[FN#429] "Ja'afar," our old Giaffar (which is painfully like "Gaffer," i.e. good father) means either a rushing river or a rivulet.
[FN#430] A regular Fellah's name also that of a village
(Pilgrimage i. 43) where a pleasant story is told about one Haykal.
[FN#431] The "Mountain" means the rocky and uncultivated ground South of Cairo, such as Jabal-al-Ahmar and the geological-sea-coast flanked by the old Cairo-Suez highway.
[FN#432] A popular phrase=our "sharp as a razor."
[FN#433] i.e. are men so few; a favourite Persian phrase.
[FN#434] She is a woman of rank who would cause him to be assassinated.
[FN#435] This is not Al-Hakimbi' Amri'llah the famous or infamous founder of the Druze ((Durъz)) faith and held by them to be, not an incarnation of the Godhead, but the Godhead itself in propriв personв, who reigned A.D. 926-1021: our Hakim is the orthodox Abbaside Caliph of Egypt who dated from two centuries after him (A.D. 1261). Had the former been meant, it would have thrown back this part of The Nights to an earlier date than is generally accepted. But in a place still to come I shall again treat of the subject.
[FN#436] For an account of a similar kind which was told to me during the last few years see "Midian Revisited," i. 15. These hiding-places are innumerable in lands of venerable antiquity like Egypt; and, if there were any contrivance for detecting hidden treasure, it would make the discoverer many times a millionaire.
[FN#437] i.e. it had been given to him or his in writing, like the book left to the old woman before quoted in "Midian," etc.
[FN#438] Arab. "Kird" (pron. in Egypt "Gird"). It is usually the hideous Abyssinian cynocephalus which is tamed by the ape-leader popularly called Kuraydati (Lane, M.E., chaps. xx.). The beast has a natural-penchant for women ; I heard of one which attempted to rape a girl in the public street and was prevented only by a sentinel's bayonet. They are powerful animals and bite like greyhounds.