THE QUEEN OF THE SERPENTS.[507] (continued 1)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
END OF VOLUME V.
Source notes
569. Arab. “Kutb”; lit. an axle, a pole; next a prince; a high order or doyen in Sainthood; especially amongst the Sufi-gnostics.
570. Lit. “The Green” (Prophet), a mysterious personage confounded with Elijah, St. George and others. He was a Moslem, i.e. a true believer in the Islam of his day and Wazir to Kaykobad, founder of the Kayanian dynasty, sixth century B.C. We have before seen him as a contemporary of Moses. My learned friend Ch. Clermont-Ganneau traces him back, with a multitude of his similars (Proteus, Perseus, etc.), to the son of Osiris (p. 45, Horus et Saint Georges).
571. Arab. “Walad,” more ceremonious than “ibn.” It is, by the by, the origin of our “valet” in its sense of boy or servant who is popularly addressed Yá walad. Hence I have seen in a French book of travels “un petit lavelet.”
572. Arab. “Azal” = Eternity (without beginning); “Abad” = Infinity (eternity without end).
573. The Moslem ritual for slaughtering (by cutting the throat) is not so strict as that of the Jews; but it requires some practice; and any failure in the conditions renders the meat impure, mere carrion (fatís).
574. The Wazir repeats all the words spoken by the Queen—but “in iteration there is no recreation.”
575. A phrase always in the Moslem’s mouth: the slang meaning of “we put our trust in Allah” is “let’s cut our stick.”
576. Koran liii. 14. This “Sidrat al-Muntahá” (Zizyphus lotus) stands in the seventh heaven on the right hand of Allah’s throne: and even the angels may not pass beyond it.
577. Arab. “Habash”: the word means more than “Abyssinia” as it includes the Dankali Country and the sea-board, a fact unknown to the late Lord Stratford de Redcliffe when he disputed with the Porte. I ventured to set him right and suffered accordingly.
578. Here ends vol. ii. of the Mac. Edit.