Alroy: The Prince of the Captivity

‘Two methods of instruction were in use among the Jews; the one public, or exoteric; the other secret, or esoteric. The exoteric doctrine was that which was openly taught the people from the law of Moses and the traditions of the fathers. The esoteric was that which treated of the mysteries of the Divine nature, and other sublime subjects, and was known by the name of the Cabala. The latter was, after the manner of the Pythagorean and Egyptian mysteries, taught only to certain persons, who were bound, under the most solemn anathema, not to divulge it. Concerning the miraculous origin and preservation of the Cabala, the Jews relate many marvellous tales. They derive these mysteries from Adam, and assert that, while the first man was in Paradise, the angel Rasiel brought him a book from heaven, which contained the doctrines of heavenly wisdom, and that, when Adam received this book, angels came down to him to learn its contents, but that he refused to admit them to the knowledge of sacred things entrusted to him alone; that, after the Fall, this book was taken back into heaven; that, after many prayers and tears, God restored it to Adam, from whom it passed to Seth. In the degenerate age before the flood this book was lost, and the mysteries it contained almost forgotten; but they were restored by special revelation to Abraham, who committed them to writing in the book Jezirah.’—Vide Enfield, vol. ii. p. 219.

‘The Hebrew word Cabala,’ says Dom Calmet, ‘signifies tradition, and the Rabbins, who are named Cabalists, apply themselves principally to the combination of certain words, numbers, and letters, by the means of which they boasted they could reveal the future, and penetrate the sense of the most difficult passages of Scripture. This science does not appear to have any fixed principles, but depends upon certain ancient traditions, whence its name Cabala. The Cabalists have a great number of names which they style sacred, by means of which they raise spirits, and affect to obtain supernatural intelligence.’—See Calmet, Art. Cabala.

‘We spake before,’ says Lightfoot, ‘of the commonness of Magick among them, one singular means whereby they kept their own in delusion, and whereby they affronted ours. The general expectation of the nation of Messias coming when he did had this double and contrary effect, that it forwarded those that belonged to God to believe and receive the Gospel; and those that did not, it gave encouragement to some to take upon them they were Christ or some great prophet, and to others it gave some persuasion to be deluded by them. These deceivers dealt most of them with Magick, and that cheat ended not when Jerusalem ended, though one would have thought that had been a fair term of not further expecting Messias; but since the people were willing to be deceived by such expectation, there rose up deluders still that were willing to deceive them.’—Lightfoot, vol. ii. p. 371.

For many curious details of the Cabalistic Magic, Vide Basnage, vol. v. p. 384, &c.

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page 34.—Read the stars no longer. ‘The modern Jews,’ says Basnage, ‘have a great idea of the influence of the stars.’ Vol. iv. p. 454. But astrology was most prevalent among the Babylonian Rabbins, of whom Jabaster was one. Living in the ancient land of the Chaldeans, these sacred sages imbibed a taste for the mystic lore of their predecessors. The stars moved, and formed letters and lines, when consulted by any of the highly-initiated of the Cabalists. This they styled the Celestial Alphabet.

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page 38.—__The Daughter of the Voice. ‘Both the Talmudick and the latter Rabbins,’ says Lightfoot, ‘make frequent mention of Bath Kol, or Filia Vocis, or an echoing voice which served under the Second Temple for their utmost refuge of revelation. For when Urim and Thummim, the oracle, was ceased, and prophecy was decayed and gone, they had, as they say, certain strange and extraordinary voices upon certain extraordinary occasions, which were their warnings and advertisements in some special matters. Infinite instances of this might be adduced, if they might be believed. Now here it may be questioned why they called it Bath Kol, the daughter of a voice, and not a voice itself? If the strictness of the Hebrew word Bath be to be stood upon, which always it is not, it may be answered, that it is called The Daughter of a Voice in relation to the oracles of Urim and Thummim. For whereas that was a voice given from off the mercy-seat, within the vail, and this, upon the decay of that oracle, came as it were in its place, it might not unfitly or improperly be called a daughter, or successor of that voice.’—Lightfoot, vol. i. pp. 485, 486. Consult also the learned Doctor, vol. ii. pp. 128, 129: ‘It was used for a testimony from heaven, but was indeed performed by magic art.‘

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page 44.—The walls and turrets of an extensive city. In Persia, and the countries of the Tigris and Euphrates, the traveller sometimes arrives at deserted cities of great magnificence and antiquity. Such, for instance, is the city of Anneh. I suppose Alroy to have entered one of the deserted capitals of the Seleucidae. They are in general the haunt of bandits.

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page 49.—Punctured his arm. From a story told by an Arab.

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page 52.—The pilgrim could no longer sustain himself. An endeavor to paint the simoom.

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page 54.—By the holy stone. The Caaba.—The Caaba is the same to the Mahomedan as the Holy Sepulchre to the Christian. It is the most unseemly, but the most sacred, part of the mosque at Mecca, and is a small, square stone building.

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page 56.—I am a Hakim; i.e. Physician, an almost sacred character in the East. As all Englishmen travel with medicine-chests, the Turks are not be wondered at for considering us physicians.

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page 57.—Threw their wanton jerreeds in the air. The Persians are more famous for throwing the jerreed than any other nation. A Persian gentleman, while riding quietly by your side, will suddenly dash off at full gallop, then suddenly check his horse, and take a long aim with his lance with admirable precision. I should doubt, however, whether he could hurl a lance a greater distance or with greater force and effect than a Nubian, who will fix a mark at sixty yards with his javelin.

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page 58.—Some pounded coffee. The origin of the use of coffee is obscure; but there is great reason to believe that it had not been introduced in the time of Alroy. When we consider that the life of an Oriental at the present day mainly consists in drinking coffee and smoking tobacco, we cannot refrain from asking ourselves, ‘What did he do before either of these comparatively modern inventions was discovered?’ For a long time, I was inclined to suspect that tobacco might have been in use in Asia before it was introduced into Europe; but a passage in old Sandys, in which he mentions the wretched tobacco smoke in Turkey, and accounts for it by that country being supplied with ‘the dregs of our markets,’ demonstrates that, in his time, there was no native growth in Asia. Yet the choicest tobaccos are now grown on the coast of Syria, the real Levant. But did the Asiatics smoke any other plant or substance before tobacco? In Syria, at the present day, they smoke a plant called timbac; the Chinese smoke opium; the artificial preparations for the hookah are known to all Indians. I believe, however, that these are all refinements, and for this reason, that in the classic writers, who were as well acquainted with the Oriental nations as ourselves, we find no allusion to the practice of smoking. The anachronism of the pipe I have not therefore ventured to commit, and that of coffee will, I trust, be pardoned.

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page 58.—Wilder gestures of the dancing girls. These dancing girls abound throughout Asia. The most famous are the Almeh of Egypt, and the Nautch of India. These last are a caste, the first only a profession.

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page 64.—For thee the bastinado. The bastinado is the common punishment of the East, and an effective and dreaded one. It is administered on the soles of the feet, the instrument a long cane or palm-branch. Public executions are very-rare.

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page 73.—A door of tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl. This elegant mode of inlay is common in Oriental palaces, and may be observed also in Alhambra, at Granada.

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page 74.—A vaulted, circular, and highly embossed roof, of purple, scarlet, and gold. In the very first style of Saracenic architecture. See the Hall of the Ambassadors in Alhambra, and many other chambers in that exquisite creation.

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page 74.—Nubian eunuchs dressed in rich habits of scarlet and gold. Thus the guard of Nubian eunuchs of the present Pacha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, or rather Caliph, a title which he wishes to assume. They ride upon white horses.

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page 74.—A quadrangular court of roses. So in Alhambra, ‘The Court of Myrtles,’ leading to the Court of Columns, wherein is the famous Fountain of Lions.

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page 75.—An Abyssinian giant. A giant is still a common appendage to an Oriental court even at the present day. See a very amusing story in the picturesque ‘Persian Sketches’ of that famous elchee, Sir John Malcolm.

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page 75.—Surrounded by figures of every rare quadruped. ‘The hall of audience,’ says Gibbon, from Cardonne, speaking of the magnificence of the Saracens of Cordova, ‘was encrusted with gold and pearls, and a great basin in the centre was surrounded with the curious and costly figures of birds and quadrupeds.’-Decline and Fall, vol. x. p. 39.

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page 76.—A tree of gold and silver. ‘Among the other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury was a tree of gold and silver, spreading into eighteen large branches, on which, and on the lesser boughs, sat a variety of birds made of the same precious metals, as well as the leaves of the tree. While the machinery effected spontaneous motions, the several birds warbled their natural harmony.’-Gibbon, vol. x. p. 38, from Abulfeda, describing the court of the Caliphs of Bagdad in the decline of their power.

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page 76.—Four hundred men led as many white bloodhounds, with collars of gold and rubies. I have somewhere read of an Indian or Persian monarch whose coursing was conducted in this gorgeous style: if I remember right, it was Mahmoud the Gaznevide.

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page 76.—A steed marked on its forehead with a star. The sacred steed of Solorhon.

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page 78.—Instead of water, each basin was replenished with the purest quicksilver. ‘In a lofty pavilion of the gardens, one of those basins and fountains so delightful in a sultry climate, was replenished, not with water, but with the purest quicksilver.’ —Gibbon, vol. x, from Cardonne.

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page 78.-Playing with a rosary of pearls and emeralds. Moslems of rank are never without the rosary, sometimes of amber and rare woods, sometimes of jewels. The most esteemed is of that peculiar substance called Mecca wood.