[FN#401] [The Ms. reads “murafraf” (passive) from, “Rafraf” = a shelf, arch, anything overhanging something else, there here applying either to the eyebrows as overhanging the eyes, or to the sockets, as forming a vault or cave for them.  Perhaps it should be “murafrif” (active part), used of a bird, who spreads his wings and circles round his prey, ready to pounce upon it; hence with prying, hungry, greedy eyes.—­St.]

[FN#402] Arab.  “Niyyah” with the normal pun upon the name.

[FN#403] Arab. “’Amil Rasad,” lit. acting as an observatory:  but the style is broken as usual, and to judge from the third line below the sentence may signify “And I am acting as Talisman (to the Hoard)”.

[FN#404] In the text “Ishari,” which may have many meanings:  I take a “shot” at the most likely.  In “The Tale of the Envier and the Envied” the counter-spell in a fumigation by means of some white hair plucked from a white spot, the size of a dirham, at the tail-end of a black tom-cat (vol. i. 124).  According to the Welsh legend, “the Devil hates cocks”—­I suppose since that fowl warned Peter of his fall.

[FN#405] In text “Yaum al-Ahad,” which begins the Moslem week:  see vols. iii. 249, and vi. 190.

[FN#406] [In Ar.  “Harj wa Laght.”  The former is generally joined with “Marj” (Harj wa Marj) to express utter confusion, chaos, anarchy.  “Laght” (also pronounced Laghat and written with the palatal “t”) has been mentioned supra p. 11 as a synonym of “Jalabah” = clamour, tumult, etc.—­St.]

[FN#407] [In Ar. “yahjubu,” aor.  Of “hajaba” = he veiled, put out of sight, excluded, warded off.  Amongst other significations the word is technically used of a nearer degree of relationship excluding entirely or partially a more distant one from inheritance.—­St.]

[FN#408] Arab.  “Yaum al-Jum’ah” = Assembly-day, Friday:  see vol. vi. 120.

[FN#409] A regular Badawi remedy.  This Artemisia (Arab.  Shayh), which the Dicts. translate “wormwood of Pontus,” is the sweetest herb of the Desert, and much relished by the wild men:  see my “Pilgrimage,” vol. i. 228.  The Finnish Arabist Wallin, who died Professor of Arabic at Helsingfors, speaks of a “Farashat al-Shayh” = a carpet of wormwood.

[FN#410] “Sahibi-h,” the masculine; because, as the old grammar tells us, that gender is more worthy than the feminine.

[FN#411] i.e., his strength was in the old:  see vol. i. 340.

[FN#412] Arab.  “Haysumah” = smooth stones (water-rounded?).

[FN#413] For “his flesh was crushed upon his bones,” a fair specimen of Arab.  “Metonomy-cum-hyperbole.”  In the days when Mr. John Bull boasted of his realism versus Gallic idealism, he “got wet to the skin” when M. Jean Crapaud was mouille jusqu’aux os.

For the Angels supposed to haunt a pure and holy well, and the trick played by Ibn Tumart, see Ibn Khaldun’s Hist. of the Berbers, vol. ii. 575.