[11]. i.e. Head of Killaut which makes, from the Muhít, “the name of a son of the sons of the Jinn and the Satans.”
[12]. i.e. attacked her after a new fashion: see vol. i. [136].
[13]. i.e. Weevil’s dung; hence Suez = Suways the little weevil, or “little Sus” from the Maroccan town: see The Mines of Midian p. 74 for a note on the name. Near Gibraltar is a fiumara called Guadalajara i.e. Wady al-Khara, of dung. “Bartús” is evidently formed “on the weight” of “Bartút;” and his metonym is a caricature, a chaff fit for Fellahs.
[14]. Arab. “Al-Din al-a’raj,” the perverted or falsified Faith, Christianity having been made obsolete and abolished by the Mission of Mohammed, even as Christianity claims to have superseded the Mosaic and Noachian dispensations. Moslems are perfectly logical in their deductions, but logic and truth do not always go together.
[15]. The “Breaker of Wind” (faswah = a fizzle, a silent crepitus) “son of Children’s dung.”
[16]. Arab. “Ammá laka au ’alayk” lit. = either to thee (be the gain) or upon thee (be the loss). This truly Arabic idiom is varied in many ways.
[17]. In addition to what was noted in vol. iii. [100] and viii. 51, I may observe that in the “Masnavi” the “Baghdad of Nulliquity” is opposed to the Ubiquity of the World. The popular derivation is Bagh (the idol-god, the slav “Bog”) and dád a gift, he gave (Persian). It is also called Al-Zaurá = a bow, from the bend of the Tigris where it was built.
[18]. Arab. “Jawásís” plur. of Jásús lit. the spies.
[19]. The Caliph could not “see” her “sweetness of speech”; so we must understand that he addressed her and found out that she was fluent of tongue. But this idiomatic use of the word “see” is also found in the languages of Southern Europe: so Camoens (Lus. i. ii.), “Ouvi * * * vereis” lit. = “hark, you shall see” which sounds Hibernian.
[20]. Here “Farz” (Koranic obligation which it is mortal sin to gainsay) follows whereas it should precede “Sunnat” (sayings and doings of the Apostle) simply because “Farz” jingles with “Arz” (earth.)