[307]. A picturesque phrase enough to express a deserted site, a spectacle familiar to the Nomades and always abounding in pathos to the citizens.
[308]. The olden "Harem" (or gynæceum, Pers. Zenanah, Serraglio): Harím is also used by synecdoche for the inmates; especially the wife.
[309]. The pearl is supposed in the East to lose 1% per ann. of its splendour and value.
[310]. Arab. "Fass," properly the bezel of a ring; also a gem cut en cabochon and generally the contenant for the contenu.
[311]. Arab. "Mihráb"=the arch-headed niche in the Mosque-wall facing Meccah-wards. Here, with his back to the people and fronting the Ka'abah or Square House of Meccah (hence called the "Kiblah"=direction of prayer), stations himself the Imám, antistes or fugleman, lit. "one who stands before others;" and his bows and prostrations give the time to the congregation. I have derived the Mihrab from the niche in which the Egyptian God was shrined: the Jews ignored it, but the Christians preserved it for their statues and altars. Maundrell suggests that the empty niche denotes an invisible God. As the niche (symbol of Venus) and the minaret (symbol of Priapus) date only from the days of the tenth Caliph, Al-Walid (A.H. 86-96=105-115), the Hindus charge the Moslems with having borrowed the two from their favourite idols—The Linga-Yoni or Cunnus-phallus (Pilgrimage ii. 140), and plainly call the Mihrab a Bhaga=Cunnus (Dabistan ii. 152.) The Guebres further term Meccah "Mah-gah," locus Lunæ, and Al-Medinah, "Mahdinah,"=Moon of religion. See Dabistan i., 49, etc.
[312]. Arab. "Kursi," a stool of palm-fronds, etc., ❌-shaped (see Lane's illustration, Nights i., 197), before which the reader sits. Good Moslems will not hold the Holy Volume below the waist nor open it except when ceremonially pure. Englishmen in the East should remember this, for to neglect the "Adab al-Kúran" (respect due to Holy Writ) gives great scandal.
[313]. Mr. Payne (i. 148) quotes the German Zuckerpüppchen.
[314]. The Persian poets have a thousand conceits in praise of the "mole," (Khál or Shámah) for which Hafiz offered "Samarkand and Bokhara" (they not being his, as his friends remarked). Another "topic" is the flight of arrows shot by eyelashes.
[315]. Arab. "Suhá" a star in the Great Bear introduced only to balance "wushát"=spies, enviers, enemies, whose "evil eye" it will ward off.
[316]. In Arab tales beauty is always "soft-sided," and a smooth skin is valued in proportion to its rarety.