[FN#121] This is the popular prejudice and it has doubtless saved many a reputation. The bat is known to Moslems as the Bird of Jesus, a legend derived by the Koran from the Gospel of Infancy (1 chapt. xv. Hone's Apocryphal New Testament), in which the boy Jesus amuses herself with making birds of clay and commanding them to fly when (according to the Moslems) they became bats. These Apocryphal Gospels must be carefully read, if the student would understand a number of Moslem allusions to the Injνl which no Evangel contains.
[FN#122] Because it quibbled away out of every question, a truly diplomatic art.
[FN#123] This Caliph, the orthodox Abbaside of Egypt (A.D. 1261) must not be confounded with the Druze-god, the heretical Fatimite (A.D. 996-1021). D'Herbelot (Hakem") gives details. Mr. S.L. Poole (The Academy, April 26, '79) is very severe on the slip of Mr. Payne.
[FN#124] The beautiful name is Persian "Anϊshνn-rawαn" = Sweet of Soul; and the glorious title of this contemporary of Mohammed is "Al-Malik al-Adil" = the Just King. Kisra, the Chosroλ per excellentiam, is also applied to the godly Guebre of whom every Eastern dictionary gives details.
[FN#125] "Sultan" is here an anachronism: I have noted that the title was first assumed independently by Mohammed of Ghazni after it had been conferred by the Caliph upon his father the Amir Al- Umarα (Mayor of the Palace), Sabuktagin A.D. 974.
[FN#126] The "Sakkα" or water-carrier race is peculiar in Egypt and famed for trickery and intrigue. Opportunity here as elsewhere makes the thief.
[FN#127] A famous saying of Mohammed is recorded when an indiscretion of his young wife Ayishah was reported to him, "There be no adultress without an adulterer (of a husband)." Fatimah the Apostle's daughter is supposed to have remained a virgin after bearing many children: this coarse symbolism of purity was known to the classics (Pausanias), who made Juno recover her virginity by bathing in a certain river every year. In the last phrase, "Al-Salaf" (ancestry) refers to Mohammed and his family.
[FN#128] Khusrau Parwiz, grandson of Anushirwan, the Guebre King who tore his kingdom by tearing Mohammed's letter married the beautiful Maria or Irene (in Persian "Shνrνn = the sweet) daughter of the Greek Emperor Maurice: their loves were sung by a host of poets; and likewise the passion of the sculptor Farhαd for the same Shirin. Mr. Lyall writes "Parwκz" and holds "Parwνz" a modern form.
[FN#129] he could afford it according to historians. His throne was supported by 40,000 silver pillars; and 1,000 globes, hung in the dome, formed an orrery, showing the motion of the heavenly bodies; 30,000 pieces of embroidered tapestry overhung the walls below were vaults full of silver, gold and gems.
[FN#130] Arab. "Khunsα," meaning also a catamite as I have explained. Lane (ii. 586) has it; "This fish is of a mixed kind." (!).