Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6) Part 1
General
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6) Part 1
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
M. Hermann Zotenberg lately informed me that “Khudadad and his
Brothers” is to be found in a Turkish MS., “Al-Faraj bȧ’d
al-Shiddah”—Joy after Annoy—in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris.
But that work is a mere derivation from the Persian “Hazár o yek Roz,”
for which see my vol. x. p. 499. The name Khudadad is common to most
Eastern peoples, the Sansk. Devadatta, the Gr. Θεοδόσιος, Θεοδώρος,
Θεοδώρητος and Dorotheus; the Lat. Deodatus, the Ital. Diodato, and
Span. Diosdado, the French Dieu-donné, and the Arab.-Persic Alladád,
Dívdád and Khudábaksh. Khudá is the mod. Pers. form of the old Khudáí
= sovereign, king, as in Máh-i-Khudáí = the sovereign moon, Kám-Khudáí
= master of his passions, etc.
Footnote 236:
Lit. Homes (or habitations) of Bakr (see vol. v. 66), by the Turks
pronounced “Diyár-i-Bekír.” It is the most famous of the four
provinces into which Mesopotamia (Heb. Naharaym, Arab. Al-Jàzírah) is
divided by the Arabs; viz: Diyár Bakr (capital Amídah); Diyár Modhar
(cap. Rakkah or Aracta); Diyár Rabí’ah (cap. Nisibis) and Diyár
al-Jazírah or Al-Jazírah (cap. Mosul). As regards the “King of
Harrán,” all these ancient cities were at some time the capitals of
independent chiefs who styled themselves royalties.
Footnote 237:
The Heb. Charran, the Carrhæ of the classics where, according to the
Moslems, Abraham was born, while the Jews and Christians make him
emigrate thither from “Ur (hod. Mughayr) of the Chaldees.” Hence his
Arab. title “Ibrahim al-Harráni.” My late friend Dr. Beke had a
marvellous theory that this venerable historic Harrán was identical
with a miserable village to the east of Damascus _because_ the Fellahs
call it Harrán al-’Awámíd—of the Columns—from some Græco-Roman
remnants of a paltry provincial temple. See “Jacob’s Flight,” etc.,
London, Longmans, 1865.
Footnote 238:
Pírozah = turquoise, is the Persian, Firúzah and Firuzakh (De Sacy
Chrest. ii. 84) the Arab. forms. The stone is a favourite in the East
where, as amongst the Russians (who affect to despise the Eastern
origin of their blood to which they owe so much of its peculiar
merit,) it is supposed to act talisman against wounds and death in
battle; and the Persians, who hold it to be a guard against the Evil
Eye, are fond of inscribing “turquoise of the old rock” with one or
more of the “Holy Names.” Of these talismans a modern Spiritualist
asks, “Are rings and charms and amulets _magnetic_, to use an analogue
for what we cannot understand, and has the immemorial belief in the
power of relics a natural not to say a scientific basis?”
Footnote 239:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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