear, and every one drave as he had
directed until all who entered lost their lives and a many of men where
drowned. Hereupon cried the Prince of True Believers, “O Wazir, we are
about to destroy our host and to fare with them!” and cried the other,
“How shall we act, O Caliph of the Age? Haply our first, nay our best
way, is to ask help of those within the house and grant to them
indemnity while they exchange words with us and we see anon what will
come of their affair.” “Do as beseemeth thee,” answered the Prince of
True Believers; whereupon the Minister commanded his men to cry aloud
upon the household and they sued for help during a length of time. But
the Sage, hearing their shouts, said to the youth, “Arise and go up to
the terrace and say to the Caliph of the Age:—Thou art in safety; turn
away thy steps hence and presently we will meet thy Highness in health
and weal; otherwise[258] thy daughter shall be lost and thine army shall
be destroyed, and thou, O Commander of the Faithful, wilt depart and
return as one outdriven. Do thou wend thy ways: this be not the mode of
meeting us and in such manner there is no management.” The Cook did as
he was bidden, and when the twain heard his words, quoth the Wazir to
the Caliph, “Verily these be naught save Magicians, otherwise they must
be of the fulsomest of the Jann, for indeed never heard we nor saw we
aught of this.” Hereupon the Prince of True Believers turned his back
upon the place and he sorrowful and strait of breast and disheartened of
heart; so he went down to his Palace and sat there for a full-told hour
when behold, the Warlock and the Cook appeared before him. But as soon
as they stood in the presence the Caliph cried out, “O Linkman, bring me
the head of yonder youth from between his shoulders!” Hereupon the
Executioner came forward and tearing a strip off the youth’s robe-skirt
bandaged his eyes; then he walked thrice round about him brandishing his
blade over the victim’s head and lastly cried, “O Caliph of the Age,
shall I make away with this youth?” Answered the Caliph, “Yes, after
thou shalt have stricken off his head.” Hearing this the Sworder raised
his hand and smote, when suddenly his grip was turned backwards upon a
familiar of his who stood beside him, and it lighted upon his neck with
such force that his head flew off and fell at the Caliph’s feet. The
King and the Wazir were perplexed at this affair, and the former cried
out, “What be this? Art gone blind, O Bhang-eater, that thy stroke hath
missed the mark and thou hast not known thy familiar from this youth who
kneeleth before thee? Smite him without delay!” Hereupon the Linkman
again raised his hand to obey his lord, but the blow fell upon the neck
of his varlet and the head flew off and rolled at the feet of the Caliph
and his Chief Councillor. At this second mishap the wits of all present
were bewildered and the King cried, “What business is this, O Wazir?”
whereto the other made answer, “O Caliph of the Time and rare gift of
the Age and the Tide, what canst thou do, O my lord, with such as these?
And whoso availeth to take away o’ nights thy daughter upon her bed and
dispread a sea around his house, the same also hath power to tear thy
kingdom from thy grasp; nay more, to practise upon thy life. Now ’tis my
rede that thou rise and kiss the hand of this Sage and sue his
protection,[259] lest he work upon us worse than this. Believe me,
’twere better for thee, O my lord, to do as I bid thee and thus ’twill
be well for us rather than to rise up as adversaries of this man.”
Hearing such words from his Minister, the King bade them raise the youth
from the strip of blood-rug and remove the bandage from before his eyes,
after which he rose to his feet, and, kissing the Warlock’s hand, said
to him, “In very sooth we knew thee not nor were we ware of the measure
of thine excellence. But, O teacher of the Time and sum and substance of
revolving Tide, why hast thou wrought to me on this wise in the matter
of my daughter and destroyed my servants and soldiers?” “O Viceregent of
Allah upon His Earth,” replied the Sage, “I am a stranger, and having
eaten bread and salt with this youth, I formed friendship and
familiarity with him: then, seeing his case which was sad and his state
which was marvellous as it had afflicted him with sickness, I took
compassion upon him; moreover I designed to show you all what I am and
what Almighty Allah hath taught me of occult knowledge. Hitherto there
hath been naught save weal, and now I desire of thy favour that thou
marry thy daughter to this youth, my familiar, for that she suiteth none
other save himself.” Quoth the Caliph, “This proceeding I look upon as
the fittest and it besitteth us that we obey thy bidding.” Presently he
robed the youth with a sumptuous robe worth the kingdom of a King, and
commanded him to sit beside the presence and seated the Sage upon a
chair of ebony-wood. Now whilst they were in converse the Warlock turned
round and beheld arear of the Caliph a hanging of sendal whereupon stood
figured lions twain: so he signed with his hand to these forms which
were mighty huge of limb and awesome to look upon, when each put forth
his paw upon his fellow and both roared with roars like unto the bellow
of ear-rending thunder. Hereat all present were perplext in the extreme
and were in admiration at that matter, and especially the Prince of True
Believers who cried, “O Wazir, what seest thou in this business?” The
Wazir replied, “O Caliph of the Age, verily Allah Almighty to thee hath
sent this Sage that He[260] might show thee such marvels as these.” Then
the Warlock signalled with his hand to the lions which shrank till they
became as cats which carried on the combat; and both Caliph and Wazir
wondered thereat with excessive wonderment. Anon quoth the King to the
Minister, “Bid the Sage display to us more of his marvels;” and
accordingly the Wazir obeyed his lord’s behest, and the Warlock replied,
“To hear is to obey.” He then said, “Bring hither to me a chauldron full
of water;” and when it was brought he asked the Courtiers, “Which of you
would divert himself?” “I,” quoth the Wazir; when quoth the Sage, “Do
thou rise to thy feet and doff thy robes and gird thee with a zone:”
whereto said the other, “Bring me a waistcloth;” and when it was brought
he did therewith as he was bidden. Hereat said the Warlock, “Seat thee
in the centre of the chauldron;” so he plunged into the water, but when
he would have seated him amiddlemost thereof as ordered he saw only that
he had entered a sea dashing with surges clashing wherein whoso goeth is
lost to view, and whence whoso cometh is born anew; and he fell to
swimming from side to side intending to issue forth, while the waves
suffered him not to make the shore. And while he was in this case
behold, a billow of the billows vomited[261] him up from the sea to the
strand and he stood on dry land, when he surveyed his person and
suddenly saw that he had become a woman with the breasts of a woman and
the solution of continuity like a woman, and long black hair flowing
down to his heels even as a woman’s. Then said he to himself, “O
ill-omened diversion! What have I done with such unlucky disport that I
have looked upon this marvel and wonder of wonderments, only to become a
woman.[262] Verily we are Allah’s, and unto Him shall we return;” adding
as he took thought of the matter and of what had befallen him, “There is
no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the
Great.” Presently a Fisherman approached him and sighting a fair girl
said, “This be none other than a blessed day which Allah hath opened to
us with a beautiful maiden for quarry; and she is doubtless of the
Daughters of the Deep, whom Allah Almighty hath sent to us that I may
espouse her to my son.” Hearing these words said the transformed to
himself, “Now after being a Wazir I have become a woman and this be for
that as tit for tat,[263] and the wight furthermore desireth to see me
married, and as for the Caliph and the kingdom and the countries, who
shall now be able to offer them counsel?” But the Fisherman who for his
joyance had no stomach to ply his pursuit, as was his custom, forthwith
arose and taking with him the Daughter of the Deep led her to his house,
and on entering the door cried aloud to his wife, “This day hath been a
lucky for my fishing craft: during all these years it never befel me to
happen upon a Mermaid save on this best-omened of all the days,” adding,
“Where is thy son, to whom Allah hath sent this Daughter of the
Daughters of the Main; and hath made her his portion and vouchsafed her
to his service? for ’tis my design to marry them.” Replied the woman,
“He hath taken the beast[264] and hath fared forth to pasture it and
plough therewith; but right soon will he return.” And whilst they were
thus conversing the youth came forward, and the Wazir on sighting him
groaned and cried, “Well-away for me! this very night I shall become a
bride for this blamed lad[265] to sleep withal. And if I say to
them:—What intent have ye? Ye are in meanness and misery[266] while I am
Wazir to the Caliph; they will never believe me for that I have become a
woman, and all thereto appertaining now belongeth to me. Alack and alas
for that I did with mine own self; indeed what business had I with such
diversion?” Hereupon the fisherman called out, “O my son, up with thee
and straightway take this Mermaid and marry her and abate her pucelage
and be blessed with her and enjoy thy joy with her during all the days
of thy life-tide: doubtless, O my child, thou art in all boon fortune,
seeing that what good befel thee never betided any before thee nor will
become the lot of one after thee.” So the youth arose and for his
delight hardly believing in his conquest, married her and lay with her
and did away her maidenhead and on that very night she conceived by him.
After nine months she bare him issue and the couple ceased not to be
after this fashion till she had become a mother of seven. But the Wazir,
of his stress and excess of the trouble and the travail he endured, said
to himself, “How long shall last this toil and torment wherewith I am
liver-smitten and that too by mine own consent? So e’en will I arise and
hie me to this sea and hurl me thereinto and whatso shall become of me
let it be: haply I may find rest from these torments into which I have
fallen.” And forthright he arose and sought the shore and did as he had
devised, when a wave enveloped him and cast him deep into the depths and
he was like to choke, when suddenly his head protruded from the
chauldron and he was seated as before he had ducked it. Hereupon he saw
the Caliph sitting in state with the Sage by his side and all the Lords
of the land and the Notables of the commons awaiting the end of his
adventure. So he gazed at them and showed a smiling face[267] and
laughed aloud when the Prince of True Believers asked him saying, “What
hast thou seen, O Wazir?” So he repeated to the Sovran all he had
sighted and everything that had come down upon his head, presently
adding, “O Caliph of the Age and the sum and substance of the Time and
the Tide, what be these marvels wrought by this Sage? Verily I have
beheld the garths of Paradise[268] with maidens of the Húr and the
youths of Heaven, and wonderments galore unlooked upon by mankind at
all, at all. But, an thou be pleased, O Commander of the Faithful, to
espy these rare spectacles and marvellous conditions with thine own
eyes, deign go down into the water; so shalt thou divert thyself with
peregrine matters and adventures seld-seen.” The Sultan, delighted at
this rede, arose and doffed his dress; then, girding his loins with a
zone, he entered the chauldron whereat the Sage cried out to him, “O my
lord, sit thee down and duck thy head.” But when this was done the
Caliph found himself in a bottomless sea and wide-dispread and never at
rest by any manner of means, so he fell to swimming therein, when a huge
breaker threw him high ashore and he walked up the beach mother-naked
save for his zone. So he said in his mind, “Let me see what hath been
wrought with me by the Sage and the Wazir who have thus practised upon
me and have cast me in this place; and haply they have married my
daughter to the youth, and they have stolen my kingdom, the Sage
becoming Sultan in my stead. And now let me ask myself, What had I to do
with such damned diversion as this?” But as he brooded over these
thoughts and the like of them behold, a bevy of maidens came forwards to
fill their pitchers from a fountain and a pool of sweet water lying
beside the sea; and sighting him they exclaimed, “Thou, who art thou?
say sooth be thou of mankind or rather haply of Jinn-kind?” He replied,
“I am a mortal and of the noblest-born; withal I am a stranger in the
land and I wot not whither I should wend.” “Of what country art thou?”
asked they, and he answered, “I am from Baghdad.” “Up with thee,” quoth
one of the damsels, “to yonder knoll, then down to the flat on the
further side, and thou shalt sight a city whose name is ’Omán,[269]
whereinto do thou enter.” The Caliph did her bidding, and no sooner had
the people seen him stripped than they said one to other, “This man is a
merchant who hath been shipwrecked;” so they gave him by way of
alms-gift a Tobe[270] all tattered and torn wherewith he veiled his
shame. And after so doing he fell to wandering about the city for
pastime, and while walking about he passed into a Bazar and there
sighted a cook, before whom he stood open-mouthed (for indeed famine had
thinned him), and he bethought him of what to do, and he knew not how to
act. However the cook at first sight was certified of his being a
foreigner, and haply a shipwrecked mariner so he asked him, “O my
brother, why dost thou not come in and sit thee down, for thou art a
stranger and without means; so in the way of Allah I would engage thy
services and will pay thee daily two dirhams to provide thee with meat
and drink.” Answered the Caliph, “Hearing and obeying,” after which he
abode with the cook and served him and stinted not to serve him for a
long time, saying in himself the while, “This for that is tit for tat!
and after the Caliphate and commandment and happiness and honour, this
day art thou left to lick the platters. What had I to do with such
diversion as this? Withal ’tis fairer than the spectacle that anyone
even my Wazir ever saw and the more excellent, for that I after being
the Caliph of the Age, and the choice gift of the Time and Tide have now
become the hireling of a cook. Would to Heaven I wot the sin which
brought me hereto?”[271] Now as he abode with the cook it befel him that
one day he threaded the Jewellers’ Bazar; for about that city was a
sea-site whereinto the duckers and divers went down and whence they
brought up pearls and corals and precious stones; and as he stood in the
market-place, quoth he to himself, “Let me here become a broker in this
market-street and find rest from my groaning in labour and my licking of
platters.” As soon as morning morrowed he did on such wise, when
suddenly a merchant approached him, hending in hand a costly gem whose
light burned like a lamp or rather like a ray of sunshine, and ’twas
worth the tribute of Egypt and Syria. Hereat the Caliph marvelled with
exceeding marvel, and quoth he to the trader, “Say me, wilt thou sell
this jewel?” and quoth the other, “Yes.” So the Sultan taking it from
him went about with it amongst the merchants, who seeing and considering
it, wondered greatly at its beauty. Accordingly they bid for it fifty
thousand dinars, but the royal broker ceased not to bear it about and
the buyers to increase their biddings till they offered an hundred
thousand gold pieces. Thereupon the Caliph returned with it to the owner
and accosted him saying, “Wilt thou sell it for the sum named?” and when
the merchant consented, he continued, “I now go to receive its price,
wherewith I will come back to thee.” Then the broker went up to the
buyer and said, “Bring hither its value and set it in my hand;” but the
man asked him, “Where be its owner?” and the Caliph answered, “Its owner
hath commissioned me to receive its price, after which he will come and
recover the same from me.” However the bidder retorted, “This be not
fitting nor is it according to Holy Law: do thou bring me its owner;
then come and let him pouch the price, for ’tis he hath sold it to me
and thou art only our agent.” Hereupon the Caliph went forth to seek the
proprietor and wandered about a long while without finding him; after
which he again accosted the purchaser, and said to him, “I am the
rightful proprietor: place the price in my hand.” The buyer arose to pay
his debt, but before so doing he considered the jewel and saw that it
was a bit of dark Sandarach;[272] whereat he was sore perplext and cried
out to the Caliph, “O Satan, dost thou palm off false wares, the
market-place of the merchants being under the orders of the Sultan?” But
when the traders heard these words, they flocked around the pretended
broker and having seized him they pinioned his elbows and dragged him
before the Sovran of that city who, when they set the prisoner before
him, asked, “What be the offence of this man?” “O our honoured lord,”
answered they, “this wight palmeth off false wares and swindleth the
traders in the royal Bazar.” So the King commanded them to hang him,
whereat they charged his neck with chains and bared his head, and bade
the cryer cry, “This be his award and the least of awards who forgeth
counterfeits and who tricketh the merchant-folk in the market-place of
the Sultan.” Hereat quoth the Caliph to himself, “I was not content with
platter-licking, which now appeareth to me a mighty pleasant calling but
e’en I must become a broker and die _sus. per coll_. This be for that
tit for tat; however, scant blame to the Time which hath charged me with
this work.” Now when they brought him to the hanging-place and threw the
loop around his neck and fell to hoisting him up, as he rose from the
ground his eyes were opened and he found himself emerging from the
chauldron, whilst the Wazir and the Sage and the youth were sitting and
considering him. And the Minister catching sight of his lord sprang to
his feet and kissed ground before him, and laughed aloud, and the
Commander of the Faithful asked him, “Why this laughter?” Answered he,
“O thou, the Prince of True Believers and God-guarded Sovran, my
laughter and my gladness are for myself, seeing that I have recovered my
identity after becoming a woman and being wedded to a ploughman, who
eared the ground, and after bearing to him seven babes.” Cried the
Caliph, “Woe to thee, O dog, O son of a dog, thou wast married and
rejoicedst in children, whereas I this very moment from the
hanging-place have come down.” Then he informed the Wazir of all that
had befallen him and the Minister did on like guise, whereat all those
present laughed consumedly and marvelled at the words of the Warlock,
and his proficiency in occult knowledge. Then the Kazi and witnesses
were summoned with their writing-gear and were bidden draw up the
marriage-contract of the young Cook and the Caliph’s daughter. After
this the Sage sojourned with the Commander of the Faithful in highmost
degree and most honourable dignity, and they abode eating and drinking
and living the most delectable of lives and the most enjoyable with all
manner of joy and jollity, till came to them the Destroyer of delights
and the Divider of man’s days and they departed life one and all.

FINIS.

[Illustration]

THE PLEASANT HISTORY OF THE COCK AND THE FOX.

=Here we begin to indite the pleasant History which befel between the
Cock and the Fox.=[273]

It is said that there abode in such a village a man which was a Shaykh
of long standing, one gifted with fair rede and right understanding. Now
he had on his farm a plenty of poultry, male and female, and these he
was wont to breed and to eat of their eggs and their chickens. But
amongst his cocks was a Chanticleer, well advanced of age and wily of
wit, who had long fought with Fortune and who had become wise and ware
in worldly matters and in the turns and shifts of Time. It fortuned one
day that this Cock went forth to wander about the farm-lands pecking and
picking up as he went such grains of wheat and barley and holcus[274]
and sesame and millet as chanced fall in his way; but, being careless of
himself, he had left the village afar off without thinking of what he
did, and ere he took counsel with himself he found him amiddlemost the
wilderness. So he turned him rightwards and leftwards but espied nor
friend nor familiar, whereat he stood perplext as to his affair and his
breast was straitened and still he knew not what to do. Now while thus
bewildered in his wits touching his next step, behold, his glance fell
upon a Fox[275] who was approaching him from afar, whereat he feared and
trembled and was agitated with mighty great agitation. At once he turned
him about and presently espied a high wall arising from the waste,
whereto was no place of ascending for his foe; so he spread his wings
and flew up and perched upon the coping where he took his station.
Presently the Fox came forward to the foot of the wall, and, finding no
means of climbing it and getting at the fowl, he raised his head and
said, “The Peace be upon thee, ho thou the soothfast brother and
suitable friend!” But as the Cock would not turn towards him nor return
aught of reply to his salutation, the Fox resumed, “What is to do with
thee, O dear my brother, that my greeting thou acknowledgest not and to
my words inclinest thee not?” Still the Cock requited not his courtesy
and declined to reply, whereat the Fox resumed, “Wottest thou not, O my
brother, the glad tidings wherewith I came theewards, with what suitable
intelligence and counsel veridical and information at once sincere and
self-evident? and, didst know what it is hath come to mine ears, verily
thou hadst embraced me and kissed me on the mouth.” But the Cock feigned
absence of mind and ignored him and answered him naught, but stood with
rounded eyes and fixed upon the far when the Fox resumed, “O my brother,
the King of the Beasts which be the Lion and the King of the Birds which
be the Eagle have alighted from a journey upon the meads where grass is
a-growing and by the marge where waters are a-flowing and blossoms are
a-blowing and browsing gazelles are a-to-ing and a-fro-ing; and the
twain have gathered together all manner of ferals, lions and hyenas,
leopards and lynxes, wild cattle and antelopes and jackals and even
hares, brief, all the wild beasts of the world; and they have also
collected every kind of bird, eagle and vulture, crow and raven,[276]
wild pigeon and turtle-dove, poultry and fowls and Katás and quails[277]
and other small deer, and these two liege lords have bidden the herald
proclaim, throughout the tracts of the upland wold and the wild lowland,
safety and security and confraternity and peace with honour and sympathy
and familiar friendship and affection and love amongst wild beasts and
cattle and birds; also that enmity be done away with and wrongs be
forbidden nor might one transgress against other; nay, if any chance to
injure his fellow this offence might be for his scourging a reason, and
for his death by tearing to pieces a justification. The order hath also
come forth that all do feed and browse in one place whichever they
please, never venturing to break the peace but dwelling in all amity and
affection and intimacy one with other. Moreover they have commissioned
me, very me, to overroam the wastes and gladden with good tidings the
peoples of the wilds and proclaim that one and all without exception
must assemble together, and also that whoso delayeth or refuseth
obedience shall not escape punishment[278] nor let each and every fail
to make act of presence and to kiss hands. And of thee, O my brother, I
especially require that thou descend from thy high stead in safety and
security and satisfaction, and that henceforward thy heart be not
startled nor thy limbs shake for fear.” All this description was
described by the Fox to the Cock who paid no heed to him as though he
had never heard the news; and he remained silent without return of reply
or without so much as turning to regard him; nay, he only kept his head
raised and gazed afar. Hereat quoth to him the Fox (for indeed his heart
burned with desire to know how he could seize and devour him), “O
brother mine, why and wherefore dost thou not acknowledge me by an
answer or address to me a word or even turn thy face towards me who am a
Commissioner sent by Leo, Sovran of the beasts, and Aquila, Sultan of
the birds? Sore I fear lest thou refuse to accompany me and thus come
upon thee censure exceeding and odium excessive seeing that all are
assembled in the presence and are browsing upon the verdant mead.” Then
he added (as Chanticleer regarded him not), “O my brother, I bespeak
thee and thou unheedest me and my speech; and, if thou refuse to fare
with me, at least let me know what may be thy reply.” Hereupon the Cock
inclined towards him and said, “Sooth hast thou spoken, O my brother,
and well I wot thou be an Envoy and a Commissioner from our King, and
the special Messenger of him: but my condition is changed by that which
hath befallen me.” “And what calamity, O my brother, hath betided thee?”
“Dost thou espy what I am at present espying?” “And what is it thou
espiest?” “Verily, I see a dust-cloud lowering and the Saker-falcons in
circles towering;” and quoth the Fox (whose heart throbbed with fear),
“Look straitly, O my brother, lest there happen to us a mishap.” So
Chanticleer gazed as one distraught for a full-told hour, after which he
turned to the Fox and said, “O my brother, I behold and can distinguish
a bird flying and a dust-trail hieing.” “Consider them narrowly, O my
brother,” cried the Fox (whose side-muscles quivered), “lest this be
sign of greyhound;” and the other replied, “The Truth is known to Allah
alone, yet I seem now to see a something lengthy of leg, lean of flank,
loose of ears, fine of forehand and full of quarter, and at this moment
it draweth near and is well nigh upon us—O fine!”[279] Now when the Fox
heard these words he cried to the Cock, “O my brother, I must farewell
thee!” and so saying he arose and committed his legs to the wind and he
had recourse to the Father of Safety.[280] Seeing this, the Cock also
cried, “Why thus take to flight when thou hast no spoiler thy heart to
affright?” Replied the Fox, “I have a fear of the Greyhound, O my
brother, for that he is not of my friends or of my familiars;” and the
Cock rejoined, “Didst thou not tell me thou camest as Commissioner of
the Kings to these wastes proclaiming a peace and safety amongst all the
beasts and the birds?” “O my brother Chanticleer,” retorted the other,
“this feral, Greyhound hight, was not present at the time when
pacification was proclaimed, nor was his name announced in the Congress
of the beasts; and I for my part have no love lost with him, nor between
me and him is there aught of security.” So saying the Fox turned
forthright to fly, routed with the foulest of routing, and the Cock
escaped the foe by his sleight and sagacity with perfect safety and
security. Now after the Fox had turned tail and fled from him
Chanticleer came down from the wall and regained his farm, lauding Allah
Almighty who had conveyed him unharmed to his own place. And here he
related unto his fellows what had befallen him with the Fox and how he
had devised that cunning device and thereby freed himself from a strait
wherein, but for it, the foe had torn him limb by limb.

FINIS.

HISTORY OF WHAT BEFEL THE FOWL-LET WITH THE FOWLER.

=Here we begin to indite the History of what befel the Fowl-let from the
Fowler.=[281]

They relate (but Allah is All-knowing) that there abode in
Baghdad-city a huntsman-wight in venerie trained aright. Now one day
he went forth to the chase taking with him nets and springes and other
gear he needed and fared to a garden-site with trees bedight and
branches interlaced tight wherein all the fowls did unite; and
arriving at a tangled copse he planted his trap in the ground and he
looked around for a hiding-place and took seat therein concealed.
Suddenly a Birdie approaching the trap-side began scraping the earth
and, wandering round about it, fell to saying in himself, “What may
this be? Would Heaven I wot, for it seemeth naught save a marvellous
creation of Allah!” Presently he considered the decoy which was half
buried in the ground and salam’d to it from afar to the far and the
Trap returned his salutation, adding thereto, “And the ruth of Allah
and His blessings;” and presently pursued, “Welcome and fair welcome
to the brother dear and the friend sincere and the companionable fere
and the kindly compeer, why stand from me so far when I desire thou
become my neighbour near and I become of thine intimates the faithful
and of thy comrades the truthful? So draw thee nigh to me and be of
thy safety trustful and prove thee not of me fearful.” Quoth the
Fowl-let, “I beseech thee by Allah, say me who art thou so I may not
of thee feel affright and what be thy bye-name and thy name and to
which of the tribes dost trace thy tree?” And quoth the Trap, “My name
is Holdfast[282] and my patronymic is Bindfast and my tribe is hight
the Sons of Fallfast.” Replied the Birdie, “Sooth thou sayest; for
such name is truly thy name and such bye-name is without question thy
bye-name nor is there any doubt of thy tribe being the noblest of the
tribes.” The Trap answered him saying, “Alhamdolillah—laud to the
Lord—that me thou hast recognised and that I be of thy truest friends
thou hast acknowledged, for where shalt thou find a familiar like unto
me, a lover soothful and truthful and my fellow in mind? And indeed I
a devotee of religious bent and from vain gossip and acquaintances and
even kith and kin abstinent; nor have I any retreat save upon the
heads of hills and in the bellies of dales which be long and deep; and
from mundane tidings I am the true Holdfast and in worldly joys the
real Bindfast.” The Fowl replied, “Sooth hast spoken, O my lord; and
all hail to thee; how pious and religious and of morals and manners
gracious art thou? Would to Heaven I were a single hair upon thy
body.” Rejoined the Trap, “Thou in this world art my brother and in
the next world my father;” and the other retorted, “O my brother, fain
would I question thee concerning matters concealed within thy
thoughts;” whereto the Trap, “Enquire of whatso thou requirest, that I
make manifest to thee what in heart thou desirest; for I will truly
declare to thee mine every aim and disclose to thee soothly all my
case and my thoughts concealed, nor shall remain unrevealed of mine
intent aught.” So the Birdie began, “O my brother, why and wherefore
see I thee on this wise abiding in the dust and dwelling afar from
relations and companeers and thou hast parted from thy family and
peers and hast departed from the fondness of thy dears?” “Hast thou
not learned, O my brother,” answered the Trap, “that retirement is
permanent heal and farness from folk doth blessings deal and
separation from the world is bodily weal;” and on this matter hath one
of the poets said, and said right well:—

Fly folk, in public ne’er appearing, ✿ And men shall name thee man
God-fearing;[283]
Nor say I’ve brother, mate and friend: ✿ Try men with mind still
persevering:
Yea, few are they as thou couldst wish: ✿ Scorpions they prove when most
endearing.[284]

And one of the Sages hath said, “Solitude and not ill associate.” Also
quoth they to Al-Bahlúl,[285] Why this tarrying of thine amid the homes
of the dead and why this sojourning in a barren stead and wherefore this
farness from kinsmen and mate and lack of neighbourly love for brother
and intimate? But quoth he, “Woe to you! my folk did I dwell amongst
them would some day unlove me and the while I abide far from them will
never reprove me; nor indeed would they remember my affection nor would
they desire my predilection; and so satisfied with my solitude am I that
an I saw my family I should start away as in fear of them, and were my
parents quickened anew and longed for my society verily I would take
flight from them.” Replied the Fowl-let, “In good sooth, O my brother,
truth thou hast pronounced in all by thee announced and the best of rede
did from thee proceed; but tell me, prithee, anent that cord about thy
middle wound and despite thine expending efforts that abound why thou
art neither a-standing nor a-sitting on ground?” To him replied the
Trap, “O my brother, learn that I spend every night of every month in
prayer, during which exercise whenever sleep would seize me I tighten
this cord about my waist and drive slumber from my eyes and become
therefrom the more wide-awake for my orisons. Know thou also that Allah
(be He glorified and magnified!) affectioneth his servants when devout
are they, and stand in worship alway, ever dight to pray and praise Him
by night and by day; and who turn on their sides loving the Lord to obey
in desire and dismay and doling their good away. And quoth Allah (be He
glorified and magnified!):—‘And for scanty while of the night they take
not gentle rest and at rising morn His pardon they obtest and their Lord
granteth unto them their request.’[286] And wottest thou not, O my
brother, what said the poet?—

These busy are with worldly gear ✿ Those of their moneys proud appear:
But some be rich by God’s approof— ✿ Praise Him o’ nights with love
sincere:
Their Guardian’s eye regards them aye ✿ Praying, confessing sins to
clear:
They wot nor worship aught but Him ✿ And hail His name with love and
fear.”

Therewith quoth the Fowl-let: “Sooth hast thou said, O my brother, in
each word by thee sped and right eloquently was announced all by thee
pronounced; however (I am thy protected!), do thou tell me why I see
thee one half buried in earth and the other half above ground?” And
quoth the Trap, “For the reason that I thereby resemble the dead and in
life I am shunning the pernicious lusts of the flesh; and Almighty Allah
(be He glorified and magnified!) said in His August Volume:—‘From earth
have We created you and unto her We will return you and from her will We
draw you forth a second time.’”[287] Replied the Birdie, “The truth thou
hast told in whatso thou dost unfold, but why do I see thee so bent of
back?” and rejoined the Trap, “Learn, O my brother, that the cause for
this bowing of my back is my frequent standing in prayer by day and my
upstanding by night in the service of the King, the Clement, the One,
the Prepotent, the Glorious, the Omnipotent; and verily upon this matter
right well the poet hath spoken:—

None save the pious Youth gains boon of Paradise ✿ (To whom the Lord
doth pardon crime and sin and vice),
Whose back by constant prayer through murk o’ night is bent ✿ And longs
to merit Heaven in sore and painful guise.
Hail to the slave who ever would his lord obey ✿ And who by death is
saved when he obedient dies.”

The Fowl-let continued, “O my brother, of truth the token is that
whereof thou hast spoken and I have understood thee and am certified of
thy sooth. But yet, I see upon thee a robe[288] of hair!” and the Trap
rejoined, “O my brother, knowest thou not of hair and wool that they be
the wear of the pious and the religious, whereof one of the poets hath
spoken in these words:—

Folk who in fear of long accompt[289] for naught of worldly care ✿ Hail
to them! haply garb of wool they’ll change for silken wear:
In life for provaunt shall suffice them salt and barley-bread ✿ Who seek
th’ Almighty Lord and bow the head in sedulous pray’r.”

The Birdie resumed, “In very deed thy speech the sooth doth teach; but
say me what be this staff[290] thou hendest in hand?” Replied the Trap,
“O my brother, know that I have become an olden man well shotten in
years and my strength is minished, wherefor I have taken me a staff that
I may prop me thereon and that it aid my endeavour when a-fasting.” The
Fowl-let pursued, “Thy speech is true, O my brother, and thou speakest
as due, yet would I ask thee of a matter nor refuse me information
thereanent: tell me why and wherefore this plenty of grain scattered all
about thee?” The Trap answered, “Indeed the merchants and men of wealth
bring to me this victual that I may bestow it in charity upon the Fakir
and the famisht;” and the Birdie rejoined, “O my brother, I also am
an-hungered; so dost thou enjoin me to eat thereof?” “Thou art my
companion,” cried the Trap, “so upon me such injunction is a bounden
duty,” presently adding, “Be so kind, O my brother, and haste thee
hither and eat.” Hereat the Fowl-let flew down from off his tree and
approaching little by little (with a heart beating for fear of the Trap)
picked up a few grains which lay beside it until he came to the corn set
in the loop of the springe. Hereupon he pecked at it with one peck nor
had he gained aught of good therefrom ere the Trap came down heavily
upon him and entangled his neck and held him fast. Hereupon he was
seized with a fit of sore affright and he cried out “Zík! zík!” and
“Mík! mík![291] Verily I have fallen into wreak and am betrayed by
friendly freke and oh, the excess of my trouble and tweak, Zík! Zík! O
Thou who kennest my case, do Thou enable me escape to seek, and save me
from these straits unique and be Thou ruthful to me the meek!” Thereupon
quoth to him the Trap, “Thou criest out Zik! Zik! and hast fallen into
straits unique and hast strayed from the way didst seek, O Miscreant and
Zindík,[292] and naught shall avail thee at this present or brother or
friend veridique or familiar freke. Now understand and thy pleasure
seek! I have deceived thee with a deceit and thou lentest ear and
lustedst.” Replied the Bird, “I am one whom desire hath cast down and
ignorance hath seduced and inordinate greed, one for whose neck the
collar of destruction is fitted and I have fallen along with those who
lowest fall!” Hereupon the Fowler came up with his knife to slaughter
the Fowl-let and began saying, “How many a birdie have we taken in all
ease for desire of its meat that we may dress their heads with rice or
in Harísah[293] or fried in pan and eat thereof pleasurably myself or
feed therewith great men and grandees. Also ’tis on us incumbent to feed
privily upon half the bodies and the other half shall be for our guests
whilst I will take the wings to set before my family and kinsmen as the
most excellent of gifts.”[294] Hearing these words the Bird fell to
speaking and saying:—

“O Birder, my mother’s in misery ✿ And blind with weeping my loss is
she.
I suffice not thy guest nor can serve for gift: ✿ Have ruth and
compassion and set me free!
With my parents I’ll bless thee and then will I ✿ Fly a-morn and at
e’en-tide return to thee.”

Presently resumed he, “Seest thou not how my meat be mean and my maw be
lean; nor verily can I stand thee in stead of cate nor thy hunger
satiate: so fear Allah and set me at liberty then shall the Almighty
requite thee with an abundant requital.” But the Fowler far from heeding
his words, made him over to his son saying, “O my child, take this bird
and faring homewards slaughter him and of him cook for us a cumin-ragout
and a lemon-stew, a mess flavoured with verjuice and a second of
mushrooms and a third with pomegranate seeds and a fourth of clotted
curd[295] cooked with Summák,[296] and a fine fry and eke conserves of
pears[297] and quinces and apples and apricots hight the rose-water and
vermicelli[298] and Sikbáj;[299] and meat dressed with the six leaves
and a porridge[300] and a rice-milk, and an ’Ajíjíyah[301] and fried
flesh in strips and Kabábs and meat-olives and dishes the like of these.
Also do thou make of his guts strings for bows and of his gullet a
conduit for the terrace-roof and of his skin a tray-cloth and of his
plumage cushions and pillows.” Now when the Fowl-let heard these words
(and he was still in the Fowler’s hand), he laughed a laugh of sorrow
and cried, “Woe to thee, O Birder whither be wended thy wits and thine
understanding? Art Jinn-mad or wine-drunken? Art age-foolish or asleep?
Art heavy-minded or remiss in thought? Indeed had I been that
long-necked bird the ’Anká, daughter of Life, or were I the she-camel of
Sálih to be, or the ram of Isaac the sacrificed, or the loquent calf of
Al-Sámiri[302] or even a buffalo fattened daintily all this by thee
mentioned had never come from me.” Hereat he fell to improvising and
saying:—

“The Ruthful forbiddeth the eating of me ✿ And His Grace doth grace me
with clemency:
A Camel am I whom they overload ✿ And the Birder is daft when my flesh
seeth he:
From Solomon’s breed, O my God I have hope: ✿ If he kill me the Ruthful
his drowning[303] decree.”

Then quoth the Fowl to the Fowler, “An thou design to slaughter me in
thy greed even as thou hast described, verily I shall avail thee naught,
but an thou work my weal and set me free I will show thee somewhat shall
profit thee and further the fortunes of thy sons’ sons and thy latest
descendants.” “What is that direction thou wouldst deal to me?” asked
the Fowler, and answered the Fowl-let, “I will teach a trio of words
all-wise and will discover to thee in this earth a Hoard wherewith thou
and thy seed and posterity shall ever be satisfied and shall ever pray
for the lengthening of my years. Moreover I will point out to thee a
pair of Falcons ashen-grey, big of body and burly of bulk, who are to me
true friends and whom thou didst leave in the gardens untrapped.” Asked
the Birder, “And what be the three words which so savour of wisdom?” and
answered the other, “O Fowler, the three words of wisdom are:—Bemourn
not what is the past nor at the future rejoice too fast nor believe
aught save that whereon thy glance is cast. But as regards the Hoard and
the two Falcons, when thou shalt have released me I will point them out
to thee and right soon to thee shall be shown the sooth of whatso I have
said to thee.” Hereat the Birder’s heart became well affected towards
the Birdie for his joy anent the Treasure and the Falcons; and the
device of the captive deceived the Capturer and cut short his wits so
that he at once released the prey. Forthright the Fowl-let flew forth
the Fowler’s palm in huge delight at having saved his life from death;
then, after preening his plume and spreading his pinions and his wings,
he laughed until he was like to fall earthwards in a fainting-fit. Anon
he began to gaze right and left, long breaths a-drawing and increase of
gladness ever a-showing; whereupon quoth the Birder, “O Father of
Flight, O thou The Wind hight! what saidst thou to me anent pointing out
the two Falcons ashen-grey and who were the comrades thou leftest in the
gardens?” Quoth the Birdie in reply, “Alack and alas! never saw I thy
like for an ass nor aught than thyself meaner of capacity nor mightier
of imbecility; for indeed thou carriest in thy head lightness and in thy
wits slackness. O Scant of sense, when sawest thou ever a sparrow
company with a Falcon, much less with two Falcons? So short is thine
understanding that I have escaped thy hand by devising the simplest
device which my _nous_ and knowledge suggested.” Hereat he began to
improvise and repeat:—

“When Fortune easy was, from duty[304] didst forbear ✿ Nor from that
malady[305] hast safety or repair:
Then blame thyself nor cast on other wight[306] the fault ✿ And lacking
all excuse to death of misery fare!”

Then resumed the Fowl-let, “Woe to thee, O mean and mesquin, thou
wottedst not that which thou hast lost in me, for indeed baulked is thy
bent and foiled is thy fortune and near to thee is poverty and nigh to
thee is obscurity. Hadst thou when taking me cut my throat and cloven my
crop thou hadst found therein a jewel the weight of an ounce which I
picked up and swallowed from the treasury of Kisrà Anúshírwán the King.”
But when the Birder heard the Birdie’s words he scattered dust upon his
head and buffeted his face and plucked out his beard and rent his
raiment, and at last slipped down a-swooning to the ground. And
presently recovering his senses he looked towards his late captive and
cried, “O Father of Flight, O thou The Wind hight, say me is there any
return for thee me-wards, where thou shalt with me abide, and thee
within the apple of mine eye will I hide, and after all this toil and
turmoil I will perfume and fumigate thee with ambergris and with Comorin
lign-aloes, and I will bring thee sugar for food and nuts of the
pine[307] and with me thou shalt tarry in highmost degree?” Replied the
Birdie, “O miserable, past is that which passed; I mean, suffice me not
thy fraud and thy flattering falsehood. And laud to the Lord, O thou
meanest of men, how soon hast thou forgotten the three charges wherewith
I charged thee! And how short are thy wits seeing that the whole of me
weighteth not ten drachms[308] and how then can I bear in crop a jewel
weighing an ounce? How far from thee is subtilty and how speedily hast
thou forgotten mine injunctions wherewith I enjoined thee
saying:—Believe not aught save that whereon thine eye is cast nor regret
and bemourn the past nor at what cometh rejoice too fast. These words of
wisdom are clean gone from thy memory, and hadst thou been nimble of
wits thou hadst slaughtered me forthright: however, Alhamdolillah—Glory
to God, who caused me not to savour the whittle’s sharp edge, and I
thank my Lord for my escape and for the loosing of my prosperity from
the trap of trouble.” Now when the Birder heard these words of the
Birdie he repented and regretted his folly, and he cried, “O my sorrow
for what failed me of the slaughter of this volatile, and as he sank on
the ground he sang:—[309]

“O brave was the boon which I held in my right ✿; Yet, O Maker of man,
’twas in self-despight.
Had my lot and my luck been of opulence, ✿ This emptiness never had
proved my plight.”

Hereupon the Fowl-let farewelled the Fowler and took flight until he
reached his home and household, where he seated him and recited all that
had befallen him with the Birder, to wit, how the man had captured him,
and how he had escaped by sleight, and he fell to improvising:—

“I charged you, O brood of my nestlings, and said, ✿ Ware yon Wady, nor
seek to draw near a stead
Where sitteth a man who with trap and with stakes ✿ Entrapped me, drew
knife and would do me dead.
And he longed to destroy me, O children, but I ✿ Was saved by the Lord
and to you was sped.”

And here endeth the History of the
Fowl-let and the Fowler
entire and complete.

TALE OF ATTAF.

=Here we begin to write and indite the Tale of a man of Syria, Attaf
hight.=[310]

They relate (but Allah is All-knowing of His unknown and All-cognisant
of what forewent in the annals of folk and the wonders of yore, and of
times long gone before!) that in the city of Shám[311] there dwelt of
old a man Attáf hight, who rivalled Hátim of Tayy[312] in his generosity
and his guest-love and in his self-control as to manners and morals. Now
he lived in the years when the Caliph Harun al-Rashid was reigning in
Baghdad-city, and it happened on a day of the days that this Commander
of the Faithful awoke morne and melancholic, and right straitened was
his breast. So he arose, and taking Ja’afar the Barmecide and Masrúr the
Eunuch passed with them into the place where his treasures were stored.
Presently quoth he to the Wazir, “O Ja’afar, open to me this door that I
may solace me with the sight, and my breast may be broadened and haply
be gladdened by such spectacle.” The Minister did the bidding of his
lord, who, finding a room full of books, put forth his hand, and taking
up one of the volumes, opened and read. Then he fell to weeping thrice,
and thrice to laughing aloud,[313] whereat the Wazir considered him and
cried, “O King of the Age, how is it I espy thee reading and weeping and
laughing at one and the same moment when none so act save madmen and
maniacs?”[314] And having spoken on this wise he held his peace; but the
Prince of True Believers turned himwards and cried, “O dog of the sons
of Bermak, I see thee going beyond thy degree and quitting the company
of sensible men, and thou speakest vainly making me a madman in
saying:—None laugh and cry at one and the same time save maniacs?” With
these words the Caliph restored the volume to its place in the Treasury
and bade lock the door, after which the three returned to the Divan.
Here the Commander of the Faithful regarded Ja’afar and exclaimed, “Go
thou forth from before me and address me not again nor seat thee upon
the Wazirial seat until thou answer thine own question and thou return
me a reply concerning that which is writ and aligned in yonder book I
was reading, to the end thou learn why I wept and wherefore I laught at
one and the same hour.” And he cried at him in anger saying, “Off and
away with thee, nor face me again save with the answer, else will I slay
thee with the foulest of slaughter.” Accordingly Ja’afar fared forth and
hardly could he see with his eyes, and he kept saying to himself,
“Indeed I have fallen with a sore fall; foul befal it for a fall; how
fulsome it is!” Then he fared homewards where he encountered face to
face his father Yahyá the Bermaki, who was issuing from the mansion and
he recounted to him the tale, whereat his parent said, “Go at once,
abide not here, but turn thee Damascus-wards until shall terminate this
decline of fortune and this disjunction of favour, and at the ending
thereof thou shalt see wonders therein.”[315] Ja’afar replied, “Not
until I shall have laid a charge upon my Harím;”[316] but Yahya cried,
“Enter not these doors, hie thee at once to Al-Shám, for even so ’tis
determined by Destiny.” Accordingly the Wazir gave ear to his sire, and
taking a bag containing one thousand dinars and slinging on his sword
farewelled him; then, mounting a she-mule, alone and unattended by slave
or page, he rode off and he ceased not riding for ten days full-told
until he arrived at the Marj[317] or mead of Damascus. Now it so
fortuned that on that same day Attaf,[318] a fair youth and a well-known
of the “Smile of the Prophet,” and one of the noblest and most generous
of her sons had pitched tents and had spread a banquet outside the city,
where chancing to sight Ja’afar mounted on his beast, he knew him to be
a wayfarer passing by, and said to his slaves, “Call to me yonder man!”
They did his bidding and the stranger rode up to the party of friends,
and dismounting from his mule saluted them with the salam which they all
returned. Then they sat for a while[319] after which Attaf arose and led
Ja’afar to his house companied by all the company which was there and
they paced into a spacious open hall and seated themselves in converse
for an hour full-told. Anon the slaves brought them a table spread with
the evening meal and bearing more than ten several manners of meat. So
they ate and were cheered, and after the guests had washed hands, the
eunuchs and attendants brought in candles of honey-coloured wax that
shed a brilliant light, and presently the musicians came in band and
performed a right royal partition while the servants served up conserves
for dessert. So they ate, and when they had eaten their sufficiency
they[320] drank coffee; and finally, at their ease and in their own good
time, all the guests arose and made obeisance and fared homewards. Then
Attaf and Ja’afar sat at table for an hour or so, during which the host
offered his guest an hundred greetings, saying, “All kinds of blessings
have descended from Heaven upon our heads. Tell me, how was it thou
honouredst us, and what was the cause of thy coming and of thy favouring
us with thy footsteps?”[321] So Ja’afar disclosed to him his name and
office[322] and told him the reasons of his ride to Damascus from the
beginning to the end full and detailed, whereto Attaf rejoined, “Tarry
with me an thou please a decade of years; and grieve not at all, for thy
Worship is owner of this place.” After this the eunuchs came in and
spread for Ja’afar bedding delicately wrought at the head of the hall
and its honour-stead, and disposed other sleeping-gear alongside
thereof, which seeing the Wazir said to himself, “Haply my host is a
bachelor, that they would spread his bed by my side; however, I will
venture the question.” Accordingly he addressed his host saying, “O
Attaf, art thou single or married?”[323] “I am married, O my lord,”
quoth the other, whereat Ja’afar resumed, “Wherefore dost thou not go
within and lie with thy Harím?” “O my lord,” replied Attaf, “the Harim
is not about to take flight, and it would be naught but disgraceful to
me were I to leave a visitor like thyself, a man by all revered, to
sleep alone while I fare to-night with my Harim and rise betimes to
enter the Hammam.[324] In me such action would I deem be want of
courtesy and failure in honouring a magnifico like thine Honour. In very
sooth, O my lord, so long as thy presence deign favour this house I will
not sleep within my Harem until I farewell thy Worship and thou depart
in peace and safety to thine own place.” “This be a marvellous matter,”
quoth Ja’afar to himself, “and peradventure he so doeth the more to make
much of me.” So they lay together that night and when morning morrowed
they arose and fared to the Baths whither Attaf had sent for the use of
his guest a suit of magnificent clothes, and caused Ja’afar don it
before leaving the Hammam. Then finding the horses at the door, they
mounted and repaired to the Lady’s Tomb,[325] and spent a day worthy to
be numbered in men’s lives. Nor did they cease visiting place after
place by day and sleeping in the same stead by night, in the way we have
described, for the space of four months, after which time the soul of
the Wazir Ja’afar waxed sad and sorry, and one chance day of the days,
he sat him down and wept. Seeing him in tears Attaf asked him, saying,
“Allah fend from thee all affliction, O my lord! why dost thou weep and
wherefore art thou grieved? An thou be heavy of heart why not relate to
me what hath oppressed thee?” Answered Ja’afar, “O my brother, I find my
breast sore straitened and I would fain stroll about the streets of
Damascus and solace me with seeing the Cathedral-mosque of the
Ommiades.”[326] “And who, O my lord,” responded the other, “would hinder
thee therefrom? Do thou deign wander whither thou wilt and take thy
solace, so may thy spirits be gladdened and thy breast be broadened.
Herein is none to let or stay thee at all, at all.” Hearing these words
Ja’afar arose to fare forth, when quoth his host, “O my lord, shall they
saddle thee a hackney?” but the other replied, “O my friend, I would not
be mounted for that the man on horseback may not divert himself by
seeing the folk; nay the folk enjoy themselves by looking upon him.”
Quoth Attaf, “At least delay thee a while that I may supply thee with
spending money to bestow upon the folk; and then fare forth and walk
about to thy content and solace thyself with seeing whatso thou wilt; so
mayest thou be satisfied and no more be sorrowed.” Accordingly, Ja’afar
took from Attaf a purse of three hundred dinars and left the house
gladly as one who issueth from durance vile, and he turned into the city
and began a-wandering about the streets of Damascus and enjoying the
spectacle; and at last he entered the Jámi’ al-Amawi where he prayed the
usual prayers. After this he resumed his strolling about pleasant places
until he came to a narrow street and found a bench formed of stone[327]
set in the ground. Hereon he took seat to rest a while, and he looked
about, when behold, fronting him were latticed windows wherein stood
cases planted with sweet-smelling herbs.[328] And hardly had he looked
before those casements were opened and suddenly appeared thereat a young
lady,[329] a model of comeliness and loveliness and fair figure and
symmetrical grace, whose charms would amate all who upon her gaze, and
she began watering her plants. Ja’afar cast upon her a single glance and
was sore hurt by her beauty and brilliancy; but she, after looking upon
the lattices and watering the herbs to the extent they required turned
her round and gazed adown the street where she caught a sight of Ja’afar
sitting and earnestly eyeing her. So she barred the windows and
disappeared. But the Minister lingered on the bench hoping and expecting
that haply the casement would open a second time and allow him another
look at her; and as often as he would have risen up his nature said to
him, “Sit thee down.” And he stinted not so doing till evening came on,
when he arose and returned to the house of Attaf, whom he found standing
at the gateway to await him, and presently his host exclaimed, “’Tis
well, O my lord! during all this delay indeed my thoughts have gone with
thee for that I have long been expecting thy return.” “’Tis such a while
since I walked abroad,” answered Ja’afar, “that I had needs look about
me and console my soul, wherefor I lingered and loitered.” Then they
entered the house and sat down, when the eunuchs served up on trays the
evening meal, and the Minister drew near to eat thereof but was wholly
unable, so he cast from his hand the spoon and arose. Hereat quoth his
host, “Why, O my lord, canst thou not eat?” “Because this day’s
noon-meal hath been heavy to me and hindereth my supping; but ’tis no
matter!” quoth the other. And when the hour for sleep came Ja’afar
retired to rest; but in his excitement by the beauty of that young lady
he could not close eye, for her charms had mastered the greater part of
his sense and had snared his senses as much as might be; nor could he do
aught save groan and cry, “Ah miserable me! who shall enjoy thy
presence, O full Moon of the Age and who shall look upon that comeliness
and loveliness?” And he ceased not being feverish and to twist and turn
upon his couch until late morning, and he was as one lost[330] with
love; but as soon as it was the undurn-hour Attaf came in to him and
said, “How is thy health? My thoughts have been settled on thee: and I
see that thy slumber hath lasted until between dawn and midday: indeed I
deem that thou hast lain awake o’night and hast not slept until so near
the mid-forenoon.” “O my brother, I have no Kayf,”[331] replied Ja’afar.
So the host forthwith sent a white slave to summon a physician, and the
man did his bidding, and after a short delay brought one who was the
preventer[332] of his day. And when ushered into Ja’afar’s room he
addressed the sick man, “There is no harm to thee and boon of health
befal thee:[333] say me what aileth thee?” “All is excitement[334] with
me,” answered the other, whereat the Leach putting forth his fingers
felt the wrist of his patient, when he found the pulsations pulsing
strong and the intermissions intermitting regularly.[335] Noting this he
was ashamed to declare before his face, “Thou art in love!” so he kept
silence and presently said to Attaf, “I will write thee a recipe
containing all that is required by the case.” “Write!” said the host,
and the Physician sat down to indite his prescription, when behold, a
white slave came in and said to his lord, “Thy Harim requireth thee.” So
the host arose and retired to learn what was wanted of him in the
women’s apartments, and when his wife saw him she asked, “O my lord,
what is thy pleasure that we cook for dinner and supper?” “Whatsoever
may be wanted,” he rejoined and went his ways, for since Ja’afar had
been guested in his house Attaf had not once entered the inner rooms
according as he had before declared to the Minister. Now the Physician
during the host’s visit to the Harem had written out the prescription
and had placed it under the pillow of the patient, and as he was leaving
the house he came suddenly upon the housemaster on return to the men’s
apartment, and Attaf asked him, “Hast thou written thy prescription?”
“Yes,” answered the Leach, “I have written it and set it under his
head.” Thereupon the host pulled out a piastre[336] and therewith fee’d
the physician; after which he went up to Ja’afar’s couch and drew the
paper from under his pillow and read it and saw therein written,[337] “O
Attaf, verily thy guest is a lover, so do thou look for her he loveth
and for his state purvey and make not overmuch delay.” So the host
addressed his guest, saying, “Thou art now become one of us: why then
hide from me thy case and conceal from me thy condition? This Doctor,
than whom is none keener or cleverer in Damascus, hath learned all that
befel thee.” Hereupon he produced the paper and showed it to Ja’afar,
who took it and read it with a smile; then he cried, “This Physician is
a master leach and his saying is soothfast. Know that on the day when I
went forth from thee and sauntered about the streets and lanes, there
befel me a matter which I never had thought to have betided me; no,
never; and I know not what shall become of me for that, O my brother
Attaf, my case is one involving life-loss.” And he told him all that had
happened to himself; how when seated upon the bench a lattice had been
unclosed afront of him and he had seen a young lady, the loveliest of
her time, who had thrown it open and had come forward to water her
window-garden; adding, “Now my heart was upstirred by love to her, and
she had suddenly withdrawn after looking down the street and closed the
casement as soon as she had seen a stranger gazing upon her. Again and
again I was minded to rise and retire but desire for her kept me seated
in the hope that haply she would again throw open the lattice and allow
me the favour of another glimpse, so could I see her a second time.
However, inasmuch as she did not show till evening came on I arose and
repaired hither, but of my exceeding agitation for the ardour of love to
her I was powerless to touch meat or drink, and my sleep was broken by
the excess of desire for her which had homed in my heart. And now, O my
brother Attaf, I have made known to thee whatso betided me.” When the
host heard these words, he was certified that the house whereof Ja’afar
spoke was his house and the lattice his own lattice and the lovely and
lovesome young lady his wife the daughter of his paternal uncle, so he
said in his thought, “There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in
Allah, the Glorious, the Great. Verily we are Allah’s and unto Him shall
we return!” But presently he regained himself in the nobility of his
nature, and he continued, “O Ja’afar, thine intent is pure for that the
dame thou sawest yesterday was divorced by her husband; and I will
straightway fare to her father and bespeak him to the end that none may
lay hand upon her; and then will I return and let thee ken all
concerning her.” So saying he arose and went at once to his
cousin-wife[338] who greeted him and kissing his hand said to him, “Is
thy guest a-going?” Said he, “By no means: the cause of my coming to
thee is not his going, the reason thereof is my design of sending thee
to the home of thy people, for that thy father anon met me in the
market-street and declared to me that thy mother is dying of a colick,
and said to me:—Go send her daughter without delay so that she may see
her parent alive and meet her once more.” Accordingly the young wife
arose; and, hardly knowing how she moved for tears at such tidings, she
took her slave-girls with her and repairing to her home rapped at the
door, and her mother who opened to her cried on seeing her, “May this
thy coming (Inshallah!) be well, O my daughter, but how is it thou
comest thus unexpected?” “Inshallah!” said the wife, “thou art at rest
from the colick?” and the mother rejoined, “Who told thee I was colicky?
but pass thou within.” So she entered the court and her father, Abdullah
Chelebi hight,[339] hearing her footstep from an inner room, asked,
“What is there to do?” “Thou mettest anon,” replied his daughter, “Attaf
thy son-in-law in the Bazar and didst tell him that my mother was sore
afflicted with a colick.” Hearing this he exclaimed, “This day I went
not once to the market-street nor have I seen a soul!” Now they had not
ceased conversing ere the door was rapped; and as the slave girls opened
it, they saw porters laden with the young lady’s gear and garments and
they led the men into the court where the father asked them, “Who sent
these stuffs?” “Attaf,” they replied, and setting down their loads
within went their way. Then the father turned to his daughter and said
to her, “What deed hast done that my son-in-law bade take up thy gear
and have it sent after thee?” And the mother said to him, “Hold thy
peace and speak not such speech lest the honour of the house be blamed
and shamed.” And as they were talking, behold, up came Attaf companied
by a party of friends when his father-in-law asked him, “Wherefore hast
thou done on this wise?” “To-day,” answered he, “there came from me a
wrongous oath: on account of my inclination to thy daughter my heart is
dark as night whereas her good name is whiter than my turband and ever
bright.[340] Furthermore an occasion befel and this oath fell from my
mouth and I bade her be the owner of herself.[341] And now will I beweep
the past and straightway set her free.” So saying he wrote a writ of
repudiation and returning to Ja’afar said, “From early dawn I have
wearied myself[342] for thy sake and have so acted that no man can lay
hand upon her. And at last thou mayst now enjoy life and go to the
gardens and the Hammams and take thy pleasure until the days of her
widowhood[343] be gone by.” Replied Ja’afar, “Allah quicken thee for
what thou wroughtest of kindness to me,” and Attaf rejoined, “Find for
thyself something thou requirest, O my brother.”[344] Then he fell to
taking him every day amongst the crowd of pleasure-seekers and solacing
him with a show of joyous spectacles[345] till the term of divorce had
sped, when he said to the Wazir, “O Ja’afar, I would counsel thee with
an especial counsel.” “And what may it be, O my brother?” quoth the
other; and quoth he, “Know, O my lord, that many of the folk have found
the likeness between thy Honour and Ja’afar the Barmecide, wherefore
must I fain act on this wise. I will bring thee a troop of ten Mamelukes
and four servants on horseback, with whom do thou fare privily and by
night forth the city and presently transmit to me tidings from outside
the walls that thou the Grand Wazir, Ja’afar the Barmecide, art recalled
to court and bound thither from Egypt upon business ordered by the
Sultan. Hereat the Governor of Damascus, ’Abd al-Malik bin Marwán[346]
and the Grandees of Syria will flock forth to meet and greet thee with
fêtes and feasts, after which do thou send for the young lady’s sire and
of him ask her to wife. Then I will summon the Kazi and witnesses and
will write out without stay or delay the marriage-writ with a dower of a
thousand dinars the while thou makest ready for wayfare, and if thou
journey to Homs or to Hamah do thou alight at whatso place ever pleaseth
thee. Also I will provide thee of spending-money as much as thy soul can
desire and supply to thee raiment and gear, horses and bât-animals,
tents and pavilions of the cheap and of the dear, all thou canst
require. So what sayest thou concerning this counsel?” “Fair fall it for
the best of rede which hath no peer,” replied Ja’afar. Hereupon Attaf
arose and gathering his men about his guest sent him forth the city when
the Minister wrote a writ and despatched it by twenty horsemen with a
trader to inform the Governor of Syria that Ja’afar the Barmecide was
passing that way and was about to visit Damascus on the especial service
of the Sultan. So the Kapújí[347] entered Damascus and read out the
Wazirial letter[348] announcing Ja’afar’s return from Egypt. Hereat the
Governor arose and after sending a present of provisions[349] without
the walls bade pitch the tents, and the Grandees of Syria rode forth to
meet the Minister, and the Headmen of the Province set out to greet him,
and he entered with all honour and consideration. It was indeed a day
fit to be numbered among the days of a man’s life, a day of general
joyance for those present, and they read the Farmán and they offered the
food and the forage to the Chamberlain and thus it became known to one
and all of the folk that a writ of pardon had come to Ja’afar’s hands
and on this wise the bruit went abroad, far and near, and the Grandees
brought him all manner of presents. After this Ja’afar sent to summon
the young lady’s father and as soon as he appeared in his presence, said
to him, “Thy daughter hath been divorced?” and said the other “Yes; she
is at home with me.” Quoth the Minister, “I would fain take her to
wife;” and quoth the father, “Here am I ready to send her as thy
handmaid.” The Governor of Sham added, “I will assume charge of the
dowry,” and the damsel’s father rejoined, “It hath already come to
hand.”[350] Hereat they summoned the Kazi and wrote out the writ of
Ja’afar’s marriage; and, having ended the ceremony, they distributed
meat and drink to the poor in honour of the wedding, and Abd al-Malik
bin Marwan said to Ja’afar, “Deign, O my lord, come hither with me and
become my guest, and I will set apart for thee a place wherein thou
canst consummate thy marriage.” But the other replied, “Nay, I may not
do so; I am sent on public affairs by the Commander of the Faithful and
I purpose setting off with my bride and marching without further delay.”
The Grandees of Syria spent that night until morning without any being
able to snatch a moment of sleep, and as soon as dawned the day Ja’afar
sent to summon his father-in-law and said, “On the morrow I design
setting forth, and I desire that my bride be ready for the road;”
whereto replied the other, “Upon my head be it and my eyes!” Then
Abdullah Chelebi fared homewards and said to his daughter, “O my child,
Attaf hath divorced thee from bed and from board, whereas Sultan Ja’afar
the Bermaki hath taken thee to wife, and on Allah is the repairing of
our broken fortunes and the fortifying of our hearts.” And she held her
peace for displeasure by cause that she loved Attaf on account of the
blood-tie and his exceeding great generosity. But on the next day
Ja’afar sent a message to her sire informing him that the march would
begin about mid-afternoon and that he wished him to make all ready, so
the father did accordingly; and when Attaf heard thereof he sent
supplies and spending-money.[351] At the time appointed the Minister
took horse escorted by the Governor and the Grandees, and they brought
out the mule-litter[352] wherein was the bride, and the procession rode
onwards until they had reached the Dome of the Birds,[353] whereat the
Minister bade them return home and they obeyed him and farewelled him.
But on the ride back they all met Attaf coming from the city, and he
reined in his horse and saluted the Governor and exchanged salams with
his companions, who said to him, “Now at the very time we are going in
thou comest out.” Attaf made answer, “I wotted not that he would set
forth this day, but as soon as I was certified that he had mounted I
sent to summon his escort and came forth a-following him.”[354] To this
the Governor replied, “Go catch them up at the Dome of the Birds, where
they are now halting.” Attaf followed this counsel and reaching the
place alighted from his mare, and approaching Ja’afar embraced him and
cried, “Laud to the Lord, O brother mine, who returneth thee to thy home
with fortunes repaired and heart fortified;” and said the Minister, “O
Attaf, Allah place it in my power to requite thee; but cease thou not to
write me and apprise me of thy tidings; and for the nonce I order thee
to return hence and not to lie the night save in thine own house.” And
his host did his bidding whilst the cousin-wife hearing his voice thrust
her head out of the litter and looked upon him with flowing tears,
understanding the length to which his generosity had carried him. So
fared it with Attaf and his affair; but now give ear to what befel him
from Abd al-Malik bin Marwan. As they hied them home one who hated the
generous man asked the Governor, “Wottest thou the wherefore he went
forth to farewell his quondam guest at so late a time as this?” “Why
so?” answered the other; and the detractor continued, “Ja’afar hath
tarried four months as a guest in his household, and disguised so that
none save the host knew him, and now Attaf fared not forth for his sake
but because of the woman.” “What woman?” enquired the Governor, and the
other replied, “His whilom wife, whom he divorced for the sake of his
stranger, and married her to him; so this day he followeth to enjoin him
once more concerning the Government of Syria which perchance is promised
to him. And ’tis better that thou breakfast upon him ere he sup upon
thee.” The other enquired, “And whose daughter is she, is not her sire
Abdullah Chelebi?”[355] Whereto the man answered, “Yes, O my lord, and I
repeat that she was put away to the intent that Ja’afar might espouse
her.” When the Governor heard these words, he was wroth with wrath
galore than which naught could be more, and he hid his anger from Attaf
for a while of time until he had devised a device to compass his
destruction. At last, one day of the days he bade cast the corpse of a
murthered man into his enemy’s garden and after the body was found by
spies he had sent to discover the slayer, he summoned Attaf and asked
him, “Who murthered yon man within thy grounds?” Replied the other,
“’Twas I slew him.” “And why didst slay him?” cried the Governor, “and
what harm hath he wrought thee?” But the generous one replied, “O my
lord, I have confessed to the slaughter of this man in order that I and
only I may be mulcted in his blood-wite lest the neighbours say:—By
reason of Attaf’s garden we have been condemned to pay his fine.” Quoth
Abd al-Malik, “Why should I want to take mulcts from the folk? Nay; I
would command according to Holy Law and even as Allah hath ordered, ‘A
life for a life.’” He then turned for testimony to those present and
asked them, “What said this man?” and they answered, “He said:—I slew
him.” “Is the accused in his right mind or Jinn-mad[356]?” pursued the
Governor; and they said, “In his senses.” Then quoth the Governor to the
Mufti, “O Efendi, deliver me thine official decision according to that
thou heardest from the accused’s mouth;” and the Judge pronounced and
indited his sentence upon the criminal according to his confession.
Hereupon the Governor gave order for his slaves to plunder the house and
bastinado the owner; then he called for the headsman, but the Notables
interfered and cried, “Give him a delay, for thou hast no right to slay
him without further evidence; and better send him to gaol.” Now all
Damascus was agitated and excited by this affair, which came upon the
folk so suddenly and unforeseen. And Attaf’s friends[357] and familiars
came down upon the Governor and went about spreading abroad that the
generous man had not spoken such words save in fear lest his neighbours
be molested and be mulcted for a murther which they never committed, and
that he was wholly innocent of such crime. So Abd al-Malik bin Marwan
summoned them and said, “And ye plead that the accused is Jinn-mad this
were folly, for he is the prince of intelligent men: I was resolved to
let him live until the morrow; but I have been thwarted and this very
night I will send and have him strangled.” Hereupon he returned him to
prison and ordered the gaoler to do him die before day might break. But
the man waxed wroth with exceeding wrath to hear the doom devised for
Attaf and having visited him in prison said to him, “Verily the Governor
is determined to slay thee for he was not satisfied with the
intercession made for thee by the folk or even with taking the legal
blood-wite.” Hereat Attaf wept and cried, “Allah (be He magnified and
glorified!) hath assigned unto every death a cause. I desired but to do
good amongst the garden folk and prevent their being fined; and now this
benevolence hath become the reason of my ruin.” Then, after much ‘say
and said’ the gaoler spake as follows, “Why talk after such fashion? I
am resolved to set thee free and to ransom thee with my life; and at
this very moment I will strike off thy chains and deliver thee from him.
But do thou arise and tear my face and pluck out my beard and rend my
raiment; then, after thrusting a gag[358] into my mouth wend thy ways
and save thy life and leave me to bear all blame.”[359] Quoth Attaf,
“Allah requite thee for me with every weal!” Accordingly the gaoler did
as he had undertaken and his prisoner went forth unhurt and at once
followed the road to Baghdad. So far concerning him; but now hear thou
what befel the Governor of Syria, Abd al-Malik bin Marwan. He took
patience till midnight, when he arose and fared accompanied by the
headsman to the gaol that he might witness the strangling of Attaf; but
lo and behold! he found the prison-door wide open and the keeper in sore
sorrow with his raiment all rent to rags and his beard plucked out and
his face scratched and the blood trickling from his four sides and his
case was the miserablest of cases. So they removed the gag from his
mouth and the Governor asked him, “Who did with thee on this wise?” and
the man answered, “O my lord, yesternight, about the middle thereof, a
gang of vagabonds and ne’er-do-wells as they were ’Ifrits of our lord
Sulayman (upon whom be The Peace!), not one of whom I recognised, came
upon me and ere I was ware of them they broke down the prison door and
killed me;[360] and when I would have cried aloud and shouted for aid
they placed yonder gag in my mouth, then they wounded me and shredded my
dress and left me in the state thou seest. Moreover they took Attaf
after breaking his chains and said to him:—Go and lay thy complaint
before the Sultan.” Now those who accompanied the Governor said, “This
be a gaoler and the son of a gaoler, nor during all his days hath anyone
charged him with letting a prisoner out of hand.” Quoth Abd al-Malik to
the wounded man “Hie thee to thy house and stay there;” whereat he
straightway arose and went his ways. After this the Governor took horse,
he and his escort; and all rode off to search for Attaf during a term of
four days and some of them dug and dug deep down while the others
returned after a bootless errand, and reported that they had failed to
find him. Such was the case with the Governor of Syria; and now give ear
to the adventure of Attaf. He left not wayfaring until but a single
stage remained between him and Baghdad when robbers came upon him and
stripped him of all his clothes, so that he was compelled to enter the
capital in foulest condition, naked even as his mother bare him. And
after some charitable wight had thrown an old robe about him and bound
his head with a clout (and his unshorn hair fell over his eyes)[361] he
fell to asking for the mansion of the Wazir Ja’afar and the folk guided
him thereto. But when he would have entered the attendants suffered him
not; so he stood at that gate till an old man joined him. Attaf enquired
of him saying, “Hast thou with thee, O Shaykh, an ink-case and pens and
paper?” and the other replied, “I have; but what is thy need thereof?
tell me, so may I write for thee.” “I will write myself,” rejoined
Attaf; and when the old man handed to him the gear, he took seat and
indited an address to Ja’afar informing him of all that passed from
first to last, and especially of his own foul plight.[362] Presently he
returned the ink-case and reed pens to the Shaykh; and, going up to the
gate, asked those standing about the doors, “Will ye not admit for me
this missive and place it in the hand of his Highness, Ja’afar the
Bermaki, the Wazir?” “Give it here,” said they, and one of them took it
with the intent of handing it to the Minister when suddenly the cannon
roared;[363] the palace was in a hubbub and each and everyone cried,
“What is to do?” Hereat many voices replied, “The Sultan, who hath been
favoured with a man-child, biddeth decorate the city for seven days.”
Hereat the attendant, who had charged himself with the letter, threw it
in that confusion from his hand and Attaf was led to gaol as a vagrant.
Anon Ja’afar took horse and, after letting read the Sultan’s rescript
about the city-decorations, gave command that all the prisoners be
released, Attaf amongst the number. As he issued forth the gaol he
beheld all the streets adorned with flags and tapestry, and when evening
approached eating-cloths and trays of food were set and all fell-to,
while sundry said to Attaf who was in pauper plight, “Come and eat
thou;” for it was a popular feast.[364] And affairs went on after this
same fashion and the bands made music and cannon was fired until ended
the week of decoration during which the folk ceased not to-ing and
fro-ing. As evening evened Attaf entered a cathedral-mosque and prayed
the night-prayers when he was accosted by the eunuchs who cried, “Arise
and gang thy gait, that we may close the mosque-door, O Attaf,” for his
name had become known. He replied, “O man, the Apostle of Allah saith,
‘Whoso striveth for good is as the doer thereof and the doer is of the
people of Paradise:’ so suffer me to sleep here in some corner;” but
quoth the other, “Up with thee and be off: yesterday they stole me a bit
of matting and to-night I will bolt the door nor allow any to sleep
here. And indeed the Apostle of Allah (whom the Almighty save and
assain!) hath forbidden sleep o’ nights in the mosques.” Attaf had no
competence to persuade the Castrato by placing himself under his
protection, albeit he prayed him sore saying, “I am a stranger in the
city nor have I knowledge of any, so do thou permit me here to pass this
one night and no more.” But as he was again refused he went forth into
the thoroughfares where the street dogs barked at him, and thence he
trudged on to the market where the watchmen and warders cried out at
him, till at last he entered a ruinous house where he stumbled when
walking and fell over something which proved to be a youth lately
murthered, and in tripping he fell upon his face and his garments were
bewrayed and crimsoned with blood. And as he stood in doubt as to what
must be done the Wali and the watch, who were going round the town by
night, met him face to face; and as soon as they saw him all rushed at
him in a body and seizing him bore him to the gaol. Here we leave
speaking of him; and now return we to Ja’afar and what befel him. After
he had set out from Damascus and sent back Attaf from the Dome of the
Birds he said in his mind, “Thou art about to consummate marriage with a
damsel and to travel until thou shalt reach Baghdad, so meanwhile up and
take thee an ewer of water and make the Wuzú and pray.” However, as he
purposed that evening to go in unto the wife of Attaf, controversy
forewent compliments[365] and the tent-pitchers, who were sent on to the
next station set up the pavilion of the bride and the other tents.
Ja’afar took patience until every eye however wakeful waxed sleep-full,
at which time he rose up and went in to Attaf’s wife who, the moment she
saw him enter, covered her face with her hands as from a stranger. “The
Peace be upon thee!” said he and said she, “With thee also be The Peace
and the ruth of Allah and His blessings.” Then he continued, “O daughter
of my father’s brother[366] why hast thou placed thy hand upon thy face?
In the lawful there be naught of shameful.” “True, O my lord,” she
replied, “but Modesty is a part of Religion. If to one the like of thee
it be a light matter that the man who guested thee and served thee with
his coin and his case be treated on this wise and thou have the heart to
take his mate from him, then am I but a slave between thy hands.” “Art
thou the divorced wife of Attaf?” asked Ja’afar, and she answered, “I
am.” Quoth he, “And why did thy husband on such wise?” and quoth she,
“The while I stood watering plants at the window, thy Highness deigned
look upon me and thou toldest thy love to Attaf, who forthright put me
away and made me wife to thy Worship. And this is wherefore I conceal
from thee my face.” Ja’afar cried, “Thou art now unlawful to him and
licit to me; but presently thou shalt become illicit to me and
legitimate to thy husband: so from this time forth thou art dearer and
more honourable to me than my eyes and my mother and my sister. But for
the moment thy return to Damascus is not possible for fear of foolish
tongues lest they prattle and say:—Attaf went forth to farewell Ja’afar,
and his wife lay the night with the former, and thus have the back-bones
had a single lappet.[367] However I will bear thee to Baghdad where I
will stablish thee in a spacious and well furnished lodging with ten
slave girls and eunuchs to serve thee; and, as long as thou abide with
me, I will give thee[368] every day five golden ducats and every month a
suit of sumptuous clothes. Moreover everything in thy lodging shall be
thine; and whatever gifts and offerings be made to thee they shall be
thy property, for the folk will fancy thee to be my bride and will
entertain thee and escort thee to the Hammams and present thee with
sumptuous dresses. After this fashion thou shalt pass thy days in
joyance and thou shalt abide with me in highmost honour and esteem and
worship till what time we see that can be done. So from this moment
forth[369] throw away all fear and hereafter be happy in heart and high
in spirits, for that now thou standest me in stead of mother and sister
and here naught shall befal thee save weal. And now my first desire to
thee which burned in my soul hath been quenched and exchanged for
brotherly love yet stronger than what forewent it.” So Attaf’s wife
rejoiced with exceeding joy; and, as they pursued their journey, Ja’afar
ceased not to clothe her in the finest of clothes, so that men might
honour her as the Wazir’s Consort; and ever to entreat her with yet
increasing deference. This endured until they entered Baghdad-city where
the attendants bore her Takhtrawán into the Minister’s Harem and an
apartment was set apart for her even as he had promised, and she was
provided with a monthly allowance of a thousand dinars and all the
comforts and conveniences and pleasures whereof he had bespoken her; nor
did he ever allow his olden flame for her to flare up again, and he
never went near her; but sent messengers to promise her a speedy reunion
with her mate. Such was the case of Ja’afar and Attaf’s wife; and now
give ear to what befel and betided the Minister during his first
reception by his liege lord who had sorely regretted his departure and
was desolated by the loss of him. As soon as he presented himself before
the Caliph, who rejoiced with exceeding joy and returned his salute and
his deprecation of evil,[370] the Commander of the Faithful asked him,
“Where was the bourne of this thy wayfare?” and he answered, “Damascus.”
“And where didst alight?” “In the house of one Attaf hight,” rejoined
Ja’afar, who recounted all that his host had done with him from the
beginning to the end. The Prince of True Believers took patience, until
he had told his story and then cried to his Treasurer saying, “Hie thee
hence and open the Treasury and bring me forth a certain book.” And when
this was done he continued, “Hand that volume to Ja’afar.” Now when the
Minister took it and read it he found written therein all that had
occurred between Attaf and himself and he left not reading till he came
to the time when the twain, host and guest, had parted and each had
farewelled other and Attaf had fared homewards. Hereupon the Caliph
cried to him, “Close the book at what place it completeth the recital of
thy bidding adieu to Attaf and of his returning to his own place, so
shalt thou understand how it was I said to thee:—Near me not until thou
bring that which is contained in this volume.” Then the Commander of the
Faithful restored the book to the Treasurer saying, “Take this and set
it in the bibliotheca;” then, turning to Ja’afar he observed, “Verily
Almighty Allah (be He glorified and magnified!) hath deigned show thee
whatso I read therein until I fell a-weeping and a-laughing at one and
the same time. So now do thou retire and hie thee home.” Ja’afar did his
bidding and reassumed the office of Wazir after fairer fashion than he
was before. And now return we to the purport of our story as regardeth
the designs of Attaf and what befel him when they took him out of gaol.
They at once led him to the Kazi who began by questioning him, saying,
“Woe to thee, didst thou murther this Háshimí?”[371] Replied he, “Yes, I
did!” “And why killedst thou him?” “I found him in yonder ruin and, I
struck him advisedly and slew him!” “Art thou in thy right senses?”
“Yea, verily.” “What may be thy name?” “I am hight Attaf.” Now when the
Judge heard this confession, which was thrice repeated, he wrote a writ
to the Mufti and acquainted him with the contention: and the divine
after delivering his decision produced a book and therein indited the
_procès-verbal_. Then he sent notice thereof to Ja’afar the Wazir for
official order to carry out the sentence and the Minister took the
document and affixing his seal and signature thereto gave order for the
execution. So they bore Attaf away and led him to the gallows-foot
whither he was followed by a world of folk in number as the dust; and,
as they set him under the tree Ja’afar the Wazir, who was riding by with
his suite at the time, suddenly espied a crowd going forth the city.
Thereupon he summoned the Sobáshí[372] who came up to him and kissed his
knee. “What is the object of this gathering of folk who be manifold as
the dust and what do they want?” quoth the Wazir; and quoth the officer,
“We are wending to hang[373] a Syrian who hath murthered a youth of
Sharif family.” “And who may be this Syrian?” asked the Wazir, and the
other answered, “One hight Attaf.” But when Ja’afar heard the word Attaf
he cried out with a mighty loud outcry and said, “Hither with him.” So
after loosing the noose from his neck they set him before the Wazir who
regarding him at once recognised his whilome host albeit he was in the
meanest of conditions, so he sprang up and threw himself upon him and he
in turn threw himself upon his sometime guest.[374] “What condition be
this?” quoth Ja’afar as soon as he could speak, and quoth Attaf, “This
cometh of my acquaintance with thee which hath brought me to such pass.”
Hereupon the twain swooned clean away and fell down fainting on the
floor, and when they came to themselves and could rise to their feet
Ja’afar the Wazir sent his friend Attaf to the Hammam with a sumptuous
suit of clothes which he donned as he came out. Then the attendants led
him to the Wazirial mansion where both took seat and they drank wine and
ate the early meal[375] and after their coffee they sat together in
converse. And when they had rested and were cheered, Ja’afar said, “Do
thou acquaint me with all that betided thee from the time we took leave
each of other until this day and date.” So Attaf fell to telling him how
he had been entreated by Abd al-Malik bin Marwan, Governor of Syria; how
he had been thrown into prison and how his enemy came thither by night
with intent to strangle him; also how the gaoler devised a device to
save him from slaughter and how he had fled nor ceased flight till he
drew near Baghdad when robbers had stripped him; how he had lost an
opportunity of seeing the Wazir because the city had been decorated;
and, lastly, what had happened to him through being driven from the
Cathedral-mosque; brief, he recounted all from commencement to
conclusion. Hereupon the Minister loaded him with benefits and presently
gave orders to renew the marriage-ceremony between man and wife; and she
seeing her husband led in to pay her the first visit lost her senses,
and her wits flew from her head and she cried aloud, “Would Heaven I wot
if this be on wake or the imbroglio of dreams!” So she started like one
frightened and a moment after she threw herself upon her husband and
cried, “Say me, do I view thee in vision or really in the flesh?”
whereto he replied, “In the world of sense and no sweven is this.” Then
he took seat beside her and related to her all that had befallen him of
hardships and horrors till he was taken from under the Hairibee; and she
on her part recounted how she had dwelt under Ja’afar’s roof, eating
well and drinking well and dressing well and in honour and worship the
highmost that might be. And the joy of this couple on reunion was
perfect. But as for Ja’afar when the morning morrowed, he arose and
fared for the Palace; then, entering the presence, he narrated to the
Caliph all that had befallen Attaf, art and part; and the Commander of
the Faithful rejoined, “Indeed this adventure is the most wondrous that
can be, and the most marvellous that ever came to pass.” Presently he
called to the Treasurer and bade him bring the book a second time from
the Treasury, and when it was brought the Prince of True Believers took
it, and handing it to Ja’afar, said to him, “Open and read.” So he
perused the whole tale of Attaf with himself the while his liege lord
again wept and laughed at the same moment and said, “In very deed, all
things strange and rare are written and laid up amongst the treasuries
of the Kings; and therefor I cried at thee in my wrath and forbade thee
my presence until thou couldst answer the question, What is there in
this volume? and thou couldst comprehend the cause of my tears and my
smiles. Then thou wentest from before me and wast driven by doom of
Destiny until befel thee with Attaf that which did befal; and in fine
thou returnedst with the reply I required.” Then the Caliph enrobed
Ja’afar with a sumptuous honour-robe and said to the attendants, “Bring
hither to me Attaf.” So they went out and brought him before the Prince
of True Believers; and the Syrian standing between his hands blessed the
Sovran and prayed for his honour and glory in permanence of prosperity
and felicity. Hereat quoth the Caliph, “O Attaf, ask whatso thou
wishest!” and quoth the generous man, “O King of the Age, I pray only
thy pardon for Abd al-Malik bin Marwan.” “For that he harmed thee?”
asked Harun al-Rashid, and Attaf answered, “O my lord, the transgression
came not from him, but from Him who caused him work my wrong; and I have
freely pardoned him. Also do thou, O my lord, write a Farmán with thine
own hand certifying that I have sold to the gaoler, and have received
from him the price thereof, all my slaves and estates in fullest tale
and most complete. Moreover deign thou appoint him inspector over the
Governor of Syria[376] and forward to him a signet-ring by way of sign
that no petition which doth not bear that seal shall be accepted or even
shall be heard and lastly transmit all this with a Chamberlain unto
Damascus.” Now all the citizens of Syria were expecting some ill-turn
from the part of Attaf, and with this grievous thought they were
engrossed, when suddenly tidings from Baghdad were bruited abroad; to
wit, that a Kapuji was coming on Attaf’s business. Hereat the folk
feared with exceeding great affright and fell to saying, “Gone is the
head of Abd al-Malik bin Marwan, and gone all who could say aught in his
defence.” And when the arrival of the Chamberlain was announced all
fared forth to meet and greet him, and he entered on a day of flocking
and crowding,[377] which might be truly numbered amongst the days and
lives of men. And presently he produced the writ of indemnity, and
pardon may not be procured save by one duly empowered to pardon. Then he
sent for the gaoler and committed to him the goods and chattels of
Attaf, together with the signet and the appointment of supervisor over
the Governor of Syria with an especial Farman that no order be valid
unless sealed with the superior’s seal. Nor was Abd al-Malik bin Marwan
less rejoiced that the adventure had ended so well for him when he saw
the Kapuji returning Baghdad-wards that he might report all concerning
his mission. But as for Attaf, his friend Ja’afar bestowed upon him
seigniories and presented him with property and moneys exceeding tenfold
what he had whilome owned and made him more prosperous than he had ever
been aforetime.

_NOTE ON THE TALE OF ATTAF._

Mr. Alexander J. Cotheal, of New York, a correspondent who already on
sundry occasions has rendered me able aid and advice, was kind enough to
send me his copy of the Tale of Attaf (the “C. MS.” of the foregoing
pages). It is a small 4to of pp. 334, size 5¾ by 8 inches, with many of
the leaves injured and repaired; and written in a variety of
handwritings, here a mere scribble, there regular and legible as printed
Arabic. A fly-leaf inserted into the Arabic binding contains in cursive
hand the title, “A Book embracing many Tales of the Tales of the Kings
and named ‘Stories from the Thousand Nights and a Night.’” And a note at
the end supplies the date; “And the finish thereof was on Fifth Day
(Thursday), 9th from the beginning of the auspicious month Rabí’a 2nd,
in the year 1096 of the Hijrah of the Apostle, upon whom be the choicest
of blessings and the fullest of greetings; and Allah prospereth what he
pleaseth,[378] and praise be to God the One.” Thus (A.H. 1096 = A.D.
1685) the volume is upwards of 200 years old. It was bought by Mr.
Cotheal many years ago with other matters among the effects of a
deceased American missionary who had brought it from Syria.

The “Tale of Attaf” occupies pp. 10–50, and the end is abrupt. The
treatment of the “Novel” contrasts curiously with that of the Chavis MS.
which forms my text, and whose directness and simplicity give it a
European and even classical character. It is an excellent study of the
liberties allowed to themselves by Eastern editors and scribes. In the
Cotheal MS. the tone is distinctly literary, abounding in verse
(sometimes repeated from other portions of The Nights), and in Saj’a or
Cadence which the copyist sometimes denotes by marks in red ink. The
wife of Attaf is a much sterner and more important personage than in my
text: she throws water upon her admirer as he gazes upon her from the
street, and when compelled to marry him by her father, she “gives him a
bit of her mind” as forcibly and stingingly as if she were of
“Anglo-Saxon” blood; _e.g._ “An thou have in thee aught of manliness and
generosity thou wilt divorce me even as he did.” Sundry episodes like
that of the brutal Eunuch at Ja’afar’s door, and the Vagabond in the
Mosque are also introduced; but upon this point I need say no more, as
Mr. Cotheal shall now speak for himself.

THE TALE OF ATTAF
BY
ALEXANDER J. COTHEAL.

_STORY OF ATTAF THE GENEROUS, AND WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM WITH THE
WAZIR JA’AFAR WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH A YOUNG LADY NOT KNOWING HER
TO BE THE COUSIN-WIFE OF ATTAF WHO, IN HIS GENEROSITY DIVORCED HER
AND MARRIED HER TO HIM. THE NAIB OF DAMASCUS BEING JEALOUS OF
ATTAF’S INTIMACY WITH JA’AFAR IMPRISONS HIM FOR TREASON AND
PILLAGES HIS PROPERTY. ESCAPE OF ATTAF FROM PRISON AND HIS FLIGHT
TO BAGHDAD WHERE HE ARRIVES IN A BEGGARLY CONDITION, AND BEING
ACCUSED OF ASSASSINATION IS CONDEMNED TO DEATH, BUT BEING RELEASED
HE GOES TO JA’AFAR WHO RECOGNISES HIM AND IS REWARDED BY HIM AND
THE CALIPH. HIS WIFE IS RESTORED TO HIM AND AFTER A WHILE THEY ARE
SENT HOME TO DAMASCUS OF WHICH HE IS APPOINTED WALI IN PLACE OF
THE NAIB WHO IS CONDEMNED TO DEATH, BUT IS AFTERWARDS EXILED._

=In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate to whom we cry for
help.=

They say God is omniscient, knowing the past and the future, and we
learn from the histories of the peoples that there was in ancient times
and bygone seasons (and God knows best!) a Caliph of the Caliphs of the
orthodox and he was Harun er-Rashid who one night became very restless
and from the drowsiness that came upon him he sat down upon the bed and
dressed himself in sleeping-clothes; then it was that he called to his
service Mesrúr the sword-bearer of grace who came immediately into his
presence and said to him, O Mesrur, the night is very oppressive and I
wish thee to dispel my uneasiness. Then Mesrur said to him, O Commander
of the Faithful, arise now and go to the terrace-roof of the palace and
look upon the canopy of heaven and upon the twinkling stars and the
brightness of the moon, while listening to the music of the rippling
streams and the creaking norias as they are spoken of by the poet who
said:—

A Noria that discharges by the spouts of her tears resembles the actions
of a distracted lover:
She is the lover of her branches (sweeps or levers) by the magic in her
heart until she laughs:
She complains and the tears run from her eyes, she rises in the morning
to find herself weeping and complaining.

Then he said, O Commander of the Faithful, the _streams_ also are thus
mentioned by one of them:—

My favorite is a damsel dispensing drink, and my recreation is a running
stream;
A damsel whose eyes are a garden of Paradise, and a garden whose springs
make a running brook.

Then again said Harun er-Rashid, O Mesrur, such is not my wish, and
Mesrur replied, O Commander of the Faithful, in thy palace are three
hundred and sixty damsels, they are thy concubines and thy slaves, and
they are as if they were rising moons and beautiful gazelles, and in
elegant robes they are dressed like the flowers. Walk around in the
midst of the palaces and from thy hiding-place see each of them enter by
herself in her own apartment admiring her beauty and her magnificent
dresses, all showing their joy and mirth since they will not know of
thee; then listen to their singing and their playing and their joyous
company in their apartments and perhaps you’ll attach yourself to one of
them who’ll play with thee, keep thee awake and be thy cup-companion,
dispelling what may remain of thy restlessness. But he replied, O
Mesrur, bring to me my cousin Ja’afar the Barmeky immediately. So he
answered, Hearing is obedience. Then Mesrur went out to the house of
Ja’afar and said to him, Come to the Commander of the Faithful, and he
answered, To hear is to obey. Then Ja’afar dressed himself and went with
Mesrur to the Caliph and kissing the ground before him he said, May it
be good! O Commander of the Faithful. It is not other than good, he
answered, but I am wearied this night with a great weariness and I sent
for you to divert me so that my unrest may be dissipated. Then Ja’afar
said, Let’s get up, O Commander of the Faithful, and we’ll go out into
the garden of the palace and listen to the warbling of the birds and
smell of the odours of the flowers, and the cool zephyr with its gentle
breath will pass over us, dispelling our uneasiness and gladdening the
heart. The Rawi says that Ja’afar was very familiar with the Caliph by
reason of the endearment between them. Then the Caliph arose and with
Ja’afar and Mesrur went to the garden. The Caliph began to be thoughtful
and asked about the trees and the qualities of the flowers and the
fruits and the nature of their colours, and as the Caliph took pleasure
in that, he walked around for an hour and then passed over to the
palaces and houses, going from place to place, from quarter to quarter,
and from market to market; and, whilst they were going on, they stopped
before a book-shop and the Caliph opened a book-case and began to turn
over the books one by one, and taking one in his hand opened it, began
to read in it, and then suddenly laughed until he fell upon his back. He
read in it again and wept until his beard was wet with the falling
tears, and wrapping up the book he put it in his sleeve when Ja’afar
said, O Commander of the Faithful and Lord of the two worlds, what was
it that made thee laugh and then weep at the same time? When the Caliph
heard that he was angered and cried out at him in the midst of his rage,
O dog of a Barmeky, what an impertinence on thy part about what concerns
thee not, why meddle with what thou hast not lost. You’ve taken upon
yourself to be annoying and conceited, you have passed beyond your place
and it only remained for you to brave the Caliph. By my fathers and
grandfathers, if thou dost not bring me someone who can tell me about
the contents of this book from the first page to the last, I’ll strike
thy neck and show thee what it is that has made me laugh and cry. When
Ja’afar heard these words and saw his passion he said, O Commander of
the Faithful, I have committed a fault: sin is for the like of me and
forgiveness for the like of your Highness; to which the Caliph answered,
I have made oath, thou must bring that person to explain the book or
I’ll strike thy neck this very hour. Then Ja’afar said, O Commander of
the Faithful, God created the heavens and the two worlds in six days and
if it had pleased Him He could have created them in one single hour, but
He did so for an instruction to his worshippers that one should not
fault with another but be patient; then, O Lord, be thou patient with
thy servant if it be for three days only; and the Caliph replied to him,
If thou bringest not to me him whom I have mentioned I will slay thee
with the most horrible of deaths. At this Ja’afar said, I depart on thy
mission; thereupon Ja’afar went home with a sorrowful heart to his
father Yahya and his brother El-Fadl to take leave of them and weep.
Then they said to him, What is thy trouble? so he told them of what had
occurred between him and the Caliph and of the condition laid upon him
of execution if not complied with in three days, for doubtless the
Caliph seeks my death; he who strikes against a point, ’twill pierce his
hand, and he that struggles with a lion will be killed; but as to myself
I can no longer remain with him for that would be the greatest of
dangers for me and for thee, O my father, and for thee, O my brother. I
now set out to travel and I wish to go far away from his eye. The
preservation of life is not esteemed and is of little value: distance is
the best preservative for our necks—as is said by the poet:—

Save your life if menaced by evil (danger), and leave the house to
complain of the builder:
You’ll find a land upon a land, but not another life for your own life.

When he had finished, his father and his brother said to him, Do not do
so, for probably the Caliph will be merciful to you. And Ja’afar
answered, Only good will come of my travel. Then he went to his
treasure-room and took out a purse containing 1,000 dinars, mounted his
horse, put on his sword, bade adieu to his father and brother and set
forth in his time and hour; then, not taking with him any servants,
either slave or boy, he hastened on his journey, travelling day and
night for twenty days until he reached the city of Aleppo without
stopping, passing by Hamah and Homs until he reached Teniyát al-Igáb and
arrived at Damascus where he entered the city and saw the Minaret of the
Bride from bottom to top covered with gilded tiles; and it surrounded
with meadows, irrigated gardens with all kinds of flowers, fields of
myrtle with mountains of violets and other beauties of the gardens. He
dwelt upon these charms while listening to the singing of the birds in
the trees; and he saw a city whose like has never been created in any
other country of the world. Turning then to the right hand and to the
left he espied a man standing near him and said to him, O my brother,
what’s the name of this city? and he answered, O my lord, this city in
ancient times was called Jullag the same that is mentioned by the poet
who says:—

I am called Jullag and my heart I attach, in me flow the waters, in and
out;
The Garden of Eden upon the earth, birth-place of the fairies:
I will never forget thy beauties, O Damascus, for none but thee will I
ever long:—
Blessed be the wonders that glitter on thy roofs (expanse).

She was also called _Sham_ (grain of beauty) because she is the Sham of
Cities and the Sham of God on earth. Ja’afar was pleased at the
explanation of the name, and dismounted with the intention of taking a
stroll through the streets, by the great houses and the domes (mosks).
Whilst thus engaged in examining the various places and their beauties,
he perceived a tent of silk brocade called Dibáj, containing carpets,
furniture, cushions, silk curtains, chairs and beds. A young man was
sitting upon a mattress, and he was like a rising moon, like the shining
orb in its fourteenth night. He was in an undress, upon his head a
kerchief and on his body a rose-coloured gaberdine; and as he sat before
him were a company and drinks worthy of Kings. Ja’afar stopped and began
to contemplate the scene, and was pleased with what he saw of the youth;
then looking further he espied a damsel like unto the sun in serene
firmament who took her lute and played on it while singing:—

Evil to whoever have their heart in possession of their lovers, for in
obtaining it they will kill it:
They have abandoned it when they have seen it amorous: when they see it
amorous they abandon it.
Nursling, they pluck it out from the very entrails: O bird, repeat
“Nursling they have plucked thee out!”
They have killed it unjustly: the loved plays the coquette with the
humble lover.
The seeker of the effects of love, love am I, brother of love, and sigh
Behold the man stricken by love, though his heart change not they bury
it (him?)

The Rawi said that Ja’afar was pleased and he rejoiced at hearing the
song and all his organs were moved at the voice of the damsel and he
said, Wallahy, it is fine. Then she began again to sing, reciting the
following verses:—

With these sentiments thou art in love, it is not wonderful that I
should love thee:
I stretch out my hand to thee asking for mercy and pity for my
humility—mayst thou be charitable;
My life has passed away soliciting thy consent, but I have not found it
in my confidence to be charitable,
And I have become a slave in consequence of her possession of love my
heart is imprisoned and my tears flow.

When the poem was finished Ja’afar gave himself up more and more to the
pleasure of hearing and looking at the damsel. The youth, who was
reclining, sat up and calling some of his boys said to them, Don’t you
see that young man standing there in front of us? They answered, Yes,
and he said, He must be a stranger for I see on him the signs of travel:
bring him to me and take care not to offend him. They answered, With joy
and gladness, and went towards Ja’afar, who, while contemplating the
damsel, perceived the boy that came and who said to him, In the name of
God, O my lord, please have the generosity to come in to our master.
Ja’afar came with the boy to the door of the tent, dismounted from his
horse and entered at the moment when the youth was rising upon his feet,
and he stretched out his two hands and saluted him as if he had always
known him, and after he had chanted the prayer to the envoy (of Allah)
he sang:—

O my visitor be welcome, thou enlivenest us and bringest us our union:
By thy face I live when it appears and I die if it disappears.

Then he said to Ja’afar, Please be seated, my dear sir; thanks be to God
for your happy arrival; and he continued his chant after another prayer
to the envoy (of God):—

If we had known of thy arrival we would have covered (thy) heart with
the black of our eyes,
And we would have spread the street with our cheeks that thy coming
might have been between our eyelids.

After that he arose, kissed the breast of Ja’afar, magnified his power
and said to him, O my Master, this day is a happy one and were it not a
fast-day I would have fasted for thee to render thanks to God. Then came
up the servants to whom he said, Bring us what is ready. They spread the
table of viands and the youth said, O my lord, the Sages say, ‘If you
are invited content yourself with what’s before you, but if you are not
invited, stay not and visit not again; if we had known that you would
arrive to-day we would have sacrificed the flesh of our bodies and our
children.’ Ja’afar said, I put out my hand and I ate until I was
satisfied, while he was presenting me with his hand the delicate morsels
and taking pleasure in entertaining me. When we had finished they
brought the ewer and basin, we washed our hands and we passed into the
drinking room where he told the damsel to sing. She took up her lute,
tuned it, and holding it against her breast she began:—

A visitor of whom the sight is venerated by all, sweeter than either
spirit or hope:
He spreads the darkness of his hair over the morning dawn and the dawn
of shame appeared not;
And when my lot would kill me I asked his protection, his arrival
revived a soul that death reclaimed:
I’ve become the slave of the Prince of the Lovers and the dominion of
love was of my making.

The Rawi says that Ja’afar was moved with exceeding joy, as was also the
youth, but he did not fail to be fearful on account of his affair with
the Caliph, so that it showed itself in his countenance, and this
anxiety was apparent to the youth who knew that he was anxious,
frightened, dreaming and uncertain. Ja’afar perceived that the youth was
ashamed to question him on his position and the cause of his condition,
but the youth said to him, O my lord, listen to what the Sages have
said:—

Worry not thyself for things that are to come, drive away your cares by
the intoxicating bowl:
See you not that hands have painted beautiful flowers on the robes of
drink?
Spoils of the vine-branch, lilies and narcissus, and the violet and the
striped flower of N’uman:
If troubles overtake you, lull them to sleep with liquors and flowers
and favourites.

Then said he to Ja’afar, Contract not thy breast, and to the damsel,
Sing; and she sang, and Ja’afar who was delighted with her songs, said
Let us not cease our enjoyment, now in conversation, now in song until
the day closes and night comes with darkness.

The youth ordered the servants to bring up the horses and they presented
to his guest a mare fit for Kings. We mounted (said Ja’afar), and,
entering Damascus, I proceeded to look at the bazars and the streets
until we came to a large square in the middle of which were two mastabas
or stone benches before a high doorway brilliantly illuminated with
divers lights, and before a portière was suspended a lamp by a golden
chain. There were lofty domes surrounded by beautiful statues, and
containing various kinds of birds and abundance of flowing water, and in
their midst was a hall with windows of silver. He opened it and found it
looking upon a garden like that of Paradise animated by the songs of the
birds and the perfumes of the flowers and the ripple of the brooks. The
house, wherein were fountains and birds warbling their songs understood
in every language, was carpeted with silken rugs and furnished with
cushions of Dibaj-brocade. It contained also in great number costly
articles of every kind, it was perfumed with the odours of flowers and
fruits and it contained every other imaginable thing, plates and dishes
of silver and gold, drinking vessels, and a censer for ambergris, powder
of aloes and every sort of dried fruits. Brief, it was a house like that
described by the poet:—

Society became perfectly brilliant in its beauty and shone in the éclat
of its magnificence.

Ja’afar said, When I sat down the youth came to me and asked, From what
country art thou? I replied, From Basora, soldier by profession,
commandant over a company of men and I used to pay a quit-rent to the
Caliph. I became afraid of him for my life and I came away fleeing with
downcast face for dread of him, and I never ceased wandering about the
country and in the deserts until Destiny has brought me to thee. The
youth said, A blessed arrival, and what may be thy name? I replied, My
name is like thine own. On hearing my words he smiled, and said,
laughing, O my Lord, Abu ’l-Hasan, carry no trouble in your heart nor
contraction of your breast; then he ordered a service and they set for
us a table with all kinds of delicacies and we ate until satisfied.
After this they took away the table and brought again the ewer and basin
and we washed our hands and then went to the drinking room where there
was a pleasaunce filled with fruits and flowers in perfection. Then he
spoke to the damsel for music and she sang, enchanting both Ja’afar and
the youth with delight at her performances, and the place itself was
agitated, and Ja’afar in the excess of his joy took off his robes and
tore them. Then the youth said to him, Wallahy, may the tearing be the
effect of the pleasure and not of sorrow and waywardness, and may God
disperse far from you the bitterness of your enemies. Then he went to a
chest (continued Ja’afar) and took out from it a complete dress, worth a
hundred dinars and putting it upon me said to the damsel, Change the
tune of thy lute. She did so, and sang the following verses:—

My jealous regard is attached to him and if he regard another I am
impatient:
I terminate my demand and my song crying, Thy friendship will last until
death in my heart.

The Rawi said: When she had finished her poetry Ja’afar threw off the
last dress and cried out, and the youth said, May God ameliorate your
life and make its beginning the end. Then he went to the chest and took
out a dress better than the first and put it upon Ja’afar, and the
damsel was silent for an hour during the conversation. The youth said,
Listen, O my lord Abu ’l-Hasan, to what people of merit have said of
this valley formerly called the Valley of Rabwat in which we now are and
spoken of in the poem, saying:—

O bounty of our Night in the valley of Rabwat where the gentle zephyr
brings in her perfumes:
It is a valley whose beauty is like that of the necklace: trees and
flowers encompass it.
Its fields are carpeted with every variety of flowers and the birds fly
around above them;
When the trees saw us seated beneath them they dropped upon us their
fruits.
We continued to exchange upon the borders of its gardens the flowing
bowls of conversation and of poesy,
The valley was bountiful and her zephyrs brought to us what the flowers
had sent to us.

So when the youth had finished his recitation he turned to the damsel
and told her to sing:—

I consume (with desire) when I hear from him a discourse whose sweetness
is a melting speech:
My heart palpitates when he sees it, it is not wonderful that the
drunken one should dance:
It has on this earth become my portion, but on this earth I have no
chance to obtain it.
O Lord! tell me the fault that I’ve committed, perhaps I may be able to
correct it.
I find in thee a heart harder than that of others and the hearts consume
my being.

Now when she had finished, Ja’afar in his joy threw off the third dress.
The youth arose, kissed him on the head, and then took out for him
another suit and put it upon him, for he was the most generous man of
his time. Then he entertained Ja’afar with the news of the day and of
the subjects and anecdotes of the great pieces of poetry and said to
him, O my lord, load not thyself with cares. The Rawi says that they
continued living in the same way for forty days and on the forty-first
Ja’afar said to the young man, Know, O my lord, that I have left my
country neither for eating nor for drinking, but to divert myself and to
see the world; but if God vouchsafe my return to my country to talk to
my people, my neighbours and friends, and they ask me where I have been
and what I have seen, I will tell them of your generosity and of the
great benefactions that you have heaped upon me in your country of
Damascus. I will say that I have sighted this and that, and thus I will
entertain them with what I have espied in Damascus and of its order. The
young man replied, Thou sayest true: and Ja’afar said, I desire to go
out and visit the city, its bazars and its streets, to which the young
man answered, With love and good will, to-morrow morning if it please
Allah. That night Ja’afar slept there and when God brought the day, he
rose, went in to the young man, wished him good morning and said to him,
O my lord, thy promise! to which he replied, With love and good will;
and, ordering a white dress for him, he handed him a purse of three
hundred dinars saying, Bestow this in charity and return quick after
thou hast made thy visit, and lastly said to his servants, Bring to your
lord a horse to ride. But Ja’afar answered, I do not wish to have one,
for a rider cannot observe the people but the people observe him. The
young man, who was named Attaf, said, O my lord, be it as thou wishest
and desirest; be not away long on my account for thine absence gives me
pain. Then he gave to Ja’afar a grain of red musk saying, Take this and
keep it in thy hand and if thou go into any place where there is a bad
odour thou wilt take a smell of the musk. Ja’afar the Barmeky (Allah be
merciful to him!) said, After that I left him and set out to walk in the
streets and quarters of Damascus and went on until I came to the Mosk of
the ’Omeyyades where I saw a fountain casting the water from its upper
part and falling like serpents in their flight. I sat down under the
pulpit; and as it was a Friday I heard the preacher and made my Friday
prayer and remained until I made the afternoon prayer when I went to
distribute the money I had, after which I recited these verses:—

I see the beauties united in the mosk of Jullag, and around her the
meaning of beauty is explained;
If people converse in the mosks tell them their entrance door is open.

Then I left the mosk and began to promenade the quarters and the streets
until I came before a splendid house, broad in its richness and strong
in its build, having a border of gold astonishing the mind by the beauty
of the work, showing curtains of silk embroidered with gold and in front
of the door were two carpeted steps. I sat down upon one of them and
began to think of myself and of the events that had happened to me and
of my ignorance of what had taken place after my departure. In the midst
of my sadness at the contemplation of my troubles (and the wind blowing
upon me) I fell asleep and I awaked not until a sprinkling of water came
down upon me. On opening my eyes I saw a young woman behind the curtain
dressed in a morning gown and a _Sa’údí_ fillet upon her forehead. Her
look and eyelids were full of art and her eyebrows were like the fronts
of the wings of light. The Rawi says she resembled a full moon. When my
eyes fell upon her (continued Ja’afar) and looked at her, that look
brought with it a thousand sighs and I arose and my disposition was
changed. The young woman cried at me and I said, I am your servant, O my
lady, and here at thy command, but said she, No labbayka and no favour
for thee! Is this house thine? Said I, No my lady, and she replied, O
dog of the streets, this house is not thine, why art thou sitting here?
When Ja’afar heard this he was greatly mortified, but he took courage
and dissimulated, answering, O my lady, I am resting here only to recite
some verses which I have composed for thee, then she asked, And what
hast thou said about me? He continued:—

She appeared in a whitish robe with eyelids and glances of wonder,
I said she came out without greeting, with her I’m content to my heart’s
content.
Blessed be He that clothed thy cheeks with roses, He can create what He
wills without hindrance.
Thy dress like thy lot is as my hand, white, and they are white upon
white upon my white.

When he had finished these verses he said, I have composed others on
thine expression, and recited the following:—

Dost thou see through her veil that face appearing how it shines, like
the moon in the horizon?
Its splendour enlightens the shade of her temples and the sun enters
into obscurity by system;
Her forehead eclipses the rose and the apple, and her look and
expression enchant the people;
It is she that if mortal should see her he’d become victim of love, of
the fires of desire.

On hearing this recitation the young lady said to Ja’afar, Miserable
fellow, what is this discourse which does not belong to the like of
thee? Get up and begone with the malediction of Allah and the protection
of Satan. Ja’afar arose, seized with a mighty rage in addition to his
love; and in this love for her he departed and returned to the house of
his friend Attaf and saluted him with a prepossessed heart. As soon as
Attaf saw him he cast himself on his breast and kissed him between the
eyes, saying to him, O my lord, thou hast made me feel desolate to-day
by thine absence. Then Attaf, looking in the face of Ja’afar and reading
in it many words, continued to him, O my lord, I find thy countenance
changed and thy mind broken. Ja’afar answered, O my lord, since I left
thee up to the present time I have been suffering with a headache and a
nervous attack for I was sleeping upon my ear. The people in the mosk
recited the afternoon prayer without my knowing it, and now I have a
mind to get an hour’s sleep, probably I shall find repose for the body,
and what I suffer will pass off. Accordingly, Attaf went into the house
and ordered cushions to be brought out and a bed to be made for him,
Ja’afar then stretched himself upon it depressed and out of spirits, and
covering himself up began to think of the young lady and of the
offensive words she gave him so contrary to usage. Also he thought of
her beauty and the elegance of her stature and perfect proportions and
of what Allah (to whom be praise!) had granted her of magnificence. He
forgot all that happened to him in other days and also his affair with
the Caliph and his people and his friends and his society. Such was the
burden of his thoughts until he was taken with monomania and his body
wasted. Hereupon Attaf sent for doctors, they surrounded him constantly,
they employed all their talents for him, but they could find no remedy.
So he remained during a certain time without anyone being able to
discover what was the matter with him. The breast of Attaf became
straitened, he renounced all diversions and pleasures, and Ja’afar
getting worse and worse, his trouble augmented. One day a new doctor
arrived, a man of experience in the art of gallantry, whose name was
Dabdihkán. When he came to Ja’afar and looked at his face and felt his
pulse and found everything in its place, no suffering, no pain, he
comprehended that he was in love, so he took a paper and wrote a
prescription and placed it beneath Ja’afar’s head. He then said, Thy
remedy is under thy head, I’ve prescribed a purge, if thou take it thou
wilt get well, for he was ashamed to tell Attaf his love-sick condition.
Presently the Doctor went away to other patients and Attaf arose and
when about entering to see Ja’afar he heard him recite the following
verses:—

A doctor came to me one day and took my hand and pulse, when I said to
him Let go my hand, the fire’s in my heart.
He said, Drink syrup of the rose and mix it well with water of the
tongue but tell it not to anyone:
I said, The syrup of the rose is quite well known to me; it is the water
of the cheek that breaks my very heart;
But can it be that I can get the water of the tongue that I may cool the
burning fire that within me dwells?
The doctor said, Thou art in love, I said Yes to him, and said he to me,
Its remedy is to have the body here.

Then when Attaf went in to him after the end of the recitation he sat
down at the head of the bed and asked him about his condition and what
had been prescribed for him by the Hakím. Ja’afar said, O my lord, he
wrote for me a paper which is under the pillow. Attaf put out his hand,
took out the paper and read it and found upon it written:—“In the name
of God the Curer—To be taken, with the aid and blessing of God, 3
miskals of pure presence of the beloved unmixed with morsels of absence
and fear of being watched: plus, 3 miskals of a good meeting cleared of
any grain of abandonment and rupture: plus, 2 okes of pure friendship
and discretion deprived of the wood of separation. Then take some
extract of the incense of the kiss, the teeth and the waist, 2 miskals
of each; also take 100 kisses of pomegranate rubbed and rounded, of
which 50 small ones are to be sugared, 30 pigeon-fashion and 20 after
the fashion of little birds. Take of Aleppine twist and sigh of Al-Iráq
2 miskals each; also 2 okes of tongue-sucking, mouth and lip kissing,
all to be pounded and mixed. Then put upon a furnace 3 drams of Egyptian
grain with the addition of the beautiful fold of plumpness, boil it in
love-water and syrup of desire over a fire of wood of pleasure in the
retreat of the ardour. Decant the whole upon a royal díbáqy divan and
add to it 2 okes of saliva syrup and drink it fasting during 3 days.
Next take for dinner the melon of desire mixed with embrace-almond and
juice of the lemon of concord, and lastly 3 rolls of thigh-work and
enter the bath for the benefit of your health. And—The Peace!” When
Attaf had finished the reading of this paper he burst into a laugh at
the prescription and, turning to Ja’afar, he asked him with whom he was
in love and of whom he was enamoured. Ja’afar gave no answer, he spoke
not neither did he commence any discourse, when Attaf said, O my
brother, thou are not my friend, but thou art in my house esteemed as is
the soul in the body. Between me and thee there has been for the last
four months friendship, company, companionship and conversation. Why
then conceal thy situation? For me, I have fear and sorrow on thine
account. Thou art a stranger, thou art not of this capital. I am a son
of the city, I can dispel what thou hast (of trouble) and that of which
thou sufferest. By my life, which belongs to you, by the bread and salt
between us, reveal to me thy secret. And Attaf did not cease to speak
thus until Ja’afar yielded and said to him, It shall no longer be
concealed, and I will not blame those who are in love and are impatient.
Then he told his story from beginning to end, what was said to him by
the young lady and what she did with him and lastly he described the
quarter and the place. Now when Attaf heard the words of Ja’afar he
reflected on the description of the house and of the young lady and
concluded that the house was his house and the young lady was his
cousin-wife, and said to himself, There is no power nor strength but in
Allah the High, the Great. We are from God and to Him we return. Then he
came to his mind again and to the generosity of his soul and said to
himself, O Attaf! God hath favoured me and hath made me worthy of doing
good and hath sent to me I know not whence this stranger who hath become
bound in friendship with me during all this time and he hath acquired
over me the ties of friendship. His heart hath become attached to the
young woman and his love for her hath reached in him an imminent point.
Since that time he is almost on the verge of annihilation, in so
pitiable a condition and behold, he hopeth from me a good issue from his
trouble. He hath made known to me his situation after having concealed
it for so long a time: if I do not befriend him in his misfortune I
should resemble him who would build upon water and thus would aid him to
annihilate his existence. By the magnanimity of my God, I will further
him with my property and with my soul. I will divorce my cousin and will
marry her to him and I will not change my character, my generosity nor
my resolution. The Rawi says, that young woman was his wife and his
cousin, also a second wife as he was previously married to another, and
she occupied the house, his own house containing all that he possessed
of property and so forth, servants, odalisques and slaves. There was
also his other house which was for his guests, for drinking and eating
and to receive his friends and his company. Of this, however, he said
nothing to his cousin-wife when he came to see her at certain times.
When he heard that Ja’afar was in love with her he could not keep from
saying to him, Be quiet, I take upon myself to dispel thy chagrin, and
soon I shall have news of her, and if she is the daughter of the Naïb of
Damascus I will take the proper steps for thee even though I should lose
all my property; and if she is a slave-girl I will buy her for thee even
were her price such as to take all I possess. Thus he calmed the anguish
of Ja’afar the best way he could; then he went out from his own house
and entered that of his cousin-wife without making any change in his
habits or saying a single word save to his servants, Go to my uncle’s
and bring him to me. The boy then went for the uncle and brought him to
Attaf, and when the uncle entered the nephew arose to receive him,
embraced him and made him be seated, and, after he had been seated
awhile, Attaf came to him and said, O my uncle! there is naught but
good! Know that when God wills good to his servitor he shows to him the
way and my heart inclines to Meccah, to the house of God, to visit the
tomb of Mohammed (for whom be the most noble of prayers and the most
complete of salutations!) I have decided to visit those places this year
and I cannot leave behind me either attachments or debts or obligations;
nothing in fact that can disturb the mind, for no one can know who will
be the friend of the morrow. Here, then, is the writ of divorce of thy
daughter and of my other wife. Now when his uncle heard that, he was
troubled and exaggerating to himself the matter, he said, O son of my
brother, what is it that impels thee to this? If thou depart and leave
her and be absent as long as thou willest she is yet thy wife and thy
dependent which is sufficient. But Attaf said, O my uncle, what hath
been done is done. As soon as the young wife heard that, the abomination
of desolation overcame her, she became as one in mourning and was upon
the point of killing herself, because she loved her husband by reason of
his relationship and his education. But this was done by Attaf only to
please Ja’afar, and for that he was incited by his duty to do good to
his fellow beings. Then Attaf left the house and said to himself, if I
delay this matter it will be bruited abroad, and will come to the ears
of my friend who will be afflicted and will be ashamed to marry, and
what I have done will come to naught. The divorce of Attaf’s second
spouse was only out of regard to his cousin-wife, and that there might
not be an impediment to the success of his project. Then Attaf proceeded
to his guest-house and went in to Ja’afar, who when he saw him, asked
where he had been. Attaf replied, Make yourself easy, O my brother, I am
now occupied with your affair, I have sought out the young lady and I
know her. She is divorced from her husband and her ’iddah is not yet
expired, so expand your breast and gladden your soul, for when her
obligatory term of waiting shall be accomplished I will marry her to
you. And Attaf ceased not to divert him by eating and drinking,
amusements and shows, song and songstress until he knew that the ’iddah
of his cousin had ended; then he went to Ja’afar and said to him, “Know,
O my lord, that the father of the young woman thou sawest is one of my
friends, and if I betroth her that would not be proper on my part and he
will say: My friend hath not done well in betrothing my daughter to a
man who is a stranger and whom I know not. He will take her and carry
her to his own country and we shall be separated. Now I have an idea
that has occurred to me, and ’tis to send out for you a tent with ten
mamelukes and four servants upon horses and mules, baggage, stuffs,
chests of dresses, and horses and gilded vehicles. Everything I have
mentioned will be placed outside the city that no one shall know of
thee, and I will say that thou art Ja’afar the Barmeky the Caliph’s
Wazir. I will go to the Kady and the Wali and the Naïb and I will inform
them of thee (as Ja’afar); so will they come out to meet and salute
thee. Then thou wilt salute them and tell them that thou hast come on
business of the Caliph. Thou must also say thou hast heard that Damascus
is a very fine city and a hospitable, and add, I will go in to visit it
and if it prove favourable to me I will remain and marry to establish
between myself and its inhabitants relationship and friendship, and I
would like you to seek for me a man of high position and noble origin
who hath a beautiful cousin that I may marry. Attaf then said to
Ja’afar, O my lord, we know one who hath a daughter of noble origin,
that man is such-and-such an one, ask her of him for betrothal and say
to him, Here is her dowry, which is all that thou hast in the chests.
Then produce a purse of a thousand dinars and distribute them among
those present, and display the characteristic of the Barmekys, and take
out a piece of silken stuff and order them to draw up the marriage
contract immediately. If they sign it, declare to them that thou wilt
not enter the city because thou art pressed and thy bride will come to
thee. Should thou do thus, thou wilt accomplish what thou desirest, God
willing, then leave instantly and order that the tents be struck, the
camels loaded, and set out for thine own country in peace. Know that all
I shall do for you is little for the rights of friendship and
devotedness.” Ja’afar sprang up to kiss the hand of Attaf, but was
prevented, then he thanked him and praised him and passed the night with
him. The next morning at break of day he arose, made his ablutions, and
having recited his morning prayer, accompanied his host to the outside
of the city. Attaf ordered a great tent to be pitched and that
everything necessary should be carried to it; of horses, camels, mules,
slaves, mamelukes, chests containing all kinds of articles for
distribution, and boxes holding purses of gold and silver. He dressed
his guest in a robe worthy a Wazir, and set up for him a throne and sent
some slaves to the Naïb of Damascus to announce the arrival of Ja’afar
on business of the Caliph. As soon as the Naïb of Damascus was informed
of that, he went out accompanied by the notables of the city and of his
government and met the Wazir Ja’afar, and kissing the ground between his
hands, said to him, O my lord, why didst thou not inform me sooner in
order that we might be prepared for thine arrival. Ja’afar said, That
was not necessary, may God augment thy wealth, I have not come but with
the intention to visit this city; I desire to stay in it for some time
and I would also marry in it. I have learned that the Amír ’Amr has a
daughter of noble descent, I wish thou wouldst cause her to be brought
before thee and that thou betroth her to me. The Naïb of Damascus said,
Hearing is obeying. Her husband hath divorced her and desireth to go to
al-Hejaz on the pilgrimage and after her ’iddah hath expired and there
remaineth not any impediment the betrothal can take place. At the proper
time the Naïb of Damascus caused to be present the father of the lady
and spoke to him of what the Wazir Ja’afar had said and that he should
betroth his daughter, so that there was nothing more for the father to
say than, I hear and I obey. The Rawi says that Ja’afar ordered to be
brought the dress of honour and the gold from the purses to be thrown
out for distribution and commanded the presence of the Kady and
witnesses; and, when they arrived, he bade them write the marriage
contract. Then he brought forward and presented the ten chests and the
ten purses of gold, the dowry of the bride, and all those present, high
and low, and rich and poor gave him their best wishes and
congratulations. After the father of the lady had taken the dowry he
ordered the Kady to draw up the contract and presented to him a piece of
satin; he also called for sugar-water to drink and set before them the
table of viands, and they ate and washed their hands. Afterwards they
served sweet dishes and fruits; and when that was finished and the
contract passed, the Naïb of Damascus said to the Wazir, O my lord, I
will prepare a house for thy residence and for the reception of thy
wife. Ja’afar said, That cannot be; I am here on a commission of the
Commander of the Faithful, and I wish to take my wife with me to Baghdad
and only there can I have the bridal ceremonies. The father of the lady
said, Enter unto thy bride and depart when thou wilt. Ja’afar replied, I
cannot do that, but I wish thee to make up the trousseau of thy daughter
and have it ready so as to depart this very day. We only wait, said the
father of the bride, for the Naïb of Damascus to retire, to do what the
Wazir commands. He answered With love and good will; and the lady’s
father set about getting together the trousseau and making her ready. He
took her out and got her trousseau, mounted her upon a Hodaj, and when
she arrived at Ja’afar’s camp her people made their adieus and departed.
When Ja’afar had ridden to some distance from Damascus and had arrived
at Tiniat el ’Iqáb he looked behind him and perceived in the distance in
the direction of Damascus a horseman galloping towards him; so he
stopped his attendants and when the rider had come near them Ja’afar
looked at him and behold it was Attaf. He had come out after him and
cried, Hasten not, O my brother. And when he came up he embraced him and
said, O my lord, I have found no rest without thee, O my brother Abu
’l-Hasan, it would have been better for me never to have seen thee nor
known thee, for now I cannot support thine absence. Ja’afar thanked him
and said to him, I have not been able to act against what thou hast
prescribed for me and provided, but we pray God to bring near our
reunion and never more separate us. He is Almighty to do what He
willeth. After that Ja’afar dismounted and spread a silken carpet and
they sat down together, and Attaf laid a tablecloth with duck, chicken,
sweets and other delicacies, of which they ate and he brought out dry
fruits and wine. They drank for an hour of the day when they remounted
their horses and Attaf accompanied Ja’afar a way on the journey, when
Ja’afar said to him, Every departer must return, and he pressed him to
his breast and kissed him and said to him, O my brother Abu ’l-Hasan, do
not interrupt the sending of thy letters; but make known to me about
thyself, and thy condition as if I were present with thee. Then they
bade each other adieu and each went on his way. When the young wife
noticed that the camels had stopped on their march as well as their
people, she put out her head from the Hodaj and saw her cousin
dismounting with Ja’afar and they eating and drinking together and then
in company to the end of the road where they bade adieu exchanging a
recitation of poetry. So she said, The one, Wallahy is my cousin Attaf
and the other the man whom I saw seated under the window, and upon whom
I sprinkled the water. Doubtless he is the friend of my cousin. He hath
been seized with love for me, and complaining to my cousin, hath given
him a description of me and of my house; and the devotedness of his
character and the greatness of his soul must have impelled him to
divorce me and to take steps to marry me to that man. The Rawi says that
Attaf in bidding good-bye to Ja’afar left him joyful in the possession
of the young lady for whom he was on the point of ruin by his love, and
in having made the friendship of Attaf whom he intended to reward in
gratitude for what he had done by him. So glad was he to have the young
wife that everything that had taken place with Er-Rashid had passed out
of his mind. In the meanwhile she was crying and lamenting over what had
happened to her, her separation from her cousin and from her parents and
her country, and bemoaning what she did and what she had been; and her
scalding tears flowed while she recited these verses:—

I weep for these places and these beauties; blame not the lover if some
day he’s insane:
For the places the dear ones inhabit. O praise be to God! how sweet is
their dwelling!
God protect the past days while with you, my dear friends, and in the
same house may happiness join us!

On finishing this recitation she wept and lamented and recited again:—

I’m astonished at living without you at the troubles that come upon us:
I wish for you, dear absent ones, my wounded heart is still with you.

Then, still crying and lamenting, she went on:—

O you to whom I gave my soul, return; from you I wish’d to pluck it, but
could not succeed:
Then pity the rest of a life that I’ve sacrificed for thee, before the
hour of death my last look I will take:
If all of thee be lost astonished I’ll not be; my astonishment would be
that his lot will be to another.

Presently the Wazir Ja’afar coming up to the Hodaj said to the young
wife, O mistress of the Hodaj, thou hast killed us. When she heard this
address she called to him with dejection and humility, We ought not to
talk to thee for I am the cousin-wife of thy friend and companion Attaf,
prince of generosity and devotion. If there be in thee any feeling of
the self-denial of a man thou wilt do for him that which, in his
devotion, he hath done for thee. When Ja’afar heard these words he
became troubled and taking in the magnitude of the situation he said to
the young lady, O thou! thou art then his cousin-wife? and said she,
Yes! it is I whom thou sawest on such a day when this and that took
place and thy heart attached itself to me. Thou hast told him all that.
He divorced me, and while waiting for the expiration of my ’iddah
diverted thee that such and such was the cause of all my trouble. Now I
have explained to thee my situation: do thou the action of a man. When
Ja’afar heard these words he uttered a loud cry and said, We are from
God and to Him we return. O thou! thou art now to me an interdiction and
hast become a sacred deposit until thy return to where it may please
thee. Then said Ja’afar to a servant, Take good care of thy mistress.
After which they set forward and travelled on day and night. Now
Er-Rashid, after the departure of Ja’afar, became uneasy and sorrowful
at his absence. He lost patience and was tormented with a great desire
to see him again, while he regretted the conditions he had imposed as
impossible to be complied with and obliging him to the extremity of
tramping about the country like a vagabond, and forcing him to abandon
his native land. He had sent envoys after him to search for him in every
place, but he had never received any news of him, and was cast into
great embarrassment by reason of his absence. He was always waiting to
hear of him, and when Ja’afar had approached Baghdad and he, Er-Rashid,
had received the good tidings of his coming, he went forth to meet him,
and as soon as they came together they embraced each other, and the
Caliph became content and joyful. They entered together into the palace
and the Prince of True Believers seating Ja’afar at his side, said to
him, Relate to me thy story where thou hast been during thine absence
and what thou hast come upon. So Ja’afar told him then all that had
happened from the time he left him until the moment of finding himself
between his hands. Er-Rashid was greatly astonished and said, Wallahy,
thou hast made me sorrowful for thine absence, and hast inspired me with
great desire to see thy friend. My opinion is that thou divorce this
young lady and put her on the road homeward accompanied by someone in
whom thou hast confidence. If thy friend have an enemy he shall be our
enemy, and if he have a friend he also shall be ours; after which we
will make him come to us, and we shall see him and have the pleasure of
hearing him and pass the time with him in joy. Such a man must not be
neglected, we shall learn, by his generosity, bounty and useful things.
Ja’afar answered, To hear is obedience. Then Ja’afar apportioned to the
young lady a spacious house and servants and a handsome enclosure; and
he treated with generosity those who had come with her as suite and
followers. He also sent to her sets of furniture, mattresses and every
thing else she might need, while he never intruded upon her and never
saw her. He sent her his salutation and reassuring words that she should
be returned to her cousin; and he made her a monthly allowance of a
thousand dinars, besides the cost of her living. So far as to Ja’afar;
but as to Attaf, when he had bidden adieu to Ja’afar and had returned to
his country, those who were jealous of him took steps to ruin him with
the Naïb of Damascus to whom they said, O our lord, what is it that hath
made thee neglect Attaf? Dost thou not know that the Wazir was his
friend and that he went out after him to bid him adieu after our people
had returned, and accompanied him as far as Katifa, when Ja’afar said to
him, Hast thou need of anything O Attaf? he said _Yes_. Of what? asked
the Wazir, and he answered, That thou send me an imperial rescript
removing the Naïb of Damascus. Now this was promised to him, and the
most prudent thing is that thou invite him to breakfast before he takes
you to supper; success is in the opportunity and the assaulted profiteth
by the assaulter. The Naïb of Damascus replied, Thou hast spoken well,
bring him to me immediately. The Rawi says that Attaf was in his own
house, ignorant that anyone owed him grudge when suddenly in the night
he was surrounded and seized by the people of the Naïb of Damascus armed
with swords and clubs. They beat him until he was covered with blood,
and they dragged him along until they set him in presence of the Pasha
of Damascus who ordered the pillage of his house and of his slaves and
his servants and all his property and they took everything, his family
and his domestics and his goods. Attaf asked, What is my crime? and he
was answered, O scoundrel, thou art an ignorant fellow of the rabble,
dost dispute with the Naïb of Damascus? Then the Swordman was ordered to
strike his neck, and the man came forward and, cutting off a piece of
his robe, with it blindfolded his eyes, and was about to strike his neck
when one of the Emírs arose and said, Be not hasty, O my lord, but wait,
for haste is the whisper of Satan, and the proverb saith: Man gaineth
his ends by patience, and error accompanieth the hasty man. Then he
continued, Do not press the matter of this man; perhaps he who hath
spoken of him lieth and there is nobody without jealousy; so have
patience, for thou mayest have to regret the taking of his life
unjustly. Do not rest easy upon what may come to thee on the part of the
Wazir Ja’afar, and if he learn what thou hast done by this man be not
sure of thy life on his part. He will admit of no excuse for he was his
friend and companion. When the Naïb of Damascus heard that he awoke from
his slumber and conformed to the words of the Emir. He ordered that
Attaf should be put in prison, enchained and with a padlock upon his
neck, and bade them, after severely tightening the bonds, illtreat him.
They dragged him out, listening neither to his prayers nor his
supplications; and he cried every night, doing penance to God and
praying to Him for deliverance from his affliction and his misfortune.
In that condition he remained for three months. But one night as he woke
up he humiliated himself before God and walked about his prison, where
he saw no one; then, looking before him, he espied an opening leading
from the prison to the outside of the city. He tried himself against his
chain and succeeded in opening it; then, taking it from his neck, he
went out from the gaol running at full speed. He concealed himself in a
place, and darkness protected him until the opening of the city gate,
when he went out with the people and hastening his march he arrived at
Aleppo and entered the great mosk. There he saw a crowd of strangers on
the point of departure and Attaf asked them whither they were going, and
they answered to Baghdad. Whereupon he cried, And I with you. They said,
Upon the earth is our weight, but upon Allah is our nourishment. Then
they went on their march until they arrived at Koufa after a travel of
twenty days, and then continued journeying till they came to Baghdad.
Here Attaf saw a city of strong buildings, and very rich in elegant
palaces reaching to the clouds, a city containing the learned and the
ignorant, and the poor and the rich, and the virtuous and the evil doer.
He entered the city in a miserable dress, rags upon his shoulders, and
upon his head a dirty conical cap, and his hair had become long and
hanging over his eyes and his entire condition was most wretched. He
entered one of the mosks. For two days he had not eaten. He sat down,
when a vagabond entered the mosk and seating himself in front of Attaf
threw off from his shoulder a bag from which he took out bread and a
chicken, and bread again and sweets and an orange, and olive and
date-cake and cucumbers. Attaf looked at the man and at his eating,
which was as the table of ’Isa son of Miriam (upon whom be peace!). For
four months he had not had a sufficient meal and he said to himself, I
would like to have a mouthful of this good cheer and a piece of this
bread, and then cried for very hunger. The fellow looked at him and
said, Bravo! why dost thou squint and do what strangers do? By the
protection of God, if you weep tears enough to fill the Jaxartes and the
Bactrus and the Dajlah and the Euphrates and the river of Basrah and the
stream of Antioch and the Orontes and the Nile of Egypt and the Salt Sea
and the ebb and the flow of the Ocean, I will not let thee taste a
morsel. But, said the buffoon, if thou wish to eat of chicken and white
bread and lamb and sweets and mutton patties, go thou to the house of
Ja’afar son of Yahya the Barmeky, who hath received hospitality from a
Damascus man named Attaf. He bestoweth charity in honour of him in this
manner, and he neither getteth up nor sitteth down without speaking of
him. Now when Attaf heard these words from the buffoon he looked up to
heaven and said, O Thou whose attributes are inscrutable, bestow thy
benefits upon thy servant Attaf. Then he recited this couplet:—

Confide thy affairs to thy Creator; set aside thy pains and dismiss thy
thoughts.

Then Attaf went to a paper-seller and got from him a piece of paper and
borrowed an inkstand and wrote as follows:—From thy brother Attaf whom
God knoweth. Let him who hath possessed the world not flatter himself,
he will some day be cast down and will lose it in his bitter fate. If
thou see me thou wilt not recognise me for my poverty and my misery;
and, because of the change in situation and the reverses of the times,
my soul and body are reduced by hunger, by the long journey I have made,
until at last I have come to thee. And peace be with thee. Then he
folded the paper and returning the pen-case to its owner asked for the
house of Ja’afar, and when it was shown to him he went there and stood
at a distance before it. The doorkeepers saw him standing, neither
commencing nor repeating a word, and nobody spoke to him, but as he was
thus standing embarrassed, an eunuch dressed in a striped robe and
golden belt passed by him. Attaf remained motionless before him, then
went up to him, kissed his hands and said to him, O my lord, the Apostle
of Allah (upon whom be peace and salutation) hath said, The medium of a
good deed is like him who did it, and he who did it belongeth to the
dwellers in heaven. The man said to him, What is thy need? and said he,
I desire of thy goodness to send in this paper to thy lord and say to
him, Thy brother Attaf is standing at the door. When the servant heard
his words he got into a great and excessive rage so that his eyes
swelled in his head and he asked, O cursed one, thou art then the
brother of the Wazir Ja’afar! and as he had in his hand a rod with a
golden end, he struck Attaf with it in the face and his blood flowed and
he fell full length to the ground in his weakness from weeping and from
receiving the blow. The Rawi says that God hath placed the instinct of
good in the heart of some domestics, even as he hath placed that of evil
in the heart of others. Another of the domestics was raised up against
his companion by good will to Attaf and reproved him for striking the
stranger and was answered, Didst thou not hear, O brother, that he
pretended to be the brother of the Wazir Ja’afar? and the second one
said, O man of evil, son of evil, slave of evil, O cursed one, O hog! is
Ja’afar one of the prophets? is he not a dog of the earth like
ourselves? Men are all brethren, of one father and one mother, of Adam
and of Eve; and the poet hath said:—

Men by comparison all are brethren, their father is Adam their mother is
Eve;

but certain people are preferable to others. Then he came up to Attaf
and made him be seated and wiped off the blood from his face and washed
him and shook off the dust that was upon him and said, O my brother,
what is thy need? and said he, My need is the sending of this paper to
Ja’afar. The servant took the paper from his hand and going in to
Ja’afar the Barmeky found there the officers of the Governor and the
Barmekys standing at his service on his right and on his left; and
Ja’afar the Wazir who held in his hand a cup of wine was reciting poetry
and playing and saying, O you all here assembled, the absent from the
eye is not like the present in the heart; he is my brother and my friend
and my benefactor, Attaf of Damascus, who was continuous in his
generosity and his bounty and his benefactions to me; who for me
divorced his cousin-wife and gave her to me. He made me presents of
horses and slaves and damsels and stuffs in quantities that I might
furnish her dower; and, if he had not acted thus, I should certainly
have been ruined. He was my benefactor without knowing who I was, and
generous to me without any idea of profiting by it. The Rawi says that
when the good servant heard these words from his lord he rejoiced and
coming forward he kneeled down before him and presented the paper. When
Ja’afar read it he was in a state of intoxication and not being able to
discern what he was doing he fell on his face to the floor while holding
the paper and the glass in his hand, and he was wounded in the forehead
so his blood ran and he fainted and the paper fell from his grasp. When
the servant saw that he hastened to depart fearing the consequence; and
the Wazir Ja’afar’s friends seated their lord and staunched the blood.
They exclaimed, There is no power and strength but in God the High, the
Mighty. Such is the character of servants; they trouble the life of
kings in their pleasures and annoy them in their humours: Wallahy, the
writer of this paper merits nothing less than to be handed over to the
Wali who shall give him five hundred lashes and put him in prison.
Thereupon the Wazir’s doorkeeper went out and asked for the owner of the
paper, when Attaf answered, ’Tis I, O my lord. Then they seized him and
sent him to the Wali and ordered him to give one hundred blows of the
stick to the prisoner and to write upon his chain “for life.” Thus they
did with Attaf and carried him to the prison where he remained for two
months when a child was born to Harun er-Rashid, who then ordered that
alms should be distributed, and good done to all, and bade liberate all
that were in prison and among those that were set free was Attaf. When
he found himself out of gaol, beaten and famished and naked he looked up
to heaven and exclaimed, Thanks be to thee, O Lord, in every situation,
and crying said, It must be for some fault committed by me in the past,
for God had taken me into favour and I have repaid Him in disobedience;
but I pray to Him for pardon for having gone too far in my debauchery.
Then he recited these verses:—

O God! the worshipper doth what he should not do; he is poor, depending
on Thee:
In the pleasures of life he forgetteth himself, in his ignorance, pardon
Thou his faults.

Then he cried again and said to himself, What shall I do? If I set out
for my country I may not reach it; if I arrive there, there will be no
safety for my life on the part of the Naïb, and if I remain here nobody
knoweth me among the beggars and I cannot be for them of any use nor for
myself as an aid or an intermediate. As for me, I had hope in that man,
that he would raise me from my poverty. The affair hath turned out
contrary to my expectations, and the poet was right when he said:—

O friend, I’ve run o’er the world west and east; all that I met with was
pain and fatigue:
I’ve frequented the men of the age, but never have found e’en a friend
grateful not even to me.

Once more he cried and exclaimed, God give me the grace of patience.
After that he got up and walked away, and entered one of the mosks and
staid there until afternoon. His hunger increased and he said, By Thy
magnanimity and Thy majesty I shall ask nothing of anyone but of Thee.
He remained in the mosk until it became dark when he went out for
something, saying to himself, I have heard a call from the Prophet (on
whom be the blessing and peace of Allah!) which said, God forbiddeth
sleep in the Sanctuary and forbiddeth it to His worshippers. Then he
arose, and went out from the mosk to some distance when he entered a
ruined building after walking an hour, and here he stumbled in the
darkness and fell upon his face. He saw something before him that he had
struck with his foot and felt it move, and this was a lad that had been
slain and a knife was in his side. Attaf rose up from off the body, his
clothes stained with blood; he stood motionless and embarrassed and
while in that situation the Wali and his policemen stood at the door of
the ruin and Attaf said to them, Come in and search. They entered with
their torches and found the body of the murdered lad and the knife in
him and the miserable Attaf standing at the head with his clothes
stained with blood. When a man with a scarf saw him he arrested him and
said to him, O Wretch, ’tis thou killedst him. Attaf said, Yes. Then
said the Wali, Pinion him and take him to prison until we make our
report to the Wazir Ja’afar. If he orders his death we will execute him.
They did as ordered, and the next day the man with the scarf wrote to
the Wazir, We went into a ruin and found there a man who had killed a
lad and we interrogated him and he confessed that it was he who had done
the deed, what are thine orders? The Wazir commanded them to put him to
death; so they took Attaf from the prison to the place of execution and
cut off a piece of his garment and with it bandaged his eyes. The
Sworder said O my lord, shall I strike his neck? and the Wali said,
Strike! He brandished the sword which whistled and glittered in the air
and was about to strike, when a cry from behind, Stop thy hand! was
heard, and it was the voice of the Wazir Ja’afar who was out on a
promenade. The Wali went to him and kissed the earth before him and the
Wazir said to him, What is this great gathering here? He answered, ’Tis
the execution of a young man of Damascus whom we found yesterday in a
ruin; he had killed a lad of noble blood and we found the knife with him
and his clothes spotted with blood. When I said to him, Is it thou that
killedst him? he replied Yes three times. To-day I sent to thee my
written report and thine Excellency ordered his death, saying, “Let the
sentence of God be executed,” and now I have brought him out that his
neck may be struck. Ja’afar said, “Oh, hath a man of Damascus come into
our country to find himself in a bad condition? Wallahy, that shall
never be!” Then he ordered that he should be brought to him. The Wazir
did not recognize him, for Attaf’s air of ease and comfort had
disappeared; so Ja’afar said to him, From what country art thou, O young
man, and he answered, I am a man from Damascus. From the city or from
the villages? Wallahy O my lord, from Damascus city where I was born.
Ja’afar asked, Didst thou happen to know there a man named Attaf? I know
when thou wast his friend and he lodged thee in such-and-such a house
and thou wentest out to such-and-such a garden; and I know when thou
didst marry his cousin-wife, I know when he bade adieu to thee at Katifa
where thou drankest with him. Ja’afar said, Yes, all that is true, but
what became of him after he left me? He said, O my Lord, there happened
to him this and that and he related to him everything from the time he
quitted him up to the moment of his standing before him and then recited
these verses:—

This age, must it make me its victim, and thou at the same time art
living: wolves are seeking to devour me while thou the lion art here.
Every thirsty one that cometh his thirst is quenched by thee: can it be
that I thirst while thou art still our refuge?

When he had finished the verses he said, O my lord. I am Attaf, and then
recalled all that had taken place between them from first to last. While
he was thus speaking a great cry was heard, and it came from a Sheikh
who was saying, This is not humanity. They looked at the speaker, who
was an old man with trimmed beard dyed with henna, and upon him was a
blue kerchief. When Ja’afar saw him he asked him what was the matter,
and he exclaimed, Take away the young man from under the sword, for
there is no fault in him: he hath killed no one nor doth he know
anything of the dead youth. Nobody but myself is the killer. The Wazir
said, Then ’tis thou that killed him? and he answered, Yes.—Why didst
thou kill him? hast thou not the fear of God in killing a Hashimy child?
The old man said, He was my servant, serving me in the house and working
with me at my trade. Every day he took from me some quarter-pieces of
money and went to work for another man called Shumooshag, and to work
with Nagísh, and with Gasís, and with Ghúbar, and with Gushír, and every
day working with someone. They were jealous of my having him. ’Odís the
sweeper and Abu Butrán the stoker, and everyone wanted to have him. In
vain I corrected him, but he would not abide corrected and ceased not to
do thus until I killed him in the ruin, and I have delivered myself from
the torment he gave me. That is my story. I kept silent until I saw thee
when I made myself known at the time thou savedst the head of this young
man from the sword. Here I am standing before you: strike my neck and
take life for life. Pray do no harm to this young man, for he hath
committed no fault. The Wazir said, Neither to thee nor to him. Then he
ordered to be brought the parents of the dead lad and reconciled them
with the old man, whom he pardoned. He mounted Attaf upon a horse and
took him to his house; then he entered the palace of the Caliph and
kissed the earth before him and said, Behold Attaf, he who was my host
at Damascus, and of whom I have related his treatment of me and his
kindness and generosity, and how he preferred me to himself. Er-Rashid
said, Bring him in to me immediately. He presented him to the Caliph in
the miserable state in which he had found him; and when he entered, he
made his salutations in the best manner and with the most eloquent
language, Er-Rashid answered and said to him, What is this state in
which I find you? and Attaf wept and made his complaint in these
verses:—

Troubles, poverty and distant sojourn far away from the dear ones, and a
crushing desire to see them:
The soul is in them, they became like their fellows, thus the enigma
remains in the world;
While the generous is stricken with misfortune and grief, where’s the
miser that finds not good fortune therein?

When Attaf had finished he conversed with the Caliph about his history
and all his life from beginning to end; and Er-Rashid cried and suffered
at what had happened to him after the loss of his riches, nor did he
cease to weep with Ja’afar until the close of Attaf’s story. The Sheikh
who had killed the lad and had been liberated by Ja’afar came in and
Er-Rashid laughed at seeing him. Then he caused Attaf to be seated and
made him repeat his story. And when Attaf had finished speaking the
Caliph looked at Ja’afar and said, The proverb goeth:—

Good for good, to the giver the merit remains; evil for evil, the doer’s
most cruel.

Afterwards the Caliph said to Ja’afar, Tell me what thou didst for thy
brother Attaf before he came to thee, and he answered, O Commander of
the Faithful, he came upon me suddenly, and I now prepare for him three
millions of gold, and the like of it in horses, and in slaves, and in
boys, and in dresses; and the Caliph said, From me the same. Here endeth
the last leaf of the writ, but the Rawi says that two days afterwards
Ja’afar restored to his friend Attaf his beloved cousin-wife, saying to
him, I have divorced her and now I deliver over to thee intact the
precious deposit that thou didst place in my hands. Already hath the
order from the Caliph been despatched to Damascus enjoining the arrest
of the Naib, to place him in irons and imprison him until further
notice. Attaf passed several months in Baghdad enjoying the pleasures of
the city in company with his friend Ja’afar and Er-Rashid. He would have
liked to have stayed there all his life, but numerous letters from his
relations and his friends praying him to return to Damascus, he thought
it his duty to do so, and asked leave of the Caliph, who granted it, not
without regrets and fears for his future condition. Er-Rashid appointed
him Wali of Damascus and gave him the imperial rescript; and a great
escort of horses, mules and dromedaries, with abundant magnificent
presents accompanied him as far as Damascus, where he was received with
great pomp. All the city was illuminated as a mark of joy for the return
of Attaf, so loved and respected by all classes of the people, and above
all by the poor who had wept incessantly for him in his absence. As to
the Naib, a second decree of the Caliph ordered his being put to death
for his oppression of the people, but by the generous intercession of
Attaf Er-Rashíd contented himself with commuting the sentence to
banishment. Attaf governed his people many years with justice and
prosperity, protector of his happy subjects and in the enjoyment of the
delights and pleasures of life, until the Angel of Death overtook him
and summoned him to Paradise.

HISTORY OF PRINCE HABIB
AND WHAT BEFEL HIM WITH
THE LADY DURRAT AL-GHAWWAS.

[Illustration]

=Here we begin to indite the History of Sultan Habib and of what befel
him with Durrat al-Ghawwas.=[379]

It is related (but Allah is All-knowing of His unknown and All-cognisant
of what took place and forewent in the annals of folk!) that there was,
in days of yore and in times and tides long gone before, a tribe of the
tribes of the Arabs hight Banú Hilál[380] whose head men were the Emir
Hilál and the Emir Salámah.[381] Now this Emir Salamah had well nigh
told out his tale of days without having been blessed with boon of
child; withal he was a ruler valiant, masterful, a fender of his foes
and a noble knight of portly presence. He numbered by the thousand
horsemen the notablest of cavaliers and he came to overrule
three-score-and-six tribes of the Arabs. One chance night of the nights
as he lay sleeping in the sweetness of slumber, a Voice addressed him
saying, “Rise forthright and know thy wife, whereby she shall conceive
under command of Allah Almighty.” Being thus disturbed of his rest the
Emir sprang up and compressed his spouse Kamar al-Ashráf;[382] she
became pregnant by that embrace and when her days came to an end she
bare a boy as the full moon of the fulness-night who by his father’s
hest was named Habíb.[383] And as time went on his sire rejoiced in him
with joy exceeding and reared him with fairest rearing and bade them
teach him Koran-reading together with the glorious names of Almighty
Allah and instruct him in writing and in all the arts and sciences.
After this he bestowed robes of honour and gifts of money and raiment
upon the teachers who had made the Sultan[384] Habib, when he reached
the age of seventeen, the most intelligent and penetrating and knowing
amongst the sons of his time. And indeed men used to admire at the
largeness of his understanding and were wont to say in themselves,
“There is no help but that this youth shall rise to dignity (and what
dignity!) whereof men of highmost intellect shall make loud mention. For
he could write the seven caligraphs[385] and he could recite traditions
and he could improvise poetry; and, on one occasion when his father bade
him versify impromptu, that he might see what might come thereof, he
intoned:—

“O my sire, I am lord of all lere man knows or knew— ✿ Have enformed my
vitals with lore and with legend true;
Nor cease I repeat what knowledge this memory guards ✿ And my writ as
ruby and pearl doth appear to view.”

So the Emir Salamah his sire marvelled at the elegance of his son’s
diction; and the Notables of the clan, after hearing his poetry and his
prose, stood astounded at their excellence; and presently the father
clasped his child to his breast and forthright summoned his governor, to
whom there and then he did honour of the highmost. Moreover he largessed
him with four camels carrying loads of gold and silver and he set him
over one of his subject tribes of the Arabs; then said he to him,
“Indeed thou hast done well, O Shaykh; so take this good and fare
therewith to such a tribe and rule it with justice and equity until the
day of thy death.” Replied the governor, “O King of the Age, I may on no
wise accept thy boons, for that I am not of mankind but of Jinn-kind;
nor have I need of money or requirement of rule. Know thou, O my lord,
that erst I sat as Kázi amongst the Jinns and I was enthroned amid the
Kings of the Jánn, whenas one night of the nights a Voice[386] addressed
me in my sleep saying, “Rise and hie thee to the Sultan Habib son of the
Emir Salamah ruler of the tribes of the Arabs subject to the Banu Hilal
and become his tutor and teach him all things teachable; and, if thou
gainsay going, I will tear thy soul from thy body.” Now when I saw this
marvel-vision in my sleep, I straightway arose and repairing to thy son
did as I was bidden.”[387] But as the Emir Salamah heard the words of
this Shaykh he bowed him down and kissing his feet cried,
“Alhamdolillah—laud to the Lord, who hath vouchsafed thee to us of His
bounty; and indeed thy coming to us was of good omen, O Judge of the
Jann.” “Where is thy son?” quoth the governor and quoth the father,
“Ready, aye ready;” then he summoned his child and when the Shaykh
looked upon his pupil he wept with sore weeping and cried, “Parting from
thee, O Habib, is heavy upon us,” presently adding, “Ah! were ye to wot
all that shall soon befal this youth after my departure and when afar
from me!”[388] Those present in the assembly at once asked saying:—

“And what shall, O Shaykh, to us fall forthright? ✿ Quoth he, ‘Sore
marvels shall meet your sight’:
No heart have I to describe it you”. ✿ Then approached Habib the same
tutor-wight;
And clasping the youth to the breast of him, ✿ Kissed his cheek
a-shrieking the shrillest shright.[389]

Whereupon all about them were perturbed and were amated and amazed at
the action of the Shaykh when, vanishing from their view, he could
nowhere be seen. Then the Emir Salamah addressed the lieges saying, “Ho
ye Arabs, who wotteth what presently shall betide my son? would Heaven I
had one to advise him!” Hereupon said his Elders and Councillors, “We
know of none.” But the Sultan Habib brooded over the disappearance of
his governor and bespake his sire weeping bitter tears the while, “O my
father, where be he who brought me up and enformed me with all manner
knowledge?” and the Emir replied, “O my son, one day of the days he
farewelled us and crying out with a loud cry evanished from our view and
we have seen him no more.” Thereupon the youth improvised and said:—

“Indeed I am scourged by those ills whereof I felt affray, ah! ✿ By
parting and thoughts which oft compelled my soul to say, ‘Ah!’
Oh saddest regret in vitals of me that ne’er ceaseth, nor ✿ Shall
minished be his love that still on my heart doth prey, ah!
Where hath hied the generous soul my mind with lere adorned? ✿ And alas!
what hath happened, O sire, to me, and well-away, ah!”

Hereat the Emir Salamah shed tears (as on like wise did all present) and
quoth he to his son, “O Habib, we have been troubled by his action,” and
quoth the youth, “How shall I endure severance from one who fostered me
and brought me to honour and renown and who raised my degree so high?”
Then began he to improvise saying:—

“Indeed this pine in my heart grows high, ✿ And in eyeballs wake doth my
sleep outvie:
You marched, O my lords, and from me hied far ✿ And you left a lover
shall aye outcry:
I wot not where on this earth you be ✿ And how long this patience when
none is nigh:
Ye fared and my eyeballs your absence weep, ✿ And my frame is meagre, my
heart is dry.”

Now whilst the Emir Salamah was sitting in his seat of dignity and the
Sultan Habib was improvising poetry and shedding tears in presence of
his sire, they heard a Voice which announced itself and its sound was
audible whilst its personality was invisible. Thereupon the youth shed
tears and cried, “O father mine, I need one who shall teach me
horsemanship and the accidents of edge and point and onset and offset
and spearing and spurring in the Maydán; for my heart loveth knightly
derring-do to plan, such as riding in van and encountering the horseman
and the valiant man.” And the while they were in such converse behold,
there appeared before them a personage rounded of head, long of length
and dread, with turband wide dispread, and his breadth of breast was
armoured with doubled coat of mail whose manifold rings were
close-enmeshed after the model of Dáúd[390] the Prophet (upon whom be
The Peace!) Moreover he hent in hand a mace erst a block cut out of the
live hard rock, whose shock would arrest forty braves of the doughtiest;
and he was baldrick’d with an Indian blade that quivered in the grasp,
and he bestrode, with a Samhari[391] lance at rest, a bay destrier of
black points whose peer was not amongst the steeds of the Arabs. Then he
took his station standing as a vassal between the Emir Salamah’s hands
and he addressed a general salam and he greeted all that stood afoot or
were seated. His salute they repeated and presently the pages hastened
forwards and aided him alight from his charger’s back; and after waiting
for a full-told hour that he might take somewhat of repose, the
stranger-knight and doughty wight advanced and said, “Ho thou the Emir,
I came hither to fulfil the want whereof thou expressedst a wish; and,
if such prove thy pleasure, I will teach thy son fray and fight and
prowess in the plain of sword-stroke and lance-lunge. But ere so doing I
would fain test thy skill in cavalarice; so do thou, O Emir, be first to
appear as champion and single combatant in the field when I will show
thee what horsemanship is.” “Hearkening and obeying,” replied the Emir,
“and if thou desire the duello with us we will not baulk thee thereof.”
Hereat his Shaykhs and Chieftains sprang up and cried to him, “O Emir,
Allah upon thee do not meet in fight this cavalier for that thou wottest
not an he be of mankind or of Jinn-kind; so be thou not deceived by his
sleights and snares.” “Suffer me this day,” quoth the Emir, “to see the
cavalarice of this cavalier, and, if over me he prevail, know him to be
a knight with whom none may avail.” Speaking thus the Emir arose and
hied him to his tent where he bade the slaves bring forth the best of
his habergeons; and, when all these were set before him, he took from
them a Davidian suit of manifold rings and close-meshed, which he
donned, and he baldrick’d himself with a scymitar of Hindi steel, hadst
thou smitten therewith a cliff it had cleft it in twain or hadst thou
stricken a hill it had been laid level as a plain; and he hent in hand a
Rudaynían lance[392] of Khatt Hajar, whose length was thirty ells and
upon whose head sat a point like unto a basilisk’s tongue; and lastly he
bade his slaves bring him his courser which in the race was the
fleetest-footed of all horses. Then the two combatants took the plain
accompanied by the tribesmen nor did one of them all, or great or small,
remain in camp for desire to witness the fight of these champions who
were both as ravening lions. But first the stranger-knight addressed his
adversary and speaking with free and eloquent tongue quoth he, “I will
encounter thee, O Emir Salamah, with the encountering of the valiant; so
have thou a heed of me for I am he hath overthrown the Champions some
and all.” At these words each engaged his foeman and the twain forwards
pressed for a long time, and the Raven of cut-and-thrust croaked over
the field of fight and they exchanged strokes with the Hindi scymitar
and they thrust and foined with the Khatti spear and more than one blade
and limber lance was shivered and splintered, all the tribesmen looking
on the while at both. And they ceased not to attack and retire and to
draw near and draw off and to heave and fence until their forearms ailed
and their endeavour failed. Already there appeared in the Emir Salamah
somewhat of weakness and weariness; natheless when he looked upon his
adversary’s skill in the tourney and encounter of braves he saw how to
meet all the foeman’s sword-strokes with his targe: however at last
fatigue and loss of strength prevailed over him and he knew that he had
no longer the force to fight; so he stinted his endeavour and withdrew
from brunt of battle. Hereat the stranger knight alighted and falling at
the Emir’s feet kissed them and cried, “O Sovran of the Age, I came not
hither to war with thee but rather with the design of teaching thy son,
the Sultan Habib, the complete art of arms and make him the prow
cavalier of his day.” Replied Salamah, “In very sooth, O horseman of the
age, thou hast spoken right fairly in thy speech; nor did I design with
thee to fight nor devised I the duello or from steed to alight;[393]
nay, my sole object was my son to incite that he might learn battle and
combat aright, and the charge of the heroic Himyarite[394] to meet with
might.” Then the twain dismounted and each kissed his adversary; after
which they returned to the tribal camp and the Emir bade decorate it and
all the habitations of the Arab clans with choicest decoration, and they
slaughtered the victims and spread the banquets and throughout that day
the tribesmen ate and drank and fed the travellers and every wayfarer
and the mean and mesquin and all the miserables. Now as soon as the
Sultan Habib was informed concerning that cavalier how he had foiled his
father in the field of fight, he repaired to him and said, “Peace be
with him who came longing for us and designing our society! Who art
thou, Ho thou the valorous knight and foiler of foemen in fight?” Said
the other, “Learn thou, O Habib, that Allah hath sent me theewards.”
“And, say me, what may be thy name?” “I am hight Al-’Abbús,[395] the
Knight of the Grim Face.” “I see thee only smiling of countenance whilst
thy name clean contradicteth thy nature;” quoth the youth. Presently the
Emir Salamah committed his son to the new governor saying, “I would thou
make me this youth _the_ Brave of his epoch;” whereto the knight
replied, “To hear is to obey, first Allah then thyself and to do suit
and service of thy son Habib.” And when this was determined youth and
governor went forth to the Maydan every day and after a while of delay
Habib became the best man of his age in fight and fray. Seeing this his
teacher addressed him as follows. “Learn, O Sultan Habib, that there is
no help but thou witness perils and affrights and adventures, wherefor
is weak the description of describers and thou shalt say in
thyself:—Would heaven I had never sighted such and I were of these same
free. And thou shalt fall into every hardship and horror until thou be
united with the beautiful Durrat al-Ghawwás, Queen-regnant over the
Isles of the Sea. Meanwhile to affront all the perils of the path thou
shalt fare forth from thy folk and bid adieu to thy tribe and patrial
stead; and, after enduring that which amateth man’s wit, thou shalt win
union with the daughter of Queen Kamar al-Zamán[396].” But when Habib
heard these words concerning the “Pearl of the Diver” his wits were
wildered and his senses were agitated and he cried to Al-Abbus, “I
conjure thee by Allah say me, is this damsel of mankind or of
Jinn-kind.” Quoth the other, “Of Jinn-kind, and she hath two Wazirs, one
of either race, who overrule all her rulers and a thousand islands of
the Isles of the Sea are subject to her command, while a host of Sayyids
and Sharífs[397] and Grandees hath flocked to woo her, bringing wealthy
gifts and noble presents, yet hath not any of them won his wish of her
but all returned baffled and baulked of their will.” Now the Sultan
Habib hearing this from him cried in excess of perturbation and stress
of confusion, “Up with us and hie we home where we may take seat and
talk over such troublous matter and debate anent its past and its
future.” “Hearkening and obedience,” rejoined the other; so the twain
retired into privacy in order to converse at ease concerning the
Princess, and Al-Abbus began to relate in these words—

_THE HISTORY OF DURRAT AL-GHAWWAS._

Whilome there was a Sovran amongst the Kings of the Sea, hight Sábúr,
who reigned over the Crystalline Isles,[398] and he was a mighty ruler
and a generous, and a masterful potentate and a glorious. He loved women
and he was at trouble to seek out the fairest damsels; yet many of his
years had gone by nor yet had he been blessed with boon of boy. So one
day of the days he took thought and said in himself, “To this length of
years I have attained and am well nigh at life’s end and still am I
childless: what then will be my case?” Presently, as he sat upon his
throne of kingship, he saw enter to him an Ifrit fair of face and form,
the which was none other than King ’Atrús[399] of the Jánn, who cried,
“The Peace be upon thee, Ho thou the King! and know that I have come to
thee from my liege lord who affecteth thee. In my sleep it befel that I
heard a Voice crying to me:—During all the King’s days never hath he
been vouchsafed a child, boy or girl; so now let him accept my command
and he shall win to his wish. Let him distribute justice and largesse
and further the rights of the wronged and bid men to good and forbid
them from evil and lend not aid to tyranny or to innovation in the realm
and persecute not the unfortunate, and release from gaol all the
prisoners he retaineth. At these words of the Voice I awoke astartled by
my vision and I hastened to thee without delay and I come with design to
inform thee, O King of the Age, that I have a daughter, hight Kamar
al-Zaman, who hath none like her in her time, and no peer in this tide,
and her I design giving thee to bride. The Kings of the Jann have
ofttimes asked her in marriage of me but I would have none of them save
a ruler of men like thyself and Alhamdolillah—glory be to God, who
caused thy Highness occur to my thought, for that thy fame in the world
is goodly fair and thy works make for righteousness. And haply by the
blessing of these thou shalt beget upon my daughter a man child, a pious
heir and a virtuous.” Replied the King, “Ho thou who comest to us and
desirest our weal, I accept thine offer with love and good will.” Then
Sabur, the King of the Crystalline Isles, bade summon the Kazi and
witnesses, and quoth the Ifrit, “I agree to what thou sayest, and whatso
thou proposest that will I not oppose.” So they determined upon the
dowry and bound him by the bond of marriage with the daughter of
Al-’Atrus, King of the Jinns, who at once sent one of his Flying Jann to
bring the bride. She arrived forthright when they dressed and adorned
her with all manner ornaments, and she came forth surpassing all the
maidens of her era. And when King Sabur went in unto her he found her a
clean maid: so he lay that night with her and Almighty Allah so willed
that she conceived of him. When her days and months of pregnancy were
sped, she was delivered of a girl-babe as the moon, whom they committed
to wet-nurses and dry-nurses, and when she had reached her tenth year,
they set over her duennas who taught her Koran-reading and writing and
learning and _belles-lettres_; brief, they brought her up after the
fairest of fashions. Such was the lot[400] of Durrat al-Ghawwas, the
child of Kamar al-Zaman, daughter to King ’Atrus by her husband King
Sabur. But as regards the Sultan Habib and his governor Al-Abbus, the
twain ceased not wandering from place to place in search of the promised
damsel until one day of the days when the youth entered his father’s
garden and strolled the walks adown amid the borders[401] and blossoms
of basil and of rose full blown and solaced himself with the works of
the Compassionate One and enjoyed the scents and savours of the flowers
there bestrown; and, while thus employed, behold, he suddenly espied the
maiden, Durrat al-Ghawwas hight, entering therein as she were the moon;
and naught could be lovelier than she of all earth supplies, gracious as
a Huriyah of the Virgins of Paradise, to whose praise no praiser could
avail on any wise. But when the Sultan Habib cast upon her his eyes he
could no longer master himself and his wits were bewildered from the
excitement of his thoughts; so he regarded her with a long fixed look
and said in himself, “I fear whenas she see me that she will vanish from
my sight.” Accordingly, he retired and clomb the branches of a tree in a
stead where he could not be seen and whence he could see her at his
ease. But as regards the Princess, she ceased not to roam about the Emir
Salamah’s garden until there approached her two score of snow-white
birds each accompanied by a handmaid of moon-like beauty. Presently they
settled upon the ground and stood between her hands saying, “Peace be
upon thee, O our Queen and Sovran Lady.” She replied, “No welcome to you
and no greeting; say me, what delayed you until this hour when ye know
that I am longing to meet the Sultan Habib, the dear one, son of
Salamah, and I long to visit him for that he is the dearling of my
heart. Wherefor I bade you accompany me and ye obeyed not, and haply ye
have made mock of me and of my commandment.” “We never gainsay thy
behest,” replied they, “or in word or in deed;” and they fell to seeking
her beloved. Hearing this the Sultan Habib’s heart was solaced and his
mind was comforted and his thoughts were rightly directed and his soul
was reposed; and when he was certified of her speech, he was minded to
appear before her; but suddenly fear of her prevailed over him and he
said to his thoughts, “Haply she will order one of the Jinns to do me
die; so ’twere better to have patience and see what Allah shall purpose
for me of His Almighty will.” But the Princess and her attendants ceased
not wandering about the garden from site to site and side to side till
they reached the place wherein the Sultan Habib lay in lurking; when
Durrat al-Ghawwas there stood still and said in herself, “Now I came not
from my capital save on his account, and I would see and be seen by him
even as the Voice informed me of him, O ye handmaidens; and peradventure
hath the same informed him of me.” Then the Princess and her suite,
drawing still nearer to his place of concealment, found a lakelet in the
Arab’s garden brimful of water amiddlemost whereof stood a brazen lion,
through whose mouth the water entered to issue from his tail. Hereat the
Princess marvelled and said to her bondswomen, “This be none other than
a marvellous lake, together with the lion therein; and when, by the
goodwill of Almighty Allah, I shall have returned home I will let make a
lakelet after this fashion, and in it set a lion of brass.” Thereupon
she ordered them to doff their dress and go down to the piece of water
and swim about; but they replied, “O our lady, to hear is to obey thy
commandment, but we will not strip nor swim save with thee.” Then she
also did off her dress and all stripped themselves and entered the
lakelet in a body, whereupon the Sultan Habib looked through the leaves
to solace himself with the fair spectacle and he ejaculated, “Blessed be
the Lord the best of Creators!” And when the handmaids waxed aweary of
swimming, the Princess commanded them to come forth the water, and said
“Whenas Heaven willeth that the desire of my heart be fulfilled in this
garden, what deem ye I should do with my lover?” and quoth they,
“’Twould only add to our pleasure and gladness.” Quoth she, “Verily my
heart assureth me that he is here and hidden amongst the trees of yon
tangled brake;” and she made signs with her hand whither Habib lay in
lurking-place; and he, espying this, rejoiced with joy galore than which
naught could be more, and exclaimed, “There is no Majesty and there is
no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great: what meaneth this lady?
Indeed, I fear to stay in this stead lest she come hither and draw me
forth and put me to shame; and ’twere better that of mine own accord I
come out of my concealment and accost her and suffer her to do all she
designeth and desireth.” So he descended from the topmost of the tree
wherein he had taken refuge and presented himself before the Princess
Durrat al-Ghawwas, who drew near and cried to him, “O Habib, O welcome
to Habib! and is it thus that we have travailed with love of thee and
longing for thee, and where hast thou been all this time, O my dearling,
and O coolth of my eyes and O slice of my liver?” Replied he, “I was in
the head of yonder huge tree to which thou pointedst with thy finger.”
And as they looked each at other she drew nearer to him and fell to
improvising:—

“Thou hast doomed me, O branchlet of Bán, to despair ✿ Who in worship
and honour was wont to fare,—
Who lived in rule and folk slaved for me ✿ And hosts girded me round
every hest to bear!”

[Illustration]

And anon quoth the Sultan Habib; “Alhamdolillah—laud be to the Lord, who
deigned show me thy face and thy form! Can it be thou kennest not what
it was that harmed me and sickened me for thy sake, O Durrat
al-Ghawwas?” Quoth she, “And what was it hurt thee and ailed thee?” “It
was the love of thee and longing for thee!” “And who was the first to
tell thee and make thee ware of me?” He replied saying, “One day it so
befel, as I was amongst my family and my tribe, a Jinni Al-Abbus hight
became my governor and taught me the accidents of thrust and cut and
cavalarice; and ere he left he commended thy beauty and loveliness and
foretold to me all that would pass between thee and me. So I was
engrossed with affection for thee ere my eyes had sight of thee, and
thenceforwards I lost all the pleasures of sleep, nor were meat and
eating sweet to me, nor were drink and winedraughts a delight to me: so
Alhamdolillah—praise be to Allah, who deigned conjoin me in such union
with my heart’s desire!” Hereat the twain exchanged an embrace so long
that a swoon came upon them and both fell to the ground in a fainting
fit, but after a time the handmaidens raised them up and besprinkled
their faces with rose-water which at once revived them. All this
happened, withal the Emir Salamah wotted naught of what had befallen his
son the Sultan Habib nor did his mother weet that had betided her child;
and the husband presently went in to his spouse and said, “Indeed this
boy hath worn us out: we see that o’ nights he sleepeth not in his own
place and this day he fared forth with the dawn and suffered us not to
see a sight of him.” Quoth the wife, “Since the day he went to Al-Abbus,
thy boy fell into cark and care;” and quoth the husband, “Verily our son
walked about the garden and Allah knoweth that therefrom is no issue
anywhither. So there shalt thou find him and ask him of himself.” And
they talked over this matter in sore anger and agitation. Meanwhile as
the Sultan Habib sat in the garden with the handmaids waiting upon him
and upon the Princess Durrat al-Ghawwas, there suddenly swooped upon
them a huge bird which presently changed form to a Shaykh seemly of
aspect and semblance who approached and kissing their feet humbled
himself before the lover and his beloved. The youth marvelled at such
action of the Shaykh, and signalled to the Princess as to ask, “Who may
be this old man?” and she answered in the same way, “This is the Wazir
who caused me forgather with thee;” presently adding to the Shaykh,
“What may be thy need?” “I came hither for the sake of thee,” he
replied, “and unless thou fare forthright to thy country and kingdom the
rule of the Jánn will pass from thy hand; for that the Lords of the land
and Grandees of the realm seek thy loss and not a few of the nobles have
asked me saying, O Wazir, where is our Queen? I answered, She is within
her palace and to-day she is busied with some business. But such pretext
cannot long avail, and thou, unless thou return with me to the region of
thy reign there shall betray thee some one of the Marids and the hosts
will revolt against thee and thy rule will go to ruin and thou wilt be
degraded from command and sultanat.” “What then is thy say and what thy
bidding?” enquired she, and he replied, “Thou hast none other way save
departure from this place and return to thy realm.” Now when these words
reached the ear of Durrat al-Ghawwas, her breast was straitened and she
waxed sorrowful with exceeding sorrow for severance from her lover whom
she addressed in these words, “What sayest thou anent that thou hast
heard? In very sooth I desire not parting from thee and the ruin of my
reign as little do I design; so come with me, O dearling of my heart,
and I will make thee liege lord over the Isles of the Sea and sole
master thereof.” Hereat the Sultan Habib said in his soul, “I cannot
endure parting from my own people; but as for thee thy love shall never
depart from thee:” then he spake aloud, “An thou deign hear me, do thou
abandon that which thou purposest and bid thy Wazir rule over the Isles
and thy patrial stead; so shall we twain, I and thou, live in privacy
for all time and enjoy the most joyous of lives.” “That may never be,”
was her only reply; after which she cried to the Wazir saying, “Carry me
off that I fare to my own land.” Then after farewelling her lover, she
mounted the Emir-Wazir’s back[402] and bade him bear her away, whereat
he took flight and the forty handmaidens flew with him, towering high in
air. Presently, the Sultan Habib shed bitter tears; his mother hearing
him weeping sore as he sat in the garden went to her husband and said,
“Knowest thou not what calamity hath befallen thy son that I hear him
there groaning and moaning?” Now when the parents entered the garden,
they found him spent with grief and the tears trickled adown his cheeks
like never-ceasing rain-showers;[403] so they summoned the pages who
brought cucurbits of rose-water wherewith they besprinkled his face. But
as soon as he recovered his senses and opened his eyes, he fell to
weeping with excessive weeping and his father and mother likewise shed
tears for the burning of their hearts and asked him, “O Habib, what
calamity hath come down to thee and who of his mischief hath overthrown
thee? Inform us of the truth of thy case.” So he related all that had
betided between him and Durrat al-Ghawwas, and his mother wept over him
while his father cried, “O Habib, do thou leave this say and this thy
desire cast away that the joys of meat and drink and sleep thou may
enjoy alway.” But he made answer, “O my sire, I will not slumber upon
this matter until I shall sleep the sleep of death.” “Arise thou, O my
child,” rejoined the Emir, “and let us return homewards,”[404] but the
son retorted “Verily I will not depart from this place wherein I was
parted from the dearling of my heart.” So the sire again urged him
saying, “These words do thou spare nor persist in this affair because
therefrom for thee I fear;” and he fell to cheering him and comforting
his spirits. After a while the Sultan Habib arose and fared homewards
beside his sire who kept saying to him, “Patience, O my child, the while
I assist thee in thy search for this young lady and I send those who
shall bring her to thee.” “O my father,” rejoined the son, “I can no
longer endure parting from her; nay, ’tis my desire that thou load me
sundry camels with gold and silver and plunder and moneys that I may go
forth to seek her: and if I win to my wish and Allah vouchsafe me length
of life I will return unto you; but an the term of my days be at hand
then the behest be to Allah, the One, the Omnipotent. Let not your
breasts be straitened therefor and do ye hold and believe that if I
abide with you and see not the beloved of my soul I shall perish of my
pain while you be standing by to look upon my death. So suffer me to
wayfare and attain mine aim; for from the day when my mother bare me
’twas written to my lot that I journey over wild and wold and that I see
and voyage over the seas seven-fold.” Hereupon he fell to improvising
these verses:—

“My heart is straitened with grief amain ✿ And my friends and familiars
have wrought me pain;
And whene’er you’re absent I pine, and fires ✿ In my heart beweep what
it bears of bane:
O ye, who fare for the tribe’s domain, ✿ Cry aloud my greetings to
friends so fain!”

Now when the Emir Salamah heard these his son’s verses, he bade pack for
him four camel loads of the rarest stuffs, and he largessed to him a
she-dromedary laden with thrones of red gold; then he said to him, “Lo,
O my son, I have given thee more than thou askedst.” “O my father,”
replied Habib, “where are my steed and my sword and my spear?” Hereat
the pages brought forward a mail-coat Davidian[405] and a blade
Maghrabian and a lance Khattian and Samharian, and set them between his
hands; and the Sultan Habib donning the habergeon and drawing his sabre
and sitting lance in rest backed his steed, which was of the noblest
blood known to all the Arabs. Then quoth he, “O my father is it thy
desire to send with me a troop of twenty knights that they may escort me
to the land of Al-Yaman and may anon bring me back to thee?” “My
design,” quoth the sire, “is to despatch those with thee who shall
befriend thee upon the road;” and, when Habib prayed him do as he
pleased, the Emir appointed to him ten knights, valorous wights, who
dreaded naught of death however sudden and awesome. Presently, the youth
farewelled his father and mother, his family and his tribe, and joining
his escort, mounted his destrier when Salamah, his sire, said to his
company, “Be ye to my son obedient in all he shall command you;” and
said they, “Hearing and obeying.” Then Habib and his many turned away
from home and addressed them to the road when he began to improvise the
following lines:—

“My longing grows less and far goes my cark ✿ After flamed my heart with
the love-fire stark;
As I ride to search for my soul’s desire ✿ And I ask of those faring to
Al-Irák.”

On this wise it befel the Sultan Habib and his farewelling his father
and mother; but now lend ear to what came of the knights who escorted
him. After many days of toil and travail they waxed discontented and
disheartened; and presently taking counsel one with other, they said,
“Come, let us slay this lad and carry off the loads of stuffs and coin
he hath with him; and when we reach our homes and be questioned
concerning him, let us say that he died of the excess of his desire to
Princess Durrat al-Ghawwas.” So they followed this rede, while their
lord wotted naught of the ambush laid for him by his followers. And
having ridden through the day when the night of offence[406] was
dispread, the escort said, “Dismount we in this garden[407] that here we
may take our rest during the dark hours, and when morning shall morrow
we will resume our road.” The Sultan Habib had no mind to oppose them,
so all alighted and in that garden took seat and whatso of victual was
with them produced; after which they ate and drank their sufficiency and
lay down to sleep all of them save their lord, who could not close eye
for excess of love-longing. “O Habib, why and wherefore sleepest thou
not?” they asked, and he answered, “O comrades mine, how shall slumber
come to one yearning for his dearling, and verily I will lie awake nor
enjoy aught repose until such time as I espy the life-blood of my heart,
Durrat al-Ghawwas.” Thereupon they held their peace; and presently they
held council one with other saying, “Who amongst us can supply a dose of
Bhang that we may cast him asleep and his slaughter may be easy to us?”
“I have two Miskáls weight[408] of that same,” quoth one of them, and
the others took it from him and presently, when occasion served, they
put it into a cup of water and presented it to Habib. He hent that cup
in hand and drank off the drugged liquid at a single draught; and
presently the Bhang wrought in his vitals and its fumes mounted to his
head, mastering his senses and causing his brain to whirl round,
whereupon he sank into the depths of unconsciousness. Then quoth his
escort, “As soon as his slumber is soundest and his sleep heaviest we
will arise and slay him and bury him on the spot where he now sleepeth:
then will we return to his father and mother, and tell them that of
love-stress to his beloved and of excessive longing and pining for her
he died.” And upon this deed of treachery all agreed. So when dawned the
day and showed its sheen and shone clear and serene, the knights awoke
and seeing their lord drowned[409] in sleep they arose and sat in
council, and quoth one of them, “Let us cut his throat from ear to
ear;”[410] and quoth another, “Nay, better we dig us a pit the stature
of a man and we will cast him amiddlemost thereof and heap upon him
earth so that he will die, nor shall any know aught about him.” Hearing
this said one of the retinue, whose name was Rabí’a,[411] “But fear you
naught from Almighty Allah and regard ye not the favours wherewith his
father fulfilled you, and remember ye not the bread which ye ate in his
household and from his family? Indeed ’twas but a little while since his
sire chose you out to escort him that his son might take solace with you
instead of himself, and he entrusted unto you his heart’s core, and now
ye are pleased to do him die and thereby destroy the life of his
parents. Furthermore, say me doth your judgment decide that such
ill-work can possibly abide hidden from his father? Now I swear by the
loyalty[412] of the Arabs there will not remain for us a wight or any
who bloweth the fire alight, however mean and slight, who will receive
us after such deed. So do ye at least befriend and protect your
households and your clans and your wives and your children whom ye left
in the tribal domain. But now you design utterly to destroy us, one and
all, and after death affix to our memories the ill-name of traitors, and
cause our women be enslaved and our children enthralled, nor leave one
of us aught to be longed for.” Quoth they jeeringly, “Bring what thou
hast of righteous rede:” so quoth he, “Have you fixed your intent upon
slaying him and robbing his good?” and they answered, “We have.”
However, he objected again and cried, “Come ye and hear from me what it
is I advise you, albeit I will take no part[413] in this matter;”
presently adding, “Established is your resolve in this affair, and ye
wot better than I what you are about to do. But my mind is certified of
this much; do ye not transgress in the matter of his blood and suffer
only his crime be upon you;[414] moreover, if ye desire to lay hands
upon his camels and his moneys and his provisions, then do ye carry them
off and leave him where he lieth; then if he live, ’twere well, and if
he die ’twill be even better and far better.” “Thy rede is right and
righteous,” they replied. Accordingly they seized his steed and his
habergeon and his sword and his gear of battle and combat, and they
carried off all he had of money and means, and placing him naked upon
the bare ground they drove away his camels. Presently asked one of
other, “Whenas we shall reach the tribe what shall we say to his father
and his mother?” “Whatso Rabi’a shall counsel us,” quoth they, and quoth
Rabi’a, “Tell them:—We left not travelling with your son; and, as we
fared along we lost sight of him and we saw him nowhere until we came
upon him a-swoon and lying on the road senseless: then we called to him
by name but he returned no reply, and when we shook him with our hands
behold, he had become a dried-up wand. Then seeing him dead we buried
him and brought back to you his good and his belongings.” “And if they
ask you,” objected one:—In what place did ye bury him and in what land,
and is the spot far or near, what shall ye make answer; also if they say
to you, “Why did ye not bear his corpse with you, what then shall be
your reply?” Rabi’a to this rejoined, “Do you say to them:—Our strength
was weakened and we waxed feeble from burn of heart and want of water,
nor could we bring his remains with us. And if they ask you:—Could ye
not bear him a-back; nay, might ye not have carried him upon one of the
camels? do ye declare that ye could not for two reasons, the first being
that the body was swollen and stinking from the fiery air, and the
second our fear for his father, lest seeing him rotten he could not
endure the sight and his sorrow be increased for that he was an only
child and his sire hath none other.” All the men joined in accepting
this counsel of Rabi’a, and each and every exclaimed, “This indeed is
the rede that is most right.” Then they ceased not wayfaring until they
reached the neighbourhood of the tribe, when they sprang from their
steeds and openly donned black, and they entered the camp showing the
sorest sorrow. Presently they repaired to the father’s tent, grieving
and weeping and shrieking as they went; and when the Emir Salamah saw
them in this case, crowding together with keening and crying for the
departed, he asked them, “Where is he, my son?” and they answered,
“Indeed he is dead.” Right hard upon Salamah was this lie, and his grief
grew the greater, so he scattered dust upon his head and plucked out his
beard and rent his raiment and shrieked aloud saying, “Woe for my son,
ah! Woe for Habib, ah! Woe for the slice of my liver, ah! Woe for my
grief, ah! Woe for the core[415] of my heart, ah!” Thereupon his mother
came forth, and seeing her husband in this case, with dust on his head
and his beard plucked out and his robe-collar[416] rent, and sighting
her son’s steed she shrieked, “Woe is me and well-away for my child,
ah!” and fainted swooning for a full-told hour. Anon when recovered she
said to the knights who had formed the escort, “Woe to you, O men of
evil, where have ye buried my boy?” They replied, “In a far-off land
whose name we wot not, and ’tis wholly waste and tenanted by wild
beasts,” whereat she was afflicted exceedingly. Then the Emir Salamah
and his wife and household and all the tribesmen donned garbs black-hued
and ashes whereupon to sit they strewed, and ungrateful to them was the
taste of food and drink, meat and wine; nor ceased they to beweep their
loss, nor could they comprehend what had befallen their son and what of
ill-lot had descended upon him from Heaven. Such then was the case of
them; but as regards the Sultan Habib, he continued sleeping until the
Bhang ceased to work in his brain, when Allah sent a fresh, cool wind
which entered his nostrils and caused him sneeze, whereby he cast out
the drug and sensed the sun-heat and came to himself. Hereupon he opened
his eyes and sighted a wild and waste land, and he looked in vain for
his companions the knights, and his steed and his sword and his spear
and his coat of mail, and he found himself mother-naked, athirst,
an-hungered. Then he cried out in that Desert of desolation which lay
far and wide before his eyes, and the case waxed heavy upon him, and he
wept and groaned and complained of his case to Allah Almighty, saying,
“O my God and my Lord and my Master, trace my lot an thou hast traced it
upon the Guarded Tablet, for who shall right me save Thyself, O Lord of
Might that is All-might and of Grandeur All-puissant and All-excellent!”
Then he began improvising these verses:—

“Faileth me, O my God, the patience with the pride o’ me; ✿ Life-tie is
broke and drawing nigh I see Death-tide o’ me:
To whom shall injured man complain of injury and wrong ✿ Save to the
Lord (of Lords the Best!) who stands by side o’ me.”

Now whilst the Sultan Habib was ranging with his eye-corners to the
right and to the left behold, he beheld a blackness rising high in air,
and quoth he to himself, “Doubtless this dark object must be a mighty
city or a vast encampment, and I will hie me thither before I be
overheated by the sun-glow and I lose the power of walking and I die of
distress and none shall know my fate.” Then he heartened his heart for
the improvising of such poetry as came to his mind, and he repeated
these verses:—

“Travel, for on the way all goodly things shalt find; ✿ And wake from
sleep and dreams if still to sleep inclined!
Or victory win and rise and raise thee highmost high ✿ And gain, O giddy
pate, the good for which thy soul hath pined;
Or into sorrow thou shalt fall with breast full strait ✿ And ne’er enjoy
the Fame that wooes the gen’rous mind,
Nor is there any shall avail to hinder Fate ✿ Except the Lord of Worlds
who the Two Beings[417] designed.”

And when he had finished his verse, the Sultan Habib walked in the
direction of that blackness nor left walking until he drew near the
ridge; but after he could fare no farther and that walking distressed
him (he never having been broken to travel afoot and barefoot withal),
and his forces waxed feeble and his joints relaxed and his strong will
grew weak and his resolution passed away. But whilst he was perplexed
concerning what he should do, suddenly there alighted between his hands
a snow-white fowl huge as the dome of a Hammám, with shanks like the
trunk of a palm-tree. The Sultan Habib marvelled at the sight of this
Rukh and saying to himself, “Blessed be Allah the Creator!” he advanced
slowly towards it and all unknown to the fowl seized its legs. Presently
the bird put forth its wings (he still hanging on) and flew upwards to
the confines of the sky, when behold, a Voice was heard saying, “O
Habib! O Habib! hold to the bird with straitest hold, else ’twill cast
thee down to earth and thou shalt be dashed to pieces limb from limb!”
Hearing these words he tightened his grasp and the fowl ceased not
flying until it came to that blackness which was the outline of Káf the
mighty mountain, and having set the youth down on the summit it left him
and still flew onwards. Presently a Voice sounded in the sensorium of
the Sultan Habib saying, “Take seat, O Habib; past is that which
conveyed thee hither on thy way to Durrat al-Ghawwas;” and he, when the
words met his ear, aroused himself and arose and, descending the
mountain slope to the skirting plain, saw therein a cave. Hereat quoth
he to himself, “If I enter this antre, haply shall I lose myself, and
perish of hunger and thirst!” He then took thought and reflected, “Now
death must come sooner or later, wherefore will I adventure myself in
this cave.” And as he passed thereinto he heard one crying with a high
voice and a sound so mighty that its volume resounded in his ears. But
right soon the crier appeared in the shape of Al-Abbus, the Governor who
had taught him battle and combat; and, after greeting him with great
joy, the lover recounted his love-adventure to his whilome tutor. The
Jinni bore in his left a scymitar, the work of the Jann and in his right
a cup of water which he handed to his pupil. The draught caused him to
swoon for an hour or so, and when he came to Al-Abbus made him sit up
and bathed him and robed him in the rarest of raiment and brought him a
somewhat of victual and the twain ate and drank together. Then quoth
Habib to Al-Abbus “Knowest thou not that which befel me with Durrat
al-Ghawwas of wondrous matters?” and quoth the other, “And what may that
have been?” whereupon the youth rejoined, “O my brother, Allah be
satisfied with thee for that He willed thou appear to me and direct me
and guide me aright to the dearling of my heart and the cooling of mine
eyes.” “Leave thou such foolish talk,” replied Al-Abbus, “for where art
thou and where is Durrat al-Ghawwas? Indeed between thee and her are
horrors and perils and long tracts of land and seas wondrous, and
adventures marvellous, which would amaze and amate the rending lions,
and spectacles which would turn grey the sucking child or any one of
man’s scions.” Hearing these words Habib clasped his governor to his
breast and kissed him between the eyes, and the Jinni said, “O my
beloved, had I the might to unite thee with her I would do on such wise,
but first ’tis my desire to make thee forgather with thy family in a
moment shorter than an eye-twinkling.” “Had I longed for my own people,”
rejoined Habib, “I should never have left them, nor should I have
endangered my days nor wouldst thou have seen me in this stead; but as
it is I will never return from my wayfaring till such time as my hope
shall have been fulfilled, even although my appointed life-term should
be brought to end, for I have no further need of existence.” To these
words the Jinni made answer, “Learn thou, O Habib, that the cavern
wherein thou art containeth the hoards of our Lord Solomon, David’s son
(upon the twain be The Peace!) and he placed them under my charge and he
forbade me abandon them until such time as he shall permit me, and
furthermore that I let and hinder both mankind and Jinn-kind from
entering the Hoard; and know thou, O Habib, that in this cavern is a
treasure-house and in the Treasury forty closets offsetting to the right
and to the left. Now wouldst thou gaze upon this wealth of pearls and
rubies and precious stones, do thou ere passing through the first door
dig under its threshold, where thou shalt find buried the keys of all
the magazines. Then take the first of them in hand and unlock its door,
after which thou shalt be able to open all the others and look upon the
store of jewels therein. And when thou shalt design to depart the
Treasury thou shalt find a curtain hung up in front of thee and fastened
around it eighty hooks of red gold;[418] and do thou beware how thou
raise the hanging without quilting them all with cotton.” So saying he
gave him a bundle of tree-wool he had by him, and pursued, “O Habib,
when thou shalt have raised the curtain thou wilt discover a door with
two leaves also of red gold, whereupon couplets are inscribed, and as
regards the first distich an thou master the meaning of the names and
the talismans, thou shalt be saved from all terrors and horrors, and if
thou fail to comprehend them thou shalt perish in that Hoard. But after
opening the door close it not with noise nor glance behind thee, and
take all heed, as I fear for thee those charged with the care of the
place[419] and its tapestry. And when thou shalt stand behind the
hanging thou shalt behold a sea clashing with billows dashing, and ’tis
one of the Seven Mains which shall show thee, O Habib, marvels whereat
thou shalt wonder, and whereof relaters shall relate the strangest
relations. Then do thou take thy stand upon the sea-shore whence thou
shalt descry a ship under way and do thou cry aloud to the crew who
shall come to thee and bear thee aboard. After this I wot not what shall
befal thee in this ocean, and such is the end of my say and the last of
my speech, O Habib, and—The Peace!” Hereat the youth joyed with joy
galore than which naught could be more and taking the hand of Al-Abbus
he kissed it and said, “O my brother, thou hast given kindly token in
what thou hast spoken, and Allah requite thee for me with all weal, and
mayest thou be fended from every injurious ill!” Quoth Al-Abbus, “O
Habib, take this scymitar and baldrick thyself therewith, indeed ’twill
enforce thee and hearten thy heart, and don this dress which shall
defend thee from thy foes.” The youth did as he was bidden; then he
farewelled the Jinni and set forth on his way, and he ceased not pacing
forward until he reached the end of the cavern and here he came upon the
door whereof his governor had informed him. So he went to its threshold
and dug thereunder and drew forth a black bag creased and stained by the
lapse of years. This he unclosed and it yielded him a key which he
applied to the lock and it forthwith opened and admitted him into the
Treasury where, for exceeding murk and darkness, he could not see what
he hent in hand. Then quoth he to himself, “What is to do? Haply
Al-Abbus hath compassed my destruction!” And the while he sat on this
wise sunken in thought, behold, he beheld a light gleaming from afar,
and as he advanced its sheen guided him to the curtain whereof he had
been told by the Jinni. But as he looked he saw above it a tablet of
emerald dubbed with pearls and precious stones, while under it lay the
hoard which lighted up the place like the rising sun. So he hastened him
thither and found inscribed upon the tablet the following two couplets:—

“At him I wonder who from woe is free, ✿ And who no joy displays[420]
when safe is he:
And I admire how Time deludes man when ✿ He views the past; but ah
Time’s tyranny.”

[Illustration]

So the Sultan Habib read over these verses more than once, and wept till
he swooned away; then recovering himself he said in his mind, “To me
death were pleasanter than life without my love!” and turning to the
closets which lay right and left he opened them all and gazed upon the
hillocks of gold and silver and upon the heaps and bales of rubies and
unions and precious stones and strings of pearls, wondering at all he
espied, and quoth he to himself, “Were but a single magazine of these
treasures revealed, wealthy were all the peoples who on earth do dwell.”
Then he walked up to the curtain whereupon Jinns and Ifrits appeared
from every site and side, and voices and shrieks so loudened in his ears
that his wits well-nigh flew from his head. So he took patience for a
full-told hour when behold, a smoke which spired in air thickened and
brooded low, and the sound ceased and the Jinns departed. Hereat,
calling to mind the charge of Al-Abbus, he took out the cotton he had by
him and after quilting the golden hooks he withdrew the curtain and
sighted the portal which the Jinni had described to him. So he fitted in
the key and opened it, after which, oblivious of the warning, he
slammed-to the door noisily in his fear and forgetfulness, but he did
not venture to look behind him. At this the Jinns flocked to him from
every side and site crying, “O thou foulest of mankind, wherefore dost
thou provoke us and disturb us from our stead? and, but for thy wearing
the gear of the Jann, we had slain thee forthright.” But Habib answered
not and, arming himself with patience and piety, he tarried awhile until
the hubbub was stilled, nor did the Jann cry at him any more: and, when
the storm was followed by calm, he paced forward to the shore and looked
upon the ocean crashing with billows dashing. He marvelled at the waves
and said to himself, “Verily none may know the secrets of the sea and
the mysteries of the main save only Allah!” Presently, he beheld a ship
passing along shore, so he took seat on the strand until Night let down
her pall of sables upon him; and he was an-hungered with exceeding
hunger and athirst with excessive thirst. But when morrowed the morn and
day showed her sheen and shone serene, he awoke in his sore distress and
behold, he saw two Mermaidens of the daughters of the deep (and both
were as moons) issue forth hard by him. And ere long quoth one of the
twain, “Say me, wottest thou the mortal who sitteth yonder?” “I know him
not,” quoth the other, whereat her companion resumed, “This be the
Sultan Habib who cometh in search of Durrat al-Ghawwas, our Queen and
liege lady.” Hearing these words the youth considered them straitly and
marvelling at their beauty and loveliness he presently rejoiced and
increased in pleasure and delight. Then said one to other, “Indeed the
Sultan Habib is in this matter somewhat scant and short of wits; how can
he love Durrat al-Ghawwas when between him and her is a distance only to
be covered by the sea-voyage of a full year over most dangerous depths?
And, after all this woe hath befallen him, why doth he not hie him home
and why not save himself from these horrors which promise to endure
through all his days and to cast his life at last into the pit of
destruction?” Asked the other, “Would heaven I knew whether he will ever
attain to her or not!” and her companion answered, “Yes, he will attain
to her, but after a time and a long time and much sadness of soul.” But
when Habib heard this promise of success given by the Maidens of the
Main his sorrow was solaced and he lost all that troubled him of hunger
and thirst. Now while he pondered these matters there suddenly issued
from out the ocean a third Mermaid, which asked her fellows, “Of what
are you prattling?” and they answered, “Indeed the Sultan Habib sitteth
here upon the sea-shore during this the fourth successive night.” Quoth
she, “I have a cousin the daughter of my paternal uncle and when she
came to visit me last night I enquired of her if any ship had passed by
her and she replied:—Yea verily, one did sail driven towards us by a
violent gale, and its sole object was to seek you.” And the others
rejoined, “Allah send thee tidings of welfare!” The youth hearing these
words was gladdened and joyed with exceeding joy; and presently the
three Mermaidens called to one another and dove into the depths leaving
the listener standing upon the strand. After a short time he heard the
cries of the crew from the craft announced and he shouted to them and
they, noting his summons, ran alongside the shore and took him up and
bore him aboard: and, when he complained of hunger and thirst, they gave
him meat and drink and questioned him saying, “Thou! who art thou? Say
us, art of the traderfolk?” “I am the merchant Such-and-such,” quoth he,
“and my ship foundered albe ’twas a mighty great vessel; but one chance
day of the days as we were sailing along there burst upon us a furious
gale which shivered our timbers and my companions all perished while I
floated upon a plank of the ship’s planks and was carried ashore by the
send of the sea. Indeed I have been floating for three days and this be
my fourth night.” Hearing this adventure from him the traders cried,
“Grieve no more in heart but be thou of good cheer and of eyes cool and
clear: the sea voyage is ever exposed to such chances and so is the gain
thereby we obtain; and if Allah deign preserve us and keep for us the
livelihood He vouchsafed to us we will bestow upon thee a portion
thereof.” After this they ceased not sailing until a tempest assailed
them and blew their vessel to starboard and larboard and she lost her
course and went astray at sea. Hereat the pilot cried aloud, saying, “Ho
ye company aboard, take your leave one of other for we be driven into
unknown depths of ocean, nor may we keep our course, because the wind
bloweth full in our faces.” Hereupon the voyagers fell to beweeping the
loss of their lives and their goods, and the Sultan Habib shed tears
which trickled adown his cheeks and exclaimed, “Would Heaven I had died
before seeing such torment: indeed this is naught save a matter of
marvel.” But when the merchants saw the youth thus saddened and troubled
of soul, and weeping withal, they said to him, “O Monarch of the
Merchants, let not thy breast be straitened or thy heart be
disheartened: haply Allah shall vouchsafe joy to us and to thee:
moreover, can vain regret and sorrow of soul and shedding of tears avail
aught? Do thou rather ask of the Almighty that He deign relieve us and
further our voyage.” But as the vessel ran through the middle of the
main, she suddenly ceased her course and came to a stop without tacking
to the right or the left, and the pilot cried out, “O folk, is there any
of you who conneth this ocean?” But they made answer, “We know thereof
naught, neither in all our voyage did we see aught resembling it.” The
pilot continued, “O folk, this main is hight ‘The Azure’;[421] nor did
any trader at any time therein enter but he found destruction; for that
it is the home of Jinns and the house of Ifrits, and he who now
withholdeth our vessel from its course is known as Al-Ghashamsham,[422]
and our lord Solomon son of David (upon the twain be The Peace!) deputed
him to snatch up and carry off from every craft passing through these
forbidden depths whatever human beings, and especially merchants he
might find a-voyaging, and to eat them alive.” “Woe to thee!” cried
Habib. “Wherefore bid us take counsel together when thou tellest us that
here dwelleth a Demon over whom we have no power to prevail, and thou
terrifiest us with the thoughts of being devoured by him? However, feel
ye no affright; I will fend off from you the mischief of this Ifrit.”
They replied, “We fear for thy life, O Monarch of the Merchants,” and he
rejoined, “To you there is no danger.” Thereupon he donned a closely
woven mail-coat and armed himself with the magical scymitar and spear;
then, taking the skins of animals freshly slain,[423] he made a hood and
vizor thereof and wrapped strips of the same around his arms and legs
that no harm from the sea might enter his frame. After this he bade his
shipmates bind him with cords under his armpits and let him down
amiddlemost the main. And as soon as he touched bottom he was confronted
by the Ifrit, who rushed forward to make a mouthful of him, when the
Sultan Habib raised his forearm and with the scymitar smote him a stroke
which fell upon his neck and hewed him into two halves. So he died in
the depths; and the youth, seeing the foeman slain, jerked the cord and
his mates drew him up and took him in, after which the ship sprang
forward like a shaft outshot from the belly[424] of the bow. Seeing this
all the traders wondered with excessive wonderment and hastened up to
the youth, kissing his feet and crying, “O Monarch of the Merchants, how
didst thou prevail against him and do him die?” “When I dropped into the
depths,” replied he, “in order to slay him, I asked against him the
aidance of Allah, who vouchsafed His assistance, and on such wise I
slaughtered him.” Hearing these good tidings and being certified of
their enemy’s death the traders offered to him their good and gains
whereof he refused to accept aught, even a single mustard seed. Now,
amongst the number was a Shaykh well shotten in years and sagacious in
all affairs needing direction; and this oldster drew near the youth, and
making lowly obeisance said to him, “By the right of Who sent thee
uswards and sent us theewards, what art thou and what may be thy name
and the cause of thy falling upon this ocean?” The Sultan Habib began by
refusing to disclose aught of his errand, but when the Shaykh persisted
in questioning he ended by disclosing all that had betided him first and
last, and as they sailed on suddenly the Pilot cried out to them,
“Rejoice ye with great joy and make ye merry and be ye gladdened with
good news, O ye folk, for that ye are saved from the dangers of these
terrible depths and ye are drawing near the city of Sábúr, the King who
overruleth the Isles Crystalline; and his capital (which be populous and
prosperous) ranketh first among the cities of Al-Hind, and his reign is
foremost of the Isles of the Sea.” Then the ship inclined thither, and
drawing nearer little by little entered the harbour[425] and cast anchor
therein, when the canoes[426] appeared and the porters came on board and
bore away the luggage of the voyagers and the crew, who were freed from
all sorrow and anxiety. Such was their case; but as regards Durrat
al-Ghawwas, when she parted from her lover, the Sultan Habib, severance
weighed sore and stark upon her, and she found no pleasure in meat and
drink and slumber and sleep. And presently whilst in this condition and
sitting upon her throne of estate, an Ifrit appeared to her and coming
forwards between her hands said, “The Peace of Allah be upon thee, O
Queen of the Age and Empress of the Time and the Tide!” whereto she made
reply, “And upon thee be The Peace and the ruth of Allah and His
blessings. What seekest thou O Ifrit?” Quoth he, “There lately hath come
to us a shipful of merchants and I have heard talk of the Sultan Habib
being amongst them.” As these words reached her ear she largessed the
Ifrit and said to him, “An thou speak sooth I will bestow upon thee
whatso thou wishest.” Then, having certified herself of the news, she
bade decorate the city with the finest of decorations and let beat the
kettledrums of glad tidings and bespread the way leading to the Palace
with a carpeting of sendal,[427] and they obeyed her behest. Anon she
summoned her pages and commanded them to bring her lover before her; so
they repaired to him and ordered him to accompany them. Accordingly, he
followed them and they ceased not faring until they had escorted him to
the Palace, when the Queen bade all her pages gang their gait and none
remained therein save the two lovers; to wit, the Sultan Habib and
Durrat al-Ghawwas. And after the goodly reunion she sent for the Kazi
and his assessors and bade them write out her marriage-writ[428] with
Habib. He did as he was bidden and the witnesses bore testimony thereto
and to the dowry being duly paid; and the tie was formally tied and the
wedding banquets were dispread. Then the bride donned her choicest of
dresses and the marriage procession was formed and the union was
consummated and both joyed with joy exceeding. Now this state of things
endured for a long while until the Sultan Habib fell to longing after
his parents and his family and his native country; and at length, on a
day of the days, when a banquet was served up to him by his bride he
refused to taste thereof, and she, noting and understanding his
condition, said to him, “Be of good cheer, this very night thou shalt
find thee amongst thine own folk.” Accordingly she summoned her Wazir of
the Jann, and when he came she made proclamation amongst the nobles and
commons of the capital saying, “This my Wazir shall be my Viceregent
over you and whoso shall gainsay him that man I will slay.” They replied
with “Hearkening to and obeying Allah and thyself and the Minister.”
Then turning to her newly-established deputy she said, “I desire that
thou guide me to the garden wherein was the Sultan Habib;” and he
replied, “Upon my head be it and on my eyes!” So an Ifrit was summoned,
and Habib mounting him pick-a-back together with the Princess Durrat
al-Ghawwas bade him repair to the garden appointed, and the Jinni took
flight, and in less than the twinkling of an eye bore the couple to
their destination. Such was the reunion of the Sultan Habib with Durrat
al-Ghawwas and his joyous conjunction;[429] but as regards the Emir
Salamah and his wife, as they were sitting and recalling to memory their
only child and wondering in converse at what fate might have betided
him, lo and behold! the Sultan Habib stood before them and by his side
was Durrat al-Ghawwas his bride, and as they looked upon him and her,
weeping prevailed over them for excess of their joyance and delight and
both his parents threw themselves upon him and fell fainting to the
ground. As soon as they recovered the youth told them all that had
betided him, first and last, whereupon one congratulated other and the
kettledrums of glad tidings were sounded, and a world of folk from all
the Badawi tribes and the burghers gathered about them and offered
hearty compliments on the reunion of each with other. Then the
encampment was decorated in whole and in part, and festivities were
appointed for a term of seven days full-told, in token of joy and
gladness; and banquets were arrayed and trays were dispread, and all sat
down to them in the pleasantest of life eating and drinking; and the
hungry were filled, and the mean and the miserable and the mendicants
were feasted until the end of the seventh day. After this they applied
them to the punishment of the ten Knights whom the Emir Salamah had
despatched to escort his son; and the Sultan Habib gave order that
retribution be required from them, and restitution of all the coin and
the good and the horses and the camels entrusted to them by his sire.
When these had been recovered he commanded that there be set up for them
as many stakes in the garden wherein he sat with his bride, and there in
their presence he let impale[430] each upon his own pale. And
thenceforward the united household ceased not living the most joyous of
lives and the most delectable until the old Emir Salamah paid the debt
of nature, and they mourned him with excessive mourning for seven days.
When these were ended his son, the Sultan Habib, became ruler in his
stead and received the homage of all the tribes and clans who came
before him and prayed for his victory and his length of life; and the
necks of his subjects, even the most stubborn, were bowed in abasement
before him. On this wise he reigned over the Crystalline Isles of Sabur,
his sire-in-law, with justice and equity, and his Queen, Durrat
al-Ghawwas, bare to him children in numbers who in due time followed in
their father’s steps. And here is terminated the tale of Sultan Habib
and Durrat al-Ghawwas with all perfection and completion and good omen.

_NOTE ON THE HISTORY OF HABIB._

The older translators of this “New Arabian Night” have made wild work
with this Novel at least as the original is given by my text and the
edition of Gauttier (vii. 60–90): in their desire to gallicise it they
have invested it with a toilette purely European and in the worst
possible style. Amongst the insipid details are the division of the
Crystalline Islands into the White, Yellow, Green and Blue; with the
Genies Abarikaff, the monstrous Racachik, Ilbaccaras and Mokilras; and
the terrible journey of Habib to Mount Kaf with his absurd reflections:
even the “Roc” cannot come to his aid without “a damask cushion
suspended between its feet by silken cords” for the greater comfort of
the “Arabian Knight.” The Treasury of Solomon, “who fixed the principles
of knowledge by 366 hieroglyphics (_sic_) each of which required a day’s
application from even the ablest understanding, before its mysterious
sense could be understood,” is spun out as if the episode were copy
intended for the daily press. In my text the “Maidens of the Main” are
introduced to say a few words and speed the action. In the French
version Ilzaide the elder becomes a “leading lady,” whose rôle is that
of the naïve _ingénue_, famous for “smartness” and “vivacity:” “one
cannot refrain from smiling at the lively sallies of her good nature and
simplicity of heart.” I find this young person the model of a pert,
pretty, prattling little French _soubrette_ who, moreover, makes open
love to “the master.” Habib calls the “good old lady,” his governess
“Esek! Esek!” which in Turk. means donkey, ass. I need hardly enlarge
upon these ineptitudes; those who wish to pursue the subject have only
to compare the two versions.

At the end of the Frenchified tale we find a note
entitled:—“Observations by the French Editor, on the History of Habib
and Dorathil-goase, or the Arabian Knight,” and these are founded not
upon the Oriental text but upon the Occidental perversion. It is
described “from a moral plane rather as a poem than a simple tale,” and
it must be regarded as “a Romance of Chivalry which unites the two chief
characteristics of works of that sort,—amusement and instruction.”
Habib’s education is compared with that of Telemachus, and his being
inured to fatigue is according to the advice of Rousseau “in his
Emilius” and the practice of Robinson Crusoe. Lastly “Grandison is a
hero already formed: Habib is one who needs to be instructed.” I cannot
but suspect when reading all this Western travesty of an Eastern work
that M. Cazotte, a typical _littérateur_, had prepared for caricaturing
the unfortunate Habib by carefully writing up Fénélon, Rousseau, and
Richardson; and had grafted his own ideas of _morale_ upon the wild stem
of the Arabian novel.

INDEX.

“A King and no army,” 10.

’Abbús Al-, an intensive word meaning “Very stern faced,” 232.

Abd al-Malik bin Marwán (not to be confounded with the Caliph, the
tenth of the series), 179.

Abdullah Chelebi, called in old translation “Scheffander-Hassan,” 177.

Abíkám = “Abicam,” a Chaldæan Astrologer (Chavis) and Abimacam
(Gauttier), 26.

Abraham, the “Friend of Allah,” 104.

Abú Sahíh = (flight to) a sure and safe place, 149.

Abu Sumayk = “Father of the Fishlet” (in old ver. “Yapousmek”), 16.

Abú Sumayk the Pauper, _i.e._, “The Father of the little Fish,” 15.

Addíki = I will give thee (in the language of Fellahs), 189.

“Ahádís” esp. referred to the sayings of Mahommed, 41.

Ahádís al-Kudus = sentences attributed to Archangel Gabriel, 41.

Ahádís al-Nabawí = the actual words pron. by Mahommed, 41.

“Ahy Tys” for which read “Tuhà Tays” a general feast (Houdas), 187.

Ajdár = Malady, 162.

Ajíjíyah, possibly Ajínniyah = a dish of dough, 160.

Akbá’ _pl._ of “Kub’” = in pop. language, any part of garment covering
head (ST.), 48.

“Akbá’ wa Zarábíl” _tr._ “Caps and slippers,” 48

Akhyash Abná Sháh (Second name may be “Shah of the Ebna” or Persian
incolæ of Al-Yaman), 12.

“Akkál bula’hu” = commit all manner of abominations, 70.

Akyál, _pl._ of “Kayl” = Kings of the Himyarite peoples, 232.

’Álamína (’Awálim) = the (three) worlds, 249.

“Al-’iddah” in case of divorcée, widow, pregnant woman, 178.

“’Alái al-Din” = Aláeddin, 50.

’Alakah khárijah = an extraordinary drubbing, 84.

“Al bin Imrán” probably the name of some Prince of the Jinns, 126.

“Alfi Hájatan” meaning “What dost thou want (in the way of amusement)?
I am at thy disposal,” 178.

Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet (supposed author of Al-Jafr), 168.

“Alif, bá, tá, sá” (A.B.C.D.). The latter written with a Sin instead of
a Thá, showing vulg. use which extend from Alex. to Meccah, 37.

Alkermes, _i.e._, “Al-Kirm” (_Arab._ and _Pers._) = a worm, cochineal,
5.

Allah’s path (a Martyr on) = a Martyr of love, 131.

Almond-Tree “Be not like unto the,” (a _lieu commun_ in the East), 7.

Almond-Tree = the _Heb._ “Sháked” and the fruit is “Loz” (_Arab._ Lauz)
= _Amygdalus communis_, 7.

Alms-gift = whatso exceedeth Viaticum (“Jáizah”), or the three-days’
guest hospitality, 26.

Alwán, _pl._ of Laun, meats of all kinds and colours, 122.

Amírala (wife of Emir-Ben-Hilac-Salamis) meaning, if anything,
“Colonel” or Captain, R.N., 225.

Ammál (_Arab._), vulg. written with initial Hamzah = “Verily”, “I
believe you my boy” (_tr._ “Assuredly”), 11.

’Ammál (_Arab._) With the Ayn may mean “he intended,” or “he was about
to,” 11.

“—And the Peace!” = “There is an end of the matter,” 105.

Ant, Koranic legend of the, 99.

Antum fí Kháshin wa básh (an error for Khásh-másh) = a miserable
condition, 137.

Anushirwán (in full Anúshínrawán) = sweet of soul, P.N. of Pers. King,
44.

’Arafát, fête of; the day of the Sermon, when pilgrims sleep at
Muzdalifah, 41.

’Arakiyah = Skull-cap, 48.

’Aramramí = flocking and crowding, 195.

Arz (_Arab._), from the _Heb._ “Arz” or “Razah” (✓ raz = to vibrate) =
Cedar (of Lebanon), 5.

’As’as = to complicate a matter, 174.

“’Asá Fír,” _i.e._, “Fír is rebellious,” 102.

Asáfír, _pl._ of “’Usfúr” = a bird, a sparrow, 102.

Ashur, four sons of (according to Arabs), 3.

Ashghaftíní (_see_ Shaghaftíní), 15.

Aská hu ’alakah = gave him a sound drubbing (’alakah), 58.

Asshúr = Assyria, 3.

Assyrian correspondence, the simplicity of, 12.

Asúr, in the text, “Atúr,” the scriptural
“Asshur” = Assyria, 3.

’Atrús, King (? Heron’s “Illabousatrous”), 234.

Attaf (named by Heron Chebib, also “Xakem Tai-Chebib” = Hátim Tayy
Habib), 169.

Attáf, Tale of (Cotheal MS.), 196.

Attáf, Tale of, title compared with Gauttier and Heron, 167.

“Atúr,” scriptural “Asshur” = Assyria, 3.

“’Ayyik” or “Ayyuk” = a hinderer (of disease), 174.

’Ayyúk = Capella, a bright star, 174.

Azm = Koranic versets, which avert evil, 19.

Azzamín = Charmers, _i.e._, men who recite the Azm, 19.

Bábúk, or “Bábúnak” (_Pers._) = the white Camomile flower, 27.

Bahlúl Al- = the “Bahalul” of D’Herbelot, 155.

Bahr al-Azrak = the Blue Sea (Mediterranean), 256.

Bak’ah (=“a hollow where water collects”) and “Buk’ah” (=“a patch of
ground”) compared, 12.

Bakar = black cattle, whether bull, cow, or ox, 136.

Banú Hilál, a famous tribe, 225.

Bardawán, the well-known city in Hindostan whose iron was famous, 71.

“Bashákhín,” _pl._ of “Bashkhánah” = hangings, arras, 44.

Basíl, son of “Ashur,” 3.

Baybúnah (_prop._ “Bábúnaj” in _Arab._, and “Bábúk” in _Pers._) = the
white Camomile flower, 27.

Bel the idol (or Ba’al or Belus, the Phœnician and Canaanite head-god),
26.

Bell as a fringe to the Ephod of High Priest, 100.

Bghb (evidently for “Baght,” or preferably “Baghtatan”), 78.

“Bi Asri-hi” (_Arab._) _lit._ “rope and all;” metaphorically used =
altogether, entirely (_tr._ “the World universal”), 108.

“Bí, Bí, Bí” (compare the French “Brr”), 77.

Birkat Far’aun = Pharaoh’s Pool, 98.

Bisáta-hum = their carpets (_tr._ “warehouses”), 124.

Buk’ah (=“a piece of low ground”) and Bak’ah (=“a hollow where water
collects”) compared, 12.

Bundukáni (Al-) = the cross-bow man, 53.

Buyúrdi, Al- (_cler. error_ for “Buyúruldi”) = the written order of a
Governor, 180.

Bye Names, 84.

“Camaralzaman” (olden versions) = “Complete Time,” for “Moon of the
Age,” 233.

Camels made drunk with Bhang, or Indian hemp, to make extended marches,
244.

Camomile flower (white), 27.

Cat, a sacred animal amongst the Egyptians, 31.

Cedar of Lebanon, 5.

Census of the Exodus (Exposition by Mr. Thayer), 113.

“Changul” (with three dotted Chím) = red gold, 251.

Chavis quoted, 12, _ib._ 15, 16, 53, 54, 56, 59, 63, 68, 72.

Chenery quoted, 7, 54, 73, 84, 89, 94, 97, 124, 159, 183, 225, 241.

“Chifte,” from _Pers._ “Juft” = a pair, any two things coupled together
(ST.), 67.

Cock and the Fox (Fable of whose moral is that the biter is often bit),
145.

Cohen = a priest either of the true God or of false gods, 109.

Conjuration, a specimen of Islamised Mantra (in Sanskrit “Stambhaná”)
intended to procure illicit intercourse, 126.

Conundrum or riddle, 97.

Cotheal MS. quoted, 167, 168, 169, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179, 181,
184, 186, 192.

Court of Baghdad was, like the Urdú (Horde or Court) of “Grand Mogul,”
organised after the ordinance of an army in the field, 81.

“Cousin” more polite than “wife,” 188.

Crucifixion, 261.

Crystalline Isles, 234.

Dabbús bazdaghání (trans. as if from _Pers._ “Bazdagh” = a file) _tr._
a “file-wrought mace,” 71.

Dabdihkán, a physician (Cotheal MS.), 174.

Dabshalímat = the Dabshalíms, the dynastic title of the Kings of
Somanáth in Western India, 23.

Dahn (_Arab._) = oil, ointment (_tr._ “sweetest unguent”), 10.

Dajlah River (Tigris), 122.

Damascus City (_der._ from Dimishk) called Shám (Cotheal MS.), 167.

Dán (with dual Dánayn) and “Wudn” (with plural “Audán”) are pop. forms
for literary “Uzn” (ST.), 245.

Dán Al- (cler. error for Al-Uzn = ear), 245.

Darb al-Záji = the street of the copperas-maker, 60.

“Darbisí al-báb” (from the _Pers._ “Darbastan” = to tie up, to shut),
_tr._ “Do thou bar,” 69.

Dastúr! = by your leave (_Pers._), 58.

Dáúd = David, 229.

Death and Life are states, not things, 103.

De Sacy quoted, 65, 160.

Drachms, Ten = 475 to 478 Eng. grains avoir., 163.

Drinking customs, 47.

Drinking wine before the meal, still a custom in Syria and Egypt, 192.

Dukhn (_Arab._) = _Holcus dochna_, a well-known grain (_tr._ “millet”),
130.

Durà for “Zurà” or for “Zurrah,” pop. pron. “Durrah” = the _Holcus
sativus_, 146.

Durrat al Ghawwas = Pearl of the diver, 225.

Eastern despots never blame their own culpable folly in misfortune, 22.

Eglantine (or Narcissus), The lowland of, 12.

Elias, Elijah, or Khizr, a marvellous legendary figure, 100.

Emir-Ben-Hilac-Salamis (Heron), 225.

Emir Yúnas (old trans. = Hamir Youmis), 70.

“Enlarge the Turband” = to assume rank of an ’Álim or learned man, 42.

Entertainment of Guest, three days, 26.

Escarlate, a woollen cloth dyed red (probably French of the xii.
century), 5.

Exodus of the Hebrews, Census of the (Exposition by Mr. Thayer), 113.

Exodus, Story of the, 98.

Falsafah (_Arab._) = philosophy, 29.

“Fa min tumma,” for “thumma” (“Anon.”), 91.

Fa-sáha (for “Maksah”) = and cried out, 158.

Fatimé (Ja’afar’s wife, according to Heron), 169.

“Fa-yatrahúna” masc. for fem. (_tr._ “miscarry”), 31.

Fir’aun (_Arab._), the dynastic name of Egyptian Kings = Pharaoh (Holy
Writ), 12.

“First Footsteps” quoted, 65.

Flogging as punishment, 9.

Furát River (Euphrates), 122.

Gauttier quoted, 3, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, _ib._ 15, _ib._ 33, 34, 41, 59,
68, 89, 167, 225, _ib._ 226, 234.

Gharím = debtor or creditor, 77.

Ghashamsham Al- = the Stubborn, the Obstinate, 256.

“Ghaush” for “Ghaushah” = noise, row, 69.

Ghayth al-hátil = incessant rain of small drops, 241.

Ghilmán (in text “Wuldán”), the boys of Paradise, 128.

Ghiyár (_Arab._) = any piece of dress or uniform which distinguishes a
class, 52

Ghiyár in Pers. = a strip of yellow cloth worn by Jews subject to the
Shah, 52.

Golden Calf of Al-Sámiri, 160.

Guest-rite = three days, 26.

“Há Káhi Ptáh” (_O. Egypt._) = “the Land of the great God, Ptah,” 12.

Habbah (_Arab._) = a grain (of barley), an obolus, a mite, 53.

Habíb = the Beloved, 226.

Habib, Note on History of, 262.

“Habib, Prince, and Dorathil-goase” (_Eng. trans._), 225.

Hammam, necessary to enter after Car. Cop., 171.

Hanút means either “Vintner” or “Vintner’s shop,” 124.

Harísah = meat pudding, 159.

Hasá Al = the Plain of Pebbles, 169.

Hasan, the Handsome (in the old trans. “The Hazen”) (Kházin =
treasurer?), 68.

“Háshimí,” _i.e._, a descendant of Al-Háshim, great grandfather of the
Prophet, 191.

Hásil (Al-) (_Arab._) = government stores, also the taxes, the revenue,
60.

Hátim of the Tayy-tribe, proverbial for liberality, 167.

Haudaj = camel-litter, 181.

“Hawánít” _pl._ of “Hanút” = the shop or vault of a Vintner (_tr._
“taverns”), 124.

Hawar, many meanings of, 73.

Hayy = either serpent, or living, alive (_tr._ “living branch”), 99.

“He mounted his father and clothed himself with his mother” = he sold
his father for a horse and his mother for a fine dress, 105.

“He readeth it off (readily) as one drinketh water,” 5.

He sat upon ashes (may be figurative or literal), 19.

Head placed at a distance from the body (by way of insult), 15.

Headsman paces round convict three times preparatory to execution; a
custom at the Courts of Caliphs generally, 52.

“Health to you and healing,” usual formulæ when a respectable person is
seen drinking, 47.

Hebrews and their Exodus (Exposition by Mr. Thayer), 113.

Helios (Apollo), Worship of, not extinct in mod. Greece, 100.

Heron quoted, 41, _ib._ 50, 52, 68, 72, 167, 168, 169, 170, 173, 178,
225, 234, 242, 245, 247.

“Hicar was a native of the country of Haram (Harrán), and had brought
from thence the knowledge of the true God,” 4.

Himyarite (in text “Akyál,” _pl._ of “Kayl” = “Kings of the Himyarite
peoples”) here = the heroes, 232.

Hisában tawíl = a long punishment, 157.

“History of Chec Chahabeddin” (Shaykh Shiháb al-Dín) in “Turkish Tales”
of Petis de la Croix = here, “The Tale of the Warlock and the Young
Cook of Baghdad,” 121.

“Hizà (‏حظى‎ in MS. ‏حضى‎) bi-Zaijati-há” = _le bonheur de ses
aventures_, 260.

Hms = Vetchling, 74.

Hobal, the biggest idol in the Meccan Pantheon, 26.

Horseman of the horsemen, _i.e._, not a well-known or distinguished
horseman, but a chance rider, 92.

Houdas quoted, 7, 36, 48, 57, 62, 66, 67, 72, 84, _ib._ 104, _ib._ 125,
126, 147, 178, _ib._ 187, 188, 189, 191, 243, 247, 251, 257.

Houri, 73.

“How was it thou honouredst us, and what was the cause of thy coming,
etc.” the address of well-bred man to a stranger, 170.

Húr (Al-Ayn) feminine counterparts of the “Boys of Paradise” (Ghilmán),
128.

Húr al-Ayn = our vulgar “Houri,” 73.

“I bade her be the owner of herself,” one of the formulas of divorce,
178.

“I have accepted,” the normal idiom “I accept,” 81.

“Ij’alní fí Kll,” (the latter word a cler. error for “Kal-a” or “Kiláa”
= safety, protection) = Set me in a place of safety, 84.

Illicit intercourse, (method intended to procure), 126.

Inbasata ’l-Layl al-Asá = “when the night of offence was dispread,”
243.

Irán (father of the Furs = Persians, etc.) son of “Ashur,” 3.

Isá, according to Moslems, was not begotten in the normal way, 100.

Is’hák = Isaac (Abraham and Isaac), 104.

Is’háku kána ’l-Zabíh = Isaac was the victim, 104.

Ishmael not Isaac made the hero by mod. Moslems of the story “Abraham,
and Isaac,” 104.

Islam Al- is based upon the fundamental idea of a Republic, 194.

Israel, history of the name, 100.

Israelite, now polite synonym for Jew, 100.

Ittikà (viiith of ✓ wakà); the form Takwà gen. used = fearing God, 96.

Jabal Ka’ka’án, the highest parts of Meccah, inhabited by the Jurham
tribe (so called from their clashing armour and arms), 131.

Jafr, supposed to mean a skin (camel’s or dog’s) prepared as parchment
for writing, 168.

Jafr Al-, a cabalistic book, prognosticating all that will ever happen
to Moslems, 168.

Jafr-Al-, confused with “Ja’afar bin Tayyár” the Jinni, 168.

Jaftáwát (_Arab._) _pl._ of _Turk._ “Chifút” = a Jew, or mean fellow,
67.

Jáizah (viaticum) = a day and night, 26.

Jalak, the older name of Damascus, the “Smile of the Prophet,” 167.

“Jamarát of the Arabs” = Banú Numayr, Banú Háris, and Banú Dabbah, 7.

Jámí al-Amawí (_Arab._) Cathedral Mosque of the Ommiades, one of the
Wonders of the Moslem World, 172.

“Jamrah” (_Arab._) a word of doubtful origin, applied to a self
dependent tribe (_tr._ “live coal”), 7.

Janánan may also read “Jinánan” (ST.), 138.

Janánan (? _vulg._ form of “Jannatan” = the garden (of Paradise)) _tr._
“the garths of Paradise,” 138.

Jarazat Kuzbán (_pl._ of Kazíb) = long and slender sticks, 76.

Jarír bin ’Abd al-Masíh (Mutalammis, a poet of The Ignorance), 94.

Jarmúk, son of “Ashur,” 3.

Jawádit Al- = animals freshly slain, 257.

Jawákín (_Arab._) _pl._ of Arab. Jaukán for _Pers._ “Chaugán,” a
crooked stick (used in Polo), 125.

“Jayb” = the breast of a gown, also used in sense of a pocket, 42.

Jayyid, _der._ from root “Jaud” = to excel. (ST.), 5.

Jehovah, the tribal deity of the Jews, 4.

Jerusalem, Temple of, a _fac simile_ of the orig. built by Jehovah in
the lowest heaven, _i.e._, that of the moon, 105.

Jím (j) with 3 dots, a Persian letter still preserved in Arabic
alphabets of Marocco, etc., 182.

Jinn “Curiosity,” 62.

Jinn (_Arab._) = spirit or energy of a man, 183.

Jund (_Arab. pl._ “Junúd”) = “guards,” a term mostly applied to regular
troops under Government, 16.

Juráb al-’uddah (_Arab._) _i.e._, The manacles, fetters, etc., 78.

“Júrah Syán” for “Jurah Sayyál” = a stinking fosse a-flowing, 35.

Ká’ah = a saloon, 61.

Kabad = liver, sky vault, the handle or grip of a bow (_tr._ here
“belly” of the bow), 257.

Kábil-ki (? _cler._ error for Kátil-ki = Allah strike thee dead) _tr._
“Allah requite thee,” 55.

Kabá (_Pers._) = a short coat or tunic, 48.

Kabírah = head of the household (_i.e._ the mother), 83.

Kabr al-Sitt, wherein Sitt Zaynab is supposed to lie buried (_tr._
“Lady’s Tomb”), 171.

Káfi’ah Al- = parapet, 72.

Kahana (_Heb._) = he ministered (priests’ offices or other business),
109.

Kahbah = our whore (_i.e._ hired woman), 46.

Káhin = a Cohen, a Jewish Priest, a soothsayer, 109.

Kahramánah, a word of many senses, 89.

Ka’ka’ = “jingle and jangle” (of horses’ tramp), 131.

Kála ’l-Ráwí = quoth the reciter, 227.

Kál (al-Ráwí) = “the Reciter saith” (a formula omitted here), 15.

Kamar al-Ashráf = Moon of the Nobles, 226.

Kamar al-Zamán (“Moon of the Time”), 233.

“Kamá zukira fí Dayli-h” = “Let it be, as is said, in the tail,” 126.

Kamburisíyah = clotted curd, 159.

Kamal (_Arab._) = Louse, 99.

Kapú Katkhúdási = the agent which every Governor is obliged to keep at
Constantinople, 180.

Kapú = a door, a house, or a Government office, 179.

Kapújí = a porter. Kapújí-báshí = head porter, 179.

Karz (_Arab._) = moneys lent in interest without fixed term of payment,
as _opp._ to “Dayn,” 29.

Káshán (Well of), proverbial for its depth, 127.

Kasím (an unusual word), _tr._ “tax tribute,” 18.

(Kataba) Zayjata-há = marriage-writ, 259.

Katá grouse, 65.

Katáif (_pl._) = Katífah-cakes, a kind of pancake, 45.

Kátal-ki = Allah strike thee dead, 55.

Katalú-ní = killed me, 185.

Kaunayn (_Arab._) = the two entities, this world and other world (_tr._
here “Two Beings”), 249.

Kaus al-Bunduk (or Bundúk) (_Arab._) = a pellet-bow, (_Ital._
arcobugio, _Eng._ arquebuse), 53.

Kawání al- (_pl._ of Kanát) = the spears (_tr._ there “punishment”),
also read “al-Ghawání” (ST.), 147.

Kayf = joy, the pleasure of living, 174.

Kazafa (_Arab._) = threw up, vomited, 135.

Kazi bade ancient dame precede him (on reaching door), lest he happen
to meet an unveiled woman upon the upper stairs, 58.

Keyhole (Eastern) cannot be spied through, the holes being in the bolt,
54.

Khabata = “He (the camel) pawed the ground” (_tr._ “beateth the
bough”), 28.

Khatíb = a preacher (not Kátíb = a writer), 240.

Khatt Hajar, a province, 230.

“Khayr” (_Arab._) = “’Tis well,” a word of good omen, 58.

Khila’t dakk al-Matrakah, _tr._ “whereon plates of gold were hammered”
(an especial kind of brocade), 81.

Kikán (_pl._ of Kík) _tr._ “raven,” 147.

Kinnab = hemp, 62.

Kintár = a quintal, 98 to 99 lbs. avoir, (in round numbers, a cwt.),
29.

Kirm Al- (_Arab._ and _Pers._) = a worm, 5.

Kirsh (_Arab._) = piastre, 175.

Kishk = ground wheat, etc., eaten with sheep’s milk soured, etc., 160.

Kís = usually the _Giberne_ or pellet-bag (here the “bow cover”), 53.

Kit’ah humrah = a small quantity of red brickdust to which wonderful
medicinal powers are ascribed (ST.), 125.

Koran quoted, 100, 104, 156, 157.

“Kubbat al-’Asáfír” = the Dome of the Birds, 181.

“Kullu Shayyin lí mu’as’as” = all is excitement, 174.

“Kúl,” _vulg._ for “Kul” = “tell me”; a constant form in this MS., 5.

Kunná nu’tíhu li-ahad = we should have given him to someone (_Dr.
Steingass_ also explains), 73.

Kunyah (_Arab._), the pop. mispronunciation of “Kinyah” = “bye name”
(gen. taken from favourite son), 83.

Lane quoted, 46, 53, 74, 178.

“Letters of Mutalammis” (“Uriah’s letters”) are a _lieu commun_ in the
East, 94.

Libás (_Arab._) = clothes in general (_tr._ “habit”), 103.

“Live thy head, O King, for ever and aye!” (a formula announcing death
of supposed enemy), 17.

Liyah (? Liyyah) = Lign-aloes, 125.

Lodging in the Khan, 95.

Love-fit distinguished by the pulse or similar obscure symptoms, 174.

“Love thy friends and hate thy foes,” the religion of nature, 34.

Low-caste and uneducated men rise suddenly to a high degree, 194.

“Loz” (_Heb._ and “Lauz” _Arab._) = fruit of the Almond-tree =
_Amygdalus communis_, 7.

Ma’adabah = wake or funeral feast before death, 16.

“Made small their sleeves and breasts” = habited themselves in the
garments of little people, 42.

Mahmá = as often as = Kullu-má, 54.

Mail-coat Davidian (Heron, “A massy cuirass of Haoudi”), 242.

Manetho’s account of Moses, 112.

Man metamorphosed into a woman, 136.

Man with El, or God = Israel, 100.

Marj = the open grassy space on left bank of Baradah (Damascus) River,
169.

“Mashá’ilíyah jaftáwát wa fánúsín” = “(cresset) bearers of double
torches and lanterns” (ST.), 67.

Mas’h _tr._ “robe” (of hair), 157.

Massa-hu’l Fakr = poverty touched him, 105.

Masser, Grand Cairo; having been built by Misraim, Son of Cham, 25.

Matamor (_Arab._ “Matmúrah”) = Sardábah, a silo for storing grain,
etc., 17.

Matáyá Al- = Wight, 162.

Mayzar (_Pers._) = a turband; in _Arab._ “Miizar” = a girdle, a
waistcloth, 53.

Mazrab Al- = the care of the place, 251.

Mazlúm (Al-) = the wronged, 59.

Miizar (_Arab._) = a girdle, a waistcloth, 53.

“Mík! Mík!” an onomatopy like “Couïc, Couïc,” 158.

Míná = a port, both in old _Egypt._ and mod. _Pers._, 258.

“Min al-’Án wa sá’idan” _lit._ = from this moment upwards, 189.

Mi’ráj = ascent to heaven made by Apostle and return therefrom,
etc.—History of, 121.

Mirza Mohammed Husayn Khan, originally a Bakkál (greengrocer) made
premier of Fath Ali Shah’s Court, 194.

Miskál is the weight of a dinar = 1½ dirham = 71–72 grains avoir., 244.

Misraim (the dual Misrs), 12.

“Mizr” in Assyrian = “Musur,” in Heb. = “Misraim,” in Arab. “Misr,”
corrupted to Masser, 12.

Moses (by name Osarsiph = Osiris-Sapi), history of (by Manetho), 112.

“Mother of Hospitality” is the Sikbáj (_Pers._ Sikbá) = principal dish
set before guests, 159.

“Mother of Strengthening” (meat pudding), 159.

Mother, the head of the household (Kabírah), 83.

“Muábalát min shaani-ká” = (From early dawn) I have wearied myself,
178.

Mukábalah, the third form of “Kabila” = requital, retaliation (ST.),
55.

Mukrif = _lit._ born of a slave father and free mother (_tr._ “blamed
lad,”) 137.

Mulberry-tree in Italy bears leaves till the end of October, and the
foliage is as bright as spring verdure, 7.

Murakhkhim = a marble-cutter = simply a stone-mason, 60.

Músà (Moses), 112.

Mutalammis (“Jarír bin ’Abd al-Masíh”) a poet of “The Ignorance,” 94.

“Mutasa’lik” for “Mutasa’lik = like a Sa’lúk” = lean of limb, 122.

Mu’tazid bi ’llah Al-, Caliph, 124.

Muzawwaj = married, 170.

Nabít, son of “Ashur,” 3.

Nádán (_Arab._) = the “unknowing” (as op. to Naudán, the equiv. of
Pers. “New of knowledge”), 11.

Nadan (in Assyrian story) = Nathan, King of the people of Pukudu, 3.

Nádán (_Pers._) = fool, 3.

Nadan The Fool, 3.

Naddábah = public wailing-woman, 17.

“Nahs” = something more than ill-omened, something nasty, foul,
uncanny, 71.

Náhú (from ✓ “Nauh”) = making ceremonious “Keening” for the dead, 17.

Najas = a pear, 160.

Najmat al-Sabáh = constellation of Morn, 173.

Nakáír al- (_pl._ of Nakír = a dinghy, a dug-out) _tr._ “canoes,” 258.

Nakdí = the actual dowry as opposed to the contingent dowry, 43.

Nákús, or the Gong = Bell, 100.

Names for clouds, rain, etc., in _Arab._ well nigh innumerable, 241.

Nátúr Al- = the Keeper, esp. of a vineyard, 57.

Naudán (_Arab._) equiv. to the _Pers._ “New of knowledge” as opp. to
“Nádán” the “unknowing,” 11.

Naynawah, _i.e._, “Fish-town” or “town of Nin” = Ninus the founder, 3.

Naynawah, in mod. days name of a port on east bank of Tigris, 3.

Naynawah or “town of Nin” = Ninus, the founder, 3.

Naysán, the Syro-solar month = April, 27.

Názúk, prob. a corr. of Pers. “Názuk” = adj. = delicate, nice, 67.

Nazúr = one who looks intently, for Názir, a looker, 18.

Negemet-il-Souper (Heron) = Najmat al-Sabáh = constellation of Morn,
173.

Nisrín, an island, prob. fabulous, where amber abounds, 12.

Nizál = dismounting to fight on foot, 231.

Obedience to children common in Eastern folk-lore, 90.

’Omán, name of the capital of Eastern Arabia, 139.

Ommiades, Cathedral Mosque of, one of the wonders of the Moslem world,
172.

Only son has a voice in the disposal of his sister, 83.

O rider of the jar, _i.e._, a witch, 76.

Original sin, 247.

Osarsiph = Osiris-Sapi (Moses), 112.

“Otbah hath a colic,” 77.

Pá-andáz = cloth to tread upon, 259.

Perceval C. de, quoted, 89.

Pharaoh (of Hebrew Scriptures) has become with the Arabs “Fir’aun,” the
dynastic name of Egyptian kings, 12.

Pilgrimage quoted, 9, 83, 99, 104, 105, 131, 174.

Porphyry quarries in Middle Egypt, rediscovery of, 60.

“Prayer of Moses, the man of God,” 103.

Punishment by flogging, 9.

Puzzling questions and clever replies, a favourite exercise in the
East, 97.

“Quicker to slay than Amrú bin Kulsum” (Proverb), 94.

Rabí’a, 245.

Ráhíb = monk or lion (_tr._ “God-fearing”), 155.

“Rahúm” for “Rahím” (Doric form) = compassionate, 18.

“Rauzah” in Algiers was a royal park, 243.

“Rauz al-Sanájirah” = plain of the Sinjars, 243.

Razah = cedar or fir (old controversy), 5.

Reading placed in more honourable place than writing (“Writing and
reading,” as opposed to “Reading and writing”), 5.

Red Sea (Holy Writ does not say that Pharaoh was drowned in), 99.

Retribution confined to this life, and belief that Fate is fruit of
man’s actions (Mosaic theory), 140.

Riddle or conundrum, 97.

Riding men as asses, a facetious exaggeration of an African practice,
240.

Roc or vulture, 23.

Rod of Moses became a common symbol of dignity, etc., 157.

Rods of Moses and Aaron, 98, 99.

Roum, city of (Rúmí), 89.

“Rudaynían,” from “Rudaynah,” either a woman or a place, 230.

Rukhám = marble or alabaster, here used for building material, 60.

Rúmí (“Roum”), in Marocco and other parts of Moslem world is still syn.
with our “European,” 89.

“Rushdu ’llah” or “Al-Hudà,” spiritual direction or divine grace
received from Allah, 104.

“Sa’alab” or “Tha’lab” = Fox, 146.

“Sádát wa Ashráf” = Sayyids and Sharífs, 233.

(“Sahha) ’alakah (=a something) fí hazá ’l-Amri” = albeit I will take
no part, 245.

“Sáhib al-jayyid” (Al-) (_Arab._) = excellent companion, 5.

Sajálmah-bird, unknown to dictionaries, prob. species of hawk, 35.

“Sakalat” (_Pers._) or “Saklatún,” whence Mr. Skeat would derive
“scarlet,” 5.

Sakká (_Arab._) = a water carrier, 46.

“Sakká Sharbah,” who supplies water to passengers in streets, 46.

“Salám” here = Heaven’s blessing, 97.

Salát, sundry technical meanings, 103.

Salát = the formal ceremonious prayer, 103.

“Salb” = impalement, everywhere else meaning crucifixion, 260–1.

Samaritans, 160–1.

Samd = carpets and pots and pans (_tr. Vaiselle_), 64.

Samhari, 229.

Sámiri Al-, Golden Calf of, 160.

Sámiri, translated by Christian commentators as “Samaritan,” 160.

“Samman” (for “Sammán”) = quails, 66.

“Samman” or “Summan” (classically “Salwá”) = quails, 147.

Samson’s Enigma (Judges xiv. 12), 106.

Sandarúsah (_Arab._) = red juniper gum (from _Pers._ “Sandar” = amber)
_tr._ “Sandarach,” 141.

Sankharíb the Sovran, 3.

Sarhádún = “Sarkhadom” (_Gauttier_). The great usurper Sargon, 6.

Sayyád, _lit._ = a fisherman, 161.

Scarlet (red, violet, white, green), 5.

Seven handwritings, 226.

Shaghaftíní (also “Ashghaftíní”) from Shaghaf = violent love, joy,
grief = “Thou hast enamoured me,” 15.

Shaghaf = violent love, joy, grief, 15.

Shah-Goase (Shah Ghawwás = King Diver), 233.

Shakbán = the end of cloth, gown, cloak, etc. (Houdas), 189.

Sháked (_Heb._) = Almond-tree, 7.

Shamámah (or “Chamama,” accord. to Gauttier and Heron), 68.

Shám = Syria (and its capital) called Damascus (Cotheal MS.), 167.

Shámat = cheek mole (beauty spot), applied to Damascus (Shám), 167.

“Shobási,” for “Sobáshí,” 191.

Sibák (_Arab._) usually = a leash (for falconry) _tr._ “silken cord,”
46.

Sikálah (_Sing._) = scaffolding, 61.

Sikbáj, a marinated stew like Zirbájah, 160.

Sikbáj (_Pers._ Sikbá) called “Mother of Hospitality,” being principal
dish set before guests, 159.

Símiyá = fascination (a form of magic), 132.

Sin akhi-irib = Sini (Lunus, or the moon-god) increaseth brethren
(Etymology of “Sankharíb”), 3.

Sinaubar (_tr._ “pine”) may also mean pistachio-tree, 163.

“Snsál” for “Salsál” = _lit._ chain (_tr._ “borders”), 235.

“Spare not blows to thy child,” a barbarous sentiment of Biblical
inspiration, 9.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child,” 9.

Steingass Notes, 5, 57, 67, 73, 122, 125, 138, 147, 245.

Striking the nape = “boxing ears” (Moslem equiv.), 35.

Sultan, amongst Arabs may denote any dignity from a Shaykh to a Sultan,
226.

Summák = a plant with acid flavour, dried, pounded, and peppered with
meat, 160.

Sun fare backwards = “to eclipse the sun,” 107.

Suwaydá al-Kalb (the black one of the heart) = original sin (synonymous
with “Habbat al-Kalb” = the grain in the heart), both metaphorically
used for “original sin.” (ST.), 247.

“Suwayd” and “Suwaydá,” diminutives of “Aswad” = black. (ST.), 247.

Suwaydá, _lit._ “a small and blackish woman,” 247.

Ta’arkalak, (_Arab._) = waylay thee, 7.

Tábah = gag, 184.

Tabariyyah = Gennesaret (Chinnereth, Cinneroth) where, according to
some Moslems, _the_ Solomon was buried, 101.

Tabshálím, (a word which appears to be a corruption bearing a
resemblance to “Dabshalim,” meaning “a mighty king”), 23.

Tá-Há, whose first 14–16 verses are said to have converted the
hard-headed Omar, 157.

Tajní = _lit._ thou pluckest (the fruit of good deeds), 104.

Takhtrawán = mule-litter, 181.

Takwà (form gen. used for “Ittikà”) = fearing God, 96.

Tá-mera (Coptic) = the Land of the Nile Flood, 12.

“Tarajjum,” taking refuge from Satan the Stoned (Rajím), 190.

Tarjumán = a dragoman, 89.

Tarjumanah (_fem._ of “Tarjumán” = a dragoman) = _lit._ an
“interpreter” woman, 89.

Tatadakhkhal ’alay-h = “sue his protection,” 134.

Tays = myriads of, 187.

Thaníyyat al-’Ukáb = the Vulture’s Pass, 181.

“The green stick is of the trees of Paradise,” 9.

“The reed-pen wrote what ’twas bidden write” = “Destiny so willed it,”
51.

“There is no harm to thee, and boon of health befal thee,” auspicious
formula, 174.

The sand appeared in the sunlight like unto ropes (author and
_Steingass_ explain) 32.

“This night” for “last night,” 128.

Tín (_Arab._) = clay, mud (used with Tob forming walls of Egypt and
Assyria), 24.

TMT, _i.e._, Tammat = She (the tale) is finished, 38.

Tobe = the Anglo-Oriental form of “Thaub” = in Arabia a loose robe like
a night-gown, 139.

“To eat skite” = to talk or act foolishly, 70.

Towáb Al- (_Arab. pl._ of _Pers._ and _Turk._ “Top”) = cannon, 186.

Tuhà = cooked meat, 187.

“Tutmájíyah” for “Tútmáj” = vermicelli, 160.

Tuzáribí may mean “Dost thou play the part of” (ST.), 57.

Ukiyyah (or Wukiyyah) = ounce = 571·5 to 576 grains, 163.

Voices from the other world, 227.

Wahwah Al- = the hue of metal leaves, 122.

“Wa Kita’h hamrah,” _tr._ “also a bit of cooked meat,” 125.

“Wa lá ahad tafawwaha fína” = “nor hath anyone ever spoken,” 29.

Walawá’yh? = wa’l-aw’iyah (_pl._ of wi’á) = and the vessels ...
shimmered like unto silver for their cleanliness. (ST.), 122.

Wálí, at one time a Civil Governor, and in other ages a Master of
Police, 67.

“Waliyah” or “Waliyáh” = and why? 59.

“Wa’lláhu ’l-Muwaffiku ’l-Mu’ín” = God prospereth and directeth (a
formula often prefixed to a book), 196.

“Walwalah” or “Wilwál” (an onomatopy), general term for the wail, 17.

“Wa yabkí ’alaykum Mabálu-h” = suffer only his crime be upon you
(_Steingass_ reads “Wabál” for “Mabál,” and translates, “lest the
guilt of it rest upon you,”) 246.

Wayha-k (before “Wayla-k”) = “Fie upon thee,” 20.

Weapons and furniture (_i.e._, headstalls, hobbles, etc.) for mare
saddled and bridled (price for slave), 92.

Week days, 13.

“When Adam dolve and Eve span,” etc., 102.

Will, a mighty motor-power, 126.

Window gardening, an ancient practice in the East, 172.

“Writing and reading,” as opposed to our “Reading and writing,” 5.

Wuldán = Ghilmán = the boys of Paradise, 128.

“Yabahh” = saying “Bah, Bah!” 253.

“Yá Bunayyí” = _lit._ “O my little son,” a term of special fondness
(_tr._ “O dear, my son”), 7.

Yákah Thiyábish = his robe-collar rent, 247.

Yá Kawákí = O thou brawler, 84.

Yakhat (prob. cler. error for “Yakhbut,”) _lit._ = he was panting in a
state of unconsciousness, _tr._ “drowned” in sleep, 244.

Yá Luss (_Arab._) = “O Robber” (=the Gr. ληστὴς), 56.

Yamaklak, Al- = vivers, provaunt, 180.

Yamak (_Turk._) = food, a meal, 180.

Yapousmek (old ver.) = “Yá Abú Sumayk,” 16.

Yá Ta’ásat-ná = “O our misery,” 48.

Ya’tadir (dots often omitted in MS.) may mean Ya’tazir = find excuse,
20.

Ya’tadir (from ✓ ’Adr = heavy rain, boldness) (_tr._ “fortify
himself,”), 20.

Yá Ta’ís = “O thou miserable,” 48.

Yatbashsh (for “yanbashsha”) = a smiling face, 138.

—— may also stand for Yabtashsh, with transposition of the “t” of the
8th form (ST.), 138.

Ya’tazir = find excuse, 20.

Yaum al-Khamís (_Arab._) = fifth day, 13.

Yá zayn = oh, the beautiful beast, 149.

Yulakkimu (_Arab._) from “Lukmah” = a mouthful, 75.

Zábit = A Prefect of Police, 154.

Zábit (from the ✓ “Zabt” = keeping in subjection, holding tight) _tr._
“Holdfast,” 154.

Zabtiyah = a constable, 154.

Zafar = victory (clerical error for Zafar = plaited hair), 104.

Zahr, Al- = duty, 162.

Zalamah (_Arab._) = tyrants, 73.

Záraba (_verb_) 3rd form followed by acc. = “to join one in
partnership” (ST.), 57.

Zarábíl (com. cor. of Zarábin = slaves’ shoes, slippers), 48.

Zarbúl tákí (_Arab._), the latter meaning “high-heeled,” 53.

Zawádah (gen. “Azwád” or “Azwidah”) = provisions, viaticum, 181.

Zayjah (from (_Pers._) “Záycheh”) = _lit._ a horoscope (_tr._ “lot”),
235.

Zifr = horny matter which, according to Moslem tradition, covered our
first parents, 104.

Zimmat = obligation, protection, clientship (_tr._ “loyalty”), 245.

Zindík = Atheist, Agnostic, 158.

Znnákt-ha, _tr._ “(striketh) her sting” (?) 35.

Appendix I.
_INDEX I._
_INDEX TO THE TALES AND PROPER NAMES_

_N.B.—The Roman Numerals denote the volume, the Arabic the page._

Abbaside, Ja’afar bin Yahya and Abd Al-Malik bin Salih the, i. 159.

Abd Al-Malik bin Salih the Abbaside, Ja’afar bin Yahya and, i. 159.

Abdullah bin Nafí’, Tale of Harun Al-Rashid and, ii. 67.

Abu Niyyatayn, History of Abu Niyyah and, iv. 334.

Abu Niyyah and Abu Niyyatayn, History of, iv. 334.

Abu Sabir, Story of, i. 81.

Abu Tammam, Story of Aylan Shah and, i. 112.

Advantages of Patience, Of the, i. 81.

Adventure of the Fruit Seller and the Concubine, iv. 256.

Adventures of Khudadad and his brothers, iii. 269.

Adventures of Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri-Banu, iii. 419.

Al-’Abbás, Tale of King Ins bin Kays and his daughter with the Son of
King ii. 191.

Alaeddin; or the Wonderful Lamp, iii. 51.

Do. (English Translation of Galland), iii. 195.

Al-Bundukani, or the Caliph Harun Al-Rashid and the daughter of King
Kisra, vi. 39.

Al-Hajjaj and the Three Young Men, i. 47.

Al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf and the Young Sayyid, History of, v. 37.

Al-Hayfa and Yusuf, The Loves of, v. 121.

Ali Baba, and the Forty Thieves, Story of, iii. 369.

Ali Khwajah and the Merchant of Baghdad, Story of, iii. 405.

Allah, Of the Speedy relief of, i. 151.

Allah, Of Trust in, i. 102.

Al-Maamun and Zubaydah, i. 175.

Al-Maamun, The Concubine of, ii. 281.

Al-Malik Al-Zahir Rukn Al-Din Bibars al-Bundukdari and the Sixteen
Captains of Police, ii. 3.

Al-Nu’uman and the Arab of the Banu Tay, i. 179.

Al-Rahwan, King Shah Bakht and his Wazir, i. 191.

Al-Rashid and the Barmecides, i. 165.

Do. Ibn Al-Sammak and, i. 171.

Appointed Term, which, if it be Advanced may not be Deferred, and if it
be Deferred, may not be Advanced, Of the, i. 129.

Arab of the Banu Tay, Al-Nu’uman and the, i. 179.

Ass, Tale of the Sharpers with the Shroff and the, i. 298.

Attaf, The Tale of, vi. 165.

Do. (by Alex. J. Cotheal) vi. 197.

Aylan Shah and Abu Tammam, Story of, i. 112.

Baba Abdullah, Story of the Blind Man, iii. 311.

Babe, History of the Kazi who bare a, iv. 167.

Bakhtzaman, Story of King, i. 102.

Banu Tay, Al-Nu’uman and the Arab of the, i. 179.

Barber and the Captain, The Cairenne Youth, the, v. 241.

Barber’s Boy and the Greedy Sultan, Story of the Darwaysh and the, v.
105.

Barmecides, Al-Rashid and the, i. 165.

Do. Harun Al-Rashid and the Woman of the, i. 51.

Bassorah, The Loves of the Lovers of, v. 65.

Beautiful Daughter to the Poor Old Man, Tale of the Richard who married
the, i. 218.

Bhang-Eater and his Wife, History of the, iv. 202.

Do. Tale of the Kazi and the, iv. 187.

Bihkard, Story of King, i. 107.

Blind man, Baba Abdullah, Story of the, iii. 311.

Broke-Back Schoolmaster, Story of the, iv. 95.

Cadette, Tale of the Two Sisters who envied their, iii. 491.

Cairenne Youth, the Barber and the Captain, The, v. 241.

Cairo (The good wife of) and her four gallants, v. 251.

Caliph Harun Al-Rashid and the daughter of King Kisra, The History of
Al-Bundukani or the, vi. 39.

Caliph Omar Bin Abd Al-Aziz and the Poets, The, i. 39.

Caliph’s Night Adventure, History of the, iii. 307.

Caliph, The Concubine and the, ii. 275.

Captain, The Cairenne Youth, the Barber and the, v. 241.

Captain, The Tailor and the Lady and the, v. 261.

Cheat and the Merchants, Tale of the, i. 302.

China, The three Princes of, v. 211.

Clemency, Of, i. 107.

Clever Thief, A merry jest of a, ii. 56.

Cock and the Fox, The pleasant history of the, vi. 143.

Cœlebs the droll and his wife and her four Lovers, v. 295.

Compeer, Tale of the Two Sharpers who each cozened his, i. 288.

Concubine, Adventure of the Fruit Seller and the, iv. 256.

Concubine and the Caliph, The, ii. 275.

Do. of Al-Maamun, The, ii. 281.

Constable’s History, First, ii. 6.

Do. Second, ii. 16.

Do. Third, ii. 19.

Do. Fourth, ii. 23.

Do. Fifth, ii. 25.

Do. Sixth, ii. 27.

Do. Seventh, ii. 30.

Do. Eighth, ii. 34.

Do. Ninth, ii. 44.

Do. Tenth, ii. 47.

Do. Eleventh, ii. 49.

Do. Twelfth, ii. 52.

Do. Thirteenth, ii. 53.

Do. Fourteenth, ii. 54.

Do. Fifteenth, ii. 59.

Do. Sixteenth, ii. 63.

Cook, Story of the Larrikin and the, i. 4.

Coyntes, The Lady with the two, v. 279.

Crone and the Draper’s Wife, Story of the, i. 309.

Do. and the King, Tale of the Merchant, the, i. 235.

Cunning she thief, The gate keeper of Cairo and the, v. 307.

Dadbin and his Wazirs, Story of King, i. 94.

Darwaysh and the Barber’s Boy and the Greedy Sultan, Story of, v. 105.

Do. The Sultan who fared forth in the habit of a, iv. 35.

Daryabar, History of the Princess of, iii. 281.

Daughter of King Kisra, The History of Al-Bundukani, or the Caliph
Harun Al-Rashid and the, vi. 39.

David and Solomon, Story of, i. 244.

Destiny or that which is written on the Forehead, i. 120.

Dethroned Ruler, whose reign and wealth were restored to him, Tale of
the, i. 253.

Devotee accused of Lewdness, Tale of the, i. 270.

Disciple’s Story, The, i. 251.

Druggist, Tale of the Singer and the, i. 203.

Drummer Abu Kasim became a Kazi, How, iv. 210.

Duenna and the King’s Son, The Linguist-Dame, the, vi. 87.

Eighth Constable’s History, ii. 34.

Eleventh Constable’s History, ii. 49.

Enchanting Bird, Story of the King of Al-Yaman and his Three sons, and
the, v. 258.

Do., Tale of the Sultan and his Three Sons and the, iv. 244.

Ends of Affairs, Of Looking to the, i. 73.

Envy and Malice, Of, i. 111.

Fairy Peri Banu, Adventures of Prince Ahmad and the, iii. 419.

Falcon and the Locust, Story of the, i. 305.

Fellah and his Wicked Wife, The, v. 345.

Fifteenth Constable’s History, ii. 59.

Fifth Constable’s History, ii. 25.

First Constable’s History, ii. 6.

Do. Larrikin, History of the, iv. 281.

Do. Lunatic, Story of the, iv. 49.

Firuz and his Wife, i. 185.

Fisherman and his Son, Tale of the, iv. 314.

Forehead, Of Destiny or that which is Written on the, i. 120.

Forty Thieves, Story of Ali Baba and the, iii. 369.

Fourteenth Constable’s History, ii. 54.

Fourth Constable’s History, ii. 23.

Fowl with the Fowler, History of what befel the, vi. 151.

Fox, The Pleasant History of the Cock and the, vi. 143.

Fruit-seller and the Concubine, Adventure of the, iv. 256.

Fruit-seller’s Tale, The, iv. 244.

Fuller and his Wife and the Trooper, Tale of the, i. 231.

Gallants, The Goodwife of Cairo and her Four, v. 251.

Gatekeeper of Cairo and the Cunning She-thief, The, v. 307.

Girl, Tale of the Hireling and the, i. 279.

Good and Evil Actions, Of the Issues of, i. 93.

Goodwife of Cairo and her Four Gallants, The, v. 251.

Greedy Sultan, Story of the Darwaysh and the Barber’s Boy and the, v.
105.

Hajjaj (Al-) and the Three young Men, i. 47.

Harun Al-Rashid and Abdullah bin Nafí, Tale of, ii. 67.

Do. and the Woman of the Barmecides, i. 51.

Do. and the Youth Manjab, Night Adventure of, v. 61.

Do. Tale of the Damsel Tohfat al-Kulub and the Caliph, ii. 70.

Haykar the Sage, The Say of, vi. 1.

History of King Azadbakht and his Son, The Ten Wazirs; or the, i. 55.

Do. of what befel the Fowl with the Fowler, vi. 151.

Hireling and the Girl, Tale of the, i. 279.

How Allah gave him relief, Story of the Prisoner and, i. 151.

How Drummer Abu Kasim became a Kazi, iv. 210.

Husband, Tale of the Simpleton, v. 116.

Ibn al-Sammak and Al-Rashid, i. 171.

Ibrahim and his Son, Story of, i. 121.

Ill Effects of Impatience, Of the, i. 89.

Impatience, Of the Ill Effects of, i. 89.

Ins bin Kays (King) and his Daughter with the Son of King Al-’Abbás,
Tale of, ii. 191.

Isa, Tale of the Three Men and our Lord, i. 250.

Issues of Good and Evil Actions, Of the, i. 93.

Ja’afar bin Yahya and Abd Al-Malik bin Salih the Abbaside, i. 159.

Kazi and the Bhang-Eater, Tale of the, iv. 187.

Do. and the Slipper, Story of the, iv. 212.

Do., How Drummer Abu Kasim became a, iv. 210.

Do. schooled by his Wife, The, v. 361.

Do. who bare a babe, History of the, iv. 167.

Khalbas and his Wife and the Learned Man, Tale of the, i. 267.

Khudadad and his Brothers, Adventures of, iii. 269.

Khwajah Hasan al-Habbal, History of, iii. 341.

King and his Chamberlain’s Wife, Tale of the, i. 308.

Do. Azadbakht and his Son. The Ten Wazirs; or the History of, i. 55.

Do. Bakhtzaman, Story of, i. 102.

Do. Bihkard, Story of, i. 107.

Do. Dadbin and his Wazirs, Story of, i. 94.

Do. Ibrahim and his Son, Story of, i. 121.

Do. of Al-Yaman and his Three Sons and the Enchanting Bird, Story of
the iv. 258.

Do. of Hind and his Wazir, Tale of, i. 352.

Do. Shah Bakht and his Wazir Al-Rahwan, i. 191.

Do. Sulayman Shah and his Niece, Story of, i. 131.

Do. Tale of himself told by the, v. 463.

Do. Tale of the Merchant, the Crone and the, i. 235.

Do. who kenned the quintessence of things, Tale of the, i. 212.

Do. who lost Kingdom and Wife and Wealth and Allah restored them to
him, Tale of the, i. 319.

King’s Son of Sind and the Lady Fatimah, The History of, v. 1.

Do. The Linguist-Dame, the Duenna and the, vi. 87.

Kurd Sharper, Tale of Mahmud the Persian and the, iv. 242.

Lady and the Captain, The Tailor and the, v. 261.

Do. Dunat al-Ghawwas, History of Prince Habib and what befel him with
the, vi. 223.

Do. Fatimah, The History of the King’s Son of Sind and the, v. 1.

Do. with the two Coyntes, The, v. 279.

Larrikin and the Cook, Story of the, i. 4.

Do. concerning himself, Tale of the Third, vi. 329.

Do. History of the First, iv. 281.

Do. History of the Second, iv. 290.

Do. History of the Third, iv. 294.

Leach (Tale of the Weaver who became a), by order of his wife, i. 282.

Learned Man, Tale of Khalbas and his Wife and the, i. 267.

Lewdness, Tale of the Devotee accused of, i. 270.

Limping Schoolmaster, Story of the, iv. 101.

Linguist-Dame, the Duenna, and the King’s Son, The, vi. 87.

Locust, Story of the Falcon and the, i. 305.

Looking to the Ends of Affairs, Of, i. 73.

Lovers, Cœlebs the Droll and his wife and her four, v. 295.

Do. of Bassorah, The Loves of the, v. 65.

Do. of Syria, History of the, v. 19.

Loves of Al-Hayfa and Yusuf, The, v. 121.

Do. of the Lovers of Bassorah, The, v. 65.

Luck, Story of the Merchant who lost his, i. 65.

Lunatic, Story of the First, iv. 49.

Do., Do. Second, iv. 67.

Mahmud the Persian and the Kurd Sharper, Tale of, iv. 242.

Man of Khorassan, his Son and his Tutor, Tale of the, i. 194.

Do. whose Caution slew him, Tale of the, i. 258.

Do. who was Lavish of his House, and his Provision for one whom he knew
not, i. 259.

Malice, Of Envy and, i. 111.

Melancholist and the Sharper, Tale of the, i. 264.

Merchant and his Sons, Tale of the, i. 73.

Do. of Baghdad, Story of Ali Khirajah and the, iii. 405.

Merchant’s daughter and the Prince of Al-Irak, The, v. 371.

Merchants, Tale of the Cheat and the, i. 302.

Merchant, the Crone and the King, Tale of the, i. 235.

Do. who lost his luck, Story of the, i. 65.

Merry Jest of a Clever Thief, A, ii. 56.

Mistress and his Wife, Mohammed the Shalabi and his, v. 333.

Mohammed, Story of a Sultan of Al-Hind and his Son, iv. 297.

Do. Sultan of Cairo, History of, iv. 37.

Do. the Shalabi and his Mistress and his Wife, v. 333.

Mohsin and Musa, Tale of, v. 319.

Musa, Tale of Mohsin and, v. 319.

Niece, Story of King Sulayman Shah and his, i. 131.

Night Adventure of Sultan Mohammed of Cairo with the Three foolish
schoolmasters, The, iv. 90.

Night Adventure of Harun Al-Rashid and the Youth Manjab, v. 61.

Ninth Constable’s History, ii. 44.

Nur al-Din Ali of Damascus and the damsel Sitt al-Milah, ii. 151.

Omar Bin Abd Al-Aziz and the Poets, The Caliph, i. 39.

Patience, Of the advantages of, i. 81.

Persistent Ill Fortune, Of the Uselessness of Endeavour against the, i.
63.

Picture, Tale of the Prince who fell in love with the, i. 226.

Pleasant History of the Cock and the Fox, The, vi. 143.

Poets, The Caliph Omar Bin Abd Al-Aziz and the, i. 39.

Poor man who brought to him Fruit, Tale of the Sultan and the, iv. 242.

Do. old man, Tale of the Richard who married his beautiful Daughter to
the, i. 218.

Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri-Banu, Adventures of, iii. 419.

Prince Bihzad, Story of, i. 89.

Do. Habib and what befel him with the Lady Dunat al-Ghawwas, History
of, vi. 223.

Prince of Al-Irak, The Merchant’s Daughter and the, v. 371.

Princess of Daryabar, History of, iii. 281.

Prince who fell in love with the Picture, Tale of the, i. 226.

Prisoner and how Allah gave him relief, Story of, i. 151.

Quintessence of things, Tale of the King who kenned the, i. 212.

Richard, Tale of the, who married his beautiful daughter to the Poor
Old Man, i. 218.

Righteous Wazir wrongfully gaoled, The, v. 229.

Robber and the Woman, Tale of the, i. 246.

Sage and his Three Sons, Tale of the, i. 222.

Do. the Scholar, Story of the, iv. 74.

Salim the Youth of Khorasan, and Salma his Sister, Tale of, i. 332.

Salma, his Sister, Tale of Salim the Youth of Khorasan and, i. 332.

Say of Haykar the Sage, The, vi. 1.

Scholar, Story of the Sage and the, iv. 74.

Schoolmaster, Story of the Broke-Back, iv. 95.

Do. Story of the Limping, iv. 101.

Do. Story of the Split-mouthed, iv. 97.

Second Constable’s History, ii. 16.

Do. Larrikin, History of the, iv. 290.

Do. Lunatic, Story of the, iv. 67.

Seventh Constable’s History, ii. 30.

Shah Bakht and his Wazir Al-Rahwan, King, i. 191.

Sharpers with the Shroff and the Ass, Tale of the, i. 298.

Sharper, Tale of the Melancholist and the, i. 264.

Do. Tale of the old, ii. 57.

Shroff and the Ass, Tale of the Sharpers with the, i. 298.

Sidi Nu’uman, History of, iii. 325.

Singer and the Druggist, Tale of the, i. 203.

Simpleton Husband, Tale of the, i. 239.

Do. Do. v. 116.

Sitt al-Milah, Nur al-Din Ali of Damascus and the Damsel, ii. 151.

Sixteen Captains of Police, Al-Malik Al-Zahir Rukn Al-Din Bibars
Al-Bundukdari and the, ii. 3.

Sixteenth Constable’s History, ii. 63.

Sixth Constable’s History, ii. 27.

Sleeper and the Waker, The, i. 1.

Slipper, Story of the Kazi and the, iv. 212.

Solomon, Story of David and, i. 244.

Sons, Tale of the Merchant and his, i. 73.

Speedy relief of Allah, Of the, i. 151.

Split Mouth Schoolmaster, Story of the, iv. 97.

Sulayman Shah and his Niece, Story of King, i. 131.

Sultanah, Story of three Sisters and their Mother the, iv. 109.

Sultan and his Three Sons and the Enchanting Bird, Tale of the, iv.
244.

Do. and the Poor Man who brought to him Fruit, Tale of the, iv. 242.

Do. Mohammed of Cairo with the Three Foolish Schoolmasters, The Night
Adventure of, iv. 90.

Sultan of Al-Hind and his Son Mohammed, Story of the, iv. 297.

Do. of Al-Yaman and his Three Sons, Story of, iv. 1.

Do. who fared forth in the habit of a Darwaysh, The, iv. 35.

Syria, History of the Lovers of, v. 19.

Syrian and the Three Women of Cairo, The, v. 271.

Tailor and the Lady and the Captain, The, v. 261.

Tale of Himself told by the King, v. 463.

Tenth Constable’s History, ii. 47.

Ten Wazirs; or, the History of King Azadbakht and his Son, The, i. 55.

Thief’s Tale, The, ii. 42.

Third Constable’s History, ii. 19.

Third Larrikin concerning himself, Tale of, iv. 329.

Do. History of the, iv. 294.

Thirteenth Constable’s History, ii. 53.

Three Foolish Schoolmasters, The Night Adventure of Sultan Mohammed of
Cairo with the, iv. 90.

Three men and our Lord Isa, Tale of the, i. 250.

Do. Princes of China, The, v. 211.

Do. Sharpers, Story of the, iv. 17.

Do. Sisters and their Mother the Sultanah, Story of the, iv. 109.

Do. Sons, Tale of the Sage and his, i. 222.

Do. Women of Cairo, The Syrian and the, v. 271.

Do. Young Men, Al-Hajjaj and the, i. 47.

Tither, Tale of the Unjust King and the, i. 242.

Tohfat al-Kulub and the Caliph Harun Al-Rashid, Tale of the Damsel, ii.
70.

Trooper, Tale of the Fuller and his wife and the, i. 231.

Trust in Allah, Of, i. 102.

Tutor, Tale of the Man of Khorassan, his Son and his, i. 194.

Twelfth Constable’s History, ii. 52.

Two Kings and the Wazir’s daughters, Tale of the, ii. 263.

Two Lack-Tacts of Cairo and Damascus, Story of the, v. 453.

Do. Sharpers who each cozened his Compeer, Tale of the, i. 288.

Do. Sisters who envied their Cadette, Tale of the, iii. 491.

Ugly man and his beautiful Wife, Tale of the, i. 315.

Unjust King and the Tither, Tale of the, i. 242.

Uselessness of Endeavour against the Persistent Ill Fortune, Of the, i.
63.

Virtue, The whorish wife who vaunted her, v. 287.

Waker, The Sleeper and the, i. 1.

Warlock and the Young Cook of Baghdad, Tale of the, vi. 119.

Wazir Al-Rahwan, King Shah Bakht and his, i. 191.

Do. Tale of the King of Hind and his, i. 352.

Do. (The Righteous) wrongfully gaoled, v. 229.

Wazir’s Daughters, Tale of the Two Kings and the, ii. 263.

Wazirs; or the History of King Azadbakht and his Son, The Ten, i. 55.

Do. Story of King Dadbin and his, i. 94.

Weaver who became a Leach by order of his wife, Tale of the, i. 282.

Whorish wife who vaunted her virtue, The, v. 287.

Wicked wife, The Fellah and his, v. 345.

Wife, Firuz and his, i. 185.

Do. History of the Bhang Eater and his, iv. 202.

Do. Story of the Crone and the Draper’s, i. 309.

Do. Tale of the King and his Chamberlain’s, i. 308.

Do. do. Ugly man and his beautiful, i. 315.

Do. do. Weaver who became a Leach by order of his, i. 282.

Do. The Kazi schooled by his, v. 361.

Wives, Story of the Youth who would futter his father’s, v. 439.

Woman of the Barmecides, Harun Al-Rashid and the, i. 51.

Do. Tale of the Robber and the, i. 246.

Do. who humoured her lover at her husband’s expense, The, v. 355.

Women’s Wiles, ii. 137.

Wonderful Lamp, Alaeddin; or the, iii. 51.

Do. do. (English Translation of Galland), iii. 195.

Young Cook of Baghdad, Tale of the Warlock and the, vi. 119.

Do. Sayyid, History of Al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf and the, v. 37.

Youth Manjab, Night Adventure of Harun Al-Rashid and the, v. 61.

Do. who would futter his father’s wives, Story of the, v. 439.

Yusuf, The Loves of Al-Hayfa and, v. 121.

Zayn al-Asnam, Tale of, iii. 3.

Do. (Turkish version by E. J. W. Gibb), iii. 41.

Zubaydah, Al-Maamun and, i. 175.

_VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES BY W. A. CLOUSTON._

Aladdin; or the Wonderful Lamp, iii. 564.

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, iii. 590.

Ali Khwajah and the Merchant of Baghdad, iii. 596.

Al-Malik Al-Zahir and the Sixteen Captains of Police, ii. 369.

Blind Man, Baba Abdullah, The Story of the, iii. 582.

Damsel Tohfat al-Kulub, The, ii. 371.

Devout woman accused of Lewdness, The, ii. 340.

Fifteenth Constable’s Story, The, ii. 369.

Firuz and his Wife, ii. 301.

Fuller, his Wife and the Trooper, The, ii. 329.

Khudadad and his Brothers, iii. 576.

Khwajah Hasan al-Habbal, History of, iii. 587.

King Aylan Shah and Abu Tammam, ii. 297.

Do. Dadbin and his Wazirs, ii. 296.

Do. Ins bin Kays and his Daughter, ii. 377.

Do. Shah Bakht and his Wazir Al-Rahwan, ii. 302.

Do. Sulayman Shah and his Niece, ii. 298.

Do. who kenned the Quintessence of things, The, ii. 320.

Do. who lost Kingdom, Wife and Wealth, The, ii. 343.

Melancholist and the Sharper, The, ii. 333.

Ninth Constable’s Story, The, ii. 369.

Nur al-Din and the Damsel Sitt al-Milah, ii. 277.

On the Art of Enlarging Pearls, ii. 303.

Prince Ahmad and the Peri Banu, iii. 600.

Prince who fell in love with the Picture, The, ii. 328.

Sidi Nu’uman, History of, iii. 585.

Simpleton Husband, The, ii. 332.

Singer and the Druggist, The, ii. 305.

Sleeper and the Waker, ii. 291.

Ten Wazirs, or the History of King Azadbakht and his son, ii. 295.

Thief’s Tale, The, ii. 369.

Three men and our Lord Isa, The, ii. 332.

Two Sisters who envied their Cadette, The, iii. 617.

Weaver who became a leach by order of his wife, The, ii. 341.

Women’s Wiles, ii. 372.

Zayn al-Asnam, The tale of, iii. 553.

_ADDITIONAL NOTES BY W. A. CLOUSTON._

Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp, iii. 650.

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, iii. 650.

Firuz and his Wife, ii. 378.

Fuller, his wife and the Trooper, The, ii, 379.

Prince Ahmad, The Tale of, iii. 652.

Singer and the Druggist, The, ii. 378.

Zayn al-Asnam, The Tale of, iii. 649.

_BY W. F. KIRBY._

Additional Notes to some of Tales in vol. iv.; v. 505.

Additional Notes to some of Tales in vol. v.; v. 513.

Additional Notes to some of Tales in vol. vi.; vi. 351.

Additional Bibliographical Notes to the Tales in the Supplemental
Nights, vi. 356.

Appendix II.
_ALPHABETICAL TABLE OF THE NOTES_ (_ANTHROPOLOGICAL, &c._)

“A King and no Army,” vi. 10.

“A mighty matter” may also mean “A masterful man” (reading Imraan = man
for Amran = matter), ii. 204.

A’atú Al-Wírah = gave in their submission, v. 405.

—— corresponds with Turk. “Wírah wírmek” = to capitulate (ST.) v. 405.

Abadan = never at all, iii. 52.

Abadid (like Khadídán) non-significant, i. 103.

Abárík (Al-), _pl._ of Ibrík, an ewer containing water for the
Wuzu-ablution, ii. 170.

’Abbás bin Mirdás (Chief of the Banu Sulaym) i. 40.

Abbasides traced their descent from Al-Abbas, i. 14.

’Abbús Al-, an intensive word meaning “Very stern faced,” vi. 232.

Abd al-Malik bin Marwán (not to be confounded with the Caliph, the
tenth of the series) vi. 179.

Abd al-Malik bin Sálih, i. 159.

Abdullah Chelebi, called in old translation “Scheffander-Hassan,” vi.
177.

Abhak (composite word) i. 40.

Abíkám = “Abicam,” a Chaldæan Astrologer (Chavis) and Abimacam
(Gauttier) vi. 26.

Ablution of whole body necessary after car. cop., v. 93.

Ab o hawá = climate, iii. 362.

Abraham (according to Jews and Christians emigrated to Harrán from “Ur
of the Chaldees”) iii. 270.

—— (according to Moslem born in Harrán) iii. 269.

—— the “Friend of Allah,” vi. 104.

Absurdities to a European reader, are but perfectly natural to an
Eastern coffee-house audience, v. 477.

Abtál (_pl._ of Batal) = champions, athletes (_tr._ “braves”) ii. 42.

Abtar = tailless (as applied to class of tales such as “Loves of
Al-Hayfa and Yusuf”) v. 210.

Abú al-Hasan (cleverness of) i. 30.

—— al-Hasan-al-Khalí’a, _i.e._, The Wag (old version “debauchee”) i. 1.

—— al-Tawáif (_pron._ “Abu tawáif”) the Father of the (Jinn-) tribes,
ii. 84.

—— Antiká = father of antiquities (new noun in Arabic) iii. 11.

—— Hamámah = “Father of a Pigeon” (_i.e._, surpassing in swiftness the
carrier pigeon) v. 380.

—— Ishák, _i.e._, Ibrahim of Mosul the Musician, i. 14.

—— Ja’dah = father of curls (=a wolf) iv. 14.

—— Kásim al-Tambúrí = Abú Kásim the Drummer, iv. 209.

—— Niyyah and Abu Niyyatayn, History of various versions of the names,
iv. 334.

Abú Nowás (appearing in The Nights, a signal for an outburst of
obscenity), ii. 153.

—— Sábir = Father of the Patient (one), i. 81.

—— Sahíh = (flight to) a sure and safe place, vi. 149.

—— Sumayk = “Father of the Fishlet” (in old ver. “Yapousmek”) vi. 16.

—— Sumayk the Pauper, _i.e._, “The Father of the little Fish,” vi. 15.

Abúyah (a Fellah, vulg. for “Abí”) v. 418.

Adab = accomplishments, ii. 68.

“Adab” _translated_ “Arabic,” i. 48.

Adam’s Sons = a term that has not escaped ridicule amongst Moslems,
iii. 149.

Addíki = I will give thee (in the language of Fellahs) vi. 189.

Address to inanimate object highly idiomatic and must be cultivated by
practical Arabists, iii. 150.

’Adu = an enemy (_tr._ “foe”) ii. 14.

Adi (_Arab._) = So it is, v. 448.

Adí in Egypt. (not Arabic) is = that man, the (man) here, v. 118.

’Adím al-Zauk (_Arab._), _tr._ “Lack-tacts” = to our deficiency in
taste, manners, etc. (Here denoting “practical joking”) v. 455.

Adíní = Here am I, v. 118.

’Adl (Al-) = the Notary, i. 219.

Adoption of slave lads and lasses common among Moslems, i. 76.

’Adrán (_Arab._) _tr._ “Sheeted,” the ✓ being ’Adr = much and heavy
rain, iv. 7.

’Adúl = Assessors, i. 327.

Áfák Al- (_pl._ of Uík) “elegant” for the universe (_tr._ “all the
horizons”) v. 66.

Afandiyah Al- (_Arab._) = Efendis, iv. 41.

’Afár, _tr._ “sand devils,” a word frequently joined with “Ghubár” =
dust (ST.) iv. 262.

Affidavit amongst Moslems, iii. 411.

Afkah, a better Fakih or theologian, i. 244.

Afrákh al-Jinn, _lit._ = Chicks of the Jinns (_tr._ “Babes of the
Jinns”) v. 202.

Afras = _lit._ a better horseman (_tr._ “doughtier”) ii. 105.

Africa (_Arab._ “Afrikíyah”), here used for the limited tract about
Carthage (Tunis), _i.e._, Africa Propria, iii. 76.

Aghá of the Janákilah = the Chief man (Aghá) of the Gypsies, iv. 72.

Ágháwát (Aghas), meaning Eunuch officers and officials, iii. 112.

“Ahádís” esp. referred to the sayings of Mahommed, vi. 41.

Ahádís al-Kudus = sentences attributed to Archangel Gabriel, vi. 41.

—— al-Nabawí = the actual words pron. by Mahommed, vi. 41.

Ahbábu-ná _pl. for sing._ = my beloved (_tr._ “my friends”) ii. 103.

Ahmar = red, ruddy brown, dark brown, v. 347.

Ahú ’inda-k, _tr._ “Whatso thou broughtest here it be” (Pure Fellah
speech), v. 366.

—— ma’í = “Here it is with me” (Pure Fellah speech), v. 265.

Ahwas al-’Ansárí (Al-) (Al-Akhwass _Breslau Ed._) i. 42.

Ahyaf (alluding to Al-Hayfá) = (with waist full-) slight, v. 175.

“Ahy Tys” for which read “Tuhà Tays” a general feast (Houdas), vi. 187.

“Air hath struck me and cut my joints,” _i.e._, “I suffer from an
attack of rheumatism” (common complaint in even the hottest
climates), v. 160.

’Ajáib (_pl._ of ’Ajíb) = “Marvellous!” (used in Pers. as well as
Arab.) iii. 181.

Ajal = the appointed day of death (_tr._ “appointed term”) i. 129.

’Ajam = Barbarian-land, v. 213.

Ajdár = Malady, vi. 162.

Ajíjíyah, possibly Ajínniyah = a dish of dough, vi. 160.

’Ajlan = a hasty man, i. 265.

Ajr (Al-) = Heaven, i. 290.

’Ajúz, a woman who ceases to have her monthly period (_tr._ “the old
woman”) v. 52.

’Ajúz nahs = a foul crone, i. 310.

’Akákír (_pl._ of ’Akkár) = aromatic roots (_tr._ “simples”) i. 282.

Akbá’ _pl._ of “Kub’” = in pop. language, any part of garment covering
head (ST.) vi. 48.

“Akbá’ wa Zarábíl” _tr._ “Caps and slippers,” vi. 48.

Akhaztu dam wajhhi-há (_Arab._) = “I bled her of the hymeneal blood,”
iv. 42.

Akhbarú-hu (_Arab._) = have given him (Yahyà) tidings, v. 156.

Akhmitu Ghazla-há _lit._ = thicken her yarn or thread, i. 206.

Akhyash Abná Sháh (second name may be “Shah of the Ebna” or Persian
incolæ of Al-Yaman) vi. 12.

Akík = carnelian stone, v. 130.

—— Al- (_Arab._) = carnelian, v. 52.

’Akíl, first cousin of Mahommed, ii. 164.

“Akkada la-hu ráy,” plur. of “ráyat” = a banner, i. 137.

“Akkál bula’hu” = commit all manner of abominations, vi. 70.

’Akl (_Arab._) = comprehension, understanding, iv. 193.

“Akram” = the more generous (ST.) iv. 304.

“Akrás al-Jullah,” _tr._ “dung cakes” (ST.) v. 292.

Akwà min dahni’l-lauz = more strengthening than almond oil, ii. 75.

Akyál, _pl._ of “Kayl” = Kings of the Himyarite peoples, vi. 232.

“Ál bin Imrán” probably the name of some Prince of the Jinns, vi. 126.

’Alà al-Kaylah = “the place where they usually slept the siesta,” i.
34.

’Alà-Aklí, _tr._ “thou deservest naught for this,” v. 85.

“’Alà bábi ’lláh” (_Arab._) = for the love of the Lord, gratis, etc., a
popular phrase (_tr._ “At the Gate of Allah Almighty”) iv. 138.

“’Alà ghayri tarík” (_Arab._) = “out of the way” (like _Pers._ “bí
Ráh”) (ST.) v. 224.

A hámati-hi = “upon the poll of his head” (rendered here “upon the nape
of his neck”) v. 191.

Alà hudúd (or Alà hadd) al-Shauk (_Arab._) = fulfilling all our
desires, iv. 114.

Alà kám (for “kam,” how much?) peasants’ speech, iv. 224.

Alà kulli hál = “whatever may betide” or “willy nilly,” ii. 283.

“Alà Tarík al-Satr wa al-Salámah,” meaning that each other’s wives did
not veil before their brothers-in-law, i. 270.

’Alá Yadín = Aláeddín, 265.

Alaeddin, a favourite with the stage, iii. 51.

Alaeddin, _i.e._ the “Height or Glory (’Alá) of the Faith (al-Din),”
_pron._ Aláaddeen, iii. 51.

“’Alái al-Din” = Alaeddin, vi. 50.

’Alaka = he hung, iv. 149.

’Alakah khárijah = an extraordinary drubbing, vi. 84.

’Alam = a pile of stones (_tr._ a “mark”), i. 229.

’Alam al-Din = “Flag of the Faith,” ii. 4.

’Alamah = an undeflowered virgin, iii. 119.

’Álamína (’Awálim) = the (three) worlds, vi. 249.

Alaykum = “Peace be on you” (addressed to a single person) ii. 52.

Alexander the Great = Lord of the Two Horns, iii. 148.

“Alfi Hájatan” meaning “What dost thou want (in the way of amusement)?
I am at thy disposal,” vi. 178.

“Alhamdolillah = Glory be to God!” = grace after meat, iv. 337.

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (variants) iii. 369.

Ali bin Ibrahim, “a faithful Eunuch” (Scott) v. 184.

Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet (supposed author of Al-Jafr) vi. 168.

“Al-’iddah,” term of widowhood of divorcée, pregnant woman, etc., vi.
178.

“Alif, bá, tá, sá” (A.B.C.D.). The latter written with a Sin instead of
a Thá, showing vulg. use which extends from Alex. to Meccah, vi. 37.

’Álim = a learned man, iii. 119.

’Alkam = the bitter gourd, colocynth, ii. 218.

Alkermes, _i.e._, “Al-Kirm” (_Arab._ and _Pers._) = a worm, cochineal,
vi. 5.

Allah (accomplish on them the ordinance of the Almighty) i. 100.

“Allah! Allah!” here meaning “Haste! haste!” iv. 71.

—— = “I conjure thee by God,” v. 302.

—— (Allah! Allah! sign of impatience) = Look sharp! i. 231.

—— Almighty hath done this = _here lit._ “hath given it to him,” v. 27.

—— (“An alms, for the love of”) ii. 44.

—— (and again by Allah) i. 9.

—— (be the judge between me and thee), ii. 52.

Allah! (called upon to witness a lie) i. 261.

—— (decreed of old), ii. 90.

—— (do thou be steadfast of purpose and rely upon) = “Let us be off,”
pop. parlance, v. 66.

—— (“Enter in the name of” = Bismillah), ii. 38.

—— (Gifted of) ii. 200.

—— háfiz-ik (_Arab._) = the pop. _Pers._ expression, “Khudá Háfiz”
(“Allah be thy safeguard”) iv. 218.

—— (in peace of) i. 6.

—— (I look to, for aid) ii. 202.

—— (“I seek refuge with,” _i.e._, Allah forfend) ii. 9.

—— (I seek refuge with) = God forfend, i. 185.

—— (I will give him the covenant of) i. 179.

—— (is All-great) ii. 125.

—— (is threatening unbelievers) i. 51.

“—— kill all woman-kind,” v. 304.

—— (made easy to me) ii. 53.

—— (Men who resign themselves to = _i.e._, Moslems who practise the
Religion of Resignation) ii. 271.

—— (name of, taken in vain) i. 87.

—— (O spirit of) i. 251.

—— (O worshipper of) (_i.e._, “O Moslem, opposed to enemy of Allah) = a
non-Moslem,” v. 460.

“—— openeth,” “Allah veileth,” civil forms of refusal, iv. 315.

—— (open to thee the door of subsistence) ii. 44.

—— (Prince ’Ajíb forbidden to call upon name of), iii. 18.

—— (removed to the mercy of = he died) ii. 78.

“—— sent down a book confirmed,” a passage not Koranic, v. 47 (not a
literal quotation, but alludes to Koran iii., 5) (ST.) v. 47.

—— Shadow of—a title of the Shah, iii. 531.

—— (sued for pardon of Almighty) a pious exclamation (“Astaghfiru
’llah”) v. 136.

—— (Take refuge with, from the Evil eye of her charms) ii. 245.

—— (the peace of, be upon you and the ruth of Allah) i. 14.

Allah (This is the deposit of, then thy deposit = “I commit him to thy
charge under God”) ii. 184.

—— (while Almighty Allah willed) = a long time, i. 351.

—— (whom Allah save and assain) ii. 173.

—— ya’tik = Allah will give it thee, (not I) ii. 44.

Allah’s path (a Martyr on) = a Martyr of love, vi. 131.

Alláho Akbar = God is most Great (war cry) v. 403.

“Allazí ’amaltu fí-him, etc.” = Those to whom I did a good turn,
requite me with the contrary thereof (ST.) iv. 253.

Almahs (_fem._ of ’Álim = a learned man) = professional singing and
dancing girls, iii. 119.

Almás, _Arab._ (from ἀδάμας, and in _Hind._ “Hírá” and “Panná”) =
diamond, iii. 354.

Almond-Tree “Be not like unto the,” (a _lieu commun_ in the East) vi.
7.

—— = the _Heb._ “Sháked” and the fruit is “Loz” (_Arab._ Lauz) =
_Amygdalus communis_, vi. 7.

Alms-gift = whatso exceedeth Viaticum (“Jáizah”), or the three days
guest hospitality, vi. 26.

Alwán, _pl._ of Laun, meats of all kinds and colours, vi. 122.

“Amán” (_Arab._) = quarter, mercy (_tr._ “safety”) iv. 30.

Amán = Pardon (_lit._ “security”), i. 118.

Amawi Mosque of Damascus, one of the four Wonders of the Moslem world,
iv. 36.

“Ambergris’d” coffee, sherbet, etc., (aphrodisiac) iii. 31.

’Amil Rasad (_Arab._) = _lit._, acting as an observatory, iv. 341.

Amín = Overseer, i. 67.

—— al-Hukm = “Faithful of Command,” ii. 7.

—— (Al-) Sixth Abbaside A.D. 809–13, i. 175.

Áminah, _i.e._, the secure (_fem._) iii. 326.

Amírala (wife of Emir-Ben-Hilac-Salamis) meaning, if anything,
“Colonel” or Captain, R.N., vi. 225.

Ammál (_Arab._), vulg. written with initial Hamzah = “Verily”, “I
believe you my boy” (_tr._ “Assuredly”), vi. 11.

’Ammál (_Arab._). With the Ayn may mean “he intended,” or “he was about
to,” vi. 11.

’Ammir = cause to flourish (_tr._ “Take and people”), i. 243.

Amourist justified in obtaining his object by fair means or foul, i.
313.

Amsaytu = I came at evening, i. 316.

Amsik (_Arab._), a “chaff” with the Turks—meaning cunnus-penis, iv. 93.

—— lisána-k (_Arab._) = “hold thy tongue,” iv. 93.

’An Abí = (a propitiatory offering) for my father, i. 265.

“Ana ’l-Tabib, al-Mudáwi” (_Arab._) = I am the leach, the healer, v.
326.

“Aná min ahli zálika,” _tr._ “I am of the folk of these things” (vulg.
equiv. would be “Kizí,”) (for “Kazálika,” “Kazá”) = so (it is) v.
50.

Anakati-h (_Arab._) _tr._ “neck,” v. 427.

Anbar (_tr._ “Ambergris”) ii. 67.

“—And the Peace!” = “There is an end of the matter,” vi. 105.

’Andalíb, nightingale, iii. 506.

Andromeda and Perseus, Myth of, brought down to St. George and the
Dragon, iv. 261.

’Anfakati-h = the hair between the lower lips and the chin, also chin
itself (ST.), v. 427.

’Anká (Al-) = _lit._ “The long-necked” (bird), ii. 128.

Animals (lower) breeding with men, iv. 331.

Anjar = a flat platter (_Pers._) iv. 143.

“Annus Domini” = Age (the worst disease in human life) iv. 3.

Ant, Koranic legend of the, vi. 99.

Ant’ amilta maskhará (for maskharah) matah (for matà) idiomatical
Fellah-tongue, v. 269.

—— aysh (for “man” decidedly not complimentary) “What (thing) art
thou?” v. 298.

“Anta jáibb(un) bas rájul (an) wáhid (an)” = veritable and
characteristic peasant’s jargon, v. 359.

Antum fí Kháshin wa básh (an error for Khásh-másh) = a miserable
condition, vi. 137.

Anushirwán (in full Anúshínrawán) = sweet of soul, P.N. of Pers. King,
vi. 44.

Aorist, preceded by preposition “bi,” v. 432.

Aphrodisiacs, iii. 133.

Apocrypha, Tobias, etc., iv. 78.

“Après moi le déluge,” ii. 123.

’Arab al-’Arbá = Arabian Arabs, iii. 134.

Arab al-Arbá = prehistoric Arabs, iii. 145.

—— lovers jealous of their mistresses’ nightly phantom, ii. 179.

——, of noble tribe, always first to mount his own mare, ii. 248.

“Arabia Deserta” (Mr. Doughty’s) quoted v. 10, 53, 405.

’Arafát, fête of; the day of the Sermon, when pilgrims sleep at
Muzdalifah, vi. 41.

Arafshah = superintendent, i. 20.

’Arakiyah = Skull-cap, vi. 48.

Arám (pl. of Irm), a beautiful girl, a white deer (_tr._ “Reems”) i.
43.

’Aramramí = flocking and crowding, vi. 195.

Ardabb (_prop._) “Irdabb” = five bushels, iv. 290.

Ardashir (King), son of Bábak, iii. 180.

“Arghá” for “Arkhá” = he “brayed” (like an ostrich) for “his limbs
relaxed,” iv. 31.

Arja’ = _lit._ return (_tr. here_ “Desist”) ii. 105.

Armaghánát (_Arab._) pl. of “Armaghán” (_Pers._) a present, iv. 59.

Arm-pit, Hair shaven or plucked from, iv. 153.

’Arsah (_Arab._) akin to Mu’arris = a pimp, a pander, iv. 208.

“Arsh,” = the Ninth Heaven, v. 178.

Arstable (astrolabe) iii. 159.

“Art thou (Al-Hajjáj) from Cairo,” a neat specimen of the figure
anachronism. (Al-Hajjáj died A.H. 95; Cairo built A.H. 358) v. 41.

’Arús muhallíyah “a bride tricked out,” v. 468.

Arwà written with a terminal yá is a woman’s P.N. in Arabic, i. 94.

Arz (_Arab._), from the _Heb._ “Arz” or “Razah” (✓ raz = to vibrate) =
Cedar (of Lebanon), vi. 5.

Arzi-há = in its earth, its outlying suburbs (_tr._ “Environs”) ii.
198.

’Asá = Staff, one of the properties of Moslem Saints, iii. 183.

“’Asá Fír,” _i.e._ “Fír is rebellious,” vi. 102.

’As’as = to complicate a matter, vi. 174.

Asáfír, _pl._ of “’Usfúr” = a bird, a sparrow, vi. 102.

Asáfírí (olives, etc.) iii. 405.

Asár, clerical error for Sár = Vendetta, blood revenge, i. 134.

Asfandíyâr = two heroes of the Shahnameh, both types of reckless
daring, iii. 524.

’Ashama, _lit._ = he greeded for, v. 285.

Ashdak, usually applied to a wide-chapped face, iv. 91.

Ashghaftíní (_see_ Shaghaftíní) vi. 15.

Ashírah = clan, ii. 225.

Ashkhákh Al- (_Arab._), _pl._ of Shakhkh = _lit._ the “Stales” (_tr._
“Skite and piss”) (Steingass reads “bi ’l-Shakhákh” the usual modern
word for urine) v. 265.

Ashkhás (_pl._ of Shakhs) = images = (_vulg._ used in Moslem realms in
the sense of persons or individuals) iii. 12.

Ashrafí (_Port._ Xerafim), a gold coin whose value has varied, iii.
294.

’Asharah Mlah (Al) = ten times one, hundred, _ib._ “one hundred for the
(_i.e._, every) ten” (ST.) iv. 28.

Ashrafi, a gold coin of variable value, iv. 143;
the Portuguese Xerafim, iv. 38.

Ash-Shabakah bitáht al-Sayd = thy net for fishing, iv. 9.

’Ashshár or Tither, i. 243.

Ashur, four sons of (according to Arabs) vi. 3.

’Ásí (Al-) = rebel, syn. with Pers. “Yághí,” i. 134.

Aská-hu ’alakah = gave him a sound drubbing (’alakah), vi. 58.

Asmá al-Adwíyah = names of the medicines, i. 283.

Ass (loan of) usually granted gratis in Fellah villages and Badawi
camps, v. 460.

—— (the “cab” of modern Egypt), v. 281.

Assemblage of dramatis personæ at end of a scene highly artistic and
equally improbable, v. 31.

Asshúr = Assyria, vi. 3.

Assyrian correspondence, the simplicity of, vi. 12.

“Astaghfiru ’llah,” a pious exclamation, humbling oneself before the
Creator (_tr._ “sued for pardon of Almighty Allah”) v. 136.

Astrology and astronomy, iii. 159.

Astrolabe (_tr._ “Astronomical-gear”) iii. 159.

Asúr, in the text, “Atúr,” the scriptural “Asshur” = Assyria, vi. 3.

At her last breath, when cured by the magic of love, ii. 243.

Athr = sign, mark, trail (_tr._ “Scar”) i. 280.

’Atík = antique, iii. 11.

Atrábulus (also Tarábulus), Arabisations of Tripolis, iv. 169.

Atráf (pl. of “Tarf”) = great and liberal lords (_tr._ “chiefs”) i. 58.

’Atrús, King (? Heron’s “Illabousatrous”) vi. 234.

Attáf (named by Heron Chebib, also “Xakem Tai-Chebib” = Hátim Tayy
Habíb), vi. 169.

Attáf, Tale of (Cotheal MS.), vi. 196.

—— Tale of, title compared with Gauttier and Heron, vi. 167.

“Atúr,” scriptural “Asshur” = Assyria, vi. 3.

Atwash (Al-) = one notable for levity of mind, ii. 16.

Audáj (_Arab._) _pl._ of “Wadaj,” applying indiscriminately to the
carotid arteries and jugular veins, v. 340.

Audán (_pl._ of the pop. “Widn” of “Wudn” for the literary “Uzn” = ear)
(ST.), v. 301.

Aulád-i = sons (vulg. plural for dual), i. 132.

’Aun, a high degree among the Jinns, a tribe of the Jinn, sometimes
syn. with Márid, iv. 80, 302.

’Aurat = nakedness, _tr._ “shame,” v. 75.

’Ausaj = bushes, v. 456.

Auzah (_Arab._), a popular word in Egypt and Syria (_Pers._ “Oták,” and
_Turk._ “Otah”) iv. 40.

A’úzu bi ’lláhi min al-Sháytáni’l-Rajím = I take refuge with Allah
against Satan the Stoned (ST.) iv. 242.

’Awán _lit._ = aids, helpers (_tr._ “guards”), i. 253.

Award o burd (Pers.) = brought and bore away, i. 210.

Ay Ni’am (Yea, verily, Yes indeed), an emphatic and now vulgar
expression, iii. 14, 31.

’Ayn turned into H., _i.e._, Bitáht for Bitá’at, iv. 9.

“Ayoh” (in text), _tr._ “here he is”; a corr. of “Í (or Ayy) hú” = yes
indeed he, v. 265.

Aysh = Ayyu Shayyin, what? iv. 207.

—— (_Arab._) = Ayyu Shayyin and Laysh = li ayyi Shayyin, a popular
corruption of olden date, iii. 122.

“—— Khabara-k?” = how art thou? iii. 122.

Aywah (different spelling for “aywa”) = “yes indeed,” or contraction
for Ay (Í) wa ’lláhi = “yes, by Allah” (ST.) v. 265.

Ayyám al-Nifás (_Arab._) = the forty days after labour, during which a
woman may not cohabit with her husband, iii. 502.

“’Ayyik” or “Ayyuk” = a hinderer (of disease), vi. 174.

’Ayyinah, probably a misreading for ’Ayniyyah = a sample, pattern (ST.)
iv. 290.

’Ayyúk = Capella, a bright star, vi. 174.

Azán-hú = _lit._ “its ears” (_tr._ “its pegs”) ii. 159.

Azay má tafút-ní? = how canst thou quit me? vi. 290.

Azbad (_Arab._) from ✓ Zbd (Zabd) = foaming, frothing, iv. 31.

“Azlam” = the more iniquitous (ST.), iv. 304.

Azm = Koranic versets, which avert evil, vi. 19.

Aznání = emaciated one, ii. 214.

Azzamín = Charmers, _i.e._, men who recite the Azm, vi. 19.

Baba Abdullah = Daddy Abdullah, iii. 311.

Báb al-Nasr, the grand old Eastern or Desert-gate of Cairo, v. 457.

Baba used in Pers., Turk., and Hindostan, for Dad! Dear! Child! iii.
311.

Bábúj (from “Bábúg” from the _Pers._ “Pay-púsh” = foot-clothing), _tr._
“papoosh,” v. 442.

Bábúk, or “Bábúnak” (_Pers._) = the white Camomile flower, vi. 27.

Backgammon = “(jeu de) dames,” a term of European origin, iii. 180.

Bádám or Bídám (almond), used by way of small change, iii. 348.

Badawí dogs dangerous, i. 316.

—— tent, v. 116.

Badr, Al- (_pl._ Budúr) = the “Full Moon,” v. 198.

Badrah, _lit._ a myriad, ten thousand dirhams, i. 278.

—— (_Arab._) = a purse of ten thousand dirhams, v. 58.

Badr al-Budúr, _i.e._ Full moon of full moons, iii. 95.

Badrat Zahab = a purse of gold (ST.) v. 58.

Bágh = Royal tiger, iii. 530.

Baghdad (explained), iii. 25.

Bahár = ox-eye, ii. 13.

—— (_Arab._) often used for hot spices (_tr._ “pimento”), iv. 138.

Bahlúl, a famous type of madman, v. 88.

—— Al- = the “Bahalul” of D’Herbelot, vi. 155.

Bahluwán (Arab. for Pers. Pahluwán) = a brave, a warrior, i. 131.

Bahman, meaning one of the Spirits that presides over beasts of burden,
iii. 502.

Bahr al-Azrak = the Blue Sea (Mediterranean) vi. 256.

—— al-Muhít (_Arab._) = Circumambient Ocean, iv. 323.

Bahrjaur (in Pers. Bahr-i-Jaur = luck of Jaur-city) i. 57.

Bak’ah (=“a hollow where water collects”) and “Buk’ah” (=“a patch of
ground”) compared, vi. 12.

Bakar (Ox) and Taur (Bull) Moslem emblems of stupidity, ii. 178.

Bakar = black cattle, whether bull, cow, or ox, vi. 136.

Bakhshísh (written “Bakshísh” after Fellah-fashion) iv. 243.

Bakht = luck, good fortune, iii. 331.

—— (i) Zamán (Persian) = Luck of the Time, i. 102.

Bákiyah = may also mean Eternal, as opposed to Fániyah = temporal
(_tr._ “abide”) i. 39.

Bákúlat = pot-herbs (_tr._ “almond cakes”), probably clerical error for
“Bakláwát,” i. 261.

Bákúr = driving-sticks, v. 10.

Bál (_Arab._) sing. Bálah = a tale, iv. 210.

Balass ruby = of rare wood, set with rubies, ii. 251.

Balát = the flags (slabs of limestone and sandstone) ii. 21.

Baliyah = bane and bale (to jingle with “Bábiliyah”) ii. 153.

Ballát, limestone, slabs cut in the Torah quarries south of Cairo, v.
80.

Baltah, for Turk. “Báltah” = an axe, a hatchet, v. 336.

Baltah-ji, a pioneer, one of the old divisions of the Osmanli troops,
surviving as a family name amongst Levantines, v. 336.

Bámiyah = Gumbo, etc., of Brit. India (_tr._ “rose-mallows”) iv. 243.

Banát al-hawá = _lit._ daughters of love (_tr. here_ “a merry girl”)
ii. 137.

Bandukah = a little bunduk, nut, bullet, (_tr._ “degrees”) i. 353.

Banj akrítashí = Cretan Bhang, i. 9.

Banj al-tayyar, _i.e._, volatile = that which flies fastest to the
brain (_tr._ “flying Bhang”) v. 26.

Bánú = a lady, a dame of high degree, iii. 419.

Banú Adam = Sons of Adam (as opposed to Banú Elohim = Sons of the Gods)
iii. 88.

Banú al-Asfar = Sons of the yellow (Esau’s posterity in Edom) iii. 88.

Banú al-Khashkhash = Sons of the (black) poppy (viz. Ethiopians) iii.
88.

Banú Ghálib, v. 43

Banú Hilál, a famous tribe, vi. 225.

Banú Shaybán = the King’s own tribe, ii. 199.

Banú Tay, the tribe of the chieftain and poet Hátim Táí, i. 179.

Banú Thakíf, a noble tribe sprung from Iyád, v. 46.

Barári or deserts, ii. 16.

Barbarians (Matthew Arnold’s) iv. 280.

Barbasa (with dental sibilant “Sín”) = he sought, looked for (with
palatial sibilant “Sád”) = he watered the ground abundantly (ST.)
iv. 291.

Barbastu = besmeared, iv. 291.

Barber, being a surgeon ready to bleed a madman, v. 277.

—— the usual operator in circumcision, ii. 116.

Bardawán, the well-known city in Hindostan whose iron was famous, vi.
71.

Barniyah = Pot (in which manna was collected) i. 265.

“Bartamán” for “Martaban” = a pot, jar, etc. (_tr._ “a crock”) iv.
204–223.

Báshá (_Arab._ form of _Turk._ “Pasha”) derivation, iv. 137.

“Bashákhín,” _pl._ of “Bashkhánah” = hangings, arras, vi. 44.

Bashárah, can hardly be applied to ill news (faulty text), i. 34.

Bashárah, Al- (_Arab._) = a gift of good news, iv. 307.

Basíl, son of “Ashur,” vi. 3.

Bashkhánah (corr. of _Pers._ “Peshkhánah = state-tents sent forward on
march”) _tr. here_ “a hanging,” v. 131.

—— custom of, among Eastern Moslems, v. 106.

Bashkhánah (Al-) = the Curtain, ii. 165.

Bassorah-city = “Balsorah” (Galland), “Bansrá” (H.V.) iii. 3.

Bast, a preparation of Bhang (_Cannabis sativa_) iv. 19.

Bastinado used to extort confession, i. 148.

Bát (for “Bit”) = Pass the night here (in Fellah speech) iv. 246.

—— = “the night has passed” (ST.) iv. 246.

Bathá = lowlands and plains outside Meccan Valley, i. 42.

Bathah = inner court, i. 284.

Bathing after copulation kept up by both sexes in ancient Rome, ii.
142.

Batiyah (_Arab._) gen. = a black jack, a leathern flagon (_tr._ “Keg”)
iv. 125.

Bayt al-Mukaddas = Sanctified House, iii. 407.

Bazzistán (_Arab._-_Pers._) = market-place for Bazz = cloth, iii. 431.

Bawwábah Al = a place where doorkeepers meet, a police-station (_tr._
“guard-house”) v. 309.

Baybúnah (_prop._ “Bábúnaj” in _Arab._, and “Bábúk” in _Pers._) = the
white Camomile flower, vi. 27.

Bayn farsi-k wa ’l-damí = _lit._ between fœces and menses (_tr._ “thy
droppings and drippings”) i. 41.

Baysár or Baysárah, a dish peculiar to Egypt = beans seasoned with milk
and honey, iv. 176. Also “Baysár” or “Faysár,” iv. 291.

Bayzah (_Arab._) = an egg, a testicle, v. 360.

Bazaka = brought out, i. 209.

“Bean and ’twas split, A,” proverb suggesting “par nobile fratrum,”
iii. 179.

Beating the bosom with a sunbaked brick, i. 34.

Bed (on roof) made of carpet or thin mattress strewn upon the stucco
flooring of the terrace roof, v. 219.

Beef, causes dysenteric disease, v. 51.

Bell as a fringe to the Ephod of High Priest, vi. 100.

Bel the idol (or Ba’al or Belus, the Phœnician and Canaanite head-god)
vi. 26.

Bghb (evidently for “Baght,” or preferably “Baghtatan”) vi. 78.

Bhang-eaters, indecencies of, iv. 196.

“Bi,” the particle proper of swearing, v. 470.

Bí-adabí = being without Adab, (means rudeness, etc.) ii. 68.

Bi al-Salám = in the Peace (of Allah) i. 6.

“Bi Asri-hi” (_Arab._) _lit._ “rope and all;” metaphorically used =
altogether entirely (_tr._ “the World universal”) vi. 108.

Bibars (_pron._ “Baybars”) ii. 3.

“Bí, Bí, Bí,” compare the French “Brr”, vi. 77.

Bid’ah = _lit._ an innovation, a new thing (_tr. here_ “accursed
custom”) ii. 266.

Bíhkamál (Pers. and Arab.) = “Good Perfection,” i. 107.

Bihkard = “Well he did,” i. 107.

Bihzad (Persian) = Bih (well, good) Zád (born) i. 89.

Biiru-milyánah Moyah (with various forms of “Moyah”) v. 323.

“Bi-izá-humá” _lit._ vis-à-vis to the twain, v. 69.

Bi jildi ’l-bakar = a cow hide, ii. 96.

Bi-Khátiri-k = Thy will be done (_tr._ “At thy pleasure”), v. 322.

“Bilád al-Maghrib (al-Aksa” in full) = the Farthest Land of the Setting
Sun (_tr._ “Sundown-Land”) ii. 252.

Bilal = moisture, beneficence, etc., i. 40.

“Bilám” here = the headstall of the bridle (ST.) v. 381.

“Billáhi,” _i.e._, “by Allah,” v. 470.

Bilisht = The long span between thumb-tip and minimus-tip, iii. 353.

“Bi-Má al-fasíkh ’alà Akrás al-Jullah” (_tr._ “Save with foul water
upon the disks of dung”) v. 292.

Bímáristán (_Arab._ from _Pers._) = a “sick house”, hospital, madhouse,
iv. 48.

Bir al-Khátim = Well of the signet, i. 165.

Birkah = a fountain basin, lake, pond, reservoir (_tr._ “hole”) v. 117.

Birkat Far’aun = Pharaoh’s Pool, vi. 98.

Bi-sab’a Sikak = _lit._ “with seven nails” (meaning here posts whereto
chains were attached) v. 380.

Bisáta-hum = their carpets (_tr._ “warehouses”) vi. 124.

Bishangarh, iii. 422.

Bishr and Hind (two well-known lovers), ii. 211.

“Bismillah” = Enter in the name of Allah, ii. 38.

Bísmillah = grace before meat, iv. 337.

“Bismillah; in the name of the Lord” = “Let us go,” etc., ii. 85.

Bisnagar (corruption of Sanskrit Vijáyanagara = City of Victory) iii.
422.

Bitá’i (_Arab._) = my own, iv. 9.

“Bi-Wujúh al-Fániját al-Miláh” (reading “al-Ghániját” in app. with
“al-Miláh”), render “the faces of the coquettish, the fair” (ST.) v.
80.

Biyarza’ fí Asábí-hi (only instance in MS. where the aorist is preceded
by preposition “bi”) (ST.) v. 432.

Blackening faces a promise of Hell-fire, ii. 42.

Bloody sweat, v. 149.

Blood-feuds troublesome to travellers, ii. 222.

“Blood hideth not from blood” (_equiv. to_ Scotch “Blood is thicker
than water”) iii. 54.

Blood moved between them (a “pathetic fallacy”) i. 77.

—— red tears, v. 149.

—— revenge religiously laudable, iii. 180.

“—— speaking to blood,” popular superstition, excusing unwarrantable
liberties in Royal personages, iii. 531.

Blowing a man up with bellows, i. 351

Book of Bakhtyár (Persian Bakhtyár Námeh) “The ten Wazirs, etc.,” i.
55.

Bostán al-Nuzhah = the Garden of Pleasance, i. 29.

Bráhmani = Hindu, Indian, ii. 111.

Brain-pans (good old classical English) v. 219.

Branchlet = a youth’s bending form, ii. 162.

Breslau Edition quoted, i. 1, 4, 15, 25, 39, 42, 47, 51, 55, 58, 60,
121, 131, 134, 159, 165, 171, 175, 179, 185, 191, 266, 334, 359; ii.
3, 54, 55, 63, 67, 151, 183, 191, 259, 263, 275; iii. 51; v. 117,
118, 419.

Bribing the Kazi’s wife, v. 364.

Bridegroom offers coffee and Halwá to friends after a “happy night,”
ii. 142.

Bridge at Baghdah made of the ribs of Og bin ’Unk (=Og of the Neck)
iii. 19.

—— of Sanjia in Northern Syria is one of the four Wonders of the Moslem
world, iv. 36.

Brow white as day and hair black as night (common conceit) iii. 96.

Brutality of a Moslem mob, ii. 168.

Buk’ah (=“a piece of low ground”) and Bak’ah (=“a hollow where water
collects”) compared, vi. 12.

Bukhári = a place for steaming, iii. 355.

Bakhtí = The Bactrian or double-humped dromedary, ii. 235.

Buksumah (_Arab._) = “hard bread” (_tr._ “biscuit”) iv. 169.

Bulaybul (Al-) = the little nightingale, Philomelet, iv. 245.

Bulbul-i-hazár-dástán (_Arab._), usually shortened to “Hazár” = bird of
a thousand tales = the Thousand, in Arab. called ’Andalíb, iii. 506.

“Bull- (Taur for Thaur or Saur)—numbered-and-for-battle-day-lengthened”
(_tr. The Bull-aye-ready-and-for Battle-aye-steady_) v. 160.

Bull used in the East to turn the mill and water-wheel, iv. 294.

Bundukáni (Al-) = the cross-bow or pellet-bow man, vi. 53.

Bunduki (adj. of Bunbuk) = Venetian, ii. 204.

Bunúd (pl. of Pers. “band”) = hypocrisy, deceit (_tr._ “quiddities”) i.
353.

Burd (_pl._ of Burdah) = mantle or woollen plaid of striped stuff, v.
42.

Burka’ = the face veil of Egypt, etc., ii. 172.

—— = Nosebag, v. 91.

—— veil or “Nosebag,” iv. 282.

Burúj (pl. of Burj) = _lit._ towers (_tr._ “mansions”) i. 353.

Búsah (doubtful meaning), possibly reed used as a case or sheath (ST.)
v. 108.

But-Khánah = idol house, _syn._ with But-Kadah = image cuddy (_tr._
“Pagodas”) iii. 427.

Búyúrdi, Al- (_cler. error_ for “Buyúruldi”) = the written order of a
Governor, vi. 180.

“By the life of my youth,” a “swear” peculiarly feminine, and never
used by men, v. 85.

Bye Names, vi. 84.

Byron in England, v. 274.

Bystanders excited about some matter in no way concerning them, i. 303.

Cafilah, _i.e._, caravan, iv. 222.

“——” (Shaykh of) for Cafila, v. 419.

“Cage of Clapham,” iii. 501.

Cairo (magnificent city of Egypt), iii. 58.

Calcutta Edition quoted, ii. 137, 141.

Caliph can do no wrong, i. 167.

—— Omar bin Abd al-Aziz (The Good Caliph) i. 39.

Caliphs under the early Ommiades, v. 39.

“Camaralzaman” (olden versions) = “Complete Time,” for “Moon of the
Age,” vi. 233.

Camel (not customary to mount lady upon in India) iii. 294.

—— (“Ushtur” or “Unth”) iii. 294.

Camels made drunk with Bhang, or Indian hemp, to make extended marches,
vi. 244.

Camel’s pasture divided into “Khullah” (Sweet food called bread) and
“Hámiz” termed fruit, iv. 7.

Camomile flower (white), vi. 27.

Camphor, use of, iii. 361.

“Can play with the egg and the stone,” _i.e._, “can play off equally
well the soft-brained and the hard-brained,” v. 277.

Cap of the “Sútarí” or jester of the Arnaut (Albanian) regiments, v.
276.

—— worn by professional buffoon, v. 276.

Carpet (the Flying), prototype of, iii. 425.

Carrion (animals that died without being ceremonially killed) ii. 175.

Cat, a sacred animal amongst the Egyptians, vi. 31.

Cedar of Lebanon, vi. 5.

Census of the Exodus (Exposition by Mr. Thayer), vi. 113.

—— should not be made without direct command of Creator (superstitious
idea) iv. 308.

“Chafariz” (fountain) of Portugal (der. from Sakáríj) v. 5.

Chamber (a dangerous word in English) ii. 129.

Change from first person into third, looseness of style in the MS.
(ST.) iv. 282.

Changes, contradictions and confusions inherent in Arab. stories, iii.
93.

“Changul” (with three dotted Chím) = red gold, vi. 251.

Chapter of the Cow (Koran) ii. 175.

Chaugán (Persian) = the crooked bat used in polo, i. 109.

Chavis quoted, vi. 12, _ib._ 15, 16, 53, 54, 56, 59, 63, 68, 72.

Chavis and Cazotte quoted, i. 55, 60, 65, 73, 81, 89, 94, 95, 97, 102,
103, 107, 112, 121, 131, 147, 151; iv. 49, 64, 66; v. 27.

Cheek, he set his right hand upon, meaning he rested his cheek upon his
right hand, v. 9.

Chenery quoted, iv. 7; vi. 7, 54, 73, 84, 89, 94, 97, 124, 159, 183,
225, 241.

Chess rarely played for money in Europe, ii. 205.

Chhuchhundar, _Hind._ (_Sorex cœrulescens_) = musk-rat, iii. 500.

“Chifte,” from _Pers._ “Juft” = a pair, any two things coupled together
(ST.) vi. 67.

Child-bed customs amongst Moslems, iv. 177.

“Children” used for fighting men, ii. 224.

China = the normal Oriental “despotism, tempered by assassination,”
iii. 164.

Chob-dár = rod-bearer, mace-bearer, usher, etc., iii. 125.

Church of Rohah (Edessa), one of the four Wonders of the Moslem world,
iv. 36.

Circumcision, ii. 90.

—— (Jewish rite), must always be performed by the Mohel, an official of
the Synagogue, v. 217.

—— three operations of, v. 217.

Circumstantial (affecting the), a favourite manœuvre with the Ráwí, v.
233.

—— evidence not lawful amongst Moslems, i. 112.

Circus tricks with elephants, horses, etc., iii. 430.

Cistern or tank in terrace-roof of Syrian houses, v. 246.

Citadel of Lead = Capital of King Al-Shisban, ii. 117.

Cloud (which contains rain) always typical of liberality and generous
dealing, v. 179.

—— of Locusts believed by Arabs to be led by a King locust (the Sultan
Jarád) i. 305.

Chronique de Tabari quoted, iv. 3–5.

Cob-houses, iv. 214.

Cock and the Fox (Fable of whose moral is that the biter is often bit)
vi. 145.

Cock-speak = a natural clock called by West Africans Cokkerapeek, i.
10.

Coffee, iv. 198.

—— and sherbet, mention of, makes the tale synchronous with that of
Ma’arúf, or the xvii. century, iv. 55.

—— and smoking, v. 236.

Cohen = a priest either of the true God or of false gods, vi. 109.

Coinage of Baghdad, iii. 294.

Concealments inevitable in ancient tale or novel, v. 417.

Conclusions of Tales compared, iii. 303.

Condition of forfeits (_lit._ order and acceptance), i. 175.

Confections, or sweetmeats used by way of restoratives in the Bath, iv.
56.

Conjuration, a specimen of Islamised Mantra (in Sanskrit “Stambhaná”)
intended to procure illicit intercourse, vi. 126.

Connexion of Beasts with Humans, and consequences thereof, iv. 331.

Conundrum or riddle, vi. 97.

Cook and Cooking, Egyptian or Syrian compared with English, iv. 174.

Corpse sprinkled with water, etc., iv. 257.

Cossid (_Arab._ Kásid), an Anglo-Indian term = a running carrier, iv.
123.

Cotheal MS. quoted, vi. 167, 168, 169, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179,
181, 184, 186, 192.

Couch of Circumcision, ii. 111.

Couplets rhyming in “—ání” and “—álí” not lawful, v. 128.

Courser, rubbing his cheeks upon his master’s back and shoulders, v.
405.

Court of Baghdad was, like the Urdú (Horde or Court) of “Grand Mogul,”
organised after the ordinance of an army in the field, vi. 81.

“Cousin” more polite than “wife,” vi. 188.

Cramoisy (dressed from head to foot in), a royal sign of wrath denoting
torture or death, iv. 63.

Cranes of Ibycus, ii. 59.

Crepitus ventris, iv. 231.

“Cried out from her head” = Sang in tenor tones which are always in
falsetto, ii. 238.

Crows, audacious, and dangerous to men lying wounded, iii. 344.

Crucifixion, vi. 261.

—— by nailing to an upright board, ii. 49.

Cuckold, origin of, i. 205.

Cuddy, _der. from Pers._ “Kadah” = a room, v. 24.

Cup-companions = the professional Ráwís or tale reciters, ii. 266.

“Cut the way” = became a highwayman, i. 90.

Cutting the way (_i.e._, waylaying travellers) i. 60.

Curiosity (playing upon the bride’s) = a favourite topic in Arab. and
all Eastern folk-lore, v. 443.

Crystalline Isles, vi. 234.

Cynocephalus famed for venery, iv. 333.

Dabbah = wooden bolt, v. 265.

Dabbús = a mace, i. 95.

—— bazdaghání (trans. as if from _Pers._ “Bazdagh” = a file) _tr._ a
“file-wrought mace,” vi. 71.

Dabdihkán, a physician (Cotheal MS.) vi. 174.

Dabshalímat = the Dabshalíms, the dynastic title of the Kings of
Somanáth in Western India, vi. 23.

Dád-bín (Persian) = one who looks to justice, i. 94.

Dahab ramli (_Arab._) = gold-dust washed out of the sand, _placer_-gold
(_tr._ “pure sand-gold”) iii. 126.

Dáhiyat al-Dawáhí = a calamity of the Calamities, ii. 119.

Dahmár (King) called by Scott “Rammaud,” v. 105.

Dahn (_Arab._) = oil, ointment (_tr._ “sweetest unguent”), vi. 10.

Dainty food (Egyptian or Syrian Cook compared with English) iv. 174.

Daïs (place of honour) i. 16.

Dajlah River (Tigris), vi. 122.

Dakhlah Al- (_Arab._) = the night of going in, iv. 42.

Dallál = broker (same as Sáhib = owner), iv. 224.

Damascus City (_der._ from Dimishk) called Shám (Cotheal MS.) vi. 167.

Dán (with dual Dánayn) and “Wudn” (with plural “Audán”) are pop. forms
for literary “Uzn” (ST.) vi. 245.

—— Al- (cler. error for Al-Uzn = ear), vi. 245.

Dáúnk (Pers. “Dáng”) = one-sixth of a dirham, _i.e._, about a penny
halfpenny, i. 245.

Dann = Amphora (_Gr._ ἀμφορεύς short for ἀμφιφορεύς = having two
handles), _tr._ “two-handed jar,” v. 198.

Dara’ or Dira’ = armour (_tr._ “jerkin,”) ii. 209.

Darabukkah-drum (or “tom-tom”) v. 13.

Darajah = an instant; also a degree (of the Zodiac) _tr._ “one watch.”

—— is also used for any short space of time (ST.) v. 90.

Darajatáni (_Arab._), _lit._ = two astronomical degrees (_tr._ “a
couple of hours”) iv. 110.

Dár al-Salám = Abode of Peace, i. 11.

Dár al-Ziyáfah (in Northern Africa) = kind of caravanserai in which
travellers are lodged at Government expense, v. 330.

Darb = _lit._ a road (_tr._ “street”) ii. 8.

Darbálah (_Arab._), corresponding with _Egypt._ “Darábukkah,” a tabor
of wood or earthenware (_tr._ “little drum”) iv. 43. Also part of
the regular Darwaysh’s begging gear, iv. 43.

Darb al-Mandal (_Egypt._) = Striking the magic circle in which
enchanter sits when he conjures up spirits (a form of second sight)
iv. 45.

—— al-Záji = the street of the copperas-maker, vi. 60.

Darbár (_Hind._), term for Royal Levée = Selám (_Pers._) iii. 451.

“Darbisí al-báb” (from the _Pers._ “Darbastan” = to tie up, to shut),
_tr._ “Do thou bar,” vi. 69.

“Darín” for “Zarín” = what is powdered, collyrium, v. 111.

Darwaysh (_Pers._), _pron._ by Egyptians “Darwísh,” iii. 313.

Darwayshah (_Arab._) = a she-Fakir (_tr._ “religious mendicant”) iv.
217.

Darwayshes suspected of kidnapping, iv. 153.

Daryábár, _der._ from “Daryá,” the sea, and “bar” = a region, iii. 281.

—— (_Pers._ = the ocean land), a fancy name for a country, iii. 281.

Dashísh (_Arab._), _tr._ “flour” (_Dicts._ make “wheat broth to be
sipped”) v. 347.

“Dasht-i-lá-siwá-Hú” = a desert wherein is none save He (Allah), a
howling wilderness, iii. 284.

Dastí = thou trampledst, i. 146.

Dastúr! = by your leave (_Pers._), vi. 58.

Dates and cream (“Proud rider on the desired steed”) i. 59.

Dáúd = David, vi. 229.

“Daughter shall be in his name” = betrothed to her, iii. 110.

“Daughters” secondary figures in geomancy, “mothers” being primary,
iii. 156.

Daur al-Ká’ah = the opening made in the ceiling for light (_tr._ “the
opening of the saloon”) ii. 23.

Dawát = ink-case (containing the reed-pens) ii. 211.

Dani = an echo, iv. 273.

Dawn-prayer, i. 13.

“Day in the Country,” an old Eastern custom, iv. 96

Daylakí = Daylakian (garments), v. 143.

Daylam (Al-) prison, ii. 142.

Dayr al-Tin = “The Convent of Clay,” a Coptic Monastery near Cairo, ii.
284.

—— Nashshábah = the Monastery of the Archers (a fancy name) v. 129.

Days in Moslem year 354 (=6 months of 29 days and the rest of 30) i.
245.

Death and Life are states, not things, vi. 103.

_Decies repetitæ_, forms which go down with an Eastern audience, but
intolerable to a Western reader, v. 170.

Defloration, regarded by many ancient peoples as if it were porters’
work, iv. 57.

Delights of Paradise promised by the Prophet, ii. 244.

De Sacy quoted, vi. 65, 160.

Descended = Come down from Heaven, i. 333.

Destiny, ii. 61.

Devil may not open a door shut in Allah’s name, i. 21.

“Dhobí-ká kuttá, na Ghar-ká na Ghátká” (Hindí saying) = a washerman’s
tyke, nor of the house nor of the Ghátdyke, iii. 491.

Dhol = drums, iii. 137.

Diamond does not grow warm whilst held in the hand, i. 215.

Diamonds, iii. 354.

“Diapedesis” of blood-stained tears frequently mentioned in the
“Nights,” v. 149.

Died of laughter (now become familiar to English speech), i. 13.

Die thou and be thou an expiation for the shoe-latchet of Kilayb, ii.
263.

Dignity, permissible in royalty, affected by dames in Anglo-Egypt, ii.
110.

Dihkán, in Persian = a villager (_tr._ “village-headman”) i. 81.

Dijlah Al- = The Tigris (Hid-dekel) iv. 151.

Dilk (_Arab._) more commonly “Khirkah” = tattered robe of religious
mendicant (_tr._ “gaberdine”) iv. 43.

Dimity (_der._ from “Damietta”) ii. 210.

Din (Al-); omission of, in proper names very common, iii. 3.

Dínárzád and Shahrázád (for Dunyázád and Shahrázád), iii. 3.

Dínárzádah (W.M. MS.) = “Ducat-born” (for Dínárzád) iv. 6.

“Díním” (religious considerations) of the famous Andalusian Yúsuf Caro
(a most fanatical work) v. 160.

Dirhams—
50 = about 40 shillings 300
5,050 = about £220 300
1,000,000 = about £25,000 161

Dish-cover used for cleanliness, and to prevent Evil-Eye falling upon
food, iv. 243.

Dismantled his shop (removing goods from the “but” to the “ben”), i.
207.

Divan-door, dismounting at, the highest of honours, iii. 136.

Divan or Darbár (levée), being also a _lit de justice_ and a Court of
Cassation, iii. 107.

“Dive not into the depths unless thou greed for thyself and thy wants,”
_i.e._, “tempt not Providence unless compelled so to do by
necessity,” v. 422.

Divorce and marriage to Mahommed of the wife of Zayd (his adopted son),
ii. 197.

Díwán (_Arab._) = Council-chamber, v. 227.

Díwan = Divan (the “Martabah” when placed on “Mastabah,” etc.) v. 68.

—— —origin of _Fr._ “Douane” and _Ital._ “Dogana,” etc., iii. 7.

Diyár Bakr, _lit._ Homes (or habitations) of Bakr (_pron._
“Diyár-i-Bekír”) iii. 269.

Dodges, Eastern, to detect physiological differences between man and
maid, etc., iv. 121.

Doggerel, fit only for coffee-house, v. 164.

Doghrí = assuredly, i. 18.

“Dog or a hog” = a Jew or a Christian, ii. 147.

Dogs, hatred of, inherited from Jewish ancestors, iii. 330.

Drachms, Ten = 475 to 478 Eng. grains avoir., vi. 163.

“Draw me aside its tail, so that I may inform thee thereanent” (also
similar facetia in Mullah Jámí), v. 46.

Draw thee near to them (They) = they make much of thee, i. 2.

“Dream is the inspiration of the True Believer, The,” iii. 8.

Dress (a Moslem should dress for public occasions), i. 159.

—— exchange of, iii. 171.

Dried fruits, to form the favourite “filling” for lamb and other meats
prepared in “Puláo” (Pilaff) v. 358.

Drinking customs, vi. 47.

—— in a bright light, loved by Easterns, iv. 193.

—— wine before the meal, still a custom in Syria and Egypt, vi. 192.

Dromedaries the only animals used for sending messages over long
distances, ii. 249.

“Drowned in her blood” in the text, for “all bleeding” (hyperbole run
mad), v. 139.

Drunkenness (instead of “intoxication”) v. 315.

Drying towels of palm fibre, iv. 55.

Du’á = supplication, prayer as opposed to “Salát” = divine worship, ii.
94.

Dukhán = _lit._ smoke, ii. 126.

Dukhn (_Arab._) = _Holcus dochna_, a well-known grain (_tr._ “millet”),
vi. 130.

Dukhúla-k = _lit._ thy entering (_tr._ “thy courtesy”) ii. 109.

Dúna-k (_Arab._) = “Well done,” iv. 239.

Durà for “Zurà” or for “Zurrah,” pop. pron. “Durrah” = the _Holcus
sativus_, vi. 146.

Durráj (_tr._ Francolin) ii. 60.

Durrat al-Ghawwás = Pearl of the diver, vi. 225.

Duty of good neighbour, to keep watch and guard from evil, v. 285.

Dyed robe (Abbasides, _black_; Ommiades, _white_; Fatimites, _green_)
i. 160.

Ear conceiving love before the eye, iv. 139.

Earthquakes (curious coincidence), iii. 21.

Easterns startled by sudden summons to the presence of a king, ii. 210.

Eastern despots never blame their own culpable folly in misfortune, vi.
22.

“Eat thy pottage,” a formula like our “Cut your mutton,” iv. 84.

Eateth on the spittle, _i.e._, on an empty stomach, v. 51.

Eating and drinking, iv. 160.

Eaves-dropping (favourite incident of Eastern Storiology) iii. 492.

Efendi (here meaning the under-governor or head clerk) iv. 214.

Eglantine (or Narcissus), The lowland of, vi. 12.

Egypt (magnificent city of) = Cairo, iii. 58.

Elephants usually are vegetarians, iv. 265.

Elias, Elijah, or Khizr, a marvellous legendary figure, vi. 100.

Elopements of frequent occurrence, i. 317.

Emir-Ben-Hilac-Salamis (Heron), vi. 225.

Emir Yúnas (old trans. = Hamir Youmis), vi. 70.

Embárah (_pron._ ’Mbárah), _pop. for_ Albárihah = the last part of the
preceding day or night, yesterday, v. 256.

“Empty gourds” Eastern succedaneum for swimming corks, ii. 286.

Enallage of persons (“third” for “first”—“youth” for “I”) v. 468.

—— of persons is Koranic and therefore classical, iv. 39.

“Enlarge the Turband” = to assume rank of an ’Álim or learned man, vi.
42.

Entertainment of Guest, three days, vi. 26.

Envious Sisters, The (various versions) iii. 491.

Escarlate, a woollen cloth dyed red (probably French of the xii.
century), vi. 5.

Eunuchs, i. 70.

“Every one cannot go to Corinth,” ii. 74.

Everything returns to or resembles its origin, iv. 13.

Evil Eye, iv. 60, 257.

—— to keep off the = one of the functions of iron and steel, iii. 146.

Exaggeration necessary to impress an Oriental audience, v. 139.

Exchange of salams, a sign of safety, ii. 86.

Executioner, difficulty in Marocco about finding one who becomes
obnoxious to the Thár, ii. 54.

Exodus of the Hebrews, Census of the (Exposition by Mr. Thayer) vi.
113.

Exodus, Story of the, vi. 98.

Eyes swollen by swathes, i. 30.

Fa’álah (_Arab._) = the building craft (_tr._ “industry”) iv. 179.

Fadáwí (_Arab._) = a blackguard (_tr._ “ne’er-do-well”) v. 441.

Faddah (_Arab._), _lit._ = silver; the smallest Egyptian coin, iv. 37;
Faddahs, 2,000 = about 1s. 2d., iv. 295.

—— _tr._ “groats,” v. 226.

Faddán (here miswritten “Faddád”) a plough, a yoke of oxen, v. 347.

—— also the common land measure of Egypt and Syria, v. 347.

“Fa-ghábá thaláthat ayyamin” = and he (or it, the mountain?)
disappeared for three days, v. 390.

—— (Dr. Steingass translates), v. 390.

Fahata (for “Fahasa?” or, perhaps, _cl. error for_ “Fataha”) = he
opened (the ground), _tr._ “choosing a place,” v. 353.

—— (prob. vulgarism for “Fahathá”) (fahasa) = to investigate (ST.) v.
353.

—— or may be read “Fataha” and _tr._ “he recited a ’Fátihah’ for them,”
(ST.), v. 353.

“Fair fate befal thee, etc.,” an address only suited to a king or
ruler, iv. 109.

Fair play not a jewel to the Eastern mind, iii. 180.

Fajj = mountain pass (Spanish, Vega = also a mountain plain) ii. 117.

Fákhir (Al-) = the potter, i, 360.

Fakakat = _lit._ “she flowed over like a brimful vessel.” (ST.) _tr._
here “she expired,” iv. 333.

Fakír, a title now debased in Nile Valley to an insult = “poor devil,”
iii. 313.

—— here the _Arab. syn._ of the _Pers._ “Darwaysh,” iii. 313.

—— also come to signify a Koran chaunter, iii. 314.

Falling backwards in laughter rare amongst the Badawin, ii. 202.

“Falling-place of my head” = picturesque term for “birth-place,” iii.
58.

Fál or omen (taking a) v. 424.

Falsafah (_Arab._) = philosophy, vi. 29.

Fals (or Fils) = a fish scale, a spangle of metal, iii. 294.

“Fa-min tumma,” for “thumma” (“Anon.”) vi. 91.

Fanárát (_Arab. pl. of the Pers._ Fanár = a light house) here equiv. to
mod. _Gr._ φαυάρ a lantern (_Egypt._ Fánús) _tr._ “flambeaux,” iv.
44.

Fár (_Arab._) _pl._ “Fírán” = mouse rather than rat, iv. 324.

Faráfísh (_Arab._) a word not found in dictionary—_tr._ “lumps,” iv.
12;
nearest approach to would be Faráfík (_pl. of_ Furfák) = fine, thin
or soft bread, iv. 12.

Faraj (Al-) ba’d al-Shiddah = (Joy after Annoy), compared to Khudadad
and his brothers, iii. 269.

Farajiyah = gaberdine, iii. 30.

Farárijí, _tr._ “Poulterer” (in text, as if the _pl._ of “Farrúy” =
chicken were “Farárij” instead of Faráríj) (ST.) v. 291.

Faras = a mare (_tr._ “horses”) i. 216.

Farásah = _lit._ Knowing a horse (_tr._ “Visnomy”) ii. 96.

Fáris = a rider (_tr._ “horseman”) i. 103.

Farkalah (φραγέλλιο) = cattle whip, ii. 47.

Farkh Warak = a slip of paper, ii. 114.

Farrásh = tent pitcher, body servant, iv. 157.

Fárs = Persia, i. 282.

Fárs (Al-) = Persians (a people famed for cleverness and debauchery) i.
2.

Farsh = bed or straw-spread store-room where apples are preserved, ii.
113.

Farts, savour his own (curious phenomenon) iv. 231.

“Farz,” devotions, iii. 328.

Fa-sáha (for “Maksah”) = and cried out, vi. 158.

Faswah (_Arab._) = “a silent break wind,” as opposed to “Zirt,” a loud
fart, iv. 231.

Fatáirí = a maker of “Fatírah” pancake (_tr._ “Pieman”) v. 298.

“Fa-tarak-hu Muu’sí am’à dáir yaltash fí ’l-Tarík” = “hereupon Musa
left his companion darkly tramping about,” v. 323.

—— (Dr. Steingass explains and translates) v. 323.

Fátihah (_fem._ of “fátih” = an opener, a conqueror), v. 460.

Fátimah = a weaner, iii. 181.

—— and Halímah = Martha and Mary, v. 318.

Fatimé (Ja’afar’s wife, according to Heron) vi. 169.

Fatír (_for_ “Fatírah”) = pancake (_tr._ “scone”), v. 321.

“Fa-yatrahúna,” masc. for fem. (_tr._ “miscarry”) vi. 31.

Fawwák (chair of) ii. 72.

Faysár, a dish peculiar to Egypt (see Baysár) iv. 176.

Fazl (Al-) the elder brother of Ja’afar, ii. 71.

—— (Caliph’s foster-brother) i. 166.

Feeding captives and prisoners (exception being usually made in cases
of brigands, assassins and criminals condemned for felony) v. 430.

“Feeling conception” unknown except in tales, v. 124.

“Feet towards Mecca,” i. 34.

Fellah, natural fear of—being seen in fine gear, which would have been
supposed to be stolen, iii. 171.

—— women stain their veils, etc., with indigo (for sorrow) iv. 248.

Feminine venereal paroxysm, iv. 144.

Fidá’i (_Pers._) = a robber, a murderer, iv. 281.

Fidáwi (also “Fidá’i” and “Fidawíyah”) = pirate-men, v. 25.

Fidawiyah (_Arab._) sing. “Fidáwi” = _lit._ one who gives his life to a
noble cause, iv. 281.

Fighting rams, i. 210.

—— (the Fellah will use anything in preference to his fists in) v. 350.

Fí ghuzúni zálika (_Arab._), a peculiar phrase (_tr._ “meanwhile”) iii.
142.

Fí Hayyi-kum Taflatun háma, etc. (“A maiden in your tribe avails my
heart with love to fire,” etc.) (Steingass also translates) v. 149.

Fí-hi = “In him” (_i.e._, either Mohammed) or “in it” (his action) i.
40.

“Fí ’irzak” (_vulg._ “’arzak”), formula for “I place myself under thy
protection” (ST.) v. 220.

Fí Jífán ka’l-Jawábí (_Arab._) meaning small things (or men) and great
(_tr._ “In the wells like the tanks”) iv. 106.

Fí Kíb = “in a mat” (Scott) v. 214.

Fikî (the pop. form of present day for “Fakíh,” _prop._ “learned in the
law”), _tr._ “tutor” (ST.) v. 420.

Fils (or Fals) = a fish scale, a spangle of metal, iii. 294.

Finján (_pl._ “Fanájíl,” _pron._ “Fanágil”), and “Filgál” used
promiscuously (ST.) v. 236.

Finjál (_Arab._), systematically repeated for “Finján” (_pron._ in
Egypt “Fingán”) v. 236.

—— (_vulg._ for “Finján”) = coffee cup, iv. 198.

Firásah (_Arab._) = penetration, iv. 10.

—— _lit._ = judging the points of a mare (_tr._ “physiognomy”) i. 286.

Fir’aun (_Arab._), the dynastic name of Egyptian Kings = Pharaoh (Holy
Writ) vi. 12.

Fire lighted to defend mother and babe from bad spirits, i. 279.

Firozábádí (author of “Kámús”), Tale of, iii. 84.

First day = our Sunday, i. 286.

“First Footsteps” quoted, vi. 65.

First night (wedding night) v. 223.

Fírúz (_Pers._ “Píroz”) = Victorious, triumphant, i. 185.

Firúzah (_Arab._) = turquoise, (_Pers. form_) Pírozah, iii. 270.

Fityán (_pl._ of Fatà) = my fine fellows, ii. 42.

Flfl’a (a scribal error?), may be Filfil = pepper or palm fibre, v.
351.

Flogging as punishment, vi. 9.

Flower = the breast, ii. 252.

Flying Carpet (prototype of) iii. 42.

Food, calls for, at critical times not yet wholly obsolete amongst the
civilised of the nineteenth century, iii. 113.

—— respect due to (Tale of “Daftardar”) v. 86.

“Folk are equal, but in different degrees” (compared with “All men are
created equal”) v. 425.

Force of fancy, iii. 182.

Forehead (compared with a page of paper upon which Destiny writes her
decrees) i. 100.

Formula of the cup and lute, v. 196.

Forwardness on the part of women held to be insulting by modest Moslem,
iv. 68.

Fowl (domestic) unknown to Europe till about the time of Pericles
(_ob._ B.C. 429) iv. 32.

Freemasonry, iv. 288.

“Full dressed and ornamented” (a girl lying beneath a slab), a sign of
foul play, v. 317.

Fumigating gugglets (with musk) ii. 275.

Funeral, Customs at, iii. 380.

Furát River (Euphrates) vi. 122.

Futúh (Al-) _lit._ = the victories (_tr._ “the honorarium”) i. 285.

Gáikwár, iii. 134.

Galland quoted, iii. 3, 12, 18, 19, 20, 22, 51, 58, 71, 77, 82, 87, 91,
108, 110, 116, 140, 158, 160, 167, 171, 297, 303, 321, 327, 331,
334, 335, 341, 348, 351, 353, 355, 363, 369, 377, 380, 385, 416,
422, 429, 446, 472, 500, 506;
iv. 41, 244, 348.

Gandharba-lagana (fairy wedding) of the Hindus, iii. 448.

Gandharbas = heavenly choristers, iii. 448.

Gardener, Egyptian names for (ST.) v. 293.

Gardens of the Hesperides and of King Isope, (Chaucer) iii. 74.

“Gásha” = he produced a sound, iv. 20.

Gauttier quoted, iv. 3, 19, 49, 74, 90, 95, 97, 176, 189, 228, 244,
254, 334.

—— quoted, v. 3, 17, 21, 63, 123, 125, 231, 263.

—— quoted, vi. 3, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, _ib._, 15, _ib._, 33, 34, 41, 59,
68, 89, 167, 225, _ib._, 226, 234.

Gave her the hire of her going forth (_i.e._ Engaged her for a revel
and paid her in advance) 44.

Ghába = departed (may here mean “passed away”) v. 390.

“Ghabasah” (_Arab._) from Ghabas = obscure, dust-colored (_tr._
“clouded of color”) iv. 22.

Ghalílí = my yearning (_tr._ “my thirst”) ii. 102.

“Ghánim bin Ayyúb = The Thrall o’ Love”—position of in Arab. texts
compared with Galland, iii. 303.

Gharbíyah (province in Egypt) ii. 16.

Gharím = debtor or creditor, vi. 77.

Ghashamsham Al- = the Stubborn, the Obstinate, vi. 256.

Ghashím (_Arab._), from the root “Ghashm” (iniquity) = a “Johnny Raw”—a
“raw laddie,” iii. 91.

—— (_Arab._) = a favourite word of insult in Egypt, v. 29.

Ghát (_pop._ “Ghaut”) = the steps (or path) which lead to a watering
place, iii. 491.

Ghattí = “Cover it up,” ii. 158.

Ghaur (or lowland) = the fall of the waist, ii. 252.

Ghuráb al-bayn = Raven of the wold or of parting, ii. 126.

Ghaush = a tree of hard wood whereof musical instruments are made, iv.
20.

“——” for “Ghaushah” = noise, row, vi. 69.

Ghaushah = tumult, quarrel, iv. 20;
(_tr._ “clamour”) a Persianism for which “Ghaughá” is a more common
form, iv. 20.

Ghawwasha = he produced a sound, iv. 20.

Ghawwásún = divers (_tr._ “duckers”) i. 68.

Ghaylah Al- = Siesta-time (Badawi speech), v. 151.

Ghayr an (_Arab._) = otherwise that, except that (_tr._ “Still”) iii.
82.

Ghayr Wá’d or “Min ghayr Wa’d” = _lit._ without previous agreement
(_tr._ “undesignedly”) iv. 149.

Ghayth al-hátil = incessant rain of small drops, vi. 241.

Ghazbán = an angry man, i. 265.

Gháziyah (_Arab._) = a gypsy (_pl._ Ghawázi) iv. 29.

Ghazn = a crease—a wrinkle, iii. 142.

Gheir (_Syriac_) = for (_der._ from Greek γὰρ) iii. 82.

Ghetto, the Jewish quarter (Hárah) which Israelites call “Hazer” = a
court yard, an inclosure, v. 217.

“Ghibtu ’an al-Dunyá” a pop. phrase, _tr._ “I was estranged from the
world,” meaning simply “I fainted,” v. 97.

Ghilmán (in text “Wuldán”), the boys of Paradise, vi. 128.

Ghiovendé (_Turk._), a race of singers and dancers, professional
Nautch-girls, iv. 72.

Ghirárah (_Arab._) (_pl._ “Gharáír”) = a sack, v. 228.

Ghiyár (_Arab._) = any piece of dress or uniform which distinguishes a
class, vi. 52.

—— in Pers. = a strip of yellow cloth worn by Jews subject to the Shah,
vi. 52.

“Ghul-who-eateth-man-we-pray-Allah-for safety” (compound name), v. 161.

Ghubár = dust (joined to ’Afár = “sanddevils”) iv. 262.

Ghúlah = an ogress (_fem._ of Ghúl), iii. 327.

“Ghurrát” (_Arab._) may be bright looks, charms in general, or
“fore-locks” (ST.) v. 88.

Ghusl, or complete ablution, v. 93.

—— ablution, i. 20.

—— or complete ablution after car. cop., i. 220.

Giallo antico, verd’ antico = serpentine limestone, iii. 139.

Giant Face (a parallel to the “Bodiless Head”) ii. 102.

Gil-i-sar-shúí (_Pers._) = head washing clay (_tr._ “fuller’s earth”)
iii. 348.

Girbahs = water-skins, v. 28.

Glass tokens (for coins) iii. 351.

Goat’s droppings (used as fuel, also for practical jokes) i. 288.

Golden Calf of Al-Sámiri, vi. 160.

Goodwife of Cairo and her four gallants (analogous) v. 253.

Gouged out the right eye, v. 322.

Guernsey and Sark folk-lore, v. 328.

Guest-fires, ii. 249.

Guest rite = three days, vi. 26.

Guide going in front, i. 201.

—— (in Africa), following, instead of leading the party, v. 388.

“H” (the final aspirate), use of, v. 419.

Há! Há! so Háka (_fem._ Háki), _Arab._ = Here for thee (_tr._ “There!
there!”) iii. 89.

Habashí = an Abyssinian, iii. 276.

Habbah (_Arab._) = a grain (of barley), an obolus, a mite, vi. 53.

—— Al- = grain (for al-Jinnah) (ST.) v. 108.

Habib, Note on History of, vi. 262.

“——, Prince, and Dorathil-goase” (_Eng. trans._) vi. 225.

Habíb = the Beloved, vi. 226.

“Hábíl” and “Kábíl” (_Arab._) equiv. of Abel and Cain, v. 56.

Habshí (chief) of Jinjírah (=Al-Jazirah, the Island), admiral of the
Grand Moghul’s fleets, iii. 276.

Hadas = moved (“event,” a word not easy to translate) i. 321.

“Hadda ’lláho bayní wa baynakum,” _tr._ “Allah draw the line between me
and you,” v. 406.

Hádi (Al-) Fourth Abbaside (A.D. 785–786) i. 165.

Hæmorrhage stopped by plunging the stump into burning oil, ii. 168.

Háfiz = traditionist and Koran reader, iii. 341.

Hajárata ’l-Bahramán (_Arab._) carbuncles, v. 133.

Hájib = Chamberlain, i. 324.

—— = eyebrow or chamberlain, ii. 252.

Hajj (Al-) = the company of pilgrims (_tr._ “pilgrimage caravan”) i.
196.

“——” never applied to the Visitation (Ziyárah) at Al-Medinah, i. 196.

Hajj al-Shárif = Holy pilgrimage, i. 194.

Hajjáj (Al-), i. 47.

—— son of Yúsuf the Thakafí, v.

Hajjat al-Islam, the Pilgrimage commanded to all Moslems, i. 194.

“Há Káhi Ptáh” (_O. Egypt._) = “the Land of the great God, Ptah,” vi.
12.

Hálah mutawassitah (_Arab._) = middle-class folk, iii. 94.

Haláwat = _lit._ a sweetmeat (ii. 127), a gratuity, a thank-offering
(_tr._ “a douceur”) i. 35.

—— al-Miftáh = Sweetmeat of the Key-money (_tr._ “_douceur_ of the
Key”) ii. 20.

Halbún, The Boobies of (tale concerning them), v. 273.

Halfah grass, ii. 46.

Half-man, an old Plinian fable (_Pers._ Ním-Chihreh, and _Arab._ Shikk)
iv. 76.

Half of marriage-settlement due to wife on divorcement, i. 311.

Hálik (_Arab._) = intensely black, iv. 24.

Halkah = throat, throttle, iv. 190.

“Halwá” = sweetmeat, iv. 7.

Hamadán, a well-known city of Irák ’Ajamí, i. 203.

Hamákah = fury, v. 446.

Hamám = ruffed pigeon, culver, v. 151.

Hamd (Al-) = Allah-lauds, ii. 221.

Hamhama = muttered, i. 265.

Hamídah = the Praiseworthy (according to Totárám Shayyán, instead of
Fátimah = a weaner) iii. 181.

Hammám, _i.e._, the private bagnio, i. 262.

——, necessary to enter after car. cop., vi. 171.

—— bin Ghálib al-Farazdak, a famous Christian Poet, i. 42.

Hammama-hu (_Arab._) = bathed, _i.e._, scraping, kneading, soaping,
etc., iii. 133.

Hámiz = pop. term for pickles (_i.e._, “Sour meat” as opposed to
“sweetmeats”) iv. 7.

Hamlat al-jamal = according to Scott, a “Camel’s load of Treasure,” iv.
59.

Hamzah, uncle of Mahommed, ii. 164.

Hand (She raised her) heavenwards (not “her hands” after Christian
fashion), v. 174.

“Handicraft an it enrich not, still it veileth,” _i.e._, enables a man
to conceal the pressure of impecuniosity, v. 223.

“Hanná-kumú’llah” = Almighty Allah make it pleasant to you, v. 69.

Hanút (_Arab._) = aromatic herbs, iv. 257.

—— = perfumes (leaves of the lotus tree) i. 290.

—— means either “Vintner” or “Vintner’s shop,” vi. 124.

“Haply there will befal thee somewhat contrary to this”—a euphuism
meaning some disaster, v. 237.

Haráis (pl. of Harísah) = meat puddings, i. 287.

Haráj (in _Egypt._ “Harág”) = the cry with which the Dallál (broker)
announces each sum bidden at an auction, iv. 37.

Harám = “forbidden,” sinful (_tr._ “useless”) i. 72.

Harárah = heat (_here der._ from “Hurr,” freeborn) noble, and _tr._
“nobility,” v. 289.

Hárát (or quarters) closed at night with strong wooden doors, ii. 9.

Harem, v. 283.

—— supposed to be in Eastern Wing of Palace, i. 199.

Harfúsh = Larrikin, popularly a “blackguard,” i. 4.

Harím (women) = the broken pl. of “Hurmah,” from “Haram,” the honour of
the house (also an infinitive whose pl. is Harímát = the women of a
family) v. 283.

Harísah = meat puddings, ii. 277.

—— = meat pudding, vi. 159.

Harj, gen. joined with Marj (Harj wa Marj) = utter confusion, chaos
(ST.) iv. 342.

Harj wa Laght (_Arab._) = turmoil and trouble (ST.) iv. 342.

Harrán, King of, iii. 269.

—— (the Hebrew Charran) iii. 269.

Harun al-Rashid (house still standing) i. 15.

—— and his famous pilgrimage from Baghdad to Mecca, iii. 177.

Hasá Al = the Plain of Pebbles, vi. 169.

Hasab wa nasab = degree and descent, v. 43.

Hasal (for which read Khasal) _tr._ “gain,” v. 425.

Hasan, the Handsome (in the old trans. “The Hazen”) (Kházin =
treasurer?) vi. 68.

Háshim = breaker, i. 47.

“Háshimí,” _i.e._, a descendant of Al-Háshim, great grandfather of the
Prophet, vi. 191.

Hashimites (and Abbasides) fine specimens of the Moslem Pharisee, i.
159.

Hashísh = Bhang in general, iv. 19; confection of, iv. 195.

Hasír = mat (used for sleeping on during the hot season), i. 204.

Hásil (Al-) (_Arab._) = government stores, also the taxes, the revenue,
vi. 60.

Hátíf = an ally, ii. 234.

Hátif, or invisible speaker, iii. 519.

Hatím (wall) = The “broken” (wall) to the north of Ka’abah, v. 180.

Hátim of the Tayy-tribe, proverbial for liberality, vi. 167.

Haudaj (_Arab._) = a camel-litter, _tr._ “Howdah,” v. 193.

—— = camel-litter, vi. 181.

“Haukalah” and “Haulakah,” i. 265.

Hauráni = (native of Hauran), Job’s country, ii. 50.

Hawálín, cler. error for either “hawálà” = all around, or “Hawálí” =
surroundings (ST.), v. 301.

“Hawánít” _pl._ of “Hanút” = the shop or vault of a Vintner (_tr._
“taverns”) vi. 124.

Hawar, many meanings of, vi. 73.

Hawwúlín (_Arab._), _tr._ “over his ears,” (a corrupt passage in text)
v. 301.

Hayfá Al-, _i.e._, “The Slim-waisted,” v. 125.

Háyishah from ✓ “Haysh” = spoiling, iv. 190.

Haykal (_Ar._ and _Heb._) = a large space, a temple (_tr._ “hallowed
fane”) ii. 175.

Haysumah (_Arab._) = smooth stones (_tr._ “pebbles”) iv. 347.

Hayy = either serpent, or living, alive (_tr._ “living branch”) vi. 99.

Hazár = the nightingale, or bird of a thousand songs, v. 151.

Hazer = a courtyard, an inclosure, v. 217.

Házir (_Arab._) corresponds with English “Yes, sir!” (_tr._ “Present”),
iv. 254.

Házúr (Al-) = loquacity, frivolous garrulity (_tr._ “jargon”) i. 283.

“He who keeps his hands crossed upon his breast, shall not see them cut
off,” i. 114.

He is of the lords of houses = folk of good family, ii. 169.

“He Pilgrimaged: quoth one, Yes, and for his villainy lives (yujáwir)
at Meccah.”—_Egyptian Proverb_, i. 196.

He for she, iv. 29.

“He found the beasts and their loads and the learned men,” etc., a new
form of “bos atque sacerdos,” iv. 311.

“He found her a treasure wherefrom the talisman had been loosed,” v.
14.

“He ... who administereth between a man and his heart,” a Koranic
phrase (ST.) v. 42.

“He readeth it off (readily) as one drinketh water,” vi. 5.

He sat upon ashes (may be figurative or literal) vi. 19.

“He mounted his father and clothed himself with his mother” = he sold
his father for a horse and his mother for a fine dress, vi. 105.

Head cut off and set upon the middle of the corpse (in case of a Jew),
or under the armpit (in case of a Moslem), iv. 64.

Head placed at a distance from the body (by way of insult) vi. 15.

Headsman paces round convict three times preparatory to execution; a
custom at the Courts of Caliphs generally, vi. 52.

“Health to you and healing,” usual formulæ when a respectable person is
seen drinking, vi. 47.

Heaven, the fifth = the planet Mars, v. 119.

Hebrews and their Exodus (Exposition by Mr. Thayer) vi. 113.

Helios (Apollo), Worship of, not extinct in mod. Greece, vi. 100.

“Hell-flame but not shame,” _proverb_, ii. 148.

“Help ye a Moslemah” (in text “Help ye the Moslems”) v. 368.

Hemp, Indian, iv. 195.

Her desire was quenched, iv. 144.

Herklots quoted, v. 28.

Heron quoted, v. 27;
vi. 41, 50, 52, 68, 72, 167, 168, 169, 170, 173, 178, 225, 234, 242,
245, 247.

Hibá = dust, ii. 244.

Hibernicè, “kilt” for beaten, i. 247.

“Hicar was a native of the country of Haram (Harrán), and had brought
from thence the knowledge of the true God,” vi. 4.

Hidden (for fear of the “Eye”) i. 75.

Hidyah (_Arab._) in Egypt = a falcon (_tr._ “a Kite”) iv. 101.

“Hie Salvationwards” (the Words of Azán) i. 42.

Hifán (_pl._ of “Hafnah”) = handful, mouthful (ST.) v. 11.

Hijáz (Al-) = The Moslem’s Holy Land, (Cap. Meccah) ii. 193.

Hikáyah (=literal production of a discourse, etc.) iv. 39.

Hilál = the crescent (waxing or waning) for the first and last two or
three nights, v. 72.

Hilm (vision), “au ’Ilm” (knowledge) _Arab._ (_tr._ dreaming or awake)
a phrase peculiar to this MSS., iv. 39.

Himà = the tribal domain (_tr._ “tribe-land”) ii. 215.

—— = the private and guarded lands of a Badawi tribe (_tr._ “demesne”)
v. 142.

Himyán (or Hamyán) = a girdle (_tr._ “purse belt”) i. 152.

Himyarite (in text “Akyál,” _pl._ of “Kayl” = “Kings of the Himyarite
peoples”) here = the heroes, vi. 232.

Hindostani Version quoted, iii. 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 19, 26, 27, 33, 51,
57, 61, 75, 79, 82, 85, 87, 95, 96, 97, 105, 113, 114, 116, 125,
129, 133, 137, 140, 144, 147, 148, 150, 158, 159, 160, 161, 166,
167, 170, 171, 174, 175, 180, 185, 188, 189, 294, 297, 355, 377,
380, 422, 446.

Hirfah = a trade, a guild, a corporation (_here_ the officers of
police) ii. 54.

His head forewent his feet = He fell down senseless, i. 17.

“His eyes turned in his head” (to show the whites, as happens to the
mesmerised) ii. 242.

“His bones were crushed upon his flesh” for “His flesh ... bones,” iv.
347.

Hisában tawíl = a long punishment, vi. 157.

“History of Chec Chahabeddin” (Shaykh Shiháb al-Dín) in “Turkish Tales”
of Petis de la Croix = here, “The Tale of the Warlock and the Young
Cook of Baghdad,” vi. 121.

“Hizà (‏حظى‎, in MS. ‏حفى‎) bi-Zaijati-há” = _le bonheur de ses
aventures_, vi. 260.

Hizám = girdle, sash, waist-belt, _tr._ “waist-shawl,” iii. 20.

Hms = Vetchling, vi. 74.

“Ho! Aloes good for use. Ho! Pepper,” etc., cries of an itinerant
pedlar hawking about women’s wares, v. 351.

Ho, Tuffáhah! Ho, Ráhat al-Kulúb = O Apple, O Repose o’ Hearts, &c., i.
17.

Holy House (youth being of, can deny that he belongs to any place or
race), v. 39.

Hobal, the biggest idol in the Meccan Pantheon, vi. 26.

Horseman of the horsemen, _i.e._, not a well-known or distinguished
horseman, but a chance rider, vi. 92.

Horse-thief chained to four pickets of iron, ii. 224.

Horses used in India, iii. 297.

Hospitality (House of) v. 330.

Houdas (Professor) quoted, v. 47, 48; vi. 7, 36, 48, 57, 62, 66, 67,
72, 84, 104, 125, 126, 147, 178, 187, 188, 189, 191, 243, 247, 251,
257.

Hour (would his hour had never come) i. 27.

Houri, vi. 73.

House of the Elephant = the Castle’s squares at chess, ii. 205.

—— of Háshim, great grandfather to the prophet, v. 46.

—— masters (also Kings) in the East are the last to be told a truth
familiar to all but themselves and their wives, iv. 351.

—— made of cob or unbaked brick, which readily melts in rain, iv. 214.

Housewife, Egyptian or Syrian, will make twenty dishes out of roast
lamb, iv. 174.

“How very good he was to me,” i. 32.

“How was it thou honouredst us, and what was the cause of thy coming,
etc.” the address of well-bred man to a stranger, vi. 170.

Hubban li-raasi-k (_Arab._) _lit._ = out of love for thy head, _i.e._,
from affection for thee, iv. 50.

Hudá Sirru-hu, _i.e._, his secret sin was guided (by Allah) to the
safety of concealment, _tr._ “his secret was safe directed,” v. 339.

—— (Dr. Steingass reads “Wahadá Sirru-hu” = “and his mind was at
rest”), v. 339.

Hudhud (_tr._ “hoopoe”) called from its cry (“Hood! Hood!”) i. 148.

Hujjat = a legal deed (may also mean “an excuse”) ii. 27.

Hummus (or Himmis) = vetches, iv. 7.

Hundred dirhams = £4 (about), i. 43.

Húr (Al-Ayn) feminine counterparts of the “Boys of Paradise” (Ghilmán)
vi. 128.

—— al-Ayn = our vulgar “Houri,” vi. 73.

Húrí (_Arab._) for Húr = pool, marsh or quagmire (vulg. “bogshop”) iv.
206.

Husn tadbir = _lit._ “beauty of his contrivance” (_tr._ “Seemliness of
his stratagem”) ii. 29.

“Huwa inná lam na’rifu-h” (_Arab._) _lit._ = He, verily we wot him not
(suggesting “I am he”) iv. 133.

Hysterics, common amongst the races of the East, i. 198.

Hydrophobia in Egypt, iii. 330.

Hypocrites = those who feign to be Moslems when they are miscreants,
iii. 83.

“I am an Irání but Walláhi indeed I am not lying” (Persian saying for
“I will shun leasing”), v. 303.

“—— as one who hath fallen from the heavens to the earth,” _i.e._, an
orphan and had seen better days, iv. 75.

—— between his hands = at his service, i. 280.

“I bade her be the owner of herself,” one of the formulas of divorce,
vi. 178.

I cannot fill my eye with the twain = I cannot look at them long, ii.
88.

“I change the pasture” = I pass from grave to gay, etc., iv. 7.

“I commit him to thy charge under God,” ii. 184.

“I have accepted,” the normal idiom “I accept,” vi. 81.

“I have not any eye that can look at him” = “I cannot bear to see him,”
ii. 110.

I have not found thy heel propitious to me, i. 21.

“I must present myself before him (the King) with face unveiled,” a
Persian custom for women, iii. 533.

I smell the scent of the Jinn, ii. 125.

“I think not otherwise” = “I am quite sure,” ii. 119.

“I will hire thee a shop in the Chauk” = Carfax or market street, iii.
61.

I will lay down my life to save thee from sorrow—a commonplace
hyperbole of love, ii. 181.

Ibl, specific name for camels (_tr._ “certain camels”) i. 315.

Ibn al Sammák = Son of the fisherman or fishmonger, i. 171.

—— mín, a vulgarism for “man,” iii. 53.

Ibráa = deliverance from captivity, v. 203.

Ibrahim al-Harráni (_Arab._ title for Abraham) iii. 270.

—— of Mosul, the far famed musician, v. 193.

“’Iddah” = days during which a widow cannot marry (_tr._ “widowhood”)
iii. 379.

“If Almighty Allah have appointed unto thee aught thou shalt obtain it
without toil and travail”—a favourable sentiment, iii. 10.

“If his friend the Devil be overstrong for thee, flee him rather than
be slain,” ii. 202.

If my hand were changed = if my hand had lost its cunning, ii. 78.

“’Ifr” (_fem._ ’Ifrah) = a wicked and dangerous man, iii. 80.

Ifrít, mostly derived from “’afar” = dust, iii. 80.

Ihtidá = divine direction, i. 313.

Ihtimám wa Ghullah (former should be written with major aspirate
meaning “fever”) _tr._ “there befel him much concern,” v. 421.

Ihtirák = burning (used in the metaphorical sense of consuming,
torturing) i. 35.

Ihramat li al-Salát = she pronounced the formula of Intention (Niyat)
(_tr._ “the Prohibition”), ii. 94.

“Ij’alní fí Kll,” (the latter word a cler. error for “Kal-a” or “Kiláa”
= safety, protection) = Set me in a place of safety, vi. 84.

“Ikhbár” (=mere account of the discourse, _oratio indirecta_, etc.) iv.
39.

Iklím = climes, ii. 3.

“Ilà an káta-ka ’l-’amal al-rabíh” (In MS. giving no sense.
Translations by Author and Dr. Steingass) v. 58.

’Iláj (Al-) = insertion (_tr._ “horizontal refreshment”) ii. 185.

Illicit intercourse, (method intended to procure) vi. 126.

’Ilm al-Ghayb (_Arab._) = the Science of Hidden Things, iii. 452.

—— al-Híah, _gen. tr._ “Astrology”—here meaning Scientific Physiognomy,
iii. 32.

—— al-Hurúf (_Arab._) _tr._ “Notaricon,” iv. 80.

Imr al-Kays (in text “Imryu ’l-Kays”) a pre-Islamitic poet (“The man of
al-Kays”) v. 181.

’Ilm al-Mukáshafah = the Science by which Eastern adepts discover man’s
secret thoughts (_tr._ “Thought reading”) iii. 539.

Ilm al-Raml = (Science of the Sand), our geomancy, iii. 156.

Imam = Antistes or fugleman at prayer who leads off the orisons, ii.
101.

Imám = a leader of prayer, iii. 380.

—— = an antistes—a leader in prayer (a word with a host of meanings)
iii. 27.

—— (the spiritual title of the Caliph) i. 43.

Imán = prayer, iii. 380.

’Imárah = a building, _tr. here_ souterrain (probably clerical error
for Maghárah = a cave, a souterrain) iii. 15.

Impotence, causes and cure of, iv. 257.

Improbable details on which stories depend, iii. 160.

In a modest way (_lit._ In the way of moderation) i. 248.

Inbasata ’l-Layl al-Asá = “when the night of offence was dispread,” vi.
243.

Indecencies of Bhang-eaters, iv. 196.

Indian hemp, iv. 195.

“’Ind ’uzzáti ’s-siníni” (_Arab._) = _lit._ the thorny shrubs of ground
bare of pasture, v. 59.

Infanticide (in accordance with the manners of the age) iii. 497.

“In lam tazidd Kayní” = _lit._ unless thou oppose my forming or
composing (_tr._ “unless thou avert my shame”) iv. 11.

“Inna házih Hurmah; lam ’alay-há Shatárah” = “Truly this one is a
woman; I must not act vilely or rashly towards her” (ST.) v. 220.

Inscriptions on metal trays sold to Europeans—(also on tablecloths) ii.
87.

“Insistance overcometh hindrance” (equiv. of “’Tis dogged as does it”
of Charles Darwin) v. 171.

Intersexual powers, vaunting, v. 91.

“Intihába ’l furas” _lit._ = the snatching of opportunities (_tr._
“divest himself in a pleasurable case”) v. 222.

Intoxication (properly meaning “poisoning”) a term to be left for
“teetotallers” to use, v. 315.

Inverted speech, form of, v. 60.

Irak Al-, the head-quarters of the Khárijite heresy, v. 213.

Iraks (two) = Irák Arabí (Chaldæe) and ’Ajami (Western Persia) ii. 191.

Irán (father of the Furs) = Persians, etc son of “Ashur,” vi. 3.

Irham turham = Pity and shalt be pitied (one of the few passive verbs
still used in pop. par.) v. 169.

’Irk = vein (of our eye) _equiv. to_ “the apple of the eye,” ii. 144.

—— al-Háshimí = the Háshimí vein, i. 29.

“—— al-Usná” (_Arab._) = chordæ testiculorum (_tr._ “testicle-veins”)
v. 52.

Irregular use of inn, perpetuated in some monster hotels throughout
Europe, ii. 20.

Irtiyád = a place where the urine spray may not defile the dress (_tr._
“a place to make water”) ii. 13.

“’Irz” (=protection), “Hurmah” and “Shatárah” (words explaining each
other mutually) (ST.) v. 220.

Isá, according to Moslems, was not begotten in the normal way, vi. 100.

Isaac of Mosul, the Greatest of Arab Musicians, ii. 70.

“Ishá” prayer, iv. 296.

Is’hák = Isaac (Abraham and Isaac) vi. 104.

Is’háku kána ’l-Zabíh = Isaac was the victim, vi. 104.

Ishári, a word which may have many meanings (_tr._ “a white cock in his
tenth month”) iv. 341.

Ishmael (not Isaac) made the hero by mod. Moslems of the story “Abraham
and Isaac,” vi. 104.

Ishtalaka = he surmised, discovered (a secret), v. 33.

Islam Al- is based upon the fundamental idea of a Republic, vi. 194.

—— (Shaykh of), v. 317.

Israel, history of the name, vi. 100.

Israelite, now polite synonym for Jew, vi. 100.

Isráfíl = Raphael, v. 302.

Istanáda ’ala Shakkati-h, _tr._ “(he might) lean against his quarter,”
v. 401.

—— “he lay down on his rug” (ST.) v. 401.

“Istanatú lá-ha” (presupposing “istanattú” 10th form of “natt” = he
jumped) _tr._ “they threw themselves on her neck” (Dr. Steingass
takes it for 8th form of “sanat” and translates “listened
attentively”) v. 34.

Istífá = choice, selection, v. 203.

Istikhráj Al- = making “elegant extracts,” v. 126.

Istiláh (_Arab._) = Specific dialect, idiom (_tr._ “right direction”)
iv. 104.

Istinshák (_Arab._) one of the items of the Wuzú or lesser ablution
(_tr._ “water”) iv. 58.

“Itawwaha,” _tr._ “throwing his right leg over his back,” v. 382.

—— (Dr. Steingass also explains and translates) v. 382.

Ittikà (viiith of ✓ wakà); the form Takwà gen. used = fearing God, vi.
96.

Iyálah = government-general, iv. 245.

’Iyál-hu = _lit._ his family (_tr._ wives) ii. 8.

Iyás al-Muzani, al Kazi (of Bassorah) the Model Physiognomist, iv. 107.

“Iz lam naakhaz, wa-illá,” etc., a fair specimen of Arab. ellipsis, iv.
300.

Ja’ad = a curl, a liberal man, iv. 14.

Ja’ad al-yad = miserly, iv. 14.

Ja’afar, the model Moslem minister, v. 72.

Jabábirah—fabled Giant rulers of Syria, iii. 86.

Jabal (Al-) al-Mukawwar = the Crescent Mountain (from Kaur = a park)
ii. 119.

Jabal al-Saháb = “The mount of clouds,” v. 376.

Jabal Ka’ka’án, the highest parts of Meccah, inhabited by the Jurham
tribe (so called from their clashing armour and arms) vi. 131.

Jabhat = the lintel, opposed to the threshold (_tr. here_ “forehead” of
his shop) ii. 137.

Jabr (Al-) = the tyranny (equiv. of “Civil law”) i. 212.

Jady (_Arab._) = the zodiacal sign Capricorn (_tr._ “kid”) v. 46.

Jafr, supposed to mean a skin (camel’s or dog’s) prepared as parchment
for writing, vi. 168.

Jafr Al-, a cabalistic book, prognosticating all that will ever happen
to Moslems, vi. 168.

—— Al-, confused with “Ja’afar bin Tayyár” the Jinni, vi. 168.

Jaftáwát (_Arab._) _pl._ of _Turk._ “Chifút” = a Jew, or mean fellow,
vi. 67.

Jahím-hell, v. 55, 201.

Jahl = ignorance (also wickedness) i. 271.

Jahrbaur (a fancy name intended to be Persian) i. 93.

Ja’ídiyah (_Arab._) a favourite word in this MSS. = “Sharpers,” iv. 14,
280.

Jáizah (viaticum) = a day and night, vi. 26.

“Jalabí” (in text) afterwards written “Shalabí,” v. 335.

Jalak, the older name of Damascus, the “Smile of the Prophet,” vi. 167.

Jálínús = “Galen” (considered by Moslems a pre-Islamitic saint) i. 284.

Jám = either mirror or cup (meaning doubtful) iii. 440.

Jama’a atráfa-h, _lit._ = he drew in his extremities (_tr._ “covered
his hands and feet with his dress”) i. 114.

Jamal fálij = the palsy-camel, ii. 235.

“Jamarát of the Arabs” = Banú Numayr, Banú Háris, and Banú Dabbah, vi.
7.

Jámi’ = cathedral mosque, i. 250.

Jámí al-Amawí (_Arab._) Cathedral Mosque of the Ommiades, one of the
Wonders of the Moslem World, vi. 172.

Jám-i-Jamshíd, a well-worn commonplace in Moslem folk-lore, iii. 440.

Jamíl bin Ma’mar al-Uzri. (“Jamíl the Poet,” and lover of Buthaynah),
i. 41.

Jamrah = a bit of burning charcoal, ii. 122.

—— = a live coal, ii. 87.

“——” (_Arab._) a word of doubtful origin, applied to a self dependent
tribe (_tr._ “live coal”) vi. 7.

Jámúsah (_Arab._) = buffalo-cow, iv. 26.

Janákilah = gypsies, iv. 72.

Janánan may also read “Jinánan” (ST.) vi. 138.

—— (? _vulg._ form of “Jannatan” = the garden (of Paradise)) _tr._ “the
garths of Paradise,” vi. 138.

Janázah, bier with a corpse thereon, iv. 289.

Jarazat Kuzbán (_pl._ of Kazíb) = long and slender sticks, vi. 76.

Janínáti Al- = the market gardener, v. 293.

Jánn, Al- (MS. preserves rare form of, for the singular) iv. 88.

Jannat al-Khuld (_Arab._) = the Eternal Garden, v. 172.

Janzír (vulgarism for “Zanjír”) = a chain, i. 20.

Jaríd = The Cane-play, iii. 327.

—— or reed used as a javelin, iv. 173.

—— _pop._ Jeríd = the palm-frond used as javelin, iii. 145.

Jarídah (_Arab._), = Palm-frond stripped of its leaves, i. 264; iv.
173.

Jarír al-Khatafah, i. 39.

Jarír bin ’Abd al-Masíh (Mutalammis, a poet of The Ignorance) vi. 94.

Járiyah = damsel, slave-girl, used instead of “Sabiyah” = young lady,
i. 134.

Járiyah rádih, Al-, _tr._ “the good graces of her mistress,” v. 161.

Jarmúk, son of “Ashur,” vi. 3.

Jarrah (_Arab._) = flask, v. 321.

Jashísh = coarsely ground wheat (ST.) v. 347.

Jatháni = the wife of an elder brother (_tr._ “sister-in-law”) iii.
373.

Jauhar = the jewel, the essential nature of a substance (_tr._
“quintessence”) i. 212.

Jauhar-jí (_Arab._) a Turkish form for Jauharí, iv. 21.

Jauharjíyyah, _tr._ jewellers (an Arab. pl. of an Arabised Turkish
sing.—ji for—chí = (crafts) man) iii. 95.

Jawádit Al- = animals freshly slain, vi. 257.

Jawákín (_Arab._) _pl._ of Arab. Jaukán for _Pers._ “Chaugán,” a
crooked stick (used in Polo), vi. 125.

Jáwar = he became a Mujáwir (one who lives near a collegiate mosque) i.
196.

Jáwúsh (_Arab._) for Cháwush (_Turk._) = an army sergeant, etc., iv.
45.

Jay’a Al- = the onyx (a well-omened stone) v. 130.

“Jayb” = the breast of a gown, also used in sense of a pocket, vi. 42.

Jayyid, _der._ from root “Jaud” = to excel. (ST.) vi. 5.

Jazdán = a pen-case (_Pers._) more prop. called Kalamdán = a reed box,
iv. 322.

Jazirah = insula, island, used in the sense of “peninsula,” ii. 220.

Jazírah (Al-) (_Arab._) = Mesopotamia, iii. 269.
“Jews hold lawful to them the good of Moslems.” (Comparison of Jew
and Christian in matters relating to dealing) iii. 93.

Jazr = cutting, strengthening, flow (of tide) v. 203.

Jehovah, the tribal deity of the Jews, vi. 4.

Jerusalem, Temple of, a _fac simile_ of the orig. built by Jehovah in
the lowest heaven, _i.e._, that of the moon, vi. 105.

Jewel inserted in the shoulder, i. 228.

Jewels (luminous) iii. 354.

Jeweller, held to be one of the dishonest classes, iv. 21.

Jiddan (Egypto-Syrian) = muchly, i. 115.

Jiház (_Arab. Egypt._ “Gaház”) = marriage portion, v. 28.

“Jílan ba’da Jíl” the latter word = revolutions, change of days, tribe,
people,
v. 476.

Jím (j) with 3 dots, a Persian letter still preserved in Arabic
alphabets of Marocco, etc., vi. 182.

Jink of Egypt (called by Turkish soldiers Ghiovendé) iv. 72.

Jinn (_Arab._) = spirit or energy of a man, vi. 183.

—— “Curiosity,” vi. 62.

—— -mad (or in Persian “Parí-stricken,”—smitten by the fairies) v. 249.

Jinns of Northern Europe, ii. 86.

Jinníyah = the Jinn feminine, iii. 470.

Joanna Papissa (Pope John VIII. called “Pope Joan”) i. 340.

Job (traditions of) ii. 50.

Jugular veins (esp. the external pair) carry blood to the face, and are
subject abnormally to the will, v. 340.

Julnár = Gulnare, ii. 100.

Jumlatun min al-mál = Worth a mint of money, iv. 59.

Jummayz (_Arab._) = a tall sycamore tree, v. 117.

Jund (_Arab._) _pl._ “Junúd” = “guards,” a term mostly applied to
regular troops under Government, vi. 16.

Juráb al-’uddah (_Arab._) _i.e._, The manacles, fetters, etc., vi. 78.

“Júrah Syán” for “Jurah sayyál” = a stinking fosse a-flowing, vi. 35.

Ká’ah (_Arab._) = the apodyterium or undressing room upon which the
vestibule of the Hammam opens (_tr._ “great hall”) iii. 133.

—— = a saloon, vi. 61.

Ka’b = heel, glory, prosperity, i. 21.

Kabá (_Pers._) = a short coat or tunic, vi. 48.

Kababjí (for “Kabábji”), seller of Kabábs (_tr._ “cook”) v. 225.

Kabad = liver, sky vault, the handle or grip of a bow (_tr._ here
“belly” of the bow), vi. 257.

Kabbaltu = I have accepted, _i.e._, I accept emphatically, iii. 37.

Kabdán (usual form “Kaptán” from _Ital._ “Capitano”) = Captain (ship’s)
(Turk. form, as in “Kapúdán-pashá” Lord High Admiral of ancient
Osmanli land), v. 402.

Kábil-ki (? _cler._ error for Kátil-ki = Allah strike thee dead) _tr._
“Allah requite thee,” vi. 55.

Kabírah = head of the household (_i.e._, the mother), vi. 83.

Kabr al-Sitt, wherein Sitt Zaynab is supposed to lie buried (_tr._
“Lady’s Tomb”), vi. 171.

Kabsh (_Arab._) = ram, v. 299.

Kabút (_pl._ Kabábít) = “Capotes,” v. 274.

Kad = verily (affirmative particle preceding a verb gives it a present
and at times a future signification) i. 245.

Kadíd Al- (_Arab._) = jerked meat flesh smoked, or sun-dried (_tr._
“boucan’d meat”) v. 51.

Kadr = rank, i. 48.

Kádúm for “Kudúm” (Syrian form) to “adze,” iv. 101.

Káfi’ah Al- = parapet, vi. 72.

Káfir (_i.e._, a non-Moslem) Everything fair in dealing with, iv. 316.

Kahana (_Heb._) = he ministered (priests’ offices or other business)
vi. 109.

Kahbah = whore, i. 12.

—— = our whore (_i.e._ hired woman), vi. 46.

Káhin, usual plurals of, are Kahanah and Kuhhán (ST.) iv. 320.

—— = a Cohen, a Jewish Priest, a soothsayer, vi. 109.

Káhinah = Divineress (fem. of Káhin), i. 279.

Káhirah = City of Mars, Cairo, iv. 35.

Kahramán (_alias_ Samarbán) (W. M. MS.) iv. 6.

Kahramánah = housekeeper (also nurse, duenna, &c. &c.) i. 199.

—— (_Arab._) = a nurse, a duenna, an Amazon guarding the Harem, iv. 78.

—— a word of many senses, vi. 89.

Ká’id; _lit._ = one who sits with a colleague (_tr._ “Captain”) i. 59.

“Káík” and “Káík-jí” the well-known Caïque of the Bosphorous, v. 236.

Káim-makám = a deputy (governor, etc.) v. 281.

Ka’ka’ = “jingle and jangle” (of horses’ tramp) vi. 131.

“Káká Siyáh” (_Pers._), _i.e._, “black brother” (a domestic negro), see
his Názi-núzí, iii. 285.

Kála al-Ráwí, etc., parenthetical formula = “The Story-teller sayeth,
etc.,” i. 347.

Kalak (_Arab._), _lit._ = agitation, disquietude (used as syn. with
Kúlanj = a true colic), iv. 177.

Kála’l-Ráwi = the reciter saith, v. 64.

—— ’l-Ráwí = quoth the reciter, vi. 227.

Kál (al-Ráwí) = “the Reciter saith” (a formula omitted here), vi. 15.

Kalamdán = reed box. iv. 322.

Kalamátu ’llah = the Koran, iv. 252.

“Kalansuwah”-cap—a distinguishing mark of the Coptic regular clergy,
iv. 34.

Kalb = stomach (sometimes “heart”) i. 26.

—— (for “Kulbat”) = a cave, a cavern (_tr._ “conduit”) iv. 214.

Kalí = potash (our “alcali”) i. 8.

Kalím = one who speaks with another, a familiar, v. 203.

Kalímu’llah = Title of Moses, on account of the Oral Law and
conversations at Mount Sinai, v. 203.

Kám Khudáí = master of his passions, iii. 269.

Káma (_Arab._) = he rose; _equiv. to_ “he began” in vulg. speech, iii.
389.

—— -Shástra = the Cupid gospel, iii. 429.

Kamar al-Ashráf = Moon of the Nobles, vi. 226.

—— al-Zamán (“Moon of the Time”), vi. 233.

Kamariyah (_der. from_ Kamar = Moon) = coloured glass windows, ii. 39

“Kamá zukira fí Dayli-h” = “Let it be, as is said, in the tail,” vi.
126.

Kamburisíyah = clotted curd, vi. 159.

Kamal (_Arab._) = Louse, vi. 99.

Kamís (χιτών, chemise, etc.) = shirt, i. 346.

Kamrah = the chief cabin (from _Gr._ καμάρα = vault), _tr._ “cuddy,” v.
24

Kanání (_plur._ of Kinnínah) = glass bottle, iii. 92.

Kanát (_Arab._) _tr._ water-leat, iv. 350.

Kandíl (Al-) al-’ajíb = the Wonderful Lamp, iii. 135.

Kanísah = a Pagan temple, a Jewish synagogue, a Christian Church, i.
198.

Kapú = a door, a house, or a Government office, vi. 179.

—— Katkhúdási = the agent which every Governor is obliged to keep at
Constantinople, vi. 180.

Kapúdán-pashá = Lord High Admiral of ancient Osmanli land, v. 402.

Kapújí = a porter. Kapújí-báshí = head porter, vi. 179.

Kár’ah, now usually called “Maslakh” = stripping room, iii. 133.

Karawán = crane or curlew (_Charadrius œdicnemus_) v. 151.

Karb, one of whose meanings is “to inflate the stomach,” iv. 182.

Kárdán (Persian) = Business-knower, i. 94.

Kárishín = chasing, being in hot pursuit of (ST.) v. 405.

Karít (✓ Kart) = complete, speaking of a year, etc. (ST.) iv. 337.

Kariyah = a village (derivation) i. 83.

Karkabah (_Arab._), Clerical error for Karkarah = driving; rumbling of
wind in bowels, iv. 182.

Karm (✓), originally means cutting a slip of skin from the camel’s nose
by way of mark, v. 266.

Karmán = Karmania, vulg. and fancifully derived from Kirmán. Pers. =
worms, i. 59.

Kart = complement, or here, “remainder,” (ST.) iv. 337.

Karúr = a crore, iii. 129.

Karz (_Arab._) = moneys lent in interest without fixed term of payment,
as _opp._ to “Dayn,” vi. 29.

Kasalah = a shock of corn, assemblage of sheaves, v. 53.

—— may be cler. error for “Kasabah” = stalk, haulm, straw, v. 53.

Kas’at (=a wooden platter or bowl) Mafrúkah, _tr._ “hand-robbed flour,”
v. 349.

Kasf = houghed, i. 155.

Kashákish (_Arab._), from the quadril. ✓ Kashkasha = he gathered fuel
(_here tr._ “fuel sticks”) iii. 67.

Kash’am, a term having various sigs., iv. 183.

Káshán (Well of), proverbial for its depth, vi. 127.

“Kashmar,” a word not to be found in dictionary, iv. 25.

Kasht = skinning (a camel) ✓ of Mikshat (_Arab._), iv. 100.

Kashshara = grinned a ghastly smile (also laughing so as to shew the
teeth), v. 461.

Kásid = messenger, ii. 37.

Kasím (an unusual word), _tr._ “tax tribute,” vi. 18.

Kasír (the Little one) iii. 390.

Kásituna (Al-) = The Swervers, i. 52.

Kasr = abbreviation, i. 295.

Katá = sand-grouse, v. 151.

“Kata’ al-arba’,” or cutting off the four members, equiv. to our
“quartering,” v. 96.

Kata’a Judúr-há (for “hú”) _tr._ “backbone,” v. 353.

—— (Dr. Steingass refers pronoun in “Judúr-há” _tr._ “Rabakah,” taking
the “roots of the neck,” _tr._ = spine) v. 353.

Katá grouse, vi. 65.

(Kataba) Zayjata-há = marriage-writ, vi. 259.

Katáif (_pl._) = Katífah-cakes, a kind of pancake, vi. 45.

Kátil-ki = Allah strike thee dead, vi. 55.

Katalú-ní = they killed me, vi. 185.

Kattán = linen, flax (_tr._ “linen web”) iv. 104.

Kattu from “Katta” = he cut (in breadth, as opposed to Kadda = he cut
lengthwise) iii. 52.

Kauk (Káka, yakúku) to chuck, iv. 203.

Kauk = an aquatic bird with a long neck, iv. 203.

Kaunayn (_Arab._) = the two entities, this world and other world (_tr._
here “Two Beings”) vi. 249.

Kauri (or “Cowrie,” _Cypræa moneta_), iii. 348.

Kaus al-Bunduk (or Bundúk) (_Arab._) = a pellet-bow (_Ital._ arcobugio,
_Eng._ arquebuse), vi. 53.

Kawá’ib Al- = High-breasted (also P. N. of the river) v. 176.

Kawá’ib Al- (A P.N. of word unknown to author); _lit._ meaning “of
high-breasted virgins,” v. 129.

Kawání al- (_pl._ of Kanát) = the spears (_tr._ here “punishment”),
also read “al-Ghawání” (ST.) vi. 147.

Kawárijí (_Arab._) = one who uses the paddle, a rower (_tr._ “boatman”)
iii. 18.

Kawík (_Arab._) = magpie, iv. 203.

Kawwárah, _tr._ “Sherd” (not found in dictionary) iv. 179.

“Kayasirah” (Cæsars) _opp._ to Akásirah, (kisras) ii. 263.

Kayf, favourite word in Egypt and Syria, i. 58.

—— a tranquil enjoyment, iv. 196.

—— = joy, the pleasure of living, vi. 174.

Kaylúlah = Siesta, iv. 324.

Kayrawán = Curlew, ii. 93.

Kazafa (_Arab._) = threw up, vomited, vi. 135.

Kazánát (_pl._ of “Kázán”) = crucibles (opp. to Kawálib = moulds) v.
108.

Kázánát Al- (_pl._ of Kázán) = chauldrons (_Turk._ “Kazghán”) (ST.) v.
25.

Kazázah = vulg. a (flask of) glass, iv. 179.

Kazdír, may here allude to the canisters used by small shopkeepers
(_tr._ “tin”) iv. 338.

Kázi, ex-officio guardian of the orphans and their property liable to
punishment in case of Fraud, ii. 10.

Kází al-Askar = the great legal authority of a country (_tr._ “Kazi of
the Army”) v. 310.

Kázi bade ancient dame precede him (on reaching door), lest he happen
to meet an unveiled woman upon the upper stairs, vi. 58.

Kazzák = Cossacks, bandits, etc. (_here tr._ “pirates”) iii. 288.

Kbb (possibly “Kubb” for “Kubbah”) = a vault, a cupola, v. 376.

Kerchief, throwing the, iv. 264.

Keyhole (Eastern) cannot be spied through, the holes being in the bolt,
vi. 54.

Khabata = “He (the camel) pawed the ground” (_tr._ “beateth the bough”)
vi. 28.

Khálata-há al-Khajal wa ’l-Hayá = shame and abasement mixed with her,
_i.e._, “suffused or overwhelmed her” (ST.) v. 399.

Khálat-kí insánun (_Arab._) _tr._ “(some man) has mixed with thee”;
meaning also “to lie with,” v. 398.

—— (Dr.Steingass also explains and translates), v. 376.

Khalbas (suggests Khalbús) = a buffoon i. 266.

Khalífah (Caliph) = a deputy, a successor, (derivation) i. 4.

—— (never written “Khalíf”) = a viceregent or vicar, v. 64.

Khalíj (Al-) The Canal (Grand Canal of Cairo) ii. 286.

Khalíyáh = beehive and empty, iv. 222.

Khallí-ná nak’ud (_Arab._) = let us sit together (a thoroughly modern
expression) (ST.) v. 475.

“Khamr al-’ukár” (=choice wine) v. 137.

Khams Ghaffár = “five pardoners” (Steingass reads Khamr. (=wine) ’ukár
another name for wine, as in “Al-Khamr al-’ukár” = choice wine) v.
137.

Khanádik = ditches or trenches (for Fanádik, “khans”) i. 288.

Kharrat (in text) = tripping and stumbling (in her haste), v. 253.

—— (also may be meant for “Kharajat” = “she went out”) (_St._) v. 253.

Khátá = Cathay = China, v. 27.

Khatíb = a preacher (not Kátíb = a writer), vi. 240.

Khatíbah (_more usually_ “Khutbah”) = the Friday sermon preached by the
Khatíb, iii. 492.

Khatt Hajar, a province, vi. 230.

Khaufu (Al-) maksúm = cowardice is equally divided, iv. 245.

Khawábi (_Arab._) (_pl._ of Khábiyah) = large jars usually of pottery,
iii. 11.

Khawátín (_pl._ of Khátún) = a matron, a lady, i. 122.

“Khayr” (_Arab._) = “’Tis well,” a word of good omen, vi. 58.

—— al-Nassáj (the Weaver) i. 344.

—— Kathír = This is right good (also “abundant kindness”), ii. 275.

Khayyál = sturdy horseman, i. 320.

“—— kabr-hu maftúh” (proverb) i. 320.

Khazíb-dye, v. 200.

Khaznah = the Treasury = 1,000 kis or purses, each 500 piastres,
£5,000, iv. 74, 180.

—— (Khazínah) or 10,000 Kís each = £5, v. 236.

Khaznat al-Siláh (_Arab._) = the ship’s armoury, v. 403.

Khil’ah = robe of honour, consists of many articles, such as a horse,
sword, etc., iv. 235; v. 410.

Khila’h dakk al-Matrakah, _tr._ “whereon plates of gold were hammered”
(an especial kind of brocade) vi. 81.

Khimár (_Arab._) = head-veil (a covering for the back of the head), v.
255.

Khizr = the Green Prophet, v. 301.

Khorasan (including our Afghanistan) in a chronic state of rebellion in
Al-Rashid’s reign, ii. 167.

Khubz mutabbak = platter-bread, i. 3.

—— Samíz = firsts bread, i. 261.

Khudá, _mod. Pers._ form of Old Khudáí = Sovereign-King, iii. 269.

Khudadad (derivation), iii. 269.

“—— and his brothers,” position of, compared with Galland, iii. 303.

—— relative position of, iii. 269.

Khutbah = sermon, i. 350.

Khurtúm = the trunk of an elephant, iii. 19.

Khuwáj = hunger, iii. 61.

“Khwájá” for “Khwájah,” iii. 61.

Khwájah = merchant and gentleman, iii. 61.

—— is also a honorific title given by Khorásánis to their notables,
iii. 61.

—— and Khawáját (_Pers._) = merchants (_Arab._), i. 332.

—— (spelt elsewhere “Khwájá”), iv. 50;
corresponds with our “good man,” iv. 62.

—— Hasan al-Habbál = Master Hasan the Ropemaker, iii. 341.

Kíb (_pl._ “Kiyáb” and “Akyáb”) = a small thick mat used to produce
shade (ST.) v. 215.

Kidnapping (by Dervishes) iv. 153.

Kidr = a cooking pot, i. 48.

Kikán (_pl._ of Kík) _tr._ “raven,” vi. 147.

Kimcobs = velvets with gold embroidery, iii. 140.

King’s Eye = Royal favour, i. 61.

King consummates his marriage in presence of his virgin sister-in-law,
ii. 268.

—— Kulayb (“little dog”) al Wá’il, ii. 263.

—— Nabhán, ii. 192.

—— of the Kingdoms (_i.e._ of the worlds visible and invisible), ii. 6.

—— of Bashan, iii. 19.

—— in Persia speaks of himself in third person, and swears by his own
head, etc., iii. 531.

“King’s Command is upon the head and the eyes” = must be obeyed, iii.
164.

Kinnab = hemp, vi. 62.

Kinship, Terms of, iii. 373.

Kintár = a quintal, 98 to 99 lbs. avoir. (in round numbers, a cwt.) vi.
29.

Kiosque, traced through the _Turk._ Kúshk (_pron._ Kyúshk) to the
_Pers._ “Kushk” = an upper chamber, iv. 151.

—— or belvedere (used to avoid confusion between Kiosque and window)
iii. 140.

Kirámát = miracles, iii. 181.

Kírát (Carat), most often one twenty-fourth of the dinar, iii. 91.

Kirm Al- (_Arab._ and _Pers._) = a worm, vi. 5.

Kirsh (_pron._ “Girsh”) the Egyptian piastre = one-fifth of a shilling,
iv. 72; 281.

—— (_Arab._), pop. “Girsh” = a dollar, iv., 281.

—— = piastre, v. 226.

—— (_Arab._) = piastre, vi. 175.

Kis = purse = 500 piastres = £5, iv. 74.

Kís = usually the _Giberne_ or pellet-bag (here the “bow-cover”) vi.
53.

Kishk = ground wheat, eaten with sheep’s milk soured, etc., vi. 160.

Kisra = Kutrú (Bresl.) Kassera (Chavis and Cazotte) i. 60.

Kisrá = Chosroës, i. 97.

“Kisrat al-yábisah ’ala ’l-Rík, etc.” = a slice of dry bread on the
spittle, for it absorbs ... phlegm on the mouth of the stomach (ST.)
v. 51.

“Kissing him upon the mouth,” i. 153.

—— the hand, the action of a servant or slave ii. 81.

Kitáb = book, written bond, ii. 27.

Kit’ah humrah = a small quantity of red brickdust to which wonderful
medicinal powers are ascribed (ST.) vi. 125.

Knife and salt placed on the stomach (_Ar._ Kalb) to repel evil
spirits, i. 26.

“Kohl’d her eyes,” v. 292.

Kohl-powder, v. 292.

Koran quoted—i. 25, 51, 52, 100, 134, 148, 353; ii. 215, 175, 270, 271,
197, 177, 106, 101; iv. 201, 242, 252, 254; v. 44, 47, 48, 49, 50,
56, 58, 180, 460; vi. 100, 104, 156, 157.

Kubbah = a dome-shaped tent (_tr._ “Pavilion”) i. 99.

—— (square building with cupola) i. 119.

—— = vault, cupola, iv. 290.

“Kubbat al-’Asáfír” = the Dome of the Birds, vi. 181.

Kubúr = tombs, i. 295.

Kuhná, Syriac singular, according to dictionaries (ST.) iv. 320.

——, Al- (_Arab._), _pl._ of Káhin = diviner, priest (_tr._ “Cohens”)
iv. 320.

“Kúl,” vulg. for “Kul” = “tell me”; a constant form in this MS., vi. 5.

Kuláh meant for “Kuláh” a Dervish’s cap (ST.) v. 108.

Kúlanj (_Arab._) = a true colic, iv. 177.

“Kullu Shayyin lí mu’as’as” = all to me is excitement, vi. 174.

Kumájah = First bread (_i.e._, Bread unleavened and baked in ashes) i.
8.

Kumri = turtle-dove, v. 151.

Kunafání = a baker of kunáfah = a vermicelli cake often eaten at
breakfast, iv. 127.

Kunaym Madúd = Kingdom of Dineroux, i. 55.

Kunná nu’tíhu li-ahad = we should have given him to someone (Dr.
Steingass also explains) vi. 73.

Kunyah (_Arab._), the pop. mispronunciation of “Kinyah” = “bye-name”
(gen. taken from favourite son, etc.) vi. 83.

Kurbáj (_Arab._) = Cravache (“Scourge”) iv. 214.

“Kurbán-at básham” = May I become thy Corban or Sacrifice (formula used
in addressing the Shah) iii. 530.

Kursí = Throne, i. 10.

Kursí (_Arab._), here = a square wooden seat without back, used for
sitting cross-legged (_tr._ “chair”) iv. 52.

Kursí stool = the stool upon which the Síníyah, or tray of tinned
copper, is placed, iv. 170.

Kurúd = apes (occurring as a rhyme twice in three couplets) v. 190.

Kurúsh (_Arab._), _pl._ of Kirsh, the Egyptian piastre = one-fifth of a
shilling, iv. 72.

Kút = food not to be confounded with “Kuwwat” = force, iv. 225.

—— al-Kulúb, iv. 225.

Kutb (Al-) al-Ghauth (_Arab._) = _lit._ “The pole-star of invocation
for help” (_tr._“Prince of the Hallows”) the highest degree of
sanctity in the mystic fraternity of Tasawwuf, v. 426.

Kuthayyir = “the dwarf,” i. 41.

—— ’Azzah (contemporary of Jamíl), i. 41.

Kuwárah = that which is cut off from the side of a thing, iv. 179.

Kuwayyis (dim. of Kaus), much used in Egypt as an adj. for “pretty,”
etc., iv. 350.

La’ab al-Andáb (_Arab._) = javelin-play, iii. 154.

Lá af’al (“I will do naught of the kind”) more commonly Má af’al, i.
296.

La’alla = peradventure (used to express expectation of possible
occurrence) ii. 20.

Lá baas = “No matter” or “All right,” (_tr._ “No harm be upon you”) i.
160.

—— Haula = there is no Majesty, etc., v. 359.

“—— Haul of Allah is upon thee,” _i.e._, it is a time when men should
cry for thy case, v. 359.

La-hu Diráah (for Diráyah = prudence) fí tabírí’l-mulúk = _tr._ “Also
he had control,” v. 465.

“Lá iláha illa ’llah,” the refrain of Unity, v. 403.

“—— khuzitat Ayday al-Firák,” meaning, “May Separation never ornament
herself in sign of gladness at the prospect of our parting,” v. 200.

—— tafzah-ní = Do not rend _my_ reputation. (ST.) iv. 295.

Laban = milk soured (_tr._ “Curd”) ii. 54.

Laban, pop. word for milk artificially soured, v. 352.

—— halíb (a trivial form) = sweet milk, v. 352.

La’bat Shawáribu-hu = _lit._ “his mustachios played” (_tr._ “curled”)
v. 273.

Labbah (_Arab._), usually part of the throat where ornaments are hung
or camels stabbed (_tr._ “necklace”) iv. 68.

Labbayka = here am I (_tr._ “Here I stand”) iv. 317.

“Laffa ’l-isnayn bi-zulúmati-h” = _tr._ winding his trunk around them
(latter word = Khurtúm the trunk of an elephant) iii. 19.

Laght (also _pron._ Laghat), a synonym of “Jalabah” = clamour, tumult.
(ST.) iv. 342.

Lahd, Luhd = tomb-niche, i. 292.

Lájawardí, _tr._ “lapis lazuli,” iii. 444.

Lajlaja = tied (his tongue was) ii. 186.

Lakasha = be conversed with, v. 285.

—— one of the words called “Zidd,” _i.e._, with opposite meanings, v.
285.

Lakh (Anglicised “lac”) = 100,000, iii. 357.

Laklaka-há (_Arab._), an onomatopœia, v. 265.

“Lam yakthir Khayrak”; this phrase (_pron._ “Kattir Khayrak”) is the
Egypt. and Moslem. equiv. for our “thank you,” v. 60.

“—— yanúb al-Wáhidu min-hum nisf haffán,” _tr._ “each took his turn
thereat and drank without drinking his full,” v. 11.

—— Dr. Steingass explains and translates, “And none took his turn
without sipping a few laps.” v. 11.

La-nakhsifanna = I would assuredly, ii. 23.

Lane, quoted, i. 3, 10, 11, 13, 16, 17, 21, 29. 31, 34, 146, 290; ii.
246; iii. 38, 119, 334, 492; iv. 19, 29, 34, 43, 45, 55, 56, 122,
209, 243, 257, 293, 296; v. 28, 86, 90, 97, 226, 265, 291, 351, 363,
426; vi. 46, 53, 74, 178.

Last march (to the next world) ii. 202.

Lauh = tablet (of the heart) iii. 386.

“Lawá’a-hu,” a clerical error for “láwa’a-hu.” (ST.) iv. 306.

Lawwaha (_Arab._) = _lit._ pointing out, making clear (_tr._ “bobbed”)
iv. 190.

“—— -hu,” a conjectured reading for “lawá’a-hu.” (ST.) iv. 306.

Laysa fi ’l-diyári dayyár = “nor is there a wight in the site” (a
favourite jingle) ii. 275.

Learned men exorcising some possible “Evil Spirit” or “the Eye,” a
superstition begun with the ancient Egyptians, iv. 60.

Learn from thyself what is thy Lord (Sufi language) = in Gr. γνῶθι
σεαυτόν, and corresponding with our “looking up through nature to
nature’s God,” v. 276.

Leather from Al-Táif, ii. 242.

Legal defects (which justify returning a slave to the slave-dealer) ii.
141.

Lens, origin of, and its applied use in telescopes and microscopes,
iii. 432.

“Letters of Mutalammis” (“Uriah’s letters”) are a _lieu commun_ in the
East, vi. 94.

Lex talionis (the essence of Moslem and all criminal jurisprudence) i.
100.

Liallá (_i.e._, li, an, lá) = lest, i. 140.

Libás (_Arab._) = clothes in general (_tr._ “habit”) vi. 103.

Libwah = lioness, i. 152.

Lieutenant of the bench, ii. 24.

Lijám (Al-) w’al-Bílám = the latter being a Tábi’ or dependent word
used only for a jingle, v. 381.

Lilláhi durrak = Gifted of Allah, ii. 200.

Lion lashing flank with tail, iv. 160.

Litám = the mouth-band for man (_tr._ “Litham”) v. 139.

Lithám = the coquettish fold of transparent muslin used by women in
Stambul, ii. 172.

“Live thy head, O King, for ever and aye!” (a formula announcing death
of supposed enemy) vi. 17.

Líwán (_Arab._) = Saloon, iii. 71.

—— al-barrání (_Arab._) _lit._ = the outer bench in the “Maslakh” or
apodyterium (_tr._ “outside the calidarium”) iv. 56.

Liyah (? Liyyah) = Lign-aloes, vi. 125.

Líyúth (pl. of Layth) = Lions (used for “warriors”) i. 14.

Lodging in the Khan, vi. 95.

Long hand, or arm, means power (Arab. idiom) i. 114.

Long lock left on shaven poll, i. 233.

“Look-at-me-and-thou-shalt-know-me” (compound name) v. 276.

Love-fit distinguished by the pulse or similar obscure symptoms, vi.
174.

Love (for “sleep”) ii. 164.

“Love thy friends and hate thy foes,” the religion of nature, vi. 34.

Lovers dressing themselves up and playing the game of mutual
admiration, v. 153.

Lovers of Al-Hayfá and Yúsuf (note concerning) v. 123.

Low-caste and uneducated men rise suddenly to a high degree, vi. 194.

“Loz” (_Heb._ and “Lauz” _Arab._) = fruit of the Almond-tree =
_Amygdalus communis_, vi. 7.

“Luh” = to him for “Lí” = to me, iv. 282.

Lukmah (_Arab._) = a balled mouthful (_tr._ “morsels”) v. 264.

Lúlúah = The Pearl or Wild Heifer, ii. 95.

Lume eterno (of the Rosicrucians) = little sepulchral lamps, burned by
the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans, iii. 72.

“Luss,” is after a fashion λῃστὴς (the Greek word however includes
piracy while the Arab term is mostly applied to petty larcenists),
v. 337.

Lute, beautiful song of the, v. 152.

Ma’adabah = wake or funeral feast before death, vi. 16.

Ma’ádin (_Arab._) = Minerals (_tr._ “ingredients”) iv. 139.

Má al-Fasíkh = water of salt-fish (_tr._ “dirty brine”) (ST.) v. 292.

Maamún (Al-) al-Hákim b’Amri’llah = The Secure, the Ruler by
Commandment of Allah, ii. 281.

Maamún (Al-) Seventh Abbaside (A.H. 198–227) i. 175.

Mabásim (_pl._ of Mabsim) = a smiling mouth, ii. 162.

Madáfi al-Salámah (_Arab._) = the cannon of safe arrival, iv. 124.

“Made small their sleeves and breasts” = habited themselves in the
garments of little people, vi. 42.

Madínat al-Andalús = City of Andalús, (usually Seville) v. 402.

“Madínat al-Nabi.” City of the Prophet, and vulg. Al-Madínah _the_
City, v. 43.

Madmen in hot climates enjoy throwing off their clothes, ii. 22.

Mad’úr, here translated (even if thou hadst been) “an invited guest,”
v. 41.

—— it may also be a synonym and be rendered “as though thou wert a boor
or clown” (ST.) v. 41.

Máfrúkah (an improvement upon the Fatírah) a favourite dish with the
Badawí (ST.) v. 349.

Mafyaat, Al- (_Arab._) = _lit._ “a shady place” (_tr. here_ “mysterious
subjects”) iv. 14.

Maghárah = a cave, a souterrain, iii. 15.

Maghbún _usually_ = deceived, cajoled, v. 366.

Maghribi (vulg. Maghrabi) iv. 43.

——, the Magician (in classical Arabic “Maghribi = a dweller in the
Sunsetland”) iii. 53.

Maghrib = set of sun, v. 151.

Maháshim (_acc._ to Bocthor, is a _pl._ without a singular, meaning
“les pàrties de la génération”) (ST.) v. 359.

Maháshima-k = good works, merits (in a secondary sense, beard,
mustachios) _tr._ here “yard,” v. 359.

Mahazzin (for Maházim) al Zerdukkaut (for al-Zardakhán) according to
Scott “Saffron—yoke of eggs, etc.;” according to Lane “apron napkins
of thick silk” (_tr. here_ “silken napkins”) iv. 55–56.

Mahdi (Al-) Third Abbaside (A.D. 775–785) i. 165.

Máh-i-Khudáí = the sovereign moon, iii. 269.

Mahkamah, _i.e._, the Kazi’s Court-house, iv. 169.

—— (Place of Judgment) or Kazi’s Court at Cairo, mostly occupied with
matrimonial disputes, v. 363.

Mahmá = as often as = Kullu má, vi. 54.

“Mahmud the Persian and the Kurd Sharper,” a poor version of “Ali the
Persian and the Kurd Sharper,” iv. 242.

Mahr = marriage settlement, i. 283.

—— = dowry, settled by the husband upon the wife, v. 28.

Ma’húd min ghayr Wa’d, Al- (_Arab._) = “the door where the appointment
had taken place without risk threatened,” iv. 66.

Maidenhead, taking it held to be porter’s work, iv. 57. Decency compels
maidens to show unwillingness in parting with, iv. 135.

Mail-coat Davidian (Heron, “A massy cuirass of Haoudi”) vi. 242.

Majlis garm karná = to give some life to the company (_tr._ “to warm
them into talk”) iii. 535.

Majnún = “A madman,” ii. 22.

Ma’jún (_Arab._) pop. applied to an electuary of Bhang (_Cannabis
sativa_) (_tr._ “confections”) iv. 56.

Májúr Al- (_Arab._) for “Maajúr” = a vessel, an utensil, v. 291.

Makán mahjúb = a retired room, i. 11.

Makhzúm = nose pierced, i. 47.

Making a picture (or statue), which artist cannot quicken, a process
demanded on Doomsday, ii. 194.

Makrán, the well-known Baloch province West of Sind, i. 335.

Makrúh = blameable, not actually damnable, ii. 46.

Mál = wealth, i. 47.

—— = flocks and herbs (in Badawi parlance) iv. 3.

—— (in text), _tr._ “coin” (also applied to “hidden treasure” amongst
Badawin) v. 313.

—— wa Ghawál (_Arab._) = moneys and treasures, iv. 3.

“—— wa Nawál,” iv. 3.

Malay Aigla = Sandal wood (_tr._ Eaglewood) iii. 20.

Malik Shah = King (Arab.) King (Persian) i. 131.

—— (King), a title loosely applied in Arabic, ii. 191.

Malláh (Al-) = the salting ground, ii. 54.

Ma’lúmah (_Arab._) = far-famed (may also mean “made known” or
“afore-mentioned”) iv. 276.

Mameluke (like unto a), _i.e._, well-fed, sturdy, bonny, v. 472.

—— Beys (dignity forbidding them to walk even the length of a carpet)
iii. 177.

Mamrak, or small dome built over pavilions (also _Pers._ “Bádhan”) ii.
82.

—— = dome-shaped skylight, ii. 39.

Ma ’múrah (_Arab._) = haunted, v. 118.

Man metamorphosed into a woman, vi. 136.

—— of Al-kays, the (pre-Islamitic poet) v. 181.

—— with El, or God = Israel, vi. 100.

Manetho’s account of Moses, vi. 112.

“Mandíl” (kerchief) of mercy, iv. 31.

—— (kerchief) used by women “on the loose” in default of water to wipe
away results of car. cop., v. 94.

Manjaník (_Arab._) from the Greek Μάγγα νον or Μηχανὴ = a catapult, iv.
117.

Mankalah, a favourite game in Egypt, iii. 180.

Manná’ = a refuser, a forbidder, v. 185.

Mansúrah (Al-) = opinions differ as to the site of, i. 341.

Ma’rafah (Al-) = the place where the mane grows (_tr._ “crest”) i. 298.

Marhúm (Al-) = my late brother (_tr._ “my brother who hath found
mercy”) iii. 58.

Máristán = Mad house, i. 18.

—— = The Bedlam, iv. 207.

Máriyah (Maria, Mary) a non-Moslem name, ii. 194.

Marj = the open grassy space on left bank of Baradah (Damascus) River,
vi. 169.

—— Sali = cleft meadow (here and below) to “Green Meadow,” ii. 227.

Marjánah = the “Coralline” (from Marján = red coral), _tr._ “Morgiana,”
iii. 378.

“Marham al-akbar, Al-” (_Arab._) = the greater salve, v. 51.

Markab mausúkah (from ✓ “Wask” = conceiving, being pregnant) v. 474.

—— _tr._ “a vessel in cargo (and about to set sail),” v. 474.

Market (Central) = the great Bazar, the Indian “Chauk,” iii. 422.

Marmar Sumáki (_Arab._) = porphyry of which ancient Egypt supplied
finest specimens (_tr._ “Sumáki marble”) iii. 139.

Marocco earliest occurrence of name, ii. 252.

Marriages (Morganatic) iii. 33.

Marriage portion, v. 28.

“Marrying below one,” i. 94.

“Martabah” = a mattress, placed upon “Mastabah” (bench) or upon its
“Sarír” (framework of jaríd or midribs of the palm) becomes the
“Díwan” = Divan, v. 68.

Martabán, iv. 204. See Bartamán, iv. 204.

Martabat Saltanah (for “Sultániyah”) which may mean a royal Divan, v.
68.

Martha and Mary (Fátimah and Halímah) v. 318.

Marwazí = Marw (derived from Sansk. Maru or Marw) i. 288.

Marzbán = guardian of the Marches, i. 234.

Masalah = a question (_tr._ “catch-question”) i. 138.

Masarat fí-há = and she used hard words to her, i. 31.

Masbúbah, _tr._ “Cakes,” v. 347.

Mas’h, _tr._ “robe” (of hair) vi. 157.

Mashá’ íli (_Arab._) the cresset-bearer, who acted hangman (_tr._
“Linkman”) iv. 23.

“Mashá’ilíyah jaftáwát wa fánúsín” = “(cresset) bearers of double
torches and lanterns” (ST.) vi. 67.

Masháli = three parallel gashes drawn down cheek of child (to prevent
kidnapping) iv. 153.

Mashrút Shadak (_Arab._) = split-mouthed, iv. 91.

Maslakh = stripping room (also Ká’ah) iii. 133.

Massage (Greek synonym μάσσω and Latin “Massare”) iv. 177.

—— needlessly derived from _Arab._ “Mas’h” = rubbing, kneading, iv.
177.

Massa-hu’l Fakr = poverty touched him, vi. 105.

Masser, vulg. for Misr, Egypt Grand Cairo; from Misraim, Son of Cham,
vi. 25.

Mastúrah = veiled (_tr._ “curtained”) i. 309.

Matamor (_Arab._ “Matmúrah”) = Sardábah, a silo for storing grain,
etc., vi. 17.

Matáyá Al- = Wight, vi. 162.

Matmúrah = a silo, matamor, or “underground cell,” i. 84

Maugraby used as an opprobrious term (Fr. _Maugrebleu_) iv. 43.

Maunds (fifty) = about 100 lbs., i. 250.

Maut Ahmar = violent or bloody death (_tr._ “red death”) ii. 11.

Mauza’ (_Arab._) = a place, an apartment, a saloon (_here tr._ “hall”)
iii. 71.

Ma’úzatáni = The two Preventives (two chapters from the Koran) ii. 101.

Mawálid (_pl._ of Maulid) = _lit._ “nativity festivals,” (_here_
“funeral ceremonies”) ii. 187.

Mawázi (_pl._ of Mauz’) = _lit._ places, shifts (_tr._ “positions”) ii.
112.

May God never requite thee for me with good (_i.e._, Damn your soul for
leading me into this danger) ii. 39.

—— I not be bereft of these steps = may thy visits never fail me, ii.
110.

“—— it be fortunate to thee,” a little precatory formula to keep off
the Evil Eye, iv. 119.

Maydán = plain, iii. 145.

Mayzah (_Arab._) = the large hall with a central fountain for ablution
attached to every great mosque (_tr._ “lavatory”) v. 458.

Mayzar (_Pers._) = a turband; in _Arab._ “Miizar” = a girdle, a
waistcloth, vi. 53.

Mazarát (_Arab._) from ✓ “Mazr” = (an egg) being addled (_tr._ qualms)
iv. 177.

Mazbúh = slaughtered for good, v. 159.

Mazlúm (Al-) = the wronged, vi. 59.

Mazrab Al- = the care of the place, vi. 251.

Meccah and Al-Medinah = The two Sanctuaries, ii. 220.

Medicine-man (Israelite) always a favourite amongst Moslems and
Christians, v. 160.

Medinah (Al-), whose title is “Al-Munawwarah” = the Illumined, iii. 58.

Merchants wear dagger and sword, ii. 38.

Mesmerism (“impose her hand upon his head”) iii. 189.

Mesopotamia (_Heb._ Naharaym, _Arab._ Al-Jazírah) iii. 269.

Met (_Sindi_) = a kind of clay, iii. 348.

Mezzízah = applying styptics to the wound (third operation of
circumcision), v. 217.

Miat Mamlúk Kitáb (_Arab._) latter word meaning “one of the Book, a
Jew” or Christian, iv. 85.

Miat wa arba’at ’ashar Súrat = the 114 chapters of the Alcoran, i. 147.

Mídí, clerical error for “Mayyidí,” an abbreviation of Muayyadí =
quarter farthing, iv. 127.

Miftáh (prop. “Miftah”) = key used throughout the Moslem East, v. 265.

Mihaffah bi-takhtrawán (_Arab._) = a covered litter, iii. 33.

Mihrján (Al-) = the Autumnal Equinox, i. 129.

—— Al- (a P.N. not to be confounded with Maháráj = Great Rajah) v. 123.

Mihtár, also may mean superintendent, head equerry, chief of military
band (ST.) (_here tr._ “Shaykh of the Pipers”) v. 298.

—— (in text) = a prince, a sweeper, a scavenger, v. 298.

Miizar (_Arab._) = a girdle, a waistcloth, vi. 53.

“Mík! Mík!” an onomatopy like “Couïc, Couïc,” vi. 158.

Mikshat (_Arab._) whose ✓ would be “Kasht” = skinning a camel (_tr._
“Whittle”) iv. 100.

Miláh (pleasant) for Mubáh (permitted), iii. 38.

Milah = the cut (first operation of circumcision) v. 217.

Miláyah = a sheet of cotton used as apparel, iv. 220.

“Mi’lakat (pop. cor. for Mil’akat al-Hilál”) may be the spoon or hollow
part of an ear-picker (ST.) v. 108.

Milk, specific gravity of, iv. 238.

—— and dates, a favourite food, i. 59.

—— time (father has no connection with the mother during) iv. 350.

—— time was passed (two years) usual time amongst savages and
barbarians, iv. 350.

Mín (who) for “Man,” a Syro-Egyptian form common throughout the MS.,
iii. 14.

’Min al-’Án wa sá’idan” _lit._ = from this moment upwards, vi. 189.

—— al-Malábis (_Arab._) pl. of “Malbas” = anything pleasant or
enjoyable, iv. 149.

—— al-Malábis (_Arab._) pl. of “Milbas” = dress, garment, iv. 149.

—— ba’ada-hu (making Jesus of later date than Imr al Kays) v. 199.

“—— ba’di an” for “Min ba’di má” = after that, iii. 34.

—— ghayr Wa’ad = without appointment (_tr._ “casually”) v. 373.

“—— Min Hakk la-hu Asl an ’and-ná huná Rájil,” a thoroughly popular
phrase = “Of a truth hath any right or reason to say that here in
this house is a man?” v. 247.

—— (Dr. Steingass explains and translates) v. 247.

“—— kuddám-ak” (meaning doubtful), v. 113.

—— perhaps it means “from before thee,” _i.e._, in thy presence (ST.)
v. 113.

Míná = a port, both in old Egypt. and mod. Pers., vi. 258.

Mi’ráj = ascent to heaven made by Apostle and return therefrom,
etc.—History of, vi. 121.

Mirror, a compromising magical article of many kinds, iii. 23.

Mirrors, made to open and shut in the East, iii. 24.

Mirwad = iron axle of pulley, etc.—hence a bar of metal (_tr._ “ingot”)
iv. 142.

Mirza Mohammed Husayn Khan, originally a Bakkál (greengrocer) made
premier of Fath Ali Shah’s Court, vi. 194.

Misallah (_pl._ “Misáll”) = a large needle for sewing canvas, iv. 288.

Miskah = Bit o’ Musk, i. 16.

Miskál is the weight of a dinar = 1½ dirham = 71–72 grains avoir., vi.
244.

“Misla’l-Kalám” (? a cler. error for “misla ’l-Kiláb”) = as the dogs do
(ST.) v. 282.

—— -Khárúf (for “Kharúf”) a common phrase for an innocent, a half
idiot, v. 283.

Misr = used in a threefold sense for Egypt, old Cairo and new Cairo,
iii. 34.

Misraim (the dual Misrs) vi. 12.

“Misri” here = local name (in India applied exclusively to sugar candy)
v. 352.

“Mithkála Zarratin” (translations by Author, Rodwell, Houdas and
Steingass) v. 48.

“Mizr” in Assyrian = “Musur,” in Heb. = “Misraim,” in Arab. “Misr,”
corrupted to Masser, vi. 12.

Mizwad (or Mizwád) = _lit._ provision bag, ii. 222.

Modesty in story of Alaeddin, iii. 148.

Mohammed Ali Pasha (“the Great”) ii. 9.

Mohsin = _i.e._, one who does good, a benefactor, v. 321.

“Moormen,” famed as Magicians, iii. 54.

More cutting = more bewitching, ii. 143.

Morier and the literal translation of the “Arabian Nights,” iii. 191.

Morning and evening = day and night for ever, ii. 195.

Moses (by name Osarsiph = Osiris-Sapi), history of by (Manetho) vi.
112.

Moslem school described, iv. 98.

Moslems all know how to pray, i. 13.

—— bound to see True Believers buried, i. 289.

—— make Wuzú-ablution and pray dawn-prayers before doing anything
worldly, iii. 141.

—— shun a formal oath, i. 304.

—— think the more you see of them the more you like them, ii. 208.

Mother (all women resembled her); an absurd statement to the West but
true in the East, iii. 97.

—— the head of the household (Kabírah) vi. 83.

“—— of Hospitality” is the Sikbáj (_Pers._ Sikbá) = principal dish set
before guests, vi. 159.

—— of our Harím = my wife, v. 283.

“—— of Strengthening” (meat pudding) vi. 159.

—— takes rank before the wife, according to Moslem fashion, iii. 301.

“Mothers” the prime figures of geomancy, daughters being secondary,
iii. 156.

Mourning-dress, iv. 248.

Mouse, passing over food, makes it impure for a religious Moslem to
eat, v. 239.

Moyah (in text), or as Fellah of Egypt says “Mayyeh,” or the Cairenne
“Mayya” and other forms, v. 323.

“Muábalát min shaani-ká” = (From early dawn) I have wearied myself, vi.
178.

Muaddib al-Atfál (_Arab._) = one who teacheth children, iv. 95.

Muajjalah = money paid down before consummation (=£25) ii. 141.

Mu’ajjalah = coin paid contingent on divorce (=about £75) ii. 141.

Mu’ammarjiyah (master masons) vulg. Egypt. for “Mu’ammarín” (_tr._
“architects”), iv. 228.

Mu’arris = pander, i. 206.

Mu’awizzatáni (Al-) “Two Refuge-takings,” iv. 252.

Mubáh = an action not sinful (_harám_) or quasi-sinful (_makrúh_)
(_tr._ “lawfully”) ii. 12.

Mubárak = The blessed or well omened, iii. 13.

Mubarbasah (_Arab._) in the fem. because referring to noun Tíz = anus
(ST.) iv. 291.

Mubattat (_Arab._) from batt = a duck (_tr._ “duck-shaped”) iv. 27.

Mudáwi Al- = the man of the people who deals in simples, etc. (as
opposed to scientific practitioner) v. 326.

Mubdi’ = the beginner, the originator, v. 196.

Mubtalí Al = sore (leprous), v. 301.

Muhandisín = geometricians, architects, for “Muhandisín,” iv. 228.

Muhat takáat = usually “with torn veils,” metaphor meaning in disgrace
(_tr._ “unveiled”) ii. 46.

Muhibbattu (Al-), _fem._ or “Muhibb” lover (in Tasawwuf particularly =
“lover of God”) (ST.) v. 393.

Muhjat al-kulúb = “Core” or “Life-blood of hearts,” v. 201.

“Muhkaman,” a word never found in the Koran, v. 47.

Mu’ín al-Din = “Aider of the Faith,” ii. 5.

Mu’izz bi-Díni ’llah, Al- (first Fatimite Caliph raised to the throne
of Egypt), tale of, v. 43.

Mukábalah, the third form of “Kabil” = requital, retaliation (ST.) vi.
55.

Mukabbab (_Arab._) = vaulted, arched, &c. (_tr. here_ “heaped”) iv. 9.

Mukaddam = Captain, ii. 7.

—— (_Anglo-Indicè_ “Muccuddum”) = overseer, v. 310.

Mukattaf al-Yadayn = arms crossed behind his back (a servile posture)
iii. 16.

“Mukawwamína (Al-) wa Arbábu ’l Aklám,” the latter usually meaning
“scribes skilled in the arts of caligraphy,” v. 374.

Mukh, _lit._ = brain, marrow (_tr._ “dimple”) v. 86.

Mukhaddarát = maidens concealed behind curtains and veiled in the
Harem, ii. 265.

Mukrif = _lit._ born of a slave father and free mother (_tr._ “blamed
lad,”) vi. 137.

Mulberry-tree in Italy bears leaves till the end of October, and the
foliage is as bright as spring verdure, vi. 7.

Mulúkhíyá (_der._ from Gr. μαλάχη from μαλάσσω = to soften) a favorite
vegetable, iv. 176.

Mulúkhiyah náshiyah (_Arab._) _lit._ = flowing (_tr._ “gravied
mallows”) iv. 176.

Munáfik (_Arab._) = “an infidel who pretendeth to believe in Al-Islam”
(_tr._ “hypocrite”) iii. 83.

Munajjim = Astrologer (authority in Egyptian townlets) i. 66.

Munawwarah (Al-) = the Illumined (title given to Al-Medinah) iii. 58.

—— (Al-) = the enlightened, v. 43.

Munír = “The brilliant,” the enlightened, ii. 100.

Munkati’ah = _lit._ “cut off” (from the weal of the world) _tr._
“defenceless,” i. 337.

Munkar and Nakír, the Interrogating Angels, i. 294.

Munnaskif (for manáshif) al fillfillee; according to Scott “compound of
peppers” “red, white and black;” according to Lane and _tr._ here
drying towels of Líf or palm-fibre, iv. 56.

Murafraf (passive) from Rafraf = anything overhanging something else
(ST.) iv. 338.

Murakhkhim = a marble cutter = simply a stone-mason, vi. 60.

Muruwwah _lit._ = manliness, i. 303.

Músà (Moses), vi. 112.

Músà wa Múzi = Músà the Malignant (Múzí = vexatious, troublesome) v.
321.

—— (Dr. Steingass reads Muusí, the malignant, the malefactor) v. 321.

Musáfahah = palm (of the hand) ii. 225.

Musajja’ (_Arab._) = rhymed prose or Saj’a, iv. 133.

Musallà = Prayer-place, i. 313.

Musawwadatayn (_Arab._) = _lit._ two black things, rough copies, etc.
(_tr._ “affright”) iii. 87.

Mushayyadát, _tr._ “high-builded,” iii. 66.

Musician, also a pederast, i. 209.

Músiká (_Arab._) _classically_ “Musikí,” = Μουσικὴ, _Pers._ Músikár =
Music, iii. 137.

Muslimína, the inflect. plur. of “Muslim” = a True Believer, v. 367.

Mustafà = the chosen Prophet, Mohammed, v. 203.

—— bin Ism’aíl (began life as apprentice to a barber and rose to high
dignity) v. 110.

Mustanda = strong box, ii. 9.

Mustapha, iii. 53.

Mustaráh (Al-) = Chapel of Ease (a favourite haunting-place of the
Jinn), ii. 85.

Musulmán (our “Mussalman,” too often made _pl._ by “Mussalmen”) is
corrupted Arab. used in Persia, Turkey, etc., v. 367.

Mutahattil (Al-) usually = one who forsakes the world (_tr._ “oyster”)
i. 215.

Mutahaddisín = novi homines, upstarts (_tr._ “of the number of the
new”) ii. 82.

Mutalammis (“Jarír bin ’Abd al-Masíh”) a poet of “The Ignorance,” vi.
94.

“Mutalaththimín” = races in North Africa whose males wear the
face-swathe (“Lithám”) of cloth, v. 139.

“Mutasa’lik” for “Moutasa’lik = like a Sa’lúk” = lean of limb, vi. 122.

Mutátí bi zahri-h (_Arab._) = “hanging an arse,” v. 459.

Mutawallí = Prefect (of Police) ii. 30.

Mutawassí ... al-Wisáyat al-támmah (Wisáyat is corr. noun) = he charged
himself with her complete charge, _i.e._, maintenance (ST.) v. 474.

Mu’tazid bi ’llah Al-, Caliph, vi. 124.

Mut’ah = temporary and extempore marriage, the Pers. Sí’ghah, iii. 33.

Muwaswas (Al-) = Melancholist, i. 264.

Muzawwaj = married, vi. 170.

Muzfir (Al-) = the Twister, ii. 95.

Mysteries of Marriage-night but lightly touched on, because the bride
had lost her virginity, v. 417.

Naakhaz bi-lissati-him (in text), _tr._ “until I catch them in their
robbery” (see under “Luss”) v. 337.

—— (Dr. Steingass reads “Balsatahum” = until I have received their
“ransom”) v. 337.

Na’sh = a box like our coffin, but open at the top, iv. 289.

Nabbút (Egyptian and Syrian weapon), iii. 482.

—— = a quarter-staff, opp. to the “Dabbús” or club-stick of the
Badawin, etc., v. 250.

Nabít, son of “Ashur,” vi. 3.

Nabíz = date-wine (or grape-wine) i. 160.

Nabk = lote tree or _Zizyphus lotus_, for sprinkling corpses, iv. 257.

Náblús = Samaria, iii. 271.

Nádán (_Arab._) = the “unknowing” (as opp. to Naudán, the equiv. of
Pers. “New of knowledge”) vi. 11.

Nadan (in Assyrian story) = Nathan Kin of the people of Pukudu, vi. 3.

——, The Fool, vi. 3.

Nádán (_Pers._) = fool, vi. 3.

Nadb = brandishing or throwing the javelin, iii. 154.

Nadd, a compound perfume, ii. 108.

Naddábah = public wailing-woman, vi. 17.

Nafas _lit._ = breath (_tr._ “air”) i. 124.

Náfishah = _Pers._ “Náfah” der. from the ✓ “naf” = belly or navel (the
part in the musk-deer supposed to store the perfume) v. 207.

Nagus = a pear, vi. 160.

Naharaym (_Heb._) = Mesopotamia, iii. 269.

Nahawand, “Nahávand” the site in Al-Irak where the Persians sustained
their final defeat at the hands of the Arabs (A.H. 21) v. 209.

—— also one of many musical measures (like the Ispaháni, the Rásti,
etc.) v. 209.

Nahnu = we (for I) ii. 28.

“Nahs” = something more than ill-omened, something nasty, foul,
uncanny, vi. 71.

Náhú (from ✓ “Nauh”) = making ceremonious “Keening” for the dead, vi.
17.

Náihah = the præfica or myriologist, ii. 171.

Na’ím = “the Delight” (also a P. N. of one of the Heavens) v. 199.

Náim (Al-) wa al-Yakzán = The Sleeper and the Waker, i. 1.

Na’íman = may it be pleasurable to thee (said by barber after
operation) v. 106.

Najmat al-Sabáh = constellation of Morn, vi. 173.

Nákah = She-dromedary, i. 315.

Nakáír al- (_pl._ of Nakír = a dinghy, a dug-out) _tr._ “canoes,” vi.
258.

“Naked intercessor” (one who cannot be withstood) ii. 83.

Nakdí = the actual dowry as opposed to the contingent dowry, vi. 43.

Nakhing = making the camels kneel, iii. 314.

Nakkál, or coffee-house tale-teller, iv. 235.

Nakl (_Arab._) = copying, describing, transcribing, iv. 193.

“Nakshat” and “Sifrat,” _tr._ Coin and Gold, iii. 29.

Nákús, or the Gong = Bell, vi. 100.

Name, not appearing in unedited tales, till much after the proper time
for specifying it, iv. 299.

Names for clouds, rain, etc., in _Arab._ well nigh innumerable, vi.
241.

“Na’mil ma’allazí, etc., makídah,” idiom “I will do him brown,” iv.
282.

Nard = table, iii. 180.

Nardashír (Nard Ardashír?) iii. 180.

Nás malmúmín = assembled men, a crowd of people (ST.) v. 253.

Nasím = the Zephyr, or the cool north breeze of Upper Arabia, v. 197.

Nasrín = moss-rose, ii. 115.

Nassafa = libavit, delibavit, etc. (ST.) v. 11.

Natar (watching) for “Nataf” (indigestion, disgust) v. 63.

Natawású sawíyah = Solace ourselves with converse, v. 395.

Natawású sawíyah (cler. error for “Natawánású Shuwayyah” = “let us
divert ourselves a little”) (ST.) v. 395.

Na’tázu (_Arab._) viii. form of ’áza = it escaped, lacked, &c.; hence
this form “we need” _tr._ “we require” (ST.) iv. 290.

Nátúr (_Arab._) pro. a watchman (_tr._ “old man”) iv. 204.

—— Al- = the Keeper, esp. of a vineyard, vi. 57.

Naubah, _lit._ = a period, keeping guard (here a band of pipes and
drums playing at certain periods) v. 299.

Naudán (_Arab._) equiv. to the _Pers._ “New of knowledge” as opp. to
“Nádán” the “unknowing,” vi. 11.

Navel string, treatment of, v. 411.

Náwús = Tower of Silence, i. 264.

Nawwáb (_pl._ of Náib) = a Nabob (_tr. lit._ “deputies”) ii. 8.

Nayízáti (_Arab._ afterwards “Nuwayzátí” and lastly “Rayhání”) = a man
who vends sweet and savoury herbs (_tr._ “Herbalist”), v. 298.

Naynawah, _i.e._, “Fish-town” or “town of Nin” = Ninus the founder, vi.
3.

—— in mod. days the name of a port on east bank of Tigris, vi. 3.

—— or “town of Nin” = Ninus, the founder, vi. 3.

Naysán, the Syro-solar month = April, vi. 27.

Nazaránah _prop._ = the gift (or gifts offered by Moslem noble to his
feudal superior) iii. 486.

Názilah = descent (of calamity), ii. 176.

Názir al-Mawáris = “Inspector of Inheritances,” ii. 286.

Náz o andáz (_Pers._) = coquetry in a half-honest sense (_tr._ “amorous
liveliness”), iii. 285.

Názúk, prob. a corr. of _Pers._ “Názuk” = adj. = delicate, nice, vi.
67.

Nazúr = one who looks intently, for Názir, a looker, vi. 18.

Necklace-pearls are the cup-bearer’s teeth, ii. 253.

“Necks” per synecdochen for heads, i. 47.

Negative emphatic in Arabic, i. 206.

Negemet-il-Souper (Heron) = Najmat al-Sabah = constellation of morn,
vi. 173.

Negroids dreaded by Hindús, iii. 276.

Never may neighbour defy thee, etc. (May thy dwelling-place never fall
into ruin), i. 15.

“New lamps for old” as in “Alaeddin,” iv. 322.

Ni’am = Yes (an exception to the Abbé Sicard’s rule), ii. 19.

Night beset his back = darkened behind him, ii. 197.

Niká (or sand hill) = the swell of the throat, ii. 252.

Níl (=the high Nile), iv. 215.

Ním = Persian Lilac (Melia Azadirachta) used as preventative to poison,
i. 64.

Nimak-harám, _tr._ “a traitor to the salt,” iii. 286.

Ním-chihreh (_Pers._) = Half-man (_Arab._ “Shikk”), iv. 76.

Nímshah = half sword or dagger, i. 14.

Nisf ra’as sukkar Misri, _tr._ “half a loaf of Egyptian sugar,” v. 352.

Níshábúr (Arab form of Nayshápúr = reeds of (King) Shápur), i. 270.

Nisrín, an island, prob. fabulous, where amber abounds, vi. 12.

“Niyat” (or intention) not pure, cause of King’s failure, v. 111.

Niyyah (_Arab._) = intent (normal pun upon the name), iv. 339.

Nizál = dismounting to fight on foot, vi. 231.

“None misses a slice from a cut loaf,” v. 393.

Nose (large in a woman indicating a masculine nature), i. 345.

“No thing poketh and stroketh more strenuously than the Gird,” or
hideous Abyssinian Cynocephalus,—popular Eastern belief, iv. 333.

Nukl-i-Pishkil = goat-dung bonbons, i. 288.

Nún al-taakid = the N. of injunction, ii. 23.

Nur al-Nihár = Light of the Day, iii. 419.

Nur Jehán (_Pers._) = “Light of the World,” iii. 473.

Nusf = half a dirham, drachma or franc, iv. 19–37.

Nusfs = Halves (_i.e._, of dirhams), i. 300.

—— (180 in these days = about 10d.), iv. 98.

Nu’umán (Al-), King of the Arab kingdom of Hirah, i. 170.

Nuwab (broken plur. of “Naubah,”) the Anglo-Indian Nowbut (_tr._
“Drums”), i. 324.

Nuwájiru ’l-wukúfát = Settlement of bequeathal, v. 467.

—— (Steingass reads “nuwájiru”) (for “nuájiru”) ’l-wakúfát and
translates “letting for hire such parts of my property as were
inalienable” (ST.), v. 467.

Nuzhat al-Fuád = “Delight of the Vitals” (or heart), i. 25.

—— al-Zaman = “Delight of the age,” v. 180.

Nuzhat-í = pleasance, ii. 45.

“O man, O miserablest of men, O thou disappointed,” etc.,
characteristic words of abuse, v. 359.

O my son! O my Child! (repetition a sign of kindness and friendliness)
iv. 269.

O my uncle (to elder man): O my cousin! (to youth) iv. 119.

O rider of the jar, _i.e._, a witch, vi. 76.

O thousand-horned (thousandfold cuckold) i. 247.

O vile of birth (Asl) a man’s origin being held to influence his
conduct throughout life, i. 62.

“O Woman,” popular form of address, iii. 108.

“O worshipper of Allah,” _i.e._, “O Moslem, opposed to enemy of Allah”
= a non-Moslem, v. 460.

Oarsman stands to his work in the East, iii. 25.

Oath of triple divorce irrevocable, i. 246.

Obedience to children common in Eastern folk-lore, vi. 90.

Ober-Ammergau “Miracle play,” i. 250.

Objects (better kept hidden) seen with naked eye by telescope (vulgar
belief) iii. 438.

Ocular testimony demanded by Moslem law, ii. 17.

“Of which a description will follow in its place,” a regular formula of
the Ráwí, or professional reciter, v. 131.

Og bin ’Unk (=Og of the Neck), the fabled King of Bashan, iii. 19.

Oil, anointing with for incipient consumption, ii. 75.

“Old lamps for new lamps—who will exchange?” iii. 159.

’Omán, name of the capital of Eastern Arabia, vi. 139.

Omar ’Adi bin Artah, i. 39.

—— bin Abd al-Aziz = the good Caliph, i. 39.

—— ibn Abi Rabí’ah, the Korashí (_i.e._ of the Koraysh tribe) i. 41.

Ommiades, Cathedral Mosque of, one of the wonders of the Moslem world,
vi. 172.

Onager, the Gúr-i-Khár of Persia, iii. 282.

—— (wild ass) confounded with Zebra, iii. 282.

“One day of the days,” a phrase emphasising the assertion that it was a
chance day, iv. 75.

Only son has a voice in the disposal of his sister, vi. 83.

“On my shop” = bit of boarding where the master sits, or on a stool in
the street, ii. 281.

“Open the spittle” = to break the fast, v. 51.

Original sin, vi. 247.

Orisons = the prayers of the last day and night, ii. 94.

Osarsiph = Osiris-Sapi (Moses) vi. 112.

“Otbah hath a colic,” vi. 77.

“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, &c.,” an idea not less Moslem
than Christian, iv. 271.

Pá-andáz = carpets and costly cloths, (spread between Baghdad and
Meccah for Harun al-Rashid) iii. 177.

—— = cloth to tread upon, vi. 259.

—— (_Pers._) = a carpet made of costly stuffs—a perquisite of royal
attendants, iii. 141.

Padding introduced to fill up the “night,” v. 460.

Paggí = Tracker, iv. 8.

Palace between two rivers = the Nílotic Rauzah-island, ii. 281.

—— not the place for a religious and scrupulous woman, ii. 229.

Papal bulls and Kings’ letters (in Mediæval Europe) were placed for
respect on the head, iii. 89.

Parasang (_Gr._ παράσάγγης), iii. 456.

Parks on the Coasts of Tropical Seas, i. 320.

Part and parts = more or less thoroughly, ii. 152.

Parturition and death compared with both processes in the temperates of
Europe, ii. 23.

Parwez, older pronunciation of the mod. (Khusrau) “Parvíz,” iii. 502.

Pashkhánah = a mosquito-curtain, iii. 121.

Pay-day for boys in Egypt (Thursday) iv. 98.

Payne quoted, i. 1, 8, 11, 34, 56, 134, 165, 209, 222, 238, 278, 286,
288, 289, 306, 311, 312, 322, 327, 338, 344; ii. 28, 54, 67, 73, 85,
110, 112, 154, 191, _ib._, 200, 227, 231, 238, 251, 263, 267, 275,
281; iv. 332; v. 55, 69.

Paysá (pice) = two farthings and in weight = ½ an oz., iii. 352.

Pear-tree, not found in Badawi land, v. 117.

Penalty inflicted to ensure obedience, iii. 336.

Pennyroyal (here mere “shot”; the orig. has “Baítharán”) v. 458.

Perceval C. de, quoted, vi. 89.

Peri-Banu (The Fairy) iii. 419.

—— (Parí) in its modern form has a superficial resemblance to “Fairy,”
iii. 419.

Peris, iii. 419.

Perízádah = Fairy-born, iii. 502.

Perjury easily expiated amongst Moslems, ii. 38.

Perspired in her petticoat trowsers (a physical sign of delight in
beauty, usually attributed to old women) v. 142.

Pertinence (in couplets) not a _sine quâ non_ amongst Arabs, v. 135.

Phantasms from the Divine presence of ‘Ali ’Aziz Efendi, the Cretan,
iii. 41.

Pharaoh (of Hebrew Scriptures) has become with the Arabs “Fir’aun,” the
dynastic name of Egyptian kings, vi. 12.

Pharos of Alexandria, one of the four Wonders of the Moslem world, iv.
36.

Philomelet, The shrilling, iv. 245.

Physiognomist, a favourite character in Arabic folk-lore, iv. 107.

“Physiognomy (‘Firásah’) unless there be the science of, other science
availeth not,” iv. 10.

Piastre (Egyptian) = one-fifth of a shilling, iv. 72.

Pictures of faces whose eyes seem to follow beholders, iii. 427.

Pigeon blood, used to resemble the results of a bursten hymen, v. 29.

Pilaff (Turco-English form of Persian Puláo) iii. 326.

Pilgrimage quoted, i. 285, 337, 228, 207, 205, 42, 165, 194; ii. 20,
71, 281, 54, 152, 9, 63, 220, _ib._, 222, 59, 22, 51; iii. 314, 330,
405, 406; iv. 35, 38, 153, 196, 208, 343; v. 43, 180, 214; vi. 9,
83, 99, 104, 105, 131, 174.

Pilgrims settle in the two Holy Places, iii. 406.

Pír = saint, spiritual guide, iii. 8.

Pírozah = turquoise (_Arab. form_ Fíruzah) iii. 270.

“Písh-namáz” (_Pers._) = fore-prayer, iii. 380.

Pit = grave, i. 88.

“Plied him with wine,” a favourite habit with mediæval Arabs, ii. 50.

Poetry (Persian) often alludes to the rose, etc., ii. 99.

“Pointing the moral,” iii. 265.

Police (Eastern) ii. 6.

Porphyry quarries in Middle Egypt, rediscovery of, vi. 60.

Practical joking, a dangerous form of fun, as much affected by
Egyptians as Hibernians, v. 455.

“Prayer of Moses, the man of God,” vi. 103.

Prayers at burial, beginning with four “Takbírs,” i. 290.

—— for the dead recited over bier, iii. 380.

——, whilst at, the Moslem cannot be spoken to, i. 197.

Precious stones, Arab superstitions concerning, v. 130.

Precocious children, iii. 416.

Pretext for murdering an enemy to his faith (Jewish) an idea prevalent
in Eastern world utterly wrong, v. 214.

“Pretty Fanny’s ways” amongst Moslems, v. 85.

Priah = tearing the foreskin (second operation of circumcision) v. 217.

Primitive attire of Easterns in hot climate, iii. 20.

Prince, petty Indian, preceded in state processions by led horses whose
saddles are studded with diamonds, iii. 134.

Prison had seven doors (to indicate its formidable strength) v. 233.

Prisoners expected to feed themselves in Moslem lands, v. 338.

Professional dancer, _i.e._, a public prostitute, iv. 29.

—— singers, become freed women, turned out “respectable,” ii. 254.

Prothesis without apodosis, figure, iv. 29.

Public gaol = here the Head Policeman’s house. In mod. times it is part
of the wall in Governor’s palace, v. 337.

Pummel of the saddle, ii. 85.

Punishment by flogging, vi. 9.

Purse = Kis = 500 piastres = £5, iv. 74.

Purses, one thousand compose the Treasury (“Khaznah”) = £5,000, iv. 74.

Puzzling questions and clever replies, a favourite exercise in the
East, vi. 97.

Quarters, containing rooms in which girls are sold, ii. 71.

Queen Shu’á’ah = Queen Sunbeam, ii. 107.

“Quench that fire for him” (_i.e._ hush up the matter) ii. 15.

“Quicker to slay than Amrú bin Kulsum” (Proverb) vi. 94.

Raas Ghanam = a head of sheep (form of expressing singularity common to
Arabic) ii. 207.

—— Sukkar = Loaf sugar, v. 352.

Raba’ = _lit._ spring quarters (_tr._ “a lodging house”) ii. 19.

Rabí’a vi. 245.

Rabite (steed of purest) = an Arab of noble strain, iii. 287.

Radáh (a form of “Rádih”) = “the large hipped,” v. 198.

Radíf or back-rider, common in Arabia, v. 162.

Rádih, a P.N. (ST.) v. 161.

“Rafá al-Bashkhánah” = he raised a hanging, a curtain (_tr._ “the
arras”) iii. 121.

Rafaka (and “Zafaka”) = took their pleasure, v. 282.

Rábíb = monk or lion (_tr._ “God-fearing”) vi. 155.

Rahíl = Rachel, iii. 355.

Ráhilah = a riding camel, i. 315.

“Rahúm” for “Rahím” (Doric form) = compassionate, vi. 18.

Rahwán (cor. of Rahbán) = one who keeps the (right) way, i. 191.

“Rá’ih fayn” = wending (art thou) whither? iv. 207.

Ráih yasír (_Arab._) = about to become (peasant’s language) iii. 131.

Rain and bounty are synonymous, i. 43.

Ra’ís (_fem._ Ra’ísah) the captain, the skipper (not the owner) iv.
125., v. 22.

Raisins, an efficacious “pick-me-up,” v. 51.

Rajah of Baroda, iii. 134.

Rajul ikhtiyár, _tr._ “a man of a certain age” (polite term for old
man) v. 402.

—— Ja’ídí = Larrikin, iv 280.

—— Khuzari (_Arab._) = a green-meat man (_tr._ “costermonger”) v. 291.

—— Khwájá = Gentleman, v. 254.

“Rákiba-há”; the technical term for demoniac possession, v. 326.

Ram’s mutton preferred in wilder tribes of the East, because it gives
the teeth more to do, v. 299.

Ramaha bi-h = bolted with him, v. 382.

Rankah or “Ranakah” prob. for “Raunakah,” which usually means
“troubled” (speaking of water) (ST.) v. 66.

Rape, i. 311.

Rasátík (_pl._ of Rusták) = villages, i. 256.

Rashákah Al- (_Arab._) a word not found in common lexicons, said to be
a fork with three prongs, here probably a hat stand (_tr._ “peg”)
(ST.) v. 244.

Rasílah = a (she) partner (_tr._ “accompanyist”) ii. 44.

Rasmál (vulg. Syrian and Egyptian form of Raas al-mál = stock in trade)
= capital in hand, i. 248.

Ratl (_Arab._) _pron._ by Europeans “Rotl” (Rotolo) = a pound, iii.
128; iv. 295.

“Rauzah” in Algiers was a royal park, vi. 243.

“Rauz al-Sanájirah” = plain of the Sinjars, vi. 243.

Ráwi = a professional tale-teller (_tr._ “Seer”) i. 56.

Rayhánah, _i.e._ the “Basil,” mostly a servile name, ii. 20.

Razah = cedar or fir (old controversy) vi. 5.

Rází (Al-) = a native of Rayy City, i. 288.

Reading of “meat and drink” enjoyed by Arabs as much as by Englishmen,
iv. 160.

Reading placed in more honourable place than writing (“Writing and
reading,” as opposed to “Reading and writing”) vi. 5.

Red camel (Ahmar) ii. 248.

Red robes a sign of displeasure, iv. 297.

Red Sea (Holy Writ does not say that Pharaoh was drowned in) vi. 99.

Rent his robes (usually a sign of quiet, here a mark of strong
excitement) v. 71.

Retribution confined to this life, and belief that Fate is fruit of
man’s actions (Mosaic theory) vi. 140.

Re-union after severance—modesty in Alaeddin as contrasted with Kamar
al-Zamán, etc., iii. 176.

Revetment of old wells in Arabia, mostly of dry masonry, v. 132.

Rheumatism, a common complaint in even the hottest climates, v. 160.

Riddle or conundrum, vi. 97.

Riding men as asses, a facetious exaggeration of an African practice,
vi. 240.

Right hand (seated at the) a place of honour in Europe; amongst Moslems
the place would be to the left, iii. 136.

Ríh = Wind, gust (of temper), pride, rage, v. 58.

Rikáb (_Arab._) = Stirrup + “dár” (_Pers._) = holder (_tr._ “groom”)
iv. 24.

Rikkí al-Saut = soften the sound (or “lower thy voice,”) ii. 89.

“Ring and the Lamp” have a magical effect over physique and morale of
the owner, iii. 104.

Ring given as token to show fair play, i. 248.

Rísah (copyist’s error for “Rishah”) = a thread, feather, line, iv.
259.

“Rise that I may seat myself in thy stead” (addressed to the full
moon)—true Orientalism, iii. 151.

Ríshah = feather, plume, (usual meaning) Dr. Steingass explains, iv.
259.

Rising up and sitting down, usual sign of emotion, i. 348.

Riyál (from, the _Span._ “Real”) = royal (coin) _tr._ “real”, iv. 284.

“Rizk” equiv. for “Al-Rizku ’l-hasanu” = any good thing obtained
without exertion (ST.) iv. 245.

—— maksúm (Al-), an old and sage byword pregnant with significance, iv.
245.

Roc or vulture, vi. 23.

Rod of Moses became a common symbol of dignity, etc., vi. 157.

Rods of Moses and Aaron, vi. 98, 99.

Rodwell quoted, v. 42, 48.

Roger, old name of the parish bull in rural England, iv. 203.

“Rose up and sat down,” a sign of agitation, v. 328.

Rosso antico (mostly a porphyry) iii. 139.

Roum = Greeks, i. 134.

—— city of (Rúmí) vi. 89.

“Rub’a” (_Arab._) _pl._ Arbá = the fourth of a “Waybah” (_tr._ “half a
quartern”) iv. 128.

“Rudaynían,” from “Rudaynah,” either a woman or a place, vi. 230.

Rúh Allah _lit._ = breath of Allah (_tr._ “Spirit of Allah”) i. 251.

Rúhi = _lit._ my breath (_tr._ “my sprite”) ii. 120.

Rukh = Roc, iii. 186.

—— (the mythical—mixed up with the mysterious bird Símurgh) iii. 188.

Rukhám = marble or alabaster, here used for building material, vi. 60.

Rumh = lance, i. 90.

Rúmí (“Roum”) in Marocco and other parts of Moslem world is still syn.
with our “European,” vi. 89.

Rusáfiyah = a cap, i. 160.

“Rushdu ’llah” or “Al-Hudà,” spiritual direction or divine grace
received from Allah, vi. 104.

Russians (Asiatics have a very contemptible opinion of the) v. 119.

Rustáki, from Rusták, a quarter of Baghdad, ii. 209.

Rutab wa manázil = degrees and dignities, i. 217.

Sá’ah = the German _Stunde_, our old “Stound” (meaning to Moslems the
spaces between prayer-times) v. 151.

“Sa’alab” or “Tha’lab” = Fox, vi. 146.

Sabba raml = cast in sand (may be clerical error for “Zaraba raml” = he
struck sand, _i.e._, made geomantic figures), _here tr._ “striking a
geomantic table,” iii. 68.

“Sabbal’alayhim (for ’alayhinna, the usual masc. _pro fem._) Al-Sattár”
(_Arab._) = _lit._ “the Veiler let down a curtain upon them,” v.
276.

Sabbath (the) = the Saturday, iii. 64.

Sabt = Sabbath, Saturday, v. 228, 324.

Sa’d = prosperity, iii. 341.

Sádah (Al-) wa al-Khatáyát _tr._ “various colors both plain and
striped,” v. 223.

“Sádát wa Ashráf” = Sayyids and Sharífs, vi. 233.

Sa’dí = prosperous, iii. 341.

Sàdir (Al-) w al-Ghádí = those who went forth betime (the latter may
mean those who came for the morning meal) iii. 27.

Saff Kamaríyát min al-Zujáj = glazed and coloured lunettes, ii. 39.

Safíh = slab over the grave (_tr._ “pave”) i. 41.

Safúl (Al-) = ranks of fighting men, or rows of threads on a loom, i.
48.

Sáhah = courtyard (as opposed to “Bathah” = inner court), i. 284.

Sáhal for Sahal (broad “Doric” of Syria) iii. 125.

Sahará _pron._ Sahrá, i. 251.

Sahbá = red wine, ii. 99.

(“Sahha) ’alakah (=a something) fí hazá ’l-Amri” = albeit I will take
no part, vi. 245.

Sáhib = owner (same as “Dallál” = broker) iv. 224.

“—— al-Hayát” = astronomer (may also = a physiognomist) v. 289.

“—— al-jayyid” (Al-) (_Arab._) = excellent companion, vi. 5.

Sáhibi-h = his mate (masculine) iv. 346.

Sáhils, or shorelands, ii. 3.

Sahl _meaning_ “the easy tempered” (Scott writes “Sohul”) v. 138.

Sahrá (_Arab._) = desert (applied by Persians to waste grounds about a
town: _hereto_ “barren hill-country”) iii. 67.

Sahríj = Cistern, v. 5.

Sails hoisted and canvas loosed (anchors weighed and canvas spread) i.
321.

Sajálmah-bird, unknown to dictionaries, prob. species of hawk, vi. 35.

“Sakalat” (_Pers._) or “Saklatún,” whence Mr. Skeat would derive
“scarlet,” vi. 5.

Sakf (flat roof), must have a parapet (a Jewish precaution neglected by
Al-Islam) v. 219.

Sakhrah = labour, i. 84.

Sakhtúr (_Arab._) for “Shakhtúr” _tr._ “batel,” v. 163.

Sákiyah = water-wheel, ii. 47.

Sakk (_pl._ “Sikák” and “Sukúk”) = “nail” (ST.) v. 380.

Sakká (_Arab._) = a water carrier, vi. 46.

“—— Sharbah,” who supplies water to passengers in streets, vi. 46.

Salaku-hu wa nashalú-hu = “they scored it,” v. 395.

“Salám” here = Heaven’s blessing, vi. 97.

Salám pronounced after prayers, i. 14.

Salásín = thirty (a clerical error for “three”) iv. 310.

Salát, sundry technical meanings, vi. 103.

—— = the formal ceremonious prayer, vi. 103.

“Salb” = impalement, everywhere else meaning crucifixion, vi. 206–1.

“Sálihín” (_Arab._) = the Saints, the Holy ones (_tr._ “the Hallows”)
iv. 218.

Salkh (_Arab._) = flaying (meaning also a peculiar form of
circumcision) v. 214.

Salt rubbed on wounds to staunch the blood, v. 97.

Samár (_Arab._) from _Pers._ “Sumar” = a reed, a rush, v. 226.

Samaria (according to Moslems, Shamrín and Shamrún) iii. 271.

Samaritans, vi. 160–1.

Samáwah, confounded with Kerbela—a desert with a place of pilgrimage,
iii. 484.

——, Desert of, iii. 484.

—— (Town on Euphrates) iii. 484.

Samd = carpets and pots and pans (_tr. Vaiselle_) vi. 64.

Samhari, vi. 229.

Sámiri Al-, Golden Calf of, vi. 160.

——, translated by Christian commentators as “Samaritan,” vi. 160.

Sammán = quail, v. 151.

“Samman” (for “Sammán”) = quails, vi. 66.

“——” or “Summán” (classically “Salwá”) = quails, vi. 147.

Sammár = reciters, ii. 3.

Samm Sá’ah (in text), _tr._ “poison of the hour,” v. 352.

Samson’s enigma (Judges xiv. 12), vi. 106.

Sandarúsah (_Arab._) = red juniper gum (from _Pers._ “Sandar” = amber)
_tr._ “Sandarach,” vi. 141.

Sanják (in modern parlance) = minor
province, iv. 245.

—— (_Turk._) = flag, banner, iv. 245.

—— -dar = the banner-bearer, ensign, iv. 245.

Sankharíb the Sovran, vi. 3.

Santír = psalteries, ii. 246.

Sapídaj (corresponding with “Isfidaj”), _tr._ “ceruse” or white lead,
v. 130.

Sára’a hu wa láwa’a-hu = he rushed upon him and worried him (ST.) iv.
266.

Sára la-hu Shanán, _tr._ “In his new degree he was feared,” v. 472.

—— (Steingass reads “Thániyan” = and he became second to him (the
Sultan), _i.e._, his alter ego) v. 472.

Sar’a’l-Lijám, _tr._ “bridal thongs,” v. 385.

“Sárayah” (for “Saráyah,” Serai, Government House), _tr._ “Palace,” v.
6.

Saráy not to be confounded with Serraglio = Harem, iv. 234.

—— (_Pers._) official head-quarters of the Walí, iv. 234.

Sára yuráshí-h, _tr._ “kindness and liberality,” v. 473.

—— (“Yuráshí” and “Yuráshú” are the 6th form of “rashá, yarshú”) = he
bestowed a gift (principally for the sake of bribery), he treated
kindly (ST.) v. 473.

Sardáb = a souterrain, v. 117.

Sarhádún = “Sarkhadom” (_Gauttier_). The great usurper Sargon, vi. 6.

Sarír = a bier without the corpse, iv. 289.

“Sarkhah adwat la-há al-Saráyah” = a cry to which the Palace women
raised an echo (ST.) iv. 272.

Sarmújah (_Arab._) = sandals, slippers, etc., v. 442;
from _Pers._ “Sarmúzah,” a kind of hose or gaiter worn over a boot
(ST.) v. 217.

Sarráf = a money changer (_tr._ “shroff”) iii. 333.

—— Sarra Surrah (Surratan) = he tied up a purse (ST.) v. 412.

Sarsarah (cler. error for “Akhaza (?) surratan”) = he took a purse, v.
462.

Sárú (dakhalú, jalasú, etc.), in the plural for the dual—popular and
vulgar speech, iii. 66.

Sat down (in sign of agitation) ii. 211.

Satíhah (_Arab._) = a She-Satíh, iv. 69.

Satl = water-can (Lat. and Etruscan Situla and Situlus, a water-pot) i.
291.

Sattár (_Arab._) = “The Veiler” iv. 31 (corresponding with “Jupiter
Servator”) iv. 270.

Sawábi (a regularly formed broken plural of a singular “Sábi’” = the
pointing one) (ST.) v. 419.

Sawáki = channels, ii. 93.

Sayabán (_Pers._) = canopy, iv. 129.

Sayf kunúzí = a talismanic scymitar (_tr._ “magical sword”) v. 426.

Sayfu (Al-) w’-al Kalanj = scymitar and dagger, v. 381.

Sayyád, _lit._ = a fisherman, vi. 161.

Sayyáh (Al-) = the Shrieker, iv. 245.

Sayyid (descendant of Hasan) and the Sharíf (der. from Husayn) =
difference between, v. 39.

“Sáza, Yasízu” (_Arab._) _tr._ “genealogist,” not a dictionary
word—perhaps a clerical error for “Sāsa” = he groomed or broke in a
horse, iv. 21.

Scarlet (red, violet, white, green) vi. 5.

“Sciences are of three kinds, etc.” iv. 10.

Scott quoted, iv. 3, 7, 14, 19, 27, 35, 43, 45, 55, 56, 59, 67, 74, 80,
90, 95, 97, 109, 127, 169, 176, 189, 244, 297, 303, 307, 334, 351;
v. 3, 17, 21, 22, _ib._ 24, 30, 36, 39, 44, 50, 63, 65, 105, 114,
116, 119, 120, 123, 125, 138, 153, 184, 210, 213, 214, 227, 231,
253, 263, 273, 321, 335, 347, 357, 465.

Seal-ring (or Signet-ring) iii. 72.

Second-sight (_Egypt._ “Darb al-Mandal”) iv. 45.

Secret, difficult for an Eastern to keep, i. 342.

Seed pearls made into great pearls (also rubies and branch-coral) i.
197.

Seeking to release Soul of Prince who had perished, iii. 298.

Semi-abortions (preservation of, a curse in sixth century) iii. 498.

Sentiment, morbid and unmasculine French, contrasted with the healthy
and manly tone of the Nights, v. 267.

Serraglio-palace; _der. from_ Serai (_Pers._) = a palace, _also der.
from_ Cerrar (Spanish and Portuguese) = to shut up, iii. 128.

Service (yearly value of his fief), i. 256.

Seven ages of woman-kind, v. 56.

—— handwritings, vi. 226.

Severance-spies = stars and planets, ii. 236.

Sha’abán (his face gladdening as the crescent moon of) v. 142.

Shabakah = net (hung over shop during absence of shopkeeper) i. 205.

Shabaytar = the Shuhrúr (in MS. Suhrúr) = a blackbird, v. 151.

—— also called “Samaytar” and “Abu al-Ayzar” = the father of the brisk
one (a long-necked bird like heron) (ST.) v. 151.

“Shadow of Allah,” a title of the Shah, iii. 531.

Shaghaf = violent love, joy, grief, vi. 15.

Shaghaftíní (also “Ashghaftíní”) from Shaghaf = violent love, joy,
grief = “Thou hast enamoured me,” vi. 15.

Shaghrí (_Pers._), _e.g._ “Kyafsh-i-Shaghri” = slippers of shagreen,
iii. 282.

Shagreen (_der. from Pers._) “Shaghri,” produced by skin of wild ass,
iii. 282.

Shah Bakht = King Luck, i. 191.

Shah-Goase (Shah Ghawwás = King Diver), vi. 233.

Shahbán, Bresl. Edit. form of Shahryár = City-keeper, for City-friend,
i. 334.

Sháhbander = King of the port, a harbour master, v. 254.

Sháhinsháh = King of kings, iii. 534.

—— a title first assumed by Ardashír, iii. 500.

Sháhmiyánah = a huge marquee or pavilion tent in India, iii. 469.

Sháhrazád (in Mac. Edit. Shahrázád) i. 334.

Shahrazád and Shahryar, ii. 259.

Shahr-Bánu (_Pers._) = City-queen, iii. 486.

Shahrbáz (W. M. MS.) = City-player or city-falcon, iv. 6.

Shahrzádah (W. M. MS.) = “City born” (for “Shahrázád”) iv. 6.

Shahwah (_Arab._) = lust, iii. 33.

Shahwah dáram = I am lustful, iii. 33.

Shá’il, copyist’s error for “Shághil,” act. part of Shughl = business
affairs, v. 245.

—— (Here probably for the fuller “Shughl shághil”) = an urgent business
(ST.) v. 245.

Shajarat al-Durr = Branch of Pearl, i. 12.

—— Rih = Wind-tree (?) iv. 138.

Shakbán = the end of cloth, gown, cloak, etc. (Houdas) vi. 189.

Sháked (_Heb._) = Almond-tree, vi. 7.

Shakhat, _tr._ here “revile” (ST.) v. 3.

Shakhs = carven image, v. 30.

—— either a person or an image (_here tr._ “Image”) iii. 18.

—— mafsúd = man of perverted belief (_i.e._, an infidel) i. 352.

Shaking his clothes (in sign of quitting possession) ii. 205.

“—— out his skirts,” a sign of willingly parting with possessions, iii.
316.

Shakk (_Arab._) = splitting or quartering, v. 96.

Shaklaba (here = “shakala”) = he weighed out (money), he had to do with
a woman (_tr._ “tumbled”) v. 291.

Shalabi = a dandy, a macaroni (from the Turk. Chelebi) v. 243.

Shám = Syria (and its capital) called Damascus (Cotheal MS.) vi. 167.

Sham’ádín, a would-be Arabic plural of the Persian “Sham’adán” =
candlestick, chandelier, iii. 109.

Shamámah (or “Chamama,” accord. to Gauttier and Heron) vi. 68.

Shámat = cheek mole (beauty spot), applied to Damascus (Shám) vi. 167.

“Shám ba’d az nisf-i-shab” = dinner after midnight = supper (ST.) iv.
244.

Shame (uncovered my), in this instance “head and face,” v. 329.

Shámiyánah = a royal pavilion (_cor._ of _Pers._ “Sayabán” = canopy)
iv. 129.

Shámiyát bi al-Nár, an Inquisitorial costume (_tr._ “a black habit
bepatched with flame colour”) iv. 79.

Shampooing (practice of) i. 116.

Shamrín (and Shamrún) = Samaria, iii. 271.

Shamúl (fem.) = liquor hung in the wind to cool, i. 42.

Sharárah = a spark, ii. 87.

Sharí’at, forbidding divorce by compulsion, ii. 147.

Sharif (a descendant from Mohammed) i. 285.

Sharífí = a sequin, ii. 143.

Sharkh (_Arab._) = in dicts. the unpolished blade of hiltless sword
(_tr._ here “a butcher’s chopper”) iv. 220.

Sharkíyah (province in Egypt) ii. 16.

Sharr (Al-) (“the wickedness”) last city in Meckran before entering
Sind, i. 336.

—— fi al-Haramayn = wickedness in the two Holy Places, ii. 220.

Shásh = a small compact white turband and distinctive sign of the true
Believer, v. 143.

Shashmah (from _Pers._ “Chashmah” = fountain) _tr._ “privies,” v. 458.

Shástras—Hindu Scripture or Holy Writ, iii. 429.

Shatárah (prop. cleverness), signifying vileness and rashness (ST.) v.
220.

Shawáhid (meaning that heart testifies to heart) _tr._ “hearts have
their witnesses,” ii. 87.

Shawwara binta-hu = he gave a marriage outfit to his daughter (ST.) v.
28.

Shaybání (Al-) = “Of the Shaybán tribe” ii. 191.

Shayh = Artemisia, iv. 343.

Shaykh becomes ceremonially impure by handling a corpse, i. 290.

——, for humility, sits at the side of room, not at the top (“Sadr”) iv.
84.

—— of Islam, v. 317.

—— or head of the Guild for thieves, iv. 282.

—— al-Hujjáj = Shaykh of the Pilgrims, ii. 63.

—— al-Islám, the Chief of the Moslem Church, iv. 69.

“—— al-Tawaif” may mean “Shaykh of the Tribes” (of Jinns) ii. 117.

Shayyan li’lláh = _lit._ (Give me some) Thing for (the love of) Allah
(_tr._ “An alms, for the love of Allah”) ii. 44.

Shayy bi-lásh = _lit._ “a thing gratis or in vain” (_here tr._ “matters
beyond the range of matter”) iii. 68.

Sházz = Voice (doubtful if girl’s, nightingale’s, or dove’s) ii. 244.

“She had never gone or come” = she was in her own home, iii. 183.

“—— heard a blowing behind her” (a phenomenon well known to
spiritualists) ii. 101.

“—— will double thy store of presents,” ii. 111.

Sherbet and coffee, mention of, makes the tale synchronous with that of
Ma’aruf or the xvii. century, iv. 55.

Sherífí _pl._ of Sherífíyah (Egyptian form); here “Ashrafis,” iv. 336.

Shi’ah doctrine, v. 178.

Shikk (_Arab._) = Half-man, iv. 69, 76.

Ship’s crew run on shore on their own business immediately the vessel
cast anchor, v. 475.

Shísheh-ká paysá = a (pice) small coin of glass, iii. 351.

Shīve-Zād, iii. 47.

“Shobási,” for “Sobáshí,” vi. 191.

Shooting shafts and firing bullets at the butt, practised by Easterns
on horseback, v. 421.

Shroft (Arab Sayrafi) i. 298.

Shubbák = lattice (also “Mashrabiyah” = latticed balcony) i. 29.

“Shúf-hu,” (_Arab._) (colloquial form of “Shuf-hu”) = look upon him,
iii. 58.

Shuhbá (Al-) = Ash-coloured, verging upon white, ii. 110.

“Shuhrúr al-kanísah” = the Blackbird of the Church (Christians in Syria
call St. Paul, on account of his eloquence) (ST.) v. 151.

“Shurbah” (_Pers._ Shorbah) = mess of pottage (_tr._ “dish of roast
meat”) iv. 22.

Shúwár (_Arab._) = trousseau (ST.) v. 28.

Si’at rizki-h = the ease with which he earned his livelihood (_tr._
“fortune”) i. 282.

Sibák (_Arab._) usually = a leash (for falconry) _tr._ “silken cord,”
vi. 46.

Sídí mistaken for Sayyid, iii. 321.

—— = my lord, iii. 321.

—— = “my lord” here becomes part of a name, ii. 151.

—— Nu’uman (sometimes “Sidi Nouman,” or “Sidi Nonman”) iii. 321.

Sífah (_Arab._) _lit._ = a quality (_tr._ “property”) iv. 102.

Signet-ring made of carnelian, v. 52.

—— of kingship (important sign of sovereignty) v. 112.

Sijn al-Dam = the Prison of Blood, ii. 161.

Sikálah (_Sing._) = scaffolding, vi. 61.

Sikbáj a marinated stew like Zirbájah, vi. 160.

—— (_Pers._ Sikbá) called “Mother of Hospitality,” being principal dish
set before guests, vi. 159.

Sikkah (_pl._ Sikak) = (amongst other meanings) “an iron post or stake”
(ST.) v. 380.

Silk, Moslems may be shrouded in it, i. 26.

Silken napkins, iv. 55.

—— platters, iii. 93.

Simá’a _lit._ hearing applied idiomatically to the ecstacy of
Darwayshes when listening to esoteric poetry, v. 151.

Sim’án-son = son of Simeon, _i.e._, a Christian, ii. 175.

Símiyá = fascination (a form of magic) vi. 132.

Simsim (or “Samsam”) The grain = _Sesamum Orientale_, iii. 370.

Sin akhi-irib = Sini (Lunus, or the Moon-god) increaseth brethren
(Etymology of “Sankharíb”) vi. 3.

Sín Al- (in text) = China (here “Al-Sind”) v. 194.

Sinaubar (_tr._ “pine”) may also mean pistachio-tree, vi. 163.

Sind Revisited quoted, iv. 8; v. 3.

—— (so-called from Sindhu, the Indus, _Pers._ “Sindáb”) v. 3.

Sindiyán (from the Persian) = holm-oak, i. 247.

Singing and music blameable (Makrúh), though not actually damnable, ii.
46.

Síníyah = tray of tinned copper, iv. 170.

Sir fí hálik (_pron._ Sirfhák) = Go about thy business, ii. 44.

Sirhán = wolf, iv. 19.

Sirr (a secret), afterwards Kitman (concealment) = keeping a lover
down-hearted, ii. 218.

“Sirru ’l-iláhi,” _i.e._, the soul which is “divinæ particula auræ”
(_tr._ “Divine mystery”) v. 466.

Sirt’anta = thou hast become (for Sirtu ana = I have become) v. 86.

Sístán (Persian) _Arab._ Sijistán, i. 56.

Sitt al-Miláh = Lady or princess of the Fair (ones) ii. 155.

“Sitt-há” (_Arab._), _tr._ “Mistress” (Mauritanians prefers “Sídah” and
Arabian Arabs “Kabírah”) = the first lady, _Madame Mère_, v. 364.

Siwán (_Arab._) pl. Siwáwín = pavilion, iv. 113.

Skin of wild ass produce the famous shagreen, iii. 282.

Slave become a King (no shame to Moslems) i. 348.

Slaves fond of talking over their sale, ii. 94.

——, when useless, made to “walk a plank” or tossed into the sea, v.
405.

Sleep at mid-forenoon (and afternoon) considered unwholesome by
Easterns, iv. 324.

“—— with both feet in one stocking” (Irish saying for “Have a care of
thyself”) v. 442.

Sleeping postures, iii. 183.

—— with drawn sword between man and maid, iii. 116.

“Smell the air” = a walk, a “constitutional,” iii. 397.

“Smoke of camel’s dung” to drive off Evil Spirits, iv. 78.

Smoking and coffee, v. 236.

Sneezes (ceremony when a Moslem), iv. 95.

“Snsál” for “Salsál” = _lit._ chain (_tr._ “borders”) vi. 235.

Soghd Samarkand = plain of Samarkand, iii. 436.

“Solaced himself by gazing upon the trees and waters,” a feeling well
known to the traveller, v. 390.

Soldiers serving on feudal tenure, i. 256.

Solomon’s Judgment, Moslem version of, iv. 236.

“Some one to back us,” i. 135.

“Son of a minute, The,” _i.e._, which would take effect in the shortest
time, iii. 171.

“Son of the Road” = a mere passer-by, a stranger, ii. 235.

Son (youngest of three) generally Fortune’s favourite in folk-lore,
iii. 453.

Sons = Men, a characteristic Arab. idiom, i. 2.

—— of Adam = his Moslem neighbours, ii. 30.

—— of the Path = Travellers, nomads, wild Arabs, ii. 213.

Soudans, Two, iv. 305.

Soul of Prince who had perished (seeking to release) iii. 298.

“Spare not blows to thy child,” a barbarous sentiment of Biblical
inspiration, vi. 9.

“—— the rod and spoil the child,” vi. 9.

“Spoiling for a fight,” ii. 199.

Spreading (the mats, mattresses, rugs, etc., of well-to-do Eastern
lodging) v. 233.

“Squeezed my ribs,” a bear-like attack, common amongst lower orders of
Egypt and Syria, ii. 47.

Standards and colours, an unfailing accompaniment of the Jinn army, iv.
89

“Stick wherewith he tapped and drew lines in absent fashion on the
ground,” v. 10.

Stirrup, The Arab, iii. 478.

Stomach has two mouths, œsophagic above and pyloric below, v. 52.

Stone tied in kerchief or rag, weapon for fighting, v. 350.

Story of the First Lunatic (variants) iv. 49.

Story-telling, servile work, v. 34.

St. Paul, called by the Christians in Syria “Shuhrúr al-Kanísah,” the
Blackbird of the Church (on account of his eloquence) (ST.) v. 151.

Stranger invites a guest during pilgrimage-time, i. 195.

“Striking palm upon palm,” _i.e._, in sign of despair, iv. 252.

—— the nape = “boxing ears” (Moslem equiv.) vi. 35.

“Subaudi” = “that hath not been pierced” (a virgin) v. 223.

Subjects (men who pay taxes) i. 256.

Subjects (Persian) both women and men are virtually King’s slaves, iii.
533.

Subú’ (_Arab._) for Yaum al-Subú’ = Septena-festival on the seventh day
after a birth, marriage, or return from pilgrimage, iv. 122.

Sufrah = the cloth (_tr._ “table cloth”) iv. 69.

—— of leather = circular leather which acts as provision bag and
tablecloth, iv. 162.

—— umm jalájil (_Arab._) _lit._ = an eating cloth with little bells,
iv. 169.

Sugar (Europe-made white) avoided by Moslems as unlawful, v. 352.

—— (Sukkar), v. 352.

Suicide, Hindus adepts in, iii. 166.

—— rare in Moslem lands, i. 325.

Sujjádah = _lit._ a praying carpet (_tr._ “rug”) iv. 52; v. 225.

Sukkar from _Pers._ “Shakkar” (whence Lat. Saccharum) the generic term,
v. 352.

Sullam (_pl._ “Salálim”) popularly used for a flight of steps (_tr.
here_ souterrain-stairs) iii. 75.

Sultan, amongst Arabs may denote any dignity from a Shaykh to a Sultan,
vi. 226.

“—— and his Sons etc.,” same as Scott’s “Story of the Three Princes,
etc.,” iv. 44.

—— of Al-Yaman and his three Sons (_ver._ taken from Zotenberg’s
“Chronique de Tabari”), iv. 3.

—— of the Jánn preceded by sweepers;
always appears in the form of “second sight” called by Egyptians “Darb
al-Mandal,” iv. 45.

Sultanate for Women Custom of Al-Islam, a strong precedent against
queenly rule, i. 350.

Sulúk (_Arab._) a sufistical expression, the road to salvation (_tr._
“paths”), iii. 185.

Summák = a plant with acid flavour, dried, pounded, and peppered with
meat, vi. 160.

Sun fare backwards = “to eclipse the sun,” vi. 107.

Sunnah = the practice, etc., of the Prophet, v. 193.

—— and Farz = The practice (of the Prophet) and the Holy Law (Koranic)
ii. 10.

Supernatural agency makes the most satisfactory version of tale, v.
118.

Supper comes first because the day begins at sundown, iv. 120.

—— (“dinner after midnight”). See Shah’s diary (ST.) iv. 244.

Surah = Koranic chapter; here possibly clerical error for Súrah sort
(of food), ii. 173.

Suráyyát (_lit._ the Pleiades) and Sham’ádin, a would-be plural
(Arabic) of the Persian “Sham’adán” = candlestick, chandelier, iii.
109.

Surúr = joy, contentment, v. 200.

Súsah (_Arab._) = weevil, moth, worm, iv. 23.

Súsan = the lily (in Heb.) ii. 116.

Su’ubán (_Arab._) = cockatrice (_tr._ “Basilisk”) v. 427.

“Suwán” (_Arab._) lit. = rock syenite, hard stone, flint (_tr._ “mace”)
iv. 24.

Suwaydá al-Kalb (the black one of the heart) = original sin (synonymous
with “Habbat al-Kalb” = the grain in the heart), both metaphorically
used for “original sin.” (ST.) vi. 247.

“Suwayd” and “Suwaydá,” diminutives of “Aswad” = black. (ST.) vi. 247.

Suwaydá, _lit._ “a small and blackish woman,” vi. 247.

Swooper of the Jinn, ii. 202.

Symmetromania, Arab., iv. 67.

Syria, city of (“the stubbornest of places and the feeblest of races”)
v. 41.

“Syrian and three women of Cairo” (Variants) v. 273.

Ta’-ám = Millet seed (_tr._ “grain”) i. 5.

Taannafú = making “long noses,” i. 300.

Ta’arkalak, (_Arab._) = waylay thee, vi. 7.

Taawíl = the commentary or explanation of Moslem Holy Writ, v. 43.

Ta’ayyun = influence (especially by the “’Ayn” (evil) Eye) _tr._
“fascinate,” v. 166.

Táb = “tip-cat,” ii. 54.

Tábah = gag, vi. 184.

Tabaristán (adj. Tabari), whereas Tabaráni = native of Tiberias, i. 94.

Tabariyyah = Gennesaret (Chinnereth, Cinneroth) where, according to
some Moslems, _the_ Solomon was buried, vi. 101.

Tabíb Al- = the scientific practitioner (in pop. parlance) v. 326.

Tabshálím, (a word which appears to be a corruption bearing a
resemblance to “Dabshalim,” meaning “a mighty king”) vi. 23.

Ta’dilú = Swerve (also “Ye do injustice”) i. 52.

Táf (Al-) a suburb of Baghdah, ii. 71.

Tafazzal (_Arab._) a useful word employed in invitations, equiv. to
“Have the kindness” iv. 84;
Tafazzalú, iv. 233.

Taffaytu-hu = extinguish (_tr._ “put it out”) iii. 84.

Tafl (_Arab._) = a kind of clay, iii. 348.

Tafrik wa’l-jam’a = division and union, i. 222.

Tá-Há = the Koranic chapter No. XX. revealed at Meccah, v. 180.

——, whose first 14–16 verses are said to have converted the hard-headed
Omar, vi. 157.

“Tahlíl” = making word or deed canonically lawful, v. 43.

Tahrím = rendering any action “harám” or unlawful, v. 43.

Tahzib—reforming morals, amending conduct, etc., ii. 240.

Tai = Man of the tribe of Tay, i. 180.

Taí Al- (relative adjective of irregular formation) v. 46.

Tail, lashing his (lion’s) symptom of rage distinguishing felines from
canines, iv. 161.

Tá’il al-Wasf = “Drawer out of Descriptions,” v. 185.

Tajní = _lit._ thou pluckest (the fruit of good deeds) vi. 104.

Tajrís, rendered by a circumlocution “Bell,” v. 337.

Ták (or Tákah) = a little wall-niche, iii. 351.

Takbír and Tahlíl, _i.e._, Crying the war cry, “Alláho Akbar” = “God is
most Great,” and “Lá iláha illa ’llah” the refrain of Unity, v. 403.

Takhsa-u, _tr._ “baffled,” a curious word of venerable age (ST.) v. 44.

Takht Raml = table of sand, geomantic table, v. 153.

Takhtrawán = mule-litter, vi. 181.

Ta’kil (_Arab._) tying up a camel’s foreleg above the knee, iv. 23.

Tákiyah = litter, i. 99.

—— = calotte or skull-cap, iv. 120.

Takrit, a town in Mesopotamia celebrated for its velvets, etc. (ST.)
iv. 337.

Takrúri = a Moslem negroid from Central and Western North Africa, iv.
298.

Takwà (form gen. used for “Ittikà”) = fearing God, vi. 96.

Talákan báinan = a triple divorce before witnesses, ii. 148.

Talámizah = disciples (sing. Talmíz) i. 251.

Tale of the Simpleton Husband i. 239. (W. M. Version) v. 116.

Tales were told before the peep of day, i. 359.

Tamanná (_Arab._) = “She saluted the king by kissing her finger tips
and raising them to her brow,” iii. 108.

Tamásil = (the Pavilion of) Pictures (generally carved images), i. 29.

Tambúr der. from “Tabl” = a drum (hence modern “Tambour”) iv. 209.

Tá-mera (Coptic) = the Land of the Nile Flood, vi. 12.

Tamím (_Arab._) pl. of Tamímat = spells, charms, amulets, “Thummim,”
iv. 332.

Tamkín = gravity, assurance (_tr._ “Self-possession”) ii. 8.

Tamtar Aysh? (_Arab._) _i.e._, Ayyu Shayyin “What do the skies rain!”
iv. 207.

Tannúr = large earthern jar (_tr._ “oven-jar”) i. 208.

—— = oven, (misprint for “Kubúr” = Tombs) i. 265.

Tanzíl = coming down, revelation of the Koran, v. 43.

Tarábulus-town (also Atrábulus) arabisations of Tripolis, iv. 169.

Tarajjama, frequently used in this MS. (ST.) iv. 242.

—— = he deprecated, v. 12.

“Tarajjum,” taking refuge from Satan the Stoned (Rajím) vi. 190.

Tarammá al-Mahramah (throwing the handkerchief) used in the old forms
of choosing a mate, iv. 31.

Tarbíyatí = yearling, i. 348.

Tarfah = Tamarisk, ii. 252.

Tari (_Arab._) _lit._ = wet (_tr._ “soothing”) iv. 71.

Tarjumán = a dragoman (_tr._ “Truchman”) ii. 185; vi. 89.

Tarjumánah (_fem._ of “Tarjumán” = a dragoman) = _lit._ an
“interpreter” woman, vi. 89.

Tarkah = “A gin,” a snare, i. 16.

Tartara (_Arab._) _tr._ “perked up” (prob. an emphatic reduplication of
Tarra = “sprouting, pushing forward”) v. 443.

Tasawwuf (mystic fraternity of) v. 426.

Tasht = “basin” (the consonantic outline being the same as of
“tashshat”) = she was raining, sprinkling (ST.) a possible pun, v.
147.

Tasill sallata’l-Munkatí’ín = _lit._ “raining on the drouth-hardened
earth of the cut-off” (_tr._ “Watering the dry ground”) i. 345.

Tastaghís (_Arab._) = _lit._ crying out “Wa Ghausáh!”—“Ho to my aid”
(_tr._ “Help! Help!”) v. 157.

Tatadakhkhal ’alay-h = “sue his protection,” vi. 134.

Tauhán al-Husán, _tr._ “lost in the waste,” v. 409.

Tawáf = Circuiting (an act of worship) iii. 298.

Tawánís (instead of “Tawánis,” _pl._ of Taunas), _tr._ “cordage” (ST.)
v. 133.

Tayhál (_pl._ “Tawáhil”) for the usual “Tihál” = spleen (ST.) v. 53.

Taylasán-hood, iv. 34.

Tays = myriads of, vi. 187.

Tayyibah = the good, sweet or lawful, v. 43.

Tazaghzagha, _gen._ = he spoke hesitatingly, he scoffed (_tr._ “waxed
wroth”) v. 106.

“Tazaghghara fí-hi” (rendered pop.) “he pitched into him” (ST.) v. 106.

Tazarghít (error for “Zaghrítah”) = the cry of joy, v. 429.

—— (numerous forms of) (ST.) v. 430.

“Ten camel loads” about a ton, at the smallest computation of 200 lbs.
to each beast, v. 395.

Ter-il-bas (Tayr Táús?), a kind of peacock, made to determine elections
by alighting on the head of a candidate, v. 26, 27. (Old
Translation.)

Teshurah = a gift offered with the object of being admitted to the
presence, iii. 100.

Thag, _equiv._ to our English “Thug,” iii. 374.

—— = simply a “cheat,” but may also mean a robber, assassin, etc.
(_tr._ “Bandits”) iii. 374.

Thaghr al-Khánakán = The narrows of the (Dervishes’) convent, ii. 74.

Thakálah (_Arab._) = heaviness, dulness, stupidity (_tr._ “horseplay”)
v. 457.

Thaníyyat al-’Ukáb = the Vulture’s Pass, vi. 181.

“That a standard be borne over his head,” i. 161.

Thayyib (_Arab._) = a woman who has known man but once, iv. 333.

“The Astrologers lied,” i. 122.

Theatre (shifting) iii. 429.

The babe to the blanket, and the adultress to the stone, i. 271.

“The chick is unsatisfied till, etc.” a translation which presupposes
the reading “Farkhah lá atammat” and would require “hattà” or “ilà”
to express “till” (ST.) iv. 302.

“The green stick is of the trees of Paradise,” vi. 9.

“The hoard hath gone from me, and I have waxed feeble,” _i.e._, his
strength was in the gold, iv. 347.

“Them” for “her” (often occurrence of) v. 178.

“There is not a present (Teshurah) to bring to the man of God,” iii.
100.

“The reed-pen wrote what ’twas bidden write” = “Destiny so willed it,”
vi. 51.

“There is no harm to thee, and boon of health befal thee,” auspicious
formula, vi. 174.

The sumptuary laws compelling Jews to wear yellow turbands, i. 286.

The sand appeared in the sunlight like unto ropes (author and Steingass
explain) vi. 32.

“The world was turned topsy-turvy,” _i.e._, there was a great movement
and confusion, iv. 262.

Thieves with hands lopped off, ii. 44.

“Thine is ours and on thee shall be whatso is on us” = we will assume
thy debts and responsibilities, ii. 247.

Thirst takes precedence of hunger, iii. 320.

This girl is a fat piece of meat (_i.e._, “There are good pickings to
be had out of this job”) ii. 17.

This matter is not far to us = “is not beyond our reach,” v. 311.

“This night” for “last night,” vi. 128.

Thiyáb ’Amúdiyah = striped clothes, ii. 79.

Those noble steps = thine auspicious visits, ii. 82.

Thou comest to bring us victory = “thou comest to our succour,” ii.
201.

Thought reading, iii. 539.

“Thou hast been absent overlong,” a kindly phrase pop. addressed to the
returning traveller, v. 444.

“Thou hast done justice” (’adalta), also means “Thou hast swerved from
right.” “Thou hast wrought equitably” also = “Thou hast
transgressed,” i. 51.

Three Sisters and their Mother, Defects in the Story of, iv. 165

“Three things lack permanency, Wealth without trading, Learning without
disputation, Government without justice,” (Sa’di in the Gulistan)
iii. 6.

Throwing the kerchief (tarammá al Mahramah) used in the old form of
choosing a mate, iv. 31. See iv. 264.

“Thummim” _der. from_ “Tôm” = completeness, iv. 332.

Thursday = pay day for the boys in Egypt, iv. 98.

Thrust his finger up his fundament (a diabolical way of clapping hands
in applause) ii. 89.

“Thy commands, O my mother, be upon my head,” iii. 89.

“Thy Highness,” a form of addressing royalty common in Austria, iii.
108.

“Thy rose-hued cheek showeth writ newwrit,” _i.e._, the growing beard
and whisker is compared with black letters on a white ground, v.
148.

Tigris, The (Hid-dekel) iv. 151.

Time, division of, in China and Japan, v. 90.

Tín (_Arab._) = clay, mud (used with Tob forming walls of Egypt and
Assyria) vi. 24.

“Tirrea Bede” (Night 655) note concerning, v. 119.

’Tis more acceptable to me than a red camel, ii. 248.

Tisht (a basin for the ewer), _tr._ “tray,” v. 428.

Tither, unable to do evil, i. 245.

TKhDH (=takhuz-hu, according to author); may be either 2nd or 8th form
of “ahad” in the sense that “thou comest to an agreement (Ittihád)
with him,” v. 189.

TMT, _i.e._, Tammat = She (the tale) is finished, vi. 38.

Tobáni = unbaked brick, i. 34.

Tobbas = “Successors” or the Himyaritic kings, ii. 263.

Tobe = the Anglo-Oriental form of “Thaub” = in Arabia a loose robe like
a night-gown, vi. 139.

“To-day wine, and to-morrow business,” ii. 177.

“To eat skite” = to talk or act foolishly, vi. 70.

Toilette, carrying a portable, iv. 303.

Tohfah = A gift, i. 16.

—— = a choice gift, ii. 79.

Tohfat al-Humaká = Choice Gift of the Fools, ii. 73.

—— al-Kulúb = Choice Gift of the Hearts, ii. 73.

Tohfat al-Sudúr = Choice Gift of the Breasts (_i.e._, of the hearts)
ii. 84–133.

Tomb of the Moslem, iv. 293.

Torture endured through Eastern obstinacy, i. 293.

Towáb Al- (_Arab. pl._ of _Per._ and _Turk._ “Top”) = cannon, vi. 186.

Trafír = trumpets, iii. 137.

“Treasure-trove,” the possession of exposing the owner to torture, iii.
105.

True believer imitates sayings and doings of the Apostle, ii. 173.

Tú bará Thag hai = thou art a precious rascal, iii. 374.

Tuhà = cooked meat, vi. 187.

Tuhál or Tihál (_Arab._) in text “Tayhál,” _tr._ “spleen,” v. 53.

Turayyih (_mod. form for_ “turawwih”) (ST.) iv. 301.

Turcoman blood (steed of) iii. 297.

Turkish Tales by Petis de la Croix, iv. 13.

Turkumániyah = Turcomanish (_tr._ “dragomanish”) ii. 191.

Turquoise stone, held as a talisman in the East, iii. 270.

Turtúr = the Badawi’s bonnet, v. 255.

“Tutmájíyah” for “Tútmáj” = vermicelli, vi. 160.

Tutty, in low Lat. “Tutia” prob. from _Pers._ “Tutiyah” = protoxide of
zinc, v. 352.

Tuzáribí may mean “Dost thou play the part of” (ST.) vi. 57.

Twelvemonths, _i.e._, a long time, i. 319.

“Uaddíki,” Taadiyah (iid. of Adá, he assisted) = sending, forwarding
(_tr._ “Carry”) ii. 77.

’Ubb (_Arab._) = bulge between breast and outer robe (_tr._ “breast
pocket”) iii. 317.

’Úd = primarily “wood”; then a “lute” (_tr._ here “fuel”) ii. 178.

’Úd Khayrázan = wood of the rattan, iv. 317.

’Udúl (_pl._ of Adil) = men of good repute (_tr._ “notables”) ii. 25.

Ukiyyah (or Wukiyyah) = ounce = 571·5 to 576 grains, vi. 163.

“Uktuli’s-siráj,” the Persian “Chirághrá bi-kush” = kill the lamp, iii.
84.

Umm Kash’am, a slang name for death, iv. 183.

Ummálí (_Arab._); _gen._ Ummál, an affirmation (_tr._ “True indeed”)
iv. 193.

’Ummár = the Jinn (_tr._ “Haunters”) ii. 102.

Ummu ’Amrin = mother of ’Amru (slang term for “hyæna”) iv. 183.

Under my ribs = In my heart’s core, i. 339.

Unsa-k (_Arab._), an expression used when drinking one’s health (_tr._
“Thy favour”) (ST.) v. 458.

Unth = Camel, iii. 294.

Urím (lights) and Thummim (amulets), iv. 332.

Urinal (old French name for phial in which the patient’s water is sent)
i. 285.

’Urkúb, a Jew of Yathrib, ii. 164.

’Urrah (_Arab._) = dung, v. 75.

’Urs (Al-) w’al-Tuhúr = “the wedding” (which does not drop out of the
tale) and the circumcision, ii. 90.

Usburú = be ye patient, v. 83.

Ushtur or “Unth” = camel, iii. 294.

Veil me = protect my honour, ii. 147.

Veil (raiser of) means a fitting purchaser, ii. 73.

Vellication (in cases of axilla-pile), iv. 153.

“Verily great is their craft” (Koranic quotation from “Joseph”), v.
294.

Viaticum = provision, provaunt for the way, iv. 304.

Vijáyanagara = City of Victory, iii. 422.

Violateth my private apartment, ii. 243.

Violation of the Harem (son “having” his father’s wives), very common
in Egypt, v. 441.

Virginity (how proved), iv. 121.

Visions frequent in Al-Islam, iii. 405.

Vocative particles (five in Arabic), i. 85.

Voice (mysterious), ii. 51.

Voices disembodied, iii. 515.

—— from the other world, vi. 227.

Vows of Pious Moslems, v. 234.

Wa adraka Shahrázáda’l-Sabáh = And Shahrazad _perceived_ the dawn of
day (also “was surprised by the dawn”) iv. 6.

Wa’d al-Banât, or burial of Mauúdát (living daughter) iii. 498.

“Wá Ghausáh!” = “Ho, to my aid,” v. 157.

“Wahá,” etc. (_Arab._) corresponding with Syriac “ho” = behold! i. 275.

“Wa Hakki man aulání házá ’l-Mulk” = “and by the right of (my duty
towards) Him who made me ruler over this kingdom” (ST.) iv. 307.

“—— inní la-ar’ákum wa ar’à widádakum,” etc., _tr._ “And I make much of
you and your love, etc.” (ST.) v. 172.

—— jasad-hu yuhazdimu = his body was emitting blood freely (ST.) iv.
285.

“—— Kita’h hamrah,” _tr._ “also a bit of cooked meat,” vi. 125.

—— Kulli Tárik = night traveller, magician, morning star, v. 378.

“—— Kuntu ráihah ursil warák” (the regular Fellah language) i. 29.

“—— lákin hú ajmalu etc.” = “and yet he was more beautiful than they,
etc.” (ST.) iv. 260.

“—— lá ahad tafawwaha fína” = “nor hath anyone ever spoken,” vi. 29.

“—— lá huwa ashamná min-ka talkas” (read “talkash”) ’alà Harimi-ná”
_tr._ “that thou wouldst strive to seduce our Harím” (or “that thou
hadst an itching after our Harím”) (ST.) v. 285.

“—— lásh: Murádí bas ism al-Madinah” (_Arab._) = For nothing: my only
want is the city’s name, v. 402.

“—— lau anunahá li ’l-Mushrikín, etc.,” lines which have occurred
before, v. 55.

“—— lláhi ’l-Muwaffiku ’l-Mu’ín” = God prospereth and directeth (a
formula often prefixed to a book), vi. 196.

“—— min-hum man fáha,” evidently an error of the scribe for “Man
nafá-hu,” v. 114.

—— Nikáh = conjugal intercourse, v. 153.

“—— sába’l-dár wa Zaujatu-hu mutawassín bi-há,” _tr._ “the house
prospered for the master and the dame had charge of it,” v. 420.

“Wa sába’l-dár wa Zaujatu-hu mutawassín bi-há,” Steingass explains the
plural “Mutawassin,” by supposing “Sáb al-Dár” is blunder for
“Sáhihu ’l-Dár” and translates “the master of the house and his wife
took charge of her (the nurse) during the days of suckling” (ST.) v.
420.

“—— Sawábi ’hu (Asábi ’a-hu?) fí hanaki-h’” _tr._ “his fingers in his
mouth and sucking thereat,” v. 419.

—— Talattuf Alfázak wa ma’áník alhísán = and for the pleasingness of
thy sayings and meanings so fine and fain (ST.) v. 146.

“—— yabkí ’alaykum Mabálu-h” = suffer only his crime be upon you
(Steingass reads “Wabál” for “Mabál,” and translates, “lest the
guilt of it rest upon you”) vi. 246.

“—— zand mujauhar fí-hi Asáwir,” etc., may mean “and a forearm (became
manifest) ornamented with jewels, on which were bracelets of red
gold” (ST.) v. 86–7.

“—— zarr-há” for “Wa dazz-há” = besprinkled her (ST.) iv. 314.

—— dazzh-á (corruption in MS.) should read “wa wazzar-há” = “and he
left her” (ST.) iv. 462.

Waddí = Carry, i. 17.

Wadí’ah = deposit (here sig. blows), i. 247.

Wafát = death (decease, departure, as opposed to Maut = death), 223.

“Wáhid min al-Tujjár,” the very vulgar style, iii. 64.

Wahsh = Lion, iii. 18.

Wahwah Al- = the hue of metal leaves, vi. 122.

Waka’h (_Arab._) = an affair (of fight) v. 403.

Wakálah = a khan or caravanserai, iv. 38.

—— = an inn (_tr._ “Caravanserai”), v. 455.

—— (Egyptian term for a Khan) ii. 153.

“——” or caravanserai, v. 273.

Wakhímah = an unhealthy land, ii. 87.

Wakíl (_Arab._) = deputy—in marriage, 333;
_lit._ = agent (_tr._ “trustee”) here corresponding with man who
gives away the bride, iv. 54.

Wakt al-Zuhá (_Arab._) = the division of
time between sunrise and midday (_tr._ “undurn hour”) iv. 69.

“Wa’l-Sultánu karaa, etc.” = “and the Sovran recited his appointed
portion of the Koran, and then sat down to convivial converse” (ST.)
iv. 244.

Walad al-Hayáh (for “Hayát”) _tr._ “Thou make him a child of life,”
_i.e._, let him be long-lived, v. 378.

Walásh (_Arab._), _i.e._ “Was lá shayya” = and nihil (_tr._ “Anaught”)
iv. 210.

Walawá’yh? = wa’l-aw’iyah (_pl._ of wi’á) = and the vessels ——
shimmered like unto silver for their cleanliness, (ST.) vi. 122.

Wálí = the Civil Governor, iii. 375.

—— at one time a Civil Governor, and in other ages a Master of Police,
vi. 67.

Walímah _prop._ = a marriage feast, iii. 15.

“Waliyah” or “Waliyáh” = and why? vi. 59.

“Walwalah” or “Wilwál” (an onomatopy), general term for the wail, vi.
17.

Warayataní ilà -turáb = thou hast given me over to the ground or
concealment (ST.) iv. 312.

Wasayah (prob. cler. error for “wa Miah”—spelt “máyah”—and a hundred
pair of pigeons) (ST.) v. 217.

Washing hands and face—a preparatory washing as a matter of cleanliness
preceding the formal Wuzú-ablution, iii. 168.

Water-closet, Eastern goes to, first thing in the morning, i. 13.

—— wedding night in. iii. 115.

Watukarribu ’l’-Abda ilayya (referring the verb to “Al-Sadakah” = the
alms) “and in bringeth the servant near to me” (ST.) iv. 335.

Waybah = the sixth of an Ardabb (Irdabb) = bushels, v. 128.

Wayha-k (before “Wayla-k”) = “Fie upon thee,” vi. 20.

Wazífah _prop._ = a task, a stipend, a salary, (_here tr._ “dutie”)
iii. 328.

Wazir expected to know everything in Oriental countries, iii. 163.

Wazíru ’l-’Arif bi-lláhi Ta’álà, Al- = The
Wazir-wise-in-Allah-Almighty, iv. 239.

“We are broken to bits (Kisf,) by our own sin,” i. 155.

Weapons and furniture, (_i.e._, headstalls, hobbles, etc.), for mare
saddled and bridled (price for slave) vi. 92.

—— taken from Easterns when embarking as passengers, ticketed and
placed in cabin, v. 403.

Wedding, description of, iii. 114.

—— -night in water-closet, iii. 115.

—— night, mothers tell their daughters what to expect, iv. 42.

Week days, vi. 13.

Well, Angels choking up a, v. 332.

——, filled in over the intruding “villain” of the piece, v. 332.

Wept and laughed alternately (nearest approach in East. tales to West.
hysterics) iv. 155.

“What hast thou left behind thee, O, Asám”? _i.e._ What didst thou see?
i. 97.

What is behind thee? = What is thy news? i. 44.

“What’s past is past and what is written is written and shall come to
pass” (Sir C. Murray’s “Hassan”) iii. 10.

What was his affair? = _lit._ “How was,” etc., i. 58.

“When Adam dolve and Eve span,” etc., vi. 102.

When Fate descended (_i.e._ When the fated hour came down from Heaven),
i. 62.

Where am I, and where is the daughter, etc.? = “What have I to do with,
etc.”, ii. 7.

“Where is the bird?” = “How far is the fowl from thee?” iv. 300.

White hand, _i.e._ gifts and presents, i. 226.

“White” night, _i.e._ “pleasant,” “enjoyable,” iv. 285.

“Whose van was not known from its rear” = “both could not be seen at
the same time,” v. 189.

“—— weal Allah increase,” well nigh sole equiv. amongst Moslems of our
“thank you,” v. 325.

“Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein,” i. 119.

“Whoso journeyeth not enjoyeth not,” ii. 152.

“Whoso keeneth for himself is not like whoso is hired to keen.”
_Proverb_ = “If you want a thing done, etc.,” ii. 171.

“Whoso leaveth issue dieth not” (popular saying amongst Moslems) iii.
55.

Wife (exalting the character of) whilst the Mistress is a mere shadow
(kind of tale not unfrequent amongst Moslems) v. 335.

“——” used for “Harim,” iv. 28.

Wiják = a stove, a portable hearth (_tr._ “a brazier”) v. 110.

Wild ass (onager) iii. 282.

—— meat of, iii. 282.

—— (skin of) produces the famous Shagreen, iii. 282.

Will of man, The, a mighty motor power, iii. 426; vi. 126.

Window gardening, an ancient practice in the East, vi. 172.

Windows (first mention of in Arabic MS. of “Alaeddin”) iii. 186.

Wine and Wassail, loose talk, etc., a favourite subject with lewd
Moslems, ii. 34.

Wine, carrion and pork lawful to Moslem if used to save life, ii. 176.

Witch, i. 235.

“With the tongue of the case” = words suggested by the circumstance, v.
9.

“With love and gladness,” ii. 137.

Without a vein swelling, _i.e._, so drunk that his circulation had
apparently stopped, v. 276.

Wizzatayn = geese, v. 357.

Woman, fulfilling the desires of, fatal to love, when she revolts
against any reduction of it, v. 91.

“Womankind, Allah kill all” (note by Dr. Steingass) v. 304.

Women (Alaeddin used to think all resembled his mother); an absurd
statement to the West but true in the East, iii. 97.

—— (all of one and the same taste) i. 96.

“—— are of little wits and lack religion,” i. 31.

—— drousy charms of, ii. 252.

Wonders of the (Moslem) World—four in number, iv. 36.

Wormwood, a regular Badawi remedy, iv. 343.

Wortley Montague MS. quoted, iv. 3, 6, 19, 35, 49, 74, 90, 95, 97, 101,
109.

“Woven air,” local name of the Patna gauzes, iii. 423.

“Writing and reading,” as opposed to our “Reading and writing,” vi. 5.

“Written,” either on the Preserved Tablet or on the Sutures of the
Skull, v. 308.

Wuldán = Ghilmán = the boys of Paradise, vi. 128.

Xerafim, _Port._ for Ashrafi, iv. 38.

Yá omitted (in poetical fashion) to show speaker’s emotion, i. 149.

—— = í and Mím = m, composing the word “Ibrahím,” v. 203.

—— Abá Sábir = O Abu Sabir, i. 85.

—— ’Ars, yá Mu’arras = O pimp, O pander, v. 246.

“—— ’Arzád” prob. cler. slip for “’Urzát” (_pl._ of ’Urzah) = a
companion, a (low) fellow, iv. 191.

“Yabahh” = saying “Bah, Bah!” vi. 253.

—— Bilál = O generosity, i. 40.

“—— Bunayyí” = _lit._ “O my little son,” a term of special fondness
(_tr._ “O dear, my son”) vi. 7.

Yad (Al-) al-bayzá = _lit._ The white hand (_tr._ “largesse”) ii. 123.

Yáfis bin Núh = Japhet, son of Noah, ii. 111.

Yaftah ’Allah = Allah open (to thee the door of subsistence) ii. 44.

Yá Ghárati a-zay má huná Rájil = O, the shame of me! however, O my
Lord, can there be here a man? v. 247.

—— Dr. Steingass explains and translates, v. 247.

Yá Hájjah (_pron._ Hággeh) = O Pilgrimess, i. 198.

Yá Házá (_Arab._) = “Ho, this one,” iv. 231.

Yahjubu (_Arab._) aor. of “hajaba” = he veiled, put out of sight (ST.)
iv. 342.

Yahya (according to Scott “Yiah”) v. 153.

Yáhyà, father of Ja’afar, made Wazir by Al-Rashid, i. 166.

“Yá Jad’án” (more gen. “Yá Jad’a” pron. Gad’a) = mon brave, iv. 191.

Yá Kabírí = my good man (_tr._ “my chief”) i. 12.

Yákah Thiyábish = his robe-collar rent, vi. 247.

Yá Kawáki = O thou brawler, vi. 84.

Yá Khálati = O my mother’s sister (_tr._ “O naunty mine”) i. 32.

Yakhat (prob. cler. error for “Yakhbut”) _lit._ = he was panting in a
state of unconsciousness, _tr._ “drowned” in sleep, vi. 244.

Yá Khawand = “O lord and master,” ii. 12.

“Yakhburu ma’a-hu fí ’l-Kalám” _lit._ = he experimented with him,
_i.e._, he put him to the test (_tr._ “he spake with him softly”)
(ST.) iv. 307.

Yaklishu (from ✓ Kulsh) = “kicking” (their heels) iv. 19.

Yá’llah, _i.e._, “By Allah,” meaning “Be quick!” v. 325.

Yá’llah jári, yá walad = “Be off at once, boy,” i. 9.

“Yállah, Yállah” = By Allah and again by Allah i. 9;
gen. meaning “Look sharp” (here syn. with “Allah! Allah!” = “I
conjure thee by God”) v. 302.

Yá Luss (_Arab._) = “O Robber” (=the _Gr._ λῃστὴς) vi. 56.

Yá Madyúnah = O indebted one, i. 249.

Yamaklak Al- = vivers, provaunt, vi. 180.

Yamak (_Turk._) = food, a meal, vi. 180.

Yamámah-land, i. 43.

Yaman Al-, people of, are still deep in the Sotadic Zone and practice,
v. 42.

Yámin, copyist’s error for “Yásimín,” _tr._ gelsamine, iii. 19.

Yá Mu’arras = O fool and disreputable (_tr._ “O pimp”) ii. 21.

Yá Nakbah = O calamity, i. 24.

Yanjaaru (_Arab._) vii. form of “jaara,” in which the idea of “raising”
seems to prevail, _tr._ “mounted,” iv. 311.

Yapousmek (old ver.) = “Yá Abú Sumayk,” vi. 16.

Yar’ad = trembleth (also thundereth) i. 166.

Yá Rájul (for Rajul) = O man (an Egypto-Syrian form) iii. 58.

Yarjú (presumably error for “Yarja’u”) _tr._ “retracing their steps,”
v. 382.

—— (may be error for “Yajrú”) (ST.) v. 382.

“Yá Sallám” (_Arab._) “O Saviour” addressed to Allah, iv. 63.

“Yá Sín” = “The Heart of the Koran,” v. 94.

“Yaskut min ’Aynay-h” _lit._ = fall from his two eyes, lose favour
(_tr._ “lose regard with him”) i. 77.

Yasrahú = roaming (_tr._ “rummaging”) iv. 19

“Yasta’amilúna al-Mrd” (_tr._ “their noblest make womanly use of Murd”
= beardless boys) may also have a number of meanings, v. 42.

Yastanít (_Arab._), aor. to the pretext “istanat” (ST.) v. 218.

Yastanit = he listened attentively (_tr._ “he firmly believed”) (ST.)
v. 432.

Ya Sultán-am = “O my chief,” v. 312.

“——” _Pers._ or _Turk._ form for _Arab._ “Yá Sultán-i” (“O my Sultan”)
iv. 214.

Yá Ta’ásat-ná = “O our misery,” vi. 48.

Ya’tadir (dots often omitted in MS.) may mean Ya’tazir = find excuse,
vi. 20.

—— (from ✓ ’Adr) = heavy rain, boldness (_tr._ “fortify himself”) vi.
20.

Yá Ta’ís = “O thou miserable,” vi. 48.

Yatama’ash min-hu, _tr._ “wherewith he might nourish himself,” v. 472.

—— a denominative of the 5th form of “Ma’ásh” = livelihood (ST.) v.
473.

Ya’tamidúna hudà-hum = purpose the right direction (_tr._ “those who
seek their salvation”) ii. 32.

Yatazáwadú (_Arab._) = increasing (_tr._ “contending”) iv. 62.

Ya’tazar = find excuse, vi. 20.

Yatbashsh (for “yanbashsha”) = a smiling face, vi. 138.

—— may also stand for Yabtashsh, with transposition of the “t” of the
8th form (ST.) vi. 138.

Yathrib = Al-Madinah, v. 183.

—— the classical name (Ἰατρίππα)
(one of the titles of “Madínat al-Nabi,” City of the Prophet) v. 43.

Ya Tinjír (_Arab._) _lit._ = O Kettle (_tr._ “O Miserable”) iv. 71.

Yauh! (_Arab._) = “Alack!” iv. 191.

Yaum al-Ahad = First day (which begins the Moslem week) iv. 341.

—— al-Jum’ah (_Arab._)—Assembly-day, Friday, iv. 342.

—— al-Khamís (_Arab._) = fifth day, vi. 13.

—— al-Mahshar = _lit._ the day of Assembly (_tr._ Judgment Day) iii.
21.

—— al-Subú’ = 7th day, iv. 122.

Yá walad al-Halál = O thou true-born son (or “O! Son of lawful
wedlock,”) (ST.) iv. 267.

Yá Wárid = “O farer to the fountain,” v. 148.

Yá Zínat al-Nisá = O adornment of woman-kind, ii. 207.

Yá zayn = oh, the beautiful beast! vi. 149.

Yazghaz-há fí Shikkati-ha = verb being prob. a cler. error for
“Yazaghzahg” from ✓ “Zaghzagha” = he opened a skin bag (_tr._
“thrusting and foining at her cleft”) v. 267.

“Ye are quit of,” etc. = You are welcome to it and so it becomes lawful
(_halál_) to you, ii. 161.

Young, a man is, in Arab speech, till forty or fifty, iv. 119.

—— man, being grown up, would not live in his father’s house, v. 442.

Youth worn out by genial labours of the (marriage) night, but bride
made the merrier and livelier (a neat touch of realism), v. 429.

Yufaghghiru = he opened his mouth wide (ST.) iv. 265.

Yughaffiru (probably for yu’ aftíru) = raising a dust cloud (ST.) iv.
265.

—— wa yuzaghdimu = raising a dust-cloud and trumpeting with rage, iv.
265.

Yulakkimu (_Arab._) from “Lukmah” = a mouthful, vi. 75.

“Yumázasa-hu fí ’l-Kalám,” evidently a clerical error for
“Yumárasa-hu,” = he tested or tried him in speech (ST.) iv. 307.

Yumkinshayy = “Is it possible,” iv. 232

Yúnus = Ibn Habíb, a friend of Isaac of Mosul, ii. 71.

Yuzaghdimu, a quadriliteral formed by blending two triliterals in one
verb, to intensify the idea (ST.) iv. 265.

Yúzbáshí, in text “Uzbáshá” or “úzbáshá” = head of a hundred (men),
centurion, captain, v. 243.

Za’amú = they opine, they declare (_tr._ “They set forth”) i. 50; ii.
55.

Zabh (Zbh) (_Arab._ ✓) = the ceremonial killing of animals for food,
iv. 32.

Zabídún (here probably a clerical error for Zabíd, Cap. of Tahámah) ii.
193.

Zábit = a Prefect of Police, vi. 154.

—— (from the ✓ “Zabt” = keeping in subjection, holding tight) _tr._
“Holdfast,” vi. 154.

Zabtiyah = a constable, vi. 154.

“Zad Yakún Z R H ahad fí Mál jazíl, etc.” (error in MS. explained)
(ST.) v. 72.

Zadig (Tale of) iv. 7.

Zafáir al-Jinn = Adiantum Capillus veneris, ii. 95.

Zafar = victory (clerical error for Zafar = plaited hair) vi. 104.

Zaghárit (_pl._ of Zaghrútah) = loud lullilooing, iv. 267.

Zahab-ramlí = placer-gold, iii. 15.

Zahr (_Arab._) lit. and generically a blossom (_tr._ “orange flower”)
iv. 52.

—— Al- = duty, vi. 162.

—— al-Bahr = the surface which affords a passage to man, iv. 125.

Zahrat = a blossom especially yellow, commonly applied to
orange-flower, v. 201.

—— al-Hayy, _i.e._, “Bloom of the Tribe,” v. 201.

Za’íf = impotent, i. 217.

“Zakarayn Wizz (ganders) simán,” _tr._ “a pair of fatted ganders,” v.
357.

Zakát = legal alms (_tr._ “poor-rates”) iv. 338.

Zakát wa Sadakát = _lit._ paying of poor rate and purifying thy
property by alms deeds (_tr._ “goodness and beneficence and charity
and almsdoing”) i. 346.

Zakka (meaning primarily “a bird feeding her young”) _tr._ “largessed,”
v. 182.

Zalábiyah = a pancake, i. 33.

Zalamah (Al-) = the policeman (_tr._ “men of violence”) ii. 52.

Zalamah (_Arab._) = tyrants, vi. 73.

Zalm = the dewlap of sheep or goat, iii. 19.

Zamaku-há, _tr._ “arabesque’d,” v. 133.

Zamán, Al- (_tr._ “A delay”) prob. an error for “Yá al-Malik al-Zamán”
= “O King of the Age,” (ST.) iv. 319.

Zangi-i-Adam-kh’wár (_tr._ Ethiopian) afterwards called Habashi = an
Abyssinian, iii. 276.

Zanzibár = Blackland, iii. 281.

Záraba (_verb_) 3rd form followed by acc. = “to join one in
partnership” (ST.) vi. 57.

Zarábíl (comm. cor. of Zarábin = slaves’ shoes, slippers) vi. 48.

Zarb al-Aklám = caligraphy, v. 376.

—— —— _tr._ “penmanship,” v. 432.

—— al Fál = casting lots for presage (_tr._ “prognostic”) v. 374.

—— Raml (Geomancy) iii. 4.

Zarbúl táki (_Arab._) the latter meaning “high-heeled,” vi. 53.

Zard-i-Kháyah (_Pers._) = yoke of egg, iv. 56.

Zardakát (for “Zardakhán”) = silken napkins, iv. 55.

“Zardiyá” (for Zaradiyyah = a small mail coat, a light helmet), _tr._
“a haubergeon,” v. 58.

Zawádah (gen. “Azwád” or “Azwidah”) = provisions, viaticum, vi. 181.

Zayjah (from (_Pers._) “Záycheh”) = _lit._ a horoscope (_tr._ “lot”)
vi. 235.

Zayn al-Asnam, object of the tale, iii. 38.

—— —— (Turkish) version by Mr. Gibb (note) iii. 41.

—— —— _old ver._ “Ornament” (adornment?) of the Statues, iii. 3.

—— (al-Dín = Adornment of the Faith and owner of) al-Asnám = the
Images, iii. 3.

Zifr = nail, claw, talon, iv. 245.

—— = horny matter which, according to Moslem tradition, covered our
first parents, vi. 104.

Zij = table of the stars—almanack, iii. 159.

Zill (_Arab._) _lit._ = “Shadow me” (_tr._ “solace me”) iv. 58.

Zimmat = obligation, protection, clientship (_tr._ “loyalty”) vi. 245.

Zindík = Atheist, Agnostic, vi. 158.

Zird-Khánah = armoury, i. 327.

Zirtah = fart, ii. 56.

Znnákt-ha, _tr._ “(striketh) her sting” (?) vi. 35.

Zor-Khán = Lord Violence, i. 94.

Zubayah’s tomb, i. 15.

“Zug” or draught which gave him rheumatism (_tr._ “the air smote me”)
v. 157.

Zuhà Al- (=undurn-hour, or before noon) and Maghrib (=set of sun)
become Al-Ghaylah (=Siesta time) and Ghaybat al-Shams, in Badawi
speech, v. 151.

Zur ghibban, tazid hibban = visits rare keep friendship fair, ii. 209.

Zúshád (a fancy name) “Zawash” in Persian = Ζεὺς, i. 89.

Zuwaylah Gate, ii. 8.

Appendix III.
_NOTES ON THE STORIES CONTAINED IN VOL. VI. OF SUPPLEMENTAL NIGHTS._

BY W. F. KIRBY.

_THE SAY OF HAYKAR THE SAGE (pp. 1–38)._

Haykar’s precepts may be compared advantageously with those of other
nations of the East and West (at a corresponding stage of civilisation)
which, as a rule, follow very similar lines. Many of them find their
parallels not only in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, as we might reasonably
expect, but even in the Havamál of the Elder Edda, respecting which
Thorpe remarks in his translation (i. p. 36 note): “Odin is the ‘High
One.’ The poem is a collection of rules and maxims, and stories of
himself, some of them not very consistent with our ideas of a supreme
deity.” The _style_ of the Icelandic poem, and the manners of the period
when it was composed are of course as wide apart from those of Haykar as
is Iceland from Syria; but human nature remains the same.

Pp. 29–32.—Two classes of subterfuges similar to those employed by
Haykar are common in folk-tales. In one, the hero vanquishes, and
generally destroys his adversary (usually a giant), by imposing on his
credulity, like Jack when he hid himself in a corner of the room, and
left a faggot in his bed for the giant to belabour, and afterwards
killed the giant by pretending to rip himself up, and defying the other
to do the same. In other cases, the hero foils his opponents by
subterfuges which are admitted to be just, but which are not intended
actually to deceive, as in the devices by which the blind Shaykh
instructs the merchant to baffle the sharpers, in one of the Sindibad
stories (vol. vi., pp. 202–212, No. 135x., of our Table). In the present
story Pharaoh was baffled by the superior cunning of Haykar, but it is
not made quite clear whether he actually believed in his power to build
a castle in the air or not. However the story probably belongs to the
second class.

P. 32.—Twisting ropes out of sand was a device by which Michael Scot
baffled a devil for whom he had to find constant employment. (Cf.
Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” and notes).

_THE HISTORY OF AL-BUNDUKANI (pp. 39–85)._

I believe the “Robber-Caliph” is sometimes played as a burlesque, for
which it is well adapted. The parallel suggested between the Caliph and
a robber may remind the reader of the interview between Alexander the
Great and the Robber, in “Evenings at Home.” One cannot help
sympathising with the disappointed young Merchant who acted as an
informer, and feeling glad that he got off with a whole skin.

P. 44. In some versions of this story Harun’s abstention from his bride
for a year is attributed to a previous vow.

P. 60 and note 1.—This passage, relative to the character of the Caliph
may be compared with his forgetfulness respecting Nur Al-Din Ali and
Anis Al-Jalis. (Vol. ii., p. 42, and note).

_THE LINGUIST-DAME, THE DUENNA, AND THE KING’S SON (pp. 87–111)._

This story, though much shorter, is very closely paralleled by that of
Prince Calaf and the Princess of China, in the Thousand and One Days
(cf. vol. x., App. pp. 499, 500). Prince Calaf (the son of the King of
the Nogais Tartars) and his parents are driven from their kingdom by the
Sultan of Carizme (Khwárizm), and take refuge with the Khan of Berlas,
where the old King and Queen remain, while Calaf proceeds to China,
where he engages in an intellectual contest with Princess Tourandocte
(Turandot, _i.e._ Turándokht, or Turan’s daughter). When Turandot is on
the point of defeat, she sends her confidante, a captive princess, to
Calaf, to worm out his secret (his own name). The confidante, who is
herself in love with Calaf, horrifies him with the invention that
Turandot intends to have him secretly assassinated; but although he
drops his name in his consternation, he refuses to fly with his visitor.
In the morning Turandot declares Calaf’s name to him, but comforts him
by saying that she has nevertheless determined to accept him as her
husband, instead of cutting off his head; and the slave princess commits
suicide. Messengers are then sent for Calaf’s parents, who arrive in
company with the friendly Khan who had granted them an asylum; and Calaf
marches against the Sultan of Carizme, who is defeated and slain, when
his subjects readily submit to the conqueror.

P. 99.—According to Jewish tradition, the Rod of Moses became
transformed into so terrible a dragon that the Egyptians took to flight,
and 60,000 of them were slain in the press.—(Sale’s Koran, chap. 7,
note.)

P. 99, note 3.—It was long denied that ants store up grain, because our
English ants do not; but it is now well known that many foreign species,
some of which inhabit countries bordering on the Mediterranean
(including Palestine) store up large quantities of grass-seeds in their
nests; and one ant found in North America is said to actually cultivate
a particular kind of grass.

P. 104, note 3.—Those interested in the question of the succession of
the Patriarchs may refer to Joseph Jacobs’ article on “Junior-right in
Genesis,”[431] in which the writer argues that it was the original
custom among the Hebrews, as among other nations, for the youngest son
to succeed to his father’s estates, after the elder ones had already
established themselves elsewhere. Much may be urged in favour of this
writer’s conclusions, and it will be remembered that our own Monarchy
was not recognised as hereditary until the time of the Conquest, the
most able or the strongest relative of the late King usually succeeding
to the Crown, and minors being always set aside, unless powerful
politicians intended to use them as mere tools. In the Esthonian
Kalevipoeg the system comes out still more strongly. Three sons are
living at home at the time of the death of Kalev, but the youngest is
designated by him as his successor, and is afterwards indicated by lot
as the peculiar favourite of the gods.

P. 108, note 1—Although it has nothing to do with the present story, yet
I may point out the great importance of the bridle in all the folk-tales
which deal with the transformation of human beings into domestic
animals. It is clearly implied (though not actually expressed) in the
story of Julnar the Sea-Born (No. 153) that the power of Abdallah and
Badr Basim over Queen Lab, while she bore the form of a mule, depended
entirely on their keeping possession of the bridle (Cf. Nights, vol.
vii., p. 304, and note). There are many stories of magicians who
transform themselves into horses, &c., for their friends to sell; but
the bridle must on no account be given with the horse. Should this be
neglected (purposely or otherwise) the magician is unable to reassume
his human form at will. (Cf. also Spitta-Bey’s story No. 1 (infrà).)

_THE TALE OF THE WARLOCK AND THE YOUNG COOK OF BAGHDAD (pp. 119–142.)_

This story appears in Chavis and Cazotte’s version, and in the various
translations made from the French, in a very highly elaborated form,
under the title of “The Adventures of Simoustapha, and the Princess
Ilsetilsone.” The Caliph and his Wazir are identified with Harun
Al-Rashid and Ja’afar, but they suffer no transformations at the hands
of the Magician, after whose death Prince Simoustapha is protected by
Setelpedour Ginatille, whose name is interpreted as meaning the Star of
the Seven Seas, though the first name appears rather to be a corruption
of Sitt El Buhúr. She is the queen of Ginnistan, and the daughter of
KokopiIesobe (Satan), whose contests with Mahomet and Michael (the
former of whom continues the conflict by “becoming man”) are described
on the approved Miltonic lines. Her chief councillors are Bahlisboull
(Beelzebub) and Asmonchar (Asmodeus), but ultimately she falls in love
with Simoustapha, and adjures her sovereignty, after which he carries
her off, and marries her, upon which the mother of Ilsetilsone, “the
sensible Zobeide formed now a much truer and more favourable judgment of
her daughter’s happiness, since she had shared the heart of Simoustapha
with Setelpedour, and at last agreed that the union of one man with two
women might be productive of great happiness to all the three, provided
that one of the wives happened to be a fairy.” (Weber, ii. p. 50.) A
most encouraging sentiment for would-be polygamists, truly, especially
in Europe, where fairies appear to fly before the advance of
civilisation as surely as the wild beasts of the forest!

P. 126.—These apparitions resemble those which usually precede the
visions which appear in the well-known pool of ink. But the sweeper is
not mentioned in the present story, nor do I remember reading of his
appearing in cases of crystal seeing, though Dante Gabriel Rosetti
introduces him into his fine poem, “Rose Mary,” as preparing the way for
the visions seen in the beryl:

“‘I see a man with a besom grey
That sweeps the flying dust away.’
‘Ay, that comes first in the mystic sphere;
But now that the way is swept and clear,
Heed well what next you look on there.’”

P. 132, note.—Apropos of the importance of “three days,” I may refer to
the “three days and three nights” which Christ is commonly said to have
passed in the tomb, and I believe that some mystics assert that three
days is the usual period required by a man to recover consciousness
after death.

Pp. 134, 135.—These worked lions recall the exhibition of power, made by
Abu Mohammed hight Lazybones (No. 37; Nights iv., p. 165). Their
Oriental prototypes are probably the lions and eagles with which the
Jinn ornamented the throne of Solomon. In the West, we meet with
Southey’s amusing legend of the Pious Painter:

“‘Help, help, Blessed Mary,’ he cried in alarm,
As the scaffold sunk under his feet;
From the canvass the Virgin extended her arm;
She caught the good Painter; she saved him from harm;
There were hundreds who saw in the street.”

The enchanted palaces of the Firm Island, with their prodigies of the
Hart and the Dogs, &c., may also be mentioned (Amadis of Gaul, book II.,
chap. 21, &c.).

Pp. 135, 136.—Stories of changed sex are not uncommon in Eastern and
classical mythology and folk-lore; usually, as in this instance, the
change of a man into a woman, although it is the converse (apparent, of
course) which we meet with occasionally in modern medical books.

In the Nights, &c., we have the story of the Enchanted Spring (No. 135j)
in the great Sindibad cyclus (Nights, vi., pp. 145–150), and Lane
(Modern Egyptians, chap. xxv.) relates a story which he heard in Cairo
more resembling that of the transformed Wazir. In classical legend we
have the stories of Tiresias, Cæneus, and Iphis. Turning to India, we
meet with the prototype of Cæneus in Amba, who was reincarnated as
Sikhandin, in order to avenge herself on Bhishma, and subsequently
exchanged her sex with a Yaksha, and became a great warrior (Mahabharata
Udyoga-Parva, 5942–7057). Some of the versions of the Enchanted Spring
represent the Prince as recovering his sex by an exchange with a demon,
thus showing a transition from the story of Sikhandin to later replicas.
There is also a story of changed sex in the Hindi Baital Pachisí; and no
doubt many others might be quoted.

_HISTORY OF WHAT BEFEL THE FOWL-LET WITH THE FOWLER (pp. 151–164)._

One of the most curious stories relative to the escape of a captured
prey is to be found in the 5th Canto of the Finnish Kalevala.
Väinäimöinen, the old minstrel, is fishing in the lake where his love,
Aino, has drowned herself, because she would not marry an old man. He
hooks a salmon of very peculiar appearance, and while he is speculating
about cutting it up and cooking it, it leaps from the boat into the
water, and then reproaches him with his folly, telling him that it is
Aino (now transformed into a waternymph) who threw herself in his way to
be his life-companion, but that owing to his folly in proposing to eat
her, he has now lost her for ever. Hereupon she disappears, and all his
efforts to rediscover her are fruitless.

_THE TALE OF ATTAF (pp. 165–222)._

P. 178, note 6.—I may add that an episode is inserted in the
Europeanised version of this story, relative to the loves of the son of
Chebib and the Princess of Herak, which is evidently copied from the
first nocturnal meeting of Kamaralzaman and Budur (No. 21, Night iii.,
pp. 223–242), and is drawn on exactly similar lines (Weber, i. pp.
508–510).

_HISTORY OF PRINCE HABIB, AND WHAT BEFEL HIM WITH THE LADY DURRAT
AL-GHAWWAS. (pp. 223–261)._

P. 256, note 1.—Epithets of colour, as applied to seas, frequently have
a purely mythological application in Eastern tales. Thus, in the story
of Zaher and Ali (cf. my “New Arabian Nights,” p. 13) we read, “You are
now upon an island of the Black Sea, which encompasses all other seas,
and flows within Mount Kaf. According to the reports of travellers, it
is a ten years’ voyage before you arrive at the Blue Sea, and it takes
full ten years to traverse this again to reach the Green Sea, after
which there is another ten years’ voyage before you can reach the Greek
Sea, which extends to inhabited countries and islands.”

Kenealy says (in a note to his poem on “Night”) that the Atlantic Ocean
is called the Sea of Darkness, on account of the great irruption of
water which occasioned its formation; but this is one of his positive
statements relative to facts not generally known to the world, for which
he considered it unnecessary to quote his authority.

P. 261.—According to one account of impalement which I have seen, the
stake is driven through the flesh of the back beneath the skin.

Reading the account of the Crucifixion between the lines, I have come to
the conclusion that the sudden death of Christ was due to his drinking
from the sponge which had just been offered to him. The liquid, however,
is said to have been vinegar, and not water; but this might have had the
same effect, or water may have been substituted, perhaps with the
connivance of Pilate. In the latter case vinegar may only have been
mentioned as a blind, to deceive the fanatical Jews. The fragmentary
accounts of the Crucifixion which have come down to us admit of many
possible interpretations of details.

Appendix IV.
_ADDITIONAL NOTES ON THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS._

(Cf. Nights, x., App. ii., pp. 465–532).

BY W. F. KIRBY.

Herewith I add notes on any works of importance which I had not seen
when my “Contributions” were published, or which have appeared since.
Owing to the occasional missing of a proof, some misprints escaped
correction in my former article, and these I will place first, along
with the correction of other slight errors. Tales and more important
notes will follow under the same headings as before.

ERRATA, &C., IN VOL. X.

P. 470, l. 21, _for_ “even has” _read_ “has even,” l. 3 from bottom,
_for_ “Chelih” _read_ “Chebib.”

P. 474, ll. 6 and 5 from bottom, _for_ “taken from Dow’s Persian Tales
of Inatulla,” _read_ “taken from the latter part of that of Prince
Fadlallah (1001 Days, cf. our p. 500, No. 4a; or from No. 251j of our
Table).”

P. 491, l. 14 from bottom, _after_ “frontispieces” _add_ “and an
Appendix including a table of the tales contained in the MS.”

P. 492, l. 35, _for_ “3c” _read_ “3e.”

P. 495, l. 14 from bottom, _for_ “Burton iii.” _read_ “Burton ii.”

P. 497, l. 5, _for_ “Xailonn” _read_ “Xailoun,” l. 22, _for_ “Mr. W. R.
Clouston” _read_ “Mr. W. A. Clouston,” l. 11 from bottom, _for_
“Kasiwirski” _read_ “Kasimirski.”

P. 500, l. 6 _for_ “Dilora” _read_ “Dilara,” l. 8 (No 4a), _add_ “ =
Nos. 184 and 251,” l. 16 (No. 5e.) _add_ “cf. Nos. 135q and 225,” l. 22
(No. 8), _add_ “ = No. 181r.”

P. 501, l. 1, _after_ “ants” _add_ “Weber (ii. p. 426) has substituted
wild beasts!”

P. 506, l. 16, _for_ “160” _read_ “140.”

P. 508. l. 8, _for_ “Zeloudvit” _read_ “Zelouide et,” l. 19, _for_
“Rose-Tree” _read_ “Nose-Tree,” l. 13 from bottom, _for_ “Little Fairy”
_read_ “Little Fairly.”

P. 511, l. 22, _for_ “Nouronnihar” _read_ “Nouronihar,” l. 8 from
bottom, _for_ “Mahommedans” _read_ “Mohammedans,” l. 5–3 from bottom,
_read_ “3, _The Count of Hamilton’s Fairy Tales_. Written shortly after
the first publication of Galland’s work. There is an English translation
among Bohn’s Extra Volumes.”

P. 513, l. 24 from bottom, _read_ “My, you ought to seen old Henry the
Eight,” l. 21 from bottom, _for_ “Nell Gwynne” _read_ “Nell Gwynn,” l.
13 from bottom, _for_ “corn” _read_ “ourn.”

P. 519, No. 100, _omit_ “?” in columns 10 and 15, substituting blanks.

P. 532, is of course Sir R. F. Burton’s, and not mine.

_GALLAND’S MS. AND TRANSLATIONS (pp. 465–470)._

P. 468, l. 4 from bottom, Destains’ “Mille et une Nuits,” should be
noticed on p. 472, after l. 2. The full title is as follows:—

_Les Mille et une Nuits_, Contes Arabes, Traduits en François par
Galland, Nouvelle édition revue sur les textes orientaux et augmentée de
plusieurs nouvelles et contes traduites des langues orientaux, par M.
Destains, précédée d’un notice historique sur Galland par M. Charles
Nodier. Paris, 1822.

This edition is in 6 vols. 8vo, and proves to be of no special interest.
The first 5 vols. contain the ordinary version of Galland, and the 6th
vol. contains a selection of tales translated from Scott’s vol. 6, eked
out with Chavis and Cazotte’s Story of Habib. (No. 250 of our Table).

_ZOTENBERG’S WORK ON ALADDIN AND ON VARIOUS MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NIGHTS._

One of the most important works which has appeared lately in connection
with the Thousand and one Nights, is the following:

_Histoire d’ ‘Alâ Al-Dîn ou la Lampe Merveilleuse._ Texte Arabe publié
avec une notice sur quelques manuscrits des Mille et une Nuits par H.
Zotenberg, roy. 8vo, Paris, Imprimérie Nationale, 1888, p., 70.

The publication of this work puts an end to the numerous conjectures of
scholars as to the source of Galland’s unidentified tales; and the notes
on various MSS. of the Nights are also very valuable. It therefore
appears desirable to give a tolerably full sketch of the contents of the
book.[432]

M. Zotenberg begins with general remarks, and passes on to discuss
Galland’s edition (section 1). Although Galland frequently speaks of
Oriental tales[433] in his journal, kept at Constantinople in 1672 and
1673, yet as he informs us, in his Dedication to the Marquise d’ O., he
only succeeded in obtaining from Syria a portion of the MS. of the
Nights themselves with considerable difficulty after his return to
France.

There is some doubt as to the date of appearance of the first 6 vols. of
Galland’s “Mille et une Nuit.” According to Caussin de Perceval, vols. 1
and 2 were published together in 1704, and vols. 3 and 4 in the course
of the same year. Nevertheless, in the copy in the Bibliothèque
Nationale, vols. 1 and 4 are dated 1704, and vols. 2, 5 and 6 are dated
1705; vol. 3 is missing, just as we have only odd volumes of the 2nd,
3rd and 4th English editions in the British Museum, the 1st being still
quite unknown.

M. Zotenberg proceeds to give an account of Galland’s MS. (cf. Nights,
x. App. p. 465), and illustrates it by a specimen page in facsimile.
Judging from the character of the writing, &c., he considers it to have
been transcribed about the second half of the 14th century (Sir R. F.
Burton suggests about A.D. 1384). It is curious that there is a MS. of
the 15th century in the Library of the Vatican, which appears to be
almost a counterpart of Galland’s, and likewise contains only the first
282 Nights. Galland’s MS. wants a leaf extending from part of Night 102
to the beginning of Night 104, and containing an account of the
Hunchback and his buffooneries; this hiatus is filled up in the Vatican
MS.

Habìcht’s version is noted as more approaching Galland’s MS. than do the
texts founded on the Egyptian texts; but in thus speaking, Zotenberg
does not notice the assertion that Habìcht’s MS., though obtained at
Tunis, came originally from Egypt. He considers the ordinary Egyptian
texts to be generally abridged and condensed.

Although it is clear that Galland made great use of this MS. for his
translation, yet M. Zotenberg points out numerous discrepancies,
especially those at the commencement of the work, which led Caussin de
Perceval to regard Galland’s work as a mere paraphrase of the original.
M. Zotenberg, however (p. 14), writes, “Évidemment, Galland, pour la
traduction du commencement du récit, à suivi un texte plus developpé que
celui du MS. 1508, texte dont la rédaction égyptienne ne presente qu’un
maladroit abrégé.” He quotes other instances which seem to show that
Galland had more than one text at his disposal.

Section II.—At the beginning of the 17th century, only two MS. of the
Nights existed in the libraries of Paris, one in Arabic, and the other
in Turkish. The Arabic MS. contains 870 Nights, and is arbitrarily
divided into 29 sections. M. Zotenberg considers that it was to this MS.
that Galland referred, when he said that the complete work was in 36
parts. The tales follow the order of our Table as far as No. 7 (Nos.
2ab, 2ac and 3ba are wanting), the remainder are irregular, and run as
follows: 153, 154, 154a, 20; story of Khailedján ibn Hámán, the Persian;
Story of the Two Old Men, and of Báz al-Aschháb Abou Lahab; 9,
apparently including as episodes 9a, 9aa, 21, 8, 9b, 170, 181r to 181bb,
137, 154 (commencement repeated), 181u to 181bb (repeated), 135a,
Adventures of a traveller who entered a pond (étang) and underwent
metamorphoses:[434] anecdotes and apothegms; a portion of the Kalila and
Dimna?

The Turkish MS. (in 11 vols.) is made up of several imperfect copies,
which have been improperly put together. The bulk is formed by vols.
2–10 which are written in three different hands, and some of which bear
date 1046 A.H. The contents of these nine vols. are as follows:
Introduction and 1–3, (wanting 2ab); Story of ’Abdallah of Basra; 5;
Story of ’Attáf ibn Ismá’il al-Schoqláni of Damascus and the schaikh
Abou-’l-Baraka al-Nawwám, 6; Story told by the Christian Merchant
(relating to Qamar al-Zamán) during the reign of Sultan Mahmoud, and
different from the story known under this title; Story of Ahmad
al-Saghir (the little) and Schams al-Qosour; Story of the Young Man of
Baghdad and the Bathman (Baigneur, attendant in a Hammám), 7; 153, 21;
Story of Khaledjan ibn Maháni; Story of ‏سنمنح‎ and ‏غوثان‎ (or
‏غوثبان‎); Story of Nour al-Din ‘Ali and of Dounya (or Dinar) of
Damascus, 133; Story of Prince Qamar-Khan and of the schaikh ’Ata, of
the Sultan Mahmoud-Khán, of Bahrám-Scháh, of ’Abdallah ibn Hilal, of
Harout and Marout, &c.; Story of Qowwat al-Qoloub; 9, including as
episodes 9a; 8; Story of Moubaref who slept in the bath; (? = 96); and
170; Fables.

The other volumes (1 and 11 of the MS.) both contain the beginning of
the MS. Vol. 1 was written towards the end of the 17th century, and
extends about as far Night 55, concluding with No. 7, which follows No.
3. Vol. 11., which once belonged to Galland, includes only a portion of
the Introduction. The text of these two fragments is similar, but
differs considerably from that of vol. 2 of the MS.; and specimens of
the commencement of vols. 1 and 2 are given to shew this. Yet it is
singular that Galland does not seem to have used these Turkish volumes;
and the second MS. which he actually used, like the 4th vol. of the copy
preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, appears to be missing.

M. Zotenberg then remarks on the missing vol. 4 of Galland, and quotes
extracts from Galland’s Diary, shewing that Nos. 191, 192 and 192a,
which were surreptitiously introduced into his work without his
knowledge, and greatly to his annoyance, were translated by Petis de la
Croix, and were probably intended to be included in the Thousand and One
Days, which was published in 1710. “Comme la plupart de ces contes, ils
sont tirés de l’ouvrage turc intitulé ‏الفرج بعد الشدة‎, dont ils
forment le 6^e, le 8^e et le 9^e récit.” (Zotenberg, p. 27.)

Then follows Section iii., one of the most important in the book, in
which extracts from Galland’s Diary of 1709 are quoted, shewing that he
was then in constant communication with a Christian Maronite of Aleppo,
named Hanna (Jean), who was brought to Paris by the traveller Paul
Lucas, and who related stories to Galland, of which the latter took
copious notes, and most of which he worked up into the later volumes of
his “Mille et une Nuit” (_sic_). Among these were 193, 194a, 194b, 59,
197, 198, 174, 195, 194c, 196. The following tales he did not use: An
Arab story of two cousins, Camar eddin and Bedr el Bodour; the Golden
City (another version of the story of the Three Princes, in No. 198,
combined with the story of the woman who slew pretenders who were unable
to solve a riddle); The Three Princes, the Genius Morhagian, and his
Daughters; and the story of the seller of ptisanne (or diet-drinks) and
his son Hassan.

Further extracts from Galland’s Diary are added, extending from the time
of Hanna’s departure from Paris between June and October, 1709, and the
completion of the 12th volume of the Mille et une Nuit in 1712. These
relate to the gradual progress of the work; and to business in
connection with it; and Hanna’s name is occasionally mentioned.

Hanna supplied Galland with a written version of No. 193, and probably
of 194 a-c; (_i.e._ most of the tales in vols. 9 and 10); but the tales
in vols. 11 and 12 were apparently edited by Galland from his notes and
recollections of Hanna’s narrations. These are Nos. 195, 196, 59, 197
and 198. M. Zotenberg concludes that Hanna possessed a MS. containing
all these tales, part of which he copied for Galland, and that this
copy, like several other important volumes which Galland is known or
believed to have possessed, was lost. M. Zotenberg thinks that we may
expect to meet with most of Hanna’s tales either in other copies of the
Nights, or in some other collection of the same kind. The latter
supposition appears to me to be by far the most probable.

[Section IV.]—M. Zotenberg proceeds to give an account of one or two
very important MSS. of the Nights in the Bibliothèque Nationale. One of
these is a MS. which belonged to the elder Caussin, and was carefully
copied by Michael Sabbagh from a MS. of Baghdad. Prof. Fleischer, who
examined it, states (Journal Asiatique, 1827, t. II., p. 221) that it
follows the text of Habicht, but in a more developed form. M. Zotenberg
copies a note at the end, finishing up with the word ‏كبيكج‎ (Kabíkaj)
thrice repeated. This, he explains, “est le nom du génie préposé au
régne des insectes. Les scribes, parfois, l’invoquent pour preserver
leurs manuscrits de l’atteinte de vers.”

This MS. was copied at Paris on European paper at the beginning of the
century, though Caussin de Perceval was not acquainted with it in 1806,
but only with a MS. of the Egyptian redaction. This MS. agrees with
Galland’s only as far as the 69th Night. It differs from it in two other
points; it contains No. 1c. and the end of No. 3 coincides with the end
of Night 69. The contents of Nights 70–1001 are as follows: 246, 4, 5,
6, 20, 7, 153, 21, 170, 247, The Unhappy Lover confined in the Madhouse
(probably = 204c), 8, 191, 193, 174, 9, 9b (not 9a, or 9aa) and as
episodes, 155, 32, and the story of the two brothers ’Amír and Ghadir,
and their children Djamil and Bathina.

Another MS., used by Chavis and Cazotte, and Caussin de Perceval, was
written in the year 1772. It has hitherto been overlooked, because it
was erroneously stated in the late M. Reinaud’s Catalogue to be a MS.
containing part of the 1001 Nights, extending from Night 282 to Night
631, and copied by Chavis. It is not from Chavis’ hand, and does not
form part of the ordinary version of the Nights, but contains the
following tales: 174, 248, Story of King Sapor, 246, 3a, 36, 3c, 153,
Story of the Intendant, the Interpreter, and the Young Man; 247, 204c,
240, 250, Story of the Caliph and the Fisherman, (probably = 156); the
Cat and the Fox, and the Little Bird and the Fowler.

Another MS., really written by Chavis, commences exactly where Vol. 3 of
Galland’s MS. leaves off; _i.e._ in the middle of No. 21, and extends
from Night 281 to Night 631. M. Zotenberg supposes it to have been
written to supply the place of the last volume of Galland’s set. It
contains the following tales, in addition to the conclusion of No. 21:
170, 247, 204c, 8, 191, 193 and 174. M. Zotenberg suggests that the
first part of this MS. may have been copied from Galland’s last volume,
which may have existed at the time in private hands.

The two last MSS. contain nearly the same tales, though with numerous
variations. M. Zotenberg discusses the hypothesis of Chavis’ MS. being a
translation from the French, and definitely rejects it.

[Section V.]—Here M. Zotenberg discusses the MSS. of the Nights in
general, and divides them into three categories. I. MSS. proceeding from
Muslim parts of Asia. These, except the MSS. of Michael Sabbagh and that
of Chavis, contain only the first part of the work. They are all more or
less incomplete, and stop short in the middle of the text. They are not
quite uniform, especially in their readings, but generally contain the
same tales arranged in the same order. II. Recent MSS. of Egyptian
origin, characterised by a special style, and a more condensed
narrative; by the nature and arrangement of the tales; by a great number
of anecdotes and fables; and by the early part of the work containing
the great romance of chivalry of King Omar Bin Al-Nu’uman. III. MSS.
mostly of Egyptian origin, differing as much among themselves in the
arrangement of the tales, as do those of the other groups.

The following MSS. are mentioned as belonging to the first group:—

I. Galland’s MS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Nos. 1506–1508.

II. MS. in the Vatican, No. 782.

III. Dr. Russell’s MS. from Aleppo.

IV. MS. in the Bibl. Nat. (Suppl. 1715, I. and II.).

V. MS. in the Library of Christ Church College, Oxford (No. ccvii.).

VI. MS. in the Library of the India Office, London (No. 2699).

VII. Sir W. Jones’ MS., used by Richardson.

VIII. Rich’s MS. in the Library of the British Museum (Addit. 7404).

IX. MS. in Bibl. Nat. (Suppl. 2522 and 2523).

X. MS. in Bibl. Nat. (Suppl. 1716).

The following MSS. are enumerated as belonging to the second group:—

I. Salt’s MS. (printed in Calcutta in 4 vols).

II.-IV. Three complete MSS. in Bibliothèque Nationale (Suppl. Arabe,
Nos. 1717, 1718, 1719).

V. Incomplete MS. of Vol. II. in Bibl. Nat. (Suppl. Arabe, Nos. 2198
to 2200).

VI. Incomplete MS. of Vol. 4 (Suppl. Arabe, Nos. 2519 to 2521).

VII. Odd vol. containing Nights 656 to 1001 (Suppl. Arabe, No. 1721,
III).

XII. MS. containing Nights 284 to 327. (Suppl. Arabe, No. 1720.)

XIII. MS. in British Museum (Oriental MSS., Nos. 1593 to 1598).

XIV. Ditto, (Oriental MSS., Nos. 2916 to 2919).

XV. Burckhardt’s MS. in the University Library at Cambridge (B. MSS.
106 to 109).

XVI. MS. in the Vatican (Nos. 778 to 781).

XVII. MS. in the Ducal Library at Gotha.

XVIII. Odd vol. in ditto.

XIX. MS. in the Royal Library at Munich.

XX. Ditto, incomplete (De Sacy’s).

XXI. Fragment in the Library of the Royal and Imperial Library at
Vienna (No. CL.).

XXII. MS. in the Imperial Public Library at St. Petersburg (Von
Hammer’s).

XXIII. MS. in the Library of the Institute for the Study of Oriental
languages at St. Petersburg (Italinski’s).

XXIV. Dr. Clarke’s MS. (cf. Nights, x., App. pp. 502–506).

XXV. Caussin de Perceval’s MS

XXVI. Sir W. Ouseley’s MSS.

The above list does not include copies or fragments in various libraries
of which M. Zotenberg has no sufficient information, nor miscellaneous
collections in which tales from the Nights are mixed with others.

Portions of Habicht’s MS. appear to belong to the Egyptian recension,
and others to have come from further East.

There is a MS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Suppl. Arabe, No. 1721,
IV.) from Egypt, containing the first 210 Nights, which somewhat
resembles Habicht’s MS. both in style and in the arrangement of the
tales. The Third Shaykh’s Story (No. 1 c.) is entirely different from
those in the ordinary MSS., nor is it the same as that in the Turkish
version of the Nights, which is again quite different from either. In
this MS. (No. 1721, IV.) No. 6 is followed by Nos. 7, 174, and 133.

Then follow notices of Anderson’s MS., used by Scott, but which cannot
now be traced; the Calcutta edition of the first 200 Nights; and of the
Wortley Montague MS. These form M. Zotenberg’s third group of MSS.

M. Zotenberg does not enter into the question of the original form, date
and constituents of the primitive work, but concludes that the complete
work as we now have it, only assumed its present form at a comparatively
recent period. But it must not be forgotten that the details,
description, manners, and style of the tales composing this vast
collection, are undergoing daily alteration both from narrators and
copyists.

Then follows an Appendix, in which M. Zotenberg has copied two tales
from Galland’s journals, which he took down as related by the Maronite
Hanna. One of these is new to me; it is the story of the Three Princes,
and the Genius Morhagian and his Daughters (added at the end of this
section); and the other is the well-known story of the Envious Sisters.

The remainder of M. Zotenberg’s volume contains the Arabic text of the
story of ’Ala Al-Din, or the Wonderful Lamp, with numerous critical
notes, most of which refer to Galland’s version. A few pages of Chavis’
text are added for comparison.

The story itself, M. Zotenberg remarks, is modern, giving a faithful
picture of Egyptian manners under the reign of the last Mamlouk Sultans.
Some expressions which occur in the French-Arabic Dictionary of Ellions
Bocthor and of A. Caussin de Perceval, are apparently derived from the
story of ’Ala Al-Din.

_STORY OF THE THREE PRINCES AND THE GENIUS MORHAGIAN AND HIS DAUGHTERS._

[Reprinted by M. Zotenberg (pp. 53–61) from Galland’s Journal, MS.
français, No. 15277, pp. 120–131.] The passages in brackets are
added by the present translator (chiefly where Galland has inserted
“etc.”) to fill up the sense.

When the Sultan of Samarcand had reached a great age, he called the
three princes, his sons, and after observing that he was much pleased to
see how much they loved and revered him, he gave them leave to ask for
whatever they most desired. They had only to speak, and he was ready to
grant them whatever they asked, let it be what it might, on the sole
condition that he should satisfy the eldest first, and the two younger
ones afterwards, each in his turn. The eldest prince, whose name was
Rostam, begged the Sultan to build him a cabinet of bricks of gold and
silver alternately, and roofed with all kinds of precious stones.

The Sultan issued his orders that very day, but before the roof of the
cabinet was finished, indeed before any furniture had been put into it,
Prince Rostam asked his father’s leave to sleep there. The Sultan tried
to dissuade him, saying that [the roof] ought to be finished first; but
the prince was so impatient that he ordered his bed to be removed there,
and he lay down. He was reading the Koran about midnight, when suddenly
the floor opened and he beheld a most hideous genius named Morhagian
rise from the ground, who cried out, “You are a prince, but even if you
were the Sultan himself, I would not refrain from taking vengeance for
your rashness in entering this house which has been built just above the
palace of my eldest daughter.” At the same time he paced around the
cabinet, and struck its walls, when the whole cabinet was reduced to
dust so fine that the wind carried it away, and left not a trace of it.
The prince drew his sword, and pursued the genius, who took to flight
until he came to a well, into which he plunged [and vanished]. When the
prince appeared before his father the Sultan next morning, he was
overwhelmed with confusion [not only at what had happened, but on
account of his disobedience to his father, who reproached him severely
for having disregarded his advice.]

The second prince, whose name was Gaiath Eddin (Ghayáth al-Dín), then
requested the Sultan to build him a cabinet constructed entirely of the
bones of fishes. The Sultan ordered it to be built, at great expense.
Prince Gaiath Eddin had no more patience to wait till it was quite
finished than his brother Rostam. He lay down in the cabinet,
notwithstanding the Sultan’s warnings, but took care to keep his sword
by his side. The genius Morhagian appeared to him also at midnight, paid
him the same compliment, and told him that the cabinet was built over
the palace of his second daughter. He reduced it to dust, and Prince
Gaiath Eddin pursued him, sword in hand, to the well, where he escaped;
and next day the prince appeared before his father, the Sultan [as
crestfallen as his brother].

The third prince, who was named Badialzaman (Badíu ’l-Zamán = Rarity of
the Age), obtained leave from the Sultan to build a cabinet entirely of
rock crystal. He went to sleep there before it was entirely finished,
but without saying anything to the Sultan, as he was resolved to see
whether Morhagian would treat him in the same way. Morhagian arrived at
midnight, and declared that the cabinet was built over the palace of his
third daughter. He destroyed the cabinet, and when the prince seized his
sword, Morhagian took to flight. The prince wounded him three times
before he reached the well, but he nevertheless succeeded in escaping.

Prince Badialzaman did not present himself to the Sultan, but went to
the two princes, his brothers, and urged them to pursue the genius in
the well itself. The three went together, and the eldest was let down
into the well by a rope, but after descending a certain distance, he
cried out, and asked to be drawn up again. He excused his failure by
saying that he felt a burning heat [and was almost suffocated]. The same
thing happened to Prince Gaiath Eddin, who likewise cried out till he
was drawn up. Prince Badialzaman then had himself let down but commanded
his brothers not to draw him up again, even if he should cry out. They
let him down, and he cried out, but he continued to descend till he
reached the bottom of the well, when he untied himself from the rope,
and called out to his brothers that the air was very foul. At the bottom
of the well he found an open door, and he advanced for some distance
between two walls, at the end of which he found a golden door, which he
opened, and beheld a magnificent palace. He entered and passed through
the kitchen and the storerooms, which were filled with all kinds of
provisions, and then inspected the rooms, when he entered one
magnificently furnished with sofas and divans. He was curious to find
out who lived there, so he hid himself. Soon afterwards he beheld a
flight of doves alight at the edge of a basin of water in the middle of
the court. The doves plunged into the water, and emerged from it as
women, each of whom immediately set about her appointed work. One went
to the store room, another to the kitchen, a third began to sweep [and
so on]. They prepared a feast [as if for expected guests]. Some time
afterwards, Badialzaman beheld another flight of ten doves of different
colours, who surrounded an eleventh, which was quite white, and these
also perched on the edge of the basin. The ten doves plunged into the
basin and came forth as women, more beautiful than the first and more
magnificently robed. They took the white dove and plunged her into a
smaller basin, which was [filled with] rose [water] and she became a
woman of extraordinary beauty. She was the eldest daughter of the
genius, and her name was Fattane. (Fattánah = The Temptress.)

Two of her attendants then took Fattane under the armpits, and led her
to her apartment, followed by the others. She took her seat on a small
raised sofa, and her women separated, some to the right and some to the
left, and set about their work. Prince Badialzaman had dropped his
handkerchief. One of the waiting women saw it and picked it up, and when
she looked round, she saw the prince. She was alarmed, and warned
Fattane, who sent some of her women to see who the stranger was. The
prince came forward, and presented himself before Fattane, who beheld a
young prince, and gave him a most gracious reception. She made him sit
next to her, and inquired what brought him there? He told his story from
the beginning to the end, and asked where he could find the genius, on
whom he wished to take vengeance. Fattane smiled, and told him to think
no more about it, but only to enjoy himself in the good company in which
he found himself. They spread the table, and she made him sit next to
her, and her women played on all kinds of musical instruments before
they retired to rest.

Fattane persuaded the prince to stay with her from day to day: but on
the fortieth day he declared that he could wait no longer, and that it
was absolutely necessary for him to find out where Morhagian dwelt. The
princess acknowledged that he was her father, and told him that his
strength was so great [that nobody could overcome him]. She added that
she could not inform him where to find him, but that her second sister
would tell him. She sent one of her women to guide him to her sister’s
palace through a door of communication, and to introduce him. He was
well received by the fairy, for whom he had a letter, and he found her
younger and more beautiful than Fattane. He begged her to inform him
where he could find the genius, but she changed the subject of
conversation, entertained him magnificently, and kept him with her for
forty days. On the fortieth day she permitted him to depart, gave him a
letter, and sent him to her youngest sister, who was a still more
beautiful fairy. He was received and welcomed with joy. She promised to
show him Morhagian’s dwelling, and she also entertained him for forty
days. On the fortieth day she tried to dissuade him from his enterprise,
but he insisted. She told him that Morhagian would grasp his head in one
hand, and his feet in the other, and would tear him asunder in the
middle. But this did not move him, and she then told him that he would
find Morhagian in a dwelling, long, high and wide in proportion to his
bulk. The prince sought him out, and the moment he caught sight of him,
he rushed at him, sword in hand. Morhagian stretched out his hand,
seized his head in one hand and his feet in the other, rent him in two
with very little effort, and threw him out of a window which overlooked
a garden.

Two women sent by the youngest princess each took a piece of the body of
the prince, and brought it to their mistress, who put them together,
reunited them, and restored life to the prince by applying water [of
life?] to the wounds. She then asked the prince where he came from, and
it seemed to him that he had just awakened from sleep; and she then
recalled everything to his recollection. But this did not weaken his
firm resolve to kill the genius. The fairy begged him to eat, but he
refused; and she then urged that Morhagian was her father, and that he
could only be killed by his own sword, which the prince could not
obtain.[435] “You may say what you please,” answered the prince; “but
there is no help for it, and he must die by my hand [to atone for the
wrongs which my brothers and I have suffered from him].”

Then the princess made him swear solemnly to take her as his bride, and
taught him how he might succeed in killing the genius. “You cannot hope
to kill him while he wakes,” said she, “but when he sleeps it is not
quite impossible. If he sleeps, you will hear him snore, but he will
sleep with his eyes open, which is a sign that he has fallen into a very
profound slumber. As he fills the whole room, step upon him and seize
his sword which hangs above his head, and then strike him on the neck.
The blow will not kill him, but as he wakes, he will tell you to strike
him a second time. But beware of doing this, [for if you strike him
again, the wound will heal of itself, and he will spring up and kill
you, and me after you].”

Then Badialzaman returned to Morhagian’s room, and found him snoring so
loud that everything around him shook. The prince entered, though not
without trembling, and walked over him till he was able to seize the
sword when he struck him a violent blow on the neck. Morhagian awoke,
cursing his daughter, and cried out to the prince, whom he recognised,
“Make an end of me.” The prince answered that what he had done was
enough, and he left him, and Morhagian died.

The prince carried off Morhagian’s sword, which he thought would be
useful to him in other encounters; and as he went, he passed a
magnificent stable in which he saw a splendid horse. He returned to the
fairy and related to her what he had done, and added that he would like
to carry off the horse, but he feared it would be very difficult. “Not
so difficult as you think,” said she. “Go and cut off some hair from his
tail, and take care of it, and whenever you are in need, burn one or two
of the hairs, and he will be with you immediately [and will bring you
whatever you require].”

After this the three fairies assembled together, and the prince promised
that the two princes, his brothers, should marry the other two sisters.
Each fairy reduced her palace to the size of a small ball, which she
gave to the prince.

The prince then took the three fairies to the bottom of the well. His
father, the Sultan, had long believed that he was dead, and had put on
mourning for him. His two brothers often came to the well, and they
happened to be there just at the time. Badialzaman attracted their
attention by his shouts, told them what had happened, and added that he
had brought the three fairies with him. He asked for a rope and fastened
the eldest fairy to it, calling out, “Pull away, Prince Rostam, I send
you your good fortune.” The rope was let down again, and he fastened the
second fairy to it, calling out “Brother Gaiath Eddin, pull up your good
fortune too.”

The third fairy, who was to marry Badialzaman, begged him to allow
himself to be drawn up before her [as she was distrustful of his
brothers], but he would not listen to her. As soon as the two princes
had drawn her up so high that they could see her, they began to dispute
who should have her. Then the fairy cried out to Badialzaman, “Prince,
did I not warn you of this?”

The princes were obliged to agree that the Sultan should settle their
dispute. When the third fairy had been drawn out of the well, the three
fairies endeavoured to persuade the two princes to draw up their
youngest brother, but they refused, and compelled them to follow them.
While they carried off the youngest princess, the other two asked leave
to say adieu to prince Badialzaman. They cried out from the top of the
well, “Prince, have patience till Friday, when you will see six bulls
pass by—three red ones and three black ones. Mount upon one of the red
ones and he will bring you up to the earth, but take good care not to
mount upon a black one, for he would carry you down to the Seventh
Earth.”[436]

The princes carried off the three fairies, and on Friday, three days
afterwards, the six bulls appeared. Badialzaman was about to mount upon
a red one, when a black one prevented him, and compelled him to mount
his back, when he plunged through the earth till he stopped at a large
town in another world. He entered the town, and took up his abode with
an old woman, to whom he gave a piece of gold to provide him with
something to eat, for he was almost famished. When he had eaten enough,
he asked for something to drink. “You cannot be a native of this
country,” said the old woman [“or you would not ask for drink”]. She
then brought him a sponge, saying that she had no other water. She then
informed him that the town was supplied with water from a very copious
spring, the flow of which was interrupted by a monster. They were
obliged to offer up a girl to be devoured by it on every Friday. To-day
the princess, the Sultan’s daughter, was to be given up to him, and
while the monster emerged from his lair to devour her, enough water
would flow for everyone to supply himself until the following Friday.

Badialzaman then requested the old woman to show him the way to the
place where the princess was already exposed; but she was so much afraid
that he had much trouble in persuading her to come out of her house to
show him what direction to take. He went out of the town, and went on
till he saw the princess who made a sign to him from a distance to
approach no nearer; and the nearer he came, the more anxiety she
displayed. As soon as he was within hearing, he shouted to her not to be
afraid; and he sat down beside her, and fell asleep, after having begged
her to wake him as soon as the monster appeared. Presently a tear from
the princess fell upon his face, and he woke up, and saw the monster,
which he slew with the sword of Morhagian, and the water flowed in
abundance. The princess thanked her deliverer, and begged him to take
her back to the Sultan her father, who would give proofs of his
gratitude; but he excused himself. She then marked his shoulder with the
blood of the monster without his noticing it. The princess then returned
to the town, and was led back to the palace, where she related to the
Sultan [all that had happened]. Then the Sultan commanded that all the
men in the town should pass before himself and the princess under pain
of death. Badialzaman tried to conceal himself in a khan, but he was
compelled to come with the others. The princess recognised him, and
threw an apple at him to point him out. He was seized, and brought
before the Sultan, who demanded what he could do to serve him. The
prince hesitated, but at length he requested the Sultan to show him the
way to return to the world from whence he came. The Sultan was furious,
and would have ordered him to be burned as a heretic [but the princess
interceded for his life]. The Sultan then treated him as a madman, and
drove him ignominiously from the town, and he wandered away without
knowing where he was going. At length he arrived at a mountain of rock,
where he saw a great serpent rising from his lair to prey on young
Rokhs. He slew the serpent with the sword of Morhagian, and the father
and mother of the Rokhs arrived at the moment, and asked him to demand
whatever he desired in return. He hesitated awhile, but at length he
asked them to show him the way to the upper world. The male Rokh then
told him to prepare ten quarters of mutton, to mount on his back, and to
give him some of the meat whenever he should turn his head either to one
side or to the other on the journey.

The prince mounted on the back of the Rokh, the Rokh stamped with his
foot, and the earth opened before them wherever he turned. They reached
the bottom of the well when the Rokh turned his head, but there was no
more meat left, so the prince cut off the calf of his leg, and give it
to him. When the Rokh arrived at the top of the well, the prince leaped
to the ground, when the Rokh perceived [that he was lame, when he
inquired the reason, and the prince explained what had happened]. The
Rokh then disgorged the calf of the leg, and returned it to its place,
when it grew fast, and the prince was cured immediately.

As the prince left the well, he met a peasant, and changed clothes with
him, but he kept the sword, the three balls, and the horse-hair. He went
into the town, where he took lodgings with a tailor, and kept himself in
retirement. The prince gradually rose in the tailor’s esteem by letting
him perceive that he knew how to sew, [and all the arts of an
accomplished tailor]. Presently, preparations were made for the wedding
of Prince Rostam, and the tailor with whom Badialzaman lodged was
ordered to prepare the fairy’s robes. Badialzaman, who slept in the
shop, took clothes from one of the balls similar to those which were
already far advanced, and put them in the place of the others. The
tailor was astonished [at their fine workmanship] and wished to take the
prince with him to receive a present, but he refused, alleging as an
excuse that he had so lately come to the town. When the fairies saw the
clothes, they thought it a good omen.

The wedding day arrived, and they threw the jaríd,[437] [and practised
other martial exercises]. It was a grand festival, and all the shops
were closed. The tailor wished to take the prince to see the spectacle,
but he put him off with an excuse. However, he went to a retired part of
the town, where he struck fire with a gun,[438] and burned a little of
the horse-hair. The horse appeared, and he told him to bring him a
complete outfit all in red, and that he should likewise appear with
trappings, jewels &c., and a reed (jaríd) of the same colour. The prince
then mounted the horse, and proceeded to the race-course, where his
appearance excited general admiration. At the close of the sports, he
cut off the head of Prince Rostam, and the horsemen pursued him, but
were unable to overtake him, and soon lost sight of him. He returned to
the shop dressed as usual before the arrival of the tailor, who related
to him what had happened, of which he pretended to be entirely ignorant.
There was a great mourning at the court; but three months afterwards,
fresh robes were ordered for the wedding of the second prince. The
fairies were confirmed in their suspicions when they saw the fresh
clothes [which Badialzaman sent them].

On the wedding day they again assembled to throw the jaríd. Prince
Badialzaman now presented himself on the white horse, robed in white,
and with pearls and jewels to match, and again he attracted general
admiration. He pushed himself into the midst of a guard of eight hundred
horsemen, and slew Gaiath Eddin. They rushed upon him, and he allowed
himself to be carried before the Sultan, who recognised him, [and
pronounced his decision], “A brother who has been abandoned to die by
his brothers, has a right to kill them.”

After this, Prince Badialzaman espoused the youngest princess, and the
two others were given in marriage to two princes who were related to the
Sultan.

_CAZOTTE’S CONTINUATION, AND THE COMPOSITE EDITIONS OF THE ARABIAN
NIGHTS (pp. 470–475)._

P. 475.—There is a small Dutch work, the title of which is as follows:

_Oostersche Vertellingen, uit de Duizend-en-een-Nacht_: Naar de
Hoogduitsche Bewerking van M. Claudius,[439] voor de Nederlandsche
Jeugduiitgegeven door J. J. A. Gouverneur. Te Groningen, bij B. Wolters
(n.d. 8vo.), pp. 281, col. front. (illustrating No. 170).

A composite juvenile edition, including Introduction (very short), and
Nos. 251g, 36a, 163 (complete form), 6ef, 4, 5, 1, 52, 170, 6ee, 223,
207c, 6, 194c, 206a, 204h, 2a, 174a and Introduction, (a.)

Derived from at least four different sources.

_TRANSLATIONS OF THE PRINTED TEXTS (pp. 495–496)._

Under this heading I have to record Sir Richard and Lady Burton’s own
works.

_Lady Burton’s Edition of her husband’s Arabian Nights_, translated
literally from the Arabic, prepared for household reading by Justin
Huntly Mc.Carthy, M.P., London, Waterlow and Sons, Roy. 8vo. 6 vols.

In preparing this edition for the press, as much as possible has been
retained, both of the translation and notes; and it has not been found
necessary to omit altogether more than a very few of the least important
tales. The contents of the 6 volumes are as follows:—

Vol I. (1886), Frontispiece (Portrait of Lady Burton), Preface,
Translator’s Foreword, Introduction, 1–9 (pp. xxiii. 476).

Vol. II. (1886), Frontispiece (Portrait of Sir Richard F. Burton), 9
(continued), 9a–29 (pp. ii. 526).

Vol. III. (1887), 29 (continued)–133e (pp. viii. 511).

Vol. IV. (1887), 133e (continued)–154a (pp. iv. 514).

Vol. V. (1887), 154a (continued)–163 (pp. iv. 516).

Vol. VI. (1886) [? 1888], 163 (continued)–169 (pp. ii. 486).

Also includes Terminal Essay, Index to Tales and Proper Names;
Contributions to Bibliography, as far as it relates to Galland’s MS. and
Translations!; Comparative Table of Tales; Opinions of the Press; and
Letters from Scholars.

_Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night_,
with notes anthropological and explanatory, by Richard F. Burton.
Benares, printed by the Kamashastra Society for private subscribers
only. Roy. 8vo.

The contents of the 6 volumes are as follows:

Vol. I. (1886) Translator’s Foreword, 170–181bb (pp. xi. 370).

Vol. II. (1886) 182–189. Appendix: Variants and analogues of some of the
tales in vols. i. and ii., by Mr. W. A. Clouston (pp. ix. 392).

These two volumes contain the tales peculiar to the Breslau Text, and
cover the same ground as Mr. Payne’s 3 vols. of “Tales from the Arabic.”

Vol. III. (1887) Foreword, 191–198. Appendix: Variants and Analogues of
the Tales in the Supplemental Nights, vol. iii., by Mr. W. A. Clouston
(pp. xvi. 661).

This volume, the bulkiest of the whole series, contains such of
Galland’s tales as are not to be found in the ordinary texts of the
Nights.

Vol. IV. (1887) The Translator’s Foreword, 203–209; App. A. Ineptiæ
Bodleianæ; App. B. The three untranslated tales in Mr. E. J. W. Gibb’s
“Forty Vezirs” (pp. xv., 381).

Vol. V. (1888) 210–241a, Translator’s Foreword; App. i. Catalogue of
Wortley Montague Manuscript; Contents; App. ii. Notes on the Stories
contained in vols. iv. and v. of Supplemental Nights, by Mr. W. F. Kirby
(pp. viii. 515).

These two volumes contain tales translated from the Wortley Montague
MS., used by Jonathan Scott, and now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
The following tales, not in our table, are added:—

Vol. IV. Story of the Limping Schoolmaster (between 204i and 204j).

How Drummer Abu Kasim became a Kazi, and Story of the Kazi and his
Slipper. (These two tales come between 206a and 206b.)

Adventure of the Fruit-seller and the Concubine (between 207c and 207d).

Tale of the third Larrikin concerning himself (between 208 and 209).

On the other hand, a few tales in the MS. are omitted as repetitions, or
as too unimportant to be worth translating:—

Vol. VI. (1888). Translators Foreword: 248; 246; The Linguist-Dame, the
Duenna, and the King’s Son; 247; The Pleasant History of the Cock and
the Fox; History of what befel the Fowl-let with the Fowler; 249; 250.

App. i. Index to the Tales and Proper Names; ii. Alphabetical Table of
the Notes (Anthropological, &c.); iii. Notes on the Stories contained in
vol. vi. of Supplementary Nights, by W. F. Kirby; iv. Additional Notes
on the Bibliography of the Thousand and One Nights, by W. F. Kirby (pp.
201, 384.); v. The Biography of the Book and the Reviewers Reviewed,
Opinions of the Press.

This volume contains the originals of Chavis and Cazotte’s Tales,
omitting the four doubtful ones (cf. Nights, x. App., pp. 470, 471).

_COLLECTIONS OF SELECTED TALES (pp. 496–497.)_

“We have also ‘Aladdin or the Wonderful Lamp,’ ‘Sindbad the Sailor, or
the Old Man of the Sea’ and ‘Ali Baba, or the Forty Thieves,’ revised by
M. E. Braddon, author of ‘Lady Audley’s Secret,’ etc. Illustrated by
Gustav Doré and other artists. London: J. & R. Maxwell.

“Miss Braddon has contented herself with ‘Englishing’ the vulgar
version, whose Gallicisms are so offensive to the national ear.” (Sir R.
F. Burton, _in litt._)

_IMITATIONS AND MISCELLANEOUS WORKS HAVING MORE OR LESS CONNECTION WITH
THE NIGHTS._ (Pp. 507–513.) B. _ENGLISH_ (pp. 512, 513.)

13. _History of Rhedi, the Hermit of Mount Ararat, an Oriental Tale._
_By—Mackenzie_, 16mo., Dublin, 1781.

I have not seen this little book.

14. _Miscellanies, consisting of poems, classical extracts, Oriental
Apologues. By William Beloe, F.S.A, Translator of Herodotus, &c._
London, 1795.

Includes some genuine Oriental tales, such as a version of that of Básim
the Smith.

15. _The Orientalist, Letters of a Rabbi, with Notes by James Noble,
Oriental Master in the Scottish Naval and Military Academy._ Edinburgh,
1831.

Noticed by Mr. W. A. Clouston, Suppl. Nights, iii., p. 573.

16. _The Adventures of the Caliph Haroun Al-raschid. Recounted by the
Author of “Mary Powell” [Miss Manning]._ 8vo., London, 1855; Arthur
Hall, Virtue & Co.

17. _The 1001 Days, a Companion to the Arabian Nights_, with
introduction by Miss [J.] Pardoe. 8vo, London, 1857, woodcuts.

A miscellaneous collection (partly derived from “Les Mille et un Jours”)
(cf. Nights, x., pp. 499, 500). I have also seen a similar miscellaneous
collection in French under the latter title. The tales in the English
work are as follows:

I. Hassan Abdallah, or the Enchanted Keys.

Story of Hassan.

Story of the Basket Maker.

Story of the Dervise Abounader.

II. Soliman Bey and the Story Tellers.

The First Story Teller.

The Second Story Teller.

The Third Story Teller.

III. Prince Khalaf and the Princess of China.

Story of Prince Al-Abbas.

Story of Liri-in.

IV. The Wise Dey.

V. The Tunisian Sage.

VI. The Nose for Gold.

VII. The Treasures of Basra.

History of Aboulcassem.

VIII. The Old Camel.

IX. The Story of Medjeddin (Grimm’s “Haschem,” cf. Nights, x. pp.
474, 475).

X. King Bedreddin Lolo and his Vizier.

Story of the Old Slippers.

Story of Atalmulk, surnamed the Sorrowful Vizier, and the
Princess Zelica.

Story of Malek and the Princess Schirine.

18. _The Modern Arabian Nights._ By Arthur A’ Beckett and Linley
Sambourne. London: Bradbury, Agnew & Co., 1877, sm. 4to., with comic
coloured frontispieces and woodcuts.

Four clever satires (social and political) as follows:

1. Alley Baber and Son, a Mock Exchange Story.

2. Ned Redding and the Beautiful Persian.

3. The Ride of Captain Alf Rashit to Ke-Vere-Street.

4. Mr. O’Laddin and the Wonderful Lamp.

19. _Tales of the Caliph._ By Al Arawiyah, 8vo., London, T. Fisher
Unwin, 1887.

Belongs to Class 5 (Imitations). Consists of fictitious adventures
supposed to have happened to Harun Al Rashid, chiefly during his
nocturnal rambles.

_SEPARATE EDITIONS OF SINGLE OR COMPOSITE TALES (pp. 497–499)._

P. 498, line 12.—No. 184 was published under the title of “Woman’s Wit”
in the “Literary Souvenir” for 1831, pp. 217–237, derived from Langlés’
version (Mr. L. C. Smithers _in litt._).

_TRANSLATION OF COGNATE ORIENTAL ROMANCES ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE NIGHTS
(pp. 499–502)._

P. 499, No. 1, Les Mille et un Jours.

Mr. L. C. Smithers (_in litt._) notes English editions published in 1781
and 1809, the latter under the title of “The Persian and Turkish Tales.”

P. 501, No. 5. _Recueil de Contes Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura_
recueillis et traduits par J. Rivière. 12mo. Paris: Leroux. 1882.

This collection is intended to illustrate the habits and ideas of the
people. The tales are very short, and probably very much abridged, but
many of them illustrate the Nights. I may note the following tales as
specially interesting from their connection with the Nights, or with
important tales in other collections, Oriental or otherwise.

Thadhillala. A brief abstract of No. 151.

Les deux Frères. A variant of Herodotus’ Story of Rhampsinitus.

L’homme de bien et le méchant. A variant of No. 262; or Schiller’s
Fridolin.

Le Corbeau et l’Enfant. Here a child is stolen and a crow left in its
place.

H’ab Sliman. Here an ugly girl with foul gifts is substituted for her
opposite.

Le roi et son fils. Here we find the counterpart of Schaibar (from No.
197), who, however, is a cannibal and devours everybody.

Les Enfants et la Chauve-sourie. Resembles No. 198.

Le Joueur de Flute. Resembles Grimm’s story of the Jew in the
Bramble-Bush.

Jésus-Christ et la femme infidèle. (=261 b.; cf. Nights x., p. 473.)

Le Roitelet. This is the fable of the Ox and the Frog.

L’idiot et le coucou (=No. 206a.)

Moh’amed ben Soltan. This is one of the class of stories known to
folklorists as the Punchkin series. The life of a Ghúl is hidden in an
egg, the egg in a pigeon, the pigeon in a camel, and the camel in the
sea.

Les deux Frères. A Cinderella story. The slayer of a hydra is discovered
by trying on a shoe.

Les trois Frères. Here a Ghúl is killed by a single blow from a magic
dagger, which must not be repeated. (Cf. antea, p. 365; and Nights, vii.
p. 361.) In this story, too, the protection of a Ghúlah is secured by
tasting her milk, a point which we find in Spitta Bey’s “Contes Arabes
Modernes,” but not in the Nights.

9. _Turkish Evening Entertainments._ “The Wonders of Remarkable
Incidents and the Rarities of Anecdotes,” by Ahmed ibn Hemdem the
Ketkhoda called “Sobailee.” Translated from the Turkish by John F.
Brown. 8vo. New York, 1850.

Contains a great number of tales and anecdotes, divided into 37
chapters, many of which bear such headings as “Illustrative of
intelligence and piety,” “On justice and fostering care,” “Anecdotes
about the Abbaside Caliphs,” &c.

“A translation of the Turkish story-book, ‘Aja’ib al-ma’ásir wa ghará
’ib ennawádir,’ written for Muád the Fourth Ottoman Sultan who reigned
between 1623–40. A volume of interesting anecdotes from the Arabic and
Persian” (Mr. L. C. Smithers, _in litt._)

10. _Contes Arabes Modernes, recueillis et traduits par Guillaume
Spitta-Bey._ 8vo. Leyden and Paris, 1883.

This book contains 12 orally collected tales of such great importance
from a folk-lore point of view that I have given full abstracts of all.
They are designed to illustrate the spoken Egyptian dialect, and are
printed in Roman character, with translation and glossary. The hero of
nearly all the tales is called “Mohammed l’Avisé,” which Mr. Sydney
Hartland renders “Prudent,” and Mr. W. A. Clouston “Discreet.” The
original gives “Essâtir Mehammed.” (Al-Shátir Mohammed, _i.e._, M. the
Clever) The frequent occurrence of the number 39 (forty less one) may
also be noted. Ghúls often play the part which we should expect Jinn to
fill. The bear which occurs in two stories, is not an Egyptian animal.
Having called attention to these general features we may leave the tales
to speak for themselves.

I. _Histoire de Mohammed l’Avisé._

Contains the essential features of Cazotte’s story of the Maugraby, (cf.
Nights, x., p. 471) with interesting additions. The “Mogrébin” confers
three sons on a king and queen, and claims Mohammed, the eldest and the
cleverest. He gives him a book to read during his absence of 30 days,
but on the 29th day he finds a girl hanging by her hair in the garden,
and she teaches him to read it, but not to tell the magician. The latter
cuts off his arm, threatening to cut off his head if he cannot read the
book within another 30 days. As soon as he is gone, Mohammed reads on
his arm again with the book, and escapes with the girl, when they
separate and return to their respective homes. Mohammed then changes
himself into a sheep for his mother to sell, but warns her not to sell
the cord round his neck. Next day he changes himself into a camel,
forbidding his mother to sell the bridle; but she is persuaded to do so,
and he falls into the hands of the magician. But he contrives to escape
in the form of a crow and the magician pursues him for two days and
nights in the form of a hawk, when he descends into the garden of the
king whose daughter he had rescued from the magician, and changes
himself into a pomegranate on a tree. The magician asks for and receives
the pomegranate, when it bursts, and the seed containing the life of
Mohammed rolls under the king’s throne. The magician changes himself
into a cock, and picks up the seeds, but while he is searching for the
last, it changes into a dagger, and cuts him in two. The princess
acknowledges Mohammed as her deliverer, and they are married.

II. _Histoire de l’Ours de Cuisine._

This begins as a swan-maiden story.[440] A king steals the feather-dress
of a bathing maiden, who will only marry him on condition that she shall
tear out the eyes of his forty women (39 white slaves and a princess).
The king answers, “C’est bien, il n’y a pas d’inconvénient.” The forty
blind women are shut up in a room under the kitchen, where they give
birth to children whom they cut up and divide; but the princess saves
her shares and thus preserves her son, whom she calls “Mohammed
l’Avisé,” and teaches to read. He steals food from the kitchen, calling
himself “Ours de Cuisine;” the queen hears of him, pretends to be ill,
and demands that he shall be sent to fetch the heart of the Bull of the
Black Valley. He finds a Ghúleh sitting with her breasts thrown back on
her shoulders, so he tastes her milk unperceived, and she at once adopts
him as her son. She gives him a ball and a dagger, warning him that if
he strikes the bull more than once, he will sink into the earth with
him. The ball rolls before him, and when it stops, the bull rises from
the ground. Mohammed kills him, refusing to repeat the blow, returns the
ball and dagger to the Ghúleh, and returns home. A few days afterwards,
the queen sends Mohammed to fetch the heart of the Bull of the Red
Valley, and when he informs the Ghúleh, she says, “Does she wish to kill
her second brother too?” “Are these her brothers?” asked Mohammed. She
answered, “Yes, indeed, they are the sons of the Sultan of the Jánn.” He
kills the Bull as before. A fortnight afterwards, the queen hides a loaf
of dry bread under her mattress, when its cracking gives rise to the
idea that she is very ill, and she complains of great pain in the sides.
She demands a pomegranate from the White Valley, where the pomegranates
grow to the weight of half a cantar.[441] The Ghúleh tells him she
cannot help him, but he must wait for her son Abderrahym. When he
arrives he remarks, “Hum! mother, there’s a smell of man about you,
bring him here to me to eat for breakfast.” But his mother introduces
Mohammed to him as his foster brother, and he becomes friendly at once,
but says that the pomegranate is the queen’s sister. He tells Mohammed
to get an ardebb of small round loaves in a basket, along with a piece
of meat, and a piece of liver. The Ghúl then gives him a rod, saying,
“Throw it down, and walk after it. It will knock at the garden gate,
which will open, and when you enter you will find great dogs, but throw
the bread right and left, without looking back. Beyond a second gate you
will find Ghúls; throw bread to them right and left, and after passing
them, look up, and you will find a tree in a fountain surrounded with
roses and jasmine. You will see a pomegranate upon it. Gather it, and it
will thunder, but fear nothing, and go on your way directly, and do not
look behind you after passing the gate.” The queen waits another
fortnight, and then demands the flying castle from Mount Kaf, intending
that her father, who dwelt there, should burn him. The Ghúleh directed
Mohammed to dye himself black, and to provide himself with some mastic
(ladin) and lupines. With these, he makes friends with a black slave,
who takes him into the castle, and shows him a bottle containing the
life of the queen; another containing the eyes of the forty women; a
magic sword which spares nothing, and the ring which moves the castle.
Mohammed then sees a beetle,[442] which the slave begs him not to kill,
as it is his life. He watches it till it enters a hole, and as soon as
the slave is asleep, he kills it, and the slave dies. Then he lays hands
on the talismans, rushes into the room where the inhabitants of the
castle are condoling with the king and queen on the loss of their three
children, and draws the sword, saying “Strike right and left, and spare
neither great nor small.” Having slain all in the castle, Mohammed
removes it to his father’s palace, when his father orders the cannons to
be fired. Then Mohammed tells his father his history, compels the queen
to restore the eyes of the forty women, when they become prettier than
before, and then gives her the flask containing her life. But she drops
it in her fright, and her life ends, and the king places Mohammed on the
throne.

III. _Histoire de la Dame des Arabes Jasmin._

A king sends his wazir to obtain a talisman of good luck, which is
written for him by Jasmine, the daughter of an Arab Sheikh. The king
marries her, although she demands to be weighed against gold, but drives
her away for kissing a fisherman in return for a bottle which he has
drawn out of the river for her. She goes two days’ journey to a town,
where she takes up her abode with a merchant, and then discovers that
whenever she turns the stopper of the bottle, food, drink, and finally
ten white dancing girls emerge from it. The girls dance, each throws her
ten purses of money, and then they retire into the bottle. She builds
herself a grand palace, where her husband seeks her, and seeing the new
palace, orders that no lights shall be lit in the town that night. She
lights up her palace, which convinces the king that he has a dangerous
rival. Then the wazir and the king visit her; the king asks for the
bottle, and she demands more than a kiss, then reveals herself, puts the
king to shame, and they are reconciled.

IV. _Histoire du Pécheur et de son Fils._

A king falls in love with the wife of a fisherman, and the wazir advises
the former to require the fisherman on pain of death to furnish a large
hall with a carpet in a single piece. The fisherman’s wife sends him to
the well of Shoubrah where he exclaims, “O such-and-such-a-one, thy
sister so-and-so salutes thee, and asks thee to send her the spindle
which she forgot when she was with thee yesterday, for we want to
furnish a room with it.” The fisherman drives a nail into the floor at
one end of the room, fixes the thread on the spindle to it, and draws
out a wonderful carpet. Then the wazir demands a little boy eight days
old, who shall tell a story of which the beginning shall be a lie and
the end a lie. The fisherman is sent to the well with the message, “O
such-and-such-a-one, thy sister so-and-so greets thee, and requests thee
to give her the child which she brought into the world yesterday.” But
the child only cries until three gnats are applied to him, one on each
side, and one on the back. Then the boy speaks, saying, “Peace be on
thee, O king!” and afterwards tells his lying story: “When I was in the
flower of my youth, I walked out of the town one day into the fields
when it was very hot. I met a melon-seller, I bought a melon for a
mahboub, took it, cut out a piece, and looked inside, when I saw a town
with a grand hall, when I raised my feet and stepped into the melon.
Then I walked about to look at the people of the town inside the melon.
I walked on till I came out of the town into the country. There I saw a
date tree bearing dates a yard long. I wished for some, and climbed the
date-tree to gather a date and eat it. There I found peasants sowing and
reaping on the date-tree, and the threshing wheels were turning to
thresh the wheat. I walked on a little, and met a man who was beating
eggs to make a poultry yard. I looked on, and saw the chickens hatch;
the cocks went to one side and the hens to the other. I stayed near them
till they grew up, when I married them to each other, and went on.
Presently I met a donkey carrying sesame-cakes, so I cut off a piece and
ate it. When I had eaten it, I looked up, and found myself outside the
melon, and the melon became whole as it was at first.” Then the child
rebukes and threatens the king and the wazir, and the fisherman’s wife
sends her husband to take the child back to the well.

The fisherman had a son named Mohammed l’Avisé (Al-Shátír), who was as
handsome as his mother; but the king had a son whose complexion was like
that of a Fellah. The boys went to school together, and the prince used
to say, “Good day, fisherman’s son,” and Mohammed used to reply, “Good
day, O son of the king, looking like a shoe-string.” The prince
complained to his father, who ordered the schoolmaster to kill Mohammed,
and he bastinadoed him severely. The boy went to his father, and turned
fisherman. On the first day he caught a mullet (Fr. _rouget_), and was
about to fry it, when it cried out that it was one of the princesses of
the river, and he threw it back. Then the wazir advised the king to send
Mohammed to fetch the daughter of the king of the Green Country, seven
years journey distant. By the advice of the fish, Mohammed asked the
king for a golden galley; and on reaching the Green Country, invited the
inhabitants to inspect his galley. At last the princess came down, and
he carried her off. When she found she was entrapped, she threw her ring
into the sea, which the fish caught. When the king proposed to the
princess, she first demanded her ring, which Mohammed immediately
presented to the king. Then she said it was the custom of her country on
the occasion of a marriage to dig a trench from the palace to the river,
which was filled with wood, and set on fire. The bridegroom was required
to walk through the trench to the river. The wazir proposed that
Mohammed should walk through the trench first; and by the fish’s advice,
he stopped his ears, cried out, “In the name of God, the Compassioning,
the Merciful,” threw himself into the trench, and returned from the
river handsomer than before. So the wazir said to the king, “Send for
your son to go with us, that he may become as handsome as Mohammed.” So
the three threw themselves into the fire, and were burned to ashes, and
Mohammed married the princess.

V. _Histoire de Dalâl._

Dalal was a little girl, the daughter of a king, who found a louse on
her head, and put it into a jar of oil, where it remained till Dalal was
twenty years old, when it burst the jar, and emerged in the form of a
horned buffalo. The king ordered the hide to be hung at the gate of the
palace, and proclaimed that anyone who could discover what the skin was
should marry his daughter, but whoever tried and failed should lose his
head. Thirty-nine suitors thus perished, when a Ghúl passed by in the
form of a man, who knew the secret. He took Dalal home with him and
brought her a man’s head, but as she would not eat it, he brought her a
sheep. He then visited her under the forms of her mother and her two
aunts, and told her that her husband was a Ghúl; but she refused to
believe it until the third visit. Then he was angry; but she begged him
to let her go to the bath before she was eaten. He consented, took her
to a bath, and sat at the door; but she rubbed herself with mud, changed
clothes with an old lupine-seller, and escaped for a time. She reached a
palace which she would not enter until she was invited by the Prince
himself, who then proposed to marry her, but on the wedding day, her
husband, having tracked her out, contrived that another Ghúl in the form
of a man should present him to the king in the form of a sheep,
pretending that he had been reared in a harem, and would bleat so loud
that nobody could sleep, unless he was tethered in the women’s
apartments. At night the Ghúl carried off Dalal from beside the prince
to the adjoining room, but she begged to be allowed to retire for a few
moments, when she called upon Saint Zaynab for help, who sent one of her
sisters (?) a Jinniyah. She clove the wall, and asked Dalal to promise
to give her her first child. She then gave her a piece of wood to throw
into the mouth of the Ghúl when he opened his mouth to eat her.[443] He
fell on the ground senseless, and Dalal woke up the prince who slew him.
But when Dalal brought forth a daughter whom she gave to the Jinniyah,
her mother-in-law declared that Dalal herself was a Ghulah, and she was
banished to the kitchen, where she pealed onions for ten years. At the
end of this time the Jinniyah again clove the wall, and brought back the
young princess, who was introduced to her father, who took Dalal again
into favour. Meantime the sultan of the Jinn sent for the Jinniyah, for
his son was ill, and could only be cured by a cup of water from the Sea
of Emeralds; and this could only be obtained by a daughter of mankind.
So the Jinniyah borrowed Dalal’s daughter again, and took her to the
sultan, who gave her a cup, and mounted her on a Jinni, warning her not
to wet her fingers. But a wave touched the hand of the princess, which
turned as green as clover. Every morning the Sea of Emerald is weighed
by an officer to discover whether any has been stolen; and as soon as he
discovered the deficiency, he took a platter of glass rings and
bracelets, and went from palace to palace calling out, “Glass bracelets
and rings, O young ladies.” When he came to Dalal’s palace, the young
princess was looking out of the window, and insisted on going herself to
try them on. She hesitated to show her right hand; and the spy knew that
she was guilty, so he seized her hand, and sunk into the ground with
her. He delivered her over to the servants of the Sea of Emerald, who
would have beaten her, but the Jinn surrounded her, and prevented them.
Then the King of the Sea of Emerald ordered her to be taken, bound into
the bath, saying that he would follow in the form of a serpent, and
devour her. But she recognised him by his green eyes, when he became a
man, ordered her to be restored to her father, and afterwards married
her. He gave forty camel loads of emeralds and jacinths as her dowry,
and always visited her by night in the form of a winged serpent,
entering and leaving by the window.

VI. _Histoire de la fille vertueuse._

A merchant and his wife set out to the Hejaz with their son, leaving
their daughter to keep house, and commending her to the protection of
the Kazi. The Kazi fell in love with the girl, but as she would not
admit him, he employed an old woman to entice her to the bath; but the
girl threw soap in his eyes, pushed him down and broke his head, and
escaped to her own house, carrying off his clothes. When the Kazi was
well enough to get about again he found that she had had the door of her
house walled up until the return of her friends, so he wrote a
slanderous letter to her father, who sent her brother to kill her, and
bring him a bottle of her blood. But her brother, although he thought
the walling up of the door was a mere pretence, could not find it in his
heart to kill her, but abandoned her in the desert, and filled the
bottle with gazelle-blood. When the young girl awoke, she wandered to a
spring, and climbed into a tree where a prince who was passing saw her,
carried her home, and married her. She had two sons and a daughter, but
one of their playmates refused to play with them because they had no
maternal uncle. The king then ordered the wazir to escort the princess
and her three children to her father’s village for a month; but on the
road, the wazir made love to her, and she allowed him to kill her three
children in succession to save her honour. At last, he became so
pressing that she pretended to consent, but asked to quit the tent for a
moment, with a cord attached to her hand to prevent her escape. But she
untied the cord, fastened it to a tree, and fled. As they could not find
the princess, the wazir advised the soldiers to tell the king that a
Ghúleh had devoured the children, and fled into the desert. The princess
changed clothes with a shepherd boy, went to a town, and took a
situation in a café. When the wazir returned to the king, and delivered
his report, the king proposed that they should disguise themselves, and
set out in search of the princess and her children; and the wazir could
not refuse. Meantime, the brother of the princess had admitted to her
father that he had not slain her, and they also set out in search of
her, taking the Kazi with them. They all met at the café, where she
recognised them, and offered to tell them a story. She related her own,
and was restored to her friends. They seized the Kazi and the wazir, and
sent for the old woman, when they burned them all three, and scattered
their ashes in the air.

VII. _Histoire du prince qui apprit un métier._

A prince named Mohammed l’Avisé went to seek a wife, and fell in love
with the daughter of a leek-grower. She would not accept him unless he
learned a trade, so he learned the trade of a silk weaver, who taught
him in five minutes; and he worked a handkerchief with the palace of his
father embroidered upon it. Two years afterwards, the prince and the
wazir took a walk, when they found a Maghrabi seated at the gate of the
town, who invited them to take coffee. But he was a prisoner (or rather,
a murderer) who imprisoned them behind seven doors; and after three days
he cooked the wazir, and was going to cook the prince, but he persuaded
him to take his handkerchief to market, where it was recognised, and the
prince released from his peril. Two years later the king died, and the
prince succeeded to the throne. The latter had a son and daughter, but
he died when the boy was six and the girl eight, warning the boy not to
marry until the girl was married, lest his wife should ill-use her.
After two years, the sister said, “Brother, if I show you the treasures
of your father and mother, what will you do?” He answered, “I will buy a
slipper for you and a slipper for me, and we will play with them among
the stones.” “No,” said she, “you are still too little,” and waited a
year before she asked him again. This time he answered, “I will buy a
tambourine for you, and a flute for myself, and we will play in the
street.” She waited two years more, and this time he answered, “We will
use them to repair the water-wheels and my father’s palaces, and we will
sow and reap.” “Now you are big,” said she, and gave him the treasures,
which he used to erect buildings in his father’s country. Soon
afterwards, an old woman persuaded the youth to marry her daughter; but
she herself went into the mountains, collected eggs of the bird Oumbar,
which make virgins pregnant if they eat them, and gave them to the
sister. The old woman reported the result to the king, who visited his
sister to satisfy himself of the truth of the matter, and then left her,
but sent her food by a slave. When the sister’s time came, four angels
descended from heaven, and took her daughter, bringing the child to her
mother to be nursed. The mother died of grief, and the angels washed and
shrouded her and wept over her; and when the king heard it, he opened
the door, and the angels flew away to heaven with the child. The king
ordered a tomb to be built in the palace for his sister, and was so much
grieved at her death that he went on pilgrimage. When he had been gone
some time, and the time of his return approached, the old woman opened
the sister’s tomb, intending to throw her body to the dogs to devour,
and to put the carcase of a sheep in its place. The angels put the child
in the tomb, and she reproached and threatened the old woman; who,
however, seized upon her and dyed her black, pretending that she was a
little black slave whom she had bought. When the king returned, he
pitied her, and called her to sit by him, but she asked for a candle and
candlestick to hold in her hand before all the company. Then she told
her mother’s story, saying to the candle at every word, “Gutter for
kings; this is my uncle, the chief of kings.” Then the candle threw
mahboubs on her uncle’s knees. When the story was ended the king ordered
proclamation to be made, “Let whosoever loves the Prophet and the Elect,
bring wood and fire.” The people obeyed, and the old woman and her
daughter were burned.

VIII. _Histoire du Prince Amoureux._

A woman prayed to God to give her a daughter, even if she should die of
the smell of flax. When the girl was ten years old, the king’s son
passed through the street, saw her at the window, and fell in love with
her. An old woman discovered that he loved Sittoukan, the daughter of a
merchant, and promised to obtain her. She contrived to set her to spin
flax, when a splinter ran under her nail, and she fainted. The old woman
persuaded her father and mother to build a palace in the midst of the
river, and to lay her there on a bed. Thither she took the prince, who
turned the body about, saw the splinter, drew it out, and the girl
awoke. He remained with her forty days, when he went down to the door,
where he found the wazir waiting, and they entered the garden. There
they found roses and jasmines, and the prince said, “The jasmines are as
white as Sittoukan, and the roses are like her cheeks; if you did not
approve, I would still remain with her, were it only for three days.” He
went up again for three days, and when he next visited the wazir, they
saw a carob-tree, and the prince said, “Remember wazir, the carob-tree
is like the eyebrows of Sittoukan, and if you would not let me, I would
still remain with her, were it only for three days.” Three days later,
they saw a fountain, when the prince observed that it was like the form
of Sittoukan, and he returned. But this time, she was curious to know
why he always went and returned, and he found her watching behind the
door, so he spat on her saying, “If you did not love men, you would not
hide behind doors”; and he left her. She wandered into the garden in her
grief, where she found the ring of empire, which she rubbed, and the
ring said, “At your orders, what do you ask for?” She asked for
increased beauty, and a palace beside that of the prince. The prince
fell in love with her, and sent his mother to propose for her hand. The
mother took two pieces of royal brocade as a present, which the young
lady ordered a slave in her hearing to cut up for dusters. Then the
mother brought her an emerald collar worth four thousand dinars, when
she ordered to be threshed, and thrown to the pigeons. The old lady
acknowledged herself beaten, and asked Sittoukan if she wished to marry
or not. The latter demanded that the prince should be wrapped in seven
shrouds, and carried to the palace which she indicated, as if he were
dead. Then she went and took off the shrouds one after another, and when
she came to the seventh, she spat on him, saying, “If you did not love
women, you would not be wrapped in seven shrouds.” Then he said, “Is it
you?” and he bit his finger till he bit it off, and they remained
together.

IX. _Histoire du musicien ambulant et de son fils._

This travelling musician was so poor that when his wife was confined, he
went out to beg for their immediate necessities, and found a hen lying
on the ground with an egg under her. He met a Jew to whom he sold the
egg for twenty mabboubs. The hen laid an egg every day, which the Jew
bought for twenty mabboubs, and the musician became rich and opened a
merchant’s shop. When his son was grown, he built a school for him at
his own expense, where poor children were taught to read. Then the
musician set out on pilgrimage, charging his wife not to let the Jew
trick her out of the hen. A fortnight afterwards, the Jew called, and
persuaded the woman to sell him the hen for a casket of silver. He
ordered her to cook it, but told her that if anybody else ate a piece,
he would rip him up. The musician’s son came in, while the fowl was
cooking, and as his mother would not give him any, he seized the
gizzard, and ate it, when one of the slaves warned him to fly before the
arrival of the Jew. The Jew pursued the boy, and would have killed him,
but the latter took him up with one hand, and dashed him to pieces on
the ground. The musician’s son continued his journey, and arrived at a
town where thirty-nine heads of suitors who had failed to conquer the
princess in wrestling, were suspended at the gate of the palace. On the
first day the youth wrestled with the princess for two hours without
either being able to overcome the other; but during the night the king
ordered the doctors to drug the successful suitor, and to steal the
talisman. Next morning when the youth awoke, he perceived his weakness,
and fled. Presently he met three men quarrelling over a flying carpet, a
food-producing cup, and a money mill. He threw a stone for them to run
after, and transported himself to Mount Kaf, where he made trial of the
other talismans. Then he returned to the palace, called to the princess
to come down to wrestle with him, and as soon as she stepped on the
carpet, carried her away to Mount Kaf, when she promised to restore the
gizzard, and to marry him. She deserted him, and he found two
date-trees, one bearing red and the other yellow dates. On eating a
yellow date, a horn grew from his head[444] and twisted round the two
date-trees. A red date removed it. He filled his pockets, and travelled
night and day for two months.[445] He cried dates out of season, and the
princess bought sixteen yellow ones, and ate them all; and eight
[sixteen?] horns grew from her head, four to each wall. They could not
be sawn off, and the king offered his daughter to whoever could remove
them. When the musician’s son married the princess, and became wazir, he
said to his bride, “Where is my carpet, &c.” She replied, “Is it you?”
“Yes,” said he, “Is my trick or yours the best?” She admitted that she
was beaten, and they lived together in harmony.

X. _Histoire du rossignol chanteur._

(This story is briefly given by Mr. W. A. Clouston, Suppl. Nights iii.,
p. 123; but I give here a fuller abstract.)

Three brothers built a palace for their mother and sister after their
father’s death. The sister loved someone of whom the brothers
disapproved. An old woman advised the sister to send her brothers for
the singing nightingale. The two eldest would not wait till the bird was
asleep, but while they were trying to shut his cage, he dusted sand over
them with his claws, and sunk them to the seventh earth. The beads and
the ring gave warning of their deaths at home; but the third, who left a
rose with his mother, to fade if he died, captured the bird, and
received sand from under the cage. When he scattered it on the ground,
more than a thousand men rose up, some negroes and some Turks. The
brothers were not among them, so the youngest was told to scatter white
sand, when 500 more people emerged, including the brothers. Afterwards
the eldest brother was sitting in his ship when a Maghrebi told him to
clean his turban; which his mother interpreted to mean that his sister
had misconducted herself, and he should kill her. He refused, and fled
with her to the desert. Hearing voices, he entered a cave where
thirty-nine robbers were dividing rations; and he contrived to
appropriate a share, and then to return it when missed; but as he was
detected, he gave himself out as a fellow-robber, engaged himself to
them, and watching his opportunity, slew them. Afterwards he brought his
sister two young lions. She found a wounded negro in the cave, whom she
nursed, and after having had two children by him, plotted against her
brother. She pretended to be ill, and sent him to find the grapes of
Paradise. He met a Ghúleh who gave him a ball which directed him to
Paradise, and he returned safely. Then his sister sent him for the Water
of Life, when the two young lions followed him, and he could not drive
them back. After travelling for a year the brother reached the Sea of
the Water of Life, and while resting under a tree, heard two pigeons
telling each other that the king’s daughter was ill, and every doctor
who failed to restore her was put to death, and she could only be cured
by the Water of Life. “Mohammed l’Avisé” filled two bottles and a jar
with the water, cured the princess with the water in the jar, married
her, and after forty days, gave her one bottle, and set out to visit his
family. At the sister’s instigation, the negro slew Mohammed, cut him to
pieces, and put the remains into a sack, which they loaded on the ass.
Then the lions drove the ass to the wife of Mohammed, who restored his
life with the water which he had left with her. Mohammed then shut up
the lions, dressed himself as a negro, and went to visit his sister,
taking with him some rings and mastic (ladin). His sister recognised his
eyes; and while she and the negro were disputing, Mohammed slew the
negro and the three [_sic_] children, and buried his sister alive. He
then returned to his wife, announced that his relations were dead, and
asked for a hundred camels; and it took them a week to convey away the
treasures of the robbers.

XI. _Histoire d’Arab-Zandyq._

This story is translated by Mr. W. A. Clouston, Suppl. Nights, iii. pp.
619–624, and need not be repeated here.

XII. _Histoire du prince et de son cheval._

A prince and foal were born at the same time, and some time afterwards
the mother and the mare died. The king married again, and the new queen
had an intrigue with a Jew. They plotted to poison the prince, but his
horse wept and warned him. Then the queen pretended to be ill, and asked
for the heart of the horse, but the prince fled to another kingdom, and
bought clothes from a poor man, packing his own on his horse. Then he
parted from the horse, who gave him a hair and a flint, telling him to
light the hair whenever he needed him. The prince then went to a town,
and engaged himself as under-gardener to the king. He was set to drive
the ox which turned the water-wheel, but one day he called his horse,
put on his own clothes, and galloped about the garden, where the
youngest princess saw “Mohammed l’Avisé” from the window, and fell in
love with him. He then returned to the water-wheel, and when the
head-gardener returned and found the garden in disorder, he wanted to
beat him; but the princess interfered and ordered the prince to receive
a fowl and a cake of bread every day. The princess then persuaded her
mother and sisters that it was time to be married, so the king ordered
everybody to pass under the window of the seven princesses, each of whom
threw down a handkerchief on the man of her choice. But the youngest
would look at no one till at last they fetched the gardener’s boy, when
the king was angry, and confined them in a room. The king fell ill with
vexation, and the doctors ordered him to drink bear’s milk in the hide
of a virgin[446] bear. The king’s six sons-in-law were ordered to seek
it, and Mohammed too set forth mounted on a lame mare, while the people
jeered him. Presently he summoned his own horse, and ordered him to
pitch a camp of which the beginning and the end could not be seen, and
which should contain nothing but bears. When the six sons-in-law passed,
they dismounted, and asked the attendants for what they required, but
they referred them to their king. The latter offered them what they
asked, but branded a ring and a circle on the back of each of the
sons-in-law. However, he gave them only the milk and hide of old
she-bears, while he himself took the milk of a virgin[446] bear that had
just cubbed for the first time, slaughtered it, put the milk into the
skin, and then remounted his lame mare, saying to the horse, “God reward
you.” He returned to town, and gave the milk to his wife who took it to
her mother. Then the six sons-in-law brought the milk to the doctors,
but when they looked at it, they said, “This is the milk of an old
she-bear and is good for nothing.” Then they gave the king the other
milk, and cured him, but he was much annoyed to hear who had brought it.
Soon afterwards a war broke out, and the king pitched his camp outside
the town in face of the enemy. Mohammed set out again on his lame mare,
the people shouting after him, “Go back, sir, for the soldiers have been
defeated.” Then he summoned his horse, put on his own clothes, and said
to the horse, “Let your hair shoot forth fire.” Then he came before the
king, saying, “I declare for you and your six sons-in-law.” He rushed
into battle, smiting with his sword, while his horse shot forth fire.
They slew a third of the enemy, and then disappeared, while the king
lamented, “Ah, if my six sons-in-law had only done this!” After his
exertions Mohammed was tired, and went home to sleep. Next day the same
thing happened, but the king put his own ring on his finger. On the
third day he slew the remaining third of his enemies, but his arm was
wounded, and the king bound it up with his own handkerchief before he
departed. The king gathered together the horses and the spoil, and
returned to town, much vexed that his sons-in-law had done nothing. Then
the youngest princess asked her mother to send for her father to look at
the ring and the handkerchief, when he fell down and kissed the feet of
Mohammed, who rose up giddy from sleep, but when he was asked his
history, he answered, “I am a prince like yourself, and your six
sons-in-law are mamelouks of my father. I beat them, and they took to
flight, and through fear of my father, I set out in search of them. I
came here and found that they were your sons-in-law, but I imposed
silence on them. But as regards your daughter, she saw me in the garden,
and recognised my real rank; here is your daughter, O king; she is still
a virgin.” Then the wedding was celebrated with great pomp, and Mohammed
remained with his father-in-law for some time, until he desired to
return to his own country. On his arrival he found that his father had
died, so he ascended the throne, and ordered his mother-in-law and the
Jew to be burned.

_Carlo de Landberg, Básim le Forgeron et Haron Er-Rachid_, 8vo., Leyden,
1888.

Text and translation of a modern Arabic story of an unfortunate smith
and hashish-eater whom Harun encounters on one of his usual nocturnal
rambles. Harun plays a succession of practical jokes on him, driving him
out of his employment every day, and supping with him every night. At
last he bastinadoes him, and throws him into prison, where a jinniyah
takes pity on him, and confers unlimited power on him, which he enjoys
for a week, and then dies, to the great grief of Harun.

_ADDITIONAL NOTE TO VOL. V. pp. 442–444._

Compare Boccaccio’s story of the Devil in Hell (Day iii. No. 10.)

THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE BOOK
AND
ITS REVIEWERS REVIEWED.

[“It has occurred to me that perhaps it would be a good plan to put
a set of notes ... to the ‘Origin,’ which now has none, exclusively
devoted to the errors of my reviewers. It has occurred to me that
where a reviewer has erred, a common reader might err. Secondly, it
will show the reader that we must not trust implicitly to
reviewers.”—DARWIN’S LIFE, ii. 349.]

TO RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON.
_The Thousand Nights and a Night._

Athwart the welkin slant the snows and pile
On sill and balcony; their feathery feet
Trip o’er the landscape, and pursuing sleet,
Earth’s brow beglooming, robs the skies of smile:
Lies in her mourning-shroud our Northern Isle,
And bitter winds in battle o’er her meet.
Her world is death-like, when behold! we greet
Light-gleams from morning-land in welcome while.

A light of golden mine and orient pearl—
Vistas of fairy-land, where Beauty reigns
And Valiance revels; cloudless moon, fierce sun,
The wold, the palm-tree; cities; hosts; a whirl
Of life in tents and palaces and fanes:
The light that streams from THOUSAND NIGHTS AND ONE.

ISABEL BURTON.

TANGIER, MAROCCO: _Feb. 19, 1886_.

THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE BOOK
AND
ITS REVIEWERS REVIEWED.

PRELIMINARY.

I here propose to produce what may be called the “biography” of a book
whereof, methinks, the writer has some reason to be proud, a work which,
after occupying him for the third of a century, well nigh half the life
of average man and the normal endurance of a generation, can show for
result these sixteen volumes. A labour of such parts and magnitude
deserves, in my humble opinion, some notice of the main features
distinguishing its career, especially of its presentation to Court
(Public Opinion) and its reception by the high officials of the Palace,
the critics, reviewers and criticasters.

And there is yet another consideration. To ignore the charges and
criminations brought forward by certain literary Sir Oracles would be
wilfully suffering judgment to go by default. However unpopular and
despised may be, as a rule, the criticism of critique and however
veridical the famous apothegm, “A controversy _in_ the Press _with_ the
Press is the controversy of a fly with a spider,” I hold it the author’s
bounden duty, in presence of the Great Public, to put forth his reply,
if he have any satisfactory and interesting rejoinder, and by such
ordeal to purge himself and prove his innocence unless he would incur
wittingly impeachment for contumacy and contempt of court.

It is not only an instinct of human nature expressed by _nemo me impunè
lacessit_ which impels to answering in presence of the passers-by the
enemy at the gate; it is also a debt which his honour and a respectful
regard for the good opinion of his fellows compel the author to repay.
The man who is feeble enough silently to suffer detraction and calumny
at the hands of some sciolist or _Halb-bildung_ sheltering his miserable
individuality under the shadow (may it never be less!) of “King We,”
simply sins against himself as the Arabs say and offends good manners by
holding out a premium to wanton aggression and injurious doing. The
reading world has a right to hear the _alteram partem_ before it shall
deliver that judgment and shall pronounce that sentence wherefrom lies
no appeal. To ignore and not to visit with _représailles_ unworthy and
calumnious censure, may become that ideal and transcendental man who
forgives (for a personal and egoistical reason) those who trespass
against him. But the sublime doctrine which commands us to love our
enemies and affect those who despitefully entreat us is in perilous
proximity to the ridiculous; at any rate it is a vain and futile rule of
life which the general never thinks of obeying. It contrasts poorly with
the common sense of the pagan—_Fiat Justitia, ruat cœlum_; and the
heathenish and old-Adamical sentiment of the clansman anent Roderick
Dhu—

“Who rights his wrong where it was given,
If it were in the court of Heaven,”
_L. of the Lake_, v. 6.

—commends itself far more to what divines are pleased to call “fallen
human nature” that is the natural man.

And here before crossing the threshold, I would seize the opportunity of
expressing my cordial gratitude and hearty thanks to the Press in
general, which has received my Eastern studies and contributions to
Oriental knowledge in the friendliest and most sympathetic spirit,
appreciating my labours far beyond the modicum of the offerer’s
expectation and lending potent and generous aid to place them before the
English world in the fairest and most favourable point of view. To
number a small proportion of “black sheep” is no shame for a flock
amounting to myriads: such exceptional varieties must be bred for the
use and delectation of those who prefer to right wrong and darkness to
light. It is with these only that my remarks and retorts will deal and
consequently I have assigned to them the post of honour. The various
extracts from notices favourable, appreciative and complimentary, appear
as the “Opinions of the Press” at the end of this volume, and again I
take the opportunity of professing myself truly thankful for the good
word of the Fourth Estate, and for its wisely detecting the soul of good
in things evil.

The romantic and exceptional circumstances under which my large labour
was projected and determined have been sufficiently described in the
Foreword (vol. i. pp. vi-ix). I may here add that during a longsome
obligatory halt of some two months at East African Zayla’ and throughout
a difficult and dangerous march across the murderous Somali country upon
Harar-Gay, then the Tinbukhtú of Eastern Africa, _The Nights_ rendered
me the best of service. The wildlings listened with the rapt attention
of little lads and lasses to the marvellous recitals of the charming
Queen and the monotonous interpellations of her lay-image sister and
looked forward to the evening lecture as the crown and guerdon of the
toilsome day. And assuredly never was there a more suitable setting, a
more admirable _mise-en-scène_ for The Nights than the landscape of
Somali-land, a prospect so adapted to their subject-matter that it lent
credibility even to details the least credible. Barren and grisly for
the most part, without any of the charms gladdening and beautifying the
normal prospects of earth, grassy hill and wooded dale, park-like plain
and placid lake, and the snaking of silvery stream, it displays ever and
anon beauties made all its own by borrowing from the heavens, in an
atmosphere of passing transparency, reflections of magical splendours
and of weird shadows proper to tropical skies. No rose-hue pinker than
the virginal blush and dewy flush of dawn in contrast with the shivering
reek of flaming noon-tide, when all brightness of colour seems burnt out
of the world by the white heat of sun-glow. No brilliancy more gorgeous
or more ravishing than the play of light and shade, the rainbow
shiftings and the fiery pinks and purples and ambers and carmines of the
sunset scenery—the gorgeous death-bed of the Day. No tint more tender,
more restful, than the uniform grey, pale and pearly, invading by
slowest progress that ocean of crimson that girds the orb of the
Sun-King, diminishing it to a lakelet of fire and finally quenching it
in iridescent haze. No gloom more ghostly than the murky hangings
drooping like curtains from the violet heavens during those traveller’s
trials the unmooned nights, when the world seems peopled by weird
phantoms and phantasms of man and monster, moving and at rest. No
verdure more exquisite than earth’s glazing of greenery, the blend of
etherial azure and yellow; no gold more sheeny than the foregrounds of
sand shimmering in the slant of the sun; no blue more profound and
transparent than the middle distances; no neutral tints more subtle,
pure, delicate and sight-soothing than the French gray which robes the
clear-cut horizon; no variety of landscape more pronounced than the
alternations of glowing sunlight and snowy moonlight and twinkling
starlight, all streaming through diaphanous air. No contrast more
admirable than the alternation of iron upland whereupon hardly a blade
of grass may grow and the Wady with its double avenue of leek-green
tamarisks, hedging now a furious rain-torrent then a ribbon of purest
sand; or the purple-grey shadow rising majestic in the Orient to face
the mysterious Zodiacal Light, a white pyramid whose base is
Amenti—region of resting Osiris—and whose apex pierces the zenith. And
not rarely this “after-glow” is followed by a blush of “celestial
rosy-red” mantling the whole circle of the horizon where the hue is
deepest and paling into the upper azure where the stars shine their
brightest. How often in Somali-land I repeated to myself

—Contentez-vous, mes yeux,
Jamais vous ne verrez chose plus belle;

and the picture still haunts me.

* * * * *

And now, turning away from these and similar pleasures of memory, and
passing over the once-told tale (Foreword, vol. i. pp. ix., x.) of how,
when and where work was begun, together with the disappointment caused
by the death of my friend and collaborator, Steinhaeuser; concerning the
copying process which commenced in 1879 and anent the precedence
willingly accorded to the “Villon Edition,” I proceed directly to what
may be termed

THE ENGINEERING OF THE WORK.

During the autumn of ’82, after my return from the Gold Coast (with less
than no share of the noble metal which my companion Cameron and I went
forth to find and found a failure), my task began in all possible
earnest with ordering the old scraps of translation and collating a vast
heterogeneous collection of notes. I was fortunate enough to discover,
at unlettered Trieste, an excellent copyist able and willing to decypher
a crabbed hand and deft at reproducing facetious and drolatic words
without thoroughly comprehending their significance. At first my
exertions were but fitful and the scene was mostly a sick bed to which I
was bound between October ’83 and June ’84. Marienbad, however, and
Styrian Sauerbrunn (bei Rohitsch) set me right and on return to Trieste
(Sept. 4, ’84), we applied ourselves to the task of advertising, the
first two volumes being almost ready for print. And here we were
confronted by a serious question, What number of copies would suffice my
public? A distinguished Professor who had published some 160,000 texts
with prices ranging from 6d. to 50 guineas, wrote to me in all kindness
advising an issue of 150 to 250: an eminent printer-publisher would have
ventured upon some 500: others rose to 750 with a warning-note anent
“wreckage,” great risk and ruinous expenditure, while only one
friend—and he not in business—urged an edition of 2,000 to 3,000 with
encouraging words as to its probable reception. After long forethought I
choose 1,000 as a just middle.

We then drew up a long list, names of friends, acquaintances and
strangers likely to patronise the novelty and caused the following three
papers to be lithographed and printed at Trieste.

No. I.

_Captain Burton, having neither agent nor publisher for his
forthcoming_ ARABIAN NIGHTS, _requests that all subscribers will
kindly send their names and addresses to him personally (Captain
Burton, Trieste, Austria), when they will be entered into a book
kept for the purpose_.

_There will be 10 volumes at a guinea a piece, each to be paid for
on delivery. Subscribers may count on the first three volumes being
printed in March next. Captain Burton pledges himself to furnish
copies to all subscribers who address themselves to him; and he also
undertakes not to issue, nor to allow the issue of a cheaper
Edition. One thousand copies will be printed; the whole Manuscript
will be ready before going to press in February, and the ten volumes
will be issued within Eighteen Months._

This was presently followed by

No. II.

_The Student of Arabic who reads_ “THE NIGHTS” _with this version,
will not only be competent to join in any conversation, to peruse
the popular books and newspapers, and to write letters to his
friends, he will also find in the notes a repertoire of those
Arabian Manners and Customs, Beliefs and Practices, which are not
discussed in popular works_.

_The 10 volumes will be handsomely bound in black and gold._

_No subscriptions will be received until the work is done, and then
at Coutts’ Bank, Strand, London._

_Subscribers who apply directly are preferred._

_The author will pay carriage of volumes all over the United
Kingdom. A London address is requested._

And, lastly, after some delay, came the subjoined cutting from the
_Daily Tribune_, New York.

No. III.

“It has already been announced that the first instalment of Captain
Burton’s new translation of the Arabian Nights may be expected this
autumn. I am indebted to a friend of his for some details which have
not yet, I think, been made public. There is still room for a
translation of the Arabian Nights. All or nearly all the popular
editions, of which there are hundreds, are but renderings, more or
less imperfect, from Professor Galland’s French version, which is
itself an abridgment from the original, and turns a most valuable
ethnographical work into a mere collection of fairy tales. Moreover,
these English translations abound in Gallicisms, and their style
offers but a painful contrast to the French of the seventeenth
century. Some years since a Mr. Torrens undertook a complete
translation from the original, but his work did not go beyond a
single volume, or fifty tales out of the 1,001. Then came Mr. Lane
in 1839, whose success was but moderate. In his three large and (in
the 1839 edition) beautifully illustrated volumes, he has given not
more than half the tales. He used the Cairo Arabic edition, which is
itself an abridgment, and took all kinds of liberties with the text,
translating verse into prose, and excising everything that was not
‘strictly proper.’

“Lastly, there is Mr. John Payne’s excellent translation, which has
occupied him during seven years and is just brought to a conclusion.
Mr. Payne bound himself to print not more than 500 copies, and his
nine volumes, not published but printed, nominally for the Villon
Society, are unprocurable except at a price which to the general
public is prohibitive.

“Captain Burton began his work on this extraordinary monument of
Oriental literature in 1852, at Aden, with some help from his friend
Dr. Steinhaeuser, of the Bombay Army. He has gone on with it as
opportunity offered, and as other literary and official labours and
his many journeys in savage lands permitted. The text and the
subject offer many difficulties, and it is to these difficulties
that he has devoted especial attention. His object is to reproduce
the book in a form as entirely Arabian as possible, preserving the
strict division of the nights, and keeping (a more questionable
matter) to the long unbroken sentences in which the composer
indulged, imitating also the rhythmic prose which is a
characteristic of the Arabic. The effect in English remains to be
seen, but of the value of Captain Burton’s method as an experiment
in literature there can be no doubt, or of its great interest to
everybody who cares for Oriental habits of thought and language. He
will not shirk any of the passages which do not suit the taste of
the day; but these Captain Burton thinks, will not commonly be found
more objectionable than some which are in Shakespeare and in
Shakespeare’s contemporaries. At the same time it will be understood
that the book is intended for men only and for the study;—not for
women or children, nor for the drawing-room table or dentist’s
waiting-room. It will be printed by subscription and not published.

“Few are the Oriental scholars in England who could do justice to
this picture of the mediæval Arab. Captain Burton is perhaps the
only one who joins to the necessary linguistic knowledge that varied
practical experience of Eastern life which alone in many cases can
supply the true meaning of a troublesome passage or an accurate
comment upon it. His aim is to make the book in its English dress
not only absolutely literal in text but Oriental in tone and colour.
He knows the tales almost by heart, and used to keep the Bedouin
tribes in roars of laughter in camp during the long summer nights by
reciting them. Sheiks to whom a preternatural solemnity of demeanour
is usual were to be seen rolling on the ground in paroxysms of
uncontrollable mirth. It was also Burckhardt’s custom to read the
stories aloud, but the Arabs would snatch the book from his hand
because his pronunciation was so bad. Captain Burton is said to have
an Arab accent not easily distinguishable from the native. When he
contents himself with the English tongue here in England, he is one
of the most picturesque talkers to be met with. I can remember a
certain dinner-party, now many years ago, where the great traveller
kept us all listening till long past day-break; narrating, as he
did, the most singular adventures with the most vivid fidelity to
facts. That, however, is a digression. I have only to add that
Captain Burton has the names of many subscribers and will doubtless
be glad to receive others, which may, I suppose, be sent to him at
Trieste. His present hope is to be ready to go to press next
February and to bring out the whole of the volumes in 1885.”

(Signed) G. W. S.

Concerning this “American” communication and its author I shall have
more to say in a future page.

Some 24,000 to 30,000 circulars were posted at an expense of £126 and
they produced about 800 favourable replies which, after my return to
England (May ’85), rose to 1,500 and to 2,000, as my unprofessional
friend, and he only, had anticipated. Meanwhile occurred an incident
characteristic of such appeals by the inexperienced to the public. A
case containing 1,100 circulars had been sent to my agent for mailing in
London, and my secretary had unfortunately gummed their envelopes.
Hereupon I should have been subjected by the Post Office to the pains
and penalties of the law, perhaps to a fine of £200. But when the affair
was reported, with due explanations, to the late lamented
Postmaster-General Henry Fawcett—a man in a million, and an official in
ten millions—he had the justice and generosity to look upon the offence
as the result of pure ignorance, and I received a caution “not to do it
again.”

Needless to say that I lost no time about advertising my mistake in the
dailies, giving the name of my agent and in offering to refund the
money. Some of the sealed and unpaid envelopes had, however, been
forwarded prematurely and the consequence was a comical display of wrath
in quarters where it was hardly to be expected. By way of stemming the
unpleasant tide of abuse I forwarded the following _communiqué_ to The
Academy.

“TUPPENCE AS A TOUCHSTONE.”

TRIESTE, _Nov. 2, ’85_.

“Can you kindly find space for a few lines on a purely personal
matter which is causing me abundant trouble? A box of circulars
giving details concerning my forthcoming version of the Arabian
Nights was sent to London with directions to stamp and post the
contents. The envelopes having been inadvertently gummed down, the
case was stopped by the Custom-house, and was transmitted to the
Post Office where it was found to contain circulars not letters; and
of these sundry were forwarded without pre-payment. The pleasant
result was that one outspoken gentleman writes upon the circular,
which he returns,—_When you send your trash again, put
postage-stamps on._ A second is peremptorily polite, _Please forward
four stamps to the Adjutant of the —th Regiment._ The ‘Chaplain of
the Forces at ——,’ at once ironical and severe, _ventures to suggest
to Captain Burton that it is advisable, if he thinks his book worth
selling, to put the postage on future advertisements_. A fourth who,
I regret to say, signs himself Lieutenant-Colonel, gives me advice
about pre-payment written in an orderly’s hand upon a torn envelope
(gratuitously insulting!); encloses the 2d. stamp and sends the
missive under official cover ‘On Her Majesty’s Service.’ The idea of
a French or an Austrian Colonel lowering himself so infinitely low!
Have these men lost all sense of honour, all respect for themselves
(and others) because they can no longer be called to account for
their insolence _more majorum_? I never imagined ‘Tuppence’ to be so
cunning a touchstone for detecting and determining the difference
between gold and dross; nor can I deeply regret that circumstance
and no default of mine has placed in hand Ithuriel’s spear in the
shape of the said ‘Tuppence’.”

I am, Sir, etc.
RICHARD F. BURTON.

The process of filling-up my list presented a fine and varied study of
character; and an extensive experience of subscribers, as well as of
nonsubscribers, presently enabled me to distribute the genus into the
following eight species. The friendly subscriber who takes ten copies
(more or less) forwarding their value. The gentleman subscriber who pays
down his money confidingly. The cautious-canny subscriber who ventures
£5. 5s., or half the price. The impudent and snobbish subscriber who
will address his victim as follows:—

SIR,

Send me the first volume of your Arabian Nights and if I like it I
will perhaps take more.

Yours obediently,
X. Y. Z.

And Cynophron will probably receive for all reply:—

SIR,

Send me ten guineas and take one or ten volumes as you please.

Yours obediently, etc.

No. vi. is the fussy and troublesome subscriber who gives more bother
than he is worth, and who takes a vicious pride in not paying till
pushed to the last point. The professional subscriber fights hard for
the most favourable terms, and holds it his vested right to “part” by
dribblets. And lastly comes the dishonest subscriber who does not pay at
all. I must, however, in justice own that species No. viii. is rare: of
one thousand the proportion was only about a score.

In mid-June, ’85, I returned to London and began at once to prepare for
issuing the book. Having found the publisher peculiarly
unsatisfactory—with one single and remarkable exception my venerable
friend, Mr. Van Voorst, whilome of Paternoster Row—I determined, like
Professor Arber, to do without him, although well aware how risky was
the proceeding, which would, in the case of a work for general reading,
have arrayed against me the majority of the trade and of their “hands,”
the critics. Then I sought hard, but sought in vain, for the agency of a
literary friend or friends, men of name and note, like those who
assisted in the Villon version: all feared the responsibility and the
expected storm of abuse which, however, failed to burst.

Under these circumstances “The Printing Times,” a professional
periodical produced by Messieurs Wymans, was pleased (August 25, ’85) to
be unpleasantly intrusive on the subject of my plan. “We always heard
associated with the publication of this important work, the name of Mr.
——, which is now conspicuous by its absence, nor is, apparently the name
of any other leading publishing house to be identified with its
production.” (The Printer’s Devil is, I presume, responsible for the
English!) The writer then warns me in all (un-)friendliness that if the
printers forget to add their imprint, they would become liable to a
legal penalty; that the work is unsafe for literal translation and,
lastly, that although printed by private subscription, “it is likely
enough to be pronounced an injury to public morals to the danger of the
author and his printers.” The unhappy article concludes, “We await the
issue of the first volume since much will depend upon the spirit (!) in
which the translation has been undertaken; certainly the original text
is not suitable for general circulation (_connu!_) unless edited with
the utmost care and discretion.”

To this production so manifestly inspired by our old friend £ s. d., I
replied in _The Academy_ (August 7, ’85), the gist of the few lines
being as follows:—

In answer to many inquiries from friends and others, will you allow
me to repeat, through your columns, that my translation of the
“Arabian Nights” will be strictly limited to 1,000 copies, each sent
to picked subscribers, and to renew the promise which I before made,
that no cheaper edition shall be printed? Correspondents have
complained that I have not stated the price; but I have mentioned
over and over again that there are ten volumes, at one guinea
each—my object in making it so expensive being to keep it from the
general public. I am also troubled with inquiries as to who is my
publisher. I am my own publisher, inaugurating (Inshallah!) a golden
age for authors. Jesting apart, the book has no publisher. It is
printed by myself for the benefit of Orientalists and
Anthropologists, and nothing could be more repugnant to me than the
idea of a book of the kind being published or being put into the
hands of any publisher.

The first volume dated “_Benares: MDCCCLXXXV: Printed by the Kamashastra
Society for Private Subscribers only_,” did not appear till September
12, ’85: it had been promised for March and had been delayed by another
unavoidable detention at Trieste. But my subscribers had no further
cause of complaint; ten tomes in sixteen months ought to satisfy even
the most exigent.

No. i. volume was accompanied by a circular earnestly requesting that
the book might not be exposed for sale in public places or permitted to
fall into the hands of any save curious students of Moslem manners. Yet
the birth of the first-born was accompanied (I am fain to confess) with
no small trouble and qualms to the parent and to all who assisted at the
parturition. Would the “little stranger” robed in black and gold, the
colours of the Abbaside Caliphs, with its brick-red night-cap after the
fashion of ecclesiastical bantlings, be kindly welcomed or would it be
regarded as an abortion, a monster? The reader will readily understand
how welcome to an author in such perplexity came the following article
from the _Standard_ (September 12), usually attributed to the popular
and trenchant pen of Mr. Alfred Austin. I must be permitted to quote it
entire, because it expresses so fully and so admirably all and
everything I could desire a reviewer to write. And the same paper has
never ceased to give me the kindest encouragement: its latest notice was
courteous and appreciative as its earliest.

The first volume of Captain Burton’s long-expected edition of the
“Arabian Nights” was issued yesterday to those who are in a position
to avail themselves of the wealth of learning contained in this
monumental labour of the famous Eastern traveller. The book is
printed for subscribers only, and is sold at a price which is not
likely to be paid by any save the scholars and students for whose
instruction it is intended. But though the Benares “Kamashastra
Society” are careful to let the world know that the “Thousand Nights
and a Night” is not “published” in the technical sense of the term,
the pages which will be read by a thousand purchases may be
fittingly regarded as the property of the world at large. In any
case, the day when the experience of a life was embodied into this
fresh translation of the “Alf Laylah wa Laylah” marks a distinct
stage in the history of Oriental research. The world has had
numerous versions of these stories. For at least a century and a
half they have delighted old and young, until Shahrazade and
Dunyazade, the Fisherman and the Jinn, and the tales told by the
Tailor, the Kalendar, the Nazarene broker, and the Hunchback ... to
say nothing of Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad the Sailor, and
Camaralzaman and Badoura—seem like the most familiar of friends. Yet
many of those who know the ordinary epitome prepared for the nursery
and the drawing-room have little idea of the nature of the original.
Galland’s abridgment was a mere shadow of the Arabic. Even the
editions of Lane and Habicht and Torrens and Von Hammer represented
but imperfectly the great corpus of Eastern folk-lore which Captain
Burton has undertaken to render into English, without regard to the
susceptibilities of those who, not having bought the book, are,
therefore, in no way concerned in what is the affair of him and his
subscribers. The best part of two centuries have passed away since
Antoine Galland first turned some of the tales into French, and got
stigmatised as a forger for his pains. Never was there such a
sensation as when he printed his translations. For weeks he had been
pestered by troops of roysterers rousing him out of bed, and
refusing to go until the shivering Professor recited one of the Arab
stories to the crowd under his window. Nor has the interest in them
in any way abated. Thousands of copies pass every year into
circulation; and any one who has ever stood in the circle around the
professional story-teller of the East must have noticed how often he
draws on this deathless collection. The camel-driver listens to them
as eagerly as did his predecessors ages ago. The Badawi laughs in
spite of himself, though next moment he ejaculates a startling
“Astaghfaru’llah” for listening to the light mention of the sex
whose name is never heard amongst the Nobility of the Desert. Or if
the traveller is a scholar and a gentleman, he will pull out his
book for the amusement of the company squatted round the camp fire,
as did Captain Burton many a time and oft in the course of his
Eastern wanderings.

To Captain Burton the preparation of these volumes must have been a
labour of love. He began them in conjunction with his friend
Steinhaeuser, soon after his return from the Mecca pilgrimage, more
than thirty years ago, and he has been doing something to them ever
since. In the swampy jungles of West Africa a tale or two has been
turned into English, or a poem has been versified during the tedium
of official life in the dank climate of Brazil. From Sind to Trieste
the manuscript has formed part and parcel of his baggage, and
though, in the interval, the learned author has added many a volume
to the shelf-full which he has written, the “Thousand Nights and a
Night” have never been forgotten. And now when he nears the end of
his labours it seems as if we had never before known what the
beauteous Shahrazad told the King who believed not in the constancy
of women. Captain Burton seems the one sober man among drunkards. We
have all the old company, though they appear in dresses so entirely
new that one scans the lines again and again before the likeness is
quite recognised. However, Tajal-Mulook will no doubt be as knightly
as ever when his turn comes, for the Barber is garrulous, after the
old fashion, and the three Shaykhs relate their experiences with the
Jinns, the gazelles, and mules as vividly as they have done any time
these thousand years or more. King Yoonan and the Sage Dooban are
here, and so are King Sindibad and his falcon, the young Prince of
the Black Islands, the envious Weezer and the Ghoolah; and the story
of the Porter and the Ladies of Baghdad lose nothing of their charms
in the new, and, we may add, extremely unsophisticated version. For
Captain Burton’s work is not _virginibus puerisque_, and, while
disclaiming for his version anything like intentional indecorum, he
warns the readers that they will be guilty of a breach of good faith
should they permit a work prepared only for students to fall into
the hands of boys and girls. From the first to almost the
penultimate edition of these stories the drawing-room alone has been
consulted. Even Mr. Payne, though his otherwise faithful version was
printed for the Villon Society, had the fear of Mrs. Grundy before
his eyes. Moreover, no previous editor—not even Lane himself—had a
tithe of Captain Burton’s acquaintance with the manners and customs
of the Moslem East. Hence, not unfrequently, they made ludicrous
blunders, and in no instance did they supply anything like the
explanatory notes which have added so greatly to the value of this
issue of “Alf Laylah wa Laylah.” Some of these are startling in
their realism, and often the traveller who believed that he knew
something of the East, winces at the plainness with which the
Wazir’s daughter tells her tales to Shahryar, King of the Banu
Sasan. The language is, however, more frequently coarse than loose,
and smacks more of the childish plainness with which high and low
talk in the family circles from Tangier to Malaysia, than of
prurience or suggestiveness. The Oriental cannot understand that it
is improper to refer in straightforward terms to anything which
Allah has created, or of which the Kuran treats. But in his
conversation, as in his folk-lore, there is no subtle corruption or
covert licentiousness—none of the vicious suggestion and false
sentiment that pervade so many of the productions of the modern
romantic school.

It is, indeed, questionable whether there is much in these
inimitable romances half so objectionable as many of the chapters in
Rabelais and Boccaccio. Nor do the most archaic of the passages
which Captain Burton declines to “veil in the decent obscurity of a
learned language” leave much room for the admirers of Shakespeare,
or Greene, or Nash, or Wycherley, or Swift, or Sterne to cry shame.
Their coarseness was a reflection of the times. The indelicacy was
not offensive to those who heard it. On the other hand, apart from
the language, the general tone of “The Nights” is exceptionally high
and pure. The devotional fervour, as Captain Burton justly claims,
often rises to the boiling-point of fanaticism, and the pathos is
sweet and deep, genuine and tender, simple and true. Its
life—strong, splendid, and multitudinous—is everywhere flavoured
with that unaffected pessimism and constitutional melancholy which
strike deepest root under the brightest skies. The Kazi administers
poetical justice with exemplary impartiality; and so healthy is the
_morale_ that at times we descry through the voluptuous and
libertine picture “vistas of a transcendental morality—the morality
of Socrates in Plato.” In no other work of the same nature is
Eastern life so vividly pourtrayed. We see the Arab Knight, his
prowess and his passion for adventure, his love and his revenge, the
craft of his wives, and the hypocrisy of his priests, as plainly as
if we had lived among them. Gilded palaces, charming women, lovely
gardens, caves full of jewels, and exquisite repasts, captivate the
senses and give variety to the panorama which is passing before our
eyes. Yet we repeat that, though there is much in the excellent
version now begun which is very plain speaking, there is nothing
intentionally demoralising. Evidently, however, the translator is
prepared to hear this charge brought against his labour of love.
Indeed, there is a tinge of melancholy pervading the preface in
which the Editor refers to his “unsuccessful professional life,” and
to the knowledge of which his country has cared so little to avail
itself. * * * * Even in the recent Egyptian troubles—which are
referred to somewhat bitterly—his wisdom was not utilised, though,
after the death of Major Morice, there was not an English official
in the camps before Suakin capable of speaking Arabic. On this
scandal, and on the ignorance of Oriental customs which was
everywhere displayed, Captain Burton is deservedly severe. The issue
of the ten volumes now in the press, accompanied by notes so full of
learning as those with which they are illuminated, will surely give
the nation an opportunity for wiping away the reproach of that
neglect which Captain Burton seems to feel more keenly than he cares
to express.

This was a sop to the friend and a sore blow dealt to the enemy.
Moreover it was speedily followed up by another as swashing and
trenchant in the _Morning Advertiser_ (September 15, ’85), of which long
extracts are presently quoted. The journal was ever friendly to me
during the long reign of Mr. James Grant, and became especially so when
the editorial chair was so worthily filled by my old familiar of Oxford
days, the late Alfred Bate Richards, a man who made the “Organ of the
Licensed Victuallers” a power in the state and was warmly thanked for
his good services by that model conservative, Lord Beaconsfield.

A phrase in the _Standard_, the “most archaic of the passages,” acted
upon

_THE "PALL MALL GAZETTE"_

like a red rag upon a rageous bull. I should rather say that it excited
the so-called “Sexual Journal” by suggesting another opportunity for its
unclean sensationalism: perhaps also the staff hoped to provide company
and a fellow-sufferer for their editor, who was then in durance vile,
his offences being “inciting to an indecent assault” and an act of
criminal immorality. I should not have felt called upon to remind my
readers of a scandal half-forgotten in England, while still held in
lively remembrance by the jealous European world, had not the persistent
fabrications, calumnies, and slanders of the _Pall Mall_, which continue
to this day, compelled me to move in self-defence, and to explain the
mean underlying motives.

Some three years and a half ago (June 3, ’85), the paper startled the
world of London by a prodigy of false, foul, and fulsome details in the
shape of articles entitled “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon.” The
object of the editor, Mr. William T. Stead, a quondam teacher in the
London schools and a respectable Methodist strengthened by
non-Conformist support, in starting this ignoble surprise on the public
was much debated. His partisans asserted that he had been honestly
deceived by some designing knave—as if such child-like credulity were
any excuse for a veteran journalist! His foes opined that under the
cloak of a virtue, which Cato never knew, he sought to quicken his
subscription-list ever dwindling under the effects of his exaggerated
Russophilism and Anglophobia.

But whatever may have been the motive, the effect was deplorable. The
articles, at once collected into a pamphlet (price twopence), as the
“Report of the _Pall Mall Gazette’s_ Secret Commission,” and headed by a
laudatory quotation from one of the late Lord Shaftesbury’s indiscreetly
philanthropic speeches, were spread broadcast about every street and
lane in London. The brochure of sixteen pages divided into three
chapters delighted the malignant with such sensational section-headings
as—How Girls are Bought and Ruined—Why the Cries of the Victims are not
Heard—Procuresses in the West End—How Annie was Procured—You Want a
Maid, do You?—The Ruin of Children—A London Minotaur (?)—The Ruin of the
Young Life—The Demon Child and—A Close Time for Girls, the latter being
intended to support the recommendation of the Lords’ Committee and the
promise of a Home Secretary that the age of consent be raised from
thirteen to sixteen. And all this catchpenny stuff (price 2d.) ended
characteristically with “Philanthropic and Religious Associations can be
supplied with copies of this reprint _on special terms_.” Such artless
benevolence and disinterested beneficence must, of course, be made to
pay.

Read by every class and age in the capital, the counties and the
colonies, this false and filthy scandal could not but infect the very
children with the contagion of vice. The little gutter-girls and
street-lasses of East London looked at men passing-by as if assured that
their pucelages were or would become vendible at £3 to £5. But, the
first startling over, men began to treat the writer as he deserved. The
abomination was “boycotted” by the Press, expelled the clubs, and driven
in disgrace from the “family breakfast-table,” an unpleasant predicament
for a newspaper which lives, not by its news, but by its advertisements.
The editor had the impudence to bemoan a “conspiracy of silence,” which
can only mean that he wanted his foul sheets to be bought and discussed
when the public thought fit to bury them in oblivion. And yet he must
have known that his “Modern Babylon” is not worse in such matters than
half-a-dozen minor Babylons scattered over Europe, Asia, and America;
and that it is far from being, except by the law of proportion, the
“greatest market of human flesh in the world.” But by carefully and
curiously misrepresenting the sporadic as the systematic, and by
declaring that the “practice of procuration has been reduced to a
science” (instead of being, we will suppose, one of the fine arts), it
is easy to make out a case of the grossest calumny and most barefaced
scandal against any great capital.

The revelations of the _Pall Mall_ were presently pooh-pooh’d at home;
but abroad their effect was otherwise. Foreigners have not yet learned
thoroughly to appreciate our national practice of washing (and suffering
others to wash) the foulest linen in fullest public. Mr. Stead’s
unworthy clap-trap representing London as the head-quarters of
kidnapping, hocussing, and child-prostitution, the author invoking the
while with true Pharisaic righteousness, unclean and blatant, pure
intentions and holy zeal for good works, was welcomed with a shout of
delight by our unfriends the French, who hold virtue in England to be
mostly Tartuffery, and by our cousins-german and rivals the Germans, who
dearly love to use us and roundly abuse us. In fact, the national name
of England was wilfully and wrongfully defiled and bewrayed by a “moral
and religious” Englishman throughout the length and breadth of Europe.

Hard upon those “revelations” comes the Eliza Armstrong case whereby the
editor of the “Sexual Gazette” stultified thoroughly and effectually his
own assertions; and proved most satisfactorily, to the injury of his own
person, that the easiest thing in the world is notably difficult and
passing dangerous. An accomplice, unable to procure a “maiden” for
immoral purposes after boasting her ability as a procuress, proceeded to
kidnap one for the especial benefit of righteous Mr. Stead.
Consequently, he found himself in the dock together with five other
accused, male and female; and the verdict, condemning the arch-plotter
to three months and the assistants to lesser terms of imprisonment for
abduction and indecent assault, was hailed with universal applause. The
delinquent had the fanatical and unscrupulous support, with purse and
influence, of the National Vigilance Association, a troop of busybodies
captained by licensed blackmailers who of late years have made England
their unhappy hunting-ground.[447] Despite, however, the “Stead Defence
Fund” liberally supplied by Methody; despite the criminal’s Pecksniffian
tone, his self-glorification of the part he had taken, his _effronté_
boast of pure and lofty motives and his passionate enthusiasm for sexual
morality, the trial emphasised the fact that no individual may break the
law of the land in order that good may come therefrom. It also proved
most convincingly the utter baselessness of the sweeping indictment
against the morality of England and especially of London—a charge which
“undoubtedly had an enormous influence for harm at home and cruelly
prejudiced the country abroad.” In the words of Mr. Vaughan of the Bow
Street Police Court (September 7, ’85) the _Pall Mall’s_ “Sensational
articles had certainly given unlimited pain and sorrow to many good
people at home and had greatly lowered the English nation in the
estimation of foreigners.” In a sequel to the Eliza Armstrong case Mr.
Justice Manisty, when summing up, severely condemned the “shocking
exhibition that took place in the London streets by the publication of
statements containing horrible details, and he trusted that those who
were responsible for the administration of the law would take care that
such outrage should not be permitted again.” So pure and pious Mr. Stead
found time for reflection during the secluded three-months life of a
“first-class misdemeanant” in “happy Holywell,” and did not bring out
his intended articles denouncing London as the head-quarters of a
certain sin named from Sodom.

About mid-September, when Mr. Stead still lay in durance vile, a
sub-editor Mr. Morley (Jun.) applied to me for an interview which I did
not refuse. It was by no means satisfactory except to provide his paper
with “copy.” I found him labouring hard to place me “in the same box”
with his martyred principal and to represent my volume (“a book of
archaic delights”) as a greater outrage on public decency than the
two-penny pamphlet. This, as said the _London Figaro_ (September 19,
’85), is a “monstrous and absurd comparison.” It became evident to me,
during the first visit, that I was to play the part of Mr. Pickwick
between two rival races of editors, the pornologists and the
anti-pornologists; and, having no stomach for such sport I declined the
rôle. In reply to a question about critics my remark to the interviewer
was, “I have taken much interest in what the classics call Skiomachia
and I shall allow Anonymus and Anonyma to howl unanswered. I shall also
treat with scornful silence the miserables who, when shown a magnificent
prospect, a landscape adorned with the highest charms of Nature and Art,
can only see in a field corner here and there a little heap of muck.
‘You must have been looking for it, Madam!’ said, or is said to have
said, sturdy old Doctor Samuel Johnson.”

Moreover Mr. Morley’s style of reporting “interviews” was somewhat too
advanced and American—that is, too personal, too sensation-mongering and
too nauseously familiar—to suit my taste; and I would have none other of
them. Hereupon being unable to make more copy out of the case the _Pall
Mall Gazette_ let loose at me a German Jew penny-a-liner, who signs
himself Sigma. This _pauvre diable_ delivered himself of two articles,
“Pantagruelism or Pornography?” (September 14, ’85) and “The Ethics of
the Dirt” (September 19, ’85), wherein with matchless front of brass he
talks of the “unsullied British breakfast-table,” so pleasantly provided
with pepper by his immaculate editor. And since that time the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ has never ceased to practise at my expense its old trade,
falsehood and calumny, and the right of private judgment, sentence and
execution. In hopes that his splenatic and vindictive fiction might bear
fruit, at one time the _Pall Mall Gazette_ has “heard that the work was
to be withdrawn from circulation” (when it never circulated). Then, “it
was resolved by the authorities to request Captain Burton not to issue
the third volume and to prosecute him if he takes no notice of the
invitation;” and, finally, “Government has at last determined to put
down Captain Burton with a strong hand.” All about as true as the
political articles which the _Pall Mall Gazette_ indites with such
heroic contempt for truth, candour and honesty. One cannot but apply to
the “Gutter Gazette” the words of the Rev. Edward Irving:—“I mean by the
British Inquisition that court whose ministers and agents carry on their
operations in secret; who drag every man’s most private affairs before
the sight of thousands and seek to mangle and destroy his life, trying
him without a witness, condemning him without a hearing, nor suffering
him to speak for himself; intermeddling in things of which they have no
knowledge and cannot on any principle have a jurisdiction. * * * I mean
the ignorant, unprincipled, unhallowed spirit of criticism, which in
this Protestant country is producing as foul effects against truth, and
by as dishonest means as ever did the Inquisition of Rome” (p. 5
“Preliminary Discourse to Ben Ezra,” etc.).

Of course men were not wanting to answer the malevolent insipidities of
the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and to note the difference between newspaper
articles duly pamphleted and distributed to the disgust of all decency,
and the translation of an Arabian classic, limited in issue and intended
only for the few select. Nor could they fail to observe that
blackballing the Nights and admitting the “revelations” was a desperate
straining at the proverbial gnat and swallowing the camel. My readers
will hardly thank me for dwelling upon this point yet I cannot refrain
from quoting certain of the protests:—

_To the Editor of the_ “PALL MALL GAZETTE.”

SIR,—

Your correspondent “Sigma” has forgotten the considerable number of
“students” who will buy Captain Burton’s translation as the only
literal one, needing it to help them in what has become necessary to
many—a masterly knowledge of Egyptian Arabic. The so-called “Arabian
Nights” are about the only written halfway house between the
literary Arabic and the colloquial Arabic, both of which they need,
and need introductions too. I venture to say that its largest use
will be as a grown-up school-book, and that it is not coarser than
the classics in which we soak all our boys’ minds at school.

ANGLO-EGYPTIAN.

_September 14th, 1885._

And the _Freethinker’s_ answer (Oct. 25, ’85) to these repeated and
malicious assaults is as follows:—

Here is a fine illustration of Mr. Stead’s Pecksniffian
peculiarities. Captain Burton, a gentleman and a scholar whose boots
Mr. Stead is not fit to black, is again hauled over the coals for
the hundredth time, about his new translation of the Arabian Nights,
which is so “pornographic” that the price of the first volume has
actually risen from a pound to twenty-five shillings. Further down,
in the very same column, the _P.M.G._ gloats proudly over the fact
that thirty-five shillings have been given for a single copy of its
own twopennyworth of smut.

The last characteristic touch which I shall take the trouble to notice
is the following gem of September 16, ’87:—

I was talking to an American novelist the other day, and he assured
me that the Custom-house authorities on “the other side” seized all
copies of Sir Richard Burton’s “Nights” that came into their hands,
and retained them as indecent publications. Burned them, I hope he
meant, and so, I fear, will all holders of this notorious
publication, for prices will advance, and Sir Richard will chuckle
to think that indecency is a much better protection than
international copyright.

Truly the pen is a two-edged tool, often turned by the fool against his
own soul. So an honest author “chuckles” when his subscribers have lost
their copies _because_ this will enhance the value of his book! I ask,
Can anything be better proven than the vileness of a man who is ever
suspecting and looking for vileness in his fellow-men? Again, the
assertion that the Custom-house authorities in the United States had
seized my copies is a Pall-Mallian fiction pure and simple, and the
“Sexual Gazette” must have known this fact right well. In consequence of
a complaint lodged by the local Society for the Suppression of Vice, the
officials of the Custom-house, New York, began by impounding the first
volumes of the Villon Version; but presently, as a literary friend
informs me (February 10, ’88), “the new translations of The Nights have
been fully permitted entry at the Custom-house and are delivered on the
payment of 25% duty.” To my copies admittance was never refused.

Mr. Stead left his prison-doors noisily declaring that the rest of his
life should be “devoted to Christian chivalry”—whatever that majestic
dictum may mean. As regards his subsequent journalistic career I can
observe only that it has been unfortunate as inconsequent. He took up
the defence, abusing the Home Secretary after foulest fashion, of the
coldblooded murderer Lipski, with the result that his protégé was hanged
after plenary confession and the Editor had not the manliness to
apologise. He espoused the cause of free speech in Ireland with the
result that most of the orators were doomed to the infirmaries connected
with the local gaols. True to his principle made penal by the older and
wiser law of libel, that is of applying individual and irresponsible
judgment to, and passing final and unappealable sentence upon, the
conduct of private individuals and of public men, he raged and inveighed
with all the fury of outraged (and interested) virtue against Colonel
Hughes-Hallett with the consequence of seating that M.P. more firmly
than before. He took up the question of free public meeting in England
with the result that a number of deludeds (including Mr. Cunninghame
Graham, M.P.) found their way to prison, which the “Christian chevalier”
had apparently contracted to supply with inmates. But there is more to
say concerning the vaunted morality of this immoral paper.—Eheu! quantum
mutatus from the old decent days when, under Mr. Frederic Greenwood, it
was indeed “written by gentlemen for gentlemen” (and ladies).

A journal which, like the _Pall Mall Gazette_, affects preferably and
persistently sexual subjects and themes lubric, works more active and
permanent damage to public morals than books and papers which are
frankly gross and indecent. The latter, so far as the world of letters
knows them, are read either for their wit and underlying wisdom (_e.g._
Rabelais and Swift), for their historical significance (Petronius
Arbiter) or for their anthropological interest as the Alf Laylah. But
the public print which deals, however primly and decently, piously and
unctuously with sexual and intersexual relations, usually held to be of
the Alekta or taboo’d subjects, is the real perverter of conduct, the
polluter of mental purity, the corrupter-general of society. Amongst
savages and barbarians the comparatively unrestrained intercourse
between men and women relieves the brain through the body; the mind and
memory have scant reason, physical or mental, to dwell fondly upon
visions amatory and venereal, to live in a “rustle of (imaginary)
copulation.” On the other hand the utterly artificial life of
civilisation, which debauches even the monkeys in “the Zoo,” and which
expands the period proper for the reproductory process from the vernal
season into the whole twelvemonth, leaves to the many, whose lot is
celibacy, no bodily want save one and that in a host of cases either
unattainable or procurable only by difficulty and danger. Hence the
prodigious amount of mental excitement and material impurity which is
found wherever civilisation extends, in maid, matron, and widow, save
and except those solely who allay it by some counteragent—religion,
pride, or physical frigidity. How many a woman in “Society,” when
stricken by insanity or puerperal fever, breaks out into language that
would shame the slums and which makes the hearers marvel where she could
have learned such vocabulary. How many an old maid held to be cold as
virgin snow, how many a matron upon whose fairest fame not a breath of
scandal has blown, how many a widow who proudly claims the title
_univira_, must relieve their pent-up feelings by what may be called
mental prostitution. So I would term the dear delights of sexual
converse and that sub-erotic literature, the phthisical “French novel,”
whose sole merit is “suggestiveness,” taking the place of Oriental
_morosa voluptas_ and of the unnatural practices—Tribadism and so forth,
still rare, we believe, in England. How many hypocrites of either sex,
who would turn away disgusted from the outspoken Tom Jones or the
Sentimental Voyager, revel in and dwell fondly upon the sly romance or
“study” of character whose profligacy is masked and therefore the more
perilous. And a paper like the (modern) _Pall Mall Gazette_ which
deliberately pimps and panders to this latent sense and state of
aphrodisiac excitement, is as much the more infamous than the loose book
as hypocrisy is more hateful than vice and prevarication is more ignoble
than a lie. And when such vile system is professionally practised under
the disguise and in the holy names of Religion and Morality, the effect
is loathsome as that spectacle sometimes seen in the East of a wrinkled
old eunuch garbed in woman’s nautch-dress ogling with painted eyes and
waving and wriggling like a young Bayadère.

There is much virtue in a nickname: at all events it shows the direction
whither the _aura popularis_ sets. The organ of Christian Chivalry is
now universally known to Society as “The Gutter Gazette;” to the public
as “The Purity-Severity Paper,” and the “Organ of the Social Pruriency
Society,” and to its colleagues of the Press as “The Dirt-Squirt.” In
the United States fulsomely to slander a man is “to Pall Mall Gazette
him:” “Just like your _Pall Mall Gazette_,” said an American to me when
describing a disreputable print “over the water.” And Mr. Stead, now
self-constituted coryphæus of the Reptile Press in Great Britain, has
apparently still to learn that lying and slandering are neither
Christian nor chivalrous.

The diminutive _Echo_ of those days (October 13 and 14, ’85) followed
suit of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and caught lightly the sounds as they
fell from the non-melliferous lips of the charmer who failed to charm
wisely. The precious article begins by informing me that I am “always
eager after the sensational,” and that on this occasion I “cater for the
prurient curiosity of the wealthy few,” such being his synonym for
“readiness to learn.” And it ends with the following comical
colophon:—“Captain Burton may possibly imitate himself (?) and challenge
us (!) to mortal combat for this expression of opinion.” If so, the
writer of these lines will imitate himself (?) and take no notice of
such an epistle. The poor scribe suggests the proverbial “Miss Baxter,
who refused a man before he axed her.” And what weapon could I use,
composing-stick or dung-fork upon an anonymous correspondent of the
hawkers’ and newsboys’ “Hecker,” the favourite ha’porth of East London?
So I left him to the tender mercies of Gaiety (October 14, ’84):—

The _Echo_ is just a bit wild
Its “par.” is indeed, a hard hitter:
In fact, it has not drawn it mild;
’Tis a matter of “Burton and bitter.”

I rejoice to subjoin that the _Echo_ has now (1888) made a name for
decent and sensible writing, having abandoned the “blatant” department
to the _Star_ (see, for the nonsense about a non-existent Alderman
Waterlow its issue of Sept. 6, ’88).

In the opinions of the Press will be found a selection from half a
century of laudatory notices to which the few curious touching such
matters will turn, while those who misjudged my work are duly
acknowledged in this paper. Amongst friends I would specify, without
invidious distinction, _The Bat_ (September 29, ’85), who on this
occasion and sundry others sturdily defended me, showing himself a bird
of “light and leading.” To the _St. James’s Gazette_ (September 12,
’85), the _Whitehall Review_ (September 17), the _Home News_ (September
18), and the _Nottingham Journal_ (September 19), I am also indebted for
most appreciative and intelligent notices. My cordial thanks are
likewise due to the Editor and especially to “Our London Correspondent”
of the _Lincoln Gazette_ (October 10 and November 2, ’85, not to notice
sundry minor articles): the articles will be reprinted almost entire
because they have expressed my meaning as though it came from my own
mouth. I have quoted Mr. J. Addington Symonds _in extenso_: if England
now possess a writer who can deliver an authoritative judgment on
literary style it is this _littérateur_. Of the journals which profess
letters _The Academy_ has ever been my friend and I have still the
honour of corresponding with it: we are called “faddists” probably from
our “fad” of signing our articles and thus enabling the criticised to
criticise the critic.

I now turn to another of my unfriends, amongst whom is and long has been

_THE “SATURDAY REVIEW.”_

This ancient dodderer, who has seen better days, deigned favour me with
six notices (January 2 and March 27, ’86; April 30, June 4, August 14,
’87; and July 21, ’88), of which No. i., dealing with my first and
second volumes, is written after the facile American fashion making the
book review itself; that is supply to the writer all the knowledge and
familiarity with the subject which he parades before an incurious and
easily gullible public. This especial form of dishonesty has but lately
succeeded to and ousted the classical English critique of Jeffrey,
Macaulay, and the late Mr. Abraham Hayward, which was mostly a handy peg
for the contents of the critic’s noddle or note book. The Saturnine
article opens characteristically.

Abroad we English have the character of being the most prudish of
nations; we are celebrated as having Bowdlerized for our babes and
sucklings even the immortal William Shakspeare; but we shall
infallibly lose this our character should the Kamashastra Society
flourish. Captain Burton has long been known as a bold explorer; his
pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, disguised in the dress and taking on
him the manners and customs of a True Believer, was a marvel of
audacity; but perhaps he may be held now to have surpassed himself,
for he has been bold enough to lay before his countrymen a literal
and unexcised translation of _The Arabian Nights_.

The writer is kind enough to pat me upon the back for “picturesque and
fluent English” and to confess that I have successfully imitated the
rhyming cadence of the original. But _The Saturday_ would not be _The
Saturday_ without carping criticism, wrong-headedness and the _culte_ of
the commonplace, together with absolute and unworthy cruelty to weaker
vessels. The reviewer denounces as “too conceited to be passed over
without comment” the good old English “whenas” (for when, vol. ii. 130),
the common ballad-term “a plump of spearmen” (ii. 190) and a “red cent”
(i. 321), the only literal rendering of “Fals ahmar” which serves to
show the ancient and noble pedigree of a slang term supposed to be
modern and American. Moreover this Satan even condemns fiercely the sin
of supplying him with “useful knowledge.” The important note (ii. 45)
upon the normal English mispronunciation of the J in Jerusalem, Jesus,
Jehovah, a corruption whose origin and history are unknown to so many
and which was, doubtless, a surprise to this Son of King “We,” is damned
as “uninteresting to the reader of the _Arabian Nights_.” _En revanche_,
three mistakes of mine (“p. 43” for “p. 45”) in vol. ii., index; “King
Zahr Shah” for King Suleyman Shah (ii. 285) and the careless confusion
of the Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al-Mustansir (ii. 817, note i.) were
corrected and I have duly acknowledged the correction. No. i. article
ends with Saturnine geniality and utterly ignoring a bye-word touching
dwellers in glass houses:—

Finally, we mark with regret that Captain Burton should find no more
courteous terms to apply to the useful work of a painstaking
clergyman than those where in his note he alludes to “Missionary
Porter’s miserable Handbook.”

As Mr. Missionary Porter has never ceased to malign me, even in his last
Edition of Murray’s “miserable Handbook,” a cento of Hibernian blunders
and hashed Bible, I have every reason to _lui rendre la pareille_.

The second article (March 27, ’86), treating of vol. iii., opens with
one of those plagiaristic commonplaces, so dear to the soul of _The
Saturday_, in its staid and stale old age as in its sprightly youth.
“There is particularly one commodity which all men, therein nobly
disregarding their differences of creed and country, are of a mind that
it is better to give than to receive. That commodity is good advice. We
note further that the liberality with which this is everywhere offered
is only to be equalled (he means ‘to be equalled only’) by the niggard
reception at most times accorded to the munificent donation; in fact the
very goodness of advice—given apparently militates against its due
appreciation in (by?) the recipient.” The critic then proceeds to fit
his _ipse dixit_ upon my case. The sense of the sentiment is the reverse
of new: we find in _The Spectator_ (No. dxii.), “There is nothing we
receive with so much reluctance as good advice,” etc.; but Mr.
_Spectator_ writes good English and his plagiarist does not. Nor is the
dictum true. We authors who have studied a subject for years, are, I am
convinced, ready enough to learn, but we justly object to sink our
opinions and our judgment in those of a counsellor who has only
“crammed” for his article. Moreover, we must be sure that he can fairly
lay claim to the three requisites of an adviser—capacity to advise
rightly, honesty to advise truly and courtesy to advise decently. Now
the _Saturday Review_ has neither this, that, nor the other
qualification. Indeed his words read like subtle and lurking irony by
the light of those phenomenal and portentous vagaries which ever and
anon illuminate his opaque pages. What correctness can we expect from a
journal whose tomahawk-man, when scalping the corpse of Matthew Arnold,
deliberately applies the term “sonnet” to some thirty lines in heroic
couplets? His confusion of Dr. Jenner, the Vaccinator, with Sir William
Jenner, the President of the R. C. of Physicians, is one which passes
all comprehension. And what shall we say of this title to pose as an
Aristarchus (November 4th, ’82)? “Then Jonathan Scott, LL.D. Oxon,
assures the world that he intended to re-translate the Tales given by
Galland (!); but he found Galland so adequate on the whole (!!) that he
gave up the idea and now reprints Galland with etchings by M. Lalauze,
giving a French view of Arab life. Why Jonathan Scott, LL.D., should
have thought to better Galland while Mr. Lane’s version is in existence,
and has just been reprinted, it is impossible to say.” In these wondrous
words Jonathan Scott’s editio princeps with engravings from pictures by
Smirke and printed by Longmans in 1811 is confounded with the imperfect
reprint by Messieurs Nimmo and Bain, in 1883; the illustrations being
borrowed from M. Adolphe Lalauze, a French artist (nat. 1838), a master
of _eaux fortes_, who had studied in Northern Africa and who
maroccanized the _mise-en-scène_ of “The Nights” with a marvellous
contrast of white and negro nudities. And such is the Solomon who
fantastically complains that I have disdained to be enlightened by his
“modest suggestions.” _Au reste_ the article is not bad simply because
it borrows—again Americanicè—all its matter from my book. At the
tail-end, however, comes the normal sting: I am guilty of not explaining
“Wuzú” (lesser ablution), “Ghusl” (greater ablution) and “Zakát” (legal
alms which constitute a poor-rate) proving that the writer never read
vol. iii. He confidently suggests replacing “Cafilah,” “by the
better-known word _Caravan_,” as if it were my speciality (as it is his)
to hunt-out commonplaces: he grumbles about “interrogation-_points à
l’Espagnole_ upside-down” (¿) which still satisfies me as an excellent
substitute to distinguish the common Q(uestion) from A(nswer); and he
seriously congratulates me upon my discovering a typographical error on
the fly-leaf.

No. iii. (August 14, ’86, handling vols. vi. vii. and viii.) is free
from the opening pretensions and absurdities of No. ii. and it is made
tolerably safe by the familiar action of scissors and paste. But—desinit
in piscem—it ends fishily; and we find, after saturnine fashion _in
cauda venenum_. It scolds me for telling the English public what it even
now ignores, the properest way of cooking meat (à propos of kabábs) and
it “trembles to receive vols. ix. and x. for truly (from a literary
point of view, of course, we mean) there seems nothing of which the
translator might not be capable”—_capable de tout_, as said Voltaire of
Habbakuk and another agnostic Frenchman of the Prophet Zerubbabel. This
was indeed high praise considering the _Saturday’s_ sympathy with and
affection for the dead level, for the average man; but as an augury of
ill it was a brutum fulmen. No. iv. (August 30, ’87) was, strange to
say, in tone almost civil and ended with a touch simulating approval:—

“The labours of a quarter of a century,” writes the translator in
_L’Envoi_, are now brought to a close, and certainly no one could
have been found better suited by education and taste to the task of
translating the ‘Nights’ than is the accomplished author of the
‘Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.’ His summing up of the contents and
character of ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ in the Terminal Essay is
a masterpiece of careful analysis, and we cannot do better than
conclude our notice with a paragraph that resumes with wonderful
effect the boundless imagination and variety of the picture that is
conjured up before our eyes:—

“Viewed as a _tout ensemble_ in full and complete form, they are a
drama of Eastern life, and a Dance of Death made sublime by faith
and the highest emotions, by the certainty of expiation and the
fulness of atoning equity, where virtue is victorious, vice is
vanquished, and the ways of Allah are justified to man. They are a
panorama which remains ken-speckle upon the mental retina. They form
a phantasmagoria in which archangels and angels, devils and goblins,
men of air, of fire, of water, naturally mingle with men of earth;
where flying horses and talking fishes are utterly realistic; where
King and Prince must meet fishermen and pauper, lamia and cannibal;
where citizen jostles Badawi, eunuch meets knight; the Kazi hob-nobs
with the thief.... The work is a kaleidoscope where everything falls
into picture; gorgeous palaces and pavilions; grisly underground
caves and deadly wolds; gardens fairer than those of the Hesperid;
seas dashing with clashing billows upon enchanted mountains; valleys
of the Shadow of Death; air-voyages and promenades in the abysses of
the ocean; the duello, the battle, and the siege; the wooing of
maidens and the marriage rite. All the splendour and squalor, the
beauty and baseness, the glamour and grotesqueness, the magic and
the mournfulness, the bravery and the baseness of Oriental life are
here.”

And now, after the _Saturday Review_ has condescended severely and
sententiously to bepreach me, I must be permitted a trifling return in
kind. As is declared by the French, an objectionable people which
prefers _la gloire_ to “duty,” and even places “honour” before
“honesty,” the calling of the Fourth Estate is _un sacerdoce_, an
Apostolate: it is a high and holy mission whose ends are the diffusion
of Truth and Knowledge and the suppression of Ignorance and Falsehood.
“Sacrilege,” with this profession, means the breaking of its two great
commandments and all sins of commission and omission suggested and
prompted by vain love of fame, by sordid self-esteem or by ignoble
rancour. What then shall we say of a paper which, professedly
established to “counteract the immorality of _The Times_,” adds to
normal journalistic follies, offences and mistakes an utter absence of
literary honour, systematic misrepresentation, malignity and absolute
ruffianism? Let those who hold such language exaggerated glance at my
_pièce justicative_, the _Saturday’s_ article (June 28, 88) upon Mr.
Hitchman’s “Biography of Sir Richard Burton.” No denizen of Grub Street
in the coarse old day of British mob-savagery could have produced a more
damning specimen of wilful falsehood, undignified scurrility and brutal
malevolence, in order to gratify a well-known pique, private and
personal. The “Saturday Reviler”—there is, I repeat, much virtue in a
soubriquet—has grown only somewhat feebler, not kindlier, not more
sympathetic since the clever author of “In Her Majesty’s Keeping” styled
this Magister Morum “the benignant and judicious foster-parent of
literature”; and since Darwin wrote of it (ii. 260) “One cannot expect
fairness in a reviewer;” nor has it even taken to heart what my friend
Swinburne declared (anent its issue of December 15, ’83) “clumsy and
shallow snobbery can do no harm.” Like other things waxing obsolete it
has served, I hasten to confess, a special purpose in the world of
letters. It has lived through a generation of thirty years in the
glorification of the mediocrities and in pandering to the impish taint
of poor human nature, the ungenerous passions of those who abhor the
novel, the original, the surprising, the startling, and who are only too
glad to witness and to assist in the Procrustes’ process of trimming and
lengthening out thoughts and ideas and diction that rise or strive to
rise above the normal and vulgar plane. This virtual descendant of the
ancestral Satirist, after long serving as a spawning-ground to envy,
hatred and malice, now enters upon the decline of an unworthy old age.
Since the death of its proprietor, Mr. Beresford-Hope, it has been
steadily going down hill as is proved by its circulation, once 15,000,
and now something nearer 5,000 than 10,000. It has become a poor shadow
of its former self—preserving the passive ill-will but lacking the power
of active malevolence—when journalists were often compelled to decline
correspondence upon its misjudgments and to close to complainants their
columns which otherwise would have been engrossed by just and reasonable
protestations. The “young lions” of its prime (too often behanged with a
calf-skin on their recreant limbs) are down among the dead and the
jackal-pack which has now taken up the howling could no longer have
caused Thackeray to fear or can excite the righteous disgust of that
votary of “fair-play”—Mr. John Bright.

And now, before addressing myself to another Reviewer, I would be
allowed a few words upon two purely personal subjects; the style chosen
for my translation and my knowledge of the Arabian language and
literature.

I need hardly waste time to point out what all men discern more or less
distinctly, how important are diction and expression in all works of
fancy and fiction and how both branches, poetic and prosaic, delight in
beauty adorned and allow in such matters the extreme of liberty. A long
study of Galland and Torrens, Lane and Payne, convinced me that none of
these translators, albeit each could claim his special merit, has
succeeded in preserving the local colouring of the original. The
Frenchman had gallicised and popularised the general tone and tenor to
such extent that even the vulgar English versions have ever failed to
throw off the French flavour. Torrens attempted literalism laudably and
courageously enough; but his execution was of the roughest, the nude
verbatim; nor did his familiarity with Arabic, or rather with Egyptian,
suffice him for the task. Lane, of whom I have already spoken, and of
whom I shall presently be driven by his imprudent relatives and
interested friends to say more, affected the latinised English of the
period, flat and dull, turgid and vapid as that of Sale’s Koran; and his
style proved the most insufficient and inadequate attire in which an
Oriental romance of the Middle Ages could be arrayed. Payne was
perfectly satisfactory to all cultivated tastes, but he designedly
converted a romantic into a classical work: none ignores its high merits
regarded merely as strong and vital English, but it lacks one thing
needful—the multiform variety of The Nights. The original Arabic text
which in the first thirteen tales (Terminal Essay, p. 80) must date from
before the XIIIth century at the latest (since Galland’s MS. in the
Bibliothèque Nationale has been assigned to the early XIVth) is highly
composite: it does not disdain local terms, bye-words and allusions
(some obsolete now and forgotten), and it borrows indiscriminately from
Persian (_e.g._ Sháhbandar), from Turkish (as Khátún) and from Sanscrit
(for instance Brahman). As its equivalent, in vocabulary I could devise
only a somewhat archaical English whose old-fashioned and sub-antique
flavour would contrast with our modern and every-day speech, admitting
at times even Latin and French terms, such as _res scibilis_ and
_citrouille_. The mixture startled the critics and carpers to whom its
object had not been explained; but my conviction still remains that it
represents, with much truth to nature, the motley suit of the
Arabo-Egyptian. And it certainly serves one purpose, too often neglected
by writers and unnoticed by reviewers. The fluent and transparent styles
of Buckle and Darwin (the modern Aristotle who has transformed the face
of Biological Science) are instruments admirably fitted for their
purpose: crystal-clear, they never divert even a bittock of the reader’s
brain from the all-important sense underlying the sound-symbols. But in
works of imagination man wants a treatment totally different, a style
which, by all or any means, little mattering what they be, can avoid the
imminent deadly risk of languor and monotony and which adds to fluency
the allurement of variety, of surprise and even of disappointment, when
a musical discord is demanded.

Again, my estimate of a translator’s office has never been of the low
level generally assigned to it even in the days when Englishmen were in
the habit of englishing every important or interesting work published on
the continent of Europe. We cannot expect at this period of our
literature overmuch from a man who, as Messieurs Vizetelly assure their
_clientèle_, must produce a version for a poor £20. But at his best the
traducteur while perfectly reproducing the matter and the manner of his
original, works upon two lines. His prime and primary object is an
honest and faithful copy, adding naught to the sense nor abating aught
of its peculiar cachet whilst he labours his best to please and edify
his readers. He has however, or should have, another aim wherein is
displayed the acme of hermeneutic art. Every language can profitably
lend something to and borrow somewhat from its neighbours, near or far,
an epithet, a metaphor, a turn of phrase, a naïve idiom; and the
translator of original mind will not neglect the frequent opportunities
of enriching his mother tongue with alien and novel ornaments, which
will justly be accounted barbarisms until formally adopted and
naturalised. Such are the “peoples” of Kossuth and the useful “lengthy,”
an American revival of a good old English term. Nor will my modern
versionist relegate to a foot-note, as is the malpractice of his banal
brotherhood, the interesting and often startling phases of his foreign
author’s phraseology and dull the text with its commonplace English
equivalent—thus doing the clean reverse of what he should do. It is
needless to quote instances concerning this phase of “Bathos:” they
abound in every occidental translation of every Oriental work,
especially the French, such as Baron de Slane’s honest and conscientious
“Ibn Khaldún.” It was this grand ideal of a translator’s duty that made
Eustache Deschamps, a contemporary poet, write of his English brother
bard:—

“GRAND TRANSLATOUR, NOBLE _GEOFFROY CHAUCIER_.”

Here,

“The firste finder of our faire langage”

is styled a “Socrates in philosophy, a Seneca in morals, an Angel in
conduct and a great Translator,” which apparent anti-climax has
scandalised not a little inditers of “Lives” and “Memoirs.” The title is
given simply because Chaucer translated (using the best and highest
sense of the term) into his English tongue and its linguistic
peculiarities, the thoughts and ideas of his foreign models—the very
letter and spirit of Petrarch and Boccaccio.

That my attempts to reproduce the form and features of the original and
that my manner of writing is well adapted to the matter appears from the
consensus of the “Notices” presently to be quoted. Mr. J. Addington
Symonds pronounces the version to be executed with “peculiar literary
vigour.” Mr. Swinburne is complimentary and even the _Saturday_ deigns
to declare “Captain Burton is certainly felicitous in the manner in
which he has englished the picturesque lines of the original.” But _le
style est de l’homme_; and this is a matter upon which any and every
educated man who writes honestly will form and express and retain his
own opinion: there are not a few who loathe “Pickwick,” and who cannot
relish _Vanity Fair_. So the _Edinburgh Review_ No. 335 (pp. 174, 181),
concerning which more anon, pronounces my work to be “a jumble of the
vulgarest slang of all nations;” also “an unreadable compound of
archæology and ‘slang,’ abounding in Americanisms, and full of an
affected reaching after obsolete or foreign words and phrases;” and
finally shows the assurance to assert “Captain Burton has produced a
version which is neither Arabic nor English, but which has at least the
merit of being beautifully unreadable” (p. 182).

It has been circulated widely enough by the Lane-Poole clique—_poules
mouillées_ they are called by an Arabist friend—that I do not know
Arabic. Let me at once plead guilty to the charge, adding by way of
_circonstance atténuante_ that I know none who does know or who can
thoroughly know a tongue of which we may say as did honest Izaak Walton
of other two crafts, “angling be so like the mathematics that it can
never be fully learned.” Most of us can master one section of a language
concerning which those who use it vernacularly declare “Only Allah
wotteth its entirety”; but we lack as yet the means to study it as a
whole. Older by long ages than Babel’s fabulous Tower, and covering a
continuous area from Eastern Arabia to the Maghrab al-Aksá (western
Mauritania), from Chaldæa in the north to southern Zanzibar, it numbers
of potential vocabulary 1,200,000 words all of which may be, if they are
not, used; and while they specify the finest shades of meaning, not a
few of them, technically termed “Zidd,” bear significations
diametrically opposite, _e.g._, “Maulá” = lord, slave; and “’Ajúz” with
88 different meanings. Its literature, poetic, semi-poetic and prosaic,
falls into three greater sections:—Ancient (The Suspendeds, the Kitáb
al-Aghání and the Koran), Mediæval (Al-Mutanabbi, Al-Asm’ái, Abú Nowás
and the poets of the Harunic cycle) and Moderns, of whom not the least
important (_e.g._ Yúsuf al-Yazají) are those of our own day. Throughout
its vast domain there are local differences of terminology which render
every dialect a study; and of these many are intimately connected with
older families, as the Egyptian with Coptic and the Moorish with Berber.
The purest speakers are still the Badawín who are often not understood
by the citizen-folk (_e.g._ of Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad) at whose
gates they tent; and a few classes like the Banú Fahim of Al-Hijáz still
converse sub-classically, ever and anon using the terminal vowels and
the nunnation elsewhere obsolete. These wildlings, whose evening
camp-fires are still their schools for eloquence and whose
improvisations are still their unwritten laws, divide speech into three
degrees; Al-’Áli the lofty addressed to the great, Al-Wasat used for
daily converse and Al-Dún the lowly or broken “loghat” (jargon)
belonging to most tribes save their own. In Egypt the purest speakers
are those of the Sa’íd—the upper Nile-region—differing greatly from the
two main dialects of the Delta: in Syria, where the older Aramean is
still current amongst sundry of the villagers outlying Damascus, the
best Arabists are the Druzes, a heterogeneous amalgam of Arabs and Kurds
who cultivate language with uncommon care. Of the dialectic families
which subtend the Mediterranean’s southern sea-board, the Maroccan and
the Algerine are barbarised by Berber, by Spanish and by Italian words
and are roughened by the inordinate use of the Sukún (quiescence or
conjoining of consonants); while the Tunisian approaches nearer to the
Syrian and the Maltese was originally Punic. The jargon of Meccah is
confessedly of all the worst. But the wide field has been scratched not
worked out, and the greater part of it, especially the Mesopotamian and
the Himyaritic of Mahrahland, still remains fallow and the reverse of
sterile.

Materials for the study of Arabic in general and of its dialects in
particular are still deficient and the dictionaries mostly content
themselves with pouring old stuff from flask to flask, instead of
collecting fresh and unknown material. Such are recueils of prayers and
proverbs, folk-songs and stories, riddles and satires, not forgetting
those polyglot vocabularies so common in many parts of the Eastern
world, notably in Sind and Afghánistán; and the departmental glossaries
such as the many dealing with “Tasawwuf”—the Moslem form of Gnosticism.
The excellent lexicon of the late Professor Dozy, _Supplément aux
Dictionnaires Arabes_, par R. Dozy, Leyde: E. J. Brill, 1881, was a step
in advance; but we still lack additions like Baron Adolph Von Kremer’s
_Beitrage zur Arabischen Lexicographie_ (_In commission bei Carl
Gerold’s_ Sohn, Wien, 1884.) The French, as might be expected began
early, _e.g._ M. Ruphy’s _Dictionnaire abrégé français-arabe, Paris,
Imprimerie de la Republique, An 10_; they have done good work in Algiers
and are now carrying it on in Tunis. Of these we have Marcel,
_Vocabulaire_, etc. (Paris, 1837); Bled de Braine (Paris, 1846), who to
his _Cours Synthétique_ adds a study of Maroccan and Egyptian; Professor
Cherbonneau (Paris, 1854) _Précis Historique_, and _Dialogues_, etc.,
(Alger, 1858); M. Gasselin (Paris, 1866) _Dictionnaire français-arabe_;
M. Brassier (Algiers, 1871) _Dictionnaire pratique_ also containing
Algerine and Tunisian terms; General Parmentier (_Vocabulaire
arabe-français des Principaux Termes de Geógraphie_, etc.: Paris, rue
Antoine-Dubois, 1882); and, to mention no others, the _Grammaire Arabe
Vulgaire_ (Paris, 1824) of M. Caussin de Perceval (fils) has extended
far and wide. Berggren (Upsal, 1844) published his _Guide Français-Arabe
des Voyageurs en Syrie et en Egypte_. Rowland de Bussy printed (Algiers,
1877) his _Dialogues Français-Arabes_ in the Algerian dialect. Fr. José
de Lerchundi, a respected Missioner to Tangier has imitated and even
improved upon this in his _Rudimentos del Arabe Vulgar_ (Madrid,
Rivadeneyra, 1872); and his studies of the Maghrabi dialect are most
valuable. Dr. A. Socin produced his _Arabische Sprichwörter_, etc.,
(Tubingen, 1878), and the late Wilhelm Spitta-Bey, whose early death was
so deeply lamented, left a grammar of Egyptian which would have been a
model had the author brought to his task more knowledge of Coptic in his
_Grammatik des Arabischen vulgär dialektes von Ægypten, Leipzig_, 1870.
Dr. Landberg published with Brill of Leyden and Maisonneuve, of Paris,
1883, a volume of Syrian Proverbs and promises some five others—No. 2,
Damascus and the Haurán; No. 3, Kasrawán and the Nusayriyah; No. 4,
Homs, Hamah and Halab (Aleppo), and No. 5, the Badawin of Syria. It is
evident that the process might be prolonged _ad infinitum_ by a writer
of whom I shall have something to say presently. M. Clément Huart (Jour.
Asiat. Jan. ’83), has printed notes on the dialect of Damascus: Dr. C.
Snouck Hurgronje published a collection of 77 proverbs and idioms with
lengthy notes in his _Mehkanische Sprichwörter_, etc. (Haag, Martinus
Nijhoff, 1886), after being expelled from Meccah by the Turkish
authorities who had discovered him only through a Parisian journal _Le
Temps_ (see his _Het Mekkanshe Feest, Leyden_, 1880). For the lower Najd
and upper Hijaz we have the glossary of Arabic words ably edited by
Prof. M. J. de Goeje in Mr. Charles M. Doughty’s valuable and fantastic
“Arabia Deserta” (ii. 542–690: see _The Academy_, July 28th, ’88). Thus
the local vocabularies are growing, but it will be long before the
ground is covered.

Again the East, and notably the Moslem East since the Massacre of
Damascus in 1860, although still moving slowly, shows a distinct
advance. The once secluded and self-contained communities are now shaken
by the repeated and continuous shocks of progress around them; and new
wants and strange objects compel them nilly-willy to provide vernacular
equivalents for the nomenclature of modern arts and sciences. Thus the
Orientalist, who would produce a contemporary lexicon of Persian, must
not only read up all the diaries and journals of Teheran and the
vocabularies of Yezd and Herat, he must go further a-field. He should
make himself familiar with the speech of the Iliyát or wandering
pastoral tribes and master a host of cognate tongues whose chiefs are
Armenian (Old and New), Caucasian, a modern Babel; Kurdish, Lúri
(Bakhtiyári), Balochki and Pukhtú or Afghan, besides the direct
descendants of the Zend, the Pehlevi, Dari and so forth. Even in the
most barbarous jargons he will find terms which throw light upon the
literary Iranian of the lexicons: for instance “Mádiyán” = a mare
presupposes the existence of “Narayán” = a stallion, and the latter is
preserved by the rude patois of the Baloch mountaineers. This process of
general collection would in our day best be effected after the fashion
of Professor James A. H. Murray’s “New English Dictionary on Historical
Principles.” It would be compiled by a committee of readers resident in
different parts of Persia, communicating with the Royal Asiatic Society
(whose moribund remains they might perhaps quicken) and acting in
co-operation with Russia, whom unfriends have converted from a friend to
an angry and jealous rival and who is ever so forward in the linguistic
field.

But if the model Persian dictionary have its difficulties, far harder
will be the task with Arabic which covers incomparably more ground. Here
we must begin with Spain and Portugal, Sardinia and the Balearics,
Southern Italy and Sicily; and thence pass over to Northern Africa and
the two “Soudans,” the Eastern extending far South of the Equator and
the Western nearly to the Line. In Asia, besides the vast Arabian
Peninsula, numbering one million of square miles, we find a host of
linguistic outliers, such as Upper Hindostan, the Concan, Malacca, Java
and even remote Yun-nan, where al-Islam is the dominant religion, and
where Arabic is the language of Holy Writ.

My initiation into the mysteries of Arabic began at Oxford under my
tutor Dr. W. A. Greenhill, who published a “Treatise on Small-pox and
Measles,” translated from Rhazes—Abú Bakr al-Rází (London, 1847); and
where the famous Arabist, Don Pascual de Gayangos, kindly taught me to
write Arabic leftwards. During eight years of service in Western India
and in Moslem Sind, while studying Persian and a variety of vernaculars,
it was necessary to keep up and extend a practical acquaintance with the
language which supplies all the religious and most of the metaphysical
phraseology; and during my last year at Sindian Karáchí (1849), I
imported a Shaykh from Maskat. Then work began in downright earnest.
Besides Erpenius’ (D’Erp) “Grammatica Arabica,” Richardson, De Sacy and
Forbes, I read at least a dozen Perso-Arabic works (mostly of pamphlet
form) on “Sarf Wa Nahw”—Accidence and Syntax—and learned by heart
one-fourth of the Koran. A succession of journeys and long visits at
various times to Egypt, a Pilgrimage to the Moslem Holy Land and an
exploration of the Arabic-speaking Somáli-shores and Harar-Gay in the
Galla country of Southern Abyssinia, added largely to my practice. At
Aden, where I passed the official examination, Captain (now Sir R.
Lambert) Playfair and the late Rev. G. Percy Badger, to whom my papers
were submitted, were pleased to report favourably of my proficiency.
During some years of service and discovery in Western Africa and the
Brazil my studies were necessarily confined to the “Thousand Nights and
a Night;” and when a language is not wanted for use my habit is to
forget as much of it as possible, thus clearing the brain for
assimilating fresh matter. At the Consulate of Damascus, however, in
West Arabian Midian and in Maroccan Tangier the loss was readily
recovered. In fact, of this and sundry other subjects it may be said
without immodesty that I have forgotten as much as many Arabists have
learned. But I repeat my confession that I do not know Arabic and I have
still to meet the man who does know Arabic.

Orientalists, however, are like poets and musicians, a rageous race. A
passing allusion to a Swedish student styled by others (Mekkanische
Sprichwörter etc. p. 1) “Dr. Landberg” and by himself “Doctor Count
Carlo Landberg” procured me the surprise of the following communication.
I quote it in full because it is the only uncourteous attempt at
correspondence upon the subject of The Nights which has hitherto been
forced upon me. In his introduction (p. xx.) to the Syrian _Proverbes et
Dictons_ Doctor Count Landberg was pleased to criticise, with less than
his usual knowledge, my study entitled “Proverbia Communia Syriaca”
(Unexplored Syria i. 264–294). These 187 “dictes” were taken mainly from
a MS. collection by one Hanná Misk, ex-dragoman of the British
Consulate, (Damascus), a little recueil for private use such as would be
made by a Syro-Christian _bourgeois_. Hereupon the critic absurdly
asserted that the translator _a voulu s’occuper de la langue classique
au lieu de se faire * * * l’interprète fidèle de celle du peuple_. My
reply was (The Nights, vol. viii. 148) that, as I was treating of
proverbs familiar to the better educated order of citizens, his critique
was not to the point; and this brought down upon me the following letter
under the ægis of a portentous coronet and initials blazing with or,
gules and azure.

PARIS, le _24 Févr., 1888_.

Monsieur,

J’ai l’honneur de vous adresser 2 fascicules de mes _Critica
Arabica_. Dans le vol. viii. p. 48 de votre traduction de 1001 Nuits
vous avez une note qui me regard (_sic_). Vous y dites que je ne
suis pas “Arabist.” Ce n’est pas votre jugement qui m’impressionne,
car vous n’êtes nullement à même de me juger. Votre article
contient, comme tout ce que vous avez écrit dans le domaine de la
langue arabe, des _bévues_. C’est vous qui n’êtes pas arabisant:
cela est bien connu et reconnu, et nous ne nous donnons pas même la
peine de relever toutes les innombrables erreurs dont vos
publications tourmillent. Quant à ‏ليت‎ vous êtes encore en erreur.
Mon étymologie est acceptée par tout le monde, et je vous renvoie à
Fleischer, Kleinre Schriften, p. 468, Leipzig. 1885, où vous
trouverez l’instruction nécessaire. Le dilettantism qui se trahit
dans tout ce que vous écrivez vous fait faire de telles erreurs.
Nous autres arabisants et professo (?) nous ne vous avons jamais et
nous ne vous pouvons jamais considérer comme arabisant. Voila ma
réponse à votre note. ‏والسلام‎

Agréez, Monsieur,
l’expression de mes sentiments distingués,
COMTE LANDBERG,
Dr.-ès-lettres.

After these preliminaries I proceed to notice the article (No. 335, of
July ’86) in

_THE “EDINBURGH REVIEW,”_

and to explain its private history with the motives which begat it.

“This is the Augustan age of English criticism,” say the reviewers who
are fond of remarking that the period is one of literary appreciation
rather than of original production; that is, contemporary reviewers,
critics and monograph-writers are more important than “makers” in verse
or in prose. In fact it is their _aurea ætas_. I reply “Virgin ore, no!”
on the whole mixed metal some noble, much ignoble; a little gold, more
silver and an abundance of brass, lead and dross. There is the criticism
of Sainte-Beuve, of the late Matthew Arnold and of Swinburne; there is
also the criticism of the _Saturday Reviler_ and of the _Edinburgh
criticaster_. The golden is truth and honour incarnate: it possesses
outsight and insight: it either teaches and inspires or it comforts and
consoles, save when a strict sense of duty compels it to severity:
briefly, it is keen and guiding and creative. Let the young beginner
learn by rote what one master says of another:—“He was never provoked
into coarseness: his thrusts were made with the rapier according to the
received rules of fence; he firmly upheld the honour of his calling and
in the exercise of it was uniformly fearless, independent and
incorrupt.” The Brazen is partial, one-sided, tricksy, misleading,
immoral; serving personal and interested purposes and contemptuously
forgetful of every obligation which an honest and honourable pen owes to
the public and to itself. Such critiques bring no profit to the
reviewed. He feels that he has been written up or written down by a
literary hireling who has possibly been paid to praise or abuse him
secondarily, and primarily to exalt or debase his publisher or his
printer.

My own literary career has supplied me with many a curious study.
Writing upon subjects, say The Lake Regions of Central Africa, which
were then a type of the Unknown, I could readily trace in the
journalistic notices all the tricks and dodges of the trade. The rare
honest would confess that they could say nothing upon the subject; they
came to me therefore for information and professed themselves duly
thankful. The many dishonest had recourse to a variety of devices. The
hard worker would read-up voyages and travels treating of the
neighbouring countries, Abyssinia, the Cape and the African Coasts,
Eastern and Western; thus he would write in a kind of reflected light
without acknowledging his obligation to my volumes. Another would review
my book after the easy American fashion of hashing up the author’s
production, taking all its facts from me without disclosing that one
fact to the reader and then proceed to “butter” or “slash.” The worst,
“fulfyld with malace of froward entente,” would choose for theme not the
work but the worker, upon the good old principle “Abuse the plaintiffs
attorney.” These arts fully account for the downfall of criticism in our
day and the deafness of the public to such literary verdicts. But a few
years ago a favourable review in a first-rate paper was “fifty pounds in
the author’s pocket:” now it is not worth as many pence unless signed by
some well-known scribbling statesman or bustling reverend who caters for
the public taste. The decline and fall is well expressed in the old
lines:—

“Non est sanctior quod laudaris:
Non est vilior si vituperaris.”

“No one, now-a-days cares for reviews,” wrote Darwin as far back as
1840; and it is easy to see the whys and the wherefores. I have already
touched upon the duty of reviewing the reviewer when the latter’s work
calls for the process, despite the pretensions of modern criticism that
it must not be criticised. Although to buffet an anonym is to beat the
air still the very effort does good. A well-known and popular novelist
of the present day was a favourite butt for certain journalists who,
with the normal half-knowledge of men—

“That read too little, and that write too much”—

persistently fell foul of the points in which the author was almost
always right and the reviewer was wrong. “An eagle hawketh not at
flies:” the object of ill-natured satire despised——

“The creatures of the stall and stye,”

and persisted in contemptuous reticence, giving consent by silence to
what was easily refuted, and suffering a fond and foolish sentence to
misguide the public which it pretends to direct. “Take each man’s
censure but reserve thy judgment,” is a wise saying when silently
practised; it leads, however, to suffering in public esteem. The case in
question was wholly changed when, at my suggestion, the writer was
persuaded to catch a few of the culprits and to administer the dressing
and redressing they so richly deserved.

And now to my tale.

Mr. Henry Reeve, Editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, wrote to me shortly
before my first volume was issued to subscribers (September, ’85) asking
for advance sheets, as his magazine proposed to produce a general notice
of The Arabian Nights Entertainments. But I suspected the man whose
indiscretion and recklessness had been so unpleasantly paraded in the
shape of the Greville (Mr. Worldly Wiseman’s) Memoirs, and I had not
forgotten the untruthful and malignant articles of perfervid brutality
which during the hot youth and calm middle age of the _Edinburgh_ had
disgraced the profession of letters. My answer, which was temporising
and diplomatic, induced only a second and a more urgent application.
Bearing in mind that professional etiquette hardly justifies publicly
reviewing a book intended only for private reading and vividly
remembering the evil record of the periodical, I replied that the sheets
should be forwarded but on one condition; namely, that the reviewer
would not dwell too lovingly and longingly upon the “archaics,” which
had so excited the Tartuffean temperament of the chaste _Pall Mall
Gazette_. Mr. Henry Reeves replied (surlily) that he was not in the
habit of dictating to his staff and I rejoined by refusing to grant his
request. So he waited until five, that is one-half of my volumes had
been distributed to subscribers, and revenged himself by placing them
for review in the hands of the “Lane-Poole” clique which, as the sequel
proved could be noisy and combative as setting hens disturbed when their
nest-egg was threatened by an intruding hand.

For the clique had appropriated all right and claim to a monopoly of The
Arabian Nights Entertainments which they held in hand as a rotten
borough. The “Uncle and Master,” Mr. Edward William Lane, eponymous hero
of the house, had re-translated certain choice specimens of the
_Recueil_ and the “nephews of their uncle” resolved to make a private
gold-mine thereof. The book came out in monthly parts at half-a-crown
(1839–41), and when offered for sale in 3 vols. royal 8vo, the edition
of 5,000 hung fire at first until the high price (£3. 3s.) was reduced
to 27 shillings for the trade. The sale then went off briskly and amply
repaid the author and the publishers—Charles Knight and Co. And although
here and there some “old Tory” grumbled that new-fangled words (as
Wezeer, Kádee and Jinnee) had taken the places of his childhood’s pets,
the Vizier, the Cadi, and the Genie, none complained of the workmanship
for the all-sufficient reason that naught better was then known or could
be wanted. Its _succès de salon_ was greatly indebted to the “many
hundred engravings on wood, from original designs by William Harvey”;
with a host of quaint and curious Arabesques, Cufic inscriptions,
vignettes, head-pieces and _culs-de-lampes_. These, with the exception
of sundry minor accessories,[448] were excellent and showed for the
first time the realistic East and not the absurdities drawn from the
depths of artistical ignorance and self-consciousness—those of Smirke,
Deveria, Chasselot and Co., not to speak of the horrors of the De Sacy
edition, whose plates have apparently been used by Prof. Weil and by the
Italian versions. And so the three bulky and handsome volumes found a
ready way into many a drawing-room during the Forties, when the public
was uncritical enough to hail the appearance of these scattered chapters
and to hold that at last they had the real thing, pure and
unadulterated. No less than three reprints of the “Standard Edition,”
1859 (the last being in ’83) succeeded one another and the issue was
finally stopped, not by the author’s death (ætat 75; London, August 10,
1876: nat. Hereford, September 17, 1801), nor by the plates, which are
now the property of Messieurs Chatto and Windus, becoming too worn for
use, but simply by deficient demand. And the clique, represented by the
late Edward Lane-Poole in 1879, who edited the last edition (1883) with
a Preface by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, during a long run of forty-three
years never paid the public the compliment of correcting the
multitudinous errors and short-comings of the translation. Even the
lengthy and longsome notes, into which The Nights have too often been
merged, were left untrimmed. Valuable in themselves and full of
information, while wholly misplaced in a recueil of folk-lore, where
they stand like pegs behung with the contents of the translator’s
adversaria, the monographs on details of Arab life have also been
exploited and reprinted under the “fatuous” title, “Arabian (for
Egyptian) Society in the Middle Ages: Studies on The Thousand and One
Nights.” They were edited by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole (Chatto and Windus)
in 1883.

At length the three volumes fell out of date, and the work was formally
pronounced unreadable. Goëthe, followed from afar by Emerson, had
foreseen the “inevitable increase of Oriental influence upon the
Occident,” and the eagerness with which the men of the West would apply
themselves to the languages and literature of the East. Such garbled and
mutilated, unsexed and unsouled versions and perversions like Lane’s
were felt to be survivals of the unfittest. Mr. John Payne (for whom see
my Foreword, vol. i. pp. xii.–xiii.) resolved to give the world the
first honest and complete version of the Thousand Nights and a Night. He
put forth samples of his work in the _New Quarterly Magazine_
(January-April, 1879), whereupon he was incontinently assaulted by Mr.
Reginald Stuart Poole, the then front of the monopolists, who after
drawing up a list of fifteen errata (which were not errata) in two
Nights, declared that “they must be multiplied five hundred-fold to give
the sum we may expect.” (The _Academy_, April 26, 1879; November 29,
1881; and December 7, 1881.) The critic had the courage, or rather
impudence, to fall foul of Mr. Payne’s mode and mannerism, which had
long become deservedly famous, and concludes:—“The question of English
style may for the present be dropped, as, if a translator cannot
translate, it little matters in what form his results appear. _But it
may be questioned whether an Arab edifice should be decorated with old
English wall-papers._”

Evidently I had scant reason to expect mercy from the clique: I wanted
none and I received none.

My reply to the arch-impostor, who

Spreads the light wings of saffron and of blue,

will perforce be somewhat detailed: it is necessary to answer paragraph
by paragraph, and the greater part of the thirty-three pages refers more
or less directly to myself. To begin with the beginning, it caused me
and many others some surprise to see the “Thousand Nights and a Night”
expelled the initial list of thirteen items, as if it were held unfit
for mention. _Cet article est principalement une diatribe contre
l’ouvrage de Sir Richard Burton, et dans le libre cet ouvrage n’est même
pas mentionné_, writes my French friend. This proceeding was a fair
specimen of “that impartiality which every reviewer is supposed to
possess.” But the ignoble “little dodge” presently suggested itself. The
preliminary excursus (p. 168) concerning the “Mille et Une Nuits (read
Nuit) an audacious fraud, though not the less the best story book in the
world,” affords us a useful measure of the writer’s competence in the
matter of audacity and ill-judgment. The honest and single-minded
Galland is here (let us believe through that pure ignorance which haply
may hope for “fool’s pardon”) grossly and unjustly vilified; and, by way
of making bad worse, we are assured (p. 167) that the Frenchman “brought
the Arabic manuscript from Syria”—an unfact which is surprising to the
most superficial student. “Galland was a born story-teller, in the good
and the bad sense” (p. 167) is a silly sneer of the true Lane-Poolean
type. The critic then compares most unadvisedly (p. 168) a passage in
Galland (De Sacy edit. vol. i. 414) with the same in Mr. Payne’s (i.
260) by way of proving the “extraordinary liberties which the worthy
Frenchman permitted himself to take with the Arabic”: had he troubled
himself to collate my version (i. 290–291), which is made fuller by the
Breslau Edit. (ii. 190), he would have found that the Frenchman, as was
his wont, abridged rather than amplified;[449] although, when the
original permitted exact translation, he could be literal enough. And
what doubt, may I enquire, can we have concerning “The Sleeper Awakened”
(Lane, ii. 351–376), or, as I call it, “The Sleeper and the Waker”
(Suppl. vol. i. 1–39), when it occurs in a host of MSS., not to mention
the collection of tales which Prof. Habicht converted into the Arabian
Nights by breaking the text into a thousand and one sections (Bresl.
Edit. iv. 134–189, Nights cclxxii.–ccxci.). The reckless assertions that
“the whole of the last fourteen (Gallandian) tales have nothing whatever
to do with ‘The Nights’” (p. 168); and that of the histories of Zayn
al-Asnám and Aladdin, “it is abundantly certain that they belong to no
manuscript of the Thousand and One Nights” (p. 169), have been notably
stultified by M. Hermann Zotenberg’s purchase of two volumes containing
both these bones of long and vain contention. See Foreword to my Suppl.
vol. iii. pp. viii.–xi., and Mr. W. F. Kirby’s interesting notice of M.
Zotenberg’s epoch-making booklet (vol. vi. p. 35).

“The first English edition was published (_pace_ Lowndes) within eight
years of Galland’s” (p. 170) states a mere error. The second part of
Galland (6 vols. 12mo) was not issued till 1717, or two years after the
translator’s death. Of the English editio princeps the critic tells
nothing, nor indeed has anyone as yet been able to tell us aught. Of the
dishonouring assertion (again let us hope made in simple ignorance)
concerning “Cazotte’s barefaced forgery” (p. 170), thus slandering the
memory of Jacques Cazotte, one of the most upright and virtuous of men
who ever graced the ranks of literature, I have disposed in the Foreword
to my Supplemental vol. vi. “This edition (Scott’s) was tastefully
reprinted by Messrs. Nimmo and Bain in four volumes in 1883” (p. 170).
But why is the reader not warned that the _eaux fortes_ are by Lalauze
(see suprà, p. 408), 19 in number, and taken from the 21 illustrations
in MM. Jouaust’s edit. of Galland with preface by J. Janin? Why also did
the critic not inform us that Scott’s sixth volume, the only original
part of the work, was wilfully omitted? This paragraph ends with
mentioning the labours of Baron von Hammer-Purgstall, concerning whom we
are afterwards told (p. 186) for the first time that he “was brilliant
and laborious.” Hard-working, yes! brilliant, by no means!

We now come to the glorification of the “Uncle and Master,” concerning
whom I can only say that Lane’s bitterest enemy (if the amiable
Orientalist ever had any unfriend) could not have done him more
discredit than this foolish friend. “His classical (!) translation was
at once recognised as an altogether new departure,” (p. 171) and “it was
written in such a manner that the Oriental tone of The Nights should be
reflected in the English.” (ibid.) “It aims at reproducing in some
degree the literary flavour of the original” (p. 173). “The style of
Lane’s translation is an old-fashioned somewhat Biblical language” (p.
173), and “it is precisely this antiquated ring” (of the imperfect and
mutilated “Boulak edition,” unwisely preferred by the translator) “that
Lane has succeeded in preserving.” “The measured and finished language
Lane chose for his version is eminently fitted to represent the
rhythmical tongue of the Arab” (Memoir, p. xxvii). “The translation
itself is distinguished by its singular accuracy and by the marvellous
way in which the Oriental tone and colour are retained” (ibid). The
writer has taken scant trouble to read me when he asserts that the Bulak
edit. was my text, and I may refer him for his own advantage, to my
Foreword (vol. i. p. xix), which he has wilfully ignored by stating
unfact. I hasten to plead guilty before the charge of “really
misunderstanding the design of Lane’s style” (p. 173). Much must be
pardoned to the panegyrist, the encomiast; but the idea of mentioning in
the same sentence with Biblical English, the noblest and most perfect
specimen of our prose, the stiff and bald, the vapid and turgid manner
of the Orientalist who “commences” and “concludes”—never begins and
ends; who never uses a short word if he can find a long word, who
systematically rejects terse and idiomatic Anglo-Saxon when a Latinism
is to be employed and whose pompous stilted periods are the very triumph
of the “Deadly-lively”! By arts precisely similar the learned George
Sale made the Koran, that pure and unstudied inspiration of Arabian
eloquence, dull as a law document, and left the field clear for the Rev.
Mr. Rodwell. I attempted to excuse the style-laches of Lane by noticing
the lack of study in English linguistic which distinguished the latter
part of the xviiith and the first half of the xixth centuries, when men
disdaining the grammar of their own tongue, learned it from Latin and
Greek; when not a few styled Shakespeare “silly-billy,” and when Lamb,
the essayist, wrote, “I can read, and I say it seriously, the homely old
version of the Psalms for an hour or two together sometimes, without
sense of weariness.” But the reviewer will have none of my palliative
process, he is surprised at my “posing as a judge of prose style,” being
“acquainted with my quaint perversions of the English language” (p. 173)
and, when combating my sweeping assertion that “our prose” (especially
the prose of schoolmasters and professors, of savans and Orientalists)
“was perhaps the worst in Europe,” he triumphantly quotes half a dozen
great exceptions whose eminence goes far to prove the rule.

As regards Lane’s unjustifiable excisions the candid writer tells us
everything but the truth. As I have before noted (vol. ix. 304), the
main reason was simply that the publisher, who was by no means a
business man, found the work outgrowing his limits and insisted upon its
coming to an untimely and, alas! a tailless end. This is perhaps the
principal cause for ignoring the longer histories, like King Omar bin
al-Nu’umán (occupying 371 pages in my vols. ii. and iii.); Abú Hasan and
his slave-girl Tawaddud (pp. 56, vol. v. 189–245); the Queen of the
Serpents with the episodes of Bulukiyá, and of Jánshah (pp. 98 vol. v.
298–396); The Rogueries of Dalilah the Crafty and the Adventures of
Mercury Ali (pp. 55 vol. vii. 144–209). The Tale of Harun al-Rashid and
Abu Hasan of Oman (pp. 19, vol. ix. 188–207) is certainly not omitted by
dictations of delicacy, nor is it true of the parts omitted in general
that “none could be purified without being destroyed.” As my French
friend remarks, “Few parts are so plain-spoken as the introduction, _le
cadre de l’ouvrage_, yet M. Lane was not deterred by such situation.”
And lastly we have, amongst the uncalled-for excisions, King Jali’ad of
Hind, etc. (pp. 102, vol. ix. 32–134). The sum represents a grand total
of 701 pages, while not a few of the notes are filled with unimportant
fabliaux and apologues.

But the critic has been grandly deceptive, either designedly or of
ignorance prepense, in his arithmetic. “There are _over four hundred_ of
these (anecdotes, fables, and stories) in the complete text, and Lane
_has not translated more than two hundred_” (p. 172). * * * “Adding the
omitted anecdotes to the omitted tales, it appears that Lane left out
about a third of the whole ‘Nights,’ and of that third at least
three-fourths was incompatible with a popular edition. When Mr. Payne
and Captain Burton boast of presenting the public ‘with three times as
much matter as any other version,’ they perhaps mean a third as much
again” (p. 173). * * * “Captain Burton records his opinion that Lane has
omitted half and by far the more characteristic half of the Arabian
Nights, but Captain Burton has a talent for exaggeration, and for
‘characteristic’ we should read ‘unclean.’ It is natural that he should
make the most of such omissions, since they form the _raison d’être_ of
his own translation; but he has widely overshot the mark, and the public
may rest assured that the tales omitted from the standard version (proh
pudor!) are of very slight importance in comparison with the tales
included in it” (p. 173).

What a mass of false statement!

Let us now exchange fiction for fact. Lane’s three volumes contain a
total, deducting 15 for index, of pp. 1995 (viz. 618 + 643 + 734); while
each (full) page of text averages 38 lines and of notes (in smaller
type) 48. The text with a number of illustrations represents a total of
pp. 1485 (viz. 441 + 449 + 595). Mr. Payne’s nine volumes contain a sum
of pp. 3057, mostly without breaks, to the 1485 of the “Standard
edition.” In my version the sum of pages, each numbering 41 lines, is
3156, or 1163 more than Lane’s total and 2671 more than his text.

Again, in Lane’s text the tales number 62 (viz. 35 + 14 + 13) and as has
been stated all the longest have been omitted, save only Sindbad the
Seaman. The anecdotes in the notes amount to 44½ (viz. 3½ + 35 + 6):
these are for the most part the merest outlines and include the 3½ of
volume i. viz. the Tale of Ibrahim al-Mausilí (pp. 223–24), the Tale of
Caliph Mu’áwiyah (i. pp. 521–22), the Tale of Mukhárik the Musician (i.
pp. 224–26), and the half tale of Umm ’Amr (i. p. 522). They are quoted
bodily from the “Halbat al-Kumayt” and from “the Kitáb al-Unwán fí
Makáid al-Niswán,” showing that at the early stage of his labours the
translator, who published in parts, had not read the book on which he
was working; or, at least, had not learned that all the three and a half
had been borrowed from The Nights. Thus the grand total is represented
by 106½ tales, and the reader will note the difference between 106½ and
the diligent and accurate reviewer’s “not much more than two hundred.”
In my version the primary tales amount to 171; the secondaries, &c., to
96 and the total to 267, while Mr. Payne has 266.[450] And these the
critic swells to “over four hundred!” Thus I have more than double the
number of pages in Lane’s text (allowing the difference between his 38
lines to an oft-broken page and my 41) and nearly two and a-half tales
to his one, and therefore I do _not_ mean “a third as much again.”

Thus, too, we can deal with the dishonest assertions concerning Lane’s
translation “not being absolutely complete” (p. 171) and that “nobody
desired to see the objectionable passages which constituted the bulk of
Lane’s omissions restored to their place in the text” (p. 175).

The critic now passes to The Uncle’s competence for the task, which he
grossly exaggerates. Mr. Lane had no “intimate acquaintance with
Mahommedan life” (p. 174). His “Manners and Customs of the Modern
Egyptians” should have been entitled “Modern Cairenes;” he had seen
nothing of Nile-land save what was shown to him by a trip to Philæ in
his first visit (1825–28) and another to Thebes during his second; he
was profoundly ignorant of Egypt as a whole, and even in Cairo he knew
nothing of woman-life and child-life—two thirds of humanity. I doubt if
he could have understood the simplest expression in baby language; not
to mention the many idioms peculiar to the Harem-nursery. The
characteristic of his work is geniality combined with a true affection
for his subject, but no scholar can ignore its painful superficiality.
His studies of legal theology gave him much weight with the Olema,
although, at the time when he translated The Nights, his knowledge of
Arabic was small. Hence the number of lapses which disfigures his pages.
These would have been excusable in an Orientalist working out of Egypt;
but Lane had a Shaykh ever at his elbow and he was always able to
command the assistance of the University Mosque, Al-Azhar. I need not
enter upon the invidious task of cataloguing these errors, especially as
the most glaring have been cursorily noticed in my volumes. Mr. Lane
after leaving Egypt became one of the best Arabic scholars of his day,
but his fortune did not equal his deserts. The Lexicon is a fine work
although sadly deficient in the critical sense, but after the labour of
thirty-four years (it began printing in 1863) it reached only the 19th
letter Ghayn (p. 2386). Then invidious Fate threw it into the hands of
Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole. With characteristic audacity he disdained to
seek the services of some German Professor, an order of men which,
rarely dining out and caring little for “Society,” can devote itself
entirely to letters; perhaps he hearkened to the silly charge against
the Teuton of minuteness and futility of research as opposed to “good
old English breadth and suggestiveness of treatment.” And the
consequence has been a “continuation” which serves as a standard whereby
to measure the excellence of the original work and the woful falling-off
and deficiencies of the sequel—the latter retaining of the former naught
save the covers.[451]

Of Mr. Lane’s Notes I have ever spoken highly: they are excellent and
marvellously misplaced—_non erat his locus_. The text of a story-book is
too frail to bear so ponderous a burden of classical Arabian lore, and
the annotations injure the symmetry of the book as a work of art. They
begin with excessive prolixity: in the Introduction these studies fill
27 closely printed pages to 14 of a text broken by cuts and vignettes.
In chapt. i. the proportion is pp. 20, notes: 15 text; and in chapt. ii.
it is pp. 20: 35. Then they become, under the publisher’s protest,
beautifully less; and in vol. iii. chapt. 30 (the last) they are pp. 5:
57. Long disquisitions, “On the initial Moslem formula,” “On the
Wickedness of Women,” “On Fate and Destiny,” “On Arabian Cosmogony,” “On
Slaves,” “On Magic,” “On the Two Grand Festivals,” all these being
appended to the Introduction and the first chapter, are mere _hors
d’œuvres_: such “copy” should have been reserved for another edition of
“The Modern Egyptians.” The substitution of chapters for Nights was
perverse and ill-judged as it could be; but it appears venial compared
with condensing the tales in a commentary, thus converting the Arabian
Nights into Arabian Notes. However, “Arabian Society in the Middle
Ages,” a legacy left by the “Uncle and Master”; and, like the tame and
inadequate “Selections from the Koran,” utilised by the grand-nephew,
has been of service to the _Edinburgh_. Also, as it appears three
several and distinct times in one article (pp. 166, 174, and 183), we
cannot but surmise that a main object of the critique was to advertise
the volume. Men are crafty in these days when practising the “puff
indirect.”

But the just complaint against Lane’s work is its sin of omission. The
partial Reviewer declares (pp. 174–75) that the Arabist “re-translated
The Nights in a practical spirit, omitting what was objectionable,
together with a few tales (!) that were, on the whole, uninteresting or
tautological, and enriching the work with a multitude of valuable notes.
We had now a scholarly version of the greater part of The Nights imbued
with the spirit of the East and rich in illustrative comment; and for
forty years no one thought of anything more, although Galland still kept
his hold on the nursery.” Despite this spurious apology, the critic is
compelled cautiously to confess (p. 172), “We are not sure that some of
these omissions were not mistaken;” and he instances “Abdallah the Son
of Fazil” and “Abu ’l-Hasan of Khorasan” (he means, I suppose, Abu Hasan
al-Ziyádi and the Khorasani Man (iv. 285),) whilst he suggests, “a
careful abridgment of the tale of Omar the Son of No’man” (ii. 77, etc.)
Let me add that wittiest and most rollicking of Rabelaisian skits, “Ali
the Persian and the Kurd Sharper” (iv. 149), struck-out in the very
wantonness of “respectability;” and the classical series, an Arabian
“Pilpay,” entitled “King Jali’ád of Hind and his Wazir Shimas” (iv. 32).
Nor must I omit to notice the failure most injurious to the work which
destroyed in it half the “spirit of the East.” Mr. Lane had no gift of
verse or rhyme: he must have known that the ten thousand lines of the
original Nights formed a striking and necessary contrast with the
narrative part, acting as _aria_ to _recitativo_. Yet he rendered them
only in the baldest and most prosaic of English without even the
balanced style of the French translations. He can be excused only for
one consideration—bad prose is not so bad as bad verse.

The ill-judged over-appreciation and glorification of Mr. Lane is
followed (p. 176), by the depreciation and bedevilment of Mr. John
Payne, who first taught the world what The Nights really is. We are told
that the author (like myself) “unfortunately did not know Arabic;” and
we are not told that he is a sound Persian scholar: however, “he
undoubtedly managed to pick up enough of the language (!) to understand
The Arabian Nights with the assistance of the earlier translations of
(by?) Torrens and Lane,” the former having printed only one volume out
of some fifteen. This critic thinks proper now to ignore the “old
English wall-papers,” of Mr. R. S. Poole, indeed he concedes to the
translator of Villon, a “genius for language,” a “singular robust and
masculine prose, which for the present purpose he intentionally weighted
with archaisms and obsolete words but without greatly injuring its force
or brilliancy” (p. 177). With plausible candour he also owns that the
version “is a fine piece of English; it is also, save where the
exigencies of rhyme compelled a degree of looseness, remarkably literal”
(p. 178). Thus the author is damned with faint praise by one who utterly
fails to appreciate the portentous difference between linguistic genius
and linguistic mediocrity, and the Reviewer proceeds, “a careful
collation” (we have already heard what his “careful” means) “of the
different versions with their originals leads us to the conclusion that
Mr. Payne’s version is _little less faithful than Lane’s_ in those parts
which are common to both, and is practically as close a rendering as is
desirable” (p. 178). Tell the truth, man, and shame the Devil! I assert
and am ready to support that the “Villon version” is incomparably
superior to Lane’s not only in its simple, pure and forcible English,
but also in its literal and absolute correctness, being almost wholly
free from the blunders and inaccuracies which everywhere disfigure
Torrens, and which are rarely absent from Lane. I also repeat that
wherever the style and the subject are the most difficult to treat, Mr.
Payne comes forth most successfully from the contest, thus giving the
best proof of his genius and capacity for painstaking. Of the metrical
part which makes the Villon version as superior to Lane’s as virgin gold
to German silver, the critique offers only three inadequate specimens
specially chosen and accompanied with a growl that “the verse is nothing
remarkable” (p. 177) and that the author is sometimes “led into extreme
liberties with the original” (_ibid._). Not a word of praise for
mastering the prodigious difficulties of the monorhyme!

But—and there is a remarkable power in this particle—Mr. Payne’s work is
“restricted to the few wealthy collectors of proscribed books and what
booksellers’ catalogues describe as ‘facetiæ’” (p. 179); for “when an
Arabic word is unknown to the literary language” (what utter
imbecility!), and “belongs only to the low vocabulary of the gutter”
(which the most “elegant” writers most freely employ) “Mr. Payne
laboriously searches out a corresponding term in English ‘Billingsgate,’
and prides himself upon an accurate reproduction of the tone of the
original” (p. 178). This is a remarkable twisting of the truth. Mr.
Payne persisted, despite my frequent protests, in rendering the “nursery
words” and the “terms too plainly expressing natural situations” by old
English such as “kaze” and “swive,” equally ignored by the “gutter” and
by “Billingsgate”: he also omitted an offensive line whenever it did not
occur in all the texts and could honestly be left untranslated. But the
unfact is stated for a purpose: here the Reviewer mounts the high horse
and poses as the Magister Morum _per excellentiam_. The Battle of the
Books has often been fought, the crude text _versus_ the bowdlerised and
the expurgated; and our critic can contribute to the great fray only the
merest platitudes. “There is an old and trusty saying that ‘evil
communications corrupt good manners,’ and it is a well-known fact that
the discussion (?) and reading of depraved literature leads (_sic_)
infallibly to the depravation of the reader’s mind” (p. 179).[452] I
should say that the childish indecencies and the unnatural vice of the
original cannot deprave any mind save that which is perfectly prepared
to be depraved; the former would provoke only curiosity and amusement to
see bearded men such mere babes, and the latter would breed infinitely
more disgust than desire. The man must be prurient and lecherous as a
dog-faced baboon in rut to have aught of passion excited by either. And
most inept is the conclusion, “So long as Mr. Payne’s translation
remains defiled by words, sentences, and whole paragraphs descriptive of
coarse and often horribly depraved sensuality, it can never stand beside
Lane’s, which still remains the standard version of the Arabian Nights”
(p. 179.) _Altro!_ No one knows better than the clique that Lane, after
an artificially prolonged life of some half-century, has at last been
weighed in the balance and been found wanting; that he is dying that
second death which awaits the unsatisfactory worker and that his Arabian
Nights are consigned by the present generation to the limbo of things
obsolete and forgotten.

But if Mr. Payne is damned with poor praise and mock modesty, my version
is condemned without redemption—beyond all hope of salvation: there is
not a word in favour of a work which has been received by the reviewers
with a chorus of kindly commendation. “The critical battery opens with a
round-shot.” “Another complete translation is now appearing in a
surreptitious way” (p. 179). How “surreptitious” I ask of this scribe,
who ekes not the lack of reason by a superfluity of railing, when I sent
out some 24,000–30,000 advertisements and published my project in the
literary papers? “The amiability of the two translators (Payne and
Burton) was testified by their each dedicating a volume to the other. So
far as the authors are concerned nothing could be more harmonious and
delightful; but the public naturally ask, What do we want with two
forbidden versions?” And I again inquire, What can be done by me to
satisfy this atrabilious and ill-conditioned Aristarchus? Had I not
mentioned Mr. Payne, my silence would have been construed into envy,
hatred and malice: if I am proud to acknowledge my friend’s noble work
the proceeding engenders a spiteful sneer. As regards the “want,” public
demand is easily proved. It is universally known (except to the Reviewer
who will not know) that Mr. Payne, who printed only 500 copies, was
compelled to refuse as many hundreds of would-be subscribers; and, when
my design was made public by the Press, these and others at once applied
to me. “To issue a thousand still more objectionable copies by another
and not a better hand” (notice the quip cursive!) may “seem
preposterous” (p. 180), but only to a writer so “preposterous” as this.

“A careful (again!) examination of Captain Burton’s translation shows
that he has not, as he pretends (!), corrected it to agree with the
Calcutta text, but has made a hotchpotch of various texts, choosing one
or another—Cairo, Breslau, Macnaghten or first Calcutta—according as it
presented most of the ‘characteristic’ detail (note the dig i’ the side
vicious), in which Captain Burton’s version is peculiarly strong” (p.
180). So in return for the severe labour of collating the four printed
texts and of supplying the palpable omissions, which by turns disfigure
each and every of the quartette, thus producing a complete copy of the
Recueil, I gain nothing but blame. My French friend writes to me:
_Lorsqu’il s’agit d’établir un texte d’après différents manuscrits, il
est certain qu’il faut prendre pour base une-seule redaction. Mais il
n’est pas de même d’une traduction. Il est conforme aux règles de la
saine critique littéraire, de suivre tous les textes._ Lane, I repeat,
contented himself with the imperfect Bulak text while Payne and I
preferred the Macnaghten Edition which, says the Reviewer, with a futile
falsehood all his own, is “really only a revised form of the Cairo
text”[453] (_ibid._). He concludes, making me his rival in ignorance,
that I am unacquainted with the history of the MS. from which the
four-volume Calcutta Edition was printed (_ibid._). I should indeed be
thankful to him if he could inform me of its ultimate fate: it has been
traced by me to the Messieurs Allen and I have vainly consulted Mr.
Johnston who carries on the business under the name of that now defunct
house. The MS. has clean disappeared.

“On the other hand he (Captain Burton) sometimes omits passages which he
considers (!) tautological and thereby deprives his version of the merit
of completeness (_e.g._ vol. v. p. 327). It is needless to remark that
this uncertainty about the text destroys the scholarly value of the
translation” (p. 180). The scribe characteristically forgets to add that
I have invariably noted these excised passages which are always the
merest repetitions, damnable iterations of a twice-, and sometimes a
thrice-told tale, and that I so act upon the great principle—in
translating a work of imagination and “inducing” an Oriental tale, the
writer’s first duty to his readers is making his pages readable.

“Captain Burton’s version is sometimes rather loose” (p. 180), says the
critic who quotes five specimens out of five volumes and who might have
quoted five hundred. This is another favourite “dodge” with the
rogue-reviewer, who delights to cite words and phrases and texts
detached from their contexts. A translator is often compelled, by way of
avoiding recurrences which no English public could endure, to render a
word, whose literal and satisfactory meaning he has already given, by a
synonym or a homonym in no way so sufficient or so satisfactory. He
charges me with rendering “_Siyar_, which means ‘doings,’ by ‘works and
words’”; little knowing that the veteran Orientalist, M. Joseph
Derenbourgh (p. 98, _Johannes de Capua, Directorium_, etc.,) renders
“Akhlák-í wa Síratí” (sing. of Siyar) by _caractère et conduite_, the
latter consisting of deeds and speech. He objects to “Kabir” (lit. =
old) being turned into _very_ old; yet this would be its true sense were
the Ráwí or story-teller to lay stress and emphasis upon the word, as
here I suppose him to have done. But what does the _Edinburgh_ know of
the Ráwí? Again I render “Mal’únah” (not the mangled Mal’ouna) lit. =
accurst, as “damned whore,” which I am justified in doing when the
version is of the category Call-a-spade-a-spade.

“Captain Burton’s Arabian Nights, however, has another defect besides
this textual inaccuracy” (p. 180); and this leads to a whole page of
abusive rhetoric anent my vocabulary: the Reviewer has collected some
thirty specimens—he might have collected three hundred from the five
volumes—and he concludes that the list places Captain Burton’s version
“quite out of the category of English books” (p. 181) and “extremely
annoying to any reader with a feeling for style.” Much he must know of
modern literary taste which encourages the translator of an ancient work
such as Mr. Gibb’s Aucassin and Nicholete (I quote but one in a dozen)
to borrow the charm of antiquity by imitating the nervous and expressive
language of the pre-Elizabethans and Shakespeareans. Let him compare any
single page of Mr. Payne with Messieurs Torrens and Lane and he will
find that the difference _saute aux yeux_. But a purist who objects so
forcibly to archaism and archaicism should avoid such terms as “whilom
Persian Secretary” (p. 170); as anthophobia, which he is compelled to
explain by “dread of selecting only what is best” (p. 175); as
anthophobist (p. 176); as “fatuous ejaculations” (p. 183), as a
“raconteurs” (p. 186), and as “intermedium” (p. 194) terms which are
certainly not understood by the general. And here we have a list of six
in thirty-three pages:—evidently this Reviewer did not expect to be
reviewed.

“Here is a specimen of his (Captain Burton’s) verse, in which, by the
way, there is seen another example of the careless manner in which the
proofs have been corrected” (p. 181). Generous and just to a work
printed from abroad and when absence prevented the author’s revision:
false as unfair to boot! And what does the critic himself but show two
several misprints in his 33 pages; “Mr. Payne, vol. ix. p. 274” (p. 168,
for vol. i. 260), and “Jamshah” (p. 172, for Jánsháh). These faults may
not excuse my default: however, I can summon to my defence the _Saturday
Review_, that past-master in the art and mystery of carping criticism,
which, noticing my first two volumes (Jan. 2, 1886), declares them
“laudably free from misprints.”

“Captain Burton’s delight in straining the language beyond its
capabilities (?) finds a wide field when he comes to those passages in
the original which are written in rhyming prose” (p. 181). “Captain
Burton of course could not neglect such an opportunity for display of
linguistic flexibility on the model of ‘Peter Parley picked a peck of
pickled pepper’” (p. 182, where the Saj’a or prose rhyme is most
ignorantly confounded with our peculiarly English alliteration). But
this is wilfully to misstate the matter. Let me repeat my conviction
(Terminal Essay, 163–164) that The Nights, in its present condition, was
intended as a text or handbook for the Ráwí or professional
story-teller, who would declaim the recitative in quasi-conversational
tones, would intone the Saj’a and would chant the metrical portions to
the twanging of the Rabábah or one-stringed viol. The Reviewer declares
that the original has many such passages; but why does he not tell the
reader that almost the whole Koran, and indeed all classical Arab prose,
is composed in such “jingle”? “Doubtfully pleasing in the Arabic,” it
may “sound the reverse of melodious in our own tongue” (p. 282); yet no
one finds fault with it in the older English authors (Terminal Essay, p.
256), and all praised the free use of it in Eastwick’s “Gulistán.”
Torrens, Lane and Payne deliberately rejected it, each for his own and
several reason; Torrens because he never dreamt of the application;
Lane, because his scanty knowledge of English stood in his way; and
Payne because he aimed at a severely classical style, which could only
lose grace, vigour and harmony by such exotic decoration. In these
matters every writer has an undoubted right to carry out his own view,
remembering the while that it is impossible to please all tastes. I
imitated the Saj’a, because I held it to be an essential part of the
work, and of my fifty reviewers none save the _Edinburgh_ considered the
reproduction of the original manner aught save a success. I care only to
satisfy those whose judgment is satisfactory: “the abuse and contempt of
ignorant writers hurts me very little” as Darwin says (iii. 88), and we
all hold with Don Quixote that, _es mejor ser loado de los pocos sabios,
que burlado de los muchos necios_.

“This amusement (of reproducing the Saj’a) maybe carried to any length
(how?), and we do not see why Captain Burton neglects the metre of the
poetry, or divides his translation into sentences by stops, or permits
any break in the continuity of the narrative, since none such exists in
the Arabic” (p. 182). My reply is that I neglect the original metres
first and chiefly because I do not care to “caper in fetters,” as said
Drummond of Hawthornden; and, secondly, because many of them are
unfamiliar and consequently unpleasant to English ears. The exceptions
are mostly two, the Rajaz (Anapæsts and Iambs, Terminal Essay, x. 294),
and the Tawíl or long measure (_ibid._ pp. 282, 296), which Mr. Lyall
(Translations of Ancient Arab. Poetry, p. xlix.) compares with “Abt
Vogler,”

And there! ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head.

This metre greatly outnumbers all others in The Nights; but its lilting
measure by no means suits every theme and in English it is apt to wax
monotonous.

“The following example of a literal rendering which Mr. Payne adduces
(vol. ix. 381: comp. my vol. v. 66) in order to show the difficulty of
turning the phraseology of the original into good English, should have
served Captain Burton as a model, and we are surprised he has not
adopted so charmingly cumbrous a style” (p. 102). I shall quote the
whole passage in question and shall show that by the most unimportant
changes, omissions and transpositions, without losing a word, the whole
becomes excellent English, and falls far behind the Reviewer’s style in
the contention for “cumbrousness”:—

“When morrowed the morning he bedabbled his feet with the water they
twain had expressed from the herb and, going-down to the sea, went
thereupon walking days and nights, he wondering the while at the
horrors of the ocean and the marvels and rarities thereof. And he
ceased not faring over the face of the waters till he arrived at an
island as indeed it were Paradise. So Bulukiya went up thereto and
fell to wondering thereanent and at the beauties thereof; and he
found it a great island whose dust was saffron and its gravel were
cornelian and precious stones: its edges were gelsomine and the
growth was the goodliest of the trees and the brightest of the
scented herbs and the sweetest of them. Its rivulets were a-flowing;
its brushwood was of the Comorin aloe and the Sumatran lign-aloes;
its reeds were sugar-canes and round about it bloomed rose and
narcissus and amaranth and gilliflower and chamomile and lily and
violet, all therein being of several kinds and different tints. The
birds warbled upon those trees and the whole island was fair of
attributes and spacious of sides and abundant of good things,
comprising in fine all of beauty and loveliness,” etc. (Payne, vol.
ix. p. 381).

The Reviewer cites in his list, but evidently has not read, the “Tales
from the Arabic,” etc., printed as a sequel to The Nights, or he would
have known that Mr. Payne, for the second part of his work, deliberately
adopted a style literal as that above-quoted because it was the
liveliest copy of the original.

We now come to the crucial matter of my version, the annotative
concerning which this “decent gentleman,” as we suppose this critic
would entitle himself (p. 185) finds a fair channel of discharge for
vituperative rhetoric. But before entering upon this subject I must be
allowed to repeat a twice-told tale and once more to give the _raison
d’être_ of my long labour. When a friend asked me point-blank why I was
bringing out my translation so soon after another and a most scholarly
version, my reply was as follows:—“Sundry students of Orientalism assure
me that they are anxious to have the work in its crudest and most
realistic form. I have received letters saying, Let us know (you who
can) what the Arab of The Nights was: if good and high-minded let us see
him: if witty and humorous let us hear him: if coarse and uncultivated,
rude, childish and indecent, still let us have him to the very letter.
We want for once the genuine man. We would have a mediæval Arab telling
the tales and traditions with the lays and legends of his own land in
his own way, and showing the world what he has remained and how he has
survived to this day, while we Westerns have progressed in culture and
refinement. Above all things give us the naïve and plain-spoken language
of the original—such a contrast with the English of our times—and show
us, by the side of these _enfantillages_, the accumulated wit and
wisdom, life-knowledge and experience of an old-world race. We want also
the _technique_ of the Recueil, its division into nights, its monorhyme,
in fact everything that gives it cachet and character.” Now I could
satisfy the longing, which is legitimate enough, only by annotation, by
a running commentary, as it were, enabling the student to read between
the lines and to understand hints and innuendoes that would otherwise
have passed by wholly unheeded. I determined that subscribers should
find in my book what does not occur in any other, making it a repertory
of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric phase, by no means intended for the
many-headed but solely for the few who are not too wise to learn or so
ignorant as to ignore their own ignorance. I regretted to display the
gross and bestial vices of the original, in the rare places where
obscenity becomes rampant, but not the less I held it my duty to
translate the text word for word, instead of garbling it and mangling it
by perversion and castration. My rendering (I promised) would be
something novel, wholly different from all other versions, and it would
leave very little for any future interpreter.[454]

And I resolved that, in case of the spiteful philanthropy and the rabid
pornophobic suggestion of certain ornaments of the Home-Press being
acted upon, to appear in Court with my version of The Nights in one hand
and bearing in the other the Bible (especially the Old Testament, a free
translation from an ancient Oriental work) and Shakespeare, with
Petronius Arbiter and Rabelais by way of support and reserve. The two
former are printed by millions; they find their way into the hands of
children, and they are the twin columns which support the scanty edifice
of our universal home-reading. The Arbiter is sotadical as Abú Nowás and
the Curé of Meudon is surpassing in what appears uncleanness to the eye
of outsight not of insight. Yet both have been translated textually and
literally by eminent Englishmen and gentlemen, and have been printed and
published as an “extra series” by Mr. Bohn’s most respectable firm and
sold by Messieurs Bell and Daldy. And if The Nights are to be
bowdlerised for students, why not, I again ask, mutilate Plato and
Juvenal, the Romances of the Middle Ages, Boccaccio and Petrarch and the
Elizabethan dramatists one and all? What hypocrisy to blaterate about
The Nights in presence of such triumphs of the Natural! How absurd to
swallow such camels and to strain at my midge!

But I had another object while making the notes a Repertory of Eastern
knowledge in its esoteric form (Foreword p. xix). Having failed to free
the Anthropological Society from the fetters of _mauvaise honte_ and the
mock-modesty which compels travellers and ethnological students to keep
silence concerning one side of human nature (and that side the most
interesting to mankind), I proposed to supply the want in these pages.
The England of our day would fain bring up both sexes and keep all ages
in profound ignorance of sexual and intersexual relations; and the
consequences of that imbecility are peculiarly cruel and afflicting. How
often do we hear women in Society lamenting that they have absolutely no
knowledge of their own physiology; and at what heavy price must this
fruit of the knowledge-tree be bought by the young first entering life.
Shall we ever understand that ignorance is not innocence? What an
absurdum is a veteran officer who has spent a quarter-century in the
East without learning that all Moslem women are circumcised, and without
a notion of how female circumcision is effected; without an idea of the
difference between the Jewish and the Moslem rite as regards males;
without an inkling of the Armenian process whereby the cutting is
concealed, and without the slightest theoretical knowledge concerning
the mental and spiritual effect of the operation. Where then is the
shame of teaching what it is shameful not to have learnt? But the
ultra-delicacy, the squeamishness of an age which is by no means purer
or more virtuous than its ruder predecessors, has ended in trenching
upon the ridiculous. Let us see what the modern English woman and her
Anglo-American sister have become under the working of a mock-modesty
which too often acts cloak to real _dévergondage_; and how
Respectability unmakes what Nature made. She has feet but no “toes”;
ankles but no “calves”; knees but no “thighs”; a stomach but no “belly”
nor “bowels”; a heart but no “bladder” nor “groin”; a liver and no
“kidneys”; hips and no “haunches”; a bust and nor “backside” nor
“buttocks”: in fact, she is a monstrum, a figure fit only to frighten
the crows.

But the _Edinburgh_ knows nothing of these things, and the “decent
gentleman,” like the lady who doth protest overmuch, persistently fixes
his eye upon a single side of the shield. “Probably no European has ever
gathered such an appalling collection of degrading customs and
statistics of vice as is contained in Captain Burton’s translation of
the ‘Arabian Nights’” (p. 185). He finds in the case of Mr. Payne, like
myself, “no adequate justification for flooding the world (!) with an
ocean of filth” (_ibid._) showing that he also can be (as said the
past-master of catchwords, the _primus verborum artifex_) “an interested
rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.” But
_audi alteram partem_—my view of the question. I have no apology to make
for the details offered to the students of Moslem usages and customs,
who will find in them much to learn and more to suggest the necessity of
learning. On no wise ashamed am I of lecturing upon these esoteric
matters, the most important to humanity, at a time when their absence
from the novel of modern society veils with a double gloom the
night-side of human nature. Nay, I take pride to myself for so doing in
the face of silly prejudice and miserable hypocrisy, and I venture to
hold myself in the light of a public benefactor. In fact, I consider my
labours as a legacy bequeathed to my countrymen at a most critical time
when England the puissantest of Moslem powers is called upon, without
adequate knowledge of the Moslem’s inner life, to administer Egypt as
well as to rule India. And while Pharisee and Philister may be or may
pretend to be “shocked” and “horrified” by my pages, the sound common
sense of a public, which is slowly but surely emancipating itself from
the prudish and prurient reticences and the immodest and immoral
modesties of the early xixth century, will in good time do me, I am
convinced, full and ample justice.

In p. 184 the Reviewer sneers at me for writing “Roum” in lieu of Rum or
Rúm; but what would the latter have suggested to the home-reader save a
reference to the Jamaican drink? He also corrects me (vol. v. 248) in
the matter of the late Mr. Emanuel Deutsch (p. 184), who excised “our
Saviour” from the article on the Talmud reprinted amongst his literary
remains. The Reviewer, or inspirer of the Review, let me own, knew more
of Mr. Deutsch than I, a simple acquaintance, could know; but perhaps he
does not know all, and if he did he probably would not publish his
knowledge. The truth is that Mr. Deutsch was, during his younger years,
a liberal, nay, a latitudinarian in religion, differing little from the
so-styled “Christian Unitarian.” But when failing health drove him to
Egypt and his hour drew nigh he became (and all honour to him!) the
scrupulous and even fanatical Hebrew of the Hebrews; he consorted mainly
with the followers and divines of his own faith, and it is said that he
ordered himself when dying to be taken out of bed and placed upon the
bare floor. The “Saviour” of the article was perhaps written in his
earlier phase of religious thought, and it was excised as the end drew
in sight.

“Captain Burton’s experience in the East seems to have obliterated any
(all?) sentiments of chivalry, for he is never weary of recording
disparaging estimates of women, and apparently delights in discovering
evidence of ‘feminine devilry’” (p. 184). This _argumentum ad feminam_
is sharpish practice, much after the manner of the Christian “Fathers of
the Church” who, themselves vehemently doubting the existence of souls
non-masculine, falsely and foolishly ascribed the theory and its
consequences to Mohammed and the Moslems. And here the Persian proverb
holds good “Harf-i-kufr kufr níst”—to speak of blasphemy is not
blasphemous. Curious readers will consult the article “Woman” in my
Terminal Essay (x. 192), which alone refutes this silly scandal. I never
pretended to understand woman, and, as Balzac says, no wonder man fails
when He who created her was by no means successful. But in The Nights we
meet principally Egyptian maids, matrons and widows, of whose “devilry”
I cannot speak too highly, and in this matter even the pudibund Lane is
as free-spoken as myself. Like the natives of warm, damp and malarious
lowlands and river-valleys adjacent to rugged and healthy uplands, such
as Mazanderán, Sind, Malabar and California, the passions and the sexual
powers of the females greatly exceed those of their males, and hence a
notable development of the crude form of polyandry popularly termed
whoredom. Nor have the women of the Nile-valley improved under our rule.
The last time I visited Cairo a Fellah wench, big, burly and boisterous,
threatened one morning, in a fine new French avenue off the Ezbekiyah
Gardens, to expose her person unless bought off with a piastre. And
generally the condition of womenkind throughout the Nile-valley reminded
me of that frantic outbreak of debauchery which characterised
Afghanistan during its ill-judged occupation by Lord Auckland, and Sind
after the conquest by Sir Charles Napier.

“Captain Burton actually depends upon the respectable and antiquated
D’Herbelot for his information” (p. 184). This silly skit at the two
great French Orientalists, D’Herbelot and Galland, is indeed worthy of a
clique which, puff and struggle however much it will, can never do a
tithe of the good work found in the _Bibliothèque Orientale_. The book
was issued in an unfinished state; in many points it has been
superseded, during its life of a century and a half, by modern studies,
but it is still a mine of facts, and a revised edition would be a boon
to students. Again, I have consulted Prof. Palmer’s work, and the
publications of the Palæographical Society (p. 184); but I nowhere find
proofs that the Naskhi character (vol. i. 128) so long preceded the
Cufic which, amongst vulgar Moslems, is looked upon like black letter in
Europe. But Semitic epigraphy is only now entering upon its second stage
of study, the first being mere tentative ignorance: about 80 years ago
the illustrious De Sacy proved, in a learned memoir, the non-existence
of letters in Arabia before the days of Mohammed. But Palmer,[455]
Halevy, Robertson Smith, Doughty and Euting have changed all that, and
Herr Eduard Glaser of Prague is now bringing back from Sana’á some 390
Sabæan epigraphs—a mass of new-old literature.

And now, having passed in review, and having been much scandalised by
“the extravagant claims of the complete translations over the Standard
Version”—a term which properly applies only to the Editio princeps, 3
vols. 8vo.—the _Edinburgh_ delivers a parting and insolent sting. “The
different versions, however, have each its proper destination—Galland
for the nursery, Lane for the library, Payne for the study, and Burton
for the sewers” (p. 184). I need hardly attempt to precise the ultimate
and well-merited office of his article: the gall in that ink may enable
it hygienically to excel for certain purposes the best of “curl-papers.”
Then our critic passes to the history of the work, concerning which
nothing need be said: it is bodily borrowed from Lane’s Preface (pp.
ix.–xv.), and his Terminal Review (iii. 735–47) with a few unimportant
and uninteresting details taken from Al-Makrízí, and probably from the
studies of the late Rogers Bey (pp. 191–92). Here the cult of the Uncle
and Master emerges most extravagantly. “It was Lane who first brought
out the importance of the ‘Arabian Nights’ as constituting a picture of
Moslem life and manners” (p. 192); thus wholly ignoring the claims of
Galland, to whom and whom alone the honour is due. But almost every
statement concerning the French Professor involves more or less of
lapse. “It was in 1704 that Antoine Galland, sometime of the French
embassy at Constantinople, but then professor at the Collège de France,
presented the world with the contents of an Arab Manuscript which he had
brought from Syria, and which bore the title of ‘The Thousand Nights and
One Night’” (p. 167), thus ignoring the famous _Il a fallu le faire
venir de Syrie_. At that time (1704) Galland was still at Caen in the
employ of “L’intendant Fouquet”; and he brought with him no MS., as he
himself expressly assures us in Preface to his first volume. Here are
two telling mistakes in one page, and in the next (p. 168) we find “As a
professed translation Galland’s ‘Mille et une Nuits’ (N.B. the Frenchman
always wrote _Mille et une Nuit_,)[456] is an audacious fraud.” It
requires something more than “audacity” to offer such misstatement even
in the pages of the _Edinburgh_, and can anything be falser than to
declare “the whole of the last fourteen tales have nothing whatever to
do with the ‘Nights’”?

These _bévues_, which give us the fairest measure for the Reviewer’s
competence to review, are followed (p. 189) by a series of obsolete
assertions. “The highest authority on this point (the date) is the late
Mr. Lane, who states his unqualified conviction that the tales represent
the social life of mediæval Egypt, and he selects a period approaching
the close of the fifteenth century as the probable date of collection,
though some of the tales are, he believes, rather later” (p. 189). Mr.
Lane’s studies upon the subject were painfully perfunctory. He
distinctly states (Preface, p. xii.) that “the work was commenced and
completed by one man,” or a least that “one man completed what another
commenced.” With a marvellous want of critical acumen he could not
distinguish the vast difference of style and diction, treatment and
sentiments which at once strikes every intelligent reader, and which
proves incontestably that many hands took part in the Great Saga-book.
He speaks of “Galland’s very imperfect MS.,” but he never took the
trouble to inspect the three volumes in question which are still in the
Bibliothèque Nationale. And when he opines that “it (the work) was most
probably not commenced earlier than the fifteenth century of our era”
(Pref. p. xiii.) M. Hermann Zotenberg, judging from the style of
writing, would attribute the MS. to the beginning[457] of the xivth
century. The French Savant has printed a specimen page in his _Histoire
d’ ’Alâ al-Dîn_ (p. 6; see my Suppl. vol. iii., Foreword p. ix.); and
now, at the request of sundry experts, he is preparing for publication
other proofs which confirm his opinion. We must correct Lane’s fifteenth
century to thirteenth century—a difference of only 200 years.[458]

After this unhappy excursus the Reviewer proceeds to offer a most
unintelligent estimate of the Great Recueil. “Enchantment” may be “a
constant motive,” but it is wholly secondary and subservient: “the true
and universal theme is love;” “‘all are but the ministers of love’
absolutely subordinate to the great theme” (p. 193). This is the usual
half-truth and whole unfact. Love and war, or rather war and love, form
the bases of all romantic fiction even as they are the motor power of
the myriad forms and fashions of dancing. This may not appear from
Lane’s mangled and mutilated version, which carefully omits all the
tales of chivalry and conquest as the History of Gharíb and his brother
’Ajíb (vol. vi. 257) and that of Omar ibn Al-Nu’umán, “which is, as a
whole, so very unreadable” (p. 172) though by no means more so than our
European romances. But the reverse is the case with the original
composition. Again, “These romantic lovers who will go through fire to
meet each other, are not in themselves interesting characters: it may be
questioned whether they have any character at all” (p. 195). “The story
and not the delineation of character is the essence of the ‘Arabian
Nights’” (p. 196). I can only marvel at the utter want of comprehension
and appreciation with which this critic read what he wrote about: one
hemisphere of his brain must have been otherwise occupied and his mental
cecity makes him a phenomenon even amongst reviewers. He thus ignores
all the lofty morale of the work, its marvellous pathos and humour, its
tender sentiment and fine touches of portraiture, the personal
individuality and the nice discrimination between the manifold heroes
and heroines which combine to make it a book for all time.

The critic ends his article with doing what critics should carefully
avoid to do. After shrewdly displaying his powers of invective and
depreciation he has submitted to his readers a sample of his own
workmanship. He persists in writing “Zobeyda,” “Khalifa,” “Aziza” (p.
194) and “Kahramana” (p. 199) without the terminal aspirate which, in
Arabic if not in Turkish, is a _sine quâ non_ (see my Suppl. vol. v.
419). He preserves the pretentious blunder “The Khalif” (p. 193), a word
which does not exist in Arabic. He translates (p. 181), although I have
taught him to do better, “Hádimu ’l-Lizzáti wa Mufarriku ’l-Jama’át,” by
“Terminator of Delights and Separator of Companies” instead of Destroyer
of delights and Severer of societies. And lastly he pads the end of his
article (pp. 196–199) with five dreary extracts from Lane (i. 372–373)
who can be dull even when translating the Immortal Barber.

The first quotation is so far changed that the peppering of commas
(three to the initial line of the original) disappears to the reader’s
gain, Lane’s textual date (App. 263) is also exchanged for that of the
notes (A.H. 653); and the “æra of Alexander,” A.M. 7320, an absurdity
which has its value in proving the worthlessness of such chronology, is
clean omitted, because Lane used the worthless Bul. Edit. The latinisms
due to Lane show here in force—“Looked for a considerable time”
(Maliyyan = for a long while); “there is an announcement that presenteth
itself to me” (a matter which hath come to my knowledge), and “thou hast
dissipated[459] my mind” (Azhakta rúhí = thou scatterest my wits, in the
Calc. Edit. Saghgharta rúhí = thou belittlest my mind). But even Lane
never wrote “I only required thee to shave my head”—the adverb thus
qualifying, as the ignoramus loves to do, the wrong verb—for “I required
thee only to shave my head.” In the second _échantillon_ we have “a
piece of gold” as equivalent of a quarter-dinar and “for God’s sake”
which certainly does not preserve local colour. In No. 3 we find “‘May
God,’ said I,” etc.; “There is no deity but God! Mohammed is God’s
apostle!”. Here Allah ought invariably to be used, _e.g._ “Mohammed is
the Apostle of Allah,” unless the English name of the Deity be
absolutely required as in “There is no god but _the_ God.” The Moslem’s
“Wa’lláhi” must not be rendered “By God,” a verbal translation and an
absolute non-equivalent; the terms Jehovah, Allah and God and the use of
them involving manifold fine distinctions. If it be true that God made
man, man in his turn made and mismade God who thus becomes a Son of Man
and a mere racial type. I need not trouble my reader with further
notices of these extracts whose sole use is to show the phenomenal
dullness of Lane’s latinised style: I prefer even Torrens (p. 273).

“We have spoken severely with regard to the last” (my version) says the
Reviewer (p. 185) and verily I thank him therefor. Laudari ab illaudato
has never been my ambition. A writer so learned and so disinterested
could hurt my feelings and mortify my pride only by approving me and
praising me. Nor have I any desire to be exalted in the pages of the
_Edinburgh_, so famous for its _incartades_ of old. As Dryden says “he
has done me all the honour that any man can receive from him, which is
to be railed at by him.” I am content to share the vituperation of this
veteran-incapable in company with the poetaster George Gordon who
suffered for “this Lord’s station;” with that “burnisht fly in the pride
of May,” Macaulay; and with the great trio, Darwin, Huxley and Hooker,
who also have been the butts of his bitter and malignant abuse (April
’63 and April ’73). And lastly I have no stomach for sweet words from
the present Editor of the _Edinburgh_, Mr. Henry Reeve, a cross and
cross-grained old man whose surly temper is equalled only by his ignoble
jealousy of another’s success. Let them bedevil the thin-skinned with
their godless ribaldry; for myself _peu m’importe_—my shoulders are
broad enough to bear all their envy, hatred and malice.

During the three years which have elapsed since I first began printing
my book I have not had often to complain of mere gratuitous impertinence
and a single exception deserves some notice. The following lines which I
addressed to _The Academy_ (August 11 ’88) will suffice to lay my case
before my readers:—

THE BESTIAL ELEMENT IN MAN.

“One hesitates to dissent from so great an authority as Sir Richard
Burton on all that relates to the bestial element in man.” So writes
(p. xli., Introduction to the Fables of Pilpay), with uncalled for
impertinence, Mr. Joseph Jacobs, who goes out of his way to be
offensive, and who confesses to having derived all his knowledge of
my views not from “the notorious Terminal Essay of the Nights,” but
from the excellent article by Mr. Thomas Davidson on “Beast-fables,”
in Chambers’s _Cyclopædia_, Edinburgh, 1888. This lofty standpoint
of morality was probably occupied for a reason by a writer who
dedicates “To my dear wife” a volume rich in _anecdotes grivoises_,
and not poor in language the contrary of conventional. However, I
suffer from this Maccabee in good society together with Prof. Max
Müller (pp. xxvi. and xxxiii.), Mr. Clouston (pp. xxxiii. and
xxxv.), Byron (p. xlvi.), Theodor Benfey (p. xlvii.), Mr. W. G.
Rutherford (p. xlviii.), and Bishop Lightfoot (p. xlix.). All this
eminent halfdozen is glanced at, with distinct and several sneers,
in a little volume which, rendered useless by lack of notes and
index, must advertise itself by the _réclame_ of abuse.

As regards the reminiscence of _Homo Darwiniensis_ by _Homo
Sapiens_, doubtless it would _ex hypothesi_ be common to mankind.
Yet to me Africa is the old home of the Beast-fable, because Egypt
was the inventor of the alphabet, the cradle of letters, the
preacher of animism and metempsychosis, and, generally, the source
of all human civilisation.

RICHARD F. BURTON.

And now I must proceed a trifle further a-field and meet

THE CRITIC IN ANGLO-AMERICA.

The _Boston Daily Advertiser_ (Jan. 26 ’86) contains the following
choice _morceau_ which went the round of the Transatlantic Press:—

G. W. S. writes from London to the _New York Tribune_ in regard to
Captain Burton’s notorious translation of the “Arabian Nights.” Of
Captain Burton’s translation of “The Arabian Nights,” two volumes
have now appeared. Before anything had been seen of them, I gave
some account of this scheme, and of the material on which he had
worked, with a statement of the reasons which made all existing
versions unsatisfactory to the student, and incomplete. Captain
Burton saw fit to reprint these desultory paragraphs as a kind of
circular or advertisement on his forthcoming book. He did not think
it necessary to ask leave to do this, nor did I know to what use my
letter had been put till it was too late to object. In any ordinary
case it would have been of no consequence, but Captain Burton’s
version is of such a character that I wish to state the facts, and
to say that when I wrote my letter I had never seen a line of his
translation, and had no idea that what I said of his plans would be
used for the purpose it has been, or for any purpose except to be
printed in your columns. As it is, I am made to seem to give some
sort of approval to a book which I think offensive, and not only
offensive, but grossly and needlessly offensive. If anybody has been
induced to subscribe for it by what I wrote I regret it, and both to
him and to myself I think this explanation due.

Mr. Smalley is the London correspondent of the _New York Tribune_, which
represents Jupiter Tonans in the Western World. He may be unable to
write with independent tone—few Anglo-Americans can afford to confront
the crass and compound ignorance of a “free and independent
majority;”—but even he is not called upon solemnly to state an untruth.
Before using Mr. Smalley’s article as a circular, my representative made
a point of applying to him for permission, as he indeed was bound to do
by the simplest rules of courtesy. Mr. Smalley replied at once,
willingly granting the favour, as I can prove by the note still in my
possession; and presently, frightened by the puny yelping of a few
critical curs at home, he has the effrontery to deny the fact.

In my last volumes I have been materially aided by two Anglo-American
friends MM. Thayer and Cotheal and I have often had cause to thank the
_Tribune_ and the _Herald_ of New York for generously appreciating my
labours. But no gratitude from me is due to the small fry of the
Transatlantic Press which has welcomed me with spiteful little pars.,
mostly borrowed from unfriends in England and mainly touching upon style
and dollars. In the _Mail Express_ of New York (September 7, ’85) I
read, “Captain Richard Burton, traveller and translator, intends to make
all the money that there may be in his translation of the ‘Arabian
Nights.’ * * * If he only fills his list, and collects his money he will
be in easy circumstances for the remainder of his days.” In a subsequent
issue (Oct. 24) readers are told that I have been requested not to
publish the rest of the series under pain of legal prosecution. In the
same paper (October 31, ’85: see also November 7, ’85) I find:—

The authorities have discovered where Capt. Burton’s “Thousand and
One Nights” is being printed, despite the author’s efforts to keep
the place a secret, but are undecided whether to suppress it or to
permit the publication of the coming volumes. Burton’s own
foot-notes are so voluminous that they exceed the letterpress of the
text proper, and make up the bulk of the work.[460] The foulness of
the second volume of his translation places it at a much higher
premium in the market than the first.

The _Tribune_ of Chicago (October 26, ’85) honours me by declaring “It
has been resolved to request Captain Burton not to publish the rest of
his translation of the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ which is really foul
and slipshod as to style.” The _New York Times_ (October 17 and November
9, ’85) merely echoes the spite of its English confrère:—

Capt. Burton’s translation of the “Arabian Nights” bears the imprint
“Benares.” Of course the work never saw Benares. America, France,
Belgium and Germany have all been suggested as the place of
printing, and now the _Pall Mall Gazette_ affirms that the work was
done “north of the Tweed.” There is, without doubt, on British soil,
it says, “a press which year after year produces scores of obscene
publications.”

And the same is the case with the _St. Louis Post Dispatch_ (November
11, ’85); the _Mail Express_ of New York (November 23, ’85); the _Weekly
Post_ of Boston (November 27, ’85) which again revives a false report
and with the _Boston Herald_ (December 16, ’85). The _Chicago Daily
News_ (January 30, ’86) contains a malicious sneer at the Kamashastra
Society. The _American Register_ (Paris, July 25, ’86) informs its
_clientèle_, “If, as is generally supposed, Captain Burton’s book is
printed abroad, the probability is that every copy will on arrival be
confiscated as ‘indecent’ by the Custom-house.” And to curtail a long
list of similar _fadaises_ I will quote the _Bookmart_ (of Pittsburg,
Pa. U.S.A., October, ’86): “Sir Richard Burton’s ‘Nights’ are terribly
in want of the fig-leaf, if anything less than a cabbage-leaf will do,
before they can be fit (fitted?) for family reading. It is not possible
(Is it not possible?) that by the time a household selection has been
sifted out of the great work, everything which makes the originality and
the value—such as it is—of Richard’s series of volumes will have
disappeared, and nothing will remain but his diverting lunacies of
style.” The _Bookmart_, I am informed, is edited by one Halkett Lord, an
unnaturalised Englishman who finds it pays best to abuse everything and
everyone English. And lastly the _Springfield Republican_ (April 5, ’88)
assures me that I have published “fully as much as the (his?) world
wants of the ‘Nights’.”

In the case of “The Nights,” I am exposed to that peculiar Protestant
form of hypocrisy, so different from the Tartuffean original of
Catholicism, and still as mighty a motor force, throughout the length
and breadth of the North-American continent, as within the narrow limits
of England. There also as here it goes hand-in-hand with
“Respectability” to blind judgment and good sense.

A great surgeon of our day said (or is said to have said) in addressing
his students:—“Never forget, gentlemen, that you have to deal with an
ignorant public.” The dictum may fairly be extended from medical
knowledge to general information amongst the many-headed of England; and
the Publisher, when rejecting a too recondite book, will repeat
parrot-fashion, The English public is not a learned body. Equally valid
is the statement in the case of the Anglo-American community which is
still half-educated and very far from being erudite. The vast country
has produced a few men of great and original genius, such as Emerson and
Theodore Parker, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt. Whitman; but the sum total is
as yet too small to leaven the mighty mass which learns its rudiments at
school and college and which finishes its education with the newspaper
and the lecture. When Emerson died it was said that the intellectual
glory of a continent had departed; but Edgar A. Poe, the peculiar poetic
glory of the States, the first Transatlantic who dared be himself and
who disdained to borrow from Schiller and Byron, the outlander poet who,
as Edgar Allan Poé, is now the prime favourite in France, appears to be
still under ban because he separated like Byron from his spouse, and he
led a manner of so-called “Bohemian” life. Indeed the wide diffusion of
letters in the States, that favourite theme for boasting and bragging
over the unenlightened and analphabetic Old World, has tended only to
exaggerate the defective and disagreeable side of a national character
lacking geniality and bristling with prickly individuality. This
disposition of mind, whose favourable and laudable presentations are
love of liberty and self-reliance, began with the beginnings of American
history. The “Fathers,” Pilgrim and Puritan, who left their country for
their country’s good and their own, fled from lay tyranny and clerkly
oppression only to oppress and tyrannise over others in new and distant
homes. Hardly had a century and a half elapsed before the sturdy
colonists, who did not claim freedom but determined to keep it, formally
revolted and fought their way to absolute independence—not, by-the-by, a
feat whereof to be overproud when a whole country rose unanimously
against a handful of troops. The movement, however, reacted powerfully
upon the politics of Europe which stood agape for change, and
undoubtedly precipitated the great French Revolution. As soon as the
States became an empire, their democratic and republican institutions at
once attracted hosts of emigrants from the Old World, thus peopling the
land with a selection of species: the active and the adventurous, the
malcontent and the malefactor readily expatriate themselves while the
_pauvre diable_ remains at home. The potato-famine in Ireland (1848)
gave an overwhelming impetus to the exode of a race which had never
known a racial baptism; and, lastly, the Germans flying from the
conscription, the blood-tax of the Fatherland, carried with them over
the ocean a transcendentalism which has engendered the wildest theories
of socialism and communism. And the emigration process still continues.
Whole regions, like the rugged Bocche di Cattaro in Dalmatia and pauper
Iceland, are becoming depopulated: to me the wonder is that a poor man
ever consents to live out of America or a rich man to live in it.

The result of such selection has been two-fold. The first appears in a
splendid self-esteem, a complacency, a confidence which passes all
bounds of the golden mean. “I am engrossed in calmly contemplating the
grandeur of my native country and her miraculous growth,” writes to me
an old literary friend. The feeling normally breaks out in the grossest
laudation of everything American. The ultra-provincial twang which we
still hear amongst the servant-classes of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and
which is so notable in the _nouveau riche_, modified by traditional
nasalisation and, as in Australia, by climatic influences, is American
and, therefore, the purest of English utterances. The obsolete
vocabulary—often obsolete in England without just reason—contrasting
with a modern disfigured etymology which strips vocables of their
genealogy and history, is American and _ergò_ admirably progressive. The
spurious facetiousness which deals mainly in mere jargon, words
ill-spelt and worse pronounced; in bizarre contrast of ideas, and in
ultra-Rabelaisian exaggeration, is American wit and humour—therefore
unsurpassable. The Newspaper Press, that great reflector of
nationalities, that prime expression of popular taste, too often of an
_écœurant_ vulgarity, personal beyond all bounds of common decency,
sensational as a transpontine drama, is American; America is the
greatest nation upon earth’s face; _ergò_ the daily sheet is setting-up
the standard of English speech and forming the language of the Future,
good and too good for all the world. This low standard of the Press is
the more regretable as its exalted duty is at present to solve the
highest problems social and industrial, such as co-operation in labour,
the development of fisheries, direct taxation versus indirect and a host
of enigmas which the young world, uncumbered by the burdens of the Old
World, alone shall unravel.

The second result is still more prejudicial and perilous. This is the
glorification of mediocrity, of the average man and woman whose low
standard must be a norm to statesman and publicist. Such cult of the
common and the ignoble is the more prejudicial because it “wars against
all distinction and against the sense of elevation to be gained by
respecting and admiring superiority.” Its characteristic predominance in
a race which, true to its Anglo-Saxon origin, bases and builds the
strongest opinions upon the weakest foundations, hinders the higher
Avatars of genius and interferes with the “chief duty of a nation which
is to produce great men.” It accounts for the ever-incroaching reign of
women in literature—meaning as a rule cheap work and second-rate. And
the main lack is not so much the “thrill of awe,” which Goethe
pronounces to be the best thing humanity possesses, but that discipline
of respect, that sense of loyalty, not in its confined meaning of
attachment to royalty, but in a far higher and nobler signification, the
recognising and welcoming elevation and distinction whatever be the
guise they may assume. “The soul lives by admiration and hope and love.”

And here we see the shady side of the educational process, the diffusion
of elementary and superficial knowledge, of the veneer and polish which
mask, until chipped-off, the raw and unpolished material lying hidden
beneath them. A little learning is a dangerous thing because it knows
all and consequently it stands in the way of learning more or much.
Hence it is sorely impatient of novelty, of improvement, of originality.
It is intolerant of contradiction, irritable, thin-skinned, and
impatient of criticism, of a word spoken against it. It is chargeable
with the Law of Copyright, which is not only legalised plunder of the
foreigner, but is unfair, unjust and ungenerous to native talent for the
exclusive benefit of the short-sighted many-headed. I am far from
charging the United States with the abomination called “International
Copyright;” the English publisher is as sturdy an enemy to “protection”
as the Transatlantic statesman; but we expect better things from a new
people which enjoys the heritage of European civilisation without the
sufferings accompanying the winning of it. This mediocrity has the
furious, unpardoning hatred of _l’amour propre offensé_. Even a word in
favour of my old friends the Mormons is an unpardonable offence: the
dwarfish and dwarfing demon “Respectability” has made their barbarous
treatment a burning shame to a so-called “free” country: they are
subjected to slights and wrongs only for practising polygamy, an
institution never condemned by Christ or the early Christians. The calm
and dispassionate judgments of Sir Lepel Griffith and the late Matthew
Arnold, who ventured to state, in guarded language, that the boasted
civilisation of the United States was not quite perfect, resulted in the
former being called a snob and the latter a liar. English stolidity
would only have smiled at the criticism even had it been couched in the
language of _persiflage_. And when M. Max O’Rell traverses the
statements of the two Englishmen and exaggerates American civilisation,
we must bear in mind first that _la vulgarité ne se traduit pas_, and
secondly, that the foes of our foemen are our friends. Woe be to the man
who refuses to fall down and do worship before that brazen-faced idol
(_Eidolon Novi Mundi_), Public Opinion in the States; unless, indeed,
his name be Brown and he hail from Briggsville.

Some years ago I proposed to write a paper upon the reflex action of
Anglo-America upon England, using as a base the last edition of Mrs.
Trollope, who was compelled to confess that almost every peculiarity
which she had abused in her first issue had become naturalised at home.
Yankee cuteness has already displaced in a marvellous way old English
rectitude and plain-dealing; gambling on the Stock Exchange, cornering,
booms and trusts have invaded the trading-classes from merchant-princes
to shopkeepers and threaten, at their actual rate of progress, not to
leave us an honest man. But now the student’s attention will be called
to the great and ever-growing influence of the New World upon the Old,
and notably upon Europe. Some 50,000 Americans annually visit the
continent, they are rapidly becoming the most important item of the
floating population, and in a few years they will number 500,000.
Meanwhile they are revolutionising all the old institutions; they are
abolishing the classical cicerone whose occupation is gone amongst a
herd which wants only to see streets and people: they greatly increase
the cost of travelling; they pay dollars in lieu of francs, and they are
satisfied with inferior treatment at superior prices:—hence the American
hotel abroad is carefully shunned by Englishmen and natives. At home the
“well-to-do-class” began by regarding their kinsmen d’outre mer with
contemptuous dislike; then they looked upon them as a country squire
would regard a junior branch which has emigrated and has thriven by
emigration; and now they are welcomed in Society because they amuse and
startle and stir up the duller depths. But however warm may be private
friendship between Englishmen and Anglo-Americans there is no public
sympathy nor is any to be expected from the present generation. “New
England does not understand Old England and never will,” the reverse
being equally the fact. “The Millennium must come” says Darwin (ii. 387)
“before nations love each other:” I add that first _Homo alalus_ seu
_Pithecanthropus_ must become _Homo Sapiens_ and cast off his moral
slough—egoism and ignorance. Mr. Cleveland, in order to efface the foul
stigma of being the “English President,” found it necessary to adopt the
strongest measures in the matter of “Fisheries;” and the “Irish vote”
must quadrennially be bought at the grave risk of national
complications. Despite the much-bewritten “brotherhood of the two great
English-speaking races of the world,” the old leaven of cousinly
ill-feeling, the jealousy which embitters the Pole against his Russian
congener, is still rampant. Uncle Sam actively dislikes John Bull and
dispraises England. An Anglo-American who has lived years amongst us and
in private intimacy must, when he returns home, speak disparagingly of
the old country unless he can afford the expensive luxury of telling
unpopular truths and of affronting Demos, the hydraheaded.

But there are even now signs of better things in the Great Republic. Mr.
James R. Lowell, an authority (if there be any) upon the subject of
Democracy, after displaying its fine points and favourable aspects in
his addresses to English audiences, has at length had the uncommon
courage to discuss family affairs, and to teach Boston and New York what
“weaknesses and perils there may be in the practical working of a system
never before set in motion under such favourable circumstances, nor on
so grand a scale.” He is emboldened to say firmly and aloud, despite the
storming of false and hollow self-praise, that American civilisation, so
strong on the material side, is sadly wanting on the other, and still
lacks much to make it morally acceptable or satisfactory. And we have
home truths concerning that Fool’s Paradise the glorification of the
“average man.” Every citizen of the world must wish full success to the
“Independents” (in politics) who sit at the feet of so wise and
patriotic a teacher.

And here I feel myself bound to offer some explanation concerning

THE HOUSEHOLD EDITION OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS,

lest any subscriber charge me, after contracting not to issue or to
allow the issue of a cheaper form, with the sharp practice which may be
styled

To keep the word of promise to our ear
And break it to our hope.

Hardly had my third volume of “The Nights” (proper) been issued to my
patrons when a benevolent subscriber, whose name I am bound to conceal,
apprised me that he had personal and precise information concerning a
project to pirate the production. England and Anglo-America, be it
observed, are the only self-styled civilised countries in the world
where an author’s brain-work is not held to be his private property: his
book is simply no book unless published and entered, after a cost of
seven presentation copies, at “Stationers’ Hall”—its only ægis. France,
Italy and Austria treat such volumes as private MSS.: here any dishonest
house may reproduce them in replica without the slightest regard to the
writer’s rightful rights. In my case this act of robbery was proposed by
a German publisher domiciled in London, supported by a Frenchman equally
industrious, who practises in Paris, and of whose sharp doings in
money-matters not a few Englishmen have had ample reason bitterly to
complain. This _par nobile_ agreed to print in partnership an issue of
handier form and easier price than my edition, and their plan if carried
out would have seriously damaged the property of my subscribers: the
series which cost them £10 10s. would have fallen probably to one-half
value. The two pirates met by agreement in Paris, where the design was
duly discussed and determined; but, fortunately for me, an unexpected
obstacle barred the way. The London solicitor, professionally consulted
by the dishonest firm, gave his opinion that such a work publicly issued
would be a boon to the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and would
not escape the unsavoury attentions of old Father Antic—the Law.

But, although these two men were deterred by probable consequences, a
bolder spirit might make light of them. I had never intended to go
beyond my original project; that is, of printing one thousand copies and
no more; nor did I believe that any cunning of disguise could make “The
Nights” presentable in conventionally decent society. It was, however,
represented to me by many whose opinions I valued that thus and thus
only the author and his subscribers could be protected from impudent
fraud, and finally an unwilling consent was the result.

Mr. Justin Huntley McCarthy, a name well known in the annals of
contemporary literature, undertook the task of converting the grand old
barbarian into a family man to be received by the “best circles.” His
proofs, after due expurgation, were passed on to my wife, who I may say
has never read the original, and she struck out all that appeared to her
over-free, under the promise that no mother should hesitate in allowing
the book to her daughters. It would, perhaps, surprise certain “modest
gentlemen” and blatantly virtuous reviewers that the amount of raw
material excised from the text and the notes, chiefly addressed to
anthropologists and Orientalists, amounts to only 215 pages out of a
grand total numbering 3,156.

Between 1886 and 1888 appeared the revision in six pretty volumes,
bearing emblematic colours, virgin-white adorned with the golden lilies
of St. Joseph and the “chaste crescent of the young moon.” The price
also was reduced to the lowest (£3 3s.) under the idea that the work
would be welcome if not to families at any rate to libraries and
reading-rooms, for whose benefit the older translations are still being
reproduced. But the flattering tale of Hope again proved to be a snare
and a delusion; I had once more dispensed with the services of Mr.
Middleman, the publisher, and he naturally refused to aid and abet the
dangerous innovation. The hint went abroad that the book belonged to the
category which has borrowed a name from the ingenious Mr. Bowdler, and
vainly half a century of reviewers spoke bravely in its praise. The
public would have none of it: even innocent girlhood tossed aside the
chaste volumes in utter contempt, and would not condescend to aught save
the thing, the whole thing, and nothing but the thing, unexpurgated and
uncastrated. The result was an unexpected and unpleasant study of modern
taste in highly respectable England. And the fact remains that of an
edition which began with a thousand copies only 457 were sold in the
course of two years. Next time I shall see my way more clearly to suit
the peculiar tastes and prepossessions of the reading world at home.

Before dismissing the subject of the Household Edition, I would offer a
few words of explanation on the part of the Editress. While touching-up
and trimming the somewhat hurried work of our friend, Mr. McCarthy, she
was compelled to accompany me abroad, and to nurse me through a
dangerous illness, which left but little time for the heavy claims of
business. Unable to superintend, with the care required, the issue of
her six volumes she entrusted the task to two agents in whose good will
and experience she had and still has the fullest confidence; but the
results were sundry letters of appeal and indignation from subscribers
touching matters wholly unknown and unintelligible to her. If any
mistakes have been made in matters of detail she begs to express her
sincerest regret, and to assure those aggrieved that nothing was further
from her intention than to show discourtesy where she felt cordial
gratitude was due.

* * * * *

Nothing now remains for me but the pleasant task of naming the many
friends and assistants to whom this sixteenth and last volume has been
inscribed. The late Reverend G. Percy Badger strongly objected to the
literal translation of “The Nights” (_The Academy_, December 8, ’81);
not the less, however, he assisted me in its philology with all
readiness. Dr. F. Grenfell Baker lent me ready and valuable aid in the
mechanical part of my hard labour. Mr. James F. Blumhardt, a practical
Orientalist and teacher of the Prakrit dialects at Cambridge, englished
for me the eight Gallandian tales (Foreword, Supp. vol. iii.) from the
various Hindostan versions. To Mr. William H. Chandler, of Pembroke
College, Oxford, I have expressed (Supp. vol. iii.) the obligations due
to a kind and generous friend: his experiments with photography will
serve to reconcile the churlishness and retrograde legislation of the
great Oxford Library with the manners and customs of more civilised
peoples. Mr. W. A. Clouston, whose degree is high in “Storiology,”
supplied my second and third Supplemental volumes with valuable
analogues and variants. Mr. Alexander J. Cotheal, Consul-General for
Nicaragua at New York, sent a valuable MS. to me across the water, and
was persuaded to translate, for my sixth Supplemental volume, a novel
version of the “Tale of Attáf.” Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the British Museum,
amongst other favours kindly revised the Foreword of my sixth volume.
Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, an Orientalist of the modern and realistic school,
who is not deterred by literal translation, permitted me to print his
version of the Turkish Zayn al-Asnám (Supp. vol. iii.) and translations
of three tales which he judged inexpedient to publish (Supp. vol. iv.).
M. O. Houdas, _Professeur d’Arabe Vulgaire à l’école des langues
Orientales vivantes_, Paris, copied for me the Arabic text of Zayn
al-Asnám and the whole MS. used by MM. Chavis and Cazotte: he also
obligingly assisted me in overcoming the various difficulties of a
crabbed and imperfect text. My friend, Mr. W. F. Kirby appended to
volume x. 471 of “The Nights” (proper) his most valuable contributions
to the bibliology of the work with its various imitations and a table
showing the contents of the principal editions and translations of “The
Nights”: he also enriched my Supplemental volumes v. and vi. with his
excellent annotations. Mr. Kingsbury (and Notcutt) photographed for my
use 400 and odd pages of the Wortley-Montague MS., and proved how easy
it was to produce a perfect fac simile of the whole. Mr. George Lewis
gave me the soundest advice touching legal matters and Mr. Philip M.
Justice was induced to take an active interest in the “Household
Edition.” The eminent Orientalist, Dr. Pertsch, Librarian of the
Grand-Ducal Collection, Saxe-Gotha, in lively contrast to my countrymen
of the Bodleian, offered to send me the two volumes of a valuable MS.
containing the most detailed texts of Judar and his brethren (vol. vi.
213) and of Zahir and his son Ali. Dr. Reinhold Rost, Librarian of the
Indian Office, took much trouble about the W. M. MS. but all in vain.
Mr. Alexander W. Thayer, of Trieste, who has studied for years the
subject of the so-called Jewish “Exodus,” obliged me with a valuable
note detailing his original views. His Excellency Yacoub Artin Pasha,
Minister of Public Instruction, Cairo, a friend of many years standing,
procured for me the decorations in the Cufic, Naskhí and other
characters, which add to much of novelty and ornament to the outer
semblance of my sixteen volumes. Mr. Hermann Zotenberg, Keeper of
Oriental MS. at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, lent me his own
transcription of the “Alaeddin,” and generously supplied me with exact
bibliographical notes and measurements of sundry tomes in that admirable
collection.

I am also deeply indebted to Mrs. Victoria L. Maylor, of Trieste, who,
during the past three years (1885–1888) had the energy and perseverance
to copy for me sixteen bulky volumes written in a “running-hand,”
concerning which the less said the better. And, lastly, I must
acknowledge peculiar obligations to my Shaykh, Dr. Steingass, Ph. D.
This well-known Arabist not only assisted me in passing the whole work
through the press, he also added a valuable treatise on Arabic Prosody
(x. 270–300) with indexes of various kinds, and finally he supervised
the MSS. of the Supplemental volumes and enriched the last three, which
were translated under peculiar difficulties in unalphabetic lands, with
the results of his wide reading and lexicographical experience.

* * * * *

And now, Alhamdolillah, the play is ended, and while the curtain drops,
I take the final liberty of addressing my kindly and appreciative
audience in the following words, borrowed from a Persian brother of the
pen:—

Now hear my hope from men of liberal mind,
Faults, that indulgence crave, shall seek and find;
For whose blames and of despite decries,
Is wight right witless, clean reverse of wise.

To which let me add the following gentle reminder from Ibn Khaldún:—

All that we can we do, and who ne’er swerves
From best endeavour much of praise deserves.

FAREWELL!

RICHARD F. BURTON.

UNITED SERVICE CLUB,
_September 30, ’88_.

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS

MORNING ADVERTISER, _September 15th, 1885_.

As the holiday season draws to a close the publishers’ announcements of
“new books” fill column after column of the organs chosen from these
special _communiqués_, But there is one work which is not entered in
these lists, though for years scholars, and many people who are not
scholars, have been looking for it with an eagerness which has left far
behind the ordinary curiosity which is bestowed on the greatest of
contributions to current literature. And to-day the chosen few who are
in possession of the volume in question are examining it with an
interest proportionate to the long toil which has been bestowed on its
preparation. We refer to Captain Burton’s translation of _The Arabian
Nights Entertainments_, now entitled _The Book of The Thousand Nights
and a Night_, of which the first tome has just been issued. * * * *
Captain Burton scorns any namby-pambyism. In the Arabic a spade is
usually called a spade, and in the latest English translation it is
never designated an agricultural implement. Moreover the endless
foot-notes which the editor appends speak with much freedom of many
things usually avoided as themes for conversation in polite society,
though they throw a flood of light on hundreds of features of Oriental
life on which, since travellers have been compelled to write for
“refined” audiences, the student has failed to be informed. * * * * * *
Yet, admitting that _The Nights_ are often coarse and indelicate, and
sometimes even gross, it is a mistake to suppose that they are
demoralising in the same way that a French novel of the Zola type is, or
might be. Indeed, what we would call its impropriety is only a
reflection of the _naïve_ freedom with which talk is to this day carried
on in the family circles of the East. They see no harm in what we should
regard as indecency. So that when Captain Burton prefaces his
unbowdlerised version with the Arab proverb, “To the pure in heart all
things are pure,” he presents perhaps the best defence he could against
the attack which it is quite possible may be made on him for devoting
many years of his life to what he terms a “a labour of love.” * * *
Captain Burton, thirty-three years ago, went in the disguise of an
Indian pilgrim to Mecca and Al-Medinah, and no one capable of giving the
world the result of his experience has so minute, so exhaustive a
knowledge of Arab and Oriental life generally. Hence the work now
begun—only a limited number of students can ever see—is simply priceless
to any one who concerns himself with such subjects, and may be regarded
as marking an era in the annals of Oriental translation.

ST. JAMES’ GAZETTE, _September 12th, 1885_.

One of the most important translations to which a great English scholar
has ever devoted himself is now in the press. For three decades Captain
Burton has been more or less engaged on his translation of the _Arabian
Nights_, the latest of the many versions of that extraordinary story
which has been made into English, the only one at all worthy of a great
original.

WHITEHALL REVIEW, _September 17th, 1885_.

The publication of the first volume of Captain Burton’s translation of
the _Alif Laïla_, enriches the world of Oriental investigation with a
monument of labour and scholarship and of research. The book is
advisedly, and even inevitably, printed for private circulation, and is
intended, as Captain Burton says in his preface, only for the eyes of
such persons as are seriously students of Oriental life and manners, and
are desirous of making a more complete acquaintance with the great
masterpieces of Eastern literature than has hitherto been possible,
except to finished Arabic scholars. * * * * * In the name of the whole
world of Oriental scholarship, we offer our heartfelt thanks and
congratulations to Captain Burton upon the appearance of this first
volume: and we look forward with the keenest interest for its
successors.

HOME NEWS, _September 18th, 1885_.

Captain Burton has begun to issue the volumes of his subscription
translation of the _Arabian Nights_, and its fortunate possessors will
now be able to realize the full flavour of Oriental feeling. They will
now have the great storehouse of Eastern folk-lore opened to them, and
Captain Burton’s minute acquaintance with Eastern life makes his
comments invaluable. In this respect, as well as in the freeness of the
translation, the version will be distinguished from its many
predecessors. Captain Burton’s preface, it may be observed, bears traces
of soreness at official neglect. Indeed it seems curious that his
services could not have been utilised in the Soudan, when the want of
competent Arabic scholars was so severely felt.

FIGARO, _September 19th, 1885_.

A laboured attempt is made in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ to show that the
publication of the first volume of Captain Burton’s edition of the
_Arabian Nights_ is a greater outrage on decency than that of the
revelations of Mr. Stead and his associates. The comparison is monstrous
and absurd. Captain Burton’s great work is only intended for men and for
students who desire to acquire a masterly knowledge of Egyptian Arabic;
subscribers only can obtain copies, and but a thousand have been
printed.

* * * * *

I am glad to be able to testify to the ability with which Captain Burton
has discharged the first portion of his Herculean task. The second
volume will be looked forward to with much interest, though I hope
attention will be paid to the translator’s appeal. Captain Burton says
that nothing could be more repugnant to his feelings than the idea of
these pages being placed in any other hands than the class for whose
especial use the book has been prepared.

NOTTINGHAM JOURNAL, _September 19th, 1885_.

But to scholars and men who have sufficient love of the soul of these
sweet stories to discern the form in its true proportions, the new
edition will be welcome. From an Oriental point of view the work is
masterly to a degree. The quatrains and couplets, reading like verses
from Elizabethan mantels, and forming a perfect rosary of Eastern lore,
the constant succession of brilliant pictures, and the pleasure of
meeting again our dear old friend Shahrázád, all these combine to give a
unique charm and interest to this “perfect expositor of the mediæval
Moslem mind.”

DAILY EXCHANGE, _September 19th, 1885_.

The first volume of Captain Burton’s _Thousand Nights and a Night_,
printed at Benares by the Kamashastra Society for subscribers only, has
been delivered to the latter. If the other nine portions equal the
first, English literature will be the richer by a work the like of which
is rare. The English is strong and vitally idiomatic. It is the English
of Shakespeare and Jeremy Taylor, the English of Robert Browning, with a
curiously varied admixture of modern colloquial phraseology. I confess
that I was not prepared, familiar as I was with Captain Burton’s other
work, to find so perfect a command of clear and vigorous style on the
part of the great traveller and Oriental scholar. Mrs. Grundy would have
protested against the public issue of _The Book of a Thousand Nights and
a Night_, and Mrs. Grundy would have had reason as well as propriety on
her side; but I must say that the tone of the work is singularly robust
and healthy. What a treasure-house Captain Burton has opened! Until he
turned the key we knew little or nothing of _The Nights_, the Villon
Society’s issue notwithstanding, and the notes which he has added to the
work have a value which is simply unique.

CONTINENTAL TIMES, _September 26th, 1885_.

I have been favoured, if that is the right word to use, with a sight of
Captain Burton’s new translation of the _Arabian Nights_. It is a
sumptuous work, in an exquisite binding of gold and black, with broad
pages and fine large type, such an edition as a scholar and a book lover
finds after his own heart. Moreover, the translation is a wonderful bit
of English. Captain Burton has by a fanciful, but on the whole, true
impulse, chosen to tell the story in old English, not the English of
Chaucer, but of a sufficiently archaic type. The choice of an idiom
which in some degree recalls the air of the Canterbury Tales and the
Decameron—to say nothing of Pantagruel and Panurge—softens the grossness
of some of the stories, and gives an additionally quaint charm to the
others. No one, however, will recognise at first sight the book of his
childhood. The solemn invocation of Allah on the first page, the
spelling of Vizier as Wazir, and of genie as Jinni, as well as the
terrible frankness of some of the tales, all seem to transport us into
another land than that through which we floated on the “silken sale of
infancy.” On the whole, Captain Burton is right in strictly confining
his work to the library and the student. The reading of it by the public
generally can only spoil an immortal work for our boys and girls.

MONTREAL DAILY HERALD, _September 21st, 1885_.

Captain Burton has translated the _Arabian Nights_, but will only
publish it for private distribution. A correspondent says that “all
these years we have been reading Lane’s turgid emasculated selections we
have been kept in the dark as to their singular beauty and vitally human
strength. I have been amazed at the _Nights_ as englished by Captain
Burton in strong, vital, picturesque prose. The stories, instead of
being pieces of wild extravagance, unreal and theatrically tinselly,
with the limelight instead of daylight, and paste instead of diamonds,
are full of abounding life.”

THE BAT, _September 29th, 1885_.

Captain Burton, in his way, renders a gigantic service to all students
of literature who are not profound Orientalists, and to many who are, by
giving them a literal, honest, and accurate translation of the _Arabian
Nights_. * * * Some idiotic persons here and there, and certain journals
which have earned an infamous notoriety by doing their best to deprave
public morals, have raised a foolish clamour against Captain Burton and
his translation. Journalists, who had no objection to pandering to the
worst tastes of humanity at a penny a copy, are suddenly inspired by
much righteous indignation at a privately printed work which costs a
guinea a volume, and in which the manners, the customs, and the language
of the East are boldly represented as they were and as they are. Such
critics Captain Burton, and the readers of Captain Burton’s translation,
can afford to despise and to ignore. _The Arabian Nights Entertainment_
has been the playbook of generations, the delight of the nursery and the
school-room for nearly two hundred years. Now it is high time that
scholars and students should be allowed to know what the Arabian Nights
Entertainment really is. Lovers of Arabic have long since known
something of the truth concerning the Alif Laila. It need no Burton, it
needed no Payne, to tell the masters of Oriental languages that _The
Thousand Nights and a Night_ was a very different thing from what either
Galland or Lane had made it out to be. Mr. Payne, in his way, rendered
no slight service, Captain Burton, in his way, renders a gigantic
service to all students of literature who are not profound Orientalists,
and to many who are, by giving them a literal, honest, and accurate
translation of the ‘_Arabian Nights_.’ * * * The blatant buffoons who
have spoken of Captain Burton’s work indifferently only show their own
ignorance of the literature of the East. Captain Burton’s work is well
worth the price he charges for it to students of Eastern literatures and
Eastern manners, and Eastern customs; but the misguided lunatic who
invests in it in the hope of getting hold of a good thing, in the
Holywell Street sense of the term, will find indeed that the fool and
his money are soon parted.

THE ACADEMY, _October 3rd, 1885_.

As Capt. Richard F. Burton’s translation of _The Thousand and One
Nights_ is likely for several reasons to awaken a literary controversy,
the following letter from Mr. John Addington Symonds in the _Academy_ of
October 3, will be read with interest. The subject upon which it touches
is an important one, and one which must be regarded from a scholarly as
well as a moral point of view. Mr. Symonds writes like the scholar that
he is; we shall soon see how the moralists write, and if they say
anything to the point we shall copy it:—

AM HOF, DAVOS PLATZ, Switzerland, _September 27th, 1885_.

“There is an outcry in some quarters against Capt. Burton’s
translation of the _Arabian Nights_. Only one volume of the work has
reached me, and I have not as yet read the whole of it. Of the
translator’s notes I will not speak, the present sample being
clearly insufficient to judge by; but I wish to record a protest
against the hypocrisy which condemns his text. When we invite our
youth to read an unexpurgated Bible (in Hebrew and Greek, or in the
authorised version), an unexpurgated Aristophanes, an unexpurgated
Juvenal, an unexpurgated Boccaccio, an unexpurgated Rabelais, an
unexpurgated collection of Elizabethan dramatists, including
Shakespeare, and an unexpurgated Plato (in Greek or in Prof.
Jowett’s English version), it is surely inconsistent to exclude the
unexpurgated _Arabian Nights_ whether in the original or in any
English version, from the studies of a nation who rule India and
administer Egypt.

“The qualities of Capt. Burton’s translation are similar to those of
his previous literary works, and the defects of those qualities are
also similar. Commanding a vast and miscellaneous vocabulary, he
takes such pleasure in the use of it that sometimes he transgresses
the unwritten laws of artistic harmony. From the point of view of
language, I hold that he is too eager to seize the _mot propre_ of
his author, and to render that by any equivalent which comes to hand
from field or fallow, waste or warren, hill or hedgerow, in our
vernacular. Therefore, as I think, we find some coarse passages of
the _Arabian Nights_ rendered with unnecessary crudity, and some
poetic passages marred by archaisms and provincialisms. But I am at
a loss to perceive how Burton’s method of translation should be less
applicable to the _Arabian Nights_ than to the _Lusiad_. So far as,
I can judge, it is better suited to the _naïveté_ combined with
stylistic subtlety of the former than to the smooth humanistic
elegancies of the latter.

“This, however, is a minor point. The real question is whether a
word for word version of the _Arabian Nights_, executed with
peculiar literary vigor, exact scholarship, and rare insight into
Oriental modes of thought and feeling, can under any shadow of
pretence be classed with ‘the garbage of the brothels.’ In the lack
of lucidity, which is supposed to distinguish English folk, our
middle-class _censores morum_ strain at the gnat of a privately
circulated translation of an Arabic classic, while they daily
swallow the camel of higher education based upon minute study of
Greek and Latin literature. When English versions of Theocritus and
Ovid, of Plato’s _Phaedrus_ and the _Ecclesiazusae_, now within the
reach of every school-boy, have been suppressed, then and not till
then can a “plain and literal” rendering of the _Arabian Nights_ be
denied with any colour of consistency to adult readers. I am far
from saying that there are not valid reasons for thus dealing with
Hellenic and Graeco-Roman and Oriental literature in its totality.
But let folk reckon what Anglo-Saxon Puritanism logically involves.
If they desire an Anglo-Saxon Index Librorum Prohibitorum, let them
equitably and consistently apply their principles of inquisitorial
scrutiny to every branch of human culture.

“JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.”

THE LINCOLN GAZETTE, _Saturday, October 10, 1885_.

_THOUSAND NIGHTS AND A NIGHT._
FIRST NOTICE.

Everything comes to him who waits—even the long-promised,
eagerly-expected “Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights,”
by Richard F. Burton. It is a whole quarter of a century since this
translation of one of the most famous books of the world was
contemplated, and we are told it is the natural outcome of the
well-known Pilgrimage to Medinah and Mecca. Of Captain Burton’s fitness
for the task who can doubt. It was during that celebrated journey to the
tomb of the Prophet that he proved himself to be an Arab—indeed, he
says, in a previous state of existence he was a Bedouin. Did he not for
months at a stretch lead the life of a Son of the Faithful, eat, drink,
sleep, dress, speak, pray like his brother devotees, the sharpest eyes
failing to pierce his disguise? He knows the ways of Eastern men—and
women—as he does the society of London or Trieste. How completely at
home he is with his adopted brethren he showed at Cairo, when, to the
amazement of some English friends who were looking on at the noisy
devotions of some “howling” Dervishes, he suddenly joined the shouting,
gesticulating circle, and behaved as if to the manner born. He has
qualified as a “Howler,” he holds a diploma as a master Dervish (see
vol. iii. of his “Pilgrimage”), and he can initiate disciples. Clearly,
to use a phrase of Arabian story, it was decreed by Allah from the
beginning, and fate and fortune have arranged, that Captain Burton
should be the one of all others to confer upon his countrymen the boon
of the genuine unsophisticated _Thousand Nights and a Night_. In the
whole of our literature no book is more widely known. It is spread
broadcast like the Bible, Bunyan and Shakespeare; yet although it is in
every house, and every soul in the kingdom knows something about it, yet
nobody knows it as it really exists. We have only had what translators
have chosen to give—selected, diluted and abridged transcripts. And of
late some so-called “original” books have been published containing
minor tales purloined bodily from the _Nights_. There have been many
versions, beginning with the beautiful Augustan French example of
Professor Galland, but all have failed, or rather no one has attempted,
to reproduce the great Oriental masterpiece. Judged by the number of
editions—a most fallacious test of merit—Lane’s three volumes, on the
whole, have found greatest favour with the British public. He was too
timid to give to the world the full benefit of his studies, and he kept
a drawing-room audience in view. He was careful to adapt his picture to
the English standard of propriety, and his suppressions and omissions
are on a wholesale scale. Lord Byron said of English novelists that they
give a full length of courtship and but a bust of marriage. Mr. Lane
thought it expedient draw a tight veil, to tell only half the truth—in
short he stops at the bust. Moreover he destroyed all the _mécanique_ of
his original, and cruelly altered the form. He did away with the
charming and dramatic framework of the tales, turned the _Arabian
Nights_ into the Arabian Chapters, and too often into the Arabian Notes.
The first sole and complete translation was furnished recently by Mr.
John Payne, whose “Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night” is
dedicated to Captain Burton. Mr. Payne printed 500 copies for private
circulation, a mere drop in the ocean. His edition was instantly
absorbed, clutched with avidity, and is unprocurable—unless, as has
happened several times, a stray copy finds its way into the market, and
is snatched up at a fancy price. It so happened that Mr. Payne and
Captain Burton applied themselves to the same task quite unconscious of
each other’s labour. They were running on the same rails like Adams and
Leverrier, the joint discoverers of Neptune, or like Darwin and Wallace,
who simultaneously evolved the theory of Natural Selection. Hearing of a
competitor, Captain Burton, who was travelling to the Gold Coast, he
freely offered his fellow worker precedence. Mr. Payne’s production
served to whet curiosity, and the young scholars of the day applied
themselves to Arabic in order to equip their minds, and to be in a more
blissful state of preparation for the triumphant edition to follow.
Captain Burton’s first volume in sombre black and dazzling gold—the
livery of the Abbasides—made its appearance three weeks ago, and divided
attention with the newly-discovered Star. It is the first volume of ten,
the set issued solely to subscribers. And already, as in the case of Mr.
Payne’s edition, there has been a scramble to secure it, and it is no
longer to be had for love or money. The fact is, it fills a void, the
world has been waiting for this _chef d’œuvre_, and all lovers of the
_Arabian Nights_ wonder how they have got on without it. We must break
off from remarks to give some idea of the originality of the style, of
the incomparable way in which the very essence and life of the East is
breathed into simple straightforward Anglo-Saxon English. In certain of
Captain Burton’s books he borrows words from all languages, there are
not enough for his use, and he is driven to coin them. But in the
character of Arabian story-teller he is simplicity itself, and whilst
avoiding words of length, he introduces just enough of antique phrase as
gives a bygone and poetic flavour. The most exacting and the most
fastidious will be satisfied at the felicitous handling of immortal
themes. A delightful characteristic is the division of the text into
Nights. Lane and Payne, for peculiar reasons of their own, have both
omitted to mark the breaks in the recital. But now for the first time
the thread on which all is strung is clearly kept in view, and justice
is done to the long drawn out episode of the young wife who saves her
own neck and averts a wholesale massacre of maidens by her round of
stories within stories. This is how Shahrazad begins her discourses:—

“But when it was midnight Shahrazad awoke and signalled to her sister
Dunyazad, who sat up and said, ’Allah upon thee, O my sister, recite to
us some new story, delightsome and delectable, wherewith to while away
the waking hours of our latter night.’ ‘With joy and goodly gree,’
answered Shahrazad, ‘if this pious and auspicious King permit me.’ ‘Tell
on,’ quoth the King, who chanced to be sleepless and restless, and
therefore was pleased with the prospect of hearing her story. So
Shahrazad rejoiced; and thus on the first night of the Thousand Nights
and a Night, she began with the

TALE OF THE TRADER AND THE JINNI.”

“It is related, O auspicious King, that there was a merchant of the
merchants who had much wealth and business in various cities. Now on a
day he mounted horse and went forth to recover monies in certain towns,
and the heat sore oppressed him; so he sat beneath a tree, and putting
his hand into his saddle-bags, took thence some broken bread and dry
dates and began to break his fast.”

The recital proceeds until

“Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day, and ceased to say her permitted
say. Then quoth her sister to her, ‘How fair is thy tale, and how
grateful, and how sweet and how tasteful!’ And Shahrazad answered her,
‘What is this to that I could tell thee on the coming night were I to
live and the King would spare me?’ Then said the King in himself, ’By
Allah, I will not slay her until I have heard the rest of her tale.’
Then the King went forth to his audience-hall, and the Wazir went with
his daughter’s shroud under his arm. The King issued his orders, and
promoted this and deposed that, until the end of the day; and he told
the Wazir no whit of what had happened. But the Minister wondered
thereat with exceeding wonder; and when the Court broke up King Shahryar
entered his palace.

Now when it was the Second Night,

said Dunyazad to her sister Shahrazad, ‘O my sister, finish for us that
story of the Merchant and the Jinni;’ and she answered, ‘With joy and
goodly gree, if the King permit me.’”

The first volume takes us through the mazes of the stories included in
the Tales of “The Trader and the Jinni,” “The Fisherman and the Jinni,”
“The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad,” “The Tale of the Three
Apples,” “The Tale of Nur Al-Din Ali and his Son Badr Al-Din Hassan,”
and “The Hunchback’s Tale.” The reader most familiar with the ordinary
versions at once is in a new atmosphere. The novelty is startling as it
is delightful. We are face to face with the veritable East, where Cairo,
Damascus, and Baghdad are known to us as London or Lincoln. The whole
life of the people is represented, nothing is passed over or omitted.
The picture is complete, and contains everything as the “white contains
the black of the eye,” a phrase which, by-the-bye, in Arabic is all
contained in one word. We have before alluded to the strength and beauty
of the style. The felicities of expression are innumerable. What could
be better than the terms to express grief and joy, “his breast
broadened,” “his breast straitened,” or the words used of a person in
abject terror, “I died in my skin,” or the cruelty of the scourger who
persevered “till her forearm failed,” or the expression of despair “The
light before his face became night,” or the grand account of the desert
storm “when behold a dust cloud up-flew and grew until _it walled the
horizon from view_.” Another speciality of Captain Burton’s edition is
the Notes. He is celebrated for sowing the bottom of his pages with
curiously illuminating remarks, and he has here carried out his custom
in a way to astonish. He tells us that those who peruse his notes in
addition to those of Lane would be complete proficients in the knowledge
of Oriental practices and customs. Lane begins with Islam from Creation
to the present day, and has deservedly won for his Notes the honour of a
separate reprint. Captain Burton’s object in his annotations is to treat
of subjects which are completely concealed from the multitude. They are
utterly and entirely esoteric, and deal with matters of which books
usually are kept clear. Indeed he has been assured by an Indian officer
who had been 40 years in the East, that he was entirely ignorant of the
matters revealed in these Notes. Without these marvellous elucidations
the _Arabian Nights_ would remain only half understood, but by their aid
we may know as much of the Moslems as the Moslems know of themselves.

LINCOLN GAZETTE, _October 17_.—No. 2.
SECOND NOTICE.

In bringing out his _Arabian Nights_ Captain Burton has made a bold
attempt to dispense with the middleman the publisher. He has gone
straight to the printer, he himself undertaking the business of
distribution. It is time somebody should be energetic. With curious
submission authors go on bearing their grievances, and sow that others
may reap. Whole editions of travels are issued, and the person most
concerned, the author, gets a pittance of £5. And only the other day
Walt Whitman, most illustrious of American poets, and in the opinion of
capable judges the most illustrious man of letters across the Atlantic,
publicly announced that the profits on his writings for a whole year
amounted to a few dollars. Captain Burton has broken through the
bondage, and the result promises to be highly satisfactory. But he has
been threatened with pains and penalties; one trade journal, the
_Printing Times and Lithographer_, under the immediate direction of an
eminent bookseller, known for his vast purchases of rare publications,
announced that _The Arabian Nights_ would be suppressed unless its tone
and morals were unexceptionable! In short, publishers are exasperated,
and, like the Peers, they do not see the force of being abolished. The
authors, however, who sigh to be independent, must not take it for
granted that the experiment is easy, or likely to be often successful.
In this particular instance it is a case of _the_ Man and _the_ Book.
There is only one _Arabian Nights_ in the world, and only one Captain
Burton. The general tone of the London press has been distinctly
favourable, the _Standard_ leading the way and other journals following
suit. The _Pall Mall_ made an effort to lodge the author in Bow Street,
with its “Chief Director,” but it has likewise had the fairness to give
both sides of the question, and whilst attacking on its own account, to
admit letters and articles in defence of a genuine and unsophisticated
translation. As we have said [in our notice of last week] Captain Burton
has been explicit on the point that his edition is by no means intended
for the circulating library. It is mainly for scholars, for students
whose tastes lead them Eastwards, and last, but not least, it is
intended as a guide for our rulers and statesmen. England, we are
reminded, “the greatest Mohammedan empire in the world,” neglects
Arabism, and discourages it in examinations for the Indian Civil
Service, “hence, when suddenly compelled to assume the reins of
Government in Moslem lands, as Afghanistan in times past, and Egypt at
present, she fails after a fashion which scandalises her few friends;
and her crass ignorance concerning the Oriental peoples which should
most interest her exposes her to the contempt of Europe as well as of
the Eastern world. The deadly blunders we commit through ignorance are
brought out in the one fact, that with the English army in Suakim,
during the troubles of 1883–84, not an English official in camp, after
the death of the gallant and lamented Major Morice, was capable of
speaking Arabic.” _The Thousand Nights and a Night_ offers a complete
picture of Eastern peoples. But the English reader must be prepared to
find that the manners of Arabs and Moslems differ from his own. Eastern
people look at things from a more natural and primitive point of view,
and they say what they think with all the unrestraint of children. At
times their plain speaking is formidable, but they are not conscious of
impropriety, and their coarseness is not intentional. It is their nature
to be downright, and to be communicative on subjects about which the
Saxon is shy or silent, and it must be remembered that the separation of
the sexes adds considerably to this freedom of expression. Their
language is material in quality, every root is objective; as an
instance, for the word _soul_ they have no more spiritual equivalent
than _breath_. Even the conversation between parents and children is of
incredible frankness, and the Wazir of Egypt talks to his daughter, “the
Lady of Beauty,” in a fashion astonishing to the West. But the Arabs are
a great mixture. They are keenly alive to beauty, and every youth and
every damsel is described in glowing, rapturous terms. We have heard in
our own country, so far north as chilly Scotland, of a whole audience
standing up in a theatre to applaud the entrance and acknowledge the
charms of a beautiful woman. In the East they are far more readily
subjugated, and the event is of every-day occurrence, and not a wonder.
“When the people of Damascus saw Ajib’s beauty and brilliancy and
perfect grace and symmetry (for he was a marvel of comeliness and
winning loveliness, softer than the cool breeze of the North, sweeter
than limpid waters to man in drouth, and pleasanter than the health for
which sick man sueth) a mighty many followed him, whilst others ran on
before and sat down on the road until he should come up, that they might
gaze on him.” The Arabs are highly imaginative, and their world is
peopled with supernatural beings, whilst Ovid is surpassed in the number
and ingenuity of their metamorphoses. Their nerves are highly strung,
they are emotional to the hysteric degree, and they do everything in the
superlative fashion. They love at first sight, and one glimpse of a face
is enough to set them in flames; they cease to sleep or to eat until
they are admitted to the adored presence, they weep till they faint,
they rend their garments, pluck their beards, buffet their faces, and
after paroxysms of passion they recover sufficiently to recite
verses—“and he beat his face and head and recited these couplets”—“then
she recited, weeping bitterly the while”—“When the young man heard these
words he wept with sore weeping, till his bosom was drenched with tears,
and began reciting.” All this effervescence, so different to our rigid
repression, all this exuberance of feeling is the gift of a hot climate.
And, besides this easy stirring of their passions, they always live in
supreme consciousness that every impulse, every act is decreed, that
they drift without will of their own, and are the helpless creatures of
destiny. Half their talk consists of invocations to Allah, the
All-ruling, All-gracious Allah! This fatalistic element is a leading
feature in the _Nights_. All that happens is accepted with submission,
and with the conviction that nothing can be averted. The Wazir’s eye is
knocked out, “as fate and fortune decreed,” the one pomegranate seed
escapes destruction, and the Princess dies in consequence; the beautiful
lad secreted in a cave _under the earth_ to keep him from harm, because
it is foretold by the astrologers that he will die on a certain day,
meets with his death at the appointed hour despite all precautions. This
is one of the myriad instances, says Captain Burton, showing “that the
decrees of Anagké, Fate, Destiny, Weird are inevitable.” And yet, in the
face of overwhelming evidence that Moslems in all things bow to the
stroke of destiny, it is singular to note that a Turkish scholar like
Mr. Redhouse, translator of the “Mesnevi,” fails to realise this most
characteristic trait of Mahometan belief, and confuses it with the
Christian idea of Providence and Premonition. The folk in Arabian tales,
as might be expected, meet calamity in the shape of death with
fortitude. The end of life is not a terror acutely feared as with us.
They die easily, and when the time comes they give up the ghost without
repining, although the mourning by survivors is often loud and vehement,
and sometimes desperately prolonged. This facility in dying is partly
due to their fatalistic philosophy, and partly it is the effect of
climate. It is in rugged climes that death is appalling, and comes as
the King of Terrors, but the hotter the country the easier it is to
enter the Door of Darkness. All these things which make the difference
between Orientals and ourselves must be taken into account by readers of
Arabian story, and the coarseness, as Captain Burton shows, “is but the
shade of a picture which otherwise would be all light;” the general tone
of the Nights “is exceptionally high and pure, and the devotional
fervour often rises to boiling point.” We have shown how Captain Burton
has rendered the prose of the Nights, how vigorous, yet simple, is the
language, how pleasant is his use of antique phrase, serving as it often
does to soften the crudity of Oriental expression. In translating the
poetry, which finally will amount to nearly 10,000 lines, he has again
started on a path of his own. He has closely preserved the Arab form,
although, as he says, an absolutely exact copy of Arabic metres is an
impossibility. Like the prose, the verse belongs to three separate
epochs. In the prose there are two sets of apologues or beast-fables,
which may date from any remote age, one having been found on an Egyptian
papyrus; we have next the fairy tales, and these were borrowed from the
Persians, whose marvellous poetic old Guebres, who gave to Islamism
everything it has which breathes of spiritualism or romance; and we have
the histories whose proper names, such as Harun al-Rashid, with that of
his Wazir, Ja’afar, give the dates. And so with the poetry. Here and
there we have some grand old fragment of pre-Islamitic verse taken from
the Hamásah anthology or from the “Suspended Poems;” but more common are
the quotations from Abou Nowas, Amaí, and other singers of the
_décadence_ who were the ornaments of Harun al-Rashid’s court: and
lastly, there are the _pièces de occasion_, the copies of verses made by
the writer or writers of the Nights, and as a rule these are mere
doggerel. When the story is a love story the poetry is abundant, the
agitated youths and damsels bandying verses to express the intensity of
their emotions. Some tales are nearly half verse, and then when we get
into parts where the sentiment is less exalted, where the recitals are
mixed with humorous touches, such as in the “Hunchback’s Tale,” or “The
Barber’s Tale of Himself,” or “The Tale of the Tailor,” we have pages of
nearly unbroken prose. A striking novelty in Captain Burton’s
translation is the frequent occurrence of passages in cadenced prose,
called in Arabic “Saj’a,” or the cooing of a dove. These melodious
fragments have a charming effect on the ear. They come as
dulcet-surprises, and mostly occur in highly-wrought situations; or they
are used to convey a vivid sense of something exquisite in art or
nature. We give one or two instances of these little eddies of song set
like gems in the prose. Their introduction seems due to whim or caprice,
but really is due to profound study of the situation as if the
tale-teller felt suddenly compelled to break into the rhythmic strain.
The prose ripples and rises to dancing measure when the King of the Age,
wandering in a lonely palace, comes upon the half-petrified youth, “the
Ensorcelled Prince.”

“Now when the Sultan heard the mournful voice he sprang to his feet, and
following the sound found a curtain let down over the chamber door. He
raised it and saw behind it a young man sitting upon a couch about a
cubit above the ground: he fair to the sight a well-shaped wight, with
eloquence dight, his forehead was flower-white, his cheek rosy bright,
and a mole on his cheek breadth like an ambergris mite.”

It is broken again to bring into fuller notice the perfections of one of
the three merry ladies of Baghdad, sitting under a silken canopy, the
curtains “looped up with pearls as big as filberts and bigger.” We are
told to note how eastern are the metaphors, how confused the flattery.

“Thereupon sat a lady bright of blee, with brow-beaming brilliancy, and
her eyebrows were arched as for archery; her breath breathed ambergris
and perfumery, and her lips were sugar to taste and carnelian to see.
Her stature was straight as the letter I (the letter Alif a straight
perpendicular stroke), and her face shamed the noon sun’s radiancy; and
she was even as a galaxy or a dome with golden marquetry, or a bride
displayed on choicest finery, or a noble maid of Araby.”

And prose is not thought adequate to do justice to the natural beauty of
a garden “like one of the pleasaunces of Paradise.”

“It was a garden with trees of freshest green and ripe fruits of yellow
sheen; and its birds were singing clear and keen, and rills ran wimpling
through the fair terrene.”

It is a marvel that these cadences have never been reproduced before.
They have been faintly attempted by Eastwick, in his “Gulistan,” whilst
Mr. Payne simply passed them over, rejected them as of no account. They
fall in with Captain Burton’s plan of omitting nothing; of giving the
_Nights_ intact in the precise form in which they are enjoyed by the
Oriental. Beside the verses so characteristic of exaggerated Arabic
sentiment, and the rhymed cadences, let like precious stones into the
gold of the prose, the proverbs embodying the proverbial wit and wisdom,
are all rhymed as in the original Arabic. What Arabists think of this
translation we may learn from a professed Arabist writing to this
effect:—“I am free to confess, after many years study of Arabic, a
comparison of your translation with the text has taught me more than
many months of dry study,” whilst Englishmen who for years have lived in
the East, are making the discovery that, after all, they have known
little or nothing, and their education is only beginning with this
version of the _Arabian Nights_. It is only knowledge that knows how to
observe; and it is satisfactory to observe that Captain Burton’s amazing
insight into Eastern peculiarities has been put to its best use in
giving a true idea of the People of the Sun and a veritable version of
their Book of Books. The labour expended on this edition has been
enormous. The work could only have been completed by the most excessive
and pertinacious application. All the same we are told it has been “a
labour of love,” a task that has brought its own exceeding great reward.
There is only one regret, the circulation is bound to be limited. We
cannot help hoping, at some future time, a selection may be made from
the ten volumes, and even as they now stand many of the stories could be
read aloud. If the public cannot have the whole work, at least it might
have a part, and not be shut out from a masterpiece unparalleled.

LYTTELTON TIMES, _August 25th, 1886_.
THE NEW “ARABIAN NIGHTS.”

Sir Richard Burton’s version of the _Thousand Nights and a Night_,
privately printed for the use of men and scholars, is now unobtainable.
The edition sold off immediately, and the price has already reached
twenty-six guineas. The best critics among the thousand purchasers say
that the language is wonderful, the words graceful, the rendering of
thought, as well as words, most accurate, and the poetry marvellous. The
Oriental purchasers say that the language is wonderful, and they declare
that they have learnt more orientalism in the volumes than by long years
of study.

LAND AND WATER, _September 4th, 1886_.

Some time since I had occasion to speak out energetically about this
same work, thinking that a book which, though running only to a small
edition, might from its general interest excite the curiosity of those
who saw copies of it, and that, within its luxurious covers, matters of
prurient crudity might meet the prying eyes of those whom we would guard
against such knowledge. * * * Of the vigorous and poetic English of
Captain Burton’s translation, its freshness and virility, it is needless
to speak.

UNITED SERVICE GAZETTE, _September 11th_.

There is a charm and fascination about Burton’s translation that
enchains the reader. The Eastern beauties of expression are singularly
attractive, and, under careful editing, we may rely on a rich feast of
such gems of thought and poesies of imagination as only the resplendent
Orient can produce.

COURT CIRCULAR, _September 11th, 1886_.

Sir Richard Burton’s translation of _The Arabian Nights_ is a work of
marvellous erudition, and a perpetual delight to Arabic scholars and all
who care to read these famous stories as accurately reproduced as
possible. But they contain much that is not fit reading for women and
for young people.

LONDON AND WESTMINSTER SPORTING LIFE, _September 18th, 1886_.

From a private note which I have received from Sir Richard Burton I
judge that the supplementary volumes to the _Thousand Nights and a
Night_ will be of great and peculiar interest. Indeed the entire set
will form a library of Oriental lore of unique value.

NOTTINGHAM JOURNAL, _October 6th, 1886_.

That Captain Burton’s work gives delight to the subscribers may be
inferred from their encomiums. One writes, “I would give passages of it
to the Board Schools”; another goes so far as to say, “It is like a new
Bible for beauty of expression, and can you fancy a more wondrous gift
than a second inspired Book?”

STAFFORDSHIRE SENTINEL, _Hanley, October 13th_.

_Honi soit qui mal y pense._ Are we not living in a too-squeamish age?
First an expurgated edition of the _Arabian Nights_ from the pen of
Captain Burton, now a similar act of Vandalism to that book of our
boyhood, _Robinson Crusoe_. What there was in the pages of the immortal
work of Defoe, to which even the most susceptible could take exception,
is one of those things known only to the Society for the Promotion of
Christian Knowledge, to whom we are indebted for this last act of
Bowdlerizing.

CIVIL SERVICE GAZETTE, _November 2nd, 1886_.

Whatever reason there may have been for limiting to the number of a
thousand copies the original translation by Captain Sir Richard F.
Burton, his literally correct, complete, and beautiful version of the
_Arabian Nights, The Thousand Nights and One Night_ tales—a work of
prodigious erudition and mastery of Oriental language, literature,
manners, and customs—we cannot but think it was a pity to have placed
exclusively within the reach of the select, opulent, scholarly, and
fastidious few that which would have been a delight and joy for ever to
the less favoured of fortune—the countless millions. The “_Arabian
Nights Entertainments_” even in the imperfect, garbled, second-hand
version which has been current in England for a hundred and eighty years
through the French paraphrase by Professor Galland, has been read by all
classes, high and low, with admiration of the wonderful invention,
marvellous adventures, oriental imagery, charming dramatic scenes,
exquisite poetry, varied pictures of Eastern life and habits—with all
which the collection abounds. Why, then, when a genuine translation, the
work of many years, has been completed by a matchless Arab scholar,
traveller, and linguist is perfected, should it be withheld from the
multitude, and reserved for the delectation of the learned and the rich.
We are of opinion that the Arabian Tales, which are so universally
pleasing to the people, should not be withheld from them, as they would
be practically if shut up in glass cases, among the _éditions de luxe_
of connoisseurs.

FUN, _November 2nd, 1886_.
NEW LEAVES.

Apart from the learning and labour so lavishly bestowed upon the
original edition, there is ever a charm of seeming enchantment
surrounding these wondrous stories, which age does not abate, nor time
destroy—yet the truthfulness of this translation enriches and enhances
them.

EASTERN DAILY PRESS, _November 13th, 1886_.

I think I should like to shake the curators of the Bodleian library.
Last September Sir Richard Burton applied to them through Dr. Rost, the
chief librarian at the India Office, for leave to have a MS. of the
_Arabian Nights_ transferred from the Bodleian to the India Office under
the custody of Dr. Rost. The request was a perfectly regular and usual
one, and in Sir Richard Burton’s case it was accompanied by a distinct
promise that no “indelicate or immoral” tale should be translated. There
was therefore no fear that the peculiar frankness which characterised
Sir Richard’s renderings of previous tales would be repeated. A
month—six weeks—passed without a reply from the curators, the fact being
that they had met twice without being able to get the necessary quorum
of three, and once again without doing anything at all. Then Sir Richard
Burton got curt note informing him that at the fourth meeting the
majority of the curators were unwilling to lend the MS. At the same
meeting they allowed sundry MSS. to be sent to the India Office. Now
this not only implies a gross neglect of duty, but it is a wanton insult
to a man who, after all, is one of the most distinguished Orientalists
of his day. Burton’s _Arabian Nights_, disfigured as they are by the
indelicacy of the original, are a masterpiece of idiomatic translation;
and as a purely literary work must rank very high indeed. Moreover, the
shadow of an excuse for the curator’s conduct disappeared after Sir
Richard’s pledge to keep within the lines of strict propriety. After
all, learned men have a sad tendency to degenerate into meddling old
women.

COUNTY GENTLEMAN, _November 27th, 1887_.

Sir Richard Burton’s work has been criticised in some quarters for a too
obvious straining after the literal reproduction of the original. In our
opinion, such a course deserves rather praise than censure. And, indeed,
we would demur to the phrase “obvious straining” in connection with the
great Orientalist and explorer’s wonderfully successful representation
to English eyes and ears of both the meaning and the form of this
marvellous mosaic of Eastern fancy and imagination. That certain words
and phrases Sir Richard makes use of are unfamiliar to the British
reader is perfectly true. But it must be remembered that they have been
made the means of rendering intelligible unfamiliar modes of thought and
feeling which are entirely beyond the reach of smug literary conventions
and forms of expression. For ourselves, we can honestly say that these
very outrages upon Philistine sensibility have been amongst the
principal charms of this unequal and unrivalled translation—adding
vastly to the vicissitudes and seeming fidelity of the work. The marvel
to us has been rather—remarking the uniformly level execution of the
whole—that so few verbal ingenuities of the kind referred to have been
found necessary, and that so much of the translated prose is English
undefiled, albeit of the vigorous and vertebrate order, and so much of
the translated poetry has the ring of genuine English verse. We might,
however, write pages in explanation of our view of the manner in which
Sir Richard has discharged his task without approaching his definition
of his work as “a faithful copy of the great Eastern Saga-book by
preserving intact not only the spirit, but even the méchanique, the
manner, and the matter.” Of the tales themselves, we can, of course, say
nothing true that is new, or nothing new that is also true. No romances
of intrigue and adventure, of wealth and poverty, of luxury and love,
have had such universal acceptance, or received so much of that homage
which is said to be the sincerest—the flattery of imitation. And this by
means of the garbled and imperfect versions which have hitherto obtained
currency in the Western world.

THE PHILADELPHIA, _December 12th, 1887_.
ONCE MORE IN PRINT.

Sir Richard F. Burton is once more in print. * * * * He has some two or
three years to serve as Consul at Trieste before he is entitled to a
retiring pension, and it is a grievance with the friends and admirers of
“the Arabian Knight” that the government does not do a generous
thing—that is, “retire” and pension him at once. There is no doubt that
the prospects of a prolonged life would be strengthened if he could
retire from the Consulate and fix his own dwelling place. And his
literary career is by no means at an end. The third volume of “The
Supplemental Nights” is to-day in the hands of the subscribers. Like all
its predecessors, it contains a characteristic dedication. Thus: “To
Henry Edward John, Lord Stanley of Alderly, this the most innocent
volume of _The Nights_ is inscribed by his old companion, the Author.”
It would appear from the Foreword that Sir Richard Burton has had some
difficulty with his work. He has reckoned without his host. He says:
“The peculiar proceedings of the curators, Bodleian Library, Oxford, of
which full particulars will be given in due time, have dislocated the
order of my volumes. The prospectus had promised that Tome III. should
contain detached extracts from the MS. known as the Wortley-Montague,
and that No. IV. and part of No. V. should comprise a reproduction of
the ten Tales (or eleven, including ‘The Princess of Daryabar’), which
have so long generally been attributed to Professor Galland.
Circumstances, however, wholly beyond my control, have now compelled me
to devote the whole of this volume to the Frenchman’s stories.” What has
happened? Has Sir Richard Burton’s Devils (I use the word in its legal
sense) been refused permission to translate? His vials of wrath will be
filled to overflowing if that sort of opposition accumulates. Already we
are promised a reckoning with the _Edinburgh Review_. Well may the
translator of _The Nights_ be spared to deal out his “smashing blow”
with characteristic vigour. He is like the late Charles Reade in this—he
is never so entertaining, to the onlooker, as when he goes tooth and
nail for an antagonist. The reader has no cause to complain of the
dislocation of the author’s plans. Two of the most famous of the
supplemental tales are given in the volume in question making it
uncommonly bulky and investing it with special interest. The account of
how the originals of these came into his possession is remarkable, but
it is too long for citation. The two tales to which I refer are
“Alaeddin, or the Wonderful Lamp,” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.”
More disillusion. It is no longer Aladdin, but Alaeddin. It is not “Open
sesame,” but “Open O simsin” and “Shut, O simsin” in the Forty Thieves.
I dare say there are many other departures from the text of the stories
which we have known from our childhood. In Sir Richard Burton’s version
“Alaeddin” opens in this wise: “There dwelt in a city of the cities of
China a man which was a tailor, withal a pauper, and he had one son,
Alaeddin, hight. Now, this boy had been from his babyhood a
ne’er-do-well, a scapegrace; and when he had reached his tenth year,”
&c. “The Forty Thieves” opens differently. “In days of yore and in times
long gone before there dwelt in a certain town of Persia two brothers,
one named Kásim and the other Alí Bábá, who at their father’s demise had
divided the little wealth he had left to them with equitable division,
and had lost no time in wasting and spending it all.”

ACADEMY, _December 11th, 1886_.

Knowing his profound Oriental scholarship, and amazing gift of tongues,
and the vast range of his reading, one could not have doubted that Sir
Richard Burton’s translation would be a noteworthy performance; but
none, I imagine, were prepared for the fine force and old-world flavour
of the style which he has forged for himself on this occasion, or for
the extraordinary richness, variety, and quaintness of his vocabulary.
Not only has he with characteristic masterfulness pressed into his
service any and every word, English or foreign, current or obsolete,
that suited his fancy or answered to the need of the moment, but he has
not scrupled to coin the lacking epithet when wanted. Thus, the
ape-prince is “ensorcelled;” a merchant who sells perfumes and drugs is
“a perfumer-cum-druggist;” an aged man “long o’ beard,” is an “oldster;”
two warriors “fall to derring-do of cut and thrust;” the Jinniyah of
Bassora flies “firmamentwise;” Prince Ajib goes to sea with a fleet of
“ten keel;” our old acquaintance the Hunchbacked Groom is a “Gobbo” and
an “accursed carle;” one of the ladies of Baghdad wears a “mantilla;”
Ja’afar the prudent minister of Harun al-Rashid, hesitates not to
propose in good Scottish dialect that “each and every one of us gang his
own gait;” and the porter refuses to “stump it” till he has heard the
stories of the three “monoculars,” better known as the three one-eyed
Kalendars, who were sons of kings. These are but a few examples taken
hastily and at random; but they serve to show the curious mosaic-work of
the style. “Ensorcelled,” englished from the French, is certainly ben
trovato; “derring-do” is pure Spenserian; “keel” in the sense of ships,
though surviving at Newcastle-on-Tyne as the name of a carrying boat,
has scarcely been in literary use since the days of Verstagen and
Surrey; “Gobbo” is Italian, and the porter’s refusal has a distinct
Transatlantic flavour.

LINCOLN GAZETTE, _December 18th, 1886_.

Few people know anything of the trouble and the travelling which Sir
Richard Burton has undertaken in the accomplishment of his tremendous
task. He has ransacked all the libraries of the east and west, and has
often undertaken a roving but idle quest in the hope of throwing clearer
light on a single disputed passage. His profound acquaintance with
Oriental languages and literature is shown at every turn, and,
preserving the romantic colouring of the original in a poetic rhythm of
expression, he has cast his finished version in a form which is
singularly picturesque. While he has wisely discarded the affected
purisms under which inferior scholars love to shelter their
incompetency, he does not disfigure his pages with gratuitous accents,
and he manfully indulges our fond reminiscences of old friends by
calling the Caliph the Caliph. Nor is it any fault of his that we miss
some of our favourites from his edition, such as Cogia Hassan of the
matchless diamonds and Aladdin of the marvellous lamp; for we believe
that they were spurious, though wonderfully attractive, and either
sprung or took new shape in the fertile fancy of that accomplished and
brilliant Frenchman, M. Galland. * * * Still another speciality in this
most complete of all Translations is the versical portion, amounting to
10,000 lines. The Arab folk break into verse, “drop into poetry,” on
every occasion. When overcome by their feelings they weep and recite
verses, or they swoon first and on recovery pour forth couplets or poems
of many lines. Sometimes they improvise, or they quote their own Moores,
Tennysons, and Shelleys. The young Prince looks at the headsman who is
ordered to slay him. “I wept,” he says, “with exceeding weeping until I
made him weep with me, and looking at him I began to recite these
couplets.” The sentimental stories are profusely sprinkled with verse;
one of the charming peculiarities of this form of utterance is its
inconsequence, the verses welling up from the depths of a despairing
breast, often having little or no relation to the circumstances of the
moment. Mr. Lane gives a prose paraphrase of a portion of the poems, but
he omits verses right and left. We quote a brief specimen from Lane and
the same from Burton, and the reader will judge between them.

(_Lane._)

“We tread the steps appointed for us; and the man whose steps are
appointed must tread them. He whose death is decreed to take place in
one land will not die in any land but that.”

(_Burton._)

“Bear my body, bear my soul wheresoever you may fare,
And where you pitch the camp let my body buried lie.
Cry my name above my grave, and an answer shall return.
The meaning of my bones responsive to your cry.”

The _Nights_ without verses are like the day without sunshine. They are
a most important part of the work. They illustrate character and
manners, and the allusions, often remote and strange, require
explanation, which is supplied in the shape of informing foot-notes to
the pages. As a characteristic example of super-sentimental
exaggeration, take the hospitable welcome of a lady, long hidden under
ground, whose solitude is suddenly broken by the arrival of a fair
Prince.

“O youth, what sayest thou to wine?” and I answered, “Do as thou wilt.”
Whereupon she went to a cupboard and took out a sealed flask of right
old wine and set off the table with flowers and scented herbs and began
to sing these lines:—

“Had we known of thy coming we fain had dispread The cores of our hearts
on the balls of our eyes;
Our cheeks as a carpet to greet thee had thrown, And our eyelids had
strown for thy feet to betread.”

If Sir Richard Burton has taken incredible pains with his “cooing
cadence” and his verses, and imparted to them their true eastern colour,
his personages, his array of characters, his sultans, his wazirs,
princes, merchants, soldiers, slaves, his princesses, concubines,
houris, slave-girls, and old women, are simply alive and exhale the
living East—they are real as any creatures in Lincoln—to use Mr.
Swinburne’s simile in his Sonnet on this translation of the _Arabian
Nights_.

WEEKLY DISPATCH, _November 14th, 1887_.

The curators of the Bodleian Library are determined to save morality
from Sir Richard Burton, so they have refused to let him see a
manuscript of _The Arabian Nights_, which he asked them to send to the
India Office. Sir Richard has produced some queer tales in his
translations of Eastern fables; but as he gave a distinct promise to the
curators that nothing that transgressed propriety should be reproduced,
their behaviour seems rather shabby. Lady Burton is publishing an
expurgated edition of her husband’s work for “household reading”; but no
doubt the Bodleian curators will forbid their daughters to look at it.

THE GAZETTE, _Saturday, December 18th, 1886_.

The most widely circulated translations of the _Nights_, the countless
editions, many of them illustrated, give no idea whatever of the true
East, and are mere burlesques of Galland’s French version. If only
parents could distinguish between the genuine and the spurious, these
unsatisfactory imitations would cease to be acceptable, and children in
the nursery would be allowed to drink from the real fountain. It would
be quite as easy, and far better for the juveniles, to follow the story
of an Ensorcelled Prince, of a Magic Horse, or a Bottled Jinni, where
the colour is all true, as it is to swallow make-believe attempts of
Eastern imagery. But a better time is coming for children, and for
children of a greater growth. To know the _Arabian Nights_ in all their
perfection, in all their gorgeous setting, in all their bewildered
variety, and in all their truth, we must look to the latest translator.
For the last fifty years it is Lane’s version that has held the field,
and many people, not knowing there could be anything better, accepted
him as final. But, like the Horseman of Brass on the Horse of Brass in
the Sea of Peril, the time has come for dethronement, and Lane must
yield to a scholar of wider research, to an Orientalist who, during one
part of his career, lived as a veritable Moslem, and was
indistinguishable from other Moslems. Lane’s idea was to give but a
portion of the _Nights_, to please himself and his printer and publisher
as to what should be selected, what omitted. If a story resembled
another story, he rejected it on the score that it might prove
wearisome. For instance, he leaves out “Nur al-Din and Miriam the Girdle
Girl!”—despite its great historical interest as connected with
Charlemagne and his daughter—because it bears a family likeness to “Ali
Shar and Zamurrud;” and because he himself felt unsympathetic he
altogether discards the lively story of “Masrur and Zayn al-Mawásif,” a
tale full of poetical merits with lute scenes nowhere excelled, and with
the most beautiful of all the many gardens in the _Nights_. He passes
over the truly Rabelaisian tale of “Ali the Persian and his marvellous
Carpet Bag;” he omits the chivalric story of “King Omar bin al-Nu’uman
and his Sons”—like cutting “Ivanhoe” out of “Waverley” novels—and for
fear of ruffling susceptibilities he suppresses “The Rogueries of
Dalilah” and “Mercury Ali of Cairo,” most characteristic of stories,
full of fun, frisk and frolic and devilry, opening up new ideas of
Eastern human nature. These are but indications of Lane’s arbitrary
method, and people have submitted because quite unconscious they have
been defrauded, and that treasures have been withheld. At length,
however, they have the entire and perfect chrysolite. Sir Richard Burton
does not pick and choose.

Various novelties distinguish the Burton edition. To begin with, a
strict account is kept of the separate nights, and the interest of the
opening drama is sustained throughout. On each individual Night of the
whole Thousand and One we learn exactly the amount and quality of
incident related. The dramatic idea which binds the whole sheaf of
stories together is kept artistically in view. It is a peculiarity of
the stories that so many of them are told when the speaker is on the
edge of doom—hardly the moment for collected oration—and the story saves
the story-teller’s life. The mighty Ifrit who cuts off the hands and
feet of his lady with four strokes, and then sends her head flying,
because he thinks she has betrayed him, is diverted from instant
vengeance on the suspected lover by the prospect of a story.

SCOTCH NEWS, _Glasgow, December 23rd, 1886_.

The first issue of Sir Richard Burton’s _Arabian Nights_, limited to one
thousand copies, was quickly absorbed by scholars and linguists. It
would have been a subject of regret had so remarkable a work remained
comparatively unknown. * * * English versions of the _Arabian Nights_
have hitherto chiefly represented them as charming fairy tales. It
remained to Sir R. Burton to fully accentuate their wider meaning. In
the translator’s words, their “pathos is sweet, deep and genuine,
tender, simple and true.”

The morale is sound and healthy, and at times we descry vistas of a
transcendental morality, the morality of Socrates in Plato.

MORNING ADVERTISER, _December 25th, 1886_.

Replete with poetry, and expressed in the graceful, fluent language of
the Orientals, this rendering by a master scholar is a real boon, and
may be taken as a typical specimen of the perfection to be obtained in
translation by the power of an author’s research and enthusiasm.

THE LITERARY WORLD, _January 7th, 1887_.

_THE REAL ARABIAN NIGHTS._

To many familiar from childhood with “The Arabian Nights
Entertainments,” it has come as a shock to be told that the great work,
in its true form, is nevertheless still to them a sealed book; yet it
would seem that the appearance of Sir Richard Burton’s translation, but
a few months ago, for the first time put within the reach of the English
public anything like a faithful reproduction of the original. Even this
can hardly be said to be given to the public. Only a thousand copies
were published, and those at a price that would have been prohibitory to
the majority, if the issue had been unlimited. Another obstacle to the
general enjoyment of Sir Richard Burton’s translation was, undoubtedly,
the too faithful rendering of certain passages, specimens of “an
exaggerated mode of expressing thought” peculiar to Orientalists.

Numbers of English readers, to whom even the incomplete and bald
versions hitherto common amongst us have afforded many a delightful
hour, on hearing of the Burton edition have felt themselves almost
mocked as they listened to its glowing praises, and were told at the
same time that it was for ever beyond their reach. Some would, perhaps,
rather have never heard of it, and have been left in happy ignorance of
anything better than they already had.

Now, however, all such lovers of the famous Oriental tales have
consolation offered them. Lady Burton, deeply sympathising with their
disappointment, and anxious, too, that her husband’s great labour, “a
deep well of reading and knowledge,” should not be wasted upon a few
only, has come forward with an edition of her own which, while
preserving the beauty and value of the larger work, will be more
accessible to general readers, and, moreover, fitted for family use. The
aim she has had in view in editing has been to make as few omissions as
possible, consistent with the latter requirement, on which point Lady
Burton observes: “I guarantee that no mother shall regret her girl’s
reading this _Arabian Nights_.” We may say at once that, having
carefully read a considerable portion of this first volume, we think her
guarantee quite made good. Of the original 3,215 pages 215 only have
been omitted. The translator’s “Foreword” tells how the work came to be
taken up, its system, and the conditions under which it was carried out,
and its relation to other translations. Here is Sir R. Button’s own
account of

THE OBJECT OF THIS VERSION.

“Briefly, the object of this version is to show what ‘The Thousand
Nights and a Night’ really is. Not, however, by straining _verbum
reddere verbo_, but by writing as the Arab would have written in
English. My work claims to be a faithful copy of the great Eastern Saga
Book, by preserving intact not only the spirit, but even the
_mécanique_, the manner of the matter. Hence, however prosy and
long-drawn out be the formula, it retains the scheme of _The Nights_,
because they are a prime feature in the original. Moreover, holding that
the translator’s glory is to add something to his native tongue, while
avoiding the hideous, hag-like nakedness of Torrens and the bald
literalism of Lane, I have carefully englished the picturesque turns and
novel expressions of the original in all their outlandishness; for
instance, as when the dust-cloud raised by a tramping host is described
as ‘walling the horizon.’”

Although occasionally, perhaps, the formulæ may be a little too
“long-drawn out,” and some expressions too “outlandish” for the
enjoyment of all, the reading is extremely easy and pleasant. There is
in it a charming movement and rhythm altogether absent in the popular
translations. Indeed, speaking of the translation as a whole, it is, as
compared with Scott’s or Lane’s, especially the former, as a poem to a
paraphrase. The very fulness of detail, far from wearying, so fills in
the pictures before the mind that one is inclined to linger over them
with delight. To justly compare the several translations one must place
whole stories side by side. For this there is no space here; but perhaps
the comparison of a few brief extracts with Lane’s well-known
translation will serve to convey some idea of the greater beauty of Sir
R. Burton’s. Dr. Scott’s version differs so widely from either, and is
so extremely scanty, that verbal comparison with it is almost
impossible. An idea of the scantiness may be formed from the fact that
the matter comprised in the tenth night, according to Burton and Lane,
extends in Scott from the thirty-first night to the thirty-sixth. The
following passages are from the “Story of the Porter and the Three
Ladies of Baghdad”:—

_Lane._—“If of love we complain, what shall we say? Or consuming through
desire, how can we escape?
Or if he send a messenger to interpret for us, he cannot convey the
lover’s complaint.
Or if we would be patient, short were our existence after the loss of
those we love.
Naught remaineth to us but grief and mourning, and tears streaming down
our cheeks.
O you who are absent from my sight, but constantly dwelling within my
heart,
Have you kept your faith to an impassioned lover who while time endureth
will never change?
Or, in absence, have you forgotten that lover who, on your account is
wasting away?
When the Day of Judgment shall bring us together I will beg of our Lord
a protracted trial.”

_Burton._—“If we ’plain of absence what shall we say? Or if pain afflict
us where wend our way?
An I hire a truckman to tell my tale, The lover’s plaint is not told for
pay:
If I put on patience, a lover’s life after loss of love will not last a
day:
Naught is left me now but regret, repine; And tears flooding cheeks for
ever and aye:
O thou who the babes of these eyes hast fled, Thou art homed in heart
that shall never stray;
Would heaven I wot hast thou kept our pact, Long as streams shall flow,
to have firmest say?
Or hast forgotten the weeping slave Whom groans afflict and whom griefs
waylay?
Ah, when severance ends, and we side by side Rest, I’ll blame thy
rigours and chide thy pride!”

_Lane._—“Then, winking to the Khaleefeh, he said, ‘There remaineth but
an hour; and to-morrow we will bring them before thee, and thou shalt
ask them their story.’ But the Khaleefeh refused to do so, and said, ‘I
have not patience to wait so long for their history.’—Words followed
words, and at last they said, ‘Who shall put the question to them?’—and
one answered, ‘The Porter.’”

_Burton._—“Then he winked at the Caliph and whispered to him, ‘There is
but one hour of darkness left and I can bring them before thee
to-morrow, when thou canst freely question them all concerning their
story.’ But the Caliph raised his head haughtily, and cried out at him
in wrath, saying, ‘I have no patience left for my longing to hear of
them; let the Kalendars question them forthright.’ Quoth Ja’afar, ‘This
is not my counsel.’ Then words ran high and talk answered talk; and they
disputed as to who should first put the question, but at last all fixed
upon the Porter.”

_Lane._—“How good is it to pardon one able to resist! and how much more
so one who is helpless!
For the sake of the friendship that subsisted between us, destroy not
one for the crime of another!”

_Burton._—“How fair is ruth the strong man deigns not smother! And
fairest fair when shown to weakest brother:
By love’s own holy tie between us twain, Let one not suffer for the sin
of other.”
Here are four other examples of the difference of language between the
two translations:—

_Lane._—“A damsel of tall stature, high-bosomed, fair and beautiful, and
of elegant form, with a forehead like the bright new moon, eyes like
those of gazelles, eyebrows like the new moon of Ramadân, cheeks
resembling anemones, and a mouth like the seal of Suléyman, her
countenance like the full moon in its splendour, and the forms of her
bosom resembled two pomegranates of equal size.”

_Burton._—“A lady of tall figure, some five feet high; a model of beauty
and loveliness, brilliance, and symmetry, and perfect grace. Her
forehead was flower-white; her cheeks like the anemone, ruddy bright;
her eyes were those of the wild heifer or the gazelle, with eyebrows
like the crescent moon, which ends Sha’aban and begins Ramuzán; her
mouth was the ring of Sulayman; her lips coral-red; her teeth like a
line of string pearls, or of camomile petals; and her throat recalled
the antelope’s. In fine, she was like her of whom the poet said,” &c.

_Lane._—“Was greatly surprised.”

_Burton._—“Marvelled with exceeding wonder.”

_Lane._—“Touched the chords with the ends of her fingers.”

_Burton._—“Swept the strings with her finger-tips.”

_Lane._—“We heard the sounds of drums and trumpets, warriors galloped
about, and the air was filled with dust raised by the horses’ hoofs.”

_Burton._—“We heard the tom-toming of the kettle-drum and the tantara of
trumpets, and clash of cymbals; and the rattling of warmen’s lances; and
the clamours of assailants, and the clanking of bits, and the neighing
of steeds; while the world was canopied with dense dust and sand-clouds
raised by the horses’ hoofs.”

As we said before, however, for a fair comparison we must refer our
readers to the works themselves. Those who will take the pains to read
Burton’s side by side with any of the received translations, will, we
have no question, recognise its vast superiority in every way. On the
question of fulness it is enough to say that if the remaining volumes
are of the same size as the first, Burton’s contains more than half as
much again as Lane’s.

We must not omit to mention the explanatory notes. “I can hardly imagine
the _Nights_ being read to any profit by men of the West without
commentary,” says Sir Richard Burton. “My annotations avoid only one
subject, the parallels of European folk-lore and fabliaux which, however
interesting, would overswell the bulk of a book whose speciality is
anthropology.” “The scholar who adds to mine the notes of Lane, will
know as much of the Moslem East, and more than many Europeans who have
spent half their lives in Orient lands. Such, at least, is my belief.”
The notes are brief enough not to be passed over, and are conveniently
placed at foot of the page.

Referring briefly to the _matter_ of the _Arabian Nights_, we cannot do
better than quote the words of Sir R. Burton again:—

“THE MATTER OF THE ‘NIGHTS.’

“The general tone is exceptionally high and pure. The devotional fervour
often rises to the boiling point of fanaticism. The pathos is sweet,
deep, and genuine; tender, simple, and true; utterly unlike much of our
modern tinsel. Its life, strong, splendid, and multitudinous, is
everywhere flavoured with that unaffected pessimism and constitutional
melancholy which strike deepest root under the brightest skies and which
sigh in the face of heaven:

“Vita quid est hominis? Viridis floriscula mortis;
Sole oriente oriens, sole cadente cadens.”

“Poetical justice is administered by the literary Kazi with exemplary
impartiality and severity, ‘denouncing evil-doers and eulogising deeds
admirably achieved.’ The _morale_ is sound and healthy, and at times we
descry vistas of transcendental morality—the morality of Socrates in
Plato. It is, indeed, this unique contrast of a quaint element, childish
crudities, jostling the finest and highest views of life and character,
shown in the kaleidoscopic shiftings of the marvellous picture with many
a ’rich truth in a tale’s pretence’; pointed by a rough, dry humour
which compares well with ‘wut’; the alternations of strength and
weakness, of pathos and bathos, of the boldest poetry (the diction of
Job) and the boldest prose (the Egyptian of to-day), and, finally, the
whole dominated everywhere by that marvellous Oriental fancy, wherein
the spiritual and the supernatural are as common as the material and the
natural; it is the contrast, I say, which forms the chiefest charm of
_The Nights_, which gives it the most striking originality, and which
makes it a perfect expositor of the mediæval Moslem mind.”

At the present the first volume only of the work has reached us. We
shall give our readers early notice of the appearance of the remaining
five.

QUEEN, _January 27th, 1887_.

As regards the text, the poetical portions are exhibited in a metrical
form, and all divisions and breaks are carefully indicated. The
foot-notes are both numerous and important, and they should by no means
be lightly passed ever, giving, as they do, much valuable information,
explanatory and illustrative, which the “home student” will profit by.
This great effort will be extensively appreciated, and not a few will
read and learn more than otherwise they would or could have done
respecting those wonderful tribes and nations, among whom still linger
so much of the lore which instructs as well as fascinates, not only
themselves, but the children of the West. We have read considerable
portions of this volume, and compared them with a popular English
edition, and, without hesitation, we say that the style of this is far
better, and the arrangement very much to be preferred. The colloquial
terms and homely phrases, we presume, truly reflect the original, as do
some other unusual forms of expression. Meanwhile, we regard the book
with much satisfaction, and hope it will receive a hearty welcome from
the well-instructed and inquiring reader who seeks wisdom as well as
recreation.

COUNTY GENTLEMAN, _February, 1887_.

Several of the stories now issued are in the form of apalogues or
fables, in which the inferior animals are the chief actors and
interlocutors. Amongst these we may mention, the tales of the Water Fowl
and the Tortoise, the Wolf and the Fox, the Mouse and the Ichneumon, the
Cat and the Crow, the Hedgehog and the Wood Pigeons, and the Sparrow and
the Peacock. There is, of course, here a suggestion or a reminiscence of
Æsop, but the Arabian fabulists take a line of their own. There are
striking differences between the two authors or sets of authors, both in
the narrative form and in the ethical quality of the moral conveyed. And
this difference may, we think, on examination, be traced to national
idiosyncrasy and modes of thought. The fables of the _Arabian Nights_
have less point and conciseness, and less of harmonious subservience of
details to unity of effect and impression than those of great Ethiopian.
On the other hand, they have greater perfection of literary form, far
more splendid imagery, and in some instances more psychological subtlety
in the somewhat long-drawn disquisitive, and, indeed, disputatious
dialogues in which the chief characters indulge. For our own part, we
have found this introduction of the lower animal element an interesting
temporary departure from the comprehensive and elaborate, and, sooth to
say, somewhat monotonous representations of men and their affairs which
form the staple of these gorgeous productions of an ancient Oriental
loom. In the story of the Wolf and the Fox we have an example of the
justification of the lex talionis, which mingles somewhat curiously with
the general exhortations to mercy and forgiveness, founded on the maxims
of the Sacred Books. In our notice of the first volume we made some
inadequate attempt to express our admiration of the virile beauty and
force of Sir Richard Burton’s translation. Only captious critics will
consider that he has strained a point in his use of obsolete words and
phrases, or in his happy invention of new collocations. As these are
invariably conceived and expressed in the spirit of the original Arabic,
they present to our mind the aspect of beauties rather than blemishes,
and indisputably add to the Oriental flavour of this fine translation.
The notes are in themselves a liberal education in respect of Persian
and Arabian manners and customs, old and new.

BAT, _February 8th, 1887_.

The most marvellous collection of stories in the world is for the first
time placed before the English readers. Positively for the first time.
Those who know the Arabian Nights, through the charming, but ludicrously
unoriental, paraphrase of Galland, or through the solid, and perhaps
slightly stolid, rendering of Lane, cannot be said to know the _Arabian
Nights_ at all. It would be indeed a thousand pities if such a book as
Sir Richard has made were to be entirely tabooed to the world at large
and to women. The matchless wealth of fancy of the _Arabian Nights_, the
amazing wealth of knowledge which Sir Richard Burton has accumulated
about it, the glowing virile prose in which these Eastern tales have
been imbued with a new vitality, all these should be the possession, not
of a poor thousand students and scholars, but of all the myriad readers
of books who speak the English speech * * * Now, for the first time, all
that enchanted Eastern world is open to everyone. Jean Paul Richter,
most delightful of German writers, has dwelt, in his great essay on
education, on the importance of Oriental fiction in the education of the
young. It is easy to imagine the delight with which he would have
welcomed the masterpieces of Oriental fancy which have now, for the
first time, been placed within the reach of all who care to read.

The reader passes at once into the most exquisite world of fancy, where
enchanted princesses, caliphs and mock caliphs, wizards, ghouls, jinns,
barmecides, kalandars, sultans, slaves, mullahs, and dancing-girls
jostle one another in a mad merry world of their own, by the yellow Nile
or the yellow Tigris. All the life of the East—vivid, passionate,
fantastic, poetic—lives in these entrancing pages, and the reader who
knows them, and knows them well, knows more about oriental life and
oriental thought than many who have passed half their lives in Cairo or
Bagdad.

MORNING POST, _February 14th, 1886_.

In the volume under notice are comprised the tales from the 78th to the
275th night inclusive. They are remarkable for their originality and
poetic sentiment, and the spirit of chivalry which animates the heroes.
The tales of birds and beasts are fables containing a wholesome moral.

MORNING ADVERTISER, _February 26th, 1887_.

The poetic imagery of the Arabic masterpiece is presented in all its
naive and native charm, almost as far as such a thing is possible, when
we remember the immense gulf which sunders the ideas and tongues of the
Orients from our own mental methods and modes of speech. The use of
rhymed prose by the translator is most judicious, and enhances the
impression produced by the Arabic simile and metaphor, as in the
following, where Sulayman Shah prepares to send forth his Wazir to sue
for the hand of the daughter of Zahr Shah:—“Then he hied to his own
house and bade make ready presents befitting Kings, of precious stones
and things of price, and other matters light of load but weighty of
worth, besides Arab steeds and coats of mail, such as David made, and
chests of treasure for which speech hath no measure.” Again we find the
same use of rhyme in the Wazir’s mention to the celibate King of the
charms of the Princess:—“Know, O King, it hath come to my knowledge that
King Zahr Shah, Lord of the White Land, hath a daughter of surpassing
loveliness, whose charms talk and tale fail to express. She hath not her
equal in this age, for she is perfect in proportion and symmetry,
blackeyed as if kohl-dyed and long-locked, wee of waist and full of
form.” The couplets in which many of the characters after composing
their minds unbind their tongues puts the resources of the Queen’s
English to some strain. Here is a specimen of how the emissary of
Sulayman Shah “displayed the oratory of Wazirs and saluted the King in
the language of eloquence.” When it is remembered, however, that the
Arabic verse is improvised, we can afford to be charitable to the not
unsuccessful effort of the translator, who has no small difficulties to
cope with. It runs as follows:—

He cometh robed and bending gracefully:
O’er face and figure dews of grace sheds he:
He charms: nor characts, spells, nor grammarye
May fend the glances of those eyne from thee.
O heart! th’ art not the sole that loveth him,
So live with him while I desertion dree.
There’s naught to joy mine eyes with joyous sound
Save praise of King Zahr Shah in jubilee:
A King! albeit thou leave thy life to win
One look, that look were all sufficiency;

And if a pious prayer thou breathe for him,
Shall join all faithful in such pious gree:
Folk of his realm! If any shirk his right for other hoping, gross
unfaith I see.

Still, though the English is a little quaint, and every period in the
history of the language is laid under contribution to supply material of
verbiage, this very circumstance heightens the effect upon the mind of
the reader of the strange scenery, the bizarre situation, and the
eccentricity—according to our notions—of the characters? * * * Men who
as children have revelled in this narrative of wonders, and then
accepted them with implicit and ingenuous trust, will return to it again
to find light shed on the customs and manners of the East. The very
instructive notes elucidate the text, and so the reader may, as he
peruses, not only discover delight for his fancy, but gain information
about the social life of lands which, though the Western world has
varied and altered over and over again, have for ages remained in their
main social features unchanged so much so as to lead many observers to
regard them as unchangeable. Down at the bottom of all we read, however,
the great truth that human nature is much the same all the world over,
and in all ages, in its joys and griefs, its gratifications and its
heartburnings.

ARMY AND NAVY GAZETTE, _February 26th, 1887_.

Sir Richard Burton was a bold man when he wrote, and the Kamashastra
Society of Benares was a bold society when it printed his great
translation of the _Arabian Nights_. Yet the boldness of both has been
amply justified, for never before was the golden prime of the Caliphs of
Baghdad, with all its Oriental colour, brought so vividly before the
reading public. Nor could any demur be made justly to the book, as the
issue of a private press, because of the indelicacy, not to say
pruriency, that characterised it, since it is plainly inconsistent to
judge the morals of one age by the standard of another, and this
translation of “The Thousand Nights and a Night” was intended not only
to make accessible the great work of Arabian fiction, but also to
illustrate the social conditions of those for whom it was composed. It
must be remembered, moreover, that in these days refinement has
progressed so rapidly that the books even which delighted our
grandmothers have become too indelicate for the family circle; and, if
we go on in the same direction, it is certain that ere long Swinburne
will be Bowdlerised, and fifty years hence who can say that the Laureate
himself will escape? There could have been no more fitting translator
for the _Arabian Nights_ than Sir Richard Burton, who is as much at home
in Eastern bazaars as the very disciples of the Prophet, who has himself
made the pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and to Meccah, and who, as the result
of a vast experience of all phases of Oriental life, has been able to
enter into the very spirit of the wondrous Arab tales. In comparing his
work with that of his best predecessors, in the translation, Mr. John
Payne and Mr. E. W. Lane, becomes speedily apparent that the former was
weak as a linguist, while the latter driven thereto by the necessity of
making a book for the family circle, used his pruning-knife much too
freely, and cut out some of the very best pieces—notably, the major part
of the excellent story, which is of great length, of King Omar bin
al-Nu’uman and his Sons, whereof he has preserved but two small
episodes. Another great advantage which Sir Richard Burton possesses
over other translators is his exquisite sense of the delicate beauty of
Arabic poetry, which has enabled him to preserve in his graceful
rendering of the many verses scattered through the stories, much of the
character of Oriental assonance and rhythm. We take an example, almost
at random, from the first volume:—

“Shall the beautiful hue of the Basil fail,
Tho’ the beetle’s foot over the Basil crawl?
And though spider and fly be its denizens,
Shall disgrace attach to the royal hall?
The cowrie, I ken, shall have currency,
But the pearl’s clear drop,—shall its value fall?”

FUN, _March 2nd, 1887_.

We readily repeat our expression of the high estimation in which we hold
the superiority of this translation over all others. Many stories are
included which have hitherto been left untold.

BOOKSELLER, _March 4th, 1887_.

The progress of this charming work continues apace, in the appearance of
a further volume going down to the “Five Hundred and Fifty-Seventh
Night” of Shahrazad’s world-famous tales. Within the limits of the new
instalment will be found several old favourites, such as Harun Al-Rashid
and the Slave Girl, The Ebony (Flying) Horse, and The Voyages of Sindbad
the Sailor. Sir Richard Burton’s notes which liberally accompany the
text, are by no means the least entertaining portion of the book,
leading, as they do, to many suggestive comparisons with Scriptural and
mythological analogies, and to points of etymology as curious as they
are instructive. The story of the “Death-Angel and the Rich King,” by
the way, is so closely akin to the Parables of the Rich Fool and the
Unjust Steward of the Gospels, that it is difficult to believe that they
did not serve as the original of the Arabian counterpart.

ALLEN’S INDIAN MAIL, _March 7th, 1887_.

On reading the first volume again and again the reflection occurred, how
little—how very little—the general public know, as to the tales of which
the name is familiar in every circle of society. Still more does this
fact force itself into notice in the second volume. Not a story do we
meet which bears a name linked with the memoirs of youth or the
recollections of early age. What is the explanation? Are all the tales,
which for generation after generation, have played their part in the
nursery, merely idle dreams of a fanciful edition of the _Thousand and
One Nights_ or are the well-known stories reserved for the last? We
cannot say: but we avow with some trepidation, that we have not hitherto
met with a single friendly face amongst the two hundred and fifty
divisions as yet presented to the public.

If, however, we have expected against expectation for some landmark to
show us the road whereon we are travelling, it must notwithstanding, be
avowed that in the present continuation of the tales there is much to
interest, and perhaps more to instruct. Apart from this, there is such
vast array of wisdom contained in this storehouse of experience and
knowledge that the world should be wise, and, therefore, happier in
learning what dangers to avoid, what virtues to cultivate, what vices to
eradicate. Then, too, as regards the notes by Sir Richard Burton. It
would be impossible to exaggerate their worth, their depth, or the
insight that they afford into the inner life of the Arabian natives, a
life of which so little is known, though so much is talked—a life which
has much to recommend it—albeit Exeter Hall is loud in its dispraise,
and the advocates of women’s rights are passionate in denunciation
thereof. Like all other nations the people of the East have their
faults, but who are they which presume to cast the first stone?

LUNES, _January 3rd, 1887_.

ALLEN’S INDIAN MAIL, _January 17th, 1887_.

The reason is not far to seek, since there never has been a really good
translation of this most untranslateable of Oriental works. From such a
sweeping assertion must be excluded the happy and successful effort of
Mr. John Payne; but this latter work was printed for the Villon Society,
and the issue being restricted to five hundred copies, while the author
bound himself “not to reproduce the work in its complete form,” the
version is and must ever be “caviare to the general.” Such being the
case Sir Richard Burton bethought himself that he would employ his
leisure hours in presenting to the public a trustworthy and withal
picturesque translation of the _Thousand and One Nights_: and who more
fitted for such task? * * * * We have no hesitation in pronouncing the
present version of the _Arabian Nights_ to be incontestably the best
extant. Perfection is not given to mortals, but the tales now appear in
as satisfactory a garb as is possible; and henceforth there will be no
excuse should the English public fail to become familiar with a work
which all should read—the time-honoured _Thousand and One Nights_.

LIVERPOOL MERCURY, _March 26th, 1887_.

We have read with mingled admiration and delight every line of Sir
Richard Burton’s wonderful rendering of the world-famous but never till
now adequately translated _Thousand Nights and a Night_. * * * * At the
same time, in any literal reproduction of the ancient folk-stories of a
race having different customs and modes of thought to our own there must
necessarily be passages which are unsuited to modern English
tastes. * * * The first writer who undertook to introduce the Nights to
Europe was M. Galland, a Frenchman who made Arabic his study, and
travelled not a little in the Eastern countries which border on the
Mediterranean close upon two centuries ago. What he did, however, was
not to translate the entire work, or even one-half of it, but to
paraphrase certain selections from it, to add other stories of Eastern
origin thereto, and to dress up the whole in a composite literary style
which reflected the French tastes of the time far more accurately than
those of the Arab tribes from whose romantic folk-lore he drew his
inspiration. Other labourers in the same field—and there have been
many—have but too faithfully followed upon the lines laid down by M.
Galland. Until quite lately the best European paraphrase of the _Nights_
was that of the late distinguished Orientalist, Lane; but even he took
an abbreviated edition of the original as his standard, and, while
omitting at least one-third of the stories which it contained, failed
altogether to reproduce the distinctive characteristics of the
remainder.

This being so, Captain Sir Richard Burton, in the interests of Oriental
scholarship—which he rightly judges to be nowhere more important than
among a people who have so vast an Eastern empire to govern and
safeguard as we have—has for years past been engaged upon a literal
translation of the _Nights_ which should be worthy at once of the
original sources from which it was taken and of his own hard-earned
reputation. At the very time that he was putting the finishing touches
to his work and preparing for publication, however, he learnt by
accident that Mr. John Payne had undertaken for the Villon Society a
precisely similar task. Upon that Sir Richard, with characteristic
chivalry, stood aside, and allowed Mr. Payne to have the advantage of
prior publication; we mean, of course, such publication as he himself
contemplated and the Villon Society contents itself with—the issue, that
is, of a strictly limited number of copies supplied to subscribers only.
Of his rival’s translation Sir Richard Burton, with the enthusiasm of a
true scholar, says, “It is most readable; his (Mr. Payne’s) English,
with a sub-flavour of Mabinogionic archaism, is admirable, and his style
gives life and light to the nine volumes whose matter is frequently
heavy enough; he succeeds admirably in the most difficult passages, and
he often hits upon choice and special terms and the exact vernacular
equivalent of the foreign word, so happily and so picturesquely that all
future translators must perforce use the same expression under pain of
falling far short.” Nevertheless, though coming four or five years
afterwards, Sir Richard’s own edition fairly takes the field, and is
likely, we should say, to hold it permanently against all future comers.
The notes alone carry it to a point of perfection hitherto unattained.
It is the work of a man better qualified for the task than any other
living being. On the one hand, we know of no one who is so thoroughly
imbued with the spirit and soaked in the traditions of Arab life as the
traveller who, disguised as an Arab, succeeded in making the pilgrimage
to Mecca without detection; on the other, we know of no translator who
has at his command such an amazing vocabulary of English words wherewith
to reflect every shade of meaning, every turn of phrase, every subtile
touch of literary colour in the language from which he translates. As
illustrating his mastery of the secrets both of Arab life and of
picturesque English, take the following passage from his “Foreword.” He
is speaking of the solace and satisfaction which he derived from working
upon his translation of the _Nights_ during his long years of official
banishment to the luxuriant and deadly deserts of Western Africa, and to
the dull and dreary half-clearings of South America.

“From my commonplace and ‘respectable’ surroundings (he says) the Jinn
bore me at once to the land of my predilection, Arabia—a region so
familiar to my mind that even at first sight it seemed a reminiscence of
some bygone metemphysic life in the distant past. Again I stood under
the diaphanous skies in air glorious as ether, whose every breath raises
men’s spirits like sparkling wine. Once more I saw the evening star
hanging like a solitaire from the pure front of the western firmament;
and the after-glow transfiguring and transforming, as if by magic, the
homely and rugged features of the scene into a fairy-land, lit with a
light which never shines on other soils or seas. Then would appear the
woollen tents, low and black, of the true Bedawin, mere dots in the
boundless waste of lion-tawny clays and gazelle-brown gravels, and the
camp fire dotting like a glowworm the village centre. Presently,
sweetened by distance, would be heard the wild weird song of lads and
lasses, driving, or rather pelting, through the gloaming their sheep and
goats; and the measured chant of the spearmen gravely stalking behind
their charge, the camels; mingled with the bleating of the flocks and
the bellowing of the humpy herds; while the reremouse flitted overhead
with his tiny shriek, and the rave of the jackal resounded through
deepening glooms, and—most musical of music—the palm-trees answered the
whispers of the night-breeze with the softest tones of falling water.
And then a shift of scene. The Shaykhs and ‘White-beards’ of the tribe
gravely take their places, sitting with outspread skirts like hillocks
on the plain, as the Arabs say, around the camp-fire, whilst I reward
their hospitality and secure its continuance by reading or reciting a
few pages of their favourite tales. The women and children stand
motionless as silhouettes outside the ring, and all are breathless with
attention; they seem to drink in the words with eyes and mouths as well
as with ears. The most fantastic lights of fancy, the wildest
improbabilities, the most impossible of impossibilities, appear to them
utterly natural—mere matters of every-day occurrence. They enter
thoroughly into each phase of feeling touched upon by the author; they
take a personal pride in the chivalrous nature and knightly prowess of
Taj al-Mulúk; they are touched with tenderness by the self-sacrificing
love of Azizah; their mouths water as they hear of heaps of untold gold
given away in largesse like clay; they chuckle with delight every time a
Kázir or a Fakír—a judge or a reverend—is scurvily entreated by some
Pantagruelist of the Wilderness; and, despite their normal solemnity and
impassibility, all roar with laughter, sometimes rolling upon the ground
till the reader’s gravity is sorely tried, at the tales of the garrulous
Barber and of Ali and the Kurdish sharper.”

Clearly an Englishman who can thus hold an Arab encampment spell-bound
by reciting to them their own folk-stories in their own tongue has at
least one indisputable qualification for translating the famous
collection of these stories embodied in the “_Alf Laylah wa Laylah_”—the
“Thousand Nights and a Night.”

But this is not all. Sir Richard Burton has a literary conscience which
craves to be satisfied, and an imitative faculty, supported by
exhaustless wealth and ingenuity of expression, capable of satisfying
it. Not content with giving us a faithful transcript both of the matter
and of the informing spirit of the great Arabian Saga-book, he is
careful to reproduce for us even its mechanism and its music—its
peculiarities of structure, the balance of its sentences, the rhyme, the
rhythm, the assonances, the cadences, the melody, the lilt, the very
jingle of its language. How necessary all this is to the preservation of
what may be termed the literary flavour of the original may be gathered
from the first few lines upon which we light on turning to a page at
random. A king sending gifts and a missive to another king by his wazir
commands that functionary “to shorten his skirts and strain his strength
and make all expedition in going and returning. ‘Hearkening and
obedience!’ quoth the minister, who fell to making ready without stay,
and packed up his loads and prepared all his requisites without delay.
This occupied him three days, and on the dawn of the fourth he took
leave of his king and marched right away, over desert and hill-way,
stony waste and pleasant lea, without halting by night or day,” and so
on—in which passage, as one sees, the recurrence of the same consonantal
sounds, and of rhyming and nearly rhyming words at irregular distances
gives a distinctive character to the style of the narrative. Many other
passages might be quoted in illustration of similar tricks and
subtleties of literary skill, which impart an additional charm to the
book, if for no other reason, because they are racy of the soil from
which it sprang, and give an air of greater vraisemblance to the
translation. But the space at our disposal is well-nigh exhausted, and
we are desirous of giving just one quotation from Sir Richard Burton’s
“Foreword” as to the matter of the _Nights_.

“The general tone” (he writes) “is exceptionally high and pure. The
devotional feeling often rises to the boiling point of fanaticism. The
pathos is sweet, deep and genuine: tender, simple, and true; utterly
unlike much of our modern tinsel. Its life, strong, splendid, and
multitudinous, is everywhere flavoured with that unaffected pessimism
and constitutional melancholy which strike deepest root under the
brightest skies, and which sigh in the face of heaven. Poetical justice
is administered by the literary Kázi with exemplary impartiality and
severity, ‘denouncing evil-doers and eulogising deeds admirably
achieved.’ The _morale_ is sound and healthy, and at times we descry
vistas of a transcendental morality, the morality of Socrates or Plato.
It is, indeed, this unique contrast of a quaint element childish
crudities, jostling the finest and highest views of life and character,
shown in the kaleidoscopic shiftings of the marvellous picture with many
a ‘rich truth in a tale’s pretence,’ pointed by a rough, dry humour
which compares well with ‘wut;’ the alternatives of strength and
weakness; of pathos and bathos; of boldest poetry (the diction of Job)
and the baldest prose (the Egyptian of to-day); and, finally, the whole
dominated everywhere by that marvellous Oriental fancy wherein the
spiritual and the supernatural are as common as the material and the
natural; it is this contrast, I say, which forms the chiefest charm of
the _Nights_, which gives it the most striking originality, and which
makes it a perfect expositor of the mediæval Moslem mind.”

THE ACADEMY, _March 12th, 1887_.

The second volume contains _inter alia_, the delightful story of Prince
Camaralzaman and the Princess Badr ool Budoor, which loses none of its
old charm as “The Tale of Kamar al-Zaman,” and gains incalculably by
being translated into Sir Richard Burton’s rich, quaint, and picturesque
English. The third volume brings another, and a still more familiar
favourite, in the story of “Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the
Landsman,” told with a force and vivacity which make it all seem as true
as it seemed in the days of our credulous childhood. In both volumes we
find a large number of minor tales which are not included in Lane’s
edition; as, for instance, the stories of four chiefs of police, and a
whole series of charming fables about beasts, and “other small game.”
The long chivalric history of “King Omar bin al-Nu’uman and his sons,
Sharrkan and Zau al-Makan” (also one of those omitted by Lane), is a
distinct gain in a collection so complete and extensive as the present.
As regards Sir Richard Burton’s _dramatis personæ_, treatment and style,
we need only say that his foul fiends and ancient duennas are more
variously hideous, his couplets more steeped in Oriental passion, his
descriptive passages more elaborately rhythmic than ever; while the
foot-notes are so interesting and full of information that one only
regrets that they are so sparingly inserted.

MANCHESTER EXAMINER, _March 16th, 1887_.

Whatever differences of opinion there may be concerning the translator’s
taste or judgment, all will agree that the work in its complete form is
emphatically a student’s book—that in the mind of the general reading
public it is an impossibility to reproduce the _naïf_ simplicity with
which the story-tellers of an earlier age and a warmer clime treated
those incidents which a contemporary essayist has happily termed “the
enclosed facts of life.” Concerning the original, it is not necessary to
speak at length. The _Arabian Nights_ is one of the great books of the
world, and as a revelation of the outer and inner life of the Orient is
quite unique, but it is only during quite recent years that the general
reader has had any opportunity of knowing the full extent of its riches.
True, English translations have been common enough for the last century,
but they have been, for the most part taken, _not_ immediately from the
Arabic, but immediately through a French reproduction, often so garbled
in substance, and in form as to convey nothing like a voracious
impression of the original. Of late, however, serious study of Arabic
has become more common among English scholars, and we have at least
three translations—those of Mr. John Payne, of Mr. Lane, and of Sir
Richard Burton—not one of which can be charged with doing injustice to
the great classic. As a mere translations each will have its supporters,
and it would be absurd for a critic who is unacquainted with Arabic to
say that this or that is the best; but it may be urged on behalf of Sir
Richard Burton that he is more than a mere translator, that he is an
accomplished Orientalist, and that the best years of his life have been
spent among the very scenes with which the ancient romancers deal. Then,
too, his personal idiosyncrasy is such that he can enter easily,
naturally, and without any strain into the life of which the stories are
a crowded panorama, can breathe the spirit of the times and manners, and
reproduce it in such wise that we can breathe it too. It is no
exaggeration to say that he possesses unique qualifications for the task
he has so laboriously and adequately performed.

COUNTY GENTLEMAN, _March 19th, 1887_.

Volume III. consists of no less than 83 tales, which bring down the
marvellous sequence of stories invented in self-defence by “the
liberator of her sex” to the 557th night. Of these tales, while many of
the less familiar are full of beauty and suggestiveness, the last,
relating the wonderful adventures of Sindbad the Seaman will be welcomed
as an old and much-esteemed friend. The old friend, too, though he does
not come to us with exactly a new face, offers to our charmed
recognition a face much brightened and beautified, and decked with the
goodly raiment of Sir Richard Burton’s inimitable translation. Many of
the tales are very short, but some of the shortest are really the most
delightful. Take, for example, the one recording the generous dealing of
Yahya, son of Khalid, with a convicted forger, and the one referring to
the Caliph Al-Maamun and the Strange Scholar. The directness and
forceful simplicity of these brief narratives, which would merit a high
place in any collection of succinct apologues of the virtues, as well as
the almost Christianity of their teaching, cannot fail to impress any
discerning reader. The note on page 58 to the first of these tales is
one of similar commentaries throwing light upon Eastern customs and
institutions. At the same time it marks the continuity of Oriental
political ideas.

ARMY AND NAVY GAZETTE, _March 27th, 1887_.

This volume, bringing us down to the 557th night, and to the fifth
voyage of Sindbad the Seaman, includes a large number of stories quite
new to the reader, some of them brimful of humour, and others most
interesting from many points of view, from which it would be easy to
quote endless readable items. Harun al-Rashid, Al-Maamun, Isaac of
Mosul, and Ja’afar the Barmecide figure here very often; but more
amusement is to be derived from the doings of lesser people, as, for
example, the sharp-witted vagabonds who generally escape the
chastisement they deserve by some ingenious trick, such as the Oriental
mind delights in. The story of Al-Maamun and the Pyramids of Egypt
(omitted by Lane) illustrates the mediæval Arabic view of those
monuments—viz., that they were rich treasure-houses, which it was
desirable to plunder if possible; and there are other tales dealing with
crusading times, and with the relations of Christians and Moslems. One
great charm of these stories is their endless variety, which prevents
them from ever becoming monotonous, and Sir Richard Burton’s English has
a quaint and sometimes quite archaic cast which accords well with his
subject. As we said, in speaking of the earlier volumes, this is by far
the best translation of the _Nights_ for general reading, and we are
sure, in its present handsome form, it will find a place on most library
shelves.

LIVERPOOL MERCURY, _March 31st, 1887_.

Then Sir Richard goes on to tell us all about the origin of the
_Nights_, their birth-place, and their probable date; the means by
which, and the strangely incomplete and inaccurate forms in which they
found their way into Europe; the matter and the manner of the _Nights_,
the social condition of Al-Islam which they disclose, and the
peculiarities of the prose-rhyme and poetry in which they are written.
The work—translation and commentary alike—is done throughout with the
thoroughness which characterises everything Sir Richard Burton takes in
hand; and, in the result, we have such a conspectus of Arab life, Arab
thought, and Arab literature as could only have proceeded from the mind
of one who years ago was so soaked in Arabian customs and traditions as
to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, in the character of a good Moslem,
without detection. A complete index to the tales and proper names, and a
bibliography of all the principal editions of the _Nights_, fittingly
round off a work which, as it can never be superseded, must inevitably
take its place among the few achievements of human effort from which
Time reverently withholds his destroying hand.

CHRISTIAN UNION, _April, 1887_.

Those who are at all conversant with the old productions of this work
will readily discover the distinctive difference and characteristic
features of Sir Richard F. Burton’s translation, that it excels in
originality, style, and graphicness all other editions of the _Arabian
Nights_. No one who has read the work will hesitate to accept. Regard it
in whatever aspect we will, it is unique in its production, and will
henceforth take the precedence of all other translations.

MORNING ADVERTISER, _April 8th, 1887_.

As pointed out in previous notices of this admirable work, it possesses
many charms which have hitherto been lost to European readers by the
manner in which the tales have been presented to them in the current
versions of the narratives. Although these stories, among many other
collections, have been in circulation for ages through the East, they
have not yet been known in Europe for two hundred years. They were first
introduced into Christendom, indeed, by means of the translation of
Antoine Galland, a distinguished French Orientalist. They were, as a
matter of course, everywhere hailed with delight, although, with perhaps
rare exceptions, until the appearance of Lane’s edition, the many
translations of the tales into European languages, merely gave the
narratives themselves. The numerous and ample notes and philological
comparisons, which are profusely scattered through it, and which serve
to convey the exact meaning of important words in the text, are not only
most interesting in themselves, but are often of indispensable necessity
to the grasping of the point of the story. Several examples of this will
again be found in the present volume. In some places the translator is
completely at variance with Lane, who appears, in the instances cited,
to have missed the point of the story, from a misapprehension of the
true signification of an important word. A remarkable example of the
extent to which the force of the narrative is seen to depend on the
skill of the translator, occurs in the story of “the Illiterate, who sit
up as a teacher,” in which it is remarked in a foot-note, that Lane
appears to have mistaken for a girdle, a word which simply means the
usual brazier for the charcoal which serves for a fire, and so to have
missed the whole point of the tale. In this volume will also be seen
several fine examples of the rhymed prose, which form one of the great
beauties of the work. The translations of the many pieces of Eastern
poetry which adorn the tales, are most elegant and felicitous. They are
also most unique in their character. In many instances obsolete words
have been introduced with wonderfully pleasing effect, and in other
Saxon words and Saxon locutions in close relation with modern German,
from their immediate connexion with the text, the notes are full of
learning—geographical, philological, and antiquarian—which contains an
immense body of useful knowledge on the matters to which they relate.

DAILY NEWS, _April 28th, 1887_.

The present volume contains not many of our old friends, like “Aladdin”
and the “Forty Thieves,” but is rich in those Oriental stories of
beasts, which often much resemble the romances of “Uncle Remus.” The
tale of the Animals and the Son of Adam, if one remembers correctly,
does come, with a difference, in “Uncle Remus.” As an example of the
value and interest of the notes, may be cited the remarks on the “lucky
signs,” which add to the value of horses. Mohammed disliked horses with
white stockings on alternate hoofs. The tale of the Wolf and the Fox is
again in Uncle Remus’s style. It is a very difficult thing to account
for the migration of these stories. Even the bushmen have a version of
_vestigia nulla retrorsum_, and Professor Hartt was told similar fables
by the Indians of the Amazon. Huet, Bishop of Avranches, knew that such
stories were current among the Hurons and Iroquois, whose hero, if not
exactly Brer Rabbit, is usually Brer Hare. The Sawahílis, also, make an
animal very like a rabbit take the best parts. Occasionally, the
translation itself needs notes for some readers, who may ask what the
Fox means when he sings of the Wolf that “garred me drain eisel and
fell.” It will interest some mythologists to know that dawn, in Persian,
is called by a name meaning “Wolf’s tail.” Prince Kamar al-Zaman is in
this volume in all his glory, compared to which, that of Solomon was
mere tinsel. Probably only Orientalists can properly estimate the labour
and erudition of these _Arabian Nights_. The notes on the Diamond
Valley, and the Roc, and other pleasant marvels are very instructive.
The following note is curious. We say melanchólia, with the accent on
the o: the Arabs say Malikhulíya, with the accent on the penultimate,
and probably, or rather certainly, the Greeks from who we both borrowed
the word did the same, as the Greek accent indicates. But how they read
their own poetry, on this system, who can explain or understand?

SPECTATOR, _April 2, 1887_.

_THE ARABIAN NIGHTS._

Sir Richard Burton has certainly conferred a great boon on the reading
public, great and small, by this edition of _The Arabian Nights_. _The
Arabian Nights_ has hitherto been known to us chiefly as Aristotle is
said to have been known to the Schoolmen, in a translation of a
translation. The work of Galland, a Frenchman who was, according to Lane
and Burton, not over well-skilled in Arabic, and who knew little of
Arabic manners and customs, has hitherto, in various translations and
adaptations, been the source of popular knowledge of _The Arabian
Nights_. Lane’s own translation was a little too much like Sir Richard
Burton’s _magnum opus_, in being too close to the original for modern
manners or drawing room use. And, to tell the truth, it is also a trifle
bald and dull. Moreover, it is disfigured to the ordinary eye, much like
Grote’s _Greece_, by uncouth renderings of more or less familiar names.
It is terrible, for instance, to see Aziz and Azizah rendered by Azeez
and Azeezah, to find Sindbad converted into es-Sindhibad, and our old
friend the Vizier turned into a Weezer; and to be encountered on every
page by some terrible Arabic word for the meaning of which you have to
refer to notes, those torments of the interested reader. Sir Richard
Burton indeed, does not wholly spare our old friends. But Wazir for
Vizier is better than Weezer; and while Lane converts Noureddin and the
fair Persian into Noor ed-Deen and Enees-al-Jalees, Sir Richard Burton
only goes so far as Nur al-Din and Anis al-Jalis. The most striking
novelty in this translation is the preservation of the rhymed prose, a
jingle of assonance running through the more lively passages,
particularly where love or fighting are concerned. Thus, in the Second
Kalendar’s tale, we have,—“Her figure measured five feet in height: her
form was firm and upright: her cheek a very garden of delight: her
colour lively bright: her face gleamed like dawn through curly tresses
which gloomed like night;” and when Sharrkan, the Moslem cavalier fights
the Franks, “they fell to fighting and to wheeling left and right, and
necks were stretched out to see the sight, nor did they stint from
strife and sword-play, and lunge of lance with main and might, till the
day turned to night and darkness overwhelmed the light.” Taken in
connection with the context, the effect, though strange and bizarre, is
not unpleasing, and gives a sense of something outlandish which accords
well with the subject. Another novelty is the translation into verse of
the verses copiously scattered about the stories, which have hitherto
been omitted or turned into prose. It must be admitted that these verses
are rather boring. They are mostly of the ultra-sentimental and “high
falutin’” order, with exaggerated sentiment and metaphors. Here is a
sample:—

“Had we known of thy coming, we fain had dispread ✿ the cores of our
hearts or the balls of our eyes:
Our cheeks as a carpet to greet thee had thrown, ✿ and our eyelids had
strown for thy feet to betread.”

Some of them, however, are pretty enough in feeling and expression. But
the translator has invented a barbarous expedient for plaguing the
reader, and preventing his taking them quickly, by placing an asterisk
in the middle of each line to represent the couplets of the original. As
he does not really retain the metres of the original, there is no valid
excuse for thus disfiguring the page and trying the reader’s temper, and
we sincerely hope that, if not for later volumes, at all events for
later editions, he will abandon this excruciating invention.

With this exception, there is no doubt that this is the most readable as
well as the most complete, or probably because it is the most complete,
version of _The Arabian Nights_ yet produced. In this first volume we
have our old friends the Porter and the three Ladies of Baghdad, with
the three Kalendars, the Hunchback, and the silent Barber. But one of
the most striking of the stories has not appeared in any former
edition,—the tale, namely, of King Omar bin al-Nu’uman and his sons.
This is a Moslem chivalrous romance, with all the characteristics of a
mediæval romance founded on the Crusades; but, of course, the facts are
reversed. Instead of a Christian knight falling in love with a Moslem
maiden, and slaughtering her kith and kin by thousands and defeating
their treacherous attempts at murder by violence and stealth, by
ambuscade and poison, the hero is a Moslem prince and knight, and the
heroine is a Christian maiden, and the villains and villainesses are all
Christians, and it is the Christians who are slaughtered in their
thousands by his single arm. As in the Christian romances, too, the plot
wanders off from episode to episode, and, it must be admitted, becomes
insufferably tedious, for before the end the grandchildren of the
original hero are become the principal personages of the tale. But the
leading incident and the opening episode of Sharrkan and Abrizah are
worthy to rank with the tales of Sigurd and Brynhild. In fact, it may be
questioned whether there is any personage in mediæval romance who
outshines the fair Amazonian Abrizah in purity and nobility of womanly
character, or any more devoted and chivalrous lover than Sharrkan. But
the story does not remain throughout at the same high level, and the
fate of Aurora Leigh, which is inflicted on Abrizah by Sharrkan’s father
(only darkly hinted at in this edition), and her death by the hands of a
negro slave, and the horribly Eastern sufferings that befall Nuzhat
al-Zaman, are worse than those which befell the heroines of Western
tales of chivalry, bad as they often are. It would be interesting to
know the origin of this story, which certainly strikes one as out of its
place in the _Thousand Nights and a Night_; for though its adventures
are many of them exaggerated and improbable, yet they are more casually
connected, more coherent, and more natural and human and less inverted,
than the weird and monstrous incidents of the true Arabian tales. Among
these stand conspicuous the Third Kalendar’s tale, with its Loadstone
Mountain and its man of brass, its castle plated with red gold, and the
inevitable decree of blind Fate; the First Lady’s tale, with its city of
stone men; and above all, the delightful tale of the Fisherman and the
Ifreet,—the enchanted city with its King turned into marble from the
waist downwards, and its citizens into white, red, blue, and yellow
fishes that lift up their heads from the frying-pan and recite “verses
in writing.” Assuredly the tales that used to charm one’s childhood have
no less charm with the added anthropological interest which is lent them
by Sir Richard Burton’s translation and notes.

COUNTY GENTLEMAN, _May 14th, 1887_.

The well-known and widely appreciated yarns of Sindbad the Seaman and
Sindbad the Landsman are brought to a conclusion. The less familiar but
most powerful and typically Oriental story “The City of Brass” follows
and, though we are far from wishing to join the yelping pack already at
Mr. Haggard’s heels, readers of this colossal conception will feel
inclined to agree with Solomon that “there is nothing new under the
sun.”

ARMY AND NAVY GAZETTE, _May 14th, 1887_.

The present volume brings us up to the 761st “night,” and, like its
predecessors, contains a number of stories quite unknown to the general
reader. It concludes the history of Sindbad, giving a variant rendering,
from the Calcutta edition, of the seventh voyage, and contains a large
number of stories concerning the “Craft and Malice of Women,” which are
of the highest value as illustrations of social conditions, and it has
besides, many tales to which it would be a pleasure to allude
individually. * * * As a translation, it is unequalled in fidelity, and
Sir Richard Burton’s familiarity with Oriental scenes has enabled him to
preserve the greater part of the quaint flavour of the original.

LIVERPOOL MERCURY, _August 24th, 1887_.

We have already fully described this latest edition of the _Arabian
Nights_ and have spoken at large of its merits, both as a singularly
faithful translation and a finished work of high literary art. It is the
only rendering of _The Nights_ which has any pretentions to literalness
and completeness, and in this and all other respects is far away the
best edition extant.

ARMY AND NAVY GAZETTE, _August 27th, 1887_.

Bringing us up to the 944th night, this volume includes the curious tale
of the “Man of Upper Egypt and his Frankish Wife,” and others omitted by
Lane. One of the most characteristic of these is that of “King Jali’ad
of Hind and his Wazir Shimas,” which belongs to the oldest series in
_The Nights_ and has attached to it a number of animal and other fables,
all very remarkable. Lane found the story “puerile,” and it is very true
that from many points of view, it is so; but as an illustration of the
ways of Arabian society and an example of a class of stories largely
circulated amongst the Oriental peoples of that date, it cannot be
overlooked, and if read in the proper appreciative spirit, it is by no
means devoid of amusement. The style of the translation, as we have
previously remarked, has a strange archaic charm, and the unusual
locutions of which Sir Richard Burton is master, harmonize admirably
with his subject, while the rhythmic portions, which he has reproduced
with so much skill and diversify, render still more picturesque the
whole.

MORNING ADVERTISER, _October 12th, 1887_.

Several of the stories comprised in this latter group are familiar under
other forms in most parts of Europe, and there are few of them which do
not embody the practical wisdom and the sound and generous moral
precepts which are, as a rule, characteristic of the _Arabian Nights_.
Taken in conjunction with the numerous and excellent notes which the
translator has supplied, this version as we have before had occasion to
observe, presents the exact sense of the original Arabic text, which the
fanciful phraseology in which the narratives are expressed largely
assists in realising, while lending an additional charm to the tales
themselves. * * * In this volume are contained, among others, the
stories of Hasan of Bassorah, of Khalifah the Fisherman of Baghdad, of
Ali Nur Al-Din and Miriam the Girdle Girl, of the Man of Upper Egypt and
his Frankish Wife, of the Ruined Man of Baghdad and his Slave-Girl, and
the long series of tales, fables and allegories, in which the
astrologers and other wise men variously interpret a dream which had
disturbed the great King Jali’ad of Hind, and on which he had consulted
them. Several of the stories comprised in this latter group are familiar
under other forms in most parts of Europe, and there are few of them
which do not embody the practical wisdom and the sound and generous
moral precepts which are, as a rule, characteristic of the _Arabian
Nights_. The volume contains also the interesting history of King Wird
Khan, with his women and Wazirs. This monarch was weak and uxorious, and
disregarding the sage counsels of Shimas, the chief of his Wazirs,
pursued a profligate and effeminate career, as the result of which great
troubles arose in his realm, and an extensive conspiracy was formed to
get rid of him. Acting on the suggestion of his favourite wife, he
caused his Wazirs, grandees, and notables to be put to death after the
fashion of Eastern despots. The weakness to which his kingdom was thus
reduced tempted aggression by a neighbouring king, and it was threatened
with immediate invasion, rapine, and slaughter. From this strait he was
delivered by the sagacity of a boy whom he had accidentally fallen in
with in the course of a stroll he made _incog._ one evening through his
capital whilst pondering over his desperate position. The stories
introduced in the course of the history contain the counsel offered him
in the successive stages of his difficulty, through which he is at
length conducted in safety and then returns to a more rational course of
life. Lane omits this story as being exceedingly puerile. That judgment
will hardly be supported by the reader when he now reads it. It is one
of the two oldest tales in the whole series of the _Arabian Nights_ as
is here pointed out, and at the same time very characteristic. Taken in
conjunction with the numerous and excellent notes here supplied, this
version, as we have before had occasion to observe, presents the exact
sense of the original Arabic text, which the fanciful phraseology in
which the narrative are expressed largely assists in realising, while
lending an additional charm to the tales themselves.

GLASGOW EVENING TIMES, _December 3, 1887_.

The third of the five Supplemental volumes of Sir Richard Burton’s
translation of _The Thousand Nights and a Night_ is in the hands of the
subscribers this week. It is one of the most interesting, and (we have
Sir Richard’s word for it) the most innocent of the series. It contains
some of the best known of the Eastern tales, including “Aladdin” and
“Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” which did not find a place either in
Sir Richard Burton’s translation of the _Nights_ or in that of Mr. John
Payne for the Villon Society, for the very good reason that they were
then unknown except through the French translation of Galland, and were
under suspicion of not being of Eastern origin at all. The doubts about
Galland’s translations have, however, now been removed, for all his
tales have been discovered in Hindustani, and some of them in Arabic
under circumstances which preclude these versions from having been
translated from that of the French writer. In his preface Sir Richard
Burton tells the story in detail, but we need not follow him there. He
has now had these old favourites translated afresh, and they form a
fitting pendant to his work. He courts comparison of his translation
with the long popular version of Galland by printing the English
translation of the latter’s Aladdin along with his own. Sir Richard’s
notes are, it may be expected, full of curious information.

ACADEMY, _December 10, 1887_.

_THE KAMA SHASTRA SOCIETY._

Sir Richard F. Burton has just issued to his subscribers the third
volume of his _Supplemental Nights_, the printing of which was delayed
through his illness during the early part of the year. Sir Richard
intends to pass the winter at Fiume, where the climate is less trying
than at Trieste. He hopes to come to England in May, bringing with him
the MS. of the fifth and last volume of the _Supplemental Nights_. The
fourth volume is already in the hands of the printers to the Kama
Shastra Society.

The third volume of the _Supplemental Nights_ was originally intended to
be the fourth; but the order has been altered on account of the
difficulties which Sir Richard experienced in transcribing the
Wortley-Montague MS. in the Bodleian, as narrated by himself in the
_Academy_ of November 13, 1886. Students, however, will not regret the
change, in consideration of their delight at here finding for the first
time the true Oriental version of “Aladdin,” which has hitherto only
been known through Galland’s French. As Sir Richard announced in the
_Academy_ of January 22, 1887, an Arabic original of “Aladdin” and some
other tales was quite recently purchased for the Bibliothèque Nationale
by M. Hermann Zotenberg, who will shortly publish a full bibliographical
description of his discovery. Meanwhile he has placed a copy of the MS.
at Sir Richard’s disposal; and from this the translation of “Aladdin,”
or rather, “Allaeddin,” has been made. “Ali Baba” is another of the most
familiar of the _Arabian Nights_ stories for which no Arabic original
has yet been found. In order to produce a genuine Orientalised version
of this, Sir Richard has had recourse to the following device. After
much searching in vain among Persian and Turkish MSS., he at last found
a Hindustani version containing the missing tales, which Mr. J. F.
Blumhardt, of Cambridge, helped to English. He was thus enabled to
escape from the plan he had originally contemplated—of turning Galland’s
French into Arabic, and then translating that.

In addition to these welcome novelties, the volume is noticeable for its
bulk, for Sir Richard generally gives his subscribers more than he
promised. We have here the popular English form of Galland’s “Aladdin,”
to compare with the version now first made from the original Arabic; and
also an appendix of about 100 pages, contributed by Mr. W. A. Clouston,
which describes in detail the variants and analogues of all the tales in
the volume.

In the meantime, the Kama Shastra Society has begun a fresh
undertaking—the production of a literal and unexpurgated translation of
three famous Persian works:—(1) The _Gulistân_, or “Rose Garden,” of
Sa’dí (A.D. 1258), which may be called not unfamiliar in incomplete
versions; (2) the _Nigaristân_, or “Picture Gallery,” of Mu’in-uddín
Jawini (A.D. 1334), which has never been translated into any Western
language; and (3) the _Behâristân_, or “Abode of Spring,” of Jâmi (A.D.
1487), of which one chapter or “garden” was translated a few years ago
by Mr. C. E. Wilson, under the title of _Persian Wit and Humour_ (Chatto
and Windus, 1883). For a popular account of these authors and their rank
in Persian literature, we may refer our readers to a little volume
published by Mr. Bernard Quaritch in the early part of the present year
called _Persian Portraits_. Of the three translations which the Kama
Shastra Society propose to issue to a very limited number of
subscribers, the _Behâristân_ of Jâmi—the latest in date but the
greatest in reputation—is now ready. It forms a volume of less than 200
pages with a few notes.

MORNING POST, _March 19, 1888_.

As is well shown in this volume, there is as much in the manner of these
tales as in the matter of them. If Oriental fiction delights our fancy
by transferring us from the common places of our workaday life to realms
and to communities fairer than any of which we have daily experience
here, any aids from language by which the dominance of fascination may
be maintained are clearly legitimate and useful. That the subject is
worthy of a warm and ornate rendering such as has been bestowed upon it
in these delightful volumes is made abundantly evident from a glance at
the splendour of the Arabian Empire during the period covered by _The
Nights_ but particularly in the earlier portion of it.

ATHENÆUM, _May 12, 1888_.

Sir Richard Burton’s complete translation of the _Arabian Nights_ may be
considered the _magnum opus_ of one who had already added much to his
country’s literature by the record of his own personal travel and
adventure. To render the original text of such a work as _The Arabian
Nights_ into a European language so as to make the reader apprehend the
style and spirit of the Arabic is necessarily a task demanding
exceptional qualifications; and success in so bold an attempt, were it
but partial, would imply the exercise of more than Oriental scholarship.
It could only be achieved by one who understood, in all shades and
phases, the genius and imaginary, the ways and habits, the tastes and
prejudices, the pathos and humour of both Western and Eastern peoples.
Probably there is no Englishman living who could have ventured on the
undertaking with better chances of success than Sir R. Burton.

LIVERPOOL DAILY POST, _May 3, 1888_.

The sale of Sir Richard Burton’s uncompromising translation of the
_Thousand and One Nights_ was so great that Sir Richard has undertaken
to supply five supplementary volumes. The “copy” has just reached the
publishers from Trieste, and the volumes will be disposed of on the same
terms as the early ones—that is to say, by subscription. The price fixed
is pretty high, but so overmastering is the purely literary curiosity in
the matter that not only was the original edition sold to the last copy,
but the book is now at a very considerable premium in the market. Sir
Richard Burton proposes to himself to take a little rest, after which he
will commence a work that cannot fail to equal in interest even the
_Arabian Nights_, and will be much better adapted for appearance on the
drawing-room table. Sir Richard is going to write his autobiography—a
work that will cover one of the most remarkable careers of modern times.
The efforts made in influential quarters to secure an adequate retiring
pension for this gallant explorer and man of letters still prove
unavailing, and he goes on with his dull, uncongenial work as Consul at
Trieste—a place in which he has never enjoyed really good health.

THE COUNTY GENTLEMAN, _October 17th, 1885_.

How fearfully cold it is, to be sure! My overcoat is neither lined with
rabbit skin nor tipped with astrachan, and I feel the bitter breeze. A
friend of mine, who has subscribed to Captain Burton, tells me that if I
carried a copy of the first volume of the new translation of the
_Arabian Nights_ in my breast-pocket I would find it very warm. I
daresay he is right, but the copies published a month ago at a guinea
have gone up in value to ten. I suppose the reports of a severe winter
have sent the work to a premium. Or, may be, Mr. Stead’s review gives it
enhanced value.

* * * * *

Burton’s new _Arabian Nights_ is the book of the season. But, strange to
say, it is not to be had at Mudie’s or at Smith’s. Only a thousand
copies were issued, and these went to subscribers. And the owners of a
copy of the first volume are already personages of importance.
School-girls cry for the book, and the Social Purity people borrow it
when they can. Inquisitive folk ask everybody if they have seen it, and
wonder why there should be so much fuss made about it. Wags look knowing
and give evasive answers, but the man who tells the truth sayeth in
reply, “because it is the highest book ever printed in English.” The
captain is not the only writer that has gone to the _Thousand and One
Nights_.

* * * * *

Burton’s book makes one feel sorry for Rabelais and Stead. Indeed,
Rabelais borrowed from the original, and Burton of immortal Melancholy,
like his namesake the peripatetic captain, knew something of it. The new
edition will be prized by a few students, perhaps, but its chief value
in the eyes of many that hold copies of it will be its high qualities. A
few of the volumes were to be had in Holywell-street, but these have all
been bought up at big prices.

“_Jehu Junior_,” VANITY FAIR, _October 24th, 1885_.

As a bold, astute traveller, courting danger, despising hardship, and
compelling fortune, Captain Burton has few equals; as a master of
Oriental languages, manners and customs he has none. He is still very
young, very vigorous, very full of anecdote and playful humour, and,
what is remarkable in a linguist, he has not disdained even his own
mother tongue, which he handles with a precision and a power that few
can approach. He has recently crowned his literary labours by the most
complete, laborious, uncompromising, and perfect translation of that
collection of stories known to us as _The Arabian Nights_, but more
correctly called _A Thousand Nights and a Night_. He is a wonderful man.

WHITEHALL REVIEW, _October 29th, 1885_.

The second volume of Captain Burton’s translation of the _Arabian
Nights_ has just been issued to the subscribers, who had already become
impatient for a second instalment of this great and fascinating
contribution to literature. The new volume is, if possible, of even
greater interest than the first. It contains the whole of the fantastic
semi-chivalrous story of King Omar Bin al-Nu’-uman and his sons Sharrkan
and Zau al-Makan, a knowledge of which has hitherto been confined
chiefly to Oriental scholars, as Lane only admitted an episode from it
into his version of _Alif Laïla_. Some of Sharrkan’s adventures will
remind students of other Eastern stories of some of the adventures
recorded of the hero of Persian romance, Hatim Taï. As usual, Captain
Burton’s notes are rich, varied, and copious, of the greatest service to
all serious students of Arabic manners and customs, and of Oriental life
in general. * * *

_Apropos_ of Captain Burton’s _Arabian Nights_, a silly story is going
the round of some of the newspapers to the effect that some idiot, or
company of idiots, intend to address a solemn appeal to Captain Burton
to cease the publication of his work. A virtuous journal like the _Pall
Mall Gazette_ has been shocked by its Oriental freedom of speech, and it
and its readers are prepared to denounce Captain Burton up hill and down
dale for the crime of translating into accurate English a great Arabic
masterpiece. How silly, how vulgar, how uneducated such a cry is must be
obvious to any one who has made any study, no matter how limited, of any
of the great literatures of the world compared to Rabelais, compared to
Boccaccio, compared to La Fontaine, the _Arabian Nights_ of Captain
Burton might almost be recommended as a study for a Sunday-school. We
have chosen for our examples authors all of whose works are familiarly
studied and easily obtainable. It would be childish to compare Captain
Burton’s _Arabian Nights_ with other works which we could mention, which
are, luckily, less generally known and also, luckily, less generally
obtainable; while to compare the morality of these new _Arabian Nights_
with the _Pall Mall Gazette_ itself would be comparing the waters of the
Mediterranean with ditchwater.

SOUTH EASTERN HERALD, _October 31st, 1885_.

At Mr. Quaritch’s trade sale the other day, Captain Burton made an
interesting speech regarding _The Thousand and One Nights_, of which the
gist was to show that his translation performs a double office. It is
not only a faithful and racy version of the true original, but it also
represents a better text than any which has been hitherto accessible in
print or manuscript. He, in fact, produced for his own use, and by
collation of the existing materials, a careful, critical recension of
the original; and his rendering may, therefore, claim to stand towards
the _Alf Laïlah_ in the same manner as the Latin version of Plato, by
Marsilius Ficinus, towards the Greek text.

ANGLER’S JOURNAL, _November 21st, 1885_.

To such of my brother anglers as consider something warm a necessity
when pursuing their sport during the winter months, I confidently
recommend the latest edition of the _Thousand and One Nights_, done into
English by Captain Burton. There is no pandering to pretended prudery in
this work, which is the only translation extant calculated to give one a
true idea of the many subtle and hitherto unexpressed beauties of the
original. This book is the more welcome from the fact of our having been
lately flooded with abridged and castrated editions of the English and
other classics; for, as a matter of fact, the excised portions are the
only parts of such books that the British public cares to read. But what
has all this to do with fishing? I fancy I hear some of my readers
indulging in expletives, and language which is best expressed by the
natural divisions of these paragraphs.

MORNING POST, _January 19th, 1886_.

Everything comes to him who waits—even the long-promised, eagerly
expected “Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights,” by
Richard F. Burton. It is a whole quarter of a century since this
translation of one of the most famous books of the world was
contemplated, and we are told it is the natural outcome of the
well-known pilgrimage to Medinah and Mecca. Of Captain Burton’s fitness
for the task who can doubt? It was during that celebrated journey to the
Tomb of the Prophet that he proved himself to be an Arab—indeed, he
says, in a previous state of existence he was a Bedouin. Did he not for
months at a stretch lead the life of a Son of the Faithful, eat, drink,
sleep, dress, speak, pray, like his brother devotees, the sharpest eyes
failing to pierce his disguise? He knows the ways of Eastern men—and
women—as he does the society of London or Trieste. How completely at
home he is with his adopted brethren he showed at Cairo, when, to the
amazement of some English friends who were looking on at the noisy
devotions of some “howling” Dervishes, he suddenly joined the shouting,
gesticulating circle, and behaved as if to the manner born. He has
qualified as a “howler,” he holds a diploma as a master Dervish, and he
can initiate disciples. Clearly, to use a phrase of Arabian story, it
was decreed by Allah from the beginning—and fate and fortune have
arranged—that Captain Burton should be the one of all others to confer
upon his countrymen the boon of the genuine unsophisticated _Thousand
Nights and a Night_. In the whole of our literature no book is more
widely known. It is spread broadcast like the Bible, Bunyan, and
Shakespeare: yet although it is in every house, and every soul in the
kingdom knows something about it, yet nobody knows it as it really
exists. We have only had what translators have chosen to give—selected,
diluted, and abridged transcripts. And of late some so-called “original”
books have been published, containing minor tales purloined bodily from
the _Nights_.

BAT, _February 8th, 1886_.

Indeed of those who know the _Arabian Nights_ as they really are, there
are three classes and only three. First, there are those who have read
the translation by Mr. John Payne, a book with many faults, but which
has the merit of being the first complete translation in any language.
Secondly, those who know the Alif Laila in its original text; whether
that text be Macnaughten’s, Habicht’s, or the Boulak version. Thirdly,
and best of all, those who know the translation by Sir Richard Burton,
an immortal addition to English literature, and the most priceless
contribution to Oriental knowledge that has been made for a century. To
the serious student of the East and of all things Eastern, Sir Richard
Burton’s translation is in itself a very Alexandrian library of rare,
curious, unparalleled knowledge, the Knowledge, that can only be
obtained and given again by a man of letters, who is also in the widest
sense a man of the world. But Sir Richard Burton’s translation of the
_Arabian Nights_ is a book for men and not for all men. It is the
text-book and the treasure-house of scholars; but it is not for
every-day readers; and above all things, and inevitably, it is not for
woman-kind. No woman could read, was ever meant to read Sir Richard
Burton’s _Arabian Nights_.

COURT SOCIETY, _March 4th, 1886_.

Not a little disgust has been excited by the vulgar sneer which a
morning paper has indulged in at the expense of Sir Richard Burton. Long
neglected by successive Governments, Captain Burton received, after 44
years, a tardy recognition of his services. Straightway, it was
suggested that he is made a knight because he translated the _Arabian
Nights_. It need scarcely be said that his translation has nothing to do
with the distinction conferred upon him, but as it is the habit in a
certain quarter to denounce the literal translation of the _Nights_, it
cannot be too distinctly understood that Captain Burton never meant his
work to fall into any hands save those of a thousand students.

SPORTING LIFE, _April 12th, 1886_.

The first two of the five volumes of “Supplemental Nights to the Book or
the Thousand Nights and a Night, with Notes Anthropological and
Explanatory,” have been issued privately to subscribers, whereof there
will be no more than a thousand. We have Sir Richard F. Burton’s pledge.
The tales are peculiarly interesting, and are told in English of
matchless flavour and force. Volume iii. is dedicated to Mr. Henry
Irving in these words: “My dear Irving, To a consummate artist like
yourself, I need hardly suggest that _The Nights_ still offers many a
virgin mine to the Playwright: and I ascribe this volume to you, not
only in admiration of your genius, but in the hope of that you will find
means of exploiting the hidden wealth which awaits only your ‘Open
Sesame!’—Ever yours sincerely, Richard F. Burton.” This is a pregnant
hint. As I have before observed, the vast majority of readers of the
Englished lore of the East knew worse than nothing of that marvellous
storehouse of romance, _The Arabian Nights_ until Sir Richard Burton
opened it for them. There are countless dramas embodied in the _Nights_,
and one cannot wonder that Sir Richard Burton should desire to see some
of them shaped for the stage at the instance of his friend Mr. Irving. I
may mention here that the third volume of Lady Burton’s edition of the
Nights is available. It is as dainty as its predecessors, as well done
in point of literary workmanship, and as full of matter.

WHITEHALL REVIEW, _May 24th, 1886_.

The sixth volume of Sir Richard Burton’s _Arabian Nights_ which has just
been issued to subscribers, is one of the most interesting of the series
to Anglo-Orientalists. For it contains that story—or set of
stories—which is, perhaps, of all the tales of the _Arabian Nights_ the
dearest to legend-loving mankind, whether Oriental or Occidental—the
story of the voyages of “Sindbad the Sailor,” or of “Sindbad the
Seaman,” as Sir Richard Burton prefers to call him. Perhaps the only
tale which at all competes in popularity with the wandering record of
the “Eastern Odysseus” is the story of “Ali Baba,” and that,
unfortunately, does not belong to the _Arabian Nights_ at all, and can
only, as far as we know, be traced to a modern Greek origin. Lovers of
the story of “Sindbad the Sailor” will be pleased to learn that their
old friend remains to all intents and purposes the same in Sir Richard’s
literal Translation as he was in the fanciful adaptation of Galland, and
the more accurate rendering of Lane. He does not “suffer a sea change,”
but remains, what he has always been, the most wonderful wanderer in the
whole range and region of romance. Sir Richard Burton’s sixth volume
contains, besides, that story of the “Seven Viziers” which in so many
forms is a favourite in all the languages of the East.

THE BAT, _July 7th, 1886_.

As regards his translation, however, Captain Burton is certainly
felicitous in the manner in which he has Englished the picturesque turns
of the original. One great improvement in this version over that of Mr.
Lane will be found in the fact that the verses so freely interspersed
throughout the _Nights_ are here rendered in metre, and that an attempt
also has often been made to preserve the assonants and the monorhyme of
the Arabic. Mr. Lane frankly stated that he omitted the greater part of
the poetry as tedious, and, through the loss of measure and rhyme
“generally intolerable to the reader,” as, in truth, the specimens
inserted mostly proved to be on account of the bald literalism of the
rendering. Captain Burton has naturally inserted the poetry with the
rest; and has often shown much skill in doing into English verse the
rippling couplets of the original. Take, as an instance, the verses
which Mr. Lane renders:—

“Tell him who is oppressed with anxiety that anxiety will not last.
As happiness passeth away, so passeth away anxiety.”

Almost equally literal, and certainly more poetical, is Captain Burton,
who gracefully turns this:—

“Tell whoso hath sorrow, Grief never shall last;
E’en as Joy hath no morrow, so woe shall go past.”

And since, in proverbs and epigrams, so much depends on the form, the
spirit of the original is well observed, when, for instance, we read in
a certain chronicle the lines of one Ibn al Sumam:—

“Hold fast thy secret, and to none unfold;
Lost is a secret when that secret’s told.
And fail thy breast thy secret to conceal,
How canst thou hope another’s breast shall hold?”

Doubtless, too—and in this not following Mr. Lane—Captain Burton is
right in retaining the original division into Nights: for, as he justly
observes, “Without the Nights, no Arabian Nights!” And, besides this
being a prime feature of the original, a grateful pause is thereby
introduced into these intricate and interminable stories. In the
translation Captain Burton’s English is generally picturesque and always
fluent. As it is frankly stated, too, has “never hesitated to coin a
word when wanted.” Captain Burton, who has passed the greater portion of
his life in Arab-speaking countries, mixing freely in Moslem society,
and often passing—as during his pilgrimage—himself for a True Believer,
is naturally well qualified to translate this “Great Eastern Saga-Book.”
Also, since the scene of the stories is laid successively in every
country of Islam, from Tangier to India, and beyond, the translator’s
intimate acquaintance, made during his wanderings, with all these people
and places, stands him in good stead in elucidating peculiar manners and
customs, and in this gives him the advantage over Mr. Lane, who had only
seen Islam as domiciled in Egypt.

THE SPORTING LIFE, _July 17th, 1886_.

There has been such a delay between the issue of the sixth and that of
the seventh volume of “Alf Laylah wa Laylah,” or “The Book of the
Thousand Nights and a Night,” “the private subscribers only” to that
marvellous work were beginning to wonder whether anything had happened
to Sir Richard F. Burton to put a stop to his undertaking. At any rate,
one private subscriber wondered, the more especially as many threats had
been breathed by self-imposed keepers of the public conscience
(journalists, of course), with regard to putting an end to the
publication. To make up for the delay, the eighth, as well as the
seventh, volume has been issued. One of the dedications is peculiar. It
is encased in a mourning border, and runs thus:—“A Message to Frederick
Hankey, formerly of No. 2, Rue Lafitte, Paris.—My dear Fred,—If there is
such a thing as ‘continuation,’ you will see these lines in the far
spirit-land, and you will find that your old friend has not forgotten
you and Annie.” It is evident from this that the great African and Asian
traveller has leanings towards a belief in spiritualism.

* * * * *

The more I see of this splendid translation, the more do I feel that we
are indebted to the translator (after Mr. Payne) for the first real
idea, in English, of the immortal original, and to him alone for a
complete reflection of the Arabian Nights. The lustre and vigour of the
English compel one’s admiration at every step. In justification whereof
I cite a couple of brief passages from the first few pages in the
seventh volume:—“The first to open the door of war was Kurajan, who
cried out, saying, ‘Let no coward come out to me this day, nor craven!’
Whereupon Jamrkan and Sa’adan stood by the colours, but there ran at him
a captain of the Banu Amir, and the two drave at each other awhile like
two rams butting. Presently Kurajan seized the Moslem by the jerkin
under his hauberk, and dragging him from his saddle, dashed him to the
ground, where he left him, upon which the Kafirs laid hands on him and
bound him and bore him off to their tents, whilst Kurajan wheeled about
and careered and offered battle till another captain came out, whom also
he took prisoner, nor did he leave to do thus till he had made prize of
seven captains before midday.”

* * * * *

Again: “He cried out to his folk, ‘At him all at once and assault him
with one assault.’ Accordingly they waved the awe-striking banners, and
host was heaped on host; Gharib rushed on with his men, and Jamrkan did
the same, and the two sides met like two seas together clashing. The
Yamani sword and spear wrought havoc, and breasts and bellies were rent,
whilst both armies saw the Angel of Death face to face, and the dust of
the battle rose to the skirts of the sky. Ears went deaf and tongues
went dumb, and doom from every side came on, whilst valiant stood fast
and faint heart fled; and they ceased not from fight and fray till ended
the day, when the drums beat the retreat and the two hosts drew apart
and returned, each to its tents.” Is not that spirited? It is palpable
enough that, until Sir Richard Burton’s wonderful work saw the light, we
had no “Arabian Nights.”

NOTTINGHAM JOURNAL, _August 30th, 1886_.

The sales of Sir Richard Burton’s most realistic version of the _Arabian
Nights_ (a very valuable book in its way, but distinctly a top-shelf
one) appear to have gone off with uncommon briskness; with so much
briskness, in fact, that Sir Richard has taken in hand to prepare for
publication a series of additional tales from the same source. Five new
volumes called _Supplemental Nights_ are in preparation, and I
understand that the first two are completed. It is no disparagement to
the scholarly labours of the editor to suggest that one may have too
much Arabian Nights Entertainment. The translation of the original work,
a unique performance, will always be valued by students and collectors
(I am told that it is already worth double the price it was issued at),
but a second series might possibly pall.

WHITEHALL GAZETTE, _August 5th, 1886_.

The current number of the _Edinburgh Review_ contains an article of a
somewhat foolish kind upon the _Arabian Nights_. That great collection
of Eastern stories is receiving a great deal of very deserved attention
just now, and any literary contribution to the question is of interest.
But the _Edinburgh_ Reviewer does not add much of value to the matter in
hand. A considerable part of his paper is devoted to a very acrid,
unjust, and ill-mannered attack upon Sir Richard Burton’s famous
translation. Quite apart from the question of tastes which the paper
raises—though whether the _Edinburgh Review_ is necessarily an
impeccable authority as to taste is at least open to question—the attack
on Sir Richard Burton’s rendering is animated by an obvious spirit of
small antagonism which puts it out of court at once as a critical essay.
To jump upon some small inaccuracy and trumpet over it like the foolish
cock in the fable will scarcely detract from the admiration which all
Orientalists feel for Sir Richard Burton, nor in any way lessen his fame
as one of the profoundest and the most remarkable Oriental students of
his time. The _Edinburgh_ Reviewer is also pleased to be sarcastic over
a reference to D’Herbelot. Does the reviewer really think that
D’Herbelot is altogether out of date because he happened not to have
been published in the latter part of the nineteenth century and under
the patronage of the _Edinburgh Review_? However, Sir Richard Burton’s
translation of the _Arabian Nights_ will endure as a standard
contribution to Oriental literature, in spite of the disapproval of its
latest critic.

FOOTNOTES:

-----

Footnote 1:

Tome xli. is dated 1789, the other three, 1788, to include them in the
“Cabinet.”

Footnote 2:

The titles of all the vols. are dated alike, 1793, the actual date of
printing.

Footnote 3:

This name is not in the Arabic text, and I have vainly puzzled my
brains about its derivation or meaning.

Footnote 4:

This P. N. is, I presume, a corruption of “Shawalán” = one falling
short. The wife “Oitba” is evidently “Otbá” or “Utbá.”

Footnote 5:

See my Supplemental volume i. pp. 55–151, “The Ten Wazirs; or, the
History of King Azádbakht and his Son.”

Footnote 6:

MS. pp. 140–182. Gauttier, vol. ii., pp. 313–353, _Histoire du sage
Heycar_ translated by M. Agoub: Weber, “History of Sinkarib and his
two Viziers” (vol. ii. 53): the “Vizier” is therein called Hicar.

Footnote 7:

This form of the P. N. is preferred by Prof. R. Hoerning in his
“Prisma des Sanherib,” etc. Leipsic, 1878. The etymology is “Sin
akhi-irib” = Sini (Lunus, or the Moon-God) increaseth brethren. The
canon of Ptolemy fixes his accession at B.C. 702, the first year of
Elibus or Belibus. For his victories over Babylonia, Palestine, Judæa,
and Egypt see any “Dictionary of the Bible,” and Byron for the
marvellous and puerile legend—

The Assyrian came down as a wolf on the fold,

which made him lose in one night 185,000 men, smitten by the “Angel of
the Lord” (2 Kings xix. 35). Seated upon his throne before Lachish he
is represented by a bas-relief as a truly noble and kingly figure.

Footnote 8:

I presume that the author hereby means a “fool,” Pers. nádán. But in
Assyrian story Nadan was = Nathan, King of the people of Pukudu, the
Pekod of Jeremiah (i. 21) and other prophets.

Footnote 9:

In text always “Atúr,” the scriptural “Asshur” = Assyria, biblically
derived from Asshur, son of Shem (Gen. x. 22), who was worshipped as
the proto-deity. The capital was Niniveh. Weber has “Nineveh and
Thor,” showing the spelling of his MS. According to the Arabs, “Ashur”
had four sons; Iran (father of the Furs = Persians, the Kurd, or
Ghozzi, the Daylams, and the Khazar), Nabít, Jarmúk, and Basíl. Ibn
Khaldun (iii. 413), in his “Universal History,” opposes this opinion
of Ibn Sa’id.

Footnote 10:

_i.e._ “Fish-town” or “town of Nin” = Ninus, the founder. In mod. days
“Naynawah” was the name of a port on the east bank of the Tigris; and
moderns have unearthed the old city at Koyunjik, Nabi Yunas, and the
Tall (mound of) Nimrud.

Footnote 11:

The surroundings, suggest Jehovah, the tribal deity of the Jews. The
old version says, “Hicar was a native of the country of Haram
(Harrán), and had brought from thence the knowledge of the true God;
impelled, however, by an irresistible decree, etc.”

Footnote 12:

_i.e._ a woollen cloth dyed red. Hence Pyrard (i. 244) has “red
scarlet,” and (vol. ii.) “violet scarlet”; Froissart (xvth centy.) has
“white scarlet,” and Marot (xvith) has “green scarlet.” The word seems
to be French of xiith century, but is uncertain: Littré proposes
Galaticus, but admits the want of an intermediate form. Piers Plowman,
and Chaucer use “cillatún,” which suggests Pers. “Sakalat,” or
“Saklatún,” whence Mr. Skeat would derive “scarlet.” This note is from
the voyage of F. Pyrard, etc. London. Hakluyts, M.dccc.lxxxvii.; and
the editor quotes Colonel Yule’s M. Polo (ii. chapt. 58) and his
“Discursive Glossary s. v. _Suclát_.”

Footnote 13:

_i.e._ “Al-Kirm,” Arab. and Pers. = a worm, as in Kirmán (see Supplem.
vol. i. 59); the _coccus ilicis_, vulg. called cochineal.

Footnote 14:

Arab. “Arz,” from the Heb. Arz or Razah (✓ raz = to vibrate), the root
κέδρος (_cedrus conifera_), the Assyrian “Erimu of Lebanon,” of which
mention is so often made. The old controversy as to whether “Razah” =
cedar or fir, might easily have been settled if the disputants had
known that the modern Syrians still preserve the word for the clump
called “The Cedars” on the seaward slope of the Libanus.

Footnote 15:

We should say “reading and writing,” but the greater difficulty of
deciphering the skeleton eastern characters places reading in the more
honourable place. They say of a very learned man, “He readeth it off
(readily) as one drinketh water.”

Footnote 16:

Arab. “Al-Sáhib al-jayyid.” [“Jayyid” is, by the measure “Fay’il,”
derived from the root “Jaud,” to excel, like “Kayyis,” from “Kaus”
(see Suppl vol. iv., p. 350), “Mayyit” from “Maut,” “Sayyid” from
“Saud.” The form was originally “Jaywid;” then the Wáw became
assimilated to the preceding Já, on account of the following Kasrah,
and this assimilation or “Idghám” is indicated by Tashdíd. As from
“Kayyis” the diminutive “Kuwayyis” is formed, so “Jayyid” forms the
Tasghír, “Juwayyid,” which, amongst the Druzes, has the specific
meaning of “deeply versed in religious matters.”—ST.]

Footnote 17:

“Kúl,” vulg. for “Kul”; a form constant in this MS.

Footnote 18:

Gauttier “Sarkhadom,” the great usurper Sargon, a contemporary of
Merodach Baladan of Babylon and of Sabaco 1st of Ethiopia, B.C.
721–702: one of the greatest Assyrian Kings, whose place has been
determined to be between Shalmaneser and his son, the celebrated
Sennacherib, who succeeded him. The name also resembles the biblical
Ezar-haddon (Asaridanus), who, however, was the son of Sennacherib,
and occupied the throne of Babylon in B.C. 680.

Footnote 19:

Gauttier, pp. 317–319, has greatly amplified and modified these words
of wisdom.

Footnote 20:

In text “Yá Bunayya” = lit. “O my little son,” a term of special
fondness.

Footnote 21:

Arab. “Jamrah,” a word of doubtful origin, but applied to a tribe
strong enough to be self-dependent. The “Jamarát of the Arabs” were
three, Banú Numayr, Banú Háris (who afterwards confederated with
Mashíj) and Banú Dabbah (who joined the Rikáb), and at last Nomayr
remained alone. Hence they said of it:

“Nomayr the jamrah (also “a live coal”) of Arabs are; ✿ And ne’er
cease they to burn in fiery war.”

See Chenery’s Al-Hariri, pp. 343–428.

Footnote 22:

In the Arab. “Ta’arkalak,” which M. Houdas renders “_qu’elle ne te
retienne dans ses filets_.”

Footnote 23:

A _lieu commun_ in the East. It is the Heb. “Sháked” and the fruit is
the “Loz” (Arab. Lauz) = _Amygdalus communis_, which the Jews looked
upon as the harbinger of spring and which, at certain feasts, they
still carry to the synagogue, as representing the palm branches of the
Temple.

Footnote 24:

The mulberry-tree in Italy will bear leaves till the end of October
and the foliage is bright as any spring verdure.

Footnote 25:

Gauttier omits this: _pas poli_, I suppose.

Footnote 26:

The barbarous sentiment is Biblical—inspired, “He that spareth his rod
hateth his son” (Prov. xiii. 24), and “Chasten thy son while there is
hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying” (Prov. xix. 18).
Compare the Arab equivalent, “The green stick is of the trees of
Paradise” (Pilgrimage i. 151). But the neater form of the saw was left
to uninspired writers; witness “Spare the rod and spoil the child,”
which appears in Ray’s proverbs, and is immortalised by Hudibras:—

Love is a boy by poets styled,
Then spare the rod and spoil the child. (ii. 1, 843).

It is to the eternal credit of John Locke, the philosopher, that in an
age of general brutality he had the moral courage, to declare,
“_Beating_ is the worst and therefore the last means to be used in the
correction of children.”

Footnote 27:

Arab. “Dahn” (oil, ointment) which may also mean “soft sawder.”

Footnote 28:

_Aucun roi ne peut gouverner sans armée et on ne peut avoir une armée
sans argent._ For a treatise on this subject see the “Chronique de
Tabari,” ii. 340.

Footnote 29:

M. Agoub, in Gauttier (vi. 321) remarks of these prosings, “Ces
maximes qui ne seraient pas indignes, pour la plupart, des beaux temps
de la philosophie grecque, appartiennent toutes au texte arabe; je
n’ai fait que les disposer dans un ordre plus méthodique. J’ai dû
aussi supprimer quelques unes, soit parce qu’elles n’offraient que des
préceptes d’une morale banale, soit que traduites en français, elles
eussent pû paraître bizarres à des lecteurs européens. Ce que je dis
ici, s’applique également à celles qui terminent le conte et qui
pourraient fournir le sujet de plusieurs fables.” One would say that
the translator is the author’s natural enemy.

Footnote 30:

Arab. “Ammál,” now vulgarly written with initial Hamzah, a favourite
expression in Egypt and meaning “Verily,” “I believe you, my boy,” and
so forth. But “’Ammál” with the Ayn may also mean “he intended,” or
“he was about to.”

Footnote 31:

In Gauttier the name is Ebnazadan, but the Arab. text has “Naudán,”
which I take to be the Persian “New of knowledge” as opp. to Nádán,
the “unknowing.”

Footnote 32:

In Chavis (Weber ii. 58) and Gauttier (p. 323) _Akis, roi de Perse_.
The second name may be “Shah of the Ebna” or Persian incolæ of
Al-Yaman; _aristocratie Persane naturalisée Arabe_ (Al-Mas’udi, iv.
188, etc.)

Footnote 33:

_i.e._ the Lowland of the Eglantine or Narcissus; Nisrín is also in
dictionaries an island where amber abounds. There is a shade of
difference between Buk’ah and Bak’ah. The former which is the
correcter form = a patch of ground, a plain (hence the Buká’a =
Cœlesyria), while Bak’ah = a hollow where water collects. In Chavis we
find “the plain of Harrim” and in Gauttier _la plaine de Baschrin_;
and the appointment was “for the first of the month Niram” (Naysán).

Footnote 34:

“Pharaoh,” which Hebrew Holy Writ left so vague and unsatisfactory,
has become with the Arabs “Fir’aun,” the dynastic name of Egyptian
kings, as Kisrà (Chosroës) of the Persians, Tobba of the Himyarites,
Kaysar (Cæsar) of the Romans, Jalut (Goliath) of the Phœnicians,
Faghfur of the Chinese, Khákán of the Tartars, Adfonsh (Alfonso) of
the Spanish, and Aguetíd of the Berbers. Ibn Khaldún iv. 572.

Footnote 35:

“Mizr” in Assyrian = “Musur,” in Heb. “Misraim” (the dual Misrs, whose
duality permeated all their polity), and in Arab “Misr,” the O. Egypt.
“Há káhi Ptáh” (the Land of the great God, Ptah), and the Coptic
“Tá-mera” = the Land of the Nile flood, ignoring, I may add, all
tradition of a Noachian or general deluge.

Footnote 36:

The simplicity of old Assyrian correspondence is here well preserved,
as we may see by comparing those letters with the cuneiform
inscriptions, etc., by S. Abden Smith (Pfeiffer, Leipsic, 1887). One
of them begins thus, “The will of the King to Sintabni-Uzur.
Salutation from me to thee. May it be well with thee. Regarding
Sinsarra-utzur whom thou has sent to me, how is thy report?” etc. We
find such expressions as “May the great Gods, lovers of thy reign,
preserve thee an hundred years;” also “Peace to the King, my lord,”
etc.

Footnote 37:

Arab. “Yaum al-Khamís.” For the week-days see vol. vi. 190, and for a
longer notice, Al-Mas’udi, iii. 422–23.

Footnote 38:

In the text “Kál” (al-Ráwí), “the Reciter saith”—which formula I omit
here and elsewhere.

Footnote 39:

_i.e._ “The Father of the little Fish,” in Gauttier (vii. 329) “Abou
Soméika.”

Footnote 40:

By way of insult; as I have before noticed.

Footnote 41:

He had now learned that Nadan had ruined him.

Footnote 42:

The wife (in p. 155, “Ashghaftíní”) is called “Thou hast enamoured me”
from the root “Shaghaf” = violent love, joy, grief. Chavis has
Zefagnie: Gauttier suppresses the name, which is not pretty. In the
old version she is made aunt (father’s sister) to Sankharib.

Footnote 43:

The old version attributes all this device to “Zefagnie;” thus
injuring the unity and the interest of the tale.

Footnote 44:

Arab. “Jund” plur. “Junúd,” a term mostly applied to regular troops
under the Government, as opposed to soldiers who took service with the
Amirs or great barons—a state of things still enduring in non-British
India.

Footnote 45:

Who thus makes a “Ma’adabah” = wake or funeral feast before his death.
See vol. viii. 231.

Footnote 46:

_i.e._ “Father of the Fishlet,” in the old version “Yapousmek” (Yá Abú
Sumayk!)

Footnote 47:

In Chavis he becomes “an old slave, a magician, stained with the
greatest crimes, who has the air and figure of Hicar.”

Footnote 48:

A formula which announces the death of his supposed enemy.

Footnote 49:

Arab. “Matmúrah” = Sardábah (i. 340), a silo for storing grain, an
underground cell (ii. 39.)

Footnote 50:

See text “Náhú” from ✓ “Nauh” = ceremonious keening for the dead. The
general term for the wail is “Walwalah” or “Wilwál” (an onomatopy) and
for the public wailing-woman “Naddábah.”

Footnote 51:

Here we find the Doric form “Rahúm” for “Rahím,” or it may simply be
the intensive and emphatic form, as “Nazúr” = one who looks intently
for “Názir,” a looker.

Footnote 52:

In the old version “a tenth part of the revenues.” The “Kasím” of the
text is an unusual word which M. Houdas would render _revenues en
nature_, as opposed to Khiráj, _revenues en argent_. I translate it by
“tax tribute.”

Footnote 53:

In text “’Azzámín,” _i.e._ men who recite “’Azm,” mostly Koranic
versets which avert evil.

Footnote 54:

This may either be figurative or literal—upon the ashes where the fire
had been; even as the father of Sayf al-Mulúk sat upon the floor of
his audience-hall (vol. vii. 314).

Footnote 55:

In text “Ya’tadir”—from ✓ ’Adr = heavy rain, boldness. But in this MS.
the dots are often omitted and the word may be Ya’tazir = find excuse.

Footnote 56:

In the old version the wife is made to disclose the secret of her
husband being alive—again a change for the worse.

Footnote 57:

Here “Wayha-k” and before “Wayla-k”: see vols. v. 258; vii. 127 and
iii. 82.

Footnote 58:

The King, after the fashion of Eastern despots, never blames his own
culpable folly and hastiness; this was decreed to him and to his
victim by Destiny.

Footnote 59:

The older version reads “Roc” and informs us that “it is a prodigious
bird, found in the deserts of Africa: it will bear two hundred pounds
weight; and many are of opinion that the idea of this bird is
visionary.” In Weber ii. 63, this is the device of “Zafagnie,” who
accompanies her husband to Egypt.

Footnote 60:

This name appears to be a corruption. The sound, however, bears a
suspicious resemblance to “Dabshalim (a name most proper for such a
Prince, to wit, meaning in their tongue a mighty King),” who appears
in chapt. i. of the “Fables of Pilpay” (Bidpai = Bidyapati = Lord of
Lore?) “Dabshalímat” = the Dabshalíms, was the dynastic title of the
Kings of Somanáth (Somnauth) in Western India.

Footnote 61:

Arab. “Tín” = clay, mud, which would be used with the Tob (adobe,
sun-dried brick) forming the walls of Egypt and Assyria. M. G.
Maspero, in his excellent booklet “L’Archéologie Egyptienne,” (p. 7.
Paris, Quantin, 1887,) illustrates this ancient industry which endures
with all its gear to the present day. The average measured 0^m 22 ×
0^m 11 × 0^m 14; the larger was 0^m 38 × 0^m 18 × 0^m 14, with
intermediate sizes. These formed the cores of temple walls, and, being
revetted with granite, syenite, alabaster and other stones, made a
grand show; but when the outer coat was removed they were presently
weathered to the external semblance of mud-piles. Such was mostly the
condition of the ruins of grand Bubastis (“Pi-Pasht”) hod. Zagázig,
where excavations are still being pushed on.

Footnote 62:

The old version has “Masser, Grand Cairo (in the days of the
Pharaohs!); so called from having been built by Misraim, the son of
Cham.”

Footnote 63:

In Chavis, “Abicam, a Chaldæan astrologer;” in Gauttier “Abimacam.”

Footnote 64:

In Al-Harírí (p. 409) we read, “Hospitality is three days;” and a
Hadís of the Prophet confirms the liberal practice of The
Ignorance:—“The entertainment of a guest is three days, and the
viaticum (“Jáizah”) is a day and a night, and whatso exceedeth is an
alms-gift.” On the first day is shown largeness and courtesy; on the
second and third the stranger is treated after the usual custom of the
household, and then he is provided with rations for a day and a night.
See Lane: A. Nights, i. 486; also The Nights, vol. i. 3.

Footnote 65:

_i.e._ Not standing astraddle, or in other such indecorous attitude.

Footnote 66:

Chavis, “Bilelsanam, the oracle of Bel, the chief God of the
Assyrian:” Gauttier _Une idole Bíl_. Bel (or Ba’al or Belus), the
Phœnician and Canaanite head-god; may here represent Hobal the biggest
idol in the Meccan Pantheon, which used to be borne on raids and
expeditions to give plunder a religious significance. Tabari iii. 17.
Evidently the author holds it to be an idol.

Footnote 67:

The Syro-solar month = April; much celebrated by poets and
fictionists: rain falling at such time into shells becomes pearls and
upon serpents poison.

Footnote 68:

The text has “Baybúnah,” prop. Bábúnaj in Arab., and in Pers. “Bábúk,”
or “Bábúnak” = the white camomile-flower. See vol. iii. 58.

Footnote 69:

“Khabata” = “He (the camel) pawed the ground.” The prim. sig. is to
beat, secondly, it is applied to a purblind camel which beats or
strikes the ground and so stumbles, or to him who bashes a tree for
its leaves; and lastly to him who gets alms by begging. See Chenery’s
Al-Hariri, p. 447.

Footnote 70:

Arab. “Karz” = moneys lent in interest and without fixed term of
payment, as opp. to “Dayn.”

Footnote 71:

In text “Kintár” = a quintal, 98 to 99 lbs. avoir.: in round numbers a
cwt. a hundred weight: see vol. ii. 233. The old version explains it
by “A golden coin, equivalent to three hundred livres French (?).”
About the value of the Kintár of gold, doctors differ. Some value it
at 40 ounces, others make it a leathern bag containing 1,080 to 1,100
dinars, and others 100 rotls (lbs.) of precious metal; while
Al-Makrizi relates that Mohammed the Apostle declared, “The Kintár of
gold is twelve hundred ounces.” Baron de Slane (Ibn Khaldun, i. 210)
computes 100 Kintárs = 1 million of francs.

Footnote 72:

In the text “wa lá ahad tafawwaha fína.”

Footnote 73:

Arab. “Falsafah” = philosophy: see vols. v. 234 and vii. 145.

Footnote 74:

In the text “Fa-yatrahúna,” masc. for fem.

Footnote 75:

The writer probably remembered that the cat was a sacred animal
amongst the Egyptians: see Herod., ii. 66, and Diod. Sic., who tells
us (vol. i. p. 94) of a Roman put to death under Ptolemy Auletes for
accidentally killing one of these holy beasts. The artists of
Bubastis, whose ruins are now for the first time being scientifically
explored, modelled the animal in bronze with an admirable art akin to
nature.

Footnote 76:

M. Houdas explains this miswritten passage, _Quand le soleil fut levé
et qu’il pénétra par ces ouvertures (lis. abkhásh, trou de flûte), il
répandit_ (‏دَرَ‎ not ‏بَذَرَ‎) _le sable dans ces cylindres formés
par la lumière du soleil_. It is not very intelligible. I understand
that the Sage went behind the Palace and drove through a mound or heap
of earth a narrow hole bearing east-west, which he partially filled up
with sand; and so when the sun rose the beams fell upon it and made it
resemble a newly made cord of white flax. M. Agoub (in Gauttier, vol.
vi. 344) shirks, as he is wont to do, the whole difficulty. [The idea
seems to me to be, and I believe this is also the meaning of M.
Houdas, that Haykar produced streaks of light in an otherwise dark
room by boring holes in the back wall, and scattered the sand over
them, so that, while passing through the rays of the sun, it assumed
the appearance of ropes. Hence he says mockingly to Pharaoh, “Have
these ropes taken up, and each time you please I will twist thee the
like of them”—reading “Aftilu,” 1st p. aor. instead of “Iftil,” 2nd
imper.—ST.]

Footnote 77:

Gauttier (vi. 347), _Ces présens ne sont pas dignes de lui; mais peu
de chose contenté les rois_.

Footnote 78:

Haykar is a Sage who follows the religion of nature, “Love thy friends
and hate thy foes.” Gauttier (vii. 349) embroiders all this with
Christian and French sentiment—_L’intention secrète de Heycar était de
sauver la vie à l’ingrat qui avait conspiré contre la sienne. Il
voulait pour toute vengeance, le mettre désormais dans l’impossibilité
de nuire et l’abandonner ensuite à ses remords, persuadé que le
remords n’est pas le moindre châtiment du coupable._ True nonsense
this when talking of a character born bad: its only remorse is not to
have done worse than bad.

Footnote 79:

Striking the nape being the Moslem equivalent for “boxing ears.”

Footnote 80:

With this formula compare Chaucer, “The Manciple’s Tale.”

Footnote 81:

In the text “Znnákt-ha,” which is unintelligible, although the sense
be clear.

Footnote 82:

A bird unknown to the dictionaries, apparently a species of hawk.

Footnote 83:

In the text “Júrah Syán” for “Júrah Sayyál.”

Footnote 84:

The tree having furnished the axe-helve.

Footnote 85:

M. Houdas translates _Tu as médit de moi et tu m’as accablé de tes
méchancetés_.

Footnote 86:

In text “Alif, bá, tá, sá,” the latter written with a Sin instead of a
Thá, showing the vulgar use which extends from Alexandria to Meccah.

Footnote 87:

So in French, deriding the difference between written and spoken
English, _Ecrivez Salmonassar, prononcez crocodile_.

Footnote 88:

Because he owes thee more than a debt of life.

Footnote 89:

_i.e._ “Tammat” = She (the tale) is finished.

Footnote 90:

MSS. pp. 217–265. See the “Arabian Tales,” translated by Robert Heron
(Edinburgh M.DCC.XCII.), where it is, “The Robber-Caliph; or
Adventures of Haroun Alraschid, with the Princess of Persia, and the
fair Zutulbé,” vol. i. pp. 2–69. Gauttier, _Histoire du Khalyfe de
Baghdad_, vol. vii. pp. 117–150.

Footnote 91:

In text “Ahádís,” esp. referred to the sayings of Mohammed, and these
are divided into two great sections, the “Ahádís al-Nabawí,” or the
actual words pronounced by the Apostle; and the “Ahádís al-Kudus,” or
the sentences attributed to the Archangel Gabriel.

Footnote 92:

Heron has “the Festival of Haraphat,” adding a power of nonsense. This
is the day of the sermon, when the pilgrims sleep at Muzdalifah
(Pilgrimage iii. 265). Kusayy, an ancestor of the Apostle, was the
first to prepare a public supper at this oratory, and the custom was
kept up by Harun al-Rashid, Zubaydah and Sha’ab, mother of the Caliph
al-Muktadir (Tabari ii. 368). Alms are obligatory on the two great
’I´ds or festivals, al-Fitr which ends the Ramazán fast and al-Kurbán
during the annual Pilgrimage. The dole must consist of at least a
“Sá’” = 7 lbs. in grain, dates, &c.

Footnote 93:

_i.e._ habited themselves in the garments of little people: so to
“enlarge the turband” is to assume the rank of an ’Álim or learned
man. “Jayb,” the breast of a coat is afterwards used in the sense of a
pocket.

Footnote 94:

Either the Caliph was persuaded that the white wrist was a “promise of
better things above and below,” or he proposed marriage as a mere
freak, intelligible enough when divorce costs only two words.

Footnote 95:

In text “Nakdí” = the actual as opposed to the contingent dowry: see
vols. vii. 126; ix. 32.

Footnote 96:

This is said in irony.

Footnote 97:

In text “Bashákhín” plur. of “Bashkhánah:” see Suppl. vols. i. 165;
iii. 121.

Footnote 98:

In Heron he becomes “Kassera-Abocheroan.” Anushirwan (in full
Anúshínrawán = sweet of soul) is popularly supposed to have begun his
rule badly after the fashion of Eastern despots, and presently to have
become the justest of monarchs. Nothing of this, however, is found in
Tabari (ii. 159).

Footnote 99:

He was indignant because twitted with having married a beggar-maid
like good King Cophetua. In Heron he is “moved by so sensible a
reply.”

Footnote 100:

Plur. “Katáif,” a kind of pancake made of flour and sugar (or honey)
and oil or butter.

Footnote 101:

Arab. “Sakká” = a water-carrier, generally a bad lot. Of the “Sakká
Sharbah,” who supplies water to passengers in the streets, there is an
illustration in Lane; M.E. chapt. xiv.

Footnote 102:

In the text “Kahbah” an ugly word = our whore (_i.e._ hired woman): it
is frightfully common in every-day speech. See vol. ii. 70.

Footnote 103:

Arab. “Sibák” usually = a leash (for falconry, etc.).

Footnote 104:

I have emphasised this detail which subsequently becomes a leading
incident.

Footnote 105:

Usual formulæ when a respectable person is seen drinking: the same
politeness was also in use throughout the civilised parts of mediæval
Europe. See the word “Hanian” (vol. ii. 5), which at Meccah and
elsewhere is pronounced also “Haniyyan.”

Footnote 106:

In text “Yá Ta’ís,” a favourite expression in this MS. Page 612 (MS.)
has “Tá’ish,” a clerical error, and in page 97 we have “Yá Ta’ásat-ná”
= O our misery!

Footnote 107:

As might a “picker up of unconsidered trifles.”

Footnote 108:

In text “Akbá’ wa Zarábíl.” I had supposed the first to be the Pers.
Kabá = a short coat or tunic, with the Arab. ’Ayn (the second is the
common corruption for “Zarábín” = slaves’ shoes, slippers: see vol. x.
1), but M. Houdas translates _Ni calottes ni caleçons_, and for the
former word here and in MS. p. 227 he reads “’Arakiyah” = skull-cap:
see vol. i. 215. [“Akbá” is the pl. of “Kub’,” which latter occurs
infra, p. 227 of the Ar. MS., and means, in popular language, any part
of a garment covering the head, as the hood of a Burnus or the
top-piece of a Kalansuwah; also a skull-cap, usually called
“’Araqíyah.”—ST.]

Footnote 109:

Heron dubs him “Hazeb (Hájib) Yamaleddin.” In text “’Alái al-Dín;” and
in not a few places it is familiarly abbreviated to “’Ali” (p. 228,
etc.). For the various forms of writing the name see Suppl. vol. iii.
51. The author might have told us the young Chamberlain’s name
_Arabicè_ earlier in the tale; but it is the Ráwi’s practice to begin
with the vague and to end in specification. I have not, however,
followed his example here or elsewhere.

Footnote 110:

_i.e._ Destiny so willed it. For the Pen and the Preserved Tablet see
vol. v. 322.

Footnote 111:

This was the custom not only with Harun as Mr. Heron thinks, but at
the Courts of the Caliphs generally.

Footnote 112:

In text “Ghiyár,” Arab. = any piece of dress or uniform which
distinguishes a class, as the soldiery: in Pers. = a strip of yellow
cloth worn by the Jews subject to the Shah.

Footnote 113:

Arab. “Zarbúl tákí,” the latter meaning “high-heeled.” Perhaps it may
signify also “fenestrated, or open-worked like a window.” So “poules”
or windows cut in the upper leathers of his shoes. Chaucer, The
Miller’s Tale.

Footnote 114:

“Mayzar,” in Pers. = a turband: in Arab. “Miizar” = a girdle; a
waistcloth.

Footnote 115:

Arab. “Kaus al-Bunduk” (or Bandúk) a pellet-bow, the Italian
arcobugio, the English arquebuse; for which see vol. i. 10. Usually
the “Kís” is the _Giberne_ or pellet-bag; but here it is the
bow-cover. Gauttier notes (vii. 131):—_Bondouk signifie en Arabe
harquebuse, Albondoukani signifie l’arquebusier; c’était comme on le
voit, le mot d’ordre du Khalyfe._ He supposes, then, that firelocks
were known in the days of Harun al-Rashid (A.D. 786–809). Al-Bundukáni
= the cross-bow man, or rather the man of the pellet-bow was,
according to the Ráwí, the name by which the Caliph was known in this
disguise. Al-Zahir Baybars al-Bundukdárí, the fourth Baharite Soldan
(A.D. 1260–77) was so entitled because he had been a slave to a
Bundukdár, an officer who may be called the Grand Master of Artillery.
In Chavis and Cazotte the Caliph arms himself with a spear, takes a
bow and arrow (instead of the pellet-bow that named him), disguises
his complexion, dyes beard and eyebrows, dons a large coarse turband,
a buff waistcoat with a broad leathern belt, a short robe of common
stuff and half-boots of strong coarse leather, and thus “assumes the
garb of an Arab from the desert.” (!)

Footnote 116:

See vol. i. 266.

Footnote 117:

_i.e._ by the Archangel Gabriel.

Footnote 118:

Arab. “Habbah” = a grain (of barley, etc.), an obolus, a mite: it is
also used for a gold bead in the shape of a cube forming part of the
Egyptian woman’s headdress (Lane M.E., Appendix A). As a weight it is
the 48th of a dirham, the third of a kírát (carat) or 127/128 of an
English grain, avoir.

Footnote 119:

In text “Mahmá” = as often as = kullu-má. This is the eleventh
question of the twelve in Al-Hariri, Ass. xxiv., and the sixth of Ass.
xxxvi. The former runs, “What is the noun (kullu-má) which gives no
sense except by the addition thereto of two words, or the shortening
thereof to two letters (_i.e._ má); and in the first case there is
adhesion and in the second compulsion?” (Chenery, pp. 246–253).

Footnote 120:

In Chavis and Cazotte he looks through the key-_hole_ which an Eastern
key does not permit, the holes being in the bolt. See Index, Suppl.
vol. v.

Footnote 121:

In text “Kábal-ki,” which I suspect to be a clerical error for
“Kátal-ki” = Allah strike thee dead. See vol. iv. 264, 265. [One of
the meanings of “Mukábalah,” the third form of “kabila,” is
“requital,” “retaliation.” The words in the text could therefore be
translated: “may God requite thee.”—ST.]

Footnote 122:

In Chavis and Cazotte she swears “by the name of God which is written
on our Great Prophet’s forehead.”

Footnote 123:

Arab. “Yá Luss”; for this word = the Gr. λῃστὴς see Suppl. vol. iv.
index.

Footnote 124:

“Al-Nátúr,” the keeper, esp. of a vineyard, a word naturalized in
Persian. The Caliph asks, Is this a bonâ fide affair and hast thou the
power to settle the matter definitely? M. Houdas translates as _Les
raisins sont-ils à toi, ou bien es-tu seulement la gardienne de la
vigne?_ [The verb záraba, 3rd form, followed by the accusative, means
“to join one in partnership.” The sense of the passage seems therefore
to be: Dost thou own grapes thyself, or art thou (“tuzáribí,” 2 fem.
sing.) in partnership with the vineyard-keeper. The word may be chosen
because it admits of another interpretation, the _double entendre_ of
which might be kept up in English by using the expression “sleeping”
partnership. Perhaps, however, “tuzáribí” means here simply: “Dost
thou play the part of.”—ST.]

Footnote 125:

The innuendo is intelligible and I may draw attention to the humorous
skill with which the mother-in-law’s character is drawn.

Footnote 126:

In text “Aská-hu ’alakah” = gave him a good sound drubbing (’alakah),
as a robber would apply to a Judge had he the power.

Footnote 127:

Lest he happen to meet an unveiled woman on the stairs; the usual
precaution is to cry “Dastúr!”—by your leave (Persian).

Footnote 128:

Arab. “Khayr”—a word of good omen.

Footnote 129:

In Chavis and Cazotte the mother gives her daughter’s name as
_Zutulbé_ (?) and her own _Lelamain_ (?).

Footnote 130:

In text “Waliyah” or “Waliyáh” = and why?

Footnote 131:

The “Wronged” (Al-Mazlúm) refers to the Caliph who was being abused
and to his coming career as a son-in-law. Gauttier, who translates the
tale very perfunctorily, has _Dieu protège les malheureux et les
orphelins_ (vii. 133).

Footnote 132:

This again is intended to show the masterful nature of the Caliph, and
would be as much admired by the average coffee-house audience as it
would stir the bile of the free and independent Briton.

Footnote 133:

The “Street of the Copperas-maker”: the name, as usual, does not
appear till further on in the tale.

Footnote 134:

In text “Rukhám” = marble or alabaster, here used for building
material: so “Murakhkhim” = a marble-cutter, means simply a
stone-mason. I may here note the rediscovery of the porphyry quarries
in Middle Egypt, and the gypsum a little inland of Ras Gharíb to the
West of the Suez Gulf. Both were much used by the old Egyptians, and
we may now fairly expect to rediscover the lost sites, about Tunis and
elsewhere in Northern Africa, whence _Rosso antico_ and other fine
stones were quarried.

Footnote 135:

Arab. “Al-Hásil” also meaning the taxes, the revenue.

Footnote 136:

In text “Ká’ah” = a saloon: see vols. i. 85; i. 292; and vii. 167.

Footnote 137:

In the sing. “Sikálah.”

Footnote 138:

The Jinn here was Curiosity, said to be a familiar of the sex
feminine, but certainly not less intimate with “the opposite.”

Footnote 139:

In text “Kinnab” which M. Houdas translates _étoupe que l’on fixe au
bout d’un roseau pour blanchir les murs_.

Footnote 140:

Impossible here not to see a sly hit at the Caliph and the Caliphate.

Footnote 141:

The writer has omitted this incident which occurs in Chavis and
Cazotte.

Footnote 142:

In the text, “Samd” = carpets and pots and pans.

Footnote 143:

The Katá grouse (_Tetrao alchata seu arenarius_ of Linn.) has often
been noticed by me in Pilg. i. 226, (where my indexer called it “sand
goose”) and in The Nights (vols. i. 131; iv. 111). De Sacy (Chrestom.
Arab. iii. pp. 416, 507–509) offers a good literary account of it: of
course he cannot speak from personal experience. He begins with the
Ajáib al-Makhlúkát by Al-Kazwini (ob. A.H. 674 = A.D. 1274) who tells
us that the bird builds in the desert a very small nest (whence the
Hadís, “Whoso shall build to Allah a mosque, be it only the bigness of
a Katá’s nest, the Lord shall edify for him a palace in Paradise”);
that it abandons its eggs which are sometimes buried in sand, and
presently returns to them (hence the saying, “A better guide than the
Katá”); that it watches at night (?) and that it frequents highways to
reconnoitre travellers (??), an interpretation confirmed by the
Persian translator. Its short and graceful steps gave rise to the
saying, “She hath the gait of a Katá,” and makes De Sacy confound the
bird with the Pers. Káhú or Kabk-i-dari (partridge of the valley)
which is simply the francolin, the Ital. francolino, a perdix. The
latter in Arab. is “Durráj” (Al-Mas’udi, vii. 347): see an affecting
story connected with it in the Suppl. Nights, ii. 59–62. In the
xxiii^d Ass. of Al-Hariri the sagacity of the Katá is alluded to, “I
crossed rocky places, to which the Katá would not find its way.” See
also Ass. viii. But Mr. Chenery repeats a mistake when he says (p.
339) that the bird is “never found save where there is good pasturage
and water:” it haunts the wildest parts of Sind and Arabia, although
it seldom strays further than 60 miles from water which it must drink
every evening. I have never shot the Katá since he saved my party from
a death by thirst on a return-ride from Harar (First Footsteps in E.
Africa, p. 388). The bird is very swift with a skurrying flight like a
frightened pigeon; and it comes to water regularly about dusk when it
is easily “potted.”

Footnote 144:

In text “Samman” for “Sammán”: Dozy gives the form “Summun” (Houdas).
The literary name is “Salwà.”

Footnote 145:

For Wali (at one time a Civil Governor and in other ages a Master of
Police) see vol. i. 259.

Footnote 146:

Prob. a corruption of the Pers. “Názuk,” adj. delicate, nice.

Footnote 147:

In text “Jaftáwát” which is I presume the Arab. plur. of the Turk.
“Chifút” a Jew, a mean fellow. M. Houdas refers to Dozy _s.v._
“Jaftáh.” [The Turkish word referred to by Dozy is “Chifte” from the
Persian “Juft” = a pair, any two things coupled together.
“Mashá’ilíyah jaftáwát wa fánúsín” in the text would therefore be
“(cresset-) bearers of double torches and lanterns,” where the plural
fánúsín is remarkable as a vulgarism, instead of the Dictionary form
“Fawánís.”—ST.]

Footnote 148:

So in Chavis and Cazotte: Gauttier and Heron prefer (vol. i. 38)
“Chamama.” They add, “That dæmon incarnate gave out himself that Satan
was his father and the devil Camos (?) his brother.” The Arab. word is
connected with the ✓ shamma = he smelt and suggests the policeman
smoking plots.

Footnote 149:

_i.e._ concealing the secret sins of the people. This sketch of the
cad policeman will find many an original in the London force, if the
small householder speak the truth.

Footnote 150:

_Qui n’ait un point de contact avec l’une de ces catégories_—(Houdas).

Footnote 151:

In the old translations “The Hazen” (Kházin = treasurer?) which wholly
abolishes the _double entendre_.

Footnote 152:

In text “Darbisí al-báb” from the Persian, “Dar bastan” = to tie up,
to shut.

Footnote 153:

In text “Ghaush” for “Ghaushah” = noise, row.

Footnote 154:

“Akkál bula’hu” _i.e._ commit all manner of abominations. “To eat
skite” is to talk or act foolishly.

Footnote 155:

In the old translations “Ilamir Youmis.”

Footnote 156:

In text “Dabbús bazdaghání,” which I have translated as if from the
Pers. “Bazdagh” = a file. But it may be a clerical error for
“Bardawáni,” the well-known city in Hindostan whose iron was famous.

Footnote 157:

“Nahs” means something more than ill-omened, something nasty, foul,
uncanny: see vol. i. 301.

Footnote 158:

In Chavis, Heron and Co. there are two ladders to scale the garden
wall and descend upon the house-terrace which apparently they do not
understand to be the roof.

Footnote 159:

Arab. “Al-Káfi’ah” = _garde-fou, rebord d’une terrasse_—(Houdas).

Footnote 160:

Our vulgar “Houri”: see vols. i. 90; iii. 233. There are many meanings
of Hawar; one defines it as intense darkness of the black of the eye
and corresponding whiteness; another that it is all which appears of
the eye (as in the gazelle) meaning that the blackness is so large as
to exclude the whiteness; whilst a third defines “Haurá” as a woman
beautiful in the “Mahájir” (parts below and around the eyes which show
when the face is veiled), and a fourth as one whose whiteness of eye
appears in contrast with the black of the Kohl-powder. See Chenery’s
Al-Hariri, pp. 354–55.

Footnote 161:

Arab. “Zalamah” = tyrants, oppressors (police and employés): see vols.
i. 273, and vi. 214.

Footnote 162:

In text “Kunná nu’tíhu li-ahad” = we should have given him to someone;
which makes very poor sense. [The whole passage runs: “Házá allazí
kasam alláh bi-hi fa-lau kána rajul jayyid ghayr luss kunná nu’tíhu
li-ahad,” which I would translate: This is he concerning whom Allah
decreed (that he should be my portion, swearing;) “and if he were a
good man and no thief, we would have bestowed him on _someone_.” In
“kasama” the three ideas of decreeing, giving as a share, and binding
one’s self by oath are blended together. If it should appear out of
place to introduce Divinity itself as speaking in this context, we
must not forget that the person spoken of is no less illustrious
individual than Harun al-Rashíd, and that a decidedly satirical and
humorous vein runs through the whole tale. Moreover, I doubt that
“li-ahad” could be used as equivalent for “li-ghayrí,” “to some other
than myself,” while it frequently occurs in the emphatic sense of “one
who is somebody, a person of consequence.” The damsel and her mother,
on the other hand allude repeatedly to the state of utter
helplessness, in which they find themselves in default of their
natural protector, and which has reduced them from an exalted station
to the condition of nobodies. I speak, of course, here as elsewhere,
“under correction.”—ST.]

Footnote 163:

In text “Hmsh.” The Dicts. give Himmas and Himmis, forms never heard,
and Forsk. (Flora Ægypt.-Arab. p. lxxi.) “Homos,” also unknown. The
vulg. pron. is “Hummus” or as Lane (M. E. chapt. v.) has it “Hommus”
(chick-peas). The word applies to the pea, while “Malán” is the plant
in pod. It is the _cicer arietinum_ concerning which a classical tale
is told. “Cicero (pron. Kikero) was a poor scholar in the University
of Athens, wherewith his enemies in Rome used to reproach him, and as
he passed through the streets would call out ‘O Cicer, Cicer, O,’ a
word still used in Cambridge, and answers to a Servitor in Oxford.”
Quaint this approximation between “Cicer” the vetch and “Sizar” which
comes from “size” = rations, the Oxford “battel.”

Footnote 164:

Arab. “Yulakkimu,” from “Lukmah” = a mouthful; see vols. i. 266; vii.
367.

Footnote 165:

Arab. “Jarazat Kuzbán” (plur. of “Kazíb,” see vol. ii. 66) = long and
slender sticks.

Footnote 166:

_i.e._ a witch; see vol. viii. 131.

Footnote 167:

So in the phrase “Otbah hath the colic,” first said concerning Otbah
b. Rabí’a by Abú Jahl when the former advised not marching upon Badr
to attack Mohammed. Tabari, vol. ii. 491.

Footnote 168:

Compare the French “Brr!”

Footnote 169:

_i.e._ to whom thou owest a debt of apology or excuse, “Gharím” =
debtor or creditor.

Footnote 170:

Arab. “Juráb al-’uddah,” _i.e._ the manacles, fetters, etc.

Footnote 171:

The following three sentences are taken from the margin of (MS.) p.
257, and evidently belong to this place.

Footnote 172:

In text “Bghb” evidently for “Baght” or preferably “Baghtatan.”

Footnote 173:

This is a twice-told tale whose telling I have lightened a little
without omitting any important detail. Gauttier reduces the ending of
the history to less than five pages.

Footnote 174:

The normal idiom for “I accept.”

Footnote 175:

In text “Khila’t dakk al-Matrakah,” which I have rendered literally:
it seems to signify an especial kind of brocade.

Footnote 176:

The Court of Baghdad was, like the Urdú (Horde or Court) of the “Grand
Mogul,” organised after the ordinance of an army in the field, with
its centre, the Sovran, and two wings right and left, each with its
own Wazir for Commander, and its vanguard and rearguard.

Footnote 177:

Being the only son he had a voice in the disposal of his sister. The
mother was the Kabírah = head of the household, in Marocco Al-Sídah =
Madame mère; but she could not interfere single-handed in affairs
concerning the family. See Pilgrimage, vol. iii. 198. Throughout
Al-Islam in default of a father the eldest brother gives away the
sisters, and if there be no brother this is done by the nearest male
relation on the “sword” side. The mother has no authority in such
matters nor indeed has anyone on the “spindle” side.

Footnote 178:

Alluding to the Wali and his men.

Footnote 179:

Arab. “Kunyah” (the pop. mispronunciation of “Kinyah”) is not used
here with strict correctness. It is a forename or bye-name generally
taken from the favourite son, Abú (father of) being prefixed. When
names are written in full it begins the string, _e.g._, Abu Mohammed
(forename), Kásim (true name), ibn Ali (father’s name), ibn Mohammed
(grandfather’s), ibn Osman (great-grandfather), Al-Hariri (=the
Silkman from the craft of the family), Al-Basri (of Bassorah). There
is also the “Lakab” (_sobriquet_), _e.g._ Al-Bundukání or Badí’u
’l-Zamán (Rarity of the Age), which may be placed either before or
after the “Kunyah” when the latter is used alone. Chenery (Al-Hariri,
p. 315) confines the “Kunyah” to forenames beginning with Abú; but it
also applies to those formed with Umm (mother), Ibn (son), Bint
(daughter), Akh (brother) and Ukht (sister). See vol iv. 287. It is
considered friendly and graceful to address a Moslem by this
bye-name.—Gaudent prænomine molles Auriculæ.

Footnote 180:

In text “Yá Kawákí,” which M. Houdas translates “_O piailleur_,”
remarking that here it would be = _poule mouillée_.

Footnote 181:

“’Alakah khárijah” = an extraordinary drubbing.

Footnote 182:

In text “Ij’alní fí kll,” the latter word being probably, as M. Houdas
suggests, a clerical error for “Kal-a” or “Kiláa” = safety,
protection.

Footnote 183:

I am surprised that so learned and practical an Arabist as the Baron
de Slane in his Fr. translation of Ibn Khaldún should render _le
surnom d’Er-Rechid_ (_le prudent_), for “The Rightly Directed,” the
Orthodox (vol. ii. 237), when (ibid. p. 259) he properly translates
“Al-Khulafá al-rashidín” by _Les Califes qui marchent dans la voie
droite_.

Footnote 184:

MSS. pp. 476–504. This tale is laid down on the same lines as “Abú
al-Husn and his Slave-girl Tawaddud,” vol. vi. 189. It is carefully
avoided by Scott, C. de Perceval, Gauttier, etc.

Footnote 185:

Lit. an interpreter woman; the word is the fem. of Tarjumán, a
dragoman whom Mr. Curtis calls a Drag o’ men; see vol. i. 100. It has
changed wonderfully on its way from its “Semitic” home to Europe which
has naturalised it as Drogman, Truchman and Dolmetsch.

Footnote 186:

For this word of many senses, see vols. i. 231; ix. 221. M. Caussin de
Perceval (viii. 16) quoting d’Herbelot (_s.v._), notes that the
Abbasides thus entitled the chief guardian of the Harem.

Footnote 187:

See vols. iv. 100; viii. 268. In his Introduction (p. 22) to the
Assemblies of Al-Hariri Chenery says, “This prosperity had now passed
away, for God had brought the people of Rûm (so the Arabs call the
Byzantines, whom Abú Zayd here confounds with the Franks) on the
land,” etc. The confusion is not Abu Zayd’s: “Rúmí” in Marocco and
other archaic parts of the Moslem world is still synonymous with our
“European.”

Footnote 188:

This obedience to children is common in Eastern folk-lore: see Suppl.
vol. i. 212, in which the royal father orders his son to sell him. The
underlying idea is that the parents find their offspring too clever
for them; not, as in the “New World,” that Youth is entitled to take
precedence and command of Age.

Footnote 189:

In text “Fa min tumma” for “thumma”—then, _alors_.

Footnote 190:

Such as the headstall and hobbles, the cords and chains for binding
captives, and the mace and sword hanging to the saddle-bow.

Footnote 191:

_i.e._ not a well-known or distinguished horseman, but a chance rider.

Footnote 192:

These “letters of Mutalammis,” as Arabs term our Litteræ
Bellerophonteæ, or “Uriah’s letters,” are a _lieu commun_ in the East
and the Prince was in luck when he opened and read the epistle here
given by mistake to the wrong man. Mutalammis, a poet of The
Ignorance, had this _sobriquet_ (the “frequent asker,” or, as we
should say, the Solicitor-General), his name being Jarír bin ’Abd
al-Masíh. He was uncle to Tarafah of the Mu’allakah or prize-poem, a
type of the witty dissolute bard of the jovial period before Al-Islam
arose to cloud and dull man’s life. One day as he was playing with
other children Mutalammis was reciting a panegyric upon his favourite
camel, which ran:—

I mount a he-camel, dark-red and firm-fleshed; or a she-camel of
Himyar, fleet of foot and driving the pebbles with her crushing
hooves.

“See the he-camel turned to a she,” cried the boy, and the phrase
became proverbial to express inelegant transition (Arab. Prov. ii.
246). The uncle bade his nephew put out his tongue and seeing it
dark-coloured said, “That black tongue will be thy ruin!” Tarafah, who
was presently entitled Ibn al-’Ishrín (the son of twenty years), grew
up a model reprobate who cared nothing save for three things, “to
drink the dark-red wine foaming as the water mixeth with it, to urge
into the fight a broad-backed steed, and to while away the dull day
with a young beauty.” His apology for wilful waste is highly poetic:—

I see that the grave of the careful, the hoarder, differeth not from
the grave of the debauched, the spendthrift:
A hillock of earth covers this and that, with a few flat stones laid
together thereon.

See the whole piece in Chenery’s Al-Hariri (p. 360), from which this
note is borrowed. At last uncle and nephew fled from ruin to the Court
of ’Amrú bin Munzír III., King of Hira, who in the tale of
Al-Mutalammis and his wife Umaymah (The Nights, vol. v. 74) is called
Al-Nu’umán bin Munzir but is better known as ’Amrú bin Hind (his
mother). The King who was a ferocious personage nicknamed Al-Muharrik
or the Burner because he had thrown into the fire ninety-nine men and
one woman of the Tamím tribe in accordance with a vow of vengeance he
had taken to slaughter a full century, made the two strangers
boon-companions to his boorish brother Kábús. Tarafah, offended
because kept at the tent-door whilst the master drank wine within,
bitterly lampooned him together with ’Abd Amrú a friend of the King;
and when this was reported his death was determined upon. Amrú, the
King, seeing the anxiety of the two poets to quit his Court, offered
them letters of introduction to Abú Kárib, Governor of Al-Hajar
(Bahrayn) under the Persian King and they were accepted. The uncle
caused his letter to be read by a youth, and finding that it was an
order for his execution destroyed it and fled to Syria; but the nephew
was buried alive. Amrú, the King, was afterwards slain by the
poet-warrior, Amrú bin Kulthum, also of the “Mu’allakát,” for an
insult offered to his mother by Hind: hence the proverb, “Quicker to
slay than ’Amrú bin Kulsum” (A.P. ii. 233).

Footnote 193:

See vols. i. 192; iii. 14; these correspond with the “Stathmoi,”
Stationes, Mansiones or Castra of Herodotus, Terps. cap. 53, and
Xenophon An. i. 2, 10.

Footnote 194:

In text “Ittikà” viiith of ✓ wakà: the form “Takwà” is generally used
= fearing God, whereby one guards oneself from sin in this life and
from retribution in the world to come.

Footnote 195:

This series of puzzling questions and clever replies is still as
favourite a mental exercise in the East as it was in middle-aged
Europe. The riddle or conundrum began, as far as we know, with the
Sphinx, through whose mouth the Greeks spoke: nothing less likely than
that the grave and mysterious Scribes of Egypt should ascribe aught so
puerile to the awful emblem of royal majesty—Abu Haul, the Father of
Affright. Josephus relates how Solomon propounded enigmas to Hiram of
Tyre which none but Abdimus, son of the captive Abdæmon, could answer.
The Tale of Tawaddud offers fair specimens of such exercises, which
were not disdained by the most learned of Arabian writers. See
Al-Hariri’s Ass. xxiv. which proposes twelve enigmas involving
abstruse and technical points of Arabic, such as: (¿) “What be the
word, which as ye will is a particle beloved, or the name of that
which compriseth the slender-waisted milch camel?” Na’am = “Yes” or
“cattle,” the latter word containing the Harf, or slender camel.
Chenery, p. 246.

Footnote 196:

For the sundry meanings and significance of “Salám,” here = Heaven’s
blessing, see vols. ii. 24, vi. 232.

Footnote 197:

This is the nursery version of the Exodus, old as Josephus and St.
Jerome, and completely changed by the light of modern learning. The
Children of Israel quitted their homes about Memphis (as if a large
horde of half-nomadic shepherds would be suffered in the richest and
most crowded home of Egypt). They marched by the Wady Músà that
debouches upon the Gulf of Suez a short way below the port now
temporarily ruined by its own folly and the ill-will of M. de Lesseps;
and they made the “Sea of Sedge” (Suez Gulf) through the valley
bounded by what is still called Jabal ’Atákah, the Mountain of
Deliverance, and its parallel range, Abu Durayj (of small steps). Here
the waters were opened and the host passed over to the “Wells of
Moses,” erstwhile a popular picnic place on the Arabian side; but
according to one local legend (for which see my Pilgrimage, i. 294–97)
they crossed the sea north of Túr, the spot being still called “Birkat
Far’aun” = Pharaoh’s Pool. Such also is the modern legend amongst the
Arabs, who learned their lesson from the Christians (not from the
Jews) in the days when the Copts and the Greeks (ivth century)
invented “Mount Sinai.” And the reader will do well to remember that
the native annalists of Ancient Egypt, which conscientiously relate
all her defeats and subjugations by the Ethiopians, Persians, etc.,
utterly ignore the very name of Hebrew, Sons of Israel, etc.

I cannot conceal my astonishment at finding a specialist journal like
the “Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund” (Oct.,
1887), admitting such a paper as that entitled “The Exode,” by R. F.
Hutchinson, M.D. For this writer the labours of the last half-century
are non-existing. Job is still the “oldest book” in the world. The
Rev. Charles Forster’s absurdity, “Israel in the wilderness” gives
valuable assistance. Goshen is Mr. Chester’s Tell Fakús (not, however,
far wrong in this) instead of the long depression by the Copts still
called “Gesem” or “Gesemeh,” the frontierland through which the middle
course of the Suez Canal runs. “Succoth,” tabernacles, is confounded
with the Arab. “Sakf” = a roof. Letopolis, the “key of the Exode,” and
identified with the site where Babylon (Old Cairo) was afterwards
built, is placed on the right instead of the left bank of the Nile.
“Bahr Kulzum” is the “Sea of the Swallowing-up,” in lieu of The
Closing. El-Tíh, “the wandering,” is identified with Wady Musa to the
west of the Suez Gulf. And so forth. What could the able Editor have
been doing?

Students of this still disputed question will consult “The Shrine of
Saft el-Henneh and the Land of Goschen,” by Edouard Naville, fifth
Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Published by order of the
Committee. London, Trübner, 1837.

Footnote 198:

Eastern fable runs wild upon this subject, and indeed a large volume
could be written upon the birth, life and death of Moses’ and Aaron’s
rods. There is a host of legends concerning the place where the former
was cut and whence it descended to the Prophet whose shepherd’s staff
was the glorification of his pastoral life (the rod being its symbol)
and of his future career as a ruler (and flogger) of men. In Exodus
(viii. 3–10), when a miracle was required of the brothers, Aaron’s rod
became a “serpent” (A.V.) or, as some prefer, a “crocodile,” an animal
worshipped by certain of the Egyptians; and when the King’s magicians
followed suit it swallowed up all others. Its next exploit was to turn
the Nile and other waters of Egypt into blood (Exod. vii. 17). The
third wonder was worked by Moses’ staff, the dividing of the Red Sea
(read the Sea of Sedge or papyrus, which could never have grown in the
brine of the Suez Gulf) according to the command, “Lift thou up thy
rod and stretch out thine hand over the sea,” etc. (Exod. xiv. 15).
The fourth adventure was when the rod, wherewith Moses smote the
river, struck two blows on the rock in Horeb and caused water to come
out of it (Numb. xxi. 8). Lastly the rod (this time again Aaron’s)
“budded and brought forth buds and bloomed blossoms and yielded
almonds” (Numb. xvii. 7); thus becoming a testimony against the
rebels: hence it was set in the Holiest of the Tabernacles (Heb. ix.
14) as a lasting memorial. I have described (Pilgrim. i. 301) the mark
of Moses’ rod at the little Hammam behind the old Phœnician colony of
Tur, in the miscalled “Sinaitic” Peninsula: it is large enough to act
mainmast for a ship. The end of the rod or rods is unknown: it died
when its work was done, and like many other things, holy and unholy,
which would be priceless, _e.g._, the true Cross or Pilate’s sword, it
remains only as a memory around which a host of grotesque
superstitions have grouped themselves.

Footnote 199:

In this word “Hayy” the Arab. and Heb. have the advantage of our
English: it means either serpent or living, alive.

Footnote 200:

It is nowhere said in Hebrew Holy Writ that “Pharaoh,” whoever he may
have been, was drowned in the “Red Sea.”

Footnote 201:

Arab. “Kaml.” The Koranic legend of the Ant has, I repeat, been
charmingly commented upon by Edwin Arnold in “Solomon and the Ant” (p.
i., Pearls of the Faith). It seems to be a Talmudic exaggeration of
the implied praise in Prov. vi. 6 and xxx. 25, “The ants are a people
not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer”—which, by the
by, proves that the Wise King could be caught tripping in his natural
history, and that they did _not_ know everything down Judee.

Footnote 202:

Isá, according to the Moslems, was so far like Adam (Koran iii. 52)
that he was not begotten in the normal way: in fact his was a
miraculous conception. See vol. v. 238.

Footnote 203:

For Elias, Elijah, or Khizr, a marvellous legendary figure, see vols.
iv. 175; v. 384. The worship of Helios (Apollo) is not extinct in mod.
Greece where it survives under the name of Elias. So Dionysus has
become St. Dionysius; Bacchus the Drunken, St. George; and Artemis St.
Artemides the healer of childhood.

Footnote 204:

Gesenius interprets it “Soldier of God”; the bye-name given to Jacob
presently became the national name of the Twelve Tribes collectively;
then it narrowed to the tribe of Judah; afterwards it became = laymen
as opposed to Levites, etc., and in these days it is a polite synonym
for Jew. When you want anything from any of the (self-) Chosen People
you speak of him as an Israelite; when he wants anything of you, you
call him a Jew, or a damned Jew, as the case may be.

Footnote 205:

I am not aware that there is any general history of the bell,
beginning with the rattle, the gong and other primitive forms of the
article; but the subject seems worthy of a monograph. In Hebrew Writ
the bell first appears in Exod. xxviii. 33 as a fringe to the Ephod of
the High Priest that its tinkling might save him from intruding
unwarned into the bodily presence of the tribal God, Jehovah.

Footnote 206:

Gennesaret (Chinnereth, Cinneroth), where, according to some Moslems,
_the_ Solomon was buried.

Footnote 207:

I cannot explain this legend.

Footnote 208:

So the old English rhyme, produced for quite another purpose by Sir
John Bull in “Wat Tyler’s Rebellion” (Hume, Hist. of Eng., vol. i.
chapt. 17):—

“When Adam dolve and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?”

A variant occurs in a MS. of the xvth century, Brit. Museum:—

“Now bethink the gentleman,
How Adam dalf and Eve span.”

And the German form is:—

“So Adam reutte (reute) and Eva span
Wer was da ein Eddelman (Edelman)?”

Footnote 209:

Plur. of “’Usfúr” = a bird, a sparrow. The etymology is
characteristically Oriental and Mediæval, reminding us of Dan
Chaucer’s meaning of Cecilia “Heaven’s lily” (Súsan) or “Way for the
blind” (Cæcus) or “Thoughts of Holiness” and _lia_ = lasting industry;
or, “Heaven and Leos” (people), so that she might be named the
people’s heaven (The Second Nonne’s Tale).

Footnote 210:

_i.e._ “Fír is rebellious.”

Footnote 211:

Both of which, I may note, are not things but states, modes or
conditions of things. See vol. ix. 78.

Footnote 212:

“Salát” = the formal ceremonious prayer. I have noticed (vol. iv. 60)
the sundry technical meanings of the term Salát, from Allah = Mercy;
from Angel-kind = intercession and pardon, and from mankind = a
blessing.

Footnote 213:

Possibly “A prayer of Moses, the man of God,” the title of the highly
apocryphal Psalm xc.

Footnote 214:

Arab. “Libás” = clothes in general.

Footnote 215:

In text ‏ظفر‎ Zafar = victory. It may also be “Zifr” = alluding to the
horny matter which, according to Moslem tradition, covered the bodies
of “our first parents” and of which after the “original sin” nothing
remained but the nails of their fingers and toes. It was only when
this disappeared that they became conscious of their nudity. So says
M. Houdas; but I prefer to consider the word as a clerical error for
‏ضفر‎ Zafar = plaited hair.

Footnote 216:

According to Al-Mas’udi (i. 86, quoting Koran xxi. 52), Abraham had
already received of Allah spiritual direction or divine grace (“Rushdu
’llah” or “Al-Hudà”) which made him sinless. In this opinion of the
Imamship, says my friend Prof. A. Sprenger, the historian is more
fatalistic than most Sunnís.

Footnote 217:

Modern Moslems are all agreed in making Ishmael and not Isaac the hero
of this history: see my Pilgrimage (vol. iii. 306). But it was not
always so. Al-Mas’udi (vol. ii. 146) quotes the lines of a Persian
poet in A. H. 290 (=A. D. 902) which expressly say “Is’háku
kána’l-Zabíh” = Isaac was the victim, and the historian refers to this
in sundry places. Yet the general idea is that Ishmael succeeded his
father (as eldest son) and was succeeded by Isaac; and hence the
bitter family feud between the Eastern Jews and the Arab Gentiles.

Footnote 218:

In text “Tajní” = lit. thou pluckest (the fruit of good deeds). M.
Houdas translates _Tu recueilles, mot à mot tu cueilles_.

Footnote 219:

See note at the end of this tale.

Footnote 220:

Amongst the Jews the Temple of Jerusalem was a facsimile of the
original built by Jehovah in the lowest heaven or that of the Moon.
For the same idea (doubtless a derivation from the Talmud) amongst the
Moslems concerning the heavenly Ka’abah called Bayt al-Ma’múr (the
Populated House) see my Pilgrimage iii. 186, _et seq._

Footnote 221:

_i.e._ there is an end of the matter.

Footnote 222:

In text “Massa-hu ’l Fakr” = poverty touched him.

Footnote 223:

He had sold his father for a horse, etc., and his mother for a fine
dress.

Footnote 224:

This enigma is in the style of Samson’s (Judges xiv. 12) of which we
complain that the unfortunate Philistines did not possess the sole
clue which could lead to the solution; and here anyone with a modicum
of common sense would have answered, “Thou art the man!” The riddles
with which the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon must have been simply
hard questions somewhat like those in the text; and the relator wisely
refuses to record them.

Footnote 225:

We should say “To eclipse the sun.”

Footnote 226:

A very intelligible offer.

Footnote 227:

Arab. “Bi Asri-hi,” lit. “rope and all;” metaphorically used =
altogether, entirely: the idea is borrowed from the giving or selling
of a beast with its thong, halter, chain, etc.

Footnote 228:

In the text “Káhin,” a Cohen, a Jewish Priest, a soothsayer: see
Al-Kahánah, vol. i. 28. In Heb. Kahana = he ministered (priests’
offices or other business) and Cohen = a priest either of the true God
or of false gods.

Footnote 229:

This ending with its _resumé_ of contents is somewhat _hors ligne_,
yet despite its vain repetition I think it advisable to translate it.

Footnote 230:

“And she called his name Moses, and she said because from the water I
drew him” (Exod. ii. 10). So in Copt. ⲙⲱⲟⲩⲥⲉ = water son, ⲙⲉⲥ =
waters, ⲙⲟⲩϭⲓ = taken from or ⲙⲟⲩⲁϩⲓ = delivered from.

Footnote 231:

The Pharaoh of the Exodus is popularly supposed by Moslems to have
treated his leprosy with baths of babes’ blood, the babes being of the
Banú Isráil. The word “Pharaoh” is not without its etymological
difficulties. In Josephus ‏פרעה‎ = ⲡⲓ ⲟⲩⲣⲟ = the King. Others suggest
ⲡⲓ ⲣⲁ = the sun, which has little weight. Rá, the sun (without
article) generally follows the name of the king who is also termed ⲥⲓ
ⲣⲁ = son of Ra, ergo not Ra. Harding follows Brugsch Pasha, who
proposes “Per’ao” = great house, sublime Porte.

Footnote 232:

Graetz (Geschichte i. note 7) proves that “Aram,” in the Hebrew text
(Judges iii. 8) should be “Edom.”

Footnote 233:

I give a quadruple increase, at least 25 per centum more than the
genealogies warrant.

Footnote 234:

MS. pp. 505–537. This story is found in the “Turkish Tales” by Petis
de la Croix who translated one fourth of the “Forty Wazirs” by an
author self-termed “Shaykh Zádeh.” It is called the “History of Chec
Chahabeddin” (Shaykh Shiháb al-Dín), and it has a religious
significance proving that the Apostle did really and personally make
the “Mi’raj” (ascent to Heaven) and returned whilst his couch was
still warm and his upset gugglet had not run dry. The tale is probably
borrowed from Saint Paul who (2 Cor. xii. 4), was “caught up into
Paradise,” which in those days was a kind of region that roofed the
earth. The Shaykh in question began by showing the Voltairean Sultan
of Egypt certain specious miracles, such as a phantom army (in our
tale two lions), Cairo reduced to ashes, the Nile in flood and a
Garden of Irem, where before lay a desert. He then called for a tub,
stripped the King to a zone girding his loins and made him dip his
head into the water. Then came the adventures as in the following
tale. When after a moment’s space these ended, the infuriated Sultan
gave orders to behead the Shaykh, who also plunged his head into the
tub; but the Wizard divined the ill-intent by “Mukáshafah”
(thought-reading); and by “Al-Ghayb ’an al-Absár” (invisibility)
levanted to Damascus. The reader will do well to compare the older
account with the “First Vizir’s Story” (p. 17) in Mr. Gibb’s “History
of the Forty Vizirs,” etc. As this scholar remarks, the Mi’ráj, with
all its wealth of wild fable, is simply alluded to in a detached
verset of the Koran (xvii. 1) which runs: [I declare] “The glory of
Him who transported His servant by night from the Sacred Temple (of
Meccah) to the Remote Temple (of Jerusalem), whose precincts we have
blessed, that we might show him of our signs.” After this comes an
allusion to Moses (v. 2); Mr. Gibb observes (p. 22) that this
lengthening out of the seconds was a favourite with “Dervishes,” as he
has shown in “The Story of Jewád;” and suggests that the effect might
have been produced by some drug like Hashish. I object to Mr. Gibb’s
use of the word “Houri” (ibid. p. 24) without warning the reader that
it is an irregular formation, masculine withal, for “Huríyah” and that
the Pers. “Húrí,” from which the Turks borrowed their blunder,
properly means “One Húr.”

Footnote 235:

For the Dajlah (Tigris) and Furát (Euphrates) see vols. viii. 150; ix.
17. The topothesia is worse than Shakspearean. In Weber’s Edit. of the
“New Arabian Nights” (Adventures of Simoustapha, etc.), the rivers are
called “Ilfara” and “Aggiala.”

Footnote 236:

In text “Alwán,” for which see vol. vii. 135.

Footnote 237:

[The word which is here translated with: “and one had said that he had
laboured hard thereat” (walawá’yh?) seems scarcely to bear out this
meaning. I would read it “wa’l-Aw’iyah” (plur. of wi’á), rendering
accordingly: “and the vessels (in which the aforesaid meats were set
out) shimmered like unto silver for their cleanliness.”—ST.]

Footnote 238:

In text “Al-Wahwah.”

Footnote 239:

In text, “Mutasa’lik” for “Mutasa’lik” = like a “sa’lúk.”

Footnote 240:

For this “high-spirited Prince and noble-minded lord” see vol. ix.
229.

Footnote 241:

In text “Bisáta-hum” = their carpets.

Footnote 242:

In text “Hawánít,” plur. of “Hanút” = the shop or vault of a vintner,
pop. derived from the Persian Kháneh; but it appears to be another
form of ‏حانوت‎ Heb. ‏חנות‎ Syr. ‏ܗܰܢܘܽܬܐܰ‎. In Jer. xxvii. 16, where
the A. V. has “When Jeremiah was entered into the dungeon and into the
_cabins_,” read “underground vaults,” cells or cellars where wine was
sold. “Hanút” also means either the vintner or the vintner’s shop. The
derivation from ‏حين‎ because it _ruins_ man’s property and wounds his
honour is the _jeu d’esprit_ of a moralising grammarian. Chenery’s
Al-Hariri, p. 377.

Footnote 243:

In the Arab. “Jawákín,” plur. of Arab. Jaukán for Pers. Chaugán, a
crooked stick, a club, a bat used for the Persian form of golf played
on horseback—Polo.

Footnote 244:

[The text reads “Liyah,” and lower down twice with the article
“Al-Liyah” (double Lám). I therefore suspect that “Liyyah,” equivalent
with “Luwwah,” is intended, which both mean Aloes-wood as used for
fumigation (yutabakhkharu bi-hi). For the next ingredient I would read
“Kit’ah humrah,” a small quantity of red brickdust, a commodity, to
which, I do not know with what foundation, wonderful medicinal powers
are or were ascribed. This interpretation seems to me the more
preferable, as it presently appears that the last-named articles had
to go into the phial, the mention of which would otherwise be to no
purpose and which I take to have been finally sealed up with the
sealing clay. The whole description is exceedingly loose, and
evidently sorely corrupted, so I think every attempt at elucidation
may be acceptable.—ST.]

Footnote 245:

“Wa Kíta’h hamrah,” which M. Houdas renders _un morceau de viande
cuite_.

Footnote 246:

This is a specimen of the Islamised Mantra called in Sanskrit
Stambhaná and intended to procure illicit intercourse. Herklots has
printed a variety of formulæ which are popular throughout southern
India: even in the Maldive Islands we find such “Fandita” (_i.e._
Panditya, the learned Science) and Mr. Bell (Journ., Ceylon Br. R. A.
S. vii. 109) gives the following specimen, “Write the name of the
beloved; pluck a bud of the screwpine (here a _palette de mouton_);
sharpen a new knife; on one side of the bud write the Surat al-Badr
(chapter of Power, No. xxi., thus using the word of Allah for Satan’s
purpose); on the other side write Vajahata; make an image out of the
bud; indite particulars of the horoscope; copy from beginning to end
the Surat al-Rahmán (the Compassionating, No. xlviii.); tie the image
in five places with coir left-hand-twisted (_i.e._ widdershins or
‘against the sun’); cut the throat of a blood-sucker (lizard); smear
its blood on the image; place it in a loft; dry it for three days;
then take it and enter the sea. If you go in knee-deep the woman will
send you a message; if you go in to the waist she will visit you. (The
Voyage of François Pyrard, etc., p. 179.) I hold all these charms to
be mere instruments for concentrating and intensifying the brain
action called Will, which is and which presently will be recognised as
the chief motor-power.” See Suppl. vol. iii.

Footnote 247:

Probably the name of some Prince of the Jinns.

Footnote 248:

In text “Kamá zukira fí Dayli-h” = _arrange-toi de façon à
l’atteindre_ (Houdas).

Footnote 249:

Proverbial for its depth: Káshán is the name of sundry cities; here
one in the Jibál or Irák ’Ajami—Persian Mesopotamia.

Footnote 250:

Doubtless meaning Christians.

Footnote 251:

The Sage had summoned her by the preceding spell which the Princess
obeyed involuntarily.

Footnote 252:

_i.e._ last night; see vol. iii. 249.

Footnote 253:

In text “Wuldán” = “Ghilmán”: the boys of Paradise; for whom and their
feminine counterparts the Húr (Al-Ayn) see vols. i. 90, 211; iii. 233.

Footnote 254:

Arab. “Dukhn” = _Holcus dochna_, a well-known grain, a congener of the
Zurrah or Durrah = _Holcus Sativus_, Forsk. cxxiii. The incident is
not new. In “Das blaue Licht,” a Mecklenburg tale given by Grimm, the
King’s daughter who is borne through the air to the soldier’s room is
told by her father to fill her pocket with peas and make a hole
therein; but the sole result was that the pigeons had a rare feast.
See Suppl. vol. iii. 570.

Footnote 255:

_i.e._ a martyr of love. See vols. iii. 211; iv. 205.

Footnote 256:

In the text “Ka’ka’”; hence the higher parts of Meccah, inhabited by
the Jurham tribe, was called “Jabal Ka’ka’án,” from their clashing
arms (Pilgrimage iii. 191).

Footnote 257:

This was the work of the form of magic popularly known as Símiyá =
fascination, for which see vol. i. 305, 332. It is supposed to pass
away after a period of three days, and mesmerists will find no
difficulty in recognising a common effect upon “Odylic sensitives.”

Footnote 258:

Here supply the MS. with “illá.”

Footnote 259:

In text “tatadakhkhal ’alay-h:” see “Dakhíl-ak,” vol. i. 61.

Footnote 260:

Or “he”: the verb may also refer to the Sage.

Footnote 261:

Arab. “Kazafa” = threw up, etc.

Footnote 262:

This, in the case of the Wazir, was a transformation for the worse:
see vol. vii. 294, for the different kinds of metamorphosis.

Footnote 263:

_i.e._ my high fortune ending in the lowest.

Footnote 264:

In text “Bakar” = black cattle, whether bull, ox or cow. For ploughing
with bulls see vol. i. 16.

Footnote 265:

In text “Mukrif” = lit. born of a slave father and free mother.

Footnote 266:

In text “Antum fí kháshin wa básh,” an error for “khásh-másh” = a
miserable condition.

Footnote 267:

In text “yatbashsh” for “yanbashsha.” [Or it may stand for yabtashsh,
with transposition of the “t” of the eighth form, as usual in Egypt.
See Spitta-Bey’s Grammar, p. 198.—ST.]

Footnote 268:

“Janánan,” which, says M. Houdas is the vulgar form of “Jannatan” =
the garden (of Paradise). The Wazir thus played a trick upon his
hearers. [The word in the text may read “Jinánan,” accusative of
“Jinán,” which is the broken plural of “Jannah,” along with the
regular plural “Jannát,” and, like the latter, used for the gardens of
Paradise.—ST.]

Footnote 269:

For this name of the capital of Eastern Arabia see vols. i. 33; vii.
24.

Footnote 270:

“Tobe” is the Anglo-Oriental form of “Thaub” = in Arabia a loose robe
like a night-gown. See ii. 206.

Footnote 271:

The good old Mosaic theory of retribution confined to this life, and
the belief that Fate is the fruit of man’s actions.

Footnote 272:

Arab. “Sandarúsah” = red juniper gum (_Thuja articulata_ of Barbary),
red arsenic, realgar, from the Pers. Sandar = amber.

Footnote 273:

MSS. pp. 718–724. This fable, whose moral is that the biter is often
bit, seems unknown to Æsop and the compilation which bore his name
during the so-called Dark Ages. It first occurs in the old French
metrical _Roman de Renart_ entitled, _Si comme Renart prist Chanticler
le Coq_ (ed. Meon, tom. i. 49). It is then found in the collection of
fables by Marie, a French poetess whose _Lais_ are still extent; and
she declares to have rendered it _de l’Anglois en Roman_; the original
being an Anglo-Saxon version of Æsop by a King whose name is variously
written _Li reis Alured_ (Alfred?), or _Aunert_ (Albert?), or
_Henris_, or _Mires_. Although Alfred left no version of Æsop there is
in MS. a Latin Æsop containing the same story of an English version by
_Rex Angliæ Affrus_. Marie’s fable is printed in extenso in the
Chaucer of Dr. Morris (i. 247); London, Bell and Sons, 1880; and
sundry lines remind us of the Arabic, _e.g._:—

Li gupil volt parler en haut,
Et li cocs de sa buche saut,
Sur un haut fust s’est muntez.

And it ends with the excellent moral:—

Ceo funt li fol tut le plusur,
Parolent quant deivent taiser,
Teisent quant il deivent parler.

Lastly the Gentil Cok hight Chanticlere and the Fox, Dan Russel, a
more accidented tale, appear in “The Nonne Preestes Tale,” by the
Grand Traducteur.

Footnote 274:

“Durà” in MS. (p. 718) for “Zurà,” the classical term, or for
“Zurrah,” pop. pronounced “Durrah” = the _Holcus Sativus_ before
noticed, an African as well as Asiatic growth, now being supplanted by
maize and rice.

Footnote 275:

“Sa’alab” or “Tha’lab”; vol. iii. 132.

Footnote 276:

In text “Kikán,” plur. of “Kík” = _des corneilles_ (Houdas).

Footnote 277:

“Samman” or “Summán,” classically “Salwà.”

Footnote 278:

In text “Al-Kawání” = the spears, plur. of “Kanát.” [“Al-Kawání” as
plural of a singular “Kanát” = spear would be, I think, without
analogy amongst the plural formations, and its translation by
“punishment” appears somewhat strained. I propose to read “al-Ghawání”
and to translate “and whoever lags behind of the singing birds will
not be safe” (“lá yaslimu,” it will not go well with him). In the
mouth of the fox this implies a delicate compliment for the cock, who
might feel flattered to be numbered amongst the same tribe with the
nightingale and the thrush.—ST.]

Footnote 279:

In text “yá zayn” = Oh, the beautiful beast!

Footnote 280:

In text “Abú Sahíh” = (flight to) a sure and safe place.

Footnote 281:

MS. pp. 725–739.

Footnote 282:

Arab. “Zábit,” from the ✓ “Zabt” = keeping in subjection, holding
tight, tying. Hence “Zabtiyah” = a constable and “Zábit” = a Prefect
of Police. See vol. i. 259. The rhyming words are “Rábit” and “Hábit.”

Footnote 283:

In text “Ráhib” = monk or lion.

Footnote 284:

The lines are wholly corrupt.

Footnote 285:

The “Bahalul” of D’Herbelot. This worthy was a half-witted Sage (like
the Iourodivi of Russia and the Irish Omadhaun) who occupies his own
place in contemporary histories, flourished under Harun al-Rashid and
still is famous in Persian Story. When the Caliph married him perforce
and all the ceremonies were duly performed and he was bedded with the
bride, he applied his ear to her privities and forthwith ran away with
the utmost speed and alarm. They brought him back and questioned him
concerning his conduct when he made answer, “If you had only heard
what it said to me you would have done likewise.” In the text his
conduct is selfish and ignoble as that of Honorius

“Who strove to merit heaven by making earth a hell.”

And he shows himself heartless and unhuman as the wretched St. Alexius
of the Gesta Romanorum (Tale xv.), a warning of the intense
selfishness solemnly and logically inculcated by Christianity. See
vol. v. 150.

Footnote 286:

Koran, ch. li. v. 17.

Footnote 287:

Koran xx. 57: it is the famous “Tá-Há” whose first 14–16 verses are
said to have converted the hard-headed Omar. In the text the citation
is garbled and imperfect.

Footnote 288:

In text “Mas’h.”

Footnote 289:

“Hisában tawíl” = a long punishment.

Footnote 290:

The rod of Moses (see pp. 98–99) is the great prototype in Al-Islam of
the staff or walking-stick, hence it became a common symbol of dignity
and it also served to administer ready chastisement, _e.g._ in the
hands of austere Caliph Omar.

Footnote 291:

An onomatopy like “Couïc, Couïc.” For “Maksah,” read “Fa-sáha” = and
cried out.

Footnote 292:

“Zindík” = Atheist, Agnostic: see vols. v. 230; viii. 27.

Footnote 293:

“Harísah” = meat-pudding. In Al-Hariri (Ass. xix.) where he enumerates
the several kinds of dishes with their metonomies it is called the
“Mother of Strengthening” (or Restoration) because it contains
wheat—“the Strengthener” (as opposed to barley and holcus). So the
“Mother of Hospitality” is the Sikbáj, the Persian Sikbá, so entitled
because it is the principal dish set before guests and was held to be
royal food. (Chenery, pp. 218, 457). For the latter see infra.

Footnote 294:

This passage in the MS. (p. 733) is apparently corrupt. I have done my
best to make sense of it.

Footnote 295:

In text “Kamburisiyah.”

Footnote 296:

In the Dicts. a plant with acid flavour, dried, pounded and peppered
over meat.

Footnote 297:

In text “Najas” = a pear.

Footnote 298:

“Tutmajíyah,” for “Tutmáj.”

Footnote 299:

“Sikbáj,” a marinated stew like “Zirbájah” (vol. iii. 278): Khusrau
Parwez, according to the historians, was the first for whom it was
cooked and none ate of it without his permission. See retro.

Footnote 300:

Kishk = ground wheat, oatmeal or barley-flour eaten with soured
sheep’s milk and often with meat.

Footnote 301:

So in text: I suspect for “’Ajínniyah” = a dish of dough.

Footnote 302:

The Golden Calf is alluded to in many Koranic passages, _e.g._ Súrah
ii. (the Cow) 48; vii. (Al-Aaráf) 146; S. liv. (Women) 152; but
especially in S. xx. (Tá Há) 90, where Sámiri is expressly mentioned.
Most Christian commentators translate this by “Samaritan” and unjustly
note it as “a grievous ignorance of history on the part of Mohammed.”
But the word is mysterious and not explained. R. Jehuda (followed by
Geiger) says upon the text (Exod. xxxii. 24), “The calf came forth
lowing and the Israelites beheld it;” also that “Samael entered into
it and lowed in order to mislead Israel” (Pirke R. Eliezer, § 45).
Many Moslems identify Samiri with Micha (Judges xvii.), who is said to
have assisted in making the calf (Raschi, Sanhedr. cii. 2; Hottinger,
Hist. Orient. p. 84). Selden (de Diis Syr. Syn. 1 cap. 4) supposes
that Samiri is Aaron himself, the _Shomeer_ or keeper of Israel during
the absence of Moses. Mr. Rodwell (Koran, 2nd Edit. p. 90) who cleaves
to the “Samaritan” theory, writes, “It is probable (?) that the name
and its application, in the present instance, is to be traced to the
old national feud between the Jews and the Samaritans”—of which
Mohammed, living amongst the Jews, would be at least as well informed
as any modern European. He quotes De Sacy (Chrest. i. 189) who states
that Abú Rayhán Mohammed Birúni represents the Samaritans as being
nicknamed (not Al-limsahsit as Mr. Rodwell has it, but) “Lá Mesas” or
“Lá Mesásiyah” = the people who say “no touch” (_i.e._ touch me not,
from Súrah xx. 97); and Juynboll, Chron. Sam. p. 113 (Leid. 1848).
Josephus (Ant. xii. cap. 1) also mentions a colony of Samaritans
settled in Egypt by Ptolemy Lagus, some of whose descendants inhabited
Cairo as late as temp. Scaliger (De Emend. Temp. vii. 622). Sale
notices a similar survival on one of the islands of the Red Sea. In
these days the Samaritans or, as their enemies call them, the Cuthim
(“men from Cutha,” Cushites), in physical semblance typical Jews, are
found only at Náblús where the colony has been reduced by
intermarriage of cousins and the consequent greater number of male
births to about 120 souls. They are, like the Shi’ah Moslems, careful
to guard against ceremonial pollution: hence the epithet “Noli me
tangere.”

Footnote 303:

Alluding to the “Sayyád,” lit. = a fisherman.

Footnote 304:

In text “Al-Zahr.”

Footnote 305:

“Ajdár.”

Footnote 306:

In text “Al-Matáyá.”

Footnote 307:

In text “Sinaubar,” which may also mean pistachio-tree.

Footnote 308:

_i.e._ 475 to 478 Eng. grains avoir., less than the Ukiyyah or
Wukiyyah = ounce = 571·5 to 576 grains. Vol. ix. 216.

Footnote 309:

Not more absurd than an operatic hero singing while he dies.

Footnote 310:

MS. pp. 588–627. In Gauttier’s edit. vii. (234–256), it appears as
_Histoire de l’Habitant de Damas_. His advertisement in the beginning
of vol. vii. tells us that it has been printed in previous edits., but
greatly improved in his: however that may be, the performance is below
contempt. In Heron it becomes _The POWER OF DESTINY, or Story of the
Journey of Giafar to Damascus, comprehending the adventures of Chebib
and his Family_ (vol. i. pp. 69–175).

Footnote 311:

Damascus-city (for which see the tale of Núr al-Din Ali and his Son,
The Nights vol. i. 239–240) derives its name from Dimishk who was son
of Bátir, i. Málik, i. Arphaxed, i. Shám, i. Nuh (Noah); or son of
Nimrod, son of Canaan. Shám = Syria (and its capital) the land on the
left, as opposed to Al-Yaman the land on the right of one looking
East, is noticed in vol i. 55. In Mr. Cotheal’s MS. Damascus is
entitled “Shám” because it is the “Shámat” cheek-mole (beauty-spot) of
Allah upon earth. “Jalak” the older name of the “Smile of the
Prophet,” is also noted: see vol. ii. 100.

Footnote 312:

Hátim of the Tayy-tribe, proverbial for liberality. See vols. iv. 95,
and vii. 350.

Footnote 313:

in Mr. Cotheal’s MS. the Caliph first laughs until he falls backwards,
and then after reading further, weeps until his beard is bathed.

Footnote 314:

Heron inserts into his text, “It proved to be the Giaffer, famous
throughout all Arabia,” and informs us (?) in a foot-note that it is
“ascribed to a prince of the Barmecide race, an ancestor of the Grand
Vizier Giafar.” The word “Jafr” is supposed to mean a skin (camel’s or
dog’s), prepared as parchment for writing; and Al-Jafr, the book here
in question, is described as a cabalistic prognostication of all that
will ever happen to the Moslems. The authorship is attributed to Ali,
son-in-law of the Prophet. There are many legendary tales concerning
its contents; however, all are mere inventions as the book is supposed
to be kept in the Prophet’s family, nor will it be fully explained
until the Mahdi or Forerunner of Doomsday shall interpret its
difficulties. The vulgar Moslems of India are apt to confuse Al-Jafr
with Ja’afar bin Tayyár, the Jinni who is often quoted in talismans
(see Herklots, pp. 109–257). D’Herbelot gives the sum of what is
generally known about the “Jafr” (wa Jámi’a) under the articles “Ali”
and “Gefr u Giame.”

Footnote 315:

The father (whom Heron calls “Hichia Barmaki”) spoke not at random,
but guessed that the Caliph had been reading the book Al-Jafr.

Footnote 316:

Heron calls Ja’afar’s wife “Fatmé” from the French.

Footnote 317:

This is the open grassy space on the left bank of the Baradah River,
first sighted by travellers coming from Bayrút. See vol. i. 234, where
it is called Al-Hasá = the Plain of Pebbles.

Footnote 318:

Heron names him Chebib (Habíb) also “Xakem Tai-Chebib” = Hátim Tayy
Habíb.

Footnote 319:

The scene is described at full length in the Cotheal MS. with much
poetry sung by a fair slave-girl and others.

Footnote 320:

Again showing the date of the tale to be modern. See my Terminal
Essay, p. 90.

Footnote 321:

This might serve even in these days to ask a worshipful guest why he
came, and what was his business—it is the address of a well-bred man
to a stranger of whose rank and station he is ignorant. The vulgar
would simply say, “Who art thou, and what is thy native country?”

Footnote 322:

In Heron the host learns everything by the book Al-Jafr.

Footnote 323:

In text “Muzawwa” which the Egyptian pronounces “Mugawwaz.”

Footnote 324:

Which would be necessary after car. cop. with his women.

Footnote 325:

In text “Kabr al-Sitt,” wherein the Sitt Zaynab, aunt to Mohammed, is
supposed to lie buried. Here the cultivation begins about half a
mile’s ride from the Báb-al-Shághúr or S. Western gate of the city. It
is mentioned by Baedeker (p. 439), and ignored by Murray, whose
editor, Mr. Missionary Porter, prefers to administer the usual dainty
dish of “hashed Bible.”

Footnote 326:

Arab. “Jámi’ al-Amawí”: for this Mosque, one of the Wonders of the
Moslem World, consult any Guide Book to Damascus. See Suppl. vol. iv.
Night cccxlii. In Heron it becomes the “Giamah Illamoue,” one of the
three most famous mosques in the world.

Footnote 327:

M. Houdas translates “Tarz,” “Márkaz” or “Mirkáz” by _Une pierre en
forme de dame, instrument qui sert à enfoncer les pavés_ (=our
“beetle”); _c’est-à-dire en forme de borne_.

Footnote 328:

For this “window-gardening,” an ancient practice in the East, see vol.
i. 301.

Footnote 329:

Heron calls her “Negemet-il-Souper” = Najmat al-Sabáh = Constellation
of Morn. In the Cotheal MS. she uses very harsh language to the
stranger, “O Bull (_i.e._ O stupid), this be not thy house nor yet the
house of thy sire;” etc. “go forth to the curse of God and get thee to
Hell,” c.

Footnote 330:

In text ‏ضايح‎ which I read ‏ضايع‎.

Footnote 331:

For “Kayf” = joy, the pleasure of living, see my Pilgrimage i. 12–13.

Footnote 332:

In text “’Ayyik,” or “’Ayyuk” = a hinderer (of disease) from the ✓
’Ayk or ’Auk, whence also ’Ayyúk = Capella, a bright star proverbial
for its altitude, as in the Turk. saw “to give praise to the ’Ayyúk” =
skies.

Footnote 333:

Auspicious formulæ. The Cotheal MS. calls the physician “Dabdihkán.”

Footnote 334:

In text “Kullu Shayyin li mu’as’as”; the latter from ✓ “’As’as” = to
complicate a matter.

Footnote 335:

A sign that he diagnosed a moral not a bodily disorder. We often find
in The Nights, the doctor or the old woman distinguishing a love-fit
by the pulse or similar obscure symptoms, as in the case of Seleucus,
Stratonice and her step-son Antiochus—which seems to be the arch-type
of these anecdotes.

Footnote 336:

Arab. “Kirsh,” before explained; in Harun’s day, = 3 francs.

Footnote 337:

In the Cotheal MS. the recipe occupies a whole page of
ludicrous items, _e.g._ Let him take three Miskals of pure
“Union-with-the-lover,” etc.

Footnote 338:

In the Cotheal MS. Attaf seeks his paternal uncle and father-in-law
with the information that he is going to the Pilgrimage and
Visitation.

Footnote 339:

Called in the old translation or rather adaptation
“Scheffander-Hassan” or simply “Scheffander” = Shahbandar Hasan, for
which see vol. iv. 29. In the Cotheal MS. (p. 33) he becomes the “Emir
Omar, and the Báshá of Damascus” (p. 39).

Footnote 340:

The passage is exceedingly misspelt. “Ammá min Maylí Binti-ka sháshí
Aná Aswadu” (for Sháshí M. Houdas reads “Jáshí” = my heart) “Wa Taná”
(read “Thaná,” reputation) “Binti-ka abyazu min Sháshí.”

Footnote 341:

One of the formulæ of divorce.

Footnote 342:

In text “Muábalát min Shaani-ka.” M. Houdas reads the first word
“Muzábal” = zublán, wearied, flaccid, weak.

Footnote 343:

For “Al-’iddah,” in the case of a divorcée three lunar months, for a
widow four months and ten days and for a pregnant woman, the interval
until her delivery, see vols. iii. 292; vi. 256; and x. 43: also Lane
(M.E.) chap. iii.

Footnote 344:

In text “Alfi (4th form of ‘Lafw’) Hájatan,” the reading is that of M.
Houdas; and the meaning would be “what dost thou want (in the way of
amusement)? I am at thy disposal.”

Footnote 345:

Heron has here interpolated an adventure with a Bazar-cook and another
with a Confectioner: both discover Ja’afar also by a copy of the
“Giaffer” (Al-Jafr). These again are followed by an episode with a
fisherman who draws in a miraculous draught by pronouncing the letters
“Gim. Bi. Ouaow” (wáw = J. B. W.) _i.e._ Ja’afar, Barmecide, Wazir;
and discovers the Minister by a geomantic table. Then three Darvishes
meet and discourse anent the virtues of “Chebib” (_i.e._ Attaf); and
lastly come two blind men, the elder named Benphises, whose wife
having studied occultism and the Dom-Daniel of Tunis, discovers
Ja’afar. All this is to marshal the series of marvels and wonders upon
wonders predicted to Ja’afar by his father when commanding him to
visit Damascus; and I have neither space nor inclination to notice
their enormous absurdities.

Footnote 346:

This Governor must not be confounded with the virtuous and
parsimonious Caliph of the same name the tenth of the series (reign
A.D. 692–705) who before ruling studied theology at Al-Medinah and won
the sobriquet of “Mosque-pigeon.” After his accession he closed the
Koran saying, “Here you and I part,” and busied himself wholly with
mundane matters. The Cotheal MS. mentions only the “Nabob” (Náib =
lieutenant) of Syria.

Footnote 347:

“Kapú” (written and pronounced Kapi in Turk.) is a door, a house or a
government office and Kapújí = a porter; Kapújí-báshí = head porter;
also a chamberlain in Arab. “Hájíb”; and Kapú Katkhúdási (pron.
Kapi-Kyáyasí) = the agent which every Governor is obliged to keep at
Constantinople.

Footnote 348:

In text “Al-buyúrdi,” clerical error for “Buyúruldi” (pron. Buyúruldu)
= the written order of a Governor.

Footnote 349:

“Al-Yamaklak” = vivers, provaunt; from the T. “Yamak” = food, a meal.

Footnote 350:

Meaning that he waived his right to it.

Footnote 351:

In text “Zawádah” (gen. “Azwád” or “Azwi’dah”) = provisions, viaticum.

Footnote 352:

In text “Takhtrawán”; see vols. ii. 180; v. 175. In the Cotheal MS. it
is a “Haudaj” = camel-litter (vol. viii. 235).

Footnote 353:

“Kubbat al-’Asáfír,” now represented by the “Khan al-Asáfír,” on the
road from Damascus to Palmyra, about four hours’ ride from and to the
N. East of the Báb Túmá or N. Eastern gate. The name is found in
Baedeker (p. 541). In the C. MS. it becomes the “Thaníyyat al-’Ukáb” =
the Vulture’s Pass.

Footnote 354:

Meaning that Attaf had not the heart to see his cousin-wife leave her
home.

Footnote 355:

Written in Turkish fashion with the Jím (j) and three dots instead of
one. This Persian letter is still preserved in the Arabic alphabets of
Marocco, Algiers, etc.

Footnote 356:

In Arab. “Jinn” = spirit or energy of a man, which here corresponds
with the Heb. “Aub”; so in the Hamásah the poet says, “My Jinn have
not fled; my life is not blunted; my birds never drooped for fear,”
where, say commentators, the Arabs compare an energetic man with a
Jinní or Shaytán. So the Prophet declared of Omar, “I never saw such
an ’Abkarí amongst men,” ’Abkar, in Yamámah, like Yabrín and Wabár
near Al-Yaman, being a desolate region, the home of wicked races
destroyed by Allah and now haunted by gruesome hosts of non-human
nature. Chenery, pp. 478–9.

Footnote 357:

In the C. MS. it is an Emir of the Emirs.

Footnote 358:

Arab. “Tábah:” see vol. ii. 814.

Footnote 359:

This excellent episode is omitted in the C. MS. where Attaf simply
breaks gaol and reaching Aleppo joins a caravan to Baghdad.

Footnote 360:

In text “Katalú-ní”: see vols. v. 5; vi. 171.

Footnote 361:

In the C. MS. he enters a mosque and finds a Ja’ídí (vagabond) who
opens his bag and draws out a loaf, a roast fowl, lemons, olives,
cucumbers and date-cake, which suggest to Attaf, who had not eaten
such things for a month, “the table of Isá bin Maryam.” For the rest
see Mr. Cotheal’s version.

Footnote 362:

The C. MS. gives the short note in full.

Footnote 363:

In text “al-Towáb,” Arab. plur. of the Persian and Turk. “Top.” We
hardly expected to find ordnance in the age of Harun al-Rashid,
although according to Milton they date before the days of Adam.

Footnote 364:

M. Houdas would read for “Alhy Tys” in the text “Tuhà Tays” a general
feast: Tuhà = cooked meat and “Tays” = myriads of.

Footnote 365:

M. Houdas translates _les injures devancèrent les compliments_, an
idiom = he did not succeed in his design.

Footnote 366:

“Cousin” being more polite than “wife”: see vols. vi. 145; ix. 225.

Footnote 367:

_Les vertèbres ont fait bourrelet_, says M. Houdas who adds that
“Shakbán” is the end of a cloth, gown, or cloak, which is thrown over
the shoulders and serves, like the “Jayb” in front, to carry small
parcels, herbs, etc.

Footnote 368:

In the local Min jargon, the language of Fellahs, “Addíki” = I will
give thee.

Footnote 369:

In text “Min al-’Án wa sá’idan;” lit. = from this moment upwards.

Footnote 370:

“Tarajjum” taking refuge from Satan the Stoned (Rajím). See vol. iv.
242.

Footnote 371:

_i.e._ a descendant of Al-Háshim, great-grandfather of the Prophet.
See ix. 24.

Footnote 372:

In text “Shobási,” for “Sobáshí” which M. Houdas translates _prévôt du
Palais_.

Footnote 373:

In the C. MS. Attaf’s head was to be cut off.

Footnote 374:

In the C. MS. the anagnorisis is much more detailed. Ja’afar asks
Attaf if he knew a Damascus-man Attaf hight and so forth; and lastly
an old man comes forward and confesses to have slain the Sharíf or
Háshimi.

Footnote 375:

They drink before the meal, as is still the custom in Syria and Egypt.
See vol. vii. 132.

Footnote 376:

Gauttier (vii. 256), illustrating the sudden rise of low-caste and
uneducated men to high degree, quotes a contemporary celebrity, the
famous Mirza Mohammed Husayn Khan who, originally a Bakkál or
greengrocer, was made premier of Fath Ali Shah’s brilliant court, the
last bright flash of Iranian splendour and autocracy. But Irán is a
land upon which Nature has inscribed “Resurgam”; and despite her
present abnormal position between two vast overshadowing
empires—British India and Russia in Asia—she has still a part to play
in history. And I may again note that Al-Islam is based upon the
fundamental idea of a Republic which is, all (free) men are equal, and
the lowest may aspire to the highest dignity.

Footnote 377:

In text “’Aramramí.”

Footnote 378:

“Wa’lláhu ’l-Muwaffiku ’l-Mu’ín” = God prospereth and directeth, a
formula often prefixed or suffixed to a book.

Footnote 379:

MS. pp. 628–685. Gauttier, vii. 64–90; _Histoire du Prince Habib et de
la Princesse Dorrat-el-Gawas_. The English translation dubs it “Story
of Habib and Dorathil-goase, or the Arabian Knight” (vol. iii.
219–89); and thus degrades the high sounding name to a fair echo of
Dorothy Goose. The name = Pearl of the Diver: it is also the P. N. of
a treatise on desinental syntax by the grammarian-poet Al-Hariri
(Chenery, p. 539).

Footnote 380:

The “Banú Hilál,” a famous tribe which formed part of a confederation
against the Prophet on his expedition to Honayn. See Tabari, vol. iii.
chapt. 32, and Doughty, Arabia Deserta (Index, B. Helal). In the text
we have the vulgarism “Baní” for “Banú.”

Footnote 381:

Gauttier (vii. 64) clean omits the former Emir because he has nothing
to do with the tale. In Heron it is the same, and the second chief is
named “Emir-Ben-Hilac-Salamis”; or for shortness _tout bonnement_
“Salamis”; his wife becoming Amírala which, if it mean anything, is =
Colonel, or Captain R.N.

Footnote 382:

_i.e._ Moon of the Nobles.

Footnote 383:

= the Beloved, _le bien-aimé_.

Footnote 384:

As has been seen Gauttier reduces the title to “Prince.” Amongst
Arabs, however, it is not only a name proper but may denote any
dignity from a Shaykh to a Sultan rightly so termed.

Footnote 385:

For the seven handwritings see vol. iv. 196. The old English version
says, “He learned the art of writing with pens cut in seven different
ways.” To give an idea of the style it renders the quatrain:—“Father,”
said the youth, “you must apply to my master, to give you the
information you desire. As for me, I must long be all eye and all ear.
I must learn to use my hand, before I begin to exercise my tongue, and
to write my letters as pure as pearls from the water.” And this is
translation!

Footnote 386:

I need hardly note that “Voices from the other world” are a _lieu
commun_ of so-called Spiritualism. See also vol. i. 142 and Suppl.
vol. iii.

Footnote 387:

This tale and most of those in the MS. affect the Kála ’l-Ráwí (=quoth
the reciter) showing the true use of them. See Terminal Essay, vol. x.
163.

Footnote 388:

The missing apodosis would be, “You would understand the cause of my
weeping.”

Footnote 389:

In the text there are only five lines. I have borrowed the sixth from
the prose.

Footnote 390:

“Dáúd” = David: see vols. ii. 286; vi. 113.

Footnote 391:

For “Samharí” see vol. iv. 258.

Footnote 392:

From “Rudaynah,” either a woman or a place: see vols. ii. 1; vii. 265;
and for “Khatt Hajar” vol. ii. 1.

Footnote 393:

This is the idiomatic meaning of the Arab word “Nizál” = dismounting
to fight on foot.

Footnote 394:

In the text “Akyál,” plur. of “Kayl” = Kings of the Himyarite peoples.
See vol. vii. 60; here it is = the hero, the heroes.

Footnote 395:

An intensive word, “on the weight,” as the Arabs say of ’Abbás
(stern-faced) and meaning “Very stern-faced, austere, grim.” In the
older translations it becomes “Il Haboul”—utterly meaningless.

Footnote 396:

The Arab. “Moon of the Time” becomes in the olden versions
“Camaulzaman,” which means, if anything, “Complete Time,” and she is
the daughter of a Jinn-King “Illabousatrous (Al-’Atrús?).” He married
her to a potent monarch named “Shah-Goase” (Shah Ghawwás = King
Diver), in this version “Sábúr” (Shahpur), and by him Kamar Al-Zaman
became the mother of Durrat al-Ghawwas.

Footnote 397:

In text “Sádát wa Ashráf;” for the technical meaning of “Sayyid” and
“Sharif” see vols. iv. 170; v. 259.

Footnote 398:

Gauttier, vii. 71. _Les Isles Bellour_: see vol. iii. 194.

Footnote 399:

Heron’s “Illabousatrous” (?).

Footnote 400:

In text “Zayjah,” from Pers. “Záycheh” = lit. a horoscope, a table for
calculating nativities and so forth. In page 682 of the MS. the word
is used = marriage-lines.

Footnote 401:

In text “Snsál,” for “Salsál” = lit. chain.

Footnote 402:

In Sindbad the Seaman I have shown that riding men as asses is a
facetious exaggeration of an African practice, the Minister being
generally the beast of burden for the King. It was the same in the
Maldive Islands. “As soon as the lord desires to land, one of the
chief _Catibes_ (Arab. Khatíb = a preacher, not Kátíb = a writer)
comes forward to offer his shoulder (a function much esteemed) and the
other gets upon his shoulders; and so, with a leg on each side, he
rides him horse fashion to land, and is there set down.” See p. 71,
“The Voyage of Francois Pyrard,” etc. The volume is unusually well
edited by Mr. Albert Gray, formerly of the Ceylon Civil Service for
the Hakluyt Society, MDCCCLXXXVII: it is, however, regretable that he
and Mr. Bell, his collaborateur, did not trace out the Maldive words
to their “Aryan” origin showing their relationship to vulgar
Hindostani as _Mas_ to _Machhí_ (fish) from the Sanskrit _Matsya_.

Footnote 403:

In text “Ghayth al-Hátíl” = incessant rain of small drops and widely
dispread. In Arab. the names for clouds, rain and all such matters
important to a pastoral race are well nigh innumerable. Poetry has
seized upon the material terms and has converted them into a host of
metaphors; for “the genius of the Arabic language, like that of the
Hebrew, is to form new ideas by giving a metaphorical signification to
material objects (_e.g._ ’Azud, lit. the upper arm; met. a helper).”
Chenery p. 380.

Footnote 404:

In the text “To the palace:” the scribe, apparently forgetting that he
is describing Badawi life, lapses at times into “decorating the
capital” and “adorning the mansion,” as if treating of the normal
city-life. I have not followed his example.

Footnote 405:

Heron translates “A massy cuirass of Haoudi.”

Footnote 406:

In text, “Inbasata ’l-Layl al-Asá,” which M. Houdas renders _et
s’étendit la nuit (mère) de la tristesse_.

Footnote 407:

“Rauzah” in Algiers is a royal park; also a prairie, as “Rauz
al-Sanájirah,” plain of the Sinjars: Ibn Khaldun, ii. 448.

Footnote 408:

The “Miskál” (for which see vols. i. 126; ix. 262) is the weight of a
dinar = 1½ dirham = 71–72 grains avoir. A dose of 142 grains would
kill a camel. In 1848, when we were marching up the Indus Valley under
Sir Charles Napier to attack Náo Mall of Multan, the Sind Camel Corps
was expected to march at the rate of some 50 miles a day, and this was
done by making the animals more than half drunk with Bhang or Indian
hemp.

Footnote 409:

In text, “Yakhat,” probably clerical error for “Yakhbut,” lit. = he
was panting in a state of unconsciousness: see Dozy, Suppl. s. v.

Footnote 410:

In text “Al-Dán,” which is I presume a clerical error for “Al-Uzn” =
ear. [“Dán,” with the dual “Dánayn,” and “Wudn,” with the plural
“Audán,” are popular forms for the literary “Uzn.”—ST.]

Footnote 411:

This name has occurred in MS. p. 655, but it is a mere nonentity until
p. 657—the normal incuriousness. Heron dubs him “Rabir.”

Footnote 412:

In the text “Zimmat” = obligation, protection, clientship.

Footnote 413:

“Sahha ’alakah” (=a something) “fí hazá ’l-Amri.” The first word
appears _de trop_ being enclosed in brackets in the MS.

Footnote 414:

“Wa yabkí ’alaykum Mabálu-h.” [For “Mabál” I would read “Wabál,” in
the sense of crime or punishment, and translate: “lest the guilt of it
rest upon you.”—ST.]

Footnote 415:

In the text “Suwaydá” literally “a small and blackish woman”; and
“Suwaydá al-Kalb” (the black one of the heart) = original sin, as we
should say. [The diminutive of “Sayyid” would be “Suwayyid,” as
“Kuwayyis” from “Kayyis,” and “Juwayyid” from “Jayyid” (comp. supra p.
5). “Suwayd” and “Suwaydá” are diminutives of “Aswad,” black, and its
fem. “Saudá” respectively, meaning blackish. The former occurs in “Umm
al-Suwayd” = anus. “Suwaydá al-Kalb” = the blackish drop of clotted
blood in the heart, is synonymous with “Habbat al-Kalb” = the grain in
the heart, and corresponds to our core of the heart. Metaphorically
both are used for “original sin.”—ST.]

Footnote 416:

“Yákah Thiyábish;” the former word being Turkish (M. Houdas).

Footnote 417:

Arab. “Kaunayn” = the two entities, this world and the other world,
the past and the future, etc. Here it is opposed to “’A´lamína,” here
’Awálim = the (three) worlds, for which see vol. ii. 236.

Footnote 418:

In text “Changul,” again written with a three-dotted Chím.

Footnote 419:

In text “Al-Mazrab” which M. Houdas translates _cet endroit_.

Footnote 420:

In text “Yabahh” = saying “Bah, Bah!”

Footnote 421:

In text “Bahr al-Azrak” = the Blue Sea, commonly applied to the
Mediterranean: the origin of the epithet is readily understood by one
who has seen the Atlantic or the Black Sea.

Footnote 422:

_i.e._ “The Stubborn,” “The Obstinate.”

Footnote 423:

In text “Al-Jawádit,” where M. Houdas would read “Al-Hawádith” which
he renders by _animaux fraîchement tués_.

Footnote 424:

In the text “Kabad” = the liver, the sky-vault, the handle or grasp of
a bow.

Footnote 425:

In the text “Míná” = a port both in old Egyptian and mod. Persian: see
“Mitrahinna,” vol. ii. 257.

Footnote 426:

“Al-Nakáír,” plur. of “Nakír” = a dinghy, a dug-out.

Footnote 427:

For this “Pá-andáz,” as the Persians call it, see vol. iii. 141.

Footnote 428:

In text “Kataba Zayjata-há,” the word has before been noticed.

Footnote 429:

Again “Hizà (‏حظى‎, in MS. ‏حفى‎) bi-Zayjati-há” = _le bonheur de ses
aventures_.

Footnote 430:

This impalement (“Salb,” which elsewhere means crucifying, vol. iii.
25) may be a barbarous punishment but it is highly effective, which
after all is its principal object. Old Mohammed Ali of Egypt never
could have subjugated and disciplined the ferocious Badawi of Al-Asir,
the Ophir region South of Al-Hijáz without the free use of the stake.
The banditti dared to die but they could not endure the idea of their
bodies being torn to pieces and devoured by birds and beasts. The
stake commonly called “Kházúk,” is a stout pole pointed at one end,
and the criminal being thrown upon his belly is held firm whilst the
end is passed up his fundament. His legs and body are then lashed to
it and it is raised by degrees and planted in a hole already dug, an
agonising part of the process. If the operation be performed by an
expert who avoids injuring any mortal part, the wretch may live for
three days suffering the pangs of thirst; but a drink of water causes
hemorrhage and instant death. This was the case with the young Moslem
student who murdered the excellent Marshal Kleber in the garden
attached to Shepherd’s Hotel, Cairo, wherein, by the by he suffered
for his patriotic crime. Death as in crucifixion is brought on by
cramps and nervous exhaustion, for which see Canon Farrar (Life of
Christ, ii. 392 et seqq.).

Footnote 431:

_Archæological Review_, July, 1888, pp. 331–342.

Footnote 432:

The proper names are overrun with accents and diaeretical points, of
which I have here retained but few.

Footnote 433:

Particularly mentioning Syntipas, the Forty Vizirs, a Turkish romance
relating to Alexander, in 120 volumes; and Mohammed al-‘Aufi.

Footnote 434:

Probably similar to those described in the story of the Warlock and
the Cook (anteà, pp. 135–142).

Footnote 435:

The last clause is very short and obscure in the French “qu’il n’a pas
son sabre,” but what follows shows the real meaning to be that given
above. (W. F. K.)

Footnote 436:

This I take to be the meaning of the words, “une autre monde sous la
terre _par sept fois_.” (W. F. K.).

Footnote 437:

Galland writes “on fait un jeu de Giret (tournoi) etc.” (W. F. K.)

Footnote 438:

Perhaps an error of Galland’s. (W. F. K.).

Footnote 439:

I do not know what the German edition referred to.

Footnote 440:

This great class of tales is quite as widely extended in the north of
Europe and Asia, as in the south. We meet with them in Siberia, and
they are particularly common in Lapland. I believe, too that the
Indian story of the Red Swan, (referred to by Longfellow, Hiawatha,
xii.) is only a Swan Maiden legend in a rather modified form. As
usual, we find a bizarre form of the Swan Maiden story among the
Samoghitians of Lithuania. The Zemyne is a one-eyed venomous snake,
with black blood which cures all diseases and neutralises all magic.
It is an enchanted maiden; and sometimes the skin has been stolen, and
she has married a man. But if she recovers her skin, she resumes her
snake-form, and bites and kills her husband and children. Many other
strange things are related of the Zemyne (Veckenstedt, Mythen, Sagen,
und Legenden der Zamaiten, ii., pp. 149–152).

Footnote 441:

About twenty pounds.

Footnote 442:

Spitta Bey (p. 27 note) suggests that this is a reminiscence of the
ancient Egyptian idea of the Scarabæus, which typifies life.

Footnote 443:

Southey, in his story of the Young Dragon, relates how Satan,
disapproving of the rapid conversion of the inhabitants of Antioch to
Christianity, laid an egg, and hatched out a dragon, which he sent to
destroy the inhabitants. But a Pagan, whose Christian daughter was
devoted to the dragon by lot, stole the thumb from a relic (the hand
of John the Baptist), as he pretended to kiss it, and cast it into the
mouth of the dragon, and blew him up.

Footnote 444:

This is a variant of the Nose-Tree; I do not remember another in
genuine Oriental literature (cf. Nights, x, app. p. 508).

Footnote 445:

How small the world becomes in this story!

Footnote 446:

It is evident that a _young_ she-bear is all that is meant.

Footnote 447:

These Vigilants and Purifiers, with that hypocritical severity which
ever makes the worst sinner in private the most rigorous judge in
public, lately had the imprudent impudence to summons a publisher who
had reprinted the Decameron with the “objectionable passages” in
French. Mr. Alderman Faudell Phillips had the good sense
contemptuously to dismiss the summons. Englishmen are no longer what
they were if they continue to tolerate this ignoble espionage of
vicious and prurient virtuous “Associations.” If they mean _real_ work
why do they commence by condemning scholar-like works, instead of
cleansing the many foul cesspools of active vice which are a public
disgrace to London.

Footnote 448:

It may serve the home-artist and the home-reader to point out a few of
the most erroneous. The harp (i. 143) is the Irish and not the
Eastern, yet the latter has been shown in i. 228; and the “Kánún” (ii.
77) is a reproduction from Lane’s Modern Egyptians. The various Jinnis
are fanciful, not traditional, as they should be (see _inter alia_
Doughty’s Arabia Deserta, ii. 3, etc). In i. 81 and ii. 622 appears a
specimen bogie with shaven chin and “droopers” by way of beard and
mustachios: mostly they have bestial or simiad countenances with
rabbits’ ears, goats’ horns and so forth (i. 166, 169; ii. 97, 100),
instead of faces more or less human and eyes disposed perpendicularly.
The spreading yew-tree (i. 209) is utterly misplaced. In many the
action is excessive, after the fashion of the Illustrateds (i. 281;
356; 410 and 565; ii. 366, 374). The scymitar and the knife, held in
the left hand or slung by the left flank, are wholly out of order (i.
407; ii. 281, 374: iii. 460) and in iii. 355, the blade is wider than
the wielder’s waist. In i. 374 the astrolabe is also held in the left
hand. The features are classical as those of Arsinoë, certainly not
Egyptian, in i. 15; i. 479 and passim. The beggar-women must not
wander with faces bare and lacking “nose-bags” as in i. 512. The Shah
(i. 523) wears modern overalls strapped down over dress-_bottines_:
Moreover he holds a straight-bladed European court-sword, which is
correct in i. 527. The spears (i. 531) are European not Asiatic, much
less Arabian, whose beams are often 12–15 feet long. Aziz (i. 537) has
no right to tricot drawers and shoes tightened over the instep like
the chaussure of European _moutards_: his foot (i. 540) is wholly out
of drawing like his hand and the toes are European distortions. The
lady writing (i. 581) lacks all local colour; she should sit at squat,
support the paper in the hollow of her left instead of using a
portfolio, and with her right ply the reed or “pen of brass.” In vol
ii. 57 the lion is an absurdum, big as a cow or a camel and the same
caricature of the King of Beasts occurs elsewhere (i. 531; ii. 557 and
iii. 250). The Wazir (ii. 105) wears the striped caftan of a Cairene
scribe or shopkeeper. The two birds (ii. 140) which are intended for
hawks (see ii. 130) have the compact tails and the rounded-off wings
of pigeons. I should pity Amjad and As’ad if packed into a “bullock
trunk” like that borne by the mule in ii. 156. The Jew’s daughter (ii.
185) and the Wali of Bulak (ii. 504) carry European candlesticks much
improved in ii. 624. The Persian leach (ii. 195) is habited most
unlike an ’Ajami, while the costume is correct in ii. 275. The Badawi
mounts (ii. 263) an impossible Arab with mane and tail like the barb’s
in pictures. The streetdogs (ii. 265), a notable race, become European
curs of low degree. The mastage of the galleys (ii. 305) would suit a
modern racing-yacht. Utterly out of place are the women’s costumes
such as the Badawi maidens (ii. 335), Rose-in Hood (ii. 565), and the
girl of the Banú Odhrah (iii. 250), while the Lady Zubaydah (ii. 369)
is coiffée with a European coronet. The sea-going ship (ii. 615) is a
Dahabiyah fit only for the Nile. The banana-trees (ii. 621) tower at
least 80 feet tall and the palms and cocoa-nut trees (ii. 334; iii.
60) are indicated only by their foliage, not by their characteristic
boles. The box (ii. 624) is European and modern: in the Eastern
“Sakhkhárah” the lid fits into the top, thus saving it from the
“baggage-smasher.” In iii. 76, the elephant, single-handed, uproots a
tree rivalling a century-old English oak. The camel-saddle (iii. 247)
is neither Eastern nor possible for the rider, but it presently
improves (iii. 424 and elsewhere). The emerging of the Merfolk (iii.
262) is a “tableau,” a transformation-scene of the transpontine
pantomime, and equally theatrical is the attitude of wicked Queen Láb
(iii. 298), while the Jinni, snatching away Daulat Khatun (iii. 341)
seems to be waltzing with her in horizontal position. A sun-parasol,
not a huge Oriental umbrella, is held over the King’s head (iii. 377).
The tail-piece, the characteristic Sphinx (iii. 383) is as badly drawn
as it well can be, a vile caricature. Khalífah the Fisherman wears an
English night-gown (iii. 558) with the side-locks of a Polish Jew
(iii. 564). The dancing-girl (iii. 660) is equally reprehensible in
form, costume and attitude, and lastly, the Fellah ploughing (iii.
700) should wear a felt skull-cap in lieu of a turband, be stripped to
the waist and retain nothing but a rag around the middle.

I have carefully noted these lapses and incongruities: not the less,
however, I thoroughly appreciate the general excellence of the
workmanship, and especially the imaginative scenery and the
architectural designs of Mr. W. Harvey. He has shown the world how a
work of the kind should be illustrated, and those who would surpass
him have only to avoid the minor details here noticed.

Footnote 449:

See in M. Zotenberg’s “Alâ al-Dîn” the text generally; also p. 14.

Footnote 450:

Mr. Payne, in his Essay, vol ix., 281, computes less than two hundred
tales in all omitting the numerous incidentals; and he notices that
the number corresponds with the sum of the “Night-stories” attributed
to the Hazár Afsán by the learned author of the “Fihrist” (see
Terminal Essay, vol. x. pp. 71–73). In p. 367 (ibid.) he assumes the
total at 264.

Footnote 451:

This parlous personage thought proper to fall foul of me (wholly
unprovoked) in the _Athenæum_ of August, 25, ’88. I give his
production in full:—

LORD STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE.

_August 18, 1888._

In the notice of Sir R. Burton’s “Life” in to-day’s _Athenæum_ it
is mentioned that his biographer says that Capt. Burton proposed
to march with his Bashi-bazuks to the relief of Kars, but was
frustrated by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who, according to Sir
Richard, “gained a prodigious reputation in Europe, chiefly by
living out of it.”

This is a strange inversion of facts. The proposal to relieve Kars
by way of Redout-kalé and Kutais originated, not with Capt.
Burton, but with the Turkish Seraskier, who recommended for this
purpose the employment of Vivian’s Turkish Contingent and part of
Beatson’s Horse (“his Bashi-bazuks,”) in which Capt. Burton held a
staff appointment. In the last days of June, 1855, General
Mansfield, Lord Stratford’s military adviser, was in constant
communication on this subject with the Turkish Ministers, and the
details of the expedition were completely arranged to the
satisfaction of military opinion, both British and Turkish, at
Constantinople. Lord Stratford officially recommended the plan to
his Government, and in his private letters to the Foreign
Secretary strongly urged it upon him, and expressed a sanguine
hope of its success. But on July 14th, Lord Clarendon telegraphed:
“The plan for reinforcing the army at Kars contained in your
despatches of 30th June and 1st inst. is disapproved.” Lord
Panmure really “frustrated” the Turkish plan; Lord Stratford never
“frustrated” any attempt to succour the Army of Asia, but,
contrariwise, did all in his power to forward the object.

As to the amiable reference to the Great Elchi’s reputation, no
one knows better than Sir R. Burton by what queer methods
reputations may be annexed; but it is strange that anyone with the
reputation of a traveller should consider Constantinople to be
“out of Europe.”

S. LANE-POOLE.

The following was my reply:—

LORD STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE AND MR. S. LANE-POOLE.

_London, Aug. 26, 1888._

Will you kindly spare me space for a few lines touching matters
personal?

I am again the victim (_Athenæum_, August 25) of that everlasting
_réclame_. Mr. S. Lane-Poole has contracted to “do” a life of Lord
Stratford, and, _ergo_, he condemns me, in magistral tone and a
style of uncalled-for impertinence, to act as his “advt.” In
relating how, by order of the late General Beatson, then
commanding Bash-buzuk (_Bashi-bazuk_ is the advertiser’s own
property), I volunteered to relieve Kars, how I laid the project
before the “Great Eltchee,” how it was received with the roughest
language and how my first plan was thoroughly “frustrated.” I have
told a true tale, and no more. “A strange perversion of facts,”
cries the sapient criticaster, with that normal amenity which has
won for him such honour and troops of unfriends: when his name was
proposed as secretary to the R.A.S., all prophesied the speediest
dissolution of that infirm body.

I am aware that Constantinople is _not_ geographically “out of
Europe.” But when Mr. S. Lane-Poole shall have travelled a trifle
more he may learn that ethnologically it is. In fact, most of
South-Eastern Europe holds itself more or less non-European; and
when a Montenegrin marries a Frenchwoman or a German, his family
will tell you that he has wedded a “European.”

“No one knows better than Sir R. Burton by what queer methods
reputation may be annexed.” Heavens, what English! And what may
the man mean? But perhaps he alludes in his own silly, saltless,
sneering way to my _Thousand Nights and a Night_, which has shown
what the “Uncle and Master’s” work should have been. Some two
generations of _poules mouillées_ have reprinted and republished
Lane’s “Arabian Notes” without having the simple honesty to
correct a single _bévue_, or to abate one blunder; while they
looked upon the _Arabian Nights_ as their own especial rotten
borough. But more of this in my tractate, “The Reviewer Reviewed,”
about to be printed as an appendix to my Supplemental Volume, No.
vi.

RICHARD F. BURTON.

And here is the rejoinder (_Athenæum_, September 8):—

LORD STRATFORD AND SIR R. BURTON.

_September 4, 1888._

Sir R. Burton, like a prominent Irish politician, apparently
prefers to select his own venue, and, in order to answer my letter
in the _Athenæum_ of August 25, permits himself in the _Academy_
of September 1 an exuberance of language which can injure no one
but himself. Disregarding personalities, I observe that he
advances no single fact in support of the statements which I
contradicted, but merely reiterates them. It is a question between
documents and Sir R. Burton’s word.

S. LANE-POOLE.

It is not a question between documents and my word, but rather of the
use or abuse of documents by the “biographer.” My volunteering for the
relief of Kars was known to the whole camp at the Dardanelles, and my
visit to the Embassy at Constantinople is also a matter of
“documents.” And when Mr. S. Lane-Poole shall have produced his I will
produce mine.

Footnote 452:

It appears to me that our measures, remedial and punitive, against
“pornographic publications” result mainly in creating “vested
interests” (that English abomination) and thus in fostering the work.
The French printer, who now must give name and address, stamps upon
the cover _Avis aux Libraires_ under _Edition privée_ and adds _Ce
volume ne doit pas être mis en vente ou exposé dans les lieux publics_
(_Loi du 29 Juillet, 1881_). He also prints upon the back the number
of copies for sale. We treat “pornology” as we handle prostitution,
unwisely ignore it, well knowing the while that it is a natural and
universal demand of civilised humanity; and whereas continental
peoples regulate it and limit its abuses we pass it by, Pharisee-like
with _nez en-l’air_. Our laws upon the subject are made only to be
broken and the authorities are unwilling to persecute, because by so
doing they advertise what they condemn. Thus they offer a premium to
the greedy and unscrupulous publisher and immensely enhance the value
of productions (“Fanny Hill” by Richard Cleland for instance) which,
if allowed free publication would fetch pence instead of pounds. With
due diffidence, I suggest that the police be directed to remove from
booksellers’ windows and to confiscate all indecent pictures, prints
and photographs; I would forbid them under penalty of heavy fines to
expose immoral books for sale, and I would leave “cheap and nasty”
literature to the good taste of the publisher and the public. Thus we
should also abate the scandal of providing the secretaries and
officers of the various anti-vice societies with libraries of
pornological works which, supposed to be escheated or burned, find
their way into the virtuous hands of those who are supposed to destroy
them.

Footnote 453:

“Quand aux manuscrits de la rédaction égyptienne, l’omission de cet
épisode parait devoir être attribuée à la tendance qui les caractérise
généralement, d’abréger et de condenser la narrative” (loc. cit. p. 7:
see also p. 14).

Footnote 454:

Here I would by no means assert that the subject matter of The Nights
is exhausted; much has been left for future labourers. It would be
easy indeed to add another five volumes to my sixteen, as every
complete manuscript contains more or less of novelty. Dr. Pertsch, the
learned librarian of Saxe-Gotha, informs me that no less than two
volumes are taken up by a variant of Judar the Egyptian (in my vol.
vi. 213) and by the History of Zahir and Ali. For the Turkish version
in the _Bibliothèquè Nationale_ see M. Zotenberg (pp. 21–23). The Rich
MS. in the British Museum abounds in novelties, of which a specimen
was given in my Prospectus to the Supplemental Volumes.

In the French Scholar’s “Alâ al-Dîn” (p. 45) we find the MSS. of The
Nights divided into three groups. No. i. or the Asian (a total of ten
specified) are mostly incomplete and usually end before the half of
the text. The second is the Egyptian of modern date, characterised by
an especial style and condensed narration and by the nature and
ordinance of the tales; by the number of fables and historiettes, and
generally by the long chivalrous Romance of Omar bin al-Nu’umán. The
third group, also Egyptian, differs only in the distribution of the
stories.

Footnote 455:

My late friend who brought home 3,000 copies of inscriptions from the
so called Sinai, which I would term in ancient days the Peninsula of
Paran, and in our times the Peninsula of Tor.

Footnote 456:

See M. Zotenberg, pp. 4, 26.

Footnote 457:

M. Zotenberg (p. 5) wrote _la seconde moitie du xiv^{e.} Siècle_, but
he informed me that he has found reason to antedate the text.

Footnote 458:

I regret the necessity of exposing such incompetence and errors which
at the time when Lane wrote were venial enough: his foolish friend,
however, by unskilful and exaggerated pretensions and encomiums
compels me to lay the case before the reader.

Footnote 459:

This past tense, suggesting that an act is complete, has a present
sense in Arabic and must be translated accordingly.

Footnote 460:

Quite untrue: the critic as usual never read and probably never saw
the subject of his criticism. In this case I may invert one of my
mottoes and write “To the foul all things are foul.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. P. 38, changed “and his and” to “and his end”.
2. P. 124, changed “הנות” to “חנות”.
3. P. 240, changed “bare her away” to “bear her away”.
4. P. 268, changed “Allah strike the dead” to “Allah strike thee dead”.
5. P. 368, changed “I do not know the German edition” to “I do not know
what the German edition”.
6. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
7. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
8. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together
at the end of the last chapter.
9. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
10. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
11. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript
character, e.g. M^r.

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