[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.