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I saw the woman to be rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed and tall. Now these attributes belong to women who are enamoured of a man and are distraught for love of him;[1] moreover, I saw her consumed [with anxiety]; wherefore I knew that the patient was her husband. As for his strangerhood, I observed that the woman’s attire differed from that of the people of the city, wherefore I knew that she was a stranger; and in the mouth of the phial I espied a yellow rag,[2] whereby I knew that the patient was a Jew and she a Jewess. Moreover, she came to me on the first day [of the week];[3] and it is the Jews’ custom to take pottages[4] and meats that have been dressed overnight[5] and eat them on the Sabbath day,[6]
- ↑ Sic in the text; but the passage is apparently corrupt. It is not plain why a rosy complexion, blue eyes and tallness should be peculiar to women in love. Arab women being commonly short, swarthy and black-eyed, the attributes mentioned appear rather to denote the foreign origin of the woman; and it is probable, therefore, that this passage has by a copyist’s error, been mixed up with that which related to the signs by which the mock physician recognized her strangehood, the clause specifying the symptoms of her love-lorn condition having been crowded out in the process, an accident of no infrequent occurrence in the transcription of Oriental works.
- ↑ Yellow was the colour prescribed for the wearing of Jews by the Muslim law, in accordance with the decree issued by Khalif Omar ben el Khettab after the taking of Jerusalem in A.D. 636.
- ↑ i.e. Sunday.
- ↑ Heraïs, a species of “risotto,” made of pounded wheat or rice and meat in shreds.
- ↑ Lit. “That have passed the night,” i.e. are stale and therefore indigestible.
- ↑ i.e. Saturday.
