Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical DevelopmentGoldziher, Ignác
Religion
Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development
Goldziher, Ignác
Jewish mythology; Judaism -- History -- To 70 A.D.
We find the same figure, of which we have seen Abû-l-ʿAlâ to be so fond,
used by Abû-l-Ḥasan ʿAlî b. Isḥâḳ al-Waddânî, a Maġreb [North African]
poet, who says of the morning: ‘It is like the greyness which spreads
itself over the black hair of youth (the black night):’
Dâna-ṣ-ṣabâḥu wa-lâ ata wa-kaʾannahu * sheybun aṭalla ʿala sawâdi
shibâbî.[436]
So, inversely, when the hair grows grey it is said ‘The dark night is
lighted.’[437]
From all these cases it may be gathered that the progress of the sun
from the dawn to the full day is treated sometimes as a transition from
a whitish to a reddish colour, sometimes as the reverse. Sometimes the
redness of morning begins, and turns into white; sometimes the greyness,
which passes into red.[438] But both conceptions are also found combined
in a single idea: thus, for instance, al-ʿArjî the poet says:
Bâtâ bi-anʿâmi leylatin ḥatta badâ * subḥun talawwaḥa
ka-l-aġarri-l-ashkari.
They both passed a joyous night, until began
The morning to appear, like a red horse with white forehead-spot
(ġurrâ).[439]
Some already-cited examples have enabled us to observe that when day is
contrasted with night, it is done by calling the night black and the day
white. To the former instances I will now add another for clearness’
sake: ‘Till the whiteness of the day became black’ (ḥatta ʿâda bayâḍ
al-nahâr sawâdan, Rom. of ʿAntar, XXV. 5. 4). The attribute _white_,
applied to the sun of the advanced day, is especially clear in a passage
which I must not omit to mention. The poet al-Mutanabbî says:
Azûruhum wa-sawâdu-l-leyli yashfaʿunî * wa-anthanî wa-bayâḍu-ṣ-ṣubḥi
yuġrî bî.
I visit them when the _blackness of the night_ aids me;
And I retire when the _whiteness of the morning_ drives me away.
A critic[440] remarks on this passage that the writer ought to have
spoken of the _day_ rather than of the _whiteness of the morning_, as
the rhetorical law of al-muḳâbalâ ‘antithesis’ demands as the opposite
to Night not Dawn, but Day. Thus ‘the whiteness of day’ would be better.
Another passage with the antithesis is contained in Ḥarîrî: ‘The white
day becomes black’ (iswadda-l-yaum al-abyaḍ).[441] This use of language
is characteristically exemplified in the expression sirnâ bayâḍa jauminâ
wa-sawâda leylatinâ, ‘we travelled night and day’ (literally, ‘we
travelled during the whiteness of our day and the blackness of our
night,’ Aġânî, II. 74. 20). But apart from any antithesis, the white
colour is attributed to the light of the morning and the day:
falamma-rtafaʿat al-shams fabyâḍḍat, ‘after the sun had risen high and
_become white_,’ is said in a tradition.[442] In the Romance of ʿAntar
(XXIV. 111. 3), a horse is thus described: ‘he was white in colour, as
if he were the day when it breaks, or the moon[443] when it shines with
full beams’ (wa-hua abyaḍ al-laun kaʾannahu al-ṣabâḥ iḏa-nfajar
wa-l-ḳamar iḏâ badar).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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