_Page 93._ “Several of the soldiers returned.”—They probably came to report to the King that the enemy were in superior force,ārNā and that more troops must be despatched to oppose them.
_Page 94._ “Day was beginning to dawn.” The text adds: “He performed the morning-prayer (_namāz-i sabā_), at the time when [teaches the Kur’ān] ‘you can plainly distinguish a white thread from a black thread.’” The Persians, who are _shī`a_ (unorthodox), prefer to “distinguish a white horse from a gray horse.”
_Page 94._ “Say, King, shall I strike or not?”—It was customary, if I am not mistaken, at the courts of some of the Khalifs or other Eastern monarchs, for the executioner, after being ordered to decapitate a culprit, to ask the King three times: “Shall I strike?”
_Page 95._ “It was the will of Heaven that they should fall into the sea, where one of them perished, but the other was restored to us.”—The unhappy couple could not bring themselves to confess that the father had with his own hand tossed them into the water. There is something in this that bears a resemblance to the answer of Joseph’s brethren when they went down to Egypt to buy corn, and were arrested on suspicion of being spies: “Thy servants are twelve brethren, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan; and behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and _one is not_.” (Gen. xlii, 13.)
_Page 96._ “Set at liberty all those who had been confined with him.”—To the point is the following extract from the _Times_ newspaper, of September 23, 1882, p. 8, col. 2: “The coronation of Czars is always signalised by acts of imperial clemency, and in this respect the ukase of Alexander II, on the 7th of September, 1856, remains honourable. It granted a complete amnesty to all the political offenders of 1825–6, and of the Polish rebellion of 1831, who were still in exile, or _in prison_; also pardons to Press offenders, military defaulters, and to about five thousand other individuals in gaols.”
_Page 97._ “The history of Abū Temām, and the envy of the envious.”—The Muslim, in his daily prayers, says: “I fly for refuge unto the Lord of the Daybreak; that He may deliver me from the mischief of the envious, when he envieth.”—Kur`an cxiii. 5.