[268]. Called “zebeeb.” This name is also given to an intoxicating conserve.
[269]. A description of the shops, and a further account of the tradesmen of Cairo, will be given in another chapter, on Industry.
[270]. “Námooseeyeh.” It is composed of muslin, or linen of an open texture, or crape, and forms a close canopy.
[271]. In the Introduction to this work.
[272]. “The habit of irregular remuneration, in lieu of fixed, invariable, and actionable wages, produces a difference of mental habits, as regards servants and masters, that I am sure is not to be understood through description; and yet every day you see Europeans, those men who affect such comprehensive views and such powers of logic, reviling the habit of giving presents, not perceiving that this practice leads to the preservation of those interesting domestic relations which I conceive to be the greatest lesson, political and moral, that is presented to us by the Eastern world.”—Urquhart’s Spirit of the East, vol. ii. p. 402.
[273]. See Exodus, xxii. 26, 27.
[274]. The term “hareem” (which, as before mentioned, is applied both to the females of a family and to the apartments which they occupy) signifies prohibited, sacred, etc. The Turks, and many of the Arabs, use the synonymous Arabic term “haram,” which the former pronounce “harem.”
[275]. They are often betrothed two or three or more years earlier.
[276]. Abraham’s sending a messenger to his own country to seek a wife for his son Isaac (see Genesis xxiv.) was just such a measure as most modern Arabs would adopt under similar circumstances, if easily practicable.
[277]. See Genesis xxix. 26.