The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 02...

201. Arab. "Dirás." Easterns do not thresh with flails. The material is strewed over a round and smoothed floor of dried mud in the open air and threshed by different contrivances. In Egypt the favourite is a chair-like machine called "Norag," running on iron plates and drawn by bulls or cows over the corn. Generally, however, Moslems prefer the old classical Τρίβολον, the Tribulum of Virgil and Varro, a slipper-shaped sled of wood garnished on the sole with large-headed iron nails, or sharp fragments of flint or basalt. Thus is made the "Tibn" or straw, the universal hay of the East, which our machines cannot imitate.

202. These numbers appear to be grossly exaggerated, but they were possible in the days of sword and armour: at the battle of Saffayn the Caliph Ali is said to have cut down five hundred and twenty-three men in a single night.

203. Arab. "Biká'a": hence the "Buka'ah" or Cœlesyria.

204. Richardson in his excellent dictionary (note 103) which modern priggism finds "unscientific," wonderfully derives this word from Arab. "Khattáf," a snatcher (i.e. of women), a ravisher. It is an evident corruption of "captivus" through Italian and French.

205. These periodical and fair-like visitations to convents are still customary; especially amongst the Christians of Damascus.

206. Camphor being then unknown.

207. The "wrecker" is known all over the world; and not only barbarians hold that ships driven ashore become the property of the shore.

208. Arab. "Jokh": it is not a dictionary word, but the only term in popular use for European broadcloth.

209. The second person plural is used because the writer would involve the subjects of his correspondent in the matter.

210. This part of the phrase, which may seem unnecessary to the European, is perfectly intelligible to all Orientalists. You may read many an Eastern letter and not understand it. Compare Boccaccio iv. 1.

211. i.e., he was greatly agitated.

212. In text "Li-ajal al-Taudí'a," for the purpose of farewelling, a low Egyptianism; emphatically a "Kalám wáti." (Pilgrimage iii. 330.)

213. In the Mac. Edit. Sharrkan speaks, a clerical error.

214. The Farsakh (Germ. Stunde) a measure of time rather than distance, is an hour's travel or its equivalent, a league, a meile=three English stat. miles. The word is still used in Persia its true home, but not elsewhere. It is very old, having been determined as a lineal measure of distance by Herodotus (ii. 5 and 6; v. 53), who computes it at 30 furlongs (=furrow-lengths, 8 to the stat. mile). Strabo (xi.) makes it range from 40 to 60 stades (each=606 feet 9 inches); and even now it varies between 1500 to 6,000 yards. Captain Francklin (Tour to Persia) estimates it=about four miles. (Pilgrimage ii. 113.)

215. Arab. "Ashhab." Names of colours are few amongst semi-civilised peoples, but in Arabia there is a distinct word for every shade of horseflesh.

216. She had already said to him "Thou art beaten in everything!"

217. Showing that she was still a Christian.

218. This is not Badawi sentiment: the honoratioren amongst wild people would scorn such foul play; but amongst the settled Arabs honour between men and women is unknown; and such "hocussing" would be held quite fair.

219. The table of wine, in our day, is mostly a japanned tray with glasses and bottles, saucers of pickles and fruits and, perhaps, a bunch of flowers and aromatic herbs. During the Caliphate the "wine-service" was on a larger scale.

220. Here the "Bhang" (almost a generic term applied to hellebore, etc.) may be hyoscyamus or henbane. Yet there are varieties of Cannabis, such as the Dakha of South Africa, capable of most violent effect. I found the use of the drug well known to the negroes of the Southern United States and of the Brazil, although few of their owners had ever heard of it.

221. Amongst Moslems this is a reference to Adam who first "sinned against himself," and who therefore is called "Safíyu'llah," the Pure of Allah (Pilgrimage iii. 333).

222. Meaning, an angry, violent man.

223. Arab. "Inshád," which may mean reciting the verse of another or improvising one's own. In Modern Egypt "Munshid" is the singer or reciter of poetry at Zikrs (Lane M. E. chapt. xxiv.). Here the verses are quite bad enough to be improvised by the hapless Princess.

224. The negro skin assumes this dust-colour in cold, fear, concupiscence and other mental emotions.

225. He compares her glance with the blade of a Yamani sword, a lieu commun of Eastern poetry. The weapons are famous in The Nights; but the best sword-cutlery came from Persia as the porcelain from China to Sana'á. Here, however, is especial allusion as to the sword "Samsam" or "Samsamah." It belonged to the Himyarite Tobba, Amru bin Ma'ad Kurb, and came into the hands of Harun al-Rashid. When the Emperor of the Greeks sent a present of superior sword-blades to him by way of a brave, the Caliph, in the presence of the Envoys, took "Samsam" in hand and cut the others in twain as if they were cabbages without the least prejudice to the edge of "Samsam."

226. This touch of pathos is truly Arab. So in the "Romance of Dalhamah" (Lane, M. E. xxiii.) the infant Gundubah sucks the breast of its dead mother and the King exclaims, "If she had committed this crime she would not be affording the child her milk after she was dead."

227. Arab. Sadda'l-Aktár, a term picturesque enough to be preserved in English. "Sadd," I have said, is a wall or dyke, the term applied to the great dam of water-plants which obstructs the navigation of the Upper Nile, the lilies and other growths floating with the current from the (Victoria) Nyanza Lake. I may note that we need no longer derive from India the lotus-lily so extensively used by the Ancient Egyptians and so neglected by the moderns that it has well nigh disappeared. All the Central African basins abound in the Nymphæa and thence it found its way down the Nile-Valley.

228. Arab. "Al-Marhúmah": equivalent to our "late lamented."

229. Vulgarly pronounced "Mahmal," and by Egyptians and Turks "Mehmel." Lane (M. E. xxiv.) has figured this queenly litter and I have sketched and described it in my Pilgrimage (iii. 12).

230. For such fits of religious enthusiasm see my Pilgrimage (iii. 254).

231. "Irák" (Mesopotamia) means "a level country beside the banks of a river."

232. "Al-Kuds," or "Bayt al-Mukaddas," is still the popular name of Jerusalem, from the Heb. Yerushalaim ha-Kadushah (legend on shekel of Simon Maccabeus).

233. "Follow the religion of Abraham" says the Koran (chapt. iii. 89). Abraham, titled "Khalílu'llah," ranks next in dignity to Mohammed, preceding Isa; I need hardly say that his tomb is not in Jerusalem nor is the tomb itself at Hebron ever visited. Here Moslems (soi disant) are allowed by the jealousies of Europe to close and conceal a place which belongs to the world, especially to Jews and Christians. The tombs, if they exist, lie in a vault or cave under the Mosque.

234. Abá, or Abá'ah, vulg. Abáyah, is a cloak of hair, goat's or camel's; too well known to require description.

235. Arab. "Al-Wakkád;" the man who lights and keeps up the bath-fires.

236. Arab. "Má al-Khaláf"(or "Khiláf") a sickly perfume but much prized, made from the flowers of the Salix Ægyptiaca.

237. Used by way of soap; like glasswort and other plants.

238. i.e., "Thou art only just recovered."

239. To "Nakh" is to gurgle "Ikh! Ikh!" till the camel kneels. Hence the space called "Barr al-Manákhah" in Al-Medinah (Pilgrimage i. 222, ii. 91). There is a regular camel-vocabulary amongst the Arabs, made up like our "Gee" (go ye!), etc. of significant words worn down.

240. Arab. "Laza," the Second Hell provided for Jews.