The regent whose last joins his first.—On the particles of calling, sufficient information will be found in the Alfîyeh, v. 573, et seqq. A distinction must be observed between hamzeh, which is used in calling one who is near, and with medd, which is used in calling one who is either distant, or in the predicament of being distant, as when he is inattentive or asleep.

The regent whose deputy is more spacious than he in abode.— Ḥarîri, in the passage of the Durrah, quoted above, explains, as he does here, why is to be considered the original of the particles which enter into formulas of swearing, namely, that it is used when the verb “I swear” is expressed, and also that the affixed pronoun may be joined to it. Among the ḥurûf al jerr is used only before the name of God, or his epithets, as and : Alfîyeh, v. 366; Naṣîf’s grammar, p. 191. The usage of is explained by Ibn Hishâm, Anthol. Gram. Arabe, p. 88. It is a ḥarf al jerr in two cases, namely where it stands for as , many a region; and where it is the of the oath, as (I swear) by the fig tree and the olive tree: Koran xcv. l. Zamakhshari says (Anthol. Gram. Arabe, p. 100) that the primitive signification of is adhesion, so that when you say “I swear ,” you mean “My oath adheres to the word God.” He says, further on, that the is a substitute for , and the is a substitute for ; thus confirming the judgment of Ḥarîri that the is the original. When Ḥarîri says that has the sense of union, he adopts the opinion of the school of Basra, who hold that the conjunction “and” conveys only the idea of accompaniment, and that when you say “Zayd and ‘Amr came,” it may be that Zayd came before ‘Amr, or after him, or that they both came together. On the other hand the Kufians teach that the idea of order is also inherent in the word “and,” so that what is men­tioned before it must be considered as prior to what is mentioned after it. This, however, is refuted by Koran xxiii. 39: “There is nought but the life below; we die and we live, and we shall not be raised again.” Here what is later in time is put before what is earlier, for it is evident that when the infidels say “we live,” they refer to the present life, since they are denying the resurrection. It must be admitted, however, that according to Bayḍâwi, “we die and we live,” is interpreted to mean “one generation dies and another lives,” which would remove the objection to the Kufian theory which is derived from the Koran.

Also the is larger in dwelling.—The various uses of are given by Ibn Hishâm in the passage cited above. That it is prefixed to the noun, the verb, and the particle, while is prefixed only to the noun needs no explanation. Its use as a substitute for , or with understood, has been already noticed. The rest of the text applies to such phrases as where the second is manṣûb, with the meaning “Do ye think that ye shall enter into Paradise except God know which of you have warred well, so that he may know those who are constant?” Koran iii. 136. Or to such as , “Do not forbid a thing to men, and (in order to) commit it yourself.”

The place where males put on the veils of women.—This riddle relates to the grammatical singularity which appears not only in Arabic but also in Hebrew and Syriac; namely, that the femi­nine numeral from three to ten is used with the masculine noun, and the masculine numeral with the feminine noun. The most reasonable explanation of this phenomenon is that these numerals are substantives of multitude, the feminine representing in the Semitic languages the idea of collectiveness. It is as though you should say in Latin “trias filiorum.” The Arab gram­marians say that as the feminine fundamentally belongs to the abstract numeral it is put with the masculine, which is the fundamental gender; and as the masculine is secondary in the numeral it is put with the feminine, which is the secondary gender. Naṣîf’s grammar; al Ashmûni, Part III. p. 99; Ewald, Ausführliches Lehrbuch der Hebräischen Sprache, 7th edition, p. 650.

The other questions require no explanation. The sixth riddle in the Thirty-sixth Assembly applies to the word .