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

530. This is the “Lauh al-Mahfúz,” the Preserved Tablet, upon which are written all Allah’s decrees and the actions of mankind good (white) and evil (black). This is the “perspicuous Book” of the Koran, chapt. vi. 59. The idea again is Guebre.

531. i.e. the night before Friday which in Moslem parlance would be Friday night.

532. Again Persian “Gáw-i-Zamín” = the Bull of the Earth. “The cosmogony of the world,” etc., as we read in the Vicar of Wakefield.

533. The Calc. Edit. ii. 614, here reads by a clerical error “bull.”

534. i.e. lakes and rivers.

535. Here some abridgement is necessary, for we have another recital of what has been told more than once.

536. This name, “King of Life” is Persian: “Tegh” or “Tigh” means a scymitar and “Bahrwán,” is, I conceive, a mistake for “Bihrún,” the Persian name of Alexander the Great.

537. Arab. “Mulákát” or meeting the guest which, I have said, is an essential part of Eastern ceremony; the distance from the divan, room, house or town being proportioned to his rank or consideration.

538. Arab. “Sifr”: whistling is held by the Badawi to be the speech of devils; and the excellent explorer Burckhardt got a bad name by the ugly habit.

539. The Arabs call “Shikk” (split man) and the Persians “Nímchahrah” (half-face) a kind of demon like a man divided longitudinally: this gruesome creature runs with amazing speed and is very cruel and dangerous. For the celebrated soothsayers Shikk and Sátih see Chenery’s Al-Hariri, p. 371.

540. Arab. “Takht” (Persian) = a throne or a capital.

541. Arab. Wady al Naml; a reminiscence of the Koranic Wady (chapt. xxvii.), which some place in Syria and others in Táif.

542. This is the old, old fable of the River Sabbation which Pliny (xxxi. 18) reports as “drying up every Sabbath-day” (Saturday): and which Josephus reports as breaking the Sabbath by flowing only on the Day of Rest.

543. They were keeping the Sabbath. When lodging with my Israelite friends Tiberias and Safet, I made a point of never speaking to them (after the morning salutation) till the Saturday was over.

544. Arab. “La’al” and “Yákút,” the latter also applied to the garnet and to a variety of inferior stones. The ruby is supposed by Moslems to be a common mineral thoroughly “cooked” by the sun, and produced only on the summits of mountains inaccessible even to Alpinists. The idea may have originated from exaggerated legends of the Badakhshán country (supposed to be the home of the ruby) and its terrors of break-neck foot-paths, jagged peaks and horrid ravines: hence our “balass-ruby” through the Spanish corruption “Balaxe.” Epiphanius, archbishop of Salamis in Cyprus, who died A.D. 403, gives, in a little treatise (De duodecim gemmis rationalis summi sacerdotis Hebræorum Liber, opera Fogginii, Romæ, 1743, p. 30), a precisely similar description of the mode of finding jacinths in Scythia. “In a wilderness in the interior of Great Scythia,” he writes, “there is a valley begirt with stony mountains as with walls. It is inaccessible to man, and so excessively deep that the bottom of the valley is invisible from the top of the surrounding mountains. So great is the darkness that it has the effect of a kind of chaos. To this place certain criminals are condemned, whose task it is to throw down into the valley slaughtered lambs, from which the skin has been first taken off. The little stones adhere to these pieces of flesh. Thereupon the eagles, which live on the summits of the mountains, fly down following the scent of the flesh, and carry away the lambs with the stones adhering to them.

They, then, who are condemned to this place, watch until the eagles have finished their meal, and run and take away the stones.” Epiphanius, who wrote this, is spoken of in terms of great respect by many ecclesiastical writers, and St. Jerome styles the treatise here quoted, “Egregium volumen, quod si legere volueris, plenissimam scientiam consequeris;” and, indeed, it is by no means improbable that it was from the account of Epiphanius that this story was first translated into Arabic. A similar account is given by Marco Polo and by Nicolò de Conti, as of a usage which they had heard was practised in India, and the position ascribed to the mountain by Conti, namely, fifteen days’ journey north of Vijanagar, renders it highly probable that Golconda was alluded to. He calls the mountain Albenigaras, and says that it was infested with serpents. Marco Polo also speaks of these serpents, and while his account agrees with that of Sindbad, inasmuch as the serpents, which are the prey of Sindbad’s Rukh, are devoured by the Venetian’s eagles, that of Conti makes the vultures and eagles fly away with the meat to places where they may be safe from the serpents. (Introd. p. xlii., India in the Fifteenth Century, etc., R. H. Major, London, Hakluyt Soc. MDCCCLVII.)

545. Elder Victory: “Nasr” is a favourite name with Moslems.

546. These are the “Swan-maidens” of whom Europe in late years has heard more than enough. It appears to me that we go much too far for an explanation of the legend; a high-bred girl is so like a swan in many points that the idea readily suggests itself. And it is also aided by the old Egyptian (and Platonic) belief in pre-existence and by the Rabbinic and Buddhistic doctrine of ante-natal sin, to say nothing of metempsychosis (Joseph Ant. xvii. 153).

547. The lines have occurred before. I quote Mr. Payne for variety.

548. Arab. “Al-Khayál”: it is a synonym of “al-Tayf” and the nearest approach to our “ghost,” as has been explained. In poetry it is the figure of the beloved seen when dreaming.

549. He does not kiss her mouth because he intends to marry her.

550. It should be “manifest” excellence (Koran xxvii. 16).

551. The phrase is Koranic used to describe Paradise, and Damascus is a familiar specimen of a city under which a river, the Baradah, passes, distributed into a multitude of canals.

552. It maybe noted that rose-water is sprinkled on the faces of the “nobility and gentry,” common water being good enough for the commonalty. I have had to drink tea made in compliment with rose-water and did not enjoy it.

553. The Valley Flowery: Zahrán is the name of a place near Al-Medinah.

554. The Proud or Petulant.

555. i.e. Lion, Son of (?).

556. i.e. Many were slain.

557. I venture to draw attention to this battle-picture which is at once simple and highly effective.

558. Anglicè a quibble, evidently evasive.

559. In text “Aná A’amil,” etc., a true Egypto-Syrian vulgarism.

560. i.e. magical formulæ. The context is purposely left vague.

561. The repetition is a condescension, a token of kindness.

562. This is the common cubit of 18 inches: the modern vary from 22 to 26.

563. I have noticed the two-humped Bactrian camel which the Syrians and Egyptians compare with an elephant. See p. 221 (the neo-Syrian) Book of Kalilah and Dimnah.

564. The Noachian dispensation revived the Islam or true religion first revealed to Adam, and was itself revived and reformed by Moses.

565. Probably a corruption of the Turkish “Kara Tásh” = black stone, in Arab. “Hájar Jahannam” (hell-stone), lava, basalt.

566. A variant of lines in Night xx., vol. i., 211.

567. i.e. Daughter of Pride: the proud.

568. In the Calc. Edit. by misprint “Maktab.” Jabal Mukattam is the old sea-cliff where the Mediterranean once beat and upon whose North Western slopes Cairo is built.