A plain and literal translation of the Arabian nights entertainments, now entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 (of 17). Richard Francis Burton
href="#n55" type="note">55 "By Allah," said the Caliph, "if this damsel sing ill I will crucify all of you; but if she sing well I will forgive them and only gibbet thee." "O Allah cause her to sing vilely!" quoth Ja'afar. Asked the Caliph, "Why so?"; and he answered, "If thou crucify us all together, we shall keep one another company." The Caliph laughed at his speech. Presently the damsel took the lute and, after looking at it and tuning it, she played a measure which made all hearts yearn to her; then she sang these lines: —
O ye that can aid me, a wretched lover, ✿ Whom longing burns nor can rest restore me!
Though all you have done I have well deserved, ✿ I take refuge with you, so exult not o'er me:
True, I am weak and low and vile, ✿ But I'll bear your will and whatso you bore me:
My death at your hands what brings it of glory? ✿ I fear but your sin which of life forlore me!
Quoth the Caliph, "By Allah, good! O Ja'afar, never in my life have I heard a voice so enchanting as this." "Then haply the Caliph's wrath hath passed away," said Ja'afar, and he replied, "Yes, 'tis gone." Thereupon they descended from the tree, and the Caliph said to Ja'afar, "I wish to go in and sit with them and hear the damsel sing before me." "O Commander of the Faithful," replied Ja'afar, "if thou go in to them they will be terribly troubled, and Shaykh Ibrahim will assuredly die of fright." But the Caliph answered, "O Ja'afar, thou must teach me some device wherewith to delude them and whereby I can foregather with them without their knowing me." So they walked towards the Tigris pondering the matter, and presently came upon a fisherman who stood fishing under the pavilion windows. Now some time before this, the Caliph (being in the pavilion) had called to Shaykh Ibrahim and asked him, "What noise is this I hear under the windows?" and he had answered, "It is voices of fisher folk catching fish: " so quoth the Caliph, "Go down and forbid them this place;" and he forbade them accordingly. However that night a fisherman named Karim, happening to pass by and seeing the garden gate open, said to himself, "This is a time of negligence; and I will take advantage of it to do a bit of fishing." So he took his net and cast it, but he had hardly done so when behold, the Caliph came up single-handed and, standing hard by, knew him and called aloud to him, "Ho, Karim!" The fisherman, hearing himself named, turned round, and seeing the Caliph, trembled and his side-muscles quivered, as he cried, "By Allah, O Commander of the Faithful, I did it not in mockery of the mandate; but poverty and a large family drove me to what thou seest!" Quoth the Caliph, "Make a cast in my name." At this the fisherman was glad and going to the bank threw his net, then waiting till it had spread out at full stretch and settled down, hauled it up and found in it various kinds of fish. The Caliph was pleased and said, "O Karim, doff thy habit." So he put off a gaberdine of coarse woollen stuff patched in an hundred places whereon the lice were rampant, and a turband which had never been untwisted for three years but to which he had sewn every rag he came upon. The Caliph also pulled off his person two vests of Alexandrian and Ba'lbak silk, a loose inner robe and a long-sleeved outer coat, and said to the fisherman, "Take them and put them on," while he assumed the foul gaberdine and filthy turband and drew a corner of the head-cloth as a mouth-veil56 before his face. Then said he to the fisherman, "Get thee about thy business!"; and the man kissed the Caliph's feet and thanked him and improvised the following couplets: —
Thou hast granted more favours than ever I craved; ✿ Thou hast satisfied needs which my heart enslaved:
I will thank thee and thank whileas life shall last, ✿ And my bones will praise thee in grave engraved!
Hardly had the fisherman ended his verse, when the lice began to crawl over the Caliph's skin, and he fell to catching them on his neck with his right and left and throwing them from him, while he cried, "O fisherman, woe to thee! what be this abundance of lice on thy gaberdine." "O my lord," replied he, "they may annoy thee just at first, but before a week is past thou wilt not feel them nor think of them." The Caliph laughed and said to him, "Out on thee! Shall I leave this gaberdine of thine so long on my body?" Quoth the fisherman, "I would say a word to thee but I am ashamed in presence of the Caliph!"; and quoth he, "Say what thou hast to say." "It passed through my thought, O Commander of the Faithful," said the fisherman, "that, since thou wishest to learn fishing so thou mayest have in hand an honest trade whereby to gain thy livelihood, this my gaberdine besitteth thee right well."57 The Commander of the Faithful laughed at this speech, and the fisherman went his way. Then the Caliph took up the basket of fish and, strewing a little green grass over it, carried it to Ja'afar and stood before him. Ja'afar thinking him to be Karim the fisherman feared for him and said, "O Karim, what brought thee hither? Flee for thy life, for the Caliph is in the garden to-night and, if he see thee, thy neck is gone." At this the Caliph laughed and Ja'afar recognized him and asked, "Can it be thou, our lord the Sultan?"; and he answered, "Yes, O Ja'afar, and thou art my Wazir and I and thou came hither together; yet thou knowest me not; so how should Shaykh Ibrahim know me, and he drunk? Stay here, till I come back to thee." "To hear is to obey," said Ja'afar. Then the Caliph went up to the door of the pavilion and knocked a gentle knock, whereupon said Nur al-Din, "O Shaykh Ibrahim, some one taps at the door." "Who goes there?" cried the Shaykh and the Caliph replied, "It is I, O Shaykh Ibrahim!" "Who art thou," quoth he, and quoth the other, "I am Karim the fisherman: I hear thou hast a feast, so I have brought thee some fish, and of a truth 'tis good fish." When Nur al-Din heard the mention of fish, he was glad, he and the damsel, and they both said to the Shaykh, "O our lord, open the door and let him bring us his fish." So Shaykh Ibrahim opened and the Caliph came in (and he in fisherman guise), and began by saluting them. Said Shaykh Ibrahim, "Welcome to the blackguard, the robber, the dicer! Let us see thy fish." So the Caliph showed them his catch and behold, the fishes were still alive and jumping, whereupon the damsel exclaimed, "By Allah! O my lord, these are indeed fine fish: would they were fried!" and Shaykh Ibrahim rejoined, "By Allah, O my lady, thou art right." Then said he to the Caliph, "O fisherman, why didst thou not bring us the fish ready fried? Up now and cook them and bring them back to us." "On my head be thy commands!" said the Caliph, "I will fry thee a dish and bring it." Said they, "Look sharp." Thereupon he went out and ran till he came up to Ja'afar when he called to him, "Hallo, Ja'afar!"; and he replied, "Here am I, O Commander of the Faithful, is all well?" "They want the fish fried," said the Caliph, and Ja'afar answered, "O Commander of the Faithful, give it to me and I'll fry it for them." "By the tombs of my forbears," quoth the Caliph, "none shall fry it but I, with mine own hand!" So he went to the gardener's hut, where he searched and found all that he required, even to salt and saffron and wild marjoram and else besides. Then he turned to the brasier and, setting on the frying-pan, fried a right good fry. When it was done, he laid it on a banana-leaf, and gathering from the garden wind-fallen fruits, limes and lemons, carried the fish to the pavilion and set the dish before them. So the youth and the damsel and Shaykh Ibrahim came forward and ate; after which they washed their hands and Nur al-Din said to the Caliph, "By Allah, O fisherman, thou hast done us a right good deed this night." Then he put hand in pouch and, taking out three of the dinars which Sanjar had given him, said, "O fisherman, excuse me. By Allah had I known thee before that which hath lately befallen me, I had done away the bitterness of poverty from thy heart; but take thou this as the best I can do for thee." Then he threw the gold pieces to the Caliph, who took them and kissed them and put them in pouch. Now his sole object in doing all this was to hear the damsel sing; so he said to Nur al-Din, "Thou hast rewarded me most liberally, but I beg of thy boundless bounty that thou let this damsel sing an air, that I may hear her."58 So Nur al-Din said, "O Anis al-Jalis!" and she answered "Yes!" and he continued, "By my life, sing us something for the sake of this fisherman who wisheth so much to hear thee." Thereupon she took the lute and struck the strings, after she had screwed them tight and tuned them, and sang these improvised verses: —
The fawn of a maid hent her lute in hand ✿ And her music made us right mettlesome:
For her song gave hearing to ears stone-deaf, ✿ While Brava! Brava! exclaimed the dumb.
Then she played again and played so ravishingly, that she charmed their wits and burst out improvising and singing these couplets: —
You have honoured us visiting this our land, ✿
Arab. "Lisám," the end of the "Kúfiyah," or head-kerchief passed over the face under the eyes and made fast on the other side. This mouth-veil serves as a mask (eyes not being recognisable) and defends from heat, cold and thirst. I also believe that hooding the eyes with this article, Badawi-fashion, produces a sensation of coolness, at any rate a marked difference of apparent temperature; somewhat like a pair of dark spectacles or looking at the sea from a sandy shore. Pilgrimage i., 210 and 346. The woman's "Lisám" (chin-veil) or Yashmak is noticed in i., 337.
Most characteristic is this familiarity between the greatest man then in the world and his pauper subject. The fisherman alludes to a practise of Al-Islam, instituted by Caliph Omar, that all rulers should work at some handicraft in order to spare the public treasure. Hence Sultan Mu'ayyad of Cairo was a calligrapher who sold his handwriting, and his example was followed by the Turkish Sultans Mahmúd, Abd al-Majíd and Abd al-Aziz. German royalties prefer carpentering and Louis XVI. watch-making.
There would be nothing singular in this request. The democracy of despotism levels all men outside the pale of politics and religion.