[159]. The second couplet is not in the Mac. Edit. but Lane’s Shaykh has supplied it. (ii. 339)
[160]. Adam’s loins, the “Day of Alast,” and the Imam (who stands before the people in prayer) have been explained. The “Seventh Imam” here is Al-Maamun, the seventh Abbaside—the Ommiades being, as usual, ignored.
[161]. He sinned only for the pleasure of being pardoned, which is poetical and hardly practical or probable.
[162]. The Katá (sand-grouse) always enters into Arab poetry because it is essentially a desert bird; and here the comparison is good because it lays its eggs in the waste far from water which it must drink morning and evening. Its cry is interpreted “man sakat, salam” (silent and safe), but it does not practice that precept, for it is usually betrayed by its piping Kata! Kata! Hence the proverb, “More veracious than the sand-grouse;” and “Speak not falsely, for the Kata sayeth sooth,” is Komayt’s saying. It is an emblem of swiftness: when the brigand-poet Shanfara boasts, “The ash-coloured Katas can drink only my leavings, after hastening all night to slake their thirst in the morning,” it is a hyperbole boasting of his speed. In Sind it is called the “rock pigeon” and it is not unlike a grey partridge when on the wing.
[163]. Joseph to his brethren, Koran, xii. 92, when he gives them his “inner garment” to throw over his father’s face.
[164]. Arab. “Hajjám” = a cupper who scarifies forehead and legs, a bleeder, a (blood-) sucker. The slang use of the term is to thrash, lick, wallop (Burckhardt, Prov. 34)
THE CITY OF MANY-COLUMNED IRAM AND ABDULLAH SON OF ABI KILABAH.[[165]]
It is related that Abdullah bin Abi Kilábah went forth in quest of a she-camel which had strayed from him; and, as he was wandering in the deserts of Al-Yaman and the district of Sabá,[[166]] behold, he came upon a great city girt by a vast castle around which were palaces and pavilions that rose high into middle air. He made for the place thinking to find there folk of whom he might ask concerning his she-camel; but, when he reached it, he found it desolate, without a living soul in it. So (quoth he) I alighted and, hobbling my dromedary,——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
Now when it was the Two Hundred and Seventy-sixth Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Abdullah bin Abi Kilabah continued:—I dismounted and hobbling my dromedary, and composing my mind, entered into the city. Now when I came to the castle, I found it had two vast gates (never in the world was seen their like for size and height) inlaid with all manner jewels and jacinths, white and red, yellow and green. Beholding this I marvelled with great marvel and thought the case mighty wondrous; then entering the citadel in a flutter of fear and dazed with surprise and affright, I found it long and wide about equalling Al-Medinah[[167]] in point of size; and therein were lofty palaces laid out in pavilions all built of gold and silver and inlaid with many-coloured jewels and jacinths and chrysolites and pearls. And the door-leaves in the pavilions were like those of the castle for beauty; and their floors were strewn with great pearls and balls, no smaller than hazel-nuts, of musk and ambergris and saffron. Now when I came within the heart of the city and saw therein no created beings of the Sons of Adam I was near swooning and dying for fear. Moreover, I looked down from the great roofs of the pavilion-chambers and their balconies and saw rivers running under them; and in the main streets were fruit-laden trees and tall palms; and the manner of their building was one brick of gold and one of silver. So I said in myself, “Doubtless this is the Paradise promised for the world to come.” Then I loaded me with the jewels of its gravel and the musk of its dust as much as I could carry and returned to my own country, where I told the folk what I had seen. After a time the news reached Mu’áwiyah, son of Abu Sufyán, who was then Caliph in Al-Hijaz; so he wrote to his lieutenant in San’á of Al-Yaman to send for the teller of the story and question him of the truth of the case. Accordingly the lieutenant summoned me and questioned me of my adventure and of all appertaining to it; and I told him what I had seen, whereupon he despatched me to Mu’awiyah, before whom I repeated the story of the strange sights; but he would not credit it. So I brought out to him some of the pearls and balls of musk and ambergris and saffron, in which latter there was still some sweet savour; but the pearls were grown yellow and had lost pearly colour.——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.