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They are worn by Bedouin and Arab maidens round their hands and feet.
Many marine animals cling to the hulls of ships. They are shelled and
are called kaslir. They are very sharp and penetrating and they are, therefore, scraped by means of iron scrapers. Such cowries are also found on the shore, but when they receive warmth from the sun and the wind blows, they get spilts and seeps into them, and they get broken. Some have said that they get spilt as the cowries, gravel and shells from the coast get mixed with them. The people of Basrah make from them mortar-like stones and millstones but not for grinding or pounding but for covering bins.
Etymologists believe (and Ibn Jinni has quoted them) that the word
sadaf itself derives from "sadaf yasdifu idlia mala" (when it turns away) since it runs away from the pearl. Hence its name, sadaf. He could as well have said that it was in shape like sides of two
mountains facing each other. This explanation could also have been acceptable. When the nacreous shell is opened, both its sides look like this, although they are inverted from the earth. Small shells are called bulbul and the larger ones mahar. Imr al-Qays thus says: Its hoofs are like mother-of-pearl, and gravel flies to the right when it
propels itself forward at such high speed.
Khalil bin Ahmad says that maharah is the flesh that is inside the sadaf. But it is the animal that is inside the sadaf and no one calls this animal maharah. The word, maharah, is used for sadaf only, whether it has any flesh or not, Ra'i says: They arrived at daybreak at Maqrir, with their eyes sunk and their
hoofs like maharah (mother-of-pearl).
The meaning is that they (the mares) reached Maqrir at daybreak.
Some have held Maqr to be the sea-coast. They had their eyes sunk, their strides long, and their hoofs like large mothers-of-pearl. Abu Hanifah says that dila' is a kind of marine mother-of-pearl. In the Kitab al-Jamharah it has been said that qabqub is a mother-of-pearl in the sea whose flesh is eaten. If this be so, then all shells are qabaqib, since they are all roasted. People like their flesh, and their taste is like that of a roasted egg. It is through experience only that one can learn which shell is the mother-of-pearl. These shells are sold at the coast of Aden. The sellers cry-aloud: 'Take this jawz al-bakht.' Makhshalabah is also a synonym for the mother-of-pearl, while some say it is the pearl (taken out) from the mother-of-pearl. Others have held that maklishalab is the glass which is threaded into the silver ornaments of Bedouin women. Thus Abu al-Tayyib Mutanabbi says: The sun looks blackish beside her fair countenance, and the pearl
looks like makhshalab beside the pearls that drop from her speech.
When some one objected saying that makhshalab is not an Arabic word. |
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