On Jewish Folklore by Patai Raphael;

Author:Patai, Raphael;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Published: 2017-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Notes

“A Popular ‘Life of Nadir’” originally was published in Edoth 3, nos. 3–4 (1948): 1–20.

1.Laurence Lockhart, Nadir Shah (London, 1938).

2.Here and in the following pages I give the phonetic form of place names. On first mention, I give the correct spelling in parentheses.

3.Cf. Lockhart, Nadir Shah, pp. 18, 20.

4.Mullah, i.e., “master,” “teacher,” is the title of religious personages in Persia.

5.Herodotus reports the same to have occurred in connection with the birth of one of the remote predecessors of Nadir on Persia’s throne, Cyrus. Astyages dreamed that his daughter Mandane urinated and the water filled not only his town, but the whole of Asia. Again, when his daughter was pregnant with Cyrus, he dreamed that a vine grew out of her womb and covered all of Asia. The dreams were interpreted by the magi: his daughter’s son would reign in his stead (Herodotus 1.107–8).

6.The period of six months recurs frequently in the narrative; cf. “Three Meshhed Tales of Mullah Siman-Tov,” above.

7.Again we are reminded of what Herodotus tells about the childhood of Cyrus. When Cyrus had reached the age of ten in the house of the poor shepherd, his foster father, he played with the children in the streets of the village and they chose him to be their king. One of the children disobeyed him, and he commanded the others to beat him with whips. The beaten child complained to his father, and in consequence Cyrus’ identity was discovered (Herodotus 1.114–16).

8.Abivard, according to my informant, lies six farsang (thirty-six km.) east of Chapushli.

9.This is the first instance where we are able to check the veracity of the folktale. It does seem to be a historical fact that in his youth Nadir entered the service of Baba ‘Alī Beg Kusa Ahmadu, chief of the Afghans of the town of Abivard (Lockhart, Nadir Shah, p. 21).

10.Upon reaching this point in his narrative, my informant got up from his chair and went through Nadir’s movements in the scene he was describing.

11.East of the Caspian Sea, near the Oxus River. Today the whole territory is called Khiva. It is of course impossible that Nadir should have raided Khiva, at a distance of 500 km. from Deregez, with twelve horsemen. We may perhaps attribute this story to a muddled reminiscence of Nadir’s Turkistan expedition in 1740, when he took Khiva with a force many tens of thousands strong (Lockhart, Nadir Shah, pp. 193–95).

12.According to my informant, this method is used even today, and it is in the nature of sheep to behave like this.

13.It is a fact that Nadir, after having first served and then opposed Malik Mahmud of Meshhed, fled back to Abivard, where he raised a force of horsemen with which he raided the Deregez district (Lockhart, Nadir Shah, pp. 22–23).

14.My informant knew only of Shah Sultan Husein as having been the king of Persia during the whole period of Nadir’s ascent. According to him, Shah Sultan Husein was followed on the throne by the infant king, and then by Nadir himself. Actually,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.