Sayings of the Arabs

Unknown

ca. 1200

Chapter 47

[ . . . ] A son of a great king married the daughter of another king. She approached her mother as she was being given to the officials and servants who came to take her [to her husband], and started to cry at the thought of leaving her father’s house. Her mother told her: “restrain yourself, my daughter, lest the one who wants to be…

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Sayings of the Arabs (Mishle he-‘arav) consists of wisdom and ethical texts translated from Arabic into Hebrew in Provence or Iberia. It consists of fifty chapters in rhymed prose with some poetic interludes, in the style of Arabic literature called adab (literature meant to instill proper behavior). In the introduction to the Hebrew translation, its translator, probably named Isaac, insists that his text has a Jewish origin, and he intersperses it with biblical verses to imbue it with Jewish flavor. This excerpt presents ten pieces of advice from a mother to her daughter about how to please her husband.

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Early Medieval Tales and Legends

6th to 12th Century

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