"A sun (face) on wand (neck) in knoll of sand (hips) she showed" etc,
[FN#380] Arab. "Al-huwayna," a rare term.
[FN#381] Bright in the eyes of the famishing who is allowed to break his fast.
[FN#382] Mr. Payne reads "Maghrabi" = a Mauritanian, Maroccan, the Moors (not the Moorish Jews or Arabs) being a race of Sodomites from highest to lowest. But the Mac. and Bul. Edit. have "Ajami."
[FN#383] For "Ishk uzri" = platonic love see vol. i. 232; ii. 104.
[FN#384] Zaynab (Zenobia) and Zayd are generic names for women and men.
[FN#385] i.e. He wrote "Kasidahs" (= odes, elegies) after the fashion of the "Suspended Poems" which mostly open with the lover gazing upon the traces of the camp where his beloved had dwelt. The exaggerated conventionalism of such exordium shows that these early poems had been preceded by a host of earlier pieces which had been adopted as canons of poetry.
[FN#386] The verses are very mal-а-propos, like many occurring in The Nights, for the maligned Shaykh is proof against all the seductions of the pretty boy and falls in love with a woman after the fashion of Don Quixote. Mr. Payne complains of the obscurity of the original owing to abuse of the figure enallage; but I find them explicit enough, referring to some debauched elder after the type of Abu Nowбs.
[FN#387] Arab. "'Irk" = a root which must here mean a sprig, a twig. The basil grows to a comparatively large size in the East.
[FN#388] Arab. "Lait "= one connected with the tribe of Lot, see vol. v. 161.