[369]. i.e. renounce the craft which though not sinful (harám) is makrúh or religiously unpraiseworthy; Mohammed having objected to music and indeed to the arts in general.

[370]. Arab. “Lá tankati’í;” do not be too often absent from us. I have noticed the whimsical resemblance of “Kat’” and our “cut”; and here the metaphorical sense is almost identical.

[371]. See Ibn Khallikan ii. 455.

[372]. The Turkish body-guard. See vol. iii. [81].

[373]. Twelfth Abbaside (A.H. 248–252 = 862–866) the son of a slave-concubine Mukhárík. He was virtuous and accomplished, comely, fair-skinned, pock-marked and famed for defective pronunciation; and he first set the fashion of shortening men’s capes and widening the sleeves. After many troubles with the Turks, who were now the Prætorian guard of Baghdad, he was murdered at the instigation of Al-Mu’tazz, who succeeded him, by his Chamberlain Sa’id bin Salíh.

[374]. Arab. “Usúl,” his forbears, his ancestors.

KAMAR AL-ZAMAN AND THE JEWELLER’S WIFE.[[375]]

There was once, in time of old, a merchant hight Abd al-Rahmán, whom Allah had blessed with a son and daughter, and for their much beauty and loveliness, he named the girl Kaubab al-Sabáh and the boy Kamar al-Zamán.[[376]] When he saw what Allah had vouchsafed the twain of beauty and loveliness, brilliancy and symmetry, he feared for them the evil eyes[[377]] of the espiers and the jibing tongues of the jealous and the craft of the crafty and the wiles of the wicked and shut them up from the folk in a mansion for the space of fourteen years, during which time none saw them save their parents and a slave-girl who served them. Now their father could recite the Koran, even as Allah sent it down, as also did his wife, wherefore the mother taught her daughter to read and recite it and the father his son till both had gotten it by heart. Moreover, the twain learned from their parents writing and reckoning and all manner of knowledge and polite letters and needed no master. When Kamar al-Zaman came to years of manhood, the wife said to her husband, “How long wilt thou keep thy son Kamar al-Zaman sequestered from the eyes of the folk? Is he a girl or a boy?” He answered, “A boy.” Rejoined she, “An he be a boy, why dost thou not carry him to the bazar and seat him in thy shop, that he may know the folk and they know him, to the intent that it may become notorious among men that he is thy son, and do thou teach him to sell and to buy. Peradventure somewhat may befal thee; so shall the folk know him for thy son and he shall lay his hand on thy leavings. But, an thou die, as the case now is, and he say to the folk:—I am the son of the merchant Abd al-Rahman, verily they will not believe him, but will cry, We have never seen thee and we knew not that he had a son, wherefore the government will seize thy goods and thy son will be despoiled. In like manner the girl; I mean to make her known among the folk, so may be some one of her own condition may ask her in marriage and we will wed her to him and rejoice in her.” Quoth he, “I did thus of my fear for them from the eyes of the folk——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

Now when it was the Nine Hundred and Sixty-fourth Night,

She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the Merchant’s wife spake to him in such wise, he replied, “I did thus of my fear for them from the eyes of the folk and because I love them both and love is jealous exceedingly and well saith he who spoke these verses:—