Assemblies - The Assemblies of Hariri, Volume 2

In Ṣa‘dah, one of the chief towns of Yemen, Al Ḥârith has contracted an intimacy with the Kadi of the place, whom he occasionally assists in the decision of law cases. One day an old man presents himself before them, complaining bitterly of the untractableness and disobedience of his son. The youth retorts, that his father urges him to beg, although he had formerly strongly impressed him with the ignominy of the practice, in support of which he quotes some verses that his father had taught him on the subject. The latter rejoins that necessity knows no law, and recites on his part some lines of the boy’s composition, to the effect, that rather than meekly to submit to poverty a needy man should appeal to the liberality of the wealthy. Thus placed on the horns of a dilemma, the youth sullenly disclaims the use of any such appeal, when munificence is no longer to be found in the world. This stings the Kadi, who belongs to the tribe of Temîm, renowned for their generous disposition, into bestowing a bounty on them, and they leave the court together, the father well pleased with his booty, the son simulating earnest remorsefulness. Ḥârith, whose instinct had told him that the apparent excessive decrepitude of the old man is only a blind, follows and overtakes them, and a cordial recognition takes place between him and Abû Zayd, who, however, soon manages to give him the slip, so as to escape all further inquiries.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I had travelled up to Sa‘dah, at a time when I was straight of stature like a spear-shaft and of vigour that outstripped the daughters of Sa‘dah (the young of the onager or ostrich). Now when I had seen its freshness and fed [my looks] on her meads, I inquired from the most knowing of its informants, whom of lordly persons and mines of excellence it contained, so that I might take him for a beacon-light (ember) in times of darkness, and my tower of strength in days of oppression. Then there was pointed out to me a Kadi, wide of range [in generosity], easy in his circumstances, a Temîmî in descent and disposition. So I ceased not seeking approach to him by respectful attendance, at the same time making myself valuable to him by being chary in visiting, until I became the echo of his voice, and the Salmân of his household, and while gathering his honey and inhaling the fragrance of his bay-tree, I used to witness the contentions of litigant parties and to mediate between the unoffending of them and the offender. Now when the Kadi was sitting to give judgment on a day of flocking together and crowding, lo! there entered an old man, in plumage worse for the wear, of shaky appearance, who looked at the throng with the sharp look of the money-sifter. Then he stated that he had an unmanageable adversary, and it was not but as the scintillating of a spark or the intimation of a beckoning finger, that a lad was put in presence [bold] as though he were a lion. Said the old man: “May Allah help the Kadi, and preserve him from [ever becoming guilty of] connivance! behold this my son, like a bad reed-pen or a rusty sword, ignores the predicaments of equity, and suckles the teats of contravention [contradiction, opposition, gainsaying]. When I advanced, he drew back, when I spoke plain, he shuffled in his speech, when I kindled a fire, he put it out, and when I roasted, he scattered ashes, although I had reared him since he first crawled until he was a youth, and was to him the kindest of trainers and educators.” Then the Kadi made much of [put great stress upon] his complaint, and those around him were amazed at it [as at a case of grave concern]. Thereupon he said: “I protest that disobedience in children is one bereavement of twain, and that many an instance of infertility keeps the eye cooler.” Said the boy whom this speech had incensed: “By Him who has set up judges for the sake of justice, and possessed them of the reins of preferment and discrimination, forsooth, he never prayed, but I said Amen, and he never made a claim, but I maintained its truth, he never said ‘labbaika,’ but I donned the pilgrim’s cloak, and he never struck fire, but I gave sparks, in spite of his being like one who craves for the eggs of the cock-hawk, and wants the camels to fly.” Then the Kadi said to him: “Wherewith then used he to vex thee and to try thy obedience?” He said: “Ever since his substance has gone, and he has been visited with penury, he urges me to roll about my tongue in begging, and to ask rain from the clouds of bounty, so that his draught, which was dried up, might flow afresh in abundance, and what was broken in his fortunes might be set again. Yet when he had first taken me into schooling, and taught me culture of mind, he imbued my heart with the notion, that inordinate desire is a thing to be blamed, and covetousness worthy of rebuke, that greed breeds indigestion, and begging is a reproach. Then he indited to me, straight from the parting of his lips, with all the polish of his verse:

“‘Content thyself with scanty means, giving thanks therefor, like one who recks the little mighty much.

Shun greediness, that never fails lowering the worth of any wight who may take to it.

Fend thy fair fame and shield it with jealous care, as with a frown the lion would fend his mane.

Bear thou with patience, and forbear, poverty, as lords of holy purpose bore patiently;

Spill not the water of thy face even if he whom thou beg’st from spends on thee gifts galore.

For free is he, who if a mote hurts his eye conceals the mote from even his pupils twain,

And if his whilom gold-stuff has gone to rags sees not his way by begging to fret his cheeks.’”

Then the old man contracted his brows and scowled at his son, and rushed upon him and growled, saying: “Hush! O thou disobedient one, O thou who art choking and stifling me! Woe betide thee, wilt thou teach thy mother how to copulate, and thy nurse how to give thee suck? forsooth, the scorpion has rubbed himself against the snake, and the weanlings have coursed along with the stallions.” Then it was as if he repented of what had escaped his mouth, and affection led him to conciliate the boy, for he looked at him with the eye of the fondly disposed, and lowered to him the wing of the kindly, saying: “Alas! dear son, those who are bidden to be contented, and chidden from self-abasement are the owners of merchandise, and the workers for gain through handicraft, but as for those who are possessed of needs, an exception is made in their behalf with regard to matters prohibited. And granted thou wast ignorant of this interpretation, and it has not reached thee what has been said [on this point], wast not thou he who opposed his father in what he said, not revering him:

“‘Sit not content with distress and suffering hunger’s pangs, that people may say he is high-minded and patience full.

See for thyself if a land that is not decked out with plants, is like a land all around hedged in with trees, rich of growth;

So wend aside from what fools are in their sloth pointing to, for say, what good can there be in wood that bears never fruit?

And lead thy beasts from a place where thou sustainest brunt of thirst, to pasture-grounds whereupon in fertile flow falls the rain,

And ask the drought to descend full from the breast of the cloud, for if thy hands are bedewed then may thy gain prosper thee,

But if thou shouldst be denied, there is no harm in rebuff, for Moses met heretofore, and Prophet Khiẓr, with the same.’”

Said the narrator: Now when the Kadi saw the contradiction between the speech of the lad and his action, and that he adorned himself with that which was not his own, he looked with wrathful eye, and said: “Temîmî at one time, and Kaisî at another? Fie upon him, who belies what he says, and changes colour as the Ghûl changes colour.” Then the boy said: “By Him, who has made thee a key for the truth, and an opener [of justice] amongst mankind, I have been caused to forget, since I became sorrowful, and my wits have been turned rusty, since I waxed thirsty. Moreover, where is the open door, and the ready gift? And is there one left who bestows with full hands, and if asked for food says: ‘Take.’” Thereupon the Kadi replied to him: “Stop! for among the missing arrows is one that hits, and not every lightning deceives, so distinguish between the flashes if thou watchest the clouds [for rain], and testify not but what thou knowest.” Now when the old man saw that the Kadi was wroth on account of the generous, and thought it a serious thing to reckon all men as [to be] misers, he knew that he would abet his word, and show his munificence. So he belied him not [was not slow] in setting his net, and baking his fish before the fire, and quoth saying:

“O Kadi, thou whose wisdom and kindliness more deeply are rooted than mount Raẓwá,

This youth maintains, misguided by ignorance, that in this world none exercise bounty,

Not knowing that thou art the son of a tribe, whose gifts are like yon quails and you Manna.

Confer thou then that which will make him ashamed of what he forged of impudent falsehood,

And let me go rejoicing and giving praise for what in helpful bounty thou spendest.”

Then the Kadi was pleased at his speech, and bestowed on him liberally of his largess, whereupon he turned his face towards the boy, for whom he had already headed the arrows of rebuke, and said to him: “Hast thou now seen the refutation of thy assertion, and the error of thy opinion? So be not henceforth hasty in thy blame, and pare no wood before testing it; and beware to refuse obedience to thy father. For if thou return to thy revolt against him, there will alight on thee from me that which thou deservest.” Then the youth was dumfounded with repentance (fell to biting his hand with remorse), and sought shelter by his parent’s side, and presently rose and sped away, while the old man followed him inditing:

“Let him whom his fell fortune has treated ill repair to Ṣa‘dah town and her Kadi.

His bounty shames the bounteous that went before, his justice baffles those who come after.”

Said the narrator: Now I was bewildered in my mind as to whether I knew the old man, or not, until he had started off on his journey, when I persuaded myself to follow him, even if need be to his abode; haply I might become aware of his secrets and learn what tree was the fuel of his fire. So I flung from me what clung to me, and set out whither he had set out, and he ceased not to step along and I to follow in his track, he to get further, and I to come nearer to him, until both were face to face, and recognition was incumbent on any two intimates. Then he showed gladness, and did away with his shakiness, saying: “He who deceives his brother may not live (enjoy life).” Accordingly I knew that he was the Serûji and no mistake, and without change of condition. So I hastened towards him to shake [clasp] his hand, and to inquire after his good and evil hap. Thereupon he said: “Here is the dutiful son of thy brother at hand for thee” (i.e., let him tell thee what thou wantest to know), and left me passing his way. The youth, however, did but laugh, then he fled, as yonder had fled. So I went back after I had ascertained their identity, but where was I to find the twain of them?

“In the thirty-eighth Abû Zayd addresses the governor of a town” (for Englishmen it may not be without interest that the town in question is the famous city of Merv) “in some fine verses in praise of liberality to men of genius.” With these few lines Chenery sums up this Maḳâmah, and Preston says that it contains little beyond a repetition of circumstances and phrases which occur in other Assemblies, and is of inferior interest to most of them. It should, however, be kept in view that Ḥarîri’s work is not one to be read in uninterrupted succession, like a production of modern fiction, except perhaps by scholars. The whole plan of the work renders it almost inevitable that, to quote once more the words of the former distinguished translator, “the repetition of similar adventures and similar rhetoric becomes monotonous.” But Ḥarîri is an author whose book may be taken in hand by a reader of cultivated mind and refined taste at any moment in which the mood seizes him, and be opened at random, when he will always be sure to find much that will entertain, interest, or instruct him, and if he happens to hit on the present Assembly, taking it by itself and on its own merits, I have no doubt that he will proclaim it to be a composition of exquisite beauty, conceived in Ḥarîri’s most happy vein, and written in his most brilliant style.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: It had become dear to me ever since my foot moved and my pen sput-tured, to take literary learning for my roadway and the kindling of my torch thereat for my pursuit. Accordingly I furrowed out its doctors and the treasures of its mysteries, and when I had found of them [such as are] the desire of the seeker, and the burning log to light one’s fire from, I clutched with my hand his stirrup, and beseeched him for a dole from out his hoard. Withal I met none that equalled the Serûji in the abundant shower of his clouds, and in applying the pitch to the places where the symptoms of scab appear, save that he used to wander abroad faster than the proverb, and swifter than the moon in her changes, wherefore from longing to encounter him, and from my delight in joining his assemblies, I was eager for peregrination, and found enjoyment in travel which [according to a saying of Mohammed’s] is part of the [infernal] torment. So at a time when I had strayed to Merv, and no wonder, the rousing of birds, and the presage which is the harbinger of good, gave me happy tidings of a meeting with him. Hence I ceased not spying for him in the assemblies and on the arrival of caravans, but I found none to give me news of him, nor saw I any trace or speck of him, until despair got the better of hope, and expectation became reduced and subdued. Now one day I was in the presence of the Wâlî of Merv, who was one of those who combine excellence with dominion, when lo, Abû Zayd rose to sight in the rags of one poverty-stricken, and greeted with the greeting of the needy when he meets a lord of the crown. Then he said to the Wâlî: “Know thou, mayest thou be kept safe from blame, and spared sorrow, that on him who is entrusted with offices, hopes depend, and to him whose degrees have been exalted, needs [wants] are referred, and that he is the fortunate, who if he has the power and destiny aids him, pays the zakât for divine favours, as he pays the zakât for cattle, and who clings to the people commanding reverence, as he clings to his wife and close relations. Truly thou hast become, praise be to Allah, the support of thy city, and the pillar of thy age, to whose sanctuary the saddle-beasts are driven, and from whose generosity bounties are hoped, to whose court requests are carried, and from whose palm relief is expected to descend, for Allah’s grace upon thee has been great, and His beneficence in thy behalf plentiful. Now I am an old man who grovels in the dust after having rolled in riches, and who lacks greencrop when he has waxed hoary. I have come to thee from a distant place, and a wretched state, hoping from thy sea a swell, and from thy rank a lift, and hope is the best means of propitiation for him who begs, and the best gift of him who gives. Therefore bestow upon me what is incumbent on thee, and deal me fair, as Allah has dealt fair with thee, and beware to turn thy face from him who visits thee, and repairs to thy house, and to close thy fist [in denial] from him who asks thy gift and appeals for support to thy generosity. For he excels not who is stingy, nor goes he the right way who hoards up. But he is the man of head and heart (al-labîb), who when he has, bestows, and when he first earns a profit, profits others, and the liberal is he who, when he is asked for the gift of gold, is not afraid to give.” Then he held in, looking out for the fruit of his planting and watching for the gratification of his soul. Now the Wâlî wished to know whether his well was shallow, or whether his spring had continuity. So he bent his head to think how to strike sparks from his fire-stick and how to discriminate the temper of his blade. But the secret of his silence and of the delaying of his gift was hidden from Abû Zayd: so he flared up in wrath, and indited improvising:

“Despise not [may never thee a curse betide] men of learning because they show clad in rags and destitute paupers,

Nor fail to pay due regard to him who comes full of hope, both if he be glib of speech or if he be tongue-tied.

But give thy bounty to him who solicits help from thee and raise by thy timely aid one whom thou seest downcast.

For hail the wealth of a man whose wealth obtains praise for him, the fame of which travellers through all the world blaze forth.

And he who buys fair renown from humankind by his gifts, will never be overreached, and though he gave rubies.

But for magnanimity the wise would have no excuse, if he aspires to what goes beyond the mere day’s food.

Yet to acquire eulogy he strives, and moved by his love of nobleness, lifts his neck to aim at high places.

When he who is generous inhales the fragrance of thanks, he spurns the fragrance of musk, however fine pounded,

And never meet stinginess and praise so that one would think: a lizard this, that a fish, in water this, that ashore [on land].

Beneficence is beloved by men for its qualities, whereas the closefisted wight is all his days hated.

And his excuses to spend his riches with kindliness, keep blame on him evermore, and people’s stern censure.

Be bountiful then with what thy hands have been gathering, that he who begs for thy boon be ever dumfounded,

And take thy share, ere a stroke of fortune come over thee that shows thee thy tree of life deprived of its foliage.

For time is too fickle as in one state to endure, mayst thou delight in that state or may it be hateful.”

Said the narrator: Then the Wâlî called him near on account of his ravishing discourse, until he had made him alight on the seat of the circumciser, whereupon he dealt out to him from the streams of his donation that which prognosticated length of skirt and shortness of night for him. So he rose from his presence with a full sleeve and a merry heart. But I followed him, keeping in his direction and tracking his step, until, when he was well out of the Wâlî’s gate, and had got clear of his den, I said to him: “Mayst thou thrive on what has been given thee, and be allowed to enjoy long that which has been put in thy possession.” Then his face lit up and beamed, and he continued thanks to Allah, be He exalted, whereupon he strutted along with a proud swing, and indited straight off:

“Know, who has gained a portion by plodding dulness, or who owes rank to virtues of those before him.

That my earnings are due to worth, not to meddling, and my station to power of speech, not to kings’ grace.”

Then he said: “Out on him who blames learning, and hail to him who strives after it and makes it his pursuit;” wherewith he bade me farewell, and went away, leaving me aflame with longing for him.

Called by some important business to ‘Omân on the eastern coast of Arabia, Ḥârith is about to cross the Persian Gulf, when at the moment of departure an old man begs to be taken on board, promising the ship-company in return for their kindness to him, a safe passage, by means of a magic spell in his possession against all dangers of the sea. They comply with his request, and Ḥârith is enchanted when he recognises in the stranger his old friend Abû Zayd. At first all seems to go well. Probably, however, unknown to the rest of the company, some miscreant was on board, whose presence counteracted to a certain degree Abû Zayd’s panacea, for after the voyage had continued for some time under the most promising auspices, they are suddenly overtaken by a violent storm, which forces them to seek refuge in the port of an island. When their provisions begin to run dangerously short, Abû Zayd prevails on Ḥârith to go with him on land for a foraging expedition. Soon they arrived at a magnificent mansion, whose numerous servants are found to be plunged into the utmost grief, because the lady of the house is labouring in throes of a difficult child-birth, and her life almost despaired of. Abû Zayd reassures them, pretending to have another powerful charm for the occasion. With a great display of solemnity, he writes some verses on a piece of meerschaum in which he warns the child of the evils of existence and the troubles of life awaiting it in the world, and which, with delightful humour, are supposed, according to the innate perverseness of man’s heart, to act as an irresistible inducement for it to struggle into the light of day. Wrapped in a piece of silk, and profusely perfumed, the talisman is, at his orders, tied to the limbs of the labouring woman, and this time the incantation works well, for soon the confinement is happily got over. The lord of the mansion, in his boundless joy at the birth of a long desired son, not only overwhelms Abû Zayd with costly tokens of his gratitude, but attaches him to his household, with unlimited control over all his wealth. Ḥârith tries to persuade him to continue with him the voyage, but Abû Zayd refuses point blank, paraphrasing in another piece of his charming poetry the popular saying ubi bene ibi patria, and Ḥârith reluctantly separates from him, giving vent to his grief and disappointment in a wish, the savagery of which may playfully be converted into the essence of the milk of human kindness by the indulgent reader, who remembers the drift of Abû Zayd’s magical verses, and the words of the Greek poet:

“Best for man not to be born, second best, to die as soon as he can.”

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I clung, ever since the pile under my izâr had grown black, and the down of my cheek had sprouted, to fare through the deserts on the backs of Mahrî camels, now ascending a mountain-tract, now threading my way through lowland, so as to explore the wilds whether trodden or trackless, and to get to ken the road-stations and watering-places, making the blood flow from the hoofs of horses and camels and jading the swift steeds and the fleet dromedaries. Once when I was weary of desert-travel, and some matter of importance cropped up for me at Ṣuḥâr, I inclined to cross the billowy sea and to choose the swift-sailing ship. So I removed to it my chattels, and took along with me my provisions and water-bags; then I embarked therein as embarketh the timid, who registers vows, who blames himself and would fain find excuses. Scarcely had we settled on board, and hoisted the sails for speed, when we heard from the shore of the roadstead, while the night was darkening and waxing gloomy, a caller who said: “O ye people of this strongbuilt ship, driven on the high sea, by decree of the Mighty, the All-knowing, shall I direct you unto a merchandise that will deliver you from sore torment?” (Koran lxi. 10). Then we said: “Light for us a brand from thy fire, O thou guide, and show us the right path, as the trusty friend shows the right path to the trusty friend.” He replied: “Will ye take for companion a son of the road, who carries his provisions in a basket, and whose shadow is not heavy, wishing for nought but a sleeping-place?” So we resolved to lower our wings to him, and not to be stingy in providing for his need. When he had come aboard of the ship, he said: “I take refuge with Allah from the paths of destruction.” Then he said: “We have been told in the Traditions, handed down by the doctors of divinity, that Allah, be He exalted, has not made it binding on the ignorant to learn, any more than He has made it incumbent on the learned to teach. Now I possess a charm transmitted from the Prophets, and I have an advice for you sound of proofs, which it is not in my power to conceal, nor in my nature to withhold. Ponder then my speech and take it in, and learn what you are taught so that you may teach others.” Thereupon he shouted with the shout of the boaster, exclaiming: “Know ye what it is? It is the spell of travellers, when voyaging on the sea, and the shield against anxiety, when the wave of the deep rages. By it Noah was protected from the flood, together with what was with him of animated beings, as the verses of the Koran record it.” Then after some stories he read out, and some tinselled talk he polished up, he quoted [from the Koran]: “And he said, ‘Embark ye therein: in the name of God be its course, and its riding at anchor.’” Thereupon he sighed with the sigh of those burdened with debt, or of the fervent servants of Allah, the revered ones, saying: “Behold me, I have stood amongst you in the stead of the bringer of tidings, and advised you with the advice of the zealous, and have entered with you on the path of those who guide aright, so be Thou my witness, O Allah, who art the best of witnesses.” Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Then his eloquent discourse, conspicuous by its beauty, made us wonder, and our voices were raised to him in recitation. But my heart had from the sound of his voice a tinkling of knowledge of the true nature of his sun. So I said to him: “By Him who holds in bondage the fathomless sea, art thou not the Serûji?” He replied: “Aye, and how could the son of brightness remain hidden?” Forthwith I praised my voyage, and revealed my own self since he had revealed his, and we ceased not sailing, while the sea was smooth, and the sky serene, and life pleasant, and our time a sport, and while I was delighted with meeting him, as the rich delights in his ingot of gold, and rejoiced in his converse, as the drowning man rejoices at being saved, until on a sudden the south wind blew fierce, and the sides [of the ship] bent [groaned], and the travellers forgot what had been, and the waves rushed against them from every quarter. Therefore we veered, on account of this recent calamity, towards one of the islands, to give rest [to our ship] and to rest ourselves, until the wind should calm down. The obstacle to our travelling on, however, continued, so that the provisions dwindled to a mere pittance. Then Abû Zayd said to me: “Look here, the gathering from the tree is not obtained by sitting still: so hast thou a mind to rouse our luck by going on land?” I replied to him: “Lo, I follow thee closer than thy shadow, and wait on thee more obediently than thy shoon.” Accordingly we descended upon the island, despite the failing of our strength, to run the chase after provender, though neither of us twain owned a scrap, or was able to find a way in it, but we proceeded to scout within, and to seek shade in its shady places, until we came upon a lofty castle, with an iron gate, and a troupe of slaves in front. These we accosted, that we might make them a ladder to help us up, and a rope to draw water with, but we found every one of them mournful, deep in grief, so that we fancied them utterly broken or dragged into captivity. So we said to them: “O ye slave-boys, what is this sorrow?” But they answered not our call, and spoke not either fair or foul. When we saw that their fire was the fire of the glowworm, and their state as the mirage of the deserts, we said: “May their faces wax unsightly, and out upon the churl, and him who hopes aught of him!” Then hastened forward a servant whom old age had visited and weeping overcome, saying: “O ye folks, increase not our distress, and pain us not with reproach, for we are truly in sore anguish and in evil plight that makes us listless of talk.” Said Abû Zayd to him: “Relieve thy choking sorrow, and speak out if thou have the power to speak, for thou wilt find at my hand a competent leech and a healing prescriber.” He said: “Know thou, that the lord of this castle is the pole-star of this place, and the Shâh of this territory. Withal he is not free from grief on account of his being childless. So he ceased not paying honour to the seed-fields and selecting from the partners of his couch the most exquisite, until he was hailed with the happy tidings of the pregnancy of a noble lady, and his palm-tree gave promise of a shoot. Then vows were vowed in his behalf, and the days and months were counted, and when the time of delivery had come, and necklace and crownlet [for the adornment of the child] were fashioned, the throes of child-birth were severe, and fear was conceived for root and branch; therefore there is none of us who knows rest or tastes sleep save by snatches.” Then he burst out weeping and wailed aloud, and repeatedly called on Allah unto whom we shall return. Thereupon Abû Zayd said to him: “Be still, O such a one, and of good cheer, and receive news of joy and proclaim them, for I possess a spell for childbirth, the fame of which is spread abroad amongst mankind.” Forthwith the slaves hastened to their master, announcing each other the release from their calamity, when it took no longer than to say “nay,” that one sallied out who summoned us to him, and as soon as we had entered unto him, and were standing in his presence, he said to Abû Zayd: “For sooth thy reward will prosper thee if thy say is true and thy presage fails not.” Abû Zayd bade them bring a mended reed-pen, and some meerschaum, and some saffron macerated in pure rose-water. In a breath’s time they brought what he had asked for. Then he prostrated himself, rubbing his cheeks in the dust, and said praise to Allah, whose forgiveness he craved, bidding those present to stand off, and keeping them at a distance. Then he took the pen with a mighty show of fuss, and wrote upon the meerschaum with the saffron-solution:

“Child to come, list to one who warns thee beforehand, aye! and warning belongs to faith’s foremost duties:

Thou art safe now within a home closely guarded, an abode from all misery well protected,

Nought thou seest there to frighten thee on the part of false a friend or a foeman frank in his hatred,

But as soon as thou salliest forth from its shelter thou alight’st in a dwelling hurtful and shameful,

Where the hardship awaiting thee will betide thee drawing tears from thy eyne in fast-flowing down-pour.

So continue thy easeful life and beware of changing things proved with things that are all uncertain,

Being heedful of one who seeks to beguile thee, that he hurl thee the surer in sorry torment.

Now I gave thee, upon my soul, fair advice, but sound advisers how often are they suspected.”

Then he blotted out the writing unawares, besputtering it abundantly, and tied the meerschaum in a shred of silk, after having besprinkled it profusely with ambergris, and bade fasten it to the thigh of the labouring woman, but that the hand of none menstruous must touch it. Thereupon it took no longer than the taste [lasts on the palate] of drinking, or the interval that the milker makes in drawing the milk, when the body of the child slipped out, through the specific quality of the meerschaum, and the might of the One, the Eternal. Then the castle was filled with joy, and its thane and thralls were ready to fly with delight, and their throng surrounded Abû Zayd, singing his praises and kissing both his hands and deeming themselves blessed by the touch of his tattered garments, so that I was made to fancy him Uways Al-Ḳaranî or Dobays Al-Asadî. Thereupon he bestowed on him in presents of requital, and in abundant gifts that which poured wealth upon him, and brightened the face of his every wish, and his revenue ceased not to come in turn after turn, from the time the lamb was born, until safety was given back to the sea and our voyage to ‘Omân became easy. Abû Zayd was contented with the largess received, and prepared for departure; the Wâlî [governor], however, would not allow him to move after he had experienced his blessing, but bade enrol him in his household, so that his hand might make free with his treasures. Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: When I saw that he inclined to where he might gain riches, I took to rebuking him and taunted him with the forsaking of his home and his intimate. He replied: “Off with thee and listen to me:

“To a native place cling not where folks oppress and hold thee in scant esteem,

But depart the land that exalts the low above the high in dignity,

And take thy flight to a safe retreat, although it were on the skirts of Kâf,

With a lofty soar, so as to dwell where naught of soilure attains to thee

And roam about in the world at will, and where thou choosest, select thy home,

Not thinking of thy haunts of old, nor breathing sighs for thy distant friends.

For know full well that a free-born man in his country meets but with disregard,

As the pearl is slighted within its shell and underrated its preciousness.”

Thereupon he said: “Suffice thee what thou hast heard, and well done, if thou act accordingly.” So I proffered to him my excuses, saying to him: “Make allowance for me,” wherewith he accepted them, and excused himself, and provisioned me, stinting naught. Then he escorted me, as one escorts one’s nearest relatives, until I had embarked in the boat, when I bade him good-bye, lamenting our separation, and deprecating it, wishing heartily the babe and its mother had come to grief.

This Assembly exhibits Abû Zayd in lively altercation with his handsome young wife before the Kadi of Tebrîz, he complaining of her contumacy, she of his abuse of his conjugal rights. Purists and Puritans will probably object to the tone of this composition. But in order to judge it equitably, it should not be forgotten that Ḥarîri is bent on exhausting all the stores, I will advisedly not say all the treasures, of his native language, of which he is justly proud, and the rich and sonorous vocabulary of invective, and even of obscenity, could not be entirely ignored by him. Moreover the grossness, nay coarseness of expression, with which a wonderful display of learning is here interspersed, is not represented as inherent in the characters, but as an assumed part with a view to a specific object. If these two points are borne in mind, the unprejudiced reader cannot fail to admire this Assembly as one of the most original, amusing, and spirited pieces of the whole collection. The miserly Kadi, who by the astounding eloquence of the couple is reluctantly coaxed and partly frightened into an act of unwonted generosity, stands out, with his heartrending lamentations over the loss of his gold coins, as a worthy prototype of Shylock in Shakespear’s “Merchant of Venice.”

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I intended leaving Tebrîz at a time when it was unwholesome [irksome] for high and low, and empty of patrons and men of largess; and while I was making ready my travelling-gear and foraging for some company on the journey, I encountered there Abû Zayd, the Serûji, wrapped up in a cloak and surrounded by females. I asked him about his business, and whither he was bound with his bevy. Said he, pointing to a woman amongst them, fair of face, apparently in high dudgeon: “I had married this one, that she might make me forgetful of exile, and cleanse me from the squalor of celibacy; but I met from her with the sweat of [the carrier of] the water-bag, in that she now kept me out of my right, and now plied me beyond my strength, wherefore I am through her jaded with foot-soreness, and an ally to cark and choking care, and here we are on our way to the judge, that he may strike on the hand of the oppressor. So, if he arrange matters between us, let there be concord, but if not, a divorce, a divorce!” Then I inclined to ascertain to whom the victory would accrue, and what the upshot would be. So I put my present affair behind my back (in the Arabic idiom “behind my ear”), and accompanied the twain, though I should not be of any use. Now, when he was in the presence of the Kadi, who belonged to the number of those who appreciate parsimony, and stint even tooth-pickings, Abû Zayd crouched on his knees before him, and said to him: “Behold, this my palfrey refuses the bridle, and is much given to bolting, although I am more obedient to her than her finger-tips, and fonder of her than her own heart.” Then the Kadi said to her: “Woe betide thee, knowest thou not that stubbornness angers thy lord and master, and requires the lash?” Said she: “But, lo, he is of those who use to prowl behind the house, and to take the neighbour along with the neighbour.” Then the Kadi said to him: “Out upon thee, sowest thou in the salt-marshes, and lookest out for chicks, where no chicks are to be got? May it never go well with thee, nor be thou safe from terror.” Said Abû Zayd: “Lo by Him, who sends down the winds, she is more of a liar than Sajâḥi.” Said she: “Nay! by Him, who has adorned the neck of the dove with a ring, and given wings to the ostrich, he is a worse liar than Abû Ṣamâmah, when he forged falsehoods in Tamâmah.” Thereupon Abû Zayd hissed with the hiss of the flaring fire, and blazed up with the blaze of the enraged, saying: “Woe to thee, O thou slattern, O thou strumpet, O thou bane for thy husband and thy neighbour, art thou resolved in privacy to torment me, and showest off in public by giving me the lie? Yet thou knowest, that when I made thee a wife, and gazed at thee, I found thee uglier than a monkey, and drier than a strip of hide, and tougher than a palm-fibre, and more offensive than carrion, and more troublesome than the cholera, and dirtier than a menstrual cloth, and more barefaced than the bark of a tree, and colder than a winter night, and sillier than purslane (the plant rijlah), and wider than the river Tigris. But I veiled thy blemish, and disclosed not thy disgrace, though, if Shîrîn had presented thee with her beauty, and Zobaydeh with her wealth, and Bilkîs with her throne, and Bûrân with her carpet, and Zebbâ with her kingcraft, and Rab‘îah with her piety, and Khindaf with her nobility, and Khansâ with her poetry [such as she indited] upon [the death of her brother] Ṣakhr, I would scorn thee for my saddle-seat or a filly fit for my stallion.” Then the woman bristled up, and played the tigress, and bared her fore-arm, and tucked up her skirt, saying to him: “O thou, meaner than Mâdir, and more ill-omened than Kâshir, and more cowardly than Ṣâfir, and flightier than T̤âmir, hurlest thou at me thy own shame, and thrustest thy knife into my honour, while thou knowest that thou art more contemptible than Kulâmeh, and more vicious than the mule of Abû Dulâmeh, and more indecent than a fart in company, and more out of place than a bug in a perfume box, supposing thou wert al-Ḥasan in his preaching and utterance, and ash-Sha‘bî in his learning and memory, and al-Khalîl in his knowledge of prosody and grammar, and Jerîr in his love-song and lampoon, and Koss in his eloquence and address, and ‘Abd al-Ḥamîd in his facundity and style of writing, and Abû ‘Amr in his reading [of the Koran] and syntax, and Ibn Korayb in his tradition-lore from the Arabs, thinkest thou, that I should like thee as an Imâm for my prayer-niche, and a sword for my scabbard? Not I, by Allah, nor as door-keeper for my gate, or a stick to carry my wallet with.” Said the Kadi to her: “I see that ye twain are Shann and T̤abaqah (or ‘an old bag and its doubling’), and Ḥida’ah and Bunduqah (or ‘hawk and hunter’). So give over, man, the altercation, and enter in thy conduct on the level road; but as for thee, abstain from abusing him, and keep still when he comes to the house by its door.” Then the woman said: “By Allah, I shall not hold back from him my tongue, until he clothes me, nor will I hoist for him my sail, unless he gives me enough to eat.” Thereupon Abû Zayd swore with the three binding forms of oath, that he owned naught but his tattered rags. Thereupon the Kadi looked upon their story with the eye of the sharp-witted, and pondered with the thoughtfulness of the sagacious; then he approached the twain with a face that he made to look stern, and a buckler that he flourished, saying: “Suffices it not to you, to vilify each other in the judgment-hall, and to make bold of this offence, that you needs must proceed from the disgrace of mutual befoulment to the malice of defrauding each other? But I swear by Allah, the fundament of either of you has failed the ditch, and your arrow has missed the pit of the throat. For the Prince of the Faithful has appointed me to give judgment between litigants, not to pay the owings of debtors, and by the thanks due to his favour which has established me in this place, and conferred on me the power of binding and loosing, if ye explain not to me the truth of your case, and the hidden meaning of your deceit, I will surely proclaim the pair of you in the cities, and make an example of you for the wary.” Abû Zayd looked down before him, as the serpent looks down, then he said to him: “Listen, listen!

“I am the man of Serûj, she my consort,—the full moon has none but the sun for equal,—

Her company and mine are never severed, nor is her cloister distant from my abbot,

As naught I water but my own plantation; five nights, however, is it now since morning

And eve we wear the sorry garb of hunger, knowing no more what chewing means, or sipping,

So that from sheer exhaustion of our life-breath we are like corpses risen from the grave-yard.

So, when our patience failed, and ev’ry comfort, we came by dint of want whose touch is painful,

To this resort, for good or evil venture, to gain, by hook or crook, some little money.

For poverty, when it assails the free-born, leads him to don the shameful cloak of falsehood.

This then is my condition, this my lesson, see my to-day and ask, what was my yestern.

And bid them mend my case or send to jail me at will, for in thy hand my weal and woe lies.”

Then the Kadi said to him: “Cheer up and set thy heart at ease, for it is due to thee that thy fault should be condoned, and thy donation made plentiful.” Thereupon his spouse jumped to her feet and drew herself up to her full length, and pointing [beckoning] to those present, said:

“O folks of Tebrîz, ye are blest with a judge who ranks by far ahead of all judges,

No fault in him save that his gift on a day of bounty is dealt out with short measure.

We came to him so that we might cull the fruit from off his tree that never fails yielding.

He sent away the Shaykh, rejoiced with his gift, and treated with regard and distinction,

But turned me off more disappointed than one who watches for the lightning in August,

As though he knew not that it is I who taught the Shaykh to versify with such glibness,

And that I could if ever I were so willed make him the laughingstock of all Tebrîz.”

Said the narrator: Now when the Kadi saw the stoutness of their hearts and the glibness [readiness] of their tongues, he perceived that he was visited through them with an incurable disease and a crushing [an overwhelming] calamity, and that if he gave to one of the spouses and turned off the other empty-handed, he would be like one who pays a debt with borrowed money and prays the sunset-prayer with two genu-flexions. So he frowned and knitted his brows, and raged and fumed, and hemmed and hawed; then he turned to the right and left, and twisted about in distress and regret, and began to abuse the office of a judge and its troubles, and counted up its bothers and vicissitudes, reviling one who seeks it and applies for it. Then he groaned as the despoiled one groans, and wailed until his wailing wellnigh made him appear abject, saying: “This indeed is an astounding thing! Am I in one place to be hit with two arrows, am I in one case made to deal with two debtors, am I able to please both litigants? Where from, I ask, where from?” Then be turned towards his Usher, the carrier out of his behests, and said: “This is not a day of judgment and delivery of sentences, and of decision and execution: this is a day of sorrow, this is a day that involves one in debt, this is a day of crisis, this is a day of loss, this is a day on which one is deprived of one’s share, not given it. So rid me of these two babblers and silence their tongues with two gold coins. Then dismiss the company, and close the gate proclaiming that this is an ill-omened day and that the Kadi is in mourning on it, so that no litigant may come into my presence.” Accordingly the Usher said the Amen to the Kadi’s prayer, weeping along with him in response to his weeping, whereupon he paid out to Abû Zayd and his spouse the two miṣqâls, and said: “I bear witness that ye twain are the most crafty amongst men and Jinn, but [henceforth] respect the court of judges, and eschew therein ribaldry of speech. For not every Kadi is a Kadi of Tebrîz and not at all times will people listen to doggerel rhyme.” So they said to him: “There is not thy like of Ushers, and thanks are due to thee”; wherewith they got up and stalked away with their two gold-pieces, roasting the heart of the Kadi on two fires.

On one of his travels Ḥârith has arrived in the old Egyptian town Tanîs, from which the Tanitic mouth of the river Nile derives its name, and he finds in its mosque an eloquent preacher surrounded by a numerous congregation, who listen attentively to his sermon full of lofty moral admonitions. The speaker exhorts his hearers in a powerful address, as usual first in rhymed prose, and subsequently in sonorous verse, with advancing age to abandon the pleasures of youth and worldly pursuits, to atone for their past transgressions by acts of piety and kindliness towards their fellow-creatures, and to make provision from the wealth which they may have acquired on earth, by spending part of it in liberality to the poor. At the close of the discourse, which has moved many of those present to tears, a half-naked youth comes forward, who represents himself in his destitute condition as a fit object on whom to carry into practice the good intentions stirred up in the hearts of the assembly by the earnest words of the venerable Shaykh, and the preacher, on his part, endorses the boy’s petition by some additional remarks, calculated to rouse their compassion and sympathy for him. Thus the supplicant reaps a plentiful harvest of bounties bestowed on him, and exultingly walks away, well contented, and praising the generous dispositions of the inhabitants of Tanîs. The Shaykh also takes his departure, and Ḥârith, who thinks he possesses a clue to what is hidden from the unsuspecting rest of the company, follows him. When both have reached a secluded spot, the former reveals himself as Abû Zayd, and as the father of the boy who has so successfully made application of the sermon delivered in his presence. It must be observed that Preston, who has translated this Assembly in his volume of Makāmāt, stultifies it, by letting the boy himself refer to his relationship to the preacher. There is nothing of the kind in the text, and the introduction of this gratuitous and unwarrantable interpolation entirely destroys the artistic merit of the composition.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I responded to the calls of wantonness in the bloom of my youth, wherefore I ceased not visiting dainty damsels and listening to the tunes of song, until the warner had arrived and the freshness of life had turned its back on me. Then I craved for rectitude of watchful conduct, and repented of what I had trespassed in the face of Allah. So I began to drive out evil inclinations by good deeds and to mend wicked ways before it was too late, for I turned from the morning-call on the fair, to meeting with the God-fearing and from mixing with songstresses to drawing near to men of piety, swearing that I would not associate but with him, who has rooted out error, and whose dissolute manners should have returned to the proper bend, and when I found one loose of rein long of sleep, I removed my abode far from his abode and fled from his scab and ignominy. Now when foreign travel had cast me into Tanîs, and made me alight at its homely [familiar] mosque, I saw therein a man surrounded by a dense circle and thronged spectators, who said with a stout heart and clear tongue: “Poor is the son of Adam, ay, how poor! He relies upon the world, on that which is unreliable, and asks from it a stay by that which has no stability, and through his love for it he is slaughtered thereby without a knife. He is addicted to it through his folly, and is rabid after it through his wretchedness, he hoards up in it through his boastfulness and makes no provision from it for his future state. I swear by Him who has poured out both the waters [sweet and salt, Koran, xxv. 55], and lit up the twain, sun and moon, and exalted the might of the two [holy] stones, if the son of Adam were wise, he would not revel in drinking-bouts, and if he bethought himself of what went before, he would weep blood, and if he were mindful of the requital, he would strive to overtake that which escaped his grasp, and if he looked at the issue he would better the turpitude of his actions. O wonder of all wonders at him who plunges into the abode of fire, while he treasures gold and hoards up riches for his descendants. Again, it is of marvels unheard-of that, though the interspersion [sprinkling] of hoariness warn thee, and thy sun proclaim its setting, yet thou seest not fit to turn, and to cleanse thee from thy blamefulness.” Then he broke forth inditing, as inditeth one who leads aright:

“Woe to the man who warned by his hoariness still blindly rushes along on youth’s folly bent,

And glances back on pleasure’s fire longingly when all his limbs already from weakness shake,

Who rides the steed of wantonness, which he deems a softer couch than chamberlains ever spread,

Not awed by hoary hair which no man of sense sees come without its starry light startling him,

Nor to himself forbidding what right forbids, or heeding aught that may impair fair repute.

Ay, such a man, away with him if he die, and if he live, he’s reck’ed as though not alive,

No good in him: alive he breathes fulsomeness, as though a corpse, ten days exhumed after death.

But hail to him whose honour sheds fragrance sweet, bright in its spotless beauty like broidered gown.

So say to him whom stings the thorn of his sin, pluck out the thorn, poor brother, else thou art lost.

Wipe with sincere repentance out any writ that black misdeeds have left on thy book of deeds,

And deal with men of ev’ry kind pleasantly, winning with courtly ways alike fool and sage;

Feather the free whose plumage fair time has stripped, may he not live who, while he can, feathers not.

Help one oppressed by tyranny: if too weak to help thyself, then summon up hosts for him,

And raise him who when he has tripped, calls on thee, haply through him thou risest on gathering-day.

This cup of counsel, drink of it, and bestow on one athirst that which remains in the cup.”

Now when he had concluded his tear-provoking sentences and finished the recital of his verses, there rose a lad to his feet, in the freshness of his youth, bare of body, and said: “O ye men of discretion, who listen to injunctions, you have apprehended what has been indited, and understood what has been directed: so, whoever of you intends to accept [the proffered advice], and to mend his future, let him by his beneficence towards me manifest his intention, not withholding from me his largess. For by Him who knows all things secret, and condones obduracy in transgression, my hidden state is like what ye behold of me, and my face is well worthy of being spared shame: so aid me that ye may have aid conferred on you.” Then the Shaykh held forth what might dispose their hearts kindly towards him, and make easy for him the attainment of his wish, until his well came upon a spring and his desert-soil was covered with green-food. So when his pouch was right full, he hied away with a swagger, and singing the praises of Tanîs. But the Shaykh pleased no further stay, after the youth had retreated. He bade them raise their hands in prayer, and turned to his homeward way. Said the narrator: Now I was on the alert to test him, and solve his mystery. So I followed him while he strode apace on his road, and vouchsafed not to break his silence. But when he felt secure of any sudden intruder and confidential talk became possible, he turned his neck to me, and greeted me with the greeting of joyful recognition, and said: “Wast thou pleased with the sharpness of that fawn?” Said I: “Ay, by the Faithful, the Guardian.” He said: “Lo, he is the youngster of the Serûji, by Him who brings the pearl from out the deep.” Then I said: “I [dare] testify that thou art the tree on which his fruit has grown, and the fire from which his spark has sprung.” So he confessed to the truth of my surmise, and was gratified that I disclosed my identity. Then he said: “Hast thou a mind to hasten with me to the house, so that we may pledge each other with the cup of the ruddy wine?” But I said to him: “Woe to thee! Will ye enjoin what is right upon others, and forget your own souls?” (Koran, ii. 41). He displayed his teeth, smiling at me, and passed on without demur. Then it occurred to him to turn back to me, and he said:

“Drive cark and care away with wine unalloyed, and cheer thy heart, not pining with fretful grief,

And say to him who blames thee for warding off the pang of pain: ‘Enough of thee, get thee gone!’”

Then he said: “As for me, I am going where I may quaff my morning and evening draught, and if thou wilt not come with me and accord with the mirthful, thou art no companion for me, and thy road is not my road. So step out of my way and turn aside from it, and pry and spy not after me.” Forthwith he turned his back on me and went, without casting a glance behind him. Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Then I burnt with grief at his departure and fain would not have met him.

The scene of this Assembly, as the title indicates, is Najrân, a celebrated town of Yemen, in Mohammed’s time chiefly inhabited by Christians, whose bishop Ḳoss became proverbial for eloquence and is said to have originated the famous phrase ammâ ba‘d (and now to proceed), the formula of transition from the introductory prayer or preliminary remarks to the principal subject of a discourse.

Al Ḥârith, while making a prolonged stay in this city, meets with an assembly of people engaged in proposing riddles. An old man, who joins them, taunts them with the futility of their pursuit, but when he perceives that his remarks have provoked their violent anger, he appeases and at the same time dumfounds them, by ten riddles of his own composition. These riddles hold the middle between those of the thirty-sixth Assembly, which are of the nature of our conundrum, and the enigmatical descriptions of the eighth, the early part of the twenty-ninth and the thirty-fifth, and are like these largely interspersed with plays on words which frequently render a readable translation exceedingly difficult. Mr. Chenery in his summary of the last twenty-four Assemblies adduces the following instance (vol. i., p. 81), which we reprint in order to give the reader an opportunity of comparing his translation of the passage with the metrical rendering attempted in these pages:

“What is he, who weds two sisters, both openly and secretly, but none accuses him for it?

When he visits the one, he visits also the other; and though husbands may be partial, he is not so.

He increases his visits as his wives grow grey: now this is an affection rare among husbands.”

The answer to this is the pencil used to place the koḥl, or ointment on the eyes: the two eyelids are the wives, each of which it anoints at the same time without partiality, and as they grow old, the necessity for anointing them increases.”

Our translation of the riddle runs:

What groom is it who weds, both in secret and openly, two sisters, and no offence at his wedlock is ever found?

When waiting on one, he waits as well on the other eke: if husbands be partial, no such bias is seen in him;

His attentions increase, as the sweethearts are growing grey, and so does his largess: what a rare thing in married men!

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: The castings of travel and the by-paths of inclination used to throw me about, until I became a son of every soil and a brother of every foreign land, save that I crossed no valley, nor witnessed any Assembly, unless I fetched light from the torch of learning that consoles for griefs, and raises the worth of man, so that the habit was known of me, and became the tale of tongues with regard to me, cleaving closer to me than love to the Benû ‘Uẕrah, and bravery to the race of Abû Sufrah. Now when I had made for a while a stay at Najrân and selected there my friends and neighbours, I took its assemblies for my visiting-place, and for the resort of my sportive recreation and my night-talk, being assiduous in my attendance at them morn and eve, and seeing therein both what rejoices the heart and distresses it. Once while I was in a thronged assembly and a concourse densely crowded, there crouched before us an aged man, burdened with senility, who greeted after the fashion of a beguiler’s greeting, with a glib tongue, whereupon he said: “O ye full moons of gatherings, and seas of bounties, forsooth the morning-light is evident to him who has two eyne, and beholding holds the stead of two witnesses. So what see you fit to do in what you see [of my state]: will you vouchsafe help, or recede when ye are called upon?” Said they: “By Allah, thou hast provoked wrath, and while thy wish has been to [open a spring] make spring the water, thou hast caused it to sink away.” Then he conjured them by Allah to tell him from what he had interrupted them, so that he made it incumbent upon them to answer. So they said: “We were vying in proposing riddles, as people vie in shooting arrows on a day of battle.” Then he refrained not from vilifying their missile, and treating this feat as a futile thing. Forthwith the tongue-gifted of the people railed at him and tilted at him with the lances of reproach, and he began to excuse himself for his slip, and to repent of his speech while they persisted in upbraiding him, and responded to the war-cry of his contention, until he said to them: “O my good people, forbearance is part of generosity of disposition: abstain then from taunt and foul abuse, rather come on that we may riddle together, and let him be judge who excels.” Thereupon the fire of their rage subsided, and their anger was allayed. They agreed to what he stipulated against them and for them, and desired him to be the first of them. Then he kept back as long as a boot-lace may be tied, or a saddle-girth fastened, when he said: “Listen, may ye be preserved of levity, and given your fill of life’s enjoyment,” and he indited riddling upon a ventilating-fan of canvas (punkah):

“A maiden I know, brisk, full of speed in her ministry, returning the same track that she went by when starting off:

A driver she has, kinsman of hers, who is urging her, but while he thus is speeding her on, is her helpmate too.

In summer she is seen dew-besprinkled and moist and fresh, when summer is gone, her body shows flabby and loose and dry.”

Then he said: “Here is another for you, O ye lords of excellence, and centres of intellect,” and indited riddling upon the rope of palm-fibre:

“A son there is of a mother fair, whose root has sprung from her lofty plant:

He hugs her neck, though for some time, she had erewhile discarded him:

He who reaps her beauty ascends by means of him and none forbids and blames.”

Then he said: “Here is another for you, hidden of signification and fraught with obscurity,” and indited, riddling upon the reed-pen:

“One split in his head it is through whom ‘the writ’ is known, as honoured recording angels take their pride in him;

When given to drink he craves for more, as though athirst, and settles to rest when thirstiness takes hold of him;

And scatters tears about him when ye bid him run, but tears that sparkle with the brightness of a smile.”

Then he said: “Take this one also, clear of indication, and perspicuous of expression,” and indited riddling upon the koḥl-pencil:

“What groom is it who weds, both in secret and openly, two sisters, and no offence at his wedlock is ever found?

When waiting on one, he waits as well on the other eke: if husbands are partial, no such bias is seen in him;

His attentions increase as the sweethearts are growing grey, and so does his largess: what a rare thing in married men!”

Then he said: “Again this one, O ye men of understanding and standards of learning,” and indited riddling upon the water-wheel:

“One restless, although firmly fixed, bestowing gifts, not working mischief,

Now plunging, now uprising again, a marvel how he sinks and soars:

He pours down tears as one oppressed, yet is his fierceness to be feared:

For then he brings destruction on, although his inmost heart is pure.”

Said the narrator: Now, when he had launched forth the five which he had strung together he said: “O my good people, ponder these five and close your five upon them, then as you please gather your skirts [for departure], or accept an increase from the same measure.” Then the desire for more made it a light matter for the people to be taxed with dulness. So they said to him: “Our comprehension falls short of thy sharpness, so as to disable us to draw sparks from thy fire-shaft, and to discern the lineaments of thy blade: so if thou wilt make the ten full, it rests with thee.” Then he rejoiced with the rejoicing of one whose arrow has hit, and whose adversary has been silenced, whereupon he opened his speech [with the words] in the name of Allah, and indited riddling upon the cooling-vessel:

“One veiled as if sorrowful, and gladsome withal to see, although she alike of grief and of joy is unconscious.

Approached for her offspring sake at times, and how many times a wife would be divorced were it not that she has a child.

At times she is discarded, though unchanged in all her ways: discarding one unaltered in manners is cruelty.

When nights begin to shorten we relish her intercourse, as soon as they grow longer we care not for her embrace.

Her outward attire is showy [pleasing], disdained is her undercloth, but why should we disdain that which wisdom approveth of?

Then he showed his yellow dog-teeth, and indited riddling upon the finger-nail:

“One of whose sharpness I fight shy, he grows without either food, or drink:

Seen during Ḥajj, he disappears on offering-day, how strange to tell!”

Then he looked askance as looketh the Ifrit, and indited riddling upon the sulphur-match:

“And who is the slighted one, sought and rejected in turns, though well thou knowest thou canst not spare her:

She has two heads of most perfect resemblance, though one of them is opposite the other:

If both are painted, she is put to torture, but spurned without the paint, and recked for nothing.”

Then he roared with the roar of the stallion, and indited riddling upon the milk of the vine-tree:

“What is the thing, that when it corrupts, its error turns to righteousness,

And when its qualities are choice it stirs up mischief where it appears:

Its parent is of pure descent, but wicked that which he begets.”

Then he placed his travelling staff beneath his arm, and indited riddling upon a goldsmith’s balance:

“One flighty and leaning with one half to one side, but no man of sense will upbraid him for either:

He always is raised up on high as a just king is rightly exalted for aye in his station.

Alike are to him both the pebble and nugget, though truth should in no wise be balanced with falsehood.

And most to be wondered at in his description, if people regard him with eyes of discernment,

Is that by his judgment the parties abide, though they know him as flighty by nature, and partial.”

Said the narrator: Thereupon their thoughts were wandering in the vales of fancies and straying as the love-crazed strayeth, until time waxed long and looks grew sad. So when he saw that they rubbed the fire-shafts and no spark sprang forth, and that they consumed the day in barren wishes, he said: “O my good people, until when will ye consider and how long will ye delay? Has the time not come for that the hidden should be disclosed, or the ignorant should surrender?” So they said: “By Allah thou hast tied it hard, and set up the net and caught the game: rule then, as thou wilt, and get the booty and renown.” Then he fixed for every riddle a fee and claimed it from them in ready cash. Forthwith he opened the locks, and set a mark on every [head] piece of his cattle, and wished to decamp. But the headman of the people laid hold on him and said to him: “No dissembling after this day, and tell thy pedigree before thou goest, and reck this as the dowry of divorce.” Then he looked down sulkily, so that we said “He is of doubtful birth,” whereupon he indited while his tears were flowing:

“Serûj the place where my sun rose, the home of my joy and comfort,

But now bereft of her pleasures, of all my soul took delight in,

I had to change her for exile, embittering past and present:

No biding-place have on earth I, no rest there is for my camel.

My morn, my eve pass on one day in Nejd, in Syria another,

I drag my life out with food that dejects the heart, vile and abject,

No copper-coin own I ever;—a coin! from whom should I get it?

Who lives a life such as I live, has bought it at losing bargain.”

Then he put the select of the money into his belt, and went to wander on the face of the earth. We conjured him to return, and made him great our promises, but by [the life of] thy father, he never came back and our desire for him booted not.

In this Assembly Abû Zayd displays his eloquence and mastery of the Arabic tongue in various ways. Ḥaḍramowt in Yemen being celebrated both for its camel-breed and its cordwainery, the use of terms which might equally well apply to a young camel or a sandal, gives rise to an adventure, of which Abû Zayd renders a spirited account. Al Ḥârith, as usually amused and charmed by his friend’s descriptive powers, asks him whether he had ever met his equal in the gift of speech. Abû Zayd readily answers in the affirmative, and relates how once he was about to marry, but in the last moment grave doubts occurred to him as to the advisability of the step. After a sleepless night, passed in pondering anxiously the reasons for and against, he resolves early in the morning to go out and consult the first whom he would encounter. This happens to be a youth, a most unlikely person to speak authoritatively on the subject; he, however, keeping to his resolution, states his case, and when the lad inquires from him whether he had a maiden or a matron in view, he says that he has not made up his mind on the point, but was willing to abide by the decision of his interlocutor. The latter at once pictures with a celebrated modern debater’s skill first the white and then the black of either class of ladies, and when Abû Zayd, bewildered by his contradictory ruling, suggests that under the circumstances it might be safer to become a monk, he again confuses him, by severely condemning celibacy and extolling the advantages of matrimony, and finally leaves Abû Zayd more in doubt than ever, but determined not to consult striplings again on a question of home-rule. Ḥârith, however, shrewdly guesses that the stripling is fictitious, and the whole debate improvised by the Shaykh, as a fresh feat of his consummate art, which leads him to speak with effusion in praise of learning and literary accomplishments. Abû Zayd demurs that nowadays learning is only appreciated when backed up by wealth and high birth, and soon finds occasion to prove his assertion in a lively dialogue with a youthful inhabitant of a village on their road. While thus the enthusiastic Ḥârith is forced to acknowledge that erudition fetches less than nothing in the market of a deteriorated world, the unscrupulous Abû Zayd sees in the fact a sufficient excuse for himself to swindle, for a parting shot, his friend out of a more saleable commodity.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: Peregrination that casts a man about, and troublesome travel had wafted me to a tract where the experienced guide would lose his way, and the venturesome be seized with terror, and I met with that which the bewildered and lonely meet with, and saw sights that I had loathed, though I made stout my frightened heart and urged on my jaded beast, journeying forth as one who throws both divining arrows and resigns himself to destruction, and I ceased not trotting and cantering and traversing mile after mile until the sun was nigh setting and light veiling itself, when I conceived fear because of the downfall of darkness and the onslaught of the host of Ḥam [the father of blackamoors], and knew not whether to gather my skirts and tether, or to face the night and grope my way. Now while I was revolving in my mind for what I should decide myself, there appeared to me the form of a camel in the shelter of a mountain, and I hoped it to be the riding-beast of one taking rest, and made for it cautiously. Then my surmise proved soothsay, and the riding-beast a swift dromedary, whose resting master was wrapped up in his striped cloak and drowned in sleep. So I sat beside his head until he awoke from his drowse; then when his lamps were lit (i.e., his eyes opened), and he saw who had suddenly come upon him, he started back, as starts the suspicious, and said: “[Is it] thy brother or the wolf?” Said I: “Nay, one groping in the night, who has lost his way: so give me light, that I also may strike it for thee.” He replied: “Let thy anxiety be at rest, for thou hast many a brother whom thy mother bore not.” Then my fear departed, and sleepfulness came to my eyne. But he said: “In the morning people praise night-faring; seest thou then fit what I see fit?” Said I: “Behold, I am more obedient to thee than thy shoon, and agree better with thee than thy food.” Then he commended my friendly disposition, and hailed my companionship applaudingly, whereupon we saddled our beasts in haste and set out on our night-travel, and we ceased not to speed our faring and to battle against sleep until the night had reached her end and morning raised his standard, and when the dawn broke and naught remained that was not clearly visible, I scanned the features of my mate in the journey, and the partner in my night-talk, when, lo, it was Abû Zayd, the object of the seeker’s desire and the road-sign of the rightly guided. Then we bestowed on each other the greeting of two lovers who have met after separation, whereupon we communed our secrets and intimated our mutual tidings, my camel groaning with fatigue, while his mount flitted along with the flitting [fleetness] of the young ostrich. I wondered at the strength of her build and the extent of her [power of] endurance. So I began to descry her mettle, and asked him whence he had chosen her. Said he: “Ay, this camel has a story sweet to listen to, and pleasant to relate. So if thou likest to hear thereof, make a halt, and if thou art not so minded, then hearken not.” Thereupon I made my jaded beast kneel down for him to speak, and made my ear a target for what he had to narrate. Said he: “Know that I had her exhibited to me for sale at Ḥaḍramowt, and I endured death-pangs to acquire her, and I ceased not faring on her over the lands, and treading with her hoofs the sharp stones [or flints], until I found her doughty for travels, and a provision for the time of stay (on account of her abundance of milk), whom no fatigue overcame, with whom no stout camel kept pace, and who knew not what pitch is. Accordingly I made her my mainstay for good and evil, and held her in the place of one who benefits and gives joy. Now it happened that she had strayed some little while since, and I had no other mount. So I was overwhelmed with grief and well-nigh undone, forgetting every calamity that had gone before, and remaining three days without being able to travel on, and without tasting sleep but a little at a time. Then I began to follow up the roads and to explore the pastures and the halting-stages, but I got no wind of her, nor the quiet of despair, and whenever I reminded me of her fleetness and her readiness to vie with the birds, the remembrance sickened me and the thought thereof crazed me. One day, while I was in the tent-village of some clan, I heard a distant person, and an isolated voice [crying out]: ‘Who has lost a mount hailing from Ḥaḍramowt, one easy of step, her hide is marked, and her blemish has been cut short, and her bridle is plaited, and her back is though it had been broken and reset. She adorns her who travels thereon and furthers the journey at the oncoming of night, and keeps always close to thee, weariness comes not near her, and footsoreness befalls her not, she needs no stick, and resists not him who treats her roughly.’” Said Abû Zayd: “Then the voice drew me towards the caller, and gave me glad tidings of the recovery of my lost one, and when I came up to him and had made salutation to him, I said to him: ‘Give over the mount, and take thy guerdon.’ Said he: ‘And what is thy mount, may thy error be forgiven thee?’ I said: ‘A camel whose body is like a hillock, and her hump like a dome, and her milk the fill of the pail, and I would have been given twenty [dînârs] for her, when I alighted at Yabrîn, and asked more from the bidder, and knew that he was mistaken [in not buying her].’ Then he turned from me when he heard my description, and said: ‘Thou art not the owner of my trove.’ Thereupon I took hold of his collar, and persisted in giving him the lie, and strove to tear his garments, while he said: ‘O such a one, my mount is not that which thou seekest for, so withhold from thy rashness, and give over thy abuse, or else sue me before the judge of this tribe, who is not liable to error, and if he adjudges her to thee, take her, but if he denies her to thee, jabber no more.’ Then I saw no cure [or remedy] for my affair, and no way out of my anxiety, but to repair to the judge, even though he should cuff me. So we hastened [or sped] to a Shaykh, stoutly erect, with handsome headgear, concerning whom one could perceive that the birds might perch quietly on him, and that he was not unjust. Thereupon I broke forth complaining of ill-use, and lamenting, while my companion was silent, not moving his lips, until, when I had emptied my quiver, and finished my say, he brought out a sandal, heavy of weight, ready for the road on rough ground, and said: ‘This is she whom I designated, and her I described, and if it is she from whom he expected twenty, there he is with his eyes open; consequently he has lied in his claim, and it is an abomination what he has falsely put forth, by Allah, else let him stretch out his nape, and show plainly the truth of what he has said.’ Then the judge said: ‘Oh Allah, [I crave] thy forgiveness,’ and he began to turn the sandal this side and that side, whereupon he said: As for this sandal, it is my sandal, and as for thy mount, it is in my dwelling, so get thee up to take thy camel, and do good according to thy power.’ Then I rose, and said:

“I swear it by the ancient house, the worshipful, and those who circumambulate the holy fane,

Thou art a good man to appeal for justice to, the best of Kadis judging amongst Arab tribes,

So live as long as camels speed the pilgrims on.”

Then he replied without deliberation and on the spur of the moment, saying:

“Allah reward thee for thy thanks, dear nephew mine, though I exact no thanks as ever due to me,

For worst of men is he who wrongs, when made a judge, and who, when made trustee of aught, betrays his trust,

These twain I reckon with the dog alike in worth.”

Thereupon he ordered one into my presence, to hand over to me my camel, without snubbing me for his favour, and I went away successful in my suit, and trailing the skirt of joy, calling out: “How marvellous!”—Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Then I said to him: “By Allah! thou hast told a wonderful tale, and been lavish in thy praise on a subject thou knowest well. [Tell me] I conjure thee by Allah, hast thou ever found one more gifted with the sorcery of eloquence than thyself, and a finer craftsman in fashioning the jewellery of speech?” He replied: “By Allah, yea, listen therefore and enjoy [what thou wilt hear]. I had intended, at a time when I made for Tihâmeh, on taking a wife to myself, so that she might be a helpmate to me. Now when the resident proxy [for the conduct of the marriage negotiation] had been instructed, and the affair was all but concluded, I bethought myself with the thoughtfulness of one who guards against a mistake, and considers carefully where the arrow may fall, passing my night in communing with my tortured heart, and revolving my wavering resolve, until I decided that I would go out early in the morning and consult the first whom I saw. So when darkness had drawn in her tent-ropes, and the stars had turned their tails, I sallied forth in the morning like one who seeks a stray beast, and was early with the earliness of the diviner from the flight of birds. Then I encountered a youth, whose face pleaded in his favour, wherefore I augured well from his cheering aspect and wished to take light from his views on matrimony. Said he: ‘Wishest thou her to be a matron, or a maid that gives trouble?’ I replied: ‘Choose thou for me what thou seest fit, I have put the matter in thy hands (lit. thrown the loops or handles to thee).” Then he said: ‘To me then belongs the explanation, and on thee devolves the application, so listen, may I be thy ransom after the burial of thy enemies: as for the virgin, she is a treasured pearl, and a hidden egg, an early fruit ripe for gathering, and a must that agrees well with thee, a fresh meadow, and a necklace costly and precious, none has soiled her with his touch, and no intimate has come near her, no wanton has plied her, and no deflowerer has despoiled her. She has a face suffused with shame, and a bashful eye, her tongue is faltering, and her heart is pure; withal she is a playful puppet, and a sportive doll, a frolicsome gazelle, and accomplished gracefulness, a jewelled belt bright and new, and a sharer of thy couch that rejuvenates, not renders hoary. But for the matron: she is the trained steed, the ready morsel, the desire made easy, one who has gained knowledge by repeated practice; the fond companion and confidential friend, the skilful and well advised, the intelligent and experienced; moreover, she is the hasty meal of the rider, a slipknot for the suing proxy [or suitor], an easy mount for the enfeebled, a booty swiftly snatched by the combatant; her disposition is gentle, her bonds are light to bear, her inward state is clearly manifest, and her service adorns; and I swear by Allah, that I have been truthful in both descriptions, and have displayed the two kinds, by which of the twain is thy heart enraptured, and which rouses thy lust (on which of them stands thy carnal desire)?’” Said Abû Zayd: “Then I saw that he was a stone against which the adversary must be on his guard, and by which the cupping - places of the veins are made to bleed, save that I said: ‘I had heard that the virgin is stronger in her love, and less given to wiles.’ Said he: ‘Upon my life, this has been said indeed, but how many a say has done harm. Woe betide thee, she is a filly refusing the bridle, and the mount tardy to be tamed, the fire-shaft difficult to strike from, and the fortress hard to conquer; moreover, the provision she requires is plentiful, and the help she affords is scanty, her enjoyment is savourless, and her coquettishness provoking, her hand is clumsy, her temper a snake that will not be charmed, and her disposition froward, her night is a long and dark night forsooth [her night is a night indeed]; to break her in is a heavy task, and to know her needs the lifting of a screen, and oftentimes she puts the combatant to shame, and is averse to the sportive, and angers one inclined to toy, and humbles the experienced stallion; moreover, it is she who says: “I dress and sit in company, so I seek one who holds and spends.”’ Said I to him: ‘What then thinkest thou of the matron, O father of all that is sweet?’ He replied: ‘Woe betide thee! listest thou for the remnant of the dishes, and the residue of the watering-ponds? for draggled garments and worn-out vessels? For one dainty, who browses on every pasture? One lavish of expenditure, a spendthrift, an impudent shrew? One grasping and never satisfied? Moreover, all her talk is: “I was and have become, erewhile when I was wronged I had given me help, but what a difference between to-day and yesterday, and where is the moon beside the sun?” [Listest thou for her] though she be always bewailing [her former husband], and blest [with adult sons], and withal a bold-faced wanton; she is a collar [round a man’s neck] that breeds vermin and an ulcer that never cicatrizes.’ Then I said to him: ‘Art thou of opinion that I should become a monk, and enter on that path of conduct?’ Thereupon he chid me with the chiding of one who rails at the slip of his pupil, saying: ‘Woe to thee, wilt thou follow in the track of the monks, when the truth has been manifest? Fy on thee and the weakness of thy understanding, out upon thee and them! Showest thou thyself up as though thou hadst not heard that there is no monkery in Islâm, and hadst not been told of the wedlocks of thy Prophet, may purest peace be upon him? Or knowest thou not that a good helpmate puts thy house in order, and obeys thy voice, sobers thy sight, and brings thy fame into good odour? Through her thou beholdest the coolness of thy eye, and the flower sweet to thy nostrils, and the joy of thy heart, and the lastingness of thy memory, and the solace of thy day and morrow (all this meaning offspring). How then art thou averse to the ordinance of the sent ones, and the enjoyment of the wedded, and the path of the guarded, and that which draws forth wealth and sons? By Allah, ill pleases in thee, what I have heard from thy mouth.’ Then he turned from me as one enraged, and bounded aside with the bound of the locust. Said I to him: ‘Allah curse thee! Wilt thou strut jauntily away and leave me bewildered?’ Said he: ‘I suspect thou pretendest goodness, and indulgest thyself a bit, so that thou mayest dispense with a damsel exacting a big dowry.’ Said I to him: ‘Allah confound thy suspicion, and allow not thy generation to grow old.’ Whereupon I went away from him shamefacedly, and repented of consulting striplings.” Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, continued: Then I said to him: “I swear by Him who has planted the forests that this controversy was carried on by thee and with thee (i.e., between thee and thy own self).” So he burst out laughing exceedingly, and rejoiced with the glee of the thoroughgoing, whereupon he said: “Lick up the honey and ask no questions.” Then I began to expatiate in the praise of learning, and to exalt its owner above the possessor of riches. But he glanced at me with the glance of one who taxes with ignorance, and winked at me indulgently, and when I waxed excessive in my partiality for the learned fraternity, he said to me: “Hush, hear from me and inwardly digest:

“They say that a man’s chief adornment and pride, and his beauty is learning deep-rooted, sound,

Alas, it adorns but the wealthy and him, whose summit of lordship is rising aloft:

But as for the poor man I reckon for him far better than learning a loaf and a stew.

What beauty bestows it on him, if they say: a scholar, a school-drudge, or may be a clerk.”

Thereupon he said: “Presently there will become evident to thee the truth of my assertion, and the illustration of my argument.” So we travelled on with unfailing strength and without flagging in our exertion, until the journey brought us to a village, may the good keep aloof from it, and forthwith we entered it to forage for provender, for we were both of us short of provisions. Now we had not reached the halting-place, and the spot assigned for the kneeling down of the camels, before a lad met us, who had not known yet [or grown up to the state of] sin, with a bundle of grass on his shoulder. Abû Zayd greeted him with the salutation of the Moslem, and asked him to stand still, and give information. Said he: “And of what wishest thou to ask, may Allah prosper thee.” He said: “Are here fresh dates sold for discourses?” He replied: “No, by Allah.” Said he: “Nor green dates for witticisms?” He replied: “Certainly not, by Allah.” Said he: “Nor fruit for night-talk?” He replied: “Far from it, by Allah.” Said he: “Nor honey-fritters for poems?” He replied: “Be silent, may Allah preserve thee!” Said he: “Nor bread in broth for choice verses?” He replied: “Whither stray thy wits, may Allah guide thee aright.” Said he: “Nor sifted flour for subtle sayings?” He replied: “Give over with this, may Allah restore thy senses.” But Abû Zayd took pleasure in reiterating question and reply, and measuring out from this self-same sack, and the youth perceived that the goal of his talk was distant, and that the Shaykh was a devilkin. So he said: “Let this suffice thee, O Shaykh, I know now what is thy drift, and see clearly thy quiddity. Take then thy answer in a lump, and be satisfied with it for thy ken: In this place poetry fetches not a barley-corn, nor prose a bread-crumb, nor a narrative nail-parings, nor a treatise slop-water, nor the wise maxims of Lokmân a mouthful of food, nor the history of battles a morsel of meat, for, as for the people of this age, there is none amongst them who bestows a gift when an encomium has been fashioned for him, none who gives a reward when a poem has been recited to him, none who shows himself bountiful when a tale has diverted him, none who provides support, though he be a prince, and with them the learned is like a waste spring-dwelling: if no rain falls in abundance thereon, it has no value, and no beast approaches it; and in like manner learning, if no wealth abets it, its study is a weary toil, and its profit a fagot.” Thereupon he departed in haste, and went off and ran away. Said Abû Zayd to me: “Art thou aware now, that learning is slack, and its whilom aiders have turned their backs on it?” Then I admitted the sharpness of his sagacity, and resigned myself to the decree of necessity. Said he: “Let us by this time leave off discussion, and dive into the chapter of platters: know that adorned speeches satisfy not him who is a-hunger, and what is thy advice with regard to what keeps back the last gasp and quenches the fire of the entrails?” I replied: “The command stands with thee, and the reins are in thy hand.” Said he: “I opine that thou shouldst pawn thy sword to satisfy thy gut and thy guest: so give it to me and tarry here, that I may return to thee with something to swallow.” Now I took his proposal in good faith, and invested him with the sword and the pledge, and he lagged not to mount his camel, and to violate truth and trustiness. I stayed a long time waiting for him, then I got me up to follow him, but I was like one whose milk has run short in summer, and met neither him nor my sword.

This Assembly contains a series of puzzling statements, made by Abû Zayd in a circle of guests, who on a cold winter night warm themselves at the fire and enjoy the profuse hospitality of a generous entertainer. The intelligibleness of these statements, like that of the legal questions of the thirty-second Assembly, depends on the double meaning of the terms in which they are worded. Apparently, therefore, they refuse translation into any other language, which cannot supply similar ambiguities, but it must not be forgotten that the more recondite meanings of the several idioms require explanation even to the average Arab, who is not initiated in all the subtleties of his mother-tongue, and notably in this particular instance the English reader, who consults the short notes, attached to each puzzle, has even the advantage over Abû Zayd’s audience. For the wily Shaykh amuses himself by secretly departing in the middle of the night, without vouchsafing to his fellow-guests the interpretation promised for the morning, and probably thinking that his noble and presumably highly cultured host does not need it. He who has made himself acquainted with the hidden meanings, and then once more peruses the double-entendres in their entirety, can scarcely fail to be vastly delighted by the string of seeming absurdities and contradictions, which, moreover, in the Arab original forms a poetical composition with the same rhyme running through the whole. While adhering as much as possible to the metre, the translator had, as in all other poetical passages of the work, to renounce this adornment, and be contented with occasional alliterations and assonances.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I came in a night of deepest darkness, black of locks, upon a fire kindled on a mountain-top, and giving tidings of liberality, and it was a night whose sky was cold, her bosom closely buttoned, veiled her stars and her misty gloom heaped up. I was colder in it than the eye of the chameleon, and a mangy goat, so I urged on my sturdy camel, saying “Hail to thee and my own soul!” until the kindler [of the fire] spied my person and became aware of my speedy faring, when he came down in hot haste, and indited in the rejez metre:

“Long life to thee, groping along thy nightly way, whom sheen of fire has shown, nay, brought him as a gift,

To one of ample bounty and of vast abode, who welcomes, as the miser welcomes golden coin,

Nightfarers seeking hospitable fare and who evades not visitors with ‘not at home,’

No tardy one to entertain in friendly guise a guest, when all the ground is bound with wintry cold,

And storm-portending stars are stingy with their rain. Well is he wont to ward against the ills of time:

He gathers ashes, sharpens knives, and never fails, be it in daytime or at night, at morn or eve,

To slaughter well-fed camels, and to kindle fire.”

Then he accosted me with the countenance of the bashful and clasped my hands with the clasp of the generous, and led me into a house whose camels roared, whose cauldrons boiled, whose slave-girls carried provisions, whose trays went round, and along the sides thereof were guests dragged hither by him who had dragged me, and moulded in my mould, who were culling (enjoying) the fruit of winter and rejoicing with the glee of those endowed with youthful vigour. So I joined the place where they warmed themselves, and found with them the pleasure which the inebriated finds in wine; and when embarrassment had passed away and the cold was gone, trays were brought to us like lunar halos in roundness, and like gardens adorned with flowers which were laden with the victuals of festive banquets, and well fenced against [the faultfinding or cavil of] the blamer and caviller [or faultfinder]. Then we spurned what is said about gluttony, and saw sense in plunging into it, until, when we had meted to ourselves with the measure of the greedy and come nigh the risk of indigestion, we had handed to us napkins to wipe off the odour of food, whereupon we settled in the seats of night-talk and every one of us began to wag his tongue and to display what he had in his show-case, except an old man whose side-locks were hoary, both whose upper garments were tattered, for he crouched apart and kept far aloof from us. So his reserve, the motive for which was incomprehensible, and which would have excused anyone who censured him, angered us, save that we softened our speech to him and were afraid to encroach on him by questioning, and each time we wished him to overflow as we overflowed, and to launch out in what we launched out, he turned aside as the lofty turns aside from the lowly and quoted: “Verily this is nought but idle tales of the ancients” (Koran, vi. 25, and passim). Presently it was as though shame had smote him, and the forbidding soul had whispered to him, for he crept up and came nigh, putting away his fastidiousness and exerting himself to make amends for what had gone before. Then he begged a hearing from the night-talkers, and broke forth like the coursing torrent, saying:

“Marvels I know, seen by me, and told without any lie, for not in vain am I called the father of wonderment:

Folks have I seen, O my folk, that on a crone’s juice are fed; not, notice well, mean I though the daughter of grapes by her.

(baulu ’l-‘ajûz, lit. urina anus, is a popular idiom for “cow’s milk”; al-‘ajûz, old woman, means also “choice old wine.”)

And Arabs, at famine’s time, who relished as dainty food, a roasted rag, and allayed indeed therewith hunger’s pangs;

(khirqah, a tatter, a rag, and also a swarm of locusts.)

And powerful men I saw, who said when things went amiss, or when they did carelessly their work: ‘It was fuel’s fault’;

(qâdir, who is able, strong, powerful, and also “who cooks food in the kettle,” qidr, when it is called qadîr.)

And scribes whose hands never wrote a letter in all their lives, and who read not any more aught of what is writ in books;

(kâtib, one who writes, a clerk, a scribe, and also “a cobler, a mender of water-bags,” etc.)

And people who in their flight in eagle’s wake sped along, although they were heavily arrayed in helmet and steel;

(uqâb, a black eagle, and also “a standard”: Mohammed’s standard was called al-‘uqâb.)

And gathered folks, men of worth, to whom appeared suddenly a noble dame and they turned away, to flee far from her;

(nabîlah, a lady of distinction, and also “carrion,” whence the phrase tanabbala ’l-ba‘îr, the camel became putrid, i.e., died.)

And eke a troop, who for sure have never seen Mecca’s fane and yet had made pilgrimage on camel’s back without doubt;

(ḥajjat jus̤îyan, they performed the pilgrimage sitting crosswise [on their camels], and also “they got the better in argument in that posture,” jus̤îy, being the plural of jâs̤î, one who sits crosswise.)

And women-folks faring from Aleppo all through the night who came to Kâz̤imah-town at morn without weariness.

(ṣabbaḥna kâz̤imat-an, they reached in the morning Kâz̤imah, a town in the dependency of Basra, and also “they wished good-morning to a woman silent with anger.”)

And people from Kâz̤imah who faring forth during night found in Aleppo themselves about the time morning dawned.

(aṣbaḥû fî ḥalab, they arrived in the morning in Aleppo [far distant from the former town], and also “they passed the morning in milking.”)

A youth I saw who for sure had never touched lady fair, and yet he had progeny to keep alive name and race.

(naslun min al ‘aqib, progeny of surviving children, and “also an enemy at his heels.”)

Again one hoary not hiding ever his hoariness, who in the desert appeared still young of years, far from grey.

(shâ’ibun ghaira mukhfin li ’l-mashîb, one hoary who conceals not the hoariness, and also “one who mixes milk [with water] and makes no secret of the milk thus mixed.”)

One suckled with mother-milk, not lisping yet with his lips, I saw him in hot dispute amidst a brawl loud and fierce.

(fî shijârin baina ’s-sabab, in contention between arguments or revilings, and also “in an [open] camel-litter between the cords”; to the latter meaning of sabab Ḥarîri quotes Koran, xxii. 15: “let him stretch a cord to heaven.”)

And one who sowed millet once, and when it came to be cut, it turned, for sooth, jujube shrub, which merry men dearly love.

(al-ghubairâ’, an intoxicating liquor prepared from millet, also called sakrakah, of which a tradition says: “beware of the ghubairâ’, it is the wine of the world,” and also the Arabic name of the plant Zizypha rubra Gilanensis.)

And one who was bound and rode upon a horse also bound, but never ceased all the while to fare along amblingly.

(maghlûl, put in chains, fettered, bound, and ghulla, he was bound, have also the meaning “thirsty,” and “he was suffering from thirst.”)

And one I saw, free of hand, who led a fine saddle-beast, in haste, although captive and a brother of misery.

(ma’sûr, one taken captive, made prisoner of war, and also “one suffering from strangury.”)

One sitting, while walking, and with whom his beast fell aground, though strange it seem what I tell, yet it admits naught of doubt.

(jâlis, one who is seated, and also “one who makes for Najd”; mâshî, a pedestrian, and also “owner of cattle,” in which latter sense some commentators explain imshû, in Koran, lxvii. 15, as a prayer in behalf of mankind for abundance of cattle and prosperity.)

A weaver too, both his hands cut off, I saw, deaf and dumb, if this you deem marvellous, well, wonders will never cease.

(ḥâ’ik, a weaver, and also “one who in walking moves his shoulders, and keeps his feet far apart.”)

One straight of build met I once, whose stature rose like a lance, on Mina mount, who complained to me of back-crookedness.

(al-ḥadab, being hump-backed, and also “rough rising ground”.)

One who exerted himself in giving all creatures joy, yet cheering them thought a sin like lying or tyranny.

(ifrâḥ, rendering cheerful, and also “burdening with debts,” as in the saying of Mohammed: “There is none left in Islâm

And one who loved people to commune with him secretly, but never had any need for converse with humankind.

(ḥadîs̤u ’l-khalq, conversation with created beings, and also “the telling of a lie,” as in Koran passim: “this is but a lying tale of the ancients.”)

One scrupulous who redeemed always his word faithfully, lacked none the less conscience according to Arab ways.

(ẕimâm‘ conscientiousness, and also pl. of ẕimmah, “a well with scanty water,” when the words translated “according to Arab ways” would have to be taken in the sense of “on the road of the Arabs,” meaning in the desert.)

One full of strength, never was there yieldingness seen in him, his softness was manifest withal, and quite unconcealed.

(lîn, softness, smoothness, yieldingness, and also “a palm-tree or plantation,” whence Koran, lix. 5: “your cutting down some of their palm-trees.”)

And one prostrating himself on camel’s back, unconcerned at what he did, thinking it an act of prime piety.

(faḥl, a vigorous camel-stallion, and also “a mat made of the leaves of a male palm-tree” [fuḥḥâl].)

One who excuses, and pains him whose excuse he accepts, though coaxingly, while in screams is he who thus is excused.

(âẕir, one who accepts another man’s excuses, and also a “circumciser”; ma‘ẕûr, one excused, and also “a boy being circumcised.”)

A town I saw, waterless for him who would scoop a draught, though water flows over it with torrent’s rush many times.

(baldah, a city, town, district, and also “the space between the eyebrows,” which is also called buljah.)

A village too, less in size than any nest built by birds, in which there lived Dailamites on plunder and robbery.

(qaryah, a village, and also an ant-hill; dailam, name of a people in Gîlân and extended to non-Arabs in general, and also “a swarm of ants”; khulsatu’s-salab, sudden robbery, and also “bark of a tree.”)

A star I saw, when it shows, a man is no longer seen, as though a veil covered him, a veil that naught penetrates.

(kaukab, a star, and also “a white speck in the eye producing blindness”; insân, man, and also metaphorically “the pupil of the eye.”)

A ball of dung, highly prized as part of one’s property, the owner though recks it not by any means much of wealth.

(raus̤ah, the excrement of any hoofed animal, and also “the tip of the nose.”)

A platter of purest gold, I saw it bought after much hard bargaining for a grain, a solitary silver grain.

(nuẓâr, pure gold, and also “wood of the na‘b tree,” of which trays, cups, bows, and similar objects are made.)

One gathering poppy-seed to ward from him off the foes assailing him, and he was not disappointed therein.

(khashkhâs, the plant called abû ’n-naum, father of sleep, i.e., poppy, and also a troop of armed and armoured men.)

And oftentimes passed me by a dog in whose mouth there was a bull, but know ye, it was a bull without any tail.

(s̤aur, a bullock, a bull, and also “a piece of soft cheese.”)

How many an elephant, I swear it, has seen my eye on camel’s back, perched upon a saddle and saddle-bags.

(fîl, an elephant, and also “a man of weak intellect, a dolt”.)

How many a man I met complaining in desert-tracts, and no complaint uttered he in earnest or pleasantry.

(mushtakî, one who complains, and also “one who uses the small water-bag, called shakwah.)

A pitcher I saw again, a shepherd’s girl in the wold was owning it, and it looked with twain of eyes bright as stars.

(karrâz, a pitcher with a narrow neck [the Qâmûs reads the word in this meaning kurrâz], and also “a he-goat on whose horns a herdsman carries his utensils.”)

How often times saw my eye two springs the water whereof, though in Aleppo they were, was flowing from farthest West.

(al-gharb, the distant West, applied to Maghrib or West Africa, and also “the lachrymal gland”; ‘ain, a fountain, source, spring, and also “the eye.”)

And one who pierces with spears, although his hands never held a lance, and he never leaped against a foe charging him.

(qanâ, pl. of qanât, a lance, a spear, and also “an aquiline nose,” applied to which ṣada‘bi-hi means “he disclosed or uncovered it.”)

How many times came I to a land without any palms, and on the morrow I saw dates newly grown in their sheaths.

(busr, dates beginning to ripen, and also “rain-water lately fallen”; qulub, pl. of qalb, pith of the palm-tree, and also of qalîb, “a well.”)

How often a spacious tray in desert tracts have I seen, that in the air was on wing and swooping down from on high.

(t̤abaq, a large tray, and also “a swarm of locusts.”)

How many old men I saw that lived in this world for aye, and who, I ask you, escaped destruction at any time?

(mukhallid, one who lasts eternally, and also “one whose hoariness is slow to come.”)

How many wild beasts I met complaining of hunger’s pangs with fluent speech and a tongue more piercing than cutting swords.

(waḥsh, a dumb brute, a wild beast, and also “a famished man.”)

How often one who had eased his bowels called me and talked to me, and nor he nor I in manners were lacking aught.

(mustanjî, one who cleans himself after evacuation, and also one who sits on an elevated place [najwah].)

How oft I made kneel my beast beneath a pomegranate-bud that would have shaded no end of ‘Ajam [i.e., foreign] and Arab men.

(junbuẕah, the flower or bud of a pomegranate, a bud in general, and also “a dome, a cupola”; ‘urub, here probably by poetical license for ‘urb, Arabs, may also be taken as pl. of ‘arûb, “a woman fond of her husband,” as in Koran, lvi. 36: “loving their spouses, of equal age with them.”)

How oft I saw one rejoiced a little while, and his tears were seen to fall freely as the drops of rain from a cloud.

(surra, he was filled with joy, and also “his navel-string was cut,” the remaining part being called surrah, navel.)

How often times have I seen a shirt that hurt badly him who owned it maiming his limbs, unnerving him thoroughly.

(qamîṣ, a shirt or vest, and also “a beast given to jumping and rearing.”)

How many a veil there is, if time but would make away with it, I trow numerous wayfarers would stay at home.

(izâr, a wrapper or veil covering the upper part of the body, and also used metaphorically for “woman.”)

So far, and how many more of wondrous arts owns my mind, and sallies of pleasing wit, and sayings choice, sweet to hear.

So if you are quick to seize the drift of words, you will find that all is true and my bloom leads you to guess at my fruit.

But if you are baffled, then the fault, forsooth, lies with him who knows not how to discern ’twixt sandal and common wood.”

Said Al Ḥarîth, son of Hammâm: Then we began to grapple with his verse, and the explanation of the riddles proposed by him, while he made game of us as the careless makes game of the perplexed, saying: “It is not thy nest, so get thee gone!” until the birth proved too difficult and the debarment complete. Therefore we thrust the lead on him, and asked him for enlightenment, and we were suspended between hope and despair, he saying: “The coaxing before the call for milking.” So we knew him to be one of those who want a return for their gift, and expect a bribe for their judgment. Now it galled him who had given us shelter, that we should be exposed to a mulct, or ignominiously frustrated; accordingly the lord of the mansion sent for a camel of the breed of ‘Id, and a robe like Sa‘îd’s, and said to him: “Take them both as a lawful property, and levy not from my guests [even] a trifle for a forfeit.” Said he: “I testify that this is a disposition like Akhzam’s and liberality like Ḥâtim’s.” Thereupon he approached us with a countenance whose serenity was translucent and whose brightness beaming, and said: “O my people, the night is well-nigh gone, and drowsiness has got the victory, so betake yourselves to the sleeping-places, and snatch the repose of the sleeper, so that ye may sip a draught of refreshing rest and rise invigorated, when ye will understand that which is explained to you, and things difficult will become easy.” Then every one approved of his opinion, and laid himself down on the pillow of his slumber. Now when the lids were closed in sleep and the guests had fallen a-doze, he sprang to the camel, and straightway saddled her; then he mounted her and started her on the journey, saying, addressing her:

“Serûj, my eamel, is thy goal, so fare apace, now through the night, now through the day, now day and night,

So that thy hoofs may gladly tread her pastures moist and thou mayst find thee thence well off and prosperous,

And safe of being jaded over hill and dale: ay haste thee on, my precious beast, and speed thy pace,

Crossing the flinty mountains, peak by peak, contented with a chance draught from the wat’ring pond,

And not alighting until yonder goal is reached; for I have sworn it, and in earnest made my oath

By worship due to Mecca’s lofty-pillared house, if thou but bring me safely to my native town

Thou wilt for aye be held by me instead of child.”

Said the narrator: Then I knew that it was the Serûji, who when he had sold out, was wont to start off, and when he had filled his bushel, to decamp, and as soon as the dawn of the morrow broke and the sleepers recovered from their sleep, I informed them that at the time when unconsciousness had overcome them, the Shaykh had given them the slip for good, and mounted his camel and departed. Then a fresh vexation took hold of them after vexations of old, and they forgot the good of him for his bad. Thereupon we disbanded in all directions, and went away under every star of heaven.

Once more Abû Zayd appears, together with his young wife, in a Court of Justice, this time that of the Kadi of Ramlah, on the plea of seeking redress for their matrimonial grievances. The first instance of their quarrels was contained in the ninth Assembly, and Rückert, in his free translation, or rather imitation of Ḥarîri in German, has very skilfully interwoven the two compositions into one. The same subject we have seen treated from a different point of view in the fortieth, called “of Tebriz,” and as both the ninth and fortieth are much more elaborate than the present one, it seems to me highly probable that this Assembly is what we would call the first sketch or preliminary study to the two former, which he may have thought fit to insert here, among some of the most artificial and carefully finished of his compositions, because its comparative simplicity and soberness endows it with a particular charm of its own by way of contrast.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I had gathered it from men of experiences, that travel is a mirror of marvels, wherefore I ceased not crossing every desert, and braving every danger, so that I might bring into my reach everything wonderful. Now amongst the finest sights I ever enjoyed, and the strangest adventures that I reckoned pleasant, was that I found myself in the presence of the Kadi of Ramlah,—and he one of the lords of wealth and power,—when there had appealed to him a worn wight in worn raiment, and a fair one in faded finery. The old man was minded to speak, and explain the object of his suit, but the wench cut short his peroration, and checked his bark. Then she removed from her face the flap of kerchief and indited with the tongue of an impudent shrew:

“O Kadi of Ramlah, in whose hands there is for us the date or else the hot cinder-coal,

To thee complain I of my mate’s cruelty, who pays his pilgrim’s duty but once a while:

Would that, when his devotion has come to end, and eased his back is after his pebble-throw,

He followed Abû Yûsuf’s wise rule and wont to join the lesser with the chief pilgrimage.

This is his way in spite of that since he first took me to him I never crossed him in aught.

So bid him show me henceforth sweet kindliness, or make him drink the bitter draught of divorce,

Before he puts from him the last shred of shame, obedient to old Abû ’l-Murrah’s hest.”

Then the Kadi said to him: “Thou hast heard what she lays at thy door and with what she threatens thee, so turn aside from that which disgraces thee and beware to anger her and come to grief.” Thereupon the Shaykh crouched on his knees and poured forth the springs of his utterances, saying:

“Listen, thou whom no blame may reach, to the speech of one who clears himself of doubts cast on him:

By Allah, not from hatred turn I from her, nor has my heart’s love for my spouse died away,

But fortune’s fitful freak has come over us, ruthlessly robbing us of both pearl and bead.

So my abode is empty, as unadorned her neck you see by shell or gold ornament.

Erewhile my views on love and his creed and cult were those professed so staunchly by ‘Uẕrah’s tribe,

But since fell fortune fled I left dolls alone, like one who vows chastity for caution’s sake,

And not from grudge held I aloof from my field, only from fear to see the seed spring in halm.

So blame not one who in such plight finds himself, rather be kind to him and bear with his talk.”

Said the narrator: Then the woman flared up at his speech and unsheathed arguments to fight him, saying: “Woe betide thee, thou fool, thou lack-food and lack-a-lance, makest thou a fuss about a child, when for every grazing creature there is a pasture-ground? Forsooth, thy understanding has strayed, and thy arrow missed its aim: thou art a wretch, and thy spouse is wretched through thee.” Said the Kadi to her: “As for thee, if thou wert to wrangle with Khansâ’, she would go away from thee silenced, but as for him, if he is truthful in his assertion and his alleged poverty, there is enough in his concern for his growling entrails, to make him forget his pendulum.” Then she dropped her head, looking askance, and returning no reply, so that we said, shame has come back to her, or victory has encompassed her. Then the Shaykh said to her: “Out on thee, if thou hast tinselled thy speech or concealed that which is full well known to thee.” Said she: “Alas, is there concealment after appeal, and remains to us a seal upon any secret? There is neither of us, but says that which is true and tears the veil of modesty in speaking out: so would that we had been visited with dumbness, and not repaired to the judge.” Thereupon she covered herself with her kerchief, and pretended to weep at her exposure. But the Kadi began to wonder at their address, and to admire it, and to blame fortune and lament over it on their behalf, whereupon he brought forth of dirhems two thousand, saying: “Content therewith the two hollows, and resist the mischief-maker between two friends.” So the twain thanked him for the handsome way in which he had dismissed them and departed [as united] as though they were wine and water. After they had gone, and their persons were at a distance, the Kadi began to praise their cultured minds, and to ask: “Is there anyone who knows them?” Then the foremost of his henchmen and the most particular of his intimates said to him: “As for the Shaykh, he is the Serûji, to whose excellence all the world witnesses, and as for the woman she is his travelling consort, but as for their litigation, it is a wile of his device, and one of the hunting-nets of his deceit.” The Kadi was angered at what he heard, and burned with rage to see how he was cheated. Accordingly he said to the informer against them: “Get thee up, and spy for the pair of them, then pursue and chase them.” So he rose, shaking his limbs defiantly, and after a while he returned, defeated. Said the Kadi to him: “Let us know what thou hast unearthed, and conceal not from us aught of vileness thou hast found out.” He replied: “I ceased not following up the roads, and trying to overcome all obstructions, until I perceived them entering the desert, and they had already bridled the beast of separation, when I excited their eagerness for a second draught, and pledged myself for their obtaining [the object of] their hope; but the Shaykh’s heart was disposed to take a despairing view of the case, and said: “Flight with Kurâb (name of a celebrated horse) is wiser,” while she said: “Nay, rather the return is praiseworthier, and cowardice is weakly.” Now when the Shaykh saw clearly the foolishness of her notion, and the risk of her venturesomeness, he took hold of her skirts, whereupon he indited, saying to her:

“Take my advice, and follow its guarded way, and let the sum suffice thee for details:

Fly from the date-tree when thou hast had thy pick, and separate for good from it henceforth,

Bewaring to return to it even though its keeper made it free to all comers,

For best a thief should not be seen in a spot where he has given proof of his cunning.”

Whereupon he said to me: “Thou hast taken trouble in that which thou hast been bid to do: so return to whence thou hast come, and say to him who has sent thee, if thou wilt:

“Eh, gently, let not bounty be followed by injury, for else both thy wealth and fame alike will be lost and gone,

And fly not into passion if a beggar exaggerates, for he is by no means first to polish and gloss his speech,

And if some deceit of mine is taken by thee amiss, remember, Abû Mûsá before thee has been deceived.”

Said the Kadi to him: “Allah confound him! how charming are his ways and how exquisite his arts!” Then he sent off his spy with two mantles and a purse full of coin, saying to him: “Fare speedily like one who turns neither right nor left, until thou seest the Shaykh and the wench, and moist their hands with this gift, and show to them how fain I am to be beguiled by the learned.” Quoth the narrator: Now in all my wanderings abroad, I never saw a sight as wonderful as this, nor heard I the like of it from anyone who roved about and roamed through the lands.

After a prolonged stay in Aleppo, Ḥârith passes on his return journey through Ḥims (Emessa), a place noted for the stupidity of its inhabitants, like Abdera among the Greeks, or Schildburg in Germany. Here he meets with a schoolmaster, instructing, in the open air, his pupils, and, expecting to be entertained by the blunders of teacher and disciples, he draws near to assist at the lesson or class, as we would term it, when he finds to his astonishment that the lads are able to accomplish the most surprising feats. “One of them,” to quote once more Mr. Chenery’s succinct summary, “recites a poem consisting entirely of unpointed letters; the next writes out some which not only have every letter pointed, but are full of assonances and alliterations; a third produces lines of which the words consist alternately of pointed and unpointed letters; a fourth gives verses in which there is tejnîs, or homogeneity in sound or in letters between each two successive words; the next produces a couplet each line of which begins and ends with the same syllables. Then the nature of the exercises changes, and some lines are given containing words which ought to be written with the letter Sîn, but about which some Arabs are doubtful. Then come the words which should be written with Sâd; then those that may be written with either. One pupil gives in verse the rules for writing the verb whose last letter is weak. Another repeats a poem comprising all the words in the language which contain z̤; this table is especially usaful since a common mistake among the Arabs was to confound z̤ with ẓ [Chenery gives the two letters in Arabic characters, but would transliterate the second one by ḍ, as in “Tumâḍir,” vol. i., p. 387], the old Semitic language having a less variety of sounds than the cultivated Arabic, as may be seen by a comparison with the Hebrew. It need not be said that the schoolmaster is Abû Zayd.”

The linguistic artifices mentioned above, like those which have preceded in former Assemblies, defy the resources of the translator. Rückert, in his spirited and ingenious imitation of Ḥarîri, substitutes similar feats in German, giving for instance a number of verses, in which the sounds respectively of g and ch (as pronounced in Scotch) change entirely the meaning of certain words; another piece, in which the leading words are only distinguished by d and t alternately; a third, in which the meaning of words is altered by eliminating the letter s, and so on, with an astonishing amount of inventiveness. My less ambitious object being to render the Original into English as faithfully as the difference between the two idioms will allow, I had to content myself, like Chenery in similar cases before me, with simply translating the wording of the text. The memorial verses on Arabic orthography, however, I have tried in a certain measure to reproduce because I thought that it might be a useful exercise for the student to learn them by heart. The insertion of Arabic vocables in transliteration of needs increased the number of lines in these pieces, and, as the last of them is rather long, I give only half of it in full for fear of exhausting the patience of the general reader, relegating the remainder of the words, together with their explanation, to the Notes.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: An overpowering longing and a most ardent desire carried me to Aleppo, and at that time my back was light and I quick of execution; so I took travelling gear and sped thither with the speed of the bird, and ever since I had put up at her dwellings, and was enjoying her spring season, I ceased not to while away my days in all that which satisfies the wish and quenches thirst, until my heart had no longer power to addict itself to aught, and the raven of separation took wing after his alighting. Then my mind, free of care and sweet wilfulness [sprightliness], urged me to make for Ḥims (Emessa), so as to pass the summer in her territory and to sound the [proverbial] stupidity of the people of her soil. So I hastened towards her with the swiftness of the shooting-star when it falls to stone [the listening devils]. Now when I had pitched my tent in her boundary, and found the fragrance of her breeze, my eye spied a Shaykh whose old age was coming on and whose youth had turned its back on him, and around him ten youngsters of one root and of diverse roots, and I yielded to my eagerness to approach him, so that I might probe in him the learned folks of Ḥims. Thereupon he met me with a cheerful face and greeted me with [even] a handsomer greeting than I had given him. Then I sat down with him to test the fruit of his speech, and to fathom the essence of his clownishness. Forthwith he tarried not to point with his little staff to the oldest of his chicks, and said to him: “Indite the unadorned couplets, and beware of keeping us waiting.” Then he crouched as the lion croucheth, and indited without hesitation:

“Make ready for thy enviers’ weapons sharp, but kindly deal with him who sets hope in thee,

Cut off thyself from play, avoid wantonness, but ply the camels and the brown supple spears,

Strive to obtain a lofty place, pillared high, not to enrobe thyself in gay dalliance,

For lordship means, by Allah, not quaffing wine, nor gain you glory courting girls full of hip,

Hail to one free of hand and mind, large of heart, whose only joy is giving joy to the good,

His water-pond is sweet to those seeking it, nor waste his wealth, when one in need begs for it,

Expectant hope is not refused at his door, and not put off: delaying hope deems he vile.

He follows not the call of loose sportiveness, nor is the winecup ever seen in his palm,

Stern discipline and self-reproof make him rule over his heart and master his lust and greed,

And praise he wins through knowing that one-eyed wives are not endowed alike with wives sound of sight.”

Said he (the Shaykh) to him (the boy:) “Thou hast done well, O thou little, full-moon, O thou head of the fraternity,” whereupon he said to the next, who seemed to be a brother of the former, “Come near, O Nuwairah (my little luminary), my moonlet of the little halo.” Then he came nigh and tarried not, until he was as close to him as the receiver of a gift, when the Shaykh said to him: “Display the bridal couplets, even though they be not of the choicest.” Then he mended his reed-pen, and nibbed it, whereupon he took the tablet in his lap and wrote:

“Fair Tajannî has maddened me and bewitched me with her thousands of wily tricks and beguilements,

Has enamoured me with the droop of her eyelids, as a doe’s, draining mine of tears through her love-charm.

She approached me, adorned and richly attired, and crazed my senses with forms that gleam through her movements;

Then I fancied she favoured me and would soothe me by her speech, but an idle dream proved my fancy.

After using with me her heart’s cruel falsehood, like one faithless, who would appease rightful anger,

She forsook me, and let me go, softly weeping, and in sorrow that ceaselessly breedeth sorrow.”

When the Shaykh looked at that which the boy had deftly devised, and scanned attentively that which he had written down, he said to him: “A blessing has been bestowed on thee amongst the fawns, as there has been a blessing bestowed on yonder olive-tree.” Then he called out: “Step nigh, O Qutrub.” Forthwith approached him a lad, resembling a star of a dark night or the likeness of an ivory-figure, whereupon he said to him: “Put this into mongrel couplets (the alternate words of which consist of dotted and undotted letters), and avoid blunders.” Then the boy took the reed-pen and wrote:

“Be bountiful, bounty is a jewel, and disappoint none who hopes for shelter;

Refuse not him who implores assistance, be he prolix in his suit, or modest;

And think not that time will leave for ever the miser to starve upon his riches;

Be lenient: men of worth condemn not, their hearts expand with the joy of giving;

Betray no trustworthy friend and crave not for coin that, when tested, proves deficient.”

Said the Shaykh to him: “May thy hands not wither nor thy knives get blunted.” Then he called out: “O Ghashamsham, O thou [essence of the] perfume of Mausham.” Forthwith there stood ready to his bidding a lad like the pearl of the diver, or the young buffalo of the hunter, when he said to him: “Write down the twin-couplets, and may no mishap befall thee.” Then the boy took from him the straightened reed, and penned without stopping:

“Zaynab’s stature, erect and lithe, kills beholders, and a bane is her rounded bosom to lovers,

Helping hosts are her neck to her, and her grace, and languid eyes that dart glances of deadly sharpness,

Proudly bearing herself she swayed full-blown power, now my foe, now with glowing cheeks drawing nigh me

In the morn or at night, to leave me again in sore distress at the cruelty of her doings,

Then she came, may I be her ransom, and cooed, and with her greetings appeased her lovelorn and loved one.”

Thereupon the Shaykh began to scan carefully that which the boy had set into lines, and let his glance run over it, and when he had found his writing beautiful and his punctuation correct, he said to him: “May thy ten [fingers] not dry up, nor thy odour be found foul.” Then he called a lad of bewitching looks, who [on removing his face-veil] displayed blossoms of a garden, and said to him: “Recite the two bordered couplets, that silence every speaker, and are sure not to be matched by a third.” Said the boy to him: “Listen! and may thy hearing never become hard, nor thy collected senses be scattered,” and recited without tarrying and without delay:

“Make thee a mark, whose traces show fair to sight, give thanks for gifts, though trifling as sesam-seed,

And shun deceitfulness with all might and main, that thou mayst gain thee lordship and weight with men.”

Said he to him: “Thou hast excelled, O imp, O father of despoilment.” Then he called out: “Propound, O Yâsîn, that which is difficult of words written with Sîn.” Thereupon he rose and tarried not to indite with a nasal voice:

“In niqs, which means ‘writing-ink,’ and nasgh, ‘the wrist of the hand,’ the Sîn is used whether they be written or read aloud.

“And so in qasb ‘hard’ (of dates), and bâsiqah ‘lofty palm,’ in safḥun ‘foot of a mount,’ in bakhs ‘defect,’ iqsir ‘force!’

In iqtabis ‘borrow fire!’ taqassast ‘I heard it said,’ musait̤ir ‘custodian,’ shamûs ‘unbroke,’ jaras ‘bell.’

Qarîs, or else qâris ‘cold’; learn this from me as correct, lighting thy torch at the fire of knowledge sound and approved,”

Said he to him: “Thou hast done well, O unrest, O cymbal-beater of the troop.” Then he said: “Get thee up, O ‘Anbasah (a name of the lion) and explain the Sâds that are [vulgarly] confounded with Sîn.” Thereupon he leaped up with the leap of the roused lion-whelp, and forthwith indited without stumbling:

“With Ṣâd is written qabaṣt ‘I took with the finger-tips,’ and aṣikh ‘be listening that thou may’st receive the news,’

And baṣaqt ‘I spat,’ and ṣimâkh ‘the ear,’ and ṣanjah ‘cymbal,’ and qaṣṣ and ṣadr ‘the breast,’ iqtaṣṣ ‘he traced.’

Bakhaṣt ‘I gouged his eye,’ and furṣah ‘the proper time,’ and farîṣah ‘muscles beneath the arm that quake in fear.’

And qaṣartu Hindan ‘I guarded Hind,’ fiṣḥu ’n-naṣârá ‘paschal feast of the Christians who look out for it,’

And qaraṣt ‘I pinched,’ and the wine is qâriṣah, ‘tart of taste,’ when it pricks the tongue, and all this is orthography.”

Said he: “Allah keep thee, O my son, thou hast indeed given coolness to both my eyne.” Then he bade get up one small of body as a chess-pawn, and swift of motion as a falcon, and commanded him to stick to his way, and rehearse the words that are differently written with Sîn or Ṣâd. Then the boy rose, trailing his coat-flaps, and forthwith indited, gesticulating with both his hands:

“If so thou wilt write with Sîn, the words I will tell to thee, and if thou wilt, let them be correctly written with Ṣâd:

Maghs ‘gripes,’ and faqs ‘breeding young,’ must̤âr ‘new wine,’ mummalis

‘Slipped from the hand,’ sâligh ‘shedding teeth,’ sirât̤ ‘path of truth,’

Saqab ‘approach,’ sâmighân ‘the corners twain of the mouth,’

Saqr ‘hawk,’ sawîq ‘wheat in broth,’ miṣlâq ‘glib-tongued’: thus they teach.”

Said he to him: “Well done. O thou mite, O thou eye of a fly.” Then he called out: “O Daghfal (young elephant), O Abû Zanfal (father of mischief).” Forthwith a boy stood ready to his bidding, fairer than an [ostrich’s] egg on the green-sward. Then he said to him: “What is the rule with regard to the spelling of the verbs terminating in a weak letter?” He replied: “Listen, may thy echo never be deaf, nor thy enemies endowed with hearing,” whereupon he indited, needing no prompter:

“If ever thou art doubtful of spelling a final weak, then put such a verb into the second of preterite:

If its Tâ is preceded by Yâ, let a Yâ it be, if not, put an Alif last, in order to write it right:

And think not that verbs of three or more letters of this class, or such as contain a Hamzah, will differ in that respect.”

The Shaykh rejoiced at that which the boy had propounded, saying to him: “I commend thee to the protection of Allah from the eye of the envier, and fain would be made thy ransom,” whereupon he said: “Hither, O Ḳa‘ḳâ‘, O thou bird, cautious as to where thou sippest water.” Then came forward a lad brighter than the fire of hospitality in the eyes of the son of night-faring. He said to him: “Explain the distinction between Ẓâd and Z̤â so as to cleave thereby the hearts of the adversaries.” The boy bestirred himself gleefully at his speech, and forthwith indited with a loud voice:

“Thou who askest about the two letters Ẓâd and Z̤â, in order to make no error in writing:

Let suffice thee to know by heart those in Z̤â, so hear them like a man wide awake and retain them,

Namely z̤amyâ ‘with blackish lips,’ al-maz̤âlim ‘plaints for justice,’ iz̤lâm ‘producing obscureness,’

Z̤alm ‘the whiteness of teeth,’ z̤ubá ‘points of weapons,’ al-laḥâz̤ ‘the eye-corner next to the temples,’

And ‘az̤â ‘kind of lizards,’ and az̤-z̤alîm ‘male of the ostrich,’ or ‘wronged,’ and also ‘the wronger,’

Z̤abyun ‘antelope,’ shaiz̤am ‘tall,’ z̤ill ‘a shadow,’ and laz̤á ‘blaze,’ shiwâz̤ ‘a flame burning smokeless,’

At̤-t̤az̤annî ‘opinion,’ al-lafz̤ ‘the word,’ and nam ‘a poem,’ and at̤-t̤aqrîz̤ ‘panegyric,’

Qaiz̤ ‘the summer,’ z̤umá ‘athirst,’ and lamâz̤ ‘taste on the tip of the tongue,’ ḥiz̤á ‘shares of fortune,’

An-naz̤îr ‘what resembles,’ z̤îr ‘foster-mother,’ jâḥiz̤ ‘goggling,’ an-naz̤îrûn ‘the beholders,’

And tashaz̤z̤î ‘a splitting up,’ z̤ilf ‘the hoof of ruminants,’ and îqâz̤ ‘awaking a sleeper,’

‘Az̤m ‘a bone,’ and z̤unbûb ‘the bone of the hip,’ and ash-shaz̤â ‘bone of arm or leg,’ z̤ahr ‘the backside,’

Ash-shiz̤âz̤ ‘yoke for carrying,’ ḥâfiz̤ûn ‘those who preserve,’ iḥfâz̤ ‘provoking to anger,’

Al-ḥaz̤îrât ‘the lofts for dates,’ al-maz̤annah ‘likely place where a thing is found,’ z̤innah ‘notion,’

Kâz̤imûn ‘folks in silent wrath,’ al-waz̤îfât ‘daily rations,’ mughtâz̤ ‘enraged,’ kiz̤z̤ah ‘surfeit.’”

Said the Shaykh to him: “Thou hast done well, may thy mouth never be harmed, nor he be benefited who speaks thee harshly, for, by Allah, thou art, despite thy tender youth, a safer keeper than the earth, and more of a collector than the day of mustering (resurrection). Now I have made thee and thy comrades drink from my pure draught, and have straightened you as spear-shafts are straightened, so think of me, and I will think of you, and give me thanks, and be not ungrateful.” Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Then I wondered at what he had displayed of ingenuity blended with stolidness, and what he had shown of sagacity mingled with foolishness, and my glance ceased not to look up and down at him, and to scan and scrutinize him, but I was like one who tries to see in the dark, or who wanders in a trackless desert. So when he found my awakening tardy and my bewilderment evident, he blinked at me and smiled, saying: “There remains none who reads features.” Then I pondered as to the purport of his speech, when lo, I found him to be Abû Zayd by dint of his smile. Thereupon I began to blame him for making his home in a den of fools and choosing the trade of a clown. Then it was as if his face had been strewn with ashes, or imbued with blackness, save that he was not slow to indite:

“If Ḥims I have chosen, and trade as buffoon, it was to be blessed with the portion of fool-borns,

For our age selects but the fool for its favours, and houses its wealth in the pools of the hollows,

While brothers of wisdom obtain from their age not more than the donkey tied up in the courtyard.”

Then he said: “But teaching is the most honourable of crafts, and the most profitable of merchandizes, the most successful of intercessions, and the most excellent of eminences, and its possessor is lord of a rule obeyed, and of awe widespread, and of a flock [subjects] submissive to his sway, he guards with the guardianship of a prince, and fixes allowances as a Wazîr fixes them, and ordains with the authority of the powerful, and resembles the owner of a great kingdom, save that in a short while he reaches his dotage, and becomes noted for far-famed foolishness, and shifts about with small wits in his dealings, and none can enlighten thee better [in this matter] than one who speaks from experience.” Said I to him: “By Allah, thou art the son of the days and the pattern of patterns, and the wizard who beguiles understandings, who has access to every branch-path of speech.” Thereupon I ceased not to attend at his assembly, and to plunge into the current of his river, until the bright days passed away and grey events took their stead, when I separated from him with tears in my eyne.

Another lively scene of fictitious altercation between Abû Zayd, who for once has assumed the popular character of a cupper, and his precocious son, for the purpose of replenishing their exhausted pockets. The chief merit of the composition lies again in the marvellous forcibleness and comprehensiveness of diction, which runs through all the notes of the oratorial scale, from outspoken vulgarity redeemed by an amusing touch of quaintness in the numerous proverbial sayings, to the enouncement of sublime moral precepts in the most elaborate forms of versification. To quote one instance of the latter, there is a poem of considerable length, the permanent rhyme of which consists of two words, consecutive words each time, of exactly the same sound, but totally different meaning, as: Iẕâ mâ ’ltahabat aḥshâ’u-hu bi ’t̤-t̤awá t̤awá, “when his entrails burn with hunger (t̤awá), he bears it silently” (t̤awá). That Ḥarîri himself attached some value and importance to this Assembly, may be gathered from the fact, that he accompanied it with a short commentary of his own, the substance of which will be found embodied in the notes to this volume.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related: I needed a cupping, while I was staying in Hajr al-Yemâmeh, and accordingly was directed to a Shaykh who cupped skilfully. So I sent my slave-boy to summon him into my presence and kept waiting for him, but he was slow to return after he had gone, so that I began to fancy that he had run away, or met with accident after accident. Then he came back like one who has failed in his errand and disappointed his master. Said I to him: “Woe betide thee, for the tardiness of Find, and thy fire-shaft missing to give a spark.” Then he pretended that the Shaykh was busier than the woman of the two butter-bags and in the midst of a battle like the battle of Hunain. Now I loathed to go to a cupper’s place, and I was at a loss between sallying forth and lagging behind. Finally I saw that there was no rebuke upon him who goes to the privy. Thereupon, when I had reached his shop and got sight of his face, I perceived an old man of cleanly aspect, surrounded by ring upon ring of onlookers and throng upon throng [of customers]. Before him stood a youth like [the sharp sword] Ṣamṣâmah, about to be cupped, the Shaykh saying to him: “I see thou hast stretched forth thy head, before thou bringest out thy scrap, and hast offered me thy nape without saying to me ‘This is for thee.’ But I am not of those who sell ready goods for owed money, nor look out for the shadow after the substance. So if thou dole out thy coin, thou wilt be cupped in both thy neck-veins, but if thou deem stinting better, and hoarding more becoming in thyself, then read the Sura, ‘he frowned and turned away,’ and vanish from out of my sight, or else” Then the youth said: “By Him who has forbidden the forging of lies, as He has forbidden the chase in the two sacred precincts, I am more penniless than the babe two days old, so trust to the flow of my mountain slope, and grant me a delay until times have mended with me.” Said the Shaykh to him: “Fair promises are like the shoot of a tree, that has an equal chance that it perish, or that the fresh date be gathered from it. So what will teach me, whether I am to reap fruit from thy tree, or to derive from it an ailment? Furthermore what relying is there that, when thou hast gotten thyself far away, thou wilt fulfil what thou promisest? For in sooth, treachery has become as the whiteness in a horse’s forefeet amongst the adornments of this generation, so rid me, by Allah, of thy bothering, and take thee off to where the wolf howls.” Then the lad advanced towards him, overcome with shame, and said: “By Allah, none breaks faith, save the mean, the contemptible, and none resorts to the pond of treachery but the worthless, and if thou knewest who I am, thou wouldst not let me hear ribald talk; but thou hast spoken in ignorance, and where it behoved thee to prostrate thyself, thou hast foully aspersed, and how abject are exile and poverty, and how beautiful is the speech of him who said:

“The stranger, who trails his skirt pompously, meets but with scorn, how will he fare then abroad, if food and drink fail him?

But no distress brings disgrace upon the high-minded man: camphor and musk, well ye know, though pounded spread fragrance,

The ruby is often tried in Ghaḍa-fire’s fiercest glow, the fire abates but the ruby still remains ruby.”

Said the Shaykh to him: “O thou bane of thy father, who causest thy kindred to wail, art thou in a place to brag of, and of an account to be blazed forth? or in the place of a hide to be flayed, and of a nape to be cupped? And granted thy house be such as thou claimest, results therefrom the cupping of the hind-part of thy neck? By Allah, if thy father lorded it over Abd al-Manâf, or if ‘Abd al-Madân humbled himself to thy maternal uncle, hammer not cold iron, and seek not that which thou wilt not find, and boast when thou boastest, of thy belongings, not of thy forefathers, and of thy gatherings, not of the roots from which thou springest, and of thy own qualities, not of thy rotten bones, and of thy valuables, not of thy pedigree. Yield not to thy ambition or it will abase thee [bring thee to fall], nor follow thy lust lest it lead thee astray. I commend to Allah him who said to his son:

“Be upright, my dear son, for the straight tree will spread its roots, whereas, when it grows crooked it speedily pines away,

Obey not abasing greed, but behave as a man who bears in silence the pangs of hunger, that gnaw at his vital parts;

And battle against lust that destroys thee, for many who had soared to the stars, enslaved by lust, fell and came to grief.

Be helpful to thy kinsfolk, for shameful it is to see the pinch of distress in those depending upon the free.

And keep to the friend who when the times turn their back on thee, betrays not, but proves faithful, when matters go wrong with thee.

And pardon if thou art strong, for no good is in a man who needlessly wounds, when power of wounding is in his grasp

And guard thee of complaining, thou hearest no man of sense complain, but the fool, who snarls and growls while he checks himself.”

Then the lad said to the onlookers: “How wonderful! What a strange rarity! the nose in the sky and the rump in the water; words sweet as wine and deeds hard as flint stone.” Then he assailed the Shaykh with a sharp tongue and in burning rage, saying: “Out upon thee for a fashioner of fine speeches, who swerves from the road of kindliness. Thou preachest benevolence and actest with the ruthlessness of the cat. And if the briskness of thy trade is the cause of thy crustiness, then may Allah strike it with slackness and allow it to be spoiled by thy enviers, until thou art seen more bereft of customers than the cupper of Sâbât̤, and narrower, as far as thy livelihood is concerned, than the eye of the needle.” Said the Shaykh to him: “Nay, may Allah visit thee with blisters all over thy mouth, and heat of the blood, until thou art driven to a cupper of mighty roughness, heavy in charges, with blunt cupping-knives, snotty and breaking wind at every moment.” Now, when the youth saw that he was complaining to one who would not be silenced, and intent on opening a door that would be kept locked, he desisted from bandying words and made ready for departure. But the Shaykh knew that he deserved blame for what he had said to the youth. So he felt inclined to pacify him, and vouchsafed to submit to his claim and not to ask a fee for cupping him. The lad, however, would not hear but of going and fleeing from his presence, and the twain ceased not from argument and abuse, and tugging each other about, until the youth quaked from the strife and his sleeves got torn. Then he cried aloud over his exceedingly great loss, and the rending of his honour and his rags, while the Shaykh began to make excuses for his excesses, and to quiet the other’s tears. But the youth would not listen to his apologies nor abate his weeping until the Shaykh said to him: “May thy uncle (meaning himself) be thy ransom, and that which grieves thee pass over. Art thou not tired of wailing? Wilt thou not learn forbearance? Hast thou not heard of him, who exercised forgiveness, taking after the speech of him who said:

“Quench by thy mercy the fire of anger that recklessly a churl has kindled in thee, and pardon his trespass,

For mercy is far the best of jewels that grace the wise, and sweetest fruit, culled by man, is ready forgiveness.”

Then the youth said to him: “Forsooth, if thou wert to look at my sordid life, thou wouldst excuse my flowing tears. But the smooth-skinned make light of what the back-sore feels.” Then it was as if he became ashamed, and he left off weeping, regaining his composure, and he said to the Shaykh: “I have now conformed with thy wish, so patch up what thou hast rent.” Said the Shaykh: “Get thee gone! thou over-taxest the flow of the streamlets of my bounty: spy for another’s lightning, than mine.” Then he rose to go from row to row, and begged for the gift of the standers-by, inditing while he was wending his way between them:

“I swear by Mecca’s holy house, whither flock in pilgrim’s garb the pious from far and wide:

If I possessed but food for one day, my hand would never touch the lancet or cupping-cup.

Nor would my soul, that craves for fair fame with men, contentedly put up with this sign of trade,

Nor had this youth complained of harshness from me or felt the lacerating prick of my sting.

But, lack-a-day, foul fortune’s fell fitfulness, left me to grope my way in pitch-darkest night

And poverty brought me to such piteous pass: the blazing pit of hell I would fain prefer!

Is there a man then whom compassion impels, and tender feelings prompt to prove kind to me?”

Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Thereupon I was the first to commiserate with his misfortune, and doled out to him two dirhems, saying [within myself], “They are of no account, even though he should be a liar.” So he rejoiced at the first-fruit of his gathering, and augured well from them for the obtainment of what he needed; and the dirhems ceased not to pour upon him, and to come to him from all sides, until he had become possessed of verdant plenty, and a well-filled saddlebag. Then he cheered up at this, and congratulated himself on the event, saying to the youth: “This is a spring-growth of thy sowing, and a milk-flow of which one half belongs to thee; come then to take thy share, and be not abashed.” Thus they divided the money between them to the nicety with which the fruit of the dwarf palm splits in two, and rose in perfect agreement, and when the bond of conciliation was tied between them, and the Shaykh bethought himself of going, I said to him: “My blood is heated, and I had directed my steps to thee, so wouldst thou please to cup me and rid me of my ailment?” Then he turned his glance upon me and scanned me sharply, whereupon he came close up to me and indited:

“What think’st thou of my cunning and beguiling, and what occurred ’twixt me and my kid yonder?

That I come off as victor in the contest, and feed on fertile meadows after famine?

Tell me, my heart’s core, tell me, pray, by Allah, hast ever thou set eyes upon one like me?

To open by my spell each fastened padlock? to captivate all minds by charm of witchcraft?

To blend the serious with the sportive humour? If Al Iskandarî has been before me,

The dew precedes the shower, but the shower excels the dew in fructifying bounty.”

Said the narrator: Then his poetry roused my attention and made me perceive that he was our Shaykh, whom every finger points out. So I rebuked him for his lowering himself and stooping to self-abasement. But he took no notice of what he heard, and minded not my rebuke, saying: “Any shoe suits the bare-footed who walks on flints.” Wherewith he stepped away from me contemptuously, and started off, he and his son, like two racehorses.

This Assembly, the first composed by Ḥarîri, is based on a fact, which has been reported to us by two independent witnesses. Al Fajandîhi relates, that Ibn Qit̤ri, who was Kadi of Al Mazâr, a town in the neighbourhood of Basra, had repented of his former indulgence in wine, but relapsed into his sinful habit. One day he happened to be present in the mosque of the Benû Harâm in Basra, that is, of the quarter in which this Arab tribe had settled, when ‘Omar founded the City, and here he was mysteriously moved to sincere penitence, which prompted him to ask whether any member of the congregation could point out to him an atonement for his transgression. Then a stranger stepped forward, who claimed to be a fugitive citizen of Serûj, which had then fallen into the hands of the Greeks (here mistaken for the Franks of the first Crusade), and that his daughter had been made a captive by the enemy, from whom, in his destitute condition, he was unable to ransom her. He wound up by saying to Ibn Qit̤ri: “Thy sin will be atoned for if thou bestow alms upon me, sufficient to set her free,” and the Kadi, believing his statement to be true, presented him with twenty gold denars, part of which was forthwith spent by the rogue on wine in a tavern at a safe distance from the mosque. According to Abû ’l Ḳâsim ‘Abdallah, Ḥarîri’s son, the latter, who lived in this quarter and is therefore surnamed Al-Ḥarâmi, assisted at the scene and had previously to it, like the rest of the company, been much impressed by an eloquent address of the ragged stranger, who on their inquiry after his name, had called himself Abû Zayd the Serûji. Ḥarîri went home and wrote the present Assembly, in which Abû Zayd is supposed to dictate his tale to Al Ḥârith, a form of narration subsequently abandoned by Ḥarîri, apparently for obvious reasons of clearness and stylistic conveniency.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related in the words of Abû Zayd: I ceased not since I bestrode my stout camel and departed from my spouse and my sprigs, to crave for the sight of Basra with the craving of the oppressed for help, since the possessors of knowledge and the lords of tradition agreed upon the eminence of her schools and scholars, and the glories of her tombs and martyrs, and I begged of Allah to make me tread her soil, so that I might feast my eyes on her, and that he would let me alight in her, so as to wander about her wards and outskirts. Now when good luck had landed me there and my glances pastured in her freely, I saw in her all that fills the eye with delight and makes every stranger forgetful of his native place. So I set out one morning when the taint of darkness was vanishing, and Abû Munzir was calling out his admonitions to the sleepers, to stroll about in her precincts, and to satisfy the hankering I had to penetrate into the midst of her. Then my traversing her roads and my sauntering in her streets brought me into a quarter noted as sacred and named after the Benû Harâm; that was possessed of Mosques much visited and of tanks much frequented, of buildings of solid structure and mansions of pleasing aspect, of choice excellencies and numerous rarities.

Thy heart’s desire of holy things and worldly thou findest there, and neighbours of motley tendence,

One all wrapped up in scripture’s wondrous verses, the other thrilled by tunes of the trembling lute-string,

One skilled in solving deeply hidden meanings, the other bent on loosing the bonds of captives.

How many there, who wear their eyes by reading or wear their trays by feeding the needy stranger,

How many places of resort for learning, and seats of bounty, lavishing sweets of harvest,

And mansions where not cease from morn to evening the warblings of the peerless maiden minstrels.

So join, if thus inclined, this one in prayer, or, if thou wilt, that one in broaching wine-casks,

For there without restraint thou mayst indulge in the wise man’s converse or the toper’s tankard.

Said he: Now while I was scouting her thoroughfares and gazing at her fairness, I perceived towards sundown and the approach of eventide, a mosque, renowned for its beauties, and deriving splendour from its frequenters, where the people assembled in it had started the discussion of interchangeable letters and were running a race in the course of debate. So I turned towards them, in order to ask for rain from their cloud, not to borrow light from their grammar-lore. Then it was not but as the snatching of a fire-brand of one in haste, that the voices rose for the prayer-call, followed by the sallying forth of the Imâm, when the blades of speech were sheathed, and the loops loosed for standing up, so that devotions diverted us from asking for food, and worship from seeking bounty. But when the due of obligatory prayer was discharged, and the people nigh dispersing, there emerged from the congregation an elderly man of sweet eloquence, who possessed of graceful gifts an easy flow of speech, and the fecundity of a Hasan. Said he: “O my neighbours, whom I have chosen before the branches of my own tree, and whose precincts I have made the house of my refuge, whom I have taken for my kith and kin, and made my stay for the time of my presence and absence, know ye that the vestment of truth is brighter than costly raiments, and that ignominy in this world is lighter to bear than ignominy in the world to come, that religion is the imparting of sincere advice, and guidance the indication of sound faith, that the consulted has a claim to confidence, and that the seeker of right direction is entitled to be counselled, that he proves to be thy brother, who reproves thee, not he who finds for thee excuses, and that thy friend in truth is he who tells thee truth, not he who says ‘true’ to all thou sayest!” Quoth those present: “O thou, our loving friend and cherished intimate, what is the secret of thy riddling speech, and what the explanation of thy concise address, and what desirest thou to be accomplished by us? For by Him, who has bestowed upon us thy affection, and made us the sincerest of thy friends, we shall not withhold from thee our advice, nor be sparing in our gift.” Then he replied: “May ye be rewarded with good and preserved from harm, for ye are of those of whom a companion need not complain, and from whom dissimulation proceedeth not, in whom no expectation is disappointed, and from whom no secret should be concealed. So I will disclose to you what rankles in my breast and consult you on the matter that exhausts my patience. Know ye then, that while my fire-shaft yielded no spark and luck kept aloof from me, I was sincere in my purpose of covenant with Allah, and pledged my vow to Him, that I would never buy wine nor associate with boon-companions, nor quaff strong drink, nor don the garb of inebriety. But my misleading lust and my abasing and deluding sensuality prompted me to keep company with mighty topers, and to pass round the cups, to put away gravity and suckle myself with grape-wine, to bestride the back of the ruddy one, and be forgetful of repentance, as we are forgetful of the dead. Nor was I contented with this once, of which I have told you, in my obedience to Abû Murrah, but I was addicted to the old vintage even on the fifth day and allowed myself to be thrown prostrate by the bright wine during the sacred night. Therefore behold me contrite for my abandoning the way of return to God, and exceedingly penitent for my indulgence in constant drink, greatly in fear from the breach of my covenant and openly confessing my excess in quaffing the fermenting must.

Is there then an atonement, ye know of, O friends of mine, To bring far from my sin me, and near to my Lord again?”

Now when he had loosened the knot of his utterance and satisfied his need of complaint anent his distress, my soul whispered to me, This, O Abû Zayd, is an opportunity for catching game, so tuck up the sleeves from thy arm and sinew. Whereupon I rose from my roosting-place, as rises the alert, and sallied forth from my position in the row of worshippers with the swiftness of an arrow, saying:

Thou, distinguished by noble rank, great in glory and princeliness,

who desirest a guiding hand to the path of eternal bliss,

I am able to cure the ill, that deprives thee of peaceful sleep:

listen then to a wondrous case, fraught for me with perplexity.

Once I had in Serûj my home, seat of faith and of righteousness,

where obedience was paid to me for my wealth and my lordly state.

Througs of guests were resorting to my abode and received my boon,

for with presents I purchased praise, kept my honour by bounty bright,

Caring naught that my treasures went in profuse liberality,

and I kindled the fire aloft, which the miser is fain to quench,

That the strayer might find with me hoped-for shelter and resting-place;

none athirst watched my lightning’s flash and remained still a prey to thirst,

None, nor came one to borrow fire from my shaft, and it failed to flame;

while the times were in league with me spread I round me prosperity,

Till the Lord wrought a change in what through His favour had been my wont,

for He settled the Greeks in our country after a feud that rose,

And they seized on the households of all believers in one true God

and deprived me of all my goods either hidden or free to view.

Thus became I an outcast in distant lands and a fugitive,

who beseecheth men’s bounty while ere it had been besought of me,

And such misery is my lot, that it makes me to wish for death:

for the height of calamity, which has robbed me of all my cheer,

Is my daughter’s captivity, who was captured for ransom’s sake.

cast a glance then upon my woe, and to help me stretch out thy hand,

Ay, protect me from fortune fell, that has wronged me and been my foe,

aiding me to redeem my child from the hostile’s degrading bond.

By such acts are the sins wiped out of a servant who has rebelled,

is repentance accepted from one renouncing all worldliness,

And they are an atonement for him who, guided, has swerved astray.

though I spoke this in strains of verse yet my speech leads aright and true;

So accept the advice I give, and my guidance with thankful heart,

and bestow what may be at hand, winning praise from my gratitude.

Now when I had finished my long and rapid improvisation, and he whose help I implored, was satisfied of the truth of my words, his eagerness instigated him to display generosity in my assistance and zeal incited him to take trouble in relieving my distress. So he dealt out to me a ready dole forthwith and was profuse in ample promise, so that I returned to my nest gleeful at the success of my stratagem, for by fashioning my artifice I had obtained the sipping of my sop, and the weaving of my poem had gotten me the enjoyment of my pudding-pie. Quoth Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, “Then I said to him: ‘Praise to Him who has created thee, how mighty is thy trickery and how vile are thy inventions.’ But he burst out laughing exceedingly and indited without hesitation:

‘Live by deceit, for we live in times whose sons resemble the forest lions.

Set aflow the rills of wile so that the mill of life may briskly turn round.

And hunt for eagles, if the chase should fail content thyself with a tuft of feathers;

Try to cull the fruit, if the fruit escape thee, be satisfied with the leaves remaining;

And ease thy heart from distracting thoughts at the frowns of fickle and adverse fortune,

For the ceaseless change of vicissitudes proclaims the doom of our life’s unstableness.’”