[312]. Easterns have a superstitious belief in the powers of food: I knew a learned man who never sat down to eat without a ceremonious salam to his meat.
[313]. Lane (ii. 464), uses the vile Turkish corruption “Rustum,” which, like its fellow “Rustem,” would make a Persian shudder.
[314]. Arab. “Darrij” i.e. let them slide (Americanicè).
[315]. This tetrastich has occurred before: so I quote Mr. Payne (in loco).
[316]. Shaykh of Al-Butnah and Jábiyah, therefore a Syrian of the Hauran near Damascus and grandson to Isú (Esau). Arab mystics (unlike the vulgar who see only his patience) recognise that inflexible integrity which refuses to utter “words of wind” and which would not, against his conscience, confess to wrong-doing merely to pacify the Lord who was stronger than himself. The Classics taught this noble lesson in the case of Prometheus versus Zeus. Many articles are called after Job e.g. Ra’ará’ Ayyub or Ghubayrá (inula Arabica and undulata), a creeper with which he rubbed himself and got well:—the Copts do the same on “Job’s Wednesday,” i.e. that before Whit Sunday O.S. Job’s father is a nickname of the camel, etc. etc.
[317]. Lane (in loco) renders “I am of their number.” But “fí al-siyák” means popularly “(driven) to the point of death.”
[318]. Lit. = “pathway, road”; hence the bridge well known as “finer than a hair and sharper than a sword,” over which all (except Khadijah and a chosen few) must pass on the Day of Doom; a Persian apparatus bodily annexed by Al-Islam. The old Guebres called it Pul-i-Chinávar or Chinávad and the Jews borrowed it from them as they did all their fancies of a future life against which Moses had so gallantly fought. It is said that a bridge over the grisly “brook Kedron” was called Sirát (the road) and hence the idea, as that of hell-fire from Ge-Hinnom (Gehenna) where children were passed through the fire to Moloch. A doubtful Hadis says, “The Prophet declared Al-Sirát to be the name of a bridge over hell-fire, dividing Hell from Paradise” (pp. 17, 122, Reynold’s trans. of Al-Siyuti’s Traditions, etc.). In Koran i. 5, “Sirát” is simply a path, from sarata, he swallowed, even as the way devours (makes a lakam or mouthful of) those who travel it. The word was orig. written with Sín but changed for easier articulation to Sád, one of the four Hurúf al-Mutabbakát (ط, ض, ص and ظ), “the flattened,” formed by the broadened tongue in contact with the palate. This Sad also by the figure Ishmám (= conversion) turns slightly to a Zá, the intermediate between Sin and Sad.
[319]. The rule in Turkey where catamites rise to the highest rank: C’est un homme de bonne famille (said a Turkish officer in Egypt) il a été acheté. Hence “Alfi” (one who costs a thousand) is a well-known cognomen. The Pasha of the Syrian caravan, with which I travelled, had been the slave of a slave and he was not a solitary instance (Pilgrimage i. 90).
[320]. The device of the banquet is dainty enough for any old Italian novella; all that now comes is pure Egyptian polissonnerie speaking to the gallery and being answered by roars of laughter.
[321]. i.e. art thou ceremonially pure and therefore fit for handling by a great man like myself?