Page [53]. “Because she wore a veil (sitr).”—Muslim women are prescribed by their religion to conceal from all men whatever may be attractive in their appearance, and the men are not permitted to see any unveiled women save their wives, or slaves, and those women with whom they are prohibited by law from marrying—see Kur’ān xxiv, 31. “The curse of God,” said the Prophet, “is on the seer and the seen.” Lane, in his Modern Egyptians, gives a very minute description, with numerous engravings, of the veils worn by Muslim women, and remarks that “the veil is of very remote antiquity”—see Genesis xxiv, 65, and Isaiah iii, 23.
Page [53]. “Would not consent to perform the duties of a wife.”—When a wife disobeys her husband’s lawful commands, he may take her (or two Muslim witnesses) before the Kāzī. Should the complaint preferred be just and proved, a certificate is written, declaring her nashiza, rebellious, and the husband is then quite free from the obligation of lodging, clothing, and maintaining her.
Page [53]. “This man was not her husband.”—The 4th sura of the Kur’ān (v. 20 et seq.) treats of lawful and unlawful marriages. “Ye are all forbidden to take to wife free women who are married” (v. 22); that is, says Sale, whether they be Muslim women or not, unless they be legally divorced from their husbands.—This incident, if the story be fictitious (but it probably had some foundation in fact), is very ingeniously conceived: Abū Saber’s happiness is rendered complete by the recovery of his wife, with such a credential of her purity!
The Arabian version of this story, according to Cazotte’s French rendering (and Habicht’s German translation agrees with it in this respect), gives a very different account of the circumstances of Abū Saber’s elevation to the supreme power. Abū Saber, it seems, had been cast by the wicked King into a deep, dry well in the palace-yard. Now it happened that this impious and cruel King “had a brother whom he had always concealed from every eye, in a secret part of the palace; but suspicion and uneasiness made him afraid lest he should one day be carried off and placed upon the throne. Some time before he had privately let him down into this well. This unhappy victim of politics soon sank under so many distresses: he died; but this event was not known, although the other parts of the secret had transpired. The grandees of the realm, and the whole nation, shocked at a capricious cruelty which exposed them all to the same danger, rose, with one accord, against the tyrant, and assassinated him. The adventure of Abū Saber had been long since forgotten. One of the officers of the palace reported that the King went every day to carry bread to a man who was in the well, and to converse with him.[[52]] This idea led their thoughts to the brother who had been so cruelly used by the tyrant. They ran to the well, went down into it, and found there Abū Saber, whom they took for the presumptive heir to the crown. Without giving him time to speak, or to make himself known, they conducted him to a bath; and he was soon clothed in the royal purple, and placed upon the throne.”
Notes on Chapter V.
Page [56]. “The King of Yemen.”—As the Kings of Egypt were named Pharaoh, those of the Sassanian dynasty of Persia, Khusrū, those of Abyssinia, Negashi, so were the Kings of Yemen distinguished by the title of Tobba, from being the paramount sovereign of a number of tribes or followers (tābi`īn). Some of the ancient Kings, having considerably enlarged their dominions by conquest, became proverbial for great power.
Yemen (or Arabia Felix) in the time of Strabo was divided into five kingdoms (l. 16, p. 112), and has been successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the Persians, the Sultans of Egypt, and the Turks.—On the west Yemen has the Red Sea; on the south the Straits of Babu-’l-Mandab and the Indian Ocean; on the east Hadramaut, and the north Nejed and the Hijāz. The inhabitants plume themselves on their country being “the birth-place of the sciences and religion” (Biladu-’l-`Ulm o Biladu-’d-Dīn).—Niebuhr, par. ii, p. 247.
Page [56]. “A certain slave named Abraha.”—Influenced, probably, by a malevolent feeling towards the Mushriks (those who attribute partners to God—Christians), the Muslim author—or, more likely, translator and adapter—gives the name of Abraha to an Ethiopian slave, disparaging, as it were, the historical fame of Abraha Ebnu-’s-Sabā, the 46th King of Yemen, surnamed Sahibu-’l-Fīl (Lord of the Elephant), an Ethiopian by birth, and of the Christian religion, who in paynim times built a magnificent church in the citadel of Grandam, at Sanaā, with the design of inducing pilgrims to resort thither, instead of to the Ka`ba at Mecca. (See Kur’ān cv, and Sale’s note.)
Page [56]. “The arrow cut off one of his ears.”—According to Lescallier, only a piece of his ear.