Page:Arabian poetry for English readers.djvu/20

 THE FRONTISPIECE.

This is a lithographed reproduction, in facsimile (but only in black and white), of a page of a beautifully written and splendidly illuminated Arabic manuscript volume, in the possession of Mr. £. J. W. Gibb, whose translation of Mesihi's Ode on Spring enriches the Appendix to the present work. The page contains the eleven first couplets of £l'Busiri*s celebrated Qasida (Poem, or rather, Hymn) in praise of Muhammad, of which an English translation, by Mr. J. W. Redhouse, will be found in pages 319-341. It is hardly necessary to state, what almost every English reader must already know, that Arabic, like most Oriental languages, is written from right to left; but it may be explained that the space in the centre of the page separates the first and second hemistichs of each verse. For example: tbb first couplet is contained in the /Srst line, at the top of each column; the secon4 couplet, in the second line of eack column; and so on, reading across the central division. Mr. Redhouse has favoured me with a transliteration of this page (not every Arabist can correctly read any Arabic manuscript), and a translation of the titles and the customary invocation. The titles of the poem and of the first section, at the top of the page, are:

qasidaimu htrtllUun fashtn fi ta^dlli ^H'fia/si

A Poem; a Mantle. A Section on the Justification

of the Carnal Man.

Then follows the invocation which is invariably placed at the beginning of every Muslim composition, whether secular or religious:

di 'smi *lldhi ^r-raAmdm ^r'rahimi

In the name of GoD, the Most Merdfiil, the All-Compassionate.

Our old European authors in like manner always headed their