Part 113

[68] Here the Arabian author plays upon the Jews: this ass is that which, as the Mahometans believe, Esdras rode upon when he came from the Babylonian captivity to Jerusalem.

[69] A bezestein is a public place, where silk stuffs and other precious things are exposed for sale.

[70] This is called in English, Saltwort.

[71] There is a fountain at Mecca, which, according to the Mahometans, is the spring that God showed to Hagar, after Abraham was obliged to put her away. The water of this spring is drank by way of devotion, and is sent in presents to the princes and princesses.

[72] A sherif is the same with a sequin. This word occurs in our ancient authors.

[73] This year 653 is one of the Hegira, the common epocha of the Mahometans, and answers to the year 1255 from the nativity of Christ; from whence we may conjecture that these computations were made in Arabia about that time.

[74] As for the year 7320, the author is mistaken in that computation. The year 653 of the Hegira, and the 1255 of Christ, coincide only with the 1557 of the era or epocha of the Seleucides, which is the same with that of Alexander the Great, who is called Iskender with two horns, according to the expression of the Arabians. This name he has from his father, Jupiter Ammon, in memory of whom he is represented sometimes with the horns of a ram on his head.

[75] A public place in the towns of the Levant, where strangers lodge.

[76] He was raised to this dignity in the year of the Hegira 623, and Anno Dom. 1226, and was the 36th caliph of the race of the Abassides.

[77] The Barmecides, as has been said already, were a noble family of Persia, who settled at Bagdad.

[78] The Easterns, and particularly the Mahometans, do not drink till after meals.

[79] Or vagabond Arabs, who wander in the deserts, and plunder the caravans when they are not strong enough to resist them.

[80] This word signifies in Arabic, “the sun of the day.”

[81] The Arabians, Persians, and Turks, when they write, hold the paper commonly upon their knee with their left hand, and write with their right, with a little reed or cane, cut and slit like our pens. The cane is hollow, and resembles our reeds, but is harder.

[82] A city on the Tigris, 20 leagues below Bagdad.

[83] That is to say, in Persian, King of the Time, or King of the Age.

[84] A scheme of her nativity, drawn from the constellations of heaven.

[85] There is an adventure like this in the romance of Peter of Provence and the fair Magdalena, which was taken from the Arabic.

[86] This is an Arabic word, which signifies the life of the soul.

[87] This incident is also much the same in the romance of Peter of Provence and the fair Magdalena.

[88] A famous player on the lute, who lived in Bagdad in the reign of the caliph.

[89] Gulnare, in Arabic, is a rose or pomegranate flower.

[90] Saleh, in Arabic, signifies good.

[91] “Giauhara,” in Arabic, signifies a “precious stone.”

[92] Sequins.

[93] “Mobarec” is the name of a Mahommedan saint, and of several Arabian writers mentioned by l’Herbelot.

[94] Given of God.

[95] Master of the world above and below.

[96] Ballas rubies are rubies of the brightest colour.

[97] Which is to say, the Full Moon of Full Moons.

[98] “Reml” or “Raml” signifies “sand prepared,” or a preparation of sand, on which are marked certain points serving for a kind of divination, which we call “Geomancy;” and the Arabs, Romans, and Turks, “e’ con alraml.” These points, disposed in a certain number on many unequal lines, are described also with a pen on paper; and the person who practises divination by this art is called “Rammal.” --D’Herbelot, art. Raml.

[99] In the French it is Sidi Noman, and Noman is the name of a king of one of the dynasties in Herbelot.

[100] “Sesame” is a sort of corn.

[101] “Nevrouz,” or the New Day, is the name which the ancient Persians gave to the first day of their year, which was solar. Giarischid, king of the first dynasty of the Pischdadians, instituted the solemnity of the Nevrouz, which is still celebrated by the Persians, though they are Mahometans, and consequently obliged to use the Arabian year, which is lunar. The first day was fixed in the vernal equinox, at the point when the sun enters into the first degree of Aries. There is another Nevrouz of the autumnal equinox. --D’Herbelot.

[102] Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, the poem by which Milton describes and characterises him, is founded on this adventure. The imagination of this story consists in Arabian fiction, engrafted on Gothic chivalry. Nor is this Arabian fiction purely the sport of arbitrary fancy; it is, in a great measure, founded on Arabian learning. The idea of a horse of brass took its rise from the mechanical knowledge of the Arabians, and their experiments in metals. The poets of romance, Lydgate, and Gower, who deal in Arabian ideas, describe the Trojan horse to be made of brass. --Wharton’s Hist. of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 398-400. Chaucer has borrowed only the description of the horse and the two pins, the ascending one in his ear, and the use to be made of him. That Chaucer never finished the story is more than probable, from Milton’s speaking of it as ‘left untold,’ which does not apply to loss after finishing.

[103] Two Persian words, which signify the same, the “female fairy,” or “genie.” See the preface.

[104] An Arabian word that signifies “daylight.”

[105] This circumstance has been also brought into Europe, and copied by the Normans. Duke Richard, surnamed “Richard sans peur,” walking one evening in the forest of Moulineaux near one of his castles, on the banks of the Seine, with his courtiers, hearing a prodigious noise coming towards him, sent one of his esquires to know what was the matter, who brought him word, that it was a company of people under a leader or king. Richard, with five hundred of his bravest Norman, went out to see a sight which the peasants were so accustomed to that they viewed it two or three times a week without fear. The sight of the troop, preceded by two men who spread a cloth on the ground, made all the Normans run away, and leave the duke alone. He saw the strangers form themselves into a circle on the cloth, and on asking who they were, was told, they were the spirits of Charles V. king of France and his servants, condemned to expiate their sins by fighting all night against the wicked and the damned. Richard desired to be of their party, and receiving a strict charge not to quit the cloth, was conveyed with them to mount Sinai, where leaving them without quitting the cloth, he said his prayers in the church of St. Catherine’s abbey there, while they were fighting, and returned with them. In proof of the truth of this story, he brought back half the wedding-ring of a knight in that convent, whose wife, after six years, concluded him dead, and was going to take a second husband.

[106] From such a story as this was probably borrowed the strange knight’s ‘Mirror of Glass,’ mentioned by Chaucer in the Squire’s Tale, brought with the Indian with the wonderful horse. The virtues of that mirror were, that men might see when any adversity befell the kingdom or the king, and who is a friend, or foe; and any lady might see if the object of her love were false. This mirror was carried up into the principal tower, and there fixed for use. Such an one Gower ascribes to Virgil, who set it upon a marble pillar at Rome for similar purposes; and with this corresponds Merlin’s Glassie Mirror, in Spenser, F. Q. ii. 24, and the globe shown to de Gama in the Lusiad. Warton’s History of English Poetry, i. 406, 407. Such a mirror is said by the oriental writers to have been possessed by Giamschid, one of their kings, by which he and his people knew natural and supernatural things. (Herbelot in voce.) Our great countryman, Roger Bacon, in his ‘Opus Majus,’ a work entirely founded on the Aristotelian and Arabian Philosophy, describes a variety of specula, and explains their construction and uses. This is the most curious and extraordinary part of Bacon’s book, written about 1270. His Optic Tube, in which he pretended to see future events, was famous in his time, and long afterwards, and chiefly contributed to give him the name of a magician. He asserts that ‘all things are known by perspective.’ A mirror in the head of a monstrous fowl showed the Mexicans their future invaders the Spaniards; and C. Agrippa, in such a mirror, showed the earl of Surrey, Geraldine sick on a couch. Warton, ib.

[107] ‘Sogd Samarcand,’ or the plain of Samarcand, is on the north side of that city, and from it the province called by the ancients ‘Sogdiana’ took its name. The oriental writers say, that this plain or valley is one of the four paradises or most delightful places in the world, as well as the plain and valley of Damascus, which is called ‘Gauthah.’ They make it eight days journey in extent; and it is covered on every side with gardens full of fruit of admirable beauty and variety, or corn-fields and pastures ever green, the soil being watered by springs and rivulets issuing from a large and principal river called ‘Cai,’ running through the middle of the plain. A number of populous towns and villages, full of industrious cultivators of the soil, over-spread this rich valley. --Herbelot.

[108] Nourgihan signifies ‘Light of the world,’ and was the name of the wife of Gehanghir, son of Akbar, king of India, whom she governed by her prudence. --Herbelot.

[109] ‘Khosrou,’ ‘Khosrau’ or ‘Khosrev,’ is a name common to many kings of Persia, and the ‘Chosroes’ of the Greek historians.

[110] “Bahaman” was the name of the sixth king of Persia of the second dynasty of the Caianides, and signifies “just” and “beneficent,” being, according to some writers, only an epithet of “Ardschir Dirazdest” or “Artaxerxes Longimanus.” He is said to have reigned 112 years, and to have been contemporary with Hippocrates and Galen. --Herbelot. “Parizadeh,” the “Parisatis” of the Greeks, signifies “born of a fairy.” --Idem. “Pervis” has the same origin.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, by Anonymous