THE FORTIETH ASSEMBLY.

But I met from her with the sweat of the water-bag, i.e., with the sweat which the carrying of the water-bag produces in the slave-girl who is burdened with it, a proverbial expression for misery and hardship, for which see Ar. Prov., ii. 347; iii., P. 2, 480. Another explanation is that the sweat of the water-bag means the water which flows from it or the flow itself, so that the meaning of the proverb, “I have imposed upon thee the sweat of the water-bag,” would be either, I have forced thee to travel, when thou needest the sweat of the water-bag, i.e., its water, or, I have imposed upon thee a task which makes thy sweat flow as profusely as the water flows from the water-bag. This would come near the form of the saying, transmitted by Maydâni (Ar. Prov., ii. 436): “I have met therefrom with the sweat of my brow.” Lastly, some interpreters read instead of ‘araq (sweat), the word ‘alaq, synonymous with mi‘lâq, the handle by which the water-bag is carried, and say the proverb signifies: “I have imposed upon thee the carrying of the water-bag,” namely, the necessity of travelling.

What the upshot would be, lit., how the turning-out would be (kaifa ’l-munqalabu).—The word munqalab may be noun of place (turning-point), or verbal noun (the turning-out of a matter). In the Koran, xviii. 34, it occurs in the sense of that which takes the turn of something else: “I shall surely find a better (garden) than it in exchange (munqalaban)”; and ib., xxvi. 228, it has the meaning of return: “But they who treat them (the believers) unjustly shall find out what a return awaiteth them, lit., with what return they shall return (to God, aiya munqalabin yanqalibûna).

Hence I threw my business behind my back, in the Arabic idiom “behind my ear,” to which Ḥarîri, in the short commentary attached by him to this Assembly, quotes Koran, iii. 184: “They cast it behind their backs” (comp. p. 216, above).

Though I should not be of any help.—The fourth form of the verb ghaná, which generally means to enrich, is here used in that of helping, as in Koran, xliv. 41: “A day when a servant shall not help a master in aught (lâ yugh), neither shall aid be given to them (lâ yúnṣarûna).”

And stint even the fragment of a worn toothpick, lit., the spittings of the siwâk, meaning the splinters of the miswâk, or piece of wood, used for rubbing and thereby cleaning the teeth before prayer, which remain in the mouth, and are spit out, when this preliminary act of ceremonial ablution has been performed (see Hughes’ “Dic­tionary of Islâm,” p. 353).

Knowest thou not that contumacy provokes the wrath of the Lord?— The Lord may mean “thy husband,” as the Beyrout edition ex­plains, or more probably God Almighty, in allusion to Koran, xxiv. 8, 9: “But it shall avert the chastisement from her (i.e., the woman accused of adultery), if she testify a testimony four times repeated, by God, that he (the accusing husband) is indeed of them that lie; and a fifth time that the wrath of the Lord be on her, if he have spoken the truth.”

And punishes the neighbour for the default of the neighbour.—This and the preceding metaphor are sufficiently transparent to allow of dispensing with the exceedingly plain-spoken definition of the neighbour and the neighbour’s neighbour, given by Sherîshi, who at the same time relates that the saying was addressed by an Arab to his wife, when she excused herself from meeting his advances in due fashion on the plea that she was visited by her menses. The light, thus thrown on the subject, extends also to the following rebuke of the Kadi, in which the salt-marshes stand for a place where no plants grow, and where sowing seed is as futile as looking out for chickens in a place where no chickens are hatched. In the imprecation, with which he concludes: “May no concern of thine prosper” (lâ na‘ima ‘aufu-ka), the same double meaning underlies the word ‘auf, condition, state of affairs, as the word qalam in the first note to Assembly XXXVIII., p. 234, the affirmative form of the idiom na‘ima ‘aufu-ka, being addressed to a man on the point of consummating marriage (Ar. Prov., ii. 747), and in the sentence, “Mayst thou not be safe in that which thou fearest,” the object of fear is offspring, either female, which, as we have seen, p. 209 above, is considered as a misfortune by all ‘Arabs, or offspring in general, which the poorer classes amongst them dread in reversed propor­tion, as it seems, with those amongst ourselves.

By Him who sends down the winds, quotation from Koran, vii. 55, and passim.

She is more of a liar than Sajâḥi (la-akẕabu min Sajâḥi), according to Harîri’s commentary, a proper name indeclinable in the letter i, like that of the celebrated grammarian Sîbawayhi (see vol. i., p. 497, and comp. barâḥi in Assembly XLVIII.). The woman thus called was the daughter of al-Munẕir, and made claim to the prophetic office in opposition to the pseudo-prophet Musaylamah (see “Dict. of Islâm,” p. 422), whom she went to convert or fight, but whose cause she subsequently embraced, giving herself to him in marriage. The proverb concerning her (Ar. Prov., i. 595) is not as quoted in the text, but aghlamu (azná) min Sajâḥi, hotter (more lecherous) than Sajâḥi, probably an intentional slip of Abû Zayd’s memory, who trusted in that of his audience to give the retort courteous to the accusation of his spouse by a counter-charge.

He is a greater liar than Abû S̤umâmah, the surname of the aforesaid impostor Musaylamah, also called al-Kaẕẕâb, the liar, who in the latter days of Mohammed’s life rose in rivalry with him, and after the Prophet’s death acquired considerable power, until Abû Bekr’s general, Khâlid ibn al-Welîd, crushed his followers in a sanguinary battle, in which the false prophet was slain by the negro slave Wahshî with the same lance wherewith he had killed Mohammed’s uncle Ḥamzah in the battle of Oḥud.

More barefaced than bark, etc.—Abraza is, lit., more showing forth, i.e., displaying her face without a veil, a sign of immodesty in a woman.

Rijlah, which, for the sake of assonance, I translate by “purs­lane,” is some kind of bitter herb, which grows on the brink of rivers, and is therefore proverbially (Ar. Prov., i. 406), called ḥamqâ, foolish, silly, because exposing itself to be undermined and carried away by the current. The river Tigris, whose Arabic name dijlah rhymes with it, is considered one of the widest rivers, so much so that a flooded country is called dijlah, as resembling it in width and extent.

If Shîrîn had bestowed on thee her beauty, etc.—Shîrîn, wife of the Persian king Khosru Perwez, celebrated for her beauty and the sculptor Farhad’s fatal love for her.—Bilkîs, Queen of Saba (the Scriptural Sheba, for whom see Koran, xxvii. 22, 23).—Zobaydeh, wife of Hârûn ar Reshîd and grand-daughter of Manṣûr, possessed of great wealth, which she spent lavishly in pilgrimage, pious dona­tions, and the building of mosques.—Bûrân, either the daughter of Khosru Perwez, who reigned after his death for forty years, or more probably the wife of the Khalif Ma’mûn, who spread for her on the wedding night a golden carpet, on which he poured from a large vessel a heap of pearls for the waiting women, each of whom took a bead, the remainder being left sparkling on the carpet.—Az-Zebbâ (see notes to Assembly XXVII., p. 190 above), proverbial for magnifi­cence and power (Ar. Prov., ii. 147), and thus called from the length of her hair (zabab), which she trailed behind her when walking.— Rabî‘ah, daughter of Ishmael, of the tribe Ḳays, a woman of Baṣra, celebrated for piety (Ibn Khallikan, i. 263).—Khindaf, surname of Laila, daughter of Ḥulwân bin ‘Imrân, and wife of Alyas bin Moḍar, surpassing all Arab women in glory, as ancestress of the tribe Koraysh.—Al-Khansâ, the Pug-nosed, nickname of Tumâḍir bint ‘Amr ibn Harith ibn ash-Sherîd. She lived up to the rise of Islâm, and was the greatest Arabic poetess, famous especially for her elegies on her brother Ṣakhr (comp. Ar. Prov., ii. 617, and see Chenery’s note, vol. i., p. 387, to Being at one time Ṣakhr, at another time the sister of Ṣakhr).

O thou viler than Mâdir.—Mâdir, nickname of Mokhâriḳ, a man of the tribe Benû Hilâl ibn ‘Amir, who had taken possession of a cistern to water his camels, and when it had served his purpose, coated it with his excrements, in order to render it useless to those coming after him, and thereby gave rise to the proverb, “more stingy than Mâdir” (Ar. Prov., i. 190).—Ḳâṣhir, either a camel stallion belonging to one of the tribes of S‘ad ibn Zayd Manât ibn Temîm, who covered no she-camel without her dying, or a year of drought, thus called from its stripping (qashr) the ground of vege­tation (Ar. Prov. i. 690).—Ṣâfir (whistler), a word of disputed mean­ing (Ar. Prov., i. 326). Some say it signifies any bird that whistles, and that cowardice is attributed to it, because it is in continual fear of birds and beasts of prey. By others it is said to mean a special kind of bird, which, at the approach of night, clings to some branches and whistles all night through from fear of falling asleep and being captured. According to a third explanation, it designates a man who whistles to a woman, so as to give warning of danger, and all the while is cowed with fear lest he be caught at his errand. Lastly, it is stated that the agent “whistling” stands for the patient “whistled to” (as a signal for flight), as in Koran, lxxxvi. 6, “pour­ing (dâfiq) water” (i.e., sperm) stands for “water poured forth (madfûq)” and in popular parlance “a riding-beast (râḥilah)” for a beast ridden upon (marḥûlah), a peculiarity of idiom as frequent in Arabic as, vice versâ, the use of the patient instead of the agent, for instance, Koran, xvii. 47, “a hidden (mastûr) veil” for a “hiding or enshrouding (sâtir) veil.”—T̤âmir, the Jumper, with his full title, T̤âmir ibn T̤âmir, Jumper Jumperson, the flea, on account of his extraordinary power of leaping here, there, and everywhere, pro­verbial for giddiness (Ar. Prov., ii. 52).