[356]. Arab. “’Abír,” a fragrant powder sprinkled on face, body and clothes. In India it is composed of rice flower or powdered bark of the mango, Deodar (uvaria longifolia), Sandal-wood, lign-aloes or curcuma (zerumbat or zedoaria) with rose-flowers, camphor, civet and anise-seed. There are many of these powders: see in Herklots Chiksá, Phul, Ood, Sundul, Uggur, and Urgujja.
[357]. i.e. fair faced boys and women. These lines are from the Bresl. Edit. x. 160.
[358]. i.e. the Chief Kazi. For the origin of the Office and title see vol. ii. [90], and for the Kazi al-Arab who administers justice among the Badawin see Pilgrimage iii. 45.
[359]. Arab. “Raas al-Mál” = capital, as opposed to Ribá or Ribh = interest. This legal expression has been adopted by all Moslem races.
[360]. Our Aden which is thus noticed by Abulfeda (A.D. 1331): “Aden in the lowlands of Tehámah * * * also called Abyana from a man (who found it?), built upon the sea-shore, a station (for land travellers) and a sailing-place for merchant ships India-bound, is dry and sunparcht (Kashifah, squalid, scorbutic) and sweet water must be imported. * * * It lies 86 parasangs from San’á but Ibn Haukal following the travellers makes it three stages. The city, built on the skirt of a wall-like mountain, has a water-gate and a land-gate known as Bab al-Sákayn. But ’Adan Lá’ah (the modest, the timid, the less known as opposed to Abyan, the better known?) is a city in the mountains of Sabir, Al-Yaman, whence issued the supporters of the Fatimite Caliphs of Egypt.” ’Adan etymologically means in Arab. and Heb. pleasure (ἥδονη), Eden (the garden), the Heaven in which spirits will see Allah and our “Coal-hole of the East,” which we can hardly believe ever to have been an Eden. Mr. Badger who supplied me with this note described the two Adens in a paper in Ocean Highways, which he cannot now find. In the ’Ajáib al-Makhlúkát, Al-Kazwíni (ob. A.D. 1275) derives the name from Ibn Sinán bin Ibrahím; and is inclined there to place the Bír al-Mu’attal (abandoned well) and the Kasr al-Mashíd (lofty palace) of Koran xxii. 44; and he adds “Kasr al-Misyad” to those mentioned in the tale of Sayf al-Mulúk and Badí’a al-Jamál.
[361]. Meaning that she had been carried to the Westward of Meccah.
[362]. Arab. “Zahrawíyah” which contains a kind of double entendre. Fátimah the Prophet’s only daughter is titled Al-Zahrá the “bright-blooming”; and this is also an epithet of Zohrah the planet Venus. For Fatimah see vol. vi. [145]. Of her Mohammed said, “Love your daughters, for I too am a father of daughters” and, “Love them, they are the comforters, the dearlings.” The Lady appears in Moslem history a dreary young woman (died æt. 28) who made this world, like Honorius, a hell in order to win a next-world heaven. Her titles are Zahrá and Batúl (Pilgrimage ii. 90) both signifying virgin. Burckhardt translates Zahrá by “bright blooming” (the etymological sense); it denotes literally a girl who has not menstruated, in which state of purity the Prophet’s daughter is said to have lived and died. “Batúl” has the sense of a “clean maid” and is the title given by Eastern Christians to the Virgin Mary. The perpetual virginity of Fatimah even after motherhood (Hasan and Husayn) is a point of orthodoxy in Al-Islam as Juno’s with the Romans and Umá’s with the Hindu worshippers of Shiva. During her life Mohammed would not allow Ali a second wife, and he held her one of the four perfects, the other three being Asia wife of “Pharaoh,” the Virgin Mary and Khadíjah his own wife. She caused much scandal after his death by declaring that he had left her the Fadak estate (Abulfeda I, 133, 273) a castle with a fine palm-orchard near Khaybar. Abu Bakr dismissed the claim quoting the Apostle’s Hadis. “We prophets are folk who will away nothing: what we leave is alms gift to the poor,” and Shi’ahs greatly resent his decision. (See Dabistan iii. 51–52 for a different rendering of the words). I have given the popular version of the Lady Fatimah’s death and burial (Pilgrimage ii. 315) and have remarked that Moslem historians delight in the obscurity which hangs over her last resting-place, as if it were an honour even for the receptacle of her ashes to be concealed from the eyes of men. Her repute is a curious comment on Tom Hood’s
“Where woman has never a soul to save.”
[363]. For Sharif and Sayyid, descendants of Mohammed, see vol. iv. [170].
[364]. These lines have occurred with variants in vol. iii. [257], and iv. 50.