THE FORTY-SEVENTH ASSEMBLY.

While I was staying at Ḥajr of Yemâmeh.—Yemâmeh is one of the most fertile districts of Ḥijâz, and at the same time the name of its chief town, situated in the east of Mecca. It has been men­tioned in Assembly XL., p. 103, above, as the scene of the Musay-limeh’s insurrection under the Khalifate of Abû Bekr, which was crushed by a sanguinary battle, in which the impostor himself was slain. The Shuhadâ’, or martyrs on the Moslem side, were buried in Ḥajr, the second town of importance in the district, about two days’ journey distant from Yemâmah town to the north-west.

Or met with accident (lit., state, condition) after accident, in Arabic rakiba t̤abaqan ‘an t̤abaqin, where the preposition ‘an, from, takes the meaning of ba‘da, after, as in Koran, lxxxiv. 19: “(And I swear, etc.) that state after state ye will encounter.”

Who has disappointed his master, lit., who is a burden (kall) to his master, again taken from the Koran, xvi. 78: “God also propounds a comparison between two men, one of whom is dumb, and hath no power over anything, and is a burden to his lord (wa huwa kallun ‘alá maulâ-hu): direct him where he will, he cometh not back with success.”

Is this the tardiness of Find along with the failure of thy fire-shaft? —This is meant as a reproach for being late on his errand, and, after all, returning without having accomplished it. The allusion is to the proverb abt̤a’a min findin, “slower than Find,” a freedman of ‘Âyeshah bint Sa‘d, who sent him one day to fetch fire from a neigh­bour’s house. On his way he met some people who were travelling to Egypt, and, joining them, he stayed away for a whole year. After his return, he borrowed the fire-brand for which he had been sent, and ran home with it, but he stumbled and fell, and the fire got extinguished, whereupon he exclaimed, “Hurry be cursed!” (Ar. Prov., i. 197, 236).

More busily engaged than the woman of the two butter-bags, in the original ashghalu min ẕâti ’n-niḥyaini, a proverb of which Ḥarîri himself gives the following account: She was a woman of the tribe Taim Allâh ibn S̤a‘labah, who was present at the fair of ‘Okâz with two butter-bags. Khauwât ibn Jubair (who afterwards was con­verted and became one of the Helpers or Anṣârîs) took her aside under the pretext of buying them, opened them, tasted the contents, and returned them to her one after the other, and while she was holding them under her arms and kept their mouths closed with her hands, he outraged her. When he went away from her, she said to him: “May it do thee no good.” As for the tribal name Taim Allah, it is a corruption of Taim al-Lât, servant of Lât, an idol of the time of Ignorance, for which the religious ardour of the Faithful substituted the name of the true God in their anxiety to eliminate all traces of paganism from their early history. The comparative ashghalu is another instance of the measure af‘al, derived from maf‘ûl instead of fâ‘il, for which comp. the note on aḥmad, p. 283, above (Ar. Prov., i., 463, 687).

There is no blame on him who goes to the privy.—Sherîshi here inserts the story of the youth of Kufa, who visited an uncle of his at Medina, and during a year’s stay was never known to enter that place. When he had returned to his home, it came out on inquiry, that whenever he had asked his uncle’s slave girls for it by one of the numerous names by which it is more or less euphemistically called by the Arabs, they answered him by a verse of some popular poem, in which the same word occurred with a different and per­fectly guileless meaning, leaving the poor lad no wiser than before, and throwing him mercilessly back on his own resources for expedients, to which he took with a vengeance.

A youth like Samṣâmah, i.e., straight and sharp like a sword. According to Sherîshi, Ṣamṣâmah is in particular the name of a sword belonging to ‘Amr Mad‘ákarib, the sharpness of which was such as to cut iron as easily as iron cuts wood.

Nor seek traces after the substance is gone.—Comp. Ar. Prov., i. 221, and Chenery’s note, vol. i., p. 362.

He frowned and he turned his back, beginning of Sura lxxx., to which Rodwell remarks in a note: “We are told in the tradi­tions that, when engaged in converse with Welid, a chief man among the Koraysh, Mohammed was interrupted by the blind Abdallah Ibn Omm Maktûm, who asked to hear the Koran. The Prophet spoke very roughly to him at the time, but afterwards repented, and treated him ever after with the greatest respect. So much so that he twice made him Governor of Medina.”

So trust to the stream of my mountain-slope, i.e., to my word and promise. If no confidence is felt in the sincerity of a man’s pro­testations, it is said to him, “I trust not in thy mountain-slope” (lâ as̤iqu bi-tal‘ati-ka), viz., that any water will flow down from it, the water, as has been mentioned frequently, serving as a simile for liberality and generous disposition (Ar. Prov., i. 49). The expres­sion tal‘ah, lit., a rising ground, or the watercourse down from a mountain, occurs also in the proverb: “I am afraid of nothing but the current from my mountain-slope,” meaning thereby one’s nearest relations.

Where the wolf howls, metaphorical for a deserted place, a “howl­ing” wilderness.

If thy father had lorded it over ‘Abd Manâf, or if ‘Abd al-Madân had been thrall to thy maternal uncle.—‘Abd Manâf, surnamed al-Mugh airah, was the eldest son of Koṣṣai, and one of the most famous chiefs of the tribe Koraysh, for whose glory, as the Commentators remark, it would suffice that he belonged to the ancestors of Mohammed. ‘Abd al-Madân was proverbial for nobility and prowess in warfare. The poet Laqît̤ alludes to him in the line:

“I drank wine until I fancied myself to be ‘Abd al-Madân or Abû Kâbûs.”

Beat not cold. iron, from the proverb “thou beatest cold iron” (Ar. Prov., i. 218), which is applied to one who wishes for some­thing unattainable. Al-Mubarrid quotes the following verses of Abû ’sh-Shamaqmaq on Sa‘îd Ibn Salm:

“Alas! thou beatest cold iron if thou wishest for a gift from Sa‘id;

By Allah, if he were possessed of all the seas together and a Moslem came to him in the time of flood

Begging from him a draught to perform his ablution, he would deny it to him and say, Make thy ablution with the sand of the ground.”

The nose in the sky and the rump in the water, proverbially said of a grandiloquous boaster whose performances are poor (Ar. Prov., i. 23).

And art ruthless with the ruthlessness of the cat, allusion to the proverb a‘aqqu mina ’l-hirri, more ruthless than the cat, who is said, like the hyena, occasionally to devour her young. It was applied by a poet amongst the partisans of Ali to ‘Âyeshah, when she set out for the battle of the camel. As I have a tender corner in my heart for this animal, which I consider much maligned by those who call it devoid of affection, I gladly take note of the statement of Ḥamzah Al Iṣbahânî, that the Arabs say also, in flat contradiction to the above, “more affectionate (abarru) than the cat,” maintaining that the devouring, if it is done now and then, proceeds from pure excess of love, in order to preserve the little ones from all future trouble. It is true he adds that they offer no satisfactory argument in proof, but then he ought to repeat their arguments, such as they are, and allow us to form our own judgment. Meanwhile I am fain to credit the soundness of their saying and solemnly declare on behalf of my four-footed friends: “Well said, ye Arabs, faithful believers in feline kindliness, who deserve for aye to live in the grateful remembrance of the tribe of Puss, son of Grimalkin, son of Caterwauler.”

Less occupied than the cupper of Sâbât̤ (Ar. Prov., ii. 227).—The tale goes that for want of customers he cupped soldiers for a dâniq (small fraction of the dirhem) apiece, payable at their convenience, and when for some length of time none presented himself, he practised on his mother, so as not to be reproached with idleness, until her blood was exhausted, and the poor lady died of inanition.

Heavy of hand.—Here I have taken a liberty with the words of the text, s̤aqîlu-’l-ishtirât̤i, the literal translation of which would be “heavy in making stipulations.” But as this would come pretty much to the same as the preceding “excessive in his charges,” I hope the substitution will be condoned, while it introduces a fresh item into the description of what a cupper ought not to be.

That he was complaining to one who would not silence his complaint, a proverbial expression applying to a person who is not concerned at another’s condition, and does not care for the removal of his com­plaint, for if he alleviated it, the other would cease complaining (see Ar. Prov., i. 219). Thus a poet says, addressing his camel:

“Thou complainest to one who will not still thy complaint; so bear thy heavy burden patiently or die.”

Of a similar purport is the proverb which will follow a little lower down: hâna ‘alâ ’l-amlasi mâ lâqâ ’d-dabira, “what befalls the back-sore sits lightly on the smooth-skinned” (Ar. Prov., i. 653).

His sleeve became torn, literally, his sleeve recited the Sura inshiqâq, the splitting asunder (lxxxiv.), the sound of the tearing garment being whimsically compared to the sound of a reading voice.

Hast thou not heard what is said of him who exercises forgiveness?— Allusion to a saying reported by Tradition of Mohammed: “He who remits the offence of a believer, Allah will remit to the same his offence on the day of resurrection.”

My surroundings over-tax my liberality, meaning, that his household expenditure leaves him no surplus, which he might spend on others. The Arabic for surroundings is shi‘âb, pl. of shi‘b, a mountain cleft or valley, here used in the sense of nawâḥî, neighbouring parts, for family, etc.

They are of no account, even though he should be a liar, in Arabic lâ kânâ wa lau kâna ẕâ mainin, lit., the two have not been, even if he be possessed of lying, which a marginal note in my MS. paraphrases by: “There is no value in the two dirhems, even if the old man should have told a lie.”

A milk-flow, half of which belongs to thee, taken from the proverb: uḥlub ḥalaban la-ka shat̤ru-hu, milk the milk of which half shall be thine, inciting to the pursuit of an object by the promise of an equal share in the result (Ar. Prov., i. 345).

As nicely as the fruit of the dwarf-palm splits, in Arabic shiqqa ’l-ublumati (also read ablimati and ablamati).—According to Sherîshi ublumah is synonymous with daumah, wild or dwarf palm, whose leaves split into two equal halves. Abû Ziyâd says it is a plant growing horn-shaped fruits like beans, and which splits lengthwise in two halves of perfect equality. Hence the proverb: al-mâlu bainî wa baina-ka shiqqa ’l-ublumati, the money is or shall be equally divided between myself and thee, where the accusative shiqqa is that of the infinitive of corroboration, i.e., divided with the splitting, etc. (Ar. Prov., ii. 618).

Any shoe suits the bare-footed who walks on flints, said of one who adapts himself to the circumstances as best he can (Ar. Prov., ii. 317).