AL-MUTALAMMIS AND HIS WIFE UMAYMAH.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
It is related that Al-Mutalammis[105] once fled from Al-Nu’uman bin Munzir[106] and was absent so long that folk deemed him dead. Now he had a beautiful wife, Umaymah by name, and her family urged her to marry again; but she refused, for that she loved her husband Al-Mutalammis very dearly. However, they were urgent with her, because of the multitude of her suitors, and importuned her till she at last consented, albe reluctantly; and they espoused her to a man of her own tribe. Now on the night of the wedding, Al-Mutalammis came back and, hearing in the camp a noise of pipes and tabrets and seeing signs of a wedding festival, asked some of the children what was the merry making, to which they replied, “They have married Umaymah wife of Al-Mutalammis, to such an one, and he goes in to her this night.” When he heard this, he planned to enter the house amongst the mob of women and saw the twain seated on the bridal couch.[107] By and by, the bridegroom came up to her, whereupon she sighed heavily and weeping, recited this couplet:—
Would Heaven I knew (but many are the shifts of joy and woe) ✿ In what far distant land thou art, my Mutalammis, oh!
Now Al-Mutalammis was a renowned poet; so he answered her saying:—
Right near at hand, Umaymah mine! whene’er the caravan ✿ Halted, I never ceased for thee to pine, I would thou know.
When the bridegroom heard this, he guessed how the case stood and went forth from among them in haste improvising:—
I was in bestest luck, but now my luck goes contrary: ✿ A hospitable house and room contain your loves, you two!
And he returned not but left the twain to their privacy. So Al-Mutalammis and his wife abode together in all comfort and solace of life and in all its joys and jollities till death parted them. And glory be to Him at whose command the earth and the heavens shall arise! And among other tales is that of
Source notes
105. A pre-Islamitic bard and friend of Tarafah the poet of the Suspended or “Prize Poem.” The tale is familiar to all the Moslem East. Tarafah’s Laura was one Khaulá.
106. King of Hirah in Chaldæa, a drunken and bloodthirsty tyrant. When offended by the lampoons of the two poets he sent them with litteræ Bellerophontiæ to the Governor of Al-Bahrayn. Al-Mutalammis “smelt a rat” and destroyed his charge, but Tarafah was mutilated and buried alive, the victim of a trick which is old as (and older than) good King David and Uriah. Of course neither poet could read.
107. On this occasion, and in presence of the women only, the groom first sees or is supposed to see the face of his wife. It is, I have said, the fashion for both to be greatly overcome and to appear as if about to faint: the groom looks especially ridiculous when so attitudinising.