[1]. Arab. “Wa lá rajma ghaybin:” lit. = without stone-throwing (conjecture) of one latent.
[2]. i.e. saying Bismillah, etc. See vol. v. [206].
[3]. Where he was to await her.
[4]. As a rule, amongst Moslems the rider salutes the man on foot and the latter those who sit. The saying in the text suggests the Christian byword anent Mohammed and the Mountain, which is, I need hardly say, utterly unknown to Mahommedans.
[5]. The story-teller does not remember that “the city-folk trust to the locking of the gates” (dccclxxxix.); and forgets to tell us that the Princess took the keys from the Wazir whom she had hocussed. In a carefully corrected Arabic Edition of The Nights, a book much wanted, the texts which are now in a mutilated state would be supplied with these details.
[6]. Which probably would not be the last administered to him by the Amazonian young person, who after her mate feared to approach the dead blackamoor must have known him to be cowardly as Cairenes generally are. Moreover, he had no shame in his poltroonery like the recreant Fellah-soldiers, in the wretched Sawákin campaign against the noble Súdáni negroids, who excused their running away by saying, “We are Egyptians” i.e. too good men and Moslems to lose our lives as becomes you Franks and dog-Christians. Yet under Mohammed Ali the Great, Fellah-soldiers conquered the “colligated” Arabs (Pilgrimage iii. 48) of Al-Asír (Ophir) at Bissel and in Wahhabi-land and put the Turks to flight at the battle of Nazíb, and the late General Jochmus assured me that he saved his command, the Ottoman cavalry in Syria, by always manœuvring to refuse a pitched battle. But Mohammed Ali knew his men. He never failed to shoot a runaway, and all his officers, even the lieutenants, were Turks or Albanians. Sa’id Pasha was the first to appoint Fellah-officers and under their command the Egyptian soldier, one of the best in the East, at once became the worst. We have at last found the right way to make them fight, by officering them with Englishmen, but we must not neglect the shooting process whenever they dare to turn tail.
[7]. “Al-walhán” (as it should be printed in previous places, instead of Al-walahán) is certainly not a P.N. in this place.
[8]. Arab. “Kundur,” Pers. and Arab. manna, mastich, frankincense, the latter being here meant.
[9]. So Emma takes the lead and hides her lover under her cloak during their flight to the place where they intended to lie concealed. In both cases the women are the men.
[10]. Or “Bartút,” in which we recognise the German Berthold.