Galland omits the name, which is outlandish enough.
Meaning that he had incurred no blood-guiltiness, as he had not killed the lad and only left him to die.
The H. V. explains away the improbability of the Magician forgetting his gift. “In this sore disquietude he bethought him not of the ring which, by the decree of Allah, was the means of Alaeddin’s escape; and indeed not only he but oft times those who practice the Black Art are baulked of their designs by Divine Providence.”
See vol. vii. 60. The word is mostly derived from “’afar” = dust, and denotes, according to some, a man coloured like the ground or one who “dusts” all his rivals. “’Ifr” (fem. ’Ifrah) is a wicked and dangerous man. Al-Jannabi, I may here notice, is the chief authority for Afrikus son of Abraha and xviiith Tobba being the eponymus of “Africa.”
Arab. “Ghayr an” = otherwise that, except that, a favourite form in this MS. The first word is the Syriac “Gheir” = for, a conjunction which is most unnecessarily derived by some from the Gr. γὰρ.
Galland and the H. V. make the mother deliver a little hygienic lecture about not feeding too fast after famine: exactly what an Eastern parent would not dream of doing.
The lad now turns the tables upon his mother and becomes her master, having “a crow to pick” with her.
Arab. “Munáfik” for whose true sense, “an infidel who pretendeth to believe in Al-Islam,” see vol. vi. p. 207. Here the epithet comes last being the climax of abuse, because the lowest of the seven hells (vol. viii. 111) was created for “hypocrites,” _i.e._ those who feign to be Moslems when they are Miscreants.
Here a little abbreviation has been found necessary to avoid the whole of a twice-told tale; but nothing material has been omitted.
Arab. “Taffaytu-hu.” This is the correct term = to extinguish. They relate of the great scholar Firozábádí, author of the “Kámús” (ob. A.H. 817 = A.D. 1414), that he married a Badawi wife in order to study the purest Arabic and once when going to bed said to her, “Uktuli’s-siráj,” the Persian “Chirágh-rá bi-kush” = Kill the lamp. “What,” she cried, “Thou an ’Álim and talk of killing the lamp instead of putting it out!”
In the H. V. the mother takes the “fruits” and places them upon the ground; “but when darkness set in, a light shone from them like the rays of a lamp or the sheen of the sun.”