There is nothing remarkable in this Assembly. Ḥârith, being in the town of Kerej, during a severe winter, sees one day an old man naked and shivering, who crouches on the ground. He is sur­rounded by a crowd, and recites to them some verses on his un­happy state. The wealthy, who are standing around, pity him, and give him their furs and cloaks; and among them Ḥârith parts with a useful garment. In his speech the old man had used the phrase “the Kâfs of winter;” and Ḥârith, when he discovers that he is Abû Zayd, follows him, requesting to know its meaning. Abû Zayd reminds him of a verse of Ibn Sukkereh, in which seven things—all beginning with the letter Kâf—are spoken of as necessary in order that a winter may be passed in comfort.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was wintering at Kerej, by reason of a debt that I was demanding, and a needful business I was performing.—And I experienced of its fierce winter and its scorching cold, that which acquainted me with sorest torment, and kept me ever seeking warmth.—So that I quitted not my lair, and the kindling-place of my fire, except through some necessity that I was urged to, or that I might give attendance at the congregation.—Now on a day whose sky was frowning, whose mist was darkling, I was forced to sally from my shelter, through a business that troubled me: —When lo! an old man, bare of skin, showing his nakedness; and he was turbaned with a kerchief, and breeched with a napkin.—And around him was a crowd, dense in its throngings; and he was reciting, and heeded nought:

O people, nothing can announce to you my poverty

More truly than this, my nakedness in the season of cold.

So from my outward misery, judge ye

The inward of my condition, and what is hidden of my state.

And beware a change in the truce of fortune:

For know that once I was illustrious in rank,

I had command of plenty, and of a blade that severed;

My yellow coins served my friends, my lances destroyed my foes;

My humped camels mourned the morning that I made the feast.

But afterward the time bared the swords of perfidy,

And spread forth the squadrons of dark afflictions,

And ceased not to tear and wear me;

Until my habitation was razed, and my milk-flow decayed,

And my price and my song went down among men,

And I became the lean beast of poverty and need,

Naked of back, stripped of my covering,

As though I were a spindle in nakedness.

No warming is mine in Ṣinn and Ṣinnabar,

Save to stand in the sun, or get a heat at the coals.

Now is there any who is a deep sea of bounty, lord of an ample robe,

Who will cloak me either with embroidered garment or ragged coat,

Seeking the face of God, and not my thanks?

Then he said: O ye lords of wealth who trail in furred robes, he that is endowed with good let him expend; he that is able to bestow, let him bestow.—For the world is treacherous and fortune trips; ability is the visit of a vision, and opportunity a summer cloud.—For, by Allah, oft have I met winter with its Kâfs, and prepared its necessaries before its coming:—But to-day, Sirs, my arm is my pillow, my skin is my garment, the hollow of my hand is my dish.—So let him that is wise consider my estate, and be beforehand with the changing of the nights.—For the happy man is he who takes warning by his fellow, and makes preparation for his journey.

Thereupon it was said to him, “Thou hast displayed to us thy scholarship, now disclose to us thy pedi­gree.”—He said, “A curse on him who boasts of mould­ering bones! there is no glory but in piety and choice scholarship.” Then he recited:—

By thy life, man is but the son of his own day, according as that day displays itself; he is not the son of his yesterday.

There is no boast in rotten bones; there is only the glory of him who seeks glory through himself.

Then he sat down, bowed together, and shrank shiver­ing.—And said, “O God, thou who whelmest with thy bounty, and hast bidden us to ask of thee, send thy blessing on Moḥammed and his House, and help me against the cold and its terrors;—And appoint to me some generous man who prefers others even from his straitness, who shares even though it be but a scrap.” Said the narrator: Now when he had thus disclosed a soul like ‘Iṣâm’s, and elegancies like Aṣma‘í’s, the glances of my eye began to test him, and the darts of my side-looks to strike on him, until I perceived well that he was Abû Zayd, and that his going naked was but a noose for the prey.—But he saw secretly that my recognition had overtaken him, and he mistrusted that it would expose him.—So he said, “I swear by the shade of night and the moon, by the stars and the new moon­light, that none shall cloak me save one whose disposi­tion is goodly, whose face is imbued with the dew of be­nevolence.”—Then I understood what he meant, although the company knew not his meaning.—And I was grieved at the shivering that he suffered, and at the bristling of his skin.—So I took hold on a fur coat that was my plumage by day and my bed by night; and I stripped it off me, and said “Receive it from me.”—And he failed not to draw it on while my eye still looked at it.—Then he recited:

Well done he who has clothed me with a fur coat, which shall be my protection from shivering!

He has clothed me with it, preserving my heart’s blood; may he be preserved from the harm of men and Jinn!

To-day he shall deck himself with my praise; to-morrow he shall be decked with the silk of Paradise.

Said Al Ḥârith: Now when he had fascinated the hearts of the company by his diversity in excellence,— They cast to him of the lined furs and the parti-coloured coats, so many that their weight oppressed him, and scarce could he lift them.—And he departed glad of countenance in his joy, invoking a rain on Kerej.— But I followed him to a point where his mistrust dis­appeared, and the heaven showed clear; and I said to him, “A sharp cold was that which froze thee! But go not naked again.”—He said, “Fie on thee! swiftness to blame belongs not to the just; haste not in censuring, for it is a wrong; prosecute not that of which thou hast no knowledge,—For by Him who has given the light of hoariness, and made sweet the tomb of Ṭaybeh, had I not stripped myself I should have gone home in failure, and in emptiness of wardrobe.” —Then was he restive to take flight, and veiled himself in frowning, and said, “Knowest thou not that my nature is to pass from prey to prey, and to turn from ‘Amr to Zayd?—Yet I see thou now checkest me and resistest me; thou makest me to lose double of what thou didst profit me.—Then spare me (God save thee), from thy vain talk; shut on me the door of thy earnest and jest.”—But I pulled him with the pulling of playful­ness, and held him fast to joke with him,—And said to him, “By Allah, had I not concealed thee and covered thy imposture, thou wouldst not have gotten a gift; thou wouldst not have come off more coated than an onion.—So now recompense me for my good­ness, and for the covering that I gave thee, and put over thee, either by being kind enough to restore my fur, or by making known to me the Kâfs of winter.” —Then he looked at me with the look of one who wonders, and frowned with the frowning of the angry, —And said, “As for restoring the fur it is a thing as impossible as the restoring of yesterday that is past, or the dead man who is gone;—But as for the Kâfs of winter, glory to God who rusted thy mind and rent the bottle of thy storing,—Since thou hast let thyself forget what I recited to thee at Deskereh of the lines of Ibn Sukkereh:

Winter comes and its needs to me are seven, when the rain confines me from business;

A home, a purse, a stove, a cup of wine after the roast meat, and a pleasant wife, and clothing.

Then he said, “Sure an answer that heals is better than a cloak that warms; so be content with what thou hast learnt and depart.”—So I parted from him; and now my fur coat was gone to my sorrow, and I was in a state of shivering all the winter.