They were twice the
number of our small party, and therefore they had been in the habit of
strutting about with nonchalance, and looking at us fixedly, and
otherwise demeaning themselves in an indecorous way.
But when it came
to the point, they showed the white feather. These Persians accompanied
us to the end of our voyage. As they approached the Holy Land, visions
of the "Nabbut" caused a change for the better in their manners. At
Mahar they meekly endured a variety of insults, and at Yambu' they
cringed to us like dogs.
[FN#1] Men of the Maghrab, or Western Africa; the vulgar plural is
Maghrabin, generally written "Mogrebyn." May not the singular form of
this word have given rise to the Latin "Maurus," by elision of the
Ghayn, to Italians an unpronounceable consonant? From Maurus comes the
Portuguese "Moro," and our "Moor." When Vasco de Gama reached Calicut,
he found there a tribe of Arab colonists, who in religion and in
language were the same as the people of Northern Africa,-for this
reason he called them "Moors." This was explained long ago by Vincent
(Periplus, lib. 3), and lately by Prichard (Natural History of Man). I
repeat it because it has been my fate to hear, at a meeting of a
learned society in London, a gentleman declare, that in Eastern Africa
he found a people calling themselves Moors. Maghrabin-Westerns,-then
would be opposed to Sharkiyin, Easterns, the origin of our "Saracen."
From Gibbon downwards many have discussed the history of this word; but
few expected in the nineteenth century to see a writer on Eastern
subjects assert, with Sir John Mandeville, that these people "properly,
ben clept Sarrazins of Sarra." The learned M. Jomard, who never takes
such original views of things, asks a curious question:-"Mais comment
un son aussi distinct que le Chine [Arabic text] aurait-il pu se
confondre avec le Syn [Arabic text] et, pour un mot aussi connu que
charq; comment aurait-on pu se tromper a l'omission des points?" Simply
because the word Saracens came to us through the Greeks (Ptolemy uses
it), who have no such sound as sh in their language, and through the
Italian which, hostile to the harsh sibilants of Oriental dialects,
generally melts sh down into s. So the historical word
Hashshashiyun-hemp-drinker,-civilised by the Italians into "assassino,"
became, as all know, an expression of European use.
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