yage
Fifth Voyage
Sixth Voyage
Seventh and Last Voyage
ALADDIN'S WONDERFUL LAMP

THE ROMANCE OF ANTAR

[_Translation by Etienne Delecluse and Epiphanius Wilson_]

INTRODUCTION

The romantic figure of Antar, or Antarah, takes the same place in
Arabian literature as that of Achilles among the Greeks. The Cid in
Spain, Orlando in Italy, and Arthur in England, are similar examples of
national ideals put forth by poets and romance writers as embodiments of
a certain half-mythic age of chivalry, when personal valor, prudence,
generosity, and high feeling gave the warrior an admitted preeminence
among his fellows. The literature of Arabia is indeed rich in novels and
tales. The "Thousand and One Nights" is of world-wide reputation, but
the "Romance of Antar" is much less artificial, more expressive of high
moral principles, and certainly superior in literary style to the
fantastic recitals of the coffee house and bazaar, in which Sinbad and
Morgiana figure. A true picture of Bedouin society, in the centuries
before Mohammed had conquered the Arabian peninsula, is given us in the
charming episodes of Antar. We see the encampments of the tribe, the
camels yielding milk and flesh for food, the women friends and
councillors of their husbands, the boys inured to arms from early days,
the careful breeding of horses, the songs of poet and minstrel stirring
all hearts, the mail-clad lines of warriors with lance and sword, the
supreme power of the King--often dealing out justice with stern, sudden,
and inflexible ferocity. Among these surroundings Antar appears, a
dazzling and irresistible warrior and a poet of wonderful power. The
Arab classics, in years long before Mohammed had taken the Kaaba and
made it the talisman of his creed, were hung in the little shrine where
the black volcanic stone was kept. They were known as Maallakat, or
Suspended Books, which had the same meaning among Arabian literati as
the term classic bore among the Italian scholars of the Renaissance.
Numbered with these books of the Kaaba were the poems of Antar, who was
thus the Taliessin of Arabian chivalry.

It is indeed necessary to recollect that in reading the episodes of
Antar we have been taken back to the heroic age in the Arabian
peninsula. War is considered the noblest occupation of a man, and Khaled
despises the love of a noble maiden "from pride in his passion for war."
Antar has his famous horse as the Cid had his Babicca, and