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Updated: June 24, 2025
But it came to pass that Ibla was asked in marriage by Amarah, a stupid youth, puffed up by his wealth and lineage. Antar, on hearing the news, was transported with rage, and attacked his young rival with such violence that all the Arabian chiefs begged of Zoheir to punish the aggressor. The king left to Shedad, Antar's father, the pronouncing of sentence.
But at the very moment in which he was honored by royal felicitations, several chieftains, indignant at the elevation of a black slave, employed every means to prevent his marriage with Ibla, and to force him to undertake enterprises which would prove fatal to him. Shedad, his father, and Malek, the father of Ibla, connived at these plots.
Tears flowed from his eyes, and before departing for the pastures he went to see his mother Zebiba, and to talk with her concerning Ibla.
Antar had been for some time released from this duty, when one morning he entered the dwelling of his uncle Malek, and found there his aunt, engaged in combing the hair of her daughter Ibla, whose ringlets, black as the night, floated over her shoulders.
This is the case with the male Ibla, and in a truly extraordinary manner with the Proteolepas: for the carapace in all other cirripedes consists of the three highly important anterior segments of the head enormously developed, and furnished with great nerves and muscles; but in the parasitic and protected Proteolepas, the whole anterior part of the head is reduced to the merest rudiment attached to the bases of the prehensile antennae.
But the hostile and the envious continued to plot against him. They still aimed at preventing his marriage, and compassing his death. Amarah, who aspired to Ibla's hand, backed by all the chieftains hostile to Antar, renewed his suit and pretensions. Ibla was carried off from her house among the Absians, and taken to another tribe.
They sang the loves of Antar and of Ibla, of Leila and of Mejnoun; the romance of the desert, tales of passion and of plunder, of the rescue of women and the capture of camels, of heroes with a lion heart, and heroines brighter and softer than the moon. The beautiful daughter of Besso, pensive and abstracted, played with her beads in the pavilion of her grandfather.
His prayer was granted; he rushed upon the savage creature, and transfixed it with his lance. Nor was this the only service he did the King of Persia, who in gratitude for many others, not only gave Antar the thousand camels he was looking for, but loaded him with treasures, with which to do homage to Ibla. On his return Antar was received with a rapturous welcome by the Absian tribe.
"Of course you were right," answered Ibla, with a smile, "and we were all delighted that you escaped from the adventure safe and sound. Because of the service you have rendered us by your conduct, our mothers look upon you as a son, and we as a brother." From that moment Antar made the service of women his special duty above all others.
He might take the school-room pillars and pull the house down if he liked. He might close the door, and demolish every one of us, like Antar the lover or Ibla; but he lets us live. He never thrashes anybody without a cause; when woe betide the tyrant or the sneak!
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