[FN#237] In the text Zangi-i-Adam-kh’war afterwards called Habashi=an Abyssinian.  Galland simply says un negre.  In India the “Habshi” (chief) of Jinjirah (=Al-Jazirah, the Island) was admiral of the Grand Moghul’s fleets.  These negroids are still dreaded by Hindus and Hindis and, when we have another “Sepoy Mutiny,” a few thousands of them bought upon the Zanzibar coast, dressed, drilled and officered by Englishmen, will do us yeomans’ service.

[FN#238] This seems to be a fancy name for a country:  the term is Persian=the Oceanland or a seaport town:  from “Darya” the sea and bar=a region, tract, as in Zanzibar=Black-land.  The learned Weil explains it (in loco) by Gegend der Brunnen, brunnengleicher ort, but I cannot accept Scott’s note (iv. 400), “Signifying the seacoast of every country; and hence the term is applied by Oriental geographers to the coast of Malabar.”

[FN#239] The onager, confounded by our older travellers with the zebra, is the Gur-i-khar of Persia, where it is the noblest game from which kings did not disdain to take a cognomen, e.g., Bahram-i-Gur.  It is the “wild ass” of Jeremiah (ii. 24:  xiv. 6).  The meat is famous in poetry for combining the flavours peculiar to all kinds of flesh (Ibn Khallikan iii. 117; iii. 239, etc.) and is noticed by Herodotus (Clio. cxxxiii.) and by Xenophon (Cyro. lib. 1) in sundry passages:  the latter describes the relays of horses and hounds which were used in chasing it then as now.  The traveller Olearius (A.  D. 1637) found it more common than in our present day:  Shah Abbas turned thirty-two wild asses into an enclosure where they were shot as an item of entertainment to the ambassadors at his court.  The skin of the wild ass’s back produces the famous shagreen, a word seemingly derived from the Pers.  “Saghri,” e.g.  “Kyafash-i-Saghri"=slippers of shagreen, fine wear fit for a “young Duke”.  See in Ibn Khallikan (iv. 245) an account of a “Jur” (the Arabised “Gur”) eight hundred years old.

[FN#240] “Dasht-i-la-siwa-Hu"=a desert wherein is none save He (Allah), a howling wilderness.

[FN#241] Per.  “Naz o andaz"=coquetry, in a half-honest sense.  The Persian “Kaka Siyah,” i.e. “black brother” (a domestic negro) pronounces Nazi-nuzi.

[FN#242] In the text Nimak-haram:  on this subject see vol. viii. 12.

[FN#243] i.e., an Arab of noble strain:  see vol. iii. 72.

[FN#244] In the text “Kazzak"=Cossacks, bandits, mounted highwaymen; the word is well known in India, where it is written in two different ways, and the late Mr. John Shakespear in his excellent Dictionary need hardly have marked the origin “U” (unknown).

[FN#245] Here and below the Hindostani version mounts the lady upon a camel ("Ushtur” or “Unth”) which is not customary in India except when criminals are led about the bazar.  An elephant would have been in better form.