[FN#442] Arab. “Tákah” not “an aperture” as Lane has it, but an arched hollow in the wall.
[FN#443] In Trébutien (ii. 168) the cannibal is called “Goul Eli-Fenioun” and Von Hammer remarks, “There is no need of such likeness of name to prove that al this episode is a manifest imitation of the adventures of Ulysses in Polyphemus’s cave; * * * and this induces the belief that the Arabs have been acquainted with the poems of Homer.” Living intimately with the Greeks they could not have ignored the Iliad and the Odyssey: indeed we know by tradition that they had translations, now apparently lost. I cannot however, accept Lane’s conjecture that “the story of Ulysses and Polyphemus may have been of Eastern origin.” Possibly the myth came from Egypt, for I have shown that the opening of the Iliad bears a suspicious likeness to the proem of Pentaur’s Epic.
[FN#444] Arab. “Shakhtúr”.
[FN#445] In the Bresl. Edit. the ship is not wrecked but lands Sa’id in safety.
[FN#446] So in the Shah-nameh the Símurgh-bird gives one of her feathers to her protégé Zál which he will throw into the fire when she is wanted.
[FN#447] Bresl. Edit. “Al-Zardakhánát” Arab. plur. of Zarad-Khánah, a bastard word = armoury, from Arab. Zarad (hauberk) and Pers. Khánah = house etc.
[FN#448] Some retrenchment was here found necessary to avoid “damnable iteration.”
[FN#449] i.e. Badi’a al-Jamal.
[FN#450] Mohammed.
[FN#451] Koran xxxv. “The Creator” (Fátir) or the Angels, so called from the first verse.