Because “She Is
Blooming As The Sun At Dawn, With Hair Black As The Midnight Shades,
With Paradise In Her Eye, Her Bosom An Enchantment, And A Form Waving
Like The Tamarisk When The Soft Wind Blows From The Hills Of Nijd”?
Yes!
but his chest expands also with the thoughts of her “faith, purity, and
affection,”—it is her moral as well as her material excellence that makes
her
[p.96] the hero’s “hope, and hearing, and sight.” Briefly, in Antar I discern
“A love exalted high,
By all the glow of chivalry;”
and I lament to see so many intelligent travellers misjudging the Arab
after a superficial experience of a few debased Syrians or Sinaites.
The true children of Antar, my Lord Lindsay, have not “ceased to be
gentlemen.”
In the days of ignorance, it was the custom for Badawin, when tormented
by the tender passion, which seems to have attacked them in the form of
“possession,” for long years to sigh and wail and wander, doing the most
truculent deeds to melt the obdurate fair. When Arabia Islamized, the
practice changed its element for proselytism.
The Fourth Caliph is fabled to have travelled far, redressing the
injured, punishing the injurer, preaching to the infidel, and
especially protecting women—the chief end and aim of knighthood. The
Caliph Al-Mu’tasim heard in the assembly of his courtiers that a woman of
Sayyid family had been taken prisoner by a “Greek barbarian” of Ammoria.
The man on one occasion struck her: when she cried “Help me, O Mu’tasim!” and
the clown said derisively, “Wait till he cometh upon his pied steed!” The
chivalrous prince arose, sealed up the wine-cup which he held in his
hand, took oath to do his knightly devoir, and on the morrow started
for Ammoria with seventy thousand men, each mounted on a piebald
charger. Having taken the place, he entered it, exclaiming, “Labbayki,
Labbayki!”—“Here am I at thy call!” He struck off the caitiff’s head, released
the lady with his own hands, ordered the cupbearer to bring the sealed
bowl, and drank from it, exclaiming, “Now, indeed, wine is good!”
To conclude this part of the subject with another far-famed instance.
When Al-Mutanabbi, the poet, prophet, and warrior of Hams (A.H. 354)
started together with his
[p.97] son on their last journey, the father proposed to seek a place
of safety for the night. “Art thou the Mutanabbi,” exclaimed his slave, “who
wrote these lines,—
“‘I am known to the night, the wild, and the steed,
To the guest, and the sword, to the paper and reed[FN#29]’?”
The poet, in reply, lay down to sleep on Tigris’ bank, in a place haunted
by thieves, and, disdaining flight, lost his life during the hours of
darkness.
It is the existence of this chivalry among the “Children of Antar” which
makes the society of Badawin (“damned saints,” perchance, and “honourable
villains,”) so delightful to the traveller who[,] like the late Haji Wali
(Dr. Wallin), understands and is understood by them.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 61 of 331
Words from 31293 to 31808
of 175520
