Popularly rendered Caucasus (see Night cdxcvi): it corresponds so far with the Hindu "Udaya" that the sun rises behind it; and the "false dawn" is caused by a hole or gap. It is also the Persian Alborz, the Indian Meru (Sumeru), the Greek Olympus, and the Rhiphæan Range (Veliki Camenypoys) or great starry girdle of the world, etc.

Arab. "Mizr" or "Mizar;" vulg. Búzah; hence the medical Lat. Buza, the Russian Buza (millet beer), our "booze," the O. Dutch "buyzen" and the German "busen." This is the old ποθὸς θεῖος of negro and negroid Africa; the beer of Osiris, of which dried remains have been found in jars amongst Egyptian tombs. In Equatorial Africa it is known as "Pombe;" on the Upper Nile "Merissa" or "Mirisi" and amongst the Kafirs (Caffers) "Tshuala," "Oala" or "Boyala: " I have also heard of "Buswa" in Central Africa which may be the origin of "Buzah." In the West it became ζῦθος, (Romaic πίῤῥα), Xythum and cerevisia or cervisia, the humor ex hordeo, long before the days of King Gambrinus. Central Africans drink it in immense quantities: in Unyamwezi the standing bedsteads, covered with bark-slabs, are all made sloping so as to drain off the liquor. A chief lives wholly on beef and Pombe which is thick as gruel below. Hops are unknown: the grain, mostly Holcus, is made to germinate, then pounded, boiled and left to ferment. In Egypt the drink is affected chiefly by Berbers, Nubians and slaves from the Upper Nile; but it is a superior article and more like that of Europe than the "Pombe." I have given an account of the manufacture in The Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. ii., p. 286. There are other preparations, Umm-bulbul (mother nightingale), Dinzáyah and Súbiyah, for which I must refer to the Shaykh El-Tounsy.

There is a terrible truth in this satire, which reminds us of the noble dame who preferred to her handsome husband the palefrenier laid, ord et infâme of Queen Margaret of Navarre (Heptameron No. xx.) We have all known women who sacrificed everything despite themselves, as it were, for the most worthless of men. The world stares and scoffs and blames and understands nothing. There is for every woman one man and one only in whose slavery she is "ready to sweep the floor." Fate is mostly opposed to her meeting him but, when she does, adieu husband and children, honour and religion, life and "soul." Moreover Nature (human) commands the union of contrasts, such as fair and foul, dark and light, tall and short; otherwise mankind would be like the canines, a race of extremes, dwarf as toy-terriers, giants like mastiffs, bald as Chinese "remedy dogs," or hairy as Newfoundlands. The famous Wilkes said only a half-truth when he backed himself, with an hour's start, against the handsomest man in England; his uncommon and remarkable ugliness (he was, as the Italians say, un bel brutto), was the highest recommendation in the eyes of very beautiful women.

Every Moslem burial-ground has a place of the kind where honourable women may sit and weep unseen by the multitude. These visits are enjoined by the Apostle: – Frequent the cemetery, 'twill make you think of futurity! Also: – Whoever visiteth the graves of his parents (or one of them) every Friday, he shall be written a pious son, even though he might have been in the world, before that, a disobedient. (Pilgrimage ii., 71.) The buildings resemble our European "mortuary chapels." Saíd, Pasha of Egypt, was kind enough to erect one on the island off Suez, for the "use of English ladies who would like shelter whilst weeping and wailing for their dead." But I never heard that any of the ladies went there.

Arab. "Ajal"=the period of life, the appointed time of death: the word is of constant recurrence and is also applied to sudden death. See Lane's Dictionary, s. v.

"The dying Badawi to his tribe" (and lover) appears to me highly pathetic. The wild people love to be buried upon hill-slopes whence they can look down upon the camp; and they still call out the names of kinsmen and friends as they pass by the grave-yards. A similar piece occurs in Wetzstein (p. 27, "Reisebericht ueber Hauran," etc.): —

The Akásirah (plur. of Kasrá=Chosroës) is here a title of the four great dynasties of Persian Kings. 1. The Peshdadian or Assyrian race, proto-historics for whom dates fail; 2. The Káyánián (Medes and Persians) who ended with the Alexandrian invasion in B.C. 331; 3. The Ashkánián (Parthenians or Arsacides) who ruled till A.D. 202; and 4. The Sassanides which have already been mentioned. But strictly speaking "Kisri" and "Kasra" are titles applied only to the latter dynasty and especially to the great King Anushirwan. They must not be confounded with "Khusrau" (P.N. Cyrus, Ahasuerus? Chosroës?); and yet the three seem to have combined in "Cæsar," Kaysar and Czar. For details especially connected with Zoroaster see vol. I, p. 380 of the Dabistan or School of Manners, translated by David Shea and Anthony Troyer, Paris, 1843. The book is most valuable, but the proper names are so carelessly and incorrectly printed that the student is led into perpetual error.

The words are the very lowest and coarsest; but the scene is true to Arab life.

Arab. "Hayhát: " the word, written in a variety of ways is onomatopoetic, like our "heigh-ho!" it sometimes means "far from me (or you) be it!" but in popular usage it is simply "Alas."

Lane (i., 134) finds a date for the book in this passage. The Soldan of Egypt, Mohammed ibn Kala'ún, in the early eighth century (Hijrah=our fourteenth), issued a sumptuary law compelling Christians and Jews to wear indigo-blue and saffron-yellow turbans, the white being reserved for Moslems. But the custom was much older and Mandeville (chapt. ix.) describes it in A.D. 1322 when it had become the rule. And it still endures; although abolished in the cities it is the rule for Christians, at least in the country parts of Egypt and Syria. I may here remark that such detached passages as these are absolutely useless for chronology: they may be simply the additions of editors or mere copyists.