[FN#293] This symbolic action is repeatedly mentioned in The
Nights.
[FN#294] Arab. "Shakhs"=a person, primarily a dark spot. So "Sawád"=blackness, in Al-Hariri means a group of people who darken the ground by their shade.
[FN#295] The first bath after sickness, I have said, is called
"Ghusl al-Sihhah,"—the Washing of Health.
[FN#296] The words "malady" and "disease" are mostly avoided during these dialogues as ill-omened words which may bring on a relapse.
[FN#297] Solomon's carpet of green silk which carried him and all his host through the air is a Talmudic legend generally accepted in Al-Islam though not countenanced by the Koran. chaps xxvii. When the "gnat's wing" is mentioned, the reference is to Nimrod who, for boasting that he was lord of all, was tortured during four hundred years by a gnat sent by Allah up his ear or nostril.
[FN#298] The absolute want of morality and filial affection in the chaste young man is supposed to be caused by the violence of his passion, and he would be pardoned because he "loved much."
[FN#299] I have noticed the geomantic process in my "History of Sindh" (chaps. vii.). It is called "Zarb al-Ram!" (strike the sand, the French say "frapper le sable") because the rudest form is to make on the ground dots at haphazard, usually in four lines one above the other: these are counted and, if even-numbered, two are taken ( ** ); if odd one ( * ); and thus the four lines will form a scheme say * * * * * * This is repeated three times, producing the same number of figures; and then the combination is sought in an explanatory table or, if the practitioner be expert, he pronounces off-hand. The Nights speak of a "Takht Raml" or a board, like a schoolboy's slate, upon which the dots are inked instead of points in sand. The moderns use a "Kura'h," or oblong die, upon whose sides the dots, odd and even, are marked; and these dice are hand-thrown to form the e figure. By way of complication Geomancy is mixed up with astrology and then it becomes a most complicated kind of ariolation and an endless study. "Napoleon's Book of Fate," a chap-book which appeared some years ago, was Geomancy in its simplest and most ignorant shape. For the rude African form see my Mission to Dahome, i. 332, and for that of Darfour, pp. 360-69 of Shaykh Mohammed's Voyage before quoted.
[FN#300] Translators understand this of writing marriage contracts; I take it in a more general sense.
[FN#301] These lines are repeated from Night Ixxv.: with Mr. Payne's permission I give his rendering (iii. 153) by way of variety.
[FN#302] The comparison is characteristically Arab.