And now: In a meeting devoted to that learning whose breeze has stilled in this age, whose lights are nigh gone out—There ran a mention of the Assemblies which had been invented by Badî‘ az Zemân, the sage of Hamadân (God shew him mercy);—In which he had referred the composition to Abû’l Fatḥ of Alexandria and the relation to ‘Îsa, son of Hishâm.—And both these are persons obscure, not known; vague, not to be recognized.—Then suggested to me one whose suggestion is as a decree, and obedience to whom is as a prize,—That I should compose Assemblies, following in them the method of Badî‘ (although the lame steed attains not to outrun like the stout one).—Then I reminded him of what is said concerning him who joins even two words, or strings together one or two verses:—And deprecated this position in which the understanding is bewildered, and the fancy misses aim, and the depth of the intelligence is probed, and a man’s real value is made manifest:—And in which one is forced to be as a wood-gatherer by night, or as he who musters footmen and horsemen together:—Considering, too, that the voluble man is seldom secure or pardoned if he trips.—But when he consented not to forbearance, and freed me not from his demand, I assented to his invitation with the assenting of the obedient, and displayed in according with him all my endeavour;—And composed, in spite of what I suffered from frozen genius, and dimmed intelligence, and failing judgment, and afflicting cares,—Fifty Assemblies, comprising what is serious in language and lively, what is delicate in expression and dignified; the brilliancies of eloquence and its pearls, the beauties of scholarship and its rarities:—Besides what I have adorned them with of verses of the Koran and goodly metonymies, and studded them with of Arab proverbs, and scholarly elegancies, and grammatical riddles, and decisions dependent on the meaning of words, and original addresses, and ornate orations, and tear-moving exhortations, and amusing jests:—All of which I have indited as by the tongue of Abû Zayd of Serûj, while I have attributed the relating of them to Al Ḥârith son of Hammâm, of Basra.—And whenever I change the pasture I have no purpose but to inspirit the reader, and to increase the number of those who shall seek my book.— And of the poetry of others I have introduced nothing but two single verses, on which I have based the fabric of the Assembly of Ḥolwân; and two others, in a couplet, which I have inserted at the conclusion of the Assembly of Kerej.—And, as for the rest, my own mind is the father of its virginity, the author of its sweet and its bitter.—Yet I acknowledge withal that Badî‘ (God shew him mercy) is a mighty passer of goals, a worker of wonders;—And that he who assays after him to the composition of an Assembly, even though he be gifted with the eloquence of Ḳodâmeh,—Does but scoop up of his overflow, and travels that path only by his guidance.—And excellently said one:—
If before it mourned, I had mourned my love for Su‘da, then should I have healed my soul, nor had afterwards to repent.
But it mourned before me, and its mourning excited mine, and I said, “The superiority is to the one that is first.”
Now I hope I shall not be, in respect of the playful style that I display, and the source that I repair to, like the beast that scratched up its death with its hoof, or he who cut off his nose with his own hand;—So as to be joined to those who are “most of all losers in their works, whose course on earth has been in vain, while they count that they have done fair deeds.”—Since I know that although he who is intelligent and liberal will connive at me, and he who is friendly and partial may defend me,—I can hardly escape from the simpleton who is ignorant, or the spiteful man who feigns ignorance;—Who will detract from me on account of this composition, and will give out that it is among the things forbidden of the law.—But yet, whoever scans matters with the eye of intelligence, and makes good his insight into principles—Will rank these Assemblies in the order of useful writings, and class them with the fables that relate to brutes and lifeless objects.—Now none was ever heard of whose hearing shrank from such tales, or who held as sinful those who related them at ordinary times.— Moreover, since deeds depend on intentions, and in these lies the effectiveness of religious obligations,—What fault is there in one who composes stories for instruction not for display, and whose purpose in them is the education and not the fablings?—Nay, is he not in the position of one who assents to doctrine, and “guides to the right path?”
Yet am I content if I may carry my caprice, and then be quit of it, without any debt against me or to me.
And of God I seek to be helped in what I purpose, and to be kept from that which makes defective, and to be led to that which leads aright.—For there is no refuge but to Him, and no seeking of succour but in Him, and no prospering but from Him, and no sanctuary but He.—On Him I rely, and to Him I have recourse.
In this Assembly Al Ḥârith arrives in the town of Ṣan‘â in Yemen, in great poverty; and, while seeking relief, encounters a crowd, which is gathered about a preacher. The discourse is a stern warning against self-indulgence, and an exhortation to repentance. Ḥârith, wishing to learn who the preacher is, follows him to a cave, and there finds him enjoying himself with good food, and even with wine. He begins to rebuke him, but the preacher, throwing off disguise, extemporizes some lines, confessing that his preaching was only a device to obtain charity. Ḥârith asks the attendant the name of the preacher, and is told that he is Abû Zayd, of Serûj. This Assembly is placed first because in it Ḥârith is represented as unacquainted with Abû Zayd, though the first Assembly composed by Ḥarîri is said to be that called Al Ḥarâmîyeh, which is placed forty-eighth in the collection.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related:—When I mounted the hump of exile, and misery removed me from my fellows, the shocks of the time cast me to San‘â of Yemen.—And I entered it with wallets empty, manifest in my need; I had not a meal; I found not in my sack a mouthful.—Then began I to traverse its ways like one crazed, and to roam in its depths as roams the thirsting bird.—And wherever ranged my glances, wherever ran my goings at morn or even,—I sought some generous man before whom I might fray the tissue of my countenance, to whom I might be open concerning my need;—Or one well bred, whose aspect might dispel my pain, whose anecdote might relieve my thirsting.— Until the close of my circuit brought me, and the overture of courtesy guided me, to a wide place of concourse, in which was a throng and a wailing.—Then I entered the thicket of the crowd to explore what was drawing forth tears.—And I saw in the middle of the ring a person slender of make;—Upon him was the equipment of pilgrimage, and he had the voice of lamentation.— And he was studding cadences with the jewels of his wording, and striking hearings with the reproofs of his admonition.—And now the medley of the crowds had surrounded him, as the halo surrounds the moon, or the shell the fruit.—So I crept towards him, that I might catch of his profitable sayings, and gather up of his gems.—And I heard him say, as he coursed along in his career, and the throat of his improvisation made utterance:—
O thou reckless in petulance, trailing the garment of vanity! O thou headstrong in follies, turning aside to idle tales!—How long wilt thou persevere in thine error, and eat sweetly of the pasture of thy wrong?— How far wilt thou be extreme in thy pride, and not abstain from thy wantonness?—Thou provokest by thy rebellion the Master of thy forelock; in the foulness of thy behaving thou goest boldly against the Knower of thy secret.—Thou hidest thyself from thy neighbour, but thou art in the sight of thy Watcher; thou conceal-est from thy slave, but no hidden thing is hidden from thy Ruler.—Thinkest thou that thy state will profit thee when thy departure draweth near? or that thy wealth will deliver thee when thy deeds destroy thee? or that thy repentance will suffice for thee when thy foot slip-peth? or that thy kindred will lean to thee in the day that thy judgment place gathereth thee?—How is it thou hast not walked in the high-road of guidance, and hastened the treatment of thy disease, and blunted the edge of thine iniquity, and restrained thyself—thy chief enemy? Is not death thy doom? What then is thy preparation? Is not grey hair thy warning? What then is thy excuse? And in the grave’s niche thy sleeping place? What dost thou say? And to God thy going? and who shall be thy defender?—Oft hath the time awakened thee, but thou hast set thyself to slumber; and admonition hath drawn thee, but thou hast strained against it; and warnings have been manifest to thee, but thou hast made thyself blind; and truth hath been established to thee, but thou hast disputed it; and death hath bid thee remember, but thou hast sought to forget; and it hath been in thy power to impart of good, but thou hast not imparted.—Thou preferrest money which thou mayest hoard before piety which thou mayest keep in mind: thou choosest a castle thou mayest rear rather than bounty thou mayest confer.—Thou inclinest from the guide from whom thou mightest get guidance, to the pelf thou mayest gain as a gift; thou lettest the love of the raiment thou covetest overcome the recompence thou mightest earn.—The rubies of gifts cling to thy heart more than the seasons of prayer; and the heightening of dowries is preferred with thee to continuance in almsgivings.—The dishes of many meats are more desired of thee than the leaves of doctrines: the jesting of comrades is more cheerful to thee than the reading of the Koran.—Thou commandest to righteousness, but violatest its sanctuary: thou for-biddest from deceit, but refrainest not thyself: thou turnest men from oppression, and then thou drawest near to it; thou fearest mankind, but God is more worthy that thou shouldest fear him. Then he recited—
Woe to him who seeks the world, and turns to it his careering:
And recovers not from his greediness for it, and the excess of his love.
Oh, if he were wise, but a drop of what he seeks would content him.
Then he laid his dust, and let his spittle subside; and put his bottle on his arm, and his staff under his armpit.—And when the company gazed on his uprising, and saw that he equipped himself to move away from the midst—Each of them put his hand into his bosom, and filled for him a bucket from his stream:—And said, “Use this for thy spending, or divide it among thy friends.”—And he received it with half-closed eyes, and turned away from them, giving thanks;—And began to take leave of whoever would escort him, that his road might be hidden from them; and to dismiss whoever would follow him, that his dwelling might be unknown.—Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammân: Now I went after him, concealing from him my person; and followed on his track from where he could not see me;— Until he came to a cave, and slipped into it suddenly.— So I waited for him till he put off his sandals and washed his feet, and then I ran in upon him;—And found him sitting opposite an attendant, at some white bread and a roast kid, and over against them was a jar of date wine.—And I said to him, “Sirrah, was that thy story, and is this thy reality?”—But he puffed the puff of heat and went near to burst with rage; and ceased not to stare at me till I thought he would leap upon me.—But when his fire was allayed, and his flame hid itself, he recited:—
I don the black robe to seek my meal, and I fix my hook in the hardest prey:
And of my preaching I make a noose, and steal with it against the chaser and the chased.
Fortune has forced me to make way even to the lion of the thicket by the subtlety of my beguiling.
Yet do I not fear its change, nor does my loin quiver at it:
Nor does a covetous mind lead me to water at any well that will soil my honour.
Now if Fortune were just in its decree it would not empower the worthless with authority.
Then he said to me, “Come and eat; or, if thou wilt, rise and tell.”—But I turned to his attendant, and said, “I conjure thee, by Him through whom harm is deprecated, that thou tell me who is this.”—He said, “This is Abû Zayd, of Serûj, the Light of Foreigners, the Crown of the Learned.”—Then I turned back to whence I came, and was extreme in wonder at what I saw.
In this Assembly the author displays more than his usual rhetorical subtlety, and while there is none more admired by those whose taste has been formed on Eastern models, there is none which appears more extravagant to the European student. Alliterations, verbal caprices, far-fetched expressions, and the puerile conceits which were usual among poets of the age, so abound, that we may almost imagine the author to be desirous of satirizing what he professes to imitate. The subject is as follows:—Ḥârith in his passion for the society of literary persons makes his way to Ḥolwân, a town in Irak, on the mountains east of Bagdad, and a resort of the higher classes from the heat of the capital. Here he meets with Abû Zayd, who is pursuing his calling of improvisatore and mendicant under various disguises, and enjoys for a long time his company and literary guidance. Abû Zayd, however, disappears, and Ḥârith returns to his native place, Basra, where after a time he again meets Abû Zayd in the public library, among a crowd of dilettanti who are discussing the beauties of the popular poets. The admiration of one is especially excited by a line in which the teeth of a lady are compared to pearls and hailstones, and the white petals of a flower; and Abû Zayd instantly produces a number of comparisons in the same style, which give him a high place in the esteem of those present, when they are assured that he is really the author of them. They reward him, and the Assembly concludes by his reciting to Ḥârith, who had recognised him, some lines on the fickleness of fortune.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: Ever since my amulets were doffed and my turbans were donned, I was eager to visit learning’s seat and to jade to it the camels of seeking.—That through it I might cleave to what would be my ornament among men, my rain-cloud in thirst.—And through the excess of my longing to kindle at it, and my desire to robe myself in its raiment,—I discussed with every one, great and small, and sought my draught both of the rain-flood and the dew, and solaced myself with hope and desire.—Now when I descended at Ḥolwân, and had already tried the brethren, and tested their values, and proved what was worthless or fine;—I found there Abû Zayd of Serûj, shifting among the varieties of pedigree, beating about in various courses of gain-getting;—For at one time he claimed to be of the race of Sâsân, and at another he made himself kin to the princes of Ghassân; and now he sallied forth in the vesture of poets; and anon he put on the pride of nobles.—And yet with all this diversifying of his condition, and this display of contradiction,—He is adorned with grace and information, and courtesy and knowledge, and astonishing eloquence, and obedient improvisation, and excelling accomplishments, and a foot that mounts the hills of the sciences.—Now, through his goodly attainments he is associated with in spite of his faults; and through the largeness of his information there is a fondness for the sight of him; and through the blandishment of his fair-speaking men are loath to oppose him; and through the sweetness of his address he is helped to his desire.—Then I clung to his skirts for the sake of his peculiar accomplishments, and valued highly his affection by reason of his precious qualities.
With him I wiped away my cares, and beheld my fortune displayed to me, open of face, gleaming with light.
I looked upon his nearness to me as kinship, his abiding as wealth, his aspect as a full draught, his life as rain.
Thus we remained a long season; he produced for me daily some pleasantness, and drove some doubt from my heart,—Until the hand of want mixed for him the cup of parting, and the lack of a meal urged him to abandon Irak;—And the failures of supply cast him into desert regions, and the waving of the banner of distress ranged him in the line of travellers;—And he sharpened for departure the edge of determination, and journeyed away, drawing my heart with his leading cord.
After he was gone none pleased me who kept by me, none filled me with affection by urging me to intimacy.
Since he strayed away none has appeared to me his like in excellence; no friend has gotten the equal of his qualities.
So he was hidden from me a season: I knew not his lair; I found none to tell of him;—But when I had returned from my wandering to the place where my branch had sprouted,—I was once present in the town library, which is the council-hall of scholars, the meeting place of residents and strangers:—Then there entered one with a thick beard and a squalid aspect,—And he saluted those who sat, and took seat in the last rows of the people.—Then began he to produce what was in his wallet, and to astonish those present by the sagacity of his judgment.—And he said to the man who was next him, “What is the book into which thou lookest?”—He said, “The poems of Abû ‘Obâdeh; him of whose excellence men bear witness.”—He said, “In what thou hast seen hast thou hit on any fine thing which thou admirest?”—He said, “Yes; the line
As though she smiled from strung pearls or hailstones, or camomile flowers.
For it is original in the use of similitude which it contains.”—He said to him, “Here is a wonder! here is a lack of taste,—Sir, thou hast taken for fat what is only swollen, thou hast blown on that which is no fuel:— Where art thou in comparison with the rare verse which unites the similitudes of the teeth?
My life a ransom for those teeth whose beauty charms, and which a purity adorns sufficing thee for all other.
She parts her lips from fresh pearls, and from hail-stones, and from camomile flowers, and from the palm shoot, and from bubbles.
Then each one approved the couplet and admired it, and bade him repeat it and dictate it.—And he was asked, “Whose is this verse, and is its author living or dead?”—He said, “By Allah, Right is most worthy to be followed, and truth is most fitting to be listened to:—Know, friends, that it is his who talks with you today.”—Said Al Ḥarith: Now it was as though the company doubted of his fathering, and were unwilling to give credit to his claim.—And he perceived what had fallen into their thoughts, and was aware of their inward unbelief;—And was afraid that blame might chance to him, or ill-fame reach him;—So he quoted from the Koran, “Some suspicions are a sin.”—Then he said, “O ye reciters of verse, physicians of sickly phrase!—Truly the purity of the gem is shown by the testing, and the hand of truth rends the cloak of doubt.—Now it was said aforetime that by trial is a man honoured or contemned.—So come! I now expose my hidden store to the proving, I offer my saddle-bag for comparison.”— Then hastened one who was there and said: “I know a verse such that there is no weaving on its beam, such that no genius can supply one after its image.—Now, if thou wish to draw our hearts to thee, compose after this style:—
She rained pearls from the daffodil, and watered the rose, and bit upon the ‘unnâb with hailstone.
And it was but the glance of an eye, or less, before he recited rarely:—
I asked her when she met me to put off her crimson veil, and to endow my hearing with the sweetest of tidings:
And she removed the ruddy light which covered the brightness of her moon, and she dropped pearls from a perfumed ring.
Then all present were astonished at his readiness, and acknowledged his honesty.—And when he perceived that they approved his diction, and were hastening into the path of honouring him,—He looked down the twinkling of an eye; then he said, “Here are two other verses for you;” and recited:—
She came on the day when departure afflicted, in black robes, biting her fingers like one regretful, confounded:
And night lowered on her morn, and a branch supported them both, and she bit into crystal with pearls.
Then did the company set high his value, and deem that his steady rain was a plenteous one;—And they made pleasant their converse with him, and gave him goodly clothing.—Said the teller of this story: Now when I saw the blazing of his firebrand, and the gleam of his unveiled brightness, I fixed a long look to guess at him, and made my eye to stray over his countenance. —And lo! he was our Shaykh of Serûj; but now his dark night was moon-lit.—Then I congratulated myself on his coming thither, and hastened to kiss his hand:— And said to him, “What has changed thy appearance, so that I could not recognise thee? what has made thy beard gray, so that I knew not thy countenance?”— And he indited and said:—
The stroke of calamities makes us hoary, and fortune to men is a changer.
If it yields to-day to any, to-morrow it overcomes him.
Trust not the gleam of its lightning, for it is a deceitful gleam.
But be patient if it hounds calamities against thee, and drives them on.
For there is no disgrace on the pure gold when it is turned about in the fire.
Then he rose and departed from his place, and carried away our hearts with him.
Ḥârith is in a circle of scholars, when a lame man makes his appearance, and after saluting them describes his former affluence and present penury in a very poetical and figurative style. Ḥârith perceiving his genius, and pitying his distress, offers him a denar, on condition that he will improvise some lines in praise of it. This the lame man at once does, and on Ḥârith offering him another denar on condition of his blaming it, he recites another composition in dispraise of money. Ḥârith then recognizes in the lame man Abû Zayd, and rebukes him for his imposture. Abû Zayd defends himself in some new verses. The opening address of Abû Zayd is in imitation of a style said to be common among the Arabs of the desert.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was set with some comrades in a company wherein he that made appeal was never bootless, and the rubbing of the fire-shafts never failed, and the flame of contention never blazed.—And while we were catching from each other the cues of recitations, and betaking ourselves to novelties of anecdote,—Behold there stood by us one on whom was a worn garment, and in whose walk was a limp.—And he said, O ye best of treasures, joys of your kindred: Health to you this morning; may ye enjoy your morning draught.—Look on one who was erewhile master of guest-room and largess, wealth and bounty, land and villages, dishes and feasting.—But the frowning of calamities ceased not from him, and the warrings of sorrows, and the fire-flakes of the malice of the envious, and the succession of dark befallings,—Until the court was empty, and the yard was bare, and the fountain sank, and the dwelling was desolate, and the hall was void, and the chamber stone-strewed.—And fortune shifted so that the household wailed; and the stalls were vacant, so that the rival had compassion; and the cattle and the goods they perished, so that the envious and malignant pitied.—And to such a pass did we come, through assailing fortune and prostrating need,—That we were shod with soreness, and fed on choking, and filled our bellies with ache, and wrapped our entrails upon hunger, and anointed our eyes with watching, and made pits our home, and deemed thorns a smooth bed, and came to forget our saddles, and thought destroying death to be sweet, and the ordained day to be tardy.— And now is there any one generous to heal, bountiful to bestow?—For by Him who made me to spring from Ḳaylah, surely I am now a brother of penury, I have not a nights’ victual.
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now I pitied his distresses, and inclined to the eliciting of his rhymes.— So I drew forth for him a denar, and said to him, to prove him, “If thou praise it in verse it is thine, full surely.”—And he betook himself to recite on the spot, borrowing nothing:—
How noble is that yellow one, whose yellowness is pure,
Which traverses the regions, and whose journeying is afar.
Told abroad are its fame and repute:
Its lines are set as the secret sign of wealth;
Its march is coupled with the success of endeavours;
Its bright look is loved by mankind;
As though its ore had been molten of their hearts.
By its aid whoever has gotten it in his purse assails boldly,
Though kindred be perished, or tardy to help.
Oh charming are its purity and brightness;
Charming are its sufficiency and help.
How many a ruler is there whose rule has been perfected by it!
How many a sumptuous one is there whose grief, but for it, would be endless!
How many a host of cares has one charge of it put to flight!
How many a full moon has a sum of it brought down!
How many a one burning with rage, whose coal is flaming,
Has it been secretly whispered to, and then his anger has softened.
How many a prisoner, whom his kin had yielded,
Has it delivered, so that his gladness has been unmingled,
Now by the Truth of the Lord whose creation brought it forth,
Were it not for His fear, I should say its power is supreme.
Then he stretched forth his hand after his recitation, and said, “The honourable man performs what he promises, and the rain-cloud pours if it has thundered.” —So I threw him the denar, and said, “Take it; no grudging goes with it.”—And he put it in his mouth and said, “God bless it.”—Then he girt up his skirts for departure, after that he had paid his thanks.—But there arose in me, through his pleasantry, a giddiness of desire which made me ready to incur indebtedness.—So I bared another denar, and said, “Does it suit thee to blame this, and then gather it?”—And he recited impromptu, and sang with speed:—
Ruin on it for a deceiver and insincere,
The yellow one with two faces like a hypocrite!
It shows forth with two qualities to the eye of him that looks on it,
The adornment of the loved one, the colour of the lover.
Affection for it, think they who judge truly,
Tempts men to commit that which shall anger their Maker.
But for it no thief’s right hand were cut off;
Nor would tyranny be displayed by the impious;
Nor would the niggard shrink from the night-farer;
Nor would the delayed claimant mourn the delay of him that withholds;
Nor would men call to God from the envious who casts at them.
Moreover, the worst quality that it possesses
Is that it helps thee not in straits,
Save by fleeing from thee like a runaway slave.
Well done he who casts it away from a hill-top,
And who, when it whispers to him with the whispering of a lover,
Says to it in the words of the truth-speaking, the veracious,
“I have no mind for intimacy with thee,—begone!”
Then said I to him, “How abundant is thy shower!” He said, “Agreement binds strongest.”—So I tossed him the second denar and said, “Consecrate them both with the Twice-read Chapter.”—He cast it into his mouth and joined it with its twin,—And turned away blessing his morning’s walk, praising the assembly and its bounty. —Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now my heart whispered me that he was Abû Zayd, and that his going lame was for a trick;—So I called him back and said to him, “Thou art recognised by thy eloquence, so straighten thy walk.”—He said, “If thou be the son of Hammâm, be thou greeted with honour and live long among the honourable.”—I said, “I am Ḥârith; but what is thy condition amid all thy fortunes.”—He said, “I change between two conditions, distress and ease; and I veer with two winds, the tempest and the breeze.”—I said, “And how hast thou pretended lameness? the like of thee plays not buffoon.”—Then his cheerfulness, which had shone forth, waned; but he recited as he moved away:—
I have feigned to be lame, not from love of lameness, but that I may knock at the gate of relief.
For my cord is thrown on my neck, and I go as one who ranges freely.
Now if men blame me I say, “Excuse me: sure there is no guilt on the lame.”
Ḥârith is journeying in a caravan to Damietta, and during one of the night-halts he hears two men conversing on duty towards a neighbour. The younger being asked for his opinion replies in a spirit of charity and generosity, upon which the other rebukes him, and sets forth the fitting conduct of a man to his neighbour in accordance with the teachings of selfishness and worldly wisdom. These addresses, especially that of the elder man, are expressed in a highly rhetorical diction, which captivates the literary Ḥârith, and the next morning he looks for them, and discovers them to be Abû Zayd and his son. He invites them to his own quarters, introduces them to his friends, and procures for them valuable presents. Abû Zayd then asks permission to go to a neighbouring village and take a bath, promising to return speedily. They consent, and he goes off with his son. After waiting the greater part of the day they find that he has deceived them, and prepare to continue their journey; Ḥârith, when making ready his camel, finds some lines written on the saddle, which allude to a precept in the Koran in favour of separating after a meal. The plays on words in this Assembly are exceedingly ingenious and elaborate, and the opening description has much poetical beauty.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I journeyed to Damietta in a year of much coming and going,—And in those days was I glanced after for my affluence, desired in friendship:—I trained the bordered robes of wealth and looked upon the features of joy.—And I was travelling with companions who had broken the staff of dissension, who were suckled on the milk-flows of concord,—So that they showed like the teeth of a comb in uniformity, and like one soul in agreement of desires;—But we coursed on withal apace, and not one of us but had saddled a fleet she-camel;—And if we alighted at a station or went aside to a spring, we snatched the halt and lengthened not the staying.
Now it happened that we were urging our camels on a night youthful in prime, raven-locked of complexion;— And we journeyed until the night-season had put off its prime, and the morning had wiped away the dye of the dark;—But when we wearied of the march and inclined to drowsiness, we came upon a ground with dew-moistened hillocks, and a faint east breeze:—And we chose it as a resting-place for the white camels, an abode for the night-halt.—Now when the caravan had descended there, and the groan and the roar of the beasts were still,—I heard a loud-voiced man say to his talk-fellow in the camp, “What is the rule of thy conduct with thy people and neighbours?”—The other answered, I am duteous to my neighbour though he wrong me; and give my fellowship even to the violent; and bear with a partner though he disorder my affairs; and love my friend even though he drench me with a tepid draught; and prefer my well-wisher above my brother; and fulfil to my comrade even though he requite me not with a tenth; and think little of much if it be for my guest; and whelm my companion with my kindness; and put my talk-fellow in the place of my prince; and hold my intimate to be as my chief; and commit my gifts to my acquaintance; and confer my comforts on my associate; and soften my speech to him that hates me; and continue to ask after him that disregards me; and am pleased with but the crumbs of my due; and am content with but the least portion of my reward; and complain not of wrong even when I am wronged; and revenge not, even though a viper sting me.
Then said his companion to him, Alas! my boy, only he who clings should be clung to; only he who is valuable should be prized.—As for me I give only to him who will requite; I distinguish not the insolent by my regard; nor will I be of pure affection to one who refuses me fair-dealing; nor treat as a brother one who would undo my tethering rope; nor aid one who would baulk my hopes; nor care for one who would cut my cords; nor be courteous to him who ignores my value; nor give my leading rope to one who breaks my covenant; nor be free of my love to my adversaries; nor lay aside my menace to the hostile; nor plant my benefits on the land of my enemies; nor be willing to impart to him who rejoices at my ills; nor show my regard to him who will exult at my death; nor favour with my gifts any but my friends; nor call to the curing of my sickness any but those who love me; nor confer my friendship on him who will not stop my breach; nor make my purpose sincere to him who wishes my decease; nor be earnest in prayer for him who will not fill my wallet; nor pour out my praise on him who empties my jar.— For who has adjudged that I should be lavish and thou shouldest hoard, that I should be soft and thou rough, that I should melt and thou freeze, that I should blaze and thou smoulder?—No, by Allah, but let us balance in speech as coin, and match in deed as sandals.—That each to each we may be safe from fraud and free from hatred.— For else, why should I give thee full water and thou stint me? why should I bear with thee and thou contemn me? why should I gain for thee and thou wound me? why should I advance to thee and thou repel me? For how should fair-dealing be attracted by injury? how can the sun rise clear with cloud?—And when did love follow docilely after wrong? and what man of honour consents to a state of abasement?—For excellently said thy father:—
Whoso attaches his affection to me, I repay him as one who builds on his foundation:
And I mete to a friend as he metes to me, according to the fullness of his meting or its defect.
I make him not a loser! for the worst of men is he whose to-day falls short of his yesterday.
Whoever seeks fruit of me gets only the fruit of his own planting.
I seek not to defraud, but I will not come off with the bargain of one who is weak in his reason.
I hold not truth binding on me towards a man who holds it not binding on himself.
There may be some one insincere in love who fancies that I am true in my friendship for him, while he is false;
And knows not in his ignorance that I pay my creditor his debt after its kind.
Sunder, with the sundering of hate, from one who would make thee a fool, and hold him as one entombed in his grave.
And towards him in whose intercourse there is aught doubtful put on the garb of one who shrinks from his intimacy.
And hope not for affection from any who sees that thou art in want of his money.
Said Al Ḥarith, son of Hammâm: Now, when I had gathered what passed between them, I longed to know them in person.—And when the sun shone forth, and robed the sky with light, I went forth before the camels had risen, and with an earliness beyond the earliness of the crow,—And began to follow the direction of that night-voice, and to examine the faces with a searching glance:—Until I caught sight of Abû Zayd and his son talking together, and upon them were two worn mantles.—Then I knew that they were my two talkers of the night, the authors of my recitation.—So I approached them as one enamoured of their refinement, pitying their shabbiness;—And offered them a removal to my lodging, and the disposal of my much and my little;—And began to tell abroad their worth among the travellers, and to shake for them the fruited branches;— Until they were whelmed with gifts, and taken as friends.—Now we were in a night-camp, whence we could discern the build of the villages, and spy the fires of hospitality.—And when Abû Zayd saw that his purse was full, and his distress removed, he said to me, “Truly my body is dirty, and my filth has caked:—Wilt thou permit me to go to a village, and bathe, and fulfil this urgent need?”—I said, “If thou wilt; but quick! return!”—He said, “Thou shalt find me appear again to thee, quicker than the glancing of thine eye.”—Then he coursed away, as courses the good steed in the training-ground, and said to his son, “Haste! haste!”—And we imagined not that he was deceiving, or seeking to escape.—So we stayed and watched for him as men watch for the new moons of feasts, and made search for him by spies and scouts.—Until the sunlight was weak with age, and the wasted bank of the day had nigh crumbled in.—Then, when the term of waiting had been prolonged, and the sun showed in faded garb— I said to my companions, “We have gone to the extreme in delay, and have been long in the setting forth;—So that we have lost time, and it is plain that the man was lying.—Now, therefore, prepare for the journey, and turn not aside to the greenness of dung heaps.”—Then I rose to equip my camel and lade for the departure; and found that Abû Zayd had written on the pack saddle:—
Oh thou, who wast to me an arm and a helper, above all mankind!
Reckon not that I have left thee through impatience or ingratitude:
For since I was born I have been of those who “when they have eaten separate.
Said Al Ḥarith: “Then I made the company read the words of the Koran that were on the pack saddle, so that he who had blamed him might excuse him.—And they admired his witticism, but commended themselves from his mischief.—Then we set forth, nor could we learn whose company he had gotten in our place.
The following Assembly, remarkable for the poetical beauty of its language, and the delicacy of its versification, describes an adventure in which Abû Zayd obtains a sum of money from a company of generous scholars. Ḥârith is engaged with some friends in a night conversation at Kufa, one of the chief seats of Arabian learning, when a stranger knocks at the door, and addresses the inmates in verses describing his want and weariness, his excellent disposition, and his gratitude for the favours he may receive. Struck with his poetical powers the company admit him, and give him a supper. The lamp being brought, Ḥârith discovers that the guest is Abû Zayd, and informs the company of his merits. They then ask him for a story, and he relates that he had that evening met with a long lost son, whom he would be glad to take charge of, did not his poverty hinder him. As he had taken care to mention in the narrative that he was of the royal race of Ghassân, the company are moved by his misfortunes, and at once raise a large sum of money to enable him to support his boy. Abû Zayd delights them with his conversation, but as soon as daylight appears he calls away Ḥârith, to assist him in cashing the cheques or orders which he had received. The simple Ḥârith, who had been delighted with the verses which the father had put into the mouth of his son, desires to see so eloquent a youth; upon which Abû Zayd laughs heartily, tells his friend, in some exquisite verses, that such a desire is the following of a mirage, that he, Abû Zayd, had neither wife nor son, and that the story was only a trick to obtain money. He then departs, leaving Ḥârith mortified at the adventure.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was conversing at Kufa, in a night whose complexion was of a twofold hue, whose moon was as an amulet of silver—With companions who had been nourished on the milk of eloquence, who might draw the train of oblivion over Saḥbân.—Each was a man to remember from, and not to guard against; each was one whom his friend would incline to, and not avoid.—And the night talk fascinated us until the moon had set, and the watching overcame us.—Now when night’s unmingled dark had spread its awning, and there was nought but nodding among us—We heard from the gate the faint sound of a wayfarer, rousing the dogs; then followed the knock of one bidding to open.—We said, “Who is it that comes in the dark night?” Then the traveller answered:—
O people of the mansion, be ye guarded from ill!
Meet not harm as long as ye live!
Lo! the night which glooms has driven
To your abode one dishevelled, dust laden,
A brother of journeying, that has been lengthened, extended,
Till he has become bent and yellow
Like the new moon of the horizon when it smiles.
And now he approaches your court-yard, begging boldly,
And repairs to you before all people else,
To seek from you food and a lodging.
Ye have in him a guest contented, ingenuous,
One pleased with all, whether sweet or bitter,
One who will withdraw from you, publishing your bounty.
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now when we were caught by the sweetness of his utterance, and knew what was behind his lightning,—We hastened to open the gate, and met him with welcome;—And said to the boy “Quick, quick! bring what is ready!”—Then said our guest, “Now, by Him who has set me down at your abode, I will not roll my tongue over your food,—Unless ye pledge me that ye will not make me a burden, that ye will not, for my sake, task yourselves with a meal.—For sometimes a morsel aches the eater, and forbids him his repasts.—And the worst of guests is he who imposes trouble and annoys his host,—And especially with a harm that affects the body and tends to sickness.—For, by that proverb, which is widely current, ‘The best suppers are those that are clearly seen.’—Is only meant that supper-time should be hastened, and eating by night, which dims the sight, avoided.—Unless, by Allah, the fire of hunger kindle and stand in the way of sleep.” —Said Al Ḥârith: Now it was as though he had got sight of our desire, and so had shot with the bow of our conviction.—Accordingly we gratified him by agreeing to the condition, and commended him for his easy temper.—And when the boy brought what was to be had, and lighted the candle in the midst of us, I looked close at him, and lo! it was Abû Zayd.—So I said to my company, “Joy to you of the guest who has come! Nay, but the spoil is lightly won!—For if the moon of Sirius has gone down, truly the moon of poetry has risen:— Or if the full moon of the Lion has waned, the full moon of eloquence shines forth.”—Then ran through them the wine-glow of joy, and sleep flew away from their eye-corners.—And they refused the rest which they had purposed, and returned to the spreading out of pleasantry, after they had folded it.—But Abû Zayd kept intent upon plying his hands; however, when what was before him might be removed—I said to him, “Present us with one of the rare stories from thy night talkings, or some wonder from among the wonders of thy journeys.”—He said, “Of wonders I have met with such as no seers have seen, no tellers have told.—But among the most wondrous was that which I beheld to-night, a little before my visit to you and my coming to your gate.”— Then we bade him tell us of this new thing which he had seen in the field of his night-faring.—He said, Truly the hurlings of exile have thrown me to this land:—And I was in hunger and distress, with a scrip like the heart of the mother of Moses.—Now, as soon as the dark had settled, I arose, in spite of all my footsoreness, to seek a host or to gain a loaf.—Then the driver hunger, and Fate, which is bye-named the Father of Wonders, urged me on, till I stood at the door of a house, and spoke, improvising:—
Hail people of this dwelling,
May ye live in the ease of a plenteous life!
What have ye for a son of the road, one crushed to the sand,
Worn with journeys, stumbling in the night-dark night,
Aching in entrails, which inclose nought but hunger?
For two days he has not tasted the savour of a meal:
In your land there is no refuge for him.
And already the van of the drooping darkness has gloomed;
And through bewilderment he is in restlessness.
Now in this abode is there any one, sweet of spring,
Who will say to me, “Throw away thy staff and enter:
Rejoice in a cheerful welcome and a ready meal?”
Then came forth to me a lad in a tunic, and answered:—
Now by the sanctity of the Shaykh who ordained hospitality,
And founded the House of Pilgrimage in the Mother of cities,
We have nought for the night-farer when he visits us
But conversation and a lodging in our hall.
For how should he entertain whom hinders from sleepfulness
Hunger which peels his bones when it assails him?
Now what thinkest thou of my tale? what thinkest thou?
I said, “What shall I do with an empty house, and a host the ally of penury?—But tell me, youth, what is thy name, for thy understanding has charmed me.”—He said, “My name is Zayd, and my birth-place Fayd: and I came to this city yesterday with my mother’s kindred of the Benû ‘Abs.”—I said to him, “Show me further, so mayest thou live and be raised when thou fallest!”— He said, “My mother Barrah told me (and she is like her name, ‘pious’) that she married in the year of the foray on Mâwân a man of the nobles of Serûj and Ghassân;—But when he was aware of her pregnancy (for he was a crafty bird, it is said) he made off from her by stealth, and away he has stayed,—Nor is it known whether he is alive and to be looked for, or whether he has been laid in the lonely tomb.”—Said Abû Zayd, “Now I knew by sure signs that he was my child; but the emptiness of my hand turned me from making known to him,—So I parted from him with heart crushed and tears unsealed.—And now, ye men of understanding, have ye heard aught more wondrous than this wonder?”—We said, “No, by Him who has knowledge of the Book.”—He said, “Record it among the wonders of chance; bid it abide for ever in the hearts of scrolls; for nothing like it has been told abroad in the world.”—Then we bade bring the ink-flask, and its snake-like reeds, and we wrote the story elegantly as he worded it; — After which we sought to draw from him his wish about receiving his boy.—He said, “If my purse were heavy, then to take charge of my son would be light.”—We said, “If a niṣâb of money would suffice thee, we will collect it for thee at once.”—He said, “And how should a niṣâb not content me? would any but a madman despise such a sum?”—Said the narrator, Then each of us undertook a share of it, and wrote for him an order for it.—Whereupon he gave thanks for the kindness, and exhausted the plenteousness of praise; until we thought his speech long, or our merit little.— And then he spread out such a bright mantle of talk as might shame the stuffs of Yemen,—Until the dawn appeared and the light-bearing morn went forth.—So we spent a night of which the mixed hues had departed, until its hind-locks grew gray in the dawn;—And whose lucky stars were sovereign until its branch budded into light.—But when the limb of the sun peeped forth, he leaped up as leaps the gazelle,—And said, “Rise up, that we may take hold on the gifts and draw payment of the cheques:—For the clefts of my heart are widening through yearning after my child.”—So I went with him, hand in hand, to make easy his success.—But as soon as he had secured the coin in his purse the marks of his joy flashed forth,—And he said, “Be thou rewarded for the steps of thy feet! be God my substitute towards thee!”—I said, “I wish to follow thee that I may behold thy noble child, and speak with him that he may answer eloquently.”—Then looked he at me as looks the deceiver on the deceived, and laughed till his eyeballs gushed with tears; and he recited:—
O thou who didst fancy the mirage to be water when I quoted to thee what I quoted!
I thought not that my guile would be hidden, or that it would be doubtful what I meant.
By Allah, I have no Barrah for a spouse; I have no son from whom to take a bye-name.
Nothing is mine but divers kinds of magic, in which I am original and copy no one:
They are such as Al Aṣma‘î tells not of in what he has told; such as Al Komayt never wove.
These I use when I will to reach whatever my hand would pluck:
And were I to abandon them, changed would be my state, nor should I gain what I now gain.
So allow my excuse; nay, pardon me, if I have done wrong or crime.
Then he took leave of me and passed away, and set coals of the ghaḍa in my breast.
This Assembly is the first of a remarkable series of compositions which, though they may be set down by Europeans as merely examples of laborious trifling, are highly esteemed by the Orientals as works of ingenuity and scholarship, and have found in every succeeding age numerous imitators. The incident is that Ḥârith, being once on a visit to Merâghah, in Azerbijan, the north-west province of the present Persian monarchy, found a number of literary men lamenting the decline of learning, and depreciating all contemporary authors in comparison with their predecessors. Sitting in a humble place in the outskirts of the company was an elderly man, who showed by his glances and scornful gestures that he did not value highly the opinions of these critics. When they paused in their fault-finding he took up the conversation, and declared that one person, at least, of the present age was capable of rivalling any who had gone before in scholarship and the arts of composition. He is asked who is this genius, and answers that it is himself. The company are sceptical, but as the stranger persists in asserting his great ability, they determine to test him, and one of them proposes to him a most difficult task. He tells the company that he is a professional writer attached to the Governor, who though a man of generosity, had declared that he would help him no further, till he had composed an address in which the alternate words should consist entirely of pointed and unpointed letters; that is, that the first, third, fifth words, and so forth, should consist of letters without a point, while the second, fourth, sixth, and so forth, should have only pointed letters. He adds that he had been striving a whole year to produce such a composition, or to find some one who could produce it. The stranger, on hearing this, accepts the task with alacrity, and instantly dictates an address in praise of the Governor, fulfilling the conditions that had been imposed. The company are delighted, and inquire his family and abode: he answers in some plaintive verses that he is of the tribe of Ghassân, and the city of Serûj. His fame having reached the Governor, he is offered the place of a public writer, but declines it. Ḥârith, who had discovered that he was Abû Zayd, asks him the reason of this unwillingness to accept office. Abû Zayd again replies in verse, and tells his friend that a life of freedom and poverty is better than dependence on the great.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was present in the Court of Supervision at Merâghah when the talk ran of eloquence.—Then agreed all who were there of the knights of the pen, and the lords of genius;—That there remained no one who could select his diction, or use himself freely in its as he willed:—And that since the men of old were gone, there was none now left who could originate a brilliant method, or open a virgin style.— And that even one marvellous among the writers of this age, and holding in his grasp the cords of eloquence, is but a dependent on the ancients, even though he possess the fluency of Saḥbân Wâ’il.—Now there was in the assembly an elderly man, sitting on the outskirts, in the places of the attendants:—And as often as the company overran in their career, and scattered fruit, good and bad, from their store,—The side-glance of his eye and the up-turning of his nose showed that he was one silent to spring, one crouching who would extend his stride:—That he was a twanger of the bow who shapes his arrows, one who sits in wait desiring the conflict.—But when the quivers were empty, and quiet returned; when the storms had fallen, and the disputer was stayed,—He turned to the company and said, Ye have uttered a grievous thing, ye have wandered much from the way:—For ye have magnified mouldering bones, ye have been excessive in your leaning to those who are gone; ye have contemned your generation, among whom ye were born, and with whom your friendships are established.—Have ye forgotten, ye skilful in testing, ye sages of loosing and binding,—How much new springs have given forth; how the colt has surpassed the full-grown steed;—In refined expressions, and delightful metaphors, and ornate addresses, and admired cadences?—And, if any one here will look diligently, is there in the ancients aught but ideas whose paths are worn, whose ranges are restricted; which have been handed down from them through the priority of their birth, not from any superiority in him who draws first at the well over him who comes after?—Now truly know I one who when he composes colours richly; and when he expresses, embellishes; and when he is lengthy, finds golden thoughts; and when he is brief, baffles his imitator; and when he improvises, astonishes; and when he creates, cuts the envious.
Then said to him the President of the Court, the Eye of those Eyes: “Who is it that strikes on this rock, that is the hero of these qualities?”—He said, “It is the adversary of this thy skirmish, the partner of thy disputation: Now, if thou wilt, rein a good steed, call forth one who will answer, so shalt thou see a wonder.”—He said to him, “Stranger, the chough in our land is not taken for an eagle, and with us it is easy to discern between silver and shingle.—Rare is he who exposes himself to the conflict, and then escapes the mortal hurt; or who stirs up the dust of trial, and then catches not the mote of contempt.—So offer not thy honour to shame, turn not from the counsel of the counsellor.”— He answered, “Each man knows best the mark of his arrow, and be sure the night shall disclose its morn.”—
Then whispered the company as to how his well should be fathomed, and his proving undertaken.—Said one of them, “Leave him to my share, that I may pelt him with the stone of my story; for it is the tightest of knots, the touch-stone of testing.”—Then they invested him with the command in this business as the Rebels invested Abû Na‘âmeh.—Whereupon he turned to the elder and said, Know that I am attached to this Governor and maintain my condition by ornamental eloquence.—Now, in my country, I could rely for the straightening of my crookedness on the sufficiency of my means, coupled with the smallness of my family.—But when my back was weighted, and my thin rain failed, I repaired to him from my home with hope, and besought him to restore my comeliness and my competence.—And he looked pleasantly on my coming, and was gracious, and served me morn and even.—But when I sought permission from him to depart to my abode, on the shoulder of cheerfulness,—He said, “I have determined that I will not provide thee with supplies, I will bring together for thee no scattered means;—Unless, before thy departure, thou compose an address, setting in it an exposition of thy state;—Such, that the letters of one of every two words shall all have dots, while the letters of the other shall not be pointed at all.”—And now have I waited for my eloquence a twelvemonth, but it has returned me not a word; and I have roused my wit for a year, but only my sluggishness has increased.—And I have sought aid among the gathering of the scribes, but each of them has frowned and drawn back.—Now, if thou hast disclosed thy character with accuracy, Come with a sign if thou be of the truthful.
Then answered the elder, “Thou hast put a good steed to the pace; thou hast sought water at a full stream; thou hast given the bow to him who fashioned it; thou hast lodged in the house him who built it.”—And he thought a while till he had let his flow of wit collect, his milch camel fill her udder:—And then he said: Wool thy ink-flask, and take thy implements and write:—
Generosity (may God establish the host of thy successes), adorns; but meanness (may fortune cast down the eye-lid of thy enviers), dishonours; the noble rewards, but the base disappoints; the princely entertains, but the niggard frights away; the liberal nourishes, but the churl pains; giving relieves, but deferring torments; blessing protects, and praise purifies; the honourable repays, for repudiation abases; the rejection of him who should be respected is error; a denial to the sons of hope is outrage; and none is miserly but the fool, and none is foolish but the miser; and none hoards but the wretched; for the pious clenches not his palms.
But thy promise ceases not to fulfil; thy sentiments cease not to relieve; nor thy clemency to indulge; nor thy new moon to illumine; nor thy bounty to enrich; nor thy enemies to praise thee; nor thy blade to destroy; nor thy princeship to build up; nor thy suitor to gain; nor thy praiser to win; nor thy kindness to succour; nor thy heaven to rain; nor thy milk-flow to abound; nor thy refusal to be rare.—Now he who hopes in thee is an old man like a shadow, one to whom nothing remains.— He seeks thee with a persuasion whose eagerness leaps onward; he praises thee in choice phrases, which merit their dowries.—His demand is a light one, his claims are clear; his praise is striven for, his blame is shunned.— And behind him is a household whom misery has touched, whom wrong has stripped, whom squalor involves.—And he is ever in tears that come at call, and trouble that melts him, and care that is as a guest, and growing sadness:—On account of hope that has disappointed him, and loss that has made him hoary, and the enemy that has fixed tooth in him, and the quiet that is gone.—And yet his love has not swerved, that there should be anger at him; nor is his wood rotten, that he should be lopped away; nor has his breast spit foulness that he should be shaken off; nor has his intercourse been froward that he should be hated.—Now thy honour admits not the rejection of his claim, so whiten his hope by the lightening of his distress: then will he publish thy praise throughout the world.—So mayest thou live to avert misfortune, and to bestow wealth; to heal grief and to care for the aged:—Attended by affluence and fresh joyousness; as long as the hall of the rich is visited, or the delusion of the selfish is feared. And so Peace.
Now when he had ceased from the dictation of his address, and showed forth his prowess in the strife of eloquence—The company gratified him both by word and deed, and made large to him their courtesy and their bounty.—Then was he asked from what tribe was his origin, and in what valley was his lair; and he answered:
Ghassân is my noble kindred, and Serûj my ancient land:
There my home was like the sun in splendour and mighty rank;
And my dwelling was as Paradise in sweetness and pleasantness and worth.
Oh, excellent were the life I led there and the plenteous delights,
In the day that I drew my broidered robe in its meadow, sharp of purpose.
I walked proudly in the mantle of youth and looked upon goodly pleasures;
Fearing not the visitations of time and its evil haps.
Now if grief could kill, surely I should perish from my abiding griefs;
Or if past life could be redeemed my good heart’s blood should redeem it.
For death is better for a man than to live the life of a beast,
When the ring of subjection leads him to mighty trouble and outrage,
And he sees lions whom the paws of assailing hyænas seize.
But the fault is in the time: but for its ill luck character would not miss its place:
If the time were upright, then would the conditions of men be upright in it.
After this his story reached the Governor, who filled his mouth with pearls,—And bade him join himself to his followers, and preside over his court of public writing.— But the gifts sufficed him, and unwillingness restrained him from office.—Said the narrator: Now I had recognized the wood of his tree before the ripening of his fruit: —And I had nigh roused the people to the loftiness of his worth before that his full moon shone forth.—But he hinted to me by a twinkle of his eyelid that I should not bare his sword from its sheath.—And when he was going forth, full of purse, and parting from us, having gotten victory,—I escorted him, performing the duty of respect, and chiding him for his refusal of office.—But he turned away with a smile and recited with a chant:
Sure to traverse the lands in poverty is dearer to me than rank:
For in rulers there is caprice and fault-finding, Oh what faultfinding!
There is none of them who completes his good work, or who builds up where has laid foundation.
So let not the glare of the mirage beguile thee; undertake not that which is doubtful:
For how many a dreamer has his dream made joyful; but fear has come upon him when he waked.
This Assembly is well known to students, having been published with a translation and valuable notes by De Sacy in his Chrestomathie Arabe. Ḥârith is at Barḳa‘îd, a place which is described as the chief town of the Diyâr Rabî‘ah, at the distance of seventeen parasangs from Mowṣil. The feast at the end of Ramaḍân is approaching, and being desirous of joining in this solemnity he goes to the public prayer in his best attire. When the congregation has formed itself into rows, after the manner of Moslem worship, he espies an old man with his eyes closed accompanied by an old woman. The man takes out of a bag a number of papers curiously written or illuminated in variously coloured inks; and the old woman, going through the rows, presents them to those whom she guesses from their appearance to be charitably disposed. One of them falls to the lot of Ḥârith, who finds on it some strange verses full of alliterations and plays on words. He keeps it, and when the old woman, being disappointed in her appeal, returns to reclaim it, he offers her a dirhem on the condition that she will tell him the name of the author. She informs him that the old man had composed the verses, and that he was a native of Serûj. Ḥârith then guesses that he must be Abû Zayd, and is much concerned to find that he has become blind. When the prayer is over he goes up to him and discovers that he is indeed Abû Zayd, whereupon he presents him with a garment and invites him to his house. No sooner are they in private than Abû Zayd opens his eyes, which are perfectly sound, and Ḥârith discovers that his pretended blindness was a trick to excite pity. Abû Zayd makes a good meal, and after he has had enough sends Ḥârith to the closet to fetch alkali to wash his hands after eating, and a toothpick. When the host returns the old man and his companion are gone; Abû Zayd having as usual made his escape, to avoid a lecture on his hypocrisy and the solicitation of his friend that he would abandon his vagrant life.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I had determined on journeying from Barḳa‘îd; but now I noted the signs of the coming feast,—And I disliked to set forth from the city until I had witnessed there the day of adornment.— So when it came on with its rites, bounden or of free will, and brought up its horsemen and footmen,—I followed the tradition in new apparel, and went forth with the people to keep festival.—Now when the congregation of the prayer court was gathered and ranged, and the crowding took men’s breath,—There appeared an old man in a pair of cloaks, and his eyes were closed:—And he bore on his arm what was like a horse-bag, and had for a guide an old woman like a goblin.—Then he stopped, as stops one tottering to sink, and greeted with the greeting of him whose voice is feeble.—And when he had made an end of his salutation he circled his five fingers in his wallet,—And brought forth scraps of paper that had been written on with colours of dyes in the season of leisure,—And gave them to his old beldame, bidding her to detect each simple one.—So whenever she perceived of any that his hand was moist in bounty, she cast one of the papers before him. —Said Al Ḥârith: Now cursed fate allotted to me a scrap whereon was written:—
Sure I have become crushed with pains and fears;
Tried by the proud one, the crafty, the assailer,
By the traitor among my brethren, who hates me for my need,
By jading from those who work to undo my toils.
How oft do I burn through spites and penury and wandering;
How oft do I tramp in shabby garb, thought of by none.
Oh, would that fortune when it wronged me had slain my babes!
For were not my cubs torments to me and ills,
I would not have addressed my hopes to kin or lord:
Nor would I draw my skirts along the track of abasement.
For my garret would be more seemly for me, and my rags more honourable.
Now is there a generous man who will see that the lightening of my loads must be by a denar;
Or will quench the heat of my anxiety by a shirt and trousers.
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now when I had looked on the garb of the verses, I longed for a knowledge of him who wove it, the broiderer of its pattern.— And my thought whispered to me that the way to him was through the old woman, and advised me that a fee to an informer is lawful.—So I watched her, and she was wending through the rows, row by row, begging a dole of the hands, hand by hand.—But not at all did the trouble prosper her; no purse shed aught upon her palm. —Wherefore when her soliciting was baffled, and her circuit wearied her,—She commended herself to God with the “Return,” and addressed herself to collect the scraps of paper.—But the Devil made her forget the scrap that I held, and she turned not aside to my spot:—But went back to the old man weeping at the denial, complaining of the oppression of the time.—And he said, “In God’s hands I am, to God I commit my case; there is no strength or power but by God,” then he recited:—
There remains not any pure, not any sincere; not a spring, not a helper:
But of basenesses there is one level; not any is trusty, not any of worth.
Then said he to her, “Cheer thy soul and promise it good; collect the papers and count them.”—She said, “Truly I counted them when I asked them back, and I found that one of them the hand of loss had seized.”— He said, “Perdition on thee, Wretch; shall we be hindered, alas, both of the prey and the net, both of the brand and the wick? surely this is a new handful to the load.”—Then did the old woman hasten back, retracing her path to seek her scroll; and when she drew near to me I put with the paper a dirhem and a mite: —And said to her, “If thou hast a fondness for the polished, the engraved (and I pointed to the dirhem) shew me the secret, the obscure;—But if thou willest not to explain, take then the mite and begone.”—Then she inclined to the getting of that whole full moon, the bright-faced, the large.—So she said, “Quit contention and ask what thou wilt.”—Whereupon I asked her of the old man and his country, of the poem, and of him who wove its mantle.—She said, “Truly, the old man is of the people of Serûj, and he it was who broidered that woven poem.”—Then she snatched the dirhem with the snatch of a hawk, and shot away as shoots the darting arrow.—But it troubled my heart that perchance it was Abû Zayd who was indicated, and my grief kindled at his mishap with his eyes.—And I should have preferred to have gone suddenly on him and talked to him, that I might test the quality of my discernment upon him.—But I was unable to come to him save by treading on the necks of the congregation, a thing forbidden in the law:—And, moreover, I was unwilling that people should be annoyed by me, or that blame should arrive to me.—So I cleaved to my place, but made his form the fetter of my sight, until the sermon was ended, and to leap to him was lawful.—Then I went briskly to him and examined him in spite of the closing of his eyelids.—And, lo! my shrewdness was as the shrewdness of Ibn ‘Abbâs, and my discernment as the discernment of Iyâs.—So at once I made myself known, and presented him with one of my tunics, and bade him to my bread.— And he was joyful at my bounty and recognition, and acceded to the call to my loaves;—And he set forth, and my hand was his leading cord, my shadow his conductor;—And the old woman was the third prop of the pot; yes, by the Watcher from whom no secret is hidden!—Now, when he had taken seat in my nest, and I had set before him what hasty meal was in my power, he said, “Ḥârith, is there with us a third?”— I said, “There is none but the old woman.”—He said, “From her no secret is withheld.”—Then he opened his eyes and stared round with the twin balls, and, lo! the two lights of his face kindled like the Farḳadân.— And I was joyful at the safety of his sight, but marvelled at the strangeness of his ways.—Nor did quiet possess me, nor did patience fit with me, until I asked him, “What led thee to feign blindness; thou, with thy journeying in desolate places, and thy traversing of wildernesses, and thy pushing into far lands?”—But he made show as if his mouth were full, and kept as though busied with his meal:—Until when he had fulfilled his need, he sharpened his look upon me and recited:
Since Time (and he is the father of mankind) makes himself blind to the right in his purposes and aims,
I too have assumed blindness, so as to be called a brother of it;—what wonder that one should match himself with his father!
Then said he to me, Rise, and go to the closet, and fetch me alkali that may clear the eye, and clean the hand, and soften the skin, and perfume the breath, and brace the gums, and strengthen the stomach:—And let it be clean of box, fragrant of odour, new of pounding, delicate of powdering;—So that one touching it shall count it to be eye paint, and one smelling it shall fancy it to be camphor.—And join with it a toothpick choice in material, delightful in use, goodly in shape, that invites to the repast:—And let it have the slimness of a lover, and the polish of a sword, and the sharpness of the lance of war, and the pliancy of a green bough.— Said Al Ḥârith: Then I rose to do what he bade that I might rid him of the trace of his food:—And thought not that he purposed to deceive by sending me into the closet; nor suspected that he was mocking of his messenger when he called for the alkali and toothpick.—But when I returned with what was asked for, in less than the drawing of a breath, I found that the hall was empty, and that the old man and woman had sped away.—Then was I extreme in anger at his deceit, and I pressed on his track in search of him;—But he was as one who is sunk in the sea, or has been borne aloft to the clouds of heaven.
This Assembly, like several others that will be met with in the course of the work, is so essentially Arabic as almost to forbid intelligible translation. Two suitors, an old man and a youth, appear before the Kadi of Ma‘arrah. The former narrates to the Kadi that he had possessed a beautiful and attractive, yet obedient and active, slave girl; that the youth had borrowed her, treated her roughly, and then returned her in an infirm state. The youth admits the charge, but declares that he had offered sufficient compensation; and then complains that the old man detained as a pledge a male slave of his, who was of good origin and qualities, and highly serviceable to his master. The Kadi perceives from the style of these addresses that the language is enigmatical, and bids the litigants speak plainly. The youth then improvises some verses to explain that by a slave girl the old man meant a needle which the youth had borrowed, and the eye of which he had broken by accident as he was drawing the thread through it; the male slave which the old man detained was a pencil or stylus for the application of koḥl, the dark pigment with which Orientals anoint the eyelid to heighten by contrast the lustre of the eye. The old man in his turn admits the truth of this, but pleads in mournful verse his poverty and his inability to bear the loss even of a needle. The Kadi, touched with pity, bestows a trifle on both, and they depart joyously. But almost immediately he suspects that he has been deceived, and sends an attendant after them to bring them back. When they are again in the court, the Kadi charges them with deceit. The boy is abashed, but the old man steps forward boldly and confesses that he is the noted impostor of Serûj, and that the boy is his son; that they never had either needle or koḥl pencil, but had devised the story to excite pity. The Kadi, charmed with their literary skill, pardons their offence and dismisses them with a caution. The chief feature in the composition is the enigmatical description of the needle and pencil, which depends on the double meanings of the words and phrases contained in it. Some of these are so subtle that even the native commentators are undecided about them; and we may assume that the double-entente of passages like this, and the similar address in the Thirteenth Assembly, was among the lessons which Ḥarîri is said to have taught to his pupils. The commentators, who are often profuse of interpretation where there is no difficulty, are somewhat brief when they have to deal with these dark compositions. Even the loquacious Sherîshi, who sometimes gives whole pages of anecdote and poetical quotation to illustrate a single word, passes over in silence phrases where there evidently lurks a second and hidden sense. The present translation is, it is hoped, an adequate interpretation of the author’s meaning.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: Among the wonders of time, I saw that two suitors came before the Kadi of Ma‘arrat an No‘mân:—From the one of them the two excellencies of life had departed, while the other was as a bough of the ben tree.—And the old man said: God strengthen the judge, as by him He strengthens whoever seeks judgment.—Behold I had a slave girl, elegant of shape, smooth of cheek, patient to labour;— At one time she ambled like a good steed, at another she slept quietly in her bed: even in July thou wouldst feel her touch to be cool.—She had understanding and discretion, sharpness and wit, a hand with fingers, but a mouth without teeth: yet did she pique as with tongue of snake, and saunter in training robe; and she was displayed in blackness and whiteness; and she drank, but not from cisterns.—She was now truth-telling now beguiling; now hiding, now peeping forth; yet fitted for employment, obedient in poverty and in wealth: if thou didst spurn she showed affection, but if thou didst put her from thee, she remained quietly apart.—Generally would she serve thee, and be courteous to thee, though sometimes she might be froward to thee and pain thee, and trouble thee.sup>1 —Now this youth asked her service of me for a purpose of his own, and I made her his servant, without reward;—On the condition that he should enjoy the use of her, but not burden her with more than she could bear.—But he forced on her too hard a work, and exacted of her long labour;—Then returned her to me broken in health, offering a compensation which I accept not.
Then said the youth: Sure the old man is more truthful than the Ḳaṭa: but as for my hurting her it fell out by mistake.—And now have I pledged to him in payment of his damage, a slavesup>1 of mine, of equal birth as regards either kin, tracing his lineage to Al Ḳayn, free from stain and disgrace, whose place was the apple of his master’s eye.—He shewed forth kindness, and called up admiration; he nourished mankind, and set guard on his tongue.—If he was placed in power he was generous, if he marked aught for his own he was noble with it; if he was supplied he gave of his supply, and when he was asked for more he added.—He stayed not in the house, and rarely visited his wives, save two by two.—He was generous with his possession, he was lofty in his bounty; he kept with his spouse although she was not of his own clay; and there was pleasure in his comeliness, although he was not desired for his effeminacy.
Then said to them the Kadi, “Now either explain or depart.” Then pressed forward the lad, and said:
He lent me a needle to darn my rags, which use has worn and blackened;
And its eye broke in my hand by chance, as I drew the thread through it.
But the old man would not forgive me the paying for it when he saw that it was spoiled;
But said, “Give me a needle like it, or a price, after thou hast mended it.”
And he keeps my koḥl pencil by him as a pledge: oh, the shame that he has gotten by so doing:
For my eye is dry through giving him this pledge; my hand fails to ransom its anointer.
Now by this statement fathom the depth of my misery and pity one unused to bear it.
Then turned the Kadi to the old man, and said, “Come, speak without glozing,” and he said—
I swear by the holy place of sacrifice, and the devout whom the slope of Mina brings together;
If the time had been my helper, thou wouldst not have seen me taking in pledge the pencil which he has pledged to me.
Nor would I bring myself to seek a substitute for a needle that he had spoiled, no nor the price of it.
But the bow of calamities shoots at me with deadly arrows from here and there:
And to know my condition is to know his; misery, and distress, and exile, and sickness.
Fortune has put us on a level: I am his like in misery, and he is as I.
He cannot ransom his pencil now that it lies pledged in my hand:
And, through the narrowness of my own means, it is not within my bounds to forgive him his offending.
Now this is my tale and his: so look upon us, and judge between us, and pity us.
Now when the Kadi had learnt their stories, and was aware of their penury and their distinction,—He took out for them a denar from under his prayer cushion, and said, “With this end and decide your contention.”—But the old man caught it before the youth, and claimed the whole of it in earnest, not in jest;—Saying to the youth, “Half is mine as my share of the bounty, and thy share is mine, in payment for my needle:—Nor do I swerve from justice, so come and take thy pencil.”—Now there fell on the youth, at the words of the old man, a sadness at which the heart of the Kadi grew sullen, stirring its sorrow for the lost denar.—Yet did he cheer the concern of the youth and his anguish by a few dirhems which he doled to him.—Then he said to the two, “Avoid transactions, and put away disputes, and come not before me with wranglings, for I have no purse of fine-money for you.”—And they rose to go out from him, rejoicing at his gift, fluent in his praise.—But as for the Kadi, his ill-humour subsided not after his stone had dripped; his sad look cleared not away after his rock had oozed.—But when he recovered from his fit he turned to his attendants,—And said, “My perception is imbued with the thought, and my guess announces to me, that these are practisers of craft, not suitors in a claim:—But what is the way to fathom them, and to draw forth their secret?”—Then said to him the Knowing One of his assemblage, the Light of his following:—“Surely the discovery of what they hide must be through themselves.”— So he bade an attendant follow them and bring them back; and when they stood before him he said to them, “Tell me truly your camel’s age: so shall ye be secure from the consequence of your deceit.”—Then did the lad shrink back and ask for pardon; but the old man stepped forward and said:
I am the Serûji and this is my son; and the cub at the proving is like the lion.
Now never has his hand nor mine done wrong in matter of needle or pencil:
But only fortune, the harming, the hostile, has brought us to this, that we came forth to beg
Of each one whose palm is moist, whose spring is sweet; of each whose palm is close, whose hand is fettered;
By every art, and with every aim: by earnest, if it prosper, and if not, by jest.
That we may draw forth a drop for our thirsty lot, and consume our life in wretched victual.
And afterward Death is on the watch for us: if he fall not on us to-day he will fall to-morrow.
Then said the Kadi to him, “Oh rare! how admirable are the breathings of thy mouth; well done! should I say of thee, were it not for the guile that is in thee.— Now know that I am of those that warn thee, and will beware of thee.—So act not again deceitfully with judges, but fear the might of those who bear rule.—For not every minister will excuse, and not at every season will speech be listened to.”—Then the old man promised to follow his counsel, and to abstain from disguising his character.—And he departed from the Kadi’s presence, while the guile beamed from his forehead.—Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now I never saw aught more wonderful than these things in the changes of my journeys, nor read aught like them in the records of books.
This is one of the two Assemblies of Ḥarîri which have been translated and annotated by De Sacy in his Chrestomathy. Ḥârith in his wanderings comes to Alexandria, and, in accordance with his custom, makes the acquaintance of the Kadi, who, as appears in the sequel, is a good-natured and benevolent man. One evening, in winter, the Kadi is distributing the public alms, when an ill-looking old man is brought in by a young and handsome woman who accuses him of having married her on false pretences. She declares that he had deceived her father by giving out that he had an excellent trade as a pearl-merchant; that he had been incautiously accepted, and that now, when it was too late, she had discovered that he had no business at all. Moreover, he had taken all her dress and furniture, piece by piece, and sold it to keep himself in idleness, leaving her and her child to starve. The Kadi is indignant, and threatens to send the husband to prison, unless he can clear himself of the charge. The defendant is in no way disconcerted, but at once improvises some elegant verses, in which he admits his poverty, and that he had sold his wife’s effects, but denies that he had deceived her in calling himself a “pearl-stringer,” for the pearls which he meant were the pearls of thought, by stringing which into elegant poems he had been accustomed to make a large income from the liberality of the rich and noble. Now, however, times were changed; war and trouble had come upon the earth, and a race of niggards had succeeded the generous patrons of the old days. The Kadi accepts the excuse, bids the woman submit herself to her husband, and gives them some of the alms money; on receiving which the old man triumphantly carries off his wife. Ḥârith had discovered that it was Abû Zayd, but was afraid to tell the Kadi, because in that case he might have declined to relieve such an impostor. But when he is gone, Ḥârith cannot forbear suggesting that he should be followed and some news of him brought back. A messenger is sent and returns quickly to say that he found Abû Zayd dancing and singing in joy at his success. The Kadi treats the affair as a good jest; and declares that if he had known who he was he would have been still more liberal. This is the first appearance of Abû Zayd’s young wife, who in the fortieth Assembly is made to rival her husband in wit, learning, and volubility.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: The liveliness of youth and the desire of gain sped me on until I had traversed all that is between Farghânah and Ghânah.—And I dived into depths to gather fruits, and plunged into perils to reach my needs.—Now I had caught from the lips of the learned, and understood from the commandments of the wise—That it behoves the well-bred, the sagacious, when he enters a strange city, to conciliate its Kadi and possess himself of his favour:—That his back may be strengthened in litigation, that he may be secure in a strange land from the wrong of the powerful.—So I took this doctrine as my guide and made it the leading-cord to my advantages.—And I entered not a city, I went not into a lair, but I mingled myself with its judge as water is mingled with wine, and strengthened myself by his patronage as bodies are strengthened by souls.— Now while I was in presence of the judge of Alexandria one cold evening, and he had brought out the almsmoney to divide it among the needy,—Behold there entered an ill-looking old man whom a young matron dragged along.—And she said: God strengthen the Kadi and through him make concord to be lasting:—Know that I am a woman of stock the most noble, of root the most pure, of mother’s and father’s kin the most honourable:—My character is moderation, my disposition is contentment; my nature is to be a goodly help-meet; between me and my neighbours is a wide difference.—Now whenever there wooed me any who had built up honour or were lords of wealth—My father silenced and chid them and misliked their suit and their gift:—Making plea that he had covenanted with God Most High that he would not ally himself save with the master of a handicraft.—Then did Providence destine for my calamity and pain that this deceiver should present himself in my father’s hall;—And swear among his people that he fulfilled his condition:—Asserting that long time he had strung pearl to pearl and sold them for great price. —Then was my father deceived by the gilding of his falsehood, and married me to him before proving his condition.—And when he had drawn me forth from my covert, and carried me away from my people, and removed me to his habitation, and brought me under his bond,—I found him slothful, a sluggard; I discovered him to be a lie-a-bed, a slumberer.—Now I had come to him with apparel and goodly show, with furniture and affluence.—But he ceased not to sell it in a losing market and to squander the price in greedy feeding,— Until he had altogether destroyed whatever was mine, and spent my property on his need.—So when he had made to me to forget the taste of rest and left my house cleaner than my hand’s palm;—I said to him, “Sir, know that there is no concealment after distress, no perfume after the wedding.—Rise up then to gain something by thy trade, to gather the fruit of thy skill.”—But he declared that his trade had been struck with slackness through the violence that was abroad in the earth.— Also I have a boy by him, thin as a toothpick: neither of us gets a fill by him, and through hunger our weeping to him ceases not.—So I have brought him to thee and set him before thee, that thou mayest test the substance of his assertion, and decide between us as God shall show thee.
Then turned the Kadi to him and said: “Thou hast heard thy wife’s story; now testify of thyself: else will I discover thy deceit and bid thy imprisonment.”—But he looked down as looks the serpent; then girt up his garment for a long strife, and said:
Hear my story, for it is a wonder; there is laughter in its tale, and there is wailing.
I am a man on whose qualities there is no blame, neither is there suspicion on his glory.
Serûj is my home where I was born, and my stock is Ghassân when I trace my lineage:
And study is my business; to dive deep in learning is my pursuit; and, oh! how excellent a seeking.
And my capital is the magic of speech, out of which are moulded both verse and prose.
I dive into the deep of eloquence, and from it I choose the pearls and select them:
I cull of speech the ripe fruit and the new; while another gathers but firing of the wood:
I take the phrase of silver, and when I have moulded it men say that it is gold.
Now formerly I drew forth wealth by the learning I had gotten; I milked by it:
And my foot’s sole in its dignity mounted to ranges above which were no higher steps.
Oft were the presents brought in pomp to my dwelling, but I accepted not everyone who gave.
But to-day learning is the chattel of slackest sale in the market of him on whom hope depends.
The honour of its sons is not respected; neither are relationship and alliance with them regarded.
It is as though they were corpses in their courtyards, from whose stench men withdraw and turn aside.
Now my heart is confounded through my trial by the times;— strange is their changing.
The stretch of my arm is straitened through the straitness of my hand’s means; cares and grief assail me.
And my fortune, the blameworthy, has led me to the paths of that which honour deems base.
For I sold until there remained to me not a mat nor household goods to which I might turn.
So I indebted myself until I had burdened my neck by the carrying of a debt such that ruin had been lighter.
Then five days I wrapped my entrails upon hunger; but when the hunger scorched me,
I could see no goods except her outfit, in the selling of which I might go about and bestir myself.
So I went about with it; but my soul was loathing, and my eye tearful, and my heart saddened.
But when I made free with it, I passed not the bound of her consent, that her wrath should rise against me.
And if what angers her be her fancying that it was my fingers that should make gain by stringing;
Or that when I purposed to woo her I tinseled my speech that my need might prosper:
I swear by Him to whose Ka‘beh the companies journey when the fleet camels speed them onward,
That deceit towards chaste ladies is not of my nature, nor are glozing and lying my badge.
Since I was reared nought has attached to my hand save the swiftly-moving reeds and the books:
For it is my wit that strings necklaces, not my hand; what is strung is my poetry and not chaplets.
And this is the craft I meant as that by which I gathered and gained.
So give ear to my explaining, as thou hast given ear to her; and show respect to neither, but judge as is due.
Now when he had completed the structure of his story and perfected his recitation, the Kadi turned to the young woman, being heart struck at the verses:— And said, Know that it is settled among all judges and those who bear authority—That the race of the generous is perished, and that the times incline to the niggardly.—Now I imagine that thy husband is truthful in his speech, free from blame.—For lo! he has acknowledged the debt to thee, and spoken the clear truth; he has given proof that he can string verses, and it is plain that he is bared to the bone.—Now to vex him who shows excuse is baseness, to imprison the destitute is a sin: to conceal poverty is self-denial, to await relief with patience is devotion.—So return to thy chamber and pardon the master of thy virginity:—Refrain from thy sharpness of tongue and submit to the will of thy Lord.—Then in the almsgiving he assigned them a portion, and of the dirhems he gave them a pinch; and said to them, “Beguile yourselves with this drop, moisten yourselves with this driblet:—And endure against the fraud and the trouble of the time, for ‘it may be that God will bring victory or some ordinance from himself.’”—Then they arose to go, and on the old man was the joy of one loosed from the bond, and the exulting of one who is in affluence after need.
Said the narrator: Now I knew that he was Abû Zayd in the hour that his sun peeped forth and his spouse reviled him:—And I went near to declare his versatility and the fruiting of his divers branches.—But then I was afraid that the Kadi would hit on his falsehood and the lackering of his tongue, and not see fit, when he knew him, to train him to his bounty.— So I forebore from speech with the forbearing of one who doubts, and I folded up mention of him as the roll is folded over the writing:—Save that when he had departed and had come whither he was to come,— I said, “If there were one who would set out on his track, he might bring us the kernel of his story, and what tissues he is spreading forth.—Then the Kadi sent one of his trusty ones after him and bade him to spy out of his tidings.—But he delayed not to return bounding in, and to come back loudly laughing.—Said the Kadi to him, “Well, Abû Maryam!—He said, “I have seen a wonder; I have heard what gives me a thrill.”— Said the Kadi to him, “What hast thou seen, and what is it thou hast learnt?”—He said, “Since the old man went forth he has not ceased to clap with his hands and to caper with his feet and to sing with the full of his cheeks:
I was near falling into trouble through an impudent jade;
And should have gone to prison but for the Kadi of Alexandria.”
Then the Kadi laughed till his hat fell off, and his composure was lost:—But when he returned to gravity and had followed excess by prayer for pardon,—He said, “O God, by the sanctity of thy most honoured servants, forbid that I should imprison men of letters.”—Then said he to that trusty one, “Hither with him!” and he set forth earnest in the search; but returned after a while, telling that the man was gone.—Then said the Kadi, “Know that if he had been here he should have had no cause to fear,—For I would have imparted to him as he deserves; I would have shown him that the latter state is better for him than the former.”—Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, Now, when I saw the leaning of the Kadi towards him, and that yet the fruit of the Kadi’s notice was lost to him,—There came on me the repentance of Al Farazdaḳ when he put away Nawâr, or of Al Kosa‘î when the daylight appeared.
In this Assembly Abû Zayd is found making gain by his usual questionable arts. At Raḥbah, on the Euphrates, Ḥârith beholds a crowd following an elderly man who is dragging along a handsome youth. The former accuses the boy of having killed his son, and it is agreed to go before the Governor. The purpose of the elder, who proves in the end to be Abû Zayd, is simply to induce the Governor to buy off so handsome a youth from punishment, with the view of taking him into his own household. When they are in court the old man makes his charge, and as he has no witnesses the boy is allowed to clear himself by an oath. But the old man dictates an oath in which he enumerates all the beauties of the boy, and invokes destruction on them if truth be not spoken. The boy refuses to swear by such an oath; and the Governor, who desires to take him out of the power of the old man, then makes up a purse to satisfy the prosecutor. A hundred denars are promised; but as the whole cannot be collected at once the old man says that he will not give up the boy, but will watch him all night. The Governor consents, and soon the two are left together in the courtyard. Ḥârith then accosts Abû Zayd, and asks who is the boy. Abû Zayd replies, that he is his son, and his assistant in his tricks; and that they intend to make their escape early in the morning, and leave the Governor to his disappointment. This they do, and before setting forth Abû Zayd delivers to Ḥârith a sealed paper to be presented to the outwitted magistrate. Ḥârith, dreading to present it, opens it and finds it to contain a copy of satirical verses on the Governor. He tears the paper to pieces, regardless of his promise to his friend. This Assembly is exceedingly elaborate in its diction, and the terms of the oath dictated by Abû Zayd have much poetical beauty. It has been imitated with great felicity by Rückert, whose version has almost the spirit of the original.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related:—The summoning of desire called me to Raḥbah, the city of Mâlik, son of Ṭowḳ,—And I obeyed it, mounted on a fleet camel, and unsheathing an active purpose.—Now when I had cast my anchors there, and fastened my ropes, and had gone forth from the bath after shaving my head,—I saw a boy cast in the mould of comeliness, and clothed by beauty in the garb of perfection;—And an old man was holding on to his sleeve, asserting that he had slain his son;—But the boy denied knowledge of him and was horror-struck at his suspicion;—And the contention between them scattered its sparks, and the crowding upon them was made up of good and bad.—Now after their quarrelling had been excessive, they agreed to refer to the Governor of the town;— So they hastened to his court with the speed of Sulayk in his career;—And when they were there the old man renewed his charge and claimed help.—So the Governor made the boy speak, for the boy had already fascinated him by the graces of his bright brow, and cloven his understanding by the disposition of his forelocks.—And the boy said, “It is the lie of a great liar against one who is no blood-shedder, and the slander of a knave against one who is not an assassin.—Then said the Governor to the old man, “If two just Moslems testify for thee, well; if not, demand of him the oath.”—Said the old man, “Surely he struck him down remote from men, and shed his blood when alone;—And how can I have a witness, when on the spot there was no beholder?—But empower me to dictate an oath that it may appear to thee whether he speaks true or lies.”— He said to him, “Thou hast authority for that; thou with thy vehement grief for thy slain son.”—Then said the old man to the boy: Say, I swear by Him who hath adorned foreheads with forelocks, and eyes with their black and white, and eyebrows with separation, and smiling teeth with regularity, and eyelids with languor, and noses with straightness, and cheeks with flame, and mouths with purity, and fingers with softness, and waists with slenderness, that I have not killed thy son by negligence, nor of wilfulness, nor made his head a sheath to my sword;—If it be otherwise, may God strike my eyelid with soreness, and my cheek with freckles, and my forelocks with dropping, and my palm shoot with greenness, and my rose with the ox-eye, and my musk with a foul steam, and my full moon with waning, and my silver with tarnishing, and my rays with the dark.
Then said the boy, “The scorching of affliction be my lot rather than to take such an oath! let me yield to vengeance rather than swear as no one has ever sworn!”—But the old man would nought but make him swallow the oath which he had framed for him, and the draughts which he had bittered.—And the dispute ceased not to blaze between them, and the road of concord to be rugged.—Now the boy, while thus resisting, captivated the Governor by his motions, and made him covet that he should belong to him; until love subdued his heart and fixed in his breast;—And the passion which enslaved him, and the desire which he had imagined tempted him to liberate the boy and then get possession of him, to free him from the noose of the old man, and then catch him himself.—So he said to the old man, “Hast thou a mind for that which is more seemly in the stronger and nearer to god-fearing?”—He said, “Whither art thou pointing that I should follow and not delay?”—He said, “I think it well that thou cease from altercation and be content with a hundred denars.—On condition that I take on myself part of it, and collect the rest as may be.”—Said the old man, “I refuse not; but let there be no failure to thy promise.”—Then the Governor paid him down twenty and assigned among his attendants the making up of fifty.—But the robe of evening grew dim, and from this cause the rain of collection was cut short. —Then he said, “Take what is ready and leave disputing; and on me be it to-morrow to accomplish that the rest be doled to thee and reach thee.”—Said the old man, “I will do this on the condition that I keep close to him to-night, that the pupil of my eye guard him,— Until when on the dawning of the morn he has made up what remains of the sum of reconciliation,—Shell may get clear of chick, and he may go guiltless as the wolf went guiltless of the blood of the son of Jacob.”— Then said to him the Governor, “I think that thou dost not impose what is immoderate or ask what is excessive.”
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now when I perceived that the pleadings of the old man were as the pleadings of Ibn Surayj, I knew him to be the Glory of the Serûjis:—And I delayed until the stars of the darkness glittered, and the knots of the crowd dispersed:—And then I sought the Governor’s court-yard; and lo! the old man guarding the youth.—And I adjured him by God to say whether he was Abû Zayd: he said, “Yes, by Him who hath permitted the chase.”— I said, “Who is this boy, after whom the understanding darts?”—He said, “In kin he is my chick, and in making gain my springe.”—I said, “Wilt thou not be satisfied with the graces of his make, and spare the Governor temptation by his forelock.”—He said, “Were it not that his forehead put forth its ringlets, I should not have snatched the fifty.”—Then he said, “Pass the night near me that we may quench the fire of grief, and give enjoyment its turn after separation.—For I have resolved to slip away at dawn, and to burn the Governor’s heart with the flame of regret.”—Said Al Ḥârith, Then I spent the night with him in conversation more pleasant than a garden of flowers, or a woodland of trees:—Until when the Wolf’s Tail lighted the horizon, and the brightening of the day-break came on in its time, —He mounted the back of the highway, and left the Governor to taste burning torment.—And he committed to me, in the hour of his departure a paper firmly closed,—And said, “Hand it to the Governor when he has been bereft of composure, when he has convinced himself of our flight.”—But I broke the seal as one who would free himself from a letter of Mutelemmis, and behold there was written in it:
Tell the Governor whom I have left, after my departure, repenting, grieving, biting his hands,
That the old man has stolen his money and the young one his heart; and he is scorched in the flame of a double regret.
He was generous with his coin (◌) when love blinded his eye (◌), and he has ended with losing either ◌.
Calm thy grief, O afflicted, for it profits not to seek the traces after the substance is gone.
But if what has befallen thee is terrible to thee as the ill-fate of Al Ḥosayn is terrible to the Moslems;
Yet hast thou gotten in exchange for it understanding and caution; and the wise man, the prudent, wishes for these.
So henceforth resist desires, and know that the chasing of gazelles is not easy;
No, nor does every bird enter the springe, even though it be surrounded by silver.
And how many a one who seeks to make a prey becomes a prey himself, and meets with nought but the shoes of Ḥonayn!
Now consider well, and forecast not every thundercloud: many a thundercloud may have in it the bolts of death:
And cast down thine eye, that thou mayest rest from a passion by which thou wouldest clothe thyself with the garment of infamy and disgrace.
For the trouble of man is the following of the soul’s desire; and the seed of desire is the longing look of the eye.
Said the narrator,—But I tore the paper piece-meal, and cared not whether he blamed or pardoned me.
This and the following Assembly are justly reckoned among the master-pieces of the author. To pass suddenly from the most solemn subjects to pleasantry, to place in the mouth of a clever impostor the most serious warnings that can be addressed to mankind may be morally objectionable; but in the Moslem world, where religion is mixed up with all the concerns of life, and pious discourse and phrases abound, it excites little repugnance. The design of the author in the present composition was to produce an elaborate sermon in rhymed prose and in verse, and his genius takes a higher flight than usual. The incident on which the Assembly is founded is simple. Ḥârith, in a fit of religious zeal, betakes himself to the public burial ground of the city of Sâweh, for the purpose of contemplation. He finds a funeral in progress, and when it is over, an old man, with his face muffled in a cloak, takes his stand on a hillock, and pours forth a discourse on the certainty of death and judgment, rebuking his hearers for their worldly selfishness, and warning them that wealth and power are of little avail against the general leveller. He then rises into poetry and declaims a piece which is one of the noblest productions of Arabic literature. In lofty morality, in religious fervour, in beauty of language, in power and grace of metre, this magnificent hymn is unsurpassed. From this, and other similar compositions of Ḥarîri, a better idea of what is noblest and purest in Islam will be gained, than from all the works of the most orthodox doctors. Ḥârith, like the others who are present, is much affected; but he is indignant when he finds that the preacher is receiving abundant alms, and that beyond a doubt he is Abû Zayd. He taxes him with his hypocrisy, and receives an impudent reply. They then separate angrily. In this Assembly a view of moral duties and future judgment is exhibited which differs little from that of Christians. The enlightened and polished man of letters of the fifth century was not likely to teach the coarse doctrines of a sensual paradise, to be secured by hard fighting, which roused the ignorant warriors of Arabia in the first days of Islam. In all the work of Ḥarîri, there is not a trace of this theology, which the West erroneously attributes to every Moslem. Self-denial and benevolence are with him the duties of every man; and by them each may hope to obtain everlasting happiness, but on the nature of both future rewards and punishments he is discreetly silent.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was aware of hardness of heart while I sojourned at Sâweh.—So I betook myself to the Tradition handed down, that its cure is by visiting the tombs.—And when I had reached the mansion of the dead, the storehouse of mouldering remains, I saw an assemblage over a grave that had been dug, and a corpse that was being buried.—So I drew aside to them, meditating on the end of man, and calling to mind those of my people who were gone.— And when they had sepulchred the dead, and the crying of Alas! was over, an old man stood forth on high, from a hillock, leaning on a staff.—And he had veiled his face with his cloak, and disguised his form for craftiness.—And he said: Let those who work, work for an end like this.—Now take thought, O ye negligent, and gird yourselves, ye slothful, and look well, ye observers.—How is it with you that the burying of your fellows grieves you not, and that the pouring in of the mould frightens you not; that ye heed not the visitations of misfortune; that ye prepare not for the going down to your graves; that ye are not moved to tears at the eye that weeps; that ye take not warning at the death-message when it is heard; that ye are not affrighted when an intimate is lost; that ye are not saddened when the mourning assembly is gathered?— One of you follows home the dead man’s bier, but his heart is set towards his house;—And he is present at the burying of his kinsman, but his thought is of securing his portion.—He leaves his loved friend with the worms, then retires alone with his pipes and lutes.— Ye have sorrowed over your riches, if but a grain were notched away, yet have ye been forgetful of the cutting off of your friends:—And ye have been cast down at the befalling of adversity, but have made little of the perishing of your kindred.—Ye have laughed at a funeral as ye laughed not in the hour of dancing; ye have walked wantonly behind biers, as ye walked not in the day that ye grasped gifts.—Ye have turned from the recital of the mourning women to the preparing of banquets; and from the anguish of the bereaved to daintiness in feastings.—Ye care not for him who moulders, and ye move not the thought of death in your mind.—So that it is as if ye were joined to Death by clientship, or had gotten security from Time, or were confident of your own safety, or had made sure of a peace with the Destroyer of delights.—No! it is an ill thing that ye imagine.—Again, no! surely ye shall learn. Then he recited:
O thou who claimest understanding; how long, O brother of delusion, wilt thou marshal sin and blame, and err exceeding error?
Is not the shame plain to thee? doth not hoariness warn thee? (and in its counsel there is no doubtfulness); nor hath thy hearing become deaf.
Is not Death calling thee? doth he not make thee hear his voice? dost thou not fear thy passing away, so as to be wary and anxious?
How long wilt thou be bewildered in carelessness, and walk proudly in vanity, and go eagerly to diversion, as if death were not for all?
Till when will last thy swerving, and thy delaying to mend habits that unite in thee vices whose every sort shall be collected in thee?
If thou anger thy Master thou art not disquieted at it; but if thy scheme be bootless thou burnest with vexation.
If the graving of the yellow one gleam to thee thou art joyful; but if the bier pass by thee thou feignest grief, and there is no grief.
Thou resistest him who counselleth righteousness; thou art hard in understanding; thou swervest aside: but thou followest the guiding of him who deceiveth, who lieth, who defameth.
Thou walkest in the desire of thy soul; thou schemest after money; but thou forgettest the darkness of the grave, and remem-berest not what is there.
But if true happiness had looked upon thee, thy own look would not have led thee amiss; nor wouldest thou be saddened when the preaching wipeth away griefs.
Thou shalt weep blood, not tears, when thou perceivest that no company can protect thee in the Court of Assembling; no kinsman of mother or father.
It is as though I could see thee when thou goest down to the vault and divest deep; when thy kinsmen have committed thee to a place narrower than a needle’s eye.
There is the body stretched out that the worms may devour it, until the coffin-wood is bored through and the bones moulder.
And afterward there is no escape from that review of souls: since Ṣirâṭ is prepared; its bridge is stretched over the fire to every one who cometh thither.
And how many a guide shall go astray! and how many a great one shall be vile! and how many a learned one shall slip and say “The business surpasseth.”
Therefore hasten, O simple one, to that by which the bitter is made sweet; for thy life is now near to decay and thou hast not withdrawn thyself from blame.
And rely not on fortune though it be soft, though it be gay: for so wilt thou be found like one deceived by a viper that spitteth venom.
And lower thyself from thy loftiness; for death is meeting thee and reaching at thy collar; and he is one who shrinketh not back when he hath purposed.
And avoid proud turning away of the cheek if fortune have prospered thee: bridle thy speech if it would run astray; for how happy is he who bridleth it!
And relieve the brother of sorrow, and believe him when he speaketh; and mend thy ragged conduct; for he hath prospered who mendeth it.
And plume him whose plumage hath fallen in calamity great or small; and sorrow not at the loss, and be not covetous in amassing.
And resist thy base nature, and accustom thy hand to liberality, and listen not to blame for it, and keep thy hand from hoarding.
And make provision of good for thy soul, and leave that which will bring on ill, and prepare the ship for thy journey, and dread the deep of the sea.
Thus have I given my precepts, friend, and shown as one who showeth clearly: and happy the man who walketh by my doctrines and maketh them his example.
Then he drew back his sleeve from an arm strong of sinew, on which he had fastened the splints of deceit not of fracture;—Presenting himself to beg in the garb of impudence:—And by it he beguiled those people until his sleeve was brimmed and full;—Then he came down from the hillock merry at the gift.—Said the narrator: But I pulled him from behind by the hem of his cloak; and he turned to me submissively, and faced me, saluting me:—And lo! it was our old Abû Zayd, in his very self, and in all his deceit: and I said to him,
How many, Abû Zayd, will be the varieties of thy cunning to drive the prey to thy net? and wilt thou not care who censures?
And he answered without shame and without hesitation:
Look well, and leave thy blaming; for, tell me, hast thou ever known a time when a man would not win of the world when the game was in his hands.
Then I said to him: Away with thee, Old Shaykh of Hell, laden with infamy!—For there is nothing like thee for the fairness of thy seeming and the foulness of thy purpose; except silvered dung or a whited sewer.— Then we parted; and I went away to the right, and he went away to the left; and I set myself to the quarter of the south, and he set himself to the quarter of the north.
Ḥârith, being in affluence, crosses from Irak to Damascus to enjoy the luxury of that city. After he has had his fill of pleasure he bethinks himself of returning homeward, and joins a caravan that is about to cross the Semâweh, the desert which lies between Syria and the Euphrates. The travellers are ready to depart, but are delayed by their inability to find an escort, which they think indispensable for their protection against robbers. While they are consulting they are watched by a dervish, who at last announces to them that he has the means of keeping them safe from harm; and, on their inquiring further, tells them that his safeguard is a magic form of words revealed to him in a dream. They are at first incredulous, but at length consent to take him with them, and to use his incantation. He then repeats it, and it proves to be a prayer full of assonances and rhymes, beseeching the general protection of the Almighty. They all learn it by heart and then set forth, repeating it twice a day on their journey. As they are not molested on the road they judge the charm to have been successful; and when they come in sight of ‘Ânah, the first town on the other side of the desert, they reward him richly with what he likes best, gold and jewels. When he has taken all he can get, he makes his escape, and the next thing they hear of him is that he is drinking in the taverns of ‘Ânah, a city celebrated for its wine. Ḥârith, shocked at this enormity in a pious dervish, determines to seek him out, and soon finds him revelling amid wine and music in the guest chamber of a wine-shop. He taxes him with his wickedness, and then the old man improvises a Bacchanalian chant, which is one of the finest pieces in Ḥarîri’s work. In form this poem resembles that which is introduced into the last Assembly, though the metre is more light and lively, as Ḥarîri, no doubt, desired to display his genius by the contrast. Ḥârith, charmed with the verses, asks who the old man is; and from his answer discovers that he is Abû Zayd. He makes an ineffectual attempt to reclaim him, and then quits the wine-shop, repentant at having set foot in such a place. This Assembly is one of the most admired productions of the author, who has lavished on it all the resources of his marvellous rhetoric. It has been imitated with great skill by Rückert; who, however, wanders very far from the original.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related:—I journeyed from Irak to the Ghûṭah; and then was I master of haltered steeds and envied wealth.—Freedom of arm called me to diversion, fullness of store led me to pride. —And when I had reached the place after toil of soul, after making lean my camel,—I found it such as tongues describe it; and in it was whatever souls long for or eyes delight in.—So I thanked the bounty of travel and ran a heat with pleasure:—And began there to break the seals of desires and gather the clusters of delights.— Until some travellers were making ready for the journey to Irak, and I had so recovered from my drowning, that regret visited me in calling to mind my home and longing after my fold.—Then I struck the tents of exile and saddled the steeds of return.—And when the company had equipped themselves and agreement was completed, we shrank from setting forth without taking with us a guard.—And we sought one from every tribe and used a thousand devices to obtain him.— But to find him in the clans failed, so that we thought he was not among the living.—And for the want of such a one the resolves of the travellers were bewildered, and they assembled at the gate of Jayrûn to take counsel.—And they ceased not tying and untying, and plaiting and twining, until suggestion was exhausted and the hoper despaired.— But opposite them was a person whose demeanour was as the demeanour of the youthful, and his garb as the garb of monks, and in his hand was the rosary of women, and in his eyes the mark of giddiness from watchings.— And he had fastened his gaze on the assemblage and sharpened his ear to steal a hearing.—And when it was the time of their turning homeward and their secret was manifest to him,—He said to them, “O people, let your care relieve itself, let your mind be tranquil; for I will guard you with that which shall put off your fear and show itself in accord with you.”—Said the narrator: Then we asked him to show us concerning his safe conduct, and promised him a higher wage for it than for an embassy.—And he declared it to be some words which he had been taught in a dream, whereby to guard himself from the malice of mankind.—Then began one to steal a look at another, and to move his eyes between glances sideward and downward.—So that it was plain to him that we thought meanly of his story, and conceived it to be futile.—Whereupon he said, How is it that ye take my earnest for jest, and treat my gold as dross?—Now, by Allah, oft have I gone through fearful tracts and entered among deadly dangers:—And with this I have needed not the companying of a guard or to take with me a quiver.—Besides, I will remove what gives you doubt, I will draw away the distrust that has come on you,—In that I will consent with you in the desert and accompany you on the Semâweh.—Then, if my promise has spoken you true, do ye renew my weal and prosper my fortune:—But if my mouth has lied to you, then rend my skin and pour out my blood.
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Then we were inspired to believe his vision and take as true what he had related;— So we ceased from disputing with him and cast lots for carrying him.—And at his word we cut the loops of hindrance, and put away fear of harm or stay;—And when the pack saddles were fastened on and the setting forth was near, we sought to learn from him the magic words that we might make them a lasting safeguard.—He said: Let each of you repeat the Mother of the Koran as often as day or night comes on; —Then let him say with lowly tongue and humble voice, —O God! O thou who givest life to the mouldering dead! O thou who avertest harms! O thou who guardest from terrors! O thou generous in rewarding! O thou the refuge of suppliants! O thou the Lord of pardon and protection! Send thy blessing on Mohammed, the Seal of thy prophets, the Bringer of thy messages, and on the Lights of his kindred, the Keys of his victory;— And give me refuge, O God, from the mischiefs of devils and the assaults of princes; from the vexing of the wrongers, and from suffering through the tyrannous; from the enmity of transgressors, and from the transgression of enemies; from the conquest of conquerors, from the spoiling of spoilers, from the crafts of the crafty, from the treacheries of the treacherous;—And deliver me, O God, from the wrongfulness of neighbours and the neighbourhood of the wrongful;—And keep from me the hands of the harmful; bring me forth from the darkness of the oppressors; place me by thy mercy among thy servants who do aright.—O God, keep me in my own land and in my journeying, in my exile and my coming homeward, in my foraging and my return from it, in my trafficking and my success from it, in my adventuring and my withdrawing from it.—And guard me in myself and my property, in my honour and my goods, in my family and my means, in my household and my dwelling, in my strength and my fortune, in my riches and my death.—Bring not on me reverse; make not the invader lord over me, but give me from thyself helping power.—O God, watch over me with thy eye and thy aid, distinguish me by thy safeguard and thy bounty, befriend me with thy election and thy good, and consign me not to the keeping of any but thee.— But grant to me health that weareth not away, and allot to me comfort that perisheth not; and free me from the terrors of misfortune, and shelter me with the coverings of thy boons; make not the talons of enemies to prevail against me, for thou art He that heareth prayer.
Then he looked down, and he turned not a glance, he answered not a word:—So that we said, “A fear has confounded him or a stupor struck him dumb.”—Then he raised his head and drew his breath, and said, I swear by the heaven with its constellations, and the earth with its plains, and the pouring flood, and the blazing sun, and the sounding sea, and the wind and the dust-storm,— That this is the most sure of charms, one that will best suffice you for the wearers of the helmet.—He who repeats it at the smiling of the dawn has no alarm of danger to the red of eve;—And he who whispers it to the vanguard of the dark is safe the night long from plunder.
Said the narrator: So we learned it till we knew it thoroughly, and rehearsed it together that we might not forget it.—Then we set forth, urging the beasts by prayers, not by the song of drivers; and guarding the loads by words, not by warriors.—And our companion frequented us evening and morning, but required not of us our promises:—Till when we spied the house-tops of ‘Ânah, he said to us, “Now, your help, your help!”— Then we set before him the exposed and the hidden, and showed him the corded and the sealed.—And said to him, “Decide as thou wilt, for thou wilt find among us none but will consent.”—But nothing enlivened him but the light, the adorning; nothing was comely in his eye but the coin.—So of those he loaded on his burden, and rose up with enough to repair his poverty.—Then he dodged us as dodges the cut-purse, and slipped away from us as slips quicksilver.—And his departure saddened us, his shooting away astonished us:—And we ceased not to seek him in every assembly, and to ask news of him from each that might mislead or guide.—Until it was said, “Since he entered ‘Ânah he has not quitted the tavern.”—Then the foulness of this report set me on to test it, and to walk in a path to which I belonged not.— So I went by night to the wine-hall in disguised habit; and there was the old man in a gay-coloured dress amid casks and wine vats;—And about him were cupbearers surpassing in beauty, and lights that glittered, and the myrtle and the jasmine, and the pipe and the lute.—And at one time he bade broach the wine casks, and at another he called the lutes to give utterance; and now he inhaled the perfumes, and now he courted the gazelles.—But when I had thus stumbled on his hypocrisy, and the differing of his to-day from his yesterday;—I said to him, Woe to thee, accursed! hast thou forgotten the day at the Jayrûn?—But he laughed heartily, and then indited charmingly:
I cling to journeying, I cross deserts, I loathe pride that I may cull joy:
And I plunge into floods, and tame steeds that I may draw the trains of pleasure and delight.
And I throw away staidness, and sell my land, for the sipping of wine, for the quaffing of cups.
And were it not for longing after the drinking of wine my mouth would not utter its elegancies;
Nor would my craft have lured the travellers to the land of Irak, through my carrying of rosaries.
Now be not angry, nor cry aloud, nor chide, for my excuse is plain:
And wonder not at an old man who settles himself in a well-filled house by a wine cask that is brimming.
For truly wine strengthens the bones and heals sickness and drives away grief.
And the purest of joy is when the grave man throws off the veils of shame and flings them aside:
And the sweetest of passion is when the love-crazed ceases from the concealing of his love, and shows it openly.
Then avow thy love and cool thy heart: or else the fire-staff of thy grief will rub a spark on it;
And heal thy wounds, and draw out thy cares by the daughter of the vine, her the desired:
And assign to thy evening draught a cup-bearer who will stir the torment of desire when she gazes;
And a singer who will raise such a voice that the mountains of iron shall thrill at it when she chants.
And rebel against the adviser who will not permit thee to approach a beauty when she consents.
And range in thy cunning even to perverseness; and care not what is said of thee, and catch what suits thee:
And leave thy father if he refuse thee, and spread thy nets and hunt who comes by thee.
But be sincere with thy friend, and avoid the niggardly, and bestow kindness, and be constant in gifts;
And take refuge in repentance before thy departure; for whoso knocks at the door of the Merciful causes it to open.
Then I said to him, “O rare thy recitation, but fie on thy misconduct!—Now, by Allah, tell me from what thicket is thy root, for thy puzzle vexes me.”—He said I love not to disclose myself; yet I will intimate it:
I am the novelty of the time, the wonder of nations;
I am the wily one, who plays his wiles among Arabs and foreigners;
But not the less a brother of need, whom fortune vexes and wrongs,
And the father of children who lie out like meat on the tray:
Now the brother of want, who has a household, is not blamed if he be wily.
Said the narrator: Then I knew that it was Abû Zayd, the man of ill-fame and disgrace, he that blackens the face of his hoariness.—And the greatness of his contumacy offended me, and the foulness of the path of his resorting:—So I said to him with the tongue of indignation and the confidence of acquaintance: “Is it not time, old man, that thou withdraw from debauchery?”—But he was angry, and growled, and his countenance changed, and he thought a while:—And then he said, “It is a night for merriment, not for rebuke, an occasion for drinking wine, not for contention; so leave speaking thy thought until we meet to-morrow.” —Then I left him, through fear of his drunken humour, not through dependence on his promise;—And I passed my night clothed in the mourning of repentance, at having advanced the steps of my foot to the daughter of the vine, not of grace.—And I made a vow to God Almighty that I would never again enter the tavern of a liquor-seller, even that I might be endowed with the dominion of Bagdad;—And that I would not look upon the vats of wine, even that the season of youth might be restored to me.—Then we saddled the white camels in the last darkness of night, and left together those two old ones, Abû Zayd and Iblîs.
This Assembly is remarkable for an enigmatical address, which is difficult to be understood, even by one acquainted with the original. Ḥârith is conversing with some poets, when an old woman, followed by some lean and feeble children, makes her appearance. She at once begins to solicit alms, and sets forth her former prosperity and her present distress in a composition the peculiarity of which is that she introduces into it the names of parts of the human body, each of which is to be taken, and is intelligible only when taken, in another sense. Thus the word ◌ which means eye-ball, means also he who looks upon one with respect, and must be understood in this second sense; the word ◌ has the meanings of eye-brow and attendant, the latter of which must be understood. The passage, though not much in accordance with European tastes, belongs to an order of composition which the Arabs, seduced by the extraordinary richness of their language, have much affected. The close of the address introduces, in an equally artificial manner, the names of colours. The old woman afterwards recites some charming verses, and obtains alms from the people. She is followed by Hârith, who discovers her to be Abû Zayd, the impostor, who, when alone, is heard to improvise some verses on his own cleverness.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was in company, on the banks of the Zowrâ, with some Shaykhs of the poets.—They were such that no rival would keep up even with their dust, no disputant would run with them in the training-ground.—And we flowed in a discourse that shamed the flowers, until we had halved the day.—Now, when the yield of our thoughts was failing, and our souls were desiring after their nests,— We caught sight of an old woman, who approached from afar, and trotted the trot of a good steed.—And she was leading behind her some children, thinner than spindles, weaker than the young of doves.—And when she saw us, she failed not to make towards us;—And when she stood before us, she said: God save the faces present, though they are not of my acquaintance!—Know, O ye who are the refuge of the hoping, the stay of the widowed, that I am of the Princes of the tribes, the ladies that are kept jealously:—My people and my husband were wont to settle on the Breast, and to journey at the Heart, to burden the Back, to advance the Hand; but when Fortune destroyed the Arms, and pained the Liver by means of the Limbs; and turned about till Back was Belly; then the Eye-ball grew dim, and the Eye-brow restless, and the Eye went forth, and the Palm was lost, and the Fore-arm grew dry, and the Right hand broke, and the Elbows departed, and there remained to us neither Front tooth nor Eye tooth.— Now, since the Green life has become Dust-coloured, and the Yellow loved one has been Tarnished, my White day is made Black, and my Black temple is made White, so that the Blue-eyed enemy has pitied me, and now welcome the Red death!sup>1 And there follow me those of whom ye see that their look is a sufficient examining, that their yellowness is their interpreter:—The furthest desire of each is a mess, the extreme of his wish is a mantle.—Now I had sworn that I would not give my cheek to shame, except before the generous, even though I should die of misery.—But the soul that dwells in me has whispered me that succour will be found with you, and the discerning of my heart has announced to me that ye are the fountains of gifts.—Now may God brighten him who will make my vow sinless, and verify my observing;—And who will look on me with an eye into which parsimony sets a mote, while bounty plucks it out.
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now we were astonished at the excellence of her signifying and at the beauties of her metaphor.—So we said to her, “Thy prose has enchanted us, but how is thy versifying?”— She said, “Without a boast, it would make a rock to gush forth.”—We said, “If thou wilt place us among thy Reciters, we will not be niggardly in imparting to thee.”—She said, “I will first show you my worn out garment, and then give you to recite my poems.”—Then she put forth the sleeve of a well worn smock, and unveiled the look of a crafty old woman, and indited:
I complain to God, with the complaining of the sick, against the trouble of the unjust, the hateful time.
O friends, I am of people who prospered long time, while the eyelid of fortune was cast down before them:
Their glory there was none to forbid, and their fame was spread abroad among men.
When foraging failed in the ashy year they were a goodly meadow:
Their fires were kindled to the travellers, and they fed the guest with fresh meat:
Their neighbour passed not his night in hunger, nor through fear did he say, “Choking hinders me.”
But the changes of destruction have made their seas of bounty to sink away from them, which I thought not would ever sink:
And put away from among them, into the bowels of the earth, those that were lions of guarding, healers of the sick.
That on which I carry is now my back, after being my beast, and my home is in the hollow, after being on the height.
My little ones fail not to mourn their misery, of which there is some flash every day.
When the pious man prays to his Lord by night, they also call Him with gushing tears.
O Thou who feedest the young raven in the nest, and settest the bone which is broken, and again broken;
Appoint to us, O God, one whose honour is pure and washed from the filth of blame;
Who will quench for us the fire of hunger, though only with a mess of the sour milk or the butter milk.
Now is there any who will remove what is come upon us, and make prize of thanks long and large?
For, by Him to whom the forelocks shall bow down in the day when the faces of the assemblage shall be black and white,
Were it not for these, my cheek would not expose itself, nor would I assay to the stringing of verse.
Said the narrator: Now, by Allah, she cleft our hearts in pieces with her verses, and called forth the gifts of our bosoms:—So that he gave her alms whose habit was to beg alms himself, and he was brisk to bestow on her who we thought would not be so.—And when her bosom was filled full with gold, and each of us had shown bounty to her,—She retreated, the little ones following her, and her mouth was wide with thanks.—But after she was gone, the company were all a-stretch to fathom her, that they might prove where their bounty had fallen.—And I went surety to them for eliciting the hinted secret, and rose up and followed the track of the old woman.—Until she came to a street choked with people, exceeding in its crowd.—Then she plunged into the throng, and slipped away from the simple children.—And she turned aside, with unconcern of mind, to a ruined mosque, and threw away her cloak, and drew off her veil.—But I spied at her through a chink of the door, and watched what strange thing she would bring to pass.—And when the gear of modesty fell off, I saw the face of Abû Zayd dawn out.—And I thought within myself that I would rush upon him and rebuke him for the course he was running.—But he threw himself back with the gesture of the contumacious, and raised the shrill note of singers, and broke forth, inditing thus:—
Oh! would I knew whether the time had gotten a knowledge of my power:
Whether it had learnt or learnt not the real truth how deep I go in deceiving:
How many of its sons I have won of by my wile and my fraud:
How oft I have sallied forth upon them in my known form and in disguise;
To catch one set by preaching, and others by poetry;
To excite one mind by vinegar, and another by wine;
Being at one time Ṣakhr, at another time the sister of Ṣakhr.
Now if I had followed the frequented path all the length of my life,
My fire and my portion would have failed, my need and my loss would have lasted.
So say to him who blames, “This is my excuse—take it.”
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now when the clearness of his case appeared to me, and the marvel of his wickedness, and the excuse which he had tinseled in his verses,—I knew that his devil was a rebellious one, who would not listen to rebuke, and would do nought but what he willed.—So I turned my reins to my companions, and published to them what my eye-witnessing had established.—Then they were sullen at the loss of their presents, and vowed one to another to deny old women.
This Assembly has little that is remarkable. Ḥârith is on the pilgrimage to Mecca, and, after having fulfilled the usual rites, he and his friends are diverting themselves with conversation, in a tent, during the heat of the day. An old man and a boy make their appearance, and when they are asked what they want, the old man utters a complimentary speech, soliciting relief for himself and his son. They promise it, and he then recites some verses, lamenting that his camel had broken down,and that he should have to return from the pilgrimage on foot. They promise him a camel, and desire to know what is his son’s request. The boy recites some verses, asking for various kinds of food in use among the ancient Arabs. Both receive what they desire from the company, and Ḥârith then asks whence they come. The old man, who is Abû Zayd, begins to tell them in verse of Serûj, and its destruction; but his tears hinder him from proceeding, and he departs abruptly. In this Assembly Abû Zayd and his son are not represented as practising any kind of knavery; and it may be assumed that they were really in want of a beast and food. This trait is in keeping with the thirty-first Assembly, which introduces Abû Zayd on the pilgrimage preaching to the assembled people. On that occasion he would not ask or even take alms, having made a vow of self-denial. In the present Assembly, though less strict, he will not commit an unworthy action in a sacred place. The lingering religious sentiment and sense of honour in Abû Zayd’s character are always well observed by the author.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I rose up from the City of Peace for the pilgrimage of Islam:—And when, by the help of God, I had fulfilled my squalor and permitted myself perfumes and indulgence, there came upon the encampment of the Khayf the blaze of summer;—And I made a shelter perforce of what might ward off the mid-day heat.—Now when I was under a leather tent with a company of the polite; and the furnace of the gravel was now hot, and the noon blinded the eye of the chameleon;—Lo! there broke in upon us a tottering old man, whom followed a youth in agile prime.—And the old man greeted with the greeting of the well-bred, the intelligent, and answered with the answering of a kinsman, not a stranger.—Then he pleased us by what he scattered from his chaplet, and we wondered at his unreserve before we had emboldened him.—And we said to him, “What art thou? and how hast thou made way in, and not asked leave?”—He said, “As for me, I am a suppliant, a seeker of help; the secret of my misery is not hidden, and a look at me is my sufficient intercessor:—And as for my intrusion, to which suspicion clings, why, it is not wonderful, seeing there can be no veil over the generous.”—Then we asked him how he found his way to us, and by what he got direction towards us.—He said, “Truly generosity has a fragrance whose breathings steal forth, whose odours guide to its meadow;—And I was led by the exhaling of your perfume to the brightening of your bounty;— And the fragrant waving of your myrtle told me glad-deningly that the return from your presence would be happy.”—Then we asked him concerning his want, that we might undertake to aid him.—He said, “I have a need and my boy a request.”—We said, “Either wish shall be fulfilled, and each of you shall surely be contented:—But the elder, the elder:” He said, “Certainly; by Him who has spread out the seven earths.”—Then he leaped up to speak like the camel loosed from the footrope, and recited;
I am a man whose beast has fallen with soreness of foot and weariness;
My distance is a far one, my pace is unequal to it:
With me is not as much as a mustard seed of the stamped gold:
My contriving is closed up, my bewilderment plays with me.
If I set out on foot, I fear destructive haps;
And if I lag behind the company my way is straitened.
My sighing is on the heights, my tear is on the slopes.
But ye are the foraging ground of him that hopes, the target of seeking;
Your grist pours down as pour not down the clouds:
Your neighbour dws in sanctuary, but your wealth is open to spoiling:
The terror-stricken does not take shelter with you, and then fear the tooth of calamities;
Nor does he that hopes seek the milk-flow of your gifts, and then fail to be gifted.
So now be ye moved by my story, and prosper my retiring from you;
For if ye had made trial of my life, in its meat and its drink,
Surely such distress as mine would pain you, distress that gives me up to sorrows.
And if ye were to learn my distinction, and my pedigree, and my path,
And what my knowledge embraces of choice studies,
No doubt would occur to you but that my breeding is my malady.
Now, would that I had not sucked at the breast of scholarship!
For its ill-luck has fallen on me; and in this thing was my father unduteous to me.
Then we said to him: “As for thee, thy verses have now disclosed thy poverty, and the perishing of thy she-camel;—So we will mount thee on that which will bring thee to thy city; and, now, what is the need of thy son?” —He said to him, “Rise, my boy, as thy father rose, and speak what is in thy mind; may thy mouth not be harmed!”—Then he rose up as rises the hero to the sallying forth, and unsheathed a tongue like a cutting blade, and recited:
O ye Lords, whose dwellings are built up on high places!
Who, when danger befalls, take stand to ward off stratagem;
To whom is easy the bestowing of stored up treasures;
I desire of you a piece of roast, and a loaf, and a pudding:
But if that be too dear, then let it be cracknels, in which shall be hidden some roast lamb;
Or if there be neither this nor that, then my fill of tharîd:
But if these deny themselves altogether, then mere dates with their sauce.
Bring forth what is easy for you, even though it be but shreddings of dried meat;
And make it ready quickly, for my soul is longing for what is ready.
For there is no doing without provision for my far journey;
And ye are the best of kindred to be called on in necessity;
Your hands every day are full of new bounties;
Your palms bestow all useful gifts.
Now my wish will limit itself within the folds of that which ye shall give.
Through me may reward be gotten; and estimable is the consequence of relieving my sorrow;
And mine are young offsprings of the wit which put to shame every poem.
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now when we saw that the cub was like the lion, we mounted the father and provisioned the son;—And they requited the kindness with thanks, which they spread out as robes, and they paid for it its due.—And when they were intent on departure, and had fastened for the journey the waist-folds of the skirt,—I said to the old man, “Has our promise been like the promise of ‘Orḳûb, or does there remain a need in the mind of Jacob?”—He said, “God forbid! surely not: nay, your kindness has been mighty and manifest.”—I said to him, “Reward us as we have rewarded thee, profit us as we have profited thee!— Where is thy cot? for perplexity has possessed us concerning thee.”—Then he sighed with the sighing of one who calls to mind his home, and recited, while sobbing hindered his tongue:
Serûj is my dwelling; but how to make way to it!
For enemies have encamped in it, and marred it.
Now by the House to which I have journeyed to lay down my sins in it,
Nought has pleased my eye since I have left the bounds of Serûj.
Then his eyes were drowned with tears, and his tear-founts permitted their flowing:—And he was unwilling to let them drop, but he could not restrain them.—So he cu short his sweet reciting, and was brief in his farewell and withdrew.
This long and elaborate composition has a very slight foundation. The author, desirous to amuse his readers with a very ordinary legal puzzle, imagines a long adventure to introduce it. Ḥârith is passing a sleepless night, and strongly desires a companion to converse with, when a wanderer knocks at the door. He opens, and when the light is brought he discovers the visitor to be Abû Zayd. Rejoicing at so pleasant an encounter he offers him food, but finds that Abû Zayd will eat nothing. He is offended; but Abû Zayd proceeds to explain his want of appetite by relating the adventures of the day. He had been as usual in destitution, and his hunger had been further excited by the sight of the dates and milk that were exposed in the market. At last, when almost exhausted, he had seen a man weeping. He had inquired the cause and found that the stranger was deploring the decay of learning, inasmuch as no one was able to solve for him a puzzle which had come into his possession. This was to explain how a man, dying childless, could leave a brother perfectly competent to inherit, and yet that his property should go to his wife’s brother. Abû Zayd at once perceives the answer, but demands a supper before revealing it. The stranger takes him home and treats him to dates and cream, which he eats greedily, and then explains that the deceased man in the puzzle had had a son by a former wife, who had married the mother of his, the father’s, second wife and then died, leaving a son who would be the brother of the second wife, and the grandson of the deceased whose property was in question. This child would therefore inherit in preference to the deceased’s brother. Abû Zayd relates that when he had given the stranger the solution of the puzzle, he had been turned out in the rain, and had wandered from house to house seeking shelter, until chance had taken him to Hârith. They spend the night in conversation, and Ḥârith parts with him in the morning with regret. Sherîshi, in his commentary, remarks with justice on the inordinate length of this Assembly, and gives one by Al Hamadâni, of only a few lines, as a contrast to it, observing that if Ḥarîri’s had been shorter and Badî‘ az Zemân’s longer, both would have been better. “Abû Moḥammed,” he says, “is so long as to weary the hearer.”
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was wakeful in a certain night, that was black of robe, lowering a massive cloud, beyond the wakefulness of the lover who is driven from the door, who is tried by the aversion of mistresses.—And thoughts ceased not to rouse my sadness, and make my imagination roam among fantasies. —Until I formed a wish, through the unease of what I suffered, that I might be granted a talk-fellow from among the estimable, who should shorten the tedium of my night-dark night.—Now my wish was not ended, and I had not closed my eye, when a knocker knocked at the door, one with an humble voice.—And I said within myself, “Perchance the plant of wishing has now borne fruit, and the night of luck is moonlit.”—And I rose up to him in haste, and said, “Who is it that now walks by night?”—He said, “A stranger, whom the night has veiled in darkness, whom the rain-flood has caught;—And he desires a sheltering, nothing else; and when it dawns he will advance his journey.”—Said Al Ḥârith: Now when his rays indicated his sun, and his title disclosed the secret of his page,—I knew that night-talking with him would be a prize, and watching with him a pleasure. —So I opened the door with smiling, and said, “Enter ye into them with peace.”—And there entered a person whose lance time had bent, and the rain had wet through his mantle.—And he greeted with a glib tongue, and a sweet eloquence.—Then he thanked me for responding to his voice, and excused himself for night-walking out of season.—But I put near to him the kindled lantern, and contemplated him as one that examines money.— And I found that he was our Shaykh Abû Zayd, without question, without the guess of doubt.—So I received him as one who had possessed me of my utmost desire, and transported me from the vexing of sorrow to the quiet of joy.—Then he took to complaining of weariness, and I took to How? and Where?—He said, “Let me swallow down my spittle, for my road has wearied me.”—And I thought that he had hunger in his belly, and was sluggish from this cause.—So I set before him what is set before the guest who comes sudden in the dark night.— But he shrank as shrinks the abashed, and declined as declines the overeaten.—And I was evil in thought at his refraining, and the change of his nature angered me:—Until I was near to be rough to him in speech, and to sting him with the venom of blame.—Then he discerned from the glances of my eye what pervaded my mind:—And he said, “O weak of confidence in them that love thee! turn from that which thou makest to stir thy heart and listen to me, O thou base-born!”—I said, “Go on, brother of empty talk.”—Then he said, Know that I passed yesternight an ally of want, a communer with fantasy.—And when the night had fulfilled its vow, and the morn had sunk its stars, I went forth at the time of sunrise to one of the markets,—To assay against any prey that might pass by, any generous man who might show bounty.—And I caught sight of dates whose ordering in rows was made comely, whose place of summering had been favourable.—And they united in proof of their goodness the purity of choice wine, and the ruddiness of cornelian.—And opposite them was milk that showed forth like the yellow gold, and disclosed a saffron hue,—Which praised him who cooked it with the tongue of its perfection, and justified the judgment of the buyer, even though he had paid down his heart’s core for it.—Then appetite bound me with its cords, and thirst brought me under its dominion.—And I remained more bewildered than a lizard, more distracted than a lover;—Having no means to bring me to the reaching of my wish, and the delight of swallowing.— And now my foot obeyed me not for departure through the ardour of my inflaming.—But greediness and its violence chid me on, and hunger and its heat, to forage every land, to be content with a driblet from my watering.—And I ceased not all the length of that day to let down my bucket into rivers;—But it came not back even with a wetting, and drew not up a quenching for my thirst;—Until the sun bent to the setting, and my soul was weak with weariness.—Then at eve I went homeward with burning stomach: I returned irresolute, advancing one foot, drawing back the other.—And while I thus sped or stayed, while my breeze thus rose or fell, behold, there met me a Shaykh, who was lamenting with the lamentation of the bereaved, and his eyes were flowing.—Then not even the Wolf’s Disease that I was under, and the emptiness that melted me, engaged me from the attempt to become intimate with him, and from the desire after deceiving him.—So I said to him, “O stranger, in thy weeping there is surely a secret, and behind thy passion an ill:—So shew me thy disorder and take me among thy counsellors:—For thou wilt find in me a physician to cure or a helper to impart.”—Then he said, “By Allah! my lamenting is not after livelihood that is gone, or fortune that is insolent;—But for the perishing of science and its blotting out, for the going down of its moons and its suns.”—I said, “And what mishap has appeared? what question is obscure? so as to excite in thee grief for the loss of those who are gone.”—Then he drew forth a scrap of paper from his sleeve, and swore by his father and mother,—That he had already laid it before the chiefs of the schools, but they could not distinguish its worn-out way-marks,—And had bidden the doctors of the ink-flasks to speak on it, but they were dumb beyond the dumbness of the tenants of the tombs.—I said to him, “Let me see it; for perhaps I shall suffice for it.”—He said, “Thou art not extreme in thy request, and oft a shot is without a shooter.”— Then he handed it to me, and lo! there was written on it:
Ho the learned, the lawyer, who surpassest in acuteness, and there is none like thee!
Give me a decision on a case which every judge shuns, at which every lawyer is bewildered:
A man died, leaving a brother, both by father and mother, who was a Moslem, free, pious;
And the deceased had a wife who had, O Doctor, a brother, really her own, without equivocation;
She got her legal share, and her brother took what was left of the inheritance instead of the deceased’s brother.
Now relieve us by thy answer to what we ask; this is an ordinance of law, no fault can be found in it.
Now when I had read the verses on the paper and perceived their secret, I said to him, “Thou hast fallen on one who is knowing in it, thou hast alighted near one who is at home in it:—But yet I am burning in the entrails and have need of a supper; so grant me to sojourn with thee, then listen to my decision.”—He said, “Thou art just in thy stipulating and hast shrunk from excess;— So go with me to my dwelling, that thou mayest get what thou desirest and come off as is fitting.”—Said Abû Zayd: Then I accompanied him to his habitation as God hath commanded.—And he brought me into a house narrower than the ark of Moses, weaker than a spider’s web. —But not the less did he mend the straitness of his dwelling by the largeness of his bestowal:—For he gave me my choice of the entertainment and of all the delicacies that are bought.—And I said, “I wish for the proud rider on the desired steed, and for the wholesome companion with the hurtful one that is companied with.” —So he thought a long time, and then he said, “Perchance thou meanest the daughter of the palm-tree with the first milk that follows the kid.”—I said to him, “Just these two I meant, and for their sake I trouble myself.” —And he rose cheerful, then sat down angry: and said, “God prosper thee! Know that truth is nobility, but lying a pest;—Nor let hunger, which is the garment of the prophets and the ornament of the saints, carry thee to join thyself to him who lies, or to put on the nature of him who swerves from faith-keeping.—For the free-born woman hungers, but will not eat by her breasts; and she holds back from baseness even though urged to it by need.—Besides, I am no simpleton for thee, nor one to wink at a dupe’s bargain;—So come! I warn thee before the veil be rent, and the feud established between us;—And neglect not attention to my warning, and beware false speaking with me, beware!” —I said to him, “Now, by Him who has forbidden the eating of usury, but allowed the eating of milk, I have not spoken with falsehood, I have not shown thee deceitfully.—Thou shalt prove the truth of the business, and approve the giving of the milk and dates.”—Then he was cheerful with the cheerfulness of one who is dealt with truly, and went off hastening to the market. —And nothing could be speedier than his return, bending under them; and his face was frowning, and he set them before me as one who would upbraid me;—And said, “Press host on host; so enjoy the delight of life.” —Said Abû Zayd, Then I bared a glutton’s arm, and charged as charges the voracious elephant;—But he, he glanced at me as glances the spiteful, and in his rage he would that I had choked.—Now when I had gulped down either kind, and left them a trace after the substance, I was speechless through perplexity at the coming on of night-time, and through thinking on the answer to the verses.—And he delayed not to rise and set before me the ink-flask and pens.—And he said, “Thou hast filled thy wallet, now dictate the answer.— Otherwise, prepare, if thou shirk, to own the debt for what thou hast eaten.”—I said to him, There is nothing but earnest with me, so write (and the prospering be from God):
Say to him who riddles questions that I am the discloser of their secret which he hides.
Know that the deceased, in whose case the law preferred the brother of his spouse to the son of his father,
Was a man who, of his free consent, gave his son in marriage to his own mother-in-law; nothing strange in it.
Then the son died, but she was already pregnant by him, and gave birth to a son like him;
And he was the son’s son without dispute, and brother of the grandfather’s spouse without equivocation.
But the son of the true-born son is nearer to the grandfather, and takes precedence in the inheritance over the brother;
And therefore, when he died, the eighth of the inheritance was adjudged to the wife for her to take possession;
And the grandson, who was really her brother by her mother, took the rest;
And the full brother was left out of the inheritance, and we say thou hast only to bewail him.
This is my decision which every judge who judges will pattern by, every lawyer.
Said Abû Zayd: Now when he had understood the answer and verified its correctness, he said to me, “Remember thy family and the night, so gather up thy skirt and be beforehand with the rain-flood.”—I said, “I am in the house of exile, and in sheltering me lies the best of offering,—Especially as the van of the darkness has now drooped, and the thunder is lauding God in the cloud.”—He said, “Be off (may God keep thee) whither thou wilt; but desire not to pass the night here.”—I said, “Why is that, seeing the emptiness of thy habitation?”—He said, “Because I looked well how thou didst swallow what was before thee, until thou didst leave and let alone nothing;—And I saw that thou dost not look to thy well-being, nor take care for the keeping of thy health.—Now, he that exceeds in what thou hast exceeded, and fills his belly as thou hast filled it, escapes not a weakening surfeit or a killing cholera.—So, by Allah, leave me alone and go forth from me while thou art still kept from harm;—For by Him who gives life and death there is no lodging for thee in my house.”— Now, when I had heard his oath, and made proving of him, I went forth from his house perforce, and with a victualling of sadness:—And the sky rained upon me, and the darkness made me to stumble, and the dogs barked after me, and the doors repulsed me,—Until the kindness of fate sent me to thee, and thanks to its white hand.
Then I said to him, “Charming is this ordained meeting with thee to my glad heart.”—And he began to be diverse in his stories, and to mix the laughable with the mournful; until the first of the morning dawned, and the caller of “Blessing” made his cry.— Whereupon he made ready to respond to the caller, and then turned to bid me farewell.—But I checked him from departure and said, “Hospitality is three days.”—But he adjured God, and restricted himself by a vow; then he sought the outlet, and indited as he lingered:
Visit him thou lovest in each month only a day, and exceed not that upon him;
For the beholding of the new moon is but one day in the month, and afterward eyes look not on it.
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Then I took leave of him with a heart bleeding of its wound, and wished that my night had been tardy of its morn.
My people and my husband were wont to sit in the first place in the assembly; to march at the centre, or head quarters of the army; they mounted their friends on the backs of their camels; they conferred favours: but when Fortune destroyed those who helped them, and afflicted them by taking away their children and servants, who laboured for them, and brought them gain; and when their state was completely overthrown; then, whoever looked to them with respect withdrew; and their attendants were insolent; and their coin left them; and their quiet was lost; and their fire-staff gave no spark; their power was broken; their comforts and conveniences were scattered; there remained not a camel, young or aged. Now, since the life of plenty has become barren, and the loved gold coin has turned aside from me, my happy day has been saddened, and the black hair of my temples has been whitened, so that the blue-eyed Greek, my enemy, has pitied me, and now welcome death in war.
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