[432]. Arab. “Kasr” here meaning an upper room.
[433]. To avoid saying, I pardon thee.
[434]. A proverbial saying which here means I could only dream of such good luck.
[435]. A good old custom amongst Moslems who have had business transactions with each other: such acquittance of all possible claims will be quoted on “Judgment-Day,” when debts will be severely enquired into.
[436]. Arab. “Kutr (tract or quarter) Misr,” vulgarly pronounced “Masr.” I may remind the reader that the Assyrians called the Nile-valley “Musur” whence probably the Heb. Misraim a dual form denoting Upper and Lower Egypt which are still distinguished by the Arabs into Sa’id and Misr. The hieroglyphic term is Ta-mera = Land of the Flood; and the Greek Aigyptos is probably derived from Kahi-Ptah (region of the great God Ptah) or Ma Ka Ptah (House of the soul of Ptah). The word “Copt” or “Kopt,” in Egyptian “Kubti” and pronounced “Gubti,” contains the same consonants.
[437]. Now an unimportant frontier fort and village dividing Syria-Palestine from Egypt and famed for the French battle with the Mamelukes (Feb. 19, 1799) and the convention for evacuating Egypt. In the old times it was an important site built upon the “River of Egypt” now a dried up Wady; and it was the chief port of the then populous Najab or South Country. According to Abulfeda it derived its name (the “boothy,” the nest) from a hut built there by the brothers of Joseph when stopped at the frontier by the guards of Pharaoh. But this is usual Jewish infection of history.
[438]. Arab. “Báb” which may also = “Chapter” or category. See vol. i., 136 and elsewhere (index). In Egypt “Báb” sometimes means a sepulchral cave hewn in a rock (plur. Bíbán) from the Coptic “Bíb.”
[439]. i.e. “The Holy,” a town some three marches (60 miles) N. East of Cairo; thus showing the honour done to our unheroic hero. There is also a Sálihiyah quarter or suburb of Damascus famous for its cemetery of holy men; but the facetious Cits change the name to Zálliniyah = causing to stray; in allusion to its Kurdish population. Baron von Hammer reads “le faubourg Adelieh” built by Al-Malik Al-Adil and founded a chronological argument on a clerical error.
[440]. Kamar al-Zaman; the normal pun on the name; a practice as popular in the East as in the West, and worthy only of a pickpocket in either place.
[441]. Arab. “Azrár” plur. of “Zirr” and lit. = “buttons,” i.e. of his robe collar from which his white neck and face appear shining as the sun.