[19]. Li ‘lláhi (darr’) al-káil, a characteristic idiom. “Darr” = giving (rich) milk copiously; and the phrase expresses admiration, “To Allah be ascribed (or Allah be praised for) his rich eloquence who said,” etc. Some Hebraists would render it, “Divinely (well) did he speak who said,” etc., holding “Allah” to express a superlative like “Yah” (Jah) in Gen. iv. 1; x. 9. Nimrod was a hunter to the person (or presence) of Yah, i.e. mighty hunter.
[20]. Hamzah and Abbás were the famous uncles of Mohammed often noticed; Ukayl is not known; possibly it may be Akíl, a son of the fourth Caliph, Ali.
[21]. The Eastern ring is rarely plain; and, its use being that of a signet, it is always in intaglio: the Egyptians invented engraving hieroglyphics on wooden stamps for marking bricks and applied the process to the ring. Moses B.C. 1491 (Exod. xxviii. 9) took two onyx-stones, and graved on them the names of the children of Israel. From this the signet ring was but a step. Herodotus mentions an emerald seal set in gold, that of Polycrates, the work of Theodorus son of Telecles the Samian (iii. 141). The Egyptians also were perfectly acquainted with working in cameo (anaglyph) and rilievo, as may be seen in the cavo rilievo of the finest of their hieroglyphs. The Greeks borrowed from them the cameo and applied it to gems (e.g. Tryphon’s in the Marlborough collection), and they bequeathed the art to the Romans. We read in a modern book “Cameo means an onyx, and the most famous cameo in the world is the onyx containing the Apotheosis of Augustus.” The ring is given in marriage because it was a seal by which orders were signed (Gen. xxxviii. 18 and Esther iii. 10-12). I may note that the seal-ring of Cheops (Khufu), found in the Greatest Pyramid, was in the possession of my old friend, Doctor Abbott, of Auburn (U.S.), and was sold with his collection. It is the oldest ring in the world, and settles the Cheops-question.
[22]. This habit of weeping when friends meet after long parting is customary, I have noted, amongst the American “Indians,” the Badawin of the New World; they shed tears thinking of the friends they have lost. Like most primitive people they are ever ready to weep as was Æneas or Shakespeare’s saline personage:—
This would make a man, a man of salt
To use his eyes for garden waterpots.
(King Lear, iv. 6.)
[23]. Here poetical justice is not done; in most Arab tales the two adulterous Queens would have been put to death.
ALA AL-DIN ABU AL-SHAMAT.”[[24]]
“What is that?” asked he, and she said, It hath reached me that there lived, in times of yore and years and ages long gone before, a merchant of Cairo[[25]] named Shams al-Din, who was of the best and truest-spoken of the traders of the city; and he had eunuchs and servants and negro-slaves and handmaids and Mamelukes and great store of money. Moreover, he was Consul[[26]] of the Merchants of Cairo and owned a wife, whom he loved and who loved him; except that he had lived with her forty years, yet had not been blessed with a son or even a daughter. One day, as he sat in his shop, he noted that the merchants, each and every, had a son or two sons or more sitting in their shops like their sires. Now the day being Friday; he entered the Hammam-bath and made the total ablution: after which he came out and took the barber’s glass and looked in it, saying, “I testify that there is no god but the God and I testify that Mohammed is the Messenger of God!” Then he considered his beard and, seeing that the white hairs in it covered the black, bethought himself that hoariness is the harbinger of death. Now his wife knew the time of his coming home and had washed and made herself ready for him, so when he came in to her, she said, “Good evening,” but he replied “I see no good.” Then she called to the handmaid, “Spread the supper-tray;” and when this was done quoth she to her husband, “Sup, O my lord.” Quoth he, “I will eat nothing,” and pushing the tray away with his foot, turned his back upon her. She asked, “Why dost thou thus? and what hath vexed thee?”; and he answered, “Thou art the cause of my vexation.”——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.