285“Wabār ibn Iram”: Iram was one of the five sons of Sām, son of Nūḥ; among his descendants was Wabār, forefather of the tribe of ʿĀd, which God destroyed for practicing false belief in the sanctuary of the Kaaba.
286“The name of one of the jinn who gave ear to the Qurʾān”: a reference to “Remember how We sent to you a band of the jinn who wished to hear the Qurʾān and as they listened they said to one another, ‘Be silent and listen’….” (Q Aḥqāf 46:29); the jinn heard Muḥammad reciting during his retreat from al-Ṭāʾif and became believers.
287“mārid”: a sub-species of jinn, literally “the rebellious.”
288“I can’t find it in the Qāmūs”: it does in fact appear there, although without a definition, being glossed simply as synonymous with ʿaḍrafūṭ (see below); other dictionaries (e.g., the Lisān) define it as meaning “old woman.” As the author points out, the word also occurs in the Qāmūs as the word used to disambiguate the pronunciation of most of these (in Arabic terms) bizarre-sounding words.
289“the lexicographer” (al-m.ṣ.): an abbreviation for al-muṣannif.
290“fading mirage”: and twelve other definitions (in the Qāmūs), including “ghoul” and “devil.”
291“the ant mentioned in the Qurʾān”: “… and when they came to the Valley of the Ants, one ant said, ‘Ants! Go into your dwellings lest [Sulaymān] and his hosts inadvertently crush you’” (Q Naml 27:18).
292“the jumper” (al-waththāb): neck-muscle spasm.
293al-Hirāʾ: “a devil charged with [causing] bad dreams” (Qāmūs).
294“Muḥammad or Maḥmūd”: names specific to Muslims, while the emir was a Christian.
295“unbored pearls”: virgins, in conventional poetic imagery.
296“the letter nūn”: twenty-nine of the sūras (“chapters”) of the Qurʾān commence with one or more letters of the alphabet of unknown significance. The Fāriyāq takes the nūn preceding the verse quoted here (Q Qalam 68:1) to stand for naḥs (“bad luck”).
297“his confidant… polemics… ecclesiastical bigwig”: the “confidant” (najī) was his elder brother Asʿad, whom the author visited, with other members of his family, following his adoption of Protestantism and who talked to him at length about his beliefs (al-Maṭwī, Aḥmad, 1:69); by “polemics” (qīla wa-qāla) the author means “religious controversy and debate”; the “ecclesiastical bigwig” (aḥad… min al-jathāliqah) must be the Maronite patriarch, to whom Asʿad frankly declared his beliefs in the hope of securing internal reform.
298“saddlebag” (khurj): this introduces the theme of “the Bag-men” (al-khurjiyyūn), the author’s term for Protestant missionaries (see Glossary).
299“one of the big-time fast-talking market traders” (mina l-ḍawāṭirati l-kibār): see Glossary.
300“God’s horsemen against the infidel!” (yā khayla llāh ʿalā l-kuffār): the first half of the cry used to assemble the first Muslims before battle and subsequently used as a pious invocation to action on behalf of Muslims in danger.
301“They shall roast in Hell!” (innahum ṣālū l-nār): Q Ṣād 38:59.
302“I shall bring you the little squit ‘before ever thy glance is returned to thee’” (anā ātīka etc.): the wording evokes the Qurʾān (Q Naml 27:40), when a member of Sulaymān’s council volunteers to bring him the Queen of Sheba’s throne.
303“who had a speech defect involving the letter f… Boss of the the Market Difgwace” (wa-kāna bi-hi faʾfaʾah): the defect called faʾfaʾah is defined as “repeating and over-using the letter fāʾ in speech” and causes the Fāriyāq to say shaykh al-fusūq (literally “the Boss of Disgrace”) for shaykh al-sūq (“the Boss of the Marketplace”).
304“Shouldn’t the addition of these eighty require the eighty-lash penalty?” (fa-lā takun ziyādatu hādhihi l-thamānīna mūjibun li-ḥaddi l-thamānīn): the addition of fāʾ to sūq (see preceding endnote) produces fusūq; the numerical value of the letter fāʾ in the counting system known as ḥisāb al-jummal is eighty; and the penalty specified in the Qurʾan for the fāsiq (“committer of fusūq” or depravity) is eighty lashes (cf. Q Nūr 24:4).
305“Emotion and Motion” (Fī l-ḥiss wa-l-ḥarakah): both emotion and motion (of the heart) are mentioned in the opening passage.
306“the Vizier of the Right-hand Side… the Vizier of the Left-hand Side” (wazīr al-maymanah… wazīr al-maysarah): terms derived from popular conceptions of the organization of the courts of the caliphs, but meaning here, presumably, the primary organs on the right- and left-hand sides of the body, respectively.
307“I came not to send peace, but a sword”: Matt. 10:34.
308“he exerted himself to save the Fāriyāq from the hands of the arrogant”: following his brother Asʿad’s arrest by the Maronite patriarch in March 1826 (see n. 314, below), the author himself sought refuge with the Protestant missionaries with whom Asʿad had consorted, and these hid him in Beirut before sending him abroad in December of the same year.
309“the Island of Scoundrels” (Jazīrat al-Mulūṭ): i.e., Malta, normally Māliṭah.
310“the golden calf” (al-baʿīm, literally, “the idol”): presumably a reference to the “idolatry” implied by the presence of statues of the Virgin Mary and saints in Maronite churches.
311“ignoble and, beside that, basely born” (ʿuṭullin wa-baʿda dhālika zanīm): Q Qalam 68:13.
312“there is therein no crookedness” (ghayru dhāti ʿiwajin): an echo of Q Zumar 39:28 (“[an Arabic Koran,] wherein there is no crookedness” (Arberry, Koran, 473).
313“Sh…! Sh…!” (al-khur! al-khur!): the passenger thinks the Fāriyāq is trying to say “The shit! The shit!” (al-khurʾ! al-khurʾ!), when, in fact, he is trying to say, in his delirium, “The saddlebag! The saddlebag” (alkhurj! al-khurj!).
314Asʿad: Asʿad al-Shidyāq (1798–1830), the third eldest brother in the family (the author being the fifth and youngest), became convinced of the truth of Protestantism after associating with American evangelical missionaries in Beirut and was detained on charges of heresy by Maronite patriarch Yūsuf Ḥubaysh at his palace at Qannūbīn, where he died after some six years of maltreatment. For a detailed account of the events leading to and surrounding Asʿad’s death and their significance, see Makdisi, Artillery, and Alwan, Aḥmad, chap. 1.
315Qannūbīn: a valley in northern Lebanon, site of numerous Christian monasteries, including a former seat of the Maronite patriarch.