Dr. D.S. Merchant's Articles in Family - Article Directory | Free Content for Publication | RSS Feeds- Free Content for your Website!

Show All\|Display Category\|Title\|Newest\|Oldest
Devotional Literature "The generic term sharru or precentor in Assyria can be traced in the sha'ir or poet-soothsayer of the Arabs. The Assyrian hymn was the shire, and in it we recognize the Hebrew shir (song) and the Arabic shi'r (poetry). The Psalm of David in Assyrian was the zamaru, which equates with the Hebrew zimrah (song) and mizmor (psalm). Certainly the Assyrian shigu or penitential psalm is identical with the shiggaion of the Hebrew and the shajan of the Arabs in origin. Likewise, the allu or wail in Assyrian may be linked up with the Hebrew and Arabic elal and wilwal. Indeed, the Assyrian shidru or recitation may find its cognate in the inshad of the Arabs. Yet scarcely a line has come down to us concerning the hymn of the ancient Arabs, that their songs were appreciated is borne out by an inscription of Ashurbanipal (7th century B.C.), where Arab prisoners toiling for their Assyrian masters whiled away their hours in singing (alili) and music (ninguti), which so delighted the Assyrians that they begged for more. Black Clothes The word aswad derived from swd means black, occurring seven times in the Koran (2:187, 3:106, 35:27). In the sense of an original black colour, the word aswad occurs only twice: "When you can tell a white thread from a black on in the light of the approaching dawn" (2:187) and "black mountains" (35:27). The word muswadd (dark-faced) is used in 16:58 and its parallel (43:17) to suggest the darkening of the face in the light of bad news as reflection of grief. Other words generally understood as the colour black or dark hues include ahwa in 87:5. The word hamida in 22:5 means lifeless and is ordinarily taken as black-ended. Another term mudhamm used in 55:64 in the sense of dark green, tending to black.