[FN#431] These guest-fires are famous in Arab poetry.  So Al-Hariri (Ass. of Banu Haram) sings:—­

          A beacon fire I ever kindled high;

i.e. on the hill-tops near the camp, to guide benighted travellers.  Also the Lamiyat al-Ajam says:—­

The fire of hospitality is ever lit on the high stations.

This natural telegraph was used in a host of ways by the Arabs of The Ignorance; for instance, when a hated guest left the camp they lighted the “Fire of Rejection,” and cried, “Allah, bear him far from us!” Nothing was more ignoble than to quench such fire:  hence in obloquy of the Fazar tribe it was said:—­

          Ne’er trust Fazar with an ass, for they
               Once roasted ass-pizzle, the rabble rout: 
          And, when sight they guest, to their dams they say,
               “Piss quick on the guest-fire and put it out!”
     (Al-Mas"udi vi. 140.)

[FN#432] i.e. of rare wood, set with rubies.

[FN#433] i.e. whose absence pained us.

[FN#434] Mr. Payne and I have long puzzled over these enigmatical and possibly corrupt lines:  he wrote to me in 1884, “This is the first piece that has beaten me.”  In the couplet above (vol. xii. 230) “Rayhani” may mean “my basil-plant” or “my food” (the latter Koranic), “my compassion,” etc.; and Susani is equally ancipitous “My lilies” or “my sleep”:  see Bard al-Susan = les douceurs du sommeil in Al-Mas’udi vii. 168.

[FN#435] The “Nika” or sand hill is the swell of the throat:  the Ghaur or lowland is the fall of the waist:  the flower is the breast anent which Mr. Payne appropriately quotes the well-known lines of Fletcher: 

          “Hide, O hide those hills of snow,
          That thy frozen bosom bears,
          On whose tops the pinks that grow
          Are of those that April wears.”

[FN#436] Easterns are right in regarding a sleepy languorous look as one of the charms of women, and an incitement to love because suggestive only of bed.  Some men also find the same pleasure in a lacrymose expression of countenance, seeming always to call for consolation:  one of the most successful women I know owes her exceptional good fortune to this charm.

[FN#437] Arab.  “Hajib,"eyebrow or chamberlain; see vol. iii. 233.  The pun is classical used by a host of poets including Al-Hariri.

[FN#438] Arab.  “Tarfah.”  There is a Tarfia Island in the Guadalquivir and in Gibraltar a “Tarfah Alto” opposed to “Tarfali bajo.”  But it must not be confounded with Tarf = a side, found in the Maroccan term for “The Rock” Jabal al-Tarf = Mountain of the Point (of Europe).

[FN#439] For Solomon and his flying carpet see vol. iii. 267.

[FN#440] Arab.  “Bilad al-Maghrib (al-Aksa,” in full) = the Farthest Land of the setting Sun, shortly called Al-Maghrib and the people “Maghribi.”  The earliest occurrence of our name Morocco or Marocco I find in the “Marakiyah” of Al-Mas’udi (iii. 241), who apparently applies it to a district whither the Berbers migrated.