116 ([return])
[ Meaning that he was an orphan and had, like the well-known widow, "seen better days.">[
117 ([return])
[ The phrase, I have noted, is not merely pleonastic: it emphasises the assertion that it was a chance day.]
118 ([return])
[ An old Plinian fable long current throughout the East. It is the Pers. Ním-chihreh, and the Arab Shikk and possibly Nasnás = nisf al-Nás (?) See vol. v. 333. Shikk had received from Allah only half the form of a man, and his rival diviner Satíh was a shapeless man of flesh without limbs. They lived in the days of a woman named Tarífah, daughter of Al-Khayr al-Himyarí and wife of Amrú bin 'Ámir who was famous for having intercourse with the Jann. When about to die she sent for the two, on account of their deformity and the influence exercised upon them by the demons; and, having spat into their mouths, bequeathed to them her Jinni, after which she departed life and was buried at Al-Johfah. Presently they became noted soothsayers; Shikk had issue but Satih none; they lived 300 (some say 600) years, and both died shortly before the birth of the Prophet concerning whom they prophesied. When the Tobba of Al-Yaman dreamed that a dove flew from a holy place and settled in the Tihámah (lowland-seaboard) of Meccah, Satih interpreted it to signify that a Prophet would arise to destroy idols and to teach the best of faiths. The two also predicted (according to Tabari) to Al-Rabí'ah, son of Nasr, a Jewish king of Al-Yaman, that the Habash (Abyssinians) should conquer the country, govern it, and be expelled, and after this a Prophet should arise amongst the Arabs and bring a new religion which all should embrace and which should endure until Doomsday. Compare this with the divining damsel in Acts xvi. 16-18.]
119 ([return])
[ Arab. "Kahramánah;" the word has before been explained as a nurse, a duenna, an Amazon guarding the Harem. According to C. de Perceval (père) it was also the title given by the Abbasides to the Governess of the Serraglio.]
120 ([return])
[ So in the Apocrypha ("Tobias" vi. 8). Tobit is taught by the Archangel Raphael to drive away evil spirits (or devils) by the smoke of a bit of fish's heart. The practice may date from the earliest days when "Evil Spirits" were created by man. In India, when Europeans deride the existence of Jinns and Rakshasas, and declare that they never saw one, the people receive this information with a smile which means only, "I should think not! you and yours are worse than any of our devils.">[