[FN#177] Arabic has no single word for million although the Maroccans have adopted "Milyъn" from the Spaniards (see p. 100 of the Rudimentos del Бrabe vulgar que se habla en el imperio de Marruccos por El P. Fr. Josи de Lerchundi, Madrid 1872): This lack of the higher numerals, the reverse of the Hindu languages, makes Arabic "arithmology" very primitive and almost as cumbrous as the Chinese.
[FN#178] i.e. I am thy slave to slay or to pardon.
[FN#179] Arab. "Matta'aka 'llah"=Allah permit thee to enjoy, from the root mata', whence cometh the Maroccan Matб'i=my, mine, which answers to Bitб'i in Egypt.
[FN#180] Arab. "Khitбb" = the exordium of a letter preceding its business-matter and in which the writer displays all his art. It ends with "Ammб ba'd," lit.=but after, equivalent to our "To proceed." This "Khitбb" is mostly skipped over by modern statesmen who will say, "Now after the nonsense let us come to the sense"; but their secretaries carefully weigh every word of it, and strongly resent all shortcomings.
[FN#181] Strongly suggesting that the King had forgotten how to read and write. So not a few of the Amirs of Sind were analphabetic and seemed rather proud of it: "a Baloch cannot write, but he always carries a signet-ring." I heard of an old English lady of the past generation in Northern Africa who openly declared "A Warrington shall never learn to read or write."
[FN#182] Arab. "Бmin," of which the Heb. form is Amen from the root Amn=stability, constancy. In both tongues it is a particle of affirmation or consent=it is true! So be it! The Hebrew has also "Amanah"=verily, truly.
[FN#183] To us this seems a case of "hard lines" for the unhappy women; but Easterns then believed and still believe in the divinity which doth hedge in a King, in his reigning by the "grace of God," and in his being the Viceregent of Allah upon earth; briefly in the old faith of loyalty which great and successful republics are fast making obsolete in the West and nowhere faster than in England.
[FN#184] Abъ Sнr is a manifest corruption of the old Egyptian Pousiri, the Busiris of our classics, and it gives a name to sundry villages in modern Egypt where it is usually pronounced "Bъsнr". Abъ Kнr lit. = the Father of Pitch, is also corrupted to Abou Kir (Bay); and the townlet now marks the site of jolly old Canopus, the Chosen Land of Egyptian debauchery.
[FN#185] It is interesting to note the superior gusto with which the Eastern, as well as the Western tale-teller describes his scoundrels and villains whilst his good men and women are mostly colourless and unpicturesque. So Satan is the true hero of Paradise-Lost and by his side God and man are very ordinary; and Mephistopheles is much better society than Faust and Margaret.
[FN#186] Arab. "Dukhбn," lit. = smoke, here tobacco for the Chibouk, "Timbбk" or "Tumbбk" being the stronger (Persian and other) variety which must be washed before smoking in the Shнshah or water-pipe. Tobacco is mentioned here only and is evidently inserted by some scribe: the "weed" was not introduced into the East before the end of the sixteenth century (about a hundred years after coffee), when it radically changed the manners of society.