thee of this?" and Adi answered, "My father appeared to me in a dream last night and said to me, 'Harkye, Adi; Zu 'l Kura'a King of Himyar, sought the guest-rite of me and I, having naught to give him, slaughtered his she-camel, that he might eat: so do thou carry him a she-camel to ride, for I have nothing.'" And Zu 'l-Kura'a took her, marvelling at the generosity of Hatim of Tayy alive and dead. And amongst instances of generosity is the
TALE OF MA'AN THE SON OF ZAIDAH.[1]
It is told of Ma'an bin Záidah that, being out one day a-chasing and a-hunting, he became athirst but his men had no water with them; and while thus suffering behold, three damsels met him bearing three skins of water;—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
When it was the Two Hundred and Seventy-first Night,[2]
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that three girls met him bearing three skins of water; so he begged drink of them, and they gave him to drink. Then he sought of his men somewhat
- ↑ A rival-in generosity to Hatim: a Persian poet praising his patron's generosity says that it buried that of Hatim and dimmed that of Ma'an (D'Herbelot). He was a high official-under the last Ommiade, Marwán al-Himár (the "Ass," or the "Century," the duration of Ommiade rule) who was routed and slain in A.H. 132=750. Ma'an continued to serve under the Abbasides and was a favourite with Al-Mansúr. "More generous or bountiful than Ka'ab" is another saying (A. P., i. 325); Ka'ab ibn Mámah was a man who, somewhat like Sir Philip Sidney at Zutphen, gave his own portion of drink while he was dying of thirst to a man who looked wistfully at him, whence the saying "Give drink to thy brother the Námiri" (A. P., i. 608). Ka'ab could not mount, so they put garments over him to scare away the wild beasts and left him in the desert to die. "Scatterer of blessings" (Náshir al-Ni'am) was a title of King Malik of Al-Yaman, son of Sharhabíl, eminent for his liberality. He set up the statue in the Western Desert, inscribed "Nothing behind me," as a warner to others.
- ↑ Lane (ii. 352) here introduces, between Nights cclxxi. and ccxc., a tale entitled in the Bresl. Edit. (iv. 134) "The Sleeper and the Waker," i.e. the sleeper awakened; and he calls it: The Story of Abu-l-Hasan the Wag. It is interesting and founded upon historical-fact; but it can hardly be introduced here without breaking the sequence of The Nights. I regret this the more as Mr. Alexander J. Cotheal-of New York has most obligingly sent me an addition to the Breslau text (iv. 137) from his MS. But I hope eventually to make use of it.
