[491]. See the engraving opposite p. 359.
[492]. The reciter is generally heard to greater advantage in public than when he is hired to entertain a private party; as, in the former case, his profits are usually proportioned to the talent which he displays.
[493]. These words commence a piece of poetry of which a translation will be found in this chapter.
[494]. Literally, “Thou who hast a valiant maternal uncle!” I add this note merely for the sake of mentioning, that the Arabs generally consider innate virtues as inherited through the mother rather than the father, and believe that a man commonly resembles, in his good and evil qualities, his maternal uncle.
[495]. When the reciter utters these words, we hear, from the lips of most of the Muslims who are listening to him, the prayer of “Alláhum sallee ’aleyh!”—“O God, favour him!”
[496]. It is thus described in the romance: but a headless spear was formerly sometimes used instead of the “gereed,” or palm-stick.
[497]. Hence the Mohadditeen are sometimes called “Záhireeyeh.”
[498]. Es-Sáleh was of the house of Eiyoob, a family of Kurds.
[499]. “The ’A’dileeyeh” is the name of a mosque founded by El-Melik El-’A’dil Toomán Bey, in the year of the Flight 906 (A.D. 1501), outside the wall of Cairo, near the great gate called Báb en-Nasr. The same name is also given to the neighbourhood of that mosque.
[500]. ’Osmán (vulgarly called ’Otmán and ’Etmán) Ibn-El-Hebla was a rogue whom Beybars took into his service as groom, and compelled to vow repentance at the shrine of the seyyideh Nefeeseh (great-granddaughter of the Imám Hasan), and, soon after, made his mukaddam, or chief of his servants.