The Supreme Incense of Patriarchal Excrements

 

by Pa Rock

Reader

Those who know me are aware that I like to read - a lot - and now that my time left to enjoy that pastime grows noticeably shorter, I am hastening to read some classics that have long been on my bucket list.  The classic that I am currently plowing through is the four-volume definitive set of "The Thousand Nights and One Night," or as it is more commonly known "A Thousand and One Arabian Nights."  The collection that I am reading was compiled by Dr. J.C. Mardrus and Powys Mathers.  It is around 2,500 pages in length.

"The Thousand Nights and One Night" is an assortment of Middle Eastern folk tales dating back to around 750 AD, or roughly one century after the death of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, the Muslim religion.   Some are stories that stand alone, but most are connected to one another and are often tales within tales.  They were collected for around a thousand years, meaning that many were set during the two-hundred- year period of religious warfare known as "The Crusades"  (roughly 1100 AD-1300AD) during which Christians and Muslims fought over control of the Holy Land.    Many of the tales in this collection go back to events of the Crusades and tell of Christian and Muslim battles from the perspective of the Muslims.

Other tales are more familiar to western readers.  Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves all have their origins in "The Thousand Nights and One Night.

The frame of the story is this:  An Arabian king despoils a different virgin every night and then the next morning orders her killed.  He commits this atrocity for three years until his supply of virgins is exhausted and the only two left are the daughters of his trusted "wazir" (adviser), the man in charge of procuring the virgins.  Those two girls, Shahrazad and her younger sister, Dunyazad, appear before the ruthless king.  Shahrazad sleeps with the king, but then, before he has her killed she offers to tell him a story for his entertainment.  Shahrazad stops her story at daylight and tells the king that if he lets her live she will finish it the next night.  Every night she leaves her tale incomplete, and the king, who loves a good story, chooses to let her live another day.  Dunyazad, the little sister, occasionally involves herself with the telling of the tales, but is basically just a quiet observer.

A week or so ago I came across this passage dealing with human excrement that I thought might be of general interest to students of the history of religion or warfare.   A Christian witch was inspiring the Christian army at Constantinople to go out and meet the Muslim army on the field of battle, and she encouraged them to suffuse themselves with a special incense before going into battle.  The following is from page 442 in volume one, and it is posted here as an item of historical relevance and general interest.  It is also worth noting that there are sources on the internet which credit the practice with the Muslims instead of the Christians.    (The term "made a motion" refers to a bowel movement.)

"Brave warriors, to fight with the body when the soul is not sanctified is to ensure defeat.  Therefore, O Christian men, I counsel you to draw near to Christ before the battle and to purify yourselves with the supreme incense of the patriarchal excrements."  The two Kings and all the captains shouted:  "Your words are wise, venerable mother!"

To tell you something of the supreme incense of the patriarchal excrements:

When the High Patriarch of the Christians in Constantinople made a motion, the priests would diligently collect in in squares of silk and dry it in the sun.  Then they would mix it with musk, amber, and benzoin, and, when it was quite dry, powder it and put it up in little gold boxes.   These boxes were sent to all Christian kings and churches, and the powder was used as the holiest incense for the sanctification of Christians on all solemn occasions, to bless the bride, to fumigate the newly born, and to purify a priest on ordination.  As the genuine excrements of the High Patriarch could hardly suffice for ten provinces, much less for all Christian lands, the priests used to forge the powder by mixing less holy matters with it, that is to say, the excrements of lesser patriarchs and even of the priests themselves.  This imposture was not easy to  detect.  These Greek swine valued the powder for other virtues;  They used it as a salve for sore eyes and as a medicine for the stomach and bowels.  But only kings and queens and the very rich could obtain these cures, since, owing to the limited quantity of raw material, a dirham-weight of the powder used to be sold for a thousand dinars in gold.  So much for it.

 

That, friends of literature and history, may be  where the folksy exclamation, "Holy shit!" originated.  And with that tortured witticism, I now make a motion to adjourn this blog-posting so that I may go and clean my heavily sanctified chicken coop!