The Mahometans boast of a doctor who is reported to have read over the Koran not fewer than twenty thousand times.--D’HERBELOT, p. 75. PAGE 234. _... black eunuchs, sabre in hand_ In this manner the apartments of the ladies were constantly guarded. Thus, in the Story of the Enchanted Horse, Firouz Schah, traversing a strange palace by night, entered a room, “and by the light of a lantern saw that the persons he had heard snoring were black eunuchs with naked sabres by them, which was enough to inform him that this was the guard-chamber of some queen or princess.”--_Arabian Nights_, vol. iv, p. 189. PAGE 234. _... to let down the great swing_ The swing was an exercise much used in the apartments of the Eastern ladies, and not only contributed to their health, but also to their amusement.--_Tales of Inatulla_, vol. i, p. 259. PAGE 235. _... melodious Philomel, I am thy rose_ The passion of the nightingale for the rose is celebrated over all the East. Thus Mesihi, as translated by Sir W. Jones: “Come, charming maid, and hear thy poet sing, Thyself the rose, and he the bird of spring: Love bids him sing, and love will be obey’d, Be gay; too soon the flowers of spring will fade.” PAGE 236. _... calenders_ These were a sort of men amongst the Mahometans who abandoned father and mother, wife and children, relations and possessions, to wander through the world, under a pretence of religion, entirely subsisting on the fortuitous bounty of those they had the address to dupe.--D’HERBELOT, _Suppl._, p. 204. PAGE 236. _... santons_ A body of religionists, who were also called abdals, and pretended to be inspired with the most enthusiastic raptures of divine love. They were regarded by the vulgar as _saints_.--OLEARIUS, tom. i, p. 971. D’HERBELOT, p. 5. PAGE 236. _... dervishes_ The term _dervish_ signifies a _poor man_, and is the general appellation by which a religious amongst the Mahometans is named. There are, however, discriminations that distinguish this class from the others already mentioned. They are bound by no vow of poverty, they abstain not from marriage, and, whenever disposed, they may relinquish both their blue shirt and profession.--D’HERBELOT, _Suppl._, 214. It is observable, that these different orders, though not established till the reign of Nasser al Samani, are notwithstanding mentioned by our author as coeval with Vathek, and by the author of the _Arabian Nights_ as existing in the days of Haroun al Raschid; so that the Arabian fabulists appear as inattentive to chronological exactness in points of this sort as our immortal dramatist himself. PAGE 236. _... Brahmins_