[FN#363] Arab. "Zahrawíyah" which contains a kind of double entendre. Fátimah the Prophet's only daughter is entitled Al-Zahrá the "bright-blooming"; and this is also an epithet of Zohrah the planet Venus. For Fatimah see vol. vi. 145. Of her Mohammed said, "Love your daughters, for I too am a father of daughters" and, "Love them, they are the comforters, the dearlings." The Lady appears in Moslem history a dreary young woman (died ćt. 28) who made this world, like Honorius, a hell in order to win a next-world heaven. Her titles are Zahrá and Batúl (Pilgrimage ii. 90) both signifying virgin. Burckhardt translates Zahrá by "bright blooming" (the etymological sense): it denotes literally a girl who has not menstruated, in which state of purity the Prophet's daughter is said to have lived and died. "Batúl" has the sense of a "clean maid" and is the title given by Eastern Christians to the Virgin Mary. The perpetual virginity of Fatimah even after motherhood (Hasan and Husayn) is a point of orthodoxy in Al-Islam as Juno's with the Romans and Umá's with the Hindú worshippers of Shiva. During her life Mohammed would not allow Ali a second wife, and he held her one of the four perfects, the other three being Asia wife of "Pharaoh," the Virgin Mary and Khadijah his own wife. She caused much scandal after his death by declaring that he had left her the Fadak estate (Abulfeda I, 133, 273) a castle with a fine palm-orchard near Khaybar. Abu Bakr dismissed the claim quoting the Apostle's Hadis, "We prophets are folk who will away nothing: what we leave is alms-gift to the poor," and Shí'ahs greatly resent his decision. (See Dabistan iii. 5152 for a different rendering of the words.) I have given the popular version of the Lady Fatimah's death and burial (Pilgrimage ii. 315) and have remarked that Moslem historians delight in the obscurity which hangs over her last resting-place, as if it were an honour even for the receptacle of her ashes to be concealed from the eyes of men. Her repute is a curious comment on Tom Hood's
"Where woman has never a soul to save."
[FN#364] For Sharif and Sayyid, descendants of Mohammed, see vol. iv. 170.
[FN#365] These lines have occurred with variants in vol. iii. 257, and iv. 50.
[FN#366] Arab. "Hazrat," esp. used in India and corresponding with our medićval "prćsentia vostra."
[FN#367] This wholesale slaughter by the tale-teller of worshipful and reverend men would bring down the gallery like a Spanish tragedy in which all the actors are killed.
[FN#368] They are called indifferently "Ruhbán"=monks or
"Batárikah"=patriarchs. See vol. ii. 89.
[FN#369] Arab. "Khilál." The toothpick, more esteemed by the Arabs than by us, is, I have said, often used by the poets as an emblem of attenuation without offending good taste. Nizami (Layla u Majnún) describes a lover as "thin as a toothpick." The "elegant" Hariri (Ass. of Barkaid) describes a toothpick with feminine attributes, "shapely of shape, attractive, provocative of appetite, delicate as the leanest of lovers, polished as a poinard and bending as a green bough."
[FN#370] From Bresl. Edit. x. 194.
[FN#371] Trébutien (vol. ii. 344 et seq.) makes the seven monks sing as many anthems, viz. (1) Congregamini; (2) Vias tuas demonstra mihi; (3) Dominus illuminatis; (4) Custodi linguam; (5) Unam petii a Domino; (6) Nec adspiciat me visus, and (7) Turbatus est a furore oculus meus. Dánis the Abbot chaunts Anima mea turbata est valdč.