Arabian Society in the Middle Ages: Studies From The Thousand and One Nights

by Edward William Lane

"It is," replied the King, "that if the ode be not thine, we give thee no reward; and if it be thine, we give thee the weight in money of what it is written upon."

"How," said El-Aṣma´ee, "should I assume to myself that which belongs to another, and knowing, too, that lying before kings is one of the basest of actions? But I agree to this condition, O our Lord the Sulṭán."

So he repeated his ode. The King, perplexed, and unable to remember any of it, made a sign to the memlook—but he had retained nothing; and called to the female slave, but she also was unable to repeat a word.

"O brother of the Arabs," said he, "thou hast spoken truth, and the ode is thine without doubt; I have never heard it before: produce, therefore, what it is written upon, and we will give thee its weight in money, as we have promised."

"Wilt thou," said the poet, "send one of the attendants to carry it?"

"To carry what?" asked the King; "is it not upon a paper here in thy possession?"

"No, our lord the Sulṭán," replied the poet; "at the time I composed it I could not procure a piece of paper upon which to write it, and could find nothing but a fragment of a marble column left me by my father; so I engraved it upon this, and it lies in the court of the palace."

He had brought it, wrapped up, on the back of a camel. The King, to fulfil his promise, was obliged to exhaust his treasury; and to prevent a repetition of this trick, (of which he afterwards discovered El-Aṣma´ee to have been the author), in future rewarded the poets according to the usual custom of kings.[139]

In the present declining age of Arabian learning (which may be said to have commenced about the period of the conquest of Egypt by the ´Othmánlees), literary recreations still exert a magical influence upon the Arabs. Compositions of a similar nature to the tales of the "Thousand and One Nights" (though regarded by the learned as idle stories unworthy of being classed with their literature) enable numbers of professional story-tellers to attract crowds of delighted listeners to the coffee-shops of the East; and now that the original of this work is printed and to be purchased at a moderate price, it will probably soon in a great measure supersede the romances of Aboo-Zeyd, Eẓ-Ẓáhir, and ´Antarah. As a proof of the powerful fascinations with which the tales of the "Thousand and One Nights" affect the mind of a highly enlightened Muslim, it may be mentioned that the latest native historian of Modern Egypt, the sheykh ´Abd-Er-Raḥmán El-Jabartee, so delighted in their perusal that he took the trouble of refining the language of a copy of them which he possessed, expunging or altering whatever was grossly offensive to morality without the somewhat redeeming quality of wit, and adding many facetiæ of his own and of other literati. What has become of this copy I have been unable, though acquainted with several of his friends, to discover.

The letters of Muslims are distinguished by several peculiarities dictated by the rules of politeness. The paper is thick, white, and highly polished: sometimes it is ornamented with flowers of gold; and the edges are always cut straight with scissors. The upper half is generally left blank, and the writing never occupies any portion of the second side. A notion of the usual style of letters may be obtained from several examples in the "Thousand and One Nights." The name of the person to whom the letter is addressed, when the writer is an inferior or an equal, and even in some other cases, commonly occurs in the first sentence, preceded by several titles of honour; and is often written a little above the line to which it appertains; the space beneath it in that line being left blank: sometimes it is written in letters of gold, or red ink. A king writing to a subject, or a great man to a dependant, usually places his name and seal at the head of his letter. The seal is the impression of a signet (generally a ring, worn on the little finger of the right hand), upon which is engraved the name of the person, commonly accompanied by the words "His [i.e. God's] servant," or some other words expressive of trust in God and the like. Its impression is considered more valid than the sign-manual, and is indispensable to give authenticity to the letter. It is made by dabbing some ink upon the surface of the signet and pressing this upon the paper: the place which is to be stamped being first moistened by touching the tongue with a finger of the right hand and then gently rubbing the part with that finger. A person writing to a superior or an equal, or even to an inferior to whom he wishes to show respect, signs his name at the bottom of his letter, next the left side or corner, and places the seal immediately to the right of this: but if he particularly desire to testify his humility, he places it beneath his name, or even partly over the lower edge of the paper, which consequently does not receive the whole of the impression. The letter is generally folded twice in the direction of the writing, and enclosed in a cover of paper, upon which is written the address in some such form as this:—"It shall arrive, if it be the will of God, whose name be exalted, at such a place, and be delivered into the hand of our honoured friend, etc., such a one, whom God preserve." Sometimes it is placed in a small bag, or purse, of silk embroidered with gold.