[FN#255] Arab. "Nukl," e.g. the quatre mendiants as opposed to "Fбkihah"=fresh fruit. The Persians, a people who delight in gross practical jokes, get the confectioner to coat with sugar the droppings of sheep and goats and hand them to the bulk of the party. This pleasant confection is called "Nukl-i-peshkil"— dung-dragйes.
[FN#256] The older name of Madнnat al-Nabi, the city of the Prophet; vulg. called Al-Medinah per excellentiam. See vol. iv. 114. In the Mac. and Bul. texts we have "Tayyibah"=the goodly, one of the many titles of that Holy City: see Pilgrimage ii. 119.
[FN#257] Not "visiting the tomb of," etc. but visiting the Prophet himself, who is said to have declared that "Ziyбrah" (visitation) of his tomb was in religion the equivalent of a personal call upon himself.
[FN#258] Arab. "Nafakah"; for its conditions see Pigrimage iii. 224. I have again and again insisted upon the Anglo-Indian Government enforcing the regulations of the Faith upon pauper Hindi pilgrims who go to the Moslem Holy Land as beggars and die of hunger in the streets. To an "Empire of Opinion" this is an unmitigated evil (Pilgrimage iii. 256); and now, after some thirty-four years, there are signs that the suggestions of common sense are to be adopted. England has heard of the extraordinary recklessness and inconsequence of the British-Indian "fellow- subject."
[FN#259] The Ka'abah of Meccah.
[FN#260] When Moslems apply "Nabн!" to Mohammed it is in the peculiar sense of "prophet" ({prophйtes})=one who speaks before the people, not one who predicts, as such foresight was adjured by the Apostle. Dr. A. Neubauer (The Athenжum No. 3031) finds the root of "Nabн!" in the Assyrian Nabu and Heb. Noob (occurring in Exod. vii. 1. "Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet." i.e. orator, speaker before the people), and holds it to be a Canaanite term which supplanted "Roeh" (the Seer) e.g. 1 Samuel ix. 9. The learned Hebraist traces the cult of Nebo, a secondary deity in Assyria to Palestine and Phњnicia, Palmyra, Edessa (in the Nebok of Abgar) and Hierapolis in Syria or Mabug (Nabog?).
[FN#261] I cannot find "Dandбn" even in Lib. Quintus de Aquaticis Animalibus of the learned Sam. Bochart's "Hierozoпcon" (London, 1663) and must conjecture that as "Dandбn" in Persian means a tooth (vol. ii. 83) the writer applied it to a sun-fish or some such well-fanged monster of the deep.
[FN#262] A favourite proverb with the Fellah, when he alludes to the Pasha and to himself.
[FN#263] An euphemistic answer, unberufen as the Germans say.
[FN#264] It is a temptation to derive this word from bВњuf а l'eau, but I fear that the theory will not hold water. The "buffaloes" of Alexandria laughted it to scorn.