Half-brother of Abdullah bin al-Zubayr, the celebrated pretender.
Grand-daughter of the Caliph Abu Bakr and the most beautiful woman of her day.
The Calc. Edit. by mistake reads “Izzah.” Torrens (notes i.-xi.) remarks “The word _Ghoonj_ is applied to this sort of blandishment” (_i.e._ an affected gait), and says Burckhardt (Prov. No. 685), “The women of Cairo flatter themselves that their _Ghoonj_ is superior to that of all other females in the Levant.” But Torrens did not understand and Burckhardt would not explain “Ghunj” except by “assumed airs” (see No. 714). It here means the art of moving in coition, which is especially affected, even by modest women, throughout the East and they have many books teaching the genial art. In China there are professors, mostly old women, who instruct young girls in this branch of the gymnastic.
Abu al-Aswad bought a native-born slave-girl, who was blind of an eye, and she pleased him; but his people decried her to him; whereat he wondered and, turning the palms of his hands upwards,[114] recited these two couplets:—
They find me fault with her where I default ne’er find, ✿ Save haply that a speck in either eye may show: But if her eyes have fault, of fault her form hath none, ✿ Slim-built above the waist and heavily made below.
When reciting the Fátihah (opening Koranic chapter), the hands are held in this position as if to receive a blessing falling from Heaven; after which both palms are passed down the face to distribute it over the eyes and other organs of sense.
The Caliph Harun al-Rashid lay one night between two slave-girls, one from Al-Medinah and the other from Cufa and the Cufite rubbed his hands, whilst the Medinite rubbed his feet and made his concern[115] stand up. Quoth the Cufite, “I see thou wouldst keep the whole of the stock-in-trade to thyself; give me my share of it.” And the other answered, “I have been told by Málik, on the authority of Hishám ibn Orwah,[116] who had it of his (grand) father, that the Prophet said, “Whoso quickeneth the dead, the dead belongeth to him and is his.”” But the Cufite took her unawares and, pushing her away, seized it all in her own hand and said, “Al-A’amash telleth us, on the authority of Khaysamah, who had it of Abdallah bin Mas’úd, that the Prophet declared, Game belongeth to him who taketh it, not to him who raiseth it.” And this is also related of