The Book Of The Thousand Nights And A Night, Vol 1 Page-448

The Book Of The Thousand Nights And A Night, Vol 1

A plain and literal translation of the arabian nights entertainments

under his arm: he is not content only to shave, he must scrape the forehead, trim the eyebrows, pass the blade lightly over the nose and correct the upper and lower lines of the mustachios, opening the central parting and so forth. He is not a whit less a tattler and a scandal monger than the old Roman tonsor or Figaro, his confr�re in Southern Europe. The whole scene of the Barber is admirable, an excellent specimen of Arab humour and not over-caricatured. We all have met him. [FN#610] Abdullah ibn Abbas was a cousin and a companion of the Apostle, also a well known Commentator on the Koran and conserver of the traditions of Mohammed. [FN#611] I have noticed the antiquity of this father of our sextant, a fragment of which was found in the Palace of Sennacherib. More concerning the “Arstable” (as Chaucer calls it) is given in my “Camoens: his Life and his Lusiads,” p. 381. [FN#612] Arab. “Simiy�” to rhyme with K�miy� (alchemy proper). It is a subordinate branch of the Ilm al-Ruh�ni which I would translate “Spiritualism,” and which is divided into two great branches, “Ilw� or Rahm�ni” (the high or related to the Deity) and Sifl� or Shayt�ni (low, Satanic). To the latter belongs Al-Sahr, magic or the black art proper, gramarye, egromancy, while Al-Simiy� is white magic, electro-biology, a kind of natural and deceptive magic, in which drugs and perfumes exercise an important action. One of its principal branches is the Darb al-Mandal or magic mirror, of which more in a future page. See Boccaccio’s Day x. Novel 5. [FN#613] Chap. iii., 128. See Sale (in loco) for the noble application of this text by the Imam Hasan, son of the Caliph Ali. [FN#614] These proverbs at once remind us of our old friend Sancho Panza and