In the name of the Compassionating, the Compassionate! ✿ Praise be to Allah who all the Worlds made ✿ The Compassionating, the Compassionate ✿ King of the Day of Faith! ✿ Thee only do we adore and of Thee only do we crave aid ✿ Guide us to the path which is straight ✿ The path of those for whom Thy love is great, not those on whom is hate, nor they that deviate ✿ Amen! O Lord of the World’s trine.
My Pilgrimage (i. 285; ii. 78 and passim) will supply instances of its application; how it is recited with open hands to catch the blessing from Heaven and the palms are drawn down the face (Ibid. i. 286), and other details.
[37]. i.e. when the evil eye has less effect than upon children. Strangers in Cairo often wonder to see a woman richly dressed leading by the hand a filthy little boy (rarely a girl) in rags, which at home will be changed to cloth of gold.
[38]. Arab. “Asídah” flour made consistent by boiling in water with the addition of “Samn” (clarified butter) and honey: more like pap than custard.
[39]. Arab. “Ghábah” = I have explained as a low-lying place where the growth is thickest and consequently animals haunt it during the noon-heats.
[40]. Arab. “Akkám,” one who loads camels and has charge of the luggage. He also corresponds with the modern Mukharrij or camel-hirer (Pilgrimage i. 339); and hence the word Moucre (Moucres) which, first used by La Brocquière (A.D. 1432), is still the only term known to the French.
[41]. i.e. I am old and can no longer travel.
[42]. Taken from Al-Asma’i, the “Romance of Antar,” and the episode of the Asafir Camels.
[43]. A Mystic of the twelfth century A.D. who founded the Kádirí order (the oldest and chiefest of the four universally recognised), to which I have the honour to belong, teste my diploma (Pilgrimage, Appendix i.). Visitation is still made to his tomb at Baghdad. The Arabs (who have no hard g-letter) alter to “Jílán” the name of his birth-place “Gilan,” a tract between the Caspian and the Black Seas.
[44]. The well-known Anglo-Indian “Mucuddum;” lit. “one placed before (or over) others;” an overseer.