44 THE ORIGIN OF ISLAM LECT.

pure wine like saffron and amber, poured in its glass and mixed, spreading a costly perfume in the house, as if the riders had (just) arrived with it from the sea of Darin.1

They even mention Christian ceremonies such as they had seen on their visits to the princes of Ghassan:

We went out to watch the wild (game) around Thu'ala between Ruhayyat and the Pass of Akhrub,
And from afar I perceived a troop, as if they were monks at a festival with fringed robes.2

This is a variation of the simile in which the long sweeping tails of a herd of wild kine are compared to the long-skirted gowns of a group of girls circling a pillar in a pagan ceremony.3

The religion of these princes is referred to as part of their excellence, as was natural in poems composed in their praise:

A nature is theirs, God gives the like to no other men—
a wisdom that never sleeps, a bounty that never fails.
Their home is in God's own land, his chosen of old their faith
is steadfast: their hope is set on nought but the world to come.
Their sandals are soft and fine, and girded with chastity
1 Nöldeke, Delectus, p. 26.
2 Imru'ul-Qais, vide Ahlwardt, Divans of Six Arab Poets, p. 118.
3 Vide C. J. Lyall, Ancient Arabian Poetry, p. 93, where another example of a reference to a Christian festival will be found.
II CHRISTIANITY IN ARABIA 45

they welcome with garlands sweet the dawn of the Feast of Palms.1

The Christian hermit in his cell in the wilderness is frequently referred to, a favourite image being the light seen in the darkness from afar. (This, as we shall see, caught the fancy of Muhammad himself.) Thus Imru'ul-Qais in that poem of his which has been included in the wellknown collection, the Mu'allaqat, says of his beloved that "in the evening she brightens the darkness, as if she were the lamp of the cell of a monk devoted to God".2 The beloved is also
frequently compared to the images seen in Christian churches.3 It is a convention of the desert poets to begin a qasida by the poet representing himself as coming upon the traces of a former encampment where the beloved had at one time dwelt. The half-obliterated marks are frequently compared to writing, and this often brings with it a reference to the sacred books of the monks. For example, one of the poems of Imru'ul-Qais begins thus:

Stay, let us weep at the remembrance of a loved one and favour (bestowed), at the mark of a camp whose lines have long ago been obliterated. Years have passed over it since I knew it, and it has become like the writing of the Psalms (zubur) in the books (masahif=leaves) of the monks.4
1 An-Nabigha, vide Ahlwardt, op. cit. p. 3. (C.J. Lyall's translation, op. cit. p. 96.)
2 Imru'ul-Qais, Mu'allaqa, 1. 40.
3 Vide Fraenkel, Aramaische Fremdwörter im Arabischen, p. 271 f.
4 Imru'ul-Qais, vide Ahlwardt, op. cit. p. 161.