[231]. Pronounce Abul-Muzaffar = Father of the Conqueror.
[232]. I have explained the word in my “Zanzibar, City, Island and Coast,” vol. i. chapt. v. There is still a tribe, the Wadoe, reputed cannibal on the opposite low East African shore. These blacks would hardly be held “sons of Adam.” “Zanj” corrupted to “Zinj” (plur. Zunúj) is the Persian “Zang” or “Zangi,” a black, altered by the Arabs, who ignore the hard g; and, with the suffixion of the Persian -bár (region, as in Malabar) we have Zang-bár which the Arabs have converted to “Zanjibar,” in poetry “Mulk al Zunúj” = Land of the Zang. The term is old; it is the Zingis or Zipgisa of Ptolemy and the Zingium of Cosmas Indicopleustes; and it shows the influence of Persian navigation in pre-Islamitic ages. For further details readers will consult “The Lake Regions of Central Africa” vol. i. chapt. ii.
[233]. Arab. “Kawárib” plur. of “Kárib” prop. a dinghy, a small boat belonging to a ship. Here it refers to the canoe (a Carib word) pop. “dug-out” and classically “monoxyle,” a boat made of a single tree-trunk hollowed by fire and trimmed with axe and adze. Some of these rude craft which, when manned, remind one of saturnine Caliph Omar’s “worms floating on a log of wood,” measure 60 feet long and more.
[234]. i.e. A descendant of Mohammed in general and especially through Husayn Ali-son. Here the text notes that the chief of the bazar was of this now innumerable stock, who inherit the title through the mother as well as through the father.
[235]. Arab. “Hasab” (= quantity), the honour a man acquires for himself; opposed to “Nasab” (genealogy) honours inherited from ancestry: the Arabic well expresses my old motto (adopted by Chinese Gordon):—
Honour, not Honours.
[236]. Note the difference between “Takaddum” (= standing in presence of, also superiority in excellence) and “Takádum” (priority in time).
[237]. Lane (ii. 427) gives a pleasant Eastern illustration of this saying.
[238]. A Koranic fancy; the mountains being the pegs which keep the earth in place. “And he hath thrown before the earth mountains firmly rooted, lest it should move with you.” (Koran, chapt. xvi.) The earth when first created was smooth and thereby liable to a circular motion, like the celestial orbs; and, when the Angels asked who could stand on so tottering a frame, Allah fixed it the next morning by throwing the mountains in it and pegging them down. A fair prolepsis of the Neptunian theory.
[239]. Easy enough for an Englishman to avoid saying “by God,” but this common incident in Moslem folk-lore appeals to the peoples who are constantly using the word Allah Wallah, Billah, etc. The Koran expressly says, “Make not Allah the scope (object, lit. arrow-butt) of your oaths” (chapt. ii. 224); yet the command is broken every minute.