Arab. "Malik," here used as in our story-books: "Pompey was a wise and powerful King" says the Gesta Romanorum. This King is, as will appear, a Regent or Governor under Harun al-Rashid. In the next tale he is Viceroy of Damascus, where he is also called "Sultan."
The Bul. Edit. gives the lines as follows:—
The lance was his pen, and the hearts of his foes ✿ His paper, and dipped he in blood for ink; Hence our sires entitled the spear Khattíyah, ✿ Meaning that withal man shall write, I think.
The pun is in "Khattíyah" which may mean a writer (feminine) and also a spear, from Khatt-Hajar, a tract in the province Al-Bahrayn (Persian Gulf), and Oman, where the best Indian bamboos were landed and fashioned into lances. Imr al-Kays (Mu'allakah v. 4.) sings of "our dark spears firmly wrought of Khattiyan cane;" Al-Busírí of "the brown lances of Khatt;" also see Lebid v. 50 and Hamásah pp. 26, 231: Antar notes the "Spears of Khatt" and "Rudaynian lances." Rudaynah is said to have been the wife of one Samhár, the Ferrara of lances; others make her the wife of Al-Ka'azab and hold Samhár to be a town in Abyssinia where the best weapons were manufactured. The pen is the Calamus or Kalam (reed cut for pen) of which the finest and hardest are brought from Java: they require the least nibbing. The rhetorical figure in the text is called Husn al-Ta'alíl, our ætiology; and is as admirable to the Arabs as it appears silly to us.
"He loves folk" is high praise, meaning something more than benevolence and beneficence. Like charity it covers a host of sins.
Arab. "Rubb"=syrup a word Europeanised by the "Rob Laffecteur."
The Septentriones or four oxen and their wain.
The list fatally reminds us of "astronomy and the use of the globes" ... "Shakespeare and the musical glasses."
The octave occurs in Night xv. I quote Torrens (p. 360) by way of variety.
A courteous formula of closing with the offer.
To express our "change of climate" Easterns say, "change of water and air," water coming first.
"The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night" (Psalm cxxi. 6). Easterns still believe in the blighting effect of the moon's rays, which the Northerners of Europe, who view it under different conditions, are pleased to deny. I have seen a hale and hearty Arab, after sitting an hour in the moonlight, look like a man fresh from a sick bed; and I knew an Englishman in India whose face was temporarily paralysed by sleeping with it exposed to the moon.