[34]. Arab. “Jadíd,” see vol. viii. [121].
[35]. Both the texts read thus, but the reading has little sense. Ma’aruf probably would say, “I fear that my loads will be long coming.”
[36]. One of the many formulas of polite refusal.
[37]. Each bazar, in a large city like Damascus, has its tall and heavy wooden doors which are locked every evening and opened in the morning by the Ghafir or guard. The “silver key,” however, always lets one in.
[38]. Arab. “Wa lá Kabbata hámiyah,” a Cairene vulgarism meaning, “There came nothing to profit him nor to rid the people of him.”
[39]. Arab. “Kammir,” i.e. brown it before the fire, toast it.
[40]. It is insinuated that he had lied till he himself believed the lie to be truth—not an uncommon process, I may remark.
[41]. Arab. “Rijál” = the Men, equivalent to the Walis, Saints or Santons; with perhaps an allusion to the Rijál al-Ghayb, the Invisible Controls concerning whom I have quoted Herklots in vol. ii. [211].
[42]. A saying attributed to Al-Hariri (Lane). It is good enough to be his: the Persians say, “Cut not down the tree thou plantedst,” and the idea is universal throughout the East.
[43]. A quotation from Al-Hariri (Ass. of the Badawin). Ash’ab (ob. A.H. 54), a Medinite servant of Caliph Osman, was proverbial for greed and sanguine, Micawber-like expectation of “windfalls.” The Scholiast Al-Sharíshi (of Xeres) describes him in Theophrastic style. He never saw a man put hand to pocket without expecting a present, or a funeral go by without hoping for a legacy, or a bridal procession without preparing his own house, hoping they might bring the bride to him by mistake. * * * When asked if he knew aught greedier than himself he said “Yes; a sheep I once kept upon my terrace-roof seeing a rainbow mistook it for a rope of hay and jumping to seize it broke its neck!” Hence “Ash’ab’s sheep” became a by-word (Preston tells the tale in full, p. 288).