[FN#316] The game is much mixed up after Arab fashion. The “Tufat” is the Siyáhgosh= Black-ears, of India (Felis caracal), the Persian lynx, which gives very good sport with Dachshunds. Lynxes still abound in the thickets near Cairo [FN#317] The “Sons of Kahtán,” especially the Ya’arubah tribe, made much history in Oman. Ya’arub (the eponymus) is written Ya’arab and Ya’arib; but Ya’arub (from Ya’arubu Aorist of ’Aruba) is best, because according to all authorities he was the first to cultivate primitive Arabian speech and Arabic poetry. (Caussin de Perceval’s Hist. des Arabes i. 50, etc.) [FN#318] He who shooteth an arrow by night. See the death of Antar shot down in the dark by the archer Jazár, son of Jábír, who had been blinded by a red hot sabre passed before his eyes. I may note that it is a mere fiction of Al-Asma’i, as the real ’Antar (or ’Antarah) lived to a good old age, and probably died the “straw death.” [FN#319] See vol. ii., p. 77, for a reminiscence of masterful King Kulayb and his Himá or domain. Here the phrase would mean, “None could approach them when they were wroth; none were safe from their rage.” [FN#320] The sons of Nabhán (whom Mr. Badger calls Nebhán) supplied the old Maliks or Kings of Oman. (History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman, etc., London, Hakluyt Soc. 1871.) [FN#321] This is a sore insult in Arabia, where they have not dreamt of a “Jawab-club,” like that of Calcutta in the old days, to which only men who had been half a dozen times “jawab’d” (= refused in Anglo-lndian jargon) could belong. “I am not a stallion to be struck on the nose,” say the Arabs. [FN#322] Again “inverted speech”: it is as if we said, “Now, you’re a damned fine fellow, so,” etc. “Allah curse thee! Thou hast guarded thy women alive and dead;” said the man of Sulaym in admiration after thrusting his spear into the eye of dead Rabi’ah. [FN#323] The Badawi use javelins or throw-spears of many kinds, especially the prettily worked Mizrák (Pilgrimage i. 349); spears for footmen (Shalfah, a bamboo or palm-stick with a head about a hand broad), and the knightly lance, a male bamboo some 12 feet long with iron heel and a long tapering point often of open work or damascened steel, under which are tufts of black ostrich feathers, one or two. I never saw a crescent-shaped head as the text suggests. It is a “Pundonor” not to sell these weapons: you say, “Give me that article and I will satisfy thee!” After which the Sons of the Sand will haggle over each copper as if you were cheapening a sheep. (Ibid. iii. 73.) [FN#324] The shame was that Gharib had seen the girl and had fallen in love with her beauty instead of applying for her hand in recognised form. These punctilios of the Desert are peculiarly nice and tetchy; nor do strangers readily realise them.