[FN#409] i.e. "the father of a certain person"; here the merchant whose name may have been Abu'l Hasan, etc. The useful word (thingumbob, what d'ye call him, donchah, etc.) has been bodily transferred into Spanish and Portuguese Fulano. It is of old genealogy, found in the Heb. Fulunн which applies to a person only in Ruth iv. I, but is constantly so employed by Rabbinic writers. The Greek use {Greek letters}.
[FN#410] Lit. "by his (i.e. her) hand," etc. Hence Lane (ii. 507) makes nonsense of the line.
[FN#411] Arab. "Badrah," as has been said, is properly a weight of 10,000 dirhams or drachmas; but popularly used for largesse thrown to the people at festivals.
[FN#412] Arab. "Allaho A'alam"; (God knows!) here the popular phrase for our, "I know not;" when it would be rude to say bluntly "M'adri"= "don't know."
[FN#413] There is a picturesque Moslem idea that good deeds become incarnate and assume human shapes to cheer the doer in his grave, to greet him when he enters Paradise and so forth. It was borrowed from the highly imaginative faith of the Guebre, the Zoroastrian. On Chinavad or Chanyud-pul (Sirбt), the Judgement bridge, 37 rods (rasan) long, straight and 37 fathoms broad for the good, and crooked and narrow as sword-edge for the bad, a nymph-like form will appear to the virtuous and say, "I am the personification of thy good deeds!" In Hell there will issue from a fetid gale a gloomy figure with head like a minaret, red eyeballs, hooked nose, teeth like pillars, spear-like fangs, snaky locks etc. and when asked who he is he will reply, "I am the personification of thine evil acts!" (Dabistan i. 285.) The Hindus also personify everything.
[FN#414] Arab. "Banъ Israнl;" applied to the Jews when theirs was the True Faith i.e. before the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, whose mission completed that of Moses and made it obsolete (Matrъk) even as the mission of Jesus was completed and abrogated by that of Mohammed. The term "Yahъd"=Jew is applied scornfully to the Chosen People after they rejected the Messiah, but as I have said "Israelite" is used on certain occasions, Jew on others.
[FN#415] Arab. "Kasa'ah," a wooden bowl, a porringer; also applied to a saucer.
[FN#416] Arab. "Rasъl"=one sent, an angel, an "apostle;" not to be translated, as by the vulgar, "prophet." Moreover Rasul is higher than Nabн (prophet), such as Abraham, Isaac, etc., depositaries of Al-Islam, but with a succession restricted to their own families. Nabi-mursil (Prophet-apostle) is the highest of all, one sent with a book: of these are now only four, Moses, David, Jesus and Mohammed, the writings of the rest having perished. In Al-Islam also angels rank below men, being only intermediaries (= , nuncii, messengers) between the Creator and the Created. This knowledge once did me a good turn at Harar, not a safe place in those days. (First Footsteps in East Africa, p. 349.)
[FN#417] A doctor of law in the reign of Al-Maamun.
[FN#418] Here the exclamation is= D.V.; and it may be assumed generally to have that sense.