Note 166 — PART II THE DIVINE COMEDY COMPARED WITH OTHER MOSLEM LEGENDS ON THE AFTER-LIFE
Harold Sunderland translation
This metaphorical interpretation is not justified on philological grounds, for the Arabic lexicons only give the following indirect meanings:—chapter; sum of a calculation; mode, category or condition, etc. Lane in his Lexicon (I, 272), however, suggests that in Egypt the word was applied to a sepulchral chamber, or cave in a mountain, and was derived from the Coptic “bib.”