[175]. For the “Dawát” or wooden inkcase containing reeds see vol. v. [239] and viii. 178. I may remark that its origin is the Egyptian “Pes,” of which there is a specimen in the British Museum inscribed, “Amásis the good god and Lord of the two Lands.”
[176]. i.e. I am governed by the fear of Allah in my dealings to thee and thy subjects.
[177]. Arabic has no single word for million although the Moroccans have adopted “Milyún” from the Spaniards (see p. 100 of the Rudimentos del Árabe vulgar que se habla en el imperio de Marruccos por El P. Fr. Josè de Lerchundi, Madrid 1872). This lack of the higher numerals, the reverse of the Hindu languages, makes Arabic “arithmology” very primitive and almost as cumbrous as the Chinese.
[178]. i.e. I am thy slave to slay or to pardon.
[179]. Arab. “Matta’aka ’llah” = Allah permit thee to enjoy, from the root mata’, whence cometh the Maroccan Matá’i = my, mine, which answers to Bitá’i in Egypt.
[180]. Arab. “Khitáb” = the exordium of a letter preceding its business-matter and in which the writer displays all his art. It ends with “Ammá ba’d,” lit. = but after, equivalent to our “To proceed.” This “Khitáb” is mostly skipped over by modern statesmen who will say, “Now after the nonsense let us come to the sense”; but their secretaries carefully weigh every word of it, and strongly resent all shortcomings.
[181]. Strongly suggesting that the King had forgotten how to read and write. So not a few of the Amírs of Sind were analphabetic and seemed rather proud of it: “a Baloch cannot write, but he always carries a signet-ring.” I heard of an old English lady of the past generation in Northern Africa who openly declared “A Warrington shall never learn to read or write.”
[182]. Arab. “Ámin,” of which the Heb. form is Amen from the root Amn = stability, constancy. In both tongues it is a particle of affirmation or consent = it is true! So be it! The Hebrew has also “Amanah” = verily, truly.
[183]. To us this seems a case of “hard lines” for the unhappy women; but Easterns then believed and still believe in the divinity which doth hedge in a King, in his reigning by the “grace of God,” and in his being the Viceregent of Allah upon earth; briefly in the old faith of loyalty which great and successful republics are fast making obsolete in the West and nowhere faster than in England.