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The Floating Press - Henry Iliowizi

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106 pages

English

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Trained as a rabbi, Henry Iliowizi traveled the world teaching before settling down, first in the United States and later in England. Throughout his career as an educator, Iliowizi loved learning about the folk tales and traditions of students who hailed from far-flung locales. In the collection The Weird Orient: Nine Mystic Tales, Iliowizi brings together classic tales from the Persian and Arabic cultural traditions.

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Short story

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 février 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776531394
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE WEIRD ORIENT
NINE MYSTIC TALES
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HENRY ILIOWIZI

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The Weird Orient Nine Mystic Tales First published in 1899 Epub ISBN 978-1-77653-139-4 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77653-140-0 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Publishers' Preface The Weird Orient The Doom of Al Zameri Sheddad's Palace of Irem The Mystery of the Damavant The Gods in Exile King Solomon and Ashmodai The Croesus of Yemen The Fate of Arzemia The Student of Timbuctu A Night by the Dead Sea Endnotes
Publishers' Preface
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In introducing to the general public a writer who has heretofore beenknown chiefly among the people of his own race, his publishers mayperhaps be permitted to say a word. Rabbi Iliowizi is a Hebrew of purelineage, the son of a zealous member of the Chassidim, a Kabbalisticsect numbering over half a million members in Russia, Roumania andGallicia, but rarely met with in this country. He passed his infancyand boyhood in the Russian provinces of Minsk and Moghileff, and inRoumania, growing to manhood and receiving his education atFrankfort-on-the-Main, Berlin and Breslau, where he qualified himselffor a theological career. After six years of study in Germany, hespent some four years more perfecting his training in modern languagesand in Arabic and Hebrew in London and Paris, under the auspices ofthe Anglo-Jewish Association and the Alliance Israelite Universelle,as a preparation to take charge of one of the outlying missionstations maintained by these affiliated societies in the Orient, wherethey support some fifty schools for the benefit of their oppressedco-religionists. After a prolonged service in Morocco, engaged in theeducational work of the two societies, Mr. Iliowizi lived for a yearat Gibraltar, and then came to America to devote himself to theministry of the Jewish Church, and is now the spiritual head of alarge congregation of his own people.
Mr. Iliowizi has hitherto contributed principally to the literature ofhis race, being known among Jews by several works; most widely,perhaps, by a volume of stories of Russian life, under the title of"In the Pale," recently published by the Jewish Publication Society ofAmerica for its subscribers. In the series of Eastern tales,comprising the present book, which appeals to a larger audience, hehas the special advantage, not only of a lengthened residence amongEastern peoples, but that he is himself of an Oriental race, of aheredity highly tinctured by the tenets of one of its most mysticalsects, and personally is of a strongly Semitic type of mind, temperedby the maturing of his powers in the clear atmosphere of the New Worldintellectual life. He has, therefore,—or ought to have,—exceptionalfacilities for interpreting to the West the mind and heart of theEast.
Whoever has lived long in the Orient,—and Morocco is essentiallyEastern in its atmosphere, even if geographically it might possibly beotherwise classed,—cannot but realize the subtle and inexpressibleinfluence that so strongly pervades its life, and which, often as ithas been spoken of, is so hard for the Occidental mind fully tounderstand or appreciate. It is the "call of the East," as Mr.Kipling happily puts it, and of which his British soldier sings insuch realistic fashion:
"An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year sodger tells; 'If you've 'eard the East a-callin', why you won't 'eed nothin' else.' No! you won't 'eed nothin' else But them spicy garlic smells An' the sunshine an' the palm trees an' the tinkly temple-bells!"
The mystery of the great desolate desert stretches, with theiroverpowering solemnity of deadly silence, has from time immemorialexercised a most powerful influence upon the imagination of those whofrequent them; and their optical illusions are often so curious and sostartling as to afford easy explanation of the legends of hidden andphantom cities, such as are told here and elsewhere, and indeed ofmuch else beside. Stories similar to "Sheddad's Palace of Irem," andthat of the vanishing city of the Peri in "The Croesus of Yemen," arefrequently met with.
The gloominess of the mountain regions, especially that of theSinaitic Peninsula, has also had a profound influence in giving colorto the legendary lore of the middle Orient; and this combination ofdesert and mountain influences perhaps largely accounts for what isdistinctively peculiar in the mysticism of the East, and for much thatwill be found in this book.
The Weird Orient
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The nine tales which follow have a history which is itself not withoutinterest. The materials have been accumulated during a residence ofmany years at Tetuan, Morocco, varied by excursions to places in theinterior where semi-barbarous life may be seen in its pristinecrudeness. In Tetuan I had somewhat exceptional opportunities ofgetting into the heart of native life and thought, and I am underobligations also for contributions received from a venerablestory-teller at Tangier, who had been assistant librarian at the Kairouin of Fez, the only university of the Moorish Empire. Thetales themselves have been for centuries floating through thelegendary lore which plays so large a part in the intellectualcloudland of the gorgeous East; my part has been to put them intoEnglish dress, with scrupulous adherence to their substance and, asfar as may be, to their native costume.
Tetuan is a typical Oriental town, beautiful from a distance,disappointing at a closer inspection, but not devoid of that classicatmosphere which invests ancient cities in the East with a spiritualsomething unfelt in modern centres of culture. Situated at the foot ofthe Beni Hosmar, a bold peak of the northern branch of the Atlasrange, it has a population of about twenty thousand souls, is enclosedby a dilapidated wall, boasts of some fine homes built by wealthyTetuani, has a separate mellah for its unfavored Jews, some Europeandwellings and cultivated gardens for foreign consuls, a large uncleansquare as a market-place, chronically infested by packs of mongreldogs fed by Moslem women, and something of an official residencewithin the moss-capped walls of a stronghold spoken of as the Casbah . The rest is covered by the Moorish quarter, a bewilderinglabyrinth of unpaved, unswept alleys, crooked lanes, the white,flat-roofed, unwindowed houses often meeting each other overhead, thuscreating dingy tunnels which are utilized as bazaars, with wretchedholes to right and left reserved for sundry wares and offices—theusual conditions of Moslem towns.
Unattractive as such a conglomeration of semi-barbarous retreats mustappear, neither Pegasus nor the muses would pass them withindifference. As the descendants of the Moors expelled from Hispaniaby their Catholic Majesties, the Tetuani show a degree of refinementunknown elsewhere in Barbary, and with it survives a taste for higherthings of which poetry is not the least. Tetuan's intellectualatmosphere is so generally recognized that the present Emir-al-Mumemin(sole ruler of the true faithful) sent his heir apparent, Hassan, tobe educated at the Casbah by a taleb chosen from the localaristocracy, in preference to the unfathomed wisdom stored in the wiseheads of the Kairouin at Fez. The minstrel, the fluent story-teller,the poetic historian, and the fine performer on the double-stringed gimreh , are not unfamiliar figures in Tetuan, provided one knows howto approach them, which is not so hard as it is to overcome theirreluctance to unbosom themselves before the infidel. Great as is theMoor's cupidity, it pales before his abhorrence of the foreignintruder who presumes to pry into his jealously guarded sanctuaries.Touch him on a point concerning his nebulous legends and traditionsand, like the turtle, he draws in his head, and that is the last youwill see of him, unless you strike the sensitive chord of nationalpride by speaking grandiloquently of non-Mussulman heroes and literarytriumphs. Even then Moslem passiveness proves often an immovableinertia. It has been found possible to provoke the garrulity of the taleb , adool and fukie , respectively representing our lawyer,notary, and man of letters; but there are two characters in Moroccowhom no whirlwind will move to dispute the infidel's claim to asuperior culture, and they are the all-knowing kadi and the emin ,the judge and the priest, both deriving their unquestioned authorityfrom al Koran, and thus cherishing a supreme contempt for the wisdomof the faithless inspired by the cunning devil. The idea is as old asIslam that what the Koran reveals not, Allah alone knows.
After many rueful failures to get at the sources of Barbary'sfolklore, the author of this book conceived the idea, which happilymet with some success, of creating a social focus sufficientlyattractive to ensnare unwary stragglers of infallible Islamism, suchas itinerant students, beggars, story-tellers and pilgrims, who, beingstrangers in the place, might be induced by liberal treatment and alittle policy to impart some glimpses of the precious lore so dear toone who had set his heart on the acquisition of so promising atreasure. Did the Arabian Nights and the other works we know exhaustthe vast resources of the Orient's mysteries? Without betraying hisultimate purpose, the author called a meeting of the foreignresidents, all good friends or acquaintances, and submitted the schemeof opening a Casino for mutual sociability and the reception of worthystrangers, someti