Lane-Poole — Mohammadan Treatiea loith Christiana. 237 

 the vowel-sign fetha over the . , and it hccomes nuah t__,j , the 

 plural of nauba. In the text of the treaty in two places we find the 

 variant en-nauba hA\ in place of ^^»J1 ; and <L»jJl occurs through- 

 out in the text of the treaty printed by de Sacy from Abu-1-Mahasin 

 (quoting Ibn-Kethlr) in his Second Memoir e sur la nature et lesrevolutions 

 dti droit de propriete territoriale en Egypte.'^- Nauba means primarily a 

 'turn '; hence what is done in turns or takes turn-about, a ' sentinel,' 

 a ' guard' ; and so it comes to mean a ' garrison.' This last meaning 

 is common in later literary Arabic ; and Dozy cites it, s. v. t_j43 , as 

 used by el-Bekri in the eleventh centiuy. I beKeve, therefore, that the 

 true translation of h ^\ and (^A\ in the Treaty is ' garrison ' and 

 'garrisons.' This rendering makes the whole document intelligible. 

 There was no reason to suppose that the Nubians were disposed to 

 settle in Lower Egypt ; there was certainly no foundation for the 

 statement that they shared the dominion with the Copts ; and there 

 seems no object in connecting them closely with the Eomans. But as 

 soon as you substitute ' garrisons ' for ' Nubians ' the whole sense 

 becomes clear. ' The garrisons shall not settle among ' the people of 

 Egypt : this was the chief desire of the Copts, for whom the Eoman 

 garrisons were the symbol and agents of that Melekite or ' Chalce- 

 donian ' persecution which had made the Roman rule intolerable to 

 the monophysite church to which the great majority of Egyptian 

 Christians belonged. Yet, if the Roman soldiers chose to become 

 peaceful citizens, they might enjoy the privileges of the treaty and pay 

 the poll-tax : ' whoso of the Romans and garrisons shall come into 

 their [i.e. the Copts'] treaty, for him is the like as for them, and on 

 him is the like as on them.' It would be quite unnecessary for the 

 treaty to lay down such a rule for the Nubians, whose inclusion was 

 at that time scarcely probable. Precisely the same policy is laid down 

 in the Jerusalem Treaty, which enacts that the Romans are to depart, 



* Mem. de VInstitnt {Acad, des inscr. et belles-lettres) v, 1 ff. 



