[FN#32] Polo, which Lane calls "Goff."
[FN#33] Arab. "Muffawak"=well-notched, as its value depends upon the notch. At the end of the third hemistitch Lane's Shaykh very properly reads "baghtatan" (suddenly) for "burhatan"=during a long time.
[FN#34] "Uns" (which the vulgar pronounce Anas) "al- Wujud"=Delight of existing things, of being, of the world. Uns wa jud is the normal pun=love-intimacy and liberality; and the caranomasia (which cannot well be rendered in English) re-appears again and again. The story is throughout one of love; hence the quantity of verse.
[FN#35] The allusion to a "written N" suggests the elongated not the rounded form of the letter as in Night cccxxiv.
[FN#36] The fourteenth Arabic letter in its medial form resembling an eye.
[FN#37] This is done by the man passing his fingers over the brow as if to wipe off perspiration; the woman acknowledges it by adjusting her head-veil with both hands. As a rule in the Moslem East women make the first advances; and it is truly absurd to see a great bearded fellow blushing at being ogled. During the Crimean war the fair sex of Constantinople began by these allurements but found them so readily accepted by the Giaours that they were obliged to desist.
[FN#38] The greatest of all explorers and discoverers of the world will be he who finds a woman confessing inability to keep a secret.
[FN#39] The original is intensely prosaicand so am I.
[FN#40] Arab. "Sunnat," the practice of the Prophet. For this prayer and other silly and superstitious means of discovering the "right direction" (which is often very wrongly directed) see Lane, M.E. chapt. xi.
[FN#41] Arab. "Bahr (sea or river) al-Kunuz": Lane (ii. 576) ingeniously identifies the site with the Upper Nile whose tribes, between Assouan (Syene) and Wady al-Subu'a are called the "Kunuz"lit. meaning "treasures" or "hoards." Philae is still known as the "Islet of Anas (for Uns) al-Wujud;" and the learned and accurate Burckhardt (Travels in Nubia p. 5) records the local legend that a mighty King called Al-Wujud built the Osirian temples. I can give no information concerning Jabal al-Sakla (Thakla), the Mount of the woman bereft of children, beyond the legend contained in Night ccclxxix.