Richard Burton - A plain and literal translation of the Arabian nights entertainments, now entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 (of 17)

The usual preliminary of a wrestling bout.

In Eastern wrestling this counts as a fair fall. So Ajax fell on his back with Ulysses on his breast (Iliad xxxii., 700, etc.).

So biting was allowed amongst the Greeks in the ἀνακλινοπάλη, the final struggle on the ground.

Supposed to be names of noted wrestlers. "Kayim" (not El-Kim as Torrens has it) is a term now applied to a juggler or "professor" of legerdemain who amuses people in the streets with easy tricks (Lane, M. E., chapt. xx.).

Lit. "laughed in his face" which has not the unpleasant meaning it bears in English.

Arab. "Abu riyáh"=a kind of child's toy. It is the "Ρόμβος" of the Greeks, our "bull-roarer" well known in Australia and parts of Africa.

The people of the region south of the Caspian which is called "Sea of Daylam." It has a long history; for which see D'Herbelot, s. v. "Dilem."

Coptic convents in Egypt still affect these drawbridges over the keep-moat.

Koran iv., xxii. etc., meaning it is lawful to marry women taken in war after the necessary purification although their husbands be still living. This is not permitted with a free woman who is a True Believer. I have noted that the only concubine slave-girls mentioned in the Koran are these "captives possessed by the right hand."

The Amazonian dame is a favourite in folk-lore and is an ornament to poetry from the Iliad to our modern day. Such heroines, apparently unknown to the Pagan Arabs, were common in the early ages of Al-Islam as Ockley and Gibbon prove, and that the race is not extinct may be seen in my Pilgrimage (iii. 55) where the sister of Ibn Rumi resolved to take blood revenge for her brother.

And Solomon said, "O nobles, which of you will bring me her throne?" A terrible genius ( i. e. an Ifrit of the Jinn named Dhakwan or the notorious Sakhr) said, "I will bring it unto thee before thou arise from thy seat (of justice); for I am able to perform it, and may be trusted" (Koran, xxvii. 38-39). Balkís or Bilkís (says the Durrat al-Ghawwás) daughter of Hozád bin Sharhabíl, twenty-second in the list of the rulers of Al-Yaman, according to some murdered her husband, and became, by Moslem ignorance, the Biblical "Queen of Sheba." The Abyssinians transfer her from Arabian Saba to Ethiopia and make her the mother by Solomon of Menelek, their proto-monarch; thus claiming for their royalties an antiquity compared with which all reigning houses in the world are of yesterday. The dates of the Tabábi'ah or Tobbas prove that the Bilkís of history ruled Al-Yaman in the early Christian era.

Arab. "Fass," fiss or fuss; the gem set in a ring; also applied to a hillock rounded en cabochon . In The Nights it is used to signify "a fine gem."