All eyes being on the watch, it
naturally follows that the new moon of this month is generally
seen at an earlier stage than are those of the other months of
the year, and its crescent is therefore apparently more slender.
Hence the comparison.
[FN#27] Caravanserai or public lodging-place.
[FN#28] A kind of religious mendicant.
[FN#29] One condition of which is that no violation of the
ceremonial law (which prohibits the use of intoxicating liquors)
be committed by the pilgrim, from the time of his assuming the
pilgrim's habit to that of his putting it off; and this is
construed by the stricter professors to take effect from the
actual formation of the intent to make the pilgrimage. Haroun er
Reshid, though a voluptuary, was (at all events, from time to
time) a rigid observer of Muslim ritual.
[FN#30] It is a frequent practice, in the East, gently to rub and
knead the feet, for the purpose of inducing sleep or gradually
arousing a sleeper.
[FN#31] An expression frequent in Oriental works, meaning "The
situations suggested such and such words or thoughts."
[FN#32] Religious mendicants.
[FN#33] Referring, of course, to the wine, which it appears to
have been customary to drink warm or boiled (vinum coctum) as
among several ancient nations and in Japan and China at the
present day.
[FN#34] Or chapter or formula.
[FN#35] A play upon words is here intended turning upon the
double meaning ("aloes" and "patience") of the Arabic word sebr.
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