Assemblies - The Assemblies of Hariri, Volume 2

We know not what happens to us spiritually after death, and can only repeat in the words of the Koran, “We belong to God, and unto Him we shall surely return.” Still, if there be such a thing as continuation, should you (wherever you may be) happen to learn that your great work here has been completed and indexed, the fact will not, I trust, displease you.

The great work of Ḥarîri consists of fifty Makâmât, or Assemblies. Of these the late Mr. Thomas Chenery translated and published the first twenty-six, with copious and valuable notes, in 1867. He had fully intended to complete the translation of the remaining twenty-four, and also to prepare an Index to the two volumes. But called away to the editorship of the Times in 1877, his hopes and expectations were never fulfilled, and he died in 1884, leaving his task unfinished.

In 1891 the Oriental Translation Fund, which had existed from 1828 to 1878, was revived under the same name, but as a new series. Among the works that came under the consideration of the committee appointed by the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, the translation and annotation of the remaining twenty-four Assemblies of Ḥarîri, proposed by Dr. F. Steingass, held an important place, and was accepted.

By the courtesy of the executors of the late Mr. Chenery, two hundred and fifty unbound copies of his work were obtained and purchased, and during these negotiations, with zeal and ability Dr. F. Steingass translated the remaining twenty-four Assemblies, and explained them with important and valuable notes. To the above a complete descriptive index has been added, and these two volumes, bound with the covers of the Oriental Translation Fund New Series, form the issue for 1898 in continuation of the works which have been annually published by the Fund since 1891.

Mr. Chenery’s introduction to the first volume (extending from pages 1 to 102) contains such a complete survey of the whole work that it is hardly necessary to add to it. But the contents of the second volume continue to show the wonderful subtleties, pliabilities, fertilities, boundless resources and extraordinary richness of the Arabic language. A careful perusal of the two volumes will fully bear out the generally-expressed opinion that, next to the Koran, the Assemblies of Ḥarîri are the most celebrated production of Arabic literature.

Throughout these Assemblies, as Chenery says in his notes at page 273, “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.” In the same way there are many and constant allusions to Arab proverbs, which form a very valuable and instructive addition to the work. Every mention of them, and every allusion to the Koran, have been carefully noted in the index, and, though the references are numerous, it will enable the student or the enthusiast to go through the details of them without any difficulty. This also applies to other subjects, such as Traditions, Legends, Arab manners and customs, etc.

Dr. Steingass has completed his portion of the work under great physical difficulties. For some part of the time he was actually blind, and even after his recovery was obliged to be extremely cautious so as not to overstrain his eyesight. His Student’s Edition of the Arabic text of the Assemblies of Ḥarîri was published by Sampson Low, Marston and Co. in 1897, while his translation of the last twenty-four Assemblies follows in 1898.

One word about the transliteration from the Arabic of the second volume, regarding which Dr. Steingass was much concerned. Since 1867 considerable progress has been made in this subject, and he was naturally anxious that the names of the people and the places as spelt by Mr. Chenery should be spelt in the style now generally in use. Consequently there was some difference between the transliteration of Mr. Chenery and Dr. Steingass, and it was necessary to decide how this matter should be dealt with.

For the sake of uniformity, it seemed both advisable and desirable that the names of people, places and things should be spelt in the second volume as in the first, and I insisted, much against Dr. Steingass’s wish, that this should be done. In this, then, the transliteration of the two volumes will be found to agree, and as regards the rest, Dr. Steingass has had a free hand. The difference between the spelling of the two translators will be found in Appendix B at the end of the second volume.

The Index to the whole work is rather long, but it was absolutely necessary to give a short description of the various people who appear upon the scene, so that it might be understood at a glance who and what they were. This has been curtailed as much as possible, but further information about them can be obtained from the following works, translated for the Oriental Translation Fund Old and New Series:

(1) Ibn Khallikán’s Biographical Dictionary (O.S.).

(2) Hajji Khalfeh’s Lexicon (O.S.).

(3) Mas’udi’s Historical Encyclopædia (O.S.)

(4) Tabari’s Chronicles (O.S.).

(5) Mirkhond’s “Rauzat-us-safa,” or “Garden of Purity” (N.S.).

The following works will also be found useful for reference.

(6) Hughes’ “Dictionary of Islâm” (W. H. Allen and Co., London, 1885).

(7) Sale, Rodwell, and Palmer’s Translations of the Koran.

(8) Freytag’s Translation of Arab Proverbs into Latin, in three volumes.

(9) Burton’s “Pilgrimage to Al - Madinah and Meccah” (Tylston and Edwards, London, 1893).

(10) “Arabic Authors” (William Heinemann, 1896).

Although thirty years have elapsed since Mr. Chenery published his valuable translation of the first twenty-six Assemblies of Ḥarîri, it is a matter of congratulation that the whole work has now been completed and indexed, and that it has been done into English and in England.

F. F. ARBUTHNOT. 22, Albemarle Street, London, W.

In this Assembly, which Ḥarîri himself marks out as of some importance from a philological point of view by attaching to it a short commentary of his own, Al Ḥârith records another of his early reminiscences. In his youth he cherished a strong desire to mingle with Arabs of the desert, in order to make himself familiar with their manners and idioms. After having acquired, by strenuous exertion, a live-stock of camels and sheep, he settles amongst a Bedouin tribe of genuine descent, who willingly accord him their protection. One night a valuable milch camel went astray, and he sets out on horseback in search of her. During the night and the ensuing forenoon his efforts to find her are unavailing, and when mid-day grows high [approaches] with its oppressive heat, he feels compelled to seek shelter and rest under a shady tree. Scarcely has he done so, when he perceives a solitary wanderer nearing his resting-place. With mingled feelings of annoyance at the intrusion of a stranger, and of hope that he might hear through him news of his strayed camel, he awaits his coming. On his closer approach, however, he recognises in him Abú Zayd, whose welcome companionship makes him almost oblivious of his loss. In reply to his affectionate inquiries, Abû Zayd improvises some beautiful verses, in which he describes in racy language his Bohemian way of living, which renders him independent of favours that would have to be courted by self-abasement, more hateful to him than death itself. After having questioned on his part Al Ḥârith as to the reason of his presence in this lonely spot, and being told about the lost beast, and the hitherto fruitless search for her, he begs leave to take his noon-day sleep, and is soon deeply drowned in it. Al Ḥârith tries to keep awake, but the lull in their conversation makes him succumb to his drowsiness, and when he rouses himself at night-fall he finds to his dismay that Abû Zayd is gone together with the horse. In sore distress he awaits the morning, when he sees a rider on a camel travelling in the desert, to whom he waves his garment, to attract his attention, but the signal remains unheeded, and he has to run after the man, intending to ask him for a lift, however grudgingly it might be granted. Having reached him, he perceives on closer scrutiny that the man is seated on the lost camel. He drags him down from her back, and a violent altercation takes place, in the midst of which Abû Zayd again appears on the scene, and his coming, after yesterday’s experience, at first fills Al Ḥârith with misgivings as to his further intentions. Abû Zayd, however, at once sets his mind at rest, and addressing his antagonist in stern and threatening terms, soon puts him to flight. Then, guessing at the struggle between resentment and gratitude in Al Ḥârith’s breast, he recites some pithy lines, in which he advises him to make the best of a losing bargain and to forbear both thanks and rebuke. So they separate as fairly good friends, and Al Ḥârith returns home, having recovered his camel, but lost his horse.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: In the prime of my life that has fleeted, I had a leaning towards intercourse with the people of the hair-tents, so that I might take after their high-mettled spirits and their Arab tongues. So I bestirred myself with the alertness of one not lacking in industry, and began to roam through low-lands and high-lands, until I had got together a string of those that groan [i.e., camels], along with a flock of those that bleat [i.e., sheep]. Then I betook myself to some Arabs, [fit to be] lieutenants of kings, sons of speech [saws]. They gave me a home with them in safest vicinity, and turned [blunted] from me the edge of any [hostile] tooth. No care alighted upon me while I was with them, no arrow struck [the smoothness] of my rock, until one night, bright with full-moon-sheen, there strayed from me a she-camel profuse of milk-flow. Then my heart suffered me not to forbear the quest of her, and to throw her halter upon her hump [allowing her to wander at will]. So I sprang upon a swift-paced steed, planting a trembling lance between thigh and stirrup, and fared forth all the night, scouring the desert, and exploring every copse and treeless place, until the morning dawn unfurled its ensigns, when the crier calls to prayer and to salvation. Then I alighted from my beast for the acquittance of the written ordinance, after which I bestrode him again, trying his mettle to the utmost. While I was coursing along, I saw no trace but I tracked it, no ridge but I mounted it, no valley but I fared across it, no rider but I questioned him; but withal my toil was bootless, and its gang to the watering-place found no [way of] return, until the heat waxed blinding, and the scorching noonday sun would have distracted Ghaylân from his [beloved] Mayyah.

Now the day was longer than the shadow of the spear, and hotter than the tears of the bereft mother, and I made sure that, unless I sought shelter from the glow, and rested myself with slumber, excessive weariness would throw me prostrate with sickness—nay, Sha‘ûb [the severer] would cling to me. Hence I bent my way towards a Sarḥah tree, abounding in branches, with boughs thickly leaved, that I might sleep my noon-tide, till to the brink of sun-down; but by Allah, scarcely had my breath fetched air and my horse rested, when I beheld one coming from the left, in the garb of a wayfarer, who resorted to my place of resort, making straight for the spot I had chosen. Then I grudged his wending whither I had wended, and took refuge with Allah from the annoy of any sudden intruder. But then, again, I hoped that he might chance to be a bringer of news, or approve himself a guide [to my lost one]. And when he came nigh my tree, and had all but reached my biding-place, I found it was our learned friend [Shaykh] of Serûj, wearing his wallet by way of belt, and his travelling gear under his arm. Then he accosted me with friendliness, and made me forget my loss, and I inquired of him, whence he hailed just then and how he fared within and without. Forthwith, without a word of demur, he recited on the spur of the moment:

“Say to him, who would look into the inward state of my affair, thou shalt meet at my hands with all honour and regard.

I am roving from land to land, a night-traveller from one trackless desert to the other.

The chase yields me food, the sandal is my riding-beast, all my equipment the wallet and the ferruled staff.

If I chance to alight in a city, my abode is the garret of the hostelry, and my boon-companion a scroll.

There is nothing mine, that I miss when it is gone, or fret about when the vicissitudes [wiles] of time rob me thereof;

Save that I pass my night free from concern, and my mind has severed partnership with sorrow.

I sleep at night the fill of my eyelids and my heart is cool of burning grief and anxiety;

I reck not from what cup I sip, and sip again, or what is the sweetness that comes from the bitter-sweet;

No, not I, though I allow me not abasement to become an easy road to bounties;

For if an object of desire dons the raiment of shame, out on him who courts a gift,

And whenever a wretch inclines to baseness, my nature shrinks from his fashion and inclining.

Death for me, no base deed, mount the bier liefer, than embark in villainy.”

Then he raised his glance to me, and said: “For some purpose did Ḳoṣayr cut off his nose.” So I told him the tale of my strayed camel, and what I had endured this day and the by-gone night; and he said: “Leave concerning thyself about things departed, or pining for that which has perished; regret not what is gone, though it were a river of gold; nor incline to him who veers from thee, and kindles the fire of thy anguish, though he were the son of thy loins, or the own brother of thy soul.” Then he added: “Hast thou a mind to a noon-day nap, and to abstain from talk? For forsooth our bodies are [as it were] jaded camels for fatigue, and the heat is all aglow; whereas there is nothing to furbish up the mind, and to enliven the languid, like sleep at noon while the blaze is fiercest, especially [most so] in the two months, when the skin of the camel shrivels through excessive thirst.” I replied: “As thou wilt, I have no wish to thwart thee.” Thereupon he made the ground his bed, and fell a-dozing, nay, soon he gave evidence that he was fast asleep. But I sat leaning on my elbow, to keep watch, and not to succumb to slumber; however, drowsiness overpowered me, after our tongues were bridled, and I recovered not myself, until night had crept in, and the stars began to twinkle, when, lo, there was no friend of Serûj, and, alas, no saddle-beast, so that I passed a night such as Nâbighah sings of, pregnant with the grief of Jacob, while I was battling against my sullenness, and vying with the stars in wakefulness. Now I bethought me that I had henceforth to fare on foot, now in what wise I should retrace my homeward way; until, at the smile of morn, there appeared to me on the horizon a rider, ambling over the plain with the stride of the ostrich. So I signalled to him with my garment, hoping that he would turn in my direction. He, however, heeded not my signal, nor took he compassion on my anxiety, trotting on at his leisure and smiting my entrails with the arrow of his contempt. Then I hastened in his track, to ask him for a mount behind him, though I should have to put up with his superciliousness. But when I reached him, by dint of hard running, and cast my eye on him with a sweeping glance, I found that my camel was his riding-beast, and what I had lost he had picked up. Then I belied me not in dragging him from her hunch, and tussling with him for the end of her halter, calling out: “I am her master; it is I from whom she has strayed; to me belongs her colt and her milk! So be not like Ash‘ab in greediness, and give no trouble, lest thou see trouble!” But he took to abusing and shouting, and he waxed impudent, and would not be abashed; and while he assaulted and relented in turns, now acting the lion, now cowering, behold, there came upon us Abû Zayd, clad in the leopard’s skin, rushing along with the rush of the furious torrent. Then I feared, that his feat of to-day might be like his performance of yesterday, that [the brightness of] his full moon would equal [that of] his sun, after which I would join the two tan-gatherers, never to be seen again, and become a [mere] tale after the substance. So I saw no help but to remind him of former bonds, and yesterday’s misdeed, and conjured him by Allah, [asking] if he came to make good my wrong, or to encompass my utter ruin. He however said: “God forfend that I should despatch one whom I have wounded, or follow up the Simoom of my day with a deadly night-blast. Rather have I come to find out the truth of thy state, and to be a right hand to thy left.” Thereupon my anxiety was allayed, and my suspiciousness subsided. I made him aware of my milch camel, and of the cloak of insolence that my mate had assumed, when he glanced at him as the lion of the thicket glances at his prey. Then he pointed his lance against him, swearing by Him who kindles the morning, that if he made not away with the swiftness of the fly, and contented himself with escape as the best part of his booty, he would pierce his neck-vein with the spear, and make his offspring and friends mourn for him. Forthwith the fellow let go the halter of the camel, and ran apace, taking to his heels in hottest haste. Abû Zayd said to me: “Seize her and mount her hump, for of the two boons, booty and witness for the faith, she is one, and one woe is easier to bear than two.”

Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Then I was at a loss, whether to rebuke Abû Zayd, or thank him, and how to balance the benefit received from him, against the damage endured. But it was as if someone had whispered to him the secret of my breast, or he had divined what stirred in my heart, for he accosted me with open brow, and indited with a glib tongue:

“O brother mine who bears up with my injury better than my brethren and own kinsfolk,

If my yesterday has harmed thee, my to-day has brought thee joy.

So forgive that for the sake of this, and spare me both thanks and blame.”

Then he added: “I am hasty and thou art sluggish, how then should we agree?” Wherewith he turned away to cleave the ground, urging his steed to career, aye, what a career! But I tarried not to take seat on my beast, and return to my homestead, and after hap and mishap reached my tent-village.

On one of his mercantile journeys Ḥârith arrives at Samarcand early on a Friday morning, and after having refreshed himself in a public bath and performed the ceremonial ablutions incumbent on the day, he hurries to the chief mosque, to be one of the foremost amongst the worshippers. Here he listens attentively to a most impressive sermon on the instability of human destinies, and on the certainty and terrors of death. This address strikes him not only by the forcibleness of its diction, but by the peculiarity, that all the words employed in it consist of letters without diacritical points,—a peculiarity to which he alludes by calling it “a spotless bride.” He, therefore, looks closer at the preacher, and soon recognises in him Abû Zayd. After the divine service is over, he accosts him, and, as usual, the meeting between them is most affectionate on both sides. Abû Zayd invites Ḥârith to accompany him to his dwelling, and at nightfall shocks his guest by producing decanters filled with wine. Rebuke and remonstrances are airily met with some verses, spiced with Abû Zayd’s reckless philosophy. Relaxing from his habitual austerity, Ḥârith for once does at Rome as the Romans do, and pledged to secrecy under the influence of the cup, he even countenances his abandoned friend before the outside world during his stay in the city.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: In one of my journeys I chose sugar-candy for a merchandise, making with the same for Samarcand, and in those days I was upright of build, brimful of sprightliness, taking sight from the bow of enjoyment at the target of pleasures, and seeking in the sap of my youth help against the glamours of the water-semblance [mirage]. Now I reached her on a Friday morn, after I had endured hardship, and I bestirred myself without tarrying, until a nightstead was got, and when I had carried there my sugar-candy, and was entitled to say “at home with me,” I wended forthwith towards a bath, when I put from me the weariness of travel, and took to the washing of the congregation-day conformably to tradition. Then I hastened with the bearing of the humble to the cathedral mosque, so as to join those who near the prayer-leader, and offer [as it were] the fattened camel, and happily I was foremost in the race, and elected the central place for hearing the sermon. Meanwhile people ceased not to enter in troops into the faith of Allah, and to arrive singly and in pairs, until, when the mosque was crowded with its assembly, and a person had waxed equal with his shadow, the preacher sallied forth, swaggering in the wake of his acolyths, and straightway mounted the steps of the pulpit of the [divine] call, until he stood at its summit, when he gave blessing with a wave of his right hand, sitting down thereafter until the ritual of the cry to prayer was completed. Then he rose and spoke: “Praise be to Allah, the exalted of names, the praised for His bounties, the abundant in gifts, the called upon for the rescinding of calamity;—king of the nations, restorer of rotten bones, honourer of the folks of forbearance and generosity, destroyer of ‘Âd and Irem;—whose cognizance comes up with every secret, whose compassion encompasses every obdurate in sin, whose munificence comprises all the world, whose power breaks down every revolter.— I praise Him with the praise of one who proclaims [God’s] unity and professes Islâm, I pray to Him with the prayer of the hopeful, the trusting, for He is the God, there is no God but He, the unique, the one, the just, the eternal, there is none begotten to Him, and no begetter, no companion with Him and no helpmate.— He sent forth Mohammed to spread about Islâm, to consolidate religion, to confirm the guidance of the apostles, to straighten the black-hued and the red.— He united womb-connections, he taught the fundamentals of truth, he set a stamp on the lawful and the forbidden, he regulated [laid down the rules for] the doffing and the donning of the pilgrim-cloak.—May Allah exalt his place, and perfect the blessing and benediction upon him, may He have compassion on his race, the worthy, and on his progeny, the uterine, as long as the pile-cloud pours, as long as the dove coos, as long as the cattle graze, as long as the sword assaults.—Work ye, may Allah have mercy upon you, the work of the pious, exert yourselves towards your return [on the resurrection day] with the exertion of the sound, curb your lusts with the curbing of enemies, make ready for your departure with the readiness of the blissful.—Put ye on the robes of abstinence, and put away the ailings of greed, make straight the crookedness of your dealings, and resist the whisperings of hope.—Portray ye to your imaginings the vicissitudes of circumstances, and the alighting of terrors, and the attacks of sickness, and the cutting off from pelf and kin:—Bethink ye yourselves of death, and the agony of its throwing-place, of the tomb and the awfulness of that which is sighted there, of the grave-niche and the loneliness of the one deposed in it, of the angel and the frightfulness of his questioning and of his advent.— Look ye at fortune and the baseness of its onslaught, and the evil of its deceit and cunning:—How many road-marks has it effaced, how many viands embittered! how many a host has it scattered, how many an honoured king has it overthrown.—Its striving is to strike deaf the ears, to make flow the tear-founts, to baffle desires, to destroy the songster and the listener to the song. Its decree is the same for kings and subjects, for the lord and the henchman, for the envied and the envier, for serpents and for lions.—It enriches not, but to turn away, and reverse hopes; it bestows not, but to outrage and cut into the limbs; it gladdens not, but to sadden, and revile, and injure; it grants no health, but to engender disease and frighten friends.— Fear ye Allah! fear ye Allah! May Allah keep you! How long this persistency in levity, this perseverance in thoughtlessness, this stubbornness in sin, this loading yourselves with crime, this rejection of the word of the wise, this rebellion against the God of heaven?—Is not senility your harvest, and the clod your couch? Is not death your capturer, and [the bridge] Ṣirâṭ your path? Is not the hour [of resurrection] your tryst, and the plain [or hell] your goal? Are not the terrors of doomsday laid in ambush for you? Is not the abode of transgressors Al-Ḥuṭamah, the firmly [safely] locked?—Their warder Mâlik, their comeliness raven blackness, their food poison, their breathing-air the scorching blast!—No wealth prospers them, no offspring; no numbers protect them, and no equipments. —But lo, Allah has mercy upon the man who rules his passion, and who treads the paths of His guidance; who makes firm his obedience towards his Lord, and strives for the restfulness of his place of refuge; who works while life lasts obedient, and fortune at truce with him, and health perfect and welfare at hand;— Lest he be overtaken by the frustration of his wish, by the faltering of speech, by the alighting of afflictions, by the fulfilment of fate, by the blunting of senses, by the remedy of the sepulchres. Alack on them for a misery whose woefulness is assured, whose term is infinite! He who is remedied thereby is wretched, his distractedness has none to allay it, his regret none to pity it; there is no one to ward off that which befalls him. May then Allah inspire you with the praiseworthiest of inspirations! May He robe you with the robe of glory! May He cause you to alight in the abode of peace! Of Him I ask mercy upon you and on the people of the religion of Islâm, for He is the most forgiving of the generous, the saviour, and peace be with you.”—Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now, when I saw that the sermon was a choice thing without a flaw, and a bride without a spot, the wonderment at its admirable strain urged me on to look at the preacher’s face, and I began to scan it narrowly, and to let my glance range over him carefully, when it became clear to me by the truth of tokens, that it was our Shaykh, the author of the Assemblies.—There was, however, no help from keeping silent for the time being; so I withheld until he had left off praying, and “the dispersing on the earth” had come. Then I turned towards him, and hastened to meet him, and when he spied me he quickened his pace, and was profuse in doing me honour, bidding me to accompany him to his abode and making me a confidant of the particulars of his intimate affairs.—Now, when the wing of darkness had spread, and the time for sleep had come, he brought forth wine-flasks secured with plug, whereupon I said to him: “Dost thou quaff it before sleep, and thou the prayer-leader of the people?” But he replied: “Hush! I by day am preacher, but by night make merry.”— Said I: “By Allah, I know not whether to wonder more at thy unconcernedness as to thy kinsfolk and thy birthplace, or at thy preacher-office with thy foul habits, and the rotation of thy winecup.”—Thereupon he turned his face in disgust from me, and presently he said:—Listen to me:

“Weep not for a friend that is distant, nor for an abode, but turn thyself about with fortune as it turns about.

Reckon thou all mankind thy dwelling-place, and fancy all the earth thy home.

Forbear with the ways of him with whom thou dealest, and humour him, for it is the wise that humours.

Miss thou no chance of enjoyment, for thou knowest not if thou live a day, or if an age.

Know thou that death is going round, and the moon-haloes circle above all created beings.

Swearing that they will not cease chasing them, as long as morn and even turn and re-turn.

How then mayest thou hope to escape from a net, from which neither Kisrá escaped, nor Dârâ.”

Said he [the narrator]: And when the cups went between us from hand to hand, and the vital spirits waxed gleeful, he dragged from me the oath that allows no exception, that I would screen his repute [secret]. So I complied with his wish, and kept faith with him, and ranked him before the great in the rank of Al Fuzail, and let down the skirt over the turpitudes of the night; and this continued to be his wont and my wont, until the time for my return came, when I took leave from him, while he persisted in hypocrisy and in secretly quaffing old wine.

In a Khân or inn at Wâsiṭ, frequented by many travellers, Al Ḥârith overhears his neighbour in the adjoining room tell his son to go to the market with one person, and come back with another, both of whom he describes in enigmatical and fanciful language. His curiosity being roused, he watches the lad’s exit, and finding that he starts unaccompanied, he feels still more mystified, and, therefore, follows him to the market, where he sees him give in change a loaf against a flint-stone for striking fire. Then the solution of the riddle dawns upon him, and at the same time he is convinced that the originator of this witticism could be none other but Abû Zayd. Hastening back, he finds his surmise confirmed, for the Serûji was sitting in the courtyard of the hostelry, and after a cordial greeting the two friends were soon deeply engaged in familiar conversation. In response to Abû Zayd’s inquiries, Ḥârith tells him that reverses of fortune and the machinations of enemies have forced him to leave his home almost destitute. To help him out of his difficulties, the former proposes to bring about a matrimonial alliance between him and some wealthy people alighted in the Khân, whom he avers to be high-principled, and who would be contented with a dowry of 500 dirhems, a sum which the Prophet used to settle upon his wives and to fix for his daughters as a marriage portion. He promises to undertake the conduct of the transaction, and to crown proceedings by pronouncing at the wedding an address, such as had never been heard before. More eager to listen to this wonderful specimen of oratory, than to set his eyes on the prospective bride, Ḥârith lends himself to the scheme, and Abû Zayd quickly pushes the preliminaries to a satisfactory conclusion, offering himself as security for the 500 dirhems, after which he prepares some sweet-meats for the wedding entertainment. At nightfall he assembles all the inhabitants of the Khân in his room, and after having busied himself with the pretence of some astronomical calculations, which brings the guests to the verge of sleep, he delivers at the instigation of the impatient Ḥârith the promised speech, in which he displays the marvellous resources of his rhetorical skill, by repeating the principal heads of the sermon in the preceding Assembly in varied diction and under fresh images, while he moreover surpasses its grammatical artifice by excluding this time even the occasionally dotted Hâ of the feminine termination from it. Then he performs the marriage ceremonies, which he concludes with the usual wish for prosperity and male offspring to the newly married couple, and produces his sweet-meats, urging Ḥârith to hand them round, instead of joining in their consumption, as he had been about to do. Scarcely have the company tasted of the dishes, when they fall senseless to the ground. Ḥârith, terrified, at first thinks that they have been poisoned, but Abû Zayd reassuringly informs him that he has only drugged them. Then he coolly begins to collect the contents of all the rooms, and carefully selects everything most valuable, to carry off with him. Ḥârith is amazed at this wild freak and frightened at its consequences, but the Serûji tells him, as far as he himself is concerned, that he and his ill-gotten affluence would soon be at a safe distance, and as for his perplexed friend, he had only to feed on the remainder of the dishes and to allow himself to be stripped, when he would not be held responsible for an outrage of which he himself was a victim; or else to join in the flight, offering even to find a new bride for him to wed. In spite of his indignation, Ḥârith banteringly replies, that he had enough with the first one, and would leave someone else welcome to the second; but when Abû Zayd blandly steps forward, to enfold him in a parting embrace, he draws back in disgust. Then Abû Zayd breaks forth in one of his exquisite pieces of poetry, in which he tries to justify this and many more similar enormities committed previously by the wickedness of the injured people, winding up with a sincere touch of remorse at his own sinfulness, which makes him burst out in tears and earnest supplication for forgiveness. Ḥârith softens towards him, and hoping that he may finally meet with the divine pardon, which is held out to the repentant transgressor, he sees him depart with his son; then collecting his own scanty belongings he continues his journey in the direction of Ṭîb, a town midway between Wâsiṭ and the swamps of the Baṭîḥah.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm related: The decree of waning fortune drove me to the country of Wâsiṭ, and I repaired thither without knowing one there who would house me, or owning therein a lodging. Now when I alighted there with the alighting of the fish on the dry land, or of the white hair in the black locks, evil hap and receding luck guided me to a Khân frequented by a jumble from every land, and a medley of travellers, which, on account of the cleanliness of the place, and the civility of its inhabitants, enticed the stranger to make himself at home therein, and made him forget the air of his native country. So I secluded myself in one of its chambers, not paying an excess of rent. Then it was not but the a-twinkling of the eye, or the time to scribble a letter, that I heard my next-door neighbour say to his fellow-dweller in the room—“Rise, my dear son, may thy luck not set, nor thy adversary keep on foot, take with thee the one of full-moon face and of pearly hue, of pure root and tormented body, who was pinched and stretched, imprisoned and released, made to drink and weaned, and pushed into the fire, after he had been slapped. Then career to the market the career of the longing swain, and bring back instead of it the pregnant that impregnates, the spoiler who enriches, the saddener who gladdens, the possessor of a puff that sets on fire, and of a germ that breaks forth in light, of an emission [utterance] that satisfies, and of a gift that profits, who, when he is struck, thunders and lightens, and reveals himself in flames, and who sputters on tinder-rags.” Then, as soon as the throat-bag of the roaring camel had subsided, and nothing was left but the going of him who was to go, there sallied forth a youth with a graceful swagger, and no mate with him. So I saw that it was a tight knot to make game of understandings and to render one eager to enter into the idle fancies [absurdities]. I therefore set out in the track of the youth, to find out the meaning of the speech. Then he ceased not bustling himself with the bustle of sprites, and searching amongst the rows of market shops, until he came at last to a store of flint-stones, and gave their seller a loaf [or cake], receiving from him a fine flint in return. Then I wondered at the sagacity of the sender and the sent one, and I knew that it was of Serûji growth, and I tarried not in hastening back to the Khân, giving myself the rein, to test the truth of my surmise and whether my arrow had hit the mark in its divining. And, for sooth, I proved an expert in sharpness of sagacity, for Abû Zayd was sitting in the courtyard of the Khân. Then we congratulated each other on the meeting, and mutually paid the dues of the welcoming of friends. Whereupon he said: “What is it that befell thee, so that thou didst quit thy place?”—Said I: “Fortune broke and oppression was rife.”—He replied: “By Him who sends down the rain from the clouds, and makes come forth the fruit from its sheath, times are foul and iniquity [wrong] prevails on all sides, and the helper is not to be found, but Allah is the One besought for help. How then gottest thou away and which of the twain was thy state when thou wentest off?”—Said I: “I made night my shirt and set out early in it, a starveling.”—Then he pricked holes in the ground with his stick, and bethought him how to find a loan or procure a gift for me. Presently he stirred with the stirring of one to whom a prey comes near, or an opportunity presents itself, and said: “It just occurred to my heart that thou mightest ally thyself with one who heals thy wound and feathers thy wing.”—Said I: “How then am I to make union between the neck-ring and an empty purse, and who is it that will have Ẓull, son of Ẓull [Nobody, son of Nobody]?”—Then he said: “It is I, who shall drop hints of thee and for thee, and be proxy in and on thy behalf, besides that the people profess to set the broken bone, and to ransom the prisoner, and to hold in honour their kith and kin, and to consult the adviser; save that, if Ibrahîm, son of Adham, proposed to them, or Jebeleh, son of Ayham, they would not give in marriage unless for five hundred dirhems, in accordance with that which the Prophet, may Allah bless and hallow him, settled on his wives, or stipulated for the dowries of his daughters, with the proviso, that no portion should be claimed from thee, if thou wert driven to seek refuge in divorcement. Then I will deliver at the place of thy betrothal and at the gathering of thy wedding-guests an address such as has not opened an obstructed ear, and has not been pronounced the like of it in any assembly.” —Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now he roused my spirits more by the description of the address to be indited, than of the bride to be displayed, so that I said to him: “I entrust thee with the affair, so manage it with the management of him who is sharp-witted in the interest of him he loves.” Forthwith he rose, trotting away briskly, then returned beaming, and said: “Rejoice at the tidings of fortune, and the milking of an abundant flow. I have already been charged with fixing the contract, and stood security for the money, so the thing is all but settled. Thereupon he took to pledging all the people of the Khân [to be present at the appointed time], and to preparing sweet-meats for the table. Then when night had extended her tent-ropes, and every owner of a door had closed his door, he called out to the assembly: “Halloo! be present instantly,” and none of them lagged to obey his voice, and to enter his room. Now, when they stood in rows before him, and the witness and witnessed upon were gathered, he busied himself in raising the astrolabe and lowering it, and in consulting the almanack and laying it aside, until the people became drowsy, and sleep drew nigh. Said I to him: “Ho, Sirrah, put the axe to the block, and free the people from sleepiness.” Then he cast a glance at the stars, and breaking loose from the tie of silence, he swore by [mount] Ṭûr, and the written book, that the secret of this hidden matter should be unravelled and its memory spread forth unto the day of resurrection. Whereupon he sat in a kneeling position, and invited the ears to feed on his address, saying: “Praise be to Allah the king glorified with praise, the beloved Lord, the fashioner of every born one, the refuge of every outcast, the spreader of earth’s couch, the fastener of the mountains, the sender of rains, the smoother of difficulties, who knows all secrets and penetrates them, who overthrows kings and destroys them, who makes follow each other the ages in their turns, who initiates affairs and brings them to an issue.—His bounty is universal and perfect, His rain-cloud pours and showers, He answers request and hope, He makes it easy for the distressed and widowed.—I praise Him with the praise that endureth through all times, I proclaim His unity, as Abraham, the sorrowful, proclaimed it, for He is God, there is no God to the nations besides Him, there is none who inclines to that which would counterbalance or equal Him.—He sent Mohammed, a standard to Islâm, an Imâm to rulers, a fortifier of the lowly, an abolisher of the rights of Wadd and Suwâ, for he made known and taught, he restrained and established, he rooted firmly the principles of faith and propagated them, he confirmed promises and uttered threats.—May Allah never cease to bestow honour on him, and bring his spirit to the abode of peace, may he have compassion on his race and house, the noble, as long as a mirage glitters, as a young of the ostrich runs, as a new moon rises, as a shout that greets the same is heard.—Work ye, may Allah keep you, the best of works, and tread the paths of lawfulness, throw ye off the forbidden, and abandon it, and listen to the command of Allah, and obey it; unite ye the blood-relations and revere them, and resist the lusts and repel them; ally ye yourselves to people of righteousness and piety; and cut yourselves off from the band of wantonness and greed.—Now the seeker of your alliance is the purest of freemen as to birth, and the noblest of them as to lordliness, the sweetest as for a watering-place, and the soundest as for keeping his word.—Behold he has come to you and alighted in your sanctuary to wed your bride, the honoured, and to settle a dowry upon her as the Prophet settled upon Umm Salamah;—and he is the worthiest of sons-in-law to whom children have been trusted and who was made possessed of what he desired,—he who gives to him in marriage is not hasty nor errs he, the one who enters with him in relationship is neither foiled nor soiled.—I ask from Allah for you to approve of his connection, and to prosper him lastingly, and may He inspire each one to seek improvement of his state and to make ready for his return. To Him be eternal praise, and glory to his Apostle Mohammed.” Now when he had ended his address, marvellous of disposition, void of punctuation, he concluded the marriage contract at the settlement of the five hundred, after which he said to me: “For ease and sons!”—Then he brought forth the sweet-meats which he had prepared and set going a feast to be remembered for aye. I advanced [stepped up] to them as the company advanced [stepped up] and was nigh to stretch out my hand towards them, but he scared me from eating and urged me to hand them round, when, lo, by Allah it was not in quicker time than the eyelids meet, that the people fell prone upon their chins. Then when I saw them like the roots of a falling date-tree, or like those thrown by the daughter of the wine-cask, I knew for sooth that it was an unexampled mischief, and the mother of precedents. So I said to him: “O thou arch-fiend of thy own soul, and vile slave of thy coin, hast thou prepared for the people sweets, or a bane?”—Said he: “I have not gone beyond a mess of banj in trays of the Khalanj tree.”— Then I said: “I swear by Him who makes the stars rise in brightness and guides by them all wayfarers, thou hast done a hateful thing and secured thee a record amongst shameful deeds.” Thereupon I was bewildered at thought of what would come of his affair, and with fear of infection from his scab, so that my soul fluttered within me distractedly, and my side-muscles quivered with fright. Then, when he saw the extent of my fear and the excessiveness of my anxiety, he said: “What is this burning thought and this white-hot fear? If thy concern at my offence is for the sake of me, know that I am now well off and gone, freeing this spot from my presence, and leaving it void of me, and how many like it have I quitted to remain deserted. But if it is with a view to thyself, and from apprehension of thy imprisonment, then partake of the remainder of the mess, and be contented to be without thy shirt, so as to be safe against the redresser and the seeker of redress, that thy stay after me may be tranquil. But if not, the flight! the flight! before thou be captured and dragged away.” Forthwith he proceeded to clear out whatever there was in the rooms of money-sacks and chests, and began to appropriate the selected part of everything stored, and the choicest of everything measured and weighed, so that he left that which his net spared, like a bone voided of its marrow. Then after he had bagged that which he had chosen, and tied it in bundles, and had tucked up his sleeves and girded himself, he accosted me as accosts one who has donned impudence, and arrayed himself with the garb of sincere friendship, saying: “Hast thou a mind to accompany me to the Baṭîḥah, so that I may wed thee to another fair one?”—Then I made oath to him by Him who had created him to be blessed wherever he might find himself, and not of those who commit felony in a Khân, that I had it not in me to marry two freeborn and to cohabit with twain rival wives, moreover said I to him in the language of one who humours his humour, and measures to him with his own bushel: “The first suffices me for a boast, so seek another one for the other.”—Then he smiled at my speech and stepped forward to embrace me, but I turned from him my cheek and showed him my repugnance. So when he saw my shrinking back, and my aversion became manifest to him, he indited:

“O thou, who turnest away from me, for it is time’s nature to be fraught with turns,

And rebukest me for my foul treatment of those whom I had for neighbours, with the rebuke of the harsh:

Thou comprehendest me not in what I have done, but as for them, I know them full well:

Heretofore I sought their hospitality, and I saw them unheedful of their guests.

I probed them, and when I tested them I found them to be base coin.

Amongst them is none but who strikes terror when he can, or else is terror-stricken.

None sincere in friendship, none trustworthy, none benevolent, none kindly disposed.

So I sprang upon them the spring of the tearing wolf upon the sheep,

And left them prostrate, as if they had been made to drink the cup of death,

And my hand possessed itself of what they had hoarded, for they were the abhorrence of men’s nostrils.

Then I wended my way with booty sweet of cullings and reapings.

For sooth, often times I left behind me one wounded of entrails, who slunk after me when I had gone.

And despoiled the owners of state-chairs and carpets and curtains.

How much have I obtained by my cunning that was not obtained by the sword,

And stood my ground in terrors, such that lions would shrink from facing.

How often have I shed blood, and slain unawares and desecrated the sanctuary of the high-minded;

How many a pernicious course have I taken into sin, how many a headlong rush,

But withal I have laid in a goodly opinion with regard to my Lord, the Compassionate.”

Said the narrator: Now when he had reached this couplet, he was excessive in weeping and persistent in asking for forgiveness, until he propitiated the inclination of my heart that had turned from him, and I hoped for him that which is hoped for the guilty who confesses to his guilt. Thereupon he let subside his flowing tears, and putting his wallet under his arm-pit, he made off, saying to his son: “Carry the rest, and Allah be the protector.” Said the reporter of this tale: So when I saw the snake and the little snake slip away, and the cure terminate in the cautery, I knew that my tarrying in the Khân would drag me into ignominy. I, therefore, collected my few chattels, and gathered my skirt for departure, passing my night in faring towards Ṭîb, and relying on Allah against [the mischief of] the preacher.

The only reason for calling this Assembly after the city of Ṣûr (Tyre) seems to be that the Râwi, who perhaps in this case may be identified with Ḥarîri himself, wished to pay her a tribute of grateful remembrance for a period of exceptional prosperity, which he had passed there. The real scene of action is Cairo, whither he had journeyed from the former place under the impulse of a sudden fancy, and where he was indulging in a somewhat dissipated and indolent life of pleasure. While riding one day about the town, he encountered a gaily arrayed troop of horsemen, who, as he ascertained by inquiry, were on their road to witness a wedding-feast. Hoping to meet with an enjoyable pastime, he follows them to a distant mansion, which, although grand of appearance, is adorned in an odd manner with ragged clothes, and baskets such as beggars use for carrying the produce of their rounds. He asks an aged porter for the name of the owner of the building, and is informed that it has no particular master, but is the gathering-place of strolling people of every description, and on entering, he finds, that however poor and squalid the assembled may be individually, as a congregation or guild they know how to fare luxuriously when the occasion demands it. Presently the bridegroom appears in all his pomp, and a herald proclaims that the old and revered chief of the begging fraternity himself is about to solemnize the forthcoming marriage ceremony. The announced exalted personage steps forward and is respectfully greeted, and delivers a discourse, in which his earnest and impressive remarks on the duties of the rich towards the poor, and on the divine purpose in founding the institution of matrimony, form an amusing contrast to his description, at once high-flown and humorous, of the couple to be united in wedlock. After the ceremony is finished, the company repair, under his lead, to a richly dressed table, and Ḥârith is on the point of departing, when the old man calls to him reprovingly and bids him to stay. He swears that he would not do so, unless the other told him who he was, and is answered in some touching verses, in which the speaker exalts in glowing colours the beauties of his native town Serûj, and bitterly bewails his expulsion from it by ruthless enemies. Ḥârith now easily recognises Abû Zayd in spite of his disguise, and the change which old age has wrought in him, and passes the remainder of the day, as well as his evenings during his sojourn in Cairo, in his instructive and delightful company.

Al Ḥâreth son of Hammâm related: I fared from the city of Manṣûr [Bagdad] to the town Ṣûr [Tyre], and when I had become there the possessor of high rank and of affluence, and powerful to raise and to abase, I longed for Miṣr [Egypt and Cairo] with the longing of the sick for the physicians, and the generous for the bestowing of bounties. So I left behind me the attachments of stay, and shook off the impediments of travel, and, bestriding [a steed like] Ibnu’n-Na‘âmeh, I hastened towards her with the swiftness of the ostrich. Now when I had entered her, after sustaining hardships and being on the point of destruction, I was delighted thereat with the delight of one intoxicated by drinking morning draughts, and one dazzled by the break of morning brightness. And when I was one day loitering about, beneath me a steed of stately pace, I beheld on short-haired nags, a troop of men like the lamps of night. So I inquired for the sake of procuring me a pleasure-trip, about the troop and their destination, when I was told that the people were witnesses and their goal a wedding to be witnessed. Then the sprightliness of youth urged me to fare along with the foragers, so as to obtain a share in the sweets of the bridal scatterings and get some of the delicacies of the festive board. Presently we came, after enduring fatigue, to a mansion high of structure, wide of area, which testified to the builder’s wealth and exalted station. When we alighted from horse-back and put forward our steps to enter it, I saw its vestibules adorned with tattered garments, and garlanded [coronated] with begging-baskets hung round, and there was an aged man sitting on a cloth of piled stuff, upon a handsome bench. Now the title-page of the book, and the sight of this strange furniture, made one doubtful, and the evil augury of these ill-omened objects induced me to accost that man on the seat, and I adjured him by the dispenser of destinies to let me know who was the lord of this mansion. Said he: “It has no distinct owner and no manifest master, it is but the inn of the importune beggars and low artisans, and the den of ballad-singers and rehearsers of the traditions.” Then I said within myself: “For Allah’s sake, out upon a fool’s errand, and the failure of my pasture,” and I intended to return at once, but then I considered my sudden departure and my going back without the others to be churlish. So I entered the house reluctantly, as one drinking choking draughts [lit. drinking draughts that make one choke], or as the sparrow enters the cage. Then, lo! there were in it richly adorned state-chairs, and spread carpets, and cushions laid in rows, and arrayed curtains. Presently stepped forth the bridegroom, swaggering in his burdah [mantle of striped stuff], and strutting like a lion in the midst of his attendants, and when he had sat down as though he were the son of Mâ’u’s-samâ’, there cried out a crier on the side of his relatives: “By the reverence due to Sâsân, grand-master of masters and pattern of sturdy beggars, none ties this knot on this day white of forehead and extremities, but he who has roved and roamed, who has been young and waxed old in adversity.” Then the company [kith] on the bride’s side were well pleased with that which yonder people [the bridegroom’s relations] had proclaimed with regard to the bringing in their presence the one indicated. Forthwith sallied forth an old man whose stature the days and nights had bent, whose Thaghâm^sup>1 tree the morns and eves had decked with blossoms. Then the congregation rejoiced at his approach and hastened forward to welcome him, and when he had sat down on his carpet, and the turmoil of voices had subsided, he advanced to his cushion, and stroked his beard with his hand, whereupon he spoke: “Praise be to Allah, the foremost in munificence, the ever new in bestowing bounties, to whom we are brought near by supplication, on whom we are made to rely for the accomplishment of hopes, who has ordained the legal alms from every property, and sternly forbidden the refusal of supplicants, who has impressed on man to relieve the distressed, and commanded to feed him that begs and him that refuses to beg; who has described His servants in His book, the manifest, when He spoke, and He is the most truthful of speakers: ‘Those who know well that the supplicant and the destitute have a claim on their riches.’—I praise Him for that which He has dispensed of wholesome food, and I take refuge with Him from hearing a prayer void of intention. And I testify there is no God but God, the One, without a partner to Him for a god, who requites the alms-giving men and women, who withdraws His blessing from usury, and rewards alms with lavish interest. Furthermore I attest, that Mohammed is His sincere servant, and His honoured Apostle. He sent him that he might efface the darkness by the light, and secure to the poor a share from the rich, and he compassioned, may God bless and hallow him, with the destitute, and lowered his wing to the lowly; he made obligatory the claims on the possessions of the wealthy, and made clear what is the due to those who have little on the part of those who have much.—May Allah bless him with a blessing that obtains for him proximity [to God’s throne], as well as the elected of the stone-bench [certain Companions of the Prophet].—But now, Allah, be He exalted, has made matrimony a law so that you may be chaste, and instituted propagation so that you may multiply, for He said so that you may know: ‘O ye men, we have created you from a male and female, and made you clans and tribes, so that you may recognise each other.’—Now this is Abû’d-darrâj Wallâj [in-goer], son of Kharrâj [out-goer], lord of the impudent face, and manifest mendacity, of yelping and shouting, of importunity and persistency in begging;—who woos the shrew of her people, fit mate of her husband, Qanbas [spit-fire], daughter of Abû ‘Anbas [frowning lion], for the sake of that which reached him of her being clad with pertinacity, and her excessiveness in stooping to beggary, and her quickness in grasping a livelihood, and her rising after a fall, along with her combativeness. And he has lavished upon her for a dowry a wallet and a ferruled stick, together with a kerchief and a pitcher. So marry him as one like him is to be married, and join your rope with his rope, and if you fear poverty or want [through increase of family], Allah will give you a sufficiency out of His bounty. Thus I say my say, craving forgiveness from Allah, the Mighty, for me and you, and praying that He may multiply your offspring in the beggar-dens, and guard all of you from dangers.”—Then, when the Shaykh had ended his discourse, and pressed upon the bride’s relatives her contract, there fell of scatterings a shower, that exceeded the limits of abundance, and would have made the miser to excel in liberality. Thereupon the Shaykh rose, trailing his skirts and preceding his rabble.—Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Then I followed him, so that I might see the array of the people, and complete the enjoyment of the day. Forthwith he turned with them to a table that its dressers had adorned, and whose every side equalled the other in beauty. And when each one had seated himself in his proper place and begun to cull freely in his garden, I slipped out of the row, and fled from the throng. But then it happened that a turn of the Shaykh’s face fell in my direction, and that a glance from his eye caught me unawares, when he said: “Whither, O thou curmudgeon? Dost thou not affect the company of him who is generous?”—Said I: “By Him, who created the heavens one above another, and permeated them with light, I will not taste a morsel, nor turn in my mouth a bit, unless thou tell me where is the sprawling-place of thy youth, and whence thy breeze is blowing.” Then he fetched a deep sigh, and shed tears in torrents, until he had exhausted their flow, and bid the company to be silent, when he said to me: “Lend me thy hearing:

“My birth-place was Serûj, and there I heaved lustily my billows,

A city where all is found, and gotten readily and in abundance.

Her waters spring from Salsabîl, her fields are pleasure-meads,

Her sons and her palaces, stars they are and sidereal mansions.

Hail her breeze of fragrancy, her aspect lovely to behold!

And the flowers of her hills, when the snows have melted away.

Who sees her says the haven of earthly Eden is Serûj.

To him who leaves her sighs are meted and smothered weeping,

Such as I have met, since the Barbarians drove me thence,

Tears that pour and bitter anguish, that, scarcely calmed, will rage afresh,

Day-long grief whose engrossing cares distract the mind.

How many struggles for hopefulness, short of step, frustrated!

Would that my fatal day had come, when I was fated to depart from her.”

When he had indicated his native town, and I had understood that which he had recited, I knew for a certainty that he was our most learned Abû Zayd, although old age had now shackled him. So I sallied forth to put my hand in his, and I reckoned it a booty to eat with him from his platters. And I continued the time of my stay in Cairo to resort nightly to his guest-fire, and to fill both my shells with the pearls of his utterances, until the raven of separation croaked between us, and I parted with him as the lid would part with the eye.

The subject of this Assembly has so aptly and succinctly been stated by Mr. Chenery in the summary of the 24 Assemblies not translated by him, that any attempt to improve on him would be presumption. We therefore reproduce here the passage referring to it from his Introduction, p. 76 of Vol. I. The Thirty-first Assembly, he says, is a composition of exquisite beauty. Ḥârith makes the pilgrimage to Mecca, and there finds Abû Zayd, who addresses the worshippers first in the usual rhymed prose, and then in verse, on the duties of true religion. The Ḥajj, he tells them, does not consist in hastening on camels to the holy city, or wearying the body, or parting from home and children, but in adding to these performances abstinence from sin, purity of intention, and the practice of virtue; for “washing in fonts cleanses not from immersion in sins, the baring of the body compensates not for the laying up of guilt, nor will the donning of the pilgrim’s garb avail him who clothes himself with the forbidden.” The verses which follow are inspired by the loftiest morality. When he has concluded, Ḥârith approaches him, but Abû Zayd declares that he has a vow not to associate with anyone during his pilgrimage, nor to make gain, nor to recite his pedigree, nor to ask alms. As the pilgrims pass by on their journey he again addresses them in edifying verse.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: In the prime of my youth and the freshness of vigorous life, I hated making my den in the thickets [towns], and loved slipping out of the scabbard, from my ken, that travel fills the provision bags and produces gain, while cleaving to one’s country hamstrings [houghs] the intellect and lowers the Stay-at-home. So I shook the [divining-] arrows of seeking advice and rubbed the fire-sticks of choosing the best, whereupon I made up my mind firmer than rocks, and started towards the shores of Shâm [Syria] for the purpose of trading. Now when I had tented at Ramlah, and thrown down the staff of travel, I found there montures being made ready for night-faring, and saddles being strapped for [travelling to] the mother of Cities [Mecca]. Then the gale of longing blew strongly within me, and a craving for the holy house seized on me passionately, so that I haltered my camel, and flung from me my engagements and ties,

And said to him who blamed me, “Cut it short, for fain choose I the ‘stand’ [maqâm, the standing-place of Abraham] before the stay,

And spend, what I have gathered, on the gathering-ground [Muzdalifeh], forgetting for the sacred stone the metal cursed.”

Then I strung myself together with a travelling-company like the stars of heaven, who in their faring sped with the torrent’s rush, and coursed in quest of their good with the course of the race-horse. So, between night - journeying and journeying by day, between trotting and ambling, we abated not, until the legs of our beasts had done us rare service, in bringing us to Juḥfah [the station where the pilgrims from Syria assembled, before setting out for the general meeting-place, Muzdalifeh, next to Mecca]. Then we alighted therein, making ready for donning the pilgrim’s cloak, and wishing each other joy in having attained to our desire. But no sooner had we made kneel our beasts in the place, and laid down the saddle-bags, when there came in sight of us from amongst the mountains a person, exposed [bare] of skin, and who cried out: “O ye people of this concourse, hither with you to that which rescues on the day of the mutual call [tanâdî].” Then the pilgrims hastened towards him, and gathered and surrounded him and waxed silent, and when he saw their propping up to him, and their eagerness to feed on his discourse, he ascended one of the mounds, then he hawked, opening up his speech, and said: “O ye company of pilgrims, flocking together from the mountain-paths, do you comprehend what you are about to face and whom you go to meet? Or do you know whom you approach, and what you are undertaking boldly? Do you imagine that Hajj is (means) the choosing of saddle-beasts and the traversing of stations, the taking seat in litters, and the loading of beasts of burden? Or do you opine that piety is the tucking up of sleeves, and the emaciating of bodies, the separation from children and the getting far from your native places? Ay no, by Allah, but it is the shunning of transgressions before preparing the beast, the sincerity of purpose in making for yonder building, and the purity of submissiveness along with the fervour of devotion, the mending of dealings, before working the doughty camels. By Him who prescribed the rites for the devout, and guides astraight the wanderer in the raven-black night, the washing with bucketfuls cleanseth not from being immersed in [the mire of] sin, and the stripping of bodies counterbalances not for being loaden with crime, nor makes the donning of the pilgrim’s cloak amends for being wrapped up in the forbidden. The being plaided with the Izâr profits not, when one is burdened with iniquities, nor avails the seeking of approach [to God] by getting one’s head shaved when one busies himself in shaving mankind. Obsequiousness in clipping the hair (after completion of the pilgrimage) rubs not off the dirt of persistency in shortcomings. None prospers [by visiting mount] ‘Arafât, but he who is endowed with wisdom, nor is any blessed [hallowed] by Al Khayf, who is addicted to injustice. None witnesses the standing place [of Abraham], but he who stands upright, and he rejoices not in the acceptance of his pilgrimage who swerves from the right path. So have Allah mercy upon the man who is sincere [pure], before his running to [mount] Ṣafâ, and treads the road of the divine pleasure, before his repairing to the tanks [of the well Zamzam]; who puts off his dissimulation before doffing his garments, and excels in his beneficence, before his rushing down from ‘Arafât.” Then he raised his shrill note with a voice to make hear the deaf, and wellnigh shaking the mountain-peaks, and indited:

“The Ḥajj is not thy travelling by day and night, and thy selecting camels and camel-litters,

The Ḥajj is that thou repair to the holy house for the sake of Ḥajj, not that thou accomplish thy wants thereby.

That thou bestride the back of righteousness, taking the check of lust for guide, and truth for high-road.

That thou bestow what has been given thee while in thy power, to him who in his need tenders his hand towards thy gift.

A pilgrimage with all this fraught is perfect, but if the Ḥajj is void thereof it proves abortive.

For a losing-bargain of dissemblers it suffices that they plant and reap not, having met with toil and exile,

And that they go without reward or praise, giving their fame a bait to him who censures and lampoons.

Seek then, dear brother, in what sacrifice thou mayest offer up, the face of God, the guardian, going in and out.

For lo, no hidden deed shall remain hidden from the Compassionate, whether the servant be sincere or shamming,

And steal a march on death by good deeds sent afore: death’s sudden summons, when it comes, is not put off;

And use humility in frame of mind, such as the nights can, in their turns, not alter, though a crown they gave thee.

And watch not every cloud whose lightning flasheth, though it appear to pour a rain of copious shower.

Not every caller merits to be heard, how many a whisperer shouted fatal news,

And none is wise but he who contents him with a morsel, that makes life’s days to folden by degrees;

For every mickle comes to be a mite, and meek grows every stiff-necked, rage he as he may!”

Said the narrator: Now, when he had fructified the barrenness of our understandings with the witchcraft of his say, I sniffed the breeze of Abû Zayd, and delight made me incline to him with what a thrill of affection. But I kept still until he had completed the expounding of his wisdom, and came down from his hillock, when I slipped towards him, so that I might scan the traits of his countenance, and descry the nature of his accomplishments. And lo, it was the stray for whom I had searched, and the threader of the pearl-strings that he had displayed. Then I clung to him with the clinging of the Lâm to the Alif, and ranked him as recovery is ranked with the sick, and I asked him to join me, but he refused, or to poise me [on my camel], but he declined, saying: “I have made oath in this my pilgrimage, that I would neither ride together nor alternately with any one, neither make gain nor boast of pedigree, neither seek profit, nor companionship, nor else accommodate myself to him who dissembles.” Then he went in haste, and left me wailing, while I ceased not to shelter him in my sight (hoping for his return), nay, would have loved him to walk on the pupil of my eye, until he had climbed up one of the mountains, and stood watching the pilgrims, and when he witnessed the riders faring onward over the sand-hills, he made hand fall upon hand, and broke forth inditing: “He who visits on the back of beasts is not like him who runs on foot,

No, nor is the servant who obeys like him who riots amongst servants.

How, O people, should the toil be like, of him who builds and who pulls down?

Sinners soon will have to call the mourning-women of repentance,

While the seeker of approach to God says, “Hail to him who has done service.”

Send then forward, I beseech thee, soul, deeds of acceptance with the Lord of old,

Scorn the tinsel of this earthly life, for its existence is but naught,

And remind thee of the throw of death, when unawares his stroke befalls,

And bewail thy work of shame, forth shedding tears of blood for it,

Curing it with sore repentance, before the hide all through is rotten.

May then be, that Allah guard thee, against the fire that blazes fiercely,

On the day when sin is cancelled no more, tardy repentance vain.”

Then he sheathed the blade of his tongue, and went on his way. But I ceased not, in every water-station that we came to, and every night-camp where we pillowed, to search for him, but failed, and to ask people to help me seeking him, but they found him not, until I fancied that the Jinn had snatched him up or the earth had cut him off. And never in my peregrinations suffered I a grief like this, nor was I in any travel tried with its like of sorrow.

This is one of the most elaborate and important, as well as of the longest and most difficult of the Assemblies. Ḥârith has completed the ceremonies of the Pilgrimage to Mecca, and intends to follow it up by the visitation of Mohammed’s tomb at Ṭaybeh, one of the names given to Medina. On his road he meets in the homestead of one of the intermediate Arab tribes Abû Zayd, who this time has assumed the character of a mufti or jurisconsult and adept in the sacred and secular law of Islâm. A large gathering of people has collected around him, whose spokesman proposes to him a hundred questions on various canonical and legal points, as the religious obligations of ceremonial ablution, prayer, fast, almsgiving, pilgrimage, on buying and selling, the duties of magistrates towards orphans or weak-minded persons, on principles of moral conduct, and so on—questions which are calculated to exhibit Abû Zayd at the same time as learned in the law and in the rarest idioms of the Arabic tongue. For his answers, while startling the ordinary hearer by being the opposite of what would be expected, prove perfectly correct, if the leading word be taken in a certain more recondite sense. For instance the question is: “May a woman be rebuked for being bashful?” to which Abû Zayd, no doubt to Mrs. Grundy’s horror, replies “To be sure,” because he gives to the verbal noun khajal, in everyday parlance “being ashamed or bashful,” the rarer meaning of “being overbearing when in possession of riches,” in support of which Ḥarîri quotes a remarkable saying of Mohammed, recorded in the Traditions. As Chenery (vol. i., p. 78) appositely observes, similar puzzles were not unknown in Europe, as the question: “Num peccatum est occidere patrem suum,” where not “one’s own father,” but “the father of swine,” is meant. Ḥarîri has not given the interpretation of the ambiguous terms as an integral part of the text, but inserted it in parenthesis after each question, and with the help of these explanations, which, in case of need, we have supplemented with a few additional remarks, the reader will find no difficulty in following the general drift of the Assembly. If some of the questions appear childish, he must remember that Ḥarîri, while satisfying to the fullest extent the taste of his countrymen for the discussion of grammatical, rhetorical, and religious points of controversy, raises himself with a fine touch of irony above it, where such discussions degenerate into mere quibbles. But for the most part, we feel confident the reader will be amused and interested, and as a study on the synonyms and idioms of the Arabic Language the Assembly is invaluable.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: At one time when I had completed the rites of the Ḥajj and absolved the duties of [the shout] labbaika, and the outpour of the blood of the sacrifice, I resolved to make for Ṭaybeh, with a travelling company of the Benû Shaibah, to visit the tomb of the Prophet, the Elected, and to disengage myself from the tribe of those “who perform the Ḥajj and neglect him (Mohammed).” Now it was rumoured that the roads were unsafe and the Arabs of the two sanctuaries at war. So I was bewildered between fear that made me lag, and longing that stirred me on, until submissiveness was infused into my heart, and the predominance of [my desire for] the visiting of him upon whom be peace. Therefore, after having chosen my beast, and made ready my travelling-gear, I journeyed along with my companions without inclining to any halt, or remissness in faring on day and night, till we came to the Benû Ḥarb, who had just returned from the war. Then we made up our minds to pass the length of the day in the encampment of the people, and while we were selecting a place for making kneel down our camels, and spying for the watering-pond, and a cool drink, lo, we saw them running as if they were flocking to some idol. So their swarming roused our suspicions, and we asked what was the matter with them. Then we were told that a learned legist of the Arabs was present in their assembly, and that this was the reason of their turmoil. Said I to my company: “Halloo! let us witness the gathering of the clan, so as to learn clearly to distinguish the right from the wrong.” Thereupon they said: “Truly, what thou proposest is worth hearing, and thou hast given good advice without stint.” Accordingly we rose to follow our guide and repair to the assembly, until, when we came near it, and stretched our necks to see the legist to whom they had crowded, I found him to be Abû Zayd, the father of lies and tricks, and of mischief and choice rhymes. He had donned the turban in the orthodox fashion and gathered his garment in proper style, and was sitting crosswise, while the great ones of the clan surrounded him, and their medley enwrapped him from all sides. Presently he said to them: “Put questions to me on the points of intricacy, and let me explain to you all difficulties, for by Him who created the heavens, and taught Adam the names [of all things], I am the legist of the Arabs of the Arabians, and the most learned of those that live under the star-pocked sky.” Then there stalked up to him a man glib of tongue, stout of heart, saying: “Know, that I have had converse with the legists of the world to the effect that I have selected from them a hundred decisions, and if thou be of those who loathe the daughters of others (meaning lies, untruth, falsehood), and desire from us sound food, then listen and answer, so that thou mayest get thee thy due. He replied: “God is greatest (Allah akbar), the truth will become evident, and the hidden be disclosed, so say what thou art bidden.” He said: “What sayest thou with regard to him, who has made an ablution (wuzû), and afterwards touched the backside of his shoe?” He replied: “His ablution is invalidated by his doing so” (na‘l, a shoe, and also “wife”). He said: “And when he has made an ablution, and afterwards the cold has thrown him on his side?” He replied: “Then let him renew his ablution” (al-bard, cold, and also “sleep”). He said: “May one who makes an ablution rub with his hands his testicles?” He replied: “He is invited to do so, but it is not made obligatory on him” (uns̤ai, the two testicles, and also “both ears”). He said: “Is it allowed to make ablution with that which the serpent emits?” He replied: “And is there anything cleaner than it for the Arabs?” (s̤u‘bân, a large serpent, and also pl. of s̤a‘b, “water-course in a valley, river”). He said: “Is the water [fetched by the hands of] a blind man lawful?” He replied: “Yea, and let that of the seeing man be avoided” (ẓarîr, the word translated with blind man, in whose case the water fetched by him would not be lawful for ablution, because he cannot know whether it is pure or not, means also “river-side,” against the water of which there is no objection. On the other hand al-baṣîr, the seeing man, means also “dog,” and in their case the reverse would hold good: the water fetched by the former is chosen with discernment, and therefore not to be avoided, while “the water of the dog” would be the height of abomination). He said: “Is washing (ghusl) incumbent upon him who has lost sperm?” He replied: “Nay, even if he does so a second time” (amná, he lost or emitted sperm, and also “he went to Miná,” the sacred valley near Mecca). He said: “Is it then incumbent on one polluted by seminal loss to wash his fur-coat?” He replied: “To be sure, and also his needle” (al-farwah, fur-coat, means also “skin of the head,” and al-ibrah, needle, has moreover the signification “bone of the elbow”). He said: “Is circumambulation in the spring permitted?” He replied: “This is abominated on account of the execrable occurrence” (tat̤awwuf, circumambulation, means also “easing nature,” and ar-rabî‘, spring, early vegetation, signifies also “streamlet,” the defilement of which would be a hideous crime). He said: “Is the washing of his book incumbent on him?” He replied: “Yea, and also of his lip” (aṣ-ṣaḥîfah, book, and also “lines of the face”). He said: “How is it then, if he fails to wash his hatchet?” He replied: “It is as though he neglected to wash his head” (al-fa’s, hatchet, and also “bone of the occiput”). He said: “Is it allowed to wash in a wallet?” He replied: “It is like washing in wells” (jirâb, a leather bag, and also “the inside of a well”). He said: “And what sayest thou with regard to one who has used sand for his ablution, and afterwards sees gardens?” He replied: “His rubbing with sand is void, and he has to make his ablution afresh” (rauẓ, pl. of rauẓah, garden, and also “a small quantity of water remaining in a cistern”). He said: “Is it allowed that a man should make his prostration upon ordure?” He replied: “Yea, and let him avoid the dirty one” (‘aẕirah, human excrement, and also “a courtyard”). He said: “Is it then permitted to make prostration upon [the wood of] a Khilâf [-tree]?” He replied: “Nay, nor either on the edges of his garments” (khilâf, the ṣafṣâf or poplar-tree, on which prostration is not forbidden, and also “sleeve,” on which a man is not allowed to make his prostration, as little as on his aṭrâf, in the sense of edges of a garment in the text, while if the word is taken in the meaning of “extremities of the body, hands, and feet,” the prostration upon them is in accordance with the tradition: “I was commanded to prostrate myself on seven bones,” namely, the two feet, the two knees, the two fore-arms, and the forehead). He said: “What then if he make prostration on his left?” He replied: “There is no harm in his doing so” (shimâl, the left side, and also pl. of shimlah, “cloak enveloping the whole body”). He said: “Is it then allowed to make prostration on trotters?” He replied: “Yea, with exception of the fore-arms” (al-kurâ‘, here translated with trotters, means that part in cattle which corresponds to the pastern of a horse, which as part of a dead animal would be considered unclean, but at the same time the word means “a projecting piece of stony ground or rock,” on which prostration might take place, unless it serves to ease the fore-arms). He said: “Is it allowed that one should pray upon a dog’s head?” He replied: “Yea, as well as upon all other high places” (râs al-kalb, dog’s head, is apart from its literal meaning the name of a well-known mountain-cliff). He said: “Is it lawful for a student to carry copies of the Koran?” He replied: “Nay, nor to carry them in wrappers” (dâris, a student, and also “a menstruous woman”). He said: “And what sayest thou with regard to him who prays while the hair of his pubes appears?” He replied: “His prayer is lawful” (al-‘ânah, hair round the pudenda, and also “herd of asses,” in connection with which latter meaning the word bârizah would have to be translated in its literal meaning of coming out or sallying forth). He said: “How then if he has said prayer while [the obligation of] a fast was on him?” He replied: “He must reiterate it, and if he has prayed a hundred days” (ṣaum, fasting, and also “excrement dropped by an ostrich”). He said: “But if he has carried a puppy while praying?” He replied: “It is as if he had carried beans” (jirw, the young of a dog, and also small cucumbers, pomegranates, or similar fruit). He said: “Is the prayer of one who carries a hernia with him sound?” He replied: “Nay, and if he had been praying on [the holy] mount Marwah” (garwah, a rupture, and also “the vessel from which a dog drinks”). He said: “How then if on the garment of one praying any bodily excretion has fallen?” He replied: “His prayer takes effect, and no doubt” (najw is a general term for anything coming out of the belly, and therefore considered ceremonially impure, but it means also “a pouring cloud,” the drops of which fallen on a man would not invalidate his prayer). He said: “Is it allowed that one covered with a woman’s veil should lead a man in prayer?” He replied: “Yea, and also one in armour may lead him” (muqunna‘, one who wears the female veil miqnâ‘, implying that women are unfit to be Imâms, and also “covered with a helmet”). He said: “But what if one has led them in whose hand there is an object of a pious donation?” He replied: “They will have to begin afresh, and if they were a thousand” (waqf, any object consecrated to pious purposes, and also “a bracelet of ivory or tortoise-shell,” in the latter sense indicating that a wearer of such, i.e., a woman, is excluded from the Imâmship). He said: “What then if one has led them whose thigh is visible?” He replied: “His prayer and theirs is efficacious” (fakhiẕuhu bâdiyah [a man] whose thigh is bare, and also “whose tribal division or kindred are desert Arabs.” Ḥarîri remarks that some Lexicographers prefer in the latter meaning the reading fakhẕ, instead of fakhiẕ, for the sake of distinction). He said: “But if the hornless bullock has led them?” He replied: “Say thy prayer, and no woe betide thee” (as̤-s̤aur al-ajamm, a bullock without horns, and also “a lord or prince without a spear”). He said: “Can the prayer of the witness be curtailed or shortened?” He replied: “Nay, by the Invisible, the All-seeing” (s̤alât-ash-shâhid, the prayer of the witness, here meaning especially the blood-witness or martyr in religious warfare, and also “the prayer of sunset,” so called because it coincides with the rising of the stars, to which the name shâhid is given). He said: “Is it allowed for the excused to break fast in the month of Ramadân?” He replied: “It is not permitted except to little children” (ma‘ẕûr, or mu‘aẕẕar, excused, and also “circumcised”). He said: “Is it then open to one who brings home his bride to eat therein?” He replied: “Yea, to the fill of his mouth” (al-mu‘arris, one bringing home a bride, and also “a traveller who takes a short rest at the end of night and presently continues his journey”). He said: “But what if therein the naked break their fast?” He replied: “The authorities gainsay them not” (al-‘urât, pl. of ‘ârî, the naked, and also irr. pl. of muârrawin, “seized by an ague,” ‘urawâ’). He said: “And if the faster eat on entering the morning?” He replied: “This is the more circumspect and safer for him” (aṣbaḥ, he has entered on the morning, and also “he has lighted a lamp, miṣbâḥ”). He said: “What then if he venture on eating at night?” He replied: “Let him be prepared to receive judgment” (lail-an, adverbial accusative, at night, and also acc. of lail, meaning according to Ibn Dorayd “the young of a bustard,” and according to others “that of the partridge or the crane”). He said: “And how when he eats before the fair one has withdrawn from sight?” He replied: “Judgment, by Allah [The punishment of the law], is due on him” (al-baiẓâ’, woman, wife, and also “sun”). He said: “But if the faster provokes vomiting (by taking an emetic)?” He replied: “He has broken his fast, by Him who has made the chase lawful” (al-kaid, violent anger, and also “vomiting,” to produce which the breaking of the fast is permitted, while the provoking of anger has nothing to do with it). He said: “Is it open to him to break the fast if the cook clings to him?” He replied: “Yea, but not the cook who dresses the food in the kitchen” (t̤âbikh, cook, and also “a hot fever”). He said: “What then if a woman have laughed during her fast?” He replied: “The fasting of that day is invalidated for her” (ẓaḥikat, she laughed, and also “she became menstruous,” as in Koran, xi. 74: “and she became menstruous and we announced Isaac to her”). He said: “But if smallpox appears on her fellow-wife?” He replied: “Let her break the fast, if she has made known her ailment” (ẓarrah, a fellow or rival wife, whose sickness would not dispense the former from fasting, and also “the root of the thumb or of the teat,” which is understood in Abû Zayd’s answer). He said: “What is due in legal alms (zakât) for a hundred lamps?” He replied: “Two full-grown mature she-camels, O my friend” (miṣbâḥ, a lamp, and also a she-camel that riseṣ at daybreak from her resting-place, to go to the pasturing ground). He replied: “But if one owns ten daggers?” He replied: “Let him bring out two sheep without grumbling” (khanâjir, pl. of khanjar, a dagger, or long knife, and also of khanjar, or khanjûr, “a camel rich in milk”). He said: “But if he give over to the slanderer (informer) the best of his kindred?” He replied: “Ay, happy tidings to him on the day of resurrection” (namîmah, the foremost of one’s relations, and also “the choicest part of one’s property”; sâ‘î, an informer, or slanderer, and also “the collector of the zakât”). He said: “Is it that the bearers of sins [burdens] deserve a share in the legal alms?” He replied: “Yea, if they be engaged in warfare for the faith” (auzâr, pl. of wizr, sins, burdens, and also “arms, weapons”). He said: “Is it allowed to the Ḥâjj (pilgrim) to perform the ‘umrah (ceremonies of the lesser pilgrimage)?” He replied: “Nay, nor that he put on a veil” (ya‘tamir, he performs the ‘umrah, and also “he puts on the ‘imârah,” a kind of head-gear or turban). He said: “Is it then open to him to kill a brave one?” He replied: “Yea, as he may kill a wild beast” (shujâ‘, a valiant man, and also “a kind of serpent”). He said: “But what about him who has killed a female flutist in the Harem?” He replied: “On him is due the sacrifice of some head of cattle” (zammârah, a female player on the mizmâr, flute, or pipe, and also an ostrich, whose cry is called zimmâr; ḥaram, the harem, and also “the sacred precinct of Mecca”). He said: “But when he has thrown [his lance] at the leg of a free man and killed him?” He replied? “Let him bring out a sheep in compensation for it” (sâq, a leg, ḥurr, a free-man; ṣâqu ḥurrin, “the male of the turtle-dove”). He said: “How then if he has killed the mother of ‘Auf after donning the pilgrim-cloak?” He replied: “Let him give in alms a small quantity of food” (umm ‘Auf, name of a woman by her son, and also “a locust”). He said: “Is it incumbent upon the Ḥâjj to be provided with a boat?” He replied: “Yea, so that he may lead them to the watering-places” (qârib, a kind of boat, and also “a seeker of water at night-time”). He said: “And what sayest thou about the lawless after the Sabbath?” He replied: “He has done what is lawful at that time” (ḥarâm, unlawful, opp. to ḥalâl, lawful, and also “one who dons the pilgrim-cloak, a pilgrim”; sabt, Sabbath, and also “shaving of the head”; ḥall, “he has doffed the cloak,” which, of course, is a lawful action after the pilgrimage is completed). He said: “But what sayest thou with regard to the sale of a bay?” He replied: “It is unlawful, as the sale of a dead body” (kumait, a bay horse, and also “red wine”). He said: “Is it allowed to sell [barter] vinegar for the flesh of the camel?” He said: “Not either for the flesh of sheep” (khall, vinegar, and also a camel two years old, or the young of a pregnant camel, the sale of a living animal for flesh, whether of the same kind or any other being unlawful). He said: “Is the sale of a present lawful?” He said: “Nay, nor that of wine” (hadiyyah, a present, and also an animal being led to the Ka‘beh for sacrifice; sabiyyah, a female slave taken from the infidels, and also “wine”). He said: “What sayest thou with regard to the sale of a cornelian stone (or of the hair of a newborn)?” He said: “It is forbidden, in truth” (‘aqîqah, a single cornelian stone; the first wool of an animal, or the hair of a new-born child; but also “an animal sacrificed for a child on the seventh day after its birth”). He said: “Is the sale of (meaning on the part of) a crier to a herd’s man allowed?” He replied: “Nay, nor to a collector of the zakât” (dâ‘î, one who calls, or makes proclamation, and also “the remainder of milk in the udder,” which it is as unlawful to sell as the fœtus of an animal in the womb). He said: “May a hawk be sold for dates?” He replied: “Nay, by the Lord of creation and command” (ṣaqar, a hawk, and also “date-sugar”). He said: “May a Moslem buy the plunder [taken] from Moslem women?” He replied: “Yea, and it may be inherited from him, when he has died” (salab, plunder, booty, and also the bark of a tree, and “leaf or blade of the plant s̤umâm”). He said: “But is it allowed that the intercessor be sold?” He replied: “What is there to hinder it?” (shâfi‘, an intercessor, and also “a sheep which one buys to skin it”). He said: “May a pitcher be sold to the Benû Aṣfar?” He replied: “It is abominated as the selling of a helmet [to them]” (ibrîq, a pitcher, and also a furbished and well-tempered sword; Benû Aṣfar are the Greeks, to whom, as enemies of Islâm, it would be unlawful to sell weapons of attack or defence). He said: “Is it lawful for a man to sell the colt of his camel born in summer?” He replied: “Nay, but he may sell his friend” (ṣaifî, a camel colt born in summer, and also “a son begotten in old age,” to which latter meaning Abû Zayd’s answer refers; ṣafî, a milch camel yielding a copious flow, and also “a sincere friend,” the meaning which would suggest itself most readily to the ordinary hearer). He said: “But if one has bought a slave and a wound appears on his mother?” He said: “There is no sin in returning him” (umm, mother, and also “the pia mater of the brain”). He said: “Holds the right of pre-emption good for the co-partner in a field?” He replied: “Nay, nor for the co-partner in a [yellow] she-camel” (ṣaḥrâ’, a field, and also “an ass whose white is mingled with grey; ṣafrâ, a yellow she-camel, a word which, however, would more readily suggest the word “bile”). He said: “Is it lawful that the water of the well and of an open place should be heated?” He replied: “If they are in deserts, then certainly not” (yuḥmá, it is being heated, and also “it is prohibited from general use”; khalâ, an open place, here taken in construction with mâ’, water, and also “fodder, both green and dry”). He said: “What sayest thou with regard to the dead body of an infidel (as an article of food)?” He replied: “It is lawful for the dweller in a place and the traveller” (kâfir, an infidel, and also “the sea”; maitah, dead body, and also “fish floating on the water”). He said: “Is it allowed to offer as a forenoon sacrifice squinting men?” He replied: “This is worthier of acceptance” (al-ḥûl, pl. of aḥwal, squint-eyed, and also of ḥâ’il, “a sheep that has not conceived”). He said: “May then a divorced woman be sacrificed in the forenoon?” He replied: “Yea, and the nightfarer may be treated thereto hospitably” (at̤-t̤âliq, divorced woman, and also “a she-camel allowed to pasture freely”). He said: “How then if one slaughters before the appearance of the gazelle?” He replied: “It is a sheep whose flesh may be sold (not a sacrifice) undoubtedly” (al-ghazâlah, gazelle, and also a name for the rising sun, corresponding to al-jaunah, which is a name of the sun when setting, as in the words of the poet: tabâdara ’l-jaunatu an taghîbâ, the sun was setting quickly). He said: “Is it lawful to make gain by beating wool (or hammering metals)?” He said: “This is like gambling with dice, there is no difference” (t̤arq, beating, hammering, and also “the throwing of pebbles for the purpose of vaticination”). He said: “May one standing say salâm ‘alek to one sitting?” He replied: “It is forbidden between strangers” (al-qâ‘id, one who sits, and also “a woman who has ceased being menstruous or copulating.” He said: “May a sensible man sleep under a fool?” He said: “How lovely it is to do so in the Baqî‘” (raqî‘, a fool, and also “the sky”; al-baqî‘, the cemetery of Medina). He said: “Is a Ẕimmî forbidden to kill an old woman?” He replied: “It is not allowed to oppose him with regard to wine” (al-‘ajûz, an old woman, and also “old wine,” which to kill means to mix it with water [see the Assembly of Tiflîs]). He said: “Is it allowed that a man should remove [secede] from his father’s premises?” He replied: “It is not allowed either to one obscure or to a noble of birth” (‘imârah, building, edifice, and also “tribe”). He said: “What sayest thou with regard to becoming a Jew?” He replied: “This is the key to an ascetic life” (tahawwud, turning a Jew, and also “turning to God in repentance,” according to the words of the Koran, “behold we have returned to thee”). He said: “What sayest thou with regard to patience in misfortune?” He replied: “What a great sin it is!” (ṣabr, patience, and also “tying, fastening, keeping one imprisoned until death ensues”; baliyyah, calamity, misfortune, and also “a camel tied to the tomb of her master,” and neither watered nor fed until she dies, on which the deceased man was by the Arabs of the ignorance supposed to ride to his doom). He said: “Is it lawful to beat the ambassador?” He replied: “Yea, and also to load therewith the seeker of counsel” (safîr, envoy, ambassador, and also “leaves falling from a tree”; mustashîr, one who asks advice from another, and also “a fat camel,” or “a camel which knows the pregnant from one that has not conceived”). He said: “May a man beat his father?” He replied: “The dutiful does so and refuseth not” (‘azzar, he chastised, beat violently, and also “he helped, strengthened, honoured,” as in Koran, xlviii. 9, “and may assist him and honour him”). He said: “What sayest thou with regard to him who has impoverished his brother?” He replied: “Well done of him, how brotherly he has acted towards him” (afqar, he impoverished, and also “he lent a camel to ride upon her back”). He said: “But what if he strips his child of its clothing?” He replied: “On what a handsome thing he has resolved!” (‘arâhu, he stripped him, and also “he gave him the fruit of a date-tree for a year”). He said: “What then if he bakes his slave on the fire?” He replied: “There is no sin on him, nor any blame” (al-mamlûk, a white slave, and also “a dough kneaded repeatedly until it has become consistent”). He said: “Is it allowed for a woman to cut her husband?” (in the Arabic idiom meaning to be undutiful to him). He replied: “Nobody forbids her doing so” (ba‘l, a husband, and also “a date-tree,” in which sense “cutting” may be taken literally, or in the meaning of “gathering its fruit”). He said: “May then a woman be upbraided for being bashful?” He replied: “Most certainly” (khajal, being bashful, blushing, and also “being overbearing in possession of riches,” according to the saying of Mohammed to the women: “When ye are hungry ye fawn, and when ye have your fill ye become overbearing”). He said: “What sayest thou with regard to him who has shaved [planed] the tamarisk of his brother?” He replied: “He has sinned even if he has given permission to him” (naḥata as̤lat-hu, he shaved his tamarisk, and also “he backbited him and detracted from his honour”). He said: “Is it allowed to the magistrate to appoint a curator for one possessed of a bullock?” He replied: “Yea, to be safe from the mischief of violence” (s̤aur, a bullock, and also “madness”). He said: “But is it open to him to strike on the hand of an orphan?” He replied: “Yea, until he is of age” (ẓaraba ‘alá yadi-hi, besides having the literal meaning given above, is an idiom for: “he appointed a curator for him”). He said: “Is it then allowed to him to take for the same (an orphan) a suburban place?” He replied: “Nay, even if he consents to it” (rabẓ, buildings outside the walls of a city, and also “a wife”). He said: “But when may he (the magistrate) sell the body of an idiot?” He replied: “Whenever he sees that it pleases him” (badan, body, and also “a short armour”). He said: “Is it then allowed that he buy for him jakes?” He replied: “Yea, if they be not haunted” (ḥashsh, a privy, and also “a palm-plantation”). He said: “Is it allowed that the magistrate be an oppressor?” He replied: “Yea, if he be knowing” (z̤âlim, one who oppresses, and also “one who drinks milk before it curdles”). He said: “Is one fit to become a Kadi who has no perspicacity?” He replied: “Yea, if his conduct be fair” (baṣîrah, sharpsightedness, sagacity, and also “a shield”). He said: “But if he is bare of intellect?” He replied: “This is an indication [the title-page] of excellence” (‘aql, intellect, wisdom, and also “embroidered silk stuff”). He said: “But if he have the pride of a tyrant?” He replied: “There is nothing to be said against or to make much of” (zahw, pride, and also “a date which begins to colour”; jabbâr, a tyrant. a shedder of blood, and also “a high palm-tree whose fruit is out of the reach of the hand,” opposed to qâ‘id). He said: “Is it allowed that the witness be a suspected character?” He replied: “Yea, if he be a sensible man” (murîb, suspected, exposed to doubt, and also “one who has plenty of curdled milk”). He said: “But when it has transpired that he has committed sodomy?” He replied: “He is like one who has tailored” (lât̤, he committed the sin of the people of Lot, and also “he coated a well with clay”). He said: “And if it comes out that he has been winnowing?” He replied: “Let his evidence be refused, and not accepted” (gharbal, he sifted corn, and also “he killed,” as the poet says in the metre rejez: “Thou wilt see the kings slain around him.” The word has also an obscene meaning). He said: “But if it has become manifest that he is a liar?” He replied: “That is for him a quality which adorns him” (mân, yamîn, he lied, and also, with aor. yamûn, “he provided for his family”). He said: “What is incumbent upon a servant of God?” He replied: “Let him make oath by the God of creation” (‘âbid al-ḥaqq, a servant of God, and also “one who gainsays the true belief,” as some commentators explain the word in Koran, xliii. 81). He said: “And what sayest thou with regard to him who has deliberately gouged the eye of a nightingale?” “Let his eye be gouged, to make the speech short” (bulbul, a nightingale, and also “a spare man”). He said: “But if he has wounded the Ḳaṭa (bird) of a woman and death ensued?” He said: “Soul for soul, if it has gone” (qat̤a’, sandgrouse, and also “what lies between the hip-bones”). He said: “But if a pregnant woman has dropped her fœtus in consequence of his blow?” He replied: “Let him atone for his sin by the manumission of a slave” (ḥashîsh, grass, green herbs, etc., and also “a fœtus dropped in abortion”). He said: “What is due in law to one who keeps himself secluded?” He replied: “To have his extremities cut off for the sake of determent” (mukhtafî, one who sticks to a place without leaving it, and also “a spoiler of tombs, a stripper of graveclothes”). He said: “What then is to be done to him who has stolen the snakes of the house?” He replied: “Let his right hand be cut off, if they are worth the fourth part of a denar” (asâwid, pl. of aswad, snakes, and also “household utensils, as a washing-tub, kettle, dish,” etc.). He said: “But if he have stolen a great worth [value] of gold?” He replied: “There is no amputation as though he had committed a violent robbery” (s̤amîn, what is precious, valuable, and also “the eighth part,” as naṣîf is used for niṣf, half, sadîs for suds, sixth part, etc.; under gold is in this case to be understood a gold coin). He said: “What then if theft is brought home to a woman?” He replied: “There is no guilt upon her, and she has nothing to fear” (saraq, theft, and also “white silk”). He said: “Is a marriage contract valid, which is not witnessed by starlings?” He replied: “Nay, by the Creator, the Maker” (qawârî, pl. of qâriyah, a bird of the starling kind, from which the Arabs take a lucky augury, especially with regard to rain, and also “witnesses,” because they follow up matters, from qará, he followed up). He said: “What sayest thou with regard to a bride who has passed the first night of a month, and then has been returned early in the morning to her previous state?” He replied: “Half of the dowry is due to her, and the days of probation for divorce (‘iddah) are not incumbent on her” (lailah ḥurrah, the first night of a month, and also “a wedding night in which no consummation has taken place”). Then the asker of the questions said to him: “Allah has blessed thee with the fulness of a sea that he who draws from it lessens it not, and of a man of learning to whose praise the praiser reaches not.” Thereupon he looked down with the downward look of the abashed, and stopped silent with the silence of the tongue-tied. Said to him Abû Zayd: “Go on, Sirrah, how long then [wilt thou tarry], how long?” He replied: “There remains no missile in my quiver, and after the breaking forth of thy morn there is no scope left for debate: by Allah then, the son of what country art thou, and how beautiful was that which thou hast expounded.” Forthwith he indited with a glib tongue and a powerful voice:

“In the world I am a pattern, point of sight [Ḳiblah] for folk of wisdom,

Save that all my days I pass in tardy rest and early outset,

And the stranger, though in Eden he alight, is like one homeless.”

Then he said: “O Allah, as Thou hast made us of the number of those who are guided so that they may guide others, make us also of the number of those who follow the right way and spend.” Thereupon the people brought him a drove of camels together with a singing girl, and begged him to visit them while after while. Then he rose to go, making them longing for his return, and carrying off the slave-girl and the drove. Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Thereupon I accosted him, and said: “I know thee a rogue, since when then hast thou become a legist?” He kept twisting about a little while and then he indited, saying:

“I alter my coat to the whims of each moment and mix with its changes of welfare and ill-fare,

And pledge my companion in converse with all that may flatter his humour to please my companion,

With tellers of tales circulating narrations, with drinkers of wine circulating the goblets.

Now making the tears by my sermon to pour down, now cheering the hearts by my jocular sallies,

And feasting the ears, if but op’ning my mouth, by spell of my speech that will meeken the restive,

And if I am minded my hand makes the pen drop a shower of pearls to adorn many volumes.

How many a subtlety dim as Sohá that came to be bright as a sun by my clearing,

How many my sayings that captivate hearts, and leave in the hearer a yearning behind them,

And virgin Ḳaṣîdehs indited by me, that met with applause loud expressed and enduring.

Yet plotting of fortune has singled me out, a plotting surpassing that Tir‘aun’s ’gainst Moses,

And kindles against me a war day by day, I tread through its blaze on a furnace, a furnace!

And strikes me with ills, such as melt a man’s vigour, and blanch people’s heads with the whiteness of hoar-frost.

And brings to me near but the alien, the hateful, while banishing from me the nearest, the dearest!

And were it not but for the vileness of fortune my lot in the world were not vile, by its fell feud.”

Then I said to him: “Soothe thy sorrows and blame not fortune, but be thankful to Him who has turned thee from the way of Iblîs to the way of Idrîs” (Ash-Shâfi‘î). He replied: “Leave off idle talk, and tear no veils, but rise with us to make for the Masjid of Yathrib (Medina), haply we may cleanse away by the visitation the filth of our sins.” So I said: “Far be it that I fare with thee, before I learn thy explanation.” He replied: “By Allah, thou hast imposed duties upon me, and when thou hast asked, thou hast asked but a small matter; listen then to what remedies the mind, and removes ambiguity.” Then after he had made clear to me the enigmatical and lifted from me my perplexity, we tightened our saddles, and I fared on, and he fared on, while he ceased not from his nightly talk as long as the journey lasted, on such topics that made me forget hardship and I would have liked with him “the distance to be long” (allusion to Koran, ix. 42, “but the distance seemed long to them,” referring to those who were called upon to join in the expedition to Tâbûk), until when we had reached the city of the Prophet, and obtained our desire from the visitation, he set out Syriawards, and I towards ‘Irâk, he veered to the West, and I to the East.

In this Assembly Abû Zayd presents himself in the guise of a mendicant, afflicted with a paralytical contortion of the face, before a congregation in Tiflis, whom Ḥârith had joined in the performance of the appointed prayers, and he obtains by an eloquent appeal to their commiseration, in rhymed prose and verse, a liberal supply of alms from the captivated audience. Ḥârith follows him, when he departs with his prey, and after having reached a secluded spot, Abû Zayd laughingly throws off his palsy and reveals his identity, anticipating the rebukes of his indignant friend with his usual frank avowal, that his necessity makes for him the law, if lawful means will not provide for his necessity. Yielding to the spell of his fascinating personality, Ḥârith accompanies him in his travels during two years, after the lapse of which he regrets that circumstances enforced their separation.

I had covenanted with Allah, be He exalted, since I was of the age of about a score, that I would not delay prayer as far as it was in my power, so that with my roaming in deserts, and in spite of the sport of leisure-hours, I kept the stated times of prayer and guarded myself from the sin of letting them slip by, and when I joined in a journey, and alighted in any place, I welcomed the summoner to it, and took pattern from him, who observed it religiously. Now it happened at a time when I had come to Tiflis, that I prayed together with a number of poorly-off people, and when we had finished prayer, and were about to go, there sallied forth an old man, with a face plainly contorted by palsy, worn of garments and strength, who said: “I conjure him, who has been made of the clay of liberality, and suckled of the milk of good fellowship, that he but spare me a moment’s hurrying, and listen to a few words from me, whereafter the choice belongs to him, and it rests with his hand to spend or refuse.” Then the people fastened their hoops to him [locked their knees together to him], and sat still like the hillocks. Now when he perceived how nicely they kept silent and how considerate they showed themselves in their demeanour [deportment] he said: “O ye, endowed with eyes clear of sight, and visions bright of perception, does not eye-witnessing dispense with hearsay? and does not the smoke tell of the fire? Hoariness is apparent, and weakness oppressive, and disease manifest, and the inward state thus laid bare. Yet erewhile I was one of those who possess and bestow, who exercise authority and rule, who grant help and gifts, who assist and assault. But calamities ceased not to subvert, nor vicissitudes to take away scrap by scrap, till the nest was despoiled and the palm empty, privation became my raiment and bitterness my life-stay, my little ones whined from hunger and craved for the sucking of a date-stone. Yet withal I came not to stand in this place of ignominy and to disclose to you things [to be] hidden, but after I had suffered and was palsy-stricken, and had waxed grey from all I met with, and, oh! would that I had not been spared!” Then he sighed the sigh of the sorrowful, and indited with a feeble voice:

“I cry to the Compassionate, be praise to Him, for fortune’s fickleness and hostile rancour

And for calamities that have shattered my rock, and overthrown my frame and its foundations,

Have broken down my stem, and woe to him, whose boughs adversities pull down and break.

My dwelling they have wasted even as to banish from the wasted spot the rats themselves;

They left me bewildered and dazed, to bear the brunt of poverty and all its pangs,

While heretofore I was a lord of wealth, who trailed his sleeves along in luxury,

Whose leaves the supplicants beat freely down, whose hospitable fires night-farers praised;

But who is now, as though the world, that casts the evil eye on him, had never smiled on him,

From whom he turns who was his visitor, and whom he scorns to know who sought his gift.

So if a good man mourns the evil plight he sees an old man in, betrayed by fortune,

Then let him ease the sorrow that afflicts him, and mend the state that puts him thus to shame.”

Said the narrator: Now the company inclined to ascertain his condition, so as to find out what he might have concealed, and to sift the truth of his affair. So they said to him: “We know by this time the excellence of thy degree, and the abundance of thy rain-cloud, but make now known to us the tree of thy branch, and withdraw the veil from thy descent.” Then he showed himself averse with the reluctancy of one whom misfortunes have befallen or to whom the tidings of daughters [born to him] have been brought, and he indited with emphatic utterance, although in a low voice:

“By thy life, I assure thee, not showeth the branch by the zest of its fruit from what root it has sprung,

So eat what is sweet, when it cometh to hand, and ask not the honey where swarmeth the bee!

And learn to discern, when thou pressest thy grapes, the must of thy press from the acid it yields,

That by testing thou value the costly and cheap, to buy and to sell all things by their likes;

For blame would accrue to the witty, the wise, if error of judgment were fastened on him.”

Then the people were roused by his sagacity and subtleness, and beguiled by the beauty of his delivery, along with his disease, so that they collected for him the hidden treasures of their belts and whatever was secreted in their breast-pockets, saying to him: “Thou hast drifted to a shallow well and repaired to an empty hive; so take this trifle [pittance] and reckon it neither a miss nor a hit.” Then he made much of their little, and accompanied its acceptance with thanks, whereupon he turned away, dragging half his body, and made off, stumbling on his road. Said the narrator of this tale: Now the fancy struck me, that he had disguised his appearance, and shammed in his gait, so I rose to thread his path and to track his traces, while he glanced at me askance and gave me a wide berth, until, when the road was clear and identification [the disclosure of the truth] became possible, he looked at me with the look of him who is friendly and glad of the meeting, and shows his true colours, after he had dissembled, saying to me: “I imagine thou art a brother of peregrination, and looking out for companionship. Wouldst thou then fain have a mate who is kind to thee and helps thee, and is indulgent with thee and shares in thy expenses?” Said I to him: “If such a mate came forward, providence, indeed, would favour me.” He replied: “Thou hast found, so rejoice, and hast encountered the generous, so cleave to him.” Then he had a long laugh, and stood before me, a sound man, when lo! it was our Shaykh of Serûj, with no ailment in his body, and nothing doubtful in his outward tokens. Then I rejoiced at meeting with him, and at the feignedness of his palsy, and bethought me of rebuking him for the evilness of his ways, but he opened his mouth and indited before I could chide him:

“I show me in rags, so that people may say, a wretch that forbears with the hardships of times.

I feign to the world to be palsied of face, for often my heart thus obtaineth its wish;

Ay, but for my raggedness find I compassion, and but for the palsy I meet with my wants.”

Thereupon he said: “No pasture is left me in these parts, nor anything to be hoped for from their people, and if thou wilt be my mate, on our way with us, on our way!” So we fared forth from the place, we twain by ourselves, and I kept company with him for full two years, nay, I would fain have associated with him while my life lasts, but time, the disperser, forbade me.

In this Assembly Abû Zayd appears in the character of a slave-merchant. Ḥârith, while travelling in Yemen, had lost by death in the city of Zabîd a faithful servant, whom he found it difficult to replace. After having commissioned in vain the merchants of the town, to find him a substitute, he repairs himself to the market, where a man, muffled up in a Lis̤âm or face-veil offers to him for sale a youth, whose good qualities he praises in some spirited verses. Ḥârith is struck by the boy’s beauty, which ominously reminds him of Joseph, wḥose comeliness had made the Egyptian ladies compare him to an angel. He asks the boy for his name, but receives no answer, and only after he has shown his vexation at this, the youth, less in obedience to his intended purchaser’s wish, than to impart to him a derisive warning, emphatically says: “I am Joseph, I am Joseph,” implying thereby that his case is identical with that of the patriarch, and that he, as free-born, could as little be sold lawfully as Joseph was by his brothers. The hint, however, is lost on Ḥârith, who eagerly concludes the bargain, but, after the merchant is gone, soon finds out his mistake. For the boy, now openly claiming his freedom, appeals to the Kadi of the place, who confirms his statement, by mentioning, that only the day before his father had given in court a declaration to that effect. On further inquiry, Hârith learns with dismay that the father’s name is Abû Zayd, and he forswears all future intercourse with the wily Shaykh, until this one meets him in a narrow road, and again charms him into more friendly feelings, although this last experience of the other’s unscrupulous proceedings still rankles in his mind.

Al Hârith, son of Hammâm, related: When I crossed the deserts as far as Zabîd, I had with me a slave, whom I had reared up to his full age, and trained until he had perfected his right conduct, and he was fully familiar with my ways, and knew how to draw forth my goodwill, so as not to over-step my intentions, nor to be remiss in [carrying out] my wishes. Therefore needs his good services had won him my heart, and I singled him out [as my companion] in my stay and travel. But pernicious fate made away with him when we had reached Zabîd, and when “the sole of his foot was turned up,” and his voice had waxed still, I was a year without relishing my food, or looking out for another servant, until the various inconveniences of solitary life, and the troubles of getting up and sitting down drove me to take the bead instead of the pearl, and to hunt for one who might be a stopgap for my needs. So I repaired to the slave-sellers in the market of Zabîd, when I said: “I want a lad who gives satisfaction when he is probed [tried] and who is approved when he is tested, and let him be one of those whom the intelligent have brought out, and poverty alone has thrown into the market.” Then every one of them bestirred himself for the object of my search, and bustled about and exerted himself to encompass it speedily. Thereupon the new moons completed their round, and turned in their increase and wane, but there came to pass [the fulfilment of] none of their promises, and no thundercloud yielded rain in response thereto. Now when I saw that the slave-merchants had either forgotten or pretended to forget, I knew that not everyone who undertakes a work carries it through, and that naught will scratch my skin as well as my own nail, so I abandoned the way of commissioning and sallied forth to the market with the yellow and the white ones, and had the slave-boys led past me, inquiring for the prices, when, lo! there accosted me a man who had the face-veil drawn over his nostrils, and who held a boy by his fore-arm, saying:

“Who buys from me a lad who proves deft at his work, and is in make and manners surpassingly fair?

Equal to any task thou mayest lay upon him, who speeds thee when he speaks, and spoken to attends;

Who if thou stumble says to thee: ‘Rise to thy feet,’ and if thou bid him: ‘Enter the fire,’ he enters it.

Who when thou wilt, if but a day, associates thee, and is contented but with a scrap, if such thy wish.

Although he have his wits collected, when he talks, he neither tells a lie nor claims more than his due.

He yields not to the call of any wish of his, nor lets a secret, trusted with him, get out of keep.

And oftentimes he makes one wonder at his skill, excelling both in prose and verse-stringing alike,

And were it not, by God, for life’s straitening stress, and little ones that sadly want clothing and food:

I would not sell him for the realms that Kisra rules.”

Now when I looked at his straight build and his exquisite beauty, I fancied him one of the youths of the garden of delight (Paradise), and quoth: “This is not a man, but for sooth an honoured angel.” Then I wished him to enounce his name, not from a desire to know it, but to see whether his elocution matched his comeliness and how his utterance responded to the fairness of his countenance. But he spoke not either sweet or bitter, and uttered not a sound of the son of slave-woman or a woman of free birth. So I turned aside from him and said: “Out upon thy impediment and be gone!” Then he burst out in laughter and shook with it, whereupon he nodded his head to me, and indited:

“O thou, whose wrath is kindled if I withhold my name, not thus a man, who in his dealings shows him fair!

But if thou be not pleased unless it be revealed, then listen: Joseph I am, am Joseph, hear!

Now have I lifted to thee the veil and if thy wits are sharp, thou knowest, but I fancy thou knowest not.”

Then he allayed my anger by his poetry, and captivated my heart by his sorcery, so that I was too bewildered to perceive the truth, and made oblivious of the story of Joseph the faithful, and I concerned myself only with asking his master’s charge for him, and inquiring after the amount of his price, so that I might pay it in full. Now I thought he would look askance at me and demand from me a high sum, but he did not soar whither I had soared, nor held he on to that to which I held on, nay, on the contrary he said: “Here is the boy! if the price is low, and his keep but slight, his master thinks himself blessed in him and loves him all the better for it, and I wish above all to make thee fond of the lad by lightening to thee the price for him; so weigh out two hundred dirhems if thou wilt, and be thankful to me as long as thou livest.” So I paid him the amount at once, as the lawful price is paid in a cheap bargain, and it occurred not to my mind, that everyone who sells cheap, makes one pay dear. Now when the transaction was concluded, and separation was impending, both eyes of the lad brimmed over with tears, though they were not the bloody tears of grief; then he stepped up to his master, and said:

“Allah confound thee! is it right to sell one such as me to fill the hungry bellies,

And is it walking in the path of justice, to make me bear what cannot be endured?

To try me sore with terror after terror, though one like me, if tried, cannot be frightened?

Yet hast thou probed me and experienced from me good counsels, unalloyed with any falsehood.

How often hast thou set me as a net for game, and I brought home prey captured in my snares;

And hast imposed on me tasks difficult that were obeyed, though I might have refused them.

How many a battle that I had to fight in, how many a booty, and I had no share.

And never, all my days, did I a sin, which, if thou break’st with me, could be revealed [unveiled],

Nor couldst thou stumble on a fault of mine, praise be to God, to hide it, or proclaim it.

How canst thou cast me off then so light-heartedly, as skilful women cast away their shreds?

And why allows thy soul thee to enslave me, and offer me for sale as goods are sold?

Wouldst thou not shield my honour, as I shield thy own concerns the day when parting grieves us,

And say to him who bartered for me: ‘This is Sakâbi, neither to buy nor borrow’?

Now, I am not, for sooth, below that horse, but far above thy nature is their nature

And boldly sing I out: trading on me, my worth was lost to them, and what a worth!”

When the old man had understood his couplets and taken in [the meaning of] his ditty, he fetched a deep sigh and wept so as to make weep the far away, and said to me: “I hold this lad in the place of my son, and distinguish him not from the lobes of my liver, and were it not for the emptiness of my abode and the extinction of my lamp, he would not go out of my nest till he escorted my bier. Now thou hast seen what has come to him of the pangs of separation, and the believer is kind and gentle. So wouldst thou have a mind, for the soothing of his heart, and the removal of his grief, to stipulate with me for the cancelling of his sale, whenever I asked for it, and not to find me importune if I should press for the same, for it is amongst the choice traditions transmitted by the trustworthy, that ‘he who grants redemption to one repenting of his bargain, Allah remits to him his transgressions.’” Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Thereupon I made to him a promise, prompted by shame, but within my heart I thought otherwise. Then he bade the boy to approach him, and kissed him between both his eyes, inditing, while the tears were coursing from his lids:

“Bear patiently, my soul may be thy ransom, what thou hast met of sorrow and of anguish,

May not for long the time of parting last, nor flag the beasts that bring us to reunion;

Through aid of God, the Mighty, the Creator.”

Then he said to him: “I commend thee to the keeping of one who is a good master,” and tucked up his skirt and turned away. But the lad remained sobbing and wailing until the other might have gone the length of a mile, and when he had recovered himself and stopped the flow of his tears, he said: “Dost thou know for what I have wailed and what has been my object therein?” I said: “It is, I trow, the separation from thy master which has made thee weep.” Said he: “Thou art in one valley, and I am in another, and what a distance there is between a wisher and his wish.” Then he indited:

“By Allah, weeping was I not for friend departed, nor eke for loss of any pleasure or delight,

But tears were flowing from my eyelids for a fool, whose eyes, though opened wide, led into pitfalls him,

So that he came to grief and was sadly disgraced, and lost his white engraven ones, his lustrous coin.

Woe thee, have not those subtle words warned thee enough, that I was free, and hence not lawful was my sale?

For clear as daylight should it be what Joseph meant.”

Now I looked at his speech as a thing seen in the mirror of one who jests, or the exhibition of one indulging in pleasantry, but he waxed obstinate [restive] with the obstinacy [restiveness] of one who claims a right, and protested not to be tainted with the clay of servile condition; so we jostled about in an altercation which terminated in fisticuffs and led to an appeal to the judge. When we had explained the case to the Kadi, and read to him our Sura, he said: “Indeed, he who has warned has excused himself, he who has put one on his guard is like one who has given information, he who has made one see the state of affairs, has done no damage. Now what you both have said in explanation, demonstrates that this lad has tried to rouse thee, but thou wouldst not be awaked, and has advised thee, but thou wouldst not understand; therefore veil the ailment of thy stupidity and hide it, and blame thyself, but blame not him; beware to lay hold on him, and to wish to make him thy slave, for he is free of body, and not subject to be exposed for sale. It was only yesterday that his father brought him into my presence, a little while before sunset, declaring him to be his branch that he had grown, and that he had no heir but him.” Then I said to the Kadi: “And knowest thou his father? may Allah put him to shame!” He replied: “How should Abû Zayd be unknown for whose wound there is no retaliation, and of whom every Kadi has stories to tell and proclamation to make.” Then I gnashed my teeth in anger and said, “There is no power and no strength, but in Allah, the Exalted, the Great,” becoming wide awake, but when the time had slipped, and making sure that his face-veil was a net of his cunning, and the crowning couplet of his poem. So my mishap made me cast down my looks, and I swore that I would never again deal with the bearer of a face-veil as long as I lived, bewailing all the while my losing bargain, and the shame to which I should be put amongst my comrades. Then the Kadi said to me, when he saw my distress and became clearly aware of the brunt of my burning grief: “Ay such a one, thy loss has given thee a lesson, and he who has roused [awakened] thy wits, has not done thee an injury; take then warning by thy adventure and conceal from thy friends what has befallen thee; remember always what has occurred to thee, so as to keep in mind the admonition which thy money has administered thee and mould thyself after the disposition of one who has been tried and shown patience and who has profited by the examples set before him.” Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Thereupon I took leave from him, donning the raiment of shame and sorrow and trailing my skirt of defrauded folly, and I purposed to show Abû Zayd my aversion by shunning him, and to cut him for the remainder of my life, deliberately keeping aloof from his abode, and avoiding to see him, until he came upon me in a narrow path, and welcomed me with the welcome of an affectionate friend, though all I did was to frown at him and keep silent. Then he said: “What ails thee that thou turnest up thy nose at thy mate?” Answered I: “Hast thou forgotten that thou hast plotted against me, and cheated me, and done the thing which thou hast done?” Then he puffed his cheek and cracked it at me in derision, after which he indited appeasingly:

“O thou who show’st estrangement and curl’st up thy brow in savage scowl,

And featherest the shafts of blame that hit as hard, nay, harder, than arrows sharp

And sayest who sells a free-born man, as a nigger is sold or a dusky nag,

Cut short thy say, and know I am not the first therein as thou seem’st to think:

Heretofore the tribes sold Joseph, though they were what people know they were.

So it is; and by the holy house that in Tihâmeh is visited

And those who circumambulate it, emaciated, with ashen locks,

Not had I stood in this place of shame, I swear it, if I owned a coin.

So excuse thy brother, and bother not with the blame of one who ignores the facts.”

Thereupon he said: “My excuse is plain and thy dirhems are gone. But if thy shrinking from me and thy aversion towards me arises from the excess of thy tender concern for the remainder of thy pelf, I am not of those who sting twice and make one tread upon two cinders, and if thou art cross and givest way to thy stinginess, in order to escape the bait that hangs in my nets, the mourning-women will weep over thy wits.” Said Al Hârith, son of Hammâm: So he deluded me by his deceitful utterance and his powerful sorcery into turning his friend and becoming attached to him again, flinging the remembrance of his exploit behind me, though it was an abominable thing.

This composition is in the style of the eighth and the earlier part of the twenty-ninth Assembly. Abû Zayd describes, in a company of distinguished men of literary tastes in Shiraz, where Ḥârith has met them, a wine-cask metaphorically under the simile of a maiden, for whom, as he tells the people, he desires to purchase wedding attire. They give him money, and it turns out that by the wedding attire is meant a flagon and a cup, which were necessary to wed as it were the wine-cask to the drinker. The allegory may have been suggested by the circumstance that the scene of the event is Shiraz, a city celebrated for its wine, or rather for the manufacture of a peculiar kind of wine-flagons, which on account of their exquisite workmanship are used in preference to others for presenting in them wines of superior quality.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, narrated: In my roam-ings I met in Shiraz with an Assembly, who invited the passer-by to stay, even if he should be in haste, and I was unable to tear myself away from them, and my foot would not move to step past them, for I inclined to them, so that I might test their intrinsic worth and see how their fruit would be from their blossom. Now they proved to be select people, and he who inclined to them was profited, and while we were engaged in talk pleasanter than the songs of birds and more delightful than the milk of grapes, there entered our midst a man in two tattered pieces of clothing who had wellnigh reached the two terms of life. He greeted us with a glib tongue, and expressed himself in the delivery of the eloquent; then he sat down as one joining in the assembly, with his hands round his knees, and said: “O Allah, let us be of the rightly guided.” Now the people made little of him, on account of his ragged attire, forgetting that they would have to reckon with the two things smallest in him (his tongue and heart), and they began to bandy between them the chapter of rhetoric, counting its aloës as common wood, but he vouchsafed not a word, nor declared himself by any sign until he had probed their intellectual powers, and knew who of them made rise the scale and who weighed it down. But when he had brought to light their buried treasures and exhausted their quivers, he said. “O ye people, if you had known that behind the plug there is pure wine you would not have slighted a bearer of tattered garments, but asked what parts he possesses.” Then he let flow of the springs of learning, and of choice sayings that whereby he drew forth marvels of wonderment and which was worthy to be written in fluid gold; and when he had captivated all their senses, and made every heart turn to him, he stirred for taking his departure, and made ready to go. But the company clung to him and barred the course of his progress, saying: “We have just seen the sign of thy arrow, now make known to us the shell of thy egg and its yolk.” Then he was silent with the silence of one choked by tears, whereupon he wailed so that he was pitied by all. Said the narrator: Now when I saw the mixture and tinge of Abû Zayd, and his wonted ways and manners of proceeding, I looked hard at the old man, with all his defacement of countenance and fulsomeness, and lo! it was he himself. But I concealed his secret, as an internal disease is concealed, and veiled his cunning scheme, although he did not think so, until when he ceased wailing, he blinked at me with an eye full of laughter, whereupon he began to indite with the tongue of one who shams tearfulness:

“I crave Allah’s forgiveness, humbling myself, for all the sins whose heavy load burdens me.

O folks, how many olden maids kept at home, though in assemblies were their virtues praised about

Have I cut down not fearing from any heir that might revenge them on me or claim a fine.

And when the sin thereof was laid at my door, I boldly cleared myself and said: fate it was.

And never stopped my soul its headlong career in cutting damsels down, and kept going stray,

Till hoariness shone on the crown of my head and checked me from performing such evil deeds.

So since my temples have turned grey never shed I any more a maiden’s blood, old or young,

But now I rear, in spite of what may be seen of my condition and of my slacking trade,

A lass who for a long time has stayed at home, sheltered and veiled carefully from air itself.

And she in spite of being thus kept recluse, has wooers for her comeliness and pleasingness.

But for her outfit, at the least, I can’t do without a hundred, though I try as I may,

While in my hand there is not one silver coin, the ground is empty and the sky yields no rain.

Now is one here to help me that I may wed her amidst the singing-girls’ cheering strain,

Then let him wash my grief with its proper soap and cleanse my heart from sorrows that worry me,

That he may cull my praises, whose fragrancy will only cease to breathe when man prays in vain.”

Said the narrator: Then there was none left in the company but his palm opened to him and his kindness reached him, and when his wish had proved successful and his hundred was completed, he praised them as beseems the upright, and tucked up his skirt for departure. But I followed him, wishing to learn who was the foster-daughter of his chamber and whom he had cut down in his early life, and it was as if the swiftness of my rising had made him aware of my intention, for he approached me and said: “Hearken to me,

“‘Cutting down’ means with one like me ‘thinning the wine’ not, O friend, with the lance or sword killing a man.

And the maid, kept at home with me, means the daughter of the grape-tree, not virgin of high descent [extraction].

And to wed her to cup and flask was the errand, which thou saw’st me intent upon when I joined you.

Understand then what I have said, and decide on kind forbearance, if so thy will, or rebuking.”

Then he said: “I am quarrelsome and thou art fainthearted, so there is a wide gulf between us.” Thereupon he bade me farewell, and went away, making me send after him more than one glance of loving affection.

In this Assembly Abû Zayd proposes twenty riddles or conundrums of a particular kind, and all of the same form, which consists in finding a word resembling a given short sentence in such a manner, that its component parts are synonymous with the members of the phrase in question. The introduction to the Assembly itself adduces as an instance the query, what is like an-naum fât, Sleep has departed, to which the answer would be al-karâmât, pl. of karâmah in the sense of “wonder,” “miracle,” because the initial part of the word, al-karâ, means “slumber,” and the final syllable, mât, signifies “is dead.” The English reader of this translation will not be worse off than Abû Zayd’s Arabic audience, for the author gives no solution in the body of the Assembly, leaving its discovery to the ingenuity of the listener, but if his curiosity and interest are roused by the quaint form of the questions and the lively style in which they are introduced, he will find at the cost of small trouble amusement as well as linguistic instruction in the short commentary, which Ḥarîri himself has attached to this composition.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I made my camel of foreign travel kneel down at Maltîyah, and my pouch was at that time well filled with coin. So I made it my wont, when I had deposed there my staff, to frequent the places of entertainment and to hunt after rare pleasures, so that nothing escaped me worthy to be seen or heard, and no play-ground or resort of enjoyment was left unvisited by me, until, when I had no further business there, and no desire for longer stay, I resolved to expend my remaining gold in buying travelling gear. Now when I had completed my preparations, and was ready for departure, or all but ready, I saw a group of nine people, who had purchased some wine, wherewith they had ascended a hillock, and their winning manners captivated men’s eyes, while their pleasantry was sweet-spoken. Therefore I wended towards them from a wish to join in their conversation, not in their drinking-bout, and from eagerness to mix with them, not to taste the contents of their tumblers. Now when I had become the tenth in their string, and a companion in their forenoon meeting, I found them to be a medley assemblage thrown together from the deserts, though the woof of literary culture united them as with the union of relationship, and matched them in their ranks, so that they shone like the luminaries of the Twins, and appeared as a community whose members are of one kindred. So I rejoiced at having been guided to them, and praised the lucky star that had made me light upon them, beginning to shake my arrow together with their arrows, and to solace myself with the perfume of their refinement, not with that of their wine, until the branch-roads of discussion led us to the proposing of riddles, as if thou sayst, intending thereby al-karâmat, what is like “al-naum fât” (sleep has departed), which may be expressed by “al-karâ mât” (slumber is dead), whereupon we began to display both Sohá (the smallest star in the Bear) and the moon, and to cull both the thorn and the fruit, and while we were spreading out the fresh and the old, and drawing from [fishing out of] the pot the fat and the lean, an old man intruded upon us, whose bloom of complexion and beauty of form had gone, while knowledge and experience remained with him. Then he stood as one who listens and observes, picking up what we were scattering, until the purses were empty and it became obvious that no more was to be hoped for. Now when he saw the flagging of their powers [faculties], and that both he who drew water from the top of the well, and he who drew it from the bottom, were equally baffled, he gathered his skirts together, and turned his back on us, saying: “Not everything black is a date, nor is everything ruddy wine.” Then we clung to him as the chameleon clings to the trees, and blocked his progress as with bars, saying to him: “The cure of a rent is to stitch it, and if not, then retaliation! retaliation! So hope not to wound while thou art safe, and to make bleed the gash while thou goest scot-free.” Then he turned his bridle, sitting down in his place for a good stay, and said: “Since you have challenged me to discussion, I shall give the judgment of Solomon in the matter of the sown field. Know, ye owners of literary accomplishments and golden coloured wine, that the proposing of riddles is for the purpose of testing the quickness of wit and bringing out its hidden treasures, under the condition, that they are founded on a real resemblance and contain meaning words, and some scholarly nicety. For if they are of a style different from this they are refuse [worthless], and not to be put into the casket [as something worthy to be preserved], and I noticed that your definitions kept not within these limits, and distinguished not between the acceptable and the objectionable.” We said to him: “Thou art right, and hast spoken the truth. But measure out to us somewhat from thy select store, and pour upon us from thy main sea” [ocean]. Said he: “I will do so in a manner that those who failed may not doubt, nor look at me with suspicion.” Then he turned to the foremost of the people, and said:

1. “O thou who excels in sharpness, who strikes the fire-sticks of merit,

What is it that likens saying: ‘hunger is cheered by provisions’?”

Then he smiled to the second, and indited:

2. “O man of surpassing honour, unsullied by any baseness,

What is as if one in riddling would say: ‘a back looked askance at’?”

Then he glanced at the third, saying:

3. “O thou, the children of whose thought resemble coin of ready course,

What is like saying to a man thou pliest with riddles: ‘he met a gift’?”

Then he stretched his neck towards the fourth, and said:

4. “O thou who solvest what is intricate of riddles and enigmas,

Reveal to me that which resembles to ‘take a thousand gold coins’?”

Then he cast his eye upon the fifth, and said:

5. “O such an one of shrewdest wit, endowed with brightest sagacity,

What resembles ‘he neglects adornment’? If rightly guided, be quick and tell.”

Then he turned in the direction of the sixth, and said:

6. “O thou from whose capacity a rival’s steps stop short by far,

What is like thy saying to him who joins with thee in riddles: ‘Hold in! hold in!’?”

Then he winked his eyebrows towards the seventh, and said:

7. “O thou who own’st intellect of brilliancy, in subtleness high of rank amongst thy friends,

Explain, and, mind, tell aright in doing so, what saying is similar to ‘brother fled’?”

Then he bade the eighth to listen, and indited:

8. “O thou whose gardens of excellence are fresh with flowers in bright array,

What is like telling the sharp of wit in solving riddles: ‘he chose not silver’?”

Then he cast a glance upon the ninth, and said:

9. “O thou to whom they point for a mind of ready wit and for eloquence,

Expound to us, what is like the speech of the riddler: ‘tread upon the crowd’?”

Said the narrator: Now when he came at last to me, he patted me on the shoulder saying:

10. “O thou possessed of subtleties to baffle sore and floor opponents,

Thou makest clear, so tell us what is like my saying: “be still, my uncle’?”

Then he said: “I have watered you and allowed you time, and if you want me to let you have another draught, I let you have it.” So the brunt [heat] of thirst drove us to ask for a second drink. Whereupon he said: “I am not like one who from selfishness stints his boon-companions, nor of those whose fat remains in their own dish.” Then he returned to the first, and said:

11. “O thou whose sharpness unfolds a riddle [unties a ticklish knot], however tight,

If one propose as a riddle, ‘take this,’ say true what is like it.”

Then he bent his neck towards the second, and said:

12. “O thou whose eloquence appears clear from his skill in explanation,

What is as if people would say: ‘an onager has been decked out’?”

Then he blinked towards the third, and said:

13. “O thou who in sagacity and sharpness art like Asma‘î,

What is like saying by way of riddle: ‘spend lavishly, thou con-querest then’?”

Then he looked sharp at the fourth, and indited:

14. “O thou who if knotty questions arise enlightens their darkness,

What is it that likens saying: ‘sniff in the perfume of grape-wine’?”

Then he ogled the fifth, and said:

15. “O thou whose intellect lets him not give way to anxious thoughts and doubt,

What resembles saying to a man expert in riddles: ‘shield the ruined’?”

Then he stepped in front of the sixth, and indited:

16. “O thou endowed with sagacity in which thy perfect worth appears,

The saying, ‘he travelled awhile at night,’ say what a thing is like to it.”

Then he turned his glance towards the seventh, and said:

17. “O thou whose wit, brisk of market, gives thee adornment and honour,

Say, for thou art able to tell us, what word is like ‘love a coward’?”

Then he looked in the direction of the eighth, and said:

18. “O thou who in fame hast reached a height surpassing every height by far,

What resembles, tell us, saying: ‘give a crook [crutch] deprived of the handle-part’?”

Then he smiled to the ninth, and said:

19. “O thou who hold’st undoubtedly fine judgment and elocution,

What is like saying to the skilled in solving riddles: “I own the bullock’?”

Then he clutched my sleeve, and said:

20. “O thou who hast penetrating sharpness of wit in solving intricate question, bright as a star,

What is resembling the saying: ‘whiz of a muzzle’? Explain so that thy expounding renders it clear.”

Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Now when he had delighted us with what we had heard, and challenged us to disclose its meaning, we answered: “We are not of the horses of this racecourse, and our hands are not equal to untying these knots; so if thou wilt explain, thou conferrest a favour, and if thou wilt keep it hidden, thou inflictest grief.” Then he consulted his mind for and against and shook both his arrows (of consent or refusal), until he was pleased to vouchsafe the bounty, coming forward to the company, and saying: “O ye people of eloquence and distinction, I will forthwith make known to you that which you know not, and thought not you would ever know, so fasten upon it your vessels and freshen therewith the assemblies.” Then he began an explanation which furbished the intellects, and withal emptied the sleeves (breast pockets), until the understandings became brighter than the sun, and the pockets as if yesterday they had not been rich. Now when he bethought himself of departure, he was asked about his abode. Then he sighed as sigheth the bereft mother, and said:

“Each mountain-path is path for me, and ample is my dwelling there,

Save that for Serûj town my heart is crazed with longing, mad with love.

She is my virgin land from whence my erewhile youthful breeze has sprung,

And for her mead so rich of growth above all meads I fondly yearn.

Afar from her no sweet is sweet to me, delightful no delight.”

Concluded the narrator his tale: Thereupon I said to my companions, “This is Abû Zayd, the Serûji, whose riddles are the least of his elegancies,” and I began to descry to them the beauty of his diction, and the obedience of speech to his will. Then I turned round, and lo! he had leaped up, and was gone with what he had gained. So we wondered at his performance, when he had fallen in our midst, and knew not whither he had wended and swerved.