[FN#104] This is a true “City of Brass.” (Nuhás asfar=yellow copper), as we learn in Night dcclxxii. It is situated in the “Maghrib” (Mauritania), the region of magic and mystery; and the idea was probably suggested by the grand Roman ruins which rise abruptly from what has become a sandy waste. Compare with this tale “The City of Brass” (Night cclxxii.). In Egypt Nuhás is vulg. pronounced Nihás.
[FN#105] The Bresl. Edit. adds that the seal-ring was of stamped stone and iron, copper and lead. I have borrowed copiously from its vol. vi. pp. 343, et seq.
[FN#106] As this was a well-known pre-Islamitic bard, his appearance here is decidedly anachronistic, probably by intention.
[FN#107] The first Moslem conqueror of Spain whose lieutenant,
Tárik, the gallant and unfortunate, named Gibraltar (Jabal al-
Tarik).
[FN#108] The colours of the Banú Umayyah (Ommiade) Caliphs were white, of the Banú Abbás (Abbasides) black, and of the Fatimites green. Carrying the royal flag denoted the generalissimo or plenipotentiary.
[FN#109] i.e. Old Cairo, or Fustat: the present Cairo was then a Coptic village founded on an old Egyptian settlement called Lui-Tkeshroma, to which belonged the tanks on the hill and the great well, Bir Yusuf, absurdly attributed to Joseph the Patriarch. Lui is evidently the origin of Levi and means a high priest (Brugsh ii. 130) and his son’s name was Roma.
[FN#110] I cannot but suspect that this is a clerical error for “Al-Samanhúdi,” a native of Samanhúd (Wilkinson’s “Semenood”) in the Delta on the Damietta branch, the old Sebennytus (in Coptic Jem-nuti=Jem the God), a town which has produced many distinguished men in Moslem times. But there is also a Samhúd lying a few miles down stream from Denderah and, as its mounds prove, it is an ancient site.
[FN#111] Egypt had not then been conquered from the Christians.
[FN#112] Arab. “Kízán fukká’a,” i.e. thin and slightly porous earthenware jars used for Fukká’a, a fermented drink, made of barley or raisins.
[FN#113] I retain this venerable blunder: the right form is
Samúm, from Samm, the poison-wind.