History of Gharib and His Brother Ajib.[Fn#312]

There was once in olden time a King of might, Kundamir highs, who had been a brave and doughty man of war, a Kahramán,[FN#313] in his day, but was grown passing old and decrepit. Now it pleased Allah to vouchsafe him, in his extreme senility, a son, whom he named Ajíb[FN#314]—the Wonderful—because of his beauty and loveliness; so he committed the babe to the midwives and wet-nurses and handmaids and serving-women, and they reared him till he was full seven years old, when his father gave him in charge to a divine of his own folk and faith. The priest taught him the laws and tenets of their Misbelief and instructed him in philosophy and all manner of other knowledge, and it needed but three full told years ere he was proficient therein and his spirit waxed resolute and his judgment mature; and he became learned, eloquent and philosophic[FN#315]; consorting with the wise and disputing with the doctors of the law. When his father saw this of him, it pleased him and he taught him to back the steed and stab with spear and smite with sword, till he grew to be an accomplished cavalier, versed in all martial exercises; and, by the end of his twentieth year, he surpassed in all things all the folk of his day. But his skill in weapons made him grow up a stubborn tyrant and a devil arrogant, using to ride forth a-hunting and a-chasing amongst a thousand horsemen and to make raids and razzias upon the neighbouring knights, cutting off caravans and carrying away the daughters of Kings and nobles; wherefore many brought complaints against him to his father, who cried out to five of his slaves and when they came said, “Seize this dog!” So they seized Prince Ajib and, pinioning his hands behind him, beat him by his father’s command till he lost his senses; after which the King imprisoned him in a chamber so dark one might not know heaven from earth or length from breadth; and there he abode two days and a night. Then the Emirs went in to the King and, kissing the ground between his hands, interceded with him for the Prince, and he released him. So Ajib bore with his father for ten days, at the end of which he went in to him as he slept by night and smote his neck. When the day rose, he mounted the throne of his sire’s estate and bade his men arm themselves cap-à-pie in steel and stand with drawn swords in front of him and on his right hand and on his left. By and by, the Emirs and Captains entered and finding their King slain and his son Ajib seated on the throne were confounded in mind and knew not what to do. But Ajib said to them, “O folk, verily ye see what your King hath gained. Whoso obeyeth me, I will honour him, and whoso gainsayeth me I will do with him that which I did with my sire.” When they heard these words they feared lest he do them a mischief; so they replied, “Thou art our King and the son of our King;” and kissed ground before him; whereupon he thanked them and rejoiced in them. Then he bade bring forth money and apparel and clad them in sumptuous robes of honour and showered largesse upon them, wherefore they all loved him and obeyed him. In like manner he honoured the governors of the Provinces and the Shaykhs of the Badawin, both tributary and independent, so that the whole kingdom submitted to him and the folk obeyed him and he reigned and bade and forbade in peace and quiet for a time of five months. One Night, however, he dreamed a dream as he lay slumbering; whereupon he awoke trembling, nor did sleep visit him again till the morning. As soon as it was dawn he mounted his throne and his officers stood before him, right and left. Then he called the oneiromants and the astrologers and said to them “Expound to me my dream!” “What was the dream?” asked they; and he answered, “As I slept last Night, I saw my father standing before me, with his yard uncovered, and there came forth of it a thing the bigness of a bee, which grew till it became as a mighty lion, with claws like hangers. As I lay wondering at this lo! it ran upon me and smiting me with its claws, rent my belly in sunder; whereupon I awoke startled and trembling. So expound ye to me the meaning of this dream.” The interpreters looked one at other; and, after considering, said, “O mighty King, this dream pointeth to one born of thy sire, between whom and thee shall befal strife and enmity, wherein he shall get the better of thee: so be on thy guard against him, by reason of this thy vision.” When Ajib heard their words, he said, “I have no brother whom I should fear; so this your speech is mere lying.” They replied, “We tell thee naught save what we know;” but he was an angered with them and bastinadoed them. Then he rose and, going in to the paternal palace, examined his father’s concubines and found one of them seven months gone with child; whereupon he gave an order to two of his slaves, saying, “Take this damsel, ye twain, and carry her to the sea-shore and drown her.” So they took her forthright and, going to the sea-shore, designed to drown her, when they looked at her and seeing her to be of singular beauty and loveliness said to each other, “Why should we drown this damsel? Let us rather carry her to the forest and live with her there in rare love-liasse.” Then they took her and fared on with her days and nights till they had borne her afar off and had brought her to a bushy forest, abounding in fruit-trees and streams, where they both thought at the same time to win their will of her; but each said, “I will have her first.” So they fell out one with the other concerning this, and while so doing a company of blackamoors came down upon them, and they drew their swords and both sides fell to laying on load. The mellay waxed hot with cut and thrust; and the two slaves fought their best; but the blacks slew them both in less than the twinkling of an eye. So the damsel abode alone and wandered about the forest, eating of its fruits and drinking of its founts, till in due time she gave birth to a boy, brown but clean limbed and comely, whom she named Gharíb, the Stranger, by reason of her strangerhood. Then she cut his navel-string and wrapping him in some of her own clothes, gave him to suck, harrowed at heart, and with vitals sorrowing for the estate she had lost and its honour and solace. And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say,

When it was the Six Hundred and Twenty-fifth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the damsel abode in the bush harrowed at heart and a-sorrowed; but she suckled her babe albeit she was full of grief and fear for her loneliness. Now behold, one day, there came horsemen and footmen into the forest with hawks and hounds and horses laden with partridges and cranes and wild geese and divers and other waterfowl; and young ostriches and hares and gazelles and wild oxen and lynxes and wolves and lions.[FN#316] Presently, these Arabs entered the thicket and came upon the damsel, sitting with her child on her breast a-suckling him: so they drew near and asked her, “Say art thou a mortal or a Jinniyah?” Answered she, “I am a mortal, O Chiefs of the Arabs.” Thereupon they told their Emir, whose name was Mardás, Prince of the Banú Kahtán,[FN#317] and who had come forth that day to hunt with five hundred of his cousins and the nobles of his tribe, and who in the course of the chase had happened upon her. He bade them bring her before him, which they did and she related to him her past from first to last, whereat he marvelled. Then he cried to his kinsmen and escort to continue the chase, after which they took her and returned to their encampment, where the Emir appointed her a separate dwelling-place and five damsels to serve her; and he loved her with exceeding love and went in to her and lay with her. She conceived by him straightway, and, when her months were accomplished, she bare a man child and named him Sahím al-Layl.[FN#318] He grew up with his brother Gharib among the nurses and throve and waxed upon the lap of the Emir Mardas who, in due time committed the two boys to a Fakih for instruction in the things of their faith; after which he gave them in charge to valiant knights of the Arabs, for training them to smite with sword and lunge with lance and shoot with shaft; so by the time they reached the age of fifteen, they knew all they needed and surpassed each and every brave of their tribe; for Gharib would undertake a thousand horse and Sahim al-Layl no fewer. Now Mardas had many enemies, and the men of his tribe were the bravest of all the Arabs, being doughty cavaliers, none might warm himself at their fire.[FN#319] In his neighbourhood was an Emir of the Arabs, Hassan bin Sábit hight, who was his intimate friend; and he took to wife a noble lady of his tribe and bade all his friends to the wedding, amongst them Mardas lord of the Banu Kahtan, who accepted his invitation and set forth with three hundred riders of his tribe, leaving other four hundred to guard the women. Hassan met him with honour and seated him in the highest stead. Then came all the cavaliers to the bridal and he made them bride-feasts and held high festival by reason of the marriage, after which the Arabs departed to their dwelling-places. When Mardas came in sight of his camp, he saw slain men lying about and birds hovering over them right and left; and his heart sank within him at the sight. Then he entered the camp and was met by Gharib, clad in complete suit of ring-mail, who gave him joy of his safe return. Quoth Mardas, “What meaneth this case, O Gharib?”; and quoth Gharib, “Al-Hamal bin Májid attacked us with five hundred horsemen of his tribe.” Now the reason of this was that the Emir Mardas had a daughter called Mahdíyah, seer never saw fairer than she, and Al-Hamal, lord of the Banu Nabhán,[FN#320] heard of her charms; whereupon he took horse with five hundred of his men and rode to Mardas to demand her hand; but he was not accepted and was sent away disappointed.[FN#321] So he awaited till Mardas was absent on his visit to Hassan, when he mounted with his champions and, falling upon the camp of the Banu Kahtan, slew a number of their knights and the rest fled to the mountains. Now Gharib and his brother had ridden forth a-hunting and chasing with an hundred horse and returned not till midday, when they found that Al-Hamal had seized the camp and all therein and had carried off the maidens, among whom was Mahdiyah, driving her away with the captives. When Gharib saw this, he lost his wits for rage and cried out to Sahim, saying, “O my brother, O son of an accursed dam,[FN#322] they have plundered our camp and carried off our women and children! Up and at the enemy, that we may deliver the captives!” So Gharib and Sahim and their hundred horse rushed upon the foe, and Gharib’s wrath redoubled, and he reaped a harvest of heads slain, giving the champions death-cup to drain, till he won to Al-Hamal and saw Mahdiyah among the captives. Then he drave at the lord of the Banu Nabhan braves; with his lance lunged him and from his destrier hurled him; nor was the time of mid-afternoon prayer come before he had slain the most part of the foe and put to rout the rest and rescued the captives; whereupon he returned to the camp in triumph, bearing the head of Al-Hamal on the point of his lance and improvising these couplets,

“I am he who is known on the day of fight, * And the Jinn of
earth at my shade take fright:
And a sword have I when my right hand wields, * Death hastens
from left on mankind to alight;
I have eke a lance and who look thereon * See a crescent head of
the liveliest light.[FN#323]
And Gharib I’m highs of my tribe the brave * And if few my men I
feel naught affright.”

Hardly had Gharib made an end of these verses when up came Mardas who, seeing the slain and the vultures, was sore troubled and with fluttering heart asked the cause. The youth, after due greetings, related all that had befallen the tribe in his step-sire’s absence. So Mardas thanked him and said, “Thou hast well requited our fosterage-pains in rearing thee, O Gharib!”; then he alighted and entered his pavilion, and the men stood about him, all the tribe praising Gharib and saying, “O our Emir, but for Gharib, not one of the tribe had been saved!” And Mardas again thanked him.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say,

When it was the Six Hundred and Twenty-sixth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Mardas, hearing the tribesmen’s praises of Gharib, again thanked him for his derring-do. But the youth, when he had delivered Mahdiyah from Al-Hamal whom he slew, was smitten by the shaft of her glances and fell into the nets of her allurements, wherefore his heart could not forget her and he became drowned in love and longing and the sweets of sleep forsook him and he had no joy of drink or meat. He would spur his horse up to the mountain tops, where he would spend the day in composing verses and return at nightfall; and indeed manifest upon him were the signs of affection and distraction. He discovered his secret to one of his companions and it became noised abroad in the camp, till it reached the ears of Mardas, who thundered and lightened and rose up and sat down and sparked and snorted and reviled the sun and the moon, saying, “This is the reward of him who reareth the sons of adultery! But except I kill Gharib, I shall be put to shame.”[FN#324] Then he consulted one of the wise men of his tribe and after telling his secret took counsel with him of killing the youth. Quoth the elder, “O Emir, ’twas but yesterday that he freed thy daughter from captivity. If there be no help for it but thou must slay him, let it be by the hand of another than thyself, so none of the folk may misdoubt of thee.” Quoth Mardas, “Advise me how I may do him die, for I look to none but to thee for his death.” “O Emir,” answered the other, “wait till he go forth to hunt and chase, when do thou take an hundred horse and lie in wait for him in some cave till he pass; then fall upon him unawares and cut him in pieces, so shalt thou be quit of his reproach.” Said Mardas, “This should serve me well;” and chose out an hundred and fifty of his furious knights and Amalekites[FN#325] whom he lessoned to his will. Then he watched Gharib till one day, he went forth to hunt and rode far away amongst the dells and hills; whereupon Mardas followed him with his men, ill-omened wights, and lay in wait for him by the way against he should return from the chase that they might sally forth and slay him. But as they lay in ambush among the trees behold, there fell upon them five hundred true Amalekites, who slew sixty of them and made fourscore and ten prisoners and trussed up Mardas with his arms behind his back. Now the reason of this was that when Gharib put Al-Hamal and his men to the sword, the rest fled and ceased not flying till they reached their lord’s brother and told him what had happened, whereat his Doom-day rose and he gathered together his Amalekites and choosing out five hundred cavaliers, each fifty ells high,[FN#326] set out with them in quest of blood-revengement for his brother. By the way he fell in with Mardas and his companions and there happened between them what happened; after which he bade his men alight and rest, saying, “O folk, the idols have given us an easy brood-wreak; so guard ye Mardas and his tribesmen, till I carry them away and do them die with the foulest of deaths.” When Mardas saw himself a prisoner, he repented of what he had done and said, “This is the reward of rebelling against the Lord!” Then the enemy passed the night rejoicing in their victory, whilst Mardas and his men despaired of life and made sure of doom. So far concerning them; but as regards Sahim al-Layl, who had been wounded in the fight with Al-Hamal, he went in to his sister Mahdiyah, and she rose to him and kissed his hands, saying, “May thy two hands ne’er wither nor thine enemies have occasion to be blither! But for thee and Gharib, we had not escaped captivity among our foes. Know, however, O my brother, that thy father hath ridden forth with an hundred and fifty horse, purposing to slaughter Gharib; and thou wottest it would be sore loss and foul wrong to slay him, for that it was he who saved your shame and rescued your good.” When Sahim heard this, the light in his sight became Night, he donned his battle-harness; and, mounting steed, rode for the place where Gharib was a-hunting. He presently came up with him and found that he had taken great plenty of game; so he accosted him and saluted him and said, “O my brother, why didst thou go forth without telling me?” Replied Gharib, “By Allah, naught hindered me but that I saw thee wounded and thought to give thee rest.” Then said Sahim, “O my brother, beware of my sire!” and told him how Mardas was abroad with an hundred and fifty men, seeking to slay him. Quoth Gharib, “Allah shall cause his treason to cut his own throat.” Then the brothers set out campwards, but night overtook them by the way and they rode on in the darkness, till they drew near the Wady wherein the enemy lay and heard the neighing of steeds in the gloom; whereupon said Sahim, “O my brother, my father and his men are ambushed in yonder valley; let us flee from it.” But Gharib dismounted and throwing his bridle to his brother, said to him, “Stay in this stead till I come back to thee.” Then he went on till he drew in sight of the folk, when he saw that they were not of his tribe and heard them naming Mardas and saying, “We will not slay him, save in his own land.” Wherefore he knew that nuncle Mardas was their prisoner, and said, “By the life of Mahdiyah, I will not depart hence till I have delivered her father, that she may not be troubled!” Then he sought and ceased not seeking till he hit upon Mardas and found him bound with cords; so he sat down by his side and said to him, “Heaven deliver thee, O uncle, from these bonds and this shame!” When Mardas saw Gharib his reason fled, and he said to him, “O my son, I am under thy protection: so deliver me in right of my fosterage of thee!” Quoth Gharib, “If I deliver thee, wilt thou give me Mahdiyah?” Quoth the Emir, “O my son, by whatso I hold sacred, she is thine to all time!” So he loosed him, saying, “Make for the horses, for thy son Sahim is there:” and Mardas crept along like a snake till he came to his son, who rejoiced in him and congratulated him on his escape. Meanwhile, Gharib unbound one after another of the prisoners, till he had freed the whole ninety and they were all far from the foe. Then he sent them their weapons and war horses, saying to them, “Mount ye and scatter yourselves round about the enemy and cry out, Ho, sons of Kahtan! And when they awake, do ye remove from them and encircle them in a thin ring.”[FN#327] So he waited till the last and third watch of the Night, when he cried out, “Ho, sons of Kahtan!” and his men answered in like guise, crying, “Ho, sons of Kahtan,” as with one voice; and the mountains echoed their slogan, so that it seemed to the raiders as though the whole tribe of Banu Kahtan were assailing them; wherefore they all snatched up their arms and fell upon one another,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say,

When it was the Six Hundred and Twenty-seventh Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the raiders[FN#328] awoke from sleep and heard Gharib and his men crying out, “Ho, sons of Kahtan!”; they imagined that the whole tribe was assailing them; wherefore they snatched up their arms and fell one upon other with mighty slaughter. Gharib and his men held aloof, and they fought one another till daybreak, when Gharib and Mardas and their ninety warriors came down upon them and killed some of them and put the rest to flight. Then the Banu Kahtan took the horses of the fugitives and the weapons of the slain and returned to their tribal camp, whilst Mardas could hardly credit his deliverance from the foe. When they reached the encampment, the stay-at-home folk all came forth to meet them and rejoiced in their safe return. Then they alighted and betook them to their tents; and all the youths of the tribe flocked to Gharib’s stead and great and small saluted him and did him honour. But when Mardas saw this and the youths encircling his stepson he waxed more jealous of Gharib than before and said to his kinsfolk, “Verily, hatred of Gharib groweth on my heart, and what irketh me most is that I see these flocking about him! And to-morrow he will demand Mahdiyah of me.” Quoth his confidant, “O Emir, ask of him somewhat he cannot avail to do.” This pleased Mardas who passed a pleasant night and on the morrow, as he sat on his stuffed carpet, with the Arabs about him, Gharib entered, followed by his men and surrounded by the youth of the tribe, and kissed the ground before Mardas who, making a show of joy, rose to do him honour and seated him beside himself. Then said Gharib, “O uncle, thou madest me a promise; do thou fulfil it.” Replied the Emir, “O my son, she is thine to all time; but thou lackest wealth.” Quoth Gharib, “O uncle, ask of me what thou wilt, and I will fall upon the Emirs of the Arabs in their houses and on the Kings in their towns and bring thee fee[FN#329] enough to fence the land from East to West.” “O my son,” quoth Mardas, “I have sworn by all the Idols that I would not give Mahdiyah save to him who should take my blood-wite of mine enemy and do away my reproach.” “O uncle,” said Gharib, “tell me with which of the Kings thou hast a feud, that I may go to him and break his throne upon his pate.” “O my son,” replied Mardas, “I once had a son, a champion of champions, and he went forth one day to chase and hunt with an hundred horse. They fared on from valley to valley, till they had wandered far away amongst the mountains and came to the Wady of Blossoms and the Castle of Hám bin Shays bin Shaddád bin Khalad. Now in this place, O my son, dwelleth a black giant, seventy cubits high, who fights with trees from their roots uptorn; and when my son reached his Wady, the tyrant sallied out upon him and his men and slew them all, save three braves, who escaped and brought me the news. So I assembled my champions and fared forth to fight the giant, but could not prevail against him; wherefore I was baulked of my revenge and swore that I would not give my daughter in marriage save to him who should avenge me of my son.” Said Gharib, “O uncle, I will go to this Amalekite and take the wreak of thy son on him with the help of Almighty Allah.” And Mardas answered, saying, “O Gharib, if thou get the victory over him, thou wilt gain of him such booty of wealth and treasures as fires may not devour.” Cried Gharib, “Swear to me before witnesses thou wilt give me her to wife, so that with heart at ease I may go forth to find my fortune.” Accordingly, Mardas swore this to him and took the elders of the tribe to witness; whereupon Gharib fared forth, rejoicing in the attainment of his hopes, and went in to his mother, to whom he related what had passed. “O my son,” said she, “know that Mardas hateth thee and doth but send thee to this mountain, to bereave me of thee; then take me with thee and let us depart the tents of this tyrant.” But he answered, “O my mother, I will not depart hence till I win my wish and foil my foe.” Thereupon he slept till morning arose with its sheen and shone, and hardly had he mounted his charger when his friends, the young men, came up to him; two hundred stalwart knights armed cap-à-pie and cried out to him, saying, “Take us with thee; we will help thee and company thee by the way.” And he rejoiced in them and cried, “Allah requite you for us with good!” adding, “Come, my friends, let us go.” So they set out and fared on the first day and the second day till evening, when they halted at the foot of a towering mount and baited their horses. As for Gharib, he left the rest and walked on into that mountain, till he came to a cave whence issued a light. He entered and found, at the higher facing end of the cave a Shaykh, three hundred and forty years old, whose eyebrows overhung his eyes and whose moustachios hid his mouth. Gharib at this sight was filled with awe and veneration, and the hermit said to him, “Methinks thou art of the idolaters, O my son, stone-worshipping[FN#330] in the stead of the All-powerful King, the Creator of Night and Day and of the sphere rolling on her way.” When Gharib heard his words, his side muscles quivered and he said, “O Shaykh, where is this Lord of whom thou speakest, that I may worship him and take my fill of his sight?” Replied the Shaykh, “O my son, this is the Supreme Lord, upon whom none may look in this world. He seeth and is not seen. He is the Most High of aspect and is present everywhere in His works. He it is who maketh all the made and ordereth time to vade and fade; He is the Creator of men and Jinn and sendeth the Prophets to guide His creatures into the way of right. Whoso obeyeth Him, He bringeth into Heaven, and whoso gainsayeth Him, He casteth into Hell.” Asked Gharib, “And how, O uncle, saith whoso worshippeth this puissant Lord who over all hath power?” “O my son,” answered the Shaykh, “I am of the tribe of Ad, which were transgressors in the land and believed not in Allah. So He sent unto them a Prophet named Húd, but they called him liar and he destroyed them by means of a deadly wind; but I believed together with some of my tribe, and we were saved from destruction.[FN#331] Moreover, I was present with the tribe of Thamúd and saw what befel them with their Prophet Sálih. After Salih, the Al-mighty sent a prophet, called Abraham the Friend,[FN#332] to Nimrod son of Canaan, and there befel what befel between them. Then my companions died in the Saving Faith and I continued in this cave to serve Allah the Most High, who provideth my daily bread without my taking thought.” Quoth Gharib, “O uncle, what shall I say, that I may become of the troop of this mighty Lord?” “Say,” replied the old man,—“There is no god but the God and Abraham is the Friend of God.” So Gharib embraced the Faith of Submission[FN#333] with heart and tongue and the Shaykh said to him, “May the sweetness of belief and devotion be stablished in thy heart!” Then he taught him somewhat of the biblical ordinances and scriptures of Al-Islam and said to him, “What is thy name?”; and he replied, “My name is Gharib.” Asked the old man, “Whither art thou bound, O Gharib?” So he told him all his history, till he came to the mention of the Ghúl of the Mountain whom he sought,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say,

When it was the Six Hundred and Twenty-eighth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Gharib became a Moslem and told the Shaykh his past, from first to last, till he came to the mention of the Mountain-Ghul whom he sought, the old man asked him, “O Gharib, art thou mad that thou goest forth against the Ghul of the Mountain single handed?”; and he answered, “O my lord, I have with me two hundred horse.” “O Gharib,” rejoined the hermit, “hadst thou ten thousand riders yet shouldst thou not prevail against him, for his name is The-Ghul-who-eateth-men-we-pray-Allah-for-safety, and he is of the children of Ham. His father’s name was Hindi who peopled Hind and named it, and he left this son after him, whom he called Sa’adan the Ghul. Now the same was, O my son, even in his sire’s lifetime, a cruel tyrant and a rebellious devil and had no other food than flesh of the sons of Adam. His father when about to die forbade him from this, but he would not be forbidden and he redoubled in his forwardness, till Hindi banished him and drove him forth the Land of Hind, after battles and sore travail. Then he came to this country and fortifying himself herein, established his home in this place, whence he is wont to sally forth and cut the road of all that come and go, presently returning to the valley he haunteth. Moreover, he hath begotten five sons, warlike warlocks, each one of whom will do battle with a thousand braves, and he hath flocked the valley with his booty of treasure and goods besides horses and camels and cattle and sheep. Wherefore I fear for thee from him; so do thou implore Almighty Allah to further thee against him by the Tahlíl, the formula of Unity, and when thou drivest at the Infidels, cry, God is most Great!’ for, saying, There is no god but the God’ confoundeth those who misbelieve.” Then the Shaykh gave him a steel mace, an hundred pounds in weight, with ten rings which clashed like thunder whenas the wielder brandished it, and a sword forged of a thunderbolt,[FN#334] three ells long and three spans broad, wherewith if one smote a rock, the stroke would cleave it in sunder. Moreover he gave him a hauberk and target and a book and said to him, “Return to thy tribe and expound unto them Al-Islam.” So Gharib left him, rejoicing in his new Faith, and fared till he found his companions, who met him with salams, saying, “What made thee tarry thus?” Whereupon he related to them that which had befallen him and expounded to them Al-Islam, and they all islamised. Early next morning, Gharib mounted and rode to the hermit to farewell him, after which he set out to return to his camp when behold, on his way, there met him a horseman cap-à-pie armed so that only his eyes appeared, who made at him, saying, “Doff what is on thee, O scum[FN#335] of the Arabs; or I will do thee die!” Therewith Gharib crave at him and there befel between them a battle such as would make a new-born child turn grey and melt the flinty rock with its sore affray; but presently the Badawi did off his face-veil, and lo! it was Gharib’s half-brother Sahim al-Layl. Now the cause of his coming thither was that when Gharib set out in quest of the Mountain-Ghul, Sahim was absent and on his return, not seeing his brother, he went in to his mother, whom he found weeping. He asked the reason of her tears and she told him what had happened of his brother’s journey, whereupon, without allowing himself aught of rest, he donned his war-gear and mounting rode after Gharib, till he overtook him and there befel between them what befel. When, therefore. Sahim discovered his face, Gharib knew him and saluted him, saying, “What moved thee to do this?” Quoth Sahim, “I had a mind to measure myself with thee in the field and make trial of my lustihood in cut and thrust.” Then they rode together and on the way Gharib expounded Al-Islam to Sahim, who embraced the Faith; nor did they cease riding till they were hard upon the valley. Meanwhile, the Mountain-Ghul espied the dust of their horses’ feet and said to his sons, “O my sons, mount and fetch me yonder loot.” So the five took horse and made for the party. When Gharib saw the five Amalekites approaching, he plied shovel-iron upon his steed’s flank and cried out, saying, “Who are ye, and what is your race and what do ye require?” Whereupon Falhún bin Sa’adan, the eldest of the five, came out and said, “Dismount ye and bind one another[FN#336] and we will drive you to our father, that he may roast various of you and boil various, for it is long since he has tasted the flesh of Adam-son.” When Gharib heard these words he drove at Falhun, shaking his mace, so that the rings rang like the roaring thunder and the giant was confounded. Then he smote him a light blow with the mace between the shoulders, and he fell to the ground like a tall-trunked palm-tree; whereupon Sahim and some of his men fell upon him and pinioned him; then, putting a rope about his neck, they haled him along like a cow. Now when his brothers saw him a prisoner they charged home upon Gharib, who took three[FN#337] of them captive and the fifth fled back to his sire, who said to him, “What is behind thee and where are the brothers of thee?” Quoth he “Verily, a beardless youth, forty cubits high, hath taken them prisoner.” Quoth Sa’adan, “May the sun pour no blessing on you!” and, going down from his hold, tore up a huge tree, with which he went in quest of Gharib and his folk; and he was on foot, for that no horse might carry him, because of the bigness of his body. His son followed him and the twain went on till they came up with Gharib and his company, when the Ghul fell upon them, without word said, and slew five men with his club. Then he made at Sahim and struck at him with his tree, but Sahim avoided the blow and it fell harmless; whereat Sa’adan was wroth and throwing down the weapon, sprang upon Sahim and caught him in his pounces as the sparrow hawk catcheth up the sparrow. Now when Gharib saw his brother in the Ghul’s clutches, he cried out, saying, “Allaho Akbar God is most Great! Oh the favour of Abraham the Friend, the Muhammad,[FN#338] the Blessed One (whom Allah keep and assain!)”—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say,

When it was the Six Hundred and Twenty-ninth Night,

She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Gharib saw his brother in the clutches of the Ghul, he cried out, saying “Oh the favour of Ibrahim, the Friend, the Blessed One (whom Allah keep and assain!)”; and crave his charger at Sa’adan, shaking his mace, till the rings loud rang. Then he cried out again, “God is most Great!” and smote the Ghul on the flat of the ribs with his mace, whereupon he fell to the ground, insensible, and loosed his grip on Sahim; nor did he come to himself ere he was pinioned and shackled. When his son saw this, he turned and fled; but Gharib drove steed after him and smiting him with his mace between the shoulders, threw him from his horse. So they bound him with his father and brethren and haltering them with ropes, haled them all six along like baggage-camels, till they reached the Ghul’s castle, which they found full of goods and treasures and things of price; and there they also came upon twelve hundred Ajamis, men of Persia, bound and shackled. Gharib sat down on Sa’adan’s chair, which had aforetime belonged to Sásá[FN#339] bin Shays bin Shaddad bin Ad causing Sahim to stand on his right and his companions on his either hand, and sending for the Ghul of the Mountain, said to him, “How findest thou thyself, O accursed?” Replied Sa’adan, “O my lord, in the sorriest of plights for abasement and mortification; my sons and I, we are bound with ropes like camels.” Quoth Gharib, “It is my will that you enter my faith, the faith Al-Islam highs, and acknowledge the Unity of the All knowing King whose All-might created Light and Night and every thing, there is no God but He, the Requiting King! and confess the mission and prophethood of Abraham the Friend (on whom be peace!).” So the Ghul and his sons made the required profession after the goodliest fashion, and Gharib bade loose their bonds; whereupon Sa’adan wept and would have kissed his feet, he and his sons: but Gharib forbade them and they stood with the rest who stood before him. Then said Gharib, “Harkye, Sa’adan!”; and he replied, “At thy service, O my lord!” Quoth Gharib, “What are these captives?” “O my lord,” quoth the Ghul, “these are my game from the land of the Persians and are not the only ones.” Asked Gharib, “And who is with them?”; and Sa’adan answered, “O my lord, there is with them the Princess Fakhr Táj, daughter of King Sabúr of Persia,[FN#340] and an hundred damsels like moons.” When Gharib heard this, he marvelled and said, “O Emir, how came ye by these?” Replied Sa’adan, “I went forth one night with my sons and five of my slaves in quest of booty, but finding no spoil in our way, we dispersed over wilds and words and fared on, hoping we might happen on somewhat of prey and not return emptyhanded, till we found ourselves in the land of the Persians. Presently, we espied a dust cloud and sent on to reconnoitre one of our slaves, who was absent a while and presently returned and said, O my lord, this is the Princess Fakhr Taj, daughter of Sabur, King of the Persians, Turcomans and Medes; and she is on a journey, attended by two thousand horse.’ Quoth I, Thou hast gladdened us with good news! We could have no finer loot than this.’ Then I and my sons fell upon the Persians and slew of them three hundred men and took the Princess and twelve hundred cavaliers prisoners, together with all that was with her of treasure and riches and brought them to this our castle.” Quoth Gharib, “Hast thou offered any violence to the Princess Fakhr Taj?” Quoth Sa’adan, “Not I, as thy head liveth and by the virtue of the Faith I have but now embraced!” Gharib replied “It was well done of thee, O Sa’adan, for her father is King of the world and doubtless he will despatch troops in quest of her and lay waste the dwellings of those who took her. And whoso looketh not to issue and end hath not Fate to friend. But where is the damsel?” Said Sa’adan, “I have set apart a pavilion for her and her damsels;” and said Gharib, “Show me her lodging,” whereto Sa’adan rejoined, “Hearkening and obedience!” So he carried him to the pavilion, and there he found the Princess mournful and cast down, weeping for her former condition of dignity and delight. When Gharib saw her, he thought the moon was near him and magnified Allah, the All-hearing, the All-seeing. The Princess also looked at him and saw him a princely cavalier, with velour shining from between his eyes and testifying for him and not against him; so she rose and kissed his hands, then fell at his feet, saying, “O hero of the age, I am under thy protection; guard me from this Ghul, for I fear lest he do away my maidenhead and after devour me. So take me to serve thine handmaidens.” Quoth Gharib, “Thou art safe and thou shalt be restored to thy father and the seat of thy worship.” Whereupon she prayed that he might live long and have advancement in rank and honour. Then he bade unbind the Persians and, turning to the Princess, said to her, “What brought thee forth of thy palace to the wilds and wastes, so that the highway-robbers made prize of thee?” She replied, “O my lord, my father and all the people of his realm, Turks and Daylamites, are Magians, worshipping fire, and not the All-powerful King. Now in our country is a monastery called the Monastery of the Fire, whither every year the daughters of the Magians and worshippers of the Fire resort at the time of their festival and abide there a month, after which they return to their houses. So I and my damsels set out, as of wont, attended by two thousand horse, whom my father sent with me to guard me; but by the way this Ghul came out against us and slew some of us and, taking the rest captive, imprisoned us in this hold. This, then, is what befel me, O valiant champion, whom Allah guard against the shifts of Time!” And Gharib said, “Fear not; for I will bring thee to thy palace and the seat of thy honours.” Wherefore she blessed him and kissed his hands and feet. Then he went out from her, after having commanded to treat her with respect, and slept till morning, when he made the Wuzu-ablution and prayed a two-bow prayer, after the rite of our father Abraham the Friend (on whom be peace!), whilst the Ghul and his sons and Gharib’s company all did the like after him. Then he turned to the Ghul and said to him, “O Sa’adan, wilt thou not show me the Wady of Blossoms?”[FN#341] “I will, O my lord,” answered he. So Gharib and his company and Princess Fakhr Taj and her maidens all rose and went forth, whilst Sa’adan commanded his slaves and slave-girls to slaughter and cook and make ready the morning-meal and bring it to them among the trees. For the Giant had an hundred and fifty handmaids and a thousand chattels to pasture his camels and oxen and sheep. When they came to the valley, they found it beautiful exceedingly and passing all degree; and birds on tree sang joyously and the mocking-nightingale trilled out her melody, and the cushat filled with her moan the mansions made by the Deity,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say,

When it was the Six Hundred and Thirtieth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Gharib and his merry men and the Giant and his tribe reached the Wady of Blossoms they found birds flying free; the cushat filling with her moan the mansions made by the Deity, the bulbul singing as if ’twere human harmony and the merle whom to describe tongue faileth utterly; the turtle, whose plaining maddens men for loveecstasy and the ringdove and the popinjay answering her with fluency. There also were trees laden with all manner of fruitery, of each two kinds,[FN#342] the pomegranate, sweet and sour upon branches growing luxuriantly, the almond-apricot,[FN#343] the camphor-apricot[FN#344] and the almond Khorasan highs; the plum, with whose branches the boughs of the myrobalan were entwined tight; the orange, as it were a cresses flaming light, the shaddock weighed down with heavy freight; the lemon, that cures lack of appetite, the citron against jaundice of sovereign might, and the date, red and yellow-bright, the especial handiwork of Allah the Most High. Of the like of this place saith the enamoured poet,

“When its birds in the lake make melody, * The lorn lover
yearneth its sight to see:
’Tis as Eden breathing a fragrant breeze, * With its shade and
fruits and rills flowing free.”

Gharib marvelled at the beauty of that Wady and bade them set up there the pavilion of Fakhr Taj the Chosroite; so they pitched it among the trees and spread it with rich tapestries. Then he sat down and the slaves brought food and they ate their sufficiency; after which quoth Gharib, “Harkye, Sa’adan!”: and quoth he, “At thy service, O my lord.” “Hast thou aught of wine?” asked Gharib, and Sa’adan answered, “Yes, I have a cistern full of old wine.” Said Gharib, “Bring us some of it.” So Sa’adan sent ten slaves, who returned with great plenty of wine, and they ate and drank and were mirthful and merry. And Gharib bethought him of Mahdiyah and improvised these couplets,

“I mind our union days when ye were nigh, * And flames my heart with love’s consuming lowe.
By Allah, Ne’er of will I quitted you: * But shifts of Time from you compelled me go:
Peace and fair luck and greetings thousand-fold * To you, from exiled lover’s pining woe.”

They abode eating and drinking and taking their pleasure in the valley for three days, after which they returned to the castle. Then Gharib called Sahim and said to him, “Take an hundred horse and go to thy father and mother and thy tribe, the Banu Kahtan, and bring them all to this place, here to pass the rest of their days, whilst I carry the Princess of Persia back to her father. As for thee, O Sa’adan, tarry thou here with thy sons, till I return to thee.” Asked Sa’adan, “And why wilt thou not carry me with thee to the land of the Persians?”; and Gharib answered, “Because thou stolest away King Sabur’s daughter and if his eye fall on thee, he will eat thy flesh and drink thy blood.” When the Ghul heard this, he laughed a loud laugh, as it were the pealing thunder, and said, “O my lord, by the life of thy head, if the Persians and Medes united against me, I would make them quaff the cup of annihilation.” Quoth Gharib, “’Tis as thou sayest;[FN#345] but tarry thou here in fort till I return to thee;” and quoth the Ghul, “I hear and I obey.” Then Sahim departed with his comrades of the Banu Kahtan for the dwelling places of their tribe, and Gharib set out with Princess Fakhr Taj and her company, intending for the cities of Sabur, King of the Persians. Thus far concerning them; but as regards King Sabur, he abode awaiting his daughter’s return from the Monastery of the Fire, and when the appointed time passed by and she came not, flames raged in his heart. Now he had forty Wazirs, whereof the oldest, wisest and chiefest was highs Daydán: so he said to him, “O Minister, verily my daughter delayeth her return and I have no news of her though the appointed time is past; so do thou send a courier to the Monastery of the Fire to learn what is come of her.” “Hearkening and obedience,” replied Daydan; and, summoning the chief of the couriers, said to him, “Wend thou forthright to the Monastery.” So he lost no time and when he reached it, he asked the monks of the King’s daughter, but they said, “We have not seen her this year.” So the courier returned to the city of Isbánír[FN#346] and told the Wazir, who went in to the King and acquainted him with the message. Now when Sabur heard this, he cast his crown on the ground, tore his beard and fell down in a trance. They sprinkled water upon him, and presently he came to himself, tearful-eyed and heavy-hearted, and repeated the words of the poet,

“When I far-parted patience call and tears, * Tears came to call
but Patience never hears:
What, then, if Fortune parted us so far? * Fortune and Perfidy
are peers

Then he called ten of his captains and bade them mount with a thousand horse and ride in different directions, in quest of his daughter. So they mounted forthright and departed each with his thousand; whilst Fakhr Taj’s mother clad herself and her women in black and strewed ashes on her head and sat weeping and lamenting. Such was their case;—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

When it was the Six Hundred and Thirty-first Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that King Sabur sent his troops in quest of his daughter, whose mother clad herself and her women in black. Such was their case; but as regards the strange adventures of Gharib and the Princess, they journeyed on ten days, and on the eleventh day, appeared a dust cloud which rose to the confines of the sky; whereupon Gharib called the Emir of the Persians and said to him, “Go learn the cause thereof.” “I hear and obey,” replied he and crave his charger, till he came under the cloud of dust, where he saw folk and enquired of them. Quoth one of them, “We are of the Banu Hattál and are questing for plunder; our Emir is Samsam bin Al-Jiráh and we are five thousand horse.” The Persians returned in haste and told their saying to Gharib, who cried out to his men of the Banu Kahtan and to the Persians, saying, “Don your arms!” They did as he bade them and presently up came the Arabs who were shouting, “A plunder! a plunder!” Quoth Gharib, “Allah confound you, O dogs of Arabs!” Then he loosed his horse and drove at them with the career of a right valiant kNight, shouting, “Allaho Akbar! Ho for the faith of Abraham the Friend, on whom be peace!” And there befel between them great fight and sore fray and the sword went round in sway and there was much said and say; nor did they leave fighting till fled the day and gloom came, when they drew from one another away. Then Gharib numbered his tribesmen and found that five of the Banu Kahtan had fallen and three-and-seventy of the Persians; but of the Banu Hattal they had slain more than five hundred horse. As for Samsam, he alighted and sought nor meat nor sleep, but said, “In all my life I never saw such a fighter as this youth! Anon he fighteth with the sword and anon with the mace; but, to-morrow I will go forth on champion wise and defy him to combat of twain in battle plain where edge and point are fain and I will cut off these Arabs.” Now, when Gharib returned to his camp, the Princess Fakhr Taj met him, weeping and affrighted for the terror of that which had befallen, and kissed his foot in the stirrup, saying, “May thy hands never wither nor thy foes be blither, O champion of the age! Alhamdolillah—Praise to God—who hath saved thee alive this day! Verily, I am in fear for thee from yonder Arabs.” When Gharib heard this, he smiled in her face and heartened and comforted her, saying, “Fear not, O Princess! Did the enemy fill this wild and wold yet would I scatter them, by the might of Allah Almighty.” She thanked him and prayed that he might be given the victory over his foes; after which she returned to her women and Gharib went to his tent, where he cleansed himself of the blood of the Infidels, and they lay on guard through the night. Next morning, the two hosts mounted and sought the plain where cut and thrust ruled sovereign. The first to prick into the open was Gharib, who crave his charger till he was near the Infidels and cried out, “Who is for jousting with me? Let no sluggard or weakling come out to me!” Whereupon there rushed forth a giant Amalekite of the lineage of the tribe of Ad, armed with an iron flail twenty pounds in weight, and drove at Gharib, saying, “O scum of the Arabs, take what cometh to thee and learn the glad tidings that thy last hour is at hand!” So saying, he aimed a blow at Gharib, but he avoided it and the flail sank a cubit into the ground. Now the badawi was bent double with the blow, so Gharib smote him with his mace and clove his forehead in sunder and he fell down dead and Allah hurried his soul to Hell-fire. Then Gharib charged and wheeled and called for champions; so there came out to him a second and a third and a fourth and so on, till ten had come forth to him and he slew them all. When the Infidels saw his form of fight and his smashing blows they hung back and forebore to fare forth to him, whereupon Samsam looked at them and said, “Allah never bless you! I will go forth to him.” So he donned his battle-gear and driving his charger into mid-field where he fronted the foe and cried out to Gharib saying, “Fie on thee, O dog of the Arabs! hath thy strength waxed so great that thou shouldst defy me in the open field and slaughter my men?” And Gharib replied, “Up and take bloodrevenge for the slaughter of thy braves!” So Samsam ran at Gharib who awaited him with broadened breast and heart enheartened, and they smote each at other with maces, till the two hosts marvelled and every eye was fixed on them. Then they wheeled about in the field and struck at each other two strokes; but Gharib avoided Samsam’s stroke which wreak had wroke and dealt with a buffet that beat in his breastbone and cast him to the ground—stone dead. Thereupon all his host ran at Gharib as one man, and he ran at them, crying, “God is most Great! Help and Victory for us and shame and defeat for those who misbelieve the faith of Abraham the Friend, on whom be peace!”—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say,

When it was the Six Hundred and Thirty-second Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Sam sam’s tribesmen rushed upon Gharib as one man, he ran at them crying, “God is most Great! Help and Victory for us and shame and defeat for the Miscreant!” Now when the Infidels heard the name of the All-powerful King, the One, the All-conquering, whom the sight comprehendeth not, but He comprehendeth the sight,[FN#347] they looked at one another and said, “What is this say that maketh our side-muscles tremble and weakeneth our resolution and causeth the life to fail in us? Never in our lives heard we aught goodlier than this saying!” adding, “Let us leave fighting, that we may ask its meaning.” So they held their hands from the battle and dismounted; and their elders assembled and held counsel together, seeking to go to Gharib and saying, “Let ten of us repair to him!” So they chose out ten of their best, who set out for Gharib’s tents. Now he and his people had alighted and returned to their camp, marvelling at the withdrawal of the Infidels from the fight. But, presently, lo and behold! the ten came up and seeking speech of Gharib, kissed the earth before him and wished him glory and lasting life. Quoth he to them, “What made you leave fighting?”; and quoth they, “O, my lord, thou didst affright us with the words thou shoutest out at us.” Then asked Gharib, “What calamity do ye worship?”; and they answered, “We worship Wadd and Suwá’a and Yaghús,[FN#348] lords of the tribe of Noah”; and Gharib, “We serve none but Allah Almighty, Maker of all things and Provider of all livings. He it is who created the heavens and the earth and stablished the mountains, who made water to well from the stones and the trees to grow and feedeth wild beasts in word; for He is Allah, the One, the All-powerful Lord.” When they heard this, their bosoms broadened to the words of Unity-faith, and they said, “Verily, this be a Lord high and great, compassionating and compassionate!”; adding, “And what shall we say, to become of the Moslems, of those which submit themselves to Him?” Quoth Gharib, “Say, There is no god but the God and Abraham is the Friend of God.’” So the ten made veracious profession of the veritable religion and Gharib said to them, “An the sweet savour of Al-Islam be indeed stablished in your hearts, fare ye to your tribe and expound the faith to them; and if they profess, they shall be saved, but if they refuse we will burn them with fire.” So the ten elders returned and expounded Al-Islam to their people and set forth to them the path of truth and creed, and they embraced the Faith of Submission with heart and tongue. Then they repaired on foot to Gharib’s tent and kissing ground between his hands wished him honour and high rank, saying, “O our lord, we are become thy slaves; so command us what thou wilt, for we are to thee audient and obedient and we will never depart from thee, since Allah hath guided us into the right way at thy hands.” Replied he, “Allah abundantly requite you! Return to your dwellings and march forth with your good and your children and forego me to the Wady of Blossoms and the castle of Sásá bin Shays,[FN#349] whilst I carry the Princess Fakhr Taj, daughter of Sabur, King of the Persians, back to her father and return to you.” “Hearkening and obedience,” said they and straightway returned to their encampment, rejoicing in Al-Islam, and expounded the True Faith to their wives and children, who became Believers. Then they struck their tents and set forth, with their good and cattle, for the Wady of Blossoms. When they came in sight of the castle of Shays, Sa’adan and his sons sallied forth to them, but Gharib had charged them, saying, “If the Ghul of the Mountain come out to you and offer to attack you, do ye call upon the name of Allah the All-creator, and he will leave his hostile intent and receive you hospitably.” So when he would have fallen upon them they called aloud upon the name of Almighty Allah and straightway he received them kindly and asked them of their case. They told him all that had passed between Gharib and themselves, whereupon he rejoiced in them and lodged them with him and loaded them with favours. Such was their case; but as regards Gharib, he and his, escorting the Princess fared on five days’ journey towards the City of Isbanir, and on the sixth day they saw a dust-cloud. So Gharib sent one of the Persians to learn the meaning of this and he went and returned, swiftlier than bird in flight, saying, “O my lord, these be a thousand horse of our comrades, whom the King hath sent in quest of his daughter Fakhr Taj.” When Gharib heard this, he commanded his company to halt and pitch the tents. So they halted and waited till the new comers reached them, when they went to meet them and told Túmán, their captain, that the Princess was with them; whereupon he went in to Gharib and kissing the ground before him, enquired for her. Gharib sent him to her pavilion, and he entered and kissed her hands and feet and acquainted her with what had befallen her father and mother. She told him in return all that had betided her and how Gharib had delivered her from the Ghul of the Mountain,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say,

When it was the Six Hundred and Thirty-third Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the King’s daughter, Fakhr Taj, had told Tuman all that had befallen her from the Mountain-Ghul, and how he had imprisoned her and would have devoured her but for Gharib, adding, “And indeed, it behoveth my sire to give him the half of his reign,” Tuman arose and returned to Gharib and kissed his hands and feet and thanked him for his good dealing, saying, “With thy leave, O my lord, I will return to Isbanir City and deliver to our King the good news of his daughter’s approach.” “Go,” replied Gharib, “and take of him the gift of glad tidings.” So Tuman returned with all diligence to Isbanir, the Cities, and entering the palace, kissed ground before the King, who said to him, “What is there of new, O bringer of good news?” Quoth Tuman, “I will not speak thee, till thou give me the gift of glad tidings.” Quoth the King, “Tell me thy glad tidings and I will content thee.” So Tuman said, “O King, I bring thee joyful intelligence of the return of Princess Fakhr Taj.” When Sabur heard his daughter’s name, he fell down fainting and they sprinkled rose-water on him, till he recovered and cried to Tuman, “Draw near to me and tell me all the good which hath befallen her.” So he came forward and acquainted him with all that had betided the Princess; and Sabur beat hand upon hand, saying, “Unhappy thou, O Fakhr Taj!”[FN#350] And he bade give Tuman ten thousand gold pieces and conferred on him the government of Isfáhán City and its dependencies. Then he cried out to his Emirs, saying, “Mount, all of you, and fare we forth to meet the Princess Fakhr Taj!”; and the Chief Eunuch went in to the Queen-mother and told her and all the Harim the good news, whereat she rejoiced and gave him a robe of honour and a thousand dinars. Moreover, the people of the city heard of this and decorated the market streets and houses. Then the King and Tuman took horse and rode till they had sight of Gharib, when Sabur footed it and made some steps towards Gharib, who also dismounted and advanced to meet him; and they embraced and saluted each other, and Sabur bent over Gharib’s hand and kissed it and thanked him for his favours.[FN#351] They pitched their pavilions in face of each other and Sabur went in to his daughter, who rose and embracing him told him, all that had befallen her and how Gharib had rescued her from the clutches of the Ghul of the Mountain. Quoth the King, “By thy life, O Princess of fair ones, I will overwhelm him with gifts!”; and quoth she, “O my papa, make him thy son-in-law, that he may be to thee a force against thy foes, for he is passing valiant.” Her father replied, “O my daughter, knowest thou not that King Khirad Sháh seeketh thee in marriage and that he hath cast the brocade[FN#352] and hath given an hundred thousand dinars in settlement, and he is King of Shiraz and its dependencies and is lord of empire and horsemen and footmen?” But when the Princess heard these words she said, “O my papa! I desire not that whereof thou speakest, and if thou constrain me to that I have no mind to, I will slay myself.” So Sabur left her and went in to Gharib, who rose to him; and they sat awhile together; but the King could not take his fill of looking upon him; and he said in his mind, “By Allah, my daughter is excusable if she love this Badawi!” Then he called for food and they ate and passed the night together. On the morrow, they took horse and rode till they arrived at the City of Isbanir and entered, stirrup to stirrup, and it was for them a great day. Fakhr Taj repaired to her palace and the abiding-place of her rank, where her mother and her women received her with cries of joy and loud lullilooings. As for King Sabur, he sat down on his throne and seated Gharib on his right hand, whilst the Princes and Chamberlains, the Emirs, Wazirs and Nabobs stood on either hand and gave him joy of the recovery of his daughter. Said Sabur, “Whoso loveth me let him bestow a robe of honour on Gharib,” and there fell dresses of honour on him like drops of rain. Then Gharib abode the King’s guest ten days, when he would have departed, but Sabur clad him in an honourable robe and swore him by his faith that he should not march for a whole month. Quoth Gharib, “O King, I am plighted to one of the girls of the Arabs and I desire to go in to her.” Quoth the King, “Whether is the fairer, thy betrothed or Fakhr Taj?” “O King of the age,” replied Gharib, “what is the slave beside the lord?” And Sabur said, “Fakhr Taj is become thy handmaid, for that thou didst rescue her from the pounces of the Ghul, and she shall have none other husband than thyself.” Thereupon Gharib rose and kissed ground, saying, “O King of the age, thou art a sovereign and I am but a poor man, and belike thou wilt ask a heavy dowry.” Replied the King, “O my son, know that Khirad Shah, lord of Shiraz and dependencies thereof, seeketh her in marriage and hath appointed an hundred thousand dinars to her dower; but I have chosen thee before all men, that I may make thee the sword of my kingship and my shield against vengeance.”[FN#353] Then he turned to his Chief Officers and said to them, “Bear witness[FN#354] against me, O Lords of mine Empire, that I marry my daughter Fakhr Taj to my son Gharib.”—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say,

When it was the Six Hundred and Thirty-fourth Night,

She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Sabur, King of Ajam-land said to his Chief Officers, “Bear ye witness against me that I marry my daughter Fakhr Taj, to my son Gharib!” With that he joined palms[FN#355] with him and she became his wife. Then said Gharib, “Appoint me a dower and I will bring it to thee, for I have in the Castle of Sasa wealth and treasures beyond count.” Replied Sabur, “O my son, I want of thee neither treasure nor wealth and I will take nothing for her dower save the head of Jamrkán King of Dasht and the city of Ahwáz.[FN#356]” Quoth Gharib, “O King of the age, I will fetch my folk forthright and go to thy foe and spoil his realm.” Quoth Sabur, “Allah requite thee with good!” and dismissed the lords and commons, thinking, “If Gharib go forth against Jamrkan, he will never more return.” When morning morrowed the King mounted with Gharib and bidding all his troops take horse rode forth to the plain, where he said to his men, “Do ye tilt with spears and gladden my heart.” So the champions of Persia land played one against other, and Gharib said, “O King of the age, I have a mind to tilt with the horsemen of Ajam-land, but on one condition.” Asked the King, “What is that?”; and answered Gharib, “It is that I shall don a light tunic and take a headless lance, with a pennon dipped in saffron, whilst the Persian champions sally forth and tilt against me with sharp spears. If any conquer me, I will render myself to him: but, if I conquer him I will mark him on the breast and he shall leave the plain.” Then the King cried to the commander of the troops to bring forward the champions of the Persians; so he chose out from amongst the Princes one thousand two hundred of his stoutest champions, and the King said to them, in the Persian tongue, “Whoso slayeth this Badawi may ask of me what he will.” So they strove with one another for precedence and charged down upon Gharib and truth was distinguished from falsehood and jest from earnest. Quoth Gharib, “I put my trust in Allah, the God of Abraham the Friend, the Deity who hath power over all and from whom naught is hidden, the One, the Almighty, whom the sight comprehendeth not!” Then an Amalekite-like giant of the Persian champions rushed out to him, but Gharib let him not stand long before him ere he marked him and covered his breast with saffron and as he turned away, he smote him on the nape with the shaft of his lance, and he fell to the ground and his pages bore him from the lists.[FN#357] Then a second champion came forth against him and he overcame him and marked him on the breast; and thus did he with a third and a fourth and a fifth; and there came out against him champion after champion till he had overcome them all and marked them on the breast; for Almighty Allah gave him the victory over them and they fared forth vanquish from the plain. Then the servants set food and strong wine before them! and they ate and drank, till Gharib’s wits were dazed by the drink. By and by, he went out to obey a call of Nature and would have returned, but lost his way and entered the palace of Fakhr Taj. When she saw him, her reason fled and she cried out to her women saying, “Go forth from me to your own places!” So they withdrew and she rose and kissed Gharib’s hand, saying “Welcome to my lord, who delivered me from the Ghul! Indeed I am thine handmaid for ever and ever.” Then she drew him to her bed and embraced him, whereupon desire was hot upon him and he broke her seal and lay with her till the morning. Meanwhile the King thought that he had departed; but on the morrow he went in to him and Sabur rose to him and made him sit by his side. Then entered the tributary kings and kissing the ground stood ranged in rows on the right and left and fell to talking of Gharib’s velour and saying, “Extolled be He who gave him such prowess albeit he is so young in years!” As they were thus engaged, behold all espied from the palace-windows the dust of horse approaching and the King cried out to his scouts, saying, “Woe to you! Go and bring me news of yonder dust!” So a cavalier took horse and riding off, returned after a while, and said “O King, we found under that dust an hundred horse belonging to an Emir highs Sahim al-Layl.” Gharib hearing these words, cried out, “O my lord, this is my brother, whom I had sent on an errand, and I will go forth to meet him.” So saying, he mounted, with his hundred men of the Banu Kahtan and a thousand Persians, and rode to meet his brother in great state, but greatness belongeth to God alone.[FN#358] When the two came up with each other, they dismounted and embraced, and Gharib said to Sahim, “O my brother, hast thou brought our tribe to the Castle of Sasa and the Wady of Blossoms?” “O my brother,” replied Sahim, “when the perfidious dog Mardas heard that thou hadst made thee master of the stronghold belonging to the Mountain-Ghul, he was sore chagrined and said, Except I march hence, Gharib will come and carry off my daughter Mahdiyah without dower.’ So he took his daughter and his goods and set out with his tribe for the land of Irak, where he entered the city of Cufa and put himself under the protection of King Ajib, seeking to give him his daughter to wife.” When Gharib heard his brother’s story, he well-nigh gave up the ghost for rage and said, “By the virtue of the faith of Al-Islam, the faith of Abraham the Friend, and by the Supreme Lord, I will assuredly go to the land of Irak and fierce war upon it I will set on foot.” Then they returned to the city and going in to the King, kissed ground before him. He rose to Gharib and saluted Sahim; after which the elder brother told him what had happened and he put ten captains at his commandment, under each one’s hand ten thousand horse of the doughtiest of the Arabs and the Ajams, who equipped themselves and were ready to depart in three days. Then Gharib set out and journeyed till he reached the Castle of Sasa whence the Ghul and his sons came forth to meet him and dismounting, kissed his feet in the stirrups. He told them all that had passed and the giant said, “O my lord, do thou abide in this thy castle, whilst I with my sons and servants repair to Irak and lay waste the city Al-Rusták[FN#359] and bring to thy hand all its defenders bound in straitest bond.” But Gharib thanked him and said, “O Sa’adan, we will all go.” So he made him ready and the whole body set out for Irak, leaving a thousand horse to guard the Castle. Thus far concerning them; but as regards Mardas, he arrived with his tribe in the land of Irak bringing with him a handsome present and fared for Cufa-city which he entered. Then, he presented himself before Ajib and kissed ground between his hands and, after wishing him what is wished to kings, said, “O my lord, I come to place myself under thy protection.”—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say,

When it was the Six Hundred and Thirty-fifth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King that Mardas coming into the presence of Ajib, said to him, “I come to place myself under thy protection!” Quoth Ajib, “Tell me who hath wronged thee, that I may protect thee against him, though it were Sabur, King of the Persians and Turcomans and Daylamites.” Quoth Mardas, “O King of the Age, he who hath wronged me is none other than a youth whom I reared in my bosom. I found him in his mother’s lap in a certain valley and took her to wife She brought me a son, whom I named Sahim al-Layl, and her own son, Gharib highs, grew up on my knees and became a blasting thunderbolt and a lasting calamity,[FN#360] for he smote Al-Hamal,[FN#361] Prince of the Banu Nabhan, and slew footmen and threw horsemen. Now I have a daughter, who befitteth thee alone, and he sought her of me; so I required of him the head of the Ghul of the Mountain, wherefore he went to him and, after engaging him in singular combat, made the master his man and took the Castle of Sasa bin Shays bin Shaddad bin Ad, wherein are the treasures of the ancients and the hoards of the moderns. Moreover, I hear that, become a Moslem, he goeth about, summoning the folk to his faith. He is now gone to bear the Princess of Persia, whom he delivered from the Ghul, back to her father, King Sabur, and will not return but with the treasures of the Persians.” When Ajib heard the story of Mardas he changed colour to yellow and was in ill case and made sure of his own destruction; then he said, “O Mardas, is the youth’s mother with thee or with him?”; and Mardas replied, “She is with me in my tents.” Quoth Ajib, “What is her name?”; quoth Mardas, “Her name is Nusrah.” “’Tis very she,” rejoined Ajib and sent for her to the presence. Now when she came before him, he looked on her and knew her and asked her, “O accursed, where are the two slaves I sent with thee?”; and she answered, “They slew each other on my account;” whereupon Ajib bared his blade and smote her and cut her in twain. Then they dragged her away and cast her out; but trouble and suspicion entered Ajib’s heart and he cried, “O Mardas, give me thy daughter to wife.” He rejoined, “She is one of thine handmaids: I give her to thee to wife, and I am thy slave.” Said Ajib, “I desire to look upon this son of an adulteress, Gharib, that I may destroy him and cause him taste all manner of torments.” Then he bade give Mardas, to his daughter’s dowry, thirty thousand dinars and an hundred pieces of silk-brocaded and fringed with gold and an hundred pieces of silk bordered stuffs and kerchiefs and golden collars. So he went forth with this mighty fine dowry and set himself to equip Mahdiyah in all diligence. Such was their case; but as regards Gharib, he fared on till he came to Al-Jazírah, which is the first town of Al-Irak[FN#362] and is a walled and fortified city and he hard by it called a halt. When the townsfolk saw his army encamped before it, they bolted the gates and manned the walls, then went to the King of the city, who was called Al-Dámigh, the Brainer, for that he used to brain the champions in the open field of fight, and told him what was come upon them. So he looked forth from the battlements of the palace and seeing a conquering host, all of them Persians, encamped before the city, said to the citizens, “O folk, what do yonder Ajams want?”; and they replied, “We know not.” Now Al-Damigh had among his officers a man called Saba’ al-Kifár, the Desert-lion, keen of wit and penetrating as he were a flame of fire; so he called him and said to him, “Go to this stranger host and find out who they be and what they want and return quickly.” Accordingly, he sped like the wind to the Persian tents, where a company of Arabs rose up and met him saying, “Who art thou and what dost thou require?” He replied, “I am a messenger and an envoy from the lord of the city to your chief.” So they took him and carried him through the lines of tents, pavilions and standards, till they came to Gharib’s Shahmiyánah and told him of the mission. He bade them bring him in and they did so, whereupon he kissed ground before Gharib and wished him honour and length of days. Quoth Gharib, “What is thine errand?” and quoth Saba’ al-Kifar, “I am an envoy from the lord of the city of Al-Jazirah, Al-Damigh, brother of King Kundamir, lord of the city of Cufa and the land of Irak.” When Gharib heard his father’s name, the tears railed from his eyes in rills and he looked at the messenger and said, “What is thy name?”; and he replied, “My name is Saba’ al-Kifar.” Said Gharib, “Return to thy lord and tell him that the commander of this host is called Gharib, son of Kundamir, King of Cufa, whom his son Ajib slew, and he is come to take blood-revenge for his sire on Ajib the perfidious hound.” So Saba’ al-Kifar returned to the city and in great joy kissed the ground, when Al-Damigh said, “What is going on there, O Saba’ al-Kifar?” He replied, “O my master, the leader of yon host is thy nephew, thy brother’s son,” and told him all. The King deemed himself in a dream and asked the messenger, “O Saba’ al-Kifar, is this thou tellest me true?” and the Desert-lion answered, “As thy head liveth, it is sooth!” Then Al-Damigh bade his chief officers take horse forthright and all rode out to the camp, whence Gharib came forth and met him and they embraced and saluted each other; after which Gharib carried him to his tents and they sat down on beds of estate. Al-Damigh rejoiced in Gharib, his brother’s son, and presently turning to him, said, “I also have yearned to take blood-revenge for thy father, but could not avail against the dog thy brother; for that his troops are many and my troops are few.” Replied Gharib, “O uncle, here am I come to avenge my sire and blot out our shame and rid the realm of Ajib.” Said Al-Damigh, “O son of my brother, thou hast two blood-wreaks to take, that of thy father and that of thy mother.” Asked Gharib, “And what aileth my mother?” and Al-Damigh answered, “Thy brother Ajib hath slain her.”—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say,

When it was the Six Hundred and Thirty-sixth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Gharib heard these words of his uncle Al-Damigh, “Verily thy brother Ajib hath slain her!”, he asked what was the cause thereof and was told of all that had happened, especially how Mardas had married his daughter to Ajib who was about to go into her. Thereupon Gharib’s reason fled from his head and he swooned away and was nigh upon death. No sooner did he come to himself than he cried out to the troops, saying, “To horse!” But Al-Damigh said to him, “O son of my brother, wait till I make ready mine affairs and mount among my men and fare with thee at thy stirrup.” Replied Gharib “I have no patience to wait; do thou equip thy troops and join me at Cufa.” Thereupon Gharib mounted with his troops and rode, till he came to the town of Babel,[FN#363] whose folk took fright at him. Now there was in this town a King called Jamak, under whose hand were twenty thousand horsemen, and there gathered themselves together to him from the villages other fifty thousand horse, who pitched their tents facing the city. Then Gharib wrote a letter and sent it to King Jamak by a messenger, who came up to the city-gate and cried out, saying, “I am an envoy;” whereupon the Warder of the Gate went in and told Jamak, who said, “Bring him to me.” So he led in the messenger, who kissing the ground before the King, gave him the letter, and Jamak opened it and read its contents as follows: “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Three Worlds, Lord of all things, who giveth to all creatures their daily bread and who over all things is Omnipotent! These from Gharib, son of King Kundamir, lord of Irak and Cufa, to Jamak. Immediately this letter reacheth thee, let not thy reply be other than to break thine idols and confess the unity of the All-knowing King, Creator of light and darkness, Creator of all things, the All-powerful; and except thou do as I bid thee, I will make this day the blackest of thy days. Peace be on those who follow in the way of Salvation, fearing the issues of fornication, and obey the hest of the Most High King, Lord of this world and the next, Him who saith to a thing, Be’; and it becometh!” Now when Jamak read this letter, his eyes paled and his colour failed and he cried out to the messenger, “Go to thy lord and say to him, To-morrow, at daybreak there shall be fight and conflict and it shall appear who is the conquering hero.’” So he returned and told Gharib, who bade his men make ready for battle, whilst Jamak commanded his tents to be pitched in face of Gharib’s camp; and his troops poured forth like the surging sea and passed the night with intention of slaughter. As soon as dawned the day, the two hosts mounted and drew up in battle array and beat their drums amain and drave their steeds of swiftest strain; and they filled the whole earthly plain; and the champions to come out were fain. Now the first who sallied forth a championing to the field was the Ghul of the Mountain, bearing on shoulder a terrible tree, and he cried out between the two hosts, saying, “I am Sa’adan the Ghul! Who is for fighting, who is for jousting? Let no sluggard come forth to me nor weakling.” And he called out to his sons, saying, “Woe to you! Bring me fuel and fire, for I am an-hungered.” So they cried upon their slaves who brought firewood and kindled a fire in the heart of the plain. Then there came out to him a man of the Kafirs, an Amalekite of the unbelieving Amalekites, bearing on his shoulder a mace like the mast of a ship, and drove at Sa’adan the Ghul, saying, “Woe to thee, O Sa’adan!” When the giant heard this, he waxed furious beyond measure and raising his tree club, aimed at the Infidel a blow, that hummed through the air. The Amalekite met the stroke with his mace, but the tree beat down his guard and descending with its own weight, together with the weight of the mace upon his head, beat in his brain pan, and he fell like a long-stemmed palm-tree. Thereupon Sa’adan cried to his slaves, saying, “Take this fatted calf and roast him quickly.” So they hastened to skin the Infidel and roasted him and brought him to the Ghul, who ate his flesh and crunched his bones.[FN#364] Now when the Kafirs saw how Sa’adan did with their fellow, their hair and pile stood on end; their skins quaked, their colour changed, their hearts died within them and they said to one another, “Whoso goeth out against this Ghul, he eateth him and cracketh his bones and causeth him to lack the zephyr-wind of the world.” Wherefore they held their hands, quailing for fear of the Ghul and his sons and turned to fly, making for the town; but Gharib cried out to his troops, saying, “Up and after the runaways!” So the Persians and the Arabs crave after the King of Babel and his host and caused sword to smite them, till they slew of them twenty thousand or more. Then the fugitives crowded together in the city gate and they killed of them much people; and they could not avail to shut the gate. So the Arabs and the Persians entered with them, fighting, and Sa’adan, snatching a mace from one of the slain, wielded it in the enemy’s face and gained the city race-course. Thence he fought his way through the foe and broke into the King’s palace, where he met with Jamak and so smote him with the mace, that he toppled senseless to the ground. Then he fell upon those who were in the palace and pounded them into pieces, till all that were left cried out, “Quarter! Quarter!” and Sa’adan said to them, “Pinion your King.”—And Shahrazad saw the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say,

End of Vol 6.

Arabian Nights, Volume 6
Footnotes

[FN#1] Lane (vol. iii. 1) calls our old friend “Es-Sindibád of the Sea,” and Benfey derives the name from the Sanskrit “Siddhapati”=lord of sages. The etymology (in Heb. Sandabar and in Greek Syntipas) is still uncertain, although the term often occurs in Arab stories; and some look upon it as a mere corruption of “Bidpai” (Bidyápati). The derivation offered by Hole (Remarks on the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, by Richard Hole, LL.D. London, Cadell, 1797) from the Persian ábád (a region) is impossible. It is, however, not a little curious that this purely Persian word (=a “habitation”) should be found in Indian names as early as Alexanders’ day, e.g. the “Dachina bades” of the Periplus is “Dakhsin-ábád,” the Sansk. being “Dakshinapatha.”

[FN#2] A porter like the famous Armenians of Constantinople. Some edits, call him “Al-Hindibád.”

[FN#3] Arab. “Karawán” (Charadrius dicnemus, Linn.): its shrill note is admired by Egyptians and hated by sportsmen.

[FN#4] This ejaculation, still popular, averts the evil eye. In describing Sindbad the Seaman the Arab writer seems to repeat what one reads of Marco Polo returned to Venice.

[FN#5] Our old friend must not be confounded with the eponym of the “Sindibád-námah;” the Persian book of Sindbad the Sage. See Night dlxxviii.

[FN#6] The first and second are from Eccles. chaps. vii. 1, and ix. 4. The Bul. Edit. reads for the third, “The grave is better than the palace.” None are from Solomon, but Easterns do not “verify quotations.”

[FN#7] Arab. “Kánún”; a furnace, a brasier before noticed (vol. v., p. 272); here a pot full of charcoal sunk in the ground, or a little hearth of clay shaped like a horseshoe and opening down wind.

[FN#8] These fish-islands are common in the Classics, e.g. the Pristis of Pliny (xvii. 4), which Olaus Magnus transfers to the Baltic (xxi. 6) and makes timid as the whales of Nearchus. C. J. Solinus (Plinii Simia) says, “Indica maria balćnas habent ultra spatia quatuor jugerum.” See also Bochart’s Hierozoicon (i. 50) for Job’s Leviathan (xli. 16-17). Hence deemed an island. A basking whale would readily suggest the Krakan and Cetus of Olaus Magnus (xxi. 25). Al-Kazwíni’s famous treatise on the “Wonders of the World” (Ajáib al-Makhlúkát) tells the same tale of the “Sulahfah” tortoise, the colossochelys, for which see Night dl.

[FN#9] Sindbad does not say that he was a shipwrecked man, being a model in the matter of “travellers’ tales,” i.e. he always tells the truth when an untruth would not serve him.

[FN#10] Lane (iii. 83) would make this a corruption of the Hindu “Maharáj”=great Rajah: but it is the name of the great autumnal fęte of the Guebres; a term composed of two good old Persian words “Mihr” (the sun, whence “Mithras”) and “ján”=life. As will presently appear, in the days of the Just King Anushirwán, the Persians possessed Southern Arabia and East Africa south of Cape Guardafui (Jird Háfún). On the other hand, supposing the word to be a corruption of Maharaj, Sindbad may allude to the famous Narsinga kingdom in Mid-south India whose capital was Vijaya-nagar; or to any great Indian Rajah even he of Kachch (Cutch), famous in Moslem story as the Balhará (Ballaba Rais, who founded the Ballabhi era; or the Zamorin of Camoens, the Samdry Rajah of Malabar). For Mahrage, or Mihrage, see Renaudot’s “Two Mohammedan Travellers of the Ninth Century.” In the account of Ceylon by Wolf (English Transl. p. 168) it adjoins the “Ilhas de Cavalos” (of wild horses) to which the Dutch merchants sent their brood-mares. Sir W. Jones (Description of Asia, chapt. ii.) makes the Arabian island Soborma or Mahráj=Borneo.

[FN#11] Arab. “Sáis”; the well-known Anglo-Indian word for a groom or rather a “horse-keeper.”

[FN#12] Arab. “Darakah”; whence our word.

[FN#13] The myth of mares being impregnated by the wind was known to the Classics of Europe; and the “sea-stallion” may have arisen from the Arab practice of picketing mare asses to be covered by the wild ass. Colonel J. D. Watson of the Bombay Army suggests to me that Sindbad was wrecked at the mouth of the Ran of Kachch (Cutch) and was carried in a boat to one of the Islands there formed during the rains and where the wild ass (Equus Onager, Khar-gadh, in Pers. Gor-khar) still breeds. This would explain the “stallions of the sea” and we find traces of the ass blood in the true Kathiawár horse, with his dun colour, barred legs and dorsal stripe.

[FN#14] The second or warrior caste (Kshatriya), popularly supposed to have been annihilated by Battle-axe Ramá (Parashu Ráma); but several tribes of Rajputs and other races claim the honourable genealogy. Colonel Watson would explain the word by “Shakháyát” or noble Káthis (Kathiawar-men), or by “Shikári,” the professional hunter here acting as stable-groom.

[FN#15] In Bul. Edit. “Kábil.” Lane (iii. 88) supposes it to be the “Bartail” of Al-Kazwini near Borneo and quotes the Spaniard B. L. de Argensola (History of the Moluccas), who places near Banda a desert island, Poelsatton, infamous for cries, whistlings, roarings and dreadful apparitions, suggesting that it was peopled by devils (Stevens, vol. i., p. 168).

[FN#16] Some texts substitute for this last phrase, “And the sailors say that Al-Dajjál is there.” He is a manner of Moslem Antichrist, the Man of Sin per excellentiam, who will come in the latter days and lay waste the earth, leading 70,000 Jews, till encountered and slain by Jesus at the gate of Lud. (Sale’s Essay, sect. 4.)

[FN#17] Also from Al-Kazwini: it is an exaggerated description of the whale still common off the East African Coast. My crew was dreadfully frightened by one between Berberah and Aden. Nearchus scared away the whales in the Persian Gulf by trumpets (Strabo, lib. xv.). The owl-faced fish is unknown to me: it may perhaps be a seal or a manatee. Hole says that Father Martini, the Jesuit (seventeenth century), placed in the Canton Seas, an “animal with the head of a bird and the tail of a fish,”—a parrot-beak?

[FN#18] The captain or master (not owner) of a ship.

[FN#19] The kindly Moslem feeling, shown to a namesake, however humble.

[FN#20] A popular phrase to express utter desolation.

[FN#21] The literature of all peoples contains this physiological perversion. Birds do not sing hymns; the song of the male is simply to call the female and when the pairing-season ends all are dumb.

[FN#22] The older “roc.” The word is Persian, with many meanings, e.g. a cheek (Lalla “Rookh”); a “rook” (hero) at chess; a rhinoceros, etc. The fable world-wide of the wundervogel is, as usual, founded upon fact: man remembers and combines but does not create. The Egyptian Bennu (Ti-bennu=phoenix) may have been a reminiscence of gigantic pterodactyls and other winged monsters. From the Nile the legend fabled by these Oriental “putters out or five for one” overspread the world and gave birth to the Eorosh of the Zend, whence the Pers. “Símurgh” (=the “thirty-fowl-like”), the “Bar Yuchre” of the Rabbis, the “Garuda” of the Hindus; the “Anká” (“long-neck”) of the Arabs; the “Hathilinga bird,” of Buddhagosha’s Parables, which had the strength of five elephants; the “Kerkes” of the Turks; the “Gryps” of the Greeks; the Russian “Norka”; the sacred dragon of the Chinese; the Japanese “Pheng” and “Kirni”; the “wise and ancient Bird” which sits upon the ash-tree yggdrasil, and the dragons, griffins, basilisks, etc. of the Middle Ages. A second basis wanting only a superstructure of exaggeration (M. Polo’s Ruch had wing-feathers twelve paces long) would be the huge birds but lately killed out. Sindbad may allude to the Ćpyornus of Madagascar, a gigantic ostrich whose egg contains 2.35 gallons. The late Herr Hildebrand discovered on the African coast, facing Madagascar, traces of another huge bird. Bochart (Hierozoicon ii. 854) notices the Avium Avis Ruch and taking the pulli was followed by lapidation on the part of the parent bird. A Persian illustration in Lane (iii. 90) shows the Rukh carrying off three elephants in beak and pounces with the proportions of a hawk and field mice: and the Rukh hawking at an elephant is a favourite Persian subject. It is possible that the “Twelve Knights of the Round Table” were the twelve Rukhs of Persian story. We need not go, with Faber, to the Cherubim which guarded the Paradise-gate. The curious reader will consult Dr. H. H. Wilson’s Essays, edited by my learned correspondent, Dr. Rost, Librarian of the India House (vol. i. pp. 192-3).

[FN#23] It is not easy to explain this passage unless it be a garbled allusion to the steel-plate of the diamond-cutter. Nor can we account for the wide diffusion of this tale of perils unless to enhance the value of the gem. Diamonds occur in alluvial lands mostly open and comparatively level, as in India, the Brazil and the Cape. Archbishop Epiphanius of Salamis (ob. A.D. 403) tells this story about the jacinth or ruby (Epiphanii Opera, a Petaio, Colonić 1682); and it was transferred to the diamond by Marco Polo (iii. 29, “of Eagles bring up diamonds”) and Nicolo de Conti, whose “mountain Albenigaras” must be Vijayanagar in the kingdom of Golconda. Major Rennel places the famous mines of Pauna or Purna in a mountain-tract of more than 200 miles square to the southwest of the Jumna. Al-Kazwini locates the “Chaos” in the “Valley of the Moon amongst the mountains of Serendib” (Ceylon); the Chinese tell the same tale in the campaigns of Hulaku; and it is known in Armenia. Col. Yule (M. P. ii. 349) suggests that all these are ramifications of the legend told by Herodotus concerning the Arabs and their cinnamon (iii. 3). But whence did Herodotus borrow the tale?

[FN#24] Sindbad correctly describes the primitive way of extracting camphor, a drug unknown to the Greeks and Romans, introduced by the Arabs and ruined in reputation by M. Raspail. The best Laurus Camphora grows in the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo: although Marsden (Marco Polo) declares that the tree is not found South of the Equator. In the Calc. Edit. of two hundred Nights the camphor-island (or peninsula) is called “Al-Ríhah” which is the Arab name for Jericho-town.

[FN#25] In Bul. Edit. Kazkazan: Calc. Karkaddan and others Karkand and Karkadan; the word being Persian, Karg or Kargadan; the {Greek letters} of Ćlian (Hist. Anim. xvi. 21). The length of the horn (greatly exaggerated) shows that the white species is meant; and it supplies only walking-sticks. Cups are made of the black horn (a bundle of fibres) which, like Venetian glass, sweat at the touch of poison. A section of the horn is supposed to show white lines in the figure of a man, and sundry likenesses of birds; but these I never saw. The rhinoceros gives splendid sport and the African is perhaps the most dangerous of noble game. It has served to explain away and abolish the unicorn among the Scientists of Europe. But Central Africa with one voice assures us that a horse-like animal with a single erectile horn on the forehead exists. The late Dr. Baikic, of Niger fame, thoroughly believed in it and those curious on the subject will read about Abu Karn (Father of a Horn) in Preface (pp. xvi.-xviii.) of the Voyage au Darfour, by Mohammed ibn Oman al-Tounsy (Al-Tunisi), Paris, Duprat, 1845.

[FN#26] Ibn al-Wardi mentions an “Isle of Apes” in the Sea of China and Al-Idrísi places it two days’ sail from Sukutra (Dwipa Sukhatra, Socotra). It is a popular error to explain the Homeric and Herodotean legend of the Pygmies by anthropoid apes. The Pygmy fable (Pygmći Spithamai=1 cubit=3 spans) was, as usual, based upon fact, as the explorations of late years have proved: the dwarfs are homunculi of various tribes, the Akka, Doko, Tiki-Tiki, Wambilikimo (“two-cubit men”), the stunted race that share the central regions of Intertropical Africa with the abnormally tall peoples who speak dialects of the Great South African tongue, miscalled the “Bantu.” Hole makes the Pygmies “monkeys,” a word we have borrowed from the Italians (monichio à mono=ape) and quotes Ptolemy, (Ape-Islands) East of Sunda.

[FN#27] A kind of barge (Arab. Bárijah, plur. Bawárij) used on the Nile of sub-pyriform shape when seen in bird’s eye. Lane translates “ears like two mortars” from the Calc. Edit.

[FN#28] This giant is distinctly Polyphemus; but the East had giants and cyclopes of her own (Hierozoicon ii. 845). The Ajáib al-Hind (chapt. cxxii.) makes Polyphemus copulate with the sheep. Sir John Mandeville (if such person ever existed) mentions men fifty feet high in the Indian Islands; and Al-Kazwini and Al-Idrisi transfer them to the Sea of China, a Botany Bay for monsters in general.

[FN#29] Fire is forbidden as a punishment amongst Moslems, the idea being that it should be reserved for the next world. Hence the sailors fear the roasting more than the eating: with ours it would probably be the reverse. The Persian insult “Pidar-sokhtah”=(son of a) burnt father, is well known. I have noted the advisability of burning the Moslem’s corpse under certain circumstances: otherwise the murderer may come to be canonised.

[FN#30] Arab. “Mastabah”=the bench or form of masonry before noticed. In olden Europe benches were much more used than chairs, these being articles of luxury. So King Horne “sett him abenche;” and hence our “King’s Bench” (Court).

[FN#31] This is from the Bresl. Edit. vol. iv. 32: the Calc. Edit gives only an abstract and in the Bul. Edit. the Ogre returned “accompanied by a female, greater than he and more hideous.” We cannot accept Mistress Polyphemus.

[FN#32] This is from Al-Kazwini, who makes the serpent “wind itself round a tree or a rock, and thus break to pieces the bones of the breast in its belly.”

[FN#33] “Like a closet,” in the Calc. Edit. The serpent is an exaggeration of the python which grows to an enormous size. Monstrous Ophidia are mentioned in sober history, e.g. that which delayed the army of Regulus. Dr. de Lacerda, a sober and sensible Brazilian traveller, mentions his servants sitting down upon a tree-trunk in the Captaincy of San Paulo (Brasil), which began to move and proved to be a huge snake. F. M. Pinto (the Sindbad of Portugal though not so respectable) when in Sumatra takes refuge in a tree from “tigers, crocodiles, copped adders and serpents which slay men with their breath.” Father Lobo in Tigre (chapt. x.) was nearly killed by the poison-breath of a huge snake, and healed himself with a bezoar carried ad hoc. Maffććus makes the breath of crocodiles suavissimus, but that of the Malabar serpents and vipers “adeo teter ac noxius ut afflatu ipso necare perhibeantur.”

[FN#34] Arab. “Aurat”: the word has been borrowed by the
Hindostani jargon, and means a woman, a wife.

[FN#35] So in Al-Idrísi and Langlčs: the Bresl. Edit. has “Al-Kalásitah”; and Al-Kazwini “Al-Salámit.” The latter notes in it a petrifying spring which Camoens (The Lus. x. 104), places in Sunda, i.e. Java-Minor of M. Polo. Some read Salabat-Timor, one of the Moluccas famed for sanders, cloves, cinnamon, etc. (Purchas ii. 1784.)

[FN#36] Evidently the hippopotamus (Pliny, viii. 25; ix. 3 and xxiii. 11). It can hardly be the Mulaccan Tapir, as shields are not made of the hide. Hole suggests the buffalo which found its way to Egypt from India viâ Persia; but this would not be a speciosum miraculum.

[FN#37] The ass-headed fish is from Pliny (ix. cap. 3): all those tales are founded upon the manatee (whose dorsal protuberance may have suggested the camel), the seal and the dugong or sea calf. I have noticed (Zanzibar i. 205) legends of ichthyological marvels current on the East African seaboard; and even the monsters of the Scottish waters are not all known: witness the mysterious “brigdie.” See Bochart De Cetis i. 7; and Purchas iii. 930.

[FN#38] The colossal tortoise is noticed by Ćlian (De Nat. Animal. xvi. 17), by Strabo (Lib. xv.), by Pliny (ix. 10) and Diodorus Siculus (iv. 1) who had heard of a tribe of Chelonophagi. Ćlian makes them 16 cubits long near Taprobane and serving as house-roofs; and others turn the shell into boats and coracles. A colossochelys was first found on the Scwalik Hills by Dr. Falconer and Major (afterwards Sir Proby) Cantley. In 1867 M. Emile Blanchard exhibited to the Academie des Sciences a monster crab from Japan 1.20 metres long (or 2.50 including legs); and other travellers have reported 4 metres. These crustaceć seem never to cease growing and attain great dimensions under favourable circumstances, i.e. when not troubled by man.

[FN#39] Lane suggests (iii. 97), and with some probability, that the “bird” was a nautilus; but the wild traditions concerning the barnacle-goose may perhaps have been the base of the fable. The albatross also was long supposed never to touch land. Possible the barnacle, like the barometz of Tartarean lamb, may be a survivor of the day when the animal and vegetable kingdoms had not yet branched off into different directions.

[FN#40] Arab. “Zahwah,” also meaning a luncheon. The five daily prayers made all Moslems take strict account of time, and their nomenclature of its division is extensive.

[FN#41] This is the “insane herb.” Davis, who visited Sumatra in 1599 (Purchas i. 120) speaks “of a kind of seed, whereof a little being eaten, maketh a man to turn foole, all things seeming to him to be metamorphosed.” Linschoten’s “Dutroa” was a poppy-like bud containing small kernels like melons which stamped and administered as a drink make a man “as if he were foolish, or out of his wits.” This is Father Lobo’s “Vanguini” of the Cafres, called by the Portuguese dutro (Datura Stramonium) still used by dishonest confectioners. It may be Dampier’s Ganga (Ganjah) or Bang (Bhang) which he justly describes as acting differently “according to different constitutions; for some it stupefies, others it makes sleepy, others merry and some quite mad.” (Harris, Collect. ii. 900.) Dr. Fryer also mentions Duty, Bung and Post, the Poust of Bernier, an infusion of poppy-seed.

[FN#42] Arab. “Ghul,” here an ogre, a cannibal. I cannot but regard the “Ghul of the waste” as an embodiment of the natural fear and horror which a man feels when he faces a really dangerous desert. As regards cannibalism, Al-Islam’s religion of common sense freely allows it when necessary to save life, and unlike our mawkish modern sensibility, never blames those who

Alimentis talibus usi
Produxere animos.

[FN#43] For Cannibals, see the Massagetć of Herod (i.), the Padći of India (iii.), and the Essedones near Mćotis (iv.); Strabo (lib. iv.) of the Luci; Pomponious Mela (iii. 7) and St. Jerome (ad Jovinum) of Scoti. M. Polo locates them in Dragvia, a kingdom of Sumatra (iii. 17), and in Angaman (the Andamanian Isles?), possibly the ten Maniolai which Ptolemy (vii.), confusing with the Nicobars, places on the Eastern side of the Bay of Bengal; and thence derives the Heraklian stone (magnet) which attracts the iron of ships (See Serapion, De Magnete, fol. 6, Edit. of 1479, and Brown’s Vulgar Errors, p. 74, 6th Edit.). Mandeville finds his cannibals in Lamaray (Sumatra) and Barthema in the “Isle of Gyava” (Java). Ibn Al-Wardi and Al-Kazwini notice them in the Isle Saksar, in the Sea of the Zanj (Zanzibar): the name is corrupted Persian “Sag-Sar” (Dogs’-heads) hence the dog-descended race of Camoens in Pegu (The Lus. x. 122). The Bresl. Edit. (iv. 52) calls them “Khawárij”=certain sectarians in Eastern Arabia. Needless to say that cocoa-nut oil would have no stupefying effect unless mixed with opium or datura, hemp or henbane.

[FN#44] Black pepper is produced in the Goanese but we must go south to find the “Bilád al-Filfil” (home of pepper) i.e. Malabar. The exorbitant prices demanded by Venice for this spice led directly to the discovery of The Cape route by the Portuguese; as the “Grains of Paradise” (Amomum Granum Paradisi) induced the English to explore the West African Coast.

[FN#45] Arab. “Kazdír.” Sansk. “Kastír.” Gr. “Kassiteron.” Lat. “Cassiteros,” evidently derived from one root. The Heb. is “Badih,” a substitute, an alloy. “Tanakah” is the vulg. Arab. word, a congener of the Assyrian “Anaku,” and “Kala-i” is the corrupt Arab. term used in India.

[FN#46] Our Arabian Ulysses had probably left a Penelope or two at home and finds a Calypso in this Ogygia. His modesty at the mention of womankind is notable.

[FN#47] These are the commonplaces of Moslem consolation on such occasions: the artistic part is their contrast with the unfortunate widower’s prospect.

[FN#48] Lit. “a margin of stone, like the curb-stone of a well.”

[FN#49] I am not aware that this vivisepulture of the widower is the custom of any race, but the fable would be readily suggested by the Sati (Suttee)-rite of the Hindus. Simple vivisepulture was and is practised by many people.

[FN#50] Because she was weaker than a man. The Bresl. Edit. however, has “a gugglet of water and five scones.”

[FN#51] The confession is made with true Eastern sang-froid and probably none of the hearers “disapproved” of the murders which saved the speaker’s life.

[FN#52] This tale is evidently taken from the escape of Aristomenes the Messenian from the pit into which he had been thrown, a fox being his guide. The Arabs in an early day were eager students of Greek literature. Hole (p. 140) noted the coincidence.

[FN#53] Bresl. Edit. “Khwájah,” our “Howajee,” meaning a schoolmaster, a man of letters, a gentleman.

[FN#54] And he does repeat at full length what the hearers must have known right well. I abridge.

[FN#55] Island of the Bell (Arab. “Nákús”=a wooden gong used by
Christians but forbidden to Moslems). “Kala” is written “Kela,”
“Kullah” and a variety of ways. Baron Walckenaer places it at
Keydah in the Malay peninsula opposite Sumatra. Renaudot
identifies it with Calabar, “somewhere about the point of
Malabar.”

[FN#56] Islands, because Arab cosmographers love to place their speciosa miracula in such places.

[FN#57] Like the companions of Ulysses who ate the sacred oxen
(Od. xii.).

[FN#58] So the enormous kingfisher of Lucian’s True History (lib. ii.).

[FN#59] This tale is borrowed from Ibn Al-Wardi, who adds that the greybeards awoke in the morning after eating the young Rukh with black hair which never turned white. The same legend is recounted by Al-Dimiri (ob. A.H. 808=1405-6) who was translated into Latin by Bochart (Hierozoicon ii. p. 854) and quoted by Hole and Lane (iii. 103). An excellent study of Marco Polo’s Rukh was made by my learned friend the late Prof. G. G. Bianconi of Bologna, “Dell’Uccello Ruc,” Bologna, Gamberini, 1868. Prof. Bianconi predicted that other giant birds would be found in Madagascar on the East African Coast opposite; but he died before hearing of Hildebrand’s discovery.

[FN#60] Arab. “Izár,” the earliest garb of Eastern man; and, as such preserved in the Meccan pilgrimage. The “waist-cloth” is either tucked in or kept in place by a girdle.

[FN#61] Arab. “Líf,” a succedaneum for the unclean sponge, not unknown in the “Turkish Baths” of London.

[FN#62] The Persians have a Plinian monster called “Tasmeh-pá”=Strap-legs without bones. The “Old Man” is not an ourang-outang nor an Ifrít as in Sayf al-Mulúk, Night dcclxxi., but a jocose exaggeration of a custom prevailing in parts of Asia and especially in the African interior where the Tsetse-fly prevents the breeding of burden-beasts. Ibn Batútah tells us that in Malabar everything was borne upon men’s backs. In Central Africa the kinglet rides a slave, and on ceremonious occasions mounts his Prime Minister. I have often been reduced to this style of conveyance and found man the worst imaginable riding: there is no hold and the sharpness of the shoulder-ridge soon makes the legs ache intolerably. The classicists of course find the Shaykh of the Sea in the Tritons and Nereus, and Bochart (Hiero. ii. 858, 880) notices the homo aquaticus, Senex Judćus and Senex Marinus. Hole (p. 151) suggests the inevitable ouran-outan (man o’ wood), one of “our humiliating copyists,” and quotes “Destiny” in Scarron’s comical romance (Part ii. chapt. i) and “Jealousy” enfolding Rinaldo. (O.F. lib. 42).

[FN#63] More literally “The Chief of the Sea (-Coast),” Shaykh being here a chief rather than an elder (eoldermann, alderman). So the “Old Man of the Mountain,” famous in crusading days, was the Chief who lived on the Nusayriyah or Ansári range, a northern prolongation of the Libanus. Our “old man” of the text may have been suggested by the Koranic commentators on chapt. vi. When an Infidel rises from the grave, a hideous figure meets him and says, “Why wonderest thou at my loathsomeness? I am thine Evil Deeds: thou didst ride upon me in the world and now I will ride upon thee.” (Suiting the action to the words.)

[FN#64] In parts of West Africa and especially in Gorilla-land there are many stories of women and children being carried off by apes, and all believe that the former bear issue to them. It is certain that the anthropoid ape is lustfully excited by the presence of women and I have related how at Cairo (1856) a huge cynocephalus would have raped a girl had it not been bayonetted. Young ladies who visited the Demidoff Gardens and menagerie at Florence were often scandalised by the vicious exposure of the baboons’ parti-coloured persons. The female monkey equally solicits the attentions of man and I heard in India from my late friend, Mirza Ali Akbar of Bombay, that to his knowledge connection had taken place. Whether there would be issue and whether such issue would be viable are still disputed points: the produce would add another difficulty to the pseudo-science called psychology, as such mule would have only half a soul and issue by a congener would have a quarter-soul. A traveller well known to me once proposed to breed pithecoid men who might be useful as hewers of wood and drawers of water: his idea was to put the highest races of apes to the lowest of humanity. I never heard what became of his “breeding stables.”

[FN#65] Arab. “Jauz al-Hindi”: our word cocoa is from the Port. “Coco,” meaning a “bug” (bugbear) in allusion to its caricature of the human face, hair, eyes and mouth. I may here note that a cocoa-tree is easily climbed with a bit of rope or a handkerchief.

[FN#66] Tomb-pictures in Egypt show tame monkeys gathering fruits and Grossier (Description of China, quoted by Hole and Lane) mentions a similar mode of harvesting tea by irritating the monkeys of the Middle Kingdom.

[FN#67] Bresl. Edit. Cloves and cinnamon in those days grew in widely distant places.

[FN#68] In pepper-plantations it is usual to set bananas (Musa Paradisiaca) for shading the young shrubs which bear bunches like ivy-fruit, not pods.

[FN#69] The Bresl. Edit. has “Al-Ma’arat.” Langlčs calls it the
Island of Al-Kamárí. See Lane, iii. 86.

[FN#70] Insula, pro. peninsula. “Comorin” is a corrupt. of “Kanyá” (=Virgo, the goddess Durgá) and “Kumári” (a maid, a princess); from a temple of Shiva’s wife: hence Ptolemy’s {Greek letters} and near it to the N. East {Greek letters}, “Promontorium Cori quod Comorini caput insulć vocant,” says Maffćus (Hist. Indic. i. p. 16). In the text “Al’úd” refers to the eagle-wood (Aloekylon Agallochum) so called because spotted like the bird’s plume. That of Champa (Cochin-China, mentioned in Camoens, The Lus. x. 129) is still famous.

[FN#71] Arab. “Birkat”=tank, pool, reach, bight. Hence Birkat
Far’aun in the Suez Gulf. (Pilgrimage i. 297.)

[FN#72] Probably Cape Comorin; to judge from the river, but the text names Sarandib (Ceylon Island) famous for gems. This was noticed by Marco Polo, iii. cap. 19; and ancient authors relate the same of “Taprobane.”

[FN#73] I need hardly trouble the reader with a note on pearl-fisheries: the descriptions of travellers are continuous from the days of Pliny (ix. 35), Solinus (cap. 56) and Marco Polo (iii. 23). Maximilian of Transylvania, in his narrative of Magellan’s voyage (Novus Orbis, p. 532) says that the Celebes produce pearls big as turtle-doves’ eggs; and the King of Porne (Borneo) had two unions as great as goose’s eggs. Pigafetta (in Purchas) reduces this to hen’s eggs and Sir Thomas Herbert to dove’s eggs.

[FN#74] Arab. “Anbar” pronounced “Ambar;” wherein I would derive “Ambrosia.” Ambergris was long supposed to be a fossil, a vegetable which grew upon the sea-bottom or rose in springs; or a “substance produced in the water like naphtha or bitumen”(!): now it is known to be the egesta of a whale. It is found in lumps weighing several pounds upon the Zanzibar Coast and is sold at a high price, being held a potent aphrodisiac. A small hollow is drilled in the bottom of the cup and the coffee is poured upon the bit of ambergris it contains; when the oleaginous matter shows in dots amidst the “Kaymagh” (coffee-cream), the bubbly froth which floats upon the surface and which an expert “coffee servant” distributes equally among the guests. Argensola mentions in Ceylon, “springs of liquid bitumen thicker than our oil and some of pure balsam.”

[FN#75] The tale-teller forgets that Sindbad and his companions have just ascended it; but this inconséquence is a characteristic of the Eastern Saga. I may note that the description of ambergris in the text tells us admirably well what it is not.

[FN#76] This custom is alluded to by Lane (Mod Egypt, ch. xv.): it is the rule of pilgrims to Meccah when too ill to walk or ride (Pilgrimage i. 180). Hence all men carry their shrouds: mine, after being dipped in the Holy Water of Zemzem, was stolen from me by the rascally Somal of Berberah.

[FN#77] Arab. “Fulk;” some Edits. read “Kalak” and “Ramaz” (=a raft).

[FN#78] These lines occur in modified form in Night xi.

[FN#79] These underground rivers (which Dr. Livingstone derided) are familiar to every geographer from Spenser’s “Mole” to the Poika of Adelberg and the Timavo near Trieste. Hence “Peter Wilkins” borrowed his cavern which let him to Grandevolet. I have some experience of Sindbad’s sorrows, having once attempted to descend the Poika on foot. The Classics had the Alpheus (Pliny v. 31; and Seneca, Nat. Quae. vi.), and the Tigris-Euphrates supposed to flow underground: and the Medićvals knew the Abana of Damascus and the Zenderúd of Isfahan.

[FN#80] Abyssinians can hardly be called “blackamoors,” but the arrogance of the white skin shows itself in Easterns (e.g. Turks and Brahmans) as much as, if not more than, amongst Europeans. Southern India at the time it was explored by Vasco da Gama was crowded with Abyssinian slaves imported by the Arabs.

[FN#81] “Sarandib” and “Ceylon” (the Taprobane of Ptolemy and Diodorus Siculus) derive from the Pali “Sihalam” (not the Sansk. “Sinhala”) shortened to Silam and Ilam in old Tamul. Van der Tunk would find it in the Malay “Pulo Selam”=Isle of Gems (the Ratna-dwípa or Jewel Isle of the Hindus and the Jazirat al-Yakút or Ruby-Island of the Arabs); and the learned Colonel Yule (Marco Polo ii 296) remarks that we have adopted many Malayan names, e.g. Pegu, China and Japan. Sarandib is clearly “Selan-dwípa,” which Mandeville reduced to “Silha.”

[FN#82] This is the well-known Adam’s Peak, the Jabal al-Ramun of the Arabs where Adam fell when cast out of Eden in the lowest or lunar sphere. Eve fell at Jeddah (a modern myth) and the unhappy pair met at Mount Arafat (i.e. recognition) near Meccah. Thus their fall was a fall indeed. (Pilgrimage iii. 259.)

[FN#83] He is the Alcinous of our Arabian Odyssey.

[FN#84] This word is not in the dictionaries; Hole (p. 192) and Lane understand it to mean the hog-deer; but why, one cannot imagine. The animal is neither “beautiful” nor “uncommon” and most men of my day have shot dozens in the Sind-Shikárgahs.

[FN#85] M. Polo speaks of a ruby in Seilan (Ceylon) a palm long and three fingers thick: William of Tyre mentions a ruby weighing twelve Egyptian drams (Gibbon ii. 123), and Mandeville makes the King of Mammera wear about his neck a “rubye orient” one foot long by five fingers large.

[FN#86] The fable is from Al-Kazwini and Ibn Al-Wardi who place the serpent (an animal sacred to Ćsculapius, Pliny, xxix. 4) “in the sea of Zanj” (i.e. Zanzibar). In the “garrow hills” of N. Eastern Bengal the skin of the snake Burrawar (?) is held to cure pain. (Asiat. Res. vol. iii.)

[FN#87] For “Emerald,” Hole (p. 177) would read emery or adamantine spar.

[FN#88] Evidently Maháráj=Great Rajah, Rajah in Chief, an Hindu title common to the three potentates before alluded to, the Narsinga, Balhara or Samiry.

[FN#89] This is probably classical. So the page said to Philip of Macedon every morning, “Remember, Philip, thou art mortal”; also the slave in the Roman Triumph,

“Respice poste te: hominem te esse memento!”

And the dying Severus, “Urnlet, soon shalt thou enclose what hardly a whole world could contain.” But the custom may also have been Indian: the contrast of external pomp with the real vanity of human life suggests itself to all.

[FN#90] Arab. “Hút”; a term applied to Jonah’s whale and to monsters of the deep, “Samak” being the common fishes.

[FN#91] Usually a two-bow prayer.

[FN#92] This is the recognised formula of Moslem sales.

[FN#93] Arab. “Walímah”; like our wedding-breakfast but a much more ceremonious and important affair.

[FN#94] i.e. his wife (euphemistically). I remember an Italian lady being much hurt when a Maltese said to her “Mia moglie con rispetto parlando” (my wife, saving your presence). “What,” she cried, “he speaks of his wife as he would of the sweepings!”

[FN#95] The serpent in Arabic is mostly feminine.

[FN#96] i.e. in envying his wealth, with the risk of the evil eye.

[FN#97] I subjoin a translation of the Seventh Voyage from the Calc. Edit. of the two hundred Nights which differs in essential points from the above. All respecting Sindbad the Seaman has an especial interest. In one point this world-famous tale is badly ordered. The most exciting adventures are the earliest and the falling off of the interest has a somewhat depressing effect. The Rukh, the Ogre and the Old Man o’ the Sea should come last.

[FN#98] Arab. “Al-Suways:” this successor of ancient Arsinoë was, according to local tradition, founded by a Santon from Al-Sús in Marocco who called it after his name “Little Sús” (the wormlet).

[FN#99] Arab. “Mann,” a weight varying from two to six pounds: even this common term is not found in the tables of Lane’s Mod. Egyptians, Appendix B. The “Maund” is a well-known Anglo-Indian weight.

[FN#100] This article is not mentioned elsewhere in The Nights.

[FN#101] Apparently a fancy title.

[FN#102] The island is evidently Ceylon, long famed for elephants, and the tree is the well known “Banyan” (Ficus Indica). According to Linschoten and Wolf, the elephants of all lands do reverence and honour to those of Ceylon.

[FN#103] “Tusks” not “teeth” which are not valued. As Hole remarks, the elephants of Pliny and Sindbad are equally conscious of the value of ivory. Pliny (viii. 3) quotes Herodotus about the buying of ivories and relates how elephants, when hunted, break their “cornua” (as Juba called them) against a tree trunk by way of ransom. Ćlian, Plutarch, and Philostratus speak of the linguistic intelligence and religious worship of the “half-reason with the hand,” which the Hindus term “Háthí”=unimanus. Finally, Topsell’s Gesner (p. 152) makes elephants bury their tusks, “which commonly drop out every tenth year.” In Arabian literature the elephant is always connected with India.

[FN#104] This is a true “City of Brass.” (Nuhás asfar=yellow copper), as we learn in Night dcclxxii. It is situated in the “Maghrib” (Mauritania), the region of magic and mystery; and the idea was probably suggested by the grand Roman ruins which rise abruptly from what has become a sandy waste. Compare with this tale “The City of Brass” (Night cclxxii.). In Egypt Nuhás is vulg. pronounced Nihás.

[FN#105] The Bresl. Edit. adds that the seal-ring was of stamped stone and iron, copper and lead. I have borrowed copiously from its vol. vi. pp. 343, et seq.

[FN#106] As this was a well-known pre-Islamitic bard, his appearance here is decidedly anachronistic, probably by intention.

[FN#107] The first Moslem conqueror of Spain whose lieutenant,
Tárik, the gallant and unfortunate, named Gibraltar (Jabal al-
Tarik).

[FN#108] The colours of the Banú Umayyah (Ommiade) Caliphs were white, of the Banú Abbás (Abbasides) black, and of the Fatimites green. Carrying the royal flag denoted the generalissimo or plenipotentiary.

[FN#109] i.e. Old Cairo, or Fustat: the present Cairo was then a Coptic village founded on an old Egyptian settlement called Lui-Tkeshroma, to which belonged the tanks on the hill and the great well, Bir Yusuf, absurdly attributed to Joseph the Patriarch. Lui is evidently the origin of Levi and means a high priest (Brugsh ii. 130) and his son’s name was Roma.

[FN#110] I cannot but suspect that this is a clerical error for “Al-Samanhúdi,” a native of Samanhúd (Wilkinson’s “Semenood”) in the Delta on the Damietta branch, the old Sebennytus (in Coptic Jem-nuti=Jem the God), a town which has produced many distinguished men in Moslem times. But there is also a Samhúd lying a few miles down stream from Denderah and, as its mounds prove, it is an ancient site.

[FN#111] Egypt had not then been conquered from the Christians.

[FN#112] Arab. “Kízán fukká’a,” i.e. thin and slightly porous earthenware jars used for Fukká’a, a fermented drink, made of barley or raisins.

[FN#113] I retain this venerable blunder: the right form is
Samúm, from Samm, the poison-wind.

[FN#114] i.e. for worship and to prepare for futurity.

[FN#115] The camel carries the Badawi’s corpse to the cemetery which is often distant: hence to dream of a camel is an omen of death.

[FN#116] Koran xxiv 39. The word “Saráb” (mirage) is found in Isaiah (xxxv. 7) where the passage should be rendered “And the mirage (sharab) shall become a lake” (not, “and the parched ground shall become a pool”). The Hindus prettily call it “Mrigatrishná” = the thirst of the deer.

[FN#117] A name of Allah.

[FN#118] Arab. “Kintár”=a hundredweight (i.e. 100 Ibs.), about 98¾ Ibs. avoir. Hence the French quintal and its congeners (Littré).

[FN#119] i.e. “from Shám (Syria) to (the land of) Adnan,” ancestor of the Naturalized Arabs that is, to Arabia.

[FN#120] Koran lii. 21. “Every man is given in pledge for that which he shall have wrought.”

[FN#121] There is a constant clerical confusion in the texts between “Arar” (Juniperus Oxycedrus used by the Greeks for the images of their gods) and “Marmar” marble or alabaster, in the Talmud “Marmora” = marble. evidently from {Greek letters} = brilliant, the brilliant stone.

[FN#122] These Ifritical names are chosen for their bizarrerie. “Al-Dáhish” = the Amazed; and “Al-A’amash” = one with weak eyes always watering.

[FN#123] The Arabs have no word for million; so Messer Marco Miglione could not have learned it from them. On the other hand the Hindus have more quadrillions than modern Europe.

[FN#124] This formula, according to Moslems, would begin with the beginning “There is no iláh but Allah and Adam is the Apostle (rasúl = one sent, a messenger, not nabí = prophet) of Allah.” And so on with Noah, Moses, David (not Solomon as a rule) and Jesus, to Mohammed.

[FN#125] This son of Barachia has been noticed before. The text embroiders the Koranic chapter No. xxvii.

[FN#126] The Bresl. Edit. (vi. 371) reads “Samm-hu”=his poison, prob. a clerical error for “Sahmhu”=his shaft. It was a duel with the “Shiháb” or falling stars, the meteors which are popularly supposed, I have said, to be the arrows shot by the angels against devils and evil spirits when they approach too near Heaven in order to overhear divine secrets.

[FN#127] A fancy sea from the Lat. “Carcer” ( ?).

[FN#128] Andalusian = Spanish, the Vandal-land, a term accepted by the Moslem invader.

[FN#129] This fine description will remind the traveller of the old Haurani towns deserted since the sixth century, which a silly writer miscalled the “Giant Cities of Bashan.” I have never seen anything weirder than a moonlight night in one of these strong places whose masonry is perfect as when first built, the snowy light pouring on the jet-black basalt and the breeze sighing and the jackal wailing in the desert around.

[FN#130] “Zanj,” I have said, is the Arab. form of the Persian “Zang-bar” (=Black-land), our Zanzibar. Those who would know more of the etymology will consult my “Zanzibar,” etc., chaps. i.

[FN#131] Arab. “Tanjah”=Strabo {Greek letters} (derivation uncertain), Tingitania, Tangiers. But why the terminals ?

[FN#132] Or Amidah, by the Turks called “Kara (black) Amid” from the colour of the stones and the Arabs “Diyar-bakr” (Diarbekir), a name which they also give to the whole province—Mesopotamia.

[FN#133] Mayyáfárikín, an episcopal city in Diyar-bakr: the natives are called Fárikí; hence the abbreviation in the text.

[FN#134] Arab. “Ayát al-Naját,” certain Koranic verses which act as talismans, such as, “And wherefore should we not put our trust in Allah ?” (xiv. 15); “Say thou, Naught shall befall us save what Allah hath decreed for us,’” (ix. 51), and sundry others.

[FN#135] These were the “Brides of the Treasure,” alluded to in the story of Hasan of Bassorah and elsewhere.

[FN#136] Arab. “Ishárah,” which may also mean beckoning. Easterns reverse our process: we wave hand or finger towards ourselves; they towards the object; and our fashion represents to them, Go away!

[FN#137] i.e. musing a long time and a longsome.

[FN#138] Arab. “Dihlíz” from the Persian. This is the long dark passage which leads to the inner or main gate of an Eastern city, and which is built up before a siege. It is usually furnished with Mastabah-benches of wood and masonry, and forms a favourite lounge in hot weather. Hence Lot and Moses sat and stood in the gate, and here man speaks with his enemies.

[FN#139] The names of colours are as loosely used by the Arabs as by the Classics of Europe; for instance, a light grey is called a “blue or a green horse.” Much nonsense has been written upon the colours in Homer by men who imagine that the semi-civilised determine tints as we do. They see them but they do not name them, having no occasion for the words. As I have noticed, however, the Arabs have a complete terminology for the varieties of horse-hues. In our day we have witnessed the birth of colours, named by the dozen, because required by women’s dress.

[FN#140] For David’s miracles of metallurgy see vol. i. 286.

[FN#141] Arab. “Khwárazm,” the land of the Chorasmioi, who are mentioned by Herodotus (iii. 93) and a host of classical geographers. They place it in Sogdiana (hod. Sughd) and it corresponds with the Khiva country.

[FN#142] Arab. “Burka’,” usually applied to a woman’s face-veil and hence to the covering of the Ka’abah, which is the “Bride of Meccah.”

[FN#143] Alluding to the trick played upon Bilkís by Solomon who had heard that her legs were hairy like those of an ass: he laid down a pavement of glass over flowing water in which fish were swimming and thus she raised her skirts as she approached him and he saw that the report was true. Hence, as I have said, the depilatory.

[FN#144] I understand the curiously carved windows cut in arabesque-work of marble. (India) or basalt (the Haurán) and provided with small panes of glass set in emeralds where tin would be used by the vulgar.

[FN#145] Arab. “Bulád” from the Pers. “Pulád.” Hence the name of the famous Druze family “Jumblat,” a corruption of “Ján-pulád”=Life o’ Steel.

[FN#146] Pharaoh, so called in Koran (xxxviii. 11) because he tortured men by fastening them to four stakes driven into the ground. Sale translates “the contriver of the stakes” and adds, “Some understand the word figuratively, of the firm establishment of Pharaoh’s kingdom, because the Arabs fix their tents with stakes; but they may possibly intend that prince’s obstinacy and hardness of heart.” I may note that in “Tasawwuf,” or Moslem Gnosticism, Pharaoh represents, like Prometheus and Job, the typical creature who upholds his own dignity and rights in presence and despight of the Creator. Sáhib the Súfí declares that the secret of man’s soul (i.e. its emanation) was first revealed when Pharaoh declared himself god; and Al-Ghazálí sees in his claim the most noble aspiration to the divine, innate in the human spirit. (Dabistan, vol. iii.)

[FN#147] In the Calc. Edit. “Tarmuz, son of the daughter,” etc.
According to the Arabs Tadmur (Palmyra) was built by Queen
Tadmurah, daughter of Hassán bin Uzaynah.

[FN#148] It is only by some such drought that I can account for the survival of those marvellous Haurani cities in the great valley S. E. of Damascus.

[FN#149] So Moses described his own death and burial.

[FN#150] A man’s “aurat” (shame) extends from the navel (included) to his knees, a woman’s from the top of the head to the tips of her toes. I have before noticed the Hindostaní application of the word.

[FN#151] Arab. “Jum’ah” ( = the assembly) so called because the General Resurrection will take place on that day and it witnessed the creation of Adam. Both these reasons are evidently after-thoughts; as the Jews received a divine order to keep Saturday, and the Christians, at their own sweet will, transferred the weekly rest-day to Sunday, wherefore the Moslem preferred Friday. Sabbatarianism, however, is unknown to Al-Islam and business is interrupted, by Koranic order ([xii. 9-10]), only during congregational prayers in the Mosque. The most a Mohammedan does is not to work or travel till after public service. But the Moslem hardly wants a “day of rest;” whereas a Christian, especially in the desperately dull routine of daily life and toil, without a gleam of light to break the darkness of his civilised and most unhappy existence, distinctly requires it.

[FN#152] Mankind, which sees itself everywhere and in everything, must create its own analogues in all the elements, air (Sylphs), fire (Jinns), water (Mermen and Mermaids) and earth (Kobolds), These merwomen were of course seals or manatees, as the wild women of Hanno were gorillas.

[FN#153] Here begins the Sindibad-namah, the origin of Dolopathos (thirteenth century by the Trouvčre Harbers); of the “Seven Sages” (John Holland in 1575); the “Seven Wise Masters” and a host of minor romances. The Persian Sindibád-Námah assumed its present shape in A.D. 1375: Professor Falconer printed an abstract of it in the Orient. Journ. (xxxv. and xxxvi. 1841), and Mr. W. A. Clouston reissued the “Book of Sindibad,” with useful notes in 1884. An abstract of the Persian work is found in all edits. of The Nights; but they differ greatly, especially that in the Bresl. Edit. xii. pp. 237-377, from which I borrow the introduction. According to Hamzah Isfahání (ch. xli.) the Reguli who succeeded to Alexander the Great and preceded Sapor caused some seventy books to be composed, amongst which were the Liber Maruc, Liber Barsínas, Liber Sindibad, Liber Shimás, etc., etc.

[FN#154] Eusebius De Praep. Evang. iii. 4, quotes Prophesy concerning the Egyptian belief in the Lords of the Ascendant whose names are given {Greek letters}: in these “Almenichiaka” we have the first almanac, as the first newspaper in the Roman “Acta Diurna.”

[FN#155] “Al-Mas’údi,” the “Herodotus of the Arabs,” thus notices Sindibad the Sage (in his Murúj, etc., written about A.D. 934). “During the reign of Kurúsh (Cyrus) lived Al-Sindibad who wrote the Seven Wazirs, etc.” Al-Ya’akúbi had also named him, circ. A.D. 880. For notes on the name Sindibad, see Sindbad the Seaman, Night dxxxvi. I need not enter into the history of the “Seven Sages,” a book evidently older than The Nights in present form; but refer the reader to Mr. Clouston, of whom more in a future page.

[FN#156] Evidently borrowed from the Christians, although the latter borrowed from writers of the most remote antiquity. Yet the saying is the basis of all morality and in few words contains the highest human wisdom.

[FN#157] It is curious to compare the dry and business-like tone of the Arab style with the rhetorical luxuriance of the Persian: p.10 of Mr. Clouston’s “Book of Sindibad.”

[FN#158] In the text “Isfídáj,” the Pers. Isped (or Saféd) áb,
lit. = white water, ceruse used for women’s faces suggesting our
“Age of Bismuth,” Blanc Rosati, Cręme de l’Impératrice, Perline,
Opaline, Milk of Beauty, etc., etc.

[FN#159] Commentators compare this incident with the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife and with the old Egyptian romance and fairy tale of the brothers Anapon and Saton dating from the fourteenth century, the days of Pharaoh Ramses Miamun (who built Pi-tum and Ramses) at whose court Moses or Osarsiph is supposed to have been reared (Cambridge Essays 1858). The incident would often occur, e.g. Phćdra-cum-Hippolytus; Fausta-cum-Crispus and Lucinian; Asoka’s wife and Kunála, etc., etc. Such things happen in every-day life, and the situation has recommended itself to the folk lore of all peoples.

[FN#160] Another version of this tale is given in the Bresl. Edit. (vol. viii. pp. 273-8: Night 675-6). It is the “Story of the King and the Virtuous Wife” in the Book of Sindibad. In the versions Arabic and Greek (Syntipas) the King forgets his ring; in the Hebrew Mishlé Sandabar, his staff, and his sandals in the old Spanish Libro de los Engannos et los Asayamientos de las Mugeres.

[FN#161] One might fancy that this is Biblical, Bathsheba and Uriah. But such “villanies” must often have occurred in the East, at different times and places, without requiring direct derivation. The learned Prof. H. H. Wilson was mistaken in supposing that these fictions “originate in the feeling which has always pervaded the East unfavourable to the dignity of women.” They belong to a certain stage of civilisation when the sexes are at war with each other; and they characterise chivalrous Europe as well as misogynous Asia; witness Jankins, clerk of Oxenforde; while Ćsop’s fable of the Lion and the Man also explains their frequency.

[FN#162] The European form of the tale is “Toujours perdrix,” a sentence often quoted but seldom understood. It is the reproach of M. l’Abbé when the Count (proprietor of the pretty Countess) made him eat partridge every day for a month; on which the Abbé says, “Alway partridge is too much of a good thing!” Upon this text the Count speaks. A correspondent mentions that it was told by Horace Walpole concerning the Confessor of a French King who reproved him for conjugal infidelities. The degraded French (for “toujours de la perdrix” or “des perdrix”) suggests a foreign origin. Another friend refers me to No. x. of the “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles” (compiled in A.D. 1432 for the amusement of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI.) whose chief personage “un grand seigneur du Royaulme d’Angleterre,” is lectured upon fidelity by the lord’s mignon, a “jeune et gracieux gentil homme de son hostel.” Here the partridge became pastés d’anguille. Possibly Scott refers to it in Redgauntlet (chapt. iv.); “One must be very fond of partridge to accept it when thrown in one’s face.” Did not Voltaire complain at Potsdam of “toujours perdrix” and make it one of his grievances? A similar story is that of the chaplain who, weary of the same diet, uttered “grace” as follows:—

Rabbits hot, rabbits cold,
Rabbits tender, and rabbits tough,
Rabbits young, and rabbits old
I thank the Lord I’ve had enough.

And I as cordially thank my kind correspondents.

[FN#163] The great legal authority of the realm.

[FN#164] In all editions the Wazir here tells the Tale of the Merchant’s Wife and the Parrot which, following Lane, I have transferred to vol. i. p. 52. But not to break the tradition I here introduce the Persian version of the story from the “Book of Sindibad.” In addition to the details given in the note to vol. i., 52; I may quote the two talking-birds left to watch over his young wife by Rajah Rasálú (son of Shaliváhana the great Indian monarch circ. A.D. 81), who is to the Punjab what Rustam is to Persia and Antar to Arabia. In the “Seven Wise Masters” the parrot becomes a magpie and Mr. Clouston, in some clever papers on “Popular Tales and Fictions” contributed to the Glasgow Evening Times (1884), compares it with the history, in the Gesta Romanorum, of the Adulteress, the Abigail, and the Three Cocks, two of which crowed during the congress of the lady and her lover. All these evidently belong to the Sindibad cycle.

[FN#165] In the days of the Caliph Al-Mustakfí bi llah (A.H. 333=944) the youth of Baghdad studied swimming and it is said that they could swim holding chafing-dishes upon which were cooking-pots and keep afloat till the meat was dressed. The story is that of “The Washerman and his Son who were drowned in the Nile,” of the Book of Sindibad.

[FN#166] Her going to the bath suggested that she was fresh from coition.

[FN#167] Taken from the life of the Egyptian Mameluke Sultan (No. viii, regn. A.H., 825= A.D. 1421) who would not suffer his subjects to prostrate themselves or kiss the ground before him. See D’Herbelot for details.

[FN#168] This nauseous Joe Miller has often been told in the hospitals of London and Paris. It is as old as the Hitopadesa.

[FN#169] Koran iv. 81, “All is from Allah;” but the evil which befals mankind, though ordered by Allah, is yet the consequence of their own wickedness (I add, which wickedness was created by Allah).

[FN#170] The Bresl. Edit. (xii. 266) says “bathing.”

[FN#171] This tale is much like that told in the Fifth Night (vol. i. 54). It is the story of the Prince and the Lamia in the Book of Sindibad wherein it is given with Persian rhetoric and diffuseness.

[FN#172] Arab. “Wa’ar”= rocky, hilly, tree-less ground unfit for riding. I have noted that the three Heb. words “Year” (e.g. Kiryath-Yearin=City of forest), “Choresh” (now Hirsh, a scrub), and “Pardes” ({Greek letters} a chase, a hunting-park opposed to {Greek letters}, an orchard) are preserved in Arabic and are intelligible in Palestine. (Unexplored Syria, i. 207.)

[FN#173] The privy and the bath are favourite haunts of the
Jinns.

[FN#174] Arab history is full of petty wars caused by trifles. In Egypt the clans Sa’ad and Harám and in Syria the Kays and Yaman (which remain to the present day) were as pugnacious as Highland Caterans. The tale bears some likeness to the accumulative nursery rhymes in “The House that Jack Built,” and “The Old Woman and the Crooked Sixpence;” which find their indirect original in an allegorical Talmudic hymn.

[FN#175] This is “The Story of the Old Man who sent his Young Wife to the Market to buy Rice,” told with Persian reflections in the “Book of Sindibad.”

[FN#176] Koran xii. 28. The words were spoken by Potiphar to
Joseph.

[FN#177] Koran iv. 78. A mis-quotation, the words are, “Fight therefore against the friends of Satan, for the craft of Satan shall be weak.”

[FN#178] i.e. Koranic versets.

[FN#179] In the Book of Sindibad this is the “Story of the Prince who went out to hunt and the stratagem which the Wazir practised on him.”

[FN#180] I have noted that it is a dire affront to an Arab if his first cousin marry any save himself without his formal leave.

[FN#181] i.e. the flowery, the splendid; an epithet of Fatimah, the daughter of the Apostle “the bright blooming.” Fátimah is an old Arab name of good omen, “the weaner:” in Egypt it becomes Fattúmah (an incrementative= “great weaner”); and so Amínah, Khadíjah and Nafísah on the banks of the Nile are barbarised to Ammúnah, Khaddúgah and Naffúsah.

[FN#182] i.e. his coming misfortune, the phrase being euphemistic.

[FN#183] Arab. “Ráy:” in theology it means “private judgment” and “Ráyí” (act. partic.) is a Rationalist. The Hanafí School is called “Asháb al-Ráy” because it allows more liberty of thought than the other three orthodox.

[FN#184] The angels in Al-Islam ride piebalds.

[FN#185] In the Bresl. Edit. “Zájir” (xii. 286).

[FN#186] This is the “King’s Son and the Merchant’s Wife” of the
Hitopadesa (chapt. i.) transferred to all the Prakrit versions of
India. It is the Story of the Bath-keeper who conducted his Wife
to the Son of the King of Kanuj in the Book of Sindibad.

[FN#187] The pious Caliph Al-Muktadi bi Amri llah (A.H. 467=A.D. 1075) was obliged to forbid men entering the baths of Baghdad without drawers.

[FN#188] This peculiarity is not uncommon amongst the so-called Aryan and Semitic races, while to the African it is all but unknown. Women highly prize a conformation which (as the prostitute described it) is always “either in his belly or in mine.”

[FN#189] Easterns, I have said, are perfectly aware of the fact that women corrupt women much more than men do. The tale is the “Story of the Libertine Husband” in the Book of Sindibad; blended with the “Story of the Go-between and the Bitch” in the Book of Sindibad. It is related in the “Disciplina Clericalis” of Alphonsus (A.D. 1106); the fabliau of La vieille qui seduisit la jeune fille; the Gesta Romanorum (thirteenth century) and the “Cunning Siddhikari” in the Kathá-Sarit-Ságara.

[FN#190] The Kashmir people, men and women, have a very bad name in Eastern tales, the former for treachery and the latter for unchastity. A Persian distich says:

If folk be scarce as food in dearth ne’er let three lots come
near ye:
First Sindi, second Jat, and third a rascally Kashmeeree.

The women have fair skins and handsome features but, like all living in that zone, Persians, Sindis, Afghans, etc., their bosoms fall after the first child and become like udders. This is not the case with Hindú women, Rajpúts, Maráthís, etc.

[FN#191] By these words she appealed to his honour.

[FN#192] These vehicles suggest derivation from European witchery. In the Bresl. Edit. (xii. 304) one of the women rides a “Miknasah” or broom.

[FN#193] i.e. a recluse who avoids society.

[FN#194] “Consecrated ground” is happily unknown to Moslems.

[FN#195] This incident occurs in the “Third Kalandar’s Tale.” See vol. i. 157 {Vol 1, FN#290}; and note to p. 145. {Vol 1, FN#264}

[FN#196] The Mac. Edit. has “Nahr”= river.

[FN#197] i.e. marked with the Wasm or tribal sign to show their blood. The subject of Wasm is extensive and highly interesting, for many of these brands date doubtless from prehistoric ages. For instance, some of the great Anazah nation (not tribe) use a circlet, the initial of their name (an Ayn-letter), which thus shows the eye from which it was formed. I have given some specimens of Wasm in The Land of Midian (i. 320) where, as amongst the “Sinaitic” Badawin, various kinds of crosses are preserved long after the death and burial of Christianity.

[FN#198] i.e. from the heights. The “Sayl” is a dangerous feature in Arabia as in Southern India, where many officers have lost their lives by trying to swim it.

[FN#199] Arab. “’Ujb” I use arrogance in the Spanish sense of “arrogante,” gay and gallant.

[FN#200] In this rechauffé Paul Pry escapes without losing an eye.

[FN#201] Eastern tale-tellers always harp upon this theme, the cunning precautions taken by mankind and their utter confusion by “Fate and Fortune.” In such matters the West remarks, “Ce que femme veut, Dieu veut.”

[FN#202] As favourite an occupation in Oriental lands as in Southern Europe and the Brazil, where the Quinta or country villa must be built by the road-side to please the mistress.

[FN#203] The ink-case would contain the pens; hence called in India Kalamdán=reed (pen) box. I have advised travellers to prefer the strong Egyptian article of brass to the Persian, which is of wood or papier-mâché, prettily varnished, but not to wear it in the waist-belt, as this is a sign of being a scribe. (Pilgrimage i. 353.)

[FN#204] The vulgar Eastern idea is that women are quite knowing enough without learning to read and write; and at all events they should not be taught anything beyond reading the Koran, or some clearly-written book. The contrast with modern Europe is great; greater still in Anglo-America of our day, and greatest with the new sects which propose “biunes” and “bisexuals” and “women robed with the sun.”

[FN#205] In the Bresl. Edit. the Prince ties a key to a second arrow and shoots it into the pavilion.

[FN#206] The “box-trick” has often been played with success, by Lord Byron amongst a host of others. The readiness with which the Wazir enters into the scheme is characteristic of oriental servility: an honest Moslem should at least put in a remonstrance.

[FN#207] This story appears familiar, but I have not found it easy to trace. In “The Book of Sindibad” (p. 83) it is apparently represented by a lacuna. In the Squire’s Tale of Chaucer Canace’s ring enables the wearer to understand bird-language, not merely to pretend as does the slave-boy in the text.

[FN#208] The crow is an ill-omened bird in Al-lslam and in Eastern Christendom. “The crow of cursed life and foul odour,” says the Book of Kalilah and Dimna (p. 44). The Hindus are its only protectors, and in this matter they follow suit with the Guebres. I may note that the word belongs to the days before “Aryan” and “Semitic” speech had parted; we find it in Heb. Oreb; Arab. Ghurab; Lat. Corvus; Engl. Crow, etc.

[FN#209] Again in the Hibernian sense of being “kilt.”

[FN#210] Quoted in Night dlxxxii.; said by Kitfír or Itfír (Potiphar) when his wife (Ráil or Zulaykha) charged Joseph with attempting her chastity and he saw that the youth’s garment was whole in front and rent in rear. (Koran, chapt. xii.)

[FN#211] This witty tale, ending somewhat grossly here, has over-wandered the world. First we find it in the Kathá (S. S.) where Upakoshá, the merry wife of Vararuchi, disrobes her suitors, a family priest, a commander of the guard and the prince’s tutor, under plea of the bath and stows them away in baskets which suggest Falstaff’s “buck-basket.” In Miss Stokes’ “Indian Fairy Tales” the fair wife of an absent merchant plays a similar notable prank upon the Kotwal, the Wazir, the Kazi and the King; and akin to this is the exploit of Temal Rámákistnan, the Madrasi Tyl Eulenspiegel and Scogin who by means of a lady saves his life from the Rajah and the High Priest. Mr. G. H. Damant (pp. 357-360 of the “Indian Antiquary” of 1873) relates the “Tale of the Touchstone,” a legend of Dinahpur, wherein a woman “sells” her four admirers. In the Persian Tales ascribed to the Dervish “Mokles” (Mukhlis) of Isfahan, the lady Aruyá tricks and exposes a Kazi, a doctor and a governor. Boccaccio (viii. 1) has the story of a lady who shut up her gallant in a chest with her husband’s sanction; and a similar tale (ix. 1) of Rinuccio and Alexander with the corpse of Scannadeo (Throkh-god). Hence a Lydgate (circ. A.D. 1430) derived the plot of his metrical tale of “The Lady Prioress and her Three Sisters”; which was modified in the Netherlandish version by the introduction of the Long Wapper, a Flemish Robin Goodfellow. Followed in English the metrical tale of “The Wright’s Chaste Wife,” by Adam of Cobham (edited by Mr. Furnivall from a MS. of circ. A.D. 1460) where the victims are a lord, a steward and a proctor. See also “The Master-Maid” in Dr. (now Sir George) Dasent’s “Popular Tales from the Norse,” Mr. Clouston, who gives these details more fully, mentions a similar Scottish story concerning a lascivious monk and the chaste wife of a miller.

[FN#212]When Easterns sit down to a drinking bout, which means to get drunk as speedily and pleasantly as possible, they put off dresses of dull colours and robe themselves in clothes supplied by the host, of the brightest he may have, especially yellow, green and red of different shades. So the lady’s proceeding was not likely to breed suspicion: al-though her tastes were somewhat fantastic and like Miss Julia’s—peculiar.

[FN#213] Arab. “Najásah,” meaning anything unclean which requires ablution before prayer. Unfortunately mucus is not of the number, so the common Moslem is very offensive in the matter of nose.

[FN#214] Here the word “la’an” is used which most Moslems express by some euphemism. The vulgar Egyptian says “Na’al” (Sapré and Sapristi for Sacré and Sacristie), the Hindostani express it “I send him the three letters”—lám, ayn and nún.

[FN#215] The Mac. Edit. is here very concise; better the Bresl. Edit. (xii. 326). Here we have the Eastern form of the Three Wishes which dates from the earliest ages and which amongst us has been degraded to a matter of “black pudding.” It is the grossest and most brutal satire on the sex, suggesting that a woman would prefer an additional inch of penis to anything this world or the next can offer her. In the Book of Sindibad it is the story of the Peri and Religious Man; his learning the Great Name; and his consulting with his wife. See also La Fontaine’s “Trois Souhaits,” Prior’s “Ladle,” and “Les quatre Souhaits de Saint-Martin.”

[FN#216] Arab. “Laylat al-Kadr”= Night of Power or of Divine Decrees. It is “better than a thousand months” (Koran xcvii. 3), but unhappily the exact time is not known although all agree that it is one of the last ten in Ramazan. The latter when named by Kiláb ibn Murrah, ancestor of Mohammed, about two centuries before Al-lslam, corresponded with July-August and took its name from “Ramzá” or intense heat. But the Prophet, in the tenth Hijrah year, most unwisely forbade “Nasy”= triennial intercalation (Koran ix. 36) and thus the lunar month went round all the seasons. On the Night of Power the Koran was sent down from the Preserved Tablet by Allah’s throne, to the first or lunar Heaven whence Gabriel brought it for opportunest revelation to the Apostle (Koran xcvii.). Also during this night all Divine Decrees for the ensuing year are taken from the Tablet and are given to the angels for execution whilst, the gates of Heaven being open, prayer (as in the text) is sure of success. This mass of absurdity has engendered a host of superstitions everywhere varying. Lane (Mod. Egypt, chapt. xxv.) describes how some of the Faithful keep tasting a cup of salt water which should become sweet in the Night of Nights. In (Moslem) India not only the sea becomes sweet, but all the vegetable creation bows down before Allah. The exact time is known only to Prophets; but the pious sit through the Night of Ramazan 27th (our 26th) praying and burning incense-pastilles. In Stambul this is officially held to be the Night of Power. So in medićval Europe on Christmas Eve the cattle worshipped God in their stalls and I have met peasants in France and Italy who firmly believed that brute beasts on that night not only speak but predict the events of the coming year.

[FN#217] Hence the misfortune befel her; the pious especially avoid temporal palaces.

[FN#218] This is our tale of “The Maid and the Magpie;” the Mac. Edit. does not specify the “Tayr” (any bird) but the Bresl. Edit. has Ak’ak, a pie. The true Magpie (C. Pica) called Buzarái (?) and Zaghzaghán Abú Mássah (=the Sweeper, from its tail) is found on the Libanus and Anti-Libanus (Unexplored Syria ii. 77-143), but I never saw it in other parts of Syria or in Arabia. It is completely ignored by the Reverend Mr. Tristram in his painfully superficial book “The Natural History of the Bible,” published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (or rather Ignorance), London, 1873.

[FN#219] This is “The Story of the Two Partridges,” told at great length in the Book of Sindibad. See De Sacy’s text in the Kalilah wa Damnah, quoted in the “Book of Kalilah and Damnah” (p. 306).

[FN#220] This extremely wilful young person had rendered rape excusable. The same treat-ment is much called for by certain heroines of modern fiction—let me mention Princess Napraxine.

[FN#221] The Story of the Hidden Robe, in the Book of Sindibad; where it is told with all manner of Persian embellishments.

[FN#222] Now turned into Government offices for local administration; a “Tribunal of Commerce,” etc.

[FN#223] Arab. “Bawwáb,” a personage as important as the old French concierge and a man of trust who has charge of the keys and with letting vacant rooms. In Egypt the Berber from the Upper Nile is the favourite suisse; being held more honest or rather less rascally than the usual Egyptian. These Berbers, however, are true barbarians, overfond of Búzah (the beer of Osiris) and not unfrequently dangerous. They are supposed by Moslems to descend from the old Syrians expelled by Joshua. For the favourite chaff against them, eating the dog (not the puppy-pie), see Pilgrimage i. 93. They are the “paddies’, of Egypt to whom all kinds of bulls and blunders are attributed.

[FN#224] Arab. “Juma’ah,” which means either Friday or a week. In pre-Moslem times it was called Al-Arúbah (the other week-days being Shiyár or Saturday, Bawal, Bahan Jabar, Dabar and Fámunís or Thursday). Juma’ah, literally = “Meeting” or Congregation (-day), was made to represent the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sunday because on that day Allah ended the work of creation; it was also the date of Mohammed’s entering Al-Medinah. According to Al-Bayzáwí, it was called Assembly day because Ka’ab ibn Lowa, one of the Prophet’s ancestors, used to gather the people before him on Fridays. Moslems are not forbidden to do secular work after the congregational prayers at the hour when they must “hasten to the commemoration of Allah and leave merchandising.” (Koran, chaps. Ixii. 9.)

[FN#225] This is done only by the very pious: if they see a bit of bread they kiss it, place it upon their heads and deposit it upon a wall or some place where it will not be trodden on. She also removed the stones lest haply they prove stumbling-blocks to some Moslem foot.

[FN#226] Arab. “Ashjár,” which may mean either the door-posts or the wooden bolts. Lane (iii. 174) translates it “among the trees” in a room!

[FN#227] Koran (ix. 51), when Mohammed reproaches the unbelievers for not accompanying him to victory or martyrdom.

[FN#228] Arab. “Kiná,” a true veil, not the “Burká” or “nose bag” with the peep-holes. It is opposed to the “Tarkah” or “head veil.” Europeans inveigh against the veil which represents the loup of Louis Quatorze’s day: it is on the contrary the most coquettish of contrivances, hiding coarse skins, fleshy noses, wide mouths and vanishing chins, and showing only lustrous and liquid black eyes. Moreover a pretty woman, when she wishes, will always let you see something under the veil. (Pilgrimage i. 337.)

[FN#229] A yellow-flowered artemisia or absinthe whose wood burns like holm-oak. (Unexplored Syria ii. 43.) See vol. ii. 24 for further details.

[FN#230] The Farz or obligatory prayers, I have noted, must be recited (if necessary) in the most impure place; not so the other orisons. Hence the use of the “Sajjádah” or prayer-rug an article too well known to require description.

[FN#231] Anglicč a stomach-ache, a colic.

[FN#232] Arab. “Al-Háfizah” which has two meanings. Properly it signifies the third order of Traditionists out of a total of five or those who know 300,000 traditions and their ascriptions. Popularly “one who can recite the Koran by rote.” There are six great Traditionists whose words are held to be prime authorities; (1) Al-Bokhári, (2) Muslim, and these are entitled Al-Sahíhayn, The (two true) authorities. After them (3) Al-Tirmidi; and (4) Abu Daúd: these four being the authors of the “Four Sunan,” the others are (5) Al-Nasái and (6) Ibn Májah (see Jarrett’s Al-Siyuti pp. 2, 6; and, for modern Arab studies, Pilgrimage i. 154 et seq.).

[FN#233] Lane (iii. 176) marries the amorous couple, thus making the story highly proper and robbing it of all its point.

[FN#234] Arab. “Sabbahat,” i.e. Sabbah-ak’ Allah bi’l khayr =
Allah give thee good morning: still the popular phrase.

[FN#235] Arab. “Ta’rísak,” with the implied hint of her being a “Mu’arrisah” or she pander. The Bresl. Edit. (xii. 356) bluntly says “Kivádatak” thy pimping.

[FN#236] Arab. “Rafw”: the “Rafu-gar” or fine-drawer in India, who does this artistic style of darning, is famed for skill.

[FN#237] The question sounds strange to Europeans, but in the Moslem East a man knows nothing, except by hearsay, of the women who visit his wife.

[FN#238] Arab. “Ahl al-bayt,” so as not rudely to say “wife.”

[FN#239] This is a mere abstract of the tale told in the Introduction (vol. i. 10-12). Here however, the rings are about eighty; there the number varies from ninety to five hundred and seventy.

[FN#240] The father suspected the son of intriguing with one of his own women.

[FN#241] Arab. and Heb. “Laban” (opp. to “laban-halíb,” or simply “halíb” = fresh milk), milk artificially soured, the Dahin of India, the Kisainá of the Slavs and our Corstophine cream. But in The Nights, contrary to modern popular usage, “Laban” is also applied to Fresh milk. The soured form is universally in the East eaten with rice and enters into the Salátah or cucumber-salad. I have noted elsewhere that all the Galactophagi, the nomades who live on milk, use it in the soured never in the fresh form. The Badawi have curious prejudices about it: it is a disgrace to sell it (though not to exchange it), and “Labbán,” or “milk-vendor,” is an insult. The Bráhni and Beloch pomades have the same pundonor possibly learnt from the Arabs (Pilgrimage i. 363). For Igt (Akit), Mahir, Saribah, Jamídah and other lacteal preparations, see ibid. i. 362.

[FN#242] I need hardly say that the poison would have been utterly harmless, unless there had been an abrasion of the skin. The slave-girl is blamed for carrying the jar uncovered because thus it would attract the evil eye. In the Book of Sindibad the tale appears as the Story of the Poisoned Guest; and the bird is a stork.

[FN#243] The Prince expresses the pure and still popular Moslem feeling; and yet the learned and experienced Mr. Redhouse would confuse this absolute Predestination with Providence. A friend tells me that the idea of absolute Fate in The Nights makes her feel as if the world were a jail.

[FN#244] In the Book of Sindibad this is the Story of the Sandal-wood Merchant and the Advice of the Blind Old Man. Mr. Clouston (p. 163) quotes a Talmudic joke which is akin to the Shaykh’s advice and a reply of Tyl Eulenspiegel, the arch-rogue, which has also a family resemblance.

[FN#245] Arab. “Sá’a,” a measure of corn, etc., to be given in alms. The Kamus makes it = four mudds (each being ⅓ lbs.); the people understand by it four times the measure of a man’s two open hands.

[FN#246] i.e. till thou restore my eye to me. This style of prothesis without apodosis is very common in Arabic and should be preserved in translation, as it adds a naďveté to the style. We find it in Genesis iii. 2, “And now lest he put forth his hand,” etc.

[FN#247] They were playing at Muráhanah, like children amongst us. It is also called “Hukm wa Rizá” = order and consent. The penalty is usually something ridiculous, but here it was villainous.

[FN#248] Every Moslem capital has a “Shaykh of the thieves” who holds a regular levées and who will return stolen articles for consideration; and this has lasted since the days of Diodorus Siculus (Pilgrimage i. 91).

[FN#249] This was not the condition; but I have left the text as it is characteristic of the writer’s inconsequence.

[FN#250] The idea would readily occur in Egypt where the pulex is still a plague although the Sultan is said to hold his court at Tiberias. “Male and female” says the rouge, otherwise it would be easy to fill a bushel with fleas. The insect was unknown to older India according to some and was introduced by strangers. This immigration is quite possible. In 1863 the jigger (P. penetrans) was not found in Western Africa; when I returned there in 1882 it had passed over from the Brazil and had become naturalised on the equatorial African seaboard. the Arabs call shrimps and prawns “sea-fleas” (bargúth al-bahr) showing an inland race. (See Pilgrimage i. 322.)

[FN#251] Submission to the Sultan and the tidings of his well-being should content every Eastern subject. But, as Oriental history shows, the form of government is a Despotism tempered by assassination. And under no rule is man socially freer and his condition contrasts strangely with the grinding social tyranny which characterises every mode of democracy or constitutionalism, i.e. political equality.

[FN#252] Here the text has “Markúb” = a shoe; elsewhere “Na’al” = a sandal, especially with wooden sole. In classical Arabia, however, “Na’al” may be a shoe, a horse-shoe (iron-plate, not rim like ours). The Bresl. Edit. has “Watá,” any foot-gear.

[FN#253] Water-melons (batáyikh) says the Mac. Edit. a misprint for Aruz or rice. Water-melons are served up raw cut into square mouthfuls, to be eaten with rice and meat. They serve excellently well to keep the palate clean and cool.

[FN#254] The text recounts the whole story over again—more than European patience can bear.

[FN#255] The usual formula when telling an improbable tale. But here it is hardly called for: the same story is told (on weak authority) of the Alewife, the Three Graziers and Attorney-General Nay (temp. James II. 1577-1634) when five years old (Journ. Asiat. Soc. N.S. xxx. 280). The same feat had been credited to Thomas Egerton, Lord Chancellor in A.D. 1540-1617 (Chalmers, Biographical Dictionary xxiii. 267-68). But the story had already found its way into the popular jest-books such as “Tales and Quick Answers, very Mery and Pleasant to Rede” (1530); “Jacke of Dover’s Quest of Inquirie for the Foole of all Fooles” (1604) under the title “The Foole of Westchester”, and in “Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan, commonly called the King’s Fool.” The banker-bard Rogers (in Italy) was told a similar story concerning a widow of the Lambertini house (xivth century). Thomas Wright (Introduction to the Seven Sages) says he had met the tale in Latin( xiiith-xivth centuries) and a variant in the “Nouveaux Contes à rire” (Amsterdam 1737), under the title “Jugement Subtil du Duc d’Ossone contre Deux Marchands.” Its origin is evidently the old Sindibád-namah translated from Syriac into Greek (“Syntipas,” xith century); into Hebrew (Mishlé Sandabar, xiith century) and from the Arabian version into old Castilian, “Libro de los Engannos et los Asayamientos de las Mugeres” (A.D. 1255), whereof a translation is appended to Professor Comparetti’s Society. The Persian metrical form (an elaboration of one much older) dates from 1375; and gave rise to a host of imitations such as the Turkish Tales of the Forty Wazirs and the Canarese “Kathá Manjari,” where four persons contend about a purse. See also Gladwin’s “Persian Moonshee,” No. vi. of “Pleasing Stories;” and Mr. Clouston’s paper, “The Lost Purse,” in the Glasgow Evening Times. All are the Eastern form of Gavarni’s “Enfants Terribles,” showing the portentous precocity for which some children (infant phenomena, calculating boys, etc. etc.) have been famous.

[FN#256] From the Bresl. Edit. xii. 381. The Sa’lab or Abu Hosayn (Father of the Fortlet) is the fox, in Marocco Akkáb: Talib Yusuf and Wa’wi are the jackal. Arabas have not preserved “Jakal” from the Heb. Shu’al and Persian Shaghal and Persian Shaghál (not Shagul) as the Rev. Mr. Tristram misinforms his readers. (Nat. Hist. p. 85)

[FN#257] The name is old and classical Arabic: in Antar the young Amazon Jaydá was called Judar in public (Story of Jaydá and Khálid). It is also, as will be seen, the name of a quarter in Cairo, and men are often called after such places, e.g. Al-Jubní from the Súk al Jubn in Damascus. The story is exceedingly Egyptian and the style abounds in Cairene vulgarisms, especially in the Bresl. Edit. ix. 311.

[FN#258] Had the merchant left his property to be divided after his death and not made a will he widow would have had only one-eighth instead of a fourth.

[FN#259] Lit. “from tyrant to tyrant,” i.e. from official to official, Al-Zalamah, the “tyranny” of popular parlance.

[FN#260] The coin is omitted in the text but it is evidently the “Nusf” or half-dirham. Lane (iii.235), noting that the dinar is worth 170 “nusfs” in this tale, thinks that it was written (or copied?) after the Osmanh Conquest of Egypt. Unfortunately he cannot tell the precise period when the value of the small change fell so low.

[FN#261] Arab “Yaum mubárak!” still a popular exclamation.

[FN#262] i.e. of the door of daily bread.

[FN#263] Arab. “Sírah,” a small fish differently described (De Sacy, “Relation de l’Egypte par Abd allatif,” pp. 278-288: Lane, Nights iii. 234). It is not found in Sonnini’s list.

[FN#264] A tank or lakelet in the southern parts of Cairo, long ago filled up; Von Hammer believes it inherited the name of the old Charon’s Lake of Memphis, over which corpses were ferried.

[FN#265] Thus making the agreement a kind of religious covenant, as Catholics would recite a Pater or an Ave Maria.

[FN#266] Arab. “Yá miskím”=O poor devil; mesquin, meschino, words evidently derived from the East.

[FN#267] Plur. of Maghribí a Western man, a Moor. I have already derived the word through the Lat. “Maurus” from Maghribiyún. Europeans being unable to pronounce the Ghayn (or gh like the modern Cairenes) would turn it into “Ma’ariyún.” They are mostly of the Maliki school (for which see Sale) and are famous as magicians and treasure-finders. Amongst the suite of the late Amir Abd al-Kadir, who lived many years and died in Damascus, I found several men profoundly versed in Eastern spiritualism and occultism.

[FN#268] The names are respectively, Slave of the Salvation, of the One (God), of the Eternal; of the Compassionate; and of the Loving.

[FN#269] i.e. “the most profound”; the root is that of “Bátiní,” a gnostic, a reprobate.

[FN#270] i.e. the Tall One.

[FN#271] The loud pealing or (ear-) breaking Thunder.

[FN#272] Arab. “Fás and Miknás” which the writer evidently regards as one city. “Fás” means a hatchet, from the tradition of one having been found, says Ibn Sa’íd, when digging the base under the founder Idrís bin Idrís (A.D. 808). His sword was placed on the pinnacle of the minaret built by the Imám Abu Ahmad bin Abi Bakr enclosed in a golden étui studded with pearls and precious stones. From the local pronunciation “Fes” is derived the red cap of the nearer Moslem East (see Ibn Batutah p. 230).

[FN#273] Arab. “Al-Khurj,” whence the Span. Las Alforjas.

[FN#274] Arab. “Kebáb,” mutton or lamb cut into small squares and grilled upon skewers: it is the roast meat of the nearer East where, as in the West, men have not learned to cook meat so as to preserve all its flavour. This is found in the “Asa’o” of the Argentine Gaucho who broils the flesh while still quivering and before the fibre has time to set. Hence it is perfectly tender, if the animal be young, and has a “meaty” taste half lost by keeping

[FN#275] Equivalent to our puritanical “Mercy.”

[FN#276] Arab. “Bukjah,” from the Persian Bukcheh: a favourite way of keeping fine clothes in the East is to lay them folded in a piece of rough long-cloth with pepper and spices to drive away moths.

[FN#277] This is always specified, for respectable men go out of town on horse-back, never on “foot-back,” as our friends the Boers say. I have seen a Syrian put to sore shame when compelled by politeness to walk with me, and every acquaintance he met addressed him “Anta Zalamah!” What! afoot?

[FN#278] This tale, including the Enchanted Sword which slays whole armies, was adopted in Europe as we see in Straparola (iv. 3), and the “Water of Life” which the Grimms found in Hesse, etc., “Gammer Grethel’s German Popular Stories,” Edgar Taylor, Bells, 1878; and now published in fuller form as “Grimm’s Household Tales,” by Mrs. Hunt, with Introduction by A. Lang, 2 vols. 8vo, 1884. It is curious that so biting and carping a critic, who will condescend to notice a misprint in another’s book, should lay himself open to general animadversion by such a rambling farrago of half-digested knowledge as that which composes Mr. Andrew Lang’s Introduction.

[FN#279] These retorts of Judar are exactly what a sharp Egyptian
Fellah would say on such occasions.

[FN#280] Arab. “Salámát,” plur. of Salam, a favourite Egyptian welcome.

[FN#281] This sentence expresses a Moslem idea which greatly puzzles strangers. Arabic has no equivalent of our “Thank you” (Kassara ’llah Khayr-ak being a mere blessing Allah increase thy weal!), nor can Al-lslam express gratitude save by a periphrase. The Moslem acknowledges a favour by blessing the donor and by wishing him increase of prosperity. “May thy shadow never be less!” means, Mayest thou always extend to me thy shelter and protection. I have noticed this before but it merits repetition. Strangers, and especially Englishmen, are very positive and very much mistaken upon a point, which all who have to do with Egyptians and Arabs ought thoroughly to understand. Old dwellers in the East know that the theory of ingratitude in no way interferes with the sense of gratitude innate in man (and beast) and that the “lively sense of favours to come,” is as quick in Orient land as in Europe.

[FN#282] Outside this noble gate, the Bab al-Nay, there is a great cemetery wherein, by the by, lies Burckhardt, my predecessor as a Hájj to Meccah and Al-Medinah. Hence many beggars are always found squatting in its neighbourhood.

[FN#283] Friends sometimes walk alongside the rider holding the stirrup in sign of affection and respect, especially to the returning pilgrim.

[FN#284] Equivalent to our Alas! It is woman’s word never used by men; and foreigners must be most careful of this distinction under pain of incurring something worse than ridicule. I remember an officer in the Bombay Army who, having learned Hindostani from women, always spoke of himself in the feminine and hugely scandalised the Sepoys.

[FN#285] i.e. a neighbour. The “quarters” of a town in the East are often on the worst of terms. See Pilgrimage.

[FN#286] In the patriarchal stage of society the mother waits upon her adult sons. Even in Dalmatia I found, in many old-fashioned houses, the ladies of the family waiting upon the guests. Very pleasant, but somewhat startling at first.

[FN#287] Here the apodosis would be “We can all sup together.”

[FN#288] Arab. “Záwiyah” (=oratory), which is to a Masjid what a chapel is to a church.

[FN#289] Arab. “Kasr,” prop. a palace: so the Tuscan peasant speaks of his “palazzo.”

[FN#290] This sale of a free-born Moslem was mere felony. But many centuries later Englishmen used to be sold and sent to the plantations in America.

[FN#291] Arab. “Kawwás,” lit. an archer, suggesting les archers de la Sainte Hermandade. In former days it denoted a sergeant, an apparitor, an officer who executed magisterial orders. In modern Egypt he became a policeman (Pilgrimage i. 29). As “Cavass” he appears in gorgeous uniform and sword, an orderly attached to public offices and Consulates.

[FN#292] A purely imaginary King.

[FN#293] The Bresl. Edit. (ix. 370) here and elsewhere uses the word “Nútiyá”=Nauta, for the common Bahríyah or Malláh.

[FN#294] Arab. “Tawaf,” the name given to the sets (Ashwat) of seven circuits with the left shoulder presented to the Holy House, that is walking “widdershins” or “against the sun” (“with the sun” being like the movement of a watch). For the requisites of this rite see Pilgrimage iii. 234.

[FN#295] Arab. “Akh”; brother has a wide signification amongst
Moslems and may be used to and of any of the Saving Faith.

[FN#296] Said by the master when dismissing a servant and meaning, “I have not failed in my duty to thee!” The answer is, “Allah acquit thee thereof!”

[FN#297] A Moslem prison is like those of Europe a century ago; to think of it gives gooseflesh. Easterns laugh at our idea of penitentiary and the Arabs of Bombay call it “Al-Bistán” (the Garden) because the court contains a few trees and shrubs. And with them a garden always suggests an idea of Paradise. There are indeed only two efficacious forms of punishment all the world over, corporal for the poor and fines for the rich, the latter being the severer form.

[FN#298] i.e. he shall answer for this.

[FN#299] A pun upon “Khalíyah” (bee hive) and “Khaliyah” (empty). Khalíyah is properly a hive of bees with a honey-comb in the hollow of a tree-trunk, opposed to Kawwárah, hive made of clay or earth (Al-Hariri; Ass. of Tiflis). There are many other terms, for Arabs are curious about honey. Pilgrimage iii. 110.

[FN#300] Lane (iii. 237) supposes by this title that the author referred his tale to the days of the Caliphate. “Commander of the Faithful” was, I have said, the style adopted by Omar in order to avoid the clumsiness of “Caliph” (successor) of the Caliph (Abu Bakr) of the Apostle of Allah.

[FN#301] eastern thieves count four modes of housebreaking, (1)picking out burnt bricks; (2) cutting through unbaked bricks; (3) wetting a mud wall and (4) boring through a wooden wall (Vikram and the Vampire p. 172).

[FN#302] Arab. “Zabbat,” lit. a lizard (fem.) also a wooden lock, the only one used throughout Egypt. An illustration of its curious mechanism is given in Lane (M. E. Introduction)

[FN#303] Arab. “Dabbús.” The Eastern mace is well known to English collectors, it is always of metal, and mostly of steel, with a short handle like our facetiously called “life-preterver” The head is in various forms, the simplest a ball, smooth and round, or broken into sundry high and angular ridges like a melon, and in select weapons shaped like the head of some animal. bull, etc. See Night dcxlvi.

[FN#304] The red habit is a sign of wrath and vengeance and the Persian Kings like Fath Al Shah, used to wear it when about to order some horrid punishment, such as the “Shakk”; in this a man was hung up by his heels and cut in two from the fork downwards to the neck, when a turn of the chopper left that untouched. White robes denoted peace and mercy as well as joy. The “white” hand and “black” hand have been explained. A “white death” is quiet and natural, with forgiveness of sins. A “black death” is violent and dreadful, as by strangulation; a “green death” is robing in rags and patches like a dervish, and a “red death” is by war or bloodshed (A. P. ii. 670). Among the mystics it is the resistance of man to his passions.

[FN#305] This in the East is the way “pour se faire valoir”; whilst Europeans would hold it a mere “bit of impudence.” aping dignity.

[FN#306] The Chief Mufti or Doctor of the Law, an appointment first made by the Osmanli Mohammed II., when he captured Constantinople in A.D. 1453. Before that time the functions were discharged by the Kázi al-Kuzat (Kazi-in-Chief), the Chancellor.

[FN#307] So called because here lived the makers of crossbows (Arab. Bunduk now meaning a fire piece, musket, etc.). It is the modern district about the well-known Khan al-Hamzawi.

[FN#308] Pronounced “Goodareeyyah,” and so called after one of the troops of the Fatimite Caliphs. The name “Yamániyah” is probably due to the story-teller’s inventiveness.

[FN#309] I have noted that as a rule in The Nights poetical justice is administered with much rigour and exactitude. Here, however, the tale-teller allows the good brother to be slain by the two wicked brothers as he permitted the adulterous queens to escape the sword of Kamar al-Zaman. Dr. Steingass brings to my notice that I have failed to do justice to the story of Sharrkán (vol. ii., p. 172), where I note that the interest is injured by the gratuitous incest But this has a deeper meaning and a grander artistic effect. Sharrkán begins with most unbrotherly feelings towards his father’s children by a second wife. But Allah’s decree forces him to love his half-sister despite himself, and awe and repentance convert the savage, who joys at the news of his brother’s reported death, to a loyal and devoted subject of the same brother. But Judar with all his goodness proved himself an arrant softy and was no match for two atrocious villains. And there may be overmuch of forgiveness as of every other good thing.

[FN#310] In such case the “’iddah” would be four months and ten days.

[FN#311] Not quite true. Weil’s German version, from a MS. in the Ducal Library of Gotha gives the “Story of Judar of Cairo and Mahmud of Tunis” in a very different form. It has been pleasantly “translated (from the German) and edited” by Mr. W. F. Kirby, of the British Museum, under the title of “The New Arabian Nights” (London: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co.), and the author kindly sent me a copy. “New Arabian Nights” seems now to have become a fashionable title applied without any signification: such at least is the pleasant collection of Nineteenth Century Novelettes, published under that designation by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, 1884.

[FN#312] Von Hammer holds this story to be a satire on Arab superstition and the compulsory propagation, the compelle intrare, of Al-Islam. Lane (iii. 235) omits it altogether for reasons of his own. I differ with great diffidence from the learned Baron whose Oriental reading was extensive; but the tale does not seem to justify his explanations. It appears to me simply one of the wilder romances, full of purposeful anachronisms (e.g. dated between Abraham and Moses, yet quoting the Koran) and written by someone familiar with the history of Oman. The style too is peculiar, in many places so abrupt that much manipulation is required to make it presentable: it suits, however, the rollicking, violent brigand-like life which it depicts. There is only one incident about the end which justifies Von Hammer’s suspicion.

[FN#313] The Persian hero of romance who converses with the
Simurgh or Griffin.

[FN#314] The word is as much used in Egypt as wunderbar in
Germany. As an exclamation is equivalent to “mighty fine!”

[FN#315] In modern days used in a bad sense, as a freethinker, etc. So Dalilah the Wily is noted to be a philosopheress.

[FN#316] The game is much mixed up after Arab fashion. The
“Tufat” is the Siyáhgosh= Black-ears, of India (Felis caracal),
the Persian lynx, which gives very good sport with Dachshunds.
Lynxes still abound in the thickets near Cairo

[FN#317] The “Sons of Kahtán,” especially the Ya’arubah tribe, made much history in Oman. Ya’arub (the eponymus) is written Ya’arab and Ya’arib; but Ya’arub (from Ya’arubu Aorist of ’Aruba) is best, because according to all authorities he was the first to cultivate primitive Arabian speech and Arabic poetry. (Caussin de Perceval’s Hist. des Arabes i.50, etc.)

[FN#318] He who shooteth an arrow by night. See the death of Antar shot down in the dark by the archer Jazár, son of Jábír, who had been blinded by a red hot sabre passed before his eyes. I may note that it is a mere fiction of Al-Asma’i, as the real ’Antar (or ’Antarah) lived to a good old age, and probably died the “straw death.”

[FN#319] See vol. ii., p. 77, for a reminiscence of masterful
King Kulayb and his Himá or domain. Here the phrase would mean,
“None could approach them when they were wroth; none were safe
from their rage.”

[FN#320] The sons of Nabhán (whom Mr. Badger calls Nebhán) supplied the old Maliks or Kings of Oman. (History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman, etc., London, Hakluyt Soc. 1871.)

[FN#321] This is a sore insult in Arabia, where they have not dreamt of a “Jawab-club,” like that of Calcutta in the old days, to which only men who had been half a dozen times “jawab’d” (= refused in Anglo-lndian jargon) could belong. “I am not a stallion to be struck on the nose,” say the Arabs.

[FN#322] Again “inverted speech”: it is as if we said, “Now, you’re a damned fine fellow, so,” etc. “Allah curse thee! Thou hast guarded thy women alive and dead;” said the man of Sulaym in admiration after thrusting his spear into the eye of dead Rabi’ah.

[FN#323] The Badawi use javelins or throw-spears of many kinds, especially the prettily worked Mizrák (Pilgrimage i. 349); spears for footmen (Shalfah, a bamboo or palm-stick with a head about a hand broad), and the knightly lance, a male bamboo some 12 feet long with iron heel and a long tapering point often of open work or damascened steel, under which are tufts of black ostrich feathers, one or two. I never saw a crescent-shaped head as the text suggests. It is a “Pundonor” not to sell these weapons: you say, “Give me that article and I will satisfy thee!” After which the Sons of the Sand will haggle over each copper as if you were cheapening a sheep. (Ibid. iii. 73.)

[FN#324] The shame was that Gharib had seen the girl and had fallen in love with her beauty instead of applying for her hand in recognised form. These punctilios of the Desert are peculiarly nice and tetchy; nor do strangers readily realise them.

[FN#325] The Arabs derive these Noachidć from Imlik, great-grandson of Shem, who after the confusion of tongues settled at Sana’a, then moved North to Meccah and built the fifth Ka’abah. The dynastic name was Arkam, M. C. de Perceval’s “Arcam,” which he would identify with Rekem (Numbers xxxi. 8). The last Arkam fell before an army sent by Moses to purge the Holy Land (Al-Hijaz) of idolatry. Commentators on the Koran (chaps. vii.) call the Pharaoh of Moses Al-Walid and derive him from the Amalekites: we have lately ascertained that this Mene-Ptah was of the Shepherd-Kings and thus, according to the older Moslems, the Hyksos were of the seed of Imlik. (Pilgrimage ii. 116, and iii. 190.) In Syria they fought with Joshua son of Nun. The tribe or rather nationality was famous and powerful: we know little about it and I may safely predict that when the Amalekite country shall have been well explored, it will produce monuments second in importance only to the Hittites. “A nomadic tribe which occupied the Peninsula of Sinai” (Smith’s Dict. of the Bible) is peculiarly superficial, even for that most superficial of books.

[FN#326] The Amalekites were giants and lived 500 years.
(Pilgrimage, loc. cit.)

[FN#327] His men being ninety against five hundred.

[FN#328] Arab. “Kaum” (pron. Gúm) here=a razzia, afterwards=a tribe. Relations between Badawi tribes are of three kinds; (1) Asháb, allies offensive and defensive, friends who intermarry; (2) Kímán (plur. of Kaum) when the blood-feud exists, and (3) Akhwan= brothers. The last is a complicated affair, “Akháwat” or brotherhood, denotes the tie between patron and client (a noble and an ignoble tribe) or between the stranger and the tribe which claims an immemorial and unalienable right to its own lands. Hence a small fee (Al-Rifkah) must be paid and the traveller and his beast become “dakhíl,” or entitled to brother-help. The guardian is known in the West as Rafík; Rabí’a in Eastern Arabia; Ghafír in “Sinai ;” amongst the Somal, Abbán and the Gallas Mogásá. Further details are given in Pilgrimage iii. 85-87.

[FN#329] Arab. “Mál,” here=Badawi money, flocks and herds, our “fee” from feoh, vieh, cattle; as pecunia from pecus, etc., etc.

[FN#330] The litholatry of the old Arabs is undisputed: Manát the goddess-idol was a large rude stone and when the Meccans sent out colonies these carried with them stones of the Holy Land to be set up and worshipped like the Ka’abah. I have suggested (Pilgrimage iii. 159) that the famous Black Stone of Meccah, which appears to me a large aerolite, is a remnant of this worship and that the tomb of Eve near Jeddah was the old “Sakhrah tawílah” or Long Stone (ibid. iii. 388). Jeddah is now translated the grandmother, alluding to Eve, a myth of late growth: it is properly Juddah=a plain lacking water.

[FN#331] The First Adites, I have said, did not all perish: a few believers retired with the prophet Hud (Heber ?) to Hazramaut. The Second Adites, who had Márib of the Dam for capital and Lukman for king, were dispersed by the Flood of Al-Yaman. Their dynasty lasted a thousand years, the exodus taking place according to De Sacy in A.D. 150-170 or shortly after A.D. 100 (C. de Perceval), and was overthrown by Ya’arub bin Kahtán, the first Arabist; see Night dcxxv.

[FN#332] This title has been noticed: it suggests the “Saint Abraham” of our medaeval travellers. Every great prophet has his agnomen: Adam the Pure (or Elect) of Allah, Noah the Nájiy (or saved) of Allah; Moses (Kalím) the Speaker with Allah; Jesus the Rúh (Spirit breath) or Kalám (the word) of Allah. For Mohammed’s see Al-Busiri’s Mantle-poem vv. 31-58.

[FN#333] Koran (chaps. iii. 17), “Verily the true religion in the
sight of Allah is Islam” i.e. resigning or devoting myself to the
Lord, with a suspicion of “Salvation” conveyed by the root
Salima, he was safe.

[FN#334] Arab. “Sá’ikah,” which is supposed to be a stone. The allusion is to Antar’s sword, “Dhámi,” made of a stone, black, brilliant and hard as a rock (an aerolite), which had struck a camel on the right side and had come out by the left. The blacksmith made it into a blade three feet long by two spans broad, a kind of falchion or chopper, cased it with gold and called it Dhámi (the “Trenchant”) from its sharpness. But he said to the owner:—

The sword is trenchant, O son of the Ghalib clan,
Trenchant in sooth, but where is the sworder-man?

Whereupon the owner struck off the maker’s head, a most satisfactory answer to all but one.

[FN#335] Arab. “Kutá’ah”: lit. a bit cut off, fragment, nail-paring, and here un diminutif. I have described this scene in Pilgrimage iii. 68. Latro often says, “Thy gear is wanted by the daughter of my paternal uncle” (wife), and thus parades his politeness by asking in a lady’s name.

[FN#336] As will appear the two brothers were joined by a party of horsemen.

[FN#337] “Four” says the Mac. Edit. forgetting Falhun with characteristic inconsequence.

[FN#338] Muhammad (the deserving great praise) is the name used by men; Ahmad (more laudable) by angels, and Mahmúd (praised) by devils. For a similar play upon the name, “Allah Allah Muhammad ast” (God is God the praiseworthy) see Dabistan ii. 416.

[FN#339] The Mac. Edit. here gives “Sás,” but elsewhere “Sásá,” which is the correct form

[FN#340] Sapor the Second (A.D. 310-330) was compelled to attack the powerful Arab hordes of Oman, most of whom, like the Tayy, Aus and Khazraj, the Banu Nabhán and the Hináwi left Al-Yaman A.D. 100-170, and settled in the north and northeast of Al-Najd This great exodus and dispersion of the tribes was caused, as has been said, by the bursting of the Dam of Márib originally built by Abd al-Shams Sabá, father of Himyar. These Yamanian races were plunged into poverty and roamed northwards, planting themselves amongst the Arabs of Ma’add son of Adnán. Hence the kingdom of Ghassan in Syria whose phylarchs under the Romans (i.e. Greek Emperors of Constantinople) controlled Palestine Tertia, the Arabs of Syria and Palestine, and the kingdom of Hárah, whose Lakhmite Princes, dependent upon Persia, managed the Arabs of the Euphrates, Oman and Al-Bahrayn. The Ma’addites still continued to occupy the central plateau of Arabia, a feature analogous with India “above the Ghauts.”

[FN#341] I have described (Pilgrimage i. 370) the grisly spot which a Badawi will dignify by the name of Wady al-Ward=Vale of Roses.

[FN#342] Koran xiii. 3, “Of every fruit two different kinds” i.e. large and small, black and white, sweet and sour.

[FN#343] A graft upon an almond tree, which makes its kernel sweet and gives it an especial delicacy of favour. See Russell’s (excellent) Natural History of Aleppo, p. 21.

[FN#344] So called from the flavour of the kernel it is well-known at Damascus where a favourite fruit is the dried apricot with an almond by way of kernel. There are many preparations of apricots, especially the “Mare’s skin” (Jild al-fares or Kamar al-din) a paste folded into sheets and exactly resembling the article from which it takes a name. When wanted it is dissolved in water and eaten as a relish with bread or biscuit (Pilgrimage i. 289).

[FN#345] “Ante Kamá takúl”=the vulgarest Cairene.

[FN#346] This may be Ctesiphon, the ancient capital of the
Chosroës, on the Tigris below Baghdad; and spoken of elsewhere in
The Nights; especially as, in Night dclxvii., it is called
Isbanir Al-Madáin; Madáin Kisrá (the cities of Chosroës) being
the Arabic name of the old dual city.

[FN#347] Koran vi. 103. The translation is Sale’s which I have generally preferred, despite many imperfections: Lane renders this sentence, “The eyes see not Him, but He seeth the eyes ;” and Mr. Rodwell, “No vision taketh in Him ( ?), but He taketh in all vision ,” and (better) “No eyesight reacheth to Him.”

[FN#348] Sale (sect. 1.) tells us all that was then known of these three which with Yá’úk and Nasr and the three “daughters of God,” Goddesses or Energies (the Hindu Saktis) Allát Al-Uzzá and Manát mentioned in the Koran were the chiefs of the pre-lslamitic Pantheon. I cannot but suspect that all will be connected with old Babylonian worship. Al-Baydáwi (in Kor. Ixxi. 22) says of Wadd, Suwá’a, Yaghus, Ya’úk and Nasr that they were names of pious men between Adam and Noah, afterwards deified: Yaghús was the giant idol of the Mazhaj tribe at Akamah of Al-Yaman and afterwards at Najrán Al-Uzzá was widely worshipped: her idol (of the tree Semurat) belonging to Ghatafán was destroyed after the Prophet’s order by Khálid bin Walíd. Allát or Al-Lát is written by Pocock (spec. 110) “Ilahat” i.e. deities in general. But Herodotus evidently refers to one god when he makes the Arabs worship Dionysus as {Greek letters} and Urania as {Greek letters} and the “tashdid” in Allát would, to a Greek ear, introduce another syllable (Alilat). This was the goddess of the Kuraysh and Thakíf whose temple at Taíf was circuited like the Ka’abah before Mohammed destroyed it.

[FN#349] Shays (Shayth) is Ab Seth (Father Seth,) of the Hebrews, a name containing the initial and terminal letters of the Egypto-Phoenico-Hebrew Alphabet and the “Abjad” of the Arabs. Those curious about its connection with the name of Allah (El), the Zodiacal signs and with the constellations, visions but not wholly uninteresting, will consult “Unexplored Syria” (vol. i. 33).

[FN#350] The exclamation of an honest Fellah.

[FN#351] This is Antar with the Chosroë who “kissed the Absian hero between the eyes and bade him adieu, giving him as a last token a rich robe.” The coarser hand of the story-teller exaggerates everything till he makes it ridiculous.

[FN#352] The context suggests thee this is a royal form of “throwing the handkerchief;” but it does not occur elsewhere. In face, the European idea seems to have arisen from the oriental practice of sending presents in napkins or kerchiefs.

[FN#353] i.e. if the disappointed suitor attack me.

[FN#354] i.e. if ever I be tempted to deny it.

[FN#355] Arab. “Musáfahah,” the Arab fashion of shaking hands. The right palms are applied flat to each other; then the fingers are squeezed and the hand is raised to the forehead (Pilgrimage ii. 332).

[FN#356] A city and province of Khuzistán the old Susiana. Dasht may be either the town in Khorasan or the “forests” (dasht) belonging to Ahwáz (Ahuaz in D’Herbelot).

[FN#357] This is the contest between “Antar and the Satrap Khosrewan at the Court of Monzer.” but without its tragical finish.

[FN#358] Elliptical “he rode out in great state, that is to say if greatness can truly be attributed to man,” for, etc.

[FN#359] According to D’Herbelot (s.v. Rostac) it is a name given to the villages of Khorasan as “Souad” (Sawád) to those of Irak and Makhlaf to those of Al-Yaman: there is, how ever, a well-known Al-Rustak (which like Al-Bahrayn always takes the article) in the Province of Oman West of Maskat, and as it rhymes with “Irak” it does well enough. Mr. Badger calls this ancient capital of the Ya’arubah Imams “er-Rasták” (Imams of Oman).

[FN#360] i.e. a furious knight.

[FN#361] In the Mac. Edit. “Hassán,” which may rhyme with Nabhán, but it is a mere blunder.

[FN#362] In Classical Arabic Irak (like Yaman, Bahrayn and
Rusták) always takes the article.

[FN#363] The story-teller goes back from Kufah founded in Omar’s day to the times of Abraham.

[FN#364] This manuvre has often been practiced; especially by the first Crusaders under Bohemond (Gibbon) and in late years by the Arab slavers in Eastern Intertropical Africa. After their skirmishes with the natives they quartered and “bristled” the dead like game, roasted and boiled the choice pieces and pretended to eat the flesh. The enemy, who was not afraid of death, was struck with terror by the idea of being devoured, and this seems instinctive to the undeveloped mind.