[FN#442] Arab.  “Takah” not “an aperture” as Lane has it, but an arched hollow in the wall.

[FN#443] In Trebutien (ii. 168) the cannibal is called “Goul Eli-Fenioun” and Von Hammer remarks, “There is no need of such likeness of name to prove that al this episode is a manifest imitation of the adventures of Ulysses in Polyphemus’s cave; * * * and this induces the belief that the Arabs have been acquainted with the poems of Homer.”  Living intimately with the Greeks they could not have ignored the Iliad and the Odyssey:  indeed we know by tradition that they had translations, now apparently lost.  I cannot however, accept Lane’s conjecture that “the story of Ulysses and Polyphemus may have been of Eastern origin.”  Possibly the myth came from Egypt, for I have shown that the opening of the Iliad bears a suspicious likeness to the proem of Pentaur’s Epic.

[FN#444] Arab.  “Shakhtur”.

[FN#445] In the Bresl.  Edit. the ship ips not wrecked but lands Sa’id in safety.

[FN#446] So in the Shah-nameth the Simurgh-bird gives one of her feathers to her protege Zal which he will throw into the fire when she is wanted.

[FN#447] Bresl.  Edit.  “Al-Zardakhanat” Arab. plur of Zarad-Khanah, a bastard word = armoury, from Arab.  Zarad (hauberk) and Pers.  Khanah = house etc.

[FN#448] Some retrenchment was here found necessary to avoid “damnable iteration.”

[FN#449] i.e.  Badi’a al-Jamal.

[FN#450] Mohammed.

[FN#451] Koran xxxv.  “The Creator” (Fatir) or the Angels, so called from the first verse.

[FN#452] In the Bresl.  Edit. (p. 263) Sayf al-Muluk drops asleep under a tree to the lulling sound of a Sakiyah or water-wheel, and is seen by Badi’a al-Jamal, who falls in love with im and drops tears upon his cheeks, etc.  The scene, containing much recitation, is long and well told.

[FN#453] Arab.  “Lukmah” = a bouchee of bread, meat, fruit or pastry, and especially applied to the rice balled with the hand and delicately inserted into a friend’s mouth.

[FN#454] Arab.  “Salahiyah,” also written Sarahiyah:  it means an ewer-shaped glass-bottle.

[FN#455] Arab.  “Sarmujah,” of which Von Hammer remarks that the dictionaries ignore it; Dozy gives the forms Sarmuj, Sarmuz, and Sarmuzah and explains them by “espece de guetre, de sandale ou de mule, qu’on chausse par-dessus la botte.”

[FN#456] In token of profound submission.

[FN#457] Arab.  “Misr” in Ibn Khaldun is a land whose people are settled and civilised hence “Namsur” = we settle; and “Amsar” = settled provinces.  Al-Misrayn was the title of Basrah and Kufah the two military cantonments founded by Caliph Omar on the frontier of conquering Arabia and conquered Persia.  Hence “Tamsir” = founding such posts, which were planted in Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt.  In these camps were stationed the veterans who had fought under Mohammed; but the