[243]. This is the vinum coctum, the boiled wine, still a favourite in Southern Italy and Greece.
[244]. Eastern topers delight in drinking at dawn: upon this subject I shall have more to say in other Nights.
[245]. Arab. "Adab," a crux to translators, meaning anything between good education and good manners. In mod. Turk. "Edibiyyet" (Adabiyat)=belles lettres and "Edebi" or "Edíb"=a littérateur.
[246]. The Caliph Al-Maamún, who was a bad player, used to say, "I have the administration of the world and am equal to it, whereas I am straitened in the ordering of a space of two spans by two spans." The "board" was then "a square field of well-dressed leather."
[247]. The Rabbis (after Matth. xix. 12) count three kinds of Eunuchs; (1) Seris chammah=of the sun, i.e. natural: (2) Seris Adam=manufactured per homines; and (3) Seris Chammayim=of God (i.e. religious abstainer). Seris (castrated) or Abd (slave) is the general Hebrew name.
[248]. The "Lady of Beauty."
[249]. "Káf" has been noticed as the mountain which surrounds earth as a ring does the finger: it is popularly used like our Alp and Alpine. The "circumambient Ocean" (Bahr al-muhít) is the Homeric Ocean-stream.
[250]. The pomegranate is probably chosen here because each fruit is supposed to contain one seed from Eden-garden. Hence a host of superstitions (Pilgrimage iii., 104) possibly connected with the Chaldaic-Babylonian god Rimmon or Ramanu. Hence Persephone or Ishtar tasted the "rich pomegranate's seed." Lenormant, loc. cit. pp. 166,182.
[251]. i.e. for the love of God—a favourite Moslem phrase.
[252]. Arab. "Báb," also meaning a chapter (of magic, of war, etc.), corresponding with the Persian "Dar" as in Sad-dar, the Hundred Doors. Here, however, it is figurative "I tried a new mode." This scene is in the Mabinogion.