[240]. Arab. “Ruh!” the most abrupt form, whose sound is coarse and offensive as the Turkish yell, “Gyel!” = come here!
[241]. Bresl. Edit. xi. 50–51.
[242]. Arab. “Ádamí” = an Adamite, one descended from the mythical and typical Adam for whom see Philo Judæus. We are told in one place a few lines further on that the merman is of humankind; and in another that he is a kind of fish (Night dccccxlv). This belief in mermen, possibly originating with the caricatures of the human face in the intelligent seal and stupid manatee, is universal. Al-Kazwini declares that a waterman with a tail was dried and exhibited, and that in Syria one of them was married to a woman and had by her a son “who understood the languages of both his parents.” The fable was refined to perfect beauty by the Greeks: the mer-folk of the Arabs, Hindus and Northerners (Scandinavians, etc.) are mere grotesques with green hair, etc. Art in its highest expression never left the shores of the Mediterranean, and there is no sign that it ever will.
[243]. Here Lane translates “Wajh” lit. “the desire of seeing the face of God,” and explains in a note that a “Muslim holds this to be the greatest happiness that can be enjoyed in Paradise.” But I have noted that the tenet of seeing the countenance of the Creator, except by the eyes of spirit, is a much disputed point amongst Moslems.
[244]. Artful enough is this contrast between the squalid condition of the starving fisherman and the gorgeous belongings of the Merman.
[245]. Lit. “Verily he laughed at me so that I set him free.” This is a fair specimen of obscure conciseness.
[246]. Arab. “Mishannah,” which Lane and Payne translate basket: I have always heard it used of an old gunny-bag or bag of plaited palm-leaves.
[247]. Arab. “Kaff Shurayk” applied to a single bun. The Shurayk is a bunn, an oblong cake about the size of a man’s hand (hence the term “Kaff” = palm) with two long cuts and sundry oblique crosscuts, made of leavened dough, glazed with egg and Samn (clarified butter) and flavoured with spices (cinnamon, curcuma, artemisia and prunes mahalab), and with aromatic seeds, (Ríhat al-’ajin) of which Lane (iii. 641) specifies aniseed, nigella, absinthium, (Artemisia arborescens) and Káfúrah (A. camphorata Monspeliensis) etc. The Shurayk is given to the poor when visiting the tombs and on certain fêtes.
[248]. “Mother of Prosperities.”
[249]. Tribes of pre-historic Arabs who were sent to Hell for bad behaviour to Prophets Sálih and Húd. See vol. iii. [294].