[FN#310] In such case the “’iddah” would be four months and ten days.
[FN#311] Not quite true. Weil’s German version, from a MS. in the Ducal Library of Gotha gives the “Story of Judar of Cairo and Mahmud of Tunis” in a very different form. It has been pleasantly “translated (from the German) and edited” by Mr. W. F. Kirby, of the British Museum, under the title of “The New Arabian Nights” (London: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co.), and the author kindly sent me a copy. “New Arabian Nights” seems now to have become a fashionable title applied without any signification: such at least is the pleasant collection of Nineteenth Century Novelettes, published under that designation by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, 1884.
[FN#312] Von Hammer holds this story to be a satire on Arab superstition and the compulsory propagation, the compelle intrare, of Al-Islam. Lane (iii. 235) omits it altogether for reasons of his own. I differ with great diffidence from the learned Baron whose Oriental reading was extensive; but the tale does not seem to justify his explanations. It appears to me simply one of the wilder romances, full of purposeful anachronisms (e.g. dated between Abraham and Moses, yet quoting the Koran) and written by someone familiar with the history of Oman. The style too is peculiar, in many places so abrupt that much manipulation is required to make it presentable: it suits, however, the rollicking, violent brigand-like life which it depicts. There is only one incident about the end which justifies Von Hammer’s suspicion.
[FN#313] The Persian hero of romance who converses with the
Simurgh or Griffin.
[FN#314] The word is as much used in Egypt as wunderbar in
Germany. As an exclamation is equivalent to “mighty fine!”
[FN#315] In modern days used in a bad sense, as a freethinker, etc. So Dalilah the Wily is noted to be a philosopheress.
[FN#316] The game is much mixed up after Arab fashion. The
“Tufat” is the Siyáhgosh= Black-ears, of India (Felis caracal),
the Persian lynx, which gives very good sport with Dachshunds.
Lynxes still abound in the thickets near Cairo
[FN#317] The “Sons of Kahtán,” especially the Ya’arubah tribe, made much history in Oman. Ya’arub (the eponymus) is written Ya’arab and Ya’arib; but Ya’arub (from Ya’arubu Aorist of ’Aruba) is best, because according to all authorities he was the first to cultivate primitive Arabian speech and Arabic poetry. (Caussin de Perceval’s Hist. des Arabes i.50, etc.)
[FN#318] He who shooteth an arrow by night. See the death of Antar shot down in the dark by the archer Jazár, son of Jábír, who had been blinded by a red hot sabre passed before his eyes. I may note that it is a mere fiction of Al-Asma’i, as the real ’Antar (or ’Antarah) lived to a good old age, and probably died the “straw death.”
[FN#319] See vol. ii., p. 77, for a reminiscence of masterful
King Kulayb and his Himá or domain. Here the phrase would mean,
“None could approach them when they were wroth; none were safe
from their rage.”