One of the most curious features of the Nights is the promptitude with which everyone—porters, fishermen, ladies, caliphs—recites poetry. It is as if a cabman when you have paid him your fare were to give you a quatrain from FitzGerald's rendering of Omar Khayyam, or a cripple when soliciting your charity should quote Swinburne's Atalanta. Then in the midst of all this culture, kindliness, generosity, kingliness, honest mirth,—just as we are beginning to honour and love the great caliph, we come upon a tale [448] with the staggering commencement "When Harun al Rashid crucified Ja'afar;" and if we try to comfort ourselves with the reflection that we are reading only Fiction, History comes forward and tells us bluntly that it is naked truth. Passing from this story, which casts so lurid a light over the Nights, we come to Abu Mohammed, Lazybones, the Arab Dick Whittington, whose adventures are succeeded by those of Ali Shar, a young man who, with nothing at all, purchases a beautiful slave girl—Zumurrud. When, after a time, he loses her, he loses also his senses, and runs about crying:
"The sweets of life are only for the mad."
By and by Zumurrud becomes a queen, and the lovers are re-united. She is still very beautiful, very sweet, very pious, very tender, and she flays three men alive.
We need do no more than allude to "The Man of Al Yaman and his six Slave Girls," "The Ebony Horse," and "Uns al Wujud and Rose in Hood."
The tale of the blue-stocking Tawaddud [449] is followed by a number of storyettes, some of which are among the sweetest in the Nights. "The Blacksmith who could handle Fire without Hurt," "The Moslem Champion," with its beautiful thoughts on prayer, and "Abu Hasn and the Leper" are all of them fragrant as musk. Then comes "The Queen of the Serpents" with the history of Janshah, famous on account of the wonderful Split Men—the creatures already referred to in this work, who used to separate longitudinally. The Sindbad cycle is followed by the melancholy "City of Brass," and a great collection of anecdotes illustrative of the craft and malice of woman.
In "The Story of Judar" [450] we find by the side of a character of angelic goodness characters of fiendish malevolence—Judar's brothers—a feature that links it with the stories of Abdullah bin Fazil [451] and Abu Sir and Abu Kir. [452] Very striking is the account of the Mahrabis whom Judar pushed into the lake, and who appeared with the soles of their feet above the water and none can forget the sights which the necromancy of the third Maghrabi put before the eyes of Judar. "Oh, Judar, fear not," said the Moor, "for they are semblances without life." The long and bloody romance of Gharib and Ajib is followed by thirteen storyettes, all apparently historical, and then comes the detective work of "The Rogueries of Dalilah," and 'the Adventures of Mercury Ali." If "The Tale of Ardashir" is wearisome, that of "Julnar the Sea Born and her son King Badr," which like "Abdullah of the Land, and Abdullah of the Sea," [453] concerns mer-folk, amply atones for it. This, too, is the tale of the Arabian Circe, Queen Lab, who turns people into animals. In "Sayf al Muluk," we make the acquaintance of that very singular jinni whose soul is outside his body, and meet again with Sindbad's facetious acquaintance, "The Old Man of the Sea."
"Hasan of Bassorah" is woven as it were out of the strands of the rainbow. Burton is here at his happiest as a translator, and the beautiful words that he uses comport with the tale and glitter like jewels. It was a favourite with him. He says, "The hero, with his 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 the feminine friend should be; the silly little wife who never knows that she is happy till she loses happiness, the violent and hard-hearted queen with all the cruelty of a good woman; and the manners and customs of Amazon-land are outlined with a life-like vivacity."
Then follow the stories of Kalifah, Ali Nur al Din and Miriam the Girdle Girl [454]; the tales grouped together under the title of "King Jalead of Hind;" and Abu Kir and Abu Sir, memorable on account of the black ingratitude of the villain.
"Kamar al Zaman II." begins with the disagreeable incident of the Jeweller's Wife—"The Arab Lady Godiva of the Wrong Sort"—and the wicked plot which she contrived in concert with the depraved Kamar al Zaman. However, the storyteller enlists the reader's sympathies for the Jeweller, who in the end gains a wife quite as devoted to him as his first wife had been false. The unfaithful wife gets a reward which from an Arab point of view precisely meets the case. Somebody "pressed hard upon her windpipe and brake her neck." "So," concludes the narrator, "he who deemeth all women alike there is no remedy for the disease of his insanity." There is much sly humour in the tale, as for example when we are told that even the cats and dogs were comforted when "Lady Godiva" ceased to make her rounds. "Abdullah bin Fazil" is simply "The Eldest Lady's Tale" with the sexes changed.
The last tale in the Nights, and perhaps the finest of all, is that of "Ma'aruf the Cobbler." [455] Ma'aruf, who lived at Cairo, had a shrewish wife named Fatimah who beat him, and hauled him before the Kazi because he had not been able to bring her "kunafah sweetened with bees' honey." So he fled from her, and a good-natured Marid transported him to a distant city. Here he encounters an old playfellow who lends him money and recommends him to play the wealthy merchant, by declaring that his baggage is on the road. This he does with a thoroughness that alarms his friend. He borrows money right and left and lavishes it upon beggars. He promises to pay his creditors twice over when his baggage comes. By and by the king—a very covetous man—hears of Ma'aruf's amazing generosity, and desirous himself of getting a share of the baggage, places his treasury at Ma'aruf's disposal, and weds him to his daughter Dunya. Ma'arfu soon empties the treasury, and the Wazir, who dislikes Ma'aruf, suspects the truth. Ma'aruf, however, confesses everything to Dunya. She comes to his rescue, and her clairvoyance enables her to see his future prosperity. Having fled from the king, Ma'aruf discovers a magic "souterrain" and a talismanic seal ring, by the aid of which he attains incalculable wealth. Exclaims his friend the merchant when Ma'aruf returns as a magnifico, "Thou hast played off this trick and it hath prospered to thy hand, O Shaykh of Imposters! But thou deservest it." Ma'aruf ultimately succeeds to the throne. Then occurs the death of the beautiful and tender Dunya—an event that is recorded with simplicity and infinite pathos. The old harridan Fatimah next obtrudes, and, exhibiting again her devilish propensities, receives her quietus by being very properly "smitten on the neck." So ends this fine story, and then comes the conclusion of the whole work. This is very touching, especially where the story-telling queen, who assumes that death is to be her portion, wants to bid adieu to the children whom she had borne to the king. But, as the dullest reader must have divined, the king had long before "pardoned" her in his heart, and all ends pleasantly with the marriage of her sister Dunyazad to the king's brother.