The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4

R >> Richard F. Burton >> The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4

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[FN#243] This sword which makes men invisible and which takes
place of Siegfried's Tarnkappe (invisible cloak) and of
"Fortunatus' cap" is common in Moslem folk-lore. The idea probably
arose from the venerable practice of inscribing the blades with
sentences, verses and magic figures.

[FN#244] Arab. "'Ukab," in books an eagle (especially black) and
P. N. of constellation but in Pop. usage= a vulture. In Egypt it is
the Neophron Percnopterus (Jerdon) or N. Gingianus (Latham), the
Dijajat Far'aun or Pharaoh's hen. This bird has been known to kill
the Bashah sparrow-hawk (Jerdon i. 60); yet, curious to say, the
reviewers of my "Falconry in the Valley of the Indus" questioned
the fact, known to so many travellers, that the falcon is also
killed by this "tiger of the air," despite the latter's feeble bill
(pp. 35-38). I was faring badly at their hands when the late Mr.
Burckhardt Barker came to the rescue. Falconicide is popularly
attributed, not only to the vulture, but also to the crestless
hawk-eagle (Nisaetus Bonelli) which the Hindus call Moranga=peacock
slayer.

[FN#245] Here I translate "Nahas"=brass, as the "kumkum"
(cucurbite) is made of mixed metal, not of copper.

[FN#246] Mansur al-Nimri, a poet of the time and a protege of
Yahya's son, Al-Fazl.

[FN#247] This was at least four times Mansur's debt.

[FN#248] Intendant of the Palace to Harun al-Rashid. The Bres.
Edit. (vii. 254) begins They tell that there arose full enmity
between Ja'afar Barmecide and a Sahib of Misr" (Wazir or Governor
of Egypt). Lane (ii. 429) quotes to this purpose amongst Arab;
historians Fakhr al-Din. (De Sacy's Chrestomathie Arabe i., p. 26,
edit. ii.)

[FN#249] Arab. "Armaniyah" which Egyptians call after their
mincing fashion "Irminiyeh" hence "Ermine" (Mus Ponticus).
Armaniyah was much more extensive than our Armenia, now degraded to
a mere province of Turkey, and the term is understood to include
the whole of the old Parthian Empire.

[FN#250] Even now each Pasha-governor must keep a "Wakil" in
Constantinople to intrigue and bribe for him at head-quarters.

[FN#251] The symbol of generosity, of unasked liberality, the
"black hand" being that of niggardness.

[FN#252] Arab. Rah =pure (and old) wine. Arabs, like our classics,
usually drank their wine tempered. So Imr al-Keys in his Mu'allakah
says, "Bring the well tempered wine that seems to be
saffron-tinctured; and, when water-mixed, o'erbrims the cup." (v.
2.)

[FN#253] There is nothing that Orientals relish more than these
"goody-goody" preachments; but they read and forget them as readily
as Westerns.

[FN#254] Lane (ii. 435) ill-advisedly writes "Sher," as "the word
is evidently Persian signifying a Lion." But this is only in the
debased Indian dialect, a Persian, especially a Shirazi, pronounces
"Shir." And this is how it is written in the Bresl. Edit., vii.
262. "Shar" is evidently a fancy name, possibly suggested by the
dynastic name of the Ghurjistan or Georgian Princes.

[FN#255] Again old experience, which has learned at a heavy cost
how many a goodly apple is rotten at the core.

[FN#256] This couplet has occurred in Night xxi. I give Torrens
(p. 206) by way of specimen.

[FN#257] Arab. "Zaka" = merely tasting a thing which may be sweet
with a bitter after-flavour

[FN#258] This tetraseich was in Night xxx. with a difference.

[FN#259] The lines have occurred in Night xxx. I quote Torrens, p.
311.

[FN#260] This tetrastich is in Night clxix. I borrow from Lane
(ii. 62).

[FN#261] The rude but effective refrigerator of the desert Arab
who hangs his water-skin to the branch of a tree and allows it to
swing in the wind.

[FN#262] Arab "Khumasiyah" which Lane (ii. 438) renders "of
quinary stature." Usually it means five spans, but here five feet,
showing that the girl was young and still growing. The invoice with
a slave always notes her height in spans measured from ankle-bone
to ear and above seven she loses value as being full grown. Hence
Sudasi (fem. Sudasiyah) is a slave six spans high, the Shibr or
full span (9 inches) not the Fitr or short span from thumb to
index. Faut is the interval-between every finger, Ratab between
index and medius, and Atab between medius and annularis.

[FN#263] "Moon faced" now sounds sufficiently absurd to us, but it
was not always so. Solomon (Cant. vi. 10) does not disdain the
image "fair as the moon, clear as the sun," and those who have seen
a moon in the sky of Arabia will thoroughly appreciate it. We find
it amongst the Hindus, the Persians, the Afghans, the Turks and all
the nations of Europe. We have, finally, the grand example of
Spenser,

"Her spacious forehead, like the clearest moon, etc."

[FN#264] Blue eyes have a bad name in Arabia as in India: the
witch Zarka of Al-Yamamah was noted for them; and "blue eyed" often
means "fierce-eyed," alluding to the Greeks and Daylamites,
mortal-enemies to Ishmael. The Arabs say "ruddy of mustachio, blue
of eye and black of heart."

[FN#265] Before explained as used with camphor to fill the dead
man's mouth.

[FN#266] As has been seen, slapping on the neck is equivalent to
our "boxing ears," but much less barbarous and likely to injure the
child. The most insulting blow is that with shoe sandal-or slipper
because it brings foot in contact with head. Of this I have spoken
before.

[FN#267] Arab. "Hibal" (= ropes) alluding to the A'akal-fillet
which binds the Kufiyah-kerchief on the Badawi's head. (Pilgrimage,
i. 346.)

[FN#268] Arab. "Khiyal"; afterwards called Kara Gyuz (= "black
eyes," from the celebrated Turkish Wazir). The mise-en-scene was
like that of Punch, but of transparent cloth, lamp lit inside and
showing silhouettes worked by hand. Nothing could be more
Fescenntne than Kara Gyuz, who appeared with a phallus longer than
himself and made all the Consuls-General-periodically complain of
its abuse, while the dialogue, mostly in Turkish, as even more
obscene. Most ingenious were Kara Gyuz's little ways of driving on
an Obstinate donkey and of tackling a huge Anatolian pilgrim. He
mounted the Neddy's back face to tail, and inserting his left thumb
like a clyster, hammered it with his right when the donkey started
at speed. For the huge pilgrim he used a ladder. These shows now
obsolete, used to enliven the Ezbekiyah Gardens every evening and
explain Ovid's Words,

"Delicias videam, Nile jocose, tuas!"

[FN#269] Mohammed (Mishkat al-Masabih ii. 360-62) says, "Change
the whiteness of your hair but not with anything black." Abu Bakr,
who was two years and some months older than the Prophet, used
tincture of Henna and Katam. Old Turkish officers justify black
dyes because these make them look younger and fiercer. Henna stains
white hair orange red; and the Persians apply after it a paste of
indigo leaves, the result is successively leek-green,
emerald-green, bottle-green and lastly lamp-black. There is a stage
in life (the youth of old age) when man uses dyes: presently he
finds that the whole face wants dye; that the contrast between
juvenile coloured hair and ancient skin is ridiculous and that it
is time to wear white.

[FN#270] This prejudice extends all over the East: the Sanskrit
saying is "Kvachit kana bhaveta sadhus" now and then a monocular is
honest. The left eye is the worst and the popular idea is, I have
said, that the damage will come by the injured member

[FN#271] The Arabs say like us, "Short and thick is never quick"
and "Long and thin has little in."

[FN#272] Arab. "Ba'azu layali," some night when his mistress
failed him.

[FN#273] The fountain in Paradise before noticed.

[FN#274] Before noticed as the Moslem St. Peter (as far as the
keys go).

[FN#275] Arab. "Munkasir" = broken, frail, languishing the only
form of the maladive allowed. Here again we have masculine for
feminine: the eyelids show love-desire, but, etc.

[FN#276] The river of Paradise.

[FN#277] See Night xii. "The Second Kalandar's Tale " vol. i. 113.

[FN#278] Lane (ii. 472) refers for specimens of calligraphy to
Herbin's "Developpements, etc." There are many more than seven
styles of writing as I have shown in Night xiii.; vol. i. 129.

[FN#279] Amongst good Moslems this would be a claim upon a man.

[FN#280] These lines have occurred twice already: and first appear
in Night xxii. I have borrowed from Mr. Payne (iv. 46).

[FN#281] Arab. "Ya Nasrani", the address is not intrinsically
slighting but it may easily be made so. I have elsewhere noted that
when Julian (is said to have) exclaimed "Vicisti Nazarene!" he was
probably thinking in Eastern phrase "Nasarta, ya Nasrani!"

[FN#282] Thirst is the strongest of all pleas to an Eastern,
especially to a Persian who never forgets the sufferings of his
Imam, Husayn, at Kerbela: he would hardly withhold it from the
murderer of his father. There is also a Hadis, "Thou shalt not
refuse water to him who thirsteth in the desert."

[FN#283] Arab. "Zimmi" which Lane (ii. 474) aptly translates a
"tributary." The Koran (chaps. ix.) orders Unbelievers to Islamize
or to "pay tribute by right of subjection" (lit. an yadin=out of
hand, an expression much debated). The least tribute is one dinar
per annum which goes to the poor-rate. and for this the Kafir
enjoys protection and almost all the civil rights of Moslems. As it
is a question of "loaves and fishes" there is much to say on the
subject; "loaves and fishes" being the main base and foundation of
all religious establishments.

[FN#284] This tetrastich has before occurred, so I quote Lane (ii.
444).

[FN#285] In Night xxxv. the same occurs with a difference.

[FN#286] The old rite, I repeat, has lost amongst all but the
noblest of Arab tribes the whole of its significance; and the
traveller must be careful how he trusts to the phrase "Nahnu
malihin" we are bound together by the salt.

[FN#287] Arab. "Alama" = Ala-ma = upon what ? wherefore ?

[FN#288] Arab. "Mauz"; hence the Linnean name Musa (paradisiaca,
etc.). The word is explained by Sale (Koran, chaps. xxxvii. 146) as
"a small tree or shrub;" and he would identify it with Jonah's
gourd.

[FN#289] Lane (ii. 446) "bald wolf or empowered fate," reading
(with Mac.) Kaza for Kattan (cat).

[FN#290] i.e. "the Orthodox in the Faith." Rashid is a proper
name, witness that scourge of Syria, Rashid Pasha. Born in 1830, of
the Haji Nazir Agha family, Darrah-Beys of Macedonian Draina, he
was educated in Paris where he learned the usual-hatred of
Europeans: he entered the Egyptian service in 1851, and, presently
exchanging it for the Turkish, became in due time Wali
(Governor-General) of Syria which he plundered most shamelessly.
Recalled in 1872, he eventually entered the Ministry and on June 15
1876, he was shot down, with other villains like himself, by
gallant Captain Hasan, the Circassian (Yarham-hu 'llah !).

[FN#291] Quoted from a piece of verse, of which more presently.

[FN#292] This tetrastich has occurred before (Night cxciii.). I
quote Lane (ii. 449), who quotes Dryden's Spanish Friar,

"There is a pleasure sure in being mad
Which none but madmen know."

[FN#293] Lane (ii. 449) gives a tradition of the Prophet, "Whoso
is in love, and acteth chastely, and concealeth (his passion) and
dieth, dieth a martyr." Sakar is No. 5 Hell for Magi Guebres,
Parsis, etc., it is used in the comic Persian curse, "Fi'n-nari wa
Sakar al-jadd w'al-pidar"=ln Hell and Sakar his grandfather and
his father.

[FN#294] Arab. "Sifr": I have warned readers that whistling is
considered a kind of devilish speech by the Arabs, especially the
Badawin, and that the traveller must avoid it. It savours of
idolatry: in the Koran we find (chaps. viii. 35), "Their prayer at
the House of God (Ka'abah) is none other than whistling and
hand-clapping;" and tradition says that they whistled through their
fingers. Besides many of the Jinn have only round holes by way of
mouths and their speech is whistling a kind of bird language like
sibilant English.

[FN#295] Arab. 'Kil wa kal"=lit. "it was said and he said;" a
popular phrase for chit chat, tittle-tattle, prattle and prate,
etc.

[FN#296] Arab. "Hadis." comparing it with a tradition of the
Prophet.

[FN#297] Arab. "Mikashshah," the thick part of a midrib of a
palm-frond soaked for some days in water and beaten out till the
fibres separate. It makes an exceedingly hard, although not a
lasting broom.

[FN#298] Persian, "the youth, the brave;" Sansk. Yuvan: and Lat.
Juvenis. The Kurd, in tales, is generally a sturdy thief; and in
real-life is little better.

[FN#299] Arab. "Ya Shatir ;" lit. O clever one (in a bad sense).

[FN#300] Lane (ii. 453) has it. "that I may dress thy hair'" etc.
This is Bowdlerising with a witness.

[FN#301] The sign of respect when a personage dismounts.
(Pilgrimage i. 77.)

[FN#302] So the Hindus speak of "the defilement of separation" as
if it were an impurity.

[FN#303] Lane (i. 605) gives a long and instructive note on these
public royal-banquets which were expected from the lieges by Moslem
subjects. The hanging-penalty is, perhaps, a tattle exaggerated;
but we find the same excess in the priestly Gesta Romanorum.

[FN#304] Had he eaten it he would have become her guest. Amongst
the older Badawin it was sufficient to spit upon a man (in
entreaty) to claim his protection: so the horse-thieves when caught
were placed in a hole in the ground covered over with matting to
prevent this happening. Similarly Saladin (Salah al-Din) the
chivalrous would not order a cup of water for the robber, Reynald
de Chatillon, before putting him to death

[FN#305] Arab. "Kishk" properly "Kashk"=wheat-meal-coarsely ground
and eaten with milk or broth. It is de rigueur with the Egyptian
Copts on the "Friday of Sorrow" (Good Friday): and Lane gives the
recipe for making it (M. E. chaps. xxvi.)

[FN#306] In those days distinctive of Moslems.

[FN#307] The euphemism has before been noticed: the Moslem reader
would not like to pronounce the words "I am a Nazarene." The same
formula occurs a little lower down to save the reciter or reader
from saying "Be my wife divorced," etc.

[FN#308] Arab, "Hajj," a favourite Egyptianism. We are wrong to
write Hajji which an Eastern would pronounce Haj-ji.

[FN#309] This is Cairene "chaff."

[FN#310] Whose shell fits very tight.

[FN#311] His hand was like a raven's because he ate with thumb and
two fingers and it came up with the rice about it like a camel's
hoof in dirty ground. This refers to the proverb (Burckhardt, 756),
"He comes down a crow-claw (small) and comes up a camel-hoof (huge
and round)."

[FN#312] Easterns have a superstitious belief in the powers of
food: I knew a learned man who never sat down to eat without a
ceremonious salam to his meat.

[FN#313] Lane (ii. 464), uses the vile Turkish corruption
"Rustum," which, like its fellow "Rustem," would make a Persian
shudder.

[FN#314] Arab. "Darrij" i.e. let them slide (Americanice).

[FN#315] This tetrastich has occurred before: so I quote Mr. Payne
(in loco).

[FN#316] Shaykh of Al-Butnah and Jabiyah, therefore a Syrian of
the Hauran near Damascus and grandson to Isu (Esau). Arab mystics
(unlike the vulgar who see only his patience) recognise that
inflexible integrity which refuses to utter "words of wind" and
which would not, against his conscience, confess to wrong-doing
merely to pacify the Lord who was stronger than himself. The
Classics taught this noble lesson in the case of Prometheus versus
Zeus. Many articles are called after Job e.g. Ra'ara' Ayyub or
Ghubayra (inula Arabica and undulata), a creeper with which he
rubbed himself and got well: the Copts do the same on "Job's
Wednesday," i.e. that before Whit Sunday O.S. Job's father is a
nickname of the camel, etc. etc.

[FN#317] Lane (in loco) renders "I am of their number." But "fi
al-siyak" means popularly "(driven) to the point of death."

[FN#318] Lit. = "pathway, road"; hence the bridge well known as
"finer than a hair and sharper than a sword," over which all
(except Khadijah and a chosen few) must pass on the Day of Doom; a
Persian apparatus bodily annexed by Al-Islam. The old Guebres
called it Puli Chinavar or Chinavad and the Jews borrowed it from
them as they did all their fancies of a future life against which
Moses had so gallantly fought. It is said that a bridge over the
grisly "brook Kedron" was called Sirat (the road) and hence the
idea, as that of hell-fire from Ge-Hinnom (Gehenna) where children
were passed through the fire to Moloch. A doubtful Hadis says, "The
Prophet declared Al-Sirat to be the name of a bridge over hell-
fire, dividing Hell from Paradise" (pp. 17, 122, Reynold's trans.
of Al-Siyuti's Traditions, etc.). In Koran i. 5, "Sirat" is simply
a path, from sarata, he swallowed, even as the way devours (makes
a lakam or mouthful of) those who travel it. The word was orig.
written with Sin but changed for easier articulation to Sad, one of
the four Huruf al-Mutabbakat, "the flattened," formed by the
broadened tongue in contact with the palate. This Sad also by the
figure Ishmam (=conversion) turns slightly to a Za, the
intermediate between Sin and Sad.

[FN#319] The rule in Turkey where catamites rise to the highest
rank: C'est un homme de bonne famille (said a Turkish officer in
Egypt) il a ete achete. Hence "Alfi" (one who costs a thousand) is
a well-known cognomen. The Pasha of the Syrian caravan, with which
I travelled' had been the slave of a slave and he was not a
solitary instance. (Pilgrimage i. 90.)

[FN#320] The device of the banquet is dainty enough for any old
Italian novella; all that now comes is pure Egyptian polissonnerie
speaking to the gallery and being answered by roars of laughter.

[FN#321] i.e. "art thou ceremonially pure and therefore fit for
handling by a great man like myself?"

[FN#322] In past days before Egypt was "frankified" many
overlanders used to wash away the traces of travel by a Turkish
bath which mostly ended in the appearance of a rump wriggling
little lad who offered to shampoo them. Many accepted his offices
without dreaming of his usual-use or misuse.

[FN#323] Arab. "Imam." This is (to a Moslem) a most offensive
comparison between prayer and car. cop.

[FN#324] Arab. "Fi zaman-hi," alluding to a peculiarity highly
prized by Egyptians; the use of the constrictor vaginae muscles,
the sphincter for which Abyssinian women are famous. The "Kabbazah"
( = holder), as she is called, can sit astraddle upon a man and can
provoke the venereal-orgasm, not by wriggling and moving but by
tightening and loosing the male member with the muscles of her
privities, milking it as it were. Consequently the cassenoisette
costs treble the money of other concubines. (Arranga-Ranga, p.
127.)

[FN#325] The little eunuchs had evidently studied the Harem.

[FN#326] Lane (ii. 494) relates from Al-Makrizi, that when
Khamarawayh, Governor of Egypt (ninth century), suffered from
insomnia, his physician ordered a pool of quicksilver 50 by 50
cubits, to be laid out in front of his palace, now the Rumaylah
square. "At the corners of the pool were silver pegs, to which were
attached by silver rings strong bands of silk, and a bed of skins,
inflated with air, being thrown upon the pool and secured by the
bands remained in a continual-state of agreeable vacillation." We
are not told that the Prince was thereby salivated like the late
Colonel Sykes when boiling his mercury for thermometric
experiments,

[FN#327] The name seems now unknown. "Al-Khahi'a" is somewhat
stronger than "Wag," meaning at least a "wicked wit." Properly it
is the Span. "perdido," a youth cast off (Khala') by his friends;
though not so strong a term as "Harfush"=a blackguard.

[FN#328] Arab. "Farsakh"=parasang.

[FN#329] Arab. "Nahas asfar"=yellow copper, brass as opposed to
Nahas ahmar=copper The reader who cares to study the subject will
find much about it in my "Book of The Sword," chaps. iv.

[FN#330] Lane (ii. 479) translates one stanza of this mukhammas
(pentastich) and speaks of "five more," which would make six.

[FN#331] A servile name. Delicacy, Elegance.

[FN#332] These verses have occurred twice (Night ix. etc.): so I
give Lane's version (ii. 482).

[FN#333] A Badawi tribe to which belonged the generous Ma'an bin
Za'idab, often mentioned The Nights.

[FN#334] Wealthy harems, I have said, are hot-beds of Sapphism and
Tribadism. Every woman past her first youth has a girl whom she
calls her "Myrtle" (in Damascus). At Agbome, capital-of Dahome, I
found that a troop of women was kept for the use of the "Amazons"
(Mission to Gelele, ii. 73). Amongst the wild Arabs, who ignore
Socratic and Sapphic perversions, the lover is always more jealous
of his beloved's girl-friends than of men rivals. In England we
content ourselves with saying that women corrupt women more than
men do.

[FN#335] The Hebrew Pentateuch; Roll of the Law.

[FN#336] I need hardly notice the brass trays, platters and
table-covers with inscriptions which are familiar to every reader:
those made in the East for foreign markets mostly carry imitation
inscriptions lest infidel eyes fall upon Holy Writ.

[FN#337] These six distichs are in Night xiii. I borrow Torrens
(p. 125) to show his peculiar treatment of spinning out 12 lines to
38.

[FN#338] Arab. "Musamirah"=chatting at night. Easterns are
inordinately fond of the practice and the wild Arabs often sit up
till dawn, talking over the affairs of the tribe, indeed a Shaykh
is expected to do so. "Early to bed and early to rise" is a
civilised, not a savage or a barbarous saying. Samir is a companion
in night talk; Rafik of the road; Rahib in riding horse or camel,
Ka'id in sitting, Sharib and Rafis at drink, and Nadim at table:
Ahid is an ally. and Sharik a partner all on the model of "Fa'il."

[FN#339] In both lover and beloved the excess of love gave them
this clairvoyance.

[FN#340] The prayer will be granted for the excess (not the
purity) of her love.

[FN#341] This wailing over the Past is one of the common-places of
Badawi poetry. The traveller cannot fail, I repeat, to notice the
chronic melancholy of peoples dwelling under the brightest skies.

[FN#342] Moons=Budur

[FN#343] in Paradise as a martyr.

[FN#344] i.e. to intercede for me in Heaven; as if the young woman
were the prophet.

[FN#345] The comparison is admirable as the two letters are
written. It occurs in Al-Hariri (Ass. of Ramlah).

"So I embraced him close as Lam cleaves to Alif:"

And again;

"She laid aside reluctance and I embraced her close
As if I were Lam and my love Alif."

The Lomad Olaph in Syriac is similarly colligated.

[FN#346] Here is a double entendre "and the infirm letters (viz.
a, w and y) not subject to accidence, left him." The three make up
the root "Awi"=pitying, condoling.

[FN#347] Showing that consummation had taken place. It was a sign
of good breeding to avoid all "indecent hurry" when going to bed.
In some Moslem countries the bridegroom does not consummate the
marriage for seven nights; out of respect for (1) father (2) mother
(3) brother and so forth. If he hurry matters he will be hooted as
an "impatient man" and the wise will quote, "Man is created of
precipitation" (Koran chaps. xxi. 38), meaning hasty and
inconsiderate. I remark with pleasure that the whole of this tale
is told with commendable delicacy. O si sic omnia!

[FN#348] Pers. "Nauroz"(=nau roz, new day):here used in the Arab.
plur.'Nawariz, as it lasted six days. There are only four:
universal-festivals; the solstices and the equinoxes; and every
successive religion takes them from the sun and perverts them to
its own private purposes. Lane (ii. 496) derives the venerable
Nauroz whose birth is hid in the outer glooms of antiquity from the
"Jewish Passover"(!)

[FN#349] Again the "babes" of the eyes.

[FN#350] i.e. whose glance is as the light of the glowing braise
or (embers). The Arab. "Mikbas"=pan or pot full of small charcoal,
is an article well known in Italy and Southern Europe. The word is
apparently used here because it rhymes with "Anfas" (souls,
spirits).

[FN#351] i.e. martyrdom; a Koranic term "fi sabili 'llahi" = on
the way of Allah

[FN#352] These rhymes in -y, -ee and -ie are purposely affected,
to imitate the cadence of the Arabic.

[FN#353] Arab. "Sujud," the ceremonial-prostration, touching the
ground with the forehead So in the Old Testament "he bowed (or fell
down) and worshipped" (Gen. xxiv., 26 Mat. ii., 11), of which our
translation gives a wrong idea.

[FN#354] A girl is called "Alfiyyah " = A-shaped.

[FN#355] i.e. the medial-form of m.

[FN#356] i.e. the inverted n.

[FN#357] It may also mean a "Sevigne of pearls."

[FN#358] Koran xxvii. 12. This was one of the nine "signs" to
wicked "Pharaoh." The "hand of Moses" is a symbol of power and
ability (Koran vii. 105). The whiteness was supernatural-beauty,
not leprosy of the Jews (Exod. iv. 6); but brilliancy, after being
born red or black: according to some commentators, Moses was a
negro.

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