FROM-THE- LIBRARY-OF
TRINITYCOLLEGETORDNTO
l*TO THE PURE ALL THINGS ARE PURE"
(Paris omnia para)
Arab Proverb.
"Niuna corrotta mente intese mai saoamente parole. "
"Dtcamtron "-conclu&wn.
M Erubuit, posuitque meum Lucretia libram
Sed coram Brnto. Brute I recede, leget. "
Martial.
" Mieulx est de rls que de larmes escripre,
Pour ce que rire est le propre des hommes. "
RABELAIS.
pleasure we derive from perusing the Tboasaad-and-One
StoriiS makes us regret that we possess only a comparatively small
par4ttf fiM toaly eachanticg fictions. '*
CRICBTOW'S "History of *&<&$*.
PLAIN AND LITERAL TRANSLATION OF THE
ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS, NOW
ENTITULED
THE BOOK OF THE
antr a
WITH INTRODUCTION EXPLANATORY NOTES ON THE
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF MOSLEM MEN AND A
TERMINAL ESSAY UPON THE HISTORY OF THE
NIGHTS
VOLUME X.
RICHARD F. BURTON
PRINTED BY THE BURTON CLUB FOR PRIVATE
SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
!\5
Sharnmar Edition
Limited to one thousand numbered sets,
of which this is
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
89U27
TO
HIS EXCELLENCY YACOUB ARTIN PASHA,
MINISTER OF INSTRUCTION, ETC. ETC. ETC. CAIRO.
MY DEAR PASHA,
During the last dozen years, since we first met at Cairo, you
have done much for Egyptian folk-lore and you can do much more. This
volume is inscribed to you with a double purpose ; first it is intended as a
public expression of gratitude for your friendly assistance ; and, secondly,
as a memento that the samples which you have given us imply a promise
of further gift. With this lively sense of favours to come I subscribe
myself
Ever your friend and fellow worker,
RICHARD F. BURTON.
LONDON, July 12, 1886.
CONTENTS OF THE TENTH VOLUME.
MA'ARUF THE COBBLER AND HIS WIFE FATIMAH . I
(Lane, The Story of Maaroof, III. 671-732.)
CONCLUSION . 54
TERMINAL ESSAY 63
INDEX OF THE TENTH VOLUME 303
APPENDIX I.
i. INDEX TO THE TALES AND PROPER NAMES . . 309
u. ALPHABETICAL TABLE OF THE NOTES (ANTHROPOLOGICAL, &c.) 322
in. ALPHABETICAL TABLE OF FIRST LINES
A. English 393
B. Arabic 421
iv. TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE VARIOUS ARABIC TEXTS
A. The Unfinished Calcutta Edition (1814-1818) . . 448
B. The Breslau Text * 450
C. The Macnaghten Text and the Bulak Edition . . 457
D. The same with Mr. Lane's and my Version * ... 464
APPENDIX II.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE THOUSAND AND
ONE NIGHTS AND THEIR IMITATIONS, BY W. F. KIRBY . . 465
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night.
MA'ARUF THE COBBLER AND HIS WIFE FATIMAH,
THERE dwelt once upon a time in the God-guarded city of Cairo
a cobbler who lived by patching old shoes. 1 His name was
Ma'aruf 2 and he had a wife called Fatimah, whom the folk had
nicknamed " The Dung ;" 3 for that she was a whorish, worthless
wretch, scanty of shame and mickle of mischief. She ruled her
spouse and used to abuse him and curse him a thousand times a
day ; and he feared her malice and dreaded her misdoings ; for
that he was a sensible man and careful of his repute, but poor-
conditioned. When he earned much, he spent it on her, and
when he gained little, she revenged herself on his body that night,
leaving him no peace and making his night black as her book ; 4
for she was even as of one like her saith the poet :
How manifold nights have I passed with my wife o In the saddest plight with
all misery rife :
Would Heaven when first I went in to her o With a cup of cold poison I'd
ta'en her life.
Amongst other afflictions which befel him from her one day she
said to him, " O Ma'aruf, I wish thee to bring me this night a
vermicelli-cake dressed with bees' honey," 5 He replied, " So Allah
1 Arab. "Zarabm" (pi. of zarbun), lit. slaves' shoes or sandals (see vol. iii. p. 336)
the chaussure worn by Mamelukes. Here the word is used in its modern sense of stout
shoes or walking boots.
2 The popular word means goodness, etc., e.g. "A'mil al-Ma'arvif " = have the
kindness ; do me the favour.
3 Dozy translates " 'Urrah " =. Une Megere : Lane terms it a "vulgar word signifying
a wicked, mischievous shrew." But it is the fem. form of 'Urr = dung ; not a bad
name for a daughter of Billingsgate; and reminds us of the term " Dung-beardlings "
applied by the amiable Hallgerda to her enemy's sons. (The Story of Burnt
Njal, ii. 47-)
4 i.e. black like the book of her actions which would be shown to her on Doomsday.
(See Night dccclxxi.) The ungodly hold it in the left hand, the right being bound
behind their backs and they appear in ten foul forms, apes, swine, etc., for which see
Sale sect. iv.
5 The " KunaTah " (vermicelli-cake) is a favourite dish of wheaten flour, worked some*
what finer than our vermicelli, fried with samn (butter melted and clarified) and sweetened
with honey or sugar. See Lane M. E. chapt. v. Bees' honey is opposed to various
syrups Which are used as sweeteners. See vol. v. 300.
VOL. X.
2 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Almighty aid me to its price, I will bring it thee. By Allah, I
have no dirhams to-day, but our Lord will make things easy." 1
Rejoined she, And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and
ceased to say her permitted say.
fo&en ft foaa tfje jitne f^un&tefc antr JEJinettetf)
She resumed, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that
Ma'aruf the Cobbler said to his spouse, " If Allah aid me to its
price, I will bring it to thee this night. By Allah, I have no
dirhams to-day, but our Lord will make things easy to me ! " She
rejoined, " I wot naught of these words ; whether He aid thee or
aid thee not, look thou come not to me save with the vermicelli
and bees' honey ; and if thou come without it I will make thy
night black as thy fortune whenas thou marriedst me and fellest
into my hand." Quoth he, " Allah is bountiful ! " and going out
with grief scattering itself from his body, prayed the dawn-prayer
and opened his shop, saying, " I beseech thee, O Lord, to vouchsafe
me the price of the Kunafah and ward off from me the mischief of
yonder wicked woman this night ! " After which he sat in the
shop till noon, but no work came to him and his fear of his wife
redoubled. Then he arose and locking his shop, went out per-
plexed as to how he should do in the matter of the vermicelli-cake,
seeing he had not even the wherewithal to buy bread. Presently
he came up to the shop of the Kunafah-seller and stood before it
distraught, whilst his eyes brimmed with tears. The pastry-cook
glanced at him and said, " O Master Ma'aruf, why dost thou weep ?
Tell me what hath befallen thee." So he acquainted him with his
case, saying, " My wife is a shrew, a virago who would have me
bring her a Kunafah ; but I have sat in my shop till past
mid-day and have not gained even the price of bread ; wherefore
I am in fear of her." The cook laughed and said, " No harm shall
come to thee. How many pounds wilt thou have ? " " Five
pounds," answered Ma'aruf. So the man weighed him out five
pounds of vermicelli-cake and said to him, " I have clarified butter,
but no bees' honey. Here is drip-honey, 2 however, which is better
1 i.e. Will send us aid. The Shrew's rejoinder is highly impious in Moslem opinion.
2 Arab. Asal Katr ; "a fine kind of black honey, treacle" says Lane j but it is
afterwards called cane-honey ('Asal Kasab). I have never heard it applied to " the syrup
which exudes from ripe dates, when hung up."
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 3
than bees' honey ; and what harm will there be, if it be with drip-
honey ? " Ma'aruf was ashamed to object, because the pastry-
cook was to have patience with him for the price, and said, " Give
it me with drip-honey." So he fried a vermicelli-cake for him with
butter and drenched it with drip-honey, till it was fit to present to
Kings. Then he asked him, " Dost thou want bread J and
cheese ? "; and Ma'aruf answered, " Yes." So he gave him four
half dirhams worth of bread and one of cheese, and the vermicelli
was ten nusfs. Then said he, " Know, O Ma'aruf, that thou owest
me fifteen nusfs; so go to thy wife and make merry and take this
nusf for the Hammam ; 2 and thou shalt have credit for a day or
two or three till Allah provide thee with thy daily bread. And
straiten not thy wife, for I will have patience with thee till such
time as thou shalt have dirhams to spare." So Ma'aruf took the
vermicelli-cake and bread and cheese and went away, with a
heart at ease, blessing the pastry-cook and saying, " Extolled be
Thy perfection, O my Lord ! How bountiful art Thou ! " When
he came home, his wife enquired of him, " Hast thou brought the
vermicelli-cake?"; and, replying "Yes," he set it before her.
She looked at it and seeing that it was dressed with cane-honey, 3
said to him, " Did I not bid thee bring it with bees' honey ? Wilt
thou contrary my wish and have it dressed with cane-honey ? "
He excused himself to her, saying, I bought it not save on credit ;"
but said she, " This talk is idle ; I will not eat Kunafah save with
bees' honey." And she was wroth with it and threw it in his face,
saying, " Begone, thou pimp, and bring me other than this ! "
Then she dealt him a buffet on the cheek and knocked out one of
his teeth. The blood ran down upon his breast and for stress of
anger he smote her on the head a single blow and a slight ;
whereupon she clutched his beard and fell to shouting out and
saying, " Help, O Moslems ! " So the neighbours came in and
freed his beard from her grip ; then they reproved and reproached
her, saying, " We are all content to eat Kunafah with cane-honey.
Why, then, wilt thou oppress this poor man thus ? Verily, this is
1 Arab. " 'Aysh," lit. =: that on which man lives : " Khubz " being the more popular
term. *' Hubz and Joobn " is well known at Malta.
2 Insinuating that he had better make peace with his wife by knowing her carnally.
It suggests the story of the Irishman who brought over to the holy Catholic Church
three several Protestant wives, but failed with the fourth on account of the decline of his
44 Convarter."
3 Arab. " Asal Kasab," i.e. Sugar, possibly made from sorgho-stalks Holcus sorghum
of which I made syrup in Central Africa.
4 A If Lay ia h iva Laylah.
disgraceful in thee ! " And they went on to soothe her till they
made peace between her and him. But, when the folk were gone,
she sware that she would not eat of the vermicelli, and Ma'aruf,
burning with hunger, said in himself, "She sweareth that she will
not eat ; so I will e'en eat." Then he ate, and when she saw
him eating, she said, " Inshallah, may the eating of it be poison
to destroy the far one's body " } Quoth he, " It shall not be
at thy bidding," and went on eating, laughing and saying,
' Thou swarest that thou wouldst not eat of this ; but Allah is
bountiful, and to-morrow night, an the Lord decree, I will
bring thee Kuhafah dressed with bees' honey, and thou shalt eat it
alone." And he applied himself to appeasing her, whilst she
called down curses upon him ; and she ceased not to rail at him
and revile him with gross abuse till the morning, when she bared
her forearm to beat him. Quoth he, " Give me time and I will
bring thee other vermicelli-cake." Then he went out to the
mosque and prayed, after which he betook himself to his shop and
opening it, sat down ; but hardly had he done this when up came
two runners from the Kazi's court and said to him, " Up with thee,
speak with the Kazi, for thy wife hath complained of thee to him
and her favour is thus and thus." He recognised her by their
description ; and saying, " May Allah Almighty torment her ! "
walked with them till he came to the Kazi's presence, where he
found Fatimah standing with her arm bound up and her face-veil
besmeared with blood ; and she was weeping and wiping away her
tears. Quoth the Kazi, " Ho man, hast thou no fear of Allah the
Most High ? Why hast thou beaten this good woman and broken
her forearm and knocked out her tooth and entreated her thus ? "
And quoth Ma'aruf, " If I beat her or put out her tooth, sentence
me to what thou wilt ; but in truth the case was thus and thus and
the neighbours made peace between me and her." And he told
him the story from first to last. Now this Kazi was a benevolent
man ; so he brought out to him a quarter dinar, saying, " O man,
take this and get her Kunafah with bees' honey and do ye make
peace, thou and she." Quoth Ma'aruf, " Give it to her." So she
took it and the Kazi made peace between them, saying, " O wife,
obey thy husband ; and thou, O man, deal kindly with her. 2 "
1 For this unpleasant euphemy see vol. iv. 215.
* This is a true picture of the leniency with which women were treated in the Kazi's
court at Cairo; and the effect was simply deplorable. I have noted that matters have
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 5
Then they left the court, reconciled at the Kazi's hands, and the
woman went one way, whilst her husband returned by another way
to his shop and sat there, when, behold, the runners came up to
him and said, " Give us our fee. Quoth he, " The Kazi took not
of me aught ; on the contrary, he gave me a quarter dinar." But
quoth they, " 'Tis no concern of ours whether the Kazi took of
thee or gave to thee, and if thou give us not our fee, we will exact
it in despite of thee." And they fell to dragging him about the
market ; so he sold his tools and gave them half a dinar, whereupon
they let him go and went away, whilst he put his hand to his cheek
and sat sorrowful, for that he had no tools wherewith to work.
Presently, up came two ill-favoured fellows and said to him,
" Come, O man, and speak with the Kazi ; for thy wife hath com-
plained of thee to him." Said he, " He made peace between us
just now." But said they, " We come from another Kazi, and thy
wife hath complained of thee to our Kazi." So he arose and went
with them to their Kazi, calling on Allah for aid against her ; and
when he saw her, he said to her, " Did we not make peace, good
woman ? " Whereupon she cried, " There abideth no peace be-
tween me and thee." Accordingly he came forward and told the
Kazi his story, adding, " And indeed the Kazi Such-an-one made
peace between us this very hour." Whereupon the Kazi said to
her, " O strumpet, since ye two have made peace with each other,
why comest thou to me complaining ? " Quoth she, " He beat me
after that ; " but quoth the Kazi, " Make peace each with other,
and beat her not again, and she will cross thee no more." So they
made peace and the Kazi said to Ma'aruf, " Give the runners their
fee." So he gave them their fee and going back to his shop,
opened it and sat down, as he were a drunken man for excess of
the chagrin which befel him. Presently, while he was still sitting,
behold, a man came up to him and said, " O Ma'aruf, rise and
hide thyself, for thy wife hath complained of thee to the High
Court * and Abu Tabak 2 is after thee." So he shut his shop and
grown even worse since the English occupation, for history repeats herself ; and the same
was the case in Afghanistan and in Sind. We govern too much in these matters, which
should be directed not changed, and too little in other things, especially in exacting
respect for the conquerors from the conquered.
1 Arab. "Bab al-'Ali" = the high gate or Sublime Porte; here used of the
Chief Kazi's court: the phrase is a descendant of the Coptic "Per-ao" whence
' Pharaoh."
*_" Abu Tabak/' in Cairene slang, is an officer who arrests by order of the Kazi and
6 A If Lay la h wa Laylah.
fled towards the Gate of Victory. 1 He had five Nusfs of silver
left of the price of the lasts and gear ; and therewith he bought
four worth of bread and one of cheese, as he fled from her. Now
it was the winter season and the hour of mid-afternoon prayer ; so,
when he came out among the rubbish-mounds the rain descended
upon him, like water from the mouths of water-skins, and his
clothes were drenched. He therefore entered the 'Adiliyah, 2
where he saw a ruined place and therein a deserted cell without a
door ; and in it he took refuge and found shelter from the rain.
The tears streamed from his eyelids, and he fell to complaining of
what had betided him and saying, " Whither shall I flee from this
whore ? I beseech Thee, O Lord, to vouchsafe me one who shall
conduct me to a far country, where she shall not know the way to
me ! " Now while he sat weeping, behold, the wall clave and
there came forth to him therefrom one of tall stature, whose aspect
caused his body-pile to bristle and his flesh to creep, and said to
him, " O man, what aileth thee that thou disturbest me this night ?
These two hundred years have I dwelt here and have never seen
any enter this place and do as thou dost. Tell me what thou
wishest and I will accomplish thy need, as ruth for thee hath got
hold upon my heart." Quoth Ma'aruf, "Who and what art
thou ? " ; and quoth he, " I am the Haunter 3 of this place." So
Ma'aruf told him all that had befallen him with his wife and he
said, " Wilt thou have me convey thee to a country, where thy
wife shall know no way to thee?" "Yes," said Ma'aruf; and the
other, " Then mount my back." So he mounted on his back and
he flew with him from after supper-tide till daybreak, when he set
him down on the top of a high mountain And Shahrazad per-
ceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
means " Father of whipping" (= tabaka, a low word for beating, thrashing, whopping)
because he does his duty with all possible violence in terrorem.
1 Bab al-Nasr the Eastern or Desert Gate : see vol. vi. 234.
2 This is a mosque outside the great gate built by Al-Malik al-'Adil Tutnan Bey in
A.H. 906 ( = 1501). The date is not worthy of much remark for these names are often
inserted by the scribe for which see Terminal Essay.
3 Arab. " 'Amir" lit. = one who inhabiteth, a peopler ; here used in technical sense.
As has been seen, ruins and impure places such as privies and Hammam- baths are the
favourite homes of the Jinn. The fire-drake in the text was summoned by the Cobbler's
exclamation and even Marids at times do a kindly action.
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah.
foJjen ft foas t&e Nine f^tmtofc antr Nmetp--fmt
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Marid
having taken up Ma'aruf the Cobbler, flew off with him and set him
down upon a high mountain and said to him, " O mortal, descend
this mountain and thou wilt see the gate of a city. Enter it, for
therein thy wife cannot come at thee." He then left him and went
his way, whilst Ma'aruf abode in amazement and perplexity till the
sun rose, when he said to himself, " I will up with me and go down
into the city : indeed there is no profit in my abiding upon this
highland." So he descended to the mountain-foot and saw a city
girt by towering walls, full of lofty palaces and gold-adorned build-
ings which was a delight to beholders. He entered in at the gate
and found it a place such as lightened the grieving heart ; but, as
lie walked through the streets the townsfolk stared at him as a
curiosity and gathered about him, marvelling at his dress, for it
was unlike theirs. Presently, one of them said to him, " O man,
art thou a stranger?" "Yes." "What countryman art thou?"
" I am from the city of Cairo the Auspicious." " And when didst
thou leave Cairo ? " " I left it yesterday, at the hour of afternoon-
prayer." Whereupon the man laughed at him and cried out,
saying, " Come look, O folk, at this man and hear what he saith ! "
Quoth they, " What doeth he say ? "; and quoth the townsman,
" He pretendeth that he cometh from Cairo and left it yesterday
at the hour of afternoon-prayer ! " At this they all laughed and
gathering round Ma'aruf, said to him, " O man, art thou mad to
talk thus ? How canst thou pretend that thou leftest Cairo at
mid-afternoon yesterday and foundedst thyself this morning here,
when the truth is that between our city and Cairo lieth a full
year's journey ? " Quoth he, " None is mad but you. As for me,
I speak sooth, for here is bread which I brought with me from
Cairo, and see, 'tis yet new." Then he showed them the bread
and they stared at it, for it was unlike their country bread. So
the crowd increased about him and they said to one another,
" This is Cairo bread : look at it ; " and he became a gazing-
stock in the city and some believed him; whilst others gave him
the lie and made mock of him. Whilst this was going on, behold,
up came a merchant riding on a she-mule and followed by two
black slaves, and brake a way through the people, saying, " O
folk, are ye not ashamed to mob this stranger and make mock of
8 A If Laylak wa Laylak.
him and scoff at him ? " And he went on to rate them, till he
drave them away from Ma'aruf, and none could make him any
answer. Then he said to the stranger, " Come, O my brother,
no harm shall betide thee from these folk. Verily they have no
shame." * So he took him and carrying him to a spacious and
richly-adorned house, seated him in a speak-room fit for a King,
whilst he gave an order to his slaves, who opened a chest and
brought out to him a dress such as might be worn by a merchant
worth a thousand, 2 He clad him therewith and Ma'aruf, being a
seemly man, became as he were consul of the merchants. Then
his host called for food and they set before them a tray of all
manner exquisite viands. The twain ate and drank and the
merchant said to Ma'aruf, " O my brother, what is thy name ? "
" My name is Ma'aruf and I am a cobbler by trade and patch old
shoes/' " What countryman art thou ? " " I am from Cairo."
"What quarter?" "Dost thou know Cairo?" "I am of its
children, 3 I come from the Red Street. 4 " " And whom dost
thou know in the Red Street ? " " I know such an one and such
an one," answered Ma'aruf and named several people to him.
Quoth the other, " Knowest thou Shaykh Ahmad the druggist ? 5 "
" He was my next neighbour, wall to wall." " Is he well ? "
"Yes." "How many sons hath he?" "Three, Mustafa,
Mohammed and Ali." " And what hath Allah done with
them ? " " As for Mustafa, he is well and he is a learned man, a
professor 6 : Mohammed is a druggist and opened him a shop
beside that of his father, after he had married, and his wife hath
borne him a son named Hasan," " Allah gladden thee with good
news ! " said the merchant ; and Ma'aruf continued, " As for
Ali, he was my friend, when we were boys, and we always
played together, I and he. We used to go in the guise of the
children of the Nazarenes and enter the church and steal the
books of the Christians and sell them and buy food with the
1 The style is modern Cairene jargon.
8 Purses or gold pieces see vol. ix. 313.
3 i.e. I am a Cairene.
4 Arab. "Darb al-Ahmar," a street still existing near to and outside the noble Bab
Zuwaylah, for which see vol. i. 269.
6 Arab. '"Attar," perfume-seller and druggist; the word is connected with our
"Ottar" ('Atr).
6 Arab. " Mudarris " lit.= one who gives lessons or lectures (dars) and pop. applied to
a professor in a collegiate mosque like Al-Azhar of Cairo.
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. g
price. It chanced once that the Nazarenes caught us with a
book ; whereupon they complained of us to our folk and said to
Ali's father: An thou hinder not thy son from troubling us, we
will complain of thee to the King. So he appeased them and
gave AH a thrashing ; wherefore he ran away none knew whither
and he hath now been absent twenty years and no man hath
brought news of him." Quoth the host, " I am that very Ali, son
of Shaykh Ahmad the druggist, and thou art my playmate
Ma'aruf." * So they saluted each other and after the salam Ali
said, " Tell me why, O Ma'aruf, thou earnest from Cairo to this
city." Then he told him all that had befallen him of ill-doing
with his wife Fatimah the Dung and said, " So, when her annoy
waxed on me, I fled from her towards the Gate of Victory and
went forth the city. Presently, the rain fell heavy on me ; so I
entered a ruined cell in the Adiliyah and sat there, weeping ;
whereupon there came forth to me the Haunter of the place,
which was an Ifrit of the Jinn, and questioned me. I acquainted
him with my case and he took me on his back and flew with me
all night between heaven and earth, till he set me down on yonder
mountain and gave me to know of this city. So I came down
from the mountain and entered the city, when the people crowded
about me and questioned me. I told them that I had left Cairo
yesterday, but they believed me not, and presently thou earnest up
and driving the folk away from me, carriedst me to this house. Such,
then, is the cause of my quitting Cairo ; and thou, what object
brought thee hither ? " Quoth Ali, " The giddiness 2 of folly
turned my head when I was seven years old, from which time I
wandered from land to land and city to city, till I came to this
city, the name whereof is Ikhtiydn al-Khatan. 3 I found its people
an hospitable folk and a kindly, compassionate for the poor man.
and selling to him on credit and believing all he said. So quoth
I to them : I am a merchant and have preceded my packs and I
need a place wherein to bestow my baggage. And they believed
me and assigned me a lodging. Then quoth I to them : Is there
any of you will lend me a thousand dinars, till my loads arrive,
1 This thoroughly dramatic scene is told with a charming naivete*. No wonder that
The Nights has been made the basis of a national theatre amongst the Turks.
2 Arab. " Taysh " lit.= vertigo, swimming of head.
3 Here Trebutien (iii. 265) reads "la ville de Khaitan (so the Mac. Edit. iv. 708)
capital du royaume de Sohatan." Ikhtiydn Lane suggests to be fictitious : Khatan is a
district of Tartary east of Kashgar, so called by Sadik al- Isfahan! p. 24.
io A If Laylah wa Laylah.
when I will repay it to him ; for I am in want of certain things
before my goods come ? " They gave me what I asked and I went
to the merchants' bazar, where, seeing goods, I bought them and
sold them next day at a profit of fifty gold pieces and bought
others. 1 And I consorted with the folk and entreated them liberally,
so that they loved me, and I continued to sell and buy, till I grew
rich. Know, O my brother, that the proverb saith, The world is
show and trickery : and the land where none wotteth thee, there
do whatso liketh thee. Thou too, an thou say to all who ask
thee, I'm a cobbler by trade and poor withal, and I fled
from my wife and left Cairo yesterday, they will not believe thee
and thou wilt be a laughing-stock among them as long as thou
abidest in the city ; whilst, an thou tell them, An Ifrit brought me
hither, they will take fright at thee and none will come near thee ;
for they will say, This man is possessed of an Ifrit and harm will
betide whoso approacheth him. And such public report will be
dishonouring both to thee and to me, because they ken I come
from Cairo." Ma'aruf asked : " How then shall I do ? " ; and AH
answered, " I will tell thee how thou shalt do, Inshallah ! To-
morrow I will give thee a thousand dinars and a she-mule to ride
and a black slave, who shall walk before thee and guide thee to
the gate of the merchants' bazar ; and do thou go into them. I
will be there sitting amongst them, and when I see thee, I will
rise to thee and salute thee with the salam and kiss thy hand and
make a great man of thee. Whenever I ask thee of any kind of
stuff, saying, Hast thou brought with thee aught of such a kind ?
do thou answer, " Plenty. 2 " And if they question me of thee, I
will praise thee and magnifythee in their eyes and say to them,
Get him a store-house and a shop. I also will give thee out for a
man of great wealth and generosity ; and if a beggar come to thee,
bestow upon him what thou mayst ; so will they put faith in what
I say and believe in thy greatness and generosity and love thee.
Then will I invite thee to my house and invite all the merchants
1 This is a true picture of the tact and savoir faire of the Cairenes. It was a study to
see how, under the late Khedive they managed to take precedence of Europeans who
found themselves in the background before they knew it. For instance, every Bey,
whose degree is that of a Colonel was made an " Excellency " and ranked accordingly
at Court whilst his father, some poor Fellah, was ploughing the ground, Tanf ik Pasha
began his ill-omened rule by always placing natives close to him in the place of honour,
addressing them first and otherwise snubbing Europeans who, when English, were often
too obtuse to notice the petty insults lavished upon them
2 Arab. " Kathfr *' (pron. Katir) = much : here used in its slang sense, "no end."
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 1 1
on thy account and bring together thee and them, so that all may
know thee and thou know them, - And Shahrazad perceived
the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
fofjen ft foas tfje Kine f^untefc anfc Ninctg-secotifc
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the
merchant AH said to Ma'aruf, " I will invite thee to my house and
invite all the merchants on thy account and bring together thee and
them, so that all may know thee and thou know them, whereby
thou shalt sell and buy and take and give with them ; nor will it
be long ere thou become a man of money." Accordingly, on the
morrow he gave him a thousand dinars and a suit of clothes and a
black slave and mounting him on a she-mule, said to him, " Allah
give thee quittance of responsibility for all this, 1 inasmuch as thou
art my friend and it behoveth me to deal generously with thee.
Have no care ; but put away from thee the thought of thy wife's
misways and name her not to any." " Allah requite thee with
good ! " replied Ma'aruf and rode on, preceded by his blackamoor
till the slave brought him to the gate of the merchants' bazar,
where they were all seated, and amongst them Ali, who when he
saw him, rose and threw himself upon him, crying, " A blessed
day, O Merchant Ma'aruf, O man of good works and kindness 2 ! "
And he kissed his hand before the merchants and said to them,
"Our brothers, ye are honoured by knowing 3 the merchant
Ma'aruf." So they saluted him, and Ali signed to them to make
much of him, wherefore he was magnified in their eyes. Then Ali
helped him to dismount from his she-mule and saluted him with
the salam ; after which he took the merchants apart, one after
other, and vaunted Ma'aruf to them. They asked, " Is this man a
merchant ? ; " and he answered, " Yes ; and indeed he is the chiefest
of merchants, there liveth not a wealthier than he ; for his wealth
and the riches of his father and forefathers are famous among the
merchants of Cairo. He hath partners in Hind and Sind and Al-
1 i.e. " May the Lord soon make thee able to repay me ; but meanwhile I give it to
thee for thy own free use."
2 Punning upon his name. Much might be written upon the significance of names as
ominous of good and evil ; but the subject is far too extensive for a footnote.
3 Lane translates "Anisa-kum" by " he hath delighted you by his arrival" ; Mr.
" I commend him to you."
12 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
Yaman and is high in repute for generosity. So know ye his
rank and exalt ye his degree and do him service, and wot also
that his coming to your city is not for the sake of traffic, and none
other save to divert himself with the sight of folk's countries : in-
deed, he hath no need of strangerhood for the sake of gain and
profit, having wealth that fires cannot consume, and I am one of
his servants.'* And he ceased not to extol him, till they set him
above their heads and began to tell one another of his qualities.
Then they gathered round him and offered him junkets 1 and
sherbets, and even the Consul of the Merchants came to him and
saluted him ; whilst AH proceeded to ask him, in the presence of
the traders, " O my lord, haply thou hast brought with thee some-
what of such and such a stuff? " ; and Ma'aruf answered, " Plenty."
Now Ali had that day shown him various kinds of costly clothes
and had taught him the names of the different stuffs, dear and
cheap. Then said one of the merchants, " O my lord, hast thou
brought with thee yellow broad cloth ? " : and Ma'aruf said,
"Plenty"! Quoth another, "And gazelles' blood red 2 ?"; and
quoth the Cobbler, " Plenty " ; and as often as he asked him of
aught, he made him the same answer. So the other said, "O
Merchant Ali had thy countryman a mind to transport a thousand
loads of costly stuffs, he could do so >} ; and Ali said, " He would
take them from a single one of his store-houses, and miss naught
thereof." Now whilst they were sitting, behold, up came a beggar
and went the round of the merchants. One gave him a half dirham
and another a copper, 3 but most of them gave him nothing, till he
came to Ma'aruf who pulled out a handful of gold and gave it to
him, whereupon he blessed him and went his ways. The merchants
marvelled at this and said, " Verily, this is a King's bestowal for
he gave the beggar gold without count , and were he not a man.
of vast wealth and money without end, he had not given a beggar
a handful of gold." After a while, there came to him a poor
woman and he gave her a handful of gold ; whereupon she went
away, blessing him, and told the other beggars, who came to him,
one after other, and he gave them each a handful of gold, till he
disbursed the thousand dinars. Then he struck hand upon hand
1 Arab. " Faturat," = light food for the early breakfast of which the " Fatfrah "
cake was a favourite item. See vol. i. 300. ,
2 A dark red dye (Lane).
* Arab. "Jadfd," see vol. viii. 121.
Mcfaruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 1 3
and said, Allah is our sufficient aid and excellent is the Agent ! "
Quoth the Consul, " What aileth thee, O Merchant Ma'aruf ? " ; and
quoth he, "Itseemeth that the most part of the people of this city are
poor and needy ; had I known their misery I would have brought
with me a large sum of money in my saddle-bags and given
largesse thereof to the poor. I fear me I may be long abroad 1
and 'tis not in my nature to baulk a beggar ; and I have no gold
left : so, if a pauper come to me, what shall I say to him ? "
Quoth the Consul,-" Say, Allah will send thee thy daily bread 2 ! " ;
but Ma'aruf replied, " That is not my practice and I am care-ridden
because of this. Would I had other thousand dinars, wherewith
to give alms till my baggage come ! " " Have no care for that,"
quoth the Consul and sending one of his dependents for a thousand
dinars, handed them to Ma'aruf, who went on giving them to
every beggar who passed till the call to noon-prayer. Then they
entered the Cathedral-mosque and prayed the noon-prayers, and
what was left him of the thousand gold pieces he scattered on
the heads of the worshippers. This drew the people's attention to
him and they blessed him, whilst the merchants marvelled at the
abundance of his generosity and openhandedness. Then he turned
to another trader and borrowing of him other thousand ducats,
gave these also away, whilst Merchant AH looked on at what he
did, but could not speak. He ceased not to do thus till the call
to mid-afternoon prayer, when he entered the mosque and prayed
and distributed the rest of the money. On this wise, by the time
they locked the doors of the bazar, 3 he had borrowed five thousand
sequins and given them away, saying to every one of whom he
took aught, " Wait till my baggage come when, if thou desire gold
I will give thee gold, and if thou desire stuffs, thou shalt have
stuffs ; for I have no end of them." At eventide Merchant AH
invited Ma'aruf and the rest of the traders to an entertainment
and seated him in the upper end, the place of honour, where he
talked of nothing but cloths and jewels, and whenever they made
mention to him of aught, he said, " I have plenty of it." Next
day, he again repaired to the market-street where he showed a
1 Both the texts read thus, but the reading has little sense. Ma'aruf probably would
ay, " I fear that my loads will be long coming.''
2 One of the many formulas of polite refusal.
3 Each bazar, in a large city like Damascus, has its tall and heavy wooden doors
which are locked every evening and opened in the morning by the Ghafir or guard.
The "silver key," however, always lets one in.
14 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
friendly bias towards the merchants and borrowed of them more
money, which he distributed to the poor : nor did he leave doing
thus twenty days, till he had borrowed threescore thousand dinars,
and still there came no baggage, no, nor a burning plague. 1
At last folk began to clamour for their money and say, " The
merchant Ma'aruf's baggage cometh not. How long will he take
people's monies and give them to the poor ? " And quoth one of
them, " My rede is that we speak to Merchant All." So they
went to him and said, " O Merchant Ali, Merchant Ma'arufs
baggage cometh not." Said he, " Have patience, it cannot fail to
come soon." Then he took Ma'aruf aside and said to him, " O
Ma'aruf, what fashion is this ? Did I bid thee brown 2 the bread
or burn it ? The merchants clamour for their coin and tell me
that thou owest them sixty thousand dinars, which thou hast
borrowed and given away to the poor. How wilt thou satisfy the
folk, seeing that thou neither sellest nor buyest ? " Said Ma'aruf,
" What matters it 3 ; and what are threescore thousand dinars ?
When my baggage shall come, I will pay them in stuffs or in gold
and silver, as they will." Quoth Merchant Ali, " Allah is Most
Great ! Hast thou then any baggage ? "; and he said, " Plenty."
Cried the other, " Allah and the Hallows 4 requite thee thine
impudence! Did I teach thee this saying, that thou shouldst
repeat it to me? But I will acquaint the folk with thee."
Ma'aruf rejoined, " Begone and prate no more ! Am I a poor
man ? I have endless wealth in my baggage and as soon as it
cometh, they shall have their money's worth, two for one. I have
no need of them." At this Merchant Ali waxed wroth and said,
" Unmannerly wight that thou art, I will teach thee to lie to me
and be not ashamed !'" Said Ma'aruf, " E'en work the worst thy
hand can do ! They must wait till my baggage come, wjien they
shall have their due and more." So Ali left him and went away,
saying in himself, " I praised him whilome and if I blame him
[now, I make myself out a liar and become of those of whom it is
1 Arab. "Wa la Kabbata hamiyah," a Cairene vulgarism meaning, "There came
nothing to profit him nor to rid the people of him."
2 Arab. " Kammir," i.e. brown it before the fire, toast it.
3 It is insinuated that he had lied till he himself believed the lie to be truth not an
uncommon process, I may remark.
4 Arab. "Rijal" the Men, equivalent to the Walis, Saints or Santons ; with
perhaps an allusion to the Rijal al-Ghayb, the Invisible Controls concerning whom I
have quoted Herklots in vol. ii. 211.
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 1 5
said : Whoso praiseth and then blameth lieth twice." * And he
knew not what to do. Presently, the traders came to him and
said, " O Merchant Ali, hast thou spoken to him ? " Said he, " O
folk, I am ashamed and, though he owe me a thousand dinars, I
cannot speak to him . When ye lent him your money ye consulted
me not ; so ye have no claim on me. Dun him yourselves, and if
he pay you not, complain of him to the King of the city, saying :
He is an impostor who hath imposed upon us. And he will
deliver you from the plague of him." Accordingly, they repaired
to the King and told him what had passed, saying, " O King of
the age, we are perplexed anent this merchant, whose generosity
is excessive ; for he doeth thus and thus, and all he borroweth, he
giveth away to the poor by handsful. Were he a man of naught,
his sense would not suffer him to lavish gold on this wise ; and
were he a man of wealth, his good faith had been made manifest
to us by the coming of his baggage ; but we see none of his
luggage, although he avoucheth that he hath a baggage-train and
hath . preceded it. Now some time hath past, but there appeareth
no sign of his baggage-train, and he oweth us sixty thousand gold
pieces, all of which he hath given away in alms." And they went
on to praise him and extol his generosity. Now this King was a
very covetous man, a more covetous than Ash'ab 2 ; and when he
heard tell of Ma'arufs generosity and openhandedness, greed of
gain got the better of him and he said to his Wazir, " Were not
this merchant a man of immense wealth, he had not shown all
this munificence. His baggage-train will assuredly come, where-
upon these merchants will flock to him and he will scatter amongst
them riches galore. Now I have more right to this money than
they ; wherefore I have a mind to make friends with him and
1 A saying attributed to Al-Hariri (Lane). It is good enough to be his : the Persians
say, " Cut not down the tree thou plantedst," and the idea is universal throughout the
East.
2 A quotation from Al-Hariri (Ass. of the Badawin). Ash'ab (ob. A.H. 54), a
Medinite servant of Caliph Osman, was proverbial for greed and sanguine, Micawber-
like expectation of " windfalls." The Scholiast Al-Sharishi (of Xeres) describes him in
Theophrastic style. He never saw a man put hand to pocket without expecting a
present, or a funeral go by without hoping for a legacy, or a bridal procession without
preparing his own house, hoping they might bring the bride to him by mistake. * * *
When asked if he knew aught greedier than himself he said "Yes; a sheep I once
kept upon my terrace-roof seeing a rainbow mistook it for a rope of hay and jumping
to seize it broke its neck !" Hence "Ash'ab's sheep" became a by- word (Preston
tells the tale in full, p. 288).
1 6 A If Lay la h wa Laylak.
profess affection for him, so that, when his baggage cometh whatso
the merchants would have had I shall get of him ; and I will give
him my daughter to wife and join his wealth to my wealth."
Replied the Wazir, " O King of the age, methinks he is naught
but an impostor, and 'tis the impostor who ruineth the house of
the covetous ; " And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day
and ceased saying her permitted say.
Ttfofo fofjen ft foag tjje Nine ^unbreb an* Ntnety-tfjirb
She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when
the Wazir said to the King, "Methinks he is naught but an
impostor, and 'tis the impostor who ruineth the house of the
covetous ; " the King said, " O Wazir, I will prove him and soon
know if he be an impostor or a true man and whether he be a
reading of Fortune or not." The Wazir asked, " And how wilt
thou prove him ? "; and the King answered, " I will send for him
to the presence and entreat him with honour and give him a jewel
which I have. An he know it and wot its price, he is a man of
worth and wealth ; but an he know it not, he is an impostor and
an upstart and I will do him die by the foulest fashion of deaths."
So he sent for Ma'aruf, who came and saluted him. The King
returned his salam and seating him beside himself, said to him,
"Art thou the merchant Ma'aruf?"and said he, "Yes." Quoth
the King, " The merchants declare that thou owest them sixty
thousand ducats. Is this true?" "Yes," quoth he. Asked the
King, " Then why dost thou not give them their money? "; and
he answered, " Let them wait till my baggage come and I will repay
them twofold. An they wish for gold, they shall have gold ; and
should they wish for silver, they shall have silver ; or an they
prefer for merchandise, I will give them merchandise ; and to whom
I owe a thousand I will give two thousand in requital of that
wherewith he hath veiled my face before the poor ; for I have
plenty/' Then said the King, " O merchant, take this and look
what is its kind and value." And he gave him a jewel the bigness
of a hazel-nut, which he had bought for a thousand sequins and
not having its fellow, prized it highly. Ma'aruf took it and press-
ing it between his thumb and forefinger brake it, for it was brittle
and would not brook the squeeze. Quoth the King, <{ Why hast
thou broken the jewel ? " ; and Ma'aruf laughed and said, " O King
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 17
of the age, this is no jewel. This is but a bittock of mineral worth
a thousand dinars ; why dost thou style it a jewel ? A jewel I call
such as is worth threescore and ten thousand gold pieces and this
is called but a piece of stone. A jewel that is not of the bigness
of a walnut hath no worth in my eyes and I take no account
thereof. How Cometh it, then, that thou, who art King, stylest
this thing a jewel, when 'tis but a bit of mineral worth a thousand
dinars ? But ye are excusable, for that ye are poor folk and have
not in your possession things of price." The King asked, "O
merchant, hast thou jewels such as those whereof thou speakest ? ";
and he answered, " Plenty/' Whereupon avarice overcame the
King and he said, " Wilt thou give me real jewels ? " Said
Ma'aruf, " When my baggage- train shall come, I will give thee no
end of jewels ; and all that thou canst desire I have in plenty and
will give thee, without price." At this the King rejoiced and said
to the traders, " Wend your ways and have patience with him, till
his baggage arrive, when do ye come to me and receive your
monies from me." So they fared forth and the King turned to his
Wazir and said to him, " Pay court to Merchant Ma'aruf and take
and give with him in talk and bespeak him of my daughter,
Princess Dunya, that he may wed her and so we gain these riches
he hath." Said the Wazir, " O King of the age, this man's
fashion misliketh me and methinks he is an impostor and a liar :
so leave this whereof thou speakest lest thou lose thy daughter for
naught." Now this Minister had sued the King aforetime to give
him his daughter to wife and he was willing to do so, but when she
heard of it she consented not to marry him. Accordingly, the
King said to him, " O traitor, thou desirest no good for me, because
in past time thou soughtest my daughter in wedlock, but she would
none of thee ; so now thou wouldst cut off the way of her marriage
and wouldst have the Princess lie fallow, that thou mayst take her;
but hear from me one word. Thou hast no concern in this matter.
How can he be an impostor and a liar, seeing that he knew the
price of the jewel, even that for which I bought it, and brake it
because it pleased him not ? He hath jewels in plenty, and when
he goeth in to my daughter and seeth her to be beautiful, she will
captivate his reason and he will love her and give her jewels and
things of price : but, as for thee, thou wouldst forbid my daughter
and myself these good things." So the Minister was silent, for
fear of the King's anger, and said to himself, " Set the curs on the
VOL. X. B
1 8 A If Lay ia h wa Lay I ah.
cattle * i " Then with show of friendly bias he betook himself to
Ma'aruf and said to him, " His highness the King loveth thee and
hath a daughter, a winsome lady and a lovesome, to whom he is
minded to marry thee. What sayst thou ? " Said he, " No harm
in that ; but let him wait till my baggage come, for marriage-
settlements on Kings' daughters are large and their rank de-
mandeth that they be riot endowed save with a dowry befitting
their degree. At this present I have no money with me till the
coming of my baggage, for I have wealth in plenty and needs
must I make her marriage-portion five thousand purses. Then I
shall need a thousand purses to distribute amongst the poor and
needy on my wedding-night, and other thousand to give to those
who walk in the bridal procession and yet other thousand where-
with to provide provaunt for the troops and others 2 ; and I shall
want an hundred jewels to give to the Princess on the wedding-
morning 3 and other hundred gems to distribute among the slave-
girls and eunuchs, for I must give each of them a jewel in honour
of the bride ; and I need wherewithal to clothe a thousand naked
paupers, and alms too needs must be given. All this cannot be
done till my baggage come ; but I have plenty and, once it is
here, I shall make no account of all this outlay." The Wazir
returned to the King and told him what Ma'aruf said, whereupon
quoth he, " Since this is his wish, how canst thou style him im-
postor and liar ? " Replied the Minister, " And I cease not to say
this." But the King chid him angrily and threatened him, saying,
" By the life of my head, an thou cease not this talk, I will slay
thee ! Go back to him and fetch him to me and I will manage
matters with him myself." So the Wazir returned to Ma'aruf
and said to him, " Gome. and speak with the King." " I hear and
I obey/' said Ma'aruf and went in to the King, who said to him,
" Thou shalt not put me off with these excuses, for my treasury is
full ; so take the keys and spend all thou needest and give what
thou wilt and clothe the poor and do thy desire and have no care
for the girl and the handmaids. When the baggage shall come,
do what thou wilt with thy wife, by way of generosity, and we will
have patience with thee anent the marriage-portion till then, for
there is no manner of difference betwixt me and thee ; none at
1 i.e.-*' Show a miser money and hold him back, if you can."
* He wants 40,000 to begin with.
* i*. Arab. " Sabihat al-'urs " the morning after the wedding. See vol, L 269.
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimak. 19
all." Then he sent for the Shaykh Al-Islam 1 and bade him write
out the marriage-contract between his daughter and Merchant
Ma'aruf, and he did so; after which the King gave the signal
for beginning the wedding festivities and bade decorate the city.
The kettle drums beat and the tables were spread with meats of
all kinds and there came performers who paraded their tricks.
Merchant Ma'aruf sat upon a throne in a parlour and the players
and gymnasts and effeminates 2 and dancing-men of wondrous
movements and posture-makers of marvellous cunning came before
him, whilst he called out to the treasurer and said to him, " Bring
gold and silver." So he brought gold and silver and Ma'aruf went
round among the spectators and largessed each performer by the
handful ; and he gave alms to the poor and needy and clothes
to the naked and it was a clamorous festival and a right merry.
The treasurer could not bring money fast enough from the treasury,
and the Wazir's heart was like to burst for rage ; but he dared
not say a word, whilst Merchant Ali marvelled at this waste
of wealth and said to Merchant Ma'aruf, " Allah and the
Hallows visit this upon thy head-sides 3 ! Doth it not suffice
thee to squander the traders' money, but thou must squander
that of the King to boot ? " Replied Ma'aruf, " Tis none of
thy concern : whenas my baggage shall come, I will requite the
King manifold." And he went on lavishing money and saying
in himself, " A burning plague ! What will happen will happen
and there is no flying from that which is fore-ordained." The
festivities ceased not for the space of forty days, and on the one-
and-fortieth day, they made the bride's cortege and all the Emirs
and troops walked before her. When they brought her in before
Ma'aruf, he began scattering gold on the people's heads, and they
made her a mighty fine procession, whilst Ma'aruf expended in
her honour vast sums of money. Then they brought him in to
Princess Dunya and he sat down on the high divan ; after which
1 Another sign of modern composition as in Kamar al-Zaman II.
2 Arab. " Al-Jink " (from Turk.) are boys and youths mostly Jews, Armenians,
Greeks and Turks, who dress in woman's dress with long hair braided. Lane (M. E.
chapts. xix. and xxv.) gives same account of the customs of the "Gink" (as the
Egyptians call them) but cannot enter into details concerning these catamites. Respect-
able Moslems often employ them to dance at festivals in preference to the Ghawazi- women,
a freak of Mohammedan decorum. When they grow old they often preserve their cos-
tume, and a glance at them makes a European's blood run cold.
3 Lane translates this, " May Allah and the Rijal retaliate upon thy temple!"
SO A If Laylah wa Laylah.
they let fall the curtains and shut the doors and withdrew, leaving
him alone with his bride ; whereupon he smote hand upon
hand and sat awhile sorrowful and saying, "There is no
Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the
Great ! " Quoth the Princess, " O my lord, Allah preserve thee !
What aileth thee that thou art troubled ? " Quoth he, " And how
should I be other than troubled, seeing that thy father hath
embarrassed me and done with me a deed which is like the burning
of green corn ? " She asked, " And what hath my father done
with thee ? Tell me ! " ; and he answered, He hath brought me in
to thee before the coming of my baggage, and I want at very least
an hundred jewels to distribute among thy handmaids, to each a
jewel, so she might rejoice therein and say, My lord gave me a
jewel on the night of his going in to my lady. This good deed
would I have done in honour of thy station and for the increase of
thy dignity ; and I have no need to stint myself in lavishing jewels,
for I have of them great plenty." Rejoined she, " Be not concerned
for that. As for me, trouble not thyself about me, for I will have
patience with thee till thy baggage shall come, and as for my
women have no care for them. Rise, doff thy clothes and take
thy pleasure; and when the baggage cometh we shall get the
jewels and the rest." So he arose and putting off his clothes sat
down on the bed and sought love-liesse and they fell to toying
with each other. He laid his hand on her knee and she sat down
in his lap and thrust her lip like a tit-bit of meat into his mouth,
and that hour was such as maketh a man to forget his father and
his mother. So he clasped her in his arms and strained her fast
to his breast and sucked her lip, till the honey-dew ran out into
his mouth ; and he laid his hand under her left-armpit, whereupon
his vitals and her vitals yearned for coition. Then he clapped her
between the breasts and his hand slipped down between her thighs
and she girded him with her legs, whereupon he made of the two
parts proof amain and crying out, " O sire of the chin-veils twainl ! "
applied the priming and kindled the match and set it to the touch-
hole and gave fire and breached the citadel in its four corners ; so
1 Arab. "Yaaba '1-lithamayn," addressed to his member. Lathm the root means
kissing or breaking; so he would say, " O thou who canst take her maidenhead whilst
my tongue does away with the virginity of her mouth." " He breached the citadel "
(which is usually square) "in its four corners" signifying that he utterly broke it
down.
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 21
there befel the mystery 1 concerning which there is no enquiry ;
and she cried the cry that needs must be cried. 2 And Shahraiad
perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
Wofo fo&en tt foas t&e Nine f^untae* an* Ninctg-fouxtf) Nt'$t,
She resumed, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that while
the Princess Dunya cried the cry which must be cried, Merchant
Ma'aruf abated her maidenhead and that night was one not to be
counted among lives for that which it comprised of the enjoyment
of the fair, clipping and dallying langue fourree and futtering till
the dawn of day, when he arose and entered the Hammam whence,
after donning a suit for sovrans suitable he betook himself to the
King's Divan. All who were there rose to him and received him
with honour and worship, giving him joy and invoking blessings
upon him ; and he sat down by the King's side and asked, " Where
is the treasurer ? " They answered, " Here he is, before thee,"
and he said to him, " Bring robes of honour for all the Wazirs and
Emirs and dignitaries and clothe them therewith." The treasurer
brought him all he sought and he sat giving to all who came to
him and lavishing largesse upon every man according to his
station. On this wise he abode twenty days, whilst no baggage
appeared for him nor aught else, till the treasurer was straitened
by him to the uttermost and going in to the King, as he sat alone
with the Wazir in Ma'aruf's absence, kissed ground between his
hands and said, " O King of the age, I must tell thee somewhat,
lest haply thou blame me for not acquainting thee therewith.
Know that the treasury is being exhausted ; there is none but a
little money left in it and in ten days more we shall shut it upon
emptiness/' Quoth the King, " O Wazir, verily my son-in-law's
baggage-train tarrieth long and there appeareth no news thereof."
The Minister laughed and said, "Allah be gracious to thee, O
King of the age ! Thou art none other but heedless with respect
1 A rnyslery to the Author of Proverbs (xxx. 18-19),
There be three things which are too wondrous for me,
The way of an eagle in the air ;
The way of a snake upon a rock j
And the way of a man with a maid.
2 Several women have described the pain to me as much resembling the drawing of a
tooth.
22 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
to this impostor, this liar. As thy head liveth, there is no baggage
for him, no, nor a burning plague to rid us of him ! Nay, he hath
but imposed on thee without surcease, so that he hath wasted
thy treasures and married thy daughter for naught. How long
therefore wilt thou be heedless of this liar ? " Then quoth the
King, " O Wazir, how shall we do to learn the truth of his case ? ";
and quoth the Wazir, " O King of the age, none may come at a
man's secret but his wife ; so send for thy daughter and let her
come behind the curtain, that I may question her of the truth of
his estate, to the intent that she may make question of him and
acquaint us with his case." Cried the King, " There is no harm in
that ; and as my head liveth, if it be proved that he is a liar and
an impostor, I will verily do him die by the foulest of deaths ! "
Then he carried the Wazir into the sitting-chamber and sent for
his daughter, who came behind the curtain, her husband being
absent, and said, " What wouldst thou, O my father ? " Said he
" Speak with the Wazir." So she asked, " Ho thou, the Wazir,
what is thy will ? " ; and he answered, " O my lady, thou must
know that thy husband hath squandered thy father's substance
and married thee without a dower ; and he ceaseth not to promise
us and break his promises, nor cometh there any tidings of his
baggage ; in short we would have thee inform us concerning him."
Quoth she, " Indeed his words be many, and he still cometh and
promiseth me jewels and treasures and costly stuffs ; but I see
nothing." Quoth the Wazir, " O my lady, canst thou this night
take and give with him in talk and whisper to him : Say me sooth
and fear from me naught, for thou art become my husband and I
will not transgress against thee. So tell me the truth of the matter
and I will devise thee a device whereby thou shalt be set at rest.
And do thou play near and far 1 with him in words and profess love
to him and win him to confess and after tell us the facts of his case."
And she answered, " O my papa, I know how I will make proof
of him." Then she went away and after supper her husband came
in to her, according to his wont, whereupon Princess Dunya
rose to him and took him under the armpit and wheedled
him with winsomest wheedling (and all-sufficient 2 are woman's
wiles whenas she would aught of men) ; and she ceased not
1 As we should say, < c play fast and loose."
8 Arab. "Nahi-ka" lit. = thy prohibition but idiomatically used = let it suffice
thee I
Mcfaruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 23
to caress him and beguile him with speech sweeter than the
honey till she stole his reason ; and when she saw that he alto-
gether inclined to her, she said to him, " O my beloved, O coolth
of my eyes and fruit of my vitals, Allah never desolate me by less
of thee nor Time sunder us twain me and thee ! Indeed, the love
of thee hath homed in my heart and the fire of passion hath con-
sumed my liver, nor will I ever forsake thee or transgress against
thee. But I would have thee tell me the truth, for that the
sleights of falsehood profit not, nor do they secure credit at all
seasons. How long wilt thou impose upon my father and lie to
him ? I fear lest thine affair be discovered to him, ere we can
devise some device and he lay violent hands upon thee ? So
acquaint me with the facts of the case for naught shall befal thee
save that which shall begladden thee ; and, when thou shalt have
spoken sooth, fear not harm shall betide thee. How often wilt
thou declare that thou art a merchant and a man of money and
hast a luggage-train ? This long while past thou sayest, My
baggage ! my baggage ! but there appeareth no sign of thy
baggage, and visible in thy face is anxiety on this account. So
an there be no worth in thy words, tell me and I will contrive
thee a contrivance whereby thou shalt come off safe, Inshallah ! "
He replied, " I will tell thee the truth, and then do thou whatso
thou wilt." Rejoined she, " Speak and look thou speak soothly ; for
sooth is the ark of safety, and beware of lying, for it dishonoureth
the liar and God-gifted is he who said :
'Ware that truth thou speak, albe sooth when said * Shall cause thee in
threatened fire to fall :
And seek Allah's approof, for most foolish he * Who shall anger
his Lord to make friends with thrall.
He said, " Know, then, O my lady, that I am no merchant and
have no baggage, no, nor a burning plague ; nay, I was but a
cobbler in my own country and had a wife called Fatimah the
Dung, with whom there befel me this and that." And he told
her his story from beginning to end ; whereat she laughed and
said, "Verily, thou art clever in the practice of lying and im-
posture ! " Whereto he answered, " O my lady, may Allah
Almighty preserve thee to veil sins and countervail chagrins!"
Rejoined she, " Know, that thou imposedst upon my sire and
deceivedst him by dint of thy deluding vaunts, so that of his
greed for gain he married me to thee. Then thou squanderedst
24 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
his wealth and the Wazir beareth thee a grudge for this. How
many a time hath he spoken against thee to my father, saying,
Indeed, he is an impostor, a liar ! But my sire hearkened not to
his say, for that he had sought me in wedlock and I consented not
that he be baron and I fern me. However, the time grew long-
some upon my sire and he became straitened and said to me,
Make him confess. So I have made thee confess and that which
was covered is discovered. Now my father purposeth thee a mischief
because of this ; but thou art become my husband and I will never
transgress against thee. An I told my father what I have learnt
from thee, he would be certified of thy falsehood and imposture and
that thou imposest upon Kings' daughters and squanderest royal
wealth : so would thine offence find with him no pardon and he
would slay thee sans a doubt : wherefore it would be bruited
among the folk that 1 married a man who was a liar, an impostor,
and this would smirch mine honour. Furthermore an he kill
thee, most like he will require me to wed another, and to such
thing I will never consent ; no, not though I die ! " * So rise
now and don a Mameluke's dress and take these fifty thousand
dinars of my monies, and mount a swift steed and get thee to a
land whither the rule of my father doth not reach. Then make
thee a merchant and send me a letter by a courier who shall
bring it privily to me, that I may know in what land thou art, so
I may send thee all my hand can attain. Thus shall thy wealth
wax great and if my father die, I will send for thee, and thou
shalt return in respect and honour ; and if we die, thou or I and
go to the mercy of God the Most Great, the Resurrection shall
unite us. This, then, is the rede that is right : and while we both
abide alive and well, I will not cease to send thee letters and
monies. Arise ere the day wax bright and thou be in perplexed
plight and perdition upon thy head alight ! " Quoth he, " O my
lady, I beseech thee of thy favour to bid me farewell with thine
embracement ; " and quoth she, " No harm in that." 2 So he
embraced her and knew her carnally ; after which he made the
Ghusl-ablution ; then, donning the dress of a white slave, he bade
the syces saddle him a thoroughbred steed. Accordingly, they
1 A character-sketch like that of Princess Dunya makes ample amends for a book full
of abuse of women. And yet the superficial say that none of the characters have much
personal individuality.
2 This is indeed one of the touches of nature which makes all the world kin.
Mcfaruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 2$
paddled him a courser and he mounted and farewelling his wife,
rode forth the city at the last of the night, whilst all who saw him
deemed him one of the Mamelukes of the Sultan going abroad on
some business. Next morning, the King and his Wazir repaired
to the sitting-chamber and sent for Princess Dunya who came
behind the curtain ; and her father said to her, " O my daughter,
what sayst thou ? " Said she, " I say, Allah blacken thy Wazir's
face, because he would have blackened my face in my husband's
eyes ! " Asked the King, " How so ? "; and she answered, " He
came in to me yesterday ; but, before I could name the matter to
him, behold, in walked Faraj the Chief Eunuch, letter in hand,
and said : Ten white slaves stand under the palace window and
have given me this letter, saying : Kiss for us the hands of our
lord, Merchant Ma'aruf, and give him this letter, for we are of his
Mamelukes with the baggage, and it hath reached us that he hath
wedded the King's daughter, so we are come to acquaint him with
that which befel us by the way. Accordingly I took the letter
and read as follows : From the five hundred Mamelukes to his
highness our lord Merchant Ma'aruf. But further. We give thee
to know that, after thou quittedst us, the Arabs 1 came out upon us
and attacked us. They were two thousand horse and we five
hundred mounted slaves and there befel a mighty sore fight
between us and them. They hindered us from the road thirty days
doing battle with them and this is the cause of our tarrying from
thee. - And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased
saying her permitted say.
Nofo fofjm it toas tfje ftTt'nc f^untofc anfc Xnutg=fiftf)
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Princess
Dunya said to her sire, " My husband received a letter from his
dependents ending with : The Arabs hindered us from the road
thirty days which is the cause of our being behind time. They
also took from us of the luggage two hundred loads of cloth and
slew of us fifty Mamelukes. When the news reached my husband,
he cried, Allah disappoint them ! What ailed them to wage war
with the Arabs for the sake of two hundred loads of merchandise ?
1 As we are in Tartary " Arabs " here means plundering nomades, like the Persian
* Iliyat " and other shepherd races.
26 A If Laylak wa Laylak.
What are two hundred loads ? It behoved them not to tarry on
that account, for verily the value of the two hundred loads is only
some seven thousand dinars. But needs must I go to them and
hasten them. As for that which the Arabs have taken, 'twill not
be missed from the baggage, nor doth it weigh with me a whit, for
I reckon it as if I had given it to them by way of an alms. Then
he went down from me, laughing and taking no concern for the
wastage of his wealth nor the slaughter of his slaves. As soon as
he was gone, I looked out from the lattice and saw the ten Mame-
lukes who had brought him the letter, as they were moons, each
clad in a suit of clothes worth two thousand dinars, there is not
with my father a chattel to match one of them. He went forth
with them to bring up his baggage and hallowed be Allah who
hindered me from saying to him aught of that thou badest me, for
he would have made mock of me and thee, and haply he would
have eyed me with the eye of disparagement and hated me. But
the fault is all with thy Wazir, 1 who speaketh against my husband
words that besit him not/' Replied the King, " O my daughter,
thy husband's wealth is indeed endless and he recketh not of it ;
for, from the day he entered our city, he hath done naught but
give alms to the poor. Inshallah, he will speedily return with the
baggage, and good in plenty shall betide us from him." And he
went on to appease her and menace the Wazir, being duped by
her device. So fared it with the King ; but as regards Merchant
Ma'aruf he rode on into waste lands, perplexed and knowing not
to what quarter he should betake him ; and for the anguish of
parting he lamented and in the pangs of passion and love-longing
he recited these couplets :
Time falsed our Union and divided who were one in tway ; o And the sore
tyranny of Time doth melt my heart away :
Mine eyes ne'er cease to drop the tear for parting with my dear; o When shall
Disunion come to end and dawn the Union-day ?
O favour like the full moon's face of sheen, indeed I'm he o Whom thou didst
leave with vitals torn when faring on thy way.
Would I had never seen thy sight, or met thee for an hour; o Since after
sweetest taste of thee to bitters I'm a prey.
i The very cruelty of love which hates nothing so much as a rejected lover. The
Princess, be it noted, is not supposed to be merely romancing, but speaking with the
second sight, the clairvoyance, of perfect affection. Men seem to know very little upon
this subject, though every one has at times been more or less startled by the abnormal
introvision. and divination of things hidden which are the property and prerogative of
perfect love.
Mcfaruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 27
Ma'aruf will never cease to be enthralled by Dunya's ! charms o And long live
she albe he die whom love and longing slay,
O brilliance, like resplendent sun of noontide, deign them heal o His heart for
kindness* and the fire of longing love allay !
Would Heaven I wot an e'er the days shall deign conjoin our lots, e Join us in
pleasant talk o' nights, in Union glad and gay :
Shall my love's palace hold two hearts that savour joy, and I o Strain to my
breast the branch I saw upon the sand-hill 3 sway ?
O favour of full moon in sheen, never may sun o' thee o Surcease to rise from
Eastern rim with all-enlightening ray !
I'm well content with passion-pine and all its bane and bate o For luck in love
is evermore the butt of jealous Fate.
And when he ended his verses, he wept with sore weeping, for
indeed the ways were walled up before his face and death seemed
to him better than dreeing life, and he walked on like a drunken
man for stress of distraction, and stayed not till noontide, when he
came to a little town and saw a plougher hard by, ploughing with
a yoke of bulls. Now hunger was sore upon him ; and he went
up to the ploughman and said to him, " Peace be with thee ! " ;
and he returned his salam and said to him, " Welcome, O my lord !
Art thou one of the Sultan's Mamelukes ? " Quoth Ma'aruf,
"Yes;" and the other said, "Alight with me for a guest-meal."
Whereupon Ma'aruf knew him to be of the liberal and said to him,
" O my brother, I see with thee naught with which thou mayst
feed me : how is it, then, that thou invitest me ? " Answered the
husbandman, " O my lord, weal is well nigh. 4 Dismount thee
here : the town is near hand and I will go and fetch thee dinner
and fodder for thy stallion." Rejoined Ma'aruf, " Since the town
is near at hand, I can go thither as quickly as thou canst and buy
me what I have a mind to in the bazar and eat." The peasant
replied, " O my lord, the place is but a little village 5 and there is
no bazar there, neither selling nor buying. So I conjure thee by
Allah, alight here with me and hearten my heart, and I will run
thither and return to thee in haste." Accordingly he dismounted
1 The name of the Princess meaning "The World," not unusual amongst Moslem
women.
2 Another pun upon his name " Ma'aruf."
3 Arab. " Naka," the mound of pure sand which delights the eye of the Badawi leaving
a town. See vol. i. 217, for the lines and explanation in Night cmlxiv. vol. ix. p. 250.
* Euphemistic : " I will soon fetch thee food." To say this bluntly might have brought
misfortune.
5 Arab. " Kafr = a village in Egypt and Syria e.g. Capernaum (Kafr Nahum).
28 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
and the Fellah left him and went off to the village, to fetch dinner
for him whilst Ma'aruf sat awaiting him. Presently he said in
himself, " I have taken this poor man away from his work ; but I
will arise and plough in his stead, till he come back, to make up
for having hindered him from his work. 1 " Then he took the
plough and starting the bulls, ploughed a little, till the share
struck against something and the beasts stopped. He goaded them
on, but they could not move the plough ; so he looked at the share
and finding it caught in a ring of gold, cleared away the soil and
'saw that it was set centre-most a slab of alabaster, the size of the
nether millstone. He strave at the stone till he pulled it from its
place, when there appeared beneath it a souterrain with a stair.
Presently he descended the flight of steps and came to a place
like a Hammam, with for daYses, the first full of gold, from floor to
roof, the second full of emeralds and pearls and coral also from
ground to ceiling ; the third of jacinths and rubies and turquoises
and the fourth of diamonds and all manner other preciousest
stones. At the upper end of the place stood a coffer of clearest
crystal, full of union-gems each the size of a walnut, and upon the
coffer lay a casket of gold, the bigness of a lemon. When he saw
this, he marvelled and rejoiced with joy exceeding and said to
himself, " I wonder what is in this casket ? " So he opened it and
found therein a seal-ring of gold, whereon were graven names and
talismans, as they were the tracks of creeping ants. He rubbed
the ring and behold, a voice said, " Adsum ! Here am I, at thy
service, O my lord ! Ask and it shall be given unto thee. Wilt
thou. raise a city or ruin a capital or kill a king or dig a river-
channel or aught of the kind ? Whatso thou seekest, it shall
come to pass, by leave of the King of All-might, Creator of day
and night." Ma'aruf asked, " O creature of my lord, who and
what art thou ? " ; and the other answered, " I am the slave of
this seal-ring standing in the service of him who possesseth it.
Whatsoever he seeketh, that I accomplish for him, and I have no
excuse in neglecting that he biddeth me do ; because I am Sultan
over two-and seventy tribes of the Jinn, each two-and-seventy
thousand in number every one of which thousand ruleth over a
thousand Marids, each Marid over a thousand Ifrits, each I frit
over a thousand Satans and each Satan over a thousand Jinn : and
they are all under command of me and may not gainsay me. As
1 He has all the bonhomie of the Cairene and will do a kindness whenever he can.
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimak. 29
for me, I am spelled to this seal-ring and may not thwart whoso
holdeth it. Lo ! thou hast gotten hold of it and I am become thy
slave ; so ask what thou wilt, for I hearken to thy word and
obey thy bidding ; and if thou have need of me at any time, by
land or by sea rub the signet-ring and thou wilt find me with thee.
But beware of rubbing it twice in succession, or thou wilt con-
sume me with the fire of the names graven thereon ; and thus
wouldst thou lose me and after regret me. Now I have ac-
quainted thee with my case and the Peace ! " And Shahrazad
perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
fo&en tt foas tfje Nine ^utrtrrtfr antr Nmetg^sfxtf) tftgfc,
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when
the Slave of the Signet-ring acquainted Ma'aruf with his case,
the Merchant asked him, " What is thy name ? " and the Jinni
answered, "My name is Abu al-Sa'adat. 1 " Quoth Ma'aruf, "O
Abu al-Sa'adat what is this place and who enchanted thee in this
casket ? " ; and quoth he, " O my lord, this is a treasure called the
Hoard of Shadddd son of Ad, him who the base of ' Many-
columned Iram laid, the like of which in the lands was never
made. 2 " I was his slave in his lifetime and this is his Seal-ring,
which he laid up in his treasure ; but it hath fallen to thy lot."
Ma'aruf enquired, " Canst thou transport that which is in this
hoard to the surface of the earth ? " ; and the Jinni replied, " Yes !
Nothing were easier." Said Ma'aruf/' Bring it forth and leave
naught." So the Jinni signed with his hand to the ground, which
clave asunder, and he sank and was absent a little while. Presently,
there came forth young boys full of grace, and fair of face bearing
golden baskets filled with gold which they emptied out and going
away, returned with more ; nor did they cease to transport the
gold and jewels, till ere an hour had sped they said, " Naught is
left in the hoard." Thereupon out came Abu al-Sa'adat and said
to Ma'aruf, " O my lord, thou seest that we have brought forth all
that was in the hoard." Ma'aruf asked, " Who be these beautiful
1 i.e. the Father of- Prosperities : pron. Aboosa'adat; as in the Tale of Hasan of
Bassorah.
8 Koran Ixxxix. "The Daybreak" which also mentions Thamud and Pharaoh.
30 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
boys ? " and the Jinni answered, " They are my sons. This
matter merited not that I should muster for it the Marids, where-
fore my sons have done thy desire and are honoured by such
service. So ask what thou wilt beside this." Quoth Ma'aruf,
" Canst thou bring me he-mules and chests and fill the chests with
the treasure and load them on the mules ? " Quoth Abu al-
Sa'adat, " Nothing easier/' and cried a great cry ; whereupon his
sons presented themselves before him, to the number of eight
hundred, and he said to them, " Let some of you take the semblance
of he-mules and others of muleteers and handsome Mamelukes, the
like of the least of whom is not found with any of the Kings ; and
others of you be transmewed to muleteers, and the rest to menials."
So seven hundred of them changed themselves into bat-mules and
other hundred took the shape of slaves. Then Abu al-Sa'adat
called upon his Marids, who presented themselves between his
hands and he commanded some of them to assume the aspect of
horses saddled with saddles of gold crusted with jewels. And
when Ma'aruf saw them do as he bade he cried, " Where be the
chest's ? " They brought them before him and he said, " Pack the
gold and the stones, each sort by itself." So they packed them
and loaded three hundred he-mules with them. Then asked
Ma'aruf, "O Abu al-Sa'adat, canst thou bring me some loads of
costly stuffs ? " ; and the Jinni answered, "Wilt thou have Egyptian
stuffs or Syrian or Persian or Indian or Greek ?" Ma'aruf said,
" Bring me an hundred loads of each kind, on five hundred mules ; "
and Abu al-Sa'adat, " O my lord accord me delay that I may
dispose my Marids for this and send a company of them to each
country to fetch an hundred loads of its stuffs and then take the
form of he-mules and return, carrying the stuffs." Ma'aruf
enquired, " What time dost thou want ? " ; and Abu aUSa'adat
replied, " The time of the blackness of the night, and day shall not
! dawn ere thou have all thou desirest." Said Ma'aruf, "I grant
'thee this time," and bade them pitch him a pavilion. So they
pitched it and he sat down therein and they brought him a table
of food. Then said Abu al-Sa'adat to him, " O my lord, tarry
thou in this tent and these my sons shall guard thee: so fear
thou nothing ; for I go to muster my Marids and despatch them
to do thy desire." So saying, he departed, leaving Ma'aruf
seated in the pavilion, with the table before him and the Jinni's
sons attending upon him, in the guise of slaves and servants and
suite. And while he sat in this state behold, up came the husband-
Mcfaruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 3 1
'man, with a great porringer of lentils 1 and a nose-bag full of
barley and seeing the pavilion pitched and the Mamelukes standing,
hands upon breasts, thought that the Sultan was come and had
halted on that stead. So he stood open-mouthed and said in
himself, " Would I had killed a couple of chickens and fried them
red with clarified cow-butter for the Sultan ! " And he would
have turned back to kill the chickens as a regale for the Sultan ;
but Ma'aruf saw him and cried out to him and said to the
Mamelukes, " Bring him hither." So they brought him and his
porringer of lentils before Ma'aruf, who said to him, " What is
this ? " Said the peasant, " This is thy dinner and thy horse's
fodder ! Excuse me, for I thought not that the Sultan would
come hither ; and, had I known that, I would have killed a
couple of chickens and entertained him in goodly guise." Quoth
Ma'aruf, " The Sultan is not come. I am his son-in-law and I
was vexed with him. However he hath sent his officers to
make his peace with me, and now I am minded to return to
city. But thou hast made me this guest-meal without knowing
me, and I accept it from thee, lentils though it be, and will not
eat save of thy cheer." Accordingly he bade him set the porringer
amiddlemost the table and ate of it his sufficiency, whilst the
Fellah filled his belly with those rich meats. Then Ma'aruf washed
his hands and gave the Mamelukes leave to eat ; so they fell upon
the remains of the meal and ate ; and, when the porringer was
empty, he filled it with gold and gave it to the peasant, saying,
" Carry this to thy dwelling and come to me in the city, and I
will entreat thee with honour." Thereupon the peasant took the
porringer full of gold and returned to the village, driving the bulls
before him and deeming himself akin to the King. Meanwhile,
they brought Ma'aruf girls of the Brides of the Treasure, 2 - who
smote on instruments of music and danced before him, and he
passed that night in joyance and delight, a night not to be
reckoned among lives. Hardly had dawned the day when there
arose a great cloud of dust which presently lifting, discovered
seven hundred mules laden with stuffs and attended by muleteers
and baggage-tenders and cresset-bearers. With them came Abu
al-Sa'adat, riding on a she-mule, in the guise of a caravan-leader,
1 In Egypt the cheapest and poorest of food, never seen at a hotel table d'hote.
* The beautiful girls who guard ensorcelled hoards : See vol. vi. 109.
32 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
and before him was a travelling-litter, with four corner- terminals 1
of glittering red gold, set with gems. When Abu al-Sa'adat came
up to the tent, he dismounted and kissing the earth, said to Ma'aruf,
" O my lord, thy desire hath been done to the uttermost and in
the litter is a treasure-suit which hath not its match among Kings'
raiment : so don it and mount the litter and bid us do what thou
wilt." Quoth Ma'aruf, " O Abu al-Sa'adat, I wish thee to go to
the city of Ikhtiyan al-Khutan and present thyself to my father-
in-law the King ; and go thou not in to him but in the guise of a
mortal courier ; " and quoth he, " To hear is to obey." So Ma'aruf
wrote a letter to the Sultan and sealed it and Abu al-Sa'adat took
it and set out with it ; and when he arrived, he found the King
saying, " O Wazir, indeed my heart is concerned for my son-in-
law and I fear lest the Arabs slay him. Would Heaven I wot
whither he was bound, that I might have followed him with the
troops ! Would he had told me his destination ! " Said the
Wazir, " Allah be merciful to thee for this thy heedlessness ! As
thy head liveth, the wight saw that we were awake to him and
feared dishonour and fled, for he is nothing but an impostor, a
liar." And behold, at this moment in came the courier and
kissing ground before the King, wished him permanent glory and
prosperity and length of life. Asked the King, " Who art thou
and what is thy business ? " " I am a courier," answered the Jinni,
" and thy son-in-law who is come with the baggage sendeth me to
thee with a letter, and here it is ! So he took the letter and read
therein these words, " After salutations galore to our uncle 2 the
glorious King ! Know that I am at hand with the baggage-train :
so come thou forth to meet me with the troops." Cried the King,
" Allah blacken thy brow, O Wazir ! How often wilt thou defame
my son-in-law's name and call him liar and impostor ? Behold,
he is come with the baggage-train and thou art naught but a
traitor." The Minister hung his head ground-wards in shame and
confusion and replied, " O King of the age, I said not this save
because of the long delay of the baggage and because I feared the
loss of the wealth he hath wasted." The King exclaimed, "O
1 Arab. " Asakir," the ornaments of litters, which are either plain balls of metal or
tapering cones based on crescents or on balls and crescents. See in Lane (M. E. chapt,
xxiv.) the sketch of the Mahmal.
2 Arab. "Amm"= father's brother, courteously used for "father-in-law," which
suggests having slept with his daughter, and which is indecent in writing. Thus by a
pleasant fiction the husband represents himself as having married his first cousin.
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 33
traitor, what are my riches ! Now that his baggage is come he
will give me great plenty in their stead.*' Then he bade decorate
the city and going in to his daughter, said to her, " Good news for
thee ! Thy husband will be here anon with his baggage ; for he
hath sent me a letter to that effect and here am I now going forth
to meet him." The Princess Dunya marvelled at this and said in
herself, " This is a wondrous thing ! Was he laughing at me and
making mock of me, or had he a mind to try me, when he told me
that he was a pauper ? But Alhamdolillah, Glory to God, for that
I failed not of my duty to him ! " On this wise fared it in the
Palace ; but as regards Merchant Ali, the Cairene, when he saw
the decoration of the city and asked the cause thereof, they said
to him, " The baggage-train of Merchant Ma'aruf, the King's son-
in-law, is come." Said he, " Allah is Almighty ! What a calamity
is this man ! 1 He came to me, fleeing from his wife, and he was
a poor man. Whence then should he get a baggage-train ? But
haply this is a device which the King's daughter hath contrived
for him, fearing his disgrace, and Kings are not unable to do any-
thing. May Allah the Most High veil his fame and not bring
him to public shame ! " And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of
day and ceased saying her permitted say.
Nofo fo&en (t foas tije Nine f^unHrefc antr Ntnetp=sebentJ
She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when
Merchant Ali asked the cause of the decorations, they told him
the truth of the case ; so he blessed Merchant Ma'aruf and cried,
" May Allah Almighty veil his fame and not bring him to public
shame ! " And all the merchants rejoiced and were glad for that
they would get their monies. Then the King assembled his
troops and rode forth, whilst Abu al-Sa'adat returned to Ma'aruf
and acquainted him with the delivering of the letter. Quoth
Ma'aruf, " Bind on the loads ; " and when they had done so, he
donned the treasure-suit and mounting the litter became a
thousand times greater and more majestic than the King. Then
he set forward; but, when he had gone half-way, behold, the
King met him with the troops, and seeing him riding in the
1 i.e. a calamity to the enemy : see vol. ii. 87 and passim.
VOL. X,
34 A V Laylah wa Laylah.
Takhtrawan and clad in the dress aforesaid, threw himself upon
him and saluted him, and giving him joy of his safety, greeted
him with the greeting of peace. Then all the Lords of the land
saluted him and it was made manifest that he had spoken the
truth and that in him there was no lie. Presently he entered the
city in such state procession as would have caused the gall-bladder
of the lion to burst * for envy and the traders pressed up to him
and kissed his hands, whilst Merchant Ali said to him, " Thou hast
played off this trick and it hath prospered to thy hand, O Shaykh
of Impostors! But thou deservest it and may Allah the Most
High increase thee of His bounty ! "; whereupon Ma'aruf laughed.
Then he entered the palace and sitting down on the throne said,
" Carry the loads of gold into the treasury of my uncle the King
and bring me the bales of cloth." So they brought them to him
and opened them before him, bale after bale, till they had unpacked
the seven hundred loads, whereof he chose out the best and said,
" Bear these to Princess Dunya that she may distribute them
among her slave-girls ; and carry her also this coffer of jewels,
that she may divide them among her handmaids and eunuchs."
Then he proceeded to make over to the merchants in whose debt
he was stuffs by way of payment for their arrears, giving him
whose due was a thousand, stuffs worth two thousand or more ;
after which he fell to distributing to the poor and needy, whilst
the King looked on with greedy eyes and could not hinder him ;
nor did he cease largesse till he had made an end of the seven
hundred loads, when he turned to the troops and proceeded to
apportion amongst them emeralds and rubies and pearls and coral
and other jewels by handsful, without count, till the King said to
him, " Enough of this giving, O my son ! There is but little left
of the baggage." But he said, " I have plenty." Then indeed,
his good faith was become manifest and none could give him the
lie ; and he had come to reck not of giving, for that the Slave of
the Seal-ring brought him whatsoever he sought. Presently, the
treasurer came in to the King and said, " O King of the age, the f
treasury is full indeed and will not hold the rest of the loads.
Where shall we lay that which is left of the gold and jewels ? "
And he assigned to him another place. As for the Princess
1 Both texts read " Asad " (lion) and Lane accepts it : there is no reason to change
it for "'HAsid" (Envier), the Lion being the Sultan of the Beasts and the tnost
majestic.
McfaruJ the Cobbler and his Wife Fattmali. 35
Dunya when she saw this, her joy redoubled and she marvelled
and said in herself, "Would I wot how came he by all this
wealth ! " In like manner the traders rejoiced in that which he
had given them and blessed him ; whilst Merchant AH marvelled
and said to himself, " I wonder how he hath lied and swindled,
that he hath gotten him all these treasures 1 ? Had they come
from the King's daughter, he had not wasted them on this wise !
But how excellent is his saying who said :
When the Kings' King giveth, in reverence pause * And venture not to enquire
the cause :
Allah gives His gifts unto whom He will, * So respect and abide by
His Holy Laws!
So far concerning him ; but as regards the King, he also marvelled
with passing marvel at that which he saw of Ma'aruf s generosity
and open-handedness in the largesse of wealth. Then the Mer-
chant went in to his wife, who met him, smiling and laughing-
lipped and kissed his hand, saying, " Didst thou mock me or hadst
thou a mind to prove me with thy saying : I am a poor man and
a fugitive from my wife ? Praised be Allah for that I failed not of
my duty to thee ! For thou art my beloved and there is none
dearer to me than thou, whether thou be rich or poor. But I
would have thee tell me what didst thou design by these words.
Said Ma'aruf, " I wished to prove thee and see whether thy love
were sincere or for the sake of wealth and the greed of worldly
good. But now 'tis become manifest to me that thine affection is
sincere and as thou art a true woman, so welcome to thee ! I know
thy worth." Then he went apart into a place by himself and
rubbed the seal-ring, whereupon Abu al-Sa'adat presented himself
and said to him, " Adsum, at thy service ! Ask what thou wilt."
Quoth Ma'aruf, " I want a treasure-suit and treasure-trinkets for
my wife, including a necklace of forty unique jewels." Quoth the
Jinni, " To hear is to obey," and brought him what he sought,
whereupon Ma'aruf dismissed him and carrying the dress and
ornaments in to his wife, laid them before her and said, " Take
these and put them on and welcome ! " When she saw this, her
wits fled for joy, and she found among the ornaments a pair of
anklets of gold set with jewels of the handiwork of the magicians,
"* The Cairene knew his fellow Cairene and was not to be taken in by him.
3^ c A If Laylah wa Laylah.
and bracelets and earrings and a belt * such as no money could
buy. So she donned the dress and ornaments and said to Ma'aruf,
" O my lord, I will treasure these up for holidays and festivals."
But he answered, " Wear them always, for I have others in plenty."
And when she put them on and her women beheld her, they
rejoiced and bussed his hands. Then he left them and going
apart by himself, rubbed the seal-ring whereupon its slave appeared
and he said to him, " Bring me an hundred suits of apparel, with
their ornaments of gold." " Hearing and obeying," answered Abu
al Sa'adat and brought him the hundred suits, each with its orna-
ments wrapped up within it. Ma'aruf took them and called aloud
to the slave-girls, who came to him and he gave them each a suit :
so they donned them and became like the black-eyed girls of
Paradise, whilst the Princess Dunya shone amongst them as the
moon among the stars. One of the handmaids told the King of
this and he came in to his daughter and saw her and her women
dazzling all who beheld them ; whereat he wondered with passing
wonderment. Then he went out and calling his Wazir, said to
him, " O Wazir, such and such things have happened ; what sayst
thou n-w of this affair ? " Said he, " O King of the age, this be
no merchant's fashion ; for a merchant keepeth a piece of linen
by him for years and selleth it not but at a profit. How should
a merchant have generosity such as this generosity, and whence
should he get the like of these monies and jewels, of which but a
slight matter is found with the Kings ? So how should loads
thereof be found with merchants ? Needs must there be a cause
for this ; but, an thou wilt hearken to me, I will make the truth of
the case manifest to thee." Answered the King, " O Wazir, I will
'do thy bidding." Rejoined the Minister, " Do thou foregather
with thy son-in-law and make a show of affect to him and talk
with him and say : O my son-in-law, I have a mind to go, I and
thou and the Wazir but no more, to a flower-garden that we may
take our pleasure there. When we come to the garden, we will
set on the table wine, and I will ply him therewith and compel
him to drink ; for, when he shall have drunken, he will lose his
1 Arab. Hizam " : Lane reads " Khizam " = a nose-ring for which see appendix to
Lane's M. E. The untrained European eye dislikes these decorations and there is
certainly no beauty in the hoops which Hindu women insert through the nostrils,
camel-fashion, as if to receive the cord-acting bridle; But a drop-pearl hanging to the
septum is at least as pretty as the heavy pendants by which some European women
lengthen their ears.
Mcfaruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 37
reason and his judgment will forsake him. Then we will question
him of the truth of his case and he will discover to us his secrets,
for wine is a traitor and Allah-gifted is he who said :
When we drank the wine, and it crept its way o To the place of Secrets, I
cried, " O stay ! "
In my fear lest its influence stint my wits o And my friends spy matters
that hidden lay.
When he hath told us the truth we shall ken his case and may
deal with him as we will ; because I fear for thee the consequences
of this his present fashion : haply he will covet the kingship and
win over the troops by generosity and lavishing money and so
depose thee and take the kingdom from thee." " True," answered'
the King. And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and
ceased to say her permitted say.
Jtcfo fo&en it foas tfje J=ttne.f^un&re& antr Ninetg=ci($tJ
She resumed, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the
Wazir devised this device the King said to him, " Thou hast spoken
sooth ! "; and they passed the night on this agreement. And when
morning morrowed the King went forth and sat in .the guest-
chamber, when lo, and behold ! the grooms and serving-men came
in to him in dismay. Quoth he, " What hath befallen you ? " ;
and quoth they, " O King of the age, the Syces curried the horses
and foddered them and the he-mules which brought the baggage ;
but, when we arose in the morning, we found that thy son-in-law's
Mamelukes had stolen the horses and mules. We searched the
stables, but found neither horse nor mule ; so we entered the
lodging of the Mamelukes and found none there, nor know we
how they fled." The King marvelled at this, unknowing that the
horses and Mamelukes were all Ifrits, the subjects of the Slave
of the Spell, and asked the grooms, " O accursed how could a thou-
sand beasts and five hundred slaves and servants flee without your
knowledge ? " Answered they, " We know not how it happened,"
and he cried, " Go, and when your lord cometh forth of the Harim,
tell him the case." So they went out from before the King and
sat down bewildered, till Ma'aruf came out and, seeing them
chagrined enquired of them, " What may be the matter ? " They
told him all that had happened and he said, " What is their worth
3 8 A If Laylah iva Lay la k.
that ye should be concerned for them ? Wend your ways." And
he sat laughing and was neither angry nor grieved concerning the
case ; whereupon the King looked in the Wazir's face and said
to him, " What manner of man is this, with whom wealth is of no
worth ? Needs must there be a reason for this ? " Then they
talked with him awhile and the King said to him, " O my son-in-
law, I have a mind to go, I, thou and the Wazir, to a garden,
,where we may divert ourselves." " No harm in that," said Ma'aruf.
So they went forth to a flower-garden, wherein every sort of fruit
was of kinds twain and its waters were flowing and its trees
towering and its birds carolling. There they entered a pavilion,
whose sight did away sorrow from the soul, and sat talking, whilst
the Minister entertained them with rare tales and quoted merry
quips and mirth-provoking sayings and Ma'aruf attentively
listened, till the time of dinner came, when they set on a tray
of meats and a flagon of wine. When they had eaten and
washed hands, the Wazir filled the cup and gave it to the King,
who drank it off; then he filled a second and handed it to
Ma'aruf, saying, " Take the cup of the drink to which Reason
boweth neck in reverence." * Quoth Ma'aruf, " What is this, O
Wazir ? " ; and quoth he, " This is the grizzled l virgin and the
old maid long kept at home, 2 the giver of joy to hearts, whereof
saith the poet :
The feet of sturdy Miscreants 3 went trampling heavy tread, o And she hath
ta'en a vengeance dire on every Arab's head.
A Kdfir youth like fullest moon in darkness hands her round o Whose eyne are
strongest cause of sin by him inspirited.
And Allah-gifted is he who said :
'Tis as if wine and he who bears the bowJ, o Rising to show her charms
for man to see,*
Were dancing undurn-Sun whose face the moon o Of night adorned with stars
of Gemini.
1 Arab. " Sharatd," one of the many names of wine, the " speckled " alluding to the
bubbles which dance upon the freshly filled cup.
2 i.e. in the cask. These ' * merry quips " strongly suggest the dismal toasts of our not
remote ancestors.
3 Arab. " A'laj " plur. of " 'Ilj " and rendered by Lane " the stout foreign infidels.".
The next line alludes to the cupbearer who was generally a slave and a non-Moslem.
4 As if it were a bride. See vol. vii. 198. The stars of Jauza (Gemini) are the cup-
bearer's eyes.
Mcfaritf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimak. 39
So subtle is her essence it would seem o Through every limb like
course of soul runs she.
And how excellent is the saying of the poet :
Slept in mine arms full Moon of brightest blee o Nor did that sun eclipse in
goblet see :
I nighted spying fire whereto bow down o Magians, which bowed from
ewer's lip to me.
And that of another :
It runs through every joint of them as runs o The surge of health returning to
the sick.
And yet another:
I marvel at its pressers, how they died o And left us aqua vita lymph of life !
And yet goodlier is the saying of Abu Nowas :
Cease then to blame me, for thy blame doth anger bring o And with the
draught that madded me come med'cining :
A yellow girl 1 whose court cures every carking care j o Did a stone touch it
would with joy and glee upspring :
She riseth in her ewer during darkest night o The house with brightest, sheeniest
light illumining :
And going round of youths to whom the world inclines 2 o Ne'er, save in whatso
way they please, their hearts shall wring.
From hand of coynted 3 lass begarbed like yarded lad, 4 o Wencher and Tribe
of Lot alike enamouring,
She comes : and say to him who dares claim lore of love o Something hast
learnt but still there's many another thing.
But best of all is the saying of Ibn al-Mu'tazz 5 :
1 i.e. light-coloured wine.
2 The usual homage to youth and beauty.
3 Alluding to the cup.
4 Here Abu Nowas whose name always ushers in some abomination alluded to the
" Ghulamiyah" or girl dressed like boy to act cupbearer. Civilisation has everywhere
the same devices and the Bordels of London and Paris do not ignore the "she-boy,"
who often opens the door.
5 Abdallah ibn al-Mu'tazz, son of AI-Mu'tazz bi 'llah, the I3th Abbaside, and great-
great-grandson of Harun al-Rashid. He was one of the most renowned poets of the
third century (A.H.) and died A.D. 908, strangled by the partisans of h c neohew
Al-Muktadir bi 'llah, i8th Abbaside.
40 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
On the shaded woody island 1 His showers Allah deign o Shed on Convent
hight Abdun 2 drop and drip of railing rain :
Oft the breezes of the morning have awakened me therein o When the Dawn
shows her blaze, 3 ere the bird of flight was fain ;
And the voices of the monks that with chants awoke the walls o Black-frocked
shavelings ever wont the cup amorn to drain.*
'Mid the throng how many fair with languour-kohl'd eyes 5 o And lids enfolding
lovely orbs where black on white was lain,
In secret came to see me by shirt of night disguised o In terror and in caution
a-hurrying amain !
Then I rose and spread my cheek like a carpet on his path o In homage, and
with skirts wiped his trail from off the plain.
But threatening disgrace rose the Crescent in the sky o Like the paring of a
nail yet the light would never wane :
Then happened whatso happened : I disdain to kiss and tell o So deem of us
thy best and with queries never mell.
And gifted of God is he who saith :
In the morn I am richest of men o And in joy at good news I start up
For I look on the liquid gold 6 o And I measure it out by the cup.
And how goodly is the saying of the poet :
By Allah, this is th' only alchemy o All said of other science false we
see!
Carat of wine on hundredweight of woe o Transmuteth gloomiest grief to joy
and glee.
And that of another :
The glasses are heavy when empty brought o Till we charge them all with
unmixed wine.
Then so light are they that to fly they 're fain As bodies lightened by soul
divine.
1 Jazirat ibn Omar, an island and town on the Tigris north of Mosul. "Some
versions of the poem, from which these verses are quoted, substitute El-Mutireh, a
village near Samara (a town on the Tigris, 60 miles north of Baghdad), for El-Jezireh,
i.e. Jeziret ibn Omar." (Payne.)
2 The Convent of Abdun on the east bank of the Tigris opposite the Jezirah was so
Called from a statesman who caused it to be built. For a variant of these lines see Ibn
Khallikan, vol. ii. 42 ; here we miss " the shady groves of Al-Matirah."
3 Arab. " Ghurrah" the white blaze on a horse's brow. In Ibn Khallikan the bird
is the lark.
4 Arab. " Tay'i " =: thirsty used with Jay'i = hungry.
5 Lit. "Kohl'd with Ghunj " for which we have no better word than "coquetry."
But see vol. v. 80. It corresponds with the Latin crissare for women and cevere
for men.
8 i.e. gold-coloured wine, as the Vino d'Oro.
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 41
And yet another;
Wine-cup and ruby-wine high worship claim ; o Dishonour 'twere to see their
honour waste :
Bury me, when I'm dead, by side of vine o Whose veins shall moisten
bones in clay misplaced ;
Nor bury me in wold and wild, for I o Dread only after death no
wine to taste." 1
And he ceased not to egg him on to the drink, naming to him
such of the virtues of wine as he thought well and reciting to him
what occurred to him of poetry and pleasantries on the subject, till
Ma'aruf addressed himself to sucking the cup-lips and cared no
longer for aught else. The Wazir ceased not to fill for him ^and he
to drink and enjoy himself and make merry, till his wits wandered
and he could not distinguish right from wrong. When the Minister
saw that drunkenness had attained in him to utterest and the
bounds transgressed, he said to him, " By Allah, O Merchant
Ma'aruf, I admire whence thou gottest these jewels whose like the
Kings of the Chosroes possess not ! In all our lives never saw we
a merchant that had heaped up riches like unto thine or more
generous than thou, for thy doings are the doings of Kings and
not merchants' doings. Wherefore, Allah upon thee, do thou
acquaint me with this, that I may know thy rank and condition."
And he went on to test him with questions and cajole him, till
Ma'aruf, being reft of reason, said to him, " I'm neither merchant
nor King," and told him his whole story from first to last. Then
said the Wazir, " I conjure thee by Allah, O my lord Ma'aruf,
show us the ring, that we may see its make." So, in his drunken-
ness, he pulled off the ring and said, " Take it and look upon it."
Minister took it and turning it over, said, " If I rub it, will
1 Compare the charming song of Abu Mijan translated from the German of Dr. Weil
in Bohn's Edit, of Ockley (p. 149),
When the Death-angel cometh mine eyes to close,
Dig my grave 'mid the vines on the hill's fair side ;
For though deep in earth may my bones repose,
The juice of the grape shall their food provide.
Ah, bury me not in a barren land,
Or Death will appear to me dread and drear !
While fearless I '11 wait what he hath in hand
An the scent of the vineyard my spirit cheer.
The glorious old drinker!
42 A If Laylak wa Laylah.
its slave appear ? " Replied Ma'aruf, " Yes. Rub it and he will
appear to thee, and do thou divert thyself with the sight of him."
Thereupon the Wazir rubbed the ring and behold forthright ap-
peared the Jinni and said, " Adsum, at thy service, O my lord !
Ask and it shall be given to thee. Wilt thou ruin a city or raise
a capital or kill a king ? Whatso thou seekest, I will do for thee,
sans fail/' The Wazir pointed to Ma'aruf and said, " Take up
yonder wretch and cast him down in the most desolate of desert
lands, where he shall find nothing to eat nor drink, so he may die
of hunger and perish miserably, and none know of him." Accord-
ingly, the Jinni snatched him up and flew with him betwixt heaven
and earth, which when Ma'aruf saw, he made sure of destruction
and wept and said, " O Abu al-Sa'adat, whither goest thou with
me?" Replied the Jinni, " I go to cast thee down in the Desert
Quarter, 1 O ill-bred wight of gross wits. Shall one have the like
of this talisman and give it to the folk to gaze at ? Verily, thou
deservest that which hath befallen thee ; and but that I fear Allah,
I would let thee fall from a 1 eight of a thousand fathoms, nor
shouldst thou reach the earth, till the winds had torn thee to
shreds." Ma'aruf was silent 2 and did not again bespeak him till
he reached the Desert Quarter and casting him down there, went
away and left him in that horrible place. And Shahrazad per-
ceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
fo&en ft foa* t&e Ttfint f^untati anfc Ntnet^'Nintj) Kigbt,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Slave
of the Seal-ring took up Ma'aruf and cast him down in the Desert
Quarter where he left him and went his ways. So much con-
cerning him ; but returning to the Wazir who was now in possession
of the talisman, he said to the King, " How deemest thou now ?
Did I not tell thee that this fellow was a liar, an impostor, but
thou wouldst not credit me ? " Replied the King, " Thou wast in
1 Arab. " Rub'a al-Kharab" in Ibn al-Wardi Central Africa south of the Nile-
sources, one of the richest regions in the world. Here it prob, alludes to the Rub'a
al-Khali or Great Arabian Desert : for which see Night dclxxvi. In rhetoric it is
opposed to the " Rub'a Maskun," or populated fourth of the world, the rest being
held to be ocean.
2 This is the noble resignation of the Moslem. What a dialogue there would have
been in a European book between man and devil !
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 43
the right, O my Wazir, Allah grant thee weal ! But give me the
ring, that I may solace myself with the sight." The Minister
looked at him angrily and spat in his face, saying, " O lack-wits,
how shall I give it to thee and abide thy servant, after I am
become thy master ? But I will spare thee no more on life." Then
he rubbed the seal-ring and said to the Slave, " Take up this ill-
mannered churl and cast him down by his son-in-law the swindler-
man." So the Jinni took him up and flew off with him, where-
upon quoth the King to him, " O creature of my Lord, what is my
crime ? " Abu al-Sa'adat replied, " That wot I not, but my master
hath commanded me and I cannot cross whoso hath compassed
the enchanted ring. Then he flew on with him, till he came to
the Desert Quarter and, casting him down where he had cast
Ma'aruf left him and returned. The King hearing Ma'aruf weep-
ing, went up to him and acquainted him with his case ; and they
sat weeping over that which had befallen them and found neither
meat nor drink. Meanwhile the Minister, after driving father-in-
law and son-in-law from the country, went forth from the garden
and summoning all the troops held a Divan, and told them what
he had done with the King and Ma'aruf and acquainted them
with the affair of the talisman, adding, " Unless ye make me Sultan
over you, I will bid the Slave of the Seal-ring take you up one and
all and cast you down in the Desert Quarter where you shall die
of hunger and thirst. They replied, " Do us no damage, for we
accept thee as Sultan over us and will not anywise gainsay thy
"bidding." So they agreed, in their own despite, to his being
Sultan over them, and he bestowed on them robes of -honour,
seeking all he had a mind to of Abu al-Sa'adat, who brought it to
him forthwith. Then he sat down on the throne and the troops
did homage to him ; and he sent to Princess Dunya, the King's
daughter, saying, " Make thee ready, for I mean to come in unto
thee this night, because I long for thee with love." When she
heard this, she wept, for the case of her husband and father was
grievous to her, and sent to him saying, " Have patience with me
till my period of widowhood 1 be ended : then draw up thy contract
1 Arab. " Al-'iddah " the period of four months and ten days which must elapse
before she could legally marry again. But this was a palpable wile : she was not sure
of her husband's death and he had not divorced her ; so that although a " grass widow,"
a "Strohwitwe" as the Germans say, she could not wed again either with or without
interval.
44 Alj Laylak wa Laylah.
of marriage with me and go in to me according to law." But he
sent back to say to her, " I know neither period of widowhood nor
to delay have I a mood ; and I need not a contract nor know I
lawful from unlawful ; but needs must I go in unto thee this night."
She answered him saying, " So be it, then, and welcome to thee ! ";
but this was a trick on her part. When the answer reached the
Wazir, he rejoiced and his breast was broadened, for that he was
passionately in love with her. He bade set food before all the
folk, saying, " Eat ; this is my bride-feast ; for I purpose to go in
to the Princess Dunya this night." Quoth the Shaykh al-Islam,
" It is not lawful for thee to go in unto her till her days of widow--
hood be ended and thou have drawn up thy contract of marriage
with her." But he answered, " I know neither days of widowhood
nor other period ; so multiply not words on me." The Shaykh
Al-Islam was silent, 1 fearing his mischief, and said to the troops,
" Verily, this man is a Kafir, a Miscreant, and hath neither creed
nor religious conduct." As soon as it was evenfall, he went in to
her and found her robed in her richest raiment and decked with
her goodliest adornments. When she saw him, she came to meet
him, laughing and said, " A blessed night ! But hadst thou slain
my father and my husband, it had been more to my mind." And
he said, " There is no help but I slay them." Then she made him
sit down and began to jest with him and make show of love
caressing him and smiling in his face so that his reason fled ; but
she cajoled him with her coaxing and cunning only that she might
get possession of the ring and change his joy into calamity on the
mother of his forehead : 2 nor did she deal thus with him but after
the rede of him who said s :
I attained by my wits e What no sword had obtained,
And return wr* the spoils o Whose sweet pluckings I gained.
r When he saw her caress him and smile upon him, desire surged up
in him and he besought her of carnal knowledge but, when he
approached her, she drew away from him and burst into tears,
1 Here the silence is of cowardice and the passage is a fling at the "time-serving"
of the Olema, a favourite theme, like "banging the bishops'* amongst certain
Westerns.
2 Arab. (" Umm al-raas," the poll, crown of the head, here the place where a calamity
coming down from heaven would first alight.
8 From Al-Hariri (Lane) : the lines are excellent.
Mctaruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 45
j
saying, " my lord, seest thou not the man looking at us ? I
conjure thee by Allah, screen me from his eyes ! How canst thou
know me what while he looketh on us ? " When he heard this, he
\vas angry and asked, " Where is the man ? "; and answered she,
" There he is, in the bezel of the ring ! putting out his head and
staring at us." He thought that the Jinni was looking at them
and said laughing, " Fear not ; this is the Slave of the Seal-ring,
and he is subject to me." Quoth she, " I am afraid of Ifrits ; pull
it off and throw it afar from me." So he plucked it off and laying
it on the cushion, drew near to her, but she dealt him a kick, her
foot striking him full in the stomach 1 , and he fell over on his back
senseless ; whereupon she cried out to her attendants, who came
to her in haste, and said to them, " Seize him ! " So forty slave-
girls laid hold on him, wtiilst she hurriedly snatched up the ring
from the cushion and rubbed it; whereupon Abu al-Sa'adat pre-
sented himself, saying, " Adsum, at thy service O my mistress."
Cried she, " Take up yonder Infidel and clap him in jail and
shackle him heavily." So he took him and throwing him into the
Prison of Wrath 2 returned and reported, " I have laid him in
limbo." Quoth she, "Whither wentest thou with my father and
my husband ? "; and quoth he, " I cast them down in the Desert
Quarter." Then cried she, " I command thee to fetch them to me
forthwith." He replied, " I hear and I obey," and taking flight at
once, stayed not till he reached the Desert Quarter, where he
lighted down upon them and found them sitting weeping and com-
plaining each to other. Quoth he, " Fear not, for relief is come to
you "; and he told them what the Wazir had done, adding, " Indeed
I imprisoned him with my own hands in obedience to her, and she
hath bidden me bear you back." And they rejoiced in his news.
Then he took them both up and flew home with them ; nor was it
more than an hour before he brought them in to Princess Dunya,
who rose and saluted sire and spouse. Then she made them sit
down and brought them food and sweetmeats, and they passed the
rest of the night with her. On the next day she clad them in rich
clothing and said to the King, " O my papa, sit thou upon thy
1 When the charming Princess is so ready at the vote de faits, the reader will under-
stand how common is such energetic action among women of lower degree. The " fair
sex" in Egypt has a horrible way of murdering men, especially husbands, by tying them
down and tearing out the testicles. See Lane M. . chapt. xiii.
8 Arab. " Sijn al-Ghazab," the dungeons appropriated to the worst of criminals where
they suffer penalties far worse than hanging or guillotining.
46 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
throne and be King as before and make my husband thy Wazir of
the Right and tell thy troops that which hath happened. Then
send for the Minister out of prison and do him die, and after burn
him, for that he is a Miscreant, and would have gone in unto m
in the way of lewdness, without the rites of wedlock and he hath
testified against himself that he is an Infidel and believeth in no
religion. And do tenderly by thy son-in-law, whom thou makest
thy Wazir of the Right." He replied, " Hearing and obeying, O
my daughter. But do thou give me the ring or give it to thy
husband." Quoth she, " It behoveth not that either thou or he
have the ring. I will keep the ring myself, and belike I shall be
more careful of it than you. Whatso ye wish seek it of me and I
will demand it for you of the Slave of the Seal-ring. So fear no
harm so long as I live and after my death, do what ye twain will
with the ring.'* Quoth the King, " This is the right rede, O my
daughter," and taking his son-in-law went forth to the Divan.
Now the troops had passed the night in sore chagrin for Princess
Dunya and that which the Wazir had done with her, in going in to
her after the way of lewdness, without marriage-rites, and for his
ill-usage of the King and Ma'aruf, and they feared lest the law of
Al-Islam be dishonoured, because it was manifest to them that he
was a Kafir. So they assembled in the Divan and fell to reproach-
ing the Shaykh al-Islam, saying " Why didst thou not forbid him
from going in to the Princess in the way of lewdness ? " Said he,
" O folk, the man is a Miscreant and hath gotten possession of the
ring and I and you may not prevail against him. But Almighty
Allah will requite him his deed, and be ye silent, lest he slay you."
And as the host was thus engaged in talk, behold the King and
Ma'aruf entered the Divan. And Shahrazad perceived the dawn
of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
Nofo fo&en it foas rtje ^fjousanfct!)
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when
the troops sorely chagrined sat in the Divan talking over the ill*
deeds done by the Wazir to their Sovran, his son-in-law and his
daughter, behold, the King and Ma'aruf entered. Then the King
bade decorate the city and sent to fetch the Wazir from the place
of duresse. So they brought him, and as he passed by the troops,
they cursed him and abused him and menaced him, till he came to
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 47
the King, who commanded to do him dead by the vilest of deaths.
Accordingly, they slew him and after burned his body, and he went
to Hell after the foulest of plights ; and right well quoth one of
him :
The Compassionate show no ruth to the tomb where his bones shall lie o And
Munkar and eke Nakir 1 ne'er cease to abide thereby !
The King made Ma'aruf his Wazir of the Right and the times were
pleasant to them and their joys were untroubled. They abode
thus five years till, in the sixth year, the King died and Princess
Dunya made Ma'aruf Sultan in her father's stead, but she gave
him not the seal-ring. During this time she had conceived by
him and borne him a boy of passing loveliness, excelling in beauty
and perfection, who ceased not to be reared in the laps of nurses
till he reached the age of five, when his mother fell sick of a deadly
sickness and calling her husband to her, said to him, " I am ill."
Quoth he, " Allah preserve thee, O dearling of my heart ! " But
quoth she, " Haply I shall die and thou needest not that I com-
mend to thy care thy son : wherefore I charge thee but be careful
of the ring, for thine own sake and for the sake of this thy boy."
And he answered, "No harm shall befal him whom Allah pre-
serveth ! " Then she pulled off the ring and gave it to him, and
on the morrow she was admitted to the mercy of Allah the Most
High, 2 whilst Ma'aruf abode in possession of trie kingship and
applied himself to the business of governing. Now it chanced
that one day, as he shook the handkerchief 3 and the troops with-
drew to their places that he betook himself to the sitting-chamber,
where he sat till the day departed and the night advanced with
murks bedight. Then came in to him his cup-companions of the
notables according to their custom, and sat with him by way of
solace and diversion, till midnight, when they craved permission to
withdraw. He gave them leave and they retired to their houses ;
after which there came in to him a slave-girl affected to the service
1 According to some modern Moslems Munkar and Nakir visit the graves of Infidels
(non-Moslems) and Bashshir and Mubashshir ("Givers of glad tidings") those of
Mohammedans. Petis de la Croix (Les Mille et un Jours vol. iii. 258) speaks of the
" Zoubanya," black angels who torture the damned under their chief Dabilah.
2 Very simple and pathetic is this short sketch of the noble-minded Princess's death.
8 In sign of dismissal (vol. iv. 62) I have noted that " throwing the kerchief" is not
an Eastern practice : the idea probably arose from the Oriental practice of sending
presents in richly embroidered napkins and kerchiefs.
48 A If Laylak wa Laylah.
of his bed, who spread him the mattress and doffing his apparel, 1
clad him in his sleeping-gown. Then he lay down and she kneaded
his feet, till sleep over-powered him ; whereupon she withdrew to
her own chamber and slept. But suddenly he felt something be-
side him in the bed and awaking started up in alarm and cried, " I
seek refuge with Allah from Satan the stoned ! " Then he opened
his eyes and seeing by his side a woman foul of favour, said to her,
" Who art thou ? " Said she, " Fear not, I am thy wife Fatimah
al-Urrah." Whereupon he looked in her face and knew her by her
loathly form and the length of her dog-teeth : so he asked her,
" Whence earnest thou in to me and who brought thee to this
country ? " " In what country art thou at this present ? " " In the
city of Ikhtiyan al-Khutan. But thou, when didst thou leave
Cairo ? " But now." " How can that be ? " Know," said she,
" that, when I fell out with thee and Satan prompted me to do thee
a damage, I complained of thee to the magistrates, who sought for
thee and the Kazis enquired of thee, but found thee not. When
two days were past, repentance gat hold upon me and I knew that
the fault was with me ; but penitence availed me not, and I abode
for some days weeping for thy loss, till what was in my hand
failed and I was obliged to beg my bread. So I fell to begging of
all, from the courted rich to the contemned poor, and since thou
leftest me, I have eaten of the bitterness of beggary and have been
in the sorriest of conditions. Every night I sat beweeping our
separation and that which I suffered, since thy departure, of
humiliation and ignominy, of abjection and misery." And she
went on to tell him what had befallen her, whilst he stared at her
in amazement, till she said, " Yesterday, I went about begging all
day but none gave me aught ; and as often as I accosted any one
and craved of him a crust of bread, he reviled me and gave me
naught. When night came, I went to bed supperless, and hunger
burned me and sore on me was that which I suffered : and I sat
weeping when, behold, one appeared to me and said, O woman
why weepest thou ? Said I, erst I had a husband who used to
provide for me and fulfil my wishes ; but he is lost to me and I
know not whither he went and have been in sore straits since he
left me. Asked he, What is thy husband's name ? and I answered,
His name is Ma'aruf. Quoth he, I ken him. Know that thy
husband is now Sultan in a certain city, and if thou wilt, I will
carry thee to him. ' Cried I, I am under thy protection : of thy
bounty bring me to him ! So he took me up and flew with me
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 49
between heaven and earth, till he brought me to this pavilion and
said to me : Enter yonder chamber, and thou shalt see thy
husband asleep on the couch. Accordingly I entered and found
thee in this state of lordship. Indeed I had not thought thou
wouldst forsake me, who am thy mate, and praised be Allah
who hath united thee with me ! " Quoth Ma'aruf, " Did I for-
sake thee or thou me ? Thou complainedst of me from Kazi to
Kazi and endedst by denouncing me to the High Court and
bringing down on me Abu Tabak from the Citadel : so I fled
in mine own despite." And he went on to tell her all that had
befallen him and how he was become Sultan and had married
the King's daughter and how his beloved Dunya had died,
leaving him a son who was then seven years old. She 1
rejoined, " That which happened was fore-ordained of Allah ;
but I repent me and I place myself under thy protection
beseeching thee not to abandon me, but suffer me eat bread, with
thee by way of an alms." And she ceased not to humble herself
to him and to supplicate him till his heart relented towards her
and he said, " Repent from mischief and abide with me, and naught
shall betide thee save what shall pleasure thee : but, an thou work
any wickedness, I will slay thee nor fear any one. And fancy not
that thou canst complain of me to the High Court and that Abu
Tabak will come down on me from the Citadel ; for I am become
Sultan and the folk dread me : but I fear none save Allah Almighty,
because I have a talismanic ring which when I rub, the Slave of
the Signet appeareth to me. His name is Abu al-Sa'adat, and
whatsoever I demand of him he bringeth to me. So, an thou
desire to return to thine own country, I will give thee what shall
suffice thee all thy life long and will send thee thither speedily ;
but, an thou desire to abide with me, I will clear for thee a palace
and furnish it with the choicest of silks and appoint thee twenty
slave-girls to serve thee and provide thee with dainty dishes and
sumptuous suits, and thou shalt be a Queen and live in all delight
till thou die or I die. What sayest thou of this ? " " I wish to
abide with thee," she answered and kissed his hand and vowed
repentance from frowardness. Accordingly he set apart a palace
for her sole use and gave her slave-girls and eunuchs, and she
became a Queen. The young Prince used to visit her as he visited
his sire ; but she hated him for that he was not her son ; and
when the boy saw that she looked on him with the eye of aver-
sion and anger, he shunned her and took a dislike to her. As
VOL. X. D
SO A If Laylah wa Laylah.
for Ma'aruf, he occupied himself with the love of fair hand-
maidens and bethought him not of his wife Fatimah the Dung,
for that she was grown a grizzled old fright, foul-favoured to the
sight, a bald-headed blight, loathlier than the snake speckled black
and white ; the more that she had beyond measure evil entreated
him aforetime ; and as saith the adage, " Ill-usage the root of
desire disparts and sows hate in the soil of hearts ;" and God-gifted
is he who saith :
Beware of losing hearts of men by thine injurious deed ; * For when Aversion
takes his place none may dear Love restore :
Hearts, when affection flies from them, are likest unto glass * Which broken,
cannot whole be made, 'tis breached for evermore.
r And indeed Ma'aruf had not given her shelter by reason of any
praiseworthy quality in her, but he dealt with her thus generously
only of desire for the approval of Allah Almighty. Here Duny-
azad interrupted her sister Shahrazad, saying, " How winsome are
these words of thine which win hold of the heart more forcibly
than enchanters' eyne ; and how beautiful are these wondrous
books thou hast cited and the marvellous and singular tales thou
hast recited ! " Quoth Shahrazad, " And where is all this com-
pared with what I shall relate to thee on the coming night, an I
live and the King deign spare my days ? " So when morning
morrowed and the day brake in its sheen and shone, the King
arose from his couch with breast broadened and in high expec-
tation for the rest of the tale and saying, " By Allah, I will not
slay her till I hear the last of her story ;" repaired to his Durbar
while the Wazir, as was his wont, presented himself at the Palace,
shroud under arm. Shahriyar tarried abroad all that day,
bidding and forbidding between man and man ; after which he
returned to his Harim and, according to his custom went in to his
wife Shahrazad. 1
1 Curious to say both Lane and Payne omit this passage which appears in both texts
(Mac. and Bui.). The object is evidently to prepare the reader for the ending by
reverting to the beginning of the tale ; and its prolixity has its effect as in the old
Romances of Chivalry from Amadis of Ghaul to the Seven Champions of Christendom.
If it provoke impatience, it also heightens expectation ; " it is like the long elm-avenues
of our forefathers ; we wish ourselves at the end ; but we know that at the end there is
something great."
Mciaruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 5 1
'Noto fojjen it foas tfje ^ousanto antr $\\%\
Dunyazad said to her sister, " Do thou finish for us the History of
Ma'aruf ! " She replied, "With love and goodly gree, an my lord
deign permit me recount it." Quoth the King, " I permit thee ;
for that I am fain of hearing it." So she said : It hath reached
me, O auspicious King, that Ma'aruf would have naught to do
with his wife by way of conjugal duty. Now when she saw
that he held aloof from her bed and occupied himself with other
women, she hated him and jealousy gat the mastery of her and
Iblis prompted her to take the seal-ring from him and slay him
and make herself Queen in his stead. So she went forth one
night from her pavilion, intending for that in which was her
husband King Ma'aruf; and it chanced by decree of the Decreer
and His written destiny, that Ma'aruf lay that night with one of
his concubines ; a damsel endowed with beauty and loveliness,
symmetry and a stature all grace. And it was his wont, of the
excellence of his piety, that, when he was minded to have to lie
with a woman, he would doff the enchanted seal-ring from his
finger, in reverence to the Holy Names graven thereon, and lay it
on the pillow, nor would he don it again till he had purified him-
self by the Ghusl-ablution. Moreover, when he had lain with a
woman, he was used to order her go forth from him before day-
break, of his fear for the seal-ring; and when he went to the
Hammam he locked the door of the pavilion till his return,
when he put on the ring, and after this, all were free to enter
according to custom. His wife Fatimah the Dung knew of all
this and went not forth from her place till she had certified
herself of the case. So she sallied out, when the night was
dark, purposing to go in to him, whilst he was drowned in sleep,
and steal the ring, unseen of him. Now it chanced at this time
that the King's son had gone out, without light, to the Chapel of
Ease for an occasion, and sat down over the marble slab 1 of the
jakes in the dark, leaving the door open. Presently, he saw
Fatimah come forth of her pavilion and make stealthily for that of
his father and said in himself, " What aileth this witch to leave her
lodging in the dead of the night and make for my father's pavilion ?
1 Arab, "ala malakay bayti '1-rahah ;"on the two slabs at whose union are the round
hole and longitudinal slit. See vol. i. 221.
52 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Needs must there be some reason for this :" so he went out after
her and followed in her steps unseen of her. Now he had a short
sword of watered steel, which he held so dear that he went not to
his father's Divan, except he were girt therewith ; and his father
used to laugh at him and exclaim, " Mahallah I 1 This is a mighty
fine sword of thine, O my son ! But thou hast not gone down
with it to battle nor cut off a head therewith." Whereupon the
boy would reply, " I will not fail to cut off with it some head which
deserveth 2 cutting." And Ma'aruf would laugh at his words.
Now when treading in her track, he drew the sword from its
sheath and he followed her till she came to his father's pavilion and
entered, whilst he stood and watched her from the door. He saw
her searching about and heard her say to herself, " Where hath he
laid the seal-ring ? " ; whereby he knew that she was looking for
the ring and he waited till she found it and said, " Here it is."
Then she picked it up and turned to go out ; but he hid behind
the door. As she came forth, she looked at the ring and turned it
about in her grasp. But when she was about to rub it, he raised
his hand with the sword and smote her on the neck ; and she cried
a single cry and fell down dead. With this Ma'aruf awoke and
seeing his wife strown on the ground, with her blood flowing, and
his son standing with the drawn sword in his hand, said to him,
" What is this, O my son ? " He replied," O my father, how often
hast thou said to me, Thou hast a mighty fine sword ; but thou
hast not gone down with it to battle nor cut off a head. And I
have answered thee, saying, I will not fail to cut off with it a head
which deserveth cutting. And now, behold, I have therewith cut
off for thee a head well worth the cutting ! " And he told him
what had passed. Ma'aruf sought for the Seal-ring, but found it
not ; so he searched the dead woman's body till he saw her hand
closed upon it ; whereupon he took it from her grasp and said to
the boy, "Thou art indeed my very son, without doubt or dispute ;
Allah ease thee in this world and the next, even as thou hast eased
me of this vile woman ! Her attempt led only to her own destruc-
tion, and Allah-gifted is he who said :
1 Here the exclamation wards off the Evil Eye from the Sword and the wearer : Mr.
Payne notes, "The old English exclamation ' Cock's 'ill !' (i.e, God's will, thus cor-
rupted for the purpose of evading the statute of 3 Jac. i. against profane swearing) exactly
corresponds to the Arabic" with a difference, I add.
2 Arab. " Mustahakk " =: deserving (Lane) or worth (Payne) the cutting.
Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his Wife Fatimah. 53
When forwards Allah's aid a man's intent, a His wish in every case shall
find consent :
But an that aid of Allah be refused, * His first attempt shall do him
damagement.
Then King Ma'aruf called aloud to some of his attendants, who
came in haste, and he told them what his wife Fatimah the Dung
had done and bade them to take her and lay her in a place till the
morning. They did his bidding, and next day he gave her in
charge to a number of eunuchs, who washed her and shrouded her
and made her a tomb 1 and buried her. Thus her coming from
Cairo was but to her grave, and Allah-gifted is he who said 2 :
We trod the steps appointed for us : and he whose steps are appointed must
tread them.
He whose death is decreed to take place in our land shall not die in any
land but that.
And how excellent is the saying of the poet :
I wot not, whenas to a land I fare, e Good luck pursuing, what my lot
shall be.
Whether the fortune I perforce pursue < Or the misfortune which pursueth
me. . 4
After this, King Ma'aruf sent for the husbandman, whose guest he
had been, when he was a fugitive, and made him his Wazir of the
Right and his Chief Counsellor. 3 Then, learning that he had a
daughter of passing beauty and loveliness, of qualities nature*
ennobled at birth and exalted of worth, he took her to wife ; and
in due time he married his son. So they abode awhile in all solace
of life and its delight and their days were serene and their joys
untroubled, till there came to them the Destroyer of delights and
the Sunderer of societies, the Depopulator of populous places and
the Orphaner of sons and daughters. And glory be to the Living
who dieth not and in whose hand are the Keys of the Seen and the
Unseen ! "
1 Arab. " Mashhad" the same as " Shahid" = the upright stones at the head and
and foot of the grave. Lane mistranslates, " Made for her a fun*ral procession."
2 These lines have occurred before. I quote Lane.
3 There is nothing strange in such sudden elevations amongst Moslems and even in
Europe we still see them occasionally. The family in the East, however humble, is a
model and miniature of the state, and learning is not always necessary to wisdom.
54 A If Laylah wa Lay/ah.
Conclusion,
Now, during this time, Shahrazad had borne the King three boy
children : so, when she had made an end of the story of Ma'aruf,
she rose to her feet and kissing ground before him, said, " O King of
the time and unique one 1 of the age and the tide, I am thine hand-
maid and these thousand nights and a night have I entertained
thee with stories of folk gone before and admonitory instances of
the men of yore. May I then make bold to crave a boon of Thy
Highness ? " He replied, " Ask, O Shahrazad, and it shall be
granted to thee. 2 " Whereupon she cried out to the nurses and the
eunuchs, saying, " Bring me my children." So they brought them
to her in haste, and they were three boy children, one walking, one
crawling and one sucking. She took them and setting them before
the King, again kissed the ground and said, " O King of the age,
these are thy children and I crave that thou release me from the
doom of death, as a dole to these infants ; for, an thou kill me,
they will become motherless and will find none among women to
rear them as they should be reared." Whe*i the King heard this,
he wept and straining the boys to his bosom, said, " By Allah, O
Shahrazad, I pardoned thee before the coming of these children, for
that I found thee chaste, pure, ingenuous and pious ! Allah bless
thee and thy father and thy mother and thy root and thy branch !
I take the Almighty to witness against me that I exempt thee
from aught that can harm thee." So she kissed his hands and
feet and rejoiced with exceeding joy, saying, " The Lord make thy
life long and increase thee in dignity and majesty 3 ! " ; presently
adding, " Thou marvelledst at that which befel thee on the part of
women ; yet there betided the Kings of the Chosroes before thee
greater mishaps and more grievous than that which hath befallen
thee, and indeed I have set forth unto thee that which happened
to Caliphs and Kings and others with their women, but the relation
is longsome and hearkening groweth tedious, and in this is all-
1 Arab. "Farid" which may also mean " union-pearl."
Tre*butien (Hi. 497) cannot deny himself the pleasure of a French touch making the
Xing reply, "C'est assez ; qu'on lui coupe la tete, car ces dernieres histoires surtoul
m'ont cause un ennui mortel." This reading is found in some of the MSS.
3 After this I borrow from the Bresl. Edit, inserting passages from the Mac. Edit.
Conclusion. 55
sufficient warning for the man of wits and admonishment for the
wise." Then she ceased to speak, and when King Shahriyar heard
her speech and profited by that which she said, he summoned up
his reasoning powers and cleansed his heart and caused his under-
standing revert and turned to Allah Almighty and said to himself,
" Since there befel the Kings of the Chosroes more than that which
hath befallen me, never, whilst I live, shall I cease to blame myself
for the past. As for this Shahrazad, her like is not found in the
lands; so praise be to Him who appointed her a means for
delivering His creatures from oppression and slaughter ! " Then
he arose from his stance and kissed her head, whereat she rejoiced,
she and her sister Dunyazad, with exceeding joy. When the
morning morrowed, the King went forth and sitting down on the
throne of the Kingship, summoned the Lords of his land ; where*
upon the Chamberlains and Nabobs and Captains of the host went
in to him and kissed ground before him. He distinguished the
Wazir, Shahrazad's sire, with special favour and bestowed on him
a costly and splendid robe of honour and entreated him with the
utmost kindness, and said to him " Allah protect thee for that thou
gavest me to wife thy noble daughter, who hath been the means of
my repentance from slaying the daughters of folk. Indeed I have
found her pure and pious, chaste and ingenuous, and Allah hath
vouchsafed me by her three boy children ; wherefore praised be
He for his passing favour. Then he bestowed robes of honour
upon his Wazirs, and Emirs and Chief Officers and he set forth to
them briefly that which had betided him with Shahrazad and how
he had turned from his former ways and repented him of what he
had done and purposed to take the Wazir's daughter, Shahrazad,
to wife and let draw up the marriage-contract with her. When
those who were present heard this, they kissed the ground before
him and blessed him and his betrothed 1 Shahrazad, and the Wazir
thanked her. Then Shahriyar made an end of his sitting in all
weal, whereupon the folk dispersed to their dwelling-places and the
news was bruited abroad that the King purposed to marry the
Wazir's daughter, Shahrazad. Then he proceeded to make read/
the wedding gear, and presently he sent after his brother, King
Shah Zaman, who came, and King Shahriyar went forth to meet
him with the troops. Furthermore, they decorated the city after
the goodliest fashion and diffused scents from censers and burnt
-i- i
1 i.e. whom he intended to marry with regal ceremony.
56 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
aloes-wood and other perfumes in all the markets and thorough-
fares and rubbed themselves with saffron, 1 what while the drums
beat and the flutes and pipes sounded and mimes and mountebanks
played and plied their arts and the King lavished on them gifts
and largesse ; and in very deed it was a notable day. When they
came to the palace, King Shahriyar commanded to spread the
tables with beasts roasted whole and sweetmeats and all manner
of viands and bade the crier cry to the folk that they should come
up to the Divan and eat and drink and that this should
be a means of reconciliation between him and them. So,
high and low, great and small came up unto him and they
abode on that wise, eating and drinking, seven days with their
nights. Then the King shut himself up with his brother and
related to him that which had betided him with the Wazir's
daughter, Shahrazad, during the past three years and told -him
what he had heard from her of proverbs and parables, chronicles
and pleasantries, quips and jests, stories and anecdotes, dialogues
and histories and elegies and other verses; whereat King Shah
Zaman marvelled with the uttermost marvel and said, " Fain
would I take her younger sister to wife, so we may be two
brothers-german to two sisters-german, and they on like wise be
sisters to us ; for that the calamity which befel me was the cause
of our discovering that which befel thee and all this time of three
years past I have taken no delight in woman, save that I lie each
night with a damsel of my kingdom, and every morning I do her
to death ; but now I desire to marry thy wife's sister Dunyazad."
When King Shahriyar heard his brother's words, he rejoiced with
joy exceeding and arising forthright, went in to his wife Shahrazad
and acquainted her with that which his brother purposed, namely
that he sought her sister Dunyazad in wedlock ; whereupon she
answered, " O King of the age, we seek of him one condition, to
wit, that he take up his abode with us, for that I cannot brook to
be parted from my sister an hour, because we were brought up
together and may not endure separation each from other. 2 If he
accept this pact, she is his handmaid." King Shahriyar returned
to his brother and acquainted him with that which Shahrazad had
1 The use of coloured powders in sign of holiday-making is not obselete in India. See
Herklots for the use of " Huldee" (Haldf) or turmeric-powder, pp. 64-65.
8 Many Moslem families insist upon this before giving their girls in marriage, and the
practice is still popular amongst many Mediterranean peoples.
Conclusion. 57
said ; and he replied, " Indeed, this is what was in my mind, for
that I desire nevermore to be parted from thee one hour. As
for the kingdom, Allah the Most High shall send to it whomso
He chooseth, for that I have no longer a desire for the kingship."
When King Shahriyar heard his brother's words, he rejoiced
exceedingly and said, "Verily, this is what I wished, O my
brother. So Alhamdolillah Praised be Allah who hath brought
about union between us." Then he sent after the Kazis and
Olema, Captains and Notables, and they married the two brothers
to the two sisters. The contracts were written out and the two
Kings bestowed robes of honour of silk and satin on those who
were present, whilst the city was decorated and the rejoicings
were renewed. The King commanded each Emir and Wazir and
Chamberlain and Nabob to decorate his palace and the folk of
the city were gladdened by the presage of happiness and content-
ment. King Shahriyar also bade slaughter sheep and set up
kitchens and made bride-feasts and fed all comers, high and low ;
and he gave alms to the poor and needy and extended his bounty
to great and small. Then the eunuchs went forth, that they might
perfume the Hammam for the brides ; so they scented it with rose-
water and willow-flower-water and pods of musk and fumigated it
with Kakili ] eagle-wood and ambergris. Then Shahrazad entered,
she and her sister Dunyazad, and they cleansed their heads and
clipped their hair. When they came forth of the Hammam-bath,
they donned raiment and ornaments ; such as men were wont
prepare for the Kings of the Chosroes ; and among Shahrazad's
apparel was a dress purfled with red gold and wrought with
counterfeit presentments of birds and beasts. And the two
sisters encircled their necks with necklaces of jewels of price,
in the like whereof Iskander 2 rejoiced not, for therein were
great jewels such as amazed the wit and dazzled the eye ; and
the imagination was bewildered at their charms, for indeed each
of them was brighter than the sun and the moon. Before them
they lighted brilliant flambeaux of wax in candelabra of gold,
but their faces outshone the flambeaux, for that they had eyes
sharper than unsheathed swords and the lashes of their eyelids
bewitched all hearts. Their cheeks were rosy red and their necks
and shapes gracefully swayed and their eyes wantoned like the
1 i.e. Sumatran.
2 i.e. Alexander, according to the Arabs ; see vol. v. 252.
58 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
gazelle's ; and the slave-girls came to meet them with instruments
of music. Then the two Kings entered the Hammam-bath, and
when they came forth, they sat down on a couch set with pearls
and gems, whereupon the two sisters came up to them and stood
between their hands, as they were moons, bending and leaning
from side to side in their beauty and loveliness. Presently they
brought forward Shahrazad and displayed her, for the first dress,
in a red suit ; whereupon King Shahriyar rose to look upon her
and the wits of all present, men and women, were bewitched for
that she was even as saith of her one of her describers * :
A sun on wand in knoll of sand she showed, o Clad in her cramoisy-hued
chemisette :
Of her lips' honey-dew she gave me drink o And with her rosy cheeks quencht
fire she set.
Then they attired Dunyazad in a dress of blue brocade and she
became as she were the full moon when it shineth forth. So they
displayed her in this, for the first dress, before King Shah Zaman,
who rejoiced in her and well-nigh swooned away for love-longing
and amorous desire ; yea, he was distraught with passion for
her, whenas he saw her, because she was as saith of her one of
her describers in these couplets 2 :
She comes apparelled in an azure vest o Ultramarine as skies are deckt and
dight :
I view'd th' unparallel'd sight, which showed my eyes o A Summer-moon upon
a Winter-night.
Then they returned to Shahrazad and displayed her in the second
dress, .a suit of surpassing goodliness, and veiled her face with her
hair like a chin-veil. 3 Moreover, they let down her side-locks
and she was even as saith of her one of her describers in these
couplets :
O hail to him whose locks his cheeks o'ershade, o Who slew my life by cruel
hard despight :
Said I, " Hast veiled the Morn in Night? " He said, o Nay I but veil Moon
in hue of Night."
1 These lines are in vol i. 217.
2 I repeat the lines from vol. i. 218.
3 All these coquetries require as much inventiveness as a cotillon ; the text alludes to
fastening the bride's tresses across her mouth giving her the semblance of beard
and mustachios.
Conclusion, 59
Then they displayed Dunyazad in a second and a third and a
fourth dress and she paced forward like the rising sun, and swayed
to and fro in the insolence of beauty ; and she was even as saith
the poet of her in these couplets 1 :
The sun of beauty she to all appears o And, lovely coy she mocks
all loveliness :
And when he fronts her favour and her smile o A-morn, the sun of day in
clouds must dress.
Then they displayed Shahrazad in the third dress and the fourth
and the fifth and she became as she were a Ban-branch snell or a
thirsting gazelle, lovely of face and perfect in attributes of grace,
even as saith of her one in these couplets 2 :
She comes like fullest moon on happy night, o Taper of waist with shape of
magic might :
She hath an eye whose glances quell mankind, o And ruby on her cheeks re-
flects his light :
Enveils her hips the blackness of her hair ; o Beware of curls that bite with
viper-bite !
Her sides are silken-soft, that while the heart o Mere rock behind that surface
. 'scapes our sight :
From the fringed curtains of her eyne she shoots o Shafts that at furthest range
on mark alight.
Then they returned to Dunyazad and displayed her in the fifth
dress and in the sixth, which was green, when she surpassed
with her loveliness the fair of the four quarters of the world and
outvied, with the brightness of her countenance, the full moon at
rising tide ; for she was even as saith of her the poet in these
couplets 3 :
A damsel 'twas the tirer's art had decked with snare and sleight, o And robed
with rays as though the sun from her had borrowed light :
She came before us wondrous clad in chemisette of green, o As veiled
by his leafy screen Pomegranate hides from sight :
And when he said, "How callest thou the fashion of thy dress?" o She
answered us in pleasant way with double meaning dight,
"We call this garment creve-coeur \ and rightly is it hight, o For many
a heart wi' this we brake and harried many a sprite."
1 Repeated from vol. i. 218.
2 Repeated from vol. i. 218.
3 See vol. i. 219.
60 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Then they displayed Shahrazad in the sixth and seventh dresses
and clad her in youth's clothing, whereupon she came forward
swaying from side to side and coquettishly moving and indeed she
ravished wits and hearts and ensorcelled all eyes with her glances.
She shook her sides and swayed her haunches, then put her hair
on sword-hilt and went up to King Shahriyar, who embraced her
as hospitable host embraceth guest, and threatened her in her ear
with the taking of the sword ; and she was even as saith of her the
poet in these words :
Were not the Murk 1 of gender male, o Than feminines surpassing fair,
Tirewomen they had grudged the bride, o Who made her beard and whiskers
wear !
Thus also they did with her sister Dunyazad, and when they had
made an end of the display the King bestowed robes of honour
on all who were present and sent the brides to their own apart-
ments. Then Shahrazad went in to King Shahriyar and
Dunyazad to King Shah Zaman and each of them solaced himself
with the company of his beloved consort and the hearts of the
folk were comforted. When morning morrowed, the Wazir came
in to the two Kings and kissed ground before them ; wherefore
they thanked him and were large of bounty to him. Presently
they went forth and sat down upon couches of Kingship, whilst
all the Wazirs and Emirs and Grandees and Lords of the land
presented themselves and kissed ground. King Shahriyar ordered
them dresses of honour and largesse and they prayed for the
permanence and prosperity of the King and his brother. Then
the two Sovrans appointed their sire-in-law the Wazir to be
Viceroy in Samarcand and assigned him five of the Chief Emirs to
accompany him, charging them attend him and do him service.
The Minister kissed the ground and prayed that they might
be vouchsafed length of life : then he went in to his daughters,
whilst the Eunuchs and Ushers .walked before him, and
saluted them and farewelled them. They kissed his hands
and gave him joy of the Kingship and bestowed on him
immense treasures ; after which he took leave of them and
setting out, fared days and nights, till he came near Samar-
cand, where the townspeople met him at a distance of three
marches and rejoiced in him with exceeding joy. So he
1 Arab. Sawad = the blackness of the bait.
Conclusion. 6 1
entered the city and they decorated the houses and it was
a notable day. He sat down on the throne of his kingship
and the Wazirs did him homage and the Grandees and Emirs
of Samarcand and all prayed that he might be vouchsafed
justice and victory and length of continuance. So he bestowed
on them robes of honour and entreated them with distinction and
they made him Sultan over them. As soon as his father-in-law
had departed for Samarcand, King Shahriyah summoned the
Grandees of his realm and made them a stupendous banquet of
all manner of delicious meats and exquisite sweetmeats. He also
bestowed on them robes of honour and guerdoned them and
divided the kingdoms between himself and his brother in their
presence, whereat the folk rejoiced. Then the two Kings abode,
each ruling a day in turn, and they were ever in harmony each
with other while on similar wise their wives continued in the love
of Allah Almighty and in thanksgiving to Him ; and the peoples
and the provinces were at peace and the preachers prayed for
them from the pulpits, and their report was bruited abroad and
the travellers bore tidings of them to all lands. In due time
King Shahriyah summoned chroniclers and copyists and bade
them write all that had betided him with his wife, first and last ;
so they wrote this and named it " f &\)t SbtOtl'eS of t|)e ^ftousantJ
jfftgbtg anb & Nt'gjt." The book came to thirty volumes and these
the King laid up in his treasury. And the two brothers abode with
their wives in all pleasance and solace of life and its delights, for
that indeed Allah the Most High had changed their annoy into joy ;
and on this wise they continued till there took them the Destroyer
of delights and the Severer of societies, the Desolator of dwelling-
places and Garnerer of grave-yards, and they were translated to
the ruth of Almighty Allah ; their houses fell waste and their
palaces lay in ruins 1 and the Kings inherited their riches. Then
there reigned after them a wise ruier, who was just, keen-witted
and accomplished and loved tales and legends, especially those
which chronicle the doings of Sovrans and Sultans, and he found
in the treasury these marvellous stories and wondrous histories,
contained in the thirty volumes aforesaid. So he read in them a
first book and a second and a third and so on to the last of them,
and each book astounded and delighted him more than that which
preceded'it, till he came to the end of them. Then he admired
1 Because Easterns build, but never repair.
62 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
whatso he had read therein of description and discourse and rare
traits and anecdotes and moral instances and reminiscences and
bade the folk copy them and dispread them over all lands and
climes ; wherefore their report was bruited abroad and the people
named them " je matbds anfo foonUers of tfje ^{jousantr Ni'gfjt*
anfc gj Nu$t." This is all that hath come down to us of the
origin of this book, and Allah is All-knowing. 1 So Glory be to
Him whom the shifts of Time waste not away, nor doth aught
of chance or change affect His sway : whom one case diverteth not
from other case and Who is sole in the attributes of perfect grace.
And prayer and peace be upon the Lord's Pontiff and Chosen
One among His creatures, our lord MOHAMMED the Prince
of mankind through whom we supplicate Him for a goodly and
a godly
FINIS.
i.e. God only knows if it be true or not.
Terminal Essay.
PRELIMINARY.
THE reader who has reached this terminal stage will hardly
require my assurance that he has seen the mediaeval Arab at his
best and, perhaps, at his worst. In glancing over the myriad
pictures of this panorama, those who can discern the soul of good-
ness in things evil will note the true nobility of the Moslem's
mind in the Moyen Age, and the cleanliness of his life from cradle
to grave. As a child he is devoted to his parents, fond of his
comrades and respectful to his " pastors and masters," even school-
masters. As a lad he prepares for manhood with a will and
this training occupies him throughout youthtide : he is a
gentleman in manners without awkwardness, vulgar astonishment
or mauvaise-honte. As a man he is high-spirited and energetic,
always ready to fight for his Sultan, his country and, especially,
his Faith : courteous and affable, rarely failing in temperance of
mind and self-respect, self-control and self-command ; hospitable
to the stranger, attached to his fellow-citizens, submissive to
superiors and kindly to inferiors if such classes exist : Eastern
despotisms have arrived nearer the idea of equality and fraternity
than any republic yet invented. As a friend he proves a model
to the Damons and Pythiases : as a lover an exemplar to Don
Quijote without the noble old Caballero's touch of eccentricity. As
a knight he is the mirror of chivalry, doing battle for the weak and
debelling the strong, while ever " defending the honour of women."
As a husband his patriarchal position causes him to be loved and
64 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
fondly loved by more than one wife : as a father affection for his
children rules his life : he is domestic in the highest degree and he
finds few pleasures beyond the bosom of his family. Lastly, his
death is simple, pathethic and edifying as the life which led to it.
Considered in a higher phase, the mediaeval Moslem mind dis-
plays, like the ancient Egyptian, a most exalted moral idea, the
deepest reverence for all things connected with his religion and a
sublime conception of the Unity and Omnipotence of the Deity.
Noteworthy too is a proud resignation to the decrees of Fate and
Fortune (Kazd wa Kadar), of Destiny and Predestination a
feature which ennobles the low aspect of Al-Islam even in these
her days of comparative degeneration and local decay. Hence his
moderation in prosperity, his fortitude in adversity, his dignity,
his perfect self-dominance and, lastly, his lofty quietism which
sounds the true heroic ring. This again is softened and tempered
by a simple faith in the supremacy of Love over Fear, an un-
bounded humanity and charity for the poor and helpless : an un-
conditional forgiveness of the direst injuries (" which is the note of
the noble ") ; a generosity and liberality which at times seem
impossible and an enthusiasm for universal benevolence and
beneficence which, exalting kindly deeds done to man above every
form of holiness, constitute the root and base of Oriental, nay, of
all, courtesy. And the whole is crowned by pure trust and natural
confidence in the progress and perfectability of human nature,
which he exalts instead of degrading ; this he holds to be the
foundation-stone of society and indeed the very purpose of its exist-
ence. His Pessimism resembles far more the optimism which
the so-called Books of Moses borrowed from the Ancient Copt
than the mournful and melancholy creed of the true Pessimist,
as Solomon the Hebrew, the Indian Buddhist and the esoteric
European imitators of Buddhism. He cannot but sigh when con-
templating the sin and sorrow, the pathos and bathos of the
world ; and feel the pity of it, with its shifts and changes ending
Terminal Essay. 65
in nothingness, its scanty happiness and its copious misery. But
his melancholy is expressed in
" A voice divinely sweet, a voice no less
Divinely sad."
Nor does he mourn as they mourn who have no hope : he has
an absolute conviction in future compensation ; and, meanwhile,
his lively poetic impulse, the poetry of ideas, not of formal verse,
and his radiant innate idealism breathe a soul into the merest
matter of squalid work-a-day life and awaken the sweetest
harmonies of Nature epitomised in Humanity.
Such was the Moslem at a time when " the dark clouds of
ignorance and superstition hung so thick on the intellectual
horizon of Europe as to exclude every ray of learning that darted
from the East and when all that was polite or elegant in literature
was classed among the Studia Arabum" l
Nor is the shady side of the picture less notable. Our Arab at
his worst is a mere barbarian who has not forgotten the savage.
He is a model mixture of childishness and astuteness, of simplicity
and cunning, concealing levity of mind under solemnity of aspect.
His stolid instinctive conservatism grovels before the tyrant rule of
routine, despite that turbulent and licentious independence which
ever suggests revolt against the ruler : his mental torpidity,
founded upon physical indolence, renders immediate action and
all manner of exertion distasteful : his conscious weakness shows
itself in overweening arrogance and intolerance. His crass and
self-satisfied ignorance makes him glorify the most ignoble super-
stitions, while acts of revolting savagery are the natural results of
a malignant fanaticism and a furious hatred of every creed beyond
the pale of Al-Islam.
It must be confessed that these contrasts make a curious and
interesting tout ensemble.
1 Ouseley's Orient. Collect. I, vii.
VOL. X.
66 A If Laylah wa L&ylah.
1
THE ORIGIN OF THE NIGHTS.
A. THE BIRTHPLACE.
HERE occur the questions, Where and When was written and to
Whom do we owe a prose-poem which, like the dramatic epos of
Herodotus, has no equal ?
I proceed to lay before the reader a proces-verbal of the
sundry pleadings already in court as concisely as is compatible
with intelligibility, furnishing him with references to original
authorities and warning him that a fully-detailed account would
fill a volume. Even my own reasons for decidedly taking one
side and rejecting the other must be stated briefly. And .before
entering upon this subject I would distribute the prose-matter
of our Recueil of Folk-lore under three heads.
1. The Apologue or Beast-fable proper, a theme which may
be of any age, as it is found in the hieroglyphs and in the
cuneiforms.
2. The Fairy-tale, as for brevity we may term the stones
based upon supernatural agency : this was a favourite with
olden Persia ; and Mohammed, most austere and puritanical of
the " Prophets," strongly objected to it because preferred by the
more sensible of his converts to the dry legends of the Talmud
and the Koran, quite as fabulous without the halo and glamour
of fancy.
3. The Histories and historical anecdotes, analects, and acro-
amata, in which the names, when not used achronistically by
the editor or copier, give unerring data for the earliest date &
quo and which, by the mode of treatment, suggest the latest.
Terminal Essay. 67
Each of these constituents will require further notice when
the subject-matter of the book is discussed. The metrical por-
tion of The Nights may also be divided into three categories,
viz. :
1. The oldest and classical poetry of the Arabs, e.g. the
various quotations from the " Suspended Poems."
2. The mediaeval, beginning with the laureates of Al-Rashid's
court, such as Al-Asma'i and Abu Nowas; and ending with
Al-Harfri A.H. 446-516 = 1030-1100.
3. The modern quotations and the pieces de circonstance by
the editors or copyists of the Compilation. 1
Upon the metrical portion also further notices must be offered
at the end of this Essay.
In considering the unde derivatur of The Nights we must
carefully separate subject-matter from language-manner. The
neglect of such essential difference. has caused the remark, "It
is not a little curious that the origin of a work which has been
1 This three-fold distribution occurred to me many years ago and when far
beyond reach of literary authorities ; I was, therefore, much pleased to find the sub-
joined three-fold classification with minor details made by Baron von Hammer-
Purgstall (Preface to Contes Ine'dits etc. of G. S. Trebutien, Paris, mdcccxxviii.)
(i) The older stories which serve as a base to the collection, such as the Ten Wazirs
(" Malice of Women") and Voyages of Sindbad (?) which may date from the days of
Mahomrned. These are distributed into two sub-classes ; (a) the marvellous and purely
imaginative (e.g. Jamasp and the Serpent Queen) and (b) the realistic mixed with
instructive fables and moral instances. (2) The stories and anecdotes peculiarly Arab,
relating to the Caliphs and especially to Al-Rashld j and (3) The tales of Egyptian pro-
venance, which mostly date from the times of the puissant " Aaron the Orthodox." Mr.
John Payne (Villon Translation, vol. ix. pp. 367-73) distributes the stories roughly under
five chief heads as follows: (i) Histories or long Romances, as King Omar bin AJ-
Nu'man. (2) Anecdotes or short stories dealing with historical personages and with
incidents and adventures belonging to the every-day life of the period to which they
refer : e.g. those concerning Al-Rashid and Hatim of Tayy. (3) Romances and
romantic fictions comprising three different kinds of tales ; (a) purely romantic and
supernatural ; (b) fictions and nouvelles with or without a basis and background of
historical fact and (c) Contes fantastiques. (4) Fables and Apologues ; and (5) Tales
proper, as that of Tawaddud.
68 Alf Laylah wa Lay la k.
V
known to Europe and has been studied by many during nearly
two centuries, should still be so mysterious, and that students
have failed in all attempts to detect the secret." Hence also
the chief authorities at once branched off into two directions.
One held the work to be practically Persian : the other as per-
sistently declared it to be purely Arab.
Professor Galland, in his Epistle Dedicatory to the Marquise
d'O, daughter of his patron M. de Guillerague, showed his
literary acumen and unfailing sagacity by deriving The Nights
from India vi& Persia ; and held that they had been reduced to
their present shape by an Auteur Arabe inconnu. This refer-
ence to India, also learnedly advocated by M: Langles, was
inevitable in those days : it had not then been proved that
India owed all her literature to far older civilisations and even
that her alphabet the Ndgari, erroneously called Devandgari,
was derived through Phoenicia and Himyar-land from Ancient
Egypt. So Europe was contented to compare The Nights
with the Fables of Pilpay for upwards of a century. At last
the Pehlevi or old Iranian origin of the work found an able
and strenuous advocate in Baron von Hammer-Purgstall l who
worthily continued what Galland had begun : although a most
inexact writer, he was extensively read in Oriental history and
poetry. His contention was that the book is an Arabisation
of the Persian Hazdr Afsanah or Thousand Tales and he
proved his point.
Von Hammer began by summoning into Court the " Herodotus
of "thTXrabs, (AH Abu al-Hasan) Al-Mas'udi who, in A.H. 333
(= 944) about one generation before the founding of Cairo,
published at Bassorah the first edition of his far-famed Muruj
al-Dahab wa Ma'adin al-Jauhar, Meads of Gold and Mines of
1 Jonrnal Asiatique (Paris, Dondey-Dupre, 1826) " Sur 1'origme des Mille et une
Nuits."
Terminal Essay. 69
Gems. The Styrian Orientalist * quotes with sundry misprints 2 an
ampler version of a passage in Chapter Ixviii., which is abbreviated
in the French translation of M. C. Barbier de Meynard. 3
" And, indeed, many men well acquainted with their (Arab)
histories 4 opine that the stories above mentioned and other
trifles were strung together by men who commended themselves
to the Kings by relating them, and who found favour with their
contemporaries by committing them to memory and by reciting
them. Of such fashion 5 is the fashion of the books which have
come down to us translated from the Persian (Farasiyah), the
Indian (Hindfyah), 6 and the Graeco-Roman (Rumiyah) 7 : we
have noted the judgment which should be passed upon com-
positions of this nature. Such is the book entituled Hazar
Afsdnah or T/ie Thousand Tales, which word in Arabic signifies
Khurdfah (Facetice) : it is known to the public under the name of
The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night, (Kitab Alf Laylak
wa Laylah? This is an history of a King and his Wazir, the
minister's daughter and a slave-girl (jdriyah) who are named
Shirzdd (lion-born) and Dmar-zdd (ducat-born). 9 Such also is
1 Baron von Hammer-Purgstairs chateau is near Styrian Graz ; and, when I last saw
his library, it had been left as it was at his death.
2 At least, in Trebutien's Preface, pp. xxx.-xxxi., reprinted from the Journ. Asiat.
August, 1839 : for corrections see De Sacy's " Memoire." p. 39.
3 Vol. iv. pp. 89-90, Paris mdccclxv. Trebutien quotes, chapt. lii. (for Ixviii.), one of
Von Hammer's manifold inaccuracies.
* Alluding to Iram the Many-columned, etc.
* In Trebutien Sfha," for which the Editor of the Journ. Asiat. and De Sacy
rightly read " Sabfl-ha."
6 For this some MSS. have " Fahlawiyah " = Pehlevi.
7 ".*. Lower Roman, Grecian, of Asia Minor, etc., the word is still applied through-
out Marocco, Algiers and Northern Africa to Europeans in general.
8 De Sacy (Dissertation prefixed to the Bourdin Edition) notices the " thousand
and one," and in his Memoire " a thousand: " Von Hammer's MS. reads a thousand,
and the French translation a thousand and one. Evidently no stress can be laid upon
the numerals.
9 These names are noticed in my vol. i. 14, and vol. ii. 3. According to De Sacy some
MSS. read " History of the Wazir and his Daughters."
?o A If Laylah wa Laylah.
the Tale of Farzah, 1 (alii Firza), and Sirnds, containing details
concerning the Kings and Wazirs of Hind : the Book of Al-
Sindibad 2 and others of a similar stamp."
Von Hammer adds, quoting chapt. cxvi, of Al'Mas'udl that
Al-Mansur (second Abbaside A.H. 136-158 =: 754-775, and
grandfather of Al-Rashid) caused many translations of Greek and
Latin, Syriac and Persian (Pehlevi) works to be made into Arabic,
specifying the Kalilah wa Damnah," 3 the Fables of Bidpai
(Pilpay), the Logic of Aristotle, the Geography of Ptolemy and the
Elements of Euclid. Hence he concludes " L'original des Mille et
une Nuits * * * selon toute vraisemblance, a et< traduit au
temps du Khalife Mansur, c'est-a-dire trente ans avant le regne
du Khalife Haroun al-Raschid, qui, par la suite, devait lui-meme
jouer un si grand role dans ces histoires." He also notes that,
about a century after Al-Mas'udi had mentioned the Hazar
Afsanah, it was versified and probably remodelled by one " Rasti,"
the Takhallus or nom de plume of a bard at the Court of
1 Lane (iii. 735) has Wizreh or Wardeh which guide us to Wird Khan, the hero of
the tale. Von Hammer's MS. prefers Djilkand (Jilkand), whence probably the Isegil
or Isegild of Langles (1814), and the Tseqyl of De Sacy (1833). The mention of
"Simas" (Lane's Shemmas) identifies it with "King Jali'ad of Hind," etc. (Night
dcccxcix.) Writing in A.D. 961 Hamzah Isfahani couples with the libri Sindbad and
Schimas, the libri Baruc and Barsinas, four nouvelles out of nearly seventy. See also AN
Makri'zi's Khitat or Topography (ii. 485) for a notice of the Thousand or Thousand
and one Nights.
2 Alluding to the " Seven Wazirs " alias " The Malice of Women " (Night dlxxviii.),
which Von Hammer and many others have carelessly confounded with Sindbad the
Seaman. We find that two tales once separate have now been incorporated with The
Nights, and this suggests the manner of its composition by accretion.
3 Arabised by a most " elegant" stylist, Abdullah ibn al-Mukaffa (the shrivelled), a
Persian Guebre named Roz-bih (Day good), who islamised and was barbarously put to
death in A.H. 158 (=. 775) by command of the Caliph al-Mansur (Al-Siyuti p. 277).
'* He also translated from Pehlevi the book entitled Stkiserdn, containing the annals of
Isfandiyar, the death of Rustam, and other episodes of old Persic history," says Al-
Mas'udi chapt. xxi. See also Ibn Khallikan (l, 43) who dales the murder in A.M. 142
(= 759-6o).
Terminal Essay. 7 1
Mahmud, the Ghaznevite Sultan who, after a reign of thirty-
three years, ob. A.D. IO3O 1
Von Hammer some twelve years afterwards (Journ. Asiat.
August, 1839) brought forward, in his "Note sur 1'origine Persane
des Mille et une Nuits," a second and an even more important
witness : this was the famous Kitab al-Fihrist, 2 or Index List of
(Arabic) works, written (in A.H. 387 = 987) by Mohammed bin
Is'hak al-Nadim (cup-companion or equerry), " popularly known
as Ebou Yacoub el-Werrek." 3 The following is an extract (p. 304)
from the Eighth Discourse which consists of three arts (funun). 4
" The first section on the history of the confabulatores nocturni
(tellers of night tales) and the relaters of fanciful adventures,
together with the names of books treating upon such subjects.
Mohammed ibn Is'hak saith : The first who indited themes of
imagination and made books of them, consigning these works to
the libraries, and who ordered some of them as though related by
the tongues of brute beasts, were the palaeo-Persians (and the
Kings of the First Dynasty). The Ashkanian Kings of the Third
Dynasty appended others to them and they were augmented and
amplified in the days of the Sassanides " (the fourth and last
royal house). The Arabs also translated them into Arabic,
1 "Notice sur Le Schah-namah de Firdoussi," a posthumous publication of M. de
Wallenbourg, Vienna, 1810, by M. A. de Bianchi. In sect. iii. I shall quote another
passage of Al-Mas'udi (viii. 1/5) in which I find a distinct allusion to the "Gaboriau-
detective tales " of The Nights.
2 Here Von Hammer shows his customary inexactitude. As we learn from Ibn
Khallikan (Fr. Tr. I. 630), the author's name was Abu al-Faraj Mohammed ibn Is'hak,
pop. known as Ibn Ali Ya'kub al-Warrak, the bibliographe, librarian, copyist. It was
published (vol. i. Leipzig, 1871) under the editorship of G. Fluegel, J. Roediger, and
A. Miiller.
3 See also the Journ. Asiat., August, 1839, and Lane iii. 736-37.
4 Called " Afsanah " by Al-Mas'udi, both words having the same sense = talei
story, parable, " facetiae.'' Moslem fanaticism renders it by the Arab "Khurafah"
= silly fables, and in Hindostan it = a jest : ** Bat-ki bat ; khurafat-ki khurafat (a
vrotd for a word, a joke for a joke.)
72 A If Lay I ah wa Lay t ah.
and the loquent and eloquent polished and embellished them and
wrote others resembling them. The first work of such kind was
entituled 'The Book of Hazar Afsan/ signifying Alf Khurdfah,
the argument whereof was as follows. A King of their Kings was
wont, when he wedded a woman and had lain one night with
her, to slay her on the next morning. Presently he espoused a
damsel of the daughters of the Kings, Shahrazad 1 hight, one
endowed with intellect and erudition and, whenas she lay with
him, she fell to telling him tales of fancy ; moreover she used to
connect the story at the end of the night with that which might
induce the King to preserve her alive and to ask her of its
ending on the next night until a thousand nights had passed over
her. Meanwhile he cohabited with her till she was blest by boon
of child of him, when she acquainted him with the device she
had wrought upon him ; wherefore he admired her intelligence and
inclined to her and preserved her life. That King had also a
Kahramanah (nurse and duenna, not entremetteuse), hight
Dinarzad (Dunyazad ?), who aided the wife in this (artifice). It is
also said that this book was composed for (or, by) Humai
daughter of Bahman 2 and in. it were included other matters.
Mohammed bin Is'hak adds : And the truth is, Inshallah, 3 that
the first who solaced himself with hearing night-tales was Al-
1 Al-Mas'udi (chapt. xxi.) makes this a name of the Mother of Queen Humai or
Humayah, for whom, see below.
2 The preface of a copy of the Shah-nameh (by Firdausi, ob. A.D. 1021), collated in
A.H. 829 by command of Bayisunghur Bahadur Khan (Atkinson p. x.), informs us that
the Hazar Afsanah was composed for or by Queen Humai whose name is Arabised to
Humayah. This Persian Marguerite de Navarre was daughter and wife to (Ardashir)
Bahman, sixth Kayanian and surnamed Diraz-dast (Artaxerxes Longimanus), Abu
Sasan from his son, the Eponymus of the Sassanides who followed the Kayanians when
these were extinguished by Alexander of Macedon. Humai succeeded her husband as
seventh Queen, reigned thirty-two years and left the crown to her son Dari or Darab
jst = Darius Codomanus. She is better known to Europe (throfigh Herodotus) as
Parysatis = Peri-zadeh or the Fairy-born.
3 i./. If Allah allow me to say sooth.
Terminal Essay. 73
Iskandar (he of Macedon) and he had a number of men who
used to relate to him imaginary stories and provoke him to
laughter : he, however, designed not therein merely to please
himself, but that he might thereby become the more cautious and
alert After him the Kings in like fashion made use of the book
entitled ' Hazar Afsdn.' It containeth a thousand nights, but less
than two hundred night-stories, for a single history often occupied
several nights. I have seen it complete sundry times ; and it is,
in truth, a corrupted book of cold tales." 1
A writer in The Athenaum? objecting to Lane's modern date
for The Nights, adduces evidence to prove the greater antiquity of
the work. (Abu al-Hasan) Ibn Sa'id (bin Musa al-Gharnati = of
Granada) born in A.H. 615 = 1218 and ob. Tunis A.H. 685 =
1286, left his native city and arrived at Cairo in A.H. 639 = 1241.
This Spanish poet and historian wrote Al-Muhalld bi al-Ash'ar
(The Adorned with Verses), a Topography of Egypt and Africa,
which is apparently now lost. In this he quotes from Al-Kurtubi,
the Cordovan ; 3 and he in his turn is quoted by the Arab historian
of Spain, Abu al-Abbas Ahmad bin Mohammed al-Makkari, in
the " Windwafts of Perfume from the Branches of Andalusia the
Blooming" 4 (A.D. 1628-29). Mr. Payne (x. 301) thus translates
from Dr. Dozy's published text.
" Ibn Said (may God have mercy upon him !) sets forth in
his book, EJ Muhella bi-s-Shaar, quoting from El Curtubi the
story of the building of the Houdej in the Garden of Cairo, the
1 i.e. of silly anecdotes : here speaks the good Moslem !
8 No. 622 Sept. 29, '39 ; a review of Torrens which appeared shortly after Lane's
vol. i. The author quotes from a MS. in the British Museum, No. 7334 fol. 136.
8 There are many Spaniards of this name : Mr. Payne (ix. 302) proposes Abu Ja'afar
ibn Abd al-Hakk al-Khazraji, author of a History of the Caliphs about the middle of the
twelfth century.
4 The well-known Rauzah or Garden-island, of old Al-Sana'ah (Al-Mas'udi
chapt. xxxi.), which is more than once noticed in The Nights. The name of the pavilion
Al-Haudaj = a camel-litter, was probably intended to flatter the Badawi girl.
74 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
which was of the magnificent pleasaunces of the Fatimite Khalifs,
the rare of ordinance and surpassing, to wit that the Khalif El
Aamir bi-ahkam-illah 1 let build it for a Bedouin woman, the love
of whom had gotten the mastery of him, in the neighbourhood of
the ' Chosen Garden ' 2 and used to resort often thereto and was
slain as he went thither ; and it ceased not to be a pleasuring-
place for the Khalifs after him. The folk abound in stories of the
Bedouin girl and Ibn Meyyah 3 of the sons of her uncle (cousin ?)
and what hangs thereby of the mention of El-Aamir, so that the
tales told of them on this account became like unto the story
of El Bettal 4 and the Thousand Nights and a Night and what
resembleth them."
The same passage from Ibn Sa'id, corresponding in three MSS.,
occurs in the famous Khitat 5 attributed to Al-Makrizi (ob. A.D.
1444) and was thus translated from a MS. in the British Museum
by Mr. John Payne (ix. 303).
" The Khalif El-Aamir bi-ahkam-illah set apart, in the neigh-
bourhood of the Chosen Garden, a place for his beloved the
Bedouin maid (Aaliyah) 6 which he named El Houdej. Quoth
Ibn Said, in the book El-Muhella bi-1-ashar, from the History
of El Curtubi, concerning the traditions of the folk of the story
of the Bedouin maid and Ibn Menah (Meyyah) of the sons of
1 He was the Seventh Fatimite Caliph of Egypt: regn. A.H. 495 524
(= uoi 1129).
2 Suggesting a private pleasaunce in Al-Rauzah which has ever been and is still a
succession of gardens.
3 The writer in The Athenceum calls him Ibn Miyyah, and adds that the Badawiyah
wrote 19 her cousin certain verses complaining of her thraldom, which the youth
answered, abusing the Caliph, Al-'Amir found the correspondence and ordered Ibn
Miyah's tongue to be cut out, but he saved himself by a timely flight.
4 In Night dccclxxxv. we have the passage " He was a wily thief : none could avail
against his craft as he were Abu Mohammed Al-Battdl " : the word etymologically
means The Bad ; but see infra.
5 Amongst other losses which Orientalists have sustained by the death of Rogers Bey,
I may mention his proposed translation of Al-Makrizi's great topographical work.
6 The name appears only in a later passage.
Terminal Essay. 75
her uncle and what hangs thereby of the mention of the
Khalif El Aami'r bi-ahkam-illah, so that their traditions (or
tales) upon the garden became like unto El Bettal * and the
Thousand Nights and what resembleth them."
This evidently means either that The Nights existed in the
days of Al-'Amir (xiith cent.) or that the author compared
them with a work popular in his own age. Mr. Payne attaches
much importance to the discrepancy of titles, which appears
to me a minor detail. The change of names is easily explained.
Amongst the Arabs, as amongst the wild Irish, there is divinity
(the proverb says luck) in odd numbers and consequently the
others are inauspicious. Hence as Sir Wm. Ouseley says
(Travels ii. 21), the number Thousand and One is a favourite in
the East (Olivier, Voyages vi. 385, Paris 1807), and quotes the
Cistern of the " Thousand and One Columns " at Constanti-
nople. Kaempfer (Amcen, Exot p. 38) notes of the Takiyahs
or Dervishes' convents and the Mazdrs or Santons' tombs near
Konfah (Iconium), "Multa seges sepulchralium quae virorum ex
omni sevo doctissimorum exuvias condunt, mille et unum recenset
auctor Libri qui inscribitur Hassaaer we jek mesaar (Hazar ve
yek Mezar), *'.*., mille et unum mausolea." A book, The Hazar
o yek Ruz (= 1001 Days), was composed in the mid-xviith
century by the famous Dervaysh Mukhlis, Chief Sofi of Isfahan :
it was translated into French by Petis de la Croix, with a
preface by Cazotte, and was englished by Ambrose Phillips.
Lastly, in India and throughout Asia where Indian influence
extends, the number of cyphers not followed by a significant
number is indefinite: for instance, to determine hundreds the
Hindus affix the required figure to the end and for 100 write
101 ; for TOGO, 1001. But the grand fact of the Hazar Afsanah
1 Mr. Payne notes (viii. 137) "apparently some famous brigand of the time" (of
Charlemagne). But the title may signify The Brave, and the tale may be much older.
76 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
is its being the archetype of The Nights, unquestionably proving
that the Arab work borrows from the Persian bodily its cadre
or frame-work, the principal characteristic ; its exordium and its
denouement, whilst the two heroines still bear the old Persic
names.
Baron Silvestre de Sacy J clarum et venerabile nomen is
the chief authority for the Arab provenance of The Nights.
Apparently founding his observations upon Galland, 2 he is of
opinion that the work, as now known, was originally composed in
Syria 3 and written in the vulgar dialect ; that it was never completed
by the author, whether he was prevented by death or by other
cause ; and that imitators endeavoured to finish the work by
inserting romances which were already known but which .formed
no part of the original recueil, such as the Travels of Sindbad the
Seaman, the Book of the Seven Wazirs and others. He accepts
the Persian scheme and cadre of the work, but no more. He
contends that no considerable body of prae-Mohammedan or non-
Arabic fiction appears in the actual texts 4 ; and that all the
tales, even those dealing with events localised in Persia, India,
China and other infidel lands and dated from ante-islamitic ages,
mostly with the nafvest anachronism, confine themselves to
1 In his "Memoire sur Torigine du Recueil des Contes intitule Les Mille et une
Nuits " (Mem. d'Hist. et de Litter. Orientale, extrait des tomes ix..et x. des Me"moires
de 1'Inst. Royal Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris, Imprimerie Royale,
1833). He read the Memoir before the Royal Academy on July 31, 1829. Also in his
Dissertation " Sur les Mille et une Nuits" (pp. i. viii.) prefixed to the Bourdin Edit.
When the first Arabist in Europe landed at Alexandria he could not exchange a word
with the people : the same is told of Golius the lexicographer at Tunis.
2 Lane, Nights ii. 218.
3 This origin had been advocated a decade of years before by Shaykh Ahmad at-
Shirawanf ; Editor of the Calc. text (1814-18) : his Persian preface opines that the author
was an Arabic- speaking Syrian who designedly wrote in a modern and conversational
style, none of the purest withal, in order to instruct hon-Arabists. Here we find the
genus " Professor " pure and simple.
4 Such an assertion makes us enquire, Did De Sacy ever read through The Nights
in Arabic ?
Terminal Essay. 77
depicting the people, manners and customs of Baghdad and
Mosul, Damascus and Cairo, during the Abbaside epoch ; and
he makes a point of the whole being impregnated with the
strongest and most zealous spirit of Mohammedanism. He
points out that the language is the popular or vulgar dialect,
differing widely from the classical and literary ; that it contains
many words in common modern use and that generally it suggests
the decadence of Arabian literature. Of one tale he remarks :
The History of the loves of Camaralzaman and Budour, Princess
of China, is no more Indian or Persian than the others. The
prince's father has Moslems for subjects, his mother is named
Fatimah and when imprisoned he solaces himself with reading
the Koran. The Genii who interpose in these adventures are,
again, those who had dealings with Solomon. In fine, all that
we here find of the City of the Magians, as well as of the fire-
worshippers, suffices to show that one should not expect to
discover in it anything save the production of a Moslem writer.
All this, with due deference to so high an authority, is very
superficial. Granted, which nobody denies, that the archetypal
Hazar Afsinah was translated from Persic into Arabic nearly
a thousand years ago, it had ample time and verge enough to
assume another and a foreign dress, the corpus however remain-
ing untouched. Under the hands of a host of editors, scribes
and copyists, who have no scruples anent changing words, names
and dates, abridging descriptions and attaching their own decora-
tions, the florid and rhetorical Persian would readily be converted
into the straight-forward, business-like) matter of fact Arabic.
And what easier than to islamise the old Zoroasterism, to
transform Ahrimdn into Iblfs the Shaytdn, Jdn bin Jan into
Father Adam, and the Divs and Peris of Kayomars and the
olden Guebre Kings into the Jinns and Jinniyahs of Sulayman ?
Volumes are spoken by the fact that the Arab adapter did not
venture to change the Persic names of the two heroines and of
78 A If Laylak wa Laylah.
the royal brothers or to transfer the mise-en-scene any whither
from Khorasan or outer Persia. Where the story has not been
too much worked by the literato's pen, for instance the "Ten
Wazirs " (in the Bresl. Edit. vi. 191-343) which is the Guebre
Bakhtiydr-ndmah, the names and incidents are old Iranian and
with few exceptions distinctly Persian. And at times we can
detect the process of transition, e.g. when the Mazin of Khorasan '
of the Wortley Montagu MS. becomes the Hasan of Bassorah
of the Turner Macan MS. (Mac. Edit.).
Evidently the learned Baron had not studied such works as
the Tota-kahdni or Parrot-chat which, notably translated by
Nakhshabi from the Sanskrit Suka-Saptati, 2 has now become
as orthodoxically Moslem as The Nights. The old Hindu
Rajah becomes Ahmad Sultan of Balkh, the Prince is Maymun
and his wife Khujisteh. Another instance of such radical
change is the later Syriac version of Kalilah wa Dimnah, 3 old
11 Pilpay " converted to Christianity. We find precisely the same
process in European folk-lore ; for instance the Gesta Romanorum
in which, after five hundred years, the life, manners and customs
of the Romans lapse into the knightly and chivalrous, the
Christian and ecclesiastical developments of mediaeval Europe.
Here, therefore, I hold that the Austrian Arabist has proved
his point whilst the Frenchman has failed.
Mr. Lane, during his three years' labour of translation, first
accepted Von Hammer's view and then came round to that of
De Sacy ; differing, however, in minor details, especially in the
native country of The Nights. Syria had been chosen because
1 Dr. Jonathan Scott's " translation " vi. 283.
2 For a note on this world-wide Tale see vol. i. 52.
3 In the annotated translation by Mr. I. G. N. Keith -Falconer, Cambridge
University Press. I regret to see the wretched production called the "Fables of
Pilpay" in the " Chandos Classics" (London, F. Warne). The words are so
mutilated that few will recognise them, e.g. Carchenas for KaVshfnds, Chaschmanah
for Chashmey-e-Mh (Fountain of the Moon), etc.
Terminal Essay. 79
then the most familiar to Europeans: the "Wife of Bath" had
made three pilgrimages to Jerusalem; but few cared to visit
the barbarous and dangerous Nile- Valley. Mr. Lane, however,
was an enthusiast for Egypt or rather for Cairo, the only part
of it he knew ; and, when he pronounces The Nights to be of
purely " Arab," that is, of Nilotic origin, his opinion is entitled to
no more deference than his deriving the sub-African and negroid
Fellah from Arabia, the land per excellentiam of pure and noble
blood. Other authors have wandered Still further afield. Some
finding Mosul idioms in the Recueil, propose " Middlegates " for
its birth-place and Mr. W. G. P. Palgrave boldly says "The
original of this entertaining work appears to have been com-
posed in Baghdad about the eleventh century ; another less
popular but very spirited version is probably of Tunisian author-
ship and somewhat later." *
B. THE DATE.
The next point to consider is the date of The Nights in its
present form ; and here opinions range between the tenth and
the sixteenth centuries. Professor Galland began by placing it
arbitrarily in the middle of the thirteenth. De Sacy, who
abstained from detailing reasons and who, forgetting the number
of editors and scribes through whose hands it must have
passed, argued only from the nature of the language and the
peculiarities of style, proposed le milieu du neuvieme siecle de
Thdgire (= A.D. 1445-6) as its latest date. Mr. Hole, who
knew The Nights only through Galland's version, had already
advocated in his " Remarks " the close of the fifteenth century ;
and M. Caussin (de Perceval), upon the authority of a supposed note
1 Article Arabia in Encyclop. Brit., Qth Edit., p. 263, col. 2. I do not quite
understand Mr. Palgrave, but presume that his "other version" is the Bresl. Edit.,
the MS. of which was brought from Tunis ; see its Vorwort (vol. i. p. 3).
8o A If Laylah wa Lay la h.
in Galland's MS. 1 (vol. iii. fol. 20, verso), declares the compiler
to have been living in A.D. 1548 and 1565. Mr. Lane says
"Not begun earlier than the last fourth of the fifteenth
century nor ended before the first fourth of the sixteenth,"
i.e. soon after Egypt was conquered by Selim, Sultan of
the Osmanli Turks in A.D. 1517. Lastly the learned Dr.
Weil says in his far too scanty Vorwort (p. ix. 2nd Edit.) :
"Das wahrscheinlichste diirfte also sein, das im 15. Jahrhundert
ein Egyptier nach altern Vorbilde Erzahlungen fur 1001 Nachte
theils erdichtete, theils nach miindlichen Sagen, oder friihern
schriftlichen Aufzeichnungen, bearbeitete, dass er aber entweder
sein Werk nicht vollendete, oder dass ein Theil desselben verloren
ging, so dass das Fehlende von Andern bis ins 16. Jahrhundert
hinein durch neue Erzahlungen erganzt wurde."
But, as justly observed by Mr. Payne, the first step when
enquiring into the original date of The Nights is to determine
the nucleus of the Repertory by a comparison of the four
printed texts and the dozen MSS. which have been collated
by scholars. 2 This process makes it evident that the tales
common to all are the following thirteen :
1. The Introduction (with a single incidental story "The
Bull and the Ass").
2. The Trader and the Jinni (with three incidentals).
1 There are three distinct notes according to De Sacy (Mem., p. 50). The first
(in MS. 1508) says " This blessed book was read by the weak slave, etc. Wahabah
son of Rizkallah the Kdtib (secretary, scribe) of Tarabulus al-Sham (Syrian Tripoli,)
who prayeth long life for its owner (li mdliki-h). This tenth day of the month
First Rabi'a A.H. 95$ (= 1548)." A similar note by the same Wahabah occurs
at the end of vol. ii. (MS. 1507) dated A.H. 973 ( 1565) and a third (MS. 1506)
is undated. Evidently M. Caussin has given undue weight to such evidence. For
further information see " Tales of the East " to which is prefixed an Introductory
Dissertation (vol. i. pp. 24-26, note) by Henry Webber, Esq., Edinburgh, 1812,
in 3 vols.
* "Notice sur les douze manuscrits connus des Milles et une Nuits, qui existent
en Europe." Von Hammer in Tre"butien, Notice, vol. i.
Terminal Essay. 8*
3. The Fisherman and the Jinni (with four).
4. The Porter and the three Ladies of Baghdad.
5. The Tale of the Three Apples.
6. The Tale of Nur al-Dm Ali and his son Badr ai-Dfn Hasan.
7. The Hunchback's Tale (with eleven).
8. Nur al-Din and Anfs al-Jalis.
9. Tale of Ghanim bin 'Ayyub (with two).
10. Ali bin Bakkar and Shams al-Nahdr (with two).
11. Tale of Kamar al-Zaman.
12. The Ebony Horse; and
13. Julnar the Seabjrn.
These forty-two tales, occupying one hundred and twenty
Nights, form less than a fifth part of the whole collection which
in the Mac. Edit. 1 contains a total of two hundred and sixty-four.
Hence Dr. Patrick Russell, 2 the Natural Historian of Aleppo, 3
whose valuable monograph amply deserves study even in this our
day, believed that the original Nights did not outnumber two
hundred, to which subsequent writers added till the total of
a thousand and one was made up. Dr. Jonathan Scott, 4 who
quotes Russell, " held it highly probable that the tales of the
original Arabian Nights did not run through more than two
1 Printed from the MS. of Major Turner Macan, Editor of the Shahnamah : he
bought it. from the heirs of Mr. Salt, the historic Consul-General of England in
Egypt and after Macan's death it became the property of the now extinct Aliens,
then of Leadenhall Street (Torrens, Preface, i.). I have vainly enquired about what
became of it.
3 The short paper by "P. R." in the Gentleman's Magazine (Feb. igth, 1799,
vol. Ixix. p. 61) tells us that MSS< of The Nights were scarce at Aleppo and that
he found only two vols. (280 Nights) which he had great difficulty in obtaining leave
to copy. He also noticed (in 1771) a MS., said to be complete, in the Vatican and
another in the "King's Library" (Bibliotheque Nationale), Paris.
3 Aleppo has been happy in finding such monographers as Russell and Maundrell
while poor Damascus fell into the hands of Mr. Missionary Porter, and suffered
accordingly.
4 Vol. vi. Appendix, p. 452.
VOL. X. F
8t A If Laylah wa Laylah.
hundred and eighty Nights, if so many." So this suggestion I
may subjoin, " habent sua fata libelli." Galland, who preserves in
his Mille et une Nuits only about one fourth of The Nights, ends
them in No. cclxiv 1 with the seventh voyage of Sindbad : after
that he intentionally omits the dialogue between the sisters and
the reckoning of time, to proceed uninterruptedly with the tales.
And so his imitator, Petis de la Croix, 8 in his Mille et un Jours,
reduces the thousand to two hundred and thirty-two.
The internal chronological evidence offered by the Collection is
useful only in enabling us to determine that the tales were not
written after a certain epoch : the actual dates and, consequently,
all deductions from them, are vitiated by the habits of the scribes.
For instance we find the Tale of the Fisherman and the Jinni
(vol. i. 41) placed in A.H. 169 = A.D. 785,* which is hardly
possible. The immortal Barber in the " Tailor's Tale "(vol. i. 304)
places his adventure with the unfortunate lover on Safar 10,
A.H. 653 ( = March 25th, 1255) and 7,320 years of the era of
Alexander. 4 This is supported in his Tale of Himself (vol. i.
PP' 3 l 7-34fy> where he dates his banishment from Baghdad
during the reign of the penultimate Abbaside, Al-Mustansir
bi 'llah 5 (A.H. 623-640 = 1225-1242), and his return to Baghdad
after the accession of another Caliph who can be no other but
1 The numbers, however, vary with the Editions of Galland : some end the formula
with Night cxcvii ; others with the ccxxxvi. : I adopt that of the De Sacy Edition.
2 Contes Persans j suivis des Contes Turcs. Paris ; Bechet Aine, 1826.
8 In the old translation we have " eighteen hundred years since the prophet Solomon
died," (B.C. 975) = A.D. 825.
* Meaning the era of the Seleucides. Dr. Jonathan Scott shows (vol. ii. 324) that
A.H. 653 and A.D. 1255 would correspond with 1557 of that epoch; so that the
scribe has here made a little mistake of 5,763 years. Ex uno disce.
6 The Saturday Review (Jan. 2nd '86) writes, "Captain Burton has fallen into a
mistake by not distinguishing between the names of the by no means identical Caliphs
Al-Muntasir and Al-Mustansir." Quite true : it was an ugly confusion of the
melancholy madman and parricide with one of the best and wisest of the Caliphs. I can
explain (not extenuate) my mistake only by a misprint in Al-Siyuti (p. 554).
Terminal Essay. 83
Al-Muntasim bi 'llah (A.H. 640-656 = A.D. 1242-1258). Again
at the end of the tale (vol. i. 350) he is described as "an ancient
man, past his ninetieth year" and " a very old man " in the days
of Al-Mustansir (vol. i. 318); so that the Hunchback's adven-
ture can hardly be placed earlier than A.D. 1265 or seven years
after the storming of Baghdad by Hulaku Khan, successor of
Janghiz Khan, a terrible catastrophe which resounded throughout
the civilised world. Yet there is no allusion to this crucial
epoch and the total silence suffices to invalidate the date. 1
Could we assume it as true, by adding to A.D. 1265 half a century
for the composition of the Hunchback's story and its incidentals,
we should place the earliest date in A.D. 1315.
As little can we learn from inferences which have been drawn
from the body of the book : at most they point to its several
editions or redactions. In the Tale of the " Ensorcelled Prince "
(vol. i. 77) Mr. Lane (i. 135) conjectured that the four colours of the
fishes were suggested by the sumptuary laws of the Mameluke
Soldan, Mohammed ibn Kala'un, "subsequently to the com-
mencement of the eighth century of the Flight, or fourteenth of
our era." But he forgets that the same distinction of dress was
enforced by the Caliph Omar after the capture of Jerusalem in
A.D. 636 ; that it was revived by Harun al-Rashid, a contemporary
of Carolus Magnus and that it was noticed as a long standing
grievance by the so-called Mandeville in A.D. 1322. In the
Tale of the Porter and the Ladies of Baghdad the "Sultani
oranges " (vol. i. 83) have been connected with Sultdnfyah city in
Persian Irdk, which was founded about the middle of the
thirteenth century : but " Sultdni " may simply mean " royal,"
a superior growth. The same story makes mention (vol. i. 94) of
1 In the Galland MS. and the Bresl. Edit. (ii. 253), we find the Barber saying that
the Caliph (Al-Mustansir) was at that time (yaumaizin) in Baghdad ; and this has been
held to imply that the Caliphate had fallen. But such conjecture .is evidently based
upon insufficient grounds.
84 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
Kalandars or religious mendicants, a term popularly corrupted,
even in writing, to Karandal. 1 Here again " Kalandar " may be
due only to the scribes as the Bresl. Edit, reads Sa'aluk = asker,
beggar. The Khan al-Masriir in the Nazarene Broker's story
(i, 265) was a ruin during the early ninth century A.H. = A.D.
1420; but the Bab Zuwaylah (i. 269) dates from A.D. 1087.
In the same tale occurs the Darb al-Munkari (or Munakkari) which
is probably the Darb al-Munkadi of Al-Makrizi's careful
topography, the Khitat (ti. 40). Here we learn that in his time
(about A.D. 1430) the name had become obsolete, and the
highway was known as Darb al-Amfr Baktamfr al-Ustaddar from
one of two high officials who both died in the fourteenth century
(circ. A.D. 1350). And lastly we have the Khan al-Jawali built
about A.D. 1320. In Badr al-Din Hasan (vol. i. 237) "Sahib"
is given as a Wazirial title and it dates only from the end of
the fourteenth century. 2 In Sindbad the Seaman, there is an
allusion (vol. vi. 67) to the great Hindu Kingdom, Vijayanagar
of the Narasimha, 3 the great power of the Deccan ; but this may
be due to editors or scribes as the despotism was founded only in
the fourteenth century (A.D. 1320). The Ebony Horse (vol. v. i)
apparently dates before Chaucer ; and " The Sleeper and The
Waker " (Bresl. Edit. iv. 134189) may precede Shakespeare's
" Taming of the Shrew " : no stress, however, can be laid upon
such resemblances, the nouvelles being world-wide. But when we
come to the last stories, especially to Kamar al-Zaman II. and
the tale of Ma'aruf, we are apparently in the fifteenth and six-
1 De Sacy makes the "Kalandar" order originate in A.D. 1150; but the Shaykh
Sharif bu Ali Kalandar died in A.D. 1323-24. In Sind the first Kalandar, Osman-i-
Marwandi surnamed Lai Shahbaz, the Red Goshawk, from one of his miracles, died and
was buried at Sehwa*n in A.D. 1274: see my "History of Sindh" chapt. viii. for
details. The dates therefore run wild.
2 In this same tale H. H. Wilson observes that the title of Sultan of Egypt was not
assumed before the middle of the xiith century.
3 Popularly called Vidyanagar of the Narsingha.
Terminal Essay. 85
teenth centuries. The first contains (Night cmlxxvii.) the word
Lawandiyah = Levantine, the mention of a watch = Sa'ah in
the next Night 1 ; and, further on (cmlxxvi.), the " Shaykh Al-
Islam," an officer invented by Mohammed II. after the capture
of Stambul in A.D. 1453. In Ma'aruf the 'Adiliyah is named;
the mosque founded outside the Bab al-Nasr by Al-Malik al-
'Adil, Tuman Bey in A.H. 906 = A.D. 1501. But, I repeat,
all these names may be mere interpolations.
On the other hand, a study of the vie intime in Al-Islam and
of the manners and customs of the people proves that the body
of the work, as it now stands, must have been written before
A.D. 1400. The Arabs use wines, ciders and barley-beer, not
distilled spirits ; they have no coffee or tobacco and, while
familiar with small-pox (judri), they ignore syphilis. The
battles in The Nights are fought with bows and javelins,
swords, spears (for infantry) and lances (for cavalry) ; and,
whenever fire-arms are mentioned, we must suspect the scribe.
Such is the case with the Madfa' or cannon by means of which
Badr al-Din Hasan breaches the bulwarks of the Lady of Beauty's
virginity (i. 223). This consideration would determine the work
to have been written before the fourteenth century. We ignore
1 Time-measurers are of very ancient date. The Greeks had clepsydrae and the
Romans gnomons, portable and ring-shaped, besides large standing town-dials as at
Aquileja and San Sabba near Trieste. The " Saracens " were the perfecters of the
clepsydra : Bosseret (p. 16) and the Chronicon Turense (Beckmann ii. 340 el seg.} describe
the water-clock sent by Al-Rashid to Karl the Great as a kind of "cuckoo-clock."
Twelve doors in the dial opened successively and little balls dropping on brazen bells
told the hour : at noon a dozen mounted knights paraded the face and closed the
portals. Trithonius mentions an horologium presented in A.D. 1232 by Al-Malik al-
Kamil the Ayyubite Soldan to the Emperor Frederick II : like the Strasbourg and
Padua clocks it struck the hours, told the day, month and year, showed the phases of
the moon, and registered the position of the sun and the planets. Towards the end of
the fifteenth century Caspar Visconti mentions in a sonnet the watch proper (certi
orologii piccioli e portativi) ; and the " animated eggs " of Nurembourg became famous.
The earliest English watch (Sir Ashton Lever's) dates from 1541 : and in 1544 the port-
able chronometer became common in France.
86 A If Laylah wa- Laylah.
the invention-date and the inventor of gunpowder, as af all old
discoveries which have affected mankind at large : all we know
is that the popular ideas betray great ignorance and we are led
to suspect that an explosive compound, having been discovered
in the earliest ages of human society, was utilised by steps so
gradual that history has neglected to trace the series. Accord-
ing to Demmin ! , bullets for stuffing with some incendiary com-
position, in fact bombs, were discovered by Dr. Keller in the
Palafites or Crannogs of Switzerland ; and the Hindu's Agni-
Astar ("fire-weapon"), Agni-ban ("fire-arrow") and Shatagni
" hundred-killer "), like the Roman Phalarica, and the Greek
fire of Byzantium, suggest explosives. Indeed, Dr. Oppert 2
accepts the statement of Flavius Philostratus that when Appo-
lonius of Tyana, that grand semi-mythical figure, was travelling
in India, he learned the reason why Alexander of Macedon
desisted from attacking the Oxydracae who live between the
Ganges and the Hyphasis (Satadru or Sutledge) : " These holy
men, beloved by the gods, overthrow their enemies with tem-
pests and thunderbolts shot from their walls." Passing over the
Arab sieges of Constantinople ( A.D. 668) and Meccah (A.D. 690)
and the disputed passage in Firishtah touching the Tufang or
musket during the reign of Mahmu'd the Ghaznevite 3 (ob.
A.D. 1030), we come to the days of Alphonso the Valiant, whose
long and short guns, used at the Siege of Madrid in A.D. 1084,
are preserved in the Armeria Real. Viardot has noted that the
African Arabs first employed cannon in A.D. 1200, and that the
Maghribis defended Algeciras near Gibraltar with great guns in
1 An illustrated History of Arms and Armour etc. (p. 59) ; London : Bell and Sons,
1877. The best edition is the Guide des Amateurs d'Armes ; Paris : Renouard, 1879.
* Chapt. iv. Dr. Gustav Oppert " On the Weapons etc. of the Ancient Hindus ; "
London: Triibner and Co. , 1880.
3 I have given other details on this subject in pp. 631-637 of "Camoens, his Life
and his Lusiads."
Terminal Essay. 87
A.D. 1247, and utilised them to besiege Seville in A.D. 1342.
This last feat of arms introduced the cannon into barbarous
Northern Europe, and it must have been known to civilised Asia
for many a decade before that date.
The mention of wine in The Nights, especially the Nabfz or
fermented infusion of raisins well known to the prae-Mohammedan
Badawis, perpetually recurs. As a rule, except only in the case
of holy personages and mostly of the Caliph Al-Rashid, the
"service of wine" appears immediately after the hands are
washed ; and women, as well as men, drink, like true Orientals,
for the honest purpose of getting drunk la recherche de I'ide'al,
as the process has been called. Yet distillation became well
known in the fourteenth century. Amongst the Greeks and
Romans it was confined to manufacturing aromatic waters, and
Nicander the poet (B.C. 140) used for a still the term o/^,
like the Irish "pot" and its produce "poteen." The simple
art of converting salt water into fresh, by boiling the former and
passing the steam through a cooled pipe into a recipient, would
not have escaped the students of the Philosopher's " stone ;" and
thus we find throughout Europe the Arabic modifications of
Greek terms Alchemy, Alembic (Al-a//i), Chemistry and
Elixir ; while " Alcohol " (Al-Kohl), originally meaning " extreme
tenuity or impalpable state of pulverulent substances," clearly
shows the origin of the article. Avicenna, who died in A.H. 428
= 1036, nearly two hundred years before we read of distillation
in Europe, compared the human body with an alembic, the belly
being the cucurbit and the head the capital : he forgot one
important difference but n'importe. Spirits of wine were first
noticed in the xiiith century, when the Arabs had overrun the
Western Mediterranean, by Arnaldus de Villa Nova, who dubs
the new invention a universal panacea ; and his pupil, Raymond
Lully (nat. Majorca A.D. 1236), declared this essence of wine to
be a boon from the Deity. Now The Nights, even in the latest
88 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
adjuncts, never allude to the " white coffee " of the respect-
able" Moslem, the Raid (raisin-brandy) or Ma-hayat (aqua vitse)
of the modern Mohametan : the drinkers confine themselves to
wine like our contemporary Dalmatians, one of the healthiest
and the most vigorous of seafaring races in Europe.
Syphilis also, which at the end of the xvth century began to
infect Europe, is ignored by The Nights. I do not say it
actually began : diseases do not begin except with the dawn ol
humanity ; and their history, as far as we know, is simple
enough. They are at first sporadic and comparatively non-
lethal : at certain epochs which we can determine, and for reasons
which as yet we cannot, they break out into epidemics raging
with frightful violence : they then subside into the endemic
state and lastly they return to the milder sporadic form. For
instance, " English cholera" was known of old: in 1831 (Oct. 26)
the Asiatic type took its place and now, after sundry violent
epidemics, the disease is becoming endemic on the Northern
seaboard of the Mediterranean, notably in Spain and Italy. So
small-pox (Al-judrf, vol. i. 254) passed over from Central Africa
to Arabia in the year of Mohammed's birth (A.D. 570) and thence
overspread the civilised world, as an epidemic, an endemic and
a sporadic successively. The " Greater Pox " has appeared in
human bones of pre-historic graves and Moses seems to mention
gonorrhoea (Levit. xv. 12). Passing over allusions in Juvenal and
Martial, 1 we find Eusebiu's relating that Galerius died (A.D. 302) of
ulcers on the genitals and other parts of his body ; and, about a
century afterwards, Bishop Palladius records that one Hero, after
conversation with a prostitute, fell a victim to an abscess on the penis
1 The morbi venerei amongst the Romans are obscure because " whilst the satirists
deride them the physicians are silent." Celsus, however, names (De obscenarum partium
vitiis, lib. xviii.) inflammatio coleorum (swelled testicle), tubercula circa glandem (warts
on the glans penis), cancri carbunculi (chancre or shanker) and a few others. The
rubigo is noticed as a lues venerea by Servius in Virg. Georg.
Terminal Essay. 89
(phagedaenic shanker?). In 1347 the famous Joanna of Naples
founded (set. 23), in her town of Avignon, a bordel whose inmates
were to be medically inspected a measure to which England (proh
pudor !) still objects. In her Statuts du Lieu-publique d'Avignon,
No. iv. she expressly mentions the Mai vengut de paillardise.
Such houses, says Ricord who studied the subject since 1832, were
common in France after A.D. 1200; and sporadic venereals were
known there. But in A.D. 1493-94 an epidemic broke out with
alarming intensity at Barcelona, as we learn from the " Tractado
llamado fructo de todos los Sanctos contra el mal serpentino,
venido de la Isla espanola," of Rodrigo Ruiz Dfas, the specialist.
In Santo Domingo the disease was common under the names
Hipas, Guaynaras and Taynastizas : hence the opinion in Europe
that it arose from the mixture of European and " Indian " blood. 1
Some attributed it to the Gypsies who migrated to Western
Europe in the xvth century : 2 others to the Moriscos expelled from
Spain. But the pest got its popular name after the violent out-
break at Naples in A.D. 1493-4, when Charles VIII. of Anjou with
a large army of mercenaries, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Germans,
attacked Ferdinand II. Thence it became known as the Mal de
Naples and Morbus Gallicus una gallica being still the popular
term in neo Latin lands and the " French disease" in England.
As early as July 1496 Marin Sanuto (Journal i. 171) describes
with details the " Mal Franzoso." The scientific "syphilis" dates
from Fracastori's poem (A.D. 1521) in which Syphilus the Shepherd
1 According to David Forbes, the Peruvians believed that syphilis arose from con-
nection of man and alpaca ; and an old law forbade bachelors to keep these
animals in the house. Francks explains by the introduction of syphilis wooden figures
found in the Chinchas guano ; these represented men with a cord round the neck or a
serpent devouring the genitals.
2 They appeared before the gates of Paris in the summer of 1427, not "about July,
1422 " : in Eastern Europe, however, they date from a much earlier epoch. Sir J.
Gilbert's famous picture has one grand fault, the men walk and the women ride : in real
life the reverse would be the case.
9O A If Laylah wa Laylah.
is struck like Job, for abusing the sun. After crippling a Pope
(Sixtus IV. 1 ) and killing a King (Francis I.) the Grosse Ve>ole
began to abate its violence, under the effects of mercury it is said ;
and became endemic, a stage still shown at Scherlievo near Fiume,
where legend says it was implanted by the Napoleonic soldiery.
The Aleppo and other " buttons " also belong apparently to the
same grade. Elsewhere it settled as a sporadic and now it appears
to be dying out while gonorrhoea is on the increase. 2
The Nights, I have said, belongs to the days before coffee
(A.D. 1550) and tobacco (A.D. 1650) had overspread the East.
The former, which derives its name from the Kafd or Kaffa province,
lying south of Abyssinia proper and peopled by the Sidama Gallas,
was introduced to Mokha of Al-Yaman in A.D. 1429 30 by the
Shaykh al-Shdzili who lies buried there, and found a congenial
name in the Arabic Kahwah = old wine. 3 In The Nights (Mac.
Edit.) it is mentioned twelve times 4 ; but never in the earlier
1 Rabelais ii. c. 30.
8 I may be allowed to note that syphilis does not confine itself to man : a charger
infected with it was pointed out to me at Baroda by my late friend, Dr. Arnott
(i8th Regiment, Bombay N.I.) and Tangier showed me some noticeable cases of this
hippie syphilis, which has been studied in Hungary. Eastern peoples have a practice of
" passing on " venereal and other diseases, and transmission is supposed to cure the
patient ; for instance a virgin heals (and catches) gonorrhoea. Syphilis varies greatly
with climate. In Persia it is said to be propagated without contact : in Abyssinia it is
often fatal and in Egypt it is readily cured by sand baths and sulphur-unguents. Lastly
in lands like Unyamwezi, where mercurials are wholly unknown, I never saw caries of
the nasal or facial bones.
3 For another account of the transplanter and the casuistical questions to which coffee
gave rise, see my " First Footsteps in East Africa " (p. 76).
4 The first mention of coffee proper (not of Kahwah or old wine in vol. ii. 260) is in
Night cdxxvi. vol. v. 169, where the coffee-maker is called Kahwahjiyyah, a mongrel
term showing the modern date of the passage in AH the Cairene. As the work advances
notices become thicker, e.g. in Night dccclxvi. where Ali Nur al-Din and the Frank
King's daughter seems to be a modernisation of the story " Ala al-Din Abu al-Shamat "
(vol. iv. 29) ; and in Abu Kir and Abu Sir (Nights cmxxx. and cmxxxvi.) where coffee
is drunk with sherbet after present fashion. The use culminates in Kamar al-Zaman II.
where it is mentioned six times (Nights cmlxvi. cmlxx. cmlxxi. twice ; cmlxxiv. and
cmlxxvii.), as being drunk after the dawn-breakfast and following the meal as a matter
of course. The last notices are in Abdullah bin Fazil, Nights cmlxxviii. and cmlxxix.
Terminal Essay. 91
tales : except in the case of Kamar al-Zaman II. it evidently does
not belong to the epoch and we may fairly suspect the scribe. In
the xvith century coffee began to take the place of wine in the
nearer East; and it gradually ousted the classical drink from daily
life and from folk-tales.
It is the same with tobacco, which is mentioned only once by
The Nights (cmxxxi.), in conjunction with meat, vegetables and
fruit and where it is called "Tabah." Lane (iii. 615) holds it to be
the work of a copyist ; but in the same tale of Abu Kir and Abu
Sir, sherbet and coffee appear to have become en vogue, in fact
to have gained the ground they now hold. The result of Lord
Macartney's Mission to China was a suggestion that smoking might
have originated spontaneously in the Old World. 1 This is un-
undoubtedly true. The Bushmen and other wild tribes of Southern
Africa threw their Dakha (cannabis indicd] on the fire and sat
round it inhaling the intoxicating fumes. Smoking without
tobacco was easy enough. The North American Indians of the
Great Red Pipe Stone Quarry and those who lived above the line
where nicotiana grew, used the kinni-kinik or bark of the red
willow and some seven other succedanea. 2 But tobacco proper,
which soon superseded all materials except hemp and opium, was
first adopted by the Spaniards of Santo Domingo in A.D. 1496
and reached England in 1565. Hence the word, which, amongst
the so-called Red Men, denoted the pipe, the container, not the
contained, spread over the Old World as a generic term with
additions, like " Tutun," 3 for especial varieties. The change in
English manners brought about by the cigar after dinner has
already been noticed ; and much of the modified sobriety of the
1 It has been 1 suggested that Japanese tobacco is an indigenous growth and sundry
modern travellers in China contend that the potato and the maize, both white and yellow,
have there been cultivated from time immemorial.
2 For these see my " City of the Saints," p. 136.
' Lit. meaning smoke : hence the Arabic " Dukhan," with the same signification^
9 2 A If Laylah wa Lay la ft.
present day may be attributed to the influence of the Holy Herb
en cigarette. Such, we know from history was its effect amongst
Moslems ; and the normal wine-parties of The Nights suggest that
the pipe was unknown even when the latest tales were written.
C.
We know absolutely nothing of the author or authors who
produced our marvellous Recueil. Galland justly observes (Epist.
Dedic.), " probably this great work is hot by a single hand ; for
how can we suppose that one man alone could own a fancy fertile
enough to invent so many ingenious fictions ? " Mr. Lane, and
Mr. Lane alone, opined that the work was written in Egypt by one
person or at most by two, one ending what the other had begun,
and that he or they had re-written the tales and completed the
collection by new matter composed or arranged for the purpose.
It is hard to see how the distinguished Arabist came to such a
conclusion : at most it can be true only of the editors and scribes
of MSS. evidently copied from each other, such as the Mac. and
the Bui. texts. As the Reviewer (Forbes Falconer ?) in the
"Asiatic Journal " (vol. xxx., 1839) says, " Every step we have
taken in the collation of these agreeable fictions has confirmed us
in the belief that the work called the Arabian Nights is rather a
vehicle for stories, partly fixed and partly arbitrary, than a collec-
tion fairly deserving, from its constant identity with itself, the
name of a distinct work, and the reputation of having wholly
emanated from the same inventive mind. To say nothing of the
improbability of supposing that one individual, with every license
to build upon the foundation of popular stories, a work which had
once received a definite form from a single writer, would have
been multiplied by the copyist with some regard at least to his
arrangement of words as well as matter. But the various copies
we have seen bear about as much mutual resemblance as if they
Terminal Essay. 93
had passed through the famous process recommended for dis-
guising a plagiarism : * Translate your English author into French
and again into English.' "
Moreover, the style of the several Tales, which will be considered
In a future page ( Hi.), so far from being homogeneous, is heten>
geneous in the extreme. Different nationalities show themselves ;
West Africa, Egypt and Syria are all represented and, while some
authors are intimately familiar with Baghdad, Damascus and
Cairo, others are equally ignorant. All copies, written and
printed, absolutely differ in the last tales and a measure of the
divergence can be obtained by comparing the Bresl. Edit, with the
Mac. text: indeed it is my conviction that the MSS. preserved in
Europe would add sundry volumes full of tales to those hitherto
translated ; and here the Wortley Montagu copy can be taken as
a test. We may, I believe, safely compare the history of The
Nights with the so-called Homeric poems, the Iliad and the
Odyssey, a collection of immortal ballads and old Epic formulae
and verses traditionally handed down from rhapsode to rhapsode,
incorporated in a slowly-increasing body of poetry and finally
welded together about the age of Pericles.
To conclude. From the data above given I hold myself justi-
fied in drawing the following deductions ::
1. The framework of the book is purely Persian perfunctorily
arabised ; the archetype being the Hazdr Afsanah. 1
2. The oldest tales, such as Sindibad (the Seven Wazirs) and
King Jili'ad, may date from the reign of Al-Mansur, eighth
century A.D.
3. The thirteen tales mentioned above (p. 81) as the nucleus of
1 Unhappily the book is known only by name : for years I have vaialy troubled friends
and correspondents to hunt for a copy. Yet I am sanguine enough to think that some
day we shall succeed- Mr. Sidney Churchill, of Teheran, is ever on the look-out.
94 d/f Laylah wa Laylah.
the Repertory, together with " Dalilah the Crafty," 1 may be placed
in our tenth century.
4. The latest tales, notably Kamar al-Zaman the Second and
Ma'aruf the Cobbler, are as late as the sixteenth century.
5. The work assumed its present form in the thirteenth century.
6. The author is unknown for the best reason ; there never was
one : for information touching the editors and copyists we must
await the fortunate discovery of some MSS.
1 In '3 I shall suggest that this tale also is mentioned by Al-MasSidi.
Terminal Essay. 95
11.
THE NIGHTS IN EUROPE.
THE history of The Nights in Europe is one of slow and gradual
development. The process was begun (1704-17) by Galland, a
Frenchman, continued (1823) by Von Hammer an Austro-German,
and finished by Mr. John Payne (1882-84) an Englishman. But we
must not forget that it is wholly and solely to the genius of the
Gaul that Europe owes The " Arabian Nights' Entertainments "
over which Western childhood and youth have spent so many
spelling hours. Antoine Galland was the first to discover the
marvellous fund of material for the story-teller buried in the
Oriental mine ; and he had in a high degree that art of telling a
tale which is far more captivating than culture or scholarship.
Hence his delightful version (or perversion) became one of the
world's classics and at once made Sheherazade and Dinarzarde,
Haroun Alraschid, the Calendars and a host of other personages
as familiar to the home reader as Prospero, Robinson Crusoe,
Lemuel Gulliver and Dr. Primrose. Without the name and fame
won for the work by the brilliant paraphrase of the learned and
single-minded Frenchman, Lane's curious hash and latinized
English, at once turgid and emasculated, would have found few
readers. Mr. Payne's admirable version appeals to the Orientalist
and the " stylist," not to the many-headed ; and mine to the
anthropologist and student of Eastern manners and customs.
Galland did it and alone he did it : his fine literary flaire, his
pleasing style, his polished taste and perfect tact at once made his
work take high rank in the republic of letters nor will the immortal
fragment ever be superseded in the infallible judgment of child-
hood. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica has been pleased to
g6 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
ignore this excellent man and admirable Orientalist, numis-
matologist and litterateur, the reader may not be unwilling to see
a short sketch of his biography. 1
Antoine Galland was born in A.D. 1646 of peasant parents
" poor and honest " at Rollot, a little bourg in Picardy some two
leagues from Montdidier. He was a seventh child and his mother,
left a widow in early life and compelled to earn her livelihood,
saw scant chance of educating him when the kindly assistance of
a Canon of the Cathedral and President of the College de Noyon
relieved her difficulties/ In this establishment Galland studied
Greek and Hebrew for ten years, after which the " strait thing at
home " apprenticed him to a trade. But he was made for letters ;
he hated manual labour and he presently removed en cachette to
Paris, where he knew only an ancient kinswoman. She intro-
duced him to a priestly relative of the Canon of Noyon, who in
turn recommended him to the " Sous-principal " of the College
Du Plessis. Here he made such notable progress in Oriental
studies, that M. Petitpied, a Doctor of the Sorbonne, struck by his
abilities, enabled him to study at the College Royal and eventu-
ally to catalogue the Eastern MSS. in the great ecclesiastical
Society. Thence he passed to the College Mazarin, where a
Professor, M. Godouin, was making an experiment which might be
revived to advantage in our present schools. He collected a class
of boys, aged about four, and proposed to teach them Latin
speedily and easily by making them converse in the classical
language as well as read and write it. 2 Galland, his assistant,
1 I have extracted it from many books, especially from Hoeffer's Biographic' Gene*rale,
Paris, Firmin Didot, mdccclvii. ; Biographic Universelle, Paris, Didot, 1816, etc. etc.
All are taken from the work of M. de Boze, his " Bozzy."
* As learning a language is an affair of pure memory, almost without other exercise of
the mental faculties, it should be assisted by the ear and the tongue as well as the eyes.
I would invariably make pupils talk, during lessons, Latin and Greek, no matter how
badly at first; but unfortunately I should have to begin with teaching the pedants
who. as a class, are far more unwilling and unready to learn than are those they teach.
Terminal Essay. 97
had not time to register success or failure before he was appointed
attache-secretary to M. de Nointel named in 1660 Ambassadeur de
France for Constantinople. His special province was to study
the dogmas and doctrines and to obtain official attestations
concerning the articles of the Orthodox (or Greek) Christianity
which had then been a subject of lively discussion amongst certain
Catholics, especially Arnauld (Antoine) and Claude the Minister,
and which even in our day occasionally crops up amongst
" Protestants." * Galland, by frequenting the cafe's and listening
to the tale-teller, soon mastered Romaic and grappled with the
religious question, under the tuition of a deposed Patriarch and
of sundry Matrdns or Metropolitans, whom the persecutions of the
Pashas had driven for refuge to the Palais de France. M. de Nointel,
after settling certain knotty points in the Capitulations, visited
the harbour-towns of the Levant and the " Holy Places/' including
Jerusalem, where Galland copied epigraphs, sketched monuments
and collected antiques, such as the marbles in the Baudelot
Gallery of which Pere Dom Bernard de Montfaucon presently
published specimens in his " Palaeographia Graeca," etc. (Parisiis,
1708).
In Syria Galland was unable to buy a copy of The Nights : as he
expressly states in his Epistle Dedicatory, il a fallu le faire
venir de Syrie. But he prepared himself for translating it by
studying the manners and customs, the religion and superstitions
of the people ; and in 1675, leaving his chief, who was ordered back
to Stambul, he returned to France. In Paris his numismatic
fame recommended him to MM. Vaillant, Carcary and Giraud
who strongly urged a second visit to the Levant, for the purpose
1 The late Dean Stanley was notably trapped by the wily Greek who had only
political purposes in view. In religions as a rule the minimum of difference breeds the
maximum of disputation, dislike and disgust*
VOL. X. G
93 A If Lay lak wa Laylah.
of collecting, and he set out without delay. In 1691 he made a
third journey, travelling at the expense of the Compagnie des
Indes-Orientales, with the main object of making purchases for the
Library and Museum of Colbert the magnificent. The commis-
sion ended eighteen months afterwards with the changes of the
Company, when Colbert and the Marquis de Louvois caused him
to be created " Antiquary to the King," Louis le Grand, and
charged him with collecting coins and medals for the royal cabinet.
As he was about to leave Smyrna, he had a narrow escape from the
earthquake and subsequent fire which destroyed some fifteen thou-
sand of the inhabitants : he was buried in the ruins ; but, his kitchen
being cold as becomes a philosopher's, he was dug out unburnt. 1
Galland again returned to Paris where his familiarity with Arabic
and Hebrew, Persian and Turkish recommended him to MM.
Thevenot and Bignon : this first President of the Grand Council
acknowledged his services by a pension. He also became a
favourite with D'Herbelot whose Bibliotheque Orientale, left un-
finished at his death, he had the honour of completing and pre-
facing. 2 President Bignon died within the twelvemonth, which made
Galland attach himself in 1697 to M. Foucault, Councillor of
State and Intendant (governor) of Caen in Lower Normandy,
then famous for its academy : in his new patron's fine library and
numismatic collection he found materials for a long succession
of works, including a translation of the Koran. 3 They recom-
mended him strongly to the literary world and in 1701 he was
made a member of the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles
Lettres,
1 See in Tr&mtien (Avertissement iii.) how Baron von Hammer escaped drowning
by the blessing of The Nights.
2 He signs his name to the Discours pour seivir de Preface.
* I need not trouble the reader with their titles, which fill up nearly a column and a
half in M. Hoeffer. His collection of maxims from Arabic, Persian and Turkish
authors appeared in English in 1695.
Terminal Essay. 99
At Caen Galland issued in I7O4, 1 the first part of his Mille et
une Nuits, Contes Arabes traduits en Frangois which at once
became famous as " The Arabian Nights' Entertainments.'*
Mutilated, fragmentary and paraphrastic though the tales were,
the glamour of imagination, the marvel of the miracles and the
gorgeousness and magnificence of the scenery at once secured an
exceptional success ; it was a revelation in romance, and the public
recognised that it stood in presence of a monumental literary
work. France was a-fire with delight at a something so new, so
unconventional, so entirely without purpose, religious, moral or
philosophical : the Oriental wanderer in his stately robes was a start-
ling surprise to the easy-going and utterly corrupt Europe of the
ancien regime with its indecently tight garments and perfectly
loose morals. " Us produisirent/' said Charles Nodier, a genius
in his way, " des le moment de leur publication, cet effet qui
assure aux productions de Tesprit une vogue populaire, quoiqu'ils
appartinssent a une litteVature peu connue en France ; et
que ce genre de composition admit ou plutot exigeat des details
de moeurs, de caractere, de costume et de localite's absolument
Strangers a toutes les ide'es e'tablies dans nos contes et nos romans.
On fut ^tonne* du charme que r^sultait du leur lecture. C'est que
la ve'rite' des sentimens, la nouveaute* des tableaux, une imagination
fe'conde en prodiges, un colons plein de chaleur, 1'attrait d'une
sensibilit^ sans prevention, et le sel d'un comique sans caricature,
c'est que 1'esprit et le naturel enfin plaisent partout, et plaisent
tout le monde." 2
The Contes Arabes at once made Galland's name and a popular
tale is told of them and him known to all reviewers who, however,
1 Galland's version was published in 1704 1717 in 12 vols. i2mo., (Hoeflfer/s
Biographic ; Graesse's Tresor de Livres raresand Encyclop. Britannica, ixth Edit.)
3 See also Leigh Hunt *' The Book of the Thousand Nights and one Night," etc.,
etc. London and Westminster Review Art. iii., No. Ixiv. mentioned in Lane, iii, 746.
TOO A If Lay la k wa Laylak.
mostly mangle it. In the Biographic Universelle of Michaud 1 we
find : Dans les deux premiers volumes de ces contes 1'exorde e*tait
toujours, " Ma chere soeur, si vous ne dormez pas, faites-nous un
de ces contes que vous savez." Quelques jeunes gens, ennuye*s
de cette plate uniformite', allerent une nuit qu'il faisait tres-grand
froid, frapper a Ja porte de 1'auteur, qui courut en chemise
sa fenetre. Apres 1'avoir fait morfondre quelque temps
par diverses questions insignificantes, ils terminerent en lui disant,
" Ah, Monsieur Galland, si vous ne dormez pas, faites-nous un
de ces beaux contes que vous savez si bien." Galland profita de
la lecon, et supprima dans les volumes suivants le pre*ambule qui lui
avait attire* la plaisanterie. This legend has the merit of explain-
ing why the Professor so soon gave up the Arab framework which
he had deliberately adopted.
The Nights was at once translated from the French 2 though
when, where and by whom no authority seems to know. In
Lowndes' " Bibliographer's Manual " the English Editio Princeps
is thus noticed, " Arabian Nights' Entertainments translated from
the French, London, 1724, I2mo, 6 vols." and a footnote states
that this translation, very inaccurate and vulgar in its diction,
was often reprinted. In 1712 Addison introduced into the
Spectator (No. 535, Nov. 13) the Story of Alnaschar (=A1-
Nashshar, the Sawyer) and says that his remarks on Hope
* may serve as a moral to an Arabian tale which I find translated
into French by Monsieur Galland." His version appears, from the
tone and style, to have been made by himself, and yet in that year
a second English edition had appeared. The nearest approach
1 Edition of 1856, vol. xv.
2 To France England also owes her first translation of the Koran, a poor and mean
version by Andrew Ross of that made from the Arabic (No. iv.) by Andre du Reyer,
Consul de France for Egypt. It kept the field till ousted in 1734 by the learned
lawyer George Sale whose conscientious work, including Preliminary Discourse and
Notes (4to London), brought him the ill-fame of having *' turned Turk."
Terminal Essay. 101
to the Edit. Princeps in the British Museum 1 is a set of six volumes
bound in three and corresponding with Galland's first half dozen.
Tomes i. and ii. are from the fourth edition of 1713, Nos. iii. and
iv. are from the second of 1712 and v. and vi. are from the third
of 1715. It is conjectured that the two first volumes were reprinted
several times apart from their subsequents, as was the fashion of
the day ; but all is mystery. We (my friends and I) have turned
over scores of books in the British Museum, the University Library
and the Advocates' Libraries of Edinburgh and Glasgow : I have
been permitted to put the question in " Notes and Queries " and in
the " Antiquary " ; but all our researches hitherto have been in vain.
The popularity of The Nights in England must have rivalled
their vogue in France, judging from the fact that in 1713, or nine
years after Galland's Edit. Prin. appeared they had already
reached a fourth issue. Even the ignoble national jealousy which
prompted Sir William Jones grossly to abuse that valiant scholar,
Auquetil du Perron, could not mar their popularity. But as there
are men who cannot read Pickwick, so they were not wanting who
spoke of " Dreams of the distempered fancy of the East." 2
When the work was first published in England/ 5 says Henry
Webber, 3 " it seems to have made a considerable impression upon
1 Catalogue of Printed Books, 1884, p. 159, col. i. I am ashamed to state this default in the
British Museum, concerning which Englishmen are apt to boast and which so carefully
mulcts modern authors in unpaid copies. But it is only a slight specimen of the sad
state of art and literature in England, neglected equally by Conservatives, Liberals and
Radicals. What has been done for the endowment of research ? What is our equiva-
lent for the Prix de Rome ? Since the death of Dr. Birch who can fairly deal with a
Demotic papyrus ? Contrast the Societe* Anthropologique and its palace and professors
in Paris with our " Institute" au second in a corner of Hanover Square and its skulls
in the cellar 1
2 Art. vii. pp. 139-168, " On the Arabian Nights and translators, Weil, Torrens and
Lane (vol. i.) with the Essai of A. Loisseleur Deslongchamps." The Foreign Quar-
terly Review, vol. xxiv., Oct. 1839 Jan. 1840. London, Black and Armstrong, 1840.
3 Introduction to his Collection " Tales of the East," 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1812.
He was the first to point out the resemblance between the introductory adventures of
Shahryar and Shah Zaman and those of Astolfo and Giacondo in the Orlando Furioso-
102 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
the public. Pope in 1720 sent two volumes (French ? or English ?)
to Bishop Atterbury, without making any remark on the work ;
but, from his very silence, it may be presumed that he was not
displeased with the perusal. The bishop, who does not appear to
have joined a relish for the flights of imagination to his other
estimable qualities, expressed his dislike of these tales pretty
strongly and stated it to be his opinion, formed on the frequent
descriptions of female dress, that they were the work of some
Frenchman (Petis de la Croix, a mistake afterwards corrected by
Warburton). The A rabian Nights^ however, quickly made their way
to public favour. " We have been informed of a singular instance of
the effect they produced soon after their first appearance. Sir James
Stewart, Lord Advocate for Scotland, having one Saturday even-
ing found his daughters employed in reading these volumes,
seized them with a rebuke for spending the evening before the
' Sawbbath ' in such worldly amusement ; but the grave advocate
himself became a prey to the fascination of the tales, being found on
the morning of the Sabbath itself employed in their perusal, from
which he had not risen the whole night." As late as 1780 Dr.
Beattie professed himself uncertain whether they were translated
or fabricated by M. Galland ; and, while Dr. Pusey wrote of them
" Noctes Mille et Una dictae, quae in omnium firme populorum
cultiorum linguas conversae, in deliciis omnium habentur, manibus-
que omnium terentur," 1 the amiable Carlyle, in the gospel ac-
cording to Saint Froude, characteristically termed them "down-
right lies " and forbade the house to such " unwholesome litera-
ture.' 5 What a sketch of character in two words \
(Canto xxviii.). M. E. Leveque in Les Mythes et les Legendes de 1'Inde et la Perse
(Paris, 1880), gives French versions of the Arabian and Italian narratives, side by side la
p. 543 ff. (Cloustou).
1 Notitiae Codicis MI. Noctium. Dr. Pusey studied Arabic to familiarise himself with
ftebrew, and was very different from his predecessor at Oxford in my day, who, whea
applied to for instruction in Arabic, refused to lecture except to a class.
Terminal Essay* 103
The only fault found in France with the Contes Arabes was that
their style is peu correcte ; in fact they want classicism. Yet all
Gallic imitators, Tr<butien included, have carefully copied their
leader and Charles Nodier remarks : " II me semble que Ton n'a pas
rendu assez de justice au style de Galland. Abondant sans etre
prolixe, naturel et familier sans etre lache ni trivial, il ne manque
jamais de cette elegance qui re*sulte de la facilite*, et qui prdsente
je ne sais quel melange de la naiVet^ de Perrault et de la bonhomie
de La Fontaine."
Our Professor, with a name now thoroughly established, re-
turned in 1706 to Paris, where he was an assiduous and efficient
member of the Socie'te' Numismatique and corresponded largely
with foreign Orientalists. Three years afterwards he was made
Professor of Arabic at the College de France, succeeding Pierre
Dippy; and, during the next half decade, he devoted himself to
publishing his valuable studies. Then the end came. In his last
illness, an attack of asthma complicated with pectoral mischief, he
sent to Noyon for his nephew Julien Galland * to assist him in
ordering his MSS. and in making his will after the simplest mili-
tary fashion : he bequeathed his writings to the Bibliotheque du
Roi, his Numismatic Dictionary to the Academy and his Alcoran
to the Abbd Bignon. He died, aged sixty-nine on February 17,
1715, leaving his second Part of The Nights unpublished. 2
Professor Galland was a French litterateur of the good old
school which is rapidly becoming extinct. Homme vrai dans les
moindres choses (as his filoge stated) ; simple in life and manners
and single-hearted in his devotion to letters, he was almost childish
in worldly matters, while notable for penetration and acumen in
1 This nephew was the author of " Recueil des Rits et Ceremonies des Pilgrimage de
La Mecque," etc. etc. Paris and Amsterdam, 1754, in I2mo.
2 The concluding part did not appear, I have said, till 1717 : his " Contes et Fables
Indiennes de Bidpa'i et de Lokman,"were first printed in 1724, 2 vols. in I2mo. Hence,
I presume, Lowndes* mistake.
IO4 A If Laylah wa Lay la k.
his studies. He would have been as happy, one of his biographers
remarks, in teaching children the elements of education as he was
in acquiring his immense erudition. Briefly, truth and honesty,
exactitude and indefatigable industry characterised his most
honourable career.
Galland informs us (Epist. Bed.) that his MS. consisted of four
volumes, only three of which are extant, 1 bringing the work down
to Night cclxxxii., or about the beginning of " Camaralzaman."
The missing portion, if it contained like the other volumes 140
pages, would end that tale together with the Stories of Ghdnim and
the Enchanted (Ebony) Horse ; and such is the disposition in the
Bresl. Edit, which mostly favours in its ordinance the text used by
the first translator. But this would hardly have filled more than
two-thirds of his volumes ; for the other third he interpolated, or
is supposed to have interpolated, the ten 2 following tales.
1. Histoire du prince Zeyn Al-asnam et du Roi des Gdnies. 3
2. de Codadad et de ses freres.
3. de la Lampe merveilleuse (Aladdin).
4. de Paveugle Baba Abdalla.
5. de Sidi Nouman.
1 M. Caussin (de Perceval), Professeur of Arabic at the Imperial Library, who edited
Galland in 1806, tells us that he found there only two MSS., both imperfect. The first
(Galland's) is in three small vols. 4to. each of about pp. 140. The stories are
more detailed and the style, more correct than that of other MS., is hardly
intelligible to many Arabs, whence he presumes that it contains the original (an
early?) text which has been altered and vitiated. The date is supposed to be circa
A.D. 1600. The second Parisian copy is a single folio of some 800 pages, and is divided
into 29 sections and cmv. Nights, the last two sections being reversed. The MS. is very
imperfect, the I2th, i$th, i6th, i8th, 2oth, 2ist-23rd, 25th and 2;th parts are wanting j
the sections which follow the i;th contain sundry stories repeated, there are anecdotes
from Bidpai, the Ten Wazirs and other popular works, and lacunae everywhere abound.
* Mr. Payne (ix. 264) makes eleven, including the Histoire du Dormeur eVeille = The
Sleeper and the Waker, which he afterwards translated from the Bresl. Edit, in his
Tales from the Arabic" (vol. i 5, etc.).
3 Mr. E. J. W. Gibb informs me that he has come upon this tale in a Turkish story*
book, the same from which he drew his " Jewad."
Terminal Essay. 105
6. Histoire de Cogia Hassan Alhabbal.
7. d'Ali Baba, et de Quarante Voleurs extermine's par
une Esclave.
8. d'Ali Cogia, marchand de Bagdad.
9. du prince Ahmed et de la fe*e Peri-Banou.
t 10. de deux Sceurs jalouses de leur Cadette. 1
Concerning these interpolations which contain two of the best
and most widely known stories in the work, Aladdin and the
Forty Thieves, conjectures have been manifold but they mostly
run upon three lines. De Sacy held that they were found by
Galland in the public libraries of Paris. Mr. Chenery, whose
acquaintance with Arabic grammar was ample, suggested that the
Professor had borrowed them from the recitations of the Rawis,
rhapsodists or professional story-tellers in the bazars of Smyrna and
other ports of the Levant. The late Mr. Henry Charles Coote (in
the " Folk-Lore Record," vol. iii. Part ii. p. 178 et seq,), "On the
source of some of M. Galland's Tales," quotes from popular
Italian, Sicilian and Romaic stories incidents identical with those
in Prince Ahmad, Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Envious Sisters, sug-
gesting that the Frenchman had heard these paramythia in Levan-
tine coffee-houses and had inserted them into his unequalled
corpus fabularum. Mr. Payne (ix. 268) conjectures the probability
" of their having been composed at a comparatively recent period
by an inhabitant of Baghdad, in imitation of the legends of
Haroun er Rashid and other well-known tales of the original
work ;" and adds, " It is possible that an exhaustive examination
of the various MS. copies of the Thousand and One Nights
known to exist in the public libraries of Europe might yet cast
1 A litterateur lately assured me that NoS. ix. and x. have been found in the Biblio-
theque Nationale (du Roi) Paris ; but two friends were kind enough to enquire and
ascertained that it was a mistake. Such Persianisms as Codadad (Khudadad), Baba
Cogia (Khwajah) and Peri (fairy) suggest a Persic MS.
IO6 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
some light upon the question of the origin of the interpolated
Tales." I quite agree with him, taking "The Sleeper and the
Waker" and "Zeyn Al-asnam" as cases in point; but I should
expect, for reasons before given, to find the stories in a Persic
rather than an Arabic MS. And I feel convinced that all will be
recovered : Galland was not the man to commit a literary forgery.
As regards Aladdin, the most popular tale of the whole work, I
am convinced that it is genuine, although my unfortunate friend, the
late Professor Palmer, doubted its being an Eastern story. It is
laid down upon all the lines of Oriental fiction. The mise-en-scene
is China, "where they drink a certain warm liquor" (tea); the
hero's father is a poor tailor; and, as in " Judar and his Brethren,"
the Maghribi Magician presently makes his appearance, intro-
ducing the Wonderful Lamp and the Magical Ring. Even the
Sorcerer's cry, "New lamps for old lamps! "a prime point is
paralleled in the Tale of the Fisherman's son, 1 where the Jew asks
in exchange only old rings and the Princess, recollecting that her
husband kept a shabby, well-worn ring in his writing-stand, and
he being asleep, took it out and sent it to the man. In either tale
the palace is transported to a distance and both end with the
death of the wicked magician and the hero and heroine living
happily together ever after.
All Arabists have remarked the sins of omission and com-
mission, of abridgment, amplification and substitution, and the
audacious distortion of fact and phrase in which Galland freely
indulged, whilst his knowledge of Eastern languages proves that he
knew better. But literary license was the order of his day and at
that time French, always the most bdgueule of European languages,
was bound by a rigorisme of the narrowest and the straightest of lines
1 Vol. vi. 212. "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments (London: Longmans, 1811) by
Jonathan Scott, with the Collection of New Tales from the Wortley Montagu MS. in the
Bodleian." I regret to see that Messieurs Nimmo in reprinting Scott have omitted his
sixth Volume.
Terminal Essay. 107
from which the least e*cart condemned a man as a barbarian and a
tudesque. If we consider Galland fairly we shall find that he errs
mostly for a purpose, that of popularising his work ; and his success
indeed justified his means. He has been derided (by scholars) for
44 Hd Monsieur ! " and " Ah Madame ! "; but he could not write
" O mon sieur " and " O ma dame ; " although we can borrow
from biblical and Shakespearean English, " O my lord ! " and " O
my lady ! " " Bon Dieu ! ma soeur " (which our translators
english by " O heavens," Night xx.) is good French for Wa 'llahi
by Allah \ and " cinquante cavaliers bien faits " (" fifty hand-
some gentlemen on horseback ") is a more familiar picture
than fifty knights. " L'officieuse Dinarzade " (Night Ixi.),
and " Cette plaisante querelle des deux freres " (Night Ixxii.)
become ridiculous only in translation " the officious Dinarzade "
and "this pleasant quarrel ;" while "ce qu'il y de remarquable "
(Night Ixxiii.) would relieve the Gallic mind from the mortification
of " Destiny decreed." " Plusieurs sortes de fruits et de bou-
teilles de vin " (Night ccxxxi. etc.) europeanises flasks and
flaggons ; and the violent convulsions in which the girl dies
(Night cliv., her head having been cut off by her sister) is mere
Gallic squeamishness : France laughs at " le shoking " in England
but she has only to look at home especially during the reign of
Galland's contemporary Roi Soleil. The terrible " Old man "
(Shaykh) " of the Sea" (-board) is ba'dly described by " Tincommode
vieillard " (" the ill-natured old fellow ") : " Brave Maimune }> and
" Agre'able Maimune " are hardly what a Jinni would say to a
Jinniyah (ccxiii.) ; but they are good Gallic. The same may be
noted of " Plier les voiles pour marque qu'il se rendait " (Night
ccxxxv.), a European practice ; and of the false note struck in two
passages. "Je m'estimais heureuse d'avoir fait une si belle
conquete " (Night Ixvii.) gives a Parisian turn ; and, " Je ne puis
voir sans horreur cet abominable barbier que voila : quoiqu'il soit
n< dans un pays ou tout le monde est blanc, il ne laisse pas a
io8 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
resembler a un thiopien ; mais il a Time encore plus noire et
horrible que le visage " (Night clvii.), is a mere affectation of
Orientalism. Lastly, " Une vieille dame de leur connaissance "
(Night clviii.) puts French polish upon the matter of fact Arab's
" an old woman."
The list of absolute mistakes, not including violent liberties,
can hardly be held excessive. Professor Weil and Mr. Payne
(ix. 271) justly charge Galland with making the Trader (Night i.)
throw away the shells (tcorces) of the date which has only a pellicle,
as Galland certainly knew ; but dates were not seen every day in
France, while almonds and walnuts were of the quatre mendiants.
He preserves the forces, which later issues have changed to noyaux,
probably in allusion to the jerking practice called Inwa. Again in
the " First Shaykh's Story " (vol. i. 27) the " maillet " is mentioned
as the means of slaughtering cattle, because familiar to European
readers : at the end of the tale it becomes " le couteau funeste." In
Badr al-Din a " tarte a la creme," so well known to the West,
displaces, naturally enough, the outlandish " mess of pomegranate-
seeds." Though the text especially tells us the hero removed his
bag-trousers (not only " son habit ") and placed them under the
pillow, a crucial fact in the history, our Professor sends him to bed
fully dressed, apparently for the purpose of informing his readers
in a foot-note that Easterns " se couchent en calegon " (Night
Ixxx). It was mere ignorance to confound the arbalete or cross-
bow with the stone-bow (Night xxxviii.), but this has universally
been done, even by Lane who ought to have known better ; and it
was an unpardonable carelessness or something worse to turn Ndr
(fire) and Dun (in lieu of) into " le faux dieu Nardoun" (Night Ixv.) :
as this has been untouched by De Sacy, I cannot but conclude that
he never read the text with the translation. Nearly as bad also
to make the Jewish physician remark, when the youth gave him
the left wrist (Night cl.), " voila une grande ignorance de ne savoir
pas que Ton presente la main droite a un mdecin et non pas fa
Terminal Essay. 109
gauche " whose exclusive use all travellers in the East must
know. I have noticed the incuriousness which translates " along
the Nile-shore " by " up towards Ethiopia " (Night cli.), and the
" Islands of the Children of Khaledan " (Night ccxi.) instead of
the Khalidatani or Khalidat, the Fortunate Islands. It was by no
means " des petits soufflets " (" some tips from time to time with her
fingers ") which the sprightly dame administered to the Barber's
second brother (Night clxxi.), but sound and heavy " cuffs " on the
nape ; and the sixth brother (Night clxxx.) was not " aux levres
fendues " (" he of the hair-lips "), for they had been cut off by the
Badawi jealous of his fair wife. Abu al-Hasan would not greet
his beloved by saluting " le tapis a ses pieds : " he would kiss her
hands and feet. Hai'atalnefous (Hayat al-Nufus, Night ccxxvi.)
would not (t throw cold water in the Princess's face : " she would
sprinkle it with eau-de-rose. " Camaralzaman " I addresses his
two abominable wives in language purely European (ccxxx.), " et
de la vie il ne s'approcha d'elles," missing one of the fine touches
of the tale which shows its hero a weak and violent man, hasty and
lacking the pundonor. " La belle Persienne/' in the Tale of Nur
al-Din, was no Persian ; nor would her master address her,
" Venez ga, impertinente ! " (" come hither, impertinence "). In the
story of Badr, one of the Comoro Islands becomes " L'ile de la
Lune." "Dog" and "dog-son" are not "injures atroces et
indignes d'un grand roi : " the greatest Eastern kings allow
themselves far more energetic and significant language. Fitnah 1
1 Dr. Scott who uses Fitnah (iv. 42) makes it worse by adding "Alcolom (Al-
Kulub?) signifying Favisher of Hearts" and his names for the six slave-girls (vol. iv.
37) such as "Zohorob Bostan " (Zahr al-Bustan), which Galland rightly renders by
" Fleur du Jardin," serve only to heap blunder upon blunder. Indeed the Anglo-
French translations are below criticism : it would be waste of time to notice them. The
characteristic is a servile suit paid to the original e.g. rendering hair "accomodeen
boucles " by "hair festooned in buckles" (Night ccxiv.), and lie d'Ebene (Jazfrat al-
Abnus, Night xliii.) by " the Isle of Ebene.-" A certain surly old litterateur tells me that
he prefers these wretched versions to Mr. Payne's. Padrone ! as the Italians say : I
cannot envy his taste or his temper.
no A If Laylah wa Lay tab.
is by no means " Force de cceurs." Lastly the dtno&ement of The
Nights is widely different in French and in Arabic ; but that is
probably not Galland's fault, as he never saw the original, and
indeed he deserves high praise for having invented so pleasant and
sympathetic a close, inferior only to the Oriental device. 1
Galland's fragment has a strange effect upon the Orientalist
and those who take the scholastic view, be it wide or narrow.
De Sacy does not hesitate to say that the work owes much to
his fellow-countryman's hand ; but I judge otherwise : it is
necessary to dissociate the two works and to regard Galland's
paraphrase, which contains only a quarter of The Thousand Nights
and a Night, as a wholly different book. Its attempts to amplify
beauties and to correct or conceal the defects and the grotesque-
ness of the original, absolutely suppress much of the local colour,
clothing the bare body in the best of Parisian suits. It ignores
the rhymed prose and excludes the verse, rarely and very rarely
rendering a few lines in a balanced style. It generally rejects the
proverbs, epigrams and moral reflections which form the pith and
marrow of the book ; and, worse still, it disdains those finer
touches of character which are often Shakespearean in their depth
and delicacy, and which, applied to a race of familiar ways and
thoughts, manners and customs, would have been the wonder
and delight of Europe. It shows only a single side of the gem
that has so many facets. By deference to public taste it was
compelled to expunge the often repulsive simplicity, the childish
indecencies and the wild orgies of the original, contrasting with
the gorgeous tints, the elevated morality and the religious tone
of passages which crowd upon them. We miss the odeur du sang
1 De Sacy (Mmoire p. 52) notes that in some MSS., the Sultan, ennuye* by the last
tales of Shahrdz'ad, proposes to put her to death, when she produces her three children
and all ends merrily without marriage-bells. Von Hammer prefers this version as the
more dramatic, the Frenchman rejects it on account of the difficulties of the
accouchement!. Here he strains at the gnat a common process.
Terminal Essay. Ill
which taints the parfums du harem ; also the humouristic tale and
the Rabelaisian outbreak which relieve and throw out into strong
relief the splendour of Empire and the havoc of Time. Con-
sidered in this light it is a caput mortuum, a magnificent texture
seen on the wrong side ; and it speaks volumes for the genius of
the man who could recommend it in such blurred and caricatured
condition to readers throughout the civilised world. But those
who look only at Galland's picture, his effort to " transplant into
European gardens the magic flowers of Eastern fancy," still
compare his tales with the sudden prospect of magnificent
mountains seen after a long desert-march : they arouse strange
longings and indescribable desires ; their marvellous imagina-
tiveness produces an insensible brightening of mind and an
increase of fancy-power, making one dream that behind them
lies the new and unseen, the strange and unexpected in fact,
all the glamour of the unknown.
The Nights has been translated into every far-extending
Eastern tongue, Persian, Turkish and Hindostani. The latter
entitles them Hikaydt al-Jalilah or Noble Tales, and the trans-
lation was made by Munshi Shams al-Din Ahmad for the use
of the College of Fort George in A.H. 1252 = 1836.* All these
versions are direct from the Arabic : my search for a transla-
tion of Galland into any Eastern tongue has hitherto been
fruitless.
I was assured by the late Bertholdy Seemann that the
" language of Hoffmann and Heine " contained a literal and
complete translation of The Nights ; but personal enquiries at
Leipzig and elsewhere convinced me that the work still remains
to be done. The first attempt to improve upon Galland and to
show the world what the work really is was made by Dr. Max
Habicht and was printed at Breslau (1824-2 5), in fifteen small square
1 See Journ. Asiatique, iii. se*rie, vol. viii., Paris, 1839.
112 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
volumes. 1 Thus it appeared before the " Tunis Manuscript " *
of which it purports to be a translation. The German version
is, if possible, more condemnable than the Arabic original. It
lacks every charm of style ; it conscientiously shirks every
difficulty ; it abounds in the most extraordinary blunders and
it is utterly useless as a picture of manners or a book of reference.
We can explain its latches only by the theory that the eminent
Professor left the labour to his collaborateurs and did not take
the trouble to revise their careless work.
The next German translation was by Aulic Councillor J. von
Hammer-Purgstall 3 who, during his short stay at Cairo and
Constantinople, turned into French the tales neglected by
Galland. After some difference with M. Caussin (de Perceval) in
1810, the Styrian Orientalist entrusted his MS. to Herr Cotta the
publisher of Tubingen. Thus a German version appeared, the
translation of a translation, at the hand of Professor Zinserling, 3
while the French version was unaccountably lost en route to
1 " Tausend und Eine Nacht : Arabische Erzahlungen. Zum ersten mal aus einer
Tunisischen Handschrift erganzt und vollstandig iibersetzt," Von Max Habicht, F. H.
von der Hagen und Karl Schatte (the offenders ?)
2 Dr. Habicht informs us (Vorwort iii., vol. ix. 7) that he obtained his MS. with
other valuable works from Tunis, through a personal acquaintance, a learned Arab,
Herr M. Annagar (Mohammed Al-Najjdr ?) and was aided by Baron de Sacy, Langles
and other savants in filling up the lacunae by means of sundry MSS. The editing was a
prodigy of negligence : the corrigenda (of which brief lists are given) would fill a
volume ; and, as before noticed, the indices of the first four tomes were printed in the
fifth, as if the necessity of a list of tales had just struck the dense editor. After
Habicht's death in 1839 his work was completed in four vols. (ix. xii.) by the well-
known Prof. H. J. Fleischer, who had shown some tartness in his " Dissertatio Critica
de Glossis Habichtianis." He carefully imitated all the shortcomings of his predecessor
and even omitted the Verzeichniss, etc., the Varianten and the Glossary of Arabic words
not found in Golius, which formed the only useful part of the first eight volumes.
3 Die in Tausend und Eine Nacht noch nicht ubersetzten Nachte, Erzahlungen und
Anekdoten, zum erstenmal aus dem Arabischen in das Franzosische iibersetzt von J. von
Hammer, und aus dem Franzosichen in das Deutsche von A. E. Zinserling, Professor,
Stuttgart und Tubingen, 1823. Drei Bde. 8. Trebutien's, therefore, is the translation
of a translation of a translation.
Terminal Essay. 1 13
London. Finally the " Contes ine*dits," etc., appeared in a French
translation by G. S. Trebutien (Paris, mdcccxxviii.). Von
Hammer took liberties with the text which can compare only
with those of Lane : he abridged and retrenched till the likeness
in places entirely disappeared ; he shirked some difficult passages
and he misexplained others. In fact the work did no honour to
the amiable and laborious historian of the Turks.
The only good German translation of The Nights is due to
Dr. Gustav Weil who, born on April 24, 1808, is still (1886)
professing at Heidelburg. 1 His originals (he tells us) were the
Breslau Edition, the Bulak text of Abd al-Rahman al-Safati
and, a MS. in the library of Saxe Gotha. The venerable savant,
who has rendered such service to Arabism, informs me that Aug.
Lewald's " Vorhalle " (pp. i. xv.) 2 was written without his know-
ledge. Dr. Weil neglects the division of days which enables him
to introduce any number of tales : for instance, Galland's eleven
occupy a large part of vol. iii. The Vorwort wants development ;
(the notes, confined to a few words, are inadequate and verse is
everywhere rendered by prose, the Saj'a or assonance being wholly
ignored. On the other hand the scholar shows himself by a
correct translation, contrasting strongly with those which preceded
him, and by a strictly literal version, save where the treatment
required to be modified in a book intended for the public. Under
1 Tausend und Eine Nacht Arabische Erzahlungen. Zum erstenmale aus dem
Urtexte vollstandig und treu uebersetze von Dr. Gustav Weil. He began his work on
return from Egypt in 1836 and completed his first version of the Arabische Meisterwerlc
in 183842 (3 vols. roy. oct.)- I have the Zweiter Abdruck der dritten (2d reprint of
3d) in 4 vols. 8vo., Stuttgart, 1872. It has more than a hundred woodcuts, but all of
that art fashionable in Europe till Lane taught what Eastern illustrations should be.
2 My learned friend Dr. Wilhelm Storck, to whose admirable translations of Camoens
I have often borne witness, notes that this Vorhalle, or Porch to the first edition, a
rhetorical introduction addressed to the general public, is held in Germany to be
valueless and that it was noticed only for the Bemerkung concerning the offensive
passages which Professor Weil had toned down in his translation. In the Vorwort of
the succeeding editions (Stuttgart) it is wholly omitted.
VOU X. H
H 4 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
such circumstances it cannot well be other than longsome and
monotonous reading.
Although Spain and Italy have produced many and remarkable
Orientalists, I cannot find that they have taken the trouble to
translate The Nights for themselves : cheap and gaudy versions
of Galland seem to have satisfied the public. 1 Notes on the
Romaic, Icelandic, Russian (?) and other versions, will be found in
a future page.
Professor Galland has never been forgotten in France where,
amongst a host of editions, four have claims to distinction ; 2 and
his success did not fail to create a host of imitators and to attract
what De Sacy justly terms " une prodigieuse importation de
marchandise de contrabande." As early as 1823 Von Hammer
numbered seven in France (Tre'butien, Preface xviii.) and during
later years they have grown prodigiously. Mr. William F. Kirby,
who has made a special study of the subject, has favoured me
with detailed bibliographical notes on Galland's imitators which
are printed in Appendix No. II.
1 The most popular are now " Mille ed una notte. Novelle Arabe." Napoli, 1867,
8vo illustrated, 4 francs ; and " Mille ed une notte. Novelle Arabe, versione italiana
nuovamente emendata e corredata di note " ; 4 vols. in 32 (dateless) Milano,
8vo. , 4 francs.
2 Thes are; (i) by M. Caussin (de Perceval), Paris, 1806, 9 vols. 8vo. (2) Edouard
Gauttier, Paris, 1822 24: 7 vols. I2mo ; (3) M. Destain, Paris, 1823 25, 6 vols.
8vo., and (4) Baron de Sacy, Paris, 1838 (?) 3 vols. large 8vo, illustrated (and vilely
illustrated).
Terminal Essay. 1 1 5
THE MATTER AND TH^MANNER jOF THE NIGHTS.
A. -THE MATTER.
RETURNING to my threefold distribution of this Prose Poem ( i)
into Fable, Fairy Tale and historical Anecdote, 1 let me proceed
to consider these sections more carefully.
The Apologue or Beast-fable, which apparently antedates all
other subjects in The Nights, has been called " One of the earliest
creations of the awakening consciousness of mankind." I should
regard it, despite a monumental antiquity, as the offspring of
a comparatively civilised age, when a jealous despotism or a
powerful oligarchy threw difficulties and dangers in the way of
Speaking " plain truths." A hint can be given and a friend or foe
can be lauded or abused as Belins the sheep or Isengrim the wolf,
when the Author is debarred the higher enjoyment of praising*
them or dispraising them by name. And, as the purposes of
fables are twofold
Duplex libelli dos est : quod risum movet,
Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet
The speaking of brute beasts would give a piquancy and a
pleasantry to moral design as well as to social and political
satire.
The literary origin of the fable is not Buddhistic : we must
especially shun that " Indo-Germanic " school which goes to India
1 The number of fables and anecdotes varies in the different texts, but may assumed
lo be upwards of four hundred, about half of which were translated by Lane.
n6 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
for its origins, when Pythagoras, Solon, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle
and possibly Homer sat for instruction at the feet of the Hir-seshtha,
the learned grammarians of the pharaohnic court. Nor was it
-dEsopic, evidently ^Esop inherited the hoarded wealth of ages. As
Professor Lepsius taught us, "In the ofden times within the
memory of man, we know only of one advanced culture ; of only
one mode of writing, and of only one literary development, viz.
those of Egypt." The invention of an alphabet, as opposed to a
syllabary, unknown to Babylonia, to Assyria and to that extreme
bourne of their civilising influences, China, would for ever fix their
literature poetry, history and criticism, 1 the apologue and the
anecdote. To mention no others The Lion and the Mouse appears
in a Leyden papyrus dating from B.C. 1200-1166 the days of
Rameses III. (Rhampsinitus) or Hak On, not as a rude and early
attempt, but in a finished form, postulating an ancient origin and
illustrious ancestry. The dialogue also is brought to perfection in
the discourse between the Jackal Koufi and the Ethiopian Cat
(Revue 6gyptologique ivme. anne*e Part i.). Africa therefore was
the home of the Beast-fable not, as Professor Mahaffy thinks,
because it was the chosen land of animal worship, where
Oppida tota canem venerantur nemo Dianam ; 2
1 I have noticed these points more fully in the beginning of chapt. iii. *' The Book of
the Sword."
2 A notable instance of Roman superficiality, incuriousness and ignorance. Every old
Egyptian city had its idols (images of metal, stone or wood), in which the Deity became
incarnate as in the Catholic host ; besides its own symbolic animal used as a Kiblah or
prayer-direction (Jerusalem or Meccah),the visible means of fixing and concentrating the
thoughts of the vulgar, like the crystal of the hypnotist or the disk of the electro-biologist.
And goddess Diana was in no way better than goddess Pasht. For the true view of
idolatry see Koran xxxix. 4. I am deeply grateful to Mr. P. le Page Renouf (Soc. of
Biblic. Archaeology, April 6, 1886) for identifying the Manibogh, Michabo or Great
Hare of the American indigenes with Osiris Unnefer (" Hare God "). These are the
lines upon which investigation should run. And of late years there is a notable improve-
ment of tone in treating of symbolism or idolatry : the Lingam and the Yoni are now
described as " mystical representations, and perhaps the best possible impersonal
representatives, of the abstract expressions paternity and maternity " (Prof. Monier
Williams in "Folk-lore Record" vol. iii. part i. p. 118).
Terminal Essay. 117
but simply because the Nile-land originated every form of literature
between Fabliau and Epos.
From Kemi the Black-land it was but a step to Phoenicia,
Judaea, 1 Phrygia and Asia Minor, whence a ferry led over to Greece.
Here the Apologue found its populariser in AIO-WTTOS, ^Esop, whose
name, involved in myth, possibly connects with At^io^:
" ^Esopus et Aithiops idem sonant " says the sages. This would
show that the Hellenes preserved a legend of the land whence the
Beast-fable arose, and we may accept the fabulist's sera as
contemporary with Croesus and Solon (B.C. 570), about a century
after Psammeticus (Psamethik ist) threw Egypt open to the restless
Greek. 2 From Africa too the Fable would in early ages migrate
eastwards and make for itself a new home in the second great
focus of civilisation formed by the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. The
late Mr. George Smith found amongst the cuneiforms fragmentary
Beast-fables, such as dialogues between the Ox and the Horse, the
Eagle and the Sun. In after centuries, when the conquests of
Macedonian Alexander completed what Sesostris and Semiramis
had begun, and mingled the manifold families of mankind by
joining the eastern to the western world, the Orient became
formally hellenised. Under the Seleucidae and during the life of
the independent Bactrian kingdom (B.C. 255-125), Grecian art
and science, literature and even language overran the old Iranic
reign and extended eastwards throughout northern India. Porus
sent two embassies to Augustus in B.C. 19 and in one of them the
herald Zarmanochagas (Shramanachdrya) of Bargosa, the modern
Baroch in Guzerat, bore an epistle upon vellum written in Greek
1 See Jotham's fable of the Trees and King Bramble (Judges Ixi. 8) and Nathan's
parable of the Poor Man and his little ewe Lamb (2 Sam. ix. i).
2 Herodotus (ii. c. 134) notes that " ^Esop the fable-writer (6 AoyoVoios) was one of
her (Rhodopis) fellow slaves." Aristophanes (Vespae, 1446) refers to his murder by
the Delphians and his fable beginning, "Once upon a time there was a fight ;" while
the Scholiast finds an allusion to The Serpent and the Crab in Pax 1084 ; and others in
Vespae 1401, and Aves 651.
Ii8 A If Laylah wa Lay la h.
{Strabo xv. i 78). " Videtis gentes populosque mutasse sedes "
says Seneca (De Cons, ad Helv. c. vi.). Quid sibi volunt in mediis
barbarorum regionibus Graecae artes ? Quid inter Indos Persasque
Macedonicus sermo ? Atheniensis in Asia turba est" Upper
India, in the Macedonian days would have been mainly Buddhistic,
possessing a rude alphabet borrowed from Egypt through Arabia
and Phoenicia, but still in a low and barbarous condition : her
buildings were wooden and she lacked, as far as we know, stone-
architecture the main test of social development. But the
Bactrian Kingdom gave an impulse to her civilisation and the
result was classical opposed to vedic Sanskrit. From Persia Greek
letters, extending southwards to Arabia, would find indigenous
imitators and there ^Esop would be represented by the sundry
sages who share the name Lokman. 1 One of these was of servile
1 There are three distinct Lokmans who are carefully comfounded in Sale (Koran
chapt. xxxi.) and in Smith's Diet, of Biography etc. art. ^Esopus. The first or eldest
Lokman, entitled Al-Hakim (the Sage) and the hero of the Koranic chapter which bears
his name, was son of Ba'ura of the Children of Azar, sister's son to Job or son of Job's
maternal aunt ; he witnessed David's miracles of mail-making and when the tribe of 'Ad
was destroyed, he became King of the country. The second, also called the Sage, was
a slave, an Abyssinian negro, sold to the Israelites during the reign of David or Solomon,
synchronous with the Persian Kay Kaus and Kay Khusrau, also Pythagoras the Greek(!)
His physique is alluded to in the saying, *' Thou resemblest Lokman (in black ugliness)
but not in wisdom " (Ibn Khallikan i. 145). This negro or negroid, after a godly and
edifying life, left a volume of " Amsal," proverbs and exempla (not fables or apologues) ;
and Easterns still say, " One should not pretend to teach Lokmdn " in Persian,
"Hikmat ba Lokman dmokhtan." Three of his apothegms dwell in the public
memory : " The heart and the tongue are the best and worst parts of the human body."
" I learned wisdom from the blind who make sure of things by touching them" (as did
St. Thomas) ; and, when he ate the colocynth offered by his owner, " I have received
from thee so many a sweet that 'twould be surprising if I refused this one bitter." He
was buried (says the Tarikh Muntakhab) at Ramlah in Judaea, with the seventy Prophets
stoned in one day by the Jews. The youngest Lokman " of the vultures " was a prince
of the tribe of Ad who lived 3,500 years, the age of seven vultures (Tabariy. He
could dig a well with his nails ; hence the saying, " Stronger than Lokman " (A .P. i-7oi);
and he loved the arrow-game, hence " More gambling than Lokman " (ibid. ii. 938).
" More voracious than Lokman" (ibid. i. 134) alludes to his eating one camel for
breakfast and another for supper. His wife Bardkish also appears in proverb, e.g. " Camel
us and camel thyself" (ibid. i. 295) i.e. give us camel flesh to eat, said when her son
Terminal Essay. 1 19
condition, tailor, carpenter or shepherd ; and a " Habashi "
(Ethiopian) meaning a negro slave with blubber lips and splay
feet, so far showing a superficial likeness to the JEsop of history.
The ^Ssopic fable, carried by the Hellenes to India, might have
fallen in with some rude and fantastic barbarian of Buddhistic
" persuasion " and indigenous origin : so Reynard the Fox has its
analogue amongst the Kafirs and the Vai tribe of Mandengan
negroes in Liberia 1 amongst whom one Doalu invented or rather
borrowed a syllabarium. The modern Gypsies are said also to
have beast-fables which have never been traced to a foreign
source (Lelarid). But I cannot accept the refinement of difference
which Professor Benfey, followed by Mr. Keith-Falconer, discovers
between the JEsopic and the Hindu apologue : " In the former
animals are allowed to act as animals : the latter makes them act
as men in the form of animals." The essence of the beast-fable
is a reminiscence of Homo primigenius with erected ears and hairy
hide, and its expression is to make the brother brute behave,
think and talk like him with the superadded experience of ages.
To early man the " lower animals," which are born, live and die
like himself, showing all the same affects and disaffects, loves and
hates, passions, prepossessions and prejudices, must have seemed
quite human enough and on an equal level to become his sub-
stitutes. The savage, when he began to reflect, would regard the
carnivor and the serpent with awe, wonder and dread ; and would
soon suspect the same mysterious potency in the brute as in him-
self : so the Malays still look upon the Uran-utan, or Wood-man^
as the possessor of superhuman wisdom. The hunter and the
herdsman, who had few other companions, would presently ex-
plain the peculiar relations of animals to themselves by material
by a former husband brought her a fine joint which she and her husband relished. Also*
"Barakish hath sinned against her kin" (ibid. ii. 89). More of this in Chenery's Al
Hariri p. 422 ; but the three Lokmans are there reduced to two.
1 I have noticed them in vol. ii. 47-49. " To the Gold Coast for Gold."
I2O Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
jnetamorphosis, the bodily transformation of man to brute giving
increased powers of working him weal and woe. A more advanced
stage would find the step easy to metempsychosis, the beast con-
taining the Ego (alias soul) of the human : such instinctive belief
explains much in Hindu literature, but it was not wanted at first
by the Apologue.
This blending of blood, this racial baptism would produce a
fine robust progeny; and, after our second century, ^Egypto-
Graeco-Indian stones overran the civilized globe between Rome
and China. Tales have wings and fly farther than the jade
hatchets of proto-historic days. And the result was a book
which has had more readers than any other except the Bible.
Its original is unknown. 1 The volume, which in Pehlevi became
the Javiddn Khirad ("Wisdom of Ages") or the Testament
of Hoshang, that ancient guebre King, and in Sanskrit the
Panchatantra (" Five Chapters "), is a recueil of apologues and
anecdotes related by the learned Brahman, Vishnu Sharma for
the benefit of his pupils the sons of an Indian Rajah. The Hindu
original has been adapted and translated into a number of languages;
Arabic, Hebrew and Syraic, Greek and Latin, Persian and
Turkish, under a host of names. 2 Voltaire 3 wisely remarks of
this venerable production : Quand on fait reflexion que presque
toute la terre a &t& enfatue'e de pareils contes, et qu'ils ont fait
1 I can hardly accept the dictum that the Katha Sarit Sagara, of which more
presently, is the " earliest representation of the first collection."
2 The Pehlevi version of the days of King Anushirwan (A.D. 531-72) became the
Humdyun-nameh ("August Book") turned into Persian for Bah ram Shah the Ghaz-
navite: the Hitopadesa ("Friendship-boon") of Prakrit, avowedly compiled from the
11 Panchatantra,'* became the Hindu Panchopakhyan, the Hindostani Akhlak-i-Hindi
("Moralities of Ind ") and in Persia and Turkey the Anvar-i-Suhayli ("Lights of
Canopus"). Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac writers entitle their version Kalflah wa
Damnah, or Kalilaj wa Damnaj, from the name of the two jackal-heroes, and Europe
knows the recueil as the Fables of Pilpay or Bidpay (Bidya-pati, Lord of learning ?)
a learned Brahman reported to have been Premier at the Court of the Indian
King Dabishlim.
* Diet. Philosoph. S. V. Apocrypha.
Terminal Essay. 121
P<ducation du genre humain, on trouve les fables de Pilpay, de
Lokman, 1 d'6sope, bien raisonables. But methinks the sage of
Ferney might have said far more. These fables speak with the large
utterance of early man ; they have also their own especial beauty
the charms of well-preserved and time-honoured old age. There
is in their wisdom a perfume of the past, homely and ancient-
fashioned like a whiff of pot pourm, wondrous soothing withal to
olfactories agitated by the patchoulis and jockey clubs of modern
pretenders and petit-maitres, with 'their grey young heads and
pert intelligence, the motto of whose ignorance is " Connu ! " Were
a dose of its antique, mature experience adhibited to the Western
before he visits the East, those few who could digest it might
escape the normal lot of being twisted round the fingers of every
rogue they meet from Dragoman to Rajah. And a quotation from
them tells at once : it shows the quoter to be a man of education,
not a " Jangalf," a sylvan or savage, as the Anglo-Indian official
is habitually termed by his more civilised " fellow-subject."
The main difference between the classical apologue and the
fable in The Nights is that while ALsop and Gabrias write laconic
tales with a single event and a simple moral, the Arabian fables
are often " long-continued novelle involving a variety of events,
each characterised by some social or political aspect, forming a
narrative highly interesting in itself, often exhibiting the most
exquisite moral, and yet preserving, with rare ingenuity, the
peculiar characteristics of the actors." 2 And the distinction
between the ancient and the mediaeval apologue, including the
modern which, since " Reineke Fuchs," is mainly German, appears
equally pronounced. The latter is humorous enough and rich in
the wit which results from superficial incongruity ; but it ignores
the deep underlying bond which connects man with beast. Again,
1 The older Arab writers, I repeat, do not ascribe fables or beast-apologues to
Lokman ; they record only '* dictes " and proverbial sayings,
* Professor Taylor Lewis : Preface to Pilpay.
122 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
the main secret of its success is the strain of pungent satire,
especially in the Renardine Cycle, which the people could apply
to all unpopular " lordes and prelates, gostly and worldly."
Our Recueil contains two distinct sets of apologues. 1 The
first (vol. iii.) consists of eleven, alternating with five anecdotes
(Nights cxlvi. cliii.), following the lengthy . and knightly
romance of King Omar bin al Nu'man and followed by the
melancholy love tale of Ali bin Bakkar. The second series in
vol. ix., consisting of eight fables, not including ten anecdotes
(Nights cmi. cmxxiv.), is injected into the romance of King
Jali'ad and Shimas mentioned by Al-Mas'udi as independent
of The Nights. In both places the Beast-fables are intro-
duced with some art and add variety to the subject-matter,
obviating monotony the deadly sin of such works and giving
repose to the hearer or reader after a climax of excitement
such as the murder of the Wazirs. And even these are not
allowed to pall upon the mental palate, being mingled with
anecdotes and short tales, such as the Hermits (iii. 125), with
biographical or literary episodes, acroamata, table-talk and
analects where humorous Rabelaisian anecdote finds a place ;
in fact the fabliau or novella. This style of composition may be
as ancient as the apologues. We know that it dates as far back
as Rameses III., from the history of the Two Brothers in the
Orbigny papyrus, 2 the prototype of Yusuf and Zulaykha, the
1 In the Katha Sarit Sagara the beast-apologues are more numerous, but they can be
reduced to two great nuclei ; the first in chapter Ix. (Lib. x.) and the second in the same
book chapters Ixii-lxv. Here too they are mixed up with anecdotes and acroamata
after the fashion of The Nights, suggesting great antiquity for this style of composition.
8 Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. 266 et seq. The fabliau is interesting in more
ways than one. Anepu the elder (Potiphar) understands the language of cattle, an
idea ever cropping up in Folk-lore; and Bata (Joseph), his "little brother," who
becomes a " panther of the South (Nubia) for rage" at the wife's impudique proposal,
takes the form of a bull metamorphosis full blown. It is not, as some have called it,
the oldest book in the world ; " that name was given by M. Chabas to a MS. of
Proverbs, dating from B.C. 2200. See also the " Story of Saneha," a novel earlier than
the popular date of Moses, in the Contes Populaires of Egypt.
Terminal Essay. 123
Koranic Joseph and Potiphar's wife. It is told with a
charming naYvete* and such sharp touches of local colour as,
11 Come, let us make merry an hour and lie together ! Let down
thy hair!"
Some of the apologues in The Nights are pointless enough,
rien moins qu'amusants ; but in the best specimens, such as the
Wolf and the Fox 1 (the wicked man and the wily man), both
characters are carefully kept distinct and neither action nor
dialogue ever flags. Again The Flea and the Mouse (iii. 151), of
a type familiar to students of the Pilpay cycle, must strike the
home-reader as peculiarly quaint.
Next in date to the Apologue comes the Fairy Tale proper,
where the natural universe is supplemented by one of purely
imaginative existence. " As the active world is inferior to the
rational soul," says Bacon with his normal sound sense, "so
Fiction gives to Mankind what History denies and in some
measure satisfies the Mind with Shadows when it cannot enjoy
the Substance. And as real History gives us not the success of
things according to the deserts of vice and virtue, Fiction corrects
it and presents us with the fates and fortunes of persons rewarded
and punished according to merit." But I would say still more.
History paints or attempts to paint life as it is, a mighty maze
with or without a plan : Fiction shows or would show us life as it
1 The fox and the jackal are confounded by the Arabic dialects not by the Persian,
whose " Rubah " can never be mistaken for " Shaghal." " Sa'lab " among the Semites
is locally applied to either beast and we can distinguish the two only by the fox being
solitary and rapacious, and the jackal gregarious and a carrion -eater. In all Hindu
tales the jackal seems to be an awkward substitute for the Grecian and classical fox,
the Giddar or Kola (Cants aureus) being by no means sly and wily as the Lomri (Vtdpes
vulgaris). This is remarked by Weber (Indische Studien) and Prof. Benfey's retort
about "King Nobel" the lion is by no means to the point. See Katha Sarit
Sagara, ii. 28.
I may add that in Northern Africa jackal's gall, like jackal's grape (Solanumnigrum=z
black nightshade), ass's milk and melted camel-hump, is used aphrodisiacally as an
unguent by both sexes. See p. 239, etc. of Le Jardin parfume du Cheikh Nefzaoui,
of whom more presently.
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
should be, wisely ordered and laid down on fixed lines. Thus
Fiction is not the mere handmaid of History : she has a house-
hold of her own and she claims to be the triumph of Art which,
as Goethe remarked, is " Art because it is not Nature." Fancy,
la folle du logis> is " that kind and gentle portress who holds the
gate of Hope wide open, in opposition to Reason, the surly and
scrupulous guard." 1 As Palmerin of England says and says well,
" For that the report of noble deeds doth urge the courageous
mind to equal those who bear most commendation of their
approved valiancy ; this is the fair fruit of Imagination and of
ancient histories." And, last but not least, the faculty of Fancy
takes count of the cravings of man's nature for the marvellous,
the impossible, and of his higher aspirations for the Ideal, the
Perfect : she realises the wild dreams and visions of his generous
youth and portrays for him a portion of that "other and better
world," with whose expectation he would console his age.
The imaginative varnish of The Nights serves admirably as a
foil to the absolute realism of the picture in general. We enjoy
being carried away from trivial and commonplace characters,
scenes and incidents ; from the matter of fact surroundings of a
work-a-day world, a life of eating and drinking, sleeping and
waking, fighting and loving, into a society and a mise-en-scene
which we suspect can exist and which we know does not. Every
man at some turn or term of his life has longed for supernatural
powers and a glimpse of Wonderland. Here he is in the midst
of it. Here he sees mighty spirits summoned to work the human
mite's will, however whimsical, who can transport him in an eye-
twinkling whithersoever he wishes ; who can ruin cities and build
palaces of gold and silver, gems and jacinths ; who can serve up
delicate viands and delicious drinks in priceless chargers and im-
possible cups and bring the choicest fruits from farthest Orient :
1 Rambler, No. Ixvii.
Terminal Essay. 125
here he finds magas and magicians who can make kings of his
friends, slay armies of his foes and bring any number of beloveds
to his arms. And from this outraging probability and out-
stripping possibility arises not a little of that strange fascination
exercised for nearly two centuries upon the life and literature of
Europe by The Nights, even in their mutilated and garbled form.
The reader surrenders himself to the spell, feeling almost inclined
to enquire "And why may it not be true.?" 1 His brain is dazed
and dazzled by the splendours which flash before it, by the sudden
procession of Jinns and Jinniyahs, demons and fairies, some
hideous, others preternaturally beautiful ; by good wizards and
evil sorcerers, whose powers are unlimited for weal and for woe ;
by mermen and mermaids, flying horses, talking animals, and
reasoning elephants ; by magic rings and their slaves and by
talismanic couches which rival the carpet of Solomon. Hence,
as one remarks, these Fairy Tales have pleased and still continue
to please almost all ages, all ranks and all different capacities.
Dr. Hawkesworth * observes that these Fairy Tales find favour
" because even 'their machinery, wild and wonderful as it is, has
its laws ; and the magicians and enchanters perform nothing but
what was naturally to be expected from such beings, after we had
once granted them existence." Mr. Heron " rather supposes the
very contrary is the truth of the fact. It is surely the strange-
ness, the unknown nature, the anomalous character of the super-
natural agents here employed, that makes them to operate so
powerfully on our hopes, fears, curiosities, sympathies, and, in
short, on all the feelings of our hearts. We see men and women,
who possess qualities to recommend them to our favour, subjected
to the influence of beings, whose good or ill will, power or weak-
1 Some years ago I was asked by my old landlady if ever in the course of my
travels I had come across Captain Gulliver.
2 In "The Adventurer" quoted by Mr. Heron, "Translator's Preface to the
Arabian Tales of Chaves and Cazotte."
126 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
ness, attention or neglect, are regulated by motives and circum-
stances which we cannot comprehend : and hence, we naturally
tremble for their fate, with the same anxious concern, as we
should for a friend wandering, in a dark night, amidst torrents
and precipices ; or preparing to land on a strange island, while he
knew not whether he should be received, on the shore, by can-
nibals waiting to tear him piecemeal, and devour him, or by
gentle beings, disposed to cherish him with fond hospitality."
Both writers have expressed themselves well, but meseems each
has secured, as often happens, a fragment of the truth and holds
it to be the whole Truth. Granted that such spiritual creatures
as Jinns walk the earth, we are pleased to find them so very
human, as wise and as foolish in word and deed as ourselves :
similarly we admire In a landscape natural forms like those of
Staffa or the Palisades which favour the works of architecture.
Again, supposing such preternaturalisms to be around and
amongst us, the wilder and more capricious they prove, the
more our attention is excited and our forecasts are baffled to be
set right in the end. But this is not all. The grand source of
pleasure in Fairy Tales is the natural desire to learn more of the
Wonderland which is known to many as a word and nothing
more, like Central Africa before the last half century : thus the
interest is that of the " Personal Narrative " of a grand explora-
tion to one who delights in travels. The pleasure must be
greatest where faith is strongest ; for instance amongst imagina-
tive races like the Kelts and especially Orientals, who imbibe
supernaturalism with their mother's milk. " I am persuaded/'
writes Mr. Bayle St. John, 1 " that the great scheme of preternatural
energy, so fully developed in The Thousand and One Nights, is
believed in by the majority of the inhabitants of all the religious
1 "Life in a Levantine Family" chapt. xi. Since the able author found his
"family" firmly believing in The Nights, much has been changed in Alexandria ; but
the faith in Jinn and Ifrit, ghost and vampire is lively as ever.
Terminal Essay. 127
professions both in Syria and Egypt." He might have added
" by every reasoning being from prince to peasant, from Mullah
to Badawi, between Marocco and Outer Ind."
The Fairy Tale in The Nights is wholly and purely Persian.
The gifted Iranian race, physically the noblest and the most
beautiful of all known to me, has exercised upon the world-
history an amount of influence which has not yet been fully
recognised. It repeated for Babylonian art and literature what
Greece had done for Egyptian, whose dominant idea was that of
working for eternity a K-riJ/xa cts act. Hellas and Iran instinc-
tively chose as their characteristic the idea of Beauty, rejecting
all that was exaggerated and grotesque ; and they made the
sphere of Art and Fancy as real as the world of Nature and Fact.
The innovation was hailed by the Hebrews. The so-called
Books of Moses deliberately and ostentatiously ignored the future
state of rewards and punishments, the other world which ruled
the life of the Egyptian in this world : the lawgiver, whoever he
may have been, Osarsiph or Moshe, apparently held the tenet
unworthy of a race whose career he was directing to conquest
and isolation in dominion. But the Jews, removed to Mesopo-
tamia, the second cradle of the creeds, presently caught the
infection of their Asiatic media ; superadded Babylonian legend
to Egyptian myth ; stultified The Law by supplementing it with
the " absurdities of foreign fable** and ended, as the Talmud
proves, with becoming the most wildly superstitious and " other-
worldly" of mankind.
The same change befel Al-Islam. The whole of its super-
naturalism is borrowed bodily from Persia, which had " impara-
dised Earth by making it the abode of angels." Mohammed,
a great and commanding genius, blighted and narrowed by sur-
roundings and circumstance to something little higher than a
Covenanter or a Puritan, declared to his followers,
" I am sent to 'stablish the manners and customs ; "
128 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
and his deficiency of imagination made him dislike everything
but " women, perfumes, and prayers," with an especial aversion
to music and poetry, plastic art and fiction. Yet his system,
unlike that of Moses, demanded thaumaturgy and metaphysical
entities, and these he perforce borrowed from the Jews who had
borrowed them from the Babylonians : his soul and spirit, his
angels and devils, his cosmogony, his heavens and hells, even the
Bridge over the Great Depth are all either Talmudic or Iranian*
But there he stopped and would have stopped others. His
enemies among the Koraysh were in the habit of reciting certain
Persian fabliaux and of extolling them as superior to the silly
and equally fictitious stories of the "Glorious Koran/' The
leader of these scoffers was one Nazr ibn Hdris who, taken
prisoner after the Battle of Bedr, was incontinently decapitated,
by apostolic command, for what appears to be a natural and
sensible preference. It was the same furious fanaticism and one-
idea'd intolerance which made Caliph Omar destroy all he could
find of the Alexandrian Library and prescribe burning for the
Holy Books of the Persian Guebres. And the taint still lingers in
Al-Islam : it will be said of a pious man, " He always studies
the Koran, the Traditions and other books of Law and Religion ;
and he never reads poems nor listens to music or to stories."
Mohammed left a dispensation or rather a reformation so arid,
jejune and material that it promised little more than the " Law
of Moses," before this was vivified and racially baptised by Meso-
potamian and Persic influences. But human nature was stronger
than the Prophet and, thus outraged, took speedy and absolute
revenge. Before the first century had elapsed, orthodox Al-Islam
was startled by the rise of Tasawwuf or Sufyism 1 a revival of
classic Platonism and Christian Gnosticism, with a mingling of
modern Hylozoism ; which, quickened by the glowing imagina-
1 The name dates from the second century A.H. or before A.D.8i$.
Terminal Essay. 129
tion of the East, speedily formed itself into a creed the most
poetical and impractical, the most spiritual and the most trans-
cendental ever invented ; satisfying all man's hunger for "belief"
which, if placed upon a solid basis of fact and proof, would forth-
right cease to be belief.
I will take from The Nights, as a specimen of the true Persian
romance, " The Queen of the Serpents " (vol. v. 298), the subject
of Lane's Carlylean denunciation. The first gorgeous picture is
the Session of the Snakes which, like their Indian congeners the
Naga kings and queens, have human heads and reptile bodies,
an Egyptian myth that engendered the "old serpent " of Genesis.
The Sultanah welcomes Hdsib Karfm al-Dm, the hapless lad who
had been left in a cavern to die by the greedy woodcutters ; and,
in order to tell him her tale, introduces the " Adventures of
Bulukiya " : the latter is an Israelite converted by editor and
scribe to Mohammedanism ; but we can detect under his assumed
faith the older creed. Solomon is not buried by authentic his-
tory "beyond the Seven (mystic) Seas," but at Jerusalem or
Tiberias ; and his seal-ring suggests the Jam-i-Jam, the crystal
cup of the great King Jamshfd. The descent of the Archangel
Gabriel, so familiar to Al-Islam, is the manifestation of Bahman,
the First Intelligence, the mightiest of the Angels who enabled
Zarathustra-Zoroaster to walk like Bulukiya over the Dalatf or
Caspian Sea. 1 Amongst the sights shown to Bulukiya, as he
traverses the Seven Oceans, is a battle royal between the believ-
ing and the unbelieving Jinns, true Magian dualism, the eternal
duello of the Two Roots or antagonistic Principles, Good and
Evil, Hormuzd and Ahriman, which Milton has debased into a
common-place modern combat fought also with cannon. Sakhr
the Jinni is Eshem chief of the Divs, and Kaf, the encircling
1 Dabistan i. 231 etc.
VOL. X.
130. Alf Laylah wa Laylah,
mountain, is a later edition of Persian Alborz. So in the Mantak
al-Tayr (Colloquy of the Flyers) the Birds, emblems of souls,
seeking the presence of the gigantic feathered biped Simurgh, their
god, traverse seven Seas (according to others seven Wadys) of
Search, of Love, of Knowledge, of Competence, of Unity, of Stupe-
faction, and of Altruism (i.e. annihilation of self), the several stages
of contemplative life. At last, standing upon the mysterious
island of the Simurgh and " casting a clandestine glance at him
they saw thirty birds * in him ; and when they turned their eyes
to themselves the thirty birds seemed one Simurgh : they saw in
themselves the entire Simurgh ; they saw in the Simurgh the
thirty birds entirely." Therefore they arrived at the solution of
the problem " We and Thou ; " that is, the identity of God and
Man ; they were for ever annihilated in the Simurgh and the
shade vanished in the sun (Ibid. iii. 250). The wild ideas con-
cerning Khalit and Malit (vol. v. 319) are again Guebre. "From
the seed of Kayomars (the androgyne, like pre-Adamite man)
sprang a tree shaped like two human beings and thence pro-
ceeded Meshia and Meshianah, first man and woman, progeni-
tors of mankind ; " who, though created for " Shfdistan, Light-
land," were seduced by Ahriman. This " two-man-tree " is evi-
dently the duality of Physis and Anti-physis, Nature and her
counterpart, the battle between Mihr, Izad or Mithra with his
Surush and Feristeh (Seraphs and Angels) against the Divs who
are the children of Time led by the arch-demon Eshem. Thus
when Hormuzd created the planets, the dog, and all useful
animals and plants, Ahriman produced the comets, the wolf,
noxious beasts and poisonous growths. The Hindus represent
the same metaphysical idea by Bramha the Creator and Visva-
1 Because Si = thirty and Murgh = bird. In McClenachan's Addendum to
Mackay's Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry we find the following definition : " Simorgh.
A monstrous griffin, guardian of the Persian mysteries."
Terminal Essay. 131
karma, the Anti-creator, 1 miscalled by Europeans Vulcan : the
former fashions a horse and a bull and the latter caricatures them
with an ass and a buffalo, evolution turned topsy turvy. After
seeing nine angels and obtaining an explanation of the Seven
Stages of Earth which is supported by the Gav-i-Zamin, the
energy, symbolised by a bull, implanted by the Creator in the
mundane sphere, Bulukiya meets the four Archangels, to wit
Gabriel who is the Persian Rawanbakhsh or Life-giver ; Michael
or Beshter, Raphael or Israfil alias Ardibihisht, and Azazel or
Azrail who is Dumd or Mordad, the Death-giver ; and the four
are about to attack the Dragon, that is, the demons hostile to
mankind who were driven behind Alborz-Kaf by Tahmuras the
ancient Persian king. Bulukiya then recites an episode within an
episode, the " Story of Jdnshah," itself a Persian name and
accompanied by two others (vol. v. 329), the mise-en-scene being
Kabul and the King of Khorasan appearing in the proem.
Janshah, the young Prince, no sooner comes to man's estate than
he loses himself out hunting and falls in with cannibals whose
bodies divide longitudinally, each moiety going its own way :
these are the Shikk (split ones) which the Arabs borrowed from
the Persian Ni'm-chihrah or Half-faces. They escape to the
Ape-island whose denizens are human in intelligence and speak
articulately, as the universal East believes the/can : these Simiads
are at chronic war with the Ants, alluding to some obscure
myth which gave rise to the gold-diggers of Herodotus and other
classics, " emmets in size somewhat less than dogs but bigger than
foxes." 2 The episode then falls into the banalities of Oriental
1 For a poor and inadequate description of the festivals commemorating this ' Archi-
tect of the Gods "see vol. iii. 177, " View of the History etc. of the Hindus" by the
learned Dr. Ward, who could see in them only the " low and sordid nature of idola-
try." But we can hardly expect better things from a missionary in 1822, when no one
took the trouble to understand what " idolatry " means.
2 Rawlinson (ii. 491) on Herod, iii. c. 102. Nearchus saw the skins of these
formica Indicze, by some rationalists explained as " jackals," whose stature corresponds
132 A If Laylah wa Lay la k.
folk-lore. Janshah, passing the Sabbation river and reaching the
Jews' city, is persuaded to be sewn up in a skin and is carried in
the normal way to the top of the Mountain of Gems where he
makes acquaintance with Shaykh Nasr, Lord of the Birds : he
enters the usual forbidden room ; falls in love with the pattern
Swan-maiden ; wins her by the popular process ; loses her and
recovers her through the Monk Yaghmtis, whose name, like that
of King Teghmus, is a burlesque of the Greek ; and, finally, when
she is killed by a shark, determines to mourn her loss till the end
of his days. Having heard this story Bulukiya quits him; and,
resolving to regain his natal land, falls in with Khizr ; and the
Green Prophet, who was Wazir to Kay Kobad (vith century B. C.)
and was connected with Macedonian Alexander (!) enables hiroi
to win his wish. The rest of the tale calls for no comment
Thirdly and lastly we have the histories, historical stories and the
" Ana " of great men in which Easterns as well as Westerns
delight : the gravest writers do not disdain to relieve the dullness
of chronicles and annals by means of such discussions, humorous
or pathetic, moral or grossly indecent. The dates must greatly
vary : some of the anecdotes relating to the early Caliphs appear
almost contemporary ; others, like Ali of Cairo and Abu al-Shamat,
may be as late as the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt (sixteenth
century). All are distinctly Sunnite and show fierce animus
against the Shi'ah heretics, suggesting that they were written after
the destruction of the Fatimite dynasty (twelfth century) by Salah
al-Din (Saladin the Kurd) one of the latest historical personages
and the last king named in The Nights. 1 These anecdotes are so
with the text, and by others as " pengolens " or ant-eaters (mam's penUdactyld). The
learned Sanskritist, H. H. Wilson, quotes the name Pippilika = ant-gold, given by the
people of Little Thibet to the precious dust thrown up in the emmet heaps.
1 A writer in the Edinburgh Review (July, '86), of whom more presently, suggests
that The Nights assumed essentially their present shape during the general revival of
letters, arts and requirements which accompanied the Kurdish and Tartar irruptions into
the Nile Valley, a golden age which embraced the whole of the thirteenth, fourteenth aod
fifteenth centuries and ended with the Ottoman Conquest in A.D. 1527.
Terminal Essay. '33
often connected with what a learned Frenchman terms the
" regne fe*erique de Haroun er-Re'schid," 1 that the Great Caliph
becomes the hero of this portion of The Nights. Aaron the
Orthodox was the central figure of the most splendid empire the
world had seen, the Viceregent of Allah combining the powers of
Caesar and Pope, and wielding them right worthily according to
the general voice of historians. To quote a few : Ali bin Talib
al-Khorasdni described him, in A.D. 934, a century and-a-half
after his death when flattery would be tongue-tied, as, " one
devoted to war and pilgrimage, whose bounty embraced the folk
at large." Sa'adi (ob. A.D. 1291) tells a tale highly favourable
to him in the "Gulistan" (lib. i. 36). Fakhr al-Din 2 (xivth
century) lauds his merits, eloquence, science and generosity ;
and Al-Siyuti (nat. A.D. 1445) asserts " He was one of
the most distinguished of Caliphs and the most illustrious
of the Princes of the Earth" (p. 290). The Shaykh al-
Nafzdwi 3 (sixteenth century) in his Rauz al-'Atir fi' Nazah
1 Let us humbly hope not again to hear of the golden prime of
" The good (fellow?) Haroun Alrasch'id,"
a mispronunciation which suggests only a rasher of bacon. Why will not poets mind
their quantities, in lieu of stultifying their lines by childish ignorance ? What can be
more painful than Byron's
"They laid his dust in Ar'qua (for Arqua') where he died P "
* See De Sacy's Chrestomalhie Arabe (Paris, 1826), vol. i.
' See Le Jardin Parfum du Cheikh Nefzaoui Manuel d'Erotologie Arabe Traduction
revue et corrige'e Edition priv^e, imprime' a deux cent.-vingt exemplaires, par Isidore
Liseux et ses Amis, Paris, 1866. The editor has forgotten to note that the celebrated Sidi
Mohammed copied some of the tales from The Nights and borrowed others (I am
assured by a friend) from Tunisian MSS. of the same work. The book has not been fairly
edited : the notes abound in mistakes, the volume lacks an index, &c., &c. Since this was
written the Jardin ParfumS has been twice translated into English as "The Perfumed
Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui, a Manual of Arabian Erotology (sixteenth century).
Revised and corrected translation, Cosmopoli : mdccclxx'xvi. : for the Kama Shastra
Society of London and Benares and for private circulation only." A rival version will
be brought out by a bookseller whose Committee, as he calls it, appears to be the
model of literary pirates, robbing the author as boldly and as openly as if they picked
his pocket before his face.
134 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
al-Khatir = Scented Garden-site for Heart-delight, calls Harun
(chapt. vii.) the " Master of munificence and bounty, the best
of the generous." And even the latest writers have not ceased
to praise him. Says Alf Aziz Efendi the Cretan, in the Story of
Jewdd ! (p. Si), " Harun was the most bounteous, illustrious and
upright of the Abbaside Caliphs."
The fifth Abbaside was fair and handsome, of noble and majestic
presence, a sportsman and an athlete who delighted in polo and
archery. He showed sound sense and true wisdom in his speech
to the grammarian-poet Al-Asma'i, who had undertaken to teach
him : " Ne m'enseignez jamais en public, et ne vous empressez
pas trop de me donner des avis en particulier. Attendez ordinaire-
ment que je vous interroge, et contentez-vous de me donner
une response precise a ce que je vous demanderai, sans y rien
ajouter de superflu. Gardez vous surtout de vouloir me
pre*occuper pour vous attirer ma cre*ance, et pour vous donner de
i'autorite*. Ne vous etendez jamais trop en long sur les histoires
et les traditions que vous me raconterez, si je ne vous en donne la
permission. Lorsque vous verrai que je m'eloignerai de requite* dans
mes jugements, ramenez-moi avec douceur, sans user de paroles
fdcheuses ni de re*primandes. Enseignez-moi principalement les
choses qui sont les plus necessaries pour les discours que je dois
faire en public, dans les mosquees et ailleurs ; et ne parlez point
en termes obscurs, ou myste'rieux, ni avec des paroles trop
recherche"es." 2
He became well read in science and letters, especially history
and tradition, for " his understanding was as the understanding of
1 Translated by a well-known Turkish scholar, Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, (Glasgow, Wilson
and McCormick, 1884).
2 D'Herbelot (s. v. " Asmai"): I am reproacher by a dabbler in Orientalism for using
this admirable writer who shows more knowledge in one page than my critic does in a
whole volume.
Terminal Essay, 135
the learned ; " and, like all educated Arabs of his day, he was a
connoisseur of poetry which at times he improvised with success." 1
He made the pilgrimage every alternate year and sometimes on foot,
while "his military expeditions almost equalled his pilgrimages."
Day after day during his Caliphate he prayed a hundred " bows,"
never neglecting them, save for some especial reason, till his
death ; and he used to give from his privy purse alms to the
extent of a hundred dirhams per diem. He delighted in panegyry
and liberally rewarded its experts, one of whom, Abd al-
Sammak the Preacher, fairly said of him, " Thy humility in thy
greatness is nobler than thy greatness." " No Caliph," says
Al-Niftawayh, "had been so profusely liberal to poets, lawyers
and divines, although as the years advanced he wept over his
extravagance amongst other sins." There was vigorous manliness
in his answer to the Grecian Emperor who had sent him an insult-
ing missive : " In the name of Allah ! From the Commander of
the Faithful Harun al-Rashid, to Nicephorus the Roman dog. I
have read thy writ, O son of a miscreant mother ! Thou shalt
not hear, thou shalt see my reply." Nor did he cease to make the
Byzantine feel the weight of his arm till he " nakh'd " 2 his camel
in the imperial Court-yard ; and this was only one instance of his
indomitable energy and hatred of the Infidel. Yet, if the West is
to be believed, he forgot his fanaticism in his diplomatic dealings
and courteous intercourse with Carolus Magnus. 3 Finally, his
1 For specimens see Al-Siyutf, pp. 301 and 304 ; and the Shaykh al Nafzawi, pp.
"34-35-
2 The word ' nakh " (to make a camel kneel) is explained in vol. ii. 139.
3 The present of the famous horologium- clepsydra-cuckoo clock, the dog Becerillo and
the elephant Abu Lubabah sent by Harun to Charlemagne is not mentioned by
Eastern authorities and consequently no reference to it will be found in my late friend
Professor Palmer's little volume " Haroun Alraschid," London, Marcus Ward, 1881.
We have allusions to many presents, the clock and elephant, tent and linen hangings,
silken dresses, perfumes, and candelabra of auricalch brought by the Legati (Abdalla,
Georgius Abba et Felix) of Aaron Amiralmumminim Regis Persarum who entered the
136 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
civilised and well regulated rule contrasted as strongly with the
barbarity and turbulence of occidental Christendom, as the
splendid Court and the luxurious life of Baghdad and its carpets
and hangings devanced the quasi-savagery of London and Paris
whose palatial halls were spread with rushes.
The great Caliph ruled twenty-three years and a few months
(A.H. 170-193 = A.D. 786-808); and, as his youth was chequered
and his reign was glorious, so was his end obscure. 1 After a
vision foreshadowing his death, 2 which happened, as becomes a
good Moslem, during a military expedition to Khorasan, he
ordered his grave to be dug and himself to be carried to it in a
covered litter : when sighting the fosse he exclaimed, " O son of
man thou art come to this ! " Then he commanded himself to be
set down and a perlection of the Koran to be made over him ia
the litter on the edge of the grave. He was buried (aet. forty-
five) at Sanabad, a village near Tus.
Aaron the Orthodox appears in The Nights as a headstrong
and violent autocrat, a right royal figure according to the Moslem
ideas of his day. But his career shows that he was not more
tyrannical or more sanguinary than the normal despot of the East,
or the contemporary Kings of the West : in most points, indeed,
he was far superior to the historic misrulers who have afflicted the
world from Spain to furthest China. But a single great crime, a
tragedy whose details are almost incredibly horrible, marks his
(reign with the stain of infamy, with a blot of blood never to be
Port of Pisa (A.D. 801) in (vol. v. 178) Recueil des Histor. des Gaules et de la France,
etc., par Dom Martin Bouquet, Paris, mdccxliv. The author also quotes the lines :
Persarum Princeps illi devinctus amore
Praecipuo fuerat, nomen habens Aaron.
Gratia cui Caroli prse cunctis Regibus atTjue
Illis Principibus tempora cara fuit.
1 Many have remarked that the actual date of the decease is unknown.
2 See Al-Siyuti (p. 305) and Dr. Jonathan Scott's " Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters,"
(p- 296).
Terminal Essay. 137
washed away. This tale, " full of the waters of the eye," as
Firdausi sings, is the massacre of the Barmecides ; a story which
has often been told and which cannot here be passed over in silence.
The ancient and noble Iranian house, belonging to the "Ebnd"
or Arabised Persians, had long served- the Ommiades till, early
in our eighth century, Khalid bin Bermek, 1 the chief, entered the
service of the first Abbaside and became Wazir and Intendant of
Finance to Al-SafFah. The most remarkable and distinguished of
the family, he was in office when Al-Mansur transferred the capital
from Damascus, the head-quarters of the hated Ommiades, to
Baghdad, built ad hoc. After securing the highest character in
history by his personal gifts and public services, he was succeeded
by his son and heir Ydhya (John), a statesman famed from early
youth for prudence and profound intelligence, liberality and
nobility of soul. 2 He was charged by the Caliph Al-Mahdi with
the education of his son Harun, hence the latter was accustomed
to call him father ; and, until the assassination of the fantastic
tyrant Al-Hadi, who proposed to make his own child Caliph, he
had no little difficulty in preserving the youth from death in
prison. The Orthodox, once seated firmly on the throne, appointed
Yahya his Grand Wazir. This great administrator had four sons,
Al-Fazl, Ja'afar, Mohammed, and Musa, 3 in whose time the house
of Bermek rose to that height from which decline and fall are, in
the East, well nigh certain and immediate. Al-Fazl was a foster-
brother of Harun, an exchange of suckling infants having taken
place between the two mothers for the usual object, a tightening
of the ties of intimacy : he was a man of exceptional mind, but
he lacked the charm of temper and manner which characterised
1 I have given (vol. i. 188) the vulgar derivation of the name ; and D'Herbelot
(s.v. Barmakian) quotes some Persian lines alluding to the " supping up." Al-
Mas'udi's account of the family's early history is unfortunately los . This Kha"lid
succeeded Abu Salamah, first entitled Wazir under Al-Saffah (Ibn Khallikan i. 468).
8 For his poetry see Ibn Khallikan iv. 103.
* Their flatterers compared them with the four elements.
138 Alf Laylah wa Laylah,
Ja'afar. The poets and rhetoricians have been profuse in their
praises of the cadet who appears in The Nights as an adviser of
calm sound sense, an intercessor and a peace-maker, and even
more remarkable than the rest of his family for an almost
incredible magnanimity and generosity une ge'ne'rositd effrayante.
Mohammed was famed for exalted views and nobility of sentiment
and Musa for bravery and energy: of both it was justly said,
" They did good and harmed not." * *
For ten years (not including an interval of seven) from the time
of Al-Rashid's accession (A.D. 786) to the date of their fall,
(A.D. 803), Yahya and his sons, Al-Fazl and Ja'afar, were
virtually rulers of the great heterogeneous empire, which extended
from Mauritania to Tartary, and they did notable service in
arresting its disruption. Their downfall came sudden and terrible
like " a thunderbolt from the blue." As the Caliph and Ja'afar
were halting in Al-'Umr (the convent) near Anbar-town on the
Euphrates, after a convivial evening spent in different pavilions,
Harun during the dead of the night called up his page Yasir
al-Rikhlah 2 and bade him bring Ja'afar's head. The messenger
found Ja'afar still carousing with the blind poet Abu Zakkar
and the Christian physician Gabriel ibn Bakhtiashu, and was
persuaded to return to the Caliph and report his death ; the
Wazir adding, " An he express regret I shall owe thee my life ;
and, if not, whatso Allah will be done." Ja'afar followed
to listen and heard only the Caliph exclaim "O sucker
of thy mother's clitoris, if thou answer me another word,
I will send thee before him ! " whereupon he at once bandaged
his own eyes and received the fatal blow. Al-Asma'i, who
1 Al-Mas'udi, chapt. cxii.
2 Ibn Khallikan (i. 310) says the eunuch Abu Hashim Masrvir, the Sworder of
Vengeance, who is so pleasantly associated with Ja'afar in many nightly disguises ; but
the Eunuch survived the Caliph. Fakhr al-Din (p. 27) adds that Masrur was an enemy
of Ja'afar ; and gives further details concerning the execution.
Terminal Essay. 139
was summoned to the presence shortly after, recounts that
when the head was brought to Harun he gazed at it, and
summoning two witnesses commanded them to decapitate Yasir,
crying, " I cannot bear to look upon the slayer" of Ja'afar ! " His
vengeance did not cease with the death : he ordered the head to
be gibbetted at one end and the trunk at the other abutment of
the Tigris bridge where the corpses of the vilest malefactors used
to be exposed ; and, some months afterwards, he insulted the
remains by having them burned the last and worst indignity
which can be offered to a Moslem. There are indeed pity and
terror in the difference between two such items in the Treasury-
accounts as these : " Four hundred thousand dinars (200,000) to a
robe of honour for the Wazir Ja'afar bin Yahya ; " and, "Ten
kfrat, (5 shill.) to naphtha and reeds for burning the body of Ja'afar
the Barmecide/'
Meanwhile Yahya and Al-Fazl, seized by the Caliph Harun's
command at Baghdad, were significantly cast into the prison
" Habs al-Zanadikah " of the Guebres and their immense
wealth which, some opine, hastened their downfall, was con-
fiscated. According to the historian, Al-Tabari, who, however,
is not supported by all the annalists, the whole Barmecide family,
men, women, and children, numbering over a thousand, were
slaughtered with only three exceptions ; Yahya, his brother
Mohammed, and his son Al-Fazl. The Calipfa's foster-father, who
lived to the age of seventy-four, was allowed to die in jail
(A.H. 805) after two years' imprisonment at Rukkah. Al-Fazl,
after having been tortured with two hundred blows in order to
make him produce concealed property, survived his father three
years and died in Nov. A.H. 808, some four months before his
terrible foster-brother. A pathetic tale is told of the son warming
water for the old man's use by pressing, the copper ewer to his
stomach.
The motives of -this terrible massacre are variously recounted,
140 A If Laylah wa Laylak..
but no sufficient explanation has yet been, or possibly ever will
be, given. The popular idea is embodied in The Nights. 1 Harun,
wishing Ja'afar to be his companion even in the Harem, had
wedded him, pro forma, to his eldest sister Abbdsah, " the loveliest
woman of her day," and brilliant in mind as in body ; but he had
expressly said " I will marry thee to her, that it may be lawful for
thee to look upon her but thou shalt not touch her." Ja'afar
bound himself by a solemn oath ; but his mother Attabah was
mad enough to deceive him in his cups and the result was a boy
(Ibn Khallikan) or, according to others, twins. The issue was
sent under the charge of a confidential eunuch and a slave-girl
to Meccah for concealment; but the secret was divulged to
Zubaydah who had her own reasons for hating husband and
wife and cherished an especial grievance against Yahya. 2 Thence
it soon found its way to head-quarters. Harun's treatment of
Abbasah supports the general conviction : according to the most
credible accounts she and her child were buried alive in a pit
under the floor of her apartment.
But, possibly, Ja'afar's perjury was only "the last straw."
Already Al-Fazl bin Rabfa, the deadliest enemy of the Barme-
cides, had been entrusted (A.D. 786) with the Wazirate which
he kept seven years. Ja'afar had also acted generously but
imprudently in abetting the escape of Yahya bin Abdillah, Sayyid
and Alide, for whom the Caliph had commanded confinement in a
close dark dungeon : when charged with disobedience the Wazir
had made full confession and Harun had (they say) exclaimed,
" Thou hast done well ! " but was heard to mutter, " Allah slay
me an I slay thee not." 8 The great house seems at times to have
1 Bresl. Edit., Night dlxvii. vol. vii. pp. 258-260; translated in the Mr. Payne's
"Tales from the Arabic," vol. i. 189 and headed " Al-Rashid and the Barmecides."
It is far less lively and dramatic than the account of the same event given by
Al-Mas'udi, chapt. cxii., by Ibn Khallikan and by Fakhr al-Din.
3 Al-Mas'udi, chapt. cxi.
3 See Dr. Jonathan Scott's extracts from Major Ouseley's "Tarikh-i-Barmaki."
Terminal Essay. 141
abused its powers by being too peremptory with Harun and
Zubaydah, especially in money matters ; * and its very greatness
would have created for it many and powerful enemies and
detractors who plied the Caliph with anonymous verse and prose.
Nor was it forgotten that, before the spread of Al-Islam, they had
presided over the Naubehar or Pyraethrum of Balkh ; and Harun
is said to have remarked anent Yahya, "The zeal for magianism,
rooted in his heart, induces him to save all the monuments
connected with his faith." 2 Hence the charge that they were
" Zanadakah," a term properly applied to those who study the
Zend scripture, but popularly meaning Mundanists, Positivists
Reprobates, Atheists ; and it may be noted that, immediately
after Al-Rashid's death, violent religious troubles broke out in
Baghdad. Ibn Khallikan 3 quotes Sa'i'd ibn Salim, a well-known
grammarian and traditionist who philosophically remarked, " Of a
truth the Barmecides did nothing to deserve Al-Rashid's severity,
but the day (of their power and prosperity) had been long and
whatso endureth long waxeth longsome." Fakhr al-Din says
(p. 27), "On attribue encore leur ruine aux manieres fieres et
orgueilleuses de Djafar (Ja'afar) et de Fadhl (Al-Fazl), manieres
que les rois ne sauroient supporter/' According to Ibn
Badrun, the poet, when the Caliph's sister 'Olayyah 4 asked him,
* 4 O my lord, I have not seen thee enjoy one happy day since
putting Ja'afar to death : wherefore didst thou slay him ? " he
answered, "My dear life, an I thought that my shirt knew the
reason I would rend it in pieces!" I therefore hold with
Al-Mas'udi, " As regards the intimate cause (of the catastrophe)
it is unknown and Allah is Omniscient."
1 Al-Mas'udi, chapt. cxii. For the liberties Ja'afar took see Ibn Khallikan, i. 303.
8 Ibid, chapt. xxiv. In vol. ii. 29 of The Nights, I find signs of Ja'afar's suspected
heresy. For Al-Rashid's hatred of the Zindiks see Al-Siyuti, pp. 292, 301 ; and as
regards the religious troubles ibid. p. 362 and passim.
3 Biogr. Diet. i. 309.
4 This accomplished princess had a practice that suggests the Dame aux Camelias.
142 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
Aaron the Orthodox appears sincerely to have repented his
enormous crime. From that date he never enjoyed refreshing
sleep : he would have given his whole realm to recall Ja'afar to
life ; and, if any spoke slightingly of the Barmecides in his
presence, he would exclaim, " God damn your fathers ! Cease
to blame them or fill the void they have left." And he had
ample reason to mourn the loss. After the extermination of the
wise and enlightened family, the affairs of the Caliphate never
prospered : Fazl bin Rabfa, though a man of intelligence
and devoted to letters, proved a poor substitute for Yahya
and Ja'afar ; and the Caliph is reported to have applied to him
the couplet :
No sire to your sire, 1 I bid you spare o Your calumnies or their place
replace.
His unwise elevation of his two rival sons filled him with fear
of poison, and, lastly, the violence and recklessness of the popular
mourning for the Barmecides, 2 whose echo has not yet died away,
must have added poignancy to his tardy penitence. The crime
still "sticks fiery off" from the rest of Harun's career: it stands
out in ghastly prominence as one of the most terrible tragedies
recorded by history, and its horrible details make men write
passionately on the subject to this our day. 3
As of Harun so of Zubaydah it may be said that she was far
superior in most things to contemporary royalties, and she was
not worse at her worst than the normal despot-queen of the
Morning-land. We must not take seriously the tales of her
1 i.e. Perdition to your fathers, Allah's curse on your ancestors.
2 See vol. iv. 159, "Ja'afar and the Bean-seller; " where the great Wazir is said to
have been "crucified; " and vol. iv. pp. 179, 181. Also Roebuck's Persian Proverbs,
i. 2, 346, "This also is through the munificence of the Barmecides."
3 I especially allude to my friend Mr. Payne's admirably written account of it in his
concluding Essay (vol. ix.)- From his views of the Great Caliph and the Lady Zubaydah
I must differ in every point except the destruction of the Barmecides.
Terminal Essay. 143
jealousy in The Nights, which mostly end in her selling off or
burying alive her rivals ; but, even were all true, she acted after
the recognised fashion of her exalted sisterhood. The secret
history of Cairo, during the last generation, tells of many a
viceregal dame who committed all the crimes, without any of
the virtues which characterised Harun's cousin-spouse. And
the difference between the manners of the Caliphate and the
" respectability " of the nineteenth century may be measured by
the Tale called ." Al-Maamun and Zubaydah." 1 The lady, having
won a game of forfeits from her husband, and being vexed with
him for imposing unseemly conditions when he had been the
winner, condemned him to lie with the foulest and filthiest
kitchen-wench in the palace; and thus was begotten the Caliph
who succeeded and destroyed her son.
Zubaydah was the grand-daughter of the second Abbaside
Al-Mansur, by his son Ja'afar whom The Nights persistently
term Al-Kasim: her name was Amat al-Aziz or Handmaid of
the Almighty ; her cognomen was Umm Ja'afar as her husband's
was Abu Ja'afar ; and her popular name " Creamkin " derives
from Zubdah, 2 cream or fresh butter, on account of her plump-
ness and freshness. She was as majestic and munificent as her
husband ; and the hum of prayer was never hushed in her
palace. Al-Mas'udi 3 makes a historian say to the dangerous
Caliph Al-Kahir, " The nobleness and generosity of this Princess, in
serious matters as in her diversions, place her in the highest rank " ;
and he proceeds to give ample proof. Al-Siyuti relates how she
once filled a poet's mouth with jewels which he sold for twenty
1 Bresl. Edit., vol. vii. 261-62.
2 Mr. Grattan Geary, in a work previously noticed, informs us (i. 212) "The Sitt
al-Zobeide, or the Lady Zobeide, was so named from the great Zobeide tribe of
Arabs occupying the country East and West of the Euphrates near the Hindi'ah
Canal ; she was the daughter of a powerful Sheik of that tribe." Can this explain
the "Kasim?"
Vol. viii. 296.
144 Alf Laylak wa Laylah*
thousand dinars. Ibn Khallikan (i. 523) affirms of her, " Her
charity was ample, her conduct virtuous, and the history of her
pilgrimage to Meccah and of what she undertook to execute on
the way is so well-known that it were useless to repeat it." I
have noted (Pilgrimage iii. 2) how the Darb al-Sharki or Eastern
road from Meccah to Al-Medinah was due to the piety of
Zubaydah who dug wells from Baghdad to the Prophet's burial
place and built not only cisterns and caravanserais, but even a
wall to direct pilgrims over the shifting sands. She also supplied
Meccah, which suffered severely from want of water, with the
chief requisite for public hygiene by connecting it, through levelled
hills and hewn rocks, with the Ayn al-Mushdsh in the Arafat
subrange ; and the fine aqueduct, some ten miles long, was
erected at a cost of 1,700,000 to 2,000,000 of gold pieces. 1 We
cannot wonder that her name is still famous among the Badawin
and the " Sons of the Holy Cities." She died at Baghdad, after
a protracted widowhood, in A.H. 216 and her tomb, which still
exists, was long visited by the friends and dependents who
mourned the loss of a devout and most liberal woman.
The reader will bear with me while I run through the tales and
add a few remarks to the notices given in the notes : the glance
must necessarily be brief, however extensive be the theme. The
admirable introduction follows, in all the texts and MSS. known
to me, the same main lines but differs greatly in minor details as
will be seen by comparing Mr. Payne's translation with Lane's
and mine. In the Tale of the Sage Diibdn appears the speaking
head which is found in the Kdmil, in Mirkhond and in the
Kitab al-Uyun : M. C. Barbier de Meynard (v. 503) traces it
back to an abbreviated text of Al-Mas'udi. I would especially
recommend to students The Porter and the Three Ladies of
Baghdad (i. 82), whose mighty orgie ends so innocently in general
1 Burckhardt, "Travels in Arabia" vol. i. 185.
Terminal Essay. 145
marriage. Lane (iii. 746) blames it " because it represents Arab
ladies as acting like Arab courtesans " ; but he must have known
that during his day the indecent frolic was quite possible in some
of the highest circles of his beloved Cairo. To judge by the
style and changes of person, some of the most "archaic" ex-
pressions suggest the hand of the Rawi or professional tale-teller ;
yet as they are in all the texts they cannot be omitted in a loyal
translation. The following story of The Three Apples perfectly
justifies my notes concerning which certain carpers complain.
What Englishman would be jealous enough to kill his cousin-
wife because a blackamoor in the streets boasted of her favours ?
But after reading what is annotated in vol. i. 6, and purposely
placed there to give the key-note of the book, he will understand
the reasonable nature of the suspicion ; and I may add that the
same cause has commended these " skunks of the human race >f
to debauched women in England.
The next tale, sometimes called " The Two Wazfrs " is notable
for its regular and genuine drama-intrigue which, however, appears
still more elaborate and perfected in other pieces. The richness of
this Oriental plot-invention contrasts strongly with all European
literatures except the Spaniard's, whose taste for the theatre
determined his direction, and the Italian, which in Boccaccio's
day had borrowed freely through Sicily from the East. And the
remarkable deficiency lasted till the romantic movement dawned
in France, when Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas showed their
marvellous powers of faultless fancy, boundless imagination and
scenic luxuriance, " raising French Poetry from the dead and not
mortally wounding French prose." 1 The Two Wazirs is followed
by the gem of the volume, The Adventure of the Hunchback-jester
(i. 225), also containing an admirable surprise and a fine develop-
1 The reverse has been remarked by more than one writer ; and contemporary French
opinion seems to be that Victor Hugo's influence on French prose was, on the whole,
not beneficial.
VOL. X.
146 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
ment of character, while its " wild but natural simplicity " and its
humour are so abounding that it has echoed through the world
to the farthest West. It gave to Addison the Story of Alnaschar 1
and to Europe the term " Barmecide Feast," from the " Tale of
Shacabac " (vol. i. 343). The adventures of the corpse were
known in Europe long before Galland, as shown by three fabliaux
in Barbazan. I have noticed that the Barber's Tale of himself
(i. 317) is historical and I may add that it is told in detail by
Al-Mas'udi (chapt. cxiv).
Follows the tale of Nur al-Dm All, and what Galland miscalls
" The Fair Persian," a brightly written historiette with not a few
touches of true humour. Noteworthy are the Slaver's address
(vol. ii. 15), the fine description of the Baghdad garden (vol. ii.
21-24), tne drinking-party (vol. ii. 25), the Caliph's frolic (vol. ii.
31-37) and the happy end of the hero's misfortunes (vol. ii. 44),
Its brightness is tempered by the gloomy tone of the tale which
succeeds, and which has variants in the Bagh o Bahar, a
Hindustani version of the Persian " Tale of the Four Darwayshes ;"
and in the Turkish Kirk Vezir or " Book of the Forty Vezirs."
Its dismal pe'ripeties are relieved only by the witty indecency of
Eunuch Bukhayt and the admirable humour of Eunuch Kafur,
whose " half-lie " is known throughout the East. Here also the
lover's agonies are piled upon him for the purpose of unpiling at
last : the Oriental tale-teller knows by experience that, as a rule,
doleful endings " don't pay."
1 Mr. W. S. Clouston, the "Storiologist," who is preparing a work to be entitled
" Popular Tales and Fictions ; their Migrations and Transformations," informs me the
first to adapt this witty anecdote was Jacques de Vitry, the crusading bishop of Accon
(Acre) who died at Rome in 1240, after setting the example of " Exempla " or instances
in his sermons. He had probably heard it in Syria, and he changed the day-dreamer
into a Milkmaid and her Milk-paii to suit his "flock." It then appears as an
11 Exemplum" in the Liber de Donis or de Septem Donis (or De Dono Timoris from
Fear the first gift) of Stephanus de Borbone, the Dominican, ob. Lyons, 1261 : it treated
of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah xi . 2 and 3), Timor, Pietas, Scientia, Fortitudo,
Consilium, Intellects et Sapientia ; and was plentifully garnished with narratives for the
use of preachers.
Terminal Essay. 147
The next is the long romance of chivalry, " King Omar bin al-<
Nu'man " etc., which occupies an eighth of the whole repertory
and the best part of two volumes. Mr. Lane omits it because
" obscene and tedious," showing the license with which he trans-
lated ; and he was set right by a learned reviewer, 1 who truly
declared that "the omission of half-a-dozen passages out of
four hundred pages would fit it for printing in any language 2 and
the charge of tediousness could hardly have been applied more
unhappily." The tale is interesting as a picture of mediaeval Arab
chivalry and has many other notable points ; for instance, the lines
(iii. 86) beginning " Allah holds the kingship ! " are a lesson to the
manichasanism of Christian Europe. It relates the doings of three
royal generations and has all the characteristics of Eastern art : it
is a phantasmagoria of Holy Places, palaces and Harems ; convents,
castles and caverns, here restful with gentle landscapes (ii. 240)
and there bristling with furious battle-pictures (ii. 117, 221-8,
249) and tales of princely prowess and knightly derring-do. The
characters stand out well. King Nu'man is an old lecher who
deserves his death ; the ancient Dame Zat al-Dawahi merits her
title Lady of Calamities (to her foes) ; Princess Abrfzah appears
as a charming Amazon, doomed to a miserable and pathetic end ;
Zau al-Makan is a wise and pious royalty ; Nuzhat al-Zaman,
though a longsome talker, is a model sister ; the Wazir Dandan,
a sage and sagacious counsellor, contrasts with the Chamberlain,
an ambitious miscreant ; Kanmakan is the typical Arab knight^
gentle and brave :
A
Now managing the mouthes of stubborn e steedes ; , ,
Now practising the proof of warlike deedes ;
1 The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register (new series, vol. xxx. Sept. Dec. 1830,
London, Aliens, 1839) ; p. 69 Review of the Arabian Nights, the Mac Edit. vol. i.,
and H. Torrens.
2 As a household edition of the " Arabian Nights " is now being prepared, the curious
reader will have an opportunity of verifying this statement.
148 Alf Laylah wa Laylak.
And the kind-hearted, simple-minded Stoker serves as a foil to
the villains, the kidnapping Badawi and Ghazban the detestable
negro. The fortunes of the family are interrupted by two epi-
sodes, both equally remarkable. Taj al-Muluk * is the model
lover whom no difficulties or dangers can daunt. In Aziz
and Az/zah (ii. 291) we have the beau ide*al of a loving woman :
the writer's object was to represent a " softy " who had the luck
to win the love of a beautiful and clever cousin and the mad folly
to break her heart. The poetical justice which he receives at
the hands of women of quite another stamp leaves nothing to be
desired. Finally the plot of " King Omar" is well worked out;
and the gathering of all the actors upon the stage before the
curtain drops may be improbable but it is highly artistic.
The long Crusading Romance is relieved by a sequence of
sixteen fabliaux, partly historiettes of men and beasts and
partly apologues proper a subject already noticed. We have
then (iii. 162) the saddening and dreary love-tale of AH bin
Bakkdr, a Persian youth and the Caliph's concubine Shams al-
Nahar. Here the end is made doleful enough by the deaths of
the "two martyrs," who are killed off, like Romeo and Juliet, 2
a lesson that the course of true Love is sometimes troubled and
that men as well as women can die of the so-called " tender
passion." It is followed (iii. 212) by the long tale of Kamar al-
Zaman, or Moon of the Age, the first of that name, the " Cam-
aralzaman " whom Galland introduced into the best European
society. Like " The Ebony Horse " it seems to have been
derived from a common source with " Peter of Provence " and
" Cleomades and Claremond " ; and we can hardly wonder at its
1 It has been pointed out to me that in vol. ii. p. 285, line 18 " Zahr Shah " is a
mistake for Sulayman Shah.
* I have lately found these lovers at Schloss Sternstein near Crlli in Styria, the
property of my excellent colleague, Mr. Consul Faber, dating from A.D. 1300 whea
Jobst of Reichenegg and Agnes of Sternstein were aided and abetted by a Capuchin
of Seikkloster.
Terminal Essay. 149
wide diffusion : the tale is brimful of life, change, movement,
containing as much character and incident as would fill a modern
three-volumer and the Supernatural pleasantly jostles the Natural ;
Dahnash the Jinn and Maymunah daughter of Al-Dimiryat, 1 a
renowned King of the Jann, being as human in their jealousy
about the virtue of their lovers as any children of Adam, and
so their metamorphosis to fleas has all the effect of a surprise.
The troupe is again drawn with a broad firm touch. Prince
Charming, the hero, is weak and wilful, shifty and immoral, hasty
and violent : his two spouses are rivals in abominations as his
sons, Amjad and As'ad, are examples of a fraternal affection
rarely found in half-brothers by sister-wives. There is at least
one fine melodramatic situation (iii. 228); and marvellous feats of
indecency, a practical joke which would occur only to the canopic
mind (iii. 300-305), emphasise the recovery of her husband by that
remarkable " blackguard," the Lady Budur. The interpolated tale
of Ni'amah and Naomi (iv. i), a simple and pleasing narrative of
youthful amours, contrasts well with the boiling passions of the
incestuous and murderous Queens and serves as a pause before
the grand cttnotiement when the parted meet, the lost are found,
the unwedded are wedded and all ends merrily as a xixth century
novel.
The long tale of Ala al-Din, our old friend "Aladdin," is wholly
out of place in its present position (iv. 29) : it is a counterpart of
Ali Nur al-Din and Miriam the Girdle-girl (vol. ix. i) ; and
the mention of the Shahbandar or Harbour-master (iv. 29), the
Kunsul or Consul (p. 84), the Kaptan (Capitano), the use of
cannon at sea and the choice of Genoa-city (p. 85) prove that it be-
longs to the xvth or xvith century and should accompany Kamar
al-Zamdn II. and Ma'aruf at the end of The Nights. Despite the
1 In page 226 Dr. Steingass sensibly proposes altering the last hemistich (line*
11-12) tO
At one time showing the Moon and Sun,
150 A If Laylak wa Laylak,
lutist Zubaydah being carried off by the Jinn, the Magic Couch,
a modification of Solomon's carpet, and the murder of the King
-who refused to islamize, it is evidently a European tale and I
believe with Dr. Bacher that it is founded upon the legend of
" Charlemagne's " daughter Emma and his secretary Eginhardt,
a's has been noted in the counterpart (vol. ix. i).
This quasi-historical fiction is followed by a succession of
fabliaux, novelle and historiettes which fill the rest of vol. iv.
and the whole of vol. v. till we reach the terminal story, The
Queen of the Serpents (vol. v. pp. 304-329). It appears to me
that most of them are historical and could easily be traced. Not
a few are in Al-Mas'udi; for instance the grim Tale of Hatim
of Tayy (vol. iv. 94) is given bodily in " Meads of Gold " (iii. 327) ;
and the two adventures of Ibrahim al-Mahdi with the barber-
surgeon (vol. iv. 103) and the Merchant's sister (vol. iv. 176) are in
his pages (vol. vii. pp. 68 and 18). The City of Lubtayt (vol. iv. 99)
embodies the legend of Don Rodrigo, last of the Goths, and may
have reached the ears of Washington Irving; Many-columned
Iram (vol. iv. 113) is held by all Moslems to be factual and
sundry writers have recorded the tricks played by Al-Maamun
with the Pyramids of Ji'zah which still show his handiwork. 1
The germ of Isaac of Mosul (vol. iv. 1 19) is found in Al-Mas'udi
who (vii. 65) names " Burdn " the poetess (Ibn Khali, i. 268) ; and
Harun al-Rashid and the Slave-girl (vol. iv. 153) is told by a host
1 Omitted by Lane for some reason unaccountable as usual. A correspondent sends
me his version of the lines which occur in The Nights (vol. v. 106 and 107) :
Behold the Pyramids and hear them teach
What they can tell of Future and of Past :
They would declare, had they the gift of speech,
The deeds that Time hath wrought from first to last.
* * #
'My friends, and is there aught beneath the sky
Can with th' Egyptian Pyramids compare?
In fear of them strong Time hath passed by ;
And everything dreads Time in earth and air.
Terminal Essay. 15*
of writers. AH the Persian is a rollicking tale of fun from some
Iranian jest-book : Abu Mohammed hight Lazybones belongs to
the cycle of " Sindbad the Seaman," with a touch of Whittington
and his Cat; and Zumurrud (" Smaragdine") in Ali Shar (vol. iv.
187) shows at her sale the impudence of Miriam the Girdle-girl
and in bed the fescennine device of the Lady Budur. The
" Ruined Man who became Rich," etc. (vol. iv. 289) is historical
and Al-Mas'udi (vii. 281) relates the coquetry of Mahbubah the
concubine (vol. iv. 291) : the historian also quotes four couplets,
two identical with Nos. 'i and 2 in The Nights (vol. iv. 292) and
adding :
Then see the slave who lords it o'er her lord o In lover privacy and public
site:
Behold these eyes that one like Ja'afar saw : o Allah on Ja'afar reign boons
infinite !
Uns al-Wujud (vol. v. 32) is a love-tale which has been trans-
lated into a host of Eastern languages ; and The Lovers of the
Banu Ozrah belong to Al-Mas'ud/'s "Martyrs of Love" (vii.. 355),
with the ozrite ''Ozrite love" of Ibn Khallikan (iv. 537). " Harun
and the Three Poets " (vol. v. 77) has given to Cairo a proverb
which Burckhardt (No. 561) renders " The day obliterates the
word or promise of the Night," for
The promise of night is effaced by day.
It suggests Congreve's Doris :
For who o'er night obtain'd her grace,
She can next day disown, etc.
" Harun and the three Slave-girls " (vol. v. 81) smacks of Gargantua
(lib. i. c. 11): "It belongs to me, said one: Tis mine, said
another " ; and so forth. The Simpleton and the Sharper (vol. v. 83)
like the Foolish Dominie (vol. v. 1 18) is an old Joe Miller in Hindu
as well as Moslem folk-lore. "Kisra Anushirwdn" (vol. v. 87) is
I $2 Alf Laylah wa Laylak.
"The King, the Owl and the Villages of Al-Mas'udi " (iii. 171),
who also notices the Persian monarch's four seals of office
(ii. 204) ; and " Masrur the Eunuch and Ibn Al-Karibi (vol. v. 109)
is from the same source as Ibn al-Maghazili the Reciter and a
Eunuch belonging to the Caliph Al-Mu'tazad (vol. viii. 161). In
the Tale of Tawaddud (vol. v. 1 39) we have the fullest develop-
ment of the disputations and displays of learning then so common
in Europe, teste the " Admirable Crichton "; and these were affected
not only by Eastern tale-tellers but even by sober historians. To
us it. is much like "padding" when Nuzhat al-Zamdn (vol. ii.
1 56 etc.) fags her hapless hearers with a discourse covering sixteen
mortal pages ; when the Wazir Dandan (vol. ii. 195 etc.) reports
at length the cold speeches of the five high-bosomed maids and
the Lady of Calamities and when Wird Khan, in presence of his
papa (Nights cmxiv-xvi.) discharges his patristic exercitations and
heterogeneous knowledge. Yet Al-Mas'udi also relates, at dreary
extension (vol. vi. 369) the disputation of the twelve sages in
presence of Barmecide Yahya upon the origin, the essence, the
accidents and the omnes res of Love; and in another place
(vii. 181) shows Honayn, author of the Book of Natural Questions,
undergoing a long examination before the Caliph Al-Wdsik
(Vathek) and describing, amongst other things, the human teeth.
See also the dialogue or catechism of Al-Hajjaj and Ibn Al-
Kirrfya in Ibn Khallikan (vol. i. 238-240)
These disjecta membra of tales and annals are pleasantly
'relieved by the seven voyages of Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi.
1-83). The "Arabian Odyssey " may, like its Greek brother,
descend from a noble family, the u Shipwrecked Mariner " a Coptic
travel-tale of the twelfth dynasty (B.C. 3500) preserved on a papyrus
at St. Petersburg. In its actual condition " Sindbad " is a fanciful
compilation, like De Foe's " Captain Singleton," borrowed from
travellers' tales of an immense variety and extracts from Al-Idrfsi,
Al-Kazwfni and Ibn al-Wardi. Here we find the Polyphemus, the
Terminal Essay. 153
Pygmies and the cranes of Homer and Herodotus ; the escape of
Aristomenes; the Plinian monsters well known in Persia; the
magnetic mountain of Saint Brennan (Brandanus); the aeronautics
of "Duke Ernest of Bavaria" 1 and sundry cuttings from Moslem
writers dating between our ninth and fourteenth centuries. 2 The
" Shaykh of the Seaboard " appears in the Persian romance of
Kdmarupa translated by Francklin, all the particulars absolutely
corresponding. The " Odyssey " is valuable because it shows how
far Eastward the mediaeval Arab had extended : already in The
Ignorance he had reached China and had formed a centre of trade
at Canton. But the higher merit of the cento is to produce one of
the most charming books of travel ever written, like Robinson
Crusoe the delight of children and the admiration of all ages.
The hearty life and realism of Sindbad are made to stand out in
strong relief by the deep melancholy which pervades " The City of
Brass" (vol. vi. 83), a dreadful book for a dreary day. It is curious
to compare the doleful verses (pp. 103, 105) with those spoken to
Caliph Al-Mutawakkil by Abu al-Hasan All (Al-Mas'udi, vii. 246).
We then enter upon the venerable Sindibad-nameh, the Malice of
Women (vol. vi. 122), of which, according to the Kitab al-Fihrist,
(vol. i. 305) there were two editions a Sinzibad al-Kabfr and a
Sinzibad al-Saghfr, the latter being probably an epitome of the
former. This bundle of legends, I have shown, was incorporated
with The Nights as an editor's addition ; and as an independent
work it has made the round of the world. Space forbids any
1 A rhyming Romance by Henry of Waldeck (flor. A.D. 1160) with a Latin poem on
the same subject by Odo and a prose version still popular in Germany. (Lane's Nights
iii. 8 1 ; and Weber's " Northern Romances.")
2 e.g. 'Ajaib al-Hind (= Marvels of Ind) ninth century, translated by J. Marcel
Devic, Paris, 1878 ; and about the same date the Two Mohammedan Travellers, trans-
lated by Renaudot. In the eleventh century we have the famous Sayyid al-Idrisi ; in
the thirteenth the 'Ajaib al-Makhlukat of Al-Kazwfni and in the fourteenth the Kharidat
al- Ajaib of Ibn Al-Wardi. Lane (in loco) traces most of Sindbad to the two latter
sources.
1 54 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
detailed notice of this choice collection of anecdotes for which a
volume would be required. I may, however, note that the " Wife's
device '.' (vol. vi. 152) has its analogues in the Katha (chapt. xiii.)
in the Gesta Romanorum (No. xxviii.) and in Boccaccio (Day iii. 6
and Day vi. 8), modified by La Fontaine to Richard Minutolo
(Contes lib. i. tale 2) : it is quoted almost in the words of The
Nights by the Shaykh al-Nafzawi (p. 207). That most witty and
indecent tale The Three Wishes (vol. vi. 180) has forced its way
disguised as a babe into our nurseries. Another form of it is
found in the Arab proverb " More luckless than Basus " (Kamus),
a fair Israelite who persuaded her husband, also a Jew, to wish
that she might become the loveliest of women. Jehovah granted
it, spitefully as Jupiter ; the consequence was that her contu-
macious treatment of her mate made him pray that the beauty
might be turned into a bitch ; and the third wish restored her to
her original state.
The Story of Judar (vol. vi. 207) is Egyptian, to judge from its
local knowledge (pp. 217 and 254) together with its ignorance of
Marocco (p. 223). It shows a contrast, in which Arabs delight, of
an almost angelical goodness and forgiveness with a well-nigh
diabolical malignity, and we find the same extremes in Abu Sir
the noble-minded Barber and the hideously inhuman Abu Kir.
The excursion to Mauritania is artfully managed and gives a
novelty to the mise-en-scene. Gharib and Ajib (vi. 207, vii. 91)
belongs to the cycle of Antar and King Omar bin Nu'man : its
exaggerations make it a fine type of Oriental Chauvinism, pitting
the superhuman virtues, valour, nobility and success of all that is
Moslem, against the scum of the earth which is non-Moslem.
Like the exploits of Friar John of the Chopping-knives (Rabelais i.
c. 27) it suggests ridicule cast on impossible battles and tales of
giants, paynims and paladins. The long romance is followed by
thirteen historiettes all apparently historical : compare " Hind,
daughter of Al-Nu'man " (vol. viii. 7-14$) and " Isaac of Mosul
Terminal Essay. 155
and the Devil" (vol. vii. 136-139) with Al-Mas'udi v. 365 and
vi. 340. They end in two long detective-tales like those which
M. Gaboriau has popularised, the Rogueries of Daltlah and the
Adventures of Mercury AH, based upon the principle, " One thief
wots another." The former, who has appeared before (vol. ii. 329),
seems to have been a noted character : Al-Mas'udi says (viii. 175)
" in a word this Shaykh (Al-'Ukab) outrivalled in his rogueries
and the ingenuities of his wiles Ddllah (Dalilah ?) the Crafty and
other tricksters and coney-catchers, ancient and modern."
The Tale of Ardashir (vol. vii. 209-264) lacks originality : we
are now entering upon a series of pictures which are replicas of
those preceding. This is not the case with that charming Undine,
Julnar the Sea-born (vol. vii. 264-308) which, like Abdullah of
the Land and Abdullah of the Sea (vol. ix. Night cmxl.), describes
the vie intime of mermen and merwomen. Somewhat resembling
Swift's inimitable creations, the Houyhnhnms for instance, they
prove, amongst other things, that those who dwell in a denser
element can justly blame and severely criticise the contradictory
and unreasonable prejudices and predilections of mankind. Sayf
al-Muluk (vol. viii. Night dcclviii.), the romantic tale of two lovers,
shows by its introduction that it was originally an independent
work and it is known to have existed in Persia during the eleventh
century: this novella has found its way into every Moslem
language of the East even into Sindi, which calls the hero " Say-
fal." Here we again meet the Old Man of the Sea or rather the
Shaykh of the Seaboard and make acquaintance with a Jinn
whose soul is outside his body : thus he resembles Hermotimos
of Klazamunae in Apollonius, whose spirit left his mortal frame a
discretion. The author, philanthropically remarking (vol. viii, 4)
" Knowest thou not that a single mortal is better, in Allah's sight,
than a thousand Jinn ? " brings the wooing to a happy end which
leaves a pleasant savour upon the mental palate.
Hasan of Bassorah (vol. viii. 7-145) is a Master Shoetie an a
156 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
large scale like Sindbad, but his voyages and travels extend into
the supernatural and fantastic rather than the natural world.
Though long the tale is by no means wearisome and the characters
are drawn with a fine firm hand. The hero with his hen-like
persistency of purpose, his weeping, fainting and versifying is
interesting enough and proves that " Love can find out the
way/' The charming adopted sister, the model of what the
feminine friend should be ; the silly little wife who never knows
that she is happy till she loses happiness ; the violent and hard-
hearted queen with all the cruelty of a good woman, and the
manners and customs of Amazon-land are outlined with a life-like
vivacity. Khalifah the next tale (vol. viii. 145-184) is valuable as
a 'study of Eastern life, showing how the fisherman emerges from
the squalor of his surroundings and becomes one of the Caliph's
favourite cup-companions. Ali Nur al-Din (vol. viii. 264) and King
Jali'ad (vol. ix., Night dcccxciv) have been noticed elsewhere and
there is little to say of the concluding stories which bear the
evident impress of a more modern date.
Dr. Johnson thus sums up his notice of The Tempest. " What-
ever might have been the intention of their author, these tales
are made instrumental to the production of many characters,
diversified with boundless invention, and preserved with profound
skill in nature ; extensive knowledge of opinions, and accurate
observation of life. Here are exhibited princes, courtiers and
sailors, all speaking in their real characters. There is the agency
of airy spirits and of earthy goblin, the operations of magic, the
tumults of a storm, the adventures of a desert island, the native
effusion of untaught affection, the punishment of guilt, and the
final happiness of those for whom our passions and reason are
equally interested."
We can fairly say this much and far more for our Tales.
Viewed as a tout ensemble in full and complete form, they are
a drama of Eastern life, and a Dance of Death made sublime by
Terminal Essay. 157
faith and the highest emotions, by the certainty of expiation and
the fulness of atoning equity, where virtue is victorious, vice is
vanquished and the ways of Allah are justified to man. They are
a panorama which remains ken-speckle upon the mental retina.
They form a phantasmagoria in which archangels and angels,
devils and goblins, men of air, of fire, of water, naturally mingle
with men of earth ; where flying horses and talking fishes are
utterly realistic : where King and Prince meet fisherman and
pauper, lamia and cannibal ; where citizen jostles Badawi,
eunuch meets knight; the Kazi hob-nobs with the thief; the
pure and pious sit down to the same tray with the bawd and the
pimp ; where the professional religionist, the learned Koranist and
the strictest moralist consort with the wicked magician, the scoffer
and the debauchee-poet like Abu Nowas ; where the courtier
jests with the boor and where the sweep is bedded with the noble
lady. And the characters are " finished and quickened by a few
touches swift and sure as the glance of sunbeams." The work is a
kaleidoscope where everything falls into picture ; gorgeous palaces
and pavilions ; grisly underground caves and deadly wolds ; gar-
dens fairer than those of the Hesperid ; seas dashing with clashing
billows upon enchanted mountains ; valleys of the Shadow of
Death ; air-voyages and promenades in the abysses of ocean ; the
duello, the battle and the siege ; the wooing of maidens and the
marriage-rite. All the splendour and squalor, the beauty and
baseness, the glamour and grotesqueness, the magic and the
mournfulness, the bravery and the baseness of Oriental life are
here : its pictures of the three great Arab passions, love, war and
fancy, entitle it to be called " Blood, Musk and Hashish." 1 And
still more, the genius of the story-teller quickens the dry bones of
history, and by adding Fiction to Fact revives the dead past : the
1 So Hector France proposed to name his admirably realistic volume "Sous le
Burnous" (Paris, Charpentier, 1886).
158 A If Lay lab wa Laylah.
Caliphs and the Caliphate return to Baghdad and Cairo, whilst
Asmodeus kindly removes the terrace-roof of every tenement and
allows our curious glances to take in the whole interior. This is
perhaps the best proof of their power. Finally, the picture-gallery
opens with a series of weird and striking adventures and shows as
a tail-piece, an idyllic scene of love and wedlock in halls before
reeking with lust and blood.
I have noticed in my Foreword that the two main character-
istics of The Nights are Pathos and Humour, alternating with highly
artistic contrast, and carefully calculated to provoke tears and
smiles in the coffee-house audience which paid for them. The
sentimental portion mostly breathes a tender passion and a simple
sadness : such are the Badawi's dying farewell (vol. i. 75); the
lady's broken heart on account of her lover's hand being cut off
(vol. i. 277) ; the Wazir's death, the mourner's song and the
"tongue of the case " (vol. ii. 10) ; the murder of Princess Abrizah
with the babe sucking its dead mother's breast (vol. ii. 128) ; and,
generally, the last moments of good Moslems (e.g. vol. v. 167),
which are described with inimitable terseness and naivete'. The
i
sad and the gay mingle in the character of the good Hammam-
stoker who becomes Roi Crotte ; and the melancholy deepens in
the Tale of the Mad Lover (vol. v. 138); the Blacksmith who
could handle fire without hurt (vol. v. 271); the Devotee Prince
(vol. v. ill) and the whole Tale of Azi'zah (vol. ii. 298), whose
angelic love is set off by the sensuality and selfishness of her more
fortunate rivals. A new note of absolutely tragic dignity seems
to be struck in the Sweep and the Noble Lady (vol. iv. 125),
showing the piquancy of sentiment which can be evolved from the
common and the unclean. The pretty conceit of the Lute (vol. v.
244) is afterwards carried out in the Song (vol. viii. 281), which is
a masterpiece of originality 1 and (in the Arabic) of exquisite
1 I mean in European literature, not in Arabic where it is a lieu commun. See three
^several forms of it in one page (505) of Ibn Kallikan, vol. iii.
Terminal Essay. 159
tenderness and poetic melancholy, the wail over the past and the
vain longing for reunion. And the very depths of melancholy, of
majestic pathos and of true sublimity are reached in Many*
columned Iram (vol. iv. 113) and the City of Brass (vol. vi. 83) :
the metrical part of the latter shows a luxury of woe ; it is one long
wail of despair which echoes long and loud in the hearer's heart.
In my Foreword I have compared the humorous vein of the
comic tales with our northern " wut," chiefly for the dryness and
slyness which pervade it. But it differs in degree as much as the
pathos varies. The staple article is Cairene "chaff," a peculiar
banter possibly inherited from their pagan forefathers : instances
of this are found in the Cock and Dog (vol. i. 22), the Eunuch's
address to the Cook (vol. i. 244), the Wazir's exclamation, " Too
little pepper ! " (vol. i. 246), the self-communing of Judar (vol.
vi. 219), the Hashish-eater in Ali Shdr (vol. iv. 213), the scene
between the brother- Wazirs (vol. i. 197), the treatment of the
Gobbo (vol. i 221, 228), the Water of Zemzem (vol. i. 284),
and the Eunuchs Bukhayt and Kafur * (vol. ii. 49, 51). At
times it becomes a masterpiece of fun, of rollicking Rabelaisian
humour underlaid by the caustic mother-wit of Sancho Panza,
as in the orgie of the Ladies of Baghdad (vol. i. 92, 93) ; the
Holy Ointment applied to the beard of Luka the Knight
"unxerunt regem Salomonem " (vol. ii. 222); and Ja'afar and
the Old Badawi (vol. v. 98), with its reminiscence of " chaffy "
King Amasis. This reaches its acme in the description of ugly
old age (vol. v. 3) ; in The Three Wishes, the wickedest of satires on
the alter sexrrs (vi. iSo) ; in Ali the Persian (vol. iv. 1 39) ; in the
.Lady and her Five Suitors (vol. vi. 172), which corresponds and
contrasts with the dully told Story of Upakosa and her Four
Lovers of the Kathd (p. 17) ; and in The Man of Al-Yaman (vol.
iv. 245) where we find the true Falstaffian touch. But there is
1 My attention has been called to the resemblance between the half-lie and Job
160 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
sterling wit, sweet and bright, expressed without any artifice of
words, in the immortal Barber's tales of his brothers, especially the
second, the fifth and the sixth (vol. i. 324, 325 and 343). Finally,
wherever the honest and independent old debauchee Abu Nowas
makes his appearance the fun becomes fescennine and milesian.
B. THE MANNER OF THE NIGHTS.
And now, after considering the matter, I will glance at the
language and style of The Nights. The first point to remark is
the peculiarly happy framework of the Recueil, which I cannot
but suspect set an example to the Decamerone and its host of
successors. 1 The admirable Introduction, a perfect mise-en-scene,
gives the amplest raison d'etre of the work, which thus has all the
unity required for a great romantic recueil. We perceive this
when reading the contemporary Hindu work the Kathd Sarit
Sdgara, 2 which is at once so like and so unlike The Nights : here
1 Boccaccio (ob. Dec. 2, 1375), may easily have heard of The Thousand Nights
and a Night or of its archetype the Hazdr Afsanah. He was followed by the Piacevoli
Notti of Giovan Francisco Straparola (A.D. 1550)) translated into almost all European
languages but English : the original Italian is now rare. Then came the Heptameron
ou Histoire des amans fortunez of Marguerite d'Angouleme, Reyne de Navarre and
only sister of Francis I. She died in 1549 before the days were finished: in 1558
Pierre Boaistuan published the Histoire des amans fortunez and in 1559 Claude Guiget
the "Heptameron." Next is the Hexameron of A. de Torquemada, Rouen, 1610;
and, lastly, the Pentamerone or El Cunto de li Cunte of Giambattista Basile (Naples
1637), known by the meagre abstract of J. E. Taylor and the caricatures of George
Cruikshank (London 1847-50). I propose to translate this Pentamerone direct from the
Neapolitan and have already finished half the work.
2 Translated and well annotated by Prof. Tawney, who, however, affects asterisks
and has considerably bowdlerised sundry of the tales, e.g. the Monkey who picked out
the Wedge (vol. ii. 28). This tale, by the by, is found in the Khirad Afroz (i. 128) and
in the Anwar-i-Suhayli (chapt. i.) and gave .rise to the Persian proverb, " What has a
monkey to do with carpentering ? " It is curious to compare the Hindu with the Arabic
work whose resemblances are as remarkable as their differences, while even more
notable is their correspondence in impressionising the reader. The Thaumaturgy of
both is the same : the Indian is profuse in demonology and witchcraft ; in trans-
formation and restoration ; in monsters as wind-men, fire-men and water-men ; in
Terminal Essay. 161
the preamble is insufficient ; the whole is clumsy for want of a
thread upon which the many independent tales and fables should
air-going elephants and flying horses (i. 541-43) ; in the wishing cow, divine goats
and laughing fishes (i. 24) ; and in the speciosa miracula of magic weapons. He
delights in fearful battles (i. 400) fought with the same weapons as the Moslem
and rewards his heroes with a "turband of honour" (i. 266) in lieu of a robe.
There is a quaint family likeness arising from similar stages and states of society : the
city is adorned for gladness; men carry money in a robe-corner and exclaim "Ha!
good ! " (for " Good, by Allah ! ") ; lovers die with exemplary facility ; the "soft-sided "
ladies drink spirits (i. 61) and princesses get drunk (i. 476) ; whilst the Eunuch, the
Hetaira and the bawd (Kuttini) play the same preponderating parts as in The Nights.
Our Brahman is strong in love-making ; he complains of the pains of separation in
this phenomenal universe; he revels in youth, "twin-brother to mirth," and beauty
which has illuminating powers ; he foully reviles old age and he alternately praises and
abuses the sex, concerning which more presently. He delights in truisms, the fashion
of contemporary Europe (see Palmer in of England chapt. vii), such as "It is the
fashion of the heart to receive pleasure from those things which ought to give it,"
tc. etc. What is there the wise cannot understand ? and so forth. He is liberal
in trite reflections and frigid conceits (i. 19, 55, 97, 103, 107, in fact everywhere) ;
and his puns run through whole lines : this in fine Sanskrit style is inevitable.
Yet some of his expressions are admirably terse and telling, e.g. Ascending the
swing of Doubt : Bound together (lovers) by the leash of gazing ; Two babes
looking like Misery and Poverty : Old Age seized me by the chin : (A lake) first
assay of the Creator's skill : (A vow) difficult as standing on a sword-edge : My vital
spirits boiled with the fire of woe : Transparent as a good man's heart : There was
a certain convent full of fools : Dazed with scripture-reading : The stones could
not help laughing at him : The Moon kissed the laughing forehead of the East :
She was like a wave of the Sea of Love's insolence (ii. 127), a wave of the Sea of
Beauty tossed up by the breeze of Youth : The King played dice, he loved slave-girls, he
told lies, he sat up o' nights, he waxed wroth without reason, he took wealth wrongously,
he despised the good and honoured the bad (i. $62) ; with many choice bits of the same
kind. Like the Arab the Indian is profuse in personification ; but the doctrine of pre-
existence, of incarnation and emanation and an excessive spiritualism, ever aiming at the
infinite, makes his imagery run mad. Thus we have Immoral Conduct embodied ; the
God of Death ; Science ; the Svarga-heaven ; Evening ; Untimeliness ; and the Earth-
bride, while the Ace and Deuce of dice are turned into a brace of Demons. There is
also that grotesqueness which the French detect even in Shakespeare, e.g. She drank in
his ambrosial form with thirsty eyes like partridges (i. 476) and it often results from the
comparison of incompatibles, .e.g. a row of birds likened to a garden of nymphs; and
from forced allegories, the favourite figure of contemporary Europe. Again, the rhetorical
Hindu style differs greatly from the sobriety, directness and simplicity of the Arab, whose
motto is Brevity combined with precision, except where the latter falls into " fine
writing." And, finally, there is a something in the atmosphere of these Tales which is
unfamiliar to the West and which makes them, as more than one has remarked to me,
very hard reading.
VOL. X. L
1 62 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
be strung 1 ; and the consequent disorder and confusion tell upon
the reader, who cannot remember the sequence without taking
notes.
As was said in my Foreword " without the Nights no Arabian
Nights ! " and now, so far from holding the pauses " an
intolerable interruption to the narrative," I attach additional im-
portance to these pleasant and restful breaks introduced into
long and intricate stories. Indeed beginning again I should adopt
the plan of the Cal. Edit, opening and ending every division with
a dialogue between the sisters. Upon this point, however, opinions
will differ and the critic will remind me that the concensus of the
MSS. would be wanting : The Bresl. Edit, in many places merely
interjects the number of the night without interrupting the tale ;
the MS. in the Bibliotheque Nationale used by Galland contains
only cclxxxii and the Frenchman ceases to use the division after
the ccxxxvith Night and in some editions after the cxcviith. 2 A
fragmentary MS., according to Scott whose friend J.Anderson found
it in Bengal, breaks away after Night xxix ; and in the Wortley
Montagu, the Sultan relents at an early opportunity, the stories, as
in Galland, continuing only as an amusement, I have been careful
to preserve the balanced sentences with which the tales open ; the
tautology and the prose-rhyme serving to attract attention, e.g.,
" In days of yore and in times long gone before there was a
King," etc. ; in England where we strive not to waste words this
1 The Introduction (i. 1-5) leads to the Curse of Pushpadanta and Malyavdn who live
on Earth as Vararuchi and Gunadhya and this runs through lib. i. Lib. ii. begins with
the Story of Uda"yana to whom we must be truly grateful as our only guide : he and his
son Naravahanadatta fill up the rest and end with lib. xviii. Thus the want of the clew
or plot compels a division into books, which begin for instance with " We worship the
elephantine proboscis of Ganesha" (lib. x. i), a reverend and awful object to a Hindu
but to Englishmen mainly suggesting the "Zoo." The "Bismillah" of The Nights is
much more satisfactory.
9 See pp. $ 6 Avertissement des Editeurs, Le Cabinet des Fees, vol. xxxviii : Geneva,
1788. Galland's Edit, of mdccxxvi ends with Night ccxxxiv and the English translations
with ccxxxvi and cxcvii. See retro p. 82.
Terminal Essay. 163
becomes " Once upon a time." The closings also are artfully
calculated, by striking a minor chord after the rush and hurry
of the incidents, to suggest repose : " And they led the most
pleasurable of lives and the most delectable, till there came to
them the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies and
they became as though they had never been," Place this by the
side of Boccaccio's favourite formulae : Egli conquisto poi la
Scozia, e funne re coronato (ii, 3) ; Et onorevolmente visse infino
alia fine (ii, 4), ; Molte volte goderono del loro amore : Iddio
faccia noi goder del nostro (iii, 6) : E cosi nella sua grossezza si
rimase e ancor vi si sta (vi, 8). We have further docked this
tail into : " And they lived happily ever after."
I cannot take up the Nights, in their present condition, without
feeling that the work has been written down from the Rawi or
Nakkal, 1 the conteur or professional story-teller, also called Kassas
and Maddah, corresponding with the Hindu Bhat or Bard. To
these men my learned friend Baron A. von Kremer would attribute
'the Mu'allakat vulgarly called the Suspended Poems, as being
" indited from the relation of the Rawi." Hence in our text the
frequent interruption of the formula Kal' al-Rawi = quotes the
reciter ; dice Turpino. Moreover, The Nights read in many places
like a hand-book or guide for the professional, who would learn
them by heart ; here and there introducing his " gag " and
" patter." To this " business " possibly we may attribute much of
the ribaldry which starts up in unexpected places ": it was meant
simply to provoke a laugh. How old the custom is and how un-
changeable is Eastern life is shown, a correspondent suggests, by
the Book of Esther which might form part of The Alf Laylah.
1 There is a shade of difference in the words ; the former is also used for Reciters of
Traditions a serious subject. But in the case of Hammad surnamed Al-Rawiyah (the
Rhapsode) attached to the Court of Al-Walid, it means simply a conteur So the
Greeks had Homerista= reciters of Homer, as opposed to the Homeridae or School of
Homer.
164 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
" On that night (we read in Chap. vi. i) could not the King
sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the
chronicles ; and they were read before the King." The Rawi
would declaim the recitative somewhat in conversational style ;
he would intone the Saj'a or prose-rhyme and he would chant to
the twanging of the Rabab, a one-stringed viol, the poetical
parts. Dr. Scott * borrows from the historian of Aleppo a life-like
picture of the Story-teller. " He recites walking to and fro in the
middle of the coffee-room, stopping only now and then, when the
expression requires some emphatical attitude. He is commonly
heard with great attention; and not unfrequently in the midst of
some interesting adventure, when the expectation of his audi-
ence is raised to the highest pitch, he breaks off abruptly and
makes his escape, leaving both his hero or heroine and his
audience in the utmost embarrassment. Those who happen to
be near the door endeavour to detain him, insisting upon the
story being finished before he departs ; but he always makes his
retreat good 2 ; and the auditors suspending their curiosity are
induced to return at the same time next day to hear the sequel.
He has no sooner made his exit than the company in separate
0**-*" **'
parties fall to disputing about the characters of the drama or
the event of an unfinished adventure. The controversy by degrees
becomes serious and opposite opinions are maintained with no
less warmth than if the fall of the city depended upon the
decision."
At Tangier, where a murder in a '* coffee-house " had closed
these hovels, pending a sufficient payment to the Pasha; and
1 Vol. i. Preface p. v. He notes tKat Mr. Dallaway describes the same scene at
Constantinople, where the Story-teller was used, like the modern "Organs of Govern-
ment " in newspaper shape, for " reconciling the people to any recent measure of the Sultan
and Vizier.*' There are women Rdwiyahs for the Harems and some have become famous
like the Mother of Hasan al-Basri (Ibn Khali, i, 370).
* Hence the Persian proverb, " Baki-e-dastan farda =.the rest of the tale to-mono^
said to askers of silly questions.
Terminal Essay. 165
where, during the hard winter of 1885-86, the poorer classes were
compelled to puff their Kayf (Bhang, cannabis indicd} and sip
their black coffee in the muddy streets under a rainy sky, I found
the Rdwi active on Sundays and Thursdays, the market-days.
The favourite place was the " Soko de barra," or large bazar, outside
the town whose condition is that of Suez and Bayrut half a
century ago. It is a foul slope ; now slippery with viscous mud,
then powdery with fetid dust, dotted with graves and decaying
tombs, unclean booths, gargottes and tattered tents, and frequented
by women, mere bundles of unclean rags, and by men wearing the
haik or burnus, a Franciscan frock, tending their squatting camels and
chaffering over cattle for Gibraltar beef-eaters. Here the market-
people form ring about the reciter, a stalwart man affecting little rai-
ment besides a broad waist-belt into which his lower chiffons are
tucked, and noticeable only for his shock hair, wild eyes, broad grin
and generally disreputable aspect. He usually handles a short
stick ; and, when drummer and piper are absent, he carries a tiny
tomtom shaped like an hour-glass, upon which he taps the periods.
This Scealuidhe, as the Irish call him, opens the drama with
extempore prayer, proving that he and the audience are good
Moslems : he speaks slowly and with emphasis, varying the diction
with breaks of animation, abundant action and the most comical
grimace : he advances, retires and wheels about, illustrating every
point with pantomime ; and his features, voice and gestures are
so expressive that even Europeans who cannot understand a word
of Arabic divine the meaning of his tale. The audience stands
breathless and motionless surprising strangers 1 by the ingenuous-
ness and freshness of feeling hidden under their hard and savage
exterior. The performance usually ends with the embryo actor
going round for alms and flourishing in air every silver bit, the
1 The scene is excellently described in, "Morocco: Its People and Places," by
Edmondo de Amicis (London : Cassell, 1882), a most refreshing volume after the
enforced platitudes and commonplaces of English travellers.
1 66 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
usual honorarium being a few " fliis," that marvellous money of
Barbary, big coppers worth one-twelfth of a penny. All the tales
I heard were purely local, but Fakhri Bey, a young Osmanli
domiciled for some time in Fez and Mequinez, assured me that
The Nights are still recited there.
Many travellers, including Dr. Russell, have complained that
they failed to find a complete MS. copy of The Nights. Evidently
they never heard of the popular superstition which declares that
no one can read through them without dying it is only fair that
my patrons should know this. Yacoub Artfn Pasha declares that
the superstition dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
and he explains it in two ways. Firstly, it is a facetious exagger-
ation, meaning that no one has leisure or patience to wade through
the long repertory. Secondly, the work is condemned as futile.
When Egypt produced savants and legists like Ibn al-Hajar, Al-
'Ayni, and Al-Kastallani, to mention no others, the taste of the
country inclined to dry factual studies and positive science ; nor,
indeed, has this taste wholly died out : there are not a few who,
like Khayri Pasha, contend that the mathematic is more useful
even for legal studies than history and geography, and at Cairo
the chief of the Educational Department has always been an
engineer, t.e. 9 a mathematician. The Olema declared war against
all " futilities," in which they included not only stories but also what
is politely entitled Authentic History. From this to the fatal
effect of such lecture is only a step. Society, however, cannot rest
without light literature ; so the novel-reading class was thrown back
upon writings which had all the indelicacy and few of the merits
of The Nights.
Turkey is the only Moslem country which has dared to produce 1
a regular drama 1 and to arouse the energies of such brilliant
1 It began, however, in Persia where the celebrated Darwaysh Mukhlis, Chief Sofi of
Isfahan in the xviith century, translated into Persian tales certain Hindu plays of which a
Terminal Essay. 167
writers as MuniT Pasha, statesman and scholar ; Ekrem Bey,
literate and professor ; Kemal Bey held by some to be the greatest
writer in modern Osmanli-land and Abd al-Hakk Hamid Bey, first
Secretary of the London Embassy. The theatre began in its
ruder form by taking subjects bodily from The Nights ; then it
annexed its plays as we do the Novel having ousted the Drama
from the French ; and lastly it took courage to be original.
Many years ago I saw Harun aURashid and the Three Kalandars,
with deer-skins and all their properties de rigueur, in the court-
yard of Government House, Damascus, declaiming to the extreme
astonishment and delight of the audience. It requires only to
glance at The Nights for seeing how much histrionic matter they
contain.
In considering the style of The Nights we must bear in mind
that the work has never been edited according to our ideas of the
process. Consequently there is no just reason for translating the
whole verbatim et literatim, as has been done by Torrens, Lane
and Payne in his " Tales from the Arabic." l This conscientious
MS. entitled Alfaraga Badal-Schidda (Al-faraj ba'd al-shiddah =r Joy after annoy) exists
in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. But to give an original air to his work, he entitled
it " Hazdr o yek Ruz "= Thousand and One Days, and in 1675 he allowed his friend
Petis de la Croix, who happened to be at Isfahan, to copy it. Le Sage (of Gil Bias)
Is said to have converted many of the tales of Mukhlis into comic operas, which were
performed at the Theatre Italien. I still hope to see The Nights at the Lyceum.
1 This author, however, when hazarding a change of style which is, I think, regretable,
has shown abundant art by filling up the frequent deficiencies of the text after the
/ashion of Baron McGuckin de Slane in Ibn Khallikan. As regards the tout ensemble
of his work, a noble piece of English, my opinion will ever be that expressed in my
Foreword A carping critic has remarked that the translator, "as may be seen in every
page, is no Arabic scholar." If I be a judge, the reverse is the case : the brilliant and
beautiful version thus traduced is almost entirely free from the blemishes and careless-
ness which disfigure Lane's, and thus it is far more faithful to the original. But it is
no secret that on the staff of that journal the translator" of Villon has sundry enemies,
vrat's diables enjupponh> who take every opportunity of girding at him because he does
not belong to the clique and because he does good work when theirs is mostly sham.
The sole fault I find with Mr. Payne is that his severe grace of style treats an unclassical
work as a classic, when the romantic and irregular would have been a more appropriate
garb. But this is a mere matter of private judgment.
1 68 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
treatment is required for versions of an author like Camoens
whose works were carefully corrected and arranged by a com-
petent litterateur, but it is not merited by The Nights as they
now are. The Macnaghten, the Bulak and the Bayrut texts,
though printed from MSS. identical in order, often differ in minor
matters. Many friends have asked me to undertake the work :
but, even if lightened by the aid of Shaykhs, Munshis and
copyists, the labour would be severe, tedious and thankless :
better leave the holes open than patch them with fancy work
or with heterogeneous matter. The learned, indeed, as Lane
tells us (i. 74; iii. 740), being thoroughly dissatisfied with the
plain and popular, the ordinary and "vulgar" note of the
language, have attempted to refine and improve it and have more
than once threatened to remodel it, that is, to make it odious.
This would be to dress up Robert Burns in plumes borrowed
from Dryden and Pope.
The first defect of the texts is in the distribution and arrange-
ment of the matter, as I have noticed in the case of Sindbad the
Seaman (vol. vi. 77). Moreover, many of the earlier Nights are
overlong and not a few of the others are overshort : this, however,
has the prime recommendation of variety. Even the vagaries
of editor and scribe will not account for all the incoherences,
disorder and inconsequence, and for the vain iterations which
suggest that the author has forgotten what he said. In places
there are dead allusions to persons and tales which are left dark,
e.g. vol. i. pp. 43, 57, 61, etc. The digressions are abrupt and
useless, leading nowhere, while sundry pages are wearisome for
excess of prolixity or hardly intelligible for extreme conciseness.
The perpetual recurrence of mean colloquialisms and of words
and idioms peculiar to Egypt and Syria 1 also takes from the
1 Here I offer a few, but very few, instances from the Breslau text which is the greatest
sinner in this respect. Mas. for fern., vol. i. p. 9, and three times in seven pages.
Terminal Essay. 169
pleasure of the perusal. Yet we cannot deny that it has its
use : this unadorned language of familiar conversation in its day,
adapted for the understanding of the people, is best fitted for the
Rawi's craft in the camp and caravan, the Harem, the bazar and
the coffee-house. Moreover, as has been well said, The Nights
is the only written half-way house between the literary and
colloquial Arabic which is accessible to all, and thus it becomes
necessary to the students who would qualify themselves for
service in Moslem lands from Mauritania to Mesopotamia. It
freely uses Turkish words like " Khdtun " and Persian terms
as " Shahbandar," thus requiring for translation not only a
somewhat archaic touch, but also a vocabulary borrowed from
various sources : otherwise the effect would not be reproduced.
In places, however, the style rises to the highly ornate
Ahna and nahna for nahnu, (iv. 370, 372) ; And ba-ashtar! = I will buy (iii, 109) ; and
And 'A"mfl = I will do (v. 367). Alaykf for Alayki (i. 18), Antl for Anti (iii. 66)
and generally long i for short T. 'Ammdl (from 'amala = he did) tahlam = certainly
thou dreamest, and 'Ammalin yaakulii = they were about to eat (ix. 315) : Aywd for
Ay wa'llahi = yes, by Allah (passim). Bita' = belonging to, e.g. Sdra bitd'k = it is
become thine (ix. 352) and Mata' with the same sense (iii. 80). Dd '1-khurj = this
saddle-bag (ix. 336) and Di (for hazah) = this woman (iii. 79) or this time (ii. 162).
Fayn as rdha fayn = whither is he gone ? (iv. 323) : Kamd badri == he rose early
(ix. 318) : Kaman =r also, a word known to every European (ii. 43) : Katt = never
(ii. 172): Kawdm (pronounced 'awam) = fast, at once (iv. 385) and Rih asif kawi
(pron. 'awi) rra wind, strong very. Laysh, e.g. bi-tasalnf laysh (ix. 324) =r why do you
ask me? a favourite form for Ii ayya shayyin : so Mdfish = md fihi shayyun (there is no
thing) in which Herr Landberg (p. 425) makes " Sha, le present de pouvoir." Min
ftjali = for my sake ; and Li-ajal al-taudi'a i= for the sake of taking leave (Mac. Edit.
\. 384). Rijdl nautiyah = men sailors when the latter word would suffice: Shuwayh
(dim. of shayy) = a small thing, a little (iv. 309) like Moyyah (dim. of Md) a little
water: Wadduni = they carried me (ii. 172) and lastly the abominable Wdhid gharib
= one (for a) stranger. These few must suffice : the tale of Judar and his brethren,
which in style is mostly Egyptian, will supply a number of others. It must not,
however, be supposed, as many have done, that vulgar and colloquial Arabic is of
modern date : we find it in the first century of Al-Isktm, as is proved by the tale of
Al-Hajjdj and Al-Shabi (Ibn Khallikan, ii. 6). The former asked " Kara ataa-k?"
(=rhow much is thy pay?) to which the latter answered, " Alfayn ! " (=two thousand !).
"Tut," cried the Governor, " Kara atau-ka?" to which the poet replied as correctly
and classically, " Alfdni."
170 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
approaching the pompous ; e.g. the Wazirial addresses in
the tale of King Jali'ad. The battle-scenes, mostly admirable
(vol. v; 365), are told with the conciseness of a despatch and
the vividness of an artist ; the two combining to form perfect
<f word-pictures." Of the Badi'a or euphuistic style, " parleying
euphuism," and of Al-Saj'a, the prose rhyme, I shall speak in
a future page.
The characteristics of the whole are na'fvet^ and simplicity/
clearness and a singular concision. The gorgeousness is in the
imagery not in the language ; the words are weak while the sense,
as in the classical Scandinavian books, is strong ; and here the
Arabic differs diametrically from the. florid exuberance and
turgid amplifications of the Persian story-teller, which sound so
hollow and unreal by the side of a chaster model. It abounds
in formulae such as repetitions of religious phrases which are
unchangeable. There are certain stock comparisons, as Lokman's
wisdom, Joseph's beauty, Jacob's grief, Job's patience, David's
music, and Maryam the Virgin's chastity. The eyebrow is a Nun ;
the eye a Sdd, the mouth a Mi'm. A hero is more prudent than
the crow, a better guide than the Katd grouse, more generous than
the cock, warier than the crane, braver than the lion, more
aggressive than the panther, finer-sighted than the horse, craftier
than the fox, greedier than the gazelle, more vigilant than the
dog> and thriftier than the ant. The cup-boy is a sun rising
from the dark underworld symbolfsed by his collar ; his cheek-
mole is a crumb of ambergris, his nose is a scymitar grided at the
curve ; his lower lip is a jujube ; his teeth are the Pleiades, or haiUj
stones ; his browlocks are scorpions ; his young hair on the upper'
lip is an emerald ; his side beard is a swarm of ants or a Lam
(1-letter) enclosing the roses or anemones of his cheek. The cup-
girl is a moon who rivals the sheen of the sun ; her forehead is a
pearl set off by the jet of her " idiot-fringe ; " her eyelashes scorn
the sharp sword ; and her glances are arrows shot from the bow of
Terminal Essay. I/I
the eyebrows. A mistress necessarily belongs, though living in
the next street, to the Wady Liwa and to a hostile clan of
Badawin whose blades are ever thirsting for the lover's blood and
whose malignant tongues aim only at the " defilement of separa-
tion.'' Youth is upright as an Alif, or slender and bending as a
branch of the Bdn-tree which we should call a willow- wand , k
while Age, crabbed and crooked, bends groundwards vainly
seeking in the dust his lost juvenility. As Baron de Slane say.
of these stock comparisons (Ibn Khali, i. xxxvi.), " The figura-
tive language of Moslem poets is often difficult to be understood.
The narcissus is the eye ; the feeble stem of that plant bends
languidly under its flower, and thus recalls to mind the languor
of the eyes. Pearls signify both tears and teeth ; the latter are
sometimes called hailstones, from their whiteness and moisture ;
the lips are cornelians or rubies ; the gums, a pomegranate flower ;
the dark foliage of the myrtle is synonymous with the black hair
of the beloved, or with the first down on the cheeks of puberty.
The down itself is called the izdr t or head-stall of the bridle, and
the curve of the izar is compared to the letters lam (J) and nun
(ej). 2 Ringlets trace on the cheek or neck the letter Waw (j);
they are called Scorpions (as the Greek o-kopTribs), either from their
dark colour or their agitated movements ; the eye is a sword ;
the eyelids scabbards ; the whiteness of the complexion, camphor;
and a mole or beauty-spot, musk, which term denotes also dark
hair. A mole is. sometimes compared also to an ant creeping on
the cheek towards the honey of the mouth ; a handsome face is
both a full moon and day ; black hair is night ; the waist is a
willow-branch or a lance ; the water of the face is self-respect : a
1 In Russian folk-songs a young girl is often compared with this tree e.g."
Ivooshka, ivooshka zelonaia moia
(O Willow, O green Willow mine !)
2 So in Hector France (*' La vache enragee ") *' Le sourcil en accent circonflexe et I'oeil
n point d'interrogation."
172 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
poet sells the water of his face 1 when he bestows mercenary praises
on a rich patron."
This does not sound promising : yet, as has been said of Arab
music, the persistent repetition of the same notes in the minor key
is by no means monotonous and ends with haunting the ear,
occupying the thought and touching the soul. Like the distant
frog-concert and chirp of the cicada, the creak of the water-wheel
and the stroke of hammers upon the anvil from afar, the murmur
of the fountain, the sough of the wind and the plash of the
wavelet, they occupy the sensorium with a soothing effect, form*
ing a barbaric music full of sweetness and peaceful pleasure.
1 In Persian " Ab-i-ru " in India pronounced Abru.
Terminal Essay. 173
IV.
SOCIAL CONDITION.
I HERE propose to treat of the Social Condition which The
Nights discloses, of Al-Islam at the earlier period of its develop-
ment, concerning the position of women and about the pomology
of the great Saga-book.
A. AL-ISLAM.
A splendid and glorious life was that of Baghdad in the days
of the mighty Caliph, 1 when the Capital had towered to the
zenith of grandeur and was already trembling and tottering to
the fall. The centre of human civilization, which was then con-
fined to Greece and Arabia, and the metropolis of an Empire
exceeding in extent the widest limits of Rome, it was essentially
a city of pleasure, a Paris of the ixth century. The " Palace
of Peace " (Ddr al-Salam), worthy successor of Babylon and
Nineveh, which had outrivalled Damascus, the " Smile of the
Prophet," and Kufah, the successor of Hira and the magnificent
creation of Caliph Omar, possessed unrivalled advantages of
site and climate. The Tigris-Euphrates Valley, where the fabled
Garden of Eden has been placed, in early ages succeeded the
Nile- Valley as a great centre of human development ; and the
prerogative of a central and commanding position still promises
it, even in the present state of decay and desolation under the
1 For further praises of his poetry and eloquence see the extracts from Fakhr al-Din
of Rayy (an annalist of the xivth century A.D.) in De Sacy's Chrestomathie Arabe,
vol i
1 74 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
unspeakable Turk, a magnificent future, 1 when railways and
canals shall connect it with Europe. The city of palaces and
government offices, hotels and pavilions, mosques and colleges,
kiosks and squares, bazars and markets, pleasure grounds and
orchards, adorned with all the graceful charms which Saracenic
architecture had borrowed from the Byzantines, lay couched upon
the banks of the Dijlah-Hiddekel under a sky of marvellous
purity and in a climate which makes mere life a "Kayf" the
luxury of tranquil enjoyment. It was surrounded by far^
extending suburbs, like Rusafah on the Eastern side and
villages like Baturanjah, dear to the votaries of pleasure ; and
with the roar of a gigantic capital mingled the hum of prayer,
the trilling of birds, the thrilling of harp and lute, the shrilling
of pipes, the witching strains of the professional Almah, and
the minstrel's lay.
The population of Baghdad must have been enormous when
the smallest number of her sons who fell victims to Hulaku
Khan in 1258 was estimated at eight hundred thousand, while
other authorities more than double the terrible "butcher's bill."
Her policy and polity were unique. A well-regulated routine
of tribute and taxation, personally inspected by the Caliph ; a
network of waterways, canaux d'arrosage ; a noble system of
highways, provided with viaducts, bridges and caravanserais,
and a postal service of mounted couriers enabled it to collect
as in a reservoir the wealth of the outer world. The facilities
for education were upon the most extended scale ; large sums,
from private as well as public sources, were allotted to Mosques,
each of which, by the admirable rule of Al-Islam, was expected
to contain a school: these establishments were richly endowed
1 After this had been written I received " Babylonien, das reichste Land in der Vorzeit
und das lohnendste Kolonisationsfeld fur die Gegenwart," by my learned friend
Dr. Aloys Sprenger, Heidelberg, 1886.
Terminal Essay. 175
and stocked with professors collected from every land between
Khorasan and Marocco 1 ; and immense libraries 2 attracted the
learned of all nations. It was a golden age for poets and
panegyrists, koranists and literati, preachers and rhetoricians,
physicians and scientists who, besides receiving high salaries and
fabulous presents, were treated with all the honours of Chinese
Mandarins; and, like these, the humblest Moslem fisherman or
artizan could aspire through knowledge or savoir faire to the
highest offices of the Empire. The effect was a grafting of
Egyptian, and old Mesopotamian, of Persian and Graeco-Latin
fruits, by long Time deterioriated, upon the strong young stock
of Arab genius ; and the result, as usual after such imping, was a
shoot of exceptional luxuriance and vitality. The educational
establishments devoted themselves to the three main objects recog-
nized by the Moslem world, Theology, Civil Law and Belles
Lettres ; and a multitude of trained Councillors enabled the ruling
powers to establish and enlarge that complicated machinery of
government, at once concentrated and decentralized, a despotism
often fatal to the wealthy great but never neglecting the interests
of the humbler lieges, which forms the beau ide*al of Oriental
administration. Under the Chancellors of the empire the Kazis
administered law and order, justice and equity; and from their
decisions the poorest subject, Moslem or miscreant, could claim
with the general approval of the lieges, access and appeal to the
Caliph who, as Imdm or Antistes of the Faith was High President
of a Court of Cassation.
Under wise administration Agriculture and Commerce, the twin
1 The first school for Arabic literature was opened by Ibn Abbas who lectured to
multitudes in a valley near Meccah, this rude beginning was followed by public teaching
in the great Mosque of Damascus. For the rise of the "Madrasah," Academy or
College, see Introduct. to Ibn Khallikan pp. xxvii. -xxxii.
8 When Ibn Abba"d the Sahib (Wazir) was invited to visit one of the Samanides, he
refused, one reason being that he would require 400 camels to carry only his books.
176' A If Laylah wa Laylah.
pillars of national prosperity, necessarily flourished. A scientific
canalisation, with irrigation-works inherited from the ancients, made
the Mesopotamian Valley a rival of Kemi the Black Land, and
rendered cultivation a certainty of profit, not a mere speculation
as it must ever be to those who perforce rely upon the fickle rains
of Heaven. The remains of extensive mines prove that this
source of public wealth was not neglected; navigation laws en-
couraged transit and traffic ; and ordinances for the fisheries
aimed at developing a branch of industry which is still back-
ward even during the xixth century. Most substantial encourage-
ment was given to trade and commerce, to manufactures and
handicrafts, by the flood of gold which poured in from all parts
of earth ; by the presence of a splendid and luxurious court,
and by the call for new arts and industries which such a civili-
zation would necessitate. The crafts were distributed into guilds
and syndicates under their respective chiefs, whom the govern-
ment did not "govern too much": these Shahbandars, Mukad-
dams and Nakfbs regulated the several trades, rewarded the
industrious, punished the fraudulent and were personally answer-
able, as we still see at Cairo, for the conduct of their constituents.
Public order, the sine qua non of stability and progress, was
preserved first, by the satisfaction of the lieges who, despite
their characteristic turbulence, had few if any grievances ; and,
secondly, by a well-directed and efficient police, an engine of
statecraft which in the West seems most difficult to perfect. In
the East, however, the Wali or Chief Commissioner can reckon
more or less upon the unsalaried assistance of society : the cities
are divided into quarters shut off one from other by night, and
every Moslem is expected, by his law and religion, to keep watch
upon his neighbours, to report their delinquencies and, if necessary,
himself to carry out the penal code. But in difficult cases the
guardians of the peace were assisted by a body of private
detectives, women as well as men : these were called Tawwabun
Terminal Essay. 177
= the Penitents, because like our Bow-street runners, they had
given up an even less respectable calling. Their adventures still
delight the vulgar, as did the Newgate Calendar of past genera-
tions; and to this class we owe the Tales of Calamity Ahmad,
Dalilah the Wily One, Saladin with the three Chiefs of Police
(vol. iv. 271), and Al-Malik al-Zdhir with the Sixteen Constables
(Bresl. Edit. xi. pp. 321-99). Here and in many other places we
also see the origin of that " picaresque " literature which arose in
Spain and overran Europe ; and which begat Le Moyen de
Parvenir. 1
I need say no more on this heading, the civilisation of Baghdad
contrasting with the barbarism of Europe then Germanic, The
Nights itself being the best expositor. On the other hand the
action of the state-religion upon the state, the condition of Al-
Islam during the reign of Al-Rashid, its declension from the
primitive creed and its relation to Christianity and Christendom,
require a somewhat extended notice. In offering the following
observations it is only fair to declare my standpoints.
1. All forms of "faith," that is, belief in things unseen, not
subject to the senses and therefore unknown and (in our present
stage of development) unknowable, are temporary and transitory ;
no religion hitherto promulgated amongst men shows any pros-
pect of being final or otherwise than finite.
2. Religious ideas, which are necessarily limited, may all be
traced home to the old seat of science and art, creeds and
polity in the Nile-valley and to this day they retain the clearest
signs of their origin.
3. All so-called " revealed " religions consist mainly of three
portions, a cosmogony more or less mythical, a history more or
less falsified and a moral code more or less pure.
1 This " Salmagondis " by Francois Beroalde de Vc^ville was afterwards worked by
Tabarin. the pseudo-Bruscambille d'Aubigne and Sorel.
VOL. X. M
A If Lay la k wa Laylak^
Al-Islam, it has been said, is essentially a fighting faith and
never shows to full advantage save in the field. The exceeding
luxury of a wealthy capital, the debauchery and variety of vices
which would spring up therein, naturally as weeds in a rich fallow,
and the cosmopolitan views which suggest themselves in a
meeting-place of nations, were sore trials to the primitive
simplicity of the " Religion of Resignation " the saving faith.
Harun and his cousin-wife, as has been shown, were orthodox and
even fanatical ; but the Barmecides were strongly suspected of
heretical leanings; and while the many-headed showed itself, as
usual, violent, and ready to do battle about an Azan-call, the
learned, who sooner or later leaven the masses, were profoundly
dissatisfied with the dryness and barrenness of Mohammed's creed,
so acceptable to the vulgar, and were devising a series of schisms
and innovations.
In the Tale of Tawaddud (vol. v. 189) the reader has seen a
fairly extended catechism of the Creed (Din), the ceremonial
observances (Mazhab) and the apostolic practices (Sunnat) of the
Shafi'f school which, with minor modifications, applies to the
other three orthodox. Europe has by this time clean forgotten
some tricks of her former bigotry, such as " Mawmet " (an idol !)
and '* Mahommerie " (mummery J ), a place of Moslem worship :
educated men no longer speak with Ockley of the " great impostor
Mahomet/' nor believe with the learned and violent Dr. Prideaux
that he was foolish and wicked enough to dispossess " certain poor
orphans, the sons of an inferior artificer " (the Banu Najjar !). A
host of books has attempted, though hardly with success, to
1 I prefer this derivation to Strutt's adopted by the popular, " mumm is said to be
derived from the Danish word mumme, or momme in Dutch (Germ. = larva) and signifies
disguise in a mask, hence a mummer." In the Promptoriuni Parvulorum we have
" Mummy nge," mussacio, vel mussatus'': if was a pantomime in dumb show, e*g.
* I mumme in a mummynge ;" " Let us go mumme (mummer) to nyghte in women's
lapparayle." "Mask" and " Mascarade," for persona, larva or vizard, also derive, I
have noticed, from an Arabic word Maskharah.
Terminal Essay. 179
enlighten popular ignorance upon a crucial point ; namely, that
the Founder of Al-Islam, like the .Founder of Christianity, never
pretended to establish a new religion. His claims, indeed, were
limited to purging the ' ' School of Nazareth " of the dross of ages
and of the manifold abuses with which long use had infected
its early constitution : hence to the unprejudiced observer his
reformation seems to have brought it nearer the primitive and
original doctrine than any subsequent attempts, especially the
Judaizing tendencies of the so-called "Protestant" churches. The
Meccan Apostle preached that the Hanafjyyah or orthodox belief,
which he subsequently named Al-Islam, was first taught by Allah,
in all its purity and perfection, to Adam and consigned to certain
inspired volumes now lost ; 'and that this primal Holy Writ
received additions in the days of his descendants Shis (Seth) and
Idris (Enoch ?), the founder of the Sabian (not " Sabaean ") faith.
Here, therefore, Al-Islam at once avoided the deplorable assump-
tion of the Hebrews and the Christians, an error which has been
so injurious to their science and their progress, of placing their
" first man " in circa B.C. 4000 or somewhat subsequent to the
building of the Pyramids : the Pre-Adamite 1 races and dynasties
of the Moslems remove a great stumbling-block and square with
the anthropological views of the present day. In process of time,
when the Adamite religion demanded a restoration and a supple-
ment, its pristine virtue was revived, restored and further developed
by the books communicated to Abraham, whose dispensation thus
takes the place of the Hebrew Noah and his Noachidae. In due
time the Torah, or Pentateuch, superseded and abrogated the
Abrahamic dispensation; the "Zabur" of David (a book not
1 The Pre-Adamite doctrine has been preached but with scant success in Christendom.
Pyrere, a French Calyinist, published (A.D. 1655) his " Pr3eadamit8e,sive exercitatio supra
versibws 12, 13, 14, cap. v. Epist. Paul, ad Romanes," contending that Adam was called
the first man because with him the law began. It brewed a storm of wrath and the
author was fortunate to escape with only imprisonment.
l8o A If Laylah wa Laylah.
confined to the Psalms) reformed the Torah; the Injil or Evangel
reformed the Zabur and was itself purified, quickened and per-
fected by the Koran which means Kartfaxfa the Reading or the
Recital. Hence Locke, with many others, held Moslems to be
unorthodox, that is anti-Trinitarian Christians who believe in the
immaculate Conception, in the Ascension and in the divine
mission of Jesus ; and when Priestley affirmed that "Jesus was
sent from God," all Moslems do the same. Thus they are, in the
main point of doctrine connected with the Deity, simply Arians as
opposed to Athanasians. History proves that the former was the
earlier faith which, though formally condemned in A.D. 325 by
Constantine's Council of Nice, 1 overspread the Orient beginning
with Eastern Europe, where Ulphilas converted the Goths ; which
extended into Africa with the Vandals, claimed a victim or martyr
as late as in the sixteenth century 2 and has by no means died
out in this our day.
The Talmud had been completed a full century before
Mohammed's time and the Evangel had been translated into
Arabic ; moreover travel and converse with his Jewish and
Christian friends and companions must have convinced the
Meccan apostle that Christianity was calling as loudly for reform
as Judaism had done. 3 An exaggerated Trinitarianism or rather
1 According to Socrates the verdict was followed by a free fight of the Bishop-voters
Over the word " consubstantiality."
2 Servetus burnt (in A.D. 1553 for publishing his Arian tractate) by Calvin, whom
half educated Roman Catholics in England firmly believe to have been a pederast. This
arose, I suppose, from his meddling with Rabelais who, in return for the good joke Rabie
leesus, presented a better anagram, "Jan (a pimp or cuckold) Cul " (Calvinus).
3 There is no more immoral work than the " Old Testament." Its deity is an ancient
Hebrew of the worst type, who condones, permits or commands every sin in the
Decalogue to a Jewish patriarch, qua patriarch. He orders Abraham to murder his son
and allows Jacob to swindle his brother ; Moses to slaughter an Egyptian and the Jews to
plunder and spoil a whole people, after inflicting upon them a series of plagues which
would be the height of atrocity if the tale were true. Th_ Cations of Canaan are then
extirpated. Ehixl. for treacherously disembowelling King Eglon, is made judge over
Israel. Jael is biessed above women (Joshua v. 24) for vilely murdering a sleeping guest ;
Terminal Essay. 181
"V-
Tritheism, a " Fourth Person " and Saint-worship had virtually
dethroned the Deity; whilst Mariolatry had made the faith a religio
muliebris, and superstition had drawn from its horrid fecundity
an incredible number of heresies and monstrous absurdities.
Even ecclesiastic writers draw the gloomiest pictures of the
Christian Church in the fourth and seventh centuries, and one
declares that the " Kingdom of Heaven had become a Hell."
Egypt, distracted by the blood-thirsty religious wars of Copt and
Greek, had been covered with hermitages by a gens aeterna of
semi-maniacal superstition. Syria, ever " feracious of heresies/'
had allowed maay of her finest tracts to be monopolised by
monkeries and nunneries. 1 After many a tentative measure
Mohammed seems to have built his edifice upon two bases, the
unity of the Godhead and the priesthood of the paterfamilias.
He abolished for ever the " sacerdos alter Christus " whose
existence, as some one acutely said, is the best proof of
Christianity, and whom all know to be its weakest point. The
Moslem family, however humble, was to be the model in miniature
of the State, and every father in Al-Islam was made priest and
pontiff in his own house, able unaided to marry himself, to circum-
cise (to baptise as it were) his children, to instruct them in the law~
the horrid deeds of Judith and Esther are made examples to mankind ; and David, after an
adultery and a homicide which deserved ignominious death, is suffered to massacre a host
of his enemies, cutting some in two with saws and axes and putting others into brick-
kilns. For obscenity and impurity we have the tales of Onan and Tamar, Lot and his
daughters, Amnon and his fair sister (2 Sam. xiii.), Absalom and his father's concubines,
the " wife of whoredoms "of Hosea and, capping all, the Song of Solomon. For the horrors
forbidden to the Jews, who, therefore, must have practised them, see Levit. viii. 24 ; xi. 5 ;
xvii. 7 ; xviii. 7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 17, 21, 23, and xx. 3. For mere filth what can be fouler
than ist Kings, xviii. 27 ; Tobias ii. n ; Esther xiv. 2 ; Eccl. xxii. 2 ; Isaiah xxxvi. 12 ;
Jeremiah iv. 5, and (Ezekiel iv. 12-15), where the Lord changes human ordure into
11 Cow-chips ! " Ce qui excuse Dieu, said Henri Beyle, c'est qu'il n'existe pas, I add,
as man has made him.
1 It was the same in England before the " Reformation," and in France where, during
our days, a returned priesthood collected in a few years ' Peter-pence " to the tune of
five hundred millions of francs. And these men wonder at being turned out !
A If Laylah ^va Laylah.
and canonically to bury himself (vol. viii. 22). Ritual, properly so
called, there was none ; congregational prayers were merely those
of the individual en masse and the only admitted approach to a
sacerdotal order were the Olema or scholars learned in the legistic
and the Mullah or schoolmaster. By thus abolishing the priest-
hood Mohammed reconciled ancient with modern wisdom. " Scito
dominum," said Cato, " pro tota famili4 rem divinam facere ": " No
priest at a birth, no priest at a marriage, no priest at a death," is
the aspiration of the present Rationalistic School.
The Meccan apostle wisely retained the compulsory sacrament'
of circumcision and the ceremonial ablutions of the Mosaic law ; and
the five daily prayers not only diverted man's thoughts from the
world but tended to keep his body pure. These two institutions
had been practised throughout life by the Founder of Christianity ;
but the followers who had never even seen him, abolished them for
purposes evidently political and propagandist, By ignoring the
truth that cleanliness is next to godliness they paved the way for
such saints as Simon Stylites and Sabba who, like the lowest
Hindu orders of ascetics, made filth a concominant and an
evidence of piety : even now English Catholic girls are at times
forbidden by Italian priests a frequent use of the bath as a sign-
post to the sin of " luxury." Mohammed would have accepted
the morals contained in the Sermon on the Mount much more
readily than did the Jews from whom its matter was borrowed. 1
He did something to abolish the use of wine, which in the East
means only its abuse ; and he denounced games of chance, well
knowing that the excitable races of sub-tropical climates cannot
play with patience, fairness or moderation. He set aside certain
sums for charity to be paid by every Believer and he was the first to
establish a poor-rate (Zakat) : thus he avoided the shame and
scandal of mendicancy which, beginning in the Catholic countries
1 Deutsch on the Talmud : Quarterly Review, 1867.
Terminal Essay. 183.
of Southern Europe, extends to Syria and as far East as
Christianity is found. By these and other measures of the same
import he made the ideal Moslem's life physically clean, moderate
and temperate.
But Mohammed the " master mind of the age," had, we must
own, a " genuine prophetic power, a sinking of self in the Divine,
not distinguishable in kind from the inspiration of the Hebrew
prophets," especially in that puritanical and pharisaic narrowness
which, with characteristic simplicity, can see no good outside its
own petty pale. He had insight as well as outsight, and the two
taught him that personal and external reformation were mean
matters compared with elevating the inner man. In the " purer
Faith," which he was commissioned to abrogate and to quicken,
he found two vital defects equally fatal to its energy and to its
longevity. These were (and are) its egoism and its degradation
of humanity. Thus it cannot be a " pleroma": it needs a Higher
Law. 1 As Judaism promised the good Jew all manner of temporal
blessings, issue, riches, wealth, honour, power, length of days> so
Christianity offered the good Christian, as a bribe to lead a godly
life, personal salvation and a future state of happiness, in fact,
the Kingdom of Heaven, with an alternative threat of Hell. It
never rose to the height of the Hindu Brahmans and Lao-Tse (the
" Ancient Teacher ") ; of Zeno the Stoic and his disciples the noblt
Pharisees 2 who believed and preached that Virtue is its own
reward. It never dared to say, " Do good for Good's sake 3 ; "
1 Evidently. Its cosmogony is a myth read literally: its history is, for the most part.'
a highly immoral distortion, and its ethics are those of the Talraudic Hebrews. It has
done good work in its time ; but now it shows only decay and decrepitude in the place of
vigour and progress. It is dying hard, but it is dying of the slow poison of science.
2 These Hebrew Stoics would justly charge the Founder of Christianity with preaching
a more popular and practical doctrine, but a degradation from their own far higher and
more ideal standard.
\ * Dr. Theodore Christlieb (" Modern Doubt and Christian Relief," Edinburgh : Clark,
,1874) can even now write ; " So then the ' full age ' to which humanity is at
1 84 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
even now it does not declare with Cicero, " The sum of all is that
what is right, should be sought for its own sake, because it is right,
and not because it is enacted/' Jt does not even now venture to
say with Philo Judaeus, " The good man seeks the day for the sake
of the day, and the light for the light's sake ; and he labours to
acquire what is good for the sake of the good itself, and not of
anything else." So far for the egotism, nafve and unconscious,
of Christianity, whose burden is, " Do good to escape Hell and
gain Heaven."
A no less defect in the " School of Galilee " is its low view of
human nature. Adopting as sober and authentic history an
Osirian-Hebrew myth which Philo and a host of Rabbis explain
away, each after his own fashion, Christianity dwells, lovingly as it
were, upon the " Fall " of man * and seems to revel in the con-
temptible condition to which " original sin " condemned him ;
thus grovelling before God ad majorem Dei gloriam. To such a
point was and is this carried that the Synod of Dort declared,
Infantes infidelium morientes in infanti& reprobatos esse statuimus ;
nay, many of the orthodox still hold a Christian babe dying un-
baptised to be unfit for a higher existence, and some have
even created a " limbo " expressly to domicile the innocents " of
present supposed to have attained, consists in man's doing good purely for goodness sake !
Who sees not the hollowness of this bombastic talk. That man has yet to be born whose
practice will be regulated by this insipid theory (dieser graven Theorie). What is the
Idea of goodness per se P * * * The abstract idea of goodness is not an effectual
motive for well-doing " (p. 104). My only comment is Jest ignoble! His reverence
acts the part of Satan in Holy Writ, " Does Job serve God for naught ? " Compare this
selfish, irreligious, and immoral view with Philo Judseus (On the Allegory of the Sacred
Laws, cap. Iviii,), to measure the extent of the fall from Pharisaism to Christianity.
And the latter is still infected with the "bribe-and-threat doctrine: " I once immensely
scandalised a Consular Chaplain by quoting the noble belief of the ancients, and it
was some days before he could recover mental equanimity. The degradation is now
inbred.
1 Of the doctrine of the Fall the heretic Marcion wrote : "The Deity must either be
deficient in goodness if he willed, in prescience if he did not foresee, or in power if he did
not prevent it."
Terminal Essay. 185
whom is the kingdom of Heaven." Here, if any where, the cloven
foot shows itself and teaches us that the only solid stratum
underlying priestcraft is one composed of s. d.
And I never can now believe it, my Lord ! (Bishop) we come to this earth
Ready damned, with the seeds of evil sown quite so thick at our birth,
sings Edwin Arnold. 1 We ask, can infatuation or hypocrisy
for it must be the one or the other go farther? But the
Adamical myth is opposed to all our modern studies. The deeper
we dig into the Earth's " crust," the lower are the specimens of
human remains which occur; and hitherto not a single " find " has
come to revive the faded glories of
Adam the goodliest man of men since born (!)
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Thus Christianity, admitting, like Judaism, its own saints and
santons, utterly ignores the progress of humanity, perhaps the only
belief in which the wise man can take unmingled satisfaction.
Both have proposed an originally perfect being with hyacinthine
locks, from whose type all the subsequent humans are degradations
physical and moral. We on the other hand hold, from the
evidence of our senses, that early man was a savage very little
superior to the brute ; that during man's millions of years upon
earth there has been a gradual advance towards perfection, at
times irregular and even retrograde, but in the main progressive ;
and that a comparison of man in the xixth century with the cave-
man 2 affords us the means of measuring past progress and of
calculating the future of humanity.
1 In his charming book, " India Revisited."
* This is the answer to those who contend with much truth that the moderns are by
no means superior to the ancients of Europe : they look-at the results of only 3000
years instead of 30,000 or 300,000.
1 86 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Mahommed was far from rising to the moral heights of the
ancient sages : he did nothing to abate the egotism of Christianity ;
he even exaggerated the pleasures of its Heaven and the horrors
of its Hell. On the other hand he did much to exalt human
nature. He passed over the "Fall " with a light hand ; he made
man superior to the angels : he encouraged his fellow-creatures to
be great and good by dwelling upon their nobler not their meaner
side ; he acknowledged, even in this world, the perfectability of
mankind, including womankind, and in proposing the loftiest
ideal he acted unconsciously upon the grand dictum of chivalry
Honheur oblige. 1 His prophets were mostly faultless men ; and,
if the " Pure of Allah " sinned, he " sinned against himself."
Lastly, he made Allah predetermine the career and fortunes, not
only of empires, but of every created being ; thus inculcating
sympathy and tolerance of others, which is true humanity, a\:d a
proud resignation to evil as to good fortune. This is the doctrine
which teaches the vulgar Moslem a dignity observed even by the
"blind traveller/' and which enables him to display a moderation,
a fortitude, and a self-command rare enough amongst the followers
of the " purer creed.
Christian historians explain variously the portentous rise of Al-
Islam and it's marvellous spread over vast regions, not only of
pagans and idolaters but of Christians. Prideaux disingenuously
suggests that it "seems to have been purposely raised up by
God, to be a scourge to the Christian church for not living in
accordance with their most holy religion." The popular excuse is
by the free use of the sword ; this, however, is mere ignorance :
in Mohammed's day and early Al-Islam only actual fighters were
slain 2 : the rest were allowed to pay the Jizyah, or capitation-
1 As a maxim the saying is attributed to the Due de Le"vis, but it is much older.
* There are a few, but only a few, frightful exceptions to this rule, especially in the case
of Khalid bin Walid, the Sword of Allah, and his ferocious friend, Darar ibn al- Azwar.
Terminal Essay. 187
tax, and to become tributaries, enjoying almost all the privileges
of Moslems. But even had forcible conversion been most
systematically practised, it would have afforded an insufficient
explanation of the phenomenal rise of an empire which covered
more ground in eighty years than Rome had gained in eight
hundred. During so short a time the grand revival of Monotheism
had consolidated into a mighty nation, despite their eternal blood-
feuds, the scattered Arab tribes ; a six-years' campaign had con-
quered Syria, and a lustre or two utterly overthrew Persia, humbled
the Grasco-Roman, subdued Egypt and extended the Faith along
northern Africa as far as the Atlantic. Within three generations
the Copts of Nile-land had formally cast out Christianity, and the
same was the case with Syria, the cradle of the Nazarene, and
Mesopotamia, one of his strongholds, although both were backed
by all the remaining power of the Byzantine empire. North-
western Africa, which had rejected the idolatro-philosophic system
of pagan and imperial Rome, and had accepted, after lukewarm
fashion, the Arian Christianity imported by the Vandals, and the
" Nicene mystery of the Trinity," hailed with enthusiasm the
doctrines of the Koran and has never ceased to be most zealous
in its Islam. And while Mohammedanism speedily reduced the
limits of Christendom by one-third, while throughout the Arabian,
Saracenic and Turkish invasions whole Christian peoples embraced
the monotheistic faith, there are hardly any instances of defection
from the new creed and, with the exception of Spain and Sicily,
it has never been suppressed in any land where once it took root.
Even now, when Mohammedanism no longer wields the sword, it is
spreading over wide regions in China, in the Indian Archipelago,
and especially in Western and Central Africa, propagated only
by self-educated individuals, trading travellers, while Christianity
But their cruel excesses were loudly blamed by the Moslems, and Caliph Omar only
obeyed the popular voice in superseding the fierce and furious Khalid by the mild
*nd merciful Abu Obaydah.
l88 A if Laylah wa Laylak.
makes no progress and cannot exist on the Dark Continent
without strong support from Government. Nor can we explain
this honourable reception by the " licentiousness " ignorantly
attributed to Al-Islam, one of the most severely moral of institu-
tions ; or by the allurements of polygamy and concubinage, slavery, 1
and a " wholly sensual Paradise" devoted to eating, drinking 2 and
the pleasures of the sixth sense. The true and simple explanation
Is that this grand Reformation of Christianity was urgently wanted
when it appeared, that it suited the people better than the creed
which it superseded and that it has not ceased to be sufficient for
their requirements, social, sexual and vital. As the practical
Orientalist, Dr. Leitner, well observes from his own experience,
" The Mohammedan religion can adapt itself better than any
other and has adapted itself to circumstances and to the needs
of the various races which profess it, in accordance with the
spirit of the age." 3 Hence, I add, its wide diffusion and its
impregnable position. " The dead hand, stiff and motionless "
is a forcible simile for the present condition of Al-Islam ; but it
results from limited and imperfect observation and it fails in the
sine qua non of similes and metaphors, a foundation of fact.
I cannot quit this subject without a passing reference to an
admirably written passage in Mr. Palgrave's travels 4 which is
1 This loo when St. Paul sends the Christian slave Onesimus Back to his unbelieving (?)
master, Philemon ; which in Al-Islam would have created a scandal.
2 This too when the Founder of Christianity talks of " Eating and drinking at his
table !" (Luke xxii. 29). My notes have often touched upon fhis inveterate prejudice,
the result, like the soul -less woman of Al-Islam, of ad captandum, pious fraud. " No
soul knoweth what joy of the eyes is reserved for the good in recompense for their
works" (Koran xxxii. 17) is surely as "spiritual" as St. Paul (I Cor. ii., 9-) Some
ties, however, are very long-lived, especially those begotten by self-interest.
* I have elsewhere noted its strict conservatism which, however, it shares with al]
Eastern faiths in the East. But progress, not quietism, is the principle which governs
humanity and it is favoured by events of most different nature. In Egypt the rule of
Mohammed Ali the Great and in Syria the Massacre of Damascus (1860) have greatly
modified the constitution of Al-Islam throughout the nearer East.
4 Chapt. viii. " Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia; "
London, Macmillan, 1865.
Terminal Essay. 189
essentially unfair to Al-Islam. The author has had ample
opportunities of comparing creeds : of Jewish blood and born a
Protestant, he became a Catholic and a Jesuit (Pere Michel Cohen) 1
in a Syrian convent ; he crossed Arabia as a good Moslem and
he finally returned to his premier amour, Anglicanism. But his
picturesque depreciation of Mohammedanism, which has found due
appreciation in more than one popular volume, 2 is a notable
specimen of special pleading, of the ad captandum in its modern
and least .honest form. The writer begins by assuming the arid
and barren Wahhabi-ism, which he had personally studied, as a
fair expression of the Saving Faith. What should we say to a
Moslem traveller who would make the Calvinism of the sourest
Covenanter, model, genuine and ancient Christianity? What would
sensible Moslems say to these propositions of Professor Maccovius
and the Synod of Dort : Good works are an obstacle to salvation.
God does by no means will the salvation of all men : he does will
sin and he destines men to sin, as sin ? What would they think
of the Inadmissible Grace, the Perseverance of the Elect, the
Supralapsarian and the Sublapsarian and, finally, of a Deity the
author of man's existence, temptation and fall, who deliberately
pre-ordains sin and ruin ? " Father Cohen " carries out into the
regions of the extreme his strictures on the one grand vitalising
idea of Al-Islam, 4< There is no god but God"; 3 and his deduc-
tion concerning the Pantheism of Force sounds unreal and unsound,
compared with the sensible remarks upon the same subject by
1 The Soc. Jesu has, I believe, a traditional conviction that converts of Israelitic blood
bring only misfortune to the Order.
2 I especially allude to an able but most superficial book, the ' Ten Great Religions "
&y James F. Clarke (Boston, Osgood, 1876), which caricatures and exaggerates the false
portraiture of Mr. Palgrave. The writer's admission that, " Something is always gained
by learning what the believers in a system have to say in its behalf," clearly shows us
the man we have to deal with and the "depths of his self-consciousness."
3 But how could the Arabist write such hideous grammar as La Hah ilia Allah "
foe La iliha (accus.) ill' Allah ?
i go A If Lay I ah wa Laylak.
Dr. Badger } who sees the abstruseness of the doctrine and does
not care to include it in hard and fast lines or to subject it to
mere logical analysis. Upon the subject of " predestination "
Mr. Palgrave quotes, not from the Koran, but from the AhAdis or
Traditional Sayings of the Apostle ; but what importance attaches
to a legend in the Mischnah, or Oral Law, of the Hebrews utterly
ignored by the Written Law ? He joins the many in complaining
that even the mention of " the love of God " is absent from
Mohammed's theology, burking the fact that it never occurs in the
Jewish scriptures and that the genius of Arabic, like Hebrew, does
not admit the expression : worse still, he keeps from his reader
such Koranic passages as, to quote no other, " Allah loveth you
and will forgive your sins " (iii. 29). He pities Allah for having
" no son, companion or counsellor " and, of course, he must
equally commiserate Jehovah. Finally his views of the lifeless-
ness of Al-Islam are directly opposed to the opinions of Dr.
Leitner and the experience of all who have lived in Moslem lands.
Such are the ingenious but not ingenuous distortions of fact, the
fine instances of the pathetic fallacy, and the noteworthy illus-
trations of the falsehood of extremes, which have engendered
" Mohammedanism a Relapse : the worst form of Monotheism," 8
1 P- 996 " Muhammad " in vol. iii. Dictionary of Christian Biography. See also the
Illustration of the Mohammedan Creed, etc. from Al-Ghazali introduced (pp. 7277)
Into Bell and Sons' " History of the Saracens" by Simon Ockley, B.D. (London, 1878).
I regret that some Orientalist did not correct the proofs : everybody will not detect
"Al-Lauh al-Mahfuz " (the Guarded Tablet) in Allauh ho'hnehphoud " (p. 171); and
this but a pinch out of a camel-load.
2 The word should have been Arianism. This "heresy " of the early Christians was
much aided by the "Discipline of the Secret," supposed to be of apostolic origin,
which concealed from neophytes, catechumens and penitents all the higher mysteries,
like the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Metastoicheiosis (transubstantiation), the Real
Presence, the Eucharist and the Seven Sacraments; when Arnobiuscould ask, Quid Deo
cum vino est ? and when Justin, fearing the charge of Polytheism, could expressly declare
the inferior nature of the Son to the Father. Hence the creed was appropriately called
Symbol, f'.f. Sign of the Secret. This "mental reservation" lasted till the Edict of
Toleration, issued by Constantine in the fourth century, held Christianity secure when
divulging her " mysteries "; and it allowed Arianism to become /^popular creed.
Terminal Essay. 191
and which have been eagerly seized upon and further deformed
by the authors of popular books, that is, volumes written by those
who know little for those who know less,
M
In Al-Rashid's day a mighty change had passed over the
j. &
primitive simplicity of Al-Islam, the change to which faiths and
creeds, like races and empires and all things sublunary, are
subject. The proximity of Persia and the close intercourse
with the Graeco-Romans had polished and greatly modified the
physiognomy of the rugged old belief : all manner of metaphysical
subtleties had cropped up, with the usual disintegrating effect, and
some of these threatened even the unity of the Godhead. Mu-
saylimah and Karmat had left traces of their handiwork : the
Mutazilites* (separatists or secessors) actively propagated their
doctrine of a created and temporal Koran. The Khdrijf or Ibdzi,
who rejects and reviles Abia Turab (Caliph Ali), contended passi-
onately with the Shf'ah who reviles and rejects the other three
41 Successors ; " and these sectarians, favoured by the learned, and
by the Abbasides in their jealous hatred of the Ommiades, went
to the extreme length of the Ali-Ilahi the God-makers of Ali
whilst the Dahrf and the Zindik, the Mundanist and the Agnostic,
proposed to sweep away the whole edifice. The neo-Platonism
and Gnosticism which had not essentially affected Christendom, 1
found in Al-Islam a rich fallow and gained strength and luxuriance
by the solid materialism and conservatism of its basis. Such were
a few of the distracting and resolving influences which Time had
brought to bear upon the True Believer and which, after some
half a dozen 'generations, had separated the several schisms by a
wider breach than that which yawns between Orthodox, Romanist
1 The Gnostics played rather a fantastic jrole in Christianity with their Demiurge,
their ^Eonogony, their /Eons by syzygies or couples, their Maio and Sabscho and their
beatified bride of Jesus, Sophia Achamoth ; and some of them descended to absolute
absurdities e.g. the Tascodrugitae and the Pattalorhinchitae who during prayers placed
t their fingers upon their noses or in their mouths, &c., reading Psalm cxli. 3,
I9 2 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
and Lutheran. Nor was this scandal in Al-Islam abated until
the Tartar sword applied to it the sharpest remedy.
B. WOMAN.
THE next point I propose to consider is the position of woman-
hood in The Nights, so curiously at variance with the stock ideas
concerning the Moslem home and domestic policy still prevalent;
not only in England, but throughout Europe. Many readers of
these volumes have remarked to me with much astonishment that
they find the female characters more remarkable for decision,
action and manliness than the male; and are wonderstruck by their
masterful attitude and by the supreme influence they exercise
upon public and private life.
I have glanced at the subject of the sex in Al-Islam to such an
extent throughout my notes that little remains here to be added.
Women, all the world over, are what men make them ; and the
main charm of Amazonian fiction is to see how they live and
move and have their being without any masculine guidance.
But it is the old ever-new fable
" Who drew the Lion vanquished ? 'Twas a man ! "
The books of the Ancients, written in that stage of civilisation,
when the sexes are at civil war, make women even more than
in real life the creatures of their masters : hence from the dawn
of literature to the present day the sex has been the subject
of disappointed abuse and eulogy almost as unmerited. Eccle-
siastes, perhaps the strangest specimen of an " inspired volume '*
the world has yet produced, boldly declares " One (upright) man
among a thousand I have found ; but a woman among all have I
not found" (vol. vii. 28), thus confirming the pessimism of
Petronius :
Femina nulla bona est, et si bona contigit ulla
Nescio quo fato res mala facta bona est.
Terminal Essay. 193
In the Psalms again (xxx. 1 5) we have the old sneer at the three
insatiables, Hell, Earth and the Parts feminine (ps vulva)', and
Rabbinical learning has embroidered these and other texts, pro-
ducing a truly hideous caricature. A Hadis attributed to
Mohammed runs, "They (women) lack wits and faith. When
Eve was created Satan rejoiced saying : Thou art half of my
host, the trustee of my secret and my shaft wherewith I shoot and
miss not ! " Another tells us, " I stood at the gate of Heaven,
and lo ! most of its inmates were poor, and I stood at the gate
of Hell, and lo ! most of its inmates were women." 1 " Take care
of the glass-phials ! " cried the Prophet to a camel-guide singing
with a sweet voice. Yet the Meccan apostle made, as has been
seen, his own household produce two perfections. The blatant
popular voice follows with such " dictes " as, " Women are made of
nectar and poison " ; " Women have long hair and short wits "
and so forth. Nor are the Hindus behind hand. Woman has
fickleness implanted in her by Nature like the flashings of lightning
(Kathd s.s. i. 147) ; she is valueless as a straw to the heroic mind
(169); she is hard as adamant in sin and soft as flour in fear
(170) and, like the fly, she quits camphor to settle on compost
(ii. 17). "What dependence is there in the crowing of a hen?"
(women's opinions) says the Hindi proverb \ also " A virgin with
grey hairs ! " (i.e. a monster) and, " Wherever wendeth a fairy face
a devil wendeth with her." The same superficial view of holding
woman to be lesser (and very inferior) man is taken generally by
the classics ; and Euripides distinguished himself by misogyny,
although he drew the beautiful character of Alcestis. Simonides,
more merciful than Ecclesiastes, after naming his swine-women,
dog-women, cat-women, etc., ends the decade with the admirable
bee-woman thus making ten per cent, honest. In mediaeval or
1 "Kitdb al-'Unwan fi Makaid al-Niswan "-The Book of the Beginnings on the
Wiles of Womankind (Lane i. 38.)
VOL. X. N
194 Alf Laylah wa Lay la k.
Germanic Europe the doctrine of the Virgin mother gave the sex a
status unknown to the ancients except in Egypt, where Isis was the
help-mate and completion of Osiris, in modern parlance "The
Woman clothed with the Sun." The kindly and courtly Palmerin
of England, in whose pages " gentlemen may find their choice of
sweet inventions and gentlewomen be satisfied with courtly ex-
pectations," suddenly blurts out, " But in truth women are never
satisfied by reason, being governed by accident or appetite "
(chapt. xlix).
The Nights, as might be expected from the emotional
East, exaggerate these views. Women are mostly " Sectaries
of the god Wiinsch " ; beings of impulse, blown about by
every gust of passion ; stable only in instability. ; constant
only in inconstancy. The false ascetic, the perfidious and
murderous crone and the old hag-procuress who pimps like
Umm Kulsum 1 , for mere pleasure, in the luxury of sin, are drawn
with an experienced and loving hand. Yet not the less do we
meet with examples of the dutiful daughter, the model lover
matronly in her affection, the devoted wife, the perfect mother,
the saintly devotee, the learned preacher, Univira the chaste
widow and the self-sacrificing heroic woman. If we find (vol. iii.
216) the sex described as :
An offal cast by kites where'er they list,
and the studied insults of vol. iii. 318, we also come upon an
admirable sketch of conjugal happiness (vol. vii. ? 43) ; and, to
mention no other, Shahryar's attestation to Shahrazad's excellence
1 This person was one of the Amsal or Exampla of the Arabs. For her first thirty
years she whored ; during the next three decades she pimped for friend and foe ; and,
during the last third of her life, when bed-ridden by age and infirmities, she had a
buck-goat and a nanny tied up in her room and solaced herself by contemplating their
amorous conflicts.
Terminal Essay. 195
in the last charming pages of The Nights. 1 It is the same with the
Katha whose praise and dispraise are equally enthusiastic ; e.g.,
" Women of good family are guarded by their own virtue, the sole
efficient chamberlain ; but the Lord himself can hardly guard the
unchaste. Who can stem a furious stream and a frantic woman ? M
(i. 328). "Excessive love in woman is your only hero for daring "
(i- 339)- " Thus fair ones, naturally feeble, bring about a series of evil
actions which engender discernment and aversion to the world ;
but here and there you will find a virtuous woman who adorneth
a glorious house as the streak of the moon arrayeth the breadth
of the Heavens " (i. 346). " So you see, King, honourable matrons
are devoted to their husbands and 'tis not the case that women
are always bad " (ii. 624). And there is true wisdom in that even
balance of feminine qualities advocated by our Hindu- Hindi
class-book the Toti-nameh or Parrot volume. The perfect woman
has seven requisites. She must not always be merry (i) nor sad
(2) ; she must not always be talking (3) nor silently musing (4) ;
she must not always be adorning herself (5) nor neglecting her
person (6) ; and, (7) at all times she must be moderate and self-
possessed.
The legal status of womankind in Al-Islam is exceptionally
high, a fact of which Europe has often been assured, although
the truth has not even yet penetrated into the popular brain.
Nearly a century ago one Mirza Abu Talib Khan, an Amildar
or revenue collector, after living two years in London, wrote an
"apology" for, or rather a vindication of, his countrywomen
1 And modem Moslem feeling upon the subject has apparently undergone a change.
Ashraf Khan, the Afghan poet, sings',
Since I, the parted one, have come the secrets of the world to ken,
Women in hosts therein I find, but few (and very few) of men.
And the Osmanli proverb is, "Of ten men nine are women! "
-Alf Laylak wa Laylak*
which is still worth reading and quoting. 1 Nations are but
superficial judges of one another : where customs differ they
often remark only the salient distinctive points which, when
examined, prove to be of minor importance. Europeans seeing
and hearing that women in the East are " cloistered " as the
Grecian matron was wont ^vSov pcvtiv and oiKovpav ; that wives
may not walk out with their husbands and cannot accom-
pany them to "balls and parties "; moreover, that they are always
liable, like the ancient Hebrew, to the mortification of the " sister-
wife/' have most ignorantly determined that they are mere serviles
and that their lives are not worth living. Indeed, a learned lady,
'Miss Martineau, once visiting a Harem went into ectasies of pity
and sorrow because the poor things knew nothing of say trigo-
nometry and the use of the globes. Sonnini thought otherwise,
and my experience, like that of all old dwellers in the East, is
directly opposed to this conclusion.
I have noted (Night cmlxii.) that Mohammed, in the fifth year
of his reign, 2 after his ill-advised and scandalous marriage 3 with
i J[ His Persian paper " On the Vindication of the Liberties of the Asiatic Women"
was translated and printed in the Asiatic Annual Register for 1801 (pp. 100-107) ; it is
quoted by Dr. Jon. Scott (Introd. vol. i. p. xxxiv. et seq.) and by a host of writers.
He also wrote a book of Travels translated by Prof- Charles Stewart in 1810 and
re-issued (3 vols. 8vo.) in 1814.
2 The beginning of which I date from the Hijrah, lit. = the separation, popularly
" The Flight." Stating the case broadly, it has become the practice of modern writers
to look upon Mohammed as an honest enthusiast at Meccah and an unscrupulous
despot at Al-Medinah, a view which appears to me eminently unsound and unfair. In
a private station the Meccan Prophet was famed as a good citizen, teste his title Al-
Amfn =. the Trusty. But when driven from his home by the pagan faction, he became
de facto as de jure a king : nay, a royal pontiff; and the preacher was merged in the
Conqueror of his foes and the Commander of the Faithful. His rule, like that of all
Eastern rulers, was stained with blood ; but, assuming as true all the crimes and cruelties
with which Christians charge him and which Moslems confess, they were mere blots upon
a glorious and enthusiastic life, ending in a most exemplary death, compared with the
tissue of horrors and bavock which the Law and the Prophets attribute to Moses, to
Joshua, to Samuel and to the patriarchs and prophets by express commandment of Jehovah.
3 It was not however, incestuous : the scandal came from its ignoring the Arab ' pun*
donor."
Terminal Essay. 197
his foster-daughter Zaynab, established the Hijab or veiling of
women. It was probably an exaggeration of local usage : a
modified separation of the sexes, which extended and still extends
even to the Badawi, must long have been customary in Arabian
cities, and its object was to deliver the sexes from temptation, as
the Koran says (xxxii. 32), " purer will this (practice) be for your
hearts and their hearts.'' 1 The women, who delight in restrictions
which tend to their honour, accepted it willingly and still affect it ;
they do not desire a liberty or rather a licence which they have
learned to regard as inconsistent with their time-honoured notions
of feminine decorum and delicacy, and they would think very
meanly of a husband who permitted them to be exposed, like
hetairae, to the public gaze. 2 As Zubayr Pasha, exiled to Gibral-
tar for another's treason, said to my friend, Colonel Buckle, after
visiting quarters evidently laid out by a jealous husband, " We
Arabs think that when a man has a precious jewel, 'tis wiser to
lock it up in a box than to leave it about for anyone to take."
The Eastern adopts the instinctive, the Western prefers the rational
method. The former jealously guards his treasure, surrounds it
with all precautions, fends off from it all risks and if the treasure
go astray, kills it. The latter, after placing it en evidence upon an
eminence in ball dress with back and bosom bared to the gaze
1 The "opportunism" of Mohammed has been made a matter of obloquy by many
who have not reflected and discovered that time-serving is the very essence of " Revela-
tion." Says the Rev. W. Smith (' Pentateuch " chapt. xiii.), "As the journey (Exodus)
proceeds, so laws originate from the accidents of the way," and he applies this to suc-
cessive decrees (Numbers xxvi. 3236 ; xxvii. 8 II and xxxvi. 19) holding it indirect
internal evidence of Mosaic authorship (?) Another tone, however, is used in the case
of Al-Islam. " And now, that he might not stand in awe of his wives any longer, down
comes a revelation " says Ockley in his bluff and homely style, which admits such phrases
as, " the imposter has the impudence to say." But why, in common honesty, refuse to
the Koran the concessions freely made to the Torah? It is a mere petitio principii to
argue that the latter is "inspired " while the former is not ; moreover, although we may
be called upon to believe things beyond Reason, it is hardly fair to require our belief in
things contrary to Reason.
2 This is noticed in my wife's volume on The Inner Life of Syria, chapt. xii. vol. i. 155
198 A If Lay I ah iva Laylah.
of society, a bundle of charms exposed to every possible seduc-
tion, allows it to take its own way, and if it be misled, he kills or
tries to kill the misleader. It is a fiery trial ; and the few who
safely pass through it may claim a higher standpoint in the moral
world than those who have never been sorely tried. But the cru-
cial question is whether Christian Europe has done wisely in
offering such temptations.
The second and main objection to Moslem custom is the mar-
riage-system which begins with a girl being wedded to a man
whom she knows only by hearsay. This was the habit of our
forbears not many generations ago, and it still prevails amongst
;noble houses in Southern Europe, where a lengthened study of
it leaves me doubtful whether the " love-marriage," as it is called,
or wedlock with an utter stranger, evidently the two extremes, is
likely to prove the happier. The " sister-wife " is or would be a
sore trial to monogamic races like those of Northern Europe,
where Caia, all but the equal of Caius in most points mental and
physical and superior in some, not unfrequently proves herself
the " man of the family," the " only man in the boat." But in the
East, where the sex is far more delicate, where a girl is brought
up in polygamy, where religious reasons separate her from her
husband, during pregnancy and lactation, for three successive
years ; and where often enough like the Mormon damsel she
would hesitate to " nigger it with a one-wife-man," the case
assumes a very different aspect and the load, if burden it be, falls
comparatively light. Lastly, the " patriarchal household " is
mostly confined to the grandee and the richard, whilst Holy Law
and public opinion, neither of which can openly be disregarded,
assign command of the household to the equal or first wife and
jealously guard the rights and privileges of the others.
Mirza Abu Talib "the Persian Prince" 1 offers six reasons why
v Mirza preceding the name means Mister and following it Prince. Addison'i
Vision of Mirza," (Spectator, No. 159) is therefore "The Vision of Mister."
Terminal Essay. 199
" the liberty of the Asiatic women appears less than that of the
Europeans/' ending with,
I'll fondly place on either eye
The man that can to this reply.
He then lays down eight points in which the Moslem wife has
greatly the advantage over her Christian sisterhood ; and we may
take his first as a specimen. Custom, not contrary to law, invests
the Mohammedan mother with despotic government of the home-
stead, slaves, servants and children, especially the latter : she alone
directs their early education, their choice of faith, their marriage
and their establishment in life ; and in case of divorce she takes
the daughters, the sons going to the sire. She has also liberty
to leave her home, not only for one or two nights, but for a week
or a fortnight, without consulting her husband ; and whilst she'
visits a strange household, the master and all males above fifteen]
are forbidden the Harem. But the main point in favour of the
Moslem wife is her being a " legal sharer" : inheritance is secured
to her by Koranic law ; she must be dowered by the bridegroom
to legalise marriage and all she gains is secured to her ; whereas
in England a " Married Woman's Property Act " was completed^
only in 1882 after many centuries of the grossest abuses.
Lastly, Moslems and Easterns in general study and intelligently
study the art and mystery of satisfying the physical woman. In
my Foreword I have noticed among barbarians the system of
" making men " ! that is, of teaching lads first arrived at puberty
the nice conduct of the instrumentum paratum plantandis civibus ;
a branch of the knowledge-tree which our modern education
1 And women. The course of instruction lasts from a few days to a year and the
period of puberty is feted by magical rites and often by some form of mutilation. It is
described by Waitz, Re"clus and Schoolcraft, Pechuel-Loecksa, Collins, Dawson, Thomas,
Brough Smyth, Reverends Bulmer and Taplin, Carlo Wilhelmi, Wood, A. W. Howitt,
C. Z. Muhas (Mem. de la Soc. Anthrop. Allemande, 1882, p. 265) and by Professor,
Mantegazza (chapt. i.) for whom see infra.
2OO A If Laylah wa Laylah.
grossly neglects, thereby entail ing untold miseries upon individuals,
families and generations. The mock virtue, the most immodest
modesty of England and of the United States in the xix tb century,,
pronounces the subject foul and fulsome : " Society" sickens at all
details; and hence it is said abroad that the English have the
finest women in Europe and least know how to use them.
Throughout the East such studies are aided by a long series of
volumes, many of them written by learned physiologists, by men
of social standing and by religious dignitaries high in office. The
Egyptians especially delight in aphrodisiac literature treating, as
the Turks say, de la partie au-dessous de la taille ; and from fifteen
hundred to two thousand copies of a new work, usually litho-
graphed in cheap form, readily sell off. The pudibund Lane
makes allusion to and quotes (A. N. i. 216) one of the most out-
spoken, a 4to of 464 pages, called the Halbat al-Kumayt or " Race-
Course of the Bay Horse," a poetical and horsey term for grape-
wine. Attributed by D'Herbelot to the Kazi Shams al-Din Mo-
hammed, it is wholly upon the subject of wassail and women till
the last few pages, when his reverence exclaims : " This much, O
reader, I have recounted, the better thou mayst know what to
avoid ;" and so forth, ending with condemning all he had praised. 1
Even the divine and historian Jalal al-Din al-Siyuti is credited
with having written, though the authorship is much disputed, a
work entitled, " Kitab al-fzdh fi 'ilm al-Nikah The Book of
Exposition in the Science of Coition : my copy, a lithograph of
33 pages, undated, but evidently Cairene, begins with exclaiming
" Alhamdolillah Laud to the Lord who adorned the virginal
bosom with breasts and who made the thighs of women anvils for
the spear-handles of men ! " To the same amiable theologian are
also ascribed the "Kitab Nawazir al-Ayk fi al-Nayk = Green
1 Similarly certain Australian tribes act scenes of rape and pederasty saying to the
young, If you do this you will be killed.
Terminal Essay. 20 1
Splendours of the Copse in Copulation, an abstract of the Kitdb
al-Wishah ft fawdid al-Nikah = Book of the Zone on Coition-
boon. Of the abundance of pornographic literature we may judge
from a list of the following seven works given in the second page
of the " Kitdb Ruju'a al-Shaykh ila Sabdh fi 'I-Kuwwat al-Bah * =
Book of Age-rejuvenescence in the power of Concupiscence : it is
the work of Ahmad bin Sulayman, surnamed Ibn Kamal Pasha.
1. Kitdb al-Bah by Al-Nahli.
2. Kitab al-'Ars wa al-'Arais (Book of the Bridal and the Brides)
by Al-Jahiz.
3. Kitdb al-Kiyan (Maiden's Book) by Ibn Hdjib al-Nu'mdn.
4. Kitdb al-fzah fi asrdr al-Nikah (Book of the Exposition on
the Mysteries of married Fruition).
5. Kitdb Jami' al-Lizzah (The Compendium of Pleasure) by Ibn
Samsamdni.
6. Kitdb Barjdn (Yarjan ?) wa Jandhib (? ?) 2
7. Kitdb al-Munakahah wa al-Mufatahah fl Asnaf al-Jimd' wa
Alatih (Book of Carnal Copulation and the Initiation into the
modes of Coition and its Instrumentation), by Aziz al-Din al-
Masihi. 3
1 " Bah," is the popular term for the amatory appetite : hence such works are called
Kutub al-Bah, lit. = Books of Lust.
2 I can make nothing of this title nor can those whom I have consulted : my only
explanation is that they may be fanciful names proper.
3 Amongst the Greeks we find erotic specialists (i) Aristides of the Libri Milesii ;
(2) Astyanassa the follower of Helen who wrote on androgynisation ; (3) Cyrene the
artist of amatory Tabellae or ex-votos offered to Priapns ; (4) Elephantis the poetess who
wrote on Varia concubitus genera ; (5) Evemertis whose Sacra Historia, preserved in a
fragment of Q. Eunius, was collected by Hieronymus Columna; (6) Hemitheon of
the Sybaritic books ; (7) Musaeus the lyrist ; (8) Niko the Samian girl ; (9) Philaenis, the
poetess of Amatory Pleasures, in Athen. viii. 13, attributed to Polycrates the Sophist ;
(10) Protagorides, Amatory Conversations,; (n) Sotades the Mantinsean who, says
Suidas, wrote the poem " Cinsedica" ; (12) Sphodrias the Cynic, his Art of Love ; and
(13) Trepsicles, Amatory Pleasures. Amongst the Romans we have Aedituus, Annianus
(in Ausonius), Anscr, Bassus Eubius, Helvius Cinna, Leevius (of lo and the
Erotopsegnion), Memmius, Cicero (to Cerellia), Pliny the Younger, Sabellus (de modo
2O2 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
To these I may add the Lizzat al-Nisa (Pleasures of Women), a
text-book in Arabic, Persian and Hindostani : it is a translation
and a very poor attempt, omitting much from, and adding naught
to, the famous Sanskrit work Ananga-Ranga (Stage of the Bodiless
One i.e. Cupido) or Hindu Art of Love (Ars Amoris Indica). 1 I
have copies of it in Sanskrit and Marathi, Guzrati and Hindostani:
the latter is an unpaged 8vo of pp. 66, including eight pages of
most grotesque illustrations showing the various Asan (the Figurae
Yeneris or positions of copulation), which seem to be the triumphs
of contortionists. These pamphlets lithographed in Bombay are
broad cast over the land. 2
It must not be supposed that such literature is purely and simply
aphrodisiacal. The learned Sprenger, a physician as well as an
Arabist, says (Al-Mas'udi p. 384) of a tractate by the celebrated
Rhazes in the Leyden Library " The number of curious observa-
tions, the correct and practical ideas and the novelty of the
notions of Eastern nations on these subjects, which are contained
in this book, render it one of the most important productions of
the medical literature of the Arabs." I can conscientiously
recommend to the Anthropologist a study of the " Kutub al-Bah."
coeundi) ; Sisenna, the pathic Poet and translator of Milesian Fables and Sulpitia the
modest erotist. For these see the Dictionnaire ferotique of Blondeau pp. ix. and x.;
(Paris, Liseux, 1885).
1 It has been translated from the Sanscrit and annotated by A.F.F. and B.F.R.
Reprint : Cosmopoli : mdceclxxxv : for the Kama Shastra Society, London and Benares,
and for private circulation only. The first print has been exhausted and a reprint will
presently appear.
2 The local press has often proposed to abate this nuisance of erotic publication which
is most debasing to public morals already perverted enough. But the *' Empire of
Opinion" cares very little for such matters and, in the matter of the " native press,"
generally seems to seek only a quiet life. In England if erotic literature were not
forbidden by law, few would care to sell or to buy it, and only the legal pains and
penalties keep up the phenomenally high prices.
Terminal Essay, 203
C. PORNOGRAPHY.
HERE it will be advisable to supplement what wa* said in my
Foreword (p. xv.) concerning the turpiloquium of The Nights.
Readers who ^ave perused the ten volumes will probably agree
with me that the naiVe indecencies of the text are rather gaudisserie
than prurience; and, when delivered with mirth and humour, they
are rather the " excrements of wit " than designed for debauching
the mind. Crude and indelicate with infantile plainness; even
gross and, at times, " nasty " in their terrible frankness, they
cannot be accused of corrupting suggestiveness or subtle insinua-
tion of vicious sentiment. Theirs is a coarseness of language, not
of idea; they are indecent, not depraved; and the pure and perfect
naturalness of their nudity seems almost to purify it, showing that
the matter is rather of manners than of morals. Such throughout
the East is the language of every man, woman and child, from
prince to peasant, from matron to prostitute : all are as the
naive French traveller said of the Japanese ; " si grossiers qu'ils
ne s^avent nommer les choses que par leur nom." This primitive
stage of language sufficed to draw from Lane and Burckhardt
strictures upon the " most immodest freedom of conversation in
Egypt, where, as all the world over, there are three several
stages for names of things and acts sensual. First we have the
mot cru, the popular term, soon followed by the technical and
scientific, arid, lastly, the literary or figurative nomenclature, which
is often much more immoral because more attractive, suggestive
and seductive than the " raw word." And let me observe that the
highest civilization is now returning to the language of nature. In
La Glu of M. J. Richepin, a triumph of the realistic school, we-
find such " archaic " expressions as la pete*e, putain, foutue a la
six-quatre-dix ; un face*tieuse petarade; tu t'es foutue de, etc,
2O4 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Eh vilain bougre ! and so forth. 1 To those critics who complain
of these raw vulgarisms and puerile indecencies in The Nights I
can reply only by quoting the words said to have been said by
Dr. Johnson to the lady who complained of the naughty words in
his dictionary " You must have been looking for them, Madam ! "
But I repeat (p. xvi.) there is another element in The Nights
and that is one of absolute obscenity utterly repugnant to English
readers, even the least prudish. It is chiefly connected with what
our neighbours call Le vice contre nature as if anything can be
contrary to nature which includes all things. 2 Upon this subject
I must offer details, as it does not enter into my plan to ignore
any theme which is interesting to the Orientalist and the Anthro-
pologist. And they, methinks, do abundant harm who, for shame
or disgust, would suppress the very mention of such matters : in
order to combat a great and growing evil deadly to the birth-rate
the main-stay of national prosperity the first requisite is careful
study. As Albert Bollstoedt, Bishop of Ratisbon, rightly says :
Quia malum non evitatum nisi cognitum, ideo necesse est cog-
noscere immundiciem coitus et multa alia quae docentur in isto
libro. Equally true are Professor Mantegazza's words : 3 Cacher
les plaies du cceur humain au nom de la pudeur, ce n'est au
contraire qu'hypocrisie ou peur. The late Mr. Grote had reason to
lament that when describing such institutions as the far-famed
of Thebes, the Sacred Band annihilated at Chaeroneia,
1 The Spectator (No. 119) complains of an "infamous piece of good breeding,"
because "men of the town, and particularly those who have been polished in France,
make use of the most coarse and uncivilised words in our language and utter themselves
often in such a manner as a clown would blush to hear."
2 See the Novelle of Bandello the Bishop (Tome I ; Paris, Liseux, 1879, small in 18),
where the dying fisherman replies to his confessor " Oh 1 Oh ! your reverence, to amuse
myself with boys was natural to me as for man to eat and drink 4 yet you asked me if
I sinned against nature ! " Amongst the wiser ancients sinning contra naturam was not
marrying and begetting children.
3 Avis au Lecteur "L* Amour dans 1'Humanitl," par P. Mantegazza, traduit par
Emilien Chesneau, Paris, Fetscherin et Chuit, 1886.
Terminal Essay. 20$
he was compelled to a reticence which permitted him to touch
only the surface of the subject. This was inevitable under the
present rule of Cant * in a book intended for the public : but the
same does not apply to my version of The Nights, and now
I proceed to discuss the matter seYieusement, honnetement,
historiquement ; to show it in decent nudity not in suggestive
fig-leaf or feuille de vigne.
D. PEDERASTY.
The " execrabilis familia pathicorum" first came before me
by a chance of earlier life. In 1845, when Sir Charles Napier
had conquered and annexed Sind, despite a fraction (mostly
venal) which sought favour with the now defunct " Court
of Directors to the Honourable East India Company," the veteran
began to consider his conquest with a curious eye. It was
reported to him that Karachi, a town let of some two thousand
souls and distant not more than a mile from camp, supported no
,
less than three lupanars or bordels, in which not women but boys
and eunuchs, the former demanding nearly a double price, 2 lay for
hire. Being then the only British officer who could speak Sindi,
I was asked indirectly to make enquiries and to report upon the
subject ; and I undertook the task on express condition that my
report should not be forwarded to the Bombay Government, from
1 See " H. B." (Henry Beyle, French Consul at Civita Vecchia) par un des Quarante
(Prosper Me'rime'e), Elutheropolis, An mdccclxiv. De 1' Imposture du Nazare*en.
2 This detail expecially excited the veteran's curiosity. The reason proved to be that
the scrotum of the unmutilated boy could be used as a kind of bridle for directing the
movements of the animal. I find nothing of the kind mentioned in the Sotadical
literature of Greece and Rome ; although the same cause might be expected eveiywhere
to have the same effect. But in Mirabeau (Kadhe'sch) a grand seigneur moderne, when
his valet-de-chambre de confiance proposes to provide him with women instead of boys,
exclaims, " Des femmes ! eh ! c'est comme si tu me servais un gigot sans manche.' See
also infra for " Le poids du tisserand."
206 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
whom supporters of the Conqueror's policy could expect scant
favour, mercy or justice. Accompanied by a Munshi, Mirza
Mohammed Hosayn of Shiraz, and habited as a merchant, Mirza
Abdullah the Bushiri * passed many an evening in the townlet
visited all the porneia and obtained the fullest details which were
duly despatched to Government House. But the <f Devil's
Brother " presently quitted Sind leaving in his office my unfor-
tunate official: this found its way with sundry other reports 2 to
Bombay and produced the expected result. A friend in the
Secretariat informed me that my summary dismissal from the
service had been formally proposed by one of Sir Charles Napier's
successors, whose decease compels me parcere sepulto. But this
excess of outraged modesty was not allowed.
Subsequent enquiries in many and distant countries enabled me
to arrive at the following conclusions :
1. There exists what I shall call a " Sotadic Zone," bounded
westwards by the northern shores of the Mediterranean (N. Lat.
43) and by the southern (N. Lat. 30). Thus the depth would be
780 to 800 miles including meridional France, the Iberian Penin-
sula, Italy and Greece, with the coast-regions of Africa from
Marocco to Egypt.
2. Running eastward the Sotadic Zone narrows, embracing Asia
Minor, Mesopotamia and Chaldaea, Afghanistan, Sind, the Punjab
and Kashmir.
3. In Indo-China the belt begins to broaden, enfolding China,
Japan and Turkistan.
4. It then embraces the South Sea Islands and the New World
1 See Falconry in the Valley of the Indus, London, John Van Voorst, 1852.
2 Submitted to Government on Dec. 31, '47 and March 2, '48, they were printed
in " Selections from the Records of the Government of India." Bombay. New Series.
No. xvii. Pan 2, 1855. These are (i) Notes on the Population of Sind, etc. and
(2) Brief Notes on the Modes of Intoxication, etc. written in collaboration with my
late friend Assistant-Surgeon John E. Stocks, whose early death was a sore loss to
scientific botany.
Terminal Essay. 207
where, at the time of its discovery, Sotadic love was, with some
exceptions, an established racial institution.
5. Within the Sotadic Zone the Vice is popular and endemic,
held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the
North and South of the limits here defined practise it only
sporadically amid the opprobium of their fellows who, as a rule,
are physically incapable of performing the operation and look
upon it with the liveliest disgust.
Before entering into topographical details concerning Pederasty,
which I hold to be geographical and climatic, not racial, I must
offer a few considerations of its cause and- origin. We must not
forget that the love of boys has its noble sentimental side. The
Platonists and pupils of the Academy, followed by the Sufis or
Moslem Gnostics, held such affection, pure as ardent, t& be the
beau ide*al which united in man's soul the creature with the
Creator. Professing to regard youths as the most cleanly and
beautiful objects in this phenomenal world, they declared that by
loving and extolling the chef-d'ceuvre, corporeal and intellectual,
of the Demiurgus, disinterestedly and without any admixture of
carnal sensuality, they are paying the most fervent adoration to
the Causa causans. They add that such affection, passing as it
does the love of women, is far less selfish than fondness for
and admiration of the other sex which, however innocent, always
suggest sexuality 1 ; and Easterns add that the devotion of the
the moth to the taper is purer and more fervent than the Bulbul's
love for the Rose. Amongst the Greeks of the best ages the
system of boy-favourites was advocated on considerations of
morals and politics. The lover undertook the education of the
beloved through precept and example, while the two were con-
1 Glycon the Courtesan in Athen. xiii. 84 declares that " boys are handsome only
when they resemble women ;" and so the Learned Lady in The Nights (vol. v, 160)
declares " Boys are likened to girls because folks say, Yonder boy is like a girl." For the
superior physical beauty of the human mate compared with the female, see The Nights,
vol. iv. 15 ; and the boy's voice before it breaks excels that of any diva.
208 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
joined by a tie stricter than the fraternal. Hieronymus the
Peripatetic strongly advocated it because the vigorous disposition
of youths and the confidence engendered by their association
often led to the overthrow of tyrannies. Socrates declared that
"a most valiant army might be composed of boys and their
lovers ; for that of all men they would be most ashamed to desert
one another." And even Virgil, despite the foul flavour of
Formosum pastor Corydon, could write :
Nisus amore pio pueri.
The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to
me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that
within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and
feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only
sporadically. Hence the male ftminisme whereby the man
becomes patiens as well as agens, and the woman a tribade, a
votary of mascula Sappho, 1 Queen of Frictrices or Rubbers. 2 Prof.
1 " Mascula," from the priapiscus, the over-development of clitoris (the veretrum
muliebre, in Arabic Abu Tartur, habens cristam) which enabled her to play the man.
Sappho (nat. B.C. 612) has been retoillee like Mary Stuart, La Brinvilliers, Marie
Antoinette and a host of feminine names which have a savour not of sanctity. Maximus
of Tyre (Dissert, xxiv.) declares that the Eros of Sappho was Socratic and that
Gyrinna and Atthis were as Alcibiades and Chermides to Socrates : Ovid, who could
consult documents now lost, takes the same view in the Letter of Sappho to Phaon and in
Tristia ii. 26$.
Lesbia quid docuit Sappho nisi amare puellas ?
Suidas supports Ovid. Longinus eulogises the epomKi) fjMvia (a term applied only to
carnal love) of the far-famed Ode to Atthis :
Ille mi par esse Deo videtur # * *
(Heureux ! qui pres de toi pour toi seule soupire * *
Blest as th' immortal gods is he, etc.)
By its love symptoms, suggesting that possession is the sole cure for passion, Erasistratus
discovered the love of Antiochus for Stratonice. Mure (Hist, of Greek Literature,
1850) speaks of the Ode to Aphrodite ^Frag. i) as " one in which the whole volume of
Greek literature offers the most powerful concentration into one brilliant focus of the
modes in which amatory concupiscence can display itself." But Bernhardy, Bode,
Richter, K. O. Miiller and esp. Welcker have made Sappho a model of purity, much
like some of our dull wits who have converted Shakespeare, that most debauched genius,
into a good British bourgeois.
2 The Arabic Sahhakah, the Tractatrix or Subigitatrix, who has been noticed in vol.
Terminal Essay, 209
Mantegazza claims to have discovered the cause of this pathological
love, this perversion of the erotic sense, one of the marvellous
list of amorous vagaries which deserve, not prosecution but the
pitiful care of the physician and the study of the psychologist.
According to him the nerves of the rectum and the genitalia, in all
cases closely connected, are abnormally so in the pathic who ob-
tains, by intromission, the venereal orgasm which is usually sought
through the sexual organs. So amongst women there are tribads
who can procure no pleasure except by foreign objects introduced
a. posteriori. Hence his threefold distribution of sodomy ; (i)
Peripherie or anatomical, caused by an unusual distribution of the
nerves and their hyperaesthesia ; (2) Luxurious, when love a tergo
is preferred on account of the narrowness of the passage ; and
(3) the Psychical. But this is evidently superficial : the question
is what causes this neuropathy, this abnormal distribution and
condition of the nerves. 1
iv. 134. Hence to Lesbianise (Aeo-^ctv) and tribassare ( TpfcecrOai) J the former
applied to the love of woman for woman and the latter to its me'canique : this is either
natural, as friction of the labia and insertion of the clitoris when unusually developed ;
or artificial by means of the fascinum, the artificial penis (the Persian " Mayajang "); the
patte de chat, the banana-fruit and a multitude of other succedanea. As this feminine
perversion is only glanced at in The Nights I need hardly enlarge upon the subject.
1 Plato (Symp.) is probably mystical when he accounts for such passions by there
being in the beginning three species of humanity, men, women and men-women or
androgynes. When the latter were destroyed by Zeus for rebellion, the two others were
individually divided into equal parts. Hence each division seeks its other half in the
same sex ; the primitive man prefers men and the primitive woman women. C'est beau,
but is it true ? The idea was probably derived from Egypt which supplied the Hebrews
with androgynic humanity ; and thence it passed to extreme India, where Shiva as
Ardhanari was male on one side and female on the other side of the body, combining
paternal and maternal qualities and functions. The first creation of humans (Gen i. 27)
was hermaphrodite ( = Hermes and Venus) masculum et fceminam creavit eos male and
female created He them on the sixth day, with the command to increase and multiply
(ibid. v. 28) while Eve the woman was created subsequently. Meanwhile, say certain
Talmudists, Adam carnally copulated with all races of animals. See L'Anandryiie in
Mirabeau's Erotika Biblion, where Antoinette Bourgnon laments the undoubling
which disfigured the work of God, producing monsters incapable of independent self-
reproduction like the vegetable kingdom.
VOL. X. O
2IO A If Laylak iva Laylah.
As Prince Bismarck finds a moral difference between the male
and female races of history, so I suspect a mixed physical tempe-
rament effected by the manifold subtle influences massed together
in the word climate. Something of the kind is necessary to
explain the fact of this pathological love extending over the
greater portion of the habitable world, without any apparent
connection of race or media, from the polished Greek to the
cannibal Tupi of the Brazil. Walt Whitman speaks of the ashen
grey faces of onanists : the faded colours, the puffy features and the
unwholesome complexion of the professed pederast with his
peculiar cachetic expression, indescribable but once seen never
forgotten, stamp the breed, and Dr. G. Adolph is justified in
declaring " Alle Gewohnneits-paederasten erkennen sich einander
schnell, oft met einen Blick." This has nothing in common with
the fe*minisme which betrays itself in the pathic by womanly gait,
regard and gesture : it is a something sui generis ; and the same may
be said of the colour and look of the young priest who honestly
refrains from women and their substitutes. Dr. Tardieu, in his
well-known work, " tude Medico-l^gale sur les Attentats aux
Mceurs," and Dr. Adolph note a peculiar infundibuliform disposi-
tion of the " After " and a smoothness and want of folds even
before any abuse has taken place, together with special forms of
the male organs in confirmed pederasts. But these observations
have been rejected by Caspar, Hoffman, Brouardel and Dr. J. H.
Henry Coutagne (Notes sur la Sodomie, Lyon 1880), and it is a
medical question whose discussion would here be out of place.
The origin of pederasty is lost in the night of ages ; but its
liistorique has been carefully traced by many writers, especially
Virey, 1 Rosenbaum 2 and M. H, E. Meier. 3 The ancient Greeks
1 De la Femme, Paris, 1827.
2 Die Lustseuche des Alterthum's, Halle, 1839.
3 See his exhaustive article on (Grecian) " Paederastie " in the Allgemeine Ency-
clopaedic of Ersch and Gruber, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1837. He carefully traces it
Terminal Essay, 21 1
who, like the modern Germans, invented nothing but were great;
improvers of what other races invented, attributed the formal
apostolate of Sotadism to Orpheus, whose stigmata were worn *by
the Thracian women ;
Omnemque refugerat Orpheus
Fcemineam venerem ;
I lie etiam Thracum populis fuit auctor, amorem
In teneres transferre mares : citraque juventam
yEtatis breve ver, et primes carpere flores.
Ovid Met. x. 79-85;
Euripides proposed Lafus father of Oedipus as the inaugurator,
whereas Timaeus declared that the fashion of making favourites of
boys was introduced into Greece from Crete, for Malthusian
reasons said Aristotle (Pol. ii. 10) attributing it to Minos.
Herodotus, however, knew far better, having discovered (ii. c. 80)
that the Orphic and Bacchic rites were originally Egyptian. But
the Father of History was a traveller and an annalist rather than
an archaeologist and he tripped in the following passage (i. c. 13$),
, /.,
"As soon as they (the Persians) hear of any luxury, they
instantly make it their own, and hence, among other matters,
they have learned from the Hellenes a passion for boys" ("un-
I i V -
natural lust" says modest Rawlinson). Plutarch (De Malig,'
Herod, xiii.) 1 asserts with much more probability that the
Persians used eunuch boys according to the Mos Gratia, long
before they had seen the Grecian main.
In the Holy Books of the Hellenes, Homer and Hesiod,'
dealing with the heroic ages, there is no trace of pederasty,
although, in a long subsequent generation, Lucian suspected
through the several states, Dorians, ^olians, lonians, the Attic cities and those of
Asia Minor. For these details I must refer ray readers to M. Meier j a full account of
these would fill a volume not the section of an essay.
1 Against which see Henri Estienne, Apologie pour H^rodote, a society satire of
*vi th century, lately reprinted by Liseux,
212 A If Lay la/i wa Laylah.
Achilles and Patroclus as he did Orestes and Pylades, Theseus
and Pirithous. Homer's praises of beauty are reserved for the
feminines, especially his favourite Helen. But the Dorians of
Crete seem to have commended the abuse to Athens and Sparta
and subsequently imported it into Tarentum, Agrigentum and
other colonies. Ephorus in Strabo (x. 4 $ 21) gives a curious
account of the violent abduction of beloved boys
by the lover (epao-nfc) ; of the obligations of the ravisher
to the favourite (KAcu/o's) ] and of the " marriage-ceremonies " which
lasted two months. See also Plato Laws i. c. 8. Servius (Ad
JEneid. x. 325) informs us "De Cretensibus accepimus, quod in
amore puerorum intemperantes fuerunt, quod postea in Laconas
et in totam Graeciam translatum est." The Cretans and after-
wards their apt pupils the Chalcidians held it disreputable for a
beautiful boy to lack a lover. Hence Zeus the national Doric
god of Crete loved Ganymede 2 ; Apollo, another Dorian deity,
loved Hyacinth, and Hercules, a Doric hero who grew to be a
sun-god, loved Hylas and a host of others : thus Crete sanctified
the practice by the examples of the gods and demigods. But
when legislation came, the subject had qualified itself for legal
limitation and as such was undertaken by Lycurgus and Solon,
according to Xenophon (Lac. ii. 13), who draws a broad dis-
tinction between the honest love of boys and dishonest
1 In Sparta the lover was called cicrTrvrjAas or ctorTrnyXo? and the beloved as in
Thessaly extras O r dm??.
2 The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped
anything but himself. Zeus, who became Jupiter, was an ancient king, according to the
Cretans, who were entitled liars because they showed his burial-place. From a deified
ancestor he would become a local god, like the Hebrew Jehovah as opposed to Chemosh
of Moab ; the name would gain amplitude by long time and distant travel and the old
island chieftain would end in becoming the Demiurgus. Ganymede (who possibly gave
rise to the old Lat. " Catamitus ") was probably some fair Phrygian boy ("son of
Tiros ") who in process of time became a symbol of the wise man seized by the eagle
(perspicacity) to be raised amongst the Immortals ; and the chaste myth simply signified
that only the prudent are loved by the gods. But it rotted with age as do all things
human. For the Pederastia of the Gods see Bayle under Chrysippe.
Terminal Essay. 213
lust. They both approved of pure pederast/a, like that of
Harmodius and Aristogiton ; but forbade it with serviles because
degrading to a free man. Hence the love of boys was spoken
of like that of women (Plato: Phaedrus; Repub. vi. c. 19 and
Xenophon, Synop. iv. 10) e.g., "There was once a boy, or rather
a youth, of exceeding beauty and he had very many lovers "
this is the language of Hafiz and Sa'adi. ^schylus, Sophocles
and Euripides were allowed to introduce it upon the stage, for
" many men were as fond of having boys for their favourites as
women for their mistresses ; and this was a frequent fashion in
many well-regulated cities of Greece." Poets like Alcaeus,
Anacreon, Agathon and Pindar affected it and Theognis sang
of a " beautiful boy in the flower of his youth." The statesmen
Aristides and Themistocles quarrelled over Stesileus of Teos ; and
Pisistratus loved Charmus who first built an altar to Puerile Eros,
while Charmus loved Hippias son of Pisistratus. Demosthenes
the Orator took into keeping a youth called Cnosion greatly to
the indignation of his wife. Xenophon loved Clinias and
Autolycus; Aristotle, Hermeas, Theodectes J and others; Empe-
docles, Pausanias ; Epicurus, Pytocles ; Aristippus, Eutichydes and
Zeno with his Stoics had a philosophic disregard for women,
affecting only pederastfa. A man in Athenaeus (iv. c. 40) left in
his will that certain youths he had loved should fight like
gladiators at his funeral ; and Charicles in Lucian abuses
Callicratidas for his love of " sterile pleasures." Lastly there
was the notable affair of Alcibiades and Socrates, the " sanctus
paederasta" 2 being violemment soupgonne* when under the
1 See Dissertation sur les idees morales des Grecs et sur les danger de lire Platon. Par
M. Aude, Bibliophile, Rouen, Lemonnyer, 1879. This is the pseudonym of the late
Octave Delepierre, who published with Gay, but not the Editio Princeps which, if I
remember rightly, contains much more matter.
* The phrase of J. Matthias Gesner, Comm. Reg. Soc. Gottingen i. 1-32. It was
founded upon Erasmus' " Sancte Socrate, ora pro nobis," and the article was trans-
lated by M. Alcide Bonmaire, Paris, Liseux, 1877.
214 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
mantle : non semper ' sine plaga ab eo surrexit. Athenaeus
(v. c. 13) declares that Plato represents Socrates as absolutely
intoxicated with his passion for Alcibiades. 1 The ancients seem
to have held the connection impure, or Juvenal would not have
written .
Inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinaedos,
followed by Firmicus (vii. 14) who speaks of " Socratici paedi-
cones." It is the modern fashion to doubt the pederasty of
the master of Hellenic Sophrosyne, the " Christian before
Christianity;" but such a world- wide term as Socratic love can
hardly be explained by the lucus-a-non-lucendo theory. We are
overapt to apply our nineteenth century prejudices and prepos-
sessions to the morality of the ancient Greeks who would have
specimen'd such squeamishness in Attic salt.
The Spartans, according to Agnon the Academic (confirmed by
1 The subject has employed many a pen, e.g. Alcibiade Fanciullo a Scola, D. P. A.
(supposed to be Pietro Aretino ad captandum?), Oranges, par Juann Wart, 1652: small
square 8vo. of pp. 102, including 3 preliminary pp. and at end an unpaged leaf with
4 sonnets, almost Venetian, by V. M. There is a re-impression of the same date, a small
I2mo of longer format, pp. 124 with pp. 2 for sonnets: in 1862 the Imprimerie Ra9on
printed 102 copies in 8vo. of pp. iv.-io8, and in 1863 it was condemned by the police as
a liber spurcissimus atque execrandus de criminis sodomici laude et arte. This work
produced "Alcibiade Enfant a 1'ecole," traduit pour la premiere fois de 1'Italien de
JFerrante Pallavicini, Amsterdam, chez 1'Ancien Pierre Marteau, mdccclxvi. Pallavicini
(nat. 1618), who wrote against Rome, was beheaded, set. 26 (March 5, 1644) at Avignon
in 1644 by the vengeance of the Barberini : he was a bel esprit deregle, nourri d'etudes
antiques and a Memb. of the Acad. Degl' Incogniti. His peculiarities are shown by
his "Opere Scelte," 2 vols. I2mo, Villafranca, mdclxiii. ; these do not include Alcibiade
Fanciullo, a dialogue between Philotimus and Alcibiades which seems to be a mere
skit at the Jesuits and their Pe'che philosophique. Then came the "Dissertation sur
1' Alcibiade fanciullo a scola," traduit de 1'Italien de Giambattista Baseggio et
accompagne'e de notes et d'une post-face par un bibliophile fi^ais (M. Gustave
Brunet, Librarian of Bordeaux), Paris. J. Gay, 1861 an octavo of pp. 78 (paged),
254 copies. The same Baseggio printed in 1850 his Disquisizioni (23 copies) and
claims for F. Pallavicini the authorship of Alcibiades which the Manuel du Libraire wrongly
attributes to M. Girol. Adda in 1859. I have heard of but not seen the " Amator
fornaceus, amator ineptus" (Palladii, 1633) supposed by some to be the origin of
Alcibiade Fanciullo ; but most critics consider it a poor and insipid production.
Terminal Essay. 215
Plato, Plutarch and Cicero), treated boys and girls in the same way
before marriage: hence Juvenal (xi. 173) uses " Lacedaemonius "
for a pathic and other writers apply it to a tribade. After the
Peloponnesian War, which ended in B.C. 404, the use became
merged in the abuse. Yet some purity must have survived, even
amongst the Boeotians who produced the famous Narcissus, 1
described by Ovid (Met. iii. 339) :
Multi ilium juvenes, multse cupiere puellse ;
Nulli ilium juvenes, nullae tetigere puellse : 2
for Epaminondas, whose name is mentioned with three beloveds,
established the Holy Regiment composed of mutual lovers,
testifying the majesty of Eros and preferring to a discreditable
life a glorious death. Philip's reflections on the fatal field of
Chaeroneia form their fittest epitaph. At last the Athenians,
according to 2Eschines, officially punished Sodomy with death j
but the threat did not abolish bordels of boys, like those of
Karachi ; the Porneia and Pornoboskeia, where slaves and
pueri venales " stood," as the term was, near the Pnyx, the city
walls and a certairr tower, also about Lycabettus (^Esch. contra
Tim.) ; and paid a fixed tax to the state. The pleasures of
society in civilised Greece seem to have been sought chiefly in
the heresies of love Hetairesis 3 and Sotadism.
1 The word is from vapKiy, numbness, torpor, narcotism : the flowers, being loved
by the infernal gods, were offered to the Furies. Narcissus and Hippolytus are often
assumed as types of morosa voluptas, masturbation and clitorisation for nymphomania :
certain mediaeval writers found in the former a type of the Saviour ; and Mirabeau a
representation of the androgynous or first Adam : to me Narcissus suggests the Hindu
Vishnu absorbed in the contemplation of his own perfections.
8 The verse of Ovid is parallel'd by the song of Al-Zahir al-Jazari (Ibn Khali, iii. 720)^
Ilium impuberem amaverunt mares; puberem feminae.
Gloria Deo ! nunquam amatoribus carebit.
3 The venerable society of prostitutes contained three chief classes. The first and
lowest were the Dicteriads, so called from Diete (Crete) who imitated Pasiphae'j wife of
Minos, in preferring a bull to a husband ; above them was the middle class, the Aleutridaj
2l6 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
It is calculated that the French of the sixteenth century had
four hundred names for the parts genital and three hundred for
their use in coition. The Greek vocabulary is not less copious
and some of its pederastic terms, of which Meier gives nearly a
hundred, and its nomenclature of pathologic love are curious
and picturesque enough to merit quotation.
To live the life of Abron (the Argive) i.e. that of a irdoywv) pathic
or passive lover.
The Agathonian song.
Aischrourgfa = dishonest love, also called Akolasfa, Akrasfa,
Arrenokoitfa, etc.
Alcinoan youths, or " non-conformists,"
In cute curanda plus aequo operata Juventus.
Alegomenos, the " unspeakable," as the pederast was termed
by the Council of Ancyra: also the Agrios, Apolaustus and
Akolastos.
Androgyne, of whom Ansonius wrote (Epig. Ixviii. 1 5) :
Ecce ego sum factus femina de puero.
Badas and badfzein =s clunes torquens : also Bdtalos = a
catamite.
Catapygos, Katapygosyne = puerarius and catadactylium from
Dactylion, the ring, used in the sense of Nerissa-'s, but applied to
the corollarium puerile.
Cinaedus (Kfnaidos), the active lover (wowov) derived either from
his kinetics or quasi KvW <u8o>s = dog-modest. Also Spatalocinaedus
(lascivia fluens) = a fair Ganymede.
Chalcidissare (Khalkidizein), from Chalcis in Eubcea, a city
who were the Almahs or professional musicians, and the aristocracy was represented by the
Hetairai, whose wit and learning enabled them to adorn more than one page of Grecian
history. The grave Solon, who had studied in Egypt, established a vast Dicterion
(Philemon in his Delphica), or bordel, whose proceeds swelled the revenue of the
Republic.
Terminal Essay. 217
famed for love & posteriori ; mostly applied to le Vehement des
testicules by children.
Clazomenae = the buttocks, also a sotadic disease, so called from
the Ionian city devoted to Aversa Venus ; also used of a pathic,
et tergo femina pube vir est.
Embasicoetas, prop, a link-boy at marriages, also a^" night-cap "
drunk before bed and lastly an effeminate ; one who perambulavit
omnium cubilia (Catullus). See Encolpius' pun upon the Embasi-
cete in Satyricon, cap. iv.
Epipedesis, the carnal assault.
Geiton lit. " neighbour " the beloved of Encolpius, which has
produced the Fr. Giton = Bardache, Ital. bardascia from the
Arab. Baradaj, a captive, a slave ; the augm. form is Polygeiton.
Hippias (tyranny of) when the patient (woman or boy) mounts
the agent. Aristoph. Vesp. 502. So also Kelitizein cs peccare
superne or equum agitare supernum of Horace.
Mokhtheria, depravity with boys.
Paidika, whence paedicare (act) and paedicari (pass) : so in
the Latin poet :
PEnelopes primam DIdonis prima sequatur,
Et primam CAni, syllaba prima REmi.
Pathikos, Pathicus, a passive, like Malakos (malacus, mollis,
facilis), Malchio, Trimalchio (Petronius), Malta, Maltha and in
Hor. (Sat ii. 2$)
Malthinus tunicis demissis ambulat.
Praxis = the malpractice.
Pygisma = buttockry, because most actives end within the
nates, being too much excited for further intromission.
Phcenicissare (^ouWfcu/) = cunnilingere in tempore menstruum,
quia hoc vitium in Phoenicia generata solebat (Thes. Erot. Ling.
Latinae) ; also irrumer en miel.
Phicidissare, denotat actum per canes commissum quando
2i8 A If Laylak iva Laylak.
lambunt cunnos vel testiculos (Suetonius) : also applied to pollu*
tion of childhood,
^arnorium flores (Erasmus, Prov. xxiii.) alluding to the andro-
gyiiic prostitutions of Samos.
Siphniassare (<n<i>iaett/, from Siphnos, hod. Sifanto Island) =
digito podicem fodere ad pruriginem restinguendam, says Erasmus
(see Mirabeau's Erotika Biblion, Anoscopie).
Thrypsis = the rubbing.
Pederastfa had in Greece, I have shown, its noble and ideal
side : Rome, however, borrowed her malpractices, like her religion
and polity, from those ultra-material Etruscans and debauched
with a brazen face. Even under the Republic Plautus
(Casin. ii. 21) makes one of his characters exclaim, in the
utmost sang-froid, "Ultro te, amator, apage te a dorso meo!"
With increased luxury the evil grew and Livy notices (xxxix. 13),
at the Bacchanalia, plura virorum inter sese quam fceminarum,
stupra. There were individual protests; for instance, S. Q.
Fabius Maximus Servilianus (Consul U.C. 612) punished his
son for dubia castitas ; and a private soldier, C. Plotius, killed
his military Tribune, Q. Luscius, for unchaste proposals. The
Lex Scantrnia (Scatinia ?), popularly derived from Scantinius
the Tribune and of doubtful date (B.C. 226 ?), attempted to abate
the scandal by fine and the Lex Julia by death ; but they were
trifling obstacles to the flood of infamy which surged in with the
Empire. No class seems then to havs disdained these "sterile
pleasures:" Ton n'attachoit point alors a cette espece d'amour
une note d'infamie, comme en paYs de chrdtiente*, says Bayle
under "Anacreon." The great Caesar, the Cinaedus calvus of
Catullus, was the husband of all the wives and the wife of alF
the husbands in Rome (Suetonius, cap. lii.) ; and his soldiers sang
in his praise Gallias Caesar subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem (Suet,
cies. xlix.) ; whence his sobriquet " Fornix Birthynicus." Of
Augustus the people chaunted
Videi,<ne ut Cincedus orbem digito temperet?
Terminal Essay. 219
Tiberius, with his pisciculi and greges exoletorum, invented the'
Symplegma or nexus of Sellarii, agentes et patientes, in which
the spinthriae (lit women's bracelets) were connected in a chain
by the bond of flesh 1 (Seneca Quaest. Nat.). Oi' this refine-
ment, which in the earlier pari of the nineteenth century was
renewed by sundry Englishmen al i^apicb, Ausonius wrote
(Epig. cxix. i),
Tres uno in lecto : stuprum duo perpetiuntur ;
And Martial had said (xii. 43)
Quo symplegmate quinque copulentur;
Qua plures teneantur a catena; etc.
Ausonius recounts of Caligula he so lost patience that her
forcibly entered the priest M. Lepidus, before the sacrifice was
completed. The beautiful Nero was formally married to
Pythagoras (or Doryphoros) and afterwards took to wife Sporus
who was first subjected to castration of a peculiar fashion ; he
was then named Sabina after the deceased spouse and claimed
; queenly honours. The " Othonis et Trajani pathici " were famed ;
the great Hadrian openly loved Antinoiis and the wild de-
baucheries of Heliogabalus seem only to have amused, instead
of disgusting, the Romans.
Uranopolis allowed public lupanaria where adults and meritorii
ipueri, who began their career as early as seven years, stood for
hire : the inmates of these cauponae wore sleeved tunics and
dalmatics like women. As in modern Egypt pathic boys, we learn
from Catullus, haunted the public baths. Debauchees had signals
like freemasons whereby they recognised one another. The Greek
Skematizein was made by closing the hand to represent the scrotum
and raising the middle finger as if to feel whether a hen had eggs,,
tater si les poulettes ont Tceuf: hence the Athenians called it
1 This and Saint Paul (Romans i. 27) suggested to "Caravaggio his picture of St.
Rosario (in the museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men
turpiter ligati.
22O A If Laylah wa^Laylak.
Catapygon or sodomite and the Romans digitus impudicus or
infamis, the " medical finger L " of Rabelais and the Chiromantists.
Another sign was to scratch the head with the minimus digitulo
caput scabere (Juv. ix. I33). 2 The prostitution of boys was first
forbidden by Domitian ; but Saint Paul, a Greek, had formally
expressed his abomination of Le Vice (Rom. i. 26; i. Cor. vi. 8);
and we may agree with Grotius (de Verit. li. c. 13) that early
Christianity did much to suppress it. At last the Emperor
Theodosius punished it with fire as a profanation, because sacro-
sanctum esse debetur hospitium virilis animse,
In the pagan days of imperial Rome her literature makes no
difference between boy and girl. Horace naively says (Sat.
ii. 1 1 8):
Ancilla aut verna est praesto puer ;
and with Hamlet, but in a dishonest sense :
Man delights me not
Nor woman neither.
Similarly the Spaniard Martial, who is a mine of such pederastic
allusions (xi. 46) :-
Sive puer arrisit, sive puella tibi.
That marvellous Satyricon which unites the wit of Moliere 8 with
1 Properly speaking " Medicus" is the third or ring-finger, as shown by the old
Chiromantist verses,
Est pollex Veneris ; sed Jupiter indice gaudet,
Saturnus medium ; Sol medicumopo, tenet.
8 So Seneca uses digito scalpit caput. The modern Italian does the same by inserting
the thumb-tip between the index and medius to suggest the clitoris*
3 What can be wittier than the now trite Tale of the Ephesiatt Matron, whose dry
humour is worthy of The Nights? No wonder that it has made the grand tour of the
world. It is found in the neo-Phaedrus, the tales of Musaeus and in the Septem
Sapientes as the <c Widow which was comforted." As the '* Fabliau de la Femme qui
se fist putain sur la fosse de son Mari," it tempted Brantome and La Fontaine ; and
Abel Remusat shows in his Contes Chinois that it is well known to the Middle Kingdom.
Mr. Walter K. Kelly remarks, that the most singular place for such a tale is the " Rule
and Exercise of Holy Dying" by Jeremy Taylor, who introduces it into his chapt. v.
" Of the Contingencies of Death and Treating our Dead." But in those days divines
were not mealy-mouthed.
Terminal Essay. 221
the debaucheries of Piron, whilst the writer has been described,
like Rabelais, as purissimus in impuritate, is a kind of Triumph of
Pederasty. Geiton the hero, a handsome curly-pated hobbledehoy
of seventeen, with his calinerie and wheedling tongue, is courted
like one of the sequor sexus: his lovers are inordinately jealous
of him and his desertion leaves deep scars upon the heart. But
no dialogue between man and wife in extremis could be more
pathetic than that in the scene where shipwreck is Imminent.
Elsewhere every one seems to attempt his neighbour: a man
alte succinctus assails Ascyltos ; Lycus, the Tarentine skipper,
would force Encolpius and so forth : yet we have the neat and
finished touch (cap. vii.) : "The lamentation was very fine (the
dying man having manumitted his slaves) albeit his wife wept not
as though she loved him. How were it had he not behaved to her
so well?"
Erotic Latin glossaries 1 give some ninety words connected with
Pederasty and some, which " speak with Roman simplicity/ ' are
peculiarly expressive. " Aversa Venus " alludes to women being
treated as boys : hence Martial, translated by Piron, addresses
Mistress Martial (x. 44) :
Teque puta, cunnos, uxor, habere dues.
The capillatus or comatus is also called calamistratus, the darling
curled with crisping-irons ; and he is an Effeminatus i.e\ qui
muliebria patitur ; or a Delicatus, slave or eunuch for the use ofi
the Draucus, Puerarius (boy-lover) or Dominus (Mart. xi. 71). The;
1 Glossarium eroticum linguae Latins, sive theogoniae, legum et morum nuptialium apud
Romanes explanatio nova, auctore P. P. (Parisiis, Dondey-Dupre, 1826, in 8vo). P. P.
is supposed to be Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues, a"n engineer who made a plan of Bordeaux
and who annotated the Erotica Billion. Gay writes, " On s'est servi pour cet ouvrage
des travaux inedits de M. le Baron de Schonen, etc. Quant au Chevalier Pierre
Pierrugues, qu'on designait corame I'auteur de ce savant volume, son existence n'est pas
bien averee, et quelques bibliographes persistent a penser que ce nom cache la collabora-
tion du Baron de Schonen et d'Eloi Johanneau. Other glossicists as Blondeau and
Forberg have been printed by Liseux, Paris.
222 A If Lay la k wa Laylah.
Divisor is so called from his practice Hillas dividere or caedere^
something like Martial's cacare mentulam or Juvenal's Hesternae
occurrere caenae. Facere vicibus (Juv. vii. 238), incestare se invicem
or mutuum facere (Plaut. Trin. ii. 437), is described as "a puerile
vice," in which the two take turns to be active arid passive : they
are also called Gemelli and Fratres = compares in paedicatione.
Illicita libido is = praepostera seu postica Venus, and is expressed
by the picturesque phrase indicare (seu incurvare) aliquem.
Depilatus, divellere pilos, glaber, laevis and nates pervellere are
allusions to the Sotadic toilette. The fine distinction between
demittere and dejicere caput are worthy of a glossary, while
Pathica puella, puera, putus, pullipremo, pusio, pygiaca sacra,
quadrupes, scarabaeus and smerdalius explain themselves.
From Rome the practice extended far and wide to her colonies
especially the Provincia now called Provence. Athenaeus (xii. 26)
charges the people of Massilia with " acting like women out of
luxury "; and he cites the saying " May you sail to Massilia ! " as
if it were another Corinth. Indeed the whole Keltic race is
charged with Le Vice by Aristotle (Pol. ii. 66), Strabo. (iv. 199) and
Diodorus Siculus (v. 32). Roman civilisation carried pederasty also
to Northern Africa, where it took firm root, while the negro and
negroid races to the South ignore the erotic perversion, except
where imported by foreigners into such kingdoms as Bornu and
Haussa. In old Mauritania, now Marocco, 1 the Moors proper are
1 This magnificent country which the petiy jealousies of Europe condemn, like the
glorious regions about Constantiuople, to mere barbarism, is tenanted by three Moslem
races. The Berbers, who call themselves Tamazight (plur. of Amazigh), are the
Gaetulian indigenes speaking an Africo-Semitic tongue (see Essai de Grammaire Kabyle,
etc. par A. Hanoteau, Paris, Benjamin Duprat). The Arabs, descended from the
conquerors in our eighth century, are mostly nomads and camel-breeders. Third and
last are the Moors proper, the race dwelling in towns, a mixed breed originally Arabian
but modified by six centuries of Spanish residence and showing by thickness of feature
and a parchment-coloured skin, resembling the American Octaroon's, a negro innervation
of old date The latter are well described in ' ' Morocco and the Moors," etc. (Sampson
Low and Co., 1876), by my late friend Dr. Arthur Leared, whose work I should like to
see reprinted.
Terminal Essay. 223
notable sodomites ; Moslems, even of saintly houses, are permitted
openly to keep catamites, nor do their disciples think worse of
their sanctity for such license : in one case the English wife failed
to banish from the home " that horrid boy."
Yet pederasty is forbidden by the Koran. In chapter iv. 20 we
read ; " And if two (men) among you commit the crime, then
punish them both," the penalty being some hurt or damage by
public reproach, insult or scourging. There are four distinct
references to Lot and the Sodomites in chapters vii. 78 ; xi 77-84 ;
xxvi. 160-174 and xxix. 28-35. In the first the prophet commis-
sioned to the people says, " Proceed ye to a fulsome act wherein
no creature hath foregone ye ? Verily ye come to men in lieu of
women lustfully." We have then an account of the rain which
made an end of the wicked and this judgment on the Cities of the
Plain is repeated with more detail in the second reference. Here
the angels, generally supposed to be three, Gabriel, Michael and
Raphael, appeared to Lot as beautiful youths, a sore temptation
to the sinners and the godly man's arm was straitened concerning
his visitors because he felt unable to protect them from the erotic
vagaries of his fellow townsmen. He therefore shut his doors and
from behind them argued the matter: presently the riotous
assembly attempted to climb the wall when Gabriel, seeing the
distress of his host, smote them on the face with one of his wings
and blinded them so that all moved off crying for aid and saying
that Lot had magicians in his house. Hereupon the " cities "
which, if they ever existed, must have been Fellah villages, were
uplifted : Gabriel thrust his wing under them and raised them so
high that the inhabitants of the lower heaven (the lunar sphere)
could hear the dogs barking and the cocks crowing. Then came
the rain of stones : these were clay pellets baked in hell-fire,
streaked white and red, or having some mark to distinguish them
from the ordinary and each bearing the name of its destination
224 Alf Laylak wa Laylah.
like the missiles which destroyed the host of Abrahat al- Ashram. 1
Lastly the " Cities " were turned upside down and cast upon
earth. These circumstantial unfacts are repeated at full length
in the other two chapters ; but rather as an instance of Allah's
power than as a warning against pederasty, which Mohammed
seems to have regarded with philosophic indifference. The
general opinion of his followers is that it should be punished like
fornication unless the offenders made a public act of penitence.
But here, as in adultery, the law is somewhat too clement and will
not convict unless four credible witnesses swear to have seen rem
in re. I have noticed (vol. i. 211) the vicious opinion that the
Ghilman or Wuldan, the beautiful boys of Paradise, the counter-
parts of the Houris, will be lawful catamites to the True Believers in
a future state of happiness : the idea is nowhere countenanced in
Al-Islam ; and, although I have often heard debauchees refer to it,
the learned look upon the assertion as scandalous.
As in Marocco so the Vice prevails throughout the old regencies
of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and all the cities of the South
Mediterranean seaboard, whilst it is unknown to the Nubians, the
Berbers and the wilder tribes dwelling inland. Proceeding East-
ward we reach Egypt, that classical region of all abominations
which, marvellous to relate, flourished in closest contact with men
leading 'the purest of lives, models of moderation and morality, of
religion and virtue. Amongst the ancient Copts Le Vice was
part and portion of the Ritual and was represented by two male
partridges alternately copulating (Interp. in Priapi Carm. xvii).
The evil would have gained strength by the invasion of Cambyses
(B.C. $24), whose armies, after the victory over Psammenitus,
settled in the Nile-Valley, and held it, despite sundry revolts, for
some hundred and ninety years. During these six generations
1 Thus somewhat agreeing with one of the multitudinous modern theories that the
Pentapolis was destroyed by discharges of meteoric stones during a tremendous thunder-
storm. Possible, but where are the stones ?,
Terminal Essay. 22$
the Iranians left their mark upon Lower Egypt and especially, as
the late Rogers Bey proved, upon the Fayyum the most ancient
Delta of the Nile. 1 Nor would the evil be diminished by the
Hellenes who, under Alexander the Great, " liberator and saviour
of Egypt " (B.C. 332), extinguished the native dynasties : the love
of the Macedonian for Bagoas the Eunuch being a matter of
history. From that time and under the rule of the Ptolemies the
morality gradually decayed ; the Canopic orgies extended into
private life and the debauchery of the men was equalled only by
the depravity of the women. Neither Christianity nor Al-Islam
could effect a change for the better ; and social morality seems to
have been at its worst during the past century when Sonnini
travelled (A.D. 1717). The French officer, who is thoroughly
trustworthy, draws the darkest picture of the widely-spread crimi-
nality especially of the bestiality and the sodomy (chapt. xv.)
which formed the "delight of the Egyptians." During the
Napoleonic conquest Jaubert in his letter to General Bruix
(p. 19) says, " Les Arabes et les Mamelouks ont traite*
quelques-uns de nos prisonniers comme Socrate traitait, dit-on,
Alcibiade. II fallait peVir ou y passer." Old Anglo-Egyptians
still chuckle over the tale of Sa'id Pasha and M. de Ruyssenaer,
the high-dried and highly respectable Consul*General for the
Netherlands, who was solemnly advised to make the experiment,
active and passive, before offering his opinion upon the subject.
In the present age extensive intercourse with Europeans has
produced not a reformation but a certain reticence amongst the
upper classes : they are as vicious as ever, but they do not care
for displaying their vices to the eyes of mocking strangers.
Syria and Palestine, another ancient focus of abominations, 1
1 To this Iranian domination I attribute the use of many Persic words which are not
yet obsolete in Egypt. "Bakhshish," for instance, is not intelligble in the Moslem
regions west of the Nile- Valley and for a present the Moors say liadiyab, regale or
favor,
VOL. X. P.
226 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
borrowed from Egypt and exaggerated the worship of Andro-
gynic and hermaphroditic deities. Plutarch (De Iside) notes that
the old Nilotes held the moon to be of " male-female sex," the
men sacrificing to Luna and the women to Lunus. 1 Isis also
was a hermaphrodite, the idea being that Aether or Air (the
lower heavens) was the menstruum of generative nature ; and
Damascius explained the tenet by the all-fruitful and prolific
powers of the atmosphere. Hence the fragment attributed to
Orpheus, the song of Jupiter (Air)
All things from Jove descend
Jove was a male, Jove was a deathless bride ;
For men call Air, of two- fold sex, the Jove.
Julius Firmicus relates that "The Assyrians and part of the
Africans " (along the Mediterranean seaboard ?) " hold Air to be
the chief element and adore its fanciful figure (imaginata figura),
consecrated under the name of Juno or the Virgin Venus. *
Their companies of priests cannot duly serve her unless they
effeminate their faces, smooth their skins and disgrace their
masculine sex by feminine ornaments. You may see men in
their very temples amid general groans enduring miserable dalli-
ance and becoming passives like women (viros muliebria pati) and
they expose, with boasting and ostentation, the pollution of the
impure and immodest body." Here we find the religious signifi-
cance of eunuchry. It was practised as a religious rite by the
Tympanotribas or Callus, 2 the castrated votary of Rhea or Bona
Mater, in Phrygia called Cybele, self-mutilated but not in memory
of Atys ; and by a host of other creeds : even Christianity, as
1 Arnobius and Tertullian, with the arrogance of their caste and its miserable igno-
rance of that symbolism which often concealed from vulgar eyes the most precious
mysteries, used to taunt the heathen for praying to deities whose sex they ignored :
"Consuistis in precibus 'Seu tu Deus seu tu Dea,' dicere!" These men would
know everything ; they made God the merest work of man's brains and armed him with
a despotism of omnipotence which rendered their creation truly dreadful.
* Callus lit. = a cock, in pornologic parlance is a capon, a castrato.
Terminal Essay. 22?
sundry texts show, 1 could not altogether cast out the old possession.^
Here too we have an explanation of Sotadic love in its second
stage, when it became, like cannibalism, a matter of superstition.
Assuming a nature-implanted tendency, we see that like human
sacrifice it was held to be the most acceptable offering to the God-
goddess in the Orgia or sacred ceremonies, a something set apart
for peculiar worship. Hence in Rome as in Egypt the temples of
Isis (Inachidos limina, Isiacae sacraria Lunae) were centres of
sodomy and the religious practice was adopted by the grand
priestly castes from Mesopotamia to Mexico and Peru.
We find the earliest written notices of the Vice in the mythical
destruction of the Pentapolis (Gen. xix.), Sodom, Gomorrah
(= 'Amirah, the cultivated country), Adama, Zeboi'm and Zoar
or Bela. The legend has been amply embroidered by the Rabbis,
who make the Sodomites do everything a Venvers : e.g. if a man
were wounded he was fined for bloodshed and was compelled to
fee the offender ; and if one cut off the ear of a neighbour's ass
he was condemned to keep the animal till the ear grew again.
The Jewish doctors declare the people to have been a race of
sharpers with rogues for magistrates, and thus they justify the
judgment which they read literally. But the traveller cannot
accept it. I have carefully examined the lands at the North and
1 The texts justifying or conjoining castration are Matt, xviii. 8-9 ; Mark ix. 43-47 ;
Luke xxiii. 29 and Col. iii. 5. St. Paul preached (i Corin. vii. 29) that a man should
live with his wife as if he had none. The Afoelian heretics of Africa abstained from
Women because Abel died virginal. Origen mutilated himself after interpreting too
rigorously Matth. xix. 12, and was duly excommunicated. But his disciple, the Arab
Valerius founded (A.D. 250) the castrated sect called Valerians who, persecuted and
dispersed by the Emperors Constantine and Justinian, became the spiritual fathers of the
modern Skopzis. These eunuchs first appeared in Russia at the end of the xith century,
when two Greeks, John and Jephrem, were metropolitans of Kiew : the former was
brought thither in A.D. 1089 by Princess Anna Wassewolodowna and is called by the'
chronicles Nawjfc or the Corpse. But in the early part of the last century (1715-1733) a
sect arose in the circle of Uglitseh and in Moscow, at first called Clisti or flagellants
which developed into the modern Skopzi. For this extensive subject see De Stein i
(Zeitschrift fur Ethn. Berlin, 1875) an d Mantegazza, chapt. vi.
228 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
at the South of that most beautiful lake, the so-called Dead Sea,
whose tranquil loveliness, backed by the grand plateau of Moab,
is a* object of admiration to all save patients suffering from the
strange disease " Holy Land on the Brain." 1 But I found no-
traces of craters in the neighbourhood, no signs of vulcanism, no
remains of " meteoric stones " : the asphalt which named the
water is a mineralised vegetable washed out of the limestones,
and the sulphur and salt are brought down by the Jordan into a
lake without issue. I must therefore look upon the history as 3
myth which may have served a double purpose. The first would
be to deter the Jew from the Malthusian practices of his pagan
predecessors, upon whom obloquy was thus cast, so far resembling
the scandalous and absurd legend which explained the names of
the children of Lot by Pheine' and Thamma as " Moab " (Mu-ab)
the water or semen of the father, and " Ammon " as mother's son
that is, bastard. The fable would also account for the abnormal
fissure containing the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea, which the
late Sir R. I. Murchison used wrong-headedly to call a " Volcanc*
of Depression " : this geological feature, that cuts off the river-
basin from its natural outlet the Gulf of Eloth (Akabah), must
date from myriads of years before there were " Cities of the Plains/'
But the main object of the ancient lawgiver, Osarsiph, Moses
or the Moseidae, was doubtless to discountenance a perversion
prejudicial to the increase of population. And he speaks with
no uncertain voice, Whoso lieth with a beast shall surely be put
to death (Exod. xxii. 19) : If a man lie with mankind as he lieth
with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination ;
they shall surely be put to death ; their blood shall be upon them
(Levit. xx. 13 ; where v.v. 15-16 threaten with death man and
woman who lie with beasts). Again, There shall be no whc^re
of the daughters of Israel nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel
(Deut. xxii. 5).
1 See the marvellously absurd description of the glorious "Dead Sea" in the
Purchas v. 84.
Terminal Essay. 229
The old commentators on the Sodom-myth are most unsatis-
factory e.g. Parkhurst, s.v. Kadesh. " From hence we may observe
the peculiar propriety of this punishment of Sodom and of the
neighbouring cities. By their sodomitical impurities they meant
to acknowledge the Heavens as the cause of fruitfulness in-
dependently upon, and in opposition to Jehovah 1 ; therefore
Jehovah, by raining upon them not genial showers but brimstone
from heaven, not only destroyed the inhabitants, but also changed
all that country, which was before as the garden of God, into
brimstone and salt that is not sown nor beareth, neither any grass
groweth therein." It must be owned that to this Pentapolis was
dealt very hard measure for religiously and diligently practising
a popular rite which a host of cities even in the present day, as
Naples and Shiraz, to mention no others, affect for simple luxury
and affect with impunity. The myth may probably reduce itself
to very small proportions, a few Fellah villages destroyed by a
storm, like that which drove Brennus from Delphi.
The Hebrews entering Syria found it religionised by Assyria
and Babylonia, whence Accadian Ishtar had passed west and had
become Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth or Ashirah, 2 the Anaitis of Armenia,
the Phoenician Astarte and the Greek Aphrodite, the great Moon-
goddess. 3 who is queen of Heaven and Love. In another phase
she was Venus Mylitta = the Procreatrix, in Chaldaic Mauludatd
1 Jehovah here is made to play an evil part by destroying men instead of teaching
them better. But, "Nous faisons les Dieux a notre image et nous portons dans le ciel
oe que nous voyons sur la terre." The idea of Yahweh, or Yah is palpably Egyptian,
the Ankh or ever-living One : the etymon, however, was learned at Babylon and is
still found amongst the cuneiforms.
8 The name still survives in the Shajarat al-Ashara, a clump o'f trees near the village
Al-Ghajar (of the Gypsies ?) at the foot of Hermon.
3 I am not quite sure that Astarte is not primarily the planet Venus ; but I can
hardly doubt that Prof. Max Miiller and Sir G. Cox are mistaken in bringing from
India Aphrodite the Dawn and her attendants, the Charites identified with the Vedic
HariU. Of Ishtar in Accadia, however, Roscher seems to have proved that she is
distinctly the Moon sinking into Amenti (the west, the Underworld) in search of her lost
spouse Izdubar, the Sun-god. This again is pure Egyptianism.
230 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
and in Arabic Moawallidah, she who bringeth forth. She was
worshipped by men habited as women and vice versa ; for which
reason in the Torah (Deut. xx. 5) the sexes are forbidden to
change dress. The male prostitutes were called Kadesh the holy,
the women being Kadeshah, and doubtless gave themselves up to
great excesses. Eusebius (De bit. Const, iii. c. 55) describes a school
of impurity at Aphac, where women and " men who were not
men " practised all manner of abominations in honour of the
Demon (Venus). Here the Phrygian symbolism of Kybele and
Attis (Atys) had become the Syrian Ba'al Tammuz and Astarte,
and the Grecian Dionaea and Adonis, the anthropomorphic forms
of the two greater lights. The site, Apheca, now Wady al-Afik
on the route from Bayrut to the Cedars, is a glen of wild and
wondrous beauty, fitting frame-work for the loves of goddess and
demigod : and the ruins of the temple destroyed by Constantine
contrast with Nature's work, the glorious fountain, splendidior
vitro, which feeds the River Ibrahim and still at times Adonis
Vuns purple to the sea. 1
The Phoenicians spread this androgynic worship over Greece.
We find the consecrated servants and votaries of Corinthian
Aphrodite called Hierodouli (Strabo viii. 6), who aided the ten
thousand courtesans in gracing the Venus-temple : from this
excessive luxury arose the proverb popularised by Horace. One
1 In this classical land of Venus the worship of Ishtar-Ashtaroth is by no means obsolete.
The Metwali heretics, a people of Persian descent and Shiite tenets, and the peasantry of
" Bilad B'sharrah," which I would derive from Bayt Ashirah, still pilgrimage to the
ruins and address their vows to the Sayyidat al-Kabirah, the Great Lady. Orthodox
Moslems accuse them of abominable orgies and point to the lamps and rags which
they suspend to a tree entitled Shajarat al-Sitt the Lady's tree an Acacia Albida
which, according to some travellers, is found only here and at Sayda (Sidon) where an
avenue exists. The people of Kasrawan, a Christian province in the Libanus, inhabited
by a peculiarly prurient race, also hold high festival under the farfamed Cedars and
their women sacrifice to Venus like the Kadashah of the Phoenicians. This survival of
old superstition is unknown to missionary " Handbooks,'.' but amply deserves the study of
the anthropologist.
Terminal Essay. 231
of the head-quarters of the cult was Cyprus where, as Servius
relates (Ad JEn. ii. 632), stood the simulacre of a bearded
Aphrodite with feminine body and costume, sceptered and mitred
like a man. The sexes when worshipping it exchanged habits
and here the virginity was offered in sacrifice : Herodotus (i. c. 199)
describes this defloration at Babylon but sees only the shameful
part of the custom which was a mere consecration of a tribal rite.
Everywhere girls before marriage belong either to the father or to
the clan and thus the maiden paid the debt due to the public, before
becoming private property as a wife. The same usage prevailed
in ancient Armenia and in parts of Ethiopia ; and Herodotus tells
us that a practice very much like the Babylonian " is found also
in certain parts of the Island of Cyprus : " it is noticed by Justin
(xviii. c. 5) and probably it explains the " Succoth Benoth " or
Damsels' booths which the Babylonians transplanted to the cities
of Samaria. 1 The Jews seem very successfully to have copied the
abominations of their pagan neighbours, even in the matter of the
"dog." 2 In the reign of wicked Rehoboam (B.C. 975) "There
were also sodomites in the land and they did according to all the
abominations of the .nations which the Lord cast out before the
children of Israel " (r Kings xiv. 20). The scandal was abated by
zealous King Asa (B.C. 958) whose grandmother 3 was high-
priestess of Priapus (princeps in sacris Priapi) : he " took
1 Some commentators understand "the tabernacles sacred to the reproductive powers
of women ; " and the Rabbis declare that the emblem was the figure of a setting
hen.
2 "Dog" is applied by the older Jews to the Sodomite and the Catamite; and
thus they understand the "price of a dog" which could not be brought into the
Temple (Deut. xxiii. 18). I have noticed it in one of the derivations of cinaedus
and can only remark that it is a vile libel upon the canine tribe.
3 Her name was Maachah and her title, according to some, " King's mother " : she
founded the sect of Communists who rejected marriage and made adultery and incest
part of worship in their splendid temple. Such were the Basilians and the Carpo-
cratians, followed in the xith century by Tranchelin, whose sectarians, the Turlupius. .
long infested Savoy.
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
away the sodomites out of the land (i Kings xv. 12). Yet the
prophets were loud in their complaints, especially the so-called
Isaiah (B.C. 760), " except the Lord of Hosts had left to us a
very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom " (i. 9) ; and
strong measures were required from good King Josiah (B.C. 641)
who amongst other things, " brake down the houses of the sodomites
that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove
hangings for the grove " (2 Kings xxiii. 7). Thebordelsof boys
(pueris alienis adhaeseverunt) appear to have been near the
Temple.
Syria has not forgotten her old " praxis." At Damascus I
found some noteworthy cases amongst the religious of the great
Amawi Mosque. As for the Druses we have Burckhardt's authority
(Travels in Syria, etc., p. 202) "unnatural propensities are very
common amongst them."
The Sotadic Zone covers the whole of Asia Minor and
Mesopotamia now occupied by the " unspeakable Turk/' a race
of born pederasts ; and in the former region we first notice a
peculiarity of the feminine figure, the mammae inclinatae,
jacentes et pannosae, which prevails over all this part of the belt.
Whilst the women to the North and South have, with local ex-
ceptions, the mammae stantes of the European virgin, 1 those of
Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and Kashmir lose all the fine curves
of the bosom, sometimes even before the first child ; and after it
the hemispheres take the form of bags. This cannot result from
climate only ; the women of Maratha-land, inhabiting a damper
and hotter region than Kashmir, are noted for fine firm breasts
even after parturition. Le Vice of course prevails more in the cities
and towns of Asiatic Turkey than in the villages ; yet even these
are infected ; while the nomad Turcomans contrast badly in this
1 A noted exception is Vienna remarkable for the enormous development of the
virginal bosom which soon becomes pendulent.
Terminal Essay. 233
point with the Gypsies, those Badawin of India. The Kurd
population is of Iranian origin, which means that the evil is
deeply rooted : I have noted in The Nights that the great and
glorious Saladin was a habitual pederast. The Armenians, as
their national character is, will prostitute themselves for gain
but prefer women to boys : Georgia supplied Turkey with
catamites whilst Circassia sent concubines. In Mesopotamia the
barbarous invader has almost obliterated the ancient civilisation
which is ante-dated only by the Nilotic : the mysteries of old
Babylon nowhere survive save in certain obscure tribes like the
Mandaeans, the Devil-worshippers and the Ali-il4hi. Entering
Persia we find the reverse of Armenia ; and, despite Herodotus,
I believe that Iran borrowed her pathologic love from the peoples
of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and not from the then insignificant
Greeks. But whatever may be its origin, the corruption is now
bred in the bone. It begins in boyhood and many Persians
account for it by paternal severity. Youths arrived at puberty
find none of the facilities with which Europe supplies fornication.
Onanism J is to a certain extent discouraged by circumcision, and
meddling with the father's slave-girls and concubines would be
risking cruel punishment if not death. Hence they use each other
by turns, a " puerile practice " known as Alish-Takish, the Lat
facere vicibus or mutuum facere. Temperament, media, and
atavism recommend the custom to the general ; and after marrying
and begetting heirs, Paterfamilias returns to the Ganymede.
Hence all the odes of Hafiz are addressed to youths, as proved by
such Arabic exclamations as 'Afaka 'llah = Allah assain thee
(masculine) 2 : the object is often fanciful but it would be held
1 Gen. xxxviii. 2-11. Amongst the classics Mercury taught the ' Art of le Thalaba "
to his son Pan who wandered about the mountains distraught with love for the Nymph
Echo and Pan passed it on to the pastors. See Thalaba in Mirabeau.
2 The reader of The Nights has remarked how often the "he" in Arabic poetry
denotes a "she" ; but the Arab* when uncontaminaled by travel, ignores pederasty,
and the Arab poet is a Badawi.
$34 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
coarse and immodest to address an imaginary girl. 1 An illus-
tration of the penchant is told at Shiraz concerning a certain
Mujtahid, the head of the Shi'ah creed, corresponding with a
prince-archbishop in Europe. A friend once said to him, " There
is a question I would fain address to your Eminence but I lack
the daring to do so." " Ask and fear not," replied the Divine. " It
is this, O Mujtahid ! Figure thee in a garden of roses and
hyacinths with the evening breeze waving the cypress-heads, a
fair youth of twenty sitting by thy side and the assurance of
perfect privacy. What, prithee, would be the result ? " The holy
man bowed the chin of doubt upon the collar of meditation ; and,
too honest to lie, presently whispered, "Allah defend me from
such temptation of Satan ! " Yet even in Persia men have not
been wanting who have done their utmost to uproot the Vice : in
the same Shiraz they speak of a father who, finding his son in
flagrant delict, put him to death like Brutus or Lynch of Galway.
Such isolated cases, however, can effect nothing. Chardin tells
us that houses of male prostitution were common in Persia whilst
those of women were unknown : the same is the case in the
present day and the boys are prepared with extreme care by diet,
baths, depilation, unguents and a host of artists in cosmetics. 2
Le Vice is looked upon at most as a peccadillo and its mention
crops up in every jest-book. When the Isfahan man mocked
Shaykh Sa'adi by comparing the bald pates of Shirazian elders to
the bottom of a lota, a brass cup with a wide-necked opening used
ii the Hammam, the witty poet turned its aperture upwards and
thereto likened the well-abused podex of an Isfahani youth.
Another favourite piece of Shirazian " chaff " is to declare that
1 So Mohammed addressed his girl-wife Ayishah in the masculine.
8 So amongst the Romans we have the latroliptae,. youths or girls who wiped the
gymnast's perspiring body with swan-down, a practice renewed by the professors of
" Massage " ; Unctores who applied perfumes and essences ; Fricatrices and Tractatrices
or shampooers ; Dropacistae, corn-cutters; Alipilarii who plucked the hair, etc., etc., etc.
Terminal Essay. 235
when an Isfahan father would set up his son in business he pro-
vides him with a pound of rice, meaning that he can sell the result
as compost for the kitchen-garden, and with the price buy another
meal: hence the saying Khakh-i-pai kahu=the soil at the lettuce-
root The Isfahanis retort with the name of a station or halting-
place between the two cities where, under pretence of making
travellers stow away their riding-gear, many a Shirazi had been
raped : hence " Zin o takaltu tu bi-bar " = carry within saddle
and saddle-cloth ! A favourite Persian punishment for strangers
caught in the Harem or Gynaeceum is to strip and throw them
and expose them to the embraces of the grooms and negro- slaves.
I once asked a Shirazi how penetration was possible if the patient
resisted with all the force of the sphincter muscle : he smiled and
said, "Ah, we Persians know a trick to get over that ; we apply a
sharpened tent-peg to the crupper-bone (os coccygis) and knock
till lie opens." A well-known missionary to the East during the
last generation was subjected to this gross insult by one of the
Persian Prince-governors, whom he had infuriated by his con-
version-mania : in his memoirs he alludes to it by mentioning his
" dishonoured person ;" but English readers cannot comprehend
the full significance of the confession. About the same time
Shaykh Nasr, Governor of Bushire, a man famed for facetious
blackguardism, used to invite European youngsters serving in the
Bombay Marine and ply them with liquor till they were insensible.
Next morning the middies mostly complained that the champagne
had caused a curious irritation and soreness in la parte-poste. The
same Eastern " Scrogin " would ask his guests if they had ever
seen a man-cannon (Adami-top); and, on their replying in the
negative, a grey-beard slave was dragged in blaspheming and
struggling with all his strength. He was presently placed on all
fours and firmly held by the extremities; his bag-trousers were
let down and a dozen peppercorns were inserted ano suo : the
target was a sheet of paper held at a reasonable distance ; the
236 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
match was applied by a pinch of cayenne in the nostrils ; the
sneeze started the grapeshot and the number of hits on the butt
decided the bets. We can hardly wonder at the loose conduct of
Persian women perpetually mortified by marital pederasty. During
the unhappy campaign of 1856-57 in which, with the exception of
a few brilliant skirmishes, we gained no glory, Sir James Outram
and the Bombay army showing how badly they could work, there
was a formal outburst of the Harems ; and even women of
princely birth could not be kept out of the officers' quarters.
The cities of Afghanistan and Sind are thoroughly saturated
with Persian vice, and the people sing
Kadr-i-kus Aughdn ddnad, kadr-i-kunrd Kdbuli :
The worth of coynte the Afghan knows : Cabul prefers the other chose ! !
The Afghans are commercial travellers on a large scale and
each caravan is accompanied by a number of boys and lads
almost in woman's attire with kohl'd eyes and rouged cheeks,
long tresses and henna'd fingers and toes, riding luxuriously in
Kajawas or camel-panniers : they are called Kuch-i safari, or
travelling wives, and the husbands trudge patiently by their
sides. In Afghanistan also a frantic debauchery broke out
amongst the women when they found incubi who were not
pederasts; and the scandal was not the most insignificant cause
of the general rising at Cabul (Nov. 1841), and the slaughter of
Macnaghten, Burnes and other British officers.
Resuming our way Eastward we find the Sikhs and the
Moslems of the Panjab much addicted to Le Vice, although the
Himalayan tribes to the north and those lying south, the Rajputs
and Marathas, ignore it. The same may be said of the Kash-
1 It is a parody on the well-known song (Roebuck i. sect. 2, No. 1602) :
The goldsmith knows the worth of gold,, jewellers worth of jewelry ;
The worth of rose Bulbul can tell and Kambar's worth his lord, Ali.
Terminal Essay. 237
mirians who add another Kappa to the tria Kakista, Kappadocians,
Kretans, and Kilicians : the proverb says,
Agar kaht-i-mardum uftad, az in sih jins kam giri ;
Eki Afghan, dovvurn Sindf, 1 siyyum badjins-i-Kashmfri :
Though of men there be famine yet shun these three
Afghan, Sindi and rascally Kashmiri.
M. Louis Daville describes the infamies of Lahore and
Lakhnau where he found men dressed as women, with flowing
locks under crowns of flowers, imitating the feminine walk and
gestures, voice and fashion of speech, and ogling their admirers
with all the coquetry of bayaderes. Victor Jacquemont's Journal
de Voyage describes the pederasty of Ranji't Singh, the " Lion
of the Panjab," and his pathic Gulab Singh whom the English
inflicted upon Cashmir as ruler by way of paying for his treason.
Yet the Hindus, 1 repeat, hold pederasty in abhorrence and are
as much scandalised by being called Gand-mara (anus-beater) or
Gandu (anuser) as Englishmen would be. During the years
1843-44 my regiment, almost all Hindu Sepoys of the Bombay
Presidency, was stationed at a purgatory called Bandar Gharra,*
a sandy flat wfth a scatter of verdigris-green milk-bush some forty
miles north of Karachi the head-quarters. The dirty heap of
mud-and-mat hovels, which represented the adjacent native
village, could not supply a single woman ; yet only one case of
pederasty came to light and that after a tragical fashion some
years afterwards. A young Brahman had connection with a
soldier comrade of low caste and this had continued till, in an
unhappy hour, the Pariah patient ventured to become the agent.
The latter, in Arab. Al-Fa'il = the " doer," is not an object of
contempt like Al-Maful = the " done " ; and the high-caste
1 For "Sindi" Roebuck (Oriental Proverbs Part i. p. 99) has Kunbu (Kuroboh)
a Panjdbi peasant and others vary the saying ad libitum. See vol. vi. 156.
2 See " Sind Revisited " i. 133-35,
238 A If Laylah wa Laylah,
sepoy, stung by remorse and revenge, loaded his musket and
deliberately shot his paramour. He was hanged by court
martial at Hyderabad and, when his last wishes were asked
he begged in vain to be suspended by the feet; the idea being
that his soul, polluted by exiting " below the waist," would be
doomed to endless transmigrations through the lowest forms
of life.
Beyond India, I have stated, the Sotadic Zone begins to
broaden out embracing all China, Turkistan and Japan. The
Chinese, as far as we know them in the great cities, are omni-
vorous and omnifutuentes : they are the chosen people of
debauchery and their systematic bestiality with ducks, goats,
and other animals is equalled only by their pederasty. Kaempfer
and Orlof Torde (Voyage en Chine) notice the public houses for
boys and youths in China and Japan. Mirabeau (L'Anandryne)
describes the tribadism of their women in hammocks. When
Pekin was plundered the Harems contained a number of balls
a little larger than the old musket-bullet, made of thin silver
with a loose pellet of brass inside somewhat like a grelot J : these
articles were placed by the women between the labia and an
up-and-down movement on the bed gave a pleasant titillation
when nothing better was, to be procured. They have every
artifice of luxury, aphrodisiacs, erotic perfumes and singular
applications. Such are the pills which, dissolved in water and
applied to the glans penis, cause it to throb and swell : so
according to Amerigo Vespucci American women could arti-
ficially increase the size of their husbands' parts. 2 The Chinese
bracelet of caoutchouc studded with points now takes the place
1 They must not be confounded with the grelots lascifs^ the little bells of gold or
silver set by the people of Pegu in the prepuce-skin, and described by Nicolo de Conti
who however refused to undergo the operation.
2 Relation des de"couvertes faites par Colomb etc. p. 137 : Bologna 1875 : also
Vespucci's letter in Ramusio (i. 131) and Paro's Recherches philosophiqucs sur
les Ame'ricains.
Terminal Essay. 239
cf the Herisson, or Annulus hirsutus, 1 which was bound between
the glans and prepuce. Of the penis succedaneus, that imitation
of the Arbor vitae or Soter Kosmou, which the Latins called
phallus and fascinum, 2 the French godemiche* and the Italians
passatempo and diletto (whence our "dildo"), every kind abounds,
varying from a stuffed " French letter " to a cone of ribbed horn
which looks like an instrument of torture. For the use of men
they have the "merkin," 3 a heart-shaped article of thin skin
stuffed with cotton and slit with an artificial vagina : two tapes
at the top and one below lash it to the back of a chair. The
erotic literature of the Chinese and Japanese is highly developed
and their illustratibns are often facetious as well as obscene. All
are familiar with that of the strong man who by a blow with his
enormous phallus shivers a copper pot ; and the ludicrous con*
trast of the huge-membered wights who land in the Isle of Women
and presently escape from it, wrinkled and shrivelled, true
Domine Dolittles. Of Turkistan we know little, but what we
know confirms my statement. Mr. Schuyler in his Turkistan
(i. 132) offers an illustration of a " Batchah " (Pers. bachcheh =
catamite), " or singing-boy surrounded by his admirers." Of
the Tartars Master Purchas laconically says (v. 419), " They
are addicted to Sodomie or Buggerie." The learned casuist
Dr. Thomas Sanchez the Spaniard had (says Mirabeau in Kad-
hesch) to decide a difficult question concerning the sinfulness
of a peculiar erotic perversion. The Jesuits brought home from
Manilla a tailed man whose moveable prolongation of the os
1 See Mantegazza loc. cit. who borrows from the These de Paris of Dr. Abel Hureau
de Villeneuve, " Frictiones per coitum productae magnum mucosae membranae vaginalis
turgorem, ac simul hujus cuniculi coarctationem tarn maritis salacibus quaeritatam
afferunt."
2 Fascirius is the Priapus-god to whom the Vestal Virgins of Rome, professed tribades,
sacrificed ; also the neck-charm in phallus-shape. Fascinum is the male member.
8 Captain Grose (Lexicon Balatronicum) explains merkin as " counterfeit hair for
women's privy parts. See Bailey's Diet." The Bailey of 1764, an " improved edition,-"
does not contain the word which is now generally applied to a cunnus succedaneus.
240 A If Laylah wa Laylah*
coccygis measured from 7 to 10 inches: he had placed himself
between two women, enjoying one naturally while the other used
his tail as a penis succedaneus. The verdict was incomplete
sodomy and simple fornication. For the islands north of Japan,
the "Sodomitical Sea," and the "nayle of tynne" thrust through
the prepuce to prevent sodomy, see Litx ii. chap. 4 of Master
Thomas Caudish's Circumnavigation, and vol. vi. of Pinkerton's
Geography translated by Walckenaer.
Passing over to America we find that the Sotadic Zone contains
the whole hemisphere from Behring's Straits to Magellan's. This
prevalence of " mollities " astonishes the anthropologist, who is
apt to consider pederasty the growth of luxury and the especial
product of great and civilised cities, unnecessary and therefore
unknown to simple savagery where the births of both sexes are
about equal and female infanticide is not practised. In many parts
vof the New World this perversion was accompanied by another
depravity of taste confirmed cannibalism. 1 The forests and
^Campos abounded in game from the deer to the pheasant-like
penelope, and the seas and rivers produced an unfailing supply
of excellent fish and shell-fish 2 ; yet the Brazilian Tupis pre-
ferred the meat of man to every other food.
A glance at Mr. Bancroft 3 proves the abnormal development
of sodomy amongst the savages and barbarians of the New World.
Even his half-frozen Hyperboreans "possess all the passions
which are supposed to develop most freely under a milder
temperature " (i. 58). " The voluptuousness and polygamy of the
North American Indians, under a temperature of almost perpetual
1 I have noticed this phenomenal cannibalism in my notes to Mr. Albert Tootle'g
excellent translation of " The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse : " London, Hakluyt
Society, mdccclxxiv.
2 The Ostreiras or shell mounds of the Brazil, sometimes 200 feet high, are described
by me in Anthropologia No. i. Oct. 1873.
3 The Native Races of the Pacific States of South America, by Herbert Howe
Bancroft, London, Longmans, 1875.
Terminal Essay. 241
winter is far greater than that of the most sensual tropical nations"
(Martin's Brit. Colonies Hi. 524). I can quote only a few of the
most remarkable instances. Of the Koniagas of Kadiak Island
and the Thinkleets we read (i. 81-82), " The most repugnant of all
their practices is that of male concubinage. A Kadiak mother
will select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress
and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping
him at women's work, associating him with women and girls, in
order to render his effeminacy complete. Arriving at the age of ten
or fifteen years, he is married to some wealthy man who regards
such a companion as a great acquisition. These male concubines
are called Achnutschik or Schopans " (the authorities quoted being
Holmberg, Langsdorff, Billing, Choris, Lisiansky and Marchand).
The same is the case in Nutka Sound and the Aleutian Islands,
where "male concubinage obtains throughout, but not to the same
extent as amongst the Koniagas." The objects of " unnatural "
affection have their beards carefully plucked out as soon as the
face-hair begins to grow, and their chins are tattooed like those
of the women. In California the first missionaries found the same
practice, the youths being called Joya (Bancroft, 1.41 5 and authorities
Palon, Crespi, Boscana, Mofras, Torquemada, Duflot and Pages),
The Comanches unite incest with sodomy (i. 515). "In New Mexico
according to Arlegui, Ribas, and other authors, male concubinage
prevails to a great extent, these loathsome semblances of
humanity, whom to call beastly were a slander upon beasts,
dress themselves in the clothes and perform the functions of
women, the use of weapons being denied them " (i. 585), Pederasty
was systematically practised by the peoples of Cueba, Careta, and
other parts of Central America. The Caciques and some of the
headmen kept harems of youths who, as soon as destined for the
unclean office, were dressed as women. They went by the name
of Camayoas, and were hated and detested by the goodwives
$ 773-74)- Of the Nahua nations Father Pierre de Gand (alias
VOL, X. Q
A If Laylah wa Laylah,
de Musa) writes, " Un certain nombre de pretres n'avaient point'
de femmes, sed eorum loco pueros quibus abutebantur. Ce pe*che*
&ait si commun dans ce pays que, jeunes ou vieux, tous etaient
tnfecte's ; ils y dtaient si adonne*s que memes les enfants de six ans
s'y livraient " (Ternaux-Campans, Voyages, SeVie i. Tom. x. p, 197),
Among the Mayas of Yucatan Las Casas declares that the great
prevalence of " unnatural " lust made parents anxious to see theif
progeny wedded as soon as possible (Kingsborough's Mex. Ant.
viii. 135). In Vera Paz a god, called by some Chin and by others
Cavial and Maran, taught it by committing the act with another
god. Some fathers gave their sons a boy to use as a woman, and
if any other approached this pathic he was treated as an adulterer,
In Yucatan images were found by Bernal Diaz proving the
sodomitical propensities of the people (Bancroft v. 198). De
Pauw (Recherches Philosophiques sur les Ame'ricains, London,
1771) has much to say about the subject in Mexico generally: in
the northern provinces men married youths who, dressed like women^
were forbidden to carry arms. According to Gomara there were
at Tamalipas houses of male prostitution ; and from Diaz and
others we gather that fatpecado nefando was the rule. Both in
Mexico and in Peru it might have caused, if it did not justify, the
cruelties of the Conquistadores. Pederasty was also general
throughout Nicaragua, and the early explorers found it amongst
the indigenes of Panama.
We have authentic details concerning Le Vice in Peru and its
adjacent lands, beginning with Cieza de Leon, who must be read
in the original or in the translated extracts of Purchas (vol. v.
942, etc.), not in the cruelly castrated form preferred by the
Council of the Hakluyt Society. Speaking of the New Granada
Indians he tells us that " at Old Port (Porto Viejo) and Puna, the
Deuill so farre prevayled in their beastly Deuotions that there
were Boyes consecrated to serue in the Temple ; and at the times of
their Sacrifices and Solemne Feasts, the Lords and principall men
Terminal Essay. 243
abused them to that detestable filthinesse ; " i.e. performed their
peculiar worship. Generally in the hill-countries the Devil,
under the show of holiness, had introduced the practice ; for every
temple or chief house of adoration kept one or two men or
more which were attired like women, even from the time of their
childhood, and spake like them, imitating them in everything ;
with these, under pretext of holiness and religion, their principal
men on principal days had commerce. Speaking of the arrival of
the Giants* at Point Santa Elena, Cieza says (chap, Hi.), they were
detested by the natives, because in using their women they killed
them, and their men also in another way. All the natives declare
that God brought upon them a punishment proportioned to the
enormity of their offence. When they were engaged together in
their accursed intercourse, a fearful and terrible fire came down
from Heaven with a great noise, out of the midst of which there
issued a shining Angel with a glittering sword, wherewith at one
blow they were all killed and the fire consumed them. 2 There
remained a few bones and skulls which God allowed to bide un-
consumed by the fire, as a memorial of this punishment. In the
Hakluyt Society's bowdlerisation we read of the Tumbez Islanders
being "very vicious, many of them committing the abominable
offence " (p. 24) j also, "If by the advice of the Devil any Indian
commit the abominable crime, it is thought little of and they call
him a woman." In chapters Hi. and Iviii. we find exceptions.
The Indians of Huancabamba, " although so near the peoples of
Puerto Viejo and Guayaquil, do not commit the abominable sin ; "
and the Serranos, or island mountaineers, as sorcerers and
magicians inferior to the coast peoples, were not so much addicted
to sodomy.
1 AH Peruvian historians mention these giants, who were probably the large-limbed
Caribs (Carafbes) of the Brazil : they will be noticed in page 244.
2 This sounds much like a pious fraud of the missionaries, a Europeo-American
version of the Sodom legend.
244 Alf Laylah wa Laylah,
The Royal Commentaries of the Yncas shows that the evil wa*
of a comparatively modern growth. In the early period of
Peruvian history the people considered the crime "unspeakable:"
if a Cuzco Indian, not of Yncarial blood, angrily addressed the
term pederast to another, he was held infamous for many days.
One of the generals having reported to the Ynca Ccapacc
Yupanqui that there were some sodomites, not in all the valleys,
but one here and one there, " nor was it a habit of all the in-
habitants but only of certain persons who practised it privately,"
the ruler ordered that the criminals should be publicly burnt alive
and their houses, crops and trees destroyed : moreover, to show
his abomination, he commanded that the whole village should so
be treated if one man fell into this habit (Lib. iii. cap. 13). Else-
where we learn, " There were sodomites in some provinces, though
not openly nor universally, but some particular men and in secret,
In some parts they had them in their temples, because the Devil
persuaded them that the Gods took great delight in such people,
and thus the Devil acted as a traitor to remove the veil of shame
that the Gentiles felt for this crime and to accustom them to
commit it in public and in common."
< During the times of the Conquistadores male concubinage had
become the rule throughout Peru. At Cuzco, we are told by
Nuno de Guzman in 1530, " The last which was taken, and which
fought most couragiously, was a man in the habite of a
woman, which confessed that from a childe he had gotten his liuing
by that filthinesse, for which I caused him to be burned." V. F.
Lopez 1 draws a frightful picture of pathologic love in Peru.
Under the reigns which followed that of Inti-Kapak (Ccapacc)
Amauri, the country was attacked by invaders of a giant race
coming from the sea : they practised pederasty after a fashion so
shameless that the conquered tribes were compelled to fly (p. 271).
1 Les Races Aryennes du Prou, Paris, Franck, 1871.
Terminal Essay. 245
Under the pre-Yncarial Amauta, or priestly dynasty, Peru had lapsed
Into savagery and the kings of Cuzco preserved only the name.
Toutes ces hontes et toutes ces miseres provenaient de deux vices
infames, la bestialite* et la sodomie. Les fefnmes surtout e*taient
offensees de voir la nature frustre'e de tous ses droits. Elles
pleuraient ensemble en leurs reunions sur le miserable e*tat dans
lequel elles dtaient tombe*es, sur le me*pns avec lequel elles dtaient
traite*es. * * * * Le monde e'tait renverse*, les hommes
s'aimaient et ^taient jaloux les uns des autres. * * * Elles
cherchaient, mais en vain, les moyens de remedier au mal ; elles
employaient des herbes et des recettes diaboliques qui leur
ramenaient bien quelques individus, mais ne pouvaient arrter les
progres incessants du vice. Cet e*tat de choses constitua un
veritable moyen age, qui dura jusqu'a l'e*tablissement du
gouvernement des Incas" (p 277).
When Sinchi Roko (the xcvth of Montesinos and the xcist
of Garcilazo) became Ynca, he found morals at the lowest
ebb. " Ni la prudence de Tinea, ni les lois s^veres qu'il
avait promulgue*es n'avaient pu extirper enticement le pdche"
centre nature. II reprit avec une nouvelle violence, et les femmes
en furent si jalouses qu'un grand nombre d'elles tu&rent leurs
maris. Les devins et les sorciers passaient leurs journe*es &
fabriquer, avec certaines herbes, des compositions magiques qui
rendaient fous ceux qui en mangaient, et les fernmes en faisaient
prendre, soit dans les aliments, soit dans la chicha, a ceux dont
elles e*taient jalouses" (p. 291).
I have remarked that the Tupi races of the Brazil were infamous
for cannibalism and sodomy ; nor could the latter be only racial
as proved by the fact that colonists of pure Lusitanian blood
followed in the path of the savages. Sr. Antonio Augusto da
Costa Aguiar 1 is outspoken upon this point. " A crime which in
1 O Brazil e os Braziieiros, Santos, 1862.
246 A If Lay I ah wa Lctylah-
England leads to the gallows, and which is the very measure of
abject depravity, passes with impunity amongst us by the partici-
pating in it of almost all or of many (de quasi todos, ou de muitos).
Ah ! if the wrath of Heaven were to fall by way of punishing such
crimes (delictos)^ more than one city of this Empire, more than a
dozen, would pass into the category of the Sodoms and Gomorrahs "
(p. 30). Till late years pederasty in the Brazil was looked upon
as a peccadillo ; the European immigrants following the practice
of the wild men who were naked but not, as Columbus said,
" clothed in innocence." One of Her Majesty's Consuls used to
tell a tale of the hilarity provoked in a " fashionable " assembly by
the open declaration of a young gentleman that his mulatto-
** patient " had suddenly turned upon him, insisting upon becoming
agent. Now, however, under the influences of improved education
and respect for the public opinion of Europe, pathologic love
amongst the Luso-Brazilians has been reduced to the normal
limits.
Outside the Sotadic Zone, I have said, Le Vice is sporadic, not
endemic : yet the physical and moral effect of great cities where
puberty, they say, is induced earlier than in country sites, has been
the same in most lands, causing modesty to decay and pederasty
to flourish. The Badawi Arab is wholly pure of Le Vice ; yet
San'a the capital of Al-Yaman and other centres of population
have long been and still are thoroughly infected. History tells us
of Zu Shanatir, tyrant of " Arabia Felix," in A.D. 478, who used
to entice young men into his palace and cause them after use to
be cast out of the windows: this unkindly ruler was at last
poinarded by the youth Zerash, known from his long ringlets as
" Zii Nowas." The negro race is mostly untainted by sodomy and
tribadism. Yet Joan dos Sanctos 1 found in Cacongo of West
Africa certain " Chibudi, which are men attyred like women and
1 Aelhiopia Orieotalis, Purchas it. 1 558.
Terminal Essay. 247
behaue themselves womanly, ashamed to be called men ; are also
married to men, and esteem that vnnaturale damnation an honor."
Madagascar also delighted in dancing and singing boys dressed as
girls. In the Empire of Dahomey I noted a corps of prostitutes
kept for the use of the Amazon-soldieresses.
North of the Sotadic Zone we find local but notable instances.
Master Christopher Burrough 1 describes on the western side of the
Volga " a very fine stone castle, called by the name Oueak, and
adioyning to the same a Towne called by the Russes, Sodom>
* * # which W as swallowed into the earth by the iustice of God,
for the vvickednesse of the people." Again : although as a rule
Christianity has steadily opposed pathologic love both in writing
and preaching, there have been remarkable exceptions. Perhaps
the most curious idea was that of certain medical writers in the
middle ages : " Usus et amplexus pueri, bene temperatus,
salutaris medicina " (Tardieu). Bayle notices (under "Vayer")
the infamous book of Giovanni della Casa, Archbishop of
Benevento, " De laudibus Sodomiae/' 2 vulgarly known as " Capitolo
del Forno." The same writer refers (under " Sixte iv ") to the report
that the Dominican Order, which systematically decried Le Vice,
had presented a request to the Cardinal di Santa Lucia that
sodomy might be lawful during three months per annum, June to
August ; and that the Cardinal had underwritten the petition
"Be it done as they demand." Hence the Faeda Venus of
Battista Mantovano. Bayle rejects the history for a curious
reason, venery being colder in summer than in winter, and quotes
the proverb " Aux mois qui n'ont pas d' R, peu embrasser et bien
boire." But in the case of a celibate priesthood such scandals are
inevitable : witness the famous Jesuit epitaph Ci-gtt un Jdsuite, etc.
In our modern capitals, London, Berlin and Paris for instance,
1 Purchas iii. 243.
2 For a literal translation see l re Se'rie de la Curiosite* Litteraire et Bibliographique,
Paris, Liseux, 1880.
248 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
the Vice seems subject to periodical outbreaks. For many years,
also, England sent her pederasts to Italy, and especially to Naples
whence originated the term " II vizio Inglese." It would be
invidious to detail the scandals which of late years have startled
the public in London and Dublin : for these the curious will
consult the police reports. Berlin, despite her strong flavour of
Phariseeism, Puritanism and Chauvinism in religion, manners and
morals, is not a whit better than her neighbours. Dr. Caspar, 1 a
well-known authority on the subject, adduces many interesting
cases especially an old Count Cajus and his six accomplices.
Amongst his many correspondents one suggested to him that not
only Plato and Julius Caesar but also Winckelmann and Platen (?)
belonged to the Society; and he had found it flourishing in Palermo,
the Louvre, the Scottish Highlands and St. Petersburg, to name
only a few places. Frederick the Great is said to have addressed
these words to his nephew, "Je puis vous assurer, par mon
experience personelle, que ce plaisir est peu agr<able a cultiver.*'
This suggests the popular anecdote of Voltaire and the English-
man who agreed upon an " experience " and found it far from
satisfactory. A few days afterwards the latter informed the Sage
of Ferney that he had tried it again and provoked the exclama-
tion, " Once a philospher : twice a sodomite ! " The last revival
of the kind in Germany is a society at Frankfort and its neighbour-
hood, self-styled Les Cravates Noires in opposition, I suppose, to
Les Cravates Blanches of A. Belot.
Paris is by no means more depraved than Berlin and London ;
but, whilst the latjter hushes up the scandal, Frenchmen do not :
hence we see a more copious account of it submitted to the public.
For France of the xviith century consult the " Histoire de la
Prostitution chez tous les Peuples du Monde," and " La France
1 His best known works are (i) Praktisches Handbuch der GerechtHchen Medecin,
Berlin, 1860; and (2) Klinische Novellen zur gerechtlichen Medecin, Berlin, 1863.
Terminal Essay. 2491
devenue Italienne," a treatise which generally follows *' L'Histoire
Amoureuse des Gaules" by Bussy, Comte de Rabutin. 1 The
head-quarters of male prostitution were then in the Champ Flory, *>.,
Champ de Flore, the privileged rendezvous of low courtesans. In
the xviiith century, <c quand le Francais a tte folle," as Voltaire
sings, invented the term " Pe'che' philosophique," there was a
temporary recrudescence ; and, after the death of Pidauzet de
Mairobert (March, 1779), his " Apologie de la Secte Anandryne "
was published in L'Espion Anglais. In those days the Alle*e des
Veuves in the Champs Elysees had a " fief reserve* des Ebugors " 2
" veuve " in the language of Sodom being the maitresse en titre,
the favourite youth.
At the decisive moment of monarchical decomposition Mira-
beau 3 declares that pederasty was reglemente'e and adds, Le gout
des pdderastes, quoique moins en vogue que du temps de Henri
III. (the French Heliogabalus), sous le regne desquel les hommes
se provoquaient mutuellement 4 sous les portiques du Louvre, fait
des progres considerables. On sait que cette ville (Paris) est un
1 The same author printed another imitation of Petronius Arbiter 1 , the "Larissa"
story of Theophile Viand. His cousin, the Se"vigne*, highly approved of U. See Bayle's
objections to Rabutin's delicacy and excuses for Petronius' grossness in his " Eclairctsse-
ment sur les obsce*nites " ( Appendice au Dictionnaire Antique).
* Th Boulgrin of Rabelais, which Urquhart renders Ingle for Boulgre, an
"indorser," derived from the Bulgarus or Bulgarian, who gave to Italy the term
bug iardo liar. Bougre and Bougrerie date (Littre") from the xiiith century. I cannot
however, but think that the trivial term gained strength in the xvith when the manners
of the Bugres or indigenous Brazilians were studied by Huguenot refugees in La France
Antartique and several of these savages found their way to Europe. A grand Flte in
Rouen on the entrance of Henri II. and Dame Katherine de Medicis (June 16, 1564)
showed, as part of the pageant, .three hundred men (including fifty " Bugres '* or Tupis)
with parroquets and other birds and beasts of the newly explored regions. The proces-
sion is given in -the four-folding woodcut "Figure des Bresiliens" in Jean de Prest's
Edition of 155*1.
3 Erotika Biblion chapt. Kadesch (pp. 93 et seq.) Edition de Bruxelles with note* by
the Chevalier P. Pierrugues of Bordeaux, before noticed.
4 Called Cbivaliers de Faille because the sign was a straw in the mouth, a la
Palmers ton.
250 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
chef-d'oeuvre de police ; en consequence, il y a des lieux publics
autorises cet effet. Les jeunes gens qui se destinent a la profes-
sion, sont soigneusement enclasses ; car les systemes r^glemen-
taires s'^tendent jusques-la. On les examine ; ceux qui peuvent
etre agents et patients, qui sont beaux, vermeils, bien faits, poteles,
sont reserve's pour les grands seigneurs, ou se font payer tres-cher
par les eVeques et les financiers. Ceux qui sont privet de leurs
testicules, ou en termes de Tart (car notre langue est plus chaste
qui nos mceurs), qui n'ont pas \zpoids du tisserand, mais qui don-
nent et re^oivent, forment la seconde classe ; ils sont encore chers,
parceque les femmes en usent tandis qu'ils servent aux hommes.
Ceux qui ne sont plus susceptibles direction tant ils sont use's,
quoiqu'ils aient tous ces organes ndcessaires au plaisir, s'inscrivent
commz pattens purs, et composent la troisieme classe: mais celle
qui preside a ces plaisirs, ve'rifie leur impuissance. Pour cet effet,
on les place tout nus sur un matelas ouvertpar la moide* infeVieure ;
deux filles les caressent de leur mieux, pendant qu'une troi-
sieme frappe doucement avec des orties naissantes le siege des
de'sirs ve'ne'riens. Apres un quart d'heure de cet essai, on leur intro-
duit dans 1'anus un poivre long rouge qui cause une irritation con-
siderable ; on pose sur les ^chauboulures produites par les orties,
de la moutarde fine de Caudebec, et Ton passe le gland au camphre.
Ceux qui re'sistent a ces e*preuves et ne donnent aucun signe d'^recJ
tion, servent comme patiens k un tiers de paie seulement/
The Restoration and the Empire made the police more vigilant
in matters of politics than of morals. The favourite club, which
had its mot de passe^ was in the Rue Doyenne, old quarter St.
Thomas des Louvre; and the house was a hotel of the xviith century.
Two street-doors, on the right for the male gynaeceum and the left
. i
for the female, opened at 4 p.m. in winter and 8 p.m. in summer,
1 I have noticed that the eunuch in Sind was as meanly paid and have given the
.reason.
Terminal Essay 251
A decoy-lad, charmingly dressed in women's clothes, with big
haunches and small waist, promenaded outside ; and this continued
till 1826 when the police put down the house.
Under Louis Philippe, the conquest of Algiers had evil results,
according to the Marquis de Boissy. He complained without
ambages of mceurs Arabes in French regiments, and declared that
the result of the African wars was an dffrayable ddbordement
pe'de'rastique, even as the verole resulted from the Italian cam-
paigns of that age of passion, the xvith century. From the military
the fle'au spread to civilian society and the Vice took such expan-
sion and intensity that it may be said to have been democratised
in cities and large towns ; at least so we gather from the Dossier
des Agissements des PedeVastes. A general gathering of " La
Sainte Congregation des glorieux Pe*de*rastes " was held in the old
Petite Rue des Marais where, after the theatre, many resorted
under pretext of making water. They ranged themselves along
the walls of a vast garden and exposed their podices : bourgeois,
richards and nobles came with full purses, touched the part which
most attracted them and were duly followed by it. At the Alle*e
des Veuves the crowd was dangerous from 7 to 8 p.m. : no police-
man or ronde de nuit dared venture in it ; cords were stretched
from tree to tree and armed guards drove away strangers amongst
whom, they say, was once Victor Hugo. This nuisance was at
length suppressed by the municipal administration.
The Empire did not improve morals. Balls of sodomites were
held at No. 8 Place de la Madeleine where, on Jan. 2, '64, some
one hundred and fifty men met, all so well dressed as women
that even the landlord did not recognise them. There was also a
club for sotadic debauchery called the Cent Gardes and the Dragons
de rimpe*ratrice. 1 They copied the imperial toilette and kept it in
1 Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (by Pisanus Fraxi) 4to, p. Ix. and 593. London.
Privately printed, mdccclxxix.
252 A If Lay la ft wa Laylah.
the general wardrobe : hence " faire l'Impe>atrice " meant to be
used carnally. The site, a splendid hotel in the Ailed des
Veuves, was discovered by the Procureur-GeneVal who registered
all the names ; but, as these belonged to not a few senators and
dignitaries, the Emperor wisely quashed proceedings. The club
was broken up on July 16, '64. During the same year La Petite
Revue, edited by M. Loredan Larchy, son of the General, printed
an article, " Les ^chappds de Sodome " : it discusses the letter of
M. Castagnary to the Progres de Lyons and declares that the
Vice had been adopted by plusieurs corps de troupes. For its
latest developments as regards the chantage of the f antes (pathics),
the reader will consult the last issues of Dr. Tardieu's well-known
fetudes. 1 He declares that the servant-class is most infected ;
and that the Vice is commonest between the ages of fifteen and
twenty-five.
The pederasty of The Nights may briefly be distributed into
three categories. The first is the funny form, as the unseemly
practical joke of masterful Queen Budur (vol. iii. 300-306) and
the not less hardi jest of the slave-princess Zumurrud (vol. iv. 226).
The second is in the grimmest and most earnest phase of the
1 A friend learned in these matters supplks me with the following list of famous
pederasts* Those who marvel at the wide diffusion of such erotic perversion, and its
being affected by so many celebrities, will bear in mind that the greatest men have been
some of the worst: Alexander of Macedon, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Buonaparte
held themselves high above the moral law which obliges common-place humanity. All
three are charged with the Vice. Of Kings we have Henri iii., Louis xiii. and xviii.,
Frederick ii. of Prussia, Peter the Great, William ii. of Holland and Charles ii. and
iii. of Parma. We find also Shakespeare (i., xv., Edit Francois Hugo) and Moliere,
Theodorus Beza, Luliy (the Composer), D'Assoucy, Count Zintzendorff, the Grand
Conde, Marquis de Villette, Pierre Louis Farnese, Due de la Valliere, De Soleinne,
Count D'Avaray, Saint Megrin, D'Epernon, Admiral de la Susse, La Roche-Pouchin
Rochfort S. Louis, Henne (the Spiritualist), Comte Horace de Viel Cast el, Lerminin,
Fieve'e, Theodore Leclerc, Archi-Chancellier Cambacere's, Marquis de Custine, Sainte-
Beuve and Count D'Orsay. For others refer to the three volumes of Pisanus Fraxi ;
Index Librorum Prohibitorum (London, 1877), Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (before
alluded to) and Catena Librorum Tacendorum, London, 1885. The indices will supply
the names.
Terminal Essay. 253
perversion, for instance where Abu Nowas l debauches the three
youths (vol. v. 64-69); whilst in the third form it is wisely and
learnedly discussed, to be severely blamed, by the Shaykhah or
Reverend Woman (vol. v. 154).
To conclude this part of my subject, the ^claircissement des
obsc^nites. Many readers will regret the absence from The Nights
of that modesty which distinguishes " Amadis de Gaul ;" whose
author when leaving a man and a maid together says, " And
nothing shall be here related ; for these and suchlike things which
are conformable neither to good conscience nor nature, man ought
in reason lightly to pass over, holding them in slight esteem as
they deserve." Nor have we less respect for Palmerin of England
who after a risqu scene declares, " Herein is no offence offered
to the wise by wanton speeches, or encouragement to the loose
by lascivious matter." But these are not oriental ideas and we
must e'en take the Eastern as we find him. He still holds
" Naturalia non sunt turpia," together with " Mundis omnia munda";
and, as Bacon assures us the mixture of a lie doth add to pleasure,
so the Arab enjoys the startling and lively contrast of extreme
virtue and horrible vice placed in juxtaposition.
Those who have read through these ten volumes will agree
F with me that the proportion of offensive matter bears a very
small ratio to the mass of the work. In an age saturated with
cant and hypocrisy, here and there a venal pen will mourn over
the " Pornography " of The Nights, dwell upon the " Ethics of
Dirt " and the " Garbage of the Brothel ; " and will lament the
" wanton dissemination (!) of ancient and filthy fiction." This self-
1 Of this peculiar character Ibn Khallikan remarks (ii. 43),. " There were four poets
whose works clearly contraried their character. Abu al-Atahfyah wrote pious poems
himself being an atheist ; Abu Hukayma's verses proved his impotence, yet he was
more salacious than a he-goat ; Mohammed ibn Hzim praised contentment, yet he
was greedier than a dog ; and Abu Nowas hymned the joys of sodomy, yet he was more
passionate for women than a baboon."
A If Laylah wa Lay I ah.
constituted Censor morum reads Aristophanes and Plato, Horace"
and Virgil, perhaps even Martial and Petronius, because " veiled in
the decent obscurity of a learned language ; " he allows men
Latine loqui ; but he is scandalised at stumbling-blocks much
less important in plain English. To be consistent he must begin
by bowdlerising not only the classics, with which boys* and youths'
minds and memories are soaked and saturated at schools and
colleges, but also Boccaccio and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Rabe-
lais ; Burton, Sterne, Swift and a long list of works which are
yearly reprinted and republished without a word of protest
Lastly, why does not this inconsistent puritan purge the Old
Testament of its allusions to human ordure and the pudenda \
to carnal copulation and impudent whoredom, to adultery and
fornication, to onanism, sodomy and bestiality ? But this he will
not do, the whited sepulchre ! To the interested critic of the
Edinburgh Review (No. 335 of July, 1886), I return my warmest
thanks for his direct and deliberate falsehoods : dies are one-
legged and short-lived, and venom evaporates. * It appears to me
that when I show to such men, so " respectable " and so impure,
a landscape of magnificent prospects whose vistas are adorned
with every charm of nature and art, they point their unclean noses
at a little heap of muck here and there lying in a field-corner.
1 A virulently and unjustly abusive critique never yet injured its object : in fact it is
generally the greatest favour an author's unfriends can bestow upon him. But to notice
in a popular Review books which have been printed and not published is hardly in accord-
ance with the established courtesies of literature. At the end of my work I propose to
write a paper " The Reviewer Reviewed " which will, amongst other things, explain the,
motif of the writer of the critique and the editor of the Edinburgh.
Terminal Essay. 255
ON THE PROSE-RHYME AND THE POETRY OF THE
NIGHTS.
A. THE SAJ'A.
ACCORDING to promise in my Foreword (p. xiv.), I here proceed
to offer a few observations concerning the Saj'a or rhymed prose
and the Shi'r, or measured sentence, that is, the verse of The
Nights. The former has in composition, metrical or unmetrical,
three distinct forms. Saj'a mutawdzi (parallel), the most common,
is when the ending words of sentences agree in measure,
assonance and final letter, in fact our full rhyme : next is Saj'a
mutarraf (the affluent), when the periods, hemistichs or couplets
end in words whose terminal letters correspond, although differing
in measure and number ; and thirdly, Saj'a muwazanah (equi-
librium) is applied to the balance which affects words corresponding
in measure but differing in final letters. 1
Al-Saj'a, the fine style or style fleuri, also termed Al-Badfa, or
euphuism, is the basis of all Arabic euphony. The whole of the
Koran is written in it ; and the same is the case with the Makamat
of Al-Hariri and the prime master-pieces of rhetorical composi-
tion : without it no translation of the Holy Book can be satisfac-
tory or final, and where it is not the Assemblies become the prose
of prose. Thus universally used the assonance has necessarily
been abused, and its excess has given rise to the saying " Al-Saj'a
faj'a "prose rhyme's a pest English translators have, unwisely
1 For detailed examples and specimens see p. 10 of Gladwin'* " Dissertations oa
Rhetoric," etc., Calcutta, 1801.
256 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
I think, agreed in rejecting it, while Germans have not. Mr.
Preston assures us that " rhyming prose is extremely ungraceful in
English and introduces an air of flippancy": this was certainly
not the case with Friedrich Riickert'j version of the great original,
and I see no reason why it should be so or become so in our
tongue. Torrens (Pref. p. vii.) declares that " the effect of the
irregular sentence with the iteration of a jingling rhyme is not
pleasant in our language : " he therefore systematically neglects it
and gives his style the semblance of being " scamped " with the
object of saving study and trouble. Mr. Payne (ix. 379) deems it
an " excrescence born of the excessive facilities for rhyme afforded
by the language," and of Eastern delight in antithesis of all kinds
whether of sound or of thought ; and, aiming elaborately at grace
of style, he omits it wholly, even in the proverbs.
The weight of authority was against me but my plan compelled
me to disregard it. The dilemma was simply either to use the
Saj'a or to follow Mr. Payne's method and " arrange the disjecta
membra of the original in their natural order ; " that is to remodel
the text. Intending to produce a faithful copy of the Arabic, I
was compelled to adopt the former and still hold it to be the
better alternative. Moreover I question Mr. Payne's dictum
(ix. 383) that " the Seja-form is utterly foreign to the genius of
English prose and that its preservation would be fatal to all
vigour and harmony of style." The English translator of Palmerin
of England, Anthony Munday, attempted it in places with great
success as I have before noted (vol. viii. 60) ; and my late friend
Edward Eastwick made artistic use of it in his Gulistan. Had I
rejected the "Cadence of the cooing-dove" because un-English, I
should have adopted the balanced periods of the Anglican
marriage service 1 or the essentially English system of alliteration,
1 For instance : I, M. | take thee N. | to my wedded wife, | to have and to hold |
from this day forward, | for better for worse, | for richer for poorer, | in sickness and in
Terminal Essay. 257
requiring some such artful aid to distinguish from the vulgar
recitative style the elevated and classical tirades jn The Nights.
My attempt has found with reviewers more favour than I expected ;
and a kindly critic writes of it, " These melodious fragments, these
little eddies of song set like gems in the prose, have a charming
effect on the ear. They come as dulcet surprises and mostly
recur in highly-wrought situations, or they are used to convey a
vivid sense of something exquisite in nature or art. Their intro-
duction seems due to whim or caprice, but really it arises from a
profound study of the situation, as if the Tale-teller felt suddenly
compelled to break into the rhythmic strain."
B. THE VERSE.
The Shi'r or metrical part of The Nights is considerable,
amounting to not less than ten thousand lines and these I could
not but render in rhyme or rather in monorhyme. This portion
has been a bugbear to translators. De Sacy noticed the difficulty
of the task (p. 283). Lane held the poetry untranslatable because
abounding in the figure Tajnis, our paronomasia or paragram, of
which there are seven distinct varieties, 1 not to speak Bf other
rhetorical flourishes. He therefore omitted the greater part of the
verse as tedious and, through the loss of measure and rhyme,
" generally intolerable to the reader." He proved his position by
the bald literalism of the passages which he rendered in truly
prosaic prose and succeeded in changing the fades and present-
ment of the work. For the Shi'r, like the Saj'a, is not introduced
arbitrarily; and its unequal distribution throughout The Nights may
health, | to love and to cherish, | till death do us part, etc. Here it becomes mere
blank verse which is, of course, a defect in prose style. In that delightful old French
the Saj'a frequently appeared when attention was solicited for the titles of books : e.g,
Le Romant de la Rose, ou tout lart damours est enclose.
1 See Gladwin loc. cit. p. S : it also is = alliteration (Ibn Khali, ii., 316).
VOL. X. R
258 Alf Laylak wa Laylah.
be accounted for by rule of art. Some tales, like Omar bm
al-Nu'man and Tawaddud, contain very little because the theme is
historical or realistic ; whilst in stones of love and courtship, as that
of Rose-in-hood, the proportion may rise to one-fifth of the whole.
And this is true to nature. Love, as Addison said, makes even*
the mechanic (the British mechanic !) poetical, and Joe Hume of
material memory once fought a duel about a fair object of dispute.
Before discussing the verse of The Nights it may be advisable to
enlarge a little upon the prosody of the Arabs. We know nothing
of the origin of their poetry, which is lost in the depths of
antiquity, and the oldest bards of whom we have any remains
belong to the famous epoch of the war Al-Basus, which would
place them about A.D. 500. Moreover, when the Muse of Arabia
first shows she is not only fully developed and mature, she has lost
all her first youth, her beautd du diable, and she is assuming the
characteristics of an age beyond " middle age." No one can
study the earliest poetry without perceiving that it results from
the cultivation of centuries and that it has already assumed that
artificial type and conventional process of treatment which presages
inevitable decay. Its noblest period is included in the century
preceding the Apostolate of Mohammed and the oldest of that
epoch is the prince of Arab songsters, Imr al-Kays, " The Wander-
ing King." The Christian Fathers characteristically termed poetry
Vinum Daemonorum. The stricter Moslems called their bards
" enemies of Allah ;" and when the Prophet, who hated verse and
could not even quote it correctly, was asked who was the best poet
of the Peninsula he answered that the " Man of Al-Kays," i.e. the
worshipper of the Priapus-idol, would usher them all into Hell.
Here he only echoed the general verdict of his countrymen who
loved poetry and, as a rule, despised poets. The earliest complete
pieces of any volume and substance saved from the wreck of old
Arabic literature and familiar in our day are the seven Kasfdahs
(purpose-odes or tendence-elegies) which are popularly known as
Terminal Essay. 259
the Gilded or the Suspended Poems ; and in all of these we find,
with an elaboration of material and formal art which can go no
further, a subject-matter of trite imagery and stock ideas which
suggest a long ascending line of model ancestors and predecessors.
Scholars are agreed upon the fact that many of the earliest and
best Arab poets were, as Mohammed boasted himself, unalpha-
betic * or rather could neither read nor write. They addressed
the ear and the mind, not the eye. They " spoke verse/' learning
it by rote and dictating it to the Rawi, and this reciter again trans-
mitted it to the musician whose pipe or zither accompanied the
minstrel's song. In fact the general practice of writing began
only at the end of the first century after The Flight.
The rude and primitive measure of Arab song, upon which the
most complicated system of metres subsequently arose, was called
Al-Rajaz, literally " the trembling," because it reminded the
highly imaginative hearer of a pregnant she-camel's weak and
tottering steps. This was the carol of the camel-driver, the
lover's lay and the warrior's chaunt of the heroic ages ; and its
simple, unconstrained flow adapted it well for extempore effusions.
Its merits and demerits have been extensively discussed amongst
Arab grammarians and many, noticing that it was not originally
divided into hemistichs, make an essential difference between the
Sha'ir who speaks poetry and the Rajiz who speaks Rajaz. It
consisted, to describe it technically, of iambic dipodia (* - w -),
1 He called himself "Nabiyun utnmi " = illiterate prophet; but only his most
ignorant followers believe that he was unable to read and write. His last words, accepted
by all traditionists, were " Aatini dawata wa kalam" (bring me ink -case and pen);!
upon which the Shi' ah or Persian sectaries base, not without probability, a theory that
Mohammed intended to write down the name of Ali as his Caliph or successor when
Omar, suspecting the intention, exclaimed, " The Prophet is delirious ; have we not the
Koran ?" thus impiously preventing the precaution. However that may be, the legend
proves that Mohammed could read and write even when not "under inspiration." The
vulgar idea would arise from a pious intent to add miracle to the miraculous style of the
Koran.
260 A if Laylah wa Laylah.
the first three syllables being optionally long or short. It can
generally be read like our iambs and, being familiar, is pleasant to
the English ear. The dipodia are repeated either twice or thrice ;
in the former case Rajaz is held by some authorities, as Al-Akhfash
(Sa'id ibn Masadah), to be mere prose. Although Labid and
Antar composed in iambics, the first Kasidah or regular poem in
Rajaz was by Al-Aghlab al-Ajibi temp. Mohammed : the Alffyah-
grammar of Ibn Malik is in Rajaz Muzdawij, the hemistichs
rhyming and the assonance being confined to the couplet. Al-
Hariri also affects Rajaz in the third and fifth Assemblies. So-
far Arabic metre is true to Nature : in impassioned speech the
movement of language is iambic : we say " I will, I will" not
"I will."
For many generations the Sons of the Desert were satisfied
with Nature's teaching ; the fine perceptions and the nicely trained
ear of the bard needing no aid from art. But in time came the
inevitable prosodist under the formidable name of Abu Abd al-
Rahman al-Khalil, i. Ahmad, i. Amru, i. Tami'm al-Farahidi (of
the Farahid sept), al-Azdi (of the Azd clan), al-Yahmadi (of the
Yahmad tribe), popularly known as Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Basri,
of Bassorah, where he died set. 68, scanning verses they say, in
A.H. I/O (= 78687). Ibn Khallikan relates (i. 493) on the
authority of Hamzah al-Isfahani how this "father of Arabic
grammar and discoverer of the rules of prosody" invented the
science as he walked past a coppersmith's shop on hearing the
strokes of a hammer upon a metal basin : " two objects devoid of
any quality which could serve as a proof and an illustration of
anything else than their own form and shape and incapable of
leading to any other knowledge than that of their own nature." 1
1 I cannot but vehemently suspect that this legend was taken from much older tradi-
tions. We have Jubal the semi-mythical who, " by the different falls of his hammer on
the anvil, discovered by the ear the first rude music that pleased the antediluvian
fathers." Then came Pythagoras, of whom Macrobius (lib. ii.) relates how this Graeco-
Terminal Essay. 261
According to others he was passing through the Fullers' Bazar at
Basrah when his ear was struck by the Dak-dak ($* &) and
the Dakak-dakak (^ &*) of the workmen. In these two
onomapoetics we trace the expression which characterises the Arab
tongue : all syllables are composed of consonant and vowel, the
latter long or short as Ba and Ba ; or of a vowelled consonant
followed by a consonant as Bal, Bau (^).
The grammarian, true to the traditions of his craft which looks for
all poetry to the Badawi, 1 adopted for metrical details the language
cf the Desert The distich, which amongst Arabs is looked upon as
one line, he named " Bayt," nighting-place, tent or house ; and the
hemistich Misra'ah, the one leaf of a folding door. To this "scenic "
simile all the parts of the verse were more or less adapted. The
metres, our feet, were called " Arkan/' the stakes and stays of the
tent ; the syllables were " Usul " or roots divided into three kinds :
the first or " Sabab " (the tent-rope) is composed of two letters, a
vowelled and a quiescent consonant as a Lam." 3 The " Watad "
or tent-peg of three letters is of two varieties ; the Majmu', or
united, a foot in which the two first consonants are moved by
vowels and the last is jazmated or made quiescent by apocope as
" Lakad ;" and the Mafruk, or disunited, when the two moved con-
Egyptian philosopher, passing by a smithy, observed that the sounds were grave or
acute according to the weights of the hammers ; and he ascertained by experiment
that such was the case when different weights were hung by strings of the same size.
The next discovery was that two strings of the same substance and tension, the one
being double the length of the other, gave the diapason-interval or an eighth ; and the
same was effected from two strings of similar length and size, the one having four times
the tension of the other. Belonging to the same cycle of invention-anecdotes are
Galileo's discovery of the pendulum by the lustre of the Pisan Duomo ; and the kettle-
lid, the falling apple and the copper hook which inspired Watt, Newton and Galvani.
1 To what an absurd point this has been carried we may learn from Ibn Khallikdn
(i. 114). A poet addressing a single individual does not say "My friend!" or "My
friends !" but "My two friends! " (in the dual) because a Badawi required a pair of
companions, one to tend the sheep and the other to pasture the camels.
2 For further details concerning the Sabab, Watad and Fasilah, see at the end of
this Essay the learned remarks of Dr. Steingass.
262 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
sonants are separated by one jazmated, as " Kabla." And lastly
the " Fasilah " or intervening space, applied to the main pole of
the tent, consists of four letters.
The metres were called Buhur or " seas " (plur. of Bahr), also
meaning the space within the tent-walls, the equivoque alluding to
pearls and other treasures of the deep. Al-Khalil, the systematiser,
found in general use only five Dairah (circles, classes or groups of
metre) ; and he characterised the harmonious and stately measures,
all built upon the original Rajaz, as Al-Tawil (the long) \ Al-
Kamil (the complete), Al-Wafir (the copious), Al-Basit (the
extended) and Al-Khafif (the light). 2 These embrace all the
Mu'allakat and the Hamasah, the great Anthology of Abu Tam-
mam ; but the crave for variety and the extension of foreign inter-
course had multiplied wants and Al-Khalil deduced, from the
original five Dairah, fifteen, to which Al-Akhfash (ob. A.D. 830)
added a sixteenth, Al-Khabab. The Persians extended the number
to nineteen : the first four were peculiarly Arab ; the fourteenth,
the fifteenth and seventeenth peculiarly Persian and all the rest
were Arab and Persian. 3
Arabic metre so far resembles that of Greece and Rome that
the value of syllables depends upon the "quantity " or position of
their consonants, not upon accent as in English and the Neo-Latin
tongues. Al-Khalil was doubtless familiar with the classic
prosody of Europe but he rejected it as unsuited to the genius
of Arabic and like a true Eastern Gelehrte he adopted a process
devised by himself. Instead of scansion by pyrrhics and spondees,
iambs and trochees, anapaests and similar simplifications he
invented a system of weights ("wuzun"). Of these there are
1 e.g. the Mu'allakats of " Amriolkais," Tarafah and Zuhayr compared by Mr. Lyall
(Introduction to Translations) with the metre of Abt Vogler, e.g.
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told.
2 e.g. the Poem of Hareth which often echoes the hexameter.
3 Gladwin p. 80.
Terminal Essay. 263
nine 1 memorial words used as quantitive signs, all built upon
the root " fa'l " which has rendered such notable service to Arabic
and Hebrew 2 grammar and varying from the simple " fa'al," in
Persian " fa'ul," (* -) to the complicated I 1 Mutafa'ilun "
(wu . w -), anapaest + iamb. Thus the prosodist would scan the
Shahndmeh of Firdausi as
Fa'ulun, fa'ulun, fa'ulun, fa'ul.
w u O-
These weights also show another peculiarity of Arabic verse. In
English we have few if any spondees : the Arabic contains about
three longs to one short ; hence its gravity, stateliness and dignity.
But these longs again are peculiar, and sometimes strike the
European ear as shorts, thus adding a difficulty for those who
would represent Oriental metres by western feet, ictus and accent.
German Arabists can register an occasional success in such
attempts : Englishmen none. My late friend Professor Palmer of
Cambridge tried the tour de force of dancing on one leg instead of
two and notably failed : Mr. Lyall also strove to imitate Arabic
metre and produced only prose bewitched. 3 Mr. Payne appears
1 Gladwin (p. 77) gives only eight, omitting Fa'ul which he or his author probably
considers the Muzahaf, imperfect or apocoped form of Fa'ulun, as Mafa'Il of Mafa'Ilun.
For the infinite complications of Arabic prosody the Khafff (soft breathing) and Sahih
(hard breathing) ; the Sadr and Aruz (first and last feet), the Ibtida and Zarb (last foot
of every line); the Hashw (cushion -stuffing) or body-part of verse ; the 'Amud al-Kasi-
dah or Al-Musammat (the strong) and other details I must refer readers to such
specialists as Freytag and Sam. Clarke (Prosodia Arabica), and to Dr. Steingass's notes
infra.
2 The Hebrew grammarians of the Middle Ages wisely copied their Arab cousins
by turning Fa'la into Pael and so forth.
3 Mr. Lyall, whose "Ancient Arabic Poetry" (Williams and Norgate, 1885) I
reviewed in The Academy of Oct. 3, '85, did the absolute reverse of what is required :
he preserved the metre and sacrificed the rhyme even when it naturally suggested itself.
For instance in the last four lines of No. xli. what would be easier than to write,
Ah sweet and soft wi* thee her ways : bethink thee well ! The day shall be
When some one favoured as thyself shall find her fair and fain and free ;
And if she swear that parting ne'er shall break her word of constancy,
When did rose-tinted finger-tip with pacts and pledges e'er agree ?
264 A If Laylah wa Laylak.
to me to have wasted trouble in " observing the exterior form of
the stanza, the movement of the rhyme and (as far as possible)
the identity in number of the syllables composing the beits."
There is only one part of his admirable version concerning
which I have heard competent readers complain ; and that is the
metrical, because here and there it sounds strange to their
ears.
I have already stated my conviction that there are two and only
two ways of translating Arabic poetry into English. One is to
represent it by good heroic or lyric verse as did Sir William
Jones ; the other is to render it after French fashion, by measured
and balanced Prose, the little sister of Poetry. It is thus and thus
only that we can preserve the peculiar cacJiet of the original. This
old-world Oriental song is spirit-stirring as a " blast of that dread
horn/' albeit the words be thin. It is heady as the " Golden
Wine " of Libanus, to the tongue water and brandy to the brain
the clean contrary of our nineteenth century effusions. Techni-
cally speaking, it can be vehicled only by the verse of the old
English ballad or by the prose of the Book of Job. And Badawi
poetry is a perfect expositor of Badawi life, especially in the good
and gladsome old Pagan days ere Al-Islam, like the creed which
it abolished, overcast the minds of men with its dull grey pall of
realistic superstition. They combined to form a marvellous
picture those contrasts of splendour and squalor amongst the sons
of the sand. Under airs pure as aether, golden and ultramarine
above and melting over the horizon into a diaphanous green which
suggested a reflection of Kaf, that unseen mountain-wall of
emerald, the so-called Desert changed face twice a year; now
brown and dry as summer-dust ; then green as Hope, beautified
with infinite verdure and broad sheetings of rain-water. The
vernal and autumnal shiftings of camp, disruptions of homesteads
and partings of kith and kin, friends and lovers, made the life
many-sided as it was vigorous and noble, the outcome of hardy
Terminal Essay. 26$
frames, strong minds and spirits breathing the very essence of
liberty and independence. The day began with the dawn-drink,
" generous wine bought with shining ore/' poured into the crystal
goblet from the leather bottle swinging before the cooling breeze.
The rest was spent in the practice of weapons ; in the favourite
arrow-game known as Al-Maysar, gambling which at least had the
merit of feeding the poor ; in racing for which the Badawin had a
mania, and in the chase, the foray and the fray which formed the
serious business of his life. And how picturesque the hunting
scenes ; the greyhound, like the mare, of purest blood ; the falcon
cast at francolin and coney ; the gazelle standing at gaze ; the
desert ass scudding over the ground-waves ; the wild cows or
bovine antelopes browsing with their calves and the ostrich-
chickens flocking round the parent bird ! The Musdmarah or
night-talk round the camp-fire was enlivened by the lute-girl and
the gleeman, whom the austere Prophet described as " roving dis-
traught in every vale " and whose motto in Horatian vein was,
w To-day we shall drink, to-morrow be sober ; wine this day, that
day work." Regularly once a year, during the three peaceful
months when war and even blood revenge were held sacrilegious,
the tribes met at Ukadh (Ocaz) and other fairsteads, where they
held high festival and the bards strave in song and prided them-
selves upon doing honour to women and to the successful warriors
of their tribe. Brief, the object of Arab life was to be to be free,
to be brave, to be wise ; while the endeavours of other peoples
was and is to have to have wealth, to have knowledge, to have a
name ; and while moderns make their "epitome of life" to be, to
do and to suffer. Lastly the Arab's end was honourable as his
life was stirring : few Badawin had the crowning misfortune of
dying " the straw-death."
The poetical forms in The Nights are as follows : The Misra'ah
or hemistich is half the t( Bayt " which, for want of a better word
I have rendered couplet : this, however, though formally separated,
266 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
in MSS. is looked upon as one line, one verse ; hence a word can
be divided, the former part pertaining to the first and the latter to
the second moiety of the distich. As the Arabs ignore blank
verse, when we come upon a rhymeless couplet we know that it is
an extract from a longer composition in monorhyme. The Kit'ah
is a fragment, either an occasional piece or more frequently a
portion of a Ghazal (ode) or Kasidah (elegy), other than the Matla,
the initial Bayt with rhyming distichs. The Ghazal and Kasfdah
differ mainly in length : the former is popularly limited to
eighteen couplets : the latter begins at fifteen and is of indefinite
number. Both are built upon monorhyme, which appears twice
in the first couplet and ends all the others, e.g., aa + ba + ca,
etc. ; nor may the same assonance be repeated, unless at least seven
couplets intervene. In the best poets, as in the old classic verse
of France, the sense must be completed in one couplet and not
run on to a second ; and, as the parts cohere very loosely,
separate quotation can generally be made without injuring their
proper effect. A favourite form is the Ruba'f or quatrain, made
familiar to English ears by Mr. Fitzgerald's masterly adaptation
of Qmar-i-Khayyam : the movement is generally aa + ba ; but it
also appears as ab + cb, in which case it is a Kit'ah or fragment.
The Murabba, tetrastichs or four-fold song, occurs once only in The
Nights (vol. i, 98) ; it is a succession of double Bayts or of four-
lined stanzas rhyming aa + be + dc + ec : in strict form the
first three hemistichs rhyme with one another only, independently
of the rest of the poem, and the fourth with that of every other
stanza, e.g. 9 aa + ab -I- cb + db. The Mukhammas, cinquains
or pentastichs (Night cmrxiv.), represents a stanza of two distichs
and a hemistich in monorhyme, the fifth line being the " bob " or
burden : each succeeding stanza affects a new rhyme, except in the
fifth line, e.g., aaaab + ccccb + ddddb and so forth. The Muwwal
is a simple popular song in four to six lines ; specimens of it are
given in the Egyptian grammar of my friend the late Dr.
Terminal Essay. 267
Wilhelm Spitta. 1 The Muwashshah, or ornamented verse, has
two main divisions : one applies to our acrostics in which the
initials form a word or words ; the other is a kind of Musaddas, or
sextines, which occurs once only in The Nights (cmlxxxvii.) It
consists of three couplets or six-line strophes : all the hemistichs of
the first are in monorhyme ; in the second and following stanzas
the three first hemistichs take a new rhyme, but the fourth resumes
the assonance of the first set and is followed by the third couplet of
No, i, serving as bob or refrain, e.g. t aaaaaa + bbbaaa + cccaaa
and so forth. It is the most complicated of all the measures and
is held to be of Morisco or Hispano-Moorish origin.
Mr. Lane (Lex.) lays down, on the lines of Lbn Khallikan
(i. 476, etc.) and other representative literati, as our sole authori-
ties for pure Arabic, the precedence in following order. First of
all ranks the Jahili (Ignoramus) of The Ignorance, the ApaStas Zpuov
0i>o$: these pagans left hemistichs, couplets, pieces and elegies which
once composed a large corpus and which is now mostly forgotten.
Hammad al-Rawiyah, the Reciter, a man of Persian descent
(ob. A.H, 160 = 777) who first collected the Mu'allakat, once
recited by rote in a seance before Caliph Al-Walid two thousand
poems of prse-Mohammedan bards. 2 After the Jahili stands the
Mukhadram or Muhadrim, the "Spurious," because half Pagan
half Moslem, who flourished either immediately before or soon
after the preaching of Mohammed. The Islami or full-blooded
Moslem at the end of the first century A.H. (= 720) began the
process of corruption in language ; and, lastly, he was followed
1 See p. 439 Grammatik des Arabischen Vulgar Dialekts von ^gyptien, by Dr. Wilhelm
Spitta Bey, Leipzig, 1880. In pp. 489-493 he gives specimens of eleven Mawawfl
varying in length from four to fifteen lines. The assonance mostly attempts monorhyme :
in two tetrastichs it is aa + ba, and it does not disdain alternates, ab + ab + ab.
* Al-Siyuti, p. 235, from Ibn Khallikan. Our knowledge of oldest Arab verse is
drawn chiefly from the Kitab al-Aghani (Song-book) of Abu al-Faraj the Tsfahani who
flourished A.H. 284 356 (= 897 96?) : it was printed at the Buiak Press in.
1868.
268 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
by the Muwallad of the second century who fused Arabic with
non-Arabic and in whom purity of diction disappeared.
I have noticed (i A.) that the versical portion of The Nights
may be distributed into three categories. First are the olden
poems which are held classical by all modern Arabs ; then comes
the mediaeval poetry, the effusions of that brilliant throng which
adorned the splendid Court of Harun al-Rashid and which ended
with AI-Hariri (ob. A.H. 516); and, lastly, are the various pieces de
circonstance suggested to editors or scribes by the occasion. It is
not my object to enter upon the historical part of the subject :
a mere sketch would have neither value nor interest whilst a
finished picture would lead too far : I must be contented to notice
a few of the most famous names.
Of the prae-islamites we have Adi bin Zayd al-Ibadi the
"celebrated poet" of Ibn Kkallikan (i. 188) ; Nabighat (the
full-grown) al-Zubydni who flourished at the Court of Al-Nu'man
in A.D. 580-602, and whose poem is compared with the
" Suspendeds," * and Al-Mutalammis the " pertinacious " satirist,
friend and intimate with Tarafah of the " Prize Poem." About
Mohammed's day we find Imr al-Kays " with whom poetry began,"
to end with Zu al-Rummah ; Amru bin Madi Karab al-Zubaydi,
Labfd ; Ka'b ibn Zuhayr, the father one of the Mu'allakah-poets,
and the son author of the Burdah or Mantle-poem (see vol. iv. 115),
and Abbas bin Mirdas who lampooned the Prophet and had " his
tongue cut out " i.e. received a double share of booty from All.
In the days of Caliph Omar we have Alkamah bin Olatha followed
by Jamfl bin Ma'mar of the Banu Ozrah (ob. A,H. 82), who loved
Azza. Then came Al-Kuthayyir (the dwarf, ironice), the lover of
Buthaynah, " who was so lean that birds might be cut to bits with
her bones:" the latter was also a poetess (Ibn Khali, i. 87), like
Hind bint al-Nu'man who made herself so disagreeable to Al-Hajjaj
1 See Lyall loc. cit. p. 97.
Terminal Essay. 269
(ob. A.H.95). J ar * r al-Khatafah, the noblest of the Islami poets in
the first century, is noticed at full length by Ibn Khallikan (i. 294)
together with his rival in poetry and debauchery, Abu Firds
Hammam or Homaym bin Ghalib al-Farazdak, the Tamimi,
the Ommiade poet "without whose verse half Arabic would
be lost * : " he exchanged satires with Jarir and died forty days
before him (A.H. no). Another contemporary, forming the
poetical triumvirate of the period, was the debauched Christian
poet Al-Akhtal al-Taghlibi. They were followed by Al-Ahwas
al-Ansdri whose witty lampoons banished him to Dahlak Island
in the Red Sea (ob, A.H. 179 =r 795) ; by Bashshdr ibn Burd and
by Yunus ibn Habib (ob. A.H. 182).
The well-known names of the Harun-cycle are Al-Asma'i,
rhetorician and poet, whose epic with Antar for hero is not for-
gotten (ob. A.H. 216) ; Isaac of Mosul (Ishak bin Ibrahim of
Persian origin) ; Al-'Utbi " the Poet" (ob. A.H. 228); Abu al-Abbas
al-Rakashi ; Abu al-Atahiyah, the lover of Otbah ; Muslim bin
al-Walid al-Ansari; Abu Tammam of Tay, compiler of the
Hamasah (ob. A.H. 230), " a Muwallad of the first class " (says
Ibn Khallikan i. 392) ; the famous or infamous Abu Nowas ; Abu
Mus'ab (Ahmad ibn Ali) who died in A.H. 242 ; the satirist Dibil
al-Khuzai (ob. A.H. 246) and a host of others quos nunc
perscribere longum est. They were followed by Al-Bohtori " the
Poet" (ob. A.H. 286) ; the royal author Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz
(ob. A.H. 315) ; Ibn Abbad the Sahib (ob. A.H. 334) ; Mansur
al-Hallaj the martyred Sufi ; the Sahib ibn Abbad ; Abu Faras
al-Hamdani (ob. A.H. 357) ; Al-Ndmi (ob. A.H. 399) who had
many encounters with that model Chauvinist Al-Mutanabbi,
nicknamed Al-Mutanabbih (the "wide-awake"), killed A.H. 354 ;
Al-Mandzi of Manazjird (ob. 427) ; Al-Tughrai author of the
1 His Diwan has been published with a French translation, par R. Boucher, Paris,
Labitte. 1870.
270 A If Lay la h wa Laylah.
Lamiyat al-'Ajam (ob. A.H. 375) ; Al-Hariri the model rhetorician
(ob. A.H. 516) ; Al-Hajiri al-Irbili, of Arbela (ob. A.H. 632) ;
Baha al-Din al-Sinjari, (ob. A.H. 622) ; Al-Katib or the Scribe
(ob. A.H. 656) ; Abdun al-Andalusi the Spaniard (our xiith
century) and about the same time Al-Nawaji, author of the Halbat
al-Kumayt or " Race-course of the Bay-horse " poetical slang for
wine. 1
Of the third category, the pieces d'occasion, little need be said :
I may refer readers to my notes on the doggrels in vol. ii. 34, 35,
56, 179, 182, 1 86 and 261 ; in vol. v. 55 and in vol. viii. 50.
Having a mortal aversion to the details of Arabic prosody
I have persuaded my friend Dr. Steingass, to undertake in the
following pages the subject as far as concerns the poetry of The
Nights. He has been kind enough to collaborate with me from
the beginning, and to his minute lexicographical knowledge I am
deeply indebted for discovering not a few blemishes which would
have been " nuts to the critic." The learned Arabist's notes will
be highly interesting to students : mine ( V.) are intended to
give a superficial and popular idea of the Arab's verse-mechanism.
" The principle of Arabic Prosody (called 'Aruz, pattern
standard, or 'Ilm al-'Aruz, science of the 'Aruz), in so far
1 I find also minor quotations from the Imam Abu al-Hasan al-Askari (of Sarra
man raa) ob. A.D. 868; Ibn Makula (murdered in A.D. 862?); Ibn Durayd
(ob. A.D. 933); Al-Zahr the Poet (ob. A.D. 963) ; Abu Bakr al-Zubaydi (ob. A.D.
989); Kabvis ibn Wushmaghir (murdered in A.D. 1012-13) Ibn Nabatah the Poet
(ob. A.D. 1015) ; Ibn al-Sa'ati (ob. A.D. 1028); Ibn Zaydun al-Andalusi who died
at Hums (Ernessa, the Arab name for Seville) in A.D. 1071 j Al-Mu'tasim ibn Sumadih
(ob. A.D. 1091); Al-Murtaza ibn al-Shahrozuri the Sufi (ob. A.D. 1117); Ibn Sara
al-Shantarani (of Santarem) who sang of Hind and died A.D. 1123; Ibn al-Khazin
(ob. A.D. 1124); Ibn Kalakis (ob. A.D. 1172) ; Ibn al-Ta'wizi (ob. A.D. 1188); Ibn
Zabadah (ob. A.D. 1198); Baha al-Din Zuhayr (ob. A.D. 1249); Muwaffak al-Din
Muzaffar (ob. A.D. 1266) and sundry others. Notices of Al-Utayyah (vol. i. Ii), of Ibn
al-Sumam (vol. i. 87) and of Ibn Sahib al-Ishbili, of Seville, (vol. i. 100) are deficient.
The most notable point in Arabic verse is its savage satire, the language of excited
"destructiveness" which characterises the Badawi : he is " keen for satire as a thirsty
man for water ;" and half his poetry seems to consist of foul innuendo, of lampoons,
and of gross personal abuse.
Terminal Essay. 271
resembles that of classical poetry, as it chiefly rests on metrical
weight, not on accent, or in other words a verse is measured by
short and long quantities, while the accent only regulates its
rhythm. In Greek and Latin, however, the quantity of the
syllables depends on their vowels, which may be either naturally
short or long, or become long by position, i.e. if followed by two
or more consonants. We all remember from our school-days
what a fine string of rules had to be committed to and kept in
memory, before we were able to scan a Latin or Greek verse,
without breaking its neck by tripping over false quantities. In
Arabic, on the other hand, the answer to the question, what is
metrically long or short, is exceedingly simple, and flows with
stringent cogency from the nature of the Arabic Alphabet. This,
strictly speaking, knows only consonants (Harf, pi. Huruf). The
vowels which are required, in order to articulate the consonants,
were at first not represented in writing at all. They had to be
supplied by the reader, and are not improperly called " motions "
(Harakat), because the move or lead on as it were, one letter to
another. They are three in number, a (Fathah), i (Kasrah),
u (Zammah), originally sounded as the corresponding English
vowels in bat, bit and butt respectively, but in certain cases
modifying their pronunciation under the influence of a neigh-
bouring consonant. When the necessity made itself felt to
represent them in writing, especially for the sake of fixing the
correct reading of the Koran, they were rendered by additional
signs, placed above or beneath the consonant, after which they are
pronounced, in a similar way as it is done in some systems of
English shorthand. A consonant followed by a short vowel
is called a " moved letter " (Muharrakah) ; a consonant without
such vowel is called "resting" or " quiescent " (Sdkinah), and
can stand only at the end of a syllable or word.
And now we are able to formulate the one simple rule, which
determines the prosodical quantity in Arabic : any moved letter,
272 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
as ta, li, mu, is counted short ; any moved letter followed by a
quiescent one, as taf, lun, mus, i.e. any closed syllable beginning
and terminating with a consonant and having a short vowel
between, forms a long quantity. This is certainly a relief in
comparison with the numerous rules of classical Prosody, proved
by not a few exceptions, which for instance in Dr. Smith's
elementary Latin Grammar fill eight closely printed pages.
Before I proceed to show how from the prosodical unities, the
moved and the quiescent letter, first the metrical elements, then
the feet and lastly the metres are built up, it will be necessary to
obviate a few misunderstandings, to which our mode of trans-
literating Arabic into the Roman character might give rise.
The line :
" Love in my heart they lit and went their ways," (vol. i. 232)
runs in Arabic :
" Akdmu al-wajda fi kalbi wa sru," (Mac. Ed. i. 179).
Here, according to our ideas, the word akamu would begin with
a short vowel a, and contain two long vowels a and u ; according
to Arabic views neither is the case. The word begins with
" Alif," and its second syllable kd closes in Alif after Fathah (a),
in the same way, as the third syllable mu closes in the letter Waw
(w) after Zammah (u).
The question, therefore, arises, what is " Alif." It is the first
of the twenty-eight Arabic letters, and has through the medium
of the Greek Alpha nominally entered into our alphabet, where it
now plays rather a misleading part. Curiously enough, however,
Greek itself has preserved for us the key to the real nature of the
letter. In 'AA<a the initial a is preceded by the so-called spiritus
lenis ( ' ), a sign which must be placed in front or at the top of any
vowel beginning a Greek word, and which represents that slight
aspiration or soft breathing almost involuntarily uttered, when we
try to pronounce a vowel by itself. We need not go far to find
Terminal Essay. 273
how deeply rooted this tendency is and to what exaggerations it
will sometimes lead. Witness the gentleman, who after men-
tioning that he had been visiting his " favourite haunts " on the
scenes of his early life, was sympathetically asked, how the
dear old ladies were. This spiritus lenis is the silent h of the
French "homme" and the English "honour," corresponding
exactly to the Arabic Hamzah, whose mere prop the Alif is, when
it stands at the beginning of a word : a native Arabic Dictionary
does not begin with Bab al-Alif (Gate or Chapter of the Alif), but
with Bab al-Harnzah. What the Greeks call Alpha and have
transmitted to us as a name for the vowel a, is in fact nothing
else but the Arabic Hamzah- Alif ( \ ), moved by Fathah, i.e.
bearing the sign : for a at the top ( \ ), just as it might have the
sign Zammah (i) superscribed to express u (f*, or the sign
Kasrah (~) subjoined to represent i (]). In each case the
Hamzah-Alif, although scarcely audible to our ear, is the real
letter and might fitly be rendered in transliteration by the above-
mentioned silent h, wherever we make an Arabic word begin with
a vowel not preceded by any other sign. This latter restriction
refers to the sign ' , which in Sir Richard Burton's translation of
The Nights, as frequently in books published in this country, is
used to represent the Arabic letter c in whose very name 'Ayn
it occurs. The 'Ayn is " described as produced by a smart com-
pression of the upper part of the windpipe and forcible emission
of breath/' imparting a guttural tinge to a following or preceding
vowel-sound; but it is by no means a mere guttural 'vowel, as
Professor Palmer styles it. For Europeans, who do not belong
to the Israelitic dispensation, as well as for Turks and Persians,
its exact -pronunciation is most difficult, if not impossible to
acquire.
In reading Arabic from transliteration for the purpose of
scanning poetry, we have therefore in the first instance to keep
in mind that no Arabic word or syllable can begin with a vowel.
VOL. X. S
274 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
Where our mode of rendering Arabic in the Roman character
would make this appear to be the case, either Hamzah (silent h),
or 'Ayn (represented by the sign ') is the real initial, and the only
element to be taken in account as a letter. It follows as a self-
evident corollary that wherever a single consonant stands between
two vowels, it never closes the previous syllable, but always
opens the next one. Our word " Akamu," for instance, can only
be divided into the syllables : A (properly Ha)T-ka-mu, never into
Ak-a-mu or Ak-dm-u.
It has been stated above that the syllable ka is closed by the
letter Alif after Fathah, in the same way as the syllable mu is
closed by the letter Waw, and I may add now, as the word ft is
closed by the letter Ya (y). To make this perfectly clear, I must
repeat that the Arabic Alphabet, as it was originally written, deals
only with consonants. The signs for the short vowel-sounds were
added later for a special purpose, and are generally not repre-
sented even in printed books, e.g. in the various editions of The
Nights, where only quotations from the Koran or poetical passages
are provided with the vowel-points. But among those consonants
there are three, called weak letters (Huruf al-'illah), which have a
particular organic affinity to these vowel-sounds : the guttural
Hamzah, which is akin to a, the palatal Ya, which is related to i,
and the labial Waw, which is homogeneous with u. Where any
of the weak letters follows a vowel of its own class, either at the
end of a word or being itself followed by another consonant, it
draws out or lengthens the preceding vowel and is in this sense
called a letter of prolongation (Harf al-Madd). Thus, bearing in
mind that the Hamzah is in reality a silent h, the syllable ka
might be written kah, similarly to the German word " sah," where
the h is not pronounced either, but imparts a lengthened sound
to the a In like manner mu and fi are written in Arabic muw
and fly respectively, and form long quantities not because they
contain a vowel long by nature, but because their initial
Terminal Essay. 275'
"Muharrakah" is followed by a " Sakinah," exactly as in the
previously mentioned syllables taf, lun, mus. 1 In the Roman
transliteration, Akamu forms a word of five letters, two of which
are consonants, and three vowels; in Arabic it represents the
combination H(a)k(a)hm(u)w, consisting also of five letters but
all consonants, the intervening vowels being expressed in writing '
either merely by superadded external signs, or more frequently
not at all. Metrically it represents one short and two long
quantities (w - -), forming in Latin a trisyllabic foot, called
Bacchius, and in Arabic a quinqueliteral " Rukn " (pillar) or
"Juz" (part, portion), the technical designation for which we
shall introduce presently.
There is one important remark more to be made with regard
to the Hamzah : at the beginning of a word it is either con-
junctive, Hamzat al-Wasl, or disjunctive, Hamzat al Kat' The
difference is best illustrated by reference to the French so-called
aspirated h, as compared with the above mentioned silent h. If
the latter, as initial of a noun, is preceded by the article, the
article loses its vowel, and, ignoring the silent h altogether, is
read with the following noun almost as one word : le homme
becomes 1'homme (pronounced lomme) as le ami becomes I'ami.
This resembles very closely the Arabic Hamzah Wasl. If, on
the other hand, a French word begins with an aspirated h, as
for instance he*ros, the article does not drop its vowel before the
noun, nor is the h sounded as in the English word "hero," but
the effect of the aspirate is simply to keep the two vowel sounds
apart, so as to pronounce le dros with a slight hiatus between, ;
and this is exactly what happens in the case of the Arabic
Hamzah Kat'
With regard to the Wasl, however, Arabic goes a step further
1 If the letter preceding Waw or Y is moved by Fathah, they produce the diphthongs
au (aw), pronounced like ou in "bout," and ai, pronounced as i in " bite."
276 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
than French. In the French example, quoted above, we have
seen it is the silent h and the preceding vowel, which are
eliminated ; in Arabic both the Hamzah and its own Harakah,
i.e. the short vowel following it, are supplanted by their
antecedent Another example will make this clear. The
most common instance of the Hamzah Wasl is the article al
(for h(a)l = the Hebrew hal), where it is moved by Fathah.
But it has this sound only at the beginning of a sentence
or speech, as in "Al-hamdu" at the head of the Fatihah, or in
" Alldhu " at the beginning of the third Surah. If the two words
stand in grammatical connection, as in the sentence " Praise be
to God," we cannot say Al-Hamdu li-Allahi," but the junction
(Wasl) between the dative particle li and the noun which it
governs must take place. According to the French principle, this
junction would be effected at the cost of the preceding element
and li Allahi would become 1'Alldhf ; in Arabic, on the contrary,
the kasrated 1 of the particle takes the place of the following
fathated Hamzah and we read li 'llahi instead. Proceeding in the
Fatihah we meet with the verse " lyyaka na'budu wa iyyaka
nasta'mu," Thee do we worship and of Thee do we ask aid.
Here the Hamzah of iyyaka (properly hiyydka with silent h) is
disjunctive, and therefore its pronunciation remains the same at
the beginning and in the middle of the sentence, or to put it
differently, instead of coalescing with the preceding wa into
; wa'yyaka, the two words are kept separate, by the Hamzah
reading wa iyyaka, just as it was the case with the French
r Le he*ros.
If the conjunctive Hamzah is preceded by a quiescent letter,
this takes generally Kasrah: "Talat al-Laylah," the night was
longsome, would become Talati '1-Laylah. If, however, the
quiescent letter is one of prolongation, it mostly drops out
altogether, and the Harakah of the next preceding letter becomes
the connecting vowel between the two words, which in our
Terminal Essay. 277
parlance would mean, that the end-vowel of the first word is
shortened before the elided initial of the second. Thus "ft
al-bayti," in the house, which in Arabic is written f(i)y h(a)l-
b(a)yt(i) and which we transliterate ft '1-bayti, is in poetry read
fil-bayti, where we must remember, that the syllable fil, in spite
of its short vowel, represents a long quantity, because it consists
of a moved letter followed by a quiescent one. Ffl would be over-
long and could, according to Arabic prosody, stand only in certain
cases at the end of a verse, i.e. in pause, where a natural tendency
prevails to prolong a sound.
The attentive reader will now be able to fix the prosodical value
of the line quoted above with unerring security. For metrical
purposes it syllabifies into : A-kd-mul-vaj-da ft kal-bf wa sa-ru,
containing three short and eight long quantities. The initial
unaccented a is short, for the same reason why the syllables
da and wa are so, that is, because it corresponds to an Arabic
letter, the Hamzah or silent h, moved by Fathah. The syllables
kd, ft, bf, sd, ru, are long for the same reason, why the syllables
Tnul, waj, kal are so, that is, because the accent in the trans-
literation corresponds to a quiescent Arabic letter, following a
moved one.. The same simple criterion applies to the whole
list, in which I give in alphabetical order the first lines and the
metre of all the poetical pieces contained in the Mac. edition, and
which will be found at the end of this volume.
The prosodical unities, then, in Arabic are the moved and the
quiescent letter, and we are now going to show how they combine
into metrical elements, feet, and metres.
i. The metrical elements (Usul) are :
I. The Sabab, 1 which consists of two letters and is either
khaftf (light) or sakfl (heavy)'. A moved letter followed by a
1 For the explanation of this name and those of the following terms, see Terminal
Essay, p. 261.
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
quiescent, i.e. a closed syllable, like the afore-mentioned taf,
lun, mus, to which we may now add fa = fah, 'i = 'iy, 'u ='uw,
form a Sabab khafif, corresponding to the classical long quantity
( - ). Two moved letters in succession, like muta, 'ala, constitute
a Sabab sakil, for which the classical name would be Pyrrhic
( ^ ^ ). As in Latin and Greek, they are equal in weight and
can frequently interchange, that is to say, the Sabab khafif
can be evolved into a sakil by moving its second Harf, or the
latter contracted into the former, by making its second letter
quiescent.
2. The Watad, consisting of three letters, one of which is
quiescent. If the quiescent follows the two moved ones, the
Watad is called rnajmu* (collected or joined), as fa'ii (= fa'uw),
mafd ( mafah), 'ilun, and it corresponds to the classical Iambus
( w ). If, on the contrary, the quiescent intervenes or separates
between the two moved letters, as in fa'i (= fah'i), Idtu (= lahtu),
taPi, the Watad is called mafruk (separated), and has its classical
equivalent in the Trochee ( ~ ^ ).
3. The Fasilah, 1 containing four letters, i.e. three moved ones
followed by a quiescent, and which, in fact, is only a shorter name
for a Sabab sakil followed by a Sabab khafif, as muta 4- fa, or
'ala + tun, both of the measure of the classical Anapaest,
<uu-).
ii. These three elements, the Sabab, Watad and Fasilah, com-
bine further into feet Arkdn, pi. of Rukn, or Ajzd, pi. of Juz,
two words explained supra p. 275. The technical tefms by
which the feet are named, are derivatives of the root, fa'l, to
do, which as the student will remember, serves in Arabic
1 This Fdsilah is more accurately called sughrk, the smaller one ; there is another
Fasilah kubra, the greater, consisting of four moved letters .followed by a quiescent, or of
a Sabab saldl followed by a Watad majmu'. But it occurs only as a variation of a
normal foot, not as an integral element in its composition, and consequently no mention
of it was needed in tlu text.
t Terminal Essay. 279
Grammar to form the Auzan or weights, in accordance with
which words are derived from roots. It consists of the three
letters Fa (f), 'Ayn ('), Lam (1), and, like any other Arabic
root, cannot strictly speaking be pronounced, for the introduction
I
of any vowel-sound would make it cease to be a root and change
it into an individual word. The above fa'l, for instance, where the
initial Fd is moved by Fathah (a), is the Infinitive or verbal noun,
" to do/' " doing." If the 'Ayn also is moved by Fathah, we
obtain fa'al, meaning in colloquial Arabic " he did " (the classical
or literary form would be fa'ala). Pronouncing the first letter
with Zammah (u), the second with Kasrah (i), t.e. t fu'il, we say
" it was done " (classically fu'ila). Many more forms are derived
by prefixing, inserting or subjoining certain additional letters
called Huruf al-Ziyadah (letters of increase) to the original
radicals : fd'il, for instance, with an Alif of prolongation in the
first syllable, means "doer;" maf'ul ( = maf'uwl), where the
quiescent Fd is preceded by a fathated Mi'm (m), and the zam-
mated 'Ayn followed by a lengthening Waw, means "done";
Mufd alah, where in addition to a prefixed and inserted letter, the
feminine termination ah is subjoined after the Ldm means " to do
a thing reciprocally." Since these and similar changes are with
unvarying regularity applicable to all roots, the grammarians use
the derivatives of Fa'l as model-forms for the corresponding de-
rivations of any other root, whose letters are* in this case called its
Fd, 'Ayn and Ldm. From a root, e.g., which has Kdf (k) for its
first letter or Fd, Td (t) for its second letter 01 'Ayn, and Bd (b)
fot its third letter or Ldm
fa'l would be katb = to write, writing;
fa'al would be katab =r he wrote ;
fu'il would be kutib := it was written ;
fd'il would be kdtib = writer, scribe ;
maf'ul would be maktub == written, letter;
280 A If Laylak wa Laylah.
mufa'alah would be mukatabah = to write reciprocally, cor-
respondence.
The advantage of this system is evident. It enables the student,
who has once grasped the original meaning of a root, to form
scores of words himself, and in his readings, to understand
hundreds, nay thousands, of words, without recourse to the
Dictionary, as soon as he has learned to distinguish their radical
letters from the letters of increase, and recognises in them a
familiar root. We cannot wonder, therefore, that the inventor of
Arabic Prosody, readily availed himself of the same plan for his
own ends. The Taf 'il, as it is here called, that is the represen-
tation of the metrical feet by current derivatives of fa'l, has in this
case, of course, nothing to do with the etymological meaning of
those typical forms. But it proves none the less useful in another
direction : in simply naming a particular foot it shows at the same
time its prosodical measure and character, as will now be explained
in detail.
We have seen supra p. 275 that the word Akamu consists of a
short syllable followed by two long ones ( u - - ), and consequently
forms a foot, which the classics would call Bacchfus. In Latin
there is no connection between this name and the metrical value
of the foot : we must learn both by heart: But if we are told
that its Taf'il in Arabic is Fa'ulun, we understand at once that it
is composed of the Watad majmu' fa'u (--) and the Sabab
khafi'f lun ( - ), and as the Watad contains three, the Sabab
two letters, it forms a quinqueliteral foot or Juz khamasf.
In combining into feet, the Watad has the precedence over the
Sabab and the Fasilah, and again the Watad majmu' over the
Watad mafruk. Hence the Prosodists distinguish between Ajza
asliyah or primary feet (from Asl, root), in which this precedence is
observed, and Ajza far'iyah or secondary feet (from Far' = branch),
in which it is reversed. The former are four in number :
Terminal Essay. 281
1. Fa'u.lun, consisting, as we have just seen of a Watad majmu'
followed by a Sabab khafff, = the Latin Bacchfus ( w - - ).
2. Mafa.'i.lun, i.e. Watad majmu' followed by two Sabab khafff
= the Latin Epitritus primus ( v ).
3. Mufd.'alatun, i.e. Watad majmu' followed by Fdsilah = the
Latin Iambus followed by Anapaest ( w - w w - ).
4. Fd'i.ld.tun, i.e. Watad mafruk followed by two Sabab khafff
= the Latin Epitritus secundus ( - w - ).
The number of the secondary feet increases to six, for as No. 2
and 4 contain two Sabab, they " branch out " into two derived
feet each, according to both Sabab or only one changing place
with regard to the Watad. They are :
5. Fd.'ilun, i.e. Sabab khafff followed by Watad majmu', =
the Latin Creticus ( - w - ). The primary Fa'ii.lun becomes by
transposition Lun.fa'u. To bring this into conformity with a
current derivative of fa'l, the initial Sabab must be made to con-
tain the first letter of the root, and the Watad the two remaining
ones in their proper order. Fa is therefore substituted for lun,
and 'ilun for fa'ii, forming together the above Fd.'ilun. By similar
substitutions, which it would be tedious to specify in each separate
case, Mafd.'f.lun becomes :
6. Mus.taf.'ilun, for 'f.lun.mafd. i.e. two Sabab khafff, followed
by Watad majmu' = the Latin Epitritus tertius ( - - w - ), or :
7. Fci.'ild.tun, for Lun.mafd.'f, i.e. Watad majmu' between two
Sabab khafif = the Latin Epitritus secundus ( - u - - ).
8. Mutafd.'ilun (for 'Alatun.mufa, the reversed Mufa.'alatun)
i.e. Fdsilah followed by Watad majmu' = the Latin Anapaest
succeeded by Iambus ( u w - u - ). The last two secondary feet
are transpositions of No. 4, Fd'.i ld.tun, namely :
9. Maf.'u.ldtu, for Ld.tun.fa'i, i.e. two Sabab khafff, followed
by Watad mafrdk = the Latin Epitritus quartus ( u ) fc
282 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
10. Mus.tafi.lun, for Tun.fd'i.la, Le. Watad mafruk between
two Sabab khafi'f = the Latin Epitritus tertius (---- ).*
The " branch "-foot Fa.'ilun (No. 5), like its " root " Fa'ulun
(No. i), is quinqueliteral. All other feet, primary or secondary,
consist necessarily of seven letters, as they contain a triliteral
Watad (see supra i. 2) with either two biliteral Sabab khafi'f (i. i,)
or a quadriliteral Fasilah (i. 3). They are, therefore, called,
Saba'i = seven lettered.
iii. The same principle of the Watad taking precedence over
Sabab and Fdsilah, rules the arrangement of the Arabic metres,
which are divided into five circles (Dawair, pi. of Dairah) so called
for reasons presently to be explained. The first is. named
A. Dairat al-Mukhtalif, circle of " the varied " metre, because
it is composed of feet of various length, the five-lettered Fa'ulun
(supra ii. i) and the seven-lettered Mafa'i'lun (ii. 2) with their
secondaries Fa'ilun, Mustaf.'ilun and Fa.'ilaturi (ii. 5-7), and it com-
prises three Buhur or metres (pi. of Bahr, sea), the Taw/1, Madid
and Basit,
i . Al-Taw/1, consisting of twice
Fa'u.lun Mafc.'flun Fa'ii.lun Mafc.'flun,
the classical scheme for which would be
w - - | u | ^ - - | w |
If we transfer the Watad Fa'u from the beginning of the line to
the end, it would read :
Lun.mafa'/ Lun.fa'u Lun.mafa'i Lun.fa'u which, after the sub-
stitutions indicated above (ii. 7 and 5) becomes :
1 It is important to keep in mind that the seemingly identical feet 10 and 6, J and 3,
are distinguished by the relative positions of the constituting elements in either pair.
For as it will be seen, that Sabab and Watad are subject to different kinds of alterations,
it is evident that the effect of such alteration upon a foot will vary, if Sbab and Watad
occupy different places with regard to each other.
Terminal Essay. 283
2. Al-Mad/d, consisting of twice
F^'ildtun F.'ilun Fl'ildtun F^.'ilun,
which may be represented by the classical scheme
-u--|-v-|-u--|-w-|
If again, returning to the Tawil, we make the break after the
Watad of the second foot we obtain the line :
'flun.fa'u. Lun.mafd 'jflun.fa'u Lun.mafa, and as metrically
'flun.fa'u (two Sabab followed by Watad) and Lun.mafd (one
Sabab followed by Watad) are = 'flun.mafd and Lun.fa'u res-
pectively, their Taf 'il is effected by the same substitutions as in
ii. 5 and 6, and they become :
3. Basft, consisting of twice
Mustaf.'ilun FaVilun Mustaf.'ilun FaYilun,
in conformity with the classical scheme :
- - w-|- w -|- - w -[- u -|
Thus one metre evolves from another by a kind of rotation,
which suggested to the Prosodists an ingenious device of repre-
senting them by circles (hence the name Ddirah), round the cir-
cumference of which on the outside the complete Taf'fl of the
original metre is written, while each moved letter is faced by a
small loop, each quiescent by a small vertical stroke 1 inside the
circle. Then, in the case of this present Ddirat al-Mukhtalif for
instance, the loop corresponding to the initial f of the first Fa'ulun
is marked as the beginning of the Tawil, that corresponding to
its 1 (of the Sabab lun) as the beginning of the Madid, and that
corresponding to the 'Ayn of the next Mafd'flun as the beginning
of the Basit. The same process applies to all the following circles,
but our limited space compels us simply to enumerate them,
together with their Buhur, without further reference to the mode
of their evolution.
1 i.e. vertical to the circumference.
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
B. Dairat al-Mutalif, circle of " the agreeing " metre, so called
because all its feet agree in length, consisting of seven letters
each. It contains :
1. Al-Wafir, composed of twice
Mufa.'alatun Mufa.'alatun Mufa.'alatun (ii. 3),
~ \s-\j\j-\\j-\j\j-\\s-\s\j-\
where the Iambus in each foot precedes Jthe Anapaest, and its
reversal :
2. Al-Kdmil, consisting of twice
Mutafl'ilun Mutafl'ilun Mutafa.'ilun (ii. 8)
uw~u"ju\^~w"Juu - u~j
where the Anapaest takes the first place in every foot.
C. Dairat al-Mujtalab, circle of " the brought on " metre, so
called because its seven-lettered feet are brought on from the first
circle.
Terminal Essay. 285
1. AI-Hazaj, consisting of twice
MafaVilun Mafl'flun MafaVilun (ii. 2)
= w \\j |w---|^--~|
2. Al-Rajaz, consisting of twice
Mustaf.'ilun Mustaf.'ilun Mustaf.'ilun,
and, in this full form, almost identical with the Iambic Trimeter
of the Greek Drama :
- - v -| - - u -|- - w -|
3. Al-Ramal, consisting of twice
FaViUtun Fl'iUtun Fi.'iUtun,
the trochaic counterpart of the preceding metre
= -u--|- V--J-V--J
D. Dairat al-Mushtabih, circle of " the intricate " metre, so
called from its intricate nature, primary mingling with secondary
feet, and one foot of the same verse containing a Watad majmu',
another a Watad mafruk, i.e. the iambic rhythm alternating with
the trochaic and vice versa. Its Buhur are :
I. Al-Sarf, twice
Mustaf.'ilun Mustaf.'ilun Maf u.lltu (ii. 6 and 9)
= --u-[--v-|-v-w|
2.- Al-Munsarih, twice
Mustaf'ilun Mafu.ldtu Mustaf.'ilun (ii. 6. 9. 6)
= --w-|---w|--w-|
3. Al-Khafif, twice
Fd.'fldtun Mustaf Uun Fd.'il^tun (ii. 7. 10. 7)
= -w|--v-|-w--|
4. Al-Muzdri', twice
Mafl'flun Fd'i.litun Mafd-'ilun (ii." *. 4. 2)
. w j. w ..|^...|
5. Al-Muktazib, twice
Maf u.latu Mustaf.'ilun Maf'u.Utu (ii. 9. 6. 9)
286 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
6. Al-Mujtass, twice
MustaFi.lun Fd.'ilatim Mustaf i.lun (ii. 10. 7. 10)
= v-|-u--|--w-|
E. Dairat al-Muttafik, circle of " the concordant" metre, so
called for the same reason why circle B is called " the agreeing/'
i.e. because the feet all harmonise in length, being here, however
quinqueliteral, not seven-lettered as in the Mutalif. Al-Khalil, the
inventor of the 'Ilm al-'Aruz, assigns to it only one metre :
1, Al-Mutakarib, twice
Fa'ulun Fa'ulun Fa'ulun Fa'ulun (ii. i)
= ^--|w--|w--|u--|
Later Prosodists added :
2. Al-Mutadarak, twice
Fa'ilun Fa'ilun Fa'ilun Fa'ilun (ii. 5)
= -u-|-u-|-u-|-u-|
The feet and metres as given above, are however to a certain
extent merely theoretical ; in practice the former admit of
numerous licenses and the latter of variations brought about by
modification or partial suppression of the feet final in a verse.
An Arabic poem (Kasidah, or if numbering less than ten couplets,
Kat'ah) consists of Bayts or couplets, bound together by a
continuous rhyme, which connects the first two lines and is
repeated at the end of every second line throughout the poem.
The last foot of every odd line is called 'Aruz (fern, in contra-
distinction of Aruz in the sense of Prosody which is masc.) pi.
A'airiz, that of every even line is called Zarb, pi. Azrub, and the
remaining feet may be termed Hashw (stuffing), although in
stricter parlance a further distinction is made between the first
foot of every odd and even line as well.
Now with regard to the Hashw on the one hand, and the 'Aruz
and Zarb on the other, the changes which the normal feet undergo,
are of two kinds: Zuhaf (deviation) and 'Illah (defect). ZuhaT
Terminal Essay. 287
applies, as a rule, occasionally and optionally to the second
letter of a Sabab in those feet which compose the Hashw or body-
part of a. verse, making a long syllable short by suppressing its
quiescent final, or contracting two short quantities in a long one,
by rendering quiescent a moved letter which stands second in
a Sabab sakil. In Mustaf'ilun (ii. 6. = ---), for instance,
the s of the first syllable, or the f of the second, or both may be
dropped and it will become accordingly Mutaf ilun, by substitution
Mafa'ilun, ( u - w - ) or Musta'ilun, by substitution, Mufta'ilun
( - u u - ),or Muta'ilun, by substitution Fa'ilatun ( u u u - ).* This
means that wherever the foot Mustaf.'ilun occurs in the Hashw of
a poem, we can represent it by the scheme w w ^ - i.e. the Epitritus
tertius can, by poetical license change into Diiambus, Choriambus
or Paeon quartus. In Mufa'alatun (ii. 3, == v - u u - ) and Mutafa'ilun
(ii. 8. = v u - v - ), again, the Sabab 'ala and muta may become
khafi'f by suppression of their final Harakah and thus turn into
Mufa'altun, by substitution Mafa'ilun (ii. 2. = u ), and
Mutfa'ilun, by substitution Mustaf ilun (ii. 6. = - - u - as above).
In other words the two feet correspond to the schemes u w - w and
j- u w _, where a Spondee can take the place of the Anapaest after
or before the Iambus respectively.
'Illah, the second way of modifying the primitive or normal feet,
applies to both Sabab and Watad, but only in the 'Aruz and
Zarb of a couplet, being at the same time constant and obligatory
Besides the changes already mentioned, it consists in adding one
or two letters to a Sabab or Watad, or curtailing them more or
less, even to cutting them off altogether. We cannot here exhaust
this matter any more than those touched upon until now, but
must be satisfied with an example or two, to show the proceeding
in general and indicate its object.
1 This would be a Fasilah kubra spoken of in the note p. 278.
288 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
We have seen that the metre Basft consists of the two lines :
Mustaf.'ilun FaVilun Mustafilun Fd'ilun
Mustafilun Fd'ilun Mustafilun Fd'ilun.
This complete form, however, is not in use amongst Arab
poets. If by the Zuhdf Khabn, here acting as 'Illah, the Alif in
the final Fa'ilun is suppressed, changing it into Fa'ilun (- ^ -), it
becomes the first 'Aruz, called makhbunah, of the Basft, the
first Zarb of which is obtained by submitting the final Fa'ilun of
the second line to the same process. A second Zarb results, if in
Fa'ilun the final n of the Watad 'ilun is cut off and the preceding 1
made quiescent by the 'Illah Kat' thus giving Fa'il and by substi-
tution Fa'lun ( - - ). Thus the formula becomes :
Mustafilun Fd'ilun Mustafilun Fa'ilun
Mustafilun Fd'ilun Mustafilun \ _
( Fa lun
As in the Hashw, i.e. the first three feet of each line, the Khabn
can likewise be applied to the medial Fa'ilun, and for Mustafilun
the poetical licenses, explained above, may be introduced, this
first 'Aniz or Class of the Basft with its two Zarb or subdivisions
will be represented by the scheme
\j u ( v v
~ -* -J
that is to say in the first subdivision of this form of the Basft
both lines of each couplet end with an Anapaest and every second
line of the other subdivision terminates in a Spondee.
The Basft has four more A'ariz, three called majzuah, because
each line is shortened by a Juz or foot, one called mashturah
(halved), because the number of feet is reduced from four to two,
and we may here notice that the former kind of lessening the
number of feet is frequent with the hexametrical circles (B. C. D.),
while the latter kind can naturally only occur in those
circles, whose couplet forms an octameter (A. E.) Besides being
Terminal Essay. 289
majzuah, the second 'Aruz is sahihah (perfect) consisting of the
normal foot Mustafilun. It has three Azrub: I. Mustafilan
( - - u : , with an overlong final syllable, see supra p. 277),
produced by the 'Illah Tazyil, i.e. addition of a quiescent letter at
the end (Mustaf 'ilunn, by substitution Mustafilan) ; 2. Mustafilun,
like the 'Aruz ; 3. Maf ulun ( ), produced by the 'Illah Kat'
(see the preceding page ; Mustafilun, by dropping the final n and
making the 1 quiescent becomes Mustaf il and by substitution
Maf ulun). Hence the formula is :
Mustafilun Fa'ilun Mustafilun
f Mustaf iten
Mustafilun Fa'ilun \ Mustafilun
I Maf ulun,
which, with its allowable licenses, may be represented by the
scheme :
The above will suffice to illustrate the general method of the
Prosodists, and we must refer the reader for the remaining classes
and subdivisions of the Basit as well as the other metres to more
special treatises on the subject, to which this Essay is intended
merely as an introduction, with a view to facilitate the first steps
of the student in an important, but I fear somewhat neglected
field of Arabic learning.
If we now turn to the poetical pieces contained in The Nights,
we find that out of the fifteen metres, known to al-KhaHl, or the
sixteen of later Prosodists, instances of thirteen occur in the
Mac. N. edition, but in vastly different proportions. The total
number amounts to 1,385 pieces (some, however, repeated several
times), out of which 1,128 belong to the first two circles, leaving
only 257 for the remaining three. The same disproportionality
VOL. x. T
290 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
obtains with regard to the metres of each circle. The Mukhtalif
is represented by 331 instances of Tawi'l and 330 of Basft against
3 of Madfd ; the Mutalif by 321 instances of Kamil against 143
of Wafir ; the Mujtalab by 32 instances of Ramal and 30 of Rajaz
against i of Hazaj ; the Mushtabih by 72 instances of Khafif and
52 of San" against 18 of Munsarih and 15 of Mujtass ; and lastly
the Muttafik by 37 instances of Mutakarib. Neither the Muta-
ddrak (E. 2), nor the Muzari' and Muktazib (D. 4. 5) are met.,
with.
Finally it remains for me to quote a couplet of each metre,
showing how to scan them, and what relation they bear to the
theoretical formulas exhibited on p. 282 to p. 286.
It is characteristic for the preponderance of the Tawfl over all
the other metres, that the first four lines, with which my alpha-
betical list begins, are written in it. One of these belongs to a
poem which has for its author Bahd al-Dm Zuhayr (born A.D. 1 186
at Mekkah or in its vicinity, ob. 1249 at Cairo), and is to be
found in full in Professor Palmer's edition of his works, p. 164.
Sir Richard Burton translates the first Bayt (vol. i. 290) :
An I quit Cairo and her pleasances o Where can I hope to find so gladsome
ways ?
Professor Palmer renders it :
Must I leave Egypt where such joys abound ?
What place can ever charm me so again
In Arabic it scans :
v/~u|u---|w-w|w - w~|
A-arhalu 'an Misrin wa tfbi na'fmihi *
\^-v>jw---jc~-|w-..u-|
Fa-ayyu makanin ba'dahd li-ya shdiku.
1 In pause that is at the end of a line, a short vowel counts either as long or is
dropped, according to the exigencies of the metre. In the Hashw the u or i of the pro-
nominal affix for the third person sing. masc. , and the final u of the enlarged pronominal
plural forms, humu and kumu may be either short or long, according to the same
exigencies. The end-vowel of the pronoun of the first person ana", I, is generally read
short, although it is written with Alif.
Terminal Essay. 29!
In referring to iii. A. I. p. 282, it will be seen that in the Hashw
Fa'ulun (<---) has become Fa'ulu ( <- - u ) by a Zuhaf called
Kabz (suppression of the fifth letter of a foot if it is quiescent),
and that in the 'Ariiz and Zarb Mafa'ilun ( - --- ) has changed
into Mafa'ilun ( u - u - ) by the same Zuhaf acting as 'Illah.
The latter alteration shows the couplet to be of the second Zarb
of the first 'Aruz of the Tawi'l. If the second line did terminate
m Mafa'ilun, as in the original scheme, it would be the first Zarb of
the same 'Aruz ; if it did end in Fa'ulun ( w - - ) or Mafa'il ( ^ - - )
it would represent the third or fourth subdivision of this first class
respectively. The Taw/1 has one other 'Aruz, Fa'ulun, with a
twofold Zarb, either Fa'ulun also, or Mafa'ilun.
The first instance of the Basi't occurring in The Nights are thej
lines translated vol. i. p. 25 :
'Containeth Time a twain of days, this of blessing, that of bane o
And holdeth Life a twain of halves, this of pleasure, that of pain.
In Arabic (Mac. N. i. 1 1) :
-u-|-w-|--u-|wu-|
Al-Dahru yauma*ni za" amnun wa z hazaru
--u-|-w-|- - v*-|uw-j
Wa VAyshu shatrani z safwun wa zd kadaru.
Turning back to p. 283, where the A'an'z and Azrub of the Basft
are shown, the student will have no difficulty to recognise the,
Bayt as one belonging to the first Zarb of the first 'Aruz.
As an example of the Madfd we quote the original of the lines
(vol. v. 131) :
I had a heart, and with it lived my life 'Twas seared with fire and burnt withj
loving-lowe.
They read in Arabic :
u - u vs u
Ka"na If kalbun a'fshu bihi
Fa'ktawk bi'1-ndri wa'htarak.
If we compare this with the formula (iii. A. 2 p, 283), we find that
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
either line of the couplet is shortened by a foot ; it is, therefore,
majzu. The first 'Ariiz of this abbreviated metre is Fd'ilatun
( -u-- ), and is called sahfhah (perfect) because it consists of
the normal third foot. In the second 'Aruz Fd'ilatun loses its
end syllable tun by the 'Illah Hafz (suppression of a final Sabab
khafff), and becomes Fa'ila ( - w - ), for which Fd'ilun is sub-
stituted. Shortening the first syllable of Fd'ilun, i.e. eliminating
4 :he Alif by Khabn, we obtain the third 'Aruz Fa'ilun ( v u - )
as that of the present lines, which has two Azrub : Fa'ilun, like
the 'Aruz, and Fa'lun ( - - ), here, again by Khabn, further
reduced to Fa'al ( w - ).
Ishak of Mosul, who improvises the piece, calls it " so difficult
and so rare, that it went nigh to deaden the quick and to quicken
the dead ; " indeed, the native poets consider the metre Mad/d as
the most difficult of all, and it is scarcely ever attempted by later
writers. This accounts for its rare occurrence in The Nights,
where only two more instances are to be found, Mac. N. ii. 244
and iii. 404.
The second and third circle will best be spoken of together, as
the Wafir and Kamil have a natural affinity to the Hazaj and
Rajaz. Let us revert to the line :
" | w I ^ - - I
Akamti '1-wajda f f kalbi wa saru.
Translated, as it were, into the language of the Prosodists it will
be:
Mafc'flun 1 'Mafc'flun Fa'ulun,
and this, standing by itself, might prima facie be taken for a line
of the Hazaj (iii. C. i), with the third Mafd'flun shortened by
Hafz (see above) into Mafd'i for which Fa'ulun would be sub-
1 On p. 275 the word akdmu, as read by itself, was identified with the foot Fa'ulun.
Here k must be read together with the following syllable as "akamulwaj," which is
Mafd'ilun.
Terminal Essay. 293
stituted. We have seen (p. 287) that and how the foot Mufd'alatun
can change into Mafd'i'lun, and if in any poem which otherwise
would belong to the metre Hazaj, the former measure appears
even in one foot only along with the latter, it is considered to be
the original measure, and the poem counts no longer as Hazaj
but as Wdfir. In the piece now under consideration, it is the
second Bayt where the characteristic foot of the Wdfir first
appears :
c---ju-uv^-jv/~-|
Naat 'annfl-rubu'u wa sdkmfhd
\j-\j\j-\\j-\j\j-\\j--\
Wa kad ba'uda '1-mazaiu fa-Id mazaru.
Anglice (vol. iii. 296) :
Far lies the camp and those who camp therein ; o Far is her tent-shrine where
I ne'er shall tent.
It must, however, be remarked that the Hazaj is not in use as a
hexameter, but only with an 'Aruz majzuah or shortened by one
foot. Hence it is only in the second 'Aruz of the Wdfir, which is
likewise majzuah, that the ambiguity as to the real nature of the
metre can arise 1 ; and the isolated couplet :
w | u | ^ - - |
Yarfdu '1-mar-u an yu'ta munahu
o | u |* - - |
Wa yaba 'llahu ilia md yurfdu
Man wills his wish to him accorded be, But Allah naught accords save
what he wills (vol. iv. 157),
being hexametrical, forms undoubtedly part of a poem in Wdfir
although it does not contain the foot Mufa'alatun at all. Thus
1 Prof. Palmer, p. 328 of his Grammar, identifies this form of the Wafir, when every
Mufa'alatun of the Hashw has become Mafd'ilun, with the second form of the Rajaz.
It should be Hazaj. Professor Palmer was misled, it seems, by an evident misprint in
one of his authorities, the Muhit al-Dairah by Dr. Van Dayk, p. 52.
294 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
'the solitary instance of Hazaj in The Nights is Abu NuwaV
abomination, beginning with :
Fa-Id tas'au ilk ghayri
---- |w---|
Fa-'indi ma'dinu '1-khayri (Mac. N. ii. 377).
Steer ye your steps to none but me o Who have a mine of luxury (vol. v. 65).
If in the second ' Aruz of the Wafir Mafailun ( u --- ) is further
shortened to Mafa'ilun ( u - u - ), the metre resembles the second
'Aruz of Rajaz, where, as we have seen, the latter foot can, by
license, take the place of the normal MustaPilun ( - - o - ).
The Kclmil bears a similar relation to the Rajaz, as the Wafir
bears to the Hazaj. By way of illustration we quote from
Mac. N. ii. 8 the first two Bayts of a little poem taken from the
23rd Assembly of Al-Hariri :
--\j-\--\j-\v\j-\j-l
Yd khdtiba '1-dunyd '1-daniyyati innahd
v>u-w-jwo-u"j---j
Sharaku '1-radk wa kardratu '1-akddri
--w-|--w-|--u-|
Ddrun mata md azhakat ff yaumihd
---- i__ u _i___l
Abkat ghadan buMan lahd min ddri.
In Sir Richard Burton's translation (vol. iii. 319) :
O thou who woo'st a World unworthy, learn o 'Tis house of evils, 'tis
Perdition's net :
A house where whoso laughs this day shall weep o The next ; then perish
house of fume and fret.
The 'Aruz of the first couplet is Mutafd'ilun, assigning the piece
to the first or perfect (sahihah) class of the Kdmil. In the Hashw
of the opening line and in that of the whole second Bayt this
normal Mutafa'ilun has, by license, become Mustaf'iiun, and the
same change has taken place in the 'Aruz of the second couplet ;
for it is a peculiarity which this metre shares with a few others, to
Terminal Essay. 295
allow certain alterations of the kind Zuhaf in the 'Aniz and Zarb
as well as in the Hashw. This class has three subdivisions : the
Zarb of the first is Mutafa'ilun, like the 'Ariiz ; the Zarb of the
second is Fa'alatun ( u u - - ), a substitution for Mutafa'il which
latter is obtained from Mutafa'ilun by suppressing the final n and
rendering the / quiescent ; the Zarb of the third is Fa'lun ( - - )
for Mutfa, derived from Mutafa'ilun by cutting off the Watad 'ilun
and dropping the medial a of the remaining Mutafa.
If we make the 'Ayn of the second Zarb Fa'alatun also quies-
cent by the permitted Zuhaf Izmar, it changes into Fa'latun, by
substitution Mafulun ( ) which terminates the rhyming lines
of the foregoing quotation. Consequently the two couplets taken
together, belong to the second Zarb of the first 'Ariiz of the
Kdmil, and the metre of the poem with its licenses may be re-
presented by the scheme :
o o \J
Taken isolated, on the other hand, the second Bayt might be
of the metre Rajaz, whose first 'Aruz Mustaf ilun has two Azrub :
one equal to the Aruz, the other Maf ulun as above, but here
substituted for Mustafil after applying the 'Illah Kat' (see p.
288) to Mustaf ilun. If this were the metre of the poem through-
out, the scheme with the licenses peculiar to the Rajaz would
be:
U \J
w
The pith of Al-Hariri's Assembly is that the knight errant,
not to say the arrant wight of the Romance, Abu Sayd of Sariij,
accuses before the Wali of Baghdad his pretended pupil, in reality
his son, to have appropriated a poem of his by lopping off two
296 A If Laylah wa Lay I ah.
feet of every Bayt. If this is done in the quoted lines, they
read :
--u-l |
Yd khdtiba '1-dunyd '1-daniy-
wo-w-|uu~w-|
Yati innaha sharaku '1-rada
- - v, -I- - v - |
Ddrun matJt md azhakat
|--o-|
Ff yaumihd abkat ghada",
with a different rhyme and of a different variation of metre.
The amputated piece belongs to the fourth Zarb of the third
'Aruz of Kdmil, and its second couplet tallies with the second sub-
division of the second class of Rajaz.
The Rajaz, a iambic metre pure and simple, is the most popular,
because the easiest, in which even the Prophet was caught napping
sometimes, at the dangerous risk of following the perilous leader-
ship of Imru '1-Kays. It is the metre of improvisation, of ditties,
and of numerous didactic poems. In the latter case, when the
composition is called Urjuzah, the two lines of every Bayt rhyme,
and each Bayt has a rhyme of its own. This is the form in which
for instance, Ibn Malik's Alffyah is written, as well as the remark-
able grammatical work of the modern native scholar, Nasi'f al-
Yazijf, of which a notice will be found in Chenery's Introduction
to his Translation of Al-Hariri.
While the Hazaj and Rajaz connect the third circle with the
first and second, the Ramal forms the link between the third and
fourth Ddirah. Its measure Fd'ildtun (. * - -) and the reversal
of it, Mafulatu ( ^), affect the trochaic rhythm, as opposed
to the iambic of the two first-named metres. The iambic move-
ment has a ring of gladness about it, the trochaic a wail of sad-
ness : the former resembles a nimble pedestrian, striding apace
with an elastic step and a cheerful heart ; the latter is like a man
toiling along on the desert path, where his foot is ever and anon
Terminal Essay. 297
sliding back in the burning sand (Raml, whence probably the
name of the metre). Both combined in regular alternation, im-
part an agitated character to the verse, admirably fit to express
the conflicting emotions of a passion-stirred mind.
Examples of these more or less plaintive and pathetic metres
are numerous in the Tale of Uns al-Wujud and the Wazir's
Daughter, which, being throughout a story of love, as has been
noted, vol. v. 33, abounds in verse, and, in particular, contains
ten out of the thirty-two instances of Ramal occurring in The
Nights. We quote :
Ramal, first Zarb of the first 'Aruz (Mac. N. ii. 361) :
- w - - | v> u - ~ J w |
Inna li '1-bulbuli sautan ff '1-sahar
-w--Jwu--|-w"|
Ashghala 'l-'a'shika 'an husni '1-watar
The Bulbul's note, whenas dawn is nigh * Tells the lover from strains of strings
to fly (vol. v. 48).
San", second Zarb of the first 'Aruz (Mac. N. ii. 359) :
u-u~|--w-|~u-|
Wa fakhitin kad kdla ff nauhihi
_. w -|-- u -|- w -|
Yd Ddiman shukran 'ala balwatf
I heard a ringdove chanting soft and plaintively, o " I thank Thee, O Eternal,
for this misery " (vol. v. 47).
Khafif, full or perfect form (sahih), both in Zarb and 'Aruz (Mac.
N. ii. 356) :
- o - -|w-v-|*w--|
Y* li-man ashtakf '1-ghardma 'llazf bi
ww--Jvi-u-|-v/--|
Wa shujuni wa furkatf 'an habfbf
O to whom now of my desire complaining sore shall I o Bewail my parting
from my fere compelled thus to fly (vol. v. 44).
Mujtass, the only 'Aruz (majzuah sahfhah, i.e. shortened by one
foot and perfect) with equal Zarb (Mac. N. ii. 367) :
298 A If Laylah wa Lay la h.
Ruddu 'alayya habfbf
1 1
La hajatan If bi-malin
To me restore my dear o I want not wealth untold (vol. v. 55).
As an instance of the Munsarih, I give the second occurring
in The Nights, because it affords me an opportunity to show the
student how useful a knowledge of the laws of Prosody frequently
proves for ascertaining the correct reading of a text. Mac. N. i.
33 we find the line :
-uw-|*vw~|~wu-|
Arba'atun md 'jtama'at kattu iz.
This would be Rajaz with the license Mufta'ilun for Mustaf'ilun.
But the following lines of the fragment evince, that the metre is
Munsarih ; hence, a clerical error must lurk somewhere in the second,
foot. In fact, on page 833 of the same volume, we find the
piece repeated, and here the first couplet reads
-vu-|-w-v|-ov-|
Arba'atun md 'jtama'na kattu siwa
v-w-|-u-v|-uw-|
Ala azd mujhati wa safki dam!
Four things which ne'er conjoin unless it be o To storm my vitals and to shed
my blood (vol. iii. 237).
The Mutakdrib, the last of the metres employed in The Nights,
has gained a truly historical importance by the part which it plays
in Persian literature. In the form of trimetrical double-lines, with
a several rhyme for each couplet, it has become the " Nibelungen-"
stanza of the Persian epos : Firdausf's immortal " Book of Kings "
and Nizdmi's Iskander-namah are written in it, not to mention a
host of Masnawis in which Sufic mysticism combats Mohammedan
orthodoxy. On account of its warlike and heroical character,
therefore, I choose for an example the knightly Jamrakdn's chal-
lenge to the single fight in which he conquers his scarcely less
valiant adversary Kaurajan, Mac. N. iii. 296 :
Terminal Essay. 299
V - - j w %r | v * - | v - - |
And 'l-Jamraka"nu kawiyyn '1-jandni
v--|w-v|u--|u--|
Jamfu 'l-fawdrisi takhsha kitaU
Here the third syllable of the second foot in each line is short-
ened by license, and the final Kasrah of the first line, standing in
pause, is long, the metre being the full form of the Mutakdrib
as exhibited p. 286, iii. E. i. If we suppress the Kasrah of
al-Janani, which is also allowable in pause, and make the second
line to rhyme with the first, saying, for instance :
u - - | w - w [ v/ - - | u -
And 'l-Jamrakdnu kawiyyu '1-jandn
u - J w - - | w - - j u -
La-yakshk kitli shijd'u 'l-zamdn,
we obtain the powerful and melodious metre in which the Shih-
namah sings of Rustam's lofty deeds, of the tender love of Riida-
bah and the tragic downfall of Siyawush.
Shall I confess that in writing the foregoing pages it has been
my ambition to become a conqueror, in a modest way, myself: to
conquer, I mean, the prejudice frequently entertained, and shared
even by my accomplished countryman, Ruckert, that Arabic Pro-
sody is a clumsy and repulsive doctrine. I have tried to show
that it springs naturally from the character of the language, and,
intimately connected, as it is, with the grammatical system of the
Arabs, it appears to me quite worthy of the acumen of a people,
to whom, amongst other things, we owe the invention of Algebra,
the stepping-stone of our whole modern system of Mathematics.
I cannot refrain, therefore, from concluding with a little anecdote
anent al-Khalil, which Ibn Khallikan tells in the following words.
His son went one day into the room where his father was, and on
finding him scanning a piece of poetry by the rules of prosody,
he ran out and told the people that his father had lost his wits.
3OO A If Laylah wa Laylak.
They went in immediately and related to al-Khalfl what they had
heard, on which he addressed his son in these terms :
" Had you known what I was saying, you would have excused
me, and had you known what you said, I should have blamed you.
But you did not understand me, so you blamed me, and I knew
that you were ignorant, so I pardoned you."
HERE end, to my sorrow, the labours of a quarter-century and
here I must perforce say with the " poets' Poet,"
" Behold ! I see the haven nigh at hand,
To which I mean my wearie course to bend ;
Vere the main shete, and bear up with the land
The which afore is fairly to be ken'd."
Nothing of importance now indeed remains for me but briefly
to estimate the character of my work and to take cordial leave of
my readers, thanking them for the interest they have accorded to
these volumes and for enabling me thus successfully to complete
the decade.
Without pudor malus or over-diffidence I would claim to have
fulfilled the promise contained in my Foreword. The anthropo-
logical notes and notelets, which not only illustrate and read
between the lines of the text, but assist the student of Moslem
life and of Arabo-Egyptian manners, customs and language in
a multitude of matters shunned by books, form a repertory of
Eastern knowledge in its esoteric phase, sexual as well as
social.
To assert that such lore is unnecessary is to state, as every
Terminal Essay. 301
traveller knows, an " absurdum." Few phenomena are more
startling than the vision of a venerable infant, who has lived
half his long life in the midst of the wildest anthropological
vagaries and monstrosities, and yet who absolutely ignores all
that India or Burmah enacts under his very eyes. This is crass
ignorance, not the naive innocence of Saint Francis who, seeing
a man and a maid in a dark corner, raised his hands to Heaven
and thanked the Lord that there was still in the world so much
of Christian Charity.
Against such lack of knowledge my notes are a protest ; and
I may claim success despite the difficulty of the task. A traveller
familiar with Syria and Palestine, Herr Landberg, writes, " La
plume refuserait son service, la langue serait insuffisante, si celui
qui connait la vie de tous les jours des Orientaux, surtout des
classes e'leve'es, voulait la devoiler. L'Europe est bien loin d'en
avoir la moindre ide*e."
In this matter I have done my best, at a time too when the
hapless English traveller is expected to write like a young lady
for young ladies, and never to notice what underlies the most
superficial stratum. And I also maintain that the free treatment
of topics usually taboo'd and held to be "alekta" unknown
and unfitted for publicity will be a national benefit to an
." Empire of Opinion," whose very basis and buttresses are a
thorough knowledge by the rulers of the ruled. Men have been
crowned with gold in the Capitol for lesser services rendered to
the Respublica.
That the work contains errors, shortcomings and many a lapsus,
I am the first and foremost to declare. Yet in justice to myself
I must also notice that the maculae are few and far between ; even
the most unfriendly and interested critics have failed to point
out an abnormal number of slips. And before pronouncing the
" Vos plaudite ! " or, as Easterns more politely say, " I implore
that my poor name may be raised aloft on the tongue of praise,
3O2 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
let me invoke the fair field and courteous favour which the
Persian poet expected from his readers.
^ ^Iksc J Jj^
(Veil it, an fault thou find, nor jibe nor jeer :
None may be found of faults and failings clear t)
RICHARD F. BURTON.
ATHEN/EUM CLUB, September 30* '86.
INDEX.
ABD ALLAH ibn al-Mu'tazz (poet-
prince) . . . 39
Abdun (convent of) . . . 40
Abu al-Sa'adat (Pr. N.) = Father of
Prosperities .... 29
Abu Mijan (song of) ... 41
Abu Tabak =i Father of whipping . 5
'Adillyah (Mosque in Cairo) . . 6
Aesop (the fable -writer) . . . 117
'Ajaib al-Hind = Marvels of Ind . 153
A'laj = sturdy miscreants . . 38
Allah (will make things easy = will
send us aid) .... 2
(give thee quittance of respon-
sibility) II
(will send thee thy daily bread) 13
Alnashar (story of) . . . .146
'Amir = one who inhabiteth, haunter 6
'Amm = uncle (polite address to a
father-in-law) .... 32
Anasa-kum = ye are honoured by
knowing him . . . n
Arabs (for plundering nomades) . 25
Arianism and early Christianity . 190
Arms and Armour .... 86
Artists in cosmetics .... 234
'Asakir = corner-terminals of a litter 32
Asal Kasab = cane -honey . . 3
Katr = drip-honey ... 2
Ash'ab (proverbial for greed) . . 15
Astarte (primarely the planet Venus ?) 229
'Attdr = perfume-seller, druggist . 8
*Aysh = that on which man lives
(for bread) 3
PAGB
BAB (A1-) al- 'Ali = Sublime Porte . 5
Bab al-Nasr = Gate of Victory . 6
Barmakis (history of the family) . rtf
Battal (A1-), story of . 74
Bazar (locked at night) . . 13
Betrothed (for "intended to be
married with regal ceremony ") . 55
Boccaccio and The Nights . . 160
Book (black as her) ... 1
Boulgrin, Bougre, Bougrerie (deriva-
tions of the terms) . . 249
Bresl. Edit, quoted . . 54. seqq,.
(mean colloquialism thereof) . 169
Brides of the Treasure ... 3!
Burckhardt quoted . . . .144
8
10
28
35
33
240
219
CAIRENE jargon ....
(savoir faire) . . .
(bonhomie)
(knows his fellow-Cairene)
Calamity (i.e. to th.e enemy) .
Cannibalism in the New World
Caravaggio (picture of St. Rosario) .
Castration (texts justifying or enjoin-
ing it) 227
Character-sketch (making amends for
abuse of women) ... 24
Cask (for "home" of the maiden
wine) 38
Children (one of its = a native of) . 8
Clairvoyance of perfect affection . 26
Coffee (mention of) . . . .90
Coquetries (requiring as much inven-
tiveness as a cotillon) ... 58
304
A If Lay la h wa Laylah.
Cruelty (of the " fair sex " in Egypt) 45
Cry (that needs must be cried). . 21
Curs (set them on the cattle = show
a miser money, etc.) . . . 18
DARB AL-AHMAR = Red Street (in
Cairo) 8
Death (simply and pathetically
sketched) 47
Drama (in Turkey and Persia) . .167
Dramatic scene (told with charming
naivete") 9
Dunya (Pr. N.) = the World . . 27
53
220
ELEVATION (nothing strange in
sudden) .....
Ephesus (the Matron of ) .
Ernest (Duke of Bavaria, Romance
of) 153
Erotic specialists among the Ancients 201
Euphemism . . . 4 2 7
FARf D = unique ; union-pearl. . 54
Faturat = light food for early break-
fast 12
Fox and jackal (confounded by the
Arabic dialects) . . . .123
GALLAND, ANTOINE (memoir of) 96, seqq.
Garden (the Perfumed of the Cheykh
Nefzaoui 133
Gazelle's blood red (dark red dye) . 12
German Translations of The Nights
112, seqq.
Ghulamiyah = girl dressed as a boy
to act cup-bearer 39
Ghurrah = white blaze on a horse's
brow 4
Giants (marrying in Peru, probably
the Caribs of the Brazil) . . 243
Glossarium eroticum . . .221
Gnostic absurdities .... 191
Gold (liquid = Vino d'Oro) . . 40
Grelots lascifs 238
Gypsies (their first appearance in
Europe) 89
HANDKERCHIEF of dismissal . . 47
Hariri (lines quoted from) . . 44
Harim al-Rashid and Charlemagne . 135
Hazar Afsanah . . 72, seqq ; 93
Hippie Syphilis .... 90
Hetairesis and Sodatism (the heresies
of love) 215
Hizamzzrbelt (not Khizamrr nose-
ring) 36
'IDDAH (A1-) = period of widowhood 43
Ikhtfyan al-Khutan = Khaitan (?) . 9
Iram (the many-columned) . . 29
Irishman (and his "converter") . 3
Ishtar-Astaroth ( her worship not
obsolete in Syria) . . . 230
Iskander = Alexander (according to
the Arabs) 57
Italian Translations of The Nights . 1 14
J A' AFAR the Barmacide (his suspected
heresy) 141
Jackal's gall (used aphrodisiacally) . 123
Jadid = new (coin), chopper . . 12
Jauza = Gemini .... 38
Jazfrat ibn Omar (islarjtd and town -on
the Tigris) 40
Jink (A1-) = effeminates. . . 19
KAFR = village (in Egypt and Syria) 27
Kakili Sumatran (eagle-wood) . 57
Kalandars (order of) ... 84
Kammir (Imper) = brown (the* bread) 14
Katha Sarit Sagara . . .160, seqq.
Kathir r= much, "no end" . . 10
Kitab al-Fihrist (and its author) . 71
Kohl'd with Ghunj languor-kohl'd 40
Koran quoted (Ixxxix) ... 29
Koran (first English Translation
owing to France) . . . 100
Kunafah = Vermicelli-cake . . I
Kutubal-Bah = Books of Lust. . 201
LA KABBATA HA"MIYAH =(no burn-
ing plague) . . . *I4
Lane quoted, I; II, 12; 19; 34,
36; So; 52; 535 70 "5
Languages (study of should be as-
sisted by ear and tongue) . . 96
Lentils (cheapest and poorest food in
Egypt) 3
Lesbianism ..... 209
Libraries (much appreciated by the
Arabs) 175
Index.
30$
Lion (as Sultan of the beasts jealous
of a man's power) ... 34
Lokman (three of the name) . .118
Love (cruelty of) . . .26
Lying (until one's self believes the
lie to be truth) ... .14
MA'ARrjp = kindness, favour . . i
Mac Naghten's Edition . 81
Malakay bayti '1-rahah = slabs of
the jakes 51
" Making men" (and women) . 199
Marocco (tenanted by three Moslem
races) . . . . . 222
Mashallah =: the English "cock's
'ill " with a difference . . 52
Mashhad = head-and-foot stone of
a grave 53
Merchant (worth a thousand) . . 8
Metrical portion of The Nights(three-
fold distribution of) . . -67
Mohammed (before and after the
Hijtah) 196
Morbi venerei .... 88
Moslem resignation (noble instance
of) 42
Mudarris = professor ... 8
Mummery " Mahornmerie" . 178
Munkar and Nakir . . 47
Mustahakk = deserving ... 52
NXnf KA = let it suffice thee . . 22
Naka = sand-hill .... 27
Narcissus and Hippolytus (assumed
as types of morosa voluptas) . 215
OLEMA (time-serving ones) . . 44
Onanisms (discouraged by circum-
cision) 233
PAIN (resembling the drawing of a
tooth) 21
Palaces in ruins (for want of repair) . 61
Palgrave and Al- Islam . . . 189
Parisian MS. of The Nights . 104
Payne quoted 40 ; 50 ; 52 ; 74 j 104 ; 140 ;
142; 167.
VOL. X.
Peche philosophique (The, in France) 249
Pederasts (list of famous) * 252
Pehlevi version of the Panchatantra . 120
Penis (and its succedanea) . . 239
Plato (his theory of love) . . 209
Play "near and far " = " fast and
loose" . . . . .22
Powders (coloured in sign of holiday-
making) 56
Pre- Adamite doctrine . . .179
Poets (four whose works contraried
their character) .... 253
Prolixity (heightening the effect of
the tale) .... 50
Pun (on a name) . . n, 27
Pyramids (verses on the) . .150
RAwf = story-teller (also used for
reciter of Traditions) . . 163
Resignation (noble instance of) . 42
Rijal = Hallows . . 14
Roman superficiality (notable in-
stance of) lib
Rub' al-Kharab (probably for thegreat
Arabian Desert) ... 42
SABIHAT AL-'URS =gift on the
wedding-morning . . .18
Sacy, Sylvestre de (on the origin of
The Nights) .... 76
Sappho (the "Masculine") . . 208
Sawad= blackness of the hair . 60
Schools (attached to Mosques) . . 174
Shamtarzthe grizzled (name for wine) 38
Shaykh al-Islam (his mention sign of
modern composition) ... 19
Signals of Debauchees . . .219
Sijn al-Ghazabnr Prison of Wrath . 45
Simurgh (guardian of the Persian
mysteries) . . . . .130
Sisters (their abiding together after
marriage frequently insisted upon) 56
Socrates (' sanctus paederasta ") 213 segq.
Sodatic zone .... 206, segq.
Sodomy (abnormally developed
amongst the savages of the New
World) 240
Story-teller (picture of the) , .164
Sufyism (rise of ) . . .128
U
Alf.Laylah wa Laylah.
Sun (likened to a bride displaying
hf charms to man) ... 38
Syphilis (origin of) . . .89
(hippie) . 90
TASAWWUF (rise of) . .128
Taysh = vertigo, giddiness . . 9
Time-measurers (of very ancient dale) 85
Tobacco (mention of) . . . 91
Touch of nature (making all the
world kin) 24
Trbutien quoted . 9 ; 54 ; 69 ; 80 ; 98
VMM AL-RAAS = crown of the head 44
Umm Kulsum (one of the Amsal of
the Arabs for debauchery) . . 194
'Urrah = dung .... I
VISVAKARM A = the Anti-creator . 131
WHOSO praiseth and then blameth
lieth twice 15
Woman, women (treated leniently in
a Kazi's court) 4
Womankind (their status in Al-Islam) 195
YA ABU AL-LITHAMAYN = " O sire
of the chin-veils twain " .20
Yellow-girl (for light-coloured wine) 39
ZARABIN = slaves' shoes , . f
Hppcndix
308 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
MEMORANDUM.
I MAKE no apology for the number and extent of bibliographical
and other lists given in this Appendix : they may cumber the
book but they are necessary to complete my design. This has
been to supply throughout the ten volumes the young Arabist
and student of Orientalism and Anthropology with such assistance
as I can render him ; and it is my conviction that if with the
aid of this version he will master the original text of the
" Thousand Nights and a Night," he will find himself at home
amongst educated men in Egypt and Syria, Najd and Mesopo-
tamia and be able to converse with them like a gentleman ; not, as
too often happens in Anglo-India, like a " Ghorawala " (groom).
With this object he will learn by heart what instinct and inclina-
tion suggest of the proverbs and instances, the verses, the jeux
d'esprit and especially the Koranic citations scattered about the
text ; and my indices will enable him to hunt up the tale or the
verses which he may require for quotation even when writing an
ordinary letter to a " native " correspondent. Thus he will be
spared the wasted labour of wading through volumes in order to
pick up a line.
The following is the list of Indices :
APPENDIX I.
I. Index to the Tales in the ten Volumes.
II. Alphabetical Table of the Notes (Anthropological, etc.) prepared by
F. Steingass, Ph.D.
III. Alphabetical Table of First Lines (metrical portion) in English and
Arabic, prepared by Dr. Steingass.
IV. Tables of Contents of the various Arabic texts.
A. The Unfinished Calcutta Edition (1814-18).
B. The Breslau Text (1825-43) from Mr. Payne's Version.
C. The Macnaghten or Turner-Macan Text (A.D. 1839-42), and the
Bulak Edition (A.H. 1251 = A.D. 1835-36), from Mr. Payne's
Version.
D. The same with Mr. Lane's and my Version.
APPENDIX II.
Contributions to the Bibliography of the Thousand and One Nights, and
their Imitations, with a Table shewing the contents of the principal editions
and translations of the Nights. By W. F. Kirby, Author of " Ed-Dimiryaht,
an Oriental Romance;" "The New Arabian Nights," &c.
Appendix.
Sppentrir J.
INDEX L
INDEX TO THE TALES AND PROPER NAMES.
N.B. The Roman numerals denote the volume^ the Arabic the
Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman, ix. 165.
Do. bin Fazl and his brothers, ix. 304.
Do. bin Ma'amar with the Man of Bassorah and his slave-girl, v. 69.
Abd al-Rahman the Moor's story of the Rukh, v. 122.
Abu Hasan al-Ziyadi and the Khorasan Man, iv. 285.
Abu Hasan, how he brake Wind, v. 135.
Abu Isa and Kurrat al-Ayn, The Loves of, v. 145.
Abu Ja'afar the Leper, Abu al-Hasan al-Durraj and, v. 294.
Abu Kir the Dyer and Abu Sir the Barber, ix. 134.
Abu al-Aswad and his squinting slave-girl, v. 80.
Abu al-Husn and his slave-girl Tawaddud, v. 189.
Abu al-Hasan al-Durraj and Abu Ja'afar the Leper, v. 294.
Abu al-Hasan of Khorasan, ix. 229.
Abu Mohammed hight Lazybones, iv. 162.
Abu Nowas, Harun al-Rashid with the damsel and, iv. 261,
Abu Nowas and the Three Boys, v. 64.
Abu Sir the Barber, Abu Kir the Dyer and, ix. 134.
Abu Suwayd and the handsome old woman, v. 163.
Abu Yusuf with Harun al-Rashid and his Wazir Ja'afar, The Imam, fe.lg
Abu Yusuf with Al-Rashid and Zubaydah, The Imam, iv. 153.
Adam, The Birds and Beasts and the Son of, iii. 114.
Adi bin Zayd and the Princess Hind,v. 124.
Ajib, The History of Gharib and his brother, vi. 257.
Ala al-Din Abu al-Shamat, iv. 29.
Alexandria (The Sharper of) and the Master of Police, iv. 269.
AH bin Bakkar and Shams al-Nahar, iii. 162.
AH of Cairo, The Adventures of Mercury, vii. 172.
3IO Alf Lay I ah wa Lay la ft.
Ali Nur al-Din and Miriam the Girdle-Girl, viii. 264.
Ali the Persian and the Kurd Sharper, iv. 149.
Ali Shar and Zumurrud, iv. 187.
Ali bin Tahir and the girl Muunis, v. 164.
Al-Malik al-Nasir (Saladin) and the Three Chiefs of Police, iv. 271.
Almsgiving, The Woman whose hands were cut off for, iv. 281.
Amin (A1-) and his uncle Ibrahim binal-Mahdi, v. 152.
Anushirwan, Kisra ; and the village damsel, v. 87.
Anushirwan, The Righteousness of King, v. 254.
Angel of Death and the King of the Children of Israel, The, v. 250.
Do. with the Proud King and the Devout Man, The, v. 246.,
Do. and the Rich King, The, v. 248.
Anis al-Jalis, Nur al-Din Ali and the damsel, ii. i.
Ape, The King's daughter and the, iv. 297.
Apples, The Three, i. 186.
Arab Girl, Harun al-Rashid and the, vii. 108.
Arab Youth, The Caliph Hisham and the, iv. 101.
Ardashir and Hayat al-Nufus, vii. 209.
Asma'i (A1-) and the three girls of Bassorah, vii. I i<x
Ass, The Ox and the, i. 16.
Ass, The Wild, The Fox and, ix. 48.
Ayishah, Musab bin al-Zubayr and his wife, v. 79.
Aziz and Azizah, Tale of, ii. 298.
Azizah, Aziz and, ii. 298.
Badawi, Ja'afar the Barmecide and the old, v. 98.
Do. , Omar bin al-Khattab and the young, v. 99.
Do. , and his Wife, The, vii. 124.
Badi'a al-Jamal, Sayf al-Muluk and, vii. 314.
Badr Basim of Persia, Julnar the Sea-born, and her Son King, vii. 264.!
Badr al-Din Hasan, Nur al-Din Ali of Cairo and his son, i. 195,
Baghdad, The Haunted House in, v. 166.
Do. , Khalifah the Fisherman of, viii. 145.
Do. , The Porter and the Three Ladies of, i. 82.
Do. , (The ruined man of) and his slave-girl, ix. 24.
Do, , The Sweep and the noble Lady of, iv. 125.
Bakun's Story of the Hashish-Eater, iii. 91.
Banu Tayy, The Lovers of the, v. 137.
Banu Ozrah, The Lovers of the, v. 70.
Barber's Tale of himself, The, i. 317.
Barber's First Brother, Story of the, i. 319.
Barber's Second Brother, Story of the, i. 324.
.Barber's Third Brother, Story of the, i. 328.
Barber's Fourth Brother, Story of the, i. 331.
Barber's Fifth Brother, Story of the, i. 335.
Appendix. 3 11 '
Barber's Sixth Brother, Story of the, i. 343.
Barber, Abu Kir the Dyer and Abu Sir the, ix. 134.
Barber- Surgeon, Ibrahim bin al-Mahdi and the, iv. 103.
Barmecide, Ja'afar the, and the old Badawi, v. 98.
Bassorah (the man of) and his slave-girl, Abdullah bin Ma'amar with, v, 69.
Do. , Al-Asma'i and the three girls of, vii. no.
Do. , (Hasan of) and the King's daughter of the Jinn, viii. 7.
Do , The Lovers of, vii. 130.
Bath, Harun al-Rashid and Zubaydah in the, v. 75.
Bathkeeper's Wife, The Wazir's Son and the, vi. 150.
Beanseller, Ja'afar the Barmecide and the, iv. 159.
Bear, Wardan the Butcher's adventure with the Lady and the, iv. 293.
Beasts and the Son of Adam, The Birds and, iii. 16.
Behram, Prince of Persia, and the Princess Al-Datma, vi. 184.
Belvedere, The House with the, vi. 188.
Birds and Beasts and the Carpenter, The, iii. 1 14.
Birds, The Falcon and the, iii. 154.
Birds (the Speech of), The page who feigned to know, vi. 169.
Black Slave, The pious, v. 261.
Blacksmith who could handle fire without hurt, The, v. 271.
Blind Man and the Cripple, The, ix. 67.
Boys, Abu Nowas and the Three, v. 64.
Boy and Girl at School, The Loves of the, v. 73.
Boy and the Thieves, The, ix. 95.
Boy (The woman who had to lover a) and the other who had to lover a man,
v. 165.
Brass, The City of, vi. 83.
Broker's Story, The Christian, i. 262,
Budur and Jubayr bin Umayr, The Loves of, iv. 228.
Budur, Kamar al-Zaman and, iii. 2 1 2.
Bukhayt, Story of the Eunuch, ii. 49.
Bulak Police, Story of the Chief of the, iv, 273.
Bull and the Ass (Story of), i. 16.
Bulukiya, Adventures of, v. 304.
Butcher's adventure with the Lady and the Bear, Wardan the, iv. 293.
Butter, The Fakir and his pot of, ix. 40.
Cairo (New) Police, Story of the Chief of the, iv. 271.
Do. (Old) Police, Story of the Chief of the, iv. 274.
Do. , The Adventures of Mercury Ali of, vii. 172.
Caliph Al-Ma'amun and the Strange Doctor, iv. 185.
Caliph, The mock, iv. 130.
Cashmere Singing-girl, The Goldsmith and the, vi. 1 56.
Cat and the Crow, The, iii. 149.
Do. and the Mouse, The, ix. 35.
312 A If Laylah wa Lay I ah.
Champion (The Moslem) and the Christian Lady, v. 277.
Chaste Wife, The Lover's Trick against the, vi. 135.
Christian Broker's Story, The, i. 262.
City of Labtayt, The, vi. 83.
Cloud (The saint to whom Allah gave" a) to serve him v. 274.,
Cobbler (Ma'aruf the) and his wife Fatimah, x. I.
Confectioner, his Wife and the Parrot, The, vi. 132.
Crab, The Fishes and the, ix. 34.
Craft and Malice of Women, The, vi. 122.
Cripple, The Blind Man and the, ix. 67.
Crow, the Fox and the, iii. 150.
Do. and the Serpent, The, ix. 46.
Crow, The Cat and the, iii. 149.
Crows and the Hawk, The, ix. 53.
Dalilah the Crafty and her daughter Zaynab the Coney-catcher, The Rogueries
of, vii. 144.
Datma (The Princess A1-), Prince Behrarh of Persia and,vi. 184.
Death (The Angel of) and the King of the Children of Israel, v. 250. *
Do. do. with the Proud King and the Devout Man, v. 246.
Do. do. and the Rich King, v. 248.
Debauchee and the Three-year-old Child, The, vi. 208.
Desert (The old woman who dwelt in the) and the pilgrim, v. 186.
Device (The Wife's) to cheat her husband, vi. 152.
Devil, Ibrahim of Mosul and the, vii. 113.
Do. , Isaac and his mistress and the, vii. 136.
Devout Israelite, The, iv. 283.
Do. Tray-maker and his wife, The, v. 264.
Do. Prince, The, v. in.
Do. woman and the two wicked elders, The, v. 97.
Dibil al-Khuzai and Muslim bin al-Walid, v. 127. *
Dish of Gold, The man who stole the Dog's, iv. 265.
Doctor (The strange) and the Caliph Al-Maamun, iv. 185.
Dog's Dish of Gold, The man who stole the, iv. 265 .
Dream, The ruined man who became rich through a, iv. 289.
Drop of Honey; The, vi. 142.
Duban, The Physician, i. 45.
Dunya, Taj al-Muluk and the Princess, ii. 283.
Durraj (Abu al-Hasan al-) and Abu Ja'afar the Leper, v. 294.
Dust, The woman who made her husband sift, vi. 143.
Dyer, Abu Sir the Barber and Abu Kir the, ix. 134.
Eagle, The Sparrow and the, iii. 155.
Ebony Horse, The, v. i.
Egypt (The man of Upper) and his Frank wife, toe. 19,
Elders, The Devout woman and the two wicked, v. 97.
Appendix.
Eldest Lady's Story, The, i. 162.
Enchanted Spring, The, vi. 145.
Do. Youth, The, i. 69.
Envied, The Envier and the, i. 123.
Envier and the Envied, The, i. 123.
Eunuch Bukhayt, Tale of the, ii. 49.
Do. Kafur, Tale of the, ii. Si-
Fakir and his jar of butter, The, ix. 40*
Falcon and the Partridge, The, iii. 138.
Falcon, King Sindibad and his, i. 50.
Fatimah, Ma'aruf the Cobbler and his wife, x. I.
Fath bin Khakan (Al) and Al-Mutawakkil, v. 153.
Ferryman of the Nile and the Hermit, The, v. 288.
First Old man's Story, i. 27.
Fisherman, Abdullah the Merman and Abdullah the, ix. 165.
Do. of Baghdad, Khali fah the, viii. 145.
Do. , The Foolish, ix. 93.
Do. and the Jinni, The, i. 38.
Do. , Khusrau and Shirin and the, v. 91.
Fishes and the Crab, The, ix. 43.
Five Suitors, The Lady and her, vi. 172.
Flea and the Mouse, The, iii. 151.
Folk, The Fox and the, vi. 211.
Forger, Yahya bin Khalid and the, iv. 1 8 1.
Fox and the Crow, The, iii. 150.
Fox and the Folk, The, vi. 211.
Fox, The Wolf and the, iii. 132.
Francolin and the Tortoises, The, ix. 113.
Frank King's Daughter, AH Nur al-Din and the, viii. 264*
Frank wife, The man of Upper Egypt and his, ix. 19.
Fuller and his son, The, vi. 134.
Generous friend, The poor man and his, iv. 288.
Ghanim bin Ayyub the Thrall o' Love, ii. 45.
Gharib and his brother Ajib, The History of, vi. 257.
Girl, Harun al-Rashid and the Arab, vii. 108.
Girl at School, The Loves of the Boy and, v. 73.
Girls of Bassorah, Al-Asma'i and the three, vii. 1 10.
Girls, Harun al-Rashid and the three, vi. 81.
Do. do. , and the two, v. 81.
Goldsmith and the Cashmere Singing-Girl, The, vi. 156,
Goldsmith's wife, The water-carrie^ and the, v. 89.
Hajjaj (Al-) Hind daughter of Al-Nu'uman and, vii. 96.
Do. and the pious man, v. 269.
Hakim (The Caliph A1-) and the Merchant, v. 86.
314 Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
Hammad the Badawi, Tale of, ii, 104.
Hariri (A1-) Abu Zayd's lament for his impotency. Final Note to vol. viii.
Harun al-Rashid and the Arab girl, vii. 108.
Do. and the Slave-Girl and the Imam Abu Yusuf,'iv. 153.
Do. with the Damsel and Abu Nowas, iv. 261.
Do. and Abu Hasan the Merchant of Oman, ix. 188.
Do. and the three girls, v. 81.
Do. and the two girls, 81.
Do. and the three poets, v. 77.
Do. and Zubaydah in the Bath, v. 75.
Hashish-Eater, Bakun's tale of the, ii. 91.
Hasan of Bassorah and the King's daughter of the Jinn, viii. 7.
Hasan, King Mohammed bin Sabaik and the Merchant, vii. 308.
Hatim al-Tayyi : his generosity after death, iv. 94.
Haunted House in Baghdad, The, v. 166.
Hawk, The Crows and the, ix. 53.
Hayat al-Nufus, Ardashir and, vii. 209.
Hedgehog and the wood Pigeons, The, Hi. 156.
Hermit, The Ferryman of the Nile and the, v. 288.
Hermits, The, iii. 125.
Hind, Adi bin Zayd and the Princess, v. 1 24.
Hind daughter of Al-Nu'uman and Al-Hajjaj, vii. 96.
Hind (King Jali'ad of) and his Wazir Shimas, ix. 32.
Hisham and the Arab Youth, The Caliph, iv. 101.
Honey, The Drop of, vi. 142.
Horse, The Ebony, v. I.
House with the Belvedere, The, vi. 188.
Hunchback's Tale, The, i. 255.
Husband and the Parrot, The, i. 52.
Ibn al-Karibi, Masrur and, v. 109.
Ibrahim al-Khawwas and the Christian King's Daughter, v. 283.
Do. bin al-Khasib and Jamilah, ix. 207.
Do. of Mosul and the Devil, vii. 113.
Do. bin al-Mahdi and Al-Amin, v. 152.
Do. bin al-Mahdi and the Barber-Surgeon, iv. 103.
Do. Do. and the Merchant's Sister, iv. 278.
Ifrit's mistress and the King's Son, The, vi. 199.
Ignorant man who set up for a Schoolmaster, The, v. 119.
Ikrimah al-Fayyaz, Khuzaymah bin Bishr and, vii. 99.
Imam Abu Yusuf with Al-Rashid and Zubaydah, The, iv. 153.
Introduction. Story of King Shariyar and his brother, i. i.
I ram, The City of, iv. 113.
Isaac of Mosul's Story of Khadijah and the Caliph Maamun, iv. 119.7
Isaac of Mosul and the Merchant, v. 129.
Appendix. 315
Isaac of Mosul and his- Mistress and the Devil, vii. 113.
Island, The King of the, v. 290.
Iskandar Zu Al-Karnayn and a certain Tribe of poor folk, v. 252.
Israelite, The Devout, iv. 283.
Jackals a"nd the Wolf, The, ix. 103.
Ja'afar the Barmecide and the Beanseller, iv. 159.
Do. Do. and the old Badawi, v. 98.
Ja'afar bin al-Hadi, Mohammed al-Amin, and, v. 93.
Jamilah, Ibrahim bin al-Khasib, and, ix. 207.
Janshah, The Story of, v. 329.
Jali'ad of Hind and his Wazir Shimas, King, ix. 32.
Jeweller's Wife, Kamar al-Zaman and the, ix. 246.
Jewish Kazi and his pious Wife, The, v. 256.
Jewish Doctor's Tale, The, i. 288.
Jinni, The Fisherman and the, i. 38.
Jinni, The Trader and the, i. 24.
Jubayr bin Umayr and Budur, The Loves of, iv. 228;
Judar and his brethren, vi. 213.
Julnar the Sea-born and her son King Badr Basim of Persia, vii. 264.
Justice of Providence, The, v. 286.
Kafur, Story of the Eunuch, ii. 51.
Kalandar's Tale, The first, i. 104.
Do. The second, i. 113.
Do. The third, i. 130.
Kamar al-Zaman and Budur, iii. 211.
Do. and the Jeweller's Wife, ix. 246.
Kazi, the Jewish, and his pious wife, v. ,256.
Khadijah and the Caliph Maamun, Isaac of Mosul's Story of, iv. 119.
Khalif the Fisherman of Baghdad (note from Bresl. Edit), viii. 184.
Khalifah the Fisherman of Baghdad, viii. 145.
Khawwas (Ibrahim al-) and the Christian King's daughter, v. 283.
Khorasan, Abu Hasan al-Ziyadi and the man from, iv. 285.
Do. Abu al-Hasan of, ix. 229.
Khusrau and Shirin and the Fisherman, v. 91.
Khuzaymah bin Bishr and Ikrimah al-Fayyaz, vii. 99.
King Jali'ad, Shimas his Wazir and his son Wird Khan, ix. 32.
King of the Island, The, v. 290.
Do. and the Pilgrim Prince, The- Unjust, ix. 50.
Do. and the virtuous wife, The, v. 121.
Do. and his Wazir*s wife, The, vi. 129.
King's Daughter and the Ape, The, iy. 297.
Do. son and the I frit's Mistress, The, vi. 199.
Do. Do. and the Merchant's Wife, The, vi. 167.
Do. Do. and the Ghulah, The, vi. 139.
316 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Kings, The Two, ix. 65.
Kisra Anushirwan and the Village Damsel, v. 87.
Kurd Sharper, Ali the Persian and the, iv. 149.
Kurrat al-Ayn and Abu Isa, v. 145.
Kus Police and the Sharper, Chief of the, iv. 276.
Labtayt, The City of, iv. 99.
Lady of Baghdad, The Sweep and the noble, iv. 125.
Lady's Story, The Eldest, i. 162.
Lady and her five suitors, The, vi. 172.
Do. and her two Lovers, The, vi. 138.
Ladies of Baghdad, The Porter and the Three, i. 82.
Laughed again, The man who never, vi. 160.
Lazybones, Abu Mohammed hight, iv. 162.
Leper, Abu al-Hasan al-Durraj and Abu Ja'afar the, v. 294.
Lover, The mad, v. 138.
Lover who feigned himself a thief (to save his mistress honour), The, lv. l$$.
Lover's trick against the chaste Wife, The, vi. 135.
Lovers of Bassorah, The, vii. 130.
Do. of the Banu Tayy, The, v. 137.
Do. of the Banu Ozrah, The, v. 70.
Do. The Lady and her two, vi. 138.
Do. of Al-Medinah, The, vii. 139.
Do. The Three unfortunate, v. 133.
Loves of the Boy and Girl at School, The, v. 73.
Loves of Abu Isa and Kurrat al-Ayn, The, v. 145.
Maamun, Isaac of Mosul's Story of Khadijah and the Caliph, iv. M9
Do. (A1-) and the Pyramids of Egypt, v. 105.
Do. and the strange Scholar, The Caliph, iv. 185,
Ma'an bin Zaidah and the Badavvi, iv. 97.
Ma'an the son of Zaidah and the Three Girls, iv. 96.
Mad Lover, The, vii. 139.
Madinah (A1-), The Lovers of, vii. 139.
Magic Horse, The, v. i.
Mahbubah, Al-Mutawakkil and his favourite, iv. 291.
Malik al-Nasir (A1-) and the three Masters of Police, iv. 271.
Do. and his Wazir, vii. 142.
Man and his Wife, The, ix. 98.
Man who never laughed during the rest of his days, The, vi. 160.
Man (The Woman who had to lover a) and the other who had to lover a
boy, v. 165.
Man of Upper Egypt and his Prankish Wife, ix. 19.
Man of Al-Yaman and his six Slave-girls, iv. 245.
Man who stole the dog's dish of gold, iv. 268.
Man who saw the Night of Power (Three Wishes), vi. i8a
Appendix. $17
Man's dispute with the learned Woman about boys and girls, v. 154.
Maruf the Cobbler and his wife Fatimah, x. i.
Mansur, Yahya bin Khalid and, iv. 179.
Masrur and Ibn al-Karibi, v. 109.
Masrur and Zayn al-Mawasif, viii. 205.
Merchant of Oman, The, ix. 188.
Do. and the Robbers, The, ix. loo.
Do. and the two Sharpers, The, iii. 158.
Merchant's Sister, Ibrahim bin al-Mahdi and the, iv. 278.
Do. Wife, The King's son and the, vi. 167.
Do. Wife and the Parrot, The, i. 52.
Mercury Ali of Cairo, The Adventures of, vii. 172.
Merman, and Abdullah the Fisherman, Abdullah the, ix. 16$.
Miller and his wife, The, v. 82.
Miriam, Ali Nur al-Din and, viii. 264.
Miser and Loaves of Bread, The, vi. 137.
Mock Caliph, The, iv. 130.
Mohammed al-Amin and Ja'afar bin al-Hadi, v. 93.
Mohammed bin Sabaik and the Merchant Hasan, King, vii. 308.
Money-changer, The Thief and the, iv. 275.
Monkey, The Thief and his, iii. 1 59.
Moslem Champion and the Christian Lady, The, v. 277.
Mouse, The, and the Cat, ix. 35.
Mouse and the Flea, The, iii. 151.
Mouse and the Ichneumon, The, iii. 147.
Muunis, Ali bin Tahir and the girl, v. 164.
Musab bin al-Zubayr and Ayishah his wife, v. 79.
Muslem bin al-Walid and Dibil al-Khuzai, v. 127.
Mutawakkil (A1-) and Al-Fath bin Khakan, v. 153.
Do. and his favourite Mahbubah, iv. 291.
Mutalammis (A1-) and his wife Umaymah, v. 74.
Naomi, Ni'amah bin al-Rabi'a and his Slave-girl, iv. i.
Nazarene Broker's Story, The, i. 262.
Necklace, The Stolen, vi. 182.
Niggard and the Loaves of Bread, The, vi. 137.
Night of Power, The man who saw the, vi. 180.
Nile (The Ferryman of the) and the Hermit, v. 288.
Ni'amah bin al-Raby'a and Naomi his Slave-girl, iv. i.
Nur al-Din Ali and the damsel Anis al-Jalis, ii. r.
Nur al-Din of Cairo and his son Badr al-Din Hasan, i, 195.
Ogress, The King's Son and the, vi. 139.
Old Man's Story, The First, i. 27.
Do. Do. The Second, i. 32.
Do. Do. The Third, i. 36.
318 A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Old Woman, Abu Suwayd and the handsome, v.
Omar bin al-Nu'uman and his Sons Sharrkan and Zau al-Makan, The Tale of
King, ii. 77.
Omar bin al-Khattab and the young Badawi, v. 99.
Oman, The Merchant of, ix. 188.
Otbah and Rayya, vii. 91.
Page who feigned to know the speech of birds, The, vi. 169.
Paradise, The Apples of, v. 141.
Parrot^ The Merchant's wife and the, i. 52,
Partridge, The Hawk and the, iii. 138.
Peacock, The Sparrow and the, iii. 161,
Persian and the Kurd Sharper, AH the, iv. 140^
Physician Duban, The, 1.45.
Physician's Story, The Jewish, i. 288.
Pilgrim and the old woman who dwelt in the desert, The, v, 1 86.
Pilgrim Prince, The Unjust King and the, ix. 50.
Pious black slave, The, v. 261.
Pigeons, The Hedgehog and the, iii. 156.
Pigeons, The Two, vi. 183.
Platter-maker and his wife, The devout, v. 264.
Poets, Harun al-Rashid and the three, v. 77.
Police of Bulak, Story of the Chief of the, iv. 273.
Do. of Kus and the Sharper, the Chief of the, iv. 276.
Do. of New Cairo, Story of the Chief of the, iv. 271.
Do. of Old Cairo, Story of the Chief of the, iv. 274.
Do. (The Three Masters of), Al- Malik, al-Nasir and, iv. 371,
Poor man and his friend in need, The, iv. 288.
Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad, The, 1. 82.
Portress, The Tale of the, i. 173.
Prince Behram and the Princess Al-Datma, vi. 184.
Do. the Ensorcelled, i. 69.
Do. and the Ghulah, The, i. 54.
Do. The Devout, v. 1 1 1.
Do. (the Pilgrim), The Unjust King and, ix. 50.
Prior who became a Moslem, The, v. 141.
Providence, The justice of, v. 286.
Purse, The Stolen, vi. 209.
Pyramids of Egypt, Al-Maamun and the, v. 105.
Queen of the Serpents, The, v. 298.
Rake's trick against the chaste Wife, The, vi. 135.
Rayya, Otbah and, vii. 91.
Reeve's Tale, The, i. 278.
Rogueries of Dalilafc the Crafty aad her daughter Zaynab the Corcy*ea*cber,
The, vii. 144.
Appendix.
Rose-in- Hood, Uns al-Wujud and the Want's Daughter, v. 12.
Ruined Man of Baghdad and his Slave-girl, The, ix. 24.
Do. who became rich again through a dream, The, iv. 189.
Rukh, Abd al-Rahman the Moor's Story of the, v. 122.
Sa'id bin Salim and the Barmecides, v. 94.
Saint to whom Allah gave a cloud to serve him, The, v 274.
Saker and the Birds, The, iii. 154.
Sandalwood Merchant and the Sharpers. The, vi. 202,
Sayf al-Muluk and Badi'a al-Jamal, vii. 314.
School, The Loves of the Boy and the Girl at, v. 73.
Schoolmaster who fell in love by report, The, v. 117.
Do. The Foolish, v. 1 18.
Do. The ignorant man who set up for a, v. 119.
Serpent, TW Crow and the, ix. 46.
Serpent-charmer and his Wife, ix. 56.
Serpents, The Queen of the, v. 298.
Sexes, Relative excellence of the, v. 1 54.
Shahryar and his brother, King (Introduction), t I.
Shahryar (King) and his brother, i. 2.
Shams al-Nahar, Ali bin Bakkar and, iii. 162.
Sharper of Alexandria and the Chief of Police, The, iv. 269..
Sharper, Ali the Persian and the Kurd, iv. 149.
Do. The Chief of the Kus Police and the, iv. 276.
Do. The Simpleton and the, v. 83.
Sharpers, The Merchant and the Two, iii. 158.
Do. The Sandalwood Merchant and the, vi. 202.
Sharrkan and Zau al-Makan, The History of King Omar bin Al-Nu'uman and
his Sons, ii. 277.
Shaykh's Story (The First), i. 27.
Do. (The Second), i. 32.
Do. (The Third), i. 36.
Shepherd and the Thief, The, ix. 106.
Shimas, King Jali'ad of Hind and his Wazir, ix. 32.
Shipwrecked Woman and her child, The, v. 259.
Shirin and the Fisherman, Khusrau and, v. 91.
Simpleton and the Sharper, The, v. 83.
Sindibad and his Falcon, King, i. 50.
Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Porter, vi, I.
Do. First Voyage of, vi. 4.
Do. Second Voyage of, vi. 14.
Do. Third Voyage of, vi. 22.
Do. Fourth Voyage of,vi. 34,
Do. Fifth Voyage of, vi. 48.
Do. Sixth Voyage of, vi. 58.
320 Alf Laylah wa Laylak,
Sindbad the Seaman, Seventh Voyage of, vi. 68
Do. (note from Cal. Edit.) vi. 78.
Singing-girl, The Goldsmith and the Cashmere, vi. 156*
Six Slave-girls, The Man of Al-Yaman and his, iv. 245.
Slave, The pious black, v. 261.
Slave-girl, The ruined man of Baghdad and his, ix. 24.
Slave-girls, The Man of Al-Yaman and his six, iv. 245.
Sparrow and the Eagle, The, Hi. 155.
Do, and the Peacock, The, iii. 161.
Spider and the Wind, The, ix. 59.
Spring, The Enchanted, vi. 145.
Squinting slave-girl Abu al-Aswad and his, v. 80.
Stolen Necklace, The, vi. 182.
Do. Purse, The, vi. 209.
Suitors, The Lady and her five, vi. 172.
Sweep and Noble Lady of Baghdad, The, iv. 125.
Tailor's Tale, The, i. 300.
Taj al-Muluk and the Princess Dunya, The Tale of, ii 263.
Tawaddud, Abu al-Hasan and his slave-girl, v. 189.
Thief, The Lover who feigned himself a iv. 155.
Do. and the Shroff, The, iv. 275,
Do. and his Monkey, The, iii. 159.
Do. The Shepherd and the, ix. 106.
Do. turned Merchant and the other Thief, The, v. 107.
Thieves, The Boy and the, ix. 95.
Do. The Merchant and the, ix. loo.
Do. The Two, v. 107.
Three-year-old-child, The Debauchee and the, vi. 208.
Three Apples, The, i. 186.
Three unfortunate Lovers, v. 133
Three Wishes, or the Man who longed to see the Night of Power, The, vi
Tortoise, The Waterfowl and the, iii. 129.
Tortoises, The Heathcockand the, ix. 113.
Trader (the) and the Jinni, i. 24.
Trick (The Lover's) against the chaste wife, vi. 135.
Do. (The Wife's) against her husband, vi. 152.
Two Kings, The, ix. 56.
Two Pigeons, The, vi. 183.
Umaymah, Al-MutalammSs and his wife, v. 74.
Unfortunate Lovers, The Three, v. 133.
Unjust King and the Pilgrim Prince, The, ix. 50.
Uns al-Wujud and the Wazir's Daughter Rose-in-Hood, v, 33.
Upper Egypt (The man of) and hi? Frank wife, ix. 19.
Walid bin Sahl, Yunus the Scribe and the Caliph, vii. 104.
Appendix. 321
Wardan, the Butcher, Adventure with the Lady and the Bear, iv. 293,
Water-carrier and the Goldsmith's Wife, The, v. 89.
Waterfowl and the Tortoise, The, iii. 129.
Wazir and the Sage Duban, The, i. 45'
Wazir, Al-Malik aUNasir and his, vii. 142.
Do. of Al-Yaman and his young brother, The, v. 71.
Wazir's Son and the Hammam-Keeper's Wife, The, vi. 152.;
Do. Wife, The King and his, vi. 129.
Weasel, The Mouse and the, iii. 147-
Weaver, The Foolish, iii. 159.
Wife, The Badawi and his, vii. 124.
Do. (the Chaste) The Lover's Trick against, vi. 135.
Do. The King and his Wazir's, vi. 129.
Do. The Man and his Wilful, ix. 98.
Do. (The Merchant's) and the Parrot, i. 52.
Do. (The Virtuous) and the King, v. 121.
Wife's device to cheat her husband, The, vi. 152.
Do. trick against her husband, The, v. 96.
Wild Ass, The Jackal and the, ix. 48.
Wilful Wife, The Man and his, ix. 98.
Wind, The Spider and the, ix. 59.
Wird Khan (King) and his Women and Wazirs, ix. -^
Wolf and the Fox, The, iii. 132.
Wolf, The Foxes and the, ix. 103.
Woman (The shipwrecked) and her child, v. 259.
Woman's trick against her husband, v. 96.
Woman who made her husband sift dust, The, iv. 281.
Woman whose hands were cut off for Almsgiving, The, iv. 281. ,
Women, The Malice of, vi. 122.
Do. The Two, v. 165.
Yahya bin Khalid and the Forger, iv. 181.
Do. and Mansur, iv. 179.
Do. and the Poor Man, v. 92.
Yaman (The Man of A1-) and his six slave-girls, iv. 245.
Do. (The Wazir of A1-) and his young brother; v. 71.
Yunus the Scribe and the Caliph Walid bin Sahl, vii. 104.
Zau al-Makan, The History of King Omar bin al-Nu'uman and his Sons
Sharrkan and, ii. 77.
Zayn al-Mawasif, Masrur and, viii. 205.
Zaynab the Coney-Catcher, The Rogueries of Dalilah the Wily, and her
Daughter, vii. 144.
Zubaydah in the Bath, Harun al-Rashid and, v. 75.
Zumurrud, AH Shar and, iv. 187.
VOL. X.
322
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
INDEX //.
ALPHABETICAL TABLE OF THE NOTES
(ANTHROPOLOGICAL, &c.)
Prepared by F. SlElNGASS, Ph.D.
A'AMASH (A1-), traditionist, v. 81.
A'amash (A1-) = one with watering eyes,
vi. 96.
A'araf (A1-) = partition-wall (chapter of the
Koran) v. 217.
A'araj (A1-), traditionist, v. 81.
Aaron's rod, ii. 242.
(becomes with Moslems Moses* staff)
v. 238).
Aba, Aba"ah = cloak of hair, ii. 133 j
viii. 42.
Aba al-Khayr = my good sir, etc*, ix. 54.
Abad = eternity, without end, ii. 205.
Abbas " hero eponymus " of the Abbasides,
i. 188.
( = the grim-faced) iv. 138.
Abbasides (descendants of the Prophet's
uncle) ii. 61.
(black banners and dress) ii. 64 ;
292.
'Abd = servile, iii. 44.
Abd al-Ahad = slave of the One (God)
vi. 222.
Abd al-Aziz (Caliph) a, 166.
Abd al-Malik (Caliph) ii. 77, 167.
Abd al-Kddir of GiMn (founder of the
Kadiri order) iv. 41.
Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (Caliph) iii.
319; iv. 7-
Abd al-Rahfm = slave of the Compassion-
ate, vi. 221.
Abd al-Sala"m = slave of salvation, vi. 211.
Abd al-Samad = slave of the Eternal, vi.
221,
Abd al-Samad al-Samudi (for Samanhudf^
vi. 87.
Abdallah (a neutral name\ v. 141.
Abdallah bin Abbas, companion and tradi*
tioner, i, 304.
Abdallah bin Abi Kilabah, iv, 113.
Abdallah bin al-Zubayr, iii. 318.
Abdallah bin Malik al-Khuza'f, iv.. 181.
Abdallah bin Mas'ud (traditionist) v. 8l.
Abdallah bin Salim (traditionist) v. 8l.
Abdallah ibn al-Mu'tazz (poet-prince)
x. 39.
Abdun (convent of) x. 40.
Abhak = Allah bless him and keep (see
Sal'am) ii.-24-
'Abir (a fragrant powder sprinkled on face,
body and clothes) viii. 240.
Abjad (Hebrew- Arabic alphabet) v. 229.
(logogriphs derived from it) viii. 93.
Ablution (difference of fashion in per*
forming it) v. 112.
(obligatory after copulation) viii. 305.
Abraham (an Imam to mankind) ii. 203.
(place of) ii. 272 ; iv. 148.
(the Friend = mediaeval St. Abraham)
v. 205 ; vi. 270.
Abtan (Al-) = the most profound (see Bdtini)
vi. 221.
Abu al-Abbas al-Mubarrad (grammarian)
v. 138.
Abu al- Abba's al-Rakdshi (poet) v. 77.
Abu al-Aynd, v. 164.
Abu al-Hamlat = father of assaults, burdens,
pregnancies, vii. 149.
Appendix.
323
Abu al- Hasan (not Huso) iii. 162.
Abu al-Husn = Father of Beauty (a fancy-
name) v. 189.
Abu al-Hosayn (Father of the Forllet)=fox,
iii. 132.
Abu al-Lays (Pr. N.) = Father of the Lion,
ix. 211.
Abu al-Muzaffir = Father of the Conqueror,
iv. 166.
Abu al-Nowa"s (Pr. N.) = Father of the
Sidelocks, iv. 55, 264.
Abu al-Ruwaysh=r Father of the Feather-
kin, viii. 77.
Abu al-Sa'adat = Father of Prosperities,
viii. 148 ; x. 29.
Abu al-Sakha = Father of Munificence, vii.
133.
Abu Ali, see Di'ibil al-Khuza'i.
Abu Ali al-Husayn the Wag, vii. 130.
Abu Amir bin Marwan (Wazir to Saladin)
vii. 142.
Abu Bakr (Caliph) ii. 167, 197 ; v. 235.
Abu Bakr Mohammed al-Anbari (gramma-
rian) v. 141.
Abu Dalaf al-Ijili (a soldier famed for
liberality and culture) ix. 189.
Abu Faris = Father of Spoils (lion) v. 40.
Abu Hanifah (founder of the Senior
School) ii. 207.
(scourged for refusing to take office)
ii. 210.
Abu Hassdn al-Ziyadi, iv. 258.
Abu Hazim, ii. 205.
Abu Horayrah (uncle of Mohammed) v.
81.
Abu Hosayn = Father of the Fortlet (fox)
vi. 211.
Abu Ishak (Hdrun's cup-companion) ii.
302.
Abu Karn = Father of the Horn (unicorn?)
vi. 21.
Abu Kidr = Father of the Cooking-pot, i.
304-
Abu Kir = Father of the Pitch (Abou Kir)
ix. 134.
Abu Kurrat = Father of Coolness (Chamae-
leon) iii. 165.
Abu Lahab and his wife, viii. 291.
Abu Luluah (murderer of Caliph Omar)
ii. 162.
Abu Maryam (* term of contempt) viii.
306.
Abu Mijan (song of) x. 41.
Abu Mohammed al-Battl (hero of an
older tale) viii. 335.
Abu Musa al-Asha>i, ii. 162.
Abu Riyah = Father of Winds (a toy) ii
93-
Abu Shamah = Father of the Cheek-mole,
i. 269.
Abu Shammah = Father of a Smeller of
nose, i. 269.
Abu Shawarib = Father of Mustachios, i,
269.
Abu Shihab, Father of the Shooting-star
= evil spirit, i. 221.
Abu Sir (corruption of Pousiri = Busiris)
ix. 134.
Abu Sirhan = Father of (going out to pray
by) Morning, iii. 146 ; ix. 104.
Abu Tabak = Father of Whipping, x. 5.
Abu Tammam (poet) v. 157.
Abu Yakzan = awakener (ass, cock) i. 16,
18.
Abu Yusuf (the Lawyer) iv. 153.
Abu Zanad (traditionist) v. 81.
Abu Zarr (companion of the Prophet) ii.
200 ; v. 1 02.
Abyssinians (hardly to be called blacka-
moors) vi. 63.
Account asked from outgoing Governors,
vii. 102.
Account of them will be presently given =
"we leave them for the present," vii.
157-
Acids applied as counter-inebriants, viii.
32-
Acquit me of responsibility = pardon me,
ii. 76.
(formula of dismissing a servant) vi.
243-
Acquittance of all possible claims after
business transactions (quoted on Judg-
ment-Day) ix. 285.
'JLd (tribe of the prehistoric Arabs) i. 65 ;
iii. 294; ix. 174.
'Ad bin Zayd (poet) v. 124.
Adab = anything between good education
and good manners, i. 132 ; ix. 41.
Adam's loins, iv. ill.
Adam's Peak (Ar. Jabal al-Ramun) vi.
65.
Adaref = an Adamite (opposed to Jinn) ix.
169.
324
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Ad a rigour Adeh, viii. 248.
Address without vocative particle more
emphatic, vii. 125.
Addressing by the name not courteous vii.
114.
Adi (son of Hatim al-Tayyi) iv. 95.
Adii (Al-)= the Just (Caliph Omar) v. 103.
'Adiliyah (Mosque in Cairo) x. 6.
Adim = leather (Bulghdr, Morocco) viii. 80.
Adi'm al-Zaukt= lack-tact, ix. 206.
Adites (first and second) vi. 269.
Adi = just (ironically) iv. 271.
Adm (Udm)=any relish, iv. 128.
Admiral (fishing for the King's table) ix.
159-
Adndn (Arab genealogy begins with) v.
100.
(land of Arabia) vi. 94.
Adolescent (Un, aime toutes les femmes)
vii. 299.
Adultery (none without an adulterer) v. 90.
' (to be proved by four witnesses)
v. 97.
(son of = base-born) ix. 331.
(son of, to one's own child) iii.
219.
wEolipyla, ii. 101.
JEsop the fable-writer, x. 117.
Afa = o$t9 (a snake) ix. 37.
Affirmative and negative particles, vii. 195.
Afridun (Furaydun) absurd name for a
Greek king, ii. 82.
Africa (suggested derivation of the name)
vii. 60.
Aftah (A1-) = Broad-'o-Brow, i. 17.
Agha = master, sir, gentleman (politely
applied to a Eunuch) i. 235 ; ii. 50.
(A1-) for chief police officer, vii. 156.
Ahassa bi 'l-shurbah = "he smelt a rat,"
vii. 144.
Ahd (A1-) wa al-Mfsak=oath and cove-
nant, ix. 327.
Ahdab = hunchback (opposed to Ak'as) i.
213.
Ahirah = strumpet (see Fajirah) viii. 109.
Ahja"r al-Kassdrin = falling-stones, viii.
334-
Ahl al-Bayt = the person of the house
(euphemistic for wife) vi. 199.
Ahlan=as one of the household, 269.
Ahmad = the praised one, Mohammed, ii.
326.
Ahmad al-Danaf (Pr. N.) = Calamity Ah-
mad iv. 75.
bin AM Dawdd (High Chancellor
to the Abbasides) ix. 244.
bin Ilanbal (founder of the fourth
Moslem School) ii. 204.
Ahnaf (A1-) bin Kays, ii. 160.
Ahr (ihr) = fornication, in the sense of
irreligion, ii. 258.
Ahram (Al-) = the Pyramids, v. 105.
Ahwdz (city and province of Khuzistan)
vi. 287.
"Aidance from Allah and victory are
near," ix. 317.
'^.in = Smiter with the evil eye, i. 123.
Air (I fear it for her when it bloweth) viii.
53-
'Ajaibal-Hind=marvelsoflnd, x. 153.
Ajal = appointed time of life, i. 74.
= yes verily, vii. 195.
'Ajam (A1-) = region not Arab, Persia,
i. 2.
'Ajami= foreigner, esp. Persian, i. 120.
Ajib (Pr. N.) = wonderful, vi. 257.
Ajuz, for old woman, highly insulting i.
174.
'Ajwah = dates pressed into a solid mass
and deified, vii. 14.
Akabah (mountain pass near Meccah)
v. 295.
Akakir = drugs, spices, vii. 147.
Akdsirah ( - Kisra- Kings), i. 75 ; ix.
323-
( = sor.s of the royal Chosroes)
V. IO.
Akh= brother (wide signification of the
word), vi. 243.
Akh al-Jahalah = Brother of Ignorance,
iii. 162.
Akhawan shakikdn = (two) brothers ger-
man, viii. 340.
-khir al-Zaman = the latter days, v. 304.
Akhlat (town in Armenia), vii. 88.
Akhzar= green, grey, fresh (applied to
cheek-down) ii. 292.
Akik (A1-), two of the name, vii. 140.
'Akik = carnelian ("seal with seals of")
viii. 228.
Akil (son of Abu Talib) viii. 172.
Akka=Acre, ix. 19.
Akkam = Cameleer, Caravan -manager,
iv. 40.
Appendix.
325
Akl al-hishmah = eating decorously, ix.
337-
Akmam, pi. of Kumm = sleeve, petal,
viii. 275.
Akr Kayra wan = ball of silver-dross, viii.
267.
Akun fida-ka = I maybe thy ransom, viii. 36.
Akyal, title of the Himyarite Kings, vii. 60.
Akras = cakes, i. 83.
Al (the Article with Proper Names), iii. 309.
Ala judi-k = to thy generosity, ix. 150
Ala al-Din (Aladdin) = Glory of the Faith,
iv. 29, 33.
Ala kulli hal = in any case, any how, viii.
272.
Ala mahlak = at thy leisure, ix. 168.
Alk raghm = in spite of, vii. 121.
A' laj = sturdy miscreants, x. 38.
Alak = clotted blood, iii. 26.
Alam = way-mark etc., v. 191.
(not Ilm) al-Din = flag of the faith,
ii. 19.
Alama = ald-ma = apon what? wherefore?
iv. 201.
Alas for his chance of escaping = there is
none, vii. 183.
Alast (day of), iv. in.
Albatross (supposed never to touch land),
vi- 33-
Alchemy (its practice has cost many a life),
viii. ii.
Alcinous (of the Arabian Odyssy), vi. 65.
Alcove (corruption of Al-Kubbah), v. 18.
Al Baud (David's family), iv. 50.
Aleppo (noted for debauchery), v. 64.
Alexander (of the Koran) not to be con-
founded with the Macedonian, ii. 199.
Alexandria (praise of), viii. 289.
Alfi = one who costs a thousand, iv. 225.
Alhambra = (Dar) al-Hamra, the Red,
vii. 49.
Alhamdulillah (pronounced to avert the
evil eye), v. 7.
Ali bin Abi Talib (Caliph) v. 213 ; 225.
(his deeds of prowess) ii. 108.
(murder of) iii. 319.
bin Mohammed bin Abdallah bin
Tahfr (Governor) v. 164.
al-Muluk = high of (among the Kings,
vii. 354-
al-Zaybak (Pr. N.= Mercury Ali)
iv. 75 ; vii. 172.
Ali Shar (Pr. N.) iv. 187.
Alif (stature like one) iii. 236 ; iv. 249.
Ha, Waw as tests of calligraphy
vii. 112.
Alish Takish (acting woman and man
alternately) v. 65.
All will not be save well = it will be the
worse for him, ix. 293.
Allah (will open thee) a formula of refusal,
i-32.
(hath said) formula of quoting the
Koran, i. 61.
(names, by Edwin Arnold) ii. 28.
Wa'llahi tayyib (exclamation of the
Egyptian Moslem) ib. 34.
(His name pronounced against the
evil eye) iv. 34.
(is all-knowing, swearing by, forbid-
den) ib. 175.
= I don't know) ib. 283.
(give thee profit) iii. 17.
(unto, we are returning) ib. 317.
(desire unto) v. 104.
(corporality of?) ib. 104.
(requite you abundantly = "thank
you") ib. 171.
(seeking refuge with) ib. 200.
(names of) ib. 214.
(be praised whatso be our case) vi. 3.
(the " Manifest Truth ") ib. 93.
(is omniscient), formula used when
telling an improbable tale, ib. 210.
(the Opener) ib. 216.
(it is He who gives by our means)
ib. 233.
(sight comprehendeth Him not)
ib. 283.
(confound the far One, hard swearing)
vii. 155.
(succour the Caliph against thee)
ib. 159.
(is All-knowing for our tale is no
"Gospel truth") ib. 209.
(I take refuge with from gainsaying
thee = God forbid that I should oppose
thee) viii. 53.
(perpetuate his shadow) ib. 170.
(we seek refuge with him from the
error of the intelligent) ib. 327.
(will make no way for the Infidels
over the True Believers) ix. 16.
(I seek refuge with) ib. 35.
326
A If Laylak wa Laylah.
Allah (He was jealous for Almighty) ix.
104.
(I fear him in respect of=I am go-
verned by Him in my dealings with)
ib. 123.
(pardon thee, showing that the
speaker does not believe in another's
tale) ib. 154.
(the Provider) ib. 166.
(for the love of) ib. 170.
(Karim = God is bountiful) ib. 167.
(grant thee grace = pardon thee) ib.
283.
(yasturak = will veil thee) ib. 309.
(sole Scient of the hidden things, be
extolled) ib. 311.
(raised the heavens without columns,
etc.) ib. 324.
- - (will make things easy = will send us
aid) x. 2.
(gi ve thee quittance of responsibility)
ib. ii.
(will send thee thy daily bread) ib.
13-
Allah! Allah ! = I conjure thee by God,
i. 346.
Allah Karim= Allah is all beneficent, i. 32.
Allaho a'alam = God is all knowing, i. 2,
50.
Allaho akbar (as a war cry) ii. 89 ; v. 196 ;
vii. 8 ; viii. 265*
Allahumma = Yd Allah with emphasis, i. 39.
Allusions (far-fetched, fanciful and obscure)
hi. 58, 169, 176, 263.
Almd = brown- (not "damask-") lipped
v. 66.
Almas = Gr. Adamas, ix. 325.
Almenichiaka, vi. 124.
Almond-apricot, vi. 277.
Alms to reverend men to secure their
prayers, ii. 7 1 -
Alnashar (Story of) x. 146.
Aloes, see Sabr.
(well appreciated in Eastern
medicine) ix. loo.
(the finest used for making Nadd)
ix. 150.
Alpinism (unknown) iii. 324.
Al-Safar Zafar = voyaging is victory, L 250.
Alwan (pi. of Laun, colour) viands, dishes,
viii. 23.
Amaim (pi. of Imamah) = turbands, iv. IOO.
'Amal = action, operation (applied to drugs
etc.) ix. 274.
'Amala hilah for tricking, a Syro- Egyptian
vulgarism, vii. 43.
Amalekites, vii. 264, 265.
Amdm-ak = before thee, vii. 94.
Aman = quarter, mercy, i. 342.
'Amariah (Pr. N. of a town) vii. 353.
Amazon (a favourite in folk-lore) ii. 96.
Amazons (of Dahome) viii. 39.
Ambar al-Kham = rude Ambergris, viii. 85.
Ambiguousity, v. 44.
Amend her case = bathe her, etc., vii. 266.
Amid (Amidah) town in Mesopotamia,
vi. 106.
Amm (AJ-)-the Trusted of Allah, iv. 26 r.
son and successor of Hartin
al-Rashid, i. 185 ; v. 93, 152.
Amin (Amen) = So be it ! ix. 131.
Amir = military commander, i. 259.
' Amir = one who inhabiteth, haunter, x. 6.
Amir and Samul = Jones, Brown and
Robinson, iv. 106.
Amfr al-Muuminin = Prince of the Faithful
i. 112.
Ammi ba'ad = but after (initiatory formula)
37-
'Amm = uncle (polite address to a father-
in-law) x. 32.
Amma laka au 'alayka = either to thee (the
gain) or upon thee (the loss) ix. ii.
Amor discende non ascende, iii. 240.
Amr (Al-)' = command, matter, affair, ix.
67.
Amrad= beardless and handsome, effemi-
nate, i. 327.
Amru (pronounced Amr) or Zayd = Toro,
Dick or Harry, iv. 2.
bin Ma'adi Karib (poet) v. 147.
bin Masa'dah (Pr. N.) v. 145.
Amsei = he passed the evening, etc., iii.
239-
Amsar (pi. of Misr) = cities, i. II.
- = settled provinces, vii. 371.
Amshat (combs) perhaps = Kanafah (ver-
micelli) i. 83.
Amtar, pi. of Matr, q.v. t iii. 295.
Amud al-Sawdri = the Pillar of Masts (Dio-
cletian's column) viii. 323.
Amurfyah = the classical Amorium, v. 141.
" Ana " (from Night ccclxxxi. toccccxxiv.)
v.6 4 .
Appendix.
327
Ana a'amil = I will do it (Egypto-Syrian
vulgarism), v. 367.
Ana fi jfratak = I crave thy intercession
(useful phrase), iv. 83.
Anagnorisis, admirably managed, viii. 104.
Analphabetic Amfrs, ix. 126.
Anasa-kum = yeare honoured by knowing
him, x. II.
Anbar (pronounced Ambar), town on the
Euphrates, iv. 152.
Anbar ( Ambar) = ambergris, vi. 60.
Andalib = nightingale (masc. in Arab.)
viii. 282.
Andalusian = Spanish (/.*. of Vandal-land)
vi. 101.
Andam = the gum called dragon's blood ;
brazil-wood, i. 176 ; iii. 263 ; viii. 225.
Anemone on a tomb, ii. 325.
Angels (taking precedence in the order of
created beings) ix. 81.
(appearing to Sodomites) iii. 301 .
(ride piebalds) vi. 146.
(shooting down the Jinn) viii. 292.
Anis al-Jalis = the Cheerer of the Com-
panion, ii. 5.
Animals (have no fear of man) ix. 181.
Anista-na thy company gladdens us, viii
231.
Anklet-ring and ear drops (erotic meaning
of) ii. 318.
Ansar=Medinite auxiliaries, vii. 92 ; viii.
183.
Ant (chapter ix. of the Koran) v. 213.
Antar (Romance quoted) iv. 41.
(and the Chosroe) vi. 285.
(contest with Khosrewan) vii. 289.
Anthropophagy (allowed when it saves
life) v. 1 86.
Antiochus and Stratonice, iv. 10.
Ants (a destructive power in tropic cli-
mates) ix. 46.
Anushirwdn = Anushin-rawan = Sweet of
Soul, v. 87.
Anwa, pi. of Nau, ?.z>., viii. 266.
Anwar = lights, flowers, viii. 270 ; 282
Anyab (pi. of Nb)= grinder teeth, ix.
140.
Ape-names (expressing auspiciousness) iii.
159-
Apes (isle of) vi. 23.
(and their lustful propensities) vi. 54.
(gathering fruits) vi. 56.
Apes (remant of som ancient tribe) vii.
346.
Apodosis omitted, vi. 203, 239.
Apple (wine) iv. 134.
(many a goodly one rotten at the core)
iv. 187.
Apricots (various kinds) viii. 268.
'Ar (Al-) = shame, v. 138*
Arab al-Arba" = prehistoric tribes of the
Arabs, i. 112 ; v. 101.
al-Musta'ajimah = barbarised Arabs,
ib.
al-Musta'aribah = naturalised Arabs,
ib.
al-Muta'arribah = Arabised Arabs, #,
(exaggerates generosity) ii. 36.
(shouting under his ruler's palace) to.
39-
temperament, ib. 54, 101, 181.
cap (Turtur) ib. 143.
(Derivation of the name) ib* 140,
(pathos) iii. 55.
(the noble merciful) ib. 88.
(shop) ib. 163.
(style compared with Persian) vi. 125.
A'rab= dwellers in the desert, ix. 293.
Arab horses (breeds of) v. 246.
Arab-land and Ajam=:ail the world over,
v. 136.
Arabian Night converted into an Arabian
Note, vii. 314.
Arabian Odyssey, viii. 7.
Arabs (for plundering nomades) x. 25.
Arafat (Mount, where the victims are not
slaughtered) v. 295.
(day of) ii. 169,
Ara"k (capparis shrub) ii. 54.
(tooth-stick of the wild caper-tree ;
Ardka = I see thee) iii. 275.
Arakiyah = white scull-cap, i. 215.
Ar'ar = Juniper-tree, " heath," iii. 254 ;
vi. 95.
Ardabb (Irdabb) = five bushels, i. 263.
Ardeshir (Artaxerxes), three Persian Kings
of the name, ii. 156; vii. 209.
Ardhanari = the half- woman, iii. 306.
Arianism and early Christianity, x. 190.
Arif (Al-) = monitor, i. 231.
Arish (A1-), frontier town between Egypt
and Palestine, ix. 286.
'Arishah = arbour, etc., ix. 219.
Aristomenes and his fox, vi. 45.
328
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Arithmetic (not mastered by Moslems)
v. 236.
Arithmology (cumbrous in Arabic for lack
of the higher numerals) ix. 123.
Ark al-Halawat = vein of sweetness, for
penis, iv. 51.
Arman = Armenia, ii. 273.
Armanfyah (Armenia) iv. 182.
Armenians (porters of Constantinople)
Vi. i.
Arm-pits (taking a dismounting person
under the, a sign of respect) iv. 24.
Arms and armour, x. 86.
Army (divided into six divisions) iii. 290.
Arsh = the ninth Heaven, v. 167.
Artal, see Rotl.
jArtists in cosmetics, x. 234.
;Arubah (Al-) = Friday, vi. 190.
Arun (Heb.) = in bis shirt, i. 78.
,'Ariis (A1-) = the bride (tropical name for
wine) viii. 203.
As'ad = more (or most) fortunate, iii. 346.
Asaf bin Barkhiya (Solomon's Wazir) vi.
99 ; vii. 318 ; viii. 133.
Asafiri = sparrow-olives, iii. 295.
*Asakir = corner-terminals of a litter, x. 32.
Asal Kasab = cane -honey, x. 3.
Asal Katr = drip-honey, x. 2.
Asal Nahl = bee's honey, i. 271.
Asar = traces, ix. 255.
Ash'ab (proverbial for greed) x. 15.
Ashab = companions, vii. 92: viii. 183.
Ashdb al-Rdy (epithet of the Hanafi school)
vi. 146.
Ashab al-Sufifah, v. 102.
Ashab al-Ziya" = Feudatories, vii. 327.
Ashhab = grey- white, ii. 116.
A-Sharif anta=art thou a noble, ix. 231.
Ashirah clan, vii. 121.
Ashjar == door-posts or wooden bolts, vi.
191.
Ashka'nia'n, race of Persian Kings, i. 78.
Asidah (custard, pap) iv. 37.
Asim = defending, vii. 314.
Askar jarrdr = drawing (*>. conquering)
army, vii. 8$.
Aslah = head-kerchief, ii. 59.
Asian (Pr. N., probably for Arslan = lion)
iv. 78.
Asma'f (A1-), author of Antar, iv. 159;
vii. no.
Asoka's wife and Kundla, vi. 127,
Ass (held ill-omened) ii. 25.
- (-goad) iii. 116.
(voice ' most ungrateful ") iii. 117.
(the wild, "handy " with his hoof) iii.
235-
Asr (A1-) = time or prayer of mid-after-
noon, i. 240.
Asta"r (pi. of Satr = chopper ?) viii. 184.
Astarte (primarily the planent Venus?) x.
229.
Astrolabe, father of our sextant, i. 304.
Aswad = black (used for any dark colour)
viii. 268.
'Atb = blame, reproach (for disgrace) viii.
112.
Atbak = trays, v. 264.
Atheist (Ar. Zindik) viii. 27.
Atmar = rags (for travelling clothes) vii.
114.
Atnab = tent-ropes, viii. 240.
Atr = any perfume, i. 355.
Atsah (A1-) = sneezing, ix. 220.
'Attar = perfume-seller, druggist, x. 8.
Attraction of like to like, ii 296.
Auhashtanf = thou hast made me desolate,
i.62.
'Auj = Persian town, Kuch (?) ix. 347.
Aun (of Jinns, etc.) iv. 88.
Aurat = shame, nakedness (woman, wife)
vi. 30.
(of man and woman) vi. 118.
Avanie (Ar. Gharamah) viii. 151.
Avaunt = Ikhsa, be chased like a dog,
vii. 45.
Awahl Awa"h! = Aks ! Alas ! ii. 321.
A wak = ounces (pi. Ukiyah, q.v.} viii. 12.
'Awalim, pi. of 'Alimah = dancing girls,
i. 214.
'Awdshik = hucklebones, cockles, ix. 268.
Awwa (name of Satan's wife) iii. 229.
Awwadah = lute-player, iv. 142.
Ayat = Coranic verses, ii. 242 ; iii. 307 ;
iv. 142.
Ayat al-Najdt = Verses of Safety, vi. 108.
Ayishah bint Talhah (grand -daughter of
Abu Bakr) v. 79.
Aylulah = slumbering after morning
prayers, ii. 178.
Ayn = eye (for helper) v. 60.
Ayns (verset of the 140) v. 217.
Aysh (Egypt.) =Ayyu Shayyinfor classical
" Ma" what, i. 79.
Appendix.
329
*Aysh = that on which man lives (for
bread) x. 3.
Ayshat al-durrah murrah = the sister-wife
has a bitter life, iii. 308.
Aywd (Ay wa'lla"hi)= Ay, by Allah, i. 303;
vii. 195.
Aywan = saloon with estrades, vii. 347.
Ayys (Issus of Cilicia) iv. 76.
Ayyub = Job, ii. 45.
Azal = eternity without beginning (op-
posed to Abad = infinity) ii. 205 ; v. 390.
Azdn (call to prayer) ii. 306 ; v. 209.
Az'ar = having thin hair ; tail-less, ix.
185.
Azarbija'n = Kohista"n, vii. 104.
Azdashir, misprint for Ardashir, vii. 209.
Azghdn = camel litters, ii. 282.
Azlm = " deuced " or "mighty fine," i.
178; ix. 4 o.
Aziz (fern. Azizah) = dear, excellent, highly
prized, ii. 298.
'Aziz (A1-) al-Misr = Magnifico of Mis-
raim, ix. 119.
Azrak = blue-eyed (so is the falcon !) vii.
164 ; viii. 4,
Azrar (buttons) ii. 318.
= Ba'al'scity, v. 51.
Edb = gate, chapter, i. 136 ; vii. 3.
-- (sometimes for a sepulchral cave) ix.
286.
Bdb (A1-) al-' AH = Sublime Porte, x. 5.
Bdb al-Bahr and Bab al-Barr, viii. 55, 318.
Bab al-Faradfs = gate of the gardens at
Damascus, i. 240.
Ba"b al-Luk (of Postal) iv. 259.
Bab al-Nasr = Gate of Victory (at Cairo)
vi. 234 ; x. 6.
Bab al-Salam (of the Al-Medinah Mosque)
iv. 288.
Babel = Gate of God, i. 8$.
Babes of the eye = pupils, i. 100 ; iv. 246.
Baboon (Kird) has a natural penchant for
women, iv. 297.
Bdbunaj = white camomile, iii. 58.
Babylonian eyes = bewitching ones, viii. 278.
Bachelor not admitted in Arab quarters,
iii. 191.
Back-parts compared to revolving heavens,
iii. 1 8.
Bactrian camel, v. 371.
Badal = substitute, v. 249.
Badawi (not used in the Koran for Desert
Arab) ii. 140.
(bonnet) ib. 143.
(a fool as well as a rogue) ib. 146.
(cannot swim) iii. 69.
(baser sort) ib. 70.
(shifting camp in spring) ib.
(noble) ib. 88.
(bluntness and plain-speaking of)
iv. 102 ; v. 98.
Badawi's dying farewell, i. 75.
Badhanj = windshaft, ventilator, i. 257.
Bad -i-Saba = breeze o' the morn, ii. I Si.
Badinjein = Solanum pomiferum or S.
Melongena v. 4.
Badlah Kunuziyah = treasure-suit, ix. 331.
Badmasti = le vin mauvais, i. 88.
Badrah= 10,000 dirhams, iv. 281.
Badr Basim = full moon smiling, vii. 274.
Baghdad = Garden of Justice, iii. 100.
(House of Peace) viii. 51.
(of Nullity, opposed to the Ubiquity
of the World) ix. 13.
Baghlah = she-mule, i. 129.
Baha al-Dfn ibn Shaddad(Judge Advocate-
General under Saladin) ix. 23.
Bahadur = the brave, iii. 334.
Bahaim (pi. of Bahimah = Behemoth)
applied to cattle, iv. 54.
Bahak = white leprosy, v. 294.
Bahimah, mostly = black cattle, ix. 71.
Bahr = water cut or trenched in the earth,
sea, large river, i. 44.
Bahr (A1-) al-azrak = Blue River, not
"Blue Nile," viii. 4.
Bahr al-Kunuz = Sea of Treasures, v. 37.
Bahr al-Muhit = circumambient ocean, i,
'33-
Bahram ( Varanes) = planet Mars, iii. 339.
Bahramdni = Brahman, iv. 101.
Bahriyah = crew, viii. 17.
Bahrwa"n (Pr. N. for Bihrun ?) v. 329.
Bakh ! Bakh ! = bravo ! brava ! ii. 151 ;
iv. 121.
Bakhkharani = he incensed me, ix. 238.
Bakhshish naturalized as Anglo- Egyptian,
iii. 45-
(such as to make a bath-man's mouth
water) ix. 151.
Bakk = bug, iii. 328.
Bakkt = greengrocer, vii. 295.
Bakldmah = almond-pastry, ii. 311.
330
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Balabil pi. of bulbul (nightingale) and of
balbalah (grief) v. 244.
Balah = green date, ii. 314.
Baldricks (Ar. Hamail) v. 158.
Balid = simpleton i. 17.
Ballan = body-servant,!. 311.
Ballanah = tire-woman, i. 311.
Ballur (Billaur) = crystal, etc., iii. 194.
Baltiyah = Labrus Niloticus (fish) viii. 290.
Ban = myrobolan, vii. 247 ; viii. 322.
Banat = daughters, protegees, viii. 39.
Banal al-Na'ash = the Great Bear, iii. 28,
221.
Bandaged eyes (before beheading) iv. 145.
Bands of bandits, iii. 101.
Bandukaniyah (quarter of Cairo) vi. 254.
Banj = Nibanj = Nepenthe, i. 70.
Banner (bound to a spear sign of investi-
ture) iii. 307 ; vii. 101.
Banni(Bunnf) = Cyprinus Bynni, viii. 189.
Banquets (royal) iv. 212.
(daintily deviced) iv. 226.
Banu Abbas (their colours black) vi. 86.
al-Asfar (people of the yellow faces)
ii. 220.
Israfl, iv. 283.
Kahtan, vi. 260.
Nabhan, vi. 262.
Shayban (tribe) iv. 233.
Tamim (tribe) vii. 125.
Umayyah (their colours white) vi. 86.
'Uzzah (tribe famous for love passion)
ii. 304 ; v. 70.
Banyan = Ficus Indica, vi. 81.
Baradiyah = wide-mouthed jug, i. 36.
Baras = white leprosy, v. 294 ; viii. 24.
Barge (Ar. Barijah) vi. 24.
Barid = cold (vain, foolish, insipid) i. 213 ;
iii. 7.
Barid = Post, vii. 340.
Barijah (pi. bawarij) = Jarm, barge, vi. 24.
Barley, food for horses, i. 345.
Barmahat (seventh Coptic month) v. 231.
Barmecides (Ar. Baramikah) i. 188.
Barr al- (history of the family) x. 137.
Barmudah (eighth Coptic month) v. 232.
Barr al-Manakhah in Al-Medinah, ii. 139.
Barsh = matting, ii. 18.
Barsh (Bars) commonest form of Bhang,
iv. 31.
Bartaut = Berthold, ix. 8.
Barzakh = bar, partition, Hades, ii. 325.
Basaltic statues in Haurar.ic ruins give rist
to the idea of men transformed into
black stones, i. 170.
Basharah (al-) = gift of good tiding*,
guerdon, i. 30.
Bashik (small sparrow-hawk) iii. 6l.
Basil = the Indian Tulsi, i. 19.
Basil of the bridges = Ocymum basilicum,
pennyroyal, i. 91.
Basmalah = pronouncing the formula Bis*
millah, v. 206 ; ix. I.
(commonly -pronounced Bismillah)
v. 213.
Bastardy (a sore offence amongst Moslems)
viii. 115.
Bastinado of women, i. 183.
Bat (has seed like a man's) v. 85.
Bataikh (Batatikh) = water melons,
vi. 208.
Batanah = lining, vii. 330.
Batarikah (half ecclesiastic half military
term) viii. 256, 319.
Batarikh = roe, spawn, ix. 139.
Bath (first, after sickness) iii. 266.
(coming out of, shows that consum-
mation has taken place) iv. 244.
(suggesting freshness from coition)
vi. 135-
(and privy, favourite haunts of the
Jinns) vi. 141.
(not to be entered by men without
drawers) vi. 150,
(may it be a blessing to thee) vm.
200.
(setting it a-working, turning on the
water, hot and cold) ix. 149.
Bathers pay on leaving the Hammam, ii.
332.
Bathsheba and Uriah (congeners of) vi.
129.
Batinf = gnostic ; a reprobate, ii. 29; vi.
221.
Batiyah=jar, flagon, viii. 323.
Batrak (Batrik) = patriarch, ii. 89.
Batrik (Bitrik) = patricius, ii. 89.
Batshat al-Kubra = the great disaster
(battle of Badr) vii. 55.
Battal (A1-), story of, x. 74, 75.
Battash al-Akran = he who assaults his
peers, vii. 55.
Battle-pieces, vii. 61.
Bawd (admirably portrayed) iv. 4.
Appendix.
33*
Bawwa"b = door-keeper, vi. 189.
Bawwalc = trumpeter (a discreditable cha-
racter) viii. 192.
Bayaz = Silurus Bajad (cat-fish) viii. 150.
Bayaz = whiteness (lustre, honour) viii.
295-
Bayaz aI-Sulta"ni = the best kind of gypsum,
i. 270.
Baydah (Al-) = pawn in chess, v. 243.
Bayt (Al-) = the house (for cage) v. 269.
Bayt aI-Mukaddas= Jerusalem, ii. 132.
Bayt Sha'r= house of hair; Bayt Shi'r=a
couplet, viii. 279.
Bayzatan = testicles (egg- story) ii. 55.
Baz (vulg. for Tabl) = kettledrum, viii. 18.
Bazar (locked at night) x. 13.
Bazar of Damascus famous in the Middle
Ages, i. 2.
Ba"zf (Pers. Baz) = F. peregrinator, hawk,
falcon, iii. 138.
BE ! and IT is (the creative word) v. 240,
286.
Bead thrown into a cup (signal of delivery)
vii. 324.
Bean-eating in Egypt, iv. 160.
Beard (long, and short wits) iii. 247.
(forked, characteristic of a Persian)
iii. 325-
(combed by the fingers in the Wuzu)
v. 198, 209.
Beast with two backs (Eastern view of)
vii' 35-
Beast-stories (oldest matter in The Nights)
iii. 114.
Beauties of nature provoke hunger in
Orientals, iii. 32.
Beckoning (Eastern fashion the reverse of
ours) vi. 109.
Before the face of Allah = for the love of
God, i. 135.
Beheading or sacking of a faithless wife un-
lawful but connived at, i. 181.
Belle fourchette (greatly respected) ix.
219.
Belle passion in the East, ii. 62.
Belt (Ar. Kamar) viii. 156.
"Ben" of an Arab shop as opposed to
but,"iv. 93.
Benches (in olden Europe more usual than
chairs) vi. 26.
Berbers from the Upper Nile (the " Pad-
dies " of Egypt) vi. 189.
Bestiality (fatally common amongst Egyp*
tians) iv. 299.
Betrothed (for "intended to be marrie'd
with regal ceremony ") x. 55.
Better largesse than the mace, viii. 163.
Bhang (its kinds and uses) ii. 123.
(properties of the drug) iii. 91.
(preparation of) iv. 31.
(drugging with = tabannuj) iv. 71.
Bida'ah = innovation, v. 167.
Bier (the bulging = hadba) iv. 63.
Bi-fardayn = "with two singles" (for with
two baskets) viii. 162.
Bika'a ( = low-land) ii. 109.
( = con vents, pilgrimages to) v. 125.
Bilad al-Filfil = home of pepper (Malabar)
vi. 38.
Bilad al-Rum (applied to France) viii.
339-
Bilad al-Sudan = Land of the Blacks (our
Soudan) iii. 75.
Bilal (first Muazzin) ii. 306 j iii. 106.
"Bilking" (popular form of) ix. 145.
Bilkis and her throne, ii. 79 ; viii. 82.
Bi 'i-Salamah = in safety (to avert the evil
eye) i. 288.
Bint 'arus = daughter of the bridegroom
(Ichneumon) iii. 147.
Bint Shumukh (Pr.N.) = Daughter of Pride
v. 382.
Bir (Al-)ai-Mu'utallal = the Ruined Well,
vii. 346.
Bird (created by Jesus) v. 211.
seen by Abu Bakr in the cave, v.
235.
Bird-girls, viii. 29.
Birds (sing only in the pairing season)
vi. 15.
(huge ones discovered on the African
coast) vi. 17.
(left to watch over wives) vi. 132.
(pretended understanding of their
language) vi. 169.
' (songs and cries of) v. 50.
Birkah = pool of standing wafer, iv. 270 ;
vi. 75-
Birkat al-Habash = Abyssinian pond,
i. 391.
Birth-stool (Ar. Kursf al-Wihidah) ii. 80.
Bishr (al-Hafi = Barefoot) ii. 203 ; ix. 21.
Bisat (A1-) wa '1-masnad = carpet and
cushion, viii. 55.
332
A If Laylah wa Laylak.
Bismillah = in the name of God, i. 40 ;
v. 206.
(said before taking action) i. So.
(civil form of dismissal) i. 98.
- ( = fall to) i. 264.
(= enter in Allah's name) viii. 202.
(parodied) ii. 223.
Bismillah Nami = Now please go to sleep,
viii. 178.
Biting the finger ends (not nails) sign of
confusion, etc., ii. 38.
Biunes, bisexuals and women robed with
the sun, vi. 168.
Biza'at = capital, business concern, v. 81.
Black (colour of the Abbaside banner)
ii. 292 ; vi. 86.
Blackamoors preferred by debauched
women, i. 6
Black-mail (paid to the Badawin of Ram-
lah) iv. 76.
Blast (of the last trumpet) v. 310.
Blaze (Ar. Ghurrah, q.v.) iii. Ii8.
Blessings at the head of letters, vii. 133.
Blind (The, notorious for insolence) i. 330.
Blinding a common practice in the East,
now done, i. 108.
Blue and yellow turbans prescribed to
Christians and Jews, i. 77.
Blue-eyed (frequently = fierce-eyed) iv.
192.
Blue-eyes = blind with cataract or staring,
glittering, hungry, vii. 164.
Boasting of one's tribe, iii. 80.
Boccaccio quoted : i. 12, 174, 202, 251,
305; ii. 82, 112; iv. 36, 155; v.
134-
Boccaccio and The Nights, x. 160.
Body-guard (consists of two divisions)
iv. 62.
Boils and pimples supposed to be caused
by broken hair-roots, i. 275.
Book (Hack as her) x. I.
Books (of the Judgment-day) viii. 294.
Bostan (female Pr. N.) = flower-garden,
iii. 345.
Bostani = gardener, family name from
original occupation, i. 266.
Boulgrin, Bougre, Bougrerie (derivations
of the terms) x. 249.
Bow, a cowardly weapon, vii. 123.
Box (Ar. 'Ulbah) viii. 71.
Box-trick (and Lord Byron) vi. 168.
Boycotting (Oriental forms of) viii. 302.
Brain (fons veneris in man) v. 46.
Brasier (Kanun, Minkal) v. 273.
Brass (Ar. Nuhas asfar) vi. 83.
Braying of the ass, iii. 117.
Bread and salt (to be taken now '"cum
grano salis ") iv. 200.
Bread and salt (bond of) viii. 12.
Breast broadening with delight, i. 48.
straitened, the converse the of pre-
vious, i. 119.
Breast- bone (Taraib) v. 132.
Breath (healing by the) v. 29.
(of crocodiles, serpents, etc.) vi. 29.
Breeze (rude but efficacious refrigerator)
iv. 199.
Breslau Edition quoted, i. 14, 52, 53 54,
203, 217, 234, 245, 255, 345 ; ii. 77 ;
iii. 162, 181, 211, 259; iv. 96, 113,
181; v. 9, 17, 24, 27, 32, 42; vi.
27, 3, 37> 44, 46, 5 6 57. 84, 100,
129, 138, 148, 168, 180, 196, 207,
211, 213, 242, 247 ; vii. 145, 150, 168.
172, 173, 177, 202 262, 315, 316, 320,
321, 324, 326, 327, 329, 331, 341, 342,
343.350. 353. 354, 362, 363, 367 ; viii.
7, 18, 66, 98, 113, 197, 242, 264, 273 ;
ix. 33, 42, 59, 63, 156, 159, 169, 185,
187 ; x. 54, etc.
Breslau Edition (mean colloquialisms
thereof) x. 169.
Brethern (for kinsfolk) ix. 26.
(of trust and brethren of society =
friends and acquaintances) ix. 75.
Bridal couch (attitudinising thereon) v.
75-
Bride of the Hoards, vi. 109 ; vii. 147 ; x.
31-
Bride-night, rarely conceived in, i. 227.
Bride's throne, i. 215.
Bridle (not to be committed to another)
vii. 304.
Brother (has a wide signification amongst
Moslems) vi. 243.
(of Folly = a very fool) ii. 279.
(of Purity) iii. 150.
(of Ignorance = Ignoramus) iii. 163.
("of the Persians ") iv. 12.
Brotherhood (forms of making) iii. 151.
(sworn in Allah Almighty) v. 43.
of Futurity = lookers out for a better
world, ii. 197.
Appendix.
333
Brow (like the letter Nun) iv. 249.
Bruising the testicles a feminine mode of
murdering men, iii. 3.
Budakak (Butakah ) = crucible, viii. 8.
Budur (Badoura) = full moons, iii. 228 ;
iv. 249.
Buffalo = bceuf i. 1'eau (?) ix. 181.
Buhayrah = tank, cistern, viii. 29.
Buka'ah = Coelesyria, ii. 109.
Buka'at al-dam = place of blood (where
it stagnates) iv. 68.
Bukhayt = little good luck, ii. 48.
Bukhti (dromedary) ii. 177 ; iii. 67.
Bukjah = bundle, vi. 226.
Bulad (Pers. Pulad) = steel, vi. 1 15.
Bulak Edition quoted, i. II, 45, 68, 117,
I45 2 3 J " i, 83, 185, 187 ; iii. 181,
211, 212; vi. 5, n, 21, 27; vii. 18,
57, 139, 173,269, 359; ix. 185.
Bulbul (departed with Tommy Moor,
Englished by "Nightingale") v. 48.
Bull (followers preceding) ii. 98.
Bull (of the Earth = Gdw-i-Zamm) v.
324-
Bum = owl (introduced to rhyme with
Kayyum = the Eternal) viii. 286.
Bunn = kind of cake, ix. 1 72.
Burckhardt quoted, i. 66, 214; ii. 18,
143 ; iii. 59, 101, 138, 147, 179, 278,
308; iv. 31, 48 112, 217, 259; v.
77, 80, 119; vii. 91, 93, 136, 147,
156 ; viii. 23, 91, 93, 156, 285 j x.
144.
(fable anent his death) iv. 78.
Burdah = mantle or plaid of striped stuff,
vii. 95.
' (poem of the) iv. II<>.
Burka = nosebag, ii. 52 ; vi. 131, 192.
Burning (a foretaste of Hell-fire) ix. 158.
Bursting of the gall -bladder = our breaking
of the heart, ii. 322.
Burying a rival, ii. 58.
Buttons (Ar. Azrar) ii. 318.
Buzah = beer, i. 72.
Byron (depreciated where he ought to be
honoured most) vii. 268.
Bystanders forcing on a sale, viii. 310.
CABBALA = Spiritual Sciences, ii. 151.
Caesarea, ii. 77.
"of Armenia," ii. 273.
Cairene (vulgarism) vi. 278.
(chaff) iv. 215.
(slangl iv. 75.
(jargon) x. 8.
(savoir faire) x. 10.
(bohomie) x. 28.
(knows his fellow Cairene) x. 35.
Cairenes held exceedingly debauched, i.
298.
Cairo, see Misr.
(nothing without the Nile) i. 295.
Caitiff = Captivus, ii. 109.
Calamity (i.e., to the enemy) x. 33.
Calcutta Edition quoted, i. 17, 52 ; iii, 181,
2ii ; iv. 274 ; v. 80, 325, 383 ; vi. 27,
29,77, 116.
Caliphate (defective title to) v. 116.
Caliphs 'Abd al-'Aziz, ii. 166.
'Abd al-Malfk, ii. 77, 167 j iii. 319 ;
iv. 7.
Abu Bakr, ii. 167, 197.
AH, ii. 1 08.
Amin (A1-) i. 185 ; v. 93, 152.
Hakim (A1-) bi-Amri 'Hah, iv.
296,
Harun al-Rashid, viii. 160 ; ix. 17.
Hishanfbin 'Abd al-Malik, ii. 170;
vii. 104.
Maamun (A1-) i. 185 ; iv, 109.
Mahdf (A1-) vii. 136,
" Mansur (A1-) ii. 142, 153, 2IO.
Mu'awiyah, ii. 160, 161.
Musta'fn (A1-) bi 'Hah, ix. 246.
Mustansir (A1-) bi' llah, i. 317.
Mu'tasim (A1-) bi 'llah, iii. 8 1 ; ix.
232.
Mutawakhil (A1-) 'ala 'llah, iv. 291 ;
v. 153 ; ix. 232.
Mu'tazid (A1-) ix. 229.
Mu'tazz (A1-) ix. 242.
'Omar, ii. 158, 159,' 162, 164; v.
103.
'Othman, ii. 163 ;'v. 215.
Sulaymanbin 'Abdal-Malik,ii. 167 ;
vii. 99.
Ta'i (A1-) Ii 'llah, iii. 51, 307.
Walfd (A1-) ii. 167 ; iii. 69 ; iv. 100 ;
vii. 1 06.
Wasik (Al-)iii. 81.
Zahir (A1-) bi'llah, i. 317.
Calligraphy, iv. 196.
Camel (how slaughtered) i. 347 ; iv. 95.
334
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Camel-load = 300 Ibs., for long journeys
250 Ibs., ii. 45.
(-men do not accept drafts on futurity)
ii. 69.
(-colts roasted whole) v. 135.
(feeding on and vindictiveness) v.
US-
(Bactrian)v. 371.
(seen in a dream is an omen of death j
why ?) yi. 92.
Camels (breeds of) iii. 67, I IO.
(names) iii. no.
(haltered ; jiose-ring used for
dromedaries) iii. 120.
(Mehari, Mehrfyah) iii. 277.
(red the best kind) viii. 303.
Camphor (simile for a fair face) iii. 174.
(primitive way of extracting it) vi. 2K
Camphor-apricot, vi. 277.
Cannibal tribes in Central Africa, ii. 48.
Cannibalism in the New World, x. 243.
Cannibals and cannibalism, vi. 36.
Canton (city of) vii. 334.
Capo bianco, coda verde, iv. 36.
Capotes melancholiques, vii. 190.
Carat ( = Kirat) iii. 239.
(= A of a dinar or miskal, something
under 5d.) v. 277.
Caravaggio (picture of St. Rosario) x. 219.
Caravan (each one has to keep his place
in a) ii. 184.
Carelessness of the story-teller, ix. 4.
Carmel = Karam-El (God's vineyard) viii.
203.
Carnelion stone bit with pearls = lips bit
with teeth in sign of anger, iii. 179.
Carpet (let him come to the King's =
before the King as referee) ix.:l.io.
Carpet-room = throne-room, ix. 121
Carob (Cassia fislularis) ii. 241.
bean, emblem of constancy, iii. 315.
Carpet-beds, i. 294.
Carrier-pigeons, ii. 247
Castration (texts justifying or enjoining it)
x. 227.
Cat (puss, etc.) iii. 149.
Cat-fish (Ar. Baydz) viii. 150, 151.
Catamites (rising to highest rank in Turkey)
iv. 225.
(in Turkish baths) iv. 226.
Cask (for " home " of the maiden wine)
x. 38.
Cask in Auerbach's Keller, viii. 131. n
Ceruse (Ar. Isfidaj) vi. 126.
Cervantes and Arab romance, iii. 66.
Ceylon (Ar. Sarandib) vi. 64, 8l.
Chaff, ii. 15; iii. 23; viii. 147, 152, 157,
189.
or banter allowed even to modest
women, i. 267.
Chameleon (Father of Coolness) iii. 165.
Champing, sign of good breeding, i. 345.
Change (sudden, of disposition) viii. 213.
Character-sketch (making amends for abuse
of women) x. 24.
Chaste forbearance towards a woman
frequently causes love, vii. 189.
Chastity (merchandise in trust from Allah)
iv. 43.
Chawashiyah = Chamberlains, vii. 327.
Cheating (not only venial but laudable
under circumstances) viii. 217.
Checkmate (Pers. Ar.) = the King is dead,
viii. 217,
Cheese a styptic, iii. 3.
Chess and chessmen, ii. 104 ; v. -243.
Chess anecdote, i. 132.
Chewing a document that none may see it
after, ii. 39.
Child of the nurse, etc. = delicately reared,
iv. 34.
Children (carried astraddle upon hip or
shoulder) i. 308.
(one of its = a native of) x. 8.
China (kingdom) iv. 175.
China- ware displayed on .shelves, ii. 52.
Chinese shadows, iv. 193.
Chin-veil donned (showing intention to act
like a man) viii. 99.
Cider (Ar. Shardb al-tuffdh) iv. 134.
Circumdsion (how practised) v. 209.
(female) v. 279.
Citadel (contains the Palace) ix. 102.
Cities (two-mosqued, for large and conse-
quently vicious ones) v. 66.
City of Brass (Copper) iv. 176 ; vi. 3.
Claimant of blood-revenge, iv. 109.
and Defendant, iv. 150.
Claims of maidenhead, i. 190.
Clairvoyance of perfect affection, x. 26'.
Clapping hands preliminary to a wrestling-
bout, ii. 91.
Clapping of hands to summon servants,
i. 177; iii. 173-
Appendix.
335
Clerical error of Bulak Edition, ii. 114.
Clever young ladies dangerous in the East,
i. 15-
Climate (water and air) ii. 4.
Clitoris (Ar. Zambur) and its excision, v.
279.
Cloak (Ar. Abdah) viii. 42.
Clogs = Kubkdb, iii. 92.
Closet (the forbidden and the bird-girls)
viii. 29.
Cloth of frieze and cloth of gold, iv. 145.
" Cloth " (not " board " for playing chess)
ix. 209.
Clothes (tattered, sign of grief) iv. 158.
Clothing and decency, ix. 182.
Clout (hung over the door of a bath shows
that women are bathing) ix. 153.
Cocoa-nut (Ar. Jauz al-Hindi) vi. 55.
Coffee (see Kahwah) ii. 261.
(first mention of), v. 169 ; x. 90.
(anachronism) viii. 274.
(mention of probably due to the
scribe) ix. 141.
(its mention shows a comparatively
late date) ix. 255.
Cohen (Ka"hin) = diviner priest, esp. Jew-
ish, ii. 221.
Coition (postures of) iii. 93.
" (the seal of love) viii. 304.
(local excellences of) viii. 304.
(ablution obligatory after it) viii. 305.
Cold-of-countenance = a fool, iii. 7.
Cold speech = a silly or abusive tirade, iii. 7.
Colocasia (Ar. Kallak^s) viii. 151.
Coloquintida (Ar. Hanzal) v. 19.
Colossochelys = colossal tortoise, vi. 33.
Colours (of the Caliphs) vi. 86.
(names of) vi. in
Combat reminding of that of Rustam and
Sohrab, vii. 89.
"Come to my arms my slight acquain-
tance," ix. 177.
Commander of the Faithful (title introduced
by Omar) vi. 247.
Commune (Ar. Jama'ah) v. 205.
Comorin (derivation of the name) vi. 57.
"Compelleth" in the sense of " burden-
eth," vii. 285.
Compliment (model of a courtly one) viii.
165.
Composed of seed by all men shed =
superfetation of iniquity, viii. 15.
Comrades of the Cave, iii. 128.
Conception on the bride-night rare, i. 227.
Conciseness (verging on obscurity) ix. 171.
Confession after concealment, a character-
istic of the servile class, i. 53.
on the criminal's part required by
Moslem law, i. 274.
Confusion (of metaphors characteristic of
The Nights) i. 86
(of religious mythologies by way
of "chaff") viii. 152.
(universal in the undeveloped mind
of men) ix. 78.
Conjugal affection (striking picture of)
vii. 243.
Conjunctiva in Africans seldom white,
vii. 184.
Connection (tribal, seven degrees of)
vii. 121.
Consecrated ground (unknown to Moslems)
vi. 161.
Constipation (La) rend rigoureux, iii. 242.
Consul (Shdh-bandar) iv. 29.
(Kunsul) iv. 84.
Contemplation of street-scenery, one of
the pleasures of the Harem, i. 319.
Continuation in dignities requested by
office-holders from a new ruler, ii. 192.
Contract (artful between squalor and
gorgeousness) ix. 170.
Contrition for romancing, viii. 66.
Converts, theoretically respected and prac-
tically despised, vii. 43.
Copa d'agua, apology for a splendid ban-
quet, vii. 1 68.
Coptic convents, ii. 86.
visitations to, still customary, ii. no.
Copulation (praying before or after) ii. 161.
(postures of) iii. 93.
Coquetries (requiring as much inventive*
ness as a cotillon) x. 58.
Coral (name of a slave-girl) ii. 101.
Corpse pollutes the toucher, i. 295.
Cousin (term of familiarity = our " coz ")
ii. 43.
(first, affronts an Arab if she marries
any save him without his leave) vi. 145.
(has a prior right to marry a cousin)
ix. 225.
Covered (The, chapter of the Koran) v. 215.
Cow (chapter ii.of the Koran) v. 211.
Cowardice equally divided, iii. 173.
336
Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
Cowardice (proverb anent) viii. 333.
(of the Fellah, how to be mended)
, ": 5 '
Cowrie (shells, etc., for small change)
iv.;;.
Craft (many names for, connected with
Arabic) ix. 138.
Creases in the stomach insisted upon, 130.
Created for a mighty matter (i.e. for wor-
ship and to prepare for futurity) vi. 91.
Creation (is it and its Empire not His ?)
v. 269.
(from nothing) ix. 77.
Crenelles = Shararif, iv. 165.
Crepitus ventris and ethnology, v. 137.
Crescent of the breakfast-fete, ix. 250.
Crescent-like = emaciated, viii. 300.
Crew (Ar. Bahriyah, Nawatiyah) viii. 17.
Criss-cross row, iii. 236.
Crocodiles (breath of) vi. 29.
Cross-bows, vii. 62.
Crow (an ill* omened bird) vi. 170.
Crow-claw and camel-hoof, iv. 217.
Cruelty (the mystery of) explained only by
a law without law-giver) ix. 37.
(of the " fair sex " in Egypt) x. 45
Cry (that needs must be cried) x. 21.
Cubit (the Hashim{=l8 inches) v. 371.
Cuirasses against pleasure, cobwebs against
infection, vii. 190.
Cundums (French letters) vii. 190.
Cup and cup-bearer, ii. 327.
Curs (set them on the cattle = show a miser
money, etc.) x. 18.
Cursing intelligible, swearing meaningless,
although English, ii. 312,
Curtain (screening a reverend woman from
the sight of men-invalids) ix. 347.
Cutting (alluding to the scymitar) ii. 231.
(bones before flesh =" sharp as a
razor ") iv. 295.
(off the right hand, Koranic punish-
ment for theft) i. 274.
(of the navel string preliminary to
naming the babe) i. 231.
the rope = breaking bounds, i. 349.
Cynocephalus (kills men and rapes women)
vii. 344-
DAA AL-KABfR (Great Evil) = Daa al-Fil
(Elephantine Evil, i.e. Elephantiasis)
viii. 24.
Dabbus = mace- vi. 249.
Dadat = nurse (Pers.) viii. 209.
Danish (Al-) = the Amazed, vi. 96.
Dairah = circle, inclosure, ix. 287
(for a basin surrounded by hills) ix.
317.
Dajlah (Dijlah) = Tigris (Heb. Hid-deke!)
i. 180; viii. 150.
Dajjal (Al-) = Moslem Anti-Christ, vi. ii.
Dakhfl-ak = under thy protection, i. 61.
Dakianus = Decianus, ii. 244.
Dakkah = settle, vii. in; viii. 84,
Dalak = foot-rasp, iv. 254.
Dalhamah (Romance of) iii. 112.
Dalil = guide ; f. Dalilah = wwguiding
woman, bawd, ii. 329.
Damascus women famed for sanguinary
jealousy, i. 295.
Damon and Pythias, v. 104.
Damsel of the tribe = daughter of the chief,
vii. 95
Danaf (Al-):= distressing sickness, iv. 75.
Dandan (N.P.) = tooth, ii. 83.
Dandan (a monstrous fish), ix. 179.
Dani wa Gharib = friend and foe, v. 42.
Danik = sixth of drachma or dirham, ii.
204; v. 112.
Dar al-Na'fm= Dwelling of Delight, viii.
183.
Dara' (dira')= habergeon), coat of ring-
mail, etc. iii. 109.
Dar abukka= torn -torn, i. 311.
Darakah = target, vi. 9.
Darb al-Ahmar=Red Street (in Cairo)
x. 8.
Darb al-Asfar=the Street called Yellow,
iv. 93.
Darbar= public audience, i. 29.
Darfil = dolphin, ix. 346.
Darr al- Kail = divinely he spoke who said,
iv. 20.
Darrij = Let them slide, iv. 220.
Dastur= leave, permission, i. 66.
Datura Stramonium (the insane herb) vi.
36.
Daud = David, ii. 286.
Daughter of my uncle = my wife, i. 69.
" Daughters of God " (the three) vi. 282.
(of Sa'adah = zebras) iii. 65.
(of the bier = Ursa major) iii. 28; 221.
Daulat (Pr. N.) = for tune, empire, kingdom,
vii. 347.
Appendix.
337
Dauraki= narrow-mouthed jug, i. 36.
David (makes costs of mail) ii. 286 ; vi.
"3-
Dawa' = medicine (for a depilatory) ix. 155.
Dawat = wooden inkcase with reed-pens,
ix. 122.
Dawn -breeze, ii. 181.
Day of Doom (mutual retaliation) iii. 128.
(length of) iii. 299.
(when wealth availeth not, etc.) ix. 16.
(ye shall be saved from its misery)
ix. 315.
Daylam (A1-), soldiers of = warlike as the
Daylamites, viii. 82.
Daylamites, ir. 94.
Dayyus = pimp, wittol, ix. 297.
Dead (buried at once) v. 190.
Death (from love) v. 134.
(every soul shall taste of it) v. 166.
(of a good Moslem) v. 167.
(manners of, symbolised by colours)
vi. 250.
(simply and pathetically sketched)
x. 47.
" Death in a crowd as good as a feast "
(Persian proverb) iii. 141.
Death-prayer (usually a two-bow prayer)
vi. 70.
Debts (of dead parents sacred to the
children) ix. 311.
Deeds of prowess not exaggerated, ii. 108.
Deity of the East despotic, iv. 118.
" after the fashion of each race, iv. 267
Delicacy of the female skin, ix. 321.
"Delight of the Intelligent" (fancy title
of a book) vi. 80.
Demesne (Ar. Hima) viii. 225.
Democracy of despotism, ix. 94.
Depilation (Solomon and Bilkis) iv. 256.
Deposits are not lost with Him = He dis-
appointeth not, etc., vii. 334.
Despite his nose = against his will, i. 26.
Despotism (tempered by assassination) vi.
206.
Destiny blindeth human sight, i. 67.
Destructiveness of slaves, ii. 55.
Devil (was sick, etc.) ii. 264.
(stoned at Mina) v. 203, 212.
- (allowed to go about the world and
seduce mankind) ix. 82.
Devotees (address Allah as a lover would
his beloved) v. 263.
VOL. X.
Devotees (white woollen raiment of) vii. 214.
Dhdmi=the Trenchant (sword of Antar)
vi. 271.
Diamond (its cutting of very ancient date)
ix. 325.
Diamonds (occurring in alluvial lands)
vi. 18.
Diaphoresis (a sign of the abatement of a
disease) ix. 146.
Dihliz = passage, vi. 10.
Di'ibil al-Khuza'i (poet) v 127.
Dijlah (Tigris), River and Valley of Peace,
viii. 51.
Dirndgh = brain, meningx (for head), vii.
I 7 8.
Dimyat (vulg. Dumfyat) = Damietta, v.
171.
Dfn (A1-) al-a'raj = the perverted Faith,
ix. ii.
Dmar=gold-piece, Daric, Miskdl, i. 32.
(description of one) ix. 294.
Dinghy (Karib) iv. 168.
Diras= thrashing sled, ii. 108.
Dirham = silver-piece, i. 33.
Dirham- weight = 48 grains avoir, ii. 316.
Dirhams (50,000 = about 1,250) vii.
105.
( thousand =37 5) viii. to.
Disposition (sudden change of) viii. 213.
Dissection (practised on simiads) v. 220.
Dist (Dast) = large copper cauldron, viii.
177.
Diversion of an Eastern Potentate, viii.
171.
Divining rod (dowsing rod) iv. 73
Divorce (triple) iii. 292.
Diwdn (fanciful origin of the word) ix.
1 08.
Diwan al-Barfd = Post-office, vii. 340.
Diyar-i-Bakr = maid-land, v. 66.
Do not to others what thou wouldest not
they do unto thee, vi. 125.
"Dog" and "hog" popular terms of
abuse, i. 188.
Doggrel (royal) v. 55.
(phenomenal) v. 288.
(sad) v. 297.
(not worse than usual) viii. 225, 228.
Dogs (clothed in hot-damp countries) iv.
266.
(in Eastern cities) vii. 202.
Don Juan quoted ix. 190.
338
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Dondnmd (rejoicings for the pregnancy of a
Sultana) vii. 324.
Donkey-boy, like our "post-boy," of any
age, vii, 160.
Donning woman's attire in token of defeat,
vii. 1 88.
Doomsday (horrors of, come upon a man)
ii. 232.
Door (behind it the door-keeper's seat) v.
173-
Door -hinges, ii. 214.
Door-keepers (in Egypt mostly Berbers)
vi. 189.
Doors (usually shut with a wooden bolt)
iii. 198.
(pulled up = raised from the lower
hinge-pins) vii. 352.
Double entendre, iii. 234; viii. 153, 251.
Dove and turtle-dove female, ii. 23.
Down (of the cheek) ii. 246.
Dozd o Kazi (Persian book) ii. 55.
Drama (in Turkey and Persia) x. 167.
Dramatic scene (told with charming
naivete*) x. 9.
Draught of air (Zug) feared by Orientals,
ii. 9.
Drawbridges in Coptic convents, ii. 94.
Dream (Speaker in a) iv. 239.
Dreams (true at later night) iii. 258.
(lovers meet in) v. 47.
- (play an important part in the
romances of chivalry) viii. 113.
Dress (scarlet, of a King in anger) iv.
72.
Drinking at dawn, iii. 20.
their death-agony = suffering similar
pain, iii. 315.
(before or after dinner) vii. 132.
(in the dark disliked) ii. 59.
first to show the absence of poison,
i. 88, 295.
bouts (attended in bright dresses) vi.
17$.
Dromedary (see Camel).
(guided by a nose-ring) iii. 120.
" Drop " unknown to the Eastern gallows,
i. 260.
Drop (black, of the heart) iv. 251.
Drowning (a martyr's death) ix. 158.
" Drugging " not a Badawi sentiment,
ii. 122.
Drugs (is this an art of ?) vii. 147.
Drunk with tbe excess of his beauty, iv. 34 ;
vii. 162.
Drunken habits of Central African races,
vii. 357-
Drunken -son (excused by mother, rebuked
by father) viii. 287.
Dubarah (Dubara) = Dubrornik, Ragusa,
ii. 219.
Due demanded leads to imprisonment for
arrears, viii. 170.
Dukhan = smoke (meaning tobacco for the
Chibouk) ix. 156.
Dukhul = going in to the bride, iv. 30.
Dulab = water-wheel j buttery ; cupboard ;
ix. 306.
Dung (used as fuel, etc.) ii. 149.
Dunya (Pr. N.) = world, iii. 7, 319; x. 27.
Dunydzad = world free (?) i. 14.
Durbar of idols, ix. 325.
Durka'ah= lower part of the floor (opposed
to Li wan) iv. 71.
Durrah (vulg. for Zarrah, q.v.)
Dust-storm in tropical lands, i. III.
Duwdmah = whirlpool, ix. 93.
EAR-DROP = penis, ii. 318.
" Early to bed," etc. (modern version of
the same) vii. 217.
East and West (confounded by a beauty-
dazed monk) viii. 279.
Easterns sleep with covered heads, iii. 345.
Eatables (their exchange must be equal)
v. 204.
Eating (together makes friends) iii. 71.
(gives rights of guestship) iv. 214.
(superstitious belief in its power)
iv. 218.
(how it should be done) v. 206.
Eating and drinking (before thinking of the
lover) viii. 260.
Eedgah (see Idgah) ii. 202.
Eftendi (Turkish title = our esquire) iv. 53.
Eggs for testicles, ii. 55.
Eginhardt (belonged to the clerical pro*
fession) viii. 326.
Egypt (derivation of the name) ix. 286.
Egyptian ( = archi-) polisonnerie, iii. 243.
Egyptian vulgarism, iv. 107.
characteristic, iv. 260.
Elephant (derivation of the word) ii. 104.
Elephant-faced, Vetala, vii. 34.
Appendix.
339
Elephant's roll = swaying and graceful
gait, i. 217.
Elephants frightening horses, vii. 61.
Elevation (nothing strange in sudden)
x- 53-
Eli-Fenioun = Polyphemus, vii. 361.
Elliptical expression, vi. 288.
Elliptical style of the Eastern story-steller,
ix. 1 60.
Emancipation (the greater = pardon for
sins or holy death) ii, 105.
Embracing (like the La"m embraceth the
Alif ) iv. 243.
Emerald (white ?) iv. 164.
(mace-head of) vi. 67.
(-rods in lattice windows) vi. 117.
Emirs (of the wild Arabs) = " Phylarchs "
ix. 323.
Emma (hides her lover under her cloak)
ix. 8.
Empire (endureth with infidelity but not
with tyranny) v. 187.
Enemy (his offered hand to be kissed or
cut oft) ii. 142.
" Enfants terribles " in Eastern guise, vi.
211.
Entertainments (names of) viii. 231.
Envying another's wealth wrongs him, vi.
77-
Ephesus (The Matron of) x. 220.
(The Seven Sleepers of) iii. 128.
Epistasis without prostasis, ix. 240.
Ernest (Duke of Bavaria, Romance of) x.
153-
Erotic inferences drawn from parts of the
body, i. 350.
specialists amongst the Ancients, x.
201.
Eternal truths of The Nights, i. 7.
Eunuch best go-between, i. 282.
employed as porter, i. 343.
different kinds of, i. 132.
(if without testes only, highly prized)
ii. 90.
(driving the people out of a lady's
way) iv. 126.
(who have studied the Harim) iv. 228.
(and their wives), v. 46.
(avoid allusion to their misfortune)
v. 47.
Eunuch-in-Chief a most important Jack-
in-Omce, i. 283.
Euphemisms, i. 31 ; iii. 68, 102, 209, 267,
338; vi. 75, 145; vii. 134, 142; viii.
173; ix. 180, 224; x. 4, 27.
Euphemy (announcing death) iv. 61.
(thou shalt die) iv. 90.
(all is well) iv. 138.
(the far one is a Nazarene) iv. 215.
Euphuistic speech, vii. 285 ; ix. 43.
Euthanasia and anaesthetics, ix. 90.
Evacuation (and constipation) iii. 242.
Eve (Ar. Hawwa) v. 139.
(the true seducer) iii. 166.
Evil (befalling thee is from thyself) vi. 138.
Exaggeration part of humour, i. 12.
characteristic of The Nights, iv.
273 ; v. 306.
Expiation of oaths, ii. 186.
Eye (darkening from vine or passion) iii. '
224.
" ' (orbits slit up and down the face of a
hideous Jinn) iii. 235.
(man of the == pupil) iii. 286.
(white = blind) iii. 323.
" (the evil) on children, iv. 37.
(babes of the) iv. 246.
(likened to the letter Sa"d, the brow
to Nun) v. 34.
(for helper) v. 60.
(Thou shalt be in mine = I will keep
thee as though thou wert the apple of
my eye) viii. 90.
" Eye of the needle " (for wicket) ix. 320. 1
Eyebrows joined a great beauty in Arabia,
i. 227.
Eyes (of me = my dears) i. 163.
(hot = full of tears) ii. 99.
(becoming white = blind) ii. 283.
(bandaged before beheading) iv. 145.
-- (blue ones) iv. 129.
(one-eyed men) iv. 194.
(plucking or tearing out of, a Persian
practice) vii. 359.
("sunk" into the head for our
" starting " from it) vii-. 36.
(Babylonian = bewitching) viii. 278.
(no male has ever filled mine = none
hath pleased me) ix. 222.
FABLES proper (oldest part of The Nights)
iii. 114.
Face-veil = "nose-bag" i. 82.
340
A If Laylah wa LaylaTi.
Faces (on the Day of Judgment) iv. 249.
Fadaiscs of a blue stocking, ii. 156.
Faghfur (Mosl. title for the Emperor of
China) vii. 335.
Fa'il = agent, active (Sodomite) v. 156.
Fa-imma'alayhawa-immabiha" = whether
(luck go) against it or (luck go) with it,
viii. 157.
Paintings and trances . ( common in
romances of chivalry) viii. 118.
Fairer to-day than fair of yesterday = ever
increasing in beauty, iii. 331.
Fajirah = harlot (often mere abuse with-
out special meaning) viii. 109.
Fakih = divine, vii. 325.
Fakir = religious mendicant generally,
i- 95 J v. 39-
(the, and his jar of butter ; congeners
of the tale) ix. 40.
Fakru (A1-) fakhri = poverty is my pride
(saying of Mohammed) v. 268.
Fal = omen, v. 136.
Falak (clearing) = breaking forth of light
from darkness, iii. 22.
Falastfn, degraded to " Philister," vii. 101.
Falcon (see Hawk, Bdzi).
Falcon (blinding the quarry) i. 51.
Falling on the back (a fair fall in wrestling)
ii. 92.
(with laughter) iii. 306.
Fals ahmar = a red cent, i. 321.
Familiarity between the great and paupers,
ii. 32-
of girls with black slave-boys, ii. 49.
Family (euphemistically for wife) vi. 75.
Far off one (the, shall die) iv. 90.
Farais (pi. of farfsah) = shoulder-muscles,
vii. 219.
Fardiz = cfrders expressly given in the
Koran, i. 169.
Farajlyah = a long-sleeved robe, i. 210;
321-
Faranik (A1-) = letter-carrier, vii. 340.
Faranj (A1-) = European, i. 296.
Farashah, noun of unity of Farash =
butterfly-moth, vii. 305.
Fard Kalmah = a single word (vulgarism)
viii. 188.
FarJd = unique ; union-pearl, x. 54.
Fariki, adjective of Mayyalarikfn, vii. i.
Farikin for Mayyafarikfn (city in Diyar-
bakr) vi. 107.
Faris = rider, knight, vii. 314.
Farj = slit; Zawi '1-Furuj = slit onei,'
ii. 49,
Farkh Akrab (vulgarism for Ukayrib) = a
young scorpion, iv. 46.
Farkh Samak = fish-chick (for young fish)
viii. 149.
Farrash, a man of general utility, tent- ,
pitcher, etc., vii. 4.
Fars = Persia, v. 26.
Farsakh = parasang, iv. 230.
= three English miles, ii. 114.
Farsalah parcel, viii. 162.
Fart (in return for chafT) v. 99.
(and Badawl " pundonor ") v. 137.
Farting for fear, iii. 118.
Farz = obligatory prayer, vi. 193.
(mentioned after Sunnat because
jingling with Arz) ix. 15.
Fas = city of Fez, vi. 222.
Fass= bezel of a ring, gem cut en cabochon,
contenant for contenu, i. 165 J " 97*
Fast (and its break) v. 201.
(when forbidden) v. 265.
Faswah = susurrus, ix. 291.
Faswan Salh al-Subyan (Pr. N.) = Fizzler,'
Dung of children, ix. II.
Fat and Thin (dispute between) iv. 254.
Fata = a youth ; generous man, etc., i.
67.
Fatalism and Predestination, ix. 45.
Fate (written in the sutures of the skull)
viii. 237.
(and Freewill) ix. 60.
Fath = opening (e.g. of a maidenhead)
viii. 348.
(A1-) bin Khakan (boon companion
of Al-Mutawakkil) ix. 245.
Father of Bitterness = the Devil, vii. 116.
Fatihah (the opening chapter of the Koran)
iv. 36.
(position of the hands in reciting \i\
v. 80.
(recited seven times for greater solem-
nity) v. 184.
(repeated to confirm an agreement)
vi. 217.
(quoted) vii. 286.
(pronounced to make an agreement "
binding) ix. 138.
Fatimah (Pr. N.) = the Weaner, vi. 145.
(daughter of Mohammed) viii. 252.
Appendix.
34*
Fatimite .(Caliphs, their colours green) vi.
86.
Fatin = tempter, seducer, iii. 82.
Fatir = Creator (chapter of the Koran)
vii. 366.
Fatis = carrion, corps creve*, vii. 181.
Faturat = light food for early breakfast;
X. 12.
Fausta and Crispus, vi. 127.
Favours foreshadowing downfall, i. 48.
(not lawful until sanctified by love)
viii. 226.
Fawn (for a graceful youth) viii. 329.
Faylasuf = philosopher, v. 234.
Flaylasufiyah = philosopheress, vii. 145.
Fayliilah = slumbering after sunset, ii. 178.
Fayyaz (A1-) = the overflowing (with bene-
fits) vii. 99
Fazl = grace, exceeding goodness, vii. 220.
Fealty of the Steep, v. 295.
Fearing for the lover first, vii. 256.
Fee delicately offered, vii. 162.
Feet (lack the European development of
sebaceous glands) viii. 43.
(coldness of, a symptom of impotence)
viii. 317.
Fellah = peasant, husbandman, ix. 40.
Fellah chaff, ix. 152.
Female depravity going hand in hand with
perversity of taste, i. 73.
Female (Amazon) Island, viii. 60.
Feminine mind prone to exaggeration, viii.
25.
friend does not hesitate to prescribe
fibs, viii. 37.
- persistency of purpose (confirmed by
" consolations of religion ") viii. 99.
Festival (Ar. 'Id) viii. 142.
Fi al-Khawafik = among the flags, etc.
j v. 61.
Fi al-Kamar = in the moonshine (perhaps
allusion to the Comorin Islands) vii.
259.
Fiat tttjustitia ruat Ccelum, i. 253.
Fida = ransom, self-sacrifice, viii. 36.
Fidaan = instead of, viii. 36.. ,
Fig and sycamore (unclean allusion in)
viii. 269.
Fig = anus, vii. 151.
Fights easily provoked at funerals or wed-
ding processions, vii. 190.
Fikh = theology, vii. 325.
Fillet = the Greek " Stephane," vii;. 209.
Fillets hung on trees to denote an honoured
tomb, vii. 96.
Fine feathers make fine birds, viii. 2OI.
Fingan (for Finjan) = (coffee-) cup, viii.
200.
Finger in mouth (sign of grief) ii. 302.
(run round the inside of a vessel)
viii. 200.
Finger-tips (making marks in the ground)
viii. 72.
Fingers (names of) ix. 160.
Fingers and toes (separated to wash between
them) v. 198.
Finjan = egg-shell cup for coffee, ix. 268.
Firasah = physiognomy, viii. 326.
Firdaus= Paradise, ix. 214.
Firdausi, the Persian Homer, quoted,
iii. 83.
Fire (and sickness cannot cohabit) iii. 59.
(worshippers slandered) iii. 326.
(of Hell, but not shame) v. 138.
(handled without injury, a common
conjuring trick) v. 271.
(there is no blower of = utter desola-
tion) vi. 15.
(forbidden as punishment) vi. 26.
(none might warm himself at their)
vi. 261.
= Hell (home of suicides) ix. 25.
Fire-arms mentioned, vii. 62.
Fire-sticks (Zand, Zandah) v. 52.
Firman =Wazirial order, iv. 6l.
First at the feast and last at the fray, iii. 8r.
First personal pronoun placed first for
respect, i. 237.
Fi sabili 'llahi = on Allah's path (martyr*
dom) iv. 247.
Fish (begins to stink at the head) ii. 168.
(-island) vi. 6.
(the ass-headed) vi. 33.
(great = .Hut, common = Samak) vi.
69.
(changed into apes, true Fellah
"chaff") viii. 147.
(of Paradise, promising acceptance of
prayer) viii. 163.
Fishr = squeeze of the tomb, v. iii.
Fisherman (Arab contrasted with English)
v. 51.
Fist (putting into fist = putting one's self at
another's mercy) iii. 155.
342
A If Laylah wa Laytah.
Fitnah = revolt, seduction, mischief, beauti-
ful girl, aphrodisiac perfume, i. 219 ;
ii. 76.
Fits of religious enthusiasm, ii. 132.
Flatterers (the worst of foes) ii. ii.
Flattery (more telling because proceeding
from the heart) viii. 104.
Flatulence produced by bean-eating, iv.
1 60.
Flea (still an Egyptian plague) vi. 205.
Flirtation impossible in the East, vii. 181.
Floor (sitting upon the, sign of deepest
dejection) vii. 314.
Flowers of speech, ii. 88.
Flying for delight, iii. 26.
Food-tray of Sulayman, vi. 80.
Folk follow their King's faith, ii. 157.
Following one's face = at random, i. 347.
Food (partaken gives rights of protection)
iv. 214.
(superstitious belief in its power)
iv. 218.
Foot (smallness of, sign of blood) iii. 227.
(prehensile powers of the Eastern)
vii. 179.
"Forbid not yourselves the good things
which Allah hath allowed you," v. 216.
" Forcible eateth feeble," ix. 179.
Fore-arm (for proficiency) ix. 306.
Formality (a sign of good breeding) viii.
308.
Formication {accompanying a paralytic
stroke) v. 251.
Formula of praise pronounced to avert the
evil eye, iii. 224.
Fortune makes kneel her camel by some
other one = encamps with a favourite,
iii. 141.
" Forty days " = our "honeymoon, "viii. 47.
Foster-brother (dearer than kith and kin)
iii. 256.
Fountain-bowl (ornamented with mosaic,
etc.) ii. 310.
Fourteen (expressed by seven and seven,
or five and five plus four) viii. 70.
Fox (Ar. Abu Hosayn, Salab) vi. 211.
- (cunning man) iii. 132.
' and jackal (confounded by the Arabic
dialects) x. 123.
Frail (Ar. Farsalah) viii. 162.
Frame (crescent-like by reason of its lean-
ness) viii. 300.
Freedom (granted to a slave for the sake
of reward from Allah) ix. 243.
Freeing slaves for the benefit of the souls
of the departed, iii. 211.
Freewill (and the Koran) iv. 275.
French letters (all about them) vii. 190.
Friday night = our Thursday night, i.
269.
Friday service described, i. 313.
Friend (feminine, does not hesitate to pre-
scribe a fib) viii. 37.
Friends (weeping when they meet after
long parting) iv. 26.
(" damned ill-natured ones ") iv. 137.
Frolics of high-born ladies, i. 328.
Front-teeth wide apart (a beauty amongst
the Egyptians, not the Arabs), viii.
147.
Fruit of two kinds, vi. 277.
Fruits (fresh and dry) v. 314.
Fulan (fulano in Span, and Port.) = a
certain person, iii. 191 ; iv. 278.
Fulk = boat, vi 62.
Full, Fill = Arabian jessamine, viii. 273.
Fumigations to cite Jinnis, etc., vii. 363 ;
ix. 29.
" Fun"= practical jokes of the largest, u
220.
"Fundamentals (Usiil) remembered "as
the business is not forgotten, ii. 1$.
Funduk = Fondaco, viii. 184.
Funeral oration on an Arabian Achilles
(after Hariri) viii. 348.
Funerals (meritorious to accompany) ii.
46.
Furat = Euphrates (derivation of the
name) ix. 17.
Furaydun, see Afridun, ii. 82.
Furkan = Koran, iv. 90.
Fustat = Old Cairo, vi. 87.
Futah = napkin, waistcloth, vii. 34$
Futuh = openings, victories, benefits, iii.
304-
.... (openings, victories) iv. 51
Futur = breakfast, i. 300 ; ix. 307.
Fuzayl bin 'lyaz (Sufi ascetic) ix. 21.
GALACTOPHAGI (use milk always in the
soured form) vi. 201 ; vii. 360.
Gall-bladder and liver allusions, i. 219.
Galland, Antoine (memoir of) x. 96 seqj.
Appendix.
343
"Gallery" (speaking to the) viii. 128.
Gamin (faire le) iii. 304.
Garden (in the Prophet's tomb at Al-
Medinah) vii. 91.
(the Perfumed of the Cheykh Nef-
zaoui) x. 133.
Gardeners touchy on the point of mated
visitors, ii. 22.
Gardens (with rivers flowing underneath,
Koranic phrase) v. 356.
Gate (of war opened) ix. 9.
Gates (two to port towns) iii. 281.
(of Heaven are open) ix. 221.
(shut during Friday devotions from
fear of " Sicilian Vespers ") ix. 259.
Gaw-i-Zamm = the Bull of the Earth, v.
324-
Gazelles' blood red (dark red dye) x. 12.
Gems and their mines, vi. 18.
Genealogy (Arab, begins with Adna"n) v.
100.
Generosity (an Arab's ideal because the
reverse of his nature) ii. 36.
(peculiar style of) vii. 323.
Geography in its bearings on morality, iii.
241.
Geomantic process, iii. 269.
German translations of The Nights, x.
112, seqq.
Ghdbah = thicket, ii. 85 ; iv. 40.
Ghadir = a place where water sinks, low
land, i. 233.
Ghadr cheating, viii. 217.
Ghaliyah (A1-) = older English Algallia,
viii. 220.
Ghalyun = galleon, ix. 138.
Ghamz= winking, signing with the eyes, i.
292.
Ghandur = a gallant, vii. 181.
Gharam (Pr. N.) = eagerness, desire, love-
longing, iii. 172.
Gharamah = avanie, viii. 151.
Gharib = foreigner, i. 95.
Ghashim=" Johnny Raw," ii. 330.
Gha"shiyah = tui, scabbard ; sleeved cloak,
iv. 131.
Ghatrafan (Pr. N.) = proud, petulant, v.
36i.
Ghaut = Saridah, q.v. t v. 223.
Ghawa'si = singing girls, i. 214.
Ghaylulah = slumbering in the morning, ii.
Ghayur= jealous (applies to Time) viii. 67.
Ghaza = Artemisia (a desert shrub) ii. 24 ;
iii. 220 ; vi. 192 ; ix. 27.
Ghazalah = gazelle (a slave-girl's name) ix.
209.
Ghazanfaribn Kamkhil=Lion son of (?)
v. 363- ,
Ghayb (Al-)= secret purpose; future, ix.
314.
Ghazban (N.P.)= an angry, violent man,
ii. 125.
Ghazi= fighter for the faith, ii. 240; viii.
211.
Ghazl al-banat (girls' spinning) = vermicelli,
i.8 3 .
Ghazwah = raid, foray, razzia, ii. 217.
Ghilman = Wuldan, the beautiful youths of
Paradise, i. 211.
(counterpart of the Houris) v. 64.
Ghimd (Ghamad) = scabbard, v. 158.
Ghoonj (Ghunj) = art of motitation i
coition, v. 80.
Ghost (phantom = Tayf) iii. 252.
Ghul = ogre, cannibal, vi. 36.
Ghulah = ogress, i. 55.
Ghula"miyah=girl dressed like a boy to act
cup-bearer, x. 39.
Ghull = iron collar, ix. 333.
Ghuls (whose bellies none may fill but
Allah) ix. 152.
Ghurab al-Bayn = raven of parting, iv. 52 ;
vii. 226.
Ghurab = galleon (grab) viii. 323.
Ghurbah (A1-) Kurbah = " Travel is
Travail," ix. 257.
Gurrah = blaze on a horse's forehead, iii.
118 ; x. 40.
Ghusl = complete ablution, v. 80.
Ghusl al-Sihhah = washing of health, iii.
266.
Ghussah = calamity which chokes, wrath,
ii. 147.
Ghutah = thickly grown lowland, i. 115.
Giants (arriving in Peru, probably the
Caribs of the Brazil) x. 243.
"Gift (from me to" etc. = " I leave it to
you, sir ") vii. 292.
(is for him who is present) ix. 225.
Giraffe, exceedingly timid, vii. 54
unfit for riding, vii. 62.
Girding the Sovereign (found in the hiero-
glyphs), vii. 328.
344
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Girl (of nine plus five = in her prime)
v. 192.
Give a man luck and throw him into the
sea, iii. 341.
Glance compared with a Yamdni sword,
ii. 127.
Gloom = black hair of youth, vii. 277.
Glooms gathering and full moons dawning,
for hands and eyes, vii. 247.
Gloria (in = the Italian term for the vene?
real finish) viii. 329.
Glossarium eroticum, x. 221.
Gnostic absurdities, x. 191.
Goad (of the donkey-boy) iii. 116.
Godiva (an Arabic lady of the wrong sort)
ix. 261.
Going straight to the point preferred to
filer le parfait amour, i. 268.
Gold (makes bold) i. 340.
(different names of, required by
Arabic rhetoric) iv. 97.
(when he looked at it, his life seemed
a light thing to him) vii. 240.
(liquid = Vino d'Oro) x. 40.
Gold -pieces (stuck on the cheeks of
singing-girls, etc.) viii. 275.
Goody-goody preachments, iv. 187.
Gong (Ar. Mudawwarah) iv. 135.
Good news, Inshallah ;= is all right with
thee ? ix. 224.
Gospel of Infancy, ii. 228.
Gossamer (names for) iii. 217.
Gourd (Ar. Hanzal) ix. 165.
Grammatical double entendres, ix. 272.
Grandfather's name given familiarly, ii. 15.
Grapes (bunch of, weighing twenty pounds
no exaggeration) vii. 358.
Grave (levelling slave and sovereign) iii.
323-
" Greatness belongeth to God alone " (used
elliptically) vi. 288.
Green (colour of the Fatimite Caliphs) vi.
86.
Green gown (Anglo-Indice = white ball-
dress with blades of grass behind) viii.
32-
Green garb (distinguishing mark of Al-
Khizr) ix. 324.
Greetings before the world, v. 34.
Grelots lascifs, x. 238.
Grim joke (showing elation of spirits)
vii. 324.
Grimm's "Household Tales" quoted,
vi. 230.
Groom (falling in love with) viii. 345,
Ground (really kissed) vii. 257.
Ground- floor usually let for shops, i. 319.
Guadalajara =Wady al-Khara (of dung)
ix. 10.
" Guebre " introduced by Lord Byron, viii.
8.
Guest-rite, vii. 121.
Gull-fairs, viii. 90. .
Gypsies (their first appearance in Europe)
x.8 9 .
HABAB (Hab) = motes, iv. 257.
Habash = Abyssinia and something more,
v. 395-
Habb = grain of the heart, i. 250.
Habb al 'ubb (a woman's ornament) vii.
205.
Habbaniyah = grain -seller's quarter, i. 269.
Habba-zd ! = good this ! v. 52.
Habib, euphemism for lover, i. 223.
Habibi wa tabibi = my love and leach, ix.
299.
Habitations (names given to them by the
Arabs) viii. 229.
Habl = cord ; cause, viii. 100.
Habzalam (Pr. N. = seed of tyranny;
" Absalom "?) iv. 66.
Hadas = surmise, vii. 302.
Hadba (the bulging bier) iv. 63.
Hadf (A1-), Caliph, v. 93.
Hadid = iron, ii. 310.
Hadis = tradition of the Prophet, iv. 207 ;
v. 201.
Hadis = saying of the Apostle, tradition,
v. 201.
Hafiz (f. Hdfizah) = I. traditionist ; 2. one
who can recite the Koran by rote, vi.
'95-
Hafiz quoted, viii. 120.
Hafsah (Caliph Omar's daughter and wife
of Mohammed) ii. 165.
Hafsites (Dynasty in Mauritania) ii. 165.
Hail (within sight of the Equator) vii. 336.
Hair (should be allowed all to grow or be
shaven off) i. 308.
Hair-dyes (all vegetable matter) i. 326.
(Mohammed on) iv. 194.
Hair-strings (of black silk) iii. 311.
(significance of) iii. 313.
Appendix.
345
Hdjah = a needful thing (for something,
somewhat) vii. 349.
Hajar-coinage, vii. 95.
Hajar Jahannam = hell-stone, lava, basalt,
v. 378.
I lajib = groom, chamberlain, ii. 304*; in.
233-
Hajfn (tall camel) iii. 67.
Hajj = Pilgrimage, v. 202.
Hajj (or Haji, not Hajji) iv. 215.
Hajj al-Akbar and Hajj al-Asgar, ii. 169.
Hajjaj (A1-) bin Yusnf, Governor of Al-
Hijdz and Al-Irak, iv. 3 ; vii. 97.
Hajjam = barber-surgeon, cupper, bleeder,
iv. 112.
Haldm = ruler, not to be confounded with
Hakfm, doctor, etc., vii. 29.
Ha'kim (A1-) bi-amri 'Hah (Caliph) iv. 296.
(not to be confounded with the Fati-
mite) v. 86.
Hakk (A1-) = the Truth (Allah) v. 284.
Hakk = right (Hakki = mine) viii. 335.
Halab = Aleppo, i. 292.
Halabi Shalabi = the Aleppine is a fellow
fine, v. 64.
Haldwah = sweetmeat, iv. 60 ; vii. 205.
HaUwat al-Salamah = sweetmeat for the
returning of a friend, viii. 325.
Halfah-grass (Poa) ii. 18.
Halib = fresh milk, vi. 2OI.
Halimah = the mild, gentle (fem.) ix. 265.
Haling by the hair a reminiscence of " mar-
riage by capture," viii. 40.
Hallaling, Anglo-Indian term for the Mos-
lem rite of killing animals for food,
vii. 9.
Halumma = bring! vii. 117.
Halummu = drew near (plur.) ix. 44.
Halwa = sweetmeats, ii. 47, 212.
Hamadan (town in Persian Mesopotamia)
ix. 212.
Hamah (soul of a murdered man in form
of a bird sprung from his head) iii.
293-
Hamail = baldricks, v. 158.
Hamam = wood-pigeon, v. 49.
(al-Ayk) = culver of the copse, v. 49.
Hamath = Hightown, ii. 178.
Hamid (fem. Hamidah) = praiseworthy,
satisfactory, ix. 76.
Hammal al-Hatabi = one who carries
fuel, vii. 59.
j Hammam (going to the = convalescence)
i. 288.
(ditto, showing that women's courses
are over) i. 286.
(hired for private parties) v. 63.
Hammam-bath (a luxury as well as
necessity)- iii. 19.
Hamzah (uncle of the Prophet) viii. 172.
Hanabat = " hanap " viii. 202.
Hanbal, see Ahmad bin Hanbal, ii. 204.
Hand (left, how used) iv. 129.
(white, symbol of generosity ; black
oi niggardness) iv. 185.
(his for her) iv. 279.
(cut off in penalty for theft) viii. 164.
(cut off for striking a father) viii. 287.
Handfuls (the two) v. 207.
Handkerchief of dismissal, x. 47.
Hands (behind the back, posture of sub-
mission) iii. 218.
(stained in stripes like ring-rows of
a chain armour) iii. 176.
(how held in reciting the Fatihah), v.
80.
(bitten in repentance) v. 191.
(their feel guides the physician) v.
220.
Hanien = pleasant to thee ! after drinking,
ii. 5-
Hanifah, see Abu Hanffah, ii. 207.
Hanut = tavern, booth, etc., v. 142.
Hanzal = gourd, v. 19 ; ix. 165.
Haramf = one who lives on unlawful
gains, ix. 147.
Harbah = javelin, vii. / .
Hard of heart and soft oi" sides, ii. 5.
Hardly he (equivalent for) vii. 333.
Harf = letter, syllable, ii. 307.
Harf al-Jarr = a particle governing the
oblique case j mode of thrusting and
tumbling, ix. 272.
Harim = Harem, used for the inmates,
i. 165.
double entendre = Harem and
Honour) iv. 9.
( = wife) iv. 126.
(hot-bed of Sapphism and Tribadism)
iv. 334-
Hariri (A1-) = the silk-man (poet) v. 158.
(lines quoted from) x. 44.
Harisah, a favourite dish, i. 131.
Harjah = (a man of) any place, v. 27.
346
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Hark, you shall see, ix. 14.
Harrak (ship = Carrack ?), iv. 130.
Harrakat = carracks (also used for cock-
boat) vii. 336.
Harun al-Rashfd (described by Al-Siyuti)
via. 1 60.
(as a poet) ix. 17.
(said to have prayed every day a
hundred bows) ix. 339.
(and Charlemagne) x. 135.
Harut and Marut (sorcerer angels) iii.
217.
Harwalah = pas gymnastique, iii. 121.
Hasa (A1-) = plain of pebbles, west of
Damascus, i. 234.
Hasab = quantity opposed to Nasab =
birth, iv. 171.
Hasab wa nasab = inherited degree and
acquired dignity, iv. 171 ; vii. 279.
Hasan al-Basri (theologian) ii. 165.
Hasan bin Sahl (Wazir of Al-Maamun)
iv. 124.
Hasan ta yd Hasan =bene detto, Benedetto !
i. 251.
Hashimi= descendant of Hashim (Moham-
med's great-grandfather) ix. 24.
cubit = 1 8 inches, v. 371.
vein, ii. 19.
Hashish (intoxicant prepared of hemp)
i. 225 ; iii. 91.
1 (orgie in London) iii. 91.
(said to him = his mind, under its
influence, suggested to him) viii. 155.
Hashshashun = assassins, iii. 91.
Hasib Karim al-Din (Pr. N.) v. 298.
Hasid=an envier, iv, 137.
Hasil, Hasilah = cell, viii. 184, 196.
Hassun (diminutive of Hasan) viii. 81.
Haste ye to salvation, part of the Azan,
i. 224.
Hatif= mysterious voice, i. 142.
Hatim=broken wall (at Meccah) vii. 219.
Hatim (Pr. N.) = black crow, vii. 350.
Hatim al-Asamm (the Deaf), ii. 207.
Hatim of Tayy (proverbial for liberality)
iv. 94.
Hattin (battle of), ix. 19.
Haudaj (Hind. Howda)= camel -litter for
women), viii. 235.
Hauk! Hauk!=heehaw! i. 221.
" Haunted "= inhabited by Jinns, v. 175.
Haurani towns (weird aspect of) vi. 102.
Haurani towns (their survival accounted foi
by some protracted drought) iv. 1 16.
Hawa al-Uzri = platonic love, ii. 304.
Ha war = intensity of black and white in
the eyes, iii. 233.
Kawi= juggler playing tricks with snakes,
iii. 145 ; ix. 56.
Hawiyah (name of a Hell) viii. 346.
Hawk, iii 61, 138.
Hawwa = Eve, v. 139.
Hayat al-Nufus = Life of Souls, iii. 283.
Hayhat, onomatopoetic for lover, i. 76.
Haykal = temple, chapel, v. 192.
Hazar--(the bird of) a thousand (songs)
v. 48.
Hazar Afsaneh (tales from the) ix. 32 ;
x. 72, 93.
Hazir and Badi = townsman and nomad,
iii. 234.
Hazramaut (Hazarmaveth) iv. 118; v.
136.
Hazrat=our mediaeval "presentia vostra,"
viii. 254.
Hazza-hu=he made it (the javelin) quiver,
vii. 45-
"He" for "she" out of delicacy, ii,
179.
Head (must always be kept covered) iii.
275.
Head in the poke = into the noose, i. 179.
Head-kerchief (deshabille"), ii. 328.
Headsman delaying execution, iii. 42.
" Hearer " not " reader " addressed, viii.
3r6.
Heart (black drop in the) iv. 256.
(from one full of wrath = in spite of
himself) v. 68.
Heart-ache (for stomach-ache = mal au
cceur), vi. 194.
Heaven (Ar. Na'im), iv. 143.
Heavens (names of the seven) viii. m.
Hell (Sa'ir) iv. 143.
(cold as well as hot) iv. 253.
Hells (names of the seven and their intended
inhabitants) viii. in.
Hemistichs divided, iii. 166.
Henna-flower (its spermatic odour) vii
250.
Herb (the insane) vi. 36.
Hermaphrodites (Ar. Khunsa) iii. 306.
Heroes and heroines of love-tales are
bonnes fourchettes, vii. 300.
Appendix.
347
Heroine of Eastern romance eats well.
iii. 168.
Heroism of a doubtful character, viii. 27.
Hesperides (apples of the, probably golden
nuggets) viii. 272.
Hetairesis and Sotadism (the heresies of
love) x. 21 5.
Hiba = cords, garters, ii. 236.
Hibdl = ropes, iv. 193.
High-bosomed damsel a favourite with
Arab tale-tellers, i. 84.
Hijdz (Al-)^ Moslem Holy Land, ii. 306.
Hijl = partridge, iii. 138.
"Him "for "her," iii. 78.
Him& = guarded side, demesne, viii. 102,
225.
Himalayan brothers, ii. 21 1 ; 260.
Hind (A1-) al-Aksa = Outer Hind or India,
ix. 116.
Hind bint Asmd and the poet Jarfr, vii. 96.
Hindi = Indian Moslem opposed to Hindu,
v. i.
Hindiba = endive, v. 226.
Hinges (of ancient doors) iii. 41.
Hippie syphilis, x. 90.
Hippopotamus, vi. 33.
Hips (their volume admired) ii. 285.
(leanness of, " anti-pathetic " to
Easterns) iii. 226.
Hirah (Christian city in Mesopotamia)
v. 124.
Hirakl (monastery of) v. 138.
" His" for " her," viii. 50.
Hisham bin Abd al-Malik (Caliph) ii. 170;
vii. 104.
Hishdm ibn Orwah (traditionist) v. 8l.
Hisn al-Fakihat = Fortalice of Fruits,
vii. 75.
Hiss = (sensual) perception, vii. 302.
Hizam = girdle, viii. 160, x. 36.
Hizb = section of the Koran, v. 217.
Hobbling a camel (how done) vii. 119.
Hog, popular term of abuse, i. 188.
Holiness supposed to act as talisman,
ii. 251.
Holy Writ (punned upon) viii. 348.
Homme achete = de bonne famille, iv.
225.
Honayn (scene of one of Mohammed's
battles) v. 66.
Honey (of bees as distinguished from cane
honey) v. 300.
Honey (simile for the delights of the world)
ix. 64.
" Honeymoon" (lasts a week) v. 62.
Honour amongst thieves, ii. 159.
Hoof (of the wild ass) iii. 235.
Horoscopes, etc., i. 213.
Horripilation = goose flesh, iii. 2.
Horse (names of) iii. 72.
Horse-stealing honourable; iii. 73.
Horseplay frequently ending in bastinado
325-
Horses (not taught to leap) ii. 89.
(Arab breeds) v. 246.
Hosh = mean courts at Cairo, v. 170.
Hospitals hated, ii. 70.
Host (enters first as safeguard against guet-
apens) iii. 208.
Hour (of Judgment) v. 235.
Houris, iii. 233.
House (haunted = inhabited by Jinns) v.
175.
(the Holy of Allah = Ka'abah) ix.
178.
House of Peace = Baghdad, i. 139.
" House of Sadness," viii. 64.
House-breaking (four modes of) vi. 247.
Houses of Lamentation in Moslem burial-
grounds, i. 94.
Housewife (looks to the main chance) viii.
144.
Hubb al-Watan = patriotism, ii. 183.
Hubkah = doubling of a woman's waist-
cloth, vii. 1 80.
Hubub (Pr. N.) = awaking j blowing hard,
viii. 209.
Hud (prophet = Heber ?) iv. 118.
Hudhud = hoopoe, iii. 128.
Hudud al-Haram = bounds of the Holy
Places, v. 148.
Hullah = dress, vii. 180.
Hulwan al-miftdh = denier a Dieu, ix.
212.
Huwaynd (A1-) = now drawing near and
now moving away, ix. 250.
Humbly (expressed by "standing on their
heads") viii. 279.
Humility of the lovelorn Princess artfully
contrasted with her previous furiosity
vii. 261.
Humming not a favourite practice with
Moslems, i. 311.
Humours (of Hippocrates) v. 218.
348
A If Laylah wa Lay la k.
Hump-back (graphically described) viii.
297.
Hunchback looked upon with fear and
aversion, i. 258.
Hunger (burns) ii. 144.
Hungry judges, ' hanging j udges, " ii. 198.
Hur, pi. = Houris, iii. 233.
Hiir al- Ayn = with eyes of lively white
and black, i. 90.
Hurdk = tinder, iv. 108.
Hurr = gentleman, i. 254.
= free, noble, independent, opp. to
'Abd = servile, iii. 44.
Hurry is from Hell, i. 264.
(in a newly married couple indecent)
iv. 244.
Huruf al-mutabbakat = the flattened
sounds, iv. 223.
Hut = great fish, vi. 69.
Hydropathic treatment of wounds held
dangerous, v. 200.
Hymeneal blood resembles that of pigeon -
poult, ii. 50.
Hypocrite (Ar. Mundfik) v. 207.
Hysterical Arab temperament, ii. 54, 101,
181.
IsAziYAH sect, vii. 125.
Iblis (diabolus) = Despairer, i. 13 ; iii. 22 ;
ix. 300.
(Cherubim cherished by Allah) v.
319.
(cursed and expelled) v. 320.
Ibn Abba's (Companion) v. 212.
Ibn Abdun al-Andalusi (poet) iii.' 319.
Ibn Abi Anfa, ii. 200.
Ibn al-Kirnas = son of the chase (for
Persian Kurnas = pimp, cuckold ?) viii.
157.
Ibn al-'Ukab (Pr. N.) = Son of the Eagle,
viii. 198.
Ibn Hamdun (transmitter of poetry and
history) ix. 229.
Ibn Haram = son of adultery, abuse not
necessarily reflecting on the parent, i.
231.
Ibn 'Irs = weasel, ix. 114.
Ibn Muljam (murderer of the Caliph Ali)
iii. 319.
Ibn Sma = Avicenna, iii. 34.
Ibrahim bin Adham, ii. 203.
Ibrahim bin al-Mahdl (Pretender to the
Caliphate) iv. 103.
Ibrahim al-Mausili, iv. 108 j ix. 304.
Ibrat = needle graver and 'Ibrat = warning,
a favourite jingle, i. 104.
Ibrik = ewer, and Tisht = basin, used for
washing the hands, i. 241 ; vii. 146.
Ibrisam = raw silk, floss, vii. 352.
Ichneumon (mongoose) iii. 147.
Ichthyological marvels, vi. 33.
'fd = festivals (the two of Al-Islam) viii.
142.
fd al-Kabfr = the Great Festival, i. 28.
Iddat = months of a woman's enforced
celibacy after divorce, iii. 292.
(of widowhood) vi. 256 ; x. 43.
Idgah (place of prayer) ii. 202.
Ifrit, divided into two races like mankind,
i. n.
Ifrftah = she-Ifrit, i. 34.
Ihdak = encompassing, as the white en-
closes the black of the eye, i. 49.
Ihtilaj-namah = Book of palpitations, viii.
25-
Ihtilam = wet dream as a sign of puberty,
vii. 183.
Ihtizdz = shaking with delight, i. 50.
I'itikdf (Al-)= retreat, v. 202.
Ijtila = displaying of the bride on her
wedding night, vii. 198.
Ikalat (A1-) = cancelling, " resiliation," v.
204.
Ikh ! Ikh ! (cry to a camel to make it
kneel down) ii. 139.
Ikhlas (Al-)= Chapter of Unity, iii. 307.
Ikhtiydn al Khutan = Khaitan (?) x. 9.
Ikh wan al-Safa" = Brethren of Purity, iii.
ISO.
Iklil = diadem, now obsolete, i. 270.
Iklim = the seven climates of Ptolemy, i.
233-
Iksah = plait, etc., vii. 150.
Iksir (Al-) = dry drug (from fypov) v. 315 ;
viii. 9.
Ikydn = living gold, viii. 272, 2?S-
Ilah = God, v. 196.
Ilali al-Arsh = the God of the Empyrean,
iii. 106,
Iliad and Pentaur's Epic, vii. 362.
Ill is thy abiding place, iii. 137.
Ill-treatment (a plea for a lawful demand
to be sold) viii. 55.
Appendix.
349
Ilm al-Kdf = K-science for Alchemy, v.
307.
Ilm al-Ruha"n{ = Spiritualism, i. 305.
Images of living beings forbidden, v. 3.
(= statues) v. 223.
Imam = leader, antistes, ii. 203.
(the Seventh = Caliph al-Maamun)
iv. in.
(the fugleman at the prayer-niche)
iv. 227.
Immah = turband, iv. 100.
Imlik (great-grandson of Shem) vi. 264
Improvising still common among the
Badawin, i. 39.
Impudence (intended to be that of a
captive Princess) viii. 295.
Impurity (ceremonial different from dirti-
ness) v. 209.
Imsdk = retention (prolongatio veneris)
v. 76.
Inadvertency of the tale-teller, viii. 141.
In 'ash = raising from the bier (a " pick-
me-up ") v. 67.
Incest (lawful amongst ancient peoples)
i. no.
(repugnant to Moslem taste) ii. 172.
Inconsequence (of the Author of The
Nights) iv. 155.
(characteristic of the Eastern Saga)
vi. 61.
~ (of writer of The Nights) vi. 205.
Incuriousness of the Eastern story-teller
vii. 57.
Index finger (Shdhid) ii. 300.
Indian realm, vii. 336.
Indraja"! = white magic, v. 307.
Infidel should not be killed unless refusing
to become a Moslem or a tributary,
vii. 64.
Infirmity (and infirm letters) iv. 243.
Inheritance, law of, settled by the Koran,
i. 174.
Inkcase (descendant of the wooden palette
with writing reeds) viii. 178.
'Innin = impotence, viii. 317.
Innovation (Ar. Bida'ah) v. 167.
Insane (treatment of the) iii. 256.
Inscriptions (on trays, plates, etc.) iv. 235.
Inshad = conjuring by Allah, i. 1 1 .
= reciting, improvising, ii. 126.
Inshallah (Allah willing) = D.V., iv. 286 ;
viii. 104.
Inshallah bukrah = to-morrow D.V.,
ii. 324-
Insolence and licence of palace-girls,
i. 286.
Insomnia (curious treatment of) iv. 229.
Insula (for peninsula) vi. 57.
Intellect of man stronger than a Jinnf's,
i- 43-
Intention (of prayer, Niyat) v. 163, 196.
Intercession-doctrine disputed amongst
Moslems, ii. 40 ; v. 241.
Internally wounded = sick at heart, i. 5.
Inverted speech (forms of) ii. 265 ; vi. 262 \
viii. 179.
Inwa" = jerking the date-stone, i. 25.
Iradah = Sultan's order, iv. 61.
Irdk = level country beside river banks,
ii. 132.
(etc., used always with the article)
vi. 291.
(for Al-Ir&k in verse) vii. 20.
Iram (the many-columned) iv. 113 ; x. 29.
Irdn = hearse ; Moses' ark, vii. 207.
Irdabb, see Ardabb.
Irishman (the typical, in Arab garb),
viii. 191.
and his " convarter," x. 3.
'Irk = root, also sprig, twig, ix. 251.
Iron (conjures away friends) ii. 316.
Iron padlock (instead of the usual wooden
bolt) iii. 198.
Irony, iii. 291 ; iv. 271 ; viii. 3, 164.
Irreverence (Egyptian) iv. 47.
Isaak (Ishak) of Mosul, iv. 119.
Isba"nfr = Ctesiphon (?), vi- 279.
Isengrim (wolf) iii. 146.
Isfidaj = ceruse, vi. 126.
Isha = the first watch of the night, i. 175.
Isharah = signing, beckoning, vi. 109;
viii. 233.
Ishk 'uzrf (in the sense of platonic love)
vii. 121 ; ix. 250.
Ishmael (place of his sacrifice) iv. 75.
Ishtar-Ashtaroth (her worship not obsolete
in Syria) x. 230.
Iskandar Zu al-Karnayn = Alexander
Matagrobolised) v. 252 ; x. 57.
Iskandariyah = city of Alexander, viii.
289.
Island for land, viii. 317.
Ism al-A'azam = the Most Great Name of
Allah, viii. 133.
350
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Ismid = (Ithmid) stibium (eye-powder) iii.
307.
Jsrafil (blows the last trumpet) v. 310.
Istahi = have some shame, ix. 255.
Istikbell = coming forth to greet, ii. 287.
Istikhdrah = praying for direction by
omens, etc., v. 44.
Istinj = washing the fundament after
stool, iv. 129.
Istinshah = snuffing water through the
nostrils, v. 198.
Istita'ah ( = ableness) ix. 80.
(= freewill) ix. 83.
Ithmid (stibium antimone) = Sp. Althimod,
ii. 103.
"I told you so" (even more common in
East than West) iv. 69.
Italian Translations of The Nights, x. 1 14.
Izdr = sheet worn as veil, i. 163 ; vi. 50..
J (How it came to take the place of Y in
the English Bible) ii. 43.
Ja'afar contrasting strongly with his
master, i. 102.
(mode of his death) iv. 159.
(his suspected heresy) x. 141.
(river or rivulet) iv. 292.
Ja'afar bin Musk al-Hadi (Caliph) v. 93.
Jababirah = tyrants, giants, conquerors,
vii. 84 ; ix. 109, 323.
Jabal = mountain (for mountainous island)
ix. 315.
Jabal al-Ramun = Adam's Peak, vi. 65.
Jabal al-Sakld (Thakla) = mount of the
woman bereft of children, v. 37.
Jabal al-Tarik = Gibraltar, iv. 100.
Jabal Mukattam (sea-cliff upon which
Cairo is built) v. 383.
Jabal Nur, v. 215.
Jabarsa, the city of Japhet, vii. 40, 43.
Jabarti = Moslem Abyssinian, ii. 15.
Jabir Atharat al-Kiram = Repairer of the
slips of the generous, vii. loo.
Jdbir bin Abdallah (disciple of Mohammed)
v. 215.
Jackal's gall (used aphrodisiacally) x. 123.
Jacob's daughters, iv. 14.
Jadfd = new (coin), copper, x. 12.
Jah = high station, dignity, ix. 1 74.
Jahabiz pi. of Jahbaz = acute, intelligent,
ix. 62.
Jahannam = Hell, v. 306, 318.
Jaharkas = Pers. Cheharkas, four persons,
i. 266.
Jalajil = small bells for falcons, viii. 271.
Jalalah = saying" Jallajalalu-hu" = mag-
nified be His Majesty, v. 217.
Jalalikah = Gallicians, ix. 156.
Jaland, not Julned, vii. 16.
Jalldb = slave dealer, iii. 340.
Jallabiyah = gaberdine, v. 265.
Jama'at = community, v. 205.
Jamal (Gamal) = camel, iii. 1 10.
Jami' = cathedral mosque, v. 261.
Jami'an = two cathedrals, v. 66.
Jamil ibn Ma'amar (poet) ii. 102 ; vii. 117.
Jamiz (Jummayz) = sycamore fig, iii. 302.
Jamm = ocean, v. 93.
Janazah = bier with corpse, ii. 46.
Janazir for Zanajfr = chains, ix. 309.
Jannat al-Khuld = the Eternal Garden, ix.
214.
Jannat al-Na'im = The Garden of Delights,
i.e. Heaven, i. 98 ; iii. 19.
Janshah (Pr. N.) = King of Life, v. 329 ;
vii. 82.
Japhet (Ar. Yafis or Yafat) vii. 40.
his sword, vii. 41.
Jar (ridden by witches) viii. 131.
Jarir (poet) v. 148.
Jarm (Ar. Barijah) vi. 24.
Jarrah = jar, viii. 177.
Jars for cooling water, ii. 21.
Jasalik (A1-) = KaoAt/c6s, Primate, ii.
228.
Jauharah (Pr. N. = Jewel) vii. 307.
Jauz al-Hindi = cocoa-nut, vi. 55.
Jauzd = Gemini, x. 38.
Jauzar = Bubal us (Ariel) v. 130.
Javelines, vi. 263.
Jawab-club, vi. 262.
Jawamard for Jawanmard = un giovane, a
brave, vii. 17.
Jawan (Pr. N.) Pers. = a youth, juvenis,
iv. 208.
Jawarf = slave-girls rhyming with dam'a
jari = flowing tears, v. 160.
Jawarnah (Jurnah) = Zara, ii. 219.
Jawashiyah = guards, viii. 330.
Jawasis, pi. of Jasus, = spies (for secret
police) ix. 13.
Jawish = apparitor, sergeant, royal mes-
senger, ii. 49.
Jazirah = Peninsula, Arabia, i. 2 ; vii. 333.
Appendix.
35*
Jazfrsh (Al^ = Mesopotamia, vii. 100.
Jazirat al-Khalidat = Eternal Isles =
Canaries, i. 141.
Jazirat ibn Omar (island and town on the
Tigris) x. 40.
Jesus (bird of) v. 21 1.
(crucified in effigy) v. 238.
(compared with Adam) v. 238.
Jew (prefers dying on the floor, not in bed)
v. 248.
(never your equal, either above or
below you) viii. 153.
- (marrying a Moslemah deserves no
pity) viii. 262.
Jeweller (in Eastern tales generally a rascal)
iii. 1 86.
Jews (adepts in magic), ii. 233.
Jihad = righting for the Faith, iii. 39.
Jild = displaying the bride before the bride-
groom, i. 174.
Jibbab= habergeon, buff- jacket, gown, vii.
156 ; ix. 290.
Jink (A1-) = effeminates, x. 19.
Jinn = the French genie, the Hindu
Rakshasa or Yaksha, i. 10.
Jinnis (names of) iii. 225.
Job (a Syrian) iv. 221.
Joining prayers, iii. 174.
Jokh = broad-cloth, ii. III.
Jokh al-Saklat = rich brocade on broad-
cloth, viii. 202.
Joseph of the Koran very different from him
of Genesis, i. 13.
(and Potiphar's wife) vi. 127.
" Joyance is three things," etc., iv. 254.
Judad (for Judud) pi. of Jadid = new coin,
viii. 121.
Judar (classical Arab name) vi. 213.
(and his brethren, version of a Gotha
MS.) vi. 257.
Judariyah (quarter of Cairo) vi. 254.
Judgment (hour of) v. 235.
Judri = small-pox, i. 256.
Jufun = eyebrows or eyelashes, iv. 260.
Juggling with heaven, viii. 168.
Jugular vein (from to ) iv. 92.
Jujube-sherbet, ii. 317.
Julndr = Pers. Gul-i-anar (pomegranate
flower) vii. 268.
Jum'ah = assembly (Friday) vi. 120, 190.
Jumblat (for Jan-pulad, Life o' Steel, Pr.
N.)vi. 115.
Jummdr = palm-pith and cabbage, viii.
270.
Junayd al-Baghdadi (Sufi ascetic) ix. 21.
Junun = madness, i. 10.
Jurab mi'adat-hu (bag of his belly =
scrotum) ii. 233.
Justice (poetical, not done) iv. 28.
- (poetical in The Nights) vi. 255.
Juzam = (black) leprosy, iv. 51 j v. 294;
viii. 24.
KA'AB AL-AHBAR (of the Scribes, two of
the name) iv. 115.
Ka'abah (Pilgrims clinging to its curtain)
iv. 125.
Ka'ah = ground-floor hall, i. 85.
= fine house, mansion, i. 292.
(= messroom, barracks) vii. 167.
Ka'ak al 'I'd = buns (cake ?) vii. 196.
Kaannahu huwa = as he (was) he, vii. 233.
Ka'b = heel, ankle, metaph. for fortune,
vii. 177.
Kabab (mutton or lamb grilled in small
squares) vi. 225,
Kabasa = he shampooM, ix. 213.
Kabbat = saucers, viii. 12.
Kabbazah = a "holding woman," iv. 127.
Kabul men noted for Sodomy, i. 299.
Kadisfyah (A1-) city in Irak, v. 294.
Kadus pi. Kawadis = pot of a water-
wheel, ix. 218.
Kaf, popularly = Caucasus, i. 72, 133.
Kaff Shurayk = a single "Bunn," ^.,ix.
172.
Kafir = Infidel, Giaur, ii. 292.
Kafr = village (in Egypt and Syria) x. 27,
Kafs (verset of the three-and-twenty) v.
217.
Kafur (Pr. N.) = Camphor, ii. 47.
Kafra = desert place, viii. 337.
Kahanah (A1-) = the craft of a Kahin or
soothsayer, i. 28.
Kahbah = whore, i. 70.
Kahil = whose eyes are kohl'd by nature,
iii. 346.
Kahilat al-Taraf = having the eyelids lined
with kohl, i. 63.
Kahirah = City of Mars (Cairo) iv. 271.
Kahkahah = horse-laughter, i. 350.
Kahld (fern.) = nature-kohl'd, iii. 232.
Kahraman (Pers.) = braves, heroes, iv.
115; vi. 257.
352
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Kahram^nat = nursery governess, i. 231 ;
ix. 221.
Kahtan (sons of) vi. 260.
Kahwah(Kihwah) = strong old wine, ii. 261.
(A1-), used for coffee-house, ix.
r 256.
Kahwajiyah = coffee-makers, v. 169.
Kaid = leader, i. 330.
Ka'ka'at= jangling noise, vii. 21.
Kakili = Sumatran (eagle- wood) x. 57
Kala (island) vi. 47.
Kalak = raft, vii. 342.
Kalam = reed -pen, i. 128.
=leg-cut, ii. 107.
Kalam al-Mubah = the permitted say, i. 29.
Kalam wati = vulgarism, ii. 113.
Kalam-dan = reed-box (ink-case) iv. 167;
v. 239.
Kalandar = mendicant monk, i. 94.
Kalandars (order of) x. 84.
Kalla = prorsus non, iv. 257.
Kalla-ma = it is seldom, v. 150.
Kallim al-Sultan (formula of summoning)
ix. 224.
Kamah= fathom, ii. 56.
Kaman = Kamd (as) -anna (that, since,
because) viii. 197.
Kamar=belt, viii. 156.
Kamar al-Zaman (Pr. N.) = Moon of the
Age, iii. 213 : ix. 247.
Kamarani (A1-) = the two moons for sun
and moon, iii. 300.
Kama-Shastra (Ars Amoris Indica) iii. 93.
Kamat Alfiyyah = straight figure, i. 85 ;
iii. 236.
Kamil wa Basit wa Wdfir = the names of
three popular metres, viii. 91.
Kamin al-Bahrayn = lurking-place of the
two seas, vii. 353.
Kamis = shift, etc., i. 293.
Kammir (Imp.) = brown (the bread) x. 14.
Kanat = subterranean water-course, iii. 141.
Kanjifah=.pack of cards, v. 243.
Kanmakan (Pr. N.) = "was that which
was," ii. 280.
Kantar (quintal) =98 '99 Ibs. avoir, ii. 233.
Kanun (dulcimer, "zither") iii. 211.
Kanun = brasier, v. 272; vi. 5.
Kanz = enchanted treasure, ix. 320.
Kapoteshwara and Kapoteshi, iii. 126.
Kaptan = Capitano, iv. 85; ix. 139.
Kara Gyuz, see Khiyal.
Karah = budget, large bag, ix. 216.
Karaj (town in Persian Irak) vii. 77.
Kara wan = Charadrius cedicnemus, vi. i.
Karbus = saddle-bow, viii. 77.
Kari = Koran-reader, v. 216.
Karib (pi. Kawarib) = dinghy, iv. 168.
Karim = generous (cream of men) ii. 35.
Karizan (Al-) = the two mimosa-gatherers,
vii. 93
Karkadan, etc. = rhinoceros, vi. 21.
Karkar (Career ?), Sea of A1-, vi. 101.
Karkh (A1-), quarter of Baghdad t v. 127 \
ix. 3I3-
Karmut = Silurus Carmoth Niloticus, viii.
185.
Karr'aynan = keep thine eye cool, vii. 229.
Karrat azla 'hu = his ribs felt cold (from
hearty eating) viii. 189.
Karun = Korah of the Bible, v. 225.
(lake) vi. 217.
Karurah = bottle for urine, iv. n.
Kasa 'ah = wooden bowl, porringer, iv. 283.
Kasab (Al-)= acquisitiveness, ix. 80.
Kasabah = rod (measurement), ii. 328.
Kasabat = canes ; bugles, ii. 298.
Kasid = Anglo -Indian Cossid, vii. 340.
Kasidah = ode, elegy, iii. 262.
Kasfdahs (their conventionalism) ix. 250.
Kasr ( = palace, one's house) vi. 240.
( = upper room) ix. 283.
Kasr al-Nuzhat = palace of delights, ii. 22.
Kasr (A1-) al-Mashid = the high-built
castle, vii. 346.
Kasri (A1-) Governor of the two Iraksi
iv. 155-
Kat'a=bit of leather, i. 20.
Kata = sand-grouse, i. 131 ; iv. in.
Kataba (for tattooing) vii. 250.
Katala-k Allah = Allah strike thee dead
(facetiously) iv. 264, 265.
Katf= pinioning, i. 106.
Katha-Sarit-Sagara, poetical version of
the Vrihat-Katha, i. 12 ; x. 160, etc.
Kathir=smuch, " no end," x. 10.
Katfl = the Irish "kill," iv. 139.
Katul (Al-) = the slayer, iii. 72.
Kashmir people (have a bad name in
Eastern tales), vi. 156.
Kassara 'llah Khayrak = Allah increase thy
weal, vi. 233.
Kaukab al-durrl = cluster of pearls, viii
291.
Appendix.
353
Kaukab al- / Sahah = Star of the Morning,
ix. 301.
Kaum = razzia; tribe, vi. 266.
Kaun = being, existence, ix. 63.
Kaus al-Banduk = pellet-bow, i. IO.
.Kausaj = man with a thin, short heard,
cunning, tricksy, iii. 246.
Kausar, lieu commun of poets, i. 241 ; ii.
186 ; iv. 196.
Kawaid (pi. of Kaid = governor), v. 145.
Kawarib, see Karib.
Kawwad = pimp, i. 316; vii. 98.
Kawwas = archer, janissary, vi. 241.
Kayanian, race of Persian kings, i. 75.
Kayf halak = how de doo? vii. 336.
Kayim (professional wrestler, names of
such) ii. 93.
Kayliilah = siesta, i. 51; ii. 178; viii.
191.
Kayrawan = the Greek Cyrene, viii. 317.
Kaysariyah = superior kind of Bazar, i.
266.
Kaysum = yellow camomile, iii. 58.
Kaywdn (Persian for Saturn) ii. 75.
Kayy (Al-) = cautery, the end of medicine-
cure, iii. 59.
Kayyimah = guardian (fern.) viii. 330.
Kaz (Al-) = shears, viii. 9.
Kaza, Kismatand "Providence," vii. 135.
Kazdir = Skr. Kastira (tin) iv. 274 ; vi.
39-
Kdzi = judge in religious matters, i. 21.
Kazi al Kuzat = Chief Justice, ii. 90 ; viii.
245-
Kazi of the army (the great legal \authority
of a country) vi. 131.
Kazib al-Ban = willow- wand, ii. 66.
Kazis (the four of the orthodox schools, ii.
39-
Kerchief (of mercy), i. 343.
(of dismissal) iii. 295.
(shaking and throwing the) iv. 62.
' ' Key " = fee paid on the keys being handed
to a lodger, vii. 212.
Khabal = pus flowing from the damned,
v. 162.
Khadd = cheek, vii. 277.
Khadim = servant, politely applied to a
castrato, i. 23$ ; ix. 237.
Khadiv (not Kedive) ix. 119.
Khafiyah = concealed ; Khainah = perfidy,
vii. 320.
VOL. X,
Khafz al -Jinan = lowering the wing (de-
meaning oneself gently) ix. 33.
Khak-bak = '' hocus pocus," etc., viii. 328.
Khal'a al-'izar = stripping of jaws or side-
beard, vii. 248.
Khalanj = a hard kind of wood, i. 154 ; Ii.
269; viii. 271.
Khalbus = buffoon, ii. 143 ; vii. 195.
Khali'a = worn out; wit, i. 311 ; iv. 229;
vii. 130.
Khalid bin al-Walid, ii. 203.
bin Safwan, ii. 107.
Khalidan (for Khalidat) = the Canaries, iii.
212.
Khali fah = Vicar of Allah; successor of a
Santon, i. 184.
Khalilu 'llah (friend of Allah = Abraham)
ii. 132 ; v. 205.
Khaliyah = bee-hive ; empty (pun on) vi.
246 ; ix. 291.
Khalkinah = copper cauldron, viii. 177.
Khammarah = wine-shop, tavern, '-hotel,"
iv. 79.
Khan = caravanserai, i. 92 ; iii. 14.
Khan al-Masrur, in Cairo, famous in the
1 5th century, i. 265.
Khanakah = Dervishes' convent, vii. 177.
Khanjar = hanger, i. 232 ; iii, 90.
Khara = dung (lowest insult) ii. 56.
(holy merde), ii. 223.
Khara al-Sus = weevil's dung, ix. 10.
Kharaju = they (masc.)- went, forth (vul-
garism for Kharajna) (fem.) viii. 144.
Khassat-hu = she gelded him, iii. 47.
Khatmah = reading or reciting of the whole
Koran, i. 277.
Khatt Sharif = royal hand letter, ii. 39 ; ix.
309-
Khattiyah = writer, &c.,^pear, from Khatt
Hajar, ii. i.
Khatun (Turk, lady) iv. 66 ; vii. 146.
(follows the name) vii. 323, 347.
Khauf (A1-) maksum = fear (cowardice) is
equally apportioned, iii. 173.
Khaukhah = tunnel, viii. 330.
Khayal (Al-) = phantom ghost, v. 348.
Khayr = good news by euphemy, iv. 138.
Khayr wa 'Atiyah = well and in good ease,
ix. 94.
Khaysamah (traditiomst) v. 8l.
Khayt hamayan = threads of vanity (gos-
samer) iii. 217.
354
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Khayza>an = rattan, ii. 66; iv. 255.
Kha"wf (skin of) vi. 66.
Khawwds (Al-) = basket-maker, v. 283.
Khaznah (Khazinah)=i,ooo kfs of ,5
each, ii. 84 ; iii. 278.
Khazra" (al-) = the Green, palace of
Mu'awiyah, vii. 124.
KhilaT (Khalaf) = Salix ^Egyptiaca, ii. 66.
KhiUl = toothpick (emblem of attenuation)
v. 44 ; viii. 258.
Khinsir = little (or middle) ringer, ix. 160.
Khinzir-- hog, i. 108.
Khirad Shah = King of Intelligence, vii.
73-
!Khishkha"nah = cupboard, vii. 199.
Khitab = exordium of a letter, ix. 126.
Khiza"b (dye used by women) iii. 105,
Khizanah (A1-) = treasury, ix. 22.
Khizr (the Green Prophet) iv. 175 ; v. 384.
Khiya"! (Chinese shadows) iv. 193.
Khubz = scones, i. 131.
Khuff= walking shoes, i. 82; iv. 107.
Khuffa"sh = bat (animal) v. 226.
Khuld = fourth heaven (of yellow coral)
viii. 47.
Khumaslyah = five feet high, iv. 191.
Khunsa= flexible, flaccid (hermaphrodite,
also catamite) iii. 306 ; v. 91.
Khurj (Al-) = saddle-bag (las Alforjas) vi.
224.
Khusrau Parwiz and Shirfn, v. 91.
(his wealth) v. 91.
Khusyatdn = testicles, ii. 55.
Khutnah = circumcision, v. 209.
Khutub (Pr. N.) = affairs, misfortunes, viii.
209.
Khwdjah (Howajee) = schoolmaster, man
of letters, &c., vi. 46.
Khwdrazm = land of the Chorasmioi, vi.
US-
Khyas ! Khyas ! onomatopoetic, used in a
sea-spell, i. 228.
Kiblah (turning towards it in mortal
danger) v. 39.
(anything opposite) applied to the
Ka'abah, v. 196.
Kiblatayn = the two Kiblahs (Meccah and
Jerusalem) v. 196.
Kidrah=pot, kettle, lamp-globe, ix. 320.
Kil wa Kdl=it was said and he said (chit-
chat) iv. 207.
Killed = Hibernice "kilt," v. 5; vi. 171.
Killing (of an unfaithful wife commended
by public opinion) ix. 297.
Kimiyd Alchemy (from xy/AOOl = wet drug)
viii. 9.
Kimkhab = (velvet of) "Kimcob," viii.
201 ; ix. 221.
Kind'= veil, vi. 192.
Kinchin lay (Arab form of) iii. IO2.
King (dressing in scarlet when wroth) iv,
72.
(the, and the Virtuous Wife) v. 122*
Kingfisher (Lucian's) vi. 49.
King's barber a man of rank, i. 351.
Kintar = a hundredweight (quintal) vi.
94.
Kir = bellows, viii. 9.
Kirab = wooden swordcase, viii. 267.
Kiram = nobles ; Kurdm = vines, viii.
203.
Kirdmat = prodigy, ii. 237 ; iv. 45.
Kirat (bean of Abrus precatorius) vii. 289,
(weight = 2-3 grains ; length = one
finger-breadth) iii. 239.
Kird = baboon> iv. 297.
Kirsh al-Nukhdl = Guts of bran, viii.
169.
Kisds (A1-) = lex talionis, vii. 170.
Kishk (Kashk) = porridge, iv. 214.
Kisra = the Chosroe, applied to Anushir-
wan) v. 87.
Kiss (without mustachio = breacl without
salt) v. 165.
" Kiss key to Kitty; 1 * i. 323.
" Kiss ground " not to be taken literally
vii. 210.
Kissing (the eyes, a paternal salute) i. 125,
(like a pigeon feeding its young) iii*
275-
(names for) iv. 259.
(en tout bien et en tout honneur) viii.
25-
the ground of obedience (Persian
metaphorical phrase) vii. 354.
Kissis = ecclesiast, ii. 228.
Kit (of the traveller in the East) v. 174.
Kitab al-Kazd = book of law-cases, ix.
no.
Kitab al-Fihrist (and its author) x. 71.
Kitf al-Jamal = camel shoulder-blade*
vii. 167.
Kitfir (Itfir) == Potiphar, vi. 172.
Kiyakh (fourth Coptic month) v. 231.
Appendix.
355
Kiz^n fukka'a = jars for fukka'a (a kind
of beer) vi. 88.
Kneeling in prayer (exclusively Christian)
v. 196.
Knife, "bravest of arms," vii. 123.
Knight-errant of the East, ii. 77.
Knuckle-bone, ii. 314.
Kohl = powdered antimony for the eye-
lids i. 89.
- proverbially used, i. 278.
(-powder keeps the eyes from inflam-
mation) ii. 291.
- (applying of = takhfl) iii.57.
(-eyed = Kahla) f. iii. 232.
(he would steal it off the eye-ball =
he is a very expert thief) iv. 68.
Kohl'd with Ghunj = languour-kohl'd, x.
40.
Kohl-needle in the Kohl -case = res in re,
v. 97.
Kohls (many kinds of) viii. io
Koka Pandit (Hind*i Ars Amandi) iii. 93.
Korah (Karun) v. 225.
Koran quoted : (xx.) i. 2.
(ii. 34 ; xxv. 31 ; xix. 69) i. 13.
(xxvi.) i. 39.
(xxvii.) i. 42.
(v. xx.) i. 119.
(vii. ; xviii.) i. 169.
(i.) i. 208.
(Ivi. 9) i. 211.
(Ix.) i. 220.
(v.) i. 240.
(cviii.) i. 241.
(xvii.) i. 249.
(xxxv<i. 69) i. 251.
(cv.) i. 256.
(ii. ; ix.) i. 257.
(v. ; viii. 17) i. 274.
(iii.) i. 298.
(iii. 128) i. 307,
(xxxviii. 19) ii. 37.
(xciv. ii ; cv. 59) ii. 38.
(iv.) ii. 64, 78.
(iii. 57) ii. 79.
- (vii. ; Ixxvi.; Ixxxvi.) ii. 91.
- (iv. xxii.) ii. 95.
(iii. 89) ii. 132.
- (ix. ; xxxiii.) ii. 140.
* (iv. 88) ii. 146.
(v.) ii. 1 86.
(ii. etc.) ii. 198.
Koran quoted : (ii. 185) ii. 199.
(Ixxiv. I, 8 ; xcvi.) ii. 201.
(xvi. 74 ; ii. 118) ii. 203.
(Ivi. 6 ; xxviii. ; vii. ; ix.) ii. 205.
(xxviii; 22-27) " 207.
(xiv. 34) ii. 225.
(Ixi.) ii. 226.
(ii. ; iii. 141 ) ii. 228.
(x. 25) ii. 239.
(ii. 149 ; xcv.) ii. 242.
(xix. 170) ii. 281.
(xviii.) ii. 293.
(xcvi. 5) ii. 298.
(xxiv.) ii. 312.
(vii. 21.) ii. 316.
(x. 10, 12 ; Ivi. 24, 26 ; Ixxxviit. 17,
20) iii. 19.
(xii. 31) iii. 21.
(cxiii. i) iii, 22.
(ii. 186 ; Ix. i) iii. 39.
(IxxvL) iii. 57.
(ii. 23) iii. 65.
(xxxi. 18 ; Ixvii, 7) iii. 117.
(ii. 191) iii. 123.
(xviii. ; xxii. 20; Ixxxvii.) iii. 128.
(ii. 96, 256) iii. 217.
(ii. ; iii. ; xxxvi. ; Iv. j Ixvii. s cxiii. ;
cxpv.) iii. 222.
(ii. 32 ; xviii. 48) iii. 223.
(xxiii. 2O ; xcv. i) iii. 276.
(xxvi.) iii. 294.
(xi.) iii. 301.
(xxiii. 38) iii.. 302.
(ii. ; Ii. 9 ; xxxv. ii) iii, 304.
(cxii.) iii. 307.
(xxiv. 39) iii. 319.
(xxi.) iii. 323.
(iv. 38) iii. 332.
(xxv. 70) iv. 5.
(xii. 84, 93, 96 ; xvi.) iv. 14.
(opening chapter) iv. 36.
(xiii. 14) iv. 43.
(chapter Ya Sin) iv. 50.
(xvii. 85) iv. 80.
(xlix. Inner Apartments) iv.
(xvi. 112) iv. 102.
(xii. 92) iv. in.
(Ixxxix. 6, 7) iv. 115.
(iii. 178) iv. 156.
(xvi.) iv. 174.
(ii. 224) iv. 175.
(xxi. 38) iv. 244.
356
Alf Laylah wa Lay la h
Koran quoted : (iii. 103 ; vii 105 ; xxvii
12) iv. 249.
. . (cxiv. i) iv. 251.
(ii. 26) iv, 254.
' (ii. 64 ; xxvii.) iv. 256.
(xvii. 62 ; xxx vi. 16) iv. 259.
( . (xli. 46) iv. 275.
! (xxvi. 5, 6) v. 78.
(xxxiii. 48) v. loi.
(xxxviii. 2) v. 102.
j. (vii. 195) v. 143.
* (x. 36) v. 145.
, (xxvi. 165) v. 161.
(xxi. 36) v. 166.
I (vii. 148) v. 191.
| - (iv. 38, 175; ii. 282) v. 155.
'. (xii. 51) v. 159.
f. (iv. 1 60) vi. 194.
'; (viii. 66) v. 203.
(xxxix. 67 ; Ixxviii. 19) v. 207.
- (vii. 63, 71, 83) v. 210.
' (chapt. of The Cow) v. 211.
(xvi. 92 ; xxxix. 54 ; Ixx. 38) v. 21 1.
(ii. 28, 137 ; xii. 18 ; xvi. 100 ; Ii. 57)
v. 212.
(ix. ; xxvi. 30 ; xcvi. I, 2) v. 213.
(ii. 158 ; xvii. no) v. 214.
. (v. 4; xx*. ; Ixxiv ; ex. i) v. 21$.
.. (iv. 124 ; v. 89, 116) v. 216.
. (vii. 154; xi. 50) v. 217.
(xvii. 39) v. 221.
(ii. 216 ; v. 92) v. 223.
(x. 5 ; xxii. 60 ; xxxvi. 40 ; Ixx. 40)
I v. 228.
(xxxi. 34) v. 231.
(xxxvii. 5) v. 233.
' (xxxvi. 37, 38) v. 234.
! (xx. 57 ; xxii. 7) v. 235.
(Ixxxi. 1 8) v. 836.
(iii. ; vii. no) v. 238.
(xii. 10) v. 239.
(xxxvi. 82) v. 240.
(vi. 44) v. 250.
(vii. 52) v. 269.
(xxxvi. 82) v. 286.
, (v. 108) v. 287.
! (xiii. 41) v. 290.
i (xxxviii. 34) v. 310.
(vii.) v. 320.
. i (xxvii.) v. 337.
( (xxvii. 16) v. 355.
(liii. 14) y. 393.
Koran quoted : (xxiv. 39) vi. 93.
(Hi. 21) vi. 95.
(ix. 51 ; xiv. 15) vi. 108.
(xxxviii. n) vi. 115.
(iv. 81) vi. 138.
(iv. 78 ; xli. 28) vi. 144.
(ix. 51) vi. 191.
(iii. 17) vi. 270.
(xiii. 3) vi. 277.
(vi. 103) vi. 282.
(iii. ii ; i. 42; viii. 9) vii. 55.
(cxi.) vii. 59.
(xxxiii.) vii. 92.
(xx. 102) vii. 164.
- (iL 286) vii. 285. N .
(ii. 6 1 ; xxii. 44) vii. 346.
(xxxv.^ vii. 366.
(iii. 90) viii. 51.
(xxxix. 54) viii. 182.
(vi. 99) viii. 267.
(xvi. 69 \. ii. 216 ; v. 92) viii. 277.
(cxiii. I, 3) viii. 285.
(cxi, 184) viii. 291.
(xvii. ; xviii. ; bcix ; Ixxxiv.) viii. 294.
(ix. 33) ix. 15.
(xxvi. 88, 89 ; iv. 140) ix. 16.
(Ivii. 88) ix. 33.
(Ixxxi. 40) ix. 59.
(xii. 28) ix. 119.
(xl. 36 ; Ixvii. 14 ; Ixxiv. 39 ; Ixxviii.
69; Ixxxviii. 17) ix. 1 66.
(cviii. 3) ix. 185.
(xxiv.) ix. 316.
(ex. I) ix. 317.
(xxxvi. 55, 58) ix. 322.
(Ii. 1 8, 19) ix. 324.
(Ixxxix.) x. 29.
Koran (abrogating and abrogated passages)
v. 194.
(most excellent chapter of) v. 211.
(eminent and curious verses of) v. 211.
(first English translation owing to
France) x. 100.
Koss ibn Sa'idah (Bishop of Najrdn) ii. 37.
Kubbad = shaddock, ii. 310 ; viii. 272.
Kubbah (A1-) = alcove, 8. 18.
Kubkab= bath-clogs, iii. 92.
Kuds (A1-), see Bayt al-Mukaddas, ii. 132.
Kufah (A1-) founded by Omar, iv. i.
(revolutionary spirit of) iv. 3.
Kufiyah = coif, etc., ii. 230.
Kufr= rejecting the True Religion, i. 169.
Appendix.
357
Kuhaylat (breed of Arab horses) iii. 346.
Kclayb allows no one to approach his
camp-fire, ii. 77 ; vi. 261.
Kuikasa = colocasia roots, i. 272.
Kullah = gugglet, i. 36.
Kulzum (A1-), old name of Suez-town,
vii. 348.
Kumasra (Kummasra) = pear, vii. 357.
Kumayt (A1-) = bay horse with black
points, vii. 128.
Kumkum (cucurbite, gourd-shaped vessel)
i. 42 ; iv. 68, 178.
Kumm = sleeve (used as a bag) iv. 107 ;
viii. 267.
Kun = Be (the creative word) iii. 317.
Kunafah = vermicelli cake, x. i.
Kundur = frankincense, ix. 7.
Kunfuz = hedgehog, ii. 88.
Kunsul = Consul, iv. 84.
Kunyat = patro- or matro-nymic, iv. 287.
Kur = furnace, viii. 9.
= forge where children are ham-
mered out (?) viii. 46.
Kurbaj = cravache, viii. 17.
Kurban = sacrifice, viii. 16.
Kurds (Xenophon's and Strabo's Carduchi)
iii. 100.
Kurdus = body of horse, ix. ill.
Kurra = teachers of the correct pronuncia-
tion of the Koran, i. 113.
Kurrah = ball in the Polo game, ii. 329.
Kurrat al-Ayn = coolness of the eye, i. 72 ;
v. 145.
Kurs (has taken the place of Iklfl) i. 270.
Kursan (A1-) = "Corsaro, a runner,
viii. 323.
Kursi (choir, throne) = desk or stool for
the Koran, i. 167 ; vii. 311.
Kursi al-wiladah = birth-stool, ii. 80.
Kiis (town in Upper Egypt) iv. 276.
Kus(s) = vulva, viii. 93.
Kush'arfrah = horripilation, symptom of
great joy? i. 251.
Kussd'a = curling cucumber, iv. 98.
Kusiif = eclipse of the moon, viii. 291.
Kut al-Kulub, viii. 158.
Kutd'ah = a bit cut off, etc., vi. 272*
Kutayt = little tom-cat, ii. 39.
Kutb = axle, pole ; hence prince, doyen
in sainthood, v. 384.
Kuthayyir (poet) ii. 102.
Kutr Misr = tract of Egypt, ix. 286.
Kutub al-Bah = Books of Lust, x. 201.
Kuzfa Fakan (Pr. N.) = "it was decreed
by destiny, so it came to pass," ii. 175.
LA ADAMNAK = Heaven deprive us not of
thee, i. 268.
La Bas (bi-zdlik = there is no harm in
that) iv. 164.
(in Marocco) = " I am pretty well,"
viii. 274.
( = no harm is [yet] done) ix. 102.
La" haula, etc. = there is no Majesty, etc.,
1.65.
La ilaha ilia 'llah = there is no God but
the God (tahlil) ii. 336.
Ld kabbata hamiyah = no burning plague,
x. 14.
La" rajma ghaybin = without stone-throw-
ing of secrecy, ix. I.
La rayba ff-hi, ii. 210.
La" tankati'i = sever not thyself from us,
ix. 245.
La tuwahishna=do not make me desolate,
i. 62.
La tuwkhiznd = donot chastise us = excuse
us, i. 164.
La'alla = haply, belike; forsure, certainly,
ix. 49.
La' ab= (sword-) play, vii. 44.
La'abah=.a plaything, a puppet, a lay
figure, i. 245.
La'al = ruby, v. 342.
La'an = curse, v. 250; vi. 178.
Ldb (Old Pers. for Sun) vii. 296.
Laban ( = milk artificially soured) vi. 201.
(= sweet milk) vji. 360.
halib = fresh milk, vi. 201.
Labbayka ( = Here am I, called Talbiyah)
i. 226 ; ii. 227.
(pronounced on sighting Meccah)
v. 203.
Labbis al-Biisah tabkf 'Arusah = clothe the
reed and it will become a bride, viii. 2OI.
Labtayt (Pr. N.= Toledo) iv. 99.
Lactation (term of) v. 299.
(no cohabitation during) v. 299.
Ladies of the family (waiting upon the
guests) vi. 237.
Lihik = the Overtaker, viii. 341.
Lait = one acting like- the tribe of Lot,
sodomite, ix. 253.
358
AIJ Laylah wa Laylah.
I,ajlaj = rolling anything in the mouth;
stammering, ix. 322
Ldjuward, see Lazuward, iii. 33.
Lake Kariin, vi. 217.
Lakit = foetus, foundling, contemptible fel-
low, vii. 145.
Lamf (A1-) = the 1-shaped, forked (os
hyoides) v. 219.
Lamiyat = poem rhyming in L, iii. 143.
Lane quoted : i. i, 36, 42, 74, 77, 83, 93,
100, 104, 131, 147, 163, 201, 210, 213,
215, 217, 223, 245, 259, 269, 270, 291,
311, 314, 317, 340 ; ii. 5, 38, 41, 46,
56, 77, 80, 89, 93, 131, 167, 206, 215,
243 292, 304, 314, 315, 328, 332 ;
iii. 20, 30,44, 112, 114, 116, 117, 141,
162, 176, l8l, 191, 211, 212, 222, 259,
322, 33', 34i ; iv. 2, 12, 46, 55, 63,
66, 82, 95, 96, 107, 1 10, 124, 136, 144,
152, 160, 164, 171, 181, 187, 189, 191,
196, 199, 200, 202, 204, 205, 209, 212,
214, 219, 222, 228, 231, 233, 244, 254,
268, 271, 273, 279, 287, 297; V. 2,
32, 33t 37, 44, 4S> 64, 104, 112, 120,
121, 144, 145, 189, 201, 231, 259, 273,
286, 298 ; vi. i, 8, 11, 17, 33, 49, 57,
61, 66, 80, 180, 191, 196, 214, 216,
247,257,282; vii. 95, 96, in, 113,
118, 119, 123, 124, 135, 136, 139, 144,
172, 182, 195, 196, 209, 250, 269, 275,
280, 282, 303, 306, 309, 314, 322, 328,
346, 354, 357 J viii. 14, 18, 21, 27, 35,
53, 62, 68, 77, 80, 84, 94, 97, 102,
122, 124, 128, 131, 147, 148, 155, 156,
166, 177, 179 180 187, 205, 264, 285,
298, 337 ; ix. 32, 33, 146, 1 68, 170,
l82, 221, 222, 224, 226, 229, 246, 291,
304, 307 ; x. i, n, 12, 19, 34, 36, 50,
52, 70, 115.
Language of signs, ii. 304.
Languages (study of, should be assisted by
ear and tongue) x. 96,
Largesse (better than the mace) viii. 163.
Lasm (Lathm) = kissing the lower face,
iv. 259.
Lasting calamity = furious knight, vi. 290.
Latter night = hours between the last sleep
and dawn, i. 24.
Laughing in one's face not meant for an
affront, i. 320.
Laughter rare and sign of a troubled mind,
i. 248.
Lauh = tablet used as slate, v. 73.
Lauh al-Mahfuz = the Preserved Tablet (of
Allah's decrees) v. 322.
Laulka=but for thee, for thy sake, v. 306.
Laun = colour, hue (for dish) vii. 185.
Lawandiyah. (Al-) = Levantines, ix. 275.
Layali = nights, future, fate, iii. 318.
Layl (night) frequently = the interval be-
tween sunset and sunset, ii. 260.
Layla (female Pr. N.) iii. 135.
wa Majnun (love poem) iii. 183.
Laylat al-Kabilah = to-night, ix. 271.
Laylat al-Kadr = Night of Power, vi. 180.
Laylat al-Wafa = the night of completion
of the Nile-flood, i. 291.
Laylat ams = yesternight, vii. 186.
Laza (Hell for Jews) ii. 140 ; viii. 346.
Lazuward = lapis lazuli, azure, iii. 33 ; ix.
190.
Leaving one standing (pour se faire valoir)
vi. 252.
Leg-cut (severs horse's leg) ii. 220.
Legs (making mute the anklets) vii. 131.
(shall be bared on a certain day) ix.
253-
Lentils (cheapest and poorest food in
Egypt) x- 3'-
Leprosy (white = bahak or baras, black =
juzam) v. 294.
(thickens voice) iv. 50.
(shows first at the wrist) iv. 51.
Lesbianism, x. 209.
Letter (reading not always understanding)
ii. 112.
(model specimen) iv. 57.
(toren tears a kingdom) vii. 2.
Letters and letter-writing, iii. 24.
(French) vii. 190.
Li-ajal = for the sake of, low Egyptian, il,
"3-
Libdah (skull-cap of felt) sign of a religious
mendicant, iii. 62.
Liberality (men proverbial for their) iv. 96.
(after poverty) viii. 182.
Libraries (large ones known by the Arabs)
viii. 79.
(much appreciated by the Arabs) x.
175-
Lice bred by perspiration, ii. 69.
Lie (only degrading if told for fear of
telling the truth) ix. 87.
(simulating truth) ix. 223.,
Appendix.
359
Lieu d'aisance (in Eastern crafts) ix. 332.
Lff = fibre of palm-fronds, v. 45 ; vi. 50.
Life (by the, of thy youth) oath of women,
iv. 49.
(cheap in hot countries) iv. 275.
Life-breath in the nostrils = heart in the
mouth, i. 42.
Light (of salvation shining from the face
of Prophets) ix. 324.
Light -worshippers (are liars) iv. 252.
Lijam shadid = sharp bit, ix. 70.
Like mother, like daughter, i. 299.
Li 'llahi darru-ka = the Lord has been
copious to thee, iv. 20.
Lion (beguiled by flattery) v. 40.
(as Sultan of the beasts jealous of a
man's power) x. 34.
at home, lamb abroad, ii. 183.
Lisam (mouth-band for men, chin- veil =
Tasmak for women, ii. 31, 230; iii. 283.
Lisan al-Hamal = lamb's tongue (plan-
tain) viii. 273.
Listening not held dishonourable, vii. 279.
Litholatry of the old Arabs, vi. 269.
Liver = seat of passion, i. 27.
(for heart) iii. 240.
(and spleen held to be congealed
blood) v* 220.
Living (the, who dieth not) vi. 67.
Liwa = Arab Tempe, vii. 115.
Liwan = Al-Aywan, iv. 71 ; vii. 347.
Liyyah = fat sheep (calves like tails of)
viii. 291.
Lizzat al-Nisa (erotic poem) iii. 93.
Loathing of prohibition, ix. 279.
Locks (Mohammed's) ii. 230.
Logah = Arabic language, also a vocabulary,
dictionary, i. 251.
Logogriphs, viii. 93.
Lokman (three of the name) x. 118.
Loosening the hair an immodesty in
women sanctioned only by a great
calamity, i. 314.
Lord for Lady = she, v. 60.
(of the East and West) v. 228.
Lost on Allah's way = martyr, ii. 330.
Lot (this is ours = I have been lucky and
will share with you) ix. 328.
Lot, see Luti.
Lote-tree (beyond which there is no
passing) v. 393.
Lots = games of chance, v. 223.
Love (pure, becomes prophetical) iii. 6.
(the ear conceiveth it before the eye)
iii. 9.
(ten stages of) iii. 36.
(martyrs of) iii. 21 1.
(platonic, see vol. ii. 104) iii. 232.
(ousting affection) iii. 240.
(martyrs of) iv. 205.
(clairvoyance) iv. 238.
(excess of) iv. 238.
(strange chances of) v. 71.
(deaths from) v. 134.
(made public disgraces) v. 151.
(man and woman with regard to)
vii. 299.
(called upon to torment the lover still
more) viii. 75.
(cruelty of) x. 26.
Love-children (exceedingly rare amongst
Moslems) viii. 115.
Love-liesse (never lacked between folk,
i.e. people of different conditions) viii.
212.
Lovers in Laza (hell) as well as in Na'im
(heaven) iii. 58.
(parting of, a stock-topic in poetry),
iii. 58.
(buried together) v. 71.
(model ones, becoming an ordinary
married couple) v. 92.
(becoming Moslems secure the good
will of the audience) viii. 224.
Loving folk = something more than bene-
volence, ii. 2.
Luk-Gate (proverb referring to) iv. 259.
Lukmah = mouthful, i. 261 ; vii. 367.
Lukman (^Esop of the Arabs) ii. 199.
Lukmdn (three of the name) iii. 264; x.
118.
Lullilooing (Tahlil Zagriitah, Kil) ii. 80.
Luliiah = union pearl ; wild cow, ix. 218.
Lumd = dark hue of the inner lips, iv.
251.
Lupin-flour used as soap, ii. 136.
Luss = thief, robber, ix. 106.
Lute (personification of) viii. 281.
Lutf (servile name = elegance, delicacy)
iv. 232.
Luti (of the people of Lot = Sodomite) v.
161.
Lying (until one's self believes the lie to be
truth) x. 14.
A If Lay la k wa Laylah.
Lynch-Iaw (the modern form of Jus talionisj
v. 103.
Lymph (alluding to the "Neptunist"
doctrine) ix. 77.
Lynx (trained for hunting) ii. 293.
MA AL-KHALAF, see Khilaf, ii. 136.
Ma al-Malahah = water (brilliancy) of
beauty, viii. 47.
M4 Ddhiyatak = what is thy misfortune t
(for " what ill business is this?) ix. 137.
Ma kaharani ahadun = none vexeth (or
has overcome) me, ix. 156.
Ma'abfd (singer and composer) v. 147.
Maamun (Al ), son and successor of Harun
al-Rashfd, i. 185 ; iv. 109.
Ma'an bin Zaidah, iii. 236 ; iv. 96.
Ma'ani-ha (her meanings = her inner
woman) iv. 146.
Ma'aruf = kindness, favour, x. I.
Mace (Ar. Dabbus) vi. 249.
(a dangerous weapon) vii. 24.
MacNaghten's Edition, x. 81.
Madfa = cannon, showing modern date, i.
223.
Madinat al-Nabf (Al-Medfnah) = City of
the Prophet, iv. 114.
Madness (there is a pleasure in) iv. 204.
Mafarik (A1-) = partings of the hair, vii.
222.
Maf ul = patient, passive (Catamite) v. 156.
Magazine (as one wherein wheat is heaped
up = unmarried) vii. 372.
Magharibah (pi. of Maghribi = Western
man, Moor, "Maurus") vi. 220.
Maghdad (for Baghdad, as Makkah and
Bakkah) viii. 51.
Maghrib (al-Aksa) = the land of thb
setting sun, ix. 50.
Magic studied by Jews, ii. 234.
Magic Horse (history of the fable) v. 2.
Magnet Mountains, fable probably based
on the currents, i. 140.
Maha = wild cattle, vii. 280.
Mahall = (a man's) quarters, viii. 229.
Mahall al-Zauk = seat of taste, sensorium,
ix. 83.
Maharaj = great Rajah, vi. 8, 67.
Mahaya = M al-Hayat = aqua vitse, vii.
I3 2 -
Mahdi (A1-) Caliph, vii. 136; ix. 334.
Mahmil (mahmal) = litter, ii. 131,
Mahmudah = praiseworthy ; confection of
aloes, viii. 35.
Mahr = marriage dowry, settlement, vii.
126; ix. 32.
Mahrfyah (Mehari) = blood-dromedary,
iii. 277.
Maid and Magpie, vi. 182.
Mail-coat and habergeon, simile for a
glittering stream, i. 291.
Ma' in, Ma'un = smitten with the evil
eye, i. 123.
Maintenance (of a divorced woman during
Iddah) ix. 32.
Majajah =*saliva, vii. 28.
Ma'janah (a place for making bricks) ii. 17.
Majlis = sitting (to a woman) iii. 92.
Majnun = madman, i. 10 ; iii. 72.
Majzub = drawn, attracted (Sufi term for
ecstatic) v. 57.
Maka'ad = sitting-room, iv. 78.
Makhaddah = pillow, ii. 70.
Makkamah = Kazi's' Court, i. 21.
Making water, i. 259.
Mai = Badawi money, flocks, "fee," vi.
267.
Malak = level ground, viii. 285.
Malak or Malik = Seraph or Sovran, i.
253-
Malakay bayti M-rahah = slabs of the
jakes, x. 51.
" Making men " (and women) x. 199.
Malakut (Al) = the world of spirits (Sufi
term) viii. 145.
Male children (as much prized as riches)
ix. 316.
Malihah (al-) = salt-girl ; beautiful, i. 340.
Malik (used as " king " in our story-books)
ii. i.
bin Dindr (theologian) ii. 204 ; vii.
261.
(taken as title) iii. 51,
(traditionist) v. 81.
al-Khuzd'i (intendant of the palace)
v. 95.
(A1-) al-Nasir = the conquering King,
iv. 271 ; vii. 142 ; ix. 19.
Malik (door-keeper of Hell) iii. 20.
Malik Kawf-= very handsome (Cairene
vulgarism) vii. 150.
Malikhulfya (A1-) = melancholy, v. 221.
Malocchio or Gettatura (evil) ix. 247.
Mamluk (white slave trained to arms) i. 8l.
Appendix.
361
Mamarr al-Tujjar = passing place of the
traders, viii. 155.
Mamrak = sky-window, etc. viii. 156.
Man (extract of despicable water) iii. 1 6.
(is fire, woman tinder) iii. 59.
(shown to disadvantage in beast-
stories) iii. 115.
(his destiny written on his skull) iii.
123.
(pre-eminence above women; iii. 332.
(handsomer than woman) iv. 15.
(his ad vantages above woman) v. 155.
(one's evidence = two women's) v.
155-
(one's portion = two women's v. 155.
(created of congealed blood) v. 213.
(one worthier in Allah's sight than a
thousand Jinn) viii. 5, 44.
(created after God's likeness, rather
a Jewish-Christian than a Moslem doc-
trine) ix. 79.
(I am a man of them = never mind
my name) ix. 238.
(of the people of Allah = a Religious)
ix. 51.
(his wrong is from the tongue) ix. 309.
Manaf (idol) v. 129.
Manar al-Sana = Place of Light, viii. 104.
Manashif (pi. of Minshafah, q.v.} viii. 92.
Manazil (stations of the Moon) v. 228.
Mandil kerchief, ii. 301.
Maniyat = death ; muniyat = desire, iii.
291.
Manjanikat (A1-) = Mangonels, vii. 335.
Mankind (creates its analogues in all the
elements) iv. 121.
(superior to Jinn) ix. 339.
Mann = from two to six pounds, vi. 80.
Man's creation, ii. 91.
Mansur (Pr. N.) = triumphant, ix. 310.
Mansur (A1-) Calipli, ii. 142, 153, 210.
- bin Ammar, ii. 204.
al-Nimri (poet) iv. 179.
Mansur wa Munazzam = oratio soluta et
ligata, viii. 226.
Manumission of slaves, ii. 55.
Manzil (Makam) = (a lady's) lodgings, viii.
229.
Maragha = he rubbed his face, ii. 60.
Marba' = summer quarters, iii. 79.
Marddn-i-Ghayb (Himalayan brothers) ii.
211.
Mares (impregnated by the wind) vi. 9.
Marhub = terrible, viii. 180.
Marhum (f. Marhiimah) = late lamented,
ii. 129, 196.
Marid = contumacious, i. 41.
Mariduna = rebels (against Allah) vii.
39-
Ma'rifah = article, ix. 272.
Maristan (from Pers. Bimaristan = place of
sickness) i. 288.
Marjan = Coral-branch (slave name) iii.
169.
Marjanah (Pr. N.) = Coral-branch, ii. 100.
(Morgante, Urganda, Morgain) vii,
373-
Markub = shoe, vi. 207.
Marmar = marble, i. 295 ; vi. 95.
Marocco (tenanted by three Moslem races)
X. 222.
Marriage (not valid without receipt of set-
tlement) i. 276.
(if consummated demands Ghusl) iii.
286.
(by capture) viii. 40.
(one of the institutions of the Apostles)
viii. 137.
Marriage-sheet inspected, ii. 50.
Married men profit nothing, iii. 2.
never once (emphasises poverty) viii .
145-
Marseille (probably alluded to) viii. 315.
Marsin = myrtle, vii. 290.
Martyrdom, iv 24.7.
(of the drowned) ix. 340.
Martyrs (still alive) ii. 242.
(of love) iii. 211 ; iv. 205.
Marwah (ground-wave in Meccah) v. 203.
Marwazi = of Marw (Margiana) iii. 222.
Marwan bin al-Hakam (Governor of al-
Medinah) vii. 125.
Maryam (a Christian name), viii. 306.
Maryam al-Husn = place of the White doe
(Rim) of beauty, viii. 321.
Marz-ban = Warden of the Marches, Mar-
grave, iii. 256.
Masculine for feminine, vii. 140.
Ma shaa 'llah (as Allah willeth)= well done,
iii. 92.
Mashallah = the English " Cock's 'ill "
with a difference, x. 52.
Mashhad = head and foot stone of a grave,
* S3-
362
A If Laylah wa Laylak.
Masha'ili = cresset-bearer, for public crier,
hangman, i. 259 ; iv. 6l.
Masihi follower of the Messiah, i. 258.
Maskharah = buffoon, ii. 143 ; vii. 195.
Maskhut = transformed (mostly in some-
thing hideous), a statue, i. 165.
Maslamah bin Abd al- Malik, ii. 167.
Massacre (the grand moyen of Eastern
state-craft, ix. no.
Massage, i. 172.
Mastabah^ bench of masonry, vi. 26.
Masukah = stick used for driving cattle,
viii. 147.
Mataf= place of Tawaf, q.v.
Matarik (pi. of mitrak) = targes, ix. 225.
Matmurah = underground cell, ii. 39.
Matr (pi. amtar) = large vessel of leather or
wood, iii. 295.
Matta'aka 'llah = Allah permit thee to
enjoy, ix. 125.
Matting (of Sind, famous) v. 146.
Maukab (Al-) = Procession-day, iv. 287.
Maulid = nativity, ix. 289.
Maund, see Mann, vi. 80.
Maurid = desert well and road to such, iii.
33-
Mausil (Mosul) alluding to the junction of
Assyria and Babylonia, i. 82.
Mausul (Al-) = the conjoined (for relative
pronoun or particle) ix. 272.
Maut = death, vii. 147.
Mauz=Musa (Banana) iv. 201.
Mawwal (for Mawaliyah) short poem,
viii. 94 ; 151.
" May thy life be prolonged," iv. 62.
Mayazib (pi. of miza"b) = gargoyles, vii.
I 3 6.
Maydan = parade-ground, i. 46.
Maydan al-Fil = race-course of the Ele-
phant, vii. 326.
Maymunah (proverbial noun now forgotten)
i. 57-
Maysir = game of arrows, v. 223.
Maysum (Badawi wife of Caliph Mu'awi-
yah) ii. 160.
Maysum's song, vii. 97.
Mayyafarikin, ancient capital of Diydr
Bakr, vii. I.
Meat rarely coloured in modern days, i.
310.
Medicine (rules and verses bearing on
domestic) v. 222.
Melancholy (chronic under the brightest
skies) iv. 239.
Men (is there a famine of?) = are men so
few? iv. 295.
Meniver = menu vair (Mus lemmus) ix.
321.
Menses (coition during, and leprosy) viii.
34-
Menstruous discharge (made use of as a
poison) ix. 101.
Merchant (worth a thousand) x. 8.
Merchants and shopkeepers carrying swords,
i- 54-
Mercury Aly (his story sequel to that of
Dalilah) vii. 172.
Mercy (quality of the noble Arab) iii. 88.
Mer-folk(refinedwith the Greeks, grotesques
with other nations) ix. 169.
Messiah (made a liar by the Miscreants)
ix. 15.
Metamorphosis (terms of) vii. 294.
Metempsychosis and sharpers' tricks, v. 84.
Metrical portion of the Nights (threefold
distribution of) x. 67.
Miao or Mau = cat, i. 220.
Mihrab and Minaret (symbols of Venus and!
Priapus ?) i. 166.
Mihraj = Maharaj, q.v. ; vi. 67.
Mikashshah = broom, iv. 208.
Mihrgan = Sun-fete, degraded into
Michaelmas, v. i.
Mikbas (pot of lighted charcoal) iv. 246.
Mikhaddah = cheek-pillow, viii. 273.
Mikmarah = cover for a brasier, extin*
guisher, v. 120.
Miknas = town Mequinez, vi. 223.
Miknasah = broom, vi. 158.
Mi'lakah = spoon, ix. 141.
Milh = salt, i. 340.
Military and Police sneered at, iv. 270.
Milk (white as, opposed to black as mud)
iv. 140.
(soured) v. 225.
(Ar. Laban, Halib) vi. 201.
(by nomades always used in the soured
form) vi. 201.
Milk-drinking races prefer the soured milk
to the sweet, vii. 360.
Million (no Arabic word for, expressed by
a thousand thousand) vi. 98.
Mim-like mouth, iv. 249.
Mims (verset of the sixteen) v 217.
Appendix.
363
Mina (and the stoning of the Devil) v.
203.
Minaret (simile for a fair young girl) iii. 69.
Mind (one by vinegar, another by wine =
each goes its own way) iv. 72.
" Mine " (various idioms for expressing it)
viii. 335-
Mininah = biscuit, iv. 86.
Minshafah (pi. Manashif) = drying towel,
viii. 92.
Mikra'ah = palm-rod, i. 99.
Miracle (minor, known to Spiritualism) v.
144.
Miracles (performed by Saints' tombs) i.
241.
' (disclaimed by Mohammed but gene-
rally believed in) iii. 346.
(growing apace in the East) ix. 336
Mirage = Sarab, iii 319.
Mirbad (A1-) market-place at Bassorah,
vii. 130.
Mirza 'Abdullah-i-Hichmakani = Master
Abdullah of Nowhere, v. 27.
'" Mis "-conformation (prized by women)
vi. 156.
Mishammah = an old gunny-bag, ix. 171.
Miskal = 71-72 grams in gold, used for
dinar, i. 126 ; ix. 262.
Misr, Masr = Capital (applied to Memphis,
Fostat and Cairo) vii. 172.
(for Egypt) vii. 370.
Misra (twelfth Coptic month) v. 232.
Misrayn (A1-) = Basrah and Kufah,
vii. 371.
Mitrahinna (Minat-ro-hinnu) = port at
mouth of canal, ii. 237.
Mizr, Mizar = beer, i. 72.
Modesty (behind a curtain) v. 162.
Mohammed (best of the first and last) ii. II.
(Mustafa) ii. 40.
(his letter to the Mukaukis) ii. 79.
- (Periclytus and Paracletus) ii. 226.
(abhors the shaveling) ii. 248.
(bearer of glad and bad tidings)
ii. 257.
(Congratulator and Commiserator)
ii. 260.
(Best of Mankind), ii. 263.
(" born with Kohl'd eyes") iii. 232.
(his uncles) iv 22.
(traditional saying of) iv. 35.
(cleanses the Ka'abah of idols) iv. 80,
Mohammed (on dyeing the hair, etc.) iv.
194.
(on lovers) iv. 205.
(on his being seen in sleep) iv. 287.
(places the " black stone ") iv. 261.
(mentioned in the Koran) v. 210.
(Allah's right hand) vii. 366.
(sent with the guidance and True
Faith) ix. 15.
(before and after the Hijrah) x. 196.
Mohammed al-Amin (Caliph) v. 93.
Mohammed bin Sulayman al-Rabi'i
(Governor of Bassorah) vii. 130.
Moharram = first month of the Moslem
year, viii. 71.
Mohr = signet, vii. 329.
Mohtasib = inspector of weights and
measures, etc., viii. 293.
Mole on cheek (black as Bilal) iv. 142.
Moles compared with pearls, i. 177.
Monasteries (best wine made in) v. 65.
(Ar. Bika'a) v. 125.
(places of confinement for madmen)
v. 139.
Monday second day reckoning from
Sabbath, i. 266.
Money (carried in the corner of a hand-
kerchief) i. 271.
(large sums weighed) i. 281 ; ii. 145*
(carried round the waist) viii. 288.
(let lie with the folk = not dunned
for) ix. 311.
Monkery (abhorred by Mohammed) ii. 248.
(none in Al-Islam) viii. 137.
Monoculars (unlucky to meet) i. 333.
(famed for mischief) iv. 194 ;
viii. 318.
Monsters (abounding in Persian literature)
vii. 399-
Months (of peace) v. 54.
(Coptic names of) v. 221, 232.
Arabic names explained) v. 233.
Moon (blighting effect of its rays) ii. 4.
masculine in Semitic, ii. 45.
(masc., Sun fern.) iii. 28 ; iv. 261.
(simile for female beauty) v. 8.
(shall be cloven in twain) v. 217.
(its stations) v. 228.
(taking in hand the star = girl hand-
ing round the cup) ix. 192.
Moon-faced (not absurd) iv. 192.
Moons (for cup-bearers) viii. 2*7,
A If Laylah wa Laylak.
Moore (Thomas, anticipated) iii. 305.
Morality (geographical and chronological)
iii. 241.
(want of, excused by passion) iii.
269.
Morbi venerei, x. 88.
Morning draught, iii. 20.
" Morosa voluptas," vii. 132.
Mortal (one better in Allah's sight than a
thousand Jinn) viii. 5, 44.
Moses (derivation of the name) ii. 205.
and Jethro, ii. 205.
and the next world, ii. 206.
and Al-Khizr, ii. 263.
(describes his own death and burial)
vi. 116.
Moslem (model Conservative) ii. 13.
(external) ii. 29.
(familiarity between high and low)
ii. 32.
(peasants kind-hearted) ii. 69.
(kihd feeling shown to a namesake)
vi. 13.
(corpses should be burnt under cer-
tain circumstances) vi. 26.
(commonplaces of condolence) vi. 41.
(sales, formula of) vi. 73.
(consecrated ground unknown to
them) vi. 161.
(a free-born's sale is felony) vi. 240.
(dignity contrasting with Christian
abasement) viii. $, 44.
. T- (can circumcise, marry and bury him-
self) viii. 22.
(on a journey tries to bear with him
a new suit of clothes for the festivals
and Friday service) ix. 51.
(bound to discharge the debts of his
dead parents) ix. 311.
[. . (doctrine ignores the dictum, " ex
nihilonihil fit") ix. 63.
(resignation, noble instance of) x. 42.
Moslems (their number preordained) viii.
154.
(deal kindly with religiqus mendi-
cants) ix. 51.
(not ashamed of sensual appetite)
ix. 84.
(bound to abate scandals amongst
neighbours) ix. 98.
(husbands among them divided into
three classes) ix. 263.
Mosque al-Ahzab = mosque of the troops,
vii. 92.
Mosques serving as lodgings for poor
travellers, ii. 69.
Mosul (exempted from idolatrous worship)
v.6 4 .
stuff = muslin, i. 229.
Mother (waiting upon the adult sons (vi.
237-
(in Arab tales = ma mere) viii. 27.
Mother's milk = nature, ii. 44.
Mounds = rubbish heaps outlying Eastern
cities, i. 71.
Mountain (coming from the = being a
clodhopper) iii. 324.
(sit upon the = turn anchorite) iii.
324-
(the, at Cairo) iv. 294.
Mountains (the pegs of the earth) iv. 174.
Mourning (perfumes not used during) iii
63-
(normal term of forty days) ix. 311.
Moustachio (salt to a kiss) v. 165.
Mouth compared to the ring of Sulayman,
i. 84.
Mrigatrishna = the thirst of the deer
(mirage) vi. 93.
MS. copy of The Nights (price of one in
Egypt) vii. 312.
Muakhat = entering in a formal agree-
ment for partnership, viii. 232.
Mu'allim = teacher, master (address to a
Jew or Christian) vi. 150.
Mu'arras = pimp, i. 338.
Mu'attik al-Rikab = Liberator of Necks,
vii. 331.
Mu'awiyah (Caliph) ii. 160, 161.
(his Moses-like "mildness") iii.
286.
Muayyad (Sultan and calligrapher) ii. 32.
Muazzin (who calls to prayer) ii. 306.
Mubarak (f. mubarakah) = blessed (a
favourite slave-name) ix. 58.
Mubarakah = the blessed (fem.) ix. 330.
Mudarris = professor, x. 8.
Mudawwarah (a gong ?) iy. 135.
Mufti (Doctcr of Law) vi. 254.
Muhabbat (A1-) al-ghariziyah = natural
affection, viii. no.
Muhafiz = district-governor, i. 259.
Muhajiriin = companions in Mohammed's
flight, vii. 92.
Appendix.
365
Muhakkah =" Court-hand," i. 129.
Muhallil, see Mustahall.
Muhammad, Ahmad and Mahmud, vi. 273.
Muhammarah = fricandoed, i. 286.
Muharabah = doing battle, ix. Q2/
Muharramat (the three forbidden things)
iii. 340 ; v. 148.
Mu'in al-Din = Aider of the Faith, vii. 354.
Mujahid (A1-) = fighter in Holy War, iii.
St.
Mujahidun, plur. of the previous, iii. 39.
Mujauhar = damascened, vii. 84.
Mujawirun = lower servants, sweepers,
etc. v. 119.
Mujtaba = the Accepted, i. 77.
Mukaddam (Anglo-Indice Muccudum) =
overseer, iv. 42.
Mukarrabun = those near Allah, v. 319.
Mukhammas = cinquains, iii. 280.
Mukri = Koranist, v. 216.
Mulabbas = dragees, vii. 205.
Mulakat = going to meet an approaching
guest, v. 330.
Mulberry-fig (for anus) iii. 302.
Mummery = " Mahommerie " x. 178.
Munadamah = table-talk, "conversation
over the cup," vii. 309.
Munafik = hypocrite, v. 207.
Munakkishah = woman who applies the
dye to a face, i. 270.
Munawwarah (A1-) = the Illumined (title
of Al-Medinah) vii. 95.
Munazarah = dispute, ix. 243.
Munazirah = like (fern.) ix. 243.
Munkar andNakir (the questioning angels)
v. in ; ix. 163 ; x. 47.
Munkasir (broken) = languid, iv. 195.
Munkati' = cut off, viiu 24.
Murahanah = game at forfeits, vi. 204.
Murder (to be punished by the family) v.
103.
(to save one's life approved of), vi. 44.
Murjiyy (sect and tenets) iii. 341.
Murtaza = the Elect, i. 77.
Musa = Moses, ii. 205.
Musa bin Nusayr (conqueror of Spain) vi.
86.
Mus'ab bin al-Zubayr, v. 79.
MusaTahah = joining palms for " shaking
hand," vi. 287 ; vii.,52 ; ix. 342.
Musdhakah = tribadism, vii. 132.
Musahikah = tribade, viii. 130.
Musakhkham (A1-) = the defiled Cioss, ii.
220.
Musalla = place of prayer, oratory, v. 261.
Musamarah = chatting at night, iv. 237 ;
vii. 217.
Music (forbidden by Mohammed) ix. 31.
Musk (scent of heaven) ii. 300.
(sherbet flavoured with) v. 66.
Mushayyad = lofty, high-builded, viii. 23.
Muslim bin al-Walid (poet) v. 128.
Musquito caught between the toes, vii. 179.
Musran (A1-) guts, vii. 190.
Mustafa (the chosen) = Mohammed, i. 77 ;
ii. 40.
Mustahakk = deserving, x. 52.
Mustahall (Mustahill) = one who marries
a thrice divorced woman and divorces
her to make her lawful for her first hus-
band, iv. 48.
Musta'in (A1-) bi 'Hah (Caliph) ix. 246.
Mutalammis (A1-), the poet and his fatal
letter, v. 74.
Mustansir bi 'llah (A1-) = one seeking help
in Allah, i. 317.
Mutanakkir = disguised, proud, reserved,
vii. I pi.
Mu'tasim (A1-) bi 'llah (Caliph) iii. 81 ;
ix. 232.
Mutawakkil (A1-) Caliph, iv. 291 ; v. 153 ;
ix. 232.
Mutawalli = Prefect of Police, i. 259.
Mutawwif = leader in the Tawaf, q.v. v.
203.
Mu'tazid (A1-) bi 'llah (Caliph) ix. 229.
Mu'tazz (A1-) bi 'llah (Caliph) ix. 242.
Mu'ujizah = miracle of a prophet, ii. 237.
Muunah = provisions, vii. 232; ix. 104.
Muunis (Pr. N. = Companion) v. 164.
Muwaffak = well-notched, v. 33.
Mu wallad = a slave born in a Moslem land,
iv. 291.
Muwashshah (stanza) iv. 54.
Muzani (A1-) ii. 208.
Muzayyin (Figaro of the East) i. 304.
Myrtle-bush =young beard, iv. 143.
Mystification explained by extraordinary
likeness, viii. 40.
NA'AL = sandal, shoe, horse-shoe, vi. 207.
Nab (pi. Anyab) = canine tooth, tusk, vii.
339-
366
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Nabbut = quarter-staff, i. 234; viii. 186.
Nabhan (sons of) vi. 262.
Nabi = prophet, ix. 178.
Nabighah al-Zubyani (pre-Islamitic poet)
vi. 85.
Nadd (a compound perfume) i. 310.
Naddabah = mourning woman, i. 311.
Nadim = cup-companion, i. 46.
Nafahat = breathings, benefits, v. 29.
Nafakah = sum necessary for the expenses
of the pilgrimage, ix. 178.
Nafas= breath, i. 107.
Nafs = soul, life, i. 107.
Nfi' (traditionist) v. 204.
Nafilah = supererogatory Koran recitation,
iii. 222.
Nafisah (great -grand-daughter of the Imam
Hasan) iv. 46.
Nafisah (Pr. N.) = the Precious one, viii.
328.
Nafs-i = my soul for " the flesh/' vii. 118.
Nafs Ammarah=" the Flesh," viii. 31.
al-Natikah = intellectual soul, viii.
31-
- - al-Ghazabiy ah = animal function, viii.
31-
al-Shahwaniyah= vegetative property,
viii. 31.
Naga-kings (of Hinduism) v. 302.
Nahas (vulg. for Nuhas, q.v.) ii. 327 ; iv.
178.
Nahf-ka = let it suffice thee, x. 22.
Nahnu malihm = we are on term of salt, i.
344-
Nahr = slaughtering a camel by stabbing,
iv. 95.
Nahr = river, vi. 163.
Nahs = nasty, i. 301.
Na'i al-maut = messenger of death, vii.
226.
Naihah = keener, hired mourner, i. 311.
Na'im = delight (name for Heaven) iii. 19;
iv. 143.
Na'iman = may it benefit thee ! after
bathing, etc., ii. 5.
Naivete (of the Horatian kind)'ix. 215.
Najasah = nastiness (anything unclean) vi.
178.
Najib (al-taraf = son of a common Mos-
lemah by a Sayyid, q.v.) v. 259.
Najib (al-tarafayn = whose parents are both
of Apostolic blood) v. 259.
Najis = ceremonially impure, ix. 337.
Najiyah = Salvadora, ii. 145.
Najm al-Munkazzi = shooting star, viii.
329-
Najm al-Sabah (Pr. N.) = Star o' Morn,
viii. 107.
Najran (in Syria) ii. 232.
Naka = sand-hill, x. 27.
Nakat = to spot ; to handsel, viii. 266.
Naked = without veil or upper clothing,
vii. 151.
Nakedness (Ar. Aurat) vi. 30.
(paraphrased) i. 327.
Nakfur = Nicephorus, ii. 77.
Nakh = make a camel kneel down by the
cry Ikh ! Ikh ! ii. 139.
Nakhuzah Zulayt = skipper rapscallion,
viii. 175.
Nakib, a caravan-leader, chief, syndic, i.
269.
Nakisatu 'aklin wa din = failing in wit and
faith, ix. 298.
Nakkar = Pecker (a fabulous fish), ix. 184.
Nakl-i-safar (move preliminary to a jour-
ney) ii. 84.
Nakus = wooden gong (used as bell) vi. 47;
viii. 328.
Name of Allah introduced into an indecent
tale essentially Egyptian, i. 12.
Names (of God) v. 214.
(= magical formula) v. 369.
frequently do not appear till near
the end of a tale) vii. 43, 75, 274.
(approved by Allah) ix. 165.
Naming of a child, ii. 174.
Naming a girl by name offensive, vii. 286.
Naml (ant) simile for a young beard, iii. 58.
Namusiyah = mosquito curtains, viii. 330.
Napoleonic pose (attitude assumed by a
slave) ix. 320.
Nar (fire) ii. 163.
(fem. like, the names of other ele-
ments) viii. 16.
.Narcissus (with negro eyes = yellowish
white) ii. 24.
Narcissus and Hippolytus (assumed as types-
of morosa voluptas, etc.) x. 215.
Narjis = Narcissus, i. 294.
(name of a slave-girl) viii. 176.
Nashshar (A1-) ^ the sawer, i. 335.
Nsik = a devotee, ix. 40.
Naskh = copying hand, i. 128.
Appendix.
367
Nasfm == Zephyr (emendation for Nadlm
= cup-companion) viii. 62.
Nasir (Pr. N.) = triumphing, ix. 310.
Nasrani = follower of Him of Nazareth,
i. 258.
Nat'a = leather used by way of table-cloth,
i. 20.
Nat'a al-dam = the leather of blood,
i. 318 jii. 41.
Nation (its power consists in its numbers
of fighting men) v. 255.
Nau (pi. Anwd) = setting of one star
simultaneous with another's rising, viii.
266.
Nauruz = new (year's) day, iv. 244.
Navel, as to beauty and health, i. 84.
(largeness of, much appreciated) viii.
33-
Nawa = date-stone ; Nawdyah = sever-
ance, ii. 315.
Nawatfyah = crew (navigata, nauta) viii.
17-
Nay = reed-pipe, v. 50.
Naysabur (town in Khorasan) ix. 230.
Ndzih = travelled far and wide, v. 52.
Nzir = overseer, ii. 304 ; iii. 233.
Nearness of seat a mark of honour, i.
250.
Negro (Legend of his origin) iv. 250.
Negroes preferred by debauched women,
i. 6.
(familiarity of boys with white girls)
ii. 49.
(their skin assumes dust-colour in
cold, etc.) ii. 127.
Negrofied races like " walking tun-butts,"
iv. 255.
Neighbour before the house, companion
before the journey, ii. 207.
Neighbours (frequently on the worst of
terms) vi. 236.
Nemo repente fuit turpissimus (not believed
in by Easterns) ix. 91.
" New Arabian Nights," vi. 257.
New-moon of Ramazan watched for, i.
84.
New moon of the Festival = Crescent of
the breakfast, ix. 249, 250.
News (what is behind thee of, O Asa*m)
viii. 222.
Ni'am = yes in answer to a negative, vii.
'95-
Ni'amat = a blessing, iv. i.
Night (and day, not day and night, with
the Arabs) iii. 121.
- (-cap) iii. 222.
("this " = our " last ") iii. 249,
(for day) iii. 318.
(its promise spread with butter that
melteth with day-rise) v. 77-
(its last the bitter parting) vii. 243.
(consists of three watches) i. 175;
viii. 330.
Nil (A1-) = flood season corresponding to
summer, i. 290.
Nilah = indigo, dye-stuff, ix. 144.
Nile-water sweet and light, i. 290.
Nimchahrah = half- face (Pers., a kind of
demon) v. 333.
Nimr = leopard, ix. 63.
Nimrod of the desert, ii. 291.
Nimsd = Germans, ii. 219.
Nimshah (Namshah?) = dagger of state,
ii. 193-
Nineteen the age of an oldish old maid in
Egypt, i. 212.
Nisab (A1-), smallest sum for stealing which
the hand is mutilated, iv. 157.
Nitak, a woman's waistcloth, vii. 180.
Niyah (A1-) = ceremonial intention of
prayer, v. 163 ; x. 254.
Nizami (Persian poet) iii. 183.
Noachian dispensation (revived Al- Islam as
revealed to Adam) v. 372.
Noisy merriment scandalous to Moslem
1 ' respectability," i. 95.
Nostrils (his life-breath was in his, = his
heart was in his mouth) vii. 258.
Nostrums for divining the sex of the unborn
child, vii. 268.
Nothing for nothing a sexual point
d'honneur, i. 87.
Nuha"s (vulg. Nahds) = copper, brass, i.
40 ; ii. 327 ; iv. 1 78, 230 ; vi. 83.
Nukl = quatre mendiants, ix. 177, 213.
Numbering the streets, etc. a classical
custom, viii. 88.
Nun (simile for the eye-brow) v. 34.
Nun-like brow, iv. 249.
Nuptial sheet (inspection of) iii. 289.
Nur al-Huda (Pr. N.)= Light of Salvation,
iii. 17 ; viii. 97.
Niirayn = two lights (town in Turkestan)
vii. 88.
Nusf = half-dirham, ii. 37 ; vi. 214 ; fat,
139. 167.
368
Alf Lay/ah wa Laylah.
Nusk = piety, abstinence from women, ix.
243-
Nu'uma*n (A1-) bin Munzir (tyrant of Hirah)
v. 74.
Nu'uman's flower = anemone, ii. 325.
Nuzhat al-Zamdn = delight of the age, ii.
81.
Nymphomania (ascribed to worms in the
vagina) iv. 298.
OATH (a serious thing amongst Moslems) i.
179.
(inconsiderately taken) ii. 136.
(kept to the letter) iv. 70.
(retrieved by expiation) viii. 263.
(of divorce) viii. 287, 311.
Obayd Allah (Pr. N.) v. 164.
Obayd ibn Tahir (Under-Prefect of Bagh-
dad) iv. 291.
Object first seen in the morning determines
the fortunes of the day, viii. 147.
Obscene abuse meant as familiarity, not
insult, ii. 88.
O Camphor (antiphrase = Snowball) iii.
40.
Ocean (Jamm) v. 93.
(of darkness) v. 309.
" Off-with-his-head " style (not to be taken
literally) ix. 308.
Offering for naught = closing with the
offer, ii. 4.
Offerings (pious = ex votes, etc.) vii. 150.
Oftentimes the ear loveth before the eye,
iii. 9.
Ohod (battle of) ii. 165.
Old age (graphically described) v. 3.
"Old maids" ignored in the East, vii.
286.
" Old Man of the Sea" (a Ma>id or evil
Jinn) vii. 338.
Old woman (polite equivalents for) v. 163.
Oldest matter in The Nights the beast-
stories, iii. 114.
Olema" (pi. of 'Alim) = the learned in the
law, v. 183.
(Time-serving) x. 44.
Oman = Eastern Arabia, i. 83.
(with capital Maskat = Omana
Moscha) vii. 24.
Omar bin al-Khattab (Caliph) ii. 158, 159,
162, 164 ; v. 103.
Omar-i- Khayyam * (astronomer -poet) ix.
230.
Omen (Fal) v. 136.
Onanism (discouraged by circumcision) x.
233.
One-eyed men considered rascals, iv. 194.
Opener (of the door of daily bread) vi.
216.
Opening doors without a key is the knavish
trick of n petty thief, vii. 182.
Ophidia (of monstrous size) vi. 29.
Orange (a growth of India) viii. 272.
Oriental orgie different from European, i.
93-
Othello (even he does not kill Emilia) ix.
300.
Othmdn (Caliph) ii. 163.
(Ka"tib al-Kuran) v. 215.
Oubliettes (in old Eastern houses) iii. 327.
Out of the sight of my friend is better and
pleasanter, iii. 315.
whose thrall am I, etc. = To her (I
drink) viii. 224.
PAIN (resembling the drawing of a tooth)
X. 21.
Palace (of the Caliph at Baghdad) vi.
189.
Palaces (avoided by the pious) vi. 182.
(in ruins for want of repair) x. 61.
Palgrave and Al- Islam, x. 189.
Palmerin of England, viii. 64.
Palm-stick (a salutary rod) ii. 22.
Palsy (creeps over him) v. 251.
Pander-dodge to get more money, i. 302.
Panel-dodge fatally common, i. 323.
Paper (his = the whiteness of his skin) v.
161.
Paradise (of the Moslem not wholly sen-
sual) iii. 19 ; ix. 322.
Parapets (on terrace-roofs made obligatory
by Moses) v. 72.
Parasite (Ar. Tufayli) v. 130.
Parent (ticklish on the Pundonor) ix. 288.
Paris Jockey-club scene anticipated, i. 327.
Parisian MSS. of The Nights, x. 104.
Parody on the testification of Allah's Unity,
i. 177 ; iii. 215.
Parrot-story a world-wide folk-lore, i. C2.
Particles of swearing, viii. 310.
Partner in very deed, viii. 181.
Partridge (Ar. Hijl) iii. 138.
Appendix.
369
Partridges (story of the two) vi. 183.
Pashas' agents for bribery in Constanti-
nople, iv. 183.
Passengers in difficulties take command,
i. 140.
Pathos (touch of) iii. 55.
Patience (cutting the cords of) iii. 178.
Pausing as long as Allah pleased = musing
a long time, vi. 109.
Pay-chest (of a Hammam bath) ix. 152.
Payne quoted: i. 129, 150, 167, 209, 217;
ii. 19, 185, 304; iii. 58, 130, 162, 172,
193, 252, 275, 291 ; iv. 50, 54, 66, 197,
221, 222; v. 44, 49, 65, 86, 112, 161,
192, 204, 346 ; vii. 16, 18, 57, 123, 178,
277, 337 J viii. 21, 32, 64, 70, 72, 80,
117, 125, 130, 131, 148, 158, 168, 179,
216, 223, 224, 262, 264, 271, 275, 278,
279, 282, 293, 294, 298, 314, 326, 327 ;
ix. 22, 23, 79, 84, 86, 89, 171, 212, 224,
226, 227, 250, 251, 265, 268, 290; x.
50, 52, 74, 104, 140, 142, 167.
Peaches (Sultani and Andam) viii. 270.
Pearl supposed to lose I per cent, per ann.
of its lustre, i. 165.
Pearl-fisheries, vi. 60.
Pearls (shaded by hair = teeth under
mustachio) v. 157.
(fresh from water) vii. 240.
(resting on the sand-bank) ix. 164.
Pears (various kinds of) viii. 269.
Peccadillo in good olden days (murder) iv
275-
'* Peche philosophique " (the, in France)
x. 249.
Pederasts (list of famous) x. 252.
Pehlevi version of the Panchatantra, x.
120.
Pen and Preserved Tablet, ii. 68.
Pencilling the eyes with Kohl, vii. 250.
Penis (as to anus and cunnus) iii. 303.
(Ark al-Halawat) iv. 51.
(correspondence of si^c) iv. 52.
(and its succedanea) x. 230.
Pens (gilded = reeds washed with gold) vii.
112.
People of His affection = those who deserve
His love, ix. 92.
Pepper (and the discovery of the Cape
route) vi. 38.
(-plantations shaded by bananas) vi.
57-
VOL. X.
Perfumes (not used during mourning) iii.
63-
(natural) iii. 231.
Periphrase containing a negative adds
emphasis, ii. 83.
Persian (" I am a, but not lying now") v. 26.
(poets mostly addressing youths) v.
156.
Persians always suspected, viii. 8.
Persians (delighting in practical jokes) ix.
177.
Person (Ar. Shakhs) iv. 97 ; viii. 159.
Peshadians (race of Persian Kings) i. 7S
Petrified folk, ix. 318.
Phaedra and Hippolytus, vi. 127.
Pharao (signs to) iv. 249.
" Philippi" and " Alexanders" in_Siaon f
ii. 82.
Philosophic (used in a bad sense) vi. 257.
Physical prognostication familiar to Mes-
merists, ii. 72.
Physiognomy (Ar. Firasah, Kiyafah) viii,
326.
Physiologists (practise on the simiads) v.
220.
Physis and Antiphysis, v. 320.
Picnics (on the Rauzah island) v. 169.
Pidar-sokhtah = (son of a) burnt father
(Persian insult) vi. 26.
Pieces de circonstance ( mostly mere
doggrel) ii. 261 ; viii. 59.
Pigeon (language, etc.) iii. 126.
(blood of the young) ib. 289.
Pilgrimage quoted . .
(iii. 1 i) ib. 46.
(i. 5 ; ii. 196) ib. 51.
(ii. 71) ib. 74.
(ii. 309) M. 77-
(iii. 126) ib. 97.
(i. 86) ib. 107.
(iii. 31, etc.) ib. 1 12.
(i. 327) ib. 120.
(ii. 198) ib. 123.
(iii. 104) ib. 134.
(iii. 350) ib. 138.
(i. chapt. xi.) ib. 140.
(iii. 137) ib. 170.
(iii. 200) Ib. 174.
(iii. 60, 62 ib. 208.
(i. 202) ib. 214.
(ii. 275) ib. 215,
(i. 1 1 8) ib. 219.
i. 28.
AA
370
A If Lay la ft ua L aylah.
Pilgrimage quoted : (ii. 215) i. 22O.
(iii. 125, 232) ib. 226.
(i- 313) ^. 228.
(iii. 63) ib. 230.
(i. 84 ; iii. 43) ib. 245.
(i. 127) ib. 250.
(ii. 175) ib. 256.
(i. 1 60) ib. 258.
(i. 255 ; i. 60) ib. 266.
(iii. 263) ib. 269.
[ (iii. 201, 202) ib. 284.
(i. 53) ib. 294.
(i. 240 ; iii. 35, 36) ib. 308.
(i. 1 1 ; iii. 285) . . ii. 5.
(i. 261 ; iii. 7) ib. 15.
(i. 210; 346) ib. 31.
(ii. 77) ib. 40.
(iii. 330) ib. 113.
(ii. 113) ib. 114.
(i- 99) # 3*6-
(ii. 274) ib. 326.
(ii. 176; i. 174) ^. 330.
(i. 276) ib. 338.
(i- 333) # 124.
(iii. 12) ib. 131.
(iii. 254) ib. 132.
(i. 222; ii. 91) ib. 139
(ii. 1 1 8) ib. 140-
(i. 121) ib. 163.
(ii. 227) ib. 165.
(iii. 226, 342, 344) ib. 169.
(ii. 49) ib. 178.
(i- 305) #. 1 80.
(iii. 322) ib. 203.
(ii. 89) ib. 220.
(iii. 115) ib. 224.
(iii. 232) ib. 227.
(i. 346} ib. 230.
I (iii. 78) ib. 236.
I (ii. no) ib. 242.
j- (iii. 171-175; 203) ib. 272.
\ (iii. 113)0.286.
(iii. 7 1);#. 293.
(ii. 105, 205) ib. 317.
(ii. 58 ; iii. 343) ib. 327.
(i. 1 10) ib. 330.
(ii. 22) iii. 7.
(iii. 77) ib. 65.
(iii. 14) ib. 67.
(i. 216) ib. 81.
(i. 64) ib. 91.
r- (iii. 185) 0. 107.
Pilgrimage quoted : (iii. 270) iii. 1 1 8.
(iii. 208) ib. 121.
(iii. 218) ib. 126.
(i. 52) ib. 151.
(iii. 307) ib. 159.
(i. 99) # 163.
(iii. 239) 0. 174.
(iii. 22) ib. 226.
(ii. 282) ib. 241.
(iii. 144) ib. 252.
(ii. 213, 321) ,b. 304.
(iii. 192-194) ib. 319.
(i. 106) ib. 324.
0- 75-77) iv. 6-
(i. 285 ; ii. 78) ib. 36.
(iii. 306) ib. 75.
(i. 123) ib. 78.
(iii. 295) ib. 80.
(iii. 303) ib. 95.
(ii. 119) ib. 114.
(i. 213) ib. 115.
(iii. 156, 162, 216, 220) ib. 125.
(iii. 168, 174, 175) ib. 148.
(ii. 329) ib. 254.
(iii. 192) ib. 261.
(i. 43) id. 293.
(i. 22) .... v. 39,
(ii. 287) ib. 44.
(iii. 218) ib. 49.
(i. 16) ib. 97.
(ii. 344) ib. 100.
(i. 10) ib. 112.
(ii. 161) ib. 119.
(i. 352) ib. 158.
(ii. 320) ib. 196.
(i. no) ib. 2OI.
(iii. 193, 205, 226, 282) ib. 203.
(iii. 248) ib. 212.
(iii. 92) ib. 220.
- (ii. 322) ib. 224.
(i. 362) ib. 22$.
(ii. 288) ib. 236.
(i- 297) ... vi. 57.
(i. 1 80) ib. 61.
(i. 349 ; iii. 73) ib. 263.
(ii. 1 1 6 ; iii. 190) ib. 264.
(i. 370) ib. 276.
(i. 298) ib. 277.
(ii. 332) ib. 287.
(iii. 90) . . . . vii. 3, 4.
(i- 377) # 9-
(iii. 191) ib. 21.
Appendix.
371
Pilgrimage quoted : (i. 14) . . vii. 80.
(ii. 62-69) ib. 91.
(ii. 130, 138, 325) ib. 92.
(ii. 3) ib. 95.
(iii. 336) ib. 104.
(i-59)tf- I?'-
(i. 1 20) ib. 172.
(ii. 300) ib. 124.
(ii. 24) ib. 140.
(i. 124) ib. 177.
(iii. 66) ib. 181.
(ii. 52-54) ib. 202.
(i. 62) ib. 212.
(iii. 165) ib. 219.
(iii. 70) . . viii. 137.
(iii. 365) ib. 157.
(ii. 248) ib. 172.
(ii. 130, etc.) ib. 183.
(ii. 207) ib. 273.
(i. 176) ib. 287.
(ii. 82) ib. 291.
(i. 88) ib. 300.
(i. 9) .... ix. 50.
0- 235) U>> 51-
(iii. 66) ib. 81.
(i. 20) ib. 165.
(ii. 285-287) ib. 175.
(iii. 224, 256) ib. 178.
(i. 99) ib. 262.
(ii. 48) ib. 307.
(i. 314) M- 3I5-
Pilgrimage not perfected save by copulation
with the camel, viii. 157.
Pilgrims (offcast of the = a broken down
pilgrim left to die on the road) ix.
290.
Pillow (wisadah, makhaddah), taking to =
taking to one's bed, ii. 70.
Pistachio-nut (tight-fitting shell of)iv. 216.
Pitching tents within dog -bark from
Royalty disrespectful, ii. 294.
Plain (ground), synonyms for, i. 46.
Plain-speaking (of the Badawf) iv. 102.
Plaisirs de la petite oie (practised by
Eunuchs) v. 46.
Plates as armature, iii. 216.
Plato (his theory of love) x. 209.
Play "near and far "="fast and loose,"
X. 22.
Pleasure prolonged (en pensant a sa pauvre
mere, etc.) v. 76.
Pleiads (the stars whereby men sail) viii. 304.
Plunder sanctioned by custom, ii. 68.
Plur. masc. used by way of modesty by a
girl addressing her lover, i. 98.
Plural of Majesty, iii. 16; iv. 156.
Poetical justice (administered with vigour
in The Nights) vi. 25.
Poetry of the Arabs requires knowledge of
the Desert to be understood, i. 230.
Poets (four, whose works contraried their
character) x. 253.
Poison (deadly only in contact with abraded
skin) vi. 202.
Poisons in the East, ix. 101.
Poke (counterfeit) iii. 302.
Policeman (called in, a severe punishment
in the East ; why?) ix. 137.
Police-master legally answerable for losses,
vii. 161.
Polissonnerie (Egyptian) iii. 243 ; iv. 226.
Polo ("Goff") v. 32.
Poltroon (contrasted with a female tiger*
lamb) ix. 224.
Polygamy and Polyandry in relation to
climate, iii. 241.
Polyphemus (in Arab garb) vi. 24.
(no Mrs. P. accepted) vi. 27.
Pomegranate fruit supposed to contain seed
from Eden garden, i. 134.
(Hadis referring to) viii. 267.
Porcelain (not made in Egypt or Syria) iv.
164.
Postilion (Le) iii. 304.
Postures of coition, iii. 93.
Potter (simile of the) ix. 77.
Pouch (Ar. Surrah) viii. 71.
Poverty (Holy) v. 269.
Powders (coloured in sign of holiday
making) x. 51.
Power (whoso has it and spareth, for
Allah's reward he prepareth) ix. 340.
Prayer (for the dead lack the Sijdah) ii. 10.
(of Ramazan) ii. 202.
(rules for joining in) iii. 174.
(two-bow) iii. 213.
(-niche = way-side chapel) iii. 324.
(without intention, Ar. Niyat, is
valueless) v. 163.
(offered standing or prostrating) v.
196.
(of a sick person as he best can) v.
200.
(intonation of the voice in) v. 200.
372
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Prayer (call to, Aza"n) v. 201.
(is a collector of all folk) v. 201.
Praying against (polite form for cursing)
ix. 293.
Pre-Adamite doctrine, x. 179.
Preachments (to Eastern despots) v. 254.
Precautions (thwarted by Fate and Fortune)
vi. 167.
Precedence (claims pre-eminence) viii. 285.
Precedent (merit appertains to) iii. 264.
Predestination (not Providence, a Moslem
belief) vi. 202.
Pre-eminence (appertaineth to precedence)
viii. 285.
Preliminaries of a wrestling bout, ii. 92.
Premier (Le, embellit) viii. 86.
Preposterous venery, iii. 304.
Presence (I am in thy thy sleeve to slay or
pardon) ix. 124.
Preserved tablet, ii. 68.
Preventives (the two) iii. 222.
Price (without abatement = without ab-
stracting a large bakhshish, ix. 152.
(shall remain) ix. 262.
Pride of beauty intoxicates, iv. 34.
Priest hidden within an image (may date
from the days of Memnon) ix. 324.
Prima Venus debet esse cruenta, iii. 289.
Prime Minister carrying fish to the cook-
maid, i. 63.
Prince (of a people is their servant) ix. 99.
Prin'cess, English ; Prince'ss, French, vii.
245-
Prison (in the King's Palace) ix. 52.
Prisons (Moslem) vi. 244.
Privy, a slab with slit in front and a round
hole behind, i. 221.
and bath favourite haunts of the
Jinns, vi. 141.
Proces verbal (customary with Moslems)
iv. 73.
Prognostication frequently mentioned, ii.
72.
(from nervous movements) viii. 25.
Prolixity (heightening the effect of a tale)
x. 50.
Prolongatio verieris (Imsak)- v. 76.
Prominence of the pugaeic muscles insisted
upon, ii. 98.
Property (of the heirless lapses to the
treasury) iv. 62.
(left by will) vi. 213.
Prophets (have some manual trade) ii. 286.
(named in the Koran) v. 210.
(and their agnomina) vi. 270.
Proportion of horse and foot in Arab and
Turcoman armies, vii. i.
Prostitution (never wholly abolished in Al-
Islam) viii. 115.
Prostration (must be made to Allah only)
vi. 136.
Protestants (four great Somnritts) vii. 124.
Prothesis without apodosis (a favourite
style in Arabic) vi. 203, 239.
Proverbs true to nature, i. 307.
Providence (and Justice) v. 286.
Province ("some" = Sancho Panza'f
"insula") ii. 188.
Puellse Wakwakienses, viii. 89.
Puns (wretched and otherwise) ii. 64, 179,
182 ; iv. 258 ; vii. 53, 288, 307 ; viii.
35, 228, 329; ix. 278, 289; x. ii, 27.
Punctilios of the Desert, vi. 264.
Purgation (Easterns most careful during)
v. 154.
Purifying (after evacuation) ii. 326.
Purity of love attains a prophetic strain,
iii. 6.
Pyramidennarren, v. 106.
Pyramids (Ar. Al-Ahram) v. 105.
(containing unopened chambers ?) v.
106.
(verses on the) x. 150.
QANOON-E-ISLAM quoted on the subject
of horoscopes, etc. i. 213.
Quarter (son of the = neighbour) vi. 236.
Queen's mischief = the mischief which may
(or will) come from the Queen, viii. 98.
Question (expressing emphatic assertion)
ix. 182.
Questions (indiscreet, the rule throughout
Arabia) iii. 105.
Quibbling away (a truly diplomatic art)
v. 86.
RA'AD AL-KASIF (Pr. N.) = the loud-
pealing Thunder, vi. 221.
Ra'ad Shah A. P. = thunder-king, vii. $$.1
Raas al-Mal = capital, viii. 248.
Raat-hu = she saw him, viii. 298.
Ra'aya (pL.of Ra'iyat) = Ryot, iii. 21$.
Rabbati = my she-Lord, applied to the
fire, vii. 36.
Appendix.
373
Rabelaisian humour of the richest, iv. 152.
Rabite, classical term for a noble Arab
horse, iii. 72.
Racing a favourite pastime, ii. 273.
Raff = shelf running round a room, via.
122.
Rafisi = denier, Shi'ah, iv. 44.
Rafw = artistic style of darning, vi. 198.
Rag (burnt, used as styptic) iv. 108.
Raghib = the Desirous, v. 145.
( = expecter ; Zahid = rejecter) viii.
SIS-
Rah = pure old wine, iv. 186.
Rahan = pledge, ix. 311.
Rahatani (A1-) = the two rests, viii. 342.
Rahil (small dromedary) iii. 67.
Rahim, Rihm = womb for uterine relations,
vii. 123.
Rahmah (Pr. N.) = the puritanical
" Mercy," vi. 226.
Raiment of devotees (white wool) vii. 214.
Rais = captain, master (not owner) of a
ship, i. 127 ; vi. 12.
Raising the tail, sign of excitement in the
Arab blood-horse, iii. 84.
Rajab = worshipping (seventh Arab month)
v. 54-
Rajaz = the seventh Bahr of Arabic pro-
sody, i. 251.
Rajul ikhtiyar = a middle-aged man, i. 55.
Rakham = aquiline vulture, viii. 20.
Raki (distilled from raisins) v. 65.
Rakb = fast -going caravan, iv. 254.
Ramazan (moon of) viii. 33.
Ramlah (half-way house between Jaffa and
Jerusalem) vi. 103.
Rank (derived from Pers. rang = colour)
ii. 192.
(thine is with me such as thou couldst
wish = I esteem thee as thou deservest)
ix. 41.
(conferred by a Sovereign's addressing
a person by a title; ix. 119.
Rape (rendered excusable by wilfulness)
vi. 187.
Ra"s al Killaut = Head of Killaut, a son
of the sons of the Jinn, ix. 8.
Rds al-Tin = Headland of Clay (not Figs)
V. 112.
Rashaa = fawn beginning to walk, v. 149.
Rashad = garden-cresses or stones ;
Rashid = the heaven-directed, viii. 194.
Rashid (Pasha, etc.) iv. 202.
Rashid = Rosetta, viii. 288.
Rasif (A1-) river-quay, dyke, viii. 150.
Rasm = usage (justifies a father killing his
son) ii. 7.
Rasul = one sent, "apostle," not prophet,
iv. 284.
Rasy = praising in a funeral sermon, iii
291.
Ratanah = a jargon, iii. 200.
Raushan = window, iii. 171.
Raushana (splendour) =Roxana, iii. 171.
Rauzah (Al-) = the gardens, i. 291.
(at Cairo) v. 169.
Raven of the waste or the parting, iv. 52 ;
viii. 236.
Rawi = story-teller (also used for Reciter of
Traditions) x. 163.
Ray = rede ("private judgment ") vi. 146.
Rayah kafmah = pennons flying (not " beast
standing") vii. 118.
Raydaniyah (camping ground near Cairo)
i. 245.
Rayhan = scented herb, viii. 187.
Rayhani = a curved character, i. 128; ii.
301.
Rayi=: rationalist, vi. 146.
Rayy (old city of Media) iv. 104.
Ready to fly for delight, iii. 26.
Ream (It. risma, Ar. rizmah) v. 108.
Red dress (sign of wrath) iv. 72 ; vi. 250*
Red Sea (cleaves in twelve places) v.
236.
Reed = pen (title of the Koranic chapt.
Ixviii) ii. 68.
Reed-pipe (Nay) v. 50.
Refusal of a gift, greatest affront, i. 336.
(of a demand in marriage a sore in-
sult) vi. 262).
Relations between Badawi tribes, vi. 267.
Rending of garments as sign of sorrow or
vexation, i. 308.
" Renowning it " (boasting of one's tribe)
iii. 80, 108.
(naive style of) vii. 347.
Repentance (a strong plead for granting aid
with a Moslem) iv. 277.
(acquits the penitent), vii. 72.
Repetition, vii. 293, 301.
(of an address in token of kindness)
v. 370.
Resignation (noble instance of) x. 42.
374
Alf Laylah wa Laylah.
Respect shown to parts of the body,
exuviae, etc., i. 276.
Rest (in Eastern travel before eating and
drinking) viii. 142.
Retorts (of a sharp Fellah) vi. 232.
Return unto Allah, iii. 317.
Return-Salam, viii. 309.
Revenge (a sacred duty) viii. 26.
Riba = interest, usury, v. 201 ; viii. 248.
Ridding the sea of its rubbish, ix. 169.
Riddle " surprise " (specimen of) v. 239.
Riders (names of such on various beasts)
viii. 239.
Riding on the ass an old Biblical practice,
i. 262.
Riding on men as donkeys (facetious exag-
geration of African practice) vii. 357.
Rif (Al-) = low-land, viii. 304.
Rihl = wooden saddle, iii. 117*
Rijal al-Ghayb (invisible controls) ii. 21 1;
x. 14.
Rims cars, i. 131.
Rind (rand) = willow, bay, aloes-wood, iii.
172.
Ring (in memoriam) vi. 199.
(lost in the Harim raises jealous sus-
picion) vi. 200.
Rings in the East, iv. 24.
Rising up and sitting down sign of agita-
tion, ii. 112.
River (the = Tigris Euphrates) ix. 313.
Rivers (underground) vi. 63.
Rizam (pi. of rizmah) = bales, reams, v.
108.
Rizwan (approbation) = key-keeper of Para-
dise, iii. i$, 20; iv. 195 ; viii. 265.
Robbing (to keep life and body together,
an acceptable plea) ix. 137.
Robe (the hidden, story of) vi. 188.
Robing one's self in rags = becoming a
Fakir, ii. 171.
Robinson Crusoe (with a touch of Arabic
prayerfulness) v. 291.
Rod (divining or dowsing) iv. 73.
Roman superficiality (notable instance of)
x. 116.
Rosary, iii. 123.
Rose (in Arab, masculine) viii. 274.
Rose-water (for "nobility and gentry,"
even in tea) v. 357.
Roll (pi. Artal) = rotolo, pound weight, iv.
124.
Roum =Graeco- Roman Empire, iv. 100.
Roumi (in Marocco= European) viii. 268.
Royalty in the guise of merchants, iii. 12.
Rozistdn = day-station, i. 29.
Rub' al-Kharab (probably for the Great
Arabian Desert) vii. 80 ; x. 42.
Rubb = syrup, " Rob," ii. 3.
Rubbamd= perhaps, sometimes (more em-
phatic than rubba, vii. 218.
Rubber (shampooer) iii. 17.
Rubhah (townlet on the frontier of Syria)
iii. 52.
Ruby (La'al, Yakut) v. 342.
(of exceptional size) vi. 66.
Rudaynah and Rudaynian lances, ii. I.
Rudaynian lance (like a) vii. 265.
Ruh = spirit, breath of life, ix. 67.
Rub. = be off, ix. 168.
Ruh bila Fuzul = Begone and none of yout
impudence, viii. 163.
Ruhban = monks, viii. 256.
Ruka'f = correspondence hand, i. 128.
Ruk'atayn = two-bow prayer, i. 142.
Rukb = travellers on camels, return cara*
van, viii. 238.
Rukh (Roc and " Roc's " feathers) v. 122.
(the world- wide " Wundervogel ")
vi. 1 6.
(study of, by Prof. Bianconi) vi. 49.
Rukham = alabaster, i. 295.
Rumourers (the two) = basin and ewer, vii.
146.
Rustak (A1-), city of Oman, vi. 289.
Rustam (not Rustum or Rustem) iv. 219.
Rutub (applying to pearls = fresh from
water) vii. 240.
Ryot = liege, subject; Fellah, peasant, iii.
215.
SA'A (measure of corn, etc.) vi. 203.
Sa'ad = auspiciousness, prosperity; deriva-
tives, i. 9.
Sa'adah (female Pr. N.) iii. 65.
Sa'ddah = worldly prosperity and future
happiness, ix. 327.
Sa'alab=fox, iii. 132.
Sa'alabah (name of a tribe) iii. 107
Saba = Biblical Sheba, iv. 113 ; vii. 316.
Sabab = rope (hence a cause) ii. 14 ; viii,
100.
Sabaj (not Sabah) a black shell, vii. 131.
Appendix.
375
Sabaka = he out-raced, ix. in.
Sabaka Kurahd = he pierced her forge,
viii. 46.
Sabb = low abuse, iii. 311.
Sabbagh = dyer, ii. 305.
Sabbah bin Rammdh bin Humdm = the
Comely, son of the Spearman, son of
the Lion, iii. 67.
Sabbahaka 'llah bi-'l-Khayr = Allah give
thee good morning, vi. 196.
Sabbath (kept in silence) v. 339.
Sabbation (River) v. 337.
Sabihat al-'Urs = gift on the wedding
morning, x. 1 8.
Sdbik = forerunner, viii. 341.
Sabikah = bar, lamina, ingot, viii. IO.
Sabfyah = young lady, ix. 226.
Sabr = patience and aloes, source of puns,
i. 138 ; viii. 35 ; ix. 278.
Sabt = Sabbath, ii. 305.
Sabur = Sapor ii., vi. 274.
Sacrifice (Ar. Kurban) viii. 16.
Sacy, Silvestre de (on the origin of The
Nights) x. 76.
Sdd (Letter, simile for the eye) v. 34.
Sadaf = cowrie, i. 19.
Sadakah = voluntary alms, opposed to
Zakat, i. 339.
Sadd = wall, dyke, i. 114 ; ii. 128.
Sadir = returning from the water (see
Warid) iii. 56.
Sadness (House of) viii. 64.
Sady = Hamah, q.v. ; iii. 293.
Safk (ground -wave in Meccah) v. 203.
Safe-guard (I am in thy = I appeal to thy
honour) vi. 158.
Saffron (aphrodisiac) ii. 2^4.
Safinah = (Noah's) Ark, ix. 310.
Safiyu 'llah (Adam) = pure of Allah, ii.
124.
Safwdn (Pr. N.) = clear, cold, vii. 314.
Saghr (Thagr), the opening of the lips
showing the teeth, i. 156 ; viii. 289.
Sahdkah = tribadism, ii. 234.
Sahib = companion, used as a Wazirial
title, i. 237; iv. 139; v. 71.
Sdhib al-Shartah = chief of the watch
(Prefect of Police) i. 259.
Sdhib Nafas = master of breath, a minor
saint healing by expiration, i. 107.
Sahifah = page, book, viii. 148.
Sahikah = Tribade, viii. 130.
Sahil (A1-) = the coast (Phoenicia) ix. 22.
Sahil Masr = the river side (at Cairo) i.
291.
Sahfm al-Layl (Pr. N.) = he who shooteth
an arrow by night, vi. 261.
Sahirah = place for the gathering of souls
on Doom-day, iii. 323.
Sahm-hu = his shaft, vi. ioo.
Sahm mush ab = forked (not barbed) arrow,
ix. 48.
Sa'i running between Safa and Marwah,
ii. 327.
Saibah = she-camel freed from labour, iii.
78.
= a woman who lets herself go
(a- whoring, etc.) viii. 151.
Sa'id = Upper Egypt, viii. 304.
Sa'id bin Jubayr, ii. 201.
Sa'fd bin Salim (Governor of Khorasan) v.
94-
Sa'id bin Zayd (traditionist) v. 8l.
Sa'fdah = the auspicious (fern.) ix. 330.
Sa'ik = the Striker (Pr. N.) vii. 35.
Sa'ikah = thunderbolt, vi. 271.
Sailor (Ar. equivalents for) vi. 242.
Sciim al-dahr = perennial faster, v. 1 12.
Saint, Santon (Wali) v. 112.
Saint and Sinner, v. 115.
Sa'fr = Hell, iv. 143.
Sais = groom, horsekeeper (Syce) vi. 9.
Saj'a (= rhymed prose) i. 116.
(instance of) v. 160.
(bald in translation) vii. 2.
(answerable for galimatias) vii. 36.
Sajjddah = prayer-rug, vi. 193.
Sak = calf of the leg, ii. 327.
Sakati= second hand dealer, iv. 77.
Sakhr al-Jinnf alluded to, i. 41 ; v. 316.
Saki = cup bearer, ii. 27, 327.
(and Sdk-i) ix. 253.
Sakin = quiescent (applied to a closing
wound) ix. 255.
Sakiyah = the Persian water-wheel, i.
123; ix. 218.
Sakka (Anglo-Indian Bihishti) = water-
carrier, iv. 44 ; v. 89.
Sakr=hawk, ii. 293.
Saksar (Pers. Sag-sar= dog's head) vi.
37-
Sa'lab=fox, jackal, vi. 211 ; ix. 48, 103.
Salaf (A1-) = ancestry (referring to
Mohammed) v. 90.
376
A If Laylah wa Lay la h.
Salahitah (A1-) island, vi. 30.
Sal'am = S(alla) Al(lah) 'A(layhi wa, salla)
M, see Abhak, ii. 24.
Salam (to be answered by a better saluta-
tion) ii. 146.
(of prayers) ii. 243.
(becomes Shalum with the Jews) viii.
223.
(not returned, a Moslem form of Boy-
cotting) viii. 302.
Salamat = Welcome ! vi. 232.
Salat (blessing, prayer) iv. 60.
Salat mamlukiyah = praying without ablu-
tion, vii. 148.
Salatah (how composed) vii. 132.
Salb = crucifying, iii. 25.
Sale (forced on by the bystanders) viii.
310.
Sales (formula of) vi. 73.
Salifah = silken plait, viii. 223.
Slih = a pious man, vii. 314; viii. 191.
prophet sent to Thamud, i. 169.
(grandson of Shem ?) v. 210.
(his she-camel) v. 235.
al-Mazani (theologian) v. 261.
Salihiyah = the Holy (name of a town) ix.
287.
Salfm (Pr. N. = the " Safe and Sound "}
iv. 58.
Sallah = basket of wickerwork, ix. 56.
Salli 'ala 'l-Nabf = bless the prophet (im-
posing silence) v. 65.
Salma and Layla = our " Mary and Martha,"
i. 265.
Salsabil (fountain of Paradise) iii. 57 ; iv.
195-
Salutation (the first) v. 200.
(Salam, unwillingly addressed to a
Christian) v. 284.
(from a rider to a man who stands,
and from the latter to one who sits)
ix. i.
Saluting after prayer, ix. 254.
Sama'an wa Ta'atan to be translated
variously, i. 96.
Samak = common fish, vi. 69.
Samandal (Al-) = Salamander, vii. 280.
Samar = night-story, vii. 312.
Samawah (A1-), visitation place in Baby-
lonian Irak, vii. 93.
Samharf lance of Samhar (place or maker)
iv. 258.
Samir = night-talker, vii. 217.
Samn = melted butter, Ghi, i. 144 ; iv. 53 ;
ix. 39-
= clarified butter, ix. 39.
Samsam (sword of the Tobba Amru bin
Ma'ad Kurb) ii. 127.
Samum = poisonous wind (Simoon) vi. 88.
Samur (applied to cats and dogs, also to
Admiral Seymour) iv. 57.
Sana'a (capital of Al-Yaman) v. 16.
(famed for leather and other work)
vii. 130.
Sanajik = banners, ensigns, etc., ix. 290.
Sand (knowing by the = geomancy) ix.
117.
Sandal (Pr. N.) = Sandal-wood, viii. 169.
(scented with) v. 192.
(Ar. Na'al) vi. 209.
Sandali (eunuch deprived of penis and
testes) v. 46.
Sandals (kissed and laid on the head in
token of submission) vii. 370.
Sanduk al-Nuzur = box of vowed oblations,
viii. 330.
Sapphic venery, ii. 234.
Sapphism (practised in wealthy Harfms)
iv. 234.
Sappho (the " Mascula ") x. 208.
Sar' (epilepsy, falling sickness* possession)
iv. 89 ; v. 28.
Sar = vendetta, i. 101, 114.
Sarab = mirage, iii. 319 ; vi. 93.
Sarandib = Selan-dvipa (Ceylon) vi. 64.
Sarawil = bag or petticoat trousers, i. 222.
(plural or singular ?) ix. 225.
Sardab = underground room, souterrain,
tunnel, i. 340; v. 128; ix. 241, 274.
Sari al-Sakati (Sufi ascetic) ix. 21.
Sarfdah (Tharidah) = brewis, v. 223.
Sarir = bier (empty) ii. 46.
Sarmujah = leggings, sandals, slippers,
vii. 370.
Sarraf= Anglo-Indian "Shroff," i. 210;
iv. 270.
Sasa bin Shays, vi. 274.
Sassanides, i. 75.
Satan (his malice weak in comparison with
women's) vi. 144.
Satl = kettle, bucket (situla ?) vii. 182.
Satur = chopper, viii. 162.
Saub (Tobe) 'Atabi = tabby silk, viii. 201.
Sauda = black bile, melancholia, iv. 251.
Appendix.
377
Saudaw! = of a melancholic temperament,
vii. 238.
Sauf (particle to express future) ii. 269,
296.
Saulajan = bat in " bat and ball," ii. 329.
Sawab = reward in Heaven, i. 96.
Sawad = blackness of the hair, x. 60.
Sawahflf = shore-men, ix. 22.
Sawalif = tresses, locks, v. 158.
Sawik = parched corn, vii. 303.
Sawwahun = wanderers, pilgrims, viii.
336.
Saw wan = Syenite, Hi. 324.
Sayd wa Kanas = hunting and coursing,
Sayf (i< os ) al-Muluk = Sword of the
Kings, vii. 325.
Sayf Zu al-Yazan (hero of a Persian ro-
mance) viii. 21.
Sayhiin and Jayhun=Jaxartes and Bactrus,
ii. 78; v. 41.
Sayih = wanderer (not " pilgrim ") ix. 51.
Sayl = torrent, vi. 164.
Sayr = broad girdle, viii. 325.
Sayyib (Thayyib) = woman who leaves her
husband after lying once with him, viii.
324-
Sayyib-hu = let him go, viii. 151.
Sayyid (descendant from Mohammed
through Al-Hasan) v. 259.
Scabbard (Ar. Ghimd) v. 158.
Scalding a stump in oil a common surgery
practice, i. 297.
Schoolmaster (derided in East and West)
v. 118.
Schools (attached to mosques) x. 174.
Scorpions of the brow = accroche-cceurs,
etc., i. 1 68 ; viii. 209.
Scoundrels (described with superior gusto)
ix. 135.
Scrotum (curdling in fear) ii. 233.
Sea of Al-Karkar, vi. 101.
Sea (striking out sparks) ix. 314.
Sea-stallion (myth of the) vi. 6.
Seal (and sealing-wax) iii. 189.
- (affixed to make an act binding) v.
184.
- (breaking the = taking the maiden-
head) v. 154.
Sealing a covered dish (a necessary precau-
tion against poison) i. 244.
Seal-ring of Soloman (oath by) vii. 317.
Seas (the two = the Mediterranean and the
Indian Ocean) i. 173.
(fresh = lakes and rivers) v. 326.
Seclusion (royal, and its consequences) ix.
91.
Secrets (instances and sayings with regard
to their keeping) v. 83.
Secrets (of workmanship, withheld from
apprentices) ix. 263.
Seditions in Kufah caused by Caliph Oth-
man's nepotism, ii. 163.
Seduction (the trulh about it) iii. 166.
Seeing sweetness of speech = finding it
out in converse, ix. 14.
Separation (spoken of as a defilement) iv.
211.
Seeking refuge with Allah, v. 200.
Septentriones (four oxen and their wain)
ii. 3-
Sepulchre, erroneously called a little Wali,
i. 105.
Serpent does not sting or bite, but strikes,
iii. 160.
(breaks the bones of its devoured
prey by winding round a tree or rock)
vi. 29.
(breath of), vi. 29.
(preserving from sickness) vi. 66.
(in Ar. mostly feminine) vi. 75.
Serving the Lord by sinning against one's
body, ii. 208,
Set-off for abuse of women, vii. 130.
Seven deadly sins, ii. 175.
Seven schools or editions of the Koran,
i. 113.
Seven sleepers, iii. 128.
Sevigne of pearls, iv. 249.
Sha'aban (moon of) v. 191.
Shlbb = youth between puberty and forty,
i- 55-
Shabistan = night station, i. 29.
Shadow (may yours never.be less) viii. 170*
Shafaif = lower labia, viii. 93.
Shaft' i (school of theology) ii. 151.
Shahadatayn = the two Testimonies, ii. 10;
iii. 346.
Shah-bandar = lord of the port (Consul)
iv. 29.
Shah (A1-) mit = the King is dead (check-
mate) viii. 217.
Shahid = index, pointer, ii. 300.
Shahmiyah (large tent) ii. 194.
373
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Shah-pur = Kings son, 2a^o>p> Sapor,
V. 2.
Shahrazdd (various explanations of the
name) i. 14 ; ii. 3.
Shahriman not Shah Zemdn, iii. 7, 212.
Shahryar = city friend, i. 2.
Shahyal bin Shdrukh (Pr. N.) vii. 331.
Shah Zamdn = King of the Age, i. 2.
Shdib al-Ingha'z = grey beard shaking with
disapproval, iii. 307.
Sha'ilah = link (also lamp, wick, etc.)
i. 259.
Shakespear and musical glasses, ii. 3.
Shakespearean " topothesia " out- Shake-
speared, iii. 212.
Shakhs = a person ; a black spot, iii. 26 ;
viii. 159.
Shakhtur = dinghy, vii. 362.
Shaking and nodding the head, universal
items of gesture language, I. 300.
Shakiriyah = Kshatriya caste, vi. 10.
Shakurfyah = chicore, v. 226.
Sham (Sysia)=land on the left, opposed to
al-Yaman = land on the right, i. 83.
Shamah = Khal, mole on the cheek, i.
167.
Shamardal (Al-) = the Tall One, vi. 221.
Shambar= Cassia fistularis, ii. 241.
" Shame " alluded to in cursing parents of
an abused person, i. 227.
(extends from navel to knees) viii.
193-
Shamlah = gaberdine, viii. 160.
Shammara = he tucked up (sleeve or gown)
vii. 133.
Shammir = up and ready ! viii. 263.
Shampooer (rubber) = Mukayyis or bag-
man, iii. 17.
Shampooing the feet, i. 117.
Shams al-Dauiah (imaginary king of
Egypt) vi. 241.
Shams al-Nahdr (Pr. N.) = Sun of the
Day, v. 9.
Shams al-Zuha (Pr. N.) = Sun of Undurn.
viii. 107.
Shamta" = the grizzled (name for wine)
x. 38.
Shanak= hanging, iii. 25.
Shanfara (poet) iii. 143.
Shdr, Sher and Shir, iv. 187.
Sha'r = hair of the body, pile, ix. 157.
Shara (A1-) mountain in Arabia, vii. 23.
Shar'a = holy law, vii. 170,
Sharab al-Tuffah = cider, iv. 134.
Sharaf al-Banat (Pr. N.) = Honour of
Maidenhood, viii. 107.
Shararif = trefoil-shaped crenelles, iv. 165.
Sharit = chopper, sword, vii. 178.
Sharmutah = rags, tatters; a strumpet;
shreds of meat =Kadld, i. 163.
Sharrkan (Sharrun kana) = bane to the foe,
ii. 78.
Shart = a single Talbiyah or cry Labbayka,
i. 226.
Shash Abyaz = white turband (distinctive
sign of the True Believer) viii. 8.
Shatm = obscene abuse, i. 182.
Shaukat = sting ; pride, ii. 106.
Shaving and depilation (process of) ii. 160;
ix. 139.
Shay ban (Arab tribe), v. 100.
Shaykh = an old man, elder, chief, i. 26,
55 J 144-
(attended by a half-witted lunatic)
vii. 152.
(after the type of Abu Nowas) ix.
251.
(for syndic of a guild) ix. 260.
(of the thieves one of the worthies of
a Moslem capital) vi. 204.
al-Bahr = Chief of the Sea (-coast) vi.
5i 53? vii. 357.
Shaykh al-Islam = Chief of the Olema,
ix.- 289.
(his mention sign of modern compo-
sition) x. 19.
Shaykh Nasr (Pr. N. = Elder of Victory) v.
343-
Shaykhah Rajihah = the excellent Reli-
gious, ix. 347.
Shaykhs (five, doubtful allusion) iii. 30.
Shays = Ab Seth, vi. 283.
Shaytan (Satan) term of abuse, iii. 25.
(his wife and nine sons) iii. 229.
Shayyun Ii Mlahi = per amor di Dio, i.
329-
Shawahi (from Shauh)= having fascinating
eyes, ii. 269.
Shawahi Umm al-Dawahi = the Fascinator,
Mother of Calamities, viii. 87.
Shazarwdn = Pers. Shadurwan, palace,
cornice, etc., vii. 51.
Shedding tears no disgrace for a man, i.
68.
Appendix,
379
Shem namphorash = the hundredth name of
God engraved on the seal-ring of Solo-
mon, i. 173.
Sherif=a descendant of Mohammed, iv.
170.
Shibabah = reed-pipe, viii. 166
Shihab = shooting stars, i. 224.
Shikk = split man (a kind of demon) v.
333-
Shinf= gunny-bag, v. 45.
Shiraj = sesame oil, ix. 184.
Shirk (partnership) = Polytheism, Dualism,
Trinitarianism, i. 181 ; ii. 202.
(=syntheism) of love, v. 9.
of the Mushrik, v. 142.
Shiyar (old name for Saturday) ii. 305.
Shoe (Ar. Markub, Na'al) vi. 207.
Shop (front shelf of, a seat for visitors) ix.
262.
Shops composed of a " but " and a " ben,'*
i. 316 ; iii. 163.
" Short and thick is never quick," iv. 194.
Shouting under a ruler's palace to attract
attention, ii. 38.
Shovel-iron stirrup, iii. 119.
Shower (how delightful in rainless lands),
vii. 141.
Shroud (joined in one = shrouded together ?)
v. 71.
Shrouds (carried by the pilgrims to Meccah)
vi. 61.
Shu'ayb=Jethro, ii. 205 ; v. 210.
Shubash = bravo! vii. 195.
Shudder preceding the magnetic trance,
i. 44.
Shuhada= martyrs (extensive category) i.
171.
Shuhud = accessors of the Kazi's court,
i. 21.
Shuja' al-Din (Pr. N.) = the Brave of the
Faith, ix. 18.
Shukkah = piece of cloth, ix. 236.
Shum (a tough wood used for staves) viii.
354-
Shuraih (a Kazi of Kufah in the seventh
century) i. 252.
Shushah = top -knot of hair, i. 308.
Shuuman = pestilent fellow, iv. 75.
Sibawayh (grammarian) vii. 233.
Siddik = true friend, ii. 197.
Siddikah (Al-) = the veridical (apparently
undeserved title of Ayishah) viii. 152.
Side-muscles (her, quiver) = she trembles
in every nerve, vii. 219.
Sidf (from Sayyidi) = my lord, v. 283.
Sidf Ibrahim bin al-Khawwas (Pr. N.)
v. 283.
Sidillah = seats, furniture, ix. 190.
Sifr = whistling, iv. 206; v. 333.
Sight comprehendeth Him not, etc.,vi. 282.
Sign of the cross on the forehead, ii. 224.
Signals of debauchees, x. 219.
Signet-rings, iv. 24.
Signing with the hand not our beckoning,
viii. 78.
Signs (of a Shaykh's tent) iii. 104.
(lucky in a horse) iii. 118.
(to Pharao) iv. 249.
(of Allah = Koranic versets) vi. 144.
(by various parts of the body) viii.
233-
(language of) ix. 269.
Signum salutis, viii. 293.
Sihr (Al-)= magic, black art, i. 305.
Sijdah = prostration, ii. 10.
Sijn al-Ghazab= Prison of Wrath, x. 45.
Sikankur = SioyKOS, see Aphrodisiacs,
iv. 32.
Silah = conjunctive sentence, coition, ix.
272.
Silah-dr= armour-bearer, ii. 215.
Simat = dinner table, i. 178.
Simiya = white magic, i. 305, 332.
Simoon (Ar. Samum = poisonous wind)
vi. 88.
Simurgh (guardian of the Persian mysteries)
x. 130.
Sin (permitted that men might repent)
ix. 83.
(thy, shall be on thine own neck) ix.
211.
Sin = China, ii. 77
Sinai (convent famous for Raki) v. 65.
Sind (matting of) v. 145.
Sindan, Sandan = anvil, viii. 8.
Sindbad (not to be confounded with the
eponym of the Sindibad-namah) vi. 4.
Sindibad the Sage, vi. 124.
Sindibad-namah (Persian romance) vi. 122;
quoted : vi. 129, 132, 134, 139, 143,
145, 150, 152, 169, 180, 183, 188, 202.
Singing (not haram = sinful, but makruh =
objectionable) ix. 245.
Sinnaur = cat, prince, iii. 149.
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Sinning (for the pleasure of being pardoned)
iv. in.
Sins (seven deadly) ii. 175.
Sirah (small fish, fry, sprat) vi. 216 ;
ix. 1 66.
Sisters (their abiding together after mar-
riage frequently insisted upon) x. 56.
Sitt al-Mashaikh = Lady of Shaykhs,
v. 154.
Skin (free from exudation sounds louder
under the clapping of the hand) ix. 1 50.
(extreme delicacy of the female)
ix. 321.
Sirat (A1-), the bridge of Hell, iv. 223.
Sister (by adoption) viii. 25.
Sisterhood = companions, suite, viii. 41.
Sitting on shins and knees, a trying pos-
ture, i. 130.
Siwak = tooth-stick ; Siwa-ka = other
than thou, iii. 275.
Sixth Abbaside Caliph, error for Fifth,
viii. 56.
Siyagosh, see Tufah.
Slain were those who were slain " = many
were slain, v. 364.
Slander (poisoned = fatal) ii. 264.
Slapping on the nape of the neck = boxing
the ears, iv. 193.
Slate (Ar. Lauh) v. 73.
Saughter (wholesale, for the delight of the
gallery) viii. 255.
Slaughtering (ritual for) v. 391.
(by "cutting the animal's throat)
viii. 44.
Slave (holds himself superior to a menial
freeman) viii. 294.
Slave-girl (Moslemah can compel an infidel
master who has attempted her seduc-
tion to sell her) vii. 203. .
(when newly bought frequently pre-
tentious and coquettish) vii. 266.
(can only be sold with her consent)
viii. 292..
(free, not forward in her address)
ix. 268.
(lewd and treacherous by birth)
ix. 280.
(to be sent as a spy into the Harims)
ix. 292.
Slaves (fancied by debauched women)
i. 191.
(cannibals) ii. 48.
Slaves (familiarity) ii. 49.
(called "Camphor," like "Snow-
ball) ii. 47.
(refuse to be set free) ii. 55.
(manumission of) ii. 55.
(destructiveness) ii. 55.
(girls' names) ii. 57.
(returning from a journey) ii. 65.
(Christian girls sent to Moslems) ii.79.
(girls examined as to virginity) ii. 147.
(Behaving like one) ii. 270.
(O Camphor) iii. 40.
(set free for the benefit of the dead)
iii. 211.
(dealer in = Jallab) iii. 349.
(ambitious to have slaves of their
own) v. 12.
(if ill-treated may demand to be sold)
viii. 54-
Sledge (thrashing = tribulum) ii. 23.
Sleeper and Waker (tale of the) iv. 96.
Sleepers (the Seven of Ephesus) iii. 128.
Sleeping (and slumbering) ii. 178.
(with covered head and face) iii. 345.
(naked) v. 8.
(with head and body covered by a
sheet) v. 18.
(with a sword between them) vii. 352.
Sleeplessness (contrivance against) iv. 228.
Slice of the moon = digit of the moon,
i.9i.
Smile (like Mim) iv. 249.
(and laughter) v. 193.
Smoking out (a common practice) ii. 255.
Smothering a rival (common in Harims)
ii. 58.
Smuggling men into the Harim, i. 282.
Snatching off the turband, a paying
industry, i. 259.
Sneezing (etiquette of) ix. 220.
Socrates (" sanctus pasderasta") x. 213
seqq.
Sodomite (Ar. Lutf) v. 161.
(punished if detected) v. 160.
Sodomites (angels appear to) iii. 301, 304.
Sodomy (abnormally developed amongst
the savages of the New World) x. 240.
with women, iii. 304.
Softness of skin highly prized, ii. 295.
Soft-sided, attribute of beauty, i. 168.
Soko (Maghribi form for Siik = bazar-
street) viii. 230.
Appendix.
Sold to thee for monies received (formula
of Moslem sales), vi. 73.
Soldiers of Al-Daylam = warlike as the
Daylamites, viii. 82.
Sole of a valley often preferred to encamp
in, ii. 85.
Solomon (his carpet) iii. 267.
(his food -tray) vi. 80.
(his seal-ring) vi. 84.
(the Apostle of Allah) vi. 99.
(his Wazir Asaf) vi. 99.
(his trick upon Bilkis) vi. 113.
(oath by his seal-ring), vii. 317.
and David (their burial-place) v.
310.
and Al-Sakhr, ii. 97.
Solomon's death fixing the date of a tale,
i. 41.
prison (the copper cucurbites in which
he imprisoned the rebellious Jinns)
viii. 157.
"Son" used for "grandson" as more
affectionate, i. 243.
(the lamp of a dark house) ii. 280.
(of a century = hundred years old,
i. 126.
(of Persian Kings, not Prince but
descendant) iii. 163.
(of ten years dieth not in the ninth)
viii. 70.
Sons of Adam = men, i. 130.
of Sasan = Sassanides, i. 2.
(brought as servants unto Kings) ix.
43-
of the road = wayfarers, ii. 23.
Sophia (Pr. N. and Mosque) ii. 79.
Sortes Virgilianse, v. 44.
Soul (Thou knowest what is in mine and
I know not what is in Thine) v. 216.
(you may have his, but leave me his
body) viii. 284.
(for lover) ix. 25.
Souls (doctrine of the three) v. 218.
Spartivento = mountain whereon the
clouds split, viii. 19.
Speaker puts himself first, i. 33.
Speaking en prince, ii. 184.
Speaking to the " gallery," viii. 128.
Spears and javelines, vi. 263.
Speech (this my = the words I am about
to speak) viii. 147.
Speech (inverted) viii. 318.
Speech (for prayers imprecating parting)
viii. 347-
Sperm (though it were a drop of mar-
guerite) viii. 210.
Spider-web, frailest of houses (Koranic)
ix. 59.
Spindle (thinner than a) iii. 260.
Spiritual Sciences (Moslem form of Cab-
bala) ii. 151.
Spiritualism (the religion of the nineteenth
century) ix. 86.
Spittle dried up from fear, i. 285.
Spoon (Ar. Mi'lakah) ix. 141.
Spurring = kicking with the shovel-stirrup
ii. 89.
Squatting against a wall, iv. 119.
Squeeze of the tomb (Fishas) v. in.
Staff broken in the first bout = failure in
the first attempt, i. 64.
Stages (ten, of love-sickness) iii. 36.
Stallion (I am not one to be struck on the
nose 1 ) vi. 262.
Standards reversed in sign of defeat, ii. 259.
Stations of the Moon (Ar. Manazil) v. 228.
Stature (Alif-like) iv. 249.
Steel (Ar. Bulad) vi. 115.
Steward (pendant to the parable of the un
just) ix. 66.
St. George (posture) iii. 304.
Stirrup (walking by the) vi. 234.
" Stone-bow " not " cross-bow," iii. 116.
Stoning (of the devil at Mina) v. 203.
Stones (precious) v. 312.
(ditto, and their mines) vi. 18.
(removed from the path by the pious)
vi. 190.
Story-teller (picture of the) x. 164.
Strangers (treated with kindly care) v.
171.
" Strangers yet " (Lord Houghton quoted)
v. 284.
Street (the, called Yellow) iv. 93.
(-watering) iv. 107.
Street-cries of Cairo, vii. 172.
Street-melodies changing with fashion,
i.3".
Striking the right hand upon the left in
sign of vexation, i. 298.
Striking with the shoe, the pipe-stick, etc.
highly insulting, i. 1 10.
Stuff his mouth with jewels (reward for
poetry) iv. 103.
382
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Stuff a dead man's mouth with cotton,
iv. 193.
Style (of a Cairene public scribe) vii.
134.
(intended to be worthy of a statesman)
ix. 42.
Su'add = Beatrice, iv. 267.
Suban = dragon, ix. 277.
Subhana 'llah pronounced to keep off the
evil eye, iii. 224.
Subhat-hu = in company with him, vii.
262.
Subh-i-kdzib = false dawn, i. 78.
Subh-i-sddik = true dawn, i. 78
Submission (Ar. Khafz al-Jinah = lowering
the wings) ix. 74.
Sucking the tongue = " kissing with th'
inner lip " i. 270-
Sucking the dead mother's breast, touch of
Arab pathos, ii. 128.
Sudan = our Soudan, iii. 75.
Stadein-men = Negroes, viii. 266.
Suez (Ar. Al-Suways) vi. 80.
Suf (wool) ; Sufi (Gnostic) iii. 140.
Sufiism (rise of) x. 128.
Sufis (stages of their journey) v. 264.
. . (address Allah as a lover would his
beloved) iv. 263, 298.
Suffah = "sofa" (shelf) iv. 275.
Sufrah (provision-bag and table-cloth) i.
178; v. 8; viii. 269; ix. 141.
Sufydn al-Thaurf, ii. 202 ; v. 81.
Sugar-stick = German Zuckerpiippchen, i.
167.
Sughr (Thughr) see Saghr.
Suha, star in the Great Bear, i. 167 ; iii.
28.
Sujiid = prostration, iv. 248.
Sukat (pi. of Saki cup-bearer) v. 66
Sukita fi aydihim = it repented them, v.
191.
Sukub (Pr. N.) = flowing, pouring, viii.
209.
Sulaf al-Khandarisi (a contradiction) viii.
203.
Suldfah = ptisane of wine, must, iv. 258 ;
v. 158.
Sulami = belonging to the Banu Sulaym
tribe, vii. 93.
Sulayma", dim. of Salma = any beautiful
woman, iii. 263.
Sulayman and Sakhr al-Jinni, i. 42.
Sulaymdn bin Abd al-Malik (Caliph) ii.
167 ; vii. 99.
Sulaymanfyah = Afghans, vii. 171.
Sullam = ladder ; whipping-post, i. 331.
Sultan (anachronistic use of the title) v.
88, 179.
(fit for the service of = for the service
of a temporal monarch) viii. 325.
Sulus = engrossing hand, i. 128.
Sumbul al-'Anbari = spikenard, viii. 273.
Sumr = brown, black, iv. 251.
Sums of large amount weighed, i. 281.
Sun (greeting Mohammed) i. 45.
(likened to a bride displaying her
charms to man) x. 38.
Sun and Moon (luminaries for day and
night) v. 228.
(do not outstrip each other) v. 228.
Sunan (used for Rasm)= usage, customs,
ix. 74.
Sundus = brocade, v. 57
Sunnah = practice of the Prophet, etc., v.
36, 167.
Sunni (versus Shi'ah) iv. 82.
Suns (for fair-faced boys and women) viii.
242.
Superiority of man above woman, iii,
332.
Supernaturalismus (has a material basis)
viii. 31.
Superstitious practices not confined to the
lower orders, i. 40.
Surahiyah (vulg. Sulahiyah) = glass-bottle,
vii. 370.
Surayya= Stars of Wealth (lit. moderately
rich) viii. 303.
Suritu = I was possessed of a Jinn, ix. 27.
Surrah = purse, pouch, viii. 71.
Surriyah = concubine, i. 27.
Susannah and the Elders in Moslem garb,
v. 97.
Sutures of the skull, iii. 123.
Su'ubdn = dragon, cockatrice = Tammfm,
i. 172; vii. 322.
Su'ud used as a counter-odour, i. 279.
Suwan = syenite, i. 238; ix. 316.
Suways (Al-) = Suez, vi. 80; ix. IO.
Swan-maidens, v. 346 ; viii. 30.
Swearing (on Blade and Book) ii. 332.
(by Allah, forbidden) iv. 175.
Sweet (the, slang for fire) ii. 163.
Sweetmeat of Safety, iv. 60 ; viii. 105.
Appendix.
383
Swevens (an they but prove true) ix. 284.
Swimming (studied in Baghdad) vi. 134.
Sword (making invisible) iv. 176 ; vi. 230.
(between sleepers represents only the
man's honour) vii. 353.
Sycamore fig (for anus) iii. 302.
Syene (town on the Nile) iv. 152.
Syphilis (origin of) x. 89.
(hippie) x. 90.
Syria (Sham) = left-hand land, ii. 224.
TAAKH{R = acting with deliberation, ix.
328.
Ta'alik = hanging lamps, ix. 320.
Ta'am = meat ; millet, ii. 67.
Tab (game) tip-cat, ii. 314.
Tabannuj = drugging with Bhang, iv. 71.
Tabban lahu = perdition on him ! iv. 142.
Tabik = coffer, vii. 350.
Tabl = kettledrum, viii. 18.
Tablet (Ar. Lauh) v. 37.
(the Preserved), v. 322.
Tabut = bier, ark, etc., ii. 46; vii. 207,
35-
Tabzir = female circumcision, ii. 234.
Tadmurah (founds Tadmur or Palmyra) vi.
116.
Tafazzal = favorisca (have the kindness) ii.
103.
Taggda ii. 88.
Taghadda"=he dined, vii. 180.
Taghum, a kind of onomatopoetic grunt, i.
228.
Taghut (idol) iii. 217.
Tahlil = Refrain of Unity, ii. 236.
Taif (A1-) , town famous for scented leather,
viii. 273.
Taifi leather, viii. 303. ,
Tail (wagging of, a sign of anger with feli-
dse) ix. 72.
Tai'li 'llah (Caliph) iii. 51, 307.
Tailor made to cut out the cloth in owner's
presence, i. 321.
Tair al-bayn = parting-bird, vii. 226.
Taj al-Muluk Khran = crown of the kings
of amorous blandishment, ii. 291.
Taj Kisrawi = Chosroan crown, ix. 319.
Tajfr Alff=a merchant worth a thousand
(left indefinite) ix. 313.
Takaddum and Takadum (difference be-
tween) iv. 171.
Takah = arched hollow in the wall, niche,
vii. 361.
Takhil = adorning with Kohl, Hi. 57.
Takhmish = tearing the face in grief, ix.
10.
Takht (sitting accommodation from a
throne to a saddle, capital) v. 322 ; vii.
55-
(more emphatical than Sarir) vii.
328.
Takht -ra wan = moving throne (mule-litter)
ii. 180 ; v. 175.
Takiyah = calotte worn under the Fez,
skull-cap, i. 224 ; viii. 120.
Taklid = baldricking, not girding, a sword,
vii. 3.
Takliyah = onion-sauce, vii. 322.
Takruri = Moslem from Central and West-
ern North Africa, ii. 15.
Taksim = distribution, analysis, ix. 77.
Takwim = Tacufno (for Almanac) vii.
296.
Talak bi '1-SaHsah = triple divorce, iii.
292.
Talbiyah = the cry Labbayka, i. 226 ; ii.
227.
Talking birds (watching over wives) vi.
132.
Tamar al-Hindi (Tamarind) = the Indian
date, iii. 297.
Tamar Hannd= flower of privet, i. 83 ;
viii. 176.
Tarn Muz = July, i. 53.
Ta'mfm = crowning with turband or tiara ;
covering, wetting, v. 199.
Tamsir (derived from Misr) = founding *
military cantonment, vii. 371.
Tanjah = Tanjiers,'vi. 106.
Tanwin al-Izafah = the nunnation in con-
struction, ix. 272.
Tdr = tambourine, i. 215.
Tardib = breast -bone, v. 132.
Tarbush = Pers. Sar-push, head cover, i.
215-
Target (Ar. Darakah), vi. 9.
Tarhah = head- veil, ii. 52.
Tarik = clear the way, i. 66.
Tarik (Jabal al-) = Gibraltar, iv. 100.
Tarfkah= musical mode, modulation, ix.
27.
Tarikat = (mystic) path to knowledge, v.
in.
384
A If Laylah wa Laylak.
Ta'ris-ak = thy going between (pimping)
vi. 196.
Tarjumau = truchman, i. 100.
Tarn-Kappe (Siegfried's) iv. 176 ; viii.
1 20.
Tars Daylam{ = Median Targe, viii. 291.
Tas (from Pers. Tasah) = tasse, viii. 224.
Tasawwuf (rise of) x. 128.
Tasbih = saying Subhan Allah ; Rosary, i.
2585 iii. 125.
Tasmeh-pa = strap-legs, vi. 51.
Tasnim (from sanam) = a fountain in Para-
dise, ii. 100 ; v. 264.
Tetsumah = sandal, slipper, ii. 197.
Taswff= saying "Sauf," q.v., ii. 296.
Taub (Saub, Tobe) = loose garment, ii.
206.
Taubah (Bi'l-) = by means or on account
of penitence, ix. 83.
Taufik (Pr. N. = causing to be prosperous)
iv. i.
Taur (Thaur, Saiir), a venerable remnant
of an un-split speech, i. 16.
Taverns, vii. 324.
Tawaf = circumambulation of the Ka'abah,
ii. 327 ; vi. 242.
Tawshi, obnoxious name for a Eunuch, i.
235-
Tawashshuh = shoulder-cut, ii. 107.
Tawaf= Ka'abah-circuit, v. 203.
Tawakkul 'ala 'llah = trust in Allah, v.
208.
Tawil (and Abt Vogler) viii. 96.
Tawllan jiddan, now a Cairenism, vii. 13.
Tayammum = washing with sand, v. 197.
Tayf= ghost, phantom, iii. 252.
Taylasan (turband worn by a preacher) iv.
286.
Tayr = any flying thing, bird, vii. 227.
Tayrab (A1-) a city, iii. 259.
Taysh = vertigo, giddiness, x. 9.
Tayy (noble Arab tribe) iv. 94*
Tazrib = quilting, vii. 330.
Tears shed over past separation, i. 283.
(pouring blood like red wine) iii.
169.
Teeth (their cleansing enjoined by Mo-
hammed), v. 44.
"Tell the truth!" way of taking an
Eastern liar, vii. 183.
Ten stages of love-sickness, iii. 36.
Tent (signs of a Shaykh's) iii. 104.
Tent (how constructed) vii. 109.
Testicles (names for) ii. 55.
(curdling in fear) ii. 233.
(beating and bruising of, female mode
of killing a man) iii. 3.
Testimonies (the two = Shahadatayn) ii.
10.
Thakilata-k Ummak = be thy mother
bereaved of thee, iv. 1 56.
Thamud (pre-historic Arab tribe) iii. 294.
Thank you (Eastern equivalent for) iv. 6 ;
v. 171.
Theft (penalty of) viii. 164.
"Them "for "her," viii. 35.
" There is no Majesty," etc. as ejaculation
of impatience, vii. 73.
"They" for "she," v. 41, 140; viii. 281.
Thigh-bite allowed in wrestling, ii. 93.
Third = Tuesday, vii. 349.
Thirst (affecting plea; why?) iv. 199.
Thongs (of the water skins cut, preparatory
to departure) ix. 302.
Thorn of lance = eye-lash, iii. 331.
Thou fillest mine eyes = I find thy beauty
all-sufficient, viii. 57.
Thousand dinars and five thousand dirhams
= ^"500 and ^125 respectively, i. 281.
Thousand thousand = a million, vi. 98.
Three days, term of hospitality, i. 3.
Three hundred and three score rooms =
one for each day of the Moslem year,
ix. 61.
Three things (are better than other three)
vi. 5.
(not to be praised before death) ix*
39-
Threshold (of marble in sign of honour)
ix. 238.
Throne-verse, v. 21 1.
Throwing one = bastinado on the back,
i. 243.
"Throwing the handkerchief," vi. 285.
Thrusting (applied to spear and lance) ii.
231.
Thursday night (in Moslem parlance =
Friday night) v. 324.
Tibn = crushed straw, i. 16 ; ix. 106.
Tigris (Ar. Dajlah, Dijlah) viii. 150.
Timbdk (Tumbak) = stronger variety of
Tobacco, ix. 136.
Time (distribution of) ix. 71.
Time-measurers (of very ancient date) x, 85.
Appendix.
385
Timsah = crocodile, vii. 343.
Tin (Kazdir) iv. 274 ; vi. 39.
Tin = fig, simile for a woman's parts, iii.
302.
= clay puddled with chaff, v. 112.
Tinder (a styptic) iv. 108.
Tingis = Tanjah (Tangiers) vi. 106.
Tip-cat stick, ii. 314.
Tiryak = theriack, treacle (antidote) iii.
65.
Title (used by a Sovereign in addressing a
person confers the rank) ix. 119.
Tob = Span. Adobe (unbaked brick) ii.
17-
Tobacco (its mention inserted by some
scribe) ix. 136.
first mention of) x. 91.
Tobba.(Himyaritic) = the Great or Chief,
i. 216.
Tohfah = rarity, present, viii. 55.
Tongue (of the case = words suggested by
circumstances) i. 121.
(made to utter (?) what is in the heart
of man) v. 218.
(my, is under thy feet; vii. 239.
Too much for him (to come by lawfully)
ix. 174.
Tooth -pick (Ar. Khilal) v. 44.
Topothesia (designedly made absurd) viii.
338.
Tor (Mount Sinai) ii. 242.
(its shaking) ii. 281.
Torrens quoted, i. 56, 147, 203, 206, 225,
228, 251, 271 ; ii. 4, 19, 38, 93 ; iii. 218,
235, 249, 289 ; iv. 187, 189, 236 ; v. 80,
96, 1 88 ; viii. 280, 305, 309, 319, 321,
327 ; ix. 278.
Torrents (Ar. Sayl), a dangerous feature in
Arabia, vi. 164.
Tortoise (the colossal) vi. 33.
Torture easier than giving up cash, viii.
189.
Tossing upon coals of fire, iii. 61.
Touch of nature (making all the world kin)
x. 24.
Toujours perdrix, vi. 130.
Toutes putes, ix. 298.
Traditionists :
Al-Zuhrf, ii. 198.
Ibn Abi Aufa, ib. 200.
Sa'id bin Jubayr, ib. 20 1.
Sufyan al-Thaurf, ib. 202.
VOL. X.
Traditionists :
Bishr al-Hafi, ii. 203.
Mansiir bin Ammdr, ib. 204.
Trafalgar = Taraf al-Gharb (edge of the
West) ix. 50.
Trailing the skirts = humbly, ii. i6s ; viii.
301.
Trances and faintings (common in romances
of chivalry) viii. 118.
Transformation (sudden of character
frequent in Eastern stories) viii. 178.
Translators (should be "bould ") ix. 244.
Traveller (a model one tells the truth when
an untruth would not serve him) vi. 7.
Travelling at night, ii. 286.
Treasure (resembling one from which the
talismans had been loosed) ix. 287.
Treasures (enchanted in some one's name
and nature) iv. 296.
Trebutien quoted, iv. 268 ; vii. 91, 98, 139,
314, 318, 324, 331,346, 353, 36i J ix.
33. 6 3 ; x - 9> 54, 69, So, 98.
Tree of Paradise (Ar. Tuba) v. 237.
Tribade (Ar. Sahikah, Musahikah) viii. 130.
Tribadism, iv. 234.
Tribe (one fortuneth another) ix. 342.
Tribes (relations between) vi. 267.
Tribulum (thrashing sledge) ii. 108.
Tricks (two = before and behind) v. 161.
Triregno (denoted by the Papal Tiara) ii.
236.
Trouser-string, ii. 60.
Truth (most worthy to be followed) v. 145.
(is becoming manifest) v. 159.
(told so as to be more deceptive than
a lie) ix. 223.
prevailing, falsehood failing, iv. 80.
Tuba (tree of Paradise) v. 237.
Tubah (fifth Coptic month) v. 231.
Tufah = felis caracal, lynx, vi. 260.
Tufan (Typhoon, etc.) iv. 156.
Tufan = Deluge of Noah, viii. 346.
Tufayl (proverbial intruder) iv. 123.
Tufayli = parasite, v. 130.
Tulf = Sordes unguinum (fie!) viii. 195.
Tughra = imperial cypher, v. 184.
Tughrai (A1-), poet, iii. 143.
Tughyan = Kufr, rejection of the True
Religion, i. 169.
Tumar = uncial letters, i. 129.
Tuning (peculiar fashions of Arab musicians
with regard to it) ix. 27.
BB
386
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Turband (not put upon the ground out of
respect) i. 223.
(white, distinctive of Moslems) iv.
214.
< (substitute for a purse) viii. 190.
(worn large by the learned) v.
1 20.
(inclining from the head-tops) ix.
221.
" Turk " probably a late addition, i. 52.
Turk (= Turkoman, nomade) ii. 218.
(= plunderer, robber) ii. 304.
(provoked to hunger by beauties of
nature) iii. 32.
(appears under the Abbasides) iii.
81.
Turkey (Future of) ix. 94.
Turks (fair boy-slaves abounding in Bagh-
ddd) v. 66
(forming the body-guard of the Ab-
basides) ix. 245.
Turning round in despair against an op-
pressor, i. 246.
Turtur (an Arab's bonnet) ii. 143.
Tusks (of elephants, not teeth), vi. 82.
Tuwumya = he was received (into the grace
of God) ix. 54.
Two sayings (double entendre) viii. 153.
Tyrant (from, to tyrant = from official to
official) vi. 214.
*UBB = breast-pocket (poche au sein) viii.
205.
Ubi aves ibi angeli, iii. 280.
Ubullah (canal leading from Bassorah to
Ubullah-town) ix. 31.
'tld Jalaki = Damascus lute, ii. IOO.
Udah, properly Uta = private room of a
concubine, i. 286.
Udm = ""kitchen " (see Adm) ix. 213.
Uff 'alayka = fie upon thee (Uft = sorties
aurium) viii. 195.
Uhmlkh = Enoch (Idris?) v. 210.
Ujb = arrogance (in the Spanish sense of
gaiety, etc.) vi. 164.
Uka"b = eagle, vulture, iv. 177*
Uka"b al-k^sir = the breaker eagle, ix. 69.
Ukayl(Akil?)iv. 22.
Ukhuwdn = camomile, iii. 58.
Ukiyyah (pi. Awdk) = ounce, ix. 2 1 6.
'Ulbah = box, viii. 71.
Ultra-Shakespearean geography " Fars of
Roum," i. 45.
Ulysses (the Arabian) vi. 40.
Umamah and 'Asikah, tale of two women
now forgotten, i. 61.
Umm al-banat wa '1-banin = mother of
daughters and sons, ix. 175.
Umm al-raas = crown of the head, x,
44.
Umm al Su'ud (Pr. N.) = Mother of Pros-
perities, ix. 173.
Umm 'Amir = mother of Amir, nickname
for the hyena, i. 43.
Umm Amru (mother of 'Amr) and the ass,
v. 118.
Umm Kulsum (one of the Amsal of the
Arabs for debauchery) x. 194.
'Ummal (pi. of 'Amil = governor) ix. 26.
'Umrah = lesser Pilgrimage, ii. 169 ; v.
205.
" Unberufen," ix. 180.
Underground rivers, vi. 63.
Unguinum fulgor, iv. 252.
Unhappy thou ! vi. 285.
'Unnabi = between dark yellow and red
(jujube-colour) ix. 143.
Union opposed to " Severance," vii. 120.
Uns al-Wujud (Pr. N.) = Delight of exist-
ing things, v. 33.
Unveiling the face a sign of being a Chris-
tian, ii. 119.
Upakosha (Vararuchi's wife) vi. 172.
'Urb = Arabs of pure race, ix. 293.
'Urban = wild Arabs, i. 112.
Urine (pollutes) iii. 229.
Urining, ii. 326.
(wiping after) iii. 229.
Urkub = tendon Achilles, hough, viii. 185,
'Urrah = dung, x. I.
Urwah = handle, buttonhole, v. 227.
"Use this" (i.e. for thy daily expenses;
vii. 298.
Usfur = safflower, i. 219.
Ushari = camel travelling ten days, iii. 67,
Usirat (A1-), island, vi. 57.
Usul (= fundamentals) ii. 15.
(= forbears, ancestors) ix. 246*
Usury (Ar. Riba) v; 201.
(verset of) v. 215.
Usus = os sacrum, v. 219.
'Utbi (A1-), poet, v. 133.
Uzayr = Esdras, i. 257.
Appendix.
337
Uzn al-Kuffah = ear (handle) of the basket,
viii. 161.
Uzrah = Azariyah, vii. 158.
VARIETIES of handwriting, i. 129.
Veil, see Lisdm, ii. 31.
Veiling her honour = saving her from being
ravished, ix. 330.
Vellication, iv. 256.
Vengeance (of a disappointed suitor appre-
hended) vi. 286.
Verses (purposely harsh) viii. 337.
(aforementioned, distinguishing for-
mula of " Hasan of Bassorah ") viii.
126.
Versets (number of the Koranic) v. no.
View (gorgeous description of) viii. 30.
*' Vigilance Committees" (for abating
scandals) ix. 98.
Vile water (Koranic term for semen) vii.
213.
Violent temper (frequent amongst Eastern
princesses) vii. 254.
Virgil (a magician) v. 44.
Virginity of slave-girls (respected by the
older slave-trader, rarely by the young)
vii. 267.
Visit (confers a blessing in polite parlance)
ix. 185.
Visits (in dreamland) v. 47.
(to the tombs) vii. 124.
(should not be overfrequent) ix. 273.
Visvakarma = anti-creator, v. 320 ; x. 131.
Vivisepulture, vi. 41.
Voice (thickened by leprosy) iv. 50.
WA = and (introducing a parenthetic
speech) ix. 282.
Wa'ar = rough ground unfit for riding) vi.
140.
Wa ba'ad (see Amma ba'ad, vol. ii. 34) =
and afterwards, iii. 181.
Wada'a, see Cowrie, iv. 77.
Wadd, Suwd'a and Yagus (idols) vi. 282.
Waddle of "Arab ladies," iii. 37.
Wady = valley ; slayer, i. 51 ; ii. 85 ; iii.
234.
Wady al-Naml = Valley of the Emmets,
v- 337-
Wady al-Ward =Vale of Roses, vi. 276.
Wady Zahrdn = Valley Flowery, v. 360.
Waggid (Hebr. speaker in a dream) iv^
289.
Wahk, Wahak = Lasso, vii. 61.
Wahsh = wild beast and synonyms, i. 242.
Wahtah (Al-)= quasi- epileptic fit, vii. 127.
Wailing over the past, iv. 239.
Waist (slender, hips large), iii. 278.
Wakalah, described in Pilgrimage (i. 60)
i. 266.
Wakil = agent (see Pashas) iv. 182.
Wakites (number their islands) viii. 88.
Wakkad = stoker, i. 312 ; ii. 134.
Wak Wak (Islands of) viii. 60.
Walad = son (more ceremonious than
"ibn") v. 386.
Walgh = lapping of a dog, iii. 319.
Walhan (A1-) = the distracted, iii. 226 ;
viii. 33 ; ix. 6.
Wali= (civil) Governor, i. 259.
Wall = Saint, San ton, v. 112.
'ahd = heir-presumptive, ix. 87.
Walid (A1-) bin Abd al-Malik, Caliph,
iv. 100.
bin Marwan (Caliph) ii. 167 ; iii. 69.
bin Sahl (Caliph) vii. 106.
Walidati ^= my mother, speaking to one not
of the family, iii. 208.
Walimah = marriage-feast, vi, 74 ; viii.
231.
Walking afoot (not dignified) vi. 227.
Wa 'llahi = I swear by Allah, viii. 310.
tayyib = by Allah, good ! ii. 34.
Wa '1-Salam = and here ends the matter,
i. 102.
(used in a variety of senses) viii.
74-
Wanderer in the mountains = a recluse
avoiding society, vi. 158.
Warahmatah = Alas, the pity of it, v. 42.
Ward = rose ; Wardah = a single rose,
viii. 274.
(A1-) fi '1-Akmam (Pr. N.)= Rose in
' Hood, v. 32.
Shah = Rose King, vii. 70.
Wardan (a Fellah name, also of a village)
iv. 293.
Warid = resorting to the water, iii. 56.
Warid (jugular vein) iv. 92.
Warm one's self at a man's fire, ii. 76.
Wars (caused by trifles, frequent in Arab
history) vi. 142.
(A1-) = carthamus tinctorius, vii. 92.
388
A If Laylah wa Laylak.
Wartah = precipice, quagmire, etc., x.
8ft
Washing the dead ^vithout doors only in
case of poverty, ii. 10.
Washings after evacuation, i. 220.
Wasif = servant ; fem. Wasifah = con-
cubine, iii. 171.
Wasik (A1-) Caliph, iii. 81.
Wasit = Middle (town of Irak Arabi)
ix. 26.
Wasm = tribal sign, vi. 163.
Watad = tent-peg (also a prosodical term)
viii. 279.
Water (sight of running, makes a Persian
long for strong drink) iv. 75.
(had no taste in his mouth) v. 39.
(-carrier = Sakka) v. 89.
Watering the streets, iv. 107.
Water-melons (eaten with rice and meat)
vi. 208.
Waters flowing in Heaven, iii. 65.
Watwat = bat, v. 226.
Way of Allah = common property, {.91.
Waybah = six to seven English gallons,
iv. 86.
Wayha = Alas ! v, 258.
Wayha-k, equivalent to Wayla-k, vii. 127.
Wayla-k = Woe to thee ! iii. 82.
Wazir = Minister, i. 2.
(the sharp-witted in the tales)
ii. 246.
Weal (I see naught but) ix. 180.
Weapons (carried under the thigh) vii. 56.
magic, vii. 59.
new forms of, vii. 62.
Web and pin (eye -disease of horses)
viii. 341.
Week-days (only two names for) iii. 249.
(old names for) vi. 190.
Weeping (not for form and face alone)
iii. 318.
. (over dead friends) ix. 187.
Whale (still common off the East African
coast) vi. ii.
What calamity is upon thee = what a bother
thou art, viii. 177.
What happened, happened = fortune so
willed it, iii. 68.
11 What is it compared with," popular way
of expressing great difference, i. 37.
What manner of thing is Al-Rashid ? =
What has he to do here ? viii. 176.
"Whatso thou wouldest do, that do," =
Do what thou wilt, vii. 324.
Where is and where ? = What a difference
is there between, etc., v. 65.
" Where lies China-land ?"= it is a far cry
to Loch Awe, vii. 344.
Whistling (Sifr) iv. 206.
(held to be the devil's speech) v. 333.
(to call animals to water) viii. 278.
White as milk (opposed to black as mud,
etc.) iv. 140.
(hand, symbol of generosity, etc.)
iv. 185.
(turband, distinctive of Moslems) iv.^
214.
hand of Moses (sign to Pharao)]
iv. 249.
and black faces on the Day of Judg-
ment, iv. 249.
(colour of the Ommiades) vi. 86.
robes (denote grace and mercy)
vi. 250.
(mourning colour under the Abbasides)
viii. 200.
Whiteness (for lustre, honour) viii. 295.
Whitening and blackening of the faces on
Judgment -Day, ii. 312.
"Who art thou?" etc. (meaning " you
are nobodies ") vii. 286.
" Whoso beguileth folk, him shall Allah
beguile," viii. 143.
'" Whoso loveth me, let him bestow
largesse upon this man," vii. 323.
"Whoso praiseth and then blameth lieth
twice," x. 15.
"Why don't (can't) you buy me?" viii.
300.
Wicket (small doorway at the side of a
gate) ix. 320.
Wife (euphemistically spoken of in the
masculine) i. 67.
(Aurat) vi. 30.
(called " Family") vi. 7$.
(contrast between vicious servile and
virtuous of noble birth) ix. 302.
Will he not care ? = he shall answer for
this ! vi. 245.
Window-gardening, old practice in the
East, i. 301.
Windows (looTdng out of, a favourite occu-
pation in the East and South) vi. 167.
Wine (why strained) i. 27.
Appendix.
Wine (boiled) = vinum coctum, i. 132.
(flying to the head, effect of the cold
after a heated room) i. 224.
(kahwah) ii. 261.
(table and service) ii. 122.
(a sun, with cupbearer for East and
the drinker's mouth for West) iii.
263.
(its prohibition not held absolute)
v. 224.
(breeds gladness, etc.) viii. 202.
(in cup, or cup in wine ?) viii. 276.
(Mohammed makes up his mind about
it by slow degrees) viii. 277.
Wird = the last twenty-five chapters of the
Koran, v. 185.
(Pers.) = pupil, disciple, ix. 61.
Wisadah = pillow, ii. 70.
Wishah = belt, scarf, viii. 209.
Wishes (talc of the three) vi. 180.
Wiswas = diabolical temptation or sugges-
tion, i. 106.
Witches (and their vehicles) vi. 158.
Witness (bear, against me, i.e. in case of
my denial) vi. 286 ; viii. 22.
Witnesses (one man = two women) v. 155.
Wittol (pictured with driest Arab humour)
ix. 269.
Wives have their night in turns, ii. 78.
(why four, see Women) iii. 212.
(a man's tillage) iii. 304.
(and their suitors) vi. 172.
Wolf (wicked man) ; fox (cunning one) iii.
132.
WomaniWomen (debauched prefer Blacka-
moors) i. 6.
(their depravity goes hand in hand
with perversity of taste) i. 73.
(old must not be called Ajiiz but
Shaybah) i. 174.
(bastinadoed) i. 183.
(chaff and banter allowed to) i. 267.
(of Damascus famed for sanguinary
jealousy) i. 295.
(Cairene held exceedingly debauched)
i. 298.
mourning, i. 311.
(high-born and their frolics) i. 328.
(cries of) ii. 6.
1 weeping and wailing before cenotaphs,
ii. 68.
maltreated under the Caliphate, ii. 69.
Woman, Women captives, ii. 94.
of the blue-stocking type, ii. 156.
created of a crooked rib, ii. 161.
(consult them and do the contrary) ii.
184.
(peculiar waddle of) iii. 37.
(proposing extreme measures) iii. 39.
(are tinder, men fire) iii. 59.
(monkish horror of) iii. 126.
(Laylah, name of) iii. 135.
(true seducers) iii. 166.
(Walidati = my mother) iii. 208.
(four wives, and why) iii. 212.
(compared to an inn) iii. 216.
(large hips and thighs) iii. 226.
(small fine foot) iii. 227.
(names of) iii. 239 j 263.
(more passionate than men) iii. 241,
(head must always be kept covered)
iii. 275.
(slender-waisted but full of hips, etc.)
iii. 278.
(Sodomy with) iii. 304.
(all charges laid upon them) iii. 335.
(old bawd) iv. 4.
(names of) iv. 12.
(less handsome than man) iv. 1 5.
(walk and gait) iv. 16.
(bride night) iv. 30.
(oath of a) iv. 49.
(insolence of princesses) iv. 145.
(inner, her meanings) iv. 146.
(answering question by counter-
question) iv. 148.
(Abyssinian famous as holders ") iv.
227.
(slave-names) iv. 232.
(intercourse between) iv. 234.
(white-skinned supposed to be heating
and unwholesome) iv. 253.
(sleep naked in hot weather) v. 8.
(making the first advances) v. 34.
(and secrets) v. 35, 83.
(wives of eunuchs) v. 46.
(visiting their lovers in a dream) v. 47.
(thought to be Jinn or Ghul) v. 51.
(called Zaura, the crooked) v. 66.
(allowed to absent themselves from
the house of father or husband) v. 96.
(instructed in " motitations ") v. 80.
(apt for two tricks) v. 161.
(old, polite equivalents for) v. 163.
390
A If Laylah wa Laylak.
Woman, Women (in their prime at fourteen
to fifteen) v. 192.
(inferior to man) v. 155.
(unveiling to a man, if not slaves,
insult him) v. 194.
(in Hindostani jargon = Aurat) vi.
30.
(her shame extends from head to toes)
vi. 1 1 8.
(their cunning and malice) vi. 144.
(corrupts woman more than men do)
vi. 152.
(knowing enough without learning to
read and write) vi. 168.
(of Kashmir) vi. 156.
(her female visitors unknown to the
husband except by hear-say) vi. 199.
[ (words used only by them, not by
men) vi. 233.
(blue-eyed of good omen) vii. 164.
(stealing of their clothes) viii. 30.
(her heart the only bond known by
her) viii. 54.
(reasons for their ageing in the East)
viii. 86.
(always to be addressed Ummi = my
mother) viii. 87.
(often hide their names from the
husband) viii. loo.
(semi-maniacal rancour of a good one
against an erring sister) viii. 118.
(when old, the most vindictive of her
kind) viii. 137.
(who are neither thine nor another's)
viii. 208.
(their bodies impregnated with scents)
viii. 279.
(to be respected by the King) ix. 73.
(" great is their malice ") ix. 119.
(a case of "hard lines" for them)
ix. 134.
(their marrying a second time reckoned
disgraceful) ix. 246.
(the sin lieth with them) ix. 297.
(fail in wit and faith) ix. 298.
(practically .only two ways of treating
them) ix. 303.
(delicacy of their skin) ix. 321.
(treated Jeniently in a Kazi's court)
x. 4.
Womankind (seven ages of) ix. 175.
(their status in Al- Islam) x. 195.
Wonder (= cause) in every death, i. 351."
Word (the creative " Kun") ix. 78.
Words (divided in a couplet) iii. 166.
Worlds (the three = Triloka) ii. 236.,
Wreckers, ii. in.
Wrestling and Wrestlers, ii. 93.
(amongst the Egyptian Fellah) viii.j
199.
Writer of The Nights careless, iv. 155.
Writing (styles of) iv. 196.
Writing without fingers = being unable to
answer for what is written) iii. 181.
Wuldan = Ghilman, the beautiful youths
of Paradise, i. 21 1.
Wuzu-ablution = lesser ablution, i. 142.
(necessary before joining in prayer?)
ii. 46.
(Koranic order for) v. 198.
(angels and devils at the side of a man"
who prepares for it) v. 198.
XISISTHRUS = Noah, ii. 20, 25.
YA A'AWAZ = O, one eye (obscene meaning
of the phrase) viii. 185.
Ya Abati = O dear father mine, ix. 88.
Ya Abu al-Lithamayn = O sire of the chin*
veils twain, x. 20.
Ya Abu Libdah = O father of a felt-calotte,
iii. 62.
Ya Abu Sumrah = O father of brownness,
iii. 40.
Ya Ahmak = O fool, ix. 271.
Ya 'Ajtiz = O old woman (now insulting)
v. 163.
Ya Bunayya = O dear (lit. little) my son,
ix. 79.
Ya Ba'id = th'ou distant one, euphemism
for gross abuse, i. 41.
Ya Barid = O fool, i. 313.
Ya Dadatf = O my nurse, " ma mie," vii.
, 372 ',
Ya Fulan = O certain person, iii. 191 ; ix,
334-
Yd Fulanah = O certain person (fem.) ix*
270.
Ya Hajj = O Pilgrim, ii. 15.
Ya haza = O this one. somewhat slightingly,
i. 240.
Ya hu = O he ! Swift's Yahoo? i. 240.
Ya Jahil = O ignorant, ix. 52.
Ya Ka'wwad = O pitup, v. 129*
Appendix.
191
Yd KhdlaH = O mother's sister, in address-
ing the 61d, i. 303.
Yd Khawand = O .Master, vii. 315.
Yd Khwdjah = O Master, viii. 18.
Ya Kisrawi = O subject of the Kisra, v.
26.
Yd layta = would to heaven, vili. 48.
Yd Ma'ashar al-Muslimin = Ho Moslems!
iv. 149.
Ya Mashum = O unlucky one, i. 221.
Ya Mauldya=O, my lord, ix. 228.
Ya Miskfn = O poor devil, vi. 219.
Ya Mumatil = O Slow o' Pay, viii. 169.
Ya Nasrani = O Nazarene, iv. 199.
YaSaki 'al-Dakan=O frosty-beard, v. 99.
Ya Saki 'al-Wajh = O false face, vii. 353.
Ya Salam = O safety (a vulgar ejaculation)
viii. 98.
Yd Sdtir=O veiler (of sins) iii. 41.
YdSattdr=O Thou who veilest the dis-
creditable secrets of Thy creatures, i.
258.
Yd Shatir=O clever one ! (in a-bad sense)
iv. 209.
Yd Shukayr = O little Tulip, viii. 168.
Yd Talji- O snowy one, iii. 40.
Yd Tayyib al-Khdl = O thou nephew of a
good uncle, i. 303.
Yd Usta (for Ustdz) = O my master, vii.
192.
Yd Wadud = O loving one, iv. 54.
Vd Sin. (heart of the Koran, chapt. xxxvi.)
iv. 50.
Ya'arub (eponymus of an Oman tribe) vi.
260 ; vii. 25.
Yafis, Yafat=Japhet, vii. 40.
Yaftah Allah = Allah will open, an offer
being insufficient, ii. 149,
Yahudi for Jew, less polite than Banu
Israil, i. 210.
Yajf miat khwdnjah = near a hundred
chargers, vii. 345.
Ydji'tj and Mdjuj, v. 318.
Yakhni = steW, broth, vii. 186.
Ydkut = ruby, garnet, etc., v. 342.
Yaman (Al-) = right-hand region, ii. 179.
(lightning on the hills of) ii. 179.
Ydsamfn= Jessamine (name of a slave-girl)
viii. 176.
Yashmak (chin- veil for women) ii. 31.
Yasrib (ancient name of Al-Medinah) iv.
114.
Yastaghibuni = they take advantage of ray
absence, -ix. 224.
Yauh (conversationally Yehh) expression of
astonishment, ii. 321.
Yauh ! Yauh ! = Alas ! vi. 235.
Yathrib (old name of Al-Medinah) ix.
177, see Yasrib.
Yaum al-Id = the great festival, i. 317.
Yaum al-Tanddi = Resurrection Day, iii.
74-
Yaum-i-Alast = Day of " am-I-not " (your
Lord) ? ii. 91.
Yaum rnubdrak = a blessed day, vi. 215,
Yellow girl (for light -coloured wine) x. 39.
Yes, Yes ! and No, No ! trifles common
amongst the Arabs, iu 60 ; ix. 250.
Youth described in terms applying to
women, i. 144.
Yohanna=John, iv. 87.
Yuhannd (Greek Physician) v. 154.
Yunan Yunanfyah = Greece, ii. 82; iv.
100.
Yusuf bin Omar, ii. 170.
Yusuf (Grand Vizier, and his pelisse) vii.
323
ZA'AR = E man with fair skin, red hair and
blue eyes (Marocco) viii. 297.
Zabbah = lizard ; bolt, vi. 247 ; vii. 182.
Zabbdl = dung-drawer, etc., i. 312 ; iii.
51-
Zdbft = Prefect of Police, i. 259.
Zabiyah (Pr. N.) = roe, doe, v. 147.
Zaffu (in the sense of "they displayed
her ") ix. 245.
Zaghab = the chick's down, v. 165.
Zaghzaghan (Abu Massdh = Father of the
Sweeper) = magpie, vi. 182.
Zahir bi 'llah (A1-) = one prominent by
the decree of Allah, i. 317.
Zahirf = plain honest Moslem, ii. 29.
Za.hra = the flowery, vi. 145.
Zahr Shdh (Pr. N.) ii. 284.
Zahrawiyah = lovely as the Venus-star,
viii. 251.
Zahwah = mid -time between sunrise and
noon, vi. 35.
Zaka = he tasted, iv. 188.
Zakar (penis) = that which betokens rnas*
culinity, iii. 3.
Zakariyd and Zakar, iv. 51.
Zakat = legal alms, i. 339,
392
A If Lay I ah wa Lay I ah.
Zakhmah (Zukhmah) = strap, stirrup-
leather, viii. 1 8.
Zakkiim (A1-) tree of Hell, iv. 259.
Zakzuk = young of the Shal, viii. 185.
Zalabiyah bi- 'Asal = honey-fritters, vii.
164.
Zalamah (A1-) = tyrants, oppressors (police
and employe's) i. 273; vi. 214.
Zalz&l, son of Muzalzil = Earthquake, son
of Ennosigaius, vii. 79.
Zambur = clitoris, i. 90 ; v. 279.
Zamiyad = guardian angel of Bihisht, see
Rizwan, iii. 20, 233.
Zanab Sirhan (wolfs tail) = early dawn,
iii. 146.
Zand and Zandah = fire-sticks, v. 52.
Zanj = negroes of Zanzibar, ii. 5 ; vi. 104.
Zanzibar (cannibals etc.) iv. 168.
Zardbin = slaves' shoes, x. i.
Zarbu '1-Nawaklsf = striking of gongs
(pun on the word) viii. 329.
Zardah = rice dressed with honey and
saffron, ii. 313 ; vii. 185.
Zardakhanah = Zarad (Ar. for hauberk),
Khanah (Pers. for house) vii. 363.
Zarka = the blue-eyed (Cassandre of
Yamamah) ii. 103.
Zarr wa 'urwah = button and button -hole,
v. 227.
Zarraf = giraffe, vii. 51.
Zarrat (vulg. Durrah) = co-wife, sister-
wife, iii. 308.
Zat al-Dawahl='Lady of Calamities, ii. 87.
Zau al-Makdn = Light of the Place, ii. 81.
Zaura = the crooked, for woman, v. 66.
Zaura (A1-) == the bow (name of Baghdad)
ix. 13.
Zawf al-furuj = habentes rimam, ii. 49.
Zawiyah = oratory, vi. 259 ; vii. 328. .
Zaybak (A1-) = the quicksilver, iv. 75.
Zayn al-Abidm (grandson of AH) ii. 202.
Zayn al-Mawasif (Pr. N.) = Adornment of
(good) qualities, viii. 205.
Zaynab and Zayd (generic names for women
and men) ix. 250.
Zebra (daughter of Sa'adah) iii. 65.
Zemzem (its water saltish) i. 284 ; ii. 272.
Zi'ah village, hamlet, farm, ix. 27.
Zibl = dung, iii. !
Zibl Khan = Le Roi Crotte, iii. 99.
Zidd = opposite, contrary, v. 206.
Zikr = litanies, i. 124.
(and Edwin Arnold's Pearls of Faith)
ii. 28.
Zimbil (Zambil) = limp basket of palm-
leaves, iv. 119.
Zimmi = a (Christian, Jewish or Majusi)
tributary, iv. 199.
Zinad = fire-sticks, viii. So.
Zindik = Agnostic, atheist, v. 230 ; viii.
27-
Zirbajah = meat dressed with cumin-seed,
etc., i. 278.
Zirt = broken wind ; derivatives, ii. 88 ]
ix. 291.
Ziyad bin Abi Sufyan, ii. 163.
Ziyarat = visit to a pious person or place,
i. 125.
= visiting the Prophet's tomb, ix.
I 7 8.
Zobabah (Zauba'ah ?) = sand-storm in the
desert, i. 1-14.
Zu al-Autad = the contriver of the stakes
(Pharaoh) vi, 118.
Zu al-Kura'a (Pr. N.) = Lord of cattle
feet, iv. 95.
Zubaydah (Pr. N.) = creamkin, iv. 48 ;
viii. 56, 158.
Zubb = penis, i. 92.
" Zug " (draught) feared by Orientals, ii. 9.
Zuhal = Saturn, ii. 75.
Zuhrf (Al-'), traditionist, ii. 198; v. 81.
Zujaj bikr = unworked glass, viii. 342.
Zukak al-Nakib = Syndic street, ii. 325.
Zukhruf = glitter, tinsel, ix. 86.
Zulf = side-lock, i. 308.
Zulm, injustice, tyranny ; worst of a
monarch's crimes, i. 190.
Zunnar = <m/apiov confounded with the!
" Janeo," ii. 215.
Zur ghibban tazid hubban = call rarely that
friendship last fairly, ix. 2/3.
Zurayk (dim. of Azrak = blue-eyed)
viii. 195.
Zurk = blue-eyed, dim-sighted, purblind,
vii. 164.
Zuwaylah gate, more correctly Bab Zawilafr
i. 269.
Appendix.
393
INDEX ///.A.
ALPHABETICAL TABLE OF FIRST LINES
(METRICAL PORTION) IN ENGLISH.
Prepared by DR. STEIN GASS.
A BELOVED familiar o'erreigns my heart,
viii. 70.
A boy of twice ten is fit for a king !
iii. 303.
A breeze of love on my soul did blow,
viii. 222.
A damsel 'twas the tirer's art had decked
with snares and sleight, i. 219 ; x. 59.
A dancer whose figure is like a willow-
branch, ix. 222.
A dancer whose form is like branch of
Ban ! ix. 221.
A dog, dog-fathered, by dog-grandsire
bred, viii. 15.
A fan whose breath is fraught with fragrant
scent, viii. 273.
A fair one, to idolaters if she her face
should show, ix. 197.
A friend in need is he who, ever true, iii.
149.
A guest hath stolen on my head and honour
may he lack, viii. 295.
A hag to whom th' unlawful lawfullest, i.
174.
A heart bore thee off in chase of the fair,
ix. 282.
A heart by Allah ! never soft to lover-
wight, vii. 222.
A Houri, by whose charms my heart is
moved to sore distress, vii. 105.
A house where flowers from stones of gra-
nite grow, iii. 19.
A Jinniyah this, with her Jinn, to show, v.
149.
A King who when hosts of the foe invade,
ii. i.
A lutanist to us inclined, viii. 283.
A maiden 'twas, the dresser's art had decked
with cunning sleight, viii. 32.
A merchant I spied whose lovers, viii. 264.
A messenger from thee came bringitg
union-hope, iii. 188.
A moon she rises, willow-wand she waves,
iii. 237 ; viii. 303.
A moon, when he bends him those eyes lay
bare, viii. 284.
A moon which blights you if you dare be-
hold, ii. 4.
A night whose stars refused to run their
course, iii. 299.
A palace whereon be blessings and praise,
iv. 134.
A place secure from every thought of fear,
i. 114.
A sage, I feel a fool before thy charms,
iii. 272.
A slave of slaves there standeth at thy
door, i. 89.
A sun on wand in knoll of sand she showed,
i. 217; x. 58.
A thin-waist maid who shames the willow-
wand, ii. 285.
A term decreed my lot I 'spy, viii. 83.
A trifle this an his eyes be sore, v. 127.
A tree whilere was I the Bulbul's home,
viii. 281.
A wand uprising from a sandy knoll,
ix. 250.
A warrior showing such open hand,
iv. 97.
A wasted body, heart empierced to core,
ii. 314.
394
A If Laylah wa Lay! ah.
A youth slim waisted from whose locks
and brow, i. 68.
A zephyr bloweth from the lover's site,
viii. 90.
Above the rose of cheek is thorn of lance,
i". 33'-
Act on sure grounds, nor hurry fast, iv. 189.
Add other wit to thy wit, counsel craving,
iv. 189.
Affright me funerals at every time, v. in.
After thy faring never chanced I 'spy,
viii. 142.
Ah, fare thee not ; for I've no force thy
faring to endure, yiii. 63.
Ah ! for lowe of love and longing suffer ye
as suffer we ? viii. 68.
Ah Khalid ! this one is a slave of love
distraught, iv. 158.
Ah, often have I sought the fair ! how
often lief and fain, vii. 138*
Alack and alas ! Patience taketh flight,
viii. 263.
Alas, alack and wellaway for blamer's
calumny ! viii. 285.
Albe by me I had through day and night,
iii. 267.
Albe to lover adverse be his love, iii. 266.
Albeit my vitals quiver 'neath this ban,
iii. 62.
Alexandria's a frontier, viii. 289.
All crafts are like necklaces strung on*
a string, i. 308.
All drinks wherein is blood the Law un-
clean Doth hold, i. 89.
All sons of woman albe long preserved,
iv. 63.
" Allah assain those eyne ! What streams
of blood they shed ! " ii. 100.
Allah be good to him that gives glad
tidings of thy steps, i. 239.
Allah ho'ds Kingship ! Whoso seeks with-
out Him victory, iii. 86.
Allah, my patience fails : I have no word,
iii. 344:
Allah save the rose which yellows amorn,
viii. 276.
Allah, where'er thou be, His aid impart,
ii. 148.
Allah's peace on thee, House of Vacancy !
viii. 237.
Although the Merciful be doubtless with
me, ix. 278.
Al-Yaman's leven-gleam I see, il. 179.
An but the house could know who cometh'
'twould rejoice, i. 176.
An, by thy life, pass thee my funeral train,
v. 70.
An fail I of my thanks to thee, i. 56.
An Fate afflict thee, with grief manifest,
viii. 146.
An Fate some person 'stablish o'er thyi
head, iii. 89.
An faulty of one fault the beauty prove, (
ii. 96.
An I be healed of disease in frame, viii. 70.
An I quit Cairo and her pleas xunces, i,
290.
An we behold a lover love-foredone, v.
73-
An my palm be full of wealth and my
wealth I ne'er bestow, ii. n.
An say I : Patient I can bear his faring,
iii. 187.
An tears of blood for me, friend, thou hast
shed, i. 89.
An there be one who shares with me her
love, i. 180.
An thou but deign consent, A wish toj
heart affied, iv. 247.
An thou of pious works a store neglect,)
ii. 202.
An thou wouldst know my name, whosei
day is done, vi. 94.
An through the whole of life, iv. 190.
An Time my lover restore me I'll blame*
him fain, ix. 192.
An were it asked me when by hell-fire*
burnt, iii. 279.
An what thou claimest were the real truth,!
v. 151.
An wouldst be life-long safe, vaunt not
delight, viii. 94,
And Almond apricot suggesting swain,
viii. 268.
And dweller in the tomb whose food is at
his head, v. 238.
And eater lacking mouth and even maw,
v. 240.
And fairest Fawn, we said to him Portray,
viii. 272.
And haply whenas strait descends on lot>
of generous youth, iii. 131.
And in brunettes is mystery, couldst
but read it right, iv. 258.
Appendix.
395
And in my liver higher flames the fire,
vii. 366.
And leveling weareth on his cheek a mole,
v. 65.
And pity one who erst in honour throve,
ii. 149-
And shaddock mid the garden paths, on
bough, viii. 272.
And Solomon, when Allah to him said,
vi. 86.
And the lips of girls, that are perfume
sweet, v. 79.
And the old man crept o'er the worldly
ways,, iv. 41.
And trees of orange fruiting ferly fair,
viii. 271.
And wand-like Houri who can passion
heal, v. 149.
And 'ware her scorpions when pressing
them, viii. 209.
And when birdies o'er-warble its lakelet,
it gars, ix. 6.
And, when she announceth the will to sing,
viii. 1 66.
Albeit this thy case lack all resource,
v. 69.
Allah watered a land, and upsprang a tree,
v. 244.
Answer, by Allah ! Sepulchre, are all his
beauties gone ? i 239.
Appeared not my excuse till hair had
clothed his cheek, iii. 57.
Apple which joins hues twain and brings
to mind, viii. 268.
Apple whose hue combines in union mellow,
i. 158.
As a crescent-moon in the garth her form,
viii. 207,
As for me, of him I feel naught affright,
vi. 98.
As long as palms shall shift the flower,
v. 136.
As love waxt longer less met we tway,
v. 7 8.
As one of you who mounted mule, viii.
297.
As she willed she was made, and in such a
way that when, iv. 191.
As the Sage watched the stars, the sem-
blance clear, i. 206.
As though ptisane of wine oa her lips
honey dew, iii. 57.
Ask (if needs thou ask) the compassionate,
ix. 29.
Ask of my writ, what wrote my pen in dole,
iii. 274.
Ass and Umrn Amr* went their way,
v. 118.
BARE hills and camp-ground desolate,
v. 130.
Baulks me my Fate as tho* she were my
foe, viii. 130.
Be as thou wilt, for Allah is bountiful,
viii. 277.
Be as thou wilt, for Allah still is bounteous
Lord, ii. 202.
Be mild to brother mingling, iv. 1 10.
Be mild what time thou'rt ta'en with
anger and despite, iv. 221.
Be mild when rage shall come to afflict thy
soul, iv. 54.
Be praises mine to all-praiseworthy Thee,
fi. 261.
Be proud; I'll crouch ! Bully; I'll bear!
Despise; I'll pray ! iii. 188.
Be sure all are villains and so bide safe,
iii. 142.
Bear our salams, O Dove, from this our
stead, viii. 236.
Beareth for love a burden sore this soul of
me, viii. 66.
Beauty they brought with him to make
compare, i. 144.
Beguiled as Fortune who her guile dis-
plays, iv. 22.
Behind the veil a damsel sits with gracious
beauty dight, viii. 210.
Behold a house that's like the Dwelling of
Delight, viii. 183.
Behold this lovely garden ! 'tis as though,
ii. 240.
Belike my Fortune may her bridle turn,
i. 152.
Belike Who Yusuf to his kin restored,
iv. 103.
Beloved, why this strangeness, why this
hate? iv. 234.
Bethink thee not of worldly state, iii. 328.
Bid thou thy phantom distance keep,
vii. 108.
Better ye 'bide and I take my leave,
154-
39^
A If Laylak wa Laylah.
Beware her glance I rede thee 'tis like
wizard wight, ii. 295.
Beware of losing hearts of men by thine
injurious deed, x. 50.
Beware that eye-glance which hath magic
might, iii. 252.
Black girls in acts are white, and 'tis as
though, iv. 251.
Black girls not white are they, iv. 251.
Blame not ! said I to all who blamed me,
viii. 95.
Blest be his beauty ; blest the Lord's
decree, i. 177.
Blighted by her yet am I not to blame,
viii. 255.
Blows from my lover's land a zephyr
ccoly sweet, ii. 311.
Boon fortune sought him in humblest way,
viii. 501.
Boy-like of back side, in the deed of kind,
v. 157.
Breeze of East who bringest me gentle
air, vii. 122.
Brighter than moon at full with kohl'd
eyes she came, viii. 279.
Bring gold and gear an a lover thou,
viii. 214.
By Allah, by th' Almighty, by his right,
vii. 366.
By Allah, couldst thou but feel my pain,
v. 77.
By Allah, glance of mine, thou hast
opprest, vii. 140.
By Allah, heal, O my lords, the unwhole,
viii. 144.
By Allah, O thou house, if my beloved
amorn go by, v. 38
By Allah, O tomb, have her beauties ceased,
viii. 1 68.
By Allah, set thy foot upon my soul,
i. 222.
By Allah this is th' only alchemy, x. 40.
By Allah ! while the days endure ne'er
shall forget her I, iv. 146.
By Allah, wine shall not disturb me, while
this soul of mine, iv. 190.
By craft and sleight I snared him when
he came, ii. 44.
By his cheeks' unfading damask and his
smiling teeth I swear, viii. 282.
y li'.s eyelash tendril curled, by his slender
waist I swear, iii. 217.
By his eyelids shedding perfume and his
fine slim waist I swear, i. 168.
By His life who holds my guiding rein, I
swear, iv. 2.
By Love's right ! naught of farness thy
slave can estrange, viii. 76.
By means of toil man shall scale the height,
vi. 5-
By rights of you, this heart of mine could
ne'er aby, viii. no.
By stress of parting, O beloved one, iii. 166.
By th' Abyssinian Pond, O day divine !
i. 291.
By the Compassionate, I'm dazed about
my case, forlo ! vii. 337.
By the Five Shayks, O Lord, I pray deliver
me, iii. 30.
By the life o' thy face, O thou life o' my
sprite ! viii. 284.
By what thine eyelids show of kohl and
coquetry! ii. 296.
CAME a merchant to pay us a visit, viii. 265.
Came Rayya's phantom to grieve thy sight,
vii. 91.
Came the writ whose contents a new joy
revealed, viii. 222.
Came to match him in beauty and loveli-
ness rare, viii. 298.
Came to me care when came the love of
thee, vii. 366.
Came your writ to me in the dead of the
night, ix. 2.
Captured me six all bright with youthful
blee, iv. 260.
Carry the trust of him whom death awaits,
v. 114.
Cease then to blame me, for thy blame doth
anger bring, x. 39.
Cease ye this farness ; 'bate this pride of
you, iv. 136.
Chide not the mourner for bemourning woe,
iii. 291.
Choice rose that gladdens heart to see her
sight, viii. 275.
dear's the wine, the cup's fine, i. 349.
Cleave fast to her thou lovest and let the
envious rail amain, iv. 198.
Close prest appear to him who views th'
inside, viii. 267.
Clove through the shades and came to me
in night so dark and sore, vii. 138.
Appendix.
397
Come back and so will I ! i. 63.
Coifie with us, friend, and enter thou, viii.
267.
Confide thy case to Him, the Lord who
made mankind, i. 63.
Consider but thy Lord, His work shall
bring, viii. 20.
Consider thou, O man, what these places
to thee showed, vi. 112
Console thy lover, fear no consequence, v.
74-
Consort not with the Cyclops e'en a day,
iv. 194.
Containeth time a twain of days, i. 25.
Converse with men hath scanty weal
except, iv. 188.
Count not that I your promises forgot,
iii. 238.
Cut short this strangeness, leave unruth of
you, v. 245.
Culvers of Liwa ! to your, nests return,
vii. 115.
DARK falls the night : my tears unaided
rail, iii. II.
Dark falls the night and passion comes
sore pains to gar me dree, ii. 140.
Daughter of nobles, who thine aim shalt
gain, v. 54.
Dawn heralds daylight : so wine pass
round, viii. 276.
Dear friend ! ah leave thy loud reproach
and blame, iii. no.
Dear friend, ask not what burneth in my
breast, i. 265.
Dear friend, my tears aye flow these cheeks
adown, iii. 14.
Deep in mine eyeballs ever dwells the
phantom form of thee, viii. 61.
Deign grant thy favours ; since 'tis time I
were engraced, v. 148.
Describe me! a fair one said, viii. 265.
Did Azzah deal behest to sun 0* noon, ii.
1 02.
Did not in love-plight joys and sorrows
meet, iii. 182.
Dip thou with spoons in saucers four and
gladden heart and eye, viii. 223.
Displaying that fair face, iv. 195.
Divinely were inspired his words who
brought me news of you, iv. 207.
Do you threaten me wi* death for my loving
you so well? vii. 221.
Drain not the bowl, save from dear hand
like thine, i. 88.
Drain not the bowl but with lovely wight,
viii. 209.
Drain not the bowl save with a trusty friend,
i. 88.
Drawn in thy shoulders are and spine
thrust out, viii. 297.
Drink not pure wine except from hand of
slender youth, ix. 198.
Drink not strong wine save at the slender
dearling's hand, v. 66.
Drink not upon thy food in haste but wait
awhile, v. 222.
Drink the clear draught, drink free and
fain, 5. 88.
Drive off the ghost that ever shows, vii.
109.
Dumb is my tongue and scant my speech
for thee, viii. 258.
EACH portion of her charms we see, vii.
131.
Each thing of thing's hath his appointed
tide, v. 294,
Easy, O Fate ! how long this wrong, this
injury, iii. 329.
Eight glories meet, all, all conjoined in
thee, iii. 271.
Enough for lovers in this world their ban
and bane, iv. 205.
Enough of tears hath shed the lover-wight,
iii. 206.
Enrobes with honour sands of camp her
foot-step wandering lone, iv. 204.
Escape with thy life if oppression betide
thee, i. 209.
Even not beardless one with girl, nor heed,
iii. 303-
Ever thy pomp and pride, O House ! dis
play, viii. 207.
FACE that with Sol in Heaven lamping
vies, iii. 167.
Fain had I hid thy handwork, but it
showed, iii. 280.
Fain leaving life that fleets thou hast th*
eternal won, ii. 281.
398
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Fair youth shall die by stumbling of the
tongue, iii. 221.
Familiar with my heart are woes and with
them I, vii. 340.
Far is the fane and patience faileth me,
v. 41.
Tare safely, Masrur ! an her sanctuary,
viii. 237.
Farewell thy love, for see, the Cafilah's on
the move, iv. 254.
Farewelling thee indeed is like to bidding
life farewell, viii. 62.
Fate the wolfs soul snatched up from
wordly stead, iii. 146.
Fate frights us when the thing is past and
gone, iii. 318.
Fate hath commanded I become thy fere,
iii. 312.
Fie on this wretched world an so it be,
i. 4 o.
Fight for my mother (an I live) I'll take,
ii. 239.
Fire is cooler than fires in my breast,
iv. 245.
Fly, fly with life whenas evils threat,
vi. 62.
Fly, fly with thy life if by ill overtaken,
ii. 19.
Foik have made moan of passion before
me, of past years, viii. 65.
For cup friends cup succeeding cup assign,
v. 66.
For eaters a table they brought and set,
viii. 208.
For her sins is a pleader that brow, ii. 97.
For joys that are no more I want to weep,
iii. 185.
For Layla's favour dost thou greed? iii.
135-
For loss of lover mine and stress of love I
dree, viii. 75.
For not a deed the hand can try, v. 188.
For others these hardships and labours I
bear, i. 17.
For your love my patience fails, i. 74.
Forbear, O troubles of the world, i. 39.
Forgive me, thee-ward sinned I, but the
wise, ii. 9.
Forgive the sin 'neath which my limbs are
trembling, iii. 249.
Fortune had mercy on the soul of me,
"i. 135-
Fortune had ruth upon my plight, viii. 50.
Four things that meet not, save they here
unite, i. 116.
Four things which ne'er conjoin, unless it
be, iii. 237.
Freest am I of all mankind fro* meddling
wight, ii, 200.
Fro' them inhale I scent of Attar of Ban,
viii. 242.
From her hair is night, from her forehead
noon, viii. 303.
From Love-stupor awake, O Masrur, 'twere
best, viii. 214,
From that liberal hand on his foes he rains,
iv. 97.
From the plain of his face springs a
minaret, viii. 296.
From wine I turn and whoso wine-cups
swill, i. 208.
Full many a reverend Shaykh feels sting of
flesh, v. 64.
Full many laugh at tears they see me shed,
' Hi- 193-
Full moon if unfreckled would favour thee,
- iv. 19.
Full moon with sun in single mansion, i.
264.
GAINSAY WOMEN ; he obeyeth Allah best,
who saith them nay, ix. 282.
Garb of Fakir, renouncement, lowliness*
v. 297.
Garth Heaven-watered wherein clusters
waved, viii. 266.
Get thee provaunt in this world ere thou
wend upon thy way, ii. 139.
Give back mine eyes their sleep long
ravished, i. 99.
Give me brunettes, so limber, lissom, lithe
of sway, iv. 258.
Give me brunettes ; the Syrian spears so
limber and so straight, viii. 158.
Give me the Fig sweet-flavoured, beauty
clad, viii. 269.
Give thou my message twice, iii. 166.
Gladsome and gay forget thine every grief,
i- 57-
Glory to Him who guides the skies, vii. 78.
Gnostic's heart -homed in the heavenly
Garth, v. 264.
Go, gossip ! re-wed thee, for Prime drawetb
near, v. 135.
I
Appendix.
399
Go, visit her thou lovest, and regard not,
iii. 235 ; viii. 305,
God make thy glory last in joy of life, viii.
99-
Gone is my strength, told is my tale of
days, iii. 55.
Goodly of gifts is she, and charm those
perfect eyes, iii. 57.
Granados of finest skin, like the breasts,
viii. 267.
Grant me the kiss of that left hand ten
times, iv. 129*
Grape-bunches likest as they sway, viii.
266.
Grapes tasting with the taste of wine, viii.
266.
Grief, cark and care in my heart reside, iv.
19.
Grow thy weal and thy welfare day by day,
i. 204.
HAD I known of love in what fashion he,
vii. 330.
Had I wept before she did in my passion
for Su'ada, vii. 275.
Had she shown her shape to idolater's
sight, viii. 279.
Hadst thou been leal in love's loyalty, iii.
77-
Had we known of thy coming we fain had
dispread, i. 117.
Had we wist of thy coming, thy way had
been strown, i. 271.
Haply and happily may Fortune bend her
rein, viii. 67.
Haply shall Allah deign us twain unite,
viii. 141.
Haply shall Fortune draw her rein, iii.
251-
Happy is Eloquence when thou art named,
i. 47.
Hast quit the love of Moons or dost per-
sist ? iv. 240.
Hast seen a Citron-copse so weighed
adown, viii. 272.
Haste to do kindness thou dost intend,
iv. i8r.
Haste to do kindness while thou hast the
power, iii. 136.
Have the doves that moan in the lotus*
tree, vii. 91.
He blames me for casting on him my
sight, viii. 283.
He came and cried they, Now be Allah
blest ! iii. 215.
He came in sable hued sacque, iv. 263.
He came to see me, hiding neath the shirt
of night, iv. 252.
He comes ; and fawn and branch and
moon delight these eyne, iv. 142.
He cometh robed and bending gracefully,
He heads his arrows with piles of gold,
iv. 97.
He is Caliph of Beauty in YusuPs lieu,
ii. 292.
He .is gone who when to this gate thou
go'st, ii. 14.
He is to thee that daily bread thou canst
nor loose nor bind, i. 39.
He'll offer sweetmeats with his edged
tongue, iii. 115.
He made me drain his wine of honeyed
lips, v. 72.
He missed not who dubbed thee, " World's
delight," v. 33.
He pluckt fruits of her necklace in rivalry,
ii. 103.
He prayeth and he fasteth for an end he
doth espy, ii. 264.
He seized my heart and freed my tears to
flow, viii. 259.
He showed in garb anemone-red, iv. 263.
He thou trustedst most is thy worst un-
friend, iii. 143.
He whom the randy motts entrap, iii.
216.
Hearkening, obeying, with my dying
mouth, ii. 321.
Heavy and swollen like an urine-bladder
blown, iv. 236.
Her fair shape ravisheth, if face to face
she did appear, v. 192.
Her fore-arms, dight with their bangles,
show, v. 89.
Her golden yellow is the sheeny sun's,
iv. 257.
Her lip-dews rival honey-sweets, that
sweet virginity, viii. 33.
Her smiles twin rows of pearls display,
i. 86.
Here ! Here ! by Allah, here ! Cups of
the sweet, the dear ! i. 89,
4OO
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Here the heart reads a chapter of devotion
pure, iii. 18.
Hind is an Arab filly purest bred, vii. 97.
His cheek-down writeth (O fair fall the
goodly scribe !) ii. 301.
His cheekdown writeth on his cheek with
ambergris on pearl, ii. 301.
His eyelids sore and bleared, viii. 297.
His face as the face of the young moon
shines, i. 177.
His honeydew of lips is wine ; his breath,
iv. 195-
His looks have made me drunken, not his
wine, iii. 166.
His lovers said, Unless he deign to give us
all a drink, viii. 285.
His lovers' souls have drawn upon his
cheek, iii. 58.
His mole upon plain of cheek is like, viii.
265
His scent was musk and his cheek was rose,
i. 203.
Ho, lovers all ! by Allah say me fair and
sooth, ii. 309.
Ho, lovers all ! by Allah say me sooth, ii.
320.
Ho say to men of wisdom, wit and lere, v.
239.
Ho thou, Abrizah, mercy ! leave me not
for I, ii. 127.
Ho, those heedless of Time and his sore
despight 1 vii. 221.
Ho thou hound who art rotten with foulness
in grain, iii. 108.
Ho thou lion who broughtest thyself to
woe, vii. 123.
Ho thou my letter ! when my friend shall
see thee, iv. 57.
Ho thou o' the tabret, my heart fakes flight,
viii. 1 66.
Ho thou the House ! Grief never home in
thee, viii. 206.
Ho thou, the house, whose birds were sing-
ing gay, v. 57.
Ho thou who grovellest low before the
great, ii. 235.
Ho thou, who past and bygone risks re-
gardest with uncare ! iii. 28.
Ho thou whose heart is melted down by
force of Amor's fire, v. 132.
Ho ye mine eyes let prodigal tears go free,
iv. 248.
Ho ye my friends draw near, for I forth-
right, viii. 258.
Hola, thou mansion! woe ne'er enter thee,
iv. 140.
Hold fast thy secret and to none unfold, i.
87.
Hold to nobles, sons of nobles, ii. 2.
Honour and glory wait on thee each morn,
iv. 60.
Hope not of our favours to make thy prey,
viii. 208.
Houris and high-born Dames who feel no
fear of men, v. 148.
How bitter to friends is a parting, iv. 222.
How comes it that I fulfilled my vow the
while that vow brake you ? iv. 241.
How dear is our day and how lucky our
lot, i. 293.
How fair is ruth the strong man deigns not
smother, i. 103.
How good is Almond .green I view, viii.
270.
How is this? Why should the blamer
abuse thee in his pride, iii. 232.
How joyously sweet are the nights that
unite, v. 61.
How long, rare beauty ! wilt do wrong to
me, ii. 63.
How long shall I thy coyness and thy great
aversion see, iv. 242.
How long shall last, how long this rigour
rife of woe, i. 101.
How long this harshness, this unlove shall
bide ? i. 78.
How manifold nights have I passed with
my wife, x. i.
How many a blooming bough in glee-girls
hand is fain, viii. 166,
How many a joy by Allah's will hath fled,
i. 150.
How many a lover with his eyebrows
speaketh, i. 122.
How many a night have I spent in woes,
ix. 316.
How many a night I've passed with the
beloved of me, iv. 252.
How many boons conceals the Deity,
v. 261.
How many by my labours, that evermore
endure, vi. 2.
How oft bewailing the place shall be this
coming and going, viii. 242.
Appendix.
401
How oft have I fought and how many
have slain ! vi. 91.
How oft in the mellay I've cleft the array,
ii. 109.
How patient bide, with love in sprite of
me, iv. 136.
How shall he taste of sleep who lacks
repose, viii. 49.
How shall youth cure the care his life
undo'th, ii. 320.
Hunger is sated with a bone-dry scone,
iv. 201.
Hurry not, Prince of Faithful Men ! with
best of grace thy vow, vii. 128.
I AM he who is known on the day of
fight, vi. 262.
I am distraught, yet verily, I. 138.
I am going, O mammy^ to fill up my pot,
i. 311.
I am not lost to prudence, but indeed,
ii. 98.
I am taken : my heart burns with living
flame, viii. 225.
I am the wone where mirth shall ever
smile, i. 175.
I am when friend would raise a rage that
mote, iv. 109.
I and my love in union were unite, viii.
247.
I ask of you from every rising sun, i. 238.
I asked of Bounty, ' Art thou free? " v.
93-
I asked the author of mine ills, ii. 60.
I bade adieu, my right hand wiped my
tears away, ii. 113.
I attained by my wits, x. 44.
I bear a hurt heart, who will sell me for
this, vii. 115.
I call to mind the parting day that rent our
loves in twain, viii. 125.
I can't forget him, since he rose and
showed with fair design, ix. 253.
I ceased not to kiss that cheek with bud-
ding roses dight, viii, 329.
I dipt his form and wax'd drunk with
his scent, ii. 292.
I came to my dear friends door, of my
hopes the goal, v. 58.
I craved of her a kiss one day, but soon
as she beheld, iv. 192.
VOL. X.
I cried, as the camels went off with them,
viii. 63.
I'd win good will of everyone, but whoso
envies me, ix. 342.
I deemed my brethren mail of strongest
steel, i. 108.
I deemed you coat-o'-mail that should with*
stand, i. 108.
I die my death, but He alone is great who
dieth not, ii. 9.
I drank the sin till my reason fled, 224.
I drink, but the draught of his glance, not
wine, i. loo.
I drooped my glance when seen thee on
the way, iii. 331.
I dyed what years have dyed, but this my
staining, v. 164.
I embrace him, yet after him yearns my
soul, ix. 242.
I'er lost patience by despite of you,
i. 280.
I ever ask for news of you from whatsO
breezes pass, viii. 53.
I feed eyes on their stead by the valley's
side, iii. 234.
I fix my glance on her, whene'er she wends.
viii. 158.
I fly the carpers injury, ii. 183.
I gave her brave old wine that like her
cheeks blushed red, i. 89.
I had a heart and with it lived my life,
v. 131.
I have a friend with a beard, viii. 298.
I have a friend who hath a beard, iv. 194.
I have a friend, whose form is fixed within
mine eyes, iv. 246.
I have a froward yard of temper ill, viii.
293-
I have a lover and when drawing him, iv.
247.
I have a sorrel steed, whose pride is fain
to bear the rein, ii. 225.
I have borne for thy love what never bore,
iii. 183.
I have fared content jn my solitude, iii.
152-
I have no words though folk would have
me talk, ix. 276.
I have won my wish and my need have
scored, vii. 59.
I have wronged mankind, and have ranged
like wind, iii. 74.
CC
4O2
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
I have a yard that sleeps in base and shame-
ful way, viii. 293.
J have sorrowed on account of our disunion,
viii. 128.
I heard a ring-dove chanting plaintively,
v. 47.
\ hid what I endured of him and yet it
came to light, i* 67.
I hope for union with my love which I
may ne'er obtain, viii. 347.
I kissed him : darker grew those pupils,
which, iii. 224.
I lay in her arms all night, leaving him,
v. 128.
I'll ransom that beauty-spot with my soul,
v. 65.
I long once more the love that was between
us to regain, viii. 181.
I longed for him I love ; but, when we
met, viii. 347.
I longed for my beloved but when I saw
his face, i. 240.
I look to my money and keep it with
care, ii. 11.
I looked at her one look and that dazed
me, ix. 197.
I looked on her with longing eyne, v. 76.
I love a fawn with gentle white- black eyes,
iv. 50.
I love a moon of comely shapely form,
viii. 259.
I love her madly for she is perfect fair,
vii. 265.
I love not black girls but because they
show, iv. 251.
I love not white girls blown with fat who
puff and pant, iv. 252.
1 love Su'ad and unto all but her my love
is dead, vii. 129.
1 love the nights of parting though I joy
not in the same, ix. 198.
I loved him, soon as his praise I heard,
vii. 280.
I'm Al-Kurajan, and my name is known,
vii. 20.
I'm estranged fro' my folk and estrange-
ment 's long, iii. 71.
I'm Kurajan, of this age the Knight, vii. 23.
I'm the noted Knight in the field of fight,
vii. 18.
I made my wrist her pillow and I lay with
her in litter, vii. 243.
I marvel at its pressers, how they died,
x. 39.
I marvel hearing people questioning, ii. 293.
I marvel in Iblis such pride to see, vii. 139.
I marvel seeing yon mole, ii. 292.
I mind our union days when ye were nigh,
vi. 278.
I number nights; indeed I count night
after night, ii. 308.
I offered this weak hand as last farewell,
iii. 173.
I passed a beardless pair without compare,
v. 64.
I past by a broken tomb amid a garth
right sheen, ii. 325.
I plunge with my braves in the seething
sea, vii. 18.
I pray in Allah's name, O Princess mine,
be light on me, iv. 241.
I pray some day that we reunion gain,
iii. 124.
I roam, and roaming hope I to return,
iii. 64.
I saw him strike the gong and asked of him
straightway, viii. 329.
I saw thee weep before the gates and 'plain,
v. 283.
I saw two charmers treading humble earth,
iii. 18.
I say to him, that while he slings his
sword, ii. 230.
I see all power of sleep from eyes of me
hath flown, ii. 151.
I see not happiness lies in gathering gold,
ii. 166.
I see the woes of the world abound, i. 298.
I see thee and close not mine eyes for fear,
IX. 221.
I see thee full of song and plaint and love's
own ecstasy, iii. 263,
I see their traces and with pain I melt,
i. 230.
I see you with my heart from far countrie,
vii. 93.
I sent to him a scroll that bore my plaint
of love, ii. 300.
I show my heart and thoughts to Thee,
and Thou, v. 266.
I sight their track and pine for longing
love, viii. 103.
I sooth my heart and my love repel, v.
35'
Appendix.
403
I sought of a fair maid to kiss her lips,
viii. 294.
I speak and longing love upties me and
unties me, ii. 104.
I still had hoped to see thee and enjoy thy
sight, i. 242.
I stood and bewailed who their loads had
bound, ix. 27.
I swear by Allah's name, fair Sir ! no
thief was I, i. 274.
I swear by swayings of that form so fair,
iv. 143.
I swear by that fair face's life I'll love but
thee, iv. 246.
I thought of estrangement in her embrace,
ix. 198.
I've been shot by Fortune, and shaft of
eye, iii. 175.
I've sent the ring from off thy finger ta'en,
iii. 274.
I've sinned enormous sin, iv. 109.
I view their traces and with pain I pine,
viii. 320.
I visit them and night black lendeth aid to
me, iv. 252.
I vow to Allah if at home I sight, ii.
186.
I walk for fear of interview the weakling's
walk, v. 147.
I wander 'mid these walls, my Layla's
walls, i. 238.
I wander through the palace but I sight
there not a soul, iv. 29 1.
I was in bestest luck, but now my love
goes contrary, v. 75.
I was kind and 'scaped not, they were
cruel and escaped, i. 58.
I waved to and fro and he leaned to and
fro, v. 239.
I weep for one to whom a lonely death
befel, v. 115.
I weep for longing love's own ardency,
vii. 369.
I weet not, whenas to a land I fare, ix.
328.
I went to my patron some blood to let
him, i. 306.
I went to the house of the keeper-man,
iii. 20.
I will bear in patience estrangement of
friend, viii. 345.
I wot not, whenas to a land I fare, x. 53.
I write thee, love, the while my tears pour
down, iii. 24.
I write to thee, O fondest hope, a writ,
iii. 24.
I write with heart devoted to thy thought,
iii. 273.
Ibn Sina in his canon doth opine, iii. 34.
If a fool oppress thee bear patiently, vi.
214.
If a man from destruction caa save his
head, ix. 314.
If a man's breast with bane he hides be
straitened, ix. 292.
If a sharp witted wight mankind e'er tried,
iv. 1 88.
If another share in the thing I love, iv.
234.
If any sin I sinned, or did I aught, iii.
132.
If aught I've sinned in sinful way, viii.
119.
If generous youth be blessed with luck and
wealth, ix. 291.
If he of patience fail the truth to bide>
ii. 320.
If I liken thy shape to the bough when
green, i. 92.
If I to aught save you, O lords of me
incline, vii. 369.
If ill betide thee through thy slave, i.
194.
If Kings would see their high emprize
preserved, v. 106.
If Naomi bless me with a single glance,
iv. 12.
If not master of manners or aught but
discreet, i. 235.
If thereby man can save his head from
death, iv. 46.
If thou crave our love, know that love's a
loan, v. 127.
If thou should please a friend who pleaseth
thee, v. 150.
If Time unite us after absent while, i. 157.
If your promise of personal call prove
untrue, iii. 252.
If we 'plain of absence what shall we say?
i. loo.
If we saw a lover who pains as he ought,
v. 164.
Ill-omened hag ! unshriven be her sins nor
mercy visit her on dying bed, i. 174.
404
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
In dream I saw a bird o'er speed (meseem'd),
viii. 218.
In her cheek cornered nine calamities,
viii. 86.
In his face-sky shineth the fullest moon,
i. 205.
In love they bore me further than my force
would go, ii. 137.
In patience, O 'my God, I endure my lot
and fate, i. 77.
In patience, O my God, Thy doom fore-
cast, viii. 17.
In ruth and mildness surety lies, ii. 1 60.
In sleep came Su'adas shade and wakened
me, iv. 267.
In sooth the Nights and Days are cha-
ractered, iii. 319.
In spite of enviers jealousy, at end, v. 62.
In the morn I am richest of men, x. 40.
In the towering forts Allah throned him
King, ii. 291.
In this world there is none thou mayst
count upon, i. 207.
In thought I see thy form when farthest
far or nearest near, ii. 42.
In thy whole world there is not one,
iv. 187.
In vest of saffron pale and safflower red,
i. 219.
Incline not to parting, I pray, viii. 314.
Indeed afflicted sore are we and all
distraught, viii. 48.
Indeed I am consoled now and sleep
without a tear, iv. 242.
Indeed I deem thy favours might be bought,
iii. 34.
Indeed I hourly need thy choicest aid,
v. 281.
Indeed I'll bear my love for thee with
firmest soul, iv. 241.
Indeed I longed to share unweal with
thee, iii. 323.
Indeed I'm heart-broken to see thee start,
viii. 63.
Indeed I'm strong to bear whatever befal,
iii. 46.
Indeed my heart loves all the lovely boys,
ix. 253.
Indeed, ran my tears on the severance day,
vii. 64.
Indeed, to watch the darkness-moon he
blighted me, iii. 277.
Irks me my fate and clean unknows that I,
viii. 130.
" Is Abu's-Sakr of Shayban" they asked,
v. 100.
Is it not strange one house us two contain,
iv. 279.
Is not her love a pledge by all mankind
confest? ii. 186.
It behoveth folk who rule in our time,
viii. 294.
It happed one day a hawk pounced on a
bird, iv. 103.
It runs through every joint of them as runs,
x. 39.
It seems as though of Lot's tribe were our
days, iii. 301.
It was as though the sable dye upon her
palms, iii. 105.
JAMIL, in Holy War go fight ! to me they
say : ii. 102.
Jahannam, next Laza, and third Hatim,
v. 240.
Jamrkan am I ! and a man of might,
vii. 23.
Joy from stroke of string doth to me incline,
viii. 227.
Joy is nigh, O Masriir, so rejoice in true
rede, viii. 221.
"Joy needs shall come," a prattler 'gan to
prattle: iii. 7.
Joy of boughs, bright branch of Myrobalan !
viii. 213.
Joy so o'ercometh me, for stress of joy,
v- 355-
Joyance is come, dispelling cark and care,
v. 61.
KINGDOM with none endures ; if thou deny
this truth, where be the Kings of earlier
earth ? i. 129.
Kinsmen of mine were those three men who
came to thee, iv. 289.
Kisras and Caesars in a bygone day, ii. 41.
Kiss then his fingers which no fingers are,
iv. 147.
LACK of good is exile to man at home,
ix. 199.
Lack-gold abaseth man and doth his worth
away, ix. 290.
Lady of beauty, say,- who taught thee hard
and harsh design, iii. 5-
Appendix.
405
Laud not long hair, except it be dispread,
ii. 230.
Laud to my Lord who gave thee all of love-
liness, iv. 143.
Leave this blame, I will list to no enemy's
blame ! iii. 61.
Leave this thy design and depart, O man !
viii. 212.
Leave thou the days to breed their ban and
bate, ii. 41.
Leave thy home for abroad an wouldest rise
on high, ix. 138.
Let days their folds and plies deploy,
ii. 309.
Let destiny with slackened rein its course
appointed fare ! viii. 70.
Let Fate with slackened bridle fare her pace,
iv. 173.
Let Fortune have her wanton way, i. 107.
Let thy thought be ill and none else but
ill, iii. 142.
Leyla's phantom came by night, viii. 14.
Life has no sweet for me since forth ye
fared, iii. 177.
Like are the orange hills when zephyr
breathes, viii. 272.
Like a tree is he who in wealth doth
wone, ii. 14.
Like fullest moon she shines on happiest
night, v. 347.
Like moon she shines amid the starry sky,
v. 32.
Like peach -in vergier growing, viii. 270.
Like the full moon she shineth in garments
all of green, viii. 327.
Lion of the wold wilt thou murder me, v.
40.
Long as earth is earth, long as sky is sky,
ix. 317.
Long have I chid thee, but my chiding
hindereth thee not, vii. 225.
Long have I wept o'er severance ban and
bane, i- 249.
Long I lamented that we fell apart, ii. 187.
Long, long have I bewailed the sev'rance
of our loves, iii. 275.
Long was my night for sleepless misery,
iv. 263.
Longsome is absence ; Care and Fear are
sore, ii. 295.
Longsome is absence, restlessness in-
creaseth, vii. 212.
Look at the Lote-tree, note on boughs
arrayed, viii. 271.
Look at the apricot whose bloom contains,
viii. 268.
Look on the Pyramids and hear the twain,
v. 106.
Love, at first sight, is a spurt of spray, vii.
280.
Love, at the first, is a spurt of spray, vii.
330-
Love for my fair they chide in angry way,
iii. 233.
Love in my breast they lit and fared away,
iii. 296.
Love in my heart they lit and went their
ways, i. 232.
Love-longing urged me not except to trip
in speech o'er free, ix. 322.
Love smote my frame so sore on parting
day, ii. 152.
Love's tongue within my heart speaks plain
to thee, iv. 135.
Love's votaries I ceased not to oppose, iii.
290.
Lover with his beloved loseth will and aim,
v. 289.
Lover, when parted from the thing he loves,
viii. 36.
Luck to the Rubber whose deft hand o'er-
plies, iii. 17.
MAKE me not (Allah save the Caliph !) one
of the betrayed, vii. 129^
Make thy game by guile for thou'rt born in
a time, iii. 141.
Man is known amon^ men as his deeds
attest, ix. 164.
Man wills his wish to him accorded be, iv,
157-
Many whose ankle rings are dumb have
tinkling belts, iii. 302.
Masrur joys life made fair by ail delight of
days, viii. 234.
May Allah never make you parting dree,
v. 74.
May coins thou raakest joy in heart instil,
ix. 69.
May God deny me boon of troth if I, viiL
34
May that Monarch's life span a mighty
span, ii. 75.
406
A If Laylah wa LayJak.
Mazed with thy love no more I can feign
patience, viii. 321.
Melted pure gold in silvern bowl to drain.
v. 66.
Men and dogs together are all gone by,
iv. 268.
Men are a hidden malady, iv. 188.
Men craving pardon will uplift their hands,
iii. 304.
Men have 'plained of pining before my
time, iii. 183.
Men in their purposes are much alike,
vii. 169.
Men's turning unto bums of boys is bump-
tious, v. 162.
Methought she was the forenoon sun until
she donned the veil, viii. 284.
Mine ear forewent mine eye in loving him,
ix. 222.
Mine eyes I admire that can feed their fill,
viii. 224.
Mine eyes ne'er looked on aught the
Almond like, viii. 270.
Mine eyes were dragomans for my tongue
betied, i. 121.
Mine is a Chief who reached most haught
estate, i. 253.
'Minish this blame I ever bear from you,
iii. 60.
Morn saith to-night, '* withdraw and let
me shine," i. 132.
Most beautiful is earth in budding bloom,
ii. 86.
Muawiyah, thou gen'rous lord, and best of
men that be, vii. 125.
My best salam to what that robe enrobes
of symmetry, ix. 321.
My blamers instant chid that I for her be-
come consoled, viii. 171.
My blamers say of me, He is consoled, And
lie! v. 158.
My body bides the sad abode of grief and
malady, iv. 230.
My censors say, What means this pine for
him? v. 158.
My charmer who spellest my piety, ix. 243.
My coolth of eyes, the darling child of me,
v. 260.
My day of bliss is that when thou appearest,
iii. 291.
My friend I prithee tell me, 'neath the sky.
v. 107.
My friend who went hath returned once
more, vi. 196.
My friends, despite this distance and this
cruelty, viii. 115.
My friends, I yearn in heart distraught for
him, vii. 212.
My friends! if ye are banisht from mine
eyes, iii. 340.
My friends, Rayya hath mounted soon as
morning shone, vii. 93.
My fondness, O my moon, for thee my
foeman is, iii. 256.
My heart disheartened is, my breast is
strait, ii. 238.
My heart is a thrall : my tears ne'er abate,
viii. 346.
My life for the scavenger ! right well I love
him, i. 312.
My life is gone but love-longings remain,
viii. 345-
My longing bred of love with mine unease
forever grows, vii. 21 1.
My Lord hath servants fain of piety, v.
277.
My lord, this be the Sun, the Moon thou
hadst before, vii. 143.
My lord, this full moon takes in Heaven
of thee new birth, vii. 143.
My love a meeting promised me and kept
it faithfully, iii. 195.
My loved one's name in cheerless solitude
aye cheereth me, v. 59,
My lover came in at the close of night,
iv. 124.
My lover came to me one night, iv. 252.
My mind's withdrawn from Zaynab and
Nawar, iii. 239.
My patience failed me when my lover went,
viii. 259.
My patience fails me and grows anxiety,
viii. 14.
My prickle is big and the little one said,
iii. 302.
My Salam to the Fawn in the garments
concealed, iv. 50.
My sin to thee is great, iv. 109.
My sister said, as saw she how I stood,
iii. 109.
My sleeplessness would show I love to bide
on wake, iii. 195^
My soul and my folk I engage for the
youth, vii. in.
Appendix.
407
My soul for loss of lover sped I sight,
viii. 67.
My soul be sacrifice for one, whose going,
iii. 292.
My soul thy sacrifice ! I chose thee out,
iii. 303.
My soul to him who smiled back my salute,
iii. 168.
My tale, indeed, is tale unlief, iv. 265.
My tears thus flowing rival with my wine,
iii. 169.
My tribe have slain that brother mine,
Umaym, iv. no.
My wish, mine illness, mine unease ! by
Allah, own, viii. 68.
My wrongs hide I, withal they show to
sight, viii. 260.
My yearning for thee though long is fresh,
iv. 211.
NAUGHT came to salute me in sleep save
his shade, vii. in.
Naught gar red me weep save where and
when of severance spake lie, viii. 63.
Nears my parting fro" my love, nigher
draws the severance-day, viii. 308.
Need drives a man into devious roads,
ii. 14.
Needs must I bear the term by Fate de-
creed,, ii. 41.
Ne'er cease thy gate be Ka'abah to man-
kind, iv. 148.
Ne'er dawn the severance-day on any
wise, viii. 49.
Ne'er incline thee to part, ii. 105.
Ne'er was a man with beard grown over-
long, viii. 298.
News my wife wots is not a locket in a
box ! i. 311.
News of my love fill all the land, I swear,
iii. 287.
No breeze of Union to the lover blows,
viii. 239.
No ! I declare by Him to whom ail bow,
v. 152.
No longer beguile me, iii. 137.
' ' No ring-dove moans from home on branch
in morning light, H. 152.
None but the good a secret keep And
good men keep it unrevealed, i. 87.
None but the men of worth a secret keep,
iii. 289.
None keepeth a secret but a faithful
person, iv. 233.
None other charms but thine shall greet
mine eyes, i. 156.
None wotteth best joyance but generous
youth, v. 67.
Not with his must I'm drunk, but verily,
v. 158.
Now an, by Allah, unto man were fully
known, iii. 128.
Now, an of woman ask ye, I reply, iii. 214.
Now blame him not ; for blame brings
only vice and pain, ii. 297.
Now, by my life, brown hue hath point of
comeliness, iv. 258.
Now, by thy life, and wert thou just my
life thou hadst not ta'en, i. 182.
Now, by your love ! your love I'll ne'er
forget, viii. 315.
Now I indeed will hide desire and all
repine, v. 267.
Now is my dread to incur reproaches,
which, iii. 59.
Now love hast banished all that bred
delight, iii. 259.
Now with their says and said no more vex
me the chiding race, iv. 207.
O ADORNMENT of beauties to thee write I,
vii. 176.
O beauty's Union ! love for thee's my
creed, iii. 303.
O best of race to whom gave Hawwd boon
of birth, v. 139.
O bibber of fiquor, art not ashamed, v.
224.
O breeze that blowest from the land Irak,
viii. 103.
O child of Adam let not hope make mock
and flyte at thee, vi. 116.
O culver of the copse, with salams I greet,
v. 49.
O day of joys to either lover fain 1 v. 63,
O dwelling of my friends, say is there no
return, viii. 319.
O fair ones forth ye cast my faithrul love,
ix. 300.
O fertile root and noble growth of trunk,
ii. 43.
O fisherman no care hast thou to fea, v.
408
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
O flier from thy home when foes affright !
v. 290.
O friends of me- one favour more I pray,
v. 125.
O glad news bearer well come ! ii. 326.
O hail to him whose locks his cheeks o'er-
shade, x. 58.
O Haya.t al-Nufus be gen'rous and incline,
vii. 217.
O heart, an lover false thee, shun the
parting bane, viii. 94.
O heart ! be not thy love confined to one,
iii. 232.
O hope of me ! pursue me not with rigour
and disdain, iii. 28.
O joy of H'ell and Heaven ! whose tor-
mentry, iii. 19.
O Keener, O sweetheart, thou fallest riot
short, i. 311
O Kings of beauty, grace to prisoner ta'en,
viii. 96.
O Lord, by the Five Shaykhs, I pray
deliver me, vii. 226.
O Lord, how many a grief from me hast
driven, v. 270.
O Lord, my foes are fain to slay me in
despight, viii. 117.
O Lords of me, who fared but whom my
heart e'er followeth, iv. 239.
O Love, thou'rt instant in thy cruellest
guise, iv. 204.
O lover thou bringest to thought a tide, v.
50.
O Maryam of beauty return for these eyne,
viii. 321.
O Miriam thy chiding I pray, forego, ix. J8.
O moon for ever set this earth below, iii.
323-
O Moslem ! thou whose guide is Alcoran,
iv. 173.
O most noble of men in this time and
stound, iv. 20.
O my censor who wakest amorn to see, viii.
343-
O my friend, an I rendered my life, my
sprite, ix. 214.
O my friend ! reft of rest no repose I com-
mand, ii. 35.
O my friends, have ye seen or have ye heard,
vi. 174,
O my heart's desire, grows my misery, vii.
248.
Q my Lord, well I weet thy puissant hand,
vi. 97.
O Night of Union, Time's virginal prize,
viii. 328.
O my lords, shall he to your minds occur,
ix. 299.
O Night here I stay ! I want no morning
light, iv. 144.
O passing Fair I have none else but thee,
vii. 365.
O pearl-set mouth of friend, iv. 231.
O pearly mouth of friend, who set those
pretty pearls in line, iv. 231.
O Rose, thou rare of charms that dost con-
tain, viii. 275.
O sire, be not deceived by worldly joys, v.
U4-
O son of mine uncle Lsaine sorrow I bear.
iii. 61.
O spare me, thou Ghazban, indeed enow
for me, ii. 126.
O Spring-camp have ruth on mine over-
throwing, viii. 240.
O thou Badi'a '1-Jamal, show thou some
clemency, vii. 368.
O thou of generous seed and true nobility,
vi. 252.
O thou sheeniest Sun who in night dost
shine, viii. 215.
O Thou, the One, whose grace doth all the
world embrace, v. 272.
O thou tomb ! O thou tomb! be his horrors
set in blight ? i. 76.
O thou to whom sad trembling wights in
fear complain! iii. 317".
O thou who barest leg-calf better to sug-
gest, ii. 327.
O thou who claimest to be prey of love and
ecstasy, vii. 220.
O thou who deignest come at sorest syne,
iii. 78.
O thou who dost comprise all Beauty's
boons ! vii. 107.
O thou who dyest hoariness with black,
viii. 295.
O Thou who fearest Fate, i. 56.
O thou who for thy wakeful nights wouldst
claim my love to boon, iii. 26.
O thou who givest to royal state sweet
savour, ii. 3.
O thou who gladdenest man by speech and
rarest quality, ix* 322.
Appendix*
409
O thou who seekesl innocence to 'guile, iii.
137-
O thou who seekest parting, safely fare !ii.
3i9-
O thou who seekest separation, act leisurely
iv. 200.
O thou who seekest severance, i. 118.
O thou who shamest sun in morning sheen,
viii. 35.
O thou who shunnest him thy love misled !
viii. 259.
O thou who wooest Severance, easy fare !
iii. 278.
O thou who woo'st a world unworthy learnj
iii. 319.
O thou whose boons to me are more than
one, iii. 317.
O thou whose favours have been out of
compt, iii. 137.
O thou whose forehead, like the radiant
East, i. 210.
O to whom I gave soul which thou tor-
turest, iv. 19.
O to whom now of my desire complaining
sore shall I, v. 44.
O toiler through the glooms of night in
peril and in pain, i. 38.
O turtle dove, like me art thou distraught?
tv. 47.
O waftings of musk from the Babel-land !
ix. 195.
O who didst win my love in other date,v. 63.
O who hast quitted these abodes and
faredst lief and light, viii. 59.
O who passest this doorway, by Allah,
see, viii. 236.
O who praisest Time with the fairest
appraise, ix. 296.
O who shamest the Moon and the sunny
glow, vii. 248.
who suest Union, ne'er hope such
delight, viii. 257.
O whose heart by our beauty is captive
ta'en, v. 36.
O Wish of wistful men, for Thee I yearn,
v. 269.
O ye that can aid me, a wretched lover,
ii. 30.
O ye who fled and left my heart in pain
low li'en, iii. 285.
O ye who with my vitals fled, have ruth,
viii. 258.
O you whose mole on cheek enthroned
recalls, i. 251.
O Zephyr of Morn, an thou pass where
the dear ones dwell, viii. 120.
O Zephyr of Najd, when from Najd thou
blow, vii. 115.
Of dust was I created, and man did I
become, v. 237.
Of evil thing the folk suspect us twain,
iii. 305-
Of my sight I am jealous for thee, of me,
ix. 248.
Of Time and what befel me I complain,
viii. 219.
Of wit and wisdom is Maymunah bare,
i. 57-
Oft hath a tender bough made lute for
maid, v. 244.
Oft hunchback added to his bunchy back,
viii. 297.
Oft times mischance shall straiten noble
breast, viii. 117.
Oft when thy case shows knotty and
tangled skein, vi. 71.
Oh a valiant race are the sons of Nu'uman,
iii. 80.
Oh soul of me, an thou accept my rede,
ii. 210.
Oh ye gone from the gaze of these lidded
eyne, ii. 139.
Old hag, of high degree in filthy life,
v. 96.
On earth's surface we lived in rare ease
and joy, vii, 123.
On her fair bosom caskets twain I scanned,
i. 156.
On me and with me bides thy volunty,
viii. 129.
On Sun and Moon of palace cast thy
sight, i. 85.
On the brow, of the World is a writ ; an
thereon thou look, ix. 297.
On the fifth day at even-tide they went
away from me, ii. 10.
On the fifth day I quitted all my friends
for evermore, ii. 10.
On the glancing racer outracing glance,
ii. 273.
On the shaded woody island His showers
Allah deign, x. 40.
On these which once were chicks, iv.
4io
A if Laylah wa Layla/i.
One, I wish him in belt a thousand horns,
v. 129.
One craved my love and I gave all he
craved of me, iii. 210.
One wrote upon her cheek with musk, his
name was Ja'afar hight, iv. 292.
Open the door! the leach now draweth
near, v. 284.
Oppression ambusheth in sprite of man,
ix. 343-
Our aim is only converse to enjoy, iv. 54.
Our Fort is Tor, and flames the fire of
fight, ii. 242.
Our life to thee, O cup-boy Beauty-dight !
iii. 169.
Our trysting-time is all too short, iii. 167.
PARDON my fault, for 'tis the wise man's
wont, i. 126.
Pardon the sinful ways I did pursue, ii.
38.
Part not from one whose wont is not to
part from you, iii. 295.
Parting ran up to part from lover twain,
iii. 209.
Pass round the cup to the old and the
young man, too, viii. 278.
Pass o'er my fault, for 'tis the wise man's
wont, viii. 327.
Patience hath fled, but passion fareth not,
v. 358-
Patience with sweet and with bitter Fate !
viii. 146.
Patient I seemed, yet Patience shown by
me, vii. 96.
Patient, O Allah 1 to Thy destiny I bow,
iii. 328.
Pause ye and see his sorry state since when
ye fain withdrew, viii. 66.
Peace be to her who visits me in sleeping
phantasy, viii. 241.
Peace be to you from lover's wasted love,
vii. 368.
Peace be with you, sans you naught com-
pensateth me, viii. 320.
Perfect were lover's qualities in him was
brought amorn, viii. 255.
Pink cheeks and eyes enpupil'd black have
dealt me sore despight, viii. 69.
Pleaseth me more the fig than every fruit,
viii. 269.
Pleaseth me yon H aza"r of mocking strain,
v. 48.
Pleasure and health, good cheer, good
appetite, ii. 102.
Ply me and also my mate be plied, viii.
203.
Poverty dims the sheen of man whate'er
his wealth has been, i. 272.
Pray'ee grant me some words from your
lips, belike, iii. 274.
Pray, tell me what hath Fate to do be-
twixt us twain? v. 128.
Preserve thy hoary hairs from soil and
stain, iv. 43.
Prove how love can degrade, v. 134.
QUINCE every taste conjoins; in her are
found, i. 158.
Quoth I to a comrade one day, viii. 289.
Quoth our Imam Abu Nowas, who was,
v. 157.
Quoth she (for I to lie with her forbare),
iii. 303.
Quoth she, " I see thee dye thy hoari-
ness, iv. 194.
Quoth she to me, and sore enraged, viii.
293-
Quoth she to me I see thou dy'st thy
hoariness, viii. 295.
Quoth they and I had trained my taste
thereto, viii. 269.
Quoth they, Black letters on his cheek are
writ ! iv. 196.
Quoth they, Maybe that Patience lend thee
ease ! iii. 178.
Quoth they, Thou rav'st on him thou
lov'st, iii. 258.
Quoth they, "Thou'rt surely raving mad
for her thou lov'st," viii. 326.
RACKED is my heart by parting fro* my
friends, i. 150.
Rain showers of torrent tears, O Eyne, and
see, viii. 250.
Rebel against women and so shalt thou
serve Allah the more, iii. 214.
Red fruits that fill the hand, and shine
with sheen, viii. 271.
Rely not on women: Trust not to their
hearts, i. 13.
Appendix.
411
Reserve is a jewel, Silence safety is, i.
208.
Restore my heart as 'twas within my
breast, viii. 37.
Right near at hand, Umaymah mine I v. 75.
Robe thee, O House, in richest raiment
Time, viii. 206.
Roll up thy days and they shall easy roll,
iv. 220.
Rosy red Wady hot with summer-glow
ix. 6.
Round with big and little, the bowl and
cup, ii. 29.
SAID I to slim-waist who the wine engraced,
viii. 307.
Salam from graces treasured by my Lord,
iii. 273.
Salams fro' me to friends in every stead,
iii. 256.
Say, cans't not come to us one momentling,
iv. 43.
Say, doth heart of my fair incline to him,
v. 127.
Say him who careless sleeps what while the
shaft of Fortune flies, i, 68.
Say me, on Allah's path has death not
dealt to me, iv. 247.
Say me, will Union after parting e'er
return to be, viii. 320.
Say then to skin "Be soft," to face "Be
fair," i. 252.
Say thou to the she-gazelle, who's no
gazelle, v. 130.
Say to angry lover who turns away, v.
131-
Say to the charmer in the dove-hued veil,
i. 280.
Say to the fair in the wroughten veil, viii.
291.
Say to the pretty one in veil of blue, iv.
264.
Say what shall solace one who hath nor
home nor stable stead, ii. 124.
Say, will to me and you the Ruthful union
show, viii. 323.
Scented with sandal and musk, right
proudly doth she go, v. 192.
Seeing thy looks wots she what thou
desir'st, v. 226.
Seest not how the hosts of the Rose display,
viii. 276.
Seest not .that Almond plucked by hand,
viii. 270.
Seest not that musk, the nut-brown musk,
e'er claims the highest price, iv. 253.
Seest not that pearls are prized for milky
hue, iv. 250.
Seest not that rosery where Rose a flower-
ing displays, viii. 275.
Seest not the bazar with its fruit in rows,
iii. 302.
Seest not the Lemon when it taketh form,
viii. 272.
Seest not we want for joy four things all
told, i. 86.
Semblance of full-moon Heaven bore, v.
192.
Severance-grief nighmost, Union done to
death, iv. 223.
Shall I be consoled when Love hath
mastered the secret of me, viii. 261.
Shall man experience-lectured ever care,
vii. 144.
Shall the beautiful hue of the Basil fail,
i. 19.
Shall the world oppress me when thou art
in't, ii. 18.
Shall we e'er be united after severance-tide,
viii. 322.
Shamed is the bough of Ban by pace of her,
viii. 223.
She bade me farewell on our parting day,
35-
She beamed on my sight with a wondrous
glance, ii. 87.
She came apparelled in an azure vest,
i. 218.
She came apparelled in a vest of blue,
viii. 280.
She came out to gaze on the bridal at ease,
v. 149.
She came thick veiled, and cried I, O dis-
play, viii. 280.
She comes apparelled in an azure vest,
x. 58.
She comes like fullest moon on happy
night, i. 218 ; x. 59.
She cried while played in her side Desire t
ix. 197.
She dispread the locks from her head one
night, iii. 226.
She drew near whenas death was departing
us, v. 71.
412
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
She gives her woman's hand a force that
fails the hand of me, iii. 176.
She hath eyes whose babes wi' their fingers
sign, viii. 166.
She hath those hips conjoined by thread of
waist, iii. 226.
She hath wrists which, did her bangles not
contain, iii. 226.
She is a sun which towereth high asky,
iii. 163.
Shejoineth charms were never seen con-
joined in mortal dress, vii. 104.
She lords it o'er our hearts in grass-green
gown, ii. 318.
She prayeth ; the Lord of grace her prayer
obeyed, v. 273.
She proffered me a tender coynte, iii.
304-
She rose like the morn as she shone
through the night, i. n.
She saith sore hurt in sense the most acute,
iii. 303.
She shineth forth a moon, and bends a
willow-wand, iv. 50.
She shone out in the garden in garments
all of green, v. 346.
She shot my heart with shaft, then turned
on heel, vii. 141.
She sits it in lap like a mother fond,
ix. 191.
She 'spied the moon of Heaven reminding
me, iv. 51.
She split my casque of courage with eye-
swords that sorely smite, iii. 179.
She spread three tresses of unplaited hair,
iv. 51.
She wears a pair of ringlets long let down,
v. 240.
She who my all of love by love of her hath
won, viii. 254.
Shoulder thy tray and go straight to thy
goal, i. 278.
Showed me Sir Such-an-one a sight, and
what a sight ! iv. 193.
Silent I woned and never owned my love,
v. 151.
Silky her skin and silk that zoned waist,
iii. 163.
Since my toper-friend in my hand hath
given, iv. 20.
Since none will lend my love a helping
hand, vii. -225.
Since our Imam came forth from medicine,
v. 154.
Sleep fled me, by my side wake ever shows,
viii. 68.
Slept in mine arms full moon of brightest
blee, x. 39.
Slim-waist and boyish wits delight, v. 161.
Slim-waist craved wine from her com-
paneer, viii. 307.
Slim-waisted leveling, from his hair and
brow, viii. 299.
Slim-waisted leveling, jetty hair encrowned
i. 116.
Slim-waisted one whose looks with down
of cheek, v. 158.
Slim-waisted one, whose taste is sweetest
sweet, v. 241.
Sojourn of stranger, in whatever land,
vii. 175-
Sought me this heart's dear love at gloom
of night, vii. 253.
Source of mine evils, truly, she alone' s,
iii. 165.
Sow kindness-seed in the unfittest stead,
iii. 136.
Stand by and see the derring-do which I
to-day will show, iii. 107.
Stand by the ruined home and ask of us,
iii. 328.
Stand thou and hear what fell to me,
viii. 228.
Stand thou by the homes and hail the lords
of the ruined stead, ii. 181.
Stay! grant one parting look before we
part, ii. 15.
Steer ye your steps to none but me, v. 65.
Still cleaves .to this homestead mine ecstasy,
viii. 243.
Stint ye this blame, viii. 254.
Straitened bosom; reveries dispread, iii. 182
Strange is my story, passing prodigy,
iv. 139.
Strange is the charm which dights her
brows like Luna's disk that shine, ii. 3.
Strive he to cure his case, to hide the truth,
ii. 320.
Such is the world, so bear a patient heart,
i. 183.
Suffer mine eye-babes weep lost of love
and tears express, viii. 112.
Suffice thee death, such marvels can
enhance, iii. 56.
Appendix.
413
Sun riseth sheen from her brilliant brow,
vii. 246.
Sweetest of nights the world can show to
me, ii. 318.
Sweetheart ! How long must I awaitjby so
long suffering tried ? ii. 178
Sweetly discourses she on Persian string,
viii. 1 66.
TAKE all things easy ; for all worldly
things, iv. 220.
Take thy life and fly whenas evils threat ;
let the ruined house tell its owner's
fate, i. 109.
Take, O my lord to thee the Rose, viii. 275.
Take patience which breeds good if
patience thou can learn, iv. 221.
Take warning, O proud, iv. 118.
Tear-drops have chafed mine eyelids and
rail down in wondrous wise, v. 53.
Tell her who turneth from our love to work
it injury sore, i. 181.
Tell whoso hath sorrow grief never shall
last i. 15.
That cheek-mole's spot they evened with a
grain, i. 251.
That jetty hair, that glossy brow, i. 203.
That night th' astrologer a scheme of
planets drew, i. 167.
That pair in image quits me not one single
hour, ii. 173.
That rarest beauty ever bides my foe,
vii. 366.
That spouting hair upon his face took
wreak, v. 161.
The birds took flight at eve and winged
their way, vii? 34.
The blear-eyed scapes the pits, i. 265.
The boy like his father shall surely show,
i. 310.
The breeze o* morn blows uswards from
her trace, viii. 206.
The bushes of golden hued rose excite,
viii. 276.
The Bulbul's note, whenas dawn is nigh,
v. 48.
The caravan-chief calleth loud o' night,
viii. 239.
The chambers were like a bee-hive well
stocked, ix. 292.
The coming unto thee is blest, viii. 167.
The company left with my love by night,
ix. 27.
The Compassionate show no rmh to the
tomb where his bones shall lie, x.47.
The courser chargeth on battling foe,
iii. 83.
The day of my delight is the day when you
draw near, i. 75.
The day of parting cut my heart in twain,
iii. 124.
The fawn-like one a meeting promised me,
iv. 195-
The fawn of a maid hent her lute in
hand, ii. 34.
The feet of sturdy miscreants went tramp-
ling heavy tread, x. 38.
The first in rank to kiss the ground shall
deign, i. 250.
The fragrance of musk from the breasts of
the fair, viii. 209.
The full moon groweth perfect once a
month, vii. 271.
The glasses are heavy when empty brought,
x. 40.
The hapless lover's heart is of his wooing
weary grown, iv. 144.
The hearts of lovers have eyes I ken,
iv. 238.
The hue of dusty motes is hers, iv 257.
The house, sweetheart, is now no home to
me, v. 381.
The jujube tree each day, viii. 271.
The Kings who fared before us showed,
iii. 318.
The land of lamping moon is bare and
drear, viii. 126.
The least of him is the being free, v.
156.
The life of the bath is the joy of man's life,
iii. 19.
The like of whatso feelest thou we feel,
vii. 141.
The longing of a Bedouin maid, whose
folks are far away, iii. 172.
The longing of an Arab lass forlorn of kith
and kin, ii. 306.
The Lord, empty House ! to thee peace
decree, viii. 238.
The loved ones left thee in middle night,
v. 150.
The lover is drunken with love of friend,
v- 39-
414
A If Loylah wa Lay I ah.
The lover's heart for his beloved must
meet, ii. 62.
The lover's heart is like to break in twain,
ii. 63.
The mead is bright with what is on't,
ii. 86.
The messenger who kept our commerce
hid, iii. 189.
The Moon o' the Time shows unveiled
light, ix. 287.
The Nadd is my wine scented powder, my
bread, viii. 209.
The name of what drave me distraught,
viii. 93.
The Nile-flood this day is the gain you
own, i. 290.
The penis smooth and round was made
with anus best to match it, iii. 303.
The phantom of Soada came by night to
wake me, viii. 337.
The poor man fares by everything opposed,
ix. 291.
The Prophet saw whatever eyes could see,
v. 287.
The return of the friend is the best of all
boons, ix. 287.
The Rose in highest stead I rate, viii. 274.
The signs that here their mighty works
portray, vi. 90.
The slanderers said There is hair upon his
cheeks, v. 157.
The slippers that carry these fair young
feet, viii. 320.
The smack of parting 's myrrh to me,
ii. loi.
The solace of lovers is naught but far,
viii. 143.
The spring of the down on cheeks right
clearly shows, v. 190.
The stream V a cheek by sunlight rosy
dyed, ii. 240.
The streamlet swings by branchy wood and
aye, viii. 267.
The sun of beauty she to all appears, x. 59.
The sun of beauty she to sight appears,
i. 218.
The sun yellowed not in the murk gloom
lien, viii. 285.
The sword, the sworder and the blood-
skin waiting me I sight, ii. 42.
The tears of these eyes find easy release,
v. 127.
The tears run down his cheeks in double
row, iii. 169.
"The time of parting" quoth they,
" draweth nigh," v. 280.
The tongue of love from heart bespeaks
my sprite, iv. 261.
The tongue of Love within my vitals
speaketh, viii. 319.
The toothstick love I not; for when I
say, iii. 275.
The road is longsome ; grow my grief
and need, iii. 13.
The weaver-wight wrote with gold-ore
bright, viii. 2IO.
The whiskers write upon his cheek with
ambergris on pearl, vii. 277.
The wide plain is narrowed before these
eyes, viii. 28.
The wise have said that the white of hair,
viii. 294.
The world hath shot me with its sorrow
till, vii. 340.
The world sware that for ever 'twould gar
me grieve, viii. 243.
The world tears man to shreds, so be thou
not, ix. 295.
The world tricks I admire betwixt me and
her, ix. 242.
The world's best joys long be thy lot, my
lord, i. 203.
The zephyr breatheth o'er its branches,
like, viii. 267.
Their image bides with me, ne'er quits
me, ne'er shall fly, viii. 66.
Their tracts I see, and pine with pain and
pang, i. 151.
There be no writer who from death shall
fleet, i. 128.
There be rulers who have ruled with a
foul tyrannic sway, i. 60.
There remaineth not aught save a fluttering
breath, viii. 124.
There remains to him naught save a
flitting breath, vii. 119.
They blamed me for causing my tears to
well, ix. 29.
They bore him bier'd and all who followed
wept, ii, 281.
They find me fault with her where I de-
fault ne'er find, v. 80.
They have cruelly ta'en me from him my
beloved, v. 51.
Appendix.
415
They're gone who when thou stoodest at
their door, iv. 200.
They ruled awhile and theirs was harsh
tyrannic rule, iv. 220.
They said, Thou ravest upon the person
thou lovest, iv, 205.
They say me, * ' Thou shinest a light to
mankind," i. 187.
They shine fullest moons, unveil crescent
bright, viii, 304.
They talked of three beauties whose con-
verse was quite, vii. 112.
Thine image ever companies my sprite, iii.
259-
Thine image in these eyne, a-lip thy
name, iii. 179.
Think not from her, of whom thou art
enamoured, viii. 216.
Thinkest thou thyself all prosperous, in
days which prosp'rous be, viii. 309.
This be his recompense who will, ix.
17-
This day oppressor and oppressed meet, v.
258.
This garden and this lake in truth, viii.
207.
This house, my lady, since you left is now
a home no more, i. 211.
This messenger shall give my news to
thee, iii. 181.
This is a thing wherein destruction lies, i.
118.
This is she I will never forget till I die,
viii. 304.
This is thy friend perplexed for pain and
pine, iv. 279.
This one, whom hunger plagues, and rags
enfold, vii. 129.
Tho' 'tis thy wont to hide thy love per-
force, iii. 65*
Thou art the cause that castest mea in ban
and bane, viii. 149.
Thou earnest and green grew the hills
anew, iii. 18.
T'^ou deemedst well of Time when days
went well, ii. 12 ; iii. 253.
Thou hast a reed of rede to every land, i.
128.
Thou hast failed who would sink me in
ruin-sea, iii. 108.
Thou hast granted more favours than ever
I crave, ii. 32.
Thou hast restored my wealth, sans greed
and ere f iv. in.
Thou hast sonic art the hearts of men to
clip, i. 241.
Thou hast won my heart by cheek and
eye of thee, viii. 256.
Thou liest, O foulest of Satans, thou art,
iii. 108.
Thou liest when speaking of "benefits,"
while, iii. 108.
Thou madest Beauty to spoil man's sprite,
ix. 249.
Thou madest fair thy thought of Fate,
viii. 130.
Thou pacest the palace a marvel-sight, i.
176.
Thou'present, in the Heaven of Heavens I
dwell, iii. 268.
Thou seekest my death ; naught else thy
will can satisfy ? ii. 103.
Thou wast all taken up with love of other
man not me, i. 182.
Thou wast create of dust and cam'st to lifej
iv. 190.
Thou wast invested (woe to thee !) with
rule for thee unfit, vii. 127.
Though amorn I may awake with all happi-
ness in hand, i. 75.
Though now thou jeer, O Hind, how many
a night, vii. 98.
Three coats yon freshest form endue, viii.
270.
Three lovely girls hold my bridle-rein, ix.
243-
Three matters hinder her from visiting us,
in fear, iii. 231.
Three things for ever hinder her to visit us,
viii. 279.
Throne you on highmost stead, heart, ears
and sight, viii. 258.
Thy breast thou baredst sending back the
gift, v. 153.
Thy case commit to a Heavenly Lord and
thou shalt safety see, viii. 151.
Thy folly drives thee on though long I chid,
iii. 29.
Thy note came : long lost fingers wrote that
note, iv. 14.
Thy phantom bid thou fleet and fly, vii.
108.
Thy presence bringeth us a grace, i.
I7S-
4i6
A If Laylah wa Laylak.
Thy shape with willow branch I dare
compare, iv. 255.
Thy shape's temptation, eyes as Houri's
fain, viii. 47^
Thy sight hath never seen a fairer sight,
ii. 292.
Thy writ, O Masrur, stirred my sprite to
pine, viii. 245.
Time falsed our union and divided who were
one in tway, x. 26.
Time gives me tremble, Ah, how sore the
baulk ! i. 144.
Time has recorded gifts she gave the great,
i. 128.
Time hath for his wont to upraise and
debase, ii. 143.
Time hafh shattered all my frame, ii. 4.
Time sware my life should fare in woeful
waste, ii. 186.
'Tis as if wine and he who bears the bowl,
x. 38.
'Tis as the Figs with clear white skins out-
thrown, viii. 268.
'Tis dark : my transport and unease now
gather might and main, v. 45.
'Tis I am the stranger, visited by none, v.
116.
Tis naught but this ! When a-sudden I see
her, ix. 235.
'Tis not at every time and tide unstable,
iv. 188.
'Tis thou hast trodden coyness-path not I,
iii. 332.
To all who unknow my love for the May,
viii. 332.
To Allah will I make my moan of travail
and of woe, iii. 106.
To Allah's charge I leave that moon-like
^Beauty in your tents, iv. 145.
To even her with greeny bough were vain,
i. 156.
To grief leave a heart .that to love ne'er
ceased, viii. 215.
To him I spake of coupling but he said to
me, iii. 301.
To him when the wine cup is near I de-
clare, ix. 189.
To Karim, the cream of men thou gavest
me, ii. 35.
To kith and kin bear thou sad tidings of
our plight, iii. in.
To me restore my dear, v. 55.
To our beloveds we moaned our length of
night, iv. 106.
To Rose quoth I, What gars thy thorns to
be put forth, viii. 276.
To severance you doom my love and all
unmoved remain, i. 181.
To slay my foes is chiefest bliss I wist,
ii. 239.
To th' All-wise Subtle One trust worldly
things, i. 56.
To Thee be praise, O Thou who showest
unremitting grace, viii. 183.
To thee come I forth with my heart
aflame, iii. 108.
To win our favours still thy hopes are bent,
vii. 224.
Told us, ascribing to his Shaykhs, our
Shaykh, iv. 47.
Travel ! and thou shalt find new friends
for old ones left behind, i. 197.
Troubles familiar with my heart are grown
and I with them, viii. 117.
Trust not to man when thou hast raised his
spleen, iii. 145.
Truth best befits thee albeit truth, i. 298.
Turn thee from grief nor care a jot ! i. 56.
'Twas as I feared the coming ills dis-
cerning, ii. 189.
'Twas by will of her she was create, viii.
291.
'Twas not of love that fared my feet to
them, iv. 180.
'Twas not satiety bade me leave the dear-
ling of my soul, i. 181.
'Twixt the close-tied and open-wide no
medium Fortune knoweth, ii. 105.
'Twixt me and riding many a noble dame,
v. 266.
Two contraries and both concur in oppo-
site charms, iv. 20.
Two hosts fare fighting thee the livelong
day, i. 132.
Two lovers barred from every joy and
bliss, v. 240.
Two things there are, for which if eyes
wept tear on tear, viii. 263.
Two things there be, an blood- tears
there-over, viii. 106.
Two nests in one ; blood flowing easiest
wise, v. 239.
Tyrannise not, if thou hast the power to
do so, iv. 189.
Appendix.
UMM AMR', thy boons Allah repay! v.
118.
Under my raiment a waste body lies, v.
IS'-
Under these domes how many a company,
vi. 91.
Union, this seveiance ended, shall I see
some dayPiil 12.
Unjust it were to bid the world be just,
i- 237-
Uns al-Wujud dost deem me fancy free,
v.43-
Unto thee, As'ad ! I of passion pangs
complain, iii. 312.
Unto thy phantom deal behest, vii. 109.
Upsprings from table of his lovely cheek,
vii. 277.
VEILING her cheeks with hair a-morn she
comes, i.2i8.
Verily women are devils created for us,
iii. 322.
Vied the full moon for folly with her face,
viii. 291.
Virtue in hand of thee hath built a house,
iv. 138.
Visit thy lover, spurn what envy told, i.
223.
Void are the private rooms of treasury, iv.
267.
WAIL for the little partridges on porringer
and plate, i. 131.
Wands of green chrysolite bare issue
which, viii. 275.
'Ware how thou hurtest man with hurt of
hearts, ii. 197.
'Ware that truth thou speak, albe sooth
when said, x. 23.
Was't archer shot me, or was't mine eyes,
v. 33-
Watch some tall ship she'll joy the sight of
thee, ii. 20.
Watered steel-blade, the world perfection
calls, vii. 173.
Waters of beauty o'er his cheeks flow
bright, viii. 299.
We joy in full Moon who the wine bears
round, viii. 227.
We left not taking leave of thee (when
bound to other goal), viii. 63.
VOL. X.
We lived on earth a life of fair content,
v. 71.
We lived till saw we all the marvels Love
can bear, v. 54.
We'll drink and Allah pardon sinners all,
viii. 277.
We never heard of wight nor yet espied,
viii. 296.
We reck not, an our life escape from bane,
vii. 99.
We tread the path where Fate hath led,
i. 107.
We trod the steps appointed for us, x. 53.
We trod the steps that for us were writ, ix.
226.
We were and were the days enthralled to
all our wills, ii. 182.
We were like willow-boughs in garden
shining, vii. 132.
We wrought them weal, they met our weal
with ill, i. 43.
Welcome the Fig ! To us it comes, viii.
269.
Well Allah weets that since our severance.
day, iii. 8.
Well Allah wots that since my severance
from thee, iii. 292.
Well Allah wotteth I am sorely plagued,
v. 139.
Well learnt we, since you left, our grief and
sorrow to sustain, iii 63.
Wend to that pious prayerful Emir, v.
274.
Were I to dwell on heart-consuming heat,
iii. 310.
Were it said to me while the flame is burn-
ing within me^ vii. 282.
Were not the Murk of gender male, x. 60,
What ails the Beauty, she returneth not ?
v. 137.
What ails the Raven that he croaks my
lover's house hard by, viii. 242.
What can the slave do when pursued by
Fate, iii. 341.
What fair excuse is this my pining plight,
v. 52.
What I left, I left it not for nobility of soul,
vi. 92.
What pathway find I toy desire to obtain,
v. 42.
What sayest of one by a sickness caught
v. 164.
DD
4i8
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
What sayest thou of him by sickness waste,
v- 73-
What secret kept I these my tears have
told, iii. 285.
What's life to me, unless I see the pearly
sheen, iii. 65.
What's this ? I pass by tombs, and fondly
greet, iii. 46.
What time Fate's tyranny shall oppress
thee, i. 119.
Whate'er they say of grief to lovers came,
iti- 33-
Whatever needful thing thou undertake, i.
307-
Whatso is not to be no sleight shall bring
to pass, ii. 279.
Whatso is not to be shall ne'er become,
iii. 162.
When a nickname or little name men
design, i. 350.
When Allah willeth aught befal a man, i.
275-
When comes she slays she ; and when back
she turns, iv. 232.
When drew she near to bid adieu with heart
unstrung, i. 158.
Whene'er the Lord 'gainst any man, viii.
3I4-
When fails my wealth no friend will deign
befriend, i. 208 ; iv. 189.
When fortune weighs heavy on some of us,
iii. 141,
When forwards Allah's aid a man's intent,
x- 53-
When God upon a man possessed of reason-
ing, viii. 21.
When he who is asked a favour saith " To-
morrow," i. 196.
When his softly bending shape bid him
close to my embrace, iii, 306.
When I drew up her shift from the roof of
her coynte, ii. 331.
When I far-parted patience call and tears,
vi. 279.
When I nighted and dayed in Damascus
town, i. 233.
When I think of my love and our parting
smart, i. 250.
When I took up her shift and discovered
the terrace-roof of her kaze, viii. 32.
When in thy mother's womb thou wast,
viii. 119.
When its birds in the lake make melody,
vi. 277.
When Khalid menaced off to strike my
hand, iv. 156.
When love and longing and regret are
mine, ii. 34.
When man keeps honour bright without a
stain, iv. 106.
When my blamer saw me beside my love,
ix. I.
When oped the inkhorn of thy wealth and
fame, i. 129.
When saw I Pleiad stars his glance escape,
iii. 221.
When shall be healed of thee this heart
that ever bides in woe ? ii. 296.
When shall disunion and estrangement
end? iv. 137.
When shall the disappointed heart be
healed of severance, iii. 58.
When shall the severance- fire be quenched
by union, love, with you, viii. 62.
When she's incensed thou seest folk lie
slain, viii. 165.
When straitened is my breast I will of my
Creator pray, viii. 149.
When the Kings' King giveth, in reverence
pause, x. 35.
When the slanderers only to part us cared,
iv. 19.
When the tyrant enters the lieges land, iii.
120.
When the World heaps favours on thee,
pass on, ii. 13.
When they made their camels yellow-white
kneel down at dawning grey, v. 140.
When they to me had brought the leach
and surely showed, v. 286.
When thou art seized of Evil Fate assume,
i. 3 8.
When thou seest parting be patient still,
viii. 63.
When to some parting Fate our love shall
doom, to distant life by Destiny decreed,
i. 129.
When we drank the wine, and it crept its
way, x. 37.
When we met we complained, i. 249.
When will time grant we meet, when shall
we be, viii. 86.
When wilt thou be wise and love-heat
allay, v. 78.
Appendix.
419
Whenas mine eyes behold her loveliness,
vii. 244.
Whenas on any land the oppressor doth
alight, iii. 130.
Where are the Kings earth -peopling,, where
are they? vi. 103.
Where be the Earth kings who from where
they 'bode, vi. 105.
Where be the Kings who ruled the Franks
of old ? vi. 106.
Where be the men who built and fortified,
vi. 104.
Where gone is Bounty since thy hand is
turned to clay? ii. 282.
Where is the man who built the Pyramids?
v, 107.
Where is the man who did those labours
ply, vi. 105.
Where is the way to Consolation's door,
viii. 240.
Where is the wight who peopled in the
past, vi. 104.
While girl with softly rounded polished
cheeks, iv. 249.
While slanderers slumber, longsome is my
night, iii. 221
While that fair-faced boy abode in the
place, ix. 250.
While thou'rt my lord whose bounty's my
estate, iv. 2.
Who doth kindness to men shall be paid
again, v. 104.
Who loves not swan-neck and gazelle-like
eyes, iii. 34.
Who made all graces all collected He, iv.
in.
Who saith that love at first of free will
came, ii. 302.
Who seeketh for pearl in the Deep dives
deep, ii. 208.
Who shall save me from love of a lovely
gazelle, vii. 282.
Who shall support me in calamities, ii.
40.
Who trusteth secret to another's hand, i.
87-
Whom I irk let him fly fro' me fast and
faster, viii. 315.
Whoso ne'er tasted of Love's sweets and
bitter-draught, iv. 237.
Whoso shall see the death-day of his foe,
ii. 41 .
Whoso two dirhams hath, his lips have
learnt, iv. 171.
Why dost thou weep when I depart and
thou didst parting claim, v. 295.
Why not incline me to that show of silky
down, iv. 258.
Why then waste I my time in grief, until,
i. 256.
Will Fate with joy of union ever bless our
sight, v. 128.
Wilt thou be just to others in thy love,
and do, iv. 264.
Wilt turn thy face from heart that's all
thine own, v. 278.
Wilt- tyrant play with truest friend who
thinks of thee each hour, ii). .269.
Wine cup and ruby wine high worship
claim, x. 41.
With all my soul I'll ransom him who
came to me in gloom, vii. 253.
With Allah take I refuge from whatever
driveth me, iv. 254.
With fire they boiled rne to loose my
tongue, i. 132.
With heavy back parts, high breasts
delicate, ii. 98.
With thee that pear agree, whose hue
amorn, viii. 270.
With you is my heart-cure a heart that goes,
viii. 78.
Wither thy right, O smith,, which made her
bear, viii. 246.
Within my heart is fire, vii. 127.
Witnesses unto love of thee I've four,
viii. 1 06.
Woe's me ! why should the blamer gar
thee blaming trow? ii. 305.
Women are Satans made for woe o* man,
iii. 318.
Women for all the chastity they claim,
iii. 216.
Women Satans are, made for woe of man,
ix. 282;
Would he come to my bed during sleep
'twere delight, vii. in.
Would Heaven I knew (but many are
the shifts of joy and woe), v. 75.
Would Heaven I saw at this hour, iii.
I34.
Would Heaven I wot, will ever - Time
bring our beloveds back again ? viii.
320. .
42O
A If Laylah wa Laylah.
Would Heaven the phantom spared the
friend at night, v. 348.
Would I wot for what crime shot and
pierced are we, viii. 238.
Would they the lover seek without ado,
viii. 281.
Wrong not thy neighbour even if thou
have power, iii. 136,
YE are the wish, the aim of me, i.
98.
Ye promised us and will ye not keep plight ?
iii. 282.
Yea, Allah hath joined the parted twain,
ix, 205.
Yea, I will laud thee while the rbgdove
moans, viii. loo.
Yellowness, tincturing her tho' nowise sick
or sorry, iv. 259.
Yestre'en my love with slaughter menaced
me, iii. 27.
You are my wish, of creatures brightest
light, viii. 76.
You have honoured us visiting this our
land, ii. 34.
You've roused my desire and remain at
rest, viii. 101.
You're far, yet to my heart you're nearest
near, viii. III.
Your faring on the parting day drew many
a tear fro' me, viii. 6l.
Appendix.
421
INDEX ///. B.
ALPHABETICAL TABLE OF FIRST LINES
(METRICAL PORTION) IN ARABIC.
Prepared by Dr. STEINGASS.
NOTE. The first numbers refer to vol. and p. of the Mac. Edit.; those in parentheses
to the Translation.
A-AHBABANA inni 'aid '1-bu'di wa '1-jafa
(Tawil) iv. 115 (viii. 115)
A'anikvihu wa '1-nafsu ba'du mashukatun
(Tawfl) iv. 571 (ix. 242).
A-arhalu 'an Misrin wa tibi na'fmihi
(Tawil), i. 228 (i. 290).
Aaslu 'llatf fi '1-hubbi kad malakat asri
(Tawil) iv. 243 (viii. 261).
A-ba'da '1-hibbi lazzdti tatibu (Wafir)
i. 855 (iii. 259).
Aba '1-kalbu Ii '1-hubba ilia Su'ada
(Mutakdrib) iii. 402 (vii. 129).
Abh& mina '1-badri kahlau 'l-'uyuni badat
(Basil) iv. 260 (viii. 279).
Abki ghariban ata.hu '1-mautu munfaridan
(Basil) ii. 422 (v. 115).
Abla '1-hawa asafan yauma 'l-naw& badani
(Basil) i. 424 (ii. 152).
Abrazu wajhaka '1-jamil (Khafif) ii; 219
(iv. 195).
A'd& 'aduwwika adn man wasikta bi-hi
(Basil) i. 743 (iii. 143)
Adama 'llahu 'izzaki fi sururin (Wafir) iv.
99 (viii. 99).
'Adimtu 'stibari fi 'l-haw& (in?) asla-kumu
(Tawil) i. 219 (i. 280).
'Adimtu 'stibaii fi '1-hawa in salautumu
(Tawil) i. 49 (i. 74).
'Adimtu' stibari yauma sara ahibbati (Tawil)
iv. 241 (viii. 259).
Adirha bi '1-kabiri wa bi '1-saghiri (Wafir)
i. 304 ; iv. 259 (ii. 29 ; viii. 278).
Aduru fi '1-kasri la ar ahadan (Munsarih)
ii. 311 (iv. 291).
'Afa 'llahu 'an 'aynayka kam safakat daman
(Tawil) i. 372 (ii. 100).
A-fi 'l-'ishki wa '1-tabrihi dintum kam
dinnd (Tawil) iv. 65 (viii. 68).
Agharu 'alayka min nazari wa minni (Wafir)
iv. 575 ( ix - 248).
Ahbabuna in ghibtumu 'an ndziri (Kamil)
ii. 29 (iii. 340).
Ahlan bi-tinin jaana (Rajaz) iv. 250 (viii.
269).
Ahn^ layali '1-dahri 'indiyalaylatun (Kamil)
i. 587 (ii. 318).
Ahrakuni bi '1-nari yastantikuni (KhafiO i.
96 (i. 132).
Ahsanta zannaka bi'1-ayydmi iz hasunat
(Basil) i. 288 ; iv. 292 (ii. 12 : viii. 309).
Ahwa kamaran 'adila '1-kaddi rashik (?) iv.
240 (viii. 259).
A'idi 1-risalata saniyah (Kamil) i. 764 (iii,
1 66).
'Ajibatu husnin wajhu-hd badru kaukabin
(Tawil) i. 280 (ii. 3).
'Ajibtu bi-khdlin ya'budu '1-ndra daiman
(Tawil) i. 561 (ii. 292).
'Ajibtu la-hii in zara fi '1-naumi mazja'i
(Tawil) iii. 386 (vii. HI).
'Ajibtu li-'asiriha kayfa matu (Wafir) iv.
7 r 5 ( x - 39)
'Ajibtu li-'ayni an tamall^i bi-miliha (Tawil)
iv. 203 (viii. 224).
'Ajibtu li-sa'i '1-dahri baynf wa baynaM
(Tawil) iv. 570 (ix. 242).
'Ajibtu min Iblisa fi kibrihi (Sari') iii. 411
(vii. 139).
422
A If Lay I ah wa Lay I ah.
'Ajjala '1-baynu bayna-na bi 'I-firdki (Kha-
fif) i. 808 (iii 209).
Ajn-a rakfbi min simari kalaidi (Kamil) i.
375 (ii. 103).
'Ajuza '1-nahsi Id yurham sibahd (Wafir) i.
130(1. 174).
'Ajuzun tawallat fi '1-kabaihi mansiban
(Tawil) ii. 406 (v. 96).
Akallu ma fihi min fazailihi (Munsarih) ii.
458 (v. 156).
Akamtum firaqf ff '1-hawa wa qa'adtumu-
(Tawil)i. 136(1. 181).
Akamtum gharami fi '1-hawa waka'adtumu
(Tawil) iv. 100 (viii. 101).
Akdmu '1-wajda fi kalbi wa saru (Wdfir) i.
179; i. 891 (i. 218; iii. 296).
A-kaza yujaza wuddu kullikarfnin (Kamil)
iv. 63 (viii. 66 verses from the Bresl. ed.
instead).
Akbalat fi ghildlatin zarkdi (Khafif) iv. 261
(viii. 280).
Akbalat fi ghilalatin zurkatin (KhaffQ i.
167 (i. 218).
Akbalta fa 'khzarrat ladaynd '1-ruba (Sari*)
i. 620 (iii. 18).
Akbaltu amshl 'ala khaufin mujalisatan
(Basft) ii. 449 (v. H7-
A-Khalidu hazd mustahamun mutayyamu
(Tawil) ii. 184 (iv. 158).
Akhfaytu ma alkahu minka wa-kad zahar
(Kamil) i. 44 ; i. 876 ; iv. 242 (i. 67 :
iii. 280; viii. 260).
Akhta-ta iz aradta khauza bahri (Rajaz) i.
710 (iii. 108).
Akhuzu bi-jayshf bahra kulli 'ajajatin
(Tawil) iii. 288 (vii. 18).
Akilli mina '1-laumi Mlazl Id yufariku
(Tawfl) i. 662 (iii. 60).
Akulu' lahti lammd takallada zayfahu
(Tawil) i. 497 (ii. 230).
Akulu lahu wa kad hazara 'l-'ukaru (Wafir)
iv. 517 (ix. 189).
Akulu li-ahyafin huyyf bi-kasin (Wafir) iv.
289 (viii. 30 
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