THE FORTY-FOURTH ASSEMBLY, CALLED
“THE WINTRY.”

This Assembly contains a series of puzzling statements, made by Abû Zayd in a circle of guests, who on a cold winter night warm themselves at the fire and enjoy the profuse hospitality of a generous entertainer. The intelligibleness of these statements, like that of the legal questions of the thirty-second Assembly, depends on the double meaning of the terms in which they are worded. Apparently, therefore, they refuse translation into any other language, which cannot supply similar ambiguities, but it must not be forgotten that the more recondite meanings of the several idioms require explanation even to the average Arab, who is not initiated in all the subtleties of his mother-tongue, and notably in this particular instance the English reader, who consults the short notes, attached to each puzzle, has even the advantage over Abû Zayd’s audience. For the wily Shaykh amuses himself by secretly departing in the middle of the night, without vouchsafing to his fellow-guests the interpretation promised for the morning, and probably thinking that his noble and presumably highly cultured host does not need it. He who has made himself acquainted with the hidden meanings, and then once more peruses the double-entendres in their entirety, can scarcely fail to be vastly delighted by the string of seeming absurdities and con­tradictions, which, moreover, in the Arab original forms a poetical composition with the same rhyme running through the whole. While adhering as much as possible to the metre, the translator had, as in all other poetical passages of the work, to renounce this adornment, and be contented with occasional alliterations and assonances.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I came in a night of deepest darkness, black of locks, upon a fire kindled on a mountain-top, and giving tidings of liberality, and it was a night whose sky was cold, her bosom closely buttoned, veiled her stars and her misty gloom heaped up. I was colder in it than the eye of the chameleon, and a mangy goat, so I urged on my sturdy camel, saying “Hail to thee and my own soul!” until the kindler [of the fire] spied my person and became aware of my speedy faring, when he came down in hot haste, and indited in the rejez metre:

“Long life to thee, groping along thy nightly way, whom sheen of fire has shown, nay, brought him as a gift,

To one of ample bounty and of vast abode, who welcomes, as the miser welcomes golden coin,

Nightfarers seeking hospitable fare and who evades not visitors with ‘not at home,’

No tardy one to entertain in friendly guise a guest, when all the ground is bound with wintry cold,

And storm-portending stars are stingy with their rain. Well is he wont to ward against the ills of time:

He gathers ashes, sharpens knives, and never fails, be it in day­time or at night, at morn or eve,

To slaughter well-fed camels, and to kindle fire.”

Then he accosted me with the countenance of the bashful and clasped my hands with the clasp of the generous, and led me into a house whose camels roared, whose cauldrons boiled, whose slave-girls carried pro­visions, whose trays went round, and along the sides thereof were guests dragged hither by him who had dragged me, and moulded in my mould, who were culling (enjoying) the fruit of winter and rejoicing with the glee of those endowed with youthful vigour. So I joined the place where they warmed themselves, and found with them the pleasure which the inebriated finds in wine; and when embarrassment had passed away and the cold was gone, trays were brought to us like lunar halos in roundness, and like gardens adorned with flowers which were laden with the victuals of festive banquets, and well fenced against [the fault­finding or cavil of] the blamer and caviller [or fault­finder]. Then we spurned what is said about gluttony, and saw sense in plunging into it, until, when we had meted to ourselves with the measure of the greedy and come nigh the risk of indigestion, we had handed to us napkins to wipe off the odour of food, whereupon we settled in the seats of night-talk and every one of us began to wag his tongue and to display what he had in his show-case, except an old man whose side-locks were hoary, both whose upper garments were tattered, for he crouched apart and kept far aloof from us. So his reserve, the motive for which was incomprehensible, and which would have excused anyone who censured him, angered us, save that we softened our speech to him and were afraid to encroach on him by questioning, and each time we wished him to overflow as we over­flowed, and to launch out in what we launched out, he turned aside as the lofty turns aside from the lowly and quoted: “Verily this is nought but idle tales of the ancients” (Koran, vi. 25, and passim). Presently it was as though shame had smote him, and the forbidding soul had whispered to him, for he crept up and came nigh, putting away his fastidiousness and exerting him­self to make amends for what had gone before. Then he begged a hearing from the night-talkers, and broke forth like the coursing torrent, saying:

“Marvels I know, seen by me, and told without any lie, for not in vain am I called the father of wonderment:

Folks have I seen, O my folk, that on a crone’s juice are fed; not, notice well, mean I though the daughter of grapes by her.

(baulu ’l-‘ajûz, lit. urina anus, is a popular idiom for “cow’s milk”; al-‘ajûz, old woman, means also “choice old wine.”)

And Arabs, at famine’s time, who relished as dainty food, a roasted rag, and allayed indeed therewith hunger’s pangs;

(khirqah, a tatter, a rag, and also a swarm of locusts.)

And powerful men I saw, who said when things went amiss, or when they did carelessly their work: ‘It was fuel’s fault’;

(qâdir, who is able, strong, powerful, and also “who cooks food in the kettle,” qidr, when it is called qadîr.)

And scribes whose hands never wrote a letter in all their lives, and who read not any more aught of what is writ in books;

(kâtib, one who writes, a clerk, a scribe, and also “a cobler, a mender of water-bags,” etc.)

And people who in their flight in eagle’s wake sped along, although they were heavily arrayed in helmet and steel;

(uqâb, a black eagle, and also “a standard”: Mohammed’s standard was called al-‘uqâb.)

And gathered folks, men of worth, to whom appeared suddenly a noble dame and they turned away, to flee far from her;

(nabîlah, a lady of distinction, and also “carrion,” whence the phrase tanabbala ’l-ba‘îr, the camel became putrid, i.e., died.)

And eke a troop, who for sure have never seen Mecca’s fane and yet had made pilgrimage on camel’s back without doubt;

(ḥajjat jus̤îyan, they performed the pilgrimage sitting crosswise [on their camels], and also “they got the better in argument in that posture,” jus̤îy, being the plural of jâs̤î, one who sits crosswise.)

And women-folks faring from Aleppo all through the night who came to Kâz̤imah-town at morn without weariness.

(ṣabbaḥna kâz̤imat-an, they reached in the morning Kâz̤imah, a town in the dependency of Basra, and also “they wished good-morning to a woman silent with anger.”)

And people from Kâz̤imah who faring forth during night found in Aleppo themselves about the time morning dawned.

(aṣbaḥû fî ḥalab, they arrived in the morning in Aleppo [far distant from the former town], and also “they passed the morning in milking.”)

A youth I saw who for sure had never touched lady fair, and yet he had progeny to keep alive name and race.

(naslun min al ‘aqib, progeny of surviving children, and “also an enemy at his heels.”)

Again one hoary not hiding ever his hoariness, who in the desert appeared still young of years, far from grey.

(shâ’ibun ghaira mukhfin li ’l-mashîb, one hoary who conceals not the hoariness, and also “one who mixes milk [with water] and makes no secret of the milk thus mixed.”)

One suckled with mother-milk, not lisping yet with his lips, I saw him in hot dispute amidst a brawl loud and fierce.

(fî shijârin baina ’s-sabab, in contention between arguments or revilings, and also “in an [open] camel-litter between the cords”; to the latter meaning of sabab Ḥarîri quotes Koran, xxii. 15: “let him stretch a cord to heaven.”)