The explanation of the twenty conundrums contained in this Assembly has been given at the foot of the translation from Harîri’s own commentary, and it remains for me here only to add a few more remarks of general interest, partly from the same short commentary appended to it by the author, partly from other sources, which I was able to consult.
I made my camel of peregrination kneel down at Malat̤îyah.—De Sacy
spells the name Malt̤îyah, and I followed him in my own edition of
the text, misled by his statement that the ancient name of the town
was Maldanî, and had by the Arabs been transformed into Maltîyah,
with or without tashdîd on the yâ’. Since then, however, I have
ascertained that the town, situated in Mesopotamia on the western
side of the Euphrates, was formerly called Maladnî. Moreover
Fîrûzâbâdî, the author of the Kâmûs, rejects the form with tashdîd
as faulty, hence it appears that the form Malat̤yah given in De Sacy’s
quotation from Mutenebbi is the only correct one, and that Harîri
has altered it into Malat̤îyah by poetical licence, to make it rhyme
with mat̤îyah, travelling-beast. The old city had been destroyed by
the Greeks, and Kaliph Mansûr rebuilt it
When I had thrown down there my staff, a proverbial expression for I had given over travelling or made a halt. In a similar manner, it is said, “I lifted up my staff,” for “I set out on or resumed my journey” (Ar. Prov., ii. 644; ii. 493).
I saw a group of nine people who had purchased some wine.—The Arabic term for people is here raht̤, which means a company of men below ten in number, and who according to an observation of Ḥarîri in his Durrah, are sons of the same father from different mothers. If, however, the word is preceded by a numeral, as here by tis‘ah, nine, it is synonymous with nafs or shakhṣ, a person, and in using it in this signification, Ḥarîri alludes to Koran xxvii. 49: “And there were in the city nine persons, who committed excesses in the land, and did not that which is right.” A few lines lower down the sons of one father and various mothers are called abnâ’u ‘illât, ‘illah being a fellow-wife, from the root ‘all “drinking repeatedly,” according to the idea that a man on marrying first took a single draught (nahila), which he repeats on wedding a second woman or more in addition. These half-brothers are further qualified as thrown together from deserts, from which it would appear that their case was similar to that of the fictitious son of Abû Zayd and Barrah in Assembly V., vol. i., p. 130, that is that all of them, or at least some, had a common father, who in his wanderings had married their respective mothers, and left them pregnant, without returning to them. On their chance meeting they may have discovered this tie of relationship between them, which in itself was loose enough, but strengthened by their common love for Arab lore, here called the woof of scholarship, and meaning an intimate knowledge of the Arabic language, oratory and poetry. The laxness of manners indicated by this supposed state of affairs would account for their buying wine, for the purpose of a drinking-bout in the open air, a proceeding which is evidently not approved of by Al Ḥârith, but which he is ready to condone for the sake of their accomplishments. I may mention that the term employed for wine is qahwah, the modern word for coffee, but in the older language used for any intoxicating liquor, and in particular as a synonym of khamr. It is said to be thus called because it blunts the sexual appetite (tuqhî shahwata’ l-jimâ‘).
And appeared as a complex compatible in its parts.—The simile is either taken from grammatical terminology, in which it means a compound sentence whose constituent parts are well proportioned to each other, or it is, according to Sherîshi, a comparison borrowed from arithmetic, meaning a number whose parts are congruous, i.e., one which can be divided into its fractions and fractions of fractions (half, third of this, fourth of the result, and so on) without leaving a rest, the smallest of which is 2,520, thus divisible by the first numbers from 2 to 10. The idea seems to be, that however deeply these people entered into the discussion of any question, it never led to a discrepancy of opinion between them.
We began to display both Soha and the Moon, i.e., things insignificant and brilliant (or obscure and evident; see the note on “Sohayl and Soha meet,” vol. i., p. 489, and comp. Ar. Prov., i. 527, 528).
An old man intruded upon us.—The Arabic for “intruded” is here waghala, as in Assembly XXIV., vol. i., p. 244, since those intruded upon are engaged in drinking, in contradistinction from warasha, which would mean he joined uninvited a company taking their meal or celebrating a banquet; see also the note on Ṭofayl, vol. i., p. 411.
Whose comeliness and shapeliness had gone, while knowledge and experience remained with him.—The first clause of this proposition, in Arabic, ẕahaba ḥibru-hu wa sibru-hu, is borrowed from a tradition, and ḥibr is explained as the impression or trace of beauty, from ḥabara, he embellished, whence I translate comeliness, i.e., pleasantness of aspect. Sibr, on the other hand, is that by which a thing is recognized, its form, or shape, and if I render it by shapeliness, I have in my mind the relation which exists in Italian between forma and formositá, or the more emphatic sense of the word in the English idiom “he is in good form.” The Arabic equivalents for knowledge and experience, khubr and sabr, are synonyms for information obtained by testing and probing.
And that both he who drew water from the top of the well, and he who drew it from the bottom, were at a loss.—Al mâtiḥ is a man standing with his legs astride on the brink of a well, and receiving the bucket filled with water from another standing at the bottom, who is called al-mâ’iḥ, a practice which has given rise to the proverb: “Thou knowest this better than the mâ’iḥ knoweth the fundament of the mâtiḥ” (see Ar. Prov.,, i. 111).
Not every thing black is a date, nor every thing ruddy is wine.—The proverb, for which comp. Ar. Prov., ii. 627, runs originally: “Not every thing white is fat, nor every thing black a date,” and is used to indicate an error in opinion or judgment, and difference of nature and disposition. Abû Zayd substitutes for the simile “fat” that of “wine,” in allusion to the pastime in which the party were indulging and, I suppose, insinuating that he for one would not have any scruple to take a share in it.
Then we held on to him, as the chameleon holds to the trees.—One of their proverbs says: “More cautious than the chameleon,” because it never leaves one branch of a tree before it has firmly seized another with its fore-feet (Ar. Prov., i. 399).
The cure of a rent is that it be stitched, a proverbial expression for the reparation of an injury, here referring to the stranger’s sarcastic remark by which he had wounded the susceptibilities of the audience. The word ḥauṣ, stitching, means the sowing together of a torn garment, without using a patch (Ar. Prov., i. 7).
I shall give the judgment of Solomon in the matter of the sown field, meaning a sound judgment, such as was that of Solomon, alluded to in Koran, xxi. 78: “And David and Solomon, when they gave judgment concerning a field, when some people’s sheep had grazed therein; and We were witnesses of their judgment.” The story underlying this passage is thus told by Ibn ‘Abbâs: “Two men came before David and Solomon, one of whom was owner of a field, the other of some sheep. The former said, O Prophet of the Lord, the sheep of this man have broken loose at night and pastured in my field, leaving nothing of its produce. Said David to him: Go, the sheep shall be thine. But Solomon, who was then eleven years old, quoth: Methinks another decision would be more equitable towards both parties. So David authorized him to deliver judgment between the twain, whereupon he said: I see fit that thou give over his sheep to the owner of the field, to whom their young, and their milk and wool and every profit derived therefrom shall belong, and that thou give over the field to the owner of the sheep, to sow therein seed, such as his sheep have pastured of, and keep it until in the coming year it have the same appearance as on the day on which it has been grazed upon, when he shall return it to its owner, and claim the return of his own sheep from him. Then David said to him: The decision be as thou hast decided, and he issued judgment accordingly.”
Golden-coloured cooled (companionable) wine, in Arabic ash-shamûlu ’ẕ-ẕahabîyah, shamûl being a name for wine, either because it gathers the drinkers sociably together (shamala), or more probably because it has been cooled by exposure to the north wind (shimâl, comp. the note on Cooled of the north wind, vol. i., p. 501), and here accompanied by the feminine of the adjective, because it is a synonym of the feminine noun khamr. It will be noticed how persistently the obtruder harps on a subject so congenial to him.
That those who failed may not doubt.—Al-mubt̤ilûna, a term applied in Koran, xxix. 47, to those who treat the sacred book as a vain thing, or accuse it of falsehood, has here the more general meaning of disparaging critics, who raise capricious and frivolous objections.
I am not like him who stints his boon-companion, nor of those whose
fat remains in their own dish.—Who stints is in Arabic man yasta’s̤iru,
lit., “who prefers himself to others.” The second part of the
sentence is an allusion to the proverb, samnu-kum hurîqa fî adîmi-
Then he blinked [made sign with his glance] to the third and said. —Allusion to Koran, xix. 12: “And he (Zacharias) came forth from the sanctuary to his people and made sign to them (as though he would say), ‘Praise God at morn and eve.’” (The note to this passage in the second edition of De Sacy misprints ix. for xix.)
We are not of the steeds of this race-course, and have no hands for the untying of these knots.—Two proverbial expressions for: “We are not equal to this task” (see Ar. Prov., ii. 644, and ii. 493). Another form of the second of these sayings is, “No two hands belonging to one man are ten,” meaning “The power of one man is not like that of ten;” in Arabic: lâ yadai li-wâḥidin bi-‘asharah, where the dual with its suppressed nûn before the dative particle li stands for the iẓâfah construction, lâ yadaini wâhidin, as the popular phrase lâ abâ laka, thou hast no father, stands for la abâka, there is no father of thine.
I shall make known to [teach] you that which ye had not known.— Allusion to Koran, ii. 146: “Thus have We sent to you an apostle from among yourselves, to rehearse our signs to you, and to purify you, and to instruct you in the book, and in wisdom, and to teach you that which ye had not known.”
And the pockets (lit., sleeves) became as if yesterday they had not been rich, for “they became emptied of their money.” This again alludes to the Koran, x. 25: “Until the earth hath received its golden raiment, and is decked out: and they who dwell on it deem that they have power over it! Our behest cometh to it by night or by day, and We make it as if it had been mown down—as if it had not been rich only yesterday.”