Notes on the Poem of Tarafa

Arabian Poetry, by W. A. Clouston, [1881], at sacred-texts.com

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THE POEM OF TARAFA.

v. 6. The Bedouins feed their camels with the leaves of the erak-tree.

vv. 8, 9. Lane, n his "Modern Egyptians," describing the composition of the black powder, called kohl, with which ladies of Cairo paint the edge of their eyelids, both above and below the eye, mentions the powder of various kinds of lead-ore (kohl el-hagar) as being employed for this purpose. He also states that "some women, to make their teeth glisten, tattoo their lips." It would appear from these verses that the Arab women in like manner employed a preparation of lead-ore in order to render their teeth more sparkling by contrast with their "dark-coloured bases."

v. 30. El-Yemen was famous for the production of red leather.

v. 41. This verse resembles a couplet in the song of Beshâmeh son of Hazn of Nahshal, thus rendered by Mr Lyall in his "Songs from the Hamâseh and Aghânî:"

vv. 41-48.

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vv. 48-51. The singing-girls who sang at the drinking-parties of the ancient Arabs were Greeks, Syrians, or Persians. Until after El-Islâm the Arabs, though masters of rhythm and metre, had no indigenous system of singing except the rude song (originally of the camel-driver) called rajez. These girls probably sang for the most part in their own tongue, and played the music which they had learned in Persian ’Irâk or Syria; but in the life of En-Nâbigha of Dubyân, as given in the Aghânî (ix. 164), a singing girl of Yethrib (afterwards El-Madîna) is mentioned, who sang one of that poet's pieces in Arabic, and so enabled him to detect a fault of prosody.—Lyall: Notes on vv. 60, 61, Lebīd's Mo‘all.

v. 49. In Lane's "Modern Egyptians," Ed. 1860, p. 378, is an illustration of two Ghawázee, or public dancing-girls of Cairo, in which the costume exactly corresponds with Tarafa's description of the singing-girls’ vests.

v. 56. This sentiment of the old Arab poet finds a parallel in the following verse, from the Persian of Omar Khayyam:

[paragraph continues] "Poets of all ages," remarks Nott, in his "Select Odes of Hafiz," "and particularly those who were voluptuaries, urge the advice of making the best use of the present moment. The carpe diem of Horace is a frequently-quoted maxim."

In a very different strain does a modern English poet endeavour to inculcate the lesson of life:

[paragraph continues] The great American, Longfellow, too, in one of his beautiful prose-poems: "Look not mournfully into the Past: it comes not back

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again. Wisely improve the Present: it is thine. Go boldly forth into the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart."

v. 58. The Arabs, like the Greeks and the Romans, commonly drank their wine diluted with water; and only on extraordinary occasions drank the lighter kinds pure, and the more heavy wines mixed with a very little water. (See Mo‘all. of Amru, v. 2. and Note.)

vv. 62-68.

vv. 64, 65. Thus Horace, in his well-known ode (Sir Theodore Martin's translation):

And our English poet Young:

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[paragraph continues] And the Persian Sa‘dī: "When the pure and spotless soul is about to depart, of what importance is it whether we expire upon a throne or upon the bare ground?"