Before proceeding to consider other peculiarities of this work, and especially the artificial character of so many of the pieces, it will be as well to give a short summary of the Assemblies which do not appear in this volume, so that the book may be considered as a whole. The preface and the first twenty-six are here translated, and as each has a short argument or introduction, there needs no further mention of them. The remaining twenty-four are not inferior in merit, though the repe­tition of similar adventures and similar rhetoric becomes monotonous. They are also, if possible, more elaborate than those which are placed earlier in the work, and two or three of them are of exceeding difficulty. In the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth, the author produces compositions resembling those of the sixth and twenty-sixth. In the sixth is given an address, the words of which are alternately with and without pointed letters. In the twenty-sixth the artifice is varied, and each alternate letter is pointed, the others being unpointed. In the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth the ortho­graphical feat is again changed, for they contain compo­sitions in which every letter is destitute of points. In the former, Abû Zayd preaches an eloquent sermon on the certainty and the terrors of death; in the latter, after describing a loaf of bread and a flint in enigmatical language, somewhat after the style of the eighth, he indites a benediction at a wedding, into which he had inveigled Ḥârith. Both of these addresses are composed of letters without a single point. The thirtieth is remarkable for the use of what are called Sâsâni phrases, that is, the cant of beggars, mountebanks, prestigiators, and the like. Ḥârith enters by chance into a house hung with rags, which he discovers to be a place of call for such people. A wedding is going on, and the beggar bridegroom, in gaudy apparel, takes his seat with the dignity of king Munthir ibn Mâ as Semâ. Then steps forward an old man, who, of course, turns out to be Abû Zayd, and delivers himself of a wedding sermon, with the regular exordium of the mosque. In this address the Koran is mixed up with the metaphorical jargon of vagabonds after the strangest fashion, and at the close Abû Zayd performs the marriage ceremony. This argot appears to have been thought not unworthy of study, for one Abû Dulaf wrote a ḳaṣîdeh in it, setting forth the habits and ways of life of such people, and their singular dialect.*

The thirty-first Assembly is a composition of exquisite beauty. Ḥârith makes the pilgrimage to Mecca, and there finds Abû Zayd, who addresses the worshippers first in the usual rhymed prose, and then in verse, on the duties of true religion. The Ḥajj, he tells them, does not consist in hastening on camels to the holy city, or wearying the body, or parting from home and children, but in adding to these performances abstinence from sin, purity of intention, and the practice of virtue; for “washing in fonts cleanses not from immersion in sins, the baring of the body compensates not for the laying up of guilt, nor will the donning of the pilgrim’s garb avail him who clothes himself with the forbidden.” The verses which follow are inspired by the loftiest morality. When he has concluded Ḥârith approaches him, but Abû Zayd declares that he has a vow not to associate with any one during his pilgrimage, nor to make gain, nor to recite his pedigree, nor to ask alms. As the pilgrims pass by on their journey he again addresses them in edifying verse.

The thirty-second is of a very different character, and is, perhaps, the strangest and most difficult in the work. Indeed, without plentiful commentary, it would be per­fectly unintelligible. It is that which the author alludes to in the preface when he speaks of “legal decisions dependent on the use of words.” Abû Zayd is discovered playing the part of a mufti, or jurisconsult, amid a tribe of Arabs, and bidding them ask questions of him. One of them steps forward, and says that he has gathered a hundred questions from people learned in the law, and he pro­pounds them one by one to Abû Zayd. The peculiarity of these questions is that each contains a word which may be understood in two senses, the design of the questioner being to test not only Abû Zayd’s knowledge of the Moslem canon law, but also his acquaintance with the niceties of the language. Abû Zayd is represented as discerning the hidden meaning of each question, and as returning an answer which, while directly contrary to that which might be expected, is yet correct if the ambi­guous word be taken in its less popular signification. For instance, it is asked, “Does a man ill who neglects to wash his (hatchet)?” Abû Zayd replies, “Yes, it is as though he washed not his head:” for signi­fies not only a hatchet, but also the upper part of the back of the head. Again, it is asked, “May a man say his prayers after he has been carrying (puppies)?” which are unclean animals. The answer is, “Yes; it is no more than if he had carried beans.” signifies a puppy, or the whelp of a beast of prey, and also the young cucumber, or the pomegranate. And so of the whole hundred questions. Similar puzzles were not unknown in Europe, as the question, “Num peccatum est occidere patrem suum,” where not “one’s own father,” but “the father of swine,” is meant. This Assembly is an elabo­rate exercise on the synonyms of the language. It may be noticed that the decisions are according to the rite of Ash Shâfi‘î, to which Ḥarîri belonged.

The thirty-third presents nothing worthy of especial notice. Abû Zayd, feigning to be palsied, recites verses which obtain for him the alms of the people, and when discovered by Ḥârith, confesses his imposture. In the thirty-fourth, Abû Zayd sells his son to Ḥârith as a slave, taking care, however, that the boy shall exclaim to him, “I am Joseph, I am Joseph,” words taken from Koran xii, 90. Ḥârith thinks that the boy is only telling his name, whereas he was indicating that he was free born, and ought not to be sold any more than Joseph, the son of Jacob, ought to have been sold by his brethren. The boy obtains his liberty, and Ḥârith loses his money. The thirty-fifth is a composition in the style of the eighth, and the earlier part of the twenty-ninth. Abû Zayd describes a wine-cask metaphorically under the name of a maiden, for whom, as he tells the people, he desires to purchase wedding attire. They give him money, and it turns out that by the wedding attire is meant a flagon and a cup, which were necessary to wed, as it were, the wine-cask to the drinker.

The thirty-sixth contains twenty conundrums, all of the same form: “What word signifies so and so?” For instance, what word signifies “Receive a thousand de-nars.” The answer is, (she that guides aright): for means “take,” and is the fine or blood-wit for killing a man, which was fixed at a thousand denars. It is needless to give any further specimens of the author’s ingenuity. The answers to these conundrums, and to the legal questions in the thirty-second, are given by Ḥarîri himself, at the end of the respective Assemblies.

The thirty-seventh exhibits Abû Zayd and his son be­fore the Kadi of Ṣa‘dah, obtaining money from him, as usual, by trickery. The father accuses the son of dis­obedience, and the son declares that his father had sought to degrade him by making him a beggar. The son recites some lines against beggary which he says his father had once taught him, and which justified him in disobeying the paternal commands; and the father retorts with others, which the son had recited to him, in praise of making gain in every way possible. The dialogue is kept up with great spirit, and the adventure ends by the Kadi bestow­ing his bounty on both.

In the thirty-eighth, Abû Zayd addresses the governor of a town in some fine verses in praise of liberality to men of genius, and is rewarded as usual. In the thirty-ninth, the adventure is somewhat after the fashion of the twelfth. Ḥârith is on ship-board, about to make a voyage, when a voice is heard from the shore, in the darkness, begging a passage. The stranger is taken on board, and soon in­forms the travellers that he has a talisman, a form of words handed down from the prophets, which would guard them from all dangers. He repeats it, and they think it futile; but, at a port whither they are forced to put in through a storm that overtakes them, Abû Zayd finds great lamentation among the servants of a noble family on account of the long labour of their mistress in child­birth, and he writes for them a copy of verses in which the child is warned of the miseries of the world, and recommended not to come into it. This, which seems the very contrary of what the lady’s case demanded, is hung round her neck, and her safe delivery follows. Abû Zayd is handsomely rewarded.