[FN#556] In text “Wa-Saw bi ’hu (As bi ’a-hu?) f¡ hanaki-h:”  this is explained in Ms. p. 216:  “Bi-yarza’u f¡ As b¡ hi.” [Dozy, Suppl. i. 815, gives “Saw bi’” as an irregular pl. of “Asba’” quoting from Bresl. ed. iii. 381, 9.] I would rather say it is a regularly formed broken plural of a singular “S bi’” = the pointing one, i.e. index, now commonly called “Sabb bah” the reviler, where the same idea of pointing at with contempt seems to prevail, and “Sh hid” = the witnessing, because it is raised in giving testimony.  In the plural it would be naturally generalised to “finger,” and in point of fact, the sing.  “S bi’” is used nowadays in this sense in Egypt along with the other popular form of “Sub ’.”

[FN#557] I write “Cafilah” and not “Cafila” with the unjustifiable suppression of the final “h” which is always made sensible in the pure pronunciation of the Badawi.  The malpractice has found favour chiefly through the advocacy of Dr. Redhouse, an eminent Turkish scholar whose judgments must be received with great caution; and I would quote on this subject the admirable remarks of my late lamented friend Dr. G. P. Badger in “The Academy” of July 2, 1887.  “Another noticeable default in the same category is that, like Sale, Mr. Wherry frequently omits the terminal ‘h’ in his transliteration of Arabic.  Thus he writes Sura, Am¡na, F tima, Mad¡na, Tah ma; yet, inconsistently enough, he gives the ‘h’ in Allah, Khadijah, Kaabah, Makkah, and many other words.  This point deserves special notice, owing to Dr. Redhouse’s letter, published in ‘The Academy’ of November 22 last, in which he denounces as ‘a very common European error’ the addition of the ‘h’ or ‘final aspirate,’ in the English transliteration of many Arabic words.  Hence, as I read the eminent Orientalist’s criticism, when that aspirate is not sounded in pronunciation he omits it, writing “F&amacron;tima,” not Fatimah, lest, as I presume, the unwary reader may aspirate the ‘h.’  But in our Bibles we find such names as Sarah, Hannah, Judah, Beulah, Moriah, Jehovah, in the enunciation of which no one thinks of sounding the last letter as an aspirate.  I quite agree with Dr. Redhouse that in the construct case the final h assumes the sound of t, as in Fatimatu bint-Muhammed; yet that does not strike me as a valid reason for eliding the final h, which among other uses, is indicative of the feminine gender, as in Fƒtimah, Khadijah, Aminah, etc.; also of the nomina vicis, of many abstract nouns, nouns of multitude and of quality, as well as of adjectives of intensiveness, all which important indications would be lost by dropping the final h.  And further unless the vowel a, left after the elision of that letter, be furnished with some etymological mark of distinction, there would be great risk of its being confounded with the ƒ, formative of the singular of many verbal nouns, such as binƒ, safƒ, jalƒ; with the masculine plurals ending in the same letters, such as hukamƒ,  ghniyƒ, k£farƒ; and with