And be raised when thou fallest.—When a person tripped and fell, it was usual to utter a pious exclamation, equivalent to “God raise thee.” The formula was , or . Compare Thirty-fourth Assembly, “And if thou trip he will say .”

Barrah was a celebrated woman’s name among the Arabs, having been borne by one who was sister of Temîm, and an ancestress of Ḳoraysh, two families of the highest repute, the one for its nobility and generosity, the other for its position at Mecca, and its kinship with the Prophet. The poet Al Farazdaḳ says of Ḳoraysh:

They are the sons of Barrah, daughter of Morr; how excellent are they in mother’s and father’s kin!

For there is no progenitor more pure-blooded than Ḳoraysh, and no maternal uncle more noble than Temîm.

(De Sacy’s Commentary to Thirty-seventh Assembly).

A crafty bird.— is described as a cautious bird, which looks to the right and left while drinking, through fear of the fowler, and does not come to the usual watering-places where men drink, but repairs to stagnant pools. The name is applied to any cunning and crafty person. Prov. Arab. I 162. For , a little further on, see Lane, Book I., p. 399.

Mixed hues.—The author alludes to the mingled joy and care which had preceded the advent of Abû Zayd, and which were now lost in unmingled pleasure, as well as to the mixed moon­light and dark which had been succeeded by a single shade.

The limb of the sun.— is one of the many figurative synonyms of the sun, and according to Ḥarîri (in the Durrat al Ghawwâṣ), it is only used of the rising sun, while is only used of the setting. Sherîshi gives ten of these synonyms; five of which have the , namely , and , while five have it not, , and . The word gives rise to the 63rd question in the Thirty-second Assembly.

O thou who didst fancy.—The metre of these verses is , which has been explained in the notes to the Second Assembly. The measure here, however, is that of the third , which is ; that is, is dropped at the end of each hemistich, and becomes . Its is identical with it; and both may suffer and become . Sometimes and are interchanged in the same poem; sometimes alone is used, and then the measure is called , on account of its lax and tottering rhythm. This last is the measure in the present case.

Al Aṣma‘î.—Abû Sa‘îd ‘Abd al Melik ibn Ḳorayb al Aṣma‘î, the most famous man of letters of his time, and the greatest authority on all points of Arabic learning, was born a.h. 122 (a.d. 740), and died at Basra at the age of eighty-eight years. His life is given by Ibn Khallikân, who says that he was a com­plete master of the Arabic language and grammar, and the chief of those who transmitted orally historical narratives, singular anecdotes, amusing stories, and rare expressions of the language. He was a native of Basra, but removed to Bagdad in the reign of Hârûn ar Reshîd. It is related that Al Aṣma‘î said that he knew sixteen thousand pieces of verse, composed in the metre called rejez. These verses being mostly of great antiquity, and requiring a knowledge of the archaic words and forms of the language, could only be retained in the memory of a consum­mate scholar. It was said of him that none ever explained better than he the idiom of the desert Arabs. When he was old and had returned to Basra, the Khalif Al Ma’mûn often invited him to court; but as he pleaded feebleness, Al Ma’mûn used to draw up questions on doubtful points of literature and send them to him that he might resolve them. His knowledge of pure Arabic was so great, that on one occasion he named every part of the horse successively, quoting the verses in which the poets of the desert had mentioned each. He composed works on the human frame, the species of animals, and other subjects of natural history; on the anwâ or settings of the stars which indicate rain (see Nineteenth Assembly), a work on the hamzeh, another on the metre rejez, another on maṣdars. He related of himself that one day, at the request of Hârûn ar Reshîd, he extemporized a poem on the horse, in which he introduced twenty parts of the horse’s body which have names synonymous with the names of birds. The poem is extant, and is a wonder­ful piece of philological learning, but whether it was improvised by its author may well be doubted. (Ibn Khallikân and Ham­mer Purgstall).

Al Komayt.—Al Komayt ibn Zayd was the last of three poets of the same name. He belonged to the first century of Islam, having been born in the year 60. He was learned in the poetry, the battle days, and the proverbs of the Arabs, and was a man of accomplishments and generous character. His political poems, in honour of the house of Hâshim, brought on him the anger of the Khalif Hishâm, and nearly cost him his life. He took sanctuary at the grave of Mu‘âwiyeh, the lately deceased son of the Khalif, and the children of Mu‘âwiyeh inter­ceded for him. He then replaced the offensive verses in his poem by others, and was released. He was afterwards murdered by a body-guard of Yemen soldiers in the year 126. The great length of his compositions became proverbial. At his death he had produced 5289 verses, an inordinate number in the eyes of his countrymen, for the Arab poets were never voluminous. Hence the expression of Ābû Zayd, “Such as Al Komayt never wove,” or as we should say, “span.” A poet says:

Thy stay, my brother, is so long,

That it is like a poem of Al Komayt.

Some verses composed by him in honour of Meslemet ibn ‘Abd al Melik, brother of Welîd and Sulaymân, are to be found in Ḥamâseh, p. 774. This prince had fought with success against the Greeks, and twice besieged Constantinople. There were three poets of the name of Komayt; the first, Al Komayt ibn Tha‘labeh, was a Jâhilî; the second, his grandson, Al Komayt ibn Ma‘rûf, was a Mukhaḍram; the third, the subject of this notice, was, of course, an Islâmî. The second is said to have had the finest poetical genius.

Coals of the Ghaḍa.—A wood proverbial for making a power­ful and lasting fire. Ḥarîri, in the Forty-seventh Assembly, says:

Oft is the ruby burnt in coals of Ghaḍa; then the coals are ex­tinguished and the ruby is a ruby still.

Mr. Palgrave, in his Travels (vol. I., p. 38), says, “We saw the Ghaḍa, a shrub peculiar, I believe, to the Arabian Peninsula, and often alluded to by its poets. It is of the genus Euphorbia, with a woody stem, often five or six feet in height, and innumer­able round green twigs, very slender and flexible, forming a large feathery tuft, not ungraceful to the eye, while it affords some kind of shelter to the traveller, and food to his camels.”