The diversified.—The original meaning of is a horse which has one of its eyes blue and the other black; the word is then applied to other kinds of diversity or variegation. Thus, , plural of , signifies brothers who are sons of one mother, but of different fathers. In the Forty-sixth Assembly, Abû Zayd bids one of his pupils repeat , which have the same property as those of the present Assembly.

Of the pen.—The reed-pen, used for writing. The word is only used of the reed after it is shaped for writing.

Open a virgin style.—Literally, deflower a virgin composition, i.e., write in a new and untried style, without imitation of former authors.

Saḥbân Wâ’il has been spoken of in the notes to the Fifth Assembly.

Scattered fruit, good and bad, from their store.—A meta­phorical phrase, signifying the expression of able or worthless criticisms. In Sherîshi’s commentary it is said that is not to be found among the names of the Arabs for dates; and it is suggested that it is a provincial term peculiar to Basra, which, being distinguished for its abundance of the fruit, had doubtless many local names for it. It may have been a kind used only for the feeding of animals. As for , it is applied at the present day, I believe, to the cake of pressed dates which is commonly sold in the London market.

When the quivers were empty.—A common metaphor of Ḥarîri for the exhaustion of a speaker’s arguments. Compare the Seventeenth Assembly.

Ye have uttered a grievous thing.—A phrase taken from the Koran, xix. 91, where it is applied to the Christians: “They say that the Merciful has begotten a son; behold! ye have uttered a grievous (or abominable) thing; one at which the heavens go near to cleave in sunder, and the earth to gape, and the moun­tains to be driven in ruin.”

Skilful in testing.— is the Arabic form of the Persian , a broker, one who makes bargains for others. Thus the literal meaning would be “ye brokers of money-testing,” ye who make a profession of examining and judging the merits of works. See, too, De Sacy, Chrest. II., 328.

Ye sages of loosing and binding.—From signifying a priest of the Guebres, or fire-worshippers, the Persian was applied to any sage or philosopher, and then to a judge or councillor of state.

Cuts the envious.—Sherîshi, however, renders it .

President of the Court.—The dîwân here mentioned is the Court of official writing or inshâ’. Sherîshi gives a curious anecdote which, as he imagines, accounts for the derivation of dîwân. The king of Persia, having ordered a laborious enu­meration to be completed by his scribes in three days, was amazed at their rapidity in calculation and copying, and ex­claimed, “I see devils” ; hence the place of their assem­bling was thenceforth called dîwân.

The chough in our land, etc.—For the many meanings given to baghâth, see Lane. This proverb was originally used in a sense very different to that which it has here. A hospitable and powerful tribe, receiving and adopting a stranger, boasted that “With us the chough becomes an eagle (or vulture);” that is, “the poorest wanderer by our adoption becomes a powerful personage.” Ḥarîri uses the proverb merely to signify that the speaker will not be deceived by the pretensions of an incapable person, so as to look upon him as a man of eminence. In Arab. Prov. I. 6, the verb is in the singular and the is with ḍammah. The word is used to signify the weakest and poorest of birds; thus the verse of a poet:

The common birds have the most chicks:

But the mother of birds (the eagle) hatches but one; she breeds little.

It is said that signifies birds that are preyed upon; birds that prey on others; and birds that neither prey upon others nor are preyed upon themselves, as the swallow.

Each man knows best the mark of his arrow.—As allusions to the old games of chance of the pagan Arabs are frequent in Ḥarîri, the remembrance of them being preserved in verses of the poets, and in popular proverbs, it may be as well to give some account of the game called , to which the proverb in the text refers. The Arabs of the Ignorance were so immoder­ately given to gambling that they would sometimes stake their whole property, and when all was lost, play, like the barbarians of Europe, for their own liberty. For this purpose, as well as for divination, short, pointless arrows were used, called , and , the latter name being more peculiarly applied to those employed in divination; though, according to one interpretation, it is applied to gambling by arrows in Koran, v. 4. The stake in the was a slaughtered camel, which was divided into ten or twenty-eight portions, according as one of two slightly different games was played. The arrows were short sticks of the tree called , and these, when struck against each other, emitted a peculiar sound, so that an arrow of another wood was easily discovered, and it may be presumed the use of it was unfair. The arrow sounded; it is not one of the right sort, became a proverbial expression in reference to a false pre­tender: the words having been used by ‘Omar, on the day of Bedr, in speaking of Welîd ibn ‘Oḳbah, who had exclaimed that he was of Ḳoraysh (Arab. Prov. I. 341). The game was played by seven persons, and ten or, some say, eleven arrows were used. According to one authority the ten were named as follows:— 1, ; 2, ; 3, ; 4, ; 5, ; 6, ; 7, ; 8, ; 9, ; 10, . Each arrow had a mark on it by which the players might recognise to whom it belonged; hence the proverb in the text. In order that there might be no cheating, each was placed in a leathern case, and the drawer put on a thick glove, so that it was impossible for him to tell by sight or feeling to whom any arrow belonged. It has been said that not more than seven persons played, conse­quently three of the arrows, the eighth, ninth, and tenth, belonged to no one, and were only added to give greater interest to the game. The drawer, called , drew from a bag, and when­ever one of the three unowned arrows came out, it was put in again. The principle of the game was that the third arrow won three shares, and the seventh seven shares, while those whose arrows were drawn first, second, fourth, fifth, and sixth in order, gained nothing, but had to pay for the beast. When a player won, it was said , (see Nineteenth Assembly, near the beginning). A different and somewhat unintelligible account is given of the game by Nowayri (Freytag; Einleitung in das Studium der Arabischen Sprache). It seems, however, that a second game was played, in which the animal was divided into twenty-eight portions. In this the first arrow gained one por­tion, the second two, and so on, the seventh gaining seven por­tions. This kind of gambling was forbidden by the Koran, so that whenever Ḥarîri uses phrases connected with it he speaks after the fashion of the Ignorance,—a species of classicism extremely common among the writers of Islam. The maysir is forbidden by name, Koran ii. 216, and more strongly v. 4 and 92. The latter passage is as follows: “O believers, the maysir and idols (or any stone or altar that was the object of superstitious rever­ence), and (arrows for divination), are an abomination of the work of Satan.” The Moslems consider this prohibition to extend to all games of chance. The “mark” on the arrow alluded to by Abû Zayd was called .

With respect to the divination by arrows, Bayḍâwi in his Commentary to Koran v. 4, taking the passage to refer to divi­nation of the future, says that the Arabs used to place three arrows in a bag: on one was written “My Lord bids me;” on the second “My Lord forbids me;” while the third had no in­scription. When they contemplated any enterprise they drew one of them: if the first came out, they persisted in what they purposed; if the second, they abstained from it; if the third, they put it back and drew again, until an affirmative or negative an­swer was obtained. On a journey a man would carry these ar­rows with him and consult them on any occasion of doubt. At Mecca the statues of Abraham and Hobal are said to have held in their hand arrows for divination: these Mohammed destroyed. Pocock long since pointed out the identity of this Arab practice with the divination spoken of by Ezekiel, xxi. 21: “For the King of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he made his arrows bright, he consulted with images (teraphim), he looked into the liver. At his right hand was the divination for Jerusalem, to appoint captains, to open the mouth in the slaughter, to lift up the voice with shouting, to appoint battering rams against the gates, to cast a mount and to build a fort.” He says (Specimen Historiæ Ara-bum, p. 318, edition of 1806): Certè quæ de hôc <Greek> genere vidimus, multum conferre videntur ad illustrandum locum istum Ezek. xxi. 21. Stetit enim Rex Babylonis in bivio, in ca­pite duarum viarum ad divinandum divinationem, tersit sagittas, rogavit imagines (vel, ut Vulgat. divinationem quærens, commis-cens sagittas, interrogavit Idola, etc.) ad quem quæ affert Hiero-nymus mirè concinnunt cum iis quæ de isto Arabum antiquorum more traduntur. Stabit (inquit) in ipso compito, et ritu gentis suæ oraculum consulet, ut mittat Sagittas in pharetram et com-misceat eas inscriptas, sive signatas nominibus singulorum, ut videat cujus sagitta exeat, et quam prius civitatem debeat expugnare. Ubi observare liceat vocem quæ alias tersit, polivit, reddi solet, ab Hieronymo notione commiscendi explicari. Certè apud Arabes idem valet ac commovit, atque idem hic deno-tare videtur quod apud ipsos in descriptione sortilegii sui, scilicet commovere vel agitare, ut confusè misceri possent sortes.