 Section 21 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. The Matter of the Nights, Part 3. 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 manuscripts known to me, the same main lines, but differs greatly in minor details, as will be seen by comparing Mr. Payne's translation with Layne's and Mine. In the tale of the sage Dugan appears the speaking head which is found in the Camille, in Mirkont, and in the Kitab al-Uyoun. MC Barbier de Menard traces it back to an abbreviated text of Al-Masoudi. I would especially recommend the students, the porter, and the three ladies of Baghdad, who's mighty orgy and so innocently in general marriage. Layne 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 expressions suggest the hand of the Ravi, 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 blackamore in the streets boasted of her favours? But after reading what is annotated in volume 1, 6, and purposely placed there to give the keynote 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 human race to debauched women in England. The next tale, sometimes called The Two Vasirs, is notable for its regular and genuine drama intrigue, which, however, appear still more elaborate and perfected in other pieces. The richness of this Oriental plot invention contrasts strongly with all European literatures except the Spaniards, 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 power of faultless fancy, boundless imagination and scenic luxuriance, raising French poetry from the dead and not mortally wounding French prose. The Two Vasirs is followed by the Gem of the Volium, the adventure of the hunchback jester, also containing an admirable surprise and a fine development 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 Al-Nashkar and to Europe the term Barmaside Feast, from the Tale of Shakabakh. The adventures of the corpse were known in Europe long before Galant, as shown by three Fabliot in Barbazan. I have noticed that the barber's tale of himself is historical, and I may add that it is told in detail by Alma Soudi, chapter 94. Follows the tale of Nur al-Din Ali and what Galant Miss calls the Fair Persian, a brightly written historiette with not a few touches of true humour. Noteworthy are the slaver's address, the fine description of the Baghdad Garden, the drinking party, the caliph's frolic and the happy end of the hero's misfortunes. Its brightness is tempered by the gloomy tone of the tale, which succeeds, and which has variants in the Bak-O-Baha, a Hindustani version of the Persian tale of the four Darwishes, and in the Turkish Kirk Vazir, or Book of the Forty Vazirs. Its dismal peripaties are relieved only by the witty indecency of eunuch Bukheid 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. The next is the long romance of chivalry, King Omar bin Al-Numan, 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 licence with which he translated. And he was said right by a learned reviewer, who truly declared that the omission of half a dozen passages out of four hundred pages would fit it for printing in any language, and the charge of tediousness could hardly have been applied more unhappily. The tale is interesting as a picture of medieval Arab chivalry, and has many other notable points. For instance, the lines beginning, Allah holst kingship, are a lesson to the mannequinism of Christian Europe. It relates the doings of three royal generations, and has all the characteristics of eastern art. The fantasmagoria of holy places, palaces and herrings, convents, castles and caverns, here restful with gentle landscapes, and there bristling with furious battle-pictures, and tales of princely prowess and nightly daring do. The characters stand out well. King Numan is an old lichur who deserves his death. The ancient name Zat al-Dawahi merits her title Lady of Calamities, to her foes. Princess Abriza appears as a charming Amazon, doomed to a miserable and pathetic end. Zau al-Makam is a wise and pious royalty. Nuzat al-Zaman, though a long-sim talker, is a model sister. Devazir Dandan, a sage and sagacious counsellor, contrasts with the chamberlain an ambitious miscreant. Khan Makam is the typical Arab knight, gentle and brave, now managing the mouths of stubborn steeds, now practising the proof of war-like deeds. And a kind hearted, simple-minded stoker serves as a foil to the villains, the kiddamping Badavi and Ghazban, the detestable negro. The fortunes of the family are interrupted by two episodes, both equally remarkable. Taj al-Muluk is the model lover whom no difficulties or dangers condone. In Aziz and Aziza we have the beau-ideal of a loving woman. The writer's object was to represent a softie who had the luck to win the love of a beautiful and clever cousin and a 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 is highly artistic. The long crusading romance is relieved by a sequence of sixteen fablieux, partly historians of men and beasts and partly apologues proper, a subject already noticed. We have then the saddening and dreary love tale of Ali bin Bakar, 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, 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 by the long tale of Kamar al-Zaman, or Moon of the Age, the first of that name, the Kamar al-Zaman whom Gallant 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 Claremont and we can hardly wonder at its 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. The Nash the Jinn and Maimunah, daughter of Aldi Miryat, a renowned king of the Jan, 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 willful, shifty and immoral, hasty and violent. His two spouses are rivals in abominations as his sons, Amjad and Asad, are examples of a fraternal affection rarely found in half-brothers by sister-wives. There is at least one fine melodramatic situation, and marvellous feats of indecency, a practical joke which would occur only to the kind of big mind, emphasise the recovery of her husband by that remarkable blackguard, the Lady Boudour. The intercalated tale of Niamah and Naomi, a simple and pleasing narrative of useful amours, contrasts well with the boiling passions of the incestuous and murderous queens, and serves as a pause before the grand dinouement when the parted meet, the lost are found, the unwedded are wedded, and all ends merrily as a nineteenth-century novel. The long tale of Ala al-Din, our old friend Aladdin, is wholly out of place in its present position. It is a counterpart of Ali Mil al-Din and Miriam de Gerdo girl, and a mention of the Shabanda or harbormaster, the Kunzo or Kunzo, the captain, Capitano, the use of Canon at sea and the choice of Genoa city, to prove that it belongs to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and should accompany Camar al-Zaman II and Ma'aruf at the end of the nights. Despite the Lutist Zubaida being carried off by the Gen, the magic couch, a modification of Solomon's carpet, and the murder of the king who refused to Islamise, it is evidently a European tale, and I believe with Dr Bucker, it was founded upon the legend of Charlemagne's daughter Emma and his secretary Eganhardt, as has been noted in the counterpart. This quasi-historical fiction is followed by a succession of Fabio, Novell and Historiats, which fill the rest of the volume four and the whole of volume five till we reach the terminal story, the Queen of the Serpents. It appears to me that most of them are historical and could easily be traced. Not a few are in Al-Masudi. For instance, the grim tale of Hatim of Thay is given bodily in maids of gold, and the two adventures of Ibrahim Almadi with the barber surgeon and the merchant's sister are in his pages. The city of Lutite embodies the legend of Don Rodrigo, the son of the gods, and may have reached the ears of Washington Irving. Many columned Iran is held by all Muslims to be factual, and sundry writers have recorded a trick played by Al-Ma'mun with the pyramids of Jiza, which still show his handiwork. The germ of Isaac of Mosul is found in Al-Masudi, who names Buran the poetess, and the slave girl is told by a host of writers. Ali the Persian is a rollicking tale of fun from some Iranian jest book. Abu-Muhammad, Hight Lazy Bones, belongs to the cycle of Sinbad the Seaman with a touch of Wittington and his cat, and Zumarut, Smaragdain in Ali Shah, shows at her sale the impudence of Miriam the girdle girl and in bed the fascinating device of the Lady Boudour. The ruined man who became rich, etc., is historical, and Al-Masudi relates the conquetry of Mabouda the Conquybine. The historian also quotes four couplets, two identical with numbers one and two in the nights, and adding, then see the slave who lords it or her lord in lover privacy and public sight. Behold these eyes that one like Jafar's son, Allah on Jafar reigns Bones infinite. Bones al-Wujud is a love tale which has been translated into a host of eastern languages, and the lovers of the Banu-Ozra belong to Al-Masudi's martyrs of love, with the Ozrite, Ozrite love, of Ibn-Galikam. Haroon and the three poets has given to Cairo a proverb which Burqat renders, the day obliterates the word or promise of the night, for the promise of night is effaced by day, it suggests congriefs Doris, for who or night obtained her grace she can next day disown, etc. Haroon and the three slave girls smacks of gargantua, it belongs to me said one, tis mine said another, and so forth. The Cymbalton and the Sharper, like the foolish Dominique, is an old Joe Miller in Hindu as well as Muslim folklore. Kisra Anushivan is the king, the owl and the villages of Al-Masudi, who also notices the Persian monarch's four seals of office, and Masur the eunuch and Ibn al-Karibi is from the same source as Ibn al-Maghazili, the reciter, and the eunuch belonging to the Caliph al-Mutazat. In the tale of Tava Durd, we have the fullest development of the disputations and displays of learning than so common in Europe, test the admirable Krypton, and these were affected not only by eastern telltellers, but even by sober historians. To us it is much like padding when Nuzad al-Zaman fags her hapless hearers with the discourse covering sixteen mortal pages. When the Wazir Dandan reports at length the cold speeches of the five high-busynd maids and the lady of calamities, and when Vird Khan, in presence of his papa, discharges his patristic exorcitations and heterogeneous knowledge. Yet Al-Masudi also relates, at dreary extension, the disputation of the twelve sages in presence of Barmasay Jaya upon the origin, the essence, the accidents and the ominous res of love. And in another place shows Honain, author of the Book of Natural Questions, undergoing a long examination before the Khalif al-Wazir, Thateg, and describing, amongst other things, the human teeth. See also the dialogue or catechism of al-Hajjaj and even al-Qiriya in Ibn Khalikam. These disjectra-membra of tales and annals are pleasantly relieved by the seven voyages of Sinbad Semen. The Arabian Odyssey, may, like its great brother, descend from a noble family, the shipwrecked mariner, the Coptic travel-tail of the 12th dynasty, preserved on a papyrus at St. Petersburg. In its actual condition, Sinbad is a fanciful compilation, like the foes Captain Singleton, borrowed from traveller's tales of an immense variety and extracts from al-Idrisi, al-Kaswini, and Ibn al-Wardhi. Here we find the polyphemus, the pygmies and the cranes of Homer and Herodotus, the escape of Aristomines, the Plenian monsters well known in Persia, the magnetic mountain of St. Brennan, Brandanis, the aeronautics of Duke Ernest of Bavaria and sensory cuttings from Muslim writers dating between our 9th and 14th centuries. The Shaik of the Seaboard appears in the Persian romance of Kamaralpa translated by Franklin, all the particulars absolutely corresponding. The Odyssey is valuable because it shows how far eastward the medieval era has extended. Already in the ignorance he had reached China and that 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 Sinbad are made to stand out in strong relief by the deep melancholy which pervades the city of grass, a dreadful book for a dreary day. It is curious to compare the doleful verses with those spoken to Caliph al-Mutawakil by Abu al-Hassan al-Li al-Masudi. We then enter upon the venerable Sinbad Name, the malice of women, of which according to the Kitab al-Firist there were two editions, as Sinbad al-Kabir and the Sinbad al-Saghir, the latter being probably an epitome of the former. This bundle of legends I have shown was incorporated with the knights as an editor's addiction, and as an independent work it has made the round of the world. Space forbids any detailed notice of this choice collection of anecdotes for which a volume would be required. I may, however, note that the wife's device has its analogues in the Qata, in the Gesta Romanorum and in Boccaccio, modified by La Fontaine to Richard Minutolo. It is quoted almost in the words of the knights by the Shaikh al-Nafsadi, that most witty and indecent tale the three wishes 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, families, 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 contumatious treatment of her mate made him pray that the beauty might be turned into a bitch, and a third wish restored her to her original state. The story of Judah is Egyptian to judge from its local knowledge, together with its ignorance of Morocco. 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 Abusir, the noble-minded barber, and a hideously inhuman Agucir. The excursion to Mauritania is artfully managed and gives a novelty to the mise-en-scene. Garib and Agi belongs to the cycle of Antar and King Omar bin Numan. Its exaggerations make it a fine type of oriental chauvinism, pitting the superhuman virtues, valor, nobility, and success of all that is Muslim against the skim of the earth which is non-Muslim, like the exploits of friar John of the chopping knives. It suggests ridicule cast on impossible battles and tales of giants, canyons, and paladins. The long romance is followed by 13 historiets, all apparently historical, compare Hind, daughter of Al-Numan, and Isaac of Mosul and the Devil with Al-Masudi, 5, 365, and 6, 340. They end in two long detective tales, like those which M. Gaborio has popularized, the rogueries of the Laila and the adventures of Mercury Ali, based upon the principle, one thief wants another. The former, who has appeared before, seems to have been a noted character. Al-Masudi says, The tale of Ar-Dashir 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 undyne, Jonar the Seabourn, which, like Abdulaziz said, is not the case with that charming undyne, Jonar the Seabourn, which, like Abdulaziz said, is not the case with that charming undyne, Jonar the Seabourn, which, like Abdullah of the land and Abdullah of the sea, describes the v-intime of MIR men and MIR women, somewhat resembling Swift's inimitable creations, the huims, for instance, they prove, amongst other things, that those who dwell in a denser element can justly blame and severely criticize the contradictory and unreasonable prejudices and predilections of mankind. Saif al-Muluk, 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 11th century. This novella has found its way into every Muslim language of the East, even into Sindhi, which calls the hero Saif al. Here we again meet the old man of the sea or rather the Shaikh of the seaboard and make acquaintance with a jinn whose soul is outside his body. Thus he resembled Hermotimos of Clasimune in Apollonius, whose spirit left his mortal frame a discres-ion. The author, philanthropically remarking, knows thou not that a single mortal is better in a last sight than a thousand jinn, brings the wooing to a happy end which leaves a pleasant savor upon the mental palette. Hassan of Basra is a master shoe-tie on a large scale like Sinbad, but his voyages and travels extend into the supernatural and fantastic rather than the natural world. Though long, the tale is by no means wear-esome and the characters are drawn with a fine, firm hand. The hero with this 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 a feminine friend should be, the silly little wife who never knows that she is happy till she loses happiness, the violent and heart-hearted queen with all the cruelty of a good woman and the manners and customs of Amazon land are outlined with a lifelike vivacity. Khalifa, the next tale, is valuable as a study of eastern life showing how the fisherman emerges from the squalor of his surroundings and becomes one of the Khalifa's favorite cup companions. Ali Nur-Aldin and King Jaliad have been noticed elsewhere and there is little to say of the concluding stories which bear the evident impress of the modern date. Dr. Johnson thus sums up his notice of the Tempest. Whatever 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. There 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 untold 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 toot ensemble in full and complete form they are a drama of eastern life and the dance of death made sublime by faith and the highest emotions by the certainty of expiation and the fullness 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 can 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, lamea and cannibal where citizen jossels badawi, eunuch meets knight, the kazi hobnobs with a thief, the pure and pious sit down on the same tray with the bald and the pimm where the professional religionist, the learned Quranist and the strictest moralist consort with the wicked magician, the scoffer and the debauchy poet like Abu Nowas where the courtier jests with the boar 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 some beams. The work is a kaleidoscope where everything falls into picture, gorgeous palaces and pavilions, grisly underground caves and deadly wolves, gardens fairer than those of the Hesperint, seas dashing with clashing billows upon enchanted mountains, valleys of the shadow of death, air voyages and promenades in the abysses of ocean, the dwellow, the battle and the siege, the wooing of maidens and the marriage-right, all the splendor and squalor, the beauty and baseness, the glamour and grotesqueness, the magic and demornfulness, the bravery and the baseness of oriental life are here, its pictures of the three great Arab passions, love, war and fancy entitled to be called blood, musk and hashish and still more, the genius of the storyteller quickens the dry bones of history and by adding fiction to pact revives the dead past, the 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 tailpiece an idyllic scene of love and wedlock in holes before reeking with lust and blood. I have noticed in my foreword that the two main characteristics 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 breeds a tender passion and a simple sadness. Such are the Badabi's dying farewell, the lady's broken heart on account of her lover's hand being cut off, the wazir's death, the mourner's song and the tongue of the case, the murder of Princess Abriza with the babe sucking its dead mother's breast and generally the lost moments of good Muslims which are described with inimitable terse-ness and naivety. The sad and the gay in the character of the good Hamam Stoker who becomes Roy Crott and the melancholy deepens in the tale of the mad lover, the blacksmith who could handle fire without hurt, the devotee Prince and the whole tale of Aziza 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 showing the pecansi of sentiment which can be evolved from the common and the unclean. The pretty conceit of the loot is afterwards carried out in the song which is a masterpiece of originality and in the Arabic of exquisite tenderness and poetic melancholy, the whale over the past and the vain longing for reunion and the very depths of melancholy, of majestic pastels and of true sublimity are reached in many columns I ran and the city of brass. 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 woot chiefly for the dryness and slowness which pervaded but it differs in degree as much as the pathos varies. The staple article is Kyrene Chaff, a peculiar banter possibly inherited from their pagan forefathers. Instances of this are found in the cook and dog, the eunuchs addressed to the cook, the wazir's exclamation, too little pepper, the self-communing of Judah, the hashish eater in Alishah, the scene between the brother's wazir, the treatment of the govo, the water of Zemzem and the eunuchs Bukhite and Kafur. At times it becomes a masterpiece of fun, of rollicking rabbalazian humor underlaid by the caustic mother-wit of Sanchil Panza as in the orgy of the ladies of Baghdad. The holy ointment applied to the beard of Luka the Knight, Unxerund Regem Salomonem and Ja'afar and the Old Badabi with its reminiscence of Chafi king Amasiz. This reaches its acme in the description of ugly old age, in the three wishes the wickedest of satires on the altar sexes, in Alidah Persian, in the lady and her five suitors which corresponds and contrasts with the dully-told story of Upakosa and her four lovers of the katha and in the man of Al-Yaman where we find the true falstafian touch but there is sterling wit sweet and bright expressed without any artifice of words in the immortal barber's tales of its brothers especially the second, the fifth and the sixth. Finally, wherever the honest and independent old debauchee Abu Novas makes his appearance the fun becomes fessenine and malesian. End of section 21 Recording by phone Section 22 of the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Knight 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 Amelia Chesley. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Knight Volume 10 by Anonymous Translated by Richard Francis Burton. The Manor of the Nights And now, after considering the matter, I will glance at the language and style of the knights. The first point to remark is the peculiarly happy framework of the Requiel which I cannot but suspect to set an example to the Decameron and its host of successors. The admirable introduction a perfect miser and scene gives the amplest raise on detra of the work which thus has all the unity required for a great romantic Requiel. We perceive this when reading the contemporary Hindu work the Katha Sarit Sagara which is at once so like and so unlike the knights. Here the preamble is insufficient. The whole is clumsy for want of a thread upon which the many independent tales and fables should be strung and the consequent disorder and confusion tell upon the reader who cannot remember the sequence without taking notes. As was said in my forward without the knights no Arabian knights and now so far from holding the pauses and intolerable interruption to the narrative I attach additional importance 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 consensus of the manuscript would be wanting. The Bresla Edit in many places merely interjects the number of the knight without interrupting the tale. The manuscript in the Bibliothèque National used by Galland contains only 282 and the Frenchman ceases to use the division after the 236th knight and in some editions after the 197th. A fragmentary manuscript according to Scott whose friend J. Anderson found it in Bengal breaks away after night 29 and in the Wortley Montague 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 for example 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 becomes once upon a time. We 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 the Boccaccio's favorite formula Egli con Cristio poi la Scosia e recoronato et ono revolamente vice in fino alla fine molte volte go d'orono del loro amore edio faccia noi go d'er del nostro e cosi nera su grossesa si rimase e ancor visista We have further docked this tale 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 Ravi or Nakal the contour or professional storyteller also called Kassas and Mada corresponding with the Hindu bat or bard To these men my learned friend Baron A. von Krimmer would attribute the mu alakat vulgarly called the suspended poems as being indicted from the relation of the Ravi hence in our texts the frequent interruption of the formula kal al Ravi quotes the reciter Dice Torpino Moreover, the nights read in many places like a handbook 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 rivalry which starts up in unexpected places it was meant simply to provoke a laugh how old the custom is and how unchangeable his eastern life is shown a correspondence suggests by the book of Esther which might form part of the alf Leila On that night we read in chapter 6 part 1 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 Ravi would declaim the recitative somewhat in conversational style and he would chant the sarra or prose rhyme and he would chant to the twanging of the Rabab a one-stringed reel the poetical parts Dr. Scott borrows from the historian of Aleppo a life-like picture of the storyteller 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 not unfrequently in the midst of some interesting adventure when the expectation of his audience 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 endeavor to detain him insisting upon the story being finished before he departs but he always makes his retreat good 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 parties fall to disputing about the characters of the drama or the event of an unfinished adventure the controversy by degrees become 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 those hovels of efficient payment to the Pasha and where during the hard winter of 1885-86 the poorer classes were compelled to puff their cave, Bihang cannabis indica and sip their black coffee in the muddy streets under a rainy sky I found the Raui active on Sundays and Thursdays the market days the favorite place was the Soko de Bara or large bazaar outside the town whose condition is that of Suez and Beirut 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 gargots and tattered tents and frequented by women mere bundles of unclean rags and by men wearing the hake or bonus a franciscan frock tending their squatting camels and chaffering over cattle for gibraltar beef eaters here the market people form a ring about the reciter a stalwart man affecting little raiment besides a broad waist belt into which his lower shippons 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 tom-tom shaped like an hour glass upon which he taps the periods this skelly as the Irish call him opens the drama with extemporary prayer proving that he and the audience are good Muslims he speaks slowly and with emphasis varying addiction 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 by the ingenuousness and freshness of feeling hidden under their heart and savage exterior the performance usually ends with the embryo actor going round for alms and flourishing in air every silver bit, the usual honorarium, being a few flutes, that marvelous 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 knights are still recited there many travelers including Dr. Russell have complained that they failed to find a complete manuscript copy of the knights 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 patron should know this Yakub Artin Pasha declares that the superstition dates from the 14th and 15th centuries and he explains it in two ways, firstly it is a facetious exaggeration 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-Hajjar, Al-Aini and Al-Kastalani 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 Khari Pasha contend that the mathematics 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 i.e. a mathematician the Alemah 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 knights turkey is the only muslim country which has dared to produce a regular drama and to arouse the energies of such brilliant writers as Minif Pasha statesman and scholar Ekrem Bey, literato and professor Kemal Bey held by some to be the greatest writer in modern Osmanli land and Abda Al-Haq Hamid Bey first secretary of the island and embassy the theater began in its ruder form by taking subjects bodily from the knights 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 Haroun al-Rashid and the three calendars with dearskins and all their properties derigger in the courtyard of government house Damascus through the extreme astonishment and delight of the audience it requires only to glance at the knights for seeing how much histrionic matter they contain in considering the style of the knights 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 at literatum as has been done by Torren's lane and pain in his tales from the Arabic this conscientious treatment is required for versions of an author like Camus whose works were carefully corrected and arranged by a competent literature but is not merited by the knights as they now are the McNaughton, the Boulac and the Beirut texts though printed for manuscripts identical in order often differ in minor matters many friends have asked me to take the work but even if lightened by the aid of the sheikhs, munchies 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 being thoroughly dissatisfied with the plain and popular the ordinary and vulgar note of the language have attempted to refine and improve it is 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 arrangement of the matter as I have noticed in the case of Sinbad the seaman moreover many of the earlier knights are over long and not a few of the others are over short this however has the prime recommendation of variety of editor inscribed 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 illusions to persons and tales which are left dark for example volume 1 page 43 57 61 etc the digressions are abrupt and useless leading nowhere while sundry pages are for excess of prolixity were hardly intelligible for extreme conciseness the perpetual recurrence of mean colloquialisms and of words and idioms peculiar to Egypt and Syria also takes from the 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 Ravi's craft in the caravan the harem the bazaar and the coffee house moreover as has been well said the nights is the only written halfway 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 muslim lands from Mauritania to Mesopotamia it freely uses Turkish words like cartoon and Persian terms as Shabandar 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 approaching the pompous for example the waziriel addresses in the tale of king Jaliad the battle scenes mostly admirable are told with the conciseness of a despatch and the vividness of an artist the two combining to form perfect word pictures of the badia or euphistic style parlaying euphemism and of al-sajah the prose rhyme I shall speak in a future page the characteristics of the whole are naivety and simplicity, clearness and singular concision the gorgeousness is in the imagery not in the language but in a week 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 storyteller which sound so hollow and unreal by the side of a chaser model it abounds in formula such as repetitions of religious phrases which are unchangeable there are certain stock comparisons as Lachman's wisdom Joseph's beauty Jacob's grief Job's patience David's music and Miriam the virgin's chastity the eyebrow is a nun the eye a saint the mouth a mim a hero is more prudent than the crow a better guide than the categrouse more generous than the cock wearier than the crane braver than the lion more aggressive than the panther 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 symbolized by his collar his cheek mole is a crumb of ambergris his nose is a scimitar girded at the curve his lower lip is a jujube his teeth are the pleides or hailstones his brow locks are scorpions his young hair on the upper lip is an emerald his side beard is a swarm of ants or a lamb 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 the eyebrows a mistress necessarily belongs though living in the next street to the wadi liwa and to a hostile clan of Badawin whose blades are ever-thirsty for the lover's blood and whose malignant tongues aim only at the defilement of separation youth is upright as an aleph or slender and bending as a branch of the band tree which we should call a willow wand while age, crabbed and crooked bends groundwards vainly seeking in the dust his lost juvenility as barren dislay says of these stock comparisons the figurative language of muslim poets is often difficult to be understood the narcissus is the eye the feeble stem of that plant bends languidly under its dower 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 cornelions 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 isar or headstall of the bridle and the curve of the isar is compared to the letters lam and nun ringlets trace on the cheek or neck the letter wa they are called scorpions as the greek either from their dark color or their agitated movements the eye is a sword the eyelids scabbards the whiteness of the complexion camphor and a mole or a 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 both a full moon and a day black hair is night the waist is a willow branch or a lance the water of the face is self-respect a poet sells the water of his face 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 sigh of the wind and the plash of the wavelet they occupy the sensorium with a soothing effect forming a barbaric music full of sweetness and peaceful pleasure End of Section 22 Section 23 of the Book of the Thousand Nights in 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 Jeff Burke The Book of the Thousand Nights in a Night Volume 10 by Anonymous Translated by Richard Francis Burton Social Condition A. Alislam I here propose to treat of the social condition which the Nights discloses of Alislam at the earlier period of its development concerning the position of women and about the pornography of the Great Saga Book A. Alislam A splendid and glorious life was that of Baghdad in the days of the mighty Caliph when the capital had towered to the zenith of grandeur and was already trembling and tottering to the fall The center of human civilization which was then confined to Greece and Arabia and the metropolis of an empire exceeding an extent the widest limits of Rome it was essentially a city of pleasure of the 6th century The Palace of Peace Dar Al-Salam Worthy successor of Babylon and Nineveh which had outrivaled Damascus the smile of the prophet and Kufa the successor of Hira and the magnificent creation of Caliph Omar possessed unrivaled advantages of sight and climate The Tigris Euphrates Valley the ages succeeded the Nile Valley as a great center 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 unspeakable Turk a magnificent future 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 bazaars 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 Dijlahi dekel under a sky of marvelous purity and in a climate which makes mere life a cave the luxury of tranquil enjoyment It was surrounded by far extending suburbs like Rousseffa on the eastern side and villages like Baturanja dear to the votaries of pleasure 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 Alma and the minstrel's lei The population of Baghdad must have been enormous when the smallest number of her sons who fell victims to the Hulaku Khan in 1258 was estimated at 800,000 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 Kano Darosage a noble system of highways provided with viaducts bridges and caravanseries and a postal service of mounted couriers enabled it to collect as 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 and stocked collected from every land between Khorasan and Morocco and immense libraries attracted the learned of all nations it was a golden age for poets and panagyrists Koranists and literati preachers and rhetoricians physicians and scientists who, besides receiving high salaries and fabulous presents were treated with all the honors of Chinese mandarins the humblest Muslim fisherman or artisan 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 Greco-Latin fruits by long time deteriorated upon the strong young stock of Arab genius and the result, as usual after such imping exceptional luxuriance and vitality the educational establishments devoted themselves to the three main objects recognized by the Muslim world theology, civil law and bell-letra and a multitude of trained counselors 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 Bowie d'Al of Oriental administration under the chancellors of the empire the Khazis administered law and order justice and equality and from their decisions the poorest subject, Muslim or miscreant could claim with the general approval of the Lieges access and appeal to the Caliph as Imam or Antisities of the Faith was high president of a court of cassation under wise administration agriculture and commerce the twin pillars of national prosperity necessarily flourished a scientific canalization 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 reins of heaven the remains of extensive minds prove that this source of public wealth was not neglected navigation laws encouraged transit and traffic and ordinances for the fisheries aimed at developing a branch of industry which is still backward even during the 19th century most substantial encouragement was given to trade and commerce to manufacture and handicrafts by the flood of gold which poured in from all parts of the earth by the presence of a splendid and luxurious court and by the call for new arts and industries which such a civilization would necessitate the crafts were distributed into guilds and syndicates under their respective chiefs whom the government did not govern too much these Shabandars Mukadams and Nakibs regulated several trades rewarded the industrious punished the fraudulent and were personally answerable 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 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 unsalaryed assistance of society the cities are divided into quarters shut off one from other by night and every Muslim is expected by his law and religion to keep watch upon his neighbors 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 Tawabun 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 generations and to this class we owe the tales of Calamity Ahmad Delilah the Wiley one Saladin with the three chiefs of police and Al-Malik al-Zahir with the 16 constables here and in many other places we also see the origin of that picaresque literature which arose in Spain in overran Europe and which beget I need say no more on this heading the civilization of Baghdad contrasting with the barbarism of Europe then Germanic the knights itself being the best exposer 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 one 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 our temporary and transitory no religion hitherto promulgated amongst men shows any prospect of being final or otherwise finite two 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 three 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 al-Islam it has been said is essentially a fighting faith and never shows to full advantage save in the field the faith and 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 Haroon and his cousin wife as has been shown were orthodox and even fanatical but the barmasides were strongly suspected of heretical leanings and while the many headed as usual violent and ready to do battle about an azan call the learned who sooner or later leavened 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 Tawadud the reader has seen a fairly extended catechism of the creed in the ceremonial observances Mazab and the apostolic practices Sunnat of the Shafi 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 Maomet and Idol and Maomari a place of Muslim worship educated men no longer speak with Aqli of the great imposter Mahomet nor believe with the learned and violent Dr. Prado 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 enlighten popular ignorance upon a crucial point namely that the founder of Christianity never pretended to establish a new religion his claims indeed were limited to purging the school of Nazareth of the draws 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 in original doctrine than any subsequent attempts especially the Judaizing tendencies of the so-called Protestant churches the Meccan Apostle preached that the Hanafiyah or Orthodox belief which he subsequently named 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 Seth and Idris Enoch the founder of the Sabean not Sabean faith here therefore al-Islam at once avoided the deplorable assumption 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 BC 4,000 or somewhat subsequent to the building of the pre-Adamite races and dynasties of the Muslims 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 supplement 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 God. In due time the Torah or Pentateuch superseded and abrogated the Abrahamic dispensation. The Zabur of David a book not confined to the Psalms reformed the Torah the Injil or Evangel reformed the Zabur and was itself purified quickened and perfected by the Koran which means the reading or the recital hence Locke with many others held Muslims 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 priestly affirmed that Jesus was sent from God all Muslims do the same thus they are in the main point of doctrine connected with the deity simply Arians as opposed to Asians. History proves that the former was the earlier faith which though formally condemned in AD 325 by Constantine's Council of Nice overspread the Orient beginning with Eastern Europe where Ulphelas converted the Goths which extended into Africa with the Vandals claimed a victim or martyr as late as in the 16th century and has by no means died out in this hour day. The Talmud had been completed a full century before Muhammad'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. An exaggerated Trinitarianism or rather Pytheism, a fourth person in Saint worship had virtually dethroned the deity whilst Mariolatry had made the faith a religio mulli ebris and superstition had drawn from its horrid fecundity an incredible member of heresies and monstrous absurdities. Even ecclesiastic writers draw the gloomiest picture 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 bloodthirsty religious wars of Copt and Greek, had been covered with hermitages by a Yen Zaterna of semi-moniacal superstition. Syria, ever ferocious of heresies, had allowed many of her finest tracts to be monopolized by monkries and nunneries. After many a tentative measure, Muhammad seems to have built his edifice upon two bases. The unity of the Godhead and the priesthood of the pater familias. He abolished forever the sacerdos alterchristus whose existence, as someone acutely said, is the best proof of Christianity and whom all know to be its weakest point. The Muslim family, however humble, was to be the model in miniature of the state and every father in al-Islam was made priest in Pontif in his own house Abel unaided to marry himself to circumcise to baptize as it were, his children to instruct them in the law and canonically to bury himself. Ritual, properly so called, there was none. Congregational prayers were merely those of the individual and mass and the only admitted approach to a sacerdotal order were the olemma or scholars learned in the legalistic school or schoolmaster. By thus abolishing the priesthood Muhammad reconciled ancient with modern wisdom. Skeetodominum, said Kato Protota Familia Rem Divinam Fakere 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 practiced throughout life by the founder of Christianity, but the followers who had never 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 Saba, who, like the lowest Hindu orders of acetics, made filth a concomitant and an evidence of piety. Even now, English Catholic girls are at times forbidden by Italian priests of frequent use of the bath as a sign post to the sin of luxury. Muhammad would have accepted the morals contained in the sermon much more readily than did the Jews from whom its matter was borrowed. 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 subtropical 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 the poor rate, zakat. Thus he avoided the shame and scandal of mendicancy, which, beginning in the Catholic countries 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 Muslim's life physically clean, moderate, and temperate. But Muhammad, the mastermind 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 outside, 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 pluroma. It needs a higher law. As Judaism promised, the good Jew all manner of temporal blessings issue riches, wealth, honor, 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 Brahmins and Lao Tse, the ancient teacher of Zeno the Stoic and his disciples, the noble Pharisees, who believed and preached that virtue is its own reward. It never dared to say do good for good's sake. Even now it does not declare with Cicero, the sum of all of that what is right should be sought for its own sake because it is right and not because it is enacted. It does not even now venture to say with Philo Judeus, the good man seeks the day for the sake of the day and the light for the light's sake and he labors to acquire what is good for the sake of the good itself and not of anything else. So far for the egotism, naive 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 a sober and authentic history in 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 contemptible condition to which original sin condemned him. Thus groveling before God, Admajorim Dei Gloriam to such a point was and is this carried that the Synod of Dort declared, Infantes infidelia morientes in infantia reprobatos ese statuimus. Nay, many of the orthodox still hold a Christian babe dying unbaptized to be unfit for higher existence and some have even created a limbo expressly to domicile the innocence of whom is the kingdom of heaven. Here, if anywhere, the cloven foot shows itself and teaches us that the only solid stratum underlying priest craft is one composed of LSD. And now I can never 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. We ask, can infatuation or hypocrisy, for it must be the one or the other, go farther? But the domicile 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 hither too, not a single find has come to revive the fated 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, in that a comparison of man in the nineteenth century with the caveman affords us the means of measuring past progress and of calculating the future of humanity. Muhammad 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 great dictum of chivalry, honor oblige. 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 and a proud resignation to evil as to good fortune. This is the doctrine which teaches the vulgar Muslim a dignity observed even by the blind traveler and which enables him to display a moderation, a fortitude, and a self-command rare enough amongst the followers of the pure creed. Christian historians explain variously the portentous rise of Allah slum and its marvelous spread over vast regions, not only of pagans and idolaters but of Christians. Prado 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 Muhammad's day and early Allah slum only actual fighters were slain. The rest were allowed to pay the jizwa or capitation tax and to become tributaries enjoying almost all the privileges of Muslims. But even had forcible conversion been most systematically practiced it would have afforded an insufficient explanation of the phenomenal rise of an empire more ground in 80 years than Rome had gained in 800. 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 conquered Syria and a luster or two utterly overthrew Persia, humbled the Greco-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. Northwestern Africa which had rejected the idolatrophilosophic system of Rome and had accepted after lukewarm fashion the Aryan 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 the most zealous in its Islam. And while Mohammedanism speedily reduced the limits of Christendom by one third while throughout the Arabian, Seracenic and Turkish invasions 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 travelers while Christianity makes no progress and cannot exist on the dark continent without strong support from government. Nor can we explain this honorable reception by the licentiousness ignorantly attributed to al-Islam one of the most severely moral of institutions or by the allurements of polygamy and concubinage, slavery and a holy sensual paradise devoted to drinking, drinking 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 the 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. 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. Palgraves' travels which is essentially unfair to al-Islam. The author has had ample opportunities of comparing creeds. Of Jewish blood in Born a Protestant he became a Catholic and a Jesuit Pair Michael Cohen in a Syrian convent. He crossed Arabia as a good Muslim and he finally returned to his premier amor Anglicanism. But his picturesque depreciation of Mohammedanism, which has found due appreciation in more than one popular volume, is a notable specimen of special pleading of the ad-captandom in its modern and least honest form. The writer begins by assuming the arid and barren Wahhabism which he had personally studied as a fair expression of the saving faith. What should we say to a Muslim traveler who would make the Calvinism of the sourest covenanter model genuine and ancient Christianity? What would sensible Muslims say to these propositions of Professor Makovius 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 superlapsarian and the sublapsarian? And finally, of a deity, the author of man's existence, temptation and fall who deliberately preordains sin and ruin. Father Cohen carries out into the regions of the extreme his strictures on the one grand vitalizing idea of Allah's Salaam. There is no God but God and his deduction concerning the pantheism of force sounds unreal and unsound compared with the sensible remarks upon the same subject by Dr. Badgers who sees the obstruceness of the doctrine and does not care to include it or to subject it to mere logical analysis. Upon the subject of predestination, Mr. Palgrave quotes not from the Quran but from the ahadis or traditional sayings of the Apostle. But what importance attaches to a legend in the Mishnah 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 the prophet'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 Quranic passages as to quote no other Allah loveeth you and will forgive your sins. He pities Allah for having no son, companion or counselor Finally, his views of the lifelessness of al-Islam are directly opposed to the opinions of Dr. Leitner and the experience of all who have lived in Muslim lands. Such are the ingenious but not ingenuous distortions of fact, the fine instances of the pathetic fallacy and the noteworthy illustrations of the falsehood of extremes which have engendered Mohammedanism or relapse the worst form of monotheism 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. In al-Rashid's day a mighty change had passed over the primitive simplicity of al-Islam the change to which faiths and creeds, like races and empires and all things sub-lunary are subject. The proximity of Persia and the intercourse with the Greco-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. Musailima and Karmat had left traces of their handiwork. The Mutazalites, Separatists or successors actively propagated their doctrine in temporal Koran. The Hariji or Ibazi who rejects and reviles Abu Turab, Caliph Ali contended passionately with the Shia who reviles and rejects the other three successors. And these sectarians favored by the learned and by the Abbasids in their jealous hatred of the Omniads went to the extreme length of the Ali-Ilahi, the God-makers of Ali, whilst the Dari and the Zindik, the Mundanist and the Agnewetic proposed to sweep away the whole edifice. The Neoplatanism and Gnosticism which had not essentially affected Christendom 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 in which, after some half a dozen generations, had separated the several schisms by a wider breach than that which yawns between Orthodox, Romanist and Lutheran. Nor was this scandal in Al-Islam abated until the Tardar sword applied to it the sharpest remedy. End of section 23 Section 24 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 The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 by Anonymous translated by Richard Francis Burton Social Condition B. Woman The next point I propose to consider is the position of womanhood in the knights 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 all 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 civilization when the sexes are at civil war make women even more 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. Ecclesiastes 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 I have not found volume 7, 28 thus confirming the pessimism of Petronius Femina nula bona est et si bona contiguit ula nesio cuofato res male facta bona est In the Psalms again 30 verse 15 we have the old sneer at the three insatiables hell, earth, and the parts feminine ols volvi and rabbinical learning has embroidered these and other texts producing a truly hideous caricature a hadith attributed to Muhammad 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 low most of its inmates were poor and I stood at the gate of hell and low most of its inmates were women take care of the glass files cried the prophet to a camel guide singing with a sweet voice yet the meccan apostle made as has been seen his own household produced two perfections the blatant popular voice follows with such dictates as women are made of nectar and poison women have long hair and short wits and so forth nor are the Hindus behind hand women has fickleness implanted in her by nature like the flashings of lightning katha s s one one forty seven she is valueless as a straw to the heroic mind one sixty nine she is hard as adamant in sin and soft as flower in fear one seventy and like the fly she quits camphor to settle on and compost to seventeen 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 to man is taken generally by the classics and Euripides distinguished himself by misogyny although he drew the beautiful character of Alcestus 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 percent honest like Eurip the doctrine of the virgin mother gave the sex a status unknown to the ancients except in Egypt where Isis was the helpmate and completion of Osiris in common parlance the woman clothed with the son the kindly and courtly palmarin of England in whose pages gentlemen may find their choice of sweet inventions and gentle women be satisfied but in truth women are never satisfied by reason being governed by accident or appetite chapter 49 the knights as might be expected from the emotional east exaggerate these views women are mostly sectaries of the god Wunsch beings of impulse blown about by every gust of pain in instability constant only in inconstancy the false ascetic the perfidious and murderous crone and the old hag Procures who pimps like um kulsum 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 univera the chased widow and the self-sacrificing heroic woman if we find volume 3 216 the sex described as an awful cast by kites wherever they list and the studied insults of volume 3 318 we also come upon an admirable sketch of conjugal happiness volume 743 and to mention no other chariars attestation to shaharasad's excellence in the last charming pages of the nights it is the same with the katha whose praise and dispraise are equally enthusiastic for example women of good quality are guarded by their virtue the sole efficient chamberlain but the lord himself can hardly guard the unchaste who can stem a furious stream and a frantic woman 1328 excessive love in woman is your only hero for daring 1339 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 a streak of the moon and a rayeth the breath of the heavens 1346 so you see king honorable matrons are devoted to their husbands and tis not the case that women are always bad 2624 and there is true wisdom in that even balance of feminine qualities advocated by our hindu-hindi class book the totinama or parrot volume the perfect woman has seven opposites she must not always be merry one nor sad two she must not always be talking three nor silently musing four she must not always be adorning herself five nor neglecting her person six and seven at all times she must be moderate and self-possessed the legal status of woman kind in all 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 al-Mildar or revenue collector after living two years in London wrote an apology for or rather a vindication of his country women which is still worth reading and quoting nations are but superficial judges of one another where customs differ they often remark only the salient distinctive points which when examined proved to be of minor importance Europeans seeing and hearing that women in the east are cloistered as the Grecian matron was won't and that wives may not walk out with their husbands and cannot accompany 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 Martino once visiting a harem went into ecstasies of pity and sorrow because the poor things knew nothing of say trigonometry and the use of globes Sonini thought otherwise and my experience like that of all old dwellers in the east is directly opposed to this conclusion I have noted night 962 that Muhammad in the fifth year of his reign after his ill-advised and scandalous marriage with his foster daughter Zainab 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 Quran says 3232 quote pure will this practice be for your hearts and their hearts end quote who delight in restrictions which tend to their honor accepted it willingly and still affect it they do not desire a liberty or rather a license which they have learned to regard as inconsistent with their time honored notions of feminine decorum and delicacy and they would think very meanly of a husband who permitted them to be exposed like Hitari to the public gaze as Zubiar Pasha 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 in evidence upon an eminence in bald dress with back and bosom bared to the gaze of society a bundle of charms exposed to every possible seduction 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 crucial question is whether Christian Europe has done wisely in offering such temptations the second and main objection to Muslim custom is the marriage system which begins with a girl being wedded to a man whom she knows only by hearsay this was the habit of our forebears 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 Kaya all but the equal of Kais in most points mental and physical and superior in some not infrequently 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 quote nigger it with a one wife man and quote the case assumes a very different aspect and the load if burdened be false 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 offers six reasons why quote the liberty of the Asiatic women appears less than that of the Europeans and quote ending with I'll fondly place on either I the man that can to this reply then lays down eight points in which the Muslim 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 homestead slaves servants and children especially the latter she alone directs their early education their choice of faith their marriage and their engagement 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 favor of the life is her being a legal sharer inheritance is secured to her by Quranic law she must be dowered by the bridegroom to legalize 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 Muslims and Easterns in Israel study and intelligently study the art and mystery of satisfying the physical woman in my forward 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 perretum platandus avibis a branch of the knowledge tree which are modern education grossly neglects thereby entailing old miseries upon individuals families and generations the mock virtue the most immodest modesty of England and the United States in the nineteenth century pronounces the subject foul and fulsome society sickened 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 are aided by 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 lithographed in cheap form readily sell off the putibund lane makes an allusion to and quotes one of the most outspoken a quarto of four hundred sixty-four pages called the halbat al kumayat or race course of the bay horse a poetical and horsey term for grape wine attributed by Durbelow to the Kazi shams al deen Mohammed it is wholly upon the subject of wassel and women to the last few pages when his reverence exclaims quote this much a reader I have recounted the better thou mayest know what to avoid and quote and so forth ending with condemning all he had praised even the divine and historian Jalal al deen al siyuti is credited with having written though the authorship is much disputed a work entitled kitab al izah fi ilm al nikah the book of exposition in the science of cohesion my copy a lithograph of thirty-three pages undated but evidently careene begins with exclaiming alhamdulillah laud to the lord who adorned the virginal bosom with breasts and who made the thighs of women anvils for the spearhandles to the same amiable theologian are also ascribed the kitab nawazir al aik fi al naik green splendors of the cops in copulation an abstract of the kitab al wisah fi fawid al nikah book of the zone on cohesion boon of the abundance of pornographic literature we may judge from a list of the following seven works even on the second page of the kitab book of the age rejuvenessence in the power of concupiscence it is the work of amad being sir named ibn kamal pasha one kitab kitab book of the bridle and the brides by al jahiz three kitab al qiyan maidens book by ibn hajib al numan four kitab al izah fi asrar al nikah book of the exposition on the mysteries of married fruition five kitab jami al lisah the compendium of pleasure by ibn sasamani six kitab barjan yarjan wa jahnahib seven kitab al muna kaha al mu fatah fi asnaf al jima wa alati book of carnal copulation and the institution into the modes of cohesion and its instrumentation by aziz al deen al masihi to these I may add the lisat al nisa pleasures of women a textbook in arabic, persian and hindustani it is a translation and a very poor attempt omitting much from and adding not to the famous sanskrit work anangaranga stage of the bodiless one i.e. qipido or hindu art of love arza moris indika I have copies of it in sanskrit and marathi, guzarti and hindustani the latter is an unpaged octavo of 66 pages including 8 pages of most grotesque illustrations showing the various sans the figuri venaris or positions of copulation which seem to be the triumphs of contortionists these pamphlets lithographed in bombay are broadcast over the land it must not be supposed that such literature is purely and simply aphrodisiacal the learned spranger a physician as well as an arabist says al masudi page 384 of a tractate by the celebrated rases in the laden library quote the number of curious observations 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 katub al-ba end of section 24