[326]. Arab. "Iddat," alluding to the months of celibacy which, according to Moslem law, must be passed by a divorced woman before she can re-marry.
[327]. Arab. "Talák bi'l-Salásah" = a triple divorce which cannot be revoked; nor can the divorcer re-marry the same woman till after consummation with another husband. This subject will continually recur.
[328]. An allusion to a custom of the pagan Arabs in the days of ignorant Heathenism. The blood or brain, soul or personality of the murdered man formed a bird called Sady or Hámah (not the Humá or Humái, usually translated "phœnix") which sprang from the head, where four of the five senses have their seat, and haunted his tomb, crying continually, "Uskúni!" = Give me drink (of the slayer's blood)! and which disappeared only when the vendetta was accomplished. Mohammed forbade the belief. Amongst the Southern Slavs the cuckoo is supposed to be the sister of a murdered man ever calling for vengeance.
[329]. To obtain a blessing and show how he valued it.
[330]. Well-known tribes of proto-historic Arabs who flourished before the time of Abraham: see Koran (chapt. xxvi. et passim). They will be repeatedly mentioned in The Nights and notes.
[331]. Arab. "Amtár"; plur. of "Matr," a large vessel of leather or wood for water, etc.
[332]. Arab. "Asáfírí," so called because they attract sparrows (asáfír) a bird very fond of the ripe oily fruit. In the Romance of "Antar" Asáfír camels are beasts that fly like birds in fleetness. The reader must not confound the olives of the text with the hard unripe berries ("little plums pickled in stale") which appear at English tables; nor wonder that bread and olives are the beef-steak and potatoes of many Mediterranean peoples. It is an excellent diet, the highly oleaginous fruit supplying the necessary carbon.
[333]. Arab. "Tamar al-Hindi" = the "Indian-date," whence our word "Tamarind." A sherbet of the pods, being slightly laxative, is much drunk during the great heats; and the dried fruit, made into small round cakes, is sold in the bazars. The traveller is advised not to sleep under the tamarind's shade, which is infamous for causing ague and fever. In Sind I derided the "native nonsense," passed the night under an "Indian date-tree" and awoke with a fine specimen of ague which lasted me a week.
[334]. Moslems are not agreed upon the length of the Day of Doom when all created things, marshalled by the angels, await final judgement; the different periods named are 40 years, 70, 300 and 50,000. Yet the trial itself will last no longer than while one may milk an ewe, or than "the space between two milkings of a she-camel." This is bringing down Heaven to Earth with a witness; but, after all, the Heaven of all faiths, including "Spiritualism," the latest development, is only an earth more or less glorified even as the Deity is humanity more or less perfected.
[335]. Arab. "Al-Kamaráni," lit. "the two moons." Arab rhetoric prefers it to "Shamsáni," or "two suns," because lighter (akhaff), to pronounce. So, albeit Omar was less worthy than Abu-Bakr the two are called "Al-Omaráni," in vulgar parlance, Omarayn.