Ḥolwân.—A proverbial expression is “Longer in companion­ship than the two palm-trees of Ḥolwân.” Two palm-trees, planted on a hill near the town in the time of the Persians, had been celebrated by the poet Mo‘ṭî ibn Iyâs, who addressed to them a lamentation at his separation from a slave-girl whom he had sold, saying that they too would weep if they were parted. For this reason the Khalif Al Manṣûr forbade their destruction. But Hârûn ar-Reshîd, passing that way, was seized with a fever, and the pith of a palm-tree being prescribed to him, he cut down one of them. The other quickly withered away. This legend is worthy of notice, as it has a character of sentimen­tality somewhat rare in the East. (Prov. Arab. II. 47). Ḥol-wân is four stations east of Bagdad, and was named after its founder, Ḥolwân ibn ‘Alî ibn Ḳoḍâ‘ah. It consists of two towns divided by a large river. It was conquered in the time of the Khalif ‘Omar by Sa‘d ibn Abî Waḳḳâṣ, after the battle of Jelûleh.

My amulets were doffed and my turbans were donned.—Ever since I came to the age of puberty. Among the Arabs amulets were hung round children’s necks to preserve them from the evil eye, or the designs of Jinn; and these were taken off when the child reached a certain age. When the boy approached man­hood he assumed the turban and girt on the sword.

The word temâ’im signifies “certain beads which the Arabs of the desert used to hang upon their children to repel, as they asserted, the evil eye;” or necklaces, on which amulets were put. Temâ’im were forbidden by the Prophet, though in , which are sentences from the Koran, there is no harm; so that Ḥarîri, in describing Ḥârith as wearing temâ’im in childhood, speaks after the manner of the Arabs of the Ignorance, which is allowable in poetical composition, as the attribution to moderns of classical customs and beliefs is allowed to European poets. Of the charms used among Moslems of the present day an niteresting account may be found in Mr. Lane’s Modern Egyp­tians. Another kind of charm to which great power has been attributed is that which is called by mathematicians a Magic Square, that is the arrangement of numbers in certain orders, so that, whether counted horizontally, perpendicularly, or diago­nally, each row may make up the same sum. Others present more complicated relations of numbers; and each has its virtue in certain positions of the planetary bodies. But these latter were the devices of astrologers rather than of theologians; and it may be presumed that the only amulet used by the strictest professors consisted of verses of the Koran, or relics in some way connected with religion.

Learning’s seat.—According to the opinion of some this was the name of a place, so called from being the meeting place of learned men.

Hope and desire.—Literally, “It may be” and “Perhaps.” When he could find no one to instruct him sufficiently, he passed his time in hoping that such a person would soon appear.

Shifting among the varieties of pedigree, etc.—The Arab race, being made up of many tribes, the members of which, though continually roaming through the country and taking up their temporary abode in strange cities, or among neighbouring tribes, still prided themselves on their allegiance to their own kinsmen, and relied on the protection which these would give them, it was the habit to ask the name and pedigree of a new comer. Examples of this occur frequently in the Assem­blies. When Abû Zayd has charmed his audience with one of his displays, he is commonly asked what is his home, and from what stock he derives his lineage. In answer, he gene­rally claims to be of kin to the race of Ghassân, who reigned in Syria under the protection of the Romans, and whose rivalries with the kings of Hira, who were under the protection of the Persians, make up a great part of ancient Arab history. Thus, in the Sixth Assembly, he says, “Ghassân is my kindred and Serûj my home.” In the present case he is represented as giving various accounts of himself as might be most suitable to the various disguises which he assumed.

Beating about.—There may be here a double signification to . From its primitive signification “to beat” it is used to express the stumbling of the purblind she-camel, which beats the ground with her hoof, not seeing whither she is going, and is thence applied to any one who goes recklessly to work in any matter. Another signification is to beat a tree, so as to break off the leaves for fodder, whence the word is metaphorically applied to the extorting alms from the benevolent by impor­tunity. Either sense would be applicable here. In the Nine­teenth Assembly the author purposely exhibits the two senses of the word when he says of Abû Zayd .

Sâsân.—Sâsân al Akbar, son of Bahman, son of Isfendiyâr, son of Kushtâsif, a Prince of Western Persia, is the reputed chief and patron of all beggars and mountebanks. The legend is that Bahman, being near his death, sent for his daughter Ḥomaya, who was pregnant, and settled the succession on her and her child, if it should prove a boy, to the exclusion of his own son Sâsân. Sâsân, indignant at this, left the court, and lived the life of a shepherd among the Kurds, so that his name passed into a proverb for one who leads a vagabond life. Hence “the people of Sâsân the Kurd” is a phrase signifying beggars, presti-giators, people that go about with dogs or monkeys and the like. These people had a cant of their own, which was not thought unworthy of study and imitation by the learned. One Abû Dulaf wrote a ḳaṣîdeh in their language, which is said to have supplied Ḥarîri with many of the terms used in the Thirtieth Assembly. This Assembly, which I purpose to publish in my second volume, introduces Abû Zayd making a speech at a beg­gars’ wedding, full of the cant phrases current among them. In the Forty-ninth, called the Assembly of Sâsân, one of the masterpieces of the author, Abû Zayd exhorts his son to follow a beggar’s life, as the happiest and most independent; and there he speaks of Sâsân as having laid the foundations of the pro­fession, and distinguished its kinds, and kindled the flame of it in east and west.

Sherîshi gives another account of the origin of this term. He says that after the Persians had been subdued in the time of the Khalifs ‘Omar and ‘Othmân, they submitted peaceably to the conquerors, adopting their manners and religion, and that being a clever, artful people they betook themselves to various ways of making their living, one of which was mendicancy. Their way of exciting commiseration was to give out that they belonged to the royal house of Sâsân, or, as we call them, the Sassanids, and to describe the cruel changes of fortune and their fallen conditon, so that at last people came to call a beggar a Sâsâni. This may be the true derivation of the word, but it is evident, from the Forty-ninth Assembly, that Ḥarîri adopts the legend which makes Sâsân a real person.

The Princes of Ghassân.—The ancestors of this family issued from Yemen at that celebrated epoch of Arab history, the break­ing of the dyke of Mareb. The legend is that Amr Muzayḳîyâ, being warned by his wife of the approaching calamity, sold his property and emigrated, being followed by many other families, who found the country reduced to sterility. (See the note at the end of the Seventeenth Assembly, to the words “We went asunder like the bands of Saba”). The part of the community which followed Muzayḳîyâ first halted in the northern part of Yemen, by a lake called Ghassân, and here Muzayḳîyâ died. His son Tha‘labeh migrated with his fol­lowers to Baṭn Marr, in the territory of Mecca. From this place again they were obliged to depart, owing to feuds with the possessors of the land. On these early and vague portions of their history it is unnecessary to dwell. It was only when they left Arabia proper and migrated to the regions of Syria that they became of importance. Here they were known by the name of Ghassân, from the lake where they first inhabited; or, according to other authorities, from a lake of the same name, between Hijâz and Syria. At last they arrived in the plains of Bozra, where the Benû Salîh dwelt under the authority of the Roman Empire. They were desired to pay tribute, and re­fusing, sustained a war against the Benû Salîh, which ended in their defeat. They then accepted the condition of tributaries, which they held under successive Princes, until at an epoch, which M. Caussin de Perceval places a.d. 292, they, having greatly increased in numbers and strength, overthrew the House of the Ḍaj‘am, the reigning family of the Benû Salîh, and be­came the ruling race of the country. The Romans, who troubled themselves little concerning these revolutions, accepted a Ghassânide vassal, and Tha‘labeh, son of ‘Amr, son of Mujâlid, became the first prince of his race. After his death the crown passed to his kinsman Jafneh, and the family of Ghassân maintained a high position for 350 years. It is sup­posed that they embraced Christianity in the reign of Con-stantine. Though sometimes, as under their queen Mâwiyeh, rebellious against the Romans, they were generally faithful vassals, and aided them against the Persians and the kings of Hira. Their last ruler was Jebelet al Ayham, a prince of gene­rosity and magnificence. When the Moslems invaded Syria, under the Khalifate of Abû Bekr, Jebeleh supported the cause of the Empire in the field; but when Heraclius gave up the contest, Jebeleh submitted to the Khalif ‘Omar and embraced Islam in 637. Thus ended the princeship of Ghassân, but the name of the family remained as the exemplar of grandeur and nobility of race; and kinship with it was, no doubt, often claimed by Syrian Arabs who had little right to the distinction. Of pro­verbs connected with Ghassân, see Prov. Arab. I. 421, “Take from Jith‘ what he gives thee,” and 422, “Take it, even if thou give for it the earrings of Mâriyeh.” Although Ḥarîri makes his hero a son of Ghassân, yet the tribe are said by Ibn Khal-dûn not to have spoken pure Arabic, since they bordered on foreigners, and thereby their language became corrupted.