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the verse, charm and significance, as Imr' al-Qays has achieved in lam
yuthqab, so the poet has already alluded to clean and transparent
jaza1. With lain yuthqab, the poet has achieved a more telling effect.
Imr al-Qays says:
A person bringing joyful tidings said: "Mayst thou have the best of
victuals." I have seen three onagers grazing separately in the wilderness as if they were unthreaded jaza( stones.
A poet has depicted the pupil of the eye (sawad) circumscribed by the
white (bayad) as follows:
Our female singer gazes with such eyes as if two round jaza' stones
have been superimposed upon two pearls.
This poet has compared the fierceness of the eyes with two pearls, the
pupils of the eye with the blackness of jaza' and the whites of the eyes
with the whiteness of jaza'. Sanawbari, flattering his beloved, says:
Jaza', ruby and pearls — these are thine two eyes, two cheeks and
teeth.
Labid says about his brother, Arbad:
He was our leader and our thread and the jaza' that guarded the
thread.
Farazdaq says:
Such goats are our hereditary wealth and are like the jaza' stones that
hang from the breast bones.
And Imr' al-Qays says:
When they turned their backs (upon us), they presented the spectacle
of the jaza' necklace which had been put on by one of a noble tribe.
That is to say, the jaza' neckclace was put on the neck of a child belonging to a noble tribe (even though the child might be an orphan) and inherited wealth. And the necklace had besides jaza', other kinds of stones
strung on the necklace for achieving proper spacing. The implication,
then, is that the kids of the goats in the herd looked like the stones of
another species threaded into a. jaza' necklace.
"Abd 'Amr Ta'i says:
They turned their backs upon us as if they were a jaza' neckband
round the throat of a slave.
Abual-Tamhan writes:
Their high pedigree and countenance dispelled the darkness of the
night so much that jaza' could be threaded in the light (of their
countenance).
Exegetes have attempted to explain the image of jaza' by saying that the
stone is speckled by white and black stripes which are arranged close to
each other. The whiteness of its stripes and the day make it invisible,
and the whiteness of the stripes and the night also make it equally invisible. But this is an explanation that jaza' would be invisible both in
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