[FN#89] Arab.  “Bakiyah,” which may also mean eternal as opposed to “Faniyah” = temporal.  Omar’s answer shows all the narrow-minded fanaticism which distinguished the early Moslems:  they were puritanical as any Praise-God-Barebones, and they hated “boetry and bainting” as hotly as any Hanoverian.

[FN#90] The Saturday Review (Jan. 2, ’86), which has honoured me by the normal reviling in the shape of a critique upon my two first vols., complains of the “Curious word Abhak” as “a perfectly arbitrary and unusual group of Latin letters.”  May I ask Aristarchus how he would render “Sal’am” (vol ii. 24), which apparently he would confine to “Arabic MSS."(!).  Or would he prefer A(llah) b(less) h(im) a(nd) k(eep) “W.G.B.” (whom God bless) as proposed by the editor of Ockley?  But where would be the poor old “Saturnine” if obliged to do better than the authors it abuses?

[FN#91] He might have said “by more than one, including the great Labid.”

[FN#92] Fi-hi either “in him” (Mohammed) or “in it” (his action).

[FN#93] Chief of the Banu Sulaym.  According to Tabari, Abbas bin Mirdas (a well-known poet), being dissatisfied with the booty allotted to him by the Prophet, refused it and lampooned Mohammed, who said to Ali, “Cut off this tongue which attacketh me,” i.e.  “Silence him by giving what will satisfy him.”  Thereupon Ali doubled the Satirist’s share.

[FN#94] Arab.  “Ya Bilal”:  Bilal ibn Rabah was the Prophet’s freedman and crier:  see vol. iii. 106.  But bilal also signifies “moisture” or “beneficence,” “benefits”:  it may be intended for a double entendre but I prefer the metonymy.

[FN#95] The verses of this Kasidah are too full of meaning to be easily translated:  it is fine old poetry.

[FN#96] i.e. of the Koraysh tribe.  For his disorderly life see Ibn Khallikan ii. 372:  he died, however, a holy death, battling against the Infidels in A.H. 93 (= 711-12), some five years before Omar’s reign.

[FN#97] Arab.  “Bayn farsi-k wa ’l-dami” = lit. between faeces and menses, i.e., the foulest part of his mistress’s person.  It is not often that The Nights are “nasty”; but here is a case.  See vol. v. 162.

[FN#98] “Jamil the Poet,” and lover of Buthaynah:  see vol. ii. 102, Ibn Khallikan (i.331), and Al-Mas’udi vi. 381, who quotes him copiously.  He died A.H. 82 (= 701), or sixteen years before Omar’s reign.

[FN#99] Arab.  “Safih” = the slab over the grave.

[FN#100] A contemporary and friend of Jamil and the famous lover of Azzah.  See vol. ii. 102, and Al-Mas’udi, vi. 426.  The word “Kuthayyir” means “the dwarf.”  Term.  Essay, 231.

[FN#101] i.e. in the attitude of prayer.

[FN#102] In Bresl.  Edit.  “Al-Akhwass,” clerical error, noticed in Ibn Khallikan i. 526.  His satires banished him to Dahlak Island in the Red Sea, and he died A.H. 179 (= 795-96).