[313]. The Persian hero of romance who converses with the Simurgh or Griffin.
[314]. The word is as much used in Egypt as wunderbar in Germany. As an exclamation it is equivalent to “mighty fine!”
[315]. In modern days used in a bad sense, as a freethinker, etc. So Dalilah the Wily is noted to be a philosopheress.
[316]. The game is much mixed up after Arab fashion. The “Tufat” is the Siyáhgosh = Black-ears, of India (Felis caracal), the Persian lynx, which gives very good sport with Dachshunds. Lynxes still abound in the thickets near Cairo.
[317]. The “Sons of Kahtán,” especially the Ya’arubah tribe, made much history in Oman. Ya’arub (the eponymus) is written Ya’arab and Ya’arib; but Ya’arub (from Ya’arubu, Aorist of ‘Aruba) is best, because according to all authorities he was the first to cultivate primitive Arabian speech and Arabic poetry. (Caussin de Perceval’s Hist. des Arabes i. 50, etc.)
[318]. He who shooteth an arrow by night. See the death of Antar shot down in the dark by the archer Jazár, son of Jábir, who had been blinded by a red-hot sabre passed before his eyes. I may note that it is a mere fiction of Al-Asma’i, as the real ‘Antar (or ‘Antarah) lived to a good old age, and probably died the “straw-death.”
[319]. See vol. ii., p. [77], for a reminiscence of masterful King Kulayb and his Himà or domain. Here the phrase would mean, “None could approach them when they were wroth; none were safe from their rage.”
[320]. The sons of Nabhán (whom Mr. Badger calls Nebhán) supplied the old Maliks or Kings of Oman (History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman, etc., London, Hakluyt Soc. 1871).
[321]. This is a sore insult in Arabia, where they have not dreamt of a “Jawáb-club,” like that of Calcutta in the old days, to which only men who had been half a dozen times “jawab’d” (= refused in Anglo-Indian jargon) could belong. “I am not a stallion to be struck on the nose,” say the Arabs.
[322]. Again “inverted speech”: it is as if we said, “Now, you’re a damned fine fellow, so,” etc. “Allah curse thee! Thou hast guarded thy women alive and dead;” said the man of Sulaym in admiration after thrusting his spear into the eye of dead Rabí’ah.