357Henry IV (r. 1056–1106) had declared Pope Gregory VII deposed at the synod of Worms, held a week before his own excommunication.
358“Countess Matilda”: Matilda of Tuscany (1055–1115), a leading noblewoman and heiress, who supported Pope Gregory VII during the Investiture Controversy.
359Canossa: Matilda’s ancestral castle.
360Urbanus II (r. 1088–99) in fact succeeded the short-reigning Victor III rather than Gregory VII directly.
361“the two sons of Henry IV”: i.e, Conrad (1074–1101) and his brother Henry (1086–1125), later Emperor Henry V (r. 1106–1125); Conrad joined the papal camp against his father in 1093; Henry was crowned King of Germany by his father to replace Conrad but soon revolted against his father, whom ultimately he deposed.
362Henry VI (r. 1190–1197) was in fact the son of Emperor Frederick I, while Frederick II was his son.
363Pope Celestine: i.e, Celestine III (r. 1191–98).
364Innocent III: reigned 1198–1216.
365Pope Innocent IV (r. 1243–54) summoned the Thirteenth General Council of the Church at Lyons in 1245 in order to further his attempts to recover from the Holy Roman Empire territories in Italy that Innocent believed belonged by right to the papacy. The Council formally deposed the emperor, although to no practical effect.
366Frederick II: reigned 1212–1250.
367Lucius II: during his reign (1144–45), the Senate of Rome established a Commune of Rome that demanded the pope abandon all secular functions; the pope died leading an army against the Commune.
368“Clement XV”: a mistake for “Clement V” (r. ca. 1264–1314).
369Vienne: on the Rhône in southern France and site of the Council of Vienne, called by Clement V from 1311 to 1312 to address accusations against the Templars, partly in response to the desire of Philip IV of France, Clement’s patron, to confiscate their wealth.
370“Pope Urban”: i.e., Urban VI (r. ca. 1318–89), who in 1384 tortured and put to death certain of his cardinals who wished to declare him incompetent.
371John XXIII: i.e., the antipope John XXIII (r. 1410–15), whose seat, during the Western Schism, was in Rome.
372John XXIII was deposed, along with other claimants to the papacy, by the Council of Constance, which was called by Emperor Sigismund; he was accused of heresy, simony, schism, and immorality.
373Sijjīn: a valley in Hell.
374“over your eyes there is a covering” (ʿalā abṣārikum ghishāwah): cf. Q Baqarah 2:7.
375“the Five Stars” (al-nujūm al-khamsah): the planets known to Islamic astronomy (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury), called khunnas because they return (takhnusu) in their courses.
376“the Mijarrah—‘the gateway of the sky, or its anus’” (mijarratuhā—bāb al-samāʾi aw sharajuhā): the Lisān explains the first part of the gloss by the resemblance of the Milky Way to an arch.
377“the rujum—‘the stars used for stoning’” (rujumuhā—al-nujūmu llatī yurmā bihā): the stars with which God stones Satan, who is commonly referred to as al-rajīm for this reason; in popular belief, shooting stars (see, for Egypt, Lane, Manners, 223).
378“the Two Calves” (al-farqadayn): stars γ and β in Ursa Minor (the Little Dipper); also known as Pherkad and Kochab (al-kawkab).
379“all those gazettes” (fī hādhihi l-waqāʾiʿ al-ikhbāriyyah): no doubt a reference to Al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyyah, on which see further n. 132 to 2.11.5 below.
380“Friends of God” (awliyāʾ Allāh): individuals believed to be chosen by God for special favor; sometimes they manifest unusual spiritual powers.
381“to bring about divorces” (li-l-taṭlīq): a reference, perhaps, to the notary (maʾdhūn) who gives formal recognition to a divorce.
382“as a legitimizer” (li-l-taḥlīl): if a Muslim man divorces his wife three times — thus irrevocably — and then regrets his act, he may hire a man (known as a muḥallil, approx. “legitimizer”) to marry her and then divorce her, rendering remarriage legally possible.
383Though the references in the following passage are, in some cases, at least, to recognized rhetorical figures, their precise meaning is less important than the impression of erudite obfuscation that they convey.
384“the method of the sage” (uslūb al-ḥakīm): taking advantage of an inappropriate or unanswerable question to open a more important discussion.
385“person-switching” (iltifāt): a rhetorical figure consisting of an “abrupt change of grammatical person from second to third and from third to second,” as in the words of the poet Jarīr “When were the tents at Dhū Ṭulūḥ? O tents, may you be watered by ample rain!” (Meisami and Starkey, Encyclopedia, 2:657).
386“tight weaving” (iḥtibāk): a rhetorical figure defined, in a widely taught formulation (http://www.alfaseeh.com/vb/showthread.php?t=9355), as “the omission from the earlier part of the utterance of something whose equal or equivalent comes in the later, and the omission from the later of something whose equal or equivalent comes in the earlier”; an example is the Qurʿānic verse “a company that fights for God and a disbelieving company” (Q Āl ʿImrān 3:13), meaning “a [believing] company that fights for God and a disbelieving company [that fights for the Devil].”
387“an Arabized word”: via Latin, from Greek manganon.
388“like common caltrops” (ʿalā mithāl al-ḥasak al-maʿrūf): i.e., like star-weed (Centaurea calcitrapa), whose spiked seed-cases pierce sandals and feet when stepped on.
389“a padded outer garment… a weapon… thick shields”: the confusion as to the word’s meaning seems to stem from its foreign, probably Persian, origin.
390“a device for war worn by horse and man alike”: cataphract armor.
391al-ʿadhrāʾ: literally, “the virgin”—“a kind of collar by means of which the hands, or arms, are confined together with the neck” (Lane, Lexicon).
392Jadīs and Ṭasm: related tribes of ʿĀd, a pre-Islamic people destroyed, according to the Qurʾan, for their ungodliness.
393al-ʿAbbās ibn Mirdās: an early Meccan convert to Islam who burned al-Dimār, the idol of his clan.
394ʿAmr ibn Luḥayy: a leader of Mecca in the Days of Barbarism, and supposedly the first to introduce the worship of idols into the Arabian Peninsula.
395“Ilyās, peace be upon him”: Ilyās (Elias) is regarded in Islam as a prophet.
396“ʿUrwah’s hadith ‘al-Rabbah’” (ḥadīth ʿUrwatin al-Rabbah): the tradition recounts that a recent convert to Islam, ʿUrwah ibn Masʿūd, was refused entry to his home unless he first visited “al-Rabbah” (literally, “the Mistress”), “meaning al-Lāt, which is the rock that [the tribe of] Thaqīf used to worship at al-Ṭāʾif” (see Ibn al-Athīr, Al-Nihāyah, 1:56).
397Dhāt ʿIrq: a place, 92 kilometers north of Mecca.
398“Furdūd, Pherkad… Kuwayy”: names of stars in this list that have accepted English names (all but one of which in fact derive from Arabic) are printed in regular font, while those impossible to identify from the extensive list provided by the Wikipedia article “List of Arabic Star Names” are transcribed in italics.
399“instruments that…”: see the Translator’s Afterword (Volume Four) on the choice of synonyms in this passage; note that, while the Arabic list contains forty-eight items, only forty-five are represented in the translation, because three (daghz, zazz, and waqz) could not be found in the dictionaries.