 Section 30 of the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by phone. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 by Anonymous. Translated by Richard Francis Burton. On the prose rhyme and the poetry of the nights, be the verse, part one. The sheer 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. The sassy noticed the difficulty of the task. Lain helped the poetry untranslatable because abounding in the figure Tajnees or Paranomazia or Peregrine, of which there are seven distinct varieties, not to speak of 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 bold literalism of the passages which he rendered in truly prosaic prose and succeeded in changing the fassies and presentment of the work. For the sheer, like the saja, is not introduced arbitrarily, and its unequal distribution throughout the nights may be accounted for by rule of art. Some tales, like Omar bin Al-Numan and Tawadud, contain very little because the theme is historical or realistic. Whilst in stories of love and courtship, instead 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 bars of whom we have any remains belong to the famous epoch of the war Al-Basus, which would place them about A.B. 500. Moreover, when the muse of Arabia first chose she is not only fully developed and mature, she has lost all her first youth, her bote 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 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 Muhammad, and the oldest of that epoch is the Prince of Arab Songsters, Imer al-Qaiz, the Wondering King. The Christian Fathers characteristically termed poetry, The stricter Muslims called their boards 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-Qaiz, that is the worshipper of the Prophet's 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 qazidahs, purpose-oads or tendons-eligies, which are popularly known as the gilded or the suspended poems, and in all of these we find was an elaboration of material and formal art which can go no further, a subject matter of trite imagery and struck 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-era poets were, as Muhammad boasted himself, unalphabetic 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 ravi, and this reciter again transmitted 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 meters subsequently arose was called al-Rajaz, literally the trembling, because it reminded the highly imaginative hearer of the pregnant she-camels' weak and tottering steps. This was the carol of the camel-driver, the lover's lay and the warrior-chonde 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 hemi-sticks, make an essential difference between the shah-eer, who speaks poetry, and the rajis, who speaks rajaz. It consisted, to describe it technically, of iambic dipodia, the first three syllables being optionally long or short. It can generally be read like our ayams 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-Aqfaj, Sayid ibn Masada, to be mere prose. Although Labid and Amtar composed in ayambics, the first Qasida, or regular poem in rajaz, has by al-Aqlab al-Ajibitem Muhammad. The al-Fiyyag grammar of ibn Malik is in rajaz-muzdari, the hemi-sticks rhyming and the usinans being confined to the couplet. Al-Hariri also affects rajaz in the third and fifth assemblies. So far Arabic neater 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 al-Ghaman al-Kalil i-Amad i-Amru al-Faraidi of the Farahid sect. al-Azdi of the Azd clan, al-Yamadi of the Yama tribe, popularly known as al-Kalil ibn Ahmad al-Bazqi of Basra where he died at 68, scanning verses they say, in AH 170, is 786-87 AD. ibn Kalikan relates on the authority of Hamza 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. According to others who was passing through the father's bazaar at Basra when his ear was struck by the dak-dak Arabic letters and the dakak-dakak Arabic letters of the workmen. In these two Onuma poetics we trace the expression which characterizes the Arab tongue. All syllables are composed of consonant and vowel, the letter long or short as B and B or of a vowel consonant followed by a consonant as baal-baal Arabic. The grammarian drew to the traditions of this craft which looks for all poetry to the Badawi adopted for metrical details the language of the desert. The dystic which amongst Arabs is looked upon as one line he named bight, knighting place, tent or house and the hemi-stic Misra, the one leaf of a folding door. To this scenic simile all the parts of the verse were more or less adapted. The meters or feet were called arcane, 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 vowel and a quiescent consonant as lam. The watad or tent peg of three letters is of two varieties, the majmoo or united, a foot in which the two first consonants are moved by vowels and the last is jasmated or made quiescent by aqapub as laqad and the mafruq or disunited when the two moved consonants are separated by one jasmated as kabla and lastly the fazila or intervening space applied to the main pole of the tent consists of four letters. The meters were called buhur or seas, plural of bar, also meaning the space within the tent walls, the equivoke alluding to pearls and other treasures of the deep. Al-Khalil, the systematiser, found in general use only five daira, circles, classes of groups of meter and he characterised the harmonious and stately measures all built upon the original rajas al-tawil, the long, al-kameel, the complete, al-bafir, the copious, al-basit, the extended and al-kafeef, the light. These embrace all the mu'alakat and the hamasa, the great anthology of abutamam but the crave for variety and the extension of foreign intercourse had multiplied ones and Al-Khalil deduced from the original five daira 15 to which Al-Aqfaj, died 80, 830, added a sixteenth al-kabab. The Persians extended the number to 19. The first four were peculiarly Arab, the 14th, the 15th and 17th peculiarly Persian and all the rest were Arab and Persian. Arabic meters so far resemble 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 galerte he adopted a process devised by himself. Instead of scansion by pyrrhex and spondes, yams and trochies, and similar simplifications he invented a system of weights, wuzun. Of these there are nine memorial words used as quantitative signs all built upon the root phal which has rendered such notable service to Arabic and Hebrew grammar and varying from the simple phal in Persian to the complicated with a phal loon and a pest plus yam. Thus the prosodyist would scan the shanameh of Firdawzi as pha'u loon, pha'u loon, pha'u loon, phal. These weights also show another peculiarity of Arabic verse. In English we have few of any spondes. The Arabic contains about three longs to one short hence its gravity, statelyness 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 meters 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 to tour the force of dancing on one leg instead of two and notably failed. He also strove to imitate Arabic meter and produced only prose bewitched. Mr. Paine appears 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 debates. 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 cachet of the original. This old word 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 claim contrary of our 19th century effusions. Technically speaking it can be vehicleed only by the verse of the old English ballad or by the prose of the book of Job. And Badawi poetry is a perfect exposer of Badawi life, especially in the good and gladsome old pagan days ere al Islam, like the creed which had abolished overcast the minds of men with its dull grey pole of realistic superstition. They combined to form the marvelous picture, those contrasts of splendor and squalor amongst the sons of the sand. Under airs pure as ether golden and ultramarine above and melting over the horizon into a diaphanous green which suggested a resection of calf, that unseen mountain wolf emerald, the so-called desert, changed face twice a year. Now brown and dry as summer dust then green as hope beautified with infinite verger and broadsheetings of rainwater. The vernal and autumnal shiftings of camp disruptions of homesteads and partings of kith and ken friends and lovers made the life many-sided as it was vigorous and noble the outcome of hardy frames strong minds and spirits breeding 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 before the cooling breeze. The rest was spent in the practice of weapons in the favorite aerogame known as al-maisal 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 Franklin and Coney the gazelle standing at gaze the desert ass scutting over the ground waves the wild cows or bovine antelopes browsing with their calves and the ostrich chickens flocking round the parent bird the musamara or night talk round the campfire was enlivened by the loot girl and the glee man whom the austere prophet described as roving the strut in every veil and whose motto into a racian vein was today we shall drink tomorrow be sober whine this day that they work regularly once a year during the three peaceful months when war and even blood revenge were held sacrilegious the tribes met at Ukad and other fairsteads where they held high festival and debards strave in song and prided themselves upon doing honor 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 endeavors 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 the Arab's end was honorable as his life was stirring few Badawin had the crowning misfortune of dying the straw death the poetical forms in the knights are as follows the misral or hemostic is half the bite which for want of a better word I have rendered couplet this however though formally separated in manuscripts 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 district as the Arabs ignore blank verse when we come upon a rhyme less couplet we know that it is an extract from a longer composition in mono rhyme the quita is a fragment either an occasional piece or more frequently a portion of a gazale, ode or casida, elegy other than the madla the initial bite with rhyming disticts the gazale and casida differ mainly in length the former is popularly limited to 18 couplets the latter begins at 15 and is of indefinite number both are built upon mono rhyme which appears twice in the first couplet and ends all the others for example a a plus b a plus c a etc. nor may the same assonance be repeated unless at least 7 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 rubai or quatrain made familiar to English ears Mr Fitzgerald's masterly adaptation of omai ikayam the movement is generally a a plus b a but it also appears as a b plus c b in which case it is a quita or fragment the muraba testretics or four fold song occurs only once in the nights volume 1 98 it is a succession of double bites or of four line stanzas in a a plus b c plus d c plus e c in strict form the first three hemi sticks rhyme with one another only independently of the rest of the poem and the fourth with that of every other stanza for example a a plus a b plus c b plus d b the mukamas sinquanes or pentistics like 964 represents a stanza of two districts and a hemi stick in mono line the fifth line being the bob or burden each succeeding stanza affects a new rhyme except in the fifth line for example a a a a b plus c c c c b plus d d d d b and so forth the moval is a simple popular song in four to six lines specimens of it are given in the egyptian grammar of my friend the late doctor Wilhelm Spitta the muasha 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 musadas or sextines which occurs once only in the nights 937 it consists of three couplets or six lines throws all the hemi sticks of the first are in mono rhyme in the second and following stanzas the three first hemi sticks take a new rhyme but the fourth resumes the assonance of the first set and is followed by the third couplet of number one serving as bob or refrain for example a a a a a a plus b b b a a a plus c c c a a a and so forth it is the most complicated of all the measures and is held to be of morisco or his spano morish origin mr. Lane lex lays down on the lines of even calica one 476 etc and other representative literati as our sole authorities for pure arabic the precedence in following order first of all ranks the jahili ignoramus of the ignorance these pagans left hemi sticks couplets pieces and elegies which once composed a large corpus and which is now mostly forgotten hamad al ravija the reciter a man of persian descent died a h 160 is 777 ad who first collected the mu alakat once recited by wrote in a seance before caliph al valley 1,000 poems of pray muhammad on bars after the jahili stands the mukadram or muhadrain the spur is because half pagan half muslim who flourished either immediately before or soon after the preaching of muhammad the islami or full-blooded muslim at the end of the first century a h equals 720 ad began the process of corruption in language and lastly he was followed by the muvalad of the second century refused arabic with non-arabic and in whom purity of diction disappeared I have noticed that the versical portion of the knights may be distributed into three categories first are the olden poems which are held classical by old modern Arabs then comes the medieval poetry the effusions of that brilliant throng which adorned the splendid court Arun al-Rashid and which ended with al-Harili died age 516 and lastly are the various p.s. the circumstance 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 the finished picture would lead too far I must be contented to notice a few of the most famous poets of the pre-islamites we have Aby Binzait al-Ibadih the celebrated poet of Ibn Khaliqan one 188 Nabigat the full grown al-Subyani who flourished at the court of al-Numan in AD 580-602 and whose poem is compared with the suspenders and al-Mutalamis the pertinacious satirist friend and intimate with tarafa of the prize poem about Muhammad's day we find Imer al-Kais with whom poetry began to end with Zuh al-Huma Amrub bin Madi Karab al-Zubaydi Labid Kab Ibn Zuhair the father one of the Mual laka poets and the son author of the Borda or Mantle poem see volume 4 115 and Abbas bin Mirdas who lampooned to prophet and had his tongue cut out that is received a double share of booty from Ali in the days of Khalif Omar we have Al-Kama bin Olata followed by Jamil bin Mamar of the Banu Ozra died AH 82 who loved Azza then came Al-Qutayir the dwarf Ionis the lover of Bhutayna who was so lean that birds might be cut to bits with her bones the letter was also a poetess Ibn Qal 187 like Hind bin Al-Numan who made herself so disagreeable to Al-Hajjaj died AH 95 Jamil Al-Qutafa the noblest of the Islamic poets in the first century is noticed at full length by Ibn Khalikan in 1894 together with his rival in poetry and debauchery Abu Firas Hamam or Homeim bin Ghalib al-Farazdaq the Tamini the Omiyay poet without whose verse half Arabic would be lost he exchanged satires with Jarir and died 40 days before him AH 110 another contemporary was the debauched Christian poet al-Aqtal al-Taghlibi they were followed by al-Abbas al-Ansari whose witty lampoons banished him to Dalak Island in the Red Sea died AH 179 equals 795 AD by Bashar Ibn Burth and by Ibn Habib died AH 182 the well-known names of the Harun cycle are al-Azmay and poet whose epic with Antar for hero is not forgotten died AH 216 Isaac of Mosul Ishaq bin Ibrahim of Persian origin al-Udbi the poet died AH 228 Abu al-Abbas al-Rakashi Abu al-Atahiyah the lover of Otbah Muslim bin al-Valid al-Ansari Abu Taman of Tay compiler of Tahamasa died AH 230 Mu'alad of the first class says Ibn Khalikan 1 392 the famous or infamous Abu Novas Abu Musab Ahmad Ibn Ali who died in AH 242 the satirist Dibil al-Kuzai died AH 246 and the host of others Qosnunk poshibere longum est they were followed by al-Batori the poet died AH 286 the royal author Abdullah Ibn al-Mutaz died AH 315 Ibn Abad the Sahib died AH 334 Mansur al-Halaj the martyred Sufi the Sahib Ibn Abad the Sahib Ibn Abad Abu Faraz al-Amdani died AH 357 al-Nami died AH 399 who had many encounters with that model chauvinist al-Mutanabi nicknamed al-Mutanabi the wide awake killed AH 354 al-Manazi of Manajirz died 427 al-Tugray al-Niyat al-Ajam died AH 375 al-Hariri the model rhetorician died AH 516 al-Hajiri al-Irbil of Arbelah died AH 632 Baha al-Din al-Sinjari died AH 622 al-Katib or describe died AH 656 died AH 656 Abdul al-Andalusi the Spaniard our 12th century and about the same time al-Navaji author of the halbat al-Kumayt or race course of the bay horse poetical slang for wine of the third category the pièce d'occasion the toni be said I may refer readers to my notes on the dog rolls in volume 2 34, 35, 56 179, 182 186 and 261 in volume 5 55 and in volume 8 50 having a mortal aversion to the details of Arabic prosody I've persuaded my friend Dr. Steingas to undertake in the following pages the subject as far as concerns the poetry of the knights 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 arabists notes will be highly interesting to students mine are intended to give a superficial and popular idea of the Arabs first mechanism the principle of Arabic prosody called arous pattern standard arous, science of the arous insofar resembles that of classical poetry as it chiefly rests on metrical weight not on accent or in other words the 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 that is 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 form the nature of the Arabic alphabet this strictly speaking knows only consonants have plural 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 because they move or lead on as it were one letter to another number three in number originally sounded as the corresponding English vowels in bat, bit and but respectively but in certain cases modifying their pronunciation under the influence of a neighbouring consonant when the necessity made itself felt to represent him in writing especially for the sake of fixing the correct reading of the Quran they were rendered 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 moharaka a consonant without such vowel is called resting or quiescent sakina and can stand only at the end of a syllable or word and now we are able to formulate the final rule which determines the prosodical quantity in Arabic any moved letter as ta li mu is counted short any moved letter followed by a quiescent one as ta thun moos that is any closed syllable beginning and determining 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 end of section 30 recording iPhone section 31 of the book of the Thousand Nights and a Night volume 10 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording iPhone the book of the Thousand Nights and a Night volume 10 by Anonymous translated by Richard Francis Burton on the prose rhyme and the poetry of the Nights be the verse part two before I proceed to show how from the prosodical unities the moved and the quiescent letter firstly metrical elements then defeat and lastly the meters are built up it will be necessary to obviate a few misunderstandings to which our mode of transliterating Arabic into the Roman character might give rise the line love in my heart they lit and went their ways volume 1 232 runs in Arabic akamu al-waja fi-kalbi wa-sa'u mak-ed 179 here according to our ideas the word akamu would begin with the 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 is second syllable ka closes in alif after father ah in the same way as the third syllable mu closes in the letter w after sama u the question therefore arises what is alif it is the first of the 28 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 the initial a is preceded by the so called spiritus lens 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 how deeply rooted this alif is and to what exaggerations it will sometimes lead witness the gentleman who after mentioning that he had been visiting his favorite haunts on the scenes of his early life was sympathetically asked how the dear old ladies were this spiritus lens is the silent age of the French um and the English honor corresponding exactly to the Arabic Hamza whose mere property 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 with with Bab al Hamza 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 Hamza alif moved by father that is bearing the sign for a at the top just as it might have the sign Zama superscribed to express you or the sign Kazra subjoined to represent I in each case the Hamza alif although scarcely audible to our ear is the real letter and might fitly be rendered in transliteration by the above mentioned silent age wherever we make an Arabic word begin with a vowel not preceded by any other sign this letter is used to represent the Arabic letter in whose very name it occurs the iron is described as produced by a smart compression of the upper part of the windpipe and forcible emission of breath imparting a guttural tinge to a following or proceeding vowel sound but it is by no reason that the Arabic letter is used to represent the Arabic letter in whose very name sound but it is by no means a mere guttural vowel as professor Palmer styles it for Europeans who do not belong to the Israeli 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 keep in mind that no Arabic word or syllable can begin with a vowel where our mode of rendering Arabic in the Roman character would make disappear to be the case either Hamza silent age or Ein represented by the sign apostrophe is the real initial and the only element to be taken in account as a letter it follows as self evident corollary that wherever a single consonant between two vowels it never closes the previous syllable but always opens the next one our word for instance can only be divided into the syllables properly never into it has been stated above that the syllable is close by the letter a leaf after father in the same way as the syllable Mu is close by the letter above and I may add now as the word fi is close by the letter ya why 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 represented even in printed books for example in the various editions of the night where only quotations from the Quran or poetical passages are provided with the vowel points but among those consonants there are three called weak letters which have a particular organic affinity to these vowel sounds the guttural hamsa which is akin to a the palatal ya which is related to I and the labial lau which is homogeneous with you 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 thus bearing in mind that the hamsa is in reality a silent age the syllable ka might be written k-a-h similarly to the German word sa where the h is not pronounced either but imparts a lengthened sound to the a in light manner mu and fi are written in Arabic and u-w and f-i-y respectively and form long quantities not because they contain a vowel long by nature but because their initial mu-ha-ra-ka is followed by a sak-i-na exactly as in the previously mentioned syllables taf, fun, moos in the Roman transliteration akamu forms the word of five letters two of which are consonants and three vowels in Arabic it represents the combination h-a k-a h-m q-w q-w the intervening vowels being expressed in writing either merely by super-added external signs or more frequently not at all metrically it represents one short and two long quantities long, short, short forming in Latin a tricillable foot called baqias and in Arabic a quinkva literal ruk-n or juice part portion the technical designation for which we shall introduce presently there is one important remark more to be made with regard to the hamsa at the beginning of a word it is either conjunctive hamsat al-wazl or disjunctive hamsat al-kat the difference is best illustrated by reference to the French so-called aspirated h mentioned silent h if the letter as initial of a noun is preceded by the article the article loses its foul and ignoring the silent h all together is read with the following noun almost as one word le um becomes lom, pronounced lom as le ami becomes lami this resembles very closely the Arabic hamsa al-wazl if on the other hand a French word begins with an aspirated h as for instance ero 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 ero with a slight hiatus between and this is exactly what happens in the case of the Arabic hamsa with regard to the wazl however Arabic goes a step further 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 hamsa and its own haraqa that is the short vowel following it are supplanted by their antecedent another example will make this clear the most common instance of the hamsa wazl is the article al for h-a-l the Hebrew hal where it is moved by father but it has this sound only at the beginning of a sentence or speech as in alhamdu at the head of the fatiha or in alahu at the beginning of the third surah if the two words stand in grammatical connection as in the sentence praise be to God say alhamdu li alahi but the conjunction wazl between the dative particle li and the noun which it governs must take place according to the French principle this junction would be affected at the cost of the preceding element and li alahi would become lalahi in Arabic on the contrary the casurated L of the particle takes the place of the following fatiha at hamsa we re-read li-lahi instead preceding in the fatiha we made with the first iyaka naburu wa iyaka nastaynu the do we worship and of the do we ask aid here the hamsa of iyaka properly hiyaka 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 the two words are kept separate by the hamsa just as it was the case with the French if the conjunctive hamsa is preceded by a quiescent letter this takes generally casura the night was longsum would become if however the quiescent letter is one of prolongation it mostly drops out altogether and the haraqa of the next preceding letter becomes the connecting vowel between the two words which in our parlance would mean that the end vowel of the first word is shortened before the elided initial of the second thus fi albaity in the house which in arabic is written f-i-y will be a y-t-i and which we transliterate fi albaity is in poetry read fi albaity where we must remember that the syllable fi in spite of its short vowel represents a long quantity because it consists of a moved letter followed by a quiescent one fi would be overlong and could according to arabic prosody stand only in certain cases at the end of a verse that is in pause where a natural tendency prevails to prolong a sound the attentive reader will now be able to fix the prosodycal value of the line quoted above with unerring security for a metrical purposes it syllabifies into aqamul vajda fi qalbi va-sa-ru containing three short and eight long quantities the initial unaccented a is short for the same reason why the syllabals da and wa are so that is because it corresponds to an arabic letter the hamsa or silent h moved by fada the syllabals ka fi bi sa-ru are long for the same reason by the syllabals mul vaj qal are so that is because the accent in the transliteration corresponds to a qiescent 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 meter of all the poetical pieces contained in the mac edition and which will be found at the end of this volume this appendix is not included in this text the prosodycal unities then the arabic are the moved and the qiescent letter and we are now going to show how they combine in geometrical elements, feet and meters one the metrical elements usul are one the sabab which consists of two letters and is either kafif, light or sakil, heavy a moved letter followed by a qiescent that is a closed syllable like the aforementioned taf, thun, moose to which we may now add fa, i, u form a sabab kafif corresponding to the classical long quantity two moved letters in succession like moote, 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 kafif can be evolved into a sakil by moving its second hearth or the letter contracted into the former by making its second letter qiescent two, the vatan consisting of three letters one of which is qiescent if the qiescent follows the two moved ones the vatan is called majmu collected or joined as fau, mafa ilum and it corresponds to the classical yambas if on the contrary the qiescent intervenes or separates between the two moved letters as in fai, latu, tafi the vatan is called mafrouk, separated and has its classical equivalent in the trochi the facila containing four letters three moved ones followed by a qiescent and which in fact is only a shorter name for a sabab sakil followed by a sabab kafif as mute plus fa or ala plus tun both of the measure of the classical anapest two these three elements the sabab, vatan and facila combine further into feat arcane plural of rukan or ajza plural of juz two words explain suprapage 236 the technical terms by which the feat are named are derivatives of the root fal to do which as the student will remember serves an arabic grammar to form the auzan or weights in accordance with which words are derived from roots it consists of the three letters fa, f ein lam, l and like any other arabic root cannot strictly speaking be pronounced for the introduction of any vowel sound would make it cease to be of root and change it into an individual word the above fal for instance where the initial fa is moved by father a is the infinitive or verbal noun to do doing if the ein is also moved by father we obtain faal meaning in colloquial arabic he did the classical or literary form would be faala pronouncing the first letter with zama u the second with khazra i that is fuil we say it was done ziyada letters of increase to the original radicals we say it was done many more forms are derived by prefixing inserting or subjoining certain additional letters called hiruf al ziyada letters of increase to the original radicals fail for instance with a leaf of prolongation in the first syllable maful where the quiescent fa is preceded by a factated mean m and the zamaated ein followed by a lengthening above means done mufala where in addition to a prefixed and inserted letter the feminine termination a is subjoined after the lamb 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 fail as model forms for the corresponding derivations of any other root whose letters are in this case called its fa, ein and lamb from a root for example which has kaaf, k for its first letter or fa, ta, ti for its second letter or i and ba b for its third letter or lamb faal would be ka to write writing faal would be katab he wrote fail would be kutib it was written fail would be katib writer scribe maful would be maktub written letter mufala would be mukataba to write reciprocally correspondence 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 thousands of words without recourse to the dictionary as soon as he has learned to distinguish their radical letters from their degrees 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 tafil as it is here called that is the representation of the metrical feet by current derivatives of faal has in this case of course nothing to do with the etymological meaning of those typical forms which is nonetheless 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 super page 236 that the word akamu consists of a short syllable followed by two long ones and consequently forms a foot which the classics would call bakias 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 tafil in Arabic is faulun we understand at once that it is composed of devatad majmu faul and the sabab kafif lun and as devatad contains three the sabab two letters it forms a quinquiliteral foot or juz kamazi in combining into feet devatad has the precedence over the sabab and the fasila and again devatad majmu over devatad mafruk hence the prosodists distinguish between aja asliya or primary feet from azil root in which this precedence is observed and aja faria or secondary feet from far is branch in which it is reversed the former are four in number one faulun consisting as we have just seen of a vatad majmu followed by a sabab kafif is the latin bakias two mafailun that is vatad majmu followed by two sabab kafif is the latin epitritus primus three mufa alatun that is vatad majmu followed by fasila is the latin yambus followed by anapest four failatun that is vatad mafruk followed by two sabab kafif is the latin epitritus secundis the number of the secondary feet increases to six for as numbers two and four contain two sabab they change out into two derived feet each according to both sabab or only one changing place with regard to the vatad they are failun that is sabab kafif followed by vatad majmu is the latin criticus the primary faulun becomes by transposition lunfa'u to bring this into conformity with the current derivative of faal the initial sabab must be made to contain the first letter of the root and the vatad the two remaining ones in their proper order fa is therefore substituted for lun and ilun for fa'u forming together the above failun by similar substitutions which it would be tedious to specify in each separate case mafailun becomes six for ilun mafailun that is two sabab kafif followed by vatad majmu is the latin epitritus tertius or seven failatun for lun mafailun that is vatad majmu between the two sabab kafif is the latin epitritus secundus eight for alatun mufailun alatun mufail the reversed mufail alatun that is facila followed by vatad majmu is the latin anapest succeeded by iambus the last two secondary feet are transpositions of number four failatun namely nine mafoulatu for latun fa'i that is two sabab kafif followed by vatad mafouk the latin epitritus quartus ten mustafilun for tun fa'ila that is vatad mafouk between two sabab kafif is the latin epitritus tertius the branch foot fa'ilun number five like its root fa'ulun number one is quinquiliteral all other feet primary or secondary they consist necessarily of seven letters as they contain a triliteral vatad see supran 1.2 with either two bilateral sabab kafif 1.1 or a quadriliteral facila 1.3 they are therefore called sab'ai is seven lettered three the same principle of the vatad over sabab and facila rules the arrangement of the arabic meters which are divided into five circles davair, plural of dirah so called for reasons presently to be explained the first is named ay dirat al-muktalif circle of the varied meter because it is composed of feet of various lengths the five lettered fa'ulun supran 2.1 and the seven lettered ma'failun 2.2 with their secondaries fa'ilun, mustafilun and fa'ilatun 2.5 to 7 and it comprises three buhur or meters plural of bar see the tavil, madid and basit ay one consisting of twice fa'ulun, ma'failun fa'ulun, ma'failun the classical scheme for which would be short long long if we transfer the vatad fa'u from the beginning of the line to the end it would read ay which after the substitutions indicated above 2.7 and 5 becomes al-madid consisting of twice fa'ilatun, fa'ilun fa'ilatun, fa'ilun which may be represented by the classical scheme long short long long long short long long long long short long if again returning to the tavil we make a break after the vatad of the second foot we obtain the line ilun fa'u ilun ma'fail and as metrically ilun fa'u 2 subab followed by vatad and ilun ma'fail one subab followed by vatad are ilun ma'fail and ilun fa'u respectively their tavil is affected by the same substitutions as in 2.5 and 6 and they become a3 basit consisting of twice mustaf ilun fa'ilun mustaf ilun fa'ilun in conformity with the classical scheme long long short long long short long long short long long long short long long short long thus one metr evolves from another by a kind of rotation which suggested to the prosodists an ingenious device of representing them by circles hence the name dyra round the circumference of which on the outside the complete tavil of the original metr is written while each moved letter is faced by a small loop each quiescent by a small vertical stroke inside the circle in the case of this present dirac al-muk-talif for instance the loop corresponding to the initial f of the first fa'u-lun is the beginning of the tavil that corresponding to its l of the sabab fun as the beginning of the madid and that corresponding to the ein of the next ma'failun as the beginning of the basit the same process applies to all the following circles but our limited space compels us to commemorate them together with their buhur without further reference to the mode of their evolution bi dirac al-muk-talif circle of the agreeing metr so called because all its feet agree in length consisting of seven letters each it contains bi one al-vafir composed of twice mufa'alatun mufa'alatun 2.3 is short long short short long short long short short short long short long short short long short long short short long where the ayambas in each foot precedes the anapist and its reversal b.2 al-khamil consisting of twice mudafailun mudafailun mudafailun 2.8 short short long short long short short long short long short short long short long short long where the anapist takes the first place in every foot c. dirac al-muk-talif circle of the brought on metr so called because its seven lettered feet are brought on from the first circle c.1 al-hazaj consisting of twice mufa'ailun mufa'ailun mufa'ailun 2.2 short long long long short long long long short long long long c.2 al-hazaj consisting of twice mustafilun mustafilun mustafilun and in this full form almost identical with the ayambic trimeter of the greek drama long long short long long long short long long long short long c.3 al-ramal consisting of twice fa'ilatun fa'ilatun fa'ilatun the trochaic counterpart of the preceding metr long short long long long short long long long short long long c.3 dirac al-muk-talif al-muk-tabi circle of the intricate meter so called from its intricate nature primary mingling with secondary feet and one foot of the same verse containing a vatat majmu another a vatat mafrug that is the ayambic rhythm alternating with the trochaic and vice versa its puhur are d1 al-sari twice moustafilun mu'ful-atuh long long short long long long short long long long long short d2 al-mousari twice moustafilun mu'fuli-tu moustafilun long long short long long long short long long short long d3 alka'feefin Twice, fa ilatum, mustafilun, fa ilatum. Long short long long, long long short long, long short long long. The four, al muzari, twice, ma fa ilun, fa ilatum, ma fa ilun. Short long long long, long short long long, short long long long. The five, al muktazib, twice, ma fulatu, mustafilun, ma fulatu. Long long long short, long long short long, long long long short. The six, al muzhtaz, twice, mustafilun, fa ilatum, mustafilun. Long long short long, long short long long, long long short long. E, dairat al mutafik, circle of the concordant meter, so called for the same reason why circle B is called the agreeing, that is, because the feet all harmonize in length, being here, however, quinquilitero, not seven-lettered as in the matalif. Al khalil, the inventor of the iln al aruz, assigns it to only one meter. E, one, al mutakharib, twice, fa ulun, fa ulun, fa ulun, fa ulun. Short long long, short long long, short long long. Later, prosodists added, e tu, al mutaderak, twice, fa ilun, fa ilun, fa ilun. Long short long, long short long, long short long. The feet and meters, as given above, are, however, to a certain extent merely theoretical. In practice, the former admit of numerous licenses and the letter of variations brought about by modification or partial suppression of defeat final in a verse. An Arabic poem, kassida, or if numbering less than ten couplets, kata, consists of bites 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, feminine in contradistinction of aruz in the sense of prosody, which is masculine, plural a'airiz, that of every even line is called zarb, plural azrub, and the remaining feet may be termed hajf, 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 hajf on one hand, and the aruz and zarb on the other, the changes which the normal feet undergo are of two kinds, zuhaf, deviation, and ilah, defect. Zuhaf applies, as a rule, occasionally and optionally, to the second letter of a sabab in those feet which compose the hajf, 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 Mustafilun, 2.6, or long, long, short, long, for instance, the s of the first syllable or the f of the second, or both, may be dropped and it will become accordingly Mustafilun by substitution Mu Failun, short long, short long, or Mustailun by substitution Mu Ftailun, long short, short long, or Mutailun by substitution Failatun, short, short, short long. This means that wherever the foot Mustafilun occurs in the hajf of a poem, we can represent it by the scheme short, short, short long. That is, the epitritus tertius can, by poetical license, change into Diyambus, Coriambus, or Pion Cortes. In Mu Faalatun, 2.3, short long, short short long, and Mu Failun, 2.8, short short long, short long, again, a sabab ala and mute may become kafif by suppression of their final haraqa and thus turn into Mu Faalatun by substitution Ma Failun, 2.2, short long, long, long, and Mu Failun by substitution Mustafilun, 2.6, long, long, short, short, as above. In other words, the two feet correspond to the scheme short, short, long, short, and short long, short long, short long, where a Spondy can take the place of the Anapest after or before the Ayambus respectively. Ila, the second way of modifying the primitive or normal feet, applies to both sabab and vatad, 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 vatad, or curtailing them more or less, even to cutting them off altogether. We cannot hear 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. End of section 31, recording by phone. Section 32 of the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, volume 10. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by phone. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, volume 10 by Anonymous, translated by Richard Francis Burton. On the prose rhyme and the poetry of the nights, be the verse, part 3. We have seen that the meter-bas-seat consists of the two lines This complete form, however, is not in use amongst Arab poets. If by the zuhaf cabin here acting as ila, the alif in the final phailun is suppressed, changing it into a phailun, short short long. It becomes the first aruz, called makbuna, of the bas-seat, the first zaab of which is obtained by submitting the final phailun of the second line to the same process. A second zaab results if in phailun the final end of the vatat ilun is cut off and the preceding l made quiescent by the ila-kat, thus giving phailun and by substitution phailun, long long. Thus the formula becomes mustafilun phailun, mustafilun phailun, mustafilun phailun, or phailun. As in a haj, that is, the first three feet of each line, the cabin can likewise be applied to the medial phailun, and for mustafilun the poetical licenses explained above may be introduced. This first aruz, or class of the bas-seat with its two zaab or subdivisions, will be represented by the scheme short short short short short short short long long short long long short long long long short short short short long short short short and then either short short long long short long long short long or long long. That is to say, in the first subdivision of this form of the basite, both lines of each couplet end with an anapest, and every second line of the other subdivision terminates in a spondy. The basite has four more ares, three called majuah, because each line is shortened by a juz or fut, one called majtura, halved, because the number of feet is reduced from four to two, and we may hear notice that the former kind of listening the number of feet is frequent with the hexometrical circles, b, c, d, while the latter kind can naturally only occur in those circles whose couplet forms an octameter, a, e. Besides being majuah, the second ares is sahihah, perfect, consisting of the normal foot mustafilun. It has three asrub, one mustafilan, long, long, short, long, with an overlong final syllable, c, sukra, page 238, produced by the ilatajil, that is addition of a quiescent letter at the end, mustafilun, with double n, by substitution mustafilan, two mustafilun, like the ares, three mafulun, long, long, long, produced by the ilakat, see the preceding page, mustafilun, by dropping the final n and making the l quiescent becomes mustafil, and by substitution mafulun, hence the formula is mustafilun, failun, mustafilun, mustafilun, failun, and then either mustafiln, mustafilun, or mafulun, which with its allowable licenses may be represented by the scheme short short short, long long short long, long short long, long long short long. The above will suffice to illustrate the general methods of the prosodists, and we must refer the reader for the remaining classes and subdivisions of the basit, as well as the other meters, to more special treatises on the subject, to which this essay is intended merely as an introduction, with the 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 knights, we find that out of the thirteen meters, known to Al Khalil, or the sixteen of later prosodists, instances of thirteen occur in the Makhan 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 obtains with regard to the meters of each circle. The Muqtalif is represented by 331 instances of Tawil, and 330 of Basit against three of Madin. The Muqtalif by 321 instances of Kamil against 143 of Wafil. The Moushtalab by 32 instances of Ramal and 30 of Rajals against one of Azaj. The Moushtabib by 72 instances of Kafif and 52 of Saari against 18 of Munsaari and 15 of Moushtaz. And last day, the Mutafiq by 37 instances of Mutakarib, neither the Mutaderak, E2, nor the Moussari and Moushtazib, D4 and 5, are met with. Finally, it remains for me to quote a couplet of each meter, showing how to scan them and what relation they bear to the theoretical formulas exhibited on page 242 to page 247. It is characteristic for the preponderance of the Tawil over all the other meters, that the first four lines, with which my alphabetical list begins, are written in it. One of these belongs to a poem which has for its author Baha al-Din Zuhayr, born AD 1186 at Mecca or in its vicinity, died 1248 at Cairo, and is to be found in full in Professor Palmer's edition of his works, page 164. Sir Richard Burton translates the first byte, volume 1, 290, and I quit Cairo and her pleasantess. Where can I hope to find so blad some 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, a'a'a halouan misgrin wa tibi na'i mehil, fa'ayu mak'anin bada'a liya shayku. I'm referring to 3.8.1, page 242. It will be seen that in the hash fa'ulun, short long long, has become fa'ulu, short long short, by a zuhaf called kabs, suppression of the fifth letter of the foot if it is quiescent, and that in the aruz and za'op, ma'failu'un, short long long long, has changed into ma'failu'un, short long short long, by the same zuhaf acting as ila. The latter alteration shows the couplet to be of the second za'op of the first aruz of the davin. If the second line did terminate in ma'failu'un, as in the original scheme, it would be the first za'op of the same aruz. If it did end in fa'ulu'un, short long long, or ma'failu'un, short long long, it would represent the third or fourth sub-division of this first clause, respectively. The ta'vil has one other aruz, fa'ulu'un, with a two-fold za'op, either fa'ulu'un also, or ma'failu'un. The first instance of the basit occurring in the knights are the lines translated volume 1, page 25, contain a time, a twain of days, this of blessing, that of being, and holdeth life, a twain of halves, this of pleasure, that of pain. In Arabic, Mak'an edition 1.2, al-daru yawmani za'amnun waza'hazaru, wa'al aishu shat'hani za'afrun wa'aza qadaru. Turning back to page 243, where the a'a reads an asrub of the basit or shum, the student will have no difficulty to recognise the bite, as the one belonging to the first za'op of the first aruz. As an example of the madid, we quote the original of the lines volume 5, 131, I had a heart, and with it lived my life, it was seared with fire, and burnt with loving glow. They read in Arabic, k'ana lik'alrun aishubi, faktava bilnari batarak. If we compare this with the formula 3.8.2, page 242, we find that either line of the couplet is shortened by a foot, it is therefore ma'ju. The first aruz of this abbreviated metre is fa'ilatun, long short long long, and is called sa'hiha, perfect, because it consists of the normal third foot. In the second aruz, fa'ilatun loses its end-syllable tune by the ilahaus, suppression of a final sabab kafif, and becomes fa'ila, long short long, for which fa'ilun is substituted. In the first syllable of fa'ilun, that is eliminating the alif by kamun, we obtain the third aruz fa'ilun, short short long, as that of the present lines, which has two as rub, fa'ilun, like the aruz and falun, long long, here, again by kamun, further reduced to fa'al, short long. Ishak of Mozul, 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 madid 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, Makhan edition 2, 244, and 3, 404. The second and third circle will best be spoken of together, as De Vafir and Kamil have a natural affinity to the hajahs and vrajahs. Let us revert to the line, akamo el vajda fikalbi vasau, translated as it were into the language of the prosodists, it will be mafailun mafailun fa'ulun, and this, standing by itself, might premafachi be taken for a line of the hajahs, 3.3.1, with the third mafailun shortened by hajahs, see above, into mafai, for which fa'ulun would be substituted. We have seen that and how the foot mufa'alatun can change into mafailun, and if in any poem, which otherwise would belong to the metre hajahs, 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 hajahs but as vajda. In the piece now under consideration, it is the second byte where the characteristic foot of the wafil first appears, nad anil rubu vasakiniya vakat ba'udal maza'u fal'a maza'u, only say, volume 3, 296, far lies the camp and those who camped therein, far is their tent shrine where a narrow shell tent. It must, however, be remarked that hazaj is not in use as a hexameter, but only with an aruz majua, or shortened by one foot. Hence it is only in the second aruz of the wafil, which is likewise majua, that the ambiguity as to the real nature of the metre can arise, and the isolated couplet, yaridul ma'u anyuta muna'u vayaba la'u ila mayuridu. Man will this wish to him accorded be, but Allah not accords save what he wills, volume 4, 157. Being hexametrical forms undoubtedly part of the poem in wafil, although it does not contain the foot mufa'alitun at all. Thus the solitary instance of hazaj in the nights is abu nuvah's abomination, beginning with short lon lon lon, short lon lon lon, fa la tasaw ila gairee. Short lon lon lon, short lon lon lon, fa indi madino de kairee. Macan edition 2, 377. Steer ye your steps to none but me, who have a mind of luxury. Volume 5, 65. If in the second aruz of the wafil, ma fa'i lon, short lon lon lon, is further shortened to ma fa'i lon, short lon, short lon, the metre resembles the second aruz of rajaz, where as we have seen, the latter foot can, by licence, take the place of the normal mustafilun, lon lon, short lon. The kamil bears a similar relation to the rajaz, as the wafir bears to the hazaj. By way of illustration, we quote from Macan edition 2, 8, the first two bytes of the little poem taken from the 23rd assembly of al-hariri. Ya katibal dunyal daniyati inaha, sharakul rada makera ratul abtari, darun mata'r ma'adzakat fi yamiha, abgat gadan budan lahamindari. In Sir Richard Burton's translation, volume 3, 319, O doh who woorist a world unworthy, learn, to his house of evils, to his perdition, to his perdition's net, a house where whoso laughs this day shall weep to next, then perish house of fume and fret. The aruz of the first couplet is mustafilun, assigning the peace to the first, or perfect, sahiha, class of the kamil. The aruz of the first couplet is mustafilun, assigning the peace to the first, or perfect, sahiha, class of the kamil. In the hajj of the opening line, and in that of the whole second byte, this normal mudafilun has, by license, become mustafilun, and the same change has taken place in the aruz of the second couplet. For it is a peculiarity which this meter shares with a few others, to allow certain alterations of the kind zuhaf in the aruz and zarb, as well as in the hajj. This class has three subdivisions. The zarb of the first is mudafilun, like the aruz, the zarb of the second is phalatun, a substitution for mudafil, which latter is obtained from mudafilun, by suppressing the final n, and rendering the l quiescent. The zarb of the third is phalun for mudfah, derived from mudafilun, by cutting off the vatat ilun, and dropping the medial a of the remaining mudafah. If we make the ein of the second zarb phalatun, also quiescent by the permitted zuhaf ismar, it changes into phalatun, by substituting mafulun, which terminates the rhyming lines of the foregoing quotation. Consequently, the two couplets taken together belong to the second zarb of the first aruz of the kamil, and the meter of the poem with its licenses may be represented by the scheme long, long, long, short, short, long, short, long, short, short, long, short, long, short, short, long, short, short, long, long, long, long, short, short, long, short, long, short, short, long, short, long, short, short, long, long. Taken isolated, on the other hand, the second byte might be of the meter rajaz, whose first aruz mustafilun has two as root, one equal to the aruz, the other mafulun, as above, but here substituted for mustafiln, after applying the ila kanth to mustafilun. If this were the meter of the poem throughout the scheme with the licenses peculiar to the rajaz, would be short, short, short, short, short, long, long, short, short, long, long, long, long, short, long, short, short, short, short, short, long, long, long, long, short, long, long, long, long, long, long. The pith of Al-Hariri's assembly is that the knight errant not to say the errant white of the Romans, Abul Said of Saruj, accuses before the valley of Bagdad his pretended pupil, in reality his son, to have appropriated a poem of his by lopping off two feet of every bite. If this is done in the quoted lines, they read, Ya katibal dunya al-dandi, Ya ti innaha sharuk al-radda, Darul mata ma'a zakat, Fi yamiha abdat gadda, With a different rhyme and a different variation of meter. The amputated piece belongs to the fourth zaab of the third aruz of Kamil, and its second couplet tallies with the second subdivision of the second class of Rajaz. The Rajaz, an iambic meter, pure and simple, is the most popular, because the easiest, in which even a prophet was caught napping sometimes, and at dangerous risk of following the perilous leadership of Imrul Qaiz. It is the meter of improvisation, of ditties, and of numerous didactic poems. In the letter case, when the composition is called Urjusa, the two lines of every bite rhyme, and each bite has a rhyme of its own. This is the form in which, for instance, even Malik's al-fiya is written, as well as the remarkable grammatical work of the modern native scholar Nasif al-Nazidji, of which a notice will be found in Shanaeri's introduction to this translation of al-hariri. While the Hazaj and Rajaz connect the third circle with the first and second, the ramal forms a link between the third and fourth daira. Its measure, fa'ilatun, long short long long, and the reversal of it, mafulatu, long long long short, affect the trochaic rhythm as opposed to the iambic of the two first named meters. The iambic movement has a ring of gladness about it, the trochaic a wail of sadness. The former resembles a nimbo-pedestrian, striding a pace 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 sliding back in the burning sand, ramal, whence probably the name of the meter. Numbers combined in regular alternation impart an agitated character to the verse admirably fit to express the conflicting emotions of a patient's third mind. Examples of these, more or less plaintive and pathetic meters, are numerous in the tale of Unz al-Wujud and De Wazir's daughter, which, being throughout a story of love, has been noted Volume 5, 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-arouse, Maqan edition, 2, 361. The bubbles note, when as dawn is nigh, tells the lover from strains of strings to fly, Volume 5, 48. Sa-ri, second-zarb of the first-arouse, Maqan edition, 2, 359. I heard a ring-dove chanting soft and plaintively, I thank thee, O eternal, for this misery. Ya'aliman ashtaqil ghrama la zibi, Va shujuni wa furqati an yabibi, O to whom of my desire complaining soar shall I bewail my parting, for my fair compelled dust to fly. Mujtas, the only arouse, Majua sahiha, that is shortened by one foot and perfect, with equal-zarb, Rdu alaya ha-bibi, lahajatan li bi malin, To me, restore my dear, I want not wealth untold. As an instance of the Munsari, 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. Maqan edition, 1, 33, defined the line, arba'atun ma shtamaat katu'iza. This would be rajaz with the license muftailun for mustafilun, but the following lines of fragment events, that to meet her is Munsari, 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, arba'atun ma shtamaat katu'iza, ala'aza mujati wa safki dami. Four things which never conjoin, unless it be, to storm my vitals and to shed my blood. The Mutaqari, the loss of the meters 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 rhymes for each couplet, it has become the nibilun stanza of the Persian epos. Verdausi's immortal Book of Kings and Nizami's Iskander Nama are written in it, not to mention a host of masnavis, in which Sufiq mysticism combats Muhammedun orthodoxy. On account of its warlike and heroical character, therefore, I choose, for an example, the nightly Jambrakhan's challenge to the single fight in which he conquers his scarcely less valiant adversary Kaurajan, Makhan edition 3 296, Annal Jambrakhanu, Kavin El Janani, Jamil Favarsi, Taksha Kitali. Here the third syllable of the second foot in each line is shortened by license, and the final khazra of the first line, standing in poles, is long, the meter being the full form of the mutakarib, as exhibited page 246, 3.e.1. If we suppress the khazra of Al-Jani, which is also allowable in poles, and make the second line to rhyme with the first, saying, for instance, Annal Jambrakhanu, Kavin El Janani, Layaksha Kitali, Shijal Zaman. We obtain the powerful and melodious meter in which the Shanama sings of Rustam's lofty deeds of the tender love of Rudaba and the tragic downfall of Siyabush. 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, brookered that Arabic prosody 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, anend Al-Khalil, which even Kalikhan 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 a people that his father had lost his wits. They went in immediately and related to Al-Khalil, 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. End of Section 32 Recording by Phone Section 33 of the Book of the Thousand Nights and the Night, Volume 10 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Phone The Book of the Thousand Nights and the Night, Volume 10 by Anonymous Translated by Richard Francis Burton L'Envoi Here end to my sorrow the labours of a quarter century, and here I must perforce say with the poet's poet, Behold, I see the haven nigh at hand, to which I mean my wary course to bend, fare the main sheet, and bear up with the land, the which afore is fairly to be kend. 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 Peter Malus, or over-difference, I would claim to have fulfilled the promise contained in my foreword. The anthropological notes and notelets, which not only illustrate and read between the lines of the text, but assist the student of Muslim life, and of arable Egyptian manners, customs, and language in a multitude of manners 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 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 Burma enacts under his very eyes. This is cross-ignorance, not the naive innocence of St. 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, her Landberg, writes, La plume refuserait non-service, la langue serait insuffisante, c'est celui qui connaît la vie de tous les jours des orientaux, surtout des classes élevées, voulait la dévoiler. L'Europe est bien loin d'en avoir la moindre idée. In this matter I have done my best at the 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 tabooed and held to be electa, unknown and unfitted for publicity, will be a national benefit to an empire of opinion whose very bases and buttresses are a thorough knowledge by the rulers of the ruled. Men have been crowned with gold in the capital for lesser services rendered to the respublica. That the work contains errors, shortcomings and many elapses, I am the first and foremost to declare, yet injustice to myself I must also notice that the maculee 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, let me invoke the fair field and courteous favour which the Persian poet expected from his readers. Veil it, and fault delfined, nor jibed nor jeer, none may be found of faults and failings clear. Richard F. Burton, as a name club, September 30, 86. End of Section 33, Recording by Phone. End of the Book of the Thousand Nights and the Night, Volume 10, by Anonymous, translated by Richard Francis Burton.