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the kings of that country used to stay. Once a person came to visit the
king of Yemen. He was standing at an elevated spot and the King asked him in the Himyarite tongue to take his seat. The King had said, lliib, which means, "Take thine seat". But he thought he was being commanded to jump, and he jumped to death. (In Arabic thib and umthub are the tenses of the verb infinitive for jumping). This is how the adage, man dakhala Zifar hammara (He who enters /Ajar must speak the Himyarite language) has originated. In fact, it would be better still if the adage ran as follows: "Anyone who becomes the king of Zifar should adopt diversion and accost everyone according to the circumstance". A Himyarite king happened to be a cripple and lay all the time on bed. People, therefore, used to call him mawthaban which is derived from the same word, wathaba. It has been said about tau'am that it means an even number yielding
an even quotient when divided by an even numer, i.e., two and two, since pearls look charming in pairs. It is also quite presumable that tau'am means uniformity and that the major and minor units might not be equal under all circumstances but almost similar to each other. When the first and the second pearls are equal, and the second is equal to the third, then the first would be equal to the third, and this series would go ad infinitum, if the kings of Yemen took jaza' to spell an evil omen, this idea would have gained a firmer root among the people and they would have followed their rulers. But, on the contrary, we see them praising jaza', not refraining from describing it, and not referring to any evil omen in conjunction with it. Imr al-Qays who is himself a decendent of the Kindah Rulers (of Yemen) says: As if the eyes of the onagers scattered round our tents and accoutrements look like unperforated jaza' (lam yuthqab).
At the time of death the eyes of the onager and other animals become akin to jaza' except for the fact that their eyes are without perforation, as the white of the eye which surrounds the pupil becomes all the more evident and the eyes are holeless. Some exegetes have said that the jaza' stones that are threaded are of the inferior kind and cannot be threaded without being bored. The poet has, therefore, especially mentioned the unboredjdza' from which the gems of the ring are made and which are of the best kind. The poet has, therefore, alluded to the better of the two varieties. Another meaning that might be ascribed to the verse could be that
the eyes of the dead animals are like the unthreaded jaza' stones and because they are unbored, they lie scattered. Abu Ahmad Askari writes: The beauty of a poem lies in the poet's conveyance of the purport at
the end of the distich and, when he reaches the end, he should add to |
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