[FN#260] The coin is omitted in the text but it is evidently the “Nusf” or half-dirham. Lane (iii.235), noting that the dinar is worth 170 “nusfs” in this tale, thinks that it was written (or copied?) after the Osmanh Conquest of Egypt. Unfortunately he cannot tell the precise period when the value of the small change fell so low.
[FN#261] Arab “Yaum mubárak!” still a popular exclamation.
[FN#262] i.e. of the door of daily bread.
[FN#263] Arab. “Sírah,” a small fish differently described (De Sacy, “Relation de l’Egypte par Abd allatif,” pp. 278-288: Lane, Nights iii. 234). It is not found in Sonnini’s list.
[FN#264] A tank or lakelet in the southern parts of Cairo, long ago filled up; Von Hammer believes it inherited the name of the old Charon’s Lake of Memphis, over which corpses were ferried.
[FN#265] Thus making the agreement a kind of religious covenant, as Catholics would recite a Pater or an Ave Maria.
[FN#266] Arab. “Yá miskím”=O poor devil; mesquin, meschino, words evidently derived from the East.
[FN#267] Plur. of Maghribí a Western man, a Moor. I have already derived the word through the Lat. “Maurus” from Maghribiyún. Europeans being unable to pronounce the Ghayn (or gh like the modern Cairenes) would turn it into “Ma’ariyún.” They are mostly of the Maliki school (for which see Sale) and are famous as magicians and treasure-finders. Amongst the suite of the late Amir Abd al-Kadir, who lived many years and died in Damascus, I found several men profoundly versed in Eastern spiritualism and occultism.
[FN#268] The names are respectively, Slave of the Salvation, of the One (God), of the Eternal; of the Compassionate; and of the Loving.
[FN#269] i.e. “the most profound”; the root is that of “Bátiní,” a gnostic, a reprobate.