[171] The origin of the term is a Persian _jeu de mots_. “Bermek'am” would mean _I am a Barmak_; Bar-maken, _I sup it up_. These were the words spoken by Ja'afar the “Barmekide” when his poisoned ring caused the stones upon the arm of the Ommiade Caliph (Abd el Malik) to rattle--a general and popular superstition. It is quite possible that this memorable family belonged to the Gypsy tribe so common in Persia. According to Ibn Khálikán, the first great ancestor was the principal, or the grand prior, of the convent in Balkh called Nan-buhar (young spring), a palpable corruption of Nava bihára, in Sanskrit the “new monastery.” [172] Hence an Englishman defined the Gypsy religion as “faith in fortune-telling.” [173] Captain Newbold (p. 288) tells a curious tale of a Fehemi (wise woman), who threw a cowrie into a basin of clear water, and muttered an invocation over it; when the pot began to boil, the shell was shot out--doubtless by some chemical substance--to the distance of several feet. Some of the water accompanied it, with a slight explosion like that of a percussion cap thrown into the fire. [174] The word should be written Dár-For, the abode or region of the For tribe. [175] The latter material is that originally used in the Arab Darb el Raml (throwing of the sand), briefly called El Raml (the sand), that is, geomancy. [176] In conversation Von Kremer quoted the name Sabáijeh, a “broken plural,” of which no singular is known, as alternating with Zutt in old Arab historians. Newbold enumerates among the “distinct classes” of Ghagar the Meddáhín, Gharrádín, Barmekí (Barmekides), Walad Abú Tenná, Bayt el Rífá'í (?), Hemmeli, and Románi (p. 292). [177] This was written before 1863; in 1877 the old camping-ground of the Uzbeg Tatars had become a kind of Parisian quarter. [178] Kremer gives “Kurudāti”; the word is generally in the diminutive form Kurayd, a little Kird (baboon). [179] From the Persian Pahlewán, a brave, a wrestler, an athlete. [180] Generally written 'Id el Zuhá, the great Meccan festival when the victims are offered. [181] Their active habits make them a fine race. Newbold says that “one of the most magnificent women he had ever seen in the East” was a Ghagar rope-dancer at the palace of one of the Cairene Beys; he complains only that she had disfigured herself by tattooing her under lip and chin--a practice very common among the Arab women of Syria and Egypt.