[FN#180] Coptic convents in Egypt still affect these drawbridges over the keep-moat.
[FN#181] Koran iv., xxii. etc., meaning it is lawful to marry women taken in war after the necessary purification although their husbands be still living. This is not permitted with a free woman who is a True Believer. I have noted that the only concubine slave-girl mentioned in the Koran are these "captives possessed by the right hand."
[FN#182] The Amazonian dame is a favourite in folk-lore and is an ornament to poetry from the Iliad to our modern day. Such heroines, apparently unknown to the Pagan Arabs, were common in the early ages of Al-Islam as Ockley and Gibbon prove, and that the race is not extinct may be seen in my Pilgrimage (iii. 55) where the sister of Ibn Rumi resolved to take blood-revenge for her brother.
[FN#183] And Solomon said, "O nobles, which of you will bring me her throne ?" A terrible genius (i.e. an If rit of the Jinn named Dhakwan or the notorious Sakhr) said, " I will bring it unto thee before thou arise from thy seat (of justice); for I am able to perform it, and may be trusted" (Koran, xxvii. 38-39). Balkís or Bilkís (says the Durrat al-Ghawwás) daughter of Hozád bin Sharhabíl, twenty-second in the list of the rulers of Al- Yaman, according to some murdered her husband, and became, by Moslem ignorance, the Biblical " Queen of Sheba." The Abyssinians transfer her from Arabian Saba to Ethiopia and make her the mother by Solomon of Menelek, their proto-monarch; thus claiming for their royalties an antiquity compared with which all reigning houses in the world are of yesterday. The dates of the Tabábi'ah or Tobbas prove that the Bilkis of history ruled Al-Yaman in the early Christian era.
[FN#184] Arab. "Fass," fiss or fuss; the gem set in a ring; also applied to a hillock rounded en cabochon. In The Nights it is used to signify "a fine gem."
[FN#185] This prominence of the glutæi muscles is always insisted upon, because it is supposed to promise well in a bed-fellow. In Somali-land, where the people are sub- steatopygous, a rich young man, who can afford such luxury, will have the girls drawn up in line and choose her to wife who projects furthest behind
[FN#186] The "bull" is only half mine.
[FN#187] A favourite Arab phrase, the "hot eye" is one full of tears.
[FN#188] i.e., "Coral," coral branch, a favourite name for a slave-girl, especially a negress. It is the older "Morgiana." I do not see why Preston in Al-Haríni's "Makamah (Séance) of Singar" renders it pearls, because Golius gives "small pearls," when it is evidently "coral." Richardson (Dissert. xlviii.) seems to me justified in finding the Pari (fairy) Marjan of heroic Persian history reflected in the Fairy Morgain who earned off King Arthur after the battle of Camelon.
[FN#189] Arab. "'Ud Jalaki"=Jalak or Jalik being a poetical and almost obsolete name of Damascus.