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they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 45: The Affidavit)
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It would be detestable if readers took Moby Dick as some sort of symbol and not just an angry whale.

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Indian King Philip Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 45: The Affidavit)
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Indian King Philip, or Metacomet fought English settlers and their Native American allies in New England from 1675-78. The conflict is known as King Philip’s War

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Marius or Sylla Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 45: The Affidavit)
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Gaius Marius and Lucius Corneliuss Sulla were two great Roman Generals who hated each other.

Marius

Sulla

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Cambyses Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 45: The Affidavit)
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Ancient Persian kings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambyses_II

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Rinaldo Rinaldini Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 45: The Affidavit)
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Rinaldo Rinaldini, Captain of Banditi was the hero-outlaw of a popular German novel published in 1796.

A still from the 1926 German Film based on the novel

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So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed, as indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier part, is as important a one as will be found in this volume Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 45: The Affidavit)
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God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 44: The Chart)
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The vulture that feeds on Ahab’s heart is his desire for revenge.

The vulture that feeds on my heart is at least as petty: http://www.vulture.com/

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and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 44: The Chart)
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Ahab should cut his nails.

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379

9 years

Or it is referring to Jesus’s crucifixion. By forcing his own nails into his palms, Ahab is crucifying himself.

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Mufti Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 44: The Chart)
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An Islamic legal scholar.

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Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of the Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could enable her commander to make the great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and then running down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific in time to cruise there. Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season. Yet the premature hour of the Pequod's sailing had, perhaps, been correctly selected by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion of things. Because, an interval of three hundred and sixty-five days and nights was before him; an interval which, instead of impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt; if by chance the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas far remote from his periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkled brow off the Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any other waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor'-Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Levanter and Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the devious zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's circumnavigating wake. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 44: The Chart)
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Common sense says to try to find Moby Dick in the Pacific ocean during the Season-On-The-Line (see last annotation), but Ahab has a different plan designed to catch the Whale returning to his favorite hunting grounds. Seems overly complicated, but Ahab is an expert so…

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