Hatim’s Seventh Adventure, and the last, is to bring the lady an account of the bath of Badgird—an enchanted palace erected for the preservation of a peerless and priceless diamond by its owner, a powerful magician. The stone is in the body of a parrot, Hatim is told by a bird of the same species before entering the hall, and whoever enters shall never return unless he obtain possession of the gem. He will find a bow and three arrows laid on a sofa in the hall, and must shoot the arrows at the parrot, and if he hit right through its head he will break the spell, but if not, he will, like all others before him, be turned to marble. Nothing daunted, Hatim shoots one arrow, and, missing, he becomes marble up to his knees; the second arrow also missing, he becomes marble up to his middle; but (placing his reliance in God) when he shoots the third arrow it pierces the head of the parrot and it falls lifeless to the ground. This achievement is immediately followed by a storm of wind, thunder, lightning—darkness. And Hatim can see no palace or parrot, but at his feet are the bow and arrow and a diamond of dazzling brilliance. No sooner had Hatim seized the diamond than all the marble statues started into life, being freed from the spell of the enchanter.
Returning to Sháhábád, Hatim presented the diamond to Husn Bánú, and, as he had now fulfilled all her conditions, she was straightway married to Prince Munir, who thus reached the summit of happiness. Hatim then returned to the capital of Yaman, where he was affectionately received by his father and mother, and his arrival was hailed with universal joy, while every house resounded with music and mirth. Shortly after this Hatim’s father resigned the reins of government into his hand and lived in retirement for the remainder of his life, which amounted to twelve years, seven months, and nine days. Hatim reigned long and happily in Yaman.[266]
Such is the substance of the wonderful Adventures of Hatim Taï, though I have necessarily omitted many details and some rather curious incidents: like a tale in the Arabian Nights, out of which spring several other tales, each of Hatim’s expeditions led him on to others, which had to be accomplished before he could attain the end for which he originally set out. He undergoes some extraordinary experiences, too, such as being swallowed alive and unhurt by a dragon of such monstrous dimensions that he kept tramping to and fro in its stomach till it was at last obliged, for its internal peace, to eject him and be off; dipping his hand into a lake in order to drink of the waters, and finding it instantly turned into pure silver—where, O where is that lake?—and coming to another, which had the property of restoring the argentine member to flesh and blood; not to speak of the scenes of enchantment, which indeed seem to have been begot of hashish or a like narcotic. With all its absurdities, however, the morale of the romance is excellent: the hero goes about constantly doing good; benevolent towards bird and beast as well as to mankind; feeding the hungry, relieving the distressed, and binding up the broken heart.—This work is still a first favourite among the Persians, who continue to entertain a firm belief in dívs, parís, and many other kinds of spirits, good and evil.
Of the three stories which are interwoven with our tale of Hatim and the Benevolent Lady but one is represented in the Romance, that of the Blind Man, namely, but the details are very different in the two versions.
The Painter’s Story (p. [53])
begins with an account of a fight which he witnessed in his garden between a white snake and a black snake, and seeing the former was about to succumb he slew the black snake. This incident also occurs in the Romance, when Hatim is returning from his second expedition, only the magnanimous hero does not kill—or even scotch—the black snake: he simply shouts, when it lets go its hold of the other and wriggles off. The white snake then becomes a handsome young man, and tells Hatim that he is the son of a king of the jinn, that the black snake is his father’s slave, and bears a most deadly enmity towards himself, and so forth—an incident found in many Asiatic story-books. The Painter’s subsequent experiences in the subaqueous palace of the king of the jinn do not occur in the romance, though the story is known to several collections, and, introduced by the incident of the two snakes, it is found, as follows, in Turkish Evening Entertainments, a translation,[267] by J. P. Brown, of a Turkish story-book entitled ’Ajá’ib el-ma’ásir wa ghara’ib en-nawádir (Wonders of Remarkable Incidents and Rarities of Anecdote), by Ahmed ibn Hemden, the Ketkhoda, surnamed Suhaylí (i.e. Canopus), who composed it for Murád, the fourth Ottoman sultan, who reigned between A.D. 1623 and A.D. 1640:
In ancient times the sovereign of the country of Sabá was a man called Yeshrah. One day, when this excellent prince was travelling, he came to an extensive plain where were two serpents resembling frightful dragons. One of these was white, the other black. They were entwined around each other in desperate conflict, and the white one had received a wound in a most tender part of its body. The black serpent being thus victorious, the strength of the white one was exhausted; it could move no more, and the black one wreaked its vengeance upon the helpless animal. King Yeshrah, touched with pity, went to the assistance of the white snake, and aided it in its conquered state. He placed a diamond-pointed arrow in his bow, and, taking aim at the black snake, he let fly and instantly killed it. The white snake, thus released, crawled away.
One day the king received a visit from a youth of a handsome exterior, who informed him that he belonged to the race of the jinn, and was the white serpent rescued by him. The youth then made proffers of service to the king, which he declined, upon which he offered the king his sister in marriage. The king, enchanted by her beauty, accepted her, and the marriage took place on the king undertaking to consent to everything which his wife did, were it good or evil. Soon after the birth of his first son, a dog approached the queen, who suddenly cast the child into the dog’s mouth, and the dog ran away with it, to the king’s great grief. Their next child, a girl, the queen cast into a brazier, where the infant was immediately consumed. The king was now exceedingly afflicted; but the birth of a second daughter, who was so delicately beautiful on account of her resembling the húrís of Paradise that she was called Bilkís, somewhat reconciled him to his loss. The king implored her not to treat this child as she had done the two others, for which she severely rebuked him.
Soon after this a powerful enemy attacked the king, and his own vazír, secretly allying himself with the enemy, poisoned the provisions designed for the king’s army. The queen destroyed the provisions, at which the king in wrath demanded her reason. The queen explained the affair to her husband, and gave the remaining bread to an animal which fell dead after eating it. She then said that the king having broken the condition made on his marriage with her, all intercourse must now cease between them, and informed him that the son thrown to the dog was still alive, and had been brought up by a nurse in that form, and that the daughter was also in perfect health, nursed by the fire. Beseeching him to be mindful of their daughter Bilkís, who should succeed to the throne and become a great and illustrious queen, and promising to send to his succour an army of jinn-soldiers, she disappeared from the king’s sight for ever. The troops of jinn came to his assistance as promised, routed the enemy’s forces, and restored the king to his throne. But still he was afflicted by the loss of his wife. At length the fatal moment arrived, and he died; and his daughter Bilkís succeeded him on the throne, and her history has been written elsewhere in a detailed manner.
Thus, if we may place any credit in the foregoing story, the thrice-renowned Queen of Sheba was jinn-born: no wonder, therefore, if she was a miracle of beauty and wisdom! It does not appear, however, why her fairy-mother did not dispose of her soon after she was born, in the same extraordinary manner as she “made away” with her previous babes.—Regarding the notion that when a human being unites with one of a supernatural order there are certain conditions always imposed by the latter, the breaking of which must result in their separation, generally temporary, I take leave to refer the reader to my Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. i, p. 212 ff.