I see,” she said, “what is’t?
Is it dust from some mill that I have in view?”
Said I, “Be not amazed! This is
The powder that from time’s mill does accrue.”
—that is, her mood darkened when she saw that white hair resembling mill dust had appeared upon his face and altered his beard, and she wondered at its sudden onset, a wonderment that necessarily plunged her into gloom and “rolled up the carpet of her conviviality.” Then he answered her by saying, “Be not amazed” at how fast it has appeared—for the wondrous events that the passing of time brings and the disasters that result from these, which may be likened in their turning to a mill, have caused the appearance of these flecks that you see; so do not blame me, and patiently endure this misfortune that has befallen you. A poet223 has compared the onset of white hair in the beard to the bird called the vulture because of the latter’s whiteness224 and compared the remaining part, in its blackness, to the “Ibn Dāyah” (“Son of a Midwife”), which is the black crow. He says:
When I saw the vulture mourn Ibn Dāyah
And roost in its two nests,225 my heart felt pain at his loss.
٧،٥،١١
(ومنهم) من شبّه حدوثه بظهور الصبح واشتعاله في السواد كاشتعال النار في الحطب الغليظ اليابس قال ابن دُرَيْد رحمه الله تعالى في أوّل مقصورته [رجز]
| يا ظَبْيةً أشْبَهَ شَيْءٍ بِالمَهَا | راتِعَةً بَيْنَ العَقِيقِ واللِّوا |
| أما تَرَى رَأسِي حَاكَى لَوْنُهُ | طُرَّةَ صُبْحٍ تَحْتَ أَذْيالِ الدُّجا |
| وَاِشْتَعَلَ المُبْيَضُّ في مُسْوَدِّهِ | مِثْلَ اشْتِعالِ النَّارِ في جَزْلِ الغَضا |
| فَكانَ كَاللَّيْلِ البَهِيمِ حَلَّ في | أَرْجائِهِ ضَوْءُ صَباحٍ فَانْجَلَى |
Others have likened its onset to the appearance of the light of morning and have said that the way it “catches fire” in the blackness is like fire catching in thick, dry firewood. Ibn Durayd, may the Almighty have mercy upon him, says at the start of his maqsūrah:226
Ah Gazelle, so like the oryx
’Twixt al-ʿAqīq and al-Liwā grazing,227
See you not how my head’s color has mimicked
The dawn’s gleam ’neath the skirts of darkness trailing,
And how the whiteness in the blackness has caught
Just as fire in a saxaul log breaks out blazing?
Methought it was some pitch-dark night
In whose expanse the morn, unloosed, turns all to light!
٨،٥،١١
والتشبيه للشيب من هذا المعنى كثير وهو مشتقّ من الشَيْبة الّتي تباع عند العطّار لبياضها ورقّة عروقها واشتباك الشعر بعضه ببعض ولهذا يقال رأوا في الشيبة نجاسة مثلًا ومصدره شاب يشيب شيبًا وذِكْرُه الشيب في العارضين أوّلًا يدلّ على أنّه كان من الأماثل والكرماء لأنّ أوّل ما يشيب من الكرام العارضان ومن اللئام العَنْفَقَة قال الشاعر [متقارب]
| فَشَيْبُ الكِرامِ مِنَ العارِضَيْنِ | وَشَيْبُ اللِّئامِ مِنَ العَنْفَقَهْ |
| وَشَيْبُ الرُّؤوسِ بِما في النُّفوسِ | وَشَيْبُ الصُّدورِ مِنَ الزَّنْدَقَهْ |
Similes of this sort for white hair are legion. The word shayb (“white hair”) is derived from the shaybah (“artemisia”) that is sold at the druggist’s, because of its whiteness and the fineness of its roots and the way its hairs become entangled with one another, which is why they say, “They saw impurity in the artemisia” as a proverb.228 The paradigm is shāba, yashību, shayban (“to turn white (of hair)”). The fact that he mentions that the sides of his beard turned white first is an indication that he was a man of stature and nobility, for the first thing to turn white on a noble man is the sides of the beard, and on an ignoble man the hair between the lower lip and the chin. The poet says:
White hairs on the noble start at the whiskers,
On the vile above the chin.
White hairs on the head by worry are fed
And white hairs on the chest are a sin!
٩،٥،١١
وقصره الشيب في عارضيه ليس على بابه وإنّما كان ابتداؤه في عارضيه ثمّ جرى في بقيّة لحيته بيقين فذكر الأصل والفرع تابع له وأمّا إلحاقه تاء التأنيث في الفعل فهو جرى على لغة الريّافة والناظم منهم وأيضًا لو قال شاب عارضي أو شابوا عوارضي لاختلّ الوزن فراعى لغته ووزن الكلام
However, his restriction of mention of white hairs to those on the sides of his beard is arbitrary: they would begin at the edges and then progress ineluctably to the rest of his beard. In other words, he stated the root, and the secondary phenomena follow as a matter of course. As for his adding the feminine marker -t to the verb, he follows in this the language of the country people, of whom the poet was one; and, in addition, had he said shāba ʿāriḍī or shābū ʿawāriḍī, the meter would have been thrown off. Thus he acted in accord with both his own speech habits and the meter.229
