Footnotes

[FN#1] Arab. "Zarábín" (pl. of zarbún), lit. slaves’ shoes or
sandals (see vol. iii. p. 336) the chaussure worn by Mamelukes.
Here the word is used in its modern sense of stout shoes or
walking boots.

[FN#2] The popular word means goodness, etc.

[FN#3] Dozy translates "’Urrah"=Une Mégère: Lane terms it a
"vulgar word signifying a wicked, mischievous shrew." But it is
the fem. form of ’Urr=dung; not a bad name for a daughter of
Billingsgate.

[FN#4] i.e. black like the book of her actions which would be
shown to her on Doomsday.

[FN#5] The "Kunáfah" (vermicelli-cake) is a favourite dish of
wheaten flour, worked somewhat finer than our vermicelli, fried
with samn (butter melted and clarified) and sweetened with honey
or sugar. See vol. v. 300.

[FN#6] i.e. Will send us aid. The Shrew’s rejoinder is highly
impious in Moslem opinion.

[FN#7] Arab. Asal Katr; "a fine kind of black honey, treacle"
says Lane; but it is afterwards called cane-honey (’Asal Kasab).
I have never heard it applied to "the syrup which exudes from
ripe dates, when hung up."

[FN#8] Arab. "’Aysh," lit.=that on which man lives: "Khubz" being
the more popular term. "Hubz and Joobn" is well known at Malta.

[FN#9] Insinuating that he had better make peace with his wife by
knowing her carnally. It suggests the story of the Irishman who
brought over to the holy Catholic Church three several Protestant
wives, but failed with the fourth on account of the decline of
his "Convarter."

[FN#10] Arab. "Asal Kasab," i.e. Sugar, possibly made from
sorgho-stalks Holcus sorghum of which I made syrup in Central
Africa.

[FN#11] For this unpleasant euphemy see vol. iv. 215.

[FN#12] This is a true picture of the leniency with which women
were treated in the Kazi’s court at Cairo; and the effect was
simply deplorable. I have noted that matters have grown even
worse since the English occupation, for history repeats herself;
and the same was the case in Afghanistan and in Sind. We govern
too much in these matters, which should be directed not changed,
and too little in other things, especially in exacting respect
for the conquerors from the conquered.

[FN#13] Arab. "Báb al-’Áli"=the high gate or Sublime Porte; here
used of the Chief Kazi’s court: the phrase is a descendant of the
Coptic "Per-ao" whence "Pharaoh."

[FN#14] "Abú Tabak," in Cairene slang, is an officer who arrests
by order of the Kazi and means "Father of whipping" (=tabaka, a
low word for beating, thrashing, whopping) because he does his
duty with all possible violence in terrorem.

[FN#15] Bab al-Nasr the Eastern or Desert Gate: see vol. vi. 234.

[FN#16] This is a mosque outside the great gate built by Al-Malik
al-’Ádil Tuman Bey in A.H. 906 (=1501). The date is not worthy of
much remark for these names are often inserted by the scribe—for
which see Terminal Essay.

[FN#17] Arab. "’Ámir" lit.=one who inhabiteth, a peopler; here
used in technical sense. As has been seen, ruins and impure
places such as privies and Hammám-baths are the favourite homes
of the Jinn. The fire-drake in the text was summoned by the
Cobbler’s exclamation and even Marids at times do a kindly
action.

[FN#18] The style is modern Cairene jargon.

[FN#19] Purses or gold pieces see vol. ix. 313.

[FN#20] i.e. I am a Cairene.

[FN#21] Arab. "Darb al-Ahmar," a street still existing near to
and outside the noble Bab Zuwaylah, for which see vol. i. 269.

[FN#22] Arab. "’Attár," perfume-seller and druggist; the word is
connected with our "Ottar" (’Atr).

[FN#23] Arab. "Mudarris" lit.=one who gives lessons or lectures
(dars) and pop. applied to a professor in a collegiate mosque
like Al-Azhar of Cairo.

[FN#24] This thoroughly dramatic scene is told with a charming
naïveté. No wonder that The Nights has been made the basis of a
national theatre amongst the Turks.

[FN#25] Arab. "Taysh" lit.=vertigo, swimming of head.

[FN#26] Here Trébutien (iii. 265) reads "la ville de Khaïtan (so
the Mac. Edit. iv. 708) capital du royaume de Sohatan." Ikhtiyán
Lane suggests to be fictitious: Khatan is a district of Tartary
east of Káshgar, so called by Sádik al-Isfaháni p. 24.

[FN#27] This is a true picture of the tact and savoir faire of
the Cairenes. It was a study to see how, under the late Khedive
they managed to take precedence of Europeans who found themselves
in the background before they knew it. For instance, every Bey,
whose degree is that of a Colonel was made an "Excellency" and
ranked accordingly at Court whilst his father, some poor Fellah,
was ploughing the ground. Tanfík Pasha began his ill-omened rule
by always placing natives close to him in the place of honour,
addressing them first and otherwise snubbing Europeans who, when
English, were often too obtuse to notice the petty insults
lavished upon them.

[FN#28] Arab. "Kathír" (pron. Katir)=much: here used in its slang
sense, "no end."

[FN#29] i.e. "May the Lord soon make thee able to repay me; but
meanwhile I give it to thee for thy own free use."

[FN#30] Punning upon his name. Much might be written upon the
significance of names as ominous of good and evil; but the
subject is far too extensive for a footnote.

[FN#31] Lane translates "Ánisa-kum" by "he hath delighted you by
his arrival"; Mr. Payne "I commend him to you."

[FN#32] Arab. "Fatúrát,"=light food for the early breakfast of
which the "Fatírah"-cake was a favourite item. See vol. i. 300.

[FN#33] A dark red dye (Lane).

[FN#34] Arab. "Jadíd," see vol. viii. 121.

[FN#35] Both the texts read thus, but the reading has little
sense. Ma’aruf probably would say, "I fear that my loads will be
long coming."

[FN#36] One of the many formulas of polite refusal.

[FN#37] Each bazar, in a large city like Damascus, has its tall
and heavy wooden doors which are locked every evening and opened
in the morning by the Ghafir or guard. The "silver key," however,
always lets one in.

[FN#38] Arab. "Wa lá Kabbata hámiyah," a Cairene vulgarism
meaning, "There came nothing to profit him nor to rid the people
of him."

[FN#39] Arab. "Kammir," i.e. brown it before the fire, toast it.

[FN#40] It is insinuated that he had lied till he himself
believed the lie to be truth—not an uncommon process, I may
remark.

[FN#41] Arab. "Rijál"=the Men, equivalent to the Walis, Saints or
Santons; with perhaps an allusion to the Rijál al-Ghayb, the
Invisible Controls concerning whom I have quoted Herklots in vol.
ii. 211.

[FN#42] A saying attributed to Al-Hariri (Lane). It is good
enough to be his: the Persians say, "Cut not down the tree thou
plantedst," and the idea is universal throughout the East.

[FN#43] A quotation from Al-Hariri (Ass. of the Badawin). Ash’ab
(ob. A.H. 54), a Medinite servant of Caliph Osman, was proverbial
for greed and sanguine, Micawber-like expectation of "windfalls."
The Scholiast Al-Sharíshi (of Xeres) describes him in
Theophrastic style. He never saw a man put hand to pocket without
expecting a present, or a funeral go by without hoping for a
legacy, or a bridal procession without preparing his own house,
hoping they might bring the bride to him by mistake. * When
asked if he knew aught greedier than himself he said "Yes; a
sheep I once kept upon my terrace-roof seeing a rainbow mistook
it for a rope of hay and jumping to seize it broke its neck!"
Hence "Ash’ab’s sheep" became a by-word (Preston tells the tale
in full, p. 288).

[FN#44] i.e. "Show a miser money and hold him back, if you can."

[FN#45] He wants £40,000 to begin with.

[FN#46] i.e. Arab. "Sabíhat al-’urs" the morning after the
wedding. See vol. i. 269.

[FN#47] Another sign of modern composition as in Kamar al-Zaman
II.

[FN#48] Arab. "Al-Jink" (from Turk.) are boys and youths mostly
Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Turks, who dress in woman’s dress
with long hair braided. Lane (M. E. chapts. xix. and xxv.) gives
same account of the customs of the "Gink" (as the Egyptians call
them) but cannot enter into details concerning these catamites.
Respectable Moslems often employ them to dance at festivals in
preference to the Ghawázi-women, a freak of Mohammedan decorum.
When they grow old they often preserve their costume, and a
glance at them makes a European’s blood run cold.

[FN#49] Lane translates this, "May Allah and the Rijal retaliate
upon thy temple!"

[FN#50] Arab. "Yá aba ’l-lithámayn," addressed to his member.
Lathm the root means kissing or breaking; so he would say, "O
thou who canst take her maidenhead whilst my tongue does away
with the virginity of her mouth." "He breached the citadel"
(which is usually square) "in its four corners" signifying that
he utterly broke it down.

[FN#51] A mystery to the Author of Proverbs (xxx. 18-19),

There be three things which are too wondrous for me,
The way of an eagle in the air;
The way of a snake upon a rock;
And the way of a man with a maid.

[FN#52] Several women have described the pain to me as much
resembling the drawing of a tooth.

[FN#53] As we should say, "play fast and loose."

[FN#54] Arab. "Náhí-ka" lit.=thy prohibition but idiomatically
used=let it suffice thee!

[FN#55] A character-sketch like that of Princess Dunya makes
ample amends for a book full of abuse of women. And yet the
superficial say that none of the characters have much personal
individuality.

[FN#56] This is indeed one of the touches of nature which makes
all the world kin.

[FN#57] As we are in Tartary "Arabs" here means plundering
nomades, like the Persian "Iliyát" and other shepherd races.

[FN#58] The very cruelty of love which hates nothing so much as a
rejected lover. The Princess, be it noted, is not supposed to be
merely romancing, but speaking with the second sight, the
clairvoyance, of perfect affection. Men seem to know very little
upon this subject, though every one has at times been more or
less startled by the abnormal introvision and divination of
things hidden which are the property and prerogative of perfect
love.

[FN#59] The name of the Princess meaning "The World," not unusual
amongst Moslem women.

[FN#60] Another pun upon his name, "Ma’aruf."

[FN#61] Arab. "Naká," the mound of pure sand which delights the
eye of the Badawi leaving a town. See vol. i. 217, for the lines
and explanation in Night cmlxiv. vol. ix. p. 250.

[FN#62] Euphemistic: "I will soon fetch thee food." To say this
bluntly might have brought misfortune.

[FN#63] Arab. "Kafr"=a village in Egypt and Syria e.g. Capernaum
(Kafr Nahum).

[FN#64] He has all the bonhomie of the Cairene and will do a
kindness whenever he can.

[FN#65] i.e. the Father of Prosperities: pron. Aboosa’ádát; as in
the Tale of Hasan of Bassorah.

[FN#66] Koran lxxxix. "The Daybreak" which also mentions Thamud
and Pharaoh.

[FN#67] In Egypt the cheapest and poorest of food, never seen at
a hotel table d’hôte.

[FN#68] The beautiful girls who guard ensorcelled hoards: See
vol. vi. 109.

[FN#69] Arab. "Asákir," the ornaments of litters, which are
either plain balls of metal or tapering cones based on crescents
or on balls and crescents. See in Lane (M. E. chapt. xxiv.) the
sketch of the Mahmal.

[FN#70] Arab. "Amm"=father’s brother, courteously used for
"father-in-law," which suggests having slept with his daughter,
and which is indecent in writing. Thus by a pleasant fiction the
husband represents himself as having married his first cousin.

[FN#71] i.e. a calamity to the enemy: see vol. ii. 87 and passim.

[FN#72] Both texts read "Asad" (lion) and Lane accepts it: there
is no reason to change it for "Hásid" (Envier), the Lion being
the Sultan of the Beasts and the most majestic.

[FN#73] The Cairene knew his fellow Cairene and was not to be
taken in by him.

[FN#74] Arab. "Hizám": Lane reads "Khizám"=a nose-ring for which
see appendix to Lane’s M. E. The untrained European eye dislikes
these decorations and there is certainly no beauty in the hoops
which Hindu women insert through the nostrils, camel-fashion, as
if to receive the cord-acting bridle. But a drop-pearl hanging to
the septum is at least as pretty as the heavy pendants by which
some European women lengthen their ears.

[FN#75] Arab. "Shamtá," one of the many names of wine, the
"speckled" alluding to the bubbles which dance upon the freshly
filled cup.

[FN#76] i.e. in the cask. These "merry quips" strongly suggest
the dismal toasts of our not remote ancestors.

[FN#77] Arab. "A’láj" plur. of "’Ilj" and rendered by Lane "the
stout foreign infidels." The next line alludes to the cupbearer
who was generally a slave and a non-Moslem.

[FN#78] As if it were a bride. See vol. vii. 198. The stars of
Jauzá (Gemini) are the cupbearer’s eyes.

[FN#79] i.e. light-coloured wine.

[FN#80] The usual homage to youth and beauty.

[FN#81] Alluding to the cup.

[FN#82] Here Abu Nowas whose name always ushers in some
abomination alluded to the "Ghulámiyah" or girl dressed like boy
to act cupbearer. Civilisation has everywhere the same devices
and the Bordels of London and Paris do not ignore the "she-boy,"
who often opens the door.

[FN#83] Abdallah ibn al-Mu’tazz, son of Al-Mu’tazz bi ’llah, the
13th Abbaside, and great-great-grandson of Harun al-Rashid. He
was one of the most renowned poets of the third century (A.H.)
and died A.D. 908, strangled by the partisans of his nephew
Al-Muktadir bi ’llah, 18th Abbaside.

[FN#84] Jazírat ibn Omar, an island and town on the Tigris north
of Mosul. "Some versions of the poem, from which these verses are
quoted, substitute El-Mutireh, a village near Samara (a town on
the Tigris, 60 miles north of Baghdad), for El-Jezireh, i.e.
Jeziret ibn Omar." (Payne.)

[FN#85] The Convent of Abdun on the east bank of the Tigris
opposite the Jezirah was so called from a statesman who caused it
to be built. For a variant of these lines see Ibn Khallikan, vol.
ii. 42; here we miss "the shady groves of Al-Matírah."

[FN#86] Arab. "Ghurrah" the white blaze on a horse’s brow. In Ibn
Khallikan the bird is the lark.

[FN#87] Arab. "Táy’i"=thirsty used with Jáy’i=hungry.

[FN#88] Lit. "Kohl’d with Ghunj" for which we have no better word
than "coquetry." But see vol. v. 80. It corresponds with the
Latin crissare for women and cevere for men.

[FN#89] i.e. gold-coloured wine, as the Vino d’Oro.

[FN#90] Compare the charming song of Abu Miján translated from
the German of Dr. Weil in Bohn’s Edit. of Ockley (p. 149),

When the Death-angel cometh mine eyes to close,
Dig my grave ’mid the vines on the hill’s fair side;
For though deep in earth may my bones repose,
The juice of the grape shall their food provide.
Ah, bury me not in a barren land,
Or Death will appear to me dread and drear!
While fearless I’ll wait what he hath in hand I
An the scent of the vineyard my spirit cheer.

The glorious old drinker!

[FN#91] Arab. "Rub’a al-Kharáb" in Ibn al-Wardi Central Africa
south of the Nile-sources, one of the richest regions in the
world. Here it prob. alludes to the Rub’a al-Kháli or Great
Arabian Desert: for which see Night dclxxvi. In rhetoric it is
opposed to the "Rub’a Maskún," or populated fourth of the world,
the rest being held to be ocean.

[FN#92] This is the noble resignation of the Moslem. What a
dialogue there would have been in a European book between man and
devil!

[FN#93] Arab. "Al-’iddah" the period of four months and ten days
which must elapse before she could legally marry again. But this
was a palpable wile: she was not sure of her husband’s death and
he had not divorced her; so that although a "grass widow," a
"Strohwitwe" as the Germans say, she could not wed again either
with or without interval.

[FN#94] Here the silence is of cowardice and the passage is a
fling at the "timeserving" of the Olema, a favourite theme, like
"banging the bishops" amongst certain Westerns.

[FN#95] Arab. "Umm al-raas," the poll, crown of the head, here
the place where a calamity coming down from heaven would first
alight.

[FN#96] From Al-Hariri (Lane): the lines are excellent.

[FN#97] When the charming Princess is so ready at the voie de
faits, the reader will understand how common is such energetic
action among women of lower degree. The "fair sex" in Egypt has a
horrible way of murdering men, especially husbands, by tying them
down and tearing out the testicles. See Lane M. E. chapt. xiii.

[FN#98] Arab. "Sijn al-Ghazab," the dungeons appropriated to the
worst of criminals where they suffer penalties far worse than
hanging or guillotining.

[FN#99] According to some modern Moslems Munkar and Nakir visit
the graves of Infidels (non-Moslems) and Bashshir and Mubashshir
("Givers of glad tidings") those of Mohammedans. Petis de la
Croix (Les Mille et un Jours vol. iii. 258) speaks of the
"Zoubanya," black angels who torture the damned under their chief
Dabilah.

[FN#100] Very simple and pathetic is this short sketch of the
noble-minded Princess’s death.

[FN#101] In sign of dismissal (vol. iv. 62) I have noted that
"throwing the kerchief" is not an Eastern practice: the idea
probably arose from the Oriental practice of sending presents in
richly embroidered napkins and kerchiefs.

[FN#102] Curious to say both Lane and Payne omit this passage
which appears in both texts (Mac. and Bul.). The object is
evidently to prepare the reader for the ending by reverting to
the beginning of the tale; and its prolixity has its effect as in
the old Romances of Chivalry from Amadis of Ghaul to the Seven
Champions of Christendom. If it provoke impatience, it also
heightens expectation; "it is like the long elm-avenues of our
forefathers; we wish ourselves at the end; but we know that at
the end there is something great."

[FN#103] Arab. "alà malákay bayti ’l-ráhah;" on the two slabs at
whose union are the round hole and longitudinal slit. See vol. i.
221.

[FN#104] Here the exclamation wards off the Evil Eye from the
Sword and the wearer: Mr. Payne notes, "The old English
exclamation ‘Cock’s ’ill!’ (i.e., God’s will, thus corrupted for
the purpose of evading the statute of 3 Jac. i. against profane
swearing) exactly corresponds to the Arabic"—with a difference,
I add.

[FN#105] Arab. "Mustahakk"=deserving (Lane) or worth (Payne) the
cutting.

[FN#106] Arab. "Mashhad" the same as "Sháhid"=the upright stones
at the head and foot of the grave. Lane mistranslates, "Made for
her a funeral procession."

[FN#107] These lines have occurred before. I quote Lane.

[FN#108] There is nothing strange in such sudden elevations
amongst Moslems and even in Europe we still see them
occasionally. The family in the East, however humble, is a model
and miniature of the state, and learning is not always necessary
to wisdom.

[FN#109] Arab. "Fárid" which may also mean "union-pearl."

[FN#110] Trébutien (iii. 497) cannot deny himself the pleasure of
a French touch making the King reply, "C’est assez; qu’on lui
coupe la tête, car ces dernières histoires surtout m’ont causé un
ennui mortel." This reading is found in some of the MSS.

[FN#111] After this I borrow from the Bresl. Edit. inserting
passages from the Mac. Edit.

[FN#112] i.e. whom he intended to marry with regal ceremony.

[FN#113] The use of coloured powders in sign of holiday-making is
not obsolete in India. See Herklots for the use of "Huldee"
(Haldí) or turmeric-powder, pp. 64-65.

[FN#114] Many Moslem families insist upon this before giving
their girls in marriage, and the practice is still popular
amongst many Mediterranean peoples.

[FN#115] i.e. Sumatran.

[FN#116] i.e. Alexander, according to the Arabs; see vol. v. 252.

[FN#117] These lines are in vol. i. 217.

[FN#118] I repeat the lines from vol. i. 218.

[FN#119] All these coquetries require as much inventiveness as a
cotillon; the text alludes to fastening the bride’s tresses
across her mouth giving her the semblance of beard and
mustachios.

[FN#120] Repeated from vol. i. 218.

[FN#121] Repeated from vol. i. 218.

[FN#122] See vol. i. 219.

[FN#123] Arab. Sawád=the blackness of the hair.

[FN#124] Because Easterns build, but never repair.

[FN#125]i.e. God only knows if it be true or not.

[FN#126] Ouseley’s Orient. Collect. I, vii.

[FN#127] This three-fold distribution occurred to me many years
ago and when far beyond reach of literary authorities, I was,
therefore, much pleased to find the subjoined three-fold
classification with minor details made by Baron von Hammer-
Purgstall (Preface to Contes Inédits etc. of G. S. Trébutien,
Paris, mdcccxxviii.) (1) The older stories which serve as a base
to the collection, such as the Ten Wazirs ("Malice of Women") and
Voyages of Sindbad (?) which may date from the days of Mahommed.
These are distributed into two sub-classes; (a) the marvellous
and purely imaginative (e.g. Jamasp and the Serpent Queen) and
(b) the realistic mixed with instructive fables and moral
instances. (2) The stories and anecdotes peculiarly Arab,
relating to the Caliphs and especially to Al- Rashíd; and (3) The
tales of Egyptian provenance, which mostly date from the times of
the puissant "Aaron the Orthodox." Mr. John Payne (Villon
Translation vol. ix. pp. 367-73) distributes the stories roughly
under five chief heads as follows: (1) Histories or long
Romances, as King Omar bin Al-Nu’man (2) Anecdotes or short
stories dealing with historical personages and with incidents and
adventures belonging to the every-day life of the period to which
they refer: e.g. those concerning Al-Rashíd and Hátim of Tayy.
(3) Romances and romantic fictions comprising three different
kinds of tales; (a) purely romantic and supernatural; (b)
fictions and nouvelles with or without a basis and background of
historical fact and (c) Contes fantastiques. (4) Fables and
Apologues; and (5) Tales proper, as that of Tawaddud.

[FN#128] Journal Asiatique (Paris, Dondoy-Dupré, 1826) "Sur
l’origine des Mille et une Nuits."

[FN#129] Baron von Hammer-Purgstall’s château is near Styrian
Graz, and, when I last saw his library, it had been left as it
was at his death.

[FN#130] At least, in Trébutien’s Preface, pp. xxx.-xxxi.,
reprinted from the Journ. Asiat. August, 1839: for corrections
see De Sacy’s "Mémoire." p. 39.

[FN#131] Vol. iv. pp. 89-90, Paris mdccclxv. Trébutien quotes,
chapt. lii. (for lxviii.), one of Von Hammer’s manifold
inaccuracies.

[FN#132] Alluding to Iram the Many-columned, etc.

[FN#133] In Trébutien "Síhá," for which the Editor of the Journ.
Asiat. and De Sacy rightly read "Sabíl-há."

[FN#134] For this some MSS. have "Fahlawiyah" = Pehlevi

[FN#135] i.e. Lower Roman, Grecian, of Asia Minor, etc., the word is still applied throughout
Marocco, Algiers and Northern Africa to Europeans in general.

[FN#136] De Sacy (Dissertation prefixed to the Bourdin Edition)
notices the "thousand and one," and in his Mémoire "a thousand:"
Von Hammer’s MS. reads a thousand, and the French translation a
thousand and one. Evidently no stress can be laid upon the
numerals.

[FN#137] These names are noticed in my vol. i. 14, and vol. ii.
3. According to De Sacy some MSS. read "History of the Wazir and
his Daughters."

[FN#138] Lane (iii. 735) has Wizreh or Wardeh which guide us to
Wird Khan, the hero of the tale. Von Hammer’s MS. prefers
Djilkand (Jilkand), whence probably the Isegil or Isegild of
Langlés (1814), and the Tséqyl of De Sacy (1833). The mention of
"Simás" (Lane’s Shemmas) identifies it with "King Jalí’ád of
Hind," etc. (Night dcccxcix.) Writing in A.D. 961 Hamzah Isfaháni
couples with the libri Sindbad and Schimas, the libri Baruc and
Barsinas, four nouvelles out of nearly seventy. See also Al-
Makri’zi’s Khitat or Topography (ii. 485) for a notice of the
Thousand or Thousand and one Nights.

[FN#139] alluding to the "Seven Wazirs" alias "The Malice of
Women" (Night dlxxviii.), which Von Hammer and many others have
carelessly confounded with Sindbad the Seaman We find that two
tales once separate have now been incorporated with The Nights,
and this suggests the manner of its composition by accretion.

[FN#140] Arabised by a most "elegant" stylist, Abdullah ibn al-
Mukaffá (the shrivelled), a Persian Guebre named Roz-bih (Day
good), who islamised and was barbarously put to death in A.H. 158
(= 775) by command of the Caliph al-Mansur (Al-Siyuti p. 277).
"He also translated from Pehlevi the book entitled Sekiserán,
containing the annals of Isfandiyar, the death of Rustam, and
other episodes of old Persic history," says Al-Mas’udi chapt.
xxi. See also Ibn Khallikan (1, 43) who dates the murder in A.H.
142 (= 759-60).

[FN#141] "Notice sur Le Schah-namah de Firdoussi," a posthumous
publication of M. de Wallenbourg, Vienna, 1810, by M. A. de
Bianchi. In sect. iii. I shall quote another passage of Al-
Mas’udi (viii. 175) in which I find a distinct allusion to the
"Gaboriaudetective tales" of The Nights.

[FN#142] Here Von Hammer shows his customary inexactitude. As we
learn from Ibn Khallikan (Fr. Tr. I. 630), the author’s name was
Abu al-Faraj Mohammed ibn Is’hak pop. known as Ibn Ali Ya’kúb al-
Warrák, the bibliographe, librarian, copyist. It was published
(vol. i Leipzig, 1871) under the editorship of G. Fluegel, J.
Roediger, and A. Müller.

[FN#143] See also the Journ. Asiat., August, 1839, and Lane iii.
736-37

[FN#144] Called "Afsánah" by Al-Mas’udi, both words having the
same sense = tale story, parable, "facetiæ." Moslem fanaticism
renders it by the Arab "Khuráfah" = silly fables, and in
Hindostan it = a jest: "Bát-kí bát, khurafát-ki khurafát" (a word
for a word, a joke for a joke).

[FN#145] Al-Mas’údi (chapt. xxi.) makes this a name of the Mother
of Queen Humái or Humáyah, for whom see below.

[FN#146] The preface of a copy of the Shah-nameh (by Firdausi,
ob. A.D. 1021), collated in A.H. 829 by command of Bayisunghur
Bahadur Khán (Atkinson p. x.), informs us that the Hazar Afsanah
was composed for or by Queen Humái whose name is Arabised to
Humáyah This Persian Marguerite de Navarre was daughter and wife
to (Ardashir) Bahman, sixth Kayanian and surnamed Diraz-dast
(Artaxerxes Longimanus), Abu Sásán from his son, the Eponymus of
the Sassanides who followed the Kayanians when these were
extinguished by Alexander of Macedon. Humái succeeded her husband
as seventh Queen, reigned thirty-two years and left the crown to
her son Dárá or Dáráb 1st = Darius Codomanus. She is better known
to Europe (through Herodotus) as Parysatis = Peri-zádeh or the
Fairy-born.

[FN#147] i.e. If Allah allow me to say sooth.

[FN#148] i.e. of silly anecdotes: here speaks the good Moslem!

[FN#149] No. 622 Sept. 29, ‘39, a review of Torrens which
appeared shortly after Lane’s vol. i. The author quotes from a
MS. in the British Museum, No. 7334 fol. 136.

[FN#150] There are many Spaniards of this name: Mr. Payne (ix.
302) proposes Abu Ja’afar ibn Abd al-Hakk al-Khazraji, author of
a History of the Caliphs about the middle of the twelfth century.

[FN#151] The well-known Rauzah or Garden-island, of old Al-
Saná’ah (Al-Mas’udi chapt. xxxi.) which is more than once noticed
in The Nights. The name of the pavilion Al-Haudaj = a camel-
litter, was probably intended to flatter the Badawi girl.

[FN#152] He was the Seventh Fatimite Caliph of Egypt: regn. A.H.
495-524 (= 1101 1129).

[FN#153] Suggesting a private pleasaunce in Al-Rauzah which has
ever been and is still a succession of gardens.

[FN#154] The writer in The Athenæum calls him Ibn Miyvah, and
adds that the Badawiyah wrote to her cousin certain verses
complaining of her thraldom, which the youth answered abusing the
Caliph. Al-Ámir found the correspondence and ordered Ibn Miyah’s
tongue to be cut out, but he saved himself by a timely flight.

[FN#155] In Night dccclxxxv. we have the passage "He was a wily
thief: none could avail against his craft as he were Abu Mohammed
Al-Battál": the word etymologically means The Bad; but see infra.

[FN#156] Amongst other losses which Orientals have sustained by
the death of Rogers Bey, I may mention his proposed translation
of Al-Makrízí’s great topographical work.

[FN#157] The name appears only in a later passage.

[FN#158] Mr. Payne notes (viii. 137) "apparently some famous
brigand of the time" (of Charlemagne). But the title may signify
The Brave, and the tale may be much older.

[FN#159] In his "Mémoire sur l’origine du Recueil des Contes
intitulé Les Mille et une Nuits" (Mém. d’Hist. et de Littér.
Orientale, extrait des tomes ix., et x. des Mémoires de l’Inst.
Royal Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, Imprimerie
Royale, 1833). He read the Memoir before the Royal Academy on
July 31, 1829. Also in his Dissertation "Sur les Mille et une
Nuits" (pp. i. viii.) prefixed to the Bourdin Edit. When first
the Arabist in Europe landed at Alexandria he could not exchange
a word with the people the same is told of Golius the
lexicographer at Tunis.

[FN#160] Lane, Nights ii. 218.

[FN#161] This origin had been advocated a decade of years before
by Shaykh Ahmad al-Shirawáni; Editor of the Calc. text (1814-18):
his Persian preface opines that the author was an Arabic speaking
Syrian who designedly wrote in a modern and conversational style,
none of the purest withal, in order to instruct non-Arabists.
Here we find the genus "Professor" pure and simple.

[FN#162] Such an assertion makes us enquire, Did De Sacy ever
read through The Nights in Arabic?

[FN#163] Dr. Jonathan Scott’s "translation" vi. 283.

[FN#164] For a note on this world-wide Tale see vol. i. 52.

[FN#165] In the annotated translation by Mr. I. G. N. Keith-
Falconer, Cambridge University Press. I regret to see the
wretched production called the "Fables of Pilpay" in the "Chandos
Classics" (London, F. Warne). The words are so mutilated that few
will recognize them, e.g. Carchenas for Kár-shínás, Chaschmanah
for Chashmey-e-Máh (Fountain of the Moon), etc.

[FN#166] Article Arabia in Encyclop. Brit., 9th Edit., p. 263,
colt 2. I do not quite understand Mr. Palgrave, but presume that
his "other version" is the Bresl. Edit., the MS. of which was
brought from Tunis; see its Vorwort (vol. i. p. 3).

[FN#167] There are three distinct notes according to De Sacy
(Mém., p. 50). The first (in MS. 1508) says "This blessed book
was read by the weak slave, etc. Wahabah son of Rizkallah the
Kátib (secretary, scribe) of Tarábulus al-Shám (Syrian Tripoli),
who prayeth long life for its owner (li máliki-h). This tenth day
of the month First Rabí’a A.H. 955 (= 1548)." A similar note by
the same Wahabah occurs at the end of vol. ii. (MS. 1507) dated
A.H. 973 (= 1565) and a third (MS. 1506) is undated. Evidcntly M.
Caussin has given undue weight to such evidence. For further
information see "Tales of the East" to which is prefixed an
Introductory Dissertation (vol. i. pp. 24-26, note) by Henry
Webber, Esq., Edinburgh, 1812, in 3 vols.

[FN#168] "Notice sur les douze manuscrits connus des Milles et
une Nuits, qui existent en Europe." Von Hammer in Trébutien,
Notice, vol. i.

[FN#169] Printed from the MS. of Major Turner Macan, Editor of
the Shahnamah: he bought it from the heirs of Mr. Salt, the
historic Consul-General of England in Egypt and after Macan’s
death it became the property of the now extinct Allens, then of
Leadenhall Street (Torrens, Preface, i.). I have vainly enquired
about what became of it.

[FN#170] The short paper by "P. R." in the Gentleman’s Magazine
(Feb. 19th, 1799, vol. lxix. p. 61) tells us that MSS. of The
Nights were scarce at Aleppo and that he found only two vols.
(280 Nights) which he had great difficulty in obtaining leave to
copy. He also noticed (in 1771) a MS., said to be complete, in
the Vatican and another in the "King’s Library" (Bibliothèque
Nationale), Paris.

[FN#171] Aleppo has been happy in finding such monographers as
Russell and Maundrell while poor Damascus fell into the hands of
Mr. Missionary Porter, and suffered accordingly.

[FN#172] Vol. vi. Appendix, p.452.

[FN#173] The numbers, however, vary with the Editions of Galland:
some end the formula with Night cxcvii; others with the ccxxxvi.
: I adopt that of the De Sacy Edition.

[FN#174] Contes Persans, suivis des Contes Turcs. Paris; Béchet
Ainé, 1826.

[FN#175] In the old translation we have "eighteen hundred years
since the prophet Solomon died," (B.C. 975) = A.D. 825.

[FN#176] Meaning the era of the Seleucides. Dr. Jonathan Scott
shows (vol. ii. 324) that A.H. 653 and A.D. 1255 would correspond
with 1557 of that epoch; so that the scribe has here made a
little mistake of 5,763 years. Ex uno disce.

[FN#177] The Saturday Review (Jan. 2nd ’86) writes, "Captain
Burton has fallen into a mistake by not distinguishing between
the names of the by no means identical Caliphs Al-Muntasir and
Al-Mustansir." Quite true: it was an ugly confusion of the
melancholy madman and parricide with one of the best and wisest
of the Caliphs. I can explain (not extenuate) my mistake only by
a misprint in Al-Siyúti (p. 554).

[FN#178] In the Galland MS. and the Bresl. Edit. (ii. 253), we
find the Barber saying that the Caliph (Al-Mustansir) was at that
time (yaumaizin) in Baghdad, and this has been held to imply that
the Caliphate had fallen. But such conjecture is evidently based
upon insufficient grounds.

[FN#179] De Sacy makes the "Kalandar" order originate in A.D.
1150, but the Shaykh Sharíf bú Ali Kalandar died in A.D. 1323-24.
In Sind the first Kalandar, Osmán-i-Marwándí surnamed Lál
Sháhbáz, the Red Goshawk, from one of his miracles, died and was
buried at Sehwán in A D. 1274: see my "History of Sindh" chapt.
viii. for details. The dates therefore run wild.

[FN#180] In this same tale H. H. Wilson observes that the title
of Sultan of Egypt was not assumed before the middle of the xiith
century.

[FN#181] Popularly called Vidyanagar of the Narsingha.

[FN#182] Time-measurers are of very ancient date. The Greeks had
clepsydræ and the Romans gnomons, portable and ring-shaped,
besides large standing town-dials as at Aquileja and San Sabba
near Trieste. The "Saracens" were the perfecters of the
clepsydra: Bosseret (p. 16) and the Chronicon Turense (Beckmann
ii. 340 et seq.) describe the water-clock sent by Al-Rashid to
Karl the Great as a kind of "cockoo-clock." Twelve doors in the
dial opened successively and little balls dropping on brazen
bells told the hour: at noon a dozen mounted knights paraded the
face and closed the portals. Trithonius mentions an horologium
presented in A.D. 1232 by Al-Malik al-Kámil the Ayyubite Soldan
to the Emperor Frederick II: like the Strasbourg and Padua clocks
it struck the hours, told the day, month and year, showed the
phases of the moon, and registered the position of the sun and
the planets. Towards the end of the fifteenth century Gaspar
Visconti mentions in a sonnet the watch proper (certi orologii
piccioli e portativi); and the "animated eggs" of Nurembourg
became famous. The earliest English watch (Sir Ashton Lever’s)
dates from 1541: and in 1544 the portable chronometer became
common in France.

[FN#183] An illustrated History of Arms and Armour etc. (p. 59);
London: Bell and Sons, 1877. The best edition is the Guide des
Amateurs d’Armes, Paris: Renouard, 1879.

[FN#184] Chapt. iv. Dr. Gustav Oppert "On the Weapons etc. of the
Ancient Hindus;" London: Trübner and Co., 1880. :

[FN#185] I have given other details on this subject in pp. 631-
637 of "Camoens, his Life and his Lusiads."

[FN#186] The morbi venerei amongst the Romans are obscure because
"whilst the satirists deride them the physicians are silent."
Celsus, however, names (De obscenarum partium vitiis, lib.
xviii.) inflammatio coleorum (swelled testicle), tubercula
glandem (warts on the glans penis), cancri carbunculi (chancre or
shanker) and a few others. The rubigo is noticed as a lues
venerea by Servius in Virg. Georg.

[FN#187] According to David Forbes, the Peruvians believed that
syphilis arose from connection of man and alpaca; and an old law
forbade bachelors to keep these animals in the house. Francks
explains by the introduction of syphilis wooden figures found in
the Chinchas guano; these represented men with a cord round the
neck or a serpent devouring the genitals.

[FN#188] They appeared before the gates of Paris in the summer of
1427, not "about July, 1422": in Eastern Europe, however, they
date from a much earlier epoch. Sir J. Gilbert’s famous picture
has one grand fault, the men walk and the women ride: in real
life the reverse would be the case.

[FN#189] Rabelais ii. c. 30.

[FN#190] I may be allowed to note that syphilis does not confine
itself to man: a charger infected with it was pointed out to me
at Baroda by my late friend, Dr. Arnott (18th Regiment, Bombay
N.I.) and Tangier showed me some noticeable cases of this hippic
syphilis, which has been studied in Hungary. Eastern peoples have
a practice of "passing on" venereal and other diseases, and
transmission is supposed to cure the patient; for instance a
virgin heals (and catches) gonorrhœa. Syphilis varies greatly
with climate. In Persia it is said to be propagated without
contact: in Abyssinia it is often fatal and in Egypt it is
readily cured by sand baths and sulphur-unguents. Lastly in lands
like Unyamwezi, where mercurials are wholly unknown, I never saw
caries of the nasal or facial bones.

[FN#191] For another account of the transplanter and the
casuistical questions to which coffee gave rise, see my "First
Footsteps in East Africa" (p. 76).

[FN#192] The first mention of coffee proper (not of Kahwah or old wine in vol. ii. 260) is in Night
cdxxvi. vol. v. 169, where the coffee-maker is called Kahwahjiyyah, a mongrel term showing the
modern date of the passage in Ali the Cairene. As the work advances notices become thicker, e.g.
in Night dccclxvi. where Ali Nur al-Din and the Frank King’s daughter seems to be a modernisation
of the story "Ala al-Din Abu al-Shámát" (vol. iv. 29); and in Abu Kir and Abu Sir (Nights cmxxx.
and cmxxxvi.) where coffee is drunk with sherbet after present fashion. The use culminates in
Kamar al-Zaman II. where it is mentioned six times (Nights cmlxvi. cmlxx. cmlxxi. twice; cmlxxiv.
and cmlxxvii.), as being drunk after the dawn-breakfast and following the meal as a matter of
course. The last notices are in Abdullah bin Fazil, Nights cmlxxviii. and cmlxxix.

[FN#193] It has been suggested that Japanese tobacco is an
indigenous growth and sundry modern travellers in China contend
that the potato and the maize, both white and yellow, have there
been cultivated from time immemorial.

[FN#194] For these see my "City of the Saints," p. 136.

[FN#195] Lit. meaning smoke: hence the Arabic "Dukhán," with the
same signification.

[FN#196] Unhappily the book is known only by name: for years I have vainly troubled friends and
correspondents to hunt for a copy. Yet I am sanguine enough to think that some day we shall
succeed: Mr. Sidney Churchill, of Teheran, is ever on the look-out.

[FN#197] In § 3 I shall suggest that this tale also is mentioned
by Al-Mas’udi.

[FN#198] I have extracted it from many books, especially from
Hoeffer’s Biographie Générale, Paris, Firmin Didot, mdccclvii.;
Biographie Universelle, Paris, Didot, 1816, etc. etc. All are
taken from the work of M. de Boze, his "Bozzy."

[FN#199] As learning a language is an affair of pure memory,
almost without other exercise of the mental faculties, it should
be assisted by the ear and the tongue as well as the eyes. I
would invariably make pupils talk, during lessons, Latin and
Greek, no matter how badly at first; but unfortunately I should
have to begin with teaching the pedants who, as a class, are far
more unwilling and unready to learn than are those they teach.

[FN#200] The late Dean Stanley was notably trapped by the wily
Greek who had only political purposes in view. In religions as a
rule the minimum of difference breeds the maximum of disputation,
dislike and disgust.

[FN#201] See in Trébutien (Avertissement iii.) how Baron von
Hammer escaped drowning by the blessing of The Nights.

[FN#202] He signs his name to the Discours pour servir de
Préface.

[FN#203] I need not trouble the reader with their titles, which
fill up nearly a column and a half in M. Hoeffer. His collection
of maxims from Arabic, Persian and Turkish authors appeared in
English in 1695.

[FN#204] Galland’s version was published in 1704-1717 in 12 vols.
12mo., (Hoeffer’s Biographie; Grasse’s Trésor de Livres rares and
Encyclop. Britannica, ixth Edit.)

[FN#205] See also Leigh Hunt "The Book of the Thousand Nights and
one Night," etc., etc. London and Westminster Review Art. iii.,
No. 1xiv. mentioned in Lane, iii., 746.

[FN#206] Edition of 1856 vol. xv.

[FN#207] To France England also owes her first translation of the
Koran, a poor and mean version by Andrew Ross of that made from
the Arabic (No. iv.) by André du Reyer, Consul de France for
Egypt. It kept the field till ousted in 1734 by the learned
lawyer George Sale whose conscientious work, including
Preliminary Discourse and Notes (4to London), brought him the
ill-fame of having "turned Turk."

[FN#208] Catalogue of Printed Books, 1884, p. 159, col. i. I am
ashamed to state this default in the British Museum, concerning
which Englishmen are apt to boast and which so carefully mulcts
modern authors in unpaid copies. But it is only a slight
specimen of the sad state of art and literature in England,
neglected equally by Conservatives, Liberals and Radicals. What
has been done for the endowment of research? What is our
equivalent for the Prix de Rome? Since the death of Dr. Birch,
who can fairly deal with a Demotic papyrus? Contrast the Société
Anthropologique and its palace and professors in Paris with our
"Institute" au second in a corner of Hanover Square and its
skulls in the cellar!

[FN#209] Art. vii. pp. 139-168, "On the Arabian Nights and
translators, Weil, Torrens and Lane (vol. i.) with the Essai of
A. Loisseleur Deslongchamps." The Foreign Quarterly Review, vol.
xxiv., Oct. 1839-Jan. 1840. London, Black and Armstrong, 1840.

[FN#210] Introduction to his Collection "Tales of the East," 3
vols. Edinburgh, 1812. He was the first to point out the
resemblance between the introductory adventures of Shahryar and
Shah Zaman and those of Astolfo and Giacondo in the Orlando
Furioso (Canto xxviii.). M. E. Lévêque in Les Mythes et les
Légendes de l’Inde et la Perse (Paris, 1880) gives French
versions of the Arabian and Italian narratives, side by side in
p. 543 ff. (Clouston).

[FN#211] Notitiæ Codicis MI. Noctium. Dr. Pusey studied Arabic
to familiarise himself with Hebrew, and was very different from
his predecessor at Oxford in my day, who, when applied to for
instruction in Arabic, refused to lecture except to a class.

[FN#212] This nephew was the author of "Recueil des Rits et
Cérémonies des Pilgrimages de La Mecque," etc. etc. Paris and
Amsterdam, 1754, in 12mo.

[FN#213] The concluding part did not appear, I have said, till
1717: his "Comes et Fables Indiennes de Bidpaï et de Lokman,"
were first printed in 1724, 2 vols. in 12mo. Hence, I presume,
Lowndes’ mistake.

[FN#214] M. Caussin (de Perceval), Professeur of Arabic at the
Imperial Library, who edited Galland in 1806, tells us that he
found there only two MSS., both imperfect. The first (Galland’s)
is in three small vols. 4to. each of about pp. 140. The stories
are more detailed and the style, more correct than that of other
MS., is hardly intelligible to many Arabs, whence he presumes
that it contains the original (an early?) text which has been
altered and vitiated. The date is supposed to be circa A.D.
1600. The second Parisian copy is a single folio of some 800
pages, and is divided into 29 sections and cmv. Nights, the last
two sections being reversed. The MS. is very imperfect, the
12th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 21st-23rd, 25th and 27th parts are
wanting; the sections which follow the 17th contain sundry
stories repeated, there are anecdotes from Bidpai, the Ten Wazirs
and other popular works, and lacunæ everywhere abound.

[FN#215] Mr. Payne (ix. 264) makes eleven, including the Histoire
du Dormeur éveillé = The Sleeper and the Waker, which he
afterwards translated from the Bresl. Edit. in his "Tales from
the Arabic" (vol. i. 5, etc.)

[FN#216] Mr. E. J. W. Gibb informs me that he has come upon this
tale in a Turkish storybook, the same from which he drew his
"Jewád."

[FN#217] A littérateur lately assured me that Nos. ix. and x.
have been found in the Bibliothèque Nationale (du Roi) Paris; but
two friends were kind enough to enquire and ascertained that it
was a mistake. Such Persianisms as Codadad (Khudadad), Baba
Cogia (Khwájah) and Peri (fairy) suggest a Persic MS.

[FN#218] Vol. vi. 212. "The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments
(London: Longmans, 1811) by Jonathan Scott, with the Collection
of New Tales from the Wortley Montagu MS. in the Bodleian." I
regret to see that Messieurs Nimmo in reprinting Scott have
omitted his sixth Volume.

[FN#219] Dr. Scott who uses Fitnah (iv. 42) makes it worse by
adding "Alcolom (Al-Kulúb?) signifying Ravisher of Hearts" and
his names for the six slave-girls (vol. iv. 37) such as "Zohorob
Bostan" (Zahr al-Bústán), which Galland rightly renders by "Fleur
du Jardin," serve only to heap blunder upon blunder. Indeed the
Anglo-French translations are below criticism: it would be waste
of time to notice them. The characteristic is a servile suit
paid to the original e.g. rendering hair "accomodé en boucles" by
"hair festooned in buckles" (Night ccxiv.), and Île d’Ébène
(Jazírat al-Abnús, Night xliii.) by "the Isle of Ebene." A
certain surly old littérateur tells me that he prefers these
wretched versions to Mr. Payne’s. Padrone! as the Italians say:
I cannot envy his taste or his temper.

[FN#220] De Sacy (Mémoire p. 52) notes that in some MSS., the
Sultan, ennuyé by the last tales of Shahrázad, proposes to put
her to death, when she produces her three children and all ends
merrily without marriage-bells. Von Hammer prefers this version
as the more dramatic, the Frenchman rejects it on account of the
difficulties of the accouchements. Here he strains at the gnat—
a common process.

[FN#221] See Journ. Asiatique, iii. série, vol. viii., Paris,
1839.

[FN#222] "Tausend und Eine Nacht: Arabische Erzählungen. Zum
ersten mal aus einer Tunisischen Handschrift ergänzt und
vollstandig übersetzt," Von Max Habicht, F. H. von der Hagen und
Karl Schatte (the offenders?).

[FN#223] Dr. Habicht informs us (Vorwort iii., vol. ix. 7) that
he obtained his MS. with other valuable works from Tunis, through
a personal acquaintance, a learned Arab, Herr M. Annagar
(Mohammed Al-Najjár?) and was aided by Baron de Sacy, Langlès and
other savants in filling up the lacunæ by means of sundry MSS.
The editing was a prodigy of negligence: the corrigenda (of which
brief lists are given) would fill a volume; and, as before
noticed, the indices of the first four tomes were printed in the
fifth, as if the necessity of a list of tales had just struck the
dense editor. After Habicht’s death in 1839 his work was
completed in four vols. (ix.-xii.) by the well-known Prof. H. J.
Fleischer who had shown some tartness in his "Dissertatio Critica
de Glossis Habichtianis." He carefully imitated all the
shortcomings of his predecessor and even omitted the Verzeichniss
etc., the Varianten and the Glossary of Arabic words not found in
Golius, which formed the only useful part of the first eight
volumes.

[FN#224] Die in Tausend und Eine Nacht noch nicht übersetzten
Nächte, Erzählungen und Anekdoten, zum erstenmal aus dem
Arabischen in das Französische übersetzt von J. von Hammer, und
aus dem Französischen in das Deutsche von A. E. Zinserling,
Professor, Stuttgart und Tubingen, 1823. Drei Bde. 80 .
Trébutien’s, therefore, is the translation of a translation of a
translation.

[FN#225] Tausend und Eine Nacht Arabische Erzählungen. Zum
erstenmale aus dem Urtexte vollständig und treu uebersetze von
Dr. Gustav Weil. He began his work on return from Egypt in 1836
and completed his first version of the Arabische Meisterwerk in
1838-42 (3 vols. roy. oct.). I have the Zweiter Abdruck der
dritten (2d reprint of 3d) in 4 vols. 8vo., Stuttgart, 1872. It
has more than a hundred woodcuts.

[FN#226] My learned friend Dr. Wilhelm Storck, to whose admirable
translations of Camoens I have often borne witness, notes that
this Vorhalle, or Porch to the first edition, a rhetorical
introduction addressed to the general public, is held in Germany
to be valueless and that it was noticed only for the Bemerkung
concerning the offensive passages which Professor Weil had toned
down in his translation. In the Vorwort of the succeeding
editions (Stuttgart) it is wholly omitted.

[FN#227] The most popular are now "Mille ed una notte. Novelle
Arabe." Napoli, 1867, 8vo illustrated, 4 francs; and "Mille ed
une notte. Novelle Arabe, versione italiana nuovamente emendata
e corredata di note"; 4 vols. in 32 (dateless) Milano, 8vo, 4
francs.

[FN#228] These are; (l) by M. Caussin (de Perceval), Paris, 1806,
9 vols. 8vo. (2) Edouard Gauttier, Paris, 1822-24: 7 vols. 12mo;
(3) M. Destain, Paris, 1823-25, 6 vols. 8vo, and (4) Baron de
Sacy, Paris. 1838 (?) 3 vols. large 8vo, illustrated (and vilely
illustrated).

[FN#229] The number of fables and anecdotes varies in the
different texts, but may be assumed to be upwards of four
hundred, about half of which were translated by Lane.

[FN#230] I have noticed these points more fully in the beginning
of chapt. iii. "The Book of the Sword."

[FN#231] A notable instance of Roman superficiality,
incuriousness and ignorance. Every old Egyptian city had its
idols (images of metal, stone or wood), in which the Deity became
incarnate as in the Catholic host; besides its own symbolic
animal used as a Kiblah or prayer-direction (Jerusalem or
Meccah), the visible means of fixing and concentrating the
thoughts of the vulgar, like the crystal of the hypnotist or the
disk of the electro-biologist. And goddess Diana was in no way
better than goddess Pasht. For the true view of idolatry see
Koran xxxix. 4. I am deeply grateful to Mr. P. le Page Renouf
(Soc. of Biblic. Archæology, April 6, 1886) for identifying the
Manibogh, Michabo or Great Hare of the American indigenes with
Osiris Unnefer ("Hare God"). These are the lines upon which
investigation should run. And of late years there is a notable
improvement of tone in treating of symbolism or idolatry: the
Lingam and the Yoni are now described as "mystical
representations, and perhaps the best possible impersonal
representatives of the abstract expressions paternity and
maternity" (Prof. Monier Williams in "Folk-lore Record" vol. iii.
part i. p. 118).

[FN#232] See Jotham’s fable of the Trees and King Bramble
(Judges lxi. 8) and Nathan’s parable of the Poor Man and his
little ewe Lamb (2 Sam. ix. 1).

[FN#233] Herodotus (ii. c. 134) notes that "Æsop the fable-writer
( ) was one of her (Rhodopis) fellow slaves".
Aristophanes (Vespæ, 1446) refers to his murder by the Delphians
and his fable beginning, "Once upon a time there was a fight;"
while the Scholiast finds an allusion to The Serpent and the Crab
in Pax 1084; and others in Vespæ 1401, and Aves 651.

[FN#234] There are three distinct Lokmans who are carefully
confounded in Sale (Koran chapt. xxxi.) and in Smith’s Dict. of
Biography etc. art. Æsopus. The first or eldest Lokman, entitled
Al-Hakim (the Sage) and the hero of the Koranic chapter which
bears his name, was son of Bá’úrá of the Children of Azar,
sister’s son of Job or son of Job’s maternal aunt; he witnessed
David’s miracles of mail-making and when the tribe of ’Ád was
destroyed, he became King of the country. The second, also called
the Sage, was a slave, an Abyssinian negro, sold to the
Israelites during the reign of David or Solomon, synchronous with
the Persian Kay Káús and Kay Khusrau, also Pythagoras the Greek
(!) His physique is alluded to in the saying, "Thou resemblest
Lokman (in black ugliness) but not in wisdom" (Ibn Khallikan i.
145). This negro or negroid, after a godly and edifying life,
left a volume of "Amsál," proverbs and exempla (not fables or
apologues); and Easterns still say, "One should not pretend to
teach Lokmán"—in Persian, "Hikmat ba Lokman ámokhtan." Three of
his apothegms dwell in the public memory: "The heart and the
tongue are the best and worst parts of the human body." "I
learned wisdom from the blind who make sure of things by touching
them" (as did St. Thomas); and when he ate the colocynth offered
by his owner, "I have received from thee so many a sweet that
’twould be surprising if I refused this one bitter." He was
buried (says the Tárikh Muntakhab) at Ramlah in Judæa, with the
seventy Prophets stoned in one day by the Jews. The youngest
Lokman "of the vultures" was a prince of the tribe of Ad who
lived 3,500 years, the age of seven vultures (Tabari). He could
dig a well with his nails; hence the saying, "Stronger than
Lokman" (A. P. i. 701); and he loved the arrow-game, hence, "More
gambling than Lokman" (ibid. ii. 938). "More voracious than
Lokman" (ibid i. 134) alludes to his eating one camel for
breakfast and another for supper. His wife Barákish also appears
in proverb, e.g. "Camel us and camel thyself" (ibid. i. 295) i.e.
give us camel flesh to eat, said when her son by a former husband
brought her a fine joint which she and her husband relished.
Also, "Barákish hath sinned against her kin" (ibid. ii. 89). More
of this in Chenery’s Al-Hariri p. 422; but the three Lokmans are
there reduced to two.

[FN#235] I have noticed them in vol. ii. 47-49. "To the Gold
Coast for Gold."

[FN#236] I can hardly accept the dictum that the Katha Sarit
Sagara, of which more presently, is the "earliest representation
of the first collection."

[FN#237] The Pehlevi version of the days of King Anushirwan (A.D.
531-72) became the Humáyun-námeh ("August Book") turned into
Persian for Bahram Shah the Ghaznavite: the Hitopadesa
("Friendship-boon") of Prakrit, avowedly compiled from the
"Panchatantra," became the Hindu Panchopakhyan, the Hindostani
Akhlák-i-Hindi ("Moralities of Ind") and in Persia and Turkey the
Anvar-i-Suhayli ("Lights of Canopus"). Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac
writers entitle their version Kalilah wa Damnah, or Kalilaj wa
Damnaj, from the name of the two jackal-heroes, and Europe knows
the recueil as the Fables of Pilpay or Bidpay (Bidyá-pati, Lord
of learning?) a learned Brahman reported to have been Premier at
the Court of the Indian King Dabishlím.

[FN#238] Diet. Philosoph. S. V. Apocrypha.

[FN#239] The older Arab writers, I repeat, do not ascribe fables
or beast-apologues to Lokman; they record only "dictes" and
proverbial sayings.

[FN#240] Professor Taylor Lewis: Preface to Pilpay.

[FN#241] In the Katha Sarit Sagara the beast-apologues are more
numerous, but they can be reduced to two great nuclei; the first
in chapter lx. (Lib. x.) and the second in the same book chapters
lxii-lxv. Here too they are mixed up with anecdotes and acroamata
after the fashion of The Nights, suggesting great antiquity for
this style of composition.

[FN#242] Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. 266 et seq. The
fabliau is interesting in more ways than one. Anepu the elder
(Potiphar) understands the language of cattle, an idea ever
cropping up in Folk-lore; and Bata (Joseph), his "little
brother," who becomes a "panther of the South (Nubia) for rage"
at the wife’s impudique proposal, takes the form of a bull—
metamorphosis full blown. It is not, as some have called it, the
"oldest book in the world;" that name was given by M. Chabas to a
MS. of Proverbs, dating from B.C. 2200. See also the "Story of
Saneha," a novel earlier than the popular date of Moses, in the
Contes Populaires of Egypt.

[FN#243] The fox and the jackal are confounded by the Arabic
dialects not by the Persian, whose "Rubáh" can never be mistaken
for "Shaghál." "Sa’lab" among the Semites is locally applied to
either beast and we can distinguish the two only by the fox being
solitary and rapacious, and the jackal gregarious and a
carrion-eater. In all Hindu tales the jackal seems to be an
awkward substitute for the Grecian and classical fox, the Giddar
or Kolá (Cants aureus) being by no means sly and wily as the
Lomri (Vulpes vulgaris). This is remarked by Weber (Indische
Studien) and Prof. Benfey’s retort about "King Nobel" the lion is
by no means to the point. See Katha Sarit Sagara, ii. 28.

I may add that in Northern Africa jackal’s gall, like jackal’s
grape (Solanum nigrum = black nightshade), ass’s milk and melted
camel-hump, is used aphrodisiacally as an unguent by both sexes.
See. p. 239, etc., of Le Jardin parfumé du Cheikh Nefzaoui, of
whom more presently.

[FN#244] Rambler, No. lxvii.

[FN#245] Some years ago I was asked by my old landlady if ever in
the course of my travels I had come across Captain Gulliver.

[FN#246] In "The Adventurer" quoted by Mr. Heron, "Translator’s
Preface to the Arabian Tales of Chaves and Cazotte."

[FN#247] "Life in a Levantine Family" chapt. xi. Since the able
author found his "family" firmly believing in The Nights, much
has been changed in Alexandria; but the faith in Jinn and Ifrit,
ghost and vampire is lively as ever.

[FN#248] The name dates from the second century A. H. or before
A. D. 815.

[FN#249] Dabistan i. 231 etc.

[FN#250] Because Si = thirty and Murgh = bird. In McClenachan’s
Addendum to Mackay’s Encyclopæedia of Freemasonry we find the
following definition: "Simorgh. A monstrous griffin, guardian of
the Persian mysteries."

[FN#251] For a poor and inadequate description of the festivals
commemorating this "Architect of the Gods" see vol. iii. 177,
"View of the History etc. of the Hindus" by the learned Dr. Ward,
who could see in them only the "low and sordid nature of
idolatry." But we can hardly expect better things from a
missionary in 1822, when no one took the trouble to understand
what "idolatry" means.

[FN#252] Rawlinson (ii. 491) on Herod. iii. c. 102. Nearchus saw
the skins of these formicæ Indicæ, by some rationalists explained
as "jackals," whose stature corresponds with the text, and by
others as "pengolens" or ant-eaters (manis pentedactyla). The
learned Sanskritist, H. H. Wilson, quotes the name Pippilika =
ant-gold, given by the people of Little Thibet to the precious
dust thrown up in the emmet heaps.

[FN#253] A writer in the Edinburgh Review (July, ’86), of whom
more presently, suggests that The Nights assumed essentially
their present shape during the general revival of letters, arts
and requirements which accompanied the Kurdish and Tartar
irruptions into the Nile Valley, a golden age which embraced the
whole of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and
ended with the Ottoman Conquest in A. D. 1527.

[FN#254] Let us humbly hope not again to hear of the golden prime
of

"The good (fellow?) Haroun Alrasch’id,"

a mispronunciation which suggests only a rasher of bacon. Why
will not poets mind their quantities, in lieu of stultifying
their lines by childish ignorance? What can be more painful than
Byron’s

"They laid his dust in Ar’qua (for Arqua) where he
died?"

[FN#255] See De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe (Paris, 1826), vol. i.

[FN#256] See Le Jardin Parfumé du Cheikh Nefzaoui Manuel
d’Erotologie Arabe Traduction revue et corrigée Edition privée,
imprimé à deux cent.-vingt exemplaires, par Isidore Liseux et ses
Amis, Paris, 1866. The editor has forgotten to note that the
celebrated Sidi Mohammed copied some of the tales from The Nights
and borrowed others (I am assured by a friend) from Tunisian MSS.
of the same work. The book has not been fairly edited: the notes
abound in mistakes, the volume lacks an index, &c., &c. Since
this was written the Jardin Parfumé has been twice translated
into English as "The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui, a
Manual of Arabian Erotology (sixteenth century). Revised and
corrected translation, Cosmopoli: mdccclxxxvi.: for the Kama
Shastra Society of London and Benares and for private circulation
only." A rival version will be brought out by a bookseller whose
Committee, as he calls it, appears to be the model of literary
pirates, robbing the author as boldly and as openly as if they
picked his pocket before his face.

[FN#257] Translated by a well-known Turkish scholar, Mr. E. J. W.
Gibb (Glasgow, Wilson and McCormick, 1884).

[FN#258] D’Herbelot (s. v. "Asmai"): I am reproached by a dabbler
in Orientalism for using this admirable writer who shows more
knowledge in one page than my critic does in a whole volume.

[FN#259] For specimens see Al-Siyuti, pp. 301 and 304, and the
Shaykh al Nafzawi, pp. 134-35

[FN#260] The word "nakh" (to make a camel kneel) is explained in
vol. ii. 139.

[FN#261] The present of the famous horologium-clepsydra-cuckoo
clock, the dog Becerillo and the elephant Abu Lubabah sent by
Harun to Charlemagne is not mentioned by Eastern authorities and
consequently no reference to it will be found in my late friend
Professor Palmer’s little volume "Haroun Alraschid," London,
Marcus Ward, 1881. We have allusions to many presents, the clock
and elephant, tent and linen hangings, silken dresses, perfumes,
and candelabra of auricalch brought by the Legati (Abdalla
Georgius Abba et Felix) of Aaron Amiralmumminim Regis Persarum
who entered the Port of Pisa (A. D. 801) in (vol. v. 178) Recueil
des Histor. des Gaules et de la France, etc., par Dom Martin
Bouquet, Paris, mdccxliv. The author also quotes the lines:—

Persarum Princeps illi devinctus amore
Præcipuo fuerat, nomen habens Aaron.
Gratia cui Caroli præ cunctis Regibus atque
Illis Principibus tempora cara funit.

[FN#262] Many have remarked that the actual date of the decease
is unknown.

[FN#263] See Al-Siyuti (p. 305) and Dr. Jonathan Scott’s "Tales,
Anecdotes, and Letters," (p. 296).

[FN#264] I have given (vol. i. 188) the vulgar derivation of the
name; and D’Herbelot (s. v. Barmakian) quotes some Persian lines
alluding to the "supping up." Al-Mas’udi’s account of the
family’s early history is unfortunately lost. This Khálid
succeeded Abu Salámah, first entitled Wazir under Al-Saffah (Ibn
Khallikan i. 468).

[FN#265] For his poetry see Ibn Khallikan iv. 103.

[FN#266] Their flatterers compared them with the four elements.

[FN#267] Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxii.

[FN#268] Ibn Khallikan (i. 310) says the eunuch Abu Háshim
Masrúr, the Sworder of Vengeance, who is so pleasantly associated
with Ja’afar in many nightly disguises; but the Eunuch survived
the Caliph. Fakhr al-Din (p. 27) adds that Masrur was an enemy of
Ja’afar; and gives further details concerning the execution.

[FN#269] Bresl. Edit., Night dlxvii. vol. vii. pp. 258-260;
translated in the Mr. Payne’s "Tales from the Arabic," vol. i.
189 and headed "Al-Rashid and the Barmecides." It is far less
lively and dramatic than the account of the same event given by
Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxii., by Ibn Khallikan and by Fakhr al-Din.

[FN#270] Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxi.

[FN#271] See Dr. Jonathan Scott’s extracts from Major Ouseley’s
"Tarikh-i-Barmaki."

[FN#272] Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxii. For the liberties Ja’afar took
see Ibn Khallikan, i. 303.

[FN#273] Ibid. chapt. xxiv. In vol. ii. 29 of The Nights, I find
signs of Ja’afar’s suspected heresy. For Al-Rashid’s hatred of
the Zindiks see Al-Siyuti, pp. 292, 301; and as regards the
religious troubles ibid. p. 362 and passim.

[FN#274] Biogr. Dict. i. 309.

[FN#275] This accomplished princess had a practice that suggests
the Dame aux Camélias.

[FN#276] i. e. Perdition to your fathers, Allah’s curse on your
ancestors.

[FN#277] See vol. iv. 159, "Ja’afar and the Bean-seller;" where
the great Wazir is said to have been "crucified;" and vol. iv.
pp. 179, 181. Also Roebuck’s Persian Proverbs, i. 2, 346, "This
also is through the munificence of the Barmecides."

[FN#278] I especially allude to my friend Mr. Payne’s admirably
written account of it in his concluding Essay (vol. ix.). From
his views of the Great Caliph and the Lady Zubaydah I must differ
in every point except the destruction of the Barmecides.

[FN#279] Bresl. Edit., vol. vii. 261-62.

[FN#280] Mr. Grattan Geary, in a work previously noticed, informs
us (i. 212) "The Sitt al-Zobeide, or the Lady Zobeide, was so
named from the great Zobeide tribe of Arabs occupying the country
East and West of the Euphrates near the Hindi’ah Canal; she was
the daughter of a powerful Sheik of that Tribe." Can this explain
the "Kásim"?

[FN#281] Vol. viii. 296.

[FN#282] Burckhardt, "Travels in Arabia" vol. i. 185.

[FN#283] The reverse has been remarked by more than one writer;
and contemporary French opinion seems to be that Victor Hugo’s
influence on French prose, was on the whole, not beneficial.

[FN#284] Mr. W. S. Clouston, the "Storiologist," who is preparing
a work to be entitled "Popular Tales and Fictions; their
Migrations and Transformations," informs me the first to adapt
this witty anecdote was Jacques de Vitry, the crusading bishop of
Accon (Acre) who died at Rome in 1240, after setting the example
of "Exempla" or instances in his sermons. He had probably heard
it in Syria, and he changed the day-dreamers into a Milkmaid and
her Milk-pail to suit his "flock." It then appears as an
"Exemplum" in the Liber de Donis or de Septem Donis (or De Dono
Timoris from Fear the first gift) of Stephanus de Borbone, the
Dominican, ob. Lyons, 1261: it treated of the gifts of the Holy
Spirit (Isaiah xi. 2 and 3), Timor, Pietas, Scientia, Fortitudo,
Consilium, Intellectus et Sapientia; and was plentifully
garnished with narratives for the use of preachers.

[FN#285] The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register (new series,
vol. xxx. Sept.-Dec. 1830, London, Allens, 1839); p. 69 Review of
the Arabian Nights, the Mac. Edit. vol. i., and H. Torrens.

[FN#286] As a household edition of the "Arabian Nights" is now
being prepared, the curious reader will have an opportunity of
verifying this statement.

[FN#287] It has been pointed out to me that in vol. ii. p. 285,
line 18 "Zahr Shah" is a mistake for Sulayman Shah.

[FN#288] I have lately found these lovers at Schloss Sternstein
near Cilli in Styria, the property of my excellent colleague, Mr.
Consul Faber, dating from A. D. 1300 when Jobst of Reichenegg and
Agnes of Sternstein were aided and abetted by a Capuchin of
Seikkloster.

[FN#289] In page 226 Dr. Steingass sensibly proposes altering the
last hemistich (lines 11-12) to

At one time showing the Moon and Sun.

[FN#290] Omitted by Lane for some reason unaccountable as usual.
A correspondent sends me his version of the lines which occur in
The Nights (vol. v. 106 and 107):—

Behold the Pyramids and hear them teach
What they can tell of Future and of Past:
They would declare, had they the gift of speech,
The deeds that Time hath wrought from first to last

My friends, and is there aught beneath the sky
Can with th’ Egyptian Pyramids compare?
In fear of them strong Time hath passed by
And everything dreads Time in earth and air.

[FN#291] A rhyming Romance by Henry of Waldeck (flor. A. D. 1160)
with a Latin poem on the same subject by Odo and a prose version
still popular in Germany. (Lane’s Nights iii. 81; and Weber’s
"Northern Romances.")

[FN#292] e. g. ’Ajáib al-Hind (= Marvels of Ind) ninth century,
translated by J. Marcel Devic, Paris, 1878; and about the same
date the Two Mohammedan Travellers, translated by Renaudot. In
the eleventh century we have the famous Sayyid al-ldrisi, in the
thirteenth the ’Ajáib al-Makhlúkat of Al-Kazwini and in the
fourteenth the Kharídat al-Ajáib of Ibn Al-Wardi. Lane (in loco)
traces most of Sindbad to the two latter sources.

[FN#293] So Hector France proposed to name his admirably
realistic volume "Sous le Burnous" (Paris, Charpentier, 1886).

[FN#294] I mean in European literature, not in Arabic where it is
a lieu commun. See three several forms of it in one page (505) of
Ibn Kallikan, vol. iii.

[FN#295] My attention has been called to the resemblance between
the half-lie and Job (i. 13- 19).

[FN#296] Boccaccio (ob. Dec. 2, 1375), may easily have heard of
The Thousand Nights and a Night or of its archetype the Hazár
Afsánah. He was followed by the Piacevoli Notti of Giovan
Francisco Straparola (A. D. 1550), translated into almost all
European languages but English: the original Italian is now rare.
Then came the Heptameron ou Histoire des amans fortunez of
Marguerite d’Angoulême, Reyne de Navarre and only sister of
Francis I. She died in 1549 before the days were finished: in
1558 Pierre Boaistuan published the Histoire des amans fortunez
and in 1559 Claude Guiget the "Heptameron." Next is the Hexameron
of A. de Torquemada, Rouen, 1610; and, lastly, the Pentamerone or
El Cunto de li Cunte of Giambattista Basile (Naples 1637), known
by the meagre abstract of J. E. Taylor and the caricatures of
George Cruikshank (London 1847-50). I propose to translate this
Pentamerone direct from the Neapolitan and have already finished
half the work.

[FN#297] Translated and well annotated by Prof. Tawney, who,
however, affects asterisks and has considerably bowdlerised
sundry of the tales, e. g. the Monkey who picked out the Wedge
(vol. ii. 28). This tale, by the by, is found in the Khirad Afroz
(i. 128) and in the Anwar-i-Suhayli (chapt. i.) and gave rise to
the Persian proverb, "What has a monkey to do with carpentering?"
It is curious to compare the Hindu with the Arabic work whose
resemblances are as remarkable as their differences, while even
more notable is their correspondence in impressioning the reader.
The Thaumaturgy of both is the same: the Indian is profuse in
demonology and witchcraft; in transformation and restoration; in
monsters as wind-men, fire-men and water-men, in air-going
elephants and flying horses (i. 541-43); in the wishing cow,
divine goats and laughing fishes (i. 24); and in the speciosa
miracula of magic weapons. He delights in fearful battles (i.
400) fought with the same weapons as the Moslem and rewards his
heroes with a "turband of honour" (i. 266) in lieu of a robe.
There is a quaint family likeness arising from similar stages and
states of society: the city is adorned for gladness, men carry
money in a robe-corner and exclaim "Ha! good!" (for "Good, by
Allah!"), lovers die with exemplary facility, the "soft-sided"
ladies drink spirits (i. 61) and princesses get drunk (i. 476);
whilst the Eunuch, the Hetaira and the bawd (Kuttini) play the
same preponderating parts as in The Nights. Our Brahman is strong
in love-making; he complains of the pains of separation in this
phenomenal universe; he revels in youth, "twin-brother to mirth,"
and beauty which has illuminating powers; he foully reviles old
age and he alternately praises and abuses the sex, concerning
which more presently. He delights in truisms, the fashion of
contemporary Europe (see Palmerin of England chapt. vii), such as
"It is the fashion of the heart to receive pleasure from those
things which ought to give it," etc. etc. What is there the wise
cannot understand? and so forth. He is liberal in trite
reflections and frigid conceits (i. 19, 55, 97, 103, 107, in fact
everywhere); and his puns run through whole lines; this in fine
Sanskrit style is inevitable. Yet some of his expressions are
admirably terse and telling, e. g. Ascending the swing of Doubt:
Bound together (lovers) by the leash of gazing: Two babes looking
like Misery and Poverty: Old Age seized me by the chin: (A lake)
first assay of the Creator’s skill: (A vow) difficult as standing
on a sword-edge: My vital spirits boiled with the fire of woe:
Transparent as a good man’s heart: There was a certain convent
full of fools: Dazed with scripture-reading: The stones could not
help laughing at him: The Moon kissed the laughing forehead of
the East: She was like a wave of the Sea of Love’s insolence (ii.
127), a wave of the Sea of Beauty tossed up by the breeze of
Youth: The King played dice, he loved slave-girls, he told lies,
he sat up o’ nights, he waxed wroth without reason, he took
wealth wrongously, he despised the good and honoured the bad (i.
562); with many choice bits of the same kind. Like the Arab the
Indian is profuse in personification; but the doctrine of
pre-existence, of incarnation and emanation and an excessive
spiritualism ever aiming at the infinite, makes his imagery run
mad. Thus we have Immoral Conduct embodied; the God of Death;
Science; the Svarga-heaven; Evening; Untimeliness, and the
Earth-bride, while the Ace and Deuce of dice are turned into a
brace of Demons. There is also that grotesqueness which the
French detect even in Shakespeare, e. g. She drank in his
ambrosial form with thirsty eyes like partridges (i. 476) and it
often results from the comparison of incompatibles, e. g. a row
of birds likened to a garden of nymphs; and from forced
allegories, the favourite figure of contemporary Europe. Again,
the rhetorical Hindu style differs greatly from the sobriety,
directness and simplicity of the Arab, whose motto is Brevity
combined with precision, except where the latter falls into "fine
writing." And, finally, there is a something in the atmosphere of
these Tales which is unfamiliar to the West and which makes them,
as more than one has remarked to me, very hard reading.

[FN#298] The Introduction (i. 1-5) leads to the Curse of
Pushpadanta and Mályaván who live on Earth as Vararúchi and
Gunádhya and this runs through lib. i. Lib. ii. begins with the
Story of Udáyana to whom we must be truly grateful as our only
guide: he and his son Naraváhanadatta fill up the rest and end
with lib. xviii. Thus the want of the clew or plot compels a
division into books, which begin for instance with "We worship
the elephantine proboscis of Ganesha" (lib. x. i.) a reverend and
awful object to a Hindu but to Englishmen mainly suggesting the
"Zoo." The "Bismillah" of The Nights is much more satisfactory.

[FN#299] See pp. 5-6 Avertissement des Éditeurs, Le Cabinet des
Fées, vol. xxxviii: Geneva 1788. Galland’s Edit. of mdccxxvi ends
with Night ccxxxiv and the English translations with ccxxxvi and
cxcvii. See retro p. 82.

[FN#300] There is a shade of difference in the words; the former
is also used for Reciters of Traditions—a serious subject. But
in the case of Hammád surnamed Al-Ráwiyah (the Rhapsode) attached
to the Court of Al-Walid, it means simply a conteur. So the
Greeks had Homeristæ = reciters of Homer, as opposed to the
Homeridæ or School of Homer.

[FN#302] Vol. i, Preface p. v. He notes that Mr. Dallaway
describes the same scene at Constantinople where the Story-teller
was used, like the modern "Organs of Government" in newspaper
shape, for "reconciling the people to any recent measure of the
Sultan and Vizier." There are women Ráwiyahs for the Harems and
some have become famous like the Mother of Hasan al-Basri (Ibn
Khall. i, 370).

[FN#302] Hence the Persian proverb, "Báki-e-dastán fardá = the
rest of the tale to-morrow," said to askers of silly questions.

[FN#303] The scene is excellently described in, "Morocco: Its
People and Places," by Edmondo de Amicis (London: Cassell, 1882),
a most refreshing volume after the enforced platitudes and
commonplaces of English travellers.

[FN#304] It began, however, in Persia, where the celebrated
Darwaysh Mukhlis, Chief Sofi of Isfahan in the xviith century,
translated into Persian tales certain Hindu plays of which a MS.
entitled Alfaraga Badal-Schidda (Al-faraj ba’d al-shiddah = Joy
after annoy) exists in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. But to
give an original air to his work, he entitled it "Hazár o yek
Ruz" = Thousand and One Days, and in 1675 he allowed his friend
Petis de la Croix, who happened to be at Isfahan, to copy it. Le
Sage (of Gil Blas) is said to have converted many of the tales of
Mukhlis into comic operas, which were performed at the Théâtre
Italien. I still hope to see The Nights at the Lyceum.

[FN#305] This author, however, when hazarding a change of style
which is, I think, regretable, has shown abundant art by filling
up the frequent deficiencies of the text after the fashion of
Baron McGuckin de Slane in Ibn Khallikan. As regards the tout
ensemble of his work, a noble piece of English, my opinion will
ever be that expressed in my Foreword. A carping critic has
remarked that the translator, "as may be seen in every page, is
no Arabic scholar." If I be a judge, the reverse is the case: the
brilliant and beautiful version thus traduced is almost entirely
free from the blemishes and carelessness which disfigure Lane’s,
and thus it is far more faithful to the original. But it is no
secret that on the staff of that journal the translator of Villon
has sundry enemies, vrais diables enjupponés, who take every
opportunity of girding at him because he does not belong to the
clique and because he does good work when theirs is mostly sham.
The sole fault I find with Mr. Payne is that his severe grace of
style treats an unclassical work as a classic, when the romantic
and irregular would have been a more appropriate garb. But this
is a mere matter of private judgment.

[FN#306] Here I offer a few, but very few, instances from the
Breslau text, which is the greatest sinner in this respect. Mas.
for fem., vol. i. p. 9, and three times in seven pages, Ahná and
nahná for nahnú (iv. 370, 372); Aná ba-ashtarí = I will buy (iii.
109): and Aná ’Ámíl = I will do (v. 367). Alaykí for Alayki (i.
18), Antí for Anti (iii. 66) and generally long í for short .
’Ammál (from ’amala = he did) tahlam = certainly thou dreamest,
and ’Ammálín yaakulú = they were about to eat (ix. 315): Aywá for
Ay wa’lláhí = yes, by Allah (passim). Bitá’ = belonging to, e.g.
Sára bitá’k = it is become thine (ix. 352) and Matá’ with the
same sense (iii. 80). Dá ’l-khurj = this saddle-bag (ix. 336) and
Dí (for hazah) = this woman (iii. 79) or this time (ii. 162).
Fayn as ráha fayn = whither is he gone? (iv. 323). Kamá badri =
he rose early (ix. 318): Kamán = also, a word known to every
European (ii. 43): Katt = never (ii. 172): Kawám (pronounced
’awám) = fast, at once (iv. 385) and Rih ásif kawí (pron. ’awí) =
a wind, strong very. Laysh, e.g. bi tasalní laysh (ix. 324) = why
do you ask me? a favourite form for li ayya shayyin: so Máfish =
má fihi shayyun (there is no thing) in which Herr Landberg (p.
425) makes "Sha, le présent de pouvoir." Min ajali = for my sake;
and Li ajal al-taudí’a = for the sake of taking leave (Mac. Edit.
i. 384). Rijál nautiyah = men sailors when the latter word would
suffice: Shuwayh (dim. of shayy) = a small thing, a little (iv.
309) like Moyyah (dim. of Má) a little water: Waddúní = they
carried me (ii. 172) and lastly the abominable Wáhid gharíb = one
(for a) stranger. These few must suffice: the tale of Judar and
his brethren, which in style is mostly Egyptian, will supply a
number of others. It must not, however, be supposed, as many have
done, that vulgar and colloquial Arabic is of modern date: we
find it in the first century of Al-Islam, as is proved by the
tale of Al-Hajjáj and Al-Shabi (Ibn Khallikan, ii. 6). The former
asked "Kam ataa-k?’ (= how much is thy pay?) to which the latter
answered, "Alfayn!" (= two thousand!). "Tut," cried the Governor,
"Kam atau-ka?" to which the poet replied as correctly and
classically, "Alfáni."

[FN#307] In Russian folk-songs a young girl is often compared
with this tree e.g.—

Ivooshka, ivooshka zelonaia moia!
(O Willow, O green Willow mine!)

[FN#308] So in Hector France ("La vache enragée") "Le sourcil en
accent circonflexe et l’oeil en point d’interrogation."

[FN#309] In Persian "Áb-i-rú" in India pronounced Ábrú.

FN#310] For further praises of his poetry and eloquence see the
extracts from Fakhr al-Din of Rayy (an annalist of the xivth
century A.D.) in De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe, vol. i.

[FN#311] After this had been written I received "Babylonian, das
reichste Land in der Vorzeit und das lohnendste Kolonisationsfeld
für die Gegenwart," by my learned friend Dr. Aloys Sprenger,
Heidelberg, 1886.

[FN#312] The first school for Arabic literature was opened by Ibn
Abbas, who lectured to multitudes in a valley near Meccah; this
rude beginning was followed by public teaching in the great
Mosque of Damascus. For the rise of the "Madrasah," Academy or
College’ see Introduct. to Ibn Khallikan pp. xxvii-xxxii.

[FN#313] When Ibn Abbád the Sáhib (Wazir) was invited to visit
one of the Samanides, he refused, one reason being that he would
require 400 camels to carry only his books.

[FN#314] This "Salmagondis" by Francois Beroalde de Verville was
afterwards worked by Tabarin , the pseudo-Bruscambille d’Aubigné
and Sorel.

[FN#315] I prefer this derivation to Strutt’s adopted by the
popular, "mumm is said to be derived from the Danish word mumme,
or momme in Dutch (Germ. = larva), and signifies disguise in a
mask, hence a mummer." In the Promptorium Parvulorum we have
"Mummynge, mussacio, vel mussatus": it was a pantomime in dumb
show, e.g. "I mumme in a mummynge;" "Let us go mumme (mummer) to
nyghte in women’s apparayle." "Mask" and "Mascarade," for
persona, larva or vizard, also derive, I have noticed, from an
Arabic word—Maskharah.

[FN#316] The Pre-Adamite doctrine has been preached with but
scant success in Christendom. Peyrere, a French Calvinist,
published (A.D. 1655) his "Praadamitæ, sive exercitatio supra
versibus 12, 13, 14, cap. v. Epist. Paul. ad Romanos," contending
that Adam was called the first man because with him the law
began. It brewed a storm of wrath and the author was fortunate to
escape with only imprisonment.

[FN#317] According to Socrates the verdict was followed by a free
fight of the Bishop-voters over the word "consubstantiality."

[FN#318] Servetus burnt (in A.D. 1553 for publishing his Arian
tractate) by Calvin, whom half-educated Roman Catholics in
England firmly believe to have been a pederast. This arose I
suppose, from his meddling with Rabelais who, in return for the
good joke Rabie læsus, presented a better anagram, "Jan (a pimp
or cuckold) Cul" (Calvinus).

[FN#319] There is no more immoral work than the "Old Testament."
Its deity is an ancient Hebrew of the worst type, who condones,
permits or commands every sin in the Decalogue to a Jewish
patriarch, quâ patriarch. He orders Abraham to murder his son and
allows Jacob to swindle his brother; Moses to slaughter an
Egyptian and the Jews to plunder and spoil a whole people, after
inflicting upon them a series of plagues which would be the
height of atrocity if the tale were true. The nations of Canaan
are then extirpated. Ehud, for treacherously disembowelling King
Eglon, is made judge over Israel. Jael is blessed above women
(Joshua v. 24) for vilely murdering a sleeping guest; the horrid
deeds of Judith and Esther are made examples to mankind; and
David, after an adultery and a homicide which deserved
ignominious death, is suffered to massacre a host of his enemies,
cutting some in two with saws and axes and putting others into
brick-kilns. For obscenity and impurity we have the tales of Onan
and Tamar, Lot and his daughters, Amnon and his fair sister (2
Sam. xiii.), Absalom and his father’s concubines, the "wife of
whoredoms" of Hosea and, capping all, the Song of Solomon. For
the horrors forbidden to the Jews who, therefore, must have
practiced them, see Levit. viii. 24, xi. 5, xvii. 7, xviii. 7, 9,
10, 12, 15, 17, 21, 23, and xx. 3. For mere filth what can be
fouler than 1st Kings xviii. 27; Tobias ii. 11; Esther xiv. 2,
Eccl. xxii. 2; Isaiah xxxvi. 12, Jeremiah iv. 5, and (Ezekiel iv.
12-15), where the Lord changes human ordure into "Cow-chips!" Ce
qui excuse Dieu, said Henri Beyle, c’est qu’il n’existe pas,—I
add, as man has made him.

[FN#320] It was the same in England before the "Reformation," and
in France where, during our days, a returned priesthood collected
in a few years "Peter-pence" to the tune of five hundred millions
of francs. And these men wonder at being turned out!

[FN#321] Deutsch on the Talmud: Quarterly Review, 1867.

[FN#322] Evidently. Its cosmogony is a myth read literally: its
history is, for the most part, a highly immoral distortion, and
its ethics are those of the Talmudic Hebrews. It has done good
work in its time; but now it shows only decay and decrepitude in
the place of vigour and progress. It is dying hard, but it is
dying of the slow poison of science.

[FN#323] These Hebrew Stoics would justly charge the Founder of
Christianity with preaching a more popular and practical
doctrine, but a degradation from their own far higher and more
ideal standard.

[FN#324] Dr. Theodore Christlieb ("Modern Doubt and Christian
Belief," Edinburgh: Clark 1874) can even now write:—"So then the
’full age’ to which humanity is at present supposed to have
attained, consists in man’s doing good purely for goodness sake!
Who sees not the hollowness of this bombastic talk. That man has
yet to be born whose practice will be regulated by this insipid
theory (dieser grauen theorie). What is the idea of goodness per
se? * The abstract idea of goodness is not an effectual
motive for well-doing" (p. 104). My only comment is c’est
ignolile! His Reverence acts the part of Satan in Holy Writ,
"Does Job serve God for naught?" Compare this selfish,
irreligious, and immoral view with Philo Judæus (On the Allegory
of the Sacred Laws, cap. 1viii.), to measure the extent of the
fall from Pharisaism to Christianity. And the latter is still
infected with the "bribe-and-threat doctrine:" I once immensely
scandalised a Consular Chaplain by quoting the noble belief of
the ancients, and it was some days before he could recover mental
equanimity. The degradation is now inbred.

[FN#325] Of the doctrine of the Fall the heretic Marcion wrote:
"The Deity must either be deficient in goodness if he willed, in
prescience if he did not foresee, or in power if he did not
prevent it."

[FN#326] In his charming book, "India Revisited."

[FN#327] This is the answer to those who contend with much truth
that the moderns are by no means superior to the ancients of
Europe: they look at the results of only 3000 years instead of
30,000 or 300,000.

[FN#328] As a maxim the saying is attributed to the Duc de Lévis,
but it is much older.

[FN#329] There are a few, but only a few, frightful exceptions to
this rule, especially in the case of Khálid bin Walíd, the Sword
of Allah, and his ferocious friend, Darár ibn al-Azwar. But their
cruel excesses were loudly blamed by the Moslems, and Caliph Omar
only obeyed the popular voice in superseding the fierce and
furious Khalid by the mild and merciful Abú Obaydah.

[FN#330] This too when St. Paul sends the Christian slave
Onesimus back to his unbelieving (?) master, Philemon; which in
Al-Islam would have created a scandal.

[FN#331] This too when the Founder of Christianity talks of
"Eating and drinking at his table!" (Luke xxn. 29.) My notes have
often touched upon this inveterate prejudice the result, like the
soul-less woman of Al-Islam, of ad captandum, pious fraud. "No
soul knoweth what joy of the eyes is reserved for the good in
recompense for their works" (Koran xxxn. 17) is surely as
"spiritual" as St. Paul (I Cor. ii., 9). Some lies, however are
very long-lived, especially those begotten by self interest.

[FN#332] I have elsewhere noted its strict conservatism which,
however, it shares with all Eastern faiths in the East. But
progress, not quietism, is the principle which governs humanity
and it is favoured by events of most different nature. In Egypt
the rule of Mohammed Ali the Great and in Syria the Massacre of
Damascus (1860) have greatly modified the constitution of Al-
Islam throughout the nearer East.

[FN#333] Chapt. viii. "Narrative of a Year’s Journey through
Central and Eastern Arabia;" London, Macmillan, 1865.

[FN#334] The Soc. Jesu has, I believe, a traditional conviction
that converts of Israelitic blood bring only misfortune to the
Order.

[FN#335] I especially allude to an able but most superficial
book, the "Ten Great Religions" by James F. Clarke (Boston,
Osgood, 1876), which caricatures and exaggerates the false
portraiture of Mr. Palgrave. The writer’s admission that,
"Something is always gained by learning what the believers in a
system have to say in its behalf," clearly shows us the man we
have to deal with and the "depths of his self-consciousness."

[FN#336] But how could the Arabist write such hideous grammar as
"La Il h illa All h" for "Lá iláha (accus.) ill’ Allah"?

[FN#337] p. 996 "Muhammad" in vol. iii. Dictionary of Christian
Biography. See also the Illustration of the Mohammedan Creed,
etc., from Al-Ghazáli introduced (pp. 72-77) into Bell and Sons’
"History of the Saracens" by Simon Ockley, B.D. (London, 1878). I
regret some Orientalist did not correct the proofs: everybody
will not detect "Al-Lauh al-Mahfúz" (the Guarded Tablet) in
"Allauh ho’hnehphoud" (p. 171); and this but a pinch out of a
camel-load.

[FN#338] The word should have been Arianism. This "heresy" of the
early Christians was much aided by the "Discipline of the
Secret," supposed to be of apostolic origin, which concealed from
neophytes, catechumens and penitents all the higher mysteries,
like the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Metastoicheiosis
(transubstantiation), the Real Presence, the Eucharist and the
Seven Sacraments; when Arnobius could ask, Quid Deo cum vino est?
and when Justin, fearing the charge of Polytheism, could
expressly declare the inferior nature of the Son to the Father.
Hence the creed was appropriately called Symbol i.e., Sign of the
Secret. This "mental reservation" lasted till the Edict of
Toleration, issued by Constantine in the fourth century, held
Christianity secure when divulging her "mysteries"; and it
allowed Arianism to become the popular creed.

[FN#339] The Gnostics played rather a fantastic rôle in
Christianity with their Demiurge, their Æonogony, their Æons by
syzygies or couples, their Maio and Sabscho and their beatified
bride of Jesus, Sophia Achamoth, and some of them descended to
absolute absurdities, e.g., the Tascodrugitæ and the
Pattalorhinchitæ who during prayers placed their fingers upon
their noses or in their mouths, &c., reading Psalm cxli. 3.

[FN#340] "Kitáb al-’Unwán fí Makáid al-Niswán" = The Book of the
Beginnings on the Wiles of Womankind (Lane i. 38).

[FN#341] This person was one of the Amsál or Exampla of the
Arabs. For her first thirty years she whored; during the next
three decades she pimped for friend and foe, and, during the last
third of her life, when bed-ridden by age and infirmities, she
had a buckgoat and a nanny tied up in her room and solaced
herself by contemplating their amorous conflicts.

[FN#342] And modern Moslem feeling upon the subject has
apparently undergone a change. Ashraf Khan, the Afghan poet,
sings,

Since I, the parted one, have come the secrets of the world to
ken,
Women in hosts therein I find, but few (and very few) of men.

And the Osmanli proverb is, "Of ten men nine are women!"

[FN#343] His Persian paper "On the Vindication of the Liberties
of the Asiatic Women" was translated and printed in the Asiatic
Annual Register for 1801 (pp. 100-107); it is quoted by Dr. Jon.
Scott (Introd. vol. i. p. xxxiv. et seq.) and by a host of
writers. He also wrote a book of Travels translated by Prof.
Charles Stewart in 1810 and re-issued (3 vols. 8vo.) in 1814.

[FN#344] The beginning of which I date from the Hijrah, lit.= the
separation, popularly "The Flight." Stating the case broadly, it
has become the practice of modern writers to look upon Mohammed
as an honest enthusiast at Meccah and an unscrupulous despot at
Al- Medinah, a view which appears to me eminently unsound and
unfair. In a private station the Meccan Prophet was famed as a
good citizen, teste his title Al-Amín =The Trusty. But when
driven from his home by the pagan faction, he became de facto as
de jure a king: nay, a royal pontiff; and the preacher was merged
in the Conqueror of his foes and the Commander of the Faithful.
His rule, like that of all Eastern rulers, was stained with
blood; but, assuming as true all the crimes and cruelties with
which Christians charge him and which Moslems confess, they were
mere blots upon a glorious and enthusiastic life, ending in a
most exemplary death, compared with the tissue of horrors and
havock which the Law and the Prophets attribute to Moses, to
Joshua, to Samuel and to the patriarchs and prophets by express
command of Jehovah.

[FN#345] It was not, however, incestuous: the scandal came from
its ignoring the Arab "pundonor."

[FN#346] The "opportunism" of Mohammed has been made a matter of
obloquy by many who have not reflected and discovered that
time-serving is the very essence of "Revelation." Says the Rev.
W. Smith ("Pentateuch," chaps. xiii.), "As the journey (Exodus)
proceeds, so laws originate from the accidents of the way," and
he applies this to successive decrees (Numbers xxvi. 32-36;
xxvii. 8-11 and xxxvi. 1-9), holding it indirect internal
evidence of Mosaic authorship (?). Another tone, however, is used
in the case of Al-Islam. "And now, that he might not stand in awe
of his wives any longer, down comes a revelation," says Ockley in
his bluff and homely style, which admits such phrases as, "the
imposter has the impudence to say." But why, in common honesty,
refuse to the Koran the concessions freely made to the Torah? It
is a mere petitio principii to argue that the latter is
"inspired" while the former is not, moreover, although we may be
called upon to believe things beyond Reason, it is hardly fair to
require our belief in things contrary to Reason.

[FN#347] This is noticed in my wife’s volume on The Inner Life of
Syria, chaps. xii. vol. i. 155.

[FN#348] Mirza preceding the name means Mister and following it
Prince. Addison’s "Vision of Mirza" (Spectator, No. 159) is
therefore "The Vision of Mister."

[FN#349] And women. The course of instruction lasts from a few
days to a year and the period of puberty is fêted by magical
rites and often by some form of mutilation. It is described by
Waitz, Réclus and Schoolcraft, Páchue-Loecksa, Collins, Dawson,
Thomas, Brough Smyth, Reverends Bulmer and Taplin, Carlo
Wilhelmi, Wood, A. W. Howitt, C. Z. Muhas (Mem. de la Soc.
Anthrop. Allemande, 1882, p. 265) and by Professor Mantegazza
(chaps. i.) for whom see infra.

[FN#350] Similarly certain Australian tribes act scenes of rape
and pederasty saying to the young, If you do this you will be
killed.

[FN#351] "Báh," is the popular term for the amatory appetite:
hence such works are called Kutub al-Báh, lit. = Books of Lust.

[FN#352] I can make nothing of this title nor can those whom I
have consulted: my only explanation is that they may be fanciful
names proper.

[FN#353] Amongst the Greeks we find erotic specialists (1)
Aristides of the Libri Milesii; (2) Astyanassa, the follower of
Helen who wrote on androgvnisation; (3) Cyrene, the artist of
amatory Tabellæ or ex-votos offered to Priapus; (4) Elephantis,
the poetess who wrote on Varia concubitus genera; (5) Evemerus,
whose Sacra Historia, preserved in a fragment of Q. Eunius, was
collected by Hieronymus Columnar (6) Hemitheon of the Sybaritic
books, (7) Musæus, the Iyrist; (8) Niko, the Samian girl; (9)
Philænis, the poetess of Amatory Pleasures, in Athen. viii. 13,
attributed to Polycrates the Sophist; (10) Protagorides, Amatory
Conversations; (11) Sotades, the Mantinæan who, says Suidas,
wrote the poem "Cinædica"; (12) Sphodrias the Cynic, his Art of
Love; and (13) Trepsicles, Amatory Pleasures. Amongst the Romans
we have Aedituus, Annianus (in Ausonius), Anser, Bassus Eubius,
Helvius Cinna, Lævius (of Io and the Erotopægnion), Memmius,
Cicero (to Cerellia), Pliny the Younger, Sabellus (de modo
coeundi); Sisenna, the pathic Poet and translator of Milesian
Fables and Sulpitia, the modest erotist. For these see the
Dictionnaire Érotique of Blondeau pp. ix. and x. (Paris, Liseux,
1885).

[FN#354] It has been translated from the Sanskrit and annotated
by A.F.F. and B.F.R. Reprint Cosmopoli: mdccclxxxv.: for the Kama
Shastra Society, London and Benares, and for private circulation
only. The first print has been exhausted and a reprint will
presently appear.

[FN#355] The local press has often proposed to abate this
nuisance of erotic publication which is most debasing to public
morals already perverted enough. But the "Empire of Opinion"
cares very little for such matters and, in the matter of the
"native press," generally seems to seek only a quiet life. In
England if erotic literature were not forbidden by law, few would
care to sell or to buy it, and only the legal pains and penalties
keep up the phenomenally high prices.

[FN#356] The Spectator (No. 119) complains of an "infamous piece
of good breeding," because "men of the town, and particularly
those who have been polished in France, make use of the most
coarse and uncivilised words in our language and utter themselves
often in such a manner as a clown would blush to hear."

[FN#357] See the Novelle of Bandello the Bishop (Tome 1, Paris,
Liseux, 1879, small in 18) where the dying fisherman replies to
his confessor, "Oh! Oh! your reverence, to amuse myself with boys
was natural to me as for a man to eat and drink; yet you asked me
if I sinned against nature!" Amongst the wiser ancients sinning
contra naturam was not marrying and begetting children.

[FN#358] Avis au Lecteur "L’Amour dans l’Humanité," par P.
Mantegazza, traduit par Emilien Chesneau, Paris, Fetscherin et
Chuit, 1886.

[FN#359] See "H. B." (Henry Beyle, French Consul at Civita
Vecchia) par un des Quarante H. B." (Prosper Mérimee),
Elutheropolis, An mdccclxiv. De l’Imposture du Nazaréen.

[FN#360] This detail especially excited the veteran’s curiosity.
The reason proved to be that the scrotum of the unmutilated boy
could be used as a kind of bridle for directing the movements of
the animal. I find nothing of the kind mentioned in the Sotadical
literature of Greece and Rome; although the same cause might be
expected everywhere to the same effect. But in Mirabeau
(Kadhésch) a grand seigneur moderne, when his valet-de-chambre de
confiance proposes to provide him with women instead of boys,
exclaims, "Des femmes! eh! c’est comme si tu me servais un gigot
sans manche." See also infra for "Le poids du tisserand."

[FN#361] See Falconry in the Valley of the Indus, London, John
Van Voorst, 1852.

[FN#362] Submitted to Government on Dec. 3’, ’47, and March 2,
’48, they were printed in "Selections from the Records of the
Government of India." Bombay. New Series. No. xvii. Part 2, 1855.
These are (1) Notes on the Population of Sind, etc., and (2)
Brief Notes on the Modes of Intoxication, etc., written in
collaboration with my late friend Assistant-Surgeon John E.
Stocks, whose early death was a sore loss to scientific botany.

[FN#363] Glycon the Courtesan in Athen. xiii. 84 declares that
"boys are handsome only when they resemble women," and so the
Learned Lady in The Nights (vol. v. 160) declares "Boys are
likened to girls because folks say, Yonder boy is like a girl."
For the superior physical beauty of the human male compared with
the female, see The Nights, vol. iv. 15; and the boy’s voice
before it breaks excels that of any diva.

[FN#364] "Mascula," from the priapiscus, the over-development of
clitoris (the veretrum muliebre, in Arabic Abu Tartúr, habens
cristam), which enabled her to play the man. Sappho (nat. B.C.
612) has been retoillée like Mary Stuart, La Brinvilliers, Marie
Antoinette and a host of feminine names which have a savour not
of sanctity. Maximus of Tyre (Dissert. xxiv.) declares that the
Eros of Sappho was Socratic and that Gyrinna and Atthis were as
Alcibiades and Chermides to Socrates: Ovid who could consult
documents now lost, takes the same view in the Letter of Sappho
to Phaon and in Tristia ii. 265.

Lesbia quid docuit Sappho nisi amare puellas?

Suidas supports Ovid. Longinus eulogises the (a
term applied only to carnal love) of the far-famed Ode to
Atthis:—

Ille mî par esse Deo videtur *
(Heureux! qui près de toi pour toi seule soupire *
Blest as th’ immortal gods is he, etc.)

By its love symptoms, suggesting that possession is the sole cure
for passion, Erasistratus discovered the love of Antiochus for
Stratonice. Mure (Hist. of Greek Literature, 1850) speaks of the
Ode to Aphrodite (Frag. 1) as "one in which the whole volume of
Greek literature offers the most powerful concentration into one
brilliant focus of the modes in which amatory concupiscence can
display itself." But Bernhardy, Bode, Richter, K. O. Müller and
esp. Welcker have made Sappho a model of purity, much like some
of our dull wits who have converted Shakespeare, that most
debauched genius, into a good British bourgeois.

[FN#365] The Arabic Sabhákah, the Tractatrix or Subigitatrix who
has been noticed in vol. iv. 134. Hence to Lesbianise ( )
and tribassare ( ); the former applied to the love of
woman for woman and the latter to its mecanique: this is either
natural, as friction of the labia and insertion of the clitoris
when unusually developed, or artificial by means of the fascinum,
the artificial penis (the Persian "Mayájang"); the patte de chat,
the banana-fruit and a multitude of other succedanea. As this
feminine perversion is only glanced at in The Nights I need
hardly enlarge upon the subject.

[FN#366] Plato (Symp.) is probably mystical when he accounts for
such passions by there being in the beginning three species of
humanity, men, women and men-women or androgynes. When the latter
were destroyed by Zeus for rebellion, the two others were
individually divided into equal parts. Hence each division seeks
its other half in the same sex, the primitive man prefers men and
the primitive woman women. C’est beau, but—is it true? The idea
was probably derived from Egypt which supplied the Hebrews with
androgynic humanity, and thence it passed to extreme India, where
Shiva as Ardhanárí was male on one side and female on the other
side of the body, combining paternal and maternal qualities and
functions. The first creation of humans (Gen. i. 27) was
hermaphrodite (=Hermes and Venus), masculum et fœminam creavit
eos—male and female created He them—on the sixth day, with the
command to increase and multiply (ibid. v. 28), while Eve the
woman was created subsequently. Meanwhile, say certain
Talmudists, Adam carnally copulated with all races of animals.
See L’Anandryne in Mirabeau’s Erotika Biblion, where Antoinette
Bourgnon laments the undoubling which disfigured the work of God,
producing monsters incapable of independent self-reproduction
like the vegetable kingdom.

[FN#367] De la Femme, Paris, 1827.

[FN#368] Die Lustseuche des Alterthum’s, Halle, 1839.

[FN#369] See his exhaustive article on (Grecian) "Paederastie" in
the Allgemeine Encyclopædie of Ersch and Gruber, Leipzig,
Brockhaus, 1837. He carefully traces it through the several
states, Dorians, Æolians, Ionians, the Attic cities and those of
Asia Minor. For these details I must refer my readers to M.
Meier; a full account of these would fill a volume not the
section of an essay.

[FN#370] Against which see Henri Estienne, Apologie pour
Hérodote, a society satire of xvith century, lately reprinted by
Liseux.

[FN#371] In Sparta the lover was called or x
and the beloved as in Thessaly or x.

[FN#372] The more I study religions the more I am convinced that
man never worshipped anything but himself. Zeus, who became
Jupiter, was an ancient king, according to the Cretans, who were
entitled liars because they showed his burial-place. From a
deified ancestor he would become a local god, like the Hebrew
Jehovah as opposed to Chemosh of Moab; the name would gain
amplitude by long time and distant travel, and the old island
chieftain would end in becoming the Demiurgus. Ganymede (who
possibly gave rise to the old Lat. "Catamitus") was probably some
fair Phrygian boy ("son of Tros") who in process of time became a
symbol of the wise man seized by the eagle (perspicacity) to be
raised amongst the Immortals; and the chaste myth simply
signified that only the prudent are loved by the gods. But it
rotted with age as do all things human. For the Pederastía of the
Gods see Bayle under Chrysippe.

[FN#373] See Dissertation sur les idées morales des Grecs et sur
les dangers de lire Platon. Par M. Audé, Bibliophile, Rouen,
Lemonnyer, 1879. This is the pseudonym of the late Octave
Delepierre, who published with Gay, but not the Editio
Princeps—which, if I remember rightly, contains much more
matter.

[FN#374] The phrase of J. Matthias Gesner, Comm. Reg. Soc.
Gottingen i. 1-32. It was founded upon Erasmus’ "Sancte Socrate,
ore pro nobis," and the article was translated by M. Alcide
Bonmaire, Paris, Liseux, 1877.

[FN#375] The subject has employed many a pen, e.g.,Alcibiade
Fanciullo a Scola, D. P. A. (supposed to be Pietro Aretino—ad
captandum?), Oranges, par Juann Wart, 1652: small square 8vo of
pp. 102, including 3 preliminary pp. and at end an unpaged leaf
with 4 sonnets, almost Venetian, by V. M. There is a
re-impression of the same date, a small 12mo of longer format,
pp. 124 with pp. 2 for sonnets: in 1862 the Imprimerie Racon
printed 102 copies in 8vo of pp. iv.-108, and in 1863 it was
condemned by the police as a liber spurcissimus atque execrandus
de criminis sodomici laude et arte. This work produced "Alcibiade
Enfant à l’école," traduit pour la première fois de l’Italien de
Ferrante Pallavicini, Amsterdam, chez l’Ancien Pierre Marteau,
mdccclxvi. Pallavicini (nat. 1618), who wrote against Rome, was
beheaded, aet. 26 (March 5, 1644), at Avignon in 1644 by the
vengeance of the Barberini: he was a bel esprit déréglé, nourri
d’études antiques and a Memb. of the Acad. Degl’ Incogniti. His
peculiarities are shown by his "Opere Scelte," 2 vols. 12mo,
Villafranca, mdclxiii.; these do not include Alcibiade Fanciullo,
a dialogue between Philotimus and Alcibiades which seems to be a
mere skit at the Jesuits and their Péché philosophique. Then came
the "Dissertation sur l’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola," traduit de
l’Italien de Giambattista Baseggio et accompagnée de notes et
d’une post-face par un bibliophile francais (M. Gustave Brunet,
Librarian of Bordeaux), Paris. J. Gay, 1861—an octavo of pp. 78
(paged), 254 copies. The. same Baseggio printed in 1850 his
Disquisizioni (23 copies) and claims for F. Pallavicini the
authorship of Alcibiades which the Manuel du Libraire wrongly
attributes to M. Girol. Adda in 1859. I have heard of but not
seen the "Amator fornaceus, amator ineptus" (Palladii, 1633)
supposed by some to be the origin of Alcibiade Fanciullo; but
most critics consider it a poor and insipid production.

[FN#376] The word is from numbness, torpor, narcotism: the
flowers, being loved by the infernal gods, were offered to the
Furies. Narcissus and Hippolytus are often assumed as types of
morose voluptas, masturbation and clitorisation for nymphomania:
certain mediæval writers found in the former a type of the
Saviour, and ’Mirabeau a representation of the androgynous or
first Adam: to me Narcissus suggests the Hindu Vishnu absorbed in
the contemplation of his own perfections.

[FN#377] The verse of Ovid is parallel’d by the song of Al-Záhir
al-Jazari (Ibn Khall. iii. 720).

Illum impuberem amaverunt mares; puberem feminæ.
Gloria Deo! nunquam amatoribus carebit.

[FN#378] The venerable society of prostitutes contained three
chief classes. The first and lowest were the Dicteriads, so
called from Diete (Crete), who imitated Pasiphaë, wife of Minos,
in preferring a bull to a husband; above them was the middle
class, the Aleutridæ, who were the Almahs or professional
musicians, and the aristocracy was represented by the Hetairai,
whose wit and learning enabled them to adorn more than one page
of Grecian history. The grave Solon, who had studied in Egypt,
established a vast Dicterion (Philemon in his Delphica), or
bordel whose proceeds swelled the revenue of the Republic.

[FN#379] This and Saint Paul (Romans i. 27) suggested to
Caravaggio his picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand
Duke of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men turpiter ligati.

[FN#380] Properly speaking, "Medicus" is the third or ring
finger, as shown by the old Chiromantist verses,

Est pollex Veneris; sed Jupiter indice gaudet,
Saturnus medium; Sol medicumque tenet.

[FN#381] So Seneca uses digito scalpit caput. The modern Italian
does the same by inserting the thumb-tip between the index and
medius to suggest the clitoris.

[FN#382] What can be wittier than the now trite Tale of the
Ephesian Matron, whose dry humour is worthy of The Nights? No
wonder that it has made the grand tour of the world. It is found
in the neo-Phædrus, the tales of Musæus and in the Septem
Sapientes as the "Widow which was comforted." As the "Fabliau de
la Femme qui se fist putain sur la fosse de son Mari," it tempted
Brantôme and La Fontaine; and Abel Rémusat shows in his Contes
Chinois that it is well known to the Middle Kingdom. Mr. Walter
K. Kelly remarks, that the most singular place for such a tale is
the "Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying" by Jeremy Taylor, who
introduces it into his chapt. v.—"Of the Contingencies of Death
and Treating our Dead." But in those days divines were not
mealy-mouthed.

[FN#383] Glossarium eroticum linguæ Latinæ, sive theogoniæ, legum
et morum nuptialium apud Romanos explanatio nova, auctore P. P.
(Parisiis, Dondey-Dupré, 1826, in 8vo). P. P. is supposed to be
Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues, an engineer who made a plan of
Bordeaux and who annotated the Erotica Biblion. Gay writes, "On
s’est servi pour cet ouvrage des travaux inédits de M. Ie Baron
de Schonen, etc. Quant au Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues qu’on
désignait comme l’auteur de ce savant volume, son existence n’est
pas bien avérée, et quelques bibliographes persistent à penser
que ce nom cache la collaboration du Baron de Schonen et d’Eloi
Johanneau." Other glossicists as Blondeau and Forberg have been
printed by Liseux, Paris.

[FN#384] This magnificent country, which the petty jealousies of
Europe condemn, like the glorious regions about Constantinople,
to mere barbarism, is tenanted by three Moslem races. The
Berbers, who call themselves Tamazight (plur. of Amazigh), are
the Gætulian indigenes speaking an Africo-Semitic tongue (see
Essai de Grammaire Kabyle, etc., par A. Hanoteau, Paris, Benjamin
Duprat). The Arabs, descended from the conquerors in our eighth
century, are mostly nomads and camel-breeders. Third and last are
the Moors proper, the race dwelling in towns, a mixed breed
originally Arabian but modified by six centuries of Spanish
residence and showing by thickness of feature and a
parchment-coloured skin, resembling the American Octaroon’s, a
negro innervation of old date. The latter are well described in
"Morocco and the Moors," etc. (Sampson Low and Co., 1876), by my
late friend Dr. Arthur Leared, whose work I should like to see
reprinted.

[FN#385] Thus somewhat agreeing with one of the multitudinous
modern theories that the Pentapolis was destroyed by discharges
of meteoric stones during a tremendous thunderstorm. Possible,
but where are the stones?

[FN#386] To this Iranian domination I attribute the use of many
Persic words which are not yet obsolete in Egypt. "Bakhshísh,"
for instance, is not intelligible in the Moslem regions west of
the Nile-Valley, and for a present the Moors say Hadíyah, regalo
or favor.

[FN#387] Arnobius and Tertullian, with the arrogance of their
caste and its miserable ignorance of that symbolism which often
concealed from vulgar eyes the most precious mysteries, used to
taunt the heathen for praying to deities whose sex they ignored
"Consuistis in precibus ’Seu tu Deus seu tu Dea,’ dicere!" These
men would know everything; they made God the merest work of man’s
brains and armed him with a despotism of omnipotence which
rendered their creation truly dreadful.

[FN#388] Gallus lit. = a cock, in pornologic parlance is a capon,
a castrato.

[FN#389] The texts justifying or enjoining castration are Matt.
xviii. 8-9; Mark ix. 43-47; Luke xxiii. 29 and Col. iii. 5. St.
Paul preached (1 Corin. vii. 29) that a man should live with his
wife as if he had none. The Abelian heretics of Africa abstained
from women because Abel died virginal. Origen mutilated himself
after interpreting too rigorously Matt. xix. 12, and was duly
excommunicated. But his disciple, the Arab Valerius founded (A.D.
250) the castrated sect called Valerians who, persecuted and
dispersed by the Emperors Constantine and Justinian, became the
spiritual fathers of the modern Skopzis. These eunuchs first
appeared in Russia at the end of the xith century, when two
Greeks, John and Jephrem, were metropolitans of Kiew: the former
was brought thither in A.D. 1089 by Princess Anna Wassewolodowna
and is called by the chronicles Nawjè or the Corpse. But in the
early part of the last century (1715-1733) a sect arose in the
circle of Uglitseh and in Moscow, at first called Clisti or
flagellants, which developed into the modern Skopzi. For this
extensive subject see De Stein (Zeitschrift für Ethn. Berlin,
1875) and Mantegazza, chaps. vi.

[FN#390] See the marvellously absurd description of the glorious
"Dead Sea" in the Purchas v. 84.

[FN#391] Jehovah here is made to play an evil part by destroying
men instead of teaching them better. But, "Nous faisons les Dieux
à notre image et nous portons dans le ciel ce que nous voyons sur
la terre." The idea of Yahweh, or Yah, is palpably Egyptian, the
Ankh or ever-living One: the etymon, however, was learned at
Babylon and is still found amongst the cuneiforms.

[FN#392] The name still survives in the Shajarát al-Ashará, a
clump of trees near the village Al-Ghájar (of the Gypsies?) at
the foot of Hermon.

[FN#393] I am not quite sure that Astarte is not primarily the
planet Venus; but I can hardly doubt that Prof. Max Müller and
Sir G. Cox are mistaken in bringing from India Aphrodite the Dawn
and her attendants, the Charites identified with the Vedic
Harits. Of Ishtar in Accadia, however, Roscher seems to have
proved that she is distinctly the Moon sinking into Amenti (the
west, the Underworld) in search of her lost spouse Izdubar, the
Sun-god. This again is pure Egyptianism.

[FN#394] In this classical land of Venus the worship of
Ishtar-Ashtaroth is by no means obsolete. The Metáwali heretics,
a people of Persian descent and Shiite tenets, and the peasantry
of "Bilád B’sharrah," which I would derive from Bayt Ashirah,
still pilgrimage to the ruins and address their vows to the
Sayyidat al-Kabírah, the Great Lady. Orthodox Moslems accuse them
of abominable orgies and point to the lamps and rags which they
suspend to a tree entitled Shajarat al-Sitt—the Lady’s tree—an
Acacia Albida which, according to some travellers, is found only
here and at Sayda (Sidon) where an avenue exists. The people of
Kasrawán, a Christian province in the Libanus, inhabited by a
peculiarly prurient race, also hold high festival under the
far-famed Cedars, and their women sacrifice to Venus like the
Kadashah of the Phœnicians. This survival of old superstition is
unknown to missionary "Handbooks," but amply deserves the study
of the anthropologist.

[FN#395] Some commentators understand "the tabernacles sacred to
the reproductive powers of women;" and the Rabbis declare that
the emblem was the figure of a setting hen.

[FN#396] Dog" is applied by the older Jews to the Sodomite and
the Catamite, and thus they understand the "price of a dog" which
could not be brought into the Temple (Deut. xxiii. 18). I have
noticed it in one of the derivations of cinædus and can only
remark that it is a vile libel upon the canine tribe.

[FN#397] Her name was Maachah and her title, according to some,
"King’s mother": she founded the sect of Communists who rejected
marriage and made adultery and incest part of worship in their
splendid temple. Such were the Basilians and the Carpocratians
followed in the xith century by Tranchelin, whose sectarians, the
Turlupins, long infested Savoy.

[FN#398] A noted exception is Vienna, remarkable for the enormous
development of the virginal bosoni, which soon becomes pendulent.

[FN#399] Gen. xxxviii. 2-11. Amongst the classics Mercury taught
the "Art of le Thalaba" to his son Pan who wandered about the
mountains distraught with love for the Nymph Echo and Pan passed
it on to the pastors. See Thalaba in Mirabeau.

[FN#400] The reader of The Nights has remarked how often the "he"
in Arabic poetry denotes a "she"; but the Arab, when
uncontaminated by travel, ignores pederasty, and the Arab poet is
a Badawi.

[FN#401] So Mohammed addressed his girl-wife Ayishah in the
masculine.

[FN#402] So amongst the Romans we have the Iatroliptæ, youths or
girls who wiped the gymnast’s perspiring body with swan-down, a
practice renewed by the professors of "Massage"; Unctores who
applied perfumes and essences; Fricatrices and Tractatrices or
shampooers; Dropacistæ, corn-cutters; Alipilarii who plucked the
hair, etc., etc., etc.

[FN#403] It is a parody on the well-known song (Roebuck i. sect.
2, No. 1602):

The goldsmith knows the worth of gold, jewellers worth of
jewelry;
The worth of rose Bulbul can tell and Kambar’s worth his lord,
Ali.

[FN#404] For "Sindí" Roebuck (Oriental Proverbs Part i. p. 99)
has Kunbu (Kumboh) a Panjábi peasant, and others vary the saying
ad libitum. See vol. vi. 156.

[FN#405] See "Sind Revisited" i. 133-35.

[FN#406] They must not be confounded with the grelots lascifs,
the little bells of gold or silver set by the people of Pegu in
the prepuce-skin, and described by Nicolo de Conti who however
refused to undergo the operation.

[FN#407] Relation des découvertes faites par Colomb, etc., p.
137: Bologna 1875; also Vespucci’s letter in Ramusio (i. 131) and
Paro’s Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains.

[FN#408] See Mantegazza loc. cit. who borrows from the Thèse de
Paris of Dr. Abel Hureau de Villeneuve, "Frictiones per coitum
productæ magnum mucosæ membranæ vaginalis turgorem, ac simul
hujus cuniculi coarctationem tam maritis salacibus quæritatam
afferunt."

[FN#409] Fascinus is the Priapus-god to whom the Vestal Virgins
of Rome, professed tribades, sacrificed, also the neck-charm in
phallus-shape. Fascinum is the male member.

[FN#410] Captain Grose (Lexicon Balatronicum) explains merkin as
"counterfeit hair for women’s privy parts. See Bailey’s Dict."
The Bailey of 1764, an "improved edition," does not contain the
word which is now generally applied to a cunnus succedaneus.

[FN#411] I have noticed this phenomenal cannibalism in my notes
to Mr. Albert Tootle’s excellent translation of "The Captivity of
Hans Stade of Hesse:" London, Hakluyt Society, mdccclxxiv.

[FN#412] The Ostreiras or shell mounds of the Brazil, sometimes
200 feet high, are described by me in Anthropologia No. i. Oct.
1873.

[FN#413] The Native Races of the Pacific States of South America,
by Herbert Howe Bancroft, London, Longmans, 1875.

[FN#414] All Peruvian historians mention these giants, who were
probably the large-limbed Gribs (Caraíbes) of the Brazil: they
will be noticed in page 211.

[FN#415] This sounds much like a pious fraud of the missionaries,
a Europeo-American version of the Sodom legend.

[FN#416] Les Races Aryennes du Perou, Paris, Franck, 1871.

[FN#417] O Brazil e os Brazileiros, Santos, 1862.

[FN#418] Aethiopia Orientalis, Purchas ii. 1558.

[FN#419] Purchas iii. 243.

[FN#420] For a literal translation see 1re Série de la Curiosité
Littéraire et Bibliographique, Paris, Liseux, 1880.

[FN#421] His best-known works are (1) Praktisches Handbuch der
Gerechtlichen Medecin, Berlin, 1860; and (2) Klinische Novellen
zur Gerechtlichen Medecin, Berlin, 1863.

[FN#422] The same author printed another imitation of Petronius
Arbiter, the "Larissa" story of Théophile Viand. His cousin, the
Sévigné, highly approved of it. See Bayle’s objections to
Rabutin’s delicacy and excuses for Petronius’ grossness in his
"Éclaircissement sur les obscénités" (Appendice au Dictionnaire
Antique).

[FN#423] The Boulgrin of Rabelais, which Urquhart renders Ingle
for Boulgre, an "indorser," derived from the Bulgarus or
Bulgarian, who gave to Italy the term bugiardo—liar. Bougre and
Bougrerie date (Littré) from the xiiith century. I cannot,
however, but think that the trivial term gained strength in the
xvith, when the manners of the Bugres or indigenous Brazilians
were studied by Huguenot refugees in La France Antartique and
several of these savages found their way to Europe. A grand Fête
in Rouen on the entrance of Henri II. and Dame Katherine de
Medicis (June 16, 1564) showed, as part of the pageant, three
hundred men (including fifty "Bugres" or Tupis) with parroquets
and other birds and beasts of the newly explored regions. The
procession is given in the four-folding woodcut "Figure des
Brésiliens" in Jean de Prest’s Edition of 1551.

[FN#424] Erotika Biblion, chaps. Kadésch (pp. 93 et seq.),
Edition de Bruxelles, with notes by the Chevalier P. Pierrugues
of Bordeaux, before noticed.

[FN#425] Called Chevaliers de Paille because the sign was a straw
in the mouth, à la Palmerston.

[FN#426] I have noticed that the eunuch in Sind was as meanly
paid and have given the reason.

[FN#427] Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (by Pisanus Fraxi) 4to,
p. Ix. and 593. London. Privately printed, mdccclxxix.

[FN#428] A friend learned in these matters supplies me with the
following list of famous pederasts. Those who marvel at the wide
diffusion of such erotic perversion, and its being affected by so
many celebrities, will bear in mind that the greatest men have
been some of the worst: Alexander of Macedon, Julius Cæsar and
Napoleon Buonaparte held themselves high above the moral law
which obliges common-place humanity. All three are charged with
the Vice. Of Kings we have Henri iii., Louis xiii. and xviii.,
Frederick ii. Of Prussia Peter the Great, William ii. of Holland
and Charles ii. and iii. of Parma. We find also Shakespeare (i.,
xv., Edit. Francois Hugo) and Moliere, Theodorus Beza, Lully (the
Composer), D’Assoucy, Count Zintzendorff, the Grand Condé,
Marquis de Villette, Pierre Louis Farnese, Duc de la Vallière, De
Soleinne, Count D’Avaray, Saint Mégrin, D’Epernon, Admiral de la
Susse La Roche-Pouchin Rochfort S. Louis, Henne (the
Spiritualist), Comte Horace de Viel Castel, Lerminin, Fievée,
Théodore Leclerc, Archi-Chancellier Cambacèrés, Marquis de
Custine, Sainte-Beuve and Count D’Orsay. For others refer to the
three volumes of Pisanus Fraxi, Index Librorum Prohibitorum
(London, 1877), Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (before alluded
to) and Catena Librorum Tacendorum, London, 1885. The indices
will supply the names.

[FN#429] 0f this peculiar character Ibn Khallikan remarks (ii.
43), "There were four poets whose works clearly contraried their
character. Abú al-Atahíyah wrote pious poems himself being an
atheist; Abú Hukayma’s verses proved his impotence, yet he was
more salacious than a he-goat, Mohammed ibn Házim praised
contentment, yet he was greedier than a dog, and Abú Nowás hymned
the joys of sodomy, yet he was more passionate for women than a
baboon."

[FN#430] A virulently and unjustly abusive critique never yet
injured its object: in fact it is generally the greatest favour
an author’s unfriends can bestow upon him. But to notice a
popular Review books which have been printed and not published is
hardly in accordance with the established courtesies of
literature. At the end of my work I propose to write a paper "The
Reviewer Reviewed" which will, amongst other things, explain the
motif of the writer of the critique and the editor of the
Edinburgh.

[FN#431] 1 For detailed examples and specimens see p. 10 of
Gladwin’s "Dissertations on Rhetoric," etd., Calcutta, 1801.

[FN#432] For instance: I, M. | take thee N. | to my wedded wife,
| to have and to hold, | from this day forward, | for better for
worse, | for richer for poorer, | in sickness and in health, | to
love and to cherish, | till death do us part, etc. Here it
becomes mere blank verse which is, of course, a defect in prose
style. In that delightful old French the Saj’a frequently
appeared when attention was solicited for the titles of books:
e.g. Lea Romant de la Rose, ou tout lart damours est enclose.

[FN#433] See Gladwin loc. cit. p. 8: it also is = alliteration
(Ibn Khall. ii., 316).

[FN#434] He called himself "Nabiyun ummí" = illiterate prophet;
but only his most ignorant followers believe that he was unable
to read and write. His last words, accepted by all traditionists,
were "Aatíní dawáta wa kalam" (bring me ink-case and pen); upon
which the Shi’ah or Persian sectaries base, not without
probability, a theory that Mohammed intended to write down the
name of Ali as his Caliph or successor when Omar, suspecting the
intention, exclaimed, "The Prophet is delirious; have we not the
Koran?" thus impiously preventing the precaution. However that
may be, the legend proves that Mohammed could read and write even
when not "under inspiration." The vulgar idea would arise from a
pious intent to add miracle to the miraculous style of the Koran.

[FN#435] I cannot but vehemently suspect that this legend was
taken from much older traditions. We have Jubal the semi-mythical
who, "by the different falls of his hammer on the anvil,
discovered by the ear the first rude music that pleased the
antediluvian fathers." Then came Pythagoras, of whom Macrobius
(lib. ii ) relates how this Græco-Egyptian philosopher, passing
by a smithy, observed that the sounds were grave or acute
according to the weights of the hammers; and he ascertained by
experiment that such was the case when different weights were
hung by strings of the same size. The next discovery was that two
strings of the same substance and tension, the one being double
the length of the other, gave the diapason-interval, or an
eighth; and the same was effected from two strings of similar
length and size, the one having four times the tension of the
other. Belonging to the same cycle of invention-anecdotes are
Galileo’s discovery of the pendulum by the lustre of the Pisan
Duomo; and the kettle-lid, the falling apple and the copper hook
which inspired Watt, Newton and Galvani.

[FN#436] To what an absurd point this has been carried we may
learn from Ibn Khallikán (i. 114). A poet addressing a single
individual does not say "My friend!" or "My friends!" but "My two
friends!" (in the dual) because a Badawi required a pair of
companions, one to tend the sheep and the other to pasture the
camels.

[FN#437] For further details concerning the Sabab, Watad and
Fasilah, see at the end of this Essay the learned remarks of Dr.
Steingass.

[FN#438] e.g., the Mu’allakats of "Amriolkais," Tarafah and
Zuhayr compared by Mr. Lyall (Introduction to Translations) with
the metre of Abt Vogler, e.g.,

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told

[FN#439] e.g., the Poem of Hareth which often echoes the
hexameter

[FN#440] Gladwin, p. 80.

[FN#441] Gladwin (p. 77) gives only eight, omitting F ’ l which
he or his author probably considers the Muzáhaf, imperfect or
apocopêd form of F ’ l n, as M f ’ l of M f ’ l n. For the
infinite complications of Arabic prosody the Khafíf (soft
breathing) and Sahíh (hard breathing); the Sadr and Arúz (first
and last feet), the Ibtidá and Zarb (last foot of every line);
the Hashw (cushion-stuffing) or body part of verse, the ’Amúd
al-Kasídah or Al-Musammat (the strong) and other details I must
refer readers to such specialists as Freytag and Sam. Clarke
(Prosodia Arabica), and to Dr. Steingass’s notes infra.

[FN#442] The Hebrew grammarians of the Middle Ages wisely copied
their Arab cousins by turning Fa’la into Pael and so forth.

[FN#443] Mr. Lyall, whose "Ancient Arabic Poetry" (Williams and
Norgate, 1885) I reviewed in The Academy of Oct. 3, ’85, did the
absolute reverse of what is required: he preserved the metre and
sacrificed the rhyme even when it naturally suggested itself. For
instance in the last four lines of No. xii. what would be easier
than to write,

Ah sweet and soft wi’ thee her ways: bethink thee well! The day
shall be
When some one favoured as thyself shall find her fair and fain
and free;
And if she swear that parting ne’er shall break her word of
constancy,
When did rose-tinted finger-tip with pacts and pledges e’er
agree?

[FN#444] See p. 439 Grammatik des Arabischen Vulgär Dialekts von
Ægyptian, by Dr. Wilhelm Spitta Bey, Leipzig, 1880. In pp.
489-493 he gives specimens of eleven Mawáwíl varying in length
from four to fifteen lines. The assonance mostly attempts
monorhyme: in two tetrastichs it is aa + ba, and it does not
disdain alternates, ab + ab + ab.

[FN#445] Al-Siyuti, p. 235, from Ibn Khallikan. Our knowledge of
oldest Arab verse is drawn chiefly from the Katáb al-Aghání
(Song-book) of Abu al-Faraj the Isfaháni who flourished A.H.
284-356 (= 897- 967): it was printed at the Bulak Press in 1868.

[FN#446] See Lyall loc. cit. p. 97.

[FN#447] His Diwán has been published with a French translation,
par R. Boucher, Paris, Labitte, 1870.

[FN#448] I find also minor quotations from the Imám Abu al-Hasan
al-Askari (of Sarra man raa) ob. A.D. 868; Ibn Makúla (murdered
in A.D. 862?), Ibn Durayd (ob. A.D. 933)
Al-Zahr the Poet (ob. A.D. 963); Abu Bakr al-Zubaydi (ob. A.D.
989), Kábús ibn Wushmaghir (murdered in A.D. 1012-13); Ibn
Nabatah the Poet (ob. A.D. 1015), Ibn al-Sa’ati (ob. A.D. 1028);
Ibn Zaydun al-Andalusi who died at Hums (Emessa, the Arab name
for Seville) in A.D. 1071; Al-Mu’tasim ibn Sumadih (ob. A.D.
1091), Al-Murtaza ibn al-Shahrozuri the Sufi (ob. A.D. 1117); Ibn
Sara al-Shantaráni (of Santarem) who sang of Hind and died A.D.
1123; Ibn al-Kházin (ob. A.D. 1124), Ibn Kalakis (ob. A D. 1172)
Ibn al-Ta’wizi (ob. A.D. 1188); Ibn Zabádah (ob. A.D. 1198), Bahá
al-Dín Zuhayr (ob A.D. 1249); Muwaffak al-Din Muzaffar (ob. A.D.
1266) and sundry others. Notices of Al-Utayyah (vol. i. 11), of
Ibn al-Sumám (vol. i. 87) and of Ibn Sáhib al-Ishbíli, of Seville
(vol. i. 100), are deficient. The most notable point in Arabic
verse is its savage satire, the language of excited
"destructiveness" which characterises the Badawi: he is "keen for
satire as a thirsty man for water:" and half his poetry seems to
consist of foul innuendo, of lampoons, and of gross personal
abuse.

[FN#449] If the letter preceding Wáw or Yá is moved by Fathah,
they produce the diphthongs au (aw), pronounced like ou in
"bout’" and se, pronounced as i in "bite."

[FN#450] For the explanation of this name and those of the
following terms, see Terminal Essay, p. 225.

[FN#451] This Fásilah is more accurately called sughrá, the
smaller one, there is another Fásilah kubrà, the greater,
consisting of four moved letters followed by a quiescent, or of a
Sabab sakíl followed by a Watad majmú’. But it occurs only as a
variation of a normal foot, not as an integral element in its
composition, and consequently no mention of it was needed in the
text.

[FN#452] It is important to keep in mind that the seemingly
identical feet 10 and 6, 7 and 3, are distinguished by the
relative positions of the constituting elements in either pair.
For as it will be seen that Sabab and Watad are subject to
different kinds of alterations it is evident that the effect of
such alterations upon a foot will vary, if Sabab and Watad occupy
different places with regard to each other.

[FN#453] i.e. vertical to the circumference.

[FN#454] This would be a Fásilah kubrá spoken of in the note p.
239.

[FN#455] In pause that is at the end of a line, a short vowel
counts either as long or is dropped according to the exigencies
of the metre. In the Hashw the u or i of the pronominal affix for
the third person sing., masc., and the final u of the enlarged
pronominal plural forms, humu and kumu, may be either short or
long, according to the same exigencies. The end-vowel of the
pronoun of the first person aná, I, is generally read short,
although it is written with Alif.

[FN#456] On p. 236 the word akámú, as read by itself, was
identified with the foot Fa’úlun. Here it must be read together
with the following syllable as "akámulwaj," which is Mafá’ílun.

[FN#457] Prof. Palmer, p. 328 of his Grammar, identifies this
form of the Wáfir, when every Mufá’ alatum of the Hashw has
become Mafá’ílun, with the second form of the Rajaz It should be
Hazaj. Professor Palmer was misled, it seems, by an evident
misprint in one of his authorities, the Muhít al-Dáirah by Dr.
Van Dayk, p. 52.

[FN#458] Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac 134b "The Merchant’s Wife
and the Parrot."

[FN#459] This will be found translated in my "Book of the
Thousand Nights and One Night," vol. vii. p. 307, as an Appendix
to the Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac version of the story, from
which it differs in detail.

[FN#460] Called "Bekhit" in Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac
Editions.

[FN#461] Yehya ben Khalid (Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac),

[FN#462] "Shar" (Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac).

[FN#463] "Jelyaad" (Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac.)

[FN#464] Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac, No. 63. See my "Book of
the Thousand Nights and One Night," vol. iv., p. 211.

[FN#465] Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac, "Jaafar the Barmecide."

[FN#466] Calcutta (1839-42) and Boulac, "The Thief turned
Merchant and the other Thief," No. 88.

[FN#467] This story will be found translated in my "Book of the
Thousand Nights and One Night," vol. v., p. 345.

[FN#468] After this I introduce the Tale of the Husband and the
Parrot.

[FN#469] The Bulak Edition omits this story altogether.

[FN#470] After this I introduce How Abu Hasan brake wind.

[FN#471] Probably Wakksh al-Falák=Feral of the Wild.

[FN#472] This is the date of the Paris edition. There was an
earlier edition published at La Haye in 1743.

[FN#473] There are two other Oriental romances by Voltaire; viz.,
Babouc, and the Princess of Babylon.