[FN#539] The Arabs call "Shikk" (split man) and the Persians "Nνmchahrah" (half-face) a kind of demon like a man divided longitudinally: this gruesome creature runs with amazing speed and is very cruel and dangerous. For the celebrated soothsayers "Shikk" and "Sαtih" see Chenery's Al-Hariri, p. 371.
[FN#540] Arab. "Takht" (Persian) = a throne or a capital.
[FN#541] Arab. "Wady al-Naml"; a reminiscence of the Koranic Wady (chaps. xxvii.), which some place in Syria and others in Tαif.
[FN#542] This is the old, old fable of the River Sabbation which
Pliny ((xxx). 18) reports as "drying up every Sabbath-day"
(Saturday): and which Josephus reports as breaking the Sabbath by
flowing only on the Day of Rest.
[FN#543] They were keeping the Sabbath. When lodging with my Israelite friends at Tiberias and Safet, I made a point of never speaking to them (after the morning salutation) till the Saturday was over.
[FN#544] Arab. "La'al" and "Yαkϊt," the latter also applied to the garnet and to a variety of inferior stones. The ruby is supposed by Moslems to be a common mineral thoroughly "cooked" by the sun, and produced only on the summits of mountains inaccessible even to Alpinists. The idea may have originated from exaggerated legends of the Badakhshαn country (supposed to be the home of the ruby) and its terrors of break-neck foot-paths, jagged peaks and horrid ravines: hence our "balas-ruby" through the Spanish corruption "Balaxe." Epiphanius, archbishop of Salamis in Cyprus, who died A.D. 403, gives, m a little treatise (De duodecim gemmis rationalis summi sacerdotis Hebrζorum Liber, opera Fogginii, Romae, 1743, p. 30), a precisely similar description of the mode of finding jacinths in Scythia. "In a wilderness in the interior of Great Scythia," he writes, "there is a valley begirt with stony mountains as with walls. It is inaccessible to man, and so excessively deep that the bottom of the valley is invisible from the top of the surrounding mountains. So great is the darkness that it has the effect of a kind of chaos. To this place certain criminals are condemned, whose task it is to throw down into the valley slaughtered lambs, from which the skin has been first taken off. The little stones adhere to these pieces of flesh. Thereupon the eagles, which live on the summits of the mountains, fly down following the scent of the flesh, and carry away the lambs with the stones adhering to them. They, then, who are condemned to this place watch until the eagles have finished their meal, and run and take away the stones." Epiphanius, who wrote this, is spoken of in terms of great respect by many ecclesiastical writers, and St. Jerome styles the treatise here quoted, "Egregium volumen, quod si legere volueris, plenissimam scientiam consequeris ," and, indeed, it is by no means improbable that it was from the account of Epiphanius that this story was first translated into Arabic. A similar account is given by Marco Polo and by Nicolς de Conti, as of a usage which they had heard was practiced in India, and the position ascribed to the mountain by Conti, namely, fifteen days' journey north of Vijanagar, renders it highly probable that Golconda was alluded to. He calls the mountain Albenigaras, and says that it was infested with serpents. Marco Polo also speaks of these serpents, and while his account agrees with that of Sindbad, inasmuch as the serpents, which are the prey of Sindbad's Rukh, are devoured by the Venetian's eagles, that of Conti makes the vultures and eagles fly away with the meat to places where they may be safe from the serpents. (Introd. p. xiii., India in the Fifteenth Century, etc., R. H. Major, London, Hakluyt Soc. MDCCCLVII.)
[FN#545] Elder Victory: "Nasr" is a favourite name with Moslems.
[FN#546] These are the "Swan-maidens" of whom Europe in late years has heard more than enough. It appears to me that we go much too far for an explanation of the legend; a high-bred girl is so like a swan in many points that the idea readily suggests itself. And it is also aided by the old Egyptian (and Platonic) belief in pre-existence and by the Rabbinic and Buddhistic doctrine of ante-natal sin, to say nothing of metempsychosis. (Joseph Ant. xvii.. 153.)
[FN#547] The lines have occurred before. I quote Mr. Payne for variety.
[FN#548] Arab. "Al-Khayαl": it is a synonym of "al-Tayf' and the nearest approach to our "ghost," as has been explained. In poetry it is the figure of the beloved seen when dreaming.