“The figurative language of the Muslim poets is often difficult to be understood. The narcissus is the eye; the feeble stem of that plant bends languidly under its flower, and thus recalls to mind the languor of the eyes. Pearls signify both tears and teeth, the latter are sometimes called hailstones, from their whiteness and moisture; the lips are cornelians or rubies; the gums a pomegranate flower; the dark foliage of the myrtle is synonymous with the black hair of the beloved, or with the first down which appears on the cheeks of youths at the period of puberty. The down itself is called the izâr or head-stall of the bridle, and the curve of the izâr is compared to the letters lâm and nûn. Ringlets trace on the cheek or neck the letter wâw; they are also called scorpions, either for their dark colour or their agitated movements; the eye is a sword; the eyelids, scabbards; the whiteness of the complexion, camphor; and a mole or beauty-spot, musk, which term denotes also dark hair. A mole is sometimes compared also to an ant creeping on the cheek towards the honey of the mouth; a handsome face is both a full-moon and day; black hair is night; the waist is a willow-branch, or a lance; the water of the face is self-respect; a poet sells the water of his face when he bestows mercenary praises on a rich patron devoid of every noble quality.
“Some of the verses in Arabic poetry (as in all Eastern poetry) are of a nature such as precludes translation. Had they been composed by a female on a youth whom she loved, they would seldom offer anything objectionable; but as the case is not so, they are utterly repugnant to European readers. It must not, however, be supposed that they are always the produce of a degraded passion; in many cases they were the usual expression of simple friendship and affection, or of those platonic attachments which the translated works of some Greek philosophers first taught the Moslims. Indeed, love and friendship are so closely confounded by them, that they designate both feelings by the same word, and it is not uncommon to meet epistles addressed by one aged doctor to another, and containing sentiments of the strongest kind, but which are the expression of friendship only. It often happens, also, that a poet describes his mistress under the attributes of the other sex, lest he should offend that excessive prudery of Oriental feelings which, since the fourth century of Islamism, scarcely allows an allusion to women, and more particularly in poetry, and this rigidness is still carried so far, that at Cairo public singers dare not amuse their auditors with a song in which the beloved is indicated as a female. Some of those pieces have also a mystic import, as the commentators of Hafiz, Saadi, and Shebisteri, have not failed to observe.” (Ib., p. xxxiii. et seq.)
POLL-TAX. [[JIZYAH].]
POLYGAMY. In Muḥammadanism, polygamy has the express sanction of the Qurʾān, and is, therefore, held to be a divine institution. Vide Sūratu ʾn-Nisāʾ, or [Chapter iv. 3]:—
“But if ye cannot do justice between orphans, then marry what seems good to you of women, by twos, or threes, or fours: and if ye fear that ye cannot be equitable, then only one, or what your right hand possesses” (i.e. female slaves).
Compare this with the teaching of the Talmud:—
“A man may marry many wives, for Rabba saith it is lawful to do so, if he can provide for them. Nevertheless, the wise men have given good advice, that a man should not marry more than four wives.” (Arbah. Turim. Ev. Hazaer, 1.)
But although permission to indulge in polygamy is clear and unmistakable, the opening verse of the Sūrah from which the above is taken, seems to imply some slight leaning to monogamy as the highest form of married life, for it reads thus:—
“O ye men! fear your Lord, who created you from one soul, and created therefrom its mate, and diffused from them twain numerous men and women.”
In the Ain-i-Akbari, it is related that a certain Mujtahid, or enlightened doctor, married eighteen wives, for he rendered the Arabic word mas̤na, “double,” and read the text already quoted, “Marry whatever women you like two and two, three and three, and four and four.” And in the same work it is said that another learned Maulawī married eight wives, because he read the verse—“two + three + four = nine”!