[FN#36] Evidently the hippopotamus (Pliny, viii. 25; ix. 3 and xxiii. 11). It can hardly be the Mulaccan Tapir, as shields are not made of the hide. Hole suggests the buffalo which found its way to Egypt from India via Persia; but this would not be a speciosum miraculum.

[FN#37] The ass-headed fish is from Pliny (ix. cap. 3): all those tales are founded upon the manatee (whose dorsal protuberance may have suggested the camel), the seal and the dugong or sea calf. I have noticed (Zanzibar i. 205) legends of ichthyological marvels current on the East African seaboard; and even the monsters of the Scottish waters are not all known: witness the mysterious "brigdie." See Bochart De Cetis i. 7; and Purchas iii. 930.

[FN#38] The colossal tortoise is noticed by AElian (De Nat. Animal. xvi. 17), by Strabo (Lib. xv.), by Pliny (ix. 10) and Diodorus Siculus (iv. 1) who had heard of a tribe of Chelonophagi. AElian makes them 16 cubits long near Taprobane and serving as house-roofs; and others turn the shell into boats and coracles. A colossochelys was first found on the Scwalik Hills by Dr. Falconer and Major (afterwards Sir Proby) Cantley. In 1867 M. Emile Blanchard exhibited to the Academie des Sciences a monster crab from Japan 1.20 metres long (or 2.50 including legs); and other travellers have reported 4 metres. These crustaceae seem never to cease growing and attain great dimensions under favourable circumstances, i.e. when not troubled by man.

[FN#39] Lane suggests (iii. 97), and with some probability, that the "bird" was a nautilus; but the wild traditions concerning the barnacle-goose may perhaps have been the base of the fable. The albatross also was long supposed never to touch land. Possible the barnacle, like the barometz of Tartarean lamb, may be a survivor of the day when the animal and vegetable kingdoms had not yet branched off into different directions.

[FN#40] Arab. "Zahwah," also meaning a luncheon. The five daily prayers made all Moslems take strict account of time, and their nomenclature of its division is extensive.

[FN#41] This is the "insane herb." Davis, who visited Sumatra in 1599 (Purchas i. 120) speaks "of a kind of seed, whereof a little being eaten, maketh a man to turn foole, all things seeming to him to be metamorphosed." Linschoten's "Dutroa" was a poppy-like bud containing small kernels like melons which stamped and administered as a drink make a man "as if he were foolish, or out of his wits." This is Father Lobo's "Vanguini" of the Cafres, called by the Portuguese dutro (Datura Stramonium) still used by dishonest confectioners. It may be Dampier's Ganga (Ganjah) or Bang (Bhang) which he justly describes as acting differently "according to different constitutions; for some it stupefies, others it makes sleepy, others merry and some quite mad." (Harris, Collect. ii. 900.) Dr. Fryer also mentions Duty, Bung and Post, the Poust of Bernier, an infusion of poppy-seed.

[FN#42] Arab. "Ghul," here an ogre, a cannibal. I cannot but regard the "Ghul of the waste" as an embodiment of the natural fear and horror which a man feels when he faces a really dangerous desert. As regards cannibalism, Al-Islam's religion of common sense freely allows it when necessary to save life, and unlike our mawkish modern sensibility, never blames those who

Alimentis talibus usi Produxere animos.

[FN#43] For Cannibals, see the Massagetae of Herod (i.), the Padaei of India (iii.), and the Essedones near Maeotis (iv.); Strabo (lib. iv.) of the Luci; Pomponious Mela (iii. 7) and St. Jerome (ad Jovinum) of Scoti. M. Polo locates them in Dragvia, a kingdom of Sumatra (iii. 17), and in Angaman (the Andamanian Isles?), possibly the ten Maniolai which Ptolemy (vii.), confusing with the Nicobars, places on the Eastern side of the Bay of Bengal; and thence derives the Heraklian stone (magnet) which attracts the iron of ships (See Serapion, De Magnete, fol. 6, Edit. of 1479, and Brown's Vulgar Errors, p. 74, 6th Edit.). Mandeville finds his cannibals in Lamaray (Sumatra) and Barthema in the "Isle of Gyava" (Java). Ibn Al-Wardi and Al-Kazwini notice them in the Isle Saksar, in the Sea of the Zanj (Zanzibar): the name is corrupted Persian "Sag-Sar" (Dogs'-heads) hence the dog- descended race of Camoens in Pegu (The Lus. x. 122). The Bresl. Edit. (iv. 52) calls them "Khawarij"=certain sectarians in Eastern Arabia. Needless to say that cocoa-nut oil would have no stupefying effect unless mixed with opium or datura, hemp or henbane.

[FN#44] Black pepper is produced in the Goanese but we must go south to find the "Bilad al-Filfil" (home of pepper) i.e. Malabar. The exorbitant prices demanded by Venice for this spice led directly to the discovery of The Cape route by the Portuguese; as the "Grains of Paradise" (Amomum Granum Paradisi) induced the English to explore the West African Coast.

[FN#45] Arab. "Kazdir." Sansk. "Kastir." Gr. "Kassiteron." Lat. "Cassiteros," evidently derived from one root. The Heb. is "Badih," a substitute, an alloy. "Tanakah" is the vulg. Arab. word, a congener of the Assyrian "Anaku," and "Kala-i" is the corrupt Arab. term used in India.

[FN#46] Our Arabian Ulysses had probably left a Penelope or two at home and finds a Calypso in this Ogygia. His modesty at the mention of womankind is notable.

[FN#47] These are the commonplaces of Moslem consolation on such occasions: the artistic part is their contrast with the unfortunate widower's prospect.

[FN#48] Lit. "a margin of stone, like the curb-stone of a well."

[FN#49] I am not aware that this vivisepulture of the widower is the custom of any race, but the fable would be readily suggested by the Sati (Suttee)-rite of the Hindus. Simple vivisepulture was and is practised by many people.

[FN#50] Because she was weaker than a man. The Bresl. Edit. however, has "a gugglet of water and five scones."

[FN#51] The confession is made with true Eastern sang-froid and probably none of the hearers "disapproved" of the murders which saved the speaker's life.

[FN#52] This tale is evidently taken from the escape of Aristomenes the Messenian from the pit into which he had been thrown, a fox being his guide. The Arabs in an early day were eager students of Greek literature. Hole (p. 140) noted the coincidence.

[FN#53] Bresl. Edit. "Khwajah," our "Howajee," meaning a schoolmaster, a man of letters, a gentleman.

[FN#54] And he does repeat at full length what the hearers must have known right well. I abridge.

[FN#55] Island of the Bell (Arab. "Nakus"=a wooden gong used by Christians but forbidden to Moslems). "Kala" is written "Kela," "Kullah" and a variety of ways. Baron Walckenaer places it at Keydah in the Malay peninsula opposite Sumatra. Renaudot identifies it with Calabar, "somewhere about the point of Malabar."

[FN#56] Islands, because Arab cosmographers love to place their speciosa miracula in such places.

[FN#57] Like the companions of Ulysses who ate the sacred oxen (Od. xii.).

[FN#58] So the enormous kingfisher of Lucian's True History (lib. ii.).

[FN#59] This tale is borrowed from Ibn Al-Wardi, who adds that the greybeards awoke in the morning after eating the young Rukh with black hair which never turned white. The same legend is recounted by Al-Dimiri (ob. A.H. 808=1405-6) who was translated into Latin by Bochart (Hierozoicon ii. p. 854) and quoted by Hole and Lane (iii. 103). An excellent study of Marco Polo's Rukh was made by my learned friend the late Prof. G. G. Bianconi of Bologna, "Dell'Uccello Ruc," Bologna, Gamberini, 1868. Prof. Bianconi predicted that other giant birds would be found in Madagascar on the East African Coast opposite; but he died before hearing of Hildebrand's discovery.

[FN#60] Arab. "Izar," the earliest garb of Eastern man; and, as such preserved in the Meccan pilgrimage. The "waist-cloth" is either tucked in or kept in place by a girdle.

[FN#61] Arab. "Lif," a succedaneum for the unclean sponge, not unknown in the "Turkish Baths" of London.

[FN#62] The Persians have a Plinian monster called "Tasmeh- pa"=Strap-legs without bones. The "Old Man" is not an ourang- outang nor an Ifrit as in Sayf al-Muluk, Night dcclxxi., but a jocose exaggeration of a custom prevailing in parts of Asia and especially in the African interior where the Tsetse-fly prevents the breeding of burden-beasts. Ibn Batutah tells us that in Malabar everything was borne upon men's backs. In Central Africa the kinglet rides a slave, and on ceremonious occasions mounts his Prime Minister. I have often been reduced to this style of conveyance and found man the worst imaginable riding: there is no hold and the sharpness of the shoulder-ridge soon makes the legs ache intolerably. The classicists of course find the Shaykh of the Sea in the Tritons and Nereus, and Bochart (Hiero. ii. 858, 880) notices the homo aquaticus, Senex Judaeus and Senex Marinus. Hole (p. 151) suggests the inevitable ouran-outan (man o' wood), one of "our humiliating copyists," and quotes "Destiny" in Scarron's comical romance (Part ii. chapt. i) and "Jealousy" enfolding Rinaldo. (O.F. lib. 42).

[FN#63] More literally "The Chief of the Sea (-Coast)," Shaykh being here a chief rather than an elder (eoldermann, alderman). So the "Old Man of the Mountain," famous in crusading days, was the Chief who lived on the Nusayriyah or Ansari range, a northern prolongation of the Libanus. Our "old man" of the text may have been suggested by the Koranic commentators on chapt. vi. When an Infidel rises from the grave, a hideous figure meets him and says, "Why wonderest thou at my loathsomeness? I am thine Evil Deeds: thou didst ride upon me in the world and now I will ride upon thee." (Suiting the action to the words.)

[FN#64] In parts of West Africa and especially in Gorilla-land there are many stories of women and children being carried off by apes, and all believe that the former bear issue to them. It is certain that the anthropoid ape is lustfully excited by the presence of women and I have related how at Cairo (1856) a huge cynocephalus would have raped a girl had it not been bayonetted. Young ladies who visited the Demidoff Gardens and menagerie at Florence were often scandalised by the vicious exposure of the baboons' parti-coloured persons. The female monkey equally solicits the attentions of man and I heard in India from my late friend, Mirza Ali Akbar of Bombay, that to his knowledge connection had taken place. Whether there would be issue and whether such issue would be viable are still disputed points: the produce would add another difficulty to the pseudo-science called psychology, as such mule would have only half a soul and issue by a congener would have a quarter-soul. A traveller well known to me once proposed to breed pithecoid men who might be useful as hewers of wood and drawers of water: his idea was to put the highest races of apes to the lowest of humanity. I never heard what became of his "breeding stables."

[FN#65] Arab. "Jauz al-Hindi": our word cocoa is from the Port. "Coco," meaning a "bug" (bugbear) in allusion to its caricature of the human face, hair, eyes and mouth. I may here note that a cocoa-tree is easily climbed with a bit of rope or a handkerchief.

[FN#66] Tomb-pictures in Egypt show tame monkeys gathering fruits and Grossier (Description of China, quoted by Hole and Lane) mentions a similar mode of harvesting tea by irritating the monkeys of the Middle Kingdom.

[FN#67] Bresl. Edit. Cloves and cinnamon in those days grew in widely distant places.

[FN#68] In pepper-plantations it is usual to set bananas (Musa Paradisiaca) for shading the young shrubs which bear bunches like ivy-fruit, not pods.

[FN#69] The Bresl. Edit. has "Al-Ma'arat." Langles calls it the Island of Al-Kamari. See Lane, iii. 86.

[FN#70] Insula, pro. peninsula. "Comorin" is a corrupt. of "Kanya" (=Virgo, the goddess Durga) and "Kumari" (a maid, a princess); from a temple of Shiva's wife: hence Ptolemy's {Greek letters} and near it to the N. East {Greek letters}, "Promontorium Cori quod Comorini caput insulae vocant," says Maffaeus (Hist. Indic. i. p. 16). In the text "Al'ud" refers to the eagle-wood (Aloekylon Agallochum) so called because spotted like the bird's plume. That of Champa (Cochin-China, mentioned in Camoens, The Lus. x. 129) is still famous.

[FN#71] Arab. "Birkat"=tank, pool, reach, bight. Hence Birkat Far'aun in the Suez Gulf. (Pilgrimage i. 297.)

[FN#72] Probably Cape Comorin; to judge from the river, but the text names Sarandib (Ceylon Island) famous for gems. This was noticed by Marco Polo, iii. cap. 19; and ancient authors relate the same of "Taprobane."

[FN#73] I need hardly trouble the reader with a note on pearl- fisheries: the descriptions of travellers are continuous from the days of Pliny (ix. 35), Solinus (cap. 56) and Marco Polo (iii. 23). Maximilian of Transylvania, in his narrative of Magellan's voyage (Novus Orbis, p. 532) says that the Celebes produce pearls big as turtle-doves' eggs; and the King of Porne (Borneo) had two unions as great as goose's eggs. Pigafetta (in Purchas) reduces this to hen's eggs and Sir Thomas Herbert to dove's eggs.

[FN#74] Arab. "Anbar" pronounced "Ambar;" wherein I would derive "Ambrosia." Ambergris was long supposed to be a fossil, a vegetable which grew upon the sea-bottom or rose in springs; or a "substance produced in the water like naphtha or bitumen"(!): now it is known to be the egesta of a whale. It is found in lumps weighing several pounds upon the Zanzibar Coast and is sold at a high price, being held a potent aphrodisiac. A small hollow is drilled in the bottom of the cup and the coffee is poured upon the bit of ambergris it contains; when the oleaginous matter shows in dots amidst the "Kaymagh" (coffee-cream), the bubbly froth which floats upon the surface and which an expert "coffee servant" distributes equally among the guests. Argensola mentions in Ceylon, "springs of liquid bitumen thicker than our oil and some of pure balsam."

[FN#75] The tale-teller forgets that Sindbad and his companions have just ascended it; but this inconsequence is a characteristic of the Eastern Saga. I may note that the description of ambergris in the text tells us admirably well what it is not.

[FN#76] This custom is alluded to by Lane (Mod Egypt, ch. xv.): it is the rule of pilgrims to Meccah when too ill to walk or ride (Pilgrimage i. 180). Hence all men carry their shrouds: mine, after being dipped in the Holy Water of Zemzem, was stolen from me by the rascally Somal of Berberah.

[FN#77] Arab. "Fulk;" some Edits. read "Kalak" and "Ramaz" (=a raft).

[FN#78] These lines occur in modified form in Night xi.

[FN#79] These underground rivers (which Dr. Livingstone derided) are familiar to every geographer from Spenser's "Mole" to the Poika of Adelberg and the Timavo near Trieste. Hence "Peter Wilkins" borrowed his cavern which let him to Grandevolet. I have some experience of Sindbad's sorrows, having once attempted to descend the Poika on foot. The Classics had the Alpheus (Pliny v. 31; and Seneca, Nat. Quae. vi.), and the Tigris-Euphrates supposed to flow underground: and the Mediaevals knew the Abana of Damascus and the Zenderud of Isfahan.

[FN#80] Abyssinians can hardly be called "blackamoors," but the arrogance of the white skin shows itself in Easterns (e.g. Turks and Brahmans) as much as, if not more than, amongst Europeans. Southern India at the time it was explored by Vasco da Gama was crowded with Abyssinian slaves imported by the Arabs.

[FN#81] "Sarandib" and "Ceylon" (the Taprobane of Ptolemy and Diodorus Siculus) derive from the Pali "Sihalam" (not the Sansk. "Sinhala") shortened to Silam and Ilam in old Tamul. Van der Tunk would find it in the Malay "Pulo Selam"=Isle of Gems (the Ratna- dwipa or Jewel Isle of the Hindus and the Jazirat al-Yakut or Ruby-Island of the Arabs); and the learned Colonel Yule (Marco Polo ii 296) remarks that we have adopted many Malayan names, e.g. Pegu, China and Japan. Sarandib is clearly "Selan-dwipa," which Mandeville reduced to "Silha."

[FN#82] This is the well-known Adam's Peak, the Jabal al-Ramun of the Arabs where Adam fell when cast out of Eden in the lowest or lunar sphere. Eve fell at Jeddah (a modern myth) and the unhappy pair met at Mount Arafat (i.e. recognition) near Meccah. Thus their fall was a fall indeed. (Pilgrimage iii. 259.)

[FN#83] He is the Alcinous of our Arabian Odyssey.

[FN#84] This word is not in the dictionaries; Hole (p. 192) and Lane understand it to mean the hog-deer; but why, one cannot imagine. The animal is neither "beautiful" nor "uncommon" and most men of my day have shot dozens in the Sind-Shikargahs.

[FN#85] M. Polo speaks of a ruby in Seilan (Ceylon) a palm long and three fingers thick: William of Tyre mentions a ruby weighing twelve Egyptian drams (Gibbon ii. 123), and Mandeville makes the King of Mammera wear about his neck a "rubye orient" one foot long by five fingers large.

[FN#86] The fable is from Al-Kazwini and Ibn Al-Wardi who place the serpent (an animal sacred to AEsculapius, Pliny, xxix. 4) "in the sea of Zanj" (i.e. Zanzibar). In the "garrow hills" of N. Eastern Bengal the skin of the snake Burrawar (?) is held to cure pain. (Asiat. Res. vol. iii.)

[FN#87] For "Emerald," Hole (p. 177) would read emery or adamantine spar.

[FN#88] Evidently Maharaj=Great Rajah, Rajah in Chief, an Hindu title common to the three potentates before alluded to, the Narsinga, Balhara or Samiry.

[FN#89] This is probably classical. So the page said to Philip of Macedon every morning, "Remember, Philip, thou art mortal"; also the slave in the Roman Triumph,

"Respice poste te: hominem te esse memento!"

And the dying Severus, "Urnlet, soon shalt thou enclose what hardly a whole world could contain." But the custom may also have been Indian: the contrast of external pomp with the real vanity of human life suggests itself to all.

[FN#90] Arab. "Hut"; a term applied to Jonah's whale and to monsters of the deep, "Samak" being the common fishes.

[FN#91] Usually a two-bow prayer.

[FN#92] This is the recognised formula of Moslem sales.

[FN#93] Arab. "Walimah"; like our wedding-breakfast but a much more ceremonious and important affair.

[FN#94] i.e. his wife (euphemistically). I remember an Italian lady being much hurt when a Maltese said to her "Mia moglie con rispetto parlando" (my wife, saving your presence). "What," she cried, "he speaks of his wife as he would of the sweepings!"

[FN#95] The serpent in Arabic is mostly feminine.

[FN#96] i.e. in envying his wealth, with the risk of the evil eye.

[FN#97] I subjoin a translation of the Seventh Voyage from the Calc. Edit. of the two hundred Nights which differs in essential points from the above. All respecting Sindbad the Seaman has an especial interest. In one point this world-famous tale is badly ordered. The most exciting adventures are the earliest and the falling off of the interest has a somewhat depressing effect. The Rukh, the Ogre and the Old Man o' the Sea should come last.

[FN#98] Arab. "Al-Suways:" this successor of ancient Arsinoe was, according to local tradition, founded by a Santon from Al-Sus in Marocco who called it after his name "Little Sus" (the wormlet).

[FN#99] Arab. "Mann," a weight varying from two to six pounds: even this common term is not found in the tables of Lane's Mod. Egyptians, Appendix B. The "Maund" is a well-known Anglo-Indian weight.

[FN#100] This article is not mentioned elsewhere in The Nights.

[FN#101] Apparently a fancy title.

[FN#102] The island is evidently Ceylon, long famed for elephants, and the tree is the well known "Banyan" (Ficus Indica). According to Linschoten and Wolf, the elephants of all lands do reverence and honour to those of Ceylon.

[FN#103] "Tusks" not "teeth" which are not valued. As Hole remarks, the elephants of Pliny and Sindbad are equally conscious of the value of ivory. Pliny (viii. 3) quotes Herodotus about the buying of ivories and relates how elephants, when hunted, break their "cornua" (as Juba called them) against a tree trunk by way of ransom. AElian, Plutarch, and Philostratus speak of the linguistic intelligence and religious worship of the "half-reason with the hand," which the Hindus term "Hathi"=unimanus. Finally, Topsell's Gesner (p. 152) makes elephants bury their tusks, "which commonly drop out every tenth year." In Arabian literature the elephant is always connected with India.

[FN#104] This is a true "City of Brass." (Nuhas asfar=yellow copper), as we learn in Night dcclxxii. It is situated in the "Maghrib" (Mauritania), the region of magic and mystery; and the idea was probably suggested by the grand Roman ruins which rise abruptly from what has become a sandy waste. Compare with this tale "The City of Brass" (Night cclxxii.). In Egypt Nuhas is vulg. pronounced Nihas.

[FN#105] The Bresl. Edit. adds that the seal-ring was of stamped stone and iron, copper and lead. I have borrowed copiously from its vol. vi. pp. 343, et seq.

[FN#106] As this was a well-known pre-Islamitic bard, his appearance here is decidedly anachronistic, probably by intention.

[FN#107] The first Moslem conqueror of Spain whose lieutenant, Tarik, the gallant and unfortunate, named Gibraltar (Jabal al- Tarik).

[FN#108] The colours of the Banu Umayyah (Ommiade) Caliphs were white, of the Banu Abbas (Abbasides) black, and of the Fatimites green. Carrying the royal flag denoted the generalissimo or plenipotentiary.

[FN#109] i.e. Old Cairo, or Fustat: the present Cairo was then a Coptic village founded on an old Egyptian settlement called Lui- Tkeshroma, to which belonged the tanks on the hill and the great well, Bir Yusuf, absurdly attributed to Joseph the Patriarch. Lui is evidently the origin of Levi and means a high priest (Brugsh ii. 130) and his son's name was Roma.

[FN#110] I cannot but suspect that this is a clerical error for "Al-Samanhudi," a native of Samanhud (Wilkinson's "Semenood") in the Delta on the Damietta branch, the old Sebennytus (in Coptic Jem-nuti=Jem the God), a town which has produced many distinguished men in Moslem times. But there is also a Samhud lying a few miles down stream from Denderah and, as its mounds prove, it is an ancient site.

[FN#111] Egypt had not then been conquered from the Christians.

[FN#112] Arab. "Kizan fukka'a," i.e. thin and slightly porous earthenware jars used for Fukka'a, a fermented drink, made of barley or raisins.

[FN#113] I retain this venerable blunder: the right form is Samum, from Samm, the poison-wind.

[FN#114] i.e. for worship and to prepare for futurity.

[FN#115] The camel carries the Badawi's corpse to the cemetery which is often distant: hence to dream of a camel is an omen of death.

[FN#116] Koran xxiv 39. The word "Sarab" (mirage) is found in Isaiah (xxxv. 7) where the passage should be rendered "And the mirage (sharab) shall become a lake" (not, "and the parched ground shall become a pool"). The Hindus prettily call it "Mrigatrishna" = the thirst of the deer.

[FN#117] A name of Allah.

[FN#118] Arab. "Kintar"=a hundredweight (i.e. 100 Ibs.), about 98 3/4 Ibs. avoir. Hence the French quintal and its congeners (Littre).

[FN#119] i.e. "from Sham (Syria) to (the land of) Adnan," ancestor of the Naturalized Arabs that is, to Arabia.

[FN#120] Koran lii. 21. "Every man is given in pledge for that which he shall have wrought."

[FN#121] There is a constant clerical confusion in the texts between "Arar" (Juniperus Oxycedrus used by the Breeks for the images of their gods) and "Marmar" marble or alabaster, in the Talmud "Marmora" = marble. evidently from {Greek letters} = brilliant, the brilliant stone.

[FN#122] These Ifritical names are chosed for their bizarrerie. "Al-Dahish" = the Amazed; and "Al-A'amash" = one with weak eyes always watering.

[FN#123] The Arabs have no word for million; so Messer Marco Miglione could not have learned it from them. On the other hand the Hindus have more quadrillions than modern Europe.

[FN#124] This formula, according to Moslems, would begin with the beginning "There is no ilah but Allah and Adam is the Apostle (rasul = one sent, a messenger, not nabi = prophet) of Allah." And so on with Noah, Moses, David (not Solomon as a rule) and Jesus, to Mohammed.

[FN#125] This son of Barachia has been noticed before. The text embroiders the Koranic chapter No. xxvii.

[FN#126] The Bresl. Edit. (vi. 371) reads "Samm-hu"=his poison, prob. a clerical error for "Sahmhu"=his shaft. It was a duel with the "Shihab" or falling stars, the meteors which are popularly supposed, I have said, to be the arrows shot by the angels against devils and evil spirits when they approach too near Heaven in order to overhear divine secrets.

[FN#127] A fancy sea from the Lat. "Carcer" ( ?).

[FN#128] Andalusian = Spanish, the Vandal-land, a term accepted by the Moslem invader.

[FN#129] This fine description will remind the traveller of the old Haurani towns deserted since the sixth century, which a silly writer miscalled the "Giant Cities of Bashan." I have never seen anything weirder than a moonlight night in one of these strong places whose masonry is perfect as when first built, the snowy light pouring on the jet-black basalt and the breeze sighing and the jackal wailing in the desert around.

[FN#130] "Zanj," I have said, is the Arab. form of the Persian "Zang-bar" (=Black-land), our Zanzibar. Those who would know more of the etymology will consult my "Zanzibar," etc., chaps. i.

[FN#131] Arab. "Tanjah"=Strabo {Greek letters} (derivation uncertain), Tingitania, Tangiers. But why the terminal s ?

[FN#132] Or Amidah, by the Turks called "Kara (black) Amid" from the colour of the stones and the Arabs "Diyar-bakr" (Diarbekir), a name which they also give to the whole province—Mesopotamia.

[FN#133] Mayyafarikin, an episcopal city in Diyar-bakr: the natives are called Fariki; hence the abbreviation in the text.

[FN#134] Arab. "Ayat al-Najat," certain Koranic verses which act as talismans, such as, "And wherefore should we not put our trust in Allah ?" (xiv. 15); "Say thou, 'Naught shall befall us save what Allah hath decreed for us,' " (ix. 51), and sundry others.

[FN#135] These were the "Brides of the Treasure," alluded to in the story of Hasan of Bassorah and elsewhere.

[FN#136] Arab. "Isharah," which may also mean beckoning. Easterns reverse our process: we wave hand or finger towards ourselves; they towards the object; and our fashion represents to them, Go away!

[FN#137] i.e. musing a long time and a longsome.

[FN#138] Arab. "Dihliz" from the Persian. This is the long dark passage which leads to the inner or main gate of an Eastern city, and which is built up before a siege. It is usually furnished with Mastabah-benches of wood and masonry, and forms a favourite lounge in hot weather. Hence Lot and Moses sat and stood in the gate, and here man speaks with his enemies.

[FN#139] The names of colours are as loosely used by the Arabs as by the Classics of Europe; for instance, a light grey is called a "blue or a green horse." Much nonsense has been written upon the colours in Homer by men who imagine that the semi-civilised determine tints as we do. They see them but they do not name them, having no occasion for the words. As I have noticed, however, the Arabs have a complete terminology for the varieties of horse-hues. In our day we have witnessed the birth of colours, named by the dozen, because required by women's dress.

[FN#140] For David's miracles of metallurgy see vol. i. 286.

[FN#141] Arab. "Khwarazm," the land of the Chorasmioi, who are mentioned by Herodotus (iii. 93) and a host of classical geographers. They place it in Sogdiana (hod. Sughd) and it corresponds with the Khiva country.

[FN#142] Arab. "Burka'," usually applied to a woman's face-veil and hence to the covering of the Ka'abah, which is the "Bride of Meccah."

[FN#143] Alluding to the trick played upon Bilkis by Solomon who had heard that her legs were hairy like those of an ass: he laid down a pavement of glass over flowing water in which fish were swimming and thus she raised her skirts as she approached him and he saw that the report was true. Hence, as I have said, the depilatory.

[FN#144] I understand the curiously carved windows cut in arabesque-work of marble. (India) or basalt (the Hauran) and provided with small panes of glass set in emeralds where tin would be used by the vulgar.

[FN#145] Arab. "Bulad" from the Pers. "Pulad." Hence the name of the famous Druze family "Jumblat," a corruption of "Jan- pulad"=Life o' Steel.

[FN#146] Pharaoh, so called in Koran (xxxviii. 11) because he tortured men by fastening them to four stakes driven into the ground. Sale translates "the contriver of the stakes" and adds, "Some understand the word figuratively, of the firm establishment of Pharaoh's kingdom, because the Arabs fix their tents with stakes; but they may possibly intend that prince's obstinacy and hardness of heart." I may note that in "Tasawwuf," or Moslem Gnosticism, Pharaoh represents, like Prometheus and Job, the typical creature who upholds his own dignity and rights in presence and despight of the Creator. Sahib the Sufi declares that the secret of man's soul (i.e. its emanation) was first revealed when Pharaoh declared himself god; and Al-Ghazali sees in his claim the most noble aspiration to the divine, innate in the human spirit. (Dabistan, vol. iii.)

[FN#147] In the Calc. Edit. "Tarmuz, son of the daughter," etc. According to the Arabs Tadmur (Palmyra) was built by Queen Tadmurah, daughter of Hassan bin Uzaynah.

[FN#148] It is only by some such drought that I can account for the survival of those marvellous Haurani cities in the great valley S. E. of Damascus.

[FN#149] So Moses described his own death and burial.

[FN#150] A man's "aurat" (shame) extends from the navel (included) to his knees, a woman's from the top of the head to the tips of her toes. I have before noticed the Hindostani application of the word.

[FN#151] Arab. "Jum'ah" ( = the assembly) so called because the General Resurrection will take place on that day and it witnessed the creation of Adam. Both these reasons are evidently after- thoughts; as the Jews received a divine order to keep Saturday, and the Christians, at their own sweet will, transferred the weekly rest-day to Sunday, wherefore the Moslem preferred Friday. Sabbatarianism, however, is unknown to Al-Islam and business is interrupted, by Koranic order ([xii. 9-10), only during congregational prayers in the Mosque. The most a Mohammedan does is not to work or travel till after public service. But the Moslem hardly wants a "day of rest;" whereas a Christian, especially in the desperately dull routine of daily life and toil, without a gleam of light to break the darkness of his civilised and most unhappy existence, disctinctly requires it.

[FN#152] Mankind, which sees itself everywhere and in everything, must create its own analogues in all the elements, air (Sylphs), fire (Jinns), water (Mermen and Mermaids) and earth (Kobolds), These merwomen were of course seals or manatees, as the wild women of Hanno were gorillas.

[FN#153] Here begins the Sindibad-namah, the origin of Dolopathos (thirteenth century by the Trouvere Harbers); of the "Seven Sages" (John Holland in 1575); the "Seven Wise Masters" and a host of minor romances. The Persian Sindibad-Namah assumed its present shape in A.D. 1375: Professor Falconer printed an abstract of it in the Orient. Journ. (xxxv. and xxxvi. 1841), and Mr. W. A. Clouston reissued the "Book of Sindibad," with useful notes in 1884. An abstract of the Persian work is found in all edits. of The Nights; but they differ greatly, especially that in the Bresl. Edit. xii. pp. 237-377, from which I borrow the introduction. According to Hamzah Isfahani (ch. xli.) the Reguli who succeeded to Alexander the Great and preceded Sapor caused some seventy books to be composed, amongst which were the Liber Maruc, Liber Barsinas, Liber Sindibad, Liber Shimas, etc., etc.

[FN#154] Eusebius De Praep. Evang. iii. 4, quotes Prophesy concerning the Egyptian belief in the Lords of the Ascendant whose names are given {Greek letters}: in these "Almenichiaka" we have the first almanac, as the first newspaper in the Roman "Acta Diurna."

[FN#155] "Al-Mas'udi," the "Herodotus of the Arabs," thus notices Sindibad the Sage (in his Muruj, etc., written about A.D. 934). "During the reign of Kurush (Cyrus) lived Al-Sindibad who wrote the Seven Wazirs, etc." Al-Ya'akubi had also named him, circ. A.D. 880. For notes on the name Sindibad, see Sindbad the Seaman, Night dxxxvi. I need not enter into the history of the "Seven Sages," a book evidently older than The Nights in present form; but refer the reader to Mr. Clouston, of whom more in a future page.

[FN#156] Evidently borrowed from the Christians, although the latter borrowed from writers of the most remote antiquity. Yet the saying is the basis of all morality and in few words contains the highest human wisdom.

[FN#157] It is curious to compare the dry and business-like tone of the Arab style with the rhetorical luxuriance of the Persian: p.10 of Mr. Clouston's "Book of Sindibad."

[FN#158] In the text "Isfidaj," the Pers. Isped (or Safed) ab, lit. = white water, ceruse used for women's faces suggesting our "Age of Bismuth," Blanc Rosati, Creme de l'Imperatrice, Perline, Opaline, Milk of Beauty, etc., etc.

[FN#159] Commentators compare this incident with the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife and with the old Egyptian romance and fairy tale of the brothers Anapon and Saton dating from the fourteenth century, the days of Pharaoh Ramses Miamun (who built Pi-tum and Ramses) at whose court Moses or Osarsiph is supposed to have been reared (Cambridge Essays 1858). The incident would often occur, e.g. Phaedra-cum-Hippolytus; Fausta-cum-Crispus and Lucinian; Asoka's wife and Kunala, etc., etc. Such things happen in every-day life, and the situation has recommended itself to the folk lore of all peoples.

[FN#160] Another version of this tale is given in the Bresl. Edit. (vol. viii. pp. 273-8: Night 675-6). It is the "Story of the King and the Virtuous Wife" in the Book of Sindibad. In the versions Arabic and Greek (Syntipas) the King forgets his ring; in the Hebrew Mishle Sandabar, his staff, and his sandals in the old Spanish Libro de los Engannos et los Asayamientos de las Mugeres.

[FN#161] One might fancy that this is Biblical, Bathsheba and Uriah. But such "villanies" must often have occurred in the East, at different times and places, without requiring direct derivation. The learned Prof. H. H. Wilson was mistaken in supposing that these fictions "originate in the feeling which has always pervaded the East unfavourable to the dignity of women." They belong to a certain stage of civilisation when the sexes are at war with each other; and they characterise chivalrous Europe as well as misogynous Asia; witness Jankins, clerk of Oxenforde; while AEsop's fable of the Lion and the Man also explains their frequency.

[FN#162] The European form of the tale is "Toujours perdrix," a sentence often quoted but seldom understood. It is the reproach of M. l'Abbe when the Count (proprietor of the pretty Countess) made him eat partridge every day for a month; on which the Abbe says, "Alway partridge is too much of a good thing!" Upon this text the Count speaks. A correspondent mentions that it was told by Horace Walpole concerning the Confessor of a French King who reproved him for conjugal infidelities. The degraded French (for "toujours de la perdrix" or "des perdrix") suggests a foreign origin. Another friend refers me to No. x. of the "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles" (compiled in A.D. 1432 for the amusement of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI.) whose chief personage "un grand seigneur du Royaulme d'Angleterre," is lectured upon fidelity by the lord's mignon, a "jeune et gracieux gentil homme de son hostel." Here the partridge became pastes d'anguille. Possibly Scott refers to it in Redgauntlet (chapt. iv.); "One must be very fond of partridge to accept it when thrown in one's face." Did not Voltaire complain at Potsdam of "toujours perdrix" and make it one of his grievances? A similar story is that of the chaplain who, weary of the same diet, uttered "grace" as follows:—

Rabbits hot, rabbits cold, Rabbits tender, and rabbits tough, Rabbits young, and rabbits old I thank the Lord I've had enough.

And I as cordially thank my kind correspondents.

[FN#163] The great legal authority of the realm.

[FN#164] In all editions the Wazir here tells the Tale of the Merchant's Wife and the Parrot which, following Lane, I have transferred to vol. i. p. 52. But not to break the tradition I here introduce the Persian version of the story from the "Book of Sindibad." In addition to the details given in the note to vol. i., 52 {Vol1, FN#90}; I may quote the two talking-birds left to watch over his young wife by Rajah Rasalu (son of Shalivahana the great Indian monarch circ. A.D. 81), who is to the Punjab what Rustam is to Persia and Antar to Arabia. In the "Seven Wise Masters" the parrot becomes a magpie and Mr. Clouston, in some clever papers on "Popular Tales and Fictions" contributed to the Glasgow Evening Times (1884), compares it with the history, in the Gesta Romanorum, of the Adulteress, the Abigail, and the Three Cocks, two of which crowed during the congress of the lady and her lover. All these evidently belong to the Sindibad cycle.

[FN#165] In the days of the Caliph Al-Mustakfi bi 'llah (A.H. 333=944) the youth of Baghdad studied swimming and it is said that they could swim holding chafing-dishes upon which were cooking-pots and keep afloat till the meat was dressed. The story is that of "The Washerman and his Son who were drowned in the Nile," of the Book of Sindibad.

[FN#166] Her going to the bath suggested that she was fresh from coition..

[FN#167] Taken from the life of the Egyptian Mameluke Sultan (No. viii, regn. A.H, 825= A.D. 1421) who would not suffer his subjects to prostrate themselves or kiss the ground before him. See D'Herbelot for details.

[FN#168] This nauseous Joe Miller has often been told in the hospitals of London and Paris. It is as old as the Hitopadesa.

[FN#169] Koran iv. 81, "All is from Allah;" but the evil which befals mankind, though ordered by Allah, is yet the consequence of their own wickedness (I add, which wickedness was created by Allah).

[FN#170] The Bresl. Edit. (xii. 266) says "bathing."

[FN#171] This tale is much like that told in the Fifth Night (vol. i. 54). It is the story of the Prince and the Lamia in the Book of Sindibad wherein it is given with Persian rhetoric and diffuseness.

[FN#172] Arab. "Wa'ar"= rocky, hilly, tree-less ground unfit for riding. I have noted that the three Heb. words "Year" (e.g. Kiryath-Yearin=City of forest), "Choresh" (now Hirsh, a scrub), and "Pardes" ({Greek letters} a chase, a hunting-park opposed to , an orchard) are preserved in Arabic and are intelligible in Palestine. (Unexplored Syria, i. 207.)

[FN#173] The privy and the bath are favourite haunts of the Jinns.

[FN#174] Arab history is full of petty wars caused by trifles. In Egypt the clans Sa'ad and Haram and in Syria the Kays and Yaman (which remain to the present day) were as pugnacious as Highland Caterans. The tale bears some likeness to the accumulative nursery rhymes in "The House that Jack Built," and "The Old Woman and the Crooked Sixpence;" which find their indirect original in an allegorical Talmudic hymn.

[FN#175] This is "The Story of the Old Man who sent his Young Wife to the Market to buy Rice," told with Persian reflections in the "Book of Sindibad."

[FN#176] Koran xii. 28. The words were spoken by Potiphar to Joseph.

[FN#177] Koran iv. 78. A mis-quotation, the words are, "Fight therefore against the friends of Satan, for the craft of Satan shall be weak."

[FN#178] i.e. Koranic versets.

[FN#179] In the Book of Sindibad this is the "Story of the Prince who went out to hunt and the stratagem which the Wazir practised on him."

[FN#180] I have noted that it is a dire affront to an Arab if his first cousin marry any save himself without his formal leave.

[FN#181] i.e. the flowery, the splendid; an epithet of Fatimah, the daughter of the Apostle "the bright blooming." Fatimah is an old Arab name of good omen, "the weaner:" in Egypt it becomes Fattumah (an incrementative= "great weaner"); and so Aminah, Khadijah and Nafisah on the banks of the Nile are barbarised to Ammunah, Khaddugah and Naffusah.

[FN#182] i.e. his coming misfortune, the phrase being euphemistic.

[FN#183] Arab. "Ray:" in theology it means "private judgment" and "Rayi" (act. partic.) is a Rationalist. The Hanafi School is called "Ashab al-Ray" because it allows more liberty of thought than the other three orthodox.

[FN#184] The angels in Al-Islam ride piebalds.

[FN#185] In the Bresl. Edit. "Zajir" (xii. 286).

[FN#186] This is the "King's Son and the Merchant's Wife" of the Hitopadesa (chapt. i.) transferred to all the Prakrit versions of India. It is the Story of the Bath-keeper who conducted his Wife to the Son of the King of Kanuj in the Book of Sindibad.

[FN#187] The pious Caliph Al-Muktadi bi Amri 'llah (A.H. 467=A.D. 1075) was obliged to forbid men entering the baths of Baghdad without drawers.

[FN#188] This peculiarity is not uncommon amongst the so-called Aryan and Semitic races, while to the African it is all but unknown. Women highly prize a conformation which (as the prostitute described it) is always "either in his belly or in mine."

[FN#189] Easterns, I have said, are perfectly aware of the fact that women corrupt women much more than men do. The tale is the "Story of the Libertine Husband" in the Book of Sindibad; blended with the "Story of the Go-between and the Bitch" in the Book of Sindibad. It is related in the "Disciplina Clericalis" of Alphonsus (A.D. 1106); the fabliau of La vieille qui seduisit la jeune fille; the Gesta Romanorum (thirteenth century) and the "Cunning Siddhikari" in the Katha-Sarit-Sagara.

[FN#190] The Kashmir people, men and women, have a very bad name in Eastern tales, the former for treachery and the latter for unchastity. A Persian distich says:

If folk be scarce as food in dearth ne'er let three lots come near ye: First Sindi, second Jat, and third a rascally Kashmeeree.

The women have fair skins and handsome features but, like all living in that zone, Persians, Sindis, Afghans, etc., their bosoms fall after the first child and become like udders. This is not the case with Hindu women, Rajputs, Marathis, etc.

[FN#191] By these words she appealed to his honour.

[FN#192] These vehicles suggest derivation from European witchery. In the Bresl. Edit. (xii. 304) one of the women rides a "Miknasah" or broom.

[FN#193] i.e. a recluse who avoids society.

[FN#194] "Consecrated ground" is happily unknown to Moslems. [FN#195] This incident occurs in the "Third Kalandar's Tale." See vol. i. 157 {Vol 1, FN#290}; and note to p. 145. {Vol 1, FN#264}

[FN#196] The Mac. Edit. has "Nahr"= river.

[FN#197] i.e. marked with the Wasm or tribal sign to show their blood. The subject of Wasm is extensive and highly interesting, for many of these brands date doubtless from prehistoric ages. For instance, some of the great Anazah nation (not tribe) use a circlet, the initial of their name (an Ayn-letter), which thus shows the eye from which it was formed. I have given some specimens of Wasm in The Land of Midian (i. 320) where, as amongst the "Sinaitic" Badawin, various kinds of crosses are preserved long after the death and burial of Christianity.

[FN#198] i.e. from the heights. The "Sayl" is a dangerous feature in Arabia as in Southern India, where many officers have lost their lives by trying to swim it.

[FN#199] Arab. "'Ujb" I use arrogance in the Spanish sense of "arrogante," gay and gallant.

[FN#200] In this rechauffe Paul Pry escapes without losing an eye.

[FN#201] Eastern tale-tellers always harp upon this theme, the cunning precautions taken by mankind and their utter confusion by "Fate and Fortune." In such matters the West remarks, "Ce que femme veut, Dieu veut."

[FN#202] As favourite an occupation in Oriental lands as in Southern Europe and the Brazil, where the Quinta or country villa must be built by the road-side to please the mistress.

[FN#203] The ink-case would contain the pens; hence called in India Kalamdan=reed (pen) box. I have advised travellers to prefer the strong Egyptian article of brass to the Persian, which is of wood or papier-mache, prettily varnished, but not to wear it in the waist-belt, as this is a sign of being a scribe. (Pilgrimage i. 353.)

[FN#204] The vulgar Eastern idea is that women are quite knowing enough without learning to read and write; and at all events they should not be taught anything beyond reading the Koran, or some clearly-written book. The contrast with modern Europe is great; greater still in Anglo-America of our day, and greatest with the new sects which propose "biunes" and "bisexuals" and "women robed with the sun."

[FN#205] In the Bresl. Edit. the Prince ties a key to a second arrow and shoots it into the pavilion.

[FN#206] The "box-trick" has often been played with success, by Lord Byron amongst a host of others. The readiness with which the Wazir enters into the scheme is characteristic of oriental servility: an honest Moslem should at least put in a remonstrance.

[FN#207] This story appears familiar, but I have not found it easy to trace. In "The Book of Sindibad" (p. 83) it is apparently represented by a lacuna. In the Squire's Tale of Chaucer Canace's ring enables the wearer to understand bird-language, not merely to pretend as does the slave-boy in the text.

[FN#208] The crow is an ill-omened bird in Al-lslam and in Eastern Christendom. "The crow of cursed life and foul odour," says the Book of Kalilah and Dimna (p. 44). The Hindus are its only protectors, and in this matter they follow suit with the Guebres. I may note that the word belongs to the days before "Aryan" and "Semitic" speech had parted; we find it in Heb. Oreb; Arab. Ghurab; Lat. Corvus; Engl. Crow, etc.

[FN#209] Again in the Hibernian sense of being "kilt."

[FN#210] Quoted in Night dlxxxii.; said by Kitfir or Itfir (Potiphar) when his wife (Rail or Zulaykha) charged Joseph with attempting her chastity and he saw that the youth's garment was whole in front and rent in rear. (Koran, chapt. xii.)

[FN#211] This witty tale, ending somewhat grossly here, has over-wandered the world. First we find it in the Katha (S. S.) where Upakosha, the merry wife of Vararuchi, disrobes her suitors, a family priest, a commander of the guard and the prince's tutor, under plea of the bath and stows them away in baskets which suggest Falstaff's "buck-basket." In Miss Stokes' "Indian Fairy Tales" the fair wife of an absent merchant plays a similar notable prank upon the Kotwal, the Wazir, the Kazi and the King; and akin to this is the exploit of Temal Ramakistnan, the Madrasi Tyl Eulenspiegel and Scogin who by means of a lady saves his life from the Rajah and the High Priest. Mr. G. H. Damant (pp. 357-360 of the "Indian Antiquary" of 1873) relates the "Tale of the Touchstone," a legend of Dinahpur, wherein a woman "sells" her four admirers. In the Persian Tales ascribed to the Dervish "Mokles" (Mukhlis) of Isfahan, the lady Aruya tricks and exposes a Kazi, a doctor and a governor. Boccaccio (viii. 1) has the story of a lady who shut up her gallant in a chest with her husband's sanction; and a similar tale (ix. 1) of Rinuccio and Alexander with the corpse of Scannadeo (Throkh-god). Hence a Lydgate (circ. A.D. 1430) derived the plot of his metrical tale of "The Lady Prioress and her Three Sisters"; which was modified in the Netherlandish version by the introduction of the Long Wapper, a Flemish Robin Goodfellow. Followed in English the metrical tale of "The Wright's Chaste Wife," by Adam of Cobham (edited by Mr. Furnivall from a MS. of circ. A.D. 1460) where the victims are a lord, a steward and a proctor. See also "The Master-Maid" in Dr. (now Sir George) Dasent's "Popular Tales from the Norse," Mr. Clouston, who gives these details more fully, mentions a similar Scottish story concerning a lascivious monk and the chaste wife of a miller.

[FN#212]When Easterns sit down to a drinking bout, which means to get drunk as speedily and pleasantly as possible, they put off dresses of dull colours and robe themselves in clothes supplied by the host, of the brightest he may have, especially yellow, green and red of different shades. So the lady's proceeding was not likely to breed suspicion: al- though her tastes were somewhat fantastic and like Miss Julia's—peculiar.

[FN#213] Arab. "Najasah," meaning anything unclean which requires ablution before prayer. Unfortunately mucus is not of the number, so the common Moslem is very offensive in the matter of nose.

[FN#214] Here the word "la'an" is used which most Moslems express by some euphemism. The vulgar Egyptian says "Na'al" (Sapre and Sapristi for Sacre and Sacristie), the Hindostani express it "I send him the three letters"—lam, ayn and nun.

[FN#215] The Mac. Edit. is here very concise; better the Bresi. Edit. (xii. 326). Here we have the Eastern form of the Three Wishes which dates from the earliest ages and which amongst us has been degraded to a matter of "black pudding." It is the grossest and most brutal satire on the sex, suggesting that a woman would prefer an additional inch of penis to anything this world or the next can offer her. In the Book of Sindibad it is the story of the Peri and Religious Man; his learning the Great Name; and his consulting with his wife. See also La Fontaine's "Trois Souhaits," Prior's "Ladle," and "Les quatre Souhaits de Saint-Martin."

[FN#216] Arab. "Laylat al-Kadr"= Night of Power or of Divine Decrees. It is "better than a thousand months" (Koran xcvii. 3), but unhappily the exact time is not known although all agree that it is one of the last ten in Ramazan. The latter when named by Kilab ibn Murrah, ancestor of Mohammed, about two centuries before Al-lslam, corresponded with July-August and took its name from "Ramza" or intense heat. But the Prophet, in the tenth Hijrah year, most unwisely forbade "Nasy"= triennial intercalation (Koran ix. 36) and thus the lunar month went round all the seasons. On the Night of Power the Koran was sent down from the Preserved Tablet by Allah's throne, to the first or lunar Heaven whence Gabriel brought it for opportunest revelation to the Apostle (Koran xcvii.). Also during this night all Divine Decrees for the ensuing year are taken from the Tablet and are given to the angels for execution whilst, the gates of Heaven being open, prayer (as in the text) is sure of success. This mass of absurdity has engendered a host of superstitions everywhere varying. Lane (Mod. Egypt, chapt. xxv.) describes how some of the Faithful keep tasting a cup of salt water which should become sweet in the Night of Nights. In (Moslem) India not only the sea becomes sweet, but all the vegetable creation bows down before Allah. The exact time is known only to Prophets; but the pious sit through the Night of Ramazan 27th (our 26th) praying and burning incense-pastilles. In Stambul this is officially held to be the Night of Power. So in mediaeval Europe on Christmas Eve the cattle worshipped God in their stalls and I have met peasants in France and Italy who firmly believed that brute beasts on that night not only speak but predict the events of the coming year.

[FN#217] Hence the misfortune befel her; the pious especially avoid temporal palaces.

[FN#218] This is our tale of "The Maid and the Magpie;" the Mac. Edit. does not specify the "Tayr" (any bird) but the Bresl. Edit. has Ak'ak, a pie. The true Magpie (C. Pica) called Buzarai (?) and Zaghzaghan Abu Massah (=the Sweeper, from its tail) is found on the Libanus and Anti-Libanus (Unexplored Syria ii. 77-143), but I never saw it in other parts of Syria or in Arabia. It is completely ignored by the Reverend Mr. Tristram in his painfully superficial book "The Natural History of the Bible," published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (or rather Ignorance), London, 1873.

[FN#219] This is "The Story of the Two Partridges," told at great length in the Book of Sindibad. See De Sacy's text in the Kalilah wa Damnah, quoted in the "Book of Kalilah and Damnah" (p. 306).

[FN#220] This extremely wilful young person had rendered rape excusable. The same treat- ment is much called for by certain heroines of modern fiction—let me mention Princess Napraxine. [FN#221] The Story of the Hidden Robe, in the Book of Sindibad; where it is told with all manner of Persian embellishments.

[FN#222] Now turned into Government offices for local administration; a "Tribunal of Commerce," etc.

[FN#223] Arab. "Bawwab," a personage as important as the old French concierge and a man of trust who has charge of the keys and with letting vacant rooms. In Egypt the Berber from the Upper Nile is the favourite suisse; being held more honest or rather less rascally than the usual Egyptian. These Berbers, however, are true barbarians, overfond of Buzah (the beer of Osiris) and not unfrequently dangerous. They are supposed by Moslems to descend from the old Syrians expelled by Joshua. For the favourite chaff against them, eating the dog (not the puppy-pie), see Pilgrimage i. 93. They are the "paddies', of Egypt to whom all kinds of bulls and blunders are attributed.

[FN#224] Arab. "Juma'ah," which means either Friday or a week. In pre-Moslem times it was called Al-Arubah (the other week-days being Shiyar or Saturday, Bawal, Bahan Jabar, Dabar and Famunis or Thursday). Juma'ah, literally = "Meeting" or Congregation (-day), was made to represent the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sunday because on that day Allah ended the work of creation; it was also the date of Mohammed's entering Al-Medinah. According to Al-Bayzawi, it was called Assembly day because Ka'ab ibn Lowa, one of the Prophet's ancestors, used to gather the people before him on Fridays. Moslems are not forbidden to do secular work after the congregational prayers at the hour when they must "hasten to the commemoration of Allah and leave merchandising." (Koran, chaps. Ixii. 9.)

[FN#225] This is done only by the very pious: if they see a bit of bread they kiss it, place it upon their heads and deposit it upon a wall or some place where it will not be trodden on. She also removed the stones lest haply they prove stumbling-blocks to some Moslem foot.

[FN#226] Arab. "Ashjar," which may mean either the door-posts or the wooden bolts. Lane (iii. 174) translates it "among the trees" in a room!

[FN#227] Koran (ix. 51), when Mohammed reproaches the unbelievers for not accompanying him to victory or martyrdom.

[FN#228] Arab. "Kina," a true veil, not the "Burka " or "nose bag" with the peep-holes. It is opposed to the "Tarkah" or "head veil." Europeans inveigh against the veil which represents the loup of Louis Quatorze's day: it is on the contrary the most coquettish of contrivances, hiding coarse skins, fleshy noses, wide mouths and vanishing chins, and showing only lustrous and liquid black eyes. Moreover a pretty woman, when she wishes, will always let you see something under the veil. (Pilgrimage i. 337.)

[FN#229] A yellow-flowered artemisia or absinthe whose wood burns like holm-oak. (Unexplored Syria ii. 43.) See vol. ii. 24 for further details.

[FN#230] The Farz or obligatory prayers, I have noted, must be recited (if necessary) in the most impure place; not so the other orisons. Hence the use of the "Sajjadah" or prayer-rug an article too well known to require description.

[FN#231] Anglice a stomach-ache, a colic.

[FN#232] Arab. "Al-Hafizah" which has two meanings. Properly it signifies the third order of Traditionists out of a total of five or those who know 300,000 traditions and their ascriptions. Popularly "one who can recite the Koran by rote." There are six great Traditionists whose words are held to be prime authorities; (1) Al-Bokhari, (2) Muslim, and these are entitled Al-Sahihayn, The (two true) authorities. After them (3) Al-Tirmidi; and (4) Abu Daud: these four being the authors of the "Four Sunan," the others are (5) Al- Nasai and (6) Ibn Majah (see Jarrett's Al-Siyuti pp. 2, 6; and, for modern Arab studies, Pilgrimage i. 154 et seq.).

[FN#233] Lane (iii. 176) marries the amorous couple, thus making the story highly proper and robbing it of all its point.

[FN#234] Arab. "Sabbahat," i.e. Sabbah-ak' Allah bi'l khayr = Allah give thee good morning: still the popular phrase.

[FN#235] Arab. "Ta'risak," with the implied hint of her being a "Mu'arrisah" or she pander. The Bresl. Edit. (xii. 356) bluntly says "Kivadatak" thy pimping.

[FN#236] Arab. "Rafw": the "Rafu-gar" or fine-drawer in India, who does this artistic style of darning, is famed for skill.

[FN#237] The question sounds strange to Europeans, but in the Moslem East a man knows nothing, except by hearsay, of the women who visit his wife.

[FN#238] Arab. "Ahl al-bayt," so as not rudely to say "wife."

[FN#239] This is a mere abstract of the tale told in the Introduction (vol. i. 10-12). Here however, the rings are about eighty; there the number varies from ninety to five hundred and seventy.

[FN#240] The father suspected the son of intriguing with one of his own women.

[FN#241] Arab. and Heb. "Laban" (opp. to "laban-halib," or simply "halib" = fresh milk), milk artificially soured, the Dahin of India, the Kisaina of the Slavs and our Corstophine cream. But in The Nights, contrary to modern popular usage, "Laban" is also applied to Fresh milk. The soured form is universally in the East eaten with rice and enters into the Salatah or cucumber-salad. I have noted elsewhere that all the Galactophagi, the nomades who live on milk, use it in the soured never in the fresh form. The Badawi have curious prejudices about it: it is a disgrace to sell it (though not to exchange it), and "Labban," or "milk-vendor," is an insult. The Brahni and Beloch pomades have the same pundonor possibly learnt from the Arabs (Pilgrimage i. 363). For 'Igt (Akit), Mahir, Saribah, Jamidah and other lacteal preparations, see ibid. i. 362.

[FN#242] I need hardly say that the poison would have been utterly harmless, unless there had been an abrasion of the skin. The slave- girl is blamed for carrying the jar uncovered because thus it would attract the evil eye. In the Book of Sindibad the tale appears as the Story of the Poisoned Guest; and the bird is a stork.

[FN#243] The Prince expresses the pure and still popular Moslem feeling; and yet the learned and experienced Mr Redhouse would confuse this absolute Predestination with Providence. A friend tells me that the idea of absolute Fate in The Nights makes her feel as if the world were a jail. [FN#244] In the Book of Sindibad this is the Story of the Sandal-wood Merchant and the Advice of the Blind Old Man. Mr. Clouston (p. 163) quotes a Talmudic joke which is akin to the Shaykh's advice and a reply of Tyl Eulenspiegel, the arch-rogue, which has also a family resemblance.

[FN#245] Arab. "Sa'a," a measure of corn, etc., to be given in alms. The Kamus makes it = four mudds (each being 1/3 lbs.); the people understand by it four times the measure of a man's two open hands.

[FN#246] i.e. till thou restore my eye to me. This style of prothesis without apodosis is very common in Arabic and should be preserved in translation, as it adds a naivete to the style. We find it in Genesis iii. 2, "And now lest he put forth his hand," etc.

[FN#247] They were playing at Murahanah, like children amongst us. It is also called "Hukm wa Riza" = order and consent. The penalty is usually something ridiculous, but here it was villainous.

[FN#248] Every Moslem capital has a "Shaykh of the thieves" who holds a regular levees and who will return stolen articles for consideration; and this has lasted since the days of Diodorus Siculus (Pilgrimage i. 91).

[FN#249] This was not the condition; but I have left the text as it is characteristic of the writer's inconsequence.

[FN#250] The idea would readily occur in Egypt where the pulex is still a plague although the Sultan is said to hold his court at Tiberias. "Male and female" says the rouge, otherwise it would be easy to fill a bushel with fleas. The insect was unknown to older India according to some and was introduced by strangers. This immigration is quite possible. In 1863 the jigger (P. penetrans) was not found in Western Africa; when I returned there in 1882 it had passed over from the Brazil and had become naturalised on the equatorial African seaboard. the Arabs call shrimps and prawns "sea-fleas" (barguth al-bahr) showing an inland race. (See Pilgrimage i. 322.)

[FN#251] Submission to the Sultan and the tidings of his well-being should content every Eastern subject. But, as Oriental history shows, the form of government is a Despotism tempered by assassination. And under no rule is man socially freer and his condition contrasts strangely with the grinding social tyranny which characterises every mode of democracy or constitutionalism, i.e. political equality.

[FN#252] Here the text has "Markub" = a shoe; elsewhere "Na'al" = a sandal, especially with wooden sole. In classical Arabia, however, "Na'al" may be a shoe, a horse-shoe (iron-plate, not rim like ours). The Bresl. Edit. has "Wata," any foot-gear.

[FN#253] Water-melons (batayikh) says the Mac. Edit. a misprint for Aruz or rice. Water-melons are served up raw cut into square mouthfuls, to be eaten with rice and meat. They serve excellently well to keep the palate clean and cool.

[FN#254] The text recounts the whole story over again - more than European patience can bear.

[FN#255] The usual formula when telling an improbable tale. But here it is hardly called for: the same story is told (on weak authority) of the Alewife, the Three Graziers and Attorney-General Nay (temp. James II. 1577-1634) when five years old (Journ. Asiat. Soc. N.S. xxx. 280). The same feat had been credited to Thomas Egerton, Lord Chancellor in A.D. 1540-1617 (Chalmers, Biographical Dictionary xxiii. 267-68). But the story had already found its way into the popular jest-books such as "Tales and Quick Answers, very Mery and Pleasant to Rede" (1530); "Jacke of Dover's Quest of Inquirie for the Foole of all Fooles" (1604) under the title "The Foole of Westchester", and in "Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan, commonly called the King's Fool." The banker-bard Rogers (in Italy) was told a similar story concerning a widow of the Lambertini house (xivth centry). Thomas Wright (Introducition to the Seven Sages) says he had met the tale in Latin( xiiith-xivth centuries) and a variant in the "Nouveaux Contes a rire (Amsterdam 1737), under the title "Jugement Subtil du Duc d'Ossone contre Deux Marchands." Its origin is evidently the old Sindibad-namah translated from Syriac into Greek ("Syntipas," xith century); into Hebrew (Mishle Sandabar, xiith century) and from the Arabian version into old Castilian, "Libro de los Engannos et los Asayamientos de las Mugeres" (A.D. 1255), whereof a translation is appended to Professor Comparetti's Socitey. The Persion metrical form (an elaboration of one much older) dates from 1375; and gave rise to a host of imitations such as the Turkish Tales of the Forty Wazirs and the Canarese "Katha Manjari," where four persons contend about a purse. See also Gladwin's "Persian Moonshee," No. vi. of "Pleasing Stories;" and Mr. Clouston's paper, "The Lost Purse," in the Glasgow Evening Times. All are the Eastern form of Gavarni's "Enfants Terribles," showing the portentous precocity for which some children (infant phenomena, calculating boys, etc. etc.) have been famous.

[FN#256] From the Bresl. Edit. xii. 381. The Sa'lab or Abu Hosayn (Father of the Fortlet) is the fox, in Marocco Akkab: Talib Yusuf and Wa'wi are the jackal. Arabas have not preserved "Jakal" from the Heb. Shu'al and Persian Shaghal and Persian Shaghal (not Shagul) as the Rev. Mr. Tristram misinforms his readers. (Nat. Hist. p. 85)

[FN#257] The name is old and classical Arabic: in Antar the young Amazon Jayda was called Judar in public (Story of Jayda and Khalid). It is also, as will be seen, the name of a quarter in Cairo, and men are often called after such places, e.g. Al-Jubni from the Suk al Jubn in Damascus. The story is exceedingly Egyptian and the style abounds in Cairene vulgarisms, especially in the Bresl. Edit. ix. 311.

[FN#258] Had the merchant left his property to be divided after his death and not made a will he widow would have had only one-eighth instead of a fourth.

[FN#259] Lit. "from tyrant to tyrant," i.e. from official to official, Al-Zalamah, the "tyranny" of popular parlance.

[FN#260] The coin is omitted in the text but it is evidently the "Nusf" or half-dirham. Lane (iii.235), noting that the dinar is worth 170 "nusfs" in this tale, thinks that it was written (or copied?) after the Osmanh Conquest of Egypt. Unfortunately he cannot tell the precise period when the value of the small change fell so low.

[FN#261] Arab "Yaum mubarak!" still a popular exclamation.

[FN#262] i.e. of the door of daily bread.

[FN#263] Arab. "Sirah," a small fish differently described (De Sacy, "Relation de l'Egypte par Abd allatif," pp. 278-288: Lane, Nights iii. 234. It is not found in Sonnini's list.

[FN#264] A tank or lakelet in the southern parts of Cairo, long ago filled up; Von Hammer believes it inherited the name of the old Charon's Lake of Memphis, over which corpses were ferried.

[FN#265] Thus making the agreement a kind of religious covenant, as Catholics would recite a Pater or an Ave Maria.

[FN#266] Arab. "Ya miskim"=O poor devil; mesquin, meschino, words evidently derived from the East.

[FN#267] Plur. of Maghribi a Western man, a Moor. I have already derived the word through the Lat. "Maurus" from Maghribiyun. Europeans being unable to pronounce the Ghayn (or gh like the modern Cairenes) would turn it into "Ma'ariyun." They are mostly of the Maliki school (for which see Sale) and are famous as magicians and treasure-finders. Amongst the suite of the late Amir Abd al-Kadir, who lived many years and died in Damascus, I found several men profoundly versed in Eastern spiritualism and occultism.

[FN#268] The names are respectively, Slave of the Salvation, of the One (God), of the Eternal; of the Compassionate; and of the Loving.

[FN#269] i.e. "the most profound"; the root is that of "Batini," a gnostic, a reprobate.

[FN#270] i.e. the Tall One.

[FN#271] The loud pealing or (ear-) breaking Thunder.

[FN#272] Arab. "Fas and Miknas" which the writer evidently regards as one city. "Fas" means a hatchet, from the tradition of one having been found, says Ibn Sa'id, when digging the base under the founder Idris bin Idris (A.D. 808). His sword was placed on the pinnacle of the minaret built by the Imam Abu Ahmad bin Abi Bakr enclosed in a golden etui studded with pearls and precious stones. From the local pronunciation "Fes" is derived the red cap of the nearer Moslem East (see Ibn Batutah p. 230).

[FN#273] Arab. "Al-Khurj," whence the Span. Las Alforjas.

[FN#274] Arab. "Kebab," mutton or lamb cut into small squares and grilled upon skewers: it is the roast meat of the nearer East where, as in the West, men have not learned to cook meat so as to preserve all its flavour. This is found in the "Asa'o" of the Argentine Gaucho who broils the flesh while still quivering and before the fibre has time to set. Hence it is perfectly tender, if the animal be young, and has a "meaty" taste half lost by keeping

[FN#275] Equivalent to our puritanical "Mercy."

[FN#276] Arab. "Bukjah," from the Persian Bukcheh: a favourite way of keeping fine clothes in the East is to lay them folded in a piece of rough long-cloth with pepper and spices to drive away moths.

[FN#277] This is always specified, for respectable men go out of town on horse-back, never on "foot-back," as our friends the Boers say. I have seen a Syrian put to sore shame when compelled by politeness to walk with me, and every acquaintance he met addressed him "Anta Zalamah!" What! afoot?

[FN#278] This tale, including the Enchanted Sword which slays whole armies, was adopted in Europe as we see in Straparola (iv. 3), and the "Water of Life" which the Grimms found in Hesse, etc., "Gammer Grethel's German Popular Stories," Edgar Taylor, Bells, 1878; and now published in fuller form as "Grimm's Household Tales," by Mrs. Hunt, with Introduction by A. Lang, 2 vols. 8vo, 1884. It is curious that so biting and carping a critic, who will condescend to notice a misprint in another's book, should lay himself open to general animadversion by such a rambling farrago of half-digested knowledge as that which composes Mr. Andrew Lang's Introduction.

[FN#279] These retorts of Judar are exactly what a sharp Egyptian Fellah would say on such occasions.

[FN#280] Arab. "Salamat," plur. of Salam, a favourite Egyptian welcome.

[FN#281] This sentence expresses a Moslem idea which greatly puzzles strangers. Arabic has no equivalent of our "Thank you" (Kassara 'llah Khayr-ak being a mere blessing Allah increase thy weal!), nor can Al-lslam express gratitude save by a periphrase. The Moslem acknowledges a favour by blessing the donor and by wishing him increase of prosperity. "May thy shadow never be less! " means, Mayest thou always extend to me thy shelter and protection. I have noticed this before but it merits repetition. Strangers, and especially Englishmen, are very positive and very much mistaken upon a point, which all who have to do with Egyptians and Arabs ought thoroughly to understand. Old dwellers in the East know that the theory of ingratitude in no way interferes with the sense of gratitude innate in man (and beast) and that the "lively sense of favours to come," is as quick in Orient land as in Europe.

[FN#282] Outside this noble gate, the Bab al-Nay, there is a great cemetery wherein, by the by, lies Burckhardt, my predecessor as a Hajj to Meccah and Al-Medinah. Hence many beggars are always found squatting in its neighbourhood.

[FN#283] Friends sometimes walk alongside the rider holding the stirrup in sign of affection and respect, especially to the returning pilgrim.

[FN#284] Equivalent to our Alas! It is woman's word never used by men; and foreigners must be most careful of this distinction under pain of incurring something worse than ridicule. I remember an officer in the Bombay Army who, having learned Hindostani from women, always spoke of himself in the feminine and hugely scandalised the Sepoys.

[FN#285] i.e. a neighbour. The "quarters" of a town in the East are often on the worst of terms. See Pilgrimage.

[FN#286] In the patriarchal stage of society the mother waits upon her adult sons. Even in Dalmatia I found, in many old-fashioned houses, the ladies of the family waiting upon the guests. Very pleasant, but somewhat startling at first.

[FN#287] Here the apodosis would be "We can all sup together."

[FN#288] Arab. "Zawiyah" (=oratory), which is to a Masjid what a chapel is to a church.

[FN#289] Arab. "Kasr," prop. a palace: so the Tuscan peasant speaks of his "palazzo."

[FN#290] This sale of a free-born Moslem was mere felony. But many centuries later Englishmen used to be sold and sent to the plantations in America.

[FN#291] Arab. "Kawwas," lit. an archer, suggesting les archers de la Sainte Hermandade. In former days it denoted a sergeant, an apparitor, an officer who executed magisterial orders. In modern Egypt he became a policeman (Pilgrimage i. 29). As "Cavass" he appears in gorgeous uniform and sword, an orderly attached to public offices and Consulates.

[FN#292] A purely imaginary King.

[FN#293] The Bresl. Edit. (ix. 370) here and elsewhere uses the word "Nutiya"=Nauta, for the common Bahriyah or Mallah.

[FN#294] Arab. "Tawaf," the name given to the sets (Ashwat) of seven circuits with the left shoulder presented to the Holy House, that is walking "widdershins" or "against the sun" ("with the sun" being like the movement of a watch). For the requisites of this rite see Pilgrimage iii. 234.

[FN#295] Arab. "Akh"; brother has a wide signification amongst Moslems and may be used to and of any of the Saving Faith.

[FN#296] Said by the master when dismissing a servant and meaning, "I have not failed in my duty to thee!" The answer is, "Allah acquit thee thereof!'

[FN#297] A Moslem prison is like those of Europe a century ago; to think of it gives gooseflesh. Easterns laugh at our idea of penitentiary and the Arabs of Bombay call it "Al-Bistan" (the Garden) because the court contains a few trees and shrubs. And with them a garden always suggests an idea of Paradise. There are indeed only two efficacious forms of punishment all the world over, corporal for the poor and fines for the rich, the latter being the severer form.

[FN#298] i.e. he shall answer for this.

[FN#299] A pun upon "Khaliyah" (bee hive) and "Khaliyah" (empty). Khaliyah is properly a hive of bees with a honey-comb in the hollow of a tree-trunk, opposed to Kawwarah, hive made of clay or earth (Al-Hariri; Ass. of Tiflis). There are many other terms, for Arabs are curious about honey. Pilgrimage iii. 110.

[FN#300] Lane (iii. 237) supposes by this title that the author referred his tale to the days of the Caliphate. "Commander of the Faithful" was, I have said, the style adopted by Omar in order to avoid the clumsiness of "Caliph" (successor) of the Caliph (Abu Bakr) of the Apostle of Allah.

[FN#301] eastern thieves count four modes of housebreaking, (1)picking out burnt bricks; (2) cutting through unbaked bricks; (3) wetting a mud wall and (4) boring through a wooden wall (Vikram and the Vampire p. 172).

[FN#302] Arab. "Zabbat," lit. a lizard (fem.) also a wooden lock, the only one used throughout Egypt. An illustration of its curious mechanism is given in Lane (M. E. Introduction)

[FN#303] Arab. "Dabbus." The Eastern mace is well known to English collectors, it is always of metal, and mostly of steel, with a short handle like our facetiously called "life-preterver " The head is in various forms, the simplest a ball, smooth and round, or broken into sundry high and angular ridges like a melon, and in select weapons shaped like the head of some animal. bull, etc. See Night dcxlvi.

[FN#304] The red habit is a sign of wrath and vengeance and the Persian Kings like Fath Al Shah, used to wear it when about to order some horrid punishment, such as the "Shakk"; in this a man was hung up by his heels and cut in two from the fork downwards to the neck, when a turn of the chopper left that untouched. White robes denoted peace and mercy as well as joy. The "white" hand and "black" hand have been explained. A "white death" is quiet and natural, with forgiveness of sins. A "black death" is violent and dreadful, as by strangulation; a "green death" is robing in rags and patches like a dervish, and a "red death" is by war or bloodshed (A. P. ii. 670). Among the mystics it is the resistance of man to his passions.

[FN#305] This in the East is the way "pour se faire valoir"; whilst Europeans would hold it a mere "bit of impudence." aping dignity.

[FN#306] The Chief Mufti or Doctor of the Law, an appointment first made by the Osmanli Mohammed II., when he captured Constantinople in A.D. 1453. Before that time the functions were discharged by the Kazi al-Kuzat (Kazi-in-Chief), the Chancellor.

[FN#307] So called because here lived the makers of crossbows (Arab. Bunduk now meaning a fire piece, musket, etc.). It is the modern district about the well-known Khan al-Hamzawi.

[FN#308] Pronounced "Goodareeyyah," and so called after one of the troops of the Fatimite Caliphs. The name "Yamaniyah" is probably due to the story-teller's inventiveness.

[FN#309] I have noted that as a rule in The Nights poetical justice is administered with much rigour and exactitude. Here, however, the tale-teller allows the good brother to be slain by the two wicked brothers as he permitted the adulterous queens to escape the sword of Kamar al-Zaman. Dr. Steingass brings to my notice that I have failed to do justice to the story of Sharrkan (vol. ii., p. 172), where I note that the interest is injured by the gratuitous incest But this has a deeper meaning and a grander artistic effect. Sharrkan begins with most unbrotherly feelings towards his father's children by a second wife. But Allah's decree forces him to love his half-sister despite himself, and awe and repentance convert the savage, who joys at the news of his brother's reported death, to a loyal and devoted subject of the same brother. But Judar with all his goodness proved himself an arrant softy and was no match for two atrocious villains. And there may be overmuch of forgiveness as of every other good thing.

[FN#310] In such case the "'iddah" would be four months and ten days.

[FN#311] Not quite true. Weil's German version, from a MS. in the Ducal Library of Gotha gives the "Story of Judar of Cairo and Mahmud of Tunis" in a very different form. It has been pleasantly "translated (from the German) and edited" by Mr. W. F. Kirby, of the British Museum, under the title of "The New Arabian Nights" (London: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co.), and the author kindly sent me a copy. "New Arabian Nights" seems now to have become a fashionable title applied without any signification: such at least is the pleasant collection of Nineteenth Century Novelettes, published under that designation by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, 1884.

[FN#312] Von Hammer holds this story to be a satire on Arab superstition and the compulsory propagation, the compelle intrare, of Al-Islam. Lane (iii. 235) omits it altogether for reasons of his own. I differ with great diffidence from the learned Baron whose Oriental reading was extensive; but the tale does not seem to justify his explanations. It appears to me simply one of the wilder romances, full of purposeful anachronisms (e.g. dated between Abraham and Moses, yet quoting the Koran) and written by someone familiar with the history of Oman. The style too is peculiar, in many places so abrupt that much manipulation is required to make it presentable: it suits, however, the rollicking, violent brigand-like life which it depicts. There is only one incident about the end which justifies Von Hammer's suspicion.

[FN#313] The Persian hero of romance who converses with the Simurgh or Griffin.

[FN#314] 'The word is as much used in Egypt as wunderbar in Germany. As an exclamation is equivalent to "mighty fine!"

[FN#315] In modern days used in a bad sense, as a freethinker, etc. So Dalilah the Wily is noted to be a philosopheress.

[FN#316] The game is much mixed up after Arab fashion. The "Tufat" is the Siyahgosh= Black-ears, of India (Felis caracal), the Persian lynx, which gives very good sport with Dachshunds. Lynxes still abound in the thickets near Cairo

[FN#317] The "Sons of Kahtan," especially the Ya'arubah tribe, made much history in Oman. Ya'arub (the eponymus) is written Ya'arab and Ya'arib; but Ya'arub (from Ya'arubu Aorist of 'Aruba) is best, because according to all authorities he was the first to cultivate primitive Arabian speech and Arabic poetry. (Caussin de Perceval's Hist. des Arabes i.50, etc.)

[FN#318] He who shooteth an arrow by night. See the death of Antar shot down in the dark by the archer Jazar, son of Jabir, who had been blinded by a red hot sabre passed before his eyes. I may note that it is a mere fiction of Al-Asma'i, as the real 'Antar (or 'Antarah) lived to a good old age, and probably died the "straw death."

[FN#319] See vol. ii., p. 77, for a reminiscence of masterful King Kulayb and his Hima or domain. Here the phrase would mean, "None could approach them when they were wroth; none were safe from their rage."

[FN#320] The sons of Nabhan (whom Mr. Badger calls Nebhan) supplied the old Maliks or Kings of Oman. (History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman, etc., London, Hakluyt Soc. 1871.)

[FN#321] This is a sore insult in Arabia, where they have not dreamt of a "Jawab-club," like that of Calcutta in the old days, to which only men who had been half a dozen times "jawab'd" (= refused in Anglo-lndian jargon) could belong. "I am not a stallion to be struck on the nose," say the Arabs.

[FN#322] Again "inverted speech": it is as if we said, "Now, you're a damned fine fellow, so," etc. "Allah curse thee! Thou hast guarded thy women alive and dead;" said the man of Sulaym in admiration after thrusting his spear into the eye of dead Rabi'ah.

[FN#323] The Badawi use javelins or throw-spears of many kinds, especially the prettily worked Mizrak (Pilgrimage i. 349); spears for footmen (Shalfah, a bamboo or palm-stick with a head about a hand broad), and the knightly lance, a male bamboo some 12 feet long with iron heel and a long tapering point often of open work or damascened steel, under which are tufts of black ostrich feathers, one or two. I never saw a crescent-shaped head as the text suggests. It is a "Pundonor" not to sell these weapons: you say, "Give me that article and I will satisfy thee!" After which the Sons of the Sand will haggle over each copper as if you were cheapening a sheep. (Ibid. iii. 73.)

[FN#324] The shame was that Gharib had seen the girl and had fallen in love with her beauty instead of applying for her hand in recognised form. These punctilios of the Desert are peculiarly nice and tetchy; nor do strangers readily realise them.

[FN#325] The Arabs derive these Noachidae from Imlik, great- grandson of Shem, who after the confusion of tongues settled at Sana'a, then moved North to Meccah and built the fifth Ka'abah. The dynastic name was Arkam, M. C. de Perceval's "Arcam," which he would identify with Rekem (Numbers xxxi. 8). The last Arkam fell before an army sent by Moses to purge the Holy Land (Al- Hijaz) of idolatry. Commentators on the Koran (chaps. vii.) call the Pharaoh of Moses Al-Walid and derive him from the Amalekites: we have lately ascertained that this Mene-Ptah was of the Shepherd-Kings and thus, according to the older Moslems, the Hyksos were of the seed of Imlik. (Pilgrimage ii. 116, and iii. 190.) In Syria they fought with Joshua son of Nun. The tribe or rather nationality was famous and powerful: we know little about it and I may safely predict that when the Amalekite country shall have been well explored, it will produce monuments second in importance only to the Hittites. "A nomadic tribe which occupied the Peninsula of Sinai" (Smith's Dict. of the Bible) is peculiarly superficial, even for that most superficial of books.

[FN#326] The Amalekites were giants and lived 500 years. (Pilgrimage, loc. cit.)

[FN#327] His men being ninety against five hundred.

[FN#328] Arab. "Kaum" (pron. Gum) here=a razzia, afterwards=a tribe. Relations between Badawi tribes are of three kinds; (1) Ashab, allies offensive and defensive, friends who intermarry; (2) Kiman (plur. of Kaum) when the blood-feud exists, and (3) Akhwan= brothers. The last is a complicated affair, "Akhawat" or brotherhood, denotes the tie between patron and client (a noble and an ignoble tribe) or between the stranger and the tribe which claims an immemorial and unalienable right to its own lands. Hence a small fee (Al-Rifkah) must be paid and the traveller and his beast become "dakhil," or entitled to brother-help. The guardian is known in the West as Rafik; Rabi'a in Eastern Arabia; Ghafir in "Sinai ;" amongst the Somal, Abban and the Gallas Mogasa. Further details are given in Pilgrimage iii. 85-87.

[FN#329] Arab. "Mal," here=Badawi money, flocks and herds, our "fee" from feoh, vieh, cattle; as pecunia from pecus, etc., etc.

[FN#330] The litholatry of the old Arabs is undisputed: Manat the goddess-idol was a large rude stone and when the Meccans sent out colonies these carried with them stones of the Holy Land to be set up and worshipped like the Ka'abah. I have suggested (Pilgrimage iii. 159) that the famous Black Stone of Meccah, which appears to me a large aerolite, is a remnant of this worship and that the tomb of Eve near Jeddah was the old "Sakhrah tawilah" or Long Stone (ibid. iii. 388). Jeddah is now translated the grandmother, alluding to Eve, a myth of late growth: it is properly Juddah=a plain lacking water.

[FN#331] The First Adites, I have said, did not all perish: a few believers retired with the prophet Hud (Heber ?) to Hazramaut. The Second Adites, who had Marib of the Dam for capital and Lukman for king, were dispersed by the Flood of Al-Yaman. Their dynasty lasted a thousand years, the exodus taking place according to De Sacy in A.D. 150-170 or shortly after A.D. 100 (C. de Perceval), and was overthrown by Ya'arub bin Kahtan, the first Arabist; see Night dcxxv.

[FN#332] This title has been noticed: it suggests the "Saint Abraham" of our medaeval travellers. Every great prophet has his agnomen: Adam the Pure (or Elect) of Allah, Noah the Najiy (or saved) of Allah; Moses (Kalim) the Speaker with Allah; Jesus the Ruh (Spirit breath) or Kalam (the word) of Allah. For Mohammed's see Al-Busiri's Mantle-poem vv. 31-58.

[FN#333] Koran (chaps. iii. 17), "Verily the true religion in the sight of Allah is Islam" i.e. resigning or devoting myself to the Lord, with a suspicion of "Salvation" conveyed by the root Salima, he was safe.

[FN#334] Arab. "Sa'ikah," which is supposed to be a stone. The allusion is to Antar's sword, "Dhami," made of a stone, black, brilliant and hard as a rock (an aerolite), which had struck a camel on the right side and had come out by the left. The blacksmith made it into a blade three feet long by two spans broad, a kind of falchion or chopper, cased it with gold and called it Dhami (the "Trenchant") from its sharpness. But he said to the owner:— The sword is trenchant, O son of the Ghalib clan, Trenchant in sooth, but where is the sworder-man?

Whereupon the owner struck off the maker's head, a most satisfactory answer to all but one.

[FN#335] Arab. "Kuta'ah": lit. a bit cut off, fragment, nail- paring, and here un diminutif. I have described this scene in Pilgrimage iii. 68. Latro often says, "Thy gear is wanted by the daughter of my paternal uncle" (wife), and thus parades his politeness by asking in a lady's name.

[FN#336] As will appear the two brothers were joined by a party of horsemen.

[FN#337] "Four" says the Mac. Edit. forgetting Falhun with characteristic inconsequence.

[FN#338] Muhammad (the deserving great praise) is the name used by men; Ahmad (more laudable) by angels, and Mahmud (praised) by devils. For a similar play upon the name, "Allah Allah Muhammad ast" (God is God the praisworthy) see Dabistan ii. 416.

[FN#339] The Mac. Edit. here gives "Sas," but elsewhere "Sasa," which is the correct form

[FN#340] Sapor the Second (A.D. 310-330) was compelled to attack the powerful Arab hordes of Oman, most of whom, like the Tayy, Aus and Khazraj, the Banu Nabhan and the Hinawi left Al-Yaman A.D. 100-170, and settled in the north and north-east of Al-Najd This great exodus and dispersion of the tribes was caused, as has been said, by the bursting of the Dam of Marib originally built by Abd al-Shams Saba, father of Himyar. These Yamanian races were plunged into poverty and roamed northwards, planting themselves amongst the Arabs of Ma'add son of Adnan. Hence the kingdom of Ghassan in Syria whose phylarchs under the Romans (i.e. Greek Emperors of Constantinople) controlled Palestine Tertia, the Arabs of Syria and Palestine, and the kingdom of Harah, whose Lakhmite Princes, dependent upon Persia, managed the Arabs of the Euphrates, Oman and Al-Bahrayn. The Ma'addites still continued to occupy the central plateau of Arabia, a feature analogous with India "above the Ghauts."

[FN#341] I have described (Pilgrimage i. 370) the grisly spot which a Badawi will dignify by the name of Wady al-Ward=Vale of Roses.

[FN#342] Koran xiii. 3, "Of every fruit two different kinds " i.e. large and small, black and white, sweet and sour.

[FN#343] A graft upon an almond tree, which makes its kernel s..veet and gives it an especial delicacy of favour. See Russell's (excellent) Natural History of Aleppo, p. 21.

[FN#344] So called from the flavour of the kernel it is well- known at Damascus where a favourite fruit is the dried apricot with an almond by way of kernel. There are many preparations of apricots, especially the "Mare's skin" (Jild al-fares or Kamar al-din) a paste folded into sheets and exactly resembling the article from which it takes a name. When wanted it is dissolved in water and eaten as a relish with bread or biscuit (Pilgrimage i. 289).

[FN#345] "Ante Kama takul"=the vulgarest Cairene.

[FN#346] This may be Ctesiphon, the ancient capital of the Chosroes, on the Tigris below Baghdad; and spoken of elsewhere in The Nights; especially as, in Night dclxvii., it is called Isbanir Al-Madain; Madain Kisra (the cities of Chosroes) being the Arabic name of the old dual city.

[FN#347] Koran vi. 103. The translation is Sale's which I have generally preferred, despite many imperfections: Lane renders this sentence, "The eyes see not Him, but He seeth the eyes ;" and Mr. Rodwell, "No vision taketh in Him ( ?), but He taketh in all vision ," and (better) "No eyesight reacheth to Him."

[FN#348] Sale (sect. 1.) tells us all that was then known of these three which with Ya'uk and Nasr and the three "daughters of God," Goddesses or Energies (the Hindu Saktis) Allat Al-Uzza and Manat mentioned in the Koran were the chiefs of the pre-lslamitic Pantheon. I cannot but suspect that all will be connected with old Babylonian worship. Al-Baydawi (in Kor. Ixxi. 22) says of Wadd, Suwa'a, Yaghus, Ya'uk and Nasr that they were names of pious men between Adam and Noah, afterwards deified: Yaghus was the giant idol of the Mazhaj tribe at Akamah of Al-Yaman and afterwards at Najran Al-Uzza was widely worshipped: her idol (of the tree Semurat) belonging to Ghatafan was destroyed after the Prophet's order by Khalid bin Walid. Allat or Al-Lat is written by Pocock (spec. 110) "Ilahat" i.e. deities in general. But Herodotus evidently refers to one god when he makes the Arabs worship Dionysus as {Greek letters} and Urania as {Greek letters} and the "tashdid" in Allat would, to a Greek ear, introduce another syllable (Alilat). This was the goddess of the Kuraysh and Thakif whose temple at Taif was circuited like the Ka'abah before Mohammed destroyed it.

[FN#349] Shays (Shayth) is Ab Seth (Father Seth,) of the Hebrews, a name containing the initial and terminal letters of the Egypto- Phoenico-Hebrew Alphabet and the "Abjad" of the Arabs. Those curious about its connection with the name of Allah (El), the Zodiacal signs and with the constellations, visions but not wholly uninteresting, will consult "Unexplored Syria" (vol. i. 33).

[FN#350] The exclamation of an honest Fellah.

[FN#351] This is Antar with the Chosroe who "kissed the Absian hero between the eyes and bade him adieu, giving him as a last token a rich robe." The coarser hand of the story-teller exaggerates everything till he makes it ridiculous.

[FN#352] The context suggests thee this is a royal form of "throwing the handkerchief;" but it does not occur elsewhere. In face, the European idea seems to have arisen from the oriental practice of sending presents in napkins or kerchiefs.

[FN#353] i.e. if the disappointed suitor attack me.

[FN#354] i.e. if ever I he tempted to deny it.

[FN#355] Arab. "Musafahah,' the Arab fashion of shaking hands. The right palms are applied flat to each other; then the fingers are squeezed and the hand is raised to the forehead (Pilgrimage ii. 332).

[FN#356] A city and province of Khuzistan the old Susiana. Dasht may be either the town in Khorasan or the "forests" (dasht) belonging to Ahwaz (Ahuaz in D'Herbelot).

[FN#357] This is the contest between "Antar and the Satrap Khosrewan at the Court of Monzer." but without its tragical finish.

[FN#358] Elliptical "he rode out in great state, that is to say if greatness can truly be attributed to man," for, etc.

[FN#359] According to D'Herbelot (s.v. Rostac) it is a name given to the villages of Khorasan as "Souad" (Sawad) to those of Irak and Makhlaf to those of Al-Yaman: there is, how ever, a well- known Al-Rustak (which like Al-Bahrayn always takes the article) in the Province of Oman West of Maskat, and as it rhymes with "Irak" it does well enough. Mr. Badger calls this ancient capital of the Ya'arubah Imams "er-Rastak" (Imams of Oman).

[FN#360] i.e. a furious knight.

[FN#361] In the Mac. Edit. "Hassan," which may rhyme with Nabhan, but it is a mere blunder.

[FN#362] In Classical Arabic Irak (like Yaman, Bahrayn and Rustak) always takes the article.

[FN#363] The story-teller goes back from Kufah founded in Omar's day to the times of Abraham.

[FN#364] This manoeuvre has often been practiced; especially by the first Crusaders under Bohemond (Gibbon) and in late years by the Arab slavers in Eastern Intertropical Africa. After their skirmishes with the natives they quartered and "bristled" the dead like game, roasted and boiled the choice pieces and pretended to eat the flesh. The enemy, who was not afraid of death, was struck with terror by the idea of being devoured, and this seems instinctive to the undeveloped mind.

THE END