him favour over all the other doctors of law and religion till he became the highest of them all in rank. And Allah is All knowing.[1] Men also tell a tale of
ALI SHAR[2] AND ZUMURRUD.
There lived once in the days of yore and the good old times long gone before, in the land of Khorasan, a merchant called Majd al-Dín, who had great wealth and many slaves and servants, white and black, young and old; but he had not been blessed with a child until he reached the age of threescore, when Almighty Allah vouchsafed him a son, whom he named Alí Shár. The boy grew up like the moon on the night of fulness; and when he came to man's estate and was endowed with all kinds of perfections, his father fell sick of a death-malady and, calling his son to him, said, "O my son, the fated hour of my decease is at hand, and I desire to give thee my last injunctions." He asked, "And what are they, O my father?"; and he answered, "O my son, I charge thee, be not over-familiar with any[3] and eschew what leadeth to evil and mischief. Beware lest thou sit in company with the wicked; for he is like the blacksmith; if his fire burn thee not, his smoke shall bother thee: and how excellent is the saying of the poet,[4]
'In thy whole world there is not one,
Whose friendship thou may'st count upon,
Nor plighted faith that will stand true,
When times go hard, and hopes are few.
Then live apart and dwell alone,
Nor make a prop of any one,
I've given a gift in that I've said,
Will stand thy friend in every stead:'
- ↑ There is nothing that Orientals relish more than these "goody-goody" preachments; but they read and forget them as readily as Westerns.
- ↑ Lane (ii. 435) ill-advisedly writes "Sher," as "the word is evidently Persian signifying a Lion." But this is only in the debased Indian dialect, a Persian, especially a Shirazi, pronounces "Shír." And this is how it is written in the Bresl. Edit., vii. 262. "Shár" is evidently a fancy name, possibly suggested by the dynastic name of the Ghurjistan or Georgian Princes.
- ↑ Again old experience, which has learned at a heavy cost how many a goodly apple is rotten at the core.
- ↑ This couplet has occurred in Night xxi. I give Torrens (p. 206) by way of specimen.
