liquid, containing potatoes, curry and meat. 3. Qurma, meat fried in butter with curry, onions and flavours. No water is added. 4. Kofta, round balls of minced meat fried in butter. 5. Shami Kabāb, flat minced cakes with a layer of slices of ginger, mint, etc. 6. Biryani of Pallao, rice, boiled in meat and steamed (salt). 7. Zarda, rice (sweetened) boiled and steamed, currants, almonds added in it and coloured with saffron. 8. Firini, rice (thin pudding) like ground rice pudding (sweet). 9. Maghūt, a sweet jelly dish, flavoured with rose-water and saffron. 10. Shir Māl, round flat cakes, slightly sweetened.
The breakfast dishes are fried chicken and samosa, sweet puffs, shir māl and tea; at the afternoon tea nothing is eaten.
After lunch another call summons the guests to a ceremony. So-and-so is taking her presents to the bride; a procession is formed and off they go. All say khānaysh ābād—"May this house be full and prosperous!" (Persian—khāna, house; ysh, his or her; ābād, be happy, full or prosperous.)
A second procession is already on its way, when the call for Midday Prayer, zuhr, stops the proceedings. The time for zuhr prayer is between the hours of 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. All crowd to the Mosques, and after an hour or so the ceremony begins again.
The bride is still confined to her room, and is being beautified. The old ladies in charge dress her and see her repeatedly in her wedding clothes before she is finally passed. Her tresses are perfumed, her face powdered, her eyes are brightened, and as a finishing touch sitāra (stars) are stuck here and there over her face. These "stars" or beauty-spots are small round discs, with a hole in the centre and a slit across. They are called sitāras, and are of various colours—golden, silvery, red, blue, purple and green. Crescents of the same kind are also used, and the shine on them produces a remarkable variegated effect. A cap is put on her head, and a feather fixed in it.
