Note 289
This may mean "liquid black eyes"; but also, as I have noticed, that the lashes were long and thick enough to make the eyelids appear as if Kohl-powder had been applied to the inne…
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Notes to The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 — Page 13
698 notes in Richard Francis Burton translation. Follow a thought back to its place in the book.
698 notes
Note 290
A slight parting between the two front incisors, the upper only, is considered a beauty by Arabs; why it as hard to say except for the racial love of variety. "Sughr" (Thugr) in th…
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i.e. makes me taste the bitterness of death, "bursting the gall-bladder" (Marárah) being our "breaking the heart."
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Almost needless to say that forbidden doors and rooms form a lieu-commun in Fairie: they are found in the Hindu Katha Sarit Sagara and became familiar to our childhood by "Bluebear…
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Lit. "apply Kohl to my eyes," even as Jezebel "painted her face," in Heb. put her eyes in painting (2 Kings ix. 30).
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Arab. "Al-Barkúk," whence our older "Apricock." Classically it is "Burkúk" and Pers. for Arab. "Mishrnish," and it also denotes a small plum or damson. In Syria the side next the s…
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Arab. "Hazár" (in Persian, a thousand) = a kind of mocking bird.
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Some Edits. make the doors number a hundred, but the Princesses were forty and these coincidences, which seem to have significance and have none save for Arab symmetromania, are co…
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Arab. "Májur": hence possibly our "mazer," which is popularly derived from Masarn, a maple.
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A compound scent of ambergris, musk and aloes.
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The ends of the bridle-reins forming the whip.
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The flying horse is Pegasus which is a Greek travesty of an Egyptian myth developed India.
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The Bres. Edit. wrongly says "the seventh."
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Arab. "Sharmutah" (plur. Sharámít) from the root Sharmat, to shred, a favourite Egyptian word also applied in vulgar speech to a strumpet, a punk, a piece. It is also the popular t…
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Arab. "Izár," the man's waistcloth opposed to the Ridá or shoulder-cloth, is also the sheet of white calico worn by the poorer Egyptian women out of doors and covering head and han…
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i.e. "My dears."
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Arab. "Lá tawákhizná:" lit. "do not chastise (or blame) us;" the pop. expression for, "excuse (or pardon) us."
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Arab. "Maskhút," mostly applied to change of shape as man enchanted to monkey, and in vulgar parlance applied to a statue (of stone, etc.). The list of metamorphoses in Al-Islam is…
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A picturesque phrase enough to express a deserted site, a spectacle familiar to the Nomades and always abounding in pathos to the citizens.
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The olden "Harem" (or gynæceum, Pers. Zenanah, Serraglio): Harím is also used by synecdoche for the inmates; especially the wife.
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The pearl is supposed in the East to lose 1% per ann. of its splendour and value.
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Arab. "Fass," properly the bezel of a ring; also a gem cut en cabochon and generally the contenant for the contenu.
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Arab. "Mihráb" = the arch-headed niche in the Mosque-wall facing Meccah-wards. Here, with his back to the people and fronting the Ka'abah or Square House of Meccah (hence called th…
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Arab "Kursi," a stool of palm-fronds, etc., X-shaped (see Lane's illustration, Nights i., 197), before which the reader sits. Good Moslems will not hold the Holy Volume below the w…
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