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第141章

[362]Meaning that she had been carried to the Westward of Meccah.

[363]Arab.'Zahrawiyah'which contains a kind of double entendre.F timah the Prophet's only daughter is entitled Al-Zahr the'bright-blooming';and this is also an epithet of Zohrah the planet Venus.For Fatimah see vol.vi.145.Of her Mohammed said,'Love your daughters,for I too am a father of daughters'and,'Love them,they are the comforters,the dearlings.'The Lady appears in Moslem history a dreary young woman (died aet.28) who made this world,like Honorius,a hell in order to win a next-world heaven.Her titles are Zahr and Batāl (Pilgrimage ii.90) both signifying virgin.Burckhardt translates Zahr by'bright blooming'(the etymological sense):

it denotes literally a girl who has not menstruated,in which state of purity the Prophet's daughter is said to have lived and died.'Batāl'has the sense of a'clean maid'and is the title given by Eastern Christians to the Virgin Mary.The perpetual virginity of Fatimah even after motherhood (Hasan and Husayn) is a point of orthodoxy in Al-Islam as Juno's with the Romans and Um's with the Hindā worshippers of Shiva.During her life Mohammed would not allow Ali a second wife,and he held her one of the four perfects,the other three being Asia wife of'Pharaoh,'the Virgin Mary and Khadijah his own wife.She caused much scandal after his death by declaring that he had left her the Fadak estate (Abulfeda I,133,273) a castle with a fine palmorchard near Khaybar.Abu Bakr dismissed the claim quoting the Apostle's Hadis,'We prophets are folk who will away nothing:

what we leave is alms-gift to the poor,'and Shi'ahs greatly resent his decision.(See Dabistan iii.51 52 for a different rendering of the words.) I have given the popular version of the Lady Fatimah's death and burial (Pilgrimage ii.315) and have remarked that Moslem historians delight in the obscurity which hangs over her last resting-place,as if it were an honour even for the receptacle of her ashes to be concealed from the eyes of men.Her repute is a curious comment on Tom Hood's 'Where woman has never a soul to save.'

[364]For Sharif and Sayyid,descendants of Mohammed,see vol.iv.170.

[365]These lines have occurred with variants in vol.iii.257,and iv.50.

[366]Arab.'Hazrat,'esp.used in India and corresponding with our mediaeval'praesentia vostra.'

[367]This wholesale slaughter by the tale-teller of worshipful and reverend men would bring down the gallery like a Spanish tragedy in which all the actors are killed.

[368]They are called indifferently'Ruhb n'=monks or'Bat rikah'=patriarchs.See vol.ii.89.

[369]Arab.'Khil l.'The toothpick,more esteemed by the Arabs than by us,is,I have said,often used by the poets as an emblem of attenuation without offending good taste.Nizami (Layla u Majnān) describes a lover as'thin as a toothpick.'The'elegant'Hariri (Ass.of Barkaid) describes a toothpick with feminine attributes,'shapely of shape,attractive,provocative of appetite,delicate as the leanest of lovers,polished as a poinard and bending as a green bough.'

[370]From Bresl.Edit.x.194.

[371]Tr?butien (vol.ii.344 et seq.) makes the seven monks sing as many anthems,viz.(1) Congregamini;(2) Vias tuas demonstra mihi;(3) Dominus illuminatis;(4) Custodi linguam;(5)

Unam petii a Domino;(6) Nec adspiciat me visus,and (7) Turbatus est a furore oculus meus.D nis the Abbot chaunts Anima mea turbata est vald?.

[372]A neat and characteristic touch: the wilful beauty eats and drinks before she thinks of her lover.Alas for Masrur married.

[373]The unfortunate Jew,who seems to have been a model husband (Orientally speaking),would find no pity with a coffee-house audience because he had been guilty of marrying a Moslemah.The union was null and void therefore the deliberate murder was neither high nor petty treason.But,The Nights;though their object is to adorn a tale,never deliberately attempt to point a moral and this is one of their many charms.

[374]These lines have repeatedly occurred.I quote Mr.Payne.

[375]i.e.by the usual expiation.See vol.iii.136.

[376]Arab.'Shammiri'=up and ready!

[377]I borrow the title from the Bresl.Edit.x.204.Mr.

Payne prefers'Ali Noureddin and the Frank King's Daughter.'Lane omits also this tale because it resembles Ali Shar and Zumurrud (vol.iv.187) and Ala al-Din Abu al-Shamat (vol.iv.29);'neither of which is among the text of the collection.'But he has unconsciously omitted one of the highest interest.Dr.Bacher (Germ.Orient.Soc.) finds the original in Charlemagne's daughter Emma and his secretary Eginhardt as given in Grimm's Deutsche Sagen.I shall note the points of resemblance as the tale proceeds.The correspondence with the King of France may be a garbled account of the letters which passed between Harun al-Rashid and Nicephorus,'the Roman dog.'

[378]Arab.'Allaho Akbar,'the Moslem slogan or war-cry.See vol.ii.89.

[379]The gate-keeper of Paradise.See vol.iii.15,20.

[380]Negroes.Vol.iii.75.

[381]Arab.'Nakat,'with the double meaning of to spot and to handsel especially dancing and singing women;and,as Mr.

Payne notes in this acceptation it is practically equivalent to the English phrase'to mark (or cross) the palm with silver.'I

have translated'Anwa'by Pleiads;but it means the setting of one star and simultaneous rising of another foreshowing rain.

There are seven Anwa (plur.of nawa) in the Solar year viz.

Al-Badri (Sept.-Oct.);Al-Wasmiyy (late autumn and December);

Al-Waliyy (to April);Al-Ghamir (June);Al-Busriyy (July);Barih al-Kayz (August) and Ahrak al-Hawa extending to September 8.

These are tokens of approaching rain,metaphorically used by the poets to express'bounty'.See Preston's Hariri (p.43) and Chenery upon the Ass.of the Banu Haram.

[382]i.e.They trip and stumble in their hurry to get there.

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