The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Volume 1subscribers only, 1884 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abbaseh Abbaside dynasty Abbaside Khalifs Abdallah Abou Nuwas Æsop Alasnam anecdotes appears Baghdad Barmecides Bassora Bedouin Bedreddin beit Bermek Billah Boulac Breslau brother Buyide Cairo character Cogia collection composed composition copyist death dirhems Dunyazad early edition Egypt Egyptian empire Enchanted Horse Er Reshid evident exist father Fatimite favour favourite Fezl Fezl ben Rebya fiction firearms Galland's Haroun er Reshid hemistichs Hezar Efsan honour house of Abbas Ibrahim instance Jaafer Jebril Jelyaad Khalif Kheizuran Khorassan King known Koran latter Mamoun manner Mensour mention Mesoudi metonymy modern Mohammed Mohammedan Mosul Mulouk Muslim Nile noble Noureddin Omar ben Ennuman Ommiade Oriental original passage perhaps Persian personages persons poets prince prison probably prose reign rhyme rhyming prose royal Sacy Sacy's seems stanza style Sultan supposed Syria Teberi theory Thousand Nights translation Turkish verse Vizier Voyages of Sindbad whilst women word Yehya Zubeideh
Popular passages
Page 44 - Genoese shipping at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries.
Page 56 - A compilation from earlier historical works made, in the form in which we have it, at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century and known by the name of WALTER OF COVENTRY (W.
Page 16 - What enamel of all sorts of flowers ! What a prodigious number of cities, villages, canals, and a thousand other agreeable objects! If you turn your eyes on the other side, up towards Ethiopia, how many other subjects of admiration! I cannot compare the verdure of so many plains, watered by the different canals of the island, better than to brilliant emeralds set in silver.
Page 17 - What a number of magnificent edifices, both public and private ! If you view the pyramids, you will be filled with astonishment at the sight of the masses of stone of an enormous thickness, which rear their heads to the skies! You will be obliged to confess, that the Pharaohs, who employed such riches, and so many men in building them, must have surpassed in magnificence and invention all the monarchs...
Page 104 - It is related by Mohammed ibn er Rehman, a contemporary aalim or man of learning and a member of the Khalif's family (the Hashimis), that he once saw at his mother's a woman of reverend mien, but poorly clad, who was introduced to him as the mother of Jaafer the Barmecide and said to him, " There was a time when four hundred female slaves stood awaiting my orders and yet I thought that my son did not provide for me in a manner adequate to my rank ; but now my only wish is to have two sheepskins,...
Page 112 - Zoulmekan (which alone occupies nearly an eighth part of the entire work and in which occur incidentally the subordinate stories of Taj el Mulouk and Aziz and Azizeh), and that of Gherib and his brother Agib, a romance of apparently Bedouin origin, much resembling such stories as Antar and Abou Zeid. (2) Anecdotes and short stories dealing with historical personages and with incidents and adventures belonging to the actual every-day life of the periods to which they refer. These are very numerous...
Page 127 - ... above mentioned, rendered in the jingle of the original. It is evident that it would have been by no means difficult to keep up the imitation throughout, but, upon consideration, I came, rightly or wrongly, to the conclusion that it was undesirable to do so, as it seemed to me that the se/a-foim was utterly foreign to the genius of English prose and that its preservation would be fatal to all vigour and harmony of style.
Page 16 - the man that has not seen Egypt, has not seen the greatest rarity in the world. All the land there is golden ; I mean, it is so fertile that it enriches its inhabitants. All the women of that country charm you by their beauty and their agreeable carriage.
Page 131 - Purpose-poem; practically identical with the better-known (Persian) form of the Ghazel or love-song par excellence, with the exception that the latter is limited to eighteen beits or verses and must contain the name of the poet in the last beit. The Kesideh may be composed in any one of the sixteen metres and is built upon a single rhyme, the two hemistichs of the first beit rhyming with each other and with the second hemistich of each succeeding beit to the end of the poem, however long it may be....
Page 16 - If you speak of the Nile, where is there a more wonderful river ? What water was ever lighter or more delicious? The very slime it carries along in its overflowing fattens the fields, which produce a thousand times more than other countries that are cultivated with the greatest labour. Observe what a poet said of the Egyptians, when he was obliged to depart from Egypt : Your Nile loads you with blessings every day ; it is for you onjy that it runs from such a distance.