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

399. The liver and spleen are held to be congealed blood. Hence the couplet:—

We are allowed two carrions (i.e. with throats uncut) and two bloods,

The fish and the locust, the liver and the spleen.

(Pilgrimage iii. 92.)

400. This is perfectly true and yet little known to the general.

401. Koran xvii. 39.

402. Arab. “Al-malikhulíya,” proving that the Greeks then pronounced the penultimate vowel according to the acute accent—ía; not as we slur it over. In old Hebrew we have the transliteration of four Greek words; in the languages of Hindostan many scores including names of places; and in Latin and Arabic as many hundreds. By a scholar-like comparison of these remains we should find little difficulty in establishing the true Greek pronunciation since the days of Alexander the Great; and we shall prove that it was pronounced according to accent and emphatically not quantity. In the next century I presume English boys will be taught to pronounce Greek as the Greeks do.

403. Educated Arabs can quote many a verse bearing upon domestic medicine and reminding us of the lines bequeathed to Europe by the School of Salerno. Such e.g. are:—

After the noon-meal, sleep, although for moments twain;

After the night-meal, walk, though but two steps be ta’en;

And after swiving stale, though but two drops thou drain.

404. Arab. Sarídah (Tharídah), also called “ghaut” = crumbled bread and hashed meat in broth; or bread, milk and meat. The Sarídah of Ghassán, cooked with eggs and marrow, was held a dainty dish: hence the Prophet’s dictum.

405. Koran v. 92. “Lots” = games of chance and “images” = statues.

406. Koran ii. 216. The word “Maysar” which I have rendered “gambling” or “gaming” (for such is the modern application of the word), originally meant what St. Jerome calls Βελομαντία and explains thereby the verse (Ezek. xxi. 22), “The King held in his hand the lot of Jerusalem” i.e. the arrow whereon the city-name was written. The Arabs use it for casting lots with ten azlam or headless arrows (for dice) three being blanks and the rest notched from one to seven. They were thrown by a “Zárib” or punter and the stake was generally a camel. Amongst so excitable a people as the Arabs, this game caused quarrels and bloodshed, hence its prohibition: and the theologians, who everywhere and at all times delight in burdening human nature, have extended the command, which is rather admonitory than prohibitive, to all games of chance. Tarafah is supposed to allude to this practice in his Mu’allakah.

407. Liberal Moslems observe that the Koranic prohibition is not absolute, with threat of Hell for infraction. Yet Mohammed doubtless forbade all inebriatives and the occasion of his so doing is well known (Pilgrimage ii. 322).

408. I have noticed this soured milk in Pilgrimage i. 362.

409. He does not say the “Caliph” or successor of his uncle Mohammed.

410. The Jewish Korah (Numbers xvi.) fabled by the Koran (xxviii. 76), following a Talmudic tradition, to have been a man of immense wealth. The notion that lying with an old woman, after the menses have ceased, is unwholesome, dates from great antiquity; and the benefits of the reverse process were well known to good King David. The faces of children who sleep with their grandparents (a bad practice now waxing obsolete in England), of a young wife married to an old man and of a young man married to an old woman, show a peculiar wizened appearance, a look of age overlaying youth which cannot be mistaken.

411. Arab. “Hindibá” (= endubium): the modern term is Shakuríyah = chicorée. I believe it to be very hurtful to the eyes.

412. Arab. “Khuffásh” and “Watwát”: in Egypt a woman is called “Watwátíyah” when the hair of her privities has been removed by applying bats’ blood. I have often heard of this; but cannot understand how such an application can act depilatory.

413. Dictionaries render the word by “dragon, cockatrice.” The Badawin apply it to a variety of serpents mostly large and all considered venomous.

414. Arab. “Zarr wa ‘urwah,” lit. = handle. The button-hole, I have said, is a modern invention; Urwah is also applied to the loop-shaped handle of the water-skin, for attachment of the Allákah or suspensory thong.

415. Koran lxx. 40; see also the chapter following, v. 16.

416. Koran x. 5; the “her” refers to the sun.

417. Koran xxxvi. 40.

418. Koran xxii. 60.

419. Arab. “Manázil:” these are the Hindu Nakshatra; extensively used in meteorology even by Europeans unconsciously: thus they will speak of the Elephantina-storm without knowing anything of the lunar mansion so called. The names in the text are successively Sharatán = two horns of the Ram; (2) the Ram’s belly; (3) the Pleiades;

(4) Aldebaran; (5) three stars in Orion’s head; (6) ditto in Orion’s shoulder; (7) two stars above the Twins;

(8) Lion’s nose and first summer station;

(9) Lion’s eye;

(10) Lion’s forehead;

(11) Lion’s mane;

(12) Lion’s heart; (13) the Dog, two stars in Virgo;

(14) Spica Virginis; (15) φ, ι and κ in foot of Virgo; (16) horns of Scorpio; (17) the Crown; (18) heart of Scorpio; (19) tail of Scorpio; (20) stars in Pegasus; (21) where no constellation appears; (22) the Slaughterer’s luck;

(23) Glutton’s luck;

(24) Luck of Lucks, stars in Aquarius;

(25) Luck of Tents, stars in Aquarius; (26) the fore-lip or spout of Urn; (27) hind lip of Urn; and (28) in navel of Fish’s belly (Batn al-Hút); of these 28 to each of the four seasons 7 are allotted.

420. The Hebrew absey, still used by Moslems in chronograms. For mnemonic purposes the 28 letters are distributed into eight words of which the first and second are Abjad and Hawwaz. The last six letters in two words (Thakhiz and Zuzigh) are Arabian, unknown to the Jews and not found in Syriac.

421. Arab. “Zindík;” properly, one who believes in two gods (the old Persian dualism); in books an atheist, i.e. one who does not believe in a god or gods; and, popularly, a free-thinker who denies the existence of a Supreme Being, rejects revelation for the laws of Nature imprinted on the heart of man and for humanity in its widest sense. Hence he is accused of permitting incestuous marriages and other abominations. We should now call him (for want of something better) an Agnostic.

422. Koran xxxi. 34. The words may still be applied to meteorologists especially of the scientific school. Even the experienced (as the followers of the late Mathieu de la Drôme) reckon far more failures than successes. The Koranic passage enumerates five things known only to Allah; Judgment-day; rain; sex of child in womb; what shall happen to-morrow and where a man shall die.