[FN#56] A Christian and a celebrated poet of the time.

[FN#57] The poet apparently meant to insinuate that those who professed to keep the fast of Ramazan ate flesh in secret.  The word rendered “in public,” i.e. openly, avowedly, may also perhaps be translated “in the forenoon,” and in this El Akhtel may have meant to contrast his free-thinking disregard of the ordinances of the fast with the strictness of the orthodox Muslim, whose only meals in Ramazan-time are made between sunset and dawn-peep.  As soon as a white thread can be distinguished from a black, the fast is begun and a true believer must not even smoke or swallow his saliva till sunset.

[FN#58] Prominent words of the Muezzin’s fore-dawn call to prayer.

[FN#59] i.e. fall down drunk.

[FN#60] i.e. she who ensnares [all] eyes.

[FN#61] Imam, the spiritual title of the Khalif, as head of the Faith and leader (lit. “foreman”) of the people at prayer.

[FN#62] Or “worldly.”

[FN#63] Or “worldly.”

[FN#64] A town and province of Arabia, of which (inter alia) Omar ben Abdulaziz was governor, before he came to the Khalifate.

[FN#65] Syn. munificence.

[FN#66] About 2 pounds sterling 10 s.

[FN#67] i.e. what is thy news?

[FN#68] Or “I approve of him.”

[FN#69] Breslau Text, vol. vi. pp. 188-9, Night ccccxxxiv.

[FN#70] El Hejjaj ben Yousuf eth Thekefi, a famous statesman and soldier of the seventh and eighth centuries.  He was governor of Chaldaea (Irak Arabi), under the fifth and sixth Khalifs of the Ommiade dynasty, and was renowned for his cruelty, but appears to have been a prudent and capable administrator, who used no more rigour than was necessary to restrain the proverbially turbulent populations of Bassora and Cufa, Most of the anecdotes of his brutality and tyranny, which abound in Arab authors, are, in all probability, apocryphal.

[FN#71] Used, by synecdoche, for “heads.”

[FN#72] i.e. the governed, to wit, he who is led by a halter attached (metaphorically of course) to a ring passed through his nose, as with a camel.

[FN#73] i.e. the governor or he who is high of rank.

[FN#74] i.e. their hair, which may be considered the wealth of the head.  This whole passage is a description a double-entente of a barber-surgeon.

[FN#75] Syn. cooking-pot.

[FN#76] Syn. be lowered.  This passage is a similar description of an itinerant hot bean-seller.

[FN#77] The rows of threads on a weaver’s loom.

[FN#78] Syn. levelleth.

[FN#79] i.e. that of wood used by the Oriental weaver to govern the warp and weft.

[FN#80] Syn. behave aright.

[FN#81] The loop of thread so called in which the weaver’s foot rests.

[FN#82] Syn. eloquence.

[FN#83] Adeb, one of the terribly comprehensive words which abound in Arabic literature for the confusion of translators.  It signifies generally all kinds of education and means of mental and moral discipline and seems here to mean more particularly readiness of wit and speech or presence of mind.