[141]. Arab. “Khwárazm,” the land of the Chorasmioi, who are mentioned by Herodotus (iii. 93) and a host of classical geographers. They place it in Sogdiana (hod. Sughd) and it corresponds with the Khiva country.
[142]. Arab. “Burka’,” usually applied to a woman’s face-veil and hence to the covering of the Ka’abah, which is the “Bride of Meccah.”
[143]. Alluding to the trick played upon Bilkís by Solomon who had heard that her legs were hairy like those of an ass: he laid down a pavement of glass over flowing water in which fish were swimming and thus she raised her skirts as she approached him and he saw that the report was true. Hence, as I have said, the depilatory (Koran xxvii.).
[144]. I understand the curiously carved windows cut in arabesque-work of marble (India) or basalt (the Haurán) and provided with small panes of glass set in emeralds where tinfoil would be used by the vulgar.
[145]. Arab. “Bulád” from the Pers. “Pulád.” Hence the name of the famous Druze family “Jumblat,” a corruption of “Ján-pulád” = Life o’ Steel.
[146]. Pharaoh, so called in Koran (xxxviii. 11) because he tortured men by fastening them to four stakes driven into the ground. Sale translates “the contriver of the stakes” and adds, “Some understand the word figuratively, of the firm establishment of Pharaoh’s kingdom, because the Arabs fix their tents with stakes; but they may possibly intend that prince’s obstinacy and hardness of heart.” I may note that in “Tasawwuf,” or Moslem Gnosticism, Pharaoh represents, like Prometheus and Job, the typical creature who upholds his own dignity and rights in presence and despight of the Creator. Sáhib the Súfí declares that the secret of man’s soul (i.e. its emanation) was first revealed when Pharaoh declared himself god; and Al-Ghazálí sees in his claim the most noble aspiration to the divine, innate in the human spirit (Dabistan, vol. iii.).
[147]. In the Calc. Edit. “Tarmuz, son of the daughter,” etc. According to the Arabs, Tadmur (Palmyra) was built by Queen Tadmurah, daughter of Hassán bin Uzaynah.
[148]. It is only by some such drought that I can account for the survival of those marvellous Haurani cities in the great valley S. E. of Damascus.
[149]. So Moses described his own death and burial.
[150]. A man’s “aurat” (shame) extends from the navel (included) to his knees; a woman’s from the top of the head to the tips of her toes. I have before noticed the Hindostaní application of the word.