The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Chapter 91 : [FN#73] Lit. "Coals (fit) for frying pan."[FN#74] Arab. "Libdah," t

[FN#73] Lit. "Coals (fit) for frying pan."

[FN#74] Arab. "Libdah," the sign of a pauper or religious mendicant. He is addressed "Ya Abu libdah!" (O father of a felt calotte!)

[FN#75] In times of mourning Moslem women do not use perfumes or dyes, like the Henna here alluded to in the pink legs and feet of the dove.

[FN#76] Koran, chaps. ii. 23. The idea is repeated in some forty Koranic pa.s.sages.

[FN#77] A woman's name, often occurring. The "daughters of Sa'ada" are zebras, so called because "they resemble women in beauty and graceful agility."

[FN#78] Arab. "Tiryak" from Gr. a drug against venomous bites. It was compounded mainly of treacle, and that of Baghdad and Irak was long held sovereign. The European equivalent, "Venice treacle," (Theriaca Andromachi) is an electuary containing many elements. Badawin eat for counter- poison three heads of garlic in clarified b.u.t.ter for forty days.

(Pilgrimage iii 77 )

[FN#79] Could Cervantes have read this? In Algiers he might easily have heard it recited by the tale-tellers. Kanmakan is the typical Arab Knight, gentle and valiant as Don Quixote Sabbah is the Grazioso, a "Beduin" Sancho Panza. In the "Romance of Antar"

we have a similar contrast with Ocab who says: "Indeed I am no fighter: the sword in my hand-palm chases only pelicans ;" and, "whenever you kill a satrap, I'll plunder him."

[FN#80] i.e. The Comely, son of the Spearman, son of the Lion, or Hero.

[FN#81] Arab. "Ushari." Old Purchas (vi., i. 9) says there are three kinds of camels (1 ) Huguin (=Hejin) of tall stature and able to carry 1,000 lbs. (2) Bechete (=Bukhti) the two-humped Bactrian before mentioned and, (3) the Raguahill (Rahil) small dromedaries unfit for burden but able to cover a hundred miles in a day. The "King of Timbukhtu" (not "Bukhtu's well" pop.

Timbuctoo) had camels which reach Segelmesse (Sijalmas) or Darha, nine hundred miles in eight days at most. Lyon makes the Maherry (also called El-Heirie=Mahri) trot nine miles an hour for a long time. Other travellers in North Africa report the Sabayee (Saba'i=seven days weeder) as able to get over six hundred and thirty miles (or thirty-five caravan stages=each eighteen miles) in five to seven days. One of the dromedaries in the "hamlah" or caravan of Mr. Ensor (Journey through Nubia and Darfoor--a charming book) travelled one thousand one hundred and ten miles in twenty- seven days. He notes that his beasts were better with water every five to seven days, but in the cold season could do without drink for sixteen. I found in Al-Hijaz at the end of August that the camels suffered much after ninety hours without drink (Pilgrimage iii. 14). But these were "Judi" fine-haired animals as opposed to "Khawar" (the Khowas of Chesney, p. 333), coa.r.s.e-haired, heavy, slow brutes which will not stand great heat.

[FN#82] i.e. Fortune so willed it (euphemistically).

[FN#83] The "minaret" being feminine is usually compared with a fair young girl. The oldest minaret proper is supposed to have been built in Damascus by the Ommiade Caliph (No. X.) Al-Walid A.H. 86-96 (=705-715). According to Ainsworth (ii. 113) the second was at Kuch Hisar in Chaldea.

[FN#84] None of the pure Badawi can swim for the best of reasons, want of waters.

[FN#85] The baser sort of Badawi is never to be trusted: he is a traitor born, and looks upon fair play as folly or cowardice.

Neither oath nor kindness can bind him: he unites the cruelty of the cat with the wildness of the wolf. How many Englishmen have lost their lives by not knowing these elementary truths! The race has not changed from the days of Mandeville (A.D. 1322) whose "Arabians, who are called Bedouins and Ascopards (?), are right felonious and foul, and of a cursed nature." In his day they "carried but one s.h.i.+eld and one spear, without other arm :" now, unhappily for travellers, they have matchlocks and most tribes can manufacture a something called by courtesy gunpowder.

[FN#86] Thus by Arab custom they become friends.

[FN#87] Our cla.s.sical term for a n.o.ble Arab horse.

[FN#88] In Arab. "Khayl" is=horse; Husan, a stallion; Hudud, a brood stallion; Faras, a mare (but sometimes used as a horse and meaning "that tears over the ground"), Jiyad a steed (n.o.ble); Kadish, a nag (ign.o.ble); Mohr a colt and Mohrah, a filly. There are dozens of other names but these suffice for conversation

[FN#89] Al-Katul, the slayer; Al-Majnun, the mad; both high compliments in the style inverted.

[FN#90] This was a highly honourable exploit, which would bring the doer fame as well as gain.

[FN#91] This is a true and life-like description of horse- stealing in the Desert: Antar and Burckhardt will confirm every word. A n.o.ble Arab stallion is supposed to fight for his rider and to wake him at night if he see any sign of danger. The owner generally sleeps under the belly of the beast which keeps eyes and ears alert till dawn.

[FN#92] Arab. "Yaum al tanadi," i.e. Resurrection-day.

[FN#93] Arab. "Bilad al-Sudan"=the Land of the Blacks, negro- land, whence the slaves came, a word now fatally familiar to English ears. There are, however, two regions of the same name, the Eastern upon the Upper Nile and the Western which contains the Niger Valley, and each considers itself the Sudan. And the reader must not confound the Berber of the Upper Nile, the Berderino who acts servant in Lower Egypt, with the Berber of Barbary: the former speaks an African language; the latter a "Semitic" (Arabic) tongue.

[FN#94] "Him" for "her."

[FN#95] Arab. "Saibah," a she-camel freed from labour under certain conditions amongst the pagan Arabs; for which see Sale (Prel. Disc. sect. v.).

[FN#96] Arab. "Marba'." In early spring the Badawi tribes leave the Rasm or wintering-place (the Turco-Persian "Kishlak") in the desert, where winter-rains supply them, and make for the Yaylak, or summer-quarters, where they find gra.s.s and water. Thus the great Ruwala tribe appears regularly every year on the eastern slopes of the Anti-Liba.n.u.s (Unexplored Syria, i. 117), and hence the frequent "partings."

[FN#97] This "renowning it" and boasting of one's tribe (and oneself) before battle is as natural as the war-cry: both are intended to frighten the foe and have often succeeded. Every cla.s.sical reader knows that the former practice dates from the earliest ages. It is still customary in Arabia during the furious tribal fights, the duello on a magnificent scale which often ends in half the combatants on either side being placed hors-de- combat. A fair specimen of "renowning it" is Amru's Suspended Poem with its extravagant panegyric of the Taghlab tribe (p. 64, "Arabian Poetry for English Readers," etc., by W. A. Clouston, Glasgow: privately printed MDCCCLx.x.xI.; and transcribed from Sir William Jones's translation).

[FN#98] The "Turk" appeared soon amongst the Abbaside Caliphs.

Mohammed was made to prophecy of them under the t.i.tle Banu Kanturah, the latter being a slave-girl of Abraham. The Imam Al- Shafi'i (A.H. 195=A.D. 810) is said to have foretold their rule in Egypt where an Ottoman defended him against a donkey-boy. (For details see Pilgrimage i. 216 ) The Caliph Al-Mu'atasim bi'llah (A.D. 833-842) had more than 10,000 Turkish slaves and was the first to entrust them with high office; so his Arab subjects wrote of him:--

A wretched Turk is thy heart's desire; And to them thou showest thee dam and sire.

His successor Al-Wasik (Vathek, of the terrible eyes) was the first to appoint a Turk his Sultan or regent. After his reign they became praetorians and led to the downfall of the Abbasides.

[FN#99] The Persian saying is "First at the feast and last at the fray."

[FN#100] i.e. a tempter, a seducer.

[FN#101] Arab. "Wayl-ak" here probably used in the sense of "Wayh-ak" an expression of affectionate concern.

[FN#102] Firdausi, the Homer of Persia, affects the same magnificent exaggeration. The trampling of men and horses raises such a dust that it takes one layer (of the seven) from earth and adds it to the (seven of the) Heavens. The "blaze" on the stallion's forehead (Arab. "Ghurrah") is the white gleam of the morning.

[FN#103] A noted sign of excitement in the Arab blood horse, when the tail looks like a panache covering the hind-quarter.

[FN#104] i.e. Prince Kanmakan.

[FN#105] The "quality of mercy" belongs to the n.o.ble Arab, whereas the ign.o.ble and the Bada win are rancorous and revengeful as camels.

[FN#106] Arab. "Khanjar," the poison was let into the grooves and hollows of the poniard.

[FN#107] The Pers. "Bang", Indian "Bhang", Maroccan "Fasukh" and S. African "Dakha." (Pilgrimage i. 64.) I heard of a "Has.h.i.+sh- orgie" in London which ended in half the experimentalists being on their sofas for a week. The drug is useful for stokers, having the curious property of making men insensible to heat. Easterns also use it for "Imsak" prolonging coition of which I speak presently.

[FN#108] Arab. "Hashshas.h.i.+n;" whence De Sacy derived "a.s.sa.s.sin."

A notable effect of the Has.h.i.+sh preparation is wildly to excite the imagination, a kind of delirium imaginans sive phantastic.u.m .

[FN#109] Meaning "Well done!" Mashallah (Ma shaa 'llah) is an exclamation of many uses, especially affected when praising man or beast for fear lest flattering words induce the evil eye.

[FN#110] Arab. "Kabkab" vulg. "Kubkab." They are between three and ten inches high, and those using them for the first time in the slippery Hammam must be careful.

[FN#111] Arab. "Majlis"=sitting. The postures of coition, ethnologically curious and interesting, are subjects so extensive that they require a volume rather than a note. Full information can be found in the Ananga-ranga, or Stage of the Bodiless One, a treatise in Sanskrit verse vulgarly known as Koka Pandit from the supposed author, a Wazir of the great Rajah Bhoj, or according to others, of the Maharajah of Kanoj. Under the t.i.tle Lizzat al-Nisa (The Pleasures--or enjoying--of Women) it has been translated into all the languages of the Moslem East, from Hindustani to Arabic. It divides postures into five great divisions: (1) the woman lying supine, of which there are eleven subdivisions; (2) lying on her side, right or left, with three varieties; (3) sitting, which has ten, (4) standing, with three subdivisions, and (5) lying p.r.o.ne, with two. This total of twenty- nine, with three forms of "Purushayit," when the man lies supine (see the Abbot in Boccaccio i. 4), becomes thirty-two, approaching the French quarante facons. The Upavishta, majlis, or sitting postures, when one or both "sit at squat" somewhat like birds, appear utterly impossible to Europeans who lack the pliability of the Eastern's limbs. Their object in congress is to avoid tension of the muscles which would shorten the period of enjoyment. In the text the woman lies supine and the man sits at squat between her legs: it is a favourite from Marocco to China. A literal translation of the Ananga range appeared in 1873 under the name of Kama-Shastra; or the Hindoo Art of Love (Ars Amoris Indica); but of this only six copies were printed. It was re-issued (printed but not published) in 1885. The curious in such matters will consult the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (London, privately printed, 1879) by Pisa.n.u.s Fraxi (H. S. Ashbee).

[FN#112] i.e. Le Roi Crotte.

[FN#113] This seems to be a punning allusion to Baghdad, which in Persian would mean the Garden (bagh) of Justice (dad). See "Biographical Notices of Persian Poets" by Sir Gore Ouseley, London, Oriental Translation Fund, 1846

[FN#114] The Kardoukhoi (Carduchi) of Xenophon; also called (Strabo xv.) "Kardakis, from a Persian word signifying manliness," which would be "Kardak"=a doer (of derring do). They also named the Montes Gordaei the original Ararat of Xisisthrus- Noah's Ark. The Kurds are of Persian race, speaking an old and barbarous Iranian tongue and often of the s.h.i.+'ah sect. They are born bandits, highwaymen, cattle-lifters; yet they have spread extensively over Syria and Egypt and have produced some glorious men, witness Sultan Salah al-Din (Saladin) the Great. They claim affinity with the English in the East, because both races always inhabit the highest grounds they can find.

[FN#115] These irregular bands who belong to no tribe are the most dangerous bandits in Arabia, especially upon the northern frontier. Burckhardt, who suffered from them, gives a long account of their treachery and utter absence of that Arab "pundonor" which is supposed to characterise Arab thieves.

[FN#116] An euphemistic form to avoid mentioning the incestuous marriage.

[FN#117] The Arab form of our "Kinchin lay."