Note 3 — NUR AL-DIN ALI AND THE DAMSEL ANIS AL-JALIS

The Bul. Edit. gives the lines as follows:—

The lance was his pen, and the hearts of his foes ✿ His paper, and dipped he in blood for ink;

Hence our sires entitled the spear Khattíyah, ✿ Meaning that withal man shall write, I think.

The pun is in "Khattíyah" which may mean a writer (feminine) and also a spear, from Khatt-Hajar, a tract in the province Al-Bahrayn (Persian Gulf), and Oman, where the best Indian bamboos were landed and fashioned into lances. Imr al-Kays (Mu'allakah v. 4.) sings of "our dark spears firmly wrought of Khattiyan cane;" Al-Busírí of "the brown lances of Khatt;" also see Lebid v. 50 and Hamásah pp. 26, 231: Antar notes the "Spears of Khatt" and "Rudaynian lances." Rudaynah is said to have been the wife of one Samhár, the Ferrara of lances; others make her the wife of Al-Ka'azab and hold Samhár to be a town in Abyssinia where the best weapons were manufactured. The pen is the Calamus or Kalam (reed cut for pen) of which the finest and hardest are brought from Java: they require the least nibbing. The rhetorical figure in the text is called Husn al-Ta'alíl, our ætiology; and is as admirable to the Arabs as it appears silly to us.