The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 05...

9. Again to be understood Hibernice “kilt.”

10. i.e. for fear of the evil eye injuring the palace and, haply, himself.

11. The “Sufrah” before explained as acting provision-bag and table-cloth.

12. Eastern women in hot weather, lie mother-nude under a sheet here represented by the hair. The Greeks and Romans also slept stripped and in mediæval England the most modest women saw nothing indelicate in sleeping naked by their naked husbands. The “night-cap” and the “night-gown” are comparatively modern inventions.

13. Hindu fable turns this simile into better poetry, “She was like a second and a more wondrous moon made by the Creator.”

14. “Sun of the Day.”

15. Arab. “Shirk” = worshipping more than one God. A theological term here most appropriately used.

16. The Bul. Edit. as usual abridges (vol. i. 534). The Prince lands on the palace-roof where he leaves his horse, and finding no one in the building goes back to the terrace. Suddenly he sees a beautiful girl approaching him with a party of her women, suggesting to him these couplets:—

She came without tryst in the darkest hour, ✿ Like full moon lighting horizon’s night:

Slim-formed, there is not in the world her like ✿ For grace of form or for gifts of sprite:

“Praise him who made her from semen-drop,” ✿ I cried, when her beauty first struck my sight:

I guard her from eyes, seeking refuge with ✿ The Lord of mankind and of morning-light.

The two then made acquaintance and “follows what follows.”

17. Arab. “Akásirah,” explained (vol. i., 75) as the plur. of Kisrá.

18. The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own. This was systematised by the servile rulers known in history as the Mameluke Beys and to the Egyptians as the Ghuzz. Each had his household of servile pages and squires, who looked forward to filling the master’s place as knight or baron.

19. The well-known capital of Al-Yaman, a true Arabia Felix, a Paradise inhabited by demons in the shape of Turkish soldiery and Arab caterans. According to Moslem writers Sana’a was founded by Shem son of Noah who, wandering southward with his posterity after his father’s death, and finding the site delightful, dug a well and founded the citadel, Ghamdán, which afterwards contained a Maison Carrée rivalling (or attempting to rival) the Meccan Ka’abah. The builder was Surahbíl who, says M. C. de Perceval coloured its four faces red, white, golden and green; the central quadrangle had seven stories (the planets) each forty cubits high, and the lowest was a marble hall ceiling’d with a single slab. At the four corners stood hollow lions through whose mouths the winds roared. This palatial citadel-temple was destroyed by order of Caliph Omar. The city’s ancient name was Azal or Uzal whom some identify with one of the thirteen sons of Joktan (Genesis xi. 27): it took its present name from the Ethiopian conquerors (they say) who, seeing it for the first time, cried “Hazá Sana’ah!” meaning in their tongue, this is commodious, etc. I may note that the word is Kisawahili (Zanzibarian) e.g. “Yámbo sáná—is the state good?” Sana’a was the capital of the Tabábi’ah or Tobba Kings who judaized; and the Abyssinians with their Negush made it Christian while the Persians under Anushirwán converted it to Guebrism. It is now easily visited but to little purpose; excursions in the neighbourhood being deadly dangerous.

Moreover the Turkish garrison would probably murder a stranger who sympathised with the Arabs, and the Arabs kill one who took part with their hated and hateful conquerors. The late Mr. Shapira of Jerusalem declared that he had visited it and Jews have great advantages in such travel. But his friends doubted him.

20. The Bresl. Edit. (iii. 347) prints three vile errors in four lines.

21. Alcove is a corruption of the Arab. Al-Kubbah (the dome) through Span. and Port.

22. Easterns as a rule sleep with head and body covered by a sheet or in cold weather a blanket. The practice is doubtless hygienic, defending the body from draughts when the pores are open; but Europeans find it hard to adopt; it seems to stop their breathing. Another excellent practice in the East and, indeed amongst barbarians and savages generally, is training children to sleep with mouths shut: in after life they never snore and in malarious lands they do not require Outram’s “fever-guard,” a swathe of muslin over the mouth. Mr. Catlin thought so highly of the “shut mouth” that he made it the subject of a book.

23. Arab. “Hanzal” = coloquintida, an article often mentioned by Arabs in verse and prose; the bright coloured little gourd attracts every eye by its golden glance when travelling through the brown-yellow waste of sand and clay. A favourite purgative (enough for a horse) is made by filling the inside with sour milk which is drunk after a night’s soaking: it is as active as the croton-nut of the Gold Coast.

24. The Bresl. Edit. iii. 354 sends him to the “land of Sín” (China).

25. Arab. “Yá Kisrawi!” = O subject of the Kisrá or Chosroë; the latter explained in vol. i., 75. “Fars” is the origin of “Persia”; and there is a hit at the prodigious lying of the modern race, whose forefathers were so famous as truth-tellers. “I am a Persian, but I am not lying now,” is a phrase familiar to every traveller.

26. There is no such name: perhaps it is a clerical error for “Har jáh” = (a man of) any place. I know an Englishman who in Persian called himself “Mirza Abdullah-i-Híchmakáni” = Master Abdullah of Nowhere.

27. The Bresl. Edit. (loc. cit.) gives a comical description of the Prince assuming the dress of an astrologer-doctor, clapping an old book under his arm, fumbling a rosary of beads, enlarging his turband, lengthening his sleeves and blackening his eyelids with antimony. Here, however, it would be out of place. Very comical also is the way in which he pretends to cure the maniac by “muttering unknown words, blowing in her face, biting her ear,” etc.

28. Arab. “Sar’a” = falling sickness. Here again we have in all its simplicity the old nursery idea of “possession” by evil spirits.

29. Arab. “Nafahát” = breathings, benefits, the Heb. Neshamah opp. to Nephesh (soul) and Ruach (spirit). Healing by the breath is a popular idea throughout the East and not unknown to Western Magnetists and Mesmerists. The miraculous cures of the Messiah were, according to Moslems, mostly performed by aspiration. They hold that in the days of Isa physic had reached its highest development, and thus his miracles were mostly miracles of medicine; whereas, in Mohammed’s time, eloquence had attained its climax and accordingly his miracles were those of eloquence, as shown in the Koran and Ahádís.