[FN#481] Arab. "Al-bayt" = the house. The Arabs had probably learned this pleasant mode of confinement from the Chinese whose Kea or Cangue is well known. The Arabian form of it is "Ghull," or portable pillory, which reprobates will wear on Judgment Day.
[FN#482] This commonest conjuring trick in the West becomes a miracle in the credulous East.
[FN#483] Arab. "Kαnϊn"; the usual term is Mankal (pron. Mangal) a pan of copper or brass. Some of these "chafing-dishes" stand four feet high and are works of art. Lane (M.E. chapt. iv) gives an illustration of the simpler kind, together with the "Azikν," a smaller pan for heating coffee. See Night dxxxviii.
[FN#484] See vol. iii., p.239. The system is that of the Roman As and Unciae. Here it would be the twenty-fourth part of a dinar or miskal; something under 5d. I have already noted that all Moslem rulers are religiously bound to some handicraft, if it be only making toothpicks. Mohammed abolished kingship proper as well as priestcraft.
[FN#485] Al-Islam, where salvation is found under the shade of the swords.
[FN#486] Moslems like the Classics (Aristotle and others) hold the clitoris (Zambϊr) to be the sedes et scaturigo veneris which, says Sonnini, is mere profanity. In the babe it protrudes beyond the labiζ and snipping off the head forms female circumcision. This rite is supposed by Moslems to have been invented by Sarah who so mutilated Hagar for jealousy and was afterwards ordered by Allah to have herself circumcised at the same time as Abraham. It is now (or should be) universal in Al-Islam and no Arab would marry a girl "unpurified" by it. Son of an "uncircumcised" mother (Ibn al-bazrα) is a sore insult. As regards the popular idea that Jewish women were circumcised till the days of Rabbi Gershom (A.D.1000) who denounced it as a scandal to the Gentiles, the learned Prof. H. Graetz informs me, with some indignation, that the rite was never practised and that the great Rabbi contended only against polygamy. Female circumcision, however, is I believe the rule amongst some outlying tribes of Jews. The rite is the proper complement of male circumcision, evening the sensitiveness of the genitories by reducing it equally in both sexes: an uncircumcised woman has the venereal orgasm much sooner and oftener than a circumcised man, and frequent coitus would injure her health; hence I believe, despite the learned historian, that it is practised by some Eastern Jews. "Excision" is universal amongst the negroids of the Upper Nile (Werne), the Somαl and other adjacent tribes. The operator, an old woman, takes up the instrument, a knife or razor-blade fixed into a wooden handle, and with three sweeps cuts off the labia and the head of the clitoris. The parts are then sewn up with a packneedle and a thread of sheepskin; and in Dar-For a tin tube is inserted for the passage of urine. Before marriage the bridegroom trains himself for a month on beef, honey and milk; and, if he can open his bride with the natural weapon, he is a sworder to whom no woman in the tribe can deny herself. If he fails, he tries penetration with his fingers and by way of last resort whips out his whittle and cuts the parts open. The sufferings of the first few nights must be severe. The few Somαli prostitutes who practised at Aden always had the labiζ and clitoris excised and the skin showing the scars of coarse sewing. The moral effect of female circumcision is peculiar. While it diminishes the heat of passion it increases licentiousness, and breeds a debauchery of mind far worse than bodily unchastity, because accompanied by a peculiar cold cruelty and a taste for artificial stimulants to "luxury." It is the sexlessness of a spayed canine imitated by the suggestive brain of humanity.
[FN#487] Koran vi. So called because certain superstitions about
Cattle are therein mentioned.
[FN#488] Koran iv. So called because it treats of marriages, divorces, etc.
[FN#489] Sνdi (contracted from Sayyidν = my lord) is a title still applied to holy men in Marocco and the Maghrib; on the East African coast it is assumed by negro and negroid Moslems, e.g. Sidi Mubαrak Bombay; and "Seedy boy" is the Anglo-Indian term for a Zanzibar-man. "Khawwαs" is one who weaves palm-leaves (Khos) into baskets, mats, etc.: here, however, it may be an inherited name.
[FN#490] i.e. in spirit; the "strangers yet" of poor dear Richard
Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton.