mistress necessarily belongs, though living in the next street, to the Wady Liwa and to a hostile clan of Badawin whose blades are ever thirsting for the lover’s blood and whose malignant tongues aim only at the “defilement of separation.”  Youth is upright as an Alif, or slender and bending as a branch of the Ban-tree which we should call a willow-wand,[FN#307] while Age, crabbed and crooked, bends groundwards vainly seeking in the dust his lost juvenility.  As Baron de Slane says of these stock comparisons (Ibn Khall. i. xxxvi.), “The figurative language of Moslem poets is often difficult to be understood.  The narcissus is the eye; the feeble stem of that plant bends languidly under its dower, and thus recalls to mind the languor of the eyes.  Pearls signify both tears and teeth; the latter are sometimes called hailstones, from their whiteness and moisture; the lips are cornelians or rubies; the gums, a pomegranate flower; the dark foliage of the myrtle is synonymous with the black hair of the beloved, or with the first down on the cheeks of puberty.  The down itself is called the izar, or head-stall of the bridle, and the curve of the izar is compared to the letters lam ( ) and nun ( ).[FN#308] Ringlets trace on the cheek or neck the letter Waw ( ); they are called Scorpions (as the Greek ), either from their dark colour or their agitated movements; the eye is a sword; the eyelids scabbards; the whiteness of the complexion, camphor; and a mole or beauty-spot, musk, which term denotes also dark hair.  A mole is sometimes compared also to an ant creeping on the cheek towards the honey of the mouth; a handsome face is both a full moon and day; black hair is night; the waist is a willow-branch or a lance; the water of the face is self-respect:  a poet sells the water of his face[FN#309] when he bestows mercenary praises on a rich patron.”

This does not sound promising:  yet, as has been said of Arab music, the persistent repetition of the same notes in the minor key is by no means monotonous and ends with haunting the ear, occupying the thought and touching the soul.  Like the distant frog-concert and chirp of the cicada, the creak of the water-wheel and the stroke of hammers upon the anvil from afar, the murmur of the fountain, the sough of the wind and the plash of the wavelet, they occupy the sensorium with a soothing effect, forming a barbaric music full of sweetness and peaceful pleasure.

Section iv. 
Social condition.

I here propose to treat of the Social Condition which The Nights discloses, of Al-Islam at the earlier period of its development, concerning the position of women and about the pornology of the great Saga-book.

A.—­Al-Islam.