girl has been changed by the new conditions; the foreigner, of course,
has few opportunities for observing her. Does she still possess that
exotic charm which in other years lifted her to the throne of empire,
and inspired that exquisite white dream in marble which still stands
in the Savannah of Fort-de-France--between the Rivière Madame and
the Rivière Monsieur? Does she still keep that fine witchery which
frightened the foolish Métropole long ago into the utterance of the law
that no French official in the colonies should marry a creole? I do
not know. But it is sadly true that she is bearing more than her share
of the penalty for the errors made by her fathers in the past--those
errors of slavery, that have not even yet been expiated. And it is also
true that many a fair proud girl--perhaps more than one with princely
blood in her veins--seeks escape at last from the dull formality of an
aimless and hopeless existence, by returning forever to the convent
of her child-days; knowing nothing of the higher joys or deeper pains
of life, and so the more innocently eager to transmute into religious
ecstasy and penance that strength of love and that divine desire of
self-sacrifice for some one's sake which are attributes of woman's
soul.
ARABESQUES
ARABIAN WOMEN
Although sensitiveness to beauty--the æsthetic sense--is not in itself
a capacity by which the comparative civilization of races may be fully
estimated, it is at least an indication of the possession of powers
which under favoring circumstances would enable the people possessing
it to occupy a high rank in the hierarchy of nations. When found
among semi-savage peoples, it gives us the right to believe that such
peoples have been or might yet be the founders of civilizations; and
in these days, when the study of Oriental history and ethnology is
making such rapid progress, especial interest attaches to the evidences
of the æsthetic sense in the earliest literature of the nations of
the East. In this regard, no Oriental literature possesses so natural
a charm as that of the Arabs,--particularly, perhaps, from the fact
that in it is preserved every link in the history of the wonderful
evolution of the æsthetic sense,--from the primitive desert-chant to
the elaborate literature of the Golden Prime of Islam,--from the first
camel-skin tents to the glories of Saracenic architecture in Spain
and India,--from the simplicity of nomad life between sand and sun,
to the luxurious era of El Rashid and El Mamoun, of which the memory
still lingers in the world like a breath of perfume, like a golden
afterglow, like the throbbing in the brain after some wondrous music
has died away. This literature is vast and variform; it were useless
to attempt in any limited space to speak, even of the titles of its
main branches,--or even to touch ever so lightly upon those branches
which deal especially with the sense of the beautiful. But the memory
of the student, culling here and there a blossom of the poetical flora
whose odor is most grateful to his special literary sense, can at
least present the reader with a bouquet of fancies curious enough to
interest if not beautiful enough, perhaps, to charm. If there be any
particular subject the poetical treatment of which is the best evidence
of the æsthetic sense, it is the beauty of woman,--and we confine our
gleanings to this particular domain.
From time immemorial, before the coming of Mahomet, the desert Arabs
were wont not only to honor poets highly, but to hold periodical
assemblies at which poetical contests took place, the contestants
being stimulated by the promise of a prize or the signal honor of
having their compositions hung up in the precincts of the temples as
almost-inspired masterpieces. Six out of the many victors at these
ante-islamic poetical exhibitions obtained such fame that their names
are still familiar to all the desert-tribes, and their poems have been
preserved for us almost unchanged,--marvelous specimens of simple,
beautiful, but savage genius. Naturally the field of the desert-poet
had but little variation; his subjects were few and simple--the fine
qualities of thoroughbred horses or camels, the triumph of battle,
the lament of defeat, the joy of the chase, the beauty of a mistress.
This very limitation of subject, together with the monotonous
sameness of nomad life in all ages and as far as the sands extend, by
increasing the difficulty of the art, renders its charming expression
more wonderful to modern minds. To describe the beauty of woman, the
modern poet can summon to his aid the whole art of civilization, the
varied knowledge of three thousand years, the charm of all things that
charm--jewels, music, flowers, birds, ivories of China and the Indies,
colors of the Pacific, Greek and Etruscan arts, the melody and passion
of a hundred wonderful languages. The Arab, knowing no language but his
own, seeing ever about him the yellow waste, above him the unvarying
blue,--ignorant of all arts save those of war and the chase,--was
able to create masterpieces of language which the most learned men of
our own day cannot speak of without admiration,--poems virile, supple,
ardent as the desert itself and as sun-colored. Translations of these
are now printed in most European languages.
Symbolism, so infinitely rich in the nineteenth century, was
necessarily meagre in the deserts of Arabia before the advent of
Mahomet, and the Arab lover knew of but few things to which he might
compare the beauty of her he loved: comely animals and simple objects
familiar to dwellers in tents constituted the bulk of his poetical
stock of similes. In the neighborhood of the cities he might see
other objects suited to the evocation of graceful fancies, as when he
compared the loosened tresses of an Arab girl falling over her face, to
1 the graceful drooping of the flexible vine over its trellis-work,'
But he generally confined his symbolism to desert-subjects,--the palm,
the ostrich, the gazelle, the wild cattle of the stony hills, the
antelopes,--the weapons of his people; for in all countries the eyebrow
of the fair has ever been Love's bow, her gaze its arrows, her glance
their barbed points that may not be readily withdrawn from the heart.
Strange some of these Arab comparisons of beauty seem, yet they are
never uncouth, never commonplace or feeble. 'Graceful her waist as a
nabak-branch; elegant her stature as a palm,' says one who had never
heard the words of Solomon. Another compares the beauties of Nahous to
ostriches, with good effect: 'The girls of the neighborhood of Nahous
have made thee sick for love by reason of their cadenced walk; measured
their steps are like those of the ostrich.' All the Arabian poets have
alternately compared the eyes of their women to those of the wild
antelope, the gazelle, or the desert cow--sharing the last mentioned
simile with Homer. Nor was the nomad troubadour ashamed to compare
the graces of his beloved to those of a fine steed. 'My beauty,' cries
El-Acha, 'slenderly graceful as a young mare, lithe of flank! ... the
curves of her bosom are as the curves of heaven aglow with light....
Woman enchantress! were she but to lean a moment on the body of a dead
man, surely he would arise again!' Another sings of captive maidens
beautiful as wild desert cows.' Nabiga, one of the greatest of the
early poets, is fond of a similar comparison, but uses also the gazelle
as a more graceful symbol: 'She hath gazed upon thee with the gaze of
a young gazelle, tame, swarthy of hue, sable-eyed and decked with a
necklace of strung pearls.'
But aside from mere poetical comparisons, we find the Arabs had a
well-ordinated law of beauty, which even a Greek sculptor could
scarcely have found fault with, although more severe in some respects
than the Hellenic ideal. The Arab's estimate is based on a consummate
knowledge of comparative artistic anatomy, the rare knowledge of an
accomplished stockraiser applied to human anatomy, physiology and
osteology. So minute, indeed, are the descriptions of female beauty in
the old Arabian poets that they can seldom be faithfully translated;
the general idea can alone be given. There were recognized laws of
beauty for every finger of the hand, every separate toe of the foot.
Every dimple had a special name. That of the chin was called _nounah_;
that at the corner of the lips, _rababah_; the little hollow of the
upper lip, immediately beneath the nasal cartilage, _djirthimah_; the
hollow of the throat, between the collarbones, _thograh_; the dimple
of the thumb-joint, near the wrist, _kouit._ Furthermore, there was
not merely one recognized type of beauty; there were several types. A
woman was called _melihah_, beautiful, only if so charming that every
time looked at she seemed more graceful than before. A woman was called
_djemilah_ if merely pretty,--if seeming to be exquisitely lovely at
a distance but only graceful near by. The curve of beauty--the magical
line whose secret is popularly supposed to have been known only to
the Greeks, was also known to the Arabs, though they did not perhaps
ever succeed in expressing it in ivory or marble; and could only find
poetical comparisons for it in the undulation of waves or the rounded
outlines of the sandbillows. Lips slightly pouting apart, so as to show
a pearly gleam within, were also considered a beautiful possession.
'Why are thy lips so sweetly open?1 asks a desert poet of his beloved.
'Eh!' she replied, 'when the fig ripeneth to give its honey it openeth;
the rose openeth also when the dew cometh to kiss it.' Complexion was
also a subject of æsthetic study,--especially in regard to smoothness
and clearness of skin, being compared to ivory rarely, often to the
shell of the ostrich-eggs,--a simile used by Mahomet in his description
of the girls of Paradise.
Flexibility of the joints was considered essential to womanly
perfection; and Nabiga describes a 'delicate hand, whose fingers are
like the stalks of the _anam_ that may be tied into a knot, so flexible
they are.' A perfectly straight nose was not thought especially
beautiful; the Arabs believed aquiline features to indicate a finer
human thoroughbredness and force of character. Often the curve of a
woman's nose is compared to 'the curve of a fine sabre well-furbished.'
Rounded cheeks were held in abhorrence; the nomad considered fleshiness
a sign of inferior blood; and 'smooth flat cheeks, like polished
silver,' are highly praised. 'She hath no stoutness; sleek she is,
and full-hipped' is said of a fine woman by an Arab admirer, who
expressed the view of his people that solid flesh, not adipose tissue,
should give the line of beauty. 'Flesh firm as the fruit of a ripening
pomegranate.' The hair of a woman was indeed one of her chief glories;
but a certain thickness, heaviness, and glossiness was demanded, and
a poet did not think it ungallant to compare such tresses to the black
splendor of his stallion's mane or sweeping tail.
Operating upon a race thus imbued with æsthetic ideas and learned in
the minutest details of physical completeness, the law of natural
selection could not fail to produce remarkable results. Tribes were
proud of special characteristics of beauty, transmitted from generation
to generation. Thus the Kodaides were famed for the beauty of foot and
leg; the Kindides, for the slender elegance of their flexible waists;
the Khozaides, for the graceful delicacy of both upper and lower limbs;
the Ozrides, or Beni-Azra, for the eyes of their women not less than
their famed liability to die of love. When the poet El-Asmai was asked
by Haroun El Rashid to describe in verse the beauty of a slave, he was
obliged to cite from the desert Arabs:--
She hath the members of a Kinanide,
The rounded loveliness of a Saidide,
The beautiful eyes of a Hilalide,
The graceful mouth of a Tayide.
Islam, indeed, quenched the creative genius of Arabian poetry; but the
pagan songs were sung even to the days of the last Caliph, and when
some Commander of the Faithful paid his court poet a thousand pieces
of gold for describing a slave, the poet seldom relied upon his own
powers of improvization, but simply quoted the words of the ancient
nomads,--the tamers of horses and breeders of fine camels,--which
had been bequeathed by memory from generation to generation. When
Abd-el-Melik, fifth Caliph of the house of Ommaya, wanted to know how
to choose a woman for her beauty, it was not to a court poet or learned
littérateur that he found it necessary to address his questions, but
to a herder of camels,--a desert Arab,--a man of the Beni-Ratafan.
The nomad's answer is remarkable; his description is absolutely
sculpturesque, with a sculpturesqueness that suggests the bland
smoothness, the fluent grace of a fine bronze. Its artistic perfection
apologizes for its nudity, and yet we prefer to quote it in the French
of the Orientalist who first gave it European publicity:--
'Prends la femme aux pieds bien unis, aux talons légers et délicats,
aux jambes fines et lisses, aux genoux dégagés et dessinés, aux cuisses
pleines et arrondies, aux bras potelés, aux mains déliées et fines, à
la gorge relevée et ferme, aux joues rosées, aux yeux noirs et vifs, au
front beau et ouvert, au nez aquilin et fier, à la bouche et aux dents
fraîches et douces, à la chevelure d'un noir foncé, au cou souple et
moëlleux, au ventre effacé et gracieusement ondulé.'
'But where,' asked the Caliph in astonishment, 'can such a woman be
found?'
The other replied: 'Thou mayst find such a one among the Arabs of
unmixed blood and the Persians of pure race.'
Neither must it be forgotten that for those desert beauties '_Kohl_
was the best of adornments and water the most excellent of perfumes.'
But it was in the time of the Abbasside Caliphs that the Arabian
sensitiveness to beauty obtained its supremest gratifications and
that the luxury of loveliness reached such an extreme as the Greek
world never knew. The demand for beautiful slaves brought to light
human marvels who would certainly have been well worthy to serve as
models to Praxiteles or Lysippus,--creatures so beautiful that there
seems to be good reason to believe the historians who declare that
many who saw them died of love. Islam had a surplus of slaves, yet
the pearls of its harems were paid for with the price of a province.
The age when a Caliph could expend upon his marriage festivities the
enormous sum of 50,000,000 dinars--about $140,000,000--was naturally
the era of splendid slavery and of the insolence of beauty. Abou ibn
Atik, one of the handsomest men of his era, and possessed of a most
beautiful wife whom he dearly loved, says (writing in the far earlier
days of Abd-el-Melik) that he saw slaves so beautiful that on seeing
them he felt 'as one in hell who should behold hopelessly the delights
of Paradise.' But those girls were certainly not to be compared with
the beauties of the court of Haroun or El Mamoun, for whom the whole
eastern world had been searched. The proudest of Greek sculptors would
scarcely have ventured to chisel upon the pedestal of his masterpiece:
'THIS IS THE SUPREME BEAUTY.' But the possessors of splendid girls did
not hesitate to place upon their human statues inscriptions to the
effect: 'THIS IS THE MASTERPIECE OR GOD.' Nothing can give a better
idea of the extravagant luxury of the age than the translation of
inscriptions graven upon fillets worn by these girls, or upon their
girdles, or upon their fans.
'Behind Haroun El Rashid,' says the poet, Abou'l Hassam, 'I saw girl
slaves standing so beautiful that they seemed like magnificent
statues. Fillets inlaid with rubies and with pearls clasped their
smooth brows; and to these were attached thin plates of gold bearing
Arab verses inscribed. One of these bore the words:--
Cruel one, thou hast disdained my love!--oh, God will judge
between us!
On another:--
What doth it avail me to cast at thee the shafts of my
gaze--they do not reach thee. Thou hast shot thine at me,
and they have smitten me,--cruel that thou art.
A third bore the inscription:--
To submit one's cheek to the touch of love is to make
oneself greater.
But these three pale into commonplaceness before the magnificent
insolence of the fourth:--
I am a deserter from the houris of Paradise; I have been
created to make trouble in the hearts of those who gaze upon
me.
Worthy to compare with the above is the following which El-Asmai saw
graven upon the fillets of beautiful slaves in Haroun's palace:--
We are young and bewitching beauties from the fields of
Paradise.
God hath lavished his gifts upon us; in us there is naught
to reproach.
For the love of God, sweet damozel, let me not languish for
love!
And this on the girdle of a beauteous slave:--
A single wink of thine eye, a teasing touch of thy hand,
will be enough to unclasp it.
For my heart is so feeble that it could almost leap from my
breast.
The sight of only a part of my beauty suffices to disturb
thy soul.
We quote a few more at random--graven on the fillets of El Rashid's
slaves:--
Say, O men! in heaven's name is it a sun that shines beneath
that fillet, or is it the fair crescent of the nights?
Is life possible without the follies of love? Nay, then!
flee the sight of beautiful eyes.
Rich men of Bagdad followed the example. One El Natify had a slave on
whose fillet was written:--
Seduction and the power that teaseth hearts flash from mine
eye when it gazeth. Turn, unhappy man, turn away thine eye
from mine eye!
On the fillet of Ward (Rose) slave of Mahany, was written:--
She is finished, all finished the beauty of her
features;--nothing beyond her beauty is possible in this
world.
For other mortals there is but one crescent in every month;
but for me the crescent of beauty riseth daily upon the brow
of Ward.
And there is a delicious coquetry in this inscription, traced with
henna upon the hand of a slave-girl:--
It is not the beauty of henna that doth embellish my hand;
'tis the beauty of my hand that doth heighten the beauty of
the henna.
Girl-pages, attired like men, sometimes like soldiers, were also
fashionable. One of these is spoken of as having worn a helmet on which
was engraved: 'Admire the beauty of this slave; never can thine eye
learn to define it. Is she male or female; yes,'t is a woman! aye, 't
is a man!'
And on her sword-belt was graven:--
The sword of her eyes doth not suffice her,--that terrible
sword that striketh down the keenest sabres. How dare
I remain between those two swords! Let thee behold but
once this proud beauty marching in warrior-garb, with her
twofold apparatus of slaughter; and thou wilt learn that
the scimitar of her glance is even more terrible than the
scimitar that is wielded with both hands.
The rage for beautiful slaves and exquisite dresses and inscribed
girdles increased greatly under Haroun's reign; and the art of the
poet was more than ever in demand. Even the tapestries, the coverings
of furniture, were adorned with appropriate inscriptions, of which the
following on a divan is a fair sample:--
More ravishing, more delicious than wine and the perfume
of roses, is the group of two lovers, with cheek pressed
against cheek....
The one speaking of the troubles that he feels; the other
telling of the love within her heart.
Or this, upon a fan:--
I bring a tender breath of air; with me rosy shame doth play:
I serve as a veil to the amorous mouth that pouts for a kiss.
And some of the kisses of those days, too, have become historical;
we read of a single kiss being paid for with two pearls worth forty
thousand drachmas. The giver was no caliph, but a private citizen who
sold his property to buy the pearls, and gave them away on the easy
condition that the girl should take them from his lips with hers.
The tendency of such splendid voluptuousness, extravagance, and luxury
has been the same in all civilized countries; the results similarly
lamentable: national enervation, indolence, loss of patriotism and
warrior-daring, loss of moral principle, death of ethical sentiment.
Pleasure ruined the Caliphate as it ruined Rome. Abou Nouwas, Haroun's
court poet, wrote two poems, of which two fragments reveal the whole
history of the moral decadence of Islam. The first fragment is not
without beauty:--
Ruby the wine and pearl the cup in the hands of the
beautiful slave with waist so slender and voluptuous.
Ravishing the beauty who giveth thee to drink at once of her
gaze and of her hand! Thus art thou ever seized with two
intoxications.
But the second fragment gives us the dismal sequel:--
Multiply thy sins to the utmost; for thou art to meet an
indulgent God.
When thou comest before Him thou wilt gnaw thy hands with
regret for those pleasures thou didst avoid through fear of
hell.
RABYAH'S LAST RIDE
A TRADITION OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA
This is the relation of the death of Rabyah, son of Mokaddem, of the
Beni-Firaz, according to the legend transmitted from generation unto
generation by the _rawis_, or reciters of poems and of great deeds.
And it is written down in the commentary which Abou Zakariyah
Yahyah-al-Tibrizi made upon those mighty poems chanted before Islam
which are called _Hamasah_,--a word signifying all that is stalwart and
noble in a man,--and in the _Hamasah_ the place of the legend of Rabyah
is in the second book, which is the 'Book of Dirges.' But the tale hath
also been told by Al-Maidani, and by Abou Riyash; and it is likewise
preserved in the great _Kitab-al-Aghanij_ or 'Book of Songs,' collected
and written down by Abou I Faraj Al' Ispahani, who devoted fifty years
alone to the study of the poems and the legends of the Desert Arabs of
old.
Rabyah, son of Mokaddem, of the Beni-Firaz, was famed as the bravest
and the strongest and the most generous of his tribe what time he
lived, and he was celebrated as an escort. For from the day that he
had, single-handed, as a very young man, successfully defended his
bride, Raytah, against the horsemen of the Beni-Djoucham on a foray,
the women deemed it no little honor to have Rabyah as their escort.
And no woman ever intrusted herself to the protection of Rabyah for a
journey to whom any mishap befell while he remained with her.
Now on the day of his death Rabyah was escorting a caravan of women
through the country of the Beni-Sulaim, and he was the only horseman
with them. For though there had been blood between the Beni-Firaz and
the Beni-Sulaim, the price of blood had been paid, and it was thought
peace had been brought about. And the mother and sister of Rabyah were
with the caravan.
And all that land was yellow and dry as long-dead bone; and it was
strewn with great stones that seemed to have been rained down from
heaven with fire, so seared and so blackened they were. And the pass
leading to their own country--the Pass of Ghazal--was still far off
when Rabyah, looking back, saw a distant rising of dust, like the smoke
of a fire newly kindled. Now Rabyah rode upon his favorite gray mare,
Ghezala, whom no desert steed might ever overtake, but he rode slowly
for the sake of the women, who were mounted upon camels.
So he drew rein, and gazed at the dust cloud, and perceived a gleam
break through it, and another, and another, and many glimmerings--a
lightning of lances. And looking a little while longer, he could
discern a company of men in helms of iron and shirts of mail, riding
upon lean black horses; and as they sped swiftly he knew the helm of
the horsemen that led them--Nubaishah, of whom it was said that Death,
the Mother of Vultures, ever rode with him.
Then Rabyah spurred in haste after the women, and urged on faster
the toiling camels, and said unto his mother: 'There is treachery, O
mother! Lo! Nubaishah, the son of Habib, pursueth us with the wild men
of Sulaim.' And even as he spoke, the far-off drum-roll of galloping
hoofs brake heavily upon their ears through the hot and thirsty air.
And turning his mare round, Rabyah added: 'Haste ye toward the Pass,
while I strive to hold them back; and I shall meet ye all at the Pass,
to hold it so that ye can reach our tents and arouse the horsemen.'
And he rode to meet the wild men of Sulaim, while the women urged their
beasts faster over the dusty path.
Then Rabyah's sister, Oumm 'Amr, cried out in fear, and those with her
lamented, as they saw Rabyah ride back all alone. But his mother, Oumm
Saiyar, chided them, saying:--
While there remaineth so much as one drop of blood in his veins, no son
of mine will ever fail to do the deeds of a man and the duty of a man.
Have no fear, ye foolish ones! when did Rabyah ever fail to protect a
woman? How many such robbers as those hath he not harassed ere this,
even as lizards in their desert holes are harassed with a stick? How
many an enemy's corpse hath he not left to be devoured by the lions of
the woods, by the ancient eagles of the hills? In how many encounters
hath he not been hard pressed before--ay, even tightly pressed as the
sandal strap between the toes of the wearer? Know ye not that my son
is unto men as a beacon-light--ay, as the signal-fires that be lighted
upon mountain-tops?'
Yet Rabyah's sister only would not be comforted, and she wept and said:
Purely my brother hath never before been placed in any peril like unto
this peril, for the men of Sulaim are many, and it hath ever been said
of Nubaishah that Death, the Mother of Vultures, rides with him.'