[FN#131] Arab. “Ráyah káimah,” which Lane translates a “beast standing”!
[FN#132] Tying up the near foreleg just above the knee; and even with this a camel can hop over sundry miles of ground in the course of a night. The hobbling is shown in Lane. (Nights vol. ii., p. 46.)
[FN#133] As opposed to “Severance” in the old knightly language of love, which is now apparently lost to the world. I tried it in the Lyrics of Camoens and found that I was speaking a forgotten tongue, which mightily amused the common sort of critic and reviewer.
[FN#134] More exactly three days and eight hours, after which the guest becomes a friend, and as in the Argentine prairies is expected to do friend’s duty. The popular saying is, “The entertainment of a guest is three days; the viaticum (jáizah) is a day and a night, and whatso exceedeth this is alms.”
[FN#135] Arab. “‘Ashírah.” Books tell us there are seven degrees of connection among the Badawin: Sha’ab, tribe or rather race; nation (as the Anazah) descended from a common ancestor; Kabílah the tribe proper (whence les Kabyles); Fasílah (sept), Imarah; Ashirah (all a man’s connections); Fakhiz (lit. the thigh, i.e., his blood relations) and Batn (belly) his kith and kin. Practically Kabílah is the tribe, Ashírah the clan, and Bayt the household; while Hayy may be anything between tribe and kith and kin.
[FN#136] This is the true platonic love of noble Arabs, the
Ishk ‘uzrí, noted in vol. ii., 104.
[FN#137] Arab. “‘Alá raghm,” a favourite term. It occurs in theology; for instance, when the Shí’ahs are asked the cause of such and such a ritual distinction they will reply, “Ala raghmi ‘l-Tasannun”: lit.=to spite the Sunnis.
[FN#138] In the text “Al-Kaus” for which Lane and Payne substitute a shield. The bow had not been mentioned but—n’importe, the Arab reader would say. In the text it is left at home because it is a cowardly, far-killing weapon compared with sword and lance. Hence the Spaniard calls and justly calls the knife the “bravest of arms” as it wants a man behind it.
[FN#139] Arab. “Rahim” or “Rihm”=womb, uterine relations, pity or sympathy, which may here be meant.
[FN#140] Reciting Fátihahs and so forth, as I have described in the Cemetery of Al-Medinah (ii. 300). Moslems do not pay for prayers to benefit the dead like the majority of Christendom and, according to Calvinistic Wahhábi-ism, their prayers and blessings are of no avail. But the mourner’s heart loathes reason and he prays for his dead instinctively like the so-termed “Protestant.” Amongst the latter, by the bye, I find four great Sommités, (1) Paul of Tarsus who protested against the Hebraism of Peter; (2) Mohammed who protested against the perversions of Christianity; (3) Luther who protested against Italian rule in Germany, and lastly (4) one (who shall be nameless) that protests against the whole business.