[430]. The “Mountain” means the rocky and uncultivated ground South of Cairo; such as Jabal al-Ahmar and the geological sea-coast flanked by the old Cairo-Suez highway.
[431]. A popular phrase = our “sharp as a razor.”
[432]. i.e. are men so few; a favourite Persian phrase.
[433]. She is a woman of rank who would cause him to be assassinated.
[434]. This is not Al-Hakim bi´ Amri´llah the famous or infamous founder of the Druze (Durúz) faith and held by them to be, not an incarnation of the Godhead, but the Godhead itself in propriâ personâ, who reigned A.D. 926-1021: our Hakim is the orthodox Abbaside Caliph of Egypt who dated from two centuries after him (A.D. 1261). Had the former been meant, it would have thrown back this part of The Nights to an earlier date than is generally accepted. But in a place still to come I shall again treat of the subject.
[435]. For an account of a similar kind which was told to me during the last few years see “Midian Revisited,” i. 15. These hiding-places are innumerable in lands of venerable antiquity like Egypt; and, if there were any contrivance for detecting hidden treasure, it would make the discoverer many times a millionaire.
[436]. i.e. it had been given to him or his in writing, like the book left to the old woman before quoted in “Midian,” etc.
THE KING’S DAUGHTER AND THE APE.
There was once a Sultan’s daughter, whose heart was taken with love of a black slave: he abated her maidenhead and she became passionately addicted to futtering, so that she could not do without it a single hour and complained of her case to one of her body-women, who told her that no thing poketh and stroketh more abundantly than the baboon.[[437]] Now it so chanced one day, that an ape-leader passed under her lattice, with a great ape; so she unveiled her face and looking upon the ape, signed to him with her eyes, whereupon he broke his bonds and chain and climbed up to the Princess, who hid him in a place with her, and night and day he abode there, eating and drinking and copulating. Her father heard of this and would have killed her;——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
Now when it was the Three Hundred and Fifty-sixth Night,