[197]. The coffee (see also vol. viii. [274]) like the tobacco is probably due to the scribe; but the tale appears to be comparatively modern. In The Nights men eat, drink and wash their hands but do not smoke and sip coffee like the moderns. See my Terminal Essay § 2.
[198]. Arab. “Mi’lakah” (Bresl. Edit. x, 456). The fork is modern even in the East and the Moors borrow their term for it from fourchette. But the spoon, which may have begun with a cockle-shell, dates from the remotest antiquity.
[199]. Arab. “Sufrah” properly the cloth or leather upon which food is placed. See vol. i. [178].
[200]. i.e. gaining much one day and little another.
[201]. Lit. “Rest thyself” i.e. by changing posture.
[202]. Arab. “’Unnábi” = between dark yellow and red.
[203]. Arab. “Nílah” lit. = indigo, but here applied to all the materials for dyeing. The word is the Sansk. नील growth probably came from India although during the Crusaders’ occupation of Jerusalem it was cultivated in the valley of the lower Jordan. I need hardly say that it has nothing to do with the word “Nile” whose origin is still sub judice. And yet I lately met a sciolist who pompously announced to me this philological absurdity as a discovery of his own.
[204]. Still a popular form of “bilking” in the Wakálahs or Caravanserais of Cairo: but as a rule the Bawwáb (porter or doorkeeper) keeps a sharp eye on those he suspects. The evil is increased when women are admitted into these places; so periodical orders for their exclusion are given to the police.
[205]. Natives of Egypt always hold this diaphoresis a sign that the disease has abated and they regard it rightly in the case of bilious remittents to which they are subject, especially after the hardships and sufferings of a sea-voyage with its alternations of fasting and over-eating.
[206]. Not simply, “such and such events happened to him” (Lane); but, “a curious chance befel him.”