One thousand and one nig.., p.1026
One Thousand and One Nights, page 1026
107 The words of the Azбn, vol. i. 306.
108 Wine in Arabic is feminine, “Shamъl” = liquor hung in the wind to cool, a favourite Arab practice often noticed by the poets.
109 i.e. I will fall down dead drunk.
110 Arab. “Ѕrбm,” plur. of Irm, a beautiful girl, a white deer. The word is connected with the Heb. Reem (Deut. xxxiii. 17), which has been explained unicorn, rhinoceros, and aurochs. It is the Ass. Rimu, the wild bull of the mountains, provided with a human face, and placed at the palace-entrance to frighten away foes, demon or human.
111 i.e. she who ensnares [all] eyes.
112 Imam, the spiritual title of the Caliph, as head of the Faith and leader (lit. “foreman,” Antistes) of the people at prayer. See vol. iv. 111.
113 For Yamбmah see vol. ii. 104. Omar bin Abd-al-Aziz was governor of the province before he came to the Caliphate. To the note on Zarkб, the blue-eyed Yamamite, I may add that Marwan was called Ibn Zarkб, son of “la femme au drapeau bleu,” such being the sign of a public prostitute. Al-Mas’udi, v. 509.
114 Rain and bounty, I have said, are synonymous.
115 About £2 10s.
116 i.e. what is thy news.
117 Bresl. Edit., vol. vi. p-9, Night ccccxxxiv.
118 Of this masterful personage and his йnergie indomptable I have spoken in vol. iv. 3, and other places. I may add that he built Wбsit city A.H. 83 and rendered eminent services to literature and civilization amongst the Arabs. When the Ommiade Caliph Abd al-Malik was dying he said to his son Walid, “Look to Al-Hajjaj and honour him for, verily, he it is who hath covered for you the pulpits; and he is thy sword and thy right hand against all opponents; thou needest him more than he needeth thee, and when I die summon the folk to the covenant of allegiance; and he who saith with his headЧthus, say thou with thy swordЧthus” (Al-Siyuti, p 225) yet the historian simply observes, “the Lord curse him.”
119 i.e. given through his lieutenant.
120 “Necks” per synecdochen for heads. The passage is a description of a barber-surgeon in a series of double-entendres the “nose-pierced” (Makhzъm) is the subject who is led by the nose like a camel with halter and ring and the “breaker” (hбshim) may be a breaker of bread as the word originally meant, or breaker of bones. Lastly the “wealth” (mбl) is a recondite allusion to the hair.
121 Arab. “Kadr” which a change of vowel makes “Kidr” = a cooking-pot. The description is that of an itinerant seller of boiled beans (Fъl mudammas) still common in Cairo. The “light of his fire” suggests а double-entendre some powerful Chief like masterful King Kulayb. See vol. ii. 77.
122 Arab. “Al-Sufъf,” either ranks of fighting-men or the rows of thread on a loom. Here the allusion is to a weaver who levels and corrects his threads with the wooden spate and shuttle governing warp and weft and who makes them stand straight (behave aright). The “stirrup” (rikбb) is the loop of cord in which the weaver’s foot rests.
123 “Adab.” See vols. i. 132, and ix. 41.
124 Bresl. Edit., vol. vi. p-191, Night ccccxxxiv.
125 Arab. “Za’mъ,” a word little used in the Cal., Mac. or Bul. Edit.; or in the Wortley Montague MS.; but very common in the Bresl. text.
126 More double-entendres. “Thou hast done justice” (‘adalta) also means “Thou hast swerved from right;” and “Thou hast wrought equitably” (Akasta iv. of Kast) = “Thou hast transgressed.”
127 Koran vi. 44. Allah is threatening unbelievers, “And when they had forgotten their warnings We set open to them the gates of all things, until, when they were gladdened,” etc.
128 Arab. “Ta’dilъ,” also meaning, “Ye do injustice”: quoted from Koran iv. 134.
129 Arab. “Al-Kбsitъna,” before explained. Koran lxxii. 15.
130 Bresl. Edit. vol. vi. p-343, Nights ccccxxxv- cccclxxxvii. This is the old Persian Bakhtyбr Nбmeh, i.e., the Book of Bakhtyar, so called from the prince and hero “Fortune’s Friend.” In the tale of Jili’ad and Shimas the number of Wazirs is seven, as usual in the Sindibad cycle. Here we have the full tale as advised by the Imбm al-Jara’н: “it is meet for a man before entering upon important undertakings to consult ten intelligent friends; if he have only five to apply twice to each; if only one, ten times at different visits, and if none, let him repair to his wife and consult her; and whatever she advises him to do let him do the clear contrary” (quoting Omar), or as says Tommy Moore,
Whene’er you’re in doubt, said a sage I once knew,
‘Twixt two lines of conduct which course to pursue,
Ask a woman’s advice, and whate’er she advise
Do the very reverse, and you’re sure to be wise.
The Romance of the Ten Wazirs occurs in dislocated shape in the “Nouveaux Contes Arabes, ou Supplйment aux Mille et une Nuits,” etc., par M. l’Abbй * * * Paris, 1788. It is the “Story of Bohetzad (Bakht-zбd=Luck-born, v.p.), and his Ten Viziers,” in vol. iii., p-30 of the “Arabian Tales,” etc., published by Dom Chavis and M. Cazotte, in 1785; a copy of the English translation by Robert Heron, Edinburgh, 1792, I owe to the kindness of Mr. Leonard Smithers of Sheffield. It appears also in vol. viii. of M. C. de Perceval’s Edition of The Nights; in Gauttier’s Edition (vol. vi.), and as the “Historia Decem Vizirorum et filii Regis Azad-bacht,” text and translation by Gustav Knцs, of Goettingen (1807). For the Turkish, Malay and other versions see (p. xxxviii. etc.) “The Bakhtiy?r N?ma,” etc. Edited (from the Sir William. Ouseley version of 1801) by Mr. W. A. Clouston and privately printed, London, 1883. The notes are valuable but their worth is sadly injured by the want of an index. I am pleased to see that Mr. E. J. W. Gibb is publishing the “History of the Forty Vezirs; or, the Story of the Forty Morns and Eves,” written in Turkish by “Sheykh-Zadah,” evidently a nom de plume (for Ahmad al-Misri?), and translated from an Arabic MS. which probably dated about the xvth century.
131 In Chavis and Cazotte, the “kingdom of Dineroux (comprehending all Syria and the isles of the Indian Ocean) whose capital was Issessara.” An article in the Edinburgh Review (July, 1886), calls the “Supplement” a “bare-faced forgery”; but evidently the writer should have “read up” his subject before writing.
132 The Persian form; in Arab. Sijistбn, the classical Drangiana or province East of Fars=Persia proper. It is famed in legend as the feof of hero Rustam.
133 Arab. Rбwi=a professional tale-teller, which Mr. Payne justly holds to be a clerical error for “Rбi, a beholder, one who seeth.”
134 In Persian the name would be Bahr-i-Jaur=“luck” (or fortune, “bahr”) of Jaur- (or Jъr-) city.
135 Supply “and cared naught for his kingdom.”
136 Arab. “Atrбf,” plur. of “Tarf,” a great and liberal lord.
137 Lit. “How was,” etc. Kayf is a favourite word not only in the Bresl. Edit., but throughout Egypt and Syria. Classically we should write “Mб;” vulgarly “Aysh.”
138 Karmania vulg. and fancifully derived from Kirmбn
Pers.=worms because the silkworm is supposed to have been bred
there; but the name is of far older date as we find the Asiatic
Aethiopians of Herodotus (iii. 93) lying between the Germanii
(Karman) and the Indus. Also Karmanнa appears in Strabo and Sinus
Carmanicus in other classics.
139 Arab. “Ka’нd”; lit.=one who sits with, a colleague, hence the Span. Alcayde; in Marocco it is=colonel, and is prefixed e.g. Ka’нd Maclean.
140 A favourite food; Al-Hariri calls the dates and cream, which were sold together in bazars, the “Proud Rider on the desired Steed.”
141 In Bresl. Edit. vi. 198 by misprint “Kutrъ”: Chavis and
Cazotte have “Kassera.” In the story of Bihkard we find a P.N.
“Yatrъ.”
142 i.e. waylaying travellers, a term which has often occurred.
143 i.e. the royal favour.
144 i.e. When the fated hour came down (from Heaven).
145 As the Nights have proved in many places, the Asl (origin) of a man is popularly held to influence his conduct throughout life. So the Jeweller’s wife (vol. ix.) was of servile birth, which accounted for her vile conduct; and reference is hardly necessary to a host of other instances. We can trace the same idea in the sayings and folk-lore of the West, e.g. Bon sang ne peut mentir, etc., etc.
146 i.e. “What deemest thou he hath done?”
147 The apodosis wanting “to make thee trust in him?”
148 In the Braj Bбkhб dialect of Hindi, we find quoted in the Akhlбk-i-Hindi, “Tale of the old Tiger and the Traveller”:Ч
Jo jбko paryo subhбo jбe nб jнo-sun;
Nнm na mitho hoe sichh gur ghio sun.
Ne’er shall his nature fail a man whate’er that nature be,
The Nнm-tree bitter shall remain though drenched with Gur
and Ghн.
The Nнm (Melia Azadirachta) is the “Persian lilac,” whose leaves, intensely bitter, are used as a preventive to poison: Gur is the Anglo-Indian Jaggeri = raw sugar and Ghi = clarified butter. Roebuck gives the same proverb in Hindostani.
149 In Chavis and Cazotte “Story of Kaskas; or the Obstinate Man.” For ill-luck, see Miss Frere’s “Old Deccan Days” (), and Giles’s “Strange Stories,” &c. (), where the young lady says to Ma, “You often asked me for money; but on account of your weak luck I hitherto refrained from giving it.”
150 True to life in the present day, as many a standing hay-rick has shown.
151 The “Munajjim” is a recognised authority in Egyptian townlets, and in the village-republics of Southern India the “Jyoshi” is one of the paid officials.
152 Arab. “Amнn” sub. and adj. In India it means a Government employй who collects revenue; in Marocco a commissioner sent by His Sharifian Majesty.
153 Our older word for divers=Arab “Ghawwбsъn”: a single pearl (in the text Jauhar=the Port. AIjofar) is called “habbah”=grain or seed.
154 The kindly and generous deed of one Moslem to another, and by no means rare in real life.
155 “Eunuch,” etymologically meaning chamberlain ({eynи + йchein}), a bed-chamber-servant or slave, was presently confined to castrated men found useful for special purposes, like gelded horses, hounds, and cockerels turned to capons. Some writers hold that the creation of the semivir or apocopus began as a punishment in Egypt and elsewhere; and so under the Romans amputation of the “peccant part” was frequent: others trace the Greek “invalid,” i.e., impotent man, to marital jealousy, and not a few to the wife who wished to use the sexless for hard work in the house without danger to the slave-girls. The origin of the mutilation is referred by Ammianus Marcellinus (lib. iv. cha), and the Classics generally, to Semiramis, an “ancient queen” of decidedly doubtful epoch, who thus prevented the propagation of weaklings. But in Genesis (xxxvii. 36; xxxix. 1, margin) we find Potiphar termed a “Sarнm” (castrato), an “attenuating circumstance” for Mrs. P. Herodotus (iii. cha) tells us that Periander, tyrant of Corinth, sent three hundred Corcyrean boys to Alyattes for castration {epм кt ektomк}, and that Panionios of Chios sold caponised lads for high prices (viii. 105): he notices (viii. 104 and other places) that eunuchs “of the Sun, of Heaven, of the hand of God,” were looked upon as honourable men amongst the Persians whom Stephanus and Brissonius charge with having invented the name (Dabistan i. 171). Ctesias also declares that the Persian kings were under the influence of eunuchs. In the debauched ages of Rome the women found a new use for these effeminates, who had lost only the testes or testiculi=the witnesses (of generative force): it is noticed by Juvenal (i. 22; ii. 365-379; vi. 366)
Чsunt quos imbelles et mollia semper
Oscula delectant.
So Martial,
Чvult futui Gallia, non parere,
And Mirabeau knew (see Kadнsah) “qu’ils mordent les femmes et les liment avec une prйcieuse continuitй.” (Compare my vol. ii. 90; v. 46.) The men also used them as catamites (Horace i. Od. xxxvii.).
“Contaminato cum grege turpium,
Morbo virorum.”
In religion the intestabilis or intestatus was held ill-omened, and not permitted to become a priest (Seneca Controv. ii. 4), a practice perpetuated in the various Christian churches. The manufacture was forbidden, to the satisfaction of Martial, by Domitian, whose edict Nero confirmed; and was restored by the Byzantine empire, which advanced eunuchs, like Eutropius and Narses, to the highest dignities of the realm. The cruel custom to the eternal disgrace of mediжval Christianity was revived in Rome for providing the choirs in the Sistine Chapel and elsewhere with boys’ voices. Isaiah mentions the custom (lvi. 3-6). Mohammed, who notices in the Koran (xxiv. 31), “such men as attend women and have no need of women,” i.e. “have no natural force,” expressly forbade (iv. 118), “changing Allah’s creatures,” referring, say the commentators, to superstitious ear-cropping of cattle, tattooing, teeth-sharpening, sodomy, tribadism, and slave-gelding. See also the “Hidбyah,” vol. iv. 121; and the famous divine Al-Siyъti, the last of his school, wrote a tractate Fi ‘l-Tahrнmi Khidmati ‘l-Khisyбn=on the illegality of using eunuchs. Yet the Harem perpetuated the practice throughout AI-Islam and African jealousy made a gross abuse of it. To quote no other instance, the Sultan of Dбr-For had a thousand eunuchs under a Malik or king, and all the chief offices of the empire, such as Ab (father) and Bбb (door), were monopolised by these neutrals. The centre of supply was the Upper Nile, where the operation was found dangerous after the age of fifteen, and when badly performed only one in four survived. For this reason, during the last century the Coptic monks of Girgah and Zawy al-Dayr, near Assiout, engaged in this scandalous traffic, and declared that it was philanthropic to operate scientifically (Prof. Panuri and many others). Eunuchs are now made in the Sudбn, Nubia, Abyssinia, Kordofбn, and Dбr-For, especially the Messalmiyah district: one of those towns was called “Tawбshah” (eunuchry) from the traffic there conducted by Fukahб or religious teachers. Many are supplied by the district between Majarah (Majarash?) and the port Masawwah; there are also depфts at Mbadr, near Tajurrah-harbour, where Yusuf Bey, Governor in 1880, caponised some forty boys, including the brother of a hostile African chief: here also the well-known Abu Bakr was scandalously active. It is calculated that not less than eight thousand of these unfortunates are annually exported to Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. Article IV. of the AngIo-Egyptian Convention punishes the offense with death, and no one would object to hanging the murderer under whose mutilating razor a boy dies. Yet this, like most of our modern “improvements” in Egypt, is a mere brutum fulmen. The crime is committed under our very eyes, but we will not see it.
The Romans numbered three kinds of eunuchs:Ч1. Castrati, clean-shaved, from Gr. {kйstros}; 2. Spadones, from {spбoo}, when the testicles are torn out, not from “Spada,” town of Persia; and, 3. Thlibii, from {thliboo}, to press, squeeze, when the testicles are bruised, &c. In the East also, as I have stated (v. 46), eunuchs are of three kinds:Ч1. Sandali, or the clean-shaved, the classical apocopus. The parts are swept off by a single cut of a razor, a tube (tin or wooden) is set in the urethra, the wound is cauterised with boiling oil, and the patient is planted in a fresh dunghill. His diet is milk; and if under puberty, he often survives. This is the eunuque aqueduc, who must pass his water through a tube. 2. The eunuch whose penis is removed: he retains all the power of copulation and procreation without the wherewithal; and this, since the discovery of caoutchouc, has often been supplied. 3. The eunuch, or classical Thlibias and Semivir, who has been rendered sexless by removing the testicles (as the priests of Cybele were castrated with a stone knife), or by bruising (the Greek Thlбsias), twisting, searing, or bandaging them. A more humane process has lately been introduced: a horsehair is tied round the neck of the scrotum and tightened by slow degrees till the circulation of the part stops and the bag drops off without pain. This has been adopted in sundry Indian regiments of Irregular Cavalry, and it succeeded admirably: the animals rarely required a day’s rest. The practice was known to the ancients. See notes on Kadнsah in Mirabeau. The Eunuchata virgo was invented by the Lydians, according to their historian Xanthus. Zachias (Quaest. medico-legal.) declares that the process was one of infibulation or simple sewing up the vulva; but modern experience has suggested an operation like the “spaying” of bitches, or mutilation of the womb, in modern euphuism “baby-house.” Dr. Robert (“Journey from Delhi to Bombay, Mьller’s Archiv. 1843”) speaks of a eunuch’d woman who after ovariotomy had no breasts, no pubes, no rotundities, and no desires. The Australians practice exsection of the ovaries systematically to make women barren. Miklucho Maclay learned from the traveller Retsch that about Lake Parapitshurie men’s urethras were split, and the girls were spayed: the latter showing two scars in the groin. They have flat bosoms, but feminine forms, and are slightly bearded; they mix with the men, whom they satisfy mechanically, but without enjoyment (?). MacGillivray, of the “Rattlesnake,” saw near Cape York a woman with these scars: she was a surdo-mute, and had probably been spayed to prevent increase. The old Scandinavians, from Norway to Iceland, systematically gelded “sturdy vagrants” in order that they might not beget bastards. The Hottentots before marriage used to cut off the left testicle, meaning by such semi-castration to prevent the begetting of twins. This curious custom, mentioned by the Jesuit Tochard, Boeving, and Kolbe, is now apparently obsoleteЧ at least, the traveller Fritsch did not find it.
156 Arab. “Harбm”=“forbidden,” sinful.
157 In Chavis and Cazotte, who out-galland’d Galland in transmogrifying the Arabic, this is the “Story of Illage (AI-Hбjj) Mahomet and his sons; or, the Imprudent Man.” The tale occurs in many forms and with great modifications. See, for instance, the Gesta Romanorum “Of the miraculous recall of sinners and of the consolation which piety offers to the distressed,” the adventures of the knight Placidus, vol. ii. 99. Charles Swan, London. Rivington, 1824.
