[FN#439] For an incident like this see my Pilgrimmage (vol. i. 176). How true to nature the whole scene is; the fond mother excusing her boy and the practical father putting the excuse aside. European paternity, however, would probably exclaim, "The beast's in liquor!"
[FN#440] In ancient times this seems to have been the universal and perhaps instinctive treatment of the hand that struck a father. By Nur al-Din's flight the divorce-oath became technically null and void for Taj al-Din had sworn to mutilate his son next morning.
[FN#441] So Roderic Random and his companions "sewed their money between the lining and the waistband of their breeches, except some loose silver for immediate expense on the road." For a description of these purses see Pilgrimage i. 37.
[FN#442] Arab. Rashid (our Rosetta), a corruption of the Coptic
Trashit; ever famous for the Stone.
[FN#443] For a parallel passage in praise of Alexandria see vol. i. 290, etc. The editor or scribe was evidently an Egyptian.
[FN#444] Arab. "Saghr" (Thagr), the opening of the lips showing the teeth. See vol. i. p. 156.
[FN#445] Iskandariyah, the city of Iskandar or Alexander the Great, whose "Soma" was attractive to the Greeks as the corpse of the Prophet Daniel afterwards was to the Moslems. The choice of site, then occupied only by the pauper village of Rhacotis, is one proof of many that the Macedonian conqueror had the inspiration of genius.
[FN#446] i.e. paid them down. See vol. i. 281; vol. ii. 145.
[FN#447] Arab. "Baltiyah," Sonnini's "Bolti" and Nébuleux (because it is dozid-coloured when fried), the Labrus Niloticus from its labra or large fleshy lips. It lives on the "leaves of Paradise" hence the flesh is delicate and savoury and it is caught with the épervier or sweep-net in the Nile, canals and pools.
[FN#448] Arab. "Liyyah," not a delicate comparison, but exceedingly apt besides rhyming to "Baltiyah." The cauda of the "five-quarter sheep, whose tails are so broad and thick that there is as much flesh upon them as upon a quarter of their body," must not be confounded with the lank appendage of our English muttons. See i. 25, Dr. Burnell's Linschoten (Hakluyt Soc. 1885).