Looked upon the features of joy.—Unveiled joy as a bride. The word is applied to the unveiling and looking upon a bride by the bridegroom.

Broken the staff.—A phrase of doubtful origin, but meaning to depart from or forego. The Arabs said of one who deserted his tribe, “He breaks the staff;” so one breaks the staff of the Moslems by deserting the faith. Here the meaning merely is, they avoided or eschewed dissension.

The milk-flows.—Literally, the milk which has collected in the udder between two milkings.

Like the teeth of a comb.—An expression of the Prophet; “Men are as (like each other as) the teeth of a comb.” In a bad sense they say as like as the teeth of an ass.

A night youthful in prime, etc.—A night in the early part of the month, when there is no moon. The comparison between a dark night and youth, and between a moon-lit night and the silvered hair of age, is not uncommon. Compare the Second Assembly, And now his dark night was moon-lit; also the Fifth, Its hind locks grew gray in the dawn.

The white camels.— signifies literally, “of mixed white and red.”

The night-halt.— was a halt for rest towards the end of the night.

The groan and the roar.—The one is the groan of the camel when its burden oppresses it; the other is the hoarse voice of the male, when he protrudes his shiḳshiḳah.

His talk-fellow.—All through the Assemblies we shall have mention of these night-conversations. The Arabs, like the natives of many hot climates, took a siesta in the middle of the day, and devoted the cool of the nights to those long colloquies in which first their genius for poetry, and then their fancy for every kind of rhetorical subtleties were fostered. The word means the shade of the moon, or that half darkness which pre­vails during moonlight in a place which the moon does not shine upon; but it is also applied generally to the dark of a moonless night. means “I will never do it.” By a natural transition, it came to signify the place of conversation, and then the conversation itself. For a curious derived sense of , see Prov. Arab. II. 513. Compare also Ḥarîri’s own re­marks in his interpretations to the Forty-fourth Assembly.

My companion.— is he who rides with or behind one on the same beast.

Alas.— is either a contraction of , or an ejacula­tion expressing surprise.

Only he who clings should be clung to.—A proverb referred to Al Aghlab al ‘Ajali.

The sun rise.—Ḥarîri says in the Durrah that only applies to the rising of the sun during winter.

Excellently said thy father.—The phrase is interpreted as “ascribed be to God,” that is “fitting to God, through its excel­lence is what thy father said.”—Compare the common expression .

Whoso attaches.—The metre of these verses is , like that of the verse quoted in the Second Assembly; but with this difference, that the is , like the ; both becoming .

These verses appear to have been imitated from Imr al Ḳays. (Dîwân, p. 49). The poet says:—

“I break with him who breaks with me; I unite with him who wishes union with me.”

And again—

“I join my cord to thine, and by the feathering of thy arrow I feather mine.”

There may be some one.—For the use of , see Alfîyeh, v. 366.

The sun.— is said to be a proper name, and feminine, and for this reason imperfectly declined.

With an earliness beyond the earliness of the crow.—The sub­stance of the note quoted by De Sacy from Sherîshi is as follows: When is used in a comparison among the Arabs as in this case, “With an earliness not as the earliness of the crow,” the meaning is that the thing compared is inferior to the object of comparison. Thus in the proverbial phrase (a man, but not as Mâlik) the meaning is that the person spoken of was not equal to Mâlik in bravery and goodness. But Ḥarîri evidently uses the idiom in the opposite sense, and wishes to say that the earliness was superior to the earliness of the crow. Sherîshi says that this use, though not pure Arabic, was common in Irak, and that it prevailed in the West among the people of Morocco, though not in Andalusia. It is also to be met with in the writings of modern authors, and notably in the Assemblies of Al Hamadâni. This Mâlik, whose name has thus passed into a proverb (Prov. Arab. II. 213), was Mâlik ibn Nowayrah, who was treacherously put to death by Khâlid ibn al Welîd, under the Khalifate of Abû Bekr. For the narrative, see Ḥamâseh, p. 370, in the commentary to some beautiful lines of Mâlik’s brother, Mutemmim ibn Nowayrah, to whom the proverb is attributed. For another proverbial expression given by Sherîshi, “A meadow, but not as the plant Sa‘dân,” see Prov. Arab. II. 617. It must be observed, however, in Ḥarîri’s defence, that in both the phrases cited as testimony of Arabic usage, the object of comparison is preceded by , which makes an obvious difference in the sense. The idiom of Ḥarîri resembles that which occurs in the Thirty-second Assembly, “guile, as was not the guile of Pharaoh towards Moses,” that is, “greater than the guile of Pharaoh;” so here the literal sense is, “an earliness as is not the earliness of the crow,” that is, “unequalled by the earliness of the crow.”

Two worn mantles.—The was an oblong cloth, striped down the sides, which was thrown round the body. Mr. Lane says, “The modern in every case in which I have seen it, I have observed to be an oblong piece of thick woollen cloth, generally brown, or of a dark or ashy dust colour, either plain, or having stripes so narrow and near together as to appear, at a little distance, of one colour; used both to envelope the person by day and as a night covering.”

To shake for them the fruited branches: to procure for them the bounty of the travellers.

The training-ground.—The place where horses that were to run in a race () were exercised.

Spies and scouts.—Those who go before an army to spy out the position of the enemy, and those who go before a caravan or tribe to find a fit place for halting or settlement.

And the wasted bank of the day had nigh crumbled in.—This strange similitude is taken from the eating away of the under part of a bank by a rapid stream, so that the rest is ready to fall in. The meaning is that Abû Zayd wasted their day little by little, until at last they discovered that it was evening and the day gone. There is probably an allusion to Koran ix. 110. Moṭarrezi, cited by De Sacy, remarks on the incongruity of this metaphor, not only in itself, but in respect to the former ḳarîneh.

The greenness of dung-heaps: a proverbial expression for a fair exterior which masks deceit. The was the pen where camels or sheep had been kept during the sojourning of a tribe on a particular spot. When the tribe migrated the place became covered with a rich grass, very fresh and green to the eye, but rank and coarse, and not relished by the herd. The word is used generally in the same sense as , to signify the traces of the encampment in the form of ashes and other refuse. Zohayr, Mo‘allaḳah, l. 1; Lebîd, Mo‘allaḳah, l. 3. The Prophet said “Beware of the green of dunghills.” It was said to him, “What is that, O Apostle of God?” He said, “A beautiful woman of a bad stock.”

When they have eaten separate.—The metre of these verses is , which is a metre of the second circle, or , so called from all its feet being seven-lettered. This circle is formed by the third primitive foot , thrice repeated, which is the measure of the , one of the two used metres of this circle. The normal measure of the is The in these verses is , and the is identical with it; so that the measure is the normal measure, minus one foot of each hemistich.

Of the , there enter into this metre , which is the quiescing of the moved second letter of a foot. By this licence becomes , and as it may take place in any part of the verse, the may be made identical with the However, if the original foot occur even once, you may know that the metre is . Another licence is , which is the dropping of the moved second letter of a foot. Thus, becomes . The third licence is , which is the union of and . By this becomes . Instances of the two former licences may be found in the verses.

In the Koran (Sura xxxiii. 53), it is written, “O, believers, enter not the house of the Prophet, unless ye be permitted to eat there; but, if ye be invited, enter, and when ye have eaten, separate, and go not familiarly into conversation, etc.” Moḥam-med once entered the house of his freedman and adopted son Zayd, and there, by accident, he saw Zayd’s beautiful wife, Zaynab. The Prophet instantly became enamoured, and ex­claimed in admiration, “Praise to God, who inclines men’s hearts!” Zaynab understood his language, and, possibly desir­ous of a higher alliance, reported it to her husband. Zayd, out of gratitude or respect to the Prophet, announced his purpose of repudiating his wife, alleging as his reason her haughty manner towards him, Moḥammed then resolved to marry her; but as a marriage with the wife of an adopted son was contrary to Arab usage, a revelation was necessary to give this liberty to the Prophet and his followers. The marriage was celebrated with great splendour. A number of Moslems were invited by the Prophet, and the banqueting lasted far into the night. Moḥam-med, who was anxious to retire, became angry at the tedious familiarity of his followers, and soon after the above words were revealed, and established a more respectful usage at the enter­tainments of the Prophet. Abû Zayd, as in the last Assembly, quotes the Koran as an excuse for his behaviour.

His witticism.—The meaning of is a pretty and witty story, and the more reasonable etymology makes it to be what is “gathered” of the sweets of flowers or fruit, as by bees, and thus, by a natural transition, the sweets of conversation or story­telling. Compare and . But the usual tradition is, that Khorâfeh was a man of the tribe of ‘Othrah and an inhabit­ant of Medina, who, being questioned, after a long absence, by ‘Omar, related that he had been carried away by Jinn, and had married a female of the race. A war had broken out between the believing and the unbelieving Jinn, and God had given the victory to the believers. Khorâfeh had been taken prisoner with others, but as soon as the believing Jinn heard that he was a Moslem they had given him his liberty, and permitted him to return to mankind. People disbelieved this story, and his name passed into a proverb as a teller of wonderful and impossible tales: so that it was said, “Vainer than the tale of Khorâfeh.” Prov. Arab. II. 716. The Prophet, however, is related to have said that the story of Khorâfeh was true: a tradition which countenances the belief in Jinn. Sherîshi, in his commentary, relates at length a tradition of ‘Âyisheh, who testified that having once asked the Prophet to tell her the story of Khorâfeh, he had declared that Khorâfeh was a good man, and had then told her how he had been made captive by Jinn. The adventure contains a narrative of a man, who, by drinking at a certain well, had been changed into a woman, and borne children, and who by drinking again, had been changed back to the male form, and begotten more children; of a second man, who continually followed a bull which he was unable to overtake, and a third, who had enchanted horses. The stories are much after the order of the Arabian Nights, and, if the tradition be authentic, it is chari­table to believe that Moḥammed related them more to amuse his young wife than to instruct her in the truth. In the Six­teenth Assembly, Ḥarîri uses the word with the article to signify the idle tales told in a night-talk.