[FN#304] "Kaylúlah" is the "forty-winks" about noon: it is a Sunnat or Practice of the Prophet who said, "Make the mid-day siesta, for verily at this hour the devils sleep not." "Aylúlain" is slumbering after morning prayers (our "beauty-sleep"), causing heaviness andid leness: "Ghaylúlah" is dozing about 9 a.m. engendering poverty and wretchedness: "Kaylúlah" (with the guttural Kaf) is sleeping before evening prayers and "Faylúlah" is slumbering after sunset—both held to be highly detrimental. (Pilgrimage ii 49.)
[FN#305] The Biblical "Hamath" (Hightown) too well known to require description. It is still famous for the water-wheels mentioned by al-Hariri (assembly of the Banu Harám).
[FN#306] When they say, "The leven flashes bright on the hills of
Al-Yaman," the allusion is to the south quarter, where
summer-lightning is seen. Al-Yaman (always with the article) means,
I have said, the right-hand region to one facing the rising sun and
Al-Sham (Syria) the left-hand region.
[FN#307] Again "he" for "she," in delicacy and jealousy of making public the beauty or conditions of the "veiled sex." Even public singers would hesitate to use a feminine pronoun. As will be seen however, the rule is not invariably kept and hardly ever in Badawi poetry.
[FN#308] The normal pun on "Nuzhat al-Zaman" = Delight of the Age or Time.
[FN#309] The reader will find in my Pilgrimage (i. 305) a sketch of the Takht-rawan or travelling-litter, in which pilgrimesses are wont to sleep.
[FN#310] In poetry it holds the place of our Zephyr; end the "Bád- i-Sabá"=Breeze o' the morn, Is much addressed by Persian poets.
[FN#311] Here appears the nervous, excitable, hysterical Arab temperament which is almost phrensied by the neighbourhood of a home from which he had run away.
[FN#312] Zau al-Makan and Nuzhat al-Zaman.
[FN#313] The idea is essentially Eastern, "A lion at home and a lamb abroad" is the popular saying.