"Arabian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of that climate." The cities of Samarcand, Balckd, Ispahan, and Bagdad, were enveloped and surrounded by luxurious and splendid gardens. No wonder when those countries were partly governed by such celebrated men as Haroun-al-Raschid, and his son Al-Mamoun, the generous protectors of Arabian literature, and which son (about the year 813) has been justly termed the Augustus of Bagdad. "Study, books, and men of letters, (I am quoting the eloquent pages of De Sismondi On the Literature of the Arabians,) almost entirely engrossed his attention. ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... that the great hotel that wuz nighest to us looked by night jest like one of the fairy palaces we read about in Arabian Nights, and one night we see it. From the ground clear up to the high ruff it wuz all ablaze with lines of flashin' light, and I sez instinctively to myself, "Jerusalem the golden!" and "Pan American Electric Tower!" And I d'no which metafor satisfied me best. 'Tennyrate ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... is a picture that will not impress an Englishman with the due sensation of dreariness, unless he recollects that in France there are no enclosures—that the country lies spread out before him, in some parts and seasons, like a richly variegated carpet; in others, like an Arabian desert. The romantic, Eastern, Biblical olive!—what is it? 'The trunk, a weazened, sapless-looking piece of timber, the branches spreading out from it like the top of a mushroom; and the colour, when you can see it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... handsome interior, while the finishing touch is given by the performance of the musicians and singing girls with which the guests are entertained, leading one instinctively to call to mind many similar scenes so wonderfully described in the "Arabian Nights." Many of the adventures of its heroes and heroines are suggested by the secret passages which the wall cupboards often hide, and may well have occurred in houses we may visit to-day in Cairo, for, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... that an expedition was to be sent by the Indian Government, under the command of Lieutenant Burton, to explore the Somali country, a large tract lying due south of Aden, and separated from the Arabian coast by the Gulf of Aden, he offered his services, and was accepted. Two other Indian officers, Lieutenants Stroyan and ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... present day may be summarized as the struggle between Cross and Crescent. This struggle is characterized by a persistent ebb and flow. Mohammed in 622 A.D. transformed, as if by magic, a cluster of Bedouin tribes into a warlike people. An Arabian Empire was formed, which reached from the Ebro to the Indus. Its further advance was stemmed in the year 732, just a hundred years after Mohammed's death, by Charles Martel, in the seven days' ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... be so. Fifty years ago the man would have been laughed at who talked about sending a message to Australia and getting the answer back the same day, but we do not think much of it now. We would have thought of the Arabian Nights, and magicians, if a man had spoken to some one miles away, then listened to his tiny whisper answering back; but these telephonic communications are getting to be common business matters now. Why, Vane, when ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... occasionally and by good fortune, nuggets of gold; and in the other stream bed, certainly and without hazard, you could dig up little caskets, containing talismans which gave length of days and peace; and alabaster vases of precious balms, which were better than the Arabian Dervish's ointment, and made not only the eyes to see, but the mind to know, whatever it would—I wonder in which of the stream beds there would be ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... rival kings in Babylonia joined forces against a common enemy and invaded the Western Land. Probably there was much unrest there. Great ethnic disturbances were in progress which were changing the political complexion of Western Asia. In addition to the outpourings of Arabian peoples into Palestine and Syria, which propelled other tribes to invade Mesopotamia, northern Babylonia, and Assyria, there was also much unrest all over the wide area to north and west of Elam. Indeed, the Elamite migration into southern Babylonia may not have been unconnected with the southward ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... be inhabited, Neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; Neither shall shepherds make their ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... the puppets, poor children of mere magic, had not the traditions of the golden age of science for a setting, and were obliged to content themselves with mere tricks of jars of genii instead of applied electricity and its daring. What an Arabian Nights' Entertainment we might have had if only Scheherazade had ever heard of the Present! As for the thousand-and-one-nights, they would not have contained all her invention. No wonder that the time went ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... the name of Saraceni was applied by Greeks and Romans to the troublesome Nomad Arabs of the Syro-Arabian desert."—Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the Middle Ages, however, Europeans began to call all their Moslem enemies Saracens. It is in the limited sense that it is here applied, designating the first followers of Mohammed before the rise of ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... at last upon one of these fair fields, where Nature, in her abundance, spreads her cloth of gold, spacious and apt for the entertainment of mighty multitudes—or perhaps, from the curious subtlety of its position, like the carpet in the Arabian tale, seeming to contract so as to be covered by a few only, or to dilate so as to receive an innumerable host. Here, under a bright sun, such as shone at Austerlitz or Buena Vista—amidst the peaceful harmonies of nature—on the Sabbath of peace—we behold bands of brothers, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... thinks divine, And hates the things which you believe so fine. I know your secret: 'tis the cook-shop breeds That lively sense of what the country needs: You grieve because this little nook of mine Would bear Arabian spice as soon as wine; Because no tavern happens to be nigh Where you can go and tipple on the sly, No saucy flute-girl, at whose jigging sound You bring your feet down lumbering to the ground. And yet, methinks, you've plenty on your hands In breaking ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... All knew that Master Harry was going to college, and most of them had a kind word and a look of farewell. I do not stop to say what adventures he began to imagine, or what career to devise for himself before he had ridden three miles from home. He had not read Monsieur Galland's ingenious Arabian tales as yet; but be sure that there are other folks who build castles in the air, and have fine hopes, and kick them down too, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the Duke of York, the Duke of Fife, and among notable foreign princes, the Grand Duke Servius of Russia, the Crown Prince Dando of Montenegro, and Mohammed Ali Khan, brother of the Khedive of Egypt, who rode a pure white Arabian charger. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... president. Texas' educational system is probably up to the average, and President Winston as wise as many other pompous "gerund-grinders" who look into leather spectacles and see nothing, yet imagine that, like the adventurer in the Arabian tale, they are gazing upon all the wealth of the world; but that is no reason why we should continue to waste the public revenue on Lagado professors who would extract sunbeams from cucumbers and calcine ice into gunpowder. While nothing ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... in it are clearly divine beings who have been brought down to the level of human nature, and who perform feats and tricks so strange and incredible that in reading them we imagine ourselves in the midst of the Arabian Nights. In the struggles of the two favourite heroes against the cruel princes of Xibalba, there may be reminiscences of historical events; but it would be perfectly hopeless to attempt to extricate these ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... feel so queer," she said one morning, "they are just like the Prince's legs which were turned to black marble in the Arabian Nights. What do you suppose is the reason, Papa? Won't they feel ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... green; "then a dull white belt marked the great Sahara or Desert, and then it exhibited a deep green to its most southern extremity." The Morea and Grecian Archipelago now fell under their telescope, and gradually the whole Mediterranean, and Arabian Gulf—the great media separating Africa from Europe and Asia; "the political divisions of these quarters of the world were of course undistinguishable, and few of the natural were discernible by the naked eye. The Alps were marked by a white streak, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... investigated with success his own mind, the natural world, the abstract sciences, and the great principles of morality and religion. The author is not entitled to the merit of invention, since he has blended the English story of Robinson Crusoe with the Arabian romance of Hai Ebn Yokhdan, which he might have read in the Latin version of Pocock. In the Automathes I cannot praise either the depth of thought or elegance of style; but the book is not devoid of entertainment or ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... spell off. They flew on all through the night, and when dawn began to break, saw straight ahead land stretching far to right and left. There was no doubt that this was the Oman peninsula, which, jutting out from the Arabian mainland, almost closes the Gulf. Steering now a slightly more northward course, and rising to clear the hills of the peninsula, Smith passed over the neck of land, and found himself in the Gulf of Oman, half-way between the head of ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... the rind; and others of the pure juice of oranges. These sherbets were copiously supplied in high glass ewers, placed in great numbers on the ground.... After the dishes of meat were removed, a dessert of Arabian fruits, confectionaries, and sweetmeats was served; among the latter was the date-bread. This sweetmeat is made in perfection only by the blacks at Fezzan, of the ripe date of the country.... They make ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... dignified and scornful of such performances, met us halfway and took my gun. He seemed to be able to understand the old fellow's brand of Swahili, and said it over again in a brand I could understand. From it I gathered that I was called a marvellously great sultan, a protector of the poor, and other Arabian ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Persians having become extinct and ruined, a part of that commerce passed, on account of the division of the states and the increase of trade among the peoples, by way of the Red Sea to the Arabian Gulf. Then, entering by way of the two Arabias, the nations of Asia Minor snared the spices and drugs; and through Africa they went down by the river Nilo to Egipto, stopping now in Cayro by land, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... Cousin Our Little Alaskan Cousin Our Little Arabian Cousin Our Little Argentine Cousin Our Little Armenian Cousin Our Little Australian Cousin Our Little Austrian Cousin Our Little Belgian Cousin Our Little Bohemian Cousin Our Little Brazilian Cousin Our ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... strange nations—Arabs with long flowing robes and swarthy skins, black Nubians and portly Turks, all screaming, apparently at the top of their voices. Kitty's mamma had read to her little girl some stories from the "Arabian Nights," and now, as they approached this eastern land, they mingled curiously in her little brain. They were not long in landing, and as they drove to the hotel on the Grand Square, Kitty fairly gave herself up to staring about the streets. Here came ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... proportion of the time, during a long voyage, is spent on the water, as compared with the days in harbour. And what are the boasted glories of the illimitable ocean. A tedious waste, a desert of water, as the Arabian calls it. No doubt there are some delightful scenes. A moonlight night, with the clear heavens and the dark glittering sea, and the white sails filled by the soft air of a gently blowing trade-wind, a dead calm, with the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... three years old; and an aunt, Miss Evelina Porter, cared for him and gave him nearly all his education. Books, too, were his teachers. He says that between his thirteenth and nineteenth years he did more reading than in all the years since. His favorite books were The Arabian Nights, in Lane's translation, and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, an old English book in which bits of science, superstition and reflections upon life were strangely mingled. Other books that he ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... carried away by the waves? Scarcely did the possibility of this idea arise, when two messengers were dispatched to each side of the river to make fresh search, from its junction with the Euphrates above Balsora to the spot where it flows into the Arabian Sea, to ascertain if the corpse of Haschem had been washed ashore. But these messengers also returned to the anxious father, and had not found what they sought. Now the father and his friend gave up Haschem for lost; Naima's manly spirit was broken; grief ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... abandoned to the antelopes and wild asses of the desert; but a variety of populous towns and villages were pleasantly situated on the banks of the Euphrates, and in the islands which are occasionally formed by that river. The city of Annah, or Anatho, the actual residence of an Arabian emir, is composed of two long streets, which enclose, within a natural fortification, a small island in the midst, and two fruitful spots on either side, of the Euphrates. The warlike inhabitants of Anatho showed a disposition to stop the march of a Roman emperor; till they were diverted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Baker talking about one last year," Francis continued, "never any details, but all kinds of mysterious hints—a sort of mixture between a Roman orgy and a chapter from the 'Arabian Nights'—singers from Petrograd, dancers from Africa ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of fantastic people who speak Chestertonese, then he is quite entitled to waive any trifling conventions which hinder the liberty of his subjects. As already pointed out, such is his humour. The only disadvantage, as somebody once complained of the Arabian Nights, is that one is apt to lose one's interest in a hero who is liable at any moment to turn into a camel. None of Chesterton's heroes do, as a matter of fact, become camels, but I would nevertheless strongly advise any ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... is not much that to the fragrant blossom The ragged brier should change, the bitter fir Distil Arabian myrrh; Nor that, upon the wintry desert's bosom, The harvest should rise plenteous, and the swain Bear home ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... of the pantomime is a more or less lurid eastern melodrama, based on the Arabian Nights. A hunchback is in love with a beautiful young dancer, who hates him. He sells her to a fierce old sheik, to get her out of the way of another lover, the sheik's son. Then he takes poison. Sumurun, the sheik's ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... I,' said his brother. 'It is impossible for a man to be a more devoted slave to his appetite than our great-uncle Geff. The slave of the ring in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments had a holiday life of it in comparison. Perhaps it is wrong to say it, but really I feel quite disgusted with him. As father truly says, "All his conversation has reference to the sustenation of his insatiable ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... was a good rider, and fond of horses, and whose curiosity was always aroused by things connected with show and station, suffered the little girl to draw her into the garden. Two grooms, each mounted on a horse of the pure Arabian breed, and each leading another, swathed and bandaged, were riding slowly up the road; and Caroline was so attracted by the novel appearance of the animals in a place so deserted that she followed the children towards them, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chant More welcome notes to weary bands Of travelers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the structures above them. Except two or three tapers glimmering through the casements, no one circumstance indicated human existence. I might, without being thought very romantic, have imagined myself in the city of petrified people, which Arabian fabulists are so fond of describing. Were any one to ask my advice upon the subject of retirement, I should tell him,—By all means repair to Antwerp. No village amongst the Alps, or hermitage upon Mount Lebanon, is less disturbed: you may pass ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... who effected the conversion [of the Malaysian tribes] were not, for the most part, genuine Arabs, but the mixed descendants of Arab and Persian traders from the Persian and Arabian gulfs—parties who, by their intimate acquaintance with the manners and languages of the islanders, were far more effectual instruments. The earliest recorded conversion was that of the people of Achin ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... Italian dictionary, and seated himself by his Italian; Agamemnon, with the German dictionary, by the German. The little boys took their copy of the "Arabian Nights" to the Turk. Mr. Peterkin attempted to explain to the Russian that he had no Russian dictionary, as he had hoped to learn Sanscrit of him, while Mrs. Peterkin was trying to inform her teacher that she had no books in Spanish. ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... things,—unless new recruits, or under the stimulus of aguardiente. As often as I have left the quarters of the more healthy and animated rangers in the outskirts, and walked down into the populous part of the camp, I have been reminded of one of those enchanted cities of the "Arabian Nights," where the silent inhabitants, though grouped about, seemingly engaged in their ordinary occupations, are in reality soulless, and no better than dead men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... within sight of the domes and minarets of the sacred city, and looking towards the mosque of Omar—arrogantly a-glitter on the site of Solomon's Temple—there perches among black, barren rocks a colony of Arabian Jews from Yemen. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... had finished her display. It was like the picture of Pandora opening her box, to see the pretty creature opening the big, carved wardrobe to show me the layers of delicate embroidered raiment, muslin and laces and jewels, curious trinkets and wonderful gifts worthy of the Arabian Nights. There were two rooms full of treasures that had been laid at her feet, and no doubt, like Pandora, Sara had the rainbow-tinted hope lying amid the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... mountains north of the ancient Chinese {119} capital. At the Pass this morning I saw three such camel trains coming down from Mongolia and the Desert of Gobi: long, slow-moving, romantic caravans that made me feel as if I had become a character in the Arabian Nights or a contemporary of Kublai-Khan. One of the trains was the longest I have yet seen—twenty-five or thirty camels, I should say, treading Indian-file with their usual unostentatious stateliness, a wooden pin through each camel's nostrils from which a cord bound him to the ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... following sketch vividly describes an English traveler's impression of the desert country that lies between Jerusalem and Cairo. Mr. Kinglake had only an interpreter, two Arabian attendants and two ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... along the Arabian coast of Mahrah and Hadramaut, for a distance of six miles, its undulating line of mountains being occasionally relieved by some ancient ruin. The 5th of February we at last entered the Gulf of Aden, a perfect funnel introduced ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... are in several cases distinct from those of India. We know as yet too little of the geology of the eastern peninsula to say from what epoch dates its connexion with Indo-Oceanic land. Mr. Theobald has ascertained the existence of Triassic, Cretaceous, and Nummulitic rocks in the Arabian coast range; and Carboniferous limestone is known to occur from Moulmein southward, while the range east of the Irrawadi is formed of younger Tertiary rocks. From this it would appear that a considerable ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... find him, or he will find us, if he is alive," said Kathlyn. "Now let us make ready for the last journey. One hundred miles to the west is the Arabian gulf. It is a caravan port, and there will be sailing vessels and steamships." She shook him by the shoulders joyously. "Dad, we are going ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... the noblemen and high officials, who now crowded the palace, were hopeful and expectant, and saw a rare future of costly feasts and intoxicating pleasures. The stupid and frugal entertainments of Frederick William would give place to royal fetes worthy of the Arabian Nights. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Midian, "the ornaments that were on their camels' necks." The marginal translation has "ornaments like the moon;" and in verse 24. it is stated that the Midianites were Ishmaelites. If, therefore, it be borne in mind that Mohammed was an Arabian, and that the Arabians were Ishmaelites, we may perhaps be allowed to infer that the origin of the use of the crescent was not as a symbol of Mohammed's religion, but that it was adopted by his countrymen and followers from their ancestors, and may be referred to at least ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... channels the waters have chafed, ground, abraded, eroded for centuries which man cannot number. Like the Afreets of the Arabian Nights, they have been mighty slaves, subject to a far mightier master. That potent magician whose lair is in the centre of the earth, and whom men have vaguely styled the attraction of gravitation, has summoned them incessantly toward ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Verds; it was no ordinary pleasure rambling over the plains of lava under a tropical sun, but when I first entered on and beheld the luxuriant vegetation in Brazil, it was realizing the visions in the 'Arabian Nights.' The brilliancy of the scenery throws one into a delirium of delight, and a beetle hunter is not likely soon to awaken from it, when whichever way he turns fresh treasures meet his eye. At Rio de Janeiro three months passed away like so many weeks. I ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... across them, as if in Bengal lights, is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded with inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy, Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine, Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths, hygienic chocolate," etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the breadth of the shop, bears, in gold letters, "Homais, Chemist." Then, at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixt to the counter, the word "Laboratory" ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... but the romance of her marriage was still new. I remember one summer evening, when the low sun shone between the slats of her dairy window, and I, on a creepy stool by the wall, alternately read The Arabian Nights and talked to her while she gathered the butter from the churn, that her man came in, and, not seeing me in the shadow, drew her head back and kissed her brown face and head with a passion not all common after ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... there's a herd of them to be seen there. It is outside the Exposition grounds, but worth going to see, I should think. There are rifle experts, bucking ponies, dancing dervishes, athletes, female riders, besides American, German, French, English, Cossack, Mexican, and Arabian cavalry, to say nothing of cowboys, and other attractions too many ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... deemed no small triumph for the caster; one, too, in which the state might not scorn to share. The homicide was overlooked. By the charitable that deed was but imputed to sudden transports of esthetic passion, not to any flagitious quality. A kick from an Arabian charger; not sign ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... the islands in 1507, but were driven from their settlements in that quarter by Shah Abbas in 1622. The islands afterwards became an object of contention between the Persians and Arabs, and at last the Arabian tribe of the Athubis made themselves masters ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the Chinese Lao-tse enunciated the mysteries of Taoism and Confucius uttered his maxims regarding the five earthly relations of man, to be followed within another century by the bold teaching of Mencius that kings should rule in righteousness. In Asia it was 1,000 years afterwards that the Arabian Mohammed proclaimed himself as the authoritative prophet. There the God and Father of us all revealed Himself to Hebrew sage and prophet in the night vision and the angelic form and the still, small voice; and in Asia are the village in which was cradled and the great altar of the world on ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... her, and she walked on mechanically, till the doctor entered his seat and placed her beside him. The brilliant chandeliers shone down on elegant dresses, glittering diamonds, and beautiful women, and, looking forward, Beulah was reminded of the glowing descriptions in the "Arabian Nights." She observed that many curious eyes were bent upon her, and ere she had been seated five minutes more than one lorgnette was leveled at her. Everybody knew Dr. Hartwell, and she saw him constantly returning the bows of recognition ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... notwithstanding they have been known in the East for many centuries; amongst the few, none has made more curious mention of them than Arabschah, in a chapter of his life of Timour or Tamerlane, which is deservedly considered as one of the three classic works of Arabian literature. This passage, which, while it serves to illustrate the craft, if not the valour of the conqueror of half the world, offers some curious particulars as to Gypsy life in the East at a remote period, will scarcely be considered out of place if reproduced here, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... 0% permanent crops: 0% meadows and pastures: 9% forest and woodland: 0% other: 91% Irrigated land: NA km2 Environment: vast wasteland Note: strategic location near world's busiest shipping lanes and close to Arabian oilfields; terminus of rail ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... them. Neither did I see the register containing the names of Ali, Salah-Eddin, Ibrahim or Abraham, on which Bonaparte is said to have inscribed his name. I perceived at a distance some high hills which were said to be Mount Sinai. I conversed, through the medium of an interpreter, with some Arabian chiefs of Tor and its neighbourhood. They had been informed of our excursion to the Wells, and that they might there thank the French General for the protection granted to their caravans and their trade with Egypt. On the 19th of December, before his departure ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... vast waters of the Atlantic were regarded with "awe and wonder, seeming to bound the world as with a chaos," needs no greater proof than the description given of it by Xerif al Edrizi, an eminent Arabian writer, whose countrymen were the boldest navigators of the Middle Ages, and possessed all that was then known of geography. "The ocean," he observes, "encircles the ultimate bounds of the inhabited earth, and all beyond it is unknown. No one has ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... my childhood was my father's gift to me of an English version of Monsieur Galland's book, 'The Arabian Nights' Entertainments.' Then the tinkle of the shop bell assumed a new significance. Might not Haroun al Raschid himself, with Giafar, his vizier, and Mesrour, his man, follow its cracked summons, or ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... difference between the nightingale that sings in the tree tops and the artificial bird that goes with a spring. Cities like New York, Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago listened and heard, if sometimes indistinctly, the notes of universal appeal, and children saw the Arabian Nights come true. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... of doors a lot of miscellaneous lumber that had insensibly collected there during the last half century; lugged in a few comfortable broad-bottomed chairs and stanch old tables; set up a bookshelf containing Walton's "Complete Angler," "Dialogues of Devils," "Arabian Nights," Miss Burney's "Evelina," and other equally fashionable and ingenious works; kindled a great fire on the broad hearth; and, upon the whole, rendered the aspect of things more comfortable than would have been anticipated. ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... repetition of orders like these was a great advantage,—not only because of the novel design of the ships, but also because of their constructive details. We did our best to fit up the Egyptian, Dalmatian, and Arabian, as first-rate vessels. Those engaged in the Mediterranean trade finding them to be serious rivals, partly because of the great cargos which they carried, but principally from the regularity with which they made their voyages with such surprisingly small consumption of ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... attended Marie Louise was altogether unnerved by his emotions. "Compose yourself," said Bonaparte; "imagine that you are assisting a poor girl in the Faubourg Saint Antoine." This was surely a far wiser course than that of the Eastern king in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, who proclaimed that the physicians who failed to cure his daughter should have their heads chopped off. Bonaparte knew mankind well; and, as he acted towards this surgeon, he acted towards his officers. No sovereign was ever so indulgent to mere errors ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... speaking. The company journeyed somewhat east of south, keeping near the borders of the Red Sea; then, changing their course to the eastward, crossed the peninsula of Arabia; and there, on the shores of the Arabian Sea, built and provisioned a vessel in which they committed themselves to divine care upon the waters. Their voyage carried them eastward across the Indian Ocean, then over the south Pacific Ocean to the western coast of South America, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the first to reach the veranda, Foster who had been so long accustomed to faring at Alaska road-houses, to making his own camp, on occasion, with a single helper in the frosty solitudes, that view through the French window must have seemed like a scene from the Arabian Nights. Involuntarily he stopped, and suddenly the luxurious interior became a setting for one living figure. Elizabeth was there, arranging trifles on a Christmas tree; and Mrs. Feversham, seated at a piano, was playing a brilliant bolero; but the one woman he saw held the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Times, currente calamo, has thrown the contents of these two sentences together, and somewhat strengthened the expressions of his author, who does not call the Coptic system of inflexion rude, nor assert that it is totally different from the Syro-Arabian system, but quotes the opinion of Benfey, that they differ so much that neither can have originated from the other, but both from a parent language. The distinction between a system of inflexion and one of affixes and prefixes is ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... my son-in-law told me to say he had found out that Psamtik, the crown-prince, and your rival, Petammon, had been the sole causes of this execrable deed. I could not make up my mind to trust myself on that Typhon's sea, so I travelled with an Arabian trading caravan as far as Tadmor,—[Palmyra]—the Phoenician palm-tree station in the wilderness," and then on to Carchemish, on the Euphrates, with merchants from Sidon. The roads from Sardis and from Phoenicia meet there, and, as I was sitting very ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lasting happiness for actions which Fenelon would have been the first to pronounce splendid sins. The same may be said of Mr. Southey's Mahommedan and Hindoo heroes and heroines. In Thalaba, to speak in derogation of the Arabian impostor is blasphemy; to drink wine is a crime; to perform ablutions and to pay honor to the holy cities are works of merit. In the Curse of Kehama, Kailyal is commended for her devotion to the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that every boy and girl can take to heart; while the story of his later career, through the rapid changes that made him general, consul, conqueror, emperor, is as full of interest, marvel, and romance as any of those wonder-stories of the "Arabian Nights" for which "the youngster" expressed so much admiration, but which old ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... have a tendency to contract the views and deaden the sensibility of those who follow them with extreme assiduity. A powerful mind, which has been long employed in such studies, may be compared to the gigantic spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded to contract himself to small dimensions in order to enter within the enchanted vessel, and, when his prison had been closed upon him, found himself unable to escape from the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stranger. No one could give him any information, excepting that he had been for some time past a casual frequenter of the library; that his reading lay chiefly among works treating of the occult sciences, and that he was particularly curious in his inquiries after Arabian manuscripts. They added, that he never held communication with any one, excepting to ask for particular works; that, after a fit of studious application, he would disappear for several days, and even weeks, and when ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... greatest plays." Coleridge, however, thought it "a hateful work"; it is also a poor work, badly constructed, and for the most part carelessly written. In essence it is a mere tract against Puritanism, and in form a sort of Arabian Nights' Entertainment in which the hero plays the part of Haroun-al-Raschid.] whose anger has no stead-fastness; but the gentle forgivingness of disposition that is so marked in Vincentio is a trait we found emphasized in Romeo, and again in Hamlet and again in Macbeth. It is, indeed, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... on the walls was of the choicest scarlet wool, and Coan silk, semi-transparent and striped with gold. Gold plating shone on the section of the mast enclosed within the cabin. An odour of the rarest Arabian frankincense was wafted from the pastils burning on a curiously wrought tripod of Corinthian brass. The upholsteries and rugs were more splendid than any that Cornelia had seen gracing the ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Mother Goose, Complete. the Looking-Glass. Palmer Cox's Fairy Book. Andersen's Fairy Tales. Peck's Uncle Ike and the Red-Headed Arabian Nights. Boy. Black Beauty. Pilgrim's Progress. Child's History of England. Robinson Crusoe. Grimm's Fairy Tales. Swiss Family Robinson. Gulliver's Travels. Tales from Scott for Young People. Helen's Babies. Tom Brown's School Days. Lamb's Tales from ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... stages of their travels have passed the night on the road. In this case, the method of so passing the time becomes an interesting object of research. Did the last of the Greeks provide themselves with tents,—effeminately impede their progress with luggage? Did they, skirting the north of the Arabian desert, repose under the scattered palm-trees,—or rather, wandering among the mountains of Assyria, find surer and colder shade? The importance of this inquiry becomes evident upon reflecting that the characters of the great are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... two very important alterations; the account of my imprisonment at Madrid cannot fail, I think, of being particularly interesting.... During the last week I have been chiefly engaged in horse-breaking. A most magnificent animal has found his way to this neighbourhood—a half-bred Arabian. He is at present in the hands of a low horse-dealer, and can be bought for eight pounds, but no one will have him. It is said that he kills everybody who mounts him. I have been charming him, and have so far succeeded that he does not fling me more ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... which the tap-root penetrates, it is not unlikely the succory derived its name from the Latin succurrere to run under. The Arabic name chicourey testifies to the almost universal influence of Arabian physicians and writers in Europe after the Conquest. As chicoree, achicoria, chicoria, cicorea, chicorie, cichorei, cikorie, tsikorei, and cicorie the plant is known respectively to the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, Germans, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... Yer see, it happened this way. We wuz a coastin' through ther Red Sea one brilln' arternoon, watchin' ther monkeys an' crocodiles on ther Arabian shore when all at onct I noticed a queer yaller-redness in ther sky on ther Afriky shore. It wuz caused by a simoom. Great clouds o' sand, driv' by the wind, wuz a-rushin' acrost ther desert toward ther ship, an' as it came out toward us, we seed ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... by sensible men. It was supposed that races of men existed, some with their heads under their arms, others with three eyes, and that others, again, were of gigantic stature; indeed, the tales of the Arabian Nights appeared scarcely in ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... the Monacelli of the ravines, who are, on the whole, well inclined towards mortals, are the Maghe, first cousins evidently to the terrible ginns of Arabian folk-lore; perhaps the Saracenic pirates themselves may have introduced their oriental sprites to the Neapolitan shores. In the popular mind the Maghe are supposed to possess vast treasures hidden in caves by the seashore, or on the bleak mountain side, and it was doubtless concerning these spirits ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... hid, since the world began, in a coffer of metal and acid,—the genie of the lightning,—shut down, as by the seal of Solomon in the Arabian tale, was let loose but the other day, and commenced to do the bidding of man. Every one found that he could transport his thought to the ends of the earth in the twinkling of an eye. That spirit, with its electric wings, soon flew from city to city, and whithersoever the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... descried his valet advancing at a most leisurely pace, not mounted on his own strong horse, and leading a beautiful Arabian, but bestriding a miserable jackass, which required constant application of the whip. Of this Peregil was by no means sparing, to induce him to move at even the slowest pace a jackass is capable ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT. The complete editions are not suitable for children to read, but the edition edited by Andrew Lang is excellent. Several schoolbook houses publish good selections, including the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... me away, telling them how it was that I, an English boy, was left in this condition. Then the chief merchant of the Arabs said he could not carry me away without the King's leave, for it would spoil their trade; but he would try to get me clear, and as long as the Arabian vessel lay there I might come to his house ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... that the only way to tell an Arabian Story was by imitating the style and manner of the Oriental Story-tellers. But such an attempt, whether successful or not, may read like a translation. I therefore think it better to prelude this Entertainment by an avowal that it ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... the world, the impassable borders of the oldest of human cultures. Names rang in his head like tunes—Khiva, Bokhara, Samarkand, the goal of many boyish dreams born of clandestine suppers and the Arabian Nights. It was an old fierce world he was on the brink of, and the nervous frontier civilization fell a ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... responded nobly. They were of a famous Arabian strain, which his grandfather had introduced into his stable many years before, and Peter, who led the little band, did not spare them. On and on they raced, but it was late afternoon when they neared the end ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... horse, and suddenly something halted close beside him, and he thought he caught the sound of a man's voice. Half unwilling, he could not resist raising himself wearily, and he saw before him a rider in an Arab's dress mounted on a slender Arabian horse. Overcome with joy at finding himself within reach of human help, he exclaimed, "Welcome, oh, man, in this fearful solitude! If thou canst, succor me, thy fellow-man, who must otherwise perish with thirst!" Then remembering that the tones of his dear German mother ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... shore of the Arabian Sea has at the present time an odour which it wafts far over the water, resembling odours of happy vague dream-lands, sweet to smell in the early mornings as if the earth were nothing but a perfume, and ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... up water.—Ver. 189. The ceremonial of sprinkling previous to the transformation seems not to have been neglected any more by the offended Goddesses of the classical Mythology, than by the intriguing enchantresses of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments; as the unfortunate Beder, when under the displeasure of the vicious queen Labe, experienced to his great inconvenience. The love for the supernatural, combined with an anxious desire to attribute its operations to material and visible agencies, forms one of the most singular ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of cereals and the raising of cattle. The river-bed is almost everywhere wide, but strewn with dangerous rocks and sandbanks which render navigation perilous. On nearing the ruins of Halebiyeh, the river narrows as it enters the Arabian hills, and cuts for itself a regular defile of three or four hundred paces in length, which is approached by the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... reminded, as I saw one of those vast creatures humble and obedient to the commands of its keeper, of the stories in the "Arabian Nights," of some huge genie which rises out of a bottle and swells to the size of a mountain being brought under subjection by a magic ring, and made obedient to the commands of a fair princess, or some ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Joseph, some Yusef of the Arab conquerors. The general knew all about that, because his son was stationed in the Citadel. And he proceeded to meander on historically, over a period between the first Arab conqueror Amru, to Haroun-al-Raschid, assuring us that old Cairo was the city of the Arabian Nights. He would, to my joy, have gone on indefinitely from Saladin to Napoleon if Sir John Biddell, as the only baronet on board, had not cut the only general short. He is a square man whose portrait could be ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... 'Can an Arabian steed submit to be a vile drudge?' I cries the fatalist. Nonsense! A man is not an irrational creature, but a reasoning being, and has something within him beyond mere brutal instinct. The greatest victory which a man can achieve is over himself, by which ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Pyrenees, not subject to the Franks. After a long period of uncertain warfare, Pepin determined to decide the struggle by active operations. He accordingly, in 759, took advantage of a rising of the people of Septimania against their Arabian rulers. He made himself master of Narbonne and other towns, and freed the Septimanians. Then turning upon Waifre, Duke of Aquitaine, he summoned him to disgorge the spoils which he had seized from the Aquitanian lands of certain churches of France. Waifre replied ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... was going forward on the second floor, he went up, and found everything finished. The unknown laborers, commissioned by a wizard to revive the marvels of the Arabian nights in behalf of an impoverished Italian prince, were exchanging some inferior articles of furniture brought in for the nonce. Prince Emilio made his way into the bedroom, which smiled on him like a shell just deserted by Venus. The room was so charmingly pretty, so daintily smart, so full ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... made up to burn brightly, and pine knots at hand to throw on if wanted; and with the illumination dancing all over my page, I went off to regions of enchantment, pleasant to me beyond any fairy tale. I never cared much for things that were not true. No chambers of Arabian fancy could have had the fascination for me of those old Egyptian halls, nor all the marvels of magic entranced me like the wonder-working hand of time. Those books made my comfort and my diversion all the winter. For I was not a galloping reader; I went patiently through every ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... tireless desire for knowledge characteristic of her, Cleopatra had sought information concerning all these matters, and in quiet hours had more than once pondered over plans for again uniting the Grecian and Arabian seas. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... know already," answered Rebecca, with a bright glance. "I'm sure you must be Mr. Aladdin in the Arabian Nights. Oh, please, can I run down and tell Emma Jane? She must be so tired waiting, and she will ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... thus indicated. Though he had gone but a little way on the path, and had barely tested the over-runnings of that mystic well, he was already aware of the enchantment that was transmuting all the world about him, informing his life with a strange significance and romance. London seemed a city of the Arabian Nights, and its labyrinths of streets an enchanted maze; its long avenues of lighted lamps were as starry systems, and its immensity became for him an image of the endless universe. He could well imagine how pleasant it might be to linger in such a world as this, to sit apart and ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... ten dollars to my name," said Mr. Bingle cheerily. "Luck is like the sun, Dick. It doesn't stay up all the time. Sometimes I look back upon the past ten years and wonder if they don't belong to the fellow who wrote the 'Arabian Nights' and not to me. They were not real, not a bit of it. And yet I can't remember ever having found a queer old jar at the seashore, nor having released a good geni from its smoky insides. So I suppose I ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... Such was the first introduction to Europe of the Tsar of Russia! They had long heard of this autocrat before whom millions trembled, ruling like a savage despot in the midst of splendors rivaling the Arabian Nights. Now they saw him! And the amazement can scarcely be described. He dined with the Great Electress Sophia, afterwards first Queen of Prussia, and she wrote of him: "Nature has given him an infinity of wit. With advantages ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... biographer tells us, quoting James Huneker. "For a sapling poet, within a few short years and by the hard business of words, to attain to a secretary and a butler and a family of, at length, four children, is a modern Arabian Nights Tale." Aye, indeed! But Joyce Kilmer will have as genuine a claim on remembrance by reason of his friends' love as in anything his own hand penned. And what an encircling, almost paternal, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... of the "ladies' saloon." In short, you will note all around you a style and luxuriance to which you, as a European traveller, have not been accustomed. You have only read of such a scene in some Oriental tale—in Mary Montagu, or the "Arabian Nights." ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... emperor is God." Perhaps the germ of the collection may have been a series of applied tales from Roman history. But if so, it was soon enriched with tales from the East, from the "Clericalis Disciplina," a work by Petrus Alfonsus, a baptized Jew who lived in 1106, and borrowed professedly from the Arabian fabulists. Mediaeval tales of all kinds suitable for the purpose of the "Gesta Romanorum" were freely incorporated, and the book so formed became a well-known storehouse of material for poetic treatment. Gower, Shakespeare, Schiller are some of the poets who have used ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... they have never been permitted to spend a single hour in them; so very attractive as they looked, too, covered all over with gilt and flowers, and furnished in a style that out-rivalled the pictures of the "Arabian Nights." ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... The desert of Egypt shimmers in the gleam Of the noonday sun on my dazzled sight. And a giant negro as black as night Is walking by a camel in a caravan. His great back glistens with the streaming sweat. The camel is ridden by a light-faced man, A Greek perhaps, or Arabian. And this giant negro is rhythmically swaying With the rhythm of the camel's neck up and down. He seems to be singing, rollicking, playing; His ivory teeth are glistening, the Greek is listening To the negro keeping time like ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... see the disks of third-magnitude stars. "It seems as if, when we wish any particular discovery or invention, in whatever field, we had but to turn our efforts in its direction to obtain our desire. We seem, in fact, to have awakened in the scenes of the Arabian Nights; yet the mysterious genius which we control, and which dims Aladdin's lamp, is the gift of no fairy godmother sustained by the haze of dreams, but shines as the child of science with fadeless and growing splendour, and may yet bring ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... mortar gallery. Glen was also very useful in keeping up the spirits of the forlorn party. In the early part of life he had undergone many curious adventures at sea, which he now recounted somewhat after the manner of the tales of the "Arabian Nights." When one observed that the beacon was a most comfortless lodging, Glen would presently introduce some of his exploits and hardships, in comparison with which the state of things at the beacon bore an aspect of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for the symbol of the poet, he need not look farther than "The Arabian Nights' Tales." Scherezade who interprets the stories for the Sultan—Scherezade is the poet, and the Sultan is the public who is to be agreeably entertained, or else he will ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... called by the conquerors Mantzi (or as some of the old travellers write, Mangi), a name which western Asiatics seem to have identified with Machin (from the Sanskrit Mahachin), one of the names by which China was known to the traders from Persian and Arabian ports. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the preparation of forces, are far less visible. It is an honest man, an austere but pious figure, of middling talents, that shoots up one morning, borne upward by I know not what cataclysm. There is nothing like it in the Arabian Nights. And in a moment he goes higher than the throne. He is set upon the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon |
