[377]. The Malocchio or gettatura, so often noticed.
[378]. The crescent of the month Zu ’l-Ka’dah when the Ramazan-fast is broken. This allusion is common. Comp. vol. i. [84].
[379]. This line contains one of the Yes, Yes and No, No trifles alluded to in vol. ii. [60]. Captain Lockett (M. A. 103) renders it “I saw a fawn upon a hillock whose beauty eclipsed the full moon. I said, What is thy name? she answered Deer. What my Dear said I, but she replied, no, no!” To preserve the sound I have sacrificed sense: Lúlú is a pearl Lí? lí? (= for me, for me?) and Lá! Lá! = no! no! See vol. i. [217]. I should have explained a line which has puzzled some readers,
“A sun (face) on wand (neck) in knoll of sand (hips) she showed” etc.
[380]. Arab. “Al-huwayná,” a rare term.
[381]. Bright in the eyes of the famishing who is allowed to break his fast.
[382]. Mr. Payne reads “Maghrabi” = a Mauritanian, Marocean, the Moors (not the Moorish Jews or Arabs) being a race of Sodomites from highest to lowest. But the Mac. and Bul. Edit. have “Ajami.”
[383]. For “Ishk uzri” = platonic love see vol. i. [232]; ii. 104.
[384]. Zaynab (Zenobia) and Zayd are generic names for women and men.
[385]. i.e. He wrote “Kasídahs (= odes, elegies) after the fashion of the “Suspended Poems” which mostly open with the lover gazing upon the traces of the camp where his beloved had dwelt. The exaggerated conventionalism of such exordium shows that these early poems had been preceded by a host of earlier pieces which had been adopted as canons of poetry.