[FN#529] Sa'нdah=the auspicious (fem.): Mubбrakah,=the blessed; both names showing that the bearers were Moslemahs.
[FN#530] i.e. the base-born from whom base deeds may be expected.
[FN#531] Arab. "Badlat Kunъzнyah"=such a dress as would be found in enchanted hoards (Kunъz): e.g. Prince Esterhazy's diamond jacket.
[FN#532] The lieu d'aisance in Eastern crafts is usually a wooden cage or framework fastened outside the gunwale, very cleanly but in foul weather very uncomfortable and even dangerous.
[FN#533] Arab. "Ghull," a collar of iron or other metal, sometimes made to resemble the Chinese Kza or Cangue, a kind of ambulant pillory, serving like the old stocks which still show in England the veteris vestigia ruris. See Davis, "The Chinese," i. 241. According to Al-Siyъti (p. 362) the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil ordered the Christians to wear these Ghulls round the neck, yellow head-gear and girdles, to use wooden stirrups and to place figures of devils before their houses. The writer of The Nights presently changes Ghull to "chains" and "fetters of iron."
[FN#534] Arab. "Yб fulбn," O certain person! See vol. iii. 191.
[FN#535] Father of Harun al-Rashid A.H. 158-169 (=775-785) third Abbaside who both in the Mac. and the Bul. Edits. is called "the fifth of the sons of Al-Abbas." He was a good poet and a man of letters, also a fierce persecutor of the "Zindiks" (Al-Siyuti 278), a term especially applied to those who read the Zend books and adhered to Zoroastrianism, although afterwards applied to any heretic or atheist. He made many changes at Meccah and was the first who had a train of camels laden with snow for his refreshment along a measured road of 700 miles (Gibbon, chapt. lii.). He died of an accident when hunting: others say he was poisoned after leaving his throne to his sons Musa al-Hadi and Harun al-Rashid. The name means "Heaven-directed" and must not be confounded with the title of the twelfth Shi'ah Imбm Mohammed Abu al-Kбsim born at Sarramanrai A.H. 255 whom Sale (sect. iv.) calls "Mahdi or Director" and whose expected return has caused and will cause so much trouble in Al-Islam.
[FN#536] This speciosum miraculum must not be held a proof that the tale was written many years after the days of Al-Rashid. Miracles grow apace in the East and a few years suffice to mature them. The invasion of Abraha the Abyssinia{n} took place during the year of Mohammed's birth; and yet in an early chapter of the Koran (No. cv.) written perhaps forty-five years afterwards, the small-pox is turned into a puerile and extravagant miracle. I myself became the subject of a miracle in Sind which is duly chronicled in the family-annals of a certain Pir or religious teacher. See History of Sindh (p. 230) and Sind Revisited (i. 156).
[FN#537] In the texts, "Sixth."
[FN#538] Arab. "Najis"=ceremonially impure especially the dog's mouth like the cow's mouth amongst the Hindus; and requiring after contact the Wuzu-ablution before the Moslem can pray.