[FN#35] i.e. the recompense in the world to come promised to the performer of a charitable action.

[FN#36] i.e. camphor and lote-tree leaves dried and powdered (sometimes mixed with rose-water) which are strewn over the dead body, before it is wrapped in the shroud.  In the case of a man of wealth, more costly perfumes (such as musk, aloes and ambergris) are used.

[FN#37] All the ablutions prescribed by the Mohammedan ritual are avoided by the occurrence, during the process, of any cause of ceremonial impurity (such as the mentioned in the text) and must be recommenced.

[FN#38] Having handled a corpse, he had become in a state of legal impurity and it beloved him therefore to make the prescribed ablution.

[FN#39] Which he had taken off for the purpose of making abulution.  This was reversing the ordinary course of affairs, the dead man’s clothes being the washer’s prequisite.

[FN#40] i.e. till it was diminished by evaporation to two-thirds of its original volume.

[FN#41] The Mohammedan grave is a cell, hollowed out in the sides of a trench and so constructed as to keep out the earth, that the deceased may be able to sit up and answer the examining angels when they visit him in the tomb.  There was, therefore, nothing improbable in Er Razi’s boast that he could abide two days in the tomb.

[FN#42] Nawous, a sort of overground well or turricle of masonry, surmounted by an iron grating, on which the Gueber’s body is placed for devoration by the birds.

[FN#43] Munkir [Munker] and Nakir [Nekir] are the two angels that preside at ‘the examination of the tomb.’  They visit a man in his grave directly after he has been buried and examine him concerning his faith; if he acknowledge that there is but one God and that Mohammed is His prophet [apostle], they suffer him to rest in peace; otherwise they beat him with [red-hot] iron maces, till he roars so loud[ly] that he is heard by all from east to west, except by man and Ginns [Jinn].”—­Palmer’s Koran, Introduction.

[FN#44] Lit. the oven (tennour); but this is obviously a mistake for “tombs” (cubour).

[FN#45] i.e. as a propitiatory offering on behalf of.

[FN#46] i.e. though he remain at thy charge or (as we should say) on thy hands.

[FN#47] About twenty-five shillings.

[FN#48] About £137 10s.

[FN#49] Meaning the sharper.

[FN#50] i.e. he asketh nought but that which is reasonable.

[FN#51] The strict Muslim is averse from taking an oath, even in support at the truth, and will sometimes submit to a heavy loss rather than do so.  For an instance of this, see my “Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night,” Vol.  V. p. 44, The King of the Island.

[FN#52] To wit, the merchant and his officious friend.

[FN#53] There appears to be some mistake here, but I have no means of rectifying it.  The passage is probably hopelessly corrupt and a portion of the conclusion of the story seems to have dropped out.