Hardly the equivalent of the Arab. “Kataba” (which includes true tattooing with needles) and is applied to painting “patches” of blue or green colour, with sprigs and arabesques upon the arms and especially the breasts of women. “Kataba” would also be applied to striping the fingers with Henna which becomes a shining black under a paste of honey, lime and sal-ammoniac. This “patching” is alluded to by Strabo and Galen (Lane M. E. chapt ii.); and we may note that savages and barbarians can leave nothing of beauty unadorned; they seem to hate a plain surface like the Hindu silversmith, whose art is shown only in chasing.
A violent temper, accompanied with _voies de fait_ and personal violence, is by no means rare amongst Eastern princesses; and terrible tales are told in Persia concerning the daughters of Fath Ali Shah. Few men and no woman can resist the temptations of absolute command. The daughter of a certain Dictator all-powerful in the Argentine Republic was once seen on horseback with a white bridle of peculiar leather; it was made of the skin of a man who had boasted of her favours. The slave-girls suffer first from these masterful young persons and then it is the turn of the eunuchry.
A neat touch; she was too thoroughbred to care for herself first.
Here the ground or earth is really kissed.
Corresponding with our phrase, “His heart was in his mouth.”
Very artful is the contrast of the love-lorn Princess’s humility with her furious behaviour, in the pride of her purity, while she was yet a virginette and fancy free.
Arab. “Suhbat-hu” lit. = in company with him, a popular idiom in Egypt and Syria. It often occurs in the Bresl. Edit.
JULNAR THE SEA-BORN AND HER SON KING BADR BASIM OF PERSIA.
There was once in days of yore and in ages and times long gone before, in Ajam-land, a King Shahrimán[302] hight, whose abiding-place was Khorásán. He owned an hundred concubines, but by none of them had he been blessed with boon of child, male or female, all the days of his life. One day, among the days, he bethought him of this and fell lamenting for that the most part of his existence was past and he had not been vouchsafed a son, to inherit the kingdom after him, even as he had inherited it from his fathers and forebears; by reason whereof there betided him sore cark and care and chagrin exceeding. As he sat thus one of his Mamelukes came in to him and said, “O my lord, at the door is a slave-girl with her merchant, and fairer than she eye hath never seen.” Quoth the King, “Hither to me with merchant and maid!”; and both came in to him. Now when Shahriman beheld the girl, he saw that she was like a Rudaynian lance,[303] and she was wrapped in a veil of gold-purfled silk. The merchant uncovered her face, whereupon the place was illumined by her beauty and her seven tresses hung down to her anklets like horses’ tails. She had Nature-kohl’d eyes, heavy hips and thighs and waist of slenderest guise; her sight healed all maladies and quenched the fire of sighs, for she was even as the poet cries:—
