... And by Arabic poetry I mean, here, the poetry of the Jahiliyya and of early Islam — not merely to avoid prolonging the study, but because that period represents the pure Arab temper more than any other period does; whence it followed that the poetry of that time was stamped with the pure Arab stamp, and the description of woman accordingly matched the taste of the ancient Arab in her, before he was influenced by the taste of the sons of other nations, and before woman herself was influenced by others, so that her beauty altered and changed.

In this study I have relied on no sources other than the poetry itself, for our ancients did not know the various arts that other nations knew and by which they portrayed woman's beauty, such as the painting and the statue; almost all they knew was the qasida. So it was fitting that we take poetry as the essential spring from which to draw. And what a noble spring it is: for who, like the poet, can see what cannot be seen, can feel the beauty of things, plucking that beauty as the bee plucks the sweetness of the flower, and offering it to us as a honey the Promised Land never knew — and in all this sending out no buzzings to vex the ear, nor preceding his gifts with stings that bloody the silken fingertips? Who, like the poet, sees existence in nothingness, builds pyramids out of nothing, and grows rapturous, so that his lips close upon murmurings whose meaning no one can fathom, while his fingers strike chords of thin air? Who, then, like the poet, can describe woman's beauty where it exists, and imagine her beauty where it does not, describing it as though it were real — as the first poet did before the creation of Eve?

Nor is it strange that poetry should treat the beauty of the body and dwell long in singing it. How could we expect it to speak of all the other aspects of dumb nature, and be silent about the finest thing

God created and the most beautiful thing nature fashioned? About the body, which belongs to man more than nature itself belongs to him: is not the body the one part of nature in which the soul has taken up dwelling? For when it came to earth it lodged in no tree or brook, but entered the body of man — despite the fragrant tales of the Greeks.

*

I shall now display a woman's body (in words, of course!) and relate how the poets of the Arabs described it in its fairest states:

The hair: the Arab poets took pains in describing their beloveds' hair. They required it to be long and abundant, likened for its length to black serpents; if the woman let it fall freely it trailed in the dust. And it must be black in color, like dark black clusters of grapes. Some loved crisp, coarse curls, in whose branches the comb perishes; others the smooth, flowing hair, sleek as the bodies of gliding serpents; while others pictured the woman as having hair at once curled and flowing, like Imru' al-Qays:

(The combs lose their way in it, in tresses doubled up and hanging loose...)

But in either case it must be thick as a forest: it is luxuriant and dense, the comb goes astray in it for its thickness and breaks for its coarseness; it is matted and heavy, likened therefore to vines and to the branches of the palm. The woman braided her hair for its length, and took pains over its plaiting, its combing, and its dressing. In the books of literature we read that certain noble Arab women were artful in arranging their hair, and that Sukayna bint

al-Husayn dressed hers in a partic-ular lovely style known afterward as the Sukaynian coiffure. But we read nothing of dyeing the hair or of the use of henna.

We descend a little, and the forehead meets us. The Arab poets were sparing in describing it, content to insist that it be broad, filling a notable part of the whole face, and that its whiteness harmonize with the whiteness of all the complexion — a whiteness radiant as a shining moon. The Arabs described the eyebrows as fine (naturally fine!), set well apart, arched and curved like the letter nun. We read nothing of the Arab woman's fussing over the state of her brows or her lids.

As for the eyes, I believe the Arab poets' description of them fell short of what it ought to have been, par-ticularly since the eyes, of all the members of the body, most mingle body and soul. They preferred the eyes to be: black — most of the verses treat this, and call the eyes deep-black; and wide — hence they likened them to the eyes of the cow, the gazelle, the wild cow, and other animals. They must be dark as though rimmed with kohl, hold-ing a lustrous contrast that works destruction on the beholder — and who does not know Jarir's line:

(The eyes whose glance holds that dark luster slew us, then did not bring our slain to life)

— and they should hold lan-guor and drowsiness, so they are described as languishing and heavy-lidded. As a result of these qualities the eyes came to have great power over the beholder: they slay him and do not revive him, and strip the sanctity from a monk, as Imru' al-Qays says:

(She has an eye which, had she turned it upon a monk who had fasted for God and prayed devoutly, he would have woken infatuated and lovesick for her, as though he had never fasted a day for God nor prayed)

It appears that the eyes of