681 “the proverbs of Luqmān the Wise [in] the feeble language used in Algeria” (amthāl Luqmān al-ḥakīm [fī] al-kalām al-rakīk al-mutʿāraf fī l-Jazāʾir): in all likelihood, Fables de Lokman, adaptées à l’idiome arabe en usage dans la régence d’Alger; suivies du mot à mot et de la prononciation interlinéaire by J. H. Delaporte fils (“secrétaire interprète de l’intendance civile”), Algiers, Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1835 (see Chauvin, Bibliographie, III:16 [21]).
682 “silly sayings taken from the rabble in Egypt and the Levant” (aqwāl sakhīfah min raʿāʿ al-ʿāmmah fī Miṣr wa-l-Shām): if aqwāl (“sayings”) here is to be taken to mean “utterances,” a possible candidate would be Berggren, Guide français-arabe vulgaire des voyageurs et des francs en Syrie et en Égypte: avec carte physique et géographique de la Syrie et plan géométrique de Jérusalem ancien et moderne, comme supplément aux Voyages en Orient (Uppsala, 1844), which is a French-Arabic dictionary of the dialects in question with an appended grammar; if the author intended “proverbs,” the choice is less clear: many collections of Arabic proverbs were compiled by French writers during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (see Chauvin, Bibliographie, I) but none apparently cover both Egypt and the Levant. It may seem unlikely that the author would direct his criticism in this passage at a Swedish writer, albeit one writing in French, but Berggren was a corresponding member of the Société Asiatique (personal communication from Geoffrey Roper) and al-Shidyāq may have seen his book there.
683 “a book… on the speech of the people of Aleppo”: presumably Caussin de Perceval’s Grammaire arabe vulgaire (see 4.18.11n230).
684 “anjaq”: see further Volume Three, 3.15.5.
685 “the dialect of the people of Algeria” (lisān ahl al-jazāʾir): kān fī wāḥid il-dār ṭūbāt bi-z-zāf il-ṭūbāt kishāfū “In a house there were many rats (ṭubbāt, sing. ṭubbah). The rats, when they saw….” and kīnākul “When I eat” and rāhī “She is (now)…” and antīnā (= ntīna) “you (fem. sing.)” and antiyyā (= ntiyya) “ditto” and naqjam “I joke” and khammim bāsh “he thought he would…” and wāsīt shughl il-mahābil “I did something crazy”… and il-dajājah tirjaʿ tiwallid [= tūld] zūj ʿaẓmāt “the hen now lays two eggs.” Some of the preceding is open to more than one interpretation and the sectioning sometimes results in incomplete utterances; different Algerian regional dialects may also be represented. Though one might expect al-Shidyāq to have taken this material from Bresnier’s grammar (see 5.3.6n388), only some of the individual words occur there.
686 “(i.e., al-sādis, ‘the sixth’)”: an error for “the sixteenth.”
687 “they transcribe j… with… d and j”: the Arabic letter jīm is pronounced in literary usage like the j in Jack. As in French orthography j is not pronounced like this, but like the s in measure, traditional French transcription employs dj for jīm (e.g., Djerba) to avoid misrepresentation of that letter by French j.
688 “The preaching metropolitan’s ‘cut off azbābakum’”: see Volume Two (2.3.3, last sentence, Arabic), where the preacher (who is not, as here, identified as a metropolitan) says azbābakum (“your pricks”) for asbābakum (“your ties to this world”).
689 “this… sandman” (hādhā l-ramlī): see above 5.3.2n383.
690 “not everything white is a truffle” (mā kullu bayḍāʾa shaḥmah): i.e., “appearances can be deceptive” (see al-Maydānī, Majmaʿ, II:156).
691 “the Maqāmāt of al-Ḥarīrī”: Silvestre de Sacy’s edition was first published in 1822; the author critiques aspects of the second edition (1847) below (5.5).
692 “the travels of the scholar and writer Shaykh Muḥammad ibn al-Sayyid ʿUmar al-Tūnusī”: i.e., Tashḥīdh al-adhhān bi-sīrat bilād al-ʿArab wa-l-Sūdān (The Honing of Minds through an Account of the History of the Lands of the Arabs and the Blacks), published in a lithographic edition by Kaeplin in Paris in 1850 or 1851 and in a critical edition by Khalīl Maḥmūd ʿAsākir and Muṣṭafā Muḥammad Musʿad in 1965 (al-Tūnusī, Tashḥīdh).
693 Nicolas Perron and Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Tūnusī met when working at the veterinary school at Abū Zaʿbal, where Perron took lessons in Arabic from al-Tūnusī, and their association continued after Perron became director of the Abū Zaʿbal medical school and hospital. That the lithographic edition of al-Tūnusī’s work is in Perron’s handwriting is stated in the work’s colophon. However, the editors of the printed edition believe that the lithograph was based on the author’s manuscript and, given the lengthy list of errata at its end, must have been checked and approved by the author (al-Tūnusī, Tashḥīdh, 15–19).
694 “al-ʿaṣā with a y”: i.e., 
for 
, as though the root were ʿ-ṣ-y rather than ʿ-ṣ-w.
695 “aʿlā as an elative with an alif”: i.e., 
for 
.
696 “najā with a yāʾ”: i.e., 
for 
, as though the root were n-j-y rather than n-j-w.
697 I.e., when they should be written āminūna muṭmaʾinnūna.
698 “fallāḥīna Miṣr”: for fallāḥī Miṣr (“the peasants of Egypt,” iḍāfah).
699 maḥmūdīna l-sīrah: for maḥmūdī l-sīrah (“those of praiseworthy conduct,” iḍāfah).
700 “istawzara l-faqīha Mālik”: for istawzara l-faqīha Mālikan (“he appointed the jurisprudent Mālik as minister,” Mālik being in the accusative and triptote).
701 “lā yaʿṣā”: for lā yaʿṣī (“he does not disobey”).
702 I.e., 
for 
.