[72]. i.e. cutting the animals’ throats after Moslem law.
[73]. In Night dcclxxviii. supra p. [5], we find the orthodox Moslem doctrine that “a single mortal is better in Allah’s sight than a thousand Jinns.” For, I repeat, Al-Islam systematically exalts human nature which Christianity takes infinite trouble to degrade and debase. The results of its ignoble teaching are only too evident in the East: the Christians of the so-called (and miscalled) “Holy Land” are a disgrace to the faith and the idiomatic Persian term for a Nazarene is “Tarsá” = funker, coward.
[74]. Arab. “Sakaba Kúrahá;” the forge in which children are hammered out?
[75]. Arab. “Má al-Maláhat” = water (brilliancy) of beauty.
[76]. The fourth of the Seven Heavens, the “Garden of Eternity,” made of yellow coral.
[77]. How strange this must sound to the Young Woman of London in the nineteenth century.
[78]. “Forty days” is a quasi-religious period amongst Moslem for praying, fasting and religious exercises: here it represents our “honey-moon.” See vol. v. p. [62].
[79]. Yá layta, still popular. Herr Carlo Landberg (Proverbes et Dietons du Peuple Arabe, vol. i. of Syria, Leyden, E. J. Brill, 1883) explains layta for rayta (= raayta) by permutation of liquids and argues that the contraction is ancient (p. 42). But the Herr is no Arabist: “Layta” means “would to Heaven,” or, simply “I wish,” “I pray” (for something possible or impossible); whilst “La’alla” (perhaps, it may be) prays only for the possible; and both are simply particles governing the noun in the oblique, or accusative case.
[80]. “His” for “her,” i.e. herself, making somewhat of confusion between her state and that of her son.
[81]. i.e. his mother; the words are not in the Mac. Edit.