The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 01 (of 10)
General
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 01 (of 10)
Fairy tales -- Arab countries; Folklore -- Arab countries
Every Moslem burial-ground has a place of the kind where honourable
women may sit and weep unseen by the multitude. These visits are
enjoined by the Apostle:—Frequent the cemetery, 'twill make you think
of futurity! Also:—Whoever visiteth the graves of his parents (or one
of them) every Friday, he shall be written a pious son, even though
he might have been in the world, before that, a disobedient.
(Pilgrimage ii., 71.) The buildings resemble our European "mortuary
chapels." Saíd, Pasha of Egypt, was kind enough to erect one on the
island off Suez, for the "use of English ladies who would like
shelter whilst weeping and wailing for their dead." But I never heard
that any of the ladies went there.
Footnote 126:
Arab. "Ajal"=the period of life, the appointed time of death: the
word is of constant recurrence and is also applied to sudden death.
See Lane's Dictionary, s.v.
Footnote 127:
"The dying Badawi to his tribe" (and lover) appears to me highly
pathetic. The wild people love to be buried upon hill-slopes whence
they can look down upon the camp; and they still call out the names
of kinsmen and friends as they pass by the grave-yards. A similar
piece occurs in Wetzstein (p. 27, "Reisebericht ueber Hauran,"
etc.):—
O bear with you my bones where the camel bears his load ✿ And bury me
before you, if buried I must be;
And let me not be buried 'neath the burden of the vine ✿ But high
upon the hill whence your sight I ever see!
As you pass along my grave cry aloud and name your names ✿ The crying
of your names shall revive the bones of me:
I have fasted through my life with my friends, and in my death, ✿ I
will feast when we meet, on that day of joy and glee.
Footnote 128:
The Akásirah (plur. of Kasrá=Chosroës) is here a title of the four
great dynasties of Persian Kings. 1. The Peshdadian or Assyrian race,
proto-historics for whom dates fail; 2. The Káyánián (Medes and
Persians) who ended with the Alexandrian invasion in B.C. 331; 3. The
Ashkánián (Parthenians or Arsacides) who ruled till A.D. 202; and 4.
The Sassanides which have already been mentioned. But strictly
speaking "Kisri" and "Kasra" are titles applied only to the latter
dynasty and especially to the great King Anushirwan. They must not be
confounded with "Khusrau" (P.N. Cyrus, Ahasuerus? Chosroës?); and yet
the three seem to have combined in "Cæsar," Kaysar and Czar. For
details especially connected with Zoroaster see vol. I, p. 380 of the
Dabistan or School of Manners, translated by David Shea and Anthony
Troyer, Paris, 1843. The book is most valuable, but the proper names
are so carelessly and incorrectly printed that the student is led
into perpetual error.
Footnote 129:
The words are the very lowest and coarsest; but the scene is true to
Arab life.
Footnote 130:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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