The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 01...

461. Arab. "Sáhib"=lit. a companion; also a friend and especially applied to the Companions of Mohammed. Hence the Sunnis claim for them the honour of "friendship" with the Apostle; but the Shia'hs reply that the Arab says "Sahaba-hu'l-himár" (the Ass was his Sahib or companion). In the text it is a Wazirial title, in modern India it is=gentleman, e.g. "Sahib log" (the Sahib people) means their white conquerors, who, by the by, mostly mispronounce the word "Sáb."

462. Arab. "Suwán," prop. Syenite, from Syene (Al-Suwan) but applied to flint and any hard stone.

463. It was famous in the middle ages, and even now it is, perhaps, the most interesting to travellers after that "Sentina Gentium," the "Bhendi Bazar" of unromantic Bombay.

464. "The Gate of the Gardens," in the northern wall, a Roman archway of the usual solid construction shaming not only our modern shams, but our finest masonry.

465. Arab. "Al-Asr," which may mean either the hour or the prayer. It is also the moment at which the Guardian Angels relieve each other (Sale's Koran, chapt. v.).

466. Arab. "Ya házá"=O this (one)! a somewhat slighting address equivalent to "Heus tu! O thou, whoever thou art." Another form is "Yá hú"=O he! Can this have originated Swift's "Yahoo?"

467. Alluding to the τήρατα ("minor miracles which cause surprise") performed by Saints' tombs, the mildest form of thaumaturgy. One of them gravely recorded in the Dabistan (ii. 226) is that of the holy Jamen, who opened the Sámran or bead-bracelet from the arm of the beautiful Chistápá with member erect, "thus evincing his manly strength and his command over himself"(!)

468. The River of Paradise, a lieu commun of poets (Koran, chapt. cviii.): the water is whiter than milk or silver, sweeter than honey, smoother than cream, more odorous than musk; its banks are of chrysolite and it is drunk out of silver cups set around it thick as stars. Two pipes conduct it to the Prophet's Pond which is an exact square, one month's journey in compass. Kausar is spirituous like wine; Salsabil sweet like clarified honey; the Fount of Mildness is like milk and the Fount of Mercy like liquid crystal.

469. The Moslem does not use the European basin because water which has touched an impure skin becomes impure. Hence it is poured out from a ewer ("ibrík" Pers. Abríz) upon the hands and falls into a basin ("tisht") with an open-worked cover.

470. Arab. "Wahsh," a word of many meanings; nasty, insipid, savage, etc. The offside of a horse is called Wahshi opposed to Insi, the near side. The Amir Taymur ("Lord Iron") whom Europeans unwittingly call after his Persian enemies' nickname, "Tamerlane," i.e. Taymur-i-lang, or limping Taymur, is still known as "Al-Wahsh" (the wild beast) at Damascus, where his Tartars used to bury men up to their necks and play at bowls with their heads for ninepins.

471. For "grandson" as being more affectionate. Easterns have not yet learned that clever Western saying:—The enemies of our enemies are our friends.

472. This was a simple bastinado on the back, not the more ceremonious affair of beating the feet-soles. But it is surprising what the Egyptians can bear; some of the rods used in the time of the Mameluke Beys are nearly as thick as a man's wrist.

473. The woman-like spite of the eunuch intended to hurt the grandmother's feelings.

474. The usual Cairene "chaff."

475. A necessary precaution against poison (Pilgrimage i. 84, and iii. 43).

476. The Bresl. Edit. (ii. 108) describes the scene at greater length.

477. The Bul. Edit. gives by mistake of diacritical points, "Zabdaniyah:" Raydaniyah is or rather was a camping ground to the North of Cairo.

478. Arab. "La'abat"=a plaything, a puppet, a lay figure. Lane (i. 326) conjectures that the cross is so called because it resembles a man with arms extended. But Moslems never heard of the fanciful ideas of mediæval Christian divines who saw the cross everywhere and in everything. The former hold that Pharaoh invented the painful and ignominious punishment. (Koran, chapt. vii.)

479. Here good blood, driven to bay, speaks out boldly. But, as a rule the humblest and mildest Eastern when in despair turns round upon his oppressors like a wild cat. Some of the criminals whom Fath Ali Shah of Persia put to death by chopping down the fork, beginning at the scrotum, abused his mother till the knife reached their vitals and they could no longer speak.

480. These repeated "laughs" prove the trouble of his spirit. Noble Arabs "show their back-teeth" so rarely that their laughter is held worthy of being recorded by their biographers.

481. A popular phrase, derived from the Koranic "Truth is come, and falsehood is vanished: for falsehood is of short continuance" (chapt. xvii.). It is an equivalent of our adaptation from 1 Esdras iv. 41, "Magna est veritas et prævalebit." But the great question still remains, What is Truth?

482. In Night lxxv. these lines will occur with variants.

483. This is always mentioned: the nearer the seat the higher the honour.

484. Alluding to the phrase "Al-safar zafar"=voyaging is victory (Pilgrimage i., 127).

485. Arab. "Habb;" alluding to the black drop in the human heart which the Archangel Gabriel removed from Mohammed by opening his breast.

486. This phrase, I have said, often occurs: it alludes to the horripilation (Arab. Kush'arírah), horror or gooseflesh which, in Arab as in Hindu fables, is a symptom of great joy. So Boccaccio's "pelo arriciato" v., 8: Germ. Gänsehaut.

487. Arab. "Hasanta ya Hasan"=Bene detto, Benedetto! the usual word-play vulgarly called "pun:" Hasan (not Hassan, as we will write it) meaning "beautiful."

488. Arab. "Loghah" also=a vocabulary, a dictionary; the Arabs had them by camel-loads.

489. The seventh of the sixteen "Bahr" (metres) in Arabic prosody; the easiest because allowing the most licence and, consequently, a favourite for didactic, homiletic and gnomic themes. It means literally "agitated" and was originally applied to the rude song of the Cameleer. De Sacy calls this doggrel "the poet's ass" (Torrens, Notes xxvi.). It was the only metre in which Mohammed the Apostle ever spoke: he was no poet (Koran xxxvi., 69) but he occasionally recited a verse and recited it wrongly (Dabistan iii., 212). In Persian prosody Rajaz is the seventh of nineteen and has six distinct varieties (pp. 79-81, "Gladwin's Dissertations on Rhetoric," etc. Calcutta, 1801). I shall have more to say about it in the terminal Essay.

490. "Her stature tall—I hate a dumpy woman" (Don Juan).

491. A worthy who was Kazi of Kufah (Cufa) in the seventh century. Al-Najaf, generally entitled "Najaf al-Ashraf" (the Venerand) is the place where Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, lies or is supposed to lie buried, and has ever been a holy place to the Shi'ahs. I am not certain whether to translate "Sa'alab" by fox or jackal; the Arabs make scant distinction between them. "Abu Hosayn" (Father of the Fortlet) is certainly the fox, and as certainly "Sha'arhar" is the jackal from the Pehlevi Shagál or Shaghál.

492. Usually by all manner of extortions and robbery, corruption and bribery, the ruler's motto being

Fiat injustitia ruat Cœlum.

There is no more honest man than the Turkish peasant or the private soldier; but the process of deterioration begins when he is made a corporal and culminates in the Pasha. Moreover official dishonesty is permitted by public opinion, because it belongs to the condition of society. A man buys a place (as in England two centuries ago) and retains it by presents to the heads of offices. Consequently he must recoup himself in some way, and he mostly does so by grinding the faces of the poor and by spoiling the widow and the orphan. The radical cure is high pay; but that phase of society refuses to afford it.

493. Arab. "Malik" (King) and "Malak" (angel) the words being written the same when lacking vowels and justifying the jingle.

494. Arab. "Hurr"; the Latin "ingenuus," lit. freeborn; metaph. noble as opp. to a slave who is not expected to do great or good deeds. In pop. use it corresponds, like "Fatá," with our "gentleman."

495. This is one of the best tales for humour and movement, and Douce and Madden show what a rich crop of fabliaux, whose leading incident was the disposal of a dead body, it produced.