[544]. For the martyrdom of the drowned see vol. i, 171, to quote no other places.
[545]. i.e. if he have the power to revenge himself. The sentiment is Christian rather than Moslem.
[546]. i.e. the power acquired (as we afterwards learn) by the regular praying of the dawn-prayer. It is not often that The Nights condescend to point a moral or inculcate a lesson as here; and we are truly thankful for the immunity.
[547]. Arab. “Musáfahah” which, I have said, serves for our shaking hands: and extends over wide regions. They apply the palms of the right hands flat to each other without squeezing the fingers and then raise the latter to the forehead. Pilgrimage ii. 332, has also been quoted.
[548]. Equivalent to our saying about an ill wind, etc.
[549]. A proof of his extreme simplicity and bonhomie.
[550]. Arab. “Dárfíl” = the Gr. δελφίς later δελφίν suggesting that the writer had read of Arion in Herodotus i. 23.
[551]. ’Aúj; I can only suggest, with due diffidence, that this is intended for Kúch the well-known Baloch city in Persian Carmania (Kirmán) and meant by Richardson’s “Koch u buloch.” But as the writer borrows so much from Al-Mas’udi it may possibly be Aúk in Sístán where stood the heretical city “Shádrak,” chapt. cxxii.
[552]. i.e. The excellent (or surpassing) Religious. Shaykhah, the fem. of Shaykh, is a she-chief, even the head of the dancing-girls will be entitled “Shaykhah.”
[553]. The curtain would screen her from the sight of men-invalids and probably hung across the single room of the “Záwiyah” or hermit’s cell. The curtain is noticed in the tales of two other reverend women; vols. iv. 155 and v. 257.