Behold these eyes that one like Ja’afar saw: ✿ Allah on Ja’afar reign boons infinite!
Uns al-Wujúd (vol. v. [32]) is a love-tale which has been translated into a host of Eastern languages; and The Lovers of the Banu Ozrah belong to Al-Mas’udí’s “Martyrs of Love” (vii. [355]), with the ozrite “Ozrite love” of Ibn Khallikan (iv. [537]). “Harun and the Three Poets” (vol. v. [77]) has given to Cairo a proverb which Burckhardt (No. 561) renders “The day obliterates the word or promise of the Night,” for
The promise of night is effaced by day.
It suggests Congreve’s Doris:—
For who o’er night obtain’d her grace,
She can next day disown, etc.
“Harun and the three Slave-girls” (vol. v. [81]) smacks of Gargantua (lib. i. c. II): “It belongs to me, said one: ’Tis mine, said another”; and so forth. The Simpleton and the Sharper (vol. v. [83]) like the Foolish Dominie (vol. v. [118]) is an old Joe Miller in Hindu as well as Moslem folk-lore. “Kisra Anushirwán” (vol. v. [87]) is “The King, the Owl and the Villages of Al-Mas’údi” (iii. [171]), who also notices the Persian monarch’s four seals of office (ii. [204]); and “Masrur the Eunuch and Ibn Al-Káribi” (vol. v. [109]) is from the same source as Ibn al-Magházili the Reciter and a Eunuch belonging to the Caliph Al-Mu’tazad (vol. viii. [161]). In the Tale of Tawaddud (vol. v. [139]) we have the fullest development of the disputations and displays of learning then so common in Europe, teste the “Admirable Crichton”; and these were affected not only by Eastern tale-tellers but even by sober historians. To us it is much like “padding” when Nuzhat al-Zamán (vol. ii. [156] etc.) fags her hapless hearers with a discourse covering sixteen mortal pages; when the Wazir Dandan (vol. ii. [195] etc.) reports at length the cold speeches of the five high-bosomed maids and the Lady of Calamities and when Wird Khan, in presence of his papa (Nights cmxiv-xvi.) discharges his patristic exercitations and heterogeneous knowledge. Yet Al-Mas’udi also relates, at dreary extension (vol. vi. [369]) the disputation of the twelve sages in presence of Barmecide Yahya upon the origin, the essence, the accidents and the omnes res of Love; and in another place (vii. [181]) shows Honayn, author of the Book of Natural Questions, undergoing a long examination before the Caliph Al-Wásik (Vathek) and describing, amongst other things, the human teeth. See also the dialogue or catechism of Al-Hajjáj and Ibn Al-Kirríya in Ibn Khallikan (vol. i. [238]–240).
These disjecta membra of tales and annals are pleasantly relieved by the seven voyages of Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi. [1]–83). The “Arabian Odyssey” may, like its Greek brother, descend from a noble family, the “Shipwrecked Mariner,” a Coptic travel-tale of the twelfth dynasty (B.C. 3500) preserved on a papyrus at St. Petersburg. In its actual condition “Sindbad” is a fanciful compilation, like De Foe’s “Captain Singleton,” borrowed from travellers’ tales of an immense variety and extracts from Al-Idrísi, Al-Kazwíni and Ibn al-Wardi. Here we find the Polyphemus, the Pygmies and the cranes of Homer and Herodotus; the escape of Aristomenes; the Plinian monsters well known in Persia; the magnetic mountain of Saint Brennan (Brandanus); the aeronautics of “Duke Ernest of Bavaria”[[291]] and sundry cuttings from Moslem writers dating between our ninth and fourteenth centuries.[[292]] The “Shaykh of the Seaboard” appears in the Persian romance of Kámarupa translated by Francklin, all the particulars absolutely corresponding. The “Odyssey” is valuable because it shows how far Eastward the mediæval Arab had extended: already in The Ignorance he had reached China and had formed a centre of trade at Canton. But the higher merit of the cento is to produce one of the most charming books of travel ever written, like Robinson Crusoe the delight of children and the admiration of all ages.
The hearty life and realism of Sindbad are made to stand out in strong relief by the deep melancholy which pervades “The City of Brass” (vol. vi. [83]), a dreadful book for a dreary day. It is curious to compare the doleful verses (pp. [103], [105]) with those spoken to Caliph Al-Mutawakkil by Abu al-Hasan Ali (Al-Mas’udi, vii. 246). We then enter upon the venerable Sindibad-nameh, the Malice of Women (vol. vi. [122]), of which, according to the Kitab al-Fihrist, (vol. i. [305]) there were two editions, a Sinzibád al-Kabír and a Sinzibád al-Saghír, the latter being probably an epitome of the former. This bundle of legends, I have shown, was incorporated with The Nights as an editor’s addition; and as an independent work it has made the round of the world. Space forbids any detailed notice of this choice collection of anecdotes for which a volume would be required. I may, however, note that the “Wife’s device” (vol. vi. [152]) has its analogues in the Kathá (chapt. xiii.) in the Gesta Romanorum (No. xxviii.) and in Boccaccio (Day iii. 6 and Day vi. 8), modified by La Fontaine to Richard Minutolo (Contes lib. i. tale 2): it is quoted almost in the words of The Nights by the Shaykh al-Nafzáwi (p. [207]). That most witty and indecent tale The Three Wishes (vol. vi. [180]) has forced its way disguised as a babe into our nurseries. Another form of it is found in the Arab proverb “More luckless than Basús” (Kamus), a fair Israelite who persuaded her husband, also a Jew, to wish that she might become the loveliest of women. Jehovah granted it, spitefully as Jupiter; the consequence was that her contumacious treatment of her mate made him pray that the beauty might be turned into a bitch; and the third wish restored her to her original state.
The Story of Júdar (vol. vi. [207]) is Egyptian, to judge from its local knowledge (pp. [217] and [254]) together with its ignorance of Marocco (p. [223]). It shows a contrast, in which Arabs delight, of an almost angelical goodness and forgiveness with a well-nigh diabolical malignity, and we find the same extremes in Abú Sír the noble-minded Barber and the hideously inhuman Abú Kír. The excursion to Mauritania is artfully managed and gives a novelty to the mise-en-scène. Gharíb and Ajíb (vi. [207], vii. [91]) belongs to the cycle of Antar and King Omar bin Nu’man: its exaggerations make it a fine type of Oriental Chauvinism, pitting the superhuman virtues, valour, nobility and success of all that is Moslem, against the scum of the earth which is non-Moslem. Like the exploits of Friar John of the Chopping-knives (Rabelais i. c. 27) it suggests ridicule cast on impossible battles and tales of giants, paynims and paladins. The long romance is followed by thirteen historiettes all apparently historical: compare “Hind, daughter of Al-Nu’man” (vol. viii. [7]–145) and “Isaac of Mosul and the Devil” (vol. vii. [136]–139) with Al-Mas’udi v. [365] and vi. [340]. They end in two long detective-tales like those which M. Gaboriau has popularised, the Rogueries of Dalilah and the Adventures of Mercury Ali, based upon the principle, “One thief wots another.” The former, who has appeared before (vol. ii. [329]), seems to have been a noted character: Al-Mas’udi says (viii. 175) “in a word this Shaykh (Al-’Ukáb) outrivalled in his rogueries and the ingenuities of his wiles Dállah (Dalilah?) the Crafty and other tricksters and coney-catchers, ancient and modern.”