Conclusion
When it was morning the king was wrathful, and he came and sat upon his throne, and he said, “Where is the youth? let him come.” They brought him, and the king said, “Ask ye him if he confesses to the charge of his mother.” Thereupon the grand vezir said, “Let him come before you and be asked, and it will be well; bring him, let us ask him.” The king commanded that they brought him, and he said, “Youth, speak; how hast thou done by thy mother?” The youth was silent. The king turned and said, “Be not silent, there is leave to thee, speak.” The youth was silent. Again the grand vezir said, “Perchance his governor might make him tell.”
Straightway the king commanded that they should bring his governor; and they sought him but found him not, and came and told the king. The king said, “This day it is needful to make manifest my justice; let the executioner come.” He came; and the king commanded, saying, “Take the youth and all those vezirs; and kill them.” And they took the whole of them from the presence of the king; and they made clean the judgment-square and sprinkled it with sand. And they made the vezirs sit down by tens, and they brought the youth too. Then the executioner set the prince upon his knees and bound his eyes, and he drew his sword from its scabbard and bared it, and said, “Is there leave, O king? In thy glory is my arm strong and my sword keen. The cut-off head grows not again, and too late repentance profits not.” And he went twice round the divan and asked leave of the king; and the king commanded him, saying, “Smite off his head.” The executioner went round the divan once more, and as he was again asking leave of the king, the bearer of glad tidings came, crying, “The prince’s governor comes!” The king said, “Quick, seize and bring him.”
Forthwith the slaves brought the governor, not letting his feet touch the ground. When the king saw the governor he was wroth, and said, “Kill him!” The governor said, “O king, wherefore art thou angry? If it be thy desire to make the youth speak, bring him and let him speak.” Quoth the king, “Is it thou who saidest to the youth, ‘Speak not’?” The governor answered, “Yea.” The king said, “Why?” The governor said, “O king of the world, I saw the prince’s ruling star in the astrolabe that for forty days it was in evil aspect, such evil aspect that if he uttered the least word he should perish, but that if he spake not he should escape. I taught him a Name, and charged him straitly that he should not speak the least word. Now is the time accomplished, and I am come; command that they bring him, and I shall give him leave to speak.” The king commanded that they brought the youth, and the governor said, “My prince, be my life a ransom for thy father and for thee! Praise be to God! the evil aspect of thy star is accomplished; loose thy nightingale tongue and speak; what is this plight?”
Straightway the youth said, “In the name of God!” And he related what befell him with the lady from its beginning to its end; and then he fell upon the ground and began to weep. And the king put his finger to his mouth and wondered. And the members of the divan marvelled at this deed of the woman, and they said, “The prince’s words are with reason and truth, and such like trickery comes from womankind.”
Then the king asked the slave-girls, and they bare witness that they had been behind the wall and had heard the thing, and that the prince spake truly. And the king saw that the right was the prince’s, and he repented him of what he had done. And he besought pardon, and kissed the prince’s two eyes, and pressed him to his heart and wept full bitterly. And straightway he commanded that they bring the vezirs; and the king made many excuses to them, and clad each of them in sumptuous robes, and bestowed boundless gifts and favors upon them, and begged forgiveness of all of them. And the vezirs said, “My king, whatsoever cruelty and injustice thou hast done us, be it all forgiven thee; our fear was lest thou should slay the prince, acting on the woman’s word; for our vezirship is by the health and safety of our king and our prince; and their existence is a mercy to the world; after they were perished the perishing of the whole of us were a thing assured.” And they all kissed the ground together, and asked for retribution on the woman.
And the king commanded that they bring a wild ass; and they took the lady to the square of judgment and set her upon that ass, and bound her fast to his tail and legs, and took her forth to the desert. And they smote the ass with a whip, and the ass began to gallop and the woman fell from his back to the ground; and the wild ass looked, and when he saw the woman behind him he shied and ran off. And the woman was torn into pieces small even as her ear, and left upon the shrubs and stones. Thus that which she had purposed against the prince befel herself. The sires say, “Wish good that good may come to thee: if thou dig a pit for another, dig it deep; for it is like thou shalt fall therein thyself; then thou needest not trouble trying to get out.” And from that time has the saying been among the folk, “May I see thee on the ass!” After that the king summoned all the vezirs and the nobles and the commonalty, and he made a great feast with all manner of minstrels and music, and for forty days and forty nights they feasted and made merry gratefully. And then they lived for many years, and did justice and dealt with equity.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A fabulous bird, a species of vulture or gigantic condor.
[2] Drugs.
[3] Koran, lii. 15.
[4] Ib. xii. 31.
[5] Not necessarily a Chinese woman, simply a beauty; China and Chinese Tartary being regarded as pre-eminent for the beauty of their women.
[6] A term of endearment.
[7] Probably he was afraid lest the king should put him to death for giving such bad news.
[8] The Prophet Mahomet.
[9] I.e., beautiful.
[10] Koran, iv. 94.
[11] As servants do.
[12] In the time of Murad II an aspre was worth about 2½d. stg. Turkish sequins were not struck till the time of his successor, Mahomet II, when they were equivalent to about 12s. 6d. Foreign gold coins, especially Venetian, were used previously.
[13] Qāf is the name of a fabled mountain chain, formerly supposed to encircle the world: “the castle” is simply a metaphor for the mountain peaks.
[14] This famous speech is usually attributed to ‘Omar, the second caliph.
[15] Bal’am-bin-Bā’ūr.
[16] ‘Uj-bin-‘Unuq. He is said, in the Talmud, to have been a monstrous giant. The ‘Adīs, we are told, were from sixty to one hundred cubits high. Compare Numbers xiii. 33.
[17] Koran, v. 29.
[18] Koran, vii. 175.
[19] A mysterious being, of the number of the prophets, who appears to and aids Moslems in distress; he is frequently mentioned in Mahometan fiction, where he plays a part similar to that of Elijah in the Talmud.
[20] Compare Boethius thus translated by Chaucer: All thynges seken ayen to hir propre course, and all thyngs rejoysen on hir retourninge agayne to hir nature.
[21] The emerald was supposed to have the effect of blinding snakes when they looked upon it.
[22] There is an Eastern myth to that effect.
[23] Joseph is the type of youthful beauty.
[24] A fabulous bird of great size. Solomon, it should be said, according to the Talmudic and Koranic legends, was acquainted with the language of beasts and birds, with whom he used often to converse.
[25] Koran, iii. 128.
[26] The celebrated Caliph of Bagdad, and hero of so many of the stories in the “Thousand and One Nights.”
[27] Koran, iii. 128.
[28] D’Herbelot relates the same story in his “Bibliothèque Orientale,” but substitutes Hasan son of ‘Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, for Harun-er-Reshid.
[29] Bāyezīd of Bestam was a famous saint who, according to Ibn-Khallikān, died in 261 or 264 (A.D. 875 or 878).
[30] One of the most famous kings of pre-Islamitic Persia, he reigned from A.D. 531 to 579.
[31] The Cubical (House), i.e., the Sacred Temple at Mecca.
[32] One of the ceremonies performed by the pilgrims at Mecca.
[33] For a description of it see Captain Burton’s “Pilgrimage,” vol. iii, p. 164.
[34] Such as is required by the Mahometan law in case of a triple divorce.
[35] Koran, xxi. 23.
[36] Koran, xxvii. 66.
[37] The ram is a type of courage.
[38] A legendary sage. He here pretends to kill the boy, that the king may recover through joy on finding his son alive.
[39] An adherent of the Shī’a sect, which acknowledges ‘Alī, but rejects Abu-Bekr, ‘Othmān and ‘Omar as lawful caliphs.
[40] So the point of this story turns upon an untranslatable pun.
[41] Koran, viii. 128, and lxiv. 15.
[42] To prevent their spreading the report of the king’s disappearance.
[43] Sultan Mahmūd, the son of Sebuktekīn, of Ghazni.
[44] Hasan of Maymand was a minister, not of Sultan Mahmūd, but of that monarch’s father. Hasan’s son, Ahmed, was Mahmūd’s vezir.
[45] I have thought it best to leave the uncivil remark of the owner of the black ass in the inimitable simplicity of the uncivil remark of the original.
[46] In Belletēte this courtier is said to be Firdausī of Tūs, and he is made to tell Mahmūd the following story of the khoja and the abdal, for which the Sultan rewards him with a purse of gold.
[47] A kind of religious mendicant.
[48] The original is somewhat more explicit here; Vālidesi qizin muhrini teftīsh eyledi, chun muhrini muhrlu buldi, qizin iki guzinden updi.
[49] Hasan of Basra was a very pious and learned man. He died in 110 (A.D. 728).
[50] The dervish’s cloak.
[51] El-Ma’mūn, the son of Hārūn-er-Reshīd, was proclaimed caliph in 198 (A.D. 813); he died in 218 (A.D. 833).
[52] Koran, xi. 48.
[53] The point of this story is lost in the translation. To let fly a falcon at game, is, in Turkish, to swing a falcon; the king says to the abdal, “Swing the falcon,” meaning, let it fly at the bird; but the abdal understands him literally, and swings the falcon round his head.