and that, when hoariness descendeth upon the head, delights pass away and the hour of death draweth in sight? Were not black the most illustrious of things, Allah had not set it in the core of the heart[1] and the pupil of the eye; and how excellent is the saying of the poet,
'I love not black girls but because they show * Youth's colour,
tinct of eye and heartcore's hue;
Nor are in error who unlove the white, * And hoary hairs and
winding-sheet eschew.'
And that said of another,
'Black[2] girls, not white, are they * All worthy love I
see:
Black girls wear dark-brown lips;[3] * Whites, blotch of
leprosy.'
And of a third,
'Black girls in acts are white, and 'tis as though * Like eyes,
with purest shine and sheen they show;
If I go daft for her, be not amazed; * Black bile[4] drives
melancholic-mad we know
'Tis as my colour were the noon of night; * For all no moon it
be, its splendours glow.
Moreover, is the foregathering of lovers good but in the night? Let this quality and profit suffice thee. What protecteth lovers from spies and censors like the blackness of night's darkness; and what causeth them to fear discovery like the whiteness of the dawn'
- ↑ Alluding to the "black drop" in the heart: it was taken from Mohammed's by the Archangel Gabriel. The fable seems to have arisen from the verse ' Have we not opened thy breast?" (Koran, chaps. xciv. 1). The popular tale is that Halímah, the Badawi nurse of Mohammed, of the Banu Sa'ad tribe, once saw her son, also a child, running towards her and asked him what was the matter. He answered, 'My little brother was seized by two men in white who stretched him on the ground and opened his bellyl" For a full account and deductions see the Rev. Mr. Badger's article, "Muhammed" (p. 959) in vol. in. "Dictionary of Christian Biography."
- ↑ Arab. "Sumr," lit. brown (as it is afterwards used), but politely applied to a negro: "Yá Abu Sumrah!" O father of brownness.
- ↑ Arab. 'Lumá"=dark hue of the inner lips admired by the Arabs and to us suggesting most umpleasant ideas. Mr. Chenery renders it "dark red,' and "ruddy" altogether missing the idea.
- ↑ Arab. "Saudá," feminine of aswad (black), and meaning black bile (melancholia) as opposed to leucocholia,
