And after swiving stale, though but two drops thou drain.
[404]. Arab. Sarídah (Tharídah), also called “ghaut” = crumbled bread and hashed meat in broth; or bread, milk and meat. The Sarídah of Ghassán, cooked with eggs and marrow, was held a dainty dish: hence the Prophet’s dictum.
[405]. Koran v. 92. “Lots” = games of chance and “images” = statues.
[406]. Koran ii. 216. The word “Maysar” which I have rendered “gambling” or “gaming” (for such is the modern application of the word), originally meant what St. Jerome calls Βελομαντία and explains thereby the verse (Ezek. xxi. 22), “The King held in his hand the lot of Jerusalem” i.e. the arrow whereon the city-name was written. The Arabs use it for casting lots with ten azlam or headless arrows (for dice) three being blanks and the rest notched from one to seven. They were thrown by a “Zárib” or punter and the stake was generally a camel. Amongst so excitable a people as the Arabs, this game caused quarrels and bloodshed, hence its prohibition: and the theologians, who everywhere and at all times delight in burdening human nature, have extended the command, which is rather admonitory than prohibitive, to all games of chance. Tarafah is supposed to allude to this practice in his Mu’allakah.
[407]. Liberal Moslems observe that the Koranic prohibition is not absolute, with threat of Hell for infraction. Yet Mohammed doubtless forbade all inebriatives and the occasion of his so doing is well known (Pilgrimage ii. 322).
[408]. I have noticed this soured milk in Pilgrimage i. 362.
[409]. He does not say the “Caliph” or successor of his uncle Mohammed.
[410]. The Jewish Korah (Numbers xvi.) fabled by the Koran (xxviii. 76), following a Talmudic tradition, to have been a man of immense wealth. The notion that lying with an old woman, after the menses have ceased, is unwholesome, dates from great antiquity; and the benefits of the reverse process were well known to good King David. The faces of children who sleep with their grandparents (a bad practice now waxing obsolete in England), of a young wife married to an old man and of a young man married to an old woman, show a peculiar wizened appearance, a look of age overlaying youth which cannot be mistaken.
[411]. Arab. “Hindibá” (= endubium): the modern term is Shakuríyah = chicorée. I believe it to be very hurtful to the eyes.
[412]. Arab. “Khuffásh” and “Watwát”: in Egypt a woman is called “Watwátíyah” when the hair of her privities has been removed by applying bats’ blood. I have often heard of this; but cannot understand how such an application can act depilatory.