The Book of The Thousand Nights and a Night : a plain and literal translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. Translated and Annotated by Richard F. Burton

The Translator’s Foreword.

This work, labourious as it may appear, has been to me a labour of love, an unfailing source of solace and satisfaction. During my long years of official banishment to the luxuriant and deadly deserts of Western Africa, and to the dull and dreary half clearings of South America, it proved itself a charm, a talisman against ennui and despondency. Impossible even to open the pages without a vision starting into view; with out drawing a picture from the pinacothek of the brain; without reviving a host of memories and reminiscences which are not the common property of travellers, however widely they may have travelled. From my dull and commonplace and “respectable” surroundings, the Jinn bore me at once to the land of my pre-direction, Arabia, a region so familiar to my mind that even at first sight, it seemed a reminiscence of some by gone metem-psychic life in the distant Past. Again I stood under the diaphanous skies, in air glorious as aether, whose every breath raises men’s spirits like sparkling wine. Once more I saw the evening star hanging like a solitaire from the pure front of the western firmament; and the after glow transfiguring and transforming, as by magic, the homely and rugged features of the scene into a fairy land lit with a light which never shines on other soils or seas. Then would appear the woollen tents, low and black, of the true Badawin, mere dots in the boundless waste of lion tawny clays and gazelle brown gravels, and the camp fire dotting like a glow worm the village centre. Presently, sweetened by distance, would be heard the wild weird song of lads and lasses, driving or rather pelting, through the gloaming their sheep and goats; and the measured chant of the spearsmen gravely stalking behind their charge, the camels; mingled with bleating of the flocks and the bellowing of the humpy herds; while the reremouse flitted overhead with his tiny shriek, and the rave of the jackal resounded through deepening glooms, and—most musical of music—the palm trees answered the whispers of the night breeze with the softest tones of falling water.

And then a shift of scene. The Shaykhs and “white beards” of the tribe gravely take their places, sitting with outspread skirts like hillocks on the plain, as the Arabs say, around the camp fire, whilst I reward their hospitality and secure its continuance by reading or reciting a few pages of their favourite tales. The women and children stand motionless as silhouettes outside the ring; and all are breathless with attention; they seem to drink in the words with eyes and mouths as well as with ears. The most fantastic flights of fancy, the wildest improbabilities, the most impossible of impossibilities, appear to them utterly natural, mere matters of every day occurrence. They enter thoroughly into each phase of feeling touched upon by the author: they take a personal pride in the chivalrous nature and knightly prowess of Taj al-Mulúk; they are touched with tenderness by the self sacrificing love of Azízah; their mouths water as they hear of heaps of untold gold given away in largesse like clay; they chuckle with delight every time a Kázi or a Fakír—a judge or a reverend—is scurvily entreated by some Pantagruelist of the Wilderness; and, despite their normal solemnity and impassibility, all roar with laughter, sometimes rolling upon the ground till the reader’s gravity is sorely tried, at the tales of the garrulous Barber and of Ali and the Kurdish Sharper. To this magnetising mood the sole exception is when a Badawi of superior accomplishments, who sometimes says his prayers, ejaculates a startling “Astagh-faru’llah”—I pray Allah’s pardon!—for listening, not to Carlyle’s “downright lies,” but to light mention of the sex whose name is never heard amongst the nobility of the Desert.

Nor was it only in Arabia that the immortal Nights did me such notable service: I found the wildlings of Somali land equally amenable to its discipline; no one was deaf to the charm and the two women cooks of my caravan, on its way to Harar, were in continently dubbed by my men “Shahrazad” and “Dinazad.”

It may be permitted me also to note that this translation is a natural outcome of my Pilgrimage to Al–Medinah and Meccah. Arriving at Aden in the (so called) winter of 1852, I put up with my old and dear friend, Steinhaeuser, to whose memory this volume is inscribed; and, when talking over Arabia and the Arabs, we at once came to the same conclusion that, while the name of this wondrous treasury of Moslem folk lore is familiar to almost every English child, no general reader is aware of the valuables it contains, nor indeed will the door open to any but Arabists. Before parting we agreed to “collaborate” and produce a full, complete, unvarnished, uncastrated copy of the great original, my friend taking the prose and I the metrical part; and we corresponded upon the subject for years. But whilst I was in the Brazil, Steinhaeuser died suddenly of apoplexy at Berne in Switzerland and, after the fashion of Anglo India, his valuable Mss. left at Aden were dispersed, and very little of his labours came into my hands.

Thus I was left alone to my work, which progressed fitfully amid a host of obstructions. At length, in the spring of 1879, the tedious process of copying began and the book commenced to take finished form. But, during the winter of 1881–82, I saw in the literary journals a notice of a new version by Mr. John Payne, well known to scholars for his prowess in English verse, especially for his translation of “The Poems of Master Francis Villon, of Paris.” Being then engaged on an expedition to the Gold Coast (for gold), which seemed likely to cover some months, I wrote to the “Athenaeum” (Nov. 13, 1881) and to Mr. Payne, who was wholly unconscious that we were engaged on the same work, and freely offered him precedence and possession of the field till no longer wanted. He accepted my offer as frankly, and his priority entailed another delay lasting till the spring of 1885. These details will partly account for the lateness of my appearing, but there is yet another cause. Professional ambition suggested that literary labours, unpopular with the vulgar and the half educated, are not likely to help a man up the ladder of promotion. But common sense presently suggested to me that, professionally speaking, I was not a success, and, at the same time, that I had no cause to be ashamed of my failure. In our day, when we live under a despotism of the lower “middle class” Philister who can pardon anything but superiority, the prizes of competitive services are monopolized by certain “pets” of the Médiocratie, and prime favourites of that jealous and potent majority—the Mediocnties who know “no nonsense about merit.” It is hard for an outsider to realise how perfect is the monopoly of common place, and to comprehend how fatal a stumbling stone that man sets in the way of his own advancement who dares to think for himself, or who knows more or who does more than the mob of gentlemen employee who know very little and who do even less.

Yet, however behindhand I may be, there is still ample room and verge for an English version of the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.”

Our century of translations, popular and vernacular, from (Professor Antoine) Galland’s delightful abbreviation and adaptation (A.D. 1704), in no wise represent the eastern original. The best and latest, the Rev. Mr. Foster’s, which is diffuse and verbose, and Mr. G. Moir Bussey’s, which is a re- correction, abound in gallicisms of style and idiom; and one and all degrade a chef d’oeuvre of the highest anthropological and ethnographical interest and importance to a mere fairy book, a nice present for little boys.

After nearly a century had elapsed, Dr. Jonathan Scott (LL.D. H.E.I.C.‘s S., Persian Secretary to the G. G. Bengal; Oriental Professor, etc., etc.), printed his “Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters, translated from the Arabic and Persian,” (Cadell and Davies, London, A.D. 1800); and followed in 1811 with an edition of “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments” from the Ms. of Edward Wortley Montague (in 6 vols., small 8vo, London: Longmans, etc.). This work he (and he only) describes as “Carefully revised and occasionally corrected from the Arabic.” The reading public did not wholly reject it, sundry texts were founded upon the Scott version and it has been imperfectly reprinted (4 vole., 8vo, Nimmo and Bain, London, 1883). But most men, little recking what a small portion of the original they were reading, satisfied themselves with the Anglo French epitome and metaphrase. At length in 1838, Mr. Henry Torrens, B.A., Irishman, lawyer (“of the Inner Temple”) and Bengal Civilian, took a step in the right direction; and began to translate, “The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night,” (1 vol., 8vo, Calcutta: W. Thacker and Co.) from the Arabic of the Ægyptian (!) Ms. edited by Mr. (afterwards Sir)William H. Macnaghten. The attempt, or rather the intention, was highly creditable; the copy was carefully moulded upon the model and offered the best example of the verbatim et literatim style. But the plucky author knew little of Arabic, and least of what is most wanted, the dialect of Egypt and Syria. His prose is so conscientious as to offer up spirit at the shrine of letter; and his verse, always whimsical, has at times a manner of Hibernian whoop which is comical when it should be pathetic. Lastly he printed only one volume of a series which completed would have contained nine or ten.

That amiable and devoted Arabist, the late Edward William Lane does not score a success in his “New Translation of the Tales of a Thousand and One Nights” (London: Charles Knight and Co., MDCCCXXXIX.) of which there have been four English editions, besides American, two edited by E. S. Poole. He chose the abbreviating Bulak Edition; and, of its two hundred tales, he has omitted about half and by far the more characteristic half: the work was intended for “the drawing room table;” and, consequently, the workman was compelled to avoid the “objectionable” and aught “approaching to licentiousness.” He converts the Arabian Nights into the Arabian Chapters, arbitrarily changing the division and, worse still, he converts some chapters into notes. He renders poetry by prose and apologises for not omitting it altogether: he neglects assonance and he is at once too Oriental and not Oriental enough. He had small store of Arabic at the time—Lane of the Nights is not Lane of the Dictionary—and his pages are disfigured by many childish mistakes. Worst of all, the three handsome volumes are rendered unreadable as Sale’s Koran by their anglicised Latin, their sesquipedalian un English words, and the stiff and stilted style of half a century ago when our prose was, perhaps, the worst in Europe. Their cargo of Moslem learning was most valuable to the student, but utterly out of place for readers of “The Nights;” re-published, as these notes have been separately (London, Chatto, 1883), they are an ethnological text book.

Mr. John Payne has printed, for the Villon Society and for private circulation only, the first and sole complete translation of the great compendium, “comprising about four times as much matter as that of Galland, and three times as much as that of any other translator;” and I cannot but feel proud that he has honoured me with the dedication of “The Book of The Thousand Nights and One Night.” His version is most readable: his English, with a sub-flavour of the Mabinogionic archaicism, is admirable; and his style gives life and light to the nine volumes whose matter is frequently heavy enough. He succeeds admirably in the most difficult passages and he often hits upon choice and special terms and the exact vernacular equivalent of the foreign word, so happily and so picturesquely that all future translators must perforce use the same expression under pain of falling far short. But the learned and versatile author bound himself to issue only five hundred copies, and “not to reproduce the work in its complete and uncastrated form.” Consequently his excellent version is caviaire to the general—practically unprocurable.

And here I hasten to confess that ample use has been made of the three versions above noted, the whole being blended by a callida junctura into a homogeneous mass. But in the presence of so many predecessors a writer is bound to show some raison d’etre for making a fresh attempt and this I proceed to do with due reserve.

Briefly, the object of this version is to show what “The Thousand Nights and a Night” really is. Not, however, for reasons to be more fully stated in the Terminal Essay, by straining verbum reddere verbo, but by writing as the Arab would have written in English. On this point I am all with Saint Jerome (Pref. in Jobum) “Vel verbum e verbo, vel sensum e sensu, vel ex utroque commixtum, et medic temperatum genus translationis.” My work claims to be a faithful copy of the great Eastern Saga book, by preserving intact, not only the spirit, but even the mécanique, the manner and the matter. Hence, however prosy and long drawn out be the formula, it retains the scheme of The Nights because they are a prime feature in the original. The Ráwí or reciter, to whose wits the task of supplying details is left, well knows their value: the openings carefully repeat the names of the dramatic personae and thus fix them in the hearer’s memory. Without the Nights no Arabian Nights! Moreover it is necessary to retain the whole apparatus: nothing more ill advised than Dr. Jonathan Scott’s strange device of garnishing The Nights with fancy head pieces and tail pieces or the splitting up of Galland’s narrative by merely prefixing “Nuit,” etc., ending moreover, with the ccxxxivth Night: yet this has been done, apparently with the consent of the great Arabist Sylvestre de Sacy (Paris, Ernest Bourdin). Moreover, holding that the translator’s glory is to add something to his native tongue, while avoiding the hideous hag like nakedness of Torrens and the bald literalism of Lane, I have carefully Englished the picturesque turns and novel expressions of the original in all their outlandishness; for instance, when the dust cloud raised by a tramping host is described as “walling the horizon.” Hence peculiar attention has been paid to the tropes and figures which the Arabic language often packs into a single term; and I have never hesitated to coin a word when wanted, such as “she snorted and sparked,” fully to represent the original. These, like many in Rabelais, are mere barbarisms unless generally adopted; in which case they become civilised and common currency.

Despite objections manifold and manifest, I have preserved the balance of sentences and the prose rhyme and rhythm which Easterns look upon as mere music. This “Saj’a,” or cadence of the cooing dove, has in Arabic its special duties. It adds a sparkle to description and a point to proverb, epigram and dialogue; it corresponds with our “artful alliteration” (which in places I have substituted for it) and, generally, it defines the boundaries between the classical and the popular styles which jostle each other in The Nights. If at times it appear strained and forced, after the wont of rhymed prose, the scholar will observe that, despite the immense copiousness of assonants and consonants in Arabic, the strain is often put upon it intentionally, like the Rims cars of Dante and the Troubadours. This rhymed prose may be “un English” and unpleasant, even irritating to the British ear; still I look upon it as a sine quâ non for a complete reproduction of the original. In the Terminal Essay I shall revert to the subject.

On the other hand when treating the versical portion, which may represent a total of ten thousand lines, I have not always bound myself by the metrical bonds of the Arabic, which are artificial in the extreme, and which in English can be made bearable only by a tour de force. I allude especially to the monorhyme, Rim continuat or tirade monorime, whose monotonous simplicity was preferred by the Troubadours for threnodies. It may serve well for three or four couplets but, when it extends, as in the Ghazal-cannon, to eighteen, and in the Kasidah, elegy or ode, to more, it must either satisfy itself with banal rhyme words, when the assonants should as a rule be expressive and emphatic; or, it must display an ingenuity, a smell of the oil, which assuredly does not add to the reader’s pleasure. It can perhaps be done and it should be done; but for me the task has no attractions: I can fence better in shoes than in sabots. Finally I print the couplets in Arab form separating the hemistichs by asterisks.

And now to consider one matter of special importance in the book—its turpiloquium. This stumbling-block is of two kinds, completely distinct. One is the simple, naïve and child like indecency which, from Tangiers to Japan, occurs throughout general conversation of high and low in the present day. It uses, like the holy books of the Hebrews, expressions “plainly descriptive of natural situations;” and it treats in an unconventionally free and naked manner of subjects and matters which are usually, by common consent, left undescribed. As Sir William Jones observed long ago, “that anything natural can be offensively obscene never seems to have occurred to the Indians or to their legislators; a singularity (?) pervading their writings and conversation, but no proof of moral depravity.” Another justly observes, Les peuples primitifs n’y entendent pas malice: ils appellent les choses par leurs noms et ne trouvent pas condamnable ce qui est naturel. And they are prying as children. For instance the European novelist marries off his hero and heroine and leaves them to consummate marriage in privacy; even Tom Jones has the decency to bolt the door. But the Eastern story teller, especially this unknown “prose Shakespeare,” must usher you, with a flourish, into the bridal chamber and narrate to you, with infinite gusto, everything he sees and hears. Again we must remember that grossness and indecency, in fact les turpitudes, are matters of time and place; what is offensive in England is not so in Egypt; what scandalises us now would have been a tame joke tempore Elisœ. Withal The Nights will not be found in this matter coarser than many passages of Shakespeare, Sterne, and Swift, and their uncleanness rarely attains the perfection of Alcofribas Naiser, “divin maitre et atroce cochon.” The other element is absolute obscenity, sometimes, but not always, tempered by wit, humour and drollery; here we have an exaggeration of Petronius Arbiter, the handiwork of writers whose ancestry, the most religious and the most debauched of mankind, practised every abomination before the shrine of the Canopic Gods.

In accordance with my purpose of reproducing the Nights, not virginibus puerisque, but in as perfect a picture as my powers permit, I have carefully sought out the English equivalent of every Arabic word, however low it may be or “shocking” to ears polite; preserving, on the other hand, all possible delicacy where the indecency is not intentional; and, as a friend advises me to state, not exaggerating the vulgarities and the indecencies which, indeed, can hardly be exaggerated. For the coarseness and crassness are but the shades of a picture which would otherwise be all lights. The general tone of The Nights is exceptionally high and pure. The devotional fervour often rises to the boiling point of fanaticism. The pathos is sweet, deep and genuine; tender, simple and true, utterly unlike much of our modern tinsel. Its life, strong, splendid and multitudinous, is everywhere flavoured with that unaffected pessimism and constitutional melancholy which strike deepest root under the brightest skies and which sigh in the face of heaven: —

Vita quid est hominis? Viridis floriscula mortis;
Sole Oriente oriens, sole cadente cadens.

Poetical justice is administered by the literary Kází with exemplary impartiality and severity; “denouncing evil doers and eulogising deeds admirably achieved.” The morale is sound and healthy; and at times we descry, through the voluptuous and libertine picture, vistas of a transcendental morality, the morality of Socrates in Plato. Subtle corruption and covert licentiousness are utterly absent; we find more real”vice” in many a short French roman, say La Dame aux Camélias, and in not a few English novels of our day than in the thousands of pages of the Arab. Here we have nothing of that most immodest modern modesty which sees covert implication where nothing is implied, and “improper” allusion when propriety is not outraged; nor do we meet with the Nineteenth Century refinement; innocence of the word not of the thought; morality of the tongue not of the heart, and the sincere homage paid to virtue in guise of perfect hypocrisy. It is, indeed, this unique contrast of a quaint element, childish crudities and nursery indecencies and “vain and amatorious” phrase jostling the finest and highest views of life and character, shown in the kaleidoscopic shiftings of the marvellous picture with many a “rich truth in a tale’s presence”, pointed by a rough dry humour which compares well with “wut; “the alternations of strength and weakness, of pathos and bathos, of the boldest poetry (the diction of Job) and the baldest prose (the Egyptian of today); the contact of religion and morality with the orgies of African Apuleius and Petronius Arbiter—at times taking away the reader’s breath—and, finally, the whole dominated everywhere by that marvellous Oriental fancy, wherein the spiritual and the supernatural are as common as the material and the natural; it is this contrast, I say, which forms the chiefest charm of The Nights, which gives it the most striking originality and which makes it a perfect expositor of the medieval Moslem mind.

Explanatory notes did not enter into Mr. Payne’s plan. They do with mine: I can hardly imagine The Nights being read to any profit by men of the West without commentary. My annotations avoid only one subject, parallels of European folklore and fabliaux which, however interesting, would overswell the bulk of a book whose speciality is anthropology. The accidents of my life, it may be said without undue presumption, my long dealings with Arabs and other Mahommedans, and my familiarity not only with their idiom but with their turn of thought, and with that racial individuality which baffles description, have given me certain advantages over the average student, however deeply he may have studied. These volumes, moreover, afford me a long sought opportunity of noticing practices and customs which interest all mankind and which “Society” will not hear mentioned. Grate, the historian, and Thackeray, the novelist, both lamented that the bégueulerie of their countrymen condemned them to keep silence where publicity was required; and that they could not even claim the partial licence of a Fielding and a Smollett. Hence a score of years ago I lent my best help to the late Dr. James Hunt in founding the Anthropological Society, whose presidential chair I first occupied (pp. 2–4 Anthropologia; London, Balliere, vol. i., No. I, 1873). My motive was to supply travellers with an organ which would rescue their observations from the outer darkness of manuscript, and print their curious information on social and sexual matters out of place in the popular book intended for the Nipptisch and indeed better kept from public view. But, hardly had we begun when “Respectability,” that whited sepulchre full of all uncleanness, rose up against us. “Propriety” cried us down with her brazen blatant voice, and the weak kneed brethren fell away. Yet the organ was much wanted and is wanted still. All now known barbarous tribes in Inner Africa, America and Australia, whose instincts have not been overlaid by reason, have a ceremony which they call “making men.” As soon as the boy shows proofs of puberty, he and his coevals are taken in hand by the mediciner and the Fetisheer; and, under priestly tuition, they spend months in the “bush,” enduring hardships and tortures which impress the memory till they have mastered the “theorick and practick” of social and sexual relations. Amongst the civilised this fruit of the knowledge tree must be bought at the price of the bitterest experience, and the consequences of ignorance are peculiarly cruel. Here, then, I find at last an opportunity of noticing in explanatory notes many details of the text which would escape the reader’s observation, and I am confident that they will form a repertory of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric phase. The student who adds the notes of Lane (“Arabian Society,” etc., before quoted) to mine will know as much of the Moslem East and more than many Europeans who have spent half their lives in Orient lands. For facility of reference an index of anthropological notes is appended to each volume.

The reader will kindly bear with the following technical details. Steinhaeuser and I began and ended our work with the first Bulak (“Bul.”) Edition printed at the port of Cairo in A.H. 1251 = A.D. 1835. But when preparing my Mss. for print I found the text incomplete, many of the stories being given in epitome and not a few ruthlessly mutilated with head or feet wanting. Like most Eastern scribes the Editor could not refrain from “improvements,” which only debased the book; and his sole title to excuse is that the second Bulak Edition (4 vols. A.H. 1279 = A.D. 1863), despite its being “revised and corrected by Sheik Mahommed Qotch Al-Adewi,” is even worse; and the same may be said of the Cairo Edit. (4 vols. A.H. 1297 = A. D. 1881). The Calcutta (“Calc.”) Edition, with ten lines of Persian preface by the Editor, Ahmed al-Shirwani (A.D. 1814), was cut short at the end of the first two hundred Nights, and thus made room for Sir William Hay Macnaghten’s Edition (4 vols. royal 4to) of 1839–42. This (“Mac.”), as by far the least corrupt and the most complete, has been assumed for my basis with occasional reference to the Breslau Edition (“Bres.”) wretchedly edited from a hideous Egyptian Ms. by Dr. Maximilian Habicht (1825–43). The Bayrut Text “Alif–Leila we Leila” (4 vols. at. 8vo, Beirut, 1881–83) is a melancholy specimen of The Nights taken entirely from the Bulak Edition by one Khalil Sarkis and converted to Christianity; beginning without Bismillah, continued with scrupulous castration and ending in ennui and disappointment. I have not used this missionary production.

As regards the transliteration of Arabic words I deliberately reject the artful and complicated system, ugly and clumsy withal, affected by scientific modern Orientalists. Nor is my sympathy with their prime object, namely to fit the Roman alphabet for supplanting all others. Those who learn languages, and many do so, by the eye as well as by the ear, well know the advantages of a special character to distinguish, for instance, Syriac from Arabic, Gujrati from Marathi. Again this Roman hand bewitched may have its use in purely scientific and literary works; but it would be wholly out of place in one whose purpose is that of the novel, to amuse rather than to instruct. Moreover the devices perplex the simple and teach nothing to the learned. Either the reader knows Arabic, in which case Greek letters, italics and “upper case,” diacritical points and similar typographic oddities are, as a rule with some exceptions, unnecessary; or he does not know Arabic, when none of these expedients will be of the least use to him. Indeed it is a matter of secondary consideration what system we prefer, provided that we mostly adhere to one and the same, for the sake of a consistency which saves confusion to the reader. I have especially avoided that of Mr. Lane, adopted by Mr. Payne, for special reasons against which it was vain to protest: it represents the debased brogue of Egypt or rather of Cairo; and such a word as Kemer (ez-Zeman) would be utterly un-pronounceable to a Badawi. Nor have I followed the practice of my learned friend, Reverend G. P. Badger, in mixing bars and acute accents; the former unpleasantly remind man of those hateful dactyls and spondees, and the latter should, in my humble opinion, be applied to long vowels which in Arabic double, or should double, the length of the shorts. Dr. Badger uses the acute symbol to denote accent or stress of voice; but such appoggio is unknown to those who speak with purest articulation; for instance whilst the European pronounces Mus-cat’, and the Arab villager Mas’-kat; the Children of the Waste, “on whose tongues Allah descended,” articulate Mas-kat. I have therefore followed the simple system adopted in my “Pilgrimage,” and have accented Arabic words only when first used, thinking it unnecessary to preserve throughout what is an eyesore to the reader and a distress to the printer. In the main I follow “Johnson on Richardson,” a work known to every Anglo–Orientalist as the old and trusty companion of his studies early and late; but even here I have made sundry deviations for reasons which will be explained in the Terminal Essay. As words are the embodiment of ideas and writing is of words, so the word is the spoken word; and we should write it as pronounced. Strictly speaking, the e-sound and the o-sound (viz. the Italian o-sound not the English which is peculiar to us and unknown to any other tongue) are not found in Arabic, except when the figure Imálah obliges: hence they are called “Yá al-Majhúl” and “Waw al-Majhúl” the unknown y (í) and u. But in all tongues vowel-sounds, the flesh which clothes the bones (consonants) of language, are affected by the consonants which precede and more especially which follow them, hardening and softening the articulation; and deeper sounds accompany certain letters as the sád ( ) compared with the sín ( ). None save a defective ear would hold, as Lane does, “Maulid” ( = birth-festival) “more properly pronounced ‘Molid.’” Yet I prefer Khokh (peach) and Jokh (broad cloth) to Khukh and Jukh; Ohod (mount) to Uhud; Obayd (a little slave) to Ubayd; and Hosayn (a fortlet, not the P. N. Al–Husayn) to Husayn. As for the short e in such words as “Memlúk” for “Mamluk” (a white slave), “Eshe” for “Asha” (supper), and “Yemen” for “Al-Yaman,” I consider it a flat Egyptianism, insufferable to an ear which admires the Badawi pronunciation. Yet I prefer “Shelebi” (a dandy) from the Turkish Chelebi, to “Shalabi;” “Zebdani” (the Syrian village) to “Zabdani,” and “Fes and Miknes” (by the figure Imálah) to “Fas and Miknás,”, our “Fez and Mequinez.”

With respect to proper names and untranslated Arabic words I have rejected all system in favour of common sense. When a term is incorporated in our tongue, I refuse to follow the purist and mortify the reader by startling innovation. For instance, Aleppo, Cairo and Bassorah are preferred to Halab, Kahirah and Al–Basrah; when a word is half naturalised, like Alcoran or Koran, Bashaw or Pasha, which the French write Pacha; and Mahomet or Mohammed (for Muhammad), the modern form is adopted because the more familiar. But I see no advantage in retaining,, simply because they are the mistakes of a past generation, such words as “Roc” (for Rikh),), Khalif (a pretentious blunder for Kalífah and better written Caliph) and “genie” ( = Jinn) a mere Gallic corruption not so terrible, however, as “a Bedouin” ( = Badawi).). As little too would I follow Mr. Lane in foisting upon the public such Arabisms as “Khuff” (a riding boot), “Mikra’ah” (a palm rod) and a host of others for which we have good English equivalents. On the other hand I would use, but use sparingly, certain Arabic exclamations, as “Bismillah” ( = in the name of Allah!) and “Inshallah” ( = if Allah please!), (= which have special applications and which have been made familiar to English ears by the genius of Fraser and Morier.

I here end these desultory but necessary details to address the reader in a few final words. He will not think lightly of my work when I repeat to him that with the aid of my annotations supplementing Lane’s, the student will readily and pleasantly learn more of the Moslem’s manners and customs, laws and religion than is known to the average Orientalist; and, if my labours induce him to attack the text of The Nights he will become master of much more Arabic than the ordinary Arab owns. This book is indeed a legacy which I bequeath to my fellow countrymen in their hour of need. Over devotion to Hindu, and especially to Sanskrit literature, has led them astray from those (so called) “Semitic” studies, which are the more requisite for us as they teach us to deal successfully with a race more powerful than any pagans—the Moslem. Apparently England is ever forgetting that she is at present the greatest Mohammedan empire in the world. Of late years she has systematically neglected Arabism and, indeed, actively discouraged it in examinations for the Indian Civil Service, where it is incomparably more valuable than Greek and Latin. Hence, when suddenly compelled to assume the reins of government in Moslem lands, as Afghanistan in times past and Egypt at present, she fails after a fashion which scandalises her few (very few) friends; and her crass ignorance concerning the Oriental peoples which should most interest her, exposes her to the contempt of Europe as well as of the Eastern world. When the regrettable raids of 1883–84, culminating in the miserable affairs of Tokar, Teb and Tamasi, were made upon the gallant Sudani negroids, the Bisharin outlying Sawakin, who were battling for the holy cause of liberty and religion and for escape from Turkish task-masters and Egyptian tax-gatherers, not an English official in camp, after the death of the gallant and lamented Major Morice, was capable of speaking Arabic. Now Moslems are not to be ruled by raw youths who should be at school and college instead of holding positions of trust and emolument. He who would deal with them successfully must be, firstly, honest and truthful and, secondly, familiar with and favourably inclined to their manners and customs if not to their law and religion. We may, perhaps, find it hard to restore to England those pristine virtues, that tone and temper, which made her what she is; but at any rate we (myself and a host of others) can offer her the means of dispelling her ignorance concerning the Eastern races with whom she is continually in contact.

In conclusion I must not forget to notice that the Arabic ornamentations of these volumes were designed by my excellent friend Yacoub Artin Pasha, of the Ministry of Instruction, Cairo, with the aid of the well-known writing artist, Shayth Mohammed Muunis the Cairene. My name, Al–Hajj Abdullah ( = the Pilgrim Abdallah) was written by an English calligrapher, the lamented Professor Palmer who found a premature death almost within sight of Suez.

Richard F. Burton

Wanderers’ Club, August 15, 1885.

The Story Of King Shahryar and His Brother

In the Name of Allah,
the Compassionating, the Compassionate!

Praise Be to Allah
The Beneficent King
The Creator of the
Universe
Lord of the Three Worlds
Who Set Up the Firmament Without Pillars in Its Stead
and Who Stretched Out the Earth Even As A Bed
and Grace, and Prayer-BLESSlNG Be Upon Our Lord Mohammed
Lord of Apostolic Men
and Upon his Family and Companion Train
Prayer and Blessings Enduring and Grace Which Unto the Day of Doom Shall Remain
Amen!
O Thou of the Three Worlds Sovereign!

And afterwards. Verily the works and words of those gone before us have become instances and examples to men of our modern day, that folk may view what admonishing chances befel other folk and may therefrom take warning; and that they may peruse the annals of antique peoples and all that hath betided them, and be thereby ruled and restrained:—Praise, therefore, be to Him who hath made the histories of the Past an admonition unto the Present! Now of such instances are the tales called “A Thousand Nights and a Night,” together with their far famed legends and wonders. Therein it is related (but Allah is All knowing of His hidden things and All ruling and All honoured and All giving and All gracious and All merciful ¹) that, in tide of yore and in time long gone before, there was a King of the Kings of the Banu Sásán in the Islands of India and China, a Lord of armies and guards and servants and dependents.² He left only two sons, one in the prime of manhood and the other yet a youth, while both were Knights and Braves, albeit the elder was a doughtier horseman than the younger. So he succeeded to the empire; when he ruled the land and forded it over his lieges with justice so exemplary that he was beloved by all the peoples of his capital and of his kingdom. His name was King Shahryár³, and he made his younger brother, Shah Zamán hight, King of Samarcand in Barbarian land. These two ceased not to abide in their several realms and the law was ever carried out in their dominions; and each ruled his own kingdom, with equity and fair dealing to his subjects, in extreme solace and enjoyment; and this condition continually endured for a score of years. But at the end of the twentieth twelvemonth the elder King yearned for a sight of his younger brother and felt that he must look upon him once more. So he took counsel with his Wazír⁴ about visiting him, but the Minister, finding the project unadvisable, recommended that a letter be written and a present be sent under his charge to the younger brother with an invitation to visit the elder. Having accepted this advice the King forthwith bade prepare handsome gifts, such as horses with saddles of gem encrusted gold; Mamelukes, or white slaves; beautiful handmaids, high breasted virgins, and splendid stuffs and costly. He then wrote a letter to Shah Zaman expressing his warm love and great wish to see him, ending with these words, “We therefore hope of the favour and affection of the beloved brother that he will condescend to bestir himself and turn his face us wards. Furthermore we have sent our Wazir to make all ordinance for the march, and our one and only desire is to see thee ere we die; but if thou delay or disappoint us we shall not survive the blow. Wherewith peace be upon thee!” Then King Shahryar, having sealed the missive and given it to the Wazir with the offerings aforementioned, commanded him to shorten his skirts and strain his strength and make all expedition in going and returning. “Harkening and obedience!” quoth the Minister, who fell to making ready without stay and packed up his loads and prepared all his requisites without delay. This occupied him three days, and on the dawn of the fourth he took leave of his King and marched right away, over desert and hill’ way, stony waste and pleasant lea without halting by night or by day. But whenever he entered a realm whose ruler was subject to his Suzerain, where he was greeted with magnificent gifts of gold and silver and all manner of presents fair and rare, he would tarry there three days,⁵ the term of the guest rite; and, when he left on the fourth, he would be honourably escorted for a whole day’s march. As soon as the Wazir drew near Shah Zaman’s court in Samarcand he despatched to report his arrival one of his high officials, who presented himself before the King; and, kissing ground between his hands, delivered his message. Hereupon the King commanded sundry of his Grandees and Lords of his realm to fare forth and meet his brother’s Wazir at the distance of a full day’s journey; which they did, greeting him respectfully and wishing him all prosperity and forming an escort and a procession. When he entered the city he proceeded straightway to the palace, where he presented himself in the royal presence; and, after kissing ground and praying for the King’s health and happiness and for victory over all his enemies, he informed him that his brother was yearning to see him, and prayed for the pleasure of a visit. He then delivered the letter which Shah Zaman took from his hand and read: it contained sundry hints and allusions which required thought; but, when the King had fully comprehended its import, he said, “I hear and I obey the commands of the beloved brother!” adding to the Wazir, “But we will not march till after the third day’s hospitality.” He appointed for the Minister fitting quarters of the palace; and, pitching tents for the troops, rationed them with whatever they might require of meat and drink and other necessaries. On the fourth day he made ready for wayfare and got together sumptuous presents befitting his elder brother’s majesty, and stablished his chief Wazir viceroy of the land during his absence. Then he caused his tents and camels and mules to be brought forth and encamped, with their bales and loads, attend ants and guards, within sight of the city, in readiness to set out next morning for his brother’s capital. But when the night was half spent he bethought him that he had forgotten in his palace somewhat which he should have brought with him, so he re turned privily and entered his apartments, where he found the Queen, his wife, asleep on his own carpet bed, embracing with both arms a black cook of loathsome aspect and foul with kitchen grease and grime. When he saw this the world waxed black before his sight and he said, “If such case happen while I am yet within sight of the city what will be the doings of this damned whore during my long absence at my brother’s court?” So he drew his scymitar and, cutting the two in four pieces with a single blow, left them on the carpet and returned presently to his camp without letting anyone know of what had happened. Then he gave orders for immediate departure and set out at once and began his travel; but he could not help thinking over his wife’s treason and he kept ever saying to himself, “How could she do this deed by me? How could she work her own death?,” till excessive grief seized him, his colour changed to yellow, his body waxed weak and he was threatened with a dangerous malady, such an one as bringeth men to die. So the Wazir shortened his stages and tarried long at the watering stations and did his best to solace the King. Now when Shah Zaman drew near the capital of his brother he despatched vaunt couriers and messengers of glad tidings to announce his arrival, and Shahryar came forth to meet him with his Wazirs and Emirs and Lords and Grandees of his realm; and saluted him and joyed with exceeding joy and caused the city to be decorated in his honour. When, however, the brothers met, the elder could not but see the change of complexion in the younger and questioned him of his case whereto he replied, “Tis caused by the travails of wayfare and my case needs care, for I have suffered from the change of water and air! but Allah be praised for reuniting me with a brother so dear and so rare!” On this wise he dissembled and kept his secret, adding, “O King of the time and Caliph of the tide, only toil and moil have tinged my face yellow with bile and hath made my eyes sink deep in my head.” Then the two entered the capital in all honour; and the elder brother lodged the younger in a palace overhanging the pleasure garden; and, after a time, seeing his condition still unchanged, he attributed it to his separation from his country and kingdom. So he let him wend his own ways and asked no questions of him till one day when he again said, “O my brother, I see thou art grown weaker of body and yellower of colour.” “O my brother,” replied Shah Zaman “I have an internal wound:”⁶ still he would not tell him what he had witnessed in his wife. Thereupon Shahryar summoned doctors and surgeons and bade them treat his brother according to the rules of art, which they did for a whole month; but their sherbets and potions naught availed, for he would dwell upon the deed of his wife, and despondency, instead of diminishing, prevailed, and leach craft treatment utterly failed. One day his elder brother said to him, “I am going forth to hunt and course and to take my pleasure and pastime; maybe this would lighten thy heart.” Shah Zaman, however, refused, saying, “O my brother, my soul yearneth for naught of this sort and I entreat thy favour to suffer me tarry quietly in this place, being wholly taken up with my malady.” So King Shah Zaman passed his night in the palace and, next morning, when his brother had fared forth, he removed from his room and sat him down at one of the lattice windows overlooking the pleasure grounds; and there he abode thinking with saddest thought over his wife’s betrayal and burning sighs issued from his tortured breast. And as he continued in this case lo! a pastern of the palace, which was carefully kept private, swung open and out of it came twenty slave girls surrounding his bother’s wife who was wondrous fair, a model of beauty and comeliness and symmetry and perfect loveliness and who paced with the grace of a gazelle which panteth for the cooling stream. Thereupon Shah Zaman drew back from the window, but he kept the bevy in sight espying them from a place whence he could not be espied. They walked under the very lattice and advanced a little way into the garden till they came to a jetting fountain amiddlemost a great basin of water; then they stripped off their clothes and behold, ten of them were women, concubines of the King, and the other ten were white slaves. Then they all paired off, each with each: but the Queen, who was left alone, presently cried out in a loud voice, “Here to me, O my lord Saeed!” and then sprang with a drop leap from one of the trees a big slobbering blackamoor with rolling eyes which showed the whites, a truly hideous sight.⁷ He walked boldly up to her and threw his arms round her neck while she embraced him as warmly; then he bussed her and winding his legs round hers, as a button loop clasps a button, he threw her and enjoyed her. On like wise did the other slaves with the girls till all had satisfied their passions, and they ceased not from kissing and clipping, coupling and carousing till day began to wane; when the Mamelukes rose from the damsels’ bosoms and the blackamoor slave dismounted from the Queen’s breast; the men resumed their disguises and all, except the negro who swarmed up the tree, entered the palace and closed the postern door as before. Now, when Shah Zaman saw this conduct of his sister in law he said in himself, “By Allah, my calamity is lighter than this! My brother is a greater King among the kings than I am, yet this infamy goeth on in his very palace, and his wife is in love with that filthiest of filthy slaves. But this only showeth that they all do it⁸ and that there is no woman but who cuckoldeth her husband, then the curse of Allah upon one and all and upon the fools who lean against them for support or who place the reins of conduct in their hands.” So he put away his melancholy and despondency, regret and repine, and allayed his sorrow by constantly repeating those words, adding, “ ’Tis my conviction that no man in this world is safe from their malice!” When supper time came they brought him the trays and he ate with voracious appetite, for he had long refrained from meat, feeling unable to touch any dish however dainty. Then he returned grateful thanks to Almighty Allah, praising Him and blessing Him, and he spent a most restful night, it having been long since he had savoured the sweet food of sleep. Next day he broke his fast heartily and began to recover health and strength, and presently regained excellent condition. His brother came back from the chase ten days after, when he rode out to meet him and they saluted each other; and when King Shahryar looked at King Shah Zaman he saw how the hue of health had returned to him, how his face had waxed ruddy and how he ate with an appetite after his late scanty diet. He wondered much and said, “O my brother, I was so anxious that thou wouldst join me in hunting and chasing, and wouldst take thy pleasure and pastime in my dominion!” He thanked him and excused himself; then the two took horse and rode into the city and, when they were seated at their ease in the palace, the food trays were set before them and they ate their sufficiency. After the meats were removed and they had washed their hands, King Shahryar turned to his brother and said, “My mind is overcome with wonderment at thy condition. I was desirous to carry thee with me to the chase but I saw thee changed in hue, pale and wan to view, and in sore trouble of mind too. But now Alham-dolillah—glory be to God!—I see thy natural colour hath returned to thy face and that thou art again in the best of case. It was my belief that thy sickness came of severance from thy family and friends, and absence from capital and country, so I refrained from troubling thee with further questions. But now I beseech thee to expound to me the cause of thy complaint and thy change of colour, and to explain the reason of thy recovery and the return to the ruddy hue of health which I am wont to view. So speak out and hide naught!” When Shah Zaman heard this he bowed groundwards awhile his head, then raised it and said, “I will tell thee what caused my complaint and my loss of colour; but excuse my acquainting thee with the cause of its return to me and the reason of my complete recovery: indeed I pray thee not to press me for a reply.” Said Shahryar, who was much surprised by these words, “Let me hear first what produced thy pallor and thy poor condition.” “Know, then, O my brother,” rejoined Shah Zaman, “that when thou sentest thy Wazir with the invitation to place myself between thy hands, I made ready and marched out of my city; but presently I minded me having left behind me in the palace a string of jewels intended as a gift to thee. I returned for it alone and found my wife on my carpet bed and in the arms of a hideous black cook. So I slew the twain and came to thee, yet my thoughts brooded over this business and I lost my bloom and became weak. But excuse me if I still refuse to tell thee what was the reason of my complexion returning.” Shahryar shook his head, marvelling with extreme marvel, and with the fire of wrath flaming up from his heart, he cried, “Indeed, the malice of woman is mighty!” Then he took refuge from them with Allah and said, “In very sooth, O my brother, thou hast escaped many an evil by putting thy wife to death,⁹ and right excusable were thy wrath and grief for such mishap which never yet befel crowned King like thee. By Allah, had the case been mine, I would not have been satisfied without slaying a thousand women and that way madness lies! But now praise be to Allah who hath tempered to thee thy tribulation, and needs must thou acquaint me with that which so suddenly restored to thee complexion and health, and explain to me what causeth this concealment.” “O King of the Age, again I pray thee excuse my so doing!” “Nay, but thou must.” “I fear, O my brother, lest the recital cause thee more anger and sorrow than afflicted me.” “That were but a better reason,” quoth Shahryar, “for telling me the whole history, and I conjure thee by Allah not to keep back aught from me.” Thereupon Shah Zaman told him all he had seen, from commencement to con elusion, ending with these words, “When I beheld thy calamity and the treason of thy wife, O my brother, and I resected that thou art in years my senior and in sovereignty my superior, mine own sorrow was belittled by the comparison, and my mind recovered tone and temper: so throwing off melancholy and despondency, I was able to eat and drink and sleep, and thus I speedily regained health and strength. Such is the truth and the whole truth.” When King Shahryar heard this he waxed wroth with exceeding wrath, and rage was like to strangle him; but presently he recovered himself and said, “O my brother, I would not give thee the lie in this matter, but I cannot credit it till I see it with mine own eyes.” “An thou wouldst look upon thy calamity,” quoth Shah Zaman, “rise at once and make ready again for hunting and coursing.¹⁰ and then hide thyself with me, so shalt thou witness it and shine eyes shall verify it.” “True,” quoth the King; whereupon he let make proclamation of his in tent to travel, and the troops and tents fared forth without the city, camping within sight, and Shahryar sallied out with them and took seat amidmost his host, bidding the slaves admit no man to him. When night came on he summoned his Wazir and said to him, “Sit thou in my stead and let none wot of my absence till the term of three days.” Then the brothers disguised themselves and returned by night with all secrecy to the palace, where they passed the dark hours: and at dawn they seated themselves at the lattice overlooking the pleasure grounds, when presently the Queen and her handmaids came out as before, and passing under the windows made for the fountain. Here they stripped, ten of them being men to ten women, and the King’s wife cried out, “Where art thou, O Saeed?” The hideous blackamoor dropped from the tree straightway; and, rushing into her arms without stay or delay, cried out, “I am Sa’ad al Din Saood!”¹¹ The lady laughed heartily, and all fell to satisfying their lusts, and remained so occupied for a couple of hours, when the white slaves rose up from the handmaidens’ breasts and the blackamoor dismounted from the Queen’s bosom: then they went into the basin and, after performing the Ghusl, or complete ablution, donned their dresses and retired as they had done before. When King Shahryar saw this infamy of his wife and concubines he became as one distraught and he cried out, “Only in utter solitude can man be safe from the doings of this vile world! By Allah, life is naught but one great wrong.” Presently he added, “Do not thwart me, O my brother, in what I propose;” and the other answered, “I will not.” So he said, “Let us up as we are and depart forthright hence, for we have no concern with Kingship, and let us overwander Allah’s earth, worshipping the Almighty till we find some one to whom the like calamity hath happened; and if we find none then will death be more welcome to us than life.” So the two brothers issued from a second private postern of the palace; and they never stinted wayfaring by day and by night, until they reached a tree a middle of a meadow hard by a spring of sweet water on the shore of the salt sea. Both drank of it and sat down to take their rest; and when an hour of the day had gone by: lo! they heard a mighty roar and uproar in the middle of the main as though the heavens were falling upon the earth; and the sea brake with waves before them, and from it towered a black pillar, which grew and grew till it rose skywards and began making for that meadow. Seeing it, they waxed fearful exceedingly and climbed to the top of the tree, which was a lofty; whence they gazed to see what might be the matter. And behold, it was a Jinni,¹² huge of height and burly of breast and bulk, broad of brow and black of blee, bearing on his head a coffer of crystal. He strode to land, wading through the deep, and coming to the tree whereupon were the two Kings, seated himself beneath it. He then set down the coffer on its bottom and out it drew a casket, with seven padlocks of steel, which he unlocked with seven keys of steel he took from beside his thigh, and out of it a young lady to come was seen, white-skinned and of winsomest mien, of stature fine and thin, and bright as though a moon of the fourteenth night she had been, or the sun raining lively sheen. Even so the poet Utayyah hath excellently said:—

She rose like the morn as she shone through the night
And she gilded the grove with her gracious sight:
From her radiance the sun taketh increase when
She unveileth and shameth the moonshine bright.
Bow down all beings between her hands
As she showeth charms with her veil undight.
And she floodeth cities¹³ with torrent tears
When she flasheth her look of levee light.

The Jinni seated her under the tree by his side and looking at her said, “O choicest love of this heart of mine! O dame of noblest line, whom I snatched away on thy bride night that none might prevent me taking thy maidenhead or tumble thee before I did, and whom none save myself hath loved or hath enjoyed: O my sweetheart! I would fief sleep a little while.” He then laid his head upon the lady’s thighs; and, stretching out his legs which extended down to the sea, slept and snored and sparked like the roll of thunder. Presently she raised her head towards the tree top and saw the two Kings perched near the summit; then she softly lifted off her lap the Jinni’s pate which she was tired of supporting and placed it upon the ground; then standing upright under the tree signed to the Kings, “Come ye down, ye two, and fear naught from this Ifrit.”¹⁴ They were in a terrible fright when they found that she had seen them and answered her in the same manner, “Allah upon thee¹⁵ and by thy modesty, O lady, excuse us from coming down!” But she rejoined by saying, “Allah upon you both, that ye come down forthright, and if ye come not, I will rouse upon you my husband, this Ifrit, and he shall do you to die by the illest of deaths;” and she continued making signals to them. So, being afraid, they came down to her and she rose be fore them and said, “Stroke me a strong stroke, without stay or delay, otherwise will I arouse and set upon you this Ifrit who shall slay you straightway.” They said to her, “O our lady, we conjure thee by Allah, let us off this work, for we are fugitives from such and in extreme dread and terror of this thy husband. How then can we do it in such a way as thou desirest?” “Leave this talk: it needs must be so;” quoth she, and she swore them by Him¹⁶ who raised the skies on high, without prop or pillar, that, if they worked not her will, she would cause them to be slain and cast into the sea. Whereupon out of fear King Shahryar said to King Shah Zaman, “O my brother, do thou what she biddeth thee do;” but he replied, “I will not do it till thou do it before I do.” And they began disputing about futtering her. Then quoth she to the twain, “How is it I see you disputing and demurring; if ye do not come forward like men and do the deed of kind ye two, I will arouse upon you the If rit.” At this, by reason of their sore dread of the Jinni, both did by her what she bade them do; and, when they had dismounted from her, she said, “Well done!” She then took from her pocket a purse and drew out a knotted string, whereon were strung five hundred and seventy¹⁷ seal rings, and asked, “Know ye what be these?” They answered her saying, “We know not!” Then quoth she; “These be the signets of five hundred and seventy men who have all futtered me upon the horns of this foul, this foolish, this filthy Ifrit; so give me also your two seal rings, ye pair of brothers.” When they had drawn their two rings from their hands and given them to her, she said to them, “Of a truth this If rit bore me off on my bride night, and put me into a casket and set the casket in a coffer and to the coffer he affixed seven strong padlocks of steel and deposited me on the deep bottom of the sea that raves, dashing and clashing with waves; and guarded me so that I might remain chaste and honest, quotha! none save himself might have connexion with me. But I have lain under as many of my kind as I please, and this wretched Jinni wotteth not that Des tiny may not be averted nor hindered by aught, and that whatso woman willeth the same she fulfilleth however man nilleth. Even so saith one of them.—

Rely not on women;
Trust not to their hearts, Whose joys and whose sorrows
Are hung to their parts! Lying love they will swear thee
Whence guile ne’er departs:
Take Yusuf¹⁸ for sample
‘Ware sleights and ‘ware smarts!
Iblis¹⁹ ousted Adam
(See ye not?) thro’ their arts.

And another saith:—

Stint thy blame, man! ’Twill drive to a passion without bound;
My fault is not so heavy as fault in it hast found.
If true lover I become, then to me there cometh not
Save what happened unto many in the bygone stound.
For wonderful is he and right worthy of our praise
Who from wiles of female wits kept him safe and kept him sound.”

Hearing these words they marvelled with exceeding marvel, and she went from them to the Ifrit and, taking up his head on her thigh as before, said to them softly, “Now wend your ways and bear yourselves beyond the bounds of his malice.” So they fared forth saying either to other, “Allah! Allah!” and, “There be no Majesty and there be no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great; and with Him we seek refuge from women’s malice and sleight, for of a truth it hath no mate in might. Consider, O my brother, the ways of this marvellous lady with an Ifrit who is so much more powerful than we are. Now since there hath hap pened to him a greater mishap than that which befel us and which should bear us abundant consolation, so return we to our countries and capitals, and let us decide never to intermarry with womankind and presently we will show them what will be our action.” Thereupon they rode back to the tents of King Shahryar, which they reached on the morning of the third day; and, having mustered the Wazirs and Emirs, the Chamberlains and high officials, he gave a robe of honour to his Viceroy and issued orders for an immediate return to the city. There he sat him upon his throne and sending for the Chief Minister, the father of the two damsels who (Inshallah!) will presently be mentioned, he said, “I command thee to take my wife and smite her to death; for she hath broken her plight and her faith.” So he carried her to the place of execution and did her die. Then King Shahryar took brand in hand and repairing to the Serraglio slew all the concubines and their Mamelukes.²⁰ He also sware himself by a binding oath that whatever wife he married he would abate her maidenhead at night and slay her next morning to make sure of his honour; “For,” said he, “there never was nor is there one chaste woman upon face of earth.” Then Shah Zaman prayed for permission to fare homewards; and he went forth equipped and escorted and travelled till he reached his own country. Mean while Shahryar commanded his Wazir to bring him the bride of the night that he might go in to her; so he produced a most beautiful girl, the daughter of one of the Emirs and the King went in unto her at eventide and when morning dawned he bade his Minister strike off her head; and the Wazir did accordingly for fear of the Sultan. On this wise he continued for the space of three years; marrying a maiden every night and killing her the next morning, till folk raised an outcry against him and cursed him, praying Allah utterly to destroy him and his rule; and women made an uproar and mothers wept and parents fled with their daughters till there remained not in the city a young person fit for carnal copulation. Presently the King ordered his Chief Wazir, the same who was charged with the executions, to bring him a virgin as was his wont; and the Minister went forth and searched and found none; so he returned home in sorrow and anxiety fearing for his life from the King. Now he had two daughters, Shahrazad and Dunyazad hight,²¹ of whom the elder had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplish meets; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred. Now on that day she said to her father, “Why do I see thee thus changed and laden with cark and care? Concerning this matter quoth one of the poets.—

Tell whoso hath sorrow
Grief never shall last: E’en as joy hath no morrow
So woe shall go past.”

When the Wazir heard from his daughter these words he related to her, from first to last, all that had happened between him and the King. Thereupon said she, “By Allah, O my father, how long shall this slaughter of women endure? Shall I tell thee what is in my mind in order to save both sides from destruction?” “Say on, O my daughter,” quoth he, and quoth she, “I wish thou wouldst give me in marriage to this King Shahryar; either I shall live or I shall be a ransom for the virgin daughters of Moslems and the cause of their deliverance from his hands and thine.”²² “Allah upon thee!” cried he in wrath exceeding that lacked no feeding, “O scanty of wit, expose not thy life to such peril! How durst thou address me in words so wide from wisdom and un far from foolishness? Know that one who lacketh experience in worldly matters readily falleth into misfortune; and whoso considereth not the end keepeth not the world to friend, and the vulgar say:— I was lying at mine ease: nought but my officiousness brought me unease.” “Needs must thou,” she broke in, “make me a doer of this good deed, and let him kill me an he will: I shall only die a ransom for others.” “O my daughter,” asked he. “and how shall that profit thee when thou shalt have thrown away thy life?” and she answered, “O my father it must be, come of it what will!” The Wazir was again moved to fury and blamed and reproached her, ending with, “In very deed—I fear lest the same befal thee which befel the Bull and the Ass with the Husband man.” “And what,” asked she, “betel them, O my father?” Whereupon the Wazir began the

¹ Allaho A’alam, a deprecatory formula, used because the writer is going to indulge in a series of what may possibly be untruths.

² The “Sons of Sásán” are the famous Sassanides whose dynasty ended with the Arabian Conquest (A.D.641). “Island” Jazírah) in Arabic also means “Peninsula,” and causes much confusion in geographical matters.

³ Shahryár not Shahriyar (Persian) = “City-friend.” The Bulak edition corrupts it to Shahrbáz (City-hawk), and the Breslau to Shahrbán or “Defender of the City,” like Marz-ban=Warden of the Marshes. Shah Zamán (Persian)=“King of the Age:” Galland prefers Shah Zenan, or “King of women,” and the Bull edit. changes it to Shah Rummán, “Pomegranate King.” Al–Ajam denotes all regions not Arab (Gentiles opposed to Jews, Mlechchhas to Hindus, Tajiks to Turks, etc., etc.), and especially Persia; Ajami (a man of Ajam) being an equivalent of the Gr. {Greek Letters}. See Vol.. ii., p. 1.

⁴ Galland writes “Vizier,” a wretched frenchification of a mincing Turkish mispronunciation; Torrens, “Wuzeer” (Anglo- Indian and Gilchristian); Lane, “Wezeer”; (Egyptian or rather Cairene); Payne, “Vizier,” according to his system; Burckhardt (Proverbs), “Vizír;” and Mr. Keith–Falconer, “Vizir.” The root is popularly supposed to be “wizr” (burden) and the meaning “Minister;” Wazir al-Wuzará being “Premier.” In the Koran (chaps. xx., 30) Moses says, “Give me a Wazir of my family, Harun (Aaron) my brother.” Sale, followed by the excellent version of the Rev. J. M. Rodwell, translates a “Counsellor,” and explains by “One who has the chief administration of affairs under a prince.” But both learned Koranists learnt their Orientalism in London, and, like such students generally, fail only upon the easiest points, familiar to all old dwellers in the East.

⁵ This three-days term (rest-day, drest-day and departure day) seems to be an instinct-made rule in hospitality. Among Moslems it is a Sunnat or practice of the Prophet.)

⁶ i.e., I am sick at heart.

⁷ Debauched women prefer negroes on account of the size of their parts. I measured one man in Somali-land who, when quiescent, numbered nearly six inches. This is a characteristic of the negro race and of African animals; e.g. the horse; whereas the pure Arab, man and beast, is below the average of Europe; one of the best proofs by the by, that the Egyptian is not an Asiatic, but a negro partially white-washed. Moreover, these imposing parts do not increase proportionally during erection; consequently, the “deed of kind” takes a much longer time and adds greatly to the woman’s enjoyment. In my time no honest Hindi Moslem would take his women-folk to Zanzibar on account of the huge attractions and enormous temptations there and thereby offered to them. Upon the subject of Imsák = retention of semen and “prolongation of pleasure,” I shall find it necessary to say more.

⁸ The very same words were lately spoken in England proving the eternal truth of The Nights which the ignorant call “downright lies.”

⁹ The Arab’s Tue la!

¹⁰ Arab. “Sayd wa kanas”: the former usually applied to fishing; hence Sayda (Sidon) = fish-town. But noble Arabs (except the Caliph Al–Amin) do not fish; so here it means simply “sport,” chasing, coursing, birding (oiseler), and so forth.

¹¹ In the Mac. Edit. the negro is called “Mas’úd”; here he utters a kind of war-cry and plays upon the name, “Sa’ád, Sa’íd, Sa’úd,” and “Mas’ud”, all being derived from one root, “Sa’ad” = auspiciousness, prosperity.

¹² The Arab. singular (whence the French “génie”), fem. Jinniyah; the Div and Rakshah of old Guebre-land and the “Rakshasa,” or “Yaksha,” of Hinduism. It would be interesting to trace the evident connection, by no means “accidental,” of “Jinn” with the “Genius” who came to the Romans through the Asiatic Etruscans, and whose name I cannot derive from “gignomai” or “genitus.” He was unknown to the Greeks, who had the Daimon {Greek Letters}, a family which separated, like the Jinn and the Genius, into two categories, the good (Agatho-dæmons) and the bad (Kako-dæmons). We know nothing concerning the status of the Jinn amongst the pre-Moslemitic or pagan Arabs: the Moslems made him a supernatural anthropoid being, created of subtile fire (Koran chapts. xv. 27; lv. 14), not of earth like man, propagating his kind, ruled by mighty kings, the last being Ján bin Ján, missionarised by Prophets and subject to death and Judgment. From the same root are “Junún” = madness (i.e., possession or obsession by the Jinn) and “Majnún”=a madman. According to R. Jeremiah bin Eliazar in Psalm xii. 5, Adam was excommunicated for one hundred and thirty years, during which he begat children in his own image (Gen. v. 3) and these were Mazikeen or Shedeem-Jinns. Further details anent the Jinn will presently occur.

¹³ Arab. “Amsár” (cities): in Bull Edit. “Amtár” (rains), as in Mac. Edit. So Mr. Payne (I., 5) translates: And when she flashes forth the lightning of her glance, She maketh eyes to rain, like showers, with many a tear. I would render it, “She makes whole cities shed tears,” and prefer it for a reason which will generally influence me its superior exaggeration and impossibility.

¹⁴ Not “A-frit,” pronounced Aye-frit, as our poets have it. This variety of the Jinn, who, as will be shown, are divided into two races like mankind, is generally, but not always, a malignant being, hostile and injurious to mankind (Koran xxvii. 39).

¹⁵ i.e., “I conjure thee by Allah;” the formula is technically called “Inshád.”

¹⁶ This introducing the name of Allah into an indecent tale is essentially Egyptian and Cairene. But see Boccaccio ii. 6, and vii. 9.

¹⁷ So in the Mac. Edit.; in others “ninety.” I prefer the greater number as exaggeration is a part of the humour. In the Hindu “Kathá Sárit Ságara” (Sea of the Streams of Story), the rings are one hundred and the catastrophe is more moral, the good youth Yashodhara rejects the wicked one’s advances; she awakes the water-sprite, who is about to slay him, but the rings are brought as testimony and the improper young person’s nose is duly cut off. (Chap. Ixiii.; p. 80, of the excellent translation by Prof. C. H. Tawney: for the Bibliotheca Indica: Calcutta, 1881.) The Kathá, etc., by Somadeva (century xi), is a poetical version of the prose compendium, the “Vrihat Kathá” (Great Story) by Gunadhya (cent. vi).

¹⁸ The Joseph of the Koran, very different from him of Genesis. We shall meet him often enough in The Nights.

¹⁹ “Iblis,” vulgarly written “Eblis,” from a root meaning The Despairer, with a suspicious likeness to Diabolos; possibly from “Bales,” a profligate. Some translate it The Calumniator, as Satan is the Hater. Iblis (who appears in the Arab. version of the N. Testament) succeeded another revolting angel Al–Haris; and his story of pride refusing to worship Adam, is told four times in the Koran from the Talmud (Sanhedrim 29). He caused Adam and Eve to lose Paradise (ii. 34); he still betrays mankind (xxv. 31), and at the end of time he, with the other devils, will be “gathered together on their knees round Hell” (xix. 69). He has evidently had the worst of the game, and we wonder, with Origen, Tillotson, Burns and many others, that he does not throw up the cards.

²⁰ A similar tale is still told at Akká (St. John d’Acre) concerning the terrible “butcher”—Jazzár (Djezzar) Pasha. One can hardly pity women who are fools enough to run such risks. According to Frizzi, Niccolò, Marquis of Este, after beheading Parisina, ordered all the faithless wives of Ferrara to be treated in like manner.

²¹ “Shahrázád” (Persian) = City-freer, in the older version Scheherazade (probably both from Shirzád=lion-born). “Dunyázád”=World-freer. The Bres. Edit. corrupts former to Sháhrzád or Sháhrazád, and the Mac. and Calc. to Shahrzád or Shehrzád. I have ventured to restore the name as it should be. Galland for the second prefers Dinarzade (?) and Richardson Dinazade (Dinázád = Religion— freer): here I have followed Lane and Payne; though in “First Footsteps” I was misled by Galland. See Vol. ii. p. 1.

²² Probably she proposed to “Judith” the King. These learned and clever young ladies are very dangerous in the East.

Tale of the Bull²³ and the Ass.

Know, O my daughter, that there was once a merchant who owned much money and many men, and who was rich in cattle and camels; he had also a wife and family and he dwelt in the country, being experienced in husbandry and devoted to agriculture. Now Allah Most High had endowed him with under standing the tongues of beasts and birds of every kind, but under pain of death if he divulged the gift to any. So he kept it secret for very fear. He had in his cow house a Bull and an Ass each tethered in his own stall one hard by the other. As the merchant was sitting near hand one day with his servants and his children were playing about him, he heard the Bull say to the Ass, “Hail and health to thee O Father of Waking!²⁴ for that thou enjoyest rest and good ministering; all under thee is clean swept and fresh sprinkled; men wait upon thee and feed thee, and thy provaunt is sifted barley and thy drink pure spring water, while I (unhappy creature!) am led forth in the middle of the night, when they set on my neck the plough and a something called Yoke; and I tire at cleaving the earth from dawn of day till set of sun. I am forced to do more than I can and to bear all manner of ill treatment from night to night; after which they take me back with my sides torn, my neck flayed, my legs aching and mine eyelids sored with tears. Then they shut me up in the byre and throw me beans and crushed straw,²⁵ mixed with dirt and chaff; and I lie in dung and filth and foul stinks through the livelong night. But thou art ever in a place swept and sprinkled and cleansed, and thou art always lying at ease, save when it happens (and seldom enough!) that the master hath some business, when he mounts thee and rides thee to town and returns with thee forthright. So it happens that I am toiling and distress while thou takest shine ease and thy rest; thou sleepest while I am sleepless; I hunger still while thou eatest thy fill, and I win contempt while thou winnest good will.” When the Bull ceased speaking, the Ass turned to wards him and said, “O Broad o’ Brow,²⁶ 0 thou lost one! he lied not who dubbed thee Bull head, for thou, O father of a Bull, hast neither forethought nor contrivance; thou art the simplest of simpletons,²⁷ and thou knowest naught of good advisers. Hast thou not heard the saying of the wise:—

For others these hardships and labours I bear
And theirs is the pleasure and mine is the care;
As the bleacher who blacketh his brow in the sun
To whiten the raiment which other men wear.²⁸

But thou, O fool, art full of zeal and thou toilest and moilest before the master; and thou tearest and wearest and slayest thy self for the comfort of another. Hast thou never heard the saw that saith, None to guide and from the way go wide? Thou wendest forth at the call to dawn prayer and thou returnest not till sundown; and through the livelong day thou endurest all manner hardships; to wit, beating and belabouring and bad language. Now hearken to me, Sir Bull! when they tie thee to thy stinking manger, thou pawest the ground with thy forehand and rashest out with thy hind hoofs and pushest with thy horns and bellowest aloud, so they deem thee contented. And when they throw thee thy fodder thou fallest on it with greed and hastenest to line thy fair fat paunch. But if thou accept my advice it will be better for thee and thou wilt lead an easier life even than mine. When thou goest a field and they lay the thing called Yoke on thy neck, lie down and rise not again though haply they swinge thee; and, if thou rise, lie down a second time; and when they bring thee home and offer thee thy beans, fall backwards and only sniff at thy meat and withdraw thee and taste it not, and be satis fied with thy crushed straw and chaff; and on this wise feign thou art sick, and cease not doing thus for a day or two days or even three days, so shalt thou have rest from toil and moil.” When the Bull heard these words he knew the Ass to be his friend and thanked him, saying, “Right is thy rede;” and prayed that all blessings might requite him, and cried, “O Father Wakener!²⁹ thou hast made up for my failings.” (Now³⁰ the merchant, O my daughter, understood all that passed between them.) Next day the driver took the Bull, and settling the plough on his neck,³¹ made him work as wont; but the Bull began to shirk his ploughing, according to the advice of the Ass, and the ploughman drubbed him till he broke the yoke and made off; but the man caught him up and leathered him till he despaired of his life. Not the less, however, would he do nothing but stand still and drop down till the evening. Then the herd led him home and stabled him in his stall: but he drew back from his manger and neither stamped nor ramped nor butted nor bellowed as he was wont to do; whereat the man wondered. He brought him the beans and husks, but he sniffed at them and left them and lay down as far from them as he could and passed the whole night fasting. The peasant came next morning; and, seeing the manger full of beans, the crushed straw untasted and the ox lying on his back in sorriest plight, with legs outstretched and swollen belly, he was concerned for him, and said to himself, “By Allah, he hath assuredly sickened and this is the cause why he would not plough yesterday.” Then he went to the merchant and reported, “O my master, the Bull is ailing; he refused his fodder last night; nay more, he hath not tasted a scrap of it this morning.” Now the merchant farmer understood what all this meant, because he had overheard the talk between the Bull and the Ass, so quoth he, “Take that rascal donkey, and set the yoke on his neck, and bind him to the plough and make him do Bull’s work.” Thereupon the ploughman took the Ass, and worked him through the live long day at the Bull’s task; and, when he failed for weakness, he made him eat stick till his ribs were sore and his sides were sunken and his neck was hayed by the yoke; and when he came home in the evening he could hardly drag his limbs along, either fore hand or hind legs. But as for the Bull, he had passed the day lying at full length and had eaten his fodder with an excellent appetite, and he ceased not calling down blessings on the Ass for his good advice, unknowing what had come to him on his ac count. So when night set in and the Ass returned to the byte the Bull rose up before him in honour, and said, “May good tidings gladden thy heart, O Father Wakener! through thee I have rested all this day and I have eaten my meat in peace and quiet.” But the Ass returned no reply, for wrath and heart burning and fatigue and the beating he had gotten; and he repented with the most grievous of repentance; and quoth he to himself: “This cometh of my folly in giving good counsel; as the saw saith, I was in joy and gladness, nought save my officiousness brought me this sadness. But I will bear in mind my innate worth and the nobility of my nature; for what saith the poet?

Shall the beautiful hue of the Basil³² fail
Tho’ the beetle’s foot o’er the Basil crawl?
And though spider and fly be its denizens
Shall disgrace attach to the royal hall?
The cowrie,³³ I ken, shall have currency
But the pearl’s clear drop, shall its value fall?

And now I must take thought and put a trick upon him and return him to his place, else I die.” Then he went aweary to his manger, while the Bull thanked him and blessed him. And even so, O my daughter, said the Wazir, thou wilt die for lack of wits; therefore sit thee still and say naught and expose not thy life to such stress; for, by Allah, I offer thee the best advice, which cometh of my affection and kindly solicitude for thee.” “O my father,” she answered, “needs must I go up to this King and be married to him.” Quoth he, “Do not this deed;” and quoth she, “Of a truth I will:” whereat he rejoined, “If thou be not silent and bide still, I will do with thee even what the merchant did with his wife.” “And what did he?” asked she. “Know then, answered the Wazir, that after the return of the Ass the merchant came out on the terrace roof with his wife and family, for it was a moonlit night and the moon at its full. Now the ter race overlooked the cowhouse and presently, as he sat there with his children playing about him, the trader heard the Ass say to the Bull, “Tell me, O Father Broad o’ Brow, what thou purposest to do to morrow?” The Bull answered, “What but continue to follow thy counsel, O Aliboron? Indeed it was as good as good could be and it hath given me rest and repose; nor will I now depart from it one little: so, when they bring me my meat, I will refuse it and blow out my belly and counterfeit crank.” The Ass shook his head and said, “Beware of so doing, O Father of a Bull!” The Bull asked, “Why,” and the Ass answered, “Know that I am about to give thee the best of counsel, for verily I heard our owner say to the herd, If the Bull rise not from his place to do his work this morning and if he retire from his fodder this day, make him over to the butcher that he may slaughter him and give his flesh to the poor, and fashion a bit of leather³⁴ from his hide. Now I fear for thee on account of this. So take my advice ere a calamity befal thee; and when they bring thee thy fodder eat it and rise up and bellow and paw the ground, or our master will assuredly slay thee: and peace be with thee!” Thereupon the Bull arose and lowed aloud and thanked the Ass, and said, “To morrow I will readily go forth with them;” and he at once ate up all his meat and even licked the manger. (All this took place and the owner was listening to their talk.) Next morning the trader and his wife went to the Bull’s crib and sat down, and the driver came and led forth the Bull who, seeing his owner, whisked his tail and brake wind, and frisked about so lustily that the merchant laughed a loud laugh and kept laughing till he fell on his back. His wife asked him, “Whereat laughest thou with such loud laughter as this?”; and he answered her, “I laughed at a secret something which I have heard and seen but cannot say lest I die my death.” She returned, “Perforce thou must discover it to me, and disclose the cause of thy laughing even if thou come by thy death!” But he rejoined, “I cannot re veal what beasts and birds say in their lingo for fear I die.” Then quoth she, “By Allah, thou liest! this is a mere pretext: thou laughest at none save me, and now thou wouldest hide somewhat from me. But by the Lord of the Heavens! an thou disclose not the cause I will no longer cohabit with thee: I will leave thee at once.” And she sat down and cried. Whereupon quoth the merchant, “Woe betide thee! what means thy weeping? Bear Allah and leave these words and query me no more questions.” “Needs must thou tell me the cause of that laugh,” said she, and he replied, “Thou wottest that when I prayed Allah to vouchsafe me understanding of the tongues of beasts and birds, I made a vow never to disclose the secret to any under pain of dying on the spot.” “No matter,” cried she, “tell me what secret passed between the Bull and the Ass and die this very hour an thou be so minded;” and she ceased not to importune him till he was worn out and clean distraught. So at last he said, “Summon thy father and thy mother and our kith and kin and sundry of our neighbours,” which she did; and he sent for the Kazi³⁵ and his assessors, intending to make his will and reveal to her his secret and die the death; for he loved her with love exceeding because she was his cousin, the daughter of his father’s brother, and the mother of his children, and he had lived with her a life of an hundred and twenty years. Then, having assembled all the family and the folk of his neighbourhood, he said to them, “By me there hangeth a strange story, and ’tis such that if I discover the secret to any, I am a dead man.” Therefore quoth every one of those present to the woman, “Allah upon thee, leave this sinful obstinacy and recognise the right of this matter, lest haply thy husband and the father of thy children die.” But she rejoined, “I will not turn from it till he tell me, even though he come by his death.” So they ceased to urge her; and the trader rose from amongst them and repaired to an out house to per form Wuzu ablution,³⁶ and he purposed thereafter to return and to tell them his secret and to die. Now, daughter Shahrazad, that mer chant had in his out houses some fifty hens under one cock, and whilst making ready to farewell his folk he heard one of his many farm dogs thus address in his own tongue the Cock, who was flapping his wings and crowing lustily and jumping from one hen’s back to another and treading all in turn, saying “O Chanti clear! how mean is thy wit and how shameless is thy conduct! Be he disappointed who brought thee up!³⁷ Art thou not ashamed of thy doings on such a day as this!” “And what,” asked the Rooster, “hath occurred this day?” when the Dog answered, “Doss thou not know that our master is this day making ready for his death? His wife is resolved that he shall disclose the secret taught to him by Allah, and the moment he so doeth he shall surely die. We dogs are all a mourning; but thou clappest thy wings and clarionest thy loudest and treadest hen after hen. Is this an hour for pastime and pleasuring? Art thou not ashamed of thyself?”³⁸ “Then by Allah,” quoth the Cock, “is our master a lack wit and a man scanty of sense: if he cannot manage matters with a single wife, his life is not worth prolonging. Now I have some fifty Dame Partlets; and I please this and provoke that and starve one and stuff another; and through my good governance they are all well under my control. This our master pretendeth to wit and wisdom, and he hath but one wife, and yet knoweth not how to manage her.” Asked the Dog, “What then, O Cock, should the master do to win clear of his strait?” “He should arise forthright,” answered the Cock, “and take some twigs from yon mulberry tree and give her a regular back basting and rib roasting till she cry:—I repent, O my lord! I will never ask thee a question as long as I live! Then let him beat her once more and soundly, and when he shall have done this he shall sleep free from care and enjoy life. But this master of ours owns neither sense nor judgment.” “Now, daughter Shahrazad,” continued the Wazir, “I will do to thee as did that husband to that wife.” Said Shahrazad, “And what did he do?” He replied, “When the merchant heard the wise words spoken by his Cock to his Dog, he arose in haste and sought his wife’s chamber, after cutting for her some mulberry twigs and hiding them there; and then he called to her, “Come into the closet that I may tell thee the secret while no one seeth me and then die.” She entered with him and he locked the door and came down upon her with so sound a beating of back and shoulders, ribs, arms and legs, saying the while, “Wilt thou ever be asking questions about what concerneth thee not?” that she was well nigh senseless. Presently she cried out, “I am of the repentant! By Allah, I will ask thee no more questions, and indeed I repent sincerely and wholesomely.” Then she kissed his hand and feet and he led her out of the room submissive as a wife should be. Her parents and all the company rejoiced and sadness and mourn ing were changed into joy and gladness. Thus the merchant learnt family discipline from his Cock and he and his wife lived together the happiest of lives until death. And thou also, O my daughter!” continued the Wazir, “Unless thou turn from this matter I will do by thee what that trader did to his wife.” But she answered him with much decision, “I will never desist, O my father, nor shall this tale change my purpose. Leave such talk and tattle. I will not listen to thy words and, if thou deny me, I will marry myself to him despite the nose of thee. And first I will go up to the King myself and alone and I will say to him:—I prayed my father to wive me with thee, but he refused being resolved to disappoint his lord, grudging the like of me to the like of thee.” Her father asked, “Must this needs be?” and she answered, “Even so.” Hereupon the Wazir being weary of lamenting and contending, persuading and dissuading her, all to no purpose, went up to King Shahryar and after blessing him and kissing the ground before him, told him all about his dispute with his daughter from first to last and how he designed to bring her to him that night. The King wondered with exceeding wonder; for he had made an especial exception of the Wazir’s daughter, and said to him, “O most faithful of Counsellors, how is this? Thou wottest that I have sworn by the Raiser of the Heavens that after I have gone in to her this night I shall say to thee on the morrow’s morning:—Take her and slay her! and, if thou slay her not, I will slay thee in her stead without fail.” “Allah guide thee to glory and lengthen thy life, O King of the age,” answered the Wazir, “it is she that hath so determined: all this have I told her and more; but she will not hearken to me and she persisteth in passing this coming night with the King’s Majesty.” So Shahryar rejoiced greatly and said, “’Tis well; go get her ready and this night bring her to me.” The Wazir returned to his daughter and reported to her the command saying, “Allah make not thy father desolate by thy loss!” But Shah razed rejoiced with exceeding joy and get ready all she required and said to her younger sister, Dunyazad, “Note well what directions I entrust to thee! When I have gone in to the King I will send for thee and when thou comest to me and seest that he hath had his carnal will of me, do thou say to me:—O my sister, an thou be not sleepy, relate to me some new story, delectable and delightsome, the better to speed our waking hours;” and I will tell thee a tale which shall be our deliverance, if so Allah please, and which shall turn the King from his blood thirsty custom.” Dunyazad answered “With love and gladness.” So when it was night their father the Wazir carried Shahrazad to the King who was gladdened at the sight and asked, “Hast thou brought me my need?” and he answered, “I have.” But when the King took her to his bed and fell to toying with her and wished to go in to her she wept; which made him ask, “What aileth thee?” She replied, “O King of the age, I have a younger sister and fief would I take leave of her this night before I see the dawn.” So he sent at once for Dunyazad and she came and kissed the ground between his hands, when he permitted her to take her seat near the foot of the couch. Then the King arose and did away with his bride’s maidenhead and the three fell asleep. But when it was midnight Shahrazad awoke and signalled to her sister Dunyazad who sat up and said, “Allah upon thee, O my sister, recite to us some new story, delightsome and delectable, wherewith to while away the waking hours of our latter night.”³⁹ “With joy and goodly gree,” answered Shahrazad, “if this pious and auspicious King permit me.” “Tell on,” quoth the King who chanced to be sleepless and restless and therefore was pleased with the prospect of hearing her story. So Shahrazad rejoiced; and thus, on the first night of the Thousand Nights and a Night, she began with the

²³ In Egypt, etc., the bull takes the place of the Western ox. The Arab. word is “Taur” (Thaur, Saur); in old Persian “Tore” and Lat. “Taurus,” a venerable remnant of the days before the “Semitic” and “Aryan’> families of speech had split into two distinct growths. “Taur” ends in the Saxon “Steor” and the English “Steer ”

²⁴ Arab. “Abú Yakzán” = the Wakener, because the ass brays at dawn.

²⁵ Arab. “Tibn”; straw crushed under the sledge: the hay of Egypt, Arabia, Syria, etc. The old country custom is to pull up the corn by handfuls from the roots, leaving the land perfectly bare: hence the “plucking up” of Hebrew Holy Writ. The object is to preserve every atom of “Tibn.”

²⁶ Arab. “Yá Aftah”: Al–Aftah is an epithet of the bull, also of the chameleon.

²⁷ Arab. “Balíd,” a favourite Egyptianism often pleasantly confounded with “Wali” (a Santon), hence the latter comes to mean “an innocent,” a “ninny.”

²⁸ From the Calc. Edit., Vol. 1., p. 29.

²⁹ Arab. “Abu Yakzán” is hardly equivalent with “Père l’Eveillé.”

³⁰ In Arab. the wa (x) is the sign of parenthesis.

³¹ In the nearer East the light little plough is carried afield by the bull or ass.

³² Ocymum basilicum, the “royal herb,” so much prized all over the East, especially in India, where, under the name of “Tulsi,” it is a shrub sacred to the merry god Krishna. I found the verses in a Ms. copy of The Nights.

³³ Arab. “Sadaf,” the Kauri, or cowrie, brought from the Maldive and Lakdive Archipelago. The Kámús describes this “Wada’” or Concha Veneris as “a white shell (whence to “shell out”) which is taken out of the sea, the fissure of which is white like that of the date-stone. It is hung about the neck to avert the evil eye.” The pearl in Arab. is “Murwarid,” hence evidently “Margarita” and Margaris (woman’s name).

³⁴ Arab. “Kat’a” (bit of leather): some read “Nat’a;” a leather used by way of table-cloth, and forming a bag for victuals; but it is never made of bull’s hide.

³⁵ The older “Cadi,” a judge in religious matters. The Shuhúd, or Assessors, are officers of the Mahkamah or Kazi’s Court.

³⁶ Of which more in a future page. He thus purified himself ceremonially before death.

³⁷ This is Christian rather than Moslem: a favourite Maltese curse is “Yahrak Kiddisak man rabba-k!” = burn the Saint who brought thee up!

³⁸ A popular Egyptian phrase: the dog and the cock speak like Fellahs.

³⁹ i. e. between the last sleep and dawn when they would rise to wash and pray.

Tale of the Trader and the Jinni.

It is related, O auspicious King, that there was a merchant of the merchants who had much wealth, and business in various cities. Now on a day he mounted horse and went forth to re cover monies in certain towns, and the heat sore oppressed him; so he sat beneath a tree and, putting his hand into his saddle bags, took thence some broken bread and dry dates and began to break his fast. When he had ended eating the dates he threw away the stones with force and lo! an Ifrit appeared, huge of stature and brandishing a drawn sword, wherewith he approached the mer chant and said, “Stand up that I may slay thee, even as thou slewest my son!” Asked the merchant, “How have I slain thy son?” and he answered, “When thou atest dates and threwest away the stones they struck my son full in the breast as he was walking by, so that he died forthwith.”⁴⁰ Quoth the merchant, “Verily from Allah we proceeded and unto Allah are we re turning. There is no Majesty, and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great! If I slew thy son, I slew him by chance medley. I pray thee now pardon me.” Rejoined the Jinni, “There is no help but I must slay thee.” Then he seized him and dragged him along and, casting him to the earth, raised the sword to strike him; whereupon the merchant wept, and said, “I commit my case to Allah,” and began repeating these couplets:—

Containeth Time a twain of days, this of blessing that of bane
And holdeth Life a twain of halves, this of pleasure that of pain.
See’st not when blows the hurricane, sweeping stark and striking strong
None save the forest giant feels the suffering of the strain?
How many trees earth nourisheth of the dry and of the green
Yet none but those which bear the fruits for cast of stone complain.
See’st not how corpses rise and float on the surface of the tide
While pearls o’price lie hidden in the deepest of the main!
In Heaven are unnumbered the many of the stars
Yet ne’er a star but Sun and Moon by eclipse is overta’en.
Well judgedst thou the days that saw thy faring sound and well
And countedst not the pangs and pain whereof Fate is ever fain.
The nights have kept thee safe and the safety brought thee pride
But bliss and blessings of the night are ‘genderers of bane!

When the merchant ceased repeating his verses the Jinni said to him, “Cut thy words short, by Allah! needs must I slay thee.” But the merchant spake him thus, “Know, O thou Ifrit, that I have debts due to me and much wealth and children and a wife and many pledges in hand; so permit me to go home and dis charge to every claimant his claim; and I will come back to thee at the head of the new year. Allah be my testimony and surety that I will return to thee; and then thou mayest do with me as thou wilt and Allah is witness to what I say.” The Jinni took sure promise of him and let him go; so he returned to his own city and transacted his business and rendered to all men their dues and after informing his wife and children of what had betided him, he appointed a guardian and dwelt with them for a full year. Then he arose, and made the Wuzu ablution to purify himself before death and took his shroud under his arm and bade farewell to his people, his neighbours and all his kith and kin, and went forth despite his own nose.⁴¹ They then began weeping and wailing and beating their breasts over him; but he travelled until he arrived at the same garden, and the day of his arrival was the head of the New Year. As he sat weeping over what had befallen him, behold, a Shaykh,⁴² a very ancient man, drew near leading a chained gazelle; and he saluted that merchant and wishing him long life said, “What is the cause of thy sitting in this place and thou alone and this be a resort of evil spirits?” The merchant related to him what had come to pass with the Ifrit, and the old man, the owner of the gazelle, wondered and said, “By Allah, O brother, thy faith is none other than exceeding faith and thy story right strange; were it graven with gravers on the eye corners, it were a warner to whoso would be warned.” Then seating himself near the merchant he said, “By Allah, O my brother, I will not leave thee until I see what may come to pass with thee and this Ifrit.” And presently as he sat and the two were at talk the merchant began to feel fear and terror and exceeding grief and sorrow beyond relief and ever growing care and extreme despair. And the owner of the gazelle was hard by his side; when behold, a second Shaykh approached them, and with him were two dogs both of greyhound breed and both black. The second old man after saluting them with the salam, also asked them of their tidings and said “What causeth you to sit in this place, a dwelling of the Jann?”⁴³ So they told him the tale from beginning to end, and their stay there had not lasted long before there came up a third Shaykh, and with him a she mule of bright bay coat; and he saluted them and asked them why they were seated in that place. So they told him the story from first to last: and of no avail, O my master, is a twice told tale! There he sat down with them, and lo! a dust cloud advanced and a mighty send devil appeared amidmost of the waste. Presently the cloud opened and behold, within it was that Jinni hending in hand a drawn sword, while his eyes were shooting fire sparks of rage. He came up to them and, haling away the merchant from among them, cried to him, “Arise that I may slay thee, as thou slewest my son, the life stuff of my liver.”⁴⁴ The merchant wailed and wept, and the three old men began sighing and crying and weeping and wailing with their companion. Presently the first old man (the owner of the gazelle) came out from among them and kissed the hand of the Ifrit and said, “O Jinni, thou Crown of the Kings of the Jann! were I to tell thee the story of me and this gazelle and thou shouldst consider it wondrous wouldst thou give me a third part of this merchant’s blood?” Then quoth the Jinni “Even so, O Shaykh ! if thou tell me this tale, and I hold it a marvellous, then will I give thee a third of his blood.” Thereupon the old man began to tell

⁴⁰ Travellers tell of a peculiar knack of jerking the date-stone, which makes it strike with great force: I never saw this “Inwá” practised, but it reminds me of the water splashing with one hand in the German baths.

⁴¹ i.e., sorely against his will.

⁴² Arab. “Shaykh”=an old man (primarily), an elder, a chief (of the tribe, guild, etc.), and honourably addressed to any man. Comp. among the neo Latins “Sieur,” “Signora,” “Señor,” “Senhor,” etc. from Lat. “Senior,” which gave our “Sire” and “Sir.” Like many in Arabic the word has a host of different meanings and most of them will occur in the course of The Nights. Ibrahim (Abraham) was the first Shaykh or man who became grey. Seeing his hairs whiten he cried, “O Allah what is this?” and the answer came that it was a sign of dignified gravity. Hereupon he exclaimed, “O Lord increase this to me!” and so it happened till his locks waxed snowy white at the age of one hundred and fifty. He was the first who parted his hair, trimmed his mustachios, cleaned his teeth with the Miswák (tooth-stick), pared his nails, shaved his pecten, snuffed up water, used ablution after stool and wore a shirt (Tabari).

⁴³ The word is mostly plural = Jinnís: it is also singular = a demon; and Ján bin Ján has been noticed.

⁴⁴ With us moderns “liver” suggests nothing but malady: in Arabic and Persian as in the classic literature of Europe it is the seat of passion, the heart being that of affection. Of this more presently.

The First Shaykh’s Story.

Know O Jinni! that this gazelle is the daughter of my paternal uncle, my own flesh and blood, and I married her when she was a young maid, and I lived with her well nigh thirty years, yet was I not blessed with issue by her. So I took me a concubine⁴⁵ who brought to me the boon of a male child fair as the full moon, with eyes of lovely shine and eyebrows which formed one line, and limbs of perfect design. Little by little he grew in stature and waxed tall; and when he was a lad fifteen years old, it became needful I should journey to certain cities and I travelled with great store of goods. But the daughter of my uncle (this gazelle) had learned gramarye and egromancy and clerkly craft⁴⁶ from her childhood; so she bewitched that son of mine to a calf, and my handmaid (his mother) to a heifer, and made them over to the herdsman’s care. Now when I returned after a long time from my journey and asked for my son and his mother, she answered me, saying “Thy slave girl is dead, and thy son hath fled and I know not whither he is sped.” So I remained for a whole year with grieving heart, and streaming eyes until the time came for the Great Festival of Allah.⁴⁷ Then sent I to my herdsman bid ding him choose for me a fat heifer; and he brought me one which was the damsel, my handmaid, whom this gazelle had ensorcelled. I tucked up my sleeves and skirt and, taking a knife, proceeded to cut her throat, but she lowed aloud and wept bitter tears. Thereat I marvelled and pity seized me and I held my hand, saying to the herd, “Bring me other than this.” Then cried my cousin, “Slay her, for I have not a fatter nor a fairer!” Once more I went forward to sacrifice her, but she again lowed aloud upon which in ruth I refrained and commanded the herdsman to slay her and flay her. He killed her and skinned her but found in her neither fat nor flesh, only hide and bone; and I repented when penitence availed me naught. I gave her to the herdsman and said to him, “Fetch me a fat calf;” so he brought my son ensorcelled. When the calf saw me, he brake his tether and ran to me, and fawned upon me and wailed and shed tears; so that I took pity on him and said to the herdsman, “Bring me a heifer and let this calf go!” Thereupon my cousin (this gazelle) called aloud at me, saying, “Needs must thou kill this calf; this is a holy day and a blessed, whereon naught is slain save what be perfect pure; and we have not amongst our calves any fatter or fairer than this!” Quoth I, “Look thou upon the condition of the heifer which I slaughtered at thy bidding and how we turn from her in disappointment and she profited us on no wise; and I repent with an exceeding repentance of having killed her: so this time I will not obey thy bidding for the sacrifice of this calf.” Quoth she, “By Allah the Most Great, the Compassionating, the Compassionate! there is no help for it; thou must kill him on this holy day, and if thou kill him not to me thou art no man and I to thee am no wife.” Now when I heard those hard words, not knowing her object I went up to the calf, knife in hand—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.⁴⁸ Then quoth her sister to her, “How fair is thy tale, and how grateful, and how sweet and how tasteful!” And Shahrazad answered her, “What is this to that I could tell thee on the coming night, were I to live and the King would spare me?” Then said the King in himself, “By Allah, I will not slay her, until I shall have heard the rest of her tale.” So they slept the rest of that night in mutual em brace till day fully brake. Then the King went forth to his audience hall⁴⁹ and the Wazir went up with his daughter’s shroud under his arm. The King issued his orders, and promoted this and deposed that, until the end of the day; and he told the Wazir no whit of what had happened. But the Minister wondered thereat with exceeding wonder; and when the Court broke up King Shahryar entered his palace.

⁴⁵ Originally in Al–Islam the concubine (Surriyat, etc.) was a captive taken in war and the Koran says nothing about buying slave-girls. But if the captives were true believers the Moslem was ordered to marry not to keep them. In modern days concubinage has become an extensive subject. Practically the disadvantage is that the slave-girls, knowing themselves to be the master’s property, consider him bound to sleep with them; which is by no means the mistress’s view. Some wives, however, when old and childless, insist, after the fashion of Sarah, upon the husband taking a young concubine and treating her like a daughter—which is rare. The Nights abound in tales of concubines, but these are chiefly owned by the Caliphs and high officials who did much as they pleased. The only redeeming point in the system is that it obviated the necessity of prostitution which is, perhaps, the greatest evil known to modern society.

⁴⁶ Arab. “Al–Kahánah”=the craft of a “Káhin” (Heb. Cohen) a diviner, soothsayer, etc.

⁴⁷ Arab. “Id al-kabír = The Great Festival; the Turkish Bayrám and Indian Bakar-eed (Kine-fête), the pilgrimage-time, also termed “Festival of the Kurbán” (sacrifice) because victims are slain, Al–Zuha (of Undurn or forenoon), Al–Azhá (of serene night) and Al–Nahr (of throat-cutting). For full details I must refer readers to my “Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El–Medinah and Meccah” (3 vols. 8vo, London, Longmans, 1855). I shall have often to refer to it.

⁴⁸ Arab. “Kalám al-mubáh,” i.e., that allowed or permitted to her by the King, her husband.

⁴⁹ Moslem Kings are expected, like the old Gabble Monarchs, to hold “Darbar” (i.e., give public audience) at least twice a day, morning and evening. Neglect of this practice caused the ruin of the Caliphate and of the Persian and Moghul Empires: the great lords were left uncontrolled and the lieges revolted to obtain justice. The Guebre Kings had two levée places, the Rozistan (day station) and the Shabistan (night-station — istán or stán being a nominal form of istádan, to stand, as Hindo-stán). Moreover one day in the week the sovereign acted as “Mufti” or Supreme Judge.

When it was the Second Night,

said Dunyazad to her sister Shahrazad, “O my sister, finish for us that story of the Merchant and the Jinni;” and she answered “With joy and goodly gree, if the King permit me.” Then quoth the King, “Tell thy tale;” and Shahrazad began in these words: It hath reached me, O auspicious King and Heaven directed Ruler! that when the merchant purposed the sacrifice of the calf but saw it weeping, his heart relented and he said to the herdsman, “Keep the calf among my cattle.” All this the old Shaykh told the Jinni who marvelled much at these strange words. Then the owner of the gazelle continued:—O Lord of the Kings of the Jann, this much took place and my uncle’s daughter, this gazelle, looked on and saw it, and said, “Butcher me this calf, for surely it is a fat one;” but I bade the herdsman take it away and he took it and turned his face homewards. On the next day as I was sitting in my own house, lo! the herdsman came and, standing before me said, “O my master, I will tell thee a thing which shall gladden thy soul, and shall gain me the gift of good tidings.”⁵⁰ I answered, “Even so.” Then said he, “O merchant, I have a daughter, and she learned magic in her childhood from an old woman who lived with us. Yesterday when thou gayest me the calf, I went into the house to her, and she looked upon it and veiled her face; then she wept and laughed alternately and at last she said:—O my father, hath mine honour become so cheap to thee that thou bringest in to me strange men? I asked her:—Where be these strange men and why west thou laughing, and crying?; and she answered, Of a truth this calf which is with thee is the son of our master, the merchant; but he is ensorcelled by his stepdame who bewitched both him and his mother: such is the cause of my laughing; now the reason of his weeping is his mother, for that his father slew her unawares. Then I marvelled at this with exceeding marvel and hardly made sure that day had dawned before I came to tell thee.” When I heard, O Jinni, my herdsman’s words, I went out with him, and I was drunken without wine, from the excess of joy and gladness which came upon me, until I reached his house. There his daughter welcomed me and kissed my hand, and forthwith the calf came and fawned upon me as before. Quoth I to the herdsman’s daughter, “Is this true that thou sayest of this calf?” Quoth she, “Yea, O my master, he is thy son, the very core of thy heart.” I rejoiced and said to her, “O maiden, if thou wilt release him shine shall be whatever cattle and property of mine are under thy father’s hand.” She smiled and answered, “O my master, I have no greed for the goods nor will I take them save on two conditions; the first that thou marry me to thy son and the second that I may be witch her who bewitched him and imprison her, otherwise I cannot be safe from her malice and malpractices.” Now when I heard, O Jinni, these, the words of the herdsman’s daughter, I replied, “Beside what thou askest all the cattle and the house hold stuff in thy father’s charge are shine and, as for the daughter of my uncle, her blood is lawful to thee.” When I had spoken, she took a cup and filled it with water: then she recited a spell over it and sprinkled it upon the calf, saying, “If Almighty Allah created thee a calf, remain so shaped, and change not; but if thou be enchanted, return to thy whilom form, by command of Allah Most Highest!” and lo! he trembled and became a man. Then I fell on his neck and said, “Allah upon thee, tell me all that the daughter of my uncle did by thee and by thy mother.” And when he told me what had come to pass between them I said, “ O my son, Allah favoured thee with one to restore thee, and thy right hath returned to thee.” Then, O Jinni, I married the herdsman’s daughter to him, and she transformed my wife into this gazelle, saying:—Her shape is a comely and by no means loathsome. After this she abode with us night and day, day and night, till the Almighty took her to Himself. When she deceased, my son fared forth to the cities of Hind, even to the city of this man who hath done to thee what hath been done;⁵¹ and I also took this gazelle (my cousin) and wandered with her from town to town seeking tidings of my son, till Destiny drove me to this place where I saw the merchant sitting in tears. Such is my tale! Quoth the Jinni, “This story is indeed strange, and therefore I grant thee the third part of his blood.” There upon the second old man, who owned the two greyhounds, came up and said, “ O Jinni, if I recount to thee what befel me from my brothers, these two hounds, and thou see that it is a tale even more wondrous and marvellous than what thou hast heard, wilt thou grant to me also the third of this man’s blood?” Replied the Jinni, “Thou hast my word for it, if shine adventures be more marvellous and wondrous.” Thereupon he thus began

⁵⁰ Arab. “Al–Bashárah,” the gift everywhere claimed in the East and in Boccaccio’s Italy by one who brings good news. Those who do the reverse expose themselves to a sound strappado.

⁵¹ A euphemistic formula, to avoid mentioning unpleasant matters. I shall note these for the benefit of students who would honestly prepare for the public service in Moslem lands.

The Second Shaykh’s Story.

Know, O lord of the Kings of the Jann! that these two dogs are my brothers and I am the third. Now when our father died and left us a capital of three thousand gold pieces,⁵² I opened a shop with my share, and bought and sold therein, and in like guise did my two brothers, each setting up a shop. But I had been in business no long while before the elder sold his stock for a thousand diners, and after buying outfit and merchandise, went his ways to foreign parts. He was absent one whole year with the caravan; but one day as I sat in my shop, behold, a beggar stood before me asking alms, and I said to him, “Allah open thee another door!”⁵³ Whereupon he answered, weeping the while, “Am I so changed that thou knowest me not?” Then I looked at him narrowly, and lo! it was my brother, so I rose to him and welcomed him; then I seated him in my shop and put questions concerning his case. “Ask me not,” answered he; “my wealth is awaste and my state hath waxed un stated!” So I took him to the Hammam bath⁵⁴ and clad him in a suit of my own and gave him lodging in my house. Moreover, after looking over the accounts of my stock in trade and the profits of my business, I found that industry had gained me one thousand diners, while my principal, the head of my wealth, amounted to two thousand. So I shared the whole with him saying, “Assume that thou hast made no journey abroad but hast remained at home; and be not cast down by shine ill luck.” He took the share in great glee and opened for himself a shop; and matters went on quietly for a few nights and days. But presently my second brother (yon other dog), also setting his heart upon travel, sold off what goods and stock in trade he had, and albeit we tried to stay him he would not be stayed: he laid in an outfit for the journey and fared forth with certain wayfarers. After an absence of a whole year he came back to me, even as my elder brother had come back; and when I said to him, “O my brother, did I not dissuade thee from travel?” he shed tears and cried, “O my brother, this be destiny’s decree: here I am a mere beggar, penniless⁵⁵ and without a shirt to my back.” So I led him to the bath, O Jinni, and clothing him in new clothes of my own wear, I went with him to my shop and served him with meat and drink. Furthermore I said to him, “O my brother, I am wont to cast up my shop accounts at the head of every year, and whatso I shall find of surplusage is between me and thee.”⁵⁶ So I proceeded, O Ifrit, to strike a balance and, finding two thousand diners of profit, I returned praises to the Creator (be He extolled and exalted!) and made over one half to my brother, keeping the other to my self. Thereupon he busied himself with opening a shop and on this wise we abode many days. After a time my brothers began pressing me to travel with them; but I refused saying, “What gained ye by travel voyage that I should gain thereby?” As I would not give ear to them we went back each to his own shop where we bought and sold as before. They kept urging me to travel for a whole twelvemonth, but I refused to do so till full six years were past and gone when I consented with these words, “O my brothers, here am I, your companion of travel: now let me see what monies you have by you.” I found, however, that they had not a doit, having squandered their substance in high diet and drinking and carnal delights. Yet I spoke not a word of reproach; so far from it I looked over my shop accounts once more, and sold what goods and stock in trade were mine; and, finding myself the owner of six thousand ducats, I gladly proceeded to divide that sum in halves, saying to my brothers, “These three thousand gold pieces are for me and for you to trade withal,” adding, “Let us bury the other moiety underground that it may be of service in case any harm befal us, in which case each shall take a thousand wherewith to open shops.” Both replied, “Right is thy recking;” and I gave to each one his thousand gold pieces, keeping the same sum for myself, to wit, a thousand diners. We then got ready suitable goods and hired a ship and, having embarked our merchandise, proceeded on our voyage, day following day, a full month, after which we arrived at a city, where we sold our venture; and for every piece of gold we gained ten. And as we turned again to our voyage we found on the shore of the sea a maiden clad in worn and ragged gear, and she kissed my hand and said, “O master, is there kindness in thee and charity? I can make thee a fitting return for them.” I answered, “Even so; truly in me are benevolence and good works, even though thou render me no return.” Then she said, “Take me to wife, O my master, and carry me to thy city, for I have given myself to thee; so do me a kindness and I am of those who be meet for good works and charity: I will make thee a fitting return for these and be thou not shamed by my condition.” When I heard her words, my heart yearned towards her, in such sort as willed it Allah (be He extolled and exalted!); and took her and clothed her and made ready for her a fair resting place in the vessel, and honourably entreated her. So we voyaged on, and my heart became attached to her with exceeding attachment, and I was separated from her neither night nor day, and I paid more regard to her than to my brothers. Then they were es banged from me, and waxed jealous of my wealth and the quantity of merchandise I had, and their eyes were opened covetously upon all my property. So they took counsel to murder me and seize my wealth, saying, “Let us slay our brother and all his monies will be ours;” and Satan made this deed seem fair in their sight; so when they found me in privacy (and I sleeping by my wife’s side) they took us both up and cast us into the sea. My wife awoke startled from her sleep and, forthright be coming an Ifritah,⁵⁷ she bore me up and carried me to an island and disappeared for a short time; but she returned in the morning and said, “Here am I, thy faithful slave, who hath made thee due recompense; for I bore thee up in the waters and saved thee from death by command of the Almighty. Know—that I am a Jinniyah, and as I saw thee my heart loved thee by will of the Lord, for I am a believer in Allah and in His Apostle (whom Heaven bless and preserve!). Thereupon I came to thee conditioned as thou sawest me and thou didst marry me, and see now I have saved thee from sinking. But I am angered against thy brothers and assuredly I must slay them.” When I heard her story I was surprised and, thanking her for all she had done, I said, “But as to slaying my brothers this must not be.” Then I told her the tale of what had come to pass with them from the beginning of our lives to the end, and on hearing it quoth she, “This night will I fly as a bird over them and will sink their ship and slay them.” Quoth I, “Allah upon thee, do not thus, for the proverb saith, O thou who doest good to him that cloth evil, leave the evil doer to his evil deeds. Moreover they are still my brothers.” But she rejoined, “By Allah, there is no help for it but I slay them.” I humbled myself before her for their pardon, whereupon she bore me up and flew away with me till at last she set me down on the terrace roof of my own house. I opened the doors and took up what I had hidden in the ground; and after I had saluted the folk I opened my shop and bought me merchan disc. Now when night came on I went home, and there I saw these two hounds tied up; and, when they sighted me, they arose and whined and fawned upon me; but ere I knew what happened my wife said, “These two dogs be thy brothers!” I answered, “And who hath done this thing by them?” and she rejoined, “I sent a message to my sister and she entreated them on this wise, nor shall these two be released from their present shape till ten years shall have passed.” And now I have arrived at this place on my way to my wife’s sister that she may deliver them from this condition, after their having endured it for half a score of years. As I was wending onwards I saw this young man, who acquainted me with what had befallen him, and I determined not to fare hence until I should see what might occur between thee and him. Such is my tale! Then said the Jinni, “Surely this is a strange story and therefor I give thee the third portion of his blood and his crime.” Thereupon quoth the third Shaykh, the master of the mare mule, to the Jinni, “I can tell thee a tale more wondrous than these two, so thou grant me the remainder of his blood and of his offense,” and the Jinni answered, “So be it!” Then the old man began

⁵² Arab. “Dínár,” from the Latin denarius (a silver coin worth ten ounces of brass) through the Greek {Greek Letters}: it is a Koranic word (chaps. iii.) though its Arab equivalent is “Miskál.” It also occurs in the Kathá before quoted, clearly showing the derivation. In the “Book of Kalilah and Dimnah” it is represented by the Daric or Persian Dinár, {Greek Letters}, from Dárá= a King (whence Darius). The Dinar, sequin or ducat, contained at different times from 10 and 12 (Abu Hanifah’s day) to 20 and even 25 dirhams or drachmas, and, as a weight, represented a drachma and a half. Its value greatly varied, but we may assume it here at nine shillings or ten francs to half a sovereign. For an elaborate article on the Dinar see Yule’s “Cathay and the Way Thither” (ii., pp. 439–443).

⁵³ The formula used in refusing alms to an “asker” or in rejecting an insufficient offer: “Allah will open to thee!” (some door of gain — not mine)! Another favourite ejaculation is “Allah Karim” (which Turks pronounce “Kyereem”) = Allah is All-beneficent! meaning Ask Him, not me.

⁵⁴ The public bath. London knows the word through “The Hummums.”

⁵⁵ Arab. “Dirham” (Plur. diráhim, also used in the sense of money, “siller”), the drachuma of Plautus (Trin. 2, 4, 23). The word occurs in the Panchatantra also showing the derivation; and in the Syriac Kalilah wa Dimnah it is “Zúz.” This silver piece was = 6 obols (9 3/4d.) and as a weight = 66 1/2 grains. The Dirham of The Nights was worth six “Dánik,” each of these being a fraction over a penny. The modern Greek Drachma is=one franc.

⁵⁶ In Arabic the speaker always puts himself first, even if he address the King, without intending incivility.

⁵⁷ A she-Ifrit, not necessarily an evil spirit.

The Third Shaykh’s Story.

Know, O Sultan and head of the Jann, that this mule was my wife. Now it so happened that I went forth and was absent one whole year; and when I returned from my journey I came to her by night, and saw a black slave lying with her on the carpet bed and they were talking, and dallying, and laughing, and kissing and playing the close buttock game. When she saw me, she rose and came hurriedly at me with a gugglet⁵⁸ of water; and, muttering spells over it, she besprinkled me and said, “Come forth from this thy shape into the shape of a dog;” and I became on the instant a dog. She drove me out of the house, and I ran through the doorway nor ceased running until I came to a butcher’s stall, where I stopped and began to eat what bones were there. When the stall owner saw me, he took me and led me into his house, but as soon as his daughter had sight of me she veiled her face from me, crying out, “Doss thou bring men to me and cost thou come in with them to me?” Her father asked, “Where is the man?”; and she answered, “This dog is a man whom his wife hath ensorcelled and I am able to release him.” When her father heard her words, he said, “Allah upon thee, O my daughter, release him.” So she took a gugglet of water and, after uttering words over it, sprinkled upon me a few drops, saying, “Come forth from that form into thy former form.” And I returned to my natural shape. Then I kissed her hand and said, “I wish thou wouldest transform my wife even as she bans formed me.” Thereupon she gave me some water, saying, “As soon as thou see her asleep, sprinkle this liquid upon her and speak what words thou heardest me utter, so shall she become whatsoever thou desirest.” I went to my wife and found her fast asleep; and, while sprinkling the water upon her, I said, “Come forth from that form into the form of a mare mule.” So she became on the instant a she mule, and she it is whom thou seest with shine eyes, O Sultan and head of the Kings of the Jann! Then the Jinni turned towards her and said, “Is this sooth?” And she nodded her head and replied by signs, “In deed, ’tis the truth: for such is my tale and this is what hath be fallen me.” Now when the old man had ceased speaking the Jinni shook with pleasure and gave him the third of the mer chant’s blood. And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say. Then quoth Dunyazad, “O. my sister, how pleasant is thy tale, and how tasteful; how sweet and how grateful!” She replied, “And what is this com pared with that I could tell thee, the night to come, if I live and the King spare me?”⁵⁹ Then thought the King, “By Allah, I will not slay her until I hear the rest of her tale, for truly it is wondrous.” So they rested that night in mutual embrace until the dawn. After this the King went forth to his Hall of Estate, and the Wazir and the troops came in and the court was crowded, and the King gave orders and judged and appointed and deposed, bidding and forbidding during the rest of the day. Then the Divan broke up, and King Shahryar entered his palace.

⁵⁸ Arab. “Kullah” (in Egypt pron. “gulleh”), the wide mouthed jug, called in the Hijaz “baradlyah,” “daurak” being the narrow. They are used either for water or sherbet and, being made of porous clay, “sweat,” and keep the contents cool; hence all old Anglo Egyptians drink from them, not from bottles. Sometimes they are perfumed with smoke of incense, mastich or Kafal (Amyris Kafal). For their graceful shapes see Lane’s “Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians” (chaps. v) I quote, here and elsewhere, from the fifth edition, London, Murray, 1860.

⁵⁹ “And what is?” etc. A popular way of expressing great difference. So in India: — “Where is Rajah Bhoj (the great King) and where is Gangá the oilman?”

When it was the Third Night,

And the King had had his will of the Wazir’s daughter, Dunyazad, her sister, said to her, “Finish for us that tale of thine;” and she replied, “With joy and goodly gree! It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the third old man told a tale to the Jinni more wondrous than the two preceding, the Jinni marveiled with exceeding marvel, and, shaking with delight, cried, Lo! I have given thee the remainder of the merchant’s punishment and for thy sake have I released him.” Thereupon the merchant embraced the old men and thanked them, and these Shaykhs wished him joy on being saved and fared forth each one for his own city. Yet this tale is not more wondrous than the fisherman’s story.” Asked the King, “What is the fisherman’s story?” And she answered by relating the tale of

The Fisherman and the Jinni.

It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that there was a Fisher man well stricken in years who had a wife and three children, and withal was of poor condition. Now it was his custom to cast his net every day four times, and no more. On a day he went forth about noontide to the sea shore, where he laid down his basket; and, tucking up his shirt and plunging into the water, made a cast with his net and waited till it settled to the bottom. Then he gathered the cords together and haled away at it, but found it weighty; and however much he drew it landwards, he could not pull it up; so he carried the ends ashore and drove a stake into the ground and made the net fast to it. Then he stripped and dived into the water all about the net, and left not off working hard until he had brought it up. He rejoiced thereat and, donning his clothes, went to the net, when he found in it a dead jackass which had torn the meshes. Now when he saw it, he exclaimed in his grief, “There is no Majesty, and there is no Might save in Allah the Glorious, the Great!” Then quoth he, “This is a strange manner of daily bread;” and he began re citing in extempore verse:—

O toiler through the glooms of night in peril and in pain
Thy toiling stint for daily bread comes not by might and main!
Seest thou not the fisher seek afloat upon the sea
His bread, while glimmer stars of night as set in tangled skein.
Anon he plungeth in despite the buffet of the waves
The while to sight the bellying net his eager glances strain;
Till joying at the night’s success, a fish he bringeth home
Whose gullet by the hook of Fate was caught and cut in twain.
When buys that fish of him a man who spent the hours of night
Reckless of cold and wet and gloom in ease and comfort fain,
Laud to the Lord who gives to this, to that denies his wishes
And dooms one toil and catch the prey and other eat the fishes.⁶⁰

Then quoth he, “Up and to it; I am sure of His beneficence, Inshallah!” So he continued:—

When thou art seized of Evil Fate, assume
The noble soul’s long suffering: ’tis thy best:
Complain not to the creature; this be plaint
From one most Ruthful to the ruthlessest.

The Fisherman, when he had looked at the dead ass, got it free of the toils and wrung out and spread his net; then he plunged into the sea, saying, “In Allah’s name!” and made a cast and pulled at it, but it grew heavy and settled down more firmly than the first time. Now he thought that there were fish in it, and he made it fast, and doffing his clothes went into the water, and dived and haled until he drew it up upon dry land. Then found he in it a large earthen pitcher which was full of sand and mud; and seeing this he was greatly troubled and began repeating these verses⁶¹:—

Forbear, O troubles of the world,
And pardon an ye nill forbear:
I went to seek my daily bread
I find that breadless I must fare:
For neither handcraft brings me aught
Nor Fate allots to me a share:
How many fools the Pleiads reach
While darkness whelms the wise and ware.

So he prayed pardon of Allah and, throwing away the jar, wrung his net and cleansed it and returned to the sea the third time to cast his net and waited till it had sunk. Then he pulled at it and found therein potsherds and broken glass; whereupon he began to speak these verses:—

He is to thee that daily bread thou canst nor loose nor bind
Nor pen nor writ avail thee aught thy daily bread to find:
For joy and daily bread are what Fate deigneth to allow;
This soil is sad and sterile ground, while that makes glad the hind.
The shafts of Time and Life bear down full many a man of worth
While bearing up to high degree wights of ignoble mind.
So come thou, Death! for verily life is not worth a straw
When low the falcon falls withal the mallard wings the wind:
No wonder ’tis thou seest how the great of soul and mind
Are poor, and many a loser carle to height of luck designed.
This bird shall overfly the world from east to furthest west
And that shall win her every wish though ne’er she leave the nest.

Then raising his eyes heavenwards he said, “O my God!⁶² verily Thou wottest that I cast not my net each day save four times⁶³; the third is done and as yet Thou hast vouchsafed me nothing. So this time, O my God, deign give me my daily bread.” Then, having called on Allah’s name,⁶⁴ he again threw his net and waited its sinking and settling; whereupon he haled at it but could not draw it in for that it was entangled at the bottom. He cried out in his vexation “There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah!” and he began reciting:—

Fie on this wretched world, an so it be
I must be whelmed by grief and misery:
Tho’ gladsome be man’s lot when dawns the morn
He drains the cup of woe ere eve he see:
Yet was I one of whom the world when asked
“Whose lot is happiest?” oft would say “’Tis he!”

Thereupon he stripped and, diving down to the net, busied him self with it till it came to land. Then he opened the meshes and found therein a cucumber shaped jar of yellow copper,⁶⁵ evidently full of something, whose mouth was made fast with a leaden cap, stamped with the seal ring of our Lord Sulayman son of David (Allah accept the twain!). Seeing this the Fisherman rejoiced and said, “If I sell it in the brass bazar ’tis worth ten golden diners.” He shook it and finding it heavy continued, “Would to Heaven I knew what is herein. But I must and will open it and look to its contents and store it in my bag and sell it in the brass market.” And taking out a knife he worked at the lead till he had loosened it from the jar; then he laid the cup on the ground and shook the vase to pour out whatever might be inside. He found nothing in it; whereat he marvelled with an exceeding marvel. But presently there came forth from the jar a smoke which spired heavenwards into aether (whereat he again marvelled with mighty marvel), and which trailed along earth’s surface till presently, having reached its full height, the thick vapour condensed, and became an Ifrit, huge of bulk, whose crest touched the clouds while his feet were on the ground. His head was as a dome, his hands like pitchforks, his legs long as masts and his mouth big as a cave; his teeth were like large stones, his nostrils ewers, his eyes two lamps and his look was fierce and lowering. Now when the Fisherman saw the Ifrit his side muscles quivered, his teeth chattered, his spittle dried up and he became blind about what to do. Upon this the Ifrit looked at him and cried, “There is no god but the God, and Sulayman is the prophet of God;” presently adding, “O Apostle of Allah, slay me not; never again will I gainsay thee in word nor sin against thee in deed.”⁶⁶ Quoth the Fisherman, “O Marid,⁶⁷ diddest thou say, Sulayman the Apostle of Allah; and Sulayman is dead some thousand and eight hundred years ago,⁶⁸ and we are now in the last days of the world! What is thy story, and what is thy account of thyself, and what is the cause of thy entering into this cucurbit?” Now when the Evil Spirit heard the words of the Fisherman, quoth he; “There is no god but the God: be of good cheer, O Fisherman!” Quoth the Fisherman, “Why biddest thou me to be of good cheer?” and he replied, “Because of thy having to die an ill death in this very hour.” Said the Fisherman, “Thou deservest for thy good tidings the withdrawal of Heaven’s protection, O thou distant one!⁶⁹ Wherefore shouldest thou kill me and what thing have I done to deserve death, I who freed thee from the jar, and saved thee from the depths of the sea, and brought thee up on the dry land?” Replied the Ifrit, “Ask of me only what mode of death thou wilt die, and by what manner of slaughter shall I slay thee.” Rejoined the Fisherman, “What is my crime and wherefore such retribution?” Quoth the Ifrit, “Hear my story, O Fisherman!” and he answered, “Say on, and be brief in thy saying, for of very sooth my life breath is my nostrils.”⁷⁰ Thereupon quoth the Jinni, “Know, that I am one among the heretical Jann and I sinned against Sulayman, David son (on the twain be peace!) I together with the famous Sakhr al Jinni;”⁷¹ whereupon the Prophet sent his minister, Asaf son of Barkhiya, to seize me; and this Wazir brought me against my will and led me in bonds to him (I being downcast despite my nose) and he placed me standing before him like a suppliant. When Sulayman saw me, he took refuge with Allah and bade me embrace the True Faith and obey his behests; but I refused, so sending for this cucurbit⁷² he shut me up therein, and stopped it over with lead whereon he impressed the Most High Name, and gave his orders to the Jann who carried me off, and cast me into the midmost of the ocean. There I abode an hundred years, during which I said in my heart, “Whoso shall release me, him will I enrich for ever and ever.” But the full century went by and, when no one set me free, I entered upon the second five score saying, “Whoso shall release me, for him I will open the hoards of the earth.” Still no one set me free and thus four hundred years passed away. Then quoth I, “Whoso shall release me, for him will I fulfil three wishes.” Yet no one set me free. Thereupon I waxed wroth with exceeding wrath and said to myself, “Whoso shall release me from this time forth, him will I slay and I will give him choice of what death he will die; and now, as thou hast released me, I give thee full choice of deaths.” The Fisherman, hearing the words of the Ifrit, said, “O Allah! the wonder of it that I have not come to free thee save in these days!” adding, “Spare my life, so Allah spare shine; and slay me not, lest Allah set one to slay thee.” Replied the Contumacious One, “There is no help for it; die thou must; so ask me by way of boon what manner of death thou wilt die.” Albeit thus certified the Fisherman again addressed the Ifrit saying, “Forgive me this my death as a generous reward for having freed thee;” and the Ifrit, “Surely I would not slay thee save on account of that same release.” “O Chief of the Ifrits,” said the Fisherman, “I do thee good and thou requitest me with evil! in very sooth the old saw lieth not when it saith:—

We wrought them weal, they met our weal with ill;
Such, by my life! is every bad man’s labour:
To him who benefits unworthy wights
Shall hap what inapt to Ummi Amir’s neighbor.⁷³”

Now when the Ifrit heard these words he answered, “No more of this talk, needs must I kill thee.” Upon this the Fisherman said to himself, “This is a Jinni; and I am a man to whom Allah hath given a passably cunning wit, so I will now cast about to com pass his destruction by my contrivance and by mine intelligence; even as he took counsel only of his malice and his frowardness.”⁷⁴ He began by asking the Ifrit, “Hast thou indeed resolved to kill me?” and, receiving for all answer, “Even so,” he cried, “Now in the Most Great Name, graven on the seal ring of Sulayman the Son of David (peace be with the holy twain!), an I question thee on a certain matter wilt thou give me a true answer?” The Ifrit replied “Yea;” but, hearing mention of the Most Great Name, his wits were troubled and he said with trembling, “Ask and be brief.” Quoth the Fisherman, “How didst thou fit into this bottle which would not hold thy hand; no, nor even thy foot, and how came it to be large enough to contain the whole of thee?” Replied the Ifrit, “What! cost not believe that I was all there?” and the Fisherman rejoined, “Nay! I will never believe it until I see thee inside with my own eyes.” And Shahrazad per ceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

⁶⁰ Here, as in other places, I have not preserved the monorhyme, but have ended like the English sonnet with a couplet; as a rule the last two lines contain a “Husn makta’” or climax.

⁶¹ Lit. “he began to say (or speak) poetry,” such improvising being still common amongst the Badawin as I shall afterwards note. And although Mohammed severely censured profane poets, who “rove as bereft of their senses through every valley” and were directly inspired by devils (Koran xxvi.), it is not a little curious to note that he himself spoke in “Rajaz” (which see) and that the four first Caliphs all “spoke poetry.” In early ages the verse would not be written, if written at all, till after the maker’s death. I translate “inshád” by “versifying” or “repeating” or “reciting,” leaving it doubtful if the composition be or be not original. In places, however, it is clearly improvised and then as a rule it is model doggrel.

⁶² Arab. “Allahumma”=Yá Allah (O Allah) but with emphasis the Fath being a substitute for the voc. part. Some connect it with the Heb. “Alihím,” but that fancy is not Arab. In Al–Hariri and the rhetoricians it sometimes means to be sure; of course; unless indeed; unless possibly.

⁶³ Probably in consequence of a vow. These superstitious practices, which have many a parallel amongst ourselves, are not confined to the lower orders in the East.

⁶⁴ i.e., saying “Bismillah!” the pious ejaculation which should precede every act. In Boccaccio (viii., 9) it is “remembering Iddio e’ Santi.”

⁶⁵ Arab. Nahás asfar = brass, opposed to “Nahás” and “Nahás ahmar,” = copper.

⁶⁶ This alludes to the legend of Sakhr al-Jinn), a famous fiend cast by Solomon David son into Lake Tiberias whose storms make it a suitable place. Hence the “Bottle imp,” a world-wide fiction of folk-lore: we shall find it in the “Book of Sindibad,” and I need hardly remind the reader of Le Sage’s “Diable Boiteux,” borrowed from “El Diablo Cojuelo,” the Spanish novel by Luiz Velez de Guevara.

⁶⁷ Márid (lit. “contumacious” from the Heb. root Marad to rebel, whence “Nimrod” in late Semitic) is one of the tribes of the Jinn, generally but not always hostile to man. His female is “Máridah.”

⁶⁸ As Solomon began to reign (according to vulgar chronometry) in B.C. 1015, the text would place the tale circ. A.D. 785, = A.H. 169. But we can lay no stress on this date which may be merely fanciful. Professor Tawney very justly compares this Moslem Solomon with the Hindu King, Vikramáditya, who ruled over the seven divisions of the world and who had as many devils to serve him as he wanted.

⁶⁹ Arab. “Yá Ba’íd:” a euphemism here adopted to prevent using grossly abusive language. Others will occur in the course of these pages.

⁷⁰ i. e. about to fly out; “My heart is in my mouth.” The Fisherman speaks with the dry humour of a Fellah.

⁷¹ “Sulayman,” when going out to ease himself, entrusted his seal-ring upon which his kingdom depended to a concubine “Amínah” (the “Faithful”), when Sakhr, transformed to the King’s likeness, came in and took it. The prophet was reduced to beggary, but after forty days the demon fled throwing into the sea the ring which was swallowed by a fish and eventually returned to Sulayman. This Talmudic fable is hinted at in the Koran (chaps. xxxviii.), and commentators have extensively embroidered it. Asaf, son of Barkhiya, was Wazir to Sulayman and is supposed to be the “one with whom was the knowledge of the Scriptures” (Koran, chaps. xxxvii.), i.e. who knew the Ineffable Name of Allah. See the manifest descendant of the Talmudic Koranic fiction in the “Tale of the Emperor Jovinian” (No. lix.) of the Gesta Romanorum, the most popular book of mediæval Europe composed in England (or Germany) about the end of the thirteenth century.

⁷² Arab. “Kumkam,” a gourd-shaped bottle of metal, china or glass, still used for sprinkling scents. Lane gives an illustration (chaps. viii., Mod. Egypt.).

⁷³ Arab. meaning “the Mother of Amir,” a nickname for the hyena, which bites the hand that feeds it.

⁷⁴ The intellect of man is stronger than that of the Jinni; the Ifrit, however, enters the jar because he has been adjured by the Most Great Name and not from mere stupidity. The seal-ring of Solomon according to the Rabbis contained a chased stone which told him everything he wanted to know.

When it was the Fourth Night,

Her sister said to her, “Please finish us this tale, an thou be not sleepy!” so she resumed:—It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the Fisherman said to the Ifrit, “I will never and nowise believe thee until I see thee inside it with mine own eyes;” the Evil Spirit on the instant shook⁷⁵ and became a vapour, which condensed, and entered the jar little and little, till all was well inside when lo! the Fisherman in hot haste took the leaden cap with the seal and stoppered therewith the mouth of the jar and called out to the Ifrit, saying, “Ask me by way of boon what death thou wilt die! By Allah, I will throw thee into the sea⁷⁶ be fore us and here will I build me a lodge; and whoso cometh hither I will warn him against fishing and will say:—In these waters abideth an Ifrit who giveth as a last favour a choice of deaths and fashion of slaughter to the man who saveth him!” Now when the Ifrit heard this from the Fisherman and saw him self in limbo, he was minded to escape, but this was prevented by Solomon’s seal; so he knew that the Fisherman had cozened and outwitted him, and he waxed lowly and submissive and began humbly to say, “I did but jest with thee.” But the other an swered, “Thou liest, O vilest of the Ifrits, and meanest and filthiest!” and he set off with the bottle for the sea side; the Ifrit calling out “Nay! Nay!” and he calling out “Aye! Aye !” There upon the Evil Spirit softened his voice and smoothed his speech and abased himself, saying, “What wouldest thou do with me, O Fisherman?” “I will throw thee back into the sea,” he answered; “where thou hast been housed and homed for a thousand and eight hundred years; and now I will leave thee therein till Judgment day: did I not say to thee:—Spare me and Allah shall spare thee; and slay me not lest Allah slay thee? yet thou spurn east my supplication and hadst no intention save to deal un graciously by me, and Allah hath now thrown thee into my hands and I am cunninger than thou.” Quoth the Ifrit, “Open for me and I may bring thee weal.” Quoth the Fisherman, “Thou liest, thou accursed! my case with thee is that of the Wazir of King Yunan with the sage Duban.”⁷⁷ “And who was the Wazir of King Yunan and who was the sage Duban; and what was the story about them?” quoth the Ifrit, whereupon the Fisherman began to tell

⁷⁵ The Mesmerist will notice this shudder which is familiar to him as preceding the “magnetic” trance.

⁷⁶ Arab. “Bahr” which means a sea, a large river, a sheet of water, etc., lit. water cut or trenched in the earth. Bahri in Egypt means Northern; so Yamm (Sea, Mediterranean) in Hebrew is West.

⁷⁷ In the Bull Edit. “Ruyán,” evidently a clerical error. The name is fanciful not significant.

The Tale of the Wazir and the Sage Duban.

Know, O thou Ifrit, that in days of yore and in ages long gone before, a King called Yunan reigned over the city of Fars of the land of the Roum.⁷⁸ He was a powerful ruler and a wealthy, who had armies and guards and allies of all nations of men; but his body was afflicted with a leprosy which leaches and men of science failed to heal. He drank potions and he swallowed pow ders and he used unguents, but naught did him good and none among the host of physicians availed to procure him a cure. At last there came to his city a mighty healer of men and one well stricken in years, the sage Duban hight. This man was a reader of books, Greek, Persian, Roman, Arabian, and Syrian; and he was skilled in astronomy and in leechcraft, the theorick as well as the practick; he was experienced in all that healeth and that hurteth the body; conversant with the virtues of every plant, grass and herb, and their benefit and bane; and he understood philosophy and had compassed the whole range of medical science and other branches of the knowledge tree. Now this physician passed but few days in the city, ere he heard of the King’s malady and all his bodily sufferings through the leprosy with which Allah had smitten him; and how all the doctors and wise men had failed to heal him. Upon this he sat up through the night in deep thought and, when broke the dawn and appeared the morn and light was again born, and the Sun greeted the Good whose beauties the world adorn,⁷⁹ he donned his handsomest dress and going in to King Yunan, he kissed the ground before him: then he prayed for the endurance of his honour and prosperity in fairest language and made himself known saying, “O King, tidings have reached I me of what befel thee through that which is in thy person; and how the host of physicians have proved themselves unavailing to abate it; and lo! I can cure thee, O King; and yet will I not make thee drink of draught or anoint thee with ointment.” Now when King Yunan heard his words he said in huge surprise, “How wilt thou do this? By Allah, if thou make me whole I will enrich thee even to thy son’s son and I will give thee sumptuous gifts; and whatso thou wishest shall be shine and thou shalt be to me a cup companion⁸⁰ and a friend.” The King then robed him with a dress of honour and entreated him graciously and asked him, “Canst thou indeed cure me of this complaint without drug and unguent?” and he answered, “Yes! I will heal I thee without the pains and penalties of medicine.” The King marvelled with exceeding marvel and said, “O physician, when shall be this whereof thou speakest, and in how many days shall it take place? Haste thee, O my son!” He replied,“I hear and I obey; the cure shall begin tomorrow.” So saying he went forth from the presence, and hired himself a house in the city for the better storage of his books and scrolls, his medicines and his aromatic roots. Then he set to work at choosing the fittest drugs and simples and he fashioned a bat hollow within, and furnished with a handle without, for which he made a ball; the two being prepared with consummate art. On the next day when both were ready for use and wanted nothing more, he went up to the King; and, kissing the ground between his hands bade him ride forth on the parade ground⁸¹ there to play at pall and mall. He was accompanied by his suite, Emirs and Chamberlains, Wazirs and Lords of the realm and, ere he was seated, the sage Duban came up to him, and handing him the bat said, “Take this mall and grip it as I do; so! and now push for the plain and leaning well over thy horse drive the ball with all thy might until thy palm be moist and thy body perspire: then the medicine will penetrate through thy palm and will permeate thy person. When thou hast done with playing and thou feelest the effects of the medicine, return to thy palace, and make the Ghusl ablation⁸² in the Hammam bath, and lay thee down to sleep; so shalt thou be come whole; and now peace be with thee!” Thereupon King Yunan took the bat from the Sage and grasped it firmly; then, mounting steed, he drove the ball before him and gallopped after it till he reached it, when he struck it with all his might, his palm gripping the bat handle the while; and he ceased not malling the ball till his hand waxed moist and his skin, perspiring, imbibed the medicine from the wood. Then the sage Duban knew that the drugs had penetrated his person and bade him return to the palace and enter the Hammam without stay or delay; so King Yunan forthright returned and ordered them to clear for him the bath. They did so, the carpet spreaders making all haste, and the slaves all hurry and got ready a change of raiment for the King. He entered the bath and made the total ablution long and thoroughly; then donned his clothes within the Hammam and rode therefrom to his palace where he lay him down and slept. Such was the case with King Yunan, but as regards the sage Duban, he returned home and slept as usual and when morning dawned he repaired to the palace and craved audience. The King ordered him to be admitted; then, having kissed the ground between his hands, in allusion to the King he recited these couplets with solemn intonation:—

Happy is Eloquence when thou art named her sire
But mourns she whenas other man the title claimed.
O Lord of fairest presence, whose illuming rays
Clear off the fogs of doubt aye veiling deeds high famed,
Ne’er cease thy face to shine like Dawn and rise of Morn
And never show Time’s face with heat of ire inflamed!
Thy grace hath favoured us with gifts that worked such wise
As rain clouds raining on the hills by words enframed:
Freely thou lavishedst thy wealth to rise on high
Till won from Time the heights whereat thy grandeur aimed.

Now when the Sage ceased reciting, the King rose quickly to his feet and fell on his neck; then, seating him by his side he bade dress him in a sumptuous dress; for it had so happened that when the King left the Hammam he looked on his body and saw no trace of leprosy: the skin was all clean as virgin silver. He joyed thereat with exceeding joy, his breast broadened⁸³ with delight and he felt thoroughly happy. Presently, when it was full day he entered his audience hall and sat upon the throne of his kingship whereupon his Chamberlains and Grandees flocked to the presence and with them the Sage Duban. Seeing the leach the King rose to him in honour and seated him by his side; then the food trays furnished with the daintiest viands were brought and the physician ate with the King, nor did he cease companying him all that day. Moreover, at nightfall he gave the physician Duban two thousand gold pieces, besides the usual dress of honour and other gifts galore, and sent him home on his own steed. After the Sage had fared forth King Yunan again expressed his amazement at the leach’s art, saying, “This man medicined my body from without nor anointed me with aught of ointments: by Allah, surely this is none other than consummate skill! I am bound to honour such a man with re wards and distinction, and take him to my companion and my friend during the remainder of my days.” So King Yunan passed the night in joy and gladness for that his body had been made whole and had thrown off so pernicious a malady. On the morrow the King went forth from his Serraglio and sat upon his throne, and the Lords of Estate stood about him, and the Emirs and Wazirs sat as was their wont on his right hand and on his left. Then he asked for the Sage Duban, who came in and kissed the ground before him, when the King rose to greet him and, seating him by his side, ate with him and wished him long life. Moreover he robed him and gave him gifts, and ceased not con versing with him until night approached. Then the King ordered him, by way of salary, five dresses of honour and a thousand dinars.⁸⁴ The physician returned to his own house full of gratitude to the King. Now when next morning dawned the King repaired to his audience hall, and his Lords and Nobles surrounded him and his Chamberlains and his Ministers, as the white en closeth the black of the eye.⁸⁵ Now the King had a Wazir among his Wazirs, unsightly to look upon, an ill omened spectacle; sor did, ungenerous, full of envy and evil will. When this Minister saw the King place the physician near him and give him all these gifts, he jaloused him and planned to do him a harm, as in the saying on such subject, “Envy lurks in every body;” and the say ing, “Oppression hideth in every heart: power revealeth it and weakness concealeth it.” Then the Minister came before the King and, kissing the ground between his hands, said, “O King of the age and of all time, thou in whose benefits I have grown to manhood, I have weighty advice to offer thee, and if I withhold it I were a son of adultery and no true born man; wherefore an thou order me to disclose it I will so do forthwith.” Quoth the King (and he was troubled at the words of the Minister), “And what is this counsel of shine?” Quoth he, “O glorious monarch, the wise of old have said:—Whoso regardeth not the end, hath not Fortune to friend; and indeed I have lately seen the King on far other than the right way; for he lavisheth largesse on his enemy, on one whose object is the decline and fall of his king ship: to this man he hath shown favour, honouring him with over honour and making of him an intimate. Wherefore I fear for the King’s life.” The King, who was much troubled and changed colour, asked, “Whom cost thou suspect and anent whom doest thou hint?” and the Minister answered, “O King, an thou be asleep, wake up! I point to the physician Duban.” Rejoined the King, “Fie upon thee! This is a true friend who is favoured by me above all men, because he cured me with some thing which I held in my hand, and he healed my leprosy which had baffled all physicians; indeed he is one whose like may not be found in these days—no, not in the whole world from furthest east to utmost west! And it is of such a man thou sayest such hard sayings. Now from this day forward I allot him a settled solde and allowances, every month a thousand gold pieces; and, were I to share with him my realm ’twere but a little matter. Perforce I must suspect that thou speakest on this wise from mere envy and jealousy as they relate of the King Sindibad.”—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day, and ceased saying her permitted say. Then quoth Dunyazad, “O my sister, how pleasant is thy tale, and how tasteful, how sweet, and how grateful!” She replied, “And where is this compared with what I could tell thee on the coming night if the King deign spare my life?” Then said the King in himself, “By Allah, I will not slay her until I hear the rest of her tale, for truly it is wondrous.” So they rested that night in mutual embrace until the dawn. Then the King went forth to his Hall of Rule, and the Wazir and the troops came in, and the audience chamber was thronged and the King gave orders and judged and appointed and deposed and bade and forbade during the rest of that day till the Court broke up, and King Shahryar returned to his palace.

⁷⁸ The geography is ultra-Shakespearean. “Fárs” (whence “Persia”) is the central Province of the grand old Empire now a mere wreck, “Rúm” (which I write Roum, in order to avoid Jamaica) is the neo-Roman or Byzantine Empire, while “Yunan” is the classical Arab term for Greece (Ionia) which unlearned Moslems believe to be now under water.

⁷⁹ The Sun greets Mohammed every morning even as it dances on Easter Day for Christendom. Risum teneatis?

⁸⁰ Arab. “Nadím,” a term often occurring. It denotes one who was intimate enough to drink with the Caliph, a very high honour and a dangerous. The last who sat with “Nudamá” was Al–Razi bi’llah A.H. 329 = 940. See Al–Siyuti’s famous “History of the Caliphs” translated and admirably annotated by Major H. S. Jarrett, for the Bibliotheca Indica, Calcutta, 1880.

⁸¹Arab. Maydán (from Persian); Lane generally translates it “horse course ‘ and Payne “tilting yard.” It is both and something more; an open space, in or near the city, used for reviewing troops, races, playing the Jeríd (cane-spear) and other sports and exercises: thus Al–Maydan=Gr. hippodrome. The game here alluded to is our —‘polo,” or hockey on horseback, a favourite with the Persian Kings, as all old illustrations of the Shahnamah show. Maydan is also a natural plain for which copious Arabic has many terms, Fayhah or Sath (a plain generally), Khabt (a low-lying plain), Bat’há (a low sandy flat), Mahattah (a plain fit for halting) and so forth. (Pilgrimage iii., 11.)

⁸² For details concerning the “Ghusl” see Night xliv.

⁸³ A popular idiom and highly expressive, contrasting the upright bearing of the self-satisfied man with the slouch of the miserable and the skirt-trailing of the woman in grief. I do not see the necessity of such Latinisms as “dilated” or “expanded.”

⁸⁴ All these highest signs of favour foreshow, in Eastern tales and in Eastern life, an approaching downfall of the heaviest; they are so great that they arouse general jealousy. Many of us have seen this at native courts.

⁸⁵ This phrase is contained in the word “ihdák” =encompassing, as the conjunctive does the pupil.

When it was the Fifth Night,

Her sister said, “Do you finish for us thy story if thou be not sleepy,” and she resumed:—It hath reached me, O auspicious King and mighty Monarch, that King Yunan said to his Minister, “O Wazir, thou art one whom the evil spirit of envy hath possessed because of this physician, and thou plottest for my putting him to death, after which I should repent me full sorely, even as repented King Sindibad for killing his falcon.” Quoth the Wazir, Pardon me, O King of the age, how was that?” So the King began the story of

King Sindibad and his Falcon.

It is said (but Allah is All knowing!⁸⁶) that there was a King of the Kings of Fars, who was fond of pleasuring and diversion, especially coursing end hunting. He had reared a falcon which he carried all night on his fist, and whenever he went a chasing he took with him this bird; and he bade make for her a golden cuplet hung around her neck to give her drink therefrom. One day as the King was sitting quietly in his palace, behold, the high falcaner of the household suddenly addressed him, “O King of the age, this is indeed a day fit for birding.” The King gave orders accordingly and set out taking the hawk on fist; and they fared merrily forwards till they made a Wady⁸⁷ where they planted a circle of nets for the chase; when lo! a gazelle came within the toils and the King cried, “Whoso alloweth yon gazelle to spring over his head and loseth her, that man will I surely slay.” They narrowed the nets about the gazelle when she drew near the King’s station; and, planting herself on her hind quarter, crossed her forehand over her breast, as if about to kiss the earth before the King. He bowed his brow low in acknowledgment to the beast; when she bounded high over his head and took the way of the waste. Thereupon the King turned towards his troops and seeing them winking and pointing at him, he asked, “O Wazir, what are my men saying?” and the Minister answered, “They say thou didst proclaim that whoso alloweth the gazelle to spring over his head, that man shall be put to death.” Quoth the King, “Now, by the life of my head! I will follow her up till I bring her back.” So he set off gallopping on the gazelle’s trail and gave not over tracking till he reached the foot hills of a mountain chain where the quarry made for a cave. Then the King cast off at it the falcon which presently caught it up and, swooping down, drove her talons into its eyes, bewildering and blinding it;⁸⁸ and the King drew his mace and struck a blow which rolled the game over. He then dismounted; and, after cutting the antelope’s throat and flaying the body, hung it to the pommel of his saddle. Now the time was that of the siesta⁸⁹ and the wold was parched and dry, nor was any water to be found anywhere; and the King thirsted and his horse also; so he went about searching till he saw a tree dropping water, as it were melted butter, from its boughs. Thereupon the King who wore gauntlets of skin to guard him against poisons took the cup from the hawk’s neck, and filling it with the water set it before the bird, and lo! the falcon struck it with her pounces and upset the liquid. The King filled it a second time with the dripping drops, thinking his hawk was thirsty; but the bird again struck at the cup with her talons and overturned it. Then the King waxed wroth with the hawk and filling the cup a third time offered it to his horse: but the hawk upset it with a flirt of wings. Quoth the King, “Allah confound thee, thou unluckiest of flying things! thou keepest me from drinking, and thou deprivest thyself also, and the horse.” So he struck the falcon with his sword and cut off her wing; but the bird raised her head and said by signs, “Look at that which hangeth on the tree!” The King lifted up his eyes accordingly and caught sight of a brood of vipers, whose poison drops he mistook for water; thereupon he repented him of having struck off his falcon’s wing, and mounting horse, fared on with the dead gazelle, till he arrived at the camp, his starting place. He threw the quarry to the cook saying, Take and broil it,” and sat down on his chair, the falcon being still on his fist when suddenly the bird gasped and died; whereupon the King cried out in sorrow and remorse for having slain that falcon which had saved his life. Now this is what occurred in the case of King Sindibad; and I am assured that were I to do as thou desirest I should repent even as the man who killed his parrot.” Quoth the Wazir, “And how was that?” And the King began to tell

⁸⁶ I have noted this formula, which is used even in conversation when about to relate some great unfact.

⁸⁷ We are obliged to English the word by “valley,” which is about as correct as the “brook Kedron,” applied to the grisliest of ravines. The Wady (in old Coptic wah, oah, whence “Oasis”) is the bed of a watercourse which flows only after rains. I have rendered it by “Fiumara” (Pilgrimage i., 5, and ii., 196, etc.), an Italian or rather a Sicilian word which exactly describes the “wady.”

⁸⁸ I have described this scene which Mr. T. Wolf illustrated by an excellent lithograph in “Falconry, etc.” (London, Van Voorst, MDCCCLII.)

⁸⁹ Arab. “Kaylúlah,” mid-day sleep; called siesta from the sixth canonical hour.

The Tale of the Husband and the Parrot.⁹⁰

A certain man and a merchant to boot had married a fair wife, a woman of perfect beauty and grace, symmetry and loveliness, of whom he was mad-jealous, and who contrived successfully to keep him from travel. At last an occasion compelling him to leave her, he went to the bird market and bought him for one hundred gold pieces a she parrot which he set in his house to act as duenna, expecting her to acquaint him on his return with what had passed during the whole time of his absence; for the bird was kenning and cunning and never forgot what she had seen and heard. Now his fair wife had fallen in love with a young Turk, ⁹¹ who used to visit her, and she feasted him by day and lay with him by night. When the man had made his journey and won his wish he came home; and, at once causing the Parrot be brought to him, questioned her concerning the conduct of his consort whilst he was in foreign parts. Quoth she, “Thy wife hath a man friend who passed every night with her during shine absence.” Thereupon the husband went to his wife in a violent rage and bashed her with a bashing severe enough to satisfy any body. The woman, suspecting that one of the slave girls had been tattling to the master, called them together and questioned them upon their oaths, when all swore that they had kept the secret, but that the Parrot had not, adding, “And we heard her with our own ears.” Upon this the woman bade one of the girls to set a hand mill under the cage and grind therewith and a second to sprinkle water through the cage roof and a third to run about, right and left, dashing a mirror of bright steel through the livelong night. Next morning when the husband returned home after being entertained by one of his friends, he bade bring the Parrot before him and asked what had taken place whilst he was away. “Pardon me, O my master,” quoth the bird, “I could neither hear nor see aught by reason of the exceeding murk and the thunder and lightning which lasted throughout the night.” As it happened to be the summer tide the master was astounded and cried, “But we are now in mid Tammuz,⁹² and this is not the time for rains and storms.” “Ay, by Allah,” rejoined the bird, “I saw with these eyes what my tongue hath told thee.” Upon this the man, not knowing the case nor smoking the plot, waxed exceeding wroth; and, holding that his wife had been wrongously accused, put forth his hand and pulling the Parrot from her cage dashed her upon the ground with such force that he killed her on the spot. Some days after wards one of his slave girls confessed to him the whole truth,⁹³ yet would he not believe it till he saw the young Turk, his wife’s lover, coming out of her chamber, when he bared his blade ⁹⁴ and slew him by a blow on the back of the neck; and he did the same by the adulteress; and thus the twain, laden with mortal sin, went straightways to Eternal Fire. Then the merchant knew that the Parrot had told him the truth anent all she had seen and he mourned grievously for her loss, when mourning availed him not. The Minister, hearing the words of King Yu nan, rejoined, ‘O Monarch, high in dignity, and what harm have I done him, or what evil have I seen from him that I should compass his death? I would not do this thing, save to serve thee, and soon shalt thou sight that it is right; and if thou accept my advice thou shalt be saved, otherwise thou shalt be destroyed even as a certain Wazir who acted treacherously by the young Prince.” Asked the King, “How was that?” and the Minister thus began

⁹⁰ This parrot-story is world-wide in folk-lore and the belief in metempsychosis, which prevails more or less over all the East, there lends it probability. The “Book of Sindibad” (see Night dlxxix. and “The Academy,” Sept. 20, 1884, No. 646) converts it into the “Story of the Confectioner, his Wife and the Parrot,” and it is the base of the Hindostani text— book, “Tota–Kaháni” (Parrot-chat), an abridgement of the Tutinámah (Parrot-book) of Nakhshabi (circ. A.D. 1300), a congener of the Sanskrit “Suka Saptati,” or Seventy Parrot-stories. The tale is not in the Bull. or Mac. Edits. but occurs in the Bresl. (i., pp. 90, 91) much mutilated; and better in the Calc. Edit I cannot here refrain from noticing how vilely the twelve vols. of the Breslau Edit have been edited; even a table of contents being absent from the first four volumes.

⁹¹ The young “Turk” is probably a late addition, as it does not appear in many of the Mss., e. g. the Bresl. Edit. The wife usually spreads a cloth over the cage; this in the Turkish translation becomes a piece of leather.

⁹² The Hebrew–Syrian month July used to express the height of summer. As Herodotus tells us (ii. 4) the Egyptians claimed to be the discoverers of the solar year and the portioners of its course into twelve parts.

⁹³ This proceeding is thoroughly characteristic of the servile class; they conscientiously conceal everything from the master till he finds a clew; after which they tell him everything and something more.

⁹⁴ Until late years, merchants and shopkeepers in the nearer East all carried and held it a disgrace to leave the house unarmed.

The Tale of the Prince and the Ogress.

A certain King, who had a son over much given to hunting and coursing, ordered one of his Wazirs to be in attendance upon him whithersoever he might wend. One day the youth set out for the chase accompanied by his father’s Minister; and, as they jogged on together, a big wild beast came in sight. Cried the Wazir to the King’s son, “Up and at yon noble quarry!” So the Prince followed it until he was lost to every eye and the chase got away from him in the waste; whereby he was confused and he knew not which way to turn, when lo! a damsel appeared ahead and she was in tears. The King’s son asked, “Who art thou?” and she answered, “I am daughter to a King among the Kings of Hind, and I was travelling with a caravan in the desert when drowsiness overcame me, and I fell from my beast unwittingly whereby I am cut off from my people and sore bewildered.” The Prince, hearing these words, pitied her case and, mounting her on his horse’s crupper, travelled until he passed by an old ruin ⁹⁵, when the damsel said to him, “O my master, I wish to obey a call of nature”: he therefore set her down at the ruin where she delayed so long that the King’s son thought that she was only wasting time; so he followed her without her knowledge and behold, she was a Ghulah,⁹⁶ a wicked Ogress, who was saying to her brood, “O my children, this day I bring you a fine fat youth, ⁹⁷ for dinner;” whereto they answered, “Bring him quick to us, O our mother, that we may browse upon him our bellies full.” The Prince hearing their talk, made sure of death and his side muscles quivered in fear for his life, so he turned away and was about to fly. The Ghulah came out and seeing him in sore affright (for he was trembling in every limb? cried, “Wherefore art thou afraid?” and he replied, “I have hit upon an enemy whom I greatly fear.” Asked the Ghulah, “Diddest thou not say: — I am a King’s son?” and he answered, “Even so.” Then quoth she, “Why cost not give shine enemy something of money and so satisfy him?” Quoth he, “He will not be satisfied with my purse but only with my life, and I mortally fear him and am a man under oppression.” She replied, “If thou be so distressed, as thou deemest, ask aid against him from Allah, who will surely protect thee from his ill doing and from the evil whereof thou art afraid.” Then the Prince raised his eyes heavenwards and cried, “O Thou who answerest the necessitous when he calleth upon Thee and dispellest his distress; O my God ! grant me victory over my foe and turn him from me, for Thou over all things art Almighty.” The Ghulah, hearing his prayer, turned away from him, and the Prince returned to his father, and told him the tale of the Wazir; whereupon the King summoned the Minister to his presence and then and there slew him. Thou likewise, O King, if thou continue to trust this leach, shalt be made to die the worst of deaths. He verily thou madest much of and whom thou entreatedest as an intimate, will work thy destruction. Seest thou not how he healed the disease from outside thy body by something grasped in thy hand? Be not assured that he will not destroy thee by something held in like manner! Replied King Yunan, “Thou hast spoken sooth, O Wazir, it may well be as thou hintest O my well advising Minister; and belike this Sage hath come as a spy searching to put me to death; for assuredly if he cured me by a something held in my hand, he can kill me by a something given me to smell.” Then asked King Yunan, “O Minister, what must be done with him?” and the Wazir answered, “Send after him this very instant and summon him to thy presence; and when he shall come strike him across the neck; and thus shalt thou rid thyself of him and his wickedness, and deceive him ere he can I deceive thee.” ‘Thou hast again spoken sooth, O Wazir,” said the King and sent one to call the Sage who came in joyful mood for he knew not what had appointed for him the Compassionate; as a certain poet saith by way of illustration:—

O Thou who fearest Fate, confiding fare
Trust all to Him who built the world and wait:
What Fate saith “Be” perforce must be, my lord!
And safe art thou from th undecreed of Fate.

As Duban the physician entered he addressed the King in these lines:—

An fail I of my thanks to thee nor thank thee day by day
For whom com posed I prose and verse, for whom my say and lay?
Thou lavishedst thy generous gifts ere they were craved by me
Thou lavishedst thy boons unsought sans pretext or delay:
How shall I stint my praise of thee, how shall I cease to laud
The grace of thee in secresy and patentest display?
Nay; I will thank thy benefits, for aye thy favours lie
Light on my thought and tongue, though heavy on my back they weigh.

And he said further on the same theme:—

Turn thee from grief nor care a jot!
Commit thy needs to Fate and Lot!
Enjoy the Present passing well
And let the Past be clean forgot
For whatso haply seemeth worse
Shall work thy weal as Allah wot
Allah shall do whate’er He wills
And in His will oppose Him not.

And further still.—

To th’ All wise Subtle One trust worldly things
Rest thee from all whereto the worldling clings:
Learn wisely well naught cometh by thy will
But e’en as willeth Allah, King of Kings.

And lastly.—

Gladsome and gay forget shine every grief
Full often grief the wisest hearts outwore:
Thought is but folly in the feeble slave
Shun it and so be saved evermore.

Said the King for sole return, “Knowest thou why I have summoned thee?” and the Sage replied, “Allah Most Highest alone kenneth hidden things!” But the King rejoined, “I summoned thee only to take thy life and utterly to destroy thee.” Duban the Wise wondered at this strange address with exceeding wonder and asked, “O King, and wherefore wouldest thou slay me, and what ill have I done thee?” and the King answered, “Men tell me thou art a spy sent hither with intent to slay me; and lo! I will kill thee ere I be killed by thee;” then he called to his Sworder, and said, “Strike me off the head of this traitor and deliver us from his evil practices.” Quoth the Sage, “Spare me and Allah will spare thee; slay me not or Allah shall slay thee.” And he repeated to him these very words, even as I to thee, O Ifrit, and yet thou wouldst not let me go, being bent upon my death. King Yunan only rejoined, “I shall not be safe without slaying thee; for, as thou healedst me by something held in hand, so am I not secure against thy killing me by something given me to smell or otherwise.” Said the physician, “This then, O King, is thy requital and reward; thou returnest only evil for good.” The King replied, “There is no help for it; die thou must and without delay.” Now when the physician was certified that the King would slay him without waiting, he wept and regretted the good he had done to other than the good. As one hath said on this subject:—

Of wit and wisdom is Maymunah⁹⁸ bare
Whose sire in wisdom all the wits outstrippeth:
Man may not tread on mud or dust or clay
Save by good sense, else trippeth he and slippeth.

Hereupon the Sworder stepped forward and bound the Sage Duban’s eyes and bared his blade, saying to the King, “By thy leave;” while the physician wept and cried, “Spare me and Allah will spare thee, and slay me not or Allah shall slay thee,” and began repeating:—

I was kind and ‘scaped not, they were cruel and escaped;
And my kindness only led me to Ruination Hall,
If I live I’ll ne’er be kind; if I die, then all be damned
Who follow me, and curses their kindliness befal.

“Is this,” continued Duban, “the return I meet from thee? Thou givest me, meseems, but crocodile boon.” Quoth the King,“What is the tale of the crocodile?”, and quoth the physician, “Impossible for me to tell it in this my state; Allah upon thee, spare me, as thou hopest Allah shall spare thee.” And he wept with ex ceeding weeping. Then one of the King’s favourites stood up and said, “O King! grant me the blood of this physician; we have never seen him sin against thee, or doing aught save healing thee from a disease which baffled every leach and man of science.” Said the King, “Ye wot not the cause of my putting to death this physician, and this it is. If I spare him, I doom myself to certain death; for one who healed me of such a malady by something held in my hand, surely can slay me by something held to my nose; and I fear lest he kill me for a price, since haply he is some spy whose sole purpose in coming hither was to compass my destruction. So there is no help for it; die he must, and then only shall I be sure of my own life.” Again cried Duban, “Spare me and Allah shall spare thee; and slay me not or Allah shall slay thee.” But it was in vain. Now when the physician, O Ifrit, knew for certain that the King would kill him, he said, “O King, if there be no help but I must die, grant me some little delay that I may go down to my house and release myself from mine obligations and direct my folk and my neighbours where to bury me and distribute my books of medicine. Amongst these I have one, the rarest of rarities, which I would present to thee as an offering: keep it as a treasure in thy treasury.” “And what is in the book?” asked the King and the Sage answered, “Things beyond compt; and the least of secrets is that if, directly after thou hast cut off my head, thou open three leaves and read three lines of the page to thy left hand, my head shall speak and answer every question thou deignest ask of it.” The King wondered with exceeding wonder and shaking⁹⁹ with delight at the novelty, said, “O physician, cost thou really tell me that when I cut off thy head it will speak to me?” He replied, “Yes, O King!” Quoth the King, “This is indeed a strange matter!” and forthwith sent him closely guarded to his house, and Duban then and there settled all his obligations. Next day he went up to the King’s audience hall, where Emirs and Wazirs, Chamberlains and Nabobs, Grandees and Lords of Estate were gathered together, making the presence chamber gay as a garden of flower beds. And lo! the physician came up and stood before the King, bearing a worn old volume and a little etui of metal full of powder, like that used for the eyes.¹⁰⁰ Then he sat down and said, “Give me a tray.” So they brought him one and he poured the powder upon it and levelled it and lastly spake as follows: “O King, take this book but do not open it till my head falls; then set it upon this tray, and bid press it down upon the powder, when forthright the blood will cease flowing. That is the time to open the book.” The King thereupon took the book and made a sign to the Sworder, who arose and struck off the physician’s head, and placing it on the middle of the tray, pressed it down upon the powder. The blood stopped flowing, and the Sage Duban unclosed his eyes and said, “Now open the book, O King!” The King opened the book, and found the leaves stuck together; so he put his finger to his mouth and, by moistening it, he easily turned over the first leaf, and in like way the second, and the third, each leaf opening with much trouble; and when he had un stuck six leaves he looked over them and, finding nothing written thereon, said, “O physician, there is no writing here!” Duban re plied, “Turn over yet more;” and he turned over three others in the same way. Now the book was poisoned; and before long the venom penetrated his system, and he fell into strong convulsions and he cried out, “The poison hath done its work!” Whereupon the Sage Duban’s head began to improvise:—

There be rulers who have ruled with a foul tyrannic sway
But they soon became as though they had never, never been:
Just, they had won justice: they oppressed and were oppress
By Fortune, who requited them with ban and bane and teen:
So they faded like the morn, and the tongue of things repeats
“Take this far that, nor vent upon Fortune’s ways thy spleen.”

No sooner had the head ceased speaking than the King rolled over dead. Now I would have thee know, O Ifrit, that if King Yunan had spared the Sage Duban, Allah would have spared him, but he refused so to do and decreed to do him dead, wherefore Allah slew him; and thou too, O Ifrit, if thou hadst spared me, Allah would have spared thee. And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say: then quoth Dunyazad, “O my sister, how pleasant is thy tale, and how tasteful; how sweet, and how grateful!” She replied, “And where is this compared with what I could tell thee this coming night, if I live and the King spare me?” Said the King in himself, “By Allah, I will not slay her until I hear the rest of her story, for truly it is wondrous.” They rested that night in mutual embrace until dawn: then the King went forth to his Darbar; the Wazirs and troops came in and the audience hall was crowded; so the King gave orders and judged and appointed and deposed and bade and forbade the rest of that day, when the court broke up, and King Shahryar entered his palace,

⁹⁵ The Bresl. Edit. absurdly has Jazírah (an island).

⁹⁶ The Ghúlah (fem. of Ghúl) is the Heb. Lilith or Lilis; the classical Lamia; the Hindu Yogini and Dakini, the Chaldean Utug and Gigim (desert-demons) as opposed to the Mas (hill-demon) and Telal (who steal into towns); the Ogress of our tales and the Bala yaga (Granny-witch) of Russian folk-lore. Etymologically “Ghul” is a calamity, a panic fear; and the monster is evidently the embodied horror of the grave and the graveyard.

⁹⁷ Arab. “Shább” (Lat. juvenis) between puberty and forty or according to some fifty; when the patient becomes a “Rajul ikhtiyár” (man of free will) politely termed, and then a Shaykh or Shaybah (gray-beard, oldster).

⁹⁸ Some proverbial name now forgotten. Torrens (p. 48) translates it “the giglot” (Fortune?) but “cannot discover the drift.”

⁹⁹ Arab. “Ihtizáz,” that natural and instinctive movement caused by good news suddenly given, etc.

¹⁰⁰ Arab. “Kohl,” in India, Surmah, not a “collyrium,” but powdered antimony for the eyelids. That sold in the bazars is not the real grey ore of antimony but a galena or sulphuret of lead. Its use arose as follows. When Allah showed Himself to Moses on Sinai through an opening the size of a needle, the Prophet fainted and the Mount took fire: thereupon Allah said, “Henceforth shalt thou and thy seed grind the earth of this mountain and apply it to your eyes!” The powder is kept in an étui called Makhalah and applied with a thick blunt needle to the inside of the eyelid, drawing it along the rim; hence etui and probe denote the sexual rem in re and in cases of adultery the question will be asked, “Didst thou see the needle in the Kohl-pot ?” Women mostly use a preparation of soot or lamp-black (Hind. Kajala, Kajjal) whose colour is easily distinguished from that of Kohl. The latter word, with the article (Al–Kohl) is the origin of our “alcohol;” though even M. Littré fails to show how “fine powder” became “spirits of wine.” I found this powder (wherewith Jezebel “painted” her eyes) a great preservative from ophthalmia in desert-travelling: the use in India was universal, but now European example is gradually abolishing it.

When it was the Sixth Night,

Her sister, Dunyazad, said to her,“Pray finish for us thy story;” and she answered, “I will if the King give me leave.” “Say on,” quoth the King. And she continued:—It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the Fisherman said to the Ifrit, “If thou hadst spared me I would have spared thee, but nothing would satisfy thee save my death; so now I will do thee die by jailing thee in this jar and I will hurl thee into this sea.” Then the Marid roared aloud and cried, “Allah upon thee, O Fisher man, don’t! Spare me, and pardon my past doings; and, as I have been tyrannous, so be thou generous, for it is said among sayings that go current:—O thou who doest good to him who hath done thee evil, suffice for the ill doer his ill deeds, and do not deal with me as did Umamah to ‘Atikah.”¹⁰¹ Asked the Fisherman, “And what was their case?” and the Ifrit answered, “This is not the time for story telling and I in this prison; but set me free and I will tell thee the tale.” Quoth the Fisherman, “Leave this language: there is no help but that thou be thrown back into the sea nor is there any way for thy getting out of it for ever and ever. Vainly I placed myself under thy protection,¹⁰² and I humbled my self to thee with weeping, while thou soughtest only to slay me, who had done thee no injury deserving this at thy hands; nay, so far from injuring thee by any evil act, I worked thee nought but weal in releasing thee from that jail of shine. Now I knew thee to be an evil doer when thou diddest to me what thou didst, and know, that when I have cast thee back into the sea, I will warn whomsoever may fish thee up of what hath befallen me with thee, and I will advise him to toss thee back again; so shalt thou abide here under these waters till the End of Time shall make an end of thee.” But the Ifrit cried aloud, “Set me free; this is a noble occasion for generosity and I make covenant with thee and vow never to do thee hurt and harm; nay, I will help thee to what shall put thee out of want.” The Fisherman accepted his promises on both conditions, not to trouble him as before, but on the contrary to do him service; and, after making firm the plight and swearing him a solemn oath by Allah Most Highest he opened the cucurbit. Thereupon the pillar of smoke rose up till all of it was fully out; then it thickened and once more became an Ifrit of hideous presence, who forthright ad ministered a kick to the bottle and sent it flying into the sea. The Fisherman, seeing how the cucurbit was treated and making sure of his own death, piddled in his clothes and said to himself, “This promiseth badly;” but he fortified his heart, and cried, “O Ifrit, Allah hath said¹⁰³: — Perform your covenant; for the performance of your covenant shall be inquired into hereafter. Thou hast made a vow to me and hast sworn an oath not to play me false lest Allah play thee false, for verily he is a jealous God who respiteth the sinner, but letteth him not escape. I say to thee as said the Sage Duban to King Yunan, “Spare me so Allah may spare thee!” The Ifrit burst into laughter and stalked away, saying to the Fisherman, “Follow me;” and the man paced after him at a safe distance (for he was not assured of escape) till they had passed round the suburbs of the city. Thence they struck into the uncultivated grounds, and crossing them descended into a broad wilderness, and lo! in the midst of it stood a mountain tarn. The Ifrit waded in to the middle and again cried, “Follow me;” and when this was done he took his stand in the centre and bade the man cast his net and catch his fish. The Fisherman looked into the water and was much astonished to see therein vari coloured fishes, white and red, blue and yellow; however he cast his net and, hauling it in, saw that he had netted four fishes, one of each colour. Thereat he rejoiced greatly and more when the Ifrit said to him, “Carry these to the Sultan and set them in his presence; then he will give thee what shall make thee a wealthy man; and now accept my excuse, for by Allah at this time I wot none other way of benefiting thee, inasmuch I have lain in this sea eighteen hundred years and have not seen the face of the world save within this hour. But I would not have thee fish here save once a day.” The Ifrit then gave him God speed, saying, Allah grant we meet again;”¹⁰⁴ and struck the earth with one foot, whereupon the ground clove asunder and swallowed him up. The Fisherman, much marvelling at what had happened to him with the Ifrit, took the fish and made for the city; and as soon as he reached home he filled an earthen bowl with water and therein threw the fish which began to struggle and wriggle about. Then he bore off the bowl upon his head and repairing to the King’s palace (even as the Ifrit had bidden him) laid the fish before the presence; and the King wondered with exceeding wonder at the sight, for never in his lifetime had’ he seen fishes like these in quality or in conformation. So he said, “Give those fish to the stranger slave girl who now cooketh for us,” meaning the bond maiden whom the King of Roum had sent to him only three days before, so that he had not yet made trial of her talents in the dressing of meat. Thereupon the Wazir carried the fish to the cook and bade her fry them¹⁰⁵ saying, “O damsel, the King sendeth this say to thee:—I have not treasured thee, O tear o’ me! save for stress time of me; approve, then, to us this day thy delicate handiwork and thy savoury cooking; for this dish of fish is a present sent to the Sultan and evidently a rarity.” The Wazir, after he had carefully charged her, returned to the King, who commanded him to give the Fisherman four hundred diners: he gave them accordingly, and the man took them to his bosom and ran off home stumbling and falling and rising again and deeming the whole thing to be a dream. However, he bought for his family all they wanted and lastly he went to his wife in huge joy and gladness. So far concerning him; but as regards the cookmaid, she took the fish and cleansed them and set them in the frying pan, basting them with oil till one side was dressed. Then she turned them over and, behold, the kitchen wall crave asunder, and therefrom came a young lady, fair of form, oval of face, perfect in grace, with eyelids which Kohl lines enchase.¹⁰⁶ Her dress was a silken head kerchief fringed and tasseled with blue: a large ring hung from either ear; a pair of bracelets adorned her wrists; rings with bezels of priceless gems were on her fingers; and she hent in hand a long rod of rattan cane which she thrust into the frying pan, saying, “O fish! O fish! be ye constant to your covenant?” When the cookmaiden saw this apparition she swooned away. The young lady repeated her words a second time and a third time, and at last the fishes raised their heads from the pan, and saying in articulate speech “Yes! Yes!” began with one voice to recite:—

Come back and so will I! Keep faith and so will I!
And if ye fain forsake, I’ll requite till quits we cry!

After this the young lady upset the frying pan and went forth by the way she came in and the kitchen wall closed upon her. When the cook maiden recovered from her fainting fit, she saw the four fishes charred black as charcoal, and crying out, “His staff brake in his first bout,”¹⁰⁷ she again fell swooning to the ground. Whilst she was in this case the Wazir came for the fish and looking upon her as insensible she lay, not knowing Sunday from Thursday, shoved her with his foot and said, “Bring the fish for the Sultan!” Thereupon recovering from her fainting fit she wept and in formed him of her case and all that had befallen her. The Wazir marvelled greatly and exclaiming, “This is none other than a right strange matter!”, he sent after the Fisherman and said to him, “Thou, O Fisherman, must needs fetch us four fishes like those thou broughtest before.” Thereupon the man repaired to the tarn and cast his net; and when he landed it, lo! four fishes were therein exactly like the first. These he at once carried to the Wazir, who went in with them to the cook maiden and said, “Up with thee and fry these in my presence, that I may see this business.” The damsel arose and cleansed the fish, and set them in the frying pan over the fire; however they remained there but a little while ere the wall crave asunder and the young lady appeared, clad as before and holding in hand the wand which she again thrust into the frying pan, saying, “O fish! O fish! be ye constant to your olden covenant?” And behold, the fish lifted their heads, and repeated “Yes! Yes!” and recited this couplet:

Come back and so will I! Keep faith and so will I!
But if ye fain forsake, I’ll requite till quits we cry!

And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

¹⁰¹ The tale of these two women is now forgotten.

¹⁰² Arab. “Atadakhkhal.” When danger threatens it is customary to seize a man’s skirt and cry “Dakhíl-ak!” ( = under thy protection). Among noble tribes the Badawi thus invoked will defend the stranger with his life. Foreigners have brought themselves into contempt by thus applying to women or to mere youths.

¹⁰³ The formula of quoting from the Koran.

¹⁰⁴ Lit. “Allah not desolate me” (by shine absence). This is still a popular phrase — Lá tawáhishná = Do not make me desolate, i.e. by staying away too long, and friends meeting after a term of days exclaim “Auhashtani!”=thou hast made me desolate, Je suis desole.

¹⁰⁵ Charming simplicity of manners when the Prime Minister carries the fish (shade of Vattel!)!) to the cookmaid. The “Gesta Romanorum” is nowhere more naïve.

¹⁰⁶ Arab. “Kahílat al-taraf” = lit. eyelids lined with Kohl; and figuratively “with black lashes and languorous look.” This is a phrase which frequently occurs in The Nights and which, as will appear, applies to the “lower animals” as well as to men. Moslems in Central Africa apply Kohl not to the thickness of the eyelid but upon both outer lids, fixing it with some greasy substance. The peculiar Egyptian (and Syrian) eye with its thick fringes of jet-black lashes, looking like lines of black drawn with soot, easily suggests the simile. In England I have seen the same appearance amongst miners fresh from the colliery.

¹⁰⁷ Of course applying to her own case.

When it was the Seventh Night,

She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the fishes spoke, and the young lady upset the frying pan with her rod, and went forth by the way she came and the wall closed up, the Wazir cried out, “This is a thing not to be hidden from the King.” So he went and told him what had happened, where upon quoth the King, “There is no help for it but that I see this with mine own eyes.” Then he sent for the Fisherman and commended him to bring four other fish like the first and to take with him three men as witnesses. The Fisherman at once brought the fish: and the King, after ordering them to give him four hundred gold pieces, turned to the Wazir and said, “Up and fry me the fishes here before me!” The Minister, replying “To hear is to obey,” bade bring the frying pan, threw therein the cleansed fish and set it over the fire; when lo! the wall crave asunder, and out burst a black slave like a huge rock or a remnant of the tribe Ad¹⁰⁸ bearing in hand a branch of a green tree; and he cried in loud and terrible tones, “O fish! O fish! be ye all constant to your antique covenant?” whereupon the fishes lifted their heads from the frying pan and said, “Yes! Yes ! we be true to our vow;” and they again recited the couplet:

Come back and so will I! Keep faith and so will I!
But if ye fain forsake, I’ll requite till quits we cry!

Then the huge blackamoor approached the frying pan and upset it with the branch and went forth by the way he came in. When he vanished from their sight the King inspected the fish; and finding them all charred black as charcoal, was utterly bewildered and said to the Wazir, “Verily this is a matter whereanent silence cannot be kept, and as for the fishes, assuredly some marvellous adventure connects with them.” So he bade bring the Fisherman and asked him, saying “Fie on thee, fellow! whence came these fishes?” and he answered, “From a tarn between four heights lying behind this mountain which is in sight of thy city.” Quoth the King, “How many days’ march?” Quoth he, “O our lord the Sultan, a walk of half hour.” The King wondered and, straight way ordering his men to march and horsemen to mount, led off the Fisherman who went before as guide, privily damning the Ifrit. They fared on till they had climbed the mountain and descended unto a great desert which they had never seen during all their lives; and the Sultan and his merry men marvelled much at the wold set in the midst of four mountains, and the tarn and its fishes of four colours, red and white, yellow and blue. The King stood fixed to the spot in wonderment and asked his troops and all present, “Hath any one among you ever seen this piece of water before now?” and all made answer, “O King of the age never did we set eyes upon it during all our days.” They also questioned the oldest inhabitants they met, men well stricken in years, but they replied, each and every, “A lakelet this we never saw in this place.” Thereupon quoth the King, “By Allah I will neither return to my capital nor sit upon the throne of my forbears till I learn the truth about this tarn and the fish therein.” He then ordered his men to dismount and bivouac all around the mountain; which they did; and summoning his Wazir, a Minister of much experience, sagacious, of penetrating wit and well versed in affairs, said to him, “’Tis in my mind to do a certain thing whereof I will inform thee; my heart telleth me to fare forth alone this night and root out the mystery of this tarn and its fishes. Do thou take thy seat at my tent door, and say to the Emirs and Wazirs, the Nabobs and the Chamberlains, in fine to all who ask thee:—The Sultan is ill at ease, and he hath ordered me to refuse all admittance;¹⁰⁹ and be careful thou let none know my design.” And the Wazir could not oppose him. Then the King changed his dress and ornaments and, slinging his sword over his shoulder, took a path which led up one of the mountains and marched for the rest of the night till morning dawned; nor did he cease wayfaring till the heat was too much for him. After his long walk he rested for a while, and then resumed his march and fared on through the second night till dawn, when suddenly there appeared a black point in the far distance. Hereat he rejoiced and said to himself, “Haply some one here shall acquaint me with the mystery of the tarn and its fishes.” Presently drawing near the dark object he found it a palace built of swart stone plated with iron; and, while one leaf of the gate stood wide open, the other was shut, The King’s spirits rose high as he stood before the gate and rapped a light rap; but hearing no answer he knocked a second knock and a third; yet there came no sign. Then he knocked his loudest but still no answer, so he said, “Doubtless ’tis empty.” Thereupon he mustered up resolution and boldly walked through the main gate into the great hall and there cried out aloud, “Holla, ye people of the palace! I am a stranger and a wayfarer; have you aught here of victual?” He repeated his cry a second time and a third but still there came no reply; so strengthening his heart and making up his mind he stalked through the vestibule into the very middle of the palace and found no man in it. Yet it was furnished with silken stuffs gold starred; and the hangings were let down over the door ways. In the midst was a spacious court off which set four open saloons each with its raised dais, saloon facing saloon; a canopy shaded the court and in the centre was a jetting fount with four figures of lions made of red gold, spouting from their mouths water clear as pearls and diaphanous gems. Round about the palace birds were let loose and over it stretched a net of golden wire, hindering them from flying off; in brief there was everything but human beings. The King marvelled mightily thereat, yet felt he sad at heart for that he saw no one to give him account of the waste and its tarn, the fishes, the mountains and the palace itself. Presently as he sat between the doors in deep thought behold, there came a voice of lament, as from a heart grief spent and he heard the voice chanting these verses:—

I hid what I endured of him¹¹⁰ and yet it came to light,
And nightly sleep mine eyelids fled and changed to sleepless night:
Oh world! Oh Fate! withhold thy hand and cease thy hurt and harm
Look and behold my hapless sprite in colour and affright:
Wilt ne’er show ruth to highborn youth who lost him on the way
Of Love, and fell from wealth and fame to lowest basest wight.
Jealous of Zephyr’s breath was I as on your form he breathed
But whenas Destiny descends she blindeth human sight¹¹¹
What shall the hapless archer do who when he fronts his foe
And bends his bow to shoot the shaft shall find his string undight?
When cark and care so heavy bear on youth¹¹² of generous soul
How shall he ‘scape his lot and where from Fate his place of flight?

Now when the Sultan heard the mournful voice he sprang to his feet; and, following the sound, found a curtain let down over a chamber door. He raised it and saw behind it a young man sitting upon a couch about a cubit above the ground; and he fair to the sight, a well shaped wight, with eloquence dight; his forehead was flower white, his cheek rosy bright, and a mole on his cheek breadth like an ambergris mite; even as the poet cloth indite:—

A youth slim waisted from whose locks and brow
The world in blackness and in light is set.
Throughout Creation’s round no fairer show
No rarer sight shine eye hath ever met:
A nut brown mole sits throned upon a cheek
Of rosiest red beneath an eye of jet.¹¹³

The King rejoiced and saluted him, but he remained sitting in his caftan of silken stuff pureed with Egyptian gold and his crown studded with gems of sorts; but his face was sad with the traces of sorrow. He returned the royal salute in most courteous wise adding, “O my lord, thy dignity demandeth my rising to thee; and my sole excuse is to crave thy pardon.”¹¹⁴ Quoth the King, “Thou art excused, O youth; so look upon me as thy guest come hither on an especial object. I would thou acquaint me with the secrets of this tarn and its fishes and of this palace and thy loneliness therein and the cause of thy groaning and wailing.” When the young man heard these words he wept with sore weeping;¹¹⁵ till his bosom was drenched with tears and began reciting—

Say him who careless sleeps what while the shaft of Fortune flies

How many cloth this shifting world lay low and raise to rise?
Although thine eye be sealed in sleep, sleep not th’ Almighty’s eyes
And who hath found Time ever fair, or Fate in constant guise?

Then he sighed a long fetched sigh and recited:—

Confide thy case to Him, the Lord who made mankind;
Quit cark and care and cultivate content of mind;
Ask not the Past or how or why it came to pass:
All human things by Fate and Destiny were designed!

The King marvelled and asked him, “What maketh thee weep, O young man?” and he answered, “How should I not weep, when this is my case!” Thereupon he put out his hand and raised the skirt of his garment, when lo! the lower half of him appeared stone down to his feet while from his navel to the hair of his head he was man. The King, seeing this his plight, grieved with sore grief and of his compassion cried, “Alack and well away! in very sooth, O youth, thou heapest sorrow upon my sorrow. I was minded to ask thee the mystery of the fishes only: whereas now I am concerned to learn thy story as well as theirs. But there is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great!¹¹⁶ Lose no time, O youth, but tell me forthright thy whole tale.” Quoth he, “Lend me shine ears, thy sight and shine in sight;” and quoth the King, “All are at thy service!” Thereupon the youth began, “Right wondrous and marvellous is my case and that of these fishes; and were it graven with gravers upon the eye corners it were a warner to whoso would be warned.” “How is that?” asked the King, and the young man began to tell

¹⁰⁸ Prehistoric Arabs who measured from 60 to 100 cubits high: Koran, chaps. xxvi., etc. They will often be mentioned in The Nights.

¹⁰⁹ I Arab. “Dastúr” (from Persian) = leave, permission. The word has two meanings (see Burckhardt, Arab. Prov. No. 609) and is much used, ea. before walking up stairs or entering a room where strange women might be met. So “Tarík” = Clear the way (Pilgrimage, iii., 319). The old Persian occupation of Egypt, not to speak of the Persian speaking Circassians and other rulers has left many such traces in popular language. One of them is that horror of travelers — “Bakhshísh” pron. bakh-sheesh and shortened to shísh from the Pers. “bakhshish.” Our “Christmas box” has been most unnecessarily derived from the same, despite our reading: –

Gladly the boy, with Christmas box in hand.

And, as will be seen, Persians have bequeathed to the outer world worse things than bad language, e.g.. heresy and sodomy.

¹¹⁰ He speaks of his wife but euphemistically in the masculine.

¹¹¹ A popular saying throughout Al–Islam.

¹¹² Arab. “Fata”: lit.=a youth; a generous man, one of noble mind (as youth-tide should be). It corresponds with the Lat. “vir,” and has much the meaning of the Ital. “Giovane,” the Germ. “Junker” and our “gentleman.”

¹¹³ From the Bul.Edit.

¹¹⁴ The vagueness of his statement is euphemistic.

¹¹⁵ This readiness of shedding tears contrasts strongly with the external stoicism of modern civilization; but it is true to Arab character, and Easterns, like the heroes of Homer and Italians of Boccacio, are not ashamed of what we look upon as the result of feminine hysteria — “a good cry.”

¹¹⁶ The formula (constantly used by Moslems) here denotes displeasure, doubt how to act and so forth. Pronounce, “Lá haula wa lá kuwwata illá bi ‘lláhi ‘I-Aliyyi ‘I-Azim.” As a rule mistakes are marvellous: Mandeville (chaps. xii.) for “Lá iláha illa ‘lláhu wa Muhammadun Rasúlu ’llah” writes “La ellec sila, Machomete rores alla.” The former (lá haula, etc.), on account of the four peculiar Arabic letters, is everywhere pronounced differently. and the exclamation is called “Haulak” or “Haukal.”

The Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince.

Know then, O my lord, that whilome my sire was King of this city, and his name was Mahmud, entitled Lord of the Black Islands, and owner of what are now these four mountains. He ruled three score and ten years, after which he went to the mercy of the Lord and I reigned as Sultan in his stead. I took to wife my cousin, the daughter of my paternal uncle,¹¹⁷ and she loved me with such abounding love that whenever I was absent she ate not and she drank not until she saw me again. She cohabited with me for five years till a certain day when she went forth to the Hammam bath; and I bade the cook hasten to get ready all requisites for our supper. And I entered this palace and lay down on the bed where I was wont to sleep and bade two damsels to fan my face, one sitting by my head and the other at my feet. But I was troubled and made restless by my wife’s absence and could not sleep; for although my eyes were closed my mind and thoughts were wide awake. Presently I heard the slave girl at my head say to her at my feet, “O Mas’udah, how miserable is our master and how wasted in his youth and oh! the pity of his being so be trayed by our mistress, the accursed whore!’’¹¹⁸ The other replied, “Yes indeed: Allah curse all faithless women and adulterous; but the like of our master, with his fair gifts, deserveth something better than this harlot who lieth abroad every night.” Then quoth she who sat by my head, “Is our lord dumb or fit only for bubbling that he questioneth her not!” and quoth the other, “Fie on thee! cloth our lord know her ways or cloth she allow him his choice? Nay, more, cloth she not drug every night the cup she giveth him to drink before sleep time, and put Bhang¹¹⁹ into it? So he sleepeth and wotteth not whither she goeth, nor what she doeth; but we know that after giving him the drugged wine, she donneth her richest raiment and perfumeth herself and then she fareth out from him to be away till break of day; then she cometh to him, and burneth a pastile under his nose and he awaketh from his deathlike sleep.” When I heard the slave girl’s words, the light became black before my sight and I thought night would never-fall. Presently the daughter of my uncle came from the baths; and they set the table for us and we ate and sat together a fair half hour quaffing our wine as was ever our wont. Then she called for the particular wine I used to drink before sleeping and reached me the cup; but, seeming to drink it according to my wont, I poured the contents into my bosom; and, lying down, let her hear that I was asleep. Then, behold, she cried, “Sleep out the night, and never wake again: by Allah, I loathe thee and I loathe thy whole body, and my soul turneth in disgust from cohabiting with thee; and I see not the moment when Allah shall snatch away thy life!” Then she rose and donned her fairest dress and perfumed her person and slung my sword over her shoulder; and, opening the gates of the palace, went her ill way. I rose and followed her as she left the palace and she threaded the streets until she came to the city gate, where she spoke words I understood not, and the padlocks dropped of themselves as if broken and the gate leaves opened. She went forth (and I after her without her noticing aught) till she came at last to the outlying mounds¹²⁰ and a reed fence built about a round roofed hut of mud bricks. As she entered the door, I climbed upon the roof which commanded a view of the interior, and lo! my fair cousin had gone in to a hideous negro slave with his upper lip like the cover of a pot, and his lower like an open pot; lips which might sweep up sand from the gravel-floor of the cot. He was to boot a leper and a paralytic, lying upon a strew of sugar cane trash and wrapped in an old blanket and the foulest rags and tatters. She kissed the earth before him, and he raised his head so as to see her and said, “Woe to thee! what call hadst thou to stay away all this time? Here have been with me sundry of the black brethren, who drank their wine and each had his young lady, and I was not content to drink because of shine absence.” Then she, “O my lord, my heart’s love and coolth of my eyes ¹²¹ knowest thou not that I am married to my cousin whose very look I loathe, and hate myself when in his company? And did not I fear for thy sake, I would not let a single sun arise before making his city a ruined heap wherein raven should croak and howlet hoot, and jackal and wolf harbour and loot; nay I had removed its very stones to the back side of Mount Kaf.” ¹²² Rejoined the slave, Thou liest, damn thee! Now I swear an oath by the velour and honour of blackamoor men (and deem not our manliness to be ; the poor manliness of white men), from today forth if thou stay away till this hour, I will not keep company with thee nor will I glue my body with thy body and strum and belly bump Dost play fast and loose with us, thou cracked pot, that we may satisfy thy dirty lusts? stinkard! bitch! vilest of the vile whites!” When I heard his words, and saw with my own eyes what passed between these two wretches, the world waxed dark be fore my face and my soul knew not in what place it was. But , my wife humbly stood up weeping before and wheedling the slave, and saying, O my beloved, and very fruit of my heart, there is none left to cheer me but thy dear self; and, if thou cast me off who shall take me in, O my beloved, O light of my eyes?” And she ceased not weeping and abasing herself to him until he deigned be reconciled with her. Then was she right glad and stood up and doffed her clothes, even to her petticoat trousers, and said, 0 my master what hast thou here for thy handmaiden to eat? Uncover the basin,” he grumbled, “and thou shalt find t the bottom the broiled bones of some rats we dined on, pick at them, and then go to that slop pot where thou shalt find some leavings of beer ¹²³ which thou mayest drink.” So she ate and drank and washed her hands, and went and lay down by the side of the slave, upon the cane trash and, stripping herself stark naked, she crept in with him under his foul coverlet and his rags and tatters. When I saw my wife, my cousin, the daughter of my uncle, do this deed¹²⁴ I clean lost my wits, and climbing down from the roof, I entered and took the sword which she had with her and drew it, determined to cut down the twain. I first struck at the slave’s neck and thought that the death decree had fallen on him:“And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

¹¹⁷ An Arab holds that he has a right to marry his first cousin, the daughter of his father’s brother, and if any win her from him a death and a blood-feud may result. It was the same in a modified form amongst the Jews and in both races the consanguineous marriage was not attended by the evil results (idiotcy, congenital deafness, etc.) observed in mixed races like the English and the Anglo–American. When a Badawi speaks of “the daughter of my uncle” he means wife; and the former is the dearer title, as a wife can be divorced, but blood is thicker than water.

¹¹⁸ Arab. “Kahbah;” the coarsest possible term. Hence the unhappy “Cave” of Don Roderick the Goth, which simply means The Whore.

¹¹⁹ The Arab “Banj” and Hindú “Bhang” (which I use as most familiar) both derive from the old Coptic “Nibanj” meaning a preparation of hemp (Cannabis sativa seu Indica); and here it is easy to recognise the Homeric “Nepenthe.” Al— Kazwini explains the term by “garden hemp (Kinnab bostáni or Sháhdánaj). On the other hand not a few apply the word to the henbane (hyoscyamus niger) so much used in mediæval Europe. The Kámús evidently means henbane distinguishing it from Hashish al haráfísh” = rascals’ grass, i.e. the herb Pantagruelion. The “Alfáz Adwiya” (French translation) explains “Tabannuj” by “Endormir quelqu’un en lui faisant avaler de la jusquiame.” In modern parlance Tabannuj is = our anæsthetic administered before an operation, a deadener of pain like myrrh and a number of other drugs. For this purpose hemp is always used (at least I never heard of henbane); and various preparations of the drug are sold at an especial bazar in Cairo. See the “powder of marvellous virtue” in Boccaccio, iii., 8; and iv., 10. Of these intoxicants, properly so termed, I shall have something to say in a future page.

The use of Bhang doubtless dates from the dawn of civilisation, whose earliest social pleasures would be inebriants. Herodotus (iv. c. 75) shows the Scythians burning the seeds (leaves and capsules) in worship and becoming drunken with the fumes, as do the S. African Bushmen of the present day. This would be the earliest form of smoking: it is still doubtful whether the pipe was used or not. Galen also mentions intoxication by hemp. Amongst Moslems, the Persians adopted the drink as an ecstatic, and about our thirteenth century Egypt, which began the practice, introduced a number of preparations to be noticed in the course of The Nights.

¹²⁰ The rubbish heaps which outlie Eastern cities, some (near Cairo) are over a hundred feet high.

¹²¹ Arab. “Kurrat al-aye;” coolness of eyes as opposed to a hot eye (“sakhin”) one red with tears. The term is true and picturesque so I translate it literally. All coolness is pleasant to dwellers in burning lands: thus in Al–Hariri Abu Z yd says of Bassorah, “I found there whatever could fill the eye with coolness.” And a “cool booty” (or prize) is one which has been secured without plunging into the flames of war, or imply a pleasant prize.

¹²² Popularly rendered Caucasus (see Night cdxcvi): it corresponds so far with the Hindu “Udaya” that the sun rises behind it; and the “false dawn” is caused by a hole or gap. It is also the Persian Alborz, the Indian Meru (Sumeru), the Greek Olympus and the Rhiphæan Range (Veliki Camenypoys) or great starry girdle of the world, etc.

¹²³ Arab. “Mizr” or “Mizar;” vulg. Búzah; hence the medical Lat. Buza, the Russian Buza (millet beer), our booze, the O. Dutch “buyzen” and the German “busen.” This is the old of negro and negroid Africa, the beer of Osiris, of which dried remains have been found in jars amongst Egyptian tombs. In Equatorial Africa it known as Pombe; on the Upper Nile “Merissa” or “Mirisi” and amongst the Kafirs (Caffers) “Tshuala,” “Oala” or “Boyala:” I have also heard of “Buswa”in Central Africa which may be the origin of “Buzah.” In the West it became , (Romaic, Xythum and cerevisia or cervisia, the humor ex hordeo, long before the days of King Gambrinus. Central Africans drink it in immense quantities: in Unyamwezi the standing bedsteads, covered with bark-slabs, are all made sloping so as to drain off the liquor. A chief lives wholly on beef and Pombe which is thick as gruel below. Hops are unknown: the grain, mostly Holcus, is made to germinate, then pounded, boiled and left to ferment. In Egypt the drink is affected chiefly by Berbers, Nubians and slaves from the Upper Nile, but it is a superior article and more like that of Europe than the “Pombe.” I have given an account of the manufacture in The Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. ii., p. 286. There are other preparations, Umm-bulbul (mother nightie gale), Dinzáyah and Súbiyah, for which I must refer to the Shaykh El–Tounsy.

¹²⁴ There is a terrible truth in this satire, which reminds us of the noble dame who preferred to her handsome husband the palefrenier laid, ord et infâme of Queen Margaret of Navarre (Heptameron No. xx.). We have all known women who sacrificed everything despite themselves, as it were, for the most worthless of men. The world stares and scoffs and blames and understands nothing. There is for every woman one man and one only in whose slavery she is “ready to sweep the floor.” Fate is mostly opposed to her meeting him but, when she does, adieu husband and children, honour and religion, life and “soul.” Moreover Nature (human) commands the union of contrasts, such as fair and foul, dark and light, tall and short; otherwise mankind would be like the canines, a race of extremes, dwarf as toy-terriers, giants like mastiffs, bald as Chinese “remedy dogs,” or hairy as Newfoundlands. The famous Wilkes said only a half truth when he backed himself, with an hour s start, against the handsomest man in England; his uncommon and remarkable ugliness (he was, as the Italians say, un bel brutto) was the highest recommendation in the eyes of very beautiful women.

When it was the Eighth Night,

She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the young ensorcelled Prince said to the King, “When I smote the slave with intent to strike off his head, I thought that I had slain him; for he groaned a loud hissing groan, but I had cut only the skin and flesh of the gullet and the two arteries! It awoke the daughter of my uncle, so I sheathed the sword and fared forth for the city; and, entering the palace, lay upon my bed and slept till morning when my wife aroused me and I saw that she had cut off her hair and had donned mourning garments. Quoth she:—O son of my uncle, blame me not for what I do; it hath just reached me that my mother is dead, and my father hath been killed in holy war, and of my brothers one hath lost his life by a snake sting and the other by falling down some precipice; and I can and should do naught save weep and lament. When I heard her words I refrained from all reproach and said only:—Do as thou list; I certainly will not thwart thee. She continued sorrowing, weeping and wailing one whole year from the beginning of its circle to the end, and when it was finished she said to me.—I wish to build me in thy palace a tomb with a cupola, which I will set apart for my mourning and will name the House of Lamentations.¹²⁵ Quoth I again:—Do as thou list! Then she builded for herself a cenotaph wherein to mourn, and set on its centre a dome under which showed a tomb like a Santon’s sepulchre. Thither she carried the slave and lodged him; but he was exceeding weak by reason of his wound, and unable to do her love service; he could only drink wine and from the day of his hurt he spake not a word, yet he lived on because his appointed hour¹²⁶ was not come. Every day, morning and evening, my wife went to him and wept and wailed over him and gave him wine and strong soups, and left not off doing after this manner a second year; and I bore with her patiently and paid no heed to her. One day, however, I went in to her unawares; and I found her weeping and beating her face and crying:—Why art thou absent from my sight, O my heart’s delight? Speak to me, O my life; talk with me, O my love? Then she recited these verses:—

For your love my patience fails and albeit you forget
I may not, nor to other love my heart can make reply:
Bear my body, bear my soul wheresoever you may fare
And where you pitch the camp let my body buried lie:
Cry my name above my grave, and an answer shall return
The moaning of my bones responsive to your cry.¹²⁷

Then she recited, weeping bitterly the while:—

The day of my delight is the day when draw you near
And the day of mine affright is the day you turn away:
Though I tremble through the night in my bitter dread of death
When I hold you in my arms I am free from all affray

Once more she began reciting:—

Though a morn I may awake with all happiness in hand
Though the world all be mine and like Kisra-kings¹²⁸ I reign;
To me they had the worth of the winglet of the gnat
When I fail to see thy form, when I look for thee in vain

When she had ended for a time her words and her weeping I said to her—O my cousin, let this thy mourning suffice, for in pouring forth tears there is little profit! Thwart me not, answered she, in aught I do, or I will lay violent hands on myself! So I held my peace and left her to go her own way; and she ceased not to cry and keen and indulge her affliction for yet another year. At the end of the third year I waxed aweary of this lonesome mourning, and one day I happened to enter the cenotaph when vexed and angry with some matter which had thwarted me, and suddenly I heard her say:—O my lord, I never hear thee vouch safe a single word to me! Why cost thou not answer me, O my master? and she began reciting:—

O thou tomb! O, thou tomb! be his beauty set in shade?
Hast thou darkened that countenance all sheeny as the noon?
O thou tomb! neither earth nor yet heaven art to me
Then how cometh it in thee are conjoined my sun and moon?

When I heard such verses as these rage was heaped upon my rage I cried out:—Well away! how long is this sorrow to last? and I began repeating:—

O thou tomb! O thou tomb! be his horrors set in blight?
Hast thou dark ened his countenance that sickeneth the soul?
O thou tomb! neither cess pool nor pipkin art to me
Then how cometh it in thee are conjoined soil and coal?

When she heard my words she sprang to her feet crying.—Fie upon thee, thou cur! all this is of thy doings; thou hast wounded my heart s darling and thereby worked me sore woe and thou hast wasted his youth so that these three years he hath lain abed more dead than alive! In my wrath I cried:—O thou foulest of harlots and filthiest of whores ever futtered by negro slaves who are hired to have at thee!¹²⁹ Yes indeed it was I who did this good deed; and snatching up my sword I drew it and made at her to cut her down. But she laughed my words and mine intent to scorn crying: To heel, hound that thou art! Alas¹³⁰ for the past which shall no more come to pass nor shall any one avail the dead to raise. Allah hath indeed now given into my hand him who did to me this thing, a deed that hath burned my heart with a fire which died not and a flame which might not be quenched! Then she stood up; and, pronouncing some words to me unintelligible, she said:— By virtue of my egromancy become thou half stone and half man; whereupon I became what thou seest, unable to rise or to sit, and neither dead nor alive. Moreover she ensorcelled the city with all its streets and garths, and she turned by her gramarye the four islands into four mountains around the tarn whereof thou questionest me; and the citizens, who were of four different faiths, Moslem, Nazarene, Jew and Magian, she transformed by her enchantments into fishes; the Moslems are the white, the Magians red, the Christians blue and the Jews yellow.¹³¹ And every day she tortureth me and scourgeth me with an hundred stripes, each of which draweth floods of blood and cutteth the skin of my shoulders to strips; and lastly she clotheth my upper half with a hair cloth and then throweth over them these robes.” Hereupon the young man again shed tears and began reciting:—

In patience, O my God, I endure my lot and fate;
I will bear at will of Thee whatsoever be my state:
They oppress me; they torture me; they make my life a woe
Yet haply Heaven’s happiness shall compensate my strait:
Yea, straitened is my life by the bane and hate o’ foes
But Mustafa and Murtaza¹³² shall ope me Heaven’s gate.

After this the Sultan turned towards the young Prince and said, “O youth, thou hast removed one grief only to add another grief; but now, O my friend, where is she; and where is the mausoleum wherein lieth the wounded slave?” “The slave lieth under yon dome,” quoth the young man, “and she sitteth in the chamber fronting yonder door. And every day at sunrise she cometh forth, and first strippeth me, and whippeth me with an hundred strokes of the leathern scourge, and I weep and shriek; but there is no power of motion in my lower limbs to keep her off me. After ending her tormenting me she visiteth the slave, bringing him wine and boiled meats. And to morrow at an early hour she will be here.” Quoth the King, “By Allah, O youth, I will as suredly do thee a good deed which the world shall not willingly let die, and an act of derring do which shall be chronicled long after I am dead and gone by.” Then the King sat him by the side of the young Prince and talked till nightfall, when he lay down and slept; but, as soon as the false dawn¹³³ showed, he arose and doffing his outer garments¹³⁴ bared his blade and hastened to the place wherein lay the slave. Then was he ware of lighted candles and lamps, and the perfume of incenses and unguents, and directed by these, he made for the slave and struck him one stroke killing him on the spot: after which he lifted him on his back and threw him into a well that was in the palace. Presentry he returned and, donning the slave’s gear, lay down at length within the mausoleum with the drawn sword laid close to and along his side. After an hour or so the accursed witch came; and, first going to her husband, she stripped off his clothes and, taking a whip, flogged him cruelly while he cried out, “Ah! enough for me the case I am in! take pity on me, O my cousin!’ But she replied, “Didst thou take pity on me and spare the life of my true love on whom I coated?” Then she drew the cilice over his raw and bleeding skin and threw the robe upon all and went down to the slave with a goblet of wine and a bowl of meat broth in her hands. She entered under the dome weeping and wailing, “Well-away!” and crying, “O my lord! speak a word to me! O my master! talk awhile with me!” and began to recite these couplets.—

How long this harshness, this unlove, shall bide?
Suffice thee not tear floods thou hast espied?
Thou cost prolong our parting purposely
And if wouldst please my foe, thou’rt satisfied!

Then she wept again and said, “O my lord! speak to me, talk with me!” The King lowered his voice and, twisting his tongue, spoke after the fashion of the blackamoors and said “‘lack! ‘lack! there be no Ma’esty and there be no Might save in Allauh, the Gloriose, the Great!” Now when she heard these words she shouted for joy, and fell to the ground fainting; and when her senses returned she asked, “O my lord, can it be true that thou hast power of speech?” and the King making his voice small and faint answered, “O my cuss! cost thou deserve that I talk to thee and speak with thee?” “Why and wherefore?” rejoined she; and he replied “The why is that all the livelong day thou tormentest thy hubby; and he keeps calling on ‘eaven for aid until sleep is strange to me even from evenin’ till mawnin’, and he prays and damns, cussing us two, me and thee, causing me disquiet and much bother: were this not so, I should long ago have got my health; and it is this which prevents my answering thee.” Quoth she, “With thy leave I will release him from what spell is on him;“and quoth the King, “Release him and let’s have some rest!” She cried, “To hear is to obey;” and, going from the cenotaph to the palace, she took a metal bowl and filled it with water and spake over it certain words which made the contents bubble and boil as a cauldron seetheth over the fire. With this she sprinkled her husband saying, “By virtue of the dread words I have spoken, if thou becamest thus by my spells, come forth out of that form into shine own former form.” And lo and behold! the young man shook and trembled; then he rose to his feet and, rejoicing at his deliverance, cried aloud, “I testify that there is no god but the God, and in very truth Mohammed is His Apostle, whom Allah bless and keep!” Then she said to him, “Go forth and return not hither, for if thou do I will surely slay thee;” screaming these words in his face. So he went from between her hands; and she returned to the dome and, going down to the sepulchre, she said, “O my lord, come forth to me that I may look upon thee and thy goodliness!” The King replied in faint low words, “What¹³⁵ thing hast thou done? Thou hast rid me of the branch but not of the root.” She asked, “O my darling! O my negro ring! what is the root?” And he answered, “Fie on thee, O my cuss! The people of this city and of the four islands every night when it’s half passed lift their heads from the tank in which thou hast turned them to fishes and cry to Heaven and call down its anger on me and thee; and this is the reason why my body’s baulked from health. Go at once and set them free then come to me and take my hand, and raise me up, for a little strength is already back in me.” When she heard the King’s words (and she still supposed him to be the slave) she cried joyously, O my master, on my head and on my eyes be thy commend, Bismillah¹³⁶!’’ So she sprang to her feet and, full of joy and gladness, ran down to the tarn and took a little of its water n the palm of her hand—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

¹²⁵ Every Moslem burial-ground has a place of the kind where honourable women may sit and weep unseen by the multitude. These visits are enjoined by the Apostle:—Frequent the cemetery, ’twill make you think of futurity! Also:—Whoever visiteth the graves of his parents (or one of them) every Friday, he shall be written a pious son, even though he might have been in the world, before that, a disobedient. (Pilgrimage, ii., 71.) The buildings resemble our European “mortuary chapels.” Said, Pasha of Egypt, was kind enough to erect one on the island off Suez, for the “use of English ladies who would like shelter whilst weeping and wailing for their dead.” But I never heard that any of the ladles went there.

¹²⁶ Arab. “Ajal”=the period of life, the appointed time of death: the word is of constant recurrence and is also applied to sudden death. See Lane’s Dictionary, s.v.

¹²⁷ “The dying Badawi to his tribe” (and lover) appears to me highly pathetic. The wild people love to be buried upon hill slopes whence they can look down upon the camp; and they still call out the names of kinsmen and friends as they pass by the grave-yards. A similar piece occurs in Wetzstein (p. 27, “Reisebericht ueber Hauran,” etc.):—

O bear with you my bones where the camel bears his load
And bury me before you, if buried I must be;
And let me not be burled ‘neath the burden of the vine
But high upon the hill whence your sight I ever see!
As you pass along my grave cry aloud and name your names
The crying of your names shall revive the bones of me:
I have fasted through my life with my friends, and in my death,
I will feast when we meet, on that day of joy and glee.

¹²⁸ The Akásirah (plur. of Kasrá=Chosroës) is here a title of the four great dynasties of Persian Kings. 1. The Peshdadian or Assyrian race, proto-historics for whom dates fail, 2. The Káyánián (Medes and Persians) who ended with the Alexandrian invasion in B. C. 331. 3. The Ashkánián (Parthenians or Arsacides) who ruled till A. D. 202; and 4. The Sassanides which have already been mentioned. But strictly speaking “Kisri” and “Kasra” are titles applied only to the latter dynasty and especially to the great King Anushirwan. They must not be confounded with “Khusrau” (P. N. Cyrus, Ahasuerus? Chosroës?), and yet the three seem to have combined in “Cæsar,” Kaysar and Czar. For details especially connected with Zoroaster see vol. I, p. 380 of the Dabistan or School of Manners, translated by David Shea and Anthony Troyer, Paris, 1843. The book is most valuable, but the proper names are so carelessly and incorrectly printed that the student is led into perpetual error.

¹²⁹ The words are the very lowest and coarsest; but the scene is true to Arab life.

¹³⁰ Arab.“Hayhát:” the word, written in a variety of ways is onomatopoetic, like our “heigh-ho!” it sometimes means “far from me (or you) be it!” but in popular usage it is simply “Alas.”

¹³¹ Lane (i., 134) finds a date for the book in this passage. The Soldan of Egypt, Mohammed ibn Kala’ún, in the early eighth century (Hijrah = our fourteenth), issued a sumptuary law compelling Christians and Jews to wear indigo-blue and saffron-yellow turbans, the white being reserved for Moslems. But the custom was much older and Mandeville (chaps. ix.) describes it in A. D. 1322 when it had become the rule. And it still endures; although abolished in the cities it is the rule for Christians, at least in the country parts of Egypt and Syria. I may here remark that such detached passages as these are absolutely useless for chronology: they may be simply the additions of editors or mere copyists.

¹³² The ancient “Mustaphá” = the Chosen (prophet, i. e. Mohammed), also titled Al–Mujtaba, the Accepted (Pilgrimage, ii., 309). “Murtaza”=the Elect, i.e. the Caliph Ali is the older “Mortada” or “Mortadi” of Ockley and his day, meaning “one pleasing to (or acceptable to) Allah.” Still older writers corrupted it to “Mortis Ali” and readers supposed this to be the Caliph’s name.

¹³³ The gleam (zodiacal light) preceding the true dawn; the Persians call the former Subh-i-kázib (false or lying dawn) opposed to Subh-i-sádik (true dawn) and suppose that it is caused by the sun shining through a hole in the world— encircling Mount Kaf.

¹³⁴ So the Heb. “Arún” = naked, means wearing the lower robe only; = our “in his shirt.”

¹³⁵ Here we have the vulgar Egyptian colloquialism “Aysh” (—Ayyu shayyin) for the classical “Má” = what.

¹³⁶ “In the name of Allah!” here said before taking action.

When it was the Ninth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the young woman, the sorceress, took in hand some of the tarn water and spake over it words not to be understood, the fishes lifted their heads and stood up on the instant like men, the spell on the people of the city having been removed. What was the lake again became a crowded capital; the bazars were thronged with folk who bought and sold; each citizen was occupied with his own calling and the four hills became islands as they were whilome. Then the young woman, that wicked sorceress, returned to the King and (still thinking he was the negro) said to him, O my love! stretch forth thy honoured hand that I may assist thee to rise.” “Nearer to me,” quoth the King in a faint and feigned tone. She came close as to embrace him when he took up the sword lying hid by his side and smote her across the breast, so that the point showed gleaming behind her back. Then he smote her a second time and cut her in twain and cast her to the ground in two halves. After which he fared forth and found the young man, now freed from the spell, awaiting him and gave him joy of his happy release while the Prince kissed his hand with abundant thanks. Quoth the King, “Wilt thou abide in this city or go with me to my capital?” Quoth the youth, “O King of the age, wottest thou not what journey is between thee and thy city?” “Two days and a half,” answered he, whereupon said the other, “An thou be sleeping, O King, awake! Between thee and thy city is a year’s march for a well girt walker, and thou haddest not come hither in two days and a half save that the city was under enchantment. And I, O King, will never part from thee; no, not even for the twinkling of an eye.” The King rejoiced at his words and said, “Thanks be to Allah who hath bestowed thee upon me! From this hour thou art my son and my only son, for that in all my life I have never been blessed with issue.” Thereupon they embraced and joyed with exceeding great joy; and, reaching the palace, the Prince who had been spell bound informed his lords and his grandees that he was about to visit the Holy Places as a pilgrim, and bade them get ready all things necessary for the occasion. The preparations lasted ten days, after which he set out with the Sultan, whose heart burned in yearning for his city whence he had been absent a whole twelvemonth. They journeyed with an escort of Mamelukes¹³⁷ carrying all manners of precious gifts and rarities, nor stinted they wayfaring day and night for a full year until they approached the Sultan’s capital, and sent on messengers to announce their coming. Then the Wazir and the whole army came out to meet him in joy and gladness, for they had given up all hope of ever seeing their King; and the troops kissed the ground before him and wished him joy of his safety. He entered and took seat upon his throne and the Minister came before him and, when acquainted with all that had be fallen the young Prince, he congratulated him on his narrow escape. When order was restored throughout the land the King gave largesse to many of his people, and said to the Wazir, “Hither the Fisherman who brought us the fishes!” So he sent for the man who had been the first cause of the city and the citizens being delivered from enchantment and, when he came in to the presence, the Sultan bestowed upon him a dress of honour, and questioned him of his condition and whether he had children. The Fisherman gave him to know that he had two daughters and a son, so the King sent for them and, taking one daughter to wife, gave the other to the young Prince and made the son his head treasurer. Furthermore he invested his Wazir with the Sultanate of the City in the Black Islands whilome belonging to the young Prince, and dispatched with him the escort of fifty armed slaves together with dresses of honour for all the Emirs and Grandees. The Wazir kissed hands and fared forth on his way; while the Sultan and the Prince abode at home in all the solace and the delight of life; and the Fisherman became the richest man of his age, and his daughters wived with Kings, until death came to them. And yet, O King! this is not more wondrous than the story of

¹³⁷ Arab. “Mamlúk” (plur. Mamálik) lit. a chattel; and in The Nights a white slave trained to arms. The “Mameluke Beys” of Egypt were locally called the “Ghuzz,” I use the convenient word in its old popular sense;

’Tis sung, there’s a valiant Mameluke
In foreign lands ycleped (Sir Luke)-
Hudibras.

And hence, probably, Molière’s “Mamamouchi”; and the modern French use “Mamalue.” See Savary’s Letters, No. xl.

The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad.

Once upon a time there was a Porter in Baghdad, who was a bachelor and who would remain unmarried. It came to pass on a certain day, as he stood about the street leaning idly upon his crate, behold, there stood before him an honourable woman in a mantilla of Mosul¹³⁸ silk, broidered with gold and bordered with brocade; her walking shoes were also purfled with gold and her hair floated in long plaits. She raised her face veil¹³⁹ and, showing two black eyes fringed with jetty lashes, whose glances were soft and languishing and whose perfect beauty was ever blandishing, she accosted the Porter and said in the suavest tones and choicest language, “Take up thy crate and follow me.” The Porter was so dazzled he could hardly believe that he heard her aright, but he shouldered his basket in hot haste saying in himself, “O day of good luck! O day of Allah’s grace!” and walked after her till she stopped at the door of a house. There she rapped, and presently came out to her an old man, a Nazarene, to whom she gave a gold piece, receiving from him in return what she required of strained wine clear as olive oil; and she set it safely in the hamper, saying “Lift and follow.” Quoth the Porter, “This, by Allah, is indeed an auspicious day, a day propitious for the granting of all a man wisheth.” He again hoisted up the crate and followed her; till she stopped at a fruiterer’s shop and bought from him Shami¹⁴⁰ apples and Osmani quinces and Omani¹⁴¹ peaches, and cucumbers of Nile growth, and Egyptian limes and Sultani oranges and citrons; besides Aleppine jasmine, scented myrtle berries, Damascene nenuphars, flower of privet¹⁴² and camomile, blood red anemones, violets, and pomegranate bloom, eglantine and narcissus, and set the whole in the Porter’s crate, saying, “Up with it.” So he lifted and followed her till she stopped at a butcher’s booth and said, “Cut me off ten pounds of mutton.” She paid him his price and he wrapped it in a banana leaf, whereupon she laid it in the crate and said “Hoist, O Porter.” He hoisted accordingly, and followed her as she walked on till she stopped at a grocer’s, where she bought dry fruits and pistachio kernels, Tihamah raisins, shelled almonds and all wanted for dessert, and said to the Porter, “Lift and follow me.” So he up with his hamper and after her till she stayed at the confectioner’s, and she bought an earthen platter, and piled it with all kinds of sweetmeats in his shop, open worked tarts and fritters scented with musk and “soap cakes,” and lemon loaves and melon preserves,¹⁴³ and “Zaynab’s combs,” and “ladies’ fingers,” and “Kazi’s tit-bits” and goodies of every description; and placed the platter in the Porter’s crate. Thereupon quoth he (being a merry man), “Thou shouldest have told me, and I would have brought with me a pony or a she camel to carry all this market stuff.” She smiled and gave him a little cuff on the nape saying, “Step out and exceed not in words for (Allah willing!) thy wage will not be wanting.” Then she stopped at a perfumer’s and took from him ten sorts of waters, rose scented with musk, grange Lower, waterlily, willow flower, violet and five others; and she also bought two loaves of sugar, a bottle for perfume spraying, a lump of male in cense, aloe wood, ambergris and musk, with candles of Alex’ andria wax; and she put the whole into the basket, saying, “Up with thy crate and after me.” He did so and followed until she stood before the greengrocer’s, of whom she bought pickled safflower and olives, in brine and in oil; with tarragon and cream cheese and hard Syrian cheese; and she stowed them away in the crate saying to the Porter, “Take up thy basket and follow me.” He did so and went after her till she came to a fair mansion fronted by a spacious court, a tall, fine place to which columns gave strength and grace: and the gate thereof had two leaves of ebony inlaid with plates of red gold. The lady stopped at the door and, turning her face veil sideways, knocked softly with her knuckles whilst the Porter stood behind her, thinking of naught save her beauty and loveliness. Presently the door swung back and both leaves were opened, whereupon he looked to see who had opened it; and behold, it was a lady of tall figure, some five feet high; a model of beauty and loveliness, brilliance and symmetry and perfect grace. Her forehead was flower white; her cheeks like the anemone ruddy bright; her eyes were those of the wild heifer or the gazelle, with eyebrows like the crescent moon which ends Sha’aban and begins Ramazan;¹⁴⁴ her mouth was the ring of Sulayman,¹⁴⁵ her lips coral red, and her teeth like a line of strung pearls or of camomile petals. Her throat recalled the antelope’s, and her breasts, like two pomegranates of even size, stood at bay as it were,¹⁴⁶ her body rose and fell in waves below her dress like the rolls of a piece of brocade, and her navel¹⁴⁷ would hold an ounce of benzoin ointment. In fine she was like her of whom the poet said:—

On Sun and Moon of palace cast thy sight
Enjoy her flower like face, her fragrant light:
Thine eyes shall never see in hair so black
Beauty encase a brow so purely white:
The ruddy rosy cheek proclaims her claim
Though fail her name whose beauties we indite:
As sways her gait I smile at hips so big
And weep to see the waist they bear so slight.

When the Porter looked upon her his wits were waylaid, and his senses were stormed so that his crate went nigh to fall from his head, and he said to himself, “Never have I in my life seen a day more blessed than this day!” Then quoth the lady portress to the lady cateress, “Come in from the gate and relieve this poor man of his load.” So the provisioner went in followed by the portress and the Porter and went on till they reached a spacious ground floor hall,¹⁴⁸ built with admirable skill and beautified with all manner colours and carvings; with upper balconies and groined arches and galleries and cupboards and recesses whose curtains hung before them. In the midst stood a great basin full of water surrounding a fine fountain, and at the upper end on the raised dais was a couch of juniper wood set with gems and pearls, with a canopy like mosquito curtains of red satin silk looped up with pearls as big as filberts and bigger. Thereupon sat a lady bright of blee, with brow beaming brilliancy, the dream of philosophy, whose eyes were fraught with Babel’s gramarye¹⁴⁹ and her eye brows were arched as for archery; her breath breathed ambergris and perfumery and her lips were sugar to taste and carnelian to see. Her stature was straight as the letter I¹⁵⁰ and her face shamed the noon sun’s radiancy; and she was even as a galaxy, or a dome with golden marquetry or a bride displayed in choicest finery or a noble maid of Araby.¹⁵¹ Right well of her sang the bard when he said:—

Her smiles twin rows of pearls display
Chamomile-buds or rimey spray
Her tresses stray as night let down
And shames her light the dawn o’ day.

¹⁵²The third lady rising from the couch stepped forward with grace ful swaying gait till she reached the middle of the saloon, when she said to her sisters, “Why stand ye here? take it down from this poor man’s head!” Then the cateress went and stood before him, and the portress behind him while the third helped them, and they lifted the load from the Porter’s head; and, emptying it of all that was therein, set everything in its place. Lastly they gave him two gold pieces, saying, “Wend thy ways, O Porter.” But he went not, for he stood looking at the ladies and admiring what uncommon beauty was theirs, and their pleasant manners and kindly dispositions (never had he seen goodlier); and he gazed wistfully at that good store of wines and sweet scented flowers and fruits and other matters. Also he marvelled with exceeding marvel, especially to see no man in the place and delayed his going; whereupon quoth the eldest lady, “What aileth thee that goest not; haply thy wage be too little?” And, turning to her sister the cateress, she said, “Give him another diner!” But the Porter answered, “By Allah, my lady, it is not for the wage; my hire is never more than two dirhams; but in very sooth my heart and my soul are taken up with you and your condition. I wonder to see you single with ne’er a man about you and not a soul to bear you company; and well you wot that the minaret toppleth o’er unless it stand upon four, and you want this same fourth; and women’s pleasure without man is short of measure, even as the poet said:—

Seest not we want for joy four things all told
The harp and lute, the flute and flageolet;
And be they companied with scents four fold
Rose, myrtle, anemone and violet
Nor please all eight an four thou wouldst withold
Good wine and youth and gold and pretty pet.

You be there and want a fourth who shall be a person of good sense and prudence; smart witted, and one apt to keep careful counsel.” His words pleased and amused them much; and they laughed at him and said, “And who is to assure us of that? We are maidens and we fear to entrust our secret where it may not be kept, for we have read in a certain chronicle the lines of one Ibn al-Sumam:-

Hold fast thy secret and to none unfold
Lost is a secret when that secret’s told
An fail thy breast thy secret to conceal
How canst thou hope another’s breast shall hold?

And Abu Nowás¹⁵³ said well on the same subject:—

Who trusteth secret to another’s hand
Upon his brow deserveth burn of brand!”

When the Porter heard their words he rejoined, “By your lives! I am a man of sense and a discreet, who hath read books and perused chronicles; I reveal the fair and conceal the foul and I act as the poet adviseth:—

None but the good a secret keep
And good men keep it unrevealed:
It is to me a well shut house
With keyless locks and door ensealed”¹⁵⁴

When the maidens heard his verse and its poetical application addressed to them they said, “Thou knowest that we have laid out all our monies on this place. Now say, hast thou aught to offer us in return for entertainment? For surely we will not suf fer thee to sit in our company and be our cup companion, and gaze upon our faces so fair and so rare without paying a round sum.¹⁵⁵ Wottest thou not the saying:—

Sans hope of gain
Love’s not worth a grain?”

Whereto the lady portress added, “If thou bring anything thou art a something; if no thing, be off with thee, thou art a nothing;” but the procuratrix interposed, saying, “Nay, O my sisters, leave teasing him for by Allah he hath not failed us this day, and had he been other he never had kept patience with me, so whatever be his shot and scot I will take it upon myself.” The Porter, over joyed, kissed the ground before her and thanked her saying, “By Allah, these monies are the first fruits this day hath given me.” Hearing this they said, “Sit thee down and welcome to thee,” and the eldest lady added, “By Allah, we may not suffer thee to join us save on one condition, and this it is, that no questions be asked as to what concerneth thee not, and frowardness shall be soundly flogged.” Answered the Porter, “I agree to this, O my lady, on my head and my eyes be it! Lookye, I am dumb, I have no tongue. Then arose the provisioneress and tightening her girdle set the table by the fountain and put the flowers and sweet herbs in their jars, and strained the wine and ranged the flasks in row and made ready every requisite. Then sat she down, she and her sisters, placing amidst them the Porter who kept deeming himself in a dream; and she took up the wine flagon, and poured out the first cup and drank it off, and likewise a second and a third.¹⁵⁶ After this she filled a fourth cup which she handed to one of her sisters; and, lastly, she crowned a goblet and passed it to the Porter, saying:—

“Drink the dear draught, drink free and fain
What healeth every grief and pain.”

He took the cup in his hand and, louting low, returned his best thanks and improvised:—

Drain not the bowl save with a trusty friend
A man of worth whose good old
For wine, like wind, sucks sweetness from the sweet
And stinks when over stench It haply blow:”

Adding:—

Drain not the bowl; save from dear hand like shine
The cup recall thy gifts; thou, gifts of wine.”

After repeating this couplet he kissed their hands and drank and was drunk and sat swaying from side to side and pursued:—

“All drinks wherein is blood the Law unclean
Doth hold save one, the blood shed of the vine:
Fill! fill! take all my wealth bequeathed or won
Thou fawn! a willing ransom for those eyne.”

Then the cateress crowned a cup and gave it to the portress, who took it from her hand and thanked her and drank. Thereupon she poured again and passed to the eldest lady who sat on the couch, and filled yet another and handed it to the Porter. He kissed the ground before them; and, after drinking and thanking them, he again began to recite :

“Here! Here! by Allah, here!
Cups of the sweet, the dear’
Fill me a brimming bowl
The Fount o’ Life I speer

Then the Porter stood up before the mistress of the house and said, “O lady, I am thy slave, thy Mameluke, thy white thrall, a, thy very bondsman;” and he began reciting:—

“A slave of slaves there standeth at thy door
Lauding thy generous boons and gifts galore
Beauty! may he come in awhile to ‘joy
Thy charms? for Love and I part nevermore!”

She said to him, “Drink; and health and happiness attend thy drink.” So he took the cup and kissed her hand and recited these lines in sing song:

“I gave her brave old wine that like her cheeks
Blushed red or flame from furnace flaring up:
She bussed the brim and said with many a smile
How durst thou deal folk’s cheek for folk to sup?
“Drink!” (said I) “these are tears of mine whose tinct
Is heart blood sighs have boiled in the cup.”

She answered him in the following couplet:—

“An tears of blood for me, friend, thou hast shed
Suffer me sup them, by thy head and eyes!”

Then the lady took the cup, and drank it off to her sisters’ health, and they ceased not drinking (the Porter being in the midst of them), and dancing and laughing and reciting verses and singing ballads and ritornellos. All this time the Porter was carrying on with them, kissing, toying, biting, handling, groping, fingering; whilst one thrust a dainty morsel in his mouth, and another slapped him; and this cuffed his cheeks, and that threw sweet flowers at him; and he was in the very paradise of pleasure, as though he were sitting in the seventh sphere among the Houris¹⁵⁷ of Heaven. They ceased not doing after this fashion until the wine played tucks in their heads and worsted their wits; and, when the drink got the better of them, the portress stood up and doffed her clothes till she was mother naked. However, she let down her hair about her body by way of shift, and throwing herself into the basin disported herself and dived like a duck and swam up and down, and took water in her mouth, and spurted it all over the Porter, and washed her limbs, and between her breasts, and inside her thighs and all around her navel. Then she came up out of the cistern and throwing herself on the Porter’s lap said, “O my lord, O my love, what callest thou this article?” pointing to her slit, her solution of continuity. “I call that thy cleft,” quoth the Porter, and she rejoined, Wah! wah, art thou not ashamed to use such a word?” and she caught him by the collar and soundly cuffed him. aid he again, Thy womb, thy vulva;” and she struck him a second slap crying, “O fie, O fie, this is another ugly word; is here no shame in thee?” Quoth he, “Thy coynte;” and she cried, O thou! art wholly destitute of modesty?” and thumped and bashed him. Then cried the Porter, “Thy clitoris,”¹⁵⁸ whereat the eldest lady came down upon him with a yet sorer beading, and said, “No;” and he said, “ ’Tis so,” and the Porter vent on calling the same commodity by sundry other names, but whatever he said they beat him more and more till his neck ached and swelled with the blows he had gotten; and on this wise they made him a butt and a laughing stock. At last he turned upon them asking, And what do you women call this article?” Whereto the damsel made answer, “The basil of the bridges.”¹⁵⁹ Cried the Porter, “Thank Allah for my safety: aid me and be thou propitious, O basil of the bridges!” They passed round the cup and tossed off the bowl again, when the second lady stood up; and, stripping off all her clothes, cast herself into the cistern and did as the first had done; then she came out of the water and throwing her naked form on the Porter’s lap pointed to her machine and said, “O light of mine eyes, do tell me what is the name of this concern?” He replied as before, “Thy slit;” and she rejoined, “Hath such term no shame for thee?” and cuffed him and buffeted him till the saloon rang with the blows. Then quoth she, “O fie! O fie! how canst thou say this without blushing?” He suggested, “The basil of the bridges;” but she would not have it and she said, “No! no!” and stuck him and slapped him on the back of the neck. Then he began calling out all the names he knew, “Thy slit, thy womb, thy coynte, thy clitoris;” and the girls kept on saying, “No! no!” So he said, “I stick to the basil of the bridges;” and all the three laughed till they fell on their backs and laid slaps on his neck and said, “No! no! that’s not its proper name.” Thereupon he cried, “O my sisters, what is its name?” and they replied, “What sayest thou to the husked sesame seed?” Then the cateress donned her clothes and they fell again to carousing, but the Porter kept moaning, “Oh! and Oh!” for his neck and shoulders, and the cup passed merrily round and round again for a full hour. After that time the eldest and handsomest lady stood up and stripped off her garments, whereupon the Porter took his neck in hand, and rubbed and shampoo’d it, saying, “My neck and shoulders are on the way of Allah!”¹⁶⁰ Then she threw herself into the basin, and swam and dived, sported and washed; and the Porter looked at her naked figure as though she had been a slice of the moon¹⁶¹ and at her face with the sheen of Luna when at full, or like the dawn when it brighteneth, and he noted her noble stature and shape, and those glorious forms that quivered as she went; for she was naked as the Lord made her. Then he cried “Alack! Alack!“and began to address her, versifying in these couplets:—

“If I liken thy shape to the bough when green
My likeness errs and I sore mistake it;
For the bough is fairest when clad the most
And thou art fairest when mother naked.”

When the lady heard his verses she came up out of the basin and, seating herself upon his lap and knees, pointed to her genitory and said, “O my lordling, what be the name of this?” Quoth he, “The basil of the bridges;” but she said, “Bah, bah!” Quoth he, “The husked sesame;” quoth she, “Pooh, pooh!” Then said he, “Thy womb;” and she cried, “Fie, Fie! art thou not ashamed of thyself?” and cuffed him on the nape of the neck. And whatever name he gave declaring “ ’Tis so,” she beat him and cried “No! no!” till at last he said, “O my sisters, and what is its name?” She replied, “It is entitled the Khan¹⁶² of Abu Mansur;” whereupon the Porter replied, “Ha! ha! O Allah be praised for safe deliverance! O Khan of Abu Mansur!” Then she came forth and dressed and the cup went round a full hour. At last the Porter rose up, and stripping off all his clothes, jumped into the tank and swam about and washed under his bearded chin and armpits, even as they had done. Then he came out and threw himself into the first lady’s lap and rested his arms upon the lap of the portress, and reposed his legs in the lap of the cateress and pointed to his prickle¹⁶³ and said, “O my mistresses, what is the name of this article?” All laughed at his words till they fell on their backs, and one said, “Thy pintle!” But he replied, “No!” and gave each one of them a bite by way of forfeit. Then said they, “Thy pizzle!” but he cried “No,” and gave each of them a hug; And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

¹³⁸ The name of this celebrated succesor of Nineveh, where some suppose The Nights were written, is orig. (middle-gates) because it stood on the way where four great highways meet. The Arab. form “Mausil” (the vulgar “Mosul”) is also significant, alluding to the “junction” of Assyria and Babylonis. Hence our “muslin.”

¹³⁹ This is Mr. Thackeray’s “nose-bag.” I translate by “walking-shoes” the Arab “Khuff” which are a manner of loose boot covering the ankle; they are not usually embroidered, the ornament being reserved for the inner shoe.

¹⁴⁰ i.e. Syria (says Abulfeda) the “land on the left” (of one facing the east) as opposed to Al–Yaman the “land on the right.” Osmani would mean Turkish, Ottoman. When Bernard the Wise (Bohn, p.24) speaks of “Bagada and Axiam” (Mabillon’s text) or “Axinarri” (still worse), he means Baghdad and Ash–Shám (Syria, Damascus), the latter word puzzling his Editor. Richardson (Dissert, lxxii.) seems to support a hideous attempt to derive Shám from Shámat, a mole or wart, because the country is studded with hillocks! Al–Shám is often applied to Damascus-city whose proper name Dimishk belongs to books: this term is generally derived from Damáshik b. Káli b. Málik b. Sham (Shem). Lee (Ibn Batùtah, 29) denies that ha-Dimishki means “Eliezer of Damascus.”

¹⁴¹ From Oman = Eastern Arabia.

¹⁴² Arab. “Tamar Hannà” lit. date of Henna, but applied to the flower of the eastern privet (Lawsonia inermis) which has the sweet scent of freshly mown hay. The use of Henna as a dye is known even in Enland. The “myrtle” alluded to may either have been for a perfume (as it is held an anti-intoxicant) or for eating, the bitter aromatic berries of the “Ás” being supposed to flavour wine and especially Raki (raw brandy).

¹⁴³ Lane. (i. 211) pleasantly remarks, “A list of these sweets is given in my original, but I have thought it better to omit the names” (!) Dozy does not shirk his duty, but he is not much more satisfactory in explaining words interesting to students because they are unfound in dictionaries and forgotten by the people. “Akrás (cakes) Laymunìyah (of limes) wa Maymunìyah” appears in the Bresl. Edit. as “Ma’amuniyah” which may mean “Ma’amun’s cakes” or “delectable cakes.” “Amshát” = (combs) perhaps refers to a fine kind of Kunàfah (vermicelli) known in Egypt and Syria as “Ghazl al-banát” = girl’s spinning.

¹⁴⁴ The new moon carefully looked for by all Moslems because it begins the Ramazán-fast.

¹⁴⁵ Solomon’s signet ring has before been noticed.

¹⁴⁶ The “high-bosomed” damsel, with breasts firm as a cube, is a favourite with Arab tale tellers. Fanno baruffa is the Italian term for hard breasts pointing outwards.

¹⁴⁷ A large hollow navel is looked upon not only as a beauty, but in children it is held a promise of good growth.

¹⁴⁸ Arab. “Ka’ah,” a high hall opening upon the central court: we shall find the word used for a mansion, barrack, men’s quarters, etc.

¹⁴⁹ Babel = Gate of God (El), or Gate of Ilu (P. N. of God), which the Jews ironically interpreted “Confusion.” The tradition of Babylonia being the very centre of witchcraft and enchantment by means of its Seven Deadly Spirits, has survived in Al–Islam; the two fallen angels (whose names will occur) being confined in a well; Nimrod attempting to reach Heaven from the Tower in a magical car drawn by monstrous birds and so forth. See p. 114, Francois Fenormant’s “Chaldean Magic,” London, Bagsters.

¹⁵⁰ Arab. “Kámat Alfíyyah” = like the letter Alif, a straight perpendicular stroke. In the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the origin of every alphabet (not syllabarium) known to man, one form was a flag or leaf of water-plant standing upright. Hence probably the Arabic Alif-shape; while other nations preferred other modifications of the letter (ox’s head, etc), which in Egyptian number some thirty-six varieties, simple and compound.

¹⁵¹ I have not attempted to order this marvellous confusion of metaphors so characteristic of The Nights and the exigencies of Al-Saj’a = rhymed prose.

¹⁵² Here and elsewhere I omit the “kála (dice Turpino)” of the original: Torrens preserves “Thus goes the tale” (which it only interrupts). This is simply letter-wise and sense-foolish.

¹⁵³ Of this worthy more at a future time.

¹⁵⁴ i.e., sealed with the Kazi or legal authority’s seal of office.

¹⁵⁵ “Nothing for nothing” is a fixed idea with the Eastern woman: not so much for greed as for a sexual point d’ honneur when dealing with the adversary—man.

¹⁵⁶ She drinks first, the custom of the universal East, to show that the wine she had bought was unpoisoned. Easterns, who utterly ignore the “social glass” of Western civilisation drink honestly to get drunk; and, when far gone are addicted to horse-play (in Pers. “Badmasti” = le vin mauvais) which leads to quarrels and bloodshed. Hence it is held highly irreverent to assert of patriarchs, prophets and saints that they “drank wine;” and Moslems agree with our “Teatotallers” in denying that, except in the case of Noah, inebriatives are anywhere mentioned in Holy Writ.

¹⁵⁷ Arab. “Húr al-Ayn,” lit. (maids) with eyes of lively white and black, applied to the virgins of Paradise who will wive with the happy Faithful. I retain our vulgar “Houri,” warning the reader that it is a masc. for a fem. (“Huríyah”) in Arab, although accepted in Persian, a genderless speach.

¹⁵⁸ Arab. “Zambúr,” whose head is amputated in female circumcision. See Night cccclxxiv.

¹⁵⁹ Ocymum basilicum noticed in Introduction, the bassilico of Boccaccio iv. 5. The Book of Kalilah and Dimnah represents it as “sprouting with something also whose smell is foul and disgusting and the sower at once sets to gather it and burn it with fire.” (The Fables of Bidpai translated from the later Syriac version by I. G. N. Keith–Falconer, etc., etc., etc., Cambridge University Press, 1885). Here, however, Habk is a pennyroyal (mentha puligium), and probably alludes to the pecten.

¹⁶⁰ i. e. common property for all to beat.

¹⁶¹ “A digit of the moon” is the Hindú equivalent.

¹⁶² Better known to us as Caravanserai, the “Travellers’ Bungalow” of India: in the Khan, however, shelter is to be had, but neither bed nor board.

¹⁶³ Arab. “Zubb.” I would again note that this and its synonyms are the equivalents of the Arabic, which is of the lowest. The tale-teller’s evident object is to accentuate the contrast with the tragical stories to follow.

When it was the Tenth Night,

Quoth her sister Dunyazad, “Finish for us thy story;” and she answered, “With joy and goodly greet” It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the damsels stinted not saying to the Porter “Thy prickle, thy pintle, thy pizzle,” and he ceased not kissing and biting and hugging until his heart was satisfied, and they laughed on till they could no more. At last one said, “O our brother, what, then, is it called?” Quoth he, “Know ye not?” Quoth they, “No!” “Its veritable name,” said he, “is mule Burst all, which browseth on the basil of the bridges, and muncheth the husked sesame, and nighteth in the Khan of Abu Mansur.” Then laughed they till they fell on their backs, and returned to their carousel, and ceased not to be after this fashion till night began to fall. Thereupon said they to the Porter, ‘‘Bismillah,¹⁶⁴ O our master, up and on with those sorry old shoes of shine and turn thy face and show us the breadth of thy shoulders!” Said he, “By Allah, to part with my soul would be easier for me than departing from you: come let us join night to day, and to morrow morning we will each wend our own way.” “My life on you,” said the procuratrix, “suffer him to tarry with us, that we may laugh at him: we may live out our lives and never meet with his like, for surely he is a right merry rogue and a witty.”¹⁶⁵ So they said, “Thou must not remain with us this night save on condition that thou submit to our com mends, and that whatso thou seest, thou ask no questions there anent, nor enquire of its cause.” “All right,” rejoined he, and they said, “Go read the writing over the door.” So he rose and went to the entrance and there found written in letters of gold wash; Whoso speaketh of what concerneth him not, shall hear what pleaseth him not! ¹⁶⁶ The Porter said, Be ye witnesses against me that I will not speak on whatso concerneth me not.” Then the cateress arose, and set food before them and they ate; after which they changed their drinking place for an other, and she lighted the lamps and candles and burned amber gris and aloes wood, and set on fresh fruit and the wine service, when they fell to carousing and talking of their lovers. And they ceased not to eat and drink and chat, nibbling dry fruits and laughing and playing tricks for the space of a full hour when lo! a knock was heard at the gate. The knocking in no wise dis turbed the seance, but one of them rose and went to see what it was and presently returned, saying, “Truly our pleasure for this night is to be perfect.” “How is that?” asked they; and she answered, “At the gate be three Persian Kalandars¹⁶⁷ with their beards and heads and eyebrows shaven; and all three blind of the left eye—which is surely a strange chance. They are foreigners from Roum-land with the mark of travel plain upon them; they have just entered Baghdad, this being their first visit to our city; and the cause of their knocking at our door is simply because they cannot find a lodging. Indeed one of them said to me:—Haply the owner of this mansion will let us have the key of his stable or some old out house wherein we may pass this night; for evening had surprised them and, being strangers in the land, they knew none who would give them shelter. And, O my sisters, each of them is a figure o’ fun after his own fashion; and if we let them in we shall have matter to make sport of.” She gave not over persuading them till they said to her, “Let them in, and make thou the usual condition with them that they speak not of what concerneth them not, lest they hear what pleaseth them not.” So she rejoiced and going to the door presently returned with the three monoculars whose beards and mustachios were clean shaven.¹⁶⁸ They salam’d and stood afar off by way of respect; but the three ladies rose up to them and welcomed them and wished them joy of their safe arrival and made them sit down. The Kalandars looked at the room and saw that it was a pleasant place, clean swept and garnished with cowers; and the lamps were burning and the smoke of perfumes was spireing in air; and beside the dessert and fruits and wine, there were three fair girls who might be maidens; so they exclaimed with one voice, “By Allah, ’tis good!” Then they turned to the Porter and saw that he was a merry faced wight, albeit he was by no means sober and was sore after his slappings. So they thought that he was one of themselves and said, “A mendicant like us! whether Arab or foreigner.”¹⁶⁹ But when the Porter heard these words, he rose up, and fixing his eyes fiercely upon them, said, “Sit ye here without exceeding in talk! Have you not read what is writ over the door? surely it befitteth not fellows who come to us like paupers to wag your tongues at us.” “We crave thy pardon, O Fakír,”¹⁷⁰ rejoined they, “and our heads are between thy hands.” The ladies laughed consumedly at the squabble; and, making peace between the Kalandars and the Porter, seated the new guests before meat and they ate. Then they sat together, and the portress served them with drink; and, as the cup went round merrily, quoth the Porter to the askers, “And you, O brothers mine, have ye no story or rare adventure to amuse us withal?” Now the warmth of wine having mounted to their heads they called for musical instruments; and the portress brought them a tambourine of Mosul, and a lute of Irák, and a Persian harp; and each mendicant took one and tuned it; this the tambourine and those the lute and the harp, and struck up a merry tune while the ladies sang so lustily that there was a great noise.¹⁷¹ And whilst they were carrying on, behold, some one knocked at the gate, and the portress went to see what was the matter there. Now the cause of that knocking, O King (quoth Shahrazad) was this, the Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, had gone forth from the palace, as was his wont now and then, to solace himself in the city that night, and to see and hear what new thing was stirring; he was in merchant’s gear, and he was attended by Ja’afar, his Wazir, and by Masrur his Sworder of Vengeance.¹⁷² As they walked about the city, their way led them towards the house of the three ladies; where they heard the loud noise of musical instruments and singing and merriment; so quoth the Caliph to Ja’afar, “I long to enter this house and hear those songs and see who sing them.” Quoth Ja’afar, “O Prince of the Faithful; these folk are surely drunken with wine, and I fear some mischief betide us if we get amongst them.” “There is no help but that I go in there,” replied the Caliph, “and I desire thee to contrive some pretext for our appearing among them.” Ja’afar replied, “I hear and I obey;”¹⁷³ and knocked at the door, whereupon the portress came out and opened. Then Ja’afar came forward and kissing the ground before her said, “O my lady, we be merchants from Tiberias town: we arrived at Baghdad ten days ago; and, alighting at the mer chants’ caravanserai, we sold all our merchandise. Now a certain trader invited us to an entertainment this night; so we went to his house and he set food before us and we ate: then we sat at wine and wassail with him for an hour or so when he gave us leave to depart; and we went out from him in the shadow of the night and, being strangers, we could not find our way back to our Khan. So haply of your kindness and courtesy you will suffer us to tarry with you this night, and Heaven will reward you!”¹⁷⁴ The portress looked upon them and seeing them dressed like merchants and men of grave looks and solid, she returned to her sisters and repeated to them Ja’afar’s story; and they took compassion upon the strangers and said to her, “Let them enter.” She opened the door to them, when said they to her, “Have we thy leave to come in?” “Come in,” quoth she; and the Caliph entered followed by Ja’afar and Masrur; and when the girls saw them they stood up to them in respect and made them sit down and looked to their wants, saying, “Welcome, and well come and good cheer to the guests, but with one condition!” “What is that?” asked they, and one of the ladies answered, “Speak not of what concerneth you not, lest ye hear what pleaseth you not.” “Even so,” said they; and sat down to their wine and drank deep. Presently the Caliph looked on the three Kalandars and, seeing them each and every blind of the left eye, wondered at the sight; then he gazed upon the girls and he was startled and he marvelled with exceeding marvel at their beauty and loveliness. They continued to carouse and to converse and said to the Caliph, “Drink!” but he replied, “I am vowed to Pilgrimage;”¹⁷⁵ and drew back from the wine. Thereupon the portress rose and spreading before him a table cloth worked with gold, set thereon a porcelain bowl into which she poured willow flower water with a lump of snow and a spoonful of sugar candy. The Caliph thanked her and said in himself,“By Allah, I will recompense her to morrow for the kind deed she hath done.” The others again addressed themselves to conversing and carousing; and, when the wine get the better of them, the eldest lady who ruled the house rose and making obeisance to them took the cateress by the hand, and said, “Rise, O my sister and let us do what is our devoir.” Both answered “Even so!” Then the portress stood up and proceeded to remove the table service and the remnants of the banquet; and renewed the pastiles and cleared the middle of the saloon. Then she made the Kalandars sit upon a sofa at the side of the estrade, and seated the Caliph and Ja’afar and Masrur on the other side of the saloon; after which she called the Porter, and said, “How scanty is thy courtesy! now thou art no stranger; nay, thou art one of the household.” So he stood up and, tightening his waist cloth, asked, “What would ye I do?” and she answered, “Stand in thy place.” Then the procuratrix rose and set in the midst of the saloon a low chair and, opening a closet, cried to the Porter, “Come help me.” So he went to help her and saw two black bitches with chains round their necks; and she said to him, “Take hold of them;” and he took them and led them into the middle of the saloon. Then the lady of the house arose and tucked up her sleeves above her wrists and, seizing a scourge, said to the Porter, “Bring forward one of the bitches.” He brought her forward, dragging her by the chain, while the bitch wept, and shook her head at the lady who, however, came down upon her with blows on the sconce; and the bitch howled and the lady ceased not beating her till her forearm failed her. Then, casting the scourge from her hand, she pressed the bitch to her bosom and, wiping away her tears with her hands, kissed her head. Then she said to the Porter, “Take her away and bring the second;” and, when he brought her, she did with her as she had done with the first. Now the heart of the Caliph, was touched at these cruel doings; his chest straitened and he lost all patience in his desire to know why the two bitches were so beaten. He threw a wink at Ja’afar wishing him to ask, but; the Minister turning towards him said by signs, “Be silent!” Then quoth the portress to the mistress of the house, “O my lady, arise and go to thy place that I in turn may do my devoir.”¹⁷⁶ She answered, “Even so”; and, taking her seat upon the couch of juniper wood, pargetted with gold and silver, said to the portress and cateress, “Now do ye what ye have to do.” Thereupon the portress sat upon a low seat by the couch side; but the procuretrix, entering a closet, brought out of it a bag of satin with green fringes and two tassels of gold. She stood up before the lady of the house and shaking the bag drew out from it a lute which she tuned by tightening its pegs; and when it was in perfect order, she began to sing these quatrains:—

“Ye are the wish, the aim of me
And when, O Love, thy sight I see¹⁷⁷
The heavenly mansion openeth;¹⁷⁸
But Hell I see when lost thy sight.
From thee comes madness; nor the less
Comes highest joy, comes ecstasy:
Nor in my love for thee I fear
Or shame and blame, or hate and spite.
When Love was throned within my heart
I rent the veil of modesty;
And stints not Love to rend that veil
Garring disgrace on grace to alight;
The robe of sickness then I donned
But rent to rags was secrecy:
Wherefore my love and longing heart
Proclaim your high supremest might;
The tear drop railing adown my cheek
Telleth my tale of ignomy:
And all the hid was seen by all
And all my riddle ree’d aright.

Heal then my malady, for thou
Art malady and remedy! But she whose cure is in thy hand
Shall ne’er be free of bane and blight;
Burn me those eyne that radiance rain
Slay me the swords of phantasy;
How many hath the sword of Love
Laid low, their high degree despite?
Yet will I never cease to pine
Nor to oblivion will I flee. Love is my health, my faith, my joy
Public and private, wrong or right.
O happy eyes that sight thy charms
That gaze upon thee at their gree!
Yea, of my purest wish and will
The slave of Love I’ll aye be hight.”

When the damsel heard this elegy in quatrains she cried out “Alas! Alas!” and rent her raiment, and fell to the ground fainting; and the Caliph saw scars of the palm rod¹⁷⁹ on her back and welts of the whip; and marvelled with exceeding wonder. Then the portress arose and sprinkled water on her and brought her a fresh and very fine dress and put it on her. But when the company beheld these doings their minds were troubled, for they had no inkling of the case nor knew the story thereof; so the Caliph said to Ja’afar, “Didst thou not see the scars upon the damsel’s body? I cannot keep silence or be at rest till I learn the truth of her condition and the story of this other maiden and the secret of the two black bitches.” But Ja’afar answered, “O our lord, they made it a condition with us that we speak not of what concerneth us not, lest we come to hear what pleaseth us not.” Then said the portress “By Allah, O my sister, come to me and complete this service for me.” Replied the procuratrix, “With joy and goodly gree;” so she took the lute; and leaned it against her breasts and swept the strings with her finger tips, and began singing:—

“Give back mine eyes their sleep long ravished
And say me whither be my reason fled:
I learnt that lending to thy love a place
Sleep to mine eyelids mortal foe was made.
They said, “We held thee righteous, who waylaid
Thy soul?” “Go ask his glorious eyes,” I said.
I pardon all my blood he pleased to spill
Owning his troubles drove him blood to shed.
On my mind’s mirror sun like sheen he cast
Whose keen reflection fire in vitals bred
Waters of Life let Allah waste at will
Suffice my wage those lips of dewy red:
An thou address my love thou’lt find a cause
For plaint and tears or ruth or lustihed.
In water pure his form shall greet your eyne
When fails the bowl nor need ye drink of wine.¹⁸⁰”

Then she quoted from the same ode:—

“I drank, but the draught of his glance, not wine,
And his swaying gait swayed to sleep these eyne:
’Twas not grape juice grips me but grasp of Past
’Twas not bowl o’erbowled me but gifts divine:
His coiling curl-lets my soul ennetted
And his cruel will all my wits outwitted.¹⁸¹”

After a pause she resumed:—

“If we ‘plain of absence what shall we say?
Or if pain afflict us where wend our way?
An I hire a truchman¹⁸² to tell my tale
The lover’s plaint is not told for pay:
If I put on patience, a lover’s life
After loss of love will not last a day:
Naught is left me now but regret, repine
And tears flooding cheeks for ever and aye:
O thou who the babes of these eyes¹⁸³ hast deaf
Thou art homed in heart that shall never stray
Would heaven I wot hast thou kept our pact
Long as stream shall cow, to have firmest fey?
Or hast forgotten the weeping slave
Whom groans afflict and whom griefs waylay?
Ah, when severance ends and we side by side
Couch, I’ll blame thy rigours and chide thy pride!”

Now when the portress heard her second ode she shrieked aloud and said, “By Allah! ’tis right good!”; and laying hands on her garments tore them, as she did the first time, and fell to the ground fainting. Thereupon the procuratrix rose end brought her a second change of clothes after she had sprinkled water on her. She recovered and sat upright and said to her sister the cateress, “Onwards, and help me in my duty, for there remains but this one song.” So the provisioneress again brought out the lute and began to sing these verses:—

“How long shall last, how long this rigour rife of woe
May not suffice thee all these tears thou seest flow?
Our parting thus with purpose fell thou cost prolong
Is’t not enough to glad the heart of envious foe?
Were but this Iying world once true to lover heart
He had not watched the weary night in tears of woe:
Oh pity me whom overwhelmed thy cruel will
My lord, my king, ’tis time some ruth to me thou show:
To whom reveal my wrongs, O thou who murdered me?
Sad, who of broken troth the pangs must undergo!
Increase wild love for thee and phrenzy hour by hour
And days of exile minute by so long, so slow;
O Moslems, claim vendetta¹⁸⁴ for this slave of Love
Whose sleep Love ever wastes, whose patience Love lays low:
Doth law of Love allow thee, O my wish! to lie
Lapt in another’s arms and unto me cry Go!?
Yet in thy presence, say, what joys shall I enjoy
When he I love but works my love to overthrow?”

When the portress heard the third song she cried aloud; and, laying hands on her garments, rent them down to the very skirt and fell to the ground fainting a third time, again showing the scars of the scourge. Then said the three Kalandars, “Would Heaven we had never entered this house, but had rather righted on the mounds and heaps outside the city! for verily our visit hath been troubled by sights which cut to the heart.” The Caliph turned to them and asked, “Why so?” and they made answer, “Our minds are sore troubled by this matter.” Quoth the Caliph, “Are ye not of the household?” and quoth they, “No; nor indeed did we ever set eyes on the place till within this hour.” Hereat the Caliph marvelled and rejoined, “This man who sitteth by you, would he not know the secret of the matter?” and so saying he winked and made signs at the Porter. So they questioned the man but he replied, “By the All might of Allah, in love all are alike!¹⁸⁵ I am the growth of Baghdad, yet never in my born days did I darken these doors till to day and my companying with them was a curious matter.” “By Allah,” they rejoined, “we took thee for one of them and now we see thou art one like ourselves.” Then said the Caliph, “We be seven men, and they only three women without even a fourth to help them; so let us question them of their case; and, if they answer us not, fain we will be answered by force.” All of them agreed to this except Ja’afar who said,¹⁸⁶ “This is not my recking; let them be; for we are their guests and, as ye know, they made a compact and condition with us which we accepted and promised to keep: wherefore it is better that we be silent concerning this matter; and, as but little of the night remaineth, let each and every of us gang his own gait.” Then he winked at the Caliph and whispered to him, “There is but one hour of darkness left and I can bring them before thee to morrow, when thou canst freely question them all concerning their story.” But the Caliph raised his head haughtily and cried out at him in wrath, saying, “I have no patience left for my longing to hear of them: let the Kalandars question them forthright.” Quoth Ja’afar, “This is not my rede.” Then words ran high and talk answered talk, and they disputed as to who should first put the question, but at last all fixed upon the Porter. And as the jingle increased the house mistress could not but notice it and asked them, “O ye folk! on what matter are ye talking so loudly?” Then the Porter stood up respectfully before her and said, “O my lady, this company earnestly desire that thou acquaint them with the story of the two bitches and what maketh thee punish them so cruelly; and then thou fallest to weeping over them and kissing them; and lastly they want to hear the tale of thy sister and why she hath been bastinado’d with palm sticks like a man. These are the questions they charge me to put, and peace be with thee.”¹⁸⁷ Thereupon quoth she who was the lady of the house to the guests, “Is this true that he saith on your part?” and all replied, “Yes!” save Ja’afar who kept silence. When she heard these words she cried, “By Allah, ye have wronged us, O our guests. with grievous wronging; for when you came before us we made compact and condition with you, that whoso should speak of what concerneth him not should hear what pleaseth him not. Sufficeth ye not that we took you into our house and fed you with our best food? But the fault is not so much yours as hers who let you in.” Then she tucked up her sleeves from her wrists and struck the floor thrice with her hand crying, “Come ye quickly;” and lo! a closet door opened and out of it came seven negro slaves with drawn swords in hand to whom she said, “Pinion me those praters’ elbows and bind them each to each.” They did her bidding and asked her, “O veiled and virtuous! is it thy high command that we strike off their heads?”; but she answered, “Leave them awhile that I question them of their condition, before their necks feel the sword.” “By Allah, O my lady!” cried the Porter, “slay me not for other’s sin; all these men offended and deserve the penalty of crime save myself. Now by Allah, our night had been charming had we escaped the mortification of those monocular Kalandars whose entrance into a populous city would convert it into a howling wilderness.” Then he repeated these verses :

“How fair is ruth the strong man deigns not smother!
And fairest fair when shown to weakest brother:
By Love’s own holy tie between us twain,
Let one not suffer for the sin of other.”

When the Porter ended his verse the lady laughed And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

¹⁶⁴ “ln the name of Allah,” is here a civil form of dismissal.

¹⁶⁵ Lane (i. 124) is scandalised and naturally enough by this scene, which is the only blot in an admirable tale admirably told. Yet even here the grossness is but little more pronounced than what we find in our old drama (e. g., Shakespeare’s King Henry V.) written for the stage, whereas tales like The Nights are not read or recited before both sexes. Lastly “nothing follows all this palming work:” in Europe the orgie would end very differently. These “nuns of Theleme” are physically pure: their debauchery is of the mind, not the body. Galland makes them five, including the two doggesses.

¹⁶⁶ So Sir Francis Walsingham’s “They which do that they should not, should hear that they would not.”

¹⁶⁷ The old “Calendar,” pleasantly associated with that form of almanac. The Mac. Edit. has Karandaliyah,” a vile corruption, like Ibn Batutah’s “Karandar” and Torrens’ “Kurundul:” so in English we have the accepted vulgarism of “Kernel” for Colonel. The Bull Edit. uses for synonym “Su’ulúk”=an asker, a beggar. Of these mendicant monks, for such they are, much like the Sarabaites of mediæval Europe, I have treated and of their institutions and its founder, Shaykh Sharif Bu Ali Kalandar (ob. A. H. 724 =1323–24), at some length in my “History of Sindh,” chaps. viii. See also the Dabistan (i. 136) where the good Kalandar exclaims:—

If the thorn break in my body, how trifling the pain!
But how sorely I feel for the poor broken thorn!

D’Herbelot is right when he says that the Kalandar is not generally approved by Moslems: he labours to win free from every form and observance and he approaches the Malámati who conceals all his good deeds and boasts of his evil doings—our “Devil’s hypocrite.”

¹⁶⁸ The “Kalandar” disfigures himself in this manner to show “mortification.”

¹⁶⁹ Arab. “Gharíb:” the porter is offended because the word implies “poor devil;” esp. one out of his own country.

¹⁷⁰ A religious mendicant generally.

¹⁷¹ Very scandalous to Moslem “respectability” Mohammed said the house was accursed when the voices of women could be heard out of doors. Moreover the neighbours have a right to interfere and abate the scandal.

¹⁷² I need hardly say that these are both historical personages; they will often be mentioned, and Ja’afar will be noticed in the Terminal Essay.

¹⁷³ Arab. “Same ‘an wa tá‘atan”; a popular phrase of assent generally translated “to hear is to obey;” but this formula may be and must be greatly varied. In places it means “Hearing (the word of Allah) and obeying” (His prophet, viceregent, etc.)

¹⁷⁴ Arab. “Sawáb”==reward in Heaven. This word for which we have no equivalent has been naturalized in all tongues (e. g. Hindostani) spoken by Moslems.

¹⁷⁵ Wine-drinking, at all times forbidden to Moslems, vitiates the Pilgrimage rite: the Pilgrim is vowed to a strict observance of the ceremonial law and many men date their “reformation” from the “Hajj.” Pilgrimage, iii., 126.

¹⁷⁶ Here some change has been necessary; as the original text confuses the three “ladies.”

¹⁷⁷ In Arab. the plural masc. is used by way of modesty when a girl addresses her lover and for the same reason she speaks of herself as a man.

¹⁷⁸ Arab. “Al–Na’ím”, in ful “Jannat-al-Na’ím” = the Garden of Delights, i.e. the fifth Heaven made of white silver. The generic name of Heaven (the place of reward) is “Jannat,” lit. a garden; “Firdaus” being evidently derived from the Persian through the Greek {Greek Letters}, and meaning a chase, a hunting park. Writers on this subject should bear in mind Mandeville’s modesty, “Of Paradise I cannot speak properly, for I was not there.”

¹⁷⁹ Arab. “Mikra’ah,” the dried mid-rib of a date-frond used for many purposes, especially the bastinado.

¹⁸⁰ According to Lane (i., 229) these and the immediately following verses are from an ode by Ibn Sahl al-Ishbili. They are in the Bull Edit. not the Mac. Edit.

¹⁸¹ The original is full of conceits and plays on words which are not easily rendered in English.

¹⁸² Arab. “Tarjumán,” same root as Chald. Targum ( = a translation), the old “Truchman,” and through the Ital. “tergomano” our “Dragoman,” here a messenger.

¹⁸³ Lit. the “person of the eyes,” our “babe of the eyes,” a favourite poetical conceit in all tongues; much used by the Elizabethans, but now neglected as a silly kind of conceit. See Night ccix.

¹⁸⁴ Arab. “Sár” (Thár) the revenge-right recognised by law and custom (Pilgrimage, iii., 69).

¹⁸⁵ That is “We all swim in the same boat.”

¹⁸⁶ Ja’afar ever acts, on such occasions, the part of a wise and sensible man compelled to join in a foolish frolic. He contrasts strongly with the Caliph, a headstrong despot who will not be gainsaid, whatever be the whim of the moment. But Easterns would look upon this as a proof of his “kingliness.”

¹⁸⁷ Arab. “Wa’l— Salám” (pronounced Was–Salám); meaning “and here ends the matter.” In our slang we say “All right, and the child’s name is Antony.”

When it was the Eleventh Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the lady, after laughing at the Porter despite her wrath, came up to the party and spake thus, “Tell me who ye be, for ye have but an hour of life; and were ye not men of rank and, perhaps, notables of your tribes, you had not been so froward and I had hastened your doom.” Then said the Caliph, “Woe to thee, O Ja’afar, tell her who we are lest we be slain by mistake; and speak her fair be fore some horror befal us.” “’Tis part of thy deserts,“replied he; whereupon the Caliph cried out at him saying, “There is a time for witty words and there is a time for serious work.” Then the lady accosted the three Kalandars and asked them, “Are ye brothers?”; when they answered, “No, by Allah, we be naught but Fakirs and foreigners.” Then quoth she to one among them, “West thou born blind of one eye?”; and quoth he, “No, by Allah, ’twas a marvellous matter and a wondrous mischance which caused my eye to be torn out, and mine is a tale which, if it were written upon the eye corners with needle gravers, were a warner to whoso would be warned.”¹⁸⁸ She questioned the second and third Kalandar; but all replied like the first, “By Allah, O our mistress, each one of us cometh from a different country, and we are all three the sons of Kings, sovereign Princes ruling over suzerains and capital cities.” Thereupon she turned towards them and said, “Let each and every of you tell me his tale in due order and explain the cause of his coming to our place; and if his story please us let him stroke his head¹⁸⁹ and wend his way.” The first to come forward was the Hammal, the Porter, who said, “O my lady, I am a man and a porter. This dame, the cateress, hired me to carry a load and took me first to the shop of a vintner, then to the booth of a butcher; thence to the stall of a fruiterer; thence to a grocer who also sold dry fruits; thence to a confectioner and a perfumer cum druggist and from him to this place where there happened to me with you what happened. Such is my story and peace be on us all!” At this the lady laughed and said, “Rub thy head and wend thy ways!”; but he cried, “By Allah, I will not stump it till I hear the stories of my companions.” Then came forward one of the Monoculars and began to tell her

¹⁸⁸ This is a favourite jingle, the play being upon “ibrat” (a needle-graver) and “ ‘ibrat” (an example, a warning).

¹⁸⁹ That is “make his bow,” as the English peasant pulls his forelock. Lane (i., 249) suggests, as an afterthought, that it means:—“Recover thy senses; in allusion to a person’s drawing his hand over his head after sleep or a fit.” But it occurs elsewhere in he sense of “cut thy stick.”

The First Kalandar’s Tale.

Know, O my lady, that the cause of my beard being shorn and my eye being out torn was as follows. My father was a King and he had a brother who was a King over another city; and it came to pass that I and my cousin, the son of my paternal uncle, were both born on one and the same day. And years and days rolled on; and, as we grew up, I used to visit my uncle every now and then and to spend a certain number of months with him. Now my cousin and I were sworn friends; for he ever entreated me with exceeding kindness; he killed for me the fattest sheep and strained the best of his wines, and we enjoyed long conversing and carousing. One day when the wine had gotten the better of us, the son of my uncle said to me, “O my cousin, I have a great service to ask of thee; and I desire that thou stay me not in whatso I desire to do!” And I replied, “With joy and goodly will.” Then he made me swear the most binding oaths and left me; but after a little while he returned leading a lady veiled and richly apparelled with ornaments worth a large sum of money. Presently he turned to me (the woman being still behind him) and said, “Take this lady with thee and go before me to such a burial ground” (describing it, so that I knew the place), “and enter with her into such a sepulchre¹⁹⁰ and there await my coming.” The oaths I swore to him made me keep silence and suffered me not to oppose him; so I led the woman to the cemetery and both I and she took our seats in the sepulchre; and hardly had we sat down when in came my uncle’s son, with a bowl of water, a bag of mortar and an adze somewhat like a hoe. He went straight to the tomb in the midst of the sepulchre and, breaking it open with the adze set the stones on one side; then he fell to digging into the earth of the tomb till he came upon a large iron plate, the size of a wicket door; and on raising it there appeared below it a staircase vaulted and winding. Then he turned to the lady and said to her, “Come now and take thy final choice!” She at once went down by the staircase and disappeared; then quoth he to me, “O son of my uncle, by way of completing thy kindness, when I shall have descended into this place, restore the trap door to where it was, and heap back the earth upon it as it lay before; and then of thy goodness mix this unslaked lime which is in the bag with this water which is in the bowl and, after building up the stones, plaster the outside so that none looking upon it shall say:—This is a new opening in an old tomb. For a whole year have I worked at this place whereof none knoweth but Allah, and this is the need I have of thee;” presently adding, “May Allah never bereave thy friends of thee nor make them desolate by shine absence, O son of my uncle, O my dear cousin!” And he went down the stairs and disappeared for ever. When he was lost to sight I replaced the iron plate and did all his bidding till the tomb became as it was before and I worked almost unconsciously for my head was heated with wine. Returning to the palace of my uncle, I was told that he had gone forth a-sporting and hunting; so I slept that night without seeing him; and, when the morning dawned, I remembered the scenes of the past evening and what happened between me and my cousin; I repented of having obeyed him when penitence was of no avail, I still thought, however, that it was a dream. So I fell to asking for the son of my uncle; but there was none to answer me concerning him; and I went out to the grave-yard and the sepulchres, and sought for the tomb under which he was, but could not find it; and I ceased not wandering about from sepulchre to sepulchre, and tomb to tomb, all without success, till night set in. So I returned to the city, yet I could neither eat nor drink; my thoughts being engrossed with my cousin, for that I knew not what was become of him; and I grieved with exceeding grief and passed another sorrowful night, watching until the morning. Then went I a second time to the cemetery, pondering over what the son of mine uncle had done; and, sorely repenting my hearkening to him, went round among all the tombs, but could not find the tomb I sought. I mourned over the past, and remained in my mourning seven days, seeking the place and ever missing the path. Then my torture of scruples¹⁹¹ grew upon me till I well nigh went mad, and I found no way to dispel my grief save travel and return to my father. So I set out and journeyed homeward; but as I was entering my father’s capital a crowd of rioters sprang upon me and pinioned me.¹⁹² I wondered thereat with all wonderment, seeing that I was the son of the Sultan, and these men were my father’s subjects and amongst them were some of my own slaves. A great fear fell upon me, and I said to my soul,¹⁹³ “Would heaven I knew what hath happened to my father!” I questioned those that bound me of the cause of their doing, but they returned me no answer. However, after a while one of them said to me (and he had been a hired servant of our house), “Fortune hath been false to thy father; his troops betrayed him and the Wazir who slew him now reigneth in his stead and we lay in wait to seize thee by the bidding of him.” I was well nigh distraught and felt ready to faint on hearing of my father’s death; when they carried me off and placed me in presence of the usurper. Now between me and him there was an olden grudge, the cause of which was this. I was fond of shooting with the stone bow,¹⁹⁴ and it befel one day as I was standing on the terrace roof of the palace, that a bird lighted on the top of the Wazir’s house when he happened to be there. I shot at the bird and missed the mark; but I hit the Wazir’s eye and knocked it out as fate and fortune decreed. Even so saith the poet:—

We tread the path where Fate hath led
The path Fate writ we fain must tread:
And man in one land doomed to die
Death no where else shall do him dead.

And on like wise saith another:—

Let Fortune have her wanton way
Take heart and all her words obey:
Nor joy nor mourn at anything
For all things pass and no things stay.

Now when I knocked out the Wazir’s eye he could not say a single word, for that my father was King of the city; but he hated me everafter and dire was the grudge thus caused between us twain. So when I was set before him hand bound and pinioned, he straightway gave orders for me to be beheaded. I asked, “For what crime wilt thou put me to death?”; whereupon he answered, “What crime is greater than this?” pointing the while to the place where his eye had been Quoth I, “This I did by accident not of malice prepense;” and quoth he, “If thou didst it by accident, I will do the like by thee with intention.’’¹⁹⁵ Then cried he, “Bring him forward,” and they brought me up to him, when he thrust his finger into my left eye and gouged it out; whereupon I became one eyed as ye see me. Then he bade bind me hand and foot, and put me into a chest and said to the sworder, “Take charge of this fellow, and go off with him to the waste lands about the city; then draw thy scymitar and slay him, and leave him to feed the beasts and birds.” So the headsman fared forth with me and when he was in the midst of the desert, he took me out of the chest (and I with both hands pinioned and both feet fettered) and was about to bandage my eyes before striking off my head. But I wept with exceeding weeping until I made him weep with me and, looking at him I began to recite these couplets:—

“I deemed you coat o’ mail that should withstand
The foeman’s shafts, and you proved foeman’s brand
I hoped your aidance in mine every chance
Though fail my left to aid my dexter hand:
Aloof you stand and hear the railer’s gibe
While rain their shafts on me the giber-band:
But an ye will not guard me from my foes
Stand clear, and succour neither these nor those!”

And I also quoted:—

“I deemed my brethren mail of strongest steel
And so they were—from foes I to fend my dart!
I deemed their arrows surest of their aim;
And so they were– when aiming at my heart!”

When the headsman heard my lines (he had been sworder to my sire and he owed me a debt of gratitude) he cried, “O my lord, what can I do, being but a slave under orders?” presently adding, “Fly for thy life and nevermore return to this land, or they will slay thee and slay me with thee, even as the poet said:—

Take thy life and fly whenas evils threat;
Let the ruined house tell its owner’s fate:
New land for the old thou shalt seek and find
But to find new life thou must not await.
Strange that men should sit in the stead of shame,
When Allah’s world is so wide and great!
And trust not other, in matters grave
Life itself must act for a life beset:
Ne’er would prowl the lion with maned neck,
Did he reckon on aid or of others reck.”

Hardly believing in my escape, I kissed his hand and thought the loss of my eye a light matter in consideration of my escaping from being slain. I arrived at my uncle’s capital; and, going in to him, told him of what had befallen my father and myself; whereat he wept with sore weeping and said, “Verily thou addest grief to my grief, and woe to my woe; for thy cousin hath been missing these many days; I wot not what hath happened to him, and none can give me news of him.” And he wept till he fainted. I sorrowed and condoled with him; and he would have applied certain medicaments to my eye, but he saw that it was become as a walnut with the shell empty. Then said he, “O my son, better to lose eye and keep life!” After that I could no longer remain silent about my cousin, who was his only son and one dearly loved, so I told him all that had happened. He rejoiced with extreme joyance to hear news of his son and said, “Come now and show me the tomb;” but I replied, “By Allah, O my uncle, I know not its place, though I sought it carefully full many times, yet could not find the site.” However, I and my uncle went to the grave yard and looked right and left, till at last I recognised the tomb and we both rejoiced with exceeding joy. We entered the sepulchre and loosened the earth about the grave; then, up raising the trap door, descended some fifty steps till we came to the foot of the staircase when lo! we were stopped by a blinding smoke. Thereupon said my uncle that saying whose sayer shall never come to shame, “There is no Majesty and there is no Might, save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great!” and we advanced till we suddenly came upon a saloon, whose floor was strewed with flour and grain and provisions and all manner necessaries; and in the midst of it stood a canopy sheltering a couch. Thereupon my uncle went up to the couch and inspecting it found his son and the lady who had gone down with him into the tomb, lying in each other’s embrace; but the twain had become black as charred wood; it was as if they had been cast into a pit of fire. When my uncle saw this spectacle, he spat in his son’s face and said, “Thou hast thy deserts, O thou hog!¹⁹⁶ this is thy judgment in the transitory world, and yet remaineth the judgment in the world to come, a durer and a more enduring “— And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

¹⁹⁰ This would be a separate building like our family tomb and probably domed, resembling that mentioned in “The King of the Black Islands.” Europeans usually call it “a little Wali;” or, as they write it, “Wely,” the contained for the container; the “Santon” for the “Santon’s tomb.” I have noticed this curious confusion (which begins with Robinson, i. 322) in “Unexplored Syria,” i. 161.

¹⁹¹ Arab. “Wiswás,” = diabolical temptation or suggestion. The “Wiswásí” is a man with scruples (scrupulus, a pebble in the shoe), e.g. one who fears that his ablutions were deficient, etc.

¹⁹² Arab. “Katf” = pinioning by tying the arms behind the back and shoulders (Kitf) a dire disgrace to free-born men.

¹⁹³ Arab. “Nafs.”=Hebr. Nephesh (Nafash) =soul, life as opposed to “Ruach”= spirit and breath. In these places it is equivalent to “I said to myself.” Another form of the root is “Nafas,” breath, with an idea of inspiration: so ‘Sáhib Nafas” ( = master of breath) is a minor saint who heals by expiration, a matter familiar to mesmerists (Pilgrimage, i., 86).

¹⁹⁴ Arab. “Kaus al-Banduk;” the “pellet bow” of modern India; with two strings joined by a bit of cloth which supports a ball of dry clay or stone. It is chiefly used for birding.

¹⁹⁵ In the East blinding was a common practice, especially in the case of junior princes not required as heirs. A deep perpendicular incision was made down each corner of the yes; the lids were lifted and the balls removed by cutting the optic nerve and the muscles. The later Caliphs blinded their victims by passing a red-hot sword blade close to the orbit or a needle over the eye-ball. About the same time in Europe the operation was performed with a heated metal basin—the well known bacinare (used by Ariosto), as happened to Pier delle Vigne (Petrus de Vineâ), the “godfather of modern Italian.”

¹⁹⁶ Arab. “Khinzír” (by Europeans pronounced “Hanzír”), prop. a wild-boar, but popularly used like our “you pig!”

When it was the Twelfth Night,

She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Kalandar thus went on with his story before the lady and the Caliph and Ja’afar:—My uncle struck his son with his slipper¹⁹⁷ as he lay there a black heap of coal. I marvelled at his hardness of heart, and grieving for my cousin and the lady, said, “By Allah, O my uncle, calm thy wrath: cost thou not see that all my thoughts are occupied with this misfortune, and how sorrowful I am for what hath befallen thy son, and how horrible it is that naught of him remaineth but a black heap of charcoal? And is not that enough, but thou must smite him with thy slipper?” Answered he,“O son of my brother, this youth from his boyhood was madly in love with his own sister;¹⁹⁸ and often and often I forbade him from her, saying to myself:—They are but little ones. However, when they grew up sin befel between them; and, although I could hardly believe it, I confined him and chided him and threatened him with the severest threats; and the eunuchs and servants said to him:—Beware of so foul a thing which none be fore thee ever did, and which none after thee will ever do; and have a care lest thou be dishonoured and disgraced among the Kings of the day, even to the end of time. And I added:—Such a report as this will be spread abroad by caravans, and take heed not to give them cause to talk or I will assuredly curse thee and do thee to death. After that I lodged them apart and shut her up; but the accursed girl loved him with passionate love, for Satan had got the mastery of her as well as of him and made their foul sin seem fair in their sight. Now when my son saw that I separated them, he secretly built this souterrain and furnished it and transported to it victuals, even as thou seest; and, when I had gone out a-sporting, came here with his sister and hid from me. Then His righteous judgment fell upon the twain and consumed them with fire from Heaven; and verily the last judgment will deal them durer pains and more enduring!” Then he wept and I wept with him; and he looked at me and said, “Thou art my son in his stead.” And I bethought me awhile of the world and of its chances, how the Wazir had slain my father and had taken his place and had put out my eye; and how my cousin had come to his death by the strangest chance: and I wept again and my uncle wept with me. Then we mounted the steps and let down the iron plate and heaped up the earth over it; and, after restoring the tomb to its former condition, we returned to the palace. But hardly had we sat down ere we heard the tomtoming of the kettle drum and tantara of trumpets and clash of cymbals; and the rattling of war men’s lances; and the clamours of assailants and the clanking of bits and the neighing of steeds; while the world was canopied with dense dust and sand clouds raised by the horses’ hoofs.¹⁹⁹ We were amazed at sight and sound, knowing not what could be the matter; so we asked and were told us that the Wazir who usurped my father’s kingdom had marched his men; and that after levying his soldiery and taking a host of wild Arabs²⁰⁰ into service, he had come down upon us with armies like the sands of the sea; their number none could tell and against them none could prevail. They attacked the city unawares; and the citizens, being powerless to oppose them, surrendered the place: my uncle was slain and I made for the suburbs saying to myself, “If thou fall into this villain’s hands he will assuredly kill thee.” On this wise all my troubles were renewed; and I pondered all that had betided my father and my uncle and I knew not what to do; for if the city people or my father’s troops had recognised me they would have done their best to win favour by destroying me; and I could think of no way to escape save by shaving off my beard and my eyebrows. So I shore them off and, changing my fine clothes for a Kalandar’s rags, I fared forth from my uncle’s capital and made for this city; hoping that peradventure some one would assist me to the presence of the Prince of the Faithful,²⁰¹ and the Caliph who is the Viceregent of Allah upon earth. Thus have I come hither that I might tell him my tale and lay my case before him. I arrived here this very night, and was standing in doubt whither I should go, when suddenly I saw this second Kalandar; so I salam’d to him saying—“I am a stranger!” and he answered:—“I too am a stranger!” And as we were conversing behold, up came our companion, this third Kalandar, and saluted us saying:—“I am a stranger!” And we answered:—“We too be strangers!” Then we three walked on and together till darkness overtook us and Destiny crave us to your house. Such, then, is the cause of the shaving of my beard and mustachios and eyebrows; and the manner of my losing my right eye. They marvelled much at this tale and the Caliph said to Ja’afar, “By Allah, I have not seen nor have I heard the like of what hath happened to this Kalandar!” Quoth the lady of the house, “Rub thy head and wend thy ways;” but he replied, “I will not go, till I hear the history of the two others.” Thereupon the second Kalandar came forward; and, kissing the ground, began to tell

¹⁹⁷ Striking with the shoe, the pipe-stick and similar articles is highly insulting, because they are not made, like whips and scourges, for such purpose. Here the East and the West differ diametrically. “Wounds which are given by instruments which are in one’s hands by chance do not disgrace a man,” says Cervantes (D. Q. i., chaps. 15), and goes on to prove that if a Zapatero (cobbler) cudgel another with his form or last, the latter must not consider himself cudgelled. The reverse in the East where a blow of a pipe stick cost Mahommed Ali Pasha’s son his life: Ishmail Pasha was burned to death by Malik Nimr, chief of Shendy (Pilgrimage, i., 203). Moreover, the actual wound is less considered in Moslem law than the instrument which caused it: so sticks and stones are venial weapons, whilst sword and dagger, gun and pistol are felonious. See ibid. (i., 336) for a note upon the weapons with which nations are policed.

¹⁹⁸ Incest is now abominable everywhere except amongst the overcrowded poor of great and civilised cities. Yet such unions were common and lawful amongst ancient and highly cultivated peoples, as the Egyptians (Isis and Osiris), Assyrians and ancient Persians. Physiologically they are injurious only when the parents have constitutional defects: if both are sound, the issue, as amongst the so-called “lower animals “ is viable and healthy.

¹⁹⁹ Dwellers in the Northern Temperates can hardly imagine what a dust-storm is in sun parched tropical lands. In Sind we were often obliged to use candles at mid-day, while above the dust was a sun that would roast an egg.

²⁰⁰ Arab. “ ‘Urban,” now always used of the wild people, whom the French have taught us to call les Bedouins; “Badw” being a waste or desert, and Badawi (fem. Badawíyah, plur. Badáwi and Bidwán), a man of the waste. Europeans have also learnt to miscall the Egyptians “Arabs”: the difference is as great as between an Englishman and a Spaniard. Arabs proper divide their race into sundry successive families. “The Arab al-Arabá” (or al— Aribah, or al-Urubíyat) are the autochthones, prehistoric, proto-historic and extinct tribes; for instance, a few of the Adites who being at Meccah escaped the destruction of their wicked nation, but mingled with other classes. The “Arab al-Muta’arribah,” (Arabised Arabs) are the first advenæ represented by such noble strains as the Koraysh (Koreish), some still surviving. The “Arab al-Musta’aribah” (insititious, naturalized or instituted Arabs, men who claim to be Arabs) are Arabs like the Sinaites, the Egyptians and the Maroccans descended by intermarriage with other races. Hence our “Mosarabians” and the “Marrabais” of Rabelais (not, “a word compounded of Maurus and Arabs”). Some genealogists, however, make the Muta’arribah descendants of Kahtan (possibly the Joktan of Genesis x., a comparatively modern document, B.C. 700?); and the Musta’aribah those descended from Adnán the origin of Arab genealogy. And, lastly, are the “Arab al-Musta’ajimah,” barbarised Arabs, like the present population of Meccah and Al–Medinah. Besides these there are other tribes whose origin is still unknown, such as the Mahrah tribes of Hazramaut, the “Akhdám” (=serviles) of Oman (Maskat); and the “Ebná” of Al–Yaman: Ibn Ishak supposes the latter to be descended from the Persian soldiers of Anushirwan who expelled the Abyssinian invader from Southern Arabia. (Pilgrimage, m., 31, etc.)

²⁰¹ Arab. “Amír al-Muuminín.” The title was assumed by the Caliph Omar to obviate the inconvenience of calling himself “Khalífah” (successor) of the Khalífah of the Apostle of Allah (i.e. Abu Bakr); which after a few generations would become impossible. It means “Emir (chief or prince) of the Muumins,” men who hold to the (true Moslem) Faith, the “Imán” (theory, fundamental articles) as opposed to the “Dín,” ordinance or practice of the religion. It once became a Wazirial time conferred by Sultan Malikshah (King King— king) on his Nizám al-Murk. (Richardson’s Dissert. [viii.)

The Second Kalandar’s Tale.

Know, O my lady, that I was not born one eyed and mine is a strange story; an it were graven with needle graver on the eye corners, it were a warner to whoso would be warned. I am a King, son of a King, and was brought up like a Prince. I learned intoning the Koran according the seven schools;²⁰² and I read all manner books, and held disputations on their contents with the doctors and men of science; moreover I studied star lore and the fair sayings of poets and I exercised myself in all branches of learning until I surpassed the people of my time; my skill in calligraphy exceeded that of all the scribes; and my fame was bruited abroad over all climes and cities, and all the kings learned to know my name. Amongst others the King of Hind heard of me and sent to my father to invite me to his court, with offerings and presents and rarities such as befit royalties. So my father fitted out six ships for me and my people; and we put to sea and sailed for the space of a full month till we made the land. Then we brought out the horses that were with us in the ships; and, after loading the camels with our presents for the Prince, we set forth inland. But we had marched only a little way, when behold, a dust cloud up flew, and grew until it walled²⁰³ the horizon from view. After an hour or so the veil lifted and discovered beneath it fifty horsemen, ravening lions to the sight, in steel armour dight. We observed them straightly and lo! they were cutters off of the highway, wild as wild Arabs. When they saw that we were only four and had with us but the ten camels carrying the presents, they dashed down upon us with lances at rest. We signed to them, with our fingers, as it were saying, “We be messengers of the great King of Hind, so harm us not!” but they answered on like wise, “We are not in his dominions to obey nor are we subject to his sway.” Then they set upon us and slew some of my slaves and put the lave to flight; and I also fled after I had gotten a wound, a grievous hurt, whilst the Arabs were taken up with the money and the presents which were with us. I went forth unknowing whither I went, having become mean as I was mighty; and I fared on until I came to the crest of a mountain where I took shelter for the night in a cave. When day arose I set out again, nor ceased after this fashion till I arrived at a fair city and a well filled. Now it was the season when Winter was turning away with his rime and to greet the world with his flowers came Prime, and the young blooms were springing and the streams flowed ringing, and the birds were sweetly singing, as saith the poet concerning a certain city when describing it:—

A place secure from every thought of fear
Safety and peace for ever lord it here:
Its beauties seem to beautify its sons
And as in Heaven its happy folk appear.

I was glad of my arrival for I was wearied with the way, and yellow of face for weakness and want; but my plight was pitiable and I knew not whither to betake me. So I accosted a Tailor sitting in his little shop and saluted him; he returned my salam, and bade me kindly welcome and wished me well and entreated me gently and asked me of the cause of my strangerhood. I told him all my past from first to last; and he was concerned on my account and said, “O youth, disclose not thy secret to any: the King of this city is the greatest enemy thy father hath, and there is blood wit²⁰⁴ between them and thou hast cause to fear for thy life.” Then he set meat and drink before me; and I ate and drank and he with me; and we conversed freely till night fall, when he cleared me a place in a corner of his shop and brought me a car pet and a coverlet. I tarried with him three days; at the end of which time he said to me, “Knowest thou no calling whereby to win thy living, O my son?” “I am learned in the law,” I replied, “and a doctor of doctrine; an adept in art and science, a mathematician and a notable penman.” He rejoined, “Thy calling is of no account in our city, where not a soul under standeth science or even writing or aught save money making.” Then said I, “By Allah, I know nothing but what I have mentioned;” and he answered, “Gird thy middle and take thee a hatchet and a cord, and go and hew wood in the wold for thy daily bread, till Allah send thee relief; and tell none who thou art lest they slay thee.” Then he bought me an axe and a rope and gave me in charge to certain wood cutters; and with these guardians I went forth into the forest, where I cut fuel wood the whole of my day and came back in the evening bearing my bundle on my head. I sold it for half a diner, with part of which I bought provision and laid by the rest. In such work I spent a whole year and when this was ended I went out one day, as was my wont, into the wilderness; and, wandering away from my companions, I chanced on a thickly grown lowland²⁰⁵ in which there was an abundance of wood. So I entered and I found the gnarled stump of a great tree and loosened the ground about it and shovelled away the earth. Presently my hatchet rang upon a copper ring; so I cleared away the soil and behold, the ring was attached to a wooden trap door. This I raised and there appeared beneath it a staircase. I descended the steps to the bottom and came to a door, which I opened and found myself in a noble hall strong of structure and beautifully built, where was a damsel like a pearl of great price, whose favour banished from my heart all grief and cark and care; and whose soft speech healed the soul in despair and captivated the wise and ware. Her figure measured five feet in height; her breasts were firm and upright; her cheek a very garden of delight; her colour lively bright; her face gleamed like dawn through curly tresses which gloomed like night, and above the snows of her bosom glittered teeth of a pearly white.²⁰⁶ As the poet said of one like her:—

Slim waisted loveling jetty hair encrowned
A wand of willow on a sandy mound:

And as saith another.—

Four things that meet not, save they here unite
To shed my heart blood and to rape my sprite:
Brilliantest forehead; tresses jetty bright;
Cheeks rosy red and stature beauty dight.

When I looked upon her I prostrated myself before Him who had created her, for the beauty and loveliness He had shaped in her, and she looked at me and said, “Art thou man or Jinni?” “I am a man,” answered I, and she, “Now who brought thee to this place where I have abided five and twenty years without even yet seeing man in it?” Quoth I (and indeed I found her words wonder sweet, and my heart was melted to the core by them), “O my lady, my good fortune led me hither for the dispelling of my cark and care.” Then I related to her all my mishap from first to last, and my case appeared to her exceeding grievous; so she wept and said, “I will tell thee my story in my turn. I am the daughter of the King Ifitamus, lord of the Islands of Abnus,²⁰⁷ who married me to my cousin, the son of my paternal uncle; but on my wedding night an Ifrit named Jirjís²⁰⁸ bin Rajmús, first cousin that is, mother’s sister’s son, of Iblís, the Foul Fiend, snatched me up and, flying away with me like a bird, set me down in this place, whither he conveyed all I needed of fine stuffs, raiment and jewels and furniture, and meat and drink and other else. Once in every ten days he comes here and lies a single night with me, and then wends his way, for he took me without the consent of his family; and he hath agreed with me that if ever I need him by night or by day, I have only to pass my hand over yonder two lines engraved upon the alcove, and he will appear to me before my fingers cease touching. Four days have now passed since he was here; and, as there remain six days before he come again, say me, wilt thou abide with me five days, and go hence the day before his coming?” I replied “Yes, and yes again! O rare, if all this be not a dream!” Hereat she was glad and, springing to her feet, seized my hand and carried me through an arched doorway to a Hammam bath, a fair hall and richly decorate. I doffed my clothes, and she doffed hers; then we bathed and she washed me; and when this was done we left the bath, and she seated me by her side upon a high divan, and brought me sherbet scented with musk. When we felt cool after the bath, she set food before me and we ate and fell to talking; but presently she said to me, “Lay thee down and take thy rest, for surely thou must be weary.” So I thanked her, my lady, and lay down and slept soundly, forgetting all that had happened to me. When I awoke I found her rubbing and shampooing my feet;²⁰⁹ so I again thanked her and blessed her and we sat for awhile talking. Said she, “By Allah, I was sad at heart, for that I have dwelt alone underground for these five and twenty years; and praise be to Allah, who hath sent me some one with whom I can converse!” Then she asked, “O youth, what sayest thou to wine?” and I answered, “Do as thou wilt.” Whereupon she went to a cupboard and took out a sealed flask of right old wine and set off the table with flowers and scented herbs and began to sing these lines:—

“Had we known of thy coming we fain had dispread
The cores of our hearts or the balls of our eyes;
Our cheeks as a carpet to greet thee had thrown
And our eyelids had strown for thy feet to betread.”

Now when she finished her verse I thanked her, for indeed love of her had gotten hold of my heart and my grief and anguish were gone. We sat at converse and carousel till nightfall, and with her I spent the night—such night never spent I in all my life! On the morrow delight followed delight till midday, by which time I had drunken wine so freely that I had lost my wits, and stood up, staggering to the right and to the left, and said “Come, O my charmer, and I will carry thee up from this underground vault and deliver thee from the spell of thy Jinni.” She laughed and replied “Content thee and hold thy peace: of every ten days one is for the Ifrit and the other nine are shine.” Quoth I (and in good sooth drink had got the better of me), “This very instant will I break down the alcove whereon is graven the talisman and summon the Ifrit that I may slay him, for it is a practice of mine to slay If rite!” When she heard my words her colour waxed wan and she said, “By Allah, do not!” and she began repeating:—

“This is a thing wherein destruction lies
I rede thee shun it an thy wits be wise.”

And these also:—

“O thou who seekest severance, draw the rein
Of thy swift steed nor seek o’ermuch t’ advance;
Ah stay! for treachery is the rule of life,
And sweets of meeting end in severance.”

I heard her verse but paid no heed to her words, nay, I raised my foot and administered to the alcove a mighty kick And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

²⁰² This may also mean “according to the seven editions of the Koran “ the old revisions and so forth (Sale, Sect. iii. and D’Herbelot “Alcoran.”) The schools of the “Mukri,” who teach the right pronunciation wherein a mistake might be sinful, are seven, Harnzah, Ibn Katír, Ya’akúb, Ibn Amir, Kisái, Asim and Hafs, the latter being the favourite with the Hanafis and the only one now generally known in Al–Islam.

²⁰³ Arab. “Sadd”=wall, dyke, etc. the “bund” or “band” of Anglo–India. Hence the “Sadd” on the Nile, the banks of grass and floating islands which “wall” the stream. There are few sights more appalling than a sandstorm in the desert, the “Zauba’ah” as the Arabs call it. Devils, or pillars of sand, vertical and inclined, measuring a thousand feet high, rush over the plain lashing the sand at their base like a sea surging under a furious whirlwind; shearing the grass clean away from the roots, tearing up trees, which are whirled like leaves and sticks in air and sweeping away tents and houses as if they were bits of paper. At last the columns join at the top and form, perhaps three thousand feet above the earth, a gigantic cloud of yellow sand which obliterates not only the horizon but even the mid-day sun. These sand-spouts are the terror of travellers. In Sind and the Punjab we have the dust-storm which for darkness, I have said, beats the blackest London fog.

²⁰⁴ Arab. Sár = the vendetta, before mentioned, as dreaded in Arabia as in Corsica.

²⁰⁵ Arab. “Ghútah,” usually a place where irrigation is abundant. It especially applies (in books) to the Damascus-plain because “it abounds with water and fruit trees.” The Ghutah is one of the four earthly paradises, the others being Basrah (Bassorah), Shiraz and Samarcand. Its peculiarity is the likeness to a seaport the Desert which rolls up almost to its doors being the sea and its ships being the camels. The first Arab to whom we owe this admirable term for the “Companion of Job” is “Tarafah” one of the poets of the Suspended Poems: he likens (v. v. 3, 4) the camels which bore away his beloved to ships sailing from Aduli. But “ships of the desert” is doubtless a term of the highest antiquity.

²⁰⁶ The exigencies of the “Saj’a,” or rhymed prose, disjoint this and many similar pas. sages.

²⁰⁷ The “Ebony” Islands; Scott’s “Isle of Ebene,” i., 217.

²⁰⁸ “Jarjarís” in the Bul. Edit.

²⁰⁹ Arab. “Takbís.” Many Easterns can hardly sleep without this kneading of the muscles, this “rubbing” whose hygienic properties England is now learning.

When it was the Thirteenth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the second Kalandar thus continued his tale to the lady:—But when, O my mistress, I kicked that alcove with a mighty kick, behold, the air starkened and darkened and thundered and lightened; the earth trembled and quaked and the world became invisible. At once the fumes of wine left my head: I cried to her, “What is the matter?” and she replied, “The Ifrit is upon us! did I not warn thee of this? By Allah, thou hast brought ruin upon me; but fly for thy life and go up by the way thou camest down!” So I fled up the staircase; but, in the excess of my fear, I forgot sandals and hatchet. And when I had mounted two steps I turned to look for them, and lo! I saw the earth cleave asunder, and there arose from it an Ifrit, a monster of hideousness, who said to the damsel “What trouble and posher be this wherewith thou disturbest me? What mishap hath betided thee?” “No mishap hath befallen me” she answered, “save that my breast was straitened²¹⁰ and my heart heavy with sadness! so I drank a little wine to broaden it and to hearten myself; then I rose to obey a call of Nature, but the wine had gotten into my head and I fell against the alcove.” “Thou liest, like the whore thou art!” shrieked the Ifrit; and he looked around the hall right and left till he caught sight of my axe and sandals and said to her, “What be these but the belongings of some mortal who hath been in thy society?” She answered, “I never set eyes upon them till this moment: they must have been brought by thee hither cleaving to thy garments.” Quoth the Ifrit, “These words are absurd; thou harlot! thou strumpet!” Then he stripped her stark naked and, stretching her upon the floor, bound her hands and feet to four stakes, like one crucified;²¹¹ and set about torturing and trying to make her confess. I could not bear to stand listening to her cries and groans; so I climbed the stair on the quake with fear; and when I reached the top I replaced the trap door and covered it with earth. Then repented I of what I had done with penitence exceeding; and thought of the lady and her beauty and loveliness, and the tortures she was suffering at the hands of the accursed Ifrit, after her quiet life of five and twenty years; and how all that had happened to her was for the cause of me. I bethought me of my father and his kingly estate and how I had become a woodcutter; and how, after my time had been awhile serene, the world had again waxed turbid and troubled to me. So I wept bitterly and repeated this couplet:—

What time Fate’s tyranny shall most oppress thee
Perpend! one day shall joy thee, one distress thee!

Then I walked till I reached the home of my friend, the Tailor, whom I found most anxiously expecting me; indeed he was, as the saying goes, on coals of fire for my account. And when he saw me he said, “All night long my heart hath been heavy, fearing for thee from wild beasts or other mischances. Now praise be to Allah for thy safety!” I thanked him for his friendly solicitude and, retiring to my corner, sat pondering and musing on what had befallen me; and I blamed and chided myself for my meddlesome folly and my frowardness in kicking the alcove. I was calling myself to account when behold, my friend, the Tailor, came to me and said, “O youth, in the shop there is an old man, a Persian,²¹² who seeketh thee: he hath thy hatchet and thy sandals which he had taken to the woodcutters,²¹³ saying, “I was going out at what time the Mu’azzin began the call to dawn prayer, when I chanced upon these things and know not whose they are; so direct me to their owner.” The woodcutters recognised thy hatchet and directed him to thee: he is sitting in my shop, so fare forth to him and thank him and take shine axe and sandals.” When I heard these words I turned yellow with fear and felt stunned as by a blow; and, before I could recover myself, lo! the floor of my private room clove asunder, and out of it rose the Persian who was the Ifrit. He had tortured the lady with exceeding tortures, natheless she would not confess to him aught; so he took the hatchet and sandals and said to her, “As surely as I am Jirjis of the seed of Iblis, I will bring thee back the owner of this and these!”²¹⁴ Then he went to the woodcutters with the presence aforesaid and, being directed to me, after waiting a while in the shop till the fact was confirmed, he suddenly snatched me up as a hawk snatcheth a mouse and dew high in air; but presently descended and plunged with me under the earth (I being aswoon the while), and lastly set me down in the subterranean palace wherein I had passed that blissful night. And there I saw the lady stripped to the skin, her limbs bound to four stakes and blood welling from her sides. At the sight my eyes ran over with tears; but the Ifrit covered her person and said, “O wanton, is not this man thy lover?” She looked upon me and replied, “I wot him not nor have I ever seen him before this hour!” Quoth the Ifrit, “What! this torture and yet no confessing;” and quoth she,“I never saw this man in my born days, and it is not lawful in Allah’s sight to tell lies on him.” “If thou know him not,” said the Ifrit to her, “take this sword and strike off his head.’’²¹⁵ She hent the sword in hand and came close up to me; and I signalled to her with my eyebrows, my tears the while flowing adown my cheeks. She understood me and made answer, also by signs, “How couldest thou bring all this evil upon me?” and I rejoined after the same fashion, “This is the time for mercy and forgiveness.” And the mute tongue of my case²¹⁶ spake aloud saying:—

Mine eyes were dragomans for my tongue betted
And told full clear the love I fain would hide:
When last we met and tears in torrents railed
For tongue struck dumb my glances testified:
She signed with eye glance while her lips were mute
I signed with fingers and she kenned th’ implied:
Our eyebrows did all duty ‘twixt us twain;
And we being speechless Love spake loud and plain.

Then, O my mistress, the lady threw away the sword and said, “How shall I strike the neck of one I wot not, and who hath done me no evil? Such deed were not lawful in my law!” and she held her hand. Said the Ifrit, “’Tis grievous to thee to slay thy lover; and, because he hath lain with thee, thou endurest these torments and obstinately refusest to confess. After this it is clear to me that only like loveth and pitieth like.” Then he turned to me and asked me, “O man, haply thou also cost not know this woman;” whereto I answered, “And pray who may she be? assuredly I never saw her till this instant.” “Then take the sword,” said he “and strike off her head and I will believe that thou wottest her not and will leave thee free to go, and will not deaf ‘hardly with thee.” I replied, “That will I do;” and, taking the sword went forward sharply and raised my hand to smite. But she signed to me with her eyebrows, “Have I failed thee in aught of love; and is it thus that thou requirest me?” I understood what her looks implied and answered her with an eye-glance, “I will sacrifice my soul for thee.” And the tongue of the case wrote in our hearts these lines:—

How many a lover with his eyebrows speaketh
To his beloved, as his passion pleadeth:
With flashing eyne his passion he inspireth
And well she seeth what kits pleading needeth.
How sweet the look when each on other gazeth;
And with what swiftness and how sure it speedeth:
And this with eyebrows all his passion writeth;
And that with eyeballs all his passion readeth.

Then my eyes filled with tears to overflowing and I cast the sword from my hand saying, “O mighty Ifrit and hero, if a woman lacking wits and faith deem it unlawful to strike off my head, how can it be lawful for me, a man, to smite her neck whom I never saw in my whole life. I cannot do such misdeed though thou cause me drink the cup of death and perdition.” Then said the Ifrit, “Ye twain show the good understanding between you; but I will let you see how such doings end.” He took the sword, and struck off the lady’s hands first, with four strokes, and then her feet; whilst I looked on and made sure of death and she farewelled me with her dying eyes. So the Ifrit cried at her, “Thou whorest and makest me a wittol with shine eyes;” and struck her so that her head went flying. Then he turned to me and said, “O mortal, we have it in our law that, when the wife committeth advowtry it is lawful for us to slay her. As for this damsel I snatched her away on her bride-night when she was a girl of twelve and she knew no one but myself. I used to come to her once every ten days and lie with her the night, under the semblance of a man, a Persian; and when I was well assured that she had cuckolded me, I slew her. But as for thee I am not well satisfied that thou hast wronged me in her; nevertheless I must not let thee go unharmed; so ask a boon of me and I will grant it.” Then I rejoiced, O my lady, with ex ceeding joy and said, “What boon shall I crave of thee?” He replied, “Ask me this boon; into what shape I shall bewitch thee; wilt thou be a dog, or an ass or an ape?” I rejoined (and indeed I had hoped that mercy might be shown me), “By Allah, spare me, that Allah spare thee for sparing a Moslem and a man who never wronged thee.” And I humbled myself before him with exceeding humility, and remained standing in his presence, saying, “I am sore oppressed by circumstance.” He replied “Talk me no long talk, it is in my power to slay thee; but I give thee instead thy choice.” Quoth I, “O thou Ifrit, it would besit thee to pardon me even as the Envied pardoned the Envier.” Quoth he, “And how was that?” and I began to tell him

²¹⁰ The converse of the breast being broadened, the drooping, “draggle-tail” gait compared with the head held high and the chest inflated.

²¹¹ This penalty is mentioned in the Koran (chaps. v.) as fit for those who fight against Allah and his Apostle, but commentators are not agreed if the sinners are first to be put to death or to hang on the cross till they die. Pharaoh (chaps. xx.) threatens to crucify his magicians on palm-trees, and is held to be the first crucifier.

²¹² Arab. “‘Ajami”=foreigner, esp. a Persian: the latter in The Nights is mostly a villain. I must here remark that the contemptible condition of Persians in Al–Hijáz (which I noted in 1852, Pilgrimage, i., 327) has completely changed. They are no longer, “The slippers of All and hounds of Omar:” they have learned the force of union and now, instead of being bullied, they bully.

²¹³ The Calc. Edit. turns into Tailors (Khayyátín) and Torrens does not see the misprint.

²¹⁴ i.e. Axe and sandals.

²¹⁵ Lit. “Strike his neck.”

²¹⁶ A phrase which will frequently recur; meaning the situation suggested such words a these.

The Tale of the Envier and the Envied.

They relate, O Ifrit, that in a certain city were two men who dwelt in adjoining houses, having a common party wall; and one of them envied the other and looked on him with an evil eye,²¹⁷ and did his utmost endeavour to injure him; and, albeit at all times he was jealous of his neighbour, his malice at last grew on him till he could hardly eat or enjoy the sweet pleasures of sleep. But the Envied did nothing save prosper; and the more the other strove to injure him, the more he got and gained and throve. At last the malice of his neighbour and the man’s constant endeavour to work him a harm came to his knowledge; so he said, “By Allah! God’s earth is wide enough for its people;” and, leaving the neighbourhood, he repaired to another city where he bought himself a piece of land in which was a dried up draw well,²¹⁸ old and in ruinous condition. Here he built him an oratory and, furnishing it with a few necessaries, took up his abode therein, and devoted himself to prayer and worshipping Allah Almighty; and Fakirs and holy mendicants docked to him from all quarters; and his fame went abroad through the city and that country side. Presently the news reached his envious neighbour, of what good fortune had befallen him and how the city notables had become his disciples; so he travelled to the place and presented himself at the holy man’s hermitage, and was met by the Envied with welcome and greeting and all honour. Then quoth the Envier, “I have a word to say to thee; and this is the cause of my faring hither, and I wish to give thee a piece of good news; so come with me to thy cell.” Thereupon the Envied arose and took the Envier by the hand, and they went in to the inmost part of the hermitage; but the Envier said, “Bid thy Fakirs retire to their cells, for I will not tell thee what I have to say, save in secret where none may hear us.” Accordingly the Envied said to his Fakirs, “Retire to your private cells;” and, when all had done as he bade them, he set out with his visitor and walked a little way until the twain reached the ruinous old well. And as they stood upon the brink the Envier gave the Envied a push which tumbled him headlong into it, unseen of any; whereupon he fared forth, and went his ways, thinking to have had slain him. Now this well happened to be haunted by the Jann who, seeing the case, bore him up and let him down little by little, till he reached the bottom, when they seated him upon a large stone. Then one of them asked his fellows, “Wot ye who be this man?” and they answered, “Nay.” “This man,” continued the speaker, “is the Envied hight who, flying from the Envier, came to dwell in our city, and here founded this holy house, and he hath edified us by his litanies²¹⁹ and his lections of the Koran; but the Envier set out and journeyed till he rejoined him, and cunningly contrived to deceive him and cast him into the well where we now are. But the fame of this good man hath this very night come to the Sultan of our city who designeth to visit him on the morrow on account of his daughter.” “What aileth his daughter?” asked one, and another answered “She is possessed of a spirit; for Maymun, son of Damdam, is madly in love with her; but, if this pious man knew the remedy, her cure would be as easy as could be.” Hereupon one of them inquired, “And what is the medicine?” and he replied, “The black tom cat which is with him in the oratory hath, on the end of his tail, a white spot, the size of a dirham; let him pluck seven white hairs from the spot, then let him fumigate her therewith and the Marid will flee from her and not return; so she shall be sane for the rest of her life.” All this took place, O Ifrit, within earshot of the Envied who listened readily. When dawn broke and morn arose in sheen and shone, the Fakirs went to seek the Shaykh and found him climbing up the wall of the well; whereby he was magnified in their eyes.²²⁰ Then, knowing that naught save the black tomcat could supply him with the remedy required, he plucked the seven tail hairs from the white spot and laid them by him; and hardly had the sun risen ere the Sultan entered the hermitage, with the great lords of his estate, bidding the rest of his retinue to remain standing outside. The Envicd gave him a hearty welcome, and seating him by his side asked him, “Shall I tell thee the cause of thy coming?” The King answered, “Yes.” He continued, “Thou hast come upon pretext of a visitation;²²¹ but it is in thy heart to question me of thy daughter.” Replied the King, ” ’Tis even so, O thou holy Shaykh;” and the Envied continued, “Send and fetch her, and I trust to heal her forthright (an such it be the will of Allah!)” The King in great joy sent for his daughter, and they brought her pinioned and fettered. The Envied made her sit down behind a curtain and taking out the hairs fumigated her therewith; whereupon that which was in her head cried out and departed from her. The girl was at once restored to her right mind and veiling her face, said, “What hath happened and who brought me hither?” The Sultan rejoiced with a joy that nothing could exceed, and kissed his daughter’s eyes,²²² and the holy man’s hand; then, turning to his great lords, he asked, “How say ye! What fee deserveth he who hath made my daughter whole?” and all answered, “He deserveth her to wife;” and the King said, “Ye speak sooth!” So he married him to her and the Envied thus became son in law to the King. And after a little the Wazir died and the King said, “Whom can I make Minister in his stead?” “Thy son in law,” replied the courtiers. So the Envied became a Wazir; and after a while the Sultan also died and the lieges said, “Whom shall we make King?” and all cried, “The Wazir.” So the Wazir was forthright made Sultan, and he became King regnant, a true ruler of men. One day as he had mounted his horse; and, in the eminence of his kinglihood, was riding amidst his Emirs and Wazirs and the Grandees of his realm his eye fell upon his old neighbour, the Envier, who stood afoot on his path; so he turned to one of his Ministers, and said, “Bring hither that man and cause him no affright.” The Wazir brought him and the King said, “Give him a thousand miskals²²³ of gold from the treasury, and load him ten camels with goods for trade, and send him under escort to his own town.” Then he bade his enemy farewell and sent him away and forbore to punish him for the many and great evils he had done. See, O Ifrit, the mercy of the Envied to the Envier, who had hated him from the beginning and had borne him such bitter malice and never met him without causing him trouble; and had driven him from house and home, and then had journeyed for the sole purpose of taking his life by throwing him into the well. Yet he did not requ ite his injurious dealing, but forgave him and was bountiful to him.²²⁴ Then I wept before him, O my lady, with sore weeping, never was there sorer, and I recited:—

“Pardon my fault, for ’tis the wise man’s wont
All faults to pardon and revenge forgo:
In sooth all manner faults in me contain
Then deign of goodness mercy grace to show:
Whoso imploreth pardon from on High
Should hold his hand from sinners here below.”

Said the Ifrit, “Lengthen not thy words! As to my slaying thee fear it not, and as to my pardoning thee hope it not; but from my bewitching thee there is no escape.” Then he tore me from the ground which closed under my feet and hew with me into the firmament till I saw the earth as a large white cloud or a saucer²²⁵ in the midst of the waters. Presently he set me down on a moun fain, and taking a little dust, over which he muttered some magical words, sprinkled me therewith, saying, “Quit that shape and take thou the shape of an ape!” And on the instant I became an ape, a tail less baboon, the son of a century²²⁶. Now when he had left me and I saw myself in this ugly and hateful shape, I wept for myself, but resigned my soul to the tyranny of Time and Circumstance, well weeting that Fortune is fair and constant to no man. I descended the mountain and found at the foot a desert plain, long and broad, over which I travelled for the space of a month till my course brought me to the brink of the briny sea.²²⁷ After standing there awhile, I was ware of a ship in the offing which ran before a fair wind making for the shore. I hid myself behind a rock on the beach and waited till the ship drew near, when I leaped on board. I found her full of merchants and passengers and one of them cried, “O Captain, this ill omened brute will bring us ill luck!” and another said, “Turn this ill omened beast out from among us;” the Captain said, “Let us kill it!” another said, “Slay it with the sword;” a third, “Drown it;” and a fourth, “Shoot it with an arrow.” But I sprang up and laid hold of the Rais’s²²⁸ skirt, and shed tears which poured down my chops. The Captain took pity on me, and said, “O merchants! this ape hath appealed to me for protection and I will protect him; henceforth he is under my charge: so let none do him aught hurt or harm, otherwise there will be bad blood between us.” Then he entreated me kindly and whatsoever he said I understood and ministered to his every want and served him as a servant, albeit my tongue would not obey my wishes; so that he came to love me. The vessel sailed on, the wind being fair, for the space of fifty days; at the end of which we cast anchor under the walls of a great city wherein was a world of people, especially learned men, none could tell their number save Allah. No sooner had we arrived than we were visited by certain Mameluke officials from the King of that city; who, after boarding us, greeted the merchants and giving them joy of safe arrival said, “Our King welcometh you, and sendeth you this roll of paper, whereupon each and every of you must write a line. For ye shall know that the King’s Minister, a calligrapher of renown, is dead, and the King hath sworn a solemn oath that he will make none Wazir in his stead who cannot write as well as he couId.” Hethen gave us the scroll which measured ten cubits long by a breadth of one, and each of the merchants who knew how to write wrote a line thereon, even to the last of them; after which I stood up (still in the shape of an ape) and snatched the roll out of their hands. They feared lest I should tear it or throw it overboard; so they tried to stay me and scare me, but I signed to them that i could write, whereat all marvelled, saying, “We never yet saw an, ape write.” And the Captain cried, “Let him write; and if he scribble and scrabble we will kick him out and kill him; but if he; write fair and scholarly I will adopt him as my son; for surely I never yet saw a more intelligent and well mannered monkey than he. Would Heaven my real son were his match in morals and manners.” I took the reed, and stretching out my paw, dipped it in ink and wrote, in the hand used for letters,²²⁹ these two couplets:—

Time hath recorded gifts she gave the great;
But none recorded shine which be far higher
Allah ne’er orphan men by loss of thee
Who be of Goodness mother. Bounty’s sire.

And I wrote in Rayháni or larger letters elegantly curved²³⁰:—

Thou hast a reed²³¹ of rede to every land,
Whose driving causeth all the world to thrive;
Nil is the Nile of Misraim by thy boons
Who makest misery smile with fingers five

Then I wrote in the Suls²³² character:—

There be no writer who from Death shall fleet,
But what his hand hath writ men shall repeat:
Write, therefore, naught save what shall serve thee when
Thou see’s on Judgment–Day an so thou see’s!

Then I wrote in the character Naskh²³³:—

When to sore parting Fate our love shall doom,
To distant life by Destiny decreed,
We cause the inkhorn’s lips to ‘plain our pains,
And tongue our utterance with the talking reed.

And I wrote in the Túmár character²³⁴:—

Kingdom with none endures; if thou deny
This truth, where be the Kings of earlier earth?
Set trees of goodliness while rule endures,
And when thou art fallen they shall tell thy worth.

And I wrote in the character Muhakkak²³⁵:—

When oped the inkhorn of thy wealth and fame
Take ink of generous heart and gracious hand;
Write brave and noble deeds while write thou can
And win thee praise from point of pen and brand.

Then I gave the scroll to the officials and, after we all had written our line, they carried it before the King. When he saw the paper no writing pleased him save my writing; and he said to the assembled courtiers, “Go seek the writer of these lines and dress him in a splendid robe of honour; then mount him on a she mule,²³⁶ let a band of music precede him and bring him to the presence.” At these words they smiled and the King was wroth with them and cried, “O accursed! I give you an order and you laugh at me?” “O King,” replied they, “if we laugh ’tis not at thee and not without a cause.” “And what is it?” asked he; and they answered, “O King, thou orderest us to bring to thy presence the man who wrote these lines; now the truth is that he who wrote them is not of the sons of Adam,²³⁷ but an ape, a tail-less baboon, belonging to the ship captain.” Quoth he, “Is this true that you say?” Quoth they, “Yea! by the rights of thy munificence!” The King marvelled at their words and shook with mirth and said, “I am minded to buy this ape of the Captain.” Then he sent messengers to the ship with the mule, the dress, the guard and the state drums, saying, “Not the less do you clothe him in the robe of honour and mount him on the mule and let him be surrounded by the guards and preceded by the band of music.” They came to the ship and took me from the Captain and robed me in the robe of honour and, mounting me on the she mule, carried me in state procession through the streets’, whilst the people were amazed and amused. And folk said to one another, “Halloo! is our Sultan about to make an ape his Minister?”; and came all agog crowding to gaze at me, and the town was astir and turned topsy turvy on my account. When they brought me up to the King and set me in his presence, I kissed the ground before him three times, and once before the High Chamberlain and great officers, and he bade me be seated, and I sat respectfully on shins and knees,²³⁸ and all who were present marvelled at my fine manners, and the King most of all. Thereupon he ordered the lieges to retire; and, when none remained save the King’s majesty, the Eunuch on duty and a little white slave, he bade them set before me the table of food, con taining all manner of birds, whatever hoppeth and flieth and treadeth in nest, such as quail and sand grouse. Then he signed me to eat with him; so I rose and kissed ground before him, then sat me down and ate with him. And when the table was removed I washed my hands in seven waters and took the reed-case and reed; and wrote instead of speaking these couplets:—

Wail for the little partridges on porringer and plate;
Cry for the ruin of the fries and stews well marinate:
Keen as I keen for loved, lost daughters of the Katá-grouse,²³⁹
And omelette round the fair enbrowned fowls agglomerate:
O fire in heart of me for fish, those deux poissons I saw,
Bedded on new made scones²⁴⁰ and cakes in piles to laniate.
For thee, O vermicelli! aches my very maw! I hold
Without thee every taste and joy are clean annihilate
Those eggs have rolled their yellow eyes in torturing pains of fire
Ere served with hash and fritters hot, that delicatest cate.
Praised be Allah for His baked and roast and ah! how good
This pulse, these pot-herbs steeped in oil with eysill combinate!
When hunger sated was, I elbow-propt fell back upon
Meat pudding²⁴¹ wherein gleamed the bangles that my wits amate.
Then woke I sleeping appetite to eat as though in sport
Sweets from broceded trays and kickshaws most elaborate.
Be patient, soul of me! Time is a haughty, jealous wight;
Today he seems dark-lowering and tomorrow fair to sight.²⁴²

Then I rose and seated myself at a respectful distance while the King read what I had written, and marvelled, exclaiming, “O the miracle, that an ape should be gifted with this graceful style and this power of penmanship! By Allah, ’tis a wonder of wonders!” Presently they set before the King choice wines in flagons of glass and he drank: then he passed on the cup to me; and I kissed the ground and drank and wrote on it:—

With fire they boiled me to loose my tongue,²⁴³
And pain and patience gave for fellowship:
Hence comes it hands of men upbear me high
And honey dew from lips of maid I sip!

And these also:—

Morn saith to Night, “withdraw and let me shine;”
So drain we draughts that dull all pain and pine:²⁴⁴
I doubt, so fine the glass, the wine so clear,
If ’tis the wine in glass or glass in twine.

The King read my verse and said with a sigh, “Were these gifts²⁴⁵ in a man, he would excel all the folk of his time and age!” Then he called for the chess board, and said, “Say, wilt thou play with me?”; and I signed with my head, “Yes.” Then I came forward and ordered the pieces and played with him two games, both of which I won. He was speechless with surprise; so I took the pen case and, drawing forth a reed, wrote on the board these two couplets:—

Two hosts fare fighting thro’ the livelong day
Nor is their battling ever finished,
Until, when darkness girdeth them about,
The twain go sleeping in a single bed.²⁴⁶

The King read these lines with wonder and delight and said to his Eunuch,²⁴⁷ “O Mukbil, go to thy mistress, Sitt al-Husn,²⁴⁸ and say her, ‘Come, speak the King who biddeth thee hither to take thy solace in seeing this right wondrous ape!”’ So the Eunuch went out and presently returned with the lady who, when she saw me veiled her face and said, “O my father! hast thou lost all sense of honour? How cometh it thou art pleased to send for me and show me to strange men?” “O Sitt al-Husn,” said he, “no man is here save this little foot page and the Eunuch who reared thee and I, thy father. Prom whom, then, cost thou veil thy face?” She answered, “This whom thou deemest an ape is a young man, a clever and polite, a wise and learned and the son of a King; but he is ensorcelled and the Ifrit Jirjaris, who is of the seed of Iblis, cast a spell upon him, after putting to death his own wife the daughter of King Ifitamus lord of the Islands of Abnus.” The King marvelled at his daughter’s words and, turning to me, said, “Is this true that she saith of thee?”; and I signed by a nod of my head the answer, “Yea, verily;” and wept sore. Then he asked his daughter, “Whence knewest thou that he is ensorcelled?”; and she answered, “O my dear papa, there was with me in my childhood an old woman, a wily one and a wise and a witch to boot, and she taught me the theory of magic and its practice; and I took notes in writing and therein waxed perfect, and have committed to memory an hundred and seventy chapters of egro mantic formulas, by the least of which I could transport the stones of thy city behind the Mountain Kaf and the Circum ambient Main,²⁴⁹ or make its site an abyss of the sea and its people fishes swimming in the midst of it.” “O my daughter,” said her father, “I conjure thee, by my life, disenchant this young man, that I may make him my Wazir and marry thee to him, for indeed he is an ingenious youth and a deeply learned.” “With joy and goodly gree,” she replied and, hending in hand an iron knife whereon was inscribed the name of Allah in Hebrew characters, she described a wide circle—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

²¹⁷ The smiter with the evil eye is called “A’in” and the person smitten “Ma’ím” or “Ma’ún.”

²¹⁸ Arab. “Sákiyah,” the well-known Persian wheel with pots and buckets attached to the tire. It is of many kinds, the boxed, etc., etc., and it is possibly alluded to in the “pitcher broken at the fountain” (Eccleslastes xii. 6) an accident often occurring to the modern “Noria.” Travellers mostly abuse its “dismal creaking” and “mournful monotony”: I have defended the music of the water-wheel in Pilgrimage ii. 198.

²¹⁹ Arab. “Zikr” lit. remembering, mentioning (i. c. the names of Allah), here refers to the meetings of religious for devotional exercises; the “Zikkirs,” as they are called, mostly standing or sitting in a circle while they ejaculate the Holy Name. These “rogations” are much affected by Darwayshes, or begging friars, whom Europe politely divides Unto “dancing” and “howling”; and, on one occasion, greatly to the scandal of certain Engländerinns to whom I was showing the Ezbekiyah I joined the ring of “howlers.” Lane (Mod. Egypt, see index) is profuse upon the subject of “Zikrs” and Zikkíts. It must not be supposed that they are uneducated men: the better class, however, prefers more privacy.

²²⁰ As they thought he had been there for prayer or penance.

²²¹ Arab. “Ziyárat,” a visit to a pious person or place.

²²² This is a paternal salute in the East where they are particular about the part kissed. A witty and not unusually gross Persian book, called the “Al-Námah” because all questions begin with “Al” (the Arab article) contains one “Al–Wajib al-busidan?” (what best deserves bussing?) and the answer is “Kus-i-nau-pashm,” (a bobadilla with a young bush).

²²³ A weight of 71–72 English grains in gold; here equivalent to the diner.

²²⁴ Compare the tale of The Three Crows in Gammer Grethel, Evening ix.

²²⁵ The comparison is peculiarly apposite; the earth seen from above appears hollow with a raised rim.

²²⁶ A hundred years old.

²²⁷ “Bahr” in Arab. means sea, river, piece of water; hence the adjective is needed.

²²⁸ The Captain or Master of the ship (not the owner). In Al–Yaman the word also means a “barber,” in virtue of the root, Rass, a head.

²²⁹ The text has “in the character Ruká’í,”,” or Riká’í,, the correspondence-hand.

²³⁰ A curved character supposed to be like the basil-leaf (rayhán). Richardson calls it “Rohani.”

²³¹ I need hardly say that Easterns use a reed, a Calamus (Kalam applied only to the cut reed) for our quills and steel pens.

²³² Famous for being inscribed on the Kiswah (cover) of Mohammed’s tomb; a large and more formal hand still used for engrossing and for mural inscriptions. Only seventy two varieties of it are known (Pilgrimage, ii., 82).

²³³ The copying and transcribing hand which is either Arabi or Ajami. A great discovery has been lately made which upsets all our old ideas of Cufic, etc. Mr. Löytved of Bayrut has found, amongst the Hauranic inscriptions, one in pure Naskhi, dating A. D. 568, or fifty years before the Hijrah; and it is accepted as authentic by my learned friend M. Ch. Clermont–Ganneau (p. 193, Pal. Explor. Fund. July 1884). In D’Herbelot and Sale’s day the Koran was supposed to have been written in rude characters, like those subsequently called “Cufic,” invented shortly before Mohammed’s birth by Murámir ibn Murrah of Anbar in Irák, introduced into Meccah by Bashar the Kindian, and perfected by Ibn Muklah (Al–Wazir, ob. A. H. 328=940). We must now change all that. See Catalogue of Oriental Caligraphs, etc., by G. P, Badger, London, Whiteley, 1885.

²³⁴ Capital and uncial letters; the hand in which the Ka’abah veil is inscribed (Pilgrimage iii. 299, 300).

²³⁵ A “Court hand” says Mr. Payne (i. 112): I know nothing of it. Other hands are: the Ta’alík; hanging or oblique, used for finer Mss. and having, according to Richardson, “the same analogy to the Naskhi as our Italic has to the Roman.” The Nasta’ lík (not Naskh–Ta’alik) much used in India, is, as the name suggests, a mixture of the Naskhi (writing of transactions) and the Ta’alik. The Shikastah (broken hand) everywhere represents our running hand and becomes a hard task to the reader. The Kirmá is another cursive character, mostly confined to the receipts and disbursements of the Turkish treasury. The Diváni, or Court (of Justice) is the official hand, bold and round. a business character, the lines often rising with a sweep or curve towards the (left) end. The Jáli or polished has a variety, the Jali–Ta’alik: the Sulsi (known in many books) is adopted for titles of volumes, royal edicts, diplomas and so forth; “answering much the same purpose as capitals with us, or the flourished letters in illuminated manuscripts” (Richardson) The Tughrái is that of the Tughrá, the Prince’s cypher or flourishing signature in ceremonial writings, and containing some such sentence as: Let this be executed. There are others e. g. Yákuti and Sirenkil known only by name. Finally the Maghribi (Moorish) hand differs in form and diacritical points from the characters used further east almost as much as German running hand does from English. It is curious that Richardson omits the Jali (intricate and convoluted) and the divisions of the Sulusí, Sulsi or Sulus (Thuluth) character, the Sulus al-Khafíf, etc.

²³⁶ Arab. “Baghlah”; the male (Bagful) is used only for loads. This is everywhere the rule: nothing is more unmanageable than a restive “Macho”, and he knows that he can always get you off his back when so minded. From “Baghlah” is derived the name of the native craft Anglo–Indicè a “Buggalow.”

²³⁷ In Heb. ““Ben— Adam” is any man opp. to “Beni ish” (Psalm iv. 3) =filii viri, not homines.

²³⁸ This posture is terribly trying to European legs; and few white men (unless brought up to it) can squat for any time on their heels. The ‘‘tailor-fashion,” with crossed legs, is held to be free and easy.

²³⁹ Arab. “Katá”=Pterocles Alchata, the well-known sand-grouse of the desert. It is very poor white flesh.

²⁴⁰ Arab. “Khubz” which I do not translate “cake” or ‘‘bread,’’ as thee would suggest the idea Of our loaf. The staff of life in the East is a thin flat circle of dough baked in the oven or on the griddle, and corresponding with the Scotch “scone,” the Spanish tortilla and the Australian “flap-jack.”

²⁴¹ Arab. “Harísah,” a favourite dish of wheat (or rice) boiled and reduced to a paste with shredded meat, spices and condiments. The “bangles” is a pretty girl eating with him.

²⁴² These lines are repeated with a difference in Night cccxxx. They affect Rims cars, out of the way, heavy rhymes: e. g. here Sakáríj (plur. of Sakrúj, platters, porringers); Tayáhíj (plur. of Tayhúj, the smaller caccabis-partridge); Tabáhíj (Persian Tabahjah, an me et or a stew of meat, onions, eggs, etc.) Ma’áríj (“in stepped piles” like the pyramids Lane ii 495, renders “on the stairs”); Makáríj (plur. of Makraj, a small pot); Damálíj (plur. of dumlúj, a bracelet, a bangle); Dayábíj (brocades) and Tafáríj (openings, enjoyments). In Night cccxxx. we find also Sikábíj (plur. of Sikbáj, marinated meat elsewhere explained); Faráríj (plur. of farrúj, a chicken, vulg. farkh) and Dakákíj (plur. of Gr. dakújah,, a small Jar). In the first line we have also (though not a rhyme) Gharánik Gr. , a crane, preserved in Romaic. The weeping and wailing are caused by the em remembrance that all these delicacies have been demolished like a Badawi camp.

²⁴³ This is the vinum coctum, the boiled wine, still a favourite in Southern Italy and Greece.

²⁴⁴ Eastern topers delight in drinking at dawn: upon this subject I shall have more to say in other Nights.

²⁴⁵ Arab. “Adab,” a crux to translators, meaning anything between good education and good manners. In mod. Turk. “Edibiyyet” (Adabiyat) = belles lettres and “Edebi’ or “Edíb” = a littérateur.

²⁴⁶ The Caliph Al–Maamún, who was a bad player, used to say, “I have the administration of the world and am equal to it, whereas I am straitened in the ordering of a space of two spans by two spans.” The “board” was then “a square field of well-dressed leather.”

²⁴⁷ The Rabbis (after Matth. xix. 12) count three kinds of Eunuchs; (1) Seris chammah=of the sun, i.e. natural, (2) Seris Adam=manufactured per homines; and (3) Seris Chammayim—of God (i.e.. religious abstainer). Seris (castrated) or Abd (slave) is the general Hebrew name.

²⁴⁸ The “Lady of Beauty.”

²⁴⁹ “Káf” has been noticed as the mountain which surrounds earth as a ring does the finger:: it is popularly used like our Alp and Alpine. The “circumambient Ocean” (Bahr al-muhit) is the Homeric Ocean-stream.

When it was the Fourteenth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Kalandar continued his tale thus:—O my lady, the King’s daughter hent in hand a knife whereon were inscribed Hebrew characters and described a wide circle in the midst of the palace hall, and therein wrote in Cufic letters mysterious names and talismans; and she uttered words and muttered charms, some of which we under stood and others we understood not. Presently the world waxed dark before our sight till we thought that the sky was falling upon our heads, and lo! the Ifrit presented himself in his own shape and aspect. His hands were like many pronged pitch forks, his legs like the masts of great ships, and his eyes like cressets of gleaming fire. We were in terrible fear of him but the King’s daughter cried at him, “No welcome to thee and no greeting, O dog!” whereupon he changed to the form of a lion and said, “O traitress, how is it thou hast broken the oath we sware that neither should contraire other!” “O accursed one,” answered she, “how could there be a compact between me and the like of thee?” Then said he, “Take what thou has brought on thy self;” and the lion opened his jaws and rushed upon her; but she was too quick for him; and, plucking a hair from her head, waved it in the air muttering over it the while; and the hair straightway became a trenchant sword blade, wherewith she smote the lion and cut him in twain. Then the two halves flew away in air and the head changed to a scorpion and the Princess became a huge serpent and set upon the accursed scorpion, and the two fought, coiling and uncoiling, a stiff fight for an hour at least. Then the scorpion changed to a vulture and the serpent became an eagle which set upon the vulture, and hunted him for an hour’s time, till he became a black tom cat, which miauled and grinned and spat. Thereupon the eagle changed into a piebald wolf and these two battled in the palace for a long time, when the cat, seeing himself overcome, changed into a worm and crept into a huge red pomegranate,²⁵⁰ which lay beside the jetting fountain in the midst of the palace hall. Whereupon the pomegranate swelled to the size of a water melon in air; and, falling upon the marble pavement of the palace, broke to pieces, and all the grains fell out and were scattered about till they covered the whole floor. Then the wolf shook himself and became a snow white cock, which fell to picking up the grains purposing not to leave one; but by doom of destiny one seed rolled to the fountain edge and there lay hid. The cock fell to crowing and clapping his wings and signing to us with his beak as if to ask, ‘ Are any grains left?” But we understood not what he meant, and he cried to us with so loud a cry that we thought the palace would fall upon us. Then he ran over all the floor till he saw the grain which had rolled to the fountain edge, and rushed eagerly to pick it up when behold, it sprang into the midst of the water and became a fish and dived to the bottom of the basin. Thereupon the cock changed to a big fish, and plunged in after the other, and the two disappeared for a while and lo! we heard loud shrieks and cries of pain which made us tremble. After this the Ifrit rose out of the water, and he was as a burning flame; casting fire and smoke from his mouth and eyes and nostrils. And immediately the Princess likewise came forth from the basin and she was one live coal of flaming lowe; and these two, she and he, battled for the space of an hour, until their fires entirely compassed them about and their thick smoke filled the palace. As for us we panted for breath, being well nigh suffocated, and we longed to plunge into the water fearing lest we be burnt up and utterly destroyed; and the King said, There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah the Glorious, the Great! Verily we are Allah’s and unto Him are we returning! Would Heaven I had not urged my daughter to attempt the disenchantment of this ape fellow, whereby I have imposed upon her the terrible task of fighting yon accursed Ifrit against whom all the Ifrits in the world could not prevail. And would Heaven we had never seen this ape, Allah never assain nor bless the day of his coming! We thought to do a good deed by him before the face of Allah,²⁵¹ and to release him from enchantment, and now we have brought this trouble and travail upon our heart.” But I, O my lady, was tongue tied and powerless to say a word to him. Suddenly, ere we were ware of aught, the Ifrit yelled out from under the flames and, coming up to us as we stood on the estrade, blew fire in our faces. The damsel overtook him and breathed blasts of fire at his face and the sparks from her and from him rained down upon us, and her sparks did us no harm, but one of his sparks alighted upon my eye and destroyed it making me a monocular ape; and another fell on the King’s face scorching the lower half, burning off his beard and mustachios and causing his under teeth to fall out; while a third alighted on the Castrato’s breast, killing him on the spot. So we despaired of life and made sure of death when lo! a voice repeated the saying, “Allah is most Highest! Allah is most Highest! Aidance and victory to all who the Truth believe; and disappointment and disgrace to all who the religion of Mohammed, the Moon of Faith, unbelieve.” The speaker was the Princess who had burnt the Ifrit, and he was become a heap of ashes. Then she came up to us and said, “Reach me a cup of water.” They brought it to her and she spoke over it words we understood not, and sprinkling me with it cried, “By virtue of the Truth, and by the Most Great name of Allah, I charge thee return to thy former shape.” And behold, I shook, and became a man as before, save that I had utterly lost an eye. Then she cried out, “The fire! The fire! O my dear papa an arrow from the accursed hath wounded me to the death, for I am not used to fight with the Jann; had he been a man I had slain him in the beginning. I had no trouble till the time when the pomegranate burst and the grains scattered, but I overlooked the seed wherein was the very life of the Jinni. Had I picked it up he had died on the spot, but as Fate and Fortune decreed, I saw it not; so he came upon me all unawares and there befel between him and me a sore struggle under the earth and high in air and in the water; and, as often as I opened on him a gate,²⁵² he opened on me another gate and a stronger, till at last he opened on me the gate of fire, and few are saved upon whom the door of fire openeth. But Destiny willed that my cunning prevail over his cunning; and I burned him to death after I vainly exhorted him to embrace the religion of al-Islam. As for me I am a dead woman; Allah supply my place to you!” Then she called upon Heaven for help and ceased not to implore relief from the fire; when lo! a black spark shot up from her robed feet to her thighs; then it flew to her bosom and thence to her face. When it reached her face she wept and said, “I testify that there is no god but the God and that Mahommed is the Apostle of God!” And we looked at her and saw naught but a heap of ashes by the side of the heap that had been the Ifrit. We mourned for her and I wished I had been in her place, so had I not seen her lovely face who had worked me such weal become ashes; but there is no gainsaying the will of Allah. When the King saw his daughter’s terrible death, he plucked out what was left of his beard and beat his face and rent his raiment; and I did as he did and we both wept over her. Then came in the Chamberlains and Grandees and were amazed to find two heaps of ashes and the Sultan in a fainting fit; so they stood round him till he revived and told them what had befallen his daughter from the If rit; whereat their grief was right grievous and the women and the slave girls shrieked and keened,²⁵³ and they continued their lamentations for the space of seven days. Moreover the King bade build over his daughter’s ashes a vast vaulted tomb, and burn therein wax tapers and sepulchral lamps: but as for the Ifrit’s ashes they scattered them on the winds, speeding them to the curse of Allah. Then the Sultan fell sick of a sickness that well nigh brought him to his death for a month’s space; and, when health returned to him and his beard grew again and he had been converted by the mercy of Allah to al-Islam, he sent for me and said, “O youth, Fate had decreed for us the happiest of lives, safe from all the chances and changes of Time, till thou camest to us, when troubles fell upon us. Would to Heaven we had never seen thee and the foul face of thee! For we took pity on thee and thereby we have lost our all. I have on thy account first lost my daughter who to me was well worth an hundred men, secondly I have suffered that which befel me by reason of the fire and the loss of my teeth, and my Eunuch also was slain. I blame thee not, for it was out of thy power to prevent this: the doom of Allah was on thee as well as on us and thanks be to the Almighty for that my daughter delivered thee, albeit thereby she lost her own life! Go forth now, O my son, from this my city, and suffice thee what hath befallen us through thee, even although ’twas decreed for us. Go forth in peace; and if I ever see thee again I will surely slay thee.” And he cried out at me. So I went forth from his presence, O my lady, weeping bitterly and hardly believing in my escape and knowing not whither I should wend. And I recalled all that had befallen me, my meeting the tailor, my love for the damsel in the palace beneath the earth, and my narrow escape from the Ifrit, even after he had determined to do me die; and how I had entered the city as an ape and was now leaving it a man once more. Then I gave thanks to Allah and said, “My eye and not my life!” and before leaving the place I entered the bath and shaved my poll and beard and mustachios and eye brows; and cast ashes on my head and donned the coarse black woollen robe of a Kalandar. Then I fared forth, O my lady, and every day I pondered all the calamities which had betided me, and I wept and repeated these couplets:—

“I am distraught, yet verily His ruth abides with me,
Tho’ round me gather hosts of ills, whence come I cannot see:
Patient I’ll be till Patience self with me impatient wax;
Patient for ever till the Lord fulfil my destiny:
Patient I’ll bide without complaint, a wronged and vanquish” man;
Patient as sunparcht wight that spans the desert’s sandy sea:
Patient I’ll be till Aloe’s²⁵⁴ self unwittingly allow
I’m patient under bitterer things than bitterest aloë:
No bitterer things than aloes or than patience for mankind,
Yet bitterer than the twain to me were Patience’ treachery:
My sere and seamed and seared brow would dragoman my sore
If soul could search my sprite and there unsecret secrecy:
Were hills to bear the load I bear they’d crumble ‘neath the weight,
‘Twould still the roaring wind, ‘twould quench the flame-tongue’s flagrancy,
And whoso saith the world is sweet certès a day he’ll see
With more than aloes’ bitterness and aloes’ pungency.”

Then I journeyed through many regions and saw many a city intending for Baghdad, that I might seek audience, in the House of Peace,²⁵⁵ with the Commander of the Faithful and tell him all that had befallen me. I arrived here this very night and found my brother in Allah, this first Kalandar, standing about as one perplexed; so I saluted him with “Peace be upon thee,” and entered into discourse with him. Presently up came our brother, this third Kalandar, and said to us, “Peace be with you! I am a stranger;” whereto we replied, “And we too be strangers, who have come hither this blessed night.” So we all three walked on together, none of us knowing the other’s history, till Destiny crave us to this door and we came in to you. Such then is my story and my reason for shaving my beard and mustachios, and this is what caused the loss of my eye. Said the house mistress, “Thy tale is indeed a rare; so rub thy head and wend thy ways;” but he replied, “I will not budge till I hear my companions’ stories.” Then came forward the third Kalandar, and said, “O illustrious lady! my history is not like that of these my comrades, but more wondrous and far more marvellous. In their case Fate and Fortune came down on them unawares; but I drew down destiny upon my own head and brought sorrow on mine own soul, and shaved my own beard and lost my own eye. Hear then

²⁵⁰ The pomegranate is probably chosen here because each fruit is supposed to contain one seed from Eden-garden. Hence a host of superstitions (Pilgrimage iii., 104) possibly connected with the Chaldaic–Babylonian god Rimmon or Ramanu. Hence Persephone or Ishtar tasted the “rich pomegranate’s seed.” Lenormant, loc. cit. pp. 166, 182.

²⁵¹ i.e. for the love of God—a favourite Moslem phrase.

²⁵² Arab. “Báb,” also meaning a chapter (of magic, of war, etc.), corresponding with the Persian “Dar” as in Sad-dar, the Hundred Doors. Here, however, it is figurative “I tried a new mode.” This scene is in the Mabinogion.

²⁵³ I use this Irish term = crying for the dead, as English wants the word for the præfica ,or myrialogist. The practice is not encouraged in Al–Islam; and Caliph Abu Bakr said, ; “Verily a corpse is sprinkled with boiling water by reason of the lamentations of the living, i.e. punished for not having taken measures to prevent their profitless lamentations. But the practice is from Negroland whence it reached Egypt, and the people have there developed a curious system in the “weeping-song” I have noted this in “The Lake Regions of Central Africa.” In Zoroastrianism (Dabistan, chaps. xcvii.) tears shed for the dead form a river in hell, black and frigid.

²⁵⁴ These lines are hardly translatable. Arab. “Sabr” means “patience” as well as “aloes,” hereby lending itself to a host of puns and double entendres more or less vile The aloe, according to Burckhardt, is planted in graveyards as a lesson of patience: it is also slung, like the dried crocodile, over house doors to prevent evil spirits entering: “thus hung without earth and water,” says Lane (M.E., chaps. xi.), “it will live for several years and even blossom. Hence (?) it is called Sabr, which signifies patience. But Sibr as well as Sabr (a root) means “long sufferance.” I hold the practice to be one of the many Inner African superstitions. The wild Gallas to the present day plant aloes on graves, and suppose that when the plant sprouts the deceased has been admitted to the gardens of Wák, the Creator. (Pilgrimage iii. 350.)

²⁵⁵ Every city in the East has its specific title: this was given to Baghdad either on account of its superior police or simply because it was the Capital of the Caliphate. The Tigris was also called the “River of Peace (or Security).”

The Third Kalandar’s Tale.

Know, O my lady, that I also am a King and the son of a King and my name is Ajíb son of Kazíb. When my father died I succeeded him; and I ruled and did justice and dealt fairly by all my lieges. I delighted in sea trips, for my capital stood on the shore, before which the ocean stretched far and wide; and near hand were many great islands with sconces and garrisons in the midst of the main. My fleet numbered fifty merchantmen, and as many yachts for pleasance, and an hundred and fifty sail ready fitted for holy war with the Unbelievers. It fortuned that I had a mind to enjoy myself on the islands aforesaid, so I took ship with my people in ten keel; and, carrying with me a month’s victual, I set out on a twenty days’ voyage. But one night a head wind struck us, and the sea rose against us with huge waves; the billows sorely buffetted us and a dense darkness settled round us. We gave ourselves up for lost and I said, “Whoso endangereth his days, e’en an he ‘scape deserveth no praise.” Then we prayed to Allah and besought Him; but the storm blasts ceased not to blow against us nor the surges to strike us till morning broke when the gale fell, the seas sank to mirrory stillness and the sun shone upon us kindly clear. Presently we made an island where we landed and cooked somewhat of food, and ate heartily and took our rest for a couple of days. Then we set out again and sailed other twenty days, the seas broadening and the land shrinking. Presently the current ran counter to us, and we found ourselves in strange waters, where the Captain had lost his reckoning, and was wholly bewildered in this sea; so said we to the look out man,²⁵⁶ “Get thee to the mast head and keep shine eyes open.” He swarmed up the mast and looked out and cried aloud, “O Rais, I espy to starboard something dark, very like a fish floating on the face of the sea, and to larboard there is a loom in the midst of the main, now black and now bright.” When the Captain heard the look out’s words he dashed his turband on the deck and plucked out his beard and beat his face saying, “Good news indeed! we be all dead men; not one of us can be saved.” And he fell to weeping and all of us wept for his weeping and also for our lives; and I said, “O Captain, tell us what it is the look out saw.” “O my Prince,” answered he, “know that we lost our course on the night of the storm, which was followed on the morrow by a two days’ calm during which we made no way; and we have gone astray eleven days reckoning from that night, with ne’er a wind to bring us back to our true course. To morrow by the end of the day we shall come to a mountain of black stone, hight the Magnet Mountain;²⁵⁷ for thither the cu rents carry us willy-nilly. As soon as we are under its lea, the ship’s sides will open and every nail in plank will fly out and cleave fast to the mountain; for that Almighty Allah hath gifted the loadstone with a mysterious virtue and a love for iron, by reason whereof all which is iron travelleth towards it; and on this mountain is much iron, how much none knoweth save the Most High, from the many vessels which have been lost there since the days of yore. The bright spot upon its summit is a dome of yellow laton from Andalusia, vaulted upon ten columns; and on its crown is a horseman who rideth a horse of brass and holdeth in hand a lance of laton; and there hangeth on his bosom a tablet of lead graven with names and talismans.” And he presently added, “And, O King, none destroyeth folk save the rider on that steed, nor will the egromancy be dispelled till he fall from his horse.’’²⁵⁸ Then, O my lady, the Captain wept with exceeding weeping and we all made sure of death doom and each and every one of us farewelled his friend and charged him with his last will and testament in case he might be saved. We slept not that night and in the morning we found ourselves much nearer the Loadstone Mountain, whither the waters crave us with a violent send. When the ships were close under its lea they opened and the nails flew out and all the iron in them sought the Magnet Mountain and clove to it like a network; so that by the end of the day we were all struggling in the waves round about the mountain. Some of us were saved, but more were drowned and even those who had escaped knew not one another, so stupefied were they by the beating of the billows and the raving of the winds. As for me, O my lady, Allah (be His name exalted!) preserved my life that I might suffer whatso He willed to me of hardship, misfortune and~calamity; for I scrambled upon a plank from one of the ships, and the wind and waters threw it at the feet of the Mountain. There I found a practicable path leading by steps carven out of the rock to the summit, and I called on the name of Allah Almighty”²⁵⁹—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

²⁵⁶ This is very characteristic: the passengers finding themselves in difficulties at once take command. See in my Pilgrimage (I. chaps. xi.) how we beat and otherwise maltreated the Captain of the “Golden Wire.”

²⁵⁷ The fable is probably based on the currents which, as in Eastern Africa, will carry a ship fifty miles a day out of her course. We first find it in Ptolemy (vii. 2) whose Maniólai Islands, of India extra Gangem, cause iron nails to fly out of ships, the effect of the Lapis Herculeus (Loadstone). Rabelais (v. c. 37) alludes to it and to the vulgar idea of magnetism being counteracted by Skordon (Scordon or garlic). Hence too the Adamant (Loadstone) Mountains of Mandeville (chaps. xxvii.) and the “Magnetic Rock” in Mr Puttock’s clever “Peter Wilkins.” I presume that the myth also arose from seeing craft built, as on the East African Coast, without iron nails. We shall meet with the legend again. The word Jabal (“Jebel” in Egypt) often occurs in these pages. The Arabs apply it to any rising ground or heap of rocks; so it is not always = our mountain. It has found its way to Europe e. g. Gibraltar and Monte Gibello (or Mongibel in poetry) “Mt. Ethne that men clepen Mounte Gybelle.” Other special senses of Jabal will occur.

²⁵⁸ As we learn from the Nubian Geographer the Arabs in early ages explored the Fortunate Islands (Jazírát al-Khálidát=Eternal Isles), or Canaries, on one of which were reported a horse and horseman in bronze with his spear pointing west. Ibn al-Ward) notes two images of hard stone, each an hundred cubits high, and upon the top of each a figure of copper pointing with its hand backwards, as though it would say:—Return for there is nothing behind me!” But this legend attaches to older doings. The 23rd Tobba (who succeeded Bilkis), Malik bin Sharhabíl, (or Sharabíl or Sharahíl) surnamed Náshir al-Ní‘am=scatterer of blessings, lost an army in attempting the Western sands and set up a statue of copper upon whose breast was inscribed in antique characters:—

There is no access behind me,
Nothing beyond,
(Saith) The Son of Sharabíl.

²⁵⁹ i.e. I exclaimed “Bismillah!”

When it was the Fifteenth Night,

She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the third Kalandar said to the lady (the rest of the party sitting fast bound and the slaves standing with swords drawn over their heads):—And after calling on the name of Almighty Allah and passionately beseeching Him, I breasted the ascent, clinging to the steps and notches hewn in the stone, and mounted little by little. And the Lord stilled the wind and aided me in the ascent, so that I succeeded in reaching the summit. There I found no resting place save the dome, which I entered, joying with exceeding joy at my escape; and made the Wuzu-ablution²⁶⁰ and prayed a two bow prayer,²⁶¹ a thanksgiving to God for my preservation. Then I fell asleep under the dome, and heard in my dream a mysterious Voice²⁶² saying, “O son of Khazib! when thou wakest from thy sleep dig under thy feet and thou shalt find a bow of brass and three leaden arrows, inscribed with talismans and characts. Take the bow and shoot the arrows at the horseman on the dome top and free mankind from this sore calamity. When thou hast shot him he shall fall into the sea, and the horse will also drop at thy feet: then bury it in the place of the bow. This done, the main will swell and rise till it is level with the mountain head, and there will appear on it a skiff carrying a man of laton (other than he thou shalt have shot) holding in his hand a pair of paddles. He will come to thee and do thou embark with him but beware of saying Bismillah or of otherwise naming Allah Almighty. He will row thee for a space of ten days, till he bring thee to certain Islands called the Islands of Safety, and thence thou shalt easily reach a port and find those who will convey thee to thy native land; and all this shall be fulfilled to thee so thou call not on the name of Allah.” Then I started up from my sleep in joy and gladness and, hastening to do the bidding of the mysterious Voice, found the bow and arrows and shot at the horseman and tumbled him into the main, whilst the horse dropped at my feet; so I took it and buried it. Presently the sea surged up and rose till it reached the top of the mountain; nor had I long to wait ere I saw a skiff in the offing coming towards me. I gave thanks to Allah; and, when the skiff came up to me, I saw therein a man of brass with a tablet of lead on his breast inscribed with talismans and characts; and I embarked without uttering a word. The boatman rowed on with me through the first day and the second and the third, in all ten whole days, till I caught sight of the Islands of Safety; whereat I joyed with exceeding joy and for stress of gladness exclaimed, “Allah! Allah! In the name of Allah! There is no god but the God and Allah is Almighty.’’²⁶³ Thereupon the skiff forthwith upset and cast me upon the sea; then it righted and sank deep into the depths. Now I am a fair swimmer, so I swam the whole day till nightfall, when my forearms and shoulders were numbed with fatigue and I felt like to die; so I testified to my faith, expecting naught but death. The sea was still surging under the violence of the winds, and presently there came a billow like a hillock; and, bearing me up high in air, threw me with a long cast on dry land, that His will might be fulfilled. I crawled up the beach and doffing my raiment wrung it out to dry and spread it in the sunshine: then I lay me down and slept the whole night. As soon as it was day, I donned my clothes and rose to look whither I should walk. Presently I came to a thicket of low trees; and, making a cast round it, found that the spot whereon I stood was an islet, a mere holm, girt on all sides by the ocean; whereupon I said to myself, “Whatso freeth me from one great calamity casteth me into a greater!” But while I was pondering my case and longing for death behold, I saw afar off a ship making for the island; so I clomb a tree and hid myself among the branches. Presently the ship anchored and landed ten slaves, blackamoors, bearing iron hoes and baskets, who walked on till they reached the middle of the island. Here they dug deep into the ground, until they uncovered a plate of metal which they lifted, thereby opening a trap door. After this they returned to the ship and thence brought bread and flour, honey and fruits, clarified butter,²⁶⁴ leather bottles containing liquors and many household stuffs; also furniture, table service and mirrors rugs, carpets and in fact all needed to furnish a dwelling; and they kept going to and fro, and descending by the trap door, till they had transported into the dwelling all that was in the ship. After this the slaves again went on board and brought back with them garments as rich as may be, and in the midst of them came an old, old man, of whom very little was left, for Time had dealt hardly and harshly with him, and all that remained of him was a bone wrapped in a rag of blue stuff through which the winds whistled west and east. As saith the poet of him:—

Time gars me tremble Ah, how sore the baulk!
While Time in pride of strength cloth ever stalk:
Time was I walked nor ever felt I tired,
Now am I tired albe I never walk!

And the Shaykh held by the hand a youth cast in beauty’s mould, all elegance and perfect grace; so fair that his comeliness deserved to be proverbial; for he was as a green bough or the tender young of the roe, ravishing every heart with his loveliness and subduing every soul with his coquetry and amorous ways.²⁶⁵ It was of him the poet spake when he said:—

Beauty they brought with him to make compare,
But Beauty hung her head in shame and care:
Quoth’ they, “O Beauty, hast thou seen his like?”
And Beauty cried, “His like? not anywhere!”

They stinted not their going, O my lady, till all went down by the trap door and did not reappear for an hour, or rather more; at the end of which time the slaves and the old man came up without the youth and, replacing the iron plate and carefully closing the door slab as it was before, they returned to the ship and made sail and were lost to my sight. When they turned away to depart, I came down from the tree and, going to the place I had seen them fill up, scraped off and removed the earth; and in patience possessed my soul till I had cleared the whole of it away. Then appeared the trap door which was of wood, in shape and size like a millstone; and when I lifted it up it disclosed a winding staircase of stone. At this I marvelled and, descending the steps till I reached the last, found a fair hall, spread with various kinds of carpets and silk stuffs, wherein was a youth sitting upon a raised couch and leaning back on a round cushion with a fan in his hand and nosegays and posies of sweet scented herbs and flowers before him;²⁶⁶ but he was alone and not a soul near him in the great vault. When he saw me he turned pale; but I saluted him courteously and said, “Set thy mind at ease and calm thy fears; no harm shall come near thee; I am a man like thyself and the son of a King to boot; whom the decrees of Destiny have sent to bear thee company and cheer thee in thy loneliness. But now tell me, what is thy story and what causeth thee to dwell thus in solitude under the ground?” When he was assured that I was of his kind and no Jinni, he rejoiced and his fine colour returned; and, making me draw near to him he said, “O my brother, my story is a strange story and ’tis this. My father is a merchant-jeweller possessed of great wealth, who hath white and black slaves travelling and trading on his account in ships and on camels, and trafficking with the most distant cities; but he was not blessed with a child, not even one. Now on a certain night he dreamed a dream that he should be favoured with a son, who would be short lived; so the morning dawned on my father bringing him woe and weeping. On the following night my mother conceived and my father noted down the date of her becoming pregnant.²⁶⁷ Her time being fulfilled she bare me; whereat my father rejoiced and made banquets and called together the neighbors and fed the Fakirs and the poor, for that he had been blessed with issue near the end of his days. Then he assembled the astrologers and astronomers who knew the places of the planets, and the wizards and wise ones of the time, and men learned in horoscopes and nativities,²⁶⁸ and they drew out my birth scheme and said to my father, “Thy son shall live to fifteen years, but in his fifteenth there is a sinister aspect; an he safely tide it over he shall attain a great age. And the cause that threateneth him with death is this. In the Sea of Peril standeth the Mountain Magnet hight; on whose summit is a horseman of yellow laton seated on a horse also of brass and bearing on his breast a tablet of lead. Fifty days after this rider shall fall from his steed thy son will die and his slayer will be he who shoots down the horseman, a Prince named Ajib son of King Khazib.” My father grieved with exceeding grief to hear these words; but reared me in tenderest fashion and educated me excellently well until my fifteenth year was told. Ten days ago news came to him that the horseman had fallen into the sea and he who shot him down was named Ajib son of King Khazib. My father thereupon wept bitter tears at the need of parting with me and became like one possessed of a Jinni. However, being in mortal fear for me, he built me this place under the earth; and, stocking it with all required for the few days still remaining, he brought me hither in a ship and left me here. Ten are already past and, when the forty shall have gone by without danger to me, he will come and take me away; for he hath done all this only in fear of Prince Ajib. Such, then, is my story and the cause of my loneliness.” When I heard his history I marvelled and said in my mind, “I am the Prince Ajib who hath done all this; but as Allah is with me I will surely not slay him!” So said I to him, “O my lord, far from thee be this hurt and harm and then, please Allah, thou shalt not suffer cark nor care nor aught disquietude, for I will tarry with thee and serve thee as a servant, and then wend my ways; and after having borne thee company during the forty days, I will go with thee to thy home where thou shalt give me an escort of some of thy Mamelukes with whom I may journey back to my own city; and the Almighty shall requite thee for me.” He was glad to hear these words, when I rose and lighted a large wax candle and trimmed the ramps end the three lanterns; and I set on meat and drink and sweetmeats. We ate and drank and sat talking over various matters till the greater part of the night was gone; when he lay down to rest and I covered him up and went to sleep myself. Next morning I arose and warmed a little water, then lifted him gently so as to awake him and brought him the warm water wherewith he washed his face²⁶⁹ and said to me, “Heaven requite thee for me with every blessing, O youth! By Allah, if I get quit of this danger and am saved from him whose name is Ajib bin Khazib, I will make my father reward thee and send thee home healthy and wealthy; and, if I die, then my blessing be upon thee.” I answered, “May the day never dawn on which evil shall betide thee; and may Allah make my last day before thy last day!” Then I set before him somewhat of food and we ate; and I got ready perfumes for fumigating the hall, wherewith he was pleased. Moreover I made him a Mankalah-cloth;²⁷⁰ and we played and ate sweetmeats and we played again and took our pleasure till nightfall, when I rose and lighted the lamps, and set before him somewhat to eat, and sat telling him stories till the hours of darkness were far spent. Then he lay down to rest and I covered him up and rested also. And thus I continued to do, O my lady, for days and nights and affection for him took root in my heart and my sorrow was eased, and I said to myself, “The astrologers lied²⁷¹ when they predicted that he should be slain by Ajib bin Khazib: by Allah, I will not slay him.” I ceased not ministering to him and conversing and carousing with him and telling him all manner tales for thirty nine days. On the fortieth night²⁷² the youth rejoiced and said, “O my brother, Alhamdo, lillah!—praise be to Allah—who hath preserved me from death and this is by thy blessing and the blessing of thy coming to me and I pray God that He restore thee to thy native land. But now, O my brother, I would thou warm me some water for the Ghusl ablution and do thou kindly bathe me and change my clothes.” I replied, “With love and gladness;” and I heated water in plenty and carrying it in to him washed his body all over the washing of health,²⁷³ with meal of lupins²⁷⁴ and rubbed him well and changed his clothes and spread him a high bed whereon he lay down to rest, being drowsy after bathing. Then said he, “O my brother, cut me up a water melon, and sweeten it with a little sugar candy.”²⁷⁵ So I went to the store room and bringing out a fine water melon I found there, set it on a platter and laid it before him saying, “O my master hast thou not a knife?” “Here it is,” answered he, “over my head upon the high shelf.” So I got up in haste and taking the knife drew it from its sheath; but my foot slipped in stepping down and I fell heavily upon the youth holding in my hand the knife which hastened to fulfil what had been written on the Day that decided the destinies of man, and buried itself, as if planted, in the youth’s heart. He died on the instant. When I saw that he was slain and knew that I had slain him, maugre myself, I cried out with an exceeding loud and bitter cry and beat my face and rent my raiment and said, “Verily we be Allah’s and unto Him we be returning, O Moslems! O folk fain of Allah! there remained for this youth but one day of the forty dangerous days which the astrologers and the learned had foretold for him; and the predestined death of this beautiful one was to be at my hand. Would Heaven I had not tried to cut the watermelon. What dire misfortune is this I must bear fief or loath? What a disaster! What an affliction! O Allah mine, I implore thy pardon and declare to Thee my innocence of his death. But what God willeth let that come to pass.’’²⁷⁶—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

²⁶⁰ The lesser ablution of hands, face and feet; a kind of “washing the points.” More in Night ccccxl.

²⁶¹ Arab. “Ruka’tayn”; the number of these bows which are followed by the prostrations distinguishes the five daily prayers.

²⁶² The “Beth Kol” of the Hebrews; also called by the Moslems “Hátif”; for which ask the Spiritualists. It is the Hindu “voice divine” or “voice from heaven.”

²⁶³ These formulae are technically called Tasmiyah, Tahlil (before noted) and Takbír: i.e. “testifying” is Tashhíd.

²⁶⁴ Arab. “Samn,” (Pers. “Raughan” Hind. “Ghi”) the “single sauce” of the East; fresh butter set upon the fire, skimmed and kept (for a century if required) in leather bottles and demijohns. Then it becomes a hard black mass, considered a panacea for wounds and diseases. It is very “filling”: you say jocosely to an Eastern threatened with a sudden inroad of guests, “Go, swamp thy rice with Raughan.” I once tried training, like a Hindu Pahlawan or athlete, on Gur (raw sugar), milk and Ghi; and the result was being blinded by bile before the week ended.

²⁶⁵ These handsome youths are always described in the terms we should apply to women.

²⁶⁶ The Bull Edit. (i. 43) reads otherwise:—I found a garden and a second and a third and so on till they numbered thirty and nine; and, in each garden, I saw what praise will not express, of trees and rills and fruits and treasures. At the end of the last I sighted a door and said to myself, “What may be in this place?; needs must I open it and look in!” I did so accordingly and saw a courser ready saddled and bridled and picketed; so I loosed and mounted him, and he flew with me like a bird till he set me down on a terrace-roof; and, having landed me, he struck me a whisk with his tail and put out mine eye and fled from me. Thereupon I descended from the roof and found ten youths all blind of one eye who, when they saw me exclaimed, “No welcome to thee, and no good cheer!” I asked them, “Do ye admit me to your home and society?” and they answered, “No, by Allah’ thou shalt not live amongst us.” So I went forth with weeping eyes and grieving heart, but Allah had written my safety on the Guarded Tablet so I reached Baghdad in safety, etc. This is a fair specimen of how the work has been curtailed in that issue.

²⁶⁷ Arabs date pregnancy from the stopping of the menses, upon which the fœtus is supposed to feed. Kalilah wa Dimnah says, “The child’s navel adheres to that of his mother and thereby he sucks” (i. 263).

²⁶⁸ This is contrary to the commands of Al–Islam, Mohammed expressly said “The Astrologers are liars, by the Lord of the Ka’abah!”; and his saying is known to almost all Moslems, lettered or unlettered. Yet, the further we go East (Indiawards) the more we find these practices held in honour. Turning westwards we have:

Iuridicis, Erebo, Fisco, fas vivere rapto:
Militibus, Medicis, Tortori occidere ludo est;
Mentiri Astronomis, Pictoribus atque Poetis.

²⁶⁹ He does not perform the Wuzu or lesser ablution because he neglects his dawn prayers.

²⁷⁰ For this game see Lane (M. E. Chapt. xvii.) It is usually played on a checked cloth not on a board like our draughts; and Easterns are fond of eating, drinking and smoking between and even during the games. Torrens (p. 142) translates “I made up some dessert,” confounding “Mankalah” with “Nukl” (dried fruit, quatre-mendiants).

²⁷¹ Quoted from Mohammed whose saying has been given.

²⁷² We should say “the night of the thirty-ninth.”

²⁷³ The bath first taken after sickness.

²⁷⁴ Arab. “Dikák” used by way of soap or rather to soften the skin: the meal is usually of lupins, “Adas”=“Revalenta Arabica,” which costs a penny in Egypt and half-a-crown in England.

²⁷⁵ Arab. “Sukkar-nabát.” During my day (1842–49) we had no other sugar in the Bombay Presidency.

²⁷⁶ This is one of the myriad Arab instances that the decrees of “Anagké,” Fate, Destiny, Weird, are inevitable. The situation is highly dramatic; and indeed The Nights, as will appear in the Terminal Essay, have already suggested a national drama.

When it was the Sixteenth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Ajib thus continued his tale to the lady:—When I was certified that I had slain him, I arose and ascending the stairs replaced the trap- door and covered it with earth as before. Then I looked out seawards and saw the ship cleaving the waters and making for the island, wherefore I was afeard and said, “The moment they come and see the youth done to death, they will know ’twas I who slew him and will slay me without respite.” So I climbed up into a high tree and concealed myself among its leaves; and hardly had I done so when the ship anchored and the slaves landed with the ancient man, the youth’s father, and made direct for the place and when they removed the earth they were surprised to see it soft.²⁷⁷ Then they raised the trap door and went down and found the youth lying at full length, clothed in fair new garments, with a face beaming after the bath, and the knife deep in his heart. At the sight they shrieked and wept and beat their faces, loudly cursing the murderer; whilst a swoon came over the Shaykh so that the slaves deemed him dead, unable to survive his son. At last they wrapped the slain youth in his clothes and carried him up and laid him on the ground covering him with a shroud of silk. Whilst they were making for the ship the old man revived; and, gazing on his son who was stretched out, fell on the ground and strewed dust over his head and smote his face and plucked out his beard; and his weeping redoubled as he thought of his murdered son and he swooned away once more. After awhile a slave went and fetched a strip of silk whereupon they lay the old man and sat down at his head. All this took place and I was on the tree above them watching everything that came to pass; and my heart became hoary before my head waxed grey, for the hard lot which was mine, and for the distress and anguish I had undergone, and I fell to reciting:—

“How many a joy by Allah’s will hath fled
With flight escaping sight of wisest head!
How many a sadness shall begin the day,
Yet grow right gladsome ere the day is sped!
How many a weal trips on the heels of ill,
Causing the mourner’s heart with joy to thrill!”²⁷⁸

But the old man, O my lady, ceased not from his swoon till near sunset, when he came to himself and, looking upon his dead son, he recalled what had happened, and how what he had dreaded had come to pass; and he beat his face and head and recited these couplets:—

“Racked is my heart by parting fro’ my friends
And two rills ever fro’ my eyelids flow:
With them²⁷⁹ went forth my hopes, Ah, well away!
What shift remaineth me to say or do?
Would I had never looked upon their sight,
What shift, fair sirs, when paths e’er strainer grow?
What charm shall calm my pangs when this wise burn
Longings of love which in my vitals glow?
Would I had trod with them the road of Death!
Ne’er had befel us twain this parting blow:
Allah: I pray the Truthful show me Roth
And mix our lives nor part them evermo’e!
How blest were we as ‘death one roof we dwelt
Conjoined in joys nor recking aught of woe;
Till Fortune shot us pith the severance shaft;
Ah who shall patient bear such parting throe?
And dart of Death struck down amid the tribe
The age’s pearl that Morn saw brightest show:
I cried the while his case took speech and said:—
Would Heaven, my son, Death mote his doom foreslow!
Which be the readiest road wi’ thee to meet
My Son! for whom I would my soul bestow?
If sun I call him no! the sun cloth set;
If moon I call him, wane the moons; Ah no!
O sad mischance o’ thee, O doom of days,
Thy place none other love shall ever know:
Thy sire distracted sees thee, but despairs
By wit or wisdom Fate to overthrow:
Some evil eye this day hath cast its spell
And foul befal him as it foul betel!”

Then he sobbed a single sob and his soul fled his flesh. The slaves shrieked aloud, “Alas, our lord!” and showered dust on their heads and redoubled their weeping and wailing. Presently they carried their dead master to the ship side by side with his dead son and, having transported all the stuff from the dwelling to the vessel, set sail and disappeared from mine eyes. I descended from the tree and, raising the trap-door, went down into the underground dwelling where everything reminded me of the youth; and I looked upon the poor remains of him and began repeating these verses:—

“Their tracks I see, and pine with pain and pang
And on deserted hearths I weep and yearn:
And Him I pray who doomed them depart
Some day vouchsafe the boon of safe return.’’²⁸⁰

Then, O my lady, I went up again by the trap-door, and every day I used to wander round about the island and every night I returned to the underground hall. Thus I lived for a month, till at last, looking at the western side of the island, I observed that every day the fibs ebbed, leaving shallow water for which the flow did not compensate; and by the end of the month the sea showed dry land in that direction. At this I rejoiced making certain of my safety; so I arose and fording what little was left of the water got me to the mainland, where I fell in with great heaps of loose sand in which even a camel’s hoof would sink up to the knee.²⁸¹ However I emboldened my soul and wading through the sand behold, a fire shone from afar burning with a brazing light.²⁸² So I made for it hoping haply to find succour, and broke out into these verses:—

“Belike Fortune may her bridle turn
And Time bring weal although he’s jealous hight;
Forward my hopes, and further all my needs,
And passed ills with present weals requite.”

And when I drew near the fire aforesaid lo! it was a palace with gates of copper burnished red which, when the rising sun shone thereon, gleamed and glistened from afar showing what had seemed to me a fire. I rejoiced in the sight, and sat down over against the gate, but I was hardly settled in my seat before there met me ten young men clothed in sumptuous gear and all were blind of the left eye which appeared as plucked out. They were accompanied by a Shaykh, an old, old man, and much I marvelled at their appearance, and their all being blind of the same eye When they saw me, they saluted me with the Salam and asked me of my case and my history; whereupon I related to them all what had befallen me, and what full measure of misfortune was mine. Marvelling at my tale they took me to the mansion, where I saw ranged round the hall ten couches each with its blue bedding and coverlet of blue stuff²⁸³ and amiddlemost stood a smaller couch furnished like them with blue and nothing else. As we entered each of the youths took his seat on his own couch and the old man seated himself upon the smaller one in the middle saying to me, “O youth, sit thee down on the floor and ask not of our case nor of the loss of our eyes.” Presently he rose up and set before each young man some meat in a charger and drink in a large mazer, treating me in like manner; and after that they sat questioning me concerning my adventures and what had betided me: and I kept telling them my tale till the night was far spent. Then said the young men, “O our Shaykh, wilt not thou set be fore us our ordinary? The time is come.” He replied, “With love and gladness,” and rose and entering a closet disappeared, but presently returned bearing on his head ten trays each covered with a strip of blue stuff. He set a tray before each youth and, lighting ten wax candles, he stuck one upon each tray, and drew off the covers and lo! under them was naught but ashes and powdered charcoal and kettle soot. Then all the young men tucked up their sleeves to the elbows and fell a weeping and wailing and they blackened their faces and smeared their clothes and buffetted their brows and beat their breasts, continually exclaiming, “We were sitting at our ease but our frowardness brought us unease! “ They ceased not to do this till dawn drew nigh, when the old man rose and heated water for them; and they washed their faces, and donned other and clean clothes. Now when I saw this, O my lady, for very wonderment my senses left me and my wits went wild and heart and head were full of thought, till I forgot what had betided me and I could not keep silence feeling I fain must speak out and question them of these strangenesses; so I said to them, “How come ye to do this after we have been so open hearted and frolicksome? Thanks be to Allah ye be all sound and sane, yet actions such as these befit none but mad men or those possessed of an evil spirit. I conjure you by all that is dearest to you, why stint ye to tell me your history, and the cause of your losing your eyes and your blackening your faces with ashes and soot?” Hereupon they turned to me and said, “O young man, hearken not to thy youthtide’s suggestions and question us no questions.” Then they slept and I with them and when they awoke the old man brought us somewhat of food; and, after we had eaten and the plates and goblets had been removed, they sat conversing till night fall when the old man rose and lit the wax candles and lamps and set meat and drink before us. After we had eaten and drunken we sat conversing and carousing in companionage till the noon of night, when they said to the old man, “Bring us our ordinary, for the hour of sleep is at hand!” So he rose and brought them the trays of soot and ashes; and they did as they had done on the preceding night, nor more, nor less. I abode with them after this fashion for the space of a month during which time they used to blacken their faces with ashes every night, and to wash and change their raiment when the morn was young; and I but marvelled the more and my scruples and curiosity increased to such a point that I had to forego even food and drink. At last, I lost command of myself, for my heart was aflame with fire unquenchable and lowe unconcealable and I said, “O young men, will ye not relieve my trouble and acquaint me with the reason of thus blackening your faces and the meaning of your words:—We were sitting at our ease but our frowardness brought us unease?” Quoth they “’Twere better to keep these things secret.” Still I was bewildered by their doings to the point of abstaining from eating and drinking and, at last wholly losing patience, quoth I to them, There is no help for it: ye must acquaint me with what is the reason of these doings.” They replied, “We kept our secret only for thy good: to gratify thee will bring down evil upon thee and thou wilt become a monocular even as we are.” I repeated “There is no help for it and, if ye will not, let me leave you and return to mine own people and be at rest from seeing these things, for the proverb saith:—

Better ye ‘bide and I take my leave:
For what eye sees not
heart shall never grieve.”

Thereupon they said to me, “Remember, O youth, that should ill befal thee we will not again harbour thee nor suffer thee to abide amongst us;” and bringing a ram they slaughtered it and skinned it. Lastly they gave me a knife saying, “Take this skin and stretch thyself upon it and we will sew it around thee, presently there shall come to thee a certain bird, hight Rukh,²⁸⁴ that will catch thee up in his pounces and tower high in air and then set thee down on a mountain. When thou feelest he is no longer flying, rip open the pelt with this blade and come out of it; the bird will be scared and will fly away and leave thee free. After this fare for half a day, and the march will place thee at a palace wondrous fair to behold, towering high in air and builded of Khalanj²⁸⁵, lign-aloes and sandal-wood, plated with red gold, and studded with all manner emeralds and costly gems fit for seal rings. Enter it and thou shalt win to thy wish for we have all entered that palace; and such is the cause of our losing our eyes and of our blackening our faces. Were we now to tell thee our stories it would take too long a time; for each and every of us lost his left eye by an adventure of his own.” I rejoiced at their words and they did with me as they said; and the bird Rukh bore me off end set me down on the mountain. Then I came out of the skin and walked on till I reached the palace. The door stood open as I entered and found myself in a spacious and goodly hall, wide exceedingly, even as a horse-course; and around it were an hundred chambers with doors of sandal and aloes woods plated with red gold and furnished with silver rings by way of knockers.²⁸⁶ At the head or upper end²⁸⁷ of the hall I saw forty damsels, sumptuously dressed and ornamented and one and all bright as moons; none could ever tire of gazing upon them and all so lovely that the most ascetic devotee on seeing them would become their slave and obey their will. When they saw me the whole bevy came up to me and said “Welcome and well come and good cheer²⁸⁸ to thee, O our lord! This whole month have we been expecting thee. Praised be Allah who hath sent us one who is worthy of us, even as we are worthy of him!” Then they made me sit down upon a high divan and said to me, “This day thou art our lord and master, and we are thy servants and thy hand-maids, so order us as thou wilt.” And I marvelled at their case. Presently one of them arose and set meat before me and I ate and they ate with me; whilst others warmed water and washed my hands and feet and changed my clothes and others made ready sherbets and gave us to drink; and all gathered around me being full of joy and gladness at my coming. Then they sat down and conversed with me till nightfall, when five of them arose and laid the trays and spread them with flowers and fragrant herbs and fruits, fresh and dried, and confections in profusion. At last they brought out a fine wine service with rich old wine; and we sat down to drink and some sang songs and others played the lute and psaltery and recorders and other instruments, and the bowl went merrily round. Hereupon such gladness possessed me that I forgot the sorrows of the world one and all and said, “This is indeed life; O sad that ’tis fleeting!” I enjoyed their company till the time came for rest; and our heads were all warm with wine, when they said, “O our lord, choose from amongst us her who shall be thy bed-fellow this night and not lie with thee again till forty days be past.” So I chose a girl fair of face and perfect in shape, with eyes Kohl-edged by nature’s hand;²⁸⁹ hair long and jet black with slightly parted teeth²⁹⁰ and joining brows: ‘twas as if she were some limber graceful branchlet or the slender stalk of sweet basil to amaze and to bewilder man’s fancy, even as the poet said of such an one—

To even her with greeny bough were vain
Fool he who finds her beauties in the roe:
When hath the roe those lively lovely limbs
Or honey dews those lips alone bestow?
Those eyne, soul piercing eyne, which slay with love,
Which bind the victim by their shafts laid low?
My heart to second childhood they beguiled
No wonder: love sick-man again is child!

And I repeated to her the maker’s words who said:—

“None other charms but shine shall greet mine eyes,
Nor other image can my heart surprise:
Thy love, my lady, captives all my thoughts
And on that love I’ll die and I’ll arise.

So I lay with her that night; none fairer I ever knew; and, when it was morning, the damsels carried me to the Hammam bath and bathed me and robed me in fairest apparel. Then they served up food, and we ate and drank and the cup went round till nightfall when I chose from among them one fair of form and face, soft-sided and a model of grace, such an one as the poet described when he said.—

On her fair bosom caskets twain I scanned,
Sealed fast with musk seals lovers to withstand
With arrowy glances stand on guard her eyes,
Whose shafts would shoot who dares put forth a hand.

With her I spent a most goodly night; and, to be brief, O my mistress, I remained with them in all solace and delight of life, eating and drinking, conversing and carousing and every night lying with one or other of them. But at the head of the new year they came to me in tears and bade me farewell, weeping and crying out and clinging about me: whereat I wondered and said, “What may be the matter? verily you break my heart!” They exclaimed, “Would Heaven we had never known thee; for, though we have companies with many, yet never saw we a pleasanter than thou or a more courteous.” And they wept again. “But tell me more clearly,” asked I, “what causeth this weeping which maketh my gall-bladder²⁹¹ like to burst;” and they answered, “O our lord and master, it is severance which maketh us weep; and thou, and thou only, art the cause of our tears. If thou hearken to us we need never be parted and if thou hearken not we part for ever; but our hearts tell us that thou wilt not listen to our words and this is the cause of our tears and cries.” “Tell me how the case standeth?” “Know, O our lord, that we are the daughters of Kings who have met here and have lived together for years; and once in every year we are perforce absent for forty days; and afterwards we return and abide here for the rest of the twelve month eating and drinking and taking our pleasure and enjoying delights: we are about to depart according to our custom; and we fear lest after we be gone thou contraire our charge and disobey our injunctions. Here now we commit to thee the keys of the palace which containeth forty chambers and thou mayest open of these thirty and nine, but beware (and we conjure thee by Allah and by the lives of us!) lest thou open the fortieth door, for therein is that which shall separate us for ever.”²⁹² Quoth I, “Assuredly I will not open

The Book of

The Thousand Nights and a Night

Translated and Annotated by Richard F. Burton

Table of Contents

Editor’s Note to this Web Edition

Dedications to the Original Ten Volumes

Dedication to Volume One

Dedication to Volume Two

Dedication to Volume Three

Dedication to Volume Four

Dedication to Volume Five

Dedication to Volume Six

Dedication to Volume Seven

Dedication to Volume Eight

Dedication to Volume Nine

Dedication to Volume Ten