and in the last maḳâmâ of Ḥarîrî (de Sacy, 2nd ed. p. 673. 2,) it is even said that 'the tooth of the daybreak laughs' (ibtasama thaġr al-fajr), i.e. becomes visible, as the teeth of a person laughing become visible. This mythic view has become so incorporated in the Arabic language that the word bazaġa, denoting that the teeth are prominent, is also used of the rising of the sun. In a small Arabic tract[1] by the Sheikh ʿUlwân b. ʿAṭîyyâ of Ḥamâ, which brings forward the contest between Day and Night, a subject not infrequent[2] in Oriental literature, in which the two champions engage in a battle of respective excellence in prose and poetry, there also occurs a passage suitable for quotation here. The Night says in the course of her dispute: 'To the string of these thy blameworthy qualities this must yet be added—that thou art changeable and many-coloured in thy various conditions, and not stedfast; thy beginning contradicts thy end, and thy interior is different from thy exterior. O what an utterly culpable quality is this, which scratches out the face of every merit! Thou laughest at thy rising, when thou rememberest weeping and mourning; and at thy extinction thou clothest thyself in thy most gorgeous of raiments, instead of putting on mourning garments.' And the Day replies, in his own defence to his black antagonist: 'What rank takest thou in comparison with me? What is thy gloominess and thy sombre seriousness in comparison with my gay smiles (ḍaḥikî wabtisâmî)?'[3]
It is not only the clear shining sunny sky that is called by the Arab poet 'the Smiling;' this attribute is applied also to other luminous things, e.g. to the glittering Stars
- ↑ It is entitled Nuzhat al-asrâr fî muḥâwarat al-leyl w-al-nahâr, and is in MS. in the University Library at Leipzig: cod. Ref. no. 357, fol. 11–18.
- ↑ Of this literature I will now draw attention only to a Ḳasîdâ of the old Persian poet Asadî, which is now made accessible in the edition of Rückert's Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser, published by the care of W. Pertsch, Gotha 1874, pp. 59–63. But it contains little that harmonises with the argumentation of the above-employed Arabic tract.
- ↑ Nuzhat al-asrâr &c., fol. 14 verso, 17 verso.
