[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.