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FOOTNOTES



FN#1 The name is indifferently derived from the red sand about the town or the reeds and mud with which it was originally built. It was founded by the Caliph Omar, when the old Capital-Madáin (Ctesiphon) opposite was held unwholesome, on the West bank of the Euphrates, four days' march from Baghdad and has now disappeared. Al-Saffáh, the first Abbaside, made it his Capital--and it became a famous seat of Moslem learning; the Kufi school of Arab Grammarians being as renowned as their opponents, the Basri (of Bassorah). It gave a name to the "Cufic" characters which are, however, of much older date.

FN#2 "Ni'amat" = a blessing, and the word is perpetually occurring in Moslem conversation, "Ni'amatu'lláh" (as pronounced) is also a favourite P.N. and few Anglo-Indians of the Mutiny date will forget the scandalous disclosures of Munshi Ni'amatu 'llah, who had been sent to England by Nana Sahib. Nu'm = prosperity, good fortune, and a P. N. like the Heb. "Naomi."

FN#3 i.e. "causing to be prosperous", the name, corrupted by the Turks to "Tevfik," is given to either sex, e.g. Taufik Pasha of Egypt, to whose unprosperous rule and miserable career the signification certainly does not apply.

FN#4 Lane (ii. 187) alters the two to four years.

FN#5 i.e. "to Tom, Dick or Harry:" the names like John Doe and Richard Roe are used indefinitely in Arab. Grammar and Syntax. I have noted that Amru is written and pronounced Amr: hence Amru, the Conqueror of Egypt, when told by an astrologer that Jerusalem would be taken only by a trium literarum homo, with three letters in his name sent for the Caliph Omar (Omr), to whom the so-called Holy City at once capitulated. Hence also most probably, the tale of Bhurtpore and the Lord Alligator (Kumbhir), who however did not change from Cotton to Combermore for some time after the successful siege.

FN#6 BinYúsuf al-Sakafi, a statesman and soldier of the seventh and eighth centuries (A.D.). He was Governor of Al-Hij az and Al-Irak under the fifth and sixth Ommiades, and I have noticed his vigorous rule of the Moslems' Holy Land in my Pilgrimage (iii. 194, etc.). He pulled down the Ka'abah and restored it to the condition in which it now is. Al-Siyuti (p. 219) accuses him of having suborned a man to murder Ibn Omar with a poisoned javelin, and of humiliating the Prophet's companions by "sealing them in the necks and hands," that is he tied a thong upon the neck of each and sealed the knot with lead. In Irak he showed himself equally masterful, but an iron hand was required by the revolutionists of Kufah and Basrah. He behaved like a good Knight in rescuing the Moslem women who called upon his name when taken prisoners by Dahir of Debal (Tathá in Sind). Al-Hajjaj was not the kind of man the Caliph would have chosen for a pander; but the Shi'ahs hates him and have given him a lasting bad name. In the East men respect manly measures, not the hysterical, philanthropic pseudo-humanitarianism of our modern government which is really the cruellest of all. When Ziyád bin Abihi was sent by Caliph Mu'awiyah to reform Bassorah, a den of thieves, he informed the lieges that he intended to rule by the sword and advised all evil-doers to quit the city. The people were forbidden, under pain of teeth, to walk the streets after prayers, on the first night two hundred suffered; on the second five and none afterwards. Compare this with our civilised rule in Egypt where even bands of brigands, a phenomenon perfectly new and unknown to this century, have started up, where crime has doubled in quantity and quality, and where "Christian rule" has thoroughly scandalised a Moslem land.

FN#7 The old bawd's portrait is admirably drawn: all we dwellers in the East have known her well: she is so and so. Her dress and manners are the same amongst the Hindus (see the hypocritical-female ascetic in the Katha, p. 287) as amongst the Moslems; men of the world at once recognise her and the prudent keep out of her way. She is found in the cities of Southern Europe, ever pious, ever prayerful; and she seems to do her work not so much for profit as for pure or impure enjoyment. In the text her task was easy, as she had to do with a pair of innocents.

FN#8 Koran, xxv. 70. I give Sale's version.

FN#9 Easterns, I have observed, have no way of saying "Thank you;" they express it by a blessing or a short prayer. They have a right to your surplus: daily bread is divided, they say and, eating yours, they consider it their own. I have discussed this matter in Pilgrimage i. 75-77, in opposition to those who declare that "gratitude" is unknown to Moslems.

FN#10 Cufa (Kufah) being a modern place never had a "King," but as the Hindu says, " Delhi is far" it is a far cry to Loch Awe. Here we can hardly understand "Malik" as Governor or Viceroy: can it be syn. with Zú-mál-(moneyed)?

FN#11 Abd al-Malik has been before mentioned as the "Sweat of a Stone," etc. He died recommending Al-Hajjaj to his son, Al-Walid, and one of his sayings is still remembered. "He who desireth to take a female slave for carnal-enjoyment, let him take a native of Barbary; if he need one for the sake of children, let him have a Persian; and whoso desireth one for service, let him take a Greek." Moderns say, "If you want a brother (in arms) try a Nubian; one to get you wealth an Abyssinian and if you want an ass (for labour) a Sáwahíli, or Zanzibar negroid."

FN#12 Probably suggested by the history of Antiochus and Stratonice, with an addition of Eastern mystery such as geomancy.

FN#13 Arab, "Kárúrah": the "water-doctor" has always been an institution in the east and he has lately revived in Europe especially at the German baths and in London.

FN#14 Lane makes this phrase "O brother of the Persians!" synonymous with "O Persian!" I think it means more, a Persian being generally considered "too clever by half."

FN#15 The verses deal in untranslatable word-plays upon women's names, Naomi (the blessing) Su'adá or Su'ád (the happy, which Mr. Redhouse, in Ka'ab's Mantle-poem, happily renders Beatrice); and Juml (a sum or total) the two latter, moreover, being here fictitious.

FN#16 "And he (Jacob) turned from them, and said, 'O how I am grieved for Joseph' And his eyes became white with mourning. ... (Quoth Joseph to his brethren), 'Take this my inner garment and throw it on my father's face and he shall recover his sight.' . . . So, when the messenger of good tidings came (to Jacob) he threw it (the shirt) over his face and he recovered his eye-sight." Koran, xii. 84, 93, 96. The commentators, by way of improvement, assure us that the shirt was that worn by Abraham when thrown into the fire (Koran, chaps. xvi.) by Nimrod (!). We know little concerning "Jacob's daughters" who named the only bridge spanning the upper Jordan, and who have a curious shrine tomb near Jewish "Safe" (North of Tiberias), one of the four "Holy Cities." The Jews ignore these "daughters of Jacob" and travellers neglect them.

FN#17 Easterns, I have remarked, mostly recognise the artistic truth that the animal-man is handsomer than woman and that "fair sex" is truly only of skin-colour. The same is the general-rule throughout creation, for instance the stallion compared with the mare, the cock with the hen; while there are sundry exceptions such as the Falconidae.

FN#18 The Badawi (who is nothing if not horsey) compares the gait of a woman who walks well (in Europe rarely seen out of Spain) with the slightly swinging walk of a thoroughbred mare, bending her graceful neck and looking from side to side at objects as she passes.

FN#19 Li'lláhi (darr') al-káil, a characteristic idiom. "Darr"=giving (rich) milk copiously and the phrase expresses admiration, "To Allah be ascribed (or Allah be praised for) his rich eloquence who said etc. Some Hebraists would render it, "Divinely (well) did he speak who said," etc., holding "Allah" to express a superlative like "Yah" Jah) in Gen. iv. 1; x. 9. Nimrod was a hunter to the person (or presence) of Yah, i.e. mighty hunter.

FN#20 Hamzah and Abbás were the famous uncles of Mohammed often noticed: Ukayl is not known; possibly it may be Akíl, a son of the fourth Caliph, Ali.

FN#21 The Eastern ring is rarely plain; and, its use being that of a signet, it is always in intaglio: the Egyptians invented engraving hieroglyphics on wooden stamps for marking bricks and applied the process to the ring. Moses B. C. 1491 (Exod. xxviii. 9) took two onyx-stones, and graved on them the names of the children of Israel. From this the signet ring was but a step. Herodotus mentions an emerald seal-set in gold, that of Polycrates, the work of Theodorus, son of Telecles the Samian (iii. 141). The Egyptians also were perfectly acquainted with working in cameo (anaglyph) and rilievo, as may be seen in the cavo rilievo of the finest of their hieroglyphs. The Greeks borrowed from them the cameo and applied it to gems (e.g. Tryphon's in the Marlborough collection), and they bequeathed the art to the Romans. We read in a modern book "Cameo means an onyx, and the most famous cameo in the world is the onyx containing the Apotheosis of Augustus." The ring is given in marriage because it was a seal--by which orders were signed (Gen. xxxviii. 18 and Esther iii. 10-12). I may note that the seal-ring of Cheops (Khufu), found in the Greatest Pyramid, was in the possession of my old friend, Doctor Abbott, of Auburn (U.S.), and was sold with his collection. It is the oldest ring in the world, and settles the Cheops-question.

FN#22 This habit of weeping when friends meet after long parting is customary, I have noted, amongst the American "Indians," the Badawin of the New World; they shed tears thinking of the friends they have lost. Like most primitive people they are ever ready to weep as was Ćneas or Shakespeare's saline personage,

"This would make a man, a man of salt
To use his eyes for garden waterpots."
      (King Lear, iv. 6.)

FN#23 Here poetical-justice is not done; in most Arab tales the two adulterous Queens would have been put to death.

FN#24 Pronounce Aladdin Abush-Shámát.

FN#25 Arab. "Misr," vulg. Masr: a close connection of Misraim the "two Misrs," Egypt, upper and lower.

FN#26 The Persians still call their Consuls "Shah-bander," lit. king of the Bandar or port.

FN#27 Arab. "Dukhúl," the night of going in, of seeing the bride unveiled for the first time, etcaetera.

FN#28 Arab. "Barsh" or "Bars," the commonest kind. In India it is called Ma'jún (=electuary, generally): it is made of Ganja or young leaves, buds, capsules and florets of hemp (C. saliva), poppy-seed and flowers of the thorn-apple (daiura) with milk and auger-candy, nutmegs, cloves, mace and saffron, all boiled to the consistency of treacle which hardens when cold. Several-recipes are given by Herklots (Glossary s.v. Majoon). These electuaries are usually prepared with "Charas," or gum of hemp, collected by hand or by passing a blanket over the plant in early morning, and it is highly intoxicating. Another intoxicant is "Sabzi," dried hemp-leaves, poppy-seed, cucumber heed, black pepper and cardamoms rubbed down in a mortar with a wooden pestle, and made drinkable by adding milk, ice-cream, etc. The Hashish of Arabia is the Hindustani Bhang, usually drunk and made as follows. Take of hemp-leaves, well washed, 3 drams black pepper 45 grains and of cloves, nutmeg and mace (which add to the intoxication) each 12 grains. Triturate in 8 ounces of water or the juice of watermelon or cucumber, strain and drink. The Egyptian Zabíbah is a preparation of hemp florets, opium and honey, much affected by the lower orders, whence the proverb: "Temper thy sorrow with Zabibah. In Al-Hijaz it is mixed with raisins (Zabíb) and smoked in the water-pipe. (Burck hardt No. 73.) Besides these there is (1) "Post" poppy-seed prepared in various ways but especially in sugared sherbets; (2) Datura (stramonium) seed, the produce of the thorn-apple breached and put into sweetmeats by dishonest confectioners; it is a dangerous intoxicant, producing spectral-visions, delirium tremens, etc., and (3) various preparations of opium especially the "Madad," pills made up with toasted betel-leaf and smoked. Opium, however, is usually drunk in the shape of "Kusumba," a pill placed in wet cotton and squeezed in order to strain and clean it of the cowdung and other filth with which it is adulterated.

FN#29 Arab. "Sikankúr" (Gr. {Greek letters}, Lat. Scincus) a lizard (S. officinalis) which, held in the hand, still acts as an aphrodisiac in the East, and which in the Middle Ages was considered a universal-medicine. In the "Adja'ib al-Hind" (Les Merveilles de l'Inde) we find a notice of a bald-headed old man who was compelled to know his wife twice a day and twice a night in consequence of having eaten a certain fish. (Chaps. Ixxviii. of the translation by M. L. Marcel Devic, from a manuscript of the tenth century, Paris Lemaire, 1878.) Europeans deride these prescriptions, but Easterns know better: they affect the fancy, that is the brain, and often succeed in temporarily relieving impotence. The recipes for this evil, which is incurable only when it comes from heart-affections, are innumerable in the East; and about half of every medical-work is devoted to them. Many a quack has made his fortune with a few bottles of tincture of cantharides, and a man who could discover a specific would become a millionaire in India only. The curious reader will consult for specimens the Ananga-Ranga Shastra by Koka Pandit; or the "Rujú 'al-Shaykh ila 'l-Sabáh fi Kuwwati 'l-Báh" (the Return of the Old Man to Youth in power of Procreation) by Ahmad bin Sulaymán known as Ibn Kamál-Báshá, in 139 chapters lithographed at Cairo. Of these aphrodisiacs I shall have more to say.

FN#30 Alá al-Din (our old friend Aladdin) = Glory of the Faith, a name of which Mohammed who preferred the simplest, like his own, would have highly disapproved. The most grateful names to Allah are Abdallah (Allah's Slave) and Abd al-Rahman (Slave of the Compassionate); the truest are Al-Hárith (the gainer, "bread winner") and Al-Hammám (the griever); and the hatefullest are Al-Harb (witch) and Al-Murrah (bitterness, Abu Murrah being a kunyat or by-name of the Devil). Abu al-Shámát (pronounced Abushshámát)=Father of Moles, concerning which I have already given details. These names ending in -Din (faith) began with the Caliph Al-Muktadi bi-Amri 'llah (regn. A.H. 467= 1075), who entitled his Wazir "Zahír al-Din (Backer or Defender of the Faith) and this gave rise to the practice. It may be observed that the superstition of naming by omens is in no way obsolete.

FN#31 Meaning that he appeared intoxicated by the pride of his beauty as though it had been strong wine.

FN#32 i.e. against the evil eye.

FN#33 Meaning that he had been delicately reared.

FN#34 A traditional-saying of Mohammed.

FN#35 So Boccaccio's "Capo bianco" and "Coda verde." (Day iv., Introduct.)

FN#36 The opening chapter is known as the "Mother of the Book" (as opposed to Yá Sín, the "heart of the Koran"), the "Surat (chapter) of Praise," and the "Surat of repetition" (because twice revealed?) or thanksgiving, or laudation (Ai-Masáni) and by a host of other names for which see Mr. Rodwell who, however, should not write "Fatthah" (p. xxv.) nor "Fathah" (xxvii.). The Fátihah, which is to Al-Islam much what the "Paternoster" is to Christendom, consists of seven verses, in the usual-Saj'a or rhymed prose, and I have rendered it as follows:

In the name of the Compassionating, the Compassionate!
Praise be to Allah who all the Worlds made
The Compassionating, the Compassionate
King of the Day of Faith!
Thee only do we adore and of Thee only do we crave aid
Guide us to the path which is straight
The path of those for whom Thy love is great, not those on whom is hate, nor they that deviate
Amen! O Lord of the World's trine.
My Pilgrimage (i. 285; ii. 78 and passim) will supply instances of its application; how it is recited with open hands to catch the blessing from Heaven and the palms are drawn down the face (Ibid. i. 286), and other details,

FN#37 i.e. when the evil eye has less effect than upon children. Strangers in Cairo often wonder to see a woman richly dressed leading by the hand a filthy little boy (rarely a girl) in rags, which at home will be changed to cloth of gold.

FN#38 Arab. "Asídah" flour made consistent by boiling in water with the addition of "Same" clarified butter) and honey: more like pap than custard.

FN#39 Arab. "Ghábah" = I have explained as a low-lying place where the growth is thickest and consequently animals haunt it during the noon-heats

FN#40 Arab. "Akkám," one who loads camels and has charge of the luggage. He also corresponds with the modern Mukharrij or camel-hirer (Pilgrimage i. 339), and hence the word Moucre (Moucres) which, first used by La Brocquičre (A.D. 1432), is still the only term known to the French.

FN#41 i.e. I am old and can no longer travel.

FN#42 Taken from Al-Asma'i, the "Romance of Antar," and the episode of the Asafir Camels.

FN#43 A Mystic of the twelfth century A.D. who founded the Kádirí order (the oldest and chiefest of the four universally recognised), to which I have the honour to belong, teste my diploma (Pilgrimage, Appendix i.). Visitation is still made to his tomb at Baghdad. The Arabs (who have no hard g-letter) alter to "Jílán" the name of his birth-place "Gilan," a tract between the Caspian and the Black Seas.

FN#44 The well-known Anglo-Indian "Mucuddum;" lit. "one placed before (or over) others"

FN#45 Koran xiii. 14.

FN#46 i.e.. his chastity: this fashion of objecting to infamous proposals is very characteristic: ruder races would use their fists.

FN#47 Arab. "Ráfizí"=the Shi'ah (tribe, sect) or Persian schismatics who curse the first three Caliphs: the name is taken from their own saying "Inná rafizná-hum"=verily we have rejected them. The feeling between Sunni (the so-called orthodox) and Shi'ah is much like the Christian love between a Catholic of Cork and a Protestant from the Black North. As Al-Siyuti or any historian will show, this sect became exceedingly powerful under the later Abbaside Caliphs, many of whom conformed to it and adopted its tractices and innovations (as in the Azan or prayer-call), greatly to the scandal-of their co-religionists. Even in the present day the hatred between these representatives of Arab monotheism and Persian Guebrism continues unabated. I have given sundry instances m my Pilgrimage, e.g. how the Persians attempt to pollute the tombs of the Caliphs they abhor.

FN#48 Arab. "Sakká," the Indian "Bihishtí" (man from Heaven): Each party in a caravan has one or more.

FN#49 These "Kirámát" or Saints' miracles, which Spiritualists will readily accept, are recorded in vast numbers. Most men have half a dozen to tell, each of his "Pír" or patron, including the Istidráj or prodigy of chastisement. (Dabistan, iii. 274.)

FN#50 Great granddaughter of the Imam Hasan buried in Cairo and famed for "Kirámát." Her father, governor of Al-Medinah, was imprisoned by Al-Mansur and restored to power by Al-Mahdi. She was married to a son of the Imam Ja'afar al-Sadik and lived a life of devotion in Cairo, dying in A.H. 218=824. The corpse of the Imam al-Shafi'i was carried to her house, now her mosque and mausoleum: it stood in the Darb al-Sabúa which formerly divided Old from New Cairo and is now one of the latter's suburbs. Lane (M. E. chaps. x.) gives her name but little more. The mention of her shows that the writer of the tale or the copyist was a Cairene : Abd al-Kadir is world-known : not so the "Sitt."

FN#51 Arab. "Farkh akrab" for Ukayrib, a vulgarism.

FN#52 The usual Egyptian irreverence: he relates his abomination as if it were a Hadis or Tradition of the Prophet with due ascription.

FN#53 A popular name, dim. of Zubdah cream, fresh butter, "creamkin."

FN#54 Arab. "Mustahall," "Mustahill' and vulg. "Muhallil" (=one who renders lawful). It means a man hired for the purpose who marries pro forma and after wedding, and bedding with actual-consummation, at once divorces the woman. He is held the reverse of respectable and no wonder. Hence, probably, Mandeville's story of the Islanders who, on the marriage-night, "make another man to lie by their wives, to have their maidenhead, for which they give great hire and much thanks. And there are certain men in every town that serve for no other thing; and they call them cadeberiz, that is to say, the fools of despair, because they believe their occupation is a dangerous one." Burckhardt gives the proverb (No. 79), "A thousand lovers rather than one Mustahall," the latter being generally some ugly fellow picked up in the streets and disgusting to the wife who must permit his embraces.

FN#55 This is a woman's oath. not used by men.

FN#56 Pronounced "Yá Sín" (chaps. xxxvi.) the "heart of the Koran" much used for edifying recitation. Some pious Moslems in Egypt repeat it as a Wazifah, or religious task, or as masses for the dead, and all educated men know its 83 versets by rote.

FN#57 Arab. "Ál-Dáúd"=the family of David, i.e. David himself, a popular idiom. The prophet's recitation of the "Mazámir" (Psalter) worked miracles.

FN#58 There is a peculiar thickening of the voice in leprosy which at once betrays the hideous disease.

FN#59 These lines have occurred in Night clxxxiii. I quote Mr. Payne (in loco) by way of variety.

FN#60 Where the "Juzám" (leprosy, elephantiasis, morbus sacrum, etc. etc.) is supposed first to show: the swelling would alter the shape. Lane (ii. 267) translates "her wrist which was bipartite."

FN#61 Arab. "Zakariyá" (Zacharias): a play upon the term "Zakar"=the sign of "masculinity." Zacharias, mentioned in the Koran as the educator of the Virgin Mary (chaps. iii.) and repeatedly referred to (chaps. xix. etc.), is a well-known personage amongst Moslems and his church is now the great Cathedral-Mosque of Aleppo.

FN#62 Arab. " Ark al-Haláwat " = vein of sweetness.

FN#63 Arab. "Futúh," which may also mean openings, has before occurred.

FN#64 i.e. four times without withdrawing.

FN#65 i.e. a correspondence of size, concerning which many rules are given in the Ananga-Rangha Shastra which justly declares that discrepancy breeds matrimonial-troubles.

FN#66 Arab. "Ghuráb al-Bayn"= raven of the waste or the parting: hence the bird of Odin symbolises separation (which is also called Al-bayn). The Raven (Ghurab = Heb. Oreb and Lat. Corvus, one of the prehistoric words) is supposed to be seen abroad earlier than any other bird; and it is entitled "Abu Zajir," father of omens, because lucky when flying towards the right and v.v. It is opposed in poetry to the (white) pigeon, the emblem of union, peace and happiness. The vulgar declare that when Mohammed hid in the cave the crow kept calling to his pursuers, "Ghár! Ghár!" (cavern, cavern): hence the Prophet condemned him to wear eternal-mourning and ever to repeat the traitorous words. This is the old tale of Coronis and Apollo (Ovid, lib. ii.).

----------" who blacked the raven o'er
And bid him prate in his white plumes no more."

FN#67 This use of a Turkish title "Efendi" being=our esquire, and inferior to a Bey, is a rank anachronism, probably of the copyist.

FN#68 Arab. "Samn"=Hind. "Ghi" butter melted, skimmed and allowed to cool.

FN#69 Arab. "Ya Wadúd," a title of the Almighty: the Mac. Edit. has "O David!"

FN#70 Arab. "Muwashshahah;" a complicated stanza of which specimens have occurred. Mr. Payne calls it a "ballad," which would be a "Kunyat al-Zidd."

FN#71 Arab. "Baháim" (plur. of Bahímah=Heb. Behemoth), applied in Egypt especially to cattle. A friend of the "Oppenheim" house, a name the Arabs cannot pronounce was known throughout Cairo as "Jack al-baháim" (of the cows).

FN#72 Lit. "The father of side-locks," a nickname of one of the Tobba Kings. This "Hasan of: the ringlets" who wore two long pig-tails hanging to his shoulders was the Rochester or Piron of his age: his name is still famous for brilliant wit, extempore verse and the wildest debauchery. D'Herbelot's sketch of his life is very meagre. His poetry has survived to the present day and (unhappily) we shall hear more of "Abu Nowás." On the subject of these patronymics Lane (Mod. Egypt, chaps. iv.) has a strange remark that "Abu Dáúd i' not the Father of Dáúd or Abu Ali the Father of Ali, but whose Father is (or was) Dáúd or Ali." Here, however, he simply confounds Abu = father of (followed by a genitive), with Abu-h (for Abu-hu) = he, whose father.

FN#73 Arab. "Samúr," applied in slang language to cats and dogs, hence the witty Egyptians converted Admiral-Seymour (Lord Alcester) into "Samúr."

FN#74 The home-student of Arabic may take this letter as a model even in the present day; somewhat stiff and old-fashioned, but gentlemanly and courteous.

FN#75 Arab. "Salím" (not Sé-lim) meaning the "Safe and sound."

FN#76 Arab. "Haláwah"=sweetmeat, meaning an entertainment such as men give to their friends after sickness or a journey. it is technically called as above, "The Sweetmeat of Safety."

FN#77 Arab. "Salát" which from Allah means mercy, from the Angels intercession and pardon; and from mankind blessing. Concerning the specific effects of blessing the Prophet, see Pilgrimage (ii. 70). The formula is often slurred over when a man is in a hurry to speak: an interrupting friend will say " Bless the Prophet!" and he does so by ejaculating "Sa'am."

FN#78 Persian, meaning originally a command: it is now applied to a Wazirial-order as opposed to the " Irádah," the Sultan's order.

FN#79 Arab. " Mashá'ilí" lit. the cresses-bearer who has before appeared as hangman.

FN#80 Another polite formula for announcing a death.

FN#81 As he died heirless the property lapsed to the Treasury.

FN#82This shaking the kerchief is a signal to disperse and the action suggests its meaning. Thus it is used in an opposite sense to "throwing the kerchief," a pseudo-Oriental practice whose significance is generally understood in Europe.

FN#83 The body-guard being of two divisions.

FN#84 Arab. "Hadbá," lit. "hump-backed;" alluding to the Badawi bier; a pole to which the corpse is slung (Lane). It seems to denote the protuberance of the corpse when placed upon the bier which before was flat. The quotation is from Ka'ab's Mantle-Poem (Burdah v . 37), "Every son of a female, long though his safety may be, is a day borne upon a ridged implement," says Mr. Redhouse, explaining the latter as a "bier with a ridged lid." Here we differ: the Janázah with a lid is not a Badawi article: the wildlings use the simplest stretcher; and I would translate the lines,

"The son of woman, whatso his career
One day is borne upon the gibbous bier."

FN#85 This is a high honour to any courtier.

FN#86 "Khatun" in Turk. means any lady: mistress, etc., and follows the name, e.g. Fátimah Khatun. Habzalam Bazazah is supposed to be a fanciful compound, uncouth as the named; the first word consisting of "Habb" seed, grain; and "Zalam" of Zulm=seed of tyranny. Can it be a travesty of "Absalom" (Ab Salám, father of peace)? Lane (ii. 284) and Payne (iii. 286) prefer Habazlam and Hebezlem.

FN#87 Or night. A metaphor for rushing into peril.

FN#88 Plur. of kumkum, cucurbite, gourd-shaped vessel, jar.

FN#89 A popular exaggeration for a very expert thief.

FN#90 Arab. "Buka'at Ad-bum": lit. the "low place of blood" (where it stagnates): so Al-Buká'ah = Cœlesyria.

FN#91 That common and very unpleasant phrase, full of egotism and self-esteem, "I told you so," is even more common in the naďve East than in the West. In this case the son's answer is far superior to the mother's question.

FN#92 In order to keep his oath to the letter.

FN#93 "Tabannuj; " literally "hemping" (drugging with hemp or henbane) is the equivalent in Arab medicine of our "anćsthetics." These have been used in surgery throughout the East for centuries before ether and chloroform became the fashion in the civilised West.

FN#94 Arab. "Durká'ah," the lower part of the floor, opposed to the "liwán" or daďs. Liwán =Al-Aywán (Arab. and Pers.) the hall (including the daďs and the sunken parts)

FN#95 i.e. he would toast it as he would a mistress.

FN#96 This till very late years was the custom in Persia, and Fath Ali Shah never appeared in scarlet without ordering some horrible cruelties. In Dar-For wearing a red cashmere turban was a sign of wrath and sending a blood red dress to a subject meant that he would be slain.

FN#97 That is, this robbery was committed in the palace by some one belonging to it. References to vinegar are frequent; that of Egypt being famous in those days. "Optimum et laudatissimum acetum a Romanis habebatur Ćgyptum" (Facciolati); and possibly it was sweetened: the Gesta (Tale xvii.) mentions "must and vinegar." In Arab Proverbs, One mind by vinegar and another by wine"=each mind goes its own way, (Arab. Prov. . 628); or, "with good and bad," vinegar being spoilt wine.

FN#98 We have not heard the last of this old "dowsing rod": the latest form of rhabdomancy is an electrical-rod invented in the United States.

FN#99 This is the procčs verbal always drawn up on such occasions.

FN#100 The sight of running water makes a Persian long for strong drink as the sight of a fine view makes the Turk feel hungry.

FN#101 Arab. "Min wahid aduww " a peculiarly Egyptian or rather Cairene phrase.

FN#102 Al-Danaf=the Distressing Sickness: the title would be Ahmad the Calamity. Al-Zaybak (the Quicksilver)=Mercury Ali Hasan "Shuuman"=a pestilent fellow. We shall meet all these worthies again and again: see the Adventures of Mercury Ali of Cairo, Night dccviii., a sequel to The Rogueries of Dalilah, Night dcxcviii.

FN#103 For the "Sacrifice-place of Ishmael" (not Isaac) see my Pilgrimage (iii. 306). According to all Arab ideas Ishmael, being the eldest son, was the chief of the family after his father. I have noted that this is the old old quarrel between the Arabs and their cousins the Hebrews.

FN#104 This black-mail was still paid to the Badawin of Ramlah (Alexandria) till the bombardment in 1881.

FN#105 The famous Issus of Cilicia, now a port-village on the Gulf of Scanderoon.

FN#106 Arab. " Wada'á" = the concha veneris, then used as small change.

FN#107 Arab. "Sakati"=a dealer in "castaway" articles, such es old metal,damaged goods, the pluck and feet of animals, etc.

FN#108 The popular tale of Burckhardt's death in Cairo was that the names of the three first Caliphs were found written upon his slipper-soles and that he was put to death by decree of the Olema. It is the merest nonsense, as the great traveller died of dysentery in the house of my old friend John Thurburn and was buried outside the Bab al-Nasr of Cairo where his tomb was restored by the late Rogers Bey (Pilgrimage i. 123).

FN#109 Prob. a mis-spelling for Arslán, in Turk. a lion, and in slang a piastre.

FN#110 Arab. "Maka'ad;" lit. = sitting-room.

FN#111 Arab. "Khammárah"; still the popular term throughout Egypt for a European Hotel. It is not always intended to be insulting but it is, meaning the place where Franks meet to drink forbidden drinks.

FN#112 A reminiscence of Mohammed who cleansed the Ka'abah of its 360 idols (of which 73 names are given by Freytag, Einleitung, etc. pp. 270, 342-57) by touching them with his staff, whereupon all fell to the ground; and the Prophet cried (Koran xvii. 84), "Truth is come, and falsehood is vanished: verily, falsehood is a thing that vanisheth" (magna est veritas, etc.). Amongst the "idols" are said to have been a statue of Abraham and the horns of the ram sacrificed in lieu of Ishmael, which (if true) would prove conclusively that the Abrahamic legend at Meccah is of ancient date and not a fiction of Al-Islam. Hence, possibly, the respect of the Judaising Tobbas of Hiwyarland for the Ka'abah. (Pilgrimage, iii. 295.)

FN#113 This was evidently written by a Sunni as the Shí'ahs claim to be the only true Moslems. Lane tells an opposite story (ii. 329). It suggests the common question in the South of Europe, "Are you a Christian or a Protestant?"

FN#114 Arab. "Ana fí jírat-ak!" a phrase to be remembered as useful in time of danger.

FN#115 i.e. No Jinni, or Slave of the Jewel, was there to answer.

FN#116 Arab. "Kunsúl" (pron. "Gunsul") which here means a well-to-do Frank, and shows the modern date of the tale as it stands.

FN#117 From the Ital. "Capitano." The mention of cannon and other terms in this tale shows that either it was written during the last century or it has been mishandled by copyists.

FN#118 Arab. "Minínah"; a biscuit of flour and clarified butter.

FN#119 Arab. "Waybah"; the sixth part of the Ardabb=6 to 7 English gallons.

FN#120 He speaks in half-jest ŕ la fellah; and reminds us of "Hangman, drive on the cart!"

FN#121 Yochanan (whom Jehovah has blessed) Jewish for John, is probably a copy of the Chaldean Euahanes, the Oannes of Berosus=Ea Khan, Hea the fish. The Greeks made it Joannes; the Arabs "Yohanná" (contracted to "Hanná," Christian) and "Yábyá" (Moslem). Prester (Priest) John is probably Ung Khan, the historian prince conquered and slain by Janghiz Khan in A.D. 1202. The modern history of "John" is very extensive: there may be a full hundred varieties and derivation' of the name. "Husn Maryam" the beauty (spiritual. etc.) of the B.V.

FN#122 Primarily being middle-aged; then aid, a patron, servant, etc. Also a tribe of the Jinn usually made synonymous with "Márid," evil controuls, hostile to men: modern spiritualists would regard them as polluted souls not yet purged of their malignity. The text insinuates that they were at home amongst Christians and in Genoa.

FN#123 Arab. "Sar'a" = epilepsy, falling sickness, of old always confounded with "possession" (by evil spirits) or "obsession."

FN#124 Again the true old charge of falsifying the so-called "Sacred books." Here the Koran is called "Furkán." Sale (sect. iii.) would assimilate this to the Hebr. "Perek" or "Pirka," denoting a section or portion of Scripture; but Moslems understand it to be the "Book which distinguisheth (faraka, divided) the true from the false." Thus Caliph Omar was entitled "Fárúk" = the Distinguisher (between right and wrong). Lastly, "Furkán," meanings as in Syr. and Ethiop. deliverance, revelation, is applied alike to the Pentateuch and Koran.

FN#125 Euphemistic for "thou shalt die."

FN#126 Lit. "From (jugular) vein to vein" (Arab. "Waríd"). Our old friend Lucretius again: "Tantane relligio," etc.

FN#127 As opposed to the "but" or outer room.

FN#128 Arab. "Darb al-Asfar" in the old Jamalíyah or Northern part of Cairo.

FN#129 A noble tribe of Badawin that migrated from Al-Yaman and settled in Al-Najd Their Chief, who died a few years before Mohammed's birth, was Al-Hatim (the "black crow"), a model of Arab manliness and munificence; and although born in the Ignorance he will enter Heaven with the Moslems. Hatim was buried on the hill called Owárid: I have already noted this favourite practice of the wilder Arabs and the affecting idea that the Dead may still look upon his kith and kin. There is not an Arab book nor, indeed, a book upon Arabia which does not contain the name of Hatim: he is mentioned as unpleasantly often as Aristides.

FN#130 Lord of "Cattle-feet," this King's name is unknown; but the Kámús mentions two Kings called Zu 'l Kalá'a, the Greater and the Less. Lane's Shaykh (ii. 333) opined that the man who demanded Hatim's hospitality was one Abu'l-Khaybari.

FN#131 The camel's throat, I repeat, is not cut as in the case of other animals, the muscles being too strong: it is slaughtered by the "nahr," i.e. thrusting a knife into the hollow at the commissure of the chest. (Pilgrimage iii. 303.)

FN#132 Adi became a Moslem and was one of the companions of the Prophet.

FN#133 A rival-in generosity to Hatim: a Persian poet praising his patron's generosity says that it buried that of Hatim and dimmed that of Ma'an (D'Herbelot). He was a high official-under the last Ommiade, Marwán al-Himár (the "Ass," or the "Century," the duration of Ommiade rule) who was routed and slain in A.H. 132=750. Ma'an continued to serve under the Abbasides and was a favourite with Al-Mansúr. "More generous or bountiful than Ka'ab" is another saying (A. P., i. 325); Ka'ab ibn Mámah was a man who, somewhat like Sir Philip Sidney at Zutphen, gave his own portion of drink while he was dying of thirst to a man who looked wistfully at him, whence the saying "Give drink to thy brother the Námiri" (A. P., i. 608). Ka'ab could not mount, so they put garments over him to scare away the wild beasts and left him in the desert to die. "Scatterer of blessings" (Náshir al-Ni'am) was a title of King Malik of Al-Yaman, son of Sharhabíl, eminent for his liberality. He set up the statue in the Western Desert, inscribed "Nothing behind me," as a warner to others.

FN#134 Lane (ii. 352) here introduces, between Nights cclxxi. and ccxc., a tale entitled in the Bresl. Edit. (iv. 134) "The Sleeper and the Waker," i.e. the sleeper awakened; and he calls it: The Story of Abu-l-Hasan the Wag. It is interesting and founded upon historical-fact; but it can hardly be introduced here without breaking the sequence of The Nights. I regret this the more as Mr. Alexander J. Cotheal-of New York has most obligingly sent me an addition to the Breslau text (iv. 137) from his MS. But I hope eventually to make use of it.

FN#135 The first girl calls gold "Titer" (pure, unalloyed metal); the second "Asjad" (gold generally) and the third "Ibríz" (virgin ore, the Greek {Greek letters}. This is a law of Arab rhetoric never to repeat the word except for a purpose and, as the language can produce 1,200,000 (to 100,000 in English) the copiousness is somewhat painful to readers.

FN#136 Arab. "Shakes" before noticed.

FN#137 Arab. "Kussá'á"=the curling cucumber: the vegetable is of the cheapest and the poorer classes eat it as "kitchen" with bread.

FN#138 Arab. "Haram-hu," a double entendre. Here the Barlawi means his Harem the inviolate part of the house; but afterwards he makes it mean the presence of His Honour.

FN#139 Toledo? this tale was probably known to Washington Irving. The "Land of Roum " here means simply Frank-land as we are afterwards told that its name was Andalusia the old Vandal-land, a term still applied by Arabs to the whole of the Iberian Peninsula.

FN#140 Arab. "Amáim" (plur. of Imámah) the common word for turband which I prefer to write in the old unclipt fashion. We got it through the Port. Turbante and the old French Tolliban from the (now obsolete) Persian term Dolband=a turband or a sash.

FN#141 Sixth Ommiade Caliph, A.D. 705-716, from "Tárik" we have "Gibraltar"=Jabal-al-Tárik.

FN#142 Arab. "Yunán" = Ionia, applied to ancient Greece as "Roum" is to the Grćco-Roman Empire.

FN#143 Arab. "Bahramáni ;" prob. alluding to the well-known legend of the capture of Somanath (Somnauth) from the Hindus by Mahmud of Ghazni. In the Ajá'ib al-Hind (before quoted) the Brahmins are called Abrahamah.

FN#144 i.e. "Peace be with thee!"

FN#145 i.e. in the palace when the hunt was over. The bluntness and plain-speaking of the Badawi, which caused the revelation of the Koranic chapter "Inner Apartments" (No. xlix.) have always been favourite themes with Arab tale-tellers as a contrast with citizen suavity and servility. Moreover the Badawi, besides saying what he thinks, always tells the truth (unless corrupted by commerce with foreigners); and this is a startling contrast with the townsfolk. To ride out of Damascus and have a chat with the Ruwalá is much like being suddenly transferred from amongst the trickiest of Mediterranean people to the bluff society of the Scandinavian North. And the reason why the Turk will never govern the Arab in peace is that the former is always trying to finesse and to succeed by falsehood, when the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is wanted.

FN#146 Koran. xvi. 112.

FN#147 A common and expressive way of rewarding the tongue which "spoke poetry." The Jewels are often pearls.

FN#148 Ibrahim Abu Ishák bin al-Mahdi, a pretender to the Caliphate of well known wit and a famed musician surnamed from his corpulence "Al-Tannín"=the Dragon or, according to others (Lane ii. 336), "Al-Tin"= the fig. His adventurous history will be found in Ibn Khallikan D'Herbelot and Al-Siyuti.

FN#149 The Ragha of the Zendavesta, and Rages of the Apocrypha (Tobit, Judith, etc.), the old capital-of Media Proper, and seat of government of Daylam, now a ruin some miles south of Teheran which was built out of its remains. Rayy was founded by Hoshang the primeval-king who first sawed wood, made doors and dug metal. It is called Rayy al-Mahdiyyah because Al-Mahdi held his court there. Harun al-Rashid was also born in it (A.H. 145). It is mentioned by a host of authors and names one of the Makamat of Al-Hariri.

FN#150 Human blood being especially impure.

FN#151 Jones, Brown and Robinson.

FN#152 Arab. "Kumm ," the Moslem sleeve is mostly (like his trousers) of ample dimensions and easily converted into a kind of carpet-bag by depositing small articles in the middle and gathering up the edge in the hand. In this way carried the weight would be less irksome than hanging to the waist. The English of Queen Anne's day had regular sleeve-pockets for memoranda, etc., hence the saying, to have in one's sleeve.

FN#153 Arab. "Khuff" worn under the "Bábúg" (a corruption of the Persian pá-push=feet-covers, papooshes, slippers).

Lane M. E. chaps. i.

FN#154 Done in hot weather throughout the city, a dry line for camels being left in mid-street to prevent the awkward beasts slipping. The watering of the Cairo streets of late years has been excessive; they are now lines of mud in summer as well as in winter and the effluvia from the droppings of animals have, combined with other causes, seriously deteriorated the once charming climate. The only place in Lower Egypt, which has preserved the atmosphere of 1850, is Suez.

FN#155 Arab. "Hurák:" burnt rag, serving as tinder for flint and steel, is a common styptic.

FN#156 Of this worthy, something has been said and there will be more in a future page.

FN#157 i.e. the person entitled to exact the blood-wite.

FN#158 Al-Maamum was a man of sense with all his fanaticism One of his sayings is preserved "Odious is contentiousness in Kings, more odious vexation in judges uncomprehending a case; yet more odious is shallowness of doctors in religions and most odious are avarice in the rich, idleness in youth, jesting in age and cowardice in the soldier."

FN#159 The second couplet is not in the Mac. Edit. but Lane's Shaykh has supplied it (ii. 339)

FN#160 Adam's loins, the "Day of Alast," and the Imam (who stands before the people in prayer) have been explained. The "Seventh Imam" here is Al-Maamun, the seventh Abbaside the Ommiades being, as usual, ignored.

FN#161 He sinned only for the pleasure of being pardoned, which is poetical-and hardly practical-or probable.

FN#162 The Katá (sand-grouse) always enters into Arab poetry because it is essentially a desert bird, and here the comparison is good because it lays its eggs in the waste far from water which it must drink morning and evening. Its cry is interpreted "man sakat, salam" (silent and safe), but it does not practice that precept, for it is usually betrayed by its piping " Kata! Kata!" Hence the proverb, "More veracious than the sand-grouse," and "speak not falsely, for the Kata sayeth sooth," is Komayt's saying. It is an emblem of swiftness: when the brigand poet Shanfara boasts, "The ash-coloured Katas can drink only my leavings, after hastening all night to slake their thirst in the morning," it is a hyperbole boasting of his speed. In Sind it is called the "rock pigeon" and it is not unlike a grey partridge when on the wing.

FN#163 Joseph to his brethren, Koran, xii. 92, when he gives them his "inner garment" to throw over his father's face.

FN#164 Arab. "Hajjám"=a cupper who scarifies forehead and legs, a bleeder, a (blood-) sucker. The slang use of the term is to thrash, lick, wallop. (Burckhardt. Prov. 34.)

FN#165 The Bresl. Edit. (vii. 171-174) entitles this tale, "Story of Shaddád bin Ad and the City of Iram the Columned ;" but it relates chiefly to the building by the King of the First Adites who, being promised a future Paradise by Prophet Húd, impiously said that he would lay out one in this world. It also quotes Ka'ab al-Ahbár as an authority for declaring that the tale is in the "Pentateuch of Moses." Iram was in al-Yaman near Adan (our Aden) a square of ten parasangs (or leagues each= 18,000 feet) every way, the walls were of red (baked) brick 500 cubits high and 20 broad, with four gates of corresponding grandeur. It contained 300,000 Kasr (palaces) each with a thousand pillars of gold-bound jasper, etc. (whence its title). The whole was finished in five hundred years, and, when Shaddad prepared to enter it, the "Cry of Wrath" from the Angel of Death slew him and all his many. It is mentioned in the Koran (chaps. Ixxxix. 6-7) as "Irem adorned with lofty buildings (or pillars)." But Ibn Khaldun declares that commentators have embroidered the passage; Iram being the name of a powerful clan of the ancient Adites and "imád" being a tent-pole: hence "Iram with the numerous tents or tent-poles." Al-Bayzawi tells the story of Abdullah ibn Kilabah (D'Herbelot's Colabah). At Aden I met an Arab who had seen the mysterious city on the borders of Al-Ahkáf, the waste of deep sands, west of Hadramaut; and probably he had, the mirage or sun-reek taking its place. Compare with this tale "The City of Brass" (Night dlxv.).

FN#166 The biblical-"Sheba," named from the great-grandson of Joctan, whence the Queen (Bilkis) visited Solomon It was destroyed by the Flood of Márib.

FN#167 The full title of the Holy City is "Madinat al-Nab)" = the City of the Prophet, of old Yasrib (Yathrib) the Iatrippa of the Greeks (Pilgrimage, ii. 119). The reader will remember that there are two "Yasribs:" that of lesser note being near Hujr in the Yamámah province.

FN#168 "Ka'ab of the Scribes," a well-known traditionist and religious poet who died (A.H. 32) in the Caliphate of Osman. He was a Jew who islamised; hence his name (Ahbár, plur. of Hibr, a Jewish scribe, doctor of science, etc. Jarrett's El-Siyuti, p. 123). He must not be confounded with another Ka'ab al-Ahbár the Poet of the (first) Cloak-poem or "Burdah," a noble Arab who was a distant cousin of Mohammed, and whose tomb at Hums (Emesa) is a place of pious visitation. According to the best authorities (no Christian being allowed to see them) the cloak given to the bard by Mohammed is still preserved together with the Khirkah or Sanjak Sherif ("Holy Coat" or Banner, the national oriflamme) at Stambul in the Upper Seraglio. (Pilgrimage, i. 213.) Many authors repeat this story of Mu'awiyah, the Caliph, and Ka'ab of the Burdah, but it is an evident anachronism, the poet having been dead nine years before the ruler's accession (A.H. 41).

FN#169 Koran, lxxxix. 6-7.

FN#170 Arab. "Kahramán" from Pers., braves, heroes.

FN#171 The Deity in the East is as whimsical-a despot as any of his "shadows" or "vice regents." In the text Shaddád is killed for mere jealousy a base passion utterly unworthy of a godhead; but one to which Allah was greatly addicted.

FN#172 Some traditionist, but whether Sha'abi, Shi'abi or Shu'abi we cannot decide.

FN#173 The Hazarmaveth of Genesis (x. 26) in South Eastern Arabia. Its people are the Adramitae (mod. Hazrami) of Ptolemy who places in their land the Arabić Emporium, as Pliny does his Massola. They border upon the Homeritć or men of Himyar, often mentioned in The Nights. Hazramaut is still practically unknown to us, despite the excursions of many travellers; and the hard nature of the people, the Swiss of Arabia, offers peculiar obstacles to exploration.

FN#174 i.e. the prophet Hud generally identified (?) with Heber. He was commissioned (Koran, chaps. vii.) to preach Al-Islam to his tribe the Adites who worshipped four goddesses, Sákiyah (the rain-giver), Rázikah (food-giver), Háfizah (the saviouress) and Sálimah (who healed sickness). As has been seen he failed, so it was useless to send him.

FN#175 Son of Ibraham al-Mosili, a musician poet and favourite with the Caliphs Harun al-Rashid and Al-Maamun. He made his name immortal-by being the first who reduced Arab harmony to systematic rules, and he wrote a biography of musicians referred to by Al-Hariri in the Séance of Singar.

FN#176 This must not be confounded with the "pissing against the wall" of I Kings, xiv. 10, where watering against a wall denotes a man as opposed to a woman.

FN#177 Arab. "Zambíl" or "Zimbíl," a limp basket made of plaited palm-leaves and generally two handled. It is used for many purposes, from carrying poultry to carrying earth.

FN#178 Here we have again the Syriac ''Bakhkh -un-Bakhkh-un-''=well done! It is the Pers Áferín and means "all praise be to him."

FN#179 Arab. "A Tufayli?" So the Arab. Prov. (ii. 838) "More intrusive than Tufayl" (prob. the P.N. of a notorious sponger). The Badawin call "Wárish" a man who sits down to meat unbidden and to drink Wághil; but townsfolk apply the latter to the "Wárish."

FN#180 Arab. "Artál"=rotoli, pounds; and

"A pint is a pound
All the world round;"
except in highly civilised lands where the pint has a curious power of shrinking.

FN#181 One of Al-Maamun's Wazirs. The Caliph married his daughter whose true name was Búrán; but this tale of girl's freak and courtship was invented (?) by Ishak. For the splendour of the wedding and the munificence of the Minister see Lane, ii. 350-352.

FN#182 I have described this scene, the wretch clinging to the curtain and sighing and crying as if his heart would break (Pilgrimage iii. 216 and 220). The same is done at the place Al-Multazam'"the attached to;" (ibid. 156) and various spots called Al-Mustajáb, "where prayer is granted" (ibid. 162). At Jerusalem the Wailing place of the Jews" shows queer scenes; the worshippers embrace the wall with a peculiar wriggle crying out in Hebrew, "O build Thy House, soon, without delay," etc.

FN#183 i.e. The wife. The scene in the text was common at Cairo twenty years ago; and no one complained of the stick. See Pilgrimage i., 120.

FN#184 Arab. "Udm, Udum" (plur. of Idám) = "relish," olives, cheese, pickled cucumbers, etc.

FN#185 I have noticed how the left hand is used in the East. In the second couplet we have "Istinjá"=washing the fundament after stool. The lines are highly appropriate for a nightman. Easterns have many foul but most emphatic expressions like those in the text I have heard a mother say to her brat, "I would eat thy merde!" (i.e. how I love thee!).

FN#186 Arab. "Harrák," whence probably our "Carack" and "Carrack" (large ship), in dictionaries derived from Carrus Marinus.

FN#187 Arab. "Gháshiyah"=lit. an étui, a cover; and often a saddle-cover carried by the groom.

FN#188 Arab. "Sharáb al-tuffáh" = melapio or cider.

FN#189 Arab. "Mudawwarah," which generally means a small round cushion, of the Marocco-work well known in England. But one does not strike a cushion for a signal, so we must revert to the original-sense of the word "something round," as a circular plate of wood or metal, a gong, a "bell" like that of the Eastern Christians.

FN#190 Arab. "Túfán" (from the root tauf, going round) a storm, a circular gale, a cyclone the term universally applied in Al-lslam to the "Deluge," the "Flood" of Noah. The word is purely Arabic; with a quaint likeness to the Gr. {Greek letters}, in Pliny typhon, whirlwind, a giant (Typhœus) whence "Typhon" applied to the great Egyptian god "Set." The Arab word extended to China and was given to the hurricanes which the people call "Tee foong," great winds, a second whimsical-resemblance. But Sir John Davis (ii. 383) is hardly correct when he says, "the name typhoon, in itself a corruption of the Chinese term, bears a singular (though we must suppose an accidental) resemblance to the Greek {Greek letters}. "

FN#191 Plurale majestatis acting superlative; not as Lane supposes (ii. 224) "a number of full moons, not only one." Eastern tongues abound in instances beginning with Genesis (i. 1), "Gods (he) created the heaven," etc. It is still preserved in Badawi language and a wildling greatly to the astonishment of the citizens will address his friend "Yá Rijál"= O men!

FN#192 Arab. "Hásid" = an envier: in the fourth couplet "Azúl" (Azzál, etc.) = a chider, blamer; elsewhere "Lawwám" = accuser, censor, slanderer; "Wáshí,"=whisperer, informer; "Rakib"=spying, envious rival; "Ghábit"=one emulous without envy; and "Shámit"= a "blue" (fierce) enemy who rejoices over another's calamities. Arabic literature abounds in allusions to this unpleasant category of "damned ill-natured friends;" and Spanish and Portuguese letters, including Brazilian, have thoroughly caught the trick. In the Eastern mind the "blamer" would be aided by the "evil eye."

FN#193 Another plural for a singular, "O my beloved!"

FN#194 Arab. "Khayr"=good news, a euphemistic reply even if the tidings be of the worst.

FN#195 Abbás (from 'Abs, being austere; and meaning the "grim faced") son of Abd al-Muttalib; uncle to Mohammed and eponym of the Abbaside Khalifahs. A.D. 749=1258.

FN#196 Katíl = the Irish "kilt."

FN#197 This hat been explained as a wazirial title of the time.

FN#198 The phrase is intelligible in all tongues: in Arabic it is opposed to "dark as night," "black as mud" and a host of unsavoury antitheses.

FN#199 Arab. "Awwádah," the popular word; not Udíyyah as in Night cclvi. "Ud" liter.= rood and "Al-Ud"=the wood is, I have noted, the origin of our 'lute." The Span. 'laud" is larger and deeper than the guitar, and its seven strings are played upon with a plectrum of buffalo-horn.

FN#200 Arab. "Tabban lahu!"=loss (or ruin) to him. So "bu'dan lahu"=away with him, abeat in malam rem; and "Suhkan lahu"=Allah and mercy be far from him, no hope for him I

FN#201 Arab. "Áyah"=Koranic verses, sign, miracle.

FN#202 The mole on cheek calls to prayers for his preservation; and it is black as Bilal the Abyssinian. Fajran may here mean either "A.-morning" or "departing from grace."

FN#203 i.e. the young beard (myrtle) can never hope to excel tile beauties of his cheeks (roses).

FN#204 i.e. Hell and Heaven.

FN#205 The first couplet is not in the Mac. Edit. (ii. 171) which gives only a single couplet but it is found in the Bres. Edit. which entitles this tale "Story of the lying (or false kázib) Khalífah." Lane (ii. 392) of course does not translate it.

FN#206 In the East cloth of frieze that mates with cloth of gold must expect this treatment. Fath Ali Shah's daughters always made their husbands enter the nuptial-bed by the foot end.

FN#207 This is always done and for two reasons; the first humanity, that the blow may fall unawares; and, secondly, to prevent the sufferer wincing, which would throw out the headsman.

FN#208 Arab. "Ma'áni-há," lit. her meanings, i.e. her inner woman opposed to the formal-seen by every one.

FN#209 Described in my Pilgrimage (iii. 168, 174 and 175): it is the stone upon which the Patriarch stood when he built the Ka'abah and is said to show the impress of the feet but unfortunately I could not afford five dollars entrance-fee. Caliph Omar placed the station where it now is; before his time it adjoined the Ka'abah. The meaning of the text is, Be thy court a place of pious visitation, etc. At the "Station of Abraham" prayer is especially blessed and expects to be granted. "This is the place where Abraham stood; and whoever entereth therein shall be safe" (Koran ii. 119). For the other fifteen places where petitions are favourably heard by Heaven see ibid. iii. 211-12.

FN#210 As in the West, so in the East, women answer an unpleasant question by a counter question.

FN#211 This "Cry of Haro" often occurs throughout The Nights. In real-life it is sure to colece a crowd. especially if an Infidel (non Moslem) be its cause.

FN#212 In the East a cunning fellow always makes himself the claimant or complainant.

FN#213 On the Euphrates some 40 miles west of Baghdad The word is written "Anbár" and pronounced "Ambár" as usual with the "n" before "b"; the case of the Greek double Gamma.

FN#214 Syene on the Nile.

FN#215 The tale is in the richest Rabelaisian humour; and the requisitions of the "Saj'a" (rhymed prose) in places explain the grotesque combinations. It is difficult to divine why Lane omits it: probably he held a hearty laugh not respectable.

FN#216 A lawyer of the eighth century, one of the chief pupils of the Imam Abu Hanifah, and Kazi of Baghdad under the third, fourth and fifth Abbasides. The tale is told in the quasi- historical-Persian work "Nigáristán" (The Picture gallery), and is repeated by Richardson, Diss. 7, xiii. None seem to have remarked that the distinguished legist, Abu Yusuf, was on this occasion a law-breaker; the Kazi's duty being to carry out the code not to break it by the tricks of a cunning attorney. In Harun's day, however, some regard was paid to justice, not under his successors, one of whom, Al-Muktadir bi 'lláh (A.H. 295=907), made the damsel Yamika President of the Diwán al-Mazálim (Court of the Wronged), a tribunal which took cognizance of tyranny and oppression in high places.

FN#217 Here the writer evidently forgets that Shahrazad is telling the story to the king, as Boccaccio (ii. 7) forgets that Pamfilo is speaking. Such inconsequences are common in Eastern story-books and a goody-goody sentiment is always heartily received as in an English theatre.

FN#218 In the Mac. Edit. (ii. 182) "Al-Kushayri." Al-Kasri was Governor of the two Iraks (I.e. Bassorah and Cufa) in the reign of Al-Hisham, tenth Ommiade (A.D. 723-741)

FN#219 Arab. "Thakalata k Ummak!" This is not so much a curse as a playful phrase, like "Confound the fellow." So "Kátala k Allah" (Allah slay thee) and "Lá abá lak" (thou hast no father or mother). These words are even complimentary on occasions, as a good shot or a fine recitation, meaning that the praised far excels the rest of his tribe.

FN#220 Koran, iii. 178.

FN#221 Arab. "Al-Nisáb"=the minimum sum (about half-a crown) for which mutilation of the hand is prescribed by religious law. The punishment was truly barbarous, it chastised a rogue by means which prevented hard honest labour for the rest of his life.

FN#222 To show her grief.

FN#223 Abú Sa'íd Abd al-Malik bin Kurayb, surnamed Al-Asma'i from his grandfather, flor. A.H. 122-306 (=739-830) and wrote amongst a host of compositions the well-known Romance of Antar. See in D'Herbelot the right royal-directions given to him by Harun al-Rashid.

FN#224 There are many accounts of his death, but it is generally held that he was first beheaded. The story in the text is also variously told and the Persian "Nigáristán" adds some unpleasant comments upon the House of Abbas. The Persians, for reasons which will be explained in the terminal-Essay, show the greatest sympathy with the Barmecides; and abominate the Abbasides even more than the latter detested the Ommiades.

FN#225 Not written, as the European reader would suppose.

FN#226 Arab. "Fúl al-hárr" = beans like horsebeans soaked and boiled as opposed to the "Fúl Mudammas" (esp. of Egypt)=unshelled beans steamed and boiled all night and eaten with linseed oil as "kitchen" or relish. Lane (M.E., chaps. v.) calls them after the debased Cairene pronunciation, Mudemmes. A legend says that, before the days of Pharaoh (always he of Moses), the Egyptians lived on pistachios which made them a witty, lively race. But the tyrant remarking that the domestic ass, which eats beans, is degenerate from the wild ass, uprooted the pistachio-trees and compelled the lieges to feed on beans which made them a heavy, gross, cowardly people fit only for burdens. Badawis deride "beaneaters" although they do not loathe the pulse like onions. The principal-result of a bean diet is an extraordinary development of flatulence both in stomach and intestines: hence possibly, Pythagoras who had studied ceremonial-purity in Egypt, forbade the use, unless he referred to venery or political-business. I was once sitting in the Greek quarter of Cairo dressed as a Moslem when arose a prodigious hubbub of lads and boys, surrounding, a couple of Fellahs. These men had been working in the fields about a mile east of Cairo and, when returning home, one had said to the other, "If thou wilt carry the hoes I will break wind once for every step we take." He was as good as his word and when they were to part he cried, "And now for thy bakhshish!" which consisted of a volley of fifty, greatly to the delight of the boys.

FN#227 No porcelain was ever, as far as we can discover, made in Egypt or Syria of the olden day; but, as has been said, there was a regular caravan-intercourse with China At Damascus I dug into the huge rubbish-heaps and found quantities of pottery, but no China. The same has lately been done at Clysma, the artificial-mound near Suez, and the glass and pottery prove it to have been a Roman work which defended the mouth of the old classical-sweet-water canal.

FN#228 Arab. "Lá baas ba-zálik," conversational-for "Lá jaram"= there is no harm in it, no objection to it, and, sometimes, "it is a matter of course."

FN#229 A white emerald is yet unknown; but this adds only to the Oriental-extravagance of the picture. I do not think with Lane (ii. 426) that "abyaz" here can mean "bright." Dr. Steingass suggests a clerical-error for "khazar" (green).

FN#230 Arab. "Sharárif" plur. of Shurráfah=crenelles or battlements; mostly trefoil-shaped; remparts coquets which a six-pounder would crumble.

FN#231 Pronounce Abul-Muzaffar=Father of the Conqueror.

FN#232 I have explained the word in my "Zanzibar, City, Island and Coast," vol. i. chaps. v There is still a tribe, the Wadoe, reputed cannibal-on the opposite low East African shore These blacks would hardly be held " sons of Adam." "Zanj " corrupted to "Zinj " (plur Zunúj) is the Persian "Zany" or "Zangi," a black, altered by the Arabs, who ignore the hard g; and, with the suffixion of the Persian -bár (region, as in Malabar) we have Zang- bar which the Arabs have converted to "Zanjibar," in poetry "Murk al-Zunúj"=Land of the Zang. The term is old; it is the Zingis or Zingisa of Ptolemy and the Zingium of Cosmas Indicopleustes; and it shows the influence of Persian navigation in pre-Islamitic ages. For further details readers will consult "The Lake Regions of Central-Africa" vol. i. chaps. ii

FN#233 Arab. "Kawárib" plur. of "Kárib" prop. a dinghy, a small boat belonging to a ship Here it refers to the canoe (a Carib word) pop. "dug-out" and classically "monoxyle," a boat made of a single tree-trunk hollowed by fire and trimmed with axe and adze. Some of these rude craft which, when manned, remind one of saturnine Caliph Omar's "worms floating on a log of wood," measure 60 feet long and more.

FN#234 i.e. A descendant of Mohammed in general-and especially through Husayn Ali-son. Here the text notes that the chief of the bazar was of this now innumerable stock, who inherit the title through the mother as well as through the father.

FN#235 Arab. "Hasab" (=quaneity), the honour a man acquires for himself; opposed to "Nasab" (genealogy) honours inherited from ancestry: the Arabic well expresses my old motto (adopted by Chinese Gordon),

"Honour, not Honours."

FN#236 Note the difference between "Takaddum" ( = standing in presence of, also superiority in excellence) and "Takádum" (priority in time).

FN#237 Lane (ii. 427) gives a pleasant Eastern illustration of this saying.

FN#238 A Koranic fancy; the mountains being the pegs which keep the earth in place. "And he hath thrown before the earth, mountains firmly rooted, lest it should move with you." (Koran, chaps. xvi.) The earth when first created was smooth and thereby liable to a circular motion, like the celestial-orbs; and, when the Angels asked who could stand on so tottering a frame, Allah fixed it the next morning by throwing the mountains in it and pegging them down. A fair prolepsis of the Neptunian theory.

FN#239 Easy enough for an Englishman to avoid saying "by God," but this common incident in Moslem folk-lore appeals to the peoples who are constantly using the word Allah Wallah, Billah, etc. The Koran expressly says, "Make not Allah the scope (object, lit. arrow-butt) of your oaths" (chaps. ii. 224), yet the command is broken every minute.

FN#240 This must be the ubiquitous Khizr, the Green Prophet; when Ali appears, as a rule he is on horseback.

FN#241 The name is apparently imaginary; and a little below we find that it was close to Jinn land. China was very convenient for this purpose: the medieval-Moslems, who settled in considerable numbers at Canton and elsewhere, knew just enough of it to know their own ignorance of the vast empire. Hence the Druzes of the Libanus still hold that part of their nation is in the depths of the Celestial-Empire.

FN#242 I am unwilling to alter the old title to "City of Copper" as it should be; the pure metal having been technologically used long before the alloy of copper and zinc. But the Maroccan City (Night dlxvi. et seq.) was of brass (not copper). The Hindus of Upper India have an Iram which they call Hari Chand's city (Colonel Tod); and I need hardly mention the Fata Morgana, Island of Saint Borondon; Cape Fly-away; the Flying Dutchman, etc. etc., all the effect of "looming."

FN#243 This sword which makes men invisible and which takes place of Siegfried's Tarnkappe (invisible cloak) and of "Fortunatus' cap" is common in Moslem folk-lore. The idea probably arose from the venerable practice of inscribing the blades with sentences, verses and magic figures.

FN#244 Arab. "'Ukáb," in books an eagle (especially black) and P. N. of constellation but in Pop. usage= a vulture. In Egypt it is the Neophron Percnopterus (Jerdon) or N. Gingianus (Latham), the Dijájat Far'aun or Pharaoh's hen. This bird has been known to kill the Báshah sparrow-hawk (Jerdon i. 60); yet, curious to say, the reviewers of my "Falconry in the Valley of the Indus" questioned the fact, known to so many travellers, that the falcon is also killed by this "tiger of the air," despite the latter's feeble bill (pp. 35-38). I was faring badly at their hands when the late Mr. Burckhardt Barker came to the rescue. Falconicide is popularly attributed, not only to the vulture, but also to the crestless hawk-eagle (Nisćtus Bonelli) which the Hindus call Morángá=peacock slayer.

FN#245 Here I translate "Nahás"=brass, as the "kumkum" (cucurbite) is made of mixed metal, not of copper.

FN#246 Mansur al-Nimrí, a poet of the time and a protégé of Yahya's son, Al-Fazl.

FN#247 This was at least four times Mansur's debt.

FN#248 Intendant of the Palace to Harun al-Rashid. The Bres. Edit. (vii. 254) begins They tell that there arose full enmity between Ja'afar Barmecide and a Sahib of Misr" (Wazir or Governor of Egypt). Lane (ii. 429) quotes to this purpose amongst Arab; historians Fakhr al-Din. (De Sacy's Chrestomathie Arabe i., p. 26, edit. ii.)

FN#249 Arab. "Armaníyah" which Egyptians call after their mincing fashion "Irminiyeh" hence "Ermine" (Mus Ponticus). Armaniyah was much more extensive than our Armenia, now degraded to a mere province of Turkey, and the term is understood to include the whole of the old Parthian Empire.

FN#250 Even now each Pasha-governor must keep a "Wakíl" in Constantinople to intrigue and bribe for him at head-quarters.

FN#251 The symbol of generosity, of unasked liberality, the "black hand" being that of niggardness.

FN#252 Arab. Ráh =pure (and old) wine. Arabs, like our classics, usually drank their wine tempered. So Imr al-Keys in his Mu'allakah says, "Bring the well tempered wine that seems to be saffron-tinctured; and, when water-mixed, o'erbrims the cup." (v. 2.)

FN#253 There is nothing that Orientals relish more than these "goody-goody" preachments; but they read and forget them as readily as Westerns.

FN#254 Lane (ii. 435) ill-advisedly writes "Sher," as "the word is evidently Persian signifying a Lion." But this is only in the debased Indian dialect, a Persian, especially a Shirazi, pronounces "Shír." And this is how it is written in the Bresl. Edit., vii. 262. "Shár" is evidently a fancy name, possibly suggested by the dynastic name of the Ghurjistan or Georgian Princes.

FN#255 Again old experience, which has learned at a heavy cost how many a goodly apple is rotten at the core.

FN#256 This couplet has occurred in Night xxi. I give Torrens (p. 206) by way of specimen.

FN#257 Arab. "Záka" = merely tasting a thing which may be sweet with a bitter after-flavour

FN#258 This tetraseich was in Night xxx. with a difference.

FN#259 The lines have occurred in Night xxx. I quote Torrens, p. 311.

FN#260 This tetrastich is in Night clxix. I borrow from Lane (ii. 62).

FN#261 The rude but effective refrigerator of the desert Arab who hangs his water-skin to the branch of a tree and allows it to swing in the wind.

FN#262 Arab "Khumásiyah" which Lane (ii. 438) renders "of quinary stature." Usually it means five spans, but here five feet, showing that the girl was young and still growing. The invoice with a slave always notes her height in spans measured from ankle-bone to ear and above seven she loses value as being full grown. Hence Sudási (fem. Sudásiyah) is a slave six spans high, the Shibr or full span (9 inches) not the Fitr or short span from thumb to index. Faut is the interval-between every finger, Ratab between index and medius, and Atab between medius and annularis.

FN#263 "Moon faced" now sounds sufficiently absurd to us, but it was not always so. Solomon (Cant. vi. 10) does not disdain the image "fair as the moon, clear as the sun," and those who have seen a moon in the sky of Arabia will thoroughly appreciate it. We find it amongst the Hindus, the Persians, the Afghans, the Turks and all the nations of Europe. We have, finally, the grand example of Spenser,

"Her spacious forehead, like the clearest moon, etc."

FN#264 Blue eyes have a bad name in Arabia as in India: the witch Zarká of Al-Yamamah was noted for them; and "blue eyed" often means "fierce-eyed," alluding to the Greeks and Daylamites, mortal-enemies to Ishmael. The Arabs say "ruddy of mustachio, blue of eye and black of heart."

FN#265 Before explained as used with camphor to fill the dead man's mouth.

FN#266 As has been seen, slapping on the neck is equivalent to our "boxing ears," but much less barbarous and likely to injure the child. The most insulting blow is that with shoe sandal-or slipper because it brings foot in contact with head. Of this I have spoken before.

FN#267 Arab. "Hibál" (= ropes) alluding to the A'akál-fillet which binds the Kúfiyah-kerchief on the Badawi's head. (Pilgrimage, i. 346.)

FN#268 Arab. "Khiyál"; afterwards called Kara Gyuz (= "black eyes," from the celebrated Turkish Wazir). The mise-en-scčne was like that of Punch, but of transparent cloth, lamp lit inside and showing silhouettes worked by hand. Nothing could be more Fescenntne than Kara Gyuz, who appeared with a phallus longer than himself and made all the Consuls-General-periodically complain of its abuse, while the dialogue, mostly in Turkish, as even more obscene. Most ingenious were Kara Gyuz's little ways of driving on an Obstinate donkey and of tackling a huge Anatolian pilgrim. He mounted the Neddy's back face to tail, and inserting his left thumb like a clyster, hammered it with his right when the donkey started at speed. For the huge pilgrim he used a ladder. These shows now obsolete, used to enliven the Ezbekiyah Gardens every evening and explain Ovid's Words,

"Delicias videam, Nile jocose, tuas!"

FN#269 Mohammed (Mishkát al-Masábih ii. 360-62) says, "Change the whiteness of your hair but not with anything black." Abu Bakr, who was two years and some months older than the Prophet, used tincture of Henna and Katam. Old Turkish officers justify black dyes because these make them look younger and fiercer. Henna stains white hair orange red; and the Persians apply after it a paste of indigo leaves, the result is successively leek-green, emerald-green, bottle-green and lastly lamp-black. There is a stage in life (the youth of old age) when man uses dyes: presently he finds that the whole face wants dye; that the contrast between juvenile coloured hair and ancient skin is ridiculous and that it is time to wear white.

FN#270 This prejudice extends all over the East: the Sanskrit saying is "Kvachit káná bhaveta sádhus" now and then a monocular is honest. The left eye is the worst and the popular idea is, I have said, that the damage will come by the injured member

FN#271 The Arabs say like us, "Short and thick is never quick" and "Long and thin has little in."

FN#272 Arab. "Ba'azu layáli," some night when his mistress failed him.

FN#273 The fountain in Paradise before noticed.

FN#274 Before noticed as the Moslem St. Peter (as far as the keys go).

FN#275 Arab. "Munkasir" = broken, frail, languishing the only form of the maladive allowed. Here again we have masculine for feminine: the eyelids show love-desire, but, etc.

FN#276 The river of Paradise.

FN#277 See Night xii. "The Second Kalandar's Tale " vol. i. 113.

FN#278 Lane (ii. 472) refers for specimens of calligraphy to Herbin's "Développements, etc." There are many more than seven styles of writing as I have shown in Night xiii.; vol. i. 129.

FN#279 Amongst good Moslems this would be a claim upon a man.

FN#280 These lines have occurred twice already: and first appear in Night xxii. I have borrowed from Mr. Payne (iv. 46).

FN#281 Arab. "Ya Nasráni", the address is not intrinsically slighting but it may easily be made so. I have elsewhere noted that when Julian (is said to have) exclaimed "Vicisti Nazarene!" he was probably thinking in Eastern phrase "Nasarta, yá Nasráni!"

FN#282 Thirst is the strongest of all pleas to an Eastern, especially to a Persian who never forgets the sufferings of his Imam, Husayn, at Kerbela: he would hardly withhold it from the murderer of his father. There is also a Hadis, "Thou shalt not refuse water to him who thirsteth in the desert."

FN#283 Arab. "Zimmi" which Lane (ii. 474) aptly translates a "tributary." The Koran (chaps. ix.) orders Unbelievers to Islamize or to "pay tribute by right of subjection" (lit. an yadin=out of hand, an expression much debated). The least tribute is one dinar per annum which goes to the poor-rate. and for this the Kafir enjoys protection and almost all the civil rights of Moslems. As it is a question of "loaves and fishes" there is much to say on the subject; "loaves and fishes" being the main base and foundation of all religious establishments.

FN#284 This tetrastich has before occurred, so I quote Lane (ii. 444).

FN#285 In Night xxxv. the same occurs with a difference.

FN#286 The old rite, I repeat, has lost amongst all but the noblest of Arab tribes the whole of its significance; and the traveller must be careful how he trusts to the phrase "Nahnu málihin" we are bound together by the salt.

FN#287 Arab. "Aláma" = Alá-má = upon what ? wherefore ?

FN#288 Arab. "Mauz"; hence the Linnean name Musa (paradisiaca, etc.). The word is explained by Sale (Koran, chaps. xxxvii. 146) as "a small tree or shrub;" and he would identify it with Jonah's gourd.

FN#289 Lane (ii. 446) "bald wolf or empowered fate," reading (with Mac.) Kazá for Kattan (cat).

FN#290 i.e. "the Orthodox in the Faith." Ráshid is a proper name, witness that scourge of Syria, Ráshid Pasha. Born in 1830, of the Haji Nazir Agha family, Darrah-Beys of Macedonian Draina, he was educated in Paris where he learned the usual-hatred of Europeans: he entered the Egyptian service in 1851, and, presently exchanging it for the Turkish, became in due time Wali (Governor-General) of Syria which he plundered most shamelessly. Recalled in 1872, he eventually entered the Ministry and on June 15 1876, he was shot down, with other villains like himself, by gallant Captain Hasan, the Circassian (Yarham-hu 'lláh !).

FN#291 Quoted from a piece of verse, of which more presently.

FN#292 This tetrastich has occurred before (Night cxciii.). I quote Lane (ii. 449), who quotes Dryden's Spanish Friar,

"There is a pleasure sure in being mad
Which none but madmen know."

FN#293 Lane (ii. 449) gives a tradition of the Prophet, "Whoso is in love, and acteth chastely, and concealeth (his passion) and dieth, dieth a martyr." Sakar is No. 5 Hell for Magi Guebres, Parsis, etc., it is used in the comic Persian curse, "Fi'n-nári wa Sakar al-jadd w'al-pidar"=ln Hell and Sakar his grandfather and his father.

FN#294 Arab. "Sifr": I have warned readers that whistling is considered a kind of devilish speech by the Arabs, especially the Badawin, and that the traveller must avoid it. It savours of idolatry: in the Koran we find (chaps. viii. 35), "Their prayer at the House of God (Ka'abah) is none other than whistling and hand-clapping;" and tradition says that they whistled through their fingers. Besides many of the Jinn have only round holes by way of mouths and their speech is whistling a kind of bird language like sibilant English.

FN#295 Arab. 'Kíl wa kál"=lit. "it was said and he said;" a popular phrase for chit chat, tittle-tattle, prattle and prate, etc.

FN#296 Arab. "Hadis." comparing it with a tradition of the Prophet.

FN#297 Arab. "Mikashshah," the thick part of a midrib of a palm-frond soaked for some days in water and beaten out till the fibres separate. It makes an exceedingly hard, although not a lasting broom.

FN#298 Persian, "the youth, the brave;" Sansk. Yuván: and Lat. Juvenis. The Kurd, in tales, is generally a sturdy thief; and in real-life is little better.

FN#299 Arab. "Yá Shatir ;" lit. O clever one (in a bad sense).

FN#300 Lane (ii. 453) has it. "that I may dress thy hair'" etc. This is Bowdlerising with a witness.

FN#301 The sign of respect when a personage dismounts. (Pilgrimage i. 77.)

FN#302 So the Hindus speak of "the defilement of separation" as if it were an impurity.

FN#303 Lane (i. 605) gives a long and instructive note on these public royal-banquets which were expected from the lieges by Moslem subjects. The hanging-penalty is, perhaps, a tattle exaggerated; but we find the same excess in the priestly Gesta Romanorum.

FN#304 Had he eaten it he would have become her guest. Amongst the older Badawin it was sufficient to spit upon a man (in entreaty) to claim his protection: so the horse-thieves when caught were placed in a hole in the ground covered over with matting to prevent this happening. Similarly Saladin (Saláh al-Din) the chivalrous would not order a cup of water for the robber, Reynald de Châtillon, before putting him to death

FN#305 Arab. "Kishk" properly "Kashk"=wheat-meal-coarsely ground and eaten with milk or broth. It is de rigueur with the Egyptian Copts on the "Friday of Sorrow" (Good Friday): and Lane gives the recipe for making it (M. E. chaps. xxvi.)

FN#306 In those days distinctive of Moslems.

FN#307 The euphemism has before been noticed: the Moslem reader would not like to pronounce the words "I am a Nazarene." The same formula occurs a little lower down to save the reciter or reader from saying "Be my wife divorced," etc.

FN#308 Arab, "Hájj," a favourite Egyptianism. We are wrong to write Hajji which an Eastern would pronounce Háj-jí.

FN#309 This is Cairene "chaff."

FN#310 Whose shell fits very tight.

FN#311 His hand was like a raven's because he ate with thumb and two fingers and it came up with the rice about it like a camel's hoof in dirty ground. This refers to the proverb (Burckhardt, 756), "He comes down a crow-claw (small) and comes up a camel-hoof (huge and round)."

FN#312 Easterns have a superstitious belief in the powers of food: I knew a learned man who never sat down to eat without a ceremonious salam to his meat.

FN#313 Lane (ii. 464), uses the vile Turkish corruption "Rustum," which, like its fellow "Rustem," would make a Persian shudder.

FN#314 Arab. "Darrij" i.e. let them slide (Americanicč).

FN#315 This tetrastich has occurred before: so I quote Mr. Payne (in loco).

FN#316 Shaykh of Al-Butnah and Jábiyah, therefore a Syrian of the Hauran near Damascus and grandson to Isú (Esau). Arab mystics (unlike the vulgar who see only his patience) recognise that inflexible integrity which refuses to utter "words of wind" and which would not, against his conscience, confess to wrong-doing merely to pacify the Lord who was stronger than himself. The Classics taught this noble lesson in the case of Prometheus versus Zeus. Many articles are called after Job e.g. Ra'ará' Ayyub or Ghubayrá (inula Arabica and undulata), a creeper with which he rubbed himself and got well: the Copts do the same on "Job's Wednesday," i.e. that before Whit Sunday O.S. Job's father is a nickname of the camel, etc. etc.

FN#317 Lane (in loco) renders "I am of their number." But "fí al-siyák" means popularly "(driven) to the point of death."

FN#318 Lit. = "pathway, road"; hence the bridge well known as "finer than a hair and sharper than a sword," over which all (except Khadijah and a chosen few) must pass on the Day of Doom; a Persian apparatus bodily annexed by Al-Islam. The old Guebres called it Puli Chinávar or Chinávad and the Jews borrowed it from them as they did all their fancies of a future life against which Moses had so gallantly fought. It is said that a bridge over the grisly "brook Kedron" was called Sirát (the road) and hence the idea, as that of hell-fire from Ge-Hinnom (Gehenna) where children were passed through the fire to Moloch. A doubtful Hadis says, "The Prophet declared Al-Sirát to be the name of a bridge over hell- fire, dividing Hell from Paradise" (pp. 17, 122, Reynold's trans. of Al-Siyuti's Traditions, etc.). In Koran i. 5, "Sirat" is simply a path, from sarata, he swallowed, even as the way devours (makes a lakam or mouthful of) those who travel it. The word was orig. written with Sín but changed for easier articulation to Sád, one of the four Hurúf al-Mutabbakát, "the flattened," formed by the broadened tongue in contact with the palate. This Sad also by the figure Ishmám (=conversion) turns slightly to a Zá, the intermediate between Sin and Sad.

FN#319 The rule in Turkey where catamites rise to the highest rank: C'est un homme de bonne famille (said a Turkish officer in Egypt) il a été acheté. Hence "Alfi" (one who costs a thousand) is a well-known cognomen. The Pasha of the Syrian caravan, with which I travelled' had been the slave of a slave and he was not a solitary instance. (Pilgrimage i. 90.)

FN#320 The device of the banquet is dainty enough for any old Italian novella; all that now comes is pure Egyptian polissonnerie speaking to the gallery and being answered by roars of laughter.

FN#321 i.e. "art thou ceremonially pure and therefore fit for handling by a great man like myself?"

FN#322 In past days before Egypt was "frankified" many overlanders used to wash away the traces of travel by a Turkish bath which mostly ended in the appearance of a rump wriggling little lad who offered to shampoo them. Many accepted his offices without dreaming of his usual-use or misuse.

FN#323 Arab. "Imám." This is (to a Moslem) a most offensive comparison between prayer and car. cop.

FN#324 Arab. "Fi zaman-hi," alluding to a peculiarity highly prized by Egyptians; the use of the constrictor vaginć muscles, the sphincter for which Abyssinian women are famous. The "Kabbázah" ( = holder), as she is called, can sit astraddle upon a man and can provoke the venereal-orgasm, not by wriggling and moving but by tightening and loosing the male member with the muscles of her privities, milking it as it were. Consequently the cassenoisette costs treble the money of other concubines. (Arranga-Ranga, p. 127.)

FN#325 The little eunuchs had evidently studied the Harem.

FN#326 Lane (ii. 494) relates from Al-Makrizi, that when Khamárawayh, Governor of Egypt (ninth century), suffered from insomnia, his physician ordered a pool of quicksilver 50 by 50 cubits, to be laid out in front of his palace, now the Rumaylah square. "At the corners of the pool were silver pegs, to which were attached by silver rings strong bands of silk, and a bed of skins, inflated with air, being thrown upon the pool and secured by the bands remained in a continual-state of agreeable vacillation." We are not told that the Prince was thereby salivated like the late Colonel Sykes when boiling his mercury for thermometric experiments,

FN#327 The name seems now unknown. "Al-Khahí'a" is somewhat stronger than "Wag," meaning at least a "wicked wit." Properly it is the Span. "perdido," a youth cast off (Khala') by his friends; though not so strong a term as "Harfúsh"=a blackguard.

FN#328 Arab. "Farsakh"=parasang.

FN#329 Arab. "Nahás asfar"=yellow copper, brass as opposed to Nahás ahmar=copper The reader who cares to study the subject will find much about it in my "Book of The Sword," chaps. iv.

FN#330 Lane (ii. 479) translates one stanza of this mukhammas (pentastich) and speaks of "five more," which would make six.

FN#331 A servile name. Delicacy, Elegance.

FN#332 These verses have occurred twice (Night ix. etc.): so I give Lane's version (ii. 482).

FN#333 A Badawi tribe to which belonged the generous Ma'an bin Za'idab, often mentioned The Nights.

FN#334 Wealthy harems, I have said, are hot-beds of Sapphism and Tribadism. Every woman past her first youth has a girl whom she calls her "Myrtle" (in Damascus). At Agbome, capital-of Dahome, I found that a troop of women was kept for the use of the "Amazons" (Mission to Gelele, ii. 73). Amongst the wild Arabs, who ignore Socratic and Sapphic perversions, the lover is always more jealous of his beloved's girl-friends than of men rivals. In England we content ourselves with saying that women corrupt women more than men do.

FN#335 The Hebrew Pentateuch; Roll of the Law.

FN#336 I need hardly notice the brass trays, platters and table-covers with inscriptions which are familiar to every reader: those made in the East for foreign markets mostly carry imitation inscriptions lest infidel eyes fall upon Holy Writ.

FN#337 These six distichs are in Night xiii. I borrow Torrens (p. 125) to show his peculiar treatment of spinning out 12 lines to 38.

FN#338 Arab. "Musámirah"=chatting at night. Easterns are inordinately fond of the practice and the wild Arabs often sit up till dawn, talking over the affairs of the tribe, indeed a Shaykh is expected to do so. "Early to bed and early to rise" is a civilised, not a savage or a barbarous saying. Samír is a companion in night talk; Rafík of the road; Rahíb in riding horse or camel, Ká'id in sitting, Sharíb and Rafís at drink, and Nadím at table: Ahíd is an ally. and Sharík a partner all on the model of "Fa'íl."

FN#339 In both lover and beloved the excess of love gave them this clairvoyance.

FN#340 The prayer will be granted for the excess (not the purity) of her love.

FN#341 This wailing over the Past is one of the common-places of Badawi poetry. The traveller cannot fail, I repeat, to notice the chronic melancholy of peoples dwelling under the brightest skies.

FN#342 Moons=Budúr

FN#343 in Paradise as a martyr.

FN#344 i.e. to intercede for me in Heaven; as if the young woman were the prophet.

FN#345 The comparison is admirable as the two letters are written. It occurs in Al-Hariri (Ass. of Ramlah).

"So I embraced him close as Lám cleaves to Alif:"
And again;
"She laid aside reluctance and I embraced her close
As if I were Lam and my love Alif."
The Lomad Olaph in Syriac is similarly colligated.

FN#346 Here is a double entendre "and the infirm letters (viz. a, w and y) not subject to accidence, left him." The three make up the root "Awi"=pitying, condoling.

FN#347 Showing that consummation had taken place. It was a sign of good breeding to avoid all "indecent hurry" when going to bed. In some Moslem countries the bridegroom does not consummate the marriage for seven nights; out of respect for (1) father (2) mother (3) brother and so forth. If he hurry matters he will be hooted as an "impatient man" and the wise will quote, "Man is created of precipitation" (Koran chaps. xxi. 38), meaning hasty and inconsiderate. I remark with pleasure that the whole of this tale is told with commendable delicacy. O si sic omnia!

FN#348 Pers. "Nauroz"(=nau roz, new day):here used in the Arab. plur.'Nawáriz, as it lasted six days. There are only four: universal-festivals; the solstices and the equinoxes; and every successive religion takes them from the sun and perverts them to its own private purposes. Lane (ii. 496) derives the venerable Nauroz whose birth is hid in the outer glooms of antiquity from the "Jewish Passover"(!)

FN#349 Again the "babes" of the eyes.

FN#350 i.e. whose glance is as the light of the glowing braise or (embers). The Arab. "Mikbás"=pan or pot full of small charcoal, is an article well known in Italy and Southern Europe. The word is apparently used here because it rhymes with "Anfás" (souls, spirits).

FN#351 i.e. martyrdom; a Koranic term "fi sabíli 'llahi" = on the way of Allah

FN#352 These rhymes in -y, -ee and -ie are purposely affected, to imitate the cadence of the Arabic.

FN#353 Arab. "Sujúd," the ceremonial-prostration, touching the ground with the forehead So in the Old Testament "he bowed (or fell down) and worshipped" (Gen. xxiv., 26 Mat. ii., 11), of which our translation gives a wrong idea.

FN#354 A girl is called "Alfiyyah " = A-shaped.

FN#355 i.e. the medial-form of m.

FN#356 i.e. the inverted n.

FN#357 It may also mean a "Sevigné of pearls."

FN#358 Koran xxvii. 12. This was one of the nine "signs" to wicked "Pharaoh." The "hand of Moses" is a symbol of power and ability (Koran vii. 105). The whiteness was supernatural-beauty, not leprosy of the Jews (Exod. iv. 6); but brilliancy, after being born red or black: according to some commentators, Moses was a negro.

FN#359 Koran iii. 103; the other faces become black. This explains I have noticed the use of the phrases in blessing and cursing.

FN#360 Here we have the naked legend of the negro's origin, one of those nursery tales in which the ignorant of Christendom still believe But the deduction from the fable and the testimony to the negro's lack of intelligence, though unpleasant to our ignorant negrophils, are factual-and satisfactory.

FN#361 Koran, xcii. 1, 2: an oath of Allah to reward and punish with Heaven and Hell.

FN#362 Alluding to the "black drop" in the heart: it was taken from Mohammed's by the Archangel Gabriel. The fable seems to have arisen from the verse ' Have we not opened thy breast?" (Koran, chaps. xciv. 1). The popular tale is that Halímah, the Badawi nurse of Mohammed, of the Banu Sa'ad tribe, once saw her son, also a child, running towards her and asked him what was the matter. He answered, 'My little brother was seized by two men in white who stretched him on the ground and opened his bellyl" For a full account and deductions see the Rev. Mr. Badger's article, "Muhammed" (p. 959) in vol. in. "Dictionary of Christian Biography."

FN#363 Arab. "Sumr," lit. brown (as it is afterwards used), but politely applied to a negro: "Yá Abu Sumrah!" O father of brownness.

FN#364 Arab. 'Lumá"=dark hue of the inner lips admired by the Arabs and to us suggesting most umpleasant ideas. Mr. Chenery renders it "dark red,' and "ruddy" altogether missing the idea.

FN#365 Arab. "Saudá," feminine of aswad (black), and meaning black bile (melancholia) as opposed to leucocholia,

FN#366 i.e. the Magians, Sabians, Zoroastrians.

FN#367 The "Unguinum fulgor" of the Latins who did not forget to celebrate the shining of the nails although they did not Henna them like Easterns. Some, however, have suggested that alludes to colouring matter.

FN#368 Women with white skins are supposed to be heating and unwholesome: hence the Hindu Rajahs slept with dark girls in the hot season.

FN#369 Moslems sensibly have a cold as well as a hot Hell, the former called Zamharir (lit. "intense cold")or AI-Barahút, after a well in Hazramaut; as Gehenna (Arab. "Jahannam") from the furnace-like ravine East of Jerusalem (Night cccxxv.). The icy Hell is necessary in terrorem for peoples who inhabit cold regions and who in a hot Hell only look forward to an eternity of "coals and candles" gratis. The sensible missionaries preached it in Iceland till foolishly forbidden by Papal-Bull.

FN#370 Koran ii. 26; speaking of Abraham when he entertained the angels unawares.

FN#371 Arab. "Rakb," usually applied to a fast-going caravan of dromedary riders (Pilgrimage ii. 329). The "Cafilah" is Arab.: "Caravan" is a corruption of the Pers. "Karwán."

FN#372 A popular saying. It is interesting to contrast this dispute between fat and thin with the Shakespearean humour of Falstaff and Prince Henry.

FN#373 Arab. "Dalak" vulg. Hajar al-Hammam (Hammam-stone). The comparison is very apt: the rasps are of baked clay artificially roughened (see illustrations in Lane M. E. chaps. xvi.). The rope is called "Masad," a bristling line of palm-fibre like the coir now familiarly known in England.

FN#374 Although the Arab's ideal-of beauty, as has been seen and said, corresponds with ours the Egyptians (Modern) the Maroccans and other negrofied races like "walking tun-butts" as Clapperton called his amorous widow.

FN#375 Arab. "Khayzar" or "Khayzarán" the rattan-palm. Those who have seen this most graceful "palmijuncus" in its native forest will recognize the neatness of the simile.

FN#376 This is the popular idea of a bushy "veil of nature" in women: it is always removed by depilatories and vellication. When Bilkis Queen of Sheba discovered her legs by lifting her robe (Koran xxvii.), Solomon was minded to marry her, but would not do so till the devils had by a depilatory removed the hair. The popular preparation (called Núrah) consists of quicklime 7 parts, and Zirník or orpiment, 3 parts: it is applied in the Hammam to a perspiring skin, and it must be washed off immediately the hair is loosened or it burns and discolours. The rest of the body-pile (Sha'arat opp. to Sha'ar=hair) is eradicated by applying a mixture of boiled honey with turpentine or other gum, and rolling it with the hand till the hair comes off. Men I have said remove the pubes by shaving, and pluck the hair of the arm-pits, one of the vestiges of pre-Adamite man. A good depilatory is still a desideratum, the best perfumers of London and Paris have none which they can recommend. The reason is plain: the hair bulb can be eradicated only by destroying the skin.

FN#377 Koran, ii. 64: referring to the heifer which the Jews were ordered to sacrifice,

FN#378 Arab. "kallá," a Koranic term possibly from Kull (all) and lá (not) =prorsus non-altogether not!

FN#379 "Habáb" or "Habá," the fine particles of dust, which we call motes. The Cossid (Arab. "Kásid") is the Anglo-Indian term for a running courier (mostly under Government), the Persian "Shátir" and the Guebre Rávand.

FN#380 Arab. "Sambari" a very long thin lance so called after Samhar, the maker, or the place of making. See vol. ii. p. 1. It is supposed to cast, when planted in the ground, a longer shadow in proportion to its height, than any other thing of the kind.

FN#381 Arab. "Suláfah ;" properly prisane which flows from the grapes before pressure. The plur. "Sawálif" also means tresses of hair and past events: thus there is a "triple entendre." And again "he" is used for "she."

FN#382 There is a pun in the last line, "Khálun (a mole) khallauni" (rid me), etc.

FN#383 Of old Fustát, afterwards part of Southern Cairo, a proverbially miserable quarter hence the saying, "They quoted Misr to Káhirah (Cairo), whereon Bab al-Luk rose with its grass," in derision of nobodies who push themselves forward. Burckhardt, Prov. 276.

FN#384 Its fruits are the heads of devils; a true Dantesque fancy. Koran, chaps. xvii. 62, "the tree cursed in the Koran" and in chaps. xxxvii., 60, "is this better entertainment, or the tree of Al-Zakkúm?" Commentators say that it is a thorn bearing a bitter almond which grows in the Tehamah and was therefore promoted to Hell.

FN#385 Arab. "Lasm" (lathm) as opposed to Bausah or boseh (a buss) and Kublah (a kiss,

FN#386 Arab. "Jufún" (plur. of Jafn) which may mean eyebrows or eyelashes and only the context can determine which.

FN#387 Very characteristic of Egyptian manners is the man who loves six girls equally well, who lends them, as it were, to the Caliph; and who takes back the goods as if in no wise damaged by the loan.

FN#388 The moon is masculine possibly by connection with the Assyrian Lune-god "Sin"; but I can find no cause for the Sun (Shams) being feminine.

FN#389 Arab. "Al-Amin," a title of the Prophet. It is usually held that this proud name "The honest man," was applied by his fellow-citizens to Mohammed in early life; and that in his twenty-fifth year, when the Eighth Ka'abah was being built, it induced the tribes to make him their umpire concerning the distinction of placing in position the "Black Stone" which Gabriel had brought from Heaven to be set up as the starting-post for the seven circuitings. He distributed the honour amongst the clans and thus gave universal satisfaction. His Christian biographers mostly omit to record an anecdote which speaks so highly in Mohammed's favour. (Pilgrimage iii. 192.)

FN#390 The idea is that Abu Nowas was a thought-reader such being the prerogative of inspired poets in the East. His drunkenness and debauchery only added to his power. I have already noticed that "Allah strike thee dead" (Kátala-k Allah) is like our phrase "Confound the fellow, how clever he is."

FN#391 Again said facetiously, "Devil take you!"

FN#392 In all hot-damp countries it is necessary to clothe dogs, morning and evening especially: otherwise they soon die of rheumatism and loin disease.

FN#393 =Beatrice. A fragment of these lines is in Night cccxv. See also Night dcclxxxi.

FN#394 The Moslems borrowed the horrible idea of a "jealous God" from their kinsmen, the Jews. Every race creates its own Deity after the fashion of itself: Jehovah is distinctly a Hebrew, the Christian Theos is originally a Judćo-Greek and Allah a half-Badawi Arab. In this tale Allah, despotic and unjust, brings a generous and noble-minded man to beggary, simply because he fed his dogs off gold plate. Wisdom and morality have their infancy and youth: the great value of such tales as these is to show and enable us to measure man's development.

FN#395 In Trébutien (Lane ii. 501) the merchant says to ex-Dives, "Thou art wrong in charging Destiny with injustice. If thou art ignorant of the cause of thy ruin I will acquaint thee with it. Thou feddest the dogs in dishes of gold and leftest the poor to die of hunger." A superstition, but intelligible.

FN#396 Arab. "Sarráf" = a money changer.

FN#397 Arab. "Birkah," a common feature in the landscapes of Lower Egypt: it is either a natural-pool left by the overflow of the Nile; or, as in the text, a built-up tank, like the "Táláb" for which India is famous. Sundry of these Birkahs are or were in Cairo itself; and some are mentioned in The Nights.

FN#398 This sneer at the "military" and the "police" might come from an English convict's lips.

FN#399 Lit. "The conquering King;" a dynastic title assumed by Saláh al-Dín (Saladin) and sundry of the Ayyúbi (Eyoubite) sovereigns of Egypt, whom I would call the "Soldans."

FN#400 "Káhirah" (i.e. City of Mars the Planet) is our Cairo: Bulak is the port suburb on the Nile, till 1858 wholly disjoined from the City; and Fostat is the outlier popularly called Old Cairo. The latter term is generally translated "town of leathern tents;" but in Arabic "fustát" is an abode of Sha'ar=hair, such as horse-hair, in fact any hair but "Wabar"=soft hair, as the camel's. See Lane, Lex.

FN#401 Arab. "Adl"=just: a legal-witness to whose character there is no tangible objection a prime consideration in Moslem law. Here "Adl" is evidently used ironically for a hypocritical-rascal

FN#402 Lane (ii. 503) considers three thousand dinars (the figure in the Bres. Edit.) "a more probable sum." Possibly: but, I repeat, exaggeration is one of the many characteristics of The Nights.

FN#403 Calc. Edit. "Kazir:" the word is generally written "Kazdír," Sansk. Kastira, born probably from the Greek .

FN#404 This would have passed for a peccadillo in the "good old days." As late as 1840 the Arnaut soldiers used to "pot" any peasant who dared to ride (instead of walking) past their barracks. Life is cheap in hot countries.

FN#405 Koran, xii.