[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.