The purpose of this Assembly is to exhibit Abû Zayd in the performance of an extraordinary feat of scholarship, the recitation of some lines of poetry, each of which may be read forwards or backwards without change of sense. Ḥârith meets with four scholars in a mosque and takes seat with them. The conversation falls upon sentences which preserve their identity when reversed; and some one proposes that they should try their powers of composing them. This is agreed to, and the first man produces a sentence of three words, the next a sentence of four, the next a sentence of five, the next a sentence of six. It then comes to the turn of Ḥârith to compose a sentence of seven words, which shall be the same whether read forwards or backwards. This he is unable to do; but an old man who had joined them not only performs the feat, but actually improvises five lines of poetry, each of which has the same extraordinary property. Of course this is Abû Zayd, and when Ḥârith discovers him, he introduces him to his friends, who invite him to spend the night with them in conversation. He pleads that his hungry children are expecting him; but assures them that if they will let him go and give them a meal he will return forthwith. They accede to this, and send a servant with him to carry his wallet. After some time the servant comes back alone, and relates that Abû Zayd had refused to return, and had dismissed him with some moral verses.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was present at the prayer of sunset in one of the mosques of the West:—And when I had performed it with completeness and joined to it what was optional, my eye fell on a company who had set themselves down aside and had drawn apart, friends pure in friendship;—And they were taking from each other the cup of talk and rubbing the fire-staves of discussion.—And I desired to converse with them for the sake of some maxim that might be acquired, or of scholarship that might be gotten in increase;—So I advanced to them as one who would play Ṭofayl upon them,—And said to them, “Will ye receive a comer who seeks to gather of night-talkings, and seeks not the newly-gathered of fruits; and who desires the beauties of dialogue, not the choice of the young camel’s hump?” —Then they loosed their loops to me, and said, “Welcome, Welcome!”—And I had not sat longer than the flash of the blinding lightning or the sip of the timid bird, when there came upon us a wanderer; on his shoulder was a wallet;—And he greeted us with the two words, and he greeted the mosque with the two salutations;—And he said, “O ye men of understanding and choice excellence!—Know ye not that the most precious of offerings is the relieving of sorrows, and the firmest cord of salvation is the imparting to those who have need?—Now, by Him who hath set me down in your precinct, and destined to me the asking alms of you, truly I am the stray of a distant abode, the messenger of lank-bellied children;—And is there in the company any that will cool down for us the heat of hunger?”— Then they said to him, “O stranger, thou hast come after the even-tide, and there remained over only the leavings of our supper.—But if thou art content with these thou wilt find among us none to forbid thee.”—He said, “Surely the brother of afflictions, he is content with the scraps of tables and the shakings of provision bags.”—Then each of them bade his servant to victual him with what he had.—And the kindness pleased him and he thanked for it, and took seat and watched what was brought him.—And we, we returned to mooting the beauties of scholarship and its choice points, and drawing forth its rill from its founts,—Until we engaged in the subject of language which does not become absurd by being reversed, as the phrase ◌ (the pourer out of the cup).—Then we challenged each other that we should make our thoughts yield an offspring in it, that we should originate virgin phrases in it,—On the condition that he who began should string three beads on his necklace, and that the additions should advance by degrees after him;—So that the man on his right should place four in his series, and his neighbour of the left should place seven perforce.
Said the narrator: And we were ranged to the number of the hand’s fingers, and we were set together with the union of the men of the Cave.—Then to the greatness of my vexation, hastened he on my right, and said: ◌, (Blame him who wearies of thee).—And the one on his right said: ◌, (Make great thy hope of the recompense of thy Lord).—Said he who was next: ◌, (He who completes the kindness which he renders, gains increase.)—Said the last: ◌, (Silence every one who blabs to thee, and thou wilt be wise.)—Then the turn came to me, and to string a seven-beaded thread was incumbent on me.—And my thought ceased not to mould and break, to be fertile and barren; and all the while I seek food and find none to feed me;—Until my breeze fell, and my submission was manifest.—And I said to my companions “If the Serûji were present here, he would heal this cureless malady.”—They said, “If this came before Iyâs he would certainly stop in despair.”—Then began we to be profuse in declaring that it was hard, and that its door was shut.—But that visitor who had come upon us glanced at us with the glance of the contemptuous; and he was joining pearls together, and we knew it not.— And when he had noticed our ignominy, and the drying up of our pool, he said “O people! truly a great trouble is it to make the barren bring forth, or to get a cure by the sick; and ‘there is One learned above all the learned.’”—Then he turned to me and said, I will take thy place, and free thee from what has fallen on thee:—Now if thou desire to speak in prose, and yet not to trip, say, addressing him who blames avarice, and is large in his reproach, ◌, (Take refuge with every trusty patron, who, when he has collected and possesses, gives freely).—But if thou prefer to versify, say to him whom thou esteemest:
Bestow on the needy when he comes to thee, and show regard even when a man injures thee.
Have dealings with him that is noble, but put afar from thee the base.
Withdraw from the side of the unjust, the mischievous, when he sits by thee.
When contention rouses itself put it off from thee, and cast it away when it confirms itself.
Be still, and thou shalt grow strong; for it may be that time that was perverse to thee shall aid thee.
Said Al Ḥârith: Now when he had bewitched us with his verses, and fatigued us by the remoteness of his goals—We praised him until he begged to be spared, and we gave to him until he said it was enough.—Then he gathered up his garment, and loaded on his wallet, and rose to go, reciting:
Excellent are this company, who are true of speech, princes in bounty.
They surpass mankind in far-famed virtues, they surpass them in their gifts.
I have talked with them, and found that Saḥbân in their presence would be as Bâḳil:
And I alighted among them begging, and met with a rain that poured.
I swear that if the generous are a shower they are a flood.
Then he stepped two lances’ space, but returned commending himself to God from death,—And said, “O strength of him that is without kindred, treasure of him that is reft of wealth!—The glooming has now set in, and the face of the highway is veiled;—And between me and my house is the dark night and a razed out path.—And have ye a lantern that will secure me from stumbling, and make plain the tracks?”—Said Al Ḥârith: And when there was brought what was sought for, and the light of the brand disclosed men’s faces,—I saw that he who hunted us was our Abû Zayd; and I said to my friends, “This is he of whom I indicated that when he speaks he hits the point, and when he is asked for rain he pours.”—And they stretched towards him their necks, and they made the blacks of their eyes surround him.—And they begged him that he would pass his night in talk with them, on the condition that they should mend his poverty.—He said, “My desire is yours! Welcome to you since ye have welcomed!—Nevertheless when I came to you my children were writhing with hunger, and calling to me for a quick return.—And if they find me tardy, distraction will possess them, and my life will be no more serene.— Now suffer me to go that I may fill their emptiness, and relieve their choke; then return to you straightway, prepared for night-talking till the dawn.”—So we said to one of the lads, “Follow him to his people, that he may be the quicker to come again.”—And the boy set out with him, carrying his wallet under his arm, hastening his return:—But he delayed a delay exceeding bounds; then the lad came back alone.—We said to him, “What story hast thou of the knave?”—He said: He took me along wearying ways and branching paths, until we came to a ruined hut.—Then he said, “Here is my station, the nest of my chicks.”—And he bade open to him the door, and he pulled away from me his wallet, and said, “By my life! thou hast lightened a load off me, and deserved fair treatment from me.—Now here is a counsel for thee which is among the most precious of counsels, the seed-plots of advantages;” then he recited:
When thou hast got the plucking of the palm, defer it not to the coming year:
And if thou lightest on a treading-floor, fill thy crop with the ears that are there;
And stay not when thou hast picked them up, lest thou stick in the net of the snarer;
And go not far in when thou swimmest, for safety is on the bank.
Accost with “Give now,” and answer with “Bye and bye;” and sell what is postponed from thee for what comes at once.
And exceed not upon a friend in thy visiting, for no one was ever wearied of save the clinging guest.
Then he said, “Treasure these lines in thy heart, and follow them in thy conduct.—And now hasten to thy fellows in the keeping of thy Lord;—And when thou hast reached them, bring them my greeting, and rehearse to them my commandment.—And say to them from me that full sure night-watching spent in tales is among the greatest of harms; and that I fail not to care for myself, nor will bring dryness into my head by vigils.”—Said the narrator: Now when the argument of his poem had put us in view of his cunning and fraud, we upbraided each other for leaving him, and for deceiving ourselves with his lie.—Then we separated with frowning faces and a losing bargain.
This Assembly closely resembles the last; the difference between them being that, whereas the feat accomplished in the last consisted in producing sentences or lines of poetry, the letters of which should be the same whether read forward or backward, the peculiarity of the present composition is that the words themselves being reversed produce a perfect sense. The Assembly, in other respects, shows no feature that requires notice.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: In one of the places whither my journeying cast me, to whose fairness my eye was lifted up, I beheld some youths, on whom was the mark of understanding, and the beauty of the stars of the dark.—And they were in a debate that was strong of blast, and a contention that exceeded in its heat.—Then was I roused to make towards them by the love of disputation, and by deeming the fruits of discussion to be sweet.—And when I had joined myself to their company, and strung myself on their thread, they said, “Art thou one who will prove himself in the strife and cast in his bucket among the buckets?”—I said, “Nay, I am but of the lookers on at war, not of the sons of the stab and the stroke.”—Then they broke off from arguing with me, and gave themselves to putting forth riddles.—And there was in the midst of their ring, and in the circlet of their company, an old man whom cares had made lean, whom the hot wind had scorched;—So that he had come to be thinner than a reed, dryer than the shears.—And yet was he uttering wonders whenever he answered, and causing Saḥbân to be forgotten as often as he expounded.—And I admired the judgment he was gifted with, and his surpassing that assemblage.—And he ceased not to make clear every puzzle, and to lay low all he aimed at, until the quivers were empty, and the asking and the answering were exhausted.—Now when he saw that the company had consumed their store, and were forced to fasting, he hinted at a colloquy, and asked leave for an argument.—They said, “Excellent, but who will be our surety for it?”—He said, “Do ye know a composition whose earth is its heaven, and whose morn is its even; which is woven on two beams, and shows with two colours, and prays towards two points, and goes forth with two faces?—If it rises out from its east excellent is its splendour, and if it mounts from its west, then Oh its marvel!”
Said Al Ḥârith: Then it was as though the company were struck with speechlessness, or the word “Silence” were incumbent upon them.—And no man said word, and the tongue of none uttered aught;—But when he saw them dumb as cattle, and speechless as statues, he said to them, “I have now conceded to you the term of grace, and made slack to you the tether of delay:—And here is the camp of gathering, the station of decision.— Now if your minds yield freely I will praise, but if your fire-staves be barren I will rub the spark.”—They said to him, “By Allah, there is no swimming for us in the deep of this sea, no wandering on its shore; so give rest to our thoughts from travail, and make grateful thy gift by readiness.—And take us as brethren who will leap when thou leapest, and will recompense when thou seekest recompensing.”—And he looked down a space; then he said, I hear you and obey.—Take now this dictation from me and hand it down of me:
Man is the creature of kindness; and the perfecting of a benefit is the deed of the liberal; and the disposition of the generous is a treasure of praise; and the gain of thanks is a gathering of happiness; and the index of generosity is the light of cheerfulness; and the practice of courtesy leads of needs to affection; and the bond of friendship demands sincere counsel; and truth of narrative is the ornament of the tongue; and eloquence in speech is witchcraft to hearts; and the net of desire is the bane of souls; and impatience of disposition is a dishonour to mortals; and evil desire consists not with self-restraint; and the clinging to prudence is the leading-cord of safety; and to seek occasions for blaming is the worst of faults; and the dwelling upon failings overthrows friendships; and sincerity of purpose is the cream of a gift; and ungrudgingness in conferring is the price due to asking; and the undertaking of labours lays the way for recompence; and faith in God’s protection makes it easy to bestow; and the excellence of the prince is largeness of breast; and the ornament of rulers is hatred of defamers; and the reward of praiseworthy deeds is a bestowing of gifts; and the dowry of conciliation is the obtaining of requests; and the cause of error is extravagance of aim; and to overstep bounds blunts vigour; and transgression of politeness nullifies services; and the forgetting of rights provokes resistance; and to shun doubtful deeds raises men’s rank; and elevation of dignities is by rushing into dangers; and the exalting of positions is by the favour of Providence; and loftiness in actions is through the limiting of desires; and the lengthening of thought makes precision of judgment; and the crown of princeliness is the refinement of courtliness; and by contentiousness is lost what is sought for; and in perils is shown the difference among men; and in the superiority of plans lies the distinction of men’s values; and by the exaggeration of the envoy policy is weakened; and through laxness of powers do terrors appear; and by the task of patience is the fruit of victory; and the merit to be praiseworthy is in proportion to diligence; and to repay regard is necessary to consideration; and affection in servants is shown in visiting their masters; and the adornment of manliness is the guarding of trusts; and the proving of brethren is in their lightening one’s griefs; and the repulse of enemies is by defence on the part of friends; and the testing of the intelligent is by associating them with the ignorant; and the looking to consequences gives security from fatalities; and the keeping from baseness spreads reputation; and the vice of boorishness consists not with excellence; and the essence of the noble is the guarding of secrets.
Then he said: These are two hundred words comprising culture and admonition.—If one move them in this direction, there is no debate, no contention; but if one desire the reversing of their mould, and the turning of them backwards, let him say, “Secrets are trusted to the noble; and the nature of excellence consists not with boorishness; and foulness of reputation spreads disgrace;”—And so on this track let him trail them and not fear error in them, until there shall come the close of their couplets and the last of their pearls, namely, “and to perfect kindness is a good deed of man.”
Said the narrator: Now when he had uttered his unique address, and his elegancy that was perfect of meaning, we knew how much composition may be diverse in merit, and that excellence is in the hand of God; He gives it to whom he will.—Then clung each of us to his skirt, each cut off for him a portion from what he possessed.—But he declined to receive mine, and said, “I do not take forfeit of my pupils.”—I said, “Be Abû Zayd, even with all this embrowning of thy figure and this failure of the water of thy cheek.”—He said, “I am he, even with all my leanness and withering, and the squalor of my drought.”—Then I took to chiding him for this gadding east and west.—But he declared the Power of God and our return to Him; then he indited with an aching heart:
Time hath drawn his sword upon me to fright me, and hath sharpened his blade;
And hath stolen away from mine eyelid its slumber, like an adversary; and hath made its tear flow down;
And caused me to roam the world; to go about its east, to traverse its west:
And day after day there is for me in each valley but a single rising and setting.
And so the exile’s figure is changed and his destination is afar.
Then he went away trailing his gait and swinging his arms;—And we were divided between turning to gaze on him and hastening after him.—Then we delayed not to loose our loops, and we went asunder like the bands of Saba.
The following is Abû Zayd’s composition read backwards: Secrets are trusted to the noble; and the nature of excellence consists not with boorishness; and foulness of reputation spreads disgrace; and the guarding against fatalities secures from ill consequences; and the discerning of the foolish is by associating them with the intelligent; and the proving of friends is in the repelling of enemies; and the driving away of sorrows is by the cheering of brethren; and the proof of religious beliefs is in the observance of virtue; and the grace of subjects is the visiting their masters; and sincerity of regard consists in the repaying of consideration; and the necessity of exertion is in proportion to reputation; and the meriting of success is the fruit of patience; and in the duress of terrors is strength shown; and by looseness of policy the envoy is weakened; and through increase of rank do purposes differ; and according to the eminence of men is the magnitude of their perils; and in poverty contention is useless; and with courtliness comes the refinement of rule; and the first thing in knowledge is clearness of thought; and to defer men’s hopes is a failure in duties; and loftiness of authority is by the favour of Providence; and exaltation in dignities is by rushing into dangers; and the raising of rank raises distrusts; and the shunning of contumacy produces regard for rights; and forgetfulness of services destroys courtesy; and to overstep bounds blunts vigour; and to go beyond the mark is an excess of error; and the obtaining of requests is by the interceding of conciliation; and the dowry of givers is the spreading of their praiseworthy deeds; and the reward of administrators is the hatred of rulers; and the ornament of the prince is largeness of breast; and the virtue of bestowing brings with it God’s protection; and faith in recompense makes labours easy; and the hatefulness of begging is the price paid for conferring; and ungrudgingness in a gift is the cream of intention; and sincerity in affection makes nought of failings; and the dwelling upon men’s vices is the worst of faults; and the seeking after safety is the leading-cord of prudence; and the clinging to self-restraint keeps from desire; and evil of disposition is the dishonour of mortals; and the weariness of souls is the bane of love; and the witchcraft of speech is a net to hearts; and the eloquence of the tongue is the grace of narrative; and truthfulness of advice demands friendship; and the bond of affection leads of needs to courtesy; and the habit of cheerfulness is an earnest of nobility; and the index of happiness is the gathering of thanks; and a gain of praise is the treasure of the generous; and the nature of the liberal is the doing of goodness; and the perfecting of kindness is a good deed of man.
In this Assembly Abû Zayd is represented as gaining a splendid present by the narrative of an alleged misfortune. We are left in doubt whether his story be true or only one of his usual artifices to obtain the bounty of his friends. In a journey from Damascus to Bagdad, the caravan, in which are Ḥârith and Abû Zayd, halts at Sinjâr, a city of the Diyâr Rabî‘ah, which lies on the northern route between Syria and Irak. There a merchant was giving a wedding feast, to which, according to the hospitable custom of the East, all classes were invited. After the more substantial viands have been consumed, a glass vase of sweetmeats is produced, at the sight of which Abû Zayd starts up and quits the circle of guests. On being asked the reason of this conduct he declares that he is bound by an oath not to remain in the vicinity of anything that is transparent and betrays what is inside it. The company unwillingly send away the sweetmeats, and Abû Zayd then tells his story, which is that, being possessed of a beautiful and accomplished slave girl, he had revealed the secret to a false friend, who had betrayed it to the Governor. This officer being desirous to obtain such a paragon as a present to his Prince, had taken the girl from him by force; on which Abû Zayd had vowed that he would never remain in company with any thing that could not keep a secret: and as glass has this defect he must decline to sit opposite to a glass vase. The host respects this somewhat fanciful scruple, and in the end orders sweetmeats to be brought in silver vases, and presents Abû Zayd, not only with the contents of the vessels, but the vessels themselves. Though the conceit on which this composition is founded is puerile enough, the Assembly is one of the most poetical in Ḥarîri’s work, and a choice specimen of his rich and elaborate diction. Whatever merits it may possess are, however, diminished by the circumstance that it is a close imitation, and in parts almost a literal copy, of one by Al Hamadâni.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was once on the return journey from Damascus, on my way to the City of Peace,—With travellers of the Benû Nomayr, a company of wealth and worth.—And with us was Abû Zayd, of Serûj, he that is an enchainment to the hasty, and a beguiling to the bereaved, the wonder of the time, the pointed at with the finger for his eloquence.—Now our halting at Sinjâr fell on a time when one of the merchants there was making a marriage feast:—And he bade to his banquet the whole commonalty, both of settled land and of desert; so that his bidding extended to the caravan, and he comprised in it both the important and those of no account.—Now when we had responded to his bidder, and arrived at his hall, he set before us viands of one hand and two, whatever is sweet in the mouth or fair to the eye.—And after this he brought forth a vase, which was as though it had been congealed of air, or condensed of sunbeam motes, or moulded of the light of the open plain, or peeled from the white pearl: —And it had been furnished with assortments of comfits, and affused with a pervading perfume, and there had been poured into it a draught from Tesnîm, and it disclosed a fair aspect, and the fragrance of a gentle breeze.—Now when our appetites were kindled at its presence, and our palates were eager for the trial of it; and it was imminent that the squadrons should be sent forth against its train, and that we should cry at the spoiling of it, Revenge!—Lo Abû Zayd sprang up like a madman, and sundered from it as far as the lizard is sundered from the fish.—Then we sought of him that he should return, and not be as was Ḳodâr among Thamûd.—But he said, “By Him who raises the dead from their sepulchres, I will not return except the vase be taken away.—So we found no escape from humouring him, and acquitting him of his vow.—And we bade carry it away, and our minds were carried after it and our tears flowed concerning it.—And when he had returned to his seat, and was free from guilt, we asked him wherefore he rose, and for what reason he bade take away the vase.—He said, “Because that glass is a betrayer; and for years I have had an oath that the same place should not hold me and one who betrays.”—We said to him, “What is the cause of thy strict oath and thy binding vow?”—He said: I had a neighbour whose tongue cajoled, while his heart was a scorpion; whose speech was a honeycomb to refresh, while his hidden thought was a concentred venom:—And through his living near me I was led to converse with him, and by his false smiling I was deluded into consorting with him:—And the fairness of his seeming infatuated me to companying with him, and the guile of his character drew me on to intimacy with him.—And I associated with him in the thought that he would be to me as a most close neighbour; but it was made manifest that he was a swooping eagle:—And I was familiar with him in the belief that he was a familiar friend, but he showed that he was a treacherous serpent.—And I ate my salt with him, and knew not that at the testing he would be of those whose loss is rejoiced at:—And I drank my wine with him, and understood not that on trial he would be of those whose departure is a delight.
Now in my house was a maiden to whom no rival could be found in perfection.—If she unveiled, the two lights of heaven were shamed, and each heart was burned with the fires of love.—If she smiled, she made the beads of silver to be despised, and pearls would be sold for what is worthless.—If she gazed, she roused love-fancies; she realized the witchcraft of Babylon.—If she spoke, she enchained the heart of the wise, and called down the wild goats from the crags.—If she read the Koran, she would heal the heart-sick, she would give life to one buried alive; so that thou wouldest think her gifted with the pipes of David.—If she sang, Ma‘bad would become as a slave to her, and to Isaac it would be said, “Away! begone!”—If she piped, Zonâm would appear an impostor beside her; although he was a leader in his generation, one confident in his charming.— If she danced, she dislodged the turbans from men’s heads; she would make thee forget the dance of the bubbles in the cups.—And possessed of her I despised the red camels; and with the enjoyment of her I adorned the neck of my prosperity.—And I veiled her face from the sun and moon; I excluded the mention of her from the paths of my night-talk;—Yet withal was I fearful lest a breeze by night might bear her fragrance, or a Saṭîḥ divine of her, or the flashing lightning betray her.—And it came to pass, through the decay of my minished fortune, and the malignness of my unlucky star, that the heat of wine caused me to describe her to my blabbing neighbour.—Then understanding returned after the arrow had been shot, and I felt trouble and vexation, knowing that the thing was lost which was committed to such a sieve.—But yet I stipulated with him to keep close what I had uttered, and to guard my secret even though I should anger him.—And he declared that he treasured secrets as the miser treasures the denar; and that he would not rend veils of confidence even were he exposed to be cast into fire.
But not more than a day or two had passed when it occurred to the ruler of that town, and its Governor having authority,—That he would repair to the court of his Prince to make a new display of his horsemen, and pray a rain from the cloud of his bounty;—And he wished for a present to take with him, such as should accord with the Prince’s desire; that he might offer it in the course of his interview.—Whereon he began to be liberal in rewards to his scouts, and to heighten the inducements to whoso should possess him of his wish.— Then stooped that treacherous neighbour his flight to the largess, and, putting on the breast-plate of infamy, rebelled against the blame of the blamer.—And he came to the Governor, stretching his ears, and published what I had told him as a secret.—And I had no alarm till his dependants rushed in to me and his servants swarmed upon me, urging me to prefer him with my peerless pearl, on the condition that I should dictate to him her price. —Then sorrow overwhelmed me as the sea overwhelmed Pharaoh and his host.—And I ceased not to defend her, but defence availed not; and to intercede with him, but intercession profited not.—And as often as he saw in me an increase of evasion and the desire of escape, he shouted, he burned with rage, he gnashed upon me with his teeth.—But yet my soul consented not to part from its full moon, nor that I should tear the heart from my breast.—But when threatening turned to assault, and invective to beating, the fear of death led me to barter the black of my eye for the yellow of coin; but the informer gained nought but guilt and ignominy.—And since then I have had a vow to God Most High that I would never again keep in presence of a betrayer.—Now glass is distinguished by this base quality; nay, its name has been made a proverb for treachery;—So that the tenour of my oath extends to it, and that is the reason that my hand stretches not forth to it.
Now, since I have explained, blame me not that ye have been hindered in the vintage of the cates;
For my excuse in what I have done is plain; and I will repair the rent I have made by my resources, old or new;
So that the pleasantry that I will supply you with shall be more delicious than sweetmeats in the judgment of all the intelligent.
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Then we accepted his excusing, and kissed his cheek,—And said to him, “Long since treachery vexed the Best of Mankind, so that there was declared concerning the woman that carried firewood that which was declared.”—After this we asked him of the behaviour of this tell-tale neighbour, this unregardful intimate.—After he had feathered against him the arrow of delation, and cut the cord of observance,—He said, He took to submission and humiliation, and to interceding with me by people of degree. —But I had straitly charged myself that my familiarity should not seek a return to him until my yesterday should return to me.—And he gained nothing from me but refusal and persistence in aversion; yet was he not disheartened by repulse, nor shamed from his impudence of face; but persevered in overtures and was urgent in requests;—And nought freed me from his annoying and made hopeless to him the gaining of his desire, save some verses in which breathed the vengeful breast and the wounded spirit.—And these proved a driving forth to his devil, an imprisoning of him in his dwelling.—And on their publication he made an irrevocable divorce with joy, and cried, Alas! Perdition!—And despaired of the resurrection of my buried friendship as the infidels despair of the tenants of the tombs.—Then we conjured him to recite them, and give us to smell their fragrance. —He said, “Be it so: man is made up of impatience.” —So he recited, and no bashfulness hindered him, no timidity restrained him:
There was a companion to whom I gave the pure milk of my love’s truth when I fancied him true and a friend;
But to whom I showed the estrangement of him that hates when I found him to be foul as the matter of a sore or as tepid water.
I fancied him, before he was tried, a familiar and dutiful; but he has shown himself a churl, one to be censured:
I chose him as one to converse with me, but my heart is now wounded by his wronging;
I thought him to be a helper and compassionate, but I have discovered him to be an accursed one, a devil to be driven away with stones;
I looked upon him as one devoted to me, but my testing of him has disclosed him as a fiend perverse and vile;
And I judged that he would blow a gentle breeze, but he would blow nought but a simoom.
From his serpent-bite which baffled the enchanter I lay wounded; but he had no hurt from me.
On the morning of our separation his condition was erect, but my body was sick;
He was not pleasant and abundant to me; nay, by his evildoing he was terrible to me, and an adversary.
I said, when I had made trial of him, “Would that he existed not, that he had not been a companion to me.”
By his betrayal he made hateful the morning to my heart, since the morning is found to be a betrayer;
And he has brought me to the love of the night, since the black of darkness is a watcher that conceals;
And enough of guilt and blame has the informer in his work, even though he speak the truth.
Said Al Ḥârith: Now when the master of the house heard his verse and his cadence, and admired his encomium and his satire,—He set him on the couch of his respect, and gave him the first place on his cushion of honour;—Then he bade bring ten dishes of silver, on which were sweetmeats of candy and honey,—And said to him, “The people of the Fire are not as the people of the Garden; nor is it lawful that the innocent should be made as the suspected.—Now these vessels take rank among the sinless in the keeping of secrets; so show them not aversion, nor count Hûd with ‘Âd.”—Then he bade his servant carry them to his lodging that he might do with them as he would.—And Abû Zayd turned to us and said, “Recite the Chapter of Victory, and be gladsome at the healing of your wound;—For now God hath repaired your bereavement and permitted your meal, and gathered you together to sweetmeats; and it may be that ye mislike a thing, and yet it is your good.”—And when he was thinking of departure he inclined to beg the dishes as a present,—And said to the entertainer, “Truly it is among the marks of good breeding that he who gives aught should give the vessel that holds it.”—Said the host, “Both of them and the boy; so speak no more, but rise in peace.”—And he leaped up to the reply, and thanked the host as the meadow thanks the rain-cloud.—Then did Abû Zayd lead us to his tent and give us to dispose of his sweetmeats, and began to pass round the dishes, and to divide their contents among the company;—And he said: I know not whether I should complain of that betrayer or thank him; whether I should forget his act or remember it.—For though he was aggressive in his wrong and tinseled his treacherous tale, yet from his cloud did this plenteous rain pour down, and from his sword did this spoil come in to me.—And now it is moving in my mind that I should return to my cubs, and be content with what has come thus easily, and not weary myself nor my camels.—So I will take leave of you as one that is regardful, and commend you to the Best of Guardians. —Then he mounted his beast to return on his track, to bend his course to his people.—And when his strong camel coursed along and his sociableness quitted us, he left us as an assembly whose president is gone, or a night whose moon has set.
In this composition Ḥarîri displays his knowledge of the Ṭofayli jargon. Among the fancies of his age it was the custom to give to various kinds of food names compounded with ◌ and ◌, such as are attached to a great number of animals and inanimate objects. As the Arabs of the desert called a bird ◌, and a she-hyæna ◌; and as the milky way was called ◌, so the Euphuists of the polished cities of Irak called a dish of rice by one kinyeh, or bye-name, and a dish of meat by another. To know these seems to have been considered a mark of good breeding; and the learned author did not think them unworthy of a place in his work, as one of the characteristics of the Arabic language. In the same spirit he introduces into the 30th Assembly a number of the cant terms used by the beggars of the time, or as they were called “the people of Sâsân.” The story of the Assembly is of the usual simplicity. Abû Zayd is pursuing his ordinary course of life at Naṣîbîn, in the Diyâr Rabî‘ah, when he is taken with a serious illness. His friends, hearing of it, hasten to his house in alarm, but are informed that he is better and will receive them. They find him prostrate, but as talkative as ever; and after he has entertained them with his conversation for some time he tells his son, in the enigmatical language of Ṭofayl, to bring a repast for them. They partake of it, and leave him rejoicing in his recovery, and grateful for his hospitality.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: Irak was barren in a certain year through the failure of the stars that bring the rain-cloud;—And the travellers told of the tract of Naṣîbîn, and the comfort of its wealthy people. —Then I mounted a camel of Mahrah, and fixed a lance of Samhar,—And journeyed, land sending me on to land, and hill drawing me up from dale, until I reached it, worn man on worn beast.—Now when I had halted in its fertile dwelling-place, and won a portion in its pasture, I purposed that I would lay down my neck in it, and take its people for my neighbours,—Until the dried year should revive, and the spring-rain visit the land of my family.—Now, by Allah, my eye-ball had not tasted of its sleep, my night had not travailed of its day, ere I found Abû Zayd, the Serûji, roaming the quarters of Naṣîbîn, now stumbling with the crazed, now winning with the fortunate.—And from his mouth was he scattering pearls, and he milked the milk-flow with both his hands.—Then I found that my campaign had now gathered a booty, and my single lot had become two-fold;—And I ceased not to follow his shadow where-ever he sped, and to glean his utterance as often as he spoke,—Until there came on him a sickness whose term was prolonged, whose sharp knives bared his bone; so that it went near to rob him of the robe of life, to give up to Abû Yaḥya.—Then did I feel through the loss of his presence and the interruption of his teaching, as he feels that is put far from his desire, or the suckling at the weaning.—After this it was rumoured that his pledge was already forfeit, that the talon of death was fixed in him.—And his comrades were disturbed at the rumouring of the rumourers, and they swarmed to his courtyard, hurrying in:
Bewildered, their grief making them to reel, as if they had been sucking the old wine;
They poured forth their tears, and they rent their bosoms, and they beat their cheeks, and they wounded their heads;
And they had been willing that fate had made a peace with him, and had seized their possessions and themselves.
Said the narrator: Now I was of those who joined to his comrades and hastened to his gate.—And when we had arrived at his court-yard and assayed to scent the news of him, his boy came forth to us, his lips parted with a smile.—And we inquired concerning the Shaykh as regarded his complaints, and the truth of the strength of his disorders.—He said, “He was lately in the grasp of the sickness and the wearing of the fever; until the lingering disease wasted him, and the killing disease exhausted him.—But afterward God was gracious in strengthening his last gasp, and he recovered from his trance.—So return on your paths and put off your disquietude;—For he is now one to go out and in, and to pledge you in wine.”—Then we made much of his glad news, and urged that we might see him; and he entered announcing us, then came out permitting us:—And we found Abû Zayd a prostrate, but his tongue going freely. —Then we took seat about his bed, gazing on his lineaments.—And he turned his eye round the assemblage; then said, Look on this, the offspring of the moment:
God has saved me, thanks be to Him, from a sickness that went near to blot me out;
And has granted me recovery; though it must needs be that death will one day waste me.
Death forgets me not; yet he gives me a delay before the end of my feeding.
If it be decreed, then will no friend avail, nay, not even the guarded domain of Kolayb, to guard me from him.
Nor care I if his day be near, or if death be put off for a season.
For what boast is there in life, in which I behold afflictions, nay, they wear me out?
Said Al Ḥârith: Then we saluted him with wishes for the lengthening of his term and the withdrawal of his fear;—And invited each other to rise through fear of annoying him.—But he said, “Nay, but stay with me during the light of to-day that by your pleasantry ye may heal my sadness;—For your conversation is the food of my soul, the magnet of my friendliness.”—Then we aimed at contenting him and guarded from disobeying him; and turned to discourse, gathering its cream, throwing away its froth;—Until the time of the day-sleep came on and the tongues were weary with talking. —And it was a day hot with a fervent heat, ripening the orchard.—So he said, “Surely drowsiness is now bending down your necks and seeking your eye-corners; and he is a strenuous adversary, a suitor not to be repulsed. —So make alliance with him by a day-sleep, and pattern in this by the Traditions handed down.”—Said the narrator: Then we followed what he said, and we slept and he slept; and God smote upon the ears, and poured out slumber on the eyelids,—Until we passed from the domain of Being, and by sleep were hindered from prayer.—And we waked not until the heat was now abated and the day was old.—Whereupon we washed hand and foot for the two mute prayers, and performed what loosed us of our debt.—Then we stirred for departure to the place of our camel-saddles.—But Abû Zayd turned to his cub, who was after his likeness and make, and said: I fancy that the Father of Indwelling has now lighted a coal in their stomachs;—So call for the Father of Assembling, for he is glad news for every hungry one:—And follow with the Father of Pleasantness, him who is patient at every wrong;—Then reinforce by the Father of Lovingness, the loved of every one that is wise; him that is turned about between burning and torment;—And on! with the Father of Acuteness, for excellent is he as a companion;—And ho! with the Father of Help, for there is no attendant like him;—And if thou bring on the Father of Comeliness, how comely will he make his comeliness;—And haste with the Mother of Hospitality, her who may remind thee of Chosroes;—And forget not the Mother of Strengthening, for how many are those who tell of her; —And call to the Mother of Joyfulness; then assault her, it is no crime;—And end with the Father of Dignity, the consoler of every sorrowful one;—And if thou join with him the Father of Loftiness thou will blot out thy name from among the niggardly.—And beware of summoning the Two Rumourers before the rising of the camels of departure.—And when the company have ceased from their hand-washing, and have handled the Father of Softness,—Then carry round to them the Father of Generosity, for he is the sign of the generous.
Said Al Ḥârith: Then his son understood the delicacies of his hinting by the subtlety of his discernment. —And he went round among us with viands and perfume, until the sun gave notice of the setting.—Now when we had resolved on departure, we said to him, “Seest thou not this marvellous day, how its morn showed gloomy, but its even is brilliant?”—And he prostrated himself long in prayer; then raised his head and said:
Despair not in calamities of a gladdening that shall wipe away thy sorrows;
For how many a simoom blows, then turns to a gentle breeze and is changed!
How many a hateful cloud arises, then passes away and pours not forth!
And the smoke of the wood, fear is conceived of it, yet no blaze appears from it;
And oft sorrow rises, and straightway sets again.
So be patient when fear assails, for time is the father of wonders;
And hope from the peace of God blessings not to be reckoned.
Said Al Ḥârith: Then we noted down his excellent verses and kept giving thanks to God Most High: and we took leave of him, glad at his recovery, overwhelmed by his bounty.
In this Assembly Abû Zayd laments the decay of his strength, and his advancing age, under the semblance of a mighty and valiant hero, to provide a shroud for whom he asks the bounty of the company.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was making towards Mayyâfâriḳîn with a company of the well suited, men who disputed not in familiar talk, who knew not the taste of dissembled hatred.—And with them I was as one who quits not his abode, who travels not from his friend and neighbour;—And when we had brought to their knees the camels of journeying, and had passed from our saddles to our nests, we commanded each other to bear in mind companionship, and we forbade separation in a strange land.—And we took a chamber that we might frequent it at the two ends of day and present each other with the choice of the news.—Now while we were there on a certain day, and had strung ourselves on the thread of union,—Lo! there stood by us one with a bold tongue and a loud voice;—And he greeted with the greeting of a wizard who blows on knots; of one who hunts all, from the lion to the sheep. —Then he said:
Habeo, amici, miram narrationem, à quâ exemplum sibi sumat auditor peritus et intelligens.
Vidi in flore ætatis meæ juvenem fortissimum, cui gladii erat acies penetrantis:
In certamen irruit perinde ac si certus esset aliqud audendi, et non pertimuit.
His præliis usque eo angustias dilatavit ut id quod obstructum fuerat pateret.
Ubi provocavit adversarios nunquam rediit à pugnæ contentione sine spiculo sanguine imbuto:
Nec unquam instituit arcem oppugnare arduam, occlusam, formi-dabilem, timendam,
Quin clamatum sit, cùm id instituisset: Victoria à cœlo et præsi-dium appropinquat.
Præterea, quot noctes egit vestibus adolescentiæ tectus nitidis;
Molles puellæ et dabant ei et receperunt ab eo oscula; et ille ubique gratus fuit et jucundus.
Sed tempus non desiit fortitudinem illius et vires eripere;
Donec anni ita eum afflixerint ut ab illo conjunctissimi amici dece-derent.
Debilis fuit magus, nec morbum ejus sanare potuit, et tumultuatus fuit medicus:
Ita ut discesserit à candidis puellis, et discesserint ab eo, postea quam et ab eis responsum accepisset, eisque respondisset.
Evasitque incurvus formâ, nam quicunque vivit miseriis senectutis est obnoxius.
Ecce illum hodiè veste funebri involutum! Et quis mortui pere-grini curat reliquias.sup>1
Then he broke openly into wailing, and wept with the weeping of the lover over his beloved.—And when his tear was stanched and his passion cooled, he said, O ye, who are as a pasture to the forage-scouts, an example to the generous; by Allah, I have not spoken with falsehood, I have not told you save from beholding.—Now if there were a thong to my staff, or a thin shower to my cloud, I would myself have done that to which I call you; I would not stand as one who directs to it.—But how can there be flying without a wing, or is it a crime on one that he is poor?
Said the narrator: Then began the company to consult of what they should advise, and to whisper of what they should do;—And he suspected that they were in purpose to dismiss him with refusal, or to importune him for proof.—And it escaped him to say, O mirages of the plain, white shingle of the hollow! What is this taking of thought which shame revolts at?—It is as though ye were tasked with a heavy labour, not with a rag; or had been asked the gift of a province, not of a mantle; or had been urged to the clothing of the Ka‘beh, not to the shrouding of a corpse.—Fie on him whose rock is not moist, whose gravel oozes not!
Now when the company had perceived his glibness and the saltness of his savour, each one made him whole by a gift, and bore with his light rain through fear of his flood.—Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now this beggar was standing behind me, hidden by my back from my eye.—But when the company had contented him by their out-pouring, and it was incumbent on me to take example by them, I drew the ring from my little finger and turned to him my gaze,—And lo! he was our Shaykh, the Serûji, without deception, without dispute.—Then I was sure it was a lying tale he had lied, and a net that he had laid.—But not the less did I fold his cloth over its rent and keep his splayness of tooth from inspection,—And threw him the ring, and said, “Use it for the cost of the mourning assembly.”—He said, “Well done! how burns thy flame! how noble is thy deed!”—Then he went off, running straight forward and trotting his trot as of old.—But I longed for a knowledge of his dead man, and to examine his pretence to pious duty;—So I struck my leg and kindled the ardour of my running, until I reached him a bow-shot off, and beheld him clearly in an empty place.—Then I caught him by the joining of his sleeves and stopped him from the career of his race-course,—And said to him, “By Allah, thou hast no refuge from me, and no escape, until thou show me thy shrouded corpse.—Whereupon he pointed to himself; and I said, “God fight against thee; how playful art thou in craft, how wily after the grist!”—Then I returned to my companions as returns the scout who lies not to his people, who embellishes not his speech.—And I told them what I had seen; I disguised not, nor did I dissemble.—And they burst into laughter at the matter, and cursed that dead man.
Al Ḥârith, being at Rayy, in Persia, finds the people flocking to hear a preacher of great eloquence and sanctity, and following them to the place of assembling, listens to a discourse from an aged man in ecclesiastical costume. When the sermon is over, a suppliant, who cannot prevail on the Governor to listen to his complaint against an official who had wronged him, calls upon the preacher to aid him by his admonitions, on which the preacher at once indites another discourse in reproof of the Governor. The latter is moved to repentance, hastens to do justice, rewards the preacher, and solicits acquaintance with him. The preacher, who is no other than Abû Zayd, goes off rejoicing in the success of his day’s work, having previously given Ḥârith some moral counsel.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: Ever since I perfected my forethought and knew right from wrong, I gave care to incline to admonishings and eschew angering words,—That I might be adorned with graces of disposition, and be free from what brands with shamelessness;—And I ceased not to keep myself to this discipline, and to allay by it the coals of wrath, until habituation in it became nature, and application to it a desire willingly obeyed.—Now when I descended at Rayy (and I had now loosed the loops of error, and knew good from evil), I saw there one morning crowd on the track of crowd;—And they were spreading with the spread of locusts, and running with the running of steeds,—And describing one to another a preacher to whom they were tending, and they set Ibn Sam‘ûn below him.—Then it hindered me not from hearkening to the preachings, and making trial of the preacher, that I must endure the clamorous and bear the pushing;—So I followed as follow the obedient, and slipped into the thread of the throng,— Until we came to a meeting-place, which had united the ruler and the ruled, and gathered the eminent and the obscure;—And in the midst of its halo, and among its full moons, was an old man, bowed and with a breast-hunch, and he wore the cap and the cloak;— And he was breaking forth into a sermon to heal breasts and to soften rocks; and I heard him say, and men’s minds were charmed by it:
Son of man, how thou cleavest to that which deceives thee, and clingest to that which harms thee!—How thou art given to that which seduces thee; how thou art gladdened at him who flatters thee!—Thou art troubled about that which wearies thee, but art careless of that which concerns thee.—Thou drawest wide the bow of thy transgression; thou robest thyself with covetousness which will destroy thee!—Thou art not content with what is enough; thou abstainest not from the forbidden!—Thou hearkenest not to admonishings; thou art not deterred by threatening!—It is thy habit to veer with desires; thou stumblest with the stumbling of the purblind beast!—It is thy care to labour in making gain, and to gather an inheritance for thine heirs! —It pleases thee to increase what belongs to thee, but thou rememberest not what is before thee!—Thou art ever intent on thy two caves; thou carest not whether the account shall be in thy favour or against thee!— Dost thou think that thou shalt be left at large, or that thou shalt not be reckoned with to-morrow?—Or dost thou count that Death will take bribes; that he will distinguish between the lion and the fawn?—No, by Allah, nor wealth nor children shall ward off death; and nought profits the people of the tombs save the accepted work.—Then blessing to him who hears and retains and makes good what he claims; and withholds his soul from desire, and knows that he who turns from evil is a gainer;—And that man shall have nought save his own work; and that this work surely it shall be shown.—Then he recited as one who is fearful, but with a high-pitched voice:
By thy life! mansions and wealth will not avail when the rich man dwells in the ground and abides in it;
So be liberal with thy wealth in things pleasing to God, content with what thou gainest of His hire and reward;
And anticipate by it the change of Time, for he seizes with his crooked talon and his tooth;
And trust not treacherous fortune and its deceit, for how many a lowly one has it marred, how many a noble!
But resist the desire of the soul, which no erring one ever obeyed but he fell from his high places.
And keep to the fear of God, and the dread of Him, that thou mayest escape from his punishment which is to be feared.
Neglect not to call to mind thy sin, but weep for it with tears that shall be like the rain-flood at its pouring;
And figure to thy mind Death and his stroke, and the terror of his meeting, and the taste of his wormwood cup!
For the end of the dwelling of the living is a pit, to which he shall descend, brought down from his towers.
Then well-done! the servant whom the evil of his deed grieves, and who shows amendment before the shutting of his gate.
Said Al Ḥârith: Then the assembly remained amid tears that they shed, and repentance that they showed; until the sun declined, and the day’s duties pressed upon us.—Now when the voices were low, and silence had gathered, and the tears and the preachings had gone to rest,—One crying for help cried to the Prince who was present, and began to wail to him of his tyrannous agent.—But the Prince leaned to the adversary, and was careless of discovering his wrong.—And when the suppliant despaired of redress from him, he called up the preacher to admonish him;—Who rose as rises the prompt, and recited, referring to the Prince:
Wonderful! a man hoping to attain to rule; and then when he attains to his desire he wrongs;
He weaves warp and woof in tyrannies; now lapping at their well, now bidding others to lap.
Nor cares he, when he is following his desires in them, whether he maintains his religion or destroys it:
Oh woe to him! if he knew well that there is no state but changes, surely he would not transgress;
Or if he saw clearly what is the repentance of him who inclines his hearing to the lie of informers, he would not incline it.
But obey thou him in whose hand is the leading-cord; cast down thine eye if he neglect observance or speak vainly:
And graze on bitter pasture when he calls thee to the grazing on it, and water at the salt well when he forbids thee the sweet.
And bear his injury even though its touch afflicts thee, and pours out the flow of thy tears, nay exhausts it;
For fortune shall give thee the laugh of him when it departs from him, and kindles for the ambush against him the fire of war.
And it shall bring down on him exultation, when he appears vacant of his office, emptied of it;
And thou shalt be pitiful to him when his cheek lies soiled on the dust of shame.
This is his fate: and then surely he shall one day stand in the place where even the master of eloquence shall be found a lisper:
And he shall be gathered to judgment viler than the toad-stool of the plain; he shall be reckoned with for his shortcoming and excess:
And he shall be chastised for that which he has committed, and for him whom he has chosen; he shall be demanded of for what he sipped and what he supped.
And he shall be reckoned exactly with concerning small things, as he was wont to do with mankind, but more thoroughly.
So that he shall bite his hand at his governing, and wish that he had not sought from it what he sought.
Then he said: O thou who art belted with authority, and trained to rule!—Put away wantonness at thy dominion, and vain trusting in thy might:—For dominion is a breeze that changes and power is a lightning that deceives.—And truly the happiest of rulers is he whose people are happy in him, and the most wretched in both worlds is he whose ruling is ill.—Then be thou not as one who neglects the life to come and disregards it, who loves the fleeting life and seeks it, who wrongs the people and afflicts them, and who, when he bears rule, walks in the earth to do violence in it.—For, by Allah, the Judge shall not be unregarding; thou shalt not be left at large, O man: but the balance shall be set for thee, and as thou rewardest thou shalt be rewarded.— Said Al Ḥârith: Then the Governor was sullen at what he heard, and his colour changed and changed:—And he began to groan concerning his rule, and to follow sigh with sigh.—Then he attended to the complainer, and rid him of his complaint, and to him that was complained of, and rebuked him.—And he was courteous to the preacher, and gave him gifts, and urged him to visit him. —And the wronged man departed victorious, and the wronger checked.—Then the preacher went forth swaggering among his comrades, glorying in the success of his bargain.—But I followed him up, and stepped crouching, and showed him a sharp glance.—And when he discerned what I hid from him, and was aware of the turning of my face to him, he said, “The better of two guides is he who leads aright.”—Then he came near me, and recited:
I am he whom thou knowest, Ḥârith,
The talker with kings, the wit, the intimate.
I charm as charm not the triple-twisted strings,
At times a brother of earnest, at times a jester.
Events have not changed me since I met thee,
Nor has vexing calamity peeled my branch;
Nor has any splitting edge cloven my tooth;
But my claw is fixed in every prey:
On each herd that roams my wolf is ravaging;
So that it is as though I were the heir of all mankind,
Their Shem, their Ham, and their Japhet.
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Then I said, “By Allah, now thou art surely Abû Zayd; yet thou hast been godly beyond ‘Amr Ibn ‘Obayd.”—Then he was cheerful with the cheerfulness of the hospitable when he is visited, and said: Listen, my brother:
Keep to truth, although it scorch thee with the fire of threatening:
And seek to please God; for the most foolish of mankind is he who angers the master and pleases the slave.
Then he took leave of his fellows and departed, trailing his sleeves.—And we searched for him afterwards in Rayy, and sought to get news of him by the rolls of folding.—But there was none of us who knew of his abode, or could learn what locust had gone off with him.
Al Ḥârith, accompanied by some official writers, is in a boat on the Euphrates; the party being engaged in an inspection of the land for the purpose of fixing the taxation. They meet with a person in shabby garb, whom they treat with much lack of courtesy; until the conversation falling on the comparative merits of secretaries and accountants, the stranger, who is Abû Zayd, shows his eloquence by a rhetorical address on the subject. They then seek to conciliate him; but he quits them in anger, after reciting some verses on the folly and injustice of judging by appearances. This difficult Assembly exhibits a species of composition much in favour among the Arabs, in which the poet or orator first praises and then blames, or first exalts the one of two rivals and then the other. Compare the Third Assembly, in which a gold denar is thus treated; and the addresses of Sheddâd and Sahil ibn Hârûn, on gold and glass, Ar. Prov. II. p. 780. The speech of Abû Zayd on the two orders of scribes is, throughout, an elaborate display of paronomasia.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I betook myself, during a time of quiet, to the water-lands of the Euphrates;—And there I met with scribes, more excellent than the sons of Al Furât, more pleasant in manners than the sweet waters.—And I joined myself to them for their culture, not for their gold, and I companied with them for their scholarship, not for their banquets.—And among them I sat with equals of Al Ḳa‘ḳâ‘, son of Showr, and with them I attained to plenty after want.—Until they made me sharer in food and dwelling, and set me above themselves, as the finger-top is above the finger:—And they took me as the son of their intimacy in time of office and of leisure, and the treasurer of their secret in earnest and jest.—Now it happened on a certain time that they were called to visit in their order the corn lands of the villages:—Then they chose of the lofty-sailed boats one black, of unmixed hue:— Thou wouldst think it immovable, yet it fleeted as fleet the clouds and glided on the deep as a serpent.—Then they called me to consenting, and invited me to companying.—And when we had mounted our sable beast, and set ourselves in our cushion-saddle that moved on the water,—We found there an old man, on whom was a thread-bare coat and a worn turban.—Then the company loathed his presence, and found fault with whoever had brought him; and would have purposed to put him forth of the ship, but that their calmness returned to them.—And when he spied that we deemed his shadow to be heavy, and his shower cold, he assayed to converse, but was silenced, and he praised God after sneezing, but no one blessed him.—Then was he speechless, looking at the pass he had reached, and waiting for the help which comes to the wronged.—And we, we roamed through the bye-paths of the serious and the gay;—Until there occurred a mention of the two kinds of official writing, and their excellence, and a distinguishing of the more excellent.—And one said that the scribes of Composition were the noblest of scribes, while another leaned to the preferring of Accountants:—And the arguing grew sharp, and the dispute grew long.— Until, when there remained no longer an arena for the contention, or a field for the debate,—Said the old man: My friends, ye have made much clamour, and adduced the true and the mistaken.—But the clear decision rests with me, so be content with my coin, and consult no one after me.—Know that the art of Composition is the more lofty, though the art of Account may be the more useful. —The pen of correspondence is a choice orator, but the pen of account-keeping picks up phrases carelessly:— And the fablings of eloquence are copied to be studied, but the ledgers of accounts are soon blotted out and razed.—And the Composer is the Johayneh for information, and the post-bag of secrets, and the confidant of the mighty, and great among guests.—And his pen is the tongue of sovereignty, and the knight of the skirmish; a Loḳmân of wisdom, and the interpreter of purpose: it carries glad news, and it warns, it is the intercessor and the envoy.—By it fortresses are won, and foes are vanquished, and the rebel is made obedient, and the distant is brought near;—And its master is free from suits, secure from the malice of accusers, praised in the assemblies, not exposed to the drawing up of registers.
Now when, in his judgment, he had arrived at this point, he saw from the glances of the company that he had sowed love and hatred, that he had pleased a part and angered a part.—So he followed up his discourse by saying: Not but that the art of Account is based on verification, and the art of Composing is founded on fabrication.—For the pen of the Accountant holds firm, but the pen of the Composer stumbles:—And between taking tribute by the impost on transactions and the reading of the leaves of volumes, is a difference to which comparison cannot apply, into which doubt cannot enter: —For tribute fills purses, but reading empties the head; and the tax of the memorandum-book enriches the overseer, but the interpretation of rolls wearies the eye.— And then also the Accountants are the guardians of wealth, the bearers of burdens, the truthful relators, the ṭrustworthy envoys, the guides in doing justice and obtaining it, the sufficing witnesses in breach of contract. —And of their number is the Minister of Finance, who is the Hand of the Prince, the Pivot of the Council, the Balance of business, the overseer of the agents.—To him is the reference in peace and war; on him is the management in revenue and expenditure; by him hang evil and advantage; in his hand is the rein of giving and denying.—And were it not for the pen of Accountants the fruit of earning would perish, and fraud would endure to the Day of Judgment; the order of transactions would be loosened; the wound of wrongs would be unavenged; the neck of just-dealing would be fettered; the sword of wrong-dealing would be drawn.—Moreover, the pen of composition fables, but the pen of accounting interprets; the Accountant is a close scrutinizer; the Composer is an Abû Barâḳish; —Yet each, when he rises high, has his venom until he be met and charmed; and in what each produces there is vexing until he be visited and bribed: save those that believe and work righteousness—and how few are they!
Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now when he had thus supplied our hearings with what was pure and good, we asked him of his lineage; but he was suspicious, and shrank from telling it; and if he had found a place of escaping he would have escaped.— Then from his secrecy was I in sorrow; but after a time I recollected him,—And I said, “Now by Him who controls the rolling heaven and the voyaging ships, surely I catch the breeze of Abû Zayd, though once I knew him lord of comeliness and vigour.”—And he smiled, laughing at my speech, and said, “I am he, though with a change in state and strength.”—Whereupon I said to my companions, “This is he, after whose fashioning none can fashion, whose sprite is not to be vied with.”—Then they courted his friendship, and offered him wealth; but he declined from intimacy, and leaned not to the gift.—And he said, “Since ye have hurt my honour on account of my worn garment, and cast a shadow on my soul for the threadbareness of my coat,—I will look upon you only with a heated eye; ye shall have from me only a ship’s companionship.—Then he recited:
Hear, my brother, commandment from a counsellor who mingles not the purity of his counsel with deceit:
Hasten not with a decisive judgment in the praise of him whom thou hast not tried, nor in the rebuke of him;
But stay thy judgment on him until thou hast had a view of his two characters in his two conditions of content and anger;
And until his deceiving flash be distinguished from his truthful one by those who watch it, and his flood from his light rain;
And then if thou perceive what dishonours him, hide it generously; but if thou see what becomes him, publish it:
And whoso deserves to be exalted, exalt him; and whoso deserves abasement, abase him to the sewer.
Know that the pure gold in the vein of the earth is hidden until it is brought out by the digging:
And the worth of the denar, its secret appears by scratching it, and not from the beauty of the graving.
It is folly that thou shouldst magnify the ignorant by reason of the brightness of his dress or the splendour of his adorning;
Or that thou shouldst make little of the man who is refined in soul on account of the threadbareness of his garb, or the shabbiness of his furniture.
For how many an owner of two torn mantles is reverenced for his worth, and he that is striped in his garments has ill-fame through his baseness.
For when a man approaches not to infamy, then are his rags only the steps to his throne.
It hurts not the sword that its sheath be worn, nor the hawk that its nest be mean.
Then he delayed not to bid the sailors stop, and he ascended from the boat and made off.—But each of us repented in that he had been incautious towards him, and drooped his eyelid over his mote,—And we vowed that we would never slight a man for the raggedness of his garment; that we would not despise the sword while hidden in the sheath.
In this Assembly Abû Zayd is represented as showing his skill in artificial composition. He carries his son before the Governor or criminal judge of Bagdad, and accuses him of theft, in having stolen two-thirds of a copy of verses. The boy had, he said, taken two-thirds of each of several verses, and thus made a poem of his own. The Governor asks how this can be, and bids him repeat both poems, when it appears that Abû Zayd had constructed a poem with a double rhyme, one rhyme at the end of the verse, and one at the end of the fourth foot, so that by striking off the last two feet of each verse a new poem could be formed. The boy, however, declares that he had not taken his father’s verses, and that the coincidence was merely fortuitous. The Governor then, to test this, bids them repeat alternate verses on a subject which he should give them; if the boy could extemporize as well as his father, it would be evident that his defence was a just one. This serves to introduce a most elaborate set of verses, full of paronomasia on the subject of a cruel and disdainful beauty. The Governor then bids them be reconciled; and on the old man pleading poverty as a reason for refusing to support his son, the Governor relieves their necessities. He soon discovers that he has been duped, and binds Ḥârith, who, as usual, had witnessed the incident, to profound secrecy.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related:—My wonted home was irksome to me in the prime of my time, through a dreaded calamity, through a fear that came upon me:—And I poured out the cup of drowsiness, and put to their pace the camels of the night-march.—And I traversed in my journey rough places which no steps had smoothed, to which the Ḳaṭa would not find its way;— Until I came to the domain of the Khalifate, and the sanctuary which guards from fear.—Then I put off the sense of dread and its conception, and robed myself in the raiment of security and its vest;—And limited my care to the culling of delight, and the looking upon pleasure.—Now I went forth one day to the Precinct to exercise my good steed, and to circle my eye among its beauties.—And behold! horsemen who followed each other, and men on foot who swarmed:—And eke an old man long of tongue but short of cloak, who held by the collar a lad fresh in youth but worn of tunic.—So. I spurred on the track of the spectators until we arrived at the gate of the Prefecture.—And there was the Master of Protection sitting squarely on his cushion, awing by his deportment.—Then said the old man to him: “God magnify the Governor, and set his foot on high!—Know that I bred this youth from a weanling, and brought him up from an orphan; and then failed not in instructing him.—But when he now was shrewd and strong, he bared and brandished the sword of enmity.— Though I imagined not that he would be perverse to me, and insolent, since by me was he watered and made fruitful.”—Said the lad to him: “On what offence of mine hast thou hit, that thou publishest this foul thing of me?—For, by Allah, I have not covered the face of thy kindness; I have not rent the veil of thy secret; I have not broken the staff of thy estate; I have not disregarded the rehearsing of thanks to thee.”—Then said to him the old man, “Woe to thee, what guilt is fouler than thine, what vice more base than thy vice? —For thou hast claimed my magic and appropriated it; thou hast arrogated my poetry and stolen it.—Now among poets the stealing of poetry is more shameful than the stealing of the white and yellow; and their jealousy over the daughters of their wits is as their jealousy over virgin daughters.”
Said the Governor to the old man, “When he stole, did he flay, or transform, or copy?”—Said he, “Now by Him who made poetry the register of the Arabs and the interpreter of scholarship, he did nought less than dock the completeness of its exposition, and make foray on two thirds of its flock.” Said the Governor, “Recite the verses altogether, that it may appear what he took from the sum of them.”—Then he recited:
O thou who courtest the base world, know that it is a net of destruction, a pool of impurities;
A habitation which, when it makes thee laugh to-day, makes thee weep to-morrow: away with such a habitation!
When its clouds overshadow no thirst is refreshed by them; for they are a dry cloud that deceives.
Its forays cease not, nor is its prisoner ransomed even by the mightiest of stakes.
Towards how many a one made wanton by false confidence in it, until he has shown himself contumacious, one overstepping his power,
Has it turned the back of the shield, and made its blades to lap of his blood, and leaped to the taking of revenge!
So keep guard on thy life, lest it pass away lost in the world, left astray without any protection.
And cut the bonds of thy love for the world and thy seeking of it; so shalt thou find right guidance and comfort of the inner parts.
And when it makes a truce from its stratagem, be thou on thy watch against the warring of enemies, and the assault of the treacherous:
And know that its calamities come suddenly, even though the goal be far, and the journeys of the fates be tardy.
Then said the Governor: “And now what did this lad?”—Said the old man, “Of his meanness in recompensing he made an attack on my six-feet verses, and cut off two feet, and diminished from their measures two measures, so that the loss in them is a double loss.”— Said the Governor, “Shew what he took and whence he cut.”—He said, “Let thy hearing feed of me; give thy heart to understand me;—That thou mayest perceive well how he drew the sword upon me; that thou mayest estimate the greatness of his transgression towards me.” Then he recited, and his sighs ascended:
O thou who courtest the base world, know that it is a net of destruction;
A habitation which, when it makes thee laugh to-day, makes thee weep to-morrow;
When its clouds overshadow no thirst is refreshed by them.
Its forays cease not, nor is its prisoner ransomed.
Towards how many a one made wanton by false confidence in it, until he has shown himself contumacious,
Has it turned the back of the shield, and made its blades to lap of his blood!
So keep guard on thy life lest it pass away, lost in the world, left astray;
And cut the bonds of thy love for the world, and thy seeking of it, so shalt thou find right guidance.
And when it makes a truce from its stratagem, be thou on thy watch against the warring of enemies:
And know that its calamities come suddenly even though the goal be far.
Then turned the Governor to the boy and said, “Perdition on thee for a rebellious disciple and a thieving pupil!”—But the lad said, “May I remain aloof from scholarship and its sons! may I be joined to whoever is adverse to it, and breaks down its edifices! if ever his verses came to my knowledge before I connected my own chaplet,—For it is only that our thoughts have chanced to draw at the same source as the hoof oft falls on the hoof-print.”
Said Al Ḥârith: Now it was as though the Governor allowed the truth of his assertion and repented of the hastiness of his blaming.—And he kept thinking on what means would disclose to him the truth, and how he might distinguish the genius from the fool;—And he saw no way but to set them to a contest, and to bind them together with the cord of rivalry.—So he said to them, “If ye wish for the exposure of him that lacks, and for the manifesting of the true from the false, do ye now alternate in versifying and contend, wheel in the race of verse-completing and run together:—That through clear proof he who perishes may perish, he who lives may live.”—They said to him with one tongue and an agreeing answer, “We are content with thy testing, so give us thy command.” —He said, “Of all the kinds of eloquence I am fondest of tejnîs, and I look upon it as the chief of them.— So string now ten verses, weaving them with its colouring, broidering them with its ornament;—And put in them the tale of my condition in respect to a mistress of mine, who is rare of form, dark red of lip, graceful in undulation, but full of pride and fault-finding, given to feign forgetfulness of agreement, and to prolong denial, and to break promise, while I am as her slave.” —Then started forth the old man as the winning steed, while the youth followed him like the second in the course.—And they raced together verse by verse in this order, until the series of verses was perfected and made up:
Old Man. There is a ruddy-lipped one who has compassed my enslaving by the delicacy of her utterance, and left me the companion of sleeplessness through her perfidy.
Youth. She has assayed to slay me by her aversion: truly I am in her bond, since she has gotten my heart altogether.
Old Man. I give faith to her falsehood for fear of her turning from me; I am content to listen to her folly through dread that she should fly me.
Youth. I deem her tormenting to be sweet; and as often as she renews my torment the love of being kindly to her is renewed in me.
Old Man. She is forgetful of duty, and to forget is a fault; she angers my heart—the heart which guards her secret.
Youth. What is most wonderful in her is the glorying of her vanity; yet do I make too much of her for me to speak to her of her pride.
Old Man. From me she has praise sweet of fragrance; but my lot from her is a folding up of love after its out-spreading.
Youth. Oh! if she were just she would not be fault-finding; but she wrongs me; another, and not I, gathers the dew of her mouth.
Old Man. Were it not for her graceful motion I would turn my rein in haste to another, the light of whose full moon I might look upon.
Youth. But notwithstanding the discordance between her and me, I hold the bitter as sweet through my docility to her command.
Now when in alternation they had recited these verses to the Governor, he was amazed at the wit of two so justly balanced,—And said, “I testify before God that ye are the Farḳadân of heaven, and like a pair of fire-staves in their case.—Now surely this youth, he spends of what God has given him; through his own wealth he is independent of another.—So, old man, repent of thy suspicion of him, and turn again to honouring him.”—Said the old man, “Far be it that my love should return to him, or my confidence cleave to him;—For I have proved his ingratitude for kindness; I have been tried by him with shameful revolt.” —But the lad interrupted him and said, “O friend, know that contention is ill luck, and spite meanness; to hold suspicion as truth is a sin; to vex the innocent is a wrong.—And granted that I have committed an offence and wrought a crime, rememberest thou not what thou didst thyself recite to me in the season of thy familiarity?
Pardon thy brother when he mingles his right aiming with error;
And shrink from rebuking him if he swerve or decline;
Keep to thy kind dealing towards him whether he thank the kindness or slight it:
Be thou obedient when he revolts; be thou lowly when he magnifies himself; draw near to him when he goes from thee:
Keep faith with him even though he fail in what thou and he have stipulated;
And know that if thou seek a perfect man thou desirest beyond bounds.
Who is there who has never done ill? Who is there whose deed is always fair?
Dost thou not see the loved and the hated linked together in one class,
As the thorn comes forth on the branches with the fruit that is gathered.
And the delight of long life, lo! there mingles with it the trouble of hoariness.
If thou examine well the sons of the time thou wilt find the most of them but refuse.
Then began the old man to dart his tongue as darts the serpent, and to gaze with the gazing of the towering hawk.—And he said, “By Him who hath adorned the heaven with its fires, and sent down the water from the clouds, truly my declining from reconciliation is but from fear of ignominy.—For this lad was accustomed that I should victual him, and have regard to his affairs. —And erewhile fortune poured plenteously, and I was not a niggard.—But as for now, the time is frowning, the contents of life are misery: so that this my garb is a loan, and my house not a mouse approaches it.”— Then the heart of the Governor grew tender at their speech, and he was pitiful to them because of the changes of their nights.—And he inclined to distinguish them by his help, and he bade the lookers-on to withdraw.—Said the narrator: Now I had been gazing at the face of the old man, that perchance I might get a knowledge of him when I should spy his features.— But the crowding would not discover him, nor open to me that I might approach him.—But when the rows were broken, and the bystanders sped off, I marked him, and behold he was Ābû Zayd, and the lad was his lad, and I knew then his purpose in what he had done.—And I was near swooping down on him, to make myself known to him, but he threw me off with a glance of his eye, and stopped me with a sign of his hand.—So I kept my place, and delayed my departing: and the Governor said, “What is thy wish, and wherefore is thy staying?”—Quickly the old man took him up, and said, “He is my friend, the owner of my clothes.”—Then the Governor was pleased to be friendly with me, and permitted me to take seat.—And he made largess to them of two robes of honour and presented them with a sum in coin.—And stipulated with them that they should live together in kindness until the coming on of the Day of Fear.—Then they rose up from his hall, lifting their voices in thanks for his benefits.—But I followed them that I might know their abode, that I might supply myself of their talk.—And when we had traversed the domain of the Governor, and had come to the empty plain, one of his guards overtook me, recalling me to his court.—So I said to Abû Zayd, “I think he does not send for me save that he may question me: now what shall I say, and in what valley shall I roam with him?” —He said, “Shew him the folly of his heart, and how I have played with his understanding, that he may know that his breeze has met with a whirlwind, that his streamlet has encountered the deep.”—I said, “I fear that his anger will be kindled, and so his blaze scorch thee; or that his caprice will quicken, and so his violence come upon thee.”—He said, “I am now setting off for Roha, and how should Sohayl and Soha meet together?”
Now when I was in presence of the Governor, whose hall was by this time empty, and whose austerity had cleared away, he took to describing Abû Zayd and his worth, and blaming his evil fortune.—Then he said, “I conjure thee by God, art thou not he who lent him the suit?” (dast)—I said, “No, by Him who has set thee on that cushion, (dast) I am not the owner of the suit, (dast) but thou art he against whom the game (dast) has gone.”—Then his eye-balls went askance, and his cheeks reddened.—And he said, “By Allah, it never baffled me yet to expose a suspicious person, or to discover a knave.—But I never heard of a Shaykh who cheated after he donned the saintly cloak; yet, as for this one, he has deceived to the last.—Now how call you that monkey.”—I said, “Abû Zayd.” He said, “Abû Kayd is more fitting for him than Abû Zayd: and dost thou know where the villain is strolling to?”—I said, “He dreaded thee on account of having overstepped his bound, and he journeyed away from Bagdad at once.”— He said, “May God not shorten his journey, or keep him where he sojourns: for I never dealt with aught sharper than his cunning, or tasted aught more bitter than his fraud:—And were it not for the sacredness of his scholarship, I would urge on in search of him, until he came in sight for me to fall foul of him.— And now do I loathe that what he has done should be spread abroad in the City of Peace; so should I be dishonoured among men, and my dignity come to nought before the Imâm, and I be made a laughing-stock to gentle and mean.”—Then he stipulated with me that I should not speak of what Abû Zayd had done as long as I remained a sojourner in this city.—Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, And I stipulated with him as one who does not equivocate, and I kept faith with him as Samuel kept it.
This Assembly contains the “grammatical riddles” of which the author speaks in his preface. Abû Zayd, falling into the company of some refined persons who are amusing themselves in the suburbs of Bagdad, is at first despised by them for the shabbiness of his garb. But the recitation of a singer causes the conversation to turn upon the famous and never-ending controversy concerning the use of the raf‘ and the naṣb, or, in European terminology, the nominative and accusative case, in certain Arabic phrases. The company plunge into the dispute with all the ardour which never failed to be kindled by grammatical disquisitions; and when they can come to no agreement, Abû Zayd interposes, and gives his opinion. As they do not accept it readily, and attempt to argue with him, he at once reduces them to submission by proposing twelve enigmas, involving abstruse and technical points of Arabic grammar. No one can solve them; and Abû Zayd refuses to gratify their curiosity by giving an explanation until each one of them has made him a present. Then he leaves them, refusing to drink with them on the ground that in his declining age he had made a vow against wine. The answers are briefly given in an appendix from the pen of Ḥarîri himself.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was in company in the portion of Ar Rabî‘, in the season of spring, with youths whose faces were brighter than its lights, whose dispositions were more goodly than its flowers, whose utterances were more delicate than the air of its dawns. —And through them I looked upon what would shame the flowering spring and suffice for the sounds of lutes.— And we had taken oath together for the guarding of affection and the forbidding of self-seeking; and that no one of us should hold aloof in enjoyment, or keep to himself even the smallest pleasure.—Now we had agreed together on a day whose mist had risen, whose beauty was growing, whose light cloud bade to the morning draught,—That we would amuse ourselves by going forth to one of the meadows, to pasture our eyes on the shining plots, and polish our minds by a forecasting of the rains;—So we sallied forth, and we were as the months in number, and as the two boon-companions of Jathîmeh in affection,—To a garden which had assumed its gilding and adorned itself, whose flowers were various in their kinds and hues;—And with us were the headstrong ruddy wine, and cupbearers like suns; and the singer who charms the hearer and delights him, who feasts each hearing with what it covets.—Now when we had fully taken seat, and the cups were circling to us, there intruded on us a sharp fellow, on him was an old coat:—And we frowned on him as frown the soft damsels on the gray-heads, and we felt that the purity of our day was now troubled. —But he greeted with the greeting of the intelligent; and taking seat he opened perfume-vials of prose and verse;—But we shrank from his expansion, and hastened to roll up what he spread out; until chanted our rare singer, our charming modulator:
How long, Su‘âd, wilt thou not join my cord, nor pity me for what I meet with?
I have been patient with thee until my patience is overcome, until my spirit has almost reached my throat.
But come! I am resolved to do myself right, drinking thereby to my mistress as she drinks to me;
For if union (◌) please her—then union (◌); but if rupture —then rupture like a very divorce.
Said Al Ḥârith: Then we asked the player on the double-twisted strings why he naṣbed the first ◌ and raf‘ed the second.—And he swore by the tomb of his parents that he had spoken as Sîbawayh preferred.— But the opinions of the company were divided as to the admissibility of the naṣb and raf‘.—And a section said, “The raf‘ of both, that is correct;” and a part said, “Nothing is lawful but the state of naṣb;” while to the rest the answer was impracticable, and the clamouring kindled among them.—But that intruder showed the smilingness of one who knows a matter, though he spoke not a single word.—However, when the cries were still, and the scolded and the scolder were silent, he said, “O people, I will announce to you its interpretation, I will distinguish the sound phrase from the sick.—Verily the raf‘ and the naṣb of each ◌ are lawful, and an interchange of the inflection between them;—And that is according to what is left understood, and to the virtual signification which is elided in this puzzle.”—Then was the company reckless in hastening to dispute with him, and in gliding into contention with him.—But he said: Well, since ye call to me to “Come down,” and ye gird yourselves for the war:
What is the word which, as ye will, is a particle that is loved, or the name of that which contains the slender milch-camel?
And what is the noun which alternates between a singular that binds, and a plural that clings?
And what is the ◌ which, when it attaches itself, takes away heaviness and loosens the bound?
And where does the ◌ enter and depose the regent without courtesy?
And what is that which is always manṣûb as a term of circumstance, while only a particle makes it makhfûḍ?
And what is the annexed noun which lacks one of the handles of annexion, and whose power varies between evening and morning?
And what is the regent whose last joins his first, and whose reverse effects what he effects?
And what is the regent whose deputy is more spacious than he in abode, and greater in craft, and more frequent in mention of God Most High?
And in what place do males put on the veils of women, and the ladies of the alcoves go forth with the turbans of men?
And where is the keeping of ranks necessary to the struck and the striker?
And what is the noun which gives no sense except by the addition to it of two words, or the shortening of it to two letters; and in the first case there is adhesion, and in the second compulsion?
And what is the epithet which, when it is followed by ◌, he to whom it is applied lessens in men’s eyes, and is set low in reputation, and is reckoned among the simpletons, and expoes himself to dishonour?
Now these are twelve questions to match your number, to balance your disputatiousness; if ye add, I add; if ye return, I return.
Said the teller of this story: Now from these his riddles, which terrified as they poured, there came on our thoughts bewilderment and barrenness.—And when it baffled us to swim in his sea, and our talismans had yielded to his enchantment,—We changed from weariness in looking at him to the seeking of instruction from him, and from the wrong of being annoyed by him to the desire of learning of him.—But he said, “Now by Him who has sent down grammar into speech to be as salt in food, and has veiled its risings from the perceptions of the vulgar,—I will not give you a wish, I will not heal for you a pain, unless every hand endow me, and each of you distinguish me by a gift.”—Then remained not one in the company but was obedient to his command, and cast to him the hidden treasure of his sleeve.—And when he had got it under his wallet-string he kindled the flame of his genius.—And then did he disclose of the secrets of his riddles and of the wonders of his puzzling, that wherewith he cleared away the rust from our understandings, that whose rising he manifested by the light of proof.—And we were astonished when we understood, and we wondered when we were answered, and we repented over what had escaped from us.—And we began to excuse ourselves with the excusing of the sagacious; and we offered to him the quaffing of the wine-cup.—But he said, “Need is not courtesy; and as for drinking, there remains in it no sweetness for me.”—Then he turned up his face morosely, and plucked away his side scornfully, and recited:
Gray hair forbids me that wherein are my joys; how then should I bring together the wine and my hands’ palms?
Is the morning draught of the old wine lawful, now that the hoariness of my head lights up my morning?
I swear that wine shall never again blend with me as long as my breath cleaves to my body, and my words to my speech;
That my hand shall not deck itself with the cups of must; that I will not turn round my lot among the goblets;
That I will not set my thought to the mixed drink; that I will not go joyfully to the wine;
That I will not gather myself to the wine cooled of the north wind; that I will choose no companion, save the sober.
Hoariness blots out my merriment when he writes upon my head; hated be he for a blotting scribe!
He shines forth to blame my turning the reins to pleasure; away with him for one who shines forth but to blame!
Now were I wanton while my temple is hoary, then would my lamp be put out among the lamps of Ghassân,
A people whose disposition is the honouring of their guests; and gray hair is a guest to whom honour is due, my friend.
Said Al Ḥârith: Then he slipped away as slips the serpent, and sped with the speeding of the cloud.—And I knew then that he was the light of Serûj; the full moon of scholarship that passes through the signs of heaven.—And our end was grief at his departure and separation after he was gone.
Explanation of the Arabic subtleties and grammatical riddles which are contained in this Assembly.
As for the first part of the last verse of the song, namely— ◌ (if union please her, then union), it is like the phrase ◌ (Man is rewarded according to his work; if good, good, if evil, evil.) Now Sîbawayh introduced this question into his Book, and allowed four modes of inflecting it. The first and best is that you should naṣb the first ◌ and raf‘ the second, naṣb the first ◌ and raf‘ the second. Then would the virtual meaning be, “If his work be good then his reward is good; and if his work be evil, then his reward is evil;” for the first is naṣbed through being the predicate of ◌, and the second is raf‘ed through being the predicate of an elided inchoative. And in this mode, ◌ and its noun are elided, because the conditional particle ◌ (if) points to their virtual presence; and the inchoative is also elided, because the ◌, which is the answer to the condition, points to it; and that is by reason that an inchoative commonly follows ◌. The second mode is that you should naṣb both; and then the virtual meaning of the sentence is, “If his wish be good, then he is rewarded good; and if his wish be evil, then he is rewarded evil.” Here the first is naṣbed, because it is the predicate of ◌, and the second is naṣbed as the object of the verb’s action. The third mode is that you should raf‘ both; then the virtual sense of the sentence is, “If there be good in his work, then his reward is good; and the first ◌ is raf‘ed because it is the noun of ◌, and the second is raf‘ed because it is the predicate of an elided inchoative; as was shown in the exposition of the first mode. And it may be that the first ◌ is raf‘ed through being the agent of ◌; and that the ◌, which receives a virtual power here, is the complete attributive verb, with the meaning “exists,” or “occurs;” which would need no predicate, as in the phrase of God Most High, “If he be one in difficulty.” Then the virtual meaning in the example would be, “If good be, then the reward is good:” that is, “If good exists, then the reward is good.” The fourth and weakest mode is that you should raf‘ the first on the principle explained in the third case, and naṣb the second on that which was mentioned in the second case. Then the virtual meaning will be, “If there be good in his work, then he is rewarded good.” According to this interpretation, and by the use of the virtually understood words which are here elided, runs the inflection of the verse sung in the Assembly. And among expressions of the same kind is the sentence, “The man was killed by what he killed with; if a sword, a sword; if a knife, a knife.”
Now as to the word which is a particle that is loved, or the name of that which contains the slender milch camel; it is ◌. If you use it to admit the truth of what is told you, or to promise in answer to a request, then it is a particle: but if you mean by it “camels,” then it is a noun: and ◌ is masculine and feminine, and is a general name for camels, and for all cattle (in which last definition camels are comprised.) And among camels is comprised the ◌; which means a slender she-camel. She is called ◌, from being likened to the ◌ (edge) of a sword. But it is also said that the word means a stout she-camel; through the likening of her to the ◌ (ridge) of a mountain.
As for the noun which alternates between a singular that binds and a plural that clings, it is ◌ (trowsers or drawers). Some say that this is a singular form, and that its plural is ◌; and according to this opinion, it is a singular; and from its being gathered round the waist, he gives it the epithet of “binding.” Others say, “Nay, it is a plural, and its singular form is ◌;” and, according to this opinion, it is a plural; and the meaning of the expression “clings” is, that it is not fully declined. Now, the reason that this kind of plural is not fully declined (and it consists of every plural whose third letter is an elif followed by a strengthened letter, or by two letters, or by three letters, the middle one of which is quiescent), is on account of its heaviness, and its divergence from the other plurals, inasmuch as there is no form like it among the singular nouns. And in this riddle he gives the epithet “clinging” to that which is not fully declined.
As for the ◌, which, when it attaches itself, takes away heaviness, and loosens the bound; it is the ◌ which is affixed to the form of plural above mentioned; as in ◌ (bankers), ◌ (polishers); for this form of plural becomes fully declined when the ◌ is affixed to it; because the ◌ changes it to the form of singular nouns like ◌ and ◌; and it is thus lightened, and becomes declinable. And in this riddle he gives to that which is not fully declined the epithet of “bound,” as in the former he gave it the epithet of “clinging.”
As for the ◌, which deposes the regent without courtesy, it is that which is prefixed to the future verb, and divides it from ◌, which, before the prefixion, was one of the instruments of naṣbing. The verb is then raf‘ed, and the ◌ is changed from being a naṣber to the verb, to being the lightened ◌, used in the place of the heavy. Thus, in the sentence of God, Praise be to Him, ◌ (He knows that there shall be sick among you), the virtual reading is ◌.
Now as to that which is naṣbed, as a term of circumstance, while only a particle khafḍs it, it is ◌, which is never jerred in choice speech, except by ◌; for the vulgar expression, ◌, is a mistake.
As to the annexed noun, which is deprived of one of the handles of annexion, and whose power varies between evening and morning; it is ◌. For this is one of the nouns which necessarily require annexion, and whatever noun follows it is jerred by it, except ◌; for the Arabs make this manṣûb after ◌, through the frequency with which they use it in discourse: they also nunnate it, that it may fully appear that it is manṣûb, and that it is not one of the class of jerred nouns which are not fully declinable. Among some of the grammarians, ◌ has the same meaning as ◌; but the correct view is that there is a delicate difference between them; namely that the meaning of ◌ applies to whatever is in your possession or power, whether it be near to you or at a distance, while ◌ applies only to what is in your presence and close to you.
And as for the regent, whose last joins his first, and whose reverse effects what he effects; it is ◌, the reverse of which is ◌; and both are among the particles of calling; and the effect of both upon the noun of the person called to is the same, although ◌ circulates more in discourse, and is of more frequent usage. Some, however, prefer that a person who is near should be called to with ◌ only, as he is called to with hamzeh.
As for the regent whose deputy is more spacious than he in abode, and greater in craft, and more frequent in mention of God Most High, it is the ◌ of swearing. This ◌ is the original particle of swearing; as is shown by its being used when the verb of swearing is expressed, as when you say ◌ (I swear by God); and by its being prefixed also to the pronoun; as when you say ◌, (By Thee, I will do it.) Afterwards the ◌ was substituted for it in the oath, because they are both labial letters, and also on account of the relationship of their meanings; since the ◌ gives the sense of union, and the ◌ that of adhesion, and the two meanings approach each other. Then the ◌, which was substituted for the ◌, became more common in speech, and was more largely applied in forms of swearing; and for this reason he riddles that it is more frequent in mention of God Most High. Also the ◌ is larger in dwelling than the ◌, because the ◌ is prefixed only to the noun, and effects nothing but the jerr; while the ◌ is prefixed to the noun, and the verb, and the particle, and sometimes it jerrs with the oath, and sometimes by understanding ◌, and it is also ranked with the naṣbers of the verb, and with the instruments of conjunction, and for this reason he describes it by spaciousness of abode, and greatness of cunning.
And as for the place where males put on the veils of women, and the ladies of the alcoves go forth with the turbans of men; it is the first degree of the numeral, when in the state of annexion; namely, the numerals between three and ten, for they have ◌ in the masculine, and are without it in the feminine, as in the phrase of Him Most High, ◌ (He compelled it upon them seven nights and eight days consecutively); while everywhere else the ◌ is one of the distinctives of the feminine. You see how the rule of masculine and feminine is reversed in this case; so that each turns to a form that is not its own, and goes forth in the garb of the other.
As to the place where the keeping of ranks is necessary to the struck and the striker; it is when there is ambiguity between the agent and the patient, through the sign of inflection failing to be openly expressed in both or one of them. This takes place when they are both maḳṣûr, like ◌ or ◌; or belong to the nouns of indication, like ◌ and ◌. In such cases it is necessary, for the avoiding of ambiguity, that each of the two nouns should be kept in its proper order; so that the agent may be known by its coming first, and the patient by its following after.
As for the noun which gives no sense except by the addition to it of two words, or the shortening of it to two letters, it is ◌ (whatever). About this word there are two opinions: one that it is compounded of ◌ which means “stop,” and of ◌; the second, and the correct one, is that the root of the word is ◌, to which another ◌ was added augmentively, as it is to ◌, so that the utterance became ◌. But the succession of two words with the same utterance became troublesome to people, and they substituted ◌ for the first elif, so that the two became ◌. This word is one of the instruments of condition and compensation, and when you utter it the sentence is not completed, and the meaning is not seized, except by the addition of two words after it, as, “Whatever you do I will do,” so that it necessarily “adheres” to a verb. But if you shorten it to the two letters ◌, meaning “stop,” then the meaning is intelligible, and in that case you “compel” him you are addressing to stop.
And as for the epithet which, when it is followed by ◌, he to whom it is applied lessens in men’s eyes, and is set low, and is reckoned among the simpletons, and exposes himself to dishonour; it is ◌ (a guest), which, when ◌ is added to it, changes to ◌, which means one who intrusively follows the guest, and who is set down as base coin when he is tested.
There is nothing remarkable in this Assembly. Ḥârith, being in the town of Kerej, during a severe winter, sees one day an old man naked and shivering, who crouches on the ground. He is surrounded by a crowd, and recites to them some verses on his unhappy state. The wealthy, who are standing around, pity him, and give him their furs and cloaks; and among them Ḥârith parts with a useful garment. In his speech the old man had used the phrase “the Kâfs of winter;” and Ḥârith, when he discovers that he is Abû Zayd, follows him, requesting to know its meaning. Abû Zayd reminds him of a verse of Ibn Sukkereh, in which seven things—all beginning with the letter Kâf—are spoken of as necessary in order that a winter may be passed in comfort.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I was wintering at Kerej, by reason of a debt that I was demanding, and a needful business I was performing.—And I experienced of its fierce winter and its scorching cold, that which acquainted me with sorest torment, and kept me ever seeking warmth.—So that I quitted not my lair, and the kindling-place of my fire, except through some necessity that I was urged to, or that I might give attendance at the congregation.—Now on a day whose sky was frowning, whose mist was darkling, I was forced to sally from my shelter, through a business that troubled me: —When lo! an old man, bare of skin, showing his nakedness; and he was turbaned with a kerchief, and breeched with a napkin.—And around him was a crowd, dense in its throngings; and he was reciting, and heeded nought:
O people, nothing can announce to you my poverty
More truly than this, my nakedness in the season of cold.
So from my outward misery, judge ye
The inward of my condition, and what is hidden of my state.
And beware a change in the truce of fortune:
For know that once I was illustrious in rank,
I had command of plenty, and of a blade that severed;
My yellow coins served my friends, my lances destroyed my foes;
My humped camels mourned the morning that I made the feast.
But afterward the time bared the swords of perfidy,
And spread forth the squadrons of dark afflictions,
And ceased not to tear and wear me;
Until my habitation was razed, and my milk-flow decayed,
And my price and my song went down among men,
And I became the lean beast of poverty and need,
Naked of back, stripped of my covering,
As though I were a spindle in nakedness.
No warming is mine in Ṣinn and Ṣinnabar,
Save to stand in the sun, or get a heat at the coals.
Now is there any who is a deep sea of bounty, lord of an ample robe,
Who will cloak me either with embroidered garment or ragged coat,
Seeking the face of God, and not my thanks?
Then he said: O ye lords of wealth who trail in furred robes, he that is endowed with good let him expend; he that is able to bestow, let him bestow.—For the world is treacherous and fortune trips; ability is the visit of a vision, and opportunity a summer cloud.—For, by Allah, oft have I met winter with its Kâfs, and prepared its necessaries before its coming:—But to-day, Sirs, my arm is my pillow, my skin is my garment, the hollow of my hand is my dish.—So let him that is wise consider my estate, and be beforehand with the changing of the nights.—For the happy man is he who takes warning by his fellow, and makes preparation for his journey.
Thereupon it was said to him, “Thou hast displayed to us thy scholarship, now disclose to us thy pedigree.”—He said, “A curse on him who boasts of mouldering bones! there is no glory but in piety and choice scholarship.” Then he recited:—
By thy life, man is but the son of his own day, according as that day displays itself; he is not the son of his yesterday.
There is no boast in rotten bones; there is only the glory of him who seeks glory through himself.
Then he sat down, bowed together, and shrank shivering.—And said, “O God, thou who whelmest with thy bounty, and hast bidden us to ask of thee, send thy blessing on Moḥammed and his House, and help me against the cold and its terrors;—And appoint to me some generous man who prefers others even from his straitness, who shares even though it be but a scrap.” Said the narrator: Now when he had thus disclosed a soul like ‘Iṣâm’s, and elegancies like Aṣma‘í’s, the glances of my eye began to test him, and the darts of my side-looks to strike on him, until I perceived well that he was Abû Zayd, and that his going naked was but a noose for the prey.—But he saw secretly that my recognition had overtaken him, and he mistrusted that it would expose him.—So he said, “I swear by the shade of night and the moon, by the stars and the new moonlight, that none shall cloak me save one whose disposition is goodly, whose face is imbued with the dew of benevolence.”—Then I understood what he meant, although the company knew not his meaning.—And I was grieved at the shivering that he suffered, and at the bristling of his skin.—So I took hold on a fur coat that was my plumage by day and my bed by night; and I stripped it off me, and said “Receive it from me.”—And he failed not to draw it on while my eye still looked at it.—Then he recited:
Well done he who has clothed me with a fur coat, which shall be my protection from shivering!
He has clothed me with it, preserving my heart’s blood; may he be preserved from the harm of men and Jinn!
To-day he shall deck himself with my praise; to-morrow he shall be decked with the silk of Paradise.
Said Al Ḥârith: Now when he had fascinated the hearts of the company by his diversity in excellence,— They cast to him of the lined furs and the parti-coloured coats, so many that their weight oppressed him, and scarce could he lift them.—And he departed glad of countenance in his joy, invoking a rain on Kerej.— But I followed him to a point where his mistrust disappeared, and the heaven showed clear; and I said to him, “A sharp cold was that which froze thee! But go not naked again.”—He said, “Fie on thee! swiftness to blame belongs not to the just; haste not in censuring, for it is a wrong; prosecute not that of which thou hast no knowledge,—For by Him who has given the light of hoariness, and made sweet the tomb of Ṭaybeh, had I not stripped myself I should have gone home in failure, and in emptiness of wardrobe.” —Then was he restive to take flight, and veiled himself in frowning, and said, “Knowest thou not that my nature is to pass from prey to prey, and to turn from ‘Amr to Zayd?—Yet I see thou now checkest me and resistest me; thou makest me to lose double of what thou didst profit me.—Then spare me (God save thee), from thy vain talk; shut on me the door of thy earnest and jest.”—But I pulled him with the pulling of playfulness, and held him fast to joke with him,—And said to him, “By Allah, had I not concealed thee and covered thy imposture, thou wouldst not have gotten a gift; thou wouldst not have come off more coated than an onion.—So now recompense me for my goodness, and for the covering that I gave thee, and put over thee, either by being kind enough to restore my fur, or by making known to me the Kâfs of winter.” —Then he looked at me with the look of one who wonders, and frowned with the frowning of the angry, —And said, “As for restoring the fur it is a thing as impossible as the restoring of yesterday that is past, or the dead man who is gone;—But as for the Kâfs of winter, glory to God who rusted thy mind and rent the bottle of thy storing,—Since thou hast let thyself forget what I recited to thee at Deskereh of the lines of Ibn Sukkereh:
Winter comes and its needs to me are seven, when the rain confines me from business;
A home, a purse, a stove, a cup of wine after the roast meat, and a pleasant wife, and clothing.
Then he said, “Sure an answer that heals is better than a cloak that warms; so be content with what thou hast learnt and depart.”—So I parted from him; and now my fur coat was gone to my sorrow, and I was in a state of shivering all the winter.
This Assembly presents another of those exercises of ingenuity in which the author delights. Al Ḥârith, being in the town or district of Ahwâz in a state of great poverty, determines to seek his fortune elsewhere. On the road he comes upon a tent whose wealthy owner, attended by his slaves, is reposing during a halt. The stranger invites him to rest himself, and Al Ḥârith soon discovers that he is Abû Zayd. He inquires the cause of this sudden prosperity, and is informed that it was produced by the improvisation of an elegant address or composition, the merits of which a great personage had thus munificently rewarded. Al Ḥârith, with his usual literary curiosity, desires to hear it; but Abû Zayd will consent only on condition that his friend shall first accompany him to Sûs, the ancient Susa, which is distant a day’s journey from Ahwâz. Al Ḥârith consents, and Abû Zayd detains him in the city for a month on various pretences. At last, when Al Ḥârith will no longer stay, the adventurer tells how he had been oppressed with debt, and been delivered from it, and loaded with presents, by the Governor of Ṭûs, in Khorasan, in reward for an eulogistic composition, in which the alternate letters were pointed and unpointed. He asks Al Ḥârith whether he would prefer a sum of money or a copy of this “spotted” composition. His friend chooses the latter, and Abû Zayd dictates it, not failing to accompany it with a present to relieve his necessities.
Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I descended at the two markets of Ahwâz, clothed in the garb of need. —And I delayed there a space enduring adversity, passing sombre days,—Until I looked upon the lengthening of my stay as if it were one of the hurts of vengeance,—And I viewed the city with the eye of him that hates, and I parted from it as one parts from the mouldering camp-ruin.—And I set forth from its streamlet, girded up of skirt, spurring to the abundant waters; —Until when I had journeyed from it two stations, and was distant the march of two nights, there came to my sight a pitched tent and a kindled fire.—Then I said, “I will go to them; perchance I may quench thirst or find guidance at the fire.”—And when I had arrived at the shadow of the tent I saw some fair boy-servants, and furniture which thou wouldest gaze at, and an old man; on him was noble apparel, and by him was newly plucked fruit,—And I greeted him and then went aside from him.—But he laughed to me and made kindly his answer towards me, and said, “Wilt thou not take seat by one whose fruit is choice, whose pleasantry charms?”—Then I took my seat to get the prize of conversing with him, not to swallow down what was before him.—And as soon as he unveiled his accomplishments and bared his teeth, I knew that he was Abû Zayd by the beauty of his choice sayings, and the ugliness of those yellow teeth.—And we knew each other then, and two joys compassed me in that hour.— Nor could I learn by which I was purer in rejoicing and more perfect of delight;—Whether it was at his dawning forth from the darkness of his journeys, or at the plenty of his dwelling after its dearth.—Then my soul yearned that I should break the seal of his secret and enter into the cause of his prosperity.—So I said to him, “Whence is thy returning, and whither is thy going onward, and how have thy wardrobes been filled?” —He said, “As for my coming it is from Ṭûs; and as for my destination, it is Sûs; and as for the wealth which I have reached, it is from an Address which I improvised.”—Then I begged him that he would lay before me his secret, and rehearse his Address to me.— He said, “The war of Al Basûs was a less thing than what thou desirest, unless, indeed, thou wilt accompany me to Sûs.”
So I followed him thither perforce, and I attached myself to him there a month.—And he, he watered me to the full with the cups of beguiling and made me to bear the bridle of expectation;—Until when my breast was straitened and my patience overcome, I said to him, “There remains to thee no pretext, nor to me aught that can divert me.—To-morrow I shall take omen of the raven of separation, and saddle away from thee with the shoes of Ḥonayn.”—He said, “God forbid that I should break promise with thee or thwart thee! I have not deferred to relate to thee save that I might make thee stay.—But since thou hast doubted concerning my promise, and the suspicion of ill treatment urges thee to depart from me,—Listen to the story of my lengthened journey, and add it to the Tales of Pleasure after Pain.”—I said, “Go on, how long is thy tether! how various are thy wiles!”—He said: Know that the frowning time cast me to Ṭûs, and then was I poor and laden; I had not the sprout or the split of a date-stone.—So the bareness of my hands made me resort to haltering myself with debt;—And I took credit by evil chance from one who was hard of nature;—For I fancied it would be easy to find a market for my poetry, and I enlarged in spending;—And recovered not until that debt burdened me, whose due attached to me, whose claimant beset me.— Then was I bewildered at my state, and showed my creditor my difficulty;—But he believed not my poverty and drew not off from worrying me;—Nay, he was instant in demanding and obstinate in carrying me to the Kadi;—And as often as I humbled myself to him in speech, and besought of him the grace of the generous,—And would dispose him to show mercy to me by lenity, or to wait for me till competence,—He said, “Set not thy desire on being waited for while thou holdest fast the bright gold;—For, by thy existence, thou seest not the paths of deliverance ere thou show me the meltings of the pure ore.”—And when I saw the sharpening of his contention, and that there was no refuge to me from his hand, I made a quarrel with him, and then I assaulted him,—That he might carry me up to the Governor having authority over offences, not to the Judge of civil wrongs.—And this was by reason of what had reached me of the eminence of the Governor and his virtue, and the severity of the Kadi and his meanness.—Now when we were present at the gate of the ruler of Ṭûs, I perceived that I should have nor hurt nor harm.—So I called for ink-flask and paper, and composed for him a Spotted Address, and this it it:
The qualities of our Lord are loved, and at his courtyard there is abiding;—And nearness to him is as gifts, and farness from him as destruction;—And his friendship is as pedigree, and his estrangement as calamity;— His sword’s edge is sharp, and the stars of his virtue gleam.—His continence adorns, and the rectitude of his road is plain.—His understanding turns and tries, and his fame goes east and west.
The ruler, the intelligent; surpassing, excelling; understanding, ingenious; impatient of baseness, loathing it;
Replacing, consuming; distinguished, incomparable; illustrious, virtuous; quick-witted, fastidious;
Marvellous when he discourses; able when the stir of ill befals, and the dreaded calamity grows mighty.
The chaplets of his honour are self-strung, and the rain-storm of his largess showers;—The gift of his hand flows freely, while avarice from his heart sinks away.— The teat of his liberality is milked, and the gold of his chests is spoiled.—He whom his band gathers to itself prospers and overcomes; the merchant of his gate makes gain by beguiling him.—He refrains from wronging the innocent, and is free from the foulness of the transgressor. —He unites his gentleness with dignity, and turns aside from the path of the niggardly.—He is not given to leap at the opportunity of evil, but abstains with the abstaining of the righteous.
And therefore is he loved, and his continence merits the infatuation he inspires, since its pure essence beguiles all.
His qualities are bright, and gleam; and his arrow is an arrow which overcomes when thou shootest against it.
He is gentle, he is cheerful; one who makes good when his friend slips, nor is there any doubt of his desert.
Not miserly, nay, but bountiful; open when he is solicited; one who goes forth, his gate keeps him not close.
When want bites, he breaks the edge of its biting by his succour, and its tooth falls out.
And it is fitting that whoever is wise and understanding, whoever is near and far, should submit himself to the hero of the time, the restorer of the palsied.—For since he sucked the breast of his fostering, he has been distinguished by the abundance of his shower.—He raises the fallen, and comforts him; if he helps he gladdens; if he contends in honour, he routs his adversary, and returns with a clear right.—He prepares fatigue for him who shall rule after him; he is lauded as often as men move him to kindness, or prove him in deed; he crowns his virtues with the love of his suppliants.
May he never become void of gladness, may the shadow of his prosperity be lengthened.
For he is virtuous in the sight of whoever contemplates the shining of his stars.
He adorns the graces of his culture by clothing himself with the fear of his Lord.
And may there prosper my Lord his gain of honours, firmly rooted and large, and his excelling in benefits that are perfect, that publish themselves:—And may the helping of his servant with a portion from his abundance accord with the pious offerings of His Honour:—For his servant is a child of the noble, though a wanderer from dearth; one wounded by calamities that have scarred him, who strings chaplets that voyage afar.—When he surges to the harangue there is found none to speak like him; for Ḳoss would then be as Bâḳil.—For when he embellishes thou wouldst say, “Garments of Yemen have been embroidered,” thou wouldst think that a garden had sprouted.—This is so, and then also his draught is but a draining, and his food is borrowed; his dawn is the glooming, and his cloak is worn out.—And now does he quake at the raging of a tyrannous creditor, who harasses him because of a debt that attaches to him.— But if my Lord will mercifully avert him from me by the gifts of his hand, he will belt himself with glory that surpasses, and come off with the reward of loosing me from the chain.—May the qualities of his disposition never fail to aid whoever watches the promise of his lightning-cloud.—By the grace of the Lord, who is without beginning, who liveth now, and is without end.
Said Abû Zayd: Now when the Governor had discerned the pearls of my Address, and caught a glance of the secret committed to it,—He made sign at once for the paying of my debt, and decided what was between my adversary and myself.—Then he appropriated me for his ostentation, and distinguished me by his preference. —And I remained a few years prospering in guestship with him, and pasturing in the oasis of his bounty,— Until, when his gifts had overwhelmed me, and his gold had lengthened my skirt, I contrived to depart in the fair condition that thou seest.
Said Al Ḥârith: Then I said to him, “Thanks to Him who destined to thee the meeting with the kind one, the noble, and delivered thee by him from the pressure of thy creditor.”—He said, “Praise to God for happiness of fortune and freedom from the contentious adversary.”—Then he said, “Which is more pleasing to thee, that I should share with thee of the gift, or present thee with the Spotted Address?”—I said, “The dictation of the Address will be more pleasing to me.” He said, “And that too, by thy Truth, is the lighter upon me: for truly the gift of that which goes in at the ears is easier than the gift of that which comes out of the sleeves.”—But then it was as if he scorned the meanness, and grew ashamed, for he gave me the Address and a present together.—Thus I gained from him two lots, and parted from him with two booties, and returned to my home, cool of eye, through having gotten both the Address and the coin.
Perspicuity—enunciation.—The distinction between bayân and tibyân is that the former is applied to perspicuity of language, by which the meaning, when conceived by the speaker, is rendered clear to the person addressed; while the latter, as indicated by its form, is applied to the mental process by which ideas are separated and made distinct in the intellect of the speaker, so as to be capable of communication. The one, says the Commentator, is the work of the tongue, the other of the mind. Sherîshi says, “◌ proceeds from you to another; ◌ proceeds from you to yourself.” Thus the Creator may with propriety be supplicated to “teach” the one, which is the mere art of eloquence or perspicuous expression, while he “inspires” the other. The obstacle to ◌ is ◌ or obscurity of expression, which arises, according to Jorjâni (Ta‘rîfât, p. 64, edition of Flügel, Leipsic, 1845), from a fault in the disposition of words, through inversion or elision, or else from the use of words in unusual significations, without due care to prepare the mind of the hearer.
We take refuge with thee.—A common form of deprecation among Moslems derived from the versicles which form the last two chapters of the Koran. “I take refuge with the Lord of Mankind,” and “I take refuge with the Lord of the Dawn.”
Region—domain.—◌ is literally the market street of a town, and ◌, plural of ◌, places marked out for building, as the ◌ of Kufa and Basra.
Succour or Divine Guidance.—◌ is defined in the Ta’rîfât of Jorjâni as the power by which God makes the actions of his servants agreeable to his will.
Mistake.—◌ is the turning away or deviation from the right path. Compare Koran iii. 5.
That we may be secure from slanders of the tongue.— Literally, “that we may be free from the cuttings of tongues.” i.e. from what tongues may utter, and, as it were, cut off and heap up against us like reaped corn. In this the author alludes to a traditional expression of Moḥammed. Says Sherîshi, “He refers to the Tradition of Mu‘âth, son of Jebel, who relates, “I said, O Apostle of God, are we punished for what we speak? And he answered, Thy mother be bereft of thee, Mu‘âth; is there anything that will prostrate men on their faces in the fire of hell more than the cuttings of their tongues?” The expression ◌, it may be observed, is a playful one, indicating good will and fondness, rather than enmity, thus resembling ◌ or ◌.
Make us not a morsel to the devourer.—One who devours the honour or character of another. Said the Prophet: “When I was lifted up (to heaven in the night-journey) I passed by people who had nails of brass, with which they tore their faces and breasts. And I said, ‘Who are these, Gabriel?’ He said, ‘These are they who devoured mankind, and assailed their honour.’”
The venture of Hope.—Hope is here compared to the venture or merchandise with which the favour of God is sought.
Approaching thee through the merits.—For the signification of ◌, see Bayḍâwi at Koran v. 39. The epithet of Intercessor, applied to Moḥammed, seems in opposition to Koran vi. 51 and 69; where it is said that on the Day of Judgment, man shall have no Intercessor but God. From the influence of Christian doctrine a character somewhat resembling that of the Messiah came to be attributed by the Moslems to the founder of their religion.
Set the seal to the Prophets, or closed the series of them. The twenty-five principal prophets, of whom Moḥammed is the last and greatest, are Adam, Noah, Enoch, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Lot, Hûd, Ṣâliḥ, Sho‘ayb, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Job, Thû ’l Kefl, Jonah, Elijah, Joshua, Zacharias, John, Jesus, Moḥammed.
For Hûd, see Koran vii. 63; xi. 52; xxvi. 139: for Ṣâliḥ, vii. 71; xi. 64; xxvi. 142: for Sho‘ayb, who is made the father-in-law of Moses, vii. 83; xi. 85–98, etc.; for Thû ’l Kefl, xxi. 85; xxxviii. 48. These twenty-five are mentioned in the Koran, but many others are acknowledged to have had the gift of prophecy, including the whole line of the Hebrew prophets. On the subject of the Prophets, consult the Traditions of Al Bokhâri, section of “The prophets,” Vol. 2, p. 330, Krehl’s edition. For the prophets who were “endowed with resolution,” see Bayḍâwi on Koran xlvi. 34.
To the highest heaven. — On the word ◌, there is a diversity of opinion. It is variously said to be the place where the works of the good are gathered together; a name of the angels; the seventh Heaven; the right column of the throne of God, and the Lotus-tree of Heaven. The disputations on this subject have arisen from the use of the word, Koran lxxxiii. 18, 19. The book of the just is in ‘Illîyûn. What shall teach thee what is ‘Illîyûn? It is a book marked with letters. Those who approach to God behold it.”
It is the word of a noble envoy.—In this passage Ḥarîri, quoting the Koran, erroneously applies to the Prophet a title which is really given to the Angel Gabriel. The Koran being the word of God revealed to the Prophet by Gabriel, could not be said to be the word of the Prophet: indeed whenever it is quoted, the phrase used is, “The Most High has said.” Thus, though Moḥammed’s chief title is the Envoy or Apostle of God, it must here be taken to apply to Gabriel, as, indeed, is most in accordance with the sense of the passage in the Koran, where the Prophet swears to his fellow-citizens of Mecca that his revelations proceed from on high. The passage is in Sura lxxxi. verse 17. Ḥarîri, it is said, being convinced of his mistake, afterwards substituted a verse from the 21st Sura: “We have sent thee only out of mercy to the world,” words which indubitably refer to Moḥammed. As for the phrase in the 81st Sura, Bayḍâwi distinctly declares that it applies to Gabriel, who spoke what he received from God. He also reads ◌ rather than ◌.
On his House.—The term ◌ is applied, according to some, to his followers, whether relations or not, or to his relations, whether followers or not; according to others, to the people of his religion. Ash Shâfi‘î being asked who were the ◌ of the Prophet, answered “all pious persons.” But in a Tradition, in which it is said that the poor-rates are prohibited to him and to his ◌, by this is meant those to whom was appropriated the fifth (◌) of the spoils instead of the poor-rates, and these were the genuine descendants of Hâshim, and Al Muṭṭalib. (Lane): whom also consult respecting the meaning and grammatical construction of the word. According to Sherîshi there are instances of its prefixion to the pronoun in poetry and eloquent discourse.
And now.—At this point the author concludes his invocation, and proceeds to the subject of his discourse. The phrase ◌ or ◌, is attributed by the Arabs to Ḳoss, Bishop of Najrân, an eloquent preacher of the time of Moḥammed; the meaning of which tradition probably is, that Ḳoss first made popular this kind of introductory invocation, which would thus seem to have been adopted by the Moslems from the Christian Church. The Arabs, however, also fable this usage to have originated with David. See commentary on phrase ◌, pages 27 and 446 of De Sacy’s Ḥarîri; and Bayḍâwi on Koran xxxviii. 19.
To that learning.—I have used various words in different places to express the meaning of ◌. The original meaning is Discipline of the mind, or Culture leading to moral excellence and good manners, but it is conventionally used to express what we should term scholarship, or literary skill; the chief education of the Arabs being in the use of their own language,—correctness and eloquence in which became the test of politeness and gentility. ◌, according to Hajji Khalfeh, cited in Lane’s Lexicon, is “the science by which one guards against error in the language of the Arabs, with respect to words and with respect to writing.”
The Assemblies.—Of the literary meaning of the word Ma-ḳâmeh, I have spoken in the Introduction. The exact signification is a “standing,” or “place of standing,” and it is equivalent to ◌, since the people who listen to the narrative “stand,” or “sit” about the speaker.
Badî‘ az Zemân.—A summary of what is known of the origination of the kind of composition called the Maḳâmeh is given by De Sacy in his notes to the Maḳâmehs of this author, which he has inserted in his Chrestomathie Arabe. As I have spoken of him in the Introduction, it will be only necessary here to mention the few incidents of his life which have been preserved. His name was Abû ’l Faḍl Aḥmed Ibn al Ḥosayn; his life is related by Ibn Khallikân, and an account of him by Abû’l Manṣûr ath Tha‘labî is given in the commentary of Sherîshi. Ibn Khallikân says “The ḥâfiẓ, Abû ’l Faḍl Aḥmed Ibn al Ḥosayn Ibn Yaḥya Ibn Sa‘îd al Hamadâni is author of some beautiful epistles and excellent Maḳamehs, which Al Ḥarîri took as a model for his, framing them on the same plan, and imitating the manner of their author, in whose footsteps he walked. Al Hamadâni was eminent for his knowledge of pure and correct Arabic, in which he cited, as his masters, Ibn Fâris, author of the Mujmil, and others. He dwelt at Herat, a city in the province of Khorasan.” The biographer then gives some specimens of his style, abounding in conceits which are likely to meet with less admiration from Europeans than from the poet’s countrymen, as, for instance, the following, taken from a long poem of his composition:
The gush of the shower were like thee (in thy liberality), did it, in smiling, pour forth gold. Fortune were like thee, did it not deceive; the sun, did he speak; the lion, were he not hunted; the sea, were his waters fresh.
“He died,” continues Ibn Khallikân, “of poison, at Herat,
In the foregoing extract from Ibn Khallikân I have followed the translation of M. McGuckin de Slane, which I shall always use when I do not translate from the original. It is much to be wished that this excellent translation were completed.
Ath Tha‘labi, after giving Badî‘ many titles of admiration, speaks of his wondrous memory and his powers of improvisation. He could repeat, without altering a letter, a lengthy poem which he had heard but once, or four or five leaves of a book; he could compose a ḳaṣîdeh or a risâleh on a given subject, or write what was proposed to him, beginning with the last verse and ending with the first; he could turn prose into verse or verse into prose; when a number of rhymes were given him he could fit them to verses; he could improvise in any given metre “without swallowing his spittle or drawing his breath.” He came to the court of Sâḥib Ibn ‘Abbâd (see De Sacy’s Chrestoma-thie, Vol. II. p. 57), and received great kindness from him. He settled in Nisabûr in the year 382, and there it was that he composed 400 Maḳamehs on mendicity and similar subjects, of which he made Abû ’l Fatḥ, of Alexandria, the hero. (I may say that my manuscript gives the reading ◌, suggested by De Sacy. It may be noticed, however, that his reading ◌ ought to be ◌, Chrest. Arabe, III. 259). The occasion of composing his Maḳâmehs was as follows: A certain Abû Bekr Ibn al Ḥosayn Ibn Dorayd had composed forty stories, of his own invention, using the style of the Arabs of the Ignorance, full of rare and strange phrases; and Badî‘, wishing to rival him, composed four hundred similar pieces, of which the chief object was to please the listener by a display of literary eloquence and learning. Some of these are of considerable length, while others do not reach ten lines. Though it is admitted that the Maḳâ-mehs of Ḥarîri are artistically superior, yet it is claimed for Badî‘ that he surpassed all the authors of his own time, and for this reason he received the laḳab or sobriquet by which he is known. Indeed, in the time of Ath Tha‘labi, the supremacy was doubtful between them; for one scholar, being asked which was the greater, replied, “Ḥarîri was never called the Wonder even of a day; how then should he be equal to the Wonder of the Time?” Another superiority claimed for Al Hamadâni is that his compositions were really improvised, instead of being produced laboriously and at leisure, like those of Ḥarîri.
Al Hamadâni, like other Eastern poets, was fond of wandering from place to place. After many travels he settled at Herat, where he married the daughter of a rich and powerful man, named Abû ‘Ali Ḥosayn al Khoshnâbi, and there he died at the age of forty, but whether under the circumstances mentioned by Ibn Khallikân may, perhaps, be doubted.
De Sacy says, “Il y a le plus grand rapport entre Hamadâni et Ḥarîri, soit pour le choix des sujets et des pensées, soit pour la manière de les exprimer: mais les séances de Hamadâni sont beaucoup plus courtes que celles de Ḥarîri, et par-là même peut être méritent-elles quelque préférence: on y sent moins l’ affectation d’ employer tout à la fois toutes les richesses de la langue et toutes les ressources de la rhétorique. On ne peut nier cepen-dant qu’il n’y ait plus d’art dans celles de Ḥarîri.”
Whatever may have been the real merits of the two writers, the taste of their countrymen has definitely decided in favour of Ḥarîri, whose work has been for seven hundred years the delight of learned men, while that of Al Hamadâni is now but little known.
In which he had referred the composition to Abû ’l Fatḥ, of Alexandria.—Ḥarîri again alludes to the priority of Badî‘, and asserts his own superiority to him in the Forty-seventh Assembly, by putting into the mouth of Abû Zayd:
Have thy eyes eer seen the like of me,
Who draw every bolt by my magic, and captivate every intellect by my charm?
If the Alexandrian preceded me,
Know that the dew precedes the shower, yet the shower’s excellence belongs not to the dew.
Obscure, not known, etc.—An allusion to grammatical terms. See Alfîyeh of Ibn Mâlik, line 52.
Who joins even two words, etc.—It is said that he who writes well exposes himself to envy and detraction, and he who writes ill to ridicule and insult.
As a wood-gatherer by night.—One who gathers wood by night may be bitten by a snake or stung by a scorpion; so he that is loquacious, or a voluminous writer, may utter something that will bring him trouble. This proverb is ascribed to Aktham Ibn Ṣayfi, an elder of the Benû Temîm, in the early days of Moḥammed. A poet says:—
Guard thy tongue, O Man, lest it kill thee, for it is a serpent.
How many an one is there in the grave, slain by his tongue, whom his rivals had shunned to meet in the fight! See Arabum Proverbia, ii. 671, Freytag’s edition.
Who musters footmen and horsemen together.—These words are addressed to Iblîs by God, Koran xvii. 66, with the meaning, “Collect against mankind thy forces, or threaten them with thy forces, riding and on foot;” and thus may be used to signify an impious or abortive effort. Or they may be explained as applying to a confused and unsuccessful production, since a band of mixed horse and foot is but a disorganised crowd.
Fifty Assemblies, etc.—Ḥarîri here describes the nature of his compositions. Not only are verses of the Koran freely introduced, but the whole language is tinged with allusions to it which are almost imperceptible to the European, but which are readily caught by a Moslem, who knows the sacred work by heart. Metonymy (◌) is the use of indirect expressions, as though you should say, Such an one is great in the ashes of his pot, meaning that he is given to hospitality,—Ta‘rîfât, p. 197.) Of the Arab proverbs a great number are to be found in Maydâni, and the source and original application of others are given by various commentators. To follow Ḥarîri in this department of his boundless learning has always been one of the hardest tasks of those who have devoted themselves to his work. References to the most important of them will be found in these notes. The scholarly elegancies or subtleties are to be found in the Sixth, Twenty-sixth, Twenty-eighth, and Twenty-ninth Assemblies, where the merit of the composition consists in the use of words with or without pointed letters; in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth, where phrases or a whole composition may be read either backwards or forwards; in the Twenty-Third, where a part of each verse may be removed, without spoiling sense or metre; in the Forty-sixth, where several of these ingenious displays are united. The Grammatical riddles are represented in the Twenty-Fourth, where Abû Zayd puzzles his companions by twelve subtle questions. The decisions dependent on the use of a word in two different senses are instanced in the Thirty-second, and akin to this are the enigmas or conundrums which appear in some of the other Assemblies. The addresses, orations, exhortations, and jests are too numerous to be specified.
I change the pasture.—i.e., I turn from grave to gay, from dignified to lightsome style. The Arabs divide the herbage on which the camel feeds into ◌, which means the sweet kind, and ◌, that in which there is saltness; on the latter the camels feed in the hot season, and it makes them drink. If they have it not they become lean. The former is called the bread of the camel, and the latter the fruit; and the word is used metaphorically, to express the refreshing of the reader by a change of incident and discourse.
And of the poetry of others.—The Assembly of Ḥolwân is the Second, and that of Kerej the Twenty-fifth.
The father of its virginity.—Father is here used as we should use Lord: the father of a poem’s virginity is he who first broaches or originates it. Compare Sixth Assembly, “Who can deflower a virgin composition;” also Sixteenth, “And deflower virgins of it.”
Of its sweet and its bitter,—i.e., of all of it. Compare a verse quoted at page 678, De Sacy’s Ḥarîri.
Ḳodâmeh.—Abû ’l Faraj Ibn Ja‘far Ibn Ḳodâmet Ibn Ziyâd, a scribe of Bagdad, eminent for purity of composition. He is said to have lived in the time of Muḳtadir b’illah.
And excellently said one.—The author of these lines was the amatory poet ‘Adî Ibn ar Ruḳâ‘. They relate to a lover, who hears a turtledove lamenting the loss of its mate, upon which he also laments the absence of his mistress. He then addresses himself with the words quoted, the meaning of which is that the merit of his verses is lessened by the dove having set him the example.
Although a translator does not necessarily concern himself with the technicalities of the original work, yet as this volume is intended rather for the student in Arabic than the general reader, I shall make no apology for dwelling occasionally in these notes on a subject respecting which there is little information to be found in commentators; I mean the prosody of the verses introduced throughout the Assemblies. Of this branch of learning, which has been especially elaborated by the Arab grammarians, I have made mention in the Introduction. An acquaintance with the metres, and the habit of reading the lines in accordance with them, are not only necessary for the enjoyment of Ḥarîri’s melodious and plaintive verse, but enable the student the more readily to seize the meaning of the numberless parallel passages and shawâhid which are introduced into the commentary, and which are often ill-written and insufficiently vowelled. Less attention has been paid to the subject by European scholars than might have been expected; and the Arabs, who detect the metre at once and do not need artificial help, generally pass it by without notice.
The verses beginning ◌ are in the ◌, the most common of the old metres. In the Ḥamâseh the greater part of the pieces belong to this metre or to the ◌ and ◌; the others, though known, not having been in very common use till a later period. The ◌ belongs to the first circle (◌), so called from being composed of five-lettered and seven-lettered feet (◌ and ◌). To this circle belong the three metres ◌, and ◌, and two others only used by later authors; the ◌, which is the ◌ reversed, and the ◌, which is the ◌ reversed. The first circle consists of the first two primitive feet ◌ (that is a ◌ a ◌), and ◌ (that is a ◌) twice repeated, and the original ◌ is of the measure, ◌
This ◌ (last foot of first hemistich) is, however, I believe, not found; the ◌ being invariably ◌, that is losing its quiescent fifth letter, and becoming ◌. To this ◌ there are four ◌ or closes of the second hemistich. The first is ◌ retaining the normal ◌. The second ◌ suffers ◌ like the ◌, and this is the metre quoted by Ḥarîri. The other two ◌ to this ◌ consist of one ◌ to ◌ and one ◌ to ◌. There is also an ◌ in some use. (It must be mentioned that ◌ is the dropping of the ◌ at the end of a foot, and ◌ the dropping of the last letter of a ◌ at the end of a foot, and the making quiescent the moved letter before it).
The metre of the lines quoted is, accordingly— ◌
But it will be remarked that ◌, in these lines, is of the measure ◌; that is, as we should say, the last syllable is short instead of long, and the same licence takes place twice in the next line. This brings us to the consideration of the licences allowable in ◌, among which are, according to the prosodists, two of the kind called ◌, namely, of the kind which affects the second letter of the ◌. The first of these licences is ◌, which we have seen affects the closing foot of each hemistich; it may also affect both ◌ and ◌, whenever they occur, striking out the quiescent fifth letter of each; and making the former ◌, as in the verses before us. Of its effect on ◌, there will be many instances as we proceed. The other licence is ◌, which is the dropping of the quiescent seventh letter of a foot; by which, in this metre, ◌ becomes ◌, a licence very common among the old writers. It must be borne in mind, however, that the same foot cannot suffer both ◌ and ◌; thus, there can be no such foot as ◌. This exclusion of one licence by the other is called ◌. Other peculiarities in this metre may be noticed, but the foregoing are the most important.
Scratched up its death with its hoof.—An Arab found a ram in the desert, but had no knife to kill it with. The ram, in scratching the ground, uncovered one. Hence the proverb applied to a man who furnishes the means of his own destruction. Freytag’s Arabum Proverbia, ii. 359.
He who cut off his nose with his own hand.—This is, perhaps, an allusion to Ḳoṣayr, who thus avenged the death of his master, Jathîmet al Abrash on Queen Zebbâ. An account of this stratagem will be given in the notes to the Twenty-seventh Assembly, under the words, “It was for a cause that Ḳoṣayr cut off his nose.” Another explanation is that it refers to a man who, having a razor in his hand, wished to wipe his nose, and cut it off by accident.
The chief losers, etc.—A quotation from Koran, xviii. 103.
Fables which relate to brutes and lifeless objects.—Fables, like those of Æsop and Loḳmân, or the fables of Bidpai, known under the name of Kalîleh wa Dimneh. Such writings, which belong to an order of great antiquity in the East, as may be learnt even from the Old Testament, were always highly esteemed, even by the strictest professors of religion, as conveying wise morals, and were distinguished by them from idle poetry, and stories of love or adventure. An instance of the application of this kind of fable to the highest and most mystical doctrines is to be found in the Mantiḳ Aṭ Ṭayr of the Persian poet Farîd ad Dîn ‘Aṭṭâr, who wrote in the age succeeding Ḥarîri. Sherîshi gives instances of the use of fables by eminent men, one of them being the Prophet himself. The beautiful moral allegories of Azz ad Dîn al Muḳaddasi, edited by M. Garcin de Tassy, under the name of “Les Oiseaux et les Fleurs,” are fine specimens of this kind of composition.
Yet am I content.—Metre ṭawîl, as in the preceding lines.