Part i.
A'min (Prince), son of the caliph Haroun-al-Raschid; he married Am'inê, sister of Zobeide (3 syl.), the caliph's wife.—Arabian Nights' Entertainments ("The History of Amine").
Am'ina, an orphan, who walked in her sleep. She was betrothed to Elvi'no, a rich farmer, but being found the night before the wedding in the chamber of count Rodolpho, Elvino rightly refused to marry her. The count remonstrated with the young farmer, and while they were talking, the orphan was seen to get out of a window and walk along the narrow edge of a mill-roof while the great wheel was rapidly revolving; she then crossed a crazy old bridge, and came into the same chamber. Here she awoke, and, seeing Elvino, threw her arms around him so lovingly, that all his doubts vanished, and he married her.—Bellini, La Sonnambula (an opera, 1831).
Am'ine (3 syl.), half-sister of Zobei'dè (3 syl.), and wife of Amin, the caliph's son. One day she went to purchase a robe, and the seller told her he would charge nothing if she would suffer him to kiss her cheek. Instead of kissing he bit it, and Amine, being asked by her husband how she came by the wound, so shuffled in her answers that he commanded her to be put to death, a sentence he afterwards commuted to scourging. One day she and her sister told the stories of their lives to the caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, when Amin became reconciled to his wife, and the caliph married her half-sister.—Arabian Nights'Entertainments ("History of Zobeide and History of Amine").
Am'ine (3 syl.) or Am'ines (3 syl.), the beautiful wife of Sidi Nouman. Instead of eating her rice with a spoon, she used a bodkin for the purpose, and carried it to her mouth in infinitesimal portions. This went on for some time, till Sidi Nouman determined to ascertain on what his wife really fed, and to his horror discovered that she was a ghoul, who went stealthily by night to the cemetery, and feasted on the freshly-buried dead.—Arabian Nights ("History of Sidi Nouman").
One of the Aminês' sort, who pick up their
grains of food with a bodkin.—O.W. Holmes,
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table
.
Amin'tor, a young nobleman, the troth-plight husband of Aspatia, but by the king's command he marries Evad'ne (3 syl.). This is the great event of the tragedy of which Amintor is the hero. The sad story of Evadne, the heroine, gives name to the play.—Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy (1610).