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ʾILÂM-EN-NÂS.
"ANOTHER WONDERFUL STORY."
EL-ASMAÏY[1] is said to have related the following wonderful tale.
At the time that Khâlid,[2] the son of ʾAbd-Allâh,
- ↑ El-Asmaïy was a celebrated philologer, a complete master of the Arabic language, an able grammarian, and the most eminent of all those persons who transmitted orally historical narrations, singular anecdotes, amusing stories, and rare expressions of the language. He was heard to say that he knew by heart sixteen thousand pieces of verse composed in the measure called rajaz, and it was observed of him that he never professed to know a branch of science without its being discovered that none knew it better than he. His works consisted of treatises upon every variety of subject. Doubtful points of literature were sent to him to be resolved, and it was said that none ever explained better than he the idiom of the desert Arabs. He was born A.H. 122 or 123 (A.D. 740), and died at el-Básrah, of which place he was a native, or, as some say, at Marw, A.H. 214, 216, or 217, according to different authorities.
- ↑ Khâlid-ibn-ʾAbd-Allâh, el Kúsary, was appointed governor of Arabian and Persian ʾIrâk by Hishâm-ibn-ʾAbd-el-Màlik. Before that, in A.H. 89, he was governor of Mekkah. His mother was a Christian, and his grandfather Yezîd was one of the Associates of the Prophet. Khâlid was considered as one
