Probably the messenger went to Yemen in the assumed capacity of a merchant,ārNā which would render him least liable to suspicion, and also enable him to smuggle Abraha out of the city without attracting particular notice.
The same savage maxim occurs in the _Anvār-i Suhailī_: “When thou hast got thy enemy fast, show him no mercy.”
Islām is not, as is commonly believed in Europe, synonymous with Fatalism. “What Muhammad taught,” remarks Mr Redhouse, “what the Kur’ān so eloquently and so persistently sets forth, and what real faithful Muslims believe, conformably with what is contained in the Gospels and accepted by devout Christians, is—that God’s Providence pre-ordains, as His Omniscience foreknows, all events, and over-rules the designs of men, to the sure fulfilment of His all-wise purposes.”—_El-Esmā’u-’l-Husna_, “The Most Comely Names” [_i.e._ of God], by J. W. Redhouse, M.R.A.S. Trübner & Co., London.
There are many varieties of this amusing story in Europe as well as in Asia—whether Father Beschi found it in India or took it with him.
“The ‘Uygur’ language,” Mr J. W. Redhouse writes to me, “is simply Turkish; what we should term ‘a little provincial.’ It is very much more consistent with the Ottoman Turkish of to-day than the English of four hundred years ago was like the modern English.”
Here, surely, the Tātār translator—or adapter—anticipates the course of the narrative; since the King (unfortunately for the Vezīr Kārdār) did _not_ possess, at one and the same time, _two_ Vezīrs and a beautiful wife—if by the latter be meant the pious daughter of Kerdār.
Kārdān signifies “knowing affairs”—“experienced.” The meaning of Kerdār (as Kārdār is pronounced by Turks) is already given in the foregoing notes.
Lit: without whom she could not live.—_Jaubert._
In M. Cazotte’s rendering of the Arabian version (French translation of the _Continuation of the Thousand and One Nights_), it is also the cameleer of the King of Persia, and not of King Dādīn, as in the Persian _Bakhtyār_, who discovers the pious maiden in the desert, and from this point to the end of the narrative M. Cazotte’s and the Turkī versions correspond.
Husain Vā`iz, in his _Anvār-i-Suhailī_, had probably Sa`dī’s verses in mind when he wrote: “The arrow which has leapt from the string cannot be brought back, nor can the slain person be resuscitated either by strength or gold.”