the women of the Hijaz surpassed in beauty the eyes of the women of other lands, so that they became proverbial: (Hijazi-eyed).

As for the cheek, it is required to be smooth as a plate of polished silver or a burnished leaf, free of furrows, moderate in size, neither huge nor tiny — though if it must be one or the other, better that it be large and ample, in keeping with our ancients' love of plumpness and bigness. Its color is a blend of white and red — there are roses in it, as Antara says — and it is clear, gleaming, pure and limpid of hue: Tarafa described it by saying the sun had cast its own robe over it, and another said it was the sun itself. If it bore a beauty-spot, its loveliness was increased, and the playful poet Omar wished he could take its place!

Cheeks were likened to gold dinars, and were taken as an emblem of purity and gentleness, by which the rains were besought to water the earth. We do not read that the woman used powders for the face or pastes to remove its wrinkles.

They described the nose as long, the ornament of the face, into which beauty is poured.

They did not expatiate on the fair one's lips; almost all they required of them was that they be dark in color — described as brown or la'as-tinged — and that they smile well.

As for the mouth, it should be white, pure of teeth, clear as crystal, as camomile, as the flash of lightning when it gleams, as the crescent moon at its setting, as radiant pearls, as though scented powder had been sprinkled over it. It is dark of gum — in Tarafa's saying, the sun gave it light and whiteness to drink, all but its gums, which remained dark. It is sweet to kiss and delicious to sip, exhaling fragrant musk; Antara finds in it a cure for the lovers' disease, and Omar finds in it a balm that raises the dead:

(Had the dead been given her saliva to drink, after the cup of death, they would have risen again)

The poets lavished many descriptions on the mouth's moisture: it is wine, and pressed grapes, and a cool qarqaf liquor whose drinker is seized with a shiver. It is chilled honey mixed with snow; it is honey and ginger, ambergris and cloves, and sweet-smelling musk.

The salient qualities of the teeth are that they be white and bright, finely notched, sharp-edged, evenly gapped, polished, well spaced and not crowded one upon another. When the mouth opens in the flash of a smile they have been likened to camomile after rain, to quince and apples, to hailstones, and to the ray of the sun breaking from the clouds. We read that the Arab woman polished her teeth with the miswak to keep their whiteness and their sweet scent.

The chief thing in the neck is length: hence they likened it to the neck of the gazelle, the antelope, the fawn, and the white antelope, and described it, for its length, as the neck of a gazelle that can reach the treetops when it stretches its neck. It must be white, bright and luminous, polished like a mirror (and the mirror, in Imru' al-Qays's tongue, is the sajanjal!). Nor should it remain bare of ornament; and no harm if a pendant hangs at its middle.

We come to the arms: they are long, white, quick of movement.

And to the fingers: these too are long, and tender, soft and delicate — likened therefore (and again by Imru' al-Qays) to soft caterpillars and to miswak twigs.

And to the nails: the woman took pains to adorn them, staining them with henna till they reddened and grew lustrous like kindled flames.

Then we return to the chest: it is packed with flesh — al-Mirar describes it as full of flesh, not gaunt. It is dazzling white, gleaming like the sun.

As for the breasts, they are like two caskets, white as ivory, high-set and unbowed, with no sharpness at their tips. They are small, of scarcely any bulk, in the words of al-Sa'di — though others were smitten with them large.

The figure: it should be slender and lithe in its upper half, and big and plump in its lower half. Omar describes her, saying:

(She is evenly poised: half of her is the bough of a ben-tree, and half a sand-dune matted by drenching rains)

The slenderness shows also in the front, while the plumpness shows behind: (slender as she comes toward you, ample-hipped as she turns away...). They described the woman's lithe figure in many ways, likening it to the bough, to sprays of the ben-tree, and to the brown lance (Antara's imagination being ever warlike); and for her figure they likened the woman to a gazelle, swaying with grace.

The belly belongs to the slender part of the woman: it is white and soft, lean, not slack.

The waist too belongs to that same part: it is slim, smooth, and fine, likened to the she-camel's nose-rein... (and rings might be worn on such waists)!

The Arab woman made her waist a boast to glory in, as Omar tells us — and he is widely experienced in such matters. Al-A'sha relates that when she walked, her waist all but snapped and doubled over, and that her garments hung loose about it however much they were taken in, so that she had to stuff the empty space — whereby al-Ra'i fancies her with child!

Plumpness: upon the slimness follows a plumpness that was dear to the ancient Arabs. They admired the plump woman generally, and praised the beauty of the fleshy one — the large-limbed, the massive, the heavy-hipped, the ponderous — who moves like a dune of sand and looks like a thick papyrus-stalk; she mounts the camel-litter and it proves too small for her bulk, as Bishr ibn Abi Khazim says; she puts on her gown and at once it grows tight on her, so she wears wide garments. For her fleshiness and her abundance of fat and flesh she was pictured as though she were without bones.

The haunches: the Arabs insisted greatly that the absolute beauty of the haunch

lies in its massiveness; the more massive it grows, the more beautiful. The critic al-Amidi says: (It is the custom of the Arabs hardly ever to mention slenderness, the folded flank, and the fineness of the waist, unless they also mention those members in which fullness, ripeness, and thickness are prized.) So they described