[FN#174] Arab history is full of petty wars caused by trifles. In Egypt the clans Sa’ad and Harám and in Syria the Kays and Yaman (which remain to the present day) were as pugnacious as Highland Caterans. The tale bears some likeness to the accumulative nursery rhymes in “The House that Jack Built,” and “The Old Woman and the Crooked Sixpence;” which find their indirect original in an allegorical Talmudic hymn. [FN#175] This is “The Story of the Old Man who sent his Young Wife to the Market to buy Rice,” told with Persian reflections in the “Book of Sindibad.” [FN#176] Koran xii. 28. The words were spoken by Potiphar to Joseph. [FN#177] Koran iv. 78. A mis-quotation, the words are, “Fight therefore against the friends of Satan, for the craft of Satan shall be weak.” [FN#178] i.e. Koranic versets. [FN#179] In the Book of Sindibad this is the “Story of the Prince who went out to hunt and the stratagem which the Wazir practised on him.” [FN#180] I have noted that it is a dire affront to an Arab if his first cousin marry any save himself without his formal leave. [FN#181] i.e. the flowery, the splendid; an epithet of Fatimah, the daughter of the Apostle “the bright blooming.” Fátimah is an old Arab name of good omen, “the weaner:” in Egypt it becomes Fattúmah (an incrementative= “great weaner”); and so Amínah, Khadíjah and Nafísah on the banks of the Nile are barbarised to Ammúnah, Khaddúgah and Naffúsah. [FN#182] i.e. his coming misfortune, the phrase being euphemistic. [FN#183] Arab. “Ráy:” in theology it means “private judgment” and “Ráyí” (act. partic.) is a Rationalist. The Hanafí School is called “Asháb al-Ráy” because it allows more liberty of thought than the other three orthodox. [FN#184] The angels in Al-Islam ride piebalds. [FN#185] In the Bresl. Edit. “Zájir” (xii. 286). [FN#186] This is the “King’s Son and the Merchant’s Wife” of the Hitopadesa (chapt. i.) transferred to all the Prakrit versions of India. It is the Story of the Bath-keeper who conducted his Wife to the Son of the King of Kanuj in the Book of Sindibad. [FN#187] The pious Caliph Al-Muktadi bi Amri llah (A.H. 467=A.D. 1075) was obliged to forbid men entering the baths of Baghdad without drawers. [FN#188] This peculiarity is not uncommon amongst the so-called Aryan and Semitic races, while to the African it is all but unknown. Women highly prize a conformation which (as the prostitute described it) is always “either in his belly or in mine.” [FN#189] Easterns, I have said, are perfectly aware of the fact that women corrupt women much more than men do. The tale is the “Story of the Libertine Husband” in the Book of Sindibad; blended with the “Story of the Go-between and the Bitch” in the Book of Sindibad. It is related in the “Disciplina Clericalis” of Alphonsus (A.D. 1106); the fabliau of La vieille qui seduisit la jeune fille; the Gesta Romanorum (thirteenth century) and the “Cunning Siddhikari” in the Kathá-Sarit-Ságara.